50 Famous Horror Legends (Part 2)

Henry’s Image

The old black man looked down at the courthouse steps. Below him, a crowd of murderous Southern white folk had gathered, hell-bent on stringing Henry up by the neck until he was dead. The Sherriff, seeing that a lynching seemed imminent, had judiciously decided to move Henry up to the attic and bolt him in.

The sheriff didn’t fancy the idea of a lynching; Henry hadn’t even been arraigned yet.

“Scoundrel! Varmint! Bring him on down and let us deal with him!”

The angry crowd began to chant his name, saying thee sort of things…and even worse. Cursing and spitting and a vociferous shouting of many voices were drowned out only slightly by the closed window Henry looked down, his blood turning to ice.

Why did they want to kill him? Because he was black, and because they thought he burned down their precious courthouse? That had been the third one built since the Yankees had destroyed the first one back during the war. Well, thought Henry, he was a free man now, because of them Yankees, but he was a marked one.

“Because I’m a black man,” he said to himself. “That’s the only reason they want to string me up without a trial.” Henry knew that, even if he was found innocent of the crime, he would most likely be lynched anyway. Of course, it was all Burkhardt’s doing; henry knew he was going to take the fall for it anyhow. That’s why he had ran.

“Would have got away, too, if them Pinkertons hadn’t caught up to me.”

Henry looked out the window, at the ugly mob asemble below. He knew he wasn’t really any safer up here than he would be down in a regular cell; mobs like the one below had been known to bust into jail houses and take the occupants out, ripe for a hanging.

Suddenly, Henry had an impending vision of his own death. It came on him instantly, filling his mind’s eye with the image of lying on the attic floor in ruin. He suddenly felt rage move within him. He flung open the window, leaned out, and addressed the angry crowd below.

They welled up in a rage, but he shouted them down, and they quieted so he could be heard.

“I know I’m a dead man. But I sware, before all that’s holy, that I’ll haunt you until the Day of Judgment! Do you hear me? I’m an innocent man, and if I’m to die tonight, you're going to be looking at my face from now until the end of time!”

The crowd was momentarily cowed, before surging forward again, their angry voices swelling.

Henry suddenly looked skyward, noting the heavy, low storm clouds brewing. Lightening flashed.

A low, heavy rumble drowned out the noise from below. Someone below spotted something.

“Look! Smoke!”

Someone else said, “Didn’t lightening just strike?”

Another said, “I could have swore it went in at the window! But, maybe I’m just seeing things.”

The Sherriff was already pounding his way upstairs with a bucket of water, anticipating a fire. That silly lightening rod he had bought from the salesman didn’t seem to have done much of anything. He was terrified his jail might, indeed, be on fire after being struck by a bolt of lightening.

He flung open the attic door, his deputy right on his heels. The Sherriff looked around the room.

At first, he breathed a sigh of relief; the room didn’t seem to be on fire. There was sure something smoking up here though. That’s when the two men caught sight of the strange, blackened form lying on the floor.

They waved away smoke, coughing a little as they approached it. It was Henry, of course; he looked as if he had been burned alive.

“Oh my Lord,” choked the deputy. “He’s been struck by the lightning! Burned alive!”

The Sherriff tossed the bucket of ater over the charred remains. But it was useless, of course.

“Well,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, “I guess that mob outside can go home now.”

The two men fell silent, and then the deputy said, “Sherriff, look!”

The Sherriff looked to where the deputy pointed to the still open window. He slowly approached it. There seemed to be something peculiar about the glass, something he had never noticed before.

“Must have been the lightning what done it, Sherriff?”

The Sherriff clamped a gloved hand to his mouth in shock, then turned suddenly and asked, “What was it he yelled out just before? Something about us seeing his face…until the Day of Reckoning?”

Note His image, burned into the ancient glass, is still there. Of course, one could tell oneself that that is, indeed, the original glass, from the time of Henry Wells’ death. But how likely is that. A far more frightening possibility is that, no matter how often the glass is replaced, the vengeful image of Henry Wells ALWAYS reappears. And always will.

The Death Ship

Captain Spooner and the strange man stood out on deck, watching the water lap lazily against the bough of the ship. Above them, sea gulls soared in a sky of blue.

