Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 9

Baked Scribe Flashback : Tiddy

 

Figuring out how to put an end to the project upriver was the only way she could save the town. The offense that had been perpetuated by the foreign investors had to be corrected. Otherwise, each and every one of them could end up dead because, once the creature had exacted its revenge, it would almost certainly turn on the town itself. The problem was actually being able to convince the company.

News had made its way down the river about the problems that had already plagued the work site. The weather would turn on them in a moment, heavy fog rolling in to overtake them. When the fog finally lifted, they would find equipment wrecked and often, injured workmen. A few people had gone missing, and others had reported seeing something darting around the site, short as a small child and wearing rags for clothes.

The creature had been a part of the town for longer than anyone could remember. Even the children who had originally given it the nickname “Tiddy” were now themselves senior citizens. The people of the town had made peace with it long ago but, if this offense was allowed to continue, none of that would matter. The thing would rip its way through as many people as it required in order to regain the water it so desperately needed.

She knew that this had all started when the company had diverted the river, denying the creature its access to the water that it loved more than life itself. The water was its life and now that it was gone, the benevolence, which they had grown to expect from the local creature, turned into rage, and a thirst for vengeance.

She would have to convince them to stop the project altogether. The only way to lift this curse would be to cease any work and return the river to its original course. Nothing else would suffice. It was the only way that Tiddy would be satisfied.

Chances were likely that the investors would just laugh her out of the room, assuming they even agreed to meet with her. There was little or no chance that they would give in to any suggestion, not if it meant losing their all-sacred dollars. Hunger and greed demanded satisfaction, unaware of the perils that they were putting everyone into. She knew her chances were slim. That was why she had brought the backup plan.

She had to protect what mattered.

Running a hand once more into her bag, she felt the outline of the explosives that she could only pray she wouldn’t have to use.

 

Issue #178 : Comes To This

 

He looked up as the clock struck midnight, shivering as the sound carried across the park to where he stood.

It was too late.

No more room for begging off, getting delays, finding extensions. He would be expected to come up with the dollars or else…

He didn’t want to think about the “or else”.

He had just played out his last option for actually coming up with the money in time, and it had proved worthless.

No other choice now but what lay in front of him.

Peter walked to the pay phone by the old gazebo, the only one left in town that was still operational. He picked up the receiver and plugged in his loose change, hearing them plunk down into the phone and absently wishing that he could follow.

“Yeah?” The voice on the other end wasn’t the one to whom he owed the money but he was pretty close. 

“It’s me,” he said, staring across at the empty shell of the fountain, already cleared out for the oncoming winter storm.

“You have something for us?”

“I’m on my way over. Tell him I’m on my way.”

“We’ll see you soon.”

The phone clicked on the other end and Peter shook his head. He had no idea what he had to offer but he had maybe an hour before his former benefactor decided to send out a small army to chase him down.

Peter had to be the one doing the chasing. It wasn’t a path that he had wanted to take but things had gotten to the point where it was too late to matter. He had to take the path that was in front of him. Caesar was not the kind of person he could trust to stay away from anyone else, once he had put Peter in the ground. The man had always seemed like the type that thrived on the misery he caused and the blood he had shed. Peter’s wife would just be more to add to the pile.

The town was dead at that time of night. The college was on break so even some of the taverns had shut down early because of a lack of patronage. The moon glared brightly at him through a break in the clouds and he took in the sight, wondering if this would prove to be the last time he looked up at it. There would be close to a dozen men waiting in that house and the only thing he had going for him at this point was the fact that not a single one of them likely perceived him as any kind of a threat. He would have to use that as best he could.

Caesar’s house stood at the top of Ridgeway Lane. All the houses up here were over-sized and expensive but Caesar’s house was the biggest, the most elaborate and extensively designed of all of them. It looked down over an already privileged neighborhood, like a guard for the rich and powerful, shielding them and warding off any of the evils of the world. No matter. Peter would see that house burn. It was the only way, the only route out from underneath this avalanche of disaster he had brought down on himself and anyone close to him.

