Deadman's Tome: Monsters Exist

by Mr. Deadman

  It hit one corner of the stone and fell from view. The others watched it descend and turned their glowing eyes on me. They were everywhere—climbing the walls, chattering as they navigated the seats of the front row, fluttering in and around the silver blades of moonlight. Timeless and unforgiving, they had resided in this woodland before the church was even conceived, and would still be here long after I died. I knew that I was running out of time.

  Outside, a light breeze cooled the wound on my back. I pocketed the flashlight and moved to the rear of my car. Opening the trunk, I lifted her dead weight in both arms, a shoulder blade flaring in protest. She was drowsy, but fluttering eyelids told me that she was close to being awake. The last drink she consumed was orange juice laced with sleeping pills, a prescription of mine to help with depression. She didn't partake in alcohol, but I certainly did—to gain courage.

  "What are you doing...where are we?" she groggily asked as I limped back to the church. "William, answer me." Her eyes widened, lingering on the shadows. Her body trembled.

  We passed the gate into the graveyard.

  "I'm so sorry, Susan, but it has to be this way."

  Glassy eyes widened, focusing. She bucked with her lower back, and I almost lost grip but managed to regain my composure. I had removed the belt from her jeans to tie her wrists. As the shadow of the church fell on us, Susan whimpered.

  She must have heard them, too.

  I’m not a monster, and, of course, I am sorry. I’d trawled through countless pathetic faces on dating websites before I found the ideal candidate. Initially, her doe-eyed stare and talk of romance bored me to tears; but somewhere along the line, it became a real thing. It was like repeating the word love somehow made it tangible. Entering the church with her in my arms like a newly wedded couple crossing the threshold, I honestly felt love for Susan.

  The walls within crawled with grey creatures and their cold, pinprick glares. The fairy folk of the High Peak Countryside all gathered for their twenty-year congregation. I dared not allow my eyes to linger at any single point, lest it send me mad. These terrible residents were a million miles away from the famous Cottingley fairies photographed by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths back in 1917.

  The newspapers reported how amazing it was when the young girls had captured beautiful winged cryptids on camera. They failed to mention the girls had vanished three days later, never returning from a picnic in the woods. Their parents, one of them a High Peak Ranger, hadn’t reported their disappearance. They had remembered how the remote village of Ashopton had succumbed after missing a sacrifice, and how they had to break the great dam to flood it.

  Susan’s eyes widened as they sniffed the air and followed us with intent, their wings making a dry rustle. None of them attacked, but they chitter-chattered to one another in an urgent series of clicks and whistles. They knew what was coming.

  "Please, William, don't do this," Susan whispered. "You don't have to do this."

  I blocked out her pleas and gaped at the slab where countless children had lain before. I never forgave my dad for what had happened in 1977, but when I visited his death bed, he told me, "They like the young ones. It is in their nature. Every twenty years they take a little piece of our future so we may keep the rest."

  Avoiding the splintered hole I made, I laid Susan down on the slab, her bottom resting in the deep groove of the font. She sobbed, mascara running in black torrents down her freckled cheeks. One of the fairies flapped over to the pulpit and hung from the lectern like a hungry gargoyle.

  "Please, William. I love you. I want to be with you forever. It doesn't have to be this way..."

  I closed my eyes, allowing my thoughts to drift away. Breathed in, breathed out—counted to ten. My stomach felt like it was swinging between my knees.

  I reached forward, caressing the round bump of her stomach. It was like a watermelon, except something rippled beneath the surface of her taught skin, a foot or an elbow perhaps.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered, turning away.

  Shoulders shaking like a mourner at a funeral, I headed to the exit, my car waiting. They fell upon her in a leathery flap of wings. She screamed, but it eventually tapered away into a low, wet gargle.

  I did not dare turn back.

  Would you?

  The forensic people matched the tread marks to my car and deduced the identities of the bodies from Susan's dental records. They found traces of blood engrained in the imperfect stone around the font, too. But did they think to search the hollows of that old oak? Did they not look in the nooks and crannies beneath the rotten pews? If they did, then they might have seen little eyes, like balls of blue fire.

