Arm of Darkness

Arm of Darkness

Tales of Horror by Joseph D’Agnese

Two brothers stumble upon a website so entrancing that it marks them for death.

A murderous drifter wanders into the wrong bar on a snowy night.

A lovesick executive rents a hideous creature designed to nibble his cares away.

These men become unwitting victims of a mysterious stranger who lives in these mountains. His hand is fashioned from the night sky. It is powerful, dark, deadly. When the weather’s right, he heads out of the hills and lavishes irresistible gifts on unsuspecting people.

Truth is, he cares nothing for humans. He’s a demonic prankster who wreaks casual violence on every person he meets. He’s about to offer you a bargain.

Piece of advice? Don’t trust him.

ARM OF DARKNESS contains six short stories of horror.

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Arm of Darkness

Short Stories

Joseph D’Agnese

Skullworm

He woke because of the noise.

Tick tick tick, inside his head.

And another irritating din, as if someone were scraping the last of the white from a soft-boiled egg.

His eyelids were stuck to the pillowcase. Busy night, huh? Breaking the crust around his eyes, he managed to peel his lids away from the bed linens, get himself out of bed, and take a long, viscous piss in the bowl.

Tick, tick, tick, scrape, scrape, scrape.

In the shower he sprinkled Ajax on a washcloth, scrubbed the crust off his body, then pulled on some clothes. He whipped aside the Plexiglas window, hoping to get some of that early summer air wafting into the place, hoping to scare out some of the willies.

Thankfully he was smelling more like his own self. He’d slept deeply. His head felt clear. But Jesus, the room smelled of bait gone off.

You were busy last night, weren’t you? he said aloud.

Silence.

His eyes glared upward, as if to the ceiling. I SAID, darling, you were busy last night, weren’t you?

Sound beat against the bones of his skull: Tick, tick, tick, scrape, scrape, scrape.

"There’s my girl," he muttered.

He grabbed his pack of cigs and his Zippo and headed out. The sky was pink streaked with black. The parking lot was packed. The Cocks had played last night, and the city was filled with USC fans sleeping it off. While those sluggards dozed, the go-getters were getting a jump on the day. Already he could hear trucks rumbling down the highway. The huge Asian grocery across the road looked green and garish. Up and down the highway, the lights of Mickey D’s and Sheetz and Fat Bubbies and Shoney’s and Huddle House punched the gloom. The air smelled of maple syrup, grease, and diesel fuel.

Good morning, bitches! he thought.

Behind the motel, he unlocked the back door of his Hummer and unloaded the hand truck and the cartons of scented candles and air fresheners. Geez, he’d been burning through those like crazy.

All part of the bidness of bidness, am I right?

He stacked everything on the hand truck. Then clinked the Zippo and had himself a smoke.

The ground back here sloped to the river, which washed past him looking muddy and thick. He watched plastic bags, construction debris, and a child’s bike flow by on their way to the lowcountry two hours south. The water looked lazy, but he knew it damned sure wasn’t. Every year the city lost people who thought they’d escape the murderous heat by tipping a toe in the Broad or the Congaree, never to be seen again.

An egret sailed through the mist.

Out of the darkness came a canoe. Hovering above the canoe were two red lights, glowing like the end of Hank’s cigarette. The lights, he realized, were the man’s eyes.

Hank could see the man standing tall in the boat, moving it along with a long pole. He was using both hands, though his wooden arm didn’t do much of anything. Still. It was funny to watch. Never did see a one-armed man pole a boat in treacherous waters. Today’s the day, Hank, the old man called. Day I come get what’s mine.

I’ve reconsidered.

How’s that, son?

This is the first time in my life I’ve felt special, Hank told him. On top of things. Sharp as a tack. Fresh as a fucking daisy. I don’t even need coffee anymore. I’m not looking to go back to the old Hank.

The old man lifted his nose to the air and sniffed. His nostrils moved obscenely, like an insect’s lips. "You stink, Hank, the old man called. You stink so bad your boss done exiled you to a shithole motel."

Yeah? Hank scoffed. "But I’m producing. You don’t know shit about the numbers, but if you did, you’d know. I’ll own this company inside a month. The leads are closing at over 12 percent. That never happens. They can’t get them without me. And I’m working better than I ever have. If these motherfuckers want their leads, then shee-it, I want myself a raise and a new company car. Their entire business is built on my back. I pull the leads, they’re back to zip."

It was all true. And the bosses knew it. They were sending two babies every day to work with him over at the motel, helping him man the phones and cranking the laptops. Truth was, Hank didn’t like having these fresh-faced newbies looking over his shoulder, figuring out how he worked his magic, but he didn’t see how he could do without them.

