Supernatural Horror Short Stories

by Flame Tree Studio

  “No; that will do.” Smith placed the knife inside his coat, and led the way to the quadrangle. “We are neither of us chickens, Hastie,” said he. “I think I can do this job alone, but I take you as a precaution. I am going to have a little talk with Bellingham. If I have only him to deal with, I won’t, of course, need you. If I shout, however, up you come, and lam out with your whip as hard as you can lick. Do you understand?”

  “All right. I’ll come if I hear you bellow.”

  “Stay here, then. I may be a little time, but don’t budge until I come down.”

  “I’m a fixture.”

  Smith ascended the stairs, opened Bellingham’s door and stepped in. Bellingham was seated behind his table, writing. Beside him, among his litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale number 249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff and stark within it. Smith looked very deliberately round him, closed the door, and then, stepping across to the fireplace, struck a match and set the fire alight. Bellingham sat staring, with amazement and rage upon his bloated face.

  “Well, really now, you make yourself at home,” he gasped.

  Smith sat himself deliberately down, placing his watch upon the table, drew out his pistol, cocked it, and laid it in his lap. Then he took the long amputating knife from his bosom, and threw it down in front of Bellingham.

  “Now, then,” said he, “just get to work and cut up that mummy.”

  “Oh, is that it?” said Bellingham with a sneer.

  “Yes, that is it. They tell me that the law can’t touch you. But I have a law that will set matters straight. If in five minutes you have not set to work, I swear by the God who made me that I will put a bullet through your brain!”

  “You would murder me?”

  Bellingham had half-risen, and his face was the colour of putty.

  “Yes.”

  “And for what?”

  “To stop your mischief. One minute has gone.”

  “But what have I done?”

  “I know and you know.”

  “This is mere bullying.”

  “Two minutes are gone.”

  “But you must give reasons. You are a madman – a dangerous madman. Why should I destroy my own property? It is a valuable mummy.”

  “You must cut it up, and you must burn it.”

  “I will do no such thing.”

  “Four minutes are gone.”

  Smith took up the pistol and he looked towards Bellingham with an inexorable face. As the second-hand stole round, he raised his hand, and the finger twitched upon the trigger.

  “There! There! I’ll do it!” screamed Bellingham.

  In frantic haste he caught up the knife and hacked at the figure of the mummy, ever glancing round to see the eye and the weapon of his terrible visitor bent upon him. The creature crackled and snapped under every stab of the keen blade. A thick, yellow dust rose up from it. Spices and dried essences rained down upon the floor. Suddenly, with a rending crack, its backbone snapped asunder, and it fell, a brown heap of sprawling limbs, upon the floor.

  “Now into the fire!” said Smith.

  The flames leaped and roared as the dried and tinder-like debris was piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer and the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick, fat smoke oozed out from the fire, and a heavy smell of burned resin and singed hair filled the air. In a quarter of an hour a few charred and brittle sticks were all that was left of Lot No. 249.

  “Perhaps that will satisfy you,” snarled Bellingham, with hate and fear in his little grey eyes as he glanced back at his tormentor.

  “No; I must make a clean sweep of all your materials. We must have no more devil’s tricks. In with all these leaves! They may have something to do with it.”

  “And what now?” asked Bellingham, when the leaves also had been added to the blaze.

  “Now the roll of papyrus which you had on the table that night. It is in that drawer, I think.”

  “No, no,” shouted Bellingham. “Don’t burn that! Why, man, you don’t know what you do. It is unique; it contains wisdom which is nowhere else to be found.”

  “Out with it!”

  “But look here, Smith, you can’t really mean it. I’ll share the knowledge with you. I’ll teach you all that is in it. Or, stay, let me only copy it before you burn it!”

  Smith stepped forward and turned the key in the drawer. Taking out the yellow, curled roll of paper, he threw it into the fire, and pressed it down with his heel. Bellingham screamed, and grabbed at it; but Smith pushed him back and stood over it until it was reduced to a formless, grey ash.

