A Macabre Hankering Read online

  A Macabre Hankering

  Short Stories by Tom J. Perrin

  A Macabre Hakering Tom J. Perrin A Macabre Hankering copyright © by Tom J. Perrin

  All stories copyright © by Tom J. Perrin

  "Billy Blake" copyright © 2017. Appears here for the first time.

  "The Hotel" copyright © 2017. Appears here for the first time.

  "Big Al and the Train" copyright © 2015. Appears here for the first time.

  "Red Eye" copyright © 2016. Appears here for the first time.

  "Dissapear" copyright © 2017. Appears here for the first time.

  "The Passage" copyright © 2016. First appeared on www.thousandonestories.com. Edited by Ed King.

  "Revival" copyright © 2017. First published under the name "I Can Help You" by Dark Passages Publishing.

  "The Girl Who Played Dead" copyright © 2015. First appeared in Heater Magazine, Fall 2015.

  "The TV is Watching You" copyright © 2015. First appeared in the CMC Review, Fall 2015.

  "Freaky Teeth" copyright © 2015. First appeared in the J.J Outre Review, an imprint of Dark Passages Publishing.

  There are far too many people I want to thank for making this book a reality and my dreams come true.

  Thank you, all. It wouldn't have been possible without you.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Billy Blake

  The Hotel

  Big Al and the Train

  Red Eye

  Disappear

  The Passage

  Revival

  The Girl Who Played Dead

  The TV is Watching You

  Freaky Teeth

  About the Author

  Billy Blake

  Previously unpublished.

  Excerpt taken from Taking From The Rich - by William ‘Billy’ Blake.

  ‘...It was Oscar Wilde that said ‘these days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing’. For those lucky enough to be living the perceived American dream this is more and more true nowadays - I use lucky because if you’re not worried about the price of anything then you’re living a blissful existence, a slightly messed up existence where nothing has value. But isn’t that the American dream, when you drill it down to its core? Not having to worry, living off the fat of the land. The majority, however, are brought up a little differently, raised to appreciate the value of everything and the know its price, every step of the way. "Every cent counts" is what my old man used to say to me, usually as he was dropping a handful of change into the jar on the fireplace. Over time it became a melange of bronze, silver and the occasional dollar bill which glowed against the plastic fire. Over the years the jar got bigger as we saved every penny we could as a family, "for the rainy days", my Momma used to say to me. Everything went into the jar, from loose change to those nickels, dimes and quarters I picked up walking home from school to our dilapidated townhouse in the middle of nowhere, stuck in a crumbling, shoddy row, riddled with damp and rot, facing the butt fuck nothingness of farmland owned by the rich farmer who lived somewhere over the horizon.

  Then the rich man came and took it all away from us. We owed him money, more and more over the years, and it was time for him to collect. The pennies in the jar didn’t even begin to placate the prick who wasn’t ballsy enough to evict us all himself, sending instead the heavies to strip us of our worldly possessions and leave us literally pissing into the wind.

  Two months later the houses were raised to the ground and flattened, making way for more crops. “A better source of income” was the official line. We sold everything we could as we looked for somewhere to live, pooled it all, pawned what could be pawned and hoped and prayed that it would be enough. It wasn’t enough, the bank said it would never be enough. We lived rough before moving onto welfare and beginning to settle in a shared house. Four small rooms in one big house for four families, it wasn’t a squat, the government seal of approval saw to that, but it really wasn’t far off. Eventually my Daddy left with just the clothes on his back, a few dollars he’d no doubt won from hustling pool in the local bar and a promise of work up in Alaska. Mom fell into the depression that would eventually force her to throw herself in front of the express lane of the highway one evening on the outskirts of town. Half of her was thrown across the county line, it was a nightmare for the police jurisdiction. All of this happened before my thirteenth birthday. Growing up after that as a foster child I began to envy the rich. The kids with straight teeth, neat and tidy haircuts, a beaming smile, faces full of food, bellies swollen from the fat of the land I never quite got, smiles full of happiness and eyes full of hope, the epitome of living in the United States of America.

  Tony Henrikson. I hated him from the first moment I met him. He was the guidance counsellor at my school, Ridgecrest High. In my first ever allotted meeting with him, he welcomed me with a smile but as soon as the door was closed he turned to me and said “Jim, no offence but you’ll never amount to nothing, you fucking peasant. I heard your Daddy left home and your Mommy killed herself, probably a smart move. I don't see how you're going to end up anywhere but in prison or dead...no offence”. He lauded his money over me, once giving me twenty dollars to shine his shoes during our guidance sessions, which were to become a weekly thing until school cut out for summer. That summer a lot of people at my school were going travelling with friends. Some were working two jobs and others needn’t do a single thing but sleep in and jerk off because of the silver spoon in their mouth and the stick up their asses so far it corrected their posture. As for me, I started to steal and began to make money that way - I was a self-made entrepreneur, taking from the rich had become oh so easy. A little alcohol here and there I sold to kids hanging round parks quickly turned into a car radio which quickly became a mountain bike left unchained. I always had my eye on the bigger prize though.

