So I have a story that I would like to share. I have to start off with a little background though. My home is located on the outskirts of my town in Northern Illinois. I guess you could call it a type farm house but I’m not completely alone since I do have neighbors that are fairly close to me. It was a saturday night and a bunch of my family members had just left my house. My mom and I were just cleaning up before we went to bed when she asked me, “can you take the garbage outside? If we leave it in here it’ll start to leak and stink up the place.” So I agreed and went outside to take out the trash. Now I have a very large trash can. It’s not even a can its more like a big container. This container is situated behind my house a good 50 yards away. 

I leave with the heavy bag and its very chilly outside. Cold enough that I can see my breath in the air. Theres crickets, birds and the occasional owl making noises on the walk to the container. I finally get there and throw away the trash with no hesitation at all. But once I turn around towards my house, I see a figure standing underneath the big pine tree by my house. I’m a little surprised and taken back at the sight. The light coming from our back porch was on it. 

It looked like a girl

“Mom?”

It didn’t move.

I took a couple steps forward. But still I couldn’t distinguish her from the distance. 

“Mom? Is everything okay?”

A couple more steps. No answer

“Mom!”

At this point I was freaking out. My heart was pounding, my hands were drenched in sweat, and I could hear myself thinking in a million directions. I don’t think I was ever that scared before in my life. 

The porch light suddenly shut off because of the lack of movement that the sensors were detecting.

submitted by: themovieg0er

“MOM!!!”

I yelled as loud as I could. Franticly staying in one place to terrified to move. Then suddenly the light turned back on as my mom rushed outside.

“What’s Wrong?”

I looked at the spot. And the figure was gone.  

He put the gun back into the bureau drawer and shut the drawer.

No, not that way. Louise wouldn’t suffer. It was very important that this thing have, above all duration. Duration through imagination. How to prolong the suffering? How, first of all, to bring it about? Well.

The man standing before the bedroom mirror carefully fitted his cuff-links together. He paused long enough to hear the children run by swiftly on the street below, outside this warm two-story house, like so many gray mice the children, like so many leaves.

By the sound of the children you knew the calendar day. By their screams you knew what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the year. October. The last day of October, with white bone masks and cut pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle wax.

No. Things hadn’t been right for some time. October didn’t help any. If anything it made things worse. He adjusted his black bow tie. If this were spring, he nodded slowly, quietly, emotionlessly, at his image in the mirror, then there might be a chance. But tonight all the world was burning down into ruin. There was no green spring, none of the freshness, none of the promise.

There was a soft running in the hall. “That’s Marion”, he told himself. “My little one”. All eight quiet years of her. Never a word. Just her luminous gray eyes and her wondering little mouth. His daughter had been in and out all evening, trying on various masks, asking him which was most terrifying, most horrible. They had both finally decided on the skeleton mask. It was ‘just awful!’ It would ‘scare the beans’ from people!

Again he caught the long look of thought and deliberation he gave himself in the mirror. He had never liked October. Ever since he first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother’s house many years ago and heard the wind and sway the empty trees. It has made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring. But, it was different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. There would be no spring.

He had been crying quietly all evening. It did not show, not a vestige of it, on his face. It was all hidden somewhere and it wouldn’t stop.

The rich syrupy smell of sweets filled the bustling house. Louise had laid out apples in new skins of toffee; there were vast bowls of punch fresh-mixed, stringed apples in each door, scooped, vented pumpkins peering triangularly from each cold window. There was a water tub in the center of the living room, waiting, with a sack of apples nearby, for dunking to begin. All that was needed was the catalyst, the impouring of children, to start the apples bobbing, the stringed apples to penduluming in the crowded doors, the sweets to vanish, the halls to echo with fright or delight, it was all the same.

Now, the house was silent with preparation. And just a little more than that.

Louise had managed to be in every other room save the room he was in today. It was her very fine way of intimating, Oh look Mich, see how busy I am! So busy that when you walk into a room I’m in, there’s always something I need to do in another room! Just see how I dash about!

For a while he had played a little game with her, a nasty childish game. When she was in the kitchen then he came to the kitchen saying, ‘I need a glass of water.’ After a moment, he standing, drinking water, she like a crystal witch over the caramel brew bubbling like a prehistoric mudpot on the stove, she said, ‘Oh, I must light the pumpkins!’ and she rushed to the living room to make the pumpkins smile with light. He came after, smiling, ‘I must get my pipe.’ ‘Oh, the cider!’ she had cried, running to the dining room. ‘I’ll check the cider,’ he had said. But when he tried following she ran to the bathroom and locked the door.

He stood outside the bathroom door, laughing strangely and senselessly, his pipe gone cold in his mouth, and then, tired of the game, but stubborn, he waited another five minutes. There was not a sound from the bath. And lest she enjoy in any way knowing that he waited outside, irritated, he suddenly jerked about and walked upstairs, whistling merrily.

At the top of the stairs he had waited. Finally he had heard the bathroom door unlatch and she had come out and life below-stairs and resumed, as life in a jungle must resume once a terror has passed on away and the antelope return to their spring.

Now, as he finished his bow-tie and put his dark coat there was a mouse-rustle in the hall. Marion appeared in the door, all skeletons in her disguise.

‘How do I look, Papa?’

‘Fine!’

From under the mask, blonde hair showed. From the skull sockets small blue eyes smiled. He sighed. Marion and Louise, the two silent denouncers of his virility, his dark power. What alchemy had there been in Louise that took the dark of a dark man and bleached the dark brown eyes and black hair and washed and bleached the ingrown baby all during the period before birth until the child was born, Marion, blonde, blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked? Sometimes he suspected that Louise had conceived the child as an idea, completely asexual, an immaculate conception of contemptuous mind and cell. As a firm rebuke to him she had produced a child in her own image, and, to top it, she had somehow fixed the doctor so he shook his head and said, ‘Sorry, Mr. Wilder, your wife will never have another child. This is the last one.’

‘And I wanted a boy,’ Mich had said eight years ago.