  “Now, Master B.,” said he, “I think I have pretty well drawn your teeth. You’ll hear from me again, if you return to your old tricks. And now good morning, for I must go back to my studies.”

  And such is the narrative of Abercrombie Smith as to the singular events which occurred in Old College, Oxford, in the spring of ’84. As Bellingham left the university immediately afterwards, and was last heard of in the Soudan, there is no one who can contradict his statement. But the wisdom of men is small, and the ways of Nature are strange, and who shall put a bound to the dark things which may be found by those who seek for them?

  She’s Gone

  Morgan Elektra

  My mother always told me people went to bars to disappear. Since I already felt stretched so thin light would shine through me, it seemed like as good a place to go as any. Better than most, even. The liquor would help me forget.

  “Well, look at you.”

  I flinched away from the hardscrabble rasp at my elbow, spilling the cheap bourbon I was attempting to drown in.

  I hadn’t seen the old man climb onto the stool beside me, but that was hardly a surprise. The rest of the patrons were completely ignoring me and I’d been returning the favor.

  I lost myself in the gingerbread colored depths of the burnt-sugar-and-turpentine scented liquor – my third glass – trying not to picture the scene back at my apartment: my best friend Bella’s curvy body looming above Rick, her hair a tumble of black curls down her smooth, naked back as she rode my fiancé into the 800 thread count sheets my mother gave us as a housewarming gift.

  I drained the dregs of alcohol from the water-spotted tumbler. The napalm burn wiped the image momentarily from my synapses and I sighed in relief.

  I reached a shaking hand for the pile of tarnished coins on the bar and plucked up a quarter, the visage on it edged in black. I spun it on the uneven wood, watched it wobble, and snatched it back up.

  I couldn’t bear to see what it would land on.

  The metal throbbed against my fingertips, warm as blood.

  Beside me, the man swung around, making the rickety stool creak. I caught a glimpse of scraggly hair the color of wet clay and watery amber eyes surrounded by pouches of wrinkles.

  The look in them was like the neon light shining in the bourbon, or fire reflected on the surface of a lake.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “No.”

  It came out a disagreeable grunt, but he didn’t take offense. He kept watching me, mouth pursed in contemplation as I poured myself another slug of bourbon.

  I glanced over to see if he was expecting me to share, but his beer still sweated glistening beads of moisture. He lifted it to lips the color of raw liver.

  I turned my face away to discourage his attempts at conversation. My skin ached under the bruising weight of his gaze. I rubbed at the liquor-sticky surface of the bar, tracing decades old water stains and burns from cigarettes whose ghosts still lingered in the hazy air. Both felt more substantial than me.

  He was undeterred by my rudeness.

  When he leaned closer, his breat
h puffed against my cheek, thick with hops and something darker. Something unpleasant. Like meat gone grey and greasy.

  My stomach did a slow roll.

  “Name’s Garen.” He pronounced it with a throat thick with phlegm. White dots of spittle flecked his lips. “Friends called me Gary.”

  “Jane.” I took another drink, hoping to occupy my mouth with something other than conversation that made my brain ache. It didn’t work. The bourbon made my tongue too loose. “Plain Jane.”

  Rick’s words. I’d always thought it sweet that he had a nickname for me. Though, after hearing his husky voice gasping and groaning and calling out ‘Oh my God! Yes! Like that!’ with guttural astonishment as Bella swivelled her ample hips, I guessed maybe Plain Jane wasn’t so charming a thing for my fiancé to call me, after all.

  Desperate to distance myself from those thoughts, I whirled on my stool to face Gary, wobbling only a little. My head felt like a blister, throbbing, ready to pop.

  “Why’re you asking about ghosts?”

  Part of me, the part that knew this entire evening was already nauseatingly cliché, expected the grizzled old codger to tell me I looked like I knew something about being haunted.

  Instead of answering my question, he reached over and plucked the coin from my hand, flashing a brief grin and spinning it over his cracked knuckles.

