Free Horror Stories: A Macabre Collection by Steve Wands Page B

pulling me or
pushing me toward it. I didn’t fight it, it’s not like I had
something better to do.
    I couldn’t tell if time was moving or not. It
should have taken me a while to get from the city to my old home,
but the sky never seemed to change. I felt no cold, no warmth, no
wind, no anything. I thought I saw other ghosts or spirits, but
they could have been shadows. I saw no living, or living dead. I
couldn’t even find the sun. Yet I was almost to my destination,
which was unrecognizable. The street signs were faded, the homes
deteriorating; the once well-kept lawns were rebellious fields. My
old suburbia lie in a worse ruin than when I left it, which was no
real surprise, but it was disturbing to see. It made me feel
haunted, though it seemed I was the one doing the haunting.
    There it is, right in front of me. A door to
a world I left behind years ago. A big heavy door, it used to be
red—the shutters too, now they’re rust-colored. I can’t turn the
handle. I can barely move. Whatever force had been guiding me is
gone. I’m alone. The door opens.
    “Welcome home, sweetheart,” she said to me.
Her voice, a song I so longed to hear. Her irises shimmered like
warm honey. Her skin looked so soft—if only I could touch her,
smell her.
    “Daddy,” shouted my beautiful little boy,
running down the hallway toward the door. His hair bounced with
each step, and his smile was bright. The tiny pieces of my
shattered heart ached. Each broken chunk burned. My eyes teared. I
couldn’t even smile. They did though; they smiled brightly, as
brightly and as warmly as I remember them.
    I tried to speak but I couldn’t. She nodded,
she knew what I wanted to say, and didn’t want, or need, to hear
it. She patted my boy on the head. He looked at me with somber eyes
and a grim chin. Their beautiful appearance began to change. They
looked as they did the last time I saw them—in agony.
    “You know what they say about cowards, dad,”
he said, and I did.
    I just wanted to apologize. I wanted to take
it back. I wished over and over that I died with them, that I held
them then, instead of hoping I could now.
    “A thousand deaths,” my wife whispered.
    A thousand deaths, her soft words hit me like
a sledgehammer. All the years of letting the guilt eat me alive
from the inside out for one death. How many times did I want to
kill myself and end it all? I was a coward then. I was afraid,
always afraid.
    “Do you know how long it takes for a ghost to
die,” she asked me, and I didn’t know. It wasn’t something I ever
gave any thought. After thinking about it for a moment I feared I
might never die again. I stared into her eyes looking for an
answer, but there was none, only the warmth that I’d always known
to be there. This was all my fault, not hers, I was the one who
ran. She did the right thing.
    “We love you,” they said together, and I was
forced to watch them die again. It was just as painful the second
time around, but this time I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t run
away. I had to grin and bear it. I watched every morsel of skin get
ripped away. I watched them bleed, and scream, and squirm, and cry
out for me, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help, or change what I
did. I was a Goddamn coward twice over, and there they lay in a
pool of their blood, twitching as the dead thing swallowed their
flesh, again. Just like the first time, only now I couldn’t run.
All I could do was cry, not even blink, and hurt. Then they were
gone, as quickly as they came. My angels, my demons, gone once
again, all that remained was a stain on the floorboards and a huge
gaping hole in my heart. Could God be so cruel? I guess so. I was
able to move again, so I knelt on the stain—the only remains of my
family. I wish I had my picture, now more than ever. All I have is
nothing, save that of guilt. I eventually got up and wandered
aimlessly through my old home. The dust was so thick it was dirt;
covering most of the framed