He almost bent to take hold of Marion now, in her skull mask. He felt an inexplicable rush of pity for her, because she had never had a father’s love, only the crushing, holding love of a loveless mother. But most of all he pitied himself, that somehow he had not made the most of a bad birth, enjoyed his daughter for herself, regardless of her not being dark and a son and like himself. Somewhere he had missed out. Other things being equal, he would have loved the child. But Louise hadn’t wanted a child, anyway, in the first place. She had been frightened of the idea of birth. He had forced the child on her, and from that night, all through the year until the agony of the birth itself, Louise had lived in another part of the house. She had expected to die with the forced child. It had been very easy for Louise to hate this husband who so wanted a son that he gave his only wife over to the mortuary.

But - Louise had lived. And in triumph! Her eyes, the day he came to the hospital, were cold. I’m alive they said. And I have a blonde daughter! Just look! And when he had put out a hand to touch, the mother had turned away to conspire with her new pink daughter-child - away from that dark forcing murderer. It had all been so beautifully ironic. His selfishness deserved it.

But now it was October again. There had been other Octobers and when he thought of the long winter he had been filled with horror year after year to think of the endless months mortared into the house by an insane fall of snow, trapped with a woman and child, neither of whom loved him, for months on end. During the eight years there had been respites. In spring and summer you got out, walked, picnicked; these were desperate solutions to the desperate problem of a hated man.

But, in winter, the hikes and picnics and escapes fell away with leaves. Life, like a tree, stood empty, the fruit picked, the sap run to earth. Yes, you invited people in, but people were hard to get in winter with blizzards and all. Once he had been clever enough to save for a Florida trip. They had gone south. He had walked in the open.

But now, the eighth winter coming, he knew things were finally at an end. He simply could not wear this one through. There was an acid walled off in him that slowly had eaten through tissue and bone over the years, and now, tonight, it would reach the wild explosive in him and all would be over!

There was a mad ringing of the bell below. In the hall, Louise went to see. Marion, without a word, ran down to greet the first arrivals. There were shouts and hilarity.

He walked to the top of the stairs.

Louise was below, taking cloaks. She was tall and slender and blonde to the point of whiteness, laughing down upon the new children.

He hesitated. What was all this? The years? The boredom of living? Where had it gone wrong? Certainly not with the birth of the child alone. But it had been a symbol of all their tensions, he imagined.

His jealousies and his business failures and all the rotten rest of it. Why didn’t he just turn, pack a suitcase, and leave? No. Not without hurting Louise as much as she had hurt him. It was simple as that. Divorce wouldn’t hurt her at all. It would simply be an end to numb indecision. If he thought divorce would give her pleasure in any way he would stay married the rest of his life to her, for damned spite. No, he must hurt her. Figure some way, perhaps, to take Marion away from her, legally. Yes. That was it. That would hurt most of all.

To take Marion.

‘Hello down there!’ He descended the stairs beaming.

Louise didn’t look up.

‘Hi, Mr. Wilder!’

The children shouted, waved, as he came down.

By ten o’clock the doorbell had stopped ringing, the apples were bitten from stringed doors, the pink faces were wiped dry from the apple bobbling, napkins were smeared with toffee and punch, and he, the husband, with pleasant efficiency had taken over. He took the party right out of Louise’s hands. He ran about talking to the twenty children and the twelve parents who had come and were happy with the special spiked cider he had fixed them. He supervised pin the tail on the donkey, spin the bottle, musical chairs, and all the rest, amid fits of shouting laughter. Then, in the triangular-eyed pumpkin shine, all house lights out, he cried, ‘Hush! Follow me!’ tiptoeing towards the cellar.

The parents, on the outer periphery of the costumed riot, commented to each other, nodding at the clever husband, speaking to the lucky wife. How well he got on with children, they said.

The children crowded after the husband, squealing.

‘The cellar!’ he cried. ‘The tomb of the witch!’

More squealing. He made a mock shiver. ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here!’

The parents chuckled.

One by one the children slid down a slide which Mich had fixed up from lengths of table-section, into the dark cellar. He hissed and shouted ghastly utterances after them. A wonderful wailing filled dark pumpkin-lighted house. Everybody talked at once. Everybody but Marion. She had gone through all the party with a minimum of sound or talk; it was all inside her, all the excitement and joy. What a little troll, he thought. With a shut mouth and shiny eyes she had watched her own party, like so many serpentines thrown before her.

Now, the parents. With laughing reluctance they slid down the short incline, uproarious, while little Marion stood by, always wanting to see it all, to be last. Louise went down without help. He moved to aid her, but she was gone even before he bent.

The upper house was empty and silent in the candle-shine. Marion stood by the slide. ‘Here we go,’ he said, and picked her up.

They sat in a vast circle in the cellar. Warmth came from the distant bulk of the furnace. The chairs stood in a long line along each wall, twenty squealing children, twelve rustling relatives, alternatively spaced, with Louise down at the far end, Mich up at this end, near the stairs. He peered but saw nothing. They had all grouped to their chairs, catch-as-you-can in the blackness. The entire program from here on was to be enacted in the dark, he as Mr. Interlocutor. There was a child scampering, a smell of damp cement, and the sound of the wind out in the October stars.

‘Now!’ cried the husband in the dark cellar. ‘Quiet!’

Everybody settled.

The room was black black. Not a light, not a shine, not a glint of an eye.

A scraping of crockery, a metal rattle.

‘The witch is dead,’ intoned the husband.

‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,’ said the children.

‘The witch is dead, she has been killed, and here is the knife she was killed with.’ He handed over the knife. It was passed from hand to hand, down and around the circle, with chuckles and little odd cries and comments from the adults.

‘The witch is dead, and this is her head,’ whispered the husband, and handed an item to the nearest person.

‘Oh, I know how this game is played,’ some child cried, happily, in the dark. ‘He gets some old chicken innards from the icebox and hands them around and says, “These are her innards!” And he makes a clay head and passes it for her head, and passes a soup bone for her arm. And he takes a marble and says, “This is her eye!” And he takes some corn and says, “This is her teeth!” And he takes a sack of plum pudding and gives that and says, “This is her stomach!” I know how this is played!’

‘Hush, you’ll spoil everything,’ some girl said.

‘The witch came to harm, and this is her arm,’ said Mich.