  “I’ve seen ’em. On the job.”

  Gary leaned one elbow on the bar, ignoring the puddle of moisture that darkened the material of his threadbare suit jacket. A giggle bubbled up my throat. Gary nodded as if answering an unasked question.

  I stared at the broad, wrinkled face framed by thinning hair and struggled to picture the rumpled old man in front of me being confronted by smoky apparition.

  My drinking buddy had probably once been a handsome man – the strong line of his jaw and bold slope of his forehead said so – but he didn’t look at all well at the moment. I thought he must have been big; tall, broad shouldered, and barrel-chested. Not gorgeous, but solid and good-looking.

  Now, his sallow flesh hung on the bones of his face in wrinkled flaps. Despite his gauntness, the thin skin around his eyes and under his jaw was puffy and swollen. Once strong shoulders curled in toward a sunken chest. He appeared moments away from folding in on himself.

  Burst blood vessels spiderwebbed beneath the fragile skin of his cheeks and stained the jaundiced whites of his eyes.

  Considering the world weary look in his eyes and his rumpled suit, I hazarded a guess.

  “You’re a cop?”

  I was whispering, I realized, empty glass up to my lips as if I was trying to hide what we were talking about from the rest of the bar’s disinterested patrons. Maybe I was. It seemed ridiculous to be talking about ghosts. There were worse things in the world. Real things that stole your breath and slipped into your heart like a knife.

  Gary nodded. I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with my words, or my unspoken scepticism.

  “Of a sort,” Gary replied against the lip of his beer bottle.

  I tasted metal on my tongue and poured myself another glass to wash it away. Gary tilted his head, red neon glittering in his eyes.

  “I worked as a detective in Vice once.”

  Vice. The word conjured images of hookers with lipstick leers, mouths red and open, Bella’s tongue curling around Rick’s shaft. My stomach pitched, and my heart lurched. I swallowed both back down. I sipped at the liquor, wincing at the burn in my throat, suddenly desperate to hear about Gary’s ghosts.

  “I would have figured Homicide. Since we’re talking about restless spirits.”

  He picked at the label on the beer bottle, shaking his head. His hair brushed his shoulders, rustling like dry leaves. Like Rick’s heels sliding against our soft sheets.

  “Mostly I spent my time busting up illegal books and taking the working girls off the street for a few nights. Not too much excitement, really. A lot of paperwork. Better than some other gigs I’ve had.”

  His lips twitched into half a grin. I snorted into my glass.

  On the scarred wood of the bar, a fat fly wandered into a puddle of spilled bourbon. It twitched and flailed, wings fluttering uselessly.

  I closed my eyes, bothered by how broken it looked.

  “Hardly sounds like the place for spooky stories.”

  To me, ghost stories meant fog shrouded graveyards and crumbling old Victorians; not seedy gambling dens and noisy city streets.

  “Ghosts are everywhere, Janey. Mostly people just don’t look.”

  I shivered a little at his words, cold despite the heat of the liquor burning in my belly and the sweaty warmth of the bar. My heart squeezed.

  I scowled at Gary. Or I meant to, but my eyes slid past him to the darkness outside the bar’s wide front window. The streetlight flickered intermittently, splashing some message across the pavement in code.

  The street itself was nearly empty, cars passing every few minutes instead of in their normal steady stream. Though it was still early yet. Or at least I thought it was.

  A glance at the big, old-fashioned clock above the bar showed the hour hand hovering near the eleven. Not even midnight yet.

  Something white – a flash of headlights? – flared just at the periphery of my vision as I turned to the old man.

  Shaking my throbbing head, I focused on my new friend, and slurped more warm liquor to cover up my momentary distraction. I choked on it, hacking to clear my throat, shoulders heaving. My airways burned, but I managed to catch my breath.

  “So, tell me about this one you saw – the ghost.”

