Dark Deaths_Selected Horror Fiction

by William Cook

  The Moon Came Down

  The moon came down last night and fell on our house. It made an awful ‘BANG’ on the roof, causing me to leap up and hunker down underneath my bed. My small body trembled and my heart beat in my chest like a tom-tom drum. As I crouched under my bed in the near-darkness, I was more frightened than I had ever been before. Scrabbling noises came from above, something was moving around on the corrugated-iron roof. I peeked out from under the covers that hung over the edge of the bed, but all I could see was the geometric square shape of the window, the cold blue light of the moon making my thin curtains glow like the ocean. I listened intently, but heard nothing. Mother and father must have heard the explosion of noise. Where were they? Why hadn’t they called out?

  The house suddenly creaked and cracked, then settled to silence once again. It was as though something, or someone, was sitting on the roof of our two-storied farm house. I began to feel even more afraid than I did already. Despite my fear, I decided to investigate. I scurried from under the bed and pulled boots on over my bare feet. The autumn night was cool so I tugged on a sweater over my pyjama top and jammed a woolen hat on my head before approaching the glowing blue window. I hesitated for a minute, counting my heart beats as I listened intently for any noise.

  Something skittered across the metal roof again and caused me to gasp. The sound of something scratching the surface made me think of claws – big claws. I bit my fist and slowly pulled back the thin curtain. The moon cast a blue hue over the fields and the lawn below my window. My father’s tractor sat like a sleeping animal at the edge of the field where he’d left it, before he came in for dinner. The tall trees in the nearby woods that bordered our fields stood dark and still, like sleeping sentries – an army at rest. Nothing stirred outside, or so it seemed.

  I waited there, looking out the window. Listening, as the house creaked again and seemed to sway beneath the weight of some unknown force. More sounds came from above as something else scampered across the roof, scratches and clicks trailed across and to the edge of the roof, then nothing. I took a deep breath and moved away from the window, quietly fishing my torch out of the shadows in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Tip-toeing to the bedroom door, I held the metal torch out before me like a weapon as I approached. The torch was a good one – long, black and metal – an expensive gift from Grandpa for my last birthday. I thumbed the switch on the handle and a strong cutting beam of light illuminated my room. I gripped the door handle for a moment, then turned and pushed.

  At first, what I saw in front of me did not make any sense. Then I realized with dread what might have happened. At the end of the short hallway, right where my parent’s bedroom should have been, broken beams and smashed timber littered the area like a crazy bird’s nest – splintered wood and ceiling insulation had burst from above and littered the hallway and in the middle of it all, sat a giant metal egg-shaped object. It filled the whole end of the house in width and extended up and below my field of vision. I traced its contours with my torch light – the metal was a flat silver color unlike anything I’d ever seen before and seemed without seam or join.

  My ten-year-old brain tumbled with possibilities – a satellite, meteorite, airplane, helicopter, space-rocket, UFO. My last thought appeared to be confirmed, as the side of the object began to glow a weird yellow color, the metal taking on a translucency in the center of the spot where the light omitted. At its core, a dark shape emerged, framed with the glowing yellow light as it morphed and took form. The silhouette seemed to grow limbs as dark shapes protruded from its main body and then something burst from the side of the object. A sharp hook-like apparatus poked through the center of the glowing hole and then another followed, as they folded back against the solid edge of the metal egg and forced the gap wider, long trails of smoking liquid spilled from the limbs and onto the floor as they clicked and scratched against the outer metal shell with exertion.

  My heart drummed against my ribs as I stepped back towards my bedroom. Something was trying to get out. Something was nearly out. My mind failed to compute what it was I was actually witnessing. All I could think of were crabs and lobsters, like the ones I had seen when we’d visited the sea-side last year for our holidays. Except these creatures were huge and their skin, or plating, seemed to be metallic – much-like the exterior of the metal egg. Two small, but incredibly bright, glowing white beads of light glared out at me from the shadowy form that remained inside the egg. Like a huge spider, six limbs extended out from the hole, clicking and clacking against the metal shell, searching for a foothold. The flailing limbs ceased struggling as they established a firm hold on the metal exterior.