‘Eeeeeeeeeeee!’

The items were passed and passed, like hot potatoes, around the cirle. Some children screamed, wouldn’t touch them. Some ran from their chairs to stand in the center of the cellar until the grisly items had passed.

‘Aw, it’s only chicken insides,’ scoffed a boy. ‘Come back, Helen!’

Shot from hand to hand, with small scream after scream, the items went down, down, to be followed by another and another.

‘The witch cut apart, and this is her heart,’ said the husband.

Six or seven items moving at once through the laughing, trembling dark.

Louise spoke up. ‘Marion, don’t be afraid; it’s only play.”

Marion didn’t say anything.

‘Marion?, asked Louise. ‘Are you afraid?’

Marion didn’t speak.

‘She’s all right,’ said the husband. ‘She’s not afraid.’

On and on the passing, the screams, the hilarity.

The autumn wind sighed about the house. And he, the husband stood at the head of the dark cellar, intoning the words, handing out the items.

‘Marion?’ asked Louise again, from far across the cellar.

Everybody was talking.

‘Marion?’ called Louise.

Everybody quieted.

‘Marion, answer me, are you afraid?’

Marion didn’t answer.

The husband stood there, at the bottom of the cellar steps.

Louise called ‘Marion, are you there?’

No answer. The room was silent.

Where’s Marion?’ called Louise.

She was here’, said a boy.

‘Maybe she’s upstairs.’

‘Marion!’

No answer. It was quiet.

Louise cried out, ‘Marion, Marion!’

‘Turn on the lights,’ said one of the adults.

The items stopped passing. The children and adults sat with the witch’s items in their hands.

‘No.’ Louise gasped. There was a scraping of her chair, wildly, in the dark. ‘No. Don’t turn on the lights, oh, God, God, God, don’t turn them on, please, don’t turn on the lights, don’t! .Louise was shrieking now. The entire cellar froze with the scream.

Nobody moved.

Everyone sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with the smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, ‘I’ll go upstairs and look!’ and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, ‘Marion, Marion, Marion!’ over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, ‘I can’t find her.’

Then …… some idiot turned on the lights.

 

In the summer of 2001 I found work as a camera man for a pilot episode of a reality television show. The producer was going for a format like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations or Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Though if I’m not mistaken, neither of those shows were even on the air yet, but the concept was described as a food and travel show with a comedic host.

Prepared Fresh staring Vic Passawelle could’ve been a household name. Unfortunately for Vic and the producer, we ran into a slight problem while out on the road.

The first segment went fine. We spent a few days driving through Amish country, making stops at all the back road markets. I’m talking about the places where outsiders seldom visit, where a button is as alien to them as a Martian would be to us, so imagine how they reacted to my Canon XL-1 camera.

The people were great, don’t get me wrong. They were friendly and helpful. Vic and I were invited to home-cooked dinners several times. I was even allowed to film at most of them. That’s really what the show was about. Vic’s goal was to meet unique people, and interact with them while they prepared a freshmeal. Prepared Fresh. Get it? Do ya get it? Okay, so I’m not a comedian. Vic was, not me.

Anyway, once we had the footage of the Amish meals, Vic decided to contrast that with some Asian customs. Sure, we could have gone up to China Town in New York, or China Town in California, or China Town in, well, anywhere. They were pretty much all the same. Every China Town in the United States was nothing except a carbon copied tourist attraction. No, Vic wanted something different, so Vic persuaded the producer to fly us out to the real China. — That was a mistake. A huge mistake. A nuclear mistake.

If I had to pinpoint exactly what got us into trouble, I’d say it was the language barrier. Unlike in the States where most Asian immigrants can comprehend the intricacies of the english language, the traditional Chinese speaking citizens standing around whichever third rate airport we landed had not mastered such skills. Why we didn’t land in Beijing, or Hong Kong, or any other major city where we would’ve found an english speaking guide is a question I would still like to have answered. If I ever find that producer… I swear, one way or another, I’m going to make him sorry he ever sent Vic and me on that trip.

So there we were, in China. Only God knows exactly where. It was in some small village which I couldn’t pronounce even if you told me the name, syllable by syllable. The taxi driver at the airport, or rather the shady looking guy in the rusted 1959 ford truck, dropped us off after Vic explained we were doing a TV show and we were seeking the best place around for prepared fresh food.

“Per Fesh?” the shady guy asked, disgusted.

“Yeah,” Vic said. “Can you take us?”

And so he took us.

The guy dropped us on the side of a pothole-riddled dirt road in the unpronounceable named town. Several people walked by us without so much as a nod, despite Vic’s charming personality and people skills. To them, we looked like a pair of pathetic yáng guǐzi, the Chinese slur for white tourists — it meansforeign devil — which, I guess we were.

Suddenly Vic jumped into the street and stopped this kid peddling around one of those carriages that looked like a bike in the front and a chariot in the back.

“Food,” Vic shouted at the kid. “Prepared Fresh! Can you help us?”

The poor kid stared at us with a look of utter confusion.

Vic rolled his eyes at me and slumped his shoulders. I shrugged. Apparently this wasn’t the secret location of top notch cuisine that the guy in the beat up F-350 led us to believe. I was about to call it quits when the kid decided he did know some english after all.

“No, no,” he said. “You no wan per fesh.”

“Yes.” Vic nodded. “Do want fresh.” Then he mock chewed on a carrot.

The kid said no again. He looked scared. Underneath the brim of his dirty Milwaukee Brewers cap I saw his eyes twitching. At the time, I though it was because of the way Vic spoke to him. Now I know better.

“Come on, kid,” Vic said, then fished out a twenty dollar bill from his pocket. After a moment of hesitation, the kid nodded, and he timidly reached for the money. Vic and I climbed in to the back of his carriage and off we went. The final location was a little more than two blocks away. The kid skidded to a stop and he pointed at an old shanty house to the left of us. Vic and I stepped out of our make-shift limo. As soon as we did, the kid took off down the dirt road.

“Hey!” Vic yelled and started to chase after him.

