13 Tales To Give You Night Terrors (7 page)

The knife
pierced Randy’s chest. Again and again, it sliced into him. He
screamed through a bloody cough as the blade tore at his flesh. He
felt the clown’s tears splashing on his face and its child-like
sobs wracking its immense frame.

Randy squeezed
his eyes shut, ready to die, and when he opened them, the clown was
gone. For a moment, the fear faded and he tried to breathe. The
breaths came raggedly, though, and before long he noticed the
bloody knife he held in his hand. The clown tears he’d felt had not
been tears at all, but rather, the splattering of Randy’s blood;
the sobs he’d heard had been his own.

As Randy
slowly faded away, the sound of circus music danced past his ears
and he realized what he’d always known. He and the clown were one
and the same. As the life begin to drain from him, he knew he’d
finally rid himself of that mocking stare. Randy closed his eyes,
and as the darkness began to eat away at his dying brain, he smiled
back at the clown that never was.

5. BACK
HOME

Jonathan Hatfull,
England

I
saw her as I closed up the video store. She stood in the
pouring rain, about six feet from the bus stop, wearing a sheer
white dress. Her long brown hair was soaked flat against her scalp
and she was shivering.

“
Excuse me,” I asked. “Are
you alright?”

She turned to face me. I didn’t think
she had any idea where she was.

“
Do you know the way to the
sea?” she asked.

I took a step closer, putting my hand
in my pocket for my phone.

“
The sea? Miss, you’re…this
is Nottingham. We’re a long way from the sea.”

“
They said they’d take me
to look at the water,” she told me urgently. “They said that it
looked different at night.”

I took another step closer and took my
hand back out of my pocket.

“
Did they take you there?”
I asked her, knowing the answer. She nodded, drops of water falling
from the tangles in her hair.

“
I must have fallen…or
fallen asleep…” she turned away from me to look up the road towards
town. “The water was very dark,” she finished, almost
apologetically.

“
Right, well…best of luck
finding it.” I pulled my hood up and turned to head for home when
she said my name.

“
I’ve got a message for
you, William.” When I turned back to face her she was closer. I
could smell sea water. If she’d been breathing I would have felt it
on my face. “They want you to come home. Immediately.”

“
I’m not interested,” I
muttered, but she held up her hand.

“
They said… They said ‘Tell
him it’s about Laura.’ They said that would get your
attention.”

It did. I would have asked what it had
to do with my sister, but the dripping woman was gone, and I was
standing in the rain by myself.

The first time I saw a ghost was in
that home she was talking about. My family moved to the countryside
after my parents came into some money. Both the new home and the
new money were supposed to make them happy. It didn’t work, but
there were a few weeks during which they pretended. It wasn’t
exactly a mansion, a two-storey, three-bedroom place, but my mum
still managed to find places to hide away while my dad continued
his journey into depression that we later found out had started
years before. Laura found him in the bathtub one evening near
Christmas, the water dark red and his wrists wide open.

If you’re thinking that the first
ghost I saw was my dad, you’d be wrong. I know, it seems like an
obvious one, but an old woman had come to sit at the foot of my bed
about two weeks before the big event. Her face was almost
impossibly wrinkled, she wore a dark green woollen jumper and she
had her grey hair tied back savagely. When I opened my eyes it
looked like she was studying me, hand on her chin, wondering what
this strange specimen was. I shrank under the covers, and as I
pulled the duvet over my head I caught a glimpse of her
grinning.

The apparitions grew increasingly
frequent after Dad died. I didn’t tell my mum, obviously, I just
tried to get on with it as best I could. Everyone assumed that my
sleeplessness and erratic behaviour was me struggling to cope with
what had happened, a hypothesis that was helped by Laura’s lashing
out at everyone and everything around her, and Mum’s sudden
free-fall into full-blown alcoholism. I came to realise that the
ghosts weren’t so bad. They were never aggressive. That curiosity
the old woman had showed turned out to be a common trait. A young
boy in a school uniform, a man in dark blue overalls, a woman in
her nightgown, they all seemed to be stopping by to check me out.
By the time I was fifteen and Laura was eighteen, I had learned to
cope, and she was gone.

That’s when the house started acting
up. One night, after I’d performed the nightly routine of making
sure Mum didn’t pass out with a lit cigarette, I stepped into the
garden for a smoke myself. The garden was huge but never used. No
one ever went further than the patio. As I looked up from lighting
my cigarette, a man stood in front of me. He was dressed in a dark
grey suit. His grey hair was flattened onto his scalp. He was
staring right at me.

“
Are you listening to me?”
he asked. From his tone, it was clear there was only one answer,
but I was frozen stiff. I’d never heard one speak before.
Occasional wailing, or low moaning, but actual speech, speech that
was directed at me…that was different. So I stood dumb. “Don’t make
me repeat myself,” he told me.

I nodded. That was all I could
do.

“
We’ve been watching you
for a while now,” he said. “You’ve seen us, and you know we’ve been
watching you. You’ve had plenty of time here. It’s time for you to
do what you’re told.”

“
I’m sorry,” I said. “I
don’t understand.”

“
All this…quiet doesn’t
help us, you see?” he asked. “Your father doing what he did? That
was good. That helped. Your sister’s rage? Very good. Now, what
have we got? Your mother drinking herself to a slow death and your
teenage horseshit. It’s not enough. So we need you to do what we
tell you to do.”

I remember suddenly realising I had a
lit cigarette in my hand, and looking down to see if it had gone
out.

“
Look at me!” he shouted,
and I felt my teeth rattle with the force of it. “Are you going to
do what you’re told?”

“
What do you want?” I
asked.

