Kay Inglis

Conkers

Friday, December 5th, 2008 | Creative writing, Horror, Samples of work

Thought I’d post this here, an example of my work. It’s a short story called Conkers, the first in the Stories about Shane series, a set of loosely connected horror tales following a young estate agent who gets more than he bargained for with the houses he sells.

This story was used for an illustration competition by ImagineFX magazine, over at www.imaginefx.com. I hope you enjoy it.

Conkers

 

by Kay Inglis

 

Death stalked James from every angle. His time was short; he knew that. He had minutes, not hours left to live. As he stood in the middle of the cobbled path, James thought he should have been frightened; but he had no fear. The sweat that trickled down his spine was not caused by nervousness so much as by the sheer exertion of trying to lift his leaden legs and put one foot in front of the other.

            Perhaps he should have been relieved: this hopeless battle was almost over. Soon death would take him in its cold arms and with one sweet kiss James’s pain, his suffering, his utter exhaustion would cease. Soon, he would be with Rachael.

            But James didn’t feel relief. He knew that death wasn’t beautiful, or gentle, or romantic, far from it: death was gnashing fangs and spindly legs and a hundred soulless, malevolent eyes. It was a web of silk as strong as steel, the terror of finding yourself trapped, the realisation that your worst nightmares could be real.

            Death for Rachael had been courage, valiance, the ultimate sacrifice to save her friends. For Briony, it had been at least in part vindication, proof that her fears were not, after all, unfounded. And for Shane, so far as James could see, death had been painful, a struggle, denied until the bitter end. James had watched his friends die and he knew the same fate awaited him. His destiny was sealed, but right now he wasn’t even sure he could stay awake long enough to meet it.

            The only thing that James felt was tiredness, crippling, overwhelming exhaustion that made him want to do nothing more than lie down in the street and wait for the inevitable. In a way, then, death had already started. This was the way that zombies had to feel. Alive, yet not really alive; animated, but not conscious: brain dead. Driven on by a single, primeval desire – in a zombie’s case to feed, in James’s to fight, to avenge his friends and at least try to beat the monsters.

            But he had no energy left: it took everything just to remain upright. His body was giving up on him, and he knew he had to act fast, before his mind started to follow. He had to ignore the fact that all he wanted to do was sleep.

             Clasping his fingers as tight as he could around the small, cotton bag – Rachael’s bag – that he held in his left hand, he closed his eyes. Mustering every ounce of strength, he opened them once more and raised his head, turning to face the creature. He wasn’t going to go down without a fight. And he wasn’t scared of spiders.

 

*

 

One hour earlier…

 

“Oh my God, that’s ginormous!” Briony’s shriek made James jump as the Vauxhall Astra came to a halt. “It’s massive, Shane. A monster!”

            As Shane chuckled and murmured about euphemisms, James rubbed his eyes. Turning to Rachael beside him in the back seat, he asked: “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

            Rachael shook her head. “Briony found a spider in the glovebox,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Thinks it’s going to eat us all alive.”

            “I didn’t say that. I just don’t like them!” Briony protested, glancing over her shoulder but unwilling to take her eyes off the creature, which James could barely see even when he leaned his face between the headrests. “Anyway, who has spiders in their car? Shane, do you ever clean this thing?”

            “Yeah. All the time,” Shane said, with a shrug. “I don’t know how that got there, it must have sneaked in last time I sold a spooky house.”

            Unbuckling his seatbelt, he reached across and scooped the arachnid into his hand, holding it up for James and Rachael to get a better look as Briony squeaked and recoiled against the door. The ‘monster’ was approximately a centimetre long. As it started to scuttle towards the centre of Shane’s palm, he clenched his fingers down, crushing the spider’s body with a soft squish that made James grimace and Briony squeal.

            “Anyway, we don’t have to worry about it now,” Shane continued, reaching into his pocket for a tissue, with which he wiped the spider juice from his hand. Holding his clean palm up to Briony, he smiled. “See, darling? All gone.”

            Briony smiled now and nodded as Rachael mumbled “my hero!” sarcastically under her breath. But Shane ignored her and opened his door.

