Twisted Fate (Tales of Horror) (6 page)

Nothing. No sound at all. He began to wonder if being off his meds was a good idea after all. His wife needed him. His daughters needed him. He needed to get out of there. But how? He couldn’t think properly, anymore.

Am I going to die up here?

He trudged through the snow, using the tracks left by his previous steps, and entered the cabin again. The cold had seeped in when he left the door open, and there wasn’t a fire in the fireplace to counter it. Shivering, his hand and nose aching, he looked around for the woman who had been watching him through the window.

A crackling sound came from the radio, pulling his attention to it.

Did I leave it on?

The radio announced that there had been a multi-vehicle accident on the highway. A pileup. Seven people hurt with four succumbing to their injuries at Liberty Memorial.

The news went on but John’s world stopped. He was stuck there, a virtual prisoner of the elements. The elements that took his parents. The same elements that were stealing his family away at that very moment and there was nothing he could do about it.

The sound of engines again.

What’s going on?

He cocked his ear. The sound faded.

He wobbled over to the couch where he lie down, his head on the armrest. A case of the shivers overtook him. He wondered why he hadn’t grabbed a few pieces of wood and brushed the snow off them. He could’ve started a fire by now. Anything to stave off the hypothermia that would eventually take him.

How would he go on after this? How could he live after losing his wife and his two little girls? Where was Suzy now? Still wandering, or already freezing to death?

John cried, his tears warm, but cooling rapidly as they drifted down his face. Too many events mirrored the night his parents died. They’d been lost, wandering, people out looking for them.

Who was the woman in the window? Why am I here? Who am I?

The sound of engines again.

His mind slipped.

The sat phone rang.

Startled, he jolted his head sideways, eyes wide.

“Am I hearing things?” he asked out loud.

On the third ring he convinced himself that it wasn’t an illusion. He moved to get off the couch and fell to the floor in a heap of cold, non-functioning limbs.

The phone stopped its incessant drill.

I thought I dropped the phone. I thought it broke.

This time he was sure he could hear engines as the sounds grew louder, closer. Consciousness became harder to maintain.

John forced himself up, leaning his back against the couch. He waited. The engines stopped somewhere in front of the cabin. A moment later the door to the cabin slammed inward.

A policeman entered, followed by a paramedic. The third person was a ghost. John couldn’t believe it.

Tera, his wife. She ran to him.

“Oh, John, what have you done?”

She held his face in her hands. “I told you to take your pills. You were supposed to be home two days ago on Sunday. It’s Wednesday morning, John.”

She got moved aside as the paramedic started examining him.

John had enough strength to stay awake a little longer. He knew his hallucinations could be strong, but never like this. This one, while alone in the cabin, could’ve killed him.

The ghost woman from earlier stood by the door now. She wasn’t in the window anymore, and as far as John could tell, no one could see her. Tera turned to see what he was staring at.

He realized in a wave of lucidity that the woman by the door was a younger version of his mother.

She opened her mouth and whispered, “You’re mine. I’m waiting for you, John. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

She reared her head back and laughed a horrid, guttural cackle.

John shouted and tried to get up. The paramedic eased him back down.

“Did you hear what she just said?” he asked.

Tera looked at the cop and the paramedic, then back to him.

“John, I’m the only woman in the room. I didn’t say anything.”

“We have to stop her,” he shouted. “We have to stop her.”

He looked for the woman, but she was gone. In her place was his father, shaking his head.

“Goodbye, John.”

His father’s face evolved into something unexplainable. John screamed and arched his back as he tried to get away.

When he turned around, the sofa was drenched in blood now. It dripped off the center cushion, falling to a small puddle beside his head. The blood had pooled where the cushions were torn.

What the hell is that? What happened here?

He turned back around. The paramedic was gone. The policeman had disappeared. His parents were nowhere in sight. But Tera was there. She lay across the open doorway on her stomach, straddling the threshold of the cabin, her back a mess of blood and hair.

John gasped and brought a hand to his mouth.

“Baby?” he whispered. “What happened to you? Where is everybody?”

He crawled across the floor to her. The pain and the cold momentarily forgotten. When he moved the hair out of her face, he discovered Tera’s eyes open, lifeless, empty.

There was no doubt she was dead.

John looked down the length of her body and saw the axe imbedded in her back.

“What?” He crawled away fast and bumped into the wall. “How?
Why
?”

His body shuddered.

“How could this be?” he asked.

