MicroHorror

“Turn right at the next junction,” the voice said and, obeying her sat nav, headlights danced off high untidy hedges on either side of a narrow track as her car bumped over rough ground. Then the car mounted something solid and came to a stop, front wheels spinning.

With a yelp of shock, Lisa turned off the engine. Darkness. Silence. Lisa moved. The car rocked. A strong smell of petrol reached her. She struggled to release her seat belt, imagining herself being engulfed in flames at any moment. Panic rose. She pressed down on the release button once more, and it released with a click. Opening her driver’s door, the car swayed like a boat on choppy water. She leant out and her fingers found solid, grassy ground.

Lisa rolled out and down a short incline. Getting to her feet she stood still. There were no lights. No stars. The sound of the sea roared above a high wind that buffeted her body. She knew there were cliffs close by. They were the reason she’d come when she booked a week’s stay in a holiday cottage.

“Wonderful walks along coastal paths,” the brochure had read. “Seclusion and comfort.” She’d needed a place to chill out after a year of stress and hard work.

Now her eyes made out a black hump before her: the hump she’d rolled down. She scrambled up, aware that both her right shoulder and ribs hurt. Nothing broken, she knew from her experience as a staff nurse at Benton Children’s Hospital.

Then, above the noise, she heard a bell. The bell kept ringing–it sounded like a bicycle bell. “Lisa Stanhope?” a boy’s voice called.

“Yes,” she called back.

“Follow me,” she heard him say. Lisa peered into the darkness and saw a small bobbing light ahead of her. “Just follow the light and the sound of my bell,” he told her.

Five minutes later, he stopped and the bell ceased its incessant tinkling. “You’ll be fine now.” The boy pointed down to a hamlet nestled under a hill. “Your cottage is the second one on the right.”

“Thank you so much,” she said to her young guide. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you. What’s your name?”

“Thomas Scott,” he replied and, getting on his bike, rode off.

The next day, after her car had been hauled off the grassy hump and towed to the local garage, Brian the proprietor said, “You’re a lucky lady. You were just inches from rolling over the cliff edge.”

“I’ve got Thomas Scott to thank for saving me,” Lisa said.

Brian’s red face paled. “Couldn’t have been him.”

“That’s the name he gave me,” Lisa told him.

“Thomas Scott died about two years ago,” Brian told her. “He took a shortcut coming home from Scouts on a stormy night. He and his bike went over the cliff. Poor kid was on life support for a week in Benton Children’s Hospital.”

“Is there another Thomas Scott living around here?” Lisa asked, but already knew the answer before the garage owner shook his head.

• Copyright: © 2012 Jennifer Walmsley

“Picture this.” Jane turned to look at Steve. “Imagine you’ve been told you’re going to die soon.” As he spoke, he gazed out over the decking onto the garden at an old oak tree, its branches stunted by centuries of coastal winds.

“What sort of question is that?” She sat up on the recliner.

“Humor me, Jane,” he replied, his eyes fixed on the oak’s trunk that bulged a large, face-like woody growth. “How would you like to spend your last hours on this earth?”

“On a beach in Marbella, I suppose,” she said.

“A rich man’s playground. Good fun but crowded with shallow people.” He glanced over his shoulder at Jane. “How about my own private beach?” He pointed towards the end of his garden where a hedge concealed a small cove.

Jane nodded. “That’ll be nice. Shall we have a picnic now? Smoked salmon. Champagne.”

Steve smiled. “The tide is in.”

Jane frowned. “When am I going to meet your parents?” He didn’t reply but kept gazing at the tree. “You said they’d be here to meet me?”

“I don’t think they’d approve,” he said.

“What?”

He turned to look at her. “They wouldn’t understand Internet dating. They’d think you’re a gold digger.”

“So now you want our relationship to end, is that it?”

“My profile on Love For You Dating must’ve been somewhat tempting, Jane. Good looking. Rich entrepreneur.” He laughed. “Most men in that latter category are knocking on a bit.” Now his long tanned fingers flexed.

