Tag: horror

acheron – robert boucheron

~ South Broadway Ghost Society ~ Leave a comment

acheron.jpg

At five o’clock, Arthur Lothbury put on a gray felt fedora, inserted a fresh white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket, and stepped out the front door for his daily stroll.

The town was a cluster of brick and frame dwellings of the 1800s. Located in a hollow, on a railroad line that was no longer active, it had three churches, a dozen shops, a post office, a school repurposed as a senior center, and a white-columned filling station with a porte cochère. At the center, where two main streets crossed, the town hall boasted a mansard roof and a clock tower. The tallest structure in town, with a face on all four sides, the clock tower rose above the trees like a sentinel.

Arthur kept the clock tower in view, though he was unlikely to get lost in the town where he was born. He generally walked for exercise, but this afternoon he dawdled. His gaze wandered left and right. It was early spring, still bleak but mild. Buds swelled on the trees. Cold weather had delayed them. Slanting rays of the sun lit the quiet streets. No one else was about, which was odd for the end of a weekday.

He stopped to examine a flowering shrub that overhung a picket fence, as though eager to escape. The yard was unkempt, in a town that was proud of its gardens. How could such a thing happen? Who lived in this house? He knew many neighbors, but not all. In retirement, he was losing track of changes in the population.

This house must have a tenant, someone who did not care for the place. A deflated ball and a broken toy lay on the weedy lawn. Rolled newspapers littered the porch, dusty and yellowed. Maybe no one lived here.

Arthur moved on. It was an effort to put one foot in front of the other. Yet the day had passed in idleness—light housekeeping, some reading, an hour at his desk paying bills, a letter to a relative. What had he done to be worn out?

A single man with many friends and few responsibilities, he ought to enjoy this stage of life, an endless stretch of leisure. But contentment was elusive. He urged himself to walk faster. Chin up and eyes peeled! At any moment, a friend or stranger was likely to cross his path. He would need to say something cheerful, a word of greeting. But the town was deserted, as if Arthur had missed an order to evacuate. He looked straight ahead and spurred his flank. But his feet dragged.

Coming to an alley, he stopped to peer down its length. He seldom walked in this part of town. He knew it like the back of his hand but not this alley. It bordered the railroad track—that was the trouble. The sun trembled on the horizon. The alley was already in shade. Lined by sheds and fences, it promised things of interest—an old wagon, a gnarled tree, a forgotten bicycle like a sketch of lines and circles.

Arthur strolled down the middle, over gravel and grass. The alley was long—he could not see the end—and growing dark. He tried not to scuff his shoes. He hoped he would not step in a puddle. Not a living creature met his eye, not so much as a sparrow. Then a small shape shifted. A cat crouched a few feet ahead.

Cats lurked all over town. Some allowed him to pet them, some rolled at his feet, and some fled. This one stared coldly. Whoever said that cats were curious? Another step, and the cat disappeared, perhaps through a hole in a fence.

Dusk came on. Was it so late? Arthur looked around and did not see the clock tower. How long had he been walking? He had left his watch at home. Was this a blind alley? To turn around would be an admission of defeat. Despite fatigue, he pressed on.

The alley ended at last in a building with a passage through its ground floor. It was now night. At the far end of the unlit passage was a gate, with open space visible through the bars. Should he enter? What if the gate was locked? He was too tired to retrace his steps. Go forward and hope for the best.

The passage was empty. Beyond the gate was a street. He grasped the gate and pulled. In the hollow space of the vaulted passage, the rusty hinges groaned. Arthur flinched at what sounded like a voice, the drawn-out syllable “woe.” Arthur stepped through the arch, and the gate clicked shut. On impulse, he tried it. Locked.

The street was built up on one side. The other was open to the railroad. Arthur had not been here for years. Shops were closed or boarded up. The pavement was cracked and littered. He wanted to sit, but where? A short distance away stood the old train station, abandoned. A light burned inside, the only light in this gloomy wasteland. He trudged toward it.

A low rumble made itself known. The earth shook. The rumble grew and grew to a roar, until it was unmistakable. A train! Arthur reached the platform as the train arrived. In a stupor of exhaustion, he watched it slow. It looked like an excursion train from the century before, an antique restored to service for a single run. It screeched to a stop, a door opened, and a stair dropped at his feet. Where was the conductor? The side of the coach bore a name: “Acheron.”

