Things Don’t Always Go Bump In The Night

 by Mike Sherer

In the pitch black.

“Jim”

“Hmmm.”

“Jim. Wake up.”

“What?”

“I heard something.”

“Again?”

“Yes.”

“What this time?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

“Something?”

“A noise. Downstairs.”

“It’s nothing, Peg. Like always.”

“Nothing?” Squeaks from an old bed as Peg sits upright. “I hear a noise downstairs in the middle of the night that is loud enough to wake me from a sound sleep and you say it’s nothing.”

“You’re a light sleeper.”

“Good thing I am. Someone could steal the bed out from under you and you wouldn’t miss it until morning.”

A heavy sigh of semi-resignation. “What did it sound like?”

“I don’t know. I was sound asleep, then bang, it wakes me right up. It was loud.”

“So you think I should go down and check it out?”

“My God, Jim, it could have been someone breaking in.” The agitated woman nearly knocks over the bedside lamp turning it on. “Will you go downstairs and see?”

In the sudden pupil-piercing light a young couple in their twenties is seen in an old ornate four-poster bed. She is sitting up, stiffly erect, dark hair and feverish concern spilling out over a carefree tee shirt. While the just-roused man, bare-chested and bare-faced, pries himself into an upright position alongside her. He coughs, yawns, stretches. “You know this old house. You heard a window rattle or a door shake or the floor settle.”

“I might have heard someone break in a door or smash a window or walk across the floor. Will you please go see? I won’t be able to sleep until you do.”

Having exhausted his defenses, the husband flings back the warmth of his covers. His well-toned, sleep-stunned body clumsily staggers up from the softness of his quickly-fading dreams. In stylish boxers he sets off into the night.

Peg, sitting up against the headboard nervously twisting the sheet bunched in her lap, attentively follows her husband’s route. As he stomps out of the bedroom he flips on the hallway light. She listens to the heavy tread of his bare feet on the wincing hardwood of the upstairs hallway. The bruised stairs creak at his lumbering descent and the downstairs foyer light comes on. The floor here also creaks.

It is an old house, with an impressive vocabulary. They had bought the two-story brownstone in the city a year ago. Their existence as apartment dwellers lasted through only one lease, the first year of their marriage. They had both been anxious for their own place. Already they have done much to it, yet there was much to be done. Jim was good with his hands, and she was acquiring new skills rapidly. But there was only so much time, since they both were employed, and only so much money. So they worked on their house as the time and money became available. Besides, there was no rush, they had an entire marriage during which to complete the job.

Peg hears Jim rattle the front door to assure himself that it is locked. He squeaks from the foyer on into the living room. From here she can no longer follow his late night round through their house, he is moving too far away. She can only imagine his progress. From the living room he will proceed into the dining room, the kitchen, the family room to check the back door, then on down to the basement. Then will come the inevitable “I told you so” as he returns to bed and grumpily curls back into his sleep.

Their old house creaks, squeaks, rattles, groans, screeches, patters, thumps, knocks, whistles, and generates other uncopyrighted noises for which there are no human labels. A century of battling gravity and the elements have worn out the materials, severely tested the architect’s design. She knows this. Yet she has so often heard ghosts chuckling in the shadows behind her, demons in otherwise empty rooms whispering plots to overwhelm her soul, maniacs lurking in dark crooked corners with torturous instruments in hand. Night is the worst. How many times had she roused her husband from a solid sleep to dispatch him into the bowels of the house? How many times had he returned to bed with ridicule on his lips? Still, she knows one time there will be something, something other than wood, plaster and glass echoing in the dark.

Too long. Peg glances at the clock. It is taking too long. Jim should be returning. She quickly returns her anxious gaze to the ominous hushed void just beyond the open bedroom doorway. He could have walked around the block by now. “Jim!” Not a sound. “Jim!!” Old, old house, absolutely quiet. “Jim!!!” This house which, for the year she had lived in it, had always spoken, had always conversed with her, was now mute. For the first time. Ever. “Jim!!! Where are you?!!!” From neither the old house nor the young husband comes a response. Only, and nothing but, silence.

