Horror Dungeon: A Compilation of 25 Short Stories

By James W. Cook

This book contains a compilation of 25 short stories based on the Horror Genre. It is meant to keep the reader on the edge of their seat and make them become afraid to be alone in the dark.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532090721

James W. Cook

The author was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania on March 1, 1951. I attended Freedom High School in Bethlehem Pennsylvania as well as LCCC. I am also a U.S. Army veteran having served from August 1968 through August 1971 as well as being a Vietnam Veteran. I am the proud son of the late William and Thelma Cook.

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Copyright © 2020 James W. Cook.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9073-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9072-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019921168

iUniverse rev. date:  12/30/2019

Contents

He’s Coming To Get You

It’s In The House

Only The Devil Will Hear You Scream

Dark Harvest

House Pets

Sickle

Casgarande

Jeremy

The Harvesting

Jukumba

Freak Of Nature

Laid To Rest

Curse Of The O’Cheeko’s

Whiskers

Evergreen Acres

Laying In Wait

Night Of Terror

The Curddling

When Darkness Falls

Seeds

Laboyan

Creepies

Trapped

Unborn Spirits

Devils Joker

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He’s Coming

To Get You

T he year was 1918 and the school year had just begun. There was a new student in class that year who’s family had moved to town from New York City. His name was Davis Campbell and he was quite unusual. In those days he was labeled as retarded, but by today’s standards, he would have been labeled as autistic. Nobody back then could have imagined just what capabilities the young Davis would have, however they wouldn’t turn out to be very good.

Time came one day when young Davis was at school when the other boys decided to play a prank on young Davis. The cruelty that was to follow would last one hundred years and take countless lives. To get back to the practical joke.

The three boys, Adam Bechdolt, Paul Blake, and Chris Amato got together to decide how they would go about to play this nasty joke on young Davis who they considered to be nothing but a retarded cozen.

The boys decided to lure young Davis down to the other end of the woods where the towns sewer system had its recycling plant. Row upon row there were pools of raw sewage, acres of those pools, the sunlight reflecting on their smelly surface.

Although there was a tall fence surrounding the property, the eastern gate was usually unlocked so truckers would have no problem entering the plant whenever the security guard took a piss break.

It was during one of those breaks that the boys decided to enter the plant to perform their dirty deed on poor Davis.

At the schoolyard, the boys watched as Davis could be seen walking down the long paved sidewalk down the street from his house, books dangling from his knapsack.

As Davis approached, the boys surrounded him, forcing him to follow them down toward the wooded area and down the path to the sewage treatment plant.

When Davis saw where they were leading him he began to struggle, but to no avail. The boys were no match for the young, smaller, weaker Davis. As they approached the fence line, they walked toward the eastern gate where they saw their opportunity. The guard was just starting to walk away from his post. That would give the boys about fifteen minutes to do their dirty deed and make their escape.

Trying in vain to break free, Davis nearly got away when his red jacket ripped at the collar, but the boys were just to strong for his tiny frame.

Running as fast as they could, the four boys made their way to tank 17 where they proceeded to strip Davis naked and threw him into the smelly tank. As Davis screamed in agony, the three made their way to the fence line and out the gate with the guard shouting out, Stop, Stop. Poor Davis had been thrown into a tank containing not only human waste, but also acid that someone had thrown into the tank earlier that day.

As his skin began to burn and peel, Davis screamed so loud that he had actually began to lose his voice and it became as though he had a sore throat. No longer able to take the pain, young Davis went under the waste and drowned; only later was his body found by the tank crew whose job it was to clean out the tank after it had been emptied.

Davis’s skin no longer hung from his bones and he no longer resembled that of a human being. At his funeral days later, the entire town mourned his passing, but his soul only knew that vengeance had to be done and it had to be on the heirs of those who had done this evil deed to him and cut his short life from him.

It would take another one hundred years before the soul of Davis would have its chance to take the vengeance it knew it had to take.

The year was 1963 and it was the new school year. The classes were just beginning with the new students at the new school that had been built over the remains of the burned out school that Davis had attended one hundred years earlier. The fire inspector never came to a conclusion of what actually started the fire, but some people believed that it nay have been caused by a what some people believed was the ghost of a boy that was often seen peering from the second floor of the building.

Was this ghostly figure responsible for the fire, and could one be capable of a dastardly deed? Anyway, it didn’t matter, the new school was second to none in architecture in the state. Even the Governor himself along with the Mayor and other state and local officials were at the grand opening the first day of classes.

Despite the fact the school was new, it wouldn’t take long before things started to happen. Things that one would associate with happening in the old school, not in the state of the art new school. Lights would flicker and nearly all the computers would die out off and on daily with no explanation.

One place in the school that was the beast was the Olympic size swimming pool. Unknown for a school for children from ages 5 through12.

The science lab even had a state of the art botany room along with the states only known stink flower. It had Venus fly traps, numerous flowers from around the world in its own glass heated building, capable of bringing the warmth of the sun beaming down to bring its energy to all the flowers and plants inside.

Then, not to be topped was the biology lab with an assortment of lizards, snakes and other vermin. Naturally, everything was tightly controlled so there was never any danger to the young students attending this school.

One day, Tommy German was walking down the hall when suddenly something invisible seemed to be grabbing him by the shirt collar toward a doorway leading down the steps into the cellar where the boiler room is located. Unable to control what was happening to him, the lad was being swooped toward the heated boiler that was used to heat the water system for the school. Trying to scream and unable to do so, Tommy’s face was being led towards the boilers door and as it opened and the heat emanated from it, Tommy’s face was already beginning to peel away from the intense heat, even before his face hit the flames inside the chamber. With his entire head aflame, it was all but over for the young lad and as his body fell limp, it didn’t take long before the janitor had heard his screams and came running into the boiler room, only to find his limp body on the floor. Turning the lad on his back, he saw his burned face, nothing but blackened tissue left.

