Newton Webb's Blog, page 3

The Blighted Child by Newton Webb

Contents:

Horror Compilations

The Blighted Child

Horror Story Compilations

Summer of Horror: 37 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’ and ‘The Scream’.

Beneath the Shadow: 14 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Braemoor Incident’, ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘The Scream’.

Terrifying Tales: 12 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned’ and ‘The Morrígan’.

The Fiction Giveaway Extravaganza!: 82 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Wild Hunt’ and ‘The Spinster’.

The Blighted Child, by Newton WebbKing’s Road, London, 1962

Lightning crashed on the King’s Road as Holland House partied. Thunder clashed with Bobby Vee’s Rubber Ball, echoing through the building. The mirror ball sent spears of coloured light through the glass, piercing the stormy night.

Inside, the air buzzed with laughter and the clink of glasses as the crowd danced to the vibrant music. Lizabet Holland, surrounded by her entourage, sat in a comfortable chair with a gimlet in her hand.

“Darling, you are so courageous hosting a party this soon after giving birth. I was in bed for weeks. David was rushed off his feet bringing me treats.” Esme sipped her Manhattan. “I only emerged when he cheekily gave me a voucher for John Donald.” She tapped the golden necklace on the neckline of her shift dress.

Lizabet smiled. “I told Jackyboy that I needed gaiety in my life, and that I could sit just as well in a chair as in bed.” She put down her gimlet and adjusted her posture. “Either he invited a few friends round here, or I would get up and go to them. The dear relented. He is ever so well trained.”

Her friend Tilly looked around. “Where is the baby? I thought you’d be all cock-a-hoop to show her off.”

Lizabet snorted. “Oh, I think not. She is merely the arrow, and I am the bow. The nurse assures me I will feel utter devotion for her in time, but as far as I’m concerned, she was nothing but a nine-month millstone.” Lighting a cigarette in a white ceramic holder, she took a puff.

“Oh Lizabet, that is dreadful. This is your daughter you are talking about.”

Lizabet waved a hand at the offended Tilly. “She is out back with a nursemaid who is paid to love her. She is fine.”

“Don’t be a sourpuss, Tilly.” Esme took her aside. “It is Lizabet’s party, and we are here to support her. Now, let’s get another champers, shall we?”

Lizabet felt an intense wave of dizziness, followed by a sharp pain tearing through her abdomen. Her vision blurred and the room tilted dangerously. She blinked, her gimlet slipping from her fingers and shattering on the polished wood floor. The dancing ceased, replaced by gasps of shock as she crumpled to the ground, clutching her stomach.

“Lizabet!” Jack left the boys and raced to her side, a look of panic crossing his face as she gasped for breath, her face twisted in agony. “What’s wrong?” When she didn’t answer, he called to the others. “Help me with her.” He lifted her as gently as he could. “Someone call an ambulance.”

“Jack, the child…” Lizabet gasped. “Bring her to me, quick.”

Jack carried her to her bed. “Rest now.”

“No, listen to me.” Lizabet looked at him angrily. “Bring her to me. I need her. She can—” She slumped back, unconscious.

Jack stroked her hand and watched as his pale wife’s breathing slowed. “No, my dear. It’s done enough damage to you.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “I said we didn’t need kids.”

He sniffed, rose to his feet, and squared his shoulders before marching to the bedroom door.

“Where is that ambulance?” He strode into the kitchen, where Esme was on the phone.

“Twenty minutes, Jack.”

“Good.” Jack nervously tapped the floor. “This is good.”

Kevin brought him a whisky. “She’ll be all right, Jack. It’s probably just hysteria. Giving birth does odd things to women.”

Jack nodded.

Tilly emerged from the bedroom. “Jack, she has stopped breathing.”

“No, no, Lizabet, no!” He raced into the room. “Somebody do something.”

Jack knelt at the side of his wife. He frantically tried to perform mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions from half-remembered scenes on the television. “Where is that damned ambulance?” He slumped down, holding onto her hand. “I warned her she needed to rest.”

Tilly reappeared with Minnie in her arms. “Jack, I thought it was best to—”

He turned, slowly.

“She needs a doctor.” His voice was flat. “Not that thing.”

Tilly stared at him.

“Get it out.”

Silence fell.

He refused to meet her eyes. “Get that thing out of my house.”

Tilly flinched. “Jack, she is just a baby.”

“I will not lose my wife and then let the thing that killed her sleep under my roof.” He took a step forward. “Get it out of here.”

Smash.

Jack’s fist connected with the wall beside the doorframe, cracking the plaster. “I said, ‘Get it out.’ I never want to see it again.”

He sank against the wall, his body trembling with violent sobs, his eyes fixed on the bed where Lizabet had taken her last, shuddering breath.

Tilly looked at him with horror, but obediently took Minnie outside and looked for a cab. Looking down at the baby, she hugged her close and kissed the top of her head. She rocked her gently as she waited for a black cab to appear on the road.

Kings Road, London, 1989

Minnie looked around nervously.

This is a mistake.

The air was muggy, the slate-grey clouds promising rain. She bit her top lip and tapped her thighs anxiously.

Fuck it.

She knocked on the door of Holland House. The townhouse had aged poorly. Its white-painted front was stained by roadside pollution, and the paint on the black wooden door was flaking.

There was no response.

Minnie considered turning and walking away, but she had travelled all the way from the south coast.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She knocked again, harder.

This time she heard movement.

An old man answered the door. Jack’s once sharp features had softened into a bloated, sagging face. His bloodshot eyes glared out from beneath bushy brows.
“Whatever you're selling, I don’t want it.”

“I–”

He cut her off. “You’re about to say, ‘It’ll only take a minute of your time,’ but how about you get lost and save me those precious seconds? Lord knows, I don’t have many left.”

She stared at him in shock. “You’re dying?”

“Aren’t we all? So if you don’t mind–”

“Dad!”

He froze before the anger returned. “Are you simple? Are you trying to scam me?”

“It’s me. Minnie.” She looked down. “I know you wanted nothing to do with me, but I had to meet you.”

“Minnie? Minnie…” His voice trailed off as his mind travelled back to the last time he had seen her. His eyes softened before he snarled.
“Come to finish me off, like you did your mother?”

He tried to slam the door.

She slammed her palm against it. “I’m not here to fight. Just fifteen minutes and a cup of tea. Then I’ll go. That’s all.”

“Why would you want a drink with me?” He looked at her suspiciously.

“You have no idea, do you?” She stifled a nervous laugh, before anger took its place. “But then, how could you? You grew up loved. I’ve gone my entire life without knowing where I came from. Believe me, I wish my dad was someone else. Someone who cared. But he isn’t. He is you.”

Jack stared at her for a moment, his bleary mind slowly piecing her words together. With his lip curling in disdain, he stepped back, allowing her inside.

She entered, her eyes sweeping over the dismal state of the house. Dust-covered furniture, peeling wallpaper, and the stench of stale liquor filled the air.

“I don’t have any money,” he snapped as he led her in.

She raised an eyebrow and walked into the hallway. The house, once grand, was filthy. Dust coated every surface. Cobwebs clung to every corner.
“All I need from you is a cup of tea and a conversation. Fifteen minutes should do us, I reckon.”

He shuffled behind her. “Kitchen is that way.”

“Dad, do you–”

“Call me Jack. I am not your dad,” he said, his jaw jutting out stubbornly as he led her across the stained hallway carpet to the kitchen. The sink was piled high with dishes, and the scent of rotting food was almost unbearable. Flies clustered on the plates.

“Oh my God, you’ll get rats!” Minnie looked at the kitchen in disgust.

“I lay traps,” he said sullenly.

“Go and sit down. We aren’t having our cup of tea until this kitchen is clean.”

With a grimace, she emptied the sink to make space to clean. As she tipped away the mould-topped water, she recoiled at the worsening stench.

Jack waved as if unbothered, grumbled to himself, grabbed a bottle of whisky, and shuffled into the living room.

It took Minnie two hours to clean the kitchen. She had only intended to do the washing up, but once she had started, she couldn’t stop.

She began with the dishes, then tackled the black mould on the window frames and the encrusted food on the floor tiles.

When she finished, she looked at the art deco kitchen with approval. It was worn, but she could see the expensive, fashionable fittings. She tried to imagine what it had been like with her mum in the sixties. Had she been much of a cook? Minnie knew nothing about her. All she knew was that her dad had kicked her out when she was born, blaming her for her mum’s death.

Boiling the kettle, she took two freshly cleaned and unchipped mugs and made tea. The fridge, now sparkling clean, thankfully had some reasonably fresh milk in it.

When she took the tea into the living room, her dad was snoozing in an armchair. She looked at the thick dust on the carpet and resolved to clean this room next. Placing the cup down beside Jack, she gingerly sat in an adjacent chair, trying not to think about the dust collecting on her jeans.

Jack woke and studied the cup for a long moment.
“I shouldn’t have kicked you out of the house.”

Minnie waited. She had hoped for a tearful apology for so long but had never truly expected it.

“It was unseemly of me,” Jack continued.

When he left it at that and picked up his tea, Minnie gave a tight smile.
“Thank you... Jack. I do appreciate you saying that.”

He put down his tea. “I hated you for years, you know.”

“I... I was told.” Minnie watched him closely.

“I tried to get on with my life. But it was never the same without your mother. She had a vibrant energy that filled the house.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “She was an orphan too.”

“I’m not an orphan, Jack. I have a dad,” Minnie said calmly.

“Look.” He glanced at her, annoyed, stirring his tea and spilling a few drops. “I shouldn’t have kicked you out.”

She sipped her tea.

“That’s it, really.” He slumped in his chair, looking old and worn. “You look like her, you know. Same cheekbones.”

Minnie rose and walked to the mantelpiece. She picked up a photo and, wiping off the dust, looked at her parents.

“Would you like to know what my life was like?”

“Were you happy?”

“With my foster parents?” Minnie ran her thumb along the edge of the photo frame. “Not for a long time. I felt... displaced. Like I’d been dropped into someone else’s life and expected to be grateful.”

She glanced up, but Jack wasn’t looking at her.

“I scraped through school. University was supposed to fix things, you know?” She gave a brittle laugh. “But mostly, I drank. And dated awful men. The kind who–” She stopped, her voice catching. “The kind who knew I didn’t know what love looked like.”

A long silence stretched between them.

She reached into her bag. “Then I met Tim.” She passed him a photo. He gave it a cursory glance.

“That’s why I came to see you, really, Jack. I wanted closure. I wanted to say goodbye.”

“What do you mean?”

“In a week’s time, you’ll finally have what you wanted all those years ago. I’m not going to be a Holland any more, Jack. Not that I ever really was.”

Minnie took the photo back.

“The wedding is next week. I’ll be Minnie Donovan. Our last connection will be severed. You’ll finally be free of me, just as you wanted all those years ago.”

Jack looked worried. “You don’t want me to walk you–”

“Ha. God, no.” She snorted. “All I wanted was to meet my dad for the first time. To make peace, if I could, and to say goodbye properly.”

Jack looked around nervously. “I don’t have any money for the ceremony. I quit work after your mother’s death.”

“I wouldn’t accept your money if it were offered. But perhaps you could offer your blessing?”

Jack huffed, a look of nervous panic in his eyes.
“I’m glad you’re getting married. I mean that. I hope he’s a better husband than I was a father.” Jack looked down at the cup of tea.

“Perhaps you could do something for me.”

Jack looked up, suspicious. “What?”

“I’ve had repeated dreams. Dreams of my mother. She calls to me.” Minnie clenched her fists. “I thought that maybe if I said goodbye to her at her gravestone, I’d get closure and could move on.”

“Fine. That I can do.” He looked around for something to write on. Finding a paper with a half-completed crossword, he tore off a sheet and scribbled some words with a cheap pen. Handing it to her, he gave a quick, thin-lipped smile.

“You’ve said goodbye to me. You should say goodbye to your mother.”

Minnie took the address gratefully.
“I tried to find where she was buried. I looked everywhere.”

“She was buried in the old family vault. You’d have to go back quite a few generations to find the name.”

“She wasn’t English?”

Jack scowled. “Of course she was. Her ancestors came here centuries ago.” A faint sneer crossed his face. “Hungarian.”

“Why keep it so... secret?”

Jack didn’t meet her eye. “It’s just... tradition. Her side of the family were old. Proper old blood. They had ways of doing things.” He glanced at the whisky bottle. “Superstitious, you’d say.”

Minnie frowned. “What sort of superstitions?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s all nonsense.”

Minnie looked at the paper and quietly mouthed the unfamiliar name. Her family name, passed down through the maternal line.

“Báthory.”

#

The Cemetery: 1989

The wind whipped through the yew trees as Minnie pulled her coat tight around her and read the names on the ancient tombs. Her steps were slow and measured on the uneven ground as she cursed her choice of footwear. The chill of the late autumn air cut through her thin coat. It was still early, and the morning fog shrouded the weathered headstones.

She could feel it before she saw it. A wave of exhaustion rolled over her as she looked up. The ancient stone was worn. It looked hundreds of years old, though someone—Jack, she assumed—had been keeping it clean. A polished bronze plaque bore the family name: Báthory. Minnie sniffed as she looked at it, a reaction brought on by both the cold and a rising sense of unease.

“Báthory...” Minnie ran her fingers over the stone. “It’s beautiful. So old. It—” She clutched at her head. She hadn’t drunk since university, yet she suddenly felt as if she were suffering from a severe hangover. She pulled out a bronze key and fitted it into the lock. The metal door swung open on well-oiled hinges, revealing a marble sarcophagus.

She knelt before it. “I don’t know if you can hear me,” Minnie whispered. “I feel like I’ve been looking for you all my life. I miss you, Mum. I never met you, and yet I miss you so much.” She rubbed her temple, wincing at the migraine that assailed her. “I saw Jack.”

She placed a hand on the tomb.

“He’s still angry.” She paused in thought. “Was he like this when you met him? I can’t imagine anyone falling in love with him. If you could talk to me... I get the sense that he died along with you. Christ.”

Minnie slumped to the floor as a sharp pain lanced through her skull. She looked with horror at her hand. It was withered and papery. Liver spots marred her previously flawless skin.

“What’s wrong with me?” Minnie’s voice rasped as her throat dried. She felt faint. Her head lolled back. Sunken eyes looked up at the marble sarcophagus. She was barely breathing. Her skin sagged against her bones.

A moan slipped from her lips as the air turned heavy, old, and coppery. The tomb’s marble lid slid open without a sound.

Something stirred inside. Pale fingers, smooth as alabaster, gripped the edge.

Lizabet rose, radiant and terrible. Her skin was flushed with youth. She stepped over Minnie’s collapsed form, brushing her fingers over Minnie’s face—now gaunt, hollow-eyed, her lips dry and grey.

