Free The Spectral Book of Horror Stories by Mark Morris (Editor)

reload my crate with empties. There were lots—Bacon got a lot of milk—and they were crusty and unwashed. I noticed light reflecting from the glass; the clouds must have shifted again, letting the moon shine through. I was glad. But then, as I stood, I noticed that the door to the house proper was slightly open, and that there was a face in that shadowed gap, peering at me. The moonlight caught on two big eyes, and on a row of big, yellow teeth, perfectly even, and shaped like a smile. They were the upper teeth. I recoiled against the porch wall. How long had he been there? Bacon, if this was he, did not speak, and neither did I. He maintained his smile. His mouth was slightly open, but I couldn’t see his lower teeth. I wondered if he was wearing dentures, and if they were fitted incorrectly. He had deep creases running straight down from the corners of his wide mouth. He looked utterly delighted about something. I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. I don’t know how long we stood like that. Then, the clouds came back, and the door was closing, and his face—smile unchanged—was hidden from view.
    I ran at full speed from that doorway then, rain splattering my face. And of course, on the very last of them slape-as-fuck stones, I slipped. I slipped hard. My feet flew backwards and my face flew forwards. For a brief, hopeful moment, I thought that I might flip right over, three hundred and sixty degrees, and land on my feet again. But I performed only half such a manoeuvre. I tried to break my fall with my hands, but my hands were holding a crate of empty milk bottles. The crate landed on top of my fingers and my face landed in the crate. One bottleneck aligned perfectly with my right eye socket. Glass, bone, skin and cartilage all broke. My knuckles broke. I lay there, shattered, and I was conscious of that face peering at me from out of the darkness once more, still grinning, and fat fingers trying to turn me over.
    The boss was not going to be very happy about this, I thought, as I was being dragged away. I was going to become really very slow. And probably too expensive.

THE NIGHT DOCTOR
    Steve Rasnic Tem
     
    Elaine said the walk would be good for them both. “We don’t get enough meaningful exercise these days. Besides, we might meet some of the new neighbours.” Sam couldn’t really argue with that, but he couldn’t bring himself to agree, so he nodded, grunted. Although his arthritis was worse than ever, as if his limbs were grinding themselves into immobility, it hurt whether he moved them or not, so why not move?
    He would have preferred waiting until they were more comfortable in the neighbourhood—they’d been there less than a week. Until he had seen a few friendly faces, until he could be sure of their intentions. People here kept their curtains open most of the time. He supposed that was meant to convince passersby of their trusting nature, but he didn’t like it. Someday you might see something you didn’t want to see. You might misinterpret something. Since they’d moved in he’d glanced into those other windows from time to time—and seen shiny spots back in the darkness, floating lights with no apparent source, oddly shaped shadows he could not quite identify and didn’t want to think about. He was quite happy not knowing the worst about other people’s lives. He could barely tolerate the worst about his own.
    Not that he had justification for much complaint. He’d always known the worst was somewhere just out of reach, so it shouldn’t have affected him. Like most people, he supposed. Human beings had a natural sense for it, the worst that was just beyond the limits of their own lives. The worst that was still to come.
    What with one minor annoyance or another—finding pants that didn’t make him look fat, determining what pair of shoes might hurt his feet the least, deciding on the correct degree of layering that wouldn’t make him wish he’d worn something else as the day wore