Kane's Scary Tales: Volume 1 Read online

  Then, suddenly, she stopped. She’d hit an incline, although Angela didn’t realise it at first, not till she began to slide down it. But she was grateful for the fact, because if she had just hit – literally – rock bottom, it would have smashed every bone in her body. She was still heading downwards, sliding at first, before tumbling over a few times as she went. It felt a little like she was in a laundry chute, heading to the basement to join the rest of the dirty linen. To be collected and then–

  Suddenly, the ride was at an end, and she was pitched forwards, where she rolled over several more times before skidding to a halt. The ground was lumpy, uncomfortable, and she blinked once or twice before gazing around her. There was a dim light coming from somewhere, and as her eyes adjusted she could see the snow again, flakes of it – well, that’s what it looked like at any rate. The result of the globe being turned upside down… Except they weren’t moving – weren’t falling. They were fixed and twinkling. It was this that was providing what little light there was.

  Enough to see what she’d landed in. Not laundry at all but… Bones. Lots and lots of bones.

  It was at that point Angela finally lost her grasp on consciousness.

  ***

  Red on White.

  That’s what she was seeing. Crimson blooming, no – staining the whiteness. Her blood seeping through the T-shirt where the bullet had done its worst. Then all she could see was the red, everywhere – until Angela pulled back and noticed that it was no longer blood. It was a rose opening, each petal slowly unfurling as it sprang up – sprouting out of the snow-covered ground. How it could have survived, she didn’t have a clue. But it had – indeed, it was thriving.

  She was pulling away again, like a camera zoom in reverse – pulling out so far she could see herself in the frosty wilds. Stumbling, clutching at her arm, leaving the trail of blood behind her. Except Angela saw the spilled redness on the ground from above; the spirit leaving its body again? Could see what that crimson was saying, for it wasn’t just a random pattern – it had formed two words:

  “Wake” and “Up”, with an exclamation mark just to emphasise this.

  It was what she needed to do, she knew that. She was still in danger, only now she didn’t know exactly what from. At least Robert had a face, an understandable motivation. Angela needed to rouse herself, figure out what exactly she was dealing with.

  But she didn’t.

  She remained unconscious until she felt the teeth biting into her. Then she sat up with a scream that would have woken the dead.

  Her breathing was coming in short gasps, and she was finding it harder to get oxygen than she ever had when she was running through the trees. Something scuttled away from her; something that had been clamped to her hand just moments before, and when she held it out in front of her, she could just about make out the indentations on her palm.

  The teeth-marks.

  So, what, some kind of animal? A dog maybe? But down here? Some sort of wild dog perhaps? A wolf? Did they shelter underground in winter? Maybe in caves, but… And there was no growling. She screwed up her eyes but could see no more sign of it, though she felt like it wasn’t that far away. Felt like it was waiting. Waiting and watching her.

  The scream had scared it off, but if it was hungry enough, if it was trying to eat her – like the earth had been when she fell, swallowing her whole – then it would soon be back. For now, though, she sat very still – not only because she didn’t want to draw undue attention to herself, but also because she was still feeling quite dizzy; could feel the blood still oozing from the wound at her shoulder. There she sat…amongst the bones. Other animals who had fallen foul of this creature down here? Been dragged under the ground to this… what? Nest? Pit? The more she stared, the more she could see that there were much larger bones scattered amongst the smaller ones; Angela almost let out a yelp when she spotted what was left of a human arm. And yes, there: ribcages, a leg, still with some of the meat hanging off it, though to all intents and purposes pretty much picked clean.

  Angela allowed herself a whispered: “Shit!”

  Not that far away from her, she could also see the remains of a hand – which had more or less kept its shape in spite of the fact a lot of the flesh was gone. She held up her own hand and looked again at the bite-marks. Swallowed dryly.

  People go missing around here all the time.

  But how could she see these remains anyway? Where was the light even coming from? It was only now that she remembered the snow that had been frozen in time; that refused to fall. Sparkling all around her, something set into the walls of this place.