“Jackyboy, you fool,” she said, her voice low and thick with anger. “How long have you kept me waiting?”

THE END

If you enjoyed this story, then consider reading the rest of my stories on Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited, eBook, Paperback or Hardback.

This collection of stories is designed for quick reads, whether over a coffee or during a commute. Either way, they promise to deliver exquisitely disturbing nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after.

FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Available to order on AMAZON.

Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.

The Scream by Newton Webb

Contents:

Horror Compilations

The Scream

Horror Story Compilations

Summer of Horror: 37 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’ and ‘The Scream’.

Beneath the Shadow: 14 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Braemoor Incident’, ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘The Scream’.

Terrifying Tales: 12 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned’ and ‘The Morrígan’.

The Fiction Giveaway Extravaganza!: 82 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Wild Hunt’ and ‘The Spinster’.

The Scream

1961, Soho, London.

Chapter One

The scream was the thing. It was always the thing.

Arthur Selby stood back from the canvas, the sable brush limp in his hand. He regarded his painting with a critical eye. The odour of turpentine and linseed oil enveloped him as he sucked his teeth. The paint was a sharp, chemical perfume that clung to his clothes and stained the skin on his hands. Yet he didn’t feel like an artist as he regarded his efforts.

He was exhausted. He had been up for twenty-four hours now, stood in front of his canvas, tweaking the painting and working to match the original source image.

Outside his attic window, the November rain fell in a steady, miserable drizzle. It slicked the Soho rooftops and blurred the neon lights of the club across the lane. Jazz music drifted up from the bar downstairs.

It’s dead.

His gaze was transfixed by the painting.

A dead thing. My dead thing.

On the easel, the Pope was trapped. Not with the emotional violence of the caged Pope in Francis Bacon’s design, but in the sterile perfection of Arthur’s own technical proficiency. He had the colours right. The virulent slash of cadmium yellow that cut through the Prussian blue, the fleshy, bruised tones of the dissolving face. He had mimicked the frantic energy of the brushstrokes, the accidental-on-purpose smearing that gave the original its raw, visceral power.

It had all the perfection of a photograph, but none of the fury that drove the original piece.

His forgery was a perfect, dead replica, lacking the violent emotional context the screaming Pope needed. The mouth, the singular black hole of existential terror in Bacon’s original, was on his canvas just a dark shape.

It was the best painting he had ever done.

Flawless to a fault.

Arthur would have got an A for effort from his tutor at the Slade. But for all his labour, the painting didn’t scream. It was a silent, black oval. It lacked physicality. Arthur looked at it, feeling his own throat tighten in dismay.

He knew he had failed.

Arthur had been a painter once. The Slade had told him so. A draughtsman’s eye, Selby. A good hand. But talent, he had learned through mounting debt and dwindling hope, was not the same as vision. Vision was the fire, the divine and terrible spark that separated the artist from the artisan. He was an engineer, a man of precision, who imitated rather than created.

He could, and did, paint dead Dutch masters for American tourists. He forged signatures on middling Victorian watercolours. He made a living, of sorts. He could afford the rent on his attic apartment. He kept himself in cigarettes and cheap whisky. But the man who had once dreamed of hanging in the Tate now felt unaccomplished and shallow.

A heavy, rhythmic clacking on the staircase broke his concentration.

Arthur’s stomach tightened. He knew that sound. He put his brush down, wiping his hands on an already stiff rag. He turned towards the door just as a heavy knock sounded against the wood. A flat, dead rap of knuckles.

“It’s open,” he called out, his voice hoarse.

The door swung inward and Slab filled the frame. He was an East End pugilist poured into a suit that was too tight across the shoulders. His face resembled a pack of minced beef, broken-nosed and impassive. He stepped inside and then turned back to the doorway.

“Careful, my Lord. The last step’s a bugger,” he rumbled.

Then came the source of the clacking wooden sound Arthur dreaded. The sound of Lord Marcus Thorne’s arrival. Thorne was steadied by a pair of black walking sticks, each topped with a silver wolf. He was a small man, diminished by age. But what he lacked in physical stature, his eyes radiated in pure, distilled malevolence. His face was pale and finely boned, almost avian in look, framed by wisps of thin, silver hair. His eyes, a chillingly pale blue, fixed on Arthur.

“Arthur,” Thorne’s voice was a dry, cultured whisper. He walked to look out of the single grimy window, where the grey light struggled to enter Arthur’s room. Turning, Thorne’s gaze swept the studio with a look of contempt.

It slid over a half-finished Vermeer pastiche that Arthur had painted for an American client. He lingered for a moment.

“Charming. The Girl with a Pearl Earring gets a sister, does she?” He looked closer. “You do such clean work, Arthur. So neat.”

Arthur felt the familiar flush of anger creep up his neck. He said nothing at the compliment, his own insecurities boiling within him.

Thorne’s gaze finally settled on the easel. He walked closer.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

He stared at the screaming Pope for a long, silent minute. The studio was filled with the sound of rain hammering against the glass, distant jazz, and the low hum of the city.

Arthur found himself holding his breath, waiting, as his judge pursed his lips.

“It’s good,” Thorne said at last. “I’ll take it. The colour mixing is superb. You have captured the texture of the unprimed canvas showing through the background. A fine piece of craftsmanship.”

“I’m still working on it.” Arthur tried to move between Thorne and the painting.

“Nonsense. It’s done. Look at it. This is some of the best work I’ve ever seen.” Thorne pulled out a magnifying glass. “This is immaculate.”

“No. No. No. Please.”

“You have been ‘working on it’ for a month,” Thorne snapped. “My patience is not without its limits. I have deadlines of my own. The time has come.”

“I don’t think the scream is right. It lacks passion.” Arthur wrung his hands in shame.

“I disagree. It’s a perfect replica.” Thorne’s pale blue eyes tightened with a cruel, predatory glee that made Arthur’s skin crawl. “And just in time. I have pulled a few strings. You know Sir Philip at the Tate? A dreadful bore, but his weakness for nineteenth-century French erotica is a useful lever. I have persuaded him that a small, private exhibition is in order. A ‘scholarly review’, I believe we called it. A handful of post-war British pieces, moved from the main collection for the benefit of a few esteemed patrons. My patrons, of course.”

He smiled. A thin, bloodless stretching of his lips.

Francis Bacon’s Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X will be the centrepiece. It will be moved from its usual, rather well-guarded position to a secondary viewing room on the ground floor. A quiet little room, Arthur, with older wiring and lazier attendants. It will be there for precisely seventy-two hours, starting Friday next.”

The jazz downstairs faded out, resulting in a round of applause, before leaving a sudden, ringing silence in the room.

Arthur felt a profound chill that had nothing to do with the November damp. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am.” The menace was palpable in his tone. “Deadly serious. I find I have a space for it on my study wall. And in its place, the Tate will receive this.” He gestured with his chin at Arthur’s canvas. “Your perfect copy.”

“But…”

“I’ll be taking it now.” Thorne leaned forward on his sticks. “Slab, pay the man.”

“No.” Arthur took a paintbrush, reversed it, and thrust it through the canvas, leaving a hole.

Time seemed to stop as the room’s inhabitants held their breath.

Thorne’s voice was a deep whisper, rage causing the old man to tighten his grip on his sticks’ gleaming wolf heads. “Explain. Quickly. Why did you do that?”

“I…” Arthur looked in horror at the hole.

“Explain!” Thorne roared, his exertion leading to a hacking cough. Slab swiftly moved over to stabilise him. When the coughing stopped, he waved away his henchman.

“It isn’t ready. You can’t put that in the Tate. It would be blasphemy.”

“I make that call, not you.” Thorne stepped closer, raising his sallow face to within an inch of Arthur’s.

“It wasn’t right. But I can make it right. I can make it scream.”

Thorne glared at Arthur with disgust. “I give you four days. I want my replica. I want it perfect. And I want it delivered to my house by Thursday evening. Fail me and I’ll see your scream. Slab will smash your hands so thoroughly that you’ll never paint again.”

Arthur nodded, still in shock. He turned to regard the painting with a look of sickly horror on his face.

What did I do?

Thorne shook his head. He turned to his minder. “Slab. I am finished here. The damp is getting into my bones.” At the doorway, he turned back to regard Arthur. “Never defy me like that again.”

Slab, who had stood silently, watching Arthur with grim amusement, moved to open the door for his master. As his master walked out, Slab turned back to Arthur.

“Be seeing you.” He smiled a broken toothed grin. “Real soon.”

Their footsteps began their slow, heavy descent, fading into the stairwell, until there was only the sound of the rain and the club revellers heading outside for an interval smoke.

Arthur turned back to the easel, his legs unsteady. The city’s neon light caught the paint and he realised he had penetrated the Pope’s mouth, tearing the canvas open.

The scream was the thing.

And now, he had only four days to learn how to see it.

Chapter Two

Thorne stood before the easel, staring at the wound he had inflicted. The ripped canvas around the Pope’s mouth gaped, a ragged, fibrous maw. An act of idiotic, suicidal rebellion that had solved nothing and cost him everything.

Four days.

Arthur had no fire of his own, so he warmed his hands at the embers of other men’s art.

He reached out a trembling hand and touched the edge of the tear. The canvas was rough against his fingertip. He could patch it, of course. He was a craftsman. He could reline it, fill the gap, paint over the scar until it was invisible. But he would know it was there.

Arthur bit his lip.

He understood now. He needed to feel the scream. To produce a copy that had soul, authenticity.

He needed to get into the mind of Francis Bacon. He needed to be Francis Bacon.

The room began to feel smaller, the walls leaning in. He looked at the other canvases stacked against the wall, their faces turned away like ashamed children. Dutch landscapes. Society portraits. All competent. All dead.

His entire life’s work was a collection of exquisitely rendered lies.

I have to get out.

He stumbled down the flights of stairs and burst out into the wet Soho night. Pulling a cigarette from a battered Woodbine packet, he struggled to shield it from the rain while flicking open his zippo lighter. He breathed a sigh of relief as he succeeded and sucked down on the tobacco.

The London air was cold and sharp, alive with the smells of fried onions, damp pavement, and diesel fumes. He pushed through crowds of men in sharp suits and women in vibrantly coloured shift dresses. Their drunken laughter cut at him. The gaiety of the night was wasted on him, as a bleak despair pulled at his heart.

He strode forward until he arrived at The French House, a small pub that was always busy. Inside, the fug of cigarette smoke was so thick it was like walking into a cloud. The air was warm and loud, dense with the damp dog scent of wet wool coats and the casual pub banter of the truly inebriated. He shouldered his way to the bar and ordered a large brandy.

The first glass burned a clean, hot path down his throat. He drank it quickly and ordered another. He was not drinking for pleasure. To pave the way for his rebirth, he needed to kill Arthur so he could be reborn as Francis.

Thud.

He pounded the glass down and motioned for another brandy.

Thud.

And another. Then another.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The sharp edges of his insecurity began to blur. The noise of the pub receded to a dull roar. Blearily, he watched the couple next to him. A young couple, their heads close together, whispering. The man wore a wedding ring. The woman had bare fingers.

An affair?

He smirked, then shifted his gaze to an old man staring into his pint.

No friends? Nowhere else to go.

He motioned for another brandy, only to have the barman, a stocky gentleman with a walrus moustache, shake his head.

“Why?” Arthur demanded, slurring.

“You are drunk, mate. I’m cutting you off.” The barman gestured at the door.

“I’m drunk? Drunk! Why do you think I came to the pub?” Arthur was about to launch into a tirade when he saw the bouncer making his way over. Instead, he waved his hands in surrender and backed out.

He left the pub, stumbling on the stone step, and drifted on the Soho tide. He ended up in another, darker bar. La Gioconda, on Denmark Street. He switched to whisky. The music here was angrier, more dissonant. The notes seemed to tear at the air. He felt a kinship with the noise, the controlled chaos of it. Gene Vincent. Eddie Cochran. Vince Taylor and His Playboys. He danced with his glass in one hand and listened to men scream into their microphones.

It was in the dead hours of the morning when the last of the bars shat him out onto the pavement. The rain had stopped. The moon was a sliver of bone behind thin clouds. He bought a bacon sandwich from a café, queuing with the other drunks, before walking—no, stumbling—across St James’s Park. Homeless people lay unconscious on benches as he made his way to the river. He sat down on the first free bench he found and reclined. The bacon tasted salty and mildly sweet as his drunken maw hoovered it up.

The sun was creeping above the buildings. Cars made their way behind him. The squares, in their traditional suits and hats, shuffled to their traditional jobs.

His head felt full of cotton wool. He sought a café for a cup of tea in a proper mug.

Drinking the milky tea, his sanity started to return. The frenetic sense of power that had infused him the night before fled.

He was a dead man unless he produced a painting by the deadline.

Turning the mug in his hands, he contemplated his options. He could fix the painting. It was doable. The only person who would know would be him.

But no. His ego wouldn’t allow him to produce anything less than a perfect replica. A painting worthy of the original.

If I run out of time, I can always fix the old one. He smiled at his own deceit. The lie reassured him.

I need to see the original painting again.

His tea finished, Arthur rose and started to walk towards the Tate. The sun was now casting golds and reds across the Thames.

He needed to stand in front of the original. He needed to feel what Francis felt when he painted the picture.

There was a small queue of dedicated tourists waiting for the Tate to open, and Arthur joined them. One of them, a tough northern lady with skin the texture of tree bark, narrowed her eyes at the whisky fumes on his breath and his generally roguish attire. He gave her a weak smile, which resulted in a damning tut.

When the doors opened, he dropped a coin into the donation box and raced through the galleries to find Bacon’s masterpiece.

Arthur took off his hat. He stood in front of the image of Pope Innocent X. A tear formed in his eye. Like Arthur, the Pope was caged. Trapped.

Isolated. Helpless.

His hands clenched as he paced, feeling the silent scream tear through his body.

Guilt. Desire. Grief. Rage.

The canvas seemed to shake as he felt the raw intensity of the image. A kaleidoscope of passion.

His soulless copy could never, ever replace this masterpiece.

The study in front of him wasn’t just a painting. It was a journey. An invitation to witness the Pope’s psychological collapse. A powerful man stripped of dignity and grace.

Arthur stepped back regretfully. He felt exhausted, filled with the emotional intensity of the painting.

It wasn’t enough to copy Bacon.

He had to become him.

Chapter Three

Arthur returned to his studio with new eyes. The pilgrimage to the Tate had confirmed his new purpose. His meticulous forgery wasn’t just a failure. It was blasphemy.

He went out again. Arthur was close to collapse from exhaustion. He knew a place on Berwick Street. The chemist’s had been part of the Soho landscape for generations. Tucked between a pawnshop and a closed-down tailor, its faded gold lettering read Wellingsworth & Son—Established 1894. Inside, it smelled of dust and carbolic soap.

