Quarter to Midnight: Fifteen Horror Short Stories Read online

  It wasn’t hard to find him. He was posed directly behind the head of the bed, staring down at where I’d been lying just a few minutes before.

  A stifled laugh spilled out of me. I glanced about the room, searching for some explanation—and failing to find one. The mannequin stood, legs spread on his stand, his bald head tilted downwards. His abs caught a hint of shine from the window’s light.

  I jumped through the doorway, slammed the door behind me, then jogged up the stairs. The house was quiet; Geoff probably wasn’t awake yet. I let myself out through the front door, slung the backpack over my shoulders, and jogged down the near-empty street towards my favourite café.

  I stayed there for several hours, stirring a cold mug of coffee and trying not to think about the statue in my new home. I needed someone to talk to, who would listen patiently, wouldn’t think I was crazy or stupid, and could give me solid advice.

  Well, Tony can do two out of three.

  Just before the lunch crowd started filtering in, I paid my bill then took the subway to Tony’s neighbourhood. It was a neglected part of town, but the occasional windowsill potted plant and a small park stopped it from being depressing. I let myself into Tony’s apartment complex, climbed the three flights of stairs, and knocked on his door.

  He was home, luckily, though he looked as though he hadn’t been awake for long. His round, oily face split into a huge grin when he saw me, and he pulled me into his cluttered two-room apartment.

  “How you doing, man?” He shoved a pile of clothes off his couch and waved me into the newly freed space. Then before I could answer, he asked, “Want a beer?”

  I certainly did, and he fished two bottles out of his fridge. As I opened my beer, he sat next to me and fixed me with his brilliantly carefree smile. “What brings you here on such a lovely day?”

  I took a gulp while I tried to think how to phrase my problem. Even Tony, who fervently believed in the Loch Ness Monster, had limits to what he would swallow. I settled on a vague answer: “Something weird is happening in my new apartment.”

  “What, like with the house owner?”

  “No, no, he’s fine.” Things suddenly fell into place, and I felt acutely stupid for not seeing it sooner.

  An explanation–the only possible explanation, really–for the moving mannequin was Geoff. He’d come down to the basement while I was asleep and put the statue behind my bed as a prank. It was a weird thing for him to do, and it definitely pushed the boundaries of personal space. Still, that was less disturbing than imagining the mannequin was sentient. I snorted and gulped down another bitter mouthful of beer. “You know what? It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, man.”

  Tony shrugged and turned the TV on. He was quickly absorbed in a soccer match, and I let my mind wander.

  Geoff had seemed like a jovial person when I’d met him. He was probably waiting for me to bound up the stairs, screaming about walking mannequins so he could slap my back and have a laugh at my expense.

  Well, that wasn’t going to happen. I loved a good prank, but the mannequin was just too creepy to tolerate. When I got back, I would have to confront Geoff and ask him not to move the statue again.

  I didn’t follow soccer, but Tony did, and it was an easy distracting two hours. Tony kept fishing more beers from the fridge, and around mid-afternoon, he phoned for a pizza.

  When I left Tony’s house shortly after sundown, I was slightly drunk and much less anxious than I’d been that morning. The air was cool and smelt like rain was on the way. I took my time walking home, taking detours through the nicer parts of town to prolong my freedom before retreating to the basement.

  When Geoff’s house came in sight, I hesitated then quickened my steps. The two-story house stood out like a beacon. Every light in the place was turned on, and the front door stood open, spilling a rectangle of gold down the steps and onto the sidewalk.

  I stopped in the doorway and listened to the heavy steps thundering through the back of the house. A moment later, Geoff rounded the corner, his large face beet-red from exertion, carrying a suitcase in each hand. He saw me and let his breath out in a rush.

  “You’re back! Good, good… I was going to write you a note…”

  He dropped his suitcases beside the door, wiped the back of his hand across his damp forehead, and gazed about the room. His watery eyes scanned the stack of mail on the narrow hallway table and the phone on the wall.