He sneaked around to the backside of the house, hoping that no one had noticed him crossing over from the street. This would have to happen quickly, before any of them had the opportunity to do anything to stop him. He was surprised to not see anyone outside. Once he was inside, there would be no room for error and no room for doing anything but charging forward. The only thing keeping him on his feet was the image of his wife, reminding himself that this was the only path that led to her safety.

Against all his expectations, the back door was unlocked. He felt like he was walking into a museum, after hours. The rooms he passed through weren’t completely dark but there was minimal lighting, small LED lights mounted over paintings and various sculptures. A part of him had to struggle against the urge to stop and browse the work that Caesar has selected, as it would likely be some expensive pieces. He was here for other reasons and there was no time.

At the base of the stairs, he thought he heard the sound of someone talking up on the second floor. Moving up our and onto the landing, he spotted a thin strip of light coming from under a doorway at the end of the hall. He crept along, sure that at any moment, one of Caesar’s goons would leap out from a closet or bathroom. Still, he was unchallenged as he made it to the door, took hold of the knob and let himself in.

Caesar was seated at the desk, talking to someone on the phone. He waved Peter in as he swiveled his chair away from him. Standing there, Peter listened for the minute or two it took for the conversation to end and the phone to be placed onto the desktop.

“I think you’ll be needing what’s on the table there,” Caesar said, turning back to face him. Peter looked down, confused and nearly stepped back at the sight of the pistol.

“It’s real,” Caesar said. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was trying to fool you. Go ahead, pick it up. This won’t work very well without it.”

“I don’t—”

“Oh, just pick it up. This will go much faster. Trust me.”

Peter reached down, hand trembling as he slipped his fingers around the grip. He was surprised at how light it felt, somehow expecting it to feel like a boulder in his hand.

“Now point it at me. Doesn’t do much good if you don’t point it at me, does it?”

The mocking sarcasm was almost enough for him to add pulling the trigger to the list of demands, but he sufficed with raising the barrel, aiming it tenuously at Caesar as he sat stolidly behind his desk.

“So,” Caesar said as he templed his fingers in front of him. “I’m going to assume that you don’t have my money. Generally people who are coming to make good on their debts don’t come creeping in through the back door. Am I correct? And please don’t lie to me, you are after all, pointing a gun at me in my own home.”

Peter shrugged. “Okay, so what if it is true?”

Caesar nodded. “It seems to me that at this point you have two options. You can pull that trigger and do what you thought you were planning from the start. Or, you can choose to put the gun down and accept whatever might follow.”

He barely understood what the man was saying to him. Hefting the gun and getting a better grip through the sweat oozing from his palm, he spoke. “Are you crazy? What makes you think I won’t just kill you and put myself out of this debt?”

“It’s simple. Because now I have no misapprehensions over what I should do to you. You clearly have no intention of paying me my money so why would I do anything except the obvious choice at this point? You’ve made my decision simple.”

“So you’re telling me that you’re going to kill me, why would I let you walk away, now? You think you’re going to scare me from doing it?”

Caesar smiled. “Not at all. But I do believe your action will be stayed by the knowledge that the bullet you fire from that gun will not stop inside of me.”

Peter felt the gun dip slightly, confused for a moment.

Caesar gestured towards the phone on the desk. “Let’s say I confirmed just now that colleagues of mine are waiting to hear from me. If they do not, then in the next five minutes they will enter the house they happen to be in front of and kill whoever might happen to be there.”

A thrill of anger ran through Peter and he nearly unloaded it until he felt the cool press of steel to the back of his head. Caesar raised his hands as if to show the grand finale to a magic trick.

“You see? It ends the same for you, no matter what. The only ones who pick up that gun are the desperate ones, the ones who have nothing to lose because they also have nothing to give. Except that they almost always have more to lose than they think. So…” He stood from the chair and straightened his jacket. “The gun you’re holding is loaded with blanks. It’s a mundane exercise but I’m afraid it is necessary.” He nodded at the person standing behind Peter as he moved towards the rear door of the office.

“Wait!” Peter blurted out. Caesar paused and turned back. “There’s one more option”

Caesar was clearly amused as he turned back. “And that would be?”

