Brian Freeman - Dark Screams - Volume Six

And above, always above, looking down was the glowering eye of the moon. Whenever Clow saw it, he screamed thinking it was the eye of the Corpse King.

And maybe it was.

He needed to get back to the Seven Keys, but sometimes he wasn’t sure where it was. So he darted down alleys heaped with rubbish, fought slavering dogs and fled from packs of skittering rats. He stumbled through gutters flowing with sewage and didn’t move quite fast enough when a chamber pot was emptied from above. Black and stinking, slinking like the vermin he had become, he ran and hid and giggled hysterically. When he saw two diggers pulling a dog cart, he shrieked like a lunatic.

But finally, he reached the archway that led to his close, to the Seven Keys.

He moved quietly, only mumbling softly to himself. The corpse of a man was sprawled at a doorstep, drowning in a pool of blood and vomit. The door of the public privy was swinging wide, the pit overflowing, the stench unbearable. The pigs had burst their pen and were rooting about in there, slopping up what they found. The Seven Keys was just ahead… nighted and looming. The stink of butchered hogs was ripe in the air… greasy carcasses and moist piles of entrails. Sewage in the gutter flowed past the steps. Men slept in their own vomit on the walks.

But finally, yes, he was home.

Down into the cellar he went, locking the door behind him, smelling his stock and liking it. It was some time before he dared light a single candle. And when he did he saw wreckage… someone or something had been in there, shattering vats and scattering bones and leaving a black slime in its passing.

And then Clow noticed the far wall.

A great hole had been eaten through it, a shadowy tunnel led away down into the earth.

Stifling a scream, Clow hid behind a cask of pickled babies, trembling.

He didn’t wait long. For soon enough a voice that was broken and deranged echoed out at him: “Oi, Sammy… tomorrow night I’d like something not too blown with gas and set with worms… something moist and chewy… Did ye hear me, Sammy? Eh, there’s a good lad, keep me belly full and ye’ll stay alive…”

The days passed in a sepulchral blur.

Clow did a lot of digging and a lot of snatching and the meat was always gladly taken. But it had to come screeching to an end sooner or later and then one rainy night, it did just that.

The police were waiting for him in their long coats and tall hats and dark badges when he got back to the cellar. They took hold of him and pushed him roughly down the steps. Into that dissection room of bones and pickled organs, salted babies and mildewing cadavers.

The stink was unbearable.

The floor had been dug up and a gagging, putrescent mist came off what had been uncovered.

A policeman with a bushy mustache and mutton-chop sideburns said, “Like a morgue in here, dear Christ, like a morgue.” He slapped Clow across the face and kept slapping him until Clow fell to that oozing, moist earth, sobbing and giggling. “Got to be the remains of a hundred in here, you dirty bastard, you sick and wretched ghoul… you’ll swing for this, God help me, you will…”

A couple other peelers were examining the hole in the wall and the great passage beyond. Using lamps they went in there, returning a few minutes later.

“Bones in there,” one of them said. “It must go on for a mile… nothing in there but bones. Bones that have been chewed and snapped.”

Clow tried to explain. “It were the king, the Corpse King. I was a-feeding him, I had to feed him! Ye ask Johnny Sherily if it all isn’t so, swear to God, swear to—”

But they just beat him to the floor. They didn’t want to hear anymore. They were pale and sickened and badly wanted to hurt Clow worse than they already had.

Another policeman wearing rubber gloves up to his elbows said, “Aye, a hundred corpses, sure. And that’s not counting the skulls and bottled parts.” He pulled the lid off a cask, digging around in there and yanking up a corpse out of the stinking brine by its hair. The bloated, furrowed face stared out at them. “And not counting these pickled ones, either.”

Clow was grinning and trembling. “You’d please to be careful of that one, kind sir, it being me mother and all…”

And that was how Samuel Clow finally found the gallows, the grave, and the thing that waited with ravening jaws for him beyond.

RICHARD CHIZMAR is the founder and publisher/editor of Cemetery Dance magazine and the Cemetery Dance Publications book imprint. He has edited more than a dozen anthologies, including The Best of Cemetery Dance, The Earth Strikes Back, Night Visions 10, October Dreams (with Robert Morrish), and the Shivers series.

BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN is the managing editor of Cemetery Dance Publications and the author of several novels and novellas, along with four short-story collections, including an ebook-only exclusive that hit #1 on Amazon.com in the US, UK, Germany, Spain, and France in the short-story categories. His blog and website can be found at: http://www.BrianJamesFreeman.com.

“A wicked treat [featuring] … some of the genre’s best.”

“Five fun-to-read stories by top-notch horror scribes. How can you lose? The answer: you can’t.”

“If you have not tried the series yet, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of any (or all) of the books for yourself.”

“Fans of horror of every variety will find something to love in these pages.”

“[ Volume Five ] runs the gamut from throwback horror to lyrical and heartbreaking tales.”

Dark Screams: Volume Six is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Hydra Ebook Original

Copyright © 2017 by Brian James Freeman and Richard Chizmar

“The Rich Are Different” by Lisa Morton, copyright © 2017 by Lisa Morton

“The Manicure” by Nell Quinn-Gibney, copyright © 2017 by Nell Quinn-Gibney

“The Comforting Voice” by Norman Prentiss, copyright © 2017 by Norman Prentiss

“The Corpse King” by Tim Curran, copyright © 2010 by Tim Curran

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Hydra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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