  I knew where Henrikson lived, and that he’d be out of town in his Malibu beach house he’d inherited off his parents. The thing about big shots in a small town is they run their mouth off once in public and in an instant everyone knows thier business. You might as well paint a massive fucking target on your back. It wasn’t hard to break into. A small window in the basement let me inside the three storey house on the edge of town, with no neighbors directly around the land. It was perfectly secluded and far grander than anything I’d ever been in or even seen before. For just over a week I was able to make it my own, enjoying the double bed, the walk-in steam shower, the heated jacuzzi, well-stocked games room and home cinema, not to mention the fully stocked fridge-freezer and pantry of food that was, until that point, a fairly alien concept to me. There was no jar of loose change on the fireplace, but cash lying around in the most obvious of places. I found enough cash, drugs and jewellery to leave the fuckheap of a home and start somewhere new, which is exactly what I planned to do. It was the rags to riches story I’d dreamed of.

  That would’ve been enough for me, should've been enough. I hadn’t planned to kill him. It sort of just happened. What is it they say in the movies - “it was him or me, Johnny.”

  He threw me from the sofa and pinned me down on the floor of his home cinema in the basement. I had evidently fallen asleep watching one of the films, popcorn strewn across the floor and the beer soaking into the carpet after slipping through my fingers as I dozed during what looked like Back to the Future III. He wasn't due back for another night. I thought I was safe living out my dream for one night more.

  “You snot-nosed little cunt - what the hell are you doing in my home?” I couldn’t answer - the life was being strangled from me. His grip was getting tighter.

  “You think anyone will miss you if I kill you and bury
your body? Wrong, motherfucker, there isn’t one person that’d miss you, you runty little fuck.”

  I wasn’t far off fading out when I saw the beer bottle within reaching distance. I managed to get my fingers around it and smash the glass into the back of his head. He fell off, grabbing the back of his head as he did so I picked up another bottle and smashed it into his nose as he came for me again, breaking it open with a spray of blood and leaving glass implanted in his cheeks and nose. I straddled him and punched away my anger, punching the farmer who evicted us, punching my Daddy for leaving, my Momma for throwing herself in front of that truck, punching a life’s worth of frustrations out. Eventually he stopped struggling and his head lolled to one side. A pool of blood started to congeal and his face was a complete and utter mess - I knew I’d killed him. I quickly grabbed my bag, my ticket to a new life and left through the window I’d came in.'

  The backroom of the quaint little bookstore was packed full, perhaps even a little over capacity but nobody was counting - the small town had come to a complete standstill. Customers had queued since early afternoon and rapidly snapped up all of seventy-five available chairs, it was now 6.45pm and the cool evening air drifted in through the fire escape, throwing a much welcomed breeze into the room. Even more people had recently crammed inside; they now stood in the aisles, perched down the sides of the rows and pushed back against the walls. The owners had closed the doors to the bookshop thirty minutes ago and were now backstage, getting everything ready. Fiddling with the mics, adjusting the lighting and making sure that there was enough books for everyone. The gathered audience were craning their necks every way possible to get a glance at the makeshift stage that stood directly ahead of the them, every so slightly raised from floor level and freshly polished giving off a pine disinfectant smell. A stack of freshly printed books greeted the congregation, piled high to the left of the stage, their crisp white pages gleaming under the lights.

  Wilson’s bookstore is something of a focal point in the small town of Bluebell, Pennsylvania. It sits smack bang in the middle of Main Street, the nucleus of the small suburban town. In July 2005, Money magazine voted it the fourteenth best place to live in the United States of America. This was no mean feat and widely celebrated by the town’s mayor for years afterwards, as Bluebell teetered around the early teens in the rankings. Littered around the town were circa six thousand five-hundred residents and a handful of stores still surviving the apocalypse that is the twenty-first century for small time businesses. Equally as profitable and standing strongly on their own means were a smattering of family run restaurants offering locally made products and a malt soda often dubbed the best in the state. The principal source of income to the town are the golf courses which span the horizon as far as the eye can see. Memberships rose, as did prices with the profits being fed back into the town.

  The store itself first opened back in 1950 when Buddy Wilson opened its doors for the first time, giving a lifelong love for reading and writing a home. In his own time Buddy enjoyed a mildly successful writing career, having published two crime novels of his own in the late 1940’s. His retirement nest egg was spent buying stock and then furnishing the two tier retail outlet, all the work done by hand, right up until opening and then day after day from there on out until the day he died. After suffering a fatal heart attack in 1978 at the ripe old age of seventy-four, Buddy’s only heir Peter came back from work in Alabama, moved into his old family home on the edge of town overlooking the common and took over the family business. To this day he still runs his father’s legacy, alongside his wife, Amanda. Their eight year old son Porter is already earmarked to take over On most afternoons you’ll find the blonde haired little boy sat behind the counter with either his Ma or Pa, a book in his hands, his feet dangling off the counter as he reads and greets folks coming into the store.

