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Her Rotten Embrace Horror Ghost Story narrated by Mz Kat Mac. How cool is that?

This is from my book WE ARE ALL MONSTERS!


 

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The Dying Light: A Free Preview

Frank and I had shared spooky stories ever since our families when camping together when we were seven. It was our thing—each of us tried to tell a scarier story than the other guy.

The last one he told me kept me up for a week. I had to sleep with a flashlight. Neither of us would ever admit just how scared we got.

But that was part of the fun.

“A long time ago, when the Finnish and Welsh settlers first came here, there was this Ojibwe tribe that worked the original copper mines. One clever tribesman managed to win the deed from the owner in a poker game. They’d been trying to get the property rights to it for years, saying the mine was made by their ancestors and rightfully belonged to them. So it was a big deal for them to get it back.

“A whole group of tribesmen goes down in the mine to survey and map out the oldest, deepest parts of the mine. Things seemed to be going fine, but none of them came back up at the end of the shift. They sent down a search party to see what happened, and there was blood and body parts everywhere. Like, people were just torn apart by something stupid strong.

“The day after, the tribe just up and left; they practically handed the mine deed back over to the settlers. The last Indian to leave told them not to go down too deep, as certain parts of the ancient mine was guarded by an evil great spirit called Gaaway Manidoo. He said that the miners accidentally found a sacred cave, and paid for it with their lives.

“Seeing how dead serious the Ojibwe were, they boarded off the area that lead down to the section where the murders happened.”

“What? That’s it? That’s your story?”

“No. Shut up, I’m not done yet.”

I laughed and he sucker punched my shoulder.

“You wanna hear the rest or no?”

“OK, OK keep going. Sheesh.”

“Anyways, years later this miner, a young Finnish immigrant, comes across an old section of tunnels and decides to go in them. Then one day he comes up all excited ‘cause he found something.”

“What’d he find?”

“I’m getting to that part. Just wait for it. So the Finn, he gets some guy from the mine museum over in Marquette to come over with a newspaper reporter and they take all kinds of pictures. Turns out the Indians used that section of the mine for human sacrifices. It was a big controversy. My dad says he remembers it happening when he was a kid.”

“No way.”

“Ya way. They took lots of artifacts out of the mine for display; bones of the victims, sacrificial flint-stone daggers with beaded handles, the works. The miner sees that these things have value, so he decides he’s going to find something for himself. You know, like a souvenir or something that he could sell for a lot of money.

“He explores the whole mine system for months, searching for the perfect treasure.

“One day he comes up all pale and scared out of his mind. He’s got this clay pot in his hands, it’s an old oil lamp made by the Indians. His hands are gripped on it, like white-knuckled. He won’t let anyone touch it. He keeps it with him all the time, and starts getting really weird and jumpy. He stops working, he can’t handle being in the mines anymore. It made him a nervous wreck to be down there.

“That winter, he heads out to his cabin in the woods to go hunting. Just so happens that his cabin was over by the mines where he found the lamp.

“A bad storm hit. Like, total white-out blizzard. Howling winds, the works. The roads were closed for the season and the guy gets cabin fever real bad. His neighbor goes and visits him, because he was worried, seeing as how he was living there by himself and all, and he finds that the guy had boarded himself inside the cabin. Took him a while to open the door, and once he let him in, he kept going on an on about lamp oil, ‘cause he was running out.

“A few days later, the miner guy goes from one end of the town to the other, pounding on doors, screaming and carrying on about needing lamp oil and something hunting him from the shadows in the woods. People wanted to help, but no one had any lamp oil. By then most people had switched over to kerosene. So he was shit out of luck.

“His neighbor invited him to come stay at his house a few days, seeing as how he was all alone and it was a real bad snowstorm. He didn’t want the guy to freeze to death or anything, you know? But the dude refused. Even though it would have been in his best interest to spend a few days with people just so he shook off the cabin fever. But…he didn’t. He went home, dejected, scared out of his mind. Boarded up everything. Didn’t light a fire in the fireplace or anything, like he was trying to hide that he was there.

