Dark Words (Horror Short Stories): Collected Short Fiction

by Craig Saunders

  Dumbly, he stood still, blind and deaf, with his hat and hair smoking. The warmth on his face; the remnants of the first, and possibly only girl, he'd ever wished to love.

  Blind with blood in his right eye. Blind forevermore in his left eye because a shard of Greta's perfect front tooth had pierced his eye and travelled on through his brain.

  Edgar, his top half almost entirely smothered in blood and with wisps of smoke drifting from his ruined hat, dropped forward face first onto the counter. The sound of his face hitting the wood (painted red) was louder than the original shot.

  Dead. Dead as soon as the shard of tooth hit his brain.

  The thing was, Edgar Dawn's brain was really quite small, because a long, long time ago, when he'd been a small boy who'd thought belief could make things real, he'd put ants in his ear.

  Edgar Dawn's brain had been largely run by ants for the best part of the last decade.

  *

  Greta's gaze drifted down Edgar's back. The boy had fatback and back-boobage. Creepy, too. A little creepy. Not all the way fucked up like her older brother. She'd dodged that bullet, thank fuck.

  When she'd been old enough for him to show an interest (his sickly kind of interest) her mother had split with Greta's stepfather and found a job at the university. Greta wasn't academically gifted like her mother, though she had (well, she thought) a pretty good singing voice, a nice face, and a good smile. She was hoping to make it onto one of the reality shows, make a name for herself, be a star.

  Maybe she could, maybe she couldn't. She certainly didn't have the patience for studying.

  Thankfully, she wouldn't have to.

  The third to last thing she knew was the feel of something thick, cold, and metallic in the nape of her neck.

  The second to last thing was the smell...the smell of him. Her sick brother. Her sneak up on her in the shower and pinch her arse, like a girlfriend might. A girlfriend probably wouldn't have tried to put her index finger up her arse. A girlfriend wouldn't have had her cock out at the time. Girlfriends didn't rape girlfriends.

  The very last thing she thought, oddly, was that Edgar Dawn wasn't there, but by then she was dead and that last thought passed through a small fragment of brain matter that had landed on the creepy Edgar Dawn's shirt.

  The shirt was on the floor with Greta's brain and blood and bone spread in a haphazard pattern that might have spoken to Greta's brother in a language only those who had ants tickling their brains could understand

  Atop the shirt, Edgar's smouldering hat sizzled and fizzled and then, went out.

  Edgar Dawn tapped Greta's brother on the shoulder. From behind.

  *

  Edgar had once believed in belief itself.

  He had created his own mind from ants. Instilled in those ants faith. Not the faithful lip service of a man to a faceless, silent God. The kind of faith one achieves only from within the divine.

  The ants really were quite remarkable.

  Edgar Dawn's mind was perhaps 90% ants. Maybe even as high as 95%.

  Who knows the workings of a hive mind? A hive mind with faith?

  When they disassembled the host corpse and reassembled behind Greta's older brother, a mere instant after Greta and subsequently Edgar's death, the ants were no longer Edgar's creation, but he theirs. A man who believed in belief, created by ants that had faith.

  A strange rippled passed Edgar's face. Kind of a grin, but one that crawled.

  *

  Ants, as Greta's rather gifted mother (an entomologist at the university) could have said, are capable of astounding feats of barbarity. Ants will, given the right impetuous, go to war.

  Piece by piece, the ants moved Edgar Dawn to a spot directly behind the murderer. They reassembled Edgar, putting their own unique...improvements...into their new creation.

  Edgar's hands were no longer mere appendages that he would have traded for a kind word from Greta (or maybe a quick look down her top). They ended not in digits, but giant, chitin claws, serrated and nimble things made for cutting and tearing and taking off important parts that belonged to an enemy. Strength, too, to fling them aside and move on, and on, until the ant died or was destroyed.

  But Edgar Dawn was not one ants. He was an army.

