by Watts, Peter
~
Last night she slept in her parents’ plush bed, clutching the photo tightly to her un-beating heart. She has never felt as rested in the morning as she is now with the fresh rays of sunlight poking through the window and blanketing her face in warmth. In her weakened state the light would have scorched her flesh and ended her existence. However, now healthy and strong, she is immune to the sun’s poisons, as well as other stereotypical ailments. Her pure blood feast from last night is enough to keep her healthy for a week or so, until she can find a new place to call home. She hopes to be far from here when her father’s stench penetrates the exterior walls.
To ready herself for the awaiting journey, she finds an old backpack in a closet and prepares to gather some essentials. Her unfamiliarity of life outside her pit hinders her judgment while packing. A few extra items of clothing, a couple cloves of garlic to snack on, a can of diet cola because it looked inviting, a small ornate crucifix, and the photo of her parents seem like enough to survive on. If the thirst rears its ugly head, she plans on satisfying herself with some rats and other small animals.
Nervousness tides through her as she approaches the French doors at the front of the house. Her shaky hand reaches out for the handle, hesitating as she peeks through lace curtains. She has no family, no job, and no life to call her own. However she has found hope throughout her torture, as well as a strange urge to help those bound by the torture of disease and abuse.
Slowly turning the knob, she opens the doors to the outside world. The fresh scent of spring air tickles her lungs; the warmth of the sun dances upon her pale flesh. Elizabeth steps onto the porch and walks down the stairs to the sidewalk below. With no destination in mind, she makes an internal oath to help rid the world of the horror she has suffered.
Finally, her damned life has purpose.
Essel Pratt has spent his life exploring his imagination and dreams. As a Husband and a Father, he doesn't always have as much time to write as he would like. However, his mind is always plotting out his next story and manipulating the plot. Someday he hopes to quit the 9-5 grind and focus on writing full time.
Currently, Essel is building his catalog by contributing to various anthologies as he works on his first novel. He also contributes to www.nerdzy.com and www.infendo.com on an (almost) daily basis.
Essel focuses his writings on mostly Horror/Sci-Fi, however is known to add a bit of other genres into his writings as well. You can follow Essel at:
facebook.com/esselprattwriting and Esselpratt.blogspot.com and on twitter @EsselPratt
HAPPY HOUR
G. N. Braun
Northern New South Wales, Australia
The heat was stifling, the pub was full and the air-conditioning strained to keep up with the late December humidity.
Inside the only pub in Warcoola Station, flies buzzed ceaselessly around sweat-stained shirts and torn blue singlets as hands brushed at them out of habit. As always, conversations centred on the chance of rain and the current state of the soil, and glasses hardly had time to sit before being emptied. Soon after, they were placed empty back on the bar, mostly upright, which signalled for a refill.
Even though the sun was almost down, the heat of the day sat heavily in the smoke-filled room. They didn’t bother to enforce no-smoking bans here; the farmers and miners wouldn’t have listened anyway, and you can’t ban the whole town.
Grace waited behind the bar, polishing the tray of glasses fresh out of the washer and casually keeping an eye out for refills. These guys were nice enough on the surface, but keep them waiting on their beer and you’d feel the sharp-edge of their tongues.
“Hey Gracie. Bring us a fresh ashtray, love?” Kevin Borstow winked at her as she went to grab one off the stack near the register. Nice enough guy, but he lived too far out of town for anyone to seriously want to date him. She moved to wipe her brow.
Why is it so damn hot?
It had been a strange year; hotter than usual, and full of locust plagues and other natural disasters. An entire household over near Waiaii had vanished last month; every inhabitant gone, three generations, just like that.
Enough to give you the creeps.
After replacing the full ashtray with a clean one, Grace emptied it and gave it a quick wipe with a damp cloth. She didn’t like putting ashtrays through dishwashers. She’d never smoked, and the idea of washing drinking glasses with ashtrays made her gag.
