Fear of the Dark: An Anthology of Dark Fiction Read online

  ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?

  From Christopher Fowler’s “The Man in the Rain,” to Jason Muller’s “Lullaby of the Grotesque,” the stories collected here suggest a simple, terrifying fact — that darkness gives life to the fears that haunt us all.

  From a widespread fear of darkness to the dread of death and restless spirits; through the shadowed cellars and closets of our homes to the dark and twisting corridors of our minds, Fear of the Dark: An Anthology of Dark Fiction reveals the fears we find familiar, and revels in the fears we never knew we even had.

  First published in 2011 by Horror Bound Magazine Publications, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

  This ebook edition published in 2014 by Horror Bound Magazine Publications.

  This ebook edition distributed by Extraordinarium Digital Press.

  horrorbound.extra-ordinarium.com

  Anthology © Horror Bound Magazine Publications.

  Short stories features in this anthology are © their respective author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form and any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Horror Bound Magazine Publications.

  Front cover page artwork © Michael Brennan.

  EPUB ISBN 978-0-9937234-0-7

  Contents

  Introduction

  by Paul Kane

  Daughters of the Night

  by Adrian Chamberlin

  Handyman

  by Mary A. Turzillo

  Keeper of the Light

  by Paul Kane

  The Man in the Rain

  by Christopher Fowler

  Keeping the Dead

  by Aaron Polson

  Lullabye of the Grotesque

  by Jason Muller

  The Doll in the Window

  by Anne M. Pillsworth

  What She Dreams

  by Brian D. Mazur

  Spy Glass Hill

  by Lisa Mannetti

  Crack O’Doom

  by Angel McCoy

  A Distinctive Curiosity

  by Dave Ingalls

  Dark Horse

  by Martin Rose

  (To Live, To Die) By Dusk’s Dark Light

  by Charlie Loudowl

  Beak Boy

  by Eric Dimbleby

  Reminiscence

  by A. D. Spencer

  Nocturnal Visions

  by Mark Leslie

  For Fear of Little Men

  by Sandra M. Odell

  The Closet

  by Norman L. Rubenstein & Carol Weekes

  Finders Keepers

  by Michael F. Fudali

  She’s Not There

  by Brian Wright

  Introduction

  by Paul Kane

  I make no secret of, or excuses about, my own fear of the dark.

  It’s very real and has been with me since I was little. Even now, on occasion, that small boy who used to be terrified at the thought of going to bed with the lights off resurfaces. But I beat him down, as adults do. Remind myself I’m a grown-up and I shouldn’t be scared of the shadows, or what I believe to be in them.

  Anyone who’s ever read my work should be able to trace the influence of this fear. I mean, just look at some of the titles: stories like “Blackout” and “Shadow Writer” (from which I took the name of my website, shadow-writer.co.uk); books like Alone (In the Dark), The Shadows Trilogy and Of Darkness and Light. In fact, if you’ve ever read the prologue to the last one, you’ll catch a glimpse of that little boy yourself, imagining all kinds of things in that darkened bedroom. Imagining the dark was alive and coming to get me.

  I think it’s a pretty healthy fear, actually, and to quote from Mike Carey who did the introduction to Of Darkness and Light, “Fear of the dark has a very impressive pedigree...” Many writers have tackled it in the past, and I’m sure many more will in the future. However, in the meantime, you have this excellent anthology which has gathered together many like-minded souls in an effort to work out just what it is about this subject that scares us. Why are we so frightened of what’s out there when the sun goes down? I know what personally creeps me out about it all, but it’s always fascinating to get other people’s take on it.

  And so, in “(To Live, To Die) By Dusk’s Dark Light,” Charlie Loudowl investigates the subject not only of night, but some of its more famous inhabitants, focusing on a search for the scientific reasons behind them. In “She’s Not There,” Brian Wright switches to the supernatural, and muses about the possibilities of what might happen after that great darkness: Death.

  “A Distinctive Curiosity,” however, by Dave Ingalls concerns itself more with the transportation of souls to that void — at least while they’re still here on earth. A catalyst for a living darkness, darkness made up of many parts which also has many tiny wings. Then in Eric Dimbleby’s “Beak Boy” the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred as the titular entity plagues one man in utter blackness.

  While in “Dark Horse,” Martin Rose examines what happens when nightmares are thrown into the mix, terrors that become all too real when the connection with a sinister carnival is revealed. “Daughters of the Night” on the other hand, sees Adrian Chamberlin in full flow, penning a disturbing story about a gothic neighbour and sins being punished. Fearful is night to the guilty, he writes as a warning...

  In “Finders Keepers” Michael F. Fudali gets to grips with things in the shadows, only glimpsed in the periphery of your vision (something else I know all about). Then in “For Fear of the Little Men” Sandra M. Odell mixes the age-old childhood fear of things under the bed at night-time with an investigation into creatures supposed to only exist in fairytales.

  Mary A. Turzillo’s “Handyman” takes as its subject matter the very real fear of the stalker in the dark — the mythology of a serial killer put to use to cover a deadly crime. Returning to the supernatural again, Aaron Polson’s “Keeping the Dead” involves an old house and another kind of mythology altogether, a battle between the living and those who crave the dead.

