Dark Mirrors: An Anthology of Horror

By Gary Earl Ross, Jill Benson and H.L. Sudler

Take another trip into the darkness!

Venture forth into fourteen chilling tales of unrelenting horror. A dull and quiet night turns into a bloody, gory evening shift in an emergency ward. Three revolting murders begets a supernatural revenge. Turnabout is fair play with New York's elite. Erotic dreams mask an unpredictable fate

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archer Publishing
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781735253152

Gary Earl Ross

Retired University at Buffalo professor Gary Earl Ross is the award-winning author of story collections Wheel of Desire, Shimmerville, and Beneath the Ice, the novel Blackbird Rising, the Gideon Rimes mysteries Nickel City Blues, NC Crossfire, NC Storm Warning, and NC Naked Lady, and the plays Picture Perfect, The Scavenger's Daughter, The Mark of Cain, The Guns of Christmas, The Trial of Trayvon Martin, and Matter of Intent, winner of MWA's 2006 Edgar Award. The Scavenger's Daughter and Matter of Intent were adapted into films by CITOC Productions of Mumbai, India.

Book preview

DARK

MIRRORS

_______________________

AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR

An Archer Publishing Book

Washington, D.C.

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DARK MIRRORS

Published by Archer Publishing

815 Thayer Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

Copyright © 2023 by ARCHER PUBLISHING

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any printed or electronic form. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.  Purchase only authorized editions.

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ARCHER PUBLISHING is a registered trademark of Archer Media Networks LLC.

The ARCHER PUBLISHING logo is a registered trademark of Archer Media Networks LLC.

Archer Publishing ISBN

978-1-7352531-5-2

Whether on a stormy night or an eerily quiet one, whether in an empty house or at a wooded campsite, whether you’re being haunted, chased, possessed, cursed, or marooned, these stories are for you, horror lovers. These stories are for you.

Horror is like a serpent;

always shedding its skin, always changing.

And it will always come back.

Dario Argento

Stories

Introduction

Full Moon Rising

NJ Gallegos

The Burial of Lillian Bell

David Helms

Angler Fish

Danny Baird

The City of God

Telaina Eriksen

Operation Rat Poison

Gerard Waggett

Dustman

Gina Easton

A Length of Chain

Gary Earl Ross

Triggered

James R. Lynch

The Fool

Summer Alexis

VIP

Danny Nicholas

Bubblegum and Citrus

Darren Almgren

The Crack in the Wall

Jill Benson

Nacho

Daniel A. Olivas

Wraith

H.L. Sudler

INTRODUCTION

Horror mirrors life. life mirrors horror.

  The scarier of those two scenarios is always the latter, not the former. For nothing is more jarring than seeing a horror we thought could only ever exist in fiction. It could be the everyday horrors of real life: A house with multiple dead bodies and a killer on the loose. A group of campers found disemboweled by a bear. A report of a derailed train killing all onboard, a plane exploding midair, or a bus that has plunged off a cliff. Eyewitness accounts of ghosts, the feathery touch of spirits, credible messages from the beyond, premonitions, signs. Objects hovering in the sky, things swimming up from the watery depths, scurrying in the walls, the feeling of being watched. 

  When horror jumps through the mirror, from something that is a possibility, or a notion, to something tangible—that exists on the same plane with us—the horror is paralyzing, because we’ve taken it for granted. We think that it’s not real or is make-believe. That it doesn’t have the power to jump planes…so we’re protected. However, there is strength in storytelling. Certain writers have the power to make a tale so real that the horror feels possible. 

Dark Mirrors, the second in the Dark anthology horror series, is stocked full of stories where the horror is so strong it feels possible. In A Length of Chain by Gary Earl Ross, a doctor is held captive, bound in chains by a man who has become his judge, jury, and executioner. In The City of God by Telaina Eriksen, a woman seeing a therapist suffers blackouts during her sessions and experiences wild, erotic dreams at night. In Danny Nicholas’s story VIP, a young boy is afraid to go to sleep in class, fearing his teacher has a very big and monstrous secret. In the not-so-distant future, heavily armed security guards protect a school from a mutation that is all too human in John R. Lynch’s edge-of-your-seat Triggered.

