In The Shadows: Weird Tales that Chill and Shock

By David Stuart Davies

In The Shadows: Weird Tales that Chill and Shock

By David Stuart Davies

Settle into your easy chair, but be sure to leave the lights on! This collection of twenty-five tales of the macabre and uncanny will keep you up at night.

As a child, were you ever worried that someone, or somethin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Night Shift Books
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9780938501800

David Stuart Davies

David Stuart Davies is an author, playwright and editor and is regarded as an authority on Sherlock Holmes. His fiction includes novels featuring his wartime detective Johnny Hawke and several Sherlock Holmes novels - including Sherlock Holmes and the Devil's Promise. He is a committee member of the Crime Writers' Association, editing their monthly publication, Red Herrings, and is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.

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In The Shadows

Weird Tales that Chill and Shock

By

David Stuart Davies

Night shift Books

An Imprint of Wessex Press, LLC

P.O. Box 68308

Indianapolis, IN 46268

Copyright © 2021 by David Stuart Davies.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author and publisher.

isbn

978-0-938501-80-0

To Steve & Mark

Two great guys

Table Of Contents

In The Shadows

Mamma

The Hostel

Batteries

The Secret

Christmas Again

Second Thoughts

A Close Encounter

Missing Henry

Goodness

Sweet Murder

A Stranger in Town

At Last

Takeover

The Vacation

The Christmas Box

The Survivor

An Old Fashioned Murder

The Hooded Terror

A Gentle Splash

The Expected Guest

Sonny Jim

The Ticket

Cries in the Dark

Blood is the Life

In The Shadows

Thomas knew it was there. He could sense it and sometimes hear it, shifting in the shadows at the other side of his bedroom. He was so used to it now that when he grew conscious of it somewhere in the darkness, his senses fell into a neutral mode. He was neither tense nor relaxed — but he was also sure that that at some time he would be in danger. The thing was hungry and one day it would come for him. And devour him.

On the occasions when he woke in the pitch black of the night and his skin tingled with the knowledge that in that sable void beyond his bed, the thing was stirring, he lay very still, hardly breathing, waiting for the dawn of a new day, which would banish the shadows and the creature that inhabited them.

Some nights, some blessed nights, he slept through until morning without a problem. But other nights, the troubled nights, he would slip uneasily into a light sleep and then wake around three and hear it: the gentle slithering like a corpse being dragged along a rough wooden floor. But never once did he cry out. Never once did he utter a word. He just waited for what he believed was the inevitable. And he never told a soul about the being that shared those sleepless hours with him. Not even his mother. His mother whom he loved with a passion above all things. Above life itself.

They had moved into this very ordinary semi-detached house two years previously after his father had died unexpectedly. He had taken a fall down the stairs and had landed awkwardly, breaking his neck. He was only a young fellow, the doctor had said. In the prime of life. It was a cruel accident — a fluke. Thomas had been eight at the time and the whole event had seemed not quite real: like a grim nightmare. For a time he believed that eventually he would wake up and find his father sitting on the edge of the bed beside him and all the cruel heartache of loss would disappear.

It never happened.

Or at least it hadn’t yet.

His mother went to pieces, spending most of the day in tears, hardly able to cope with her own life, let alone his. She took to finding some kind of solace in wine, often ending the evening in an inebriated state, slumped in a chair. Her face would be a mask of extreme melancholy and pain. It was at this time that Thomas became the man of the house and roles of mother and son were reversed. He looked after her instead of the other way around. His uncomplaining support gave her strength. Slowly, as time passed, there were fewer tears. A kind of practicality asserted itself and his mum began to cope with life again. But that haunted sadness never left her eyes. Even when she smiled, there was still a kind of dead darkness there. And there were still those times when she retreated into her shell and drank heavily but these began to occur less often as though the wound had healed, although the scar remained harsh and sensitive.

Then came the day when she told him that they had to move. They no longer had enough money to live in their smart detached house. ‘Now there’s only the two of us,’ she said softly, ‘we’ll have to downsize a bit. Go somewhere cosier.’ The lips parted, trying to smile, but the eyes failed to cooperate.

He wasn’t bothered about leaving the old house. In fact he was quite glad. There was the ghost of his dad about the place. There were too many memories to remind him of his loss: the makeshift goal posts in the garden, the marks on the kitchen wall that his dad had made to illustrate his annual growth, the mural with space ships in his bedroom that they’d both painted together one glorious giggling Saturday afternoon. These things were too painful for him to live with. By contrast, his mother was devastated to go. It was as though she was deserting her husband, the man she loved with a painful desperation, leaving him behind. He had left her and now she was doing the same to him. She wanted to cling to the memories, for comfort and assurance that he had once been part of their lives.

The day they left the old house, she had been very brave, but as she closed the front door for the last time, she broke down and almost fell to her knees. Thomas ran forward and supported her, hugging her tightly, his little hands caressing her hair. He hadn’t known what to say, but knew that holding her would help, would give her some kind of strength. In his embrace, she allowed the long pent up tears to fall.