She dropped it carefully in the sink, turning back toward the front of the bar just as the light changed. The setting sun sent streams of brilliant radiance into the front of the pub; reds and pinks and yellows, all the colours of the sunset reflected from mirrors behind the bar, splintering from the many bottles of spirits into a million colourful shards of light. It was one of Grace’s favourite times. It was always closely followed by evening, her least favourite time.
As a rule, all the local drunks congregated down one end of the bar while the miners and farmers gathered at the other end. In between was a kind of no-man’s-land where the women gathered to drown the sorrows of their day. No lady’s lounge at this pub.
In the end, they all drank. Some more than others and some less than they would have liked, but they all drank.
Fuck all else to do out here in the arsehole of Australia.
Grace looked up just as the last light winked over the horizon, the night settling in. A faint sound drew her attention. It sounded like fingernails on a blackboard, a faint scree-scree ringing over the top of the bubbles of conversation and laughter. It seemed to come from the front door, and as Grace looked over, something rose into view through the stained glass in the centre of the left panel.
It was hard for her to see clearly, but it seemed to be a hand, long nails scraping at the glass in casual motions. Others noticed it as well; Richard Hadley turned to look, as did Martin Longman next to him. None of the others paid any attention, but two of the women in the centre of the bar turned to see what the noise was.
Richard and Martin stood up and began to walk towards the entrance to see just what was going on when both doors slammed open.
There, silhouetted vaguely by the single street light, was an apparition. It appeared to be a shrivelled old man, hairless and wrinkled, with deep black, beseeching eyes. He was dressed in rags and tatters of clothing. Folds of dirty skin hung glistening and moist in the light cast by the overheads in the bar.
Shuffling further into the artificial lighting, the thing suddenly looked to Gracie less like an old man and more like a corpse freshly-risen from the grave.
It grinned, baring a terrifying mouthful of teeth more at home in the jaw of a tiger shark. Behind the row of razor-sharp incisors were smaller teeth, still wicked-deadly looking. Gracie’s heart missed a beat.
Sniffing, the thing cast a baleful glare at the occupants of the main bar, where silence had now overtaken the previous wallow of noise. Behind it, other shadows formed, more creatures the same or similar.
Gracie stood perfectly still. Her heart pounded in her throat. She felt an instinctual dread of these things, an inborn desire to get as far as fucking possible from them. Forcing herself to move, Gracie lowered into a squat behind the bar so she was invisible from the main room. She leaned back against the bar, watching what happened next in the mirrors behind the rows of bottles on the back wall.
Martin never stood a chance; the thing pounced on him like an animal, long talons latching onto his face and neck while the thing’s feet shot up and raked toenails an inch long down his stomach, slicing him open and spilling his guts all over the wooden floor.
Richard turned and tried to run, but a second creature—a female this time, judging by the floppy, dirt-encrusted breasts bouncing around under a filthy rag that may once have been a boob-tube—sprang onto his back. Latching fangs onto his throat from the side, she rode him hard into the bar, breaking his neck.
More of the creatures sprang through the open doors of the pub, creating a tidal wave of customers tryi
ng to head towards the back door.
As far as Gracie could tell from the reflected scene, not a soul made it that far.
She shuffled as quietly as she could to the trap door that led from behind the bar down to the cellar. As she levered the trap door open—without its usual squeak, thank God—something came around the side of the bar, through the swinging door, slowly and quietly.
Gracie froze in fear for a second before she realised it was Kevin, blood smeared over his clothes and face, eyes wide with terror and shock. His usually bushy hair was slicked back with more of the red fluid, making for a horror movie effect that would be laughable if it wasn’t so fucked up. He looked like Ash from Evil Dead after he chopped up his girlfriend. Gracie had to hold back a giggle as panic rose inside her.
Kevin crawled over to where she had the trapdoor raised and started down the steps without even looking at her; so much for ladies first.
She slipped down after him, listening to the sounds of slaughter and insane screaming as the patrons of Warcoola’s only pub died noisily.
