Shadows of a Nightmare: Shadows, #1

By Scott G. Gibson

Shadows of a Nightmare is a short story collection to haunt your nightmares and end the world as you know it.

These chilling tales are not ashamed of splashing blood across the page and crawling into the shadowy depths of horror: "The Rage", a grisly apocalyptic tale where a viral plague of anger overcomes humans; "Meat Market", about a killer monster who preys on gym-junkies to eat their well-toned flesh; "The Ghost", a harrowing supernatural tale about a man who is haunted by the world's most murderous spirit; "Alien Invasion", a story of extra-terrestrial beings taking over the world; "The Man in the Van" shows us what happens when an amateur sleuth tries to save his girlfriend from a vicious kidnapper; "Such is Life" asks what would happen if somebody went back in time to stop Ned Kelly and his gang from being killed at Glenrowan; plus many more.

Are you ready to enter a labyrinth of fear and thrills? Scott G Gibson's Shadows of a Nightmare brings you spine-tingling stories to keep you awake at night. Read them if you dare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Gibson
• Release date: Oct 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386140108

Scott G. Gibson

Scott G. Gibson is an independent author and high school teacher living in Queensland with his wife, Jess, and children, Liesel and Jonathan. In his limited spare time he enjoys reading, playing chess, and sharing puns of debatable quality.

Book preview

Foreword

EVERYONE ENJOYS BEING scared. In the dark of the night, we enjoy reading tales of horror, tales of people experiencing the worst time of their lives.

But why? Where does the thrill lie? Is it because we love entering the darkest depths of our minds, only to resurface in reality where it doesn’t seem as bad anymore? Is it because we enjoy the feeling of our heart pumping blood through our bodies?

I often like to tell a story about a boy who is scared of the dark. He is scared of what might be lurking in wait to grab him. To devour him. And so he worries and scrabbles for the light switch. When the light eventually spreads the room with a loving glow, he is relieved, for there is nothing there but furniture.

You would have worked out that the light is reality, and the dark is horror fiction. We enter the dark world of scary books and films, unsure what is waiting for us. We are given a good scare, a reminder that we are alive. Then we switch on the lights and remember everything is better now that we can see.

I think it is this constant reminder that we are alive that reinforces our love for horror fiction.

The stories within Shadows of a Nightmare are not afraid of taking you to the darkest places of imagination, pulling you by the hand through the horrors of the world. I’ve tried to include a variety of stories that appeal to many different tastes, but I’m sure you will enjoy them all.

Inspiration for these tales often came from the most mundane of everyday activities. The story for Instinx came when I was sitting in my car one night many years ago, watching the moths and bugs fly around a lamp. I remember wondering what would happen if they were larger and wanted to come after us. The story itself took many years to form, but I could never get rid of that idea.

The Rage came to me as I sat in a park in Rockhampton with Liesel, watching the world go past. A group of people suddenly crowded around us, much like the events in the story. The news at that time were showing a lot of violent attacks on people, and the events merged together into a logical story idea.

Other story ideas came about in chunks, begging to be turned into a story, and I felt like Dr Frankenstein as I built a story from bits and pieces of my imagination. I can’t remember if I laughed maniacally when I was finished; I’ll leave that part for you to decide. I hope you enjoy reading the stories within Shadows of a Nightmare as much as I enjoyed writing them.

The Ghost

LET ME TELL YOU HOW I ended up here. I’m perfectly sane, I assure you. The doctor won’t believe me. Arsehole.

I want you to know that I’m not crazy. Everything I’m about to tell you is true, and really happened to me. Why would I lie to you?

When I bought my house – the first and only one I’ve owned – I had no idea it was haunted. I mean, why would I? I didn’t believe in ghosts. Anything of the spectral, paranormal or extra-terrestrial kind, I disregarded and scoffed at their very mention.

That was until I bought my house at Thirteen Peace Drive. Sounds pretty innocent, right? Wrong!

The house had everything I needed. Three bedrooms, massive bathroom, small yard to maintain, solid gold toilet. That last one is a joke, by the way. Would I joke if I was insane?

Trouble began on my first night in the house. My mates had helped me move in, and I had shouted them pizza and beers to celebrate. A housewarming. Once my mates had all left afterwards, and I was settled in to bed, exhausted, having checked everything was locked, I heard windows and doors being opened. At first, I put it down to being the natural house sounds you always hear when you move in. When it continued, my interest was piqued, and I knew someone was in the house.

