Category: Horror

Stories aiming to primarily to unnerve and upset. Some might even take on a real-world setting, although without some excursion from reality it would be hard to tell between these stories and the nightly news.

Inktober 2019 – Build

“Ygor, I will need a left arm here.”

When, after several seconds, he heard nothing but a nervous shuffling right beside him, the doctor looked up from his stitching. Raising the magnifying goggles, he saw Ygor was still watching from just outside spurting distance, where he had retreated to after bringing over the most recent leg.

“Well?” When Ygor dropped his gaze to the floor, apparently embarrassed, the doctor felt his heart sink. “We’re not out, are we?”

Ygor’s head snapped up, professional pride displacing the bashfulness. “No, doctor. It’s not that.”

“Thank goodness.” The doctor took a deep breath, sighed out his relief, then returned to his original point. “Let’s have that arm then. This scaffolding can’t last indefinitely, and…” he paused, listening to a distant grumble of thunder, “We might be able to finish tonight with some effort.”

“Should we?”

“What?” The doctor almost dropped the spool of thread he held.

“Should we… finish?” Ygor ducked his head again, then found an inner reserve of courage. “It doesn’t seem quite right, what we’re doing.”

“This is coming very late in the game, Ygor.” The doctor spoke with icy slowness.  “If you had objections, you should have brought them up before we got this far along.”

“Well, until last week, I though you were just… you know…” The courage failed, but the way he glanced out the window toward distant Ingolstadt made his meaning plain to the doctor.

“Just reviving a corpse?” Ygor nodded. “Just creating a semblance of humanity, imbuing the spark of life into the disparate flesh of a tinkered-together homunculus?”

“Yeah, that.” Ygor took an unthinking step back, then grabbed at an upright to keep from slipping off the little work platform they stood on.

“That was fine for cousin Victor,” the doctor said. “Victor, for all his mechanical skills, lacks an artistic imagination. Besides, why should I do exactly what he did? He already proved it was possible.

“My creation, Ygor, will be the talk of the biennale in Florence, not just a source of nervous gossip in the medical schools. Now, will you please nip down to the Lefts bin and get me a nice-looking arm so I can finish this junction?”

Ygor nodded, shuffling toward the first of the four ladders he would have to climb to reach the parts stores. When he was halfway down, he paused to take in the doctor’s masterwork, trying to see it through its creators eyes. If it was actually able to support its own weight as it trundled overland to the art show, the intricately arranged network of arms, legs and torsos would indeed be admired by the cognoscenti of Europe’s art world.

From a distance, at least, where the details were less obvious. And probably only from up-wind.

“Inktober 2019 – Build” ©2019 Dirck de Lint.

Inktober 2019 – Freeze

Daisuke knew he had to find shelter soon or Yuki-onna would find him. She had already found Hanzo, taking his warmth and leaving him a mere heap of brittle meat. But then, when the boat had struck, Hanzo had been thrown into the water, been soaked through and through; by the time he floundered ashore, he was already drunk on the cold, an obvious target for the snow-woman’s seduction.

It was memory of the look on Hanzo’s face that kept him going. The man had not slipped into the tranquil death which legends of Yuki-onna promised. It was plain he had been in agony at the end.

They should have listened to the old man. He had told them the weather was going wrong. Daisuke swore at his feet, burning with cold, then he swore an oath to beg old Hayato to forgive him for the foolish words they’d shouted at him, he and Hanzo both. Surely, though, not even Hayato had foreseen a storm like this. A blizzard, this early, with the leaves still almost all green? A typhoon so late, out of the north? Both seemed ridiculous. Both had combined to come for him.

Out of the whirling snow, a regular shape began to form. Daisuke shuffled a little faster, not knowing exactly what he saw ahead, but knowing only that it was a structure of some kind. Shelter. The promise of people. A place to hide from Yuki-onna.

It was a wall, the kind that enclosed a rich man’s compound. Daisuke knew of no place like that anywhere near the village, but he had no idea where they had been driven ashore. It could be Hokkaido, for all he knew. Even China wasn’t impossible.

Weeping, the tears sticking his eyes shut now and then, he patted along the wall, seeking a gate. He found a gap, where part of the wall had fallen inward. He made a noise, possibly of joy, possibly of dismay, and picked his way across the rubble. He was at least now in the lee of the wall.

Finally, he found the buildings the wall enclosed. The larger buildings of the compound were roofless ruins, gutted by a fire the warmth of which was long gone. Staggering across the snowy gravel of an abandoned garden, Daisuke found an out-building almost completely intact, only a few small holes in the paper of the door. It jammed once as he tried to slide it open and he nearly let the frustration drive him into a frenzy, but he took hold of himself and was soon inside, the door intact and closed behind him.

The little shed was a single room without a window, square, hardly as wide or deep as he was tall. The floor was flagstones, just like the yard between it and the garden. Some kind of storage space, but Daisuke did not know enough about the economy of grand houses to guess what it had been meant for. Until the storm ended, he decided, it would be where they kept desperate fishermen. He huddled into a corner, arms around knees and tried to shiver himself back to warmth.

