Seven Deadly Tales of Terror

by Bryan Smith

  Luke navigated his way through a maze of familiar streets and neighborhoods, bittersweet memories from a lifetime ago assailing him in the process. He had grown up here. Driving through the area in the dead of night—something he hadn’t done in a very long time—was a strange experience. It was like traveling through a haunted museum of the past. His mind easily conjured images of his youthful self, flying down these streets on his Schwinn. The memory was so vivid he could almost hear the flapping sound made by the baseball cards wedged into the spokes of his bicycle’s wheels.

  The Wilhoite home was at the end of a quiet street in one of the town’s older residential areas. The houses here mainly one-story ranch-style houses built many decades earlier. Many of the families who lived in the neighborhood had been entrenched here for generations. Luke cut the truck’s headlights and slowed down as he neared the house, approaching it with an abundance of caution. He heaved a sigh of relief when he realized there were no lights on inside, making it likely no one was up awaiting young Calvin’s return. It also meant Calvin’s excursion to his place tonight had probably been a lone-wolf act on his part unsanctioned by Stump or anyone else in the family. It would make doing what he had to do a lot easier.

  He pulled into the gravel driveway, eased the door shut after getting out of the truck, and let himself into the house with Calvin’s key. Once he was inside, he snapped the flashlight beam on and performed a careful search of the premises. It didn’t take long. He found Stump Wilhoite and Wilma, his wife, sound asleep in the master bedroom. They were the only people in the house. Everything was falling into place with such shocking ease it was almost possible to believe it was all preordained. Like it was God’s will. It was an idea he seized upon with pathetic desperation. These people had unjustly persecuted him for a thing he hadn’t done for a long, long time. Looked at in that light, this was just a regrettably brutal way of setting things right again.

  Stump began to stir as Luke came into the room, making sleepy, half-aware sounds without coming to full consciousness. Luke shoved the flashlight into the waistband of his jeans, jerked the pillow out from under Stump’s head, and jammed it down over his face. The old man did wake up then, uttering a startled, muffled shriek from beneath the pillow. Luke pressed the barrel of the gun against the pillow and said, “You did this. You made it happen.”

  He squeezed the trigger.

  Stump stopped moving.

  Wilma came awake then and sat up with a terrified gasp. Luke climbed onto the bed and drilled a gloved fist straight into the center of her face. Her nose broke with an audible snap and she flopped backward as blood erupted from her nostrils. Luke grabbed her pillow and pressed it down over her face. Rather than firing the gun again, he straddled her and held the pillow down until she stopped moving. He then tossed the pillow aside and checked her pulse. When he was satisfied that she was truly dead, he went back out to the living room and peered out at the front yard through a parted curtain. Nothing was happening out there. He nonetheless stood there an additional several minutes to be certain police weren’t on the way.

  When he was sure no one had called in a report of the single shot he had fired, Luke went out to the truck and removed Calvin’s body from the back. This time he carried the body in his arms. This required a tremendous, back-straining physical effort, but Luke didn’t want to leave evidence of a body being dragged into the house. It was a warm summer night and the sweat was rolling off him in rivers and stinging his eyes before he was able to get back inside. Once he was back inside, he carried Calvin into the master bedroom and set about trying to stage the scene.

  Like most of his firearms—of which he had several—Luke’s .357 was unregistered. He didn’t like the idea of anyone in any kind of official capacity having an accurate idea of his self-defense capability. This was a product of the deep paranoia that had taken root within him in the aftermath of his trial. He didn’t trust anyone in general, a mindset that absolutely included anyone wearing any kind of uniform. Hell, especially those assholes. After thoroughly wiping it down, he wrapped Calvin’s dead fingers around the grip of the gun, threading his forefinger through the trigger guard.

