Here I will serve up short and spicy dishes crafted to make the blood run cold. I perceive that this will be the heart of the site, as while I’m trying to get my mojo back, I’ll be concentrating on short horror pieces, and that is what this title collects in one chilling space. You’ll find three unnerving tales in each volume. These things can get pretty long, and more than three can get become excessively lengthy. Rather than subject you to that, multiple collections it shall be.
Be aware that while I don’t write erotica, many of my stories contain the violence and foul language often found in real life. You’ve been warned. So, with the disclaimer out of the way, here are the first stories…
Heart on her Sleeve
We first crossed paths at the Greyhound station in San Antonio. It was mid-summer, lousy hot, and she had tossed her duffel bag against an out-of-the-way wall and was reclining against it, maybe trying to catch a nap, maybe not. She was wearing denim shorts and a tank top to combat the heat, but from across the waiting room, all that drew the eye were her arms and legs. Numerous tattoos adorned her extremities, and but for that, her long blonde hair and elegant face would have made her stunning. Assessment complete, I went back to reading my book, a pulp thriller I had picked up off the station rack to while away the time.
The station at San Antonio, like most bus stations of the day, was downtown, but in a rundown section where there were no neighbors to complain about the busloads of lost travelers being dumped into their midst on an hourly basis. As might be expected, these seedier parts of American cities were home to some of the less desirable elements of society, some down on their luck, and others seeking to improve their luck at the expense of others. We’d been waiting about a half-hour when a pair of these latter types swaggered in. Blue jeans, engineer boots, stained T-shirts, one sporting a leather vest with various emblems attached, they looked in the trash can by the entrance, then stopped to survey the crowd — me and the girl — while one of them pulled a girlie magazine from the rack along the far wall, and started flipping through it while the security guard, old enough to be my grandfather, thin and frail, pretended not to notice.
“Hey, Coffin,” the surveyor said, elbowing his literary-minded partner, “look what we got here.”
He lifted his chin toward the girl. Coffin followed his lead, and his eyes locked on her like magnets.
“Maybe you can do better than that magazine tonight, huh?”
Coffin tossed it to the floor, and they both headed over toward her. Trouble was imminent, and if she was going to receive any help, it would have to come from me or the geriatric security guard. I didn’t like her chances.
“Hey, sweetie,” Coffin said, “looks like this is your lucky night. You won’t have to be lonely after all.”
“That’s right,” his partner added. “We got a flop right down the street. You just come along with us, and we’ll show you the hospitality of old San Antone. Right Coffin?”
Coffin let out a weirdly feminine giggle.
“That’s right,” he said. “We got enough hospitality to go all night!”
I saw her head move almost imperceptibly as she looked them over in turn before she spoke.
“Fuck off.”
“You hear that?” Coffin said. “Fuck off! That’s not very neighborly.”
“That’s for sure,” Partner said, reaching down to grab her upper arm and haul her to her feet. She pulled back against him, but he just laughed, stood her up, and gave her a good shaking.
The security guard was at this point engaged in an animated conversation with the desk clerk, who was also remaining pointedly unaware of what was transpiring. It was going to be on me, then. Look, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m some kind of urban warrior. I had recently received my brown belt in Shoto-kan karate, but these two had a lifetime of experience surviving on the street, and were almost certainly armed. I would be facing knives for sure, and maybe a gun, but this girl was a fawn surrounded by wolves, and if I didn’t do something quickly, she would pay a heavy price. I just hoped I wouldn’t get us both killed.
I stood up and came up quietly behind Coffin, trying to decide how best to defuse the situation. I decided on confusion.
“Everything all right, honey?” I asked the girl.
She gave me a blank look which went unnoticed because Coffin and Partner both turned to look at me.
Coffin looked me up and down, taking in my conservative clothes, my Oxfords, my neat haircut, and sneered.
“What are you, the boyfriend?” he said, moving forward to crowd me. “I don’t think a girl like this would give the time of day to a piss-ant like you. What do you think, Mark?”
Mark never had a chance to answer, because with both of them focused on me, the girl shoved Mark’s arm, and when he turned to face her, she buried her wooden-soled platform shoe in his crotch clear up to the ankle. He went down, baying like a beagle in full chase.
Coffin spun away from me, taking in the howling Mark, and reached high to grab, I presume, her hair, but she ducked under his outstretched arm and drove her stiffened fingers, led by four sharp nails, into his throat. He had started to call her something, but it ended suddenly at the impact, and what came out was, “You bi—urk!“
As he stumbled back into me, she leaned back and stomp-kicked his knee, and down he went as well. She was on him like a cat, a three-inch blade that had appeared from nowhere at his throat, daring him to move. Now, with the danger seemingly passed, the security guard hustled over, very officious, demanding to know what was disturbing the peace of “his” bus station.
“Nothin’ we couldn’t handle,” the girl replied, including me along with her; I liked that. “If you’d like to call the cops, I’ve got a bus to catch.”
“Not so fast, little missy. You and your boyfriend here will have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Is that so? Well, I have a bus to catch that’s leaving here in a few minutes, and if you cause me to miss it, I’m going to file a detailed report with your employer about how you sat on a stool and pretended not to notice when these two thugs were about to drag me off for a rape party.”
“You can’t prove anything.”
“No? I’ll bet this won’t be your first complaint, and I’ll bet your pal at the desk wouldn’t mind having a real guard in here at night instead of somebody’s grandpa.”