Peter let himself fall back into the arms of his would be assailant. The man couldn’t suppress his instinctual response to put his arms out to catch Peter and as that happened, he grabbed the gun and twisted. He rolled as they fell together, placing the barrel under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger. The sound of the report was like a bomb going off in the room. Not allowing himself a beat to pause, Peter rolled off of the man and rose up in time to draw a bead on Caesar as he charged, firing and taking him in the throat.

As he stepped over Caesar’s prone form, Peter couldn’t help but laugh. “My wife isn’t even at home, you know. I sent her to a hotel for the night.”

The sound from Caesar as he struggled for breath sounded at first like a hacking wheeze but after a moment, Peter realized with a sinking stomach that the man was actually laughing. Blood splattered from his mouth as he sat up and uttered one sentence before collapsing back down for good.

“That’s where I sent them.”

 

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

Greetings to all of you! I hope your Thanksgivings were all great and if you don’t partake, then I hope you had a good Thursday. I wanted to pass along some info to you. I will be taking some time off in December so there won’t be any new stories for the month. Fear not though, I will be featuring some guest posts from authors who have generously agreed to donate some of their ink to this humble blog. Keep an eye on things in the weeks to come and see what there is in store! And please let me take this opportunity to wish all of you a happy hoiday, whicheveryou choose to celebrate. Thank you for your support.

Baked Scribe Flashback : Shadow People

 

The shadows were melting off of the walls.

Or at least, from the corner of his eye, that was what it looked like. The darkness slid down onto the floor like a thick sludge and coalesced. Even in the darkness of the corner of the room, he still thought he could make out the vague shape of a person standing there, staring at him.

He turned and looked directly into the corner. Of course he saw nothing. Just the dresser and the pile of random, dirty or near-dirty clothes. There was nobody standing there. He was the only one home.

Still, as he turned back to his tablet, he could see the tendrils of darkness reaching out for him, starting to take the solid shape of outstretched hands, of insubstantial darkness.

He shook his head and refused to give in to the urge to look, denied himself the tonic of turning, no matter how much his psyche begged for relief. It couldn’t be the shape of a person there in the shadows, shifting from side to side as if preparing to charge.

The cool air that had been blowing in through the open window began to ebb and then stopped completely. He turned to look, swiveling around in his chair to find that the darkness had swollen to fill the entire room. He sat there alone, wrapped in a cocoon of impenetrable blackness, lit only by the small lamp on his desk. He drew in a sharp breath and, as if breaking through some final barrier, the darkness flooded in to overtake him. The world around him vanished completely as he heard the light bulb shatter and his final breaths caught in his throat.

His consciousness began to drift away as multiple sets of hands reached out through the dark to clutch at him, and he blinked away into nothing, lost forever inside this place, under forever starless skies.

 

Baked Scribe Flashback : Roused

 

Clay had already found seven bodies.

They had all been left in various states of destructive disembodiment, sporting horrible wounds and bite marks. Whatever was down here, it was the worst thing he had ever seen.

He walked along the sewer, shining his light down into the murky water, wary of whatever might jump out at him. From the depths, he caught the occasional swirling trail left behind from some kind of aquatic life, just under the surface, but nothing had revealed itself.

In all of his years on the force, there had been plenty of deaths from animal attacks, but never down here. The worst thing that happened in the sewers was that once or twice a year, some kids would come wandering and get lost. Nothing like this. And these were no normal animal attacks, the result of something being spooked into a fight or flight mode. These had been brutal, showing a level of rage he would not have thought possible from an animal.

Still, no sign of anything unusual. He was wasting his time. It wasn’t like some snake that got flushed down some kid’s toilet was engaging in a revenge scheme against the whole town. The bodies had just been dumped down here. It was the only explanation that made sense.

The sound of more splashing, just outside the beam of his light and maybe the sound of something climbing up out of the water made him start to change his mind.

The clamor of claws scrambling out of the drain pipe to his left alerted him to the danger, but much too late. Something heavy flew from the drain and ran into him. All he felt was fur, claws and breath that was like steam off of boiling water. The thing felt like it had to be at least fifty pounds.

Clay grabbed it in a bear hug and threw it as far as he could manage. It hit the ground and skidded, rolling until it ran into the wall and turned back to face him. He saw it clearly in the flashlight beam and recoiled at the sight. It looked like your average rat, only more the size of a German Shepherd.

