PHOBOPHOBIAS final for KINDLE Read online

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed; then almost pulled them back when he was sure he felt movement. Something cold had wafted around his ankles, as though a freezing fog was lurking, ready to consume him.

  Somehow he had staggered forward. Crouching low to avoid the imagined crushing ceiling, Tom stumbled towards what he hoped was the door and the blessed light.

  He tripped and fell hard against the wall as he pulled himself along. There appeared to be no door, no light switch. Overwhelming panic surged again. He had been sure he could feel the ceiling just above his head even though this made no sense at all. And then his hand touched something…

  With relief he had snapped the switch down and turned on the light. The night terrors were sent scurrying back into whatever hell they came from. Shaking he had slumped on the floor near the door.

  Tom remembered how his eyes had fallen on the bed. He had been certain that there was still darkness underneath it: small enough to be considered claustrophobic, and big enough to hide something malignant.

  He had been unable to move back to the bed for fear that the light would go out again. And so Tom had remained on the floor until the dawn peeked through his curtains and pushed away the last of the horror the night had given him.

  After that he had descended into complete insanity which had led him to not only have lights on day and night inside and outside of the cottage, but he had also had a generator installed as a backup. Now he wandered through the house as though it were a place he had only visited in a dream and not the home he and Stacie had loved so much. It was no wonder Doctor Stevens had thought him unfit to be alone.

  “You okay?” asked Patty.

  Tom nodded. They went upstairs; Patty found an old suitcase under the bed and began to fill it with Tom’s clothing. The house smelt musty, as though he’d been away longer than the month that Patty had mentioned.

  He looked around the bedroom with disassociation. None of these items filled him with comfort or familiarity in the way they should have. They were things of fear and dread. They were chains in the prison his life had become. They all seemed so dreary and depressing.

  He sank down on the bed, remembering a tight-chested anxiety. He glanced up at the ceiling. No spikes and they weren’t closing in on him now.

  “Will I ever be back to normal?”

  Patty stopped packing and looked at him. She frowned a little, as though she was concerned about him.

  “Do you want to be?”

  Tom looked down at his hands. They trembled like a Parkinson’s sufferer.

  “It’s the drugs,” Patty explained. “The doctor told me they would take some time to get out of your system properly. You’ll still have to take a small dose for a while too.”

  It was getting dark out. Tom noticed the sun drooping over the field through the bedroom window.

  “This will do now,” Patty said closing the case.

  “Can we turn on a light?” Tom asked.

  She tried the switch near the door but to no effect. “Looks like your electricity is out.”

  “Oh no!” said Tom. “I’ve been away so long, maybe the bill wasn’t paid?”

  “More than likely.”

  Patty picked up the suitcase and took Tom’s hand. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here. We can come back in a few days if there’s anything you remember you’d like.”

  Tom nodded and let her lead him like an invalid out of the bedroom. At the top of the stairs he glanced back at the three open doors. One the bathroom, the other his bedroom, the third was Stacie’s study.

  “She wrote books…” he said suddenly.

  “That’s right, Tom. Stacie was a novelist. A very successful novelist.”

  Something was nagging at the back of his mind as Patty led him down the narrow staircase and into the living room, but he just couldn’t remember what it was.

  At the front door he paused. “I need to get something…from the study…”

  He stared back at the staircase. The dark had reached it now; it meant that Tom couldn’t walk back.

  “Tom?” Patty said.

  “It’s okay. We can come back, can’t we?”

  Patty put his case in the boot of the car as Tom climbed into the passenger seat. It was important – something Stacie wanted him to do. Something she said would help when she was gone.

  Patty slammed the boot down and got into the car beside him. She turned the key in the ignition. The car spluttered and the starter motor screeched in protest. The engine turned over; then stalled.

  “Damn thing is always plaguing me,” Patty stated. She turned the key again.

  Nothing. The battery was completely dead.

  “Bugger,” she slammed her hands against the steering wheel.

  “My car?” suggested Tom.

  The sun was sinking lower; the field opposite the cottage was now entering that dark and gloomy period known as twilight. Tom became edgy and afraid.

  “Dark…” he said.

  “Tom. You’re all right. You aren’t alone. Where are the keys to your car?”

  He described the location of the drawer in the kitchen. Patty opened the glove box and pulled out a torch.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She took Tom’s house keys, quickly climbed out of the car, then hurried to the front door. As she opened the door, Tom remembered the generator. All he needed to do was get to the barn, switch it on and the house and grounds would be flooded with light.

  The sun was gone now, swallowed whole by the landscape. There wasn’t even a moon to illuminate the path to the barn.

  Tom stared desperately at the dark house; the open door was a gaping maw waiting to swallow him. But he could see the flicker of torchlight moving across one of the windows upstairs.

  “The kitchen…” he whispered as though Patty might hear his reminder.

  What was she doing upstairs? Had she remembered what it was he wanted? But Tom couldn’t even recall what it was himself.

  He stared at the door but his eyes went blind from the lack of any light and the fear and chaos that had controlled his life before came flooding back in a horrible, cold rush.