“Why, you snot-nosed little brat, I oughta—”
“What you oughta do is cuff these two and call the police instead of harassing their victim,” I cut him off, surprised to hear my own voice. “Let me assure you that if she has to write that report, hers won’t be the only signature at the bottom.”
He looked back and forth between us, then, shaking his head, he cuffed Billy-Bob and Bubba together, right wrist to right wrist, and turned to the desk.
“Call the police,” he said, “and tell ’em to drop the donuts and get over here.”
“Already done that,” the clerk replied. “They’re on the way.”
The girl gave me a nod, and returned to her duffle bag, as calm as if nothing had ever happened. I went back to my chair, shaking with the effects of unspent adrenaline, and laid my closed book on my lap; I wouldn’t be in the mood for reading for a while. The police hadn’t arrived a few minutes later when the PA system came on with its announcement.
“Bus for El Paso, Tucson, Phoenix, and points west now boarding at gate six. All aboard, please.”
I picked up my suitcase and crossed the lobby to door marked 6, arriving just as the driver finished checking the girl’s ticket, and she headed out into the lot. He took mine, gave it a cursory glance, and punched a hole in the second box along the bottom.
“Have a comfortable trip, sir,” he said, waving his arm to indicate one of the five busses parked in the lot where, to my surprise, the girl stood at the door waiting for me.
“I’m Laurie. Laurie Bracken,” she said, extending her hand for a shake. “I thought if you felt like it, we might ride together for a while.”
“I’d like that,” I said, taking her hand to find an unsurprisingly firm grasp, given what had just happened. “I’m Ben McCoy. After you.”
* * *
She chose us seats midway back along the passenger side, and the police car arriving to deal with Coffin and Mark pulled into the lot as we were pulling out. We drove through a seedy, rundown area, with lots of vacant shops and broken down cars, everything coated in a layer of dust that made everything absorb the headlights instead of reflecting them. The whole area was depressing to look at, but soon we were climbing the ramp onto Interstate 10 headed northwest, and the scenery became a parade of headlights going the other way.
“I sort of had you pegged for a back-of-the-bus girl,” I said, offering an innocuous invitation to talk.
“I used to be,” she replied, a hint of a smile in her voice. “You don’t ride these things long before you realize that if you sit over a wheel, you feel every pebble in the road. Sit between them, let the suspension do its work. How about you, my shining knight? Do you try to rescue every damsel in distress you see?”
“Well, if I’d known how little distress you were actually in, I might have kept my nose out of it.”
“I glad you didn’t,” she said. “I knew there was going to be a dust-up, but you gave me the distraction I needed to surprise those two apes.”
She reclined her seat to the first notch, slipped off her shoes, and pulled her bare feet up into the seat.
“Anyway,” she said, “If you hadn’t, we’d just be two lonely people facing a long trip on the same bus. This is much better, don’t you think?”
“Indeed I do. So, are you going all the way to Los Angeles?”
“No. I’ll change buses in Phoenix. I have a date in Vegas.”
“A date? That’s a hell of a trip to take for a date. This must be some guy you’re meeting.”
“Yeah, he’s special. He doesn’t know I’m coming. I’m going to surprise him.”
“Lucky guy. I bet he’ll enjoy that.”
“I know I will.”
She excused herself to use the on-board rest room — “I would have done this at the station, but I got a little busy.” — and when she returned, she shooed me over to the window seat and sat down on the aisle.
“So, it’s a good thirteen hours to Phoenix,” she said. “What are we going to talk about?”
We wound up talking about everything as we rolled toward dawn. My trip to L.A. to interview for a job wasn’t exceptionally interesting, but I told her of my childhood in Austin, and my schooling. Mostly, we talked about her. She seemed almost eager to share her story. She was traveling, seeing the country up close. She’d stop in a town, get a job waiting tables or running a flower stand — “The more skin you show, the more flowers you sell.” — or sometimes she’d just panhandle, and the same rule seemed to apply.
Her tattoos were the journal of her journey. Everywhere she had a meaningful experience, everywhere she met someone who made an impression on her, she got a tattoo to commemorate it. I recognized the top of the Gateway Arch peeking out above the back of her tank top, and the Statue of Liberty rode on the outside of her right thigh. There were flowers and animals, and various structures that I didn’t recognize. On the inside of her left forearm was a simple red heart that seemed out of place with the wild array of the others.
“That’s for mom,” she said. “She died in an accident when I was eight. Dad and I never saw eye-to-eye, and I was passed around between relatives until I was fifteen. That was when I ran away the first time. I don’t know why they kept bringing me back. None of them ever wanted me when I was there. Anyway, the heart was my first tattoo. The rest of them just sort of grew up around it.”
That thirteen hours passed faster than any night I can remember, and the morning was well underway when we pulled into Phoenix. It was a 45-minute rest stop, so we went to the coffee shop and I treated her to breakfast. As the time neared for me to board the iron coach to the coast, she stepped up and gave me peck on the cheek and wrapped me in hug that belied her small stature.
“Look,” she said, stepping back and looking down at her shoes, “you’ve been great company, and I hate to ask you, but you meant to help me back in San Antonio, so maybe you can. Do you think you could spare a twenty? I’ve only got a dollar left.”
“Sure, I can do that. Your company on that long ride was worth more than that.”
I opened my wallet to see a single twenty in the bill pocket, started to take it out, then put it away. Fishing in my watch pocket, I pulled out a tightly folded fifty, unfolded it, and handed it to her.
“Twenty bucks won’t take you far these days. This here’s my holdout money. Spend it wisely.”
“You’re a saint,” she said, pocketing the bill. “I hope everything works out for you.”