  I stepped back into my room. My breath caught in my throat as the creature’s limbs concertinaed and clicked into position like an umbrella, then paused for a second. The terrible head of the creature emerged from the center of the body, its eyes glowing brighter than my torch as it pulled back on itself briefly. The limbs bunched and swelled as it prepared to launch itself … at me!

  I turned and slammed my bedroom door behind me, twisting the key in one swift motion, running for the window, my torch light spinning around the room … THWACKK!!! The house shook again and jagged shards of the door exploded across the room, spinning sharp pieces of wood narrowly missing me, as I fumbled with the window-latch in a panic. Another SMASH and the door-frame completely disintegrated in a spray of wooden splinters and drywall dust. I was up and out of my window and balancing on the sloping roof in a matter of seconds.

  A brilliant white explosion of light erupted from inside my bedroom. I stood there teetering precariously on the slippery corrugated iron, temporarily blinded from the flash, rubbing my eyes and trying to stop my boots from slipping on the metal roof. I squatted and peered in the window as I edged back down the roof. A small figure stood in the center of my bedroom.

  I blinked and rubbed my eyes with one hand, holding on to the window ledge with the other. It was a boy, no older than myself. A boy who looked exactly like me! A mess of blond hair, a rather skinny neck, a rash of freckles across the bridge of the slightly upturned nose (Granddad called it a ‘ski-jump’ nose). The boy could’ve been my identical twin!

  He looked up at me, but his eyes weren’t normal. They glowed in the shadows like two burning pieces of ice. A weird clicking noise was coming from him. His mouth yawned, exposing rows of glistening sharp metallic teeth. His body twitched and his head seemed to shimmer, as it vibrated in a blur then abruptly ceased moving. He tilted his head to one side, then the other, the strange clicks running into each other, becoming almost musical as if he were practicing scales just like I did on Grandma’s piano when we visited. The clicks became a singular tonal sound and then he said:

  “Hello, Billy.”

  I let go of the window-ledge and slid down the roof’s incline. My foot hit the guttering as I turned and launched myself off the roof and into the foliage of the large sycamore tree that stood next to the house. My arms flailed as I reached for a hand-hold amongst the branches and bushy leaves, my feet landed squarely on a big branch as I managed to grab a sturdy limb above my head. I paused for a moment and steadied myself, making sure I wasn’t injured. A warm trickle of blood wet my cheek from a scratch, but I was otherwise in good shape.

  I looked up at my bedroom window and there looking down at me was the boy. His eyes phosphorescent, glowing, as he stared at me perched in the tree. I dropped to the next branch and the next and then hit the ground running. Within minutes, I had crossed the field, running as fast as I could until I reached the tree-line of the forest that bordered our property. I crouched behind the trunk of a massive pine-tree and caught my breath. The smell of the pine was refreshing and the shelter of the dark woods gave me a moment to think about my situation. I looked back at our house and gasped. I could now see the damage that the object had caused. Nearly half the side of the house was destroyed. The part of the house where my parents slept looked as though a hurricane had ripped it apart, ex
cept that there was a metallic object the size of a combine harvester embedded in the roof.

  Something moved on the roof and the sounds of the same clicks I’d heard earlier, followed by high-pitched squeals like someone tuning a cheap radio to the correct frequency, echoed across the field. The noises reminded me of the sound of dolphins and whales that I’d seen and heard on the nature channel on television. My heart still pounded in my chest as I stood up. My mind raced as I wondered what to do next. I thought of my mother and father and hoped that they had survived. And then I saw the things that had dropped from the sky.