  What he had in mind was pretty straightforward. Calvin was obviously a troubled kid. He’d had some kind of heated dispute with his parents. Things got out of hand and he wound up killing them in their sleep. In the wake of this act, the reality of what he had done hit the boy hard and, understandably distraught, he wound up taking his own life with the very gun he’d used to murder his father. No one would bat an eye over the unregistered gun. Such things weren’t unusual. There would be nothing at all to connect Luke to any of it.

  Satisfied he’d done his best to set the scene, Luke got to his feet and headed out of the bedroom. A sudden thought made him halt in his tracks in the hallway. His face contorted with frustration and disgust as he realized he’d overlooked a potentially crucial detail. He went back into the bedroom, knelt next to Calvin’s body, and rolled it onto its side in order to aim the flashlight beam at his back. And there it was—the exit wound.

  Fucking hell.

  The .357 slug had passed through his body. The damn thing was still out there in the woods behind his trailer. Luke was no forensics expert, but he knew the investigation would need to turn up the bullet that killed the boy.

  Or at least the one that had apparently killed him.

  Luke curled his hand around Calvin’s fingers and used them to press the barrel of the gun against his abdomen, lining it up with the original entry wound. This was risky. He didn’t like the idea of having to fire a second shot. Luck had been on his side the first time, but doing it a second time would really be pushing it. And yet, what other choice did he have?

  None at all, that’s what.

  So he did it.

  And then he got the hell out of that house.

  The house where he had grown up was just three streets over. He kept his head down and walked at a brisk pace in that direction. Along the way, he passed just one house where someone appeared to be awake. There was a single dim light on at a window in the back. He eyed the window carefully as he continued on past the house, but he detected no signs of movement. Dogs on chains or in fenced-in yards barked as he hurriedly passed through their territory. This didn’t concern Luke much. A nighttime canine chorus wasn’t unusual in this kind of neighborhood. Dogs got bored and started talking to each other. For the most part, no one paid it any mind.

  The lights were on at 3366 Montgomery Street. The place was lit up like the fourth of goddamn July. Of course. Josh Benson was a retired union man with a generous pension. He was always up all hours of the night, or at least that was how it’d been back when Luke still came around semi-regularly. At first glance, it looked like nothing had changed. He had been counting on that. Josh was his way back home. They had their differences. Big ones. There had been some violent episodes. But when it came down to it, blood was blood and still meant something. His father would help him, he was sure of it.

  Luke climbed the porch steps and rapped hard on the front door. Minutes passed and no one answered, but he knew someone was awake in there because he could hear the faint strains of a scratchy C&W record playing on the turntable. “I’m Walking The Floor Over You” by Ernest Tubb. It was one of his pop’s favorites. He played it whenever he was in a particularly maudlin mood, which didn’t bode well for any interaction they might have here. The song ended and another Tubb tune—“Drivin’ Nails In My Coffin”—began moments later. Maybe he was passed out drunk in there and really couldn’t hear him knocking. Much more likely, however, was the possibility that he was opting to ignore the late night caller at his door.

  Luke couldn’t blame the man. He hated the ornery old bastard, but this reaction was nothing but plain common sense. An unexpected knock on your door at this hour could only mean bad news or trouble of some kind. Still, Luke was in a hell of a bind and had no choice but to continue pressing the issue.

  So he bang
ed harder on the door and pitched his voice above the sound of the music. “Pop! It’s me, Luke! I need your help!”

  A few more moments passed and Luke was on the verge of giving up when he detected the sound of booted feet approaching from the other side of the door, making the hardwood floor inside the foyer creak. The door came open and Josh Benson stood framed in the doorway, a scowl twisting a face flushed a bright shade of red. “Son? What in blue blazes brings you out here at this hour?”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  The old man’s scowl faded and he stared at his son with an unreadable expression for maybe a full minute. His breath reeked of cheap beer. Probably Old Style, his favorite going back at least to the 50’s. Finally, he shook his head and stepped away from the door. “Come on in, then.”

