Nightmare whiskers, p.1
Nightmare Whiskers, page 1
Nightmare Whiskers
A Fae Corps Anthology
Nightmare Whiskers
Copyright © 2024 Fae Corps Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. While some names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, some are accurate, but are used to further the story. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Title Suggestion By Tish MacWebber
Cover Art By Patricia Harris
Edits By Patricia Harris and Cindy Snow-Pilcher
Tish MacWebber (And Jazzy The Cat)
This super short story was written to give the readers of Tish MacWebber's series of short stories found throughout the Fae Corps Inc Anthologies a placeholder in between the last story, Fly Or Die! found in Howling Deep and the next installment of her series in an upcoming anthology, to be announced. The author hopes it will hold you all over, as the last story ended with a cliffhanger. Jazzy the Cat is muttering here beside me about not having enough talking cats at all, and that I need to do better next time. I will strive to make the fans of Ludvick von Hairball and Pumpkin the Cat happier in the next installment.
Serena Mossgraves
Just because a story features a monster, doesn’t mean it is not about humans. Be kind to one another, and the monster will never be you.
Patricia Harris
Be Creative, Have fun. Life is too short to worry about perfection.
Contents
The Closet By Ray Ayles
Emergent By Ruan Bradford Wright
A Ghost of Christmas Past By J. Milton Case II
Waking the Witch By Ruan Bradford Wright
The PHILCO Device By J. Milton Case II
The Black Cat By Andrew McDowell
It Comes in the Night By Jennifer Elliott
Our First Day By Jennifer Elliott
Mommy And Me Art By Sophia Elliott & Jennifer Elliott
The Nightmare & the Gronk by Ronald W. Gillespie Jr.
The Monster in Me By Patricia Harris
Mr Jones and You...By Dr Raz T. Slasher
The Whiskers of My Mind By Patricia Harris
Into the Jungle By Serena Mossgraves
Goopy Spider Monster Art By Patricia Harris
Hunting Ground By Sergio Palumbo
The Mushroom Grove By Ruan Bradford Wright
Dreamwalker’s Interlude By Tish MacWebber
About the Authors
About the Publisher
THE CLOSET
By Ray Ayles
“It’s almost midnight.” Tammy said anxiously as she shone her flashlight into her watch. Her shoulder length blonde hair hung loose around her face and hid her smile. Her crystal blue eyes reflected white. She was a senior and self appointed leader of the Kappa Kai sorority. “We should go inside now.”
Tammy and her three-sorority sisters stood in coarse, knee-high grass in the backyard of an abandoned house. They were there to initiate a new member, Jessica Sampson, an eighteen-year-old freshman, into their sorority.
They had climbed over the back fence and stood staring at the house. It was autumn, and the moon was in its lunar eclipse cycle. It glowed blood red, and cast the house in an eerie glow. The sorority sisters whispered nervously among one another as light beams from their flashlights played in its surface.
Tammy looked up at the moon, and shuddered from the cold. “Look, there’s a mourner’s moon out tonight. It seems fitting, don’t you think girls?” Tammy and her sorority sisters laughed. Jessica didn’t understand the joke, but laughed nervously along with them.
Although the moon was in eclipse. It still cast a light bright enough for any neighbors to see the girls on the property. They were careful not to allow the beams of light to shine into, or reflect from the windows of the neighboring houses. The ‘no trespassing’ signs were clearly visible, and any explanation as to their being on the grounds, especially in the middle of the night in the weeks before Halloween, would not be accepted by the sheriff or his deputies.
The house had been vacant for fifteen years and the grounds were overrun with tall grass and weeds. The back yard was a little over an acre in size, and the previous owners had planted an apple orchard. Four of the apple trees grew wild and untended on the property. Nobody wanted to harvest the fruit, and rotting apples littered the ground beneath the trees, giving off a smell of sweet decay. The rest had died from neglect.
The chains of a rusted swing set, overgrown with vines, softly creaked a warning in the cold autumn breeze.
Jessica looked at the house, then turned slowly to face Tammy. She began to rethink her decision to join the Kappa Kai’s, She wanted so badly to be in a sorority, even if was independent. Jessica was a bit of an outcast in high school, and even more so at the college. She had red hair, green eyes, and freckles. She was short in stature and slightly overweight. Not exactly the right look for the more popular sororities. She was about to give up hope when Tammy and her twin sister approached her in the student union building about joining their sorority. Jessica said yes a bit too eagerly and, with her current reputation as a geek attempting to join every sorority on campus, Tammy wanted to exploit her.
“That’s the place I have to stay?” Jessica’s breath played in the light beam, and her voice trembled slightly. She shone her light back onto the house. The white paint was peeling, exposing the weathered wood beneath, giving the whole of it a dead gray look. All of the doors and windows were boarded shut. A breeze sent a shiver down her spine and she stepped cautiously backward. “It’s spooky.”
