Authors: Carol Weekes
The Umbrella Man felt an electrical rush move through him. Lightening cut the sky in a fury of sparks and within those sparks he saw the faces of his superiors, cast in a temporary portal, watching his progress, warning him that he’d best be successful. His diseased heart sank. He was being tracked. So, they knew. Then the portal snapped shut; not that it would have done him any good to attempt re-entry without the missing DNA. He had one chance to retrieve it, soon, or he would run out of time.
* * *
Drew carried the laundry upstairs, glad that Bonnie had decided to cut him some slack and let him do his own thing. He flipped on the light switches in every room and the corridor. He strained, listening. The damned thing could be anywhere. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. It had to be found, otherwise chaos would begin in so many different ways. What might attract it, he wondered. Then, an idea came to him. Meat. It sought blood and meat. He stole downstairs and quietly opened the refrigerator, seeking until he found what he sought: Bonnie had taken out chops for tomorrow night, but now they had leftovers. He took one of the chops and carried it back upstairs, then laid the raw meat on a piece of paper towel in the center of the corridor. He’d have to scoop it up if Bonnie started upstairs. He wouldn’t be able to explain how this somehow correlated to a wasp inside the house.
He stepped back inside the edge of his bedroom, not seeing the fang bit anywhere, and watched, moving his gaze from around him to the corridor on a regular basis. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Twelve. He sighed, frustrated. He’d been wrong to bring it home, but he couldn’t have just cast it out into the night where it could anywhere, possibly reproduce.
Then he saw it. It darted, quick as a mouse across the carpet, moving out of the guest bedroom, tearing along the hall, its single projectile tugging, frantic, like a one-legged man in a hopping contest. It aimed for Dennis’s bedroom. Then it stopped short and wavered, trembling a little. He noted its fang rise up, the tip glistening as a drop of tinted fluid fell from the fang. It was still somehow generating poison. If it lit into skin, it would hurt, if not kill. But now it edged in jagged increments towards the chop lying like a sacrificial lamb in the center of the carpet. Drew held his breath.
“Drew? What are you doing?” Bonnie called from downstairs.
The fang stopped its movement and dropped, as if debating what to do next. Drew bit into his lip, angered. Perfect timing. He’d almost had the thing. He debated. Answer her or stay silent?
“Drew?”
“Oh for God’s sake, I hear you!” he yelled, unable to contain his irritation.
“What the hell are you doing up there?”
He saw it shoot into Dennis’s room, the chop now a moot point.
“Fuck!”
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” she continued. He heard the springs in the chair cushion squeak as she got up. “You’ve been weird since you got home.”
He went to tell her to stay downstairs when something solid slammed into the side of their house behind him, rocking it. Drew fell back into his bedroom. Bonnie screamed. The waylaid fang tore into the corridor again, going for Drew’s feet. Drew shrieked and leapt up onto the bed just as the fang reached the doorway. It came at him, moving up the bed cover and across the duvet. Drew went to slap at it when the fang passed by him and fell to the other side of the carpet, tapping madly as if directing some skewed form of Morse code. Drew twisted around and understood why. He saw the Umbrella Man, dark coat spread out along the glass of the bedroom window like a crushed moth, dark face pressed into the cracked glass, its eyes burning like coals. It opened its mouth and its tongue, the same strip of leathery death that had almost gotten him in the truck’s cab earlier, slid along the glass, undulating back and forth like a snake moving through water. Glass from the ruined window fell in an explosion of jagged shards and the Umbrella Man, its dark umbrella held above its head spread the fabric of its umbrella wide…and Drew knew that this was no town lunatic with a broken black umbrella. These were wings. He saw pale bone move under the translucent dark flesh as the thing stretched dark lips back from darker gums and hissed at him, revealing its broken lines of teeth around its probing tongue.
“You have something of mine,” it told him.
“You can have it back. It’s right there.”
“Who did you tell about me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone a thing.”
“You lie.”
The orphaned fang leapt into its father’s hands and Drew watched as the Umbrella Man aligned the tongue tips with the stray fang, absorbing it into him. The tongue retracted, the dark man swallowed, and when the tongue tip lashed out again, it held three tips now, rejuvenated, each pulsating and eager, each glistening with death fluid.
“Drew, I think a tree fell against the house…” Bonnie making her way up the stairs. “Why are all the lights on? Drew? Why is there a piece of raw meat in the center of the hallway?”
She entered the room. Rain gusted about them, drawing in leaves, torn grasses, stray bits of paper, and the ink of the night beyond.
“You almost won,” the Umbrella Man told them. “But I got it first. I win.”
Bonnie screamed. She screamed and ran for Drew.
“What is it? Drew, what is it?”
“I don’t know,” Drew pulled her to him. He addressed the Umbrella Man. “You have your fang back. Let us go. All we want is our lives.”
“And so do I,” it told them. “And your souls.” It stretched its wings out and shook off water, then retracted and folded the wings neatly behind its back. Its clothing hung in shards, its hat was gone, revealing a high, thin forehead of ashen flesh that ended in a point from which long strands of moving flesh circled its head, caressing it. “So do I.”
* * *
In nightmares, the work involved removing the soul from the body, encouraging it to wander in dreams, dare, seek until it entered the vulnerable landscape of astral travel—and then they would shut the return entrance to the flesh, severing the life cord once the essence was caught, then transported back to their world for myriad purposes. But this was a prize; he had two within the flesh and if he could just find a portal at the right electrical moment in this mega-storm, he would bring them both; flesh and soul, nutmeat and shell, meat and sauce, back as offerings for those he knew watched everything through the night. He would be applauded and rewarded.