“That night, the locals heard something heavy running across their rooftops. My dad says that his uncle swears that he heard them himself. After the thumping on the roof, a man screamed, and over the wailing winds of the blizzard, they heard several gun shots. His neighbor’s wife rounded up her boys and they went over to the guy’s cabin. They find the boarded-over door on the ground, ripped off its hinges. Snow had drifted inside. The guy was nowhere to be found. All they saw was two deep bloody hoof prints in the snow, the other footprints around the cabin had filled in already by the snow drifts. The guy was never heard from again.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s true. I asked my dad. His cousin has a cabin over there. It happened.”

“Sure. Try another one.”

“OK. You hear the one about the snipe hunter?”

I hit him hard. “Shut up. Snipes aren’t real.”

“You know, Brad, I know where the cabin is. We should go up there.”

“Sure. Why not?”

You can get The Dying Light at all major online eBook retailers!

Cancer’s Requiem: A Free Story from WE ARE ALL MONSTERS

CANCER'S REQUIEM is one of the stories that can be found in my collection WE ARE ALL MONSTERS. You can read it in it's entirety here. 

They lived in that place for years and it, like his life, just went up in flames.

He wanted to cry. But he just stood there with an odd little smile on his face, like the kid in elementary school who got caught shooting spitballs at the teacher.

It had squealed. That hideous creature. It screamed as it burned to ash.

His wife Maria had said it was cancer. But he knew better.

It wasn’t cancer that killed her.

It was that thing, that demon. Its foreboding presence lingered, hovering over them the whole ride back from their ill-fated trip.

It was supposed to be a vacation, a nice week long excursion to the city that ended in catastrophe.

It had started as a sore on her neck. An angry, red, swollen lump just below hairline.

“Don’t scratch it. You’ll make it worse.”

They went to all sorts of shops that day. Later, he’d revisit them in his mind, retreading the places where they were last, just as he always did when he had lost something important, trying to find where she had lost her life.

He re-walked the phantom streets in his mind, night after night lying next to her ever-fading frame, trying to find the exact moment when that damned thing bit her and devoured her from the inside out like an invisible lamprey eel.

They spent her last winter putting things in order. First the furniture. Then her clothes. Then the pots and pans, the books, the cluttered pile of things that was their life together.

He couldn’t sleep.

Not with that thing hovering over her.

Maria clung to her life until her strength ran out. Until that damned thing drained her dry.

Then, it was six weeks of pure hell, of morphine drips and dirty sheets and people telling him it's OK to grieve. But he couldn’t. She was his life. And now she was gone.

Family and friends came, a blur of faces and condolences. The funeral was over all too fast.

All that was left was John. He drank the next three days straight. The love of his life, his anchor, was gone.

Devoured. Chewed up and spat out.

Three nights to the hour after she passed, It came back, for him.

He had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the fireplace, his only companions a half bottle of gin and a knitted comforter.

He woke up, unaware of ever falling asleep.

The only light came from the fading embers in the fireplace. He saw Maria standing behind the couch, her reflection on the TV screen.

“Time for bed John.”

“Sure.”

He yawned and paused.

Her reflection wasn’t right.

She was never that tall and lanky, never that pale.

The floorboards behind him creaked and he whirled, dropping his bottle of gin on the floor.

They stood staring at one another like startled deer in headlights; him standing there, clutching Maria's knitted comforter to him like armor. It stood just feet away. Both of them waiting for the other to make the first move.

It stood on backward bending legs. It had hands with three hideous, rusted, hypodermic needle fingers. He could see its ribs and collar bone, even hip bones. A long neck craned up and back like a question mark. Bald head, milky albino pink eyes stared at him. It didn’t have a nose, just a pair of slits where it should be. Long spindly arms hung down to its feet. The needle fingers lightly scraping the wood floor as it waited for him to move.

John's heart pounded in his ears. His body felt like ice. He was right. All along. It wasn't cancer.

It was a demon.

The TV screeched to life and the picture burst into snow.

The sound made him jump.

