Darkness inside us: A book of short stories

Killer-A novella

Prologue

It was a dark and stormy summer night. Thunder rolled through the clouds, sounding like artillery fire to most people, and the lightning split through the sky, nearly catching fire to some of the dried husks of corn that were remaining in the nearly dead cornfield. In the distance, completely cloaked in darkness, was a large farmhouse, the biggest house in miles. And something terrible was happening within it.

A teenage boy was sitting in his bed, screaming, trying to make the voices inside his head, whatever they were, to shut up because he was getting visions; dark visions, visions of murder, things he never wanted to see again. The boy was crazy. His family had put him in hospitals again and again, but he had just gotten out of them after each doctor had said that he was alright. His parents didn’t believe it of course, they knew something was wrong with him. He was crazy or something - his mom even went as far as to say that he was possessed because she was a religious freak, but it could have very well been true. He slowly stood up, listening to the whispering inside his head, trying to force it out, but was unsuccessful at doing so.

“

NO!”

he screamed.

“

I am not doing those things. NO NO NO!!!”

He walked toward the door and banged his head against it. Warm blood trickled down his forehead. These voices were telling him awful things - showing him awful things- telling him to kill...

He moved forward quickly through his room and grabbed the machete he had hidden underneath his pillow. He went to the door, opened it, and heard the muttered conversations of his parents and he just stood there and smiled. He crept down the stairs, slowly, slowly, until he was at the foot of them. He saw his mom sitting at the kitchen table eating a piece of toast and his father, drunken slob that he was, sitting in the living room, kicked back. They had heard his screaming. They just didn’t care anymore. He would show them oh he would show them.

“

Time for breakfast,” his mother said. Then she stopped talking and saw the knife.

“

What’re you doin son?” his father asked, slurring his words.

“

Time to pay time to pay time to pay time to pay,” muttered the boy continuously.

“

What is wrong with him?” his mom asked and she stood up and walked toward him.

“

Woman stupid bitch woman mother get down get down get DOWN!!!” screamed the boy. She slowly backed away with her hands raised.

And then the boy swung the machete.

It hit her head and she fell to the ground with a thump. Blood pooled around her head and she was dead. His father jumped at him and tried to get him, but the boy rammed the blade through his throat and out the other end, hot, scalding blood washing over both his hands. He pulled the knife out and his father went to the floor.

He walked out of the room, washed his hands, washed the blade, and then walked out of the house, down the street, and disappeared into the stormy darkness, never to be seen for another twenty years.

[1]

When twenty five year old Thomas Hartwich moved to this small town on the outskirts of Grand Rapids Michigan, he knew that the town had a haunted history; he knew about the murders that had occurred twenty years ago. He would have to have known because he was a writer after all; he wrote stories based firmly in reality, that were true stories about ghostly encounters, and he had written a couple of true crime novels as well, though those hadn’t been the best sellers. The ghost stories had been where the money was at.