And then it came; a flash of lightening so formidable that it opened the sky and tore into the parallel realms once more. A burst of wind so foul that it stunk of minions that feast on decaying flesh came to them, and he knew—here was his chance. Grab them and go now, while the night and those beyond waited.
Bonnie went to run and the thing’s tongue lashed out like a whip, one of the fangs catching her squarely beneath her jaw and hauling her back like a fish on a taut line.
“You son of a—” Drew began then saw the second of the three fangs unravel itself from the host tongue and come for him. Footsteps behind him in the corridor. His heart sank.
“Dad? What’s going on?”
“Run Dennis!” Drew screamed, desperate. He’d brought this thing here because he’d brought a part of it into his home. He saw Bonnie collapse and turn pale as the first of the three proboscises began to drink, drawing her life force from her. The fang tip penetrated her flesh, the texture of the tongue creating a scratching noise as it slid further into her like a finger probing an orifice.
But his son didn’t run. Drew saw eighteen-year-old Dennis walk into the room, his face blank and curious, then curl in instant horror. And before he could speak, the second proboscis lashed out on a lengthening finger of tongue and hooked into Dennis’s forearm where it hauled him forward, his skin tearing in the process. Dennis screamed as Drew leapt at the Umbrella Man, his fists pummeling, to no avail.
Drew did the only thing he could think of doing. He stepped into a puddle of water on the floor where the Umbrella Man stood drinking from his wife and son. He ripped an electrical cord from the end of a live bedside lamp, sending electricity through him, his unconscious family, and into the Umbrella Man. In the last seconds of his life, Drew realized that he’d saved his family at the final second: they would all die, yes, but they’d be safely removed from their bodies before they could be confiscated by this walking nightmare.
“You should have stayed home on a rainy night,” he said to the Umbrella Man as fire burst through them all in a buzzing charge of fury. He had a microsecond to see the Umbrella Man’s eyes burst in a bubbling mess, but before, he had the satisfaction of seeing that the creature had understood: it was going to perish, its goals unattained, and it was going to go back to where its kind came from without them. They’d crossed the gate of freedom at the final, teetering second. Then Drew blacked out completely.
The house fell silent. Smoke filled its rooms. The lone chop in the hallway turned black and curled in on itself. Somewhere, out in the stormy sky, three pinpoints of light traveled higher than the clouds, moving together, coalescing colors of calm against the storm. And beyond those clouds, bits of the Umbrella Man’s body rained down in frenzied pieces into the Earth’s realm as he was torn apart for failing. Echoes of his screams were heard as shrieks of wind as branches cracked and rivers overflowed their banks. Some school kids would find bits of him the next day, charred pieces of unidentifiable, hardened substance that would later be claimed as ‘perhaps part of a passing meteor storm’ for they consisted of a geology not yet identifiable on this planet.
And the world would sleep a little easier…for a while.
The End
Dear Readers:
Yes, this afterword is for you. Firstly, to say that I appreciate your having purchased a copy of this book is an understatement. I am greatly indebted to your generosity and reading interest. Now, on to the creepier things because that is what those of us who read (and write) horror are truly interested in, isn’t it?
You may wonder what inspired my novel
Dead Reflections
.
I have a twisted sense of humor, dark and about as bent and misshapen as a weather vane caught within the vortex of an F5 tornado. People have always told me that I see things ‘differently.’ It’s a condition called ‘being a writer’ and I can’t tell you if it’s a result of having fallen on my head several times while learning to ride a bicycle at the age of seven (and back then our road consisted of dirt and cruel nuggets of gravel that salivated at the thought of bare skin making a connection) or if it was just the way I was born. Regardless, it is what it is and it has made for some interesting stories.
I wanted to write a haunted house story, but also wanted to incorporate my basic fear of mirrors into the tale. My family and I lived in an actual haunted house for almost thirteen years and the mirrors in that house portrayed the movement of ghosts far too many times; sometimes it would be a hint of a transparent profile sliding along the glass. At other times the face of someone long dead would look back at us, the eyes dark globes and full of malice. Some of the ghosts were benevolent, but this particular one was not and the incidents we encountered in that house over the years removed any lingering residual doubts about the existence of ghosts.
Objects placed on countertops or furniture would disappear, only to reappear in the exact
spot sometimes moments later. Taps would turn on and off on their own accord. Footsteps would stop halfway down the stairwell at night. Pets would growl and stare at ‘nothing.’
Haunted houses have a reputation for being placed back on the selling market far too often with turnaround times often a year or less. The house in
Dead Reflections
is no exception, ensuring its continued success in acquiring more unsuspecting victims for years to come.
I hope the stories have given you chills, thrills, and at least a few nights of tossing and turning, if not downright sleeplessness. After all, that’s why you buy horror, isn’t it? You want to be scared. You want that trickle of a shiver that feels like a cool, dead fingernail traipsing down your back. You want to meet the monster face-to-face, its smile quivering, wet, and full of sharp, decayed teeth. You want to travel on that road that goes nowhere and everywhere all at once, safe within the confines of your fictional vehicle…or so you think.
I’ll leave you now, to ponder these concepts that begin like dark little nuggets of suggestion which eventually bloom into stories. When night beckons and you leave your hands to rest upon your bedcovers, don’t be too surprised if something tenuous and slightly damp tickles your fingers, wanting to play during the wee hours. It will be waiting, in the mirror, at the edge of your driveway, or in the fold of sheets near the foot of your bed. Always. Sleep well, dear readers.
Carol Weekes
December 27, 2012