Very funny, guys! I had called out, thinking my mates had pulled a practical joke before leaving. Hilarious wankers, all of you! When I got up and turned all the lights on – it was easier that way, not knowing the switches intimately – I closed all the windows and doors again, relocking them, and checked every room again. Thoroughly.

Needless to say, I didn’t find any of my mates. They weren’t outside either. I remember lying awake for ages that night, wondering how they did it.

Just as I had drifted off to sleep, my eyes giving way to sleep’s heavy gravity, I was woken once more by the windows and doors opening again.

Fuck off, guys. It’s not funny anymore! I shouted, walking through my house to shut the doors and windows. It wasn’t funny, not even now. Let me remind you I had just moved all my furniture, not to mention cleaning the old place I was renting. Have you ever cleaned a house you had lived in for years? The bathroom and kitchen are enough to drive you crazy.

But not me. I was just exhausted.

Still, I couldn’t see any of my mates and when I rang them, I’m sure I woke them from heavy slumbers. They can’t all have been such great actors, considering how piss poor their attitude was to my ex-girlfriend. They couldn’t say one nice word. They couldn’t even give her a smile, but I guess they knew best in the end.

Anyway, I digress. My point is, I couldn’t see anybody outside. I did end up falling asleep on my couch, once I had moved it next to the window with my largest knife beside me on my small coffee table. The lounge room had a good view outside, and I’d catch the fucker when he did it again.

But he didn’t.

The next thing I remember was waking up with a sore neck and a raging headache that blurred my vision, which I put down to a hangover. All of the doors and windows were closed, which was a relief. Had the events of the previous night even happened? The only evidence was the displaced couch and call records in my phone.

Life continued relatively normally for the next few days until, exactly a week later – Friday night – another strange thing happened. This time, the smoke alarm decided to go off. I had woken, confused and drunk, from a deep sleep. I guess it’s a testament to the power of smoke alarms, but as there was neither a fire nor smoke, its incessant whine was most unwelcome. Life in Peace Drive was far from peaceful.

Well, I tried pushing the alarm test buttons. I tried ringing the fire department’s daytime number – it wasn’t really an emergency – but got no answer. So I pulled it from the roof and disconnected the power line from the unit. That cost me nearly three hundred bucks to fix, but for the silence that followed, it almost seemed worth it. After then, I continued to wake up at random intervals, smelling smoke, but when I checked the house, nothing was on fire or even hot. By the time I laid back down each time, the smell had gone.

I noticed a pattern the next Friday night when another freaky thing happened. Yes, I had been drinking alone again, but it was Friday night; the boys were busy. That night, as I was brushing my teeth, I looked in the mirror and saw a pale shadow moving through the hallway. I’m not talking about a shadow moving across the floor like a car’s headlights catching something in the window. I’m talking a silhouette of a person, the lights from my bedroom and bathroom dimly illuminating a person in my house.

I damn near shat myself. As I walked out, switching on every light as I went, arms out in front for protection, I found nobody. Imagine being in my position, how shit-scared you’d be. See? I’m not crazy.

But here’s the strange bit. When I got to the kitchen, a blanket of fog covered the floor, spreading quickly to the lounge room and up the hallway. It seemed like someone had left the fog machine on at a rave party, except I wasn’t enjoying myself. Not one bit!

The fog looked like tendrils of dense spider webs snaking along the floor. I suddenly felt very cold and began to shiver. The cold seeped through my whole body, while the fog spread through the house with searching fingers.

With hazy thoughts, I decided to lock myself in my bedroom, stuffing a pillow against the bottom of my door to block the fog. As I lay shivering in bed, covers up to my chin, heater up high, I saw an illuminated figure creeping through the darkness.

No fucking joke. Not one word of a lie! A man was walking in my bedroom, glowing in the dark like a kid’s plastic toy.

Oi! What the fuck are you doing? I yelled out. Without stopping, he turned to me and smiled viciously, baring his teeth. He was standing beside me, while I crawled back against the wall. He reached out his hands and I couldn’t breathe. When I brought my own hands up to wrench free, they came upon nothing but cold air. I began to see spots in my vision, polka dots covering the darkness and the ghostly figure.