“And you,” I said. “Take care of yourself.”
We exchanged another long hug, and I had to board my bus for a boring six-hour trip to the coast. I caught a nap on the way, and dreamed of Laurie Bracken. I wondered if she’d get a tattoo to commemorate me.
* * *
Twelve years had passed since that bus ride, and rather unsurprisingly, I had never heard of Laurie Bracken again. I hadn’t gotten the job in L.A. The boss’s son-in-law had lost his own job unexpectedly, and rather than put his daughter through a series of hardships, he gave the man the job that I had been headhunted for. The interviewer genuinely felt bad for bringing me halfway across the country for nothing, and wrote me a check for the cost of my trip; at least he had integrity.
Disillusioned with corporate ethics, I had gone home to Austin and set to work in my father’s hardware store. I soon rose to floor manager, and it wasn’t long before he made me co-owner, so I was never hurting financially. I think he always wanted his shingle to read “McCoy & Son,” but he never pressured me about it.
I married my childhood sweetheart, Jeanne Kidd, and we gave him a grandson two years later. He went into semi-retirement, and enjoyed seven years of bonding with young Justin before we lost him to Covid in the epidemic of twenty-twenty. Jeanne had long had a dream of owning a restaurant, a casual place where you could come as you are, and enjoy good, simple, American and Southwest fare without breaking the bank. I had long had a dream of making her as happy as was humanly possible, and when Dad died, I sold the store and bought a place in San Antonio. I was more worried than I let on, given that restaurants fail more often than any other business, but Jeanne had read reams and taken on-line courses, and when we opened The Real McCoy, I was pleasantly surprised to learn just how much she knew about running a restaurant.
I hadn’t thought much about Laurie in the past few years, and why would I? An attractive girl I had once shared a bus ride with a dozen years ago doesn’t count for much against twelve years in a happy marriage. I’ll admit, I thought of her occasionally, but when I did, I couldn’t remember her face, just the artwork adorning her arms and legs. So, when she sat down at our counter on that hot summer afternoon, I knew her at once by the heart on her sleeve tattoo.
“Laurie?” I greeted her. “Is it really you?”
“It really is. You’re looking good, Ben. Is this your place?”
“Yes, it is. You’re looking good yourself. What brings you to San Antonio?”
“Funny you should ask. Is there someplace a bit more private we can talk?”
It was that slack time between lunch and dinner, and I directed her to a booth in the back. She stopped before taking a seat, and pointed to a flower tattooed on the outside of her left calf.
“That’s a sweet pea,” she said, sliding into the seat. “I got it to remember you.”
“Aw, that’s sweet. But you didn’t come all the way to Texas to show me that.”
“No, I came to pay a debt, and unburden my soul a little, if you’d care to indulge me.”
“A debt?”
She opened her purse and took out a stack of bills held together with a rubber band.
“You handed me fifty dollars when I was down and out,” she said, laying it on the table, “and you must have known that you’d never see me again. Ten percent interest on fifty dollars, compounded monthly for twelve years, comes to $331.00. I’m keeping the dollar for travel expenses.”
“I don’t need this.”
“It isn’t about what you need. I’ve crisscrossed this country for a decade and a half, and I can count on my fingers everyone who was nice to me without wanting something in return. It’s about what I need.”
“All right,” I said, picking up the money and tucking it into the pocket of my work apron. “So, is your soul unburdened now?”
“No, that’s another issue entirely. Can I tell you a secret?”
“I guess, sure.”
“I’m serious, you can’t tell a soul.”
“I feel like I’m going to regret this, but, all right.”
“All right.” Her voice dropped in volume and she leaned across the table toward me. “Ben, when you met me, I wasn’t just traveling randomly. I told you my mother died when I was eight, but she didn’t just die. Three men came to our house that night. My mother must have known what was going to happen, because she swept me out the kitchen door and told me to hide when the knock came. I watched through the window as they slapped her around before they told her, ‘Derrick sends his regards,’ and shot her eight times.”
“My God, that’s horrible!”
“That isn’t the half of it. Derrick was my father.”
“Jesus!”
“Keep your voice down,” she cautioned, looking around. “Well, what I told you was true. I ran away several times, I learned some street skills, and when I was eighteen, I paid my father a visit. I sucker-punched him with a fireplace poker and broke his kneecap. I tortured him until he gave up the names of the men he’d sent, then I cut his throat.”
My face must have given away my horror, as she looked concerned for a moment, then continued.
“It’s all right, he deserved it. I found those names in his address book, and visited each of them. They won’t be killing any more helpless women. Then I decided, they have families, and they took mine away. An eye for an eye, like the Bible says, so I hunted them all down and did to them what their fathers and brothers and husbands had done to mine.”
This was unbelievable in the extreme. And I had befriended this woman when she was in the midst of her killing spree! I knew if I lifted my hands from the table, they’d be shaking like a man with palsy.
“Are you okay? You look a little pale.”
“How many?” I finally managed to get out.
“Twenty, twenty-five. I stopped counting early on. They’re all recorded in my ink. So, Ben, I need to ask you something.”
“What?”
My mind was numb, trying to comprehend what this woman who I had once had a little crush on was telling me.
“Is there any chance you could use another waitress?”
+ + + + + + + + + +
The Coder’s Muse
He stood slouched over, reeling from the kick in the face he had just received, and the girl in the lime bikini took a running step toward him, built up her momentum with a cartwheel, bounced high into the air, evading his defensive roundhouse swing, and landed on his shoulders. Locking her ankles, she threw herself backward, pulling him down with her, and began to squeeze his neck between her powerful legs.