Jane scrambled to her feet. “I’m not expecting you to marry me, if that’s what you think.”

“Look,” he said, taking hold of her arm. “Look carefully.”

She followed his gaze. “I can’t see anything apart from that ugly old tree.”

“Hear that, Mr. Oak?” Steve called out and saw that large knotted growth widen to resemble thick woody lips. “Jane says you’re ugly.” Those lips seemed to move in response and a musty smelling breeze wafted over to them.

“Did you hear that, Jane?” he asked. She shook her head. “Mr. Oak says he’s hungry. He wants blood.”

“That stinky, powdery stuff you can buy in garden centers? My Dad puts it on his roses.”

Steve’s hold tightened. She made an “ouch” sound, followed by a horrified gasp when Steve withdrew a metal cosh from the inside of his cream jacket.

“Please, Steve,” she cried. “Stop messing about.”

“Mr. Oak wants his eight pints of blood, Jane,” he whispered. Then letting her go and taking a short step back, he swung the cosh and struck a fatal blow to the side of her head.

Hours later, Jane’s body, her throat slit from ear to ear, hung upside down from a branch of the old oak tree, her blood dripping through gnarled knotted lips into a dark woody hollow where it coagulated around ancient, twisted roots.

Steve, sitting on the decking, watched her lifeless body gently sway to and fro and, as he watched, he took a call on his mobile–“Yes, this is Steve.”–then laughed. “Great. Loved your photo, too. When can we meet?”

His caller, Alicia, replied, “As soon as possible.”

• Copyright: © 2011 Jennifer Walmsley

“What a pretty child,” people used to comment when Antonia was little, and she’d flutter her long eyelashes in response.

Now Antonia, knowing that she still remained beautiful, sat at a table at yet another wedding surrounded by guests and above the sounds of voices. She detected a faint smell of decay.

Though her expression appeared serene, unreasonable anger bubbled up inside her. She frowned across the table at a portly man stuffing a profiterole into his mouth. Then he helped himself to another. Antonia felt nauseated. The man looked across with a bemused expression as if he wondered what he’d done to offend such a lovely wedding guest.

“Don’t they look happy?” Antonia glanced to her right to meet the gaze of an elderly lady she’d not noticed before.

“Who?” she asked.

“The happy couple.” The old lady indicated her head towards the top table.

“Suppose so,” Antonia agreed. “But you’d think the bride could’ve lost some weight before her wedding. She resembles a large meringue in that awful dress.”

“But the bride’s content, and so is the groom,” the elderly lady pointed out.

God! How I hate these dos, Antonia thought, picking up a glass of dessert wine and, after taking a sip, studying a middle-aged woman sitting next to the portly gentleman. Why are people so ugly? she mused.

“You’re not married,” the elderly lady said.

She turned to the speaker with shrivelled, deeply wrinkled skin that covered an almost skeletal but strangely familiar face. As she did so, Antonia caught the scent of her own signature perfume mingled with that same smell of decay. Bloody hell, she thought with disgust. Must change my perfume pronto.

“No!” came her abrupt reply. “Are you?”

The elderly lady shook her head. “In my youth I was–what they term today–an ‘It girl.’ With wealthy parents to indulge me, I spent years partying, going on holidays and meeting beautiful people.” She paused. Shrugged. “The only man I fell for left me at the altar. Said he couldn’t put up with my selfish, high maintenance lifestyle anymore.” She smiled a sad smile. “He went on to marry a voluptuous lady with, I’m told, a great sense of humor.”

Antonia froze in her seat as if an insult had been directed at her and the elderly lady said, “I know you, my dear. I know you better than you know yourself.”

Who does this bloody old bat think she is? Antonia inwardly fumed but, for once, didn’t utter her thoughts.

There was a loud rap from the top table. The best man stood up and greeted the guests. The elderly lady rose too and hobbled towards high, mirrored doors that reflected back all two hundred guests sitting around oval tables adorned with flowers.