Tammy’s twin sister Sara stepped behind Jessica and pushed her forward. “You have to stay there all-alone till morning.” She said in a tone that let Jessica know there was no backing out. Not without ridicule.
“Alone?” Jessica said in a whisper. She looked back at the fence. She could just turn and run. The worst they could do is tease her. No, she had come this far, and wanted to be brave. Still she trembled, more from fear now than from the cold. “You didn’t say alone.”
Megan, a tall thin sophomore with brown eyes and short black hair, leaned toward Jessica, her flashlight shining onto her face from below her chin, and whispered. “All alone.” She shined the light in Jessica’s face. She squinted against the light. “You do know this place is haunted don’t you?” Megan continued.
“No...” Jessica said as she looked at the house again.
“It is.” Tammy said, winking to her sorority sisters. “Don’t be so worried. We all did it and we’re just fine. We wouldn’t make you do anything we wouldn’t do. We’re not like that.”
Megan and Courtney, another sophomore, with gray eyes and auburn hair, coughed to conceal their laughter. Tammy was in rare form tonight. Jessica swallowed the bait and the hook.
Jessica shone her light on the back door and took a few cautious steps forward. “So, how do we get in? It’s all boarded up.” She hoped the barred door would end the initiation, and she could return to her warm bed without the upcoming event.
Tammy took the worn black backpack from her shoulder and set it down on the ground. Sara and Courtney shone their lights onto the backpack as Tammy kneeled and unzipped the flap. “The boards are loose from our last initiation,” Tammy lied with earnest as she removed a claw hammer. “But I brought this just in case.” She stood and walked toward the back door. “Come on, let’s go.” She ordered.
The girls followed Tammy to the back door. They were all afraid to be there, but didn’t want Jessica to know. When Tammy reached the door, she shone her light in the boards to size up the job at hand. She found a board that seemed loose and handed her light to Sara. She took hold of the board and pulled. It came off easier than she had expected. The then pulled another and another, all coming off as easily as the first. She sighed with relief and looked over her shoulder at Jessica. “See. Just like I said. Loose.”
She took hold of the door knob, and slowly turned it. And to her surprise it was unlocked. She took a deep breath, and held it as she slowly pushed the door open and went inside. The other girls followed. There was an overpowering musty smell inside the house and the girls gasped at the smell. They appeared to be standing in the garage. Tammy and Sara shone their lights on the floor and the girls all gasped at the sight of several dead mice and rats, all in different stages of decomposition.
Jessica quickly turned her head and covered her mouth to keep from vomiting. Tammy’s light revealed a door to her right. She turned the knob and slowly opened it. The five girls walked into what had once been the living room. The furniture that remained was covered with white sheets. Cobwebs began to move from the sudden breeze of the open door, and dust rose up and swirled in the beams of the flashlights, like searchlights shining through a heavy fog.
Jessica looked around the room with disgust. “I have to sleep in here?”
“No,” Tammy shone her light down the hall to a boarded up door. “In there.”
The door was boarded up much more heavily than the one they’d come in.
Jessica noticed that that was the only door in the hall that was boarded up. “Why only that door?”
“Because,” Tammy said as she held the flashlight under her chin, “that’s where the ghost is. That’s where it happened all those years ago.”
“What are you talking about? What ghost? What happened in there?” Jessica asked.
Tammy told the story with an as-a-matter-of-fact tone. “It’s a local legend around here. It was fifteen years ago when it happened. The family that lived here was religious freaks. They had a daughter named Stacey. They would punish her by locking her in her closet with her bible for a day or two. The last time was for reaching puberty. A real Carrie White Situation. Anyway, the father beat her and locked her in the closet. He left her in there for five days, until her period stopped. He said he would let her out on Sunday for church so she could confess for her sins…”
Courtney interrupted. “The sin of growing tits and flowing.”
“Really!” Agreed Sara, laughing.
Tammy continued. “Well the girl freaked and pounded on the door and screamed to be let out. She didn’t know that bleeding was normal. She thought she was dying. The louder she screamed, the louder her parents prayed for her. She scratched and cried at the door for four days. By the fourth night, she gave in. Maybe it was fear of her parents beating her when she was to be let out, or the thought that she would surely bleed to death, or maybe humiliation for not being allowed to go to the bathroom and shitting herself. Either way, she finally snapped from the abuse. She hung herself from the hanger pole with her belt.”
“When the father opened the door on the fifth day and found her dead he flipped out. She was hanging there, dead eyes staring at him, her tongue hanging out. Her fingernails were torn from her fingertips and stuck in the door. There was blood everywhere. Her parents tried to hide the truth, and they buried her in the back yard. They told the congregation that she went to live with an aunt upstate for the rest of the year.”