He stumbled back several steps as the thing charged, screaming and waddling from side to side as it ran, leaping up at him and knocking him back into the water. It bit into his wrist, down to the bone and Clay cried out, bringing his other fist down onto its flank. A long, heavy tree branch floated past and he grabbed it, beating the thing with it. The grip on his arm slackened and he was able to shove it, just far enough away for him to draw his pistol and fire four times into side of the thing’s bulky mass.

By the time the echo of the shots had faded, the body was already floating, lifeless in the water. Clay went to it, nudging it with the barrel of his gun just to be sure it was dead. He flexed his other hand and held his injured wrist to his side.

He was about to head back towards his car when two separate and distinct howls of rage erupted from behind him and he was knocked forward. Two shapes, even larger than the first one rushed past him and the gun flew from his grip to vanish into the water. He stood up to face the giant rats, carbon copies of the first one except much larger.

Mommy and Daddy were pissed.

 

Issue #177 : For Them To Find

 

“Have you really not been back here in ten years?” Michelle asked.

Davis nodded. “Yeah. I came close a few times but I never had any reason to go through with it.”

“Not even to visit the family?”

Family. The word had a lot of connotations, but mostly it implied a relationship with his parents that was much closer than it really was. “No,” he said, shaking his head as he did so. “Never had a reason.”

“So why come back now?”

“My grandfather. He was the one who got me to leave town when I did, convinced me that I was better than any of the people holding me back there. I don’t know if anyone is going to want to see me at the funeral, but I figured I owed him the respect to at least show up.”

They drove on in silence and Davis watched the landscape, starting to look familiar. He turned on the stereo and used the volume of the music as an excuse to not carry on the conversation.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Michelle turned the music down. “Can you pull over?”

“Why? Got to pee?”

“Gross. No. My legs are cramping and I need to walk around a bit.”

“Because I’ll totally watch if you–”

“Shut the hell up, sick bastard. Just pull over.”

Davis grinned as he slowed and began angling for the side of the road. 

“If you think I would go out there in the dark and squat down over God knows what, you don’t know me that well.” She slammed the door and began striding away from the car. Davis smirked at the sight of her.

“Hey!” He turned at the sound of her voice, already nearly a hundred feet from the car. She was gesturing wildly for him to come over. “Check this out!”

Davis got out and approached whatever it was she was pointing at. It was a full moon that night so it was more than bright enough to see. At first he took it for being no more than the remains of someone’s campfire. But the fragments he saw in the ground didn’t look like wood. He bent down to pick one of them up, frowning at it as he examined it.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

“Those are teeth, what else could it be!” Her voice verged on hysteria. He put a hand out to try and calm her down.

“Okay, take it easy, there has to be a reason why these are here, or at least they’re probably something else. What difference does it make anyway?”

Her shrieking laughter in response made him shiver. “Come on. You find fucking teeth in the remains of a fire and that’s all you can say. What about all that?”

Davis looked up and saw that she was pointing to the side of a nearby shed. There was something on the side and from the darkened colors, he supposed it looked like it could be blood. No way to know for sure though. Whoever had written on it had smeared it away, making it impossible to read.

“Why do you think one has anything to do with the other?” he asked. “You don’t even know what it said, don’t you think you’re reaching a little bit here?”

“Sure. Totally normal. You probably see stuff like this every day.”

“Michelle, I’m just saying you’re overreacting a bit. Can we please get back in the car and get going?”

“We need to call 911 or something. Someone has to get out here and investigate all of this.” She was already pawing around in her pockets, forgetting that her phone was still sitting on the charger in the car.

“You’re going to call 911 and tell them what? That you found someone’s teeth in the leavings of a campfire along the highway? When it’s probably something completely innocent or some kind of a prank?”

“You don’t know that, you have no idea where–“

“Neither do you! You’re freaking out for no reason. Don’t you think there would be more in the fire than just the teeth?”

Michelle let out a breath and shook her head, marching to the car and getting in, behind the wheel this time. He stood there staring, waiting for the engine to fire.

Instead, what he heard was a series of rapid clicks from the engine.