“Incontinent bitch,” Antonia muttered and, turning to the male guest seated on her right, asked, “Who was that woman?”

He bent forward to look in the direction where Antonia was pointing. “I can’t see anyone,” he said.

“Are you blind? There was an old lady sat next to me.”

The man frowned. “You’re the only elderly lady sitting here. Are you a relative of the bride? The groom?” He smiled a benign smile.

Antonia’s throat seemed to close up. Getting to her feet, she walked shakily out of the room amid the sound of laughter and, as she did do, she caught her own reflection in those high, mirrored doors and saw her that her face had wrinkled deeply, her hair appeared steely grey and thin, and her once long, elegant fingers were deformed with arthritis. Urine trickled down from beneath her skirt into a puddle at her feet.

With a loud screech of fear, Antonia frantically glanced back into the room to meet two hundred shocked faces staring back at her.

• Copyright: © 2011 Jennifer Walmsley

Through the cracks, dark water swirls. I move and the swing bridge stirs beneath my feet. Wooden planks creak as if woken from a lifelong sleep.

I step towards the middle and the bridge sways. “Swim, sis,” I can hear him saying while gripping my ankles. He swings my body in time to the bridge’s motion, singing, “Swing, baby, swing.” Terrified, hanging upside down, my eyes look at a torrent of winter water crashing over boulders only yards from my face.

He’d taken me by the hand and led me over dunes, through high hawthorn to this brooding place. In the near distance, jagged ruins of a castle edged the top of silver birch like a gray, disintegrating crown. He said he was taking me to see the Fairy Queen that lived in the castle. He said she’d grant me three wishes, and while we walked, he told me to consider those wishes very carefully.

The memory of that day is etched upon my mind and, as time has passed from childhood, young womanhood and into middle age, that memory still haunts my daily thoughts.

“You’ve got three wishes, sis.” I can still hear his cruel tone as if it’s the same cold November morning. Above the sound of rushing water that had coursed and still courses its way down from hidden hills, he kept chanting, “Come on, tell me your first wish.”

I sobbed and pleaded with my brother to lift me back up onto the bridge. “It’s a dunking, maybe drowning or three wishes.” He laughed, his laughter breaking with puberty.

I squirmed and continued to plead and he said I looked like a fish dangling on a hook. “Three wishes, little sister. What will they be?”

“I wish you were dead!” And as I uttered that wish, terror engulfed me. Stomach cramps curled knots inside my belly. Then I felt his hands winch me up from ankles to knees, to thighs until I sat panting and weeping on these planks that now creak beneath me.

On the way home, he told me not to tell my parents. It was only a game. Tell them that the bruises on my legs were due to falling off a wall. Subdued and frightened, I agreed. Months later, my brother was sent away to boarding school after smothering our pet dog. Then he went on to university and I hardly saw him after those unhappy days.

Now, in my hand I hold the urn that contains his ashes. My brother died in prison while serving a life sentence for killing his wife and daughter.

“Swim, brother, swim,” I say as I empty the urn and watch those gray particles that once were his body and bones engulfed by hungry water. “Swim for your bloody life, Simon.” I cry into the icy wind.

• Copyright: © 2010 Jennifer Walmsley

It was Sunday when it happened. At 6:30 a.m. my life imploded. Blood and air seemed to be sucked out from my body in shock.

He stood on the doorstep, a sly smile lurking on his lips. “Hi, Diane.” Rain pelted down onto his parka.

I sagged against the door jamb. He reached out as if in support. “Don’t touch me!” My voice, low and fearful, seemed to echo around my brain.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” I shook my head. He grinned. “What about the neighbors?” I looked around but it was too early. All curtains were drawn shut.

“I thought you were dead,” I said, standing aside, trying to gather my thoughts.

“Ghosts don’t get wet.” He walked past me, heading straight for the kitchen.