“Let him go,” I said, leaving out the part that we could see the exact spot at the bottom of the hill where the kid had picked us up. Vic relented and walked over to where I was standing. I looked at the rundown shack, wondering how badly the kid translated Vic’s request for fresh food. At first glance I thought it was a toolshed. At second glance I still thought it was a toolshed, and I’m sure you know that saying about what a duck looks and quacks like.

Just as I was about to tell Vic we should head home, the screen-less screen-door swung open, and a tiny, old women, with mostly missing or rotted teeth, materialized from the darkness of inside, and smiled at us. She was holding a steaming pot — thick fog floated over the edge of the container, making her appear to be a witch carrying a cauldron.

Neither Vic or I moved. She cocked her head to the side then called out to us. “Cummm, cummm! Tis way! Tis way!” Then she turned around and walked into the black void.

“Sammy,” Vic said, “I don’t know about this.”

“We can always go back to the airport if you want. Maybe find another segment to match up with the Amish intro footage.”

Vic shook his head. “No. We’re here. I just hope the food is cleaner than the kitchen.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said, walking across the threshold.

The shack wasn’t what I expected at all. Instead of an extremely tiny living space, it was actually the entrance to an underground transit. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I saw the steps leading down. The old woman was standing at the bottom, looking up at us.

“Cummm, cummm, per fesh you et,” she said. “Tis way Tis way! Fesh. You like!”

Vic and I followed her down the steps and that’s when the odor hit me. It was, by far, the most mouthwatering scent that had ever graced my nose.

“You smell that?” I asked.

“Oh my god, yes,” Vic replied.

The scent emanated from the pot the old woman was carrying. I wish I could describe it, but that was Vic’s specialty, not mine. We followed her through a short tunnel and then took a set of stair back up into … an actual house?

“Way-et hair,” the old woman said.

“Wait here?” I asked.

“Ya, ya. You way-et hair for sit.”

“Thank you,” I said and bowed.

Two men came out from behind a curtain and motioned for us to follow them. I asked if I could film. Since they didn’t understand a word I said, I unslung my camera and raised it too my eye. The men led us past a steel door, into a small, candle lit six-tabled dining area. A man and a woman sat at one table to the right and three woman sat at a table to the left. The old woman came into the room from behind us and I heard the metallic clang of the door shutting.

“Sit! Sit!” she said.

Vic and I sat at the table furthest from the other guests. He reached out and tapped the old women on the arm. “Can we have some of whatever that is?” Vic asked while pointing at the pot.

The old woman looked at the camera in my hand and said, “No, no. Pic your an no et per fesh.”

“She wants me to turn it off,” I said to Vic. “What should we do?”

“Shut it down. Let’s see what happens.”

As soon as I put the camera away, the old woman took the top off of the pot and poured some of the broth into each one of our bowls. It smelled amazing and I looked for a spoon but discovered there wasn’t any utensils on the table. The old woman saw my confusion and said, “For dip, dip. Et fesh sooooon.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the three ladies at the other table get up from her chair and lay down on the floor. I turned to see if she was all right, or if she needed any help, but her two friends were already assisting.

“What’s going on?” Vic asked.

I focused my attention back on Vic. “I don’t know. I think she collapsed.”

“No,” Vic said. “I think she’s going into labour. Look!”

“What?” I whipped my head back around. The women on the floor had a bulging belly which I hadn’t noticed at first. Her legs were propped up on a chair, and she was moaning softly. I wanted to aid her, or at the very least get someone to call a doctor, but the look Vic gave me when I even hinted at interfering was enough to keep me sitting quietly in my seat. We watched as the woman’s water broke and her faint moans became agonizing screams. All the while, the couple from the other table looked as if this were the most normal thing in the world. They seemed bored even.

“Yiiiiiii!” the two women said to their pregnant friend each time she bared down with an animalistic grunt. “Yiiiiiii! Yiiiiiii! Yiiiiiii!” Suddenly the room echoed with the shrill cries of a newborn. The couple at the other table began to cheer along with the two men standing by the steel door. Vic and I clapped excitedly, smiling ear to ear while we watched one of the women hand the baby to the new mother. The other woman sat between the mother’s legs and collected all of the afterbirth.

The whole entire scene was strange to Vic and me, but who were we to judge the ways of a culture we knew very little about.

The old woman walked over to the table that the three women had been sitting. She smiled down at the baby boy, then reached in between her breasts and took out a bill fold. She fanned the money so everyone in the room could see. Still smiling, she laid the bills onto the table, one by one, until her hands were completely empty. Then her grin faded, and her face reshaped itself into a silent question directed at the new mother.

“What the hell is going on?” I whispered.

Vic heard me. “I don’t know, but we should leave.” He stood up. The two men by the door pointed at him threateningly. They shook their heads in unison. “Fuck,” Vic said, sitting back down. “Sammy, we have a problem.”

I heard him, but my attention was focused on the old woman and the mother. The old woman held out her arms to each side, palms up, as if to say: ‘Well?’ She stood there in that restless pose while the mother stared at her, unblinking. Then the mother gave the slightest of nods and the room exploded in cheering.

“Yiiiiiii!”

The mother held up her baby. The old woman took him from her, and then she slowly spun in a circle so everyone to see the child in her hands.

“Yiiiiiii!”

One of the mother’s friends helped the mother to her feet. They walked back to the table and began to count the money. The other woman, the one holding the placenta, she stood next to the old woman and then she quickly wrapped the umbilical cord around the infant’s neck and started to pull. Her eyes were wide, maniacal. The old woman grinned, and squeezed the baby tight while it tried its best to squirm away, unable to even scream.

“Yiiiiiii!”

The attack happened so fast. I felt as if I had left my body, like I was floating above the situation, unable to react. The baby boy’s face was already turning a deathly shade of blue, his little eyes were bulging in their sockets, and his mouth opened and closed in horrifying shivers, begging for a breath that would not come. My own jaw had dropped open, mimicking the dying child. In an effort to save my sanity, my mind focused on that small detail while the rest of my body was still paralyzed by fear. “STOP!” I heard Vic scream. He threw our table over and ran at the old woman. The two men were faster though. One of them dove at Vic, catching him by the leg, and then the other tackled him. I heard a sickening crunch as Vic’s head connected with the table that the other couple was sitting at. Neither of those two reacted. They still appeared as bored as ever.

