Supernatural Horror Short Stories

by Flame Tree Studio

  Betty pulls off the wig. Before she got the virus, she could grow her thick chestnut hair clear down to her waist. I’ve never seen it except in pictures; her bare scalp gleams pale in the yellow light from the chandelier.

  The scar circumscribing her skull looks red, inflamed; I wonder if she’s been seeing other Type Threes. I quickly tamp down my pang of jealousy. We never agreed to an exclusive arrangement. And maybe she just had to go to the hospital instead; she told me she’s got some kind of massive tumor on her pituitary.

  She looks so frail. I can’t possibly begrudge her what comfort she can get. I should just be grateful that she agrees to see me when I need her.

  And, oh sweet Lord, do I need her tonight.

  Betty pulls me down to her for a kiss. Her hands are icy, but her lips are warm. She slips her tongue into my mouth, and I can taste sweet cerebrospinal fluid mingled in her saliva. The tumor must have cracked the bony barriers in her skull. Before I have a chance to try to pull away, my own tongue is swelling, toothed pores opening and nipping at her slippery flesh.

  She squeaks in pain and we separate.

  “Sorry,” I try to whisper. But my tongue is continuing to engorge and lengthen, curling back on itself and slithering down my own throat; I can feel the tiny maws rasping against my adenoids.

  “It’s okay.” Her wan smile is smeared with blood. “We better get started.”

  She kisses the palm of my hand and begins to take my clothes off. I stare up at the tawdry chandelier, watching a fly buzz among the dusty baubles and bulbs. When I’m naked, she slips off her cocktail dress and leads me to the tarp-covered couch.

  “Be gentle.” She presses a short oyster knife into my hand and sits me down, the plastic crackling beneath me. I nod, barely keeping my lips closed over my shuddering tongue, and spread my legs.

  With slow exhalation, Betty settles between my thighs, her back to me. She’s a tiny woman, her head barely clearing my chin when we’re seated, so this position works best. Her skin is already covered in goose bumps. The anticipation is killing both of us.

  I carefully run the tip of the sharp oyster knife through the red scar around her skull; there’s relatively little blood as I cut through the tissue. Betty gives a little gasp and grips my knees, her whole body tensed. The bone has only stitched back together in a few places; I use the side-to-side motion she showed me to gently pry the lid of her skull free.

  She moans when I expose her brain; it’s the most beautiful thing I could hope to see. Her dura mater glistens with a half-inch slick of golden jelly. Brain honey. When I breathe in the smell of her, I feel my blood pressure rise hard and fast.

  I set the bowl of skin and bone aside and present the knife to her in my outstretched left hand. With a flick of her wrist, she slits the vein in the crook of my arm and presses her mouth against my bleeding flesh. I wrap my cut arm around her head and pull her tight to my breast.

  I open my mouth and let my tongue unwind like an eel into her brainpan. It wriggles there, purple and gnarled, the tiny maw sucking down her golden jelly. It’s delicious, better than caviar, better than ice cream, better than anything I’ve had in my mouth before. Sweet and salty and tangy and perfect.

  The jelly gives me flashes of her memories and dreams; she’s been with other Type Threes. She’s helped them murder people. I don’t care. I keep drinking her in, my tongue probing all the corners of her skull and sheathed wrinkles of her brain to get every last gooey drop.

  I can control my tongue, but just barely. It’s hard to keep it from doing the one thing I’d dearly love, which is to drive it through her membrane deep between her slippery lobes. But that would be the end of her. The end of us. No more, all over, bye bye.

  A little of what my body and soul craves is better than nothing at all. Isn’t it?

  My arm aches, and I’m starting to feel lightheaded on top of the high. We’re both running dry. I release her, spritz her brain with saline and carefully put the top of her head back into place. She’s full of my blood, and already her scalp is sealing back together. We’ve done well; we spilled hardly anything on the tarp this time. But my face feels sticky, and I’ve probably even gotten her in my hair.

