Horrible Stories For Terrible People, Vol. 1: Monsters

HORRIBLE STORIES FOR TERRIBLE PEOPLE

VOL I - MONSTERS

A collection of monster-themed tales by James D. Pratt

All stories © James D. Pratt

Smashwords Edition

Cover image © HeroMachine.com

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If this is not a free book and you would like to share it with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If this is a free book and you would like to share it with another person, please direct the recipient to the book’s page on Smashwords.com so they can download their own copy. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Convergence

He Never Liked Mirrors

Horton Hits a Ho

Incident at the 24-7

Jack the Ripper vs. Vampires

Killing Monsters is My Business and Business is Good

Moonchild

Newton

The City is a Vampire

The Face in the Crowd

The Lake Story

The Woman in the Portrait

There’s a Light on at the Old Sutter Place

What's New, Rudy Rue?

When Horton Met Dracula

CONVERGENCE

Ralph had seen better days. On Tuesday, Waylon had arbitrarily moved their team meeting from Thursday afternoon to Wednesday morning, so of course his car had picked Wednesday to die. This in turn gave Waylon, archetypical middle-management pud that he was, the perfect excuse to scramble up on his high horse and launch into a sermon about punctuality after Ralph arrived late. And in front of the whole team, no less. Even that cute new intern, Cassie Whats-Her-Name, had been in the room, God knew why. Man, Waylon was an ass.

After work, Carl in Accounting gave Ralph a ride home. He even offered to chauffer Ralph around until he got his car back, which was a nice gesture even though Carl sometimes gave off really weird vibes. Not gay vibes, exactly, even though Carl could be a bit touchy feely. And when he talked to you he would look you right in the eye the whole time and never blink or turn away, just stare intently like he was waiting for something to happen. He even did it when he was driving. It was both awkward and scary.

And the best part, the best fuh-reakin’ part, was that it had all happened on the eve of the full moon.

Carl usually drove like a madman, running stoplights, barreling through crosswalks, and for once Ralph didn’t mind. He prayed to God they wouldn’t pass a cop and for once the Good Lord was listening.

Undressing as he went, Ralph got halfway up the stairs before he realized the key to the ‘special’ room was still in the front right pocket of the trousers he’d discarded in the foyer. Stripped down to his underwear, Ralph nearly fell down the steps as he raced to recover the key. Once obtained, the key refused to fit into the padlock. Cursing, he slammed his fist into the metal reinforced door and noticed that thick, course hair was already sprouting from the back of his hand. Ralph took a deep breath, counted to ten, and tried again. This time the key slid smoothly into the lock.

Ralph had never cut it this close before but began to relax after the door was firmly locked from the inside. He slipped into the harness and fastened the buckles with the smooth efficiency that results from years of practice. In less than a minute Ralph was securely strapped to the wall. The harness was an heirloom of sorts, fashioned generations ago in the Old World by ancestors who lived short, savage lives and died equally savage deaths. The harness had been passed down through the ages, a grim but practical gift from father to son.

The straps were the only things Ralph’s dad had left him, and in the end they were the only things he had left to give. That was the insidious nature of the curse. Your humanity slipped further and further away with each transformation, swallowed up by something dark and feral until only the beast remained. It wasn’t the same for everyone. Sometimes it took decades, sometimes a lifetime. When the time came and Ralph’s father had to be put down, the duty fell to Ralph. He had just turned sixteen and was still coming to grips with what his father had been and what he would become. Ralph’s father had been a good man, or as good as he could have been under the circumstances, but all Ralph could remember was the hairy, slavering thing that had tried to tear his throat out at the end.

Day and night Ralph felt Mother Earth beckon but it was the song of Sister Moon that awakened the beast. She called to him with a wordless, primal song of blood and teeth and claws. It was not the first song but it was an old one. Sister Moon sang it long before the ancestors of men came down from the trees or learned to kill each other with rocks and sticks.

Technically, the moon wouldn’t be full for a few more days. The human part of Ralph would still be in the driver’s seat, but he knew the best way to stay unnoticed was to take no chances. Even a single slipup would be more the enough to get the wrong attention. If that happened the police would be the least of Ralph’s worries. And last month, he’d awakened to find a few of the straps undone. The thought that the beast was getting clever, was capable of learning in a way that no real animal could, kept him up at night.

Ralph was fastening the last strap into place that he heard a scratching at the back door. It was soft, obviously the work of someone trying to be as quiet as possible. Ralph only noticed it because his hearing, like the rest of his senses, became extra-sharp as Sister Moon grew full. Sniffing the air, he detected the mingled scent of alcohol and cheap deodorant.

The intruder would almost definitely discover Ralph’s special room with the shredded walls and the secret it held a few days a month. He only had moments to decide how to handle it. Ralph reluctantly undid the first strap, then the next, then the next. When this was done, he unlocked the door and slowly pushed it open.

If only it was Waylon, he thought.

Ralph imagined Waylon’s expression and the scene brought a smile to his lips. Then the pain hit. It felt like a red-hot poker had been shoved into his guts and the smile twisted into a snarl.

The change was agonizing. Ralph bit back a scream as flesh and bone reshaped themselves into something halfway between wolf and man. Tendons twanged like guitar strings as bones dislocated and repositioned themselves, popping and cracking in a bizarre symphony of transfiguration. Ralph’s spine lengthened and curved as the transformation neared its painful conclusion.

A man in black crept into view. The change was complete and Ralph saw him through a red haze of rage and pain. He was a tall, lanky man carrying what looked like an old-fashioned doctor’s satchel. Ralph’s last memory of that night was the shocked expression on the man’s thin, unshaven face.