“Jim!!!!”

◊ ◊ ◊

Mike Sherer
Mike Sherer wrote a screenplay that was made into a movie under the title ‘Hamal_18’, released direct to DVD in 2004. It is listed in the IMDb. Sherer has a blog, ‘flanging’, (mikesherer.wordpress.com) and a novel, ‘A Cold Dish’ he is trying to get published or secure agent representation for. He is currently writing short stories.

Read More

Conjugal Visits

by Roy Dorman

Jebidiah Stone, the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church caretaker, is drinking from a pint bottle of rotgut liquor while making his rounds in the church’s cemetery. He sighs wearily when he notices a new gravesite has been disturbed yet again. It’s the grave of a woman thought to have murdered her husband with rat poison.

Abigail Benson has been buried in an unmarked grave, the plot fully 20-30 feet away from the others in the rural village’s only cemetery, and nowhere near her husband, Nathan. This had been Nathan’s family’s choice; Abigail had no family who could be located.

Two days after the not guilty verdict, the local busybodies had been vindicated; Abigail had taken her own life with rat poison.

Old Jeb finds her where he knew he would, lying half way between her site and her husband’s.

Forgot to put her back when you were done with her, didn’t ya, Jeb.

Jeb ignored the voice. “Damn, that’s the third time this week,” he said, walking back to the cemetery’s storage shed to get his shovel and the wheelbarrow he’s been using to transport Abigail back to her final resting place.

The first time it had happened, Jeb puzzled as to how Abigail had been able to escape from her coffin. But he had only puzzled over it for a bit before he had become frightened by what her resurrection might mean. He’s now thinking maybe he should tell the minister about this sometime when he doesn’t have whiskey on his breath.

Don’t tell anybody anything, Jeb. You’ll only get yourself into a world of trouble.

Jeb and Abigail had been sweethearts during the two or three years they had gone to high school together, but then Nathan had won her over with his promises of a prosperous farm with a newly built house.

That was almost forty years ago and there never had been a prosperous farm or a new house. Nathan had worked his whole life doing odd jobs in and around the village and he and Abigail had lived with his pisspot father in a ramshackle shotgun house down by the river.

The couple had never had any children. Nathan blamed Abigail for that, but most in the village thought it was for the best there hadn’t been any.

Jeb, now pushing the wheelbarrow and shovel to Nathan’s gravesite, was struck by an idea.  He had always loved Abigail from afar and he would do something for her now out of that love.

You should keep her for yourself, Jeb. Nathan stole her, pure and simple. She should have been yours.

Sometimes Jeb listened to the voice, sometimes even talked to it, but most often he ignored it. He didn’t like what hearing voices implied. Leaving the wheelbarrow by Nathan’s grave, he trudged with his shovel to Abigail’s site. He closed her coffin, shovelled the dirt back where it belonged, and patted it down.

Jeb didn’t bury folks very deep. He’d been burying Mount Vernon’s dead for years, but the stony soil was difficult digging and most of Mount Vernon’s parishioners looked the other way rather than criticize Jeb for doing a job nobody else wanted.

Ignoring the voice, he dug down to Nathan’s coffin, opened it, and lay Abigail in a loving embrace on top of him. He closed the coffin and shovelled the dirt back into the hole. At least he thought he did.

* * *

Later that evening in the little two-room shack the parish provided, Jeb was smoking his pipe after eating a frugal supper. He was just opening a new bottle of whiskey when he thought he heard a scratching noise on his door. His mind had been playing tricks on him lately and he had been hearing that voice for some time now too. He waited to see if the voice in his head would tell him what to do.

“It’s her, Jeb; open the door. She decided she really didn’t want to be with Nathan; she wants to be with you.