Hal, the chemist, looked up from his newspaper. He was a wiry old man with nicotine-yellowed fingers.

“Arthur,” he grunted. “You look like shit.”

“I need something.” Arthur tapped his exhausted fingers on his thigh. “To keep me going. Something to stay awake.”

Hal snorted. “Trying to kill a few nights sleep, are we?” He slid open a drawer beneath the counter, the wood scraping softly. “Purple hearts. The American ones. Real Dexedrine, not that chalky shite they press in Limehouse.” He glanced at Arthur’s haunted face. “How many do you need?”

Arthur pulled a crumpled five-pound note from his pocket. “How many will that get me?”

Hal took it, smoothed it out, and poured a handful of pale violet pills into a brown paper envelope.

“That’ll get you two dozen. Don’t take them all at once unless you want your heart to pop.”

Arthur pocketed the envelope. Back in his attic, he laid it on the small table next to a bottle of whisky.

He strode to the easel and tore the wounded canvas from its stretcher bars, the sound of the staples pulling free like the ripping of sinew. He carried it to the tin bathtub in the centre of the room and threw it in. He retrieved a can of turpentine, unscrewed the cap, and drenched the painting. The potent chemical smell filled the air. The image of the Pope dissolved, the colours bleeding into a murky, indistinct stain. Arthur struck a match. For a moment, the small flame trembled in his hand. Then he dropped it.

Whoosh.

The canvas erupted in blue and orange flame. The paint bubbled and blackened. The heat washed over Arthur’s face. He watched until the fire ate itself out, leaving behind a brittle, stinking rectangle of ash.

He was committed now.

He set up a new canvas, its taut, blank surface an intimidating white void. Then, methodically, he stripped off his clothes. Jacket, shirt, trousers, underwear. He stood naked in the chill of the studio, the damp air raising gooseflesh on his skin. The neon glow from the window painted one side of his body in an unnatural, sickly light. He felt utterly exposed. To paint the raw, flayed truth of Bacon’s vision, he had to be raw and flayed himself.

From his toolbox, he took a Stanley knife. He held it in his right hand, the die cast metal handle cool against his skin. Looking at the pale underside of his left forearm, at the faint blue lines of the veins, he took a breath and drew the blade across his flesh.

The pain was a sharp, clean shock. He watched, fascinated, as a thin red line appeared, welling up into a string of dark crimson jewels that merged and began to flow. He pressed his wounded arm against the stark white canvas and dragged it downwards, smearing a thick, viscous ribbon of red across the gesso. It was the first honest mark he had made on a canvas in over a decade.

He found a rag and bound his wound tightly. Under the cloth, his arm throbbed with a dull, satisfying ache. He picked up his brushes and began to work. He uncorked the whisky with his teeth and took a long, burning drink. He painted with a feverish intensity, his movements rapid and instinctive. He blocked in the background first, the claustrophobic, architectural cage, scoring the lines into the wet paint with the wrong end of his brush. He worked on the twisted meat of the torso for hours, lost in a trance of creation, the bottle of whisky growing lighter.

At some point, the bottle was empty. He threw it against the exposed brick wall, where it shattered. But when he came to the head, he stopped. His hand froze above the canvas. The figure on the easel had a ghastly life, a body writhing in a cage of his own making. But the face remained a blur of raw, unpainted canvas. A void.

I can’t hear the scream.

The primal, existential shriek of Bacon’s Pope was a sound from a deeper, darker hell than Arthur had ever known. He needed to descend to that level to be able to see it. He had felt the blood, the rage, the confinement. But he did not understand the scream, not yet.

He threw his brush down in disgust. A sudden, terrible clarity washed over him. The scream was birthed in dark rooms, in the kind of pain and pleasure he hadn’t experienced. The violence in the painting was not abstract. It was the violence of tortured flesh, of inflamed passions. Bacon’s life was rough trade, gambling debts, and clandestine desires.

I have to descend to find the scream.

He washed himself hastily at the sink. He splashed his face, the cold water a welcome shock, reinvigorating him. He dressed in his least paint-stained clothes and went back out into the Soho night. He walked past bright lights and crowded pubs, seeking the narrow alleyways and darkened doorways.

Arthur was hunting for a specific kind of damnation.

He found it in a narrow street off Old Compton Street, a place that smelled of overflowing bins and stale urine. A single bare bulb illuminated a hand-painted sign taped to a peeling door: Male Model Upstairs. He pushed the door open. A hulking man with a flattened nose sat on a wooden stool, reading a newspaper.

“Ten bob for an hour,” the man grunted, not bothering to look up. “It’s upstairs. Knock twice.”

Arthur fumbled in his pocket, his hand shaking slightly as he produced a note. The man stretched it out, checked it, then jerked his head toward a rickety flight of stairs. Arthur ascended into a gloom that smelled of dust, cheap aftershave, and something cloyingly sweet and chemical.

He looked down at the doorstep, biting his lip, hesitating before knocking twice on the door.

A muffled voice called, “It’s open.”

The room was small, dominated by a single bed with a stained mattress. A young man, mid-twenties, lay propped against a pile of grubby pillows smoking a cigarette. His eyes were glassy, his pupils dilated. He wore a tired, well-practised smile as Arthur entered. He was handsome in an emaciated way, his skeletal body exposed beneath a worn dressing gown.

“First time, darling?” the model asked with a slurred drawl.

Arthur nodded, unable to speak. His throat was dry with nerves. The air was thick with the saccharine scent of cheap aftershave, stale smoke, and unwashed bodies.

The young man seemed to sense his nervousness.

“It’s all right, dear. Just relax.” He levered himself up to a seated position, stubbing out his cigarette on a thin metal tray, his movements slow. “Now then, let’s get you comfortable, shall we?” He reached out, taking Arthur’s hand. His touch was gentle. Arthur inhaled nervously. The model seemed to think his reticence was down to inexperience.

It wasn’t.

Arthur closed his eyes for a moment, initially trying to pretend it was a woman instead of a drugged stranger. But he forced his eyes open. This had to be an authentic experience. He made himself watch as the young man, with a professional detachment that filled Arthur with disgust, unfastened his flies and took his flaccid penis into his mouth.

The sensation was alien. He had slept with plenty of women, but this was different. There was no lust here, just an experience to open his eyes to a different world. He felt like he was observing himself from a great distance. The young man worked with an efficient, passionless skill. Arthur recognised the same level of disassociation he felt when creating his forgeries. He was both surprised and disturbed when the man’s perfunctory efforts got him to a state of readiness. The model lay back on the bed, lifted his legs, and used a small jar from the bedside table to lubricate his bruised entrance.

Arthur moved over him, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked down at the waiting man and forced his face to remain impassive, masking the disgust within. Leaning down, he placed his hands on either side of the model’s face. The submissive smile caused his stomach to roil as he entered him roughly, pushing in with a clumsy, brutal thrust. The man grimaced slightly but didn’t complain. Arthur grunted as he penetrated. His hands snaked up to the young man’s throat. The skin was pliant and sticky with cold sweat.

“Scream for me.” The words came out as a harsh croak. “I need to see you scream.”

He tightened his grip. The model’s eyes, half-closed in a narcotic daze, flew open in genuine terror. A choked, gurgling sound escaped his throat. He began to struggle, his hands scrabbling at Arthur’s wrists. His face, slack with indifference moments ago, was now a mask of panic.

For a wild, terrifying second, Arthur almost saw it. The wide eyes. The gaping mouth. The silent, desperate agony. It was like a glimpse, a shadow of what he needed.

Come on, come on. Scream for me.

The model’s flailing hand found a lamp on the bedside table. With a surge of adrenaline, he swung it, smashing it against the side of Arthur’s head. Light exploded behind Arthur’s eyes, a universe of white stars. He reeled back, his hands falling away from the model’s throat. A sharp, searing pain shot through his skull.

The model gasped for air, his face purple, and screamed. Not the silent, existential scream of Bacon’s Pope, but a raw, terrified screech for help.

“Get him off me!”

The door burst open and the bouncer filled the frame, a blur of dense flesh and thick bone. He grabbed Arthur by the collar, hauling him off the bed. A fist slammed into Arthur’s stomach, driving the air from his lungs. He doubled over, gagging. Another punch, a heavy, solid slug to the jaw, snapped his head back.

The world tilted crazily.

He was dragged from the room and down the stairs, his feet barely touching the steps. The bouncer threw him out into the alleyway. He landed hard on the wet, grimy cobblestones. He lay there, winded and gasping, the reek of the gutter filling his nostrils.

The bouncer stood over him.

“Don’t you ever come back, you sick bastard,” he snarled, and drove a vicious kick into Arthur’s ribs. Pain, white-hot and absolute, flared through his side. He curled into a ball, his cheek pressed against the cold, damp stone. His genitals deflated against the slimy street. The bouncer kicked him again for good measure before turning and disappearing back inside, slamming the door behind him.

Arthur vomited. He rolled onto his back and lay in the gutter for a long time, struggling to regain his breath. His head throbbed, his jaw ached, and every breath was a fresh agony in his side. Eventually, he managed to push himself up to a seated position, his body screaming in protest. He did up his trousers, stumbled out of the alley, and into a late-night off-licence. He bought two bottles of whisky.

He could barely remember the journey back to his studio. Only that he arrived with the bottles clutched to his chest. Limping up the stairs, he felt a fresh wave of torture with each step. He let himself into the attic and collapsed into his chair, his body a mess of bruised flesh. His head bled from the smashed lamp. He stared at the painting on the easel. The canvas stared back, the cage and the twisted body waiting. But the face was still a blank, white void.

Arthur paced in front of it. He was exhausted. The whisky. The lack of sleep. It was catching up with him.

Without the scream, the painting was just shapes and colours.

Arthur reached into his pocket and pulled out the small paper envelope. His fingers, shaking, fumbled one of the violet pills into his palm. It was small, scored across the centre. He bit it in half, grimaced at the bitter chemical taste, and washed it down with a swig of whisky.

He stood before the canvas, undressing. The cool night air played across his purple, bruised flesh as he waited for the drug to work.

A smile graced his face.

He knew now what he must do.

Chapter Four

The taxi ride to St John’s Wood was a journey through a smeared, liquid world. The Dexedrine kept his eyes wide and awake, while his body had transformed into an anxiety-ridden mass of twitching flesh. The whisky had calmed him just enough to stay in control. His sanity was balanced on a knife edge between stimulants and sedatives. The streetlights bled into long streaks across the wet glass. Arthur sat curled in the back seat, the large, paper-wrapped canvas propped beside him like a silent passenger. Beneath his loose, white cotton shirt, his skin crawled, a million tiny insects marching to the beat of his hammering heart.

The mansion came into view, a hulking shape behind high iron gates. Its neighbours had all been turned into townhouses or luxury flats. Standing alone, it practically shouted the extreme wealth of its owner. Its pale stucco façade, strangled with ivy, looked like bone in the moonlight. The windows gave the mansion the impression of a skull.

The taxi driver eyed Arthur with curiosity in the rear-view mirror as he pulled to a stop. Arthur clearly didn’t belong here. He fumbled with his wallet and paid with a trembling hand, the notes slick with sweat. He got out, hauling his canvas and a small satchel of paints and oils with him.

Arthur pushed open the gate. It groaned in protest. As he walked up the cracked flagstone path, over a bed of lichen, the front door swung open, spilling a weak yellow light onto the damp steps.

Slab filled the doorway, his bulk stretching the seams of his dark suit. A grim smile played on his lips as if he had been looking forward to this visit. The smile never quite reached his flat, dead eyes.

“The master’s waiting for you,” Slab rumbled.

He stepped aside, his gaze raking over Arthur’s dishevelled state. The bloodshot eyes, the tremor in his hands, the faint, sweet-sick smell of whisky and chemicals.

Lord Thorne was in the drawing room, leaning heavily on his silver-wolf-headed sticks. The house smelt of dry rot and old pipe smoke. The furnishings and art spoke of a house in decline. They were weathered and worn, yet obviously expensive. Possibly bought in another era, when the family fortunes had been in ascendance. Oil portraits of Thorne’s ancestors glared down from the shadowed walls, their painted eyes following Arthur with silent contempt. Thorne’s own eyes, pale and chilling blue, took in Arthur’s appearance with a look of pure disgust.

Arthur was a ruin. His face was a pallid mask, bruised and gaunt. His shirt was streaked with a faint rust-coloured stain he had not bothered to wash out. He was shaking from a toxic combination of exhaustion, drugs, and fear.

“You look like something the cat dragged in,” Thorne said. His voice was dry, like the rustling of paper. “I trust the results have been worth the money I’ve paid. Slab is very much looking forward to seeing the results.” He gave a malicious smile. “Bring it. I have prepared a space for it.”

Thorne turned. With a series of slow, deliberate clacks from his sticks, he led the way down a long corridor to the rear of the house. Slab followed Arthur. They descended a short flight of stone steps into the cold, still air of the cellar. At the end of a narrow passage stood a square box of reinforced concrete, sealed with a steel blast door. A heavy mechanical wheel was set in its centre. Slab moved forward and turned it. The gears ground with a deafening finality. The door swung open, revealing the vault.

The air inside was sterile and cold, smelling of metal and dry paper. It was lit by a single, harsh industrial bulb hanging from the ceiling. Aluminium shelves lined the walls, filled with archival boxes and smaller, shrouded paintings. A low, constant hum came from a ventilation system in the corner.

Thorne gestured with one of his sticks towards the far wall. An empty space waited there, flanked by a small, savage Soutine and a de Kooning woman, her painted grin a rictus of fury.

“There,” Thorne said, his voice echoing slightly in the confined space. “The centrepiece. It will have pride of place before the original joins it. Show me.”

Arthur’s heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his ribs. He walked to the empty space, his movements stiff and jerky. His satchel of tools clattered to the floor. With shaking hands, he began to tear the brown paper from his canvas. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet of the vault.

He unwrapped the painting and, with great effort, hung it on the waiting hooks.

For a long moment, there was only the hum of the ventilation. Thorne stared, his eyebrows frozen in disbelief.

Slab took a half-step forward. His brow furrowed in confusion.

The painting was a masterpiece of mimicry. It had Bacon’s raw, violent energy. The claustrophobic cage. The smeared, visceral background. But the figure trapped within was not Pope Innocent X. The figure was small and frail, dressed in a finely tailored suit, leaning on two silver-wolf-headed sticks. The face was a perfect, merciless caricature of Lord Marcus Thorne. His pale blue eyes were wide with a familiar, distilled malevolence.

And where his mouth should have been, there was nothing. A blank, unpainted void of raw canvas.

Thorne’s face contorted. The refined mask of aristocratic disdain cracked to reveal a raw, sputtering fury. His whisper became a reedy shriek.