The captain had rescued the man from an almost certain death, stranded in a creaky lifeboat on the open sea after the ship he had been sailing on had gone down in the Azores. Captain Spooner had seen the man signaling with an old tattered flag.

The captain had quickly changed course after spotting the strange man in the lens of his telescopic spyglass. The man was weak from hunger and, most especially thirst, so the captain ordered him to be brought to his own quarters, to be laid out on his bunk, and treated with the utmost care.

It was not long before the stranger felt well enough to talk. He had been clutching a mysterious box when brought aboard, and the captain, obeying his own stern, moral, "code of the sea," refused to let any of the scurvy dogs that made up his crew open it. And they were most eager to do so, I can tell you.

"I've traveled a long way," said the strange man. "I've sailed many a nautical mile to get my hands on that box. You see, it belonged to the pirate Lafitte!"

At this, the captain found himself astounded.

"Yes, and what's more, it is rumored to contain a treasure for the ages!"

The man's face suddenly bore a weird, anguished look.

"I dare not open it, though," he whispered, leaning forward to the captain as if he were a conspirator. "You see, the treasure has been--cursed!"

At this, Captain Spooner suddenly felt anxious. It was obvious that the man was insane. What on Earth could he do to relieve him of this mad obsession?

"Well," said the captain, "I'm not sure if I quite believe that. This is the 19th century, after all. Say, why don't we just throw caution to the wind, and open the thing? Then we'd know for certain."

But the man was having none of it. He raised his shaggy head above the pillow, and exclaimed:

"No! You don't know what you ask! This casket must NEVER be opened! Why, any man that would dare do so would seal his own fate."

At this, the captain was quite perplexed, but soon gave up the idea, locking the accursed thing in his private safe. He tried, as best he could, to make certain that the strange man was comfortable and cared for as he recovered from his castaway ordeal.

The crew of the old ship, the Flying Dutchman, were a lot of scurvy dogs, and the scurviest of them (a great lout with short, oily black hair, rotting teeth, and a bad complexion) soon caught wind about the strange man and his hidden treasure. Calling forth his fellow sea dogs in the fo'ca'sle, he whispered to them, "Avast ye lubbers! You want to work like slaves until the flesh falls from your bones? That's not any way for a man to go through life. Now, I heard tell that that the strange goose they brought aboard from that dinghy was carying a box. And in that box, or so he claims, is gold and jewels the likes of which none of us have ever seen!"

Men licked their parched and craggy lips, wiping sweat from their brows as they considered. They worked like dogs from sunup till sunset-- and what did they have to show for it? What would they ever have to show for it? Suddenly, resentment and greed welled up in them, along with disgust at the filth and the murderous heat.

"Right!" exclaimed one of them. "But what do you propose we do about it? Mutiny? They'll hang us all for sure."

The ringleader smiled wickedly, pulled close into his circle of confederates, and said, "Just watch and see, matey! Just watch and see."

Indeed they did; the captain and his new ward became very spied-upon men. Devious crewmen were forever skulking about; eavesdropping, trying to find where the captain had secured the hidden treasure. Alas, there was no such luck, until, finally, exhausted with their intial plan just to steal the loot, the comspirators fomented a bolder, bloodier alternative.

One lonely day, just after dusk, the captain was called down below deck. Something about an emergency, maybe some sort of leak.

"I wouldn't be surprised about anything with this old tub," he said testily; but he went below anyway, into the crew's mess. As soon as he stepped down into the room though, he found himself perplexed; then angry, There didn't seem to be anything amiss at all, least of not some sort of serious leak.

"Why, it's as dry as a d--- bone, you idiot!" he thundered at the man who had called him down. That man cowered at the entrance, before he was soon joined by his accomplices. They formed a straight line, all staring guiltily at the captain, like a line of frightened schoolboys.

"Well," thundered the captain, "what is it?"

There was a long moment of silence before one of them peeped up, "The treasure. We want the treasure that fellow brought aboard."

The Captain turned purple with rage.

"Treasure? D--- ye! What stinking treasure?"

There was more silence and shifting about nervously before one of them said, "The treasure...we know you have it. You and he mean to share it when you get to dry land. Give it to us. Or..."

The Captain, not one to be easily intimidated (who gets to be a hardy sea captain without having been around the block a few times?), folded his arms across his chest defiantly, and said, "Or...what?"