I followed Sam and watched him assessing the state of the place. “Neat and tidy as usual,” he commented. “Did you get counseling for your Obsessive Behavior problem?” I didn’t answer. He grinned again.

I stood with my back against the sink while Sam took off his parka and draped it over a radiator. There it dripped tiny drips onto the floor, but I quelled an urge to take out the mop. “What do you want?” I asked as he settled himself down on a chair.

“Money,” came the blunt reply. When I remained silent, he went on. “Accident, they said, after that floater turned up wearing my clothes.” I clenched my fists, letting my nails dig into the palms of my hands. “Of course, after you pushed me off the cliff, you must’ve expected my body to turn up sometime.”

“It did, three weeks later,” I said, my voice hoarse.

“Ah, but it wasn’t my body, Diane.” He stood up, held out his arms, “Look, it’s me!” then sat down again. “Lucky the tide was high. I got carried around the headland and managed to scramble up onto the beach.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Where’s that tea? Remember, four teaspoons of sugar. No milk. A good slug of whiskey.” I turned and put the kettle on and as I went through the familiar motions, he explained in a loud voice as he wandered out into the hall and into the sitting room, “So I thought if they find a body wearing my clothes, then you’d get a payout from the insurance.”

I gave him the mug of tea when he returned to sit down. “You were taking a risk,” I said. “Dental records could’ve given you away.”

“But the poor bloated face was mangled. Remember the inquest? A boat’s propeller, they assumed?” I nodded, appalled. “I got this homeless guy drunk. Made a mess of his face. Nicked a car. Drove to the very same spot you shoved me off. The sea and fish did the rest.

“Any cake?” I shook my head. He slurped greedily at his drink and said, “Make me a bacon sandwich. You’re a dab hand at that.”

Like the bad, old times, I did as I was told. Then, just as I was about to serve it up to him, Sam keeled over into a heap onto the floor. Later, after I severed his limbs and head from his torso, I put all his remains into an old freezer out in the garden shed. Then I came in and scrubbed down the kitchen with pure bleach and rinsed off with hot soapy water.

• Copyright: © 2009 Jennifer Walmsley

“Come in. You look cold.” Mr. Freeman greeted his visitor with a concerned smile.

“Oh, my boots are muddy,” the woman said, her black plastic mackintosh glinting raindrops.

“Mud is fine.” Mr. Freeman stood aside, bowing slightly.

The woman glanced over her shoulder before entering the Tudor mansion. “Oh my!” she let out a soft exclamation as her eyes fell upon tapestries that adorned all four of the foyer’s walls.

Mr. Freeman smiled. “Lovely, aren’t they?” She nodded but her expression seemed to disagree with the owner’s open admiration for the depictions of dead animals, battles and executions. “Would you like a drink to warm you up?” She smiled, said she’d love to but had many more houses to call upon. “So what can I do for you?” Mr. Freeman asked.

“I’m collecting for the Kingly Donkey Sanctuary,” came the reply and, as if remembering her manners, said, “I’m Miss Spears, founder of the charity.” She held out a soft plump hand which was ignored. Then she took out from a plastic carrier bag one of many envelopes with grazing donkeys stamped on the front. “You can donate anything you want,” she said.

Mr. Freeman gazed at the proffered envelope for a long moment. “I don’t like donkeys.” He broke the silence with that quiet reply.

“Oh dear, I’m sorry to have bothered you,” Miss Spears said, “but we’re really desperate. Time is running out.”

“You’ve not bothered me, Miss Spears.” He smiled. “Your arrival here is timely.” He paused and a grandfather clock ticked somewhere, its tick like a heavy tread.

“Yes, well,” Miss Spears uttered, her eyes coming to rest on what appeared to be a modern death scene depicted on a tapestry nearest to her.

“Ah! You’ve spotted it!” Mr. Freeman sounded pleased. “That’s the last scene, but I’ve been unable to complete it up until now.’

Miss Spears looked back at him. “It looks finished to me,” she said. Then peered closer. “That man thrusting a sword into a woman’s chest looks like you.” Her comment was barely a whisper.