  Set in the 19th Century, “Lullaby of the Grotesque” begins with a spot of late night grave robbing (Burke and Hare style) which has disastrous consequences, and ends with a uniquely shocking twist guaranteed to make you shudder. Yet in “Crack O’Doom” by Angel Leigh McCoy, the impending darkness precipitates an unusual storm. A storm that leads to another terrifying situation altogether: one that really will make you fear the dark.

  The, appropriately titled, “Nocturnal Visions” by Mark Leslie reminds us that some of the fabled characters said to call on us only at night can be as frightening as they are welcome. And A.D. Spencer’s “Reminiscence” uses noises in the dark to make the hairs on the back of your neck prickle; will it be what you’re expecting? You’ll just have to read to the finale to find out...

  In “Spy Glass Hill” from Lisa Mannetti, it is an old house rather than a location, and the destination for a team of ghost hunters who get much more than they bargained for. Next comes Anne M. Pillsworth’s “The Doll in the Window,” which you really would not want coming after you when the lights have dimmed.

  “The Closet" by Norman L. Rubenstein & Carol Weekes is a perfect device for exploring fear of the dark, here the place for keeping terrible and tragic family secrets. The ever-reliable Christopher Fowler, though, examines the darkness one figure can bring with him in “The Man in the Rain.” Can this person, an outline glimpsed in the downpo
ur after a funeral, really be the harbinger of death? Finally, “What She Dreams” from the imagination of Brian D. Mazur has the protagonist actually crawling through darkness — you’ll discover why when you read it. I can’t think of anything more unnerving!

  So there you have it, tales which... What’s that? What about my own contribution, “Keeper of the Light?” Well, it would probably be fair to say that this particular story is a culmination of all those years of being scared and writing about the dark. A cautionary story about what might happen if we don’t take what’s out there in the blackness more seriously.

  Just a little something to think about when you turn out the light and try to get to sleep tonight...

  Paul Kane

  December 2010

  Daughters of the Night

  by Adrian Chamberlin

  Fearful is night to the guilty.

  It’s a phrase my wife read to me before she died. We fear the night when we’re children because of what the darkness might hide. But as adults we fear it because of what it can’t hide. Believe me, guilt has a physical presence. And trying to wash it away with blood doesn’t work.

  We’d finished another uneasy meal, the silence and tension between us as palpable and oppressing as the stifling heat of the July afternoon. Having a barbeque on an August Bank Holiday, eating outside to enjoy the weather with a nice bottle of chilled white wine, just like normal loving couples. I guess that’s why it was so hard. We were both aware of how normal it was, and we just couldn’t do it.

  The house was a two bedroom affair, a starter home really, but perfectly suitable for our needs. We were never going to have children.

  It had a beautiful garden — south facing, a perfect sun trap. The previous owners had really looked after it. Well-tended borders overflowed with rose bushes and honeysuckle, and the thick lawn sloped gently down to the river that never overflowed, even in the spring flooding. The rotary clothes drier was the only blot on this otherwise perfect miniature landscape. The machine was beginning to rust and leaned awkwardly to one side in the posthole.

  In this light, the bed sheets hanging out to dry were just that, bed sheets. Neatly pegged and evenly separated, water dripping soundlessly onto the neatly mown grass.

  But at night they were something else. Sophie didn’t know what I’d seen, the night before we agreed to put the old house up for sale. And we still hadn’t become close enough for me to tell her about it — or what I did to stop them coming back.

  The house should have been a break from the past, a new beginning. But the change of location did nothing but reinforce the distance between us.

  She eyed me warily from her book as I looked at my paper plate laden with an untouched burger and a half chewed spare rib. I put it on the patio table and sighed, reaching for the Chardonnay. The deep scar on my palm made it awkward to pour, or perhaps it was the stiffness of slowly-healing tendons. I had cut too deeply last time.

  Sophie had made even less of an effort with her food than I had. The marinated tuna steak was untouched. I couldn’t remember the last time either of us had eaten a full meal. And the results were showing — she was losing even more weight than I was. Her breasts, full and firm once, barely showed under her vest top. Her once-meaty arms and thighs were pale and withered, the sun unable to tan them.

  A wasp landed on the pool of salad dressing and made itself at home. Sophie ignored it.

  There was no light conversation, no laughter and enjoyment of the weather — or the company. She had turned her chair to face the setting sun, lowered her sunhat and concentrated on her book. I couldn’t see if she was really reading the words through the large sunglasses she wore. Very occasionally she remembered to turn a page.

  A pretence. Like everything else in our lives. I drained my glass and refilled it. The wine was warm and sour now, but I knocked it back anyway.

  “What’s the book like?”

  She flicked the book to show me the cover.

  “Matthew Lewis. The Monk. Not your usual choice of reading material, Soph,” I muttered. “Library ran out of Tom Clancy and Lee Child, has it?”