“You dare? You dare mock me in my own house?” He turned to his minder, his voice cracking with rage. “Slab! Break his hands. Now!”

Slab’s toothless grin returned. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He started forward, cracking his knuckles, his heavy shoulders rolling in anticipation.

As the minder closed the distance, Arthur’s world narrowed to a single point of action. The Dexedrine sang in his blood, burning away all hesitation and fear. Time stretched and slowed. With a movement born of pure animal instinct, he whipped the Stanley knife from his sleeve. The blade snapped into place with a sharp click.

Slab was too close. He had no time to react. Arthur lunged forward and slashed at Slab’s carotid artery with frenetic, desperate energy. The thin blade sliced through the stretched skin and muscle of Slab’s throat.

A look of profound surprise crossed the minder’s face. He stopped, raised a hand to his neck, and his fingers came away slick with his own lifeblood. A dark fountain of crimson erupted from the wound, spraying across a stack of archival boxes and spattering the concrete floor. He took a clumsy step towards Arthur, his eyes wide with confusion.

Arthur scrambled backwards, scuttling between the shelves, dodging around a shrouded bronze statue. Slab followed, a dying bull chasing a ghost. He crashed into a shelving unit, sending priceless sketches fluttering to the ground. He knocked over a small Henry Moore. The sculpture thudded to the floor. Slab staggered, his big hands outstretched, trying to catch his tormentor, but all he caught was air. Finally, with a great, shuddering sigh, his legs gave out. He collapsed to the floor, the spreading pool of his blood a dark, glistening halo around his head.

The vault was suddenly, shockingly silent, save for the hum of the machine and the wet, rhythmic dripping from the shelves.

Arthur’s breath came in ragged, burning gasps. He looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood. He felt a wild, terrifying thrill.

A frantic clanking drew his attention. Thorne. The old man had hobbled to the vault door and was struggling with the heavy wheel, his frail body too weak to turn it. The silver wolves on his sticks glinted in the harsh light.

Arthur walked towards him, the Stanley knife still clutched in his hand.

“Stay back,” Thorne hissed, his voice thin with terror. When Arthur continued, he changed tack. “I’ll give you anything. Money. Name your price. A house. Another studio. Just let me go.”

Arthur did not hear him. The words were meaningless noise. All he saw was the painting on the wall. His painting. Still unfinished. Still silent.

All he wanted was the scream.

“I’ll not beg.” Thorne glared at his tormentor.

Arthur grabbed Thorne by the collar of his expensive suit and dragged him away from the door. The old man was shockingly light. He felt like a bundle of dry sticks wrapped in silk. Arthur pulled him across the floor, through the sticky, cooling puddle of Slab’s blood, and threw him down in front of the canvas.

Thorne scrambled backwards, crab-like, until his back hit the wall beneath his own portrait.

“Please…”

“Shush now. You promised not to beg.” Arthur knelt beside him. He looked from the trembling, terrified face of the man before him to the blank space on the canvas. It was not enough. “Scream for me, instead.” Arthur’s voice was a hoarse croak. He raised the Stanley knife. He did not aim for a vital artery. He drew the blade across the old man’s cheek, a shallow, precise line that bloomed instantly with red.

Thorne let out a choked, agonised cry. His eyes were wide, the pupils black holes of pure terror.

And in that moment, Arthur saw it. He finally heard it. The silent, existential shriek of a soul stripped bare. The terror of a powerful man made utterly helpless. The scream of the Pope. The scream of Bacon. The scream he had been chasing through the dregs of alcohol, through the violation of flesh, through the dark alleys of Soho.

Exuberance filled him. Thorne’s gurgling cries were the sweetest sound Arthur had ever heard.

Arthur began to paint.

He worked with sublime, focused intensity. His brush, loaded with the blood of his subject, flew across the canvas. He painted the mouth. A gaping, black oval of pure agony. Each stroke was perfect. Each smear was truth.

When he was finished, he stood back. His whole body thrummed with a pleasure so intense it was almost painful. For the first time in his life, he felt no doubt. No inadequacy. Only a profound and absolute artistic satisfaction.

He had not just copied an artist. He had become the art. He had created something magnificent.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small paper envelope. There were only a few pills left. He shook them all into his palm and dry-swallowed them in a single, bitter gulp.

He turned his gaze back to the painting. His masterpiece. His heart began to pound even faster. A frantic, galloping rhythm. The hum of the ventilation system seemed to grow louder, filling his head.

As he stared, the lines of the painting began to shift. The face on the canvas, his portrait of the terrified Lord Thorne, began to change. The gaping mouth of the scream twisted. The lips curled upwards. The eyes, once wide with terror, now crinkled with a silent, mocking glee.

A laugh bubbled up from Arthur’s chest.

He laughed with the painting.

He laughed at the blood, at the bodies, at the sublime, terrible beauty of what he had done.

He laughed as his vision blurred, as the walls of the vault seemed to ripple and bend.

He laughed as a final, crushing pain seized his chest, and his heart, after one last, defiant, explosive beat, gave out.

He fell to the floor. A manic smile was fixed on his face. His eyes open, and staring, were fixed on the laughing portrait on the wall.

THE END

If you enjoyed this story, then consider reading the rest of my stories on Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited, eBook, Paperback or Hardback.

This collection of stories is designed for quick reads, whether over a coffee or during a commute. Either way, they promise to deliver exquisitely disturbing nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after.

FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Available to order on AMAZON.

Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.

Newt's Nightmares🦎#111

Newt's Nightmares

Greetings, my wicked darlings!

It was all going so well…

Then I refurbished my office and turned the house into a building site. Perfect timing for Chiltern Dog Rescue to find me Buddy to adopt. I now have an adorable lurcher (half greyhound, half border collie) puppy who is chewing everything and needs three walks a day.

When Buddy the Lurcher met Gill the Tortoise. Excuse the mess. Gill had just entered kaiju mode and destroyed Tokyo. Again.

I’m slimmer, more stressed, and struggling to find time to write, but I managed to release the deranged (and free) comedy horror Invasion of the Hipster Beards last month. (A few people asked if I have a beard fetish. I absolutely do not.) I’ve also just finished the girthy, extreme horror story The Scream, which is out this month.

A few shoutouts from some of the many horror fiction Substacks I follow:

Deaks has making up for my utter sloth by pounding out another banger, Road Trip.

A. J has written, The Sight of Death, as part of her Shadow Gospel’s arc.

Subscribe now

In July, you’re getting at least one free short story: The Scream (an extreme horror, short-ish tale). You should receive a couple more, and possibly even the audiobook I’ve been promising—if my office is actually finished on Wednesday as scheduled, and if Buddy doesn’t eat my power cable AGAIN!

Don’t be fooled. He is plotting.

Sweet Screams,

Newt

Last Month’s ReleasesFree Horror Fiction:

Invasion of the Hipster Beards—Elric’s beard obsession takes a deadly, cosmic horror turn.

Thanks for reading Newton’s Tales of the Macabre! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Horror Story Compilations

Summer of Horror: 35 FREE horror stories, including ‘The Scream’ and ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’.

Beneath the Shadow: 13 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Braemoor Incident’, ‘The Scream’, ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’, ‘The Spinster’, ‘The Wild Hunt’.

Terrifying Tales: 9 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

What I’ve Been Reading:

I read five horror books this month (Yes. I know I’m obsessed with David Sodergren, just for God’s sake don’t tell him). The top three were:

Death Spell by David Sodergren

Tweaker Creatures by Robert Essig

Predatory Instinct by Michael McBride

What I’ve Been Watching:

I attended the Soho Horror Film Festival, my favourite movies were:

I Hope He Doesn’t Kill Me, directed by Lyndon Henley Hanrahan, Nora Dahle Borchgrevink

Bath Bomb, directed by Colin G. Cooper

Gender Reveal, directed by Mo Hatton

Tapped, directed by Benjamin Brewer

Broad Daylight, directed by John Poliquin

Who I’ve Been Chatting To:

Author Chat #5: Jack Rollins

Author Chat #6: Roland Blake

Tales of the Macabre

You can find my stories on Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited, eBook, Paperback or Hardback.

This collection of stories is designed for quick reads, whether over a coffee or during a commute. Either way, they promise to deliver exquisitely disturbing nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after.

FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Available to order on AMAZON.

Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.

Newton Webb BibliographyAvailable on Amazon

Visit my Amazon author page

Collected Works

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3

Contemporary

2022 – The Heir Apparent, Novella

2018 – The Morrígan, Novella

2017 – Nestor Lynch, Novel

2013 – Festival of The Damned, Novella

2012 – The Platinum Service, Novella

Historical

1958 – The Black Fog, Short Story

1864 – Smoke in the Sewers, Novella

1832 – The Horror at Hargrave Hall, Novella

1818 – The Ballad of Barnacle Bill, Novella

1194 – Hunted, Short Story

Read a collection of free short stories or listen to free audiobooks by Newton Webb on his website.

Visit my website

Invasion of the Hipster Beards by Newton Webb

Contents:

Horror Compilations

The Invasion of the Hipster Beards

Horror Story Compilations

Tales of Terror: 24 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Braemoor Incident’, ‘Dark Waters’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘Strings Attached’.

Midnight Whispers: 45 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

Shadows in the Night: 35 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’

Invasion of the Hipster Beards

Compton’s, Bear Night, London, Soho. 2016.

The air in Compton’s was thick with the scent of beer, sweat, and cheap cologne. Elric stood near the sticky bar, sipping rum and orange juice through a straw, his gaze sweeping the room.

Elric had a thing for beards. A serious, all-consuming, borderline inappropriate thing. Bear Night was an all you can eat buffet of large bodied, hairy men.

Leaning on the bar next to him, his best friend and fellow twink, Jon nursed a pint. "Anything primeval on the horizon, l’Eric?" his voice was barely audible over the pulsing music. His smirk, however, was very visible. Jon had coined the nickname 'l’Eric' after Elric spent a transformative week in Paris at the tender age of sixteen. It stuck.

Elric was about to make a witty retort when he walked in.

The man was a vision. Or rather, the beard that enveloped his face was. A dense, curly thicket of deep brown, shot through with flecks of grey. It was the beard of a pirate captain or a feral Saxon, almost inhumanly large. Part Gruffalo, part Wookie.

Elric’s eyes widened. The dad bod, the dishevelled attire, and the clumsy gait were all irrelevant to him.

"Oh no, don’t tell me that you are into that?" Jon muttered.

“Don’t judge me!” Elric continued to stare. Usually, Elric was notoriously loud and confident. Until that day, he had never seen such a beard. It was a work of art, woven from keratin.

"Okay, well, whatever, just don’t ditch me again like… l’Eric!"

Elric pushed away from the bar, straightened his spine, and strutted towards the bear. He considered his approach to be relatively glamorous until Jon gave him an encouraging shove. "I said don’t ditch me, you toad!"

"Unhand me, wart!" He snapped. “I’m just saying ‘Hello’. Back in a min.” Having regained his composure he continued to sidle across.

The man, seeing his approach, waved a small, chubby hand. "Hey." His smile was pleasant enough, but Elric could barely focus on it. The beard was all Elric saw. He struggled to maintain eye contact, his gaze wanting to dip, to linger, to drown in that facial forest.

"My name’s Elric," he managed, leaning on the bar next to him.

"I’m Toby. Drink?"

"Sure. I’ll have a…" Elric scanned the bar. "Vodka with ginger beer."

Toby nodded. "Double vodka, ginger beer, and a pint of sour cherry ale, please."

As they waited, Elric could not resist. He glanced down. The beard looked soft yet substantial. Heat rushed through Elric, prickling his skin as he blushed. "Do you come here often?"

Stupid question. Stupid. Stupid.

Elric grabbed his drink, sucking eagerly through the straw to distract his hands from temptation.

Toby nodded, a serious expression on his face. "Bear Night is the only night I come to Soho. People are less judgemental here." He paused, his brow furrowing slightly. "Have I got something in my beard?"

Elric’s eyes snapped up. Caught. "No, not at all. Just thinking about… Eurovision. I’m not voting for the UK. What about you?"

Idiot.

The Eurovision he was contemplating was currently sprouting from Toby's face.

"Should we go somewhere else?" Toby asked, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He nodded towards the men’s room.

Elric’s heart leaped. Did he ever? "I’ve never cottaged before," he lied.

Fuck. Why did I say that?

Toby did not seem to notice. He turned and walked towards the toilets.

The scent of lemon soap and other less sanitary smells hit Elric like a wall. He did not care; he spotted Toby waiting by a cubicle and minced over in what he hoped was his most demure strut.

Elric went in first and sat down on the toilet, Toby following him and closing the cubicle door. The sound of generic pop music was numbed by the closed door, replaced with heavy, repetitive bass sounds that vibrated Elric’s teeth. In the cubicle next to him, he could hear the sounds of people doing cocaine. From this angle, he could only see the beard, not the face.

His life had become pure, unadulterated beard. A shiver of pleasure ran down his spine.

He mumbled excitedly as he reached for Toby’s flies. "Now then Beard Daddy, just lean back and let me do all the work. I call this the slip’n’slide." He pulled out a packet of KY lubricant and ripping it open, smeared it over his hands.

His plans were thwarted when Toby reached down and lifted him up for a kiss.

Elric blushed. "I don’t normally kiss on the mouth." But he reached up, his hands sliding under the luxurious facial foliage. As his lips got close, he felt Toby’s beard wrapping around his wrists, tightening.

What?

He ignored it, but curiosity led him to open his eyes.

He jerked back, a searing rip at his chin as filaments, barbed like tiny fishhooks, tore free from his skin, leaving a raw, bleeding patch. He screamed at the sight in front of him. Toby’s eyes were wide. His mouth stretched open, drooling. His beard had snaked around Elric’s wrists, holding him fast, and was coiling towards his face once again. A pair of purple eyes with vertical pupils opened deep within the beard.

A snigger came from the cubicle next to him. "Someone’s having fun."

"Fuck off." Elric yanked hard with his arms, freeing one of his lubricated wrists. "Get help!" He scrabbled in his hoodie pocket, fingers closing on the familiar cold metal of his Zippo. Flicking it on, he held the flame to the tendrils of hair. "Help me!" The hair erupted into flame, the eyes within clamped shut. Toby raised his gaze to the heavens and let out a long, earth shattering roar.

Elric scooted back as far into the corner of the cramped cubicle as he could. As the 'beard' died, Toby’s body collapsed against the cubicle door. His flesh turned to slime, his bones dissolving. A thick green slime spread out from his corpse; without the beard, he ceased to exist. Within moments, all that was left of the once hirsute, chubby man was a river of foul scented, grotesque jellylike liquid.

