Creep House: Horror Stories Read online

  Creep House: Horror Stories

  Andersen Prunty

  Creep House: Horror Stories copyright © 2014 by Andersen Prunty. All rights reserved.

  Published by Grindhouse Press

  www.grindhousepress.com

  Cover painting copyright © 2014 by C.V. Hunt. All rights reserved.

  Cover design copyright © 2014 by Matthew Revert. All rights reserved.

  Grindhouse Press logo and all related artwork copyright © 2014 by Brandon Duncan. All rights reserved.

  Creep House: Horror Stories

  Grindhouse Press #022

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or author.

  Also by Andersen Prunty

  Failure As a Way of Life

  This Town Needs a Monster

  Squirm With Me

  Creep House: Horror Stories

  Sociopaths In Love

  The Warm Glow of Happy Homes

  Bury the Children in the Yard: Horror Stories

  Satanic Summer

  Fill the Grand Canyon and Live Forever

  Pray You Die Alone: Horror Stories

  Sunruined: Horror Stories

  The Driver’s Guide to Hitting Pedestrians

  Hi I’m a Social Disease: Horror Stories

  Fuckness

  The Sorrow King

  Slag Attack

  My Fake War

  Morning is Dead

  The Beard

  Zerostrata

  Jack and Mr. Grin

  The Overwhelming Urge

  To Carrie,

  You are the best pet ever.

  and

  To the Kids,

  Thanks for being who you are.

  Contents

  The Calming Wood

  May to May

  Candy Heart

  Running From The Roses

  The Man Who Hated Stephen King

  The Existential Dread of Complacency

  King Creep

  THE CALMING WOOD

  A man named Figg wandered across several states searching for a certain geography. That was the only way he could really think of it. He was not a spiritual man. He’d led a rough life. Always, he found himself in a town or even just a piece of wilderness or countryside, and eventually he had to move on. But his back had begun twisting up on him and he trembled even when he tried to stand still. The grinding sound in his head had become unbearably loud. If he found his special place, he didn’t think he’d be moving on.

  There were some thick woods in these parts but, already, farmers had begun clearing away the trees to make room for fields to plant crops. Farming was becoming a big business. Living off the land by killing it. That was no way to earn a living. The man didn’t think working was any way to make a living. He’d made do without a job most of his adult life. His memories of childhood were cloudy things. His father had made him work despite Figg being a sickly child. If there was ever a day Figg wasn’t able to, his father had him make up for it the next day.

  One morning Figg stumbled onto a narrow dirt road. It was relatively flat and he could see farther then he’d been able to see for days. It looked like it was going to be a perfect spring day. It was about time. Here it was the middle of May almost and he’d bet it hadn’t reached seventy until a couple days ago. The sky was a sweet, brilliant blue, puffy white clouds hanging still like the exhalations from a kind god that didn’t exist in Figg’s world.

  And under that perfect sky, the landscape rose slightly and the already narrow dirt road seemed to disappear in shadow. The man knew that was the place. Somewhere cool and dark and quiet, like a grave above ground. The man didn’t like the sun and the light the way he used to. Hell, even then he’d only seen it as something like a cleanser for his late nights. The things he’d seen and done in the shadows were best left there and while he managed to thrive in that environment, there’d always been a part of him that looked forward to waking up in a sun-filled room. He guessed most people were supposed to like the light and warmth more as they got older. Common belief held that a warmer climate would make his back feel better but it just made him feel like more of an ailing, monstrous old man. It was like lighting a lamp in a filthy room, the grinding in his head there to match the frantic scurry of cockroaches.

  He moved so slowly it took him all day to reach that shadowy place on the horizon. He traveled south on the road, the sun stinging his right side. But even that began to diminish as he moved closer to the woods. At first he thought maybe it was already sunset and the sun had tucked itself beneath the earth for the night, but there it was hanging in the sky. It should have been intense but, somehow, it wasn’t. It was like, not even in the woods yet, the shade was already keeping the sun from him. This was a good sign.

  A small furl of smoke climbed out of the woods and dissipated in the sky.

  Now he even had an exact destination.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife and sharpening stone.

  Someone living all alone in the woods like that . . . Well, Figg thought that person was probably a lot like him. Meaning he probably wouldn’t be missed and maybe even had a reason to be living so far from people.

  Figg just hoped it wasn’t a family. It wasn’t that he would feel any guilt. Figg had heard that word – guilt – but had never experienced the feeling. When there were more than one or two people, he tended to like it too much. He really lost himself in it and usually paid for it the next day. It had been a while since he’d had to do it but the memory of last time was still quick to bubble up.

  When he finally stepped into the woods, it was like all the crazy nattering in his head went silent. He’d once taken an apartment next to a glass blower’s shop. Every morning, Figg would be woken up by the sound of the man sweeping glass shards out of his shop. Until then he’d never really had a close comparison to the sound that was almost always in his head. It lessened a little around nightfall on any given day and quieted almost completely if he was staying in one of his good places. The only time it stopped was when he did what he felt like he was born to do. And, well, probably when he was sleeping but he was unconscious and couldn’t enjoy the silence then. A tree falling in a forest with no one around and all that.