“
Laura. We want her back.
Bring her back to us.” He smiled, his lips rolling back to reveal a
row of nicotine-yellowed teeth. “She brings a bit of life to the
old place.” His laugh was more of a cough.

“
Why would I do that?” I
asked. The mention of my sister’s name had given me a bit of nerve
or anger. “She’s gone. Why would I bring her back?”

The lips returned and the smile
disappeared.

“
Because if you don’t,
we’ll find a way to punish you for it,” he said. “I can think of a
good one. It wouldn’t be difficult.”

I’d watched Laura spiral for years. I
had no idea whether she was happy or not wherever she was, but
wherever she had gone, she’d gone by choice. Love wasn’t something
that was coherently expressed in our family, but I knew that I
cared more about my sister than anyone else. As I felt the
combativeness build, I realised that I had no idea what this figure
was capable of. As far as I knew, his powers didn’t stretch beyond
speech and intimidation.

“
No.”

He nodded and closed his eyes. Behind
him, shadows began to appear. In the course of a few seconds, every
figure I had seen in that house stood behind him, their backs
straight, their eyes closed. When he opened his eyes, so did they.
He was grinning again, and so were they. Rows of white eyes and
white teeth in the darkness.

“
Final answer?” he asked. I
nodded. “Right. You stubbed your mum’s fag out, didn’t you?” I
nodded, less sure of myself this time. “No, son. You
didn’t.”

By the time I got to my mother’s room,
it was engulfed in flames. I tried to get to her, I really did. But
I wasn’t supposed to.

I went to stay with my godmother, a
nice, well-meaning woman who was busy enough to never push me too
hard on anything. The apparitions I saw there were nothing like the
ones at the old house. They were mostly lost or confused and didn’t
have time for anyone’s problems except their own. I did my best to
move on, but I never forgot.

I heard from Laura every now and then,
and we met up for a pint if we were ever in the same city.
Happiness was something that seemed to always be a few steps away
from her. If I saw her in person she did her best to act natural,
to ask the right questions, and to answer mine in vague enough
terms that I didn’t really learn anything. I heard that she’d tried
to go the same way as Dad once or twice, but whenever I saw her she
stressed that she was moving on, doing better, getting better. When
she moved to London, I stayed in Nottingham. I was doing
OK.

So getting into my car and driving
into the countryside was something that I had to talk myself into.
I had no desire to go back to the old place. Laura, though. Laura
meant that I didn’t have a choice. It looked pretty much the same.
We’d paid to have the fire damage fixed out of some vague notion
that we might resell it, but something always came up, or we
actively avoided it.

I was standing outside the front door
when my phone rang. It was Laura’s number, but she wasn’t the one
on the other end of the line.

“
Is this William
Fitzgerald?” asked a woman whose voice I didn’t recognise. There
was a slight pause after I confirmed, then an audible deep breath.
“I’m calling from the hospital in Lewisham, it’s about your sister
Laura. I’m afraid that she’s hurt herself.”

“
How bad is it?”

“
Mr Fitzgerald, you should
really try and get here as soon as possible. I don’t think she’s
going to be here very long.”

“
I’m leaving now,” I told
her, and hung up before she could answer. I tried not to think too
hard about the lie I’d just told and went inside.

They didn’t put on a show. The
familiar faces stood along both sides of the corridor, waiting for
me to walk past, but they didn’t give any sign of seeing me. They
just stood there. I moved quickly past them and into the kitchen.
There he was, standing by the oven. The man in the suit was nearly
translucent; he had become wispy around the edges. Dissipating or
not, he managed to grin at me.

“
What do you want?” I
asked. He pointed up the stairs and was gone. I went cautiously. I
took the steps one at a time. The place still smelled of smoke. I’d
been back here during the day, but at night, everything was
different. There was my old bedroom. There was my mother’s room,
where she’d… And there was the bathroom, where the light was
on.

Laura lay in the bath. Her eyes were
open. Her mouth was open. The water was red.

“
He said it’s easy,” she
said, turning to face me. “He said it’s so easy anyone can do
it.”

My phone rang. It didn’t stop ringing.
I sat with my sister for a while. I tried to take her hand once,
even though I knew I couldn’t. All I touched was dusty old
porcelain. I told her I loved her. If she heard it, she didn’t let
on. Then I went back to my car, fetched the can of petrol, and
finished the job that they’d started years ago.

The fire could be seen for
miles.

I’m sure Laura’s still around
somewhere. I just hope she’s not with them.

6.
WAITING FOR THE WOLF

Troy H. Gardner, United
States

HE’S
coming for me.

I locked the front door—deadbolted—but
it’s no comfort. How much safety can a deadbolt really guarantee?
The lights are on in every room of my fourth floor apartment,
matching the firefly sprinkling of every other home and business in
the city at night. I’m sitting at the Formica table in the kitchen
with my back to the wall, scanning the two doorways. My right
hand’s wrapped around the knife so hard it’s practically fused to
my flesh.

For the first time ever, I’m thankful
my Brooklyn apartment is so small. Less space to worry about. I
grew up in a two-story farmhouse in Idaho with stairs and a
backyard and privacy. That house would have been hell to safeguard
but I can manage the apartment.

He’s not going to get the jump on me
like he did the others.

Lights from the street flash into the
kitchen, casting long shadows my way. As they recede, I relax my
grip on the knife.

Any minute now.

A man and woman talk in hushed tones
on the other side of the kitchen wall. It’s just the neighbor’s TV.
Before I moved to the city, any sounds I heard from the TV came
from my parents’ viewing habits—westerns and political talk shows.
The widow is different. She loves reality shows and sitcoms. I
suddenly envy the amnesiac shut-in. The bag boy delivers her food.
She’s never watched a friend die. She never waits for death to
burst through her doors.