Then it was gone, leaving no sign of its presence, as though it had never even been there.

He scratched the back of his neck, telling himself that it was just paranoia that made it itch. It had to be. The thing didn’t get close enough to touch him. It couldn’t have. He checked the back of his neck every morning after that, waiting for the red lump to rise up and signal his imminent death.

It came back three days later.

He was in the front room, tending the fire.

The back screen door whined as it opened and slammed shut.

The floorboards creaked behind him.

He tightened his grip on the heavy metal poker and spun around.

It was closer than he thought. He swung the poker and it batted it away. He tried to push past the thing but it was too fast. It grabbed him, slammed him down and pinned him to the floor.

Its needle fingers wrapped around his throat. The sharp pointed ends were about to push into the back of his neck when Maria rose up over them, wielding the fire poker like the sword of an avenging angel.

She skewered the damn thing through the head. The poker barely missed hitting him. He stared at her as she wrangled the beast away and shoved into the fireplace.

It squealed an unearthly scream as it started to burn.

“I missed you.”

“I never left,” she said and helped him up. She was cold to the touch. He could see through her, even though her hands were in his. “Hurry. You must go.”

“But-”

She ushered him to the front door.

“I love you. We’ll see each other again. I promise.”

He tried to take her with him but the minute he stepped foot outside the demon sprang out of the fireplace, sending a spray of red hot embers everywhere.

“Run!” she yelled.

He backed off the porch not once taking his eyes off them. His dead wife and her demon, cancer, fought once more in the living room. The very room she had died in.

The house went up in flames as the embers devoured everything around them.

The demon tried to run after him and she tackled it and held it down.

It writhed and screeched in her arms.

Maria looked up at him and smiled the ceiling collapsed, and they disappeared in a wall of flame.

He hand went up to his lips.

Maria had saved his life.

“We’ll be together soon. I promise.”

John smiled and walked away.

Cancer had killed her.

But their love, in return, had changed it to naught but ash.

Her Rotten Embrace: A Free Horror Story from My WE ARE ALL MONSTERS Story Collection!

HER ROTTEN EMBRACE is one of the stories that can be found in my collection WE ARE ALL MONSTERS. You can read it in it's entirety here. 

You thought you could get away with it. You thought that I would forget. You thought wrong.

The waters of the swamp, her waters, never forget. Nor does she forgive. Nor would she let me pass on. She kept me in her rotten embrace for years; long after my body decayed and my bones were picked clean by the animals that crawled through her muddy bottom.

She kept me warm and safe. And she talked to me, told me things. About how we were going to wait, patiently, until the man who murdered me returned.

"Revenge," she whispered.

"Revenge," she cried.

Her voice could be heard in the songs of the frogs, the chorus of the crickets, the plaintive cries of the birds.

She pulled my bones up out of the muck and the mire. From the center of her hot, muddy heart, where all dead things are welcomed into her bosom. And sometimes, sometimes, she pushed them back out.

She said my time had come. She woke me up. She stitched my bones back together. Wrapped her roots and vines around them, raw vegetation serving as sinew and muscle. Mud and algae, worms, beetles, rodents; covered me, formed my new flesh. Let me move again.

I walked through the water, slowly rising from the center of the swamp. Strings of algae and rotten leaves pull up with me, trailing behind me as I go. It pained me to leave her. But, I knew that I would return to her bosom soon.

I could see again. Blurry shapes, sometimes in focus, sometimes not, as I slugged myself through the shallows of the swamp. It was night. I could catch glimpses of stars overhead, flashes of lightning bugs here and there as they slowly called out for mates. Clouds of mosquitoes buzzed around me, attracted by the warmth of my swampy flesh.

She lovingly caressed my feet as I stepped out onto land, I could feel her love in the things that squirmed in the mud that held together my new body.

"There. Look. The headlights." 

Yellow lights streamed through the trees.

I remembered those lights. Filtering through the trees as he dragged my dying body to its grave in the swamp.

A trunk of a car opened. The hinges squealed.

It was the same car. The same one that drove me here. The same one I rode in, as I was taken to my final resting place.