“Can you see a donkey behind her?” He pointed at a braying beast. “And that man running towards the house?”

“It looks like your house,” Miss Spears said. “The man looks like…” She stopped, fear invading her expression.

“These tapestries, Miss Spears, depict all that I’ve achieved throughout many centuries.”

Miss Spears gasped when Mr. Freeman picked up an ornamental sword from an ancient oak chest. “What are you doing?”

“The obvious, Miss Spears,” he replied, taking fluid steps towards her.

“No, please.” She fled to the door and, as her hand fumbled for the latch, she pleaded, her genteel accent slipping, “I promise I’ll give the money back to them that we’ve conned.”

“There’s no need, my dear,” Mr. Freeman told her. “You can pay for your deeds here and now, in full, at this very moment. Your partner will be dealt with later.”

Outside, the sound of heavy rain drowned out the woman’s last earthly scream. Beyond wrought iron gates, Miss Spears’ accomplice waited in an unmarked black transit van watching out for his wife’s return. Then as time passed, he became worried. Getting out from the van, he ran through those open wrought iron gates, heading straight for Mr. Freeman’s front door.

• Copyright: © 2009 Jennifer Walmsley

It lay in a hollow; the limbs of dead trees that surrounded it resembled petrified sentries. Clouds of mosquitoes rose and fell over the pool’s stagnant water. The sun, a large orange orb, began to sink, its heat lessening as a humid evening approached.

Sonia, holding Tim’s hand, stopped to gaze into the pool’s murky water. “It looks like black oil,” she said as they sat down on a large boulder, white against the dark water behind them. Blackbirds, drowsy from the heat of the day, began to sing. Bats swooped above their heads like small erratic shadows.

Sonia, resting her head against Tim’s shoulder, reminisced about their recent weekend at Glastonbury Festival. They laughed, reminding each other about the night their tent collapsed under the weight of heavy rain. The flooded toilets. They spoke with excitement about their plans to take a gap year, in October, travelling around Australia, finding jobs as they went.

Across the field, they could see their blue tent pitched on common ground. Tim’s motorbike lay beside it. Further on, a church spire peeked through trees and, in the near distance, they could hear a tractor. Both were glad that they’d stopped off at this quiet place on their journey home from Glastonbury. Sonia had called her mother and told her that they’d be a day or two late. Tim had phoned his parents and said they’d be home in a couple of days.

Now they were heading for a Welsh pub that advertised decent but cheap meals. Sonia’s stomach rumbled with hunger. Tim suggested they’d better head for the Llyn Ddu Inn and, as he spoke, the boulder seemed to shift beneath them. The pool appeared to stir its unctuous waters. Then a swarm of mosquitoes rose in one solid mass and descended upon the couple. Screaming in panic, as millions of tiny injections pierced their skin, they plunged into the pool in the vain hope of ridding their miniature tormentors.

As if disturbed, the boulder rolled over the edge into the pool. As it rolled, a black hiatus opened up at its upturned base, and a thick, warty tongue shot out to curl around the couple’s floundering bodies. In an instant, Sonia and Tim were dragged into that gaping hole, their bodies instantly dissolving in a thick and grey stinking mucus.

Five minutes later, the boulder rolled back onto solid ground, belching.

• Copyright: © 2009 Jennifer Walmsley

It started one February after midnight. Tall, with an athletic build, he paced back and forth, until finally stopping under an old railway arch. There he remained for an hour, the burning tip of his cigarettes marking the spot where he stood.

From her bedroom window Kim watched his nightly pacing and her head spun with all kinds of fantasies. One Monday night he didn’t appear and she fretted, amazed that she missed the nightly visits of a complete stranger.

Tuesday he returned, but his pattern of movement had changed. Now he stood in the doorway of a butcher’s shop opposite her flat with only the occasional flare of his cigarette lighter to show that he was there.

