Read Online 13 Tales To Give You Night Terrors by Elliot Arthur Cross - Free Book Online Page B

all
liquidated. Before the woman’s mouth disappears she throws the
notes in the air and complains venomously and, with that, her face
vanishes beneath the tile leaving only a tangle of brown hair to
sit, like a toupee, on the now-solid floor.
    Most of the customers on the ground
floor suffer such a fate. A few are left to run screaming to and
fro in this macabre garden, amongst the tangled limbs of their
fellow patrons and the cool breeze of the now functioning air
conditioning. Few notice, as you now must, that the front doors
have unlocked and slowly creak open as fresh customers shuffle into
the store marvelling at the avant-garde displays.
     
    ● ● ●
     
    IT is typical that a delivery like this, the ominous black sack
heaped in the corner of the rusted elevator, should appear on the
busiest day of the week. The Assistant should have been finished at
twelve o’clock, but it must have been, at least, half past that. It
was hot and the place took on an unwelcome reek: it stank like Hell
and worse. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact smell and breathed a
sigh of relief when the doors slid open.
    First Floor, Ladies’ Suiting, is
relatively calm. Patrons have not yet caught wind of the screams
echoing up the stairs. The first mists of confusion are only
setting in. The enormous pictures on the walls have only just begun
to change. Fine silhouettes, an army of sharply dressed models,
once frozen in uncomfortable stances, now stagger from their
positions. Some stretch out maniacally, barking silent laughter,
whilst others crawl into dark corners and weep, covering their ears
and mouths.
    When this catches on, there is
suitable panic. Wide eyes and clenched fists, hands on mouths,
hands in mouths, shuddering heads and bombastic movements, the
realization of something leaving; the air sucked from the room.
Everyone gasps. The pictures keep moving, playing host to storms
and scenes of a foreboding nature.
    Still the Assistant launches herself
forward with fervour, muttering apologies wherever she can and
barking at any shoppers unlucky enough to get in her way. Some
hapless bystanders slip in the smears left by the black sack, only
to rise shaking and stuttering at the gooey consistency smeared
over their persons.
    All the shiny white and polished wood
seems somewhat grubby, tarnished and vaguely foul like furniture
left in the street. Only when she reaches the other side of the
floor does she stop to consider that she has absolutely no reason
to be there, and races back to the lift as things get
ugly.
     
    ● ● ●
     
    FLOOR Two, Men’s and Sportswear, is silent and pitch black. The
Assistant shuffles out of the lift, letting the black sack slump
over the doorway as she staggers to catch her breath. The air is
damp and impossibly warm. The place has the uneasy stillness of a
hospital corridor in the night. There is a soft droning but not of
machinery.
    The lights have failed,
plunging all into darkness. Except not total darkness since there
are small candles radiating out in web-like precision down the
pathways. Step by step, inching forward slowly and silently , the Assistant begins to
feel the first pangs of fear.
    As she moves closer to the back walls,
she notices the ground change. Where it was gleaming white and new,
see it now, stained with hundreds of filthy footprints. Smell the
foul effluence, hear the cacophony in the velvet darkness.
Feel—
    Feel the icy hand of it , wet, soft and hungry,
clench around your arm as you kick out one of the candles in panic.
Feel a weight of rank meat tumble on your body, slathering it with
juices foul beyond the grave. The Assistant flails and races back
into the light, slowing only when nothing emerges from the shadows
to give chase.
    When her heart rate has slowed and the
dull ebbing of her pulse has retreated from her ears, she hears the
sounds. All around her, in the pitch darkness, a lament of sobs and
whispers drifts around the room. Squinting, the Assistant can