100 Not Out

by Gordon Lawrie

Horror

  SWEET DREAMS

  Amy awoke to knocking on her bedroom window. She’d slept poorly since Matt had left her; tonight’s gale-force winds made things worse.

  Assuming that the tapping was merely the wind tapping tree branches against her window, Amy nevertheless rose, defiantly throwing back the curtains.

  At first – nothing; then a dark shape emerged from the pitch-black night. She could only see its eyes. Then, with a deep unpleasant laugh, it transformed into Matt.

  “Let me in, Amy, please,” said Mark. Entranced, she opened the window.

  Next morning Amy’s body was found in bed; every organ had been sucked from her body.

  FORTHCOMING ATTRACTION

  Concentrate on your tablet, laptop or PC screen: one hundred words isn’t a lot, each one has to count.

  Relax, make yourself comfortable. Let yourself relax in the chair, let it fit your body like a glove.

  It feels good, that chair, doesn’t it? Can you feel it starting to take hold of you? That chair is alive, it wants you, it’s going to swallow you just as it’s devoured so many innocents before you. You’re dinner. There’s no escape.

  And whatever you do, don’t look behind you. Something else is there, waiting, especially for you.

  THE UNRINGING

  As Halloween’s end approached, the tiny village of St Egbert’s collectively shivered. Nobody knew who rang the church bell – everyone was past caring anyway, trusting in prayer instead.

  Each year at midnight, the bell struck twelve then continued, fifteen, perhaps sixteen strikes, each extra stroke representing a soul taken. Those hearing the bells ring were safe for another year, otherwise...

  This year was a bad one. Neither Mrs Clancy nor Jim Pearce heard bells. Bess Merryweather’s cancer finally claimed her, too. But losing the two Dempsey boys, speeding on the back road in their parents’ car, that was too much.

  THE DOOR

  They'd lived there for three years but never once opened the third bedroom's cupboard door. When they'd bought the house, they'd been told that a dark secret lay behind it.

  The door was locked – the key long-lost – and painted over many times. Henry was convinced the door was a trompe l'oeil. There simply wasn't space for a cupboard, there was simply nothing there.

  Jennifer wasn't so sure. One evening, determined to discover the truth, she instructed Henry to open the door with a crowbar. Fully ten minutes later, it finally gave way.

  What they saw made their blood run cold.

  TRICK OF THE LIGHT?

  It might have been a trick of the light.

  Watching television, I gradually started to sense that the figures on the screen weren’t the only things moving in the room. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that the subjects in the photographs on the fireplace and the wall had changed slightly; an altered expression, an adjusted posture, perhaps. My normally-gentle sister Jan appeared angry. Auntie Emma seemed to be frowning instead of smiling. Ann-Louise, my ex-wife, seemed to be holding something in her lap: a revolver? She certainly wasn’t smiling, for sure.

  Then I realised someone was behind me.

  THE DOOR IN THE BASEMENT

  He studied the basement cupboard door before him. Locked for years, he’d no idea if it was empty, even what size it was. Probably walk-in, but one could never be sure. They’d bought the house without getting a chance to see inside. But where there’s a will...

  So here he was, clutching some skeleton keys he’d borrowed from a local locksmith. Something must fit, and sure enough, at the fifth attempt, the lock turned crustily. Gingerly, he opened the door.

  He still wasn’t prepared for what he found.

  Managing to compose himself, he called out, “Sally, we have a problem.”

  FOREST HALT

  Jack knew the line well. Running along the hillside, it cut through a heavily-forested area, clearing briefly to give a stunning view of the valley.

  One night as the train passed the clearing, Jack thought he spotted a disused station, Forest Halt, on the opposite side from the view. He wasn't sure, though, it just flashed past.

  At the depot, Jack asked about Forest Halt, but no-one had ever noticed it.

  Next evening, when Jack's train was on the line again, an ill-timed landslide carried all three coaches down the steep embankment. No-one survived. Forest Halt was never seen again.

  LUNCH AT THE VAMPIRES' GUILD

  The Vampires' Guild was holding its annual vegetarian buffet lunch. One woman had ignored all advice and had more kale than was good for her; now she was hallucinating.

  "My queendom for a pasty," she slurred. "My queendom for a pasty!"

  Someone popped a piece of kale-wasabi cake into the woman's mouth. It had a dramatic effect: she had a seizure and lay writhing on the floor.

  "Give her blood, give her blood," the cry went up. Two Guild committee members flew to the woman to apply neck-to-mouth rescusitation. It did the trick; ten minutes later she was drinking tea.

  SNAKE

  Thirty thousand feet into the air is no place to discover that a coastal taipan, the world's third most deadly snake, is loose in the passenger cabin. We're mid-Pacific, which makes sense given that we're flying from Sydney to Los Angeles, but anyone unfortunate enough to be bitten won't make it; untreated bites kill within ninety minutes – always – and the Quantas flight is many hours from landing yet.

  The pilot has sensibly locked the cockpit door, but in no time the panicked snake slips underneath it and strikes both pilot and co-pilot immediately.

  The flight now has a real problem.