The Bloody Husband and other weird stories E-Book

Magnus Viita

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 234

Beschreibung

Eight stories filled with mysteries, darkness, gore, lustful desires, terror, disturbing visions and creepy creatures.

Das E-Book The Bloody Husband and other weird stories wird angeboten von BoD - Books on Demand und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
Horror, darkness, Death, demon, Evil

Leseprobe

Contents

The Bloody Husband

The Tower of Iron

The Devil’s Mirror

Limbo

The Night Walkers

The Manic Memorandum

The Worshiper of Fire

The Star Demon

The Bloody Husband

”For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”

(Leviticus 17:11)

1.July 15th

It was ten years since the events of that night. Nobody had visited the cabin ever since then. The real estate agent also quit renting the place and finally he forgot about it. However, suddenly – about a week ago – one married couple was asking for a peaceful place for vacation. Since all the available cabins were already taken, the agent had to go through his old archives. From these he found the papers of one luxury cabin, and since no other place was availabe, the agent was consent to rent it. The couple was delighted to have the kind of place they were looking for. The agent did mention about the distant location of the cabin, but it didn’t reduce their enthusiasm – in fact quite the opposite.

This couple was formed by a man named Steven and his wife Caroline. Back in the day they had met at the graduation celebration of their hometown university. It was then Steven – a master of science – met his wife-to-be Caroline – a medical doctor. After noticing how much they had in common, they started dating. Their relationship progressed rapidly and finally reached its climax when Steven and Caroline got married at the local church. Now it was two years since then. This year the couple decided to spend their summer vacation at some peaceful place on the countryside – they’d had enough of their restless urban life. Steven and Caroline did check through many places from different agents, but none of those was really suitable for the couple. Finally, after they contacted the best agent of their city, they were succesful: a beautiful, large, oldfashioned cabin was found at the northern shore of a lake – far away from all disturbance. Steven and Caroline rented the cabin right away and then started to prepare for their dreamy vacation. It was today at about 8.15 a.m. when the couple began their road trip to the cabin. The path was quite complicated: because of this the car was often sidetracked and the couple had to ask instructions from the locals.

Finally – at about 5.40 p.m. – they arrived to the yard of their cabin. Steven stayed on the outside and started unpacking the car, Caroline on the other hand decided to take a look at the inside of the place. Very carefully she opened the creaking door and stepped inside. First she took off her sandals and then started walking barefoot on the wooden floor. Caroline was at the main hall of the cabin. It was decorated with embroidered carpets, colorful paintings and also with a soft antique sofa – located on the left side of the hall. Opposite this sofa was a cabinet full of old books – there was also a color TV on one of the shelves. After seeing all this Caroline thought they had made a good decision and would get worthy compensation for their money. It was then her eyesight met the wall opposite the hall door. There was an old, mechanical clock on this wall. The clock itself was in no way special – just a typical, oldfashioned clock. But the clock had stopped and its hands were excatly at 9.10. Caroline knew the time by looking at her wristwatch – it was already 5.44 p.m. – so she decided to wind up the clock. She stepped in front of the clock, found the winding key on top of it, put the key in the face of the clock and started to turn it. However, after she had turned the key more than enough, the clock still didn’t start ticking. She then decided the clock was broken and let it be.

The Floor Plan of the Cabin.

Caroline went on checking the cabin further. She noticed two doors on the both sides of the sofa − left and right. The left one led to the bathroom and the right one to the kitchen with the dining space. Then she noticed yet another door on the right side of the cabinet, which led to the toilet. After noticing this she started to wonder where the bedroom was. This concern was soon gone after Caroline noticed there was still more space to explore: there was one more door on the left side of the cabinet. After opening it she found a staircase leading up to the second floor. She decided to check it out. The staircase was shaped like a spiral and the stairs gave a nasty creeping sound while she was going upstairs.

