Dark Deaths_Selected Horror Fiction

by William Cook

  Cassandra awoke in the darkness and tried to imagine she was without pain. It was useless; her whole body ached with bruises, bites and cuts. The most pain came from her groin where it felt as though she had been split in two. But perhaps the worst feeling was the overwhelming disgust at what had happened to her and what had been taken from her. Before she met the cab driver Cassandra had been a proud virgin. She had been a senior member of her local Christian youth group and had taken a vow of chastity on her sixteenth birthday along with a few of her best friends, but now her dream of saving herself for marriage had been violently shattered. She tried to sit up and managed to get herself in a position where she was reasonably comfortable and not in too much pain. She could feel various things around her on the floor so she carefully picked up the first object she could find. The long steel tubing of the torch handle was cold to the touch but immediately recognizable to Cassandra, her dad was a cop and carried a similar one everywhere he went. She depressed the switch and the cellar flooded with the torch’s cold blue LED light.

  There was a blanket folded neatly at her feet along with a box of muesli bars and a four-liter container of water and a cup. She quickly unfolded the coarse blanket and draped it over her cold, bruised shoulders before shining the torch light around the cellar. She was in a large narrow room that had a furnace up against the concrete wall where she sat. The side walls were made with rough sawn ply and at the end of what was essentially a hallway, stood the workbench against the far concrete wall. She saw the desk lamp sitting on the bench but could see no sign of the strange specimen jars that had lined the now empty shelves above the workbench. She wondered for a moment if she had imagined the macabre objects but she knew that she hadn’t. Cassandra shined the torchlight on her leg and recoiled at the sight of the angry red wound under the blood-caked handcuff that attached her leg to the furnace pipes. She shook the chain on the shackle and winced as pain shot up her leg, she knew she’d have to get the cuffs off her leg but for the moment had no idea how. Breathing hard, Cassandra sat back against the wall and examined the box of muesli bars. Ten fruit-flavored bars in a sealed box. She turned the box and saw the note attached to the back of it.

  ‘Away on business. Hope you enjoy your stay? Back in a short while – make food and water last. Be a good girl XXX’

  She threw the box on the floor in disgust and picked up the cup next to the water container. As far as she could tell, the large container hadn’t been tampered with. She had lost the strength to care about the consequences, so she didn’t hesitate to turn the plastic tap and pour a cup of the best water she had ever tasted. After whetting her appetite with the water she tore open the box and ripped the wrapper off an apricot-flavored muesli bar before devouring it in two bites. Her belly full, Cassandra wrapped the blanket around her sore nude body and let sleep take her away from the damp cellar for a few hours.

  The sound of the dog barking somewhere above in the house woke her from a deep, troubled sleep. The barking continued for a minute or two and she figured the postman must’ve been making his rounds. She listened as Caligula padded across the floorboards towards the rear of the house before she dared switch on the torch again. She searched the room again with the torch and noticed what looked like steel nails littering the floor next to the timber walls. She probed the shadows with the torch until her eyes had adjusted properly to the light and she could make out shapes beneath the workbench. Glass preserving jars were stacked neatly, completely filling the space beneath the workbench, and Cassandra had no doubt as to what the empty vessels would be filled with eventually. Remembering the dead fetus floating in the yellow fluid, she shivered as she fought back bile. The torch light noticeably waned but not before Cassandra had an idea.

  She scoured the floor area closest to her and spied a stray nail next to the plywood wall. It was beyond her reach but it was worth a try she decided. She braced herself against the cold, as she unwrapped the blanket and let the musty cellar air unleash a skin of gooseflesh over her shivering body. She carefully rested the flickering torch on the floor facing the general direction of the nail and twisted the blanket into a coil. She sighted the finger-length glint of dull steel and flung the blanket towards it while holding on to the end with her other hand. She heard the tinkle of steel on concrete as the blanket hit home. Cassandra slowly pulled the blanket towards her, holding her breath as she dragged it inch by inch. The torch flickered and she saw the nail still laying on the floor beside the wall. Cursing, she gathered the blanket and knotted the end of the coiled material before throwing it again. This time there was no metal noise and so she pulled in the blanket once again, disheartened at the prospect that the nail could not be reached and that it also seemed to represent possible freedom.