Before anyone dared answer, however, the man who had started the conspiracy to begin with stepped forward in the doorway. He reeked of gin, and there was murder in his eyes. The captain ooked down at what he was carrying. It was a deadly metal hook.

The captain raced forward, pushing men out of his way, but the man with the hook was too fast. He stepped in front of the man and drove the weapon home, sending out a torrent of blood and grue.

The captain crumpled to the floor with a gasping moan. A scarlet pool began to spread out from beneath him, painting the floorboards.

"Well, that takes care of him. Now, for the other one!"

And the crewmen, knowing that there was now no turning back, went for the strange man.

He was hiding in the cago hold, beneath an old crate, but they finally smoked him out and dragged him to the mast.

They band him to the mast, tying his hands in front of him, and baring his back.

"Now, you stinking, bandy-legged scurvy sea urchin, you're going to tell us where that treasure is hidden, or we'll lash you until your back is raw and your ears are bleeding from the sound of the whip! So, which will it be, then?"

But the man just raved insensibly. It was not long before he laid down on the filthy deck, and died of his injuries. The leader of the mutiny cursed and raged, and screamed, and shouted, and ordered his men to search the "D----- tub from stem to stern, till you find that treasure!" And so the mutinous crew tore the ship to pieces, but found nothing.

Now, the men had comitted the most terrible crime that sailors can commit, and so they knew they were now pirates, condemned to wander the high seas. They couldn't very well put into port in any civilized part of the world. So the crew grew scurvy and wretched, and they began to despair of ever seeing home, or even having anything like a home, again.

Finally, one dull, long day, with "water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink" surrounding them, one unlucky mate happened upon an old chest hidden beneath a few loose boars in the cargo hold. Thinking, suddenly, that this might be the strange man's "treasure," the leader of the mutiny had the box nrought to him.

With a morbid smile, he thrst in his filthy hands, half-expecting to pull out a fistfull of gold dubloons. Instead, his hand closed upon something gritty and strange.

He pulled it back from the box. Blowing from between his thick, filthy fingers was nothing but a fistful of ....sand!

He raised his fist to heaven and shouted "D--- ye! Curses! Curses! Foiled again! A pox on ye all! I swear, before God, that I'll sail these seven seas until I lay hands on that treasure. Or, till Hell lays hands on me! Whichever comes first!"

At hearing that, the scurvy, cowardly crew were much taken with fright. But they went about their duties, meekly obeying the every order of the demented man that they were certain was going tto bring down the wrath of God upon their superstitious heads.

Well, it was not long before a mysterious illness swept through the crew. Eventually, after much searchig, it was discovered that the casks of fresh water were tainted, the barrels the water was stored in being contaminated by some sort of poisonous growth.

The men began to sicken and die. One by one, their bodies, sewn, as by custom, into their shrouds, were tossed overboard with a quick prayer. Soon, they were operating a skeleton crew, a mutinous rabble of dying men who must have cursed their sorry fate, that they had ever lsitened to the unwise council of their mutinous leader.

"It's a curse!" one of the dying men cried, pulling his hair, his eyes bulging and his tongue lolling out of his mouth. The Mutiny Leader ran up to him, striking him across the face.

"Be still, damn ye!" he cried; but he knew all of his men (what was left of them) were going, similarly, mad.

***

It was at a seaport on Madagascar that two men looked out across the still, placid water, at the strange mist that had suddenly sprung up. And, they fancied they could see a ship, far off, limping into port. One of the men produced a spyglass. He focused--but, just as quicklyo he dropped the thing in terror.

"Great God!" he exclaimed in his own language. Pickining up the spyglass, his friend inquired after what he had seen. It took several minutes for the man to regain his compuser, but, finally, he said, "You would not believe the thing I have just seen! It must have sailed in from the mouth of Hell! The crew! My God, some of them living skeletons, and some of them looking like men turned into rotting fish! Am I dreaming? Have I gone mad?"

His friend, wondering if, indeed, the other man had gone mad, reached down and picked up the spyglass. He put it to his eye, and had himself a look.

He just as quickly dropped it. He shouted in terror, before turning tail and running up the dock. His friend was quickly behind him.

And not too soon, as it turned out. The mysteriosu ship was soon tossed and turned by a mighty wind that had sprang up suddenly, driving the derelict craft back out to sea amidst churning, tumultous waves.

