Dreadful Dark Tales of Horror 5, page 1
part #5 of Dreadful Dark Tales of Horror Series
Dreadful Dark
Tales of Horror: Book 5
Dean Rasmussen
Dreadful Dark: Tales of Horror: Book 5
Dean Rasmussen
Copyright © 2021 Dean Rasmussen
All rights reserved.
Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-951120-20-7
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent from the publisher is strictly prohibited, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
For more information about this book, visit:
www.deanrasmussen.com
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Dreadful Dark: Tales of Horror: Book 5
Published by:
Dark Venture Press, 15502 Stoneybrook West Parkway, Suite 104-452, Winter Garden, FL 34787
Cover Art: Dark Venture Press and Deposit Photos
Created with Vellum
Contents
Home Remedy
Matilda X
Putting Him Down
More Frightful Fun!
FREE Short Story!
More Books by the Author
About the Author
Home Remedy
It looked like a prank toy, like one of those rubber gag gifts you buy for someone at Halloween, but there was nothing artificial about this thing. It was all there, dried blood, torn flesh, and even manicured fingernails. Based on its waxy, pale, wrinkly skin, Jack guessed it came from an old woman.
And there was only one old couple living nearby—Charlie and Ella Anderson—but it was no reason to suspect the finger belonged to Ella. He would have heard about it from Charlie if she’d had an accident, especially in the forest between their properties, and she couldn’t walk more than a few feet without help, so there was no way she could have wandered out to the woods alone. And Charlie cared for her more than life itself, always watching over her, never letting her out of his sight, so she couldn’t have ventured out alone. The finger must have belonged to someone else.
Sammy was wagging his tail as he sniffed at the finger, happy as hell that he’d deposited the wretched thing there on the grass at Jack’s feet. His dog’s wide eyes stared up at him full of pride, probably expecting a reward for his morbid catch. Not this time.
“Where the hell did you get that?” Jack cringed, meeting Sammy’s gaze. Had his dog ripped it clean off someone’s hand? The finger was fresh, for lack of a better word, not rotting at all, so it hadn’t been separated for long. Sammy barked a lot in confrontations, and growled plenty of times, but had only attacked once after a man tried to physically assault Jack. Just a dog trying to protect his master, and he would never have attacked anyone unprovoked. If Sammy had encountered someone dangerous in the woods, he would have raised a clamor, but it would have ended there. Sammy didn’t run off and attack anyone without a good reason, much less tear off an elderly woman’s finger.
There’d been no signs of a struggle in the woods. No barking, no old woman screaming, just his loyal dog prancing out of the forest like a prima donna, and dropping a severed finger at his feet. If dogs could grin, then Sammy was beaming, looking as joyful as ever in the pleasant breeze of the late summer evening. Sammy’s eyes said it all: Here’s something I found for you, master. Something you’ll never forget.
The question of the finger’s owner stuck in Jack’s mind. A trespassing hunter? Old women sometimes hunted too, he guessed, although he’d never seen anything like that around Green Hills. Plenty of men of all ages took to the sport, and some women, but no old women. So did the finger belong to a homeless woman? It was possible, but unlikely, being that they were so far from the city. The only homeless he’d ever seen wandering through the area were hitchhiking along the main road through town, probably on their way to go stand by the highway exit ramps to panhandle with poorly written signs proclaiming stuff like “Homeless Anything Helps” and “Homeless Hungry Please Help”. Not much benefit for a homeless person to get help out in a dark country forest.
It made no sense. So who the hell loses a finger in the woods?
Jack inspected the thing a little closer without touching it, although his stomach churned. All the skin and muscles leaked out from the mass of torn flesh, but one really odd thing stood out—no bones, as far as he could see.
A fresh boneless finger, as if someone ripped it right off the skeleton.
Trespasser or not, he would need to search the forest. If someone was injured out there, especially an old woman, he couldn’t just stand around and do nothing. Grabbing a flashlight and his cell phone from the house, he headed out into the woods to search for any sign of its owner. But if someone had accidentally shot it off or had ripped it off in a fall, wouldn’t he have heard the gunshot or screams or… something? But Sammy hadn’t even barked lately, and nobody had stopped by the house to ask for help. Too embarrassed to tell anyone?
“If it was my finger,” Jack said, heading off into the woods with Sammy at his side, “I would’ve picked it up and ran like hell to the hospital, so the doc could stitch it back on.” Yeah, the owner must be at the hospital getting help right now, or still stuck out in the woods. No other explanation. Jack glanced at Sammy. “What do you say, boy? You think we’ll find an old woman out there stranded beneath a fallen timber?”
Sammy licked his lips and slobbered as he pranced forward as if catching the scent of a tasty meal ahead. The finger’s meat must have whet his appetite. Good thing Sammy hadn’t eaten the damn thing.
Following Sammy through the trees, Jack gestured with his head. “Lead the way. Where’d you find it, Sammy? Show me where you found it.”
