Fan Fears: A collection of fear based stories (7 page)

"Do you ever wish you retired, Justin?" Mike asked as he put his helmet back on.

"Every damn day."

The two men shook hands. "I better get back to it," Mike said. "Good luck with the search. I'll get my men over to help as soon as I can spare some."

"I appreciate it. You take care, you hear me?"

Mike waved absently as he ran back up the street and pushed through the growing crowds. Justin turned back towards the crews setting up the lighting rigs who were standing around the generators for them. "Any chance I can get some damn lights tonight so we can save some lives?"

The men complied, activating the diesel generators which coughed to life. Seconds later, the high wattage lighting rigs illuminated the pile of rubble, enabling the crews to work through the night.

FIVE

The chamber was suddenly illuminated as if someone had switched on the sun. The artificial light, much more intense than the diffused natural light of earlier, banished the darkness, melting it away so that they could see once more. Becky squinted at the sudden change, then screamed, unleashing the sound that she had been holding onto for hours.

The chamber was alive with rats. Hundreds of them scurrying around the room. She stared, unable to believe what she was seeing. Frank was also staring at the pulsating mass which covered every surface of the chamber. He had a stone in his hand and had been poised to throw it when the lights had come back on. Becky stared past him at his legs, wondering how it was possible that he hadn't felt it as the rats had eaten them. Only bloody stumps remained below the knees as masses of rats gnawed and ate at his flesh.

She watched from the safety of her ledge as they swarmed him, covering him and drowning out his screams as they ate him. She watched him struggle for an impossibly long time, but every time he pulled some of them away from his face, more filled the gap. Eventually, the fight went out of him, and he stopped moving. It was only then that she realized Kevin was screaming too. The rats were chewing on his toes, and unlike Frank who had been numb from the chest down, Kevin could feel everything as they stripped the skin from his feet. As she watched, one rat sheared away his toenail, exposing the wet, pink flesh beneath.

"I can't move, help me, it hurts." He was screaming and staring at her. Becky couldn't do anything but stare. She had become detached from the scene, unable to comprehend what was happening. Something came out of the hole where the first rats had appeared. It looked like some kind of magic trick, as the huge hairy body managed to push itself through a hole that looked far too small to accommodate it. It was at least four times as big as the next nearest of its kind. It was the size of a small dog. It sat on its haunches, surveying the scene. It was only then that she realized how noisy it was. The once silent chamber was now alive with the high-pitched squeal of hundreds of rats. She looked at Kevin, who was still screaming. Some of the rats were gnawing on his ears, tearing lumps of flesh from the lobes. She pulled against the pillar across her legs, then screamed in agony. There was nothing she could do. The large rat looked at her, eyes the deepest, darkest black. She saw nothing in those eyes but hatred and the instinct to survive.

She reached down towards Kevin, only then realizing that she was screaming, the back of her throat raw and hoarse. Kevin was screaming too. Blood dripped from his ravaged feet and soaked into the dust and pulverized concrete. She looked again at the large rat and watched as it sauntered across the room, its brethren parting to allow it access. It hopped up onto the concrete pinning Kevin in place. It was just inches from his unprotected face now. It leaned close and sniffed him, whiskers twitching, yellow teeth visible. Kevin stared back, his own eyes wide as he looked at the giant rat.

For a moment, everything seemed to freeze. Becky stared at Kevin, and then at the rat, which once again looked towards her, turning its black gaze on her. She knew what was about to happen. She could see the intent. The rat turned back to Kevin and thrust forward, biting at his face, plucking out his eye, which burst onto his cheek and ran down into his ear. The rat continued to feed, devouring Kevin's face as he thrashed and squirmed.

Becky screamed, throat filling with the taste of blood as she watched the rats devour her husband. It was around that time that something in her mind snapped, and any semblance of sanity or reality left her.

SIX

The fire crews worked into the night. Mike had managed to relocate some of his men to help Chief Clink, and they were now nearing the bottom of the rubble pile that was once the museum. The light of pre-dawn had come and brought with it some hope. They had already pulled six survivors from the rubble, which drove them on despite the forty plus dead so far. Mike was on his stomach, crawling into a space beneath a twisted cross section of wall. Some of the men had heard screaming coming from the area in the night, but for a while, it had been silent. Now he was close to breaking through. He moved a large brick of rubble to one side, knowing that in doing so the whole chamber could come crashing down.