Was that the destination? Arthur grasped the metal railing and climbed aboard.

hourglass

Robert Boucheron grew up in Syracuse and Schenectady, New York. He worked as an architect in New York and Charlottesville, Virginia, where he has lived since 1987. His short stories and essays appear in Bellingham Review, Fiction International, London Journal of Fiction, Porridge Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines.

Photo: Adam Bixby

silence – annette freeman

~ South Broadway Ghost Society ~ Leave a comment

silence

I was criticised by any number of people for what I did to the old piano. When my sculpture was exhibited at the gallery — all dismantled frames and twisted strings and bereft keys — I was criticised. Oh, yes. People at the Opening drew in shocked breaths and waggled their champagne glasses. The word desecration was used; also destructive and obscene. Obscene? I’ll tell you what’s obscene — having to put up with someone who is supposed to have moved on. My sculpture was large and it used most of the innards of the piano in a constructivist-style thing intended to reference a mound or hill. Like a burial mound. I even included an ironic plastic rose on the top, a dirty pink thing, to reference a wreath, but I don’t think the art lovers at the opening got that. They certainly mourned the piano, though.

“What did you have against that poor piano?” a tipsy art-type in an old-fashioned bow-tie asked me. He’d gone for whisky.

“How long have you got?” I replied, and sipped my champagne, leaving lipstick on the glass, blood red, which is ironic also, since the death of the piano was under discussion. In all truth, it wasn’t the piano itself that had earned my ire, but its former owner. I’ll tell you what happened and you can judge for yourself if I was justified in dismantling the thing.

When I moved in with Simon I kept my studio in the inner city. His place wasn’t far away but it was an upscale building, one of those new apartment blocks. They had CCTV cameras everywhere: didn’t want any undesirables, deplorables, muddying the terrazzo floors or shooting up in the shrubbery. You wouldn’t have thought that such a new build, where a year or so earlier there had been only a depthless mud-hole gouged into the land, could harbour any wraiths from the past. But my theory is — and I have reason to know — that the wraiths preserve their longevity by attaching their icy tendrils to objects, and objects can be moved around, as was this blighted piano. Simon told me that it had been a family piano for decades. In fact, it was an old wooden-framed thing, out of date and untuneable. Were you imagining an elegant baby grand with a rosewood cabinet? No, this was an old upright, scratched from many moves, barely playable. It had candle sconces screwed to its front. Candles! How long ago did people play the piano by candlelight? The dark ages?

I shouldn’t make flippant remarks about the dark. That piano and I were to share some sombre times. Simon and I had been together for about a year when I moved in with him. I was sure he was my soul-mate. I still am, and if he ever forgives me — or, as I prefer to think of it, understands me — I think we could be happy. If you notice an edge to my voice while I’m telling what happened, it’s because of Simon. When he found the piano gone, and I told him what I’d done with it, he went into a funk. He refused to come to the Opening at the gallery and so he hasn’t seen what a far, far better thing it has become. Those critics who could stomach the dismemberment have been raving about it. My agent is fielding offers. I have hopes that it’ll go to Abu Dhabi.

Simon goes away on business trips often, mostly to the US, for a week or two at a time. He packs a couple of his sharp suits into a folding suit bag and jets off to do whatever international-finance-types do. As for me, I’m a night owl and often come home late from my studio to the empty terrazzo-floored lobby of the apartment block. I rarely run across anyone from the other apartments. It’s an echoey lobby; there’s not much in it except a couple of Eames-replica chairs that I’ve never seen anyone sit on. There are security cameras with red cyclonic eyes staring down from the corners of the ceiling.

The old piano was an incongruous piece of furniture in Simon’s place, interior-decoration-wise, so naturally I asked him about it.

“It was Eliza’s,” he said, as if admitting something he’d rather I didn’t know.

Eliza was his ex. They hadn’t been married, exactly, unless you count that hybrid Buddhist-Hindu-hippy ceremony they went through in Kathmandu. Then Eliza was lost on the trail while they were hiking to Tengboche. Lost, as in never found. Almost certainly she went over the edge of a ravine into the Dudh Kosi and her body swept away downstream, though it was never recovered. Simon spent a long time hoping. That whole incident was years ago. He’d had two or three girlfriends between Eliza and me. But still he’d dragged the piano on at least two moves that I knew of. It sat against the wall of the living room, looking across at the Léger print on the opposite wall. It seemed to me to be constantly watching us as we lounged in front of the TV, or drank cocktails on the balcony, or slow-danced on the rug, listening to jazz. It appeared to me to disapprove of jazz.