  Angela took them in now, too. Trying to work out what they were – eyes flitting from one to the other and–

  One set blinked. She almost screamed again, but instead made a fist out of that bitten hand and put it to her mouth. The eyes blinked again; white, and surely sightless? Belonging to something she couldn’t see yet. Another set not too far away from the first also closed, then opened again.

  More than one of the animals? A male and female, then? No, a family – for a couple more sets blinked at that precise moment. Angela fought to control her breathing once more, but it wasn’t easy. She counted five sets now, and risked a movement. Risked reaching downwards with her only hand that was working properly, to fish the mobile phone out of her pocket. If she could just shed a little more light on the situation… It was always more frightening, not being able to see what was in front of you. Imagining the worst. Even if these were animals, dogs, maybe she could calm them down somehow? Throw them a fucking bone – there were plenty around here to choose from.

  But what if they aren’t animals? a little voice said in the back of her mind. What then?

  Still better to know, wasn’t it? Her hand carried on snaking down slowly, reaching towards her pocket. Wasn’t as easy to reach that as it had been in the car; oh, it was easy enough to shove her fingers inside – not so easy to pull out the phone, which was wedged in there tight. The thought occurred to her, as she was doing this and another set of eyes opened up out there in the half-light, that the phone might well be broken. Angela had taken a hell of a tumble to reach her destination, such as it was – but she tried to comfort herself by saying that it had been through a lot worse and survived: dropped on the pavement at least a dozen times; had drinks spilled on it by prats at Uni; had even fallen into her cornflakes once. Thing was like a tank.

  Nevertheless, until it was in her hands, until she switched it on–

  Yes! Angela had it, fingertips brushing against the top then pinching together to try and snag the thing, like some kind of seaside amusement where the prize kept slipping out of the grabber’s grasp. Nearly there, nearly there… Got it! Angela pulled it far enough out so that she could get a hold of the small, slippery square properly, freeing it from its confines (if only she could do the same for herself). But what had she won? Let’s see, let’s see.

  Angela brought the mobile up, flicking it on even as yet another set of eyes blinked in the distance – but as long as they stayed there… What she’d won was a working phone she saw (the grand prize) as her eyes flicked downwards. There were still no bars on the top, but then if there was no reception above ground, she shouldn’t really have expected any deep down in its depths.

  What there was available to her was the torch app, which she flipped up and turned on. Nothing happened. So, it wasn’t a completely fully-functioning piece of tech.

  The eyes were moving. All of them. Getting bigger, getting closer.

  Angela swallowed again. No light, no way of seeing what was coming for her. No way of defending herself, either, because if these things were so used to the dim lighting down here, she’d considered maybe using that torch as a weapon.

  She stared at the menu, the picture a photo of her favourite statue, snapped out on a stroll in town: a figure of indeterminate sex reaching upwards, striving to get to the clouds (or the surface, she thought absently…appropriate really).
<
br />   Snapped… photo…

  The button for the camera app was staring right at her, set to auto. Angela nudged it on with her thumb. The eyes were getting bigger, fuller, blinking again almost, but not quite in unison. Seven sets, seven pairs.

  She pressed the round button on the screen and took a picture. The flash lit up the scene around her momentarily, affording her a glimpse of what was ahead. What had clearly done this to those people in the pit: a preview of what was in store for her, too, more than likely.

  Angela saw a glimpse of the beasts and thought she was going mad. No dogs, definitely not dogs. Not even animals really, but human in shape – if not in nature. They were not that big, about the size of chimps she estimated, but their skin was as pale as their eyes. It was slick, that flesh, and lumpy, knotted – but the way they were moving showed that this extended to their bones as well; they were disjointed things straight out of a painting of Hell, thought Angela. Straight out of something from Dante’s Inferno, the creatures that populated those Circles he’d been taken on a tour of by Virgil (they’d studied this poem in her first semester).

