MicroHorror

All Vanessa ever did was look out the window.

Her life was encompassed in its narrow view, behind the milky shade of her curtains.
She watched people come and go. She counted her neighbor’s grocery bags. Standing over the sink, she clattered her dishes as she washed them. She stopped to scream at someone over the phone or her children, breaking the quiet of the neighborhood.

The children never minded her. And whomever she spoke with never agreed. At least, that’s the impression that you would get from her tone. The smallest thing was enough to get her screaming to the top of her lungs.

When she was still, or quiet, it was only because she was trying to remember something. And then, in frustration, she returned to her fussing. And then came her cravings. The want of beer or a joint. She could refrain from these things, but became a more miserable person than usual when she did.

One day, she almost dropped a wineglass in the sink.

Someone was staring back at her.

On the street, a young, tall woman, wearing a long dress and a coat, with her hands in her pockets. Her dark eyes were obscured by the hat she wore… a little tweed cap. There were hoops in her earlobes. The sunlight shined on the gold. Vanessa felt envy well up in her chest. She hadn’t bought any clothes for herself in a long time.

“What do you want?” she yelled out the window.

The woman turned and continued down the street, her heels clicking softly as she drifted down the sidewalk.

Nosy bitch, Vanessa sniped. That will show her, coming staring in my window.

Then she heard the kids acting up in their room, and went to see what they were doing.

It took a while for Vanessa to realize that she had seen the same woman more than once in a week.

Perhaps it was the clothes that threw her off, as they were different each time she saw the woman. It was the same thin frame, long neck, sort of upright posture.

There was something disturbing about her. Uppity. Overdone.

Vanessa snarled something under her breath. A sound of disgust, not even real words.
She shouted, but the woman did not hear her. Though she was standing on the sidewalk, Vanessa was sure that the stranger was looking into her window. She watched in amazement as a man in a suit joined her.

The woman, Melanie, stood on the sidewalk, crossing her arms. Her heels were beginning to hurt—the autumn sun was mild, but she didn’t want to stand beneath it for too long.

“So tell me,” she asked the man. “What is it about this place?”

Mr. Charles smiled, and ran his fingers through his salt and pepper hair. “You haven’t heard?”

“No.”

“Oh, I forget you just moved up here. The locals all know. Used to be a woman with a couple little girls that lived in that house. The mother was a nut job. Got a couple calls from children’s services that she was beating the kids. Whoever owned the place finally evicted her.”

“And. There’s a lot of evictions these days.”

“Yes. But not before she turned her oven on. And left it open.”

“Oh my God… the children?”

Charles shook his head. “Nobody survived. And those kids were gorgeous. It’s too bad about them. She put the girls to bed and they never woke up. At least they weren’t in any pain.”

Melanie shrugged. “Well, I pass here all the time. I was thinking if it were on the market it would be a nice little fixer upper, maybe a rental property,” she frowned, staring at him in the sunshine. “Now that you’ve told me this, never mind.”

Vanessa saw the man and woman walk away, unaware of her yelling.

She picked up her wineglass, and washed it again.

By the time he got back to the house, it was already growing dark outside.

Sharon told him that the envelope should be on the front table, in the hallway. That he could just get it and leave. It won’t take any more than a few minutes, she promised.

Only when he got inside, the envelope wasn’t there.

Cussing, and jingling his keys in his hands, he was about to turn and leave. He wasn’t sure what made him stop, but something did.

A prickling sense of unease touched his neck, easing its way down his back. Jeremy turned slowly.

On the floor, he saw a movement.

The flutter of a piece of paper.

Dropping his keys back into his pocket, he went into the living room.

Maybe we do have rats, Jeremy thought. Don’t those little bastards eat paper?

He had a thought that made him laugh: a huge rat, holding up his wife’s raggedy envelope that she kept stuffed with cash, eating it.

Another flash of anger ran through him. Why the hell couldn’t Sharon be like a normal woman and keep a wallet?

Only his wife actually kept an envelope for each bit of money she was allowing herself to spend: an envelope of money for groceries. An envelope for paying bills…

In this case, the envelope was for the birthday gift he should have bought his mother-in-law a week ago.

Couldn’t show up at the old crone’s house without that!

Jeremy walked all the way back to the laundry room, and now couldn’t remember what he’d even bothered to come back this way for.

Oh… yes! The flash of paper he thought he’d seen against the floor. The simple solution, he mulled, would be to go to the ATM and just withdraw some money. Sure, the house had been closer, but now he felt stupid for coming back home in the first place.

On the other hand, Sharon had begged him to check the house. So maybe he shouldn’t feel stupid.