            “Great. Now let’s get on with things. The real reason we’re here. People, I give you Sutton Manor.”

            Stepping out of the car, James caught sight of the house for the first time. Standing at the foot of what had once been the driveway, now overgrown with shrubs and weeds, he drew a breath. The building itself looked abandoned, dilapidated and run down, with broken glass in the windows and graffiti tags sprayed across the walls; this was your archetypal haunted house on the hill. Even an estate agent as prolific, as persuasive as Shane would have difficulty selling this place to anyone who didn’t sleep in a coffin and only come out at night.

            “That place is creepy!” Briony gasped. “I don’t like it!”

            “Yeah, even you won’t shift that in a hurry,” Rachael said, reading James’s mind. “It is kinda cool, though…”

            “Maybe it doesn’t look like it’s worth much at the moment,” Shane conceded. “But in a few months, this will all be parkland, and that spooky house up there will be 13 luxury apartments, each individual and unique, for the discerning buyer.”

            Rachael glanced behind her at the motorway they had passed under to get to the end of the drive.

            “Yeah, the discerning buyer who likes staring down at a traffic jam every day.”

            “Easy commuter access,” Shane quipped, well-practised in moving in for the hard sell. “Gothic manor elegance, with all mod-cons, within a stone’s throw of the city. They’re even going to put a swimming pool on the roof.”

            “Why is it that everything today has to be made into flats?” Rachael asked, unimpressed, and Shane laughed.

            “What would you rather it become? A haunted house attraction?” He looped his arm around Briony’s as she shuddered. “Come on. I want to show you inside. Briony’s right, it is pretty creepy in there, even us guys might get a bit frightened. James? You up for it? James?”

            James had only vaguely been listening to the conversation, knowing it was best not to get involved when Shane started talking shop. Besides, he’d been distracted as soon as he saw the horse chestnut trees that lined the path up to the house. While selling houses was Shane’s forte, art was James’s, and he was every bit as passionate about it. He incorporated nature into his work whenever he could, and already he had collected a handful of conkers to use in his latest project.

            “What are you doing down there?” Shane asked, slapping him on the shoulder.

            “Conkers,” James beamed, holding out his hands. “Fancy a game?”

            Shane shook his head. “How old are you? Twelve?” he laughed. “Nobody plays conkers these days. What are you going to do with those?”

            “Make them into a work of art, with any luck,” said James, and Shane just laughed some more. “Maybe I could sell them to the people who buy your luxury apartments; a genuine James Queen to hang on the wall.”

            “Yeah. Right,” said Shane. “The difference is, I’m actually going to sell some apartments. You, my friend, are going to spend your whole life painting conkers and working in Tesco. You’re my best friend, James, but let’s face it, as an artist-stroke-supermarket checkout boy, you’re hardly going to do anything significant, are you?”

            He smiled to indicate that he was teasing, though Rachael rolled her eyes.

            “Here,” she said, holding out her small, checked cotton bag. “Put the conkers in this, James. Let’s get some more. I’d be proud to have a James Queen hanging on my wall.”

            “Why thank you, I will,” James smiled. “You know, conkers have many uses – you shouldn’t diss them. Some people even say they repel spiders; maybe you should get some, Briony.”

            “All right. Let’s stop the flirting and take a look at this place,” said Shane, signalling towards the house. As Briony shuddered once more, and pouted in disgust that he wasn’t flirting with her, he leant over to plant a kiss on her lips. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll protect you from the bugs and beasties.”

            When they reached the foot of the stairs that led up to the front of the house, Shane paused. Briony was hanging back, reluctant, swinging on his arm. Rachael looked like she was trying to maintain her bored indifference, but was unable to hide her curiosity. James, meanwhile, was still fascinated by the proliferation of horse chestnut trees, wondering who had planted them there, and when, and why… The house only caught his attention again when Shane drew the group to a halt at the foot of the stairs. Stepping around them, he pointed eagerly to what James thought, initially, was a moss-covered dent or recess in the wall. It was only after staring at it for a moment that he realised it was a window, of sorts, glassless and covered by bars.