  “Did something happen?” I asked, eyeing Geoff’s suitcases warily. If he’s leaving, does that mean I need to find a new place to stay?

  Geoff caught my gaze and gave me a grim smile. “Don’t worry. I’m not kicking you out. I’ve got to be out of state for a couple of days, lad. I’m sorry to do this so soon after you’ve moved in. It’s my sister. She’s had a fall, and I… I need to be there for her.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed it over the rivulets of sweat slipping down his face, his eyes again scanning the room. “I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything… you can use whatever’s in the fridge, if you like, so it doesn’t go off. The bills are all paid, so no worries there…”

  “I’m sorry about your sister,” I said, but Geoff didn’t seem to hear me.

  A taxi honked from the street, and he grabbed his travel cases.

  “That’s for me, lad. Got to go. I’ll call if I’m going to be away for more than a few days. Take care, now.”

  He barrelled past me, dragging his suitcases towards the waiting taxi. I closed the door behind him then watched through the curtained windows until the car disappeared.

  Geoff had left the lights on in the house, so I went through each room, turning them off. He must have only just gotten the call. A mess of clothes littered the floor around his closet, and he’d left the bathroom cabinets open after collecting his toiletries.

  The offer of free food was too tempting to pass up, so I grabbed some leftover chicken and a soda from the fridge for my dinner. I took a shower–much longer than I would have dared if Geoff had been in the house–changed into a pair of my clean clothes, and set my phone to charge. Then I allowed myself the luxury of watching TV in the living room until tiredness started to gnaw at me.

  It was getting close to midnight when I made my way down the stairs into the chilly basement. I didn’t think Geoff would mind me using the rest of his house while he was gone, but it wouldn’t feel right to sleep in his bed, no matter how inviting it was compared to my stiff mattress and dusty concrete room.

  The mannequin stood where I’d left him, poised over the head of my bed. I closed the door behind myself, dropped my bag beside the coatrack, and picked the mannequin’s discarded cloth off the floor. I threw it over his head, blocking his horrible blank profile from my sight, then dragged him back to his proper place, wedged between two boxes near the opposite side of the room.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me for a few days,” I said grimly, patting the mannequin’s covered head. “Lovely.”

  I turned the light off and stood by the door for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. The rectangular window set high in the wall let in just enough moonlight to guide me back to my bed. I kicked off my shoes and crawled under the sheets, shuddering at how unexpectedly cold they were.

  The rooms upstairs had felt so warm and comfortable that it had been easy to become drowsy, but back in my basement, the tiredness melted away. I lay on my back, frustrated and alert, my eyes seeking out patterns in the stained concrete ceiling while the weak moonlight gradually eroded shadows and built new ones in their place.

  You’ve got to get some sleep, I thought after checking my phone and seeing it was creeping up on one in the morning. You’ve got classes tomorrow, and you really need to pick up your laptop and study books… brave the fiery wrath of the dragon ex…

  I slipped into a thin, unsatisfying sleep, where dreams blended into reality. The light from the window was fading, like a torch that was running out of battery, while the mannequi
n strode past me, his ceramic joins bending unnaturally as his blank eyes bored into the back of my head.

  The door gave a soft click, and I jolted into awareness, sitting up and rubbing at my face while I tried to centre myself and shake off the dreams.

  The noise had been too real–too close–to have been my imagination, so I fumbled for my phone. I swiped it to turn it on then pointed the thin glow of its screen towards the basement door.

  A tall, dark man stood there, as still as stone, staring down at me. I stared back, horrified.

  My heart was beating in my ear, like a bird trapped in a cage, thrashing its wings against its prison. Not daring to move, I sat in my bed, prepared to dive backwards or defend myself the moment the man moved towards me. The stranger, barely visible in the thin light from my phone, had frozen, as well. I could feel him watching me, waiting to see what I would do.