“
It just is.”

He spun around so fast he lost his balance and rolled onto his shoulder. When he looked up, no one was there.

The candle still burned by the door. It was the only light source in the cabin, and the light it gave off was so dim he could barely see, but it was enough to know he was alone with his dead wife.

Is someone here? Did they kill my Tera? Did
I
kill my Tera?

He looked back at her. She was still dead.

“No, no, no, no …”

He looked down at his leg. The pain had increased to the point where he wondered if he could walk on it.

Blood seeped through a hole in his jeans.

“What is that? What the hell is going on?”

He inspected his injury. He’d never seen a bullet wound before, but as far as he could tell, he had one in his leg.

“Who shot me?”

“
Don’t.”

This time the word was more of a plea. Like someone begging.

He didn’t bother to look for the source. Even if he spun around, he wouldn’t see anything. Whoever walked through his cabin could hide too fast for him to bother looking.

He attempted to get to his feet.

If Tera is here and I’m here, who is taking care of our girls?

He made it to his knees, but the leg with the bullet wound wouldn’t support his weight.

“When did I get shot? Nothing is making sense.” He shook his head, frustrated without answers.

Up on his knees, he stared at the inert form of his wife and saw a small revolver in her left hand.

“You shot me? Why, honey?”

Something flashed through his mind.

He shook his head to dislodge the memory.

“No way. I did not kill my daughters. Not me. I could never do that.”

“
Don’t, please Daddy, don’t.”

He couldn’t help himself. He spun around. The speaker was his mother again. She stood in the corner of the cabin, a soft light coming from somewhere inside her body.

“
Don’t,”
she repeated.

“Why are you here? Get out. This is my family. You’re dead.”

“
You’re dead, too.”

“Not yet.”

John used the couch to stand up. He leaned heavily on his good leg and hopped toward the bathroom. He needed bandages as his leg was still bleeding.

“
Don’t,”
the thing behind him said.

He realized it was taunting him, trying to bait him to lose his mind.

He hit the bathroom door and half fell, half ran in, using the sink to catch himself. He saw his face in the mirror and didn’t recognize it.

“Hello, pretty,” he said. “Aren’t you in some kind of trouble now.”

He smiled and turned for the medicine cabinet, slipping on the carpet and falling before he could catch himself. John hit the floor awkwardly and bent his wrist back on the sore hand.

“Fuck,” he swore at the intense pain. “What else can go wrong here? My wife is dead and I don’t know if that’s real or if I’m seeing things. I need a break here.”

Something sticky and cold covered his back. He leaned up and turned to look at what made him slip and fall.

Blood.

“Whose blood is this?”

He followed the blood to its source. It appeared to be coming from the bathtub.

His leg was completely numb now. Yet he had to see what was in the tub. He dragged himself across the bathroom floor, the small mat coming along under his weight. He got to the edge of the tub and lifted himself up.

“
Don’t do it.”

“
Fuck you,” he shouted back at the thing in his cabin.

He lifted up and looked in the tub. His daughters appeared to be sleeping.

In a flash it all came back to him. The fight. The axe and the gun. Everyone screaming. His wife yelling the word
don’t
over and over.

He eased back to the bathroom floor and dragged himself out and across the cabin. As he neared the door, he saw the woman and the man standing on either side. The woman was wagging a finger at him like he’d been a naughty boy.

He kept dragging himself, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. When he got to his wife’s body, he pushed her aside, and pulled himself out onto the snow.

John crawled and dragged himself away from the cabin. The cabin where his family had spent many seasons together, laughing and playing games. Watching late-night movies, and making popcorn.

He dragged himself further into the forest, away from the memories, away from the pain.

He dragged himself until he couldn’t anymore.

The last thought his brain processed was how the elements of schizophrenia were similar to a winter storm.

Or was it the other way around?

His mother stood over him at the end.

She cried for him as his soul was ripped away and taken to a place where pain was the price of entry.

John would never be cold again.

Vengeance

I had no idea that I would die that day, along with so many other people. It’s been ten years and I still look back and wonder how that day got so fucked up.

I had been looking forward to that holiday all summer long. Four of us had rented a cabin for Labor Day weekend, early September. It was our last party before University started for another year. We wanted to finish summer with a bang.

Boy, did we ever. I blamed a lot of people during those ten years, but never myself. It’s so hard to own something that tragic.

It’s all my fault. Everyone’s death, everyone’s blood is on my hands.