one twisted voice Read online

  The corpse of a dog.

  Then other corpses. Not canine. No maggots, no flies or blue bottles, so perhaps they too had been struck down.

  More corpses. Male, female, some older and indistinguishable now.

  The rank and bloated things were nothing new to my eyes, yet still shook me with unforgiving terror. In them I saw my own future.

  It was imminent.

  This was the day.

  Nothing moved between heaven and earth. Cornflower blue, tufts of cotton wool, nary a contrail: the sky was as empty as the heart that rode like a clenched fist in my chest. God once pledged a rainbow as a sign of his promise. Today the sky held no prism. No promise.

  I stood by a river. It smelled like corked wine, not least because the bodies of men and women fought for space with the dray beasts piled along the embankments, or hung caught in the tree roots along the edges.

  I went on. This was the day but not the place.

  Later I stood on a bridge. I knew this place. Along the way I’d been drawn back along an anabranch until my feet had again found familiar ground. One foot after the other I walked, dazed, seeking a sign. None came, not at first. The arch of the bridge drew me in, a sliver of steel to a lodestone, and I plodded towards it, my mind feeble, a shuddering ache in my bones. The coughing kept coming, the sputum, claret-rich, flecking my shirtfront.

  There on that bridge I first kissed my wife. She wasn’t my wife then, but that meant nothing now did it? She had been my everything and I wanted to be with her again. This strange anastomosis, this joining place that had entwined our lifeblood, made of us one being, it was the place to end it. Right? Damn right.

  The river here was broad and deep, such is the way where bridges arch. I stood, bent over the low wall and stared down at the smoked glass waters. The banshees were calling again, their wailing beaten back by the thrumming of my pulse in my ears. Saddle, stirrup, anvil, all thrummed. I forced the lamenting things from me. It wasn’t time. I wasn’t ready. Deep breath. Exhale. More coughing. More blood.

  On a bent knee, I leaned on the wall. Head bowed, hands clutched to my stomach. Not in prayer, I clutched at the burning in my lungs. My lips drooled, thick, viscous froth that took an age to slide to the brassed-current below. The plop was loud in the still air. Even the breeze held its breath.

  Breathe, goddamn you, I told the world. Breathe and live again.

  As well that I wave a hand and command the dead to rise once more.

  Such was my impotence.

  My wife was afraid to die. I told her not to be frightened. But I was the king of hypocrites. I was terrified. I was not ready, but it was the day.

  God. If there was such a thing, He had turned His head away in shame. He had judged his greatest creation a failure, and had held closed his fists, giving free rein to Death and all his cohorts. Disease came; Pestilence followed on its filthy heels and had swept the earth. Every man, woman, child, every beast that flew or walked or swam in the oceans, they had all been struck with God’s furious cleansing. The seas rose, the bloated fishes riding the tides, fields were spoiled by the cattle dropping in droves. Planes fell from the skies, cities burned, sewers overflowed and dams failed. It had taken less than eight months all told.

  I was the last man alive.

  Stumbling, I brought both feet onto the parapet. I scraped a nail out of the bed of my toe, and winced at the pain. Even now, pain could still make me cringe. How sad that I had not the fortitude to face this unflinching.

  The flames had immolated my wife, but I could not face them. I chose this instead.

  God had cheated us. Now I would cheat him.

  I stepped off the bridge. Opened my arms, greeted the rushing surface of the river. My love I’m coming home too.

  For today was the day.

  That humankind died.

  Author’s note:

  This story originally appeared under the pen name of Vallon Jackson at the webzine “Thrillers, Killers ‘N’ Chillers”. This story is also currently in production as a short movie by Third Act Montage, directed by Richard Gnosill, for release in 2013.

  GIVE UP THE GHOST

  Before the accident I didn’t give much credibility to mediums or spiritualists or psychics. I thought it was all a load of rubbish to be honest. However, Christine was more of a believer than I and often said that if she were to die she’d come back and prove that there was indeed life after death. I had no argument for her there; I just didn’t believe that the ‘mystics’ were anything but a group of charlatans playing on the grief of the living to coin in a healthy buck. I didn’t say there was no afterlife, only that I doubted that anyone truly had the ability to communicate with those that had passed on.

