Razorblade Dreams: Horror Stories Read online

  RAZORBLADE DREAMS

  horror stories

  by

  MARK LUKENS

  Razorblade Dreams: Horror Stories—copyright © 2016 by Mark Lukens

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead (or any other form), is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Bettibup

  Special thanks to April, Conny, Kelli, Mary Ann, Wren, Sharon, and Linda. Your help was invaluable.

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:

  Ancient Enemy – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

  Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B01K42JBGW

  The Summoning – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

  Sightings – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

  Devil’s Island – www.amazon.com/dp/B06WWJC6VD

  The Exorcist’s Apprentice – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C

  Night Terrors – www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

  What Lies Below – www.amazon.com/dp/B0143LADEY

  Ghost Town – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G

  The Darwin Effect – www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4A8ZYC

  Descendants of Magic – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

  A Dark Collection: 12 Scary Stories – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  MR. BOONE

  THE DISAPPEARED

  DOWNLOADED TO HELL

  SPRING CLEANING

  ZOMBIE HOUSE

  ON THE MOVE

  THE LIGHTHOUSE

  A RECIPIENT FOR A BURDEN

  THE WRONG FEET

  KILLING TAMMY

  THE BEDROOM LIGHT

  RAZORBLADE DREAMS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  INTRODUCTION

  You can skip this part if you want to. I know a lot of readers don’t read the introductions so I’ll try to keep it brief. But for those of you who do read introductions, here it is.

  In the introduction to my first collection (A Dark Collection: 12 Scary Stories) I talked about my lifelong love of short stories. Of course I love novels, series (and movies and TV—preferably horror, suspense, and sci-fi, but I love any good story), but I also love a good short story. In that first introduction I just mentioned, I listed some of the great stories that I’ve read throughout my life, and now I’d like to list a few other great stories that I’ve discovered only in the last few years since my first collection was published.

  I still love reading anthologies, discovering new writers and new stories, and I came across some incredible stories just reading anthologies and collections these last few years. But I also discovered some great stories because I’m preparing a blog post for this coming Halloween (2017) of the greatest horror short stories ever. I’m continuing my self-started tradition of posting a “best of” list for Halloween. Two Halloweens ago I posted a list of the best horror films, and last year I posted a list of the best 100 horror novels of all time. You can find those lists on my blog here: www.marklukensbooks.wordpress.com Now, as I explain in those posts on my blog, these aren’t my favorite movies and books, but a kind of consensus of the best, at least according to all of the lists I looked up on the internet. I included the top films and novels that appeared numerous times on all of these lists. And now I’m going to do the same thing with the greatest horror short stories. I’m not sure how long the list will be, maybe around 50-75, because finding lists of the best horror short stories online is a little tougher than finding lists of films and novels. My goal with these lists was to watch and read as many of these great films and books/stories as I could. I’d seen most of the films at the time I posted that best of list, but when I posted the best 100 horror novels, I was surprised to find that I’d only read twenty-five of them. Yes, that’s right, only twenty-five percent of the best horror ever written. So I set out to read as many of them as I could this year (and in the upcoming years). I felt that if I wanted to be a better horror/suspense writer (or just a better writer in general), then I should read more of the best of the best. And I felt that was also true of the great horror short stories.

  All of that leads up to this: I discovered a lot of great horror stories that I’d never read before, and now I wanted to take the opportunity to share them with you. Some of these stories were from the list that I’m creating, but others were stories I’d read recently in anthologies and author collections. The newer stories won’t be on my list of the greatest horror stories (although they should be, and I’m sure some will be on lists of great horror stories in the near future).

  So here are some of the great stories I’ve come across in the last few years:

  Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

  Guts by Chuck Palahniuk

  Picking Splinters from a Sex Slave by Brian Kirk

  The Gingerbread Girl by Stephen King

  The Washingtonians by Bentley Little

  Blood Music by Greg Bear

  In the Bag by Tim Curran

  White Chapel by Douglas Clegg

  Psyche by D.F. Noble

  One Possible Shape of Things to Come by Brian Hodge

  I hope you’ll check out the stories above, if you haven’t already.

  I don’t dare compare myself to these great storytellers, or to the storytellers on my “best of” list that I will be posting this Halloween, but I aspire to write good stories, stories that may scare you, but most importantly stories that make you think and stay with you. I feel the best way to hone that skill is to keep reading great stories, to keep being inspired. And even though I read stories from a writer’s point of view a lot of times, I have to admit that I also read them for pure enjoyment. I’m a writer, that’s my job now (thanks so much to you, dear reader), but I’m also a reader . . . I will always be a reader.