“A few days later when the father was cleaning out her room he was attacked by her ghost. His face and body were scratched and torn. He ran out of the room and slammed the door. The pounding on the closet door began again, day and night. It had become too much for her parents to take. Finally the father boarded up the closet door and the bedroom door to keep the ghost from harming his family. But Stacey’s ghost was at unrest, and the pounding wouldn’t stop. They left in desperation, taking only what they could pack into their van. They left and never returned. The ghost still lives in that room.”
Jessica found the story a bit hard to believe and began to feel like the butt of a joke. She wanted badly to be a member of the sorority, so she decided to play along with them.
The girls walked down the hall to the boarded up door and stopped a few feet away. Tammy and Jessica stood in front of the door. The sisters had scared themselves, and didn’t dare go any further. Jessica saw this and took it upon herself to tug on one of the boards. Tammy didn’t want to be shown up by a pledge, so she shoved Jessica out of the way and began to pull on the board that Jessica had pulled on. It wouldn’t budge. Jessica would never believe the door had been opened by them. She remembered an episode of this old house she had watched with her grandmother. She was still holding the hammer in her hand. She used the claw to try and pull the boards off. They still held fast. “The boards are swollen from the humidity. That’s why they’re in so tight.” She said. She was trying to sound convincing. “Help me...” she asked whoever would listen.
Sara took hold of the handle and they both pulled. The board finally broke loose with a loud crack. Tammy and Sara both panted at the effort.
“I guess Stacey doesn’t want us in there.” Jessica teased.
Tammy turned and faced Jessica. She wasn’t going to be shown up in front of her friends. Not by this freak. She held the hammer out for Jessica. “Here. You give it a try smart-ass!”
Jessica took the hammer and pulled on the next board. It came off without much effort at all. “They were messing with me. I knew this was bunk.” She thought as she easily pulled down the boards one by one.
Tammy tried hard to conceal her astonishment. It really did take two of them to remove the first board.
When Jessica pulled off the last board, she shone her light on the pad lock. She pried at it with the claw of the hammer and it broke off easily. She smiled when she saw Tammy’s expression. She turned the knob and opened the door. She first shone the light on the floor then on the walls as she went in. The others followed her cautiously.
The room was just how Stacey’s parents had left it. The dresser drawers were half open, full of clothes, the bed unmade, the desk with schoolbooks opened, and unfinished homework assignments sat silently. A gold rosary still hung from the closet’s door knob. Everything was covered in dust and cobwebs. The room was just as Tammy had described it, right down to the number of locks on the door. Jessica could see them between the boards that held the door shut. Ten, just like Tammy said. Now Jessica knew for certain she was being had. Now she had an upper hand. She put out an Oscar winning performance.
“Is this where I’ll sleep?” Jessica asked. “On that old bed?”
“No.” Tammy shone her light on the closet door. “That is where you’ll stay. Locked in the closet like she was. No food, no water, no light.”
Jessica watched with uneasiness as Tammy turned the locks and unhooked the chains. To stay in the closet was one thing. To be locked in was another. She was in too deep to turn back now. Besides, what could possibly happen? They couldn’t mess with her when they were all on the other side of the door.
Tammy pulled the boards off of the door, and, starting with the bottom, deliberately turned each lock more slowly than the one before. She paused when she reached the brass chain, then slid the latch from the slot. She opened the door and stood aside. She held out her hand and demanded Jessica’s flashlight.
Jessica gave Tammy the light, thrust her shoulders back and walked proudly into the closet. She tried hard not to smile and ruin their fun. “Don’t wait up for me Tammy.” She said as Tammy closed the door. Jessica now stood in total darkness. Her confidence began to fade once she heard the locks turning. They seemed louder from where she now stood. She flinched with each turning of the locks. She backed against the wall and slowly slid to a sitting position. She could see their lights through the crack under the door.
Jessica felt a cold chill down her spine and had the feeling that she wasn’t alone.
“Very funny Tammy! Someone just touched me. You said I was gonna be alone in here!”
“You are. Are you scared?”
“No.”
“Yeah right!” Tammy said back. “You know the rules. Stay there or go home.”
“Tammy, really. Who’s in here with me?” She shouted at Tammy’s unseen co-conspirator. “Who are you? Don’t touch me!”
“Nice try chicken. You won’t get out that easily!” Megan yelled through the door.
Jessica began screaming. “NO! Leave me alone! Help Tammy! My face! It hurts…!” Jessica was terrified. She began shrieking and pounding on the door. “NO! Help meeee! Tammy!” She scratched at the door with her nails as she cried in terror. “Tammy, Help me please!” Her screams were deafening.
Tammy watched as the door shook each time Jessica thrust herself against it. She covered her ears and screamed. Sara and Megan were screaming out to Jessica as Courtney cried. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Tammy was sure that they were alone, nobody could be in there, but Jessica’s screams unhinged her mind. She turned and ran from the room screaming. She was followed by the others.