When Caroline reached the second floor door and opened it, she found what she was looking for − a good-sized bedroom with a double bed facing the door. There was a large window on the right side of the door. Caroline found this very pleasant since there was going to be a lunar eclipse after a couple of days − at 4.10 a.m. Now she and Steven would be able to watch it straight from the bed. Everything seemed to be in order in the bedroom. There was just one strange detail puzzling Caroline: the left mattress of the double bed was laying on the floor − at the lower end of the bed, on the lower left corner. At the leftmost corner of the mattress − from her point of view − there was a relatively large hole. She then thought it wouldn’t be a problem since they had brought their very own bedsheets. Suddenly she heard a crashing sound coming from downstairs and was greatly startled − and was relieved after hearing Steven yelling and cursing: he was bringing in their suitcases and one of them had fallen on his right foot. Caroline wanted to do her own share of the chores. First she decided to lift the mattress back on the bed. She went barefoot on the wooden floor and stepped right next to the mattress.

In an instant she felt burning pain on the bottom of her right foot. The pain was so great she let out an ear-piercing cry and sat quickly on the mattress. Caroline looked at her right foot and saw on its bottom a wound − a deep, long cut from which blood was flowing as a straight line. Steven heard his wife screaming, appeared soon at the door and was shocked for the sight: his beloved was bleeding from her right foot to the mattress! The blood ran along the mattress and was flowing inside it through the hole on its corner.

Caroline was in great pain and asked her husband to go downstairs to get something for binding the wound. Right after that Steven went quickly down the staircase. Even though she was in pain on the foot, it didn’t stop her from wondering what was the cause of this accident. Then her eyes met a pair of bloody scissors lying on the floor next to the mattess. She thought these were dropped accidentaly by one of the previous tenants, and therefore she had stepped on them − this had to be the cause. At the same moment Steven returned to the room with some tissue paper, disinfectant and linen cloth for binding. He went to his wife and started pressing the wound in order to stop the bleeding. He then rinsed the wound and bound it carefully. After this he also had time to wonder what had caused this. Silently she answered by pointing out the scissors on the floor. Steven picked up the bloody item and went again dowstairs to get something to clean up the bloody mattress. Caroline laid herself on the right-side mattress of the bed and was waiting the pain to leave. She closed her eyes.

Half a minute passed in perfect silence. But after that Caroline suddenly heard a weird sound: it was coming from the direction of the bloody mattress and sounded as if someone had slurped water from a glass! This sound made cold ripples run along her spine, because she saw no-one in the room. She didn’t dare to move for fear to look under the bed. She was unable to imagine what was making the sound. Caroline was about to scream when the sound suddenly stopped. At the moment Steven came back upstairs. He was carrying the scissors that were cleaned of blood, a bottle of cleaner and a scrub-brush. When the wife saw her husband she leaped off the bed, embraced him and then told about the creepy sound she had heard.

Caroline and Steven both turned their eyes toward the mattress lying on the floor. What they next saw was incomprehensible: all of the blood on the mattress was gone − every single drop of it! Just a moment ago there had been blood all over the mattress, but now it had disappeared. There wasn’t even any trace on the mattress. Caroline told she had done absolutely nothing. However, Steven couldn’t believe her since blood doesn’t just vanish all on its own. In any case they kept on preparing their vacation for the rest of the day. At first Steven took the groceries to the kitchen fridge while Caroline got the bedsheets from the car and took them to the bedroom upstairs. Then she lifted the left mattress back to the bed and spread new, clean sheets on both mattresses. Even though there was a hole on the left one it wouldn’t be a problem since the sheets were nice and clean. After that the couple cleaned the cabin of dust and all other little somethings which had gathered during the years. Finally – when the day was turning towards the evening – they moved the night stand from the bed to the next of the window. Then they took the TV from downstairs and laid it on the night stand for watching. When the digital watch they had brought was displaying the time 9.35 p.m. they decided to go to sleep. Since their vacation would really start tomorrow it was necessary to get sufficient rest. Steven fell asleep quite soon, but Caroline stayed awake. She was still frightened by the vanishing of the blood from the mattress she was now lying on. She was even more scared by the slurping sound which came at the same moment – as if the mattress itself had drinked the blood! Because of her fear Caroline turned on the TV. By watching it for about an hour she ceased to think about the blood and then fell asleep. But at the moment she was unaware that she and her husband were not alone in the cabin …

