Seven Deadly Tales of Terror (5 page)

It grinned wickedly now.

A cold shiver went down Mary’s spine.

She looked at the store. Save for the clerk, the visible part of its interior was still empty.

The demon made a loud throat-clearing sound. “John is washing his hands.”

Mary looked at him, her voice quiet as she said, “Do it.”

The creature’s wicked grin broadened. “There
is
one other option.”

Mary groaned.

She should have known the creature’s mind games wouldn’t stop there. “And what would that be?”

“Instead of inducing an instantly fatal heart attack, I could engineer another kind of demise for him. Something that would give him the scare of his life before he dies. Before you automatically say no, you should know that John doesn’t just fantasize about your sister, he actually has fucked her. Many times.”

Mary’s hands curled into fists in her lap

She seethed inwardly, her face twitching. The information confirmed a nagging suspicion she’d tried hard to ignore for years. But she was aware of time passing and knew she couldn’t afford to brood. She let out a breath and looked at the demon.

“Do it.”

“Scare the bastard first?”

Another tightly released breath. “Yes.”

The creature laughed, sounding smug. “Excellent. Consider it done. Keep your eye on that clerk. He’s about to experience an unexplained psychotic episode.”

The demon vanished and the driver’s seat was again empty.

Mary’s gaze shifted back to the store. John had emerged from the bathroom and was approaching the counter. His face was very red. Evidently the frantic masturbation session had strained his heart. Mary felt contempt when she saw the long piece of dirty toilet paper clinging to his shoe.

John approached the counter, probably intending to buy some cigarettes.

The clerk took a gun out from under the counter, screamed something in a foreign language, took aim at John, and squeezed the trigger. John was too stunned to react. There was no time, anyway. The bullet hit his forehead dead-center and a spectacular rain of blood and brains erupted from the back of his head. As he fell dead to the floor, the clerk put the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger again. More blood and brains splashed against the window behind him before his corpse dropped down out of sight behind the counter.

Mary stared in disbelief for a long moment. A part of her thought this might still be some insane dream from which she would soon awake. But that didn’t happen. John stayed dead on the floor, an ever-widening pool of blood spreading out around his head.

Mary turned her head and glanced at the backseat.

Her children were still sleeping.

Her gaze went back to the store.

Then she smiled, dug her phone out of her purse, and called 911.

THE DOLL

The doll was on the dining room table in his two-bedroom apartment when Sam Thorne got home from his security guard job at the local mall that night, but its presence there did not immediately register. He was tired and distracted by stress related to his job. All he cared about was getting changed out of the goddamn security guard uniform, cracking open the first beer from his nightly six-pack of Old Style, and settling into his recliner for a night of mindless entertainment crashed out in front of the TV.

Sam walked right by the table on the way to his bedroom. He saw the doll. It was almost a direct look rather than a fleeting glimpse in his peripheral vision, but there were other objects on the table, familiar things, and their obscuring presence contributed to the delayed recognition. Among the other items were a basket in the center filled with white napkins, salt and pepper shakers, and an 18-inch-tall mini-statue of W.C. Fields. He’d inherited the statue from his grandfather. Sam didn’t care much about the old time comedian, but his grandfather had been a big fan so he held on to it for sentimental reasons. The doll, folded into a sitting position, had been wedged in between the legs of the statue.

After passing by the table, Sam shuffled bleary-eyed down the hallway to his bedroom, where he began the process of shucking off his uniform. His face was fixed in a grumpy frown as he tore at the buttons of the shirt, anxious to have the uncomfortable garment off his body. He’d gained considerable weight since starting the job six months ago, causing his pudgy flesh to strain against the fabric. A sigh of relief rolled out of him as he pulled off the shirt and tossed it aside. He’d put in a requisition for larger uniform shirts and slacks several weeks ago, but his bosses had yet to approve it, the penny-pinching bastards. It was just one of many aggravations that had him thinking about looking for some other form of gainful employment. Right now, though, he didn’t care much about that. He’d reached the end of a long week. All he wanted to do was get some drinks in him and unwind.