  I counted seven glowing pairs of eyes drifting across the field towards me, seemingly disembodied, as they appeared to float steadily ahead. Dark formless shapes emerged from the shadows as the clouds parted above and moonlight illuminated the fields with a cold clinical hue. I backed into the woods as the figures kept advancing towards me. They spread across the field in uniform fashion, evenly spaced about ten yards apart. I tripped as my left foot dipped down into a rut in the forest floor; tumbling backwards, I sprawled on my backside on a soft bed of pine-needles. I lay there for a second, stunned.

  The dark woods around me were deathly quiet and from where I sat, looking between the thick dark tree trunks towards the house, I could see that the figures now stood still. I rubbed my eyes as I slowly stood and scanned what I could see of the field between the trees, steadying myself against a nearby tree trunk about a meter thick. I could not believe what I was seeing. My brain was having trouble comprehending the bizarre visage in front of me, as the creatures blurred with sudden intense movement and the strange clicks and high-pitched sounds grew in intensity. I watched in horror as the things appeared to morph with their vibrations, their bodies twitching and swelling while losing density. I could now see through them, the bodies almost completely translucent as their movements came to a halt.

  I blinked and within that nano-second, two more figures had appeared either side of each of the seven beings, at first overlapping the central form, then shifting slightly by degrees in opposite directions until a few seconds later, the transformation had completed and there now stood twenty-one of the creatures. Each facsimile was identical to the other. The same brilliantly glowing eyes, the clawed arachnoid limbs flailing ominously, the thin dark tapered bodies hovering a foot above the ground, each creature making that strange clicking high-pitched call.

  Then they started moving forward again.

  I ran like I had never run before, my young legs pumping like pistons as my boots pelted the ground. I never looked back, just kept running with every ounce of energy my body possessed, as I weaved through the trees, heading to the hills that I knew sat hunched on the other side of the forest. The hills where I spent many hours with my father exploring and trapping game in the spring months. The lower foothills were riddled with old mines and rocky caves, plenty of good hiding places, if I could just reach the edge of the forest before they caught up to me.

  After what seemed like an eternity, I scrambled up the lower incline of the hilly range and, by the light of the moon now full in the sky above me, soon found an old abandoned mine-shaft. I walled myself in with whatever I could find and then sat there hunched in the dark damp space, peering through a crack in the pile of old timbers I had braced against the entrance. Down amongst the pines, deep in the shadowy depths of the dense forest I could see the glow of their eyes, hovering like fireflies, prowling amongst the trees as they searched for me, and then they were gone. Disappeared.

  I daren’t breathe as I waited for what seemed an eternity, shivering cold in that dark ghostly place, the only sound an occasional soft skittering across the silted floor of the mine, as a rodent or a spider went about their nocturnal business. Exhausted and afraid, I waited and, eventually, slept.

  The morning sun streamed through the cracks in my makeshift barrier, rays of light filling the entrance with a warm golden glow. I pushed my way out into the sunlight and looked across the top of the pine-forest in the direction of our house. I yawned and rubbed my eyes, stretching a tight knot out of my back, as I surveyed the farm-lands and forest, spread out before me from my vantage point on the foot-hills. There stood our old farm-house, just like it always had, the single large sycamore tree off to the side of the house closest to my bedroom. From where I stood, nothing seemed amiss and I couldn’t help wonder whether or not I had dreamed the night’s events. I started down the hill and bit my lip to suppress a yelp, as my swollen ankle throbbed with the pressure of my weight on it. I remembered tripping in the forest and a dreadful sense of foreboding filled me with fear. I knew that I hadn’t imagined, or dreamt, what I saw the previous night.

  There was no way I was going to venture back into the shadowed realm of the pine forest, so despite the painful discomfort of my injured foot I took the long way home, hugging the fence that framed the pine plantation until I finally reached the tree-line and stumbled into the corner of our field. I saw nothing that resembled the creatures I’d witnessed. No strange sounds. Nothing.

  As I approached the house, dragging my injured foot behind me, the pain in my ankle throbbing maddeningly now with each step, I studied the roof as best I could. The red corrugated iron looked as it always had: weather-beaten and in need of a recoat, but still intact – a sharp geometric block against the wide expanse of sky behind. It appeared to be free of any damage; no huge metallic contraptions lodged in it, no terrible creatures scuttling across its surface as they exited the other-worldly craft . . .