  The torch flickered again before fading completely as Cassandra gathered the blanket and sat down against the wall, completely exhausted and sickened by her situation. Her numb fingers searched for the knot in the end of the blanket and she started to unknot it in the dark, a stab of pain in her thumb made her smile as she realized that she had indeed been successful in gathering the nail. The steel had pierced the thick blanket material and stuck fast and now Cassandra felt enlivened, with the thin symbol of hope she now held in her hands.

  It took her nearly three hours of careful poking, bending, scratching and turning, before she heard the cheap steel tumblers click. At first she thought the cuffs were still locked, but after figuring out that the coagulated blood had clogged the mechanism, she tugged at it again, disregarding the pain in her leg, and the shackles came away in one movement. Cassandra nearly yelled with delight but managed to restrain herself as she hobbled to her feet for the first time in ages. The pain in her leg pulsed as the blood ran to her feet and pins and needles pricked her calf muscles, curling her toes with cramp. She slowly bent and picked the blanket up and wrapped it around her as she stood, weak with exhaustion and hunger.

  ‘Now . . .’ she asked herself, ‘what the fuck am I gonna do now???’

  Cassandra hopped on one foot as she made her way in the dark towards the other end of the cellar. She prayed that the electricity was connected and that she’d be able to turn the light on that sat on the workbench. Finally reaching the workbench, she fumbled in the darkness for the light, remembering exactly where it sat by memory. The bulb sputtered and the desk lamp flooded the cellar with light, Cassandra drew a long breath and took a look around her. She looked back towards the furnace and where she’d been chained for god-knows-how-long and let out a sigh of relief. Her ankle felt much better for being released from the cuffs, but she knew that it would need some antiseptic as the wound was still sore and inflamed. On either end of the workbench, in a T-junction, a door’s-width of wall ended at right angles before opening up into ply-lined corridors. Cassandra hobbled from one side to the other, discerning no obvious difference in the long dark corridors that ran parallel to the main room. The place was like a small maze of timber partitions that divided each section from the other. She chose the left-hand corridor and stretched the desk lamp as far as it would reach, resting it on the floor so that the light would illuminate the passage. She looked back at the furnace and quickly made up her mind as she began to hobble towards the other end of the corridor.

  At the end of the passage, a sharp left revealed another long passage that adjoined the other corridor that ran parallel to the center room. Her heart sank before her eyes adjusted to the shadows and she made out a doorway in the middle of the corridor. Cassandra limped forward and turned the handle set in the large industrial-looking steel door. Her stomach flipped as the handle gave without force and she paused as she remembered Caligula. Over the past few days, she’d heard the dog upstairs, pacing back and forth and occasionally barking, so she knew that she would have to face the fierce Rottweiler at some point. She said another silent prayer and pushed the door open to a pitch-black room. A rush of fresh air flooded her nostrils from somewhere back in the darkness and she knew she’d found her
way to somewhere that might lead to freedom. Her filthy fingers scaled the cold concrete wall nearest the door frame, feeling her way inch by inch, afraid of what she might find. She felt something plastic and very familiar and quickly flicked the light switch on. The fluorescent bulb buzzed and crackled into life like a thousand suns blazing. Cassandra gasped and stepped back out into the corridor rubbing her eyes frantically. All she could see was white light at first but slowly her vision returned. She carefully looked around the corner of the doorframe into the room and smiled.