  I sometimes wonder how many of us there are out there in the big, wide world. Men and women perceived as murderers, when all they are guilty of is saving the world from creatures beyond comprehension. There are things out there in our woods and suburbs that hunt us while we sleep, and it is people like me keeping them from your door.

  You don’t believe? Pah. I knew it would be useless. No one has listened for two decades, and the authorities repeatedly refuse my parole.

  Well, it’s too late.

  It has been twenty years to the day since I made my sacrifice, and I am the last of my kind. Heed my advice. Run. Get as far away from the Peak District as you can. A full moon is heavy in the sky, and the nubs on my left hand are itching like crazy.

  About the author:

  Gary Buller is an author from Manchester England where he lives with his long suffering partner Lisa, daughter Holly, and dog Chico. He grew up in the Peak District where hauntingly beautiful landscapes inspired him to write. He is a huge fan of all things macabre and loves a tale with a twist. He is an associate member of the Horror Writers Association.

  Playing Dead

  S. E. Casey

  Under the golden eye of Saturn, the only celestial light visible in the pre-night sky, the field vomited up a monstrosity. Rickety poles tilted at odd angles. Slug-like tents squirmed from the ground like nightcrawlers after a downpour. Deflated minarets rose reluctantly, topped with flaccid banners that didn't look like they could be aroused in a gale. Dark outlines of amusement park rides contorted in fossil shapes of prehistoric skeletons. Faded neon lights blinked and flickered, the dashes and dots spelling out some forgotten mariner distress signal.

  When Harry passed the field on his way to work that morning, there weren't any trucks, signs, or other indications of anything being built. Yet, the circus had come to town. But the wilting, candy striped canvases were more reminiscent of bug fumigation tenting than a merry carnival.

  Harry joined the other cars haphazardly pulled over in the roadside ditch. Out in the field, shadows lined up at a slumping mouth-like entrance. It seemed most of the Cochecho side of Dover heeded the call.

  He was supposed to be getting home. Surely, Maddie had some chores waiting for him, his wife's home renovation projects never ending. However, wouldn't she be upset if he didn't at least check out this oddity? It would at the least give them something interesting to talk about over dinner.

  Unusually warm for a late November New Hampshire night, he left his coat in the car. He wouldn't be long.

  The shanty tent city was built needlessly deep into the weedy meadow. No one had thought to cut or mark a path across the ruddy field. Afforded the purple-grey light of the dying sunset, Harry wondered what the nighttime walk back would be like. Despite the open space, the line to enter was single file and rigidly straight. Everyone seemed to be here alone, no families or groups of friends gathered that Harry could tell.

  From the whisperings that he overheard, the absurd carnival seemed to be an impromptu happening accidentally stumbled upon. However, the conversations were less about the sudden arrival of the carnival, and more about the devil monkey of Dover.

  It was common small-town folklore: a creature ripped out of its natural habitat terrorizing the woods and stalking the streets at night. Made to discourage teenagers from hiding
in the forest smoking pot, or sneaking out after dark, the rumors were typical scare tactics. Tales of Dover's own resident simian cryptid ranged from a rabid escaped pet macaque to a fantastic twelve-foot psychic ape.

  His oil slicked hair parted down the middle, a boy of no more than ten collected the twenty dollar entrance fee. While it was a hefty charge for the hastily constructed carnival, it was too long of a walk to turn back. Besides, thinking of the torn up, half-painted room waiting for him—which in the ten years they had owned the house his wife had wanted to be a sewing room, an extra bedroom, a home office, a game room, and, her latest plan, a nursery—Harry paid the sum.

  He expected the carnival to be mostly empty, a scam to fleece a sucker small town. However, a juggler, lines painted onto his face in a vague monkey design, performed outside the entrance. He operated in rapt concentration despite only tossing three balls in the air. The pedestrian act commanded a surprisingly large audience.

