Uneasy Reading: 4 Horror Shorts (2 page)

Once he got home, Cassie started giving him
instructions on the best way to haul the unconscious man's body
from the car… as if she'd done it a thousand times. Martin
listened, although he thought it would’ve been a lot easier if
she'd been able to help. She was dead, so he couldn't gripe too
much.

"Take him to the shed," Cassie said. "That's
where it happened. That's where they did it." She leaned down to
get a better look at the cop. Martin noted that the rain didn't
touch her at all. It didn't pass through her as he assumed it
would. It seemed to avoid her somehow, as though it couldn’t or
didn’t want to be near her.

"I know," Martin said. He slipped in the mud
twice as he dragged Bertram's unconscious form through the rain.
"That's where I'm trying to go."

It took some time, but he was able to get
Bertram into the old shack and tied up properly. When he was
finished, he leaned against the door before stepping back out into
the rain.

"You did well," she said. "The next one will
be easier."

"Yeah, that's why I chose the big one first.
I figure that the other one isn't going to be much trouble."

Bertram groaned from the corner. He was
waking up.

"The hell… where is this?"

"This is your grave," Martin said. "Well,
actually, that's a lie. I dug your grave before it started raining.
I suppose this is just the place you're going to die. I'm surprised
you don't recognize it."

"Who were you talking with?" Bertram
asked.

"Not yet," Cassie whispered to Martin.

"I was speaking with Jiminy Cricket," Martin
said.

"You're fucking crazy," Bertram said.

"Sure," Martin said. What's so crazy about
taking instructions from your sister's ghost? It wasn't as if he
were the Son of Sam listening to a dog. At least the voices in
Martin's head came from a person, even if she was long dead. It all
seemed nice and normal now.

"People are going to be looking for me,"
Bertram said.

From the sound in the man's voice, Martin
knew that was a lie. No one cared for Bertram and no one would miss
the deputy until his next shift, which wouldn't be for another two
days according to the work schedule Martin found pinned to a
corkboard in Bertram's kitchen. By then Bertram would be in the
ground.

6.

Dead Cassie had come calling on Martin three
days earlier, and as strange as it was to see his dead sister, he
couldn’t say that he was entirely shocked.

He'd just gotten off work and returned home
to his empty apartment, where he was considering the pros and cons
of cereal or microwave lasagna for dinner. She had been on his
mind. She was always on his mind. Cassie was more than a sister;
she was his protector and the one who always believed in him. She
never shunned him because he was younger or because of his
tendencies. And then she had vanished. Everyone said she must've
run away. Martin knew better.

Something horrible had happened to her. His
father was part of it no doubt, but no one would believe the words
of a child over one of the town's good ole boys. His mother didn't
say anything. She died a year later from an overdose, leaving
Martin alone with his father. Martin could only take it for a few
years before he, too, did what everyone claimed his sister had
done. He left. He tried to make his way in the world as best he
could. It was hard, but he was free and he was never going to go
back.

He sat at his kitchen table, a bowl of
Fruity Pebbles sitting before him, when the room got cold and his
sister showed up. She sat across from him, smiling and looking just
like he remembered. He was sure he'd gone insane, and that wasn't
an entirely uncomfortable thought.

"Hey, little brother," she said. "It took me
a while to get back and find you."

Martin chewed a mouthful of cereal slowly,
wondering if this was the onset of a brain tumor or if there was a
gas leak in the house causing him to hallucinate. He was trying to
remember if gas even caused hallucinations when his sister spoke
again.

"Dad's dead. He died a couple of nights
ago," she said. "You'll be receiving a letter informing you."

"How do you know that?"

"I'm dead," she said. "I know all sorts of
things."

That made about as much sense as anything.
"You came here to tell me that?"

"I came here to ask for your help," she
said.

"What kind of help?"

"I need you to help me make things right.
Since I'm dead, I can't really do much to the people who made me
that way."

Martin set his spoon back into the bowl.
Fruity Pebbles, tasty as they might be, suddenly didn't seem very
appealing. "What do you need me to do?"