But it was said ever after that the image of that ghastly, derelict ship, cursed by God, bearing its skeletal crew, would forever after be seen by men on the high seas, men facing death and distress. It was forever after known as a Death Ship, a Ghost Ship, an omen; and men dreaded the sight of it.

And what was the name of that ship?

The FLYING DUTCHMAN.

The Dying Man

The old bum settled himself on the edge of the boxcar. He was plenty drunk, and he needed a place to sleep.

He realized it was a disused refrigeration car. That scared him a little, but he was too drunk, just then, to care. So, looking this way and that, he climbed aboard. Soon, he had passed out.

It was hours later that the clack-clack of the wheels and the slow motion of the train roused him to wakefulness. He felt himself come to groggily in the dark, his eyes gradually adjusting. He was suddenly horrified to realize--

"Why, I been shut up in this refridgerator car! I was so far back in the dark, the railroad dick didn't even notice me! Man alive! Why, I'll, I'll FREEZE to death if I can't get out of here.

Already, he rubbed his hands against his arms. Wasn't it awfully cold in here? he realized. His fuzzy brain fought for a way out of his predicament. These refridgeration cars got so cold they could turn a man into a chunk of ice if he was exposed to them too long. And he was trapped in here! with no way out!

He went to the heavy, sliding door of the box cart, and began to work at it with freezing, numb fingers, fingers shaking from the cold...and the fear. But, try as he might, he couldn't get the heavy wooden door to slide open.

"Locked inside! Man alive! I'm locked inside this here refrigeration car! I-I'm done for!"

he begin to shiver and shake. Already, he could feel his skin grow cold, could feel his arms and legs grow icy as the cold crept into his clothes and onto his skin, covering his bones. His teeth began to chatter; he fancied he could see his breath blow out, mistily, in front of him.

He once fell asleep in a city movie theater, a place that showed films all night. Nobody had bothered him as he sat there in the dirty, down-at-the-heels place, drunk as a skunk. He woke up from his stupor at a point in the movie when the psycho killer, who was the father that was staying in some fancy hotel with his terrorized family, froze to death by being trapped in a bunch of hedges or something during a blizzard.

The camera had cut to a shot of him looking like a frosty pop, sitting there in the snow, immobile as a department store mannequin; the suspended animation of death.

"And that's how I'm going to look when they find me," he thought to himself grimly. He began to rub his arms with his dirty, freezing fingers, trying to coax some warmth back into them. For some reason, he thrust his hands deep into his pocket. He didn't know what he was looking for; maybe some matches.

"Start a fire? Will that save me?" He then thought this was a crazy idea, as he would be trapped inside and probably die of smoke inhalation anyway before they even got to him. Still it migth be worth a shot. He dug furiously in his pocket, but--no luck! All he pulled out was a few tattered pieces of paper, half a rotten banana, and a piece of chalk.

He began to curse hsi sorry luck. Then, an idea occured to him.

He took the chalk, went over tot he wall of the boxcar, and, with shaking fingers, began to write, slowly carefully:

"I'm trapped in here. It's so cold in here, and my body is getting numb. I only pray I can just go to sleep! These may be my last words..."

He stopped, stepped back, his breath misting out in fron tof him as he read what he had just wrote. Finally, after some consideration, he stepped forward again, and wrote:

"And this is to my lovely wife and little daughter. I'm so sorry for deserting you! If I had it all to do over again, I'd do it differently. I love and miss you both so much. Well, goodbye!"

He then stepped back, with tears in his eyes, and dropped the chalk. Shaking violently with the terror and the cold, he curled up on the floor, trying to conserve his heat the best he could. He then closed his eyes, forever.

***

Later, the medical examiner scrathed his head. He turned from the body, adressed his assistant, Dan, with some puzzlement.

"It's the darndest thing. Body shows every sign of hypothermia. This character died, clearly, from having frozen to death. Yet..."

His assistant raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Yet--what?"

The man was silent for amoment, then exclaimed, "Well, It's just imposible, is all. The temperature in that boxcar...well, it never dropped below fifty degrees. Sure, it was a refridgeration car and all, but the UNIT WAS INOPERATIVE. It wasn't functioning properly. But, unbelivably, it seems, in this character's case, it did its job anyway? Shows you the power, I guess."