  The once-besotted teenager's face did not resemble the former Edgar Dawn, but that of a man/ant hybrid. Two eyes, skin, skull, but now with clacking mandibles where once a human jaw and teeth had sufficed.

  Greta's murderer, her elder half-brother, swivelled and jammed the long barrel of his gun into ant-Edgar's maw and pulled the trigger. Edgar's head, composed mainly of ants exploded in a bright shower across the deserted fast-food restaurant's garish red tables. Ant-Edgar's corpse did not fall backwards, though, but forward. An army of Edgars, insects that carried his belief. Zealots of an army that believed in belief as Edgar had. They swarmed along the barrel of the weapon and went to war.

  An army of ants is a hungry army.

  And an army that stands stagnates. The ants, remarkable indeed, understood this.

  An army that survives, thrives, must conquer. Conquest is the driving force. And zealots all, conquest was all there was and all there ever would be, from now until the end. Kill, die - it did not matter. What mattered was the war.

  In moments...minutes, no more...Greta's elder brother was reassembled. Greta, with her pretty smile and average singing voice, remade in ant-Edgar's dream world.

  Three people left the fast-food restaurant on unsteady feet...steady feet...running feet...into the world that waited. A world full of believers in this thing, that thing...a world, in short, ripe for zealots.

  The End

  The following story was published in Help! Wanted, an anthology from Evil Jester Press. Later, it received the audio treatment from The Wicked Library. It's not bad...

  Playing Blackjack with Mr. Paws

  The building that housed the Fordham Town Herald offices was built in 1805. Originally it was a playhouse, holding productions of local theatre and travelling shows alike. Theatre had been big business back in the 19th century. That, and drinking.

  Many a patron of the playhouse had come to see the shows, but the most popular of all was the famous gambling mouse, Mr. Paws.

  ‘The Marvellous Mr. Paws’, the billing proclaimed, ‘The only card playing mouse in the world!’

  And it was, but Mr. Paws was always something else.

  *

  21 grand. That’s what Clive Greenwood reckoned his life was worth, after the government took its cut. It was all it would ever be worth, because he stood no chance of promotion beyond junior editor. Ever.

  ‘Morning,’ he grunted at the office in general, as he pulled himself awkwardly into his office chair, too tall for one of such diminutive stature.

  He heaved, and was in.

  The senior editor sniggered behind his computer monitor. Clive knew they set his chair higher every night after he left. The chair needed weight on it to be lowered, so he had to climb up every morning. Just another in a long list of wounds he wished he could redress against his colleagues and the world in general.

  He looked around the office. Senior editor, sub editor, assistant editor, and some cunt called Paul. Clive had no idea what Paul did. He thought he sold advertising space, but all he seemed to do was smoke and swear into the phone.

  Neck aching already, feet dangling off the floor, Clive switched the computer monitor on.

  21 grand. That’s what a life was worth.

  21 grams. That’s what a soul weighed. Some boffin called Dr. Duncan MacDougall weighed the departed, and found they weighed 21 grams less dead than they had while living. Turned out he was full of shit.

  He reached down and fiddled with the lever to lower his chair. It was difficult enough to lower an office chair even with normal arms, and Clive could barely reach.

  21 was a good enough guess, though.

  Would he sell his soul, all 21 grams of it, for a little more height? For normal arms and legs, f
or a body to match his head?

  Fucking right he would. Then these bastards wouldn’t be able to take the piss out of him every day.

  Like their insistence on calling him a little person. Clive wasn’t a little person. A little person was a kid. He was nearly forty years old.

  And he was also a dwarf, with achondroplasia. The real deal. Not a little person. Not some bearded axe-wielding manic, either. Just a plain old dwarf.

  ‘Clive!’

  He jumped and pulled the lever to lower his chair up, instead. His senior editor had somehow got behind him and shouted on purpose.

  ‘David?’ he said.

  ‘Mouse, Clive. Mouse in the attic.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I want you to sort it out, young man.’