The cubicle door was shouldered open. The bouncer looked down at Elric, alone and crouched in the filth, with disgust. Gagging, he held his hand over his mouth. For a moment the two of them stared at each other in stunned silence. Then the bouncer growled, "Right you, out. You are barred, you sick fuck."

Behind the bouncer, a pair of large men in leather harnesses peered over his shoulder. The larger leather daddy recoiled. “What did you eat?”

Elric scrambled to his feet and fled Compton’s.

In the street, Elric doubled over and gasped for air. He stumbled back and looked at the group of smokers outside Compton’s. They watched him curiously, commenting on his state of disarray.

His phone rang.

It was Jon. In his panic, he had forgotten about his best friend. He was being FaceTimed.

Quickly accepting, Elric looked at a pixelated mess. Poor signal. "Get out of there! Get out!" he shouted. He looked at the door and contemplated racing in to grab him, but cowardice gripped his heart. Instead, he ran into the Admiral Duncan to use their WiFi. As his phone connected, he gasped.

Jon was smiling at him, now sporting a massive, full-fledged beard where previously he had been clean shaven. "Come back l’Eric, all is forgiven. We can make this right."

He dropped his phone in panic.

"Are you alright?" The Admiral’s barman looked at him with concern, a thick, bushy beard on his chin.

Elric ran out of the pub. He raced for the tube. Everywhere, he saw hairy men. As he passed them, they stopped dead still, their heads rotating to track his flight.

It’s not over.

The beards are everywhere.

And they’re spreading.

THE END

If you enjoyed this story, then consider reading the rest of my stories on Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited, eBook, Paperback or Hardback.

This collection of stories is designed for quick reads, whether over a coffee or during a commute. Either way, they promise to deliver exquisitely disturbing nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after.

FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Available to order on AMAZON.

Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.

Newt's Nightmares🦎#110

Newt's Nightmares

Greetings, my wicked darlings!

Happy Pride month to all my fellow LGBTQ🦎 darlings. I hope you're having a marvellous time and engaging in all manner of mischief. Last month was my birthday month, so I spent it wisely, investigating every gutter in Soho and Camden.

I’ve been busy on the DIY front too. I’ve completely emptied my writing room. The integrated closets have been demolished (quite fitting to be smashing closets during Pride Month). The walls are being painted, and a carpenter is installing floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I’ve also acquired a huge new aquarium for the opposite wall. For now, I’ve stolen a garden chair to use as a reading chair. It’s a temporary measure. I haven’t yet found the perfect comfy one. If you’ve got any suggestions, let me know in the comments. And if you're a writer, show me your desk or writing room!

A few shoutouts from horror fiction Substacks I follow:

Deaks has written a banging story, Just Desserts, with serious Great British Bake Off vibes. She also wrote a landlord story for fans of The Spinster, called The Rogue Landlord.

A. J has written, The Hotel, with some marvellous Le Femme Nikita vibes.

Subscribe now

In June you’re getting at least one free short story: Invasion of the Hipster Beards (a horror comedy set on Bear Night), plus an audio narration of One More Turn (a ‘cracking’ story I promised last month, but instead I gave you my biggest sale yet).

Sweet Screams,

Newt

Last Month’s ReleasesFree Horror Fiction:

The Spinster—A cat burger targets a predatory landlord with lethal repercussions

The Wild Hunt—The Teutoburg Forest promises a fate far worse than death for the survivors of the infamous massacre

Thanks for reading Newton’s Tales of the Macabre! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Horror Story Compilations

Tales of Terror: 22 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘Strings Attached’.

Midnight Whispers: 45 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

What I’ve Been Reading:

I've read four horror books this month, but the standouts were:

Horrors of The Shopping Mall Ass Slasher by R.J. Benetti

The Forgotten Island by David Sodergren

And By God's Hand You Shall Die by David Sodergren

What I’ve Been Watching:

I reviewed six movies this month:

The Amityville Horror (1979) - Watch my review

Bad Milo (2017) - Watch my review

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) - Watch my review

Tetsuo - The Iron Man (1989) - Watch my review

Diary of the Dead (2007) - Watch my review

Who I’ve Been Chatting To:

Author Chat #3: Paul O’Neill

Author Chat #4: David Sodergren

Tales of the Macabre

You can find my stories on Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited, eBook, Paperback or Hardback.

This collection of stories is designed for quick reads, whether over a coffee or during a commute. Either way, they promise to deliver exquisitely disturbing nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after.

FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Available to order on AMAZON.

Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.

Newton Webb BibliographyAvailable on Amazon

Visit my Amazon author page

Collected Works

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3

Contemporary

2022 – The Heir Apparent, Novella

2018 – The Morrígan, Novella

2017 – Nestor Lynch, Novel

2013 – Festival of The Damned, Novella

2012 – The Platinum Service, Novella

Historical

1958 – The Black Fog, Short Story

1864 – Smoke in the Sewers, Novella

1832 – The Horror at Hargrave Hall, Novella

1818 – The Ballad of Barnacle Bill, Novella

1194 – Hunted, Short Story

Read a collection of free short stories or listen to free audiobooks by Newton Webb on his website.

Visit my website

99c SALE: Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3

Greetings, my wicked darlings!

Well, another year, and what is that I hear? The ticking clock of life continuing on its inexorable course towards final damnation.

Morbid? Nonsense. After all, the central heating is free in Hell and the entertainment? Well, I am sure a deviant like me will fit right in. You know, I think I have just the right outfit for it, too.

LIMITED TIME ONLY

And I get to share my birthday with horror legends: Christopher Lee and Vincent Price! I would complete the set with Peter Cushing, but he had the temerity to emerge from the womb a day early.

Many thanks to my friends for arranging such a wonderful birthday. We drank shots off a coffin in Garlic and Shots (where else), ate Greek food in Camden and watched Toby fall through a table in The Black Heart.

I’m now guzzling food to return my wasted, decrepit form to its usual vigour.

Horror Story Compilations

Okay - so Tales of the Macabre is only 99c, but the books in Tales of Terror are 100% FREE. So complete your collection of horror stories, including: ‘Love. Sex. Death.’, ‘The Hunger’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘Strings Attached’.

Midnight Whispers: 31 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

The Spinster by Newton Webb

Contents:

Horror Compilations

The Spinster

Horror Story Compilations

Tales of Terror: 24 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Love. Sex. Death.’, ‘The Hunger’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘Strings Attached’.

Midnight Whispers: 31 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

The Spinster

Alice trudged home through the drizzle, shoulders aching after a double shift at the petrol station, keys biting into her palm.

A brand-new BMW was parked in her driveway. She frowned. Alice didn’t know anyone with a BMW. It was unlikely that anyone on the council estate would.

Please don’t be social services again.

A flicker of unease rose, quickly quelled as she clenched her teeth and approached her front door. Maybe her brother Liam had come into money?

From bar work? Fat chance.

She pushed the door open. Her kids’ laughter drifted from the living room, bright and innocent. But it was the other voice that chilled her to the bone. A deep baritone. A man’s voice, smooth and familiar. His chuckle made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

Alice froze in the hallway. Peeking around the doorframe, she saw them. Penny, seven, perched on the arm of the sofa, beaming. James, six, sat cross-legged on the floor. And between them, holding court on her sofa, was Dave Parker. Older, sleeker, more salt than pepper in his hair, but his predatory charm was undimmed by the years. He winked at her. In the corner, hunched and avoiding her gaze, sat her brother, Liam. Twenty-two going on sixteen.

He'd let Dave in.

Liam had brought that snake back into her house.

Rage, cold and sharp, pierced through Alice’s exhaustion. “Penny. James. Upstairs. Now.” Her voice was tight, low. The children looked from her face to Dave’s easy smile, sensing the sudden frost. They started to protest. “Now!” They scrambled up and obeyed.

The moment their bedroom door clicked shut upstairs, Alice turned. “What the hell are you doing here, Dave?”

Dave stretched languidly, perfectly at ease despite the hostile reception. “Alice, it’s always so good to see an old friend.” He gestured towards her brother with a negligent flick of his wrist. “Young Liam here has got himself into a spot of bother.” He patted the seat next to him. “Have a pew.”

Liam flinched. “Alice, I—”

“Shut up, Liam.” Dave’s smile widened, his eyes twinkling.

Alice remained standing, her arms crossed.

“He was moving some business for me. Good little earner. Until he got spooked by the coppers and decided to donate twenty grand’s worth of cheekies to the local sewer system.” He leaned forward, his smile vanishing. “Now, that’s inconvenient. For me. But mostly...” His eyes locked onto Liam. “...for him.” He pulled a pair of secateurs from his jacket pocket, snipping the air idly. “Debts need settling, Alice. You remember the rules, don’t you? Keeps things tidy.”

Twenty grand.

Alice stared at her brother, disbelief warring with fury. “Dealing? You told me you were a barman!”

Liam mumbled, “It wasn’t my fault, Al. I was sacked...”

“Again?” Alice glared at him.

Useless boy.

“Luckily for him,” Dave continued, pocketing the secateurs, “I have a solution. A way for little brother to clear his slate. But it does entail his big sis helping him out a bit, with her unique skillset.” He paused for effect. “Come on, Alice. For your family.”

“Forget it.”

“Come now, hear me out.” He winked at Liam, who sat with his head hung. “After all, there is nothing more important than your health now, is there?” Grinning impishly, he gave the secateurs a final theatrical snip, then returned them to his pocket.

She stood silently.

He laid out his scheme. An old woman, Tabitha Greenwick, lived alone in Hampstead. Rich as Croesus, apparently a notorious slum landlord. She had just bought a Rubens painting, *Massacre of the Innocents*. Worth tens of millions. Easy target.

“Think of it as wealth redistribution.” Dave smirked. “Pay off little Liam’s debt. You keep five percent of the rest. Nice little nest egg.”

“Five percent?” Alice scoffed. “It used to be thirty.”

“Yeah, but then again, we used to be partners, before this little born-again Christian act.” Dave shrugged. “Two and a half million, give or take. Enough to get you out of that petrol station. Three days to scope the place. Decide.” He stood up, brushing imaginary dust off his trousers. “Don’t let me down, Alice. Wouldn’t want anything unfortunate to happen to Liam.” He ruffled Liam’s hair as he passed. “The little scallywag is so precious.” Liam flinched at the touch but remained quiet. “I’ll see myself out, pet.” Dave swaggered out the front door into the street. It closed behind him and the lock clicked shut.

Alice turned on Liam. “You stupid idiot.”

#

For three days and nights, Alice sat in Liam’s battered Ford Fiesta, never more than an hour at a time, parked opposite the Hampstead townhouse, watching. The place oozed money. Grey stone, sharp angles, multiple chimneys. Three storeys of imposing Victorian architecture. Large bay windows glowed invitingly, showcasing glimpses of a life utterly alien to her own. As she sat breathing in stale cigarette fumes, she’d thrown out the three ridiculous scented trees Liam had hung from the rear-view mirror. The saccharine scent of alpine pine was worse than the smoke.

Through the largest window, the dining room, she watched the occupant. Tabitha Greenwick. Elderly, yes, but with sharp, severe features and piercing grey eyes beneath tightly pinned grey hair. She shuffled around using her stick. During the day, she had cleaners from ten till twelve.

Twice, she had visitors. Both times they were younger women. Alice recognised the signs of poverty. The clean but worn clothing, the stressed looks in their eyes, the premature ageing from overwork. Both left visibly distressed.

Tenants.

Even from a distance, Alice saw the glint of gold at Tabitha’s throat, the sparkle of rings on her bony fingers as she moved stiffly around the room. Tasteful, expensive paintings hung on the walls behind her.

A familiar resentment, hot and acidic, burned in Alice’s gut.

She has all this, while I count pennies for bread and milk.

It wasn’t just jealousy. It felt like a profound injustice. She thought about the poor women, no doubt asking for understanding over the rent.

And this is for Liam.

Her mind worked overtime, justifying her slipping back into the bad habits of the past.

The house itself looked secure. Bars on the ground floor windows, a heavy reinforced front door. It was detached, with neighbours having clear sight lines. No obvious alarm box, but that meant little. On the last night, heart pounding, she slipped through the side gate under cover of darkness. The back garden was a small, flagstoned patio, walled in but offering privacy from the neighbours. She tested the kitchen window bars. Most were loose, the screws barely biting into the old mortar. All but one.

That one I can deal with. Fast.

She had a way in. The job was viable.

She met Dave and Liam in a dingy pub car park. Rain lashed down as Alice and Liam sat in the back of Dave’s motor.

“All right,” she said, her voice flat. “I’ll do it. But on my terms.”

Dave raised an eyebrow.

“You’re lookout. Like the old days. Don’t fob me off with one of your lads. I need someone I can—” she looked nauseous as she said the word, “—trust.” She fixed Dave with a hard stare. He nodded slowly. “And Liam,” she turned to her brother, whose pupils were visibly dilated even in the dim car park lighting. “You move in with me. Tonight. You cut ties with Dave, with all of them. And you get clean. One strike, Liam. You use anything under my roof, you’re out on the street. I won’t lift a finger. Dave can have you then.”

Liam started to protest. “Al, I can’t just...”

“Can’t you?” Alice cut him off. “Or won’t you? Because if I don’t do this, who pays Dave? And how’s that going to go down?” She held his gaze until he looked away, defeated. “Well?”

“Okay,” he mumbled. “Okay, Alice.”

“Motherhood hasn’t made you soft after all. Still the same stone-cold bitch you always were, Alice.” Dave chuckled, a low, humourless sound. “I’ve missed you. Welcome back.”

She glared at him. “This is a one-off. Then I never want to see you again. And Dave, if you ever go anywhere near my children again...”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother the little blighters, don’t worry. Got my code, ain’t I?” His eyes hardened. “But Alice, don’t ever threaten me again. You know I don’t take well to disrespect.”

Three A.M.

The witching hour. The hour when people were most vulnerable, tucked up in their beds, sheets pulled up, ignorant of the predators roaming the night. The street was dead silent, bathed in the orange glow of distant streetlights. Alice walked nonchalantly down the pavement, then slipped like a shadow through the gate of Tabitha’s townhouse.

She purposely didn’t look at Dave, parked opposite in his BMW. They each had cheap burner phones, tested earlier. He was a scumbag, but had always been professional in the old days. She hoped that was still the case.

Alice worked quickly on the last stubborn screw holding the kitchen window bars in place. The thread had gone, so she relied on a crowbar to tease it out of the ancient cement. The metal groaned softly, then gave. She caught the bars as they dropped suddenly. Alice wedged the slim airbag into the gap between the kitchen window and the frame. With one hand, she pumped it slowly, eyes fixed on the lock mechanism. As the gap widened, she slipped a length of bent wire inside, jiggling until the latch clicked. She opened the kitchen window and slipped through the narrow gap, landing silently on the cold tiles.