When Daisuke woke, it was darker. Sleep had come on him unbidden. He knew instantly that it had been a mistake to stop there, on the bare cold stone floor. He could hardly move. There was no feeling in his hands or feet; he looked to make sure they were still there and cried out at the sight of his feet. He tipped onto his side, beginning a slow creep on elbows and knees for the door, hoping to find some other shelter with a raised floor.

When he found he could not open the door this time, he battered his way through it, pushing aside the thin bits of wood with his face. For a moment, a shred of paper clung to his face, blinding him, and when the wind took it away from him, he saw her, standing on the far side of the neglected garden.

Yuki-onna. The woman who killed men in the snow, the legend somehow become present. It was hard to make her out in the dim snowfall, but he knew it must be her. What other woman would be there, in that dead place, a serene figure in the jūnihitoe of court? What other woman would wear jūnihitoe that was all the non-colours of winter, all whites and greys, never a tone of life to be seen?

She opened her arms, slowly, ready to welcome him into her embrace.

Daisuke tried to rise and flee. He barely even broke into a shamble, doing little more than propelling himself to land face-first on the icy flagstones. He began to grovel away, using his forearms to drag himself. When he heard the crunch of a light footstep on gravel, he looked back.

Her arms were up and the many jackets were open like wings, revealing a deep blackness inside. He could not see her legs, although she took immense strides, covering the distance between them in no time.

And now that she was close, he could see that the upraised hands were not hands, just black twigs at the ends of slender birch branches. The face which regarded him was a blank white mask, no lips, no nostrils, just tiny black shark eyes .

From out of the darkness within her robes came a thousand long, sharp knives, but not knives, because knives were not clear. Not icicles, because icicles could not bend as they wrapped around his legs, some plunging into the hard cold flesh to wake it with a worse burning, some clutching to pull him back, pull him into the darkness and then in their turn thrust into his groin and chest and fill him with the agonizing venom of winter.

“Inktober 2019 – Freeze” ©2019 Dirck de Lint.

Inktober 2019 – Bait

Yvonne stood beside the open window for a moment, apparently enjoying the coolness of the night breeze that wafted across the overgrown garden. After regarding the golden moon for a few seconds, she put her hand on the latch, swinging the frame until it was nearly closed, but leaving a finger’s-width gap. Less than a minute later, the warm glow of the bedside lamp went out, leaving the whole house dark.

Sometime later, a shadow flowed up out of the garden, gliding up the wall while a cloud passed before the moon to pass silently through the open window. The cloud moved on, and the renewed glow revealed a tall man, clad in worn clothes several generations out of fashion, standing at the side of Yvonne’s bed. He gazed down at her, eyes fixed on the length of neck which showed white above the dark nightgown she wore. Slowly, he began to bend toward her, then froze,.

The movement was detected too late. A cord drew the window closed even as it released a rosary concealed in the blind. The crucifix rattled against the panes as it came to rest right beside the window’s latch. Two men raced in from the hall, throwing on the light. One bore a cross in each hand, the other a boar-spear cut short for ease of use indoors. The spear’s blade and cruciform guard glittered with the blessed oil applied to them shortly before sunset that night.

“Caught you at last!” Doctor Crenshaw boomed. He reached back to hang a cross on a small shining nail driven into the door’s lintel, although he kept his eyes locked with those of the creature by the bed. Its features were an inhuman rictus of hate and frustration. “Higsby, are you ready?”

Higsby tore his own eyes from the ghastly visage to fix upon his mark, the middle of the creature’s chest. He brought his hands up until the shaft of the spear was parallel to the floor, level with his own thudding heart. “Give the word, sir,” he said, secretly pleased with the even calmness of his voice.

Yvonne had pushed herself up to the head of the bed. She looked from her two rescuers to the vampire. “The plan has worked perfectly,” she said, smiling.

With a flick, she tossed the bedclothes over the doctor. His muffled cry of surprise was lost under the roar of the shotgun Yvonne had shared her bed with. Higsby, pierced in a half-dozen places by heavy buckshot, dropped the spear before slumping against the door, his last breath wheezing out.

The second barrel ruined the bedclothes and ended the doctor’s efforts to remove them.

Yvonne broke the gun’s action, the spent cases pattering onto the floor by the bed. She set the weapon down, and stood. The vampire, his features returned to those of a handsome older man, took her hand in his.

“Thank you so much,” he said. “They have been hounding me for months. I have hardly slept since the spring.”

“Not at all,” Yvonne replied. She laid her free hand over the clasp they held. “People like them… my brother died because that breed of idiot got up a torch-and-pitchfork parade. I consider it a duty.”

“Are you sure there is no… gift… I might bestow?” His voice dropped into a sultry purr.

“No, no.” Yvonne let go of his hand, and as she continued she began to gather her clothes. “You’d best get along. I’m burning this place down as soon as I’m dressed. But do be in touch if you find yourself in need of any more help. You did a find job of drawing those two in, and I’d be happy to use… to work with you again.”

“Inktober 2019 – Bait” ©2019 Dirck de Lint.

