Read The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman Online
Authors: Tim Wellman
Tags: #horror, #short stories, #demons, #stories, #collection, #spooky, #appalachian, #young girls, #scary stories
The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman
This is a work of fiction. Names,
places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living
or dead, names, places, businesses, trademarks, or events and
incidents is purely coincidental.
Special Smashwords Edition Copyright ©
2013
All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be copied, reproduced, or distributed in any form, print
or electronically, without the expressed, written consent of the
author, with the exception of brief excerpts used in reviews and
news articles. Free copies are available, so please tell your
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Contents
These are horror stories, stories that take
place mostly in my home town and around the area of western West
Virginia where I grew up and still live. Some are graphic, some
subtle... all can be considered
Appalachian Gothic
. These
are the collected stories, all the horror stories I've written to
date. Some are good, some not so good, but a collected work always
has that issue.
The stories in this collection represent
different levels of horror... some are simply psychological
thrillers, some are more direct and bloody, but all are meant for
mature readers. They also vary in length. Two stories are not
stories at all, but are novelettes and I was able to bring out a
more novel-like feel in those.
I hope you enjoy all the stories. At some point,
some of these have appeared in anthologies, or were accepted to
anthologies, only to have the publisher lose interest (a peril of
internet 'publishers'). I got tired of playing the game, so, I got
the idea for this book. A story dump... but hey, there are
sometimes real treasures found at the dump, right?
If you want to thank me for the free book, you
can purchase one of my younger readers' novels or my new steampunk
novel,
Milk Of Ruin
. Stop by my website, http://dreadly.net,
for more info!
The old red brick house stood alone in a
landscape of fruit trees and tall grass, planted in the solid red
clay hills of western West Virginia even before it became a state.
Currently it had sat abandoned for many years after the last owner,
Lydia Wells, disappeared under less than apparent circumstances. It
was rumored the old woman simply tired of life and decided to walk
into the creek at the western edge of the property, and was washed
away in one of the frequent flash floods. She was, by most
accounts, well over one hundred years old, perhaps even, though
only in stories told by children, as old as the house itself. No
one knew the manner of her disappearance for sure, but since the
creek had claimed other lives in the past, it was the easiest to
blame, and there were no signs of struggle in the house and no
valuables were found missing according to newspaper accounts at the
time.
Though the story, and the idea of something
supernatural, spooked Allan Crum a little, his job was to evaluate
and catalog everything in the house for his father's auction
business and it was too damned hot to allow any further pondering
of ghost stories. The family members, all
distant
relatives
with no emotional ties, had decided that simply auctioning off all
the contents of the house would be the best thing for everyone
involved, and then the house could be cleaned and painted, and
quickly sold. The idea was to get something from it before it all
fell to total ruin.
"Why does dad always give me the worst
assignments?" he said as he pushed the door open and stepped
inside. "And he knows these old houses scare me." He shivered. It
was a mess, with papers, some, no doubt, over a hundred years old,
strewn about the floor, old photographs, pages from books... he was
walking on a carpet of paper, too ruined to be of any value now.
"And it had to be in the middle of fucking July." He was already
sweating and thought seriously about returning to his car until the
evening, but the old house had no electricity, so all of his work
needed to be done during daylight hours. The room was well lit now,
though, its huge old windows along the eastern wall with their
tattered curtains letting in the noonday sun.
He took a picture of the room, and then
concentrated on a couple of pieces of the old furniture. He took a
small roll of red tape from his pocket and peeled off a strip and
stuck it to the sofa. "Red means it's off to the garbage dump for
you, my friend." He looked around again and smiled. "It might be
easier to just paint this entire room red." He walked to the
fireplace mantle and picked up a few things: picture frames,
Staffordshire dogs, Pilgrim Glass menagerie animals. Nothing was
terribly expensive, but by the boxful they would add up. He shook
his head. It always amazed him, the small, petty things that help
make up a life. Above the mantle was a huge portrait of a soldier,
perhaps from the First World War. He was a handsome man with a thin
mustache and sharply angled face, something like what he imaged
every old soldier would look like.
He took a few steps back and took several
photographs of the smaller items. He looked up through the camera
lens and started to line up a short of the old soldier, but as he
did something curious happened. There was a little girl dressed in
a white shift and holding an old doll, standing next to the
soldier, her arm around his leg. He was, at first, startled, but
snapped the picture, then looked over the top of the camera. There
was no little girl. He looked through the camera again, and there
she was. He was a bit confused, but quickly decided the little girl
was just faded and the polarization of the lens brought her out,
even though he couldn't see her with his naked eye. "Damn, that
spooked me for a sec," he said. "But maybe we can catalog it as a
ghost picture or something and make a few more bucks from it." He
squinted, then closed one eye and convinced himself he could just
make out the figure of the little girl without the aid of the
camera.