  Young man rankled, but Clive bit his tongue. He was used to it. Used to the insults and the jibes. His heart was protected by a layering of keloid scars that no bastard could penetrate, and certainly not David Corn, his senior editor and ultimate boss.

  ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate,’ said Clive. ‘I’m a junior editor. I’m not a mouse catcher.’

  ‘Troublesome little bugger,’ David continued as though he had heard. ‘The attic space is too low for the rest of us. Just thought...you know...’

  ‘Because I’m a dwarf.’

  ‘Ha. Little person, Clive. Little person.’

  Clive couldn’t believe his ears, but fuck it. What could he do? What could you do in the face of the endless torments but ride them?

  ‘Here’s a torch,’ said David with a smarmy smile, because he already knew that Clive wouldn’t refuse. He never did.

  But he kept tally, alright.

  *

  The old playhouse, once grandly titled the Theatre Royal, though no royalty had ever visited in it 200 year history, had been renovated many times. The last was in 2003, when the Fordham Town Herald took it to be their offices.

  The first renovation began in 1849, six weeks after it almost burned to the ground.

  1849 was also the year that Harris Jakes lost a game of cards to an old white whiskered mouse named Mr. Paws.

  *

  Clive poked his head into the small attic space above the old playhouse. His colleagues gathered below the hatch, looking up as Clive swung the torch in wide arcs, into the dark corners, running the light over the beams and rafters.

  ‘There’s nothing up here,’ he said, knowing what the reply would be.

  ‘Pesky buggers,’ said David. ‘Little blighters are sneaky.’

  Paul barked a laugh and Clive bit his tongue once again.

  ‘You’ll have to get up there,’ said the sub-editor.

  ‘Root around. Get to understand it. Get down to the mouse’s level,’ said the assistant editor, kind of laughing too, but held in check, even though Clive knew the laugh was there in the man’s head, the thought of a laugh, a breath away.

  He sighed and went up the last few steps of the ladder. The light from the torch let him see enough to know he didn’t want to be up there among the cobwebs and hidden giant spiders and bats and nesting birds and mice. All kinds of things to fall on his neck and make him scream and he really, really, didn’t want to give the bastards below that kind of satisfaction.

  Something skittered across the joists. He swung his torch toward the sound, and the mouse darted the other way. The torch flicked back and forth, until he finally caught the mouse in his sights.

  It must have been the oldest mouse in the world. It was almost pure white, covered in thick hair, which he’d never seen on a mouse. The thing’s whiskers were about six inches long, longer than the mouse’s body, even. Its nose twitched, as though sniffing for intruders into its domain, but Clive got the impression that it could see perfectly well, because little red eyes fixed on him straight away. It was a bold stare.

  Clive didn’t return the stare, because he wasn’t getting into a staring contest with a fucking mouse.

  It was dead centre in the glare of the torch and for some stupid reason Clive figured he could hit it and be done. So he threw the torch at it. It flipped end over end, and landed against an old oak beam, shattering the lens.

  ‘Clive,’ said a voice that he didn’t recognise.

  The hatch banged shut and the darkness was total and for some reason Clive thought that voice might just belong to the mouse.

  *

  ‘You there, Sir! Care to wager?’

  Harris Jakes nodded, because all evening he’d been hoping he’d be the one to get the call. He was a drinking man, but first and foremost, he was a gambling man. He had ten shillings in his pocket. The last of his money, and all he owned in the world. He had no home since his wife had run off with a fat butcher. He had no kids. He didn’t even have a dog.

  Ten shillings was a lot of money to wager, but double that up...double it again...

  ‘Yes, Sir, I would,’ he called out to applause from the eager audience.

  He stepped carefully over the other patrons’ legs in the cheap seats and worked his way to the front of the theatre. It wasn’t a large theatre. It housed roughly a hundred people, although sometimes more stood at the back.

  The stage was lit with lanterns for atmosphere, and the only things on that stage were the mouse’s handler, a round table with green baize on top, a pack of cards, and one small wizened mouse. That mouse must have been ancient.