  I hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic. When she used to lecture in literature at the college she had always read some light thriller action on weekends for light relief. And yet, this was the first time I’d seen her pick up any book in the last nine months. That shows just how much attention we were paying to each other.

  “Mrs Kritikos lent it to me. Said I’d find a few passages interesting.” She shook her head. “I taught this in a class a few years back, as part of the Gothic Literature Module. Don’t know what she’s on about...”

  The reminder of her previous career drew a lump to her throat and a tightening of her jaw. More resentment. Not just because she deemed me responsible, but because I’d managed to hold on to my career. That’s why she hated me. That I could be so cold and clinical about it — and not even be reminded of what I’d done each time I went into surgery.

  We resumed our silence. I watched the wasp fly away from Sophie’s plate, saw it head over the low dividing wall for Mrs Kritikos’ garden.

  I could hear the screeching of metal garden furniture on patio slabs and a scratchy old voice crying out, “Shoo! Go away!” in her thick Greek accent.

  So she was there. Probably listening in on our conversation, her shrivelled ears pricking up at the mention of her name. At least I couldn’t see her. The old widow — I always assumed she was a widow, keeping the Mrs, with no sign of a man about — made me nervous. The old bag hadn’t spoken a civil word to me since we moved in, always keeping her distance. But whenever I was out in the garden, moving the lawn, or coming in through the back gate, laden with the week’s food shopping, I knew her eyes were boring into me. Perhaps recognising me.

  Perhaps knowing me, and what I had done.

  I’d only seen Mrs Kritikos have two visitors in all the time we’d been here. Two other old women, dressed in identical black clothes regardless of the heat, with similar features that marked them as relatives — possibly sisters — came every Sunday. They would sip ouzo and nibble on baklava pastries in the garden, whispering to each other in hushed tones with conspiratorial expressions on faces that were tanned and wrinkled to the texture of old leather from years spent in the Aegean sun. I hadn’t seen them for about six months, though. Perhaps they’d passed on, or gone back to the old country.

  I felt my eyelids grow heavier and heavier. I knew it was foolish to have stayed out in the sun so long, but I was so pale these days that I took every chance I could to get some colour in my face.

  I felt the warmth of the sun gradually fade through my closed eyes, and consciousness faded along with the sunlight.

  Even Sophie, matter-of-fact, down to earth and no nonsense Sophie, had told me once that she felt Mrs Kritikos was reading her mind. That thin smile on the old woman’s pursed lips was half-mocking, half-knowing. I imagined that smile now as I drifted off to sleep. I saw her never-blinking hazel eyes narrow in recognition of me, saw her greasy tangles of grey hair flailing in the wind like a nest of snakes, saw her thin lips pucker up and mutter...

  “Fearful is night to the guilty.”

  I was shocked out of my dozing. I jerked to my right to where the words had been spoken.

  It hadn’t been Mrs Kritikos saying them. It had been Sophie. She held up the book and pointed to the passage.

  “She marked it with a red highlighter. Look. What’s she trying to tell me?”

  I didn’t answer. I saw the sun sinking below the horizon, painting the fields and the river in scarlet hues. The slow-flowing waters looked like blood. I knew very well what Mrs Kritikos was saying, and I’m sure Sophie did as well.

  Night was coming. And with it the bed sheets would become...I launched myself from the chair and ran to the centre of the garden.

  I grabbed the laundry from the rotary clothes drier, yanking the towels and bed sheets from the line with clothes pegs
spinning off in all directions. All the while keeping a nervous eye on the setting sun.

  “Just leave them on the line,” Sophie snapped when she saw our duvet cover about to trail through the ashes and charcoal fragments on the barbeque. She snatched them from my overloaded arms and thrust them back on the rotary.

  “It won’t hurt to leave them out for one night. It’s not going to rain, is it?”

  I was conscious of Mrs Kritikos peering over the wall with narrowed eyes. I looked away and lowered my voice, so that the old bat wouldn’t hear me.

  “Sophie. I told you, we can’t leave the washing out at night.”

  “Oh, not this again! What, you think our neighbour’s going to steal them?” She waved mockingly to Mrs Kritikos, who mumbled something inaudible and shuffled off back to her rusting patio table. She took a sip of her lemonade and pretended to be interested in the paperback she picked up.

  I knew she was still looking at me. I caught a glimpse of the paperback she was reading, could just make out a picture of a wasp’s face and the title that looked vaguely familiar. Some science fiction book I’d read in my teens, something about giant wasps invading Britain after atom bomb tests.

  Sweat trickled down my neck as I grabbed the laundry. I told myself it was the heat of the summer day suddenly turning chill in the cool breeze that sprang from behind the house. A breeze that seemed to whisper: Be sure your sin will find you out.

  A whisper that sounded all too similar to Mrs Kritikos’ voice. I swallowed and turned back to the house, the bed sheets clasped tightly to my chest. The front of my tee shirt was soaking wet with the damp laundry, a dampness that turned as cold as the sweat trickling down my neck when I heard Mrs Kritikos laughing quietly to herself. I froze, swallowed noisily and tried not to face her. The laughter continued, louder and deeper. I turned.