The baby’s death throes ended and all of the people in the room shouted out again … even the mother this time.

“Yiiiiiii!”

The old woman dropped the small corpse on the table in front of the mother. It landed on the bills and a few of them fluttered to the ground. The mother’s friend, the one who helped her to the table, produced a knife from a sheath hidden under her dress. I turned away but I could still hear the sound of the blade sawing through bone.

I somehow maintained that surreal feeling which allows a person to analyze their surroundings with heightened awareness. I smelled the sweet, sweet aroma of the broth sitting in front of me, stronger than ever. I looked down at Vic. His body spasmed twice before going still. A pool of blood spread out from underneath his head. I didn’t need to get closer to know that it was fatal. I looked at the old woman. She nodded her approval, and hummed a little tune while the three women were busy separating organs from meat. I looked over to the couple. Their boredom was gone. They tapped their fingers on the table impatiently. Then I looked to the two men blocking the door. They shook their heads slowly and I nodded once to let them know I understood. And during it all, I listened to the drip, drip, drip, of the baby’s blood rolling over the edge and landing on the money which fell to the floor. Blood money.

My body was numb and my hands were tingling but I didn’t allow that to stop me from raising my index finger up into the air.

“Yes, what is it?” The old woman said in perfect english.

“Prepared Fresh?” I asked, certain I knew the answer.

She laughed. “Per fesh — Prepared fresh flesh.”

Yes, if I had to pinpoint exactly what got us into trouble, I’d say it was the language barrier. I swallowed down the bile rising in my throat. Everyone in the room was staring at me, waiting. I knew in that instant there was only one way I would get out of there alive. I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth to prepare myself for the next question I needed to ask, the one thing I could say that just might save my life…

I sat up straight, smiled, then asked: “So, when do we eat? I’m starving.”

“Yiiiiiii!”

++++

Don’t worry folks, I’m not going to bore you with descriptions of how delicious the meat was. That was Vic’s job, not mine.

Tim Burton’s Vincent.

Narrated by Vincent Price

Somewhere in the rural area of South Carolina, a man and a woman were about to be married. This couple were too poor to afford anything too fancy, so much of the wedding supplies were bought at thrift stores or second-hand stores. The last item they bought was the wedding dress, and they only had about two-hundred dollars left to spend, so the soon-to-be-bride went to a pawn shop to buy a dress. The pawn shop had a very pretty wedding dress, for the amazing price of fifty dollars! Who was to say no to that offer? A few days later, the couple had their wedding and it was perfect. The wedding reception went perfect, and everybody danced to their heart’s content. The groom and bride danced most excitedly, since this marked the spot when their lives officially intertwined. Each had perspired their fair share of sweat.

Just a few days later, the wife had become severely ill during their honeymoon, but they could not afford a doctor, so they decided to buy over-the-counter medicine. After a week of suffering, the wife had finally passed away. The husband became depressed, and after another few days of wallowing in sadness, the husband had taken out their life-insurance and soon collected the money. He bought the best doctor he could find to find out what had happened to his lovely wife. The doctor had explained that his wife died from the excessive amounts of embalming fluid entered her system. The husband looked at him with a confused expression. He then started to explain everything that he could remember about what happened.

“Your wife bought a dress from a pawn shop and the pawn shop bought it from an undertaker,” the doctor had said. “This undertaker would embalm a body, and when the funeral service was over, he would go back and take the valuable things off the body, in this case, a wedding dress. When your wife sweated, the body absorbed the embalming fluid.” The husband was in complete shock. He went home later that weekend to bury his wife. On Sunday, the widower committed suicide, unable to cope with the loss of his beloved wife.

The undertaker embalmed and buried his body, only to come back later to take his suit, his watch, and his ring. He sold these all to a pawn shop.

Later that evening, a gentleman came in looking for a suit to wear for his wedding.

Maybe I’m just insane or maybe I speak truthfully.

These things that always follow us. They aren’t just a simple lighting affect in life; no they are much more than that. They are a darker view of our own selves. A darkness of our souls just there yet no one has seen what I have seen. They poke at your inner darkness trying to consume you trying to take all of yourself out of you. They are our very own demons yet they keep silent enough to not be noticed.

I watch as my shadow dances in happiness, I’ve pushed my own evil out and created a new me. A darkness that can’t be controlled is ready to take over. This is only a warning to those who wish to prepare themselves. The second the shadow dances is the moment all hope is lost if there ever was any.

For her birthday I took my girl, Katie, to Arizona so we could stay with some friends of hers and spend a few weeks partying and getting crazy and stuff before heading back to school for the year. We drove up in my Dad’s car. It’s a really old Ford make, and it’s pretty beat up. The road there was bumpy and long. Our relationship seemed at its strongest on the road. We were really in love. That was the first time I realized that. I had never truly been in love before.

We were about half the way there when we realized we were going to run out of gas long before the nearest petrol pump. Katie’s head was out of the window, sunglasses on in the blistering heat outside. Nothing but the wild desert landscape to be seen in all directions. We became frantic. We hadn’t seen another car on the road in almost an hour. What if we broke down here, in the middle of the desert, with no food or water, with no one out there to find us. I sped up slightly, driven by these fears.

It was then that we came across the Gas Station. Smack bang in the middle of nowhere, in dry, empty nowhere. It was an old worn down servo. Long, yellow grass blew in the breeze beneath it. Outside were two rusted gas pumps. At first we didn’t know if it was occupied - it seemed so lifeless. But as we pulled up and saw the petrol stains in the dirt we were convinced otherwise. Katie started refilling the car and I went inside to pay, and grab something to eat on the road.

When I first went to open the door, it jammed. This perturbed me, so I looked up at the sign to check, and was reassured that the store was “OPEN”, according to the torn sign that hung in between the dull yellow curtains at the door window. I pushed harder and harder with effort, got into the shop.

Inside it was totally abandoned, and left to ruin. Complete isles lay on the ground, the fridges were smashed and glass coated on the floor. Despite the brightness outside, the interior of the Gas Station was dark and bitterly cold. Then there came, from behind me, this quiet weeping, like a child’s. I felt my heart race. It was coming from the back room.