  The mouse was sprightly enough, though. It ran down the handler’s arm and hopped onto the table, behind the pack of cards, nose twitching excitedly.

  ‘What, Sir, is your name?’

  ‘Harris Jakes,’ said Harris, smiling. The mouse was on its hind legs, sniffing. The air, or him, Harris didn’t know.

  ‘And what would you care to wager?’

  ‘Ten shillings,’ he said, and an appreciative murmur spread through the crowd.

  ‘The mouse is the house, ladies and gentlemen! Ten shillings it is...Mr. Jakes, shuffle away, blackjack’s the game of the day!’

  The crowd clapped politely, and Harris shuffled, tapped the deck, and at the handler’s nod, laid them before the happy old mouse.

  Mr. Paws capered forward, so small that the people at the back of the theatre couldn’t possibly see it. With its nose it pushed the first card toward Harris, the second toward itself.

  Both turned at the same time, the handler turning the mouse’s card for him.

  ‘Mr. Harris has a ten of hearts, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Paws holds a queen of spades!’

  A gentle kind of excitement mounted, because the wager was high.

  The mouse pushed the next card across the table, and with his clever nose, Mr. Paws dealt himself one next.

  Harris turned his. The ace of spades.

  The handler turned the next card. The ace of hearts.

  ‘The house wins!’

  Harris was suddenly very angry. It was the last of his money, and now he was destitute. He slammed his fist on the table, aiming for Mr. Paws, but the mouse was nimble. It ran up the handler’s arm and down under his collar. Cards flew into the air and the table turned over.

  ‘Cheat! Dirty bastard cheats!’ Harris roared, and swung wildly at the handler, who stepped smartly to one side and rapped Harris on the head with a different kind of blackjack.

  *

  ‘Gambling man, Mr. Greenwood?’ said the mouse, sitting up on its hind legs. It didn’t look easy for the mouse to do it, either. It was ancient, looked older than a twenty year old dog. It was the sorriest looking thing Clive had ever seen.

  He didn’t wonder at a mouse talking. He didn’t think about the kind of red glow that suffused the attic, the eerie light, the way it flickered, or the smell, coming from below. None of that seemed important.

  Just the green baize on the table, and the little old mouse, and a pack of cards.

  Had the table been there before? He didn’t remember, though it seemed to him perfectly reasonable that it was.

  He stared dumbly at the mouse.

  ‘No,’
he said. ‘Not really.’ He’d never gambled in his life.

  ‘Know blackjack, though, right?’

  Clive shook his head. ‘I played Rummy as a boy with my father.’ He shrugged. He wanted to make the mouse happy, but he couldn’t very well lie. If they were going to play cards, he wouldn’t be able to cover his ignorance.

  He wasn’t sure he did want to play cards, but the mouse was very old, and if cards made it happy...

  More than anything, he wanted to make the mouse happy. It was so...

  So old.

  ‘Simple game,’ said the mouse. ‘Aiming for twenty-one. That’s all there is to it. Five cards, bust. Over twenty one, bust. Stick on sixteen. Ace is one or eleven. Jack, Queen, King, ten. House rules, Mr. Greenwood, and believe me when I say, I am the house. Understand?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Clive.

  ‘Good,’ said the mouse, and laughed. You wouldn’t think a mouse could laugh, but then when it was talking anyway, it was just a short hop over to laughing. Clive laughed right along with the mouse’s joke, because it was a cute little thing, and Jesus, it wasn’t just a talking mouse, a card playing mouse, but it was a laughing mouse.

  ‘What are we playing for?’

  ‘What have you got?’

  Clive shrugged again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, turning out his pockets. All he could think of was his watch, but even that wasn’t worth much, and he didn’t want to disappoint the mouse.

  The mouse seemed amused.

  ‘How about...twenty-one grams?’

  Clive almost laughed himself, but then he thought he saw the flicker of flames coming up through the ceiling, off to the right, between him and the eaves. A dim kind of daylight came in through the eaves, where birds made their nests.