He heard something.

A piece of paper being crumpled…

Jeremy jumped backwards when he saw it. And then he blinked. He’d expected it to disappear. But it didn’t.

The man–or a thing that looked like a man–had no face. It was like a shadow, a form with no features. It held the envelope in its fist like a baseball.

The thing that should have been its head nodded as if to say–wanna play?

Jeremy ran.

Not for long. The thing caught up to him. When it touched his skin he felt his flesh tingle, and then burn, as if he were being covered by a thousand fire ants.

It shoved the envelope into Jeremy’s mouth before it began to rip his skin off.
　

“Is it done?” Sharon asked the woman. She’d watched the scene play out on a jagged piece of crystal placed on the table between them. Still, part of her couldn’t believe it.

Madame Leveroux looked up at her with a solemn nod. “Yes, it’s done. You won’t have to worry about that no-good husband anymore.”

“How much do I owe you?” Sharon said with a nasty grin. The woman had told her beforehand, but she wanted to be sure she had it right. She fumbled in her bag for her checkbook.

“I take cash only,” the woman told her. “And I prefer small bills, installment payments.”

“What? Well, that makes no sense. Why don’t you want to get all your money at once?”

“Because I want it that way. You’ll pay me $500 a week. Indefinitely.”

“Hold on! You said five hundred dollars for the whole–whatever it is you did just now! I can go to the bank and draw out twenty thousand dollars or so. But I can’t just keep paying you every week! Indefinitely?”

“Oh, yes you can,” Madame said. “Or my friend that just killed your husband will be making a second trip to your house.”

I squeezed Connie’s hand as she led me around the back of her house.

My hand brushed her side, and my fingers touched her sweater. Angora. She half turned and looked at me with a grin.

Her ponytail bounced on her shoulder.

“Come on, Jimmy,” she said.

Apparently, I was too slow for her.

I adjusted my glasses. It had been threatening rain all day, but the sky grew a fraction darker. I was concentrating on containing my excitement and not doing something stupid, like tripping over my shoes.

She stopped abruptly, and dropped my hand.

“This is the spot,” she said.

I looked around, puzzled. We were in the middle of her back yard. Trees swayed gently, the wind picking up the leaves and carrying them gently around the ground.

Connie sighed in exasperation. “Look down, silly.”

There was a lump of grass just beside her foot. I looked closer, and realized that this patch of grass wasn’t real.

She kicked it aside with her shoe, revealing what looked like an old wooden barn door. Beneath that was a shiny metal disc, with a handle that reminded me of a pot cover.

“Can you lift this thing for me?” she asked. “It’s heavy.”

I had to kneel to open it, but was able to pull it open without too much trouble.

“Your parents have a bomb shelter?” I asked.

She nodded slowly. “Want to see inside?”

***

She climbed down the narrow steps so quickly that I had no choice but to follow her.

Connie waited at the bottom of the stairs with a flashlight, which she put under her chin, casting hellish shadows across her face.

“Stop,” I said and got my arms around her.

She felt warm in my arms. She laughed, and I smelled strawberry bubblegum on her breath.

She moved away quickly, shining the flashlight against the walls as she did.

The built-in shelves were crowded with goods: glass jars filled with preserves, and shiny cans of vegetables.

The other corner of the room held a narrow bed, and Connie sat down. She brushed at the hem of her poodle skirt, her eyes never leaving mine.

“Connie, you know I like you. I don’t mind, but I’d like to know. You’ve brought other guys down here before, haven’t you?”

She shrugged. “It’s a waste of space, you know. My dad was in the war. So when people started to think we might be bombed by the Russians… He was probably the first on the block to have a shelter built.”

I sat down beside her. The flimsy mattress moved, and she nudged my arm companionably.

I hesitated, but only for a moment. We kissed.

I can’t be sure how long it was. Maybe only a few moments, but it felt longer. I remember her sweet breath, the softness of her skin. When she spoke, I wasn’t even sure what she was talking about. I wouldn’t understand until much later.

“It’s useless, these precautions people take. This fear of the end. Because every day it’s the end of the world for somebody.”

I never had time to respond. Those were the last words she spoke to me before she bit my neck.

***

When I woke, I was lying on the floor of the shelter.

Connie sat beside me. She had a jar of something. And she was stirring it with her finger.

It was thick, and red. My heart beat wildly at the sight of it.

“You’re right,” she said softly. “I’ve brought other boys here before. But you’re the only one I wanted to keep. Come on, baby. Take a drink.”

On the island of Kitanya, they tell the children the story of the Gate Keeper.