I stepped over the smashed glass and twisted metal remnants on the floor, over where the patches of grass had grown through. I ran my hand along the wall an felt the criss cross of ivy beneath my fingers. It was overgrown.

There came the crying again, and now I was facing the back room door. It was directly infront of me. I pushed the door open, and it creaked with rust in its joints. Inside there lay several wooden steps into the basement. It was pitch black, and the smell was horrific. The drip drop of water alerted me to the fact the basement was flooded - the water was up to my knees. Again, there came the crying, and a small splash in the far corner of the basement.

“Hello?” I called out, “Is anyone there?”
I started approaching the corner. The smell was horrible, and cold water eventually got to me. The sobbing was getting louder. In the corner I swore I saw something move amongst the shadows.
“Hello?” I called again, “Whats wrong?”
I finally reached the corner. Still dark, I had to bend down to avoid the pipes, which leaked down my back and trickled down my spine. The figure infront of me was very small and black. Hunched over, sobbing quietly, head in its hands.
“Why are you down here?” I whispered.
Then, it stopped moving completely. It was totally still. All noise seemed to cease, but for the quiet dripping of a broken pipe somewhere behind me.
I outstretched my arm to touch it’s tiny shoulder, but it then began to slowly turn in my direction, to look me eye to eye.

As it’s face swiveled around to look into mine I remember screaming, and swinging my head up in recoil, cracking it on the pipes up above. The face was white as a sheet, pale like a hideous, moving mask. The eyes and mouth were completely black holes, huge and widening even as I looked at them. They were so huge, they almost consumed it’s entire face. As I desperately tried to escape, it splashed towards me at rapid speed, uncurling it’s long, thing fingers. It was wailing now, staring into me with its huge black eyes, and I only scrabbled up the stairs with great difficulty, as I felt my legs begin to give way beneath me.

It sprinted out of the water and up the stairs towards me. I slammed the door, flipped the lock and tore out of the store, into the old Ford. Katie began to laugh when she saw me, jeans wet, trembling with sweat soaking my chest, but I grabbed her and screamed at her to drive. For about a half an hour I could barely tell her what happened in the store. She listened and gave me a look of sheer horror, when I finally gave in and told her everything. She pulled the car to the side of the road and began to cry herself. I asked her what was wrong.

She said, “I saw something while you were gone. When you were in the store, I was just putting the pump back when I saw this little girl, and a man, her father I guess. the father stared at me with blank eyes and a hanging jaw. But the girl, oh god, the girl.. She was staring straight at me, grinning with this huge smile that just strecthed so far across her face. I couldn’t see any hair on her, and her skin was so dark. Not dark, like a colored girl, but dark like a shadow. And her smile just shone through the window. I convinced myself it was a trick of the eye and looked away. when I looked back they were gone. Then a little while later, you came back out.”

It was dusk by now. We had nowhere to stay. We had not traveled nearly as much as we hoped to that day and the nearest motel meant going back past the gas station. So we just drove up from the roadside where we were, into the clearing a little way up, where people camped sometimes. We had obviously come the night after a big party - there was broken glass everywhere. When we arrived, however, it was empty. After awhile I tried to reassure her that we were okay. I calmed her down, put my arms around her and we started to kiss. I moved to get closer to her when she suddenly screamed like hell itself.

“IT’S HER! IT’S HER!!!!” she screeched, fumbling to start up the engine. I turned in time to witness a small black face, grinning literally ear to ear with only darkness inside. It was crawling into the car through my open window, with its limbs splayed out like an insect. It had too many limbs. Way too many long arms. The fingers feeling my face like antennae. We sped off, back down onto the road.

Back on the road, nothing seemed right. There were no stars.
That was what I noticed first. I was too shaken to think much of it, but there were no clouds that could be blotting them out. There was just the vast night sky, devoid of all light. Then, a few minutes after we had been driving forward, still sweating and breathing heavy, we passed the gas station. My heart skipped a beat. The gas station was at least a half an hour away. In the opposite direction. All the lights were on, and I saw the door sliding open. As we shot past it Katie was in such hysterics she found it hard to keep driving. We stopped the car, in the middle of the desolate road. I decided we should switch seats, so that I could drive. She shuffled across from her seat to mine, and I opened the door to get out. As soon as I was outside the foul stench of the basement overwhelmed me. I gagged, then vomited down the side of the car. It was then I noticed the runner. A pale white thing, sprinting torwards us through the fog, it’s limbs practically a blur. I could make out no face. How long had it been following us? Running after us in the night?!

I got into the driver seat as quickly as possible. We drove off again, not talking. Katie whimpered and I silently prayed. Then we got passed the gas station again. The door was open now. There were two figures standing at the door. Waiting.

As we forced ourselves on, we both became aware of a soft, barely audible weeping in the back seats. Neither of us dared turn around.
“Ignore it”, I whispered, my trembling hands gripped the steering wheel.
Katie was curled in the fetal position, holding her head in her hands. The wailing increased, becoming extremely loud, ear piercing and horrific. Finally I ordered myself to end it, and looked behind me.

For a split second, I thought it was a girl, in a white dress looking back up at me. But she was gone as soon as she had appeared. I checked the seats carefully, there was nothing. In my tiredness and fear I had completely lost track of the road.
I drove on, and all through the night Katie whimpered. I touched her once but she screamed. I never tried again after that. The noises from the back seat started up again. We passed the gas station twice more. The people at the door were closer and clearer every time.

The finest slither of red light had begun to settle on the horizon, it was still dark as hell, but at least I was able to see the road ahead of me now. Katie had been silent, face concealed under her hands for some times. I decided to check the time, so I turned on the radio. At first there was only static. Instead of time, or anything at all, the digital clock simply appeared black. I fiddled with the dial, trying to change the station. In between the static I found only one audible channel. It had a high pitched buzz in the background. (Writer’s note: UVB-76?!??!?!) A man was muttering names and numbers under his breath.