His assistant asked, "Shows you the power of what?"

The Medical Examiner looked at him, scowled and said, "Thought, my young friend. Belief, to be specific. It has tremendous power on the body. This character should just be able to get up and walk out of here. Yet, he lies dead. And why? because he BELIEVED he would freeze to death--he did! In a boxcar where the temperature never dropped below fifty-five degrees; yet, because he believed he was doomed, he doomed himself. Eerie, is it not? One for Ripley's 'Believe it Or Not'!"

And because the doctor's assistant didn't know how to answer, he didn't.

At Least It Will Biodegrade!

He peeped open his eyes. The sun was blindingly bright. Beside him, Mother was standing eating a cheeseburger.

"He never brought me anything," Null said glumly.

He looked over across the field. The delivery boy was still standing on the sidewalk opposite, smoking a cigarette. Which, to be perfectly honest, Null found incredibly distasteful. The delivery boy was a skinny guy, maybe late twenties, with a full beard and a rumpled uniform. But, thought Null, when did fast food joints start hiring delivery boys for their burgers and fries?

He didn't really have an answer, but he looked a dagger at the boy, who could see he was being eyed with contempt. He puffed on his cigarette, his flaming Leif Erickson beard blowing hot in the August wind.

His mother continued eating as they stood there on the walk, side by side.

"I didn't think you wanted this sort of food, anyway, Nully old bean!"

She crammed a little more in her mouth, juice dripping down her chin. In truth, he reflected, he surely didn't want it, but it was after all...

"It's the principal of the thing, Mom," he whined.

They were standing, by the way, on a sidewalk, near the corner of what appeared to be a large sports field in front of a Catholic school. The delivery boy, guy, was standing on the sidewalk on his mother's left side. He was, as we have noted, aware he was being stared down angrily.

Finally, the delivery boy angrily took his cigarette out of his mouth, threw it down in one arcing sweep of his skinny, freckled arm, and started walking back over with a sopping, greasy paper sack of what Null knew to be "fast food." He marched up to the two of them, handed over the sack angrily, and began to walk away, taking off down the paved blacktop driveway cutting through the field. Null, somewhere in his being, knew he had somehow been insulted.

He took the sopping sack, held it in front of him as if it were a putrid thing, and took out a fistful of sopping fries, holding them in his right hand as if they were a bunch of disgusting worms.

"This stuff isn't even real food. It doesn't BIODEGRADE."

The delivery boy just ignored him. Null saw his back disappear. Suddenly though, as if in answer to his complaint, people began to sprout up, as if by some sort of teleportation, across the field; mirror-image people. mostly dressed in nice middle class attire. All of them seemed to be eating dripping fast food hamburgers, as if they were all a part of the same strange cult.

***

Of course, this was just a dream.

What happened next was more on the order of a nightmare.

"Are you sure it's okay if we stop there and eat?" Mom asked. "I mean, I don't want to upset you or anything. I know how you feel about eating meat..."

"About eating anything unhealthy at all, Mom! But I guess it's okay today. A little fried chicken won't be so bad. Actually sounds kind of good, I guess," he said glumly.

They pulled up to the place, and Null knew right away he didn't want to go in. The place looked shabby, greasy; it looked less like a restaurant and more like some nasty roadside attraction.

"Your aunt says this place has great chicken. C'mon!"

She grabbed her purse, and they went inside. Behind the counter, bored, frustrated teenagers with pimply faces (but no flaming red Leif Erickson beards) manned the counter and the cash register. Null and his mother got in line. When it was her turn, Null's mother made her selection (a three-piece dinner with mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and baked beans) rather quickly, but it took Null longer. He was straddling the fence, he knew, between being a vegetarian and a carnivore, but he just couldn't help it; sometimes, you just had to have some MEAT.

He ordered a single piece of chicken, a biscuit, mashed potatoes, and corn. Not bad. He already felt a little hungry. Soon, a teenage girl with a plastic tray came out with their food on it, and Null and his mother got their drinks (a Diet cola for her, just water for him).

They made themselves as comfortable as possible on the hard plastic seats, got their sporks ready to dig in, and...

"Hm. Something funny about my chicken," said Null.

"That's just your imagination, kiddo," said his mother. But, indeed, there DID seem to be something wrong with his chicken.

