Post #108 January 22, 2018

Excerpt from The Specter

Last week, I promised you a brief excerpt from my horror/mystery novel The Specter. This story was originally written in the early 1980’s and after several re-readings, I decided it’s still a good story, well-told, and worth putting up for download on Smashwords.   I’m in the re-write, edit and cleanup process now.  Look for it around the end of May, or early June, at Smashwords and at fine e-book retailers everywhere.

Herewith… an excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Specter:

 

  Lucille Perry’s house was dark when Alex stopped by the curb and cut the engine. He looked at his watch: a little after 10 P.M.

Rita must be as tired as any of us.  She ought to be asleep.

   He got out of the car and shut the door slowly, letting it latch with as little noise as possible. The street was deserted except for a few cats prowling the sidewalk. One of them, a black and white tabby, stopped by the car and glared up at him, eyes gleaming yellow-green in the light of the streetlamp.

   Alex opened the wrought-iron gate and walked the twenty paces up the brick walkway to the front steps. He stopped there, listening, for what he wasn't sure.

   It was a three-story affair, Lucille's house. A Georgian row house, built in the latter 19th century. There was a small balcony at the third floor, opening onto the master bedroom. his grandmother's since 1932. Ornate black wrought-iron trim. Brass dolphin-shaped rain spouts. Massive bay windows by the steep front stairs. The stonework had been painted recently-- by the light of the streetlamp, it was a dull, lifeless gray. He listened again.

   Nothing.  Nothing but the faint gurgling of the creek-canal behind the block. The sound was the same as it had been, fifteen years before.

   Alex had a key of his own, that Rita had given him and he used it now. The door was a sturdy oak slab but it opened easily and Alex stepped into the dim candlelight of the foyer. He shut the door carefully and a rush of memories came flooding back.

   He shuddered and felt his way to the banister of the stairs. Its heavily lacquered post was a welcome sensation in his hands and he rubbed a little sweat off on the wood.

   Rita would be upstairs.

   The wood groaned a bit under his weight but Alex didn't stop. He held his breath at the top--a faint murmur could be heard. To the left. He stared for a moment at the double doors shut tight at the end of the hall.  The nautical design carved into the face of the door was invisible in the darkness but he could still see it nonetheless. In his mind. It was the shipwreck and serpent's head crest that had once frightened him so badly. He could laugh at it now, all these years later but back then, it hadn't been so funny. Even Grace admitted that the red-daubed reptilian eyes and flaring nostrils of the monster gave her goose bumps.

   But Alex didn't venture into that pool of black at the end of the hall. Instead, he moved cautiously into the short hall at his left. The murmuring grew louder.    Rita's room was dark. Alex placed his fingers around the door knob and gently nudged the door back. Through the crack, a faint shaft of light from the high window cast a twilight pall on everything in the room. He moved the door back another inch and saw a hand and arm, draped limply across the edge of the bed.

   Thank God, she's asleep.

   Alex listened. The murmur was a voice. an indistinct whisper issuing from the pale amber face of a clock radio on the nightstand.

   He breathed a little more easily and yet felt vaguely disappointed too. He had come here not knowing what he expected, a feeling perhaps, a freshening of the memory of that terrifying yet captivating night in the fetid sewage pipes under the back yard. It was fifteen years ago and could have been fifteen centuries in a way. Grace would not speak of what they had seen anymore, at the end of that pipe, behind the iron door of the cellar. He was no longer even sure it had happened. Time was a trickster when you got a few years on you; it reshuffled memories like a deck of hot cards.

   Alex eased the door shut and felt like the prize fool of the day.

   The funeral’s got us all cracked.

   It was somewhere near the bottom of the stairs, along about where the great picture of his gaunt, sour-faced grandfather Jacob would have been, that Alex heard it.

   He stopped immediately, his left foot inches from the floor beyond the last step. It was what he had been expecting, what he had been hoping for, and fearing. What he knew had to come.

   The low growl returned.

   Alex caught hold of the banister to steady himself. He hadn't the slightest doubt that he would investigate the sound. And he didn't even have to listen--though it came again—to know where it came from. But he took a moment to collect his wits, to get a breath and calm his racing heart. A rush of blood made his face hot and flushed.   He found himself standing before the cellar door with no memory of having moved a muscle. The brass knob was cold to the touch.

   He opened it.

  There was a string dangling in his face and he pulled it. Instantly, a single 60-watt bulb on the wall flooded the wooden stairs with light.  The steps were black and splintery with age, disappearing into the well of darkness at the bottom.   Alex stepped through and descended, his left hand squeezing the balustrade tightly.

   At the bottom, his loafers made a reassuring thump on the cement. He stood still and listened, not daring to move, even to blink, until he was sure.

   The rattle and hiss of labored breathing swelled in his ear.

   He turned around and stared hard into the musty depths of the basement. At the limit of vision, he could see the cement ended in a ragged line, running off into a dark brown bed of dirt.  As he followed the edge further around to his left, his eye was attracted to the dull sheen of something metal, a post it seemed from where he was. A column.

  He felt his mouth dry up as a human-like shape shifted slightly, silhouetted in the glimmer of that post.

   Another growl, this time deeper, with volume.

  Alex paced forward, a step at a time, his skin tingling. His eyes never left that shape and, as he stared with mounting horror, it moved again. The growl softened into a voice, recognizably human, almost a whine.

  He was at the edge of the cement now, his shoes poised above the dirt. He took another step.

  The thing jerked violently and a sharp clank rattled through the cellar. Alex froze and veered sideways, along the edge of the cement, unwilling to approach until he could see it better.

 He realized that his own shadow was blocking the light from the bulb by the stairs.

   He bumped into another post and hurt his shoulder. Rubbing it, he took a step forward, letting his foot find purchase in the loose dirt.

   Suddenly, the thing charged him.

   Alex couldn’t move.  His muscles failed him and he stood stiff and still, blood roaring in his ears.

   The thing burst into the tiny pool of illumination and squatted in the dirt on its haunches, unable to come any closer.

 He could now see the dull glint of metal that had first gotten his eye—manacles. It was manacled to a post by the far wall.

  And the face! Alex turned his head involuntarily and fought back a wave of nausea.

   It was human, he saw. Or at least, had been at one time. Maybe four feet in height, almost as wide around, the creature had no arms, merely scarred stumps of pale, shriveled tissue.

The thing did have legs but they were gnarled, misshapen skeletal bones, blood-encrusted and covered with fiery red pustules and sores.

  The worst part was the face. What eyes it had were no more than pinpricks, scabbed over and surrounded with a thick webbing of scar tissue. Even as he watched, the beast gouged at its face, opening a wound which dribbled fluid freely. Its nose was sunken back into the skull and its mouth was sealed partly shut with gray, fungus-like skin growth and more scar tissue.

  The whole effect was that of a decaying skeleton or some kind of hideous caricature of a large human fetus. Blood veins stood out clearly at or near its skin, especially around the tiny eyes. Many of them were burst, giving its face a cruel blotchy look. Its skin was otherwise a waxy yellow, where it was visible through the gray crusty mold at all and its legs were smeared with foul-smelling dung.  Alex couldn't bring himself to look at the thing for more than a few seconds at a time. His mind railed from the thought that it might be human.

   Yet it was. Once.

 

And that’s the excerpt.  I hope this will intrigue you enough to take a look at the whole book, sometime in late spring or early summer of this year.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on January 29.  In this post, I hope to look at some of the major differences, genre differences, between writing science fiction and mystery/horror. 

See you then,

Phil B.