  His stillness was unnerving, terrifying, and somehow much worse than motion. The seconds stretched out, each one lasting much longer than they had any right to, while we each waited for the other to make the first move. Then a horrible, crazy thought flitted through my head. What if it isn’t an intruder? What if it’s the mannequin?

  I glanced to the right, to where the mannequin should have been propped between the boxes. The phone’s light was too weak to make out much more than a cloud of shadows, but I thought I caught sight of the cloth pooled on the floor.

  Then darkness poured over us.

  My phone had slipped into hibernation. A weak, terrified sound escaped my lips, and I swiped the phone again, calling the light back. I looked up.

  The mannequin had moved a full two paces towards me in that second of darkness. He was frozen again, poised just shy of the foot of my bed as he loomed over me, his fingers spread by his sides, his blank face angled down at me.

  I clambered out of bed, the adrenaline lending my shaking limbs strength, and darted backwards, away from the mannequin. I kept my thumb rubbing over the phone’s screen, refusing to let it slip back into darkness, as I pointed the screen towards the mannequin like a priest uses his cross to ward off a vampire.

  I kept backing away, refusing to take my eyes of the statue’s back, until I reached the door. I grabbed for the knob with my free hand and twisted it. It stuck. I pulled harder, pushed, then put my shoulder against the door and shoved it as hard as I could.

  He locked you in, a nasty voice in my head whispered. He’s got you trapped.

  “No,” I muttered. I stepped away from the door and searched for the plastic box set in the wall. I found the switch and flicked it. Beautiful, sweet light filled the room.

  I took a series of short gulps of air as I put my phone back into my pocket. I didn’t dare take my eyes of the mannequin, but he hadn’t moved since that second of darkness. I returned to the door again and jiggled the handle. It wouldn’t budge.

  The spare keys were in my jacket’s pocket. I edged around the perimeter of the room until I reached the coatrack, where I fumbled for my corded jacket. The first pocket was empty. So was the second one. I kept going, turning out every pocket in it, until there was no room left for doubt. The keys were gone.

  They’d been there when I’d let myself into the basement the night before. I remembered putting them back in my pocket before taking off the jacket and hanging it up. And if there was no one in the house except for me and…

  I stared at the mannequin’s muscular back. He wore no clothes and had no pockets. If he took the keys, what did he do with them?

  The concrete floor was icy cold under my hands as I knelt before the door. There was a gap of nearly an inch between the wood slab and the ground. I spared a glance towards the mannequin to reassure myself he hadn’t moved, then I turned my head and looked under the door.

  The short hallway leading to the stairs was almost pitch-black, but a thin sliver of light stretched along the ground. I could just barely make out a glitter of silver at the foot of the first stair, offering tantalising freedom that was impossible to reach.

  A crash, a snap, and then the light was gone once again. I scrambled away from the door, stumbled to my feet, and turned to get my back against a wall. The light from the window had faded as the night progressed, making it impossible to see anything except vague hints of shapes. I tugged my phone back out of my pocket, my eyes uselessly scanning the black room, and swiped my mobile on.

  The mannequin stood beside the light, barely a foot away from where I’d been kneeling. His body faced the wall, but his head had turned to follow me. He held something white in his hands. I stared for a moment, extending my phone forward to push the weak light towards him. He was holding a crumpled plastic square with severed wires trailing from it. The light switch.

  “You bastard,” I whispered.

  The mannequin didn’t reply. He was frozen in the beam of my phone, the indents where his eyes belonged gazing at me. Once again, I felt the overwhelming sensation of being examined, as though his fleshless, lifeless eyes could see far more clearly than my mortal ones. I skittered sideways, towards the window, to get out of his gaze.

  Panic was building like a knot of cords in my chest, binding my lungs so I couldn’t breathe and restricting my limbs so I couldn’t move. The waning burst of adrenaline was urging me to do something–flee, fight, just some sort of action!–but my exit was locked, and I would rather have died than touch the monster in the basement.

  “That’s what you are,” I said, backing towards the window, my feet scraping across the dusty floor as I warded him off with the light from my phone. “A monster.”