The police were called, but the detectives were at a loss as to how the boy managed to get through the locked door and down the steps into the boiler room.

Days would pass until another incident would happen in the town of Junction Springs, a college town about fifty miles away. That is where some of the young people from where young Davis Campbell was tormented by.

Five young college students decided to take a trip to the mountains for a quiet weekend getaway. It would take them away from the grind of their studies and give them some recreational time off. There was a rental cabin there that one of the students had looked online about and chose it sight unseen except for the photographs that appeared online. It was a very quaint place, yet it had all the amenities. Glenn Block chose the place because his parents had once had a cabin up that way many years ago before their untimely deaths in a car accident.

Glenn, along with his girlfriend, Candace Carter, Grace Clark, Richie Collins, and his girlfriend, Debbie Gabellini, packed their belongings and headed for the mountains.

After what seemed like an eternity, hours on the road, they finally arrived at the cabin.

Totally exhausted from the long drive, they decided to take a nap first before unloading the SUV before preparing the evening meal. It seems that after such a long day, the only thing they had the energy to prepare for dinner was beans and franks, but that didn’t matter. The five were just to happy to be here in the mountains away from civilization and the sounds and sights of nature.

The next day the five went for a hike through the woods, but before long something terrible was about to happen. Grace Clark decided to venture out on her own. She was always a little adventurous and liked the solitude so off she went to discover things on her own.

After about twenty minutes, Grace came across an old abandoned cabin that seemed to have been dormant for many years.

Slowly opening the wooden door with the rusted levers, the squeaking sound broke the silence surrounding the musty old cabin. The floorboards were old and barely able to hold even her small frame. Except for one small table and a chair, there wasn’t much else inside except for a few rusted old cans of food that was left behind and certainly not good enough to eat. She surely wouldn’t eat those canned goods, that’s for sure.

Suddenly, something invisible enveloped Grace, grabbing her shoulders and even starting to play with her breasts. Grace began to scream out loud, but her screams fell on deaf ears as the entity held its ghostly hand over her mouth, preventing her from attempting to summon help from her fellow students.

As Grace attempted to struggle against the entity, she fell to the floor and the figure grabbed her legs by the ankles and started to whirl her around the room, faster and faster until it caused her head to bash against the old wooden beams, splitting her head in two, brains and blood flowing down the wall of the cabin.

Having killed Grace, the entity disappeared into thin air, leaving the mortally wounded body of Grace lying to the cabin floor in a pool of blood.

As All that was going on, the other students were busy exploring the other side of the woods, totally unaware of what happened to Grace or even the kind of danger they were in. Later that evening the other four realized by the time they returned to the cabin that Grace had still not returned. She was by this time two hours late and they were starting to worry big time. It was unlike Grace to be late this long, yet she was usually punctual most times.

Candace and Glenn decided they would venture out in search of Grace while the other two would make dinner.

Walking down what was known to the locals as Wildmans Trail, a feeling of dread came over Candace. She couldn’t exactly place her finger on it but she somehow felt as though something bad was about to happen. With Glenn walking a good ninety yards ahead of her, she called out for him to wait and no sooner had she yelled out, a dark, spooky figure of a man was standing right in front of her. He grabbed her mouth, preventing her from calling out to Glenn to help her and with one big sweep, he pulled her off her feet and slammed her body, headfirst into a tree that had a nail sticking out from it.

With a force of a ton of horses pushing her, her face hit the tree and the nail punctured her forehead and entered her brain, killing her instantly.

Glenn, unaware of what happened to Candace, turned around, called out her name, and yelled out, Candy, quite joking around now. Come on out, we have to get back to the cabin to eat dinner before darkness sets in. Spending a few more minutes walking around searching for Candace, Glenn finally gave up, think she had returned to the cabin alone.

When Glenn realized Candace hadn’t returned, panic set in and unable to sit long enough to eat, he knew he had to go back into the woods to search for Candace even though it would be dark within a few minutes.

Richie and Debbie stayed to eat and said that if he weren’t back within a half hour, they would come looking for him, even if it would be dark outside. They had to try to find Candace. Who knows what trouble she could be in, Debbie thought.

Debbie and Candace had been friends since early childhood and they always did things together. If something bad happened to her, Debbie would have a hard time explaining that to her parents.

After about an hour had passed Richie and Debbie realized that Glenn still hadn’t returned so they placed the dishes in the sink and set off in search of Glenn and Candace.

It didn’t take very long before the two of them realized something was terribly wrong. In the distance they saw what appeared to be a figure of a person tied to a tree. The closer they got they realized it was their friend, Glenn. He was dead and all his vital organs had been ripped from his body and placed before him. Debbie turned away and had to puke while Richie untied Glenn from the tree and let his body fall to the ground, right on top of the goo that was once his vital organs. It was such a bloody mess that when his body fell, the blood splashed upward, hitting the tree and the entire surrounding area including Richie and Debbie. Their clothing was now soaked with his blood and it would appear as though they were involved in his murder. Who or what could have done this to Glenn, they thought. One thing was certain. They both had to make tracks and get the hell out of there and back to the cabin where they thought they would be safe. Little did they know what would wait for them there. Something they would have no control over.

After several hours had passed, Richie and Debbie continued discussing what they had witnessed and how they would be able to explain things to the police that would lead suspicion away from them.

Around two in the morning they both were so tired they just dropped off to sleep without going to their rooms to bed.

Suddenly around four in the morning, Debbie awoke to the appearance of a dark figure standing over her. It seemed to be a man, perhaps from another time and place. She had no idea it was Davis Campbell, back from the dead and out for revenge. Just as Debbie was about to let out