The kitchen was clean to the point of being sterile. Her gloved hand stroked a worktop, coming up unblemished.

I could use a maid.

She wedged a cheap, rubber doorstop under the kitchen door to secure her exit route.

Inside, the house was unnaturally still and colder than outside.

All this money and she doesn’t turn on her central heating.

Dust motes danced in the thin beam of her low light torch. The ground floor was clear: kitchen, large dining room, a formal drawing room draped in dust sheets.

No painting.

She moved to the main staircase, testing each tread before putting her weight down. The old wood creaked ominously. She listened at each door before checking them. When she heard the gentle sound of snoring, she bypassed the door she presumed was Tabitha’s bedroom.

The first-floor landing was vast. Spare bedrooms filled with furniture shrouded in polythene, like pale corpses. A library, floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books, the air thick with the smell of paper and leather. A small writing room. A music room, incongruously filled with thousands of vinyl records stacked neatly alongside an ancient gramophone.

Still no Rubens.

Two narrower staircases led up from opposite ends of the landing to the second floor, the attic space. As she ascended, candles flickered in sconces on the walls, casting long, dancing shadows. Trinkets and strange, unidentifiable objects were arranged on small tables.

Dominating the far wall was a huge, dark oil painting. A stern-faced Elizabethan nobleman stared out with cold, imperious eyes. And opposite it, bathed in the soft candlelight, hung the prize. The Rubens. *Massacre of the Innocents.* Smaller than she expected, but undeniably beautiful.

Relief washed over her, quickly followed by a prickle of profound unease. Her eyes were drawn to another painting nearby, smaller, darker. The same nobleman. But this time he stood beside a young woman. A woman with sharp features and familiar grey eyes. A woman who looked disturbingly like Tabitha Greenwick.

“He was such a wicked man.”

The voice rasped from behind her, dry and ancient. Alice spun around, torch beam stabbing into the gloom. Tabitha Greenwick stood at the top of the other staircase, watching her, her frail body silhouetted against the faint light from below.

“Our life together was a joyous one,” Tabitha took a slow step towards Alice. “He had such sights to show me.”

She smiled. Her mouth stretched, splitting her wrinkled face, opening far too wide. Rows of needle-sharp teeth, too many teeth, filled the impossible maw.

Panic seized Alice. She forgot the painting, forgot everything but escape. She lunged for the staircase she had come up, scrambling down, heart hammering against her ribs. Fumbling for the burner phone, she hit Dave’s number. “Abort! Abort!” she hissed, stumbling onto the landing. She sprinted towards the main stairs, towards the kitchen, towards the window.

She reached the kitchen, gasping for breath, and threw herself at the back door. Locked.

No. No. No.

“I can’t get out!” she yelled into the phone. “The kitchen door is locked!”

“Did you get the painting?” Dave’s voice, tight with greed, oblivious to her terror.

“It’s in the attic! She’s here! She interrupted me!”

“Fucking amateur!” Dave snarled. The line crackled. “Stay put. I’m coming.”

Slow, deliberate footsteps echoed from the main staircase. Tabitha. Descending. Alice clicked the phone off, backing away from the locked door. Her eyes darted around the kitchen. A heavy ceramic vase stood on a sideboard. She grabbed it, hefted it. As Tabitha entered the kitchen, seemingly gliding, Alice threw it with all her strength.

Tabitha swatted it aside like a troublesome fly. It smashed against the wall. Alice grabbed a small figurine and hurled it.

Blocked.

A fruit bowl.

Deflected.

A small, heavy bronze statue of a cat. It connected, thudding against Tabitha’s forehead.

A dark line of blood welled up. Tabitha paused, head cocked slightly. She didn’t even blink. An impossibly long, slender red tongue snaked out from the terrifying mouth, darted up, and licked the wound. The blood vanished. The skin sealed, leaving no mark.

“What are you?” Alice breathed, backing away.

Tabitha’s smile widened. “Old,” she rasped. Then, with chilling simplicity, “Hungry.”

Alice scrambled backwards, fumbling at doors. Pantry. Locked. Utility room. Locked. Then she saw it. The cellar door, slightly ajar. She threw herself at it, tumbling through into darkness and pulling it shut behind her, slamming her body against the wood, hands scrabbling for a lock, finding only a simple handle. She held onto it, bracing herself.

The air in the cellar was thick and cloying. A sharp chemical tang overlaid with something else. Something rank. Her eyes slowly adjusted. White tiles covered the walls, gleaming faintly. Old, heavy wooden shelves lined the space, steel reinforced. They were filled with large glass jars. Dozens of them. In the jar nearest her, suspended in murky yellowish liquid, floated a pale, perfect form.

A newborn baby.

Horror choked her. She scanned the shelves. Every jar held a similar occupant. A grotesque, silent audience in the gloom.

Her phone. It had skittered across the floor when she fell. She needed to warn Dave. Reaching for it, a thunderous pounding began on the cellar door. The handle twisted violently in her grip, the metal biting and tearing the skin of her palms. She cried out, throwing her full weight against the door. But the woman’s strength on the other side was inhuman, slowly, inexorably forcing the handle down.

As the latch clicked, as the door began to edge open, the pressure vanished.

Silence. Utter, terrifying silence.

Alice stayed pressed against the door, listening, blood dripping from her hands. Then, muffled through the wood, Dave’s voice from the kitchen. “Back off, old woman! Get away from me or I’ll...”

The distinct thwack of something heavy hitting flesh.

“Dave!” Alice screamed, pounding on the door, but her voice was lost.

A wet, tearing sound followed. A sound like canvas ripping. Then the unmistakable, sickening crack of heavy bone breaking. Dave let out a single, gurgling scream that was brutally cut short.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Alice stumbled back from the door, shaking.

He’s dead.

Her eyes darted around the cellar. Weapon? Anything? Nothing. Just the shelves. Just the jars.

Nobody is coming.

Bile rose in her throat. She grabbed the nearest jar, the cold glass slick in her bloody hands. The tiny face inside stared back with cloudy eyes.

The cellar door flew open with explosive force. Tabitha stood at the top of the short flight of steps, framed by the kitchen light. Her white nightgown was splashed liberally with bright, wet crimson. Dave’s blood. She descended slowly, deliberately, her eyes, ancient and hungry, fixed on Alice.

Terror gave Alice a final surge of defiance. She screamed, a raw, primal sound, and hurled the jar. It spun end over end, smashing against Tabitha’s chest. Glass shattered. Preservative fluid splashed over her bloodstained nightgown. The tiny, pale body landed with a soft, obscene thud on the tiled floor between them.

Tabitha stopped. She looked down at the small form on the floor. Then she raised her head, and a sound tore from her throat. A howl of pure, unadulterated rage and loss. A sound that scraped against Alice’s bones and promised utter annihilation.

She moved. Faster than sight. One moment at the foot of the stairs, the next, slamming Alice against the cold, tiled wall, pinning her with effortless, terrifying strength. Tabitha’s face was inches away, the cavernous mouth open. The stench of rotting meat filled Alice’s nostrils. Tabitha sneered, a rictus of fury. Then the long grey tongue rasped against Alice’s cheek. Alice shuddered, tears welling as she shook with fear.

“You owe me,” Tabitha hissed. “You owe me a baby.”

She released her grip. Alice slid down the wall, landing in a heap on the floor, sobbing, shaking, unable to process.

“Bring me one,” Tabitha commanded, her voice regaining its chilling composure. “A new one. Fresh. Within twelve months. Come back here. Willingly. With a child in your arms.” Her eyes bored into Alice. “If you fail me. If you try to run. I will find you, girl. I am old, patient, and have endless resources. I will find your home. And I will feast on everyone you love.” She sneered. “I have your scent now.”

Tabitha turned. Her bloodstained gown swirled as she ascended the stairs without a backward glance. She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Alice alone in the dark, surrounded by the dead, the chemical stink burning her nostrils, the tiny corpse lying obscenely on the floor.

Epilogue

The bar was dark, smelling of stale beer and unwashed flesh. Music throbbed quietly through tinny speakers. Alice was drinking once again, years of rehab undone by a night of madness. She scanned the sparse crowd. She looked different now. The weary softness was gone, replaced by a brittle hardness around her eyes, a terrifying focus. Her clothes were skimpier, less practical, chosen with care.

Bait.

Her gaze settled on a man sitting alone at the end of the bar. Late twenties, shy eyes, nursing his pint. He looked lonely. Vulnerable. Perfect.

Alice slid off her stool, smoothed her skirt, and walked towards him, forcing a smile onto her face. A smile that didn’t reach her cold, calculating eyes.

“Hey,” Her voice was soft. “Mind if I join you? It’s so noisy in here.” She sat down before he could answer. “What do you do then?” She leaned closer, letting her hand brush his arm.

It didn’t take long for him to open up and to Alice’s surprise, he was quite interesting. A nurse at the local hospital. A good man.

“Maybe,” she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “we could go somewhere quieter? My place isn’t far. We could carry on this conversation... in a bit more privacy. Where it doesn’t cost five pounds for a pint.”

He chuckled nervously at the implication.

“Don’t worry.” She winked at him. “I’m on the pill.”

THE END

If you enjoyed this story, then consider reading the rest of my stories on Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited, eBook, Paperback or Hardback.

This collection of stories is designed for quick reads, whether over a coffee or during a commute. Either way, they promise to deliver exquisitely disturbing nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after.

FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Available to order on AMAZON.

Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.

FIXED: Horror Story Compilations

I was so fixated on murdering Romans that I sent out last month’s compilations like an absolute dunce.

Here are the CORRECT links. I apologise once more. These haggard veins need more coffee in them.

Horror Story Compilations

Tales of Terror: 24 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Love. Sex. Death.’, ‘The Hunger’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘Strings Attached’.

Midnight Whispers: 31 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

Complementary Terror

To make things right, here is a FREE link to the original, most popular download: The Tattoo, featured in the international, best-selling compilation Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1.

The Wild Hunt by Newton Webb

Horror Story Compilations

Tales of Terror: 24 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Love. Sex. Death.’, ‘The Hunger’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘Strings Attached’.

Midnight Whispers: 31 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

The Wild Hunt

9 AD, Teutoburg Forest, Germania

Flavius gasped, sucking in the putrid stench of stale blood and voided bowels. Darkness pressed close, heavy and suffocating. It took a moment for his swimming senses to register the texture against his face–rough wool, cold skin, tangled wet hair.

He was buried under his dead comrades.

Panic, hot and sharp, clawed its way up his throat. He tried to shift, and agony exploded in his right thigh. A spear wound. He remembered the blinding pain, the impact that threw him from the collapsing formation. He forced the memory down.

Got to get out.

Using his elbows and hands, ignoring the slick, yielding surfaces beneath him, he clambered upwards, wrestling through the corpses.

Rain, the miserable, endless drizzle common to these northern forests, found its way through the mound, plastering his hair to his skull, chilling him to the bone. It mixed with the gore, turning the pile into a treacherous, sucking slurry.

With a final, agonised heave, he broke through the surface, gulping the damp, cold air. It smelled only marginally better up here–wet earth, crushed pine needles, and the overwhelming metallic reek of spilled blood and exposed intestines. He lay half-sprawled atop a grotesque heap of legionaries, their limbs entangled in death's final, awkward embrace. Under his armour, his tunic was stiff with drying blood. To his relief, it was mostly not his own. Relentless pain throbbed in his leg, a sickening pulse against the frantic beat of his heart.

It was dusk. Or perhaps it had been dusk for days under the oppressive canopy of the Teutoburg Forest. Time bled together. Around him, stretching as far as his blurred vision could make out, lay the ruin of three legions. Seventeenth. Eighteenth. Nineteenth.

Gone.

Utterly destroyed.

Their familiar faces were pale masks, eyes staring sightlessly at the dripping leaves above, mouths open in final, silent screams. Amongst them, sometimes fused by drying blood, lay the victors, long-haired warriors of the Cherusci, Chatti, Marsi. At least they’d taken some of the bastards with them.

A groan sounded nearby. Flavius twisted, ignoring the fire in his thigh. Just yards away, another figure struggled weakly amidst the carnage. A Roman. Flavius recognised the man, despite the filth caking his face.

Decius.

That arrogant peacock.

Never his friend, always seeking favour, but now the sight of another survivor, any survivor, sparked a desperate joy. Decius was trying to pull his left arm free from beneath a dead Cherusci warrior.

The arm hung at an unnatural angle, clearly broken.

Flavius pushed himself off the mound, sliding and landing awkwardly, his injured leg buckling. He stifled a cry and crawled the short distance. "Decius?" he whispered, his voice a dry rasp.

Decius looked up, eyes sunken with pain and exhaustion. Recognition, then relief, flickered across his face. "Flavius. By the gods, you live."

"Quiet," Flavius hissed. "They could still be near." He offered Decius his hand. "We have to..."

Harsh laughter echoed through the trees, closer now. The guttural sounds of a Germanic tongue. Flavius gripped Decius’s good arm and pulled. Decius groaned with pain but scrambled up. "Quiet!" Flavius hissed again.

Peering through the tangle of corpses and ferns, they saw them. Three tribesmen, moving methodically through the dead, stripping armour, pulling rings from stiff fingers, occasionally dispatching a groaning Roman survivor with brutal efficiency. One warrior paused, scanning the area near them. Flavius froze, pressing himself flat against the cold earth.

Jupiter preserve us. Just keep walking.

A sudden cry sounded further off as another survivor was discovered. The warrior who had paused hefted his axe and loped towards the sound.

"Now," Flavius breathed. "Crawl. Stay low."

They moved like wounded animals, dragging themselves away from the main body of the slaughter, deeper into the tangled undergrowth. Every movement sent waves of fire through Flavius's thigh. Decius panted with the effort, cradling his shattered arm uselessly against his chest. The sounds of the looters faded behind them, replaced by the drip of rainwater and the sighing wind.

They found a small hollow, screened by thick bushes, and collapsed, shivering.

"Utter annihilation," Decius whispered, his gaze sweeping over the shadowed woods. "Varus... the eagles... They took the eagles." His voice cracked, heavy with the unspeakable shame.

"So what now? Head south in disgrace to Roman territory?" Flavius muttered, the words tasting like bile. "Wait for them to find us? Or for the cold to finish the job?"

"They’ll kill us for losing the standards. Decimation of any survivors, if we're fortunate. More likely execution of the pair of us." Decius shifted, grimacing. "No. We go south. Through the woods. Try to slip past the Rhine forts. Disappear."

"That's desertion, Decius."

"We are 'stragglers'," Decius said, the word a necessary lie. "Separated in the chaos. Making our way back to Roman lines. Who can prove otherwise, if we make it?"

Stragglers.