After changing into cotton gym shorts and an XXXL-sized Looney Tunes T-shirt, he walked out of his room and into the bathroom on the other side of the hallway. He pushed his shorts down to his ankles, sat down on the toilet seat, and selected an old issue of
Fortean Times
from the wicker basket on the floor next to the toilet. Midway through an article about a mysterious creature spotted in the woods near York, Pennsylvania, the image of the doll shifted from the foggy outskirts of his subconscious to the forefront of his brain.

The magazine slipped from his suddenly numb fingers to the floor.as his eyes opened wide and his mouth fell open. His throat felt constricted and he was unable to swallow for a long moment. The thudding of his heart in his chest felt more labored than usual. Sweat rose on his brow and formed in his armpits. His sphincter opened wide and some good-sized turds plopped loudly into the toilet, a sound that made him wince because he feared it would give away his location to the intruder in his apartment.

Granted, the person who’d put the doll on the table might not still be on the premises, but he couldn’t be certain about that. That someone with malicious intent had broken into his apartment and placed the doll there was not in doubt. Not only that, but it had been put where he was sure to see it, a deliberately provocative act. Until proven otherwise, he had to operate on the assumption that the culprit was still here.

At last, he was able to swallow and draw in a deep breath. His heart was still thudding, but not quite in that same scary, laborious way. After sitting there several more moments and listening very carefully for sounds of movement elsewhere in the apartment, he relaxed a little. The situation remained dangerous. He had no doubt his life was in imminent danger. However, he thought there was a decent chance the intruder had left the apartment and was lurking somewhere outside, perhaps waiting for him to show himself, which of course he would have to do at some point.

He couldn’t stay here.

Not now.

Not anymore.

But he couldn’t quite dismiss the possibility that the intruder was still in the apartment, perhaps lurking in the second bedroom. He used that room for storage and kept its door shut most of the time. He had not peeked inside it upon returning home tonight.
If
his intruder was still here, that room would be the likeliest hiding place.

Not bothering to wipe his ass, Sam lifted his bulk off the toilet seat and pulled up his gym shorts, taking care to do this as quietly as possible. He didn’t want to tip off anyone who might still be here that he was in motion again. He wouldn’t be able to manage that indefinitely, of course, but anything he could do to possibly gain even a little bit of an edge was worth trying.

After moving quietly across the bathroom floor in his bare feet, he put his ear to the closed door and listened for a few moments. Again, he detected no hints of movement, hushed voices, or other human activity. His Glock was in the top drawer of the nightstand by his bed. He could get to it within seconds if he could just work up the nerve to open this door and get moving. His right hand went to the doorknob and curled loosely around it, lingering there a few moments longer as he kept his ear to the door and continued to listen.

All he heard was the quiet hum of the air-conditioning.

He let out a breath and made up his mind. No matter what else happened here tonight, time was of the essence. He had to get moving and get out of here to have any hope of living to see the next day. After allowing himself one last moment to psyche himself up, he pulled the door open and raced across the hall into his bathroom. In the moment just before he reached his nightstand, he stumbled on a wrinkle in the threadbare old carpet and pitched forward. His forehead smacked the edge of the nightstand, opening a gash in his forehead.

Things went blurry for a long moment as he tumbled to the floor. When his head was clear again, there was blood in his eyes and his head was throbbing. He wiped the blood away and sat up slowly, wincing at the sharper ache this movement provoked. Remembering his predicament, his head snapped up as his gaze went to the open bedroom doorway.

No one had come into the room.

He relaxed a little, deciding the intruder almost certainly wasn’t still in the apartment. Otherwise he (or she) would surely have come running at the sound of his tumble, which had been quite dramatic and loud. Pushing his way through the pain, Sam got to his feet, pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand, and took out his Glock. He breathed a ragged sigh of relief upon seeing it. Until just then, the possibility that the intruder might have stolen it had not occurred to him. But it was here and now he was smiling. The predicament facing him remained dire, but a loaded gun in his hand evened the odds nicely.