Jeb knew what he would see. It was like watching a movie for the second time. He saw himself opening the door and finding Abigail stretched out on his stoop – just like he had left her there that afternoon.

He picked Abigail up and carried her into his bedroom. Anna Gibson, the storekeeper’s wife who had died last summer, lay on Jeb’s bed, hands crossed on her chest. Jeb had also been sweet on Anna in his younger days. Her husband, Jonathan, had died almost ten years ago. He was pretty much mummified and sat in a straight-backed chair in the corner of the room. Jonathan was the only man in town who had ever treated Jeb with anything like respect and Jeb now enjoyed talking to him sometimes when he got lonely.

After digging Jonathan up and bringing him home, it had taken Jeb the better part of a day to get the ramrod straight corpse into a sitting position, but since then Jonathan had been comfortable in his chair. The bed was small, Jeb had been sleeping on the floor, and he decided to leave Anna where she was and have Abigail sleep with him.

“I know that I had to poison Nathan to have a chance to get Abigail, but why did I have to poison her?” Jeb asked the ceiling.

 It was the only way, Jeb. Once finally free of one drunken handyman, do you think she would have agreed to come and live out her days with another?

Jeb shook his head as if trying to clear it. He looked around the bedroom at Anna on the bed, Jonathan in his chair, and Abigail on the floor in front of him.

“How did it all come to this,” he said, gesturing at the bodies, but again directing the question to the ceiling.”

I use you, Jeb; you’re my tool. I use you to provide me with a little entertainment. I get awfully bored sometimes.

Pounding on his front door caused Jeb to turn from the bedroom to the front room. The sound wasn’t of someone knocking, but rather three dull thuds that were repeated every ten seconds or so.

That would be Nathan, Jeb; he’s come to visit his Abigail. I think you should let him in before he draws the attention of a passerby. Should be an interesting evening, don’t you think?

Oh, yes, you should know that old Mrs. Miller is going to die tonight, a heart attack I think it will be, and that means there will be a funeral in a couple of days. You should get yourself up early and to the cemetery tomorrow morning to see that the grounds are in order. There’s been a lot of activity recently.

◊ ◊ ◊

Roy Dorman
Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for over 60 years.  At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now a voracious writer.  He has had flash fiction and poetry published recently in One Sentence Poems, Cease Cows, Gravel, Theme of Absence, Flash Fiction Press, The Creativity Webzine, Birds Piled Loosely, Black Petals, Mulberry Fork Review, Shotgun Honey, Near To The Knuckle, Cheapjack Pulp, and Yellow Mama.

Read More

Wartime Jewels

by Hermine Robinson

The war was not terror to Marta, it was just life. Her family spent their days foraging in bombed out buildings for firewood and food. There was never enough of either. At night, Marta slept in extra layers of clothes to keep warm, and when the sirens blared, the family had only a few minutes to scramble into the cellar before the bombers arrived.

Papa did the headcount. There was himself and Mama, Marta and her little brothers, Marc and Pieter, her Tante Truus, who was Mama’s sister and Marta’s older cousin, Willem. Her father also counted Herr Rosenfeld, the man who spent long days hidden behind a wall in the attic. No one spoke of Herr Rosenfeld. It was a time of many secrets.

Secrets were not the only thing kept close. Everyone in the cellar had important items sewn into the lining of their clothes. Marta kept her treasure, a small pouch of jewels, pinned into her skirt in the same way Mama pinned a packet of family photos close to her heart. Papa never went anywhere without his ‘safe-travel’ document (forged, but convincing) that had saved his life when the Germans let him pass. Marta’s uncle had not been so fortunate. Soldiers took Oom Jan away for being complicit with the resistance. Papa was complicit too, but very, very careful and so far, very lucky.