The word hung in the fetid air. Flavius stared into the encroaching darkness, feeling the last vestiges of legionary discipline, of belonging, leach away into the mud. Thirst clawed at his throat. Pain screamed from his leg. Death waited patiently in the shadows. He spat. "Fine. Stragglers it is. Better than waiting here for the crows."

They pushed on as true darkness fell, Flavius leaning heavily on a sturdy branch Decius found for him. The forest was an endless, suffocating maze. Roots snagged their feet, low branches whipped at their faces. At least the ceaseless rain meant finding puddles to drink from wasn’t difficult.

Just a little further. Then rest.

Hours later, near collapse, they heard a twig snap ahead. Both froze, hearts hammering. A figure emerged from the gloom between two massive oaks. Roman. Upright. Tall. A centurion. His armour dented and stained.

Flavius almost cried out in relief.

Tertius! From the Eighteenth! He survived!

"Centurion!" Flavius called, hobbling forward, Decius close behind. "Thank the gods! We thought..."

Tertius turned towards them slowly. His face was strangely blank in the dim light filtering through the canopy, his eyes unfocused. There was a dark stain matting the hair above his temple where his helmet was dented inwards, but he seemed otherwise unharmed, remarkably composed amidst the surrounding devastation. He did not react with surprise or relief. He simply watched them approach, his stillness unnerving.

"Centurion," Decius panted, clutching his broken arm. "The tribesmen are still about. We were heading south. Trying to reach the Rhine. Can you lead us? Do you know the way?"

Tertius remained silent for a long moment, his gaze distant, as if listening to something far away, something only he could hear. The wind sighed through the high branches. Then, his lips barely moving, his voice flat, devoid of inflection, he spoke a single word. A Germanic name only whispered among the auxiliaries, a god of frenzy, death, and dark knowledge.

"Wodanaz."

Flavius stared.

What?

Confusion warred with a rising unease.

Shock? Head injury?

"Centurion," Flavius tried again, urgency sharpening his tone. "We need to leave. Now. Before they find us."

Tertius said nothing more. He simply turned and began to walk. Not south, but deeper into the woods, north-east, further into the heart of the wilderness. His pace steady, unhurried, disciplined.

Flavius exchanged a bewildered look with Decius.

What is wrong with him?

"Centurion, wait!" Flavius called.

Tertius did not slow. He kept walking.

"We cannot stay here," Decius muttered, glancing nervously back into the darkness. "He's a Centurion. Maybe he knows a safer route." His desperation was plain.

Hesitantly, driven by the slim hope Tertius represented, they followed. Tertius walked ahead, a solid, disciplined figure seemingly oblivious to their presence. They struggled to keep up, Flavius's leg a constant agony, Decius hampered by his arm. The forest grew denser, the trees older, their branches interwoven like skeletal fingers against the bruised sky.

After a while, Flavius risked a glance back. No sign of pursuit. He looked ahead.

Tertius was perhaps thirty paces ahead, moving at that same deliberate walk. They pushed themselves, trying to close the distance, wanting the reassurance of a senior officer, despite his strange silence and that single, unsettling word. Flavius stumbled on a root, recovered, forced himself onward.

He looked up again. Tertius was still thirty paces ahead. Still walking the same, unhurried pace.

A cold knot tightened in Flavius's stomach. He forced more speed, ignoring the jolts in his thigh, half-hopping, half-dragging his leg. Decius kept pace beside him, breathing hard. They were practically jogging now, crashing through the undergrowth with reckless haste. Flavius dared another look forward.

Tertius was still there. Thirty paces ahead. Walking. Calmly. Deliberately. He had not sped up. Yet the distance remained exactly the same.

No. Impossible.

Terror, cold and primal, prickled Flavius's skin. This was wrong. Deeply wrong. He stopped, gasping for breath, leaning heavily on his makeshift crutch. Decius stopped beside him, his face pale and slick with rain and sweat.

"Why can't we reach him?" Decius’s voice trembled. "It's like... like running in a nightmare."

Flavius shook his head wordlessly, his throat tight. He looked ahead. Tertius continued his steady walk, moving deeper into the black woods, never varying his pace, never looking back. He seemed less like a man leading them, their frantic attempts to follow seemed irrelevant to him.

"Forget him," Flavius whispered, the words catching in his throat. "He's not right. That head wound... it’s driven him mad. We go south. Now. While we still can."

"No," Decius pleaded, his eyes fixed on the retreating figure. "We stay with the Centurion. He's our best chance. Think, Flavius! His word carries weight. If we're found with him, no one questions stragglers led by an officer. Alone? We look like deserters for sure."

Gods, he's desperate. Clinging to rank even now.

Flavius hesitated. Decius was right about how it would look, but every instinct screamed that something was wrong. Yet, turning back alone into that darkness felt equally perilous.

Tertius had stopped, still thirty paces ahead, waiting. Seeing them falter, he waited until they reluctantly began moving again, then turned and resumed his inexorable pace.

They pushed through the tangled darkness, following the walking Centurion. The forest seemed to watch them, ancient and aware. Eventually, utterly spent, they found themselves on the edge of a shallow granite ravine choked with the gnarled, ancient roots of unseen trees.

Exhaustion overwhelmed them. Decius, taking a step near the edge, simply pitched forward into the darkness without a cry. Flavius heard a dull thud, a rustle of disturbed roots far below. Panic flared anew.

No, not him too.

He lowered himself painfully into the ravine, sliding the last few feet, landing heavily beside his companion. Decius groaned, stirring.

Alive.

Relief washed over Flavius, he almost laughed with relief. He collapsed beside Decius, the last of his strength gone. He looked up. Tertius stood near a narrow fissure in the rock face, just wide enough for a man to slide through. He was standing ramrod straight almost at attention.

As Flavius watched, the Centurion turned his head fractionally towards the opening and grated, "Wodanaz."

A cave? He found shelter?

Hope, fragile but persistent, flickered again. "Decius! A cave!" Flavius levered himself up on protesting limbs and peered into the crack. It seemed to lead into darkness. He squeezed through the crevice.

Inside, the space opened into a surprisingly large cavern. As his eyes adjusted, he saw bronze braziers standing cold around the perimeter. At the back of the cave, a rough-hewn stone altar stood before a section of rock face engraved with a complex symbol, three interconnected triangles.

Decius slithered in behind him, collapsing near the entrance. "Shelter," he mumbled, shivering. "Dry shelter." Within moments, he was asleep, his breathing shallow.

Mars give me strength.

Flavius walked the perimeter of the cave, blade held ready. He found a place near the entrance where he could watch the fissure and the ravine outside. "Tertius?" he called softly. "Are you coming in–Tertius!" His voice echoed slightly. He strained his ears but heard only the drip of water somewhere deeper in the cave and Decius's breathing. The Centurion remained outside, a silent, still sentinel. Flavius sank down, leaning against the cold rock, fighting to stay awake.

Sleep dragged him under, but it wasn't restful. It was a feverish descent into nightmare, perhaps fuelled by the growing heat from his wounded leg. He felt the chill of the stone beneath him, yet dreamt of suffocating heat. He saw an immense, ancient tree dominating a landscape of mist and shadow. Not an oak or pine of the forest outside, but something older, vaster, its roots plunging into an earth that seemed to weep blood, its highest branches scraping a bruised sky boiling with storm clouds.

Impaled upon its trunk, hanging like a grim sacrifice, was a figure cloaked in grey. A spear pierced his side. Flavius saw with horror that one eye socket was empty, a void of utter blackness, while the other eye burned with a single point of piercing, blue-white light, a winter star.

Two great black ravens perched on the branches near the figure's head, their obsidian eyes gleaming, watching him.

Runes, angular and forbidding, seemed to carve themselves into the living bark around the hanging god, glowing with faint, cold energy. Flavius did not know the name of this deity, but he felt the crushing weight of its presence. An ancient, alien power, thriving on sacrifice and unimaginable pain, quite unlike the sunlit gods of Rome.

He felt the gaze of that single, burning eye fix upon him, cold and assessing.

The figure's lips moved, and a voice like the grinding of glaciers filled the dream. "Are you hunter, or are you prey?" It gestured towards the cave entrance.

Flavius looked back the way he had come in the dream, and saw the altar from the cave, stark against the swirling mist.

The voice repeated, resonating in his bones. "Are you hunter, or are you prey?"

"Who are you?" Flavius stammered, gripping his dream-sword. "By Jupiter, I serve Rome! I kneel to no barbarian god!"

The figure's lips curled into something that might have been a smile. "Prey, then..."

He woke with a gasp, shivering violently despite the enclosed space. Grey dawn filtered weakly through the cave entrance.

Just a dream. Fever from the wound.

But his heart hammered against his ribs. The vision clung to him, vivid and terrifying. He peered outside. The ravine was filled with damp mist, the struggling sunlight painting it in shades of ash.

Tertius remained standing where he had been, guarding the entrance, impossibly still.

Flavius looked up towards the lip of the ravine.

Perched on a thick, exposed root, a large raven watched him intently. Its head was cocked, its black eye glittering with unsettling intelligence. As their eyes met, it let out a single, harsh caw that echoed in the still air. Then, with a powerful beat of its wings, it launched itself upwards and vanished into the grey sky above the trees.

A shiver traced its way down Flavius’s spine, unrelated to the cold. He shifted, pain flaring in his leg. He needed to check the wound, clean it if he could. He looked at Tertius. "Centurion, you should rest. You stood guard all night."

Tertius ignored him. Flavius cautiously approached the entrance. "Tertius? Are you alright?"

The Centurion turned his head slowly, mechanically. "Wodanaz."

Flavius recoiled slightly.

Still fixated on that.

He turned to check on Decius. His companion was already awake, sitting upright, staring intently towards the altar. His face was pale, but his eyes held a strange light.

"I had a dream, Flavius," Decius said, his voice hushed, reverent. "A vision."

Flavius felt his blood run cold. "A nightmare," he corrected grimly. "I dreamt of a... a hanging god. A barbarian thing."

"Yes!" Decius's face grew animated. "Nailed to a great tree, with a spear in his side! He spoke to me, Flavius. He showed me... power."

"He asked if you were a hunter or prey?" Flavius finished, his eyes wide with disbelief and horror.

He saw it too?

"He did! It's a sign, don't you see?" Decius scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain from his arm. "The old gods are waking in this forest. They offer strength. Survival!" He gestured towards the altar. "This place... it's a gift."

"It's a curse," Flavius spat. "It's pagan filth. We need to leave. Now." He started towards the cave entrance, but Tertius shifted, blocking his path.

"Wodanaz."

Flavius looked closely at the Centurion in the thin morning light. He could see now, where the helmet was dented near the temple, the bone beneath was fractured, revealing a dark, glistening mass beneath. Gore caked his dented breastplate, dark, almost black, and congealed, despite the damp air. Where blood should have been weeping from the head wound and other minor cuts, there was only a dark, viscous ichor that seemed to glitter faintly with frost-like particles.

Yet, Tertius stood. Impossibly straight. His eyes, milky white like a cataract victim's, were wide open and fixed upon Flavius. He blinked, slow and deliberate, an awful parody of life.

Flavius stepped backwards, his good leg bumping into the cave wall. "Tertius... what in Pluto's name happened to you?"

Tertius's lips peeled back from his teeth. With a grating sound, like rocks grinding together, the word Flavius now dreaded escaped. "Wodanaz."

"A sign! He's blessed!" Decius breathed, his voice tight with a terrible awe. "The god protects his own."

Blessed? He looks like he crawled from a tomb!

"Decius, look at him! He's dead, or worse!"

Decius ignored him, approaching Tertius with a mixture of fear and reverence. "What do you want from us, Centurion? What does the god require?"

Tertius's jaw creaked open again. A wave of unnatural cold washed through the cave, carrying the scent of damp earth and the grave. Flavius gagged, pulling his cloak tighter. The dead Centurion's eyes shifted, focusing on the altar, then back to the two living men.

Then he spoke, his voice a dry rustle, echoing the words from the dream. Words that chilled Flavius far more than the Germanic morning air. "Hunter. Or prey."

Decius froze. His awe warred visibly with naked fear. He swallowed hard, then nodded slowly, as if accepting a dreadful, inevitable truth. "Hunter," he repeated softly. "Hunter."

Flavius heard the scrape of metal. He turned to see Decius lunging towards him, his sword drawn, wielded with his uninjured arm, desperation burning in his eyes. Flavius reacted instinctively, batting the blade aside with his forearm, the impact jarring him. His fist lashed out, connecting solidly with Decius’s jaw. "Have you lost your mind?" He scrambled back, drawing his own sword.

"Hunter," Decius spat blood onto the cave floor, "or prey. I'm sorry, Flavius. This is the only way. He offers power! A way out!"

"You fool! It's madness! Fever! Look at him!" Flavius parried a wild thrust. "You cannot turn your back on Rome, on our gods!"

"Our gods left us to die!" Decius snarled, attacking with renewed frenzy. The confined space filled with the clash of steel. Decius, despite his broken arm, fought with the strength of desperation. He hooked Flavius’s good leg, sending him stumbling back against the cave wall. Flavius stabbed desperately, forcing Decius back momentarily while he tried to regain his footing, his injured leg screaming.

He never got the chance. Decius surged forward again, his blade glinting. When Flavius’s wounded leg buckled under him, Decius’s sword point slid past his guard and sank into his shoulder. Pain seared through him. With a roar, Flavius gripped Decius’s armour and slammed his forehead into Decius’s nose, feeling cartilage crunch. As Decius staggered back, momentarily stunned, Flavius thrust upwards with all his might. The blade slid between Decius’s ribs and pierced his heart.

He ripped the blade free, gasping. "You stupid... foolish..."

Decius swayed, looked down at the fatal wound, then up at Flavius. Then his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.

Flavius stood panting, leaning against the wall, sword dripping. The silence in the cave was profound. He looked at Tertius, who hadn't moved, his milky eyes fixed on the scene.

Then, horribly, Decius stirred. He pushed himself up, slowly, stiffly. The gaping wound in his chest wasn't bleeding freely. Instead, the edges seemed dark, congealed, dusted with the same faint frost Flavius had seen on Tertius.

Flavius raised his blade warily, horror crawling up his spine.

"Wodanaz," Decius rasped, his voice distorted, empty. He retrieved his fallen sword, and walked with stiff, unnatural steps towards the cave entrance. Tertius moved aside, allowing him to pass. The two dead soldiers flanked the fissure, silent sentinels.

Flavius watched them, numb with shock and terror. He followed cautiously, keeping his distance, sword held ready. He squeezed through the narrow opening back into the ravine. Tertius and Decius stood there, waiting, their dead eyes fixed on him.

With immense effort, Flavius climbed out of the ravine, hauling his protesting leg after him.

South. I have to go south. Get away from them.

He glanced back. The two dead soldiers pulled themselves out of the ravine with unnatural ease, their movements stiff but certain. They fell into step behind him, their gait perfectly synchronised.