  She daintily wipes my blood from the corners of her mouth and smiles at me. Her skin is pink and practically glowing, and her boniness seems chic rather than diseased. “Want to go to that Italian place after we get cleaned up?”

  “Sure.” I’m probably glowing, too. My stomach feels strong enough for pepperoncinis.

  I head to the bathroom to wash my face, but when I push open the door –

  – I find myself in Dr. Shapiro’s office. She’s staring down at an MRI scan of somebody’s chest. The monochrome bones look strange, distorted.

  “There’s definitely a mass behind your ribs and spine. It’s growing fast, but I can’t definitely say it’s cancer.”

  I’m dizzy with terror. How did I get here? What mass? How long have I had a mass?

  “What should we do?” I stammer.

  She looks up at me with eyes as solidly black as Betty’s. “I think we should wait and see.”

  I back away, turn, push through her office door –

  – and I’m back in a rented room. But not the downtown dive with the dusty chandelier. It’s a suburban motel someplace. Have I been here before?

  The green tarp on the king-sized bed is covered in blood and bits of skull. There’s a body wrapped in black trash bags, stuffed between the bed and the writing desk. Did I do that? What have I done?

  Oh, God, please make this stop. I have to lean against the wall to keep myself from tumbling backward.

  Betty comes out of the bathroom, dressed in a spattered silk negligee. I think it used to be white. There’s gore in her wig. Her eyes go wide.

  “I told you not to come here!” She grabs me by my arm, surprising me with her strength. In the distance, I can hear sirens. “They’ll be here any minute – get away from here, fast as you can!”

  She presses a set of rental car keys into my palm, hauls me to the door and pushes me out into the hallway –

  – and I’m stepping into the elevator at work.

  Handsome blond Devin is in there. A look of surprised fear crosses his face, and I know the very sight of me repels him. His hand goes to his jeans pocket. I see the outline of something that’s probably a canister of pepper spray. It’s too small to be a taser.

  But then he pauses, smiles at me. “Hey, you going up to that training class?”

  I nod mechanically, and try to say “Sure,” but my lungs spasm and suddenly I’m doubled over, coughing into my hands. When did simply breathing start hurting this much?

  “You okay?” Devin asks.

  I try to nod, but there’s bright blood on my palms. A long-forgotten Bible verse surfaces in the swamp of my memory: Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.

  I look up and see my reflection in the chromed elevator walls – my face is gaunt, but my body is grotesquely swollen. I’ve turned into some kind of hunchback. How long have I had the mass?

  Instead of the pepper spray, Devin’s pulled his cell phone out. I can smell his mind. He’s torn between wanting to run away and wanting to help. “Should I call someone? Should I call 911?”

  The elevator is filled with the scent of him. Despite my pain and sickness, the Want returns with a vengeance. Adrenaline rises along with my blood pressure. My tongue is twitching, and something in my back, too. I can feel it tearing my ribs away from my spine. It hurts more than I can remember anything ever hurting. Maybe childbirth would be like this.

  Betty. I need Betty. How long has it been since I’ve seen her? Oh God.

  “Call 911,” I try to say, but I can’t take a breath, can’t speak around the tongue writhing backward down my throat.

  “What can I do?�
� Devin touches my shoulder.

  And the feel of his hand against my bony flesh is far too much for me to bear.

  I rise up under him, grab him by the sides of his head, kissing him. My tongue goes straight down his throat, choking him. He hits me, trying to shake me off, but as strong as he is, my Want is stronger.

  When he’s unconscious, I let him fall and hit the emergency stop button. The Want has me wrapped tightly in its ardor, burning away all my human qualms. The alarm is an annoyance, and I know I don’t have as much time as I want. Still. As I lift his left eyelid, I take a moment to admire his perfect bluebonnet iris.

  And then I plunge my tongue into his eye. The ball squirts off to the side as my organ drills deeper, the tiny mouths rasping through the thin socket bone into his sweet frontal lobe. After the first wash of cerebral fluid I’m into the creamy white meat of him, and –

  – Oh, God. This is more beautiful than I imagined.