Once the bombing stopped and the ‘all clear’ was signalled, the adults (except Herr Rosenfeld) went out to scavenge the bomb sites or wait in food lines. It was Marta’s job to tend to her younger brothers. She was only nine, so Papa gave her careful instructions on what to do while he and Mama were gone. Stay inside, stay together and hide if the enemy comes. Say nothing if you are caught. Marta did her best to follow the rules, but the boys grew restless and so did she. When it became impossible to stay cooped up, Marta and her brothers would sneak away to play in the shell of a nearby stone building. Mama and Papa had not expressly forbidden them to play in the rubble but the children kept it secret, like so many things.

Marc and Pieter built a stone fort and drove small wooden cars over the patterns in the marble floor. Marta sifted through stone dust and searched for more red, blue and green gems to add to her collection. The pickings were good and Marta hummed softly to herself as she worked, cleaning her bits of treasure with a misty breath and a quick polish. She held them up to the light and they sparkled with the deep colours of ruby, emerald and sapphire.

“What have you got there?”

The voice startled Marta, but she managed to sweep a handful of stone dust over her pouch full of jewels before looking up at her cousin, Willem. “Nothing,” she said.

Willem grabbed Marta by the arm and yanked her up. “Liar!” he said. “Tell me what you found.”

Marta did not like her cousin. He was a greasy, smelly teenaged boy with peach fuzz on his upper lip. She squirmed to break free but made the mistake of looking down at her pile of treasure.

Willem followed her gaze. “Aha. I knew it.” He snatched up the pouch before Marta could stop him and he tore it apart. He dumped a kaleidoscope of colours into his palm. Marta grabbed for them, but Willem pushed her to the ground. All she could do was watch as her cousin ran his fingers over the jagged green and blue edges, and held a large red shard up to the light. He examined a couple more pieces before looking down at Marta with disgust. “Stupid girl, it’s just stained glass from the windows.”

“I don’t care. Give it back. It’s mine.”

“It is not yours, it belongs to the church.” Willem dropped the handful of glass to the floor and crushed it to dust with the heel of his boot. “It is a sacrilege to steal from the church.”

Marta wondered why Willem cared about the glass. This was not their church, and in any case, her cousin had denied God after the Germans took his father. But Marta remembered Papa’s instructions; say nothing if you are caught, so she stared at the older boy, silent yet defiant. Willem looked away first, feigning interest in what Marta’s little brothers were doing. He strode over to their stone fort and kicked it down. “Sacrilege,” he said and stalked away, leaving Marc and Pieter crying in his wake.

Marta wiped their tears with the hem of her skirt. “Don’t cry. Remember what Papa told you in the cellar. We are stronger than the enemy.”

Pieter held up his wooden block with wheels painted on the side. “I still have my Jeep.”

“Me too,” echoed Marc.

Marta examined her pouch and knew she could sew it back together. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glint of red and picked it up. The best ruby yet. She showed it to the boys and said, “See, the enemy hasn’t won. We will rebuild tomorrow.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Hermine Robinson
Hermine Robinson lives in Alberta, Canada where winters are long and inspiration is plentiful. She loves all things ‘short fiction’ and refuses to be the place where perfectly good characters and their stories come to die. In 2012 she went from scribbling to submitting, and since then her fiction has appeared in numerous print and on-line publications including: Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Fabula Argentea and FreeFall Magazine. She is married with 2 children, and most people know her by the nickname Minkee.

Read More

Nice Night for a Splash

by Shannon Lawrence

The sky darkened as Belinda pulled up to the quarry, slipping her beater of a Honda into the nearest spot. Only one other car sat in the lot, close to the entrance. The silver BMW gleamed in the last rays of the setting sun, and she took a moment to enjoy its beauty.

She pulled a screwdriver from under the Honda’s passenger seat, removed her license plates (not hers to begin with), and switched them for those on the BMW.

Finished, Belinda straightened her dress, fixed her crimson lipstick in the rearview mirror, and brushed her hair back with shaking fingers. She took a deep breath and grabbed the flashlight, making sure it had enough juice before sliding out of her car and locking it.