  Many evenings we’d spend in our darkened living room, watching Spook Chasers on TV and while Christine would yelp and hide behind a pillow I’d cringe at the lamentable goings on of the resident spiritualist medium, Del, while he went through another questionable ‘possession’. There were some things that kept me watching – Eve, the presenter, when she wasn’t screaming, was eye-candy so I didn’t complain. Not much.

  Christine believed. She told me that she saw her mother after the old lady died. She apparently came to our bedroom and patted Chris on the foot when she was in bed. I told her that it was just wishful thinking, or maybe a waking dream or something.

  So you don’t believe in ghosts?

  I believe in ghosts, Chris, I just don’t believe in mediums.

  If I die before you, Christine said, I’m going to go to wherever the Spook Chasers team are appearing and prove it to the world.

  Her words stuck with me.

  Even after the accident.

  I kept an eye out, listened, heard that the team were doing a ‘Live’ from a castle in a town nearby. More than anything I wanted to talk to Christine again. This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for.

  So there I was an audience member, sitting among the crowd of onlookers as the cameras rolled and Eve did her piece to camera, complete with atmospheric lights and spooky music and an ankle-skimming coat right out of a Hammer production.

  They segued into a commercial break while a table was readied, and they went directly into a séance, Del mumbling some disjointed mumbo-jumbo about white lights and protection. Some of the crew, the action boys who were forever being assailed by poltergeists in the show, were larking about off camera, before joining them all-solemn-like as the cameras began rolling again.

  There were a couple knocks and bangs, but we were in an old place that was falling down round our ears. Could have been anything.

  Then it was Del’s turn to lark about.

  I wasn’t very hopeful. He told Eve historical facts that I’d already learned from tourist brochures. Then he stopped suddenly, his head jerking side-to-side like a chicken as a supposed message came in from the other side.

  We’ve a woman here, he said. She’s sitting over by the window. She’s holding her stomach. Oh, dear. Oh, Lord...

  What is it, Del? Eve’s eyes were almost popping out of her head as she stared at the blank space Del indicated. I followed her gaze, hopeful, but saw nothing whatsoever.

  Give me a little more, Bob, Del exhorted.

  I had to think about whom he was talking to, then remembered. Bob was his supposed ‘spirit guide’. Aren’t spirit guides supposed to be a swami or Native American Shaman or something equally esoteric? Bob – Del’s guide – was apparently a nineteenth century miner from Yorkshire. Maybe that was meant to add credibility, but it didn’t sit with me. Couldn’t see a ghost in a pit helmet however hard I tried.

  Oh, the poor lamb. She’s in pain; she has blood on her shift. Del began shivering, his eyes rolling up in his skull.

  Eve cried out, flinching back from him. Right on cue. Did you hear that?

  When no one responded, Eve was adamant. I heard a noise like a woman’s scream, she said. She glared at the rest of the team challenging them to disagree. Some of them nodded along with her
.

  I’d heard something too, but it was the siren of an ambulance in the nearby town as it barrelled through congested traffic. I glanced at the other audience members but they were too rapt on Del’s shenanigans to make sense of the truth.

  He killed my baby, Del squeaked out in a Mickey Mouse voice. Don’t let him get me. Then Del threw himself off his chair and began convulsing on the floor while all the team gathered round him shouting at him to ‘come forward’.

  Yeah, I thought, come forward and take a bow, Del. It was about the best acting I’d ever seen. Or the worst.

  As he shivered on the floor, making more squeaky noises, I decided I’d had enough.

  Del was the biggest fake imaginable and he was sucking everyone into his little fantasy act. Everyone but me, thanks very much.

  There was no chance of ever speaking to Christine through the likes of him.

  I got up from my chair, made my way quickly away while everyone’s attention was on that big cheese, Del, and made my way outside.

  I was so disgusted, felt so cheapened, even if I’d proven my theory.