"Give me a flashlight," he said to the men behind him, reaching his arm back. Someone placed it in his hand and he wriggled forward, switching on the light and around the dust filled chamber.

It looked like part of the lobby had crashed down into the basement, making a natural tomb of sorts. Mike had seen some horrible things during his years in the fire service. Mostly severe burns or falls from buildings when people's need for oxygen drove them to jump to certain death. This, though, was worse. There were three people in the chamber. A woman lay on a ledge less than five feet from him at his level. He could reach her but knew there was no point. Her eyes stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, a light layer of dust on them, mouth agape. Mike knew dead when he saw it and knew this woman was beyond saving. Down below, in what would be the basement, there were two other bodies, and Mike wasn't entirely sure what had happened to them. One man was face down covered in rubble, the top of his head devoid of skin, the skull open. The brain was missing and in the hole were several small blood covered stones which looked as if they had been placed there deliberately. Next to him, were the remains of another man, this one on his back and also quite dead. All the flesh was missing from his face, leaving a bloody, grinning skull behind, the eyes missing. Mike stared, unable to figure out what had happened when the woman made a sound. He looked at her and saw her moving, a barely audible moan escaping from her.

"We've got a live one in here, get a stretcher!" Mike called to the men at his back. With no thought for his own safety, he started to crawl into the hole, when something stopped him. He stared at the woman and watched as she opened her mouth and kept opening it so that it was impossibly wide. As Mike watched, something crawled out. It was a rat, the biggest rat he had ever seen. It pushed against the stretched edges of the woman's mouth, its fur slick and bloody. The rat clambered out of the woman's mouth and stood on her chest. Mike looked at the woman; the one he had wrongly assumed was alive but was quite dead. He realized then that it wasn't her that was moving, but the rat. It looked at Mike, and Mike stared back. The rat then hopped off the woman's chest and ran across the edge of the ledge, leaving bloody footprints in its wake. Mike could only watch as it scurried down the wall to the lower chamber and paused by a hole in the wall. It looked up at him, and Mike was sure there was some kind of intelligence in its eyes. The rat let out a single shrill squeal, then squeezed itself through the hole, pushing the excess blood out of its fur and leaving a rim on the edge of the hole. It reminded Mike of when he was painting his kitchen and he removed the excess paint from the brush on the edge of the tine. He watched until the rat had gone, unable to breathe, unable to think.

"How many alive in there?" one of the men said from behind him.

He looked around the room again, then at the bloody smear on the edge of the hole.

"None. False alarm. Everyone in here is dead. I'm coming out."

Mike started to crawl backward away from the hole, letting his men help him out. On his way, he pulled the concrete slab back into place and sealed off the chamber again. He didn't want anything that was in there to get out.

FEAR SUBMITTED: RATS / BEING BURIED ALIVE

FAN FEAR FOUR:

EXHIBIT

(Submitted by Naomi Avery)

****

This was a theme that I had a lot of potential avenues to follow based on the subject matter. A lot of these were what I consider to be ‘safe’ options, and not really what I was looking to write. A completely incidental conversation about something else with my wife sparked an idea that was just too appealing not to try. This is one of those stories which don’t always have to have a reason for happening, it is simply intended to be taken at face value. The explanation isn’t always the key to a good story. Sometimes you have to go it and just accept that every now and again, weird things just happen. This is one of those stories.

***

The pain was intense but fading, the last remaining moments of something that had been much, much worse. The last thing she could recall was being in the garden hanging washing. It was a nice day, the skies were blue, the breeze fresh with late spring threatening to bleed into summer, then something had happened. 

A light, a flash in the sky, an explosion but without sound. She recalled the blue crest of sky behind the garden fence and then....nothing.

Now she was on the floor in her living room. Everything felt fine apart from a headache, which still pulsed in her skull like a throbbing toothache. Naomi Avery lifted her head and looked around. She was still in her house and seemed to be in one piece apart from the headache. What she couldn't figure out was how she got back into the house. She scanned the room. Everything was how she had left it. Television. Furniture, photographs of her children. Her mobile phone was on the table. Outside, she could see the sky, still that gorgeous shade of spring blue. Using the chair to push herself to her feet, Naomi stood. Something was troubling her. It was as if something were out of place, but whatever it was she couldn't put her finger on it. Everything was as it should be, and yet different somehow. She crossed the room to the fireplace. On top of it were photographs of those closest to her. Her children. They were grown up now, but to her, they were still her babies. She stared at the photograph, and somewhere deep in her core, she felt a tremendous need to be with them. They were everything to her. Setting the photograph back in its place, Naomi walked through to the kitchen, opened the cupboard, took out a glass and poured herself a drink of water. It was cool and helped sooth her dry throat. She leaned on the counter and stared out of the back window. Her fenced garden was how she remembered it, a long rectangle of grass bordered by large dark wood fences on all sides to ensure maximum privacy. As she looked, her troubled mind tried to connect the dots. It came suddenly, a rush of knowledge, a sudden spark of knowing.