Vern struggled to escape, rotating his left stick as fast as his thumb would go, but the girl on the couch next to him had her thumb tapping her blue button like a woodpecker after a grub, and the shapely legs of the girl on the widescreen TV in front of them tightened inexorably as Vern’s lifeline crept toward zero. His struggles were hopeless, and eventually the stamina bar blacked out and “Submission!” flashed repeatedly on the screen as his opponent jumped up and danced around the ring, playing to the cheering crowd as she paused over his beaten body to flex and showboat.
“That’s great fan service,” the girl, Lindsay, said as the game returned to the match-up screen. “Teenage boys are gonna love her!”
“Yeah, but something’s wrong,” Vern replied. “If I was a heel, I would have punched you in the ribs so hard, you wouldn’t have been able to breathe.”
“What if I controlled your arms by putting my weight on your wrists?”
“Useless, at least if we’re going to maintain any hint of realism. Steven Steel is a body builder who outweighs the Blonde Tornado by at least a hundred pounds. There’s no way she could control his arms, not if she wants to maintain her scissors.”
“They shouldn’t be fighting in the first place, but yeah, I see your point.”
Lindsay flipped her long blonde hair back from her face, and studied him with her ice-blue eyes. Vern had some fan service of his own playing in his head, but he’d given up the idea of acting on it years ago; girls like Lindsay saw him as a non-entity, all but invisible against the background of their exciting lives. The miracle was she was sitting here on his couch at all.
“You know,” she said after a long pause, “you could program in some heel moves. Eye gouges, hair pulls, that sort of thing, that the player could choose to use as an option.”
“You mean, just start cheating? What happens to the pure wrestling aspect then?”
“No, no, as part of his character selection, the player would decide whether he wanted to be a heel, and if he did, a few extra moves would be added to his set. They could vary by character, or character type.”
“Why would anyone not play as a heel, then?”
“Hmmm.” She laid back against the arm of the couch, eyes closed in thought.
The fan service fantasy accelerated.
“I know!” she exclaimed, sitting up suddenly, face animated. “If you do a heel move in the referee’s line of sight, you’re instantly disqualified. The player would not only have to watch the opponent, but the referee, too. You’d have some advantageous moves, but they’d be balanced by the risk of getting caught using them.”
“I like it,” Vern said, seeing a whole new field of possibilities opening up before him. “Yeah, I like it. I can code a couple to try out, along with the referee’s responses by tomorrow if I don’t hit any snags.”
“You want to start that now?”
“Don’t see why not. The sooner we can get this in front of Raul, the better.”
“Okay. I’ll come by tomorrow and we can run some test matches. About ten?”
“Make it noon. I’ll probably be up until the wee hours.”
“Noon it is. I’ll bring Jack’s. What would you like?”
“A chicken sandwich, two tacos, and a cola.”
He reached for his wallet.
“I got it,” she said, standing up. “You can get the hundred-dollar dinner when we celebrate.”
* * *
He had met her, what, three weeks ago, a month? Time had flown since he’d bumped into Lindsay. Literally bumped into her. He had nipped into Albert’s, a little mom-and-pop bakery/deli that did a thriving business in defiance of the big box down the street. He had just bought a small club and a cola, backed away from the counter, still exchanging pleasantries with the clerk, and backed right into her. She held a sticky bun in one hand and a coffee with no top in the other, and in his carelessness, he knocked them both to the floor.
“I’m so sorry—” he began, spinning around, but his tongue mutinied as he came face-to-face with a vision of loveliness. An inch taller than him in her platform shoes, she wore a crestfallen look as she regarded her lost snack splattered on the dusty linoleum. Those pale blue eyes came up to regard him, not pleasantly, from a swirl of fine golden hair.
“I- I’m so sorry. Let me replace that. Anything you want, just pick it out and I’ve got it.”
“That’s fair,” she said, and turned toward the pastry bin. She certainly wasn’t happy, but at least she wasn’t attacking him. He waited by the counter while she picked out another bun and doctored her coffee. He offered to clean up the mess, but the counter man said that wasn’t necessary, that these things happen.
The girl returned with the same things she had had before.
“That will be seven eighty-two,” the clerk said as he rang up the order.
Vern paid for her order, then went out onto the sidewalk patio and found a small table. To his surprise, and not a little dismay, she followed him. Dismay, because he knew what girls like this thought of computer nerds, and weren’t generally shy about expressing.
“May I join you?” she asked.
He almost declined, wanting nothing to do with the tirade he was sure was coming, but he figured he owed her.
“Please.”
She pulled the chair opposite him and took a seat while he kicked himself for not getting up and holding it for her. She didn’t seem to mind, though.
“Lindsay,” she said, offering her hand. He took her fingertips and they exchanged a barely-in-contact handshake.
“Vernon,” he said. “Vern Barber. I’m really sorry about that in there. I don’t know what—”
“Forget it,” she said. “Accidents happen. Do you come here often?”
“Not really. It’s a little steep for my blood.”
“Mine, too,” she said. “It must have been kismet.”
What the hell was this? The only thing girls like this ever said to him was some variation of, “Out of my way, dweeb!”
“Maybe. Do you come here a lot? Oh, no, of course you don’t. I’m sorry, my mind’s on something else.”
“You need to stop spending so much time being sorry. What is it that has you so distracted?”
Her eyes were laughing now as her lips caressed her pastry. They didn’t seem to be laughing at him, though. He was on unfamiliar ground here.
“A new game we’re working on, that is, my studio.”