The Gate Keeper is known by other names in different places: the Sandman, the Boogeyman, the monster beneath your bed. But back home on the island, he serves a different purpose.

The Gate Keeper keeps out the bad things that lurk around corners, that hang in the shadows.

An old holy woman constructed him of bone and brass. She made his teeth from sea coral. His skull cap was shaped from metal. His eyes, two shining balls made of abalone, were said to hold the keys to the future. He was clothed in a thin green garment made of seaweed.

The holy woman breathed life into him one night, addled by nightmares and creatures that came to haunt her. Once the Gate Keeper was alive, he asked for a price, a living sacrifice.

It seemed a small thing. She gave him the neighborhood stray animals. Dogs and cats disappeared at an alarming rate. Soon livestock went missing.

This caused an uproar. Many of the islanders were farmers and cattlemen, and they decided that the slaughter must be stopped.

The Gate Keeper whispered dark things to the holy woman at sunset. He told her that the island was surrounded by many bad things, and that these sacrifices were the bounty that kept them away. Things that partook of human blood. Things that hunted men for sport.

Seeing no other recourse, she offered herself to the Gate Keeper, to quiet the angry spirits and the angry people as well.

Now, the Gate Keeper walks the beaches at night, watching the sea and the darkness for the monsters it was made to keep away. And it speaks in the darkness with the voice of an old woman and the wisdom of the ancients who came long, long before.

“I love you,” the old woman said.

Her son lifted his head. In the hospital room, he’d grown so accustomed to the bleating and beeping of machinery that the leathery voice of the old woman sounded odd, like a song sung loudly in a quiet library. He shifted in his chair.

“I’m sorry. What did you say, Ma?”

“You heard me.” Her lips moved slowly, as if the voice was coming from some other body.

The man put aside his book and leaned forward. Her brown eyes were clear. Her white hair was a bird’s nest, but not as noticeable against the pure white of her pillow.

“I love you, so I won’t leave you my secrets.”

He sighed. She was talking nonsense again.

Or at least, he hoped that she was.

“When you go home tonight, I want you to make sure you keep Dad’s gun on your bedside. Anyone comes knocking late, then you know what to do.”

“That sounds like one of your secrets,” he said condescendingly. “Isn’t it time to stop telling fortunes, Ma?”

“Hmph,” she sniffled. “Not like there’s much remaining to tell. You have always been my favorite, Carl. So you do this for Ma,” she said, reaching out to stroke his hair with her papery fingers. “And you’ll make me happy.”

She lapsed again into sleep, and after an hour more, he left the room.

The hospital parking lot was well lit but nearly empty. He couldn’t help the compulsion to look over his shoulder. He felt that he was being watched.

He showered and got into bed a little past midnight. It was windy outside, and the tree branches scratched at his window.

He heard a knocking sound.

At first, he thought that it might be the attic. But then he wasn’t sure. Convincing himself that maybe it was something else outside, he closed his eyes.

As he turned in bed, he saw a figure in the doorway of his room.

A woman. She was young. Her face was oddly familiar.

He sat up. She made a keening sound. A hiss.

The gun lay on the bedside table.

He shot her.

His hands trembled as he stood over the body. He’d have to bury it out back before dawn.

He dressed, and tucked the gun into his belt. There were four more bullets just in case more of her ilk came calling.

He got the call the next morning that Ma had passed away in the night.

She’d never been wrong about anything.

Night falls on everyone in this town in cold, expectant silence.

Most of them, except for the brave few, have left the city for the weekend. They wait with guns. Doors and windows are covered by plywood, protecting against intruders.

The Awakened have been known to climb in through any opening. The wiser residences close up their chimneys. Attics and basements are a source of worry.

The air is still. There are no dogs to be heard, as they have all gone away with their owners. The birds have flown to warmer territory.

Snow falls in steady draughts.

The Awakened Dead cry and stretch, letting ice penetrate their putrid flesh.

“You know, somebody’s going to have to do something about the neighbors upstairs.”

Mike sat up in bed, looking over at his girlfriend, Sheila. He agreed, of course, that the upstairs neighbor was a pain. He played loud music all times of the day and night. Sheila and Mike were the only other inhabitants of the duplex.

“I swear, if that kid plays ‘Enter Sandman’ one more time…” he said.

Sheila giggled. “You know what I love, though? He always drops the same note. I can’t help myself; I wait for him to do it every time.”

“Well I wasn’t a music major like you, so I can’t tell.”

She rolled her eyes. “No, you don’t listen, that’s why you can’t tell.”