  Luke followed him into the house, shutting the door behind him. The living room was directly adjacent to the little foyer. Stepping into it again triggered that impression of traveling back in time. He hadn’t been in this room for going on a decade, but it still looked much as he remembered. The furniture—all of it stuff his late mother had purchased new in the early 60’s—was all the same, albeit more weathered-looking now. The same framed family photos still hung from the walls. Younger versions of Luke appeared in several of them. He was even smiling in a few of them. Seeing the mostly black and white images now was weird, like looking at pictures of strangers. No, on further reflection, it was weirder than that. The life depicted in those pictures was completely alien to him now. They were like glimpses of life on another planet. A late night movie was playing with the sound turned down on a big Zenith television opposite the dusty sofa, some old gangster thing with Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart. The TV was one of the boxy old-fashioned kind with legs on the bottom.

  Josh walked over to the stereo system and lifted the needle off the record, silencing Ernest Tubb with a nasty scratch of vinyl. “Sit down, son. I’ll get us both a beer.”

  Luke stood there while his father walked out of the room. He was too wound up to sit down so instead he crossed the room to examine more framed photos that lined the shelves of a bookcase. He gnawed on his bottom lip and frowned at more pictures of smiling aliens.

  “Here, son.”

  Luke gasped at the sound of his father’s voice. He hadn’t known the old drunk could tread so silently. He turned away from the pictures and nodded as he accepted the can of Old Style. “Thanks.”

  Josh opened his beer and knocked back a big gulp, grimacing as he choked it down. “So tell me about this so-called trouble you’re in.”

  Luke popped the tab on his own can and had a tiny sip. The beer wasn’t unappreciated, but he needed to stay sober until he was clear of this mess and safely ensconced back in his own home. He nonetheless had another couple contemplative sips as he mulled over what to tell his father. He wracked his brain for some kind of believable cover story, but nothing came immediately to mind. All he could think of suddenly was the .357 discharging into the pillow he’d held down over Stump Wilhoite’s face.

  The beer can slipped from his gloved fingers, hit the floor, and rolled, spilling beer across the horrible mustard-colored carpeting. The powerful surge of grief and regret took him by surprise and he was powerless to stem the tide of emotion as he dropped to his knees and covered his face with his hands.

  He heard his father heave a sigh of disgust and say, “Ah, hell.”

  Luke’s sobbing continued until Josh Benson knocked him upside his head. This was no love tap. The old man had whacked him a good one. The physical pain shocked Luke out of the emotion of the moment. It was the first time his father had hit him since the year before he got drafted and shipped off to Vietnam. A simmering rage displaced the grief and he got carefully to his feet, his hands curled into shaking fists at his sides.

  Josh sneered. “I ain’t interested in fighting you, son. Hell, I know you could whoop my ass these days. But if you’re really in trouble, you need to pull your shit together and tell me all about it.”

  Luke heaved a breath and let go of his rage. His father was right. And he knew there was no line of bullshit that would cut it in this situation. “I need a ride home. I…I…” He grimaced. “I killed Stump Wilhoite tonight. And the rest of his family.”

  His father’s face registered mild surprise, but there was no hint of anything like shock or disgust in his expression. The old man didn’t reply right away but instead eyed his son in a curious, contemplative way. Luke had a hard time imagining what was his going through the man’s head and his anxiety redlined again as he waited for him to say something. When he finally did speak, the words he uttered made no sense to him. “Did you do it for me?”

  Luke frowned. “What?”

  Josh finished off his beer and crushed the can in his hand. “You heard me, boy. Did you do in ol’ Stump on my behalf?”

  Luke’s frown deepened. “Why in hell would I do it for you?”

  His father’s features took on that quizzical cast again. “To protect me, of course. Am I wrong?”

  Luke could make no sense of the turn the conversation had taken. He stared at his father in open-mouthed confusion for a long moment. Maybe the old man was even drunker than he’d thought and had misunderstood him. But, no, that didn’t seem possible based on his actual words. Luke remained at a loss until a disturbing thought took shape in his head. As soon it occurred to him, he knew it had to be true. It made a perfect, diabolical kind of sense, and he had to wonder why he’d never thought of it before.