"I need you to kill two men for me."

"Oh," Martin said. He sighed. Kill two
people. That was all he had to do. "Okay, but you should know I
don't have a car."

Transportation seemed like it would be very
important if he hoped to get away with murder.

7.

Cooper was tougher than Martin had
anticipated. He was wiry and fast, and he could swing a frying pan
with the best of them. Cooper had a mad look in his eyes when he
whirled and came at Martin with the sizzling pan full of bacon and
grease. From the toothless smile that split the old man's face,
Martin gathered that the old man was enjoying the fight.

Martin barely ducked out of the way from a
second and then a third swing of the pan. When he ducked the last
attack, he slipped on the hot bacon grease that coated the linoleum
floor and nearly fell. Cooper's eyes flashed when he saw the
opening. He lunged and tackled Martin.

Martin grunted as he fell to the floor and
the air burst from his lungs. Cooper was suddenly on top of him
with bony hands trying to wrap around Martin's throat.

"Knew you'd try something, boy," Cooper said
in a growl. "Your daddy said you weren't right in the head."

Martin grasped Cooper's hands and squeezed
his wrists. He pushed upward with his left hand while pushing his
right hand along with Cooper's across his body. This unbalanced
Cooper so Martin was able to push the elderly man off to the side.
Martin was quick to get on top of Cooper and press his weight down
on the old man. After a few minutes of struggling, Cooper began to
wheeze and choke on his own spit. Martin laid his forearm across
Cooper's throat until the man was unconscious.

Martin rolled away and lay in the bacon
grease on the dirty floor, breathing heavily.

Just kill two men.

Cassie made is sound so easy.

8.

Both of the soon-to-be victims were there
now. They lay in the same shed where they and his father had raped
and then killed his sister when she was sixteen. Martin watched
them wriggle and try to escape from the bonds around their wrists
and ankles. They reminded Martin of worms.

The work light that hung over them was
intense enough to chase away all the shadows in the shed. It
offered an almost antiseptic feel although the shed was filthy and
covered in years of dirt and dust. Cassie stood over them, looking
angelic in the bright light that shone through her.

"It's time," she said. "Ask them if they
remember this place."

Martin nodded and asked the question.

"What the hell are you talking about, boy?"
Cooper asked. He squinted at Martin, the light obviously too much
for his cataracts.

"He's crazy," Bertram said. Both dried and
fresh blood coated his wrists from where the handcuffs had dug into
him. His eyes had the glazed over look of an animal that had just
enough intelligence to know that the end was near.

"I'm not crazy," Martin said. He opened a
small blue toolbox and pulled out a high-tension hacksaw, a hammer,
and an eight-inch chef's knife. He made sure to lay them where
Cooper and Bertram could see. "She told me everything that you did
to her."

Cooper started laughing until he began to
cough. It took him a few seconds to calm his breathing down to the
point where he could speak again. "So that's what this is
about?"

"Shut up," Bertram said to Cooper. He turned
his attention to Martin. "Look, you should just let us out of here
so we can talk about all this. You've got problems, but we can work
this out."

"He's trying to talk you down," Cassie
said.

"I know what he's trying to do. Don't worry,
I've got this," Martin said, trying to keep the exasperation out of
his voice. No sense in letting Cooper and Bertram know this was his
first time.

"Who in the hell are you talking to?" Cooper
asked. "Son, your daddy was right when he said you had problems in
your brainpan."

"Remind them of how it happened," Cassie
said. "Tell them what I told you. I want them to know why you are
doing this."

"I think they have a pretty damned good idea
of why I'm doing this, Cassie," Martin said. He snatched the hammer
in one hand and the knife in the other.

"Shit, he thinks he's talking to his
sister," Cooper said. This brought another fountain of laughter and
coughing.

Martin looked down at Cooper. "What made you
hurt her? What happened in your minds to make you think it was
okay? Don't you regret what you did to her?"

"It was your father's idea," Bertram said.
"You know what kind of guy he could be. He made us do it."