“God dammit.” Davis groaned and let his head drop. He wouldn’t hear the end of this. The battery had been on the verge of giving up the ghosts. He had decided to roll the dice and get the battery replaced when they got to Conner’s Mill, instead of doing it before.

And she had left her phone plugged in to the charger.

But her phone was at least somewhat charged. They could call for a tow. Assuming service out here was good.

It took several moments after the thought fully articulated before he realized how much worse their situation was.

Thirteen figures approached them, walking slowly in body length robes of indeterminate color. They must have come down from the hills but he couldn’t understand how he hadn’t seen them until now.

The silence as they approached ran a chill down his spine. He didn’t know what to say as they flowed around him, half the group moving on towards the car. Vaguely, he heard the door slam, followed by Michelle’s diminishing sobs as she tried to run.

“Is there a problem?” He finally found his voice as the figure in the center stepped forward without responding.

Davis wasn’t sure what he took notice of first. The sound of Michelle’s moist cry of pain that was cut off, along with a sound like dry wood snapping. Or if it was the sensation of the knife plunging into his stomach and driving up into the center of his heart.

 

Baked Scribe Flashback : Qalupalik

 

“He’s too fuckin’ scared.”

The high pitched, squalling laughter had been enough to make Glenn actually take a step out onto the ice. The possibility of being beaten within an inch of his life made him walk further.

It wasn’t long before the shoreline behind him was lost in darkness and all he could hear was their idiotic cat-calls and mocking. He looked down, and by the light off the moon, he could make out a shadow under the ice, circling around him like a large fish. There was a hole in the ice ahead where some of the locals had been fishing. His attention jerked in that direction at the sound of splashing, and something crawling up out of the water.

The thing was standing there over the water hole, glaring out at him from behind hanging, clotted hair. He couldn’t guess at the thing’s gender from the overly thick parka it wore. He could also see a large pouch attached to the back, just underneath the hood like a thick, woolly backpack. The pouch looked to be just about his size.

It was suddenly advancing on him, hands outstretched with dagger-length nails, reaching for him, hunger in its eyes.

“Wait.”

The thing actually did respond to his command and paused, although he doubted for very long.

“You can’t take me, I’ll never fit in that thing.” It was the first time that his weight had ever had the potential of being an advantage. It still hesitated though, giving him wisps of hope. “That thing is ripping half up the sides as it is, I’d just fall out of—”

In an instant, the creature was on top of him, grabbing at his neck to cut off his breath. A finger was placed against his mouth and then somewhere behind that wall of hair, he heard a low voice utter one sentence.

“If not you…” It trailed off into some kind of gurgling expulsion of water and foul breath, but he immediately knew what he needed to do.

“You weren’t out there long enough.” Rodney’s ice pick of a voice was what greeted him when he returned to shore. “You gotta go back or—”

“There’s a wallet out there on the ice,” Glenn interrupted, taking delight at the glint of greed he saw in Rodney’s eyes. “Looks like it’s stuffed with cash. Some fisherman must have left it.”

One of the buddies stepped out onto the ice, but Rodney stopped them with a glance. “Where the hell are you going? This is my score.” He returned his glare to Glenn for just a moment before jerking his head in the direction of the main road. “Beat it, fat-ass.”

Glenn stuffed his hands into his pockets and sauntered off, smiling as Rodney clumsily stumbled out onto the ice, rushing out to claim his just reward.

 

Baked Scribe Flashback : Phi Tai Hong

 

This wasn’t his fault.

How was he supposed to have known that the guard rail had been out right at that curve in the road?

For that matter, how was he supposed to have guessed that the other driver was going to freak out like that when he passed her? Would an able driver have swerved, and gone right off the road like that?

It wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t his fault and that was exactly what the cops likely would have told him if he had stayed around for them to show up. Besides, it wasn’t like she could have survived that fall and someone would find her eventually.

Her fault, not his.

Her fault.

It was the mantra he repeated in his head, even as he heard the window behind him shatter.

She was standing there in his room, gaping wounds across her body. She stared him down, with a look of rage such that he had never seen, even in his worst nightmares.

She had come for him.

The light bulbs above him shattered, and he blinked away inside of himself, lost forever to darkness and the inescapable screams of vengeance.

