by Brian Harmon
Buried in the Basement
A Gathering of Dark Tales
By Brian Harmon
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Brian Harmon
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Three of the titles within this collection were published first in the following fiction magazines:
“Low Tide” originally appeared in Welcome to NOD - Spring 2000
“The Man in the Fire” originally appeared in Mindmares - Summer 1999
“The Hell Within the Heart” originally appeared in Mindmares - Winter 2000
All three titles have been updated since their original release.
Visit this author at www.HarmonUniverse.com
Table of Contents
Low Tide
The Man in the Fire
From Such Small Things
The Hell Within the Heart
Children in the Dark
Jeremy Fell
About the Author
Low Tide
There was a strange stillness in the air as the dusty pickup crept onto the empty beach and rumbled slowly to a stop.
A handsome, dark-haired man sat silently behind the wheel for a long moment as he stared through the dusty windshield at the wreckage and debris that surrounded him. It was all that was left of the cabin that had stood in this very spot only a week before.
The storm had moved through very quickly, and had actually come very close to missing the little structure. A few short miles up the beach, the only damage had been a few fallen limbs and some washed-out driveways. “Bad luck,” his friends had called it, but his luck was beyond bad.
Everything had seemed to be going great. Just a year ago, he’d had all that he ever needed: a beautiful wife, a great job that put him rubbing elbows with some of the wealthiest people in the world, exotic cars, plenty of the things that made him feel like he was worth something…like his private cabin on the beach, for example.
He could not help but wonder where it all went wrong, how he lost everything so completely. It just didn’t seem possible. One day he was making love to his wife in the shower, and then talking about the trip to Paris they had been planning for months as they dried each other off. The next thing he knew, he was sitting on his couch staring at the letter she had left him—the only goodbye she had allowed him—and trying his damnedest not to cry.
Then, to make matters worse, he lost a promotion during his struggle to get over her, and the man who earned that promotion over him wasted no time in letting him go. It wasn’t anything personal. It was simply that his office would look a lot more appealing with the redhead from downstairs sitting at the desk instead of him. After all, he wasn’t qualified to do any of the extra errands for the boss that she supposedly was.
He supposed he could not blame the man. He had the power after all. He’d won the position. It was his decision. That was what being on top was all about. He might’ve done the exact same thing.
Maybe.
One never knew.
At last, he opened the door and stepped out into the warm sunlight. Debris was scattered as far as he could see across the rocky beach. There would be a lot of work to do before this mess was cleaned up. He didn’t think he could afford to have it rebuilt now. He’d probably be forced to sell it and eat the loss.
He kicked some trash from his path and uncovered a broken and muddy picture. He picked it up, letting the water run from the broken frame. Immediately, he recognized it as the picture of his ex-wife that had hung upon the wall in his bedroom. Her face was distorted and scarred upon the paper…not unlike the way he had every right to view her. He thought about dropping the picture back into the mud, even grinding his heel into her washed-out face, but he didn’t. As bitter as he should have been, as he had every right to be, he simply did not have it in his heart to be angry with her. He still missed her far too much. He still loved her.
He knew that he was a sentimental fool but he didn’t care. She had meant everything to him. He placed the picture gently atop a heap of dry debris and walked on through the disaster area of his life.
He was not a stupid man. He knew that it was his own, nice-boy attitude that got him into these predicaments. Nice guys finish last. Everything in his life had always ended up this way. He’d rise to the top of the world, only to be tossed aside by the next guy to arrive.
But it was just his nature. He simply could not see how anything would justify being bitter and mean about things. He wished he could be bitter about things. At least bitterness hurt less than heartache.
He shook his head wearily. He remembered the fight he put up in court to keep the cabin. It was the only thing he had actually cared about at the time. It was just something to hold onto, a lifeboat for his drowning sanity.
“Should’ve kept the Corvette,” he muttered as he stepped through the rubble.
He turned and walked away from the ruins. The past few days—not to mention the past few months—had been so incredibly stressful for him. Right now his head was pounding and he felt that he needed to take a walk. Perhaps the beach could offer some serenity.
The scent of the ocean drifted across the sand and the rocks as he made his way slowly to the shoreline. He stepped over an old tire and kicked aside what might once have been a suitcase. It was surprising what could sometimes wash up onto the shore, especially after a storm.
He lifted his face toward the sky. “Why me?” he asked loudly. “What did I do?”
A giggle rose from the water just ahead of him and he froze, startled. He gazed out into the warm sea. There, a woman sat up to her neck in the surf, staring back at him. Only her tanned face and sandy hair were visible above the soft waves.
“Do you always talk to yourself?” she asked as she grinned up at him.
He could say nothing. He was shocked that there was anyone out here at all, much less the lovely vision he was seeing now.