Simon told me, when I pressed him, that the piano had first belonged to Eliza’s great-aunt, a spinster who’d lived in Melbourne and had gone to India as a missionary. Apparently she was revered in Eliza’s family. That was in the days when proselytizing was applauded. The great-aunt was musical. She played not only the piano but also the violin. That was all that Simon knew about this ephemeral person from the past, the musical missionary, Eliza’s relative. The piano was then bequeathed though Eliza’s relations — aunt, cousin, father — until, as each of them died, it eventually settled on her. She played, quite well. I’ve heard her. She favours eerie things, like Messiaen — at least that’s what I thought it was when I heard her. Yes, I’ve heard that piano play on many nights when I was alone in the apartment. Did I mention that we were on the thirty-fifth floor? An aerie. It was as if angels were malevolently plucking harp strings where they had no right.

All of this sounds fanciful, I know, and to start with I thought so too. The first time I heard the playing it was about 2 AM. I got up and marched out of the bedroom switching on all the lights. But the notes merely faded at my approach and so I assumed that I was imagining the whole thing. But the playing in the wee hours went on, only when Simon wasn’t there, of course. Obviously it was meant for me alone. I was targeted. I took to leaving all the lamps on in the living room but it made no difference. The music still woke me — and the lamps went out.

Naturally I told Simon what was going on. I tried to convince him to get rid of the piano, maybe pass it on to another of Eliza’s relatives. He actually said that he wanted to keep it in case Eliza came back! She has come back, I said grimly. Then he went all solicitous on me. He said I was just having some residual delusions. I wasn’t long out of rehab. When I met Simon I was doing far too much junk for my own good, and it was he, bless him, who’d got me into a program. Now I was clean, off the stuff, and my work was blossoming. I owe Simon so much. He’s the love of my life.

The night-time playing continued sporadically, always when I was alone in the apartment.

“Get rid of it, please!” I was begging him now.

“Sweetheart, it’s in your head. I can’t let it go. It’s my only reminder of Eliza.”

“Can’t you just keep her photo or something?” He laughed.

“Sure, but what if she comes back and I don’t have her piano? It was her most precious possession.”

That was the second time he’d said that about her coming back. If she came back, where would that leave me? This point didn’t seem to concern him as he stared across the room at the piano, and I saw in his gaze some past in which I had no part. My first impulse was to remind him that Eliza was pretty certainly dead, and so not coming back for her piano, but I stopped. Of course she was back, as I’d told him the first time we had this conversation. I couldn’t get through to him.

The playing went on. It was creeping me out. One night I changed tactics and tried spying unseen on the piano. I put my eye up to the gap in the bedroom door, which I’d left ajar. But when I looked the playing stopped abruptly. I thought I saw something slip out the front door. I definitely heard a click as the door closed. This wraith came in the front door? It didn’t happen like that in stories.

After the next night of ghostly playing, I went down to the security booth in the basement carpark. I knew the guys there; I often spoke to them when I parked my VW Beetle — they liked my car. I asked if we could take a look at the CCTV footage of the lobby from the night before. I told them I thought I’d heard noises around 2 AM, which was true. We had to go backwards and forwards a bit, but we found it. It was eerie to watch: a long stretch of silent emptiness, the cameras watching creepily, pointed at the lobby doors, the lift, the fire stairs. Twice, figures of other residents crossed the floor, silent footsteps, silent arrival of the lift, silent opening and closing of the lift doors. Then, finally, a figure emerged just as silently from the fire stairs door. The guys were amazed — “that thing’s alarmed,” they said. But no alarm sounded, there was just the CCTV silent soundtrack. The figure was frustratingly indistinct. I was sure it was female, but the security boys argued about that for a while.

“It’s wearing a cap.”

“That’s a skirt, for sure.”

“Or trousers — can’t tell. It’s not clear enough.”

The footage had been clear enough earlier to recognise the legitimate residents. We stopped and started it but we couldn’t get a better picture. The figure disappeared as silently as it had come. We didn’t see the lift arrive, but we could see the illuminated floor numbers marking its ascent from the lobby, then stopping at Level 35.