 

Issue #176 : Skeletal

 

It was beyond pain.

To Danny, the word “pain” implied something temporary, something that could be dealt with, handled.

This was one of the worst experiences of his life.

It was as if the internal mechanisms of his body had become conscious and were fighting against every movement. If he lifted his arm, it would slam back down, as if pulled by unseen tethers. When he tried looking at something, it felt like something grabbed his eyes from the inside and forced them back to center.

What could he have possibly done to deserve this kind of a special hell?

He was supposed to be at work in less than ten minutes but all he could do was lie there, curled up on the bathroom floor, crying. Even his tears felt mildly acidic as they rolled down his face. He had tried to reach the phone to call for help but anytime he tried reaching for it, his spine flexed in the opposite direction, pulling him back down to the floor.

As he lay there, he felt pressure, coming from the inside of his skull. His head lifted and slammed back down on the floor. After several impacts, his head twisted violently to the side, allowing him to see the blood smeared on the floor that he knew was his. With agonizing pain, he raised up his arms and saw that they were swelling, as if something from within was pushing out and he screamed, feeling the veins bursting out from his neck and forehead from the effort.

Something gripped his ankles and twisted violently. Or rather, the bones spun around inside his own skin, causing him to roll over onto his stomach. His legs bent back until his feet were almost touching his head. From the insides of his legs, he felt something twist and snap, like wood cracking. As he began to shriek, he felt his legs flop down to the floor, knees broken and in that moment, he finally felt the onrush of unconsciousness.

When Danny woke, he was lying with his back to the wall, looking into the bathroom where his severed legs had been left behind. The bones protruding from the stumps writhed and twisted of their own accord, as if trying to break loose from his body. He cried out as his arms pulled to the sides, palms facing up as if in prayer. Danny looked from side to side, trying to see what was happening when his arms suddenly bent backwards at the elbows. He screamed again, needing some kind of an outlet to express this pain. The pressure eased for just a moment before snapping his arms, breaking them at the elbows.

Danny passed out again.

He woke up to a hazy reflection of the world around him. Light flashed somewhere nearby but he couldn’t see from where. There was no sensation of any part of his body and the only thought he could articulate was that he needed for this to end. He felt pressure in his chest as it became impossible to breathe and he saw spots of darkness before passing out for the third time.

The first thing he saw upon waking was A jagged line of bones. It was several drawn out moments before he realized they were protruding from his own chest, like a line of posts on a barren field. 

His own ribs. Snapped, bent upwards and filed down at the ends to a sharp point.

Danny didn’t have time to scream, to beg or ask why his own body had been turned against him like this. The bones in his neck drew him back and his head thrust forward with chilling rapidity.

The last thing he saw was his own ribs, rushing up at him as he was folded in on himself.

 

Baked Scribe Flashback : Okuri-inu

 

The footfalls matched his exactly.

They were coming from somewhere above, and to his left, on the ridge and out of his sight. But he could hear it, the clear sound of rocks crunching under footfalls, in perfect time with his own.

Don’t lose your step.

He couldn’t explain where the thought had come from, but he couldn’t shake it either. One foot in front of the other. No mistakes. It was more important than ever.

The thing up above, whatever it was, continued to follow along. Every step matched his. He tried speeding up, and his unknown companion simply mirrored him perfectly. When he tried slowing abruptly, the speed of the other’s steps matched the change with exact precision.

Don’t lose your step.

The sound of his breathing filled his head as he walked, and just over the sound of the competing sets of footfalls, he thought he heard ragged, anticipatory breaths, also in perfect time with his own.

Don’t lose your—

His foot caught on an upturned root, causing him to first stumble and then, in his panic, fall to the ground.

He felt the thing leap down on him just as he heard the snarling cry. The large canine pinned his arms to the ground and slashed at him with teeth that ripped through his skin like paper. It bit into his arms and chest, clawing at the flesh on his legs and torso. He tried to yell out for help, but was cut off as his mouth was already filling with blood. Something bit into his neck and pulled, causing bright stars of pain to explode all around him as the world first went to the stark white of overly saturated film before dropping back down to the perpetual cinders of darkness.