MicroHorror

Was this Heaven?

Surely not.

And yet huge, diamond-encrusted gates towered over him.

“Maybe the Almighty approves of murder, after all,” he said.

“And maybe not.”

The voice startled him, but the appearance of the aberration that stepped through the gates was even more of a shock.

“So you think you’ve ‘gone to Heaven,’ do you?” the creature snarled, its voice akin to the roar of a blast furnace. Standing at least ten feet tall, it was green and covered in scales. The face was apelike, with a flattened nose, and yet a mane surrounded its head. Arms and legs like tree stumps, murderous talons protruding from its three-fingered hands.

“Who… what… are you?”

The creature glared down at him, its diamond-shaped eyes like lumps of coal.

“My name is not important, little man. Had you been standing at the gates of Heaven, the Archangel would have greeted you. But of course, you are a serial killer; that is why you are standing at the gates of Hell and facing me, the Anti-Angel. Jake Farley, you have come to a very warm place.”

Jake staggered backwards, but came up against an invisible wall.

“Please, I can explain.”

Hands on hips, the Anti-Angel towered over him.

“I’m sure you can. But I’ve heard every one of your lies, so allow me to save you the trouble.” And with a flourish, it produced a scroll out of thin air and unrolled it. “On March the seventh, 1982, you started a fire in a library that killed the librarian, a fifty-two-year-old widow called Martha Huff. You didn’t intend to kill her, but you were still seduced by the publicity. In 1984 you stole a rifle and opened fire on a crowd in a shopping mall. Three people died, one of them a child…”

Jake Farley bowed his head as the roll call went on. It was like being back in court.

“And finally, Lieutenant Frank Hutt of the NYPD, whom you gunned down in that final shoot-out.”

The Anti-Angel tossed the scroll and it vanished in a blast of fire. “Jake Farley, there is certainly a place in Hell for you!”

“Wait, please…”

The Anti-Angel pointed at him, fire shot from its fingers and Jake Farley burst into flames. “We believe in making the punishment fit the crime,” the Anti-Angel boomed as the serial killer writhed in agony on the ground.

The flames went out, but a second later bullets were tearing through his body, blood spurting from a dozen wounds.

“Thought you’d experienced it all in the electric chair, didn’t you? But that was just the beginning. Now you are going to experience everyone else’s death… over and over again. Oh, no, Jake, you have not ‘gone to Heaven.’”

Extending a taloned finger, the Demon sliced his victim open from throat to crotch. “And it’s true what they say, Jake,” it added, twirling a piece of intestine around its fingers. “You really are a long time dead.”

At this time of year I run away.

But I can never outrun the clown.

I pulled into the car park of a nondescript motel, the kind of place I’d usually avoid like the plague: several rows of ramshackle huts, a flashing neon sign at the entrance. A real dive, if truth be told, but it would do. I paid in cash, wrote a false name on the register, and then made my way to a musty little room.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I pulled a hollowed-out pumpkin from my bag, set it on the bedside table, placed a lighted candle inside, and then switched off the lights. As midnight approached I poured myself a glass of wine. It was All Hallows’ Eve. I raised a glass to the grinning jack-o’-lantern.

Three years ago I was a real Goth. Black jacket with safety pins, long red dress, black lipstick and so much eye shadow that I looked like a panda. I’m a natural redhead, but at the time I’d died my hair jet black and it swept over my shoulders like a dark waterfall. I liked to be known as Candy, and the Goth trappings gave me a confidence that I never used to have when I was plain Mary Lou. I was seventeen years old, a wonderful time when all your dreams are still possible.

Then, one Halloween night, I left the house with my friend Jenna, looking forward to a night of fun. I had even stuffed my pockets full of candy for trick-or-treating kids. After all, everyone has fun at Halloween, don’t they?

In a dingy motel room I raised a glass to my own reflection, a faintly unnerving sight in the flickering light.

“We were best friends like forever, Jen. We shared everything. Why didn’t you share my fear?”

The masks didn’t scare me–the long white face from Scream, Frankenstein, Jason and Freddy. I thought they were cool.

