the horror story

Charles Getting worked at The Silverfish Progress in Dunnington, a small town newspaper, ever since he graduated from college ten years ago with a degree in Journalism. He didn't write about life's mundane occurrences, but about circumstances with an acentric flare about them . His goal someday is to become a syndicated columnist or the Pulitzer Prize Winner for solving one of the worlds greatest mysteries. Some feel his true calling is to work for smut magazines that headline stories of woman impregnated by the ghost of Elviswhile the cover would sport the picture of a four month child wearing sideburns that would make his daddy proud. No matter how irrational to the everyday person, only Charles Getting could explain and find the truth in just about anything. The towns folk read his weekly column more for it's comedic element than for the factuality it tries to convey. Pranksters have called up leaving anonymous leads very much like the previous nights episode of the X-files hoping the elaborate effort would pay off plunging 'Mr. Never Gettin Any' another step closer toward humility.

He stood outside 'Café Eclectic' and finished up his third cup of Kenya Double 'A'. The caffeine surged through his gaunt frame bringing forth an uncontrollable impatience. He looked at his watch and noticed the fingers on his left hand twitching. Deirdre was forty-five minutes late and he hoped everything was alright because she was known more for her sensibility of time and not for being punctually inept. The matter she had to discuss regarded the art shop that has recently taken up quarters across the street. It seemed almost overnight, without anyone noticing. He had to indulge his curiosity and took the first step toward satisfying it. He held a simplistic red circular swiped from the coffee shop counter:

Grand Opening
'Inert Visions'
2-9-99
'Paintings for the Lifeless Dead"
New exhibits the first Sunday of every month!!!

It's times like this he felt like Perry Mason, Philip Marlow or when he was feeling kind of soft - Jane Marple. It gave him an empowering feeling, yet he would feel a little more secure if he had a gun. The wood siding outside 'Inert Visions' was white washed with blackened windows. The proprietors place of business was etched in gold across the pane. Direct sunlight kills paintings, he thought as he opened the door and stood inside the vestibule kicking off the stuck to his heels. It wasn't the overwhelming scents of lavender and frankincense, but the painting on the wall that made him step back. The door closed behind squeezing out the sun light as a flourescent bulb, giving off a blue hue, slowly illuminating the room.

A small plaque sat below the painting and it read 'Birth of Virtue'. The painting vexed at his already heightened nerves and he couldn't control the nausea and fear pricking the back of his throat - White pyramid on black canvas. It was a symbolic triangle; foundation on the idea of the trinity that is established in all things; deity, time and creation. The trinity is fabricated of three, three points that is, Three apex's, three saviors, three gods sprouting from one entity. At the triangle's core lies the beast in red with outstretched arms, fallen angel. In front of Lucifer kneels Succubus inhaling blue flame which swirls from its masters maw. From Satan's fingers shoot rays of perpetual colors outlining the pyramid's inner sanctum tracing routs to the three corners encircling them. Within the northernmost circle appears Christ, gore upon the halo of thorns hovering above his head. Circle southwest contains the face of Buddha, altar in foreground level with chin, burning body of sacrifice, urns overflowing with liquid life. The circle at the southeast corner accommodates the face of Charles Manson, Star of David upon his forehead, tears of blood stream from his eyes.

The longer he glanced the more he envisioned the fires of hell consuming his own body and had to look away. His heart pounded to what seemed an unholy song; a theme song for this place and the images displayed before him. This was the story he had waited ten years for, the one that will get him noticed. He pressed the button on the wall to his right and after a few seconds a concealed door clicked open behind him. He turned and made haste through the arches embrace, into what may be a house of horrors or from nothing more then a clever businessman's marketing genius.

dizbuster7@juno.com

The door led down a dark hallway. The stench of death and decay was all around him. At the end was another door painted black with blood red letters saying,"eNtEr Here". As soon as he placed his had on the door knob, it zapped him and he could feel another presence in his body. All of a sudden he saw a big white house. And heard crying, screaming , and moaning.