  He felt her breath on his neck again. The stark, dank stink of death and rot.

  Tomas…Only Stacie had ever called him that. Could this horror, this thing that plagued him be her? No, he couldn’t believe that. He loved her. He would do anything for her…

  Tomas.

  He shrank into his seat, afraid to remain locked up tight inside the car, alone with it.

  You promised, Tomas.

  “I don’t remember,” denial once more on his lips.

  Icy air filled the car. Tom felt a freezing hand touch his shoulder. The sensation was familiar. Horrified, he pulled away.

  “Don’t touch me. You’re dead!”

  You said you’d love me forever. You said you’d love me beyond the grave.

  “No!” Tom screamed.

  His hand pulled and tugged at the door handle. He had to escape. The only place he could go was the barn.

  “Light. I need light…”

  The lock was down. He didn’t remember pressing it…he pulled it up then yanked the handle once more. The door sprung open and Tom tumbled out onto the dirt track.

  He crawled to his feet with the support of the car door. Stacie was still inside the car…he could feel her presence and so he slammed the door shut to delay her, even though the thought was irrational: Stacie could follow him anywhere when it was dark. She wanted to pull him back into the grave, down into the dark, to stay with her forever.

  He staggered blindly around the front of the car, cursing the dead battery, the faulty alternator and the fact that Patty had left him alone in the dark.

  “Patty?” he shouted. “Help me! Come out; get me to the barn…”

  Patty didn’t reply. The house remained a block of blackness before him. He stumbled to the wall, followed it
around towards the side of the house, and stumbled towards the barn.

  The night was complete; the dark – a suffocating fog – surrounded him like ink in water. The air thickened and grew chill. Stacie wasn’t going to let him escape her that easily.

  He pushed forward, even as tendrils of icy air grabbed at his ankles and wrists, trying to tie him up in their paralysing cold.

  White condensation blew from his lips as he staggered forward into a no man’s land, hands waving furiously before him as he pushed aside the cloying phantom. It seemed an eternity before his knuckles hit painfully against the side of the barn.

  Nearly there!

  His fingers grappled with the wooden walls as he dragged himself closer to the door. His hands fell on the doorway. He tugged; then remembered that the barn was locked.

  Blindly he searched until they found the combination lock. But his mind screamed in terror when he realised he couldn’t remember the pattern. He twisted and turned the numbered dials, but it was no use when you couldn’t see the numbers, nor remember the combination.

  Tom fell to his knees. An old lump of rock he had often used to wedge the door open pressed into his thigh. The cold was around him again. Stacie was inside his head, begging him to come back to her, to keep his promise. But he didn’t want to be in the cold and dark. He didn’t want the grainy soil to cover his face, his body, to enter his mind like a worm burrowing a void in the earth.

  The fight was almost gone out of him but still his fingers gripped onto the rock. He stood up and smashed the rock down where he thought the lock would be. It connected. He smashed down again and again until finally the rusted hinge holding it in place bent and snapped with a loud crack.

  Tom dropped the rock and yanked the barn door open. The black hole before him halted him in his tracks. Inside the barn his sightlessness, if possible, grew worse. It was as though a hangman’s hood had been placed over his head, covering his face, blinding his vision.

  Terror twisted his heart and stomach in knots, but he forced his leaden feet to move, one step, then another. Forward, to the left. The generator was near.

  Tomas. You promised…

  “No. I didn’t understand. I don’t want to die, Stacie. I’m not ready yet.”

  He felt her slender arm, a cold dead-weight, slip around his waist.

  You said you loved me…

  “I do Stace, I do…but this is too much.”

  I trusted you to keep your promise…

  Tom began to sob. He pulled at the dead arm trying to free himself even as her corpse-cold fingers dug into his flesh through his thin tee-shirt.

  “Let me go, Stace…let me go…”

  Tom heaved himself forward. The generator was near: he knew it was. But now Stacie held on tighter. Her clawing hands fighting against his every move.

  His hands beat at her, connected with air and nothing more, then he twisted and turned in her grasp until his frantically flailing arms connected with the generator.

  “Get off me, Stacie,” he yelled. Anger now fuelling his determination.

  His fingers probed the machine, searching for the trigger switch that would start the generator and illuminate the barn, the house and the grounds.

  Keep your promise to me Tomas. It was my best work. You said so yourself.

  The switch was under his fingers. He paused. A flicker of memory burst behind his blinded vision. Stacie lying in the hospital bed, her wasted fingers gripping his as she extracted the promise from him.

  “You will take care of this? You promise?”

  She had handed him a handwritten manuscript. He glanced down at the pages, the penmanship started out so clear and neat, but as he read on, the writing became more frantic, but was still good. Still the best novel she had ever written.

  Soon after that she was gone and the wad of paper lay discarded. He remembered picking it up, placing it in the box with her other possessions. The same box that he had put in the study.

  He recalled how he hadn’t been in the office since: he wasn’t ready to sort through her things, to admit that finally she was gone.

  Tom flicked the switch, but there was now no need. His night blindness had gone, Stacie’s ghost had released its grip and his memory had returned along with the dreadful grief that had been pushing him slowly towards madness.