“Really. I love games. What’s it about?”
“Well,” he said with a blush, looking down at the table, “professional wrestling, I’m afraid.”
“A fighting game, then? I especially love those.”
“You do? Well, if you like, you could come back to my place and try out the alpha version. I’ve been tweaking it, and an extra opinion could really be a help.”
Whose mouth was this, and what was it getting him into?
* * *
But she accepted, came to his apartment, and played his alpha copy. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and began to make suggestions for improvement. Some were about the look, some about the on-screen movements of the wrestlers. All were good, and all were incorporated. But the best of all was her idea for the D-pad. Instead of using it to slide toward and away from the opponent, she suggested that it be a switch, and depending on what position it was held in, one of the directions or neutral, it would open a new set of moves for the wrestler. This blew the game wide open, and within a week of programming it, the game was recognized by the coworkers he showed it to as a future legend of the genre.
They met almost every day, playing and tweaking the game, going out for meals together, watching an occasional movie on his big-screen TV, and by all appearances becoming good friends. No sort of romantic involvement ever came up, not that Vern dared to raise it. He was on cloud nine just being around her, and wasn’t about to risk anything that might pop the relationship that he was certain was as fragile as a soap bubble.
Eventually the day came when they had pushed the envelope as far as far as it would stretch. Vern called Raul to set up the demo. Everything would hinge on whether Raul liked it, but Vern was confident. There had never been a wrestling game like this, not independents, not those licensed by the big productions. Raul wasn’t stupid. He knew a moneymaker when he saw one, and Hard Core ‘Rasslin’ would render every other fighting game obsolete at a stroke.
Vern invited Lindsay to come along.
She resisted; Vern had done the work. It was his project.
“I’d like you to be there. So many ideas were yours, I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“I don’t know…”
“For luck,” he coaxed. “Besides, there might be a little surprise in it for you.”
She relented.
* * *
“Big Fat Games,” Lindsay read on the door. “I didn’t realize this was a local studio. I just loved Dragon Slaughter.”
“I wrote the castle sewers subroutine for that. And when you live in L.A., everything’s a local studio,” Vern said with a certain amount of pride.
He led her into the waiting room where the receptionist greeted them with a smile.
“Vern!” she said. “We were beginning to think something bad had happened to you.”
She gave Lindsay a cursory once-over.
“I see it wasn’t bad at all!”
“At ease, Samantha,” Vern cautioned her. “We have an appointment with Raul.”
“Oh, well Orlando’s in there showing him some drawings. He shouldn’t be much longer. Just have a seat.”
They did, and Lindsay’s eyes darted around the walls, taking in the posters of past successful games, and lighting on a display of key personnel in raised metal letters behind Samantha’s desk. Third under Coders was Vernon Barber, but the name of the president seemed to amuse her.
“Raul Smith?” she asked quietly.
“His mother’s Mexican. She named him.”
“Okay.”
A kid in a skater shirt, jeans, and sneakers came out of Smith’s office embracing multiple rolls of art paper.
“Oh, hey, Vern,” the kid said. “The boss says to send you in if you’re out here. Who’s your date?”
“Just a friend.”
“That’s too bad!”
“Oh, can it! I’m sorry,” he added to Lindsay.
“Relax. It’s not the first time.”
They entered Raul Smith’s office. Other than the much larger desk littered with every sort of form, letter, and piece of stray artwork imaginable, it wasn’t that much different from the reception office. Vern remembered to hold her chair this time, and they took seats in front of the big boss’s desk as Smith studied her over an unlit cigar.
“Good to see you at last,” Smith said by way of greeting. “What’s this, you find yourself a girlfriend while you were out loafing?”
“Just a friend, boss. This is Lindsay.”
“Hi,” Smith grunted with a nod. “Friend, girlfriend, whatever. You come to work, or give a tour?”
“To work, of course. I’ve got the beta ready for testing, and you’re gonna be amazed. There’s never been a fighting game like this.”
“What’s she here for, then, to spy for Sony?”
“Not at all. She’s a gamer. She especially liked Dragon Slaughter. There are a lot of innovations in this new game that were her ideas.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know, Barber, a team of developers put a shit-ton of man-hours into creating this game. I hope you haven’t screwed it up too bad.”
“I know that, sir, but this is going to be the next Halo, the next Mortal Combat. It’s going to change the industry forever. Would you like to take a look at it?”
“That’s what we’re here for. Hook it up to my big-screen, but I warn you, Barber, after that buildup, I’d better be blown out of my socks!”
“Prepare to be barefoot, sir.”
* * *
The demonstration was wildly successful. Lindsay and Vern played some sample rounds, and Smith was as impressed as Vern had ever seen him. He quizzed Lindsay about her suggestions, and the thought processes behind them. He brought in the development team, and while there was some professional reserve about their work being changed, they couldn’t pretend they weren’t happy about the dump trucks full of money that would soon be backing up to their door. It was coming up on quitting time when the meetings broke up and the well-satisfied employees prepared to head home. Vern hung back with Lindsay.
“Raul, now that you’ve seen what we have, I have a request.”
“Sure, what is it?”
The boss was pleased, and there was no time like the present.
“I’d like to give Lindsay here a little something for her work on the project.”
“Work? You’re the coder. She played some games with you. What do you want, a credit?”
“Well, sir, given the projections that financial suggested, I don’t think ten thousand would be out of line.”
“Ten thousand? What, dollars?”
“Sir, the money people said a hundred million the first week. Ten thousand is pocket change, and this wouldn’t be half the game it is if she hadn’t been playing it right along with me, and making all those suggestions.”