  I was in such a hurry to get away I didn’t even bother with the door, just walked directly through the castle wall.

  Author’s note:

  This story originally appeared under the pen name Vallon Jackson at the now defunct blog “The Weird Vault of Vallon Jackson”.

  SUFFERING SUCCUBI

  ‘I am “freedom”.’

  The woman stood on the penultimate step on the descent to the cellar. She had halted there, standing in silence, waiting for my bloodied eyes to register her presence, for my concussed brain to make sense of her.

  Even with clots adhering to my lashes, my eyelids swollen from the repeated beatings, she was a vision of beauty.

  An emerald green dress fit as closely as her musky scent to a body as perfect as any masterpiece designed by Michelangelo. Blazing red hair hung about her shoulders, curls bunching on the swellings of her breasts. Her dress was cut low and I watched the slow rise and fall of the pale orbs that it strained to contain. On her feet were satin slippers, as green as the dress, as green as her eyes as they surveyed me.

  ‘Have you come to let me go?’

  ‘I have come to set you free,’ she corrected in a voice as mellifluous as distant birdsong.

  ‘Then undo these chains and I’ll be gone from here.’ I was trussed to an upright beam, stripped naked as a baby.

  ‘You misunderstand me, Carter Bailey,’ she said, and this time her voice was every bit as sweet as before, but it was the sweetness of decay and rot.

  ‘Worth a try,’ I said.

  She took the final step down and halted again. Her features appeared set in porcelain, her lips were the painted smile of a creepy pot doll, eyes as solid as their emerald twins. A dim bulb flickered in the stairwell above her, causing the shadows to jitter and shift. The woman’s shadow did not move, because she had none.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am the one you came looking for.’

  ‘You are Saoirse?’ I gave her name the modern Irish pronunciation: Sur-shuh.

  ‘Seer-sha,’ she corrected, in the singsong original Celtic tongue. ‘As I said, my name means “freedom”.’

  I rattled my chains, thinking of my brother, Cassius, who regularly wore chains when I visited him in the deepest dungeon of my psyche. I could almost feel pity for the depraved lunatic now that I experienced a little of the discomfort he was eternally subjected to. Almost, but not quite. Cash deserved his torment; he could never atone for the suffering he put my wife and unborn child through, or the dozens of other women he raped and slaughtered before I killed the bastard.

  Sticks and stones, Carter. Cash’s taunting voice scratched its way through the recesses of my mind. Just thinking of him was enough to wake him from slumber. He’d been conspicuous by his absence during my beating, when I needed his assistance most.

  I ignored Cash and concentrated instead on Saoirse.

  She moved without seeming to move. She didn’t walk, that was for sure, because I was eyeballing her long, long legs, imagining them wrapped around my back and they never once put as much as a ruffle in that form-hugging dress. The lustful thought clung on, even after I realised that it was more akin to something that Cash would voice, and I had to tear my attention back to her face. No, she hadn’t walked over, yet when I tilted my head up to meet her gaze, she was directly in front of me, so close I felt the exhalation of her breath on my skin.

  ‘Why did you seek me, Carter Bailey?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘You thought to kill me.’

  ‘Killing you was never an issue, I hoped only to stop any further killing.’

  ‘Yet you brought with you a gun.’ Saoirse lifted her right hand and something cold and hard-edged settled under my jaw. ‘And this.’

  I couldn’t see what it was that she held to my throat, but I didn’t have to. I knew it was the knife handed to me by my friend and mentor, Paul Broom, Britain’s sixteenth bestselling horror author, when he heard of my latest fool mission.

  ‘It just might come in handy, Bailey,’ he had said as he handed over the intricately carved silver blade. The handle was bone and looked too much like the knobby end of a human fibular to be coincidence.

  ‘There might be nothing in the stories,’ I’d told him. ‘You know how urban legends grow out of folk tales and take on a life of their own: do you really think a succubus is alive and kicking and harvesting souls in bleakest Lancashire?’