He spun around quickly because he heard
laughter. It was from a small child, and sounded as if she were
running off in a playful way, but there was no one there. The
direction he thought the sound had come was blocked by a solid
wall, as old and weary as the rest of the house. He chalked it up
to the spooky painting affecting his reason. "See?" he said. "This
is why I never liked horror movies." But, even though he knew it
wasn't real, it caused sweat to bead up on his forehead and trail
down his nose in rivulets. "Come on, Allan, get your shit together,
man. This is happening because you
think
it's happening. Be
strong! Think of naked women or something."
He walked through the large doorway and into the
dining room. It was relatively intact and apart from the dust, not
littered like the front room. The dinnerware was still on the
shelves, displayed like trophies; the silverware, unfortunately
plated, was still in the drawers. He took a few photographs of the
cabinets, old country style solid pine, worth little more than
scrap since the whole country kitchen fad had died out. He pulled
out a few of the drawers but there was nothing of value...
flashlights, a staple gun, broken sun glasses. He chuckled. He had
the same things in his own dining room cabinet drawers. The old oak
dining table and chairs would bring a bit of cash, though. He heard
the laughter again. This time he was certain. It was real. He ran
back through the doorway and just caught a glimpse of what appeared
to be a very young girl running up the old stairway, but she was
gone by the time he got to the foot of the stairs.
"Hey!" he yelled. "You're not supposed to be in
here!" He climbed a couple of steps and tried to look around the
corner of the second floor hallway. "Little girl? Did you hear me?
You can't play in here; this house is too dangerous!"
There was no response so he walked the rest of
the way up. There was no sign of her. He wasn't sure what he was
looking for, a dropped doll, candy, dirty footprints, an arrow
traced out in the dust, but he found nothing. He turned to his left
at the top and looked down the hallway. There were four doors and a
large window at the end of the hall, but the layer of dust on the
hardwood floor showed no sign of any disturbance. "Well, Allan,
congrats!" he said. "You are officially fucking nuts, now,
dude."
He looked over his shoulder, the hallway in that
direction bent around a corner at the end, but it too was salted
with a layer of pristine dust. The only possible place a small
child could be hiding was behind the door right at the top of the
stairs, but he was almost certain whatever he saw had turned left.
He shrugged and then turned the door handle and pushed the door
open. It was pitch black inside. "Is there no window in this room?"
He opened the door wider and some of the darkness disappeared but
it was still impossible to make anything out. "Hey? Little girl?
Did you come in here?" There was no answer. He snapped a flash
photograph and then looked at it on his camera screen. It was an
empty room as far as he could tell. But down on the main floor, in
the dining room, he heard the same laughter.
This time he literally ran down the stairs and
burst through the doorway of the room, but again, nothing, an empty
room. "God dammit!" He thought for a moment, and then he held his
camera to his eye. Nothing had changed, still just the room... but
no! She was there, beside the old cupboard. She was a young girl,
maybe only four or five years old, barefoot, dressed in white, with
her long blonde hair loosely tied back with a white ribbon. She was
smiling, but seemed reserved and not quite sure of the situation.
He lowered his camera and the room was once again empty.
"Insanity," he said. "Definitely heat stroke." She laughed. He
looked through the camera again and she was still there. She raised
her hand, a sly look on her face, and waved slightly, as if she
were trying to decide whether to make contact or not. "You're
real?"
She nodded. "Are you?" She didn't seem
completely sure she should speak.
He looked over the camera again. "Can you still
see me?" When he looked back through the camera he jumped back. She
was standing much closer.
She was nodding. "I can see you," she said. "The
glass filters my energy so you can see me."
"I... you are a ghost?" he said. He assumed he
was having a heat stroke and nothing he was experiencing was real,
but he decided to indulge himself in his madness.
She smiled, but instantly her hair turned black
and her eyes became solid white. "No, I am one of the
others
," she said. "And you are not!"
She took another step closer and he took his eye
away from the camera. She wasn't there. But, he knew she
was
there. He suddenly felt a pain in his side, not excruciating, but
noticeable and it felt like something was
moving
inside of
him. He looked back through the camera. "Stop!" The little girl's
hand was through his shirt and flesh, moving around. He backed
away, nearly stumbling, but the wall righted him, and the little
girl's hand came out of his body, holding a small blue stone. There
was blood, he was bleeding profusely, but as he glanced down
without the help of the camera, there was nothing out of place.
"You have many of these," she said, holding up
the jewel in her little bloody hand. "A soul stone." She then
pushed it between her lips and then disappeared with a laugh.
She was gone. He searched the room with the
camera, and without, but there was no sign. He lifted his shirt and
there were no marks, no signs at all that anything had happened.
"Am I okay, now?" he said. "Holy fuck, that was weird!" He smiled
and noticed a slight breeze blowing through the front door. "Ah, it
must have cooled off just enough to break my fever?" He laughed.
"Okay, need to spend fifteen minutes with my car air conditioner
and then get back in here and get this shit done!" He walked back
into the front room and through the open front door, but his hand
was shaking so badly he could hardly fish his keys out of his
pocket.