“You’re sure about this? She really contributed that much?”
“Raul, the D-pad switch alone would have made this a world beater. Couple that with the heel moves, the leave-the-ring option, the cheating behind the ref’s back, why, she’s a huge part of this.”
“Well, all you say is true, and if she was responsible for those innovations, maybe what you ask is fair.”
He opened his desk drawer and examined four check books. Selecting one, he began filling out the check, beginning with the date and $10,000.
“We’ll pay her from the consulting account. Lindsay?” he asked. “L-I-N-D-S-A-Y?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s her last name?” he asked, looking squarely at Vern.
“Well, uh, I don’t…”
“You don’t know your girlfriend’s last name? Oh, that’s rich! What’s your name, miss?”
“Lindsay Walston, W-A-L-S-T-O-N.”
“Walston,” he repeated slowly as he wrote it in. He signed it, tore it out, and passed it over to her. She accepted it with trembling hands, then leaned over and kissed Vern on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to seem like a gold-digger, but if I leave now, I think I can get to my bank to deposit this.”
“Go ahead,” Raul said. “We have some business stuff to tie up anyway.”
“Thank you, Mr. Smith.” She rose and kissed Vern’s cheek again. “See you tonight, honey. Maybe we can celebrate.”
Honey? Things had just taken a most unexpected turn!
“What the hell is this?” Smith demanded the second the door closed behind her. “You’re letting this girl make changes to our upcoming project and you don’t even know her last name?”
“I didn’t even realize it, sir. It just never came up.”
“Well, what do you know about her? Maybe she is a spy for Sony. Or the red Chinese. Maybe she’s a serial killer. What do you know about her, anything?”
Vern searched his memory to find that he really knew very little. She was friendly, she was nice, and she seemed to genuinely like him; that alone had been suspicious to him at first, but her friendship came to be like a drug to him. Anyway, friends don’t grill each other about their backgrounds. What he knew had been enough. Now, it seemed, it wasn’t.
“She’s nice, Raul. She’s smart, she knows games, and she didn’t take her knowledge to Sony, she gave it to us of her own free will.”
“Free will? I just handed her ten thousand dollars! That doesn’t sound free to me.”
“She didn’t know I was going to ask for that. I brought her here to help me demonstrate the game. She didn’t even want to come.”
“Vern, it’s a good thing you’re a hell of a coder, because you’re also one hell of an idiot. What you say is true, we’ll recoup that ten Gs in the first minute of sales, but the next time you want to bring in a freelance to work on a game with you, you bring them here first, and if I like them, I’ll put them on the payroll, is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It had better be. You’d be hard to replace, but one monkey don’t stop no show.”
* * *
After the hiding he had received from Raul, Vern was more than ready to spend the evening with Lindsay, but she didn’t show up that evening. He called the number she had given him, but it rang, and rang, and rang. He gave up after six calls. He didn’t see her the next day, either, nor the next. In fact, it was the morning of the fourth day before he saw her again.
He had stayed up late playing his ultra-modded version of Skyrim until his eyelids were heavy. He turned off the game, began to catch a second wind, and watched some videos on YouTube until he was almost asleep in front of the computer. Then he had taken a long drink of milk from the carton and stumbled off to bed. Within minutes he had fallen into a deep sleep.
It was no surprise, then, that he hadn’t stirred until a familiar voice began to call his name.
“Vernon.”
It barely registered at first.
“Verrrrr-non.”
He began to drift up toward the soft, gentle lilt of her voice, fabulous dreams mixing with reality until she grabbed his hair and snatched his head back.
“Vernon! That’s better. Are you awake now?”
She was dressed in form-fitting black material and sitting on the edge of his bed.
“Yeah, I’m awake. What time is it?”
He tried to sit up, but his arms wouldn’t move from behind his back, and he felt the bite of steel at his wrists. Handcuffs.
“It’s one-forty in the morning, and we have a little problem, Vern.”
“What problem?”
“It seems that your Mr. Smith’s check bounced.”
“What? That’s impossible.”
“It’s not only possible, it’s a fact. So we’re going to go pay him a little visit, you and I.”
“At two in the morning? I’m pretty sure Raul wouldn’t like that.”
“That doesn’t concern me. Where does he live?”
“I can’t tell you that. I’d lose my job. We’ll go see him in the morning. I’m sure it’s just a mistake.”
“Oh, it’s a mistake, all right. The bank told me that that account was closed over a year ago. It was his mistake, and a bad one.”
“Well, if he passed a bad check, go to the police.”
“Are the police going to cash his check for me, Vern, hmmm? Anyway, if the police got their hands on me, they’d forget all about any silly little check. No, I’m afraid I need to handle this myself. Where does he live, Vern?”
“I can’t. I can’t tell you that. I need this job, especially now with the new game about to release.”
“That’s too bad,” she said, lifting a small satchel onto the bed. “I was really starting to like you.”
She opened the satchel and took out a rod-like appliance with a cord running from the handle, leaned down beside his nightstand and plugged it in.
“What is that?” he asked, panic beginning to grow on his face.
“Soldering iron. The brochure says it will reach five hundred degrees. How badly do you need your eyes, Vern?”
He could already smell the metal of the iron heating up. Taking a firm grasp on his fear, he pulled in a deep breath.
“HELP!” he screamed. “HEL—glug, argh.”
When he opened his mouth for the second scream, she had popped a wadded-up cloth in his mouth. Freed from her hand, it had quickly expanded, filling his mouth, and before he could try to push it out, she looped a slip-knotted stocking around his head and cinched it up to hold the gag in place.