2.July 16th

It was about 3.20 a.m. Moonlight was casting a haunting glare through the bedroom window, and it gave illumination to the room. There was total silence in the cabin. The only sound was low static emanating from the bedroom TV – Caroline had fallen asleep while she was watching it and the broadcast had ended hours ago. The couple was sleeping calmly. Up to this point of time the wife had been dreaming peacefully, but then suddenly something weird happened: Caroline was dreaming that she was lying on the sofa downstairs. It was night and she was nearly unable to see around her since the lights were out. She got herself up and started to grope in the dark – touching the door frames to find the switch. It was difficult since she didn’t know the exact location. The reason was that during the previous day it hadn’t been necessary for her to use the switch downstairs since the sun had given its light the whole day.

Caroline searched for the light switch a couple of minutes – which from her point of view felt like a couple of hours – but then her search came to a sudden end: a sound came from the bedroom upstairs! She heard it and it caused chills all over her body:

Caroline prayed she hadn’t heard that sound. But she had heard it loud and clear – and she recognized it all too well: it was the cut sound of a pair of scissors! This thought caused her heartbeat to rise. She was unaware to who was cutting with the scissors, and – the worst part – what was being cut with them. A great horror came over Caroline for her husband who had been asleep in the bed. She tried to calm down herself by thinking that the sound didn’t come from a pair of scissors by necessity. Instantly the dreadful sound came again from the dark:

No, she was not mistaken – it was the sound of a pair of cutting scissors! The wife was feeling the grip of an increasing amount of fear. She begun ascending the stairs hastily but quietly, since she didn’t want to draw the attention of the person using the scissors. While going up Caroline felt her pulse increasing by each step she took. Finally she was standing in front of the bedroom door, which was open a little bit. She decided to take a peek in the room and see if her husband was in danger. If necessary, she could strike the cutter with the candle holder which she had grabbed from the downstairs cabinet – by her instict, without thinking about it.

Caroline encouraged herself, took a deep breath and peeked through the narrow opening of the door. At first she was looking for her beloved Steven from the right-side mattress on which he had been sleeping. She felt a relief when she noticed her husband was nowhere to be seen. She opened the door entirely and then stepped inside the bedroom – seeing the whole room and the double bed. What she saw next was something that made her paralyzed with fear: she saw the scissors which were used for cutting, and also that the left-side mattress of the bed was being cut with them – around its lower left corner – but she saw no-one who cut with the scissors – she wasn’t sure there even was anyone! The scissors were cutting a big, circular hole near the lower left corner of the mattress – they had already cut the hole for a quarter of a circle. Suddenly they started to move and cut the mattress, and once again the night air was pierced with the horrific sound:

Caroline was startled so greatly that she gave a loud scream from her throat. In an instant she woke up and saw herself to be lying on the bed – soaked with sweat and panting. The dream she had seen was in her memory all too clear. Alarmingly the wife looked at the lower part of the mattress – while praying that there was nothing to be seen. To her relief she noticed no cuttingmarks of any kind on the mattress. Then she determined the vision had been just a bad dream.

Caroline saw her dear husband sleeping next to her in peace, and she decided to go back to sleep. While she was thinking this her sight met the TV opposite the bed – which was still producing low static. At first she saw just the usual static spots which appear after every transmission. But after a little while Caroline started to see someting unusual: she thought there appeared a person on the TV! She then rubbed her eyes since she thought they were playing tricks on her. When she looked the TV screen again, there was no more room for any mistake: from the middle of the static the lines of a fuzzy human figure started to emerge!