He had to stay focused. His mind was working like a machine, trimmed of all fat, pared to the bone, scraped clean of neuroses and fear and insecurity.

Every night, all that horseshit—the stuff that held lesser men back—was getting chewed up and shat out by the thing inside his brain.

Can’t go on much longer like this, son, the one-armed man said. I come to do the extraction and get my two-thirds money.

Hank spied a turtle crawling out of the water to share a rock with another two. Their shells knocked together like coconuts and all three of them fell into the river. Fucking turtles were life.

Hank gestured at the river. You best be rowing on home, old-timer. I have nothing for you.

That’s how it’s gonna be, huh? You came to me because you had a problem with one little thing. This, what’s going on now? Has nothing to do with that.

Hank whooped, which a white guy in his late twenties rarely did, except in the presence of beer. "I don’t even remember that bitch’s name. Can’t remember her face. Can’t remember what it was like to ball her. My mind’s clear. Never worked better. I know things, old man. Things I’d forgotten because I was just too average to remember them, but now I’ve got them all back. Sine, cosine, and tangent. I know the immediate and the underlying causes of the French Revolution. I can quote Deuteronomy. It’s all up here—"

He tapped his temple.

All locked away in my uncluttered, logical mind.

Tick, tick, tick. Scrape, scrape, scrape.

"I know words I thought I’d forgotten. Fucking ten-gallon billon-dollar SAT words. Saxicolous. Equanimity. Amanuensis. Onomatopoeia. I’m not stupid, old man. I am not dumb. I’m through thinking dark thoughts about myself. They are banished henceforth from the bowl of my mind. The minute they pop up, they get themselves eaten. This here is the new Hank talking."

The old man rolled his eyes. Am I gonna get the rest of my money or not?

Hank flicked his cigarette at the man, who did not flinch. The embers reflected on the man’s wooden arm.

You stole my property, son.

Mine now.

The old man maneuvered the pole. As he backed away from the shore, he said, You might want to remember yourself another SAT word, Hank Headley.

What’s that?

Hermaphrodite.

Hank watched the guy pole away. Strange: The guy’s wooden arm seemed to move.

Hank wheeled his stuff back to the hotel room. The place had aired out some. He tidied up, sprayed deodorizer around, and set up the laptops in the adjoining room next door.

After a bit, he hit the head again and peed like gravy.

He felt a sniffle coming on, and when he wiped his nose he found the first one: a small white worm, no bigger than a thumbnail. He fished it out of his left nostril. It was as pretty as a garden inchworm. For a while he watched it squirm, then he pressed his fingers together and saw it pop in a explosion of pulpy green goo.

Hank had met the guy a few weeks ago in a bar downtown, just on the fringes of Five Points and well away from the tourist hangouts. Hank had been drinking since 2:00 p.m., when he’d stopping taking calls and just fled the office, unable to deal.

He had already made a name for himself as the best feeder in the business. Nobody but the Headster came up with fresh, qualified leads, leads that had not been called a million times already and thus useless.

But recently, something had gone wrong. Hank’s head was just not into it. He couldn’t shake the cruelty of her moving out of the condo and ditching her mobile number—doing all that—without granting him so much as a lunch or a coffee to hash it out.

He needed to get over this. Her departure felt like a stinging insult, a rebuke of his manhood, his intelligence, and his prospects. Truth was, it wasn’t so long ago that he felt he was something of a loser, trying to land a decent job on nothing but a piece of paper from a crappy two-year school. He’d worked hard to squelch that bullshit. He’d mastered it. The job had saved him.

But now the bullshit mind games were all back.

He couldn’t afford to mope around for a month or two or three while the bad feelings slowly trickled away.

His numbers were slipping, but he couldn’t tell anyone why. The bosses didn’t want to hear that he needed time to clear his head. The bosses wanted him to keep working the Headley magic, lining up some virgin numbers so the telemarketing babies could pop some cherries and get the closing ratio up.

Hank Headley needed to clear his head.

Alcohol wasn’t exactly helping, but he knew a guy who knew a guy.

The guy at Agave.

It was Happy Hour all over town, but the bar looked empty except for a couple of old men in VFW hats drinking one-dollar beers, staring up at the bowling program on the TV in the back. The TV over the bar was blaring the horse races. The bartender was lining up bottles in the fridge with a vengeance, stocking up for a party that would never happen.

It was not a place Hank would ordinarily catch himself dead in.

But he was desperate.

How do we do this? he whispered to the one-armed