And so they moved into 3 Woodlea Grove. It was a somewhat shabby affair, but over the first few months, his mother made an effort to brighten it up. Life took on a mundane routine. His mum went to work at the bank and he went to school. In the evenings he would do his homework and watch a bit of television. At the weekend, his mum would take him to museums and art galleries or they’d go for a walk in the country and sometimes out for ‘a posh meal.’ They became a self-sufficient couple, neither having any close friends nor feeling the need for them. She still had her black moods from time to time. Some little thing would trigger them and she would reach for the wine bottle and retreat to her bedroom. He knew better than to interfere. He waited patiently for her to come round.

They had been living at 3 Woodlea Grove for about three months when he first sensed the thing in his bedroom again. He had got up in the night to go for a pee and on returning to his bed he somehow knew he wasn’t alone. There was another presence in the room. The atmosphere was different and the air was icy and seemed to carry with it a stale smell.

‘Hello,’ he said, quietly, faintly aware of how stupid this was.

There was no reply.

He was tempted to put on the light but somehow he knew that he shouldn’t. He mustn’t. That would be fatal. Instinctively, he was sure that something terrible would happen to him if he did that.

Slowly, he climbed into bed, pulling the covers up to his chin, while he surveyed the darkness all around him. In the far corner by the wardrobe where the shadows were at their blackest, he heard the sound again. It was like an old man breathing softly with an irregular croaky rhythm.

It seemed that the creature had followed him to the new house.

At first he thought the thing would emerge from the shadows, some terrible beast, like a monster from a horror film and gobble him up, but it never did. Over the months he got used to it again, although he never lost the fear of the creature that dwelt in the shadows. He knew that one day when he grew older and stronger in mind and body he would have the courage to turn on the light and expose whatever it was that hid there and face the terrible consequences. But that time was not now.

Then came that terrible night.

It had been oppressively hot all day, the sullen grey skies indicating that a storm was brewing. The air was still and threatening. As night began to spread its darkness across the heavens, there were ominous rumblings in the distance like muted cannon fire. As Thomas slipped beneath the sheets, it began. Rain. Torrents of rain. It lashed at his window with such a force that he feared that it might smash the pane. Thunder roared overhead like some noisy giant hammering his fists on the roof of the house.

On the far side of the room, the creature stirred.

Its breathing was louder and indeed stranger than usual suggesting a fearful apprehension, like the bleat of a frightened animal.

Suddenly, the room lit up with a bright azure glare as sheet lightning filled the night sky. It was as though someone had turned on an enormous blue searchlight. Thomas sat up in bed in horror, his eyes transfixed by what he saw at the other side of the room.

At last, he saw the creature.

For a fleeting moment, he glimpsed the being that lived in the shadows. It was a small, huddled cramped thing with matted hair and two rolling eyes. But the face, the face! In the split second that the flash of lightning illuminated the thing, Thomas could see quite clearly that it had his face — or a face very much like his. It held out its arms towards him and Thomas felt his whole body tingle. A terrible thought crossed his mind fleetingly and then disappeared. The thought that now the creature had been seen, it was drawing the life out of him. That thought came and then vanished.

The lightning was gone as quickly as it has arrived and darkness descended. The house shook once more with the rumble of thunder. Thomas sat still, staring at the blank shadows at the far side of the room. What was it that he had seen? He just couldn’t understand. Before he could think any more, a ferocious tiredness which had been seeping through his very being overtook him and he fell asleep.

In the morning, when her son hadn’t come down for breakfast, Thomas’s mother went up to rouse him. The sight that met her eyes caused her to scream out loud. She staggered forward into the room her, gaze transfixed on the bed. There lay a figure with long grey matted hair and bulging eyes with an aged, lined face. Nevertheless, she recognised it as the face of her son. With trembling fingers she touched his cheek. It was as cold as ice.

Thomas was dead.

The night following her son’s funeral, Thomas’s mother sat up in bed drinking red wine from the bottle. It was her second bottle. Despite her grief, her tiredness and her inebriation, she still tried to make some sense of the tragedy that had further blighted her life. What had happened to Thomas? What cruel trick of nature had reduced his young body to an aged husk? The doctors couldn’t explain it. Neither could the priest.

She lay in the darkness and drained the bottle. She gave a little snarl of derision. It wasn’t helping. This time the booze didn’t ease any of the pain.

And then… And then she heard it. The heavy laboured breathing. Something was stirring in the shadows at the far side of the room. She felt her body stiffen and her senses began to shrug off the malaise of drink. She leaned forward staring into the blackness. It came again: the wheezing breath and the shifting of limbs.

With a fiercely beating heart, she reached for the light switch.

Mamma

This one’s a real beauty. A gem, I should say. It was a pity to snuff out its light.’ Gerald laid the sack down on the floor and untied the neck. Gladys put down her knitting and moved over to investigate. Gently, she pulled open the sack to reveal its contents. She gave a cry of delight and her good eye moistened with tears. ‘Oh, my goodness, she is an angel. A little angel.’ Gladys knelt down and ran her fingers gently across the smooth cold face and for a moment played gently with the fine red lips. ‘My heart breaks at such beauty, Gerald. It simply breaks.’

‘Yeah, I know what you mean. But I reckon she could be your masterpiece.’

Suddenly Gladys smiled. ‘Yes, yes, you’re right. My masterpiece. I shall make sure that she is.