  Gary turned toward the window too, perhaps looking for whatever it was I’d seen from the corner of my eye. His hangdog face in profile was so full of sorrow it made me catch my breath. Tears stung my eyes.

  Unease crawled up my spine, many-legged as a millipede, as my gaze slid around the room. It lit briefly on the owner, Trudy, where she leaned behind the bar.

  Trudy was bottle-blonde, a sassy and fierce 40-something who’d always had a bit of a soft spot for me. She fed me free sodas all the times I served as designated driver for Rick and his buddies. She joked with all the patrons and never seemed to take anything – aside from tips – seriously. But now she had a scowl on her face like a thundercloud as she murmured into the heavy black rotary phone she kept behind the bar.

  “I hadn’t been a detective long,” Gary finally said, blinking slowly as his gaze wandered back to mine. “Maybe a year. Could be two. After this long, it’s hard to say for sure. But I was still new enough that I always got stuck with the lion’s share of the paperwork, I remember that.”

  His chuckle was the uneven chop of a sputtering engine about to stall out.

  “That was the hottest summer I ever remember, ’til now. It was the Pansy Elliot case. I knew most of the regular girls who worked the corners down by the Point. You try and get ’em off the street, hope they decide to do something else…” He wiped his lips with gnarled fingers. “But the sad truth is, most of ’em just went right back as soon as they were out. It was all they knew to do to get by.”

  I thought of Bella. Other people had always called her unkind names because of her wild behavior. I’d defended her time and time again, told people she was just a free spirit and who cared how many people a woman took to her bed?

  Now, burning with the pain of betrayal and past the point of being a little drunk, I heard Gary’s words, ‘It was all they knew to do,’ and my brain translated them to something more vicious, in keeping with my mood: Once a whore, always a whore.

  Bourbon dribbled down my chin as I tipped the heavy glass to my lips, stinging a cut on my jaw I didn’t remember getting. I swiped at the rivulet with the back of my hand, smearing the sticky liquid over my cheek.

  “She was a pretty little thing. Young. Maybe twenty.” He paused, eyes on me, beer halfway
to his mouth. “How old are you, Janey?”

  “Twenty-two. A week ago.” Rick took me out to dinner for my birthday and got my favorite chocolate cake for dessert. At home, he laid me in our bed and kissed every inch of me with such tenderness my heart nearly broke with it. I felt that way again now, a tightness in my chest that made it hurt to breathe.

  Gary shook his head, as if he was saddened by my words too.

  “Pansy hadn’t been on the street long, maybe a month or two. Long enough to have realized the reality of it, but not long enough that it’d worn her down much. She still had a bit of sparkle in her eye.”

  I crossed my forearms on top of the bar and rested my cheek against them, my eyes on Gary. The sour-sweet smell of liquor stung my nose, mixed with the scent of overripe fruit and something bitter and mineral.

  Out in the hot night, I heard the rev of an engine, the squeal of tires on asphalt, the honk of a horn. Not uncommon in the city, but it sounded loud to my ears. I flinched at the throb of blood in my temples.

  I concentrated instead on the dim red-brown light of the bar, the hushed rumble of Gary’s voice, the warm, thick air still tinged with the scent of smoke even all these years after the indoor smoking ban. It all coalesced into a numbing sort of blanket that wrapped around me, insulating me from the outside world. I was pathetically grateful for it.

  Tears gathered on my lashes but I blinked them away.

  Gary leaned over and patted my arm. His irises glowed orange, like a candle flame. That fetid meat smell wafted from his suit again, and I swallowed hard as bile bubbled in my stomach.

  “I’ve never been much good with crying females,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was talking about me.

  I sniffed a little, but he smiled and continued, and I realized he was still caught up in his story.

  “But I was the only one in the squad room just then, so I had to deal with it. And there Pansy was, sitting at my desk, crying her pretty blue eyes out, with a nasty shiner, a split lip, and a gash on her temple still seeping blood. She’s wanting to file charges on her pimp, who’d roughed her up good when she didn’t make enough the night before.”