Into this slaughterhouse, something else followed the foul creatures; something different, something darker.
It was dim in the cellar, and a hell of a lot quieter. The only light came from a globe near the far end of the room. Beer kegs, both full and empty, lined the walls between the two scared people and the only other exit. The trapdoor to the street the damn things came from in the first place.
Gracie looked at Kevin, aware he was not-all-there. Shock, she thought. He was cowering and hunched, shaking and whimpering softly to himself. It looked like he might wet his pants as well. Not gonna be much help.
Moving slowly down the stairs, she scanned the room for any threat, in case more of those things were in here lying in wait for her. As she reached the bottom she sensed something else above her, something infinitely evil. It came in waves, making the hair stand up on the back of Gracie’s neck. Kevin sensed it as well; his whimpering rose to a near whine. Gracie worried it would attract the wrong sort of attention—the kind with teeth and claws. She turned and tried to shush him, but it was too late. Something scraped on the trapdoor, gently at first and then more insistent as Kevin’s whine became a howl of terror. Gracie rushed towards the exit, pausing to glance back over her shoulder. He hadn’t moved, just curled up on the step.
Too bad for him, she thought, but stopped her silent rush to the ladder that led to the trap-door.
I can’t do it. I can’t just leave him for those things to tear apart.
She turned and rushed back to where he sat near the bottom of the steps, the need for silence gone as clawed hands hammered roughly at the trapdoor. Grabbing him by the arm, she tried to drag him towards the exit, but he refused to move, actually pulling against her grip as though he wanted to be slaughtered. Gracie pulled back her hand and slapped him across the face. She screamed at him to snap out of it, unmindful of the noise; the things knew they were down here already—all that mattered was getting the fuck out.
Kevin focused on her for the first time, fear and horror warring on his features.
“Wha—?”
“No time for this, Kevin,” Gracie said, brushing hair back from her eyes. “Get the fuck up and get moving.”
As she spoke, a hand smashed through the trapdoor above them, far enough to reach through and slash wildly. Grey and haggard, covered in peeling skin, and human, except for the claws that tipped each finger. Each was an inch long, and razor sharp. For the first time she noticed the smell; dank and rotten, earthy as though fresh from the grave.
The hand suddenly stilled, curled slowly and withdrew from the hole it had made. The dark presence Gracie had felt was growing.
It seemed alive, this presence, and it froze them both for a second. It seemed to almost infiltrate them, inspect them. It felt cold and hard; alien. The closest word she could come up with was crystalline. Shaking herself to get traction again, Gracie pulled Kevin towards the exit just as another, smaller, hand came through the hole and scrabbled around the edges of the door, reaching blindly for the locking mechanism.
The ladder leading up to the street was permanently affixed to the wall, set there as an emergency escape for anyone trapped down there. Kevin, more alert now and just as anxious as Gracie to escape the death-trap cellar, pushed in front and grabbed at the rungs, pulling himself quickly up to the exit. Gracie followed behind, again noticing Kevin’s wet jeans as he levered the bolt open, carefully raised the door, and peered under the lid. He opened the hatch without a sound and slipped out, and Gracie followed.
They found themselves at the front of the pub, the humid night forgotten as they scampered to get away.
Warcoola’s main street consisted of the pub, the Post Office/General Store, the Thrift Shop and a few run-down houses. Many of the shops that once lined the street had been sold off and turned into private dwellings.
They passed the darkened alley between the pub and the publican’s house. Shane Burroughs had taken over the pub when old Franky died, cleaning it up a bit and adding Victorian Bitter to the tapped beers. Not many had bothered to try it, but Gracie thought it was quite a good drop. Shane was sitting in the corner, holding court at his favourite table when the shit went down.
Most likely dead by now, she thought.
Past Shane’s house was the Thrift Shop run by Gary Davis, an old double-fronted building that had first been converted into a draperer’s, and later taken over by the CWA and stocked with useless memorabilia no-one wanted or needed: bowls and vases; toast racks and doilies; paintings and old books—dusty and cobwebbed reminders of a dying generation.