"Where the hell am I ?" he asked himself. Only to be surprised when a voice answered him, "ThE sToRy You'vE beEN loOKinG FoR......"

He went from outside to the inside with out moving. He could smell the stench from the hallway, but it was much worse. The house seemed empty, words were written all over the walls, in blood, it looked like. "DiE You BiTCh" was clearly written all over the place.

The same picture that he saw in the gallery was hanging in a room that looked like it had once been a family room. Down one hall way were doors that were borded up, they shook as if someone was traped inside the room beating on them to get out. Horrible ear piercing screams of women crying to be let out filled the air. Then Charles found himself in the kitchen, he couldn't see ne one but he could hear. There was a scream and then sees a glass pick itself up and drop to the floor. "You bitch!" he hear from the neglected room. Cubbords are hang missing, blood is everywhere, then from no where a head of a blonde appears. It was Deirdre. Blood drips from her open neck. Here face was badly bruiesed, one eye was missing, and a handprint surrounds what was left of her neck as if someone had grabbed it and yanked her head off.

"cHarLEs, GEt OuT. STaY aWay fRoM hERe. iTs NOt wOrTh iT." she said gurguling blood out of her mouth along with the words. Following her advice he fled to the main door to get out but was greated by Succubus from the paintings. "gOiNG SoMEwhERe?"

"Wake up sleepy head" said Deidre from across the table. "How long have you been sleeping?"

"What the hell?" he askes, raising his head from the table. "You're ......." Charles stops when he sees his watch."early? That can't be I already went over to the shop. You were forty-minutes late so I went by myself." kaspur@geocities.com

"What kind of drugs are you on?" Deirdre asked and gave a faint laugh. "Never mind. Men never have a sense for time. I'm surprised you're here before me!" She sighed and looked at him with a sly smile. "Are we going or do you want to go back to bed?"

"We're going….," Charles replied and stood up. As he did… he noticed there was no one around. The Café was empty and so was the streets. "What the?" He asked… he knew it wasn't the time when everything was quiet.

"Hay… you still sleeping Charles?" Deirdre asked. "Wake up!" Charles woke again. Everything was as it was suppose to be.

"I've got to keep off the coffee," he muttered and stood up. "Let's go."

"Okay… just as long as you're awake," Deirdre laughed. They walked to the Art Shop. It was like living his dream over again. "Lifeless Dead?" Deirdre asked, reading the sign on the window. "Some people have too many sick thoughts." She sighed. "They should all get a life." They walk in… though, Charles was a little hesitant at first. "Don't worry Charles. The art is not going to come alive and kill you." She laughed as he walked in. Why did she sound so serious? "Come on, you're not afraid are you?"

"I'm coming," Charles said and followed her in. He looked at the paintings… at least they didn't resemble any in his dream. He sighed and walked on, relieved at first. He looked up and looked for Deirdre… she wasn't anywhere in sight. "Deirdre?" The room seemed to darken a little as he walked. He hope he wouldn't see any messages… that was the last thing he needed right now.

"Deirdre?" He walked and than, in horror, saw the picture that was in his dream. The same small plaque that sat below the painting that read 'Birth of Virtue'. The same painting. What was going on? Was he seeing visions? If he was…. "Deirdre!?"

His heart began to race. He looked around. The room seemed to get smaller. Halls twisted and that way. "Deirdre?"

"Right here Charles," Deirdre replied, sounding really sinister. Charles looked at her….

She held a dagger.

"What?" Charles asked.

"You're getting to close to the truth. I have to kill you know," Deirdre said and came forward to him. Charles couldn't move. It was as if he was stuck to the floor.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked and she placed the dagger under his throat. "I have only two words to say to you," she said slyly. Charles looked at her in fear as he felt the dagger burn his skin. "WAKE UP!!"

Charles was up in a flash. His coffee spilt on some burning his neck. "Ahhh!" He screamed, wiping the coffee from his neck. He looked at Deirdre.