When this sight faced Caroline she was so frightened that she started screaming and covered her face with her hands. Her husband woke up quickly and rose to sitting on the bed. Steven was greatly startled due to his wife’s screaming in the middle of the night. He was also perplexed seeing Caroline sitting on the bed crying and pointing with her finger at the static TV screen. Steven was unable to figure out what was wrong with the TV. But then his wife him there had been a person on the screen in the middle of the static. After hearing this the husband started assuring her that all of this had been just a nightmare which was now over and gone. Steven embraced Caroline, kissed her, ran his fingers through her long tresses and caressed her breasts. After some time she was feeling much relieved. Steven got up and turned off the static TV. Then he went back to the bed, lied down and soon fell asleep again.

Despite her husband’s words Caroline was unable to think everything had been just a nightmare – she knew what she had seen with her own eyes! The wife was still unable to find peace from her thoughts. She decided to get up and look inside the upper drawer of the night stand to check if the scissors were still there – Steven had cleaned the blood and then placed the scissors inside this drawer. With shaking hands Caroline opened the drawer and looked inside: the scissors were there. After noticing this her mind was calmed to the extent that she was feeling sleepy. She went back to the bed, lied down next to her husband and fell asleep. However, the visions of the cutting scissors and the fuzzy human figure were very present in her conciousness ...

3.July 16th

In the morning – about 9.30 a.m. – Steven got up. Through the bedroom window he noticed the sun was shining and the birds were singing – and this raised up his spirit. He saw Caroline was still sleeping. At first he thought waking her, but then decided to let her sleep; it came back to him that his wife had seen a terrible nightmare last night, so she would need more sleep than him. After he got dressed up Steven went to the kitchen for some breakfast. Half an hour passed and the time came to 10.00 a.m. on the clock. From downstairs came sounds of clinging and banging – with the smell of food – to the bedroom. Then also Caroline began to wake up. Half-asleep she got sitting on the bed – only to change her position right away since the sun was shining straight upon her eyes. But this woke her up fully. First she walked to the window and looked through it. After Caroline saw how beautiful was the day outside, she felt her mood brightened in an instant. Yes, she did remember the horrific vision from last night, but now she thought it had been just her mind playing tricks on her. Yes, this had to be so! The scissors cutting the mattress on their own were just a nightmare, and the figure on the TV was just a hallucination caused by this bad dream.

In high spirits Caroline got dressed and went downstairs. When she got to the kitchen she greeted her beloved Steven, who in turn gave her a plate filled with breakfast – fried eggs and bacon – and a cup of hot coffee. She then sat at the table and begun her first meal of the day. Her husband had already finished his own, so he decided to go out for some fresh air. When Steven left the kitchen, he pulled the room door almost closed, but left it open just a bit. The wife was eating with good appetite and thinking about what they could do today. After a while she was almost finished with her morning meal. While she was in her thoughts Caroline was looking at the small mirror on the western wall of the kitchen – just opposite the door. By looking at this mirror she saw the door suddenly opening. Then she turned her head toward the door – thinking it was just her husband coming back. At first the door was opening slowly – but then it flung wide open! Caroline was terrified: there was no-one at the door! It was then her mind was again flooded with all the horrors of last night. She tried to calm herself and block these frightening ideas by saying to herself it had been just the wind. But in reality she didn’t even believe in this explanation: only a very powerful gust would be able to flung the door open like that, but the wind was seemigly wery mild outside. So she tried to turn her attention elsewhere: Caroline looked towards the southern wall of the room – just opposite her. This wall was covered all over with white wallpaper and there was a tiny picture hanging on it – the sun shining through the window on the northern wall gave its light upon it. It was toward this wall she directed her sight and was expecting to see just her own shadow on it. This was natural since she saw no-one else in the room.