After that I dismantled the piano. I took out its guts and moved strings, hammers, felts surreptitiously to my car bit by bit. I prised off all its keys with pliers and took them away, keeping the lid on my work so Simon wouldn’t notice what was going on. It took a while, I can tell you. Of course the playing had to stop then. I thought about leaving the empty thing there, just a carcass with its ridiculous candle sconces. But two things changed my mind. The first was the imperative of the work — as I brought these infused and laden objects together in my studio I saw that they needed more bulk, the bulk of the piano cabinet, the wood, the structure. And more detail: the pedal, the hinges, and those sconces. The second thing that prompted me to completely dismantle the piano was the final occurrence of that eerie Messiaen, playing in the silence of 2 AM, despite the keys and strings being entwined in my studio two suburbs away.

At the Opening, an art agent came over and asked me about the piece. He was wearing a dishdasha and a keffiyeh. I smiled winningly.

“What is the piece entitled?” he asked.

“I call it ’Silence.’”

“And what is that strange smell it emits?”

SBGS December

Annette Freeman is a writer living in Sydney, Australia. She was born and raised in Tasmania, which she suspects is reflected in her writing in ways too mysterious to analyse. She has a Masters of Creative Writing from the University of Sydney, the support of a terrific writing group, and boundless respect for a fine sentence.

eyes – dave owens

~ South Broadway Ghost Society ~ Leave a comment

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Two sour faced guards escorted teenager Daniel Warren into the interview cell, shackled him to the metal grommets bolted to the table, and pushed him down into a chair. The boy’s orange prisoner suit did not fit, but someone, perhaps one of the guards, rolled the cuffs and sleeves up so he wouldn’t trip and fall. The lock clattered after the door slammed shut.

To the state appointed psychologist Raoul Hadras, the young man who sat in silence across from him at the table appeared not unlike many of the other troubled youths of this generation – thin, only a few weeks past his fifteenth birthday, a dozen pimples on his face, and expressive brown eyes. A shock of blond hair completed the image.
Daniel murdered his father and mother if the police report proved true. After his arrest, he demanded the death penalty from the court appointed attorney, and created quite a scene in the courtroom when the attorney plead not guilty on his behalf. The judge also thought the demand strange and questioned the boy’s sanity.

Most other youths Raoul evaluated often claimed insanity, and enacted performances that would make movie stars jealous – anything to avoid justice.

Daniel sat with yes turned down, and did not speak.

“May I call you Dan?” The doctor made a note in the evaluation folder.

“Sure. Why not? You wanna find out why I killed my old man.” The boy fidgeted in the chair, but did not try to escape the restraints. “I wanna die.”

“I must determine if you are fit to stand trial.”

“Yeah.” The voice came slow and sullen.

“So. May I call you Dan?” Raoul’s question, fashioned to create a familiar, less formal atmosphere, dated back to the time of Freud. The ploy worked sometimes, but sometimes it did not.

No answer. Raoul tried again with a gentle tone in his voice. “May I call you Dan?”

“I don’t care what you call me. Send me back to my cell,” he snapped back.

“Sometimes circumstances cause us to do things we wouldn’t normally do. Would you please tell me about what happened?”

“He deserved it. Am I done?”

“Not quite. Why do you say he deserved it?” His question probed for anything to free the boy from his defensive shell.

“He beat me and my mother up all the time. When I was a little kid, he’d jerk me up by my arm and whip me with that leather belt of his. I hated the belt. I got whipped even if I didn’t do nothin’.”

“Your mother too?” Situations like the boy described usually meant the abuse affected other family members. Raoul understood the answer.

“Yeah, she got it bad. If she tried to protect me, he’d beat her with his fists. She didn’t tell people what he did, but behind her back everyone talked about her black eyes and the bruises all over her arms, and face. I got into fights with kids who said things about her.”

“Many fights?” The question sought to let deep emotions rise. He made another note in the folder.

Dan avoided the question. “My mother. I loved her. I didn’t kill her like the police said. I didn’t do it.”

“But you did kill your father?”

“Yeah.” His head rolled back and he stared at the ceiling. “Like I said. He had it comin’.”
Trigger point. The father. Raoul wondered what other triggers might provoke Dan to continue his story. “So you blame your father for your crime?”

Dan kept his gaze focused on the ceiling. “Everyone hated him.”

“Everyone?”

His head fell forward and his eyes locked onto Raoul’s face. “Everyone.”