He wasn’t sure what detour the conversation had just taken, but he was sure it wasn’t a good one. Even half awake he could spot one of her verbal snares a mile away. Mike stretched and got up. Turning on the bathroom light, he padded in and turned on the tap.

Upstairs, the music stopped abruptly.

There was a loud boom that shook the apartment.

“What the…”

Before he could say any more there was another loud crash.

Sheila, spooked, had somehow made two jumps from the bedroom and was standing beside him in front of the bathroom sink. She was glaring at him with wide eyes. “Mike,” she said. “Do something!”

“What?”

“I said do something! That guy can’t be more than nineteen. What if something happened to him?”

“What’s that got to do with me? Call the police if you want to. ”

“A good neighbor would go check. A real man could do it himself.”

“You know what, Sheila? Fine. I’ll go check.” Anything to shut her up, he thought. He grabbed his baseball bat and went upstairs.

He pounded on the door. When there was no response, he leaned over to see if he could glimpse anything from the window.

The first thing that his eye caught was an overturned lamp lying on the floor. Then he saw an overturned chair.

The boy was hanging from a rope.

Mike tried breaking in through the door, but the lock wouldn’t give. He took his bat and broke the glass out of the window.

He climbed in, running on adrenaline. The boy’s hands were at his throat; he was trying to hold on but it was getting hard. He reached the boy and grabbed at his legs. After a moment he was able to loosen the noose. The boy fell. But he was alive, coughing, holding his throat. When he could speak, his voice was raspy.

“What?” Mike asked, breathing hard himself, shaking from the excitement.

“Thanks for coming out.”

“What?”

The boy raised a finger. There was a movement in the shadows. Feral eyes glowed in the darkness.

The werewolf pounced on Mike. He never had a chance to scream.

Later, Sheila came upstairs.

“Son,” she said with a smile to the young man, “I heard you playing last night. I am so proud of you; you’ve mastered that piece. Didn’t drop a single note.”

“Mom,” he said, embarrassed, but happy she’d noticed.

“Where’s Dad?” she asked.

“In the back, getting cleaned up.”

He came out just then. Back in his human form, he smiled at his wife. There was still blood on his mouth, and she kissed him to enjoy the taste of it.

Their son cringed. They seemed to have forgotten he was in the room.

“I do hope you saved some for me,” she whispered intimately.

“Of course. We can’t have our huntress going hungry, now can we?”

Walking back into the bedroom, she closed the door and changed into her werewolf form, so she could enjoy the meal that used to be Mike.

My Dear Kerry,

Written here is my greatest secret.

I thought long and hard about telling you this, believe me. You are sixteen. You’re on the cusp of adulthood now. I could have told you back when you were little, when you first came to my door. But you were just a little thing then. I couldn’t be sure what they’d tell you about a woman like me. So I had to be careful.

I feared you would not believe what I have to tell you.

Your mother is my great-granddaughter. She never knew me, but I am sure she heard about me. People make up all kinds of stories.

Where our people come from, on the island, shamans and mystics are respected. They are looked towards for answers and comfort. People speak as freely of magic as they discuss the change of seasons or the tides that bring in the fish that leave their spawn at the shore.

On Kitanya, magic is simply a fact. Like the warm rain or the breeze in the palms.

The New World is filled with only one way of thinking. When I first came to live here, when I was only a few years older than you, the silly things that people said were good enough to get you killed.

They burned our kind. They drowned us. They buried us alive.

If you were born with the veil, they knew to fear you. If you speculated that it might rain on a clear, cloudless day, and it happened, they were like to send the dogs after you.

The day you were born, Kerry, I read the talismans. A bird stood outside on the porch and chirped three times. The wind blew heavy from the northeast. I went outside and slaughtered my hen, waiting to see if the blood would speak to me of things whispered on the breeze. And it did. A new seer was to be born into the family.

I found out where my great-granddaughter and her husband had moved to in order to be closer. I went to the hospital and watched you in the nursery. And I waited.

The day you came to my door for candy, when you were only seven years old, changed everything. You came for Halloween! I will never forget you, your precious face.

Over these years it’s been my privilege to watch you grow. But now I must prepare you for the inevitable. The life of a seer is never a safe one, even in these times when they speak of tolerance and diversity. People will want to test your skills. Some will want to make an experiment of you. Others will hold you up to ridicule.

Miracles have been made with technology, my love, but men now fear the miracles that are inborn within us.

Truly, the important thing is that you are honest to yourself, about what you are.

Kerry, tonight, as you enter your sixteenth year, you will come into your full powers.
Use them wisely. Remember what you were always taught: that evil returns to the house from which it came, only a hundredfold stronger.