Indeed, the wife saw her own shadow – but to her horror also a second one, the shadow of a totaly unknown person! She was startled and looked behind her: there was no-one to be seen! In fright she turned her sight back to the wall, and the other shadow was there. It was then Caroline thought there had to be someone else in the room – someone who could not be seen! By shaking and sweating the wife looked at the shadow. Suddenly the figure started to move: it walked slowly and slumping from the door towards the little mirror on the opposite wall of the room. After she determined that the unseen figure stood in front of the mirror, she turned and looked at the mirror. She then saw something odd: the surface of the mirror began to be covered by moist! Caroline was watching this event with curiosity but also with fear – apparently it was the shadowy figure’s breath which was causing this! Finally the mirror was fully covered with moist. Then came about something which was only terrifying: Caroline turned back towards the wall in order to see if the figure was still standing at the mirror. It was and was also touching the mirror with it’s finger. In an instant she heard a scratching sound from behind her! After hearing this she was overcome with dread and horror. She was scared to look at the mirror again – if there had appeared something on it, the shadowy figure would be real! Despite her fear Caroline was still looking at the shadow on the wall – while trying not to hear the scratching sound which came about every time the figure moved its finger on the mirror.

Finally the unknown thing took its finger off the mirror and was standing in front of it – as if looking at its own reflection. Caroline felt her fear increasing and her heart pounding on full strength. She was paraying and sobbingly wishing that Steven would already come back inside – but he wasn’t showing up. However, in the midst of her despair she was still able to think; if the scratching noise she had just heard was indeed caused by the figure, it would be really existing. Even though this increased her pain even more, she grabbed thecoffee cup on the table. She had decided to encourage herself and tried to strike the figure’s head with this cup; it would probably be so distracted that she could escape the kitchen and reach her Steven. By this plan she was able encourage herself – however still in fear – and was grabbing the cup even tightly. Caroline then looked at the shadow, and saw the thing still standing at the mirror. She was just about to toss the cup when the figure suddenly turned its head. She was in terror – the shadowy figure was now looking right at her! Her fear kept on growing, but she was thinking fast: the wife took a deep breath, looked at the shadow, turned quickly and then tossed the cup by her right hand towards the desired spot. She was expecting the cup to hit something invisible to the eye. To her horror this didn’t come to pass: the cup hit the wall on the opposite side and it shattered to pieces. Caroline was greatly startled by this, since she had been confident the cup would hit the head of the figure standing at the mirror. It was then she looked at the mirror itself – the one she had heard was being scratched a while ago. There was indeed a real mark on the mirror! This was a clear proof that someone else was in the room. At first she was unable to believe her own eyes. Then she looked more closely and was met by a creepy sight: on the mirror there was a real mark drawn by human blood!

After seeing this there came cries of horror out of her mouth – like molten lava out of a volcano. She instantly got up and tried to get out of the kitchen as soon as possible. In this terror she was unable to pay attention to her surrondings: after getting out of the kitchen door she tripped to the carpet edge, fell over and struck her temple against the cabinet edge. She felt her conciousness blurring and fainted in the middle of the hall. She fell into the dark.

It is unknown how long Caroline was in blackout. The first thing she remembered after the fall was her lying on the sofa and having a prickling pain on her head. To relieve the pain Steven had taken a bag of vegetables out of the freezer and placed it on her forehead. It was also her dear husband who had carried her on the sofa to recover. He was upstairs watching TV, but as soon as he heard the wife calling he rushed downstairs. At first he was just glad to see Caroline was awake. However, he soon began to wonder what had happened to her while he was outside. The wife – being still a bit dizzy due to her fall – was also wondering it herself. She tried to remember what had happened before the fall, but it was of no use: there was a black veil over her memory, and it was not possible to see through it. To Steven this didn’t come as a surprise – after all, it is very common that a person who has fainted due to head injury doesn’t remember anything of the time preceding the event. Caroline got up and went to the kitchen for some refreshing drink. After reentering the kitchen she opened the fridge – on the right side of the mirror – grabbed a bottle of orange juice, took a glass off the shelf and filled it with the juice. Then she sat at the table – again facing the southern wall – and started to sip her cold juice.