“29. Lucy -
30. Adam-
31. Katie -“
I switched back to static. I knew which name was next.
When we got to Katie’s friend’s house, it was morning. It was overcast and everywhere had the smell of rain on it. Her friends weren’t home. Katie’s friends lived way out in the country, with no one else around in a mile. The grass was climbing the walls outside. How long have they been out?

As soon as were inside, Katie started whimpering again. I realized that while she had been silent she was biting on her lip - Blood was trickling down her chin and the skin around her mouth was torn and chewed through. She grabbed the newspaper, and some masking tape off the table and began blocking out the windows. After the nights events I didn’t know whether I would be insane to join her or stop her. I simply watched. She covered the windows, jammed the door and turned the lights off. For some time, it could have been minutes or hours, we sit silent in the dark. I offered to turn the television on. Katie said nothing, sitting blank and comatose. I turned the television on, anyway.

A grainy, black and white image flickered to life before us. A white face with empty eyes and an impossibly huge smile flashed up, the smile growing wider and wider the longer we stared into it. There came the sound of weeping. From the television, or in the house? I couldn’t tell.. We turned off the TV.

It’s been three whole days now. I haven’t seen Katie at all today. She spends her time in the closet, crying. I once tore the door open and screamed at her. She screamed back, her face contorting into something grotesque, and inhuman. I slammed it in her face. The phone rings, often. A voice, my mother’s I believe, whispering under its breath. I can only catch snippets of what it says.

“Come back.. You’re always welcome to come back…”
Sometimes in the background I hear quiet chuckling.

I hang up without saying a thing, usually. The bathroom is shining white, I hear the shower running, and will walk in to find nothing. Nothing at all.
Then, when I’m in the bathroom I will hear the television flick back on.

It always goes to the face. In the background there are muttering voices now. I’ve called the police. Twice. All I get is the whispering woman’s voice. I called Katie’s friends too, just as fruitlessly. There are knocks at the door a lot now. Through the newspaper, on the other side of the window I see their hands slam against the glass and slide down. They do this for hours on end sometimes. They press their eyes up to the glass, through the holes in the newspaper… At night we hear screaming from the guest room. I boarded it up. Sometimes I find tiny pieces of glass on the ground. A leak sprang up about a day ago in my room downstairs. Black spots of mold have appeared on the walls. There is a small throughout the house, seeping in from my room. The odor of decay.
I pray. I pray hopelessly, and I wish, I swear to god, I wish… That I had never gotten out of that car.

simplyhorrificstories:

Hell Yeah Horror Manga: Where’s Mommy?

hellyeahhorrormanga:

There was taxi driver whose wife disappeared, leaving him with a five-year old daughter to bring up on his own. The father had to work long hours and wasn’t able to spend much time at home. He often went out early in the morning and didn’t return until late at night. 

His neighbor was a single woman and she kindly volunteered to come over and look after the child while he was gone. Every night, the little girl would lie awake, crying her eyes out and calling her father’s name. Then, one night, she stopped crying. Listening at her bedroom door, the neighbor could hear the little girl laughing. It sounded as if she was talking to someone.

“Oh, her father must have come home early,” thought the neighbor.

She opened the bedroom door and found the little girl sitting alone on her bed, laughing in the dark. There was nobody else in the room. The neighbor decided that she had to get to the bottom of this strange behavior. 

“Who are you talking to at night when your father is out working?” she asked.

“My mom,” replied the little girl. “Whenever I’m lonely and crying, my mom comes and hugs me and kisses me on the cheek.” 

The woman was shocked. “But I’m always here and the front door is locked,” she said. “How does she get in?”

The little girl pointed to the basement door and in a whisper, she said, “She comes crawling out of there…” 

A chill went down the neighbor’s spine and she immediately called the police. 

Annie ran away again the other night. It took me hours to find her in the park, going back and forth on the swings without a care in the world, like she had every right to be there. And she dyed her hair again, blonde this time. I didn’t want to make a fuss with all those people around, so I caught her on the backswing and dragged her home kicking and screaming like a lunatic. It was humiliating: I had to smile and shrug at all the people staring like it didn’t bother me.

As soon as we were home, I sent Annie to her room. She just sat there on the bed, crying and crying. The way she carried on, I didn’t have the heart to yell at her for running away. I guess that’s the real problem, this lack of discipline. I’ve never been good at tough but fair. I’m always going too far one way or the other.

Like a few months ago when she came at me with the kitchen knife. For a minute I really thought she was trying to hurt me, my own sweet angel. But afterward she just lay there in my arms so quiet, letting me stroke her hair and sing her a lullaby, like nothing had ever happened.

But then there was that other time when she started messing around with my doll collection. They’re such fragile things, my dolls, and Annie was playing so rough like she wanted to break them. I love those dolls: they remind me of when everything was easier, when I wasn’t stuck in this house all day long with Annie’s tantrums and Bill’s moping. I got upset, and I hit her. I was so ashamed, when she ran away that night I didn’t go after her right away. I just stayed there, crying and feeling like the worst mother in the world.

I tried to be gentler after that, more understanding. So instead of getting cross with Annie, I let her stay in her room and cooked her some dinner. I turned up the TV real loud so I wouldn’t hear the racket she was making in there. She makes such a mess sometimes, and it makes me so angry, the way she breaks her things like she doesn’t even care about them anymore. I bought her a puppy once, but she wouldn’t even touch it, like she was scared of it. The very day I decided to take it back to the pet store, it vanished. I found Annie in the backyard, holding a little trowel, sitting on a pile of dirt. I helped her wash up and never mentioned it again.

I made her favorite food, macaroni and cheese, hoping it might calm her down. But as soon as I opened the door she slammed into me, trying to get past. I almost dropped the food everywhere wrestling with her like that. She had this wild look in her eyes, like an animal. It scared me, being alone in there with her when she was like that. I put the food on her desk and gently pushed her toward the chair.

“I made it just the way you like,” I told her, smiling and trying not to look as afraid as I felt.

She stared at me like she didn’t understand a word I was saying.

“Will you eat some of it?”

“I don’t want to,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, different than I’d ever heard it before. I hope I didn’t shudder. I didn’t want to upset her.

“Please, Annie, I’m very worried about you.”