    A mystery plagues a small community when kids go missing in Jill Benson’s The Crack in the Wall, and in Bubblegum and Citrus by Darren Almgren, one sweet little girl attracts something dark and deadly. Hard, shocking, and expensive lessons are learned in Danny Baird’s sleek and noir-ish Angler Fish, while the walls are slick with blood and gore in NJ Gallegos’s harrowing emergency room tale Full Moon Rising. Generational horror comes home to roost in Gina Easton’s Dustman, while government involvement only makes matters worse in Gerard Waggett’s cleverly sinister Operation Rat Poison. In David Helms’s gory gothic murder mystery The Burial of Lillian Bell, the dead won’t be denied their due, while peculiar sightings deliver a horrific omen in H.L. Sudler’s atmospheric Wraith. And while there is a question of fools posed in Summer Alexis’s crafty The Fool, one man is made wiser by a new friend of unlikely origins in Daniel A. Olivas’s fantastical tale Nacho.

  For the sophomore effort of Archer Publishing’s Dark horror series, we’ve gathered together authors from around the globe who understand the concept of stretching the boundaries of horror and storytelling; of making horror and the unexpected seem possible. Archer Publishing is proud to present these authors in Dark Mirrors. Their tales offer a myriad of settings, time periods, scares, surprises, and of course, horror. We hope you enjoy them, and join us again for future anthologies in the Dark series. Happy scares!

Archer Publishing

DARK

MIRRORS

FULL MOON

RISING

Dr. Ryan Fletcher had nearly nodded off when the radio disturbed the quietude. A burst of static blatted from the receiver, followed by a steady stream of bullshit, mostly random numbers that meant only one thing; a new patient.

    Half listening with one ear tuned to the garbled report, Ryan pulled on his white coat, wiped a string of drool from his stubbled chin, and looked outside. A full yellow moon hung in the inky sky, illuminating piles of snow drifts surrounding the ambulance bay.   

Full moon rising, Ryan thought and suppressed a shudder. He could blame the single digit temperatures, but truthfully—the full moon always unnerved him.

    Despite being a man of science, he still held superstitious views. Hell, everyone did in the medical field. He knew of an attending who threw out a brand-new fleece vest after wearing it on a string of shifts in which he pronounced no less than five children dead.  He’d not had one pediatric death in his career—much less five—and hadn’t had any since pitching that fleece. Gray-haired, battle-hardened nurses often requested every Friday the 13th off, poking fun at their superstitions even as they filled out their timecards.  And God help the poor soul who uttered one of the forbidden words, quiet or slow. Saying (even thinking) those damned words conjured a steady stream of patients.

    The full moon was a poor portent. It virtually guaranteed patients whacked out of their gourds, be it from drugs, mental illness, or any charming variety of ailments. In fact, the term ‘lunatic’ was coined with the moon in mind—initially blaming lunar cycles for certain behavioral changes, at least according to Dr. Attel, who dropped that little fact into conversation before declining one of his last transfers. 

    Fucking psychiatrists.

Ryan had worked far too many full moons to dismiss these facts outright, and he didn’t disregard them as mere superstition either. 

    He knew better.

Looking away from the heavenly body, he turned his attention to the nurses’ station. His two overnight nurses scuttled here and there, grabbing hard restraints, saline flushes, and empty syringes, as they readied room 5 for their incoming patient.

    What’s coming in? Ryan asked, directing his question to his more senior nurse, Drew. 

    A combative patient, Dr. Fletcher.  PD found him bare ass naked on all fours in the park, baying at the moon like some fucking creep, Drew said, shaking his head, Meth, if I was a betting man. I’ve seen a few patients lately that really lose their shit after using, must be a potent batch making the rounds.

    Meth seemed likely, closely followed by someone off their meds. 

    Of course, there was also PCP or crack to consider.   

Just then, a keening screech reverberated through the ER—thankfully unoccupied, save for the staff. He saw the wheels of the ambulance cot first—they were caked in dirty snow and a muddy brown substance that Dr. Fletcher hoped was dirt and not feces. Two harried paramedics—flanked by four burly policemen—wheeled the patient in. All were bundled up against the elements. They wore furry hats and thick coats, as sweat streamed down their reddened faces, darkening their shirt collars. Everyone had a wide-eyed expression, one that was easily recognized as oh shit. 