            “Oh my God, it’s a cage!” Briony gasped. “Shane, I don’t like it! Why has the house got a cage? What did they keep in there?”

            As James peered through the bars, seeing nothing in the darkness, Shane laughed again and squeezed Briony’s hand.

            “It’s not a cage, it’s a cell,” he said. “And so far as the legend goes, the people they most often threw in there were mad, screaming girlfriends.”

            “A cell?! Oh, that’s all right, then!” Briony gasped. “What kind of house has a cell? Shane, I want to go home!”

            Rachael had been leaning close to James, trying to see inside too.

            “She has a point,” she nodded. “What was this place? Some kind of prison?”

            “Yeah, who, or what, did they keep down there?” James asked.

            “Monsters!” Shane quipped, and Briony squealed again as he poked his hand through the bars into the darkness. After a second, his face dropped and he thrust himself against the wall. “Argh, it’s got me! It’s got me, it’s going to eat me alive!”

            Briony screamed as Rachael looked at James and rolled her eyes. Shane beamed once more as he pulled his hand free.

            “And for your next cheap horror movie trick?” Rachael asked.

            “Shane, you shouldn’t do that!” Briony chastised, whacking him with her handbag. “There could be anything in there… Even spiders, I bet there’s spiders!”

            “Ooh, spiders! How utterly terrifying,” Shane mocked. “Tell me, Bri, what exactly are a few little spiders going to do to four humans? I’d be more worried about the ghosts and goblins myself.” He chuckled as Briony looked ready to burst into tears. “Darling, I’m teasing you. There’s nothing to be frightened about. It’s just an old house, soon to be 13 new luxury apartments. Used to be owned by the family who built the zoo, if you must know; one of their old boys lived here for a while, back at the start of last century, and since then it’s been used as storage and accommodation for research students of the university’s natural history department. But it was too old and expensive to look after, and it’s been empty for about 15 years. It’s pretty cool inside, pretty spooky. I had a look around with the surveyor, but he didn’t show me the cells. I thought you guys might want to share the experience with me.”

            Holding up a set of keys, he smiled. “So are you coming?”

            James drew back from the window and nodded.

            “A mad scientist owned it. That’s all right, then,” he chuckled, and Briony opened her mouth to squeak again.

            “Shut up, James. You’re scaring my girlfriend,” Shane said. “Don’t worry, Bri. I promise I’ll look after you. And Rachael will do the same for you, James, I’m sure.”

            James shook his head.

            “Come on, then,” he smiled.

*

As soon as they stepped inside, James started to have misgivings. Unlike Briony, who whined still and dragged on Shane’s arm, it wasn’t eight-legged creatures that worried him, so much as missing floorboards, lack of light and two-legged tramps who wouldn’t appreciate a bunch of nosey visitors.

            “Are you sure we should be in here?” he asked, as Shane flicked on a torch. In the bright beam it produced, he saw he was right to be concerned about the building’s state of repair, as wires hung from the ceiling and various, unidentified items of junk littered the floor. From somewhere above them, water dripped. It was hard to picture this place as Shane’s luxury apartments.

            “Not getting cold feet, surely?” Shane asked, focussing the beam on a battered wooden door at the far side of the room. “Come on. I think the cells are down that way.”

            He led the way across the room, shining his torch beam in front of him to negotiate the debris on the floor. Briony was all-but dragged along after him, not wanting to follow, but too scared to let go of his hand in case she was left alone. Because only Shane had a torch, Rachael and James had to follow on close behind, Rachael holding Briony’s other hand and James bringing up the rear.

            “I don’t want to go in there!” Briony hissed as Shane stopped in front of the door, struggling to free his hand in order to open it. “I mean it, Shane. There’s going to be spiders the size of golf balls in that room.”

            But Shane just shook his head and pushed the key into the lock. Turning it with a squeak that made James’s teeth hurt, he unlocked the door, pushing it open to reveal a set of narrow, twisting stairs.

            “Look, no spiders,” he said, shining his torch inside. “Hello? Spiders? If you’re down there you’d better scuttle off now. Because you go near my girlfriend, and I’ll stomp on you, you hear?”