  Okay, I only have two more quick points to make and then you can get to the stories. First, many people have asked me how I come up with my ideas for stories and novels. I’m sure it’s the question writers get asked most often. I wish I had a suitable answer for that question, but the best way I can explain it is that ideas just seem to form on their own sometimes. A question, a movie or TV show I’m watching, or even a conversation, can spark an idea that kind of just grows in the back of my mind until it takes on a life of its own, demanding to be written down. I go into much further depth about generating ideas in my upcoming books about writing, publishing, and marketing e-books, but I wanted to go into a little detail here after each story in this collection about the inspiration for each story, and maybe a little bit about the process of writing it. If you’re not into that kind of thing, if you don’t want to see how the machinery behind the curtain works, then please feel free to skip the ramblings of this author written in that fancy italicized font at the end of each story and go on to the next one. But for those of you who might be curious (I always am—I always read the author’s notes at the end or beginning of a story or a novel), I just wanted to do my best to explain how these particular stories came to life.

  The second point I wanted to make is that in my last collection I tried to stay away from the typical monsters and horror tropes found in a lot of novels and stories, but in this collection I wanted to include them (zombies, demons, ghosts, vampires, aliens, and of course the worst monsters of all—the human monsters), or at least my twist on those monsters. The stories in this collection range over many years, a mixture of ol
der ones and newer ones; some of the stories were previously published, others were stuffed away in a drawer for a while, and others I wrote specifically for this collection.

  I hope you enjoy these tales. I hope a few of them scare you a little, but most of all I hope they stay with you for a while. So sit back, relax, and come take a walk with me . . .

  And thank you, dear reader . . . thank you for everything.

  Mark Lukens

  Florida

  2017

  MR. BOONE

  THE INVITATION

  1.

  Tonight was the night J.T. and Tyler were going to invite the spirit of Mr. Boone into their house.

  “You scared?” J.T. asked his little brother as he sat at his desk, his laptop computer right behind him. The website J.T. had looked up was still on the screen.

  “No.” Tyler practically barked the word out, but his eyes shifted to the laptop screen for a moment. The screen’s background was black with white, almost cartoonish, cobwebs in the corners. The spell to invoke the spirit of Mr. Boone was written in bright red letters. Both of them had read the spell many times now. J.T. had printed out the page and retyped the invocation so that it would be easier for them to read out loud later. They had memorized the ritual to call Mr. Boone, and they had agreed to try it tonight while their mom was out of town.

  “You seem like you’re scared,” J.T. teased.

  “I’m not,” Tyler assured him.

  “Guys!” their mom called out from the living room. The sound of her high heels click-clacking along on the wood floor announced that she was coming their way. “I’m getting ready to leave!”

  J.T. turned around and minimized the website on the laptop screen, then closed the laptop gently.

  Their mom opened the door up to J.T.’s room a few seconds later. She never knocked, and sometimes J.T. had to lock his door to keep her from barging right in.

  “You guys going to give me a hug goodbye?”

  They got up and followed their mother back out to the living room.

  “What are you guys doing in there, planning a party or something?” she asked over her shoulder with a smile (but J.T. knew she was fishing for information and trying to trip them up).

  “No,” J.T. answered, but he gave his little brother a warning stare as they stepped out of the hallway into the living room.

  Tyler couldn’t help smiling.

  The little idiot was going to give it all away, J.T. thought. Tyler hadn’t learned how to keep a straight face in front of their mom yet.

  Mom turned and stared right at J.T. once they were all gathered in the living room. “I’m serious, Jonathon,” she said. And she was serious when she used his full given name instead of the nickname that he preferred.

  “No parties,” he grumbled. “We promise.”

  “I’ve asked Mrs. Horton next door to keep an eye on the house. If she sees any cars in our driveway, or anything strange going on, she’s going to call me right away.”

  “We know, Mom,” J.T. told her.

  Tyler nodded in agreement, but he was still smiling.

  Smiling.

  Tyler’s face was getting red, and he looked like he was going to explode with the truth.

  Of course Mom caught on right away. Her gaze lingered on Tyler for a moment, studying him like a cop getting ready to stare the confession out of a nervous suspect.

  “No parties,” J.T. said again, trying to get his mother’s attention focused back on him.

  It worked. “No one over at all,” she said when she looked at J.T. again.

  “You can trust us, Mom.”

  Mom’s face crumpled a little in concern. She could change facial expressions in a millisecond. “I feel so bad I have to leave you guys alone for two days. If your Uncle Bill could’ve watched you . . .”

  “We don’t need anyone to watch us,” J.T. said. “I’m almost seventeen years old. Almost an adult.”

  “I know,” Mom said and managed to sigh at the same time when she said the words. She stared at J.T. It seemed like she might break into tears at any moment. “If I didn’t have this stupid meeting to go to down in St. Louis . . .”

  “I know, Mom. We’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Mom still seemed like she was going to choke up with emotion. She’d left them on their own plenty of times before because of the crazy hours she worked as a district manager for a fast food chain, but she had never left them alone overnight.