    A naked, whip-thin man was strapped to the ambulance cot. His wrists and ankles were shackled to either corner by handcuffs, spreading his limbs out in a distorted version of Da Vinci’s The Vitruvian Man. Black straps crossed his torso and legs so tightly, they dug into skin. Even manacled, he bucked his body wildly, straining each limb with his exertions, his pale white skin slicked with sweat. He was covered in a thicket of coarse dark hair spreading down to his inner thighs, tendrils extending up where they encircled his bellybutton. A small, shriveled penis bounced side to side as he screeched. Cords of muscle and plump veins stood out from each extremity as he struggled to free himself, ripping up so violently that he was sure to dislocate one or both shoulders if he kept it up. He then threw his head back and all Ryan could see was a dark bushy beard. Someone—probably PD, had strapped a spit hood to the man’s face—a smart move considering all the snapping teeth.

    One of the medics, a long-time veteran with salt and pepper hair rattled off a report. PD were called to the park for a disturbance. They found him, he gestured with his thumb, naked in the snow on all fours, howling at the moon. It took all of us plus another squad to wrangle him into restraints.  I gave him a shot of Ketamine hoping to sedate him but as you can see—

    High pitched shrieking erupted from the man’s lips, almost like a rabbit with its foot caught in a trap. Interspersed with the inhuman bellows, were scattered words, each rising sharply in pitch, No-let-me-go-stop-please-no-don’t. 

    —it was about as useful as CPR in a morgue, the medic continued, ignoring him. "Obviously, I didn’t get any vitals on him, each time I came close, he tried to bite me. I can tell you this; his lungs work wonderfully." 

    Alright, let’s get him transferred to our cot and—

    The man’s head snapped forward and Ryan found himself looking directly into his eyes. His pupils were huge, nearly obliterating the gold irises, his conjunctiva spidered with thin, red veins, some of them sunburst with his exertion. His eyeballs appeared to bulge from their sockets—not dissimilar to patients afflicted with hyperthyroidism. They had an unnatural shine about them, like headlights striking a thick fog or the slithering underside of a colorful snake.  Startling and also… concerning. An unruly black beard peeked out from underneath the hood and it caught the reflection of the overhead lights, shimmering, glittering with… blood.

    Fresh blood. 

    A sheen of sweat and oil thickly clung around his hairline. More curly, unkempt hair curled around reddened ears, the left one taking on a lumpy appearance, the beginning of a cauliflower ear. Must have gotten cuffed by someone, thought Ryan. While thin—perhaps 150 lbs. even after spending his lunch hour at an all-you-can-eat-buffet—corded muscle clung to his otherwise skeletal frame. The sort of muscle endurance athletes, like marathoners, boasted. Individual striations of the quadricep muscles danced with each jerk of his body against his chains. 

    As if sensing that Ryan was his best chance, the man slackened against his cuffs, drooping from the wrists like a bizarre version of Jesus on the cross. For the moment, the fight went out of him. His pupils constricted, exposing more of that odd golden color flecked with specks of brown. Holding Ryan’s gaze, the man spoke. His words came muffled from the spit hood; still understandable but gruff.

    Doctor, doctor please, you have to let me go. Unstrap me and push me outside, lock all the doors.  Just…just…let me go, he pleaded. I don’t want to hurt anyone; but I can’t stop myself. I’m about to lose control, I’m barely holding on here. His voice pitched into a high whine. Believe me, doc, believe me. It’s almost…time. His tone dropped down through all the octaves, into a guttural sound.

His eyes then rolled back, exposing yellow tinted conjunctiva and he went completely slack and fell back onto the stretcher. Each limb, as if gaining sentience of its own, tensed and then jerked, cycling rapidly. Pink tinged foam poured from the inside of the spit hood and a soggy, clenching noise, exploded from within. 

    Oh shit, he’s having a seizure! Ryan yelled. The nurses were already moving, one running to the Pyxis even before Ryan could issue the order for Ativan, the other drilled a needle into the man’s tibia, steadying the twitching limb. Ryan rushed to the head of the bed and yanked the spit hood over his head, expecting to see the tip of the man’s tongue tumble from it like a discarded piece of bubble gum.

    Red stained flecks of spit gathered in the corners of his mouth, a steady stream of blood poured out. Ryan wasn’t worried about him choking on his tongue, that was an urban legend, prompting people to shove spoons and the like in seizing mouths, succeeding only in chipping teeth and padding dentist’s pockets. He was more concerned about all the blood that had to be pouring down his airway, as evidenced by the strangling noises. Pleased he’d thought to don gloves before the shit hit the fan, he hooked his fingers under the man’s lips and pried his jaws open.

    Sharp, crowded rows of teeth greeted him. Two sharp canines curved down, coming to a frightful point that gleamed under the fluorescents. All the other teeth appeared to have been filed into honed tips. The man’s tongue was bloated, the sides dappled with bruises and blood streamed out of cuts from either side made by edged molars further back. 

