Fearsome Things: Five Short Tales of Horror and Suspense Read Online Free PDF Page B

bruise over his left cheek where a badly thrown baseball made contact two Saturdays before. He rocked back and forth on the edge of the seat, nervous and fidgeting.
    Voices, low and muted, drifted through a set of white double doors. The boy had no idea what the occupants of the room beyond the doors were saying. Despite his attempts to listen in, he could not hear them clearly, but even so, he knew it was not good. Nothing had been good for days.
    The boy wiped away a pear shaped tear that pushed from the corner of his eye and meandered down his cheek. He rose to his feet and counted out the steps to the double doors, looking down at the ground to make sure his feet remained within the confines of the light blue tiles as he walked, careful not to let them land in-between, over the grout lines. Todd Jenkins two houses down had told him it was bad luck to step on the lines between the tiles, and he didn’t need any more of that, not right now.
    When he reached the doors he put a hand out and pushed them open just wide enough to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond, but could not make sense of anything. He eased them wider, careful not to make a sound, until the room came into view, and what he saw froze him to the spot.
    His mother lay on a hard aluminum table. A strange circular light hovered like a weird alien spaceship above her. He knew it was his mother because an arm had slipped down and now dangled, fingers pointing toward the floor. Upon that arm, near her wrist, was a heart shaped tattoo with a set of initials inked into it - his father’s initials. He’d heard the story of that tattoo so many times he knew it as well as he knew his own name. She’d gotten it a few weeks after she met his father, to prove her love on a whim. The tattoo left no doubt who occupied the table, even though her body was covered with a white sheet, the fabric stained crimson in places like some grotesque Rorschach test.
    He stood transfixed, horrified yet unable to move. The men in the room were still talking, but then, as if sensing the pair of childish eyes invading the forbidden space, one of them turned, a look of deep sadness upon his face.
    “You shouldn’t be here Johnny boy.” His father said, crossing the gap between them. “You need to stay in the waiting room. I’ll be out very soon, I promise.”
    John eyed him, somehow relieved that his view of the mortuary table was blocked, that he was unable to see the nightmare that lay upon it, the bloody thing that was once his mother. Instead he saw his father, stiff and weary, his sheriff uniform uncharacteristically wrinkled. And he saw the gun in its leather holster, right there, just waiting.
    For a moment John wondered if he could snatch it and turn it upon himself, pull the trigger and join his mother in heaven, which was surely where she was. He ached to see her again, but Father Gregory, his Sunday school teacher, said suicide was a mortal sin, and sinners went to hell, not heaven, so it would be a pointless endeavor.
    It was too late now anyway. His father was steering him backward, closing the double doors, locking them.
    John turned back away, hands deep in his pockets, and started to weep, ever so softly.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    1
     
     
     
    Present Day - Wolf Haven, Louisiana
     
    SHERIFF JOHN DECKER steered the police cruiser along the winding, muddy trail toward the cabin in the woods.
    In the passenger seat Beau Thornton, Mayor of the town of Wolf Haven, leafed through a pile of paperwork resting on his lap.
    “I sure do appreciate you bringing me out here at such short notice sheriff,” he said in a thick southern accent, never once looking up from the stack of papers. “I know you have a lot on your plate.”
    “Don’t mention it,” Decker replied. He might be elected, just like Beau, but Thornton still cut his paychecks. “I’m not sure why you need me though.”
    “I thought it would be prudent to have a show of force on hand when I speak to