“Now, now, can’t have you waking all the nice people sleeping in this building, can we?”
Wide, terrified eyes watched her as she lifted the iron and spat on the tip. Her spittle hissed explosively into steam.
“If you decide you want to tell me anything, you just shake your head up and down. Now, then, Vern, where does Mr. Smith live?”
+ + + + + + + + + +
Testament
“Good afternoon, detective,” the uniformed deputy greeted her at the door of the old Victorian manse. “My name’s Joshua Corey. You made good time.”
“Lieutenant Joann Walker,” she replied. “I was already up in Pine Valley on another matter. “What do you have here?”
The uniform led her into the foyer of the elegant old home on the bluff overlooking Sagebrush Canyon.
“Four kids with the San Diego State journalism department applied for and got permission to spend the night in the house to do an investigative piece on the alleged haunting. Great urban myths of our time, or some such.”
“Right. The house is supposed to be haunted by a vindictive ghost, is it?”
“That’s right. The ghost of Felix Setliff, a nineteenth century murderer, is said to walk the corridors in search of more victims. That little quirk has gotten Setliff Manor protection as a State Historical Site. Well, that and being one of the first Victorian mansions in California south of San Francisco. It’s the haunting that brings in the tourists, though.”
“Josh,” a man interrupted, another uniform with sergeant’s stripes, entering from a side hallway, “I thought I heard someone. Are you the detective?”
“That’s right,” she said, showing her badge and ID card to him. “Lieutenant Joann Walker from the Alpine substation.”
“Sergeant Michael Allen from Boulevard.”
“Pleased to meet you, Sergeant,” she said, taking his handshake. “Your deputy was just filling me in on the scene.”
“I wish he’d fill me in. This is the strangest damned case I’ve ever seen. I’m glad I don’t have to solve it. Just securing the scene was freaky enough.”
He gestured toward the main living room just beyond the foyer and walked at her side as they entered.
“Four college students got permission to spend the night in here. They were doing a series about the region’s haunted houses. Well, the park ranger locked them in at dusk and left for the night. When he returned to let them out this morning, he found the scene just as it is now, all four kids dead, bodies mutilated, and no sign of any intruder from outside.”
“There must be dozens of ways into an old house like this,” she said. “How can he be sure there was no intrusion?”
“That’s true, there may well be. But as a State Historic Building, it’s been modernized with an eye to security. The Park Service doesn’t want people lurking around their sites when they’re closed, and a site like this attracts an odd element anyway. Add to that its remote location, and, well…”
“Yes, that’s quite understandable. And that would be why the ranger locked them in?”
“That’s right. To protect them and the site.”
“Guess that didn’t work so well. So, where are the bodies?”
“I’m not sure you’d call them bodies in the strictest sense of the term,” the deputy said.
“Never mind, Josh,” the Sergeant said. “She’ll see them soon enough. This way.”
He led them into an elegant dining hall, a long curving staircase to the next floor at the far end. This being a fully restored house, everything gleamed as if it were a set from Downton Abbey. It was breathtaking.
“Who were the students?” she asked as she stood taking it all in.
Deputy Corey took out his notepad.
“They were Bertha Nichols and Robert Lovato, both seniors, Marie Schmidt, a junior, and Theron Loera, sophomore, an exchange student from Greece. All were journalism majors, and I gather this was part of the thesis for the two seniors.”
“Any of them linked romantically?”
“We don’t have that information yet,” the Sergeant replied. “We didn’t want to step on any toes.”
“Meaning mine?”
“Well, we knew a detective was on the way, so we just looked and cataloged. The only person we’ve interviewed is the Park Ranger, Robert Johnson. Gave him a hell of a turn, I can tell you.”
“You don’t think he’s a suspect, then?”
“He lost his breakfast at the first body, so probably not.”
“All right. Let’s get to work.”
“Right. Hope you’ve got a strong stomach.”
Sergeant Allen led them to the far end, and up the stairs. At the first landing, he stopped them at a pile of red goo that had seeped into the carpet and spattered the walls.
“We don’t know who this is,” he told them. “From the length of the hair on the remaining scalp and the style of clothing, we think it’s one of the women. Maybe forensics can tell us something when they get here.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Walker breathed reverently. “What the hell did this?”
“That’s what I meant when I said I’m glad I don’t have to figure this out,” Allen said. “I’d look for something from hell if I were you.”
“That’s a luxury I don’t have,” she said, following him up to the main hallway where another pile of guts and gore lay against the wall. “What’d you make of this one?”
“Male, we think. Jeans and a tee, so non gender-specific clothing.”
“The ranger who let them in last night couldn’t identify who was wearing what?”
“He wasn’t paying any attention. Wasn’t thinking about being part of a murder investigation the next morning.”
“Pity, that. But this was the second victim?”
“Second one we found. We don’t know the order they were killed in. The third one’s in that bedroom in and around a wardrobe, but the last one we found was spread over half the attic. It looks like he tried to hide in a trunk, but the killer found him, ripped the top off, and tore him to pieces like the rest of them. Him or her. The interesting thing there is that there’s a cassette recorder in the trunk, and we have hopes that the victim left some clues on it.”
“You haven’t listened to it?”
“I told you, we just looked. We haven’t touched a thing.”
“Too bad more uniforms don’t have your discipline.”
“You’ve seen this place. It wasn’t hard to keep our hands off of everything. You want to go up now?”