Ryan yanked his hands back. Jesus, why were they so sharp? He was not planning on getting a bite from those babies. 

    The choking noises stopped and were replaced by a low growl. Postictal patients often groaned, hummed, or even laughed after their seizures stopped. Still, the noise gave Ryan brief pause. 

    It sounded almost animalistic.   

    A flicker of movement made Ryan shift his gaze up. The muscles in Ryan's face went slack and his mouth gaped open as he looked at the man’s features. 

    An already broad nose stretched and lengthened with a sickening crunch of bones and tearing cartilage. Pale, pink skin melted, taking on a tan hue, and the tissue ran forward, meeting the rapidly expanding mouth and jaw. Thick jaw muscles proliferated; each striation of the masseters visible under the flesh. The brow sloped outwards, giving him a simian appearance, leaving the closed eyes in depth recessed sockets. Whirls of black and brown hair sprung up from his hairline and continued down to his cheeks, jaws, and… muzzle. Thick fur soon covered nearly his entire face. Hair blossomed on all the extensor surfaces, leaving only the palms, soles, and a small patch on the stomach bare. Mouth still agape, Ryan watched the man’s fingers curl inward with a terrific crack, the sound of bones snapping underneath taut skin. The fingers flared out, thickening. Nails, formerly ragged, turned yellow and with a wet pop, dagger-like claws erupted from each nail matrix.

    Claws clenched into fists. His lean, runner’s muscles thickened. The resulting sinew bulged and danced underneath tan skin. Fur materialized immediately over these muscles, obscuring them from view. 

    The lupine figure stilled. Metal cuffs, now far too tight, cut into furred wrists and ankles. Drops of blood, very human in appearance—dotted the stretcher and linoleum floors. The only sound, save for the faint plinks of blood hitting the floor, was Ryan’s breath, coming in rapid gusts from his open mouth. Conscious of the noise, he closed it with a snap. Nurse Drew, clutching a syringe full of Ativan to his chest, as if it were a protective talisman, stared at the man—at the thing. The other nurse, a slight, slim woman just out of nursing school stood just behind Drew. Her name escaped Ryan who had difficulty with names on the calmest days. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs, and the crotch of her scrubs darkened. Huddled just outside the glass doors of room 5, stood the paramedics, arms wrapped around each other in a frightened embrace, like two scared children during a thunderstorm. All four of the cops had their sidearms drawn. Each barrel shook slightly but their aim was squarely on the creature in room 5. 

    Several things happened quickly; individual movements lost in the chaos. Later recollections failed to accurately capture the scope of what occurred next.

    The creature’s eyes sprang open. They’d changed entirely to a golden yellow, flecked with brown. Round pupil elongated, becoming pointed. Cat’s eye, Ryan’s brain helpfully supplied. Those intelligent eyes flitted about, resting longest on the weapons, before returning their attention to the manacles. Arms flexed, the muscles contracted, and he let loose a low bark. He heaved upwards, entire body bucking forward on the cot and with jerking movements, ripped the cuffs away from the stretcher frame with a metallic screech, leaving curled, broken metal behind.  The beast then sat up. Cuffs dangled from each wrist.

    Gunfire erupted. 

    One bullet caught Drew in the throat, tearing through trachea, vessels, and tissues. Arcing sprays of blood spurted forth, coating the white walls with arterial splashes. Making thick, congested sounds, Drew clutched at his neck, fruitlessly trying to stymie the flow of his lifeblood. He pitched forward, landing facedown, nose smashed against the floor. He drew in a last, fragmented breath, and quieted.   

    The young, nameless nurse collapsed to the floor in a heap, fainting dead away. Her skull struck the ground with a stomach-turning crunch, and a puddle of blood pooled beneath her. Her legs twitched momentarily then stilled.

    Sounds of sliding doors thunking shut echoed from the outside hallway. Screeching tires spun out on the icy pavement, gaining traction, and the ambulance surged forward blindly, ramping over a curb, before colliding with one of the columns that held up the ambulance bay roof. The roof collapsed, crushed the two medics inside the cab. One choked to death on a mixture of his own blood and teeth, drawing one of his canines deep within his bronchi where it plugged a great many alveoli. The other suffered a skull fracture, thanks to a poorly placed brick that rendered him—mercifully—unconscious. He’d wake in a panic weeks later surrounded by beeping machines, with various tubes snaked into all his orifices. Fingers hooked