  And there on the porch stood two familiar figures. As I came closer, they stepped out of the shadows of the verandah and the female one robotically descended the stairs, raising her arms in greeting. The male figure stood tall on the edge of the porch and raised his hand in salute to me, his brown weathered-flesh crowned with a neat salt-‘n’-pepper crew-cut, faded blue dungarees over a red-checked flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up tight over his muscly forearms to the elbows, as always. My mother reached out and touched my face with her cold hand, her going-gray hair pulled back tight into a bun, the purple floral apron she always wore, tied in a neat bow at the front just as she liked it. I recoiled slightly at her touch as she embraced me

  “Ma. Ma, what happened last night?”

  My father stepped down onto the dirt path and walked with the same robotic gait as my mother. As Ma wrapped her arms around me tighter, she made a ‘shussshing’ sound. My father held out his long arms as he reached us, a weird lop-sided grin on his face, his eyes the color of the morning sun, two bright glowing orbs that filled my mind with their awful luminosity. I struggled against my mother’s grasp but she was strong, so very strong. Her shussshing noises increased and then a high-pitched clicking noise ratcheted in my ears, omitting from somewhere deep in her chest, the vibration of her flesh moving rapidly beneath her loose clothes as she squeezed against me tighter. The pain in my foot eased as she lifted me from the ground, but the pressure on my chest threatened to burst my insides.

  My father loomed over us, his long arms now multiplied like a huge spider. Six metallic-black limbs had burst from his clothing; his flesh now glowed with energy. His jaw elongated and stretched, filled with razor sharp rows of teeth that buzzed as they rapidly ground against each other like out-of-control chainsaw blades. My mind collapsed as his yawping mouth grew wider and wider, his burning eyes blinding me with the brilliance of the light streaming from them, as my mother squeezed me into her. Her clicking shussshes filled my mind and senses, as a crescendo of pain engulfed me. Nothing remained, except the terrible darkness of an infinite void.

  One Way Ticket

  Off the highway heading north-west from New Orleans, near the Bayou Piquant that borders Lake Pontchartrain, sat Abel Laroux’s small pig-farm. An old ramshackle house sat in the center of a large field with a row of large pens behind, housing up to fifty plump swine at any given time. The land had been reclaimed centuries before and the dirt had long since baked hard, collecting mud from the tidal marsh
es and bayous in the wet season and long swamp grass in the warmer months. Surrounding fields and land once ran huge Creole colonial plantations for as far as the eye could see. Tall oak trees dripping with Spanish Moss bordered the property, a throwback to more prosperous times in the area and a reminder to Abel of the legacy left behind from his forefathers, both slaves and masters.

  Winter nights were still warm in January and the lake fog crept through the cypress swamp trees, across the field towards the house. Abel sat on the porch in the shadows, sipping from his pipe, puffing small wisps of smoke into the night air. The noise from the marsh was electric even at this time of the year: the jug-o-rum bullfrog calls echoed through the swamp, Loons howled and moaned with their mournful cries and the occasional sound of a swamp alligator bellowing, cut through the night air.

  Every evening for the past thirty years he had sat on the same wooden stool, watching and listening to the night. Mary, his wife, and his two daughters Amaya and Mia, had long since gone to bed. Mary had recently come down with an intermittent vomiting bug that caused her to feel quite unwell; they had agreed it best that she go in to town tomorrow and visit the doctor if she felt no better. He looked in the window, peeking through a crack in the curtains, and watched his wife sitting on the bed with the latest Stephen King novel, propped up on pillows, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, a white ceramic bowl at her side just in case. Abel smiled, she looked a lot better than she had a few hours ago; in fact she looked positively radiant, the rich warm hue of her mocha skin looked healthy and a world away from the pale hue, similar to the natural color of his own skin, that it had been earlier.