  “You have to trust us some time,” J.T. said.

  “I know.”

  “We’re not going to have any parties,” Tyler said and snickered. “It’s not like J.T. has any friends at school anyway.”

  J.T. shoved his little brother, but then he nodded at his mom. Tyler was right; J.T. was an introvert who crept through the school halls, keeping to himself and his small group of nerdy friends. He buried himself in horror novels and scary movies. His dream was to become a creator of horror films one day, the next Wes Craven or John Carpenter. And tonight’s experiment—which he would film—would be just one more step closer towards that dream. He planned on putting his film online no matter what he captured tonight.

  If Tyler had the guts to go through with the ritual tonight.

  “Dinner’s on the stove,” Mom told them. “There’s also some leftover lasagna in the fridge. Snacks in the cabinets. I left you some money in case you want to order a pizza or something, but I don’t want you going out at night at all.”

  “We know,” J.T. groaned. She didn’t have to worry about him driving even though he had his learner’s permit because they only had the one car, and she was taking it.

  “I don’t want you going out anywhere at night,” she repeated. “And tomorrow, if you go anywhere, I want you to lock the doors to the house and make sure you take your cell phone with you. You have your Uncle Bill’s number on there, right?”

  “Yessss,” J.T. said. They had been over this a thousand times already. “We’re not going anywhere tomorrow.” And it was the truth. J.T. didn’t have anything planned. His best friend—his only real friend—Garrett was at his dad’s house for the weekend.

  That made J.T. think of his own father for a moment, and a stab of pain shot through him at the thought. Dad had died four years ago in a car accident, and J.T. felt like he’d curled up inside ever since, hiding away from the world. There were so many times he had wished his dad was still here to play ball with him, talk to him, take him fishing, teach him how to be a man and not the nerdy wuss he’d become.

  He pushed the thought of his father away.

  “You got your Uncle Bill’s number?” Mom asked again.

  “I’ve got it in my phone. We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us.” He thought he was going to have to push her towards the front door.

  “Okay.” She looked around at the living room and then the kitchen like she might be forgetting something.

  “You got everything?” J.T. asked her. He had helped her load her suitcase and bags in the car an hour earlier.

  She nodded and then grabbed her purse off of the counter that separated the dining area from the kitchen. She had her keys and her phone in her hand. Her eyes were already getting big. The tears would be next.

  Please don’t start crying, Mom, J.T. thought.

  “Give me a hug,” she said. “Big group hug.”

  They all gathered together. J.T. and Tyler gave her half-hearted hugs, but Mom squeezed them tight, closing her eyes.

  “My guys,” she moaned as she let them go and wiped at her eyes.

  J.T. and Tyler followed her out the front door onto the covered front porch and then down the curving walkway to the driveway. They watched her get in the car, start it, and back out of the driveway. She gave them an exaggerated wave goodbye from behind the windshield before she drove away.

  J.T. looked at his little brother. “Time to get started.”

  2.

  J.T. and Tyler waited an hour before beginning the preparations just in c
ase their mom needed to come back for something.

  But after that hour had passed, they got to work.

  Earlier they had gathered a lot of the stuff they would need for tonight’s ritual, hiding the items away in their bedrooms. They got them out, collecting the items in a pile on the floor in the living room. There were white candles in glass jars (thirteen of them—it had to be thirteen), a Bic lighter, a container of table salt, a homemade crucifix that they had constructed from two pieces of wood lashed together with twine, a few different colors of chalk (the kind kids used to write on sidewalks with, the kind that washed off easily), a printout of the invocation spell from the website, a length of rope (they used clothesline that J.T. had bought at a dollar store a week ago), a bowl filled halfway up with red wine, a bowl of fruit, another empty bowl, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a razor knife.

  Now that the items were laid out on the floor and the autumn afternoon had turned into full darkness, J.T. looked at Tyler. “You sure you’re going to be able to go through with this?”

  Tyler cast his gaze down at the razor knife on the floor next to the bowl for a moment. “I’m sure if you’re sure,” he answered, but he didn’t look very sure.

  “I’m sure,” J.T. promised.

  The last thing J.T. got was his digital video camera. He’d practiced filming with it for two years, and he was an expert with it now. He had already filmed an intro earlier where he explained exactly what he and Tyler were doing, and he had taken some footage of them collecting the items they would need for the ritual. He planned on editing everything together later in the software Mom had bought him last year for Christmas.

  They had to wait until close to midnight to perform the ritual, and the hours were going by slowly for J.T. But he still had plenty to do. He carefully drew the symbols on the front door and the floor in front of it with the different colored sticks of chalk. Tyler asked to help, but J.T. refused his offer—these symbols had to be copied perfectly from the internet pages. Everything had to be precise and perfect, or Mr. Boone wouldn’t come.