  The barn lit up, the grounds surrounding the house were awash with light, and the house, Tom knew, was now as bright as daylight inside.

  Tom turned and walked calmly back to the car.

  ”Tom?” Patty called, emerging from the brightly lit cottage and turning off her torch.

  “I turned on the generator.”

  Patty looked afraid. Her eyes were wide open as though she had seen something in the dark.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Are you alright?”

  Patty glanced back at the house, a look of confusion and fear coloured her cheeks. “I thought I…”

  She stopped as though she was too scared to voice what she had seen, but Tom didn’t need her to explain. He knew already what had been in the house, waiting for him. Prompting him to recall a promise he should never have forgotten. A promise that had been pushed down and buried in as deep a pit of darkness as his wife’s body had been.

  “I have to get one more thing,” he explained.

  “Tom?” Patty said, gripping his arm. “Don’t go in there…”

  “It’s okay.”

  He walked into the house, and hurried upstairs.

  At the door to Stacie’s office he paused. It would be painful, but he still didn’t have to deal with it all. Just this one thing. This one important deed.

  He opened the door and switched on the light. The room was covered in dust, a cobweb grew in one corner like ivy overrunning a wall, and the windowsill was matted with dead flies.

  Heart beating rapidly he stepped inside. Memories of the room flooded him: Stacie sitting proudly at her desk before her small old-fashioned typewriter, while the new-fangled word processor sat untouched; Stacie smiling at him as she brandished a page with the words ‘THE END’ typed neatly in the centre; a growing pile of paper as she worked on her latest novel; Stacie laughing as Tom tried to persuade her to use the word processor; so many happy memories and flashes of their life together.

  The box was on top of the desk. Tom felt a chill in the air as he hesitated, but no, this time he would keep his promise. The world would know the words she shaped in those final months, days and hours of her life.

  He lifted the cardboard lid and a plume of dust rose from the box. There in the box was the manuscript. The title page glared at him. It was called The Promise. He remembered the story now. A man lost the woman he loved, and failed to keep his final promise. The lover returned from the grave to exact revenge.

  Suddenly Tom’s phobia made perfect sense.

  He picked up the papers and turned away from the room, switching the light off as he went.

  At the top of the stairs the house lights began to flicker. Tom realised with horror that he couldn’t recall the last time he had filled the generator with gasoline. His heart began to pound as he was plummeted once more in darkness. Clutching the manuscript against his chest he reached out for the banister. He wouldn’t let the phobia beat him this time.

  One foot at a time he started to make his way down the pitch black stairs. Suddenly, he felt something rush around him: that same cold malevolence that had hounded his nights. The darkness blinded and choked him. An icy hand pressed against the small of his back.

  “No…” he gasped. “I remembered my promise…”

  His foot missed the next step and he toppled forward, tumbling down the narrow staircase. But even as he fell, Tom didn’t let go of the manuscript. He had to keep his promise. Without his hands to break his fall, he hit the bottom hard and there was a loud crack as he impacted with the wooden floor. He gave a small groan and then lay still. The darkness finally claimed him for good. br />
  ***

  Torchlight flashed around the small living room as Patty hurried back into the house and towards the stairs.

  “Tom?” she cried.

  His body lay at an unnatural angle, head and back twisted in obscene opposition. Patty knelt down beside him, the light from the torch picked out the horrified expression on his face that signified the moment of death. She took a moment to study him before she stood and walked back through the house to the telephone beside the front door. She made a call then headed back outside towards the barn. A moment later the generator kicked back in and the cottage lit up once more.

  “He’s dead then?” asked Stacie, climbing over the body as she came down the stairs.

  “Yes,” Patty nodded.

  Stacie prised the manuscript from Tom’s dead fingers. “I’d better burn this.”

  Patty slipped her arm around Stacie’s waist and kissed her lips. “Pity. It really is the best book you’ve ever written. But it would be pretty damning evidence.”

  Stacie stared at the wad of papers in her hand; then she released Patty, walked into the kitchen and placed them in the wood-burner.

  “Are you sure?” Patty asked.

  “The amount of insurance we have on him…I won’t ever have to write again.”

  Stacie lit a match and held the flame against the corner of the manuscript. The paper caught immediately and she watched the top cover turn black as the flame slowly ate its way through.

  The Promise burned.

  B IS FOR BOTOPHOBIA

  Barbie Wilde

  Lorraine dreaded going back to her childhood home, but her parents had recently died in a car accident and she’d broken up with her abusive creep of a husband who hadn’t given her a dime, so there was no choice really. To add insult to injury, she’d also just lost her job, so it was either the tired, brown, fifties, ranch-style house in Opportunity, Washington (oh, the glorious irony of that name), or the streets.

  As Lorraine drove up in her battered 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo, she parked the car in the same old asphalt driveway where she’d happily driven the neighbours crazy back when she was a kid, loudly lobbing a tennis ball against the metal doors every morning, imagining she’d grow up to be an international tennis player and then escape this jerkwater burg.