Where is the washing?

It should be there, there was no reason it could be anywhere else. She had already hung out enough to cover half of the washing line; the rest was in a basket at her side before the flash of light had changed things. Now the washing line was empty, the basket of clothes nowhere to be seen. Naomi opened the door and stepped outside. Even the yard seemed different. She searched for the word to describe it, and it came to her as she stepped out onto the edge of the grass.

Sterile.

Everything seemed devoid of weight, of being something tangible. It was like one of the show houses they had in catalogues selling furniture. Everything seemed off and artificial. She wondered if perhaps it was her, maybe she was ill or having some kind of paranoid episode, but she didn’t think so.  She squinted at the sky, the dark wood fences around the garden, then at the washing line which should be half full of clothes and instead was empty. No birds sang, no aircraft contrails cut across the sky. There was complete silence. She went inside and closed the door and let her eyes drift across the room in search of whatever it was that was troubling her. Her eyes came to rest on the kitchen table. She walked towards it and ran her fingers across the surface.

The table had been damaged during redecorating, resulting in a small gouge in the wood on the outer edge of the surface. It had been there for years and had become part of the history of the house. As her fingers traced the now unblemished wood, she realized what it was that was bothering her and why she was so afraid of something that should be so familiar to her. Although it looked and felt the same, this wasn't her house.

TWO

Instead of the panic she expected to come, there was a certain sense of calm. She couldn't quite believe what her eyes were telling her, and considered the possibility that she was losing her mind. Even so, she needed to be sure. She walked around the house. First to the staircase, where the banister had a slat that was slightly different than the others when one had to be replaced. In this version of the house, all the slats were the same. Upstairs, the bedroom was the same shade of light blue that she had painted it a few years earlier, but the notches on the door frame where she had marked her children's progress as they grew which had since been painted over but were still visible, were missing. Granted, whoever had gone to the trouble of recreating her house had done a good job, brilliant even, but there were certain details, certain personal aspects that nobody else would be able to recreate no matter how good they were. The phones were also fake, just casings with no parts inside. She went to the bedroom and opened the closet door, looking for the box at the back containing her handgun. She knew how to use it and was licensed to do so if needed. She half expected it not to be there, but the box was where it should be. She sat on the bed and opened the box, then laughed, the sound shrill and a little manic. She pulled out the replica plastic gun, a useless object which like everything else was just there to give the illusion of home. She tossed it across the room, growing angry and wondering what was happening to her and who had done it. An idea came then, one fuelled by rage. She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror above the sink. Letting out a guttural scream, she pulled it off the wall, white tiles coming with it and dust and plaster pluming around her as she tossed the mirror into the bath. The wall behind where she had pulled the mirror and tiles away was steel. In the center, a small circular camera was set into the wall.

The fear she had been successfully holding at bay arrived. It raged through her. She stared at the tiny lens embedded in the wall unable to believe what was going on. She clawed at the camera, desperate to know what was beyond it, but it was flush to the steel.

A knife. Pry it out with a knife.

She charged down the stairs and back into the kitchen, heading for the knife block. She grabbed the handle of the carving knife and pulled, but like everything else, it was a prop, the entire block and handles nothing more than painted plastic. She tossed it aside as panic took over and yanked at the handles to the kitchen drawers, but they too were fake. They were just panels that didn't open. The more she looked, the more she could see the flaws everywhere. It reminded her of the time she had seen a TV show about the secrets of magic. Once you knew how the illusion was performed, you could never see past it again.

Rage

Anger

Fear

Confusion.

All were surging through her as she flew into a frenzy. She tipped the table over and threw the cups and plates on the floor, where they bounced, the plastic expertly painted to look like ceramic. Eventually, she slumped to the floor against the kitchen counter, put her head in her hands and cried.

"Please calm down, Molly."

"My name is Naomi!” she screamed at the disembodied voice.

"Don't shout please, Molly."