  “It was you,” he said, pushing the words through tightly clenched teeth. “You’re the South County Madman.”

  “Yeah, reckon I am. Hell, son, I figured you finally worked it out and went after Stump for me. Shit, I was almost proud of you there for a second.” Josh laughed. “Well, don’t stand there looking like a damn simpleton. Don’t tell me you’re gonna hold a grudge against your pa.”

  A lot of things went through Luke’s mind in the next several moments. Much of it was a This Is Your Life-style review of highlights from his childhood. The one big constant was the way his miserable, abusive, sadistic excuse for a father had delighted in undermining him in every facet of his life. There was all the physical stuff, for one thing. The savage beatings he’d endured when he’d been too small to fight back. The occasional inappropriate touching he tried very hard to never think about. And then there was the openly derisive way he reacted to anything remotely positive that happened in his son’s life, including mockery for exhibiting pride at earning good grades at school rather than excellent grades. But that had been nothing compared to the humiliating way the old man had taunted him in the wake of an especially cruel rejection by the prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Making his son cry had been one of Josh Benson’s great joys in life for a long stretch of years. He honed the skill to a fine edge during that time, systematically destroying his son’s confidence and generally doing much to turn him into the social recluse he eventually became. Dumping the bodies of the dead girls on Luke’s property had simply been the culmination of it all, an ultimate expression of contempt, as well as the most perfect way of fucking with him he’d ever conceived.

  Josh laughed again. His face looked redder than ever. “Should see yourself, son. You look like someone knocked you a good one upside the head.” He smirked. “You used to look like that a lot in the good old days.”

  Luke launched himself at the old man, slamming into him and driving him to the floor in a tangle of flailing limbs. The fight was brutal and touch-and-go in those first few moments, with his father landing a few solid blows despite being caught off-guard. But Josh had been right earlier—he was too old to get the better of his son now. Luke absorbed the worst of the blows easily and soon gained the upper hand, winding up atop the old man as he relentlessly battered the bastard’s face with his fists. He shattered his nose and pulped his lips, broke his jaw and knocked several of his teeth loose. Blood flowed from several wide gashes and his cheeks turned purple. At some p
oint, the old man stopped moving, a development Luke initially chalked up to surrender. But knowing he had won did nothing to dim his fury at first and for a time he continued to slam his gloved fists into the now virtually unrecognizable face of his father. The rhythm of his punches only began to slow as his arms grew tired.

  He let his arms hang limply at his sides when it was over. They each felt like they weighed about a million pounds. For a while he just sat there, breathing heavily and staring at his father’s ruined face in a numb state of shock. When he belatedly understood that Josh Benson had died, the numbness went away and he let out a strangled gasp followed by another round of violent sobbing. It went on for a while.

  Luke’s father had been a worthless piece of shit, but he had also been his last living relative. In those first starkly bleak moments in the aftermath of it all, beating the old man to death felt like the perfect capper to a perfectly crappy life. He had no one left in the world who gave a shit about him, even in a twisted, hateful way. No more family. No more friends. Only his dogs loved him. He cried and cursed the old man, letting out a lifetime’s worth of frustration and regret, as well as helpless grief for the life he might have had if he’d been raised by people who were decent.

  When the explosion of emotion at last subsided, he got up and commenced a careful search of the house. He hadn’t come this far to fail now and damned if he was going to let the old man get the last laugh. He found the first part of what he needed in a lockbox Josh Benson had kept under his bed. Inside it were gruesome Polaroid photographs of his victims, along with other sick mementos of his crimes, including locks of hair, various undergarments, ID cards, and a small piece of rotted flesh wrapped in a clear plastic bag. Luke’s face twisted in disgust at the sight of the latter, which he was pretty sure had been someone’s nipple.