Free The Late Night Horror Show by Bryan Smith Page A

recognized that someone as the slightly heavyset man at the theater who’d come out of his chair to ask her if she was all right.
    He collided with the masked psycho, jolting the chainsaw out of his hands as he drove the bigger man to the ground. The chainsaw thumped to the ground, where the blade dug for a moment into the soft earth before going still. Lashon stared at it for a shocked moment before shifting her attention to her rescuer. The guy was sitting astride the masked man and was hammering away at his hidden face with two big fists.
    He sensed her scrutiny and glanced up at her, his face twisting in a desperate grimace as his eyes locked with hers. His face was red from overexertion and slick with rain. He was breathing heavily, but managed to push out a single word: “Run!”
    One of the masked man’s big hands shot upward and clamped tightly around her rescuer’s throat.
    Lashon screamed.
    And then she heeded the stranger’s advice.
    She turned away from the scene of struggle and plunged into the deeper darkness of the woods.

Chapter Nine
    Kira awoke with a gasp and sat bolt upright, breathing heavily and hearing the amplified beat of her overdriven heart pounding in her ears. The dream was over. She was safe and sound in a comfortable bed. There were no vampires here. No one was assaulting her. And, really, given her tastes in literature and movies, it was a wonder she had never had that kind of dream before. She had long prided herself on not scaring easily, but, apparently, even the most hardened dark-fiction addict could eventually pay a price for constant indulgence in the stuff.
    She swept the thick comforter away from her body and swung her legs over the side of the bed, intending to get up to take a pee. Instead, she sat there on the edge of the bed, suddenly struggling to understand some things. This was a four-poster bed with an ornate wood frame. A gauzy canopy hung above her. She couldn’t remember ever having slept in a bed like this one. Moreover, she was relatively certain she didn’t know anyone who had a bed like it. But that was far from the only off-kilter detail about her current circumstances. Another odd thing was the very flimsy blue negligee she was wearing. It was see-through and had a very short hemline. She didn’t have much in the way of sexy lingerie and knew she had nothing quite like this thing in her wardrobe.
    There were other things, too. The room she was in was not at all familiar. It was big. Really big. There was what looked like a real fireplace at the far end of the room, complete with a stone hearth. Very old-fashioned. Indeed, all the furniture in the room looked like antiques. She turned her head side to side in openmouthed amazement, doing a slow survey of the contents of the room. A large steamer trunk sat at the foot of the bed. It was secured with a very big and very old-looking padlock. A rolltop desk sat against the wall opposite the bed. It looked sort of fragile in the way of many very old things. Fragile and quaint. She could imagine Charles Dickens sitting at that desk, scribbling away at Hard Times or some damn thing. A tall wardrobe cabinet stood in a corner of the room. Like the bed, it was almost exquisitely ornate, with much painstakingly carved detail.
    The windows in the room were all painted black. Weird.
    She got up and went over to the wardrobe, hoping to find something more suitable to wear. She pulled at one of the rickety doors and the knob came off in her hand as the door creaked open. She frowned as she peered in at the handful of items dangling from wire hangers. They were all very tiny pieces of lingerie. She glanced at the knob in her hand, her frown deepening for a moment, and then she screwed it back on and pressed the wardrobe door firmly shut.
    She moved numbly to the center of the room and took it all in again.
    A single, obvious conclusion soon took center stage in her mind— I have to get out of this room and out of this fucking