  An eye was painted on one hemisphere of the baseball-sized spheres. The juggler cast the balls in a constant pattern without spin or rotation, keeping them in perfect balance. Unnervingly, the eyes never moved.

  Harry waited for a slip, or, at least, a slight tilt to the ellipses, but it never occurred. The unblinking eyes stared back, daring him to look away. Finally, Harry gave up, embarrassed to be diverted for so long.

  Looking up, night had fully descended, the moon and stars out in full.

  He should be getting home. Maddie always had a task waiting, something heavy to be moved, a nail to be hammered, wood to be sanded. They were menial jobs, but he was happy to oblige her whims to finally transform the room into a finished product that satisfied her. If he left now, she would be none the wiser to his diversion. He spied a sign in the shape of an arrow marked exit; however, it pointed further down the carnival. These carnie folk weren't stupid; they made everyone walk through to tempt their impulses.

  A calliope's wheeze welcomed him into carnival row. The narcotic melody was a throwback to past days fitting the vaudevillian grotesquerie.

  Its first attraction, housed under a green and yellow striped marquee, was a kissing booth. A young girl with jet-black hair collected the thirty dollar entrance fee. Harry wondered if she was a local, or if she came with the carnival. He didn't recognize her, but he didn't know any kids in town. Maddie and he hadn't any children, and there were none in their quiet neighborhood.

  The kissing tent's side flaps were rolled up allowing a glimpse of Ms. Pinn, the retired town librarian, making out with a much younger man. Harry's heart jumped at the sight of her grey hair that had been torn away from its bun, the feral kiss too deep and passionate to be appropriate in any context. Like her hair, Ms. Pinn's shirt had been ripped open. It was difficult to visually reconcile the lumpy rolls of wrinkled, puckering flesh through the milling crowd that packed the tent.

  However, Harry's attention was stolen by a familiar mousy brown bob-cut engaged in a similar lip lock. A stocky man, his arms comically hairy, swallowed the petite woman who limply swooned in his embrace. Harry's chest seized as if the wind had been knocked out of him, unable to call his wife's name. Before he found a voice, he spied her again, now angled toward him. However, it wasn't Maddie, the other woman's hair color and style eerily the same.

  Harry exhaled as a wave of guilt washed over him. Of course, it wasn't Maddie. Why had he even entertained the thought?

  A wrinkled hand grabbed his arm. Harry was roughly dragged away by Peter Trall, his next door neighbor.

  "This way, my dear boy."

  His white hair more mussed than usual, Professor Trall personified the stereotypical absentminded academic. He taught anthropology, or zoology, or some other impractical 'ology' at a nearby college—Harry could never remember which one.

  This wasn't a first as Trall often imposed on him. Sometimes, Harry would come home to find him rattling off some esoterica to his wife while she worked on her renovations. Maddie had no interest in any of his arcanum, but reasoned it was the price of being neighborly, and would chastise Harry for not indulging the lonely old man.

  It was possible Trall could have some useful information. Maybe Maddie was here. It was plausible that she could have seen the carnival on one of her spontaneous runs to the home goods store that she single-handedly kept in business in her never-ending quest to find an unique arabesque stencil, or that special shade of seafoam green that probably hadn't been invented yet.

  "Have you seen Maddie? Is she here?" Harry raised his voice over the grinding gears of the nearby Ferris wheel.

  "The Monkey? Oh, yes, I have seen it, and it, me." Trall giggled.

  The Professor was notoriously hard of hearing, not that he ever stopped talking long enough to listen.

  They cut to the front of the Ferris wheel line—senior privileges Harry supposed. Trall forked over two twenties to the kid at the gate. The sharp dressed young lad let them through without returning any change.

  How they had erected this gigantic monstrosity in a single day was a mystery. But it was in poor shape. The chair they climbed into clattered and moaned, the pull-down crossbar badly dented. Harry understood why Trall dragged him here, connected with a single ring at the top, the seat needed the counterbalance of two bodies for stability. Bobbing side to side, Harry seized the armrest in a death grip. Clumps of rust flaked off in his hands.