She looked around the room for the source of the voice. She suspected there were hidden microphones in the ceiling, but she couldn't see them. "Who is that? What do you want from me?"

"Please relax and allow me to explain."

"Who are you?" She was crying, and could barely see through the film of tears. "What do you people want from me?"

"I'd like you to relax."

The voice was calm and friendly. Naomi wiped her eyes and stood.

"That's better," the voice said.

"What is this place?"

"It's where it's always been. This is home."

She lurched to her feet and ran for the front door. She didn't realize until she was halfway there, but she was screaming. She pulled at the handle, but like the rest of the house, it was a facade. The door was part of the wall designed to look like a way out. She slammed her fists on it anyway, desperate to be free from the prison she was in. All the time the voice was speaking to her from the roof, trying to sooth her and calling her by a name that wasn't hers.

Molly

She ran back the way she had come and out of the back door. That, at least, was real. She would climb over the fence if she had to, but would first try the side gate. She grasped at it, missed then got the latch on the second try and swung it open. Instead of the short alleyway between the houses leading to the street, there was more cold steel. The door opened to nothing.

The fence. Try the fence.

She obeyed her inner monolog. She knew her neighbors. They wouldn't mind. They would understand. She grabbed the fence and pulled herself up, but could go no further. The edge of the fence was attached to a thick plastic Plexiglas. She realized that was why she couldn't hear the world. She was completely enclosed. She banged her fists on it and screamed for help. It was impossible to climb, impossible to escape. Eventually, Naomi slumped down to the ground on the imitation grass and put her head in her hands. There, in the backyard that was hers but not at the same time, she started to cry.

"What have you done to me?" she whispered.

"This is your home now," the disembodied voice said from somewhere across the garden. "Make yourself comfortable."

"My family, I need to see my family."

"We're your family now."

As she sat there, another flash in the sky erupted and brought with it the same blinding headache as before. Naomi felt herself drifting as consciousness was snatched from her. She hoped it was death coming to take her. At least that was better than the alternative. Unable to fight any longer, her eyes closed.

THREE

When she woke, the headache wasn't as bad as before, but there was nausea whipping her guts into a frenzy. She was sitting at the kitchen table, head resting on the wood. She sat up and looked around. Somebody had been in and tidied up after her earlier outburst. She glanced out of the window and saw that the sun was low in the sky over her enclosed backyard. She had been out for some time.

"You bastards," she muttered as she looked down at the table top.

Whoever had been sent to set things right had also made a few adjustments, no doubt to make her feel more comfortable. The missing notch from the table that had set her on the awful journey of discovery was now present, but still wrong. The one on her table at home was dark with age. This notch was fresh, the wood underneath white and unspoiled.

She ran her fingers across it, then looked at the ceiling. "It's not the same. Don't you know by now that you can't make it the same?" she screamed.

She waited for the voice to come, for the calm soothing tones of the man who insisted on referring to her as Molly to come through, but there was only silence. She walked through to the sitting room. The sofas and chairs were as they were at home. It seemed in this room they had made the most effort, and she was hard pressed to find anything at all that was out of place. She walked to the window and looked outside, but there was nothing there. A painted backdrop on a steel wall a few feet beyond the glass which was lit to resemble the outdoors. She stared at it, resting her head on the cool Perspex and staring at it until her breath fogged her view. Unlike in the back, here there was no sight of the natural world. No view of the street or the houses on the other side of the street. No cars parked or driving to work or schools, or for groceries or a meal out. Just steel and a painting. An imitation of life. She wondered if perhaps that was better. The idea of knowing the world was out there beyond her reaches was cruel considering how confined she was. She thought for a moment about going out to the back step and watching the sun go down but wasn't ready for that yet. She was still struggling to cope with what had happened, to deal with the absolute numbness her body felt when she thought too much about the situation. She slumped in the chair, the one she referred to as hers in her own house. She thought it was odd how her body was already adjusting to the new environment.

Her head was still throbbing and she was exhausted. She thought about her sons, her friends. Would they be out looking for her? Did they even know she was gone? Would they go to the house to find it empty? She hated the thought of them worrying about her. It wasn't their job to worry. Her sons may be grown up, but they were still her babies. She thought about her friend, Colleen. After the traumatic experience she had also recently been through with Ashba, her cardiologist, she wanted to be there for her. She knew Colleen would be worried too. All of it paled in comparison to the question which had taken over her mind and dominated all others. That question was: Why her?