Sammy charged ahead over toward a clearing where several trees had fallen during a recent storm. Yes, that made sense. Someone got trapped over there in the storm.
More graphic mental images of finding a bloody old woman pinned beneath one of the trees sprang to Jack’s mind. Had Sammy yanked that finger right off the victim? That would explain its fresh appearance. But why just a finger?
When they arrived at the group of downed trees there was nobody around, and no sign that anyone had been there. No old lady—so far—but they didn’t stop there. It could be that the victim had gotten injured and had gone off to get help on their own. The blood could have caught Sammy’s nose and led him to it.
They scoured the area, and after several minutes had no more answers than when they’d arrived. But Sammy wandered off to the right, weaving between trees and heavy brush, before returning later with something new hanging from his mouth. As the dog approached, saliva dripped from his jowls and spilled out over his new catch. From several feet away, it looked like an uncooked, bare chunk of chicken with all the feathers stripped off.
Jack stiffened and gasped as he made out the shape of the object. A puffy pale palm with three fingers, a thumb, and a bloody stump at the wrist. “Looks like we found out where the finger came from.”
So that solved one piece of the puzzle, but a bigger mystery remained. Who the hell loses a hand?
Just like the finger, the thin, feminine hand was hairless with wrinkly, splotchy skin. So the victim had lost her entire hand in an accident in the middle of the woods. But on closer inspection, the discovery made even less sense. The hand hadn’t separated from the arm in a clean way, as if sliced off with a knife or a chainsaw. The skin was torn and stretched, almost shredded, at the wound as if someone had pulled it off using brute force.
Sammy wagged his tail more now as if the whole thing were some wonderful joke.
Nausea spread up through Jack’s chest as Sammy didn’t drop it at his feet this time, but instead nudged it closer, brushing the limp fingers against his pant legs. Jack stepped back, but Sammy moved in again as if waiting for Jack to acknowledge his prize and accept it from him.
“Drop it, Sammy.” Jack winced and avoided looking at it directly. “Keep that thing away from me.”
Sammy cocked his head to the side and wagged his tail more.
“No.” Jack raised his voice and gestured with his palm down. “Drop the damn thing.”
Sammy excitedly released it from his jaws, and the hand flopped to the ground.
The fingers landed on Jack’s shoes and he lurched back. A few drops of blood splattered over the top of his shoe. If it belonged to a murder victim, then they might now suspect him.
“Damn.”
But a murder in the small town of Green Hills was rare. Plenty of accidents though, and even some suicides, but not outright murder.
No, he couldn’t believe it, but his heart still raced. Maybe the victim lay dead nearby. His gaze followed the path from where Sammy had just come from—a darkened area of the forest, shrouded in pine trees and thick, tall brush.
Plenty of cover to hide something sinister behind those trees.
He hesitated to move forward. If it was a murder or a suicide, then it couldn’t have happened more than a day ago, judging by the condition of the victim’s skin. Maybe even just a few hours. He swallowed as he considered what to do. He wasn’t sure if he had the stomach to deal with a dead body, especially if the old woman’s body resembled anything like the hand Sammy had found.
He would need to get the police involved after he returned home. He considered turning back then, before finding anyth
Jack aimed the flashlight at the hand’s wound where it had separated from the rest of the arm and tried to locate any identifying marks. The flesh was so mushy—the knuckles were lumped in with everything else—no sign of bones in any of it. Some flies now buzzed around the wounds as he kneeled down and inspected it from a safe distance while holding his breath as the bitter stench of blood floated up. Glancing under the folds of the skin, he only spotted muscle and bloody flesh. There had to be bones in there somewhere, right? Something couldn’t have stripped out every bone.
Angling the flashlight higher and to the side, something sparkled, and then he spotted the glint of silver metal from between two folds of flesh. A wedding ring.
Sammy nuzzled up beside him now and pushed in.
“What’s wrong, boy? Ready to head back? Me too. But the cops won’t believe this shit.” Jack rubbed Sammy’s fur and leaned in closer toward the ring. It was a woman’s diamond ring with several smaller diamonds embedded along each side of the band.
Ella Anderson’s ring? Something told him it could only belong to her, but he’d know for sure soon enough after he searched the woods a little more.
“Dammit.” Jack stood up and stared over at where Sammy had gotten the hand. He could notify the police then, but he wanted to be sure it belonged to her before he did anything else. “If it’s hers, old Charlie will be devastated… Better that I find her and give him the news.” Sammy just wagged his tail.
Jack walked over to the area where Sammy had come back with the hand. He walked further and pushed through the brush and around several trees. He couldn’t have gone too far—he’d only been gone for a short time.
His foot thumped into something soft within the weeds. A dead cat. Something had ripped its chest open and its innards were missing. The flies and ants had already begun feasting on the carcass. He cringed as a fresh wave of nausea flashed through his stomach.
Something else sat on the ground in front of him. Not a dead animal this time, or a fallen branch, or piece of trash. This was a human arm, but just like the hand, someone or something had torn it from its body. The torn pulpy mass near the shoulder showed the same stretched skin and more dried blood covered the wound.