He whirled, pointing his sword at them. "Stay back! Don't follow me!"

They ignored him, simply stopping a few paces away, waiting.

"I mean it! Stay back, or I'll..." He looked at the ghastly wound in Decius’s chest, the milky eyes of Tertius.

Or you'll what? Kill them again?

Panic tightened its grip.

What do I do? What in Hades do I do?

He paced nervously before them. "Why are you following me?"

They both spoke in perfect, chilling unison, their voices devoid of inflection. "Hunter."

"You’re the hunter? Or... or am I?" Flavius asked, dread pooling in his gut.

"Hunter," they both replied.

Great.

That clarified nothing and everything. He was marked. Linked to them. Leading them? Or being led by them?

He turned, finding the weak sun through the oppressive grey sky, oriented himself south as best he could, and began to walk, leaning heavily on his branch. Flavius kept glancing nervously towards the canopy. No sign of German war parties, but a pair of large black birds, ravens, circled silently overhead, keeping pace. He muttered prayers under his breath.

Mercury, guide my steps. Mars, lend me strength. Jupiter, protect me.

The words felt hollow, useless in this ancient, brooding forest. His gods seemed very far away.

He heard the sound of running water and pushed towards it. A narrow stream, its water clear and achingly cold, gurgled through the trees. Flavius fell to his knees, drinking deeply, splashing water on his face. As he drank, he looked up. Tertius and Decius stood patiently on the bank a few paces away. They showed no sign of thirst, no needs of the living, waiting with the patience of the grave. The ravens continued their silent vigil overhead.

As dusk began to gather again, casting long, distorted shadows through the trees, Flavius found a shallow hollow sheltered beneath the sprawling roots of an ancient, gnarled oak. It offered minimal protection, but he was too exhausted, mentally and physically, to go further. Pain from his leg, now hot and swollen, radiated up his thigh.

Infection.

He collapsed into the hollow, his makeshift crutch falling beside him. Sleep claimed him quickly, a black, dreamless void this time, born of pure exhaustion.

He was jolted awake sometime later by a sound. A soft, rhythmic crunching. Footsteps on the damp leaf litter. Many footsteps. A sound that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. He opened his eyes to near darkness, the moon hidden by thick clouds. Then he heard it again, closer. Thump... thump... thump... The sound of disciplined marching.

Flavius pushed himself up, peering out from the hollow, his heart pounding. Tertius and Decius weren't alone. Standing sentinel in a loose perimeter around his resting place were three more Roman corpses. He squinted, recognising the dented helmets, the torn segments of armour gleaming dully where faint starlight caught them. Dead men from the slaughtered legions, their faces slack, their eyes empty sockets or staring with the same unseeing intensity as Tertius's. They stood unnaturally still, weapons held loosely at their sides. One was missing an arm below the elbow, but held his shield strap gripped in his remaining hand, the stump raised slightly as if still expecting to hold a sword.

They found more.

Or perhaps... they were drawn here. To me.

A shout echoed through the night. Germanic voices, alert and hostile. A hunting party, drawn by noise or misfortune.

Instantly, the five dead legionaries moved. With terrifying speed and silence, they formed a tight shield line facing the direction of the shouts, Tertius instinctively taking the centre. It was a mocking parody of Roman discipline, executed by things that should be rotting in the earth.

The barbarians, maybe six or seven of them, burst through the trees, axes and spears ready. They crashed against the dead soldiers' shield wall with guttural war cries. The formation didn't budge an inch. Silent as the grave, the dead legionaries responded. Blades licked out, finding gaps in armour, puncturing flesh, tearing throats. The barbarians' screams of pain and terror contrasted starkly with the chilling silence of their opponents.

Flavius watched, frozen in the hollow, a new kind of fear gripping him. He should have felt relief at being saved, but watching the methodical, emotionless slaughter filled him only with horror.

I'm on the wrong side.

A giant warrior, with a wolfskin helmet, roaring in fury, swung a huge two-handed axe in a devastating arc, taking the head clean off one of the dead legionaries. The headless corpse didn't even falter. It stabbed forward blindly, impaling the giant through the neck. The headless legionary remained standing, sword held ready, until the fighting stopped.

Gods, they don't even need their heads.

Flavius felt sick. He had fought beside men like these, bled with them. Now... they were abominations. And they were his abominations, somehow.

As the last German died, gurgling on the forest floor, the dead Romans reformed their silent guard around Flavius's resting place. The headless one remained standing, eerily vigilant. Flavius stared at the butchered corpses of the tribesmen, then back at his unholy escort. He scrambled back further into the hollow.

Jupiter's teeth!

The German corpses were twitching. A faint, chilling blue mist seemed to rise from their wounds, coalescing in the gloom. The mist swirled, taking on vague, shifting shapes like great hounds, silent and menacing.

What was that? More magic?

Flavius shivered uncontrollably.

Madness. It must be madness.

Exhaustion, terror, grief, the fever from his leg. It was all conspiring to conjure phantoms. Decius lay dead in the cave. Tertius rotted somewhere behind him. These figures, the marching, the fight were tricks of the light, fever-dreams, survivor's guilt given form.

Yes. That must be it. I am mad.

He almost laughed, a hysterical giggle bubbling in his throat. Time seemed to warp. Had a whole day passed since the cave? Another night? The forest remained unchanging, a claustrophobic prison of towering trees and perpetual twilight. He tried to ignore the presence behind him as he forced himself to walk again, heading south once more. But it was impossible. It was the sound. The single, unified sound of their footfalls.

Thump… thump… thump…

Five sets of sandaled feet, hitting the damp earth at precisely the same instant. A relentless, perfectly synchronised rhythm that drilled into his skull. They moved in a grotesque parody of legionary discipline. Only when a thick tree trunk or an impassable boulder blocked their path did the formation momentarily break. Individuals flowed around the obstacle with eerie fluidity, immediately reforming their rank on the other side without pause, without command.

He found himself on a low, wooded ridge. Below lay another clearing, smaller than the first, another place where the fighting must have been fierce. Broken weapons, discarded shields, and the dark shapes of more corpses littered the ground both Roman and German alike. As Flavius watched in numb horror, three more Roman bodies stirred, pushed themselves upright with jerky movements, and shambled towards his silent escort, falling into rank. The German dead remained still. His escort now numbered eight. Eight dead men following him south.

He thought he saw the flicker of distant campfires through the trees on the far side of the ridge. A small encampment. Perhaps tribesmen lingering, guarding captured supplies, or simply resting. Driven by a desperate, irrational need for warmth, for life, he started down the slope towards it.

His escort moved with him. As they neared the camp, they surged forward, moving with that terrifying, silent speed. Screams erupted from the camp as surprise turning quickly to agony. The sickening sounds of slaughter drifted back up the ridge. Flavius closed his eyes, leaning heavily on his spear, but he couldn't shut out the noises. When silence fell again, his escort formed around him. He stumbled into the now-silent camp. Three dead Germans lay sprawled near a sputtering fire. A haunch of venison roasted on a makeshift spit above it. Ignoring the bodies, Flavius limped to the fire, drew his dagger, and hacked off chunks of the hot, greasy meat. He devoured it like a starving wolf, the warmth spreading through him, a fleeting comfort in the nightmare. He found a waterskin, nearly full, and drank deeply. Then he squatted by the fire, amidst the dead, letting the heat soak into his chilled bones, strangely content for a brief moment, the horror momentarily pushed back by primal needs.

Flavius woke stiff and cold beside the dead fire, surrounded by buzzing black flies feasting on the German corpses. He stretched aching limbs. His leg was worse, throbbing, the skin around the wound tight and angry red.

I need a medicus. Soon.

Or he would lose the leg, if he didn't lose his life to the spreading poison first.

He started walking south again, discarding his branch, he used a salvaged spear as a crutch. He made poor time, his fever rising, the world occasionally swimming before his eyes. Twice more they encountered small groups of Germans. Flavius barely registered them, stumbling onward in a haze of pain and fatigue. He heard the sounds of brief, one-sided combat behind him, the chilling silence of his escort's work. He didn't look back. If the Germans had food or water, his escort seemed to leave it untouched, and he helped himself numbly after they had passed. He found skins of rough barley beer at one site and drank heavily, seeking oblivion in the harsh brew.

His forehead burned. He stumbled drunkenly through the endless trees, the silent ranks of the dead marching inexorably behind him. How many were there now? Ten? Twelve? He’d lost count.

As evening approached again, the forest began to thin slightly. Through a gap in the trees, he saw smoke rising. Not a campfire this time, but the ordered smoke of chimneys. A settlement. He squinted. Wooden palisades, tiled roofs visible here and there. A Roman village, or perhaps a fortified farmstead, on the edge of the dark wood.

Hope, fierce and desperate, surged through him. Civilisation! Safety! A proper medicus! He could escape this nightmare, heal his wounds, the dead would finally leave him be—

As if sensing his intention, the majority of his undead legionaries moved. Without pause, without command, they moved into a compact formation, shields interlocked, and advanced purposefully towards the settlement. Only Tertius, Decius, and three others remained flanking Flavius.

"No!" Flavius cried, his voice raw. "No, stop! They're Romans! Civilians!"

He tried to push past his guards, to run ahead, to warn the village. But they moved with him, matching his pace effortlessly. He realised with horrifying clarity that his own desperate urge to reach safety was leading them straight to it. He stopped fighting it, watching in despair as the testudo reached the palisade. There was no attempt to parley, no demand for entry. They simply hacked methodically at the wooden gate with their swords, relentless and untiring. Faint, ghostly hound-shapes seemed to flicker around them, phasing through the wood, their passage marked by sudden screams from within.

The screams of the dying started properly then. Men, women, children. Roman screams.

It isn't madness. It's real. And I'm doing this. I'm leading them.

The realisation hit him with the force of a physical blow. He sank to his knees, weeping into his filthy hands.

"Why?" he screamed at Tertius, who stood impassively beside him. "Why are you doing this? Stop them!"

The dead Centurion didn't turn. His ruined voice rasped the same chilling word. "Hunter."

Hunter.

They followed the hunter. They obeyed the hunter. Or perhaps... they guarded the hunter? Why keep him alive? Why protect him? Unless...

It was a flicker, a desperate gamble born of utter despair.

Unless they need me alive.

Hope, twisted and terrible, perhaps? Or just pure, final instinct.

If I die... maybe they stop.

His hand flew to the hilt of his sword. The blade rasped from its sheath. With a strangled cry that was half prayer, half curse, he reversed the grip and plunged the familiar weight of Roman steel deep into his own chest, below the ribs, angling upwards.

Agony, white-hot and absolute, ripped through him. His vision blurred. Through a red haze, he saw the dead soldiers, all of them, those guarding him, those attacking the gate stop. They turned their heads, their blank eyes or empty sockets fixing on him as one.

Tertius took a step towards him. "Hunt—" he began, the sound grating, unfinished.

Then, something changed. The unnatural coldness that clung to them seemed to recede, like a tide going out. Tertius shuddered violently. His jaw dropped open, then detached entirely, clattering to the leaf litter. His flesh seemed to darken, wither, collapse inwards with impossible speed. Green shoots erupted from the ground beneath him, thorny vines wrapping around his legs, pulling him down. The earth itself seemed to ripple. Fissures opened, dark and hungry, swallowing the dead legionaries. Nature itself, ancient and implacable, reclaiming the unholy things that had defied its laws, pulling the animated corpses back into the soil they had wrongly left. Within moments, they were gone, leaving only disturbed earth and the lingering scent of decay.

Flavius lay on the damp ground, the sounds of the distant, dying village fading. His blood pooled beneath him, warm against the cold earth. He looked up at the oppressive canopy, the first weak light of true dawn filtering through the leaves.

Jupiter... I kept the faith...

The thought formed weakly, a final plea.

Let Ovid be wrong... Let there be fields... Elysium...

His breath hitched. His vision tunnelled. The ancient forest watched, silent and uncaring, as the last survivor of the Wild Hunt finally found his peace.

THE END

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Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.

Newt's Nightmares🦎#109

Newt's Nightmares

Greetings, my wicked darlings!

I hope my UK readers enjoyed the bank holiday and the hangovers weren’t too ghastly. What is this glorious sunshine about? Come on, how am I supposed to write Gothic horror without at least a hint of drizzle?

May is a glorious month for horror. Not only is it my birthday (27 May 1982) but also Vincent Price’s (27 May 1911), Christopher Lee’s (27 May 1922), Peter Cushing’s (26 May 1913). I’m honoured to have been born within 48 hours of these titans of terror.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Dame Daphne du Maurier, who was also born in May (13 May 1907).

Let’s light a candle and raise a glass for our fallen brethren (not me, I’m still kicking around. Like a fart in a frock, I’m not dissipating anytime soon).

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I’ve a busy month coming up for you in May, you’ve got two free short stories: The Wild Hunt (fear the Teutoburg Forest) and The Spinster (be careful which old ladies you plan to burgle). I am also doing an audio narration of One More Turn (a ‘cracking’ story).

Last Month’s ReleasesFree Horror Fiction:

Deus Vult—Templars, Hashashin, and something ancient in the Holy Land

Soulmates—1980s occult horror with a lethal emotional payload

Free Audiobooks:

Dead Water—A diver meets a deadly adversary in the depths

Of Politeness and Protocol—A Victorian recluse seeks etiquette help from Hell

Horror Writers Association UKWelcome to the home of the Horror Writers Association UK Chapter.Here to promote the best in UK horror!Horror Story Compilations

Tales of Terror: 24 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Love. Sex. Death.’, ‘The Hunger’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘Strings Attached’.

Midnight Whispers: 31 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

What I’ve Been Reading:

Six horror books this month. My top three being:

Maggie’s Grave by David Sodergren

The Haar by David Sodergren

Red Womb by C.M. Guidroz

What I’ve Been Watching:

I reviewed two movies this month:

Shutter Island (2010) - Watch my review

The Evil Dead (1981) - Watch my review

Thanks for reading Newton’s Free Horror! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

If you enjoyed this email, then please consider Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1. My first collected works on Amazon containing sixteen short stories and novellas by Newton Webb.

Newton Webb BibliographyAvailable on Amazon

Visit my Amazon author page

Collected Works

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2

Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3

Contemporary

2022 – The Heir Apparent, Novella

2018 – The Morrígan, Novella

2017 – Nestor Lynch, Novel

2013 – Festival of The Damned, Novella

2012 – The Platinum Service, Novella

Historical

1958 – The Black Fog, Short Story

1864 – Smoke in the Sewers, Novella

1832 – The Horror at Hargrave Hall, Novella

1818 – The Ballad of Barnacle Bill, Novella

1194 – Hunted, Short Story

Read a collection of free short stories or listen to free audiobooks by Newton Webb on his website.

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