"What in the world is wrong with you? I've been trying to wake you for five minutes now!" She said very furiously. "Men." She sighed and looked at him and crossed her arms. Charles noticed they were back in front of the café. "I hope you are awake now." He sighed.

"Me too," he replied and stood up. He hoped he was awake and hope none of his dreams were actually going to happen in real life… if he was in real life. He wasn't sure anymore. Dark Julien

Certainty was a luxury Charles would never know again, as he looked across the street and saw the very structure of the art shop morph into ominous gates to a palace fashioned in a style of ancient architecture he had never seen. "What the?.."

"It's all a dream," Deidre's voice seemed to hollow as her words progressed in unison with her physical form fading to a mere outline. She vanished momentarily and then returned, her eyes shifting from their normal, alluring turquoise shade to a translucent green, the pupils opening and closing horizontally, as though she were in a state between animal and human. As if she could read his very thoughts, she whispered, "What's the difference?"

For Charles Getting, enough was enough. The put downs from the town people, the inability to make waves in his career as a schlock journalist, he decided life had played enough cruel tricks on him. Whether this was all an elaborate hoax put on by the town, perhaps a slip of LSD in his morning coffee, or an unbeknownst session in a sensory deprivation chamber, narrated by some prankster or another, he would get to the bottom of it right then and there. He pinched himself, establishing a physical nature unbroken by the border of yet another dream. "Get outta my way," he shoved Deidre, or whatever or whoever she was, out of the way, and stormed through the door.

Once outside, he saw that the palace was monstrous, bigger than any skyscraper he had ever seen. It had many towers whose roofs stretched into the cloud bank above and beyond. There were stairwells up and down the outside of the structure. A cobblestone road had replaced the concrete street and when he turned around, his office no longer existed, rather, a horizon of smoldering campfires and soldiers with red, glowing eyes sat around discussing their latest conquest. None of them noticed Charles, a slip of etiquette he, at that moment, felt no obligation to point out. These were not men, these were hideous beasts with scaly arms and unpolished fangs who just might look upon the failed journalist as a snack of sorts.

As he walked towards the gates, the road stretched. No matter how fast he walked, the gates were always the same distance. He stopped, thinking perhaps then would be a good time to wake up once more. "Damn," he said quietly, if ever he needed a reality break, that would certainly have been a good time. Instead, he asked himself, how much further should he take this? "I can't stop now."

Suddenly, the gates were right before him, and to his surprise and chagrin, they opened without any effort on his part. He stepped through into a smoldering courtyard that led to a stairwell leading into the ground. Looking around, he realized there were no doors to the palace itself, and, shrugging, took the stairs.

One step onto the staircase and the stairs collapse into a flat, declining surface, hurling him downwards until he landed at the alter of a creature whose very nature defied conventional definitions. The beast was the size of three solid stories, its hoofs big enough to shatter Charles' bones in a million different pieces. Its body looked as if it were composed entirely of exposed blood and veins. While it appeared to be a massive incarnation of evil, the fluid substance of its flesh made it look as though a child could put its hand through its body and retrieve a beating heart the size of a buffalo. Before Charles looked away in disgust, he noticed that, whatever the creature was, its eyes were two bowls as big as the stain glass windows at his church, with the apparitions of dead souls, swimming around and bumping into one another, somehow providing the monster with sight.

Charles scooted backwards, thinking, for one crazy moment, the thing had not noticed him. When he found the bottom of the stairwell with his hands, he turned quickly to look once more at the beast.

Its crazy eyes were focused directly on him. "Ah," it said, in a voice so deep and gravel- filled, the walls of the palace threatened to collapse with every tonal shift, "Charles Getting. Come closer, let me make your life better."cosmicmack

With only a slight tic of a monstrous hoof, the stairwell behind him was gone. In it's place was the painting he had seen in his vision, only now, it was much, much bigger, so that he could only see a tiny fraction of it. Charles looked up. The upper part of the painting was cut off from his vew, so that Jesus and Buddha were somewhere above the cavernous room.