Inktober 2019 – Ring

Hello?

Is this meant to be some kind of a joke?

No. I’m sorry. I’m just a little upset. You know I don’t do well with surprises, and you have to admit that this is a surprise.

Of course I’m happy to hear your voice. You know that. I’m always happy to hear from you. But I really wasn’t expecting…

Well, to be honest, this isn’t the best time. I was just calling the drug store to renew a prescription.

Yes, that one. So it’s fairly important.

Oh, no. You are important. You are. But…

I’m not trying to avoid you. I’m not. I just…

That’s not fair and you know it. I could be mad at you for leaving the way you did, and I’m not, no I am not, so you can’t be mad at me for not rushing off after you. Especially when it wouldn’t be quick at all, as you very well know.

I don’t know when. When I’m ready.

How are you lonely? Isn’t your grandma there? What about Rex and… oh, what was the old cat’s name?

Oh.

Dark and cold. Oh, I’m so sorry.

No. I will not.

Because I got to see the look on the driver’s face after you had stepped in front of his bus. That poor man. I’m not doing that to someone else. And at least you didn’t do it on purpose. I will come when it’s my time. I don’t know when that is, any more than anyone else does. And if you’re going to keep up like this, I’m hanging up. Yes, I miss you too, but that doesn’t give you the right…

That’s it. Goodbye.

Goodbye.

“Inktober 2019 – Ring” ©2019 Dirck de Lint.

At last, finally.

I’m making a story public today that probably should have appeared when the latest sequel of Halloween was hyping people up. I certainly could have, as I wrote it well ahead of the movie’s release although I respect the original Carpenter film too much to coat-tail on it like that.

The genesis of the story is… murky, as is often the case when the cry comes of “Where do you get your ideas?” It’s probably the result of having thought about, without sufficient space between one and the other, Friday the 13th and Forbidden Planet. The connection between the id’s antics and ’80s slasher films’ featured villains is pretty clear, after all, and from there it’s only a few synapse closures to Last Flight of the Final Girl.

For those who were curious; Patreon patronage would indeed have put this story in front of you before all the rest of the world.

Tiger Tiger

A item of trivia which will not assist you in breaking into my Twitter account: Tiger Tiger is my wife’s favourite ice cream flavour. I bring this up because it’s summer; it has no bearing whatever on the story I’m releasing today.

What does have some bearing upon it is the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day. I found myself writing a story set in the European theatre of operations given the amount of attention the war was getting. Tiger on My Back is (mostly) outside my usual line of thing, but I did what I wanted with it and I hope you enjoy it. It’s technically horror, but it’s low-key, non-cosmic, personal stuff… and to be honest, given the setting, it’s extremely restrained.

I say mostly because there’s a small hint at the end of something that might not be all in the narrator’s mind. I had toyed with the idea of inflating that hint, but… well, they say “kill your darlings” but occasionally one gets to live without even frivolous cosmetic surgery.

Mouse. Whole?

A flash fiction to mark… well, the start of local spring. Between drought and persistently chilly weather, the trees here have only just begun to unfurl their leaves.

There is nothing, really, particularly thematic to connect nature’s unclenching with Cow’rin, Tim’rous, apart from it being at its base a love story, and we’re told one’s fancy turns toward love at this time of year.

I should also mention that it involves (possible) insanity and (possible) imposture of humanity. All packed into a teeny little flash fiction.

Getting Away from Winter

It’s definitely winter. It is, unusually, less winter at the moment here than it is on pretty much the entire east coast of North America, but even here it’s winter enough to make one think of warmer times and places.

This coincides with a little story I ran out in response to a prompt which appeared last week on the Facebook Group which CBC Books keeps to support their Canada Writes program. Let me show it to you:

Clumsily blotted to avoid giving away identity of someone on a closed group.

Now, Canada Writes is aimed primarily at literary fiction, which is not what I do. There are those who argue that any fiction is necessarily speculative, otherwise it’s stuff that happened and thus not fiction, but I bow to the common separation of literary from genre. However, this doesn’t mean I won’t occasionally drop my kind of stuff on the table there, when I don’t think it will cause too much upset.

I was pleased enough with the effect that blatting something directly onto Facebook produced that I’ve decided to polish it a very little and present it here as On a Beach.

 

Sinterklaasjegeshenk!

Dutch is not the equal of German when it comes to menacingly long compound words, but sometimes it offers up a good’un.

Today is the festival of St. Nicholas, familiarly Sinterklaas to the Dutch, when good kids get a present and bad kids get threatened with abduction to Spain, because we’re still upset about the Thirty Years War and colonialism. We won’t, to avoid roaring arguments about racism versus cultural heritage, think too hard about St. Nick’s sidekick who does the abducting. Let’s just imagine a regional variant of Krampus and leave it at that.

ANYWAY, by way of observing Sinterklaasje and honouring my own paternal heritage, and to also nod to the British seasonal tradition of a ghost story, I’m posting Wassail today. Keep warm, as the sun prepares for its bounce off the southern limit of its yearly wobble, and if you have a sufficiency of bounty please share it with your fellows.