“Sure do. I’ll take a few photos, and we’ll listen to that tape. Curious?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
*
“My name is Marie Schmidt.” The voice was a whisper, trembling in terror. “I’m trapped in this house, an old house that is very much haunted. We thought there might be some bumps, or an unexplained draft, or something. But no, it’s gray and fast, and your eye can’t focus on it. It got Theron first. He was at the end of the hall looking for a place to set up his sensors, and I was at the other end holding a reflector for him. Suddenly he rose up into the air and screamed. It was horrible. I’ve never heard a scream like it. Then a shape materialized under him, a gray blob, shimmering like a mirage, and blood flew. He just came apart, pieces of him dropping like, like, like ripping shucks off an ear of corn and letting them drop where they might. I was too terrified to scream, or I’m sure it would have gotten me, too. It finished with Theron and turned to go down the stairs. I went the other way. I’m still almost too afraid to breathe. I’ve taken a poker from a fireplace, not that I think it will do much to whatever that thing is, but it makes me feel like I can put up a fight at least.”
There was a click and a short amount of tape ran off, then the voice started again.
“It’s been an hour or two, I don’t know. I’ve worked my way around the perimeter of the house looking for a way out, but there isn’t one. Every window, every door is barred or locked, or both. I haven’t tried to force one yet, as I dare not make the noise it would cause, but I might yet if it gets to that point. Robert and Bertha are looking for weapons, but I’ve seen this thing. No weapon I’ve ever seen could stop it. I’ve been creeping around like a burglar, as I’m terrified of attracting this thing’s attention, but even as I searched, I could feel the thing watching me. Or maybe it was the house itself. I’ve thought I’d had ghostly experiences before, but they were nothing like this.”
There was suddenly a long, drawn-out scream in the distance that turned to short, fast shrieks of pain and anguish, then faded away. The tape suddenly stopped recording. When the voice came back, the screaming was over.
“It got Bertha. It must have. Robert could never have made a sound like that. I have to find him. We can’t get out. Maybe both of us together will have a chance.”
She forgot to turn off the recorder this time, or perhaps her sweaty finger missed the Stop button. Whatever the reason, they were treated to nearly five minutes of the young woman’s ragged breathing, the occasional creaks of ancient floorboards that made her gasp and freeze, and one creaking door opening, a sound that engendered a muffled thump as she obviously pressed herself against a wall. Then came a drawn-out moan in the distance that could never have been made by a human throat.
“That wasn’t Robert,” she whispered, half declaration and half prayer, “it couldn’t have been. Robert’s smart, he knows a lot of tricks, he’ll get out of this. He has to! I’m going to find a hiding place. If it can’t find me, it can’t hurt me.”
The recorder clicked off again.
“Smart girl,” the deputy observed.
“In principle,” Walker said. “Didn’t help her much in the end, though, did it?”
The recording came back on again.
“I’ve found a place where I think I’ll be safe,” the woman began, her voice sounding flat and confined. “I found a trap door into an attic. You pull a rope and a ladder comes down. There’s a jumble of boxes and furniture up here, and a couple of steamer trunks. One only has a layer of folded clothes in the bottom, which makes a nice pad to lie on, so I’ve closed myself up in the trunk where I don’t think that thing will look for me. I feel terrible for leaving Robert on his own, but I couldn’t find him, and I couldn’t fight that thing if I did. He’ll be okay, he has to. All I have to do is hide until the sun comes up, which should be in a couple of hours.”
There was a long pause, the passage of time marked only by her ragged breathing, then she continued.
“Look, I might not make it here, so if it gets me and somebody finds this tape, burn this place. Burn it to the ground. This isn’t some ‘Blair Witch Project’ Halloween prank. There’s something evil in here that’s hunting us. It isn’t human, and it isn’t of this world. Burn this house to ashes, and get a priest to sanctify the ground. There’s something unspeakably evil in here, and if it isn’t stopped, it will kill again and again and again.”
There was another pause, and when she continued, her tone was softer, more composed.
“Mom, I know I haven’t been the daughter you wanted, and I’ve said some things to hurt you. If I don’t make it out of here, I just want you to know that I love you and… Did you hear that? Like a rush of wind. There can’t be any wind, I’m in the attic. It’s in here. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh—”
There was a high-pitched wrench of metal as the lid of the trunk was torn from its hinges, followed by her full-throated screams of abject terror as the thing, whatever it was, pulled her from the trunk and began the dismemberment process. The screams lasted for a few seconds, then faded to nothing as the damage to her throat and lungs rendered her incapable of further sound. There was a final thud, probably as one of the larger body parts was thrown against the wall behind the trunk, then a long sound of rushing wind, then nothing. There was plenty of tape left and the machine continued to run, but there was nothing else to be heard.
There was a long pause as the sheriff’s deputies stood staring at the silent recorder before Corey broke the silence.
“Jesus Christ almighty! I’ve always been aware that heinous crimes like this are committed, but to hear it in progress…”
“Yeah,” the sergeant said. “This is, well, I don’t have words.”
“She did,” Walker said, only half in jest. “Anyone have a match?”
The end
…at least that used to be the end. Brazilian horror writer Andrea Merchak was so taken with the story that she sought my permission to write a sequel, permission I was only too happy to grant. Andrea is an excellent proponent of the Dark Art and took it down some chilling corridors that greatly improved the overall gestalt. If you have read and enjoyed my work here, I strongly, strongly urge you to read the second part. Lovers of horror are sure to enjoy it!
https://threadsthatbind.net/2025/03/27/testament-part-2/
Flights of Fancy 