The thunderous, ominous voice rolled down towards him. "Charles. Fear not." The phrase, coming from something so fear inspiring, was laughable. Which was the only thing Charles could think to do. Bubbling, uncontrollable laughter cut through his lips. He couldn't stop it.

The beast took a mincing, tiny step forward. It's flesh rippled as if it was, indeed, liquid. As it tip toed, it changed shape, shrinking slowly. Now, it's face, which had been barely visable, came into view. Hideous, twisted teeth fought to be free from the blackened mouth which held them in. The gigantic eyes remained gigantic, even as the rest of the corpse shrunk around it. The eyes bored into Charles' soul.

"Let me show you something, Charles." the beast rumbled, as it grew steadily small. The idiocy of a beast so large taking such teeny tiny steps finally struck Charles. He rose, but as he did, Succubus, amker of night terrors and horrible dreams, reached out from the painting and clamped him tight. Charles could tell from the liquid fire which coarsed from the claws into his body that this was no longer just a sweet, innocent nightmare. Charles tried to scream, but could not.

The beast was slowly becoming recognizable. It was Satan. His miniscule steps had finally brought him face to face with Charles. They were of equal size. It was then Charles' felt his heart thumping within his chest. He closed his eyes and willed himself awake.

But, there was no such luck. Satan was still there, breathing his vile breath into unwilling nostrils. Out of the bottoms of his eyes, Charles could see Satan's breath was the same as in the painting, liquid blue. He could feel it filling him. His will slipped slowly away. Finally, the creature before him stepped back.

"Yes, Charles. Let me show you a better life." Satan reared back his head and laughed. On that cue, the walls of the palace came alive. Grotesque forms, barely recognizable as human, joined the threesome in the sinister chamber. They spilled from unknown places. Holes. The light in the dungeon grew dimmer and dimmer. Charles finally found his voice. He screamed. The creatures all joined in his chorus. The litany of the damned.

Then, from somewhere above, a rock dislodged and a ray of light shot down through the gloom, placing itself directly around Satan. JackShiner

With that ray of light, the scene dissolved around Charles. He was standing on the street outside the shop, the screams of the damned resolving themselves into the wail of a car alarm somewhere out of sight. He remembered all of it, from the moment he first entered the Café Eclectic to the monstrous sight of Satan advancing on him, but this had been no dream. As one who had studied the paranormal for many years, he had had his share of nightmares induced by his work, and had long ago learned to ignore them. This had been… something different.

With a start, he realized he was standing directly in font of the door to the art shop. He turned to face it and with a tentative hand reached out and grabbed the knob. It would not turn. He took a step back and examined the shop. The words "Inert Visions" were still etched across the door in gold, but now it looked as if the letters had been there for years, the glass of the door scratched and battered. The black velvet that hung in the windows, obscuring all sight, now had noticeable holes in it, and the white siding of the building was stained and dirty. This shop could not be new. Had it… had it always been here?

So close to the mystery that he had always searched for, Charles was suddenly terrified. He wanted no part of this shop, of whatever it was that lay inside. It was all well and good to write stories on crop circles and poltergeist activity, but he had never really though about coming face to face with what might be true evil. Almost against his will he turned and hurried down the street, away from the shop.

A block away he turned to look back and saw a hunched, black-clad form opening the art shop's door. Just before he entered the doorway, the figure turned and met Charles's gaze. Charles found himself staring into a face out of nightmare, yet one that seemed oddly familiar. Eyes of blazing yellow set within a wizened, ancient face stared back at him, and a smile crooked itself out of the mass of wrinkles around his mouth. The decrepit old man entered the shop, leaving Charles to wonder if he had ever been there at all. But that stare, the feel of those eyes upon him, that had been all too real.

Charles fled.Brian Issleb (aka Buck545)

He ran against the wind as if another force pushed him there, but then he stopped. He turned around slowly. He had just ran away from what could have been his money making story. The one thing that could have made him into the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, and he had run away.

"I'm a Damn fool," he cursed. He turned around, but the old man was still gone. He hit himself in the head with the palm of his hand. The story of his life, and he could have had pictures too, or at least hard proof. Something had finally given and he had given it up.