“That’s not my name.”

She likes to change her name sometimes. It worries me. One day she’s Beth, the next day Irene. It’s just like her hair, she changes it every time she runs away. I get so scared that one day I won’t be able to find her, and the police won’t be able to help because I won’t know what she looks like or what she’s calling herself.

“Sweetheart, I’d really like you to eat a little bit. Just a little, please, for mommy.”

And then she said, with the meanest look on her face, “You’re not my mommy.”

It hurt so much. It felt like a stab to my heart. Tears welled up in my eyes before I could stop them, so I turned away. I heard her scramble onto the bed, her fingernails scratching like little claws on the posts. When I looked back, she had her back pressed against the corner of the room, legs drawn up to her chest, rocking back and forth. Staring at me with those wild animal eyes.

“I love you, Annie,” I said with as much dignity as I could manage. “But sometimes I just don’t know how to deal with your behavior.”

She screamed. Just this one long, loud, echoing screech, like a siren. Her mouth was wide open, but her face was blank. I covered my ears, got out of the room and closed the door behind me.

I had to collect myself before I could go see Bill. He’s been so odd lately, I don’t want to worry him anymore.

I got a second plate of the macaroni and brought it to the bedroom. That’s where he spent all his time, lying in bed.

“Honey, I made dinner.”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even roll over to look. I picked up the plate from this morning, the food on it untouched, and put the new one down where he could reach it.

“Annie’s back. I found her in the park. She’s pitching a fit in her room already.”

He must’ve heard the screaming. I always tried to keep her quiet, told her that daddy needed rest, but she never listened. Sometimes I wondered if he could even hear her. He never got up to see what was wrong.

I knelt beside the bed and looked into his eyes. He stared back at me, not saying a word. He’d been like ever since the first time Annie ran away. They’d been alone together. Then she had run off, and he’d stopped talking. He lay down in bed and never got up again. Lost his job, lost so much weight. He hardly even looked like the man I’d married.

I kissed him on the forehead and left. As I closed the door behind me, I thought I saw him start to get up, but I guess I must have imagined it.

Annie kept on with that awful screaming for hours. I stayed in the living room, sitting on our big three-person couch alone. I turned up the TV as loud as I could, played music, turned on the blender, tried everything I could to drown out the awful screaming. It was like nails being driven into my ears, like spiders crawling up my neck, like ice water splashing on my legs.

Finally it stopped. I thought maybe she’d finally tuckered herself out, but then the scratching started. That was almost worse. It started out quick, rhythmic, but it got slower as time went on. Sometimes Annie would make a noise, like she was crying again. I started to worry that she might be hurting herself, but I couldn’t get that awful thing she had said to me or that wild look in her eyes out of my head. I just stayed in the living room and tried to sleep.

I don’t know how it got to be like this. I’ve thought about taking her to a doctor, but they always give her these strange looks. It’s gotten to where I don’t dare to go to the same doctor twice: I’m afraid they might be thinking of taking her away from me, of doing something awful to her.

I’ve thought about calling in a priest. I know that must sound crazy, but the way she gets sometimes, like she doesn’t even know me, it scares me so much. She’ll call out to people who aren’t there, shout names I don’t know like they’re real people. And there was that business with the kitchen knife. It wasn’t the first time she’s tried to hurt me. She smuggles rocks into the house and tries to hit me with them when my back is turned. When she gets really wild she’ll bite and claw at me. Some days I start to wonder if she’s really my little girl, or something else, wearing her face, haunting me.

After a long time the scratching stopped and everything got quiet. I sighed with relief. The house is so much nicer when it’s quiet.

I looked at the clock and could hardly believe how late it was. She must have finally fallen asleep. When I looked over at her door, I saw the light still on through the cracks. Quiet as I could, I tiptoed over. I would just peek in, turn off the light. Maybe give her a little kiss good night.

I opened the door just a crack, but that was all it took. She slammed through, knocked me to the floor, and scrambled away.

“Annie stop!” I shouted. She was going right to our bedroom, making so much noise I was sure it would wake Bill up.

She shoved through our door and I ran after. But inside she was just standing there, staring at the bed.

“Sweetheart, daddy’s sleeping,” I hissed.

She started screaming again, even louder than before. She pointed at Bill and screamed and screamed. I shushed her, tried to tell her he was sleeping.

But she wouldn’t stop. She screamed and screamed. The sound pierced through me, tore apart every nerve in my body. I covered my ears and scratched at my face and soon I was screaming too, just as loud as she was. I took her up in my arms and we screamed together. I hugged her as tight as I could, squeezed her to me, wishing I could do something, anything to make it stop. I held her so close I could feel her heartbeat, how soft and quiet it was, growing quieter and quieter.

She stopped screaming, there in my arms, and soon I stopped too. I sank to my knees, holding my little girl in my arms, stroking her hair.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. It was so dark in the bedroom.

I looked down at Annie, but it wasn’t Annie at all. I was holding one of my dolls.

I must have fallen asleep, holding her there, and she snuck away and put a doll in my arms instead. It was a funny doll, one I didn’t remember having. It had such lovely blonde hair.

I felt so silly, holding that doll like that for who knows how long. I got up and carried it to the closet where I keep the other dolls and laid it there. There were so many dolls, and they were all so big, I was starting to run out of room. But I couldn’t throw them out. They were so pretty, such lovely little dolls. They all looked different, but every single one reminded me of Annie.

I checked around the house, but she was gone. She must have been very upset, to run away twice in just two days. I got my coat on and got ready to go look for her again.

Before I left, I went back to the bedroom to check on Bill. Somehow all the noise hadn’t bothered him at all. I touched his forehead, but he didn’t seem any different. My fingers stuck a little bit, and there was some funny green stuff left on them afterward. I wiped it off on the bed and said goodbye.

It was such a lovely day outside. I took a deep breath of the fresh air. I love our house, but every once in a while I notice the worst smell in there.

Somewhere off in the distance, I heard the sound of children laughing. It was so nice to hear after all that awful noise last night. Maybe Annie thought so too. I followed the laughter.

Credit To – Gray

 

This seriously freaked me out

I hope it does the same to you

Luis