We’re all gonna be dead soon. Gracie dragged Kevin along behind her, past the thrift shop and into the alley between it and the private residence next door. It was dark and dank, smelling of dirty laundry and rotten garbage. At this point, it was also empty. They stopped for a second to gather their thoughts and work out where to go from there.
Huddled down against the thrift shop wall, Gracie breathed in oxygen and exhaled sheer terror. Her heart was beating like a meth-head drummer and her mind was crystal clear. She knew what she’d seen back there.
Those things were feasting on the dead. Drinking their blood like... like vampires!
A scuffling sound directly above her made her look up as one of the things leapt at her from the roof and knocked her to her knees, hooking one hand into her hair and cradling the back of her neck with the other. Sharp claws pierced her skin, drawing blood she could feel trickling down her neck as she struggle to break the thing’s implacable grip. It was useless.
The creature’s foul breath blasted her face.
Breathing... it’s breathing. It’s not a vampire. I can kill it.
It seemed that wasn’t going to happen today; the thing was just too damn strong. Unable to break its grip and aware of the thing’s mouth almost at her neck, Gracie dropped backwards, using her weight to throw the thing off. It took a handful of her hair as it flew away to impact against the weatherboard side of the thrift shop. Spinning in mid-air to land on its feet before it could hit the ground, it advanced even as it landed.
To Gracie’s surprise, Kevin came flying in from the side, a ragged board in his hands splintering over the thing’s head. It turned to look at him, not even staggered by the blow, hands reaching for Kevin as he held the board level with its stomach and plunged it in, piercing the saggy flesh and driving it deep.
A black spray of blood burst from the thing’s mouth, soaking Kevin from wrist to elbow before he had a chance to release the board and back away from the stricken creature. The thing fell to its knees, gasping for breath and gagging on the black fluid still dribbling and occasionally spurting from its mouth. Clawed hands grabbed at the board impaled through its gut, dragging it back out of the wound and increasing the flow of blood from seepage to a rhythmic pulse.
Casting the board aside, it tried to stand but fell to the ground, curling up and holding the wound with little effect. It
spasmed for a little bit and the blood flow slowed and then stopped completely as the thing finally stilled. Unlike the movies, in death it didn’t flare up or dust-out or whatever vampires were meant to do. With a final, rattling breath, it died.
Gracie looked over at Kevin and mouthed a quick thank-you before moving to study the creature more closely.
The thing’s mouth was shut, hiding its shark-like fangs. Dead, it resembled nothing so much as a human corpse. After seeing the ferocity of the attack, she was ready to believe in monsters and reanimated bodies.
It was male—shredded pants now displayed its genitals for all to see—and it seemed to have been no older than she was when it had died the first time. Movement from farther down the alley caught their attention. A window in the wall of the thrift shop opened and someone stuck their head out.
“What the fuck’s going on out here? People are tryin’ to sleep, y’know!”
“Mister Davis, keep your fuckin’ voice down.” Gracie’s response was whispered, but she looked around in fear, sure that more of the creatures were nearby.
“What the fuck you talkin’ about, Missy? You been drinki—” Davis was dragged back inside. A muffled scream ended suddenly.
Gracie turned and ran to Kevin, dragging him behind her as she ran further down the alley, finally emerging in the street behind the shop-fronts.
“Let’s get to the lock-up. Guns and bars.” It was hard to talk, but Kevin nodded, so he must have heard.
Cop-shop. Maybe a way to survive this madness.
The sultry night made it hard to breathe, and sweat poured down her face. At least Kevin was running quietly by her side now, not holding her back. He actually got ahead of her, arms pumping as they both staggered towards the police station a hundred yards away.
They could see the softly glowing blue sign, tantalisingly close but still too far. There were dark shapes on the ground here and there, too cloaked in darkness to make out but shaped alarmingly like torn and broken bodies.