First off, the shape was all wrong; it didn't look like any chicken leg he had ever seen before in his life. The shape was all lumpy and weird. And it seemed like gross little projections of batter were sticking out in the wrong places. What's more, it looked as if there were a tremendous long curly fry sticking out of the end of it.

"Oh! Mom!"

Null began to gag. He clamped his palm to his mouth, but he knew it was going to happen anyway.

His mother looked puzzled.

"What is it, honey? What's the matter?"

He turned, began to race to the bathroom, but...he just didn't make it in time. Customers began to moan and panic as he spewed hot lava chunks across the restaurant floor. Last time he had seen anything similar was in a John Waters movie:

Because it WASN'T a piece of chicken they brought out on his styrofoam plate.

Someone had made a little mistake. Well, actually, a BIG mistake.

Not a chicken; not any kind of poultry at all.

It was, instead, a large, battered, spicy, Southern fried rodent, curled crispy and brown in the center of his plate. All Null's mother could think to say was, "Well, honey, you can say one thing: AT LEAST IT WILL BIODEGRADE."

Edward Mordake

She led him up the creaking stairs, the candelabra held high over the grey bun of her head.

“We don’t get many of you these days. Nobody believes it actually occurred. At least, most dismiss it as merely a piece of urban folklore.”

Outside, the wind howled blowing gusts of misery, as whirlpools of dried, rustling leaves blew portals to other worlds in the grey dip of shadow and moonlight.

Or so he imagined.

“I fancy you could just turn on the current.”

She looked at him with a pale, stricken face, waxen flesh yellowed by the sickly light of the dripping candles. Her face disappeared into a slide of quivering chicken chin. Her dress, he noticed, was several decades out of fashion.

Somewhere, a rat nibbles…

“We find that the spirits can’t tolerate electrical light. It disperses the ectoplasm. At least, that is the theory we are going by, currently.”

As if to chuckle at her own pun, she did so. A brief, bone rattle of a titter. He followed her heavy tread up the staircase. Shadows poured themselves out across the peeling wallpaper.

The smell wa moldering and thick with must. What was expected, he reflected. All so trite. They might start charging for tours, eventually.

Right now, he was here in his capacity as a --paranormal investigator? Oh well.

The hallway smelt even wore, like the mildewed remnants of some forgotten crypt. Or, perhaps, just the way a haunted house should smell. She rustled to the end of the hall, held her candelabra precariously high, and produced a skeletal set of keys with which she proceeded to unlock the rusted lock (with little clack-clacks that quite set the teeth on edge).

She looked at him as if she were about to make a portentous announcement, but said nothing. Suddenly, she threw the door wide, exposing the darkness beyond, lighting it feebly with the candles she held.

He choked away a wave of dust, or nausea, or whatever it was that suddenly gripped him in the throat and belly. Beyond, his eyes adjusted to the cavernous darkness.

It was a big room, blossoms of cobwebs shrouding the corners, dust a thick blanket over everything; it almost looked as if time was reclaiming it from the grasp of civilization.

“This,” she said, striding forward, “is where it happened. This is where he did it. This is where…he can, often, be seen and heard.”

“Oh, he can be seen and heard? Perhaps you had better refresh my memory as to the details of the story.”

She looks at him with a look of astonished surprise, but also seemed to enjoy the prospect of relating the tale.

“I knew him, you know. It isn’t just an urban legend, if that’s what you’re thinking. I was his private nurse. He was a very sloppy boy.

“He always wore a hood when he went out, which he rarely did, of course. He was mostly confined to this room, where he had his books and his own private thoughts. He was of a noble lineage of course, but from a decayed line. There were whispers and hints of a family curse being visited upon him. Let’s just say, well, if you knew him, you could believe it.

“The doctors came and went. Even priests, eventually. But the thing grew straight out of the back of his head, a little face; eyes and mouth and a rudimentary nose and a glob of hanging, doughy flesh reaching around to one cheek. The eyes could blink and sometimes seemed to follow you about. They would tear up, too. IT never made a sound; at least, not by day.”

He strode about the dusty room, which had long ago been emptied of all furnishings, except for an ancient bed with a dusty, moldering blanket and an iron, cage-like bedstead. It looked badly rusted. He suddenly felt a little cooler, a little emptier, for all her chattering. He put a hand over his mouth to stifle a cough.