I have left you every spell, every incantation in this book… Guard it wisely. Commit whatever you can to memory, because you will not always have it when you need it.

There are those which still seek to destroy our kind. I am leaving you, but I do not leave you without defenses. It is safer for you–and I–if we are not together. During this powerful time, all manner of Others will be drawn to you: creatures from the dark as well as those from the Underworld.

You will know them by your power. Their real forms will be revealed to you.

Be strong, and keep well your secrets. I pass onto you the strength of the ancestors who went before us.

You are a Witch.

My Love Always,
Mary Ava

It was dark, and he sat in front of the computer screen, barely awake.

The lights were out. Somewhere on the street outside, headlights swept past his living room window.

He’d been sitting like this in his office since four thirty, the beginning of twilight.

It was now past six, and he had not bothered to get up and put on the lights.

Having worked on an advertising proposal for the better part of the day, he was exhausted. Stretching, thinking about the leftover pot roast still in the fridge from the night before, he stood and yawned.

A pop-up came on screen:

Sarah13705 has sent you a message.

That’s strange, he thought. Sarah should have left work by now and was most likely making the slog through traffic back to her apartment. It was rare that she ever sent him an instant message, anyway. Usually she just called or sent a text.

He clicked on the box and opened the message.

Are you home? it read.

He sat down and typed in his answer: Sure. Are you coming over tonight or what?

It took a moment for the reply.

Actually, I am sending a delivery over to you. Make sure you get it. I purchased some naughty things for you.

His mind began to race with possibilities: lingerie, toys? One never knew. Sarah always appeared to be this buttoned-down rich little Daddy’s girl, but she was full of surprises.

No hints? he typed back.

No. You have to wait and see.

You’ll just have to wait, baby.

The doorbell rang, and he signed for the package. It was fairly heavy, all wrapped up in a glossy red box. As the delivery man pulled away, he turned on the lights and closed the door behind him.

It took a few minutes for him to unravel the paper. Finally, he had a little black box in his hand, not much bigger than the size of a hat. He opened it, and there was a letter inside.

The front said “I love you,” in Sarah’s slanted handwriting. There was an arrow and the words beside it: turn over.

The back read “Too bad you don’t love me, too.”

There was a bunch of tissue in the box. He suddenly felt dread. He reached under the paper carefully and felt cloth.

In his hand he lifted a little lace bra. The smell of perfume still clung to the fabric.

His face turned red. This was not Sarah’s.

There seemed to be something else in the box, something much heavier. He reached in and felt the edge of something metallic.

Now he understood. How Sarah had been overly sweet, making him pot roast and calling him every few hours, smiling, but her eyes boring holes into his back every time he wasn’t looking. This routine had been going on for the better part of a month.

Just how long had she known he was cheating?

He heard a tick… one… two… three.

He tried to toss the box, but it bounced off the wall and landed at his feet.

The explosion rocked the whole street.

The elders never talk about it.

Like veterans back from war, their days and nights are filled with visions they cannot forget. No one dares speak of the days before the Great Darkness.

As our Father told us one night, when it was quiet and there was just the family gathered around the firelight, people are too busy bowing to the new monsters to worry about the old ones.

Back in the days of the War, before the world went dark, they believed we were the only creatures that existed on Earth. Other than the animals, man was alone on this Earth.

Where do the Others come from?

We started calling them that. It was the best way to describe them. Their faces aren’t… right. Their limbs are overly long, and they walk in a sort of slumping motion. Their eyes are huge, with teeth that look like they belong in the mouth of a shark.

You can smell them coming.

When they walk through the factory where I work, all the people grow silent, knowing what will soon happen. The smell of ashes cloys to them, as if their skin is made of it. Their speech is a language that does not use tongues, but is a scraping, clicking noise emanating from their throats and the grinding of their teeth.

One only prays that they do not speak to you.

There is usually a human that they keep with them, a female, who can translate their orders. None of us are sure how it is that she can understand them.

They walk around in black uniforms, caps pressed against their heads, grasping whips in their hands. Just in case someone gets out of line.

It is rare that anyone does.

We are taught from childhood that humans are not to make eye contact. They often wear dark glasses. Once, by accident, I saw one of the Others take his sunglasses off and polish them. His eyes were almost like a human’s. But there was a red cast to them. And a stillness, an emptiness that was not normal. It reminded me of the cold, steady eyes of a snake.

The Others walk through our cities, with guns and knives to keep us quiet and compliant. Making and enforcing the law is their realm alone.

Those that do not obey are never seen again.