  In the center of the room, stood a staircase that led up to a trapdoor. Surrounding the staircase was a large room lined with cupboards, shelves, and a cot-bed in the corner. Cassandra silently shut the heavy door behind her and drew the bolt across to lock it behind her as she started to explore the room. Her first instinct had been to get up the stairs and attempt to escape but she knew that the dog, if not the Creep himself, would be waiting for her above. She looked in the first cupboard and found only painting equipment and rags. She looked in the next and found a row of handguns mounted on a pegboard. She selected a small black automatic and checked the magazine as she’s seen her father do many times before at the firing range. The magazine was full with shiny brass bullets. She kept looking for a first aid kit or something she could bandage her ankle with. She sucked in her breath as she drew back the curtain that skirted the long bench beneath the stairs, before vomiting what little contents she had left in her stomach onto the floor. Under the bench were more shelves and on these shelves sat the bizarre collection of bottled oddities she had first seen in the other room. Up close they were even more disgusting and vile, she quickly drew the curtains and gathered her thoughts, intent on getting out of the foul cellar and as far away as possible from her purpose-built prison.

  Cassandra slowly pushed the trapdoor open an inch. A flap of carpet hung over the lip of the trapdoor obscuring her view of the room above. She paused momentarily before lifting the hatch a further inch. She saw the mattress-base of a bed to her left and wardrobe doors to her right. She shifted her slight weight on the top cellar steps to get a better view of the room and saw the open door of the bedroom ahead of her.

  Eighty kilos of canine fury landed squarely on top of the trapdoor, slamming the wooden hatch down onto the crown of Cassandra’s head. She tumbled heavily backwards down the cellar steps onto the concrete floor. Luckily her head connected with the soft cot-mattress next to the stairs but her sore body gathered new bruises as her buttocks slapped the hard floor. She arched her back and rolled onto her stomach, the wind knocked from her, as she struggled to her feet. Her throbbing ankle now combined with a decent lump on her head and an extremely bruised rump made it all the more harder to stand straight. She collapsed onto the cot and rested for a moment until the feeling came back to her sore legs and the popping bubbles of white light had ceased to dance before her eyes.

  Cassandra heard Caligula growling loudly and scratching at the trapdoor above her. She sat up, trembling, as she picked the automatic pistol up off the floor where it had fallen. She thought about shooting through the trapdoor but somehow doubted that it would be enough to kill the massive dog. She sat there for a minute thinking about what she could do to escape. Her stomach ached with hunger and she felt very faint; she knew that she needed sustenance and fresh water or she would never get out of the cellar alive. With great effort, Cassandra got to her feet and opened another cupboard as an idea began to expand inside her tired mind. More glue, paint, nails and other household tools and hardware items. She opened the tall cupboard next to the last one she’d opened and gasped at what she saw inside. Hanging from a pegboard were an assortment of whips, meat hooks, cleavers, handcuffs and an assortment of long-bladed knives, sparkling in the cupboard shadows. She opened the door wider to reveal more instruments stacked in the back and on top of a shelf at the bottom of the cupboard that contained a silver briefcase. She started to pull objects from the cupboard and lay them on the cot.

  There are enough devices to torture an army, she thought as her anxiety levels spiked.

  She lay the silver briefcase on top of the knives, chains, collars, and sex toys and opened the lock. She raised the lid and took a moment to work out what the strange device was that lay embedded in the gray foam. It was yellow and black and looked like a pricing gun she had used at her after-school job at Walmart. And then she remembered that her dad kept one of the same things in his patrol car. When she was little, he used to take her for a drive round the block in the cruiser before he went off to his job as Sheriff’s deputy. She had seen the stun-gun and had asked to play with it but her father had told her that it could “knock down an elephant!” She hadn’t known what that meant at the time, but at eighteen, she’d seen enough of the nine o’clock news to know that a stun-gun was her new best friend. She opened a two-door cupboard next and found the chest freezer.