* * * * *

It was night. The moon was almost full and Nick was in his familiar element. He really had made an effort to go straight but the daily grind was just too much. Nick wasn’t made for a factory work, which was the only kind of job he could get with his rather limited background. Lord knows he’d tried but he just wasn’t built that way. And then there was the little matter of Jessica’s pregnancy...

I’m going to be a father, Nick thought. How the heck did that happen? Oh yeah, we had sex.

Nick knew he had to get his act together. Earning his GED had been a good start but staying on track wasn’t an easy thing. There were plenty of distractions and morning came soooo early. Nick had a long way to go but was mature enough to realize how pathetic his life was. Jessica’s bun in the oven had been the final straw. It was time to grow up.

In Nick’s mind, the path to salvation began with a certification program at the local community college. Nick had the motivation, now all he needed was tuition money. And so, like so many times before, he fell back on the skills his dear old dad had taught him (pretty much the only thing his dad has left him). Dressed from head to toe in burglar-black, Nick went on the prowl.

Nick had been casing the split-level rancher on the corner for awhile. The little guy that lived there came home late most nights and even if he was home he probably wouldn’t be a problem. Not that Nick was the violent type; a simple threat or two was usually enough to keep most people in line. Folks weren’t willing to fight for their possessions anymore, everything being so disposable these days.

No car in the driveway. That was a good sign. Nick slunk across the yard, quick and silent, just a black smudge among a forest of shadows. In half a minute he had the back door jimmied open. Then he heard the sound on the second floor, a grunt or maybe a moan. Nick drew a small crowbar from his satchel and crept up the stairs. If he got lucky the little guy would simply faint at the sight of him.

Nick reached the landing. The groans came from a room halfway down the hall. The door to the room stood open and light streamed out, casting a strange silhouette on the opposite wall. What the hell was the guy doing in there? Nick hoped he wasn’t about the catch somebody in middle of a weird masturbation ritual, maybe something involving a gas mask and a bee costume. That was always embarrassing for both him and the homeowner.

Crowbar held high, Nick approached the room and looked in. The plan was to threaten the guy with violence unless he stayed put until Nick was safely gone, but the threat died on his lips. The man wouldn’t have heard him anyway. He was too busy being rearranged by some indescribable internal process. Flexing tendons dragged muscle and bone into unnatural configurations. Hair sprouted from every pore. Flesh was pulled taut as the man’s skull elongated into a snout. The hybrid thing neither man nor wolf turned its head and looked at Nick. The last thing Nick saw was a grin that looked like a mouthful of spears.

###

HE NEVER LIKED MIRRORS

Vlad hadn’t intended to be fashionably late. His destination, a sprawling, turn of the century plantation-style mansion somewhere in the cotton-fields-gone-to-pot badlands outside New Orleans, had been harder to find than he’d expected. Vlad’s journey terminated at the far end of dusty, winding road that snaked across overgrown fields and through stands of swaying pine trees and massive oaks thick enough in places to blot out the starless night sky. It was the site of a party held conspicuously far from prying eyes and, lacking the detailed directions provided to invited guests, Vlad had simply gotten lost.

After learning about the party and deciding to attend, Vlad could have simply forced the information out of someone but times had changed. The honest, straightforward tactics which he’d heartily embraced in the old days had become passé. Besides, it was the start of a new year, a new decade, and a new millennium. In other words, the perfect time for one to crawl out from under one’s rock and turn over a new leaf, or some other mixed metaphor.

When Vlad finally arrived, he simply walked in through the front door. He didn’t need an invitation to enter the house. The mansion’s owner and host of the party had been to the far side of the grave as back as had Vlad and all the guests. For them, the acts of eating, sleeping, and breathing were no less an affectation than the pseudo-European accents some of them had adopted. The important thing was one didn’t need an invitation to enter a house if the name on the lease belonged to someone who no longer drew breath, regardless of whether they sometimes rose from their coffin or stayed put.

Being a longer, Vlad didn’t usually associate with the living or the dead but he’d heard rumors of the party and, having been out of circulation for so long, felt compelled to investigate. He was curious as to the nature of the latest scene, as the kids would say or had said at one time. Things changed so fast these days and it was hard to keep up. Sometimes it seemed like Vlad awoke each night to brand new world.

Vlad passed a mirror, paused for a quick glance (An empty expression if there ever was one, he thought), and went on his way. He’d never liked mirrors, not even in the old days when they’d reflected something back. To him, they were a symbol of pride and vanity. One should be judged by actions, not appearance. The men of today sickened him, proud of all the wrong things and too stupid to realize how foolish they looked, strutting and preening about like horny peacocks. They were nothing like the men of his time, or the women for that matter. God, they were disgusting.

It wasn’t that Vlad really missed the old days. It was a time of endless war, famine, and disease, a dark age filled with visions of mothers wailing over their dead sons and violated daughters, of dogs fighting over corpses left to rot, of humans brutalized beyond recognition, not for wealth or power but simply because. It was a time of men who grew up knowing nothing but brutality. They spent their entire lives trying to satisfy the spiritual hunger that gnawed at them day and night, but in vain. No amount of treasure or violence could ever fill the darkness that had gobbled up their souls before they were even old enough to walk.

Vlad bore no illusions about his own role in the scheme of things. There were oceans of blood on his hands. Within a brief mortal lifetime, he’d overseen the slaughter of thousands. His trademark had been a slow, agonizing death by impalement. Ostensibly its purpose was to instill fear in the hearts of the Turks but truth be told Vlad simply liked to watch his enemies suffer. Sometimes he told himself he was a product of the times and that he’d only done what was necessary. Sometimes he even believed it. Vlad did recall the iron-willed men and women of his youth, long-suffering but proud patriots forged in a caldron of relentless tragedy, and his still heart would swell with pride but he didn’t miss those days.

It was just as well that the mirror reflected nothing back. Vlad was not a handsome man.