Charles searched around, but the streets were strangely quiet. Not a person in sight. The terrible burning under his feet, prompted him forward again. Something in him wanted to turn back, but then again, he needed rest. He wasn't fit for work right now. Unfortunately the prospect of going home didn't appeal to him, so he curled up in the warmest looking place he could find, and slept, despite the fact that he knew dreams would follow….Nova Danae Starlett

Charles awoke suddenly. Any torturous dreams he may have had fled instantly from his mind in a moment of terror. The town was black all around him. Dense cold fog hung close to the ground and obscured even the most easily recognized features around him. The heavy mist refracted the dismal orange light of mercury lamps that lined the street.

Charles staggered to his feet and looked around him desperately trying to make out any discernible shape in the unworldly light. His heart pounded in his chest like tympanic drums playing Dvorak’s “Mars Symphony”, increasingly louder and faster with each successive breath.

Charles held his hand before his face, observing with horror its ethereal appearance. The all-enveloping fog was unlike any he had before seen and certainly unlike any that had descended on the small town of Dunnington. Somehow the fog clouded his ears, making distant and muffled the familiar sound of his footsteps, yet suddenly and sharply clear came the sound from far above of a raven, calling not as Poe would have it “nevermore”, but merely an abrasive and deathly caw. Again and again it called “Caw! Caw!” - over and over in torturous rhythm, like the tolling of a somber bell in a gothic cathedral..

“Stop!” he tried to yell, yet his voice was trapped in his throat.

“Caw! Caw!” the demon bird rang, shattering the silence like drops of water falling ceaselessly into a placid pool of mirror-like solitude.

“Thump, thump” his heart rang in response - pounding in time with every caw - pounding - pounding.

Charles stumbled along the road and suddenly found himself in a cemetery, the old cemetery that held the graves of all the town founders and important people who lived a hundred years ago. The sound of the raven came abruptly to a halt, causing an eerie silence to fall over the scene. It was a suffocating type of silence that prohibited anything from disturbing its peace.

A cold breath of wind cleared away the fog before him, rending into thin pieces the dense cloud. Before him, like a tall mountain emerging from the sea of fog, was a tall grave marker towering ominously over the frightened figure of Charles, who stood transfixed by terror. His teeth chattered and he shivered suddenly, partly due to cold and partly to fear. He could just make out the words deeply carved on the face of the grave.turamarth_mormekel@yahoo.com Here lies Charlotte Zeleste
Mother of Three

Born November 12, 1969
Died January 1, 2000

The Headstone read.

Charles read the words, his stomach tightening into knots as it did. Charlotte, his sister, had left Dunnington nearly twelve years ago. She now had a degree in Marine Biology, a beachfront home in Florida, three children, and an alcoholic ex-husbnamed Michael living in Pittsburg.

He looked to the left, and the right, and saw no headstones for the children. They were alive still, but he trembled at the thought that they might be living in Cleveland with their alcoholic dad. Was this a vision of the future? He couldn't be sure, but he knew it was meant to tell him something.

Just then the fog crept back in. Thick as pea soup. He thought. Then Satan appeared again, this time rising from the ground itself. He stood up, this time appearing to be much taller than before. He stepped forward, taking the same small steps as before.

"Charles, I wanted you to see a small part of the fate that will befall the people you know. Yes, Charlotte's children will be sent to live with Michael in Pittsburg." How did Satan know what I had been thinking?

"Of course, all of this can be avoided, Charles. I can stop it from happening." Satan continued, his voice now sounding gentle and compelling, though Charles knew is was a trick. Charles almost jumped at his words.

He knew Satan was up to something, but he couldn't tell what. Moreover, he couldn't stand the thought of seeing his young nieces living with their alcoholic father. "Charlotte, what happened to her?" His voice squeaked out.Here lies Charlotte Zeleste
Mother of Three

Born November 12, 1969
Died January 1, 2000

The Headstone read.