  Under a superficial layer of frozen bread loaves and fish bites, Cassandra discovered the carefully cut limbs and plastic-wrapped skulls of at least seven other girls her own age. She dropped the lid of the freezer and it slapped shut, a gust of cool air waking her from the onset of shock. Cassandra raised the lid again to confirm what she had seen, took a loaf of bread and a packet of fish bites, and then closed the lid softly as she choked back tears for the girls inside the freezer. She sat on the bed and ripped open the loaf of frozen bread and crunched a slice until it turned to mush with her saliva. She swallowed a lump of the masticated bread and felt it travel down her gullet to her hungry stomach. She ate two more slices and sucked ice from another couple of pieces before she stood again. The idea that had formulated in her head now seemed possible as the small amount of food renewed her energy levels slightly. She attempted to eat one of the fish-bites but gave up as they were still too frozen. She thought about the dismembered body parts in the freezer and made up her mind as to what she would do next.

  Clutching the fish-bites in one thin hand and the stun-gun in the other, Cassandra climbed the stairs once again. She pushed the trapdoor open quickly and flung the frozen fish bites across the carpeted bedroom floor. Quickly closing the trapdoor, she felt the thump as Caligula leaped from the bed before hungrily devouring the frozen seafood. Cassandra seized her chance and quickly but quietly opened the trapdoor, approaching the occupied dog from behind. Caligula swallowed the last fish bite just as she pressed the stun-gun to his muscular rump. The massive dog stiffened with a half-woof and then collapsed on its side, feet sticking out horizontally as the electrically-charged seizure rendered it unconscious. Cassandra stepped over the dog and opened the wardrobe door. Stacks of hardcore pornographic magazines lined the bottom of the cupboard, to the left were a row of hung shelves with bedding and linen and the rest of the wardrobe was filled with hangers and men’s clothing. She grabbed a heavy blanket and lay it on the floor next to the Rottweiler before grabbing the front and hind legs and pulling with all her might, rolling the dog over onto the makeshift gurney. Cassandra felt faint but still she persisted, knotting the blanket around the dog’s huge head, before pulling it back towards the open trapdoor.

  “Sorry dog, this might leave a few bruises,” she whispered to the comatose animal.

  With her last remaining strength she rolled the dog in the blanket over the hole in the floor. The dog’s body bowed in the middle as Caligula sagged into the empty space above the cellar stairs. Cassandra placed her foot on the dog’s black chest and pushed, the animal tapered to a bunch of paws as it slipped through the hole and then disappeared, followed by a series of heavy bumps before it hit the floor. She looked down into the cellar and saw the pile of blanket complete with askew dog legs at the foot of the stairs. Cassandra considered closing the hatch and moving the bed over it before fleeing, but something made her stay. She thought about the fact that the Creep knew her address; he had picked her up from her family-home when she called the cab that fateful day. She thought about the poor girls whose remains lay frozen and trapped in the ce
llar below. She wondered how many other young girls he had raped, tortured and killed. And she knew she couldn’t leave that house yet, as every instinct in her young body screamed at her to do so, not until she’d set some things straight. She took a deep breath and took the steps down into the cellar once again.

  It took what seemed an eternity but she finally managed to drag Caligula’s bulk into the interior of the partitioned cellar. His paws were trembling and his breathing was becoming more regular as his tongue lolled from his mouth. She took a step back as his head moved and his eyelids opened; the whites of the dog’s eyes glistened in the shadows. She had turned the desk lamp off in the furnace room and removed the hot light bulb, not caring if it burned the tips of her fingers, before smashing it on the concrete floor. She made her way back to the light coming from the room beneath the cellar, keeping her back against the wall as she edged past Caligula. A deep growl came from the dog’s belly and he suddenly reared up towards her, a trail of saliva cascading from his flaccid jaw as he hopelessly tried to bite her. She stepped back into the room, easily avoiding the dog’s cumbersome flailing as it tried to sit up but only succeeded in falling flat on its face. Cassandra slammed the heavy steel door shut, hearing the dog let out a frustrated howl as it scratched the other side of the paneled door.