  I’m devouring his will. Devouring his memories. Living him, through and through. His first taste of wine. His first taste of a woman. The first time he stood onstage. He’s at the prime of his life, and oh, it’s been a wonderful life, and I am memorizing every second of it as I swallow down the contents of his lovely skull.

  When he’s empty, I rise from his shell and feel my new wings break free from the cage of my back. As I spread them wide in the elevator, I realize I can hear the old gods whispering to me from their thrones in the dark spaces between the stars.

  I smile at myself in the distorted chrome walls. Everything is clear to me now. I have been chosen. I have a purpose. Through the virus, the old gods tested me, and deemed me worthy of this holiest of duties. There are others like me; I can hear them gathering in the caves outside the city. Some died, yes, like the ragged man, but my Becoming is almost complete. Nothing as simple as a bullet will stop me then.

  The Earth is ripe, human civilization at its peak. I and the other archivists will preserve the memories of the best and brightest as we devour them. We will use the blood of this world to write dark, beautiful poetry across the walls of the universe.

  For the first time in my life, I don’t need faith. I know what I am supposed to do in every atom in every cell of my body. I will record thousands of souls before my masters allow me to join them in the star-shadows, and I will love every moment of my mission.

  I can hear the SWAT team rush into the foyer three stories below. Angry ants. I can hear Betty and the others calling to me from the hollow hills. Smiling, I open the hatch in the top of the elevator and prepare to fly.

  My Brother Tom

  Mariah Southworth

  I don’t really remember when Tom first started to get sick. I do remember when it got worse though. He stopped getting out of bed, and Mother and Father talked about him in furtive whispers. The overly sweet smell of cough syrup invaded the entire house, and for three long days Mother didn’t sleep at all. She just sat at Tom’s bedside while he thrashed around in delirious dreams.

  I tried to stay out of the way, but I remember watching him, his cheeks flushed red in a constant blush, his hair damp with sweat. Father called in every hour from work, and spent all evening on the phone with his brother, the nurse. When he came home, his arms were always full of special foods and candy-colored medicine.

  We couldn’t afford a doctor back then. Mother was out of work, and Father had only the two part-time jobs. There was no extra money, and worse, no medical insurance. Towards the end of Tom’s fever, Mother and Father were seriously considering sliding a little further into debt so that they could have a doctor look at him.

  Then Tom seemed to get better. His fever went away, at least. He was stiff and pale, but he wasn’t mumbling incoherently anymore. On the contrary, I remember him being very quiet. He didn’t speak, and he didn’t eat. He was very weak and had a constant glazed, dreamy expression. At least he was out of bed, though.

  I avoided him. Maybe I was still frightened by the effects of the fever, but it hadn’t scared me before. I just didn’t want to be around him. I did want to be around my parents, for comfort more than anything. That was why I was creeping along the hallway that night when I overheard Father making plans.

  “Look,” Father said. I remember him clearly, standing under the fluorescent light of the kitchen, wearing his robe, slippers, and boxer shorts. Mother was sitting at the table, rubbing at her head like she had a headache. “Look,” he repeated. “He’s still not better, that much is obvious. But he’s well enough to travel now. I want to take him to my brother. Robbie’s been helping us as best he can over the phone, but I really want him to actually take a look at Tom. And the seaside air will be good for him; good for all of us, really.”

  Looking back, I suppose my parents had been desperate for something to do, because once they had found a plan that was within their power, everything happened very quickly. The very next day we all piled into the car, me in my little pink jacket, Tom in his dark blue coat and knitted blue ski cap. Mother had to dress Tom, and I remember her having a difficult time of it. She didn’t complain, and neither did Tom, but you could see how hard it was for her to bend his arms. It was as if she were dressing a large, stiff doll.

  We all got into the car, and I heard Mother say to Father, “I’m worried about him, Hector. He’s so cold now.”