  It was a joyous time for them right now; every new Billy Blake book release brought increased custom and the possibility of a book signing at the store, they had recently redeveloped part of the upstairs area after a particularly fruitful summer, which they had converted into a cinema, choosing a different classic film to show to the public each week. It had proved a huge success from the outset and now husband and wife stood in anticipation waiting for the famous writer to appear on the stage and endorse their store, while also selflessly promoting his new book, Taking From The Rich.

  As he stood backstage, cramped into the small single cubicle toilet with room enough to just about fart let alone swing a cat Billy stared at himself in the mirror. He had wrinkled around the eyes and could swear that his hairline was receding despite his twenty-five years of age. As he scrunched his face up the wrinkles contorted and then relaxed, but stayed for a moment, scourging his face. He grimaced and looked at his slightly yellowing teeth, checking for signs of errant food. Relieved there was none he closed his eyes and threw cold water onto his face as a knock on the door came.

  “Whenever you’re ready, BIlly.”

  “Yeah, gimme thirty seconds and I’ll be out.”

  “M’kay.”

  Billy Blake was born right here in Bluebell and attended both the local elementary and high school throughout his adolescent, formative years. When interviewed after the release of his first best-selling book two years previous, his teachers had all said they knew that there was something special and strange about the young boy often referred to as “Little William’. He had excelled in creative writing and English lit, but faltered in Math and Physical Education and never really seemed to fit in with the other children. You’d often find Billy secluded with his nose in a book rather than with the swell of the crowd during breaks. Somewhat a loner, Billy didn’t attend college after high school but instead preferred to lock himself away in his parent’s basement, writing day after day. A small idea formed in a creative writing class had blossomed into his first novel seemingly overnight. Since then, his parents had moved away to London for work and he had moved out to Estes Park in Colorado, preferring a house overlooking the small mountain town and watching its season reflect his own writing periods. During the winter months Billy would find himself locked away in a self induced hibernation and then out around the country during the summer when the tourist season in Estes would swell. Tonight he was back home in Bluebell for the first time in a while and dreading facing such a small crowd; many of whom would surely recognise him from years gone by. As he prepared to face the crowd Billy, reflected for a moment on the numerous tours he had previously completed and how they’d all been larger than this, with bigger crowds and more dates. But somehow tonight felt different; he felt himself under a microscope; his every move, word, action would undoubtedly be scrutinized by his audience. The public knew that Billy wasn’t at his strongest in front of large crowds, but they couldn’t fully comprehend his trepidation in front of his own fans. He was something of an enigma to them; they worshipped him irrevocably, but they couldn’t quite figure him out. His so called social anxiety was the source of much debate in the media, his appearances often coming under very public scrutiny. Only Billy carried around with him the real reason for his fear of crowds.

  He knew that somewhere along the way during book tours there would be a murder which he would be completely hopeless to prevent.

  Two Years Previous

  Billy’s breakthrough debut novel was entitled Hide and Seek. The novel was set in Richmond, Virginia and focused on a the tale of a serial killer who would break into family homes when children were left alone and torture them, eventually chopping random body parts off before hiding parts of the body around the house for the parents to discover. The killer, nameless throughout, would leave notes and subsequently fantasize about the parent’s anguish. The killer was never caught.

  The novel received acclaim throughout the literary world. Billy’s style drew him plaudits from all corners of the publishing industry. Comparisons were drawn with writers such as Koontz and King, the former contacting Billy about a co-write in the future,
the latter giving a blurb for the front cover of reprint stating that "he fucking loved it" in true King fashion.

  Publishers were falling over themselves for the chance to represent ‘one of the best young American writers’. It sold just under two million copies and overnight Billy was a success; in no time at all after finishing in education he had gone from his parent’s basement to the bright lights of Denver. He was the toast of parties, the new A-list celeb in town and enjoying the adulation of his fifteen minutes of fame. He chose a townhouse in the bustling Lafayette to rent before visiting Estes and falling in love with the seclusion. He could see The Stanley Hotel from his back windo - no better view for a writer or so the realtor had said. Life couldn’t have been better for Billy, until he received a visit from the Denver State Police a few months after his book had hit shelves and risen steadily to the #1 spot in the New York Times Bestseller List, ousting the latest Lee Child novel in the process.

  Richmond, Virginia

  The Williams family had always lived in Richmond. Dave and Susan Williams had a beautiful young daughter called Gretchen, who had just turned fourteen and started at the local high school in Mechanicsville. Dave worked away from home a lot as a consultant to a major insurance firm, and Susan was a freelance photographer, often out on commissioned shoots. Susan was out that afternoon, just eight miles away shooting an engagement for the Towner family. She'd later torment herself that she was so close. Dave was in Houston attending a three day retreat for partners of the firm. On that fateful day, Gretchen had returned home from school to find a note from her mother, explaining that she wouldn’t been home from a shoot until later. There was twenty dollars for Gretchen to order in food clipped to the note. Gretchen and her mother had argued that morning over breakfast, Gretchen's first report card had returned back an “unsatisfactory” for overall application. Little did she know as she screamed "I hate you" at her Mother and stormed out of the door that they would never get the chance to make up.