I woke up some time later to absolute darkness and switched on the lamp. There was no fog, and no ghostly figure. I say ghostly, but at the time I was reluctant to blame it on the spiritual world. A short inspection of the house showed no fog or figure anywhere to be seen.

Wouldn’t you know it, but next Friday night, more spooky shit came my way. By that stage, I was beginning to feel a growing belief in the spiritual world. After a long week of hard work, and a Thirsty Thursday session with the boys, I spent my Friday night at home and decided to have a soak in the tub. I was covered in grease and dirt, and was planning to head out the next night with my mates to find some girls for action.

I remember the steam rising from the water and misting the air above me as I sat. The radio was playing some popular tunes and meaningless advertising dribble. I had switched off the lights, choosing to use scented candles to set a relaxing mood. When the music stopped mid-song, I assumed my Wi-Fi had stopped, causing the streaming service to disconnect. I sat up, wiping my hands dry and, just as I reached for my phone, a chilling voice clawed the steamy air around me.

Don’t touch! the voice warned. You’re invading my space. Leave!

Silence. Then, the music began again. What the actual fuck? I thought. I was about to pull the plug and get out prematurely when I felt a sudden pressure on the top of my head. No matter how hard I tried to stand up, the muscles in my arms and legs straining with pressure, I continued being forced down to the water. My arms slipped on the ceramic surface and my head went fully under, my eyes closing instinctively. I was just able to get a lungful of air before my head was submerged.

When I opened my eyes, the ceiling swam eerily in the candlelight, and there, right above me was the sneering face from the previous week, transparent. A pair of translucent arms reached down to me, my arms flailing uselessly through them. I felt like I was going to die in the bath. My mates and family would think it was suicide. What other cause would they have believed? They certainly wouldn’t have believed a murderous ghost had drowned me.

The energy seemed to seep from my body, dizziness turning into nausea.

Somehow, with one final burst of energy, I managed to push my head above the water, gasping for air. The ghost had disappeared, but as I looked down at the water, I had noticed it had turned a dark red. I could taste the metallic tang of blood, and it smelled like metal. Horrified, I realised the water had turned to blood. I jumped up, grateful for the absence of pressure on my head, and went to step out of the bath, not caring about the mess I was about to make. Anything was better than being drowned again.

Just as I was about to put my foot down on the mat, my supporting foot slipped, and I fell forward into the wall, which was too close to the bath. My hands had uselessly tried to stop me from hitting the floor. Instead, my head slammed hard into the plaster, and I dropped to the ground, unconscious.

When I told my mates about that night the next day, they were a team of scepticism. It didn’t help that when I woke up at dawn, cold and shivering on the bathroom floor, the blood had turned back to normal tap water. My skin and hair had dried overnight, but the water was still in the bath, grey and full of floaties. The only blood I could see had congealed beneath where my head had come to rest after its hard knock. Flakes of plaster littered the floor beneath the large hole my head had made. After the smoke alarm incident, I didn’t even bother getting it fixed.

Mate, you need to see a doctor, Steve had said that night. You could have done some damage with that hit. Plus, you were imagining things. That’s not healthy, dude.

I’m fine, Steve, I said. It was frustrating that my closest mates didn’t believe me, thought I was going loopy. Maybe I am, I had thought, doubting myself.

Nah, I’m with Steve here. Johnno, see a doctor on Monday. That had been Dave; never said a word usually. Always the quiet, reflective type. They were ganging up on me, and it was enough to nearly make me lose my shit.

Johnno, I’ll pick you up in the morning and take you. We know you like to forget the important things. Mate, I’ll even book the appointment for you at sparrow’s fart, Steve said. I’ve sometimes wondered since whether he would have changed his tune if he knew I ended up here. If I somehow managed to go back in time and tell them all how it has ended up, would they believe me? Or would they do the same thing. They’d probably think I’m even crazier.

I’m not crazy though.

Well that lovely doctor referred me on to a psychologist, a Doctor Stine. I remember wondering if his first name was Frank. Wouldn’t that have been the icing on the cake? Imagine being Doctor Frank N. Stine. What a laugh that would be. I don’t think it was Frank though.

Doctor Stine’s receptionist had confirmed an appointment for the next Monday. After my next scheduled haunting.