But the clown …

“Pretty ladies.”

Stepping before us, a bottle of bourbon in his hand.

“Wanna party?”

There was just… something… about him that made my skin crawl.

Jenna giggled.

I grabbed her arm and said “Let’s go.” But she figured that one little drink couldn’t do any harm.

“See you at Frank’s Bar in an hour, babe.”

It was the last thing she ever said to me.

In the flickering candlelight a thin, guilt-ridden face stared back at me.

A second glass of wine only served to put an image of Jenna into my head, lying in a copse of bushes with her throat cut, her lifeless eyes open and staring and accusing. “You weren’t there when I needed you most, Candy.”

And she’d have been right. As she walked away with the clown I just stood on the sidewalk, nervously chewing my lip and wondering what to do next. In the end I set off for Frank’s Bar and waited for her.

By the time I’d finished the bottle I was bawling like a child, tears and mucus streaming down my face. I fell asleep on the floor, curled up like an animal and facing the nightmare that came to me every Halloween since the night of the murder, the terrible image that would never let me forget that night, or ever forgive myself.

I woke up at dawn, the crotch of my jeans piss-damp and my blouse soaked through with sweat. I showered and changed. Then I stuffed the pumpkin and soiled clothes into a rubbish bag.

Before checking out I stood in front of the mirror and stared at my own reflection: pale skin, eyes puffy and red and bloodshot. Smeared lipstick, making me look a little like the Joker.

But mine was a rigid, unsmiling mouth.

“Pretty lady,” I said to that ghostly, haunted face.

A clown stared back at me.

A clown would always stare back at me.

The recording was indistinct, like distant voices heard through static, but the words could just be made out: “Go away… please… just go…”

Claire Davies leaned forward, head on one side, listening intently. Could this really be the sound of children who had died more than a century ago?

“And these voices were recorded at…” she checked her notes. “How do you say this?”

“Yoolam Cottage.” Professor Landon switched off the tape. “Everyone has heard them. A malevolent bunch, by all accounts. They certainly seem intent on wrecking our investigation.”

“You’ve sent people in?”

“Yes, but they didn’t stay long.”

Claire looked at a monochrome photograph of a typical Victorian family. The father, tall and with a huge, bushy beard; the mother, plump and wearing a drab dress, her hair pinned up; and two children, a boy and a girl: this was George and Minnie Ewelme and their two children, Harry and Ethel, just arrived from New Zealand back in the eighteen-sixties. Seven years later they were all dead, gunned down during a violent robbery. Yet it would be another eighty years before any reports of paranormal activity were to emerge.

Claire placed the photograph back on the table and picked up a picture of Ewelme Cottage. It was picturesque, if a little rundown, and certainly didn’t look threatening. At least there would be no winding corridors or shadowy alcoves.

“I think I’d like to investigate it,” she said.

Later that evening she was sitting in the back of a van with Professor Landon and a young student. There was a full moon and it was a mild evening, always a good sign. She strapped on a headset, which held an infrared camera and a microphone, then picked up an electromagnetic voice recorder. She was now ready for a ghost hunt.

“Let’s do it,” she said, and got out of the van.

The cottage loomed ahead of her. As ever, her heart was beating just a little too quickly, but she approached the front door without a moment of hesitation.

“Voices can’t hurt you, Claire.” She placed a hand on the front door and pushed it open.

Empty as the living room was, the space still seemed impossibly small for a family of four; certainly, it was no bigger that a bed-sit she had once rented during her student days. As she started across the room the voices began (almost like a distant buzz of insects), and her skin began to crawl.

Ignore them; you’re not going to be here long.

She pushed open a second door and stood before the kitchen, hairs bristling on the back of her neck. Just voices, she told herself, keep going.

Stepping through the doorway, she could feel tiny hands pushing at her, ghostly attempts to impede her progress. She ignored them and pressed on, telling herself she could do it.

But her mouth was dry and it was an effort to move. “Come on, Claire; ghosts are people too, you know.”

As she stepped into the room, a hand struck her across the face, and had it been solid flesh her head would have rocked back.