            Smiling once more at Briony, who smiled nervously back, he led the way into the stairwell. Murmuring: “This place is cool,” Rachael followed Briony down. Glancing behind him, James shuddered at how dark it was without the torch, and hurried after the others.

            Shane had taken about five steps into the corridor when he stopped dead with a gasp and let go of the torch. Briony crashed into his back and screamed as Rachael grabbed the torch from the floor. Shining it, she saw what had halted Shane. Wrapped around his arm and leg was a thick, translucent white thread-like substance. He struggled, perplexed that he couldn’t get free, as Briony gasped “Oh my God, oh my God!” The thick white thread continued into the distance, intertwining with others, woven together in a dense, sticky web that filled the tunnel entirely.

            “Spiders!” Briony screeched. “I told you there’d be spiders! That’s a spider’s web. Quick, get him out, get it off him!”

            James was surprised by the speed of Briony’s actions, not to mention the sudden streak of bravery that emerged as soon as she saw Shane’s predicament. As Shane struggled against the web and gasped: “What the…?” doing nothing but trapping himself tighter, Briony didn’t hesitate. She grabbed at thread around his arm and started pulling, trying to untangle it.

            “Stay still, Shane!” she commanded. “We’ll get you out. This stuff’s like steel, like a snare. The more you struggle the more stuck you’ll get. Come on, guys, help me!”

            James snapped out of staring at Briony and nodded, grabbing hold of the thread around Shane’s leg. As Shane obediently stopped struggling, James realised that the shaking he felt running through his body was entirely involuntary.

            The thread was wound tightly, as sticky as it was strong, and it took James and Rachael’s combined strength to pull it from Shane’s leg. James grabbed the end of the thread that Briony was working on, and after pulling and twisting for some moments, Shane was free, staggering backwards, his face white as an eerie, unidentified rustling noise started somewhere deep in the tunnel. Briony thrust herself into his arms and kissed him hard.

            “What on Earth made this?” Rachael asked, examining the broken thread that still stuck stubbornly to her hand.

            “I don’t think I want to find out,” said James, peering down into the tunnel but unable to see much in the dim light of Rachael’s torch. What he could see was Shane, still shaking and with sweat on his brow as he clung tight to Briony.

            “I told you there were spiders down here,” she repeated. “Hundreds of them, to make a web like this.”

            “Or one very big one,” Shane offered, glancing nervously at the web that had entrapped him. “Either way, I don’t want to find out. You were right, Bri. We should never have come in here. I’ll leave it for the builders to clear out. Let’s go.”

            “That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said all day,” Rachael nodded, and turned towards the stairs.

            “No, wait,” Briony said, her confidence boosted by her heroics. “Just say that again, Shane. What you just said. You know, just for the record.”

            “You were right, Briony,” Shane repeated without hesitation. “You were right. You’re always right, and I love you. Now come on!”

            “Great. Now come on, stop flirting and let’s get…” Rachael turned back to them, shining the torch towards their faces. But her voice stopped abruptly. The light of eight enormous black pearl eyes reflected back at her, and she screamed. In the beam of Rachael’s torch, James saw that Shane’s ‘one big spider’ stood at least seven feet long and almost as tall, filling the tunnel entirely. Its huge, spindly legs were striped yellow and black and clicked when it moved, while its curved body reminded James of a giant, discoloured brain. At the front of its head, two giant, venom-dripping fangs gleamed in the torchlight.

            Before Briony could even turn her head to see what Rachael was screaming about, the spider struck. With incredible speed it shot forwards, ripping Briony from Shane’s arms and lifting her towards its great chelicerae before she had the chance to make a sound. Even as it took her, Briony didn’t scream, she just looked somewhat shocked, and uttered the tiniest squeak of surprise as the spider plunged its venom into her neck. Immediately her body, her expression froze, her eyes boring into Shane for an instant, and the spider shot away backwards, wrapping her in fresh steel-like thread as it went. The whole attack lasted just seconds; there was no time for the others to react.

            For a moment, Shane remained where he had been standing, his arms still clasped as if Briony was in them, his jaw dropped, his eyes bulging. Then he started screaming, lunging forwards and becoming snared in the sticky thread himself once more.