Watching, she hoped to catch sight of his elusive features as trails of smoke thickened like a solid rope that twined its way across to her window. While she watched, she’d have mental chats with the stranger, and his soft answers seemed to echo like love songs in her mind.

Always, after he left, insomnia dogged her and her thoughts raced with romantic scenarios. “Why not go out and talk to him?” She asked herself over and over, but remained behind the shelter of her Venetian blinds.

***
 
This summer’s night he appears and walks up and down the pavement as usual. Then he stops and bright moonlight etches a handsome but tragic face gazing up at her.

“Why not?” Kim asks herself, grabbing up a packet of cigarettes. Now she’s hurrying down the flight of stairs from her flat, unbolting the door and stepping outside.

Opposite, his smoke snakes out, its heady smell of herbs and something else wafts from the dark confines of the shop’s doorway. “Hello, there,” she calls out. “I was wondering if you had a light?” She waves her cigarette pack as a silent invitation, but receives no answer, only his smoke drifting in a straight line towards her.

Kim takes a few steps back. “It doesn’t matter,” she blusters, now embarrassed by her rashness and, as she speaks, the smoke thickens and curls around her neck and her body.

Shocked, Kim’s fingers scrabble at its strength but the smoke twists, reeling her in, like a fish on a hook, towards the shop doorway. She tries to scream but the smoky rope tightens cutting off her terrified agony.

“Didn’t you know smoking kills?” a harsh voice whispers into her ear. “You should’ve heeded those warnings.” He laughs a devil’s laugh and a rotten stench breathes into her gaping mouth as he bends his face to kiss her.

• Copyright: © 2009 Jennifer Walmsley

In the beginning, distorted bubbles spun behind the lids of Martha’s closed eyes. Then they merged and grew into a perfect, transparent whole.

The head of a man, with a black moustache, turned within this transparency, his mouth moving as if in silent appeal.

Now, every day, Martha tries to keep her eyes open. All night long, she watches TV, afraid to sleep.

“Go away,” she tells the man whenever she lets her eyelids droop. “Leave me alone,” and at her frightened rejection, he appears to weep.

This lunchtime, she sits on a park bench weary and deprived of rest. Children play. Mothers chat amongst themselves. Trying to absorb this normality, a movement distracts her. She turns her head.

“Go away,” she whispers to the man now sitting beside her. He leans towards her, his mouth opening. Martha jumps to her feet.

Then he emits a loud gurgling sound, and Martha lets out a scream. Blood, from his gaping mouth, erupts like a rose bursting forth into full bloom.

“Call an ambulance,” she shouts to the small crowd of startled onlookers. Mothers call to their children. “Please!” she begs, but they shepherd their offspring out through the park gates.

Terrified, she glances back to find no trace of the man that haunts her, apart from a bloodied white rose that lies on the place where she’d recently sat.

• Copyright: © 2009 Jennifer Walmsley

Freddie wept. Around him, in that damp darkness, his terrible sorrow echoed at the loss of his partner, children, grandparents, aunties and many cousins.

Freddie, only days earlier, having left his domain in search of larger, warmer premises for his ever-extending family, had returned to find furry bodies twisted in their final hours of agony.

Stunned, he squealed in disbelief and horror at the sight of those pathetic corpses lying amongst the remains of blue, poisoned pellets, and after his tears had dried, he spent the rest of his days gnawing at wood, a demented mouse crazed with grief and fury.

Then a week later, Freddie, exhausted, let out a long, anguished screech that reverberated around the cellar’s dank walls, and from above the sound of running feet reached him.

Suddenly, the cellar door flew open. Footsteps came pounding down the steps, and as those feet pounded, the staircase collapsed sending splinters of gnawed wood flying about like shrapnel in all directions.

Above the noise of destruction, a man’s terrified scream filled the dark space, resounding off crates, two old TV sets and a defunct refrigerator as he lay paralyzed from the neck down, unable to stop Freddie chewing at his fleshy face.

• Copyright: © 2009 Jennifer Walmsley