“It spoke to him at night, of course.” She moved her heavy bulk across the creaking floorboards, a large black shadow in the dark.

“And…what did it say?”

She smiled. He could see her mouth was very tight and cruel, despite her prodigious chins and flabby features.

“Oh, that’s really the mystery of it, isn’t it? How it ‘spoke’ to him, and only him. His unborn twin, the Cassandra which he alone could hear. It related coming misfortunes, disasters…deaths. Sometimes, these prophecies…came true.”

Without even thinking of the consequences, he piped up: “I don’t believe it.”

“You can believe whatever you like,” she replied curtly. “The fact of the matter is, it correctly related the deaths of celebrities, politicians, even family members…It was seldom wrong in the details. And it would gloat; it enjoyed misfortune. It relished pain, and death.”

He wanted to make a smart retort, but thought better of it. What was he doing here, anyway? It was all so trite; obviously a ruse to pull in the tourists and suckers. But he decided to play along.

He pointed down at the bed.

“And this is where? This is where he…did it?”

She was suddenly business-like again.

“Yes, this is where Edward died. The parasitic twin tormented him at night. It said vile things to him, worse than the predictions. It would hiss at him that God…that God was dead. That He had forsaken the world, and left Satan in charge to take care of things. That life on Earth was a form of horrid nightmare that was only going to get worse. Because this was, truly, the Hell foretold in the Bible.”

He paused.

“I can well imagine that, for Edward, life must have seemed like Hell.”

“Yes,” she said, reflectively. “I suppose you are correct.”

It was full dark outside now, and he didn’t know what else to do. He had come prepared with a list of questions, but now they seemed irrelevant. He thrust his hands in his pockets, took them back out again, ambled in place, and sighed…

“So he drank poison, correct.”

She paused for a moment. Then she shifted her huge bulk across the floor, slowly, her eyes pointing down to the dark shadows of the dusty floorboards.

“Yes. Understand, the greatest surgeons in the world had been consulted, and not one of them knew of any way to…correct the problem. It was written up in one of the medical journals, you might have read, but the family struggled to keep it all under wraps. They didn’t want Edward to become the center of curiosity-seeker or lovers of freak exhibits. And of course, there was the hint of the family curse, old legends about…forbidden love. If you take my meaning.”

He nodded slowly.

“I think I do.”

Pause.

“Tell me: were any of these ‘predictions’ made by the twin, recorded for posterity?”

She smiled. He reflected that her mouth really was tight and cruel.

“Only one. That, thirty years after the suicide that freed Edward from his life of torture and pain, another body would rest upon that bed. Another man would lose his life lying there. That the sheets would, once again, be stained with blood.”

“He bled a lot then?”

“No. His twin lived several minutes after he succumbed to the arsenic, though. It responded to lit matches held in front of the eyes. Suddenly, though, it choked up a huge gout of blood, staining the sheets horribly. They’ve never been changed. Care to see the stains?”

He was hesitant, but finally bent over.

He peered closely at the faded stain. He could smell the heavy funk of mildew on the decayed, dusty sheets.

“So fascinating,” he finally admitted. “It almost looks like a face peering out from the sheets.”

He was certain it was probably an old wine stain.

Later, he dripped blood across the moth-eaten sheets, a heavy gout spilling from the wound in his head.

She had brought the heavy candelabra down with killing force. She was an old hat at this game, and quite strong.

She sat for a few moments in the pitch, imagining thermal vapors of ectoplasm leaving the body. A soul released, she surmised.

Her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Moonlight spilled in through the tattered curtains. She went to a nearby closet to retrieve her bundle.

It was a carpet bag with a florid outer design and a heavy clasp. She set it down on the creaking, uneaven boards, opened the clasp. It was already squirming and bulging, as if a small animal were trapped inside.

A noxious funk greeted her; the smell of omething in perpetual rot. This was followed by a death rictus of a face, frozen in sepulchral agony, astonished perhaps, to see Hell as the body died.

“See, I’ve brought you something. Something fresh.”

The rotted visage turned itself, mysteriously, revealing a snarling, salivating, mucus-covered but undeniably alive double…a malformed lump one might have mistaken for a growth or tumor had not the eyes glittered and the mouth gibbered strange, indecipherable syllables.