  He paused to take it in. If it wasn’t so welcome, he may have thought of it as eerie. He didn’t hear any birds or insects or animals, although he could see them.

  He was locked into his path, gliding through the dim woods, sharpening his knife on the stone and not hearing the gritty sound of the blade becoming more lethal.

  He spotted the dim glow from the cabin just as the light seemed to die completely from the air around him. There was a yellowish window, probably lit by a candle or a lantern. There wasn’t much of a clearing. Like whoever had built this shoddy, ramshackle cabin had cleaned out only enough trees to fit it. Figg liked that idea. He never could understand the concept of a yard. Wide open spaces only made you more vulnerable.

  There was a single crooked step before the door.

  Figg knocked on the door and waited. He heard footsteps and slid the sharpening stone into his pocket, tightening his grip around the haft of the knife.

  The man who opened the door was black and this momentarily surprised Figg, but not enough to derail him.

  The man looked just as surprised to see him but Figg was sure to make eye contact and say what needed to be sai
d:

  “I’ve come to take up residence here.”

  He heard his own voice from a distance and it didn’t feel like it came from him.

  The man looked slightly confused but before he could even back away, Figg had already slashed the knife across his throat. Figg had done this enough to be sure he’d done it correctly but it was hard to see the blood against the man’s skin so he didn’t feel completely confident until he saw the front of the man’s grayish shirt turn dark. Once he saw that, all the sounds of the natural world came back to him. The brain sound stayed away.

  Figg could have continued stabbing but didn’t know exactly how long he was going to be here and didn’t want to damage more of the body than was necessary. The man dropped to the floor and clutched his throat. As long as he didn’t have a gun on him or within arm’s reach, Figg didn’t figure he had much to worry about. Mostly he just stood where he was and tried not to get too much blood on him.

  Figg surveyed the tiny shack in the dim glow. He was wrong about the candle or lantern. The fire was the only source of light in the room. Maybe the man had been asleep already. He wondered why he’d just opened the door like that. It seemed like he should have been a little more cautious. Maybe he’d been expecting someone. That didn’t make Figg as nervous as it probably should have. Maybe this man just wasn’t running from or hiding from something like most of the black men Figg had encountered. The fireplace looked like a good one. There was already a metal rack for cooking in it. Most of them didn’t have that. A relatively comfortable, though narrow, bed was pushed into a corner. The man probably lived alone. There was a wobbly table against the wall below the solitary window. Figg was grateful to look up and see a sturdy beam running through the center of the room. Various pots, pans, and burlap sacks hung from it. Figg poked a couple of the sacks until he came to one that, hopefully, contained what he wanted. He lifted it from the nail and glanced into the opening. Salt. A lot of it. Good. He suspended the sack back on the nail. He didn’t want it to get soaked with blood.

  Figg unspooled the rope wrapped six times around his waist. He must have lost some weight on this latest journey. His pants almost slipped off his hips. He waited for the man to stop flopping.

  When he was pretty sure the man was finished, Figg bound his ankles with one end of the rope and took the other end over the beam. He hoisted the man so he hung upside down. A steady trickle of blood continued to pour from his throat. Figg secured the rope around the beam and made a slash along each of the man’s wrists. He’d wait till the man had bled out before splashing the floor with a pail of water. The house wasn’t constructed particularly well and he was pleased to see most of the blood already finding its way to the earth from in between the floorboards. It wasn’t overly hot so he didn’t think he’d have much to worry about. He was tired. That bed was starting to look pretty inviting. He’d earned a good night’s rest. Tomorrow he’d get up and begin the carving. Hopefully he’d have everything ready to start drying and curing the meat for the day after that. He wasn’t sure how much it would yield. It would probably be more than enough. And if he ever got sick of eating it, he could probably find a town to sell some in and maybe make enough for some steak and eggs. He usually told folks it was ostrich jerky so they didn’t have anything to compare it to.

  Figg fell asleep to the soft thick drip of the man’s blood.

  When he woke up early the next morning, the man was gone.

  That had never happened before.

  Figg inspected the rope coiled on the floor. It didn’t look ripped or shredded at either end. Supposing the man could have lived through the bloodletting – a feat Figg was pretty sure was not possible – maybe he could have chewed or gouged the rope loose. But given the shape of the rope, that definitely was not the case. Something like that would had to have woken him up, anyway.

  The front door was open. Figg walked outside and looked around. If the man had managed to free himself in some fit of post-death strength, he couldn’t have gotten far.

  The trees greatly diminished visibility, but Figg didn’t see the man lying on the ground or any sign of movement.

  Given the unsecured nature of the rope, the open door, and the fact there wasn’t a trace of the man, Figg could only think of one solution: someone had taken the man – a member of his family or something. Hell, maybe even someone like Figg. Someone happy to discover most of the work was done.

  Just thinking about his loss made Figg’s stomach rumble.

