Footsteps in the Dark: Stories of the Bizarre and Unusual

By Carlo Armenise

"Footsteps in the Dark" is a collection of eight supernatural/horror short stories, with a Twilight Zone flavor, that highlight the eternal struggle between good and evil, brought on by the human condition and the lengths we go to satisfy our desir

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors' Tranquility Press
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781962492959

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Copyright © 2023 by Carlo Armenise

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Footsteps in the Dark/Carlo Armenise

Paperback: 978-1-962859-05-9

eBook: 978-1-962492-95-9

CONTENTS

Step One: A Conversation with Death

Step two: The Potion

Step three: Deadly Dream

Step Four: Best-Laid Plans

Step Five: The Not so Wise Guy

Step Six: The Setup

Step Seven: Deadly Diagnosis

Step Eight: The Collector

STEP ONE

A Conversation with Death

It was three thirty in the morning and Jeremy Ward was in another motel in another city, lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. He hadn’t had more than a couple hours of sleep a night in the past two years since his wife’s death and it was starting to take a toll on him both physically and mentally. While he’d read about the effects of sleep deprivation, he was now experiencing them firsthand—the severe headaches and inability to concentrate—but no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about his wife and the life they lost, especially their plans to have children and share the happiness that would come from watching them grow up. Jeremy had no idea that till death do us part would come so early in their relationship.

They had only been married a few months when she died, and it almost drove him out of his mind. He started drinking and taking drugs, anything to numb the pain, but nothing worked; in fact, the drugs and alcohol made it worse. He had even contemplated suicide, but decided his wife wouldn’t have wanted that. We always think there isn’t anything we can’t handle if we had to and that whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but it isn’t true. When someone you love is taken away suddenly without giving you the chance to say a proper goodbye, while you may live, the loss makes you emotionally much weaker. You spend all your time trying to understand why it happened and wondering if there was anything you could have done to prevent it. The thing that made it so much worse for Jeremy was that his wife didn’t die of natural or accidental causes. She was murdered by a psychopathic serial killer who mutilated her body so badly, it was almost impossible to identify. In the end, instead of taking his own life, Jeremy decided to find the son of a bitch who killed his wife and do to him what he did to her.

Consumed by his need for revenge, a couple of months after his wife’s funeral, Jeremy quit his job and started tracking the killer’s ongoing trail of depravity across the country. Considering how he murdered his victims, Jeremy knew the killer wasn’t your garden-variety psychopath with a Freudian nickname who couldn’t cope with life and decided to take a few innocent victims with him when he committed suicide. No, he was the Hannibal Lecter type. The super-intelligent monster who saw murder as an art form and the extinction of humanity as his personal duty.

The type who left a signature of his work that unmistakably identified it as his so no one else would get credit. That telltale sign you hoped was a clue, but was just the manifestation of his sickness. In this case, it was stabbing and dismemberment. The killer would stab his victims, both male and female, twenty or thirty times with what was determined to be a very large hunting knife. Then he would sever their limbs and disperse the body parts around the murder scene, like so many gruesome breadcrumbs leading to nowhere. Fifteen murders in five years, including Jeremy’s wife, in various parts of the country, and the authorities still had no idea of his identity. The latest murder happened fifty miles outside of Chicago in Kankakee, Illinois. The victim was a thirty-year-old woman whose body, and all its various parts, was found in the woods near a riverbank. When Jeremy got to the crime scene, the Feds and local police were already there gathering evidence. The lead agent, Harry Flannigan, a twenty-five-year FBI veteran, had been on the case since Jeremy’s wife’s murder and was someone Jeremy had come to respect. He was a dedicated hard-ass who not only understood and condoned Jeremy’s need to be part of the ongoing investigation but was just as obsessed with bringing the psycho to justice.

Since the woman’s body had been in the woods for a few weeks, the decomposition was significant, and the smell of rotting flesh literally made Jeremy gag as he looked at the body.

This asshole has got to be stopped, said Flannigan as he examined one of the woman’s arms.

Yeah, but when? replied Jeremy. I don’t suppose anything about this murder is different from the others?

Just one thing, said Flannigan.

What’s that?

This time it looks like the victim was brought to this location after she was killed and dismembered here, replied Flannigan.

That is different; he never moves the bodies. I wonder why this time?

In all the previous murders, the bodies were left where the murder took place and the body parts scattered close by. Jeremy was intimately familiar with this practice, because his wife’s body parts were found close to her mutilated torso. She was a grade school teacher and was found by some of her students near the school where she taught. What a horrible experience. Innocent, young fifth graders walked out of class and came face-to-face with a dissected female body they found out later was the teacher they loved. And it wasn’t just the students who were profoundly affected by his wife’s murder; sadness and grief engulfed the entire city when people found out what happened.

It can’t be her, it just can’t be, Jeremy screamed when he was told. He had just kissed her goodbye that morning, planning on meeting for dinner to celebrate his mother’s birthday, and the next time he saw her was later that same day in the coroner’s office, with her body parts assembled on a table like pieces to a gruesome puzzle, and being asked to identify her. And it was that final dreadful picture of her that flashed across his mind every second of every day ever since.

I don’t know what changed this time, replied Flannigan. Maybe somebody or something interrupted him and he was forced to finish his work here. Or maybe he’s getting bored and adding a few new twists. Anyway, after we finish up, we’re heading back to the local coroner’s office. You coming?

I’ve got to go back to the motel first, replied Jeremy, heading back to his car. I’ll catch up with you later.

As he drove back to town, Jeremy couldn’t shake the gruesome images of the woman’s dissected body. And even though he’d seen several mutilated bodies since joining the search, and had become somewhat hardened and insensitive to the horror, this one hit him particularly hard. The woman and his wife were approximately the same age, and as he thought about it, all the memories and pain of his wife’s death came back in a way that made him feel like she was the victim again. All he could think about was the shock and sadness the woman’s family was about to go through when they found out she was dead and the terrible way she died. Maybe she was someone’s wife and mother and they would never have the chance to say good-bye just like Jeremy and his wife. Why was this senseless violence allowed to happen? And if everything happened for a reason, what reason could there possibly be for this unimaginable horror?

You motherfucker, Jeremy yelled, slamming the steering wheel with his fist, I’ll get you.

He had only driven a few miles from the crime scene when suddenly and without warning his car engine died.

What the fuck? he said to himself as he pulled the car to the side of the road.

Unable to get the engine started, Jeremy got out of the car and took out his cell phone.

I hope Flannigan is still at the crime scene, he said as he dialed.

At that moment, Jeremy’s cell phone died, and a dense blanket of white fog appeared and covered everything in sight, making it impossible for him to see.

Where the hell did this come from? he said as he swiped at the fog to move it away.

As Jeremy looked around, a dim light a few hundred feet off the road broke through the