Time to get down to business
, he thought.

An inspection of his bedroom revealed no one lurking under his bed or elsewhere. Not that he’d expected anything else, but the search had to be done for the sake of thoroughness. Next he went down the hall to the second bedroom. After listening at the closed door a moment and detecting no sounds of movement within, he opened the door and went inside.

The room was crowded with junk, but no one was inside it.

Sam then went to the window overlooking the parking lot outside the apartment building. Hardly anyone was moving about out there at this time of night. The one face he did see was familiar. It belonged to Lucy Austin, the good-looking woman who lived in the apartment directly beneath him. As he watched, Lucy got in her silver Sonata, backed out of her space, and drove away, probably heading out for a night of bar-hopping. She did that a lot. Sam knew, because he’d been keeping a close eye on her for a while.

Once Lucy was gone, he more closely scrutinized the other cars in the lot. He saw none that looked unfamiliar or suspicious. There were no dark-clad figures sitting slumped down in the seats, at least none he could discern. It was nighttime, though, and the illumination provided by the pole-mounted sodium lights wasn’t as strong as he might have hoped.

Regardless, he knew time was short. Whoever had been here would be back. He had to act now. To that end, he hurried back to his bedroom, dragged a large travel bag out of the closet, unzipped it, and set it down in the center of his bed, laying the Glock down next to it. He then began rapidly filling the bag with as many clothes and necessities as he could manage. Doing this included multiple trips back and forth across the hall to the bathroom and several more to the second bedroom, where his most treasured things were stored. There was so much more he wished to take with him, but he just wouldn’t be able to do it. It filled him with rage and a burning sense of loss. He wished he could get his hands around the neck of the person who’d put that doll on the table.

At last, he could fit no more items in the bag. It was stuffed to overflowing and he just managed to pull the zipper shut. By then he’d changed into more suitable clothes and was ready to go. He picked up the gun and shoved it into the waistband of his pants. He then grabbed the thick strap of the travel bag, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out to his living room.

Where he froze in his tracks.

They were waiting for him there, the men in the black ski masks. Upon closer inspection, one of the intruders was a slim woman with small breasts. The four intruders were dressed all in black. All appeared unarmed. The door behind them was standing wide open. It stayed that way only another moment, until another ski-mask-wearing intruder came in and shut the door. This fifth person was larger than the rest, bigger even than Sam. Like the others, he appeared unarmed.

Stupid assholes
.

Sam dropped the travel bag and aimed the gun at them. “Congratulations. You tracked me down. I hope you got some satisfaction from that, because you’re all about to fucking die.”

Sam squeezed the trigger multiple times.

Nothing happened.

None of the intruders made a sound. They just stared at him. Sam checked the Glock. The magazine was empty. The fuckers had unloaded his gun. He had some extra ammo in his travel bag, but he knew he’d never have time to get to it. Something shiny glinted in his peripheral vision.

His head turned toward the dining room table.

There were multiple sharp instruments there.

And more dolls.

All at once, he knew what they had in mind. And he couldn’t allow it to happen. It was a horrifying, ghastly notion. The thought of enduring it was more than he could bear. There was only one course of action left open to him. He lowered his head, grit his teeth, and ran right at the main group of intruders, hoping to bull his way through them.

For a fleeting moment, he thought he might actually make it out the door. He’d taken them by surprise. Two intruders got knocked to the floor as he ran into them. Another was staggered by a powerful roundhouse punch he delivered to the man’s chin. But there were just too many of them. Soon they recovered and overwhelmed him.

He was dragged kicking and screaming into the kitchen, where he was forced to lay flat on the floor. A rag was stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screaming. The woman knelt next to him and cut open his shirt with a scalpel. Sam struggled harder than ever, putting every bit of his not inconsiderable physical strength into the effort, but he was unable to budge them.