"Fuck, Bertram, don't you try to say you
didn't enjoy it," Cooper said. His eyes glazed over as the memory
took hold. "We all did. And one of us must've smacked her too hard
because she stopped moving. That didn't stop us though. When we
were done, we cut her up and tossed her in the river. You’re the
only sorry sack that actually missed her. So no, I don't regret
what I done."

"We didn't mean it," Bertram said. His
breathing was rapid and shallow. "We didn't mean for her to
die."

Martin raised the hammer and hesitated. Once
he swung, there could be no going back. There were no exits or
detours from that path.

"You ain't got it in you, boy," Cooper said.
"We should've saved your father a lot of grief and killed you when
we –"

Martin brought the hammer down, striking
Cooper's left kneecap. He heard it break and felt it shatter
beneath the blow. Cooper howled and cried. Martin smashed the other
knee.

The path was set. Martin knew he'd made the
right choice.

Bertram tried to squirm away, crying and
invoking the name of God as he rolled his thick body away from
Martin.

Martin followed Bertram and tried to shut
out Cooper's cries. He drove the blade of the knife deep into the
back of Bertram's thigh and withdrew it slowly. The wound sucked at
the blade as though it didn't want to leave the flesh. He stabbed
again, this time into the other thigh, and again into the buttocks,
and then once more into the lower back, letting the warm blood
splash onto him. He let the knife stay this time, sticking out of
Bertram's bulbous, quivering body. He turned his attention back to
Cooper and worked his way up the body with the hammer. No matter
how hard he struck, Cooper remained conscious and uttering
obscenities the likes of which Martin had never heard. Cooper kept
yelling right down to the final blow that caved in his skull.

9.

The shed was a red mess.

Martin fell against the wall, breathing
heavily and shaking, completely covered in blood. He'd have to burn
his clothes. Not that it would stop them from catching him. The
police would eventually figure out he was the one that killed
Bertram and Cooper, even if they never found the bodies. It
wouldn't take much to sleuth out the information, and he was sure
there were enough physical traces here to tie him to the murders.
Of course, if the other cops in Silver Point were anything like
Bertram, he might not have to worry for a long time.

The tools he used for the job still lay on
the plastic sheets next to Bertram and Cooper's bodies. The blood
was starting to congeal already. He needed to figure out a way to
get rid of the tools too. He'd already dug a grave for the men, and
he thought he might as well just toss the knife, hammer and saw in
there as well.

He started to breathe through his mouth so
he didn't have to smell the blood. It was overpowering. Mixed with
the scent of urine and feces – all the nastiness that humans expel
when they die – it was too much.

"You did great," Cassie said. She was
examining the parts and pieces of the men who had raped and killed
her so long ago. Her ghostly fingers touched the remains and passed
through them. Her ghostly form seemed to shiver as she did. She
smiled and seemed satisfied, almost radiant.

"I'm glad it's over," he said, hauling
himself back up on unsteady legs.

"How did it feel?" Cassie asked.

"What?"

"Murdering them? How did it feel?"

"It felt like the right thing to do," Martin
said.

"Like the right thing to do, or did it just
feel
right
?"

Martin shrugged and focused on the bodies
again. "What's the difference?"

"When you were little, you were different,"
Cassie said. "I always thought it was because Dad was so mean. I
thought maybe something inside your head was broken because of the
things you saw, the way he was."

"Way to spread the love, Sis," Martin said.
"You think I'm a sociopath?"

"Did you like it?"

How was he supposed to answer that? Did he
like killing people? He thought about it for a moment and felt a
tingle at the base of his skull when he realized the answer. "I did
like it. It felt like it was something I should've been doing a
long time ago."

"That's real good, little brother, because
I've got someone here I'd like you to meet."

The faint outline of a small child appeared
next to Cassie, slowly coalescing into being… or ectoplasm. Martin
wasn't entirely sure. The new ghost was a small, dark-haired
Hispanic boy who looked to be about nine or ten years old at most.
He stayed close to Cassie. She took his hand into hers.