  They also recoiled at the flash, showing their teeth – tiny and razor-sharp by the looks of things – and while she was taking in their faces, their completely bald heads, veins pulsing at the temples, she saw that they had no noses to speak of, just little slits. Their ears were pointed, jutting out awkwardly from the sides of their heads. It was only now that they made a sound as well, not the growl or bark of a wolf as she’d imagined, but a throaty, phlegmy gurgle of protest. The eyes glowed pink in the glare from the camera, then everything went dark again.

  Breath coming even faster now, Angela pressed the button again. It showed the creatures moving forwards, crouching and advancing; the light had only put them off for a second or two – or maybe they were using some other sense to find their way? Something akin to what bats use in caves, going by those ears?

  It didn’t matter – they were coming for her and they were coming more quickly. The flash didn’t affect them quite so much the second time and, without pausing now to study them, Angela pressed the button again. If nothing else, maybe these pictures would serve as evidence of what had done this to her…assuming her remains were ever found. Not that it would do her much good in the here and now.

  In the here and now, she was moments away from being attacked. The only thing Angela could think of doing was using the camera again – defensively, as a weapon, but they were already on her, denying her that opportunity. In fact one of them, maybe even the same one, was biting into her hand again: causing her to drop the phone, sending it clattering off into who knows where? At the same time the other bodies crawling over her were pushing her down onto her back again, and she collapsed with a grunt. Once the dots in front of her eyes from the flash had cleared, she could see the creatures mountaineering up her body, feel the clawed hands that were worse than Robert and his explorations.

  There was a hotness in her shoulder again, and once more it was alive with pain. Angela shifted her head to the side and saw a member of this brood licking at the wound, spittle trailing from its mouth; slurping up the blood there – sticking its tongue into the hole to get at more of the vital liquid; not that she could afford to lose any more.

  She attempted to move again, to try and shrug them off, but it was impossible – there were simply too many and they were a lot heavier than they looked. Like concrete slabs laying on her, in fact, making it even harder to breathe. The one biting into her hand was knocked off by another of the creatures, both competing for a new prize: who’d get to devour her. If there was pain in that, she didn’t feel it – was too preoccupied by the burning sensation in her shoulder. Angela was trying to hang on to consciousness this time, but could feel herself failing – she didn’t want to black out only to wake and find parts of her missing, parts of her being snacked on: an arm, a leg, a hand, a foot. Being dead she could just about handle; it was quick, it would be over and done with – for her part – relatively quickly. But losing herself piece by piece? Mouthful by mouthful? That would bend her mind so completely…

  And Angela did black out at that point, the agony from her shoulder simply too much. But it wasn’t for long, or at least she didn’t believe so. When she did come to again, the weight was gone from her frame. She looked downwards and saw that the creatures had shifted – were no longer on top of her, arguing over the prime cuts. Experimentally, Angela moved a leg, a foot, an arm. All seemed to be working as normal, unless it was phantom limb syndrome or something? No, she was able to see that they were all still there, everything intact: her body still whole. She reached across to her shoulder, tentatively touching the bullet-hole there… except it wasn’t a hole anymore. There was nothing but puckered skin; not burned, but cauterised. Something in the creature’s spit?

  Of the monsters there appeared to be no sign – had they been scared off again? Like they had by her scream before? No, for she could see them now, just out of reach. They were all there, gathered in a horseshoe shape. Waiting and watching her, but not as a prelude to an attack – she didn’t get that from them this time. After all, why would they strike and then withdraw, leaving her unscathed, only to surge forward again? In fact, not only was she unscathed, they’d stemmed the bleeding from her shoulder; healed her, even. It was numb, but she could at least move her arm a little.