  He went back into the tiny shack and found two potatoes on the brink of going bad in a wooden bin near the fireplace. He cut them up, fried them in a pan, and ate them outside while sitting on that crooked step and surveying the dark shadows of the wood. The potatoes didn’t satisfy his growing hunger but they’d have to do for now.

  In the distance he heard a dog bark and a little girl scream. He guessed if worse came to worst, he knew where to go.

  Last night he’d had his plans for today all worked out but now he found himself with nothing to do. He decided to explore the woods even though he knew his body would make him pay for it the next day. He never worried about getting lost. His sense of direction was perfect. Once he’d locked the location of this shack into his head, he could walk a thousand miles away from it and still know where to return to should he decide to turn around. There were a number of tall dark pine trees mixed in amongst the elm and oak and maples, which was odd for this part of the country. Not that Figg minded. He liked the gloom they produced. A damp chill hung in the air and he imagined there was a river or creek somewhere in the area. A ready source of fresh water was always a good thing. The shadows and the perfumed air put him in something of a spell as he spent the majority of the day wandering through the woods. He didn’t stumble upon any more houses and when he thought about returning to the shack it took him longer to find it than he thought it would. He cautiously approached it. What if the man or a member of his family had returned to find it empty? What if they had decided to take it back? Figg had his knife ready as he slowly opened the door. He surveyed the small space and found it empty and exactly as he had left it. When he took a jug of water out to the step and sat down, he saw the black man wandering through the woods. He had the carcass of a dog slung over his shoulders and clutched the hair of a bloody and mangled girl’s corpse, dragging her through the dirt and dead leaves. Figg again removed his knife from his pocket and clutched it hard in his hand, feeling the closest thing he’d felt to fear since his father had beat it out of him.

  The man didn’t seem to notice him. Figg watched him shamble through the woods with no attempt at stealth, burdened by his dead cargo. Figg knew there was no way this man could be alive. What Figg had done to him last night was something he’d done countless times before. Many times he didn’t even bother making the incisions on the wrists. He’d only done that because of the man’s size and possible virility. So how was it this man had managed to free himself? How was it he now managed to walk amongst the living with enough vigor to take the lives of others? Figg had heard about certain black magic practices and rituals. He’d lived throughout the Deep South and in some of the poor areas of this country’s larger cities where those sorts of beliefs were common. But even good old Christianity had its belief in a number of strange, dark fantasies. Figg had avoided all of it. Now the mere thought of it sent tendrils of unease uncoiling through his body. This man, this creature, was shattering the calm wood he’d found. Already, Figg could hear the grinding glass sound. It was faint right now, but he knew how it would go. It would start at the top of his spine and slowly infect his whole head until he moved on to some place else.

  Unless he kept on top of things.

  Unless he could trap the man and destroy him.

  He wished he’d paid more attention to what those believers had said.

  Figg went back into the shack to search for a gun. Someone living all alone out here in the woods was almost certain to have one. But if this guy had kept one,
Figg couldn’t find it. Maybe he hadn’t needed one. Aside from hunting and killing, Figg reasoned the gun’s existence was due to the fear of death. A man kept a gun, ultimately, because he was afraid of dying. So, he reckoned, a man who couldn’t die would have no need of a gun.

  But how did he hunt?

  The imagined answer to that question made Figg nervous.

  He could see that man, that thing, wrapping his large hands around the dog’s throat, taking a deep and savage bite from its jugular, snapping the girl’s neck when she came to the aid of her pooch.

  Some men sure were sick, ferocious bastards.

  Figg had trapped both men and animals before. Okay, so usually he’d trapped women and those he kept around for more non-dietary purposes, but he felt confident he could do the same with this . . . creature. The only way to get rid of the thing once and for all would be to completely destroy the body. First he would sever the head and burn that. Then he would sever the rest of the limbs and feed them into a roaring fire. He would find the creek running through the woods and dispose of any remaining bones. And if the grinding glass sound didn’t go away, he would move on. He might have to move on anyway, if he couldn’t manage to find a lasting source of food. He would have to remember to start decapitating his supply. And also maybe destroying the head just to be on the safe side. He didn’t really enjoy the brains and eyes much anyway and the neck muscles were always tough and stringy.

  The man had now shambled out of sight.

  Figg supposed he could have gone after him but his walk had left him feeling tired and listless.

  The day was practically done anyway. He withdrew inside. He nailed a board across the door, removed the legs from the table, and nailed that over the single window. He didn’t really know if he’d be able to fall asleep or not but, if he did, he didn’t want to wake up to that thing’s teeth at his throat. Figg found a small pipe and a pouch of tobacco in a tin on the mantle. A quick inspection of the leaves revealed that it wasn’t tobacco but maybe an herb or a weed. Figg decided to smoke it anyway, thinking it might diminish the grinding sound. The only things he knew to stay away from were the mushrooms some of the Indians liked and the consumption of alcohol. Both of those made his thoughts too weird. They made him lose the tight self-control that had kept him alive all these years. The mushrooms had made him think he was a god and the alcohol just made him tell everything to whoever would listen. He was lucky that the one time that had happened, the person he had told all his secrets to was trussed up and in the process of bleeding out. No lasting harm there.