The woman giggled again. “What? You’ll talk to yourself, but you won’t talk to me?”
“I…I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I…”
“I’m just out for a swim.” She stood up and began walking toward him. He had been shocked to find her there at all, and was astonished to see that she wore no bathing suit. “Want to join me?”
He stared at her as she stepped out of the water, stark naked, and crossed the open beach. The sunlight glistened upon her wet skin as she walked right up to him and placed her hands against his chest. He felt the warm seawater soaking into his shirt.
She was like something from a movie. Her every movement, every gesture, was a masterpiece of beauty, grace and sexuality.
He could say nothing. He stood frozen as the woman slowly unbuttoned his shirt and slid her wet fingers down his chest.
“Come on,” she pleaded. “Live a little. Have fun.”
He looked down at her, studying her. She had a gorgeous body. Her skin was soft and flawless. Her round breasts, still glistening from the surf, shimmered in the gleaming sunlight. Her eyes were brilliant and green. They stared directly into his, bold and unafraid. She was unbelievably beautiful, easily the most perfect woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
She backed away from him, beckoning him with her finger. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
He shook away his excitement and began t
o remove the rest of his clothes as she dived back into the waves and slowly swam away from him. This was exactly what he needed: a little good luck to ease his bad. And this was good luck. How many guys, he asked himself, go for a walk on a beach and find a beautiful, sex-crazed woman swimming naked in the water? Had it ever happened to anyone before? He was willing to bet it had never happened to that cocky jerk who took his job. Oh, if only he could see this!
He cast his clothes aside and followed quickly after her. He did not want to waste time wondering who she was or why she was here. This was his chance to have a little fun, like she said. This was his chance to live, to do something he had never done before. This was just what he needed!
He swam out into the water, his heart pounding with excitement, following the gorgeous, teasing woman until long after he could no longer touch bottom. Then he stopped and looked around.
The woman was gone.
He turned in a circle, looking, searching every rock and every wave. Where was she? She could not have simply disappeared.
He heard a soft splash behind him and turned, startled to find her right before his eyes. “Were you under water that whole time?” he asked. It seemed to him that she had been under for quite a while, but perhaps it had only been a moment. After all, he’d been busy trying to swim out to her. He wasn’t in the best of shape these days. He couldn’t even remember the last time he swam.
She giggled and moved closer to him. “My friends say I have gills,” she replied.
“You must.”
“You know,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pushed her naked body against his, “I didn’t expect to see anyone out here.”
“You didn’t?” To his own ears, it sounded like a pathetic reply, childish even, but her eyes only brightened at his obvious astonishment. She seemed amused by him and his fascination with her.
“Must be our lucky day.”
“Must be!” he agreed. He could no longer hold his excitement. He felt like a child on Christmas Morning.
She thrust herself forward and kissed him hard. He could feel himself being pushed under the water, and had to struggle to keep his head above the waves.
She smiled and tugged at his wrist. “Come on. I want to show you something.” Holding onto his hand, she began to descend beneath the surface.
He took a deep breath and followed her into the depths below.
He opened his eyes as the woman led him deeper and deeper into the murky darkness. He could feel the pressure growing at his ears and in his chest, and wondered if he would be able to descend as deep as she wanted him to go. But then his toes dipped into the soft sand and the woman turned to face him again. She pulled him close and pressed her lips to his.
He reached out and grasped her breasts, kneading them with his hungry fingers as she thrust herself eagerly toward him.
This was beyond anything he had ever imagined. He was making love to a gorgeous woman on the ocean floor. This was the sort of thing other men lied about while drinking with their friends. This was the stuff of movies, not of true life…especially not of his life.
But the pressure was growing rapidly in his chest and though he wanted nothing more than to stay with her, he could not. He was not in good enough shape. He could not hold his breath for so long. Reluctantly, he let go of her and began to rise toward the surface.
But she grabbed him by his wrist and pulled him down again. She kissed his neck and his chest, her lips venturing lower and lower as she held him with surprising strength.
He struggled to rise to the surface again, but like before, she would not let him leave.
My friends say I have gills, she had said.
His heart began to thump painfully in his chest. His lungs ached. And yet she had not even begun to look as though she needed to surface. He pulled at her, trying to wrench his hand free from her unyielding grip, but she would not let him go.
She floated just beneath him, gazing up into his eyes, and for the first time, even through the blurry murkiness of the water, he noticed how brilliantly green her eyes were. They seemed almost to glow in the murky depth of the ocean water.
As he stared down at her, she opened her mouth, revealing rows of long and jagged teeth. Terror swallowed him, paralyzing him. In his panic, he wondered absurdly how he had failed to notice them while kissing her. He struggled to pull his hand away from her, but she was so very strong. Valuable breath belched from his mouth and nose as he fought to free himself.