  The chair staggered upwards, the entire structure buckling as if about to implode. Trall didn't seem to notice, happily spewing some nonsense about higher primates. Even if Harry could hear him over the grinding metal, he was too frightened to care.

  Somehow, they survived the harrowing ascent, reaching the apex. The ride stalled while another two victims boarded below. Harry had to admit it was beautiful up this high, the moonlit vista of one of New Hampshire's bucolic towns spilled out below.

  Harry tracked the familiar road he traveled every workday to his home. Oddly, his neighborhood was dark, no street or house lights visible. However, a possible blackout was the least of his worries. In the woods abutting his backyard, a ring of orange flame roiled, ravishing the old pines and birches.

  Suddenly, the Ferris wheel lurched sending him careening downward at a frightening speed. Sparks showered out of the central axis. The rotational inertia threatened to pull the wheel off its base sending them into a death roll across the field and into the river.

  Harry shut his eyes and screamed as the despairing rods and gears popped and burst. He felt the sickening sensation of weightlessness, his worst fear realized.

  But his bones didn't break and neck didn't snap. He opened his eyes to find the ride had rotated back to the top, again perched over the sleepy town. The blaze behind his house was gone. However, he spied another symmetrical circle of flame in the forest on the opposite end of town. It couldn't be the same, although it burned in an identical manner. Dark smoke billowed from it. Faintly contrasting against the midnight blue sky, the thick black plumes wormed upward like an evil genie escaping from its bottle.

  Strangely, there were no flashing police lights or screaming firetruck sirens. Harry wondered if it could be seen from his house. Did Maddie spy the cloak of the menacing genie through the bay window of her unfinished room, or was she too busy with her paint swatches and other refurbishments to notice?

  With a spring-loaded jerk, the ride pitched forward. Hurtling downward with a blistering violence. Harry shut his eyes to the ground that rushed up toward him. The primal feeling of falling paralyzed him.

  Suddenly on his knees and out of breath, Harry opened his eyes to find himself underneath the creaking ride. His chest hurt and his ears rang. He didn't know how he had gotten off, but from his aches, maybe he had smashed into the chair's crossbar and blacked out. Trall was nowhere to be seen.

  Harry glanced up at the offending ride. The Ferris wheel turned slowly, its multi-colored blinking lights twinkling softly and its passengers smiling dumbly as if nothing was amiss.

  Scrambling to his feet, h
e ran on rubbery legs away from the rattling structure. He crashed into a line for a ventriloquist, a plain placard propped up against a wilting tent announcing the team of Will and Gary. It wasn't specified who was Will and who was Gary, as if their fame preceded them. Harry paid the twenty-five dollars more for a place to sit and regain his bearings than interest in the show.

  Any notion of this being an act of national acclaim was immediately dashed. The ventriloquist slouched on his stool, his arm uncomfortably up the backside of the dummy past the elbow. Harry expected to see fingers when the wooden mouth popped open.

  The performance, if it could be called that, was a farce. The ventriloquist didn't speak, but opened and shut the dummy's mouth anyway. The two were like an old couple forced to the stage after some domestic squabble, going through the motions still wrapped up in whatever long-standing lover's quarrel they had, and dreading the end of the show where it would surely continue.

  Harry was reminded of his own home and its own brand of simmering tension. Earlier in the week, Maddie had informed him of the change of plans for the unfinished room to become a nursery. She wasn't pregnant. He waited for her to explain, but she didn't. Willing to do anything to aide her happiness, he enthusiastically agreed anyway. They would discuss it when she was ready. He would miss the game room that now would never be completed; however, he was relieved he never committed to putting a down payment on that pool table with the red felt.

  Always best to wait in case plans fell through.

  The dummy stared at him as if it was reading his mind and was bored. The ventriloquist doll was a basic model, its eyes simply painted on. Harry didn't second-guess the decision not to upgrade, as he doubted this lesser ventriloquist's skill to work retractable lids or moving pupils. However, despite the fixed, unblinking stare, Harry felt watched. He leaned to his right and then to his left. The dummy's eyes somehow followed him.