  It was something she did now, helping herself to get upright again. The creatures still kept their distance, still watched and waited – but for what? Angela frowned. The “attack” had only come when she began to root around for the phone, only increased in intensity when she started using the flash. They’d got it out of her hand as quickly as they could, but then the one who’d bitten her – the smallest one, she recalled, and even as she looked now at the bites she saw they weren’t that deep – he’d been knocked away so he couldn’t do any more damage. They’d pinned her down so they could stop her from taking the photos, so they could fix her injured shoulder. Defending themselves rather than assaulting her.

  Helping her.

  The furrows on her brow deepened; she didn’t understand. Why, out of all the people who had fallen foul of this trap (and each time, they must have covered the ground back up again, she realised; which also meant there was another, easier way out of there than actually climbing up the incline; a way to get out of this hole), why had they spared her? What made her so special?

  Red on white, a voice said from somewhere – her mind, although it sounded an awful lot like a man’s timbre. A fleeting image of the rose came to her, a rose in the snow.

  “Hel… Hello,” she spoke tentatively, the word sounding odd even to Angela; her throat almost seizing up with the pitiful attempt. Unsurprisingly, there was no reply, so – determined – she tried again: “Hi there.” Angela held up her hand, the one attached to her wounded arm, which made her wince a little – but all this elicited was puzzled looks from the seven shapes, a couple gaping at each other in bewilderment. They were the strangest things she’d ever seen in her life, not quite human but humanoid – as if perhaps they had been once. She wondered how long they had lived here. Years? Generations? Maybe their ancestors had been human at some point? She rested her aching arm and raised the other one, held out her hand as you would do when giving your pet a treat. “I… I’m not going to hurt you.”

  It seemed like a weird thing to say, especially given their apparent intent. Definitely, given what they’d done to these other poor wretches down here. But Angela chose to look on the bright… well, brighter side. They had decided not to dine on her, for whatever reasons. And they were a damned sight better company than “Uncle” Robert and his gun.

  “I’m not going to…” She shut up immediately when one of the pack, a particularly vacant-looking one, began lumbering forward. Angela thought about withdrawing that hand now – what if he simply bit off the fingers? Ladyfingers… hmm, yum!

  But she was glad she didn’t when, instead of baring its tee
th, the monster nuzzled up against that hand. Angela felt like recoiling – felt also a little like being sick, but fought it.

  And, forcing herself to do so, she stroked the top of the thing’s veiny head. It purred – actually purred, even though the sound was gurgled and thick with mucus. Not a dog, but a cat.

  Seeing this, the others approached, all seven of them, nuzzling up against different parts of her. Some of it was actually even quite pleasant; some of it also tickled. In spite of herself, Angela smiled. Then she laughed.

  A laugh that went on so long, she thought that she had finally, truly, gone insane.

  ***

  Ruth stared out through the gigantic window and sipped her whiskey: Queen of all she surveyed.

  She allowed herself a grin – she’d earned it. Things were shaping up nicely, very nicely indeed. The shares had been floated, bought, and now she was one of the most powerful people on the planet.

  Power… Ruth savoured the word, the way it sounded. She could do anything, go anywhere. Power; she had so much power. It was better than being helpless, better than the things she’d had to do to get her and Robert out of that cesspit they’d lived in when her mum had died. Correction: been killed. That had been the first lesson. Power wasn’t just about money – although that greased the wheels – it was about control. Being in control and controlling others. They’d had money, before, but then it had been taken away from them. Then their one remaining parent had been taken away as well. Someone had to take charge, take control, and it was never going to be her brother.

  Oh, Robert had his uses – especially as he got older and larger, better able to handle himself – but he was a bit of a blunt instrument. No finesse. Just look at the way he’d gotten rid of Angela. If she hadn’t wanted a certain amount of distance on this one, Ruth would have cheerfully handled the problem herself; taken great pleasure in it actually, as she had Angela’s cloying father. The two terminations couldn’t have been more different, could they? The father “natural causes”, buried, and the daughter – shot and dumped in the wilderness somewhere for the animals to pick at. Somewhere she’d never be found. Robert had brought back the jacket with her blood all over it as proof, which she’d later incinerated.