He was certain that he was about to feel those razor-edged teeth in his flesh, but he was wrong about that. She did not snap at him. She did not even move toward him. Instead, something appeared from her throat. A long, tongue-like thing snaked from between her lips and rose toward him, gray and dark, like an eel. It hovered before him for a just a moment and then lashed out at him in the murky depths with the speed of a frog snatching a fly from the air. There was a piercing pain in his stomach, and then something awful was squirming deep inside his belly.
He tried to scream.
On the surface of the water, not far from the beach, the still waves were shattered by the quiet fury of escaping bubbles. Far below, the water became clouded with blood, the blue murkiness filling with the dark red tint of gore as predator and prey struggled in the shallow depths of the sea.
An hour later, the man awoke upon the sand, his body naked and cold with the salty wetness of the sea. Slowly, he stood up and walked shakily back toward his truck. There was a fleshy wound on his stomach, just below his belly button, but it was not nearly as bad as it had been. It was healing fast.
He stopped once to pick up the clothes he had left strewn upon the sand, but did not bother to put them on. He had things to do. His flesh tingled, and he yearned to go back into the sea, but he could not. Not yet. He knew somehow that he only had perhaps a week before he would have to return to the sea and remain there, but in the meantime he had some people to visit. First was his lying, ungrateful bitch of an ex-wife. Second was that high-on-his-horse bastard that had won his promotion and then fired him for his efforts. Then there were others. Maybe that whore redhead who slept her way into his old office. And plenty more. He would make them all pay. He would make them all hurt. Then he would return to his princess of the deep.
As he walked, a long, snaky thing emerged from his throat and nimbly brushed the sand from his ear.
The Man in the Fire
A hazy moon shined down through the bare tree limbs onto an old and fire-blackened cabin. Embers still glowed in the darkness, the last dying soldiers fading to memory on a silent, ravaged battlefield. The air was thick with bitter smoke, the ground blanketed with ash.
Inside the cabin, a single kerosene lamp flickered tiredly behind one smoke-stained window, casting an eerie luminance through the shadows. Nearby, a man sat silently at an old wooden desk, breathing the hot, acrid air in loud, labored wheezes, his eyes black and empty in the dismal gloom. His clothes were torn and ragged, blackened with soot and bloody from his butchered palms and gashed shins. His hair was long and singed and clotted with blood. A twig from a maple that now stood smoldering in the backyard was tangled in his filthy locks. On his right cheek, covering his face from the corner of his mouth to the lobe of his ear, was a hideous scar from another fire that had burned long ago. The expression on his face was cold, calculating determination, the expression of a man who has nothing to lose and is preparing for one final gamble.
Only the sound of his rasping breath and the occasional sigh of the wind through the burned forest could be heard above the thick and unnatural silence within the room. The air reeked with the heavy smell of smoke. All around him, the world seemed tinted with a strange and hazy darkness. But the strongest presence was below the air and beneath the silence. Strange and unholy eyes watched and waited from every black and ash filled crevice. Of this, the man was certain…but he was not frightened. Nothing would harm him. Not now.
At last, he straightened in his creaking cha
ir and stared up at the flame-gutted walls around him. The nightmare that had nearly killed him had passed hours ago, the chaos replaced by stillness. There was nothing left to burn. Not even Daniel Covey’s soul.
He drew a deep and shaky breath as almost forty years of terrible memories played cruelly through his troubled mind. His hands trembled with pain that went far deeper than his flesh.
If anyone but Daniel had been sitting in this room, he would likely have wondered how the walls and the ceiling could be so badly burned that one could even see the moonlight through them in places—the roof and the attic were nearly gone overhead, and the ceiling was riddled with empty, starlit holes—and yet other parts of the room, such as the old wooden desk and the unbroken window were singed, but hardly damaged. Daniel, however, did not wonder these things. He already knew. The desk had been left for him, just as the lamp had also been left for him. The fire had not wanted to take these things. That was the only reason the fire ever had for leaving things. It simply did not want them.
Daniel’s eyes fell to the desk again, and to the single scrap of burned paper that lay there. Wincing at the pain in his body, he reached under the desk and pulled open a drawer. Inside, a large, gleaming knife awaited him. He picked it up and held it in his hand, feeling the warmth of the blade. The metal had been smudged by heat and smoke, but the knife was unharmed by the fire. Had it been left for him intentionally? Or was it because the fire could not destroy the knife without destroying the desk or the paper? He could never really know for sure.
He held the knife up to his bloodshot eyes and stared into the blade. For a moment, he was still as the lamplight danced upon his rough, loveless face. Every emotion a human being could feel was battling among those thoughts. His had been a terrible life, full of sorrow, guilt, shame, fear and rage. Even he did not know where this night would lead…but he knew the consequences. He knew what it was he was fighting for.