  The back of my legs hit the rocking chair, and I let myself slump into it. The rickety legs creaked under my weight, but it didn’t break.

  My mind scrambled to find a way out, but every choice was a dead-end. The window above me was too narrow for a person to fit through, even if I could break it open. My phone had no signal in the basement. The door was too thick and solid to break, and without the keys, I had no hope of unlocking it.

  I glanced past the mannequin. If I could find something–a coat hanger, maybe–to slip through the gap under the door, I could probably hook the keys. But that would mean turning my back to the mannequin again. I instinctively knew that was a terrible mistake… while it was dark, at least.

  I tilted my head back to gaze at the window above me. It was narrow and had bars like a jail cell’s, but it let me see a strip of inky sky pin-pricked with stars.

  If I could hold him off until dawn, I might just have a chance to retrieve the keys and make a break for it. I looked back at the mannequin. He remained as motionless as a statue, posed by the defunct lightbulb, looking the other way.

  “Light’s your weakness, huh?” I said. “You can’t move as long as I can see you.”

  As usual, there was no reply. I kicked my heels against the ground, sending the rocking chair into a gentle swing. How long until dawn? I turned the phone towards myself for a moment. Three in the morning. I had at least two hours until sunrise.

  I rotated the phone back to face the room. The mannequin had moved. In the second I’d taken the light off him, he’d dropped the scrunched plastic from his hand and taken a step towards me.

  My breath whistled through my lips in a shaky wheeze as we stared each other down. My first impulse was to move out of his line of vision, as I’d done before, but I stopped myself. I didn’t want to show signs of weakness in front of my stalker.

  “Maybe this is best,” I told the mannequin, while the light jittered over his slate-grey face, casting strange shadows about his eyes. “I can watch you, and you can watch me, but no one gets any closer than we are now.”

  Time dragged by. When my arm began to ache, I switched the phone to my left hand. I didn’t dare break the mannequin’s gaze, even as the shadows behind him jumped and leapt in my dim light, clamouring to surge forward and engulf me and my inhuman companion. As the air became colder, goose bumps rose on my arms, and mist began to plume in front of my face. A cou
ple of times, I thought I saw tiny puffs of chilled air appear around the mannequin’s set mouth and ceramic nose, but it might have been a trick played by the light.

  It was easy to lose track of time in the basement. I kept my chair rocking, using the gentle motion to keep me alert. Each time I kicked against the floor, the worn wooden joints whined in protest. I had my eyes trained on the mannequin, watching the shadows around his eyes quiver as the light shifted from the motion, as I willed myself to stay alert.

  Then my phone beeped.

  I knew that noise, and a rush of frantic horror poured through me. I stopped rocking the chair, letting it come to a halt as my feet hit the ground, and stared at the statue with fresh dread.

  The beep was my phone’s warning for low batteries.

  How didn’t I think of this before? It’s been on for hours. Of course the battery’s going to drain.

  My mouth was dry when I swallowed, and I felt a small bead of sweat trickle down my neck. I imagined the light going out, dead beyond my power to summon it back, trapping me in the inky blackness with my inhuman companion. A strangled noise caught in my throat.

  Calm down. Think. Where’s the charger?

  Upstairs, of course, where I’d left it after fuelling the phone before bed.

  “Damnit,” I whispered. “Damnit, damnit, damnit.”

  My hand shook, and the unsteady light allowed the shadows to creep across the mannequin’s shoulders and up his legs. The way the darkness danced made his face look as though it were moving.

  How much battery do I have left? How much time?

  I eyed the statue, calculating the risk of taking the light off him versus the agony of not knowing how long my battery would last. Then I turned the phone towards myself as quickly as I could.

  He was in darkness for less than half a second, but when the light returned to him, he’d taken a long step forward.

  “Damn you to hell,” I snarled at him.

  I had fifteen percent of my battery left. I’d charged it just before bed, so having its light on was sucking its power quickly.