Steep steps were cut directly into the stone face of the quarry. There was no hand rail. She turned on the flashlight and moved down the steps, careful to feel each one before placing her foot. At the bottom, she took a minute to compose herself, heart pounding from the descent and the velvet darkness that pressed against her. Had she penetrated so far into the earth that light could no longer reach her? She breathed in the mineral-laden smell of the quarry, willing her heart to calm before proceeding.

She turned the flashlight off for a moment and listened, hoping the absence of vision would stimulate her sense of hearing. No sounds, other than her own. No light. Where was he?

There, a muffled sound to her right. She turned the flashlight back on and skirted the lip that led deeper still. The light reflected off the inky water moving far below, winking up at her as if they shared a joke.

Another sound. This time a shuffle.

“My love?” she called.

“Bel?”

“By the steps!”

Footsteps headed in her direction with a distinctive grinding of stones beneath boots. When he stepped into her light, she turned it off, set it down. Her spine itched as his hand trailed along it, her flesh trying to escape the press of his fingers. She slid her hands inside his jacket, fingers trailing through the wiry hair on his arms as she pushed the coat off him and onto the ground. His softness repulsed her.

“It’s creepy here, kinda’ kinky.” His breath brushed against her face, laden with the odor of meat and onions. “I’m glad you suggested meeting here, Bel.” His mouth sought hers, but she pulled away from him, hands pressed to his chest.

“I thought it would make a nice place for a grave,” she said.

“What?”

Her push sent him over the lip with a surprised yelp. The scream that followed caused her flesh to rise in goosebumps, the hairs to stand on end. A splash drowned the scream.

Then there was silence.

Finally free, she picked up his jacket, heavy with his keys and wallet. She ascended the steps, collected her things from the Honda, and drove away in her shiny new BMW.

◊ ◊ ◊

Shannon Lawrence
A fan of all things fantastical and frightening, Shannon Lawrence writes primarily horror and fantasy. Her stories can be found in anthologies and magazines, including Under the Bed, Devolution Z, and The Deep Dark Woods. When she’s not writing, she’s hiking through the wilds of Colorado and photographing her magnificent surroundings, where, coincidentally, there’s always a place to hide a body or birth a monster. Find her at thewarriormuse.com.

Read More

At a Subtly Different Frequency

by Michelle Ann King

If there’s one thing Maggie knows, it’s that something has always been wrong with her life. She’s the wrong shape for it, somehow; she doesn’t fit.

At first, she assumes she must be adopted, despite her parents’ protestations, because she clearly doesn’t belong here, in this place with these people. But she can’t imagine any other kind of place, or any other kind of people, that would suit her any better. Her friends’ families are equally wrong, as are all the ones she sees on TV or reads about in books and newspapers. She doesn’t feel as if she’s been kidnapped, or orphaned, or tragically lost. She doesn’t feel as if she might be a secret princess.

No, the only sensible explanation is that she’s not human. She’s a changeling, an alien, a denizen of an alternate dimension. She might look the same, but every atom in her body resonates at a subtly different frequency. Not enough to give her away to anyone else, but enough for Maggie herself to recognise that she doesn’t belong here.

She keeps a bag packed at all times, thinking it won’t be long before her purpose, her mission, is revealed. But the Earth years go by and no portal opens, no spaceship lands, no instructions are communicated. She simply gets older.

She adapts, after a fashion; takes exams, applies for jobs, enters relationships, and does her best to mourn when the beings who raised her come to the end of their physical existence. She travels the world and documents her experiences, in case data collection is her true function. She pursues a career in politics, in case she’s a sleeper agent and needs to be in a position of power when the invasion begins. She even tries to have fun, in case she’s a soldier on an extended period of shore leave.

When her human body enters its own final degeneration, she reviews her efforts and comes to the conclusion that, given her limited knowledge of the operational parameters, she’s done the best she could.

She smiles, closes her eyes, and waits to see what happens next.