  Father just put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and smiled. “Robbie will know what to do,” he assured her.

  Father started the car and off we went, heading for the coast, where Uncle Robert the Nurse lived. Out of the three healthy members of the family, Mother had been through the most the past week, and she promptly fell asleep. Tom stared listlessly out the back window and I tried to read my chapter books. I was in third grade, and quite proud of my reading skills, but I couldn’t concentrate on Charlie and his adventures in the chocolate factory; not with Tom sitting so close to me.

  There was something so very wrong about him. I kept looking over him, trying to discover what it was that made my skin crawl. He didn’t look like Tom now – he looked like those wax statues in that museum that Father had taken us to the previous Spring. Pale, staring, fake – they had given me nightmares for weeks afterward. Tom looked just like one of them, except for his skin. It wasn’t even skin colored. It was as white as the candles that Mother liked to buy.

  The car heated up quickly, and I pulled off my jacket. Tom didn’t – he just remained where he was, staring out at the rolling farmland that we drove through. I don’t remember seeing him blink once.

  It was stuffy in that car, stuffy and bad-smelling, like the way the fridge smelled when the meat drawer needed to be cleaned. I knew immediately that the smell was coming from Tom.

  Disgust surged through me, and I suddenly wanted to be as far away from Tom as possible.

  “Daddy, Tom stinks,” I called.

  “That’s not a nice thing to say honey,” Father said, not taking his eyes off the road.

  “But he does Daddy!”

  “Quiet, you’ll wake your mother.”

  I kept at it, trying everything I could think of to get him to pull over so I could get out of the car. Finally, after multiple claims that I had to pee, he pulled over in front of an old farm house.

  “Here,” he said. “We can ask to use their bathroom.”

  I was out of my seat-belt as soon as the car stopped, and out onto the gravel drive before the engine had even been turned off.

  “Hold on, hold on,” Father called as he helped Tom out of the car. Mother was still dead asleep. “You forgot your jacket.”

  Father retrieved my jacket and helped me get it on. I could have done it myself, but I let him as soon as I saw Tom walking stiffly away towards the farmhouse. I wanted Tom to get as far away as possible.

  Eventually, Father looked up and saw where Tom was. “Tom!” he yelled. Tom didn’t stop, or turn around. I can still remem
ber that moment – how bright the blue of Tom’s clothes looked against the pale gravel and the dull paint of the farmhouse, the way the little bob on his ski cap bounced with every step. I remember being afraid before anything happened, afraid and guilty that I had wanted Tom to go away.

  Tom collapsed all at once, like a marionette with its strings cut. “Tom!” Father shouted, picking me up and running for the body. His footsteps were loud in the gravel drive, like a giant crunching and grinding bones between his teeth.

  Father got to Tom and set me down at the exact moment the farmhouse door slammed open. Out of the house came a tall, old man, with iron gray hair and a large white mustache. In my memory, he looks exactly like Mark Twain, though I can’t tell you how accurate that is.

  The old man took the whole scene in at once, and came rushing to my father’s side. “Here, let me. I’m a doctor,” he said. “Give him air.”

  Father was making little choking sounds, but moved aside to give the man some room.

  The doctor turned Tom over and checked his neck for a pulse. He frowned, his mustache exaggerating the expression, and peeled back Tom’s upper lip to look at his gums. They were white-candle pale, just like the rest of him. The Doctor looked at Tom’s eyes, then poked and prodded him in various places. He even stuck his finger in Tom’s mouth, though I don’t know why.

  Finally he looked up at Father, his expression grave. “Did you find him here?” he asked.

  Father looked almost as pale as Tom. “What? Yes, he just fell down,” Father said, his voice panicked. “Is he going to be okay?”

  The doctor’s frown turned puzzled. “This boy has been dead for at least a day.”

  That was when Tom spoke.

  He didn’t move anything but his mouth. He just kept lying in the twisted, broken doll position that the doctor had left him in when he’d turned him over.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “So sorry. I was late in taking him.”