Someone whimpered. The sound told me that he had another victim to offer to the swamp.

I hid behind a tree, waiting, watching.

He stood at the back of the car, finishing smoking a cigarette. Tossed the butt to the ground, looked around, as if he could feel someone's eyes on him, before he turned to face his latest victim.

He was older now. Thinner, balding, dark circles under his eyes. His leather jacket worn in places. The car, rusted near the wheel wells, had seen better days.

The swamp murmured, sending out vines and tree roots to greet him.

He didn't notice. He was too busy leering over the girl in the trunk. She was tied up, duct tape over her mouth, hog tied with it, wrapped around her wrists and ankles. The swamp grew over the car tires, wrapped around the door handles, cementing the car shut with her sticky, rotting vegetation.

"It's time. Move now."

The swamp urged me forward. She knew it pained me, seeing him again. He broke my heart, poisoned me, and dumped me here to die a slow, agonizing death.

My pain became her pain when I sunk into her murky depths.

The swamp no longer wished to feel my pain. She selfishly wanted me to get my revenge so that neither of us had to feel that way ever again.

I stepped up behind him.

Tried to speak, but there was no sound, just a squishing of mud and squirming insects.

The girl's eyes widened. She screamed; it was muffled behind the duct tape.

She saw me.

I reached out, and he turned to see who was behind him.

He froze. I could see my silhouette in his eyes. Lumpy vegetation in the shape of a woman. Long tendril tree roots for hair. Burning white pinpoints of lights in my eye sockets. The jaw bone showed a bit beneath the rotting leaves that made up my face.

"You?"

I made a sound; a low, pained moan. I wanted to say it was me, and even though no words passed my muddy lips, he knew. He knew the moment his eyes met mine, who I was, and what he had done to me.

All color drained from his face, the way that I wanted to drain all his blood from his body. I wanted to crush him, I wanted to tear him apart, limb from limb.

"Yes. Do it," the swamp urged. "Destroy his flesh. Make him un-whole."

I smiled.

It had been so long since I had something to smile about.

His fear made me happy.

"No. No. You're not real! You're not! I killed you!"

He ran to grab his gun from the front seat. The car doors wouldn't budge. They were wrapped shut; the swamp wouldn't let him in.

He ran back to the trunk, pulled out the girl, dropped her and grabbed the tire iron. He hit my head- the tire iron sank into my new flesh. He tried to pull it out, but it was stuck fast.

I reached out, wrapped my green and brown slimy arms around his torso, and squeezed.

Steam rose from my new flesh. The heat from rotting leaves and animal bodies, rose up into the air.

And he screamed. 

He kicked and struggled and tried to pull free, but it was no use. Braced his feet on my shins, to push away from my vice grip, and they sunk into my legs with a schlupping sound. The more he struggled, the more he sank into me.

The swamp laughed--delighted in his panicked death throws. The birds, the animals, the insects, the wind, they all laughed.

The girl rolled away as her attacker sank into my body, his face smothered by my chest as he was pulled in further. His legs and arms buried into me, his hands and feet sticking out the other side of the body the swamp made for me.

His screams came faintly from inside of my body. The vibration tickled, it agitated the insects in my body, making it squirm and writh in time with his screams.

The girl rolled away. She couldn't break free from the duct tape binding her arms and legs.

My body was heavier now, weighed down by the man. I shuffled slowly to her. She shook her head no. I bent down to remove her bonds.

"No," the swamp whispered. "She comes too. She is dying. Poisoned, like you were. I can save her. Preserve her, like I preserved you."

I grabbed her by the feet, dragged her along behind us. Her struggles weakened with every step.

Soon, she grew quiet.

The swamp, she never lied.

I took them into her bosom, into the dark, warm, fetid depths of the swamp. Her bacteria and animals stripped the flesh off their bones. The man was placed between the girl and myself, and here we lay, to this day, whispering our hatred for him, for the man we both once loved.

The swamp's waters swelled with pride. She stopped my pain.

And now, we all torment him, eternally.