Michelle Ann King
Michelle Ann King writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror from her kitchen table in Essex, England. She loves zombies, Las Vegas, and good Scotch whisky — not necessarily in that order — and her favourite authoris Stephen King (sadly, no relation). Her short story collection Transient Tales is available in ebook and paperback now, and she is currently at work on a paranormal crime novel. Find more details at www.transientcactus.co.uk

Read More

The Seed

by Chaitali Gawade

Wishes are live beings. They dance on your tongue, at the back of your throat, wings frantically beating against the walls—until the walls bleed. There’s no choice but to let them have a voice, to let them go. Caged, locked in, they grow bigger until you are just a seed from which it feeds.

I had one that refused to be silenced and kept burning inside of me. When the burning became too hot to bear, the fire leapt out, outside of me. It was wild, feeding on breaths, carving its own path. The beast grew wild. That’s how this wish ended up tying me up in circles of fire and rain. Hot and cool, in its showers. I wished for a life breathing inside of me. A heartbeat within a heartbeat. Something to do with the continuity of my bloodline, the assurance of me having carved a scar on this sphere of mud.

I tried to be happy. I really did. But sometimes I could not help myself, help my emotions. I was overcome with jealousy when you were granted this gift, which you hadn’t even wished for. You weren’t grateful for it. In fact it was the wrong time to be pregnant for you. And I, who wished with all my heart for a baby, remained barren. A land without seed.

You are not ready you said, but still you had some decency and were going to give it a go. I watched your belly grow over the months and with each new swell, I ached. With each expansion of your waist, my envy grew. It came to a point where I was afraid to get outside of my door, fearing to meet you in the corridors. I was just a hot ball of green, waiting to explode. I didn’t want to know all those intimate details, the growth and the weight and the heartbeats.

The first month you came to me, laughed and said, it is the size of a pomegranate seed. It didn’t affect you that much. The third month it was the size of the seed of a mango. In spite of yourself, you were amazed. You revelled in the joy of it. The growing size was making it more real to you and more and more uncomfortable for me. The first kick that you felt, I felt it too. Deep in my womb. And I resented it, each moment that you glowed.

It was meant to be mine. Why should you have this gift and not me, when I was more deserving? When I was the better choice of the two? You never had a maternal bone in your body.

Oh, you would not be cruel, but you would forget to be kind. Then you were just amazed at the newness of it. That’s all. You swore and cursed every morning when food refused to stay in your stomach. Cursing your baby’s very existence. You wished to God you had never been pregnant. And God, how I wished it too. Why couldn’t you just stop being pregnant and then I could go on pretending. I wouldn’t have to face my failure every day, two doors down.

We both got our wishes and neither of us, are able to cope with the actual reality of it. The baby is no longer. I wished it out of existence.

You are guilty, for not being happy with its existence from the moment of its discovery. But still it was a kind of slow loving. And it had just started to blaze away. Now, the fire is no longer there and you have no choice but to face the cold. We faced each other in the corridors last morning, and the breath hitched in my throat.

You were afraid to meet my eyes and I was afraid you would see the murder of your baby in mine.

The only thing that lasts is that our wishes were granted, no matter how wrong they were and now there is no choice but to live with it. Way before your birthday or mine, our wishes were granted, somehow pushing a life out of being. Is this how it feels, when wishes come back to dance their gleeful dance in you, when they are near to completion. Is this how it should feel? A kite frantically beating, against the force of the winds even as holes are ripped in its body? This is how wishes are live beings with a mind of their own. There is no taking back those dancing beings once you have wished them into existence.

◊ ◊ ◊

Chaitali Gawade
Chaitali Gawade is a freelance writer living in Pune. Her writerly musings are fuelled by tea and coffee. Her work has been published by Twenty20 Journal, Daily Love, Postcard Shots, “Duckbill Anthology” and Vagabondage Press, among others. Check out her writerly musings at http://chaitaligawade.com/

Read More