Grunts and growls; slimy tittering. The slurping, sucking sound of an hungry maw.

Somewhere, a rat nibbled inconsolably…

The thing dragged itself, by some unseen agency, to the bed, hopped upon the stiffening body, and began to feed.

She watched the dual head take its nourishment for hours, a shifting vision of horror in the moonlit gloom.

The Paper Sack

He was sweating, with sweat running deep down into the crevices and cracks of his body, an unpleasant olfactory aura surrounding him.

He had picked up the filthy thing in an abandoned lot, while skirting the detritus, and feeling his aching feet scream at him, as he plodded heavily across bumpy, dry, uneven ground.

He had passed a trio of girls smoking grass behind a stone hut that had once served as a fountain for children playing games in the hot August sun

He had walked up the hill beside them, not offended by their laughter, (amused that they probably saw him as a stiff little white man) he was "a stereotype, to be sure.”

But he knew what burning marijuana smelled like.

And later, walking through the neighborhoods, while decrepit buildings sweated, somehow, into the mid-afternoon laziness, he had spied the thing and been fascinated by the heavy, rough exterior, and the opening which had been stapled shut with thick, industrial staples.

So, a little apprehensive, he had walked slowly over, feeling as if he were in a dream, and had picked the thing up.

It was heavy. Something at least twenty pounds in there.

He turned, still carrying it. What if it were drugs?

Money?

A nest of snakes?

“It’ s probably nothing at all.”

Nothing at all.

Nothing at all.

He said it to himself, like a sing-song mantra, but he was thrilled nonetheless.

On the way home, he passed a little group walking. The women eyed him warily, clutching their purses tighter to their woeful bosoms.

But someone recognized him, made a lame attempt at a salutation, and wondered just what the hell he was carrying--which seemed to become a topic of whispered conversation with them as they retreated into the distance.

He went inside. The old place had belonged to his grandparents; was, in point of fact, in a high state of disrepair. Of course, he had nowhere else to go. What could he do?

Nothing at all.

Nothing at all.

Nothing at all.

The chorus seemed to echo in his hot, exhausted head. He peeled off his underwear shirt, toweled sweat from himself, fixed himself some tea.

He went to the dipping, bedraggled couch, sat down in the center cushion, and stared at the sack he had laid on the filthy coffee table.

It sat there, glumly enticing, promising a cheap thrill, or a gross-out of disgust; he wasn’t sure yet which it would be. Finally, after sitting there a moment, he decided he would never know unless he took the plunge.

He put his dirty fingers against the thick grocery sack paper, began to tear the heavy, rusty staples apart, which was more strenuous than he thought it would be.

Finally, he opened up the dark maw of thing.

He could see a rounded edge of what looked to be plastic sticking up. He was afraid to thrust his hands in.

(He well remembered the urban legend about the nest of snakes.)

He reached in with trembling fingers. He realized he should have had on rubber gloves. I mean, for purposes of hygiene.

He pulled it out, unwrapped the plastic, and for a moment it was as if he were transported outside himself.

The odor was unbelievable.

He felt as if he might be dreaming.

Had someone wrapped an old baby doll in plastic and stapled it into a grocery sack.

No.

Not a doll…

A moment later he discovered the note.

It read:

To whom it may concern,

This is the body of our precious child Junior, who died when, thoughtlessly, we left for a vacation to Honolulu. It was three days, and Bill was going to deliver a seminar when he got there. All our travel expenses were paid for by his employer. Wasn’t that wonderfully thoughtful of him?

Unfortunately, we left before the babysitter (Bill’s mother) got there, unwilling to risk missing our flight. We figured, since she had just called, telling us she was on her way over, she’d be at our house in a moment. So, we just left the door unlocked and junior in his little crib.

But a terrible thing happened. Our babysitter apparently had an accident on the way, and was instantly killed. No one came over to watch little Boris, and so he slowly died of thirst…

We came home to a scene of horror, as you can well imagine.

Now, the guilt is killing me, and, despite our best effort to cover our tracks, I am leaving this note with the body, as a final confession. Soon, Bill and I will be no more…

The note trailed off into incoherence. He stood. A spider had crawled out of the open sack.

He screamed.

(He truly hated spiders.)