Jack expected to find a pool of blood below it, or at least somewhere nearby, but it sat alone with no other signs of the body part’s trauma. His stomach churned at the sight of it, but he forced himself to keep a level head. Plenty of broken branches around the area, and flattened grass where a trespasser had made their way through, but no clues who it might have been.
So the rest of the corpse is somewhere nearby? Staring into a darker section of the woods, he tried not to think about it.
Turning his attention back to the arm, he moved in for a closer look. The skin matched the other body parts—thin without hair. He couldn’t shake the hunch that it belonged to Ella. Poor Charlie.
His heart sank further when he spotted a path of flattened brush and broken branches leading back toward Ella and Charlie’s property. He followed it, and along the way, he spotted a red and orange flannel strip of torn clothing stuck to a branch. An outdated style of fabric Ella might have worn around the house, but even considering everything he’d found so far, there was no proof any of it belonged to Ella.
Sammy inched up and sniffed at the cloth, but Jack nudged him away. “You shouldn’t touch that, boy. The police will need to do an investigation. Bad enough you got a little blood on my shoe.”
They would search everything, all right. The woods would be swarming with officers soon and everyone would ask what had happened. It had to be Ella’s body parts, and she was almost certainly dead. Accident or not, it was certain to stir up big news in a small town like Green Hills. They would question old Charlie most of all—interrogate him, more accurately—and if Ella had run into foul play, then Charlie shouldn’t hear about it from some cop showing up at the front door. He deserved to hear news like that from someone who knew him.
There was no way—absolutely no way—Charlie could have had anything to do with her death. He was a farmer, nothing weak about him, but he loved Ella. Charlie worshipped her, and the news would destroy him… if it was her. Only one way to know for sure.
Jack dialed Charlie’s cell phone number.
Charlie answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Charlie, this is Jack Halverson from next door. Is everything all right over there?”
“Yes… why?”
“Is Ella okay?”
Charlie cleared his throat. “Yes, of course. Couldn’t be better.”
“Can I speak with her?”
A pause on the other line, and rustling, as if Charlie was walking. “She’s asleep now.”
“Are you sure?”
Charlie chuckled. “Jack, what do you need?”
Jack hadn’t expected Charlie’s answers. “Just checking up on her. I remember you said last week she wasn’t feeling well.”
“Yes, she’s feeling much better now.” Silence for a few seconds.
Jack focused again on the fabric stuck to the branch next to him. It was Ella’s. He was sure of that. “Ah, that’s good. I hope to see you both again soon.”
“Anytime, Jack.”
They ended the call, and Jack turned to Sammy. “Something’s up with Charlie, don’t you think? What do you say, boy, you think we should pay them a visit?”
Sammy barked once and shuddered with excitement while wagging his tail again.
“I agree. Let’s go.”
Jack hurried back to the house and slipped his .38 revolver into the inside pocket of his jacket before jumping in his truck with Sammy in the passenger seat. Old Charlie didn’t scare him, but under the circumstances, it was better to prepare for anything.
Driving the quarter mile over to the Anderson farm, Jack prepared himself for what he might encounter. If there was any sign of trouble, any strange vehicles in the driveway, he would immediately call the police and get them involved. No sense in taking any chances. But if not, he would face Charlie himself. If the worst had happened and Charlie had gone off the deep end, then the old man deserved more compassion than any police investigator would give him. But still, even then, after seeing all the body parts, he couldn’t believe that Charlie would have done something so horrendous to his wife. They were a soft-spoken, gentle couple and had always treated everyone with respect.
Still, people did snap.
Jack parked in Charlie’s driveway, pulling in behind the old man’s white Ford pickup. No sign of anything unusual, except the living room’s large windows were uncovered, revealing a soft orange glow inside.
Leaving the driver’s side window rolled down, Jack climbed out of his car and peered back at Sammy. “You stay here, boy. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Sammy squirmed in the passenger seat, probably desperate to jump out with Jack, but the dog did as he was told.
Jack followed the sidewalk up to the front door and knocked before waiting patiently on the cement steps. With the living room windows uncovered, he could see a short distance inside with the help of the orange glow, although the glare off the glass blocked most of his view. From that angle, the room appeared in disarray, as if Charlie and Ella had turned the place upside down looking for something, but something was off about the lack of window coverings. There were curtains over the windows, but only their shredded remnants hung along the sides and corners of the windows. Someone had torn them down.
He moved closer to the window and leaned over the railing to get a better view inside. The source of the orange glow became clear. Candles. Hundreds of them were spread out over the floor and the fireplace blazed brightly in the corner with a pile of firewood stacked next to it. Nothing inside looked anything like he remembered it from visiting Charlie a year earlier. Everything was a mess, as if a herd of cows had run through there. All their furniture and possessions were overturned and broken, the walls were cracked with the sheetrock and insulation hanging out, and shattered glass covered the floor—nothing was left untouched.