This time a woman’s voice fairly screamed at her, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

Claire jumped back, really frightened for the first time in her life, losing her footing and falling heavily.

“Bitch! The bloody bitch!”

Claire got to her feet, furious. There was a rip in her skirt but the indignity was far worse; if this footage ever…

“I don’t stop for anything.”

She barged through the door, virtually stomping into the centre of the room.

The rotten floorboards shattered under her weight. She screamed, arms flailing as she fell into the mineshaft that Ewelme Cottage had been built over.

The Ghosts of Ewelme Cottage had been benevolent, rather than malevolent, warning off unwary trespassers; they had saved many lives.

Claire chose to ignore their warnings.

There is now one extra ghost at Ewelme Cottage!

The Cliché Thief grinned at me with tobacco-stained teeth as his hunchback assistant pinned my arms behind my back

“Ah,” he said, “yet another prize for my collection.”

“I am no cliché,” I shouted.

“Oh, but you will be,” he informed me. “I can turn anyone–or anything–into a cliché. Take him to the cells, Ygor.”

And I was marched down a long, winding corridor littered with clichés: a detective in a trench coat and hat; a burned-out drunk who became a hero and saved his town; a woman who was going to wake up and find that she had dreamt the whole thing…

Then I was flung into a cell. There was but one way out: a loose grille leading to an air vent.

“Damnation!” I cursed, “I’ll have to escape by a blasted cliché!”

And so, piling a stack of metaphors against the wall, I climbed up to the grille and started loosening the bolts.

A long-abandoned cinema; half a bottle of vodka; for an old tramp called Ken, this was as good as it got. A few other hobos wandered around, getting a warm off the fire (a rusty oil drum that had been cut in half, and then fashioned into a crude brazier), but there was no sense of community; this was a warm place on a cold night, and that was it.

The entire building stank of death, for it had now become a tramps’ graveyard. In a far corner, several large rats were feeding on a corpse, but few took any notice; as soon as they had gorged themselves, the body would be dragged across the room and thrown into the basement, there to rot among the bones of its predecessors; after all, these people were the lost and forgotten of the community; a decent burial meant nothing to them.

Ken drank his vodka, and didn’t give the corpse a second glance.

What does it matter? he thought; We’re no good to anyone.

Torch in hand, the fat man crept into the basement, wrinkling his nose at the stench of death.

Damn place, he thought: but if he could find just one fresh corpse.

A scan with the torch did not bode well; none of these cadavers were less than a week old. He put the torch in his pocket and lit a cigarette.

Things were getting desperate. Business had been slow before, but that outbreak of bovine cholera had been a killer. The papers reckoned the crisis would be over in a week, a fortnight at the most.

Much too late; he needed to keep his customers sweet, and if he couldn’t meet their demands…

“Then I won’t have any damned customers!”

Suddenly a door opened and a body came tumbling down the stairs. The fat man nearly swallowed his cigarette in fright, but if this was a fresh kill, he’d be in business.

Taking deep drags on his Woodbine, he waited a moment before taking out his torch and shining it across the room.

“Ah, a recently deceased.”

A closer inspection revealed that the rats had had a field day; but that was fine, there was still plenty of fat on him.

Pulling on a pair of gloves, the fat man grabbed an arm and dragged the corpse across the room. Out into the alley, and the body was thrown into the back of an old Morris Minor van.

A moment to calm his nerves, and then the fat man got into the van and drove off. He had a long night ahead of him.

Driving a hook into the corpse’s spine, the fat man hauled the hobo off the ground and slid a length of canvas under him. In less than an hour he had fully dismembered the body and carefully lowered the pieces into a vat of acid; it was, he felt, a most effective way of getting rid of a cadaver.

But it wasn’t perfect; for a person’s body fat doesn’t dissolve quite so easily.

This, however, was not going to be a problem.

Midday, and the man was back in business.

“Cheeseburger and a side order of fries, please,” said his first customer of the day.

“Coming up,” said the fat man, pouring another bag of potatoes into a pan of hissing, boiling fat.