“Please explain.”

The face softened for a moment. “His eyes frightened everyone. One of my friends, Jimmy, came to the house one night after school.” Dad screamed at him to get out.”

“That’s all your father said?”

“Uh, huh. He stared at Jimmy with those cold blue eyes – they could see right through you. When I try to sleep I see them. They’re always in my dreams. I didn’t like to sleep. Neighbors avoided him. They’d go to the other side of the street when they saw him comin’.”

“It’s called post traumatic stress, Dan. He frightened you the night you killed him?”

“I came home from school late. I heard him telling from the street. When I went inside the house everything was broken. Smashed chairs, curtains ripped off the windows. I went into the kitchen. Dad grabbed the refrigerator and threw it on the floor. He swung at Mom and missed, but his second punch hit her in the stomach. She fell down. I went over to her and tried to help, but he grabbed me by the shirt and threw me into the counter by the sink. Then he turned back to Mom. I knew he was gonna hurt her more.”

His eyes smoldered with tears and his head dropped to his chest.

“Relax for a minute, Dan. I understand why you are frightened. I want to help.”

Dan disregarded Raoul’s comment and continued. “I got up and took one of the broken chair’s legs and swung it as hard as I could. I hit him on the back of his head. He turned and started to get up, but I hit him again. I hit him two more times before he fell. I went to Mom. She said ‘Run Danny, run. He’ll kill you for sure if he catches you. Please run. I love you.’ Last time I heard Mom’s voice.” He jerked his head to the side and shook it. His wet cheeks glistened in the light of the single bulb that swung from a wire above his head.

Raoul took a handkerchief from his pocket and went to the other side of the table to wipe the boy’s tears. “Calm, calm. Nobody will hurt you while you’re with me.” Genuine sadness gripped the doctor and he felt his own eyes water. He thought to leave the handkerchief with Dan, but remembered the restraints and realized the pointlessness of such an act. He returned to his seat, sat in silence, while he made a few more notes in the folder.

Dan’s chin fell back onto his chest. His voice lowered and he mumbled, “Found the gun – Dad’s nine millimeter, in the stand by the bed where he kept it, made sure it was loaded, tucked it into my pants, and ran. I went across the street to Mrs. Thompson’s house. Her lights were off. She wasn’t home, so I ran around to the back, jumped the fence and hid under some cucumber vines. I tried to hold my breath, but was breathing too hard.” He swallowed, and waited a moment before he continued. “I thought he might hear my breathing so I crawled over the back fence and ran down the alley. There’s an old wooden shed there. I went in and hid behind some boxes.”

“And . . .” Raoul’s voice faded into a whisper.

“I heard his crazy screams. He was trying to find me. I kept as quiet as I could because I was scared more than ever before. I heard his shoes crunchin’ in the alley gravel. When I peeked through a crack in the wall I saw him standin’ outside the shed, I held my breath and hoped he wouldn’t hear me. I hoped he’d go away. He didn’t. He pushed through the broken door and came into the shed yelling ‘little bastard! I’ll break your neck and piss on you. Come on out coward!’”

The doctor’s voice became sympathetic for the first time since the interview began. “Now I understand.”

“After I made sure a round was in the chamber.” The boy continued as if he could not hold back the story. Tormented words gushed from his lips at a frantic pace. “I crawled out from behind the crates and held the gun where he couldn’t see it. He moved, and I shot him in the chest, but he wasn’t dead.” His voice quieted when he remembered the moment. “I shot him in the head two times, but he’s here with me. I have to die to get rid of him. I want to die! It’s the only way I can escape.”

The softness of the boy’s voice surprised Raoul. “You’ve no need to fear your father. I think you acted in self-defense and I’ll inform the authorities. I see a full life in front of you.” Raoul wrote another note in the folder. “Your father’s gone and he can’t hurt you anymore.” He raised his head and noticed the change in Dan’s eyes.

Cold, ice blue eyes glared at the doctor. “I’m not dead.”

sbgs cowskull

David Alan Owens’ stories and non-fiction works have been published internationally. From Alien Dimensions magazine, the High Strange Horror Anthology, and other periodicals, his audiences are as varied as his stories. He prefers to write science fiction, but sometimes a story of a different genre asks to be written. He lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee with his wife Ann and his Boston Terrier, Mayla.

Photo: @sweetdangerzack