  ‘I’ve heard crazier stories,’ he said with a pointed squint at me.

  Broom was one of the few people who truly believed in my claim that the soul of my serial-killing sibling was trapped within me, and that the shared near death experience we’d experienced had made him my captive when the paramedics jump-started my heart again. Having discovered what he’d done to my wife and unborn child, my brother had almost murdered me too, but I’d turned the tables and took the fight back to him. Locked in brutal combat we’d both taken a fall from the dilapidated windmill on my property, and sank, still beating and tearing at each other into the stagnant waters of the canal below. Our bodies drowned, but our spirits had still been coiled together in battle when the intervention of well-meaning paramedics had snatched us both back to my mortal coil. It was a difficult claim to palate, but Broom took it even without the proverbial pinch of salt. Broom also believed in my proclaimed ability to read people’s auras, and to also feel the pull of dark energy, and he’d almost convinced me that I wasn’t totally bat shit crazy after all. Limping about on a walking stick, throwing back his mane of blond curls, he reminds me of an aging rock star or over the hill pro-wrestler. On his knuckles he’d had the letters WWDAD tattooed as a reminder of his constant fight against the supernatural denizens of his fevered author’s mind. What would Derek Acorah do? I wondered. I was pretty sure that the famed psychic medium wouldn’t have sought a soul-sucking succubus armed only with a tarnished silver knife and a handgun: at the very least he’d have had a camera crew and the backing of a major cable TV company behind him. Foolishly I’d come to this backstreet of Blackpool alone. And now I’d paid the price of my stupidity. I should have weighed in that knife at one of the many skanky stores that lined the neighbourhood promising ‘We Buy Your Scrap Gold and Silver’.

  But I hadn’t been able to deny the tugging in my chest, the feeling within me that drew me like metal filings to a lodestone, whenever I sensed the presence of dark energy. Cash had to atone for his crimes; I had to atone for my failings. In failing to protect my wife and baby I had accepted my self-imposed punishment to root out and destroy evil wherever it reared its ugly head. I tried to think of it as an extreme form of community service, while Broom preferred that I was serving a higher court than human law.

  Saoirse removed the knife from my throat. My relief was only momentary. She laid it between my legs.

  Whoa! Hold on there, Red! Go ahead and cut Carter’s friggin�
� throat but I’m going to need the old family jewels when I take claim of his body!

  It was nice of Cash to express his concern for my well being. Yeah, right. In my head, I told him, “Cash, she’s not interested in taking my bollocks. She’s after souls and guess what? Here she gets the special BOGOF deal.”

  Shit, Cash said, I never thought about it that way.

  “Now would be a good time to loan me a few of those special skills you have in your arsenal, dear brother.”

  When imprisoning Cash in the dungeon of my mind I’d to devise the most intricate methods of containment, because in life the son of a bitch had been as tricky as Harry Houdini, and simply locking him down with handcuffs and gaffer tape had never been enough.

  ‘What are you mumbling about?’ asked Saoirse.

  ‘Nothing important,’ I lied. ‘Just wondering if you really look like that or if you’re a fan of old Maureen O’Hara movies.’

  ‘You like the way I look?’

  ‘Of course. Who wouldn’t?’

  Saoirse proved as vain as most other supernatural beings I’d met who used the weapon of sexual desire to deceive and enrapture before sucking your life force out of every orifice imaginable. To be fair I hadn’t met many. Actually, she was my first, but she was vain all right.

  She was at once before me then at the bottom of the stairs again. She ran one hand through her fiery hair, the other on her propped hip. Then she turned away, turning her head to give me a smoky pout over one bared shoulder. The dress shimmered off her body as liquid as mercury, puddling around her finely turned ankles, and I was given a view of her in all her glory.

  ‘What about now?’ she teased.

  “Yeah, now would be a good time,” I told Cash.

  Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, bro.

  “How about a nice Perspex cell with a view?”

  How’s about you set me up on a barstool at Hooters?

  “Take it or leave it, Cash. Agree, or your next prison will be inside the lovely Seer-sha’s gut.”