            “Briony! No! Briony, Briony!”

            Rachael screamed again, shining the light into the tunnel in an attempt to see where the spider had gone. But she was shaking so hard that the torch wavered up and down, and they could see nothing but an ever-spiralling expanse of web.

            James grabbed for Shane as he stumbled forwards, trapped entirely off the ground by the web. With strength that surprised even himself, he pulled his friend’s arms free, calling to Rachael to help him untangle his legs. Shane struggled and kicked as they dragged him back away from the edge of the deadly mesh.

            “Briony!” he cried. “Get off, get off. It’s got Briony. We have to help her!”

            “We can’t help her like this. Did you see the size of that thing?” James shook his head. “We’ve got to get out of here, go and get something to kill it with. Get more people who can help Briony. Come on, we’ve got to go before it comes back!”

            He and Rachael started to drag Shane back towards the stairs, and though he struggled and kicked for a moment longer, by the time they reached the foot of them, he was still and sobbing quietly: “She hates them… Spiders… Briony hates spiders and now she’s down there with one…”

            “We’ll get her out, you’ll see,” James said, but one glance at Rachael showed she believed that as little as he did.

            The rustling came again as James pushed Shane on to the stairway. This time, the three friends knew all too well what the noise was – the rub of fine-haired spider’s legs against the floor and walls of the tunnel. It was not the sound so much as where it came from that startled James, for the noise was not coming from behind them, but from in front, at the back of the stairs.

            Rachael shone her torch around them and gasped. The tunnel didn’t stop at the stairs, but continued under the other side of the house. Here, too, it was laced with thick, white strands of web, and the eyes of the spider that had built it glinted in its centre. It seemed to be staring at them, holding them in its gaze, and as they stared back, Shane began to whimper.

            “Is that the same one?” he breathed. “The one who took Briony?”

            “I don’t know, and I don’t care!” Rachael grabbed his arm. “Just get moving! You’re blocking the stairs.”

            But Shane had other ideas. He pulled himself on to his feet, still shaking but able to stand on his own.

            “You killed her!” he screamed, lunging past Rachael at the spider. “You took my Briony. Give her back, give her back, I’ll squash you flat!”

             His foot crashed down on top of the nearest strand of web, trying to crush it but only succeeding in making it shake. This movement caught the spider’s attention and it shifted its legs in Shane’s direction, looking for its next meal.

            “Get him out of here, now!” Rachael spat, and James didn’t take a second telling, grabbing Shane under the arms and pulling him backwards up the stairs. Shane struggled and swore but James wouldn’t let go. Rachael followed them up backwards, keeping her light trained on the spider for as long as she could.

            At the top of the stairs, Shane swung his arms violently, knocking James over on to his back. As he crashed down among the debris, he saw a flurry of blonde hair, then Rachael’s hand appeared at the door, grasping it, pulling it towards her.

            “Rach!” James cried, tumbling over and grabbing a broken table to pull himself up.

            “I’m sorry, James!” Rachael cried. “Take the torch, and my bag!”

            Reaching out her other hand, she hurled the torch across the room. It hit the floor and bounced twice, and James saw the shadow of a set of spindly legs on the wall behind Rachael just before the light went out. Then the door banged shut, a half-scream muffled behind the wood, and everything was dark.

            By the time James had scrabbled around on the floor and found the two parts of the torch, the spider’s legs were scrape-scrape-scraping on the other side of the door. That and Shane’s sobbing seemed to be the only sounds in the world.

            “Rachael?” There was a lump in James’s own throat as he spoke. “Rach?”

            “She’s gone,” Shane sniffed, shuffling towards him, closing his hands around the soft fabric of Rachael’s bag. “Rachael’s gone, Briony’s gone. It’s all my fault…”

            He stopped abruptly at the sound of splintering wood. James swallowed hard, turning back towards the cellar door in time to see the spider’s two front legs breaking through it. A second later and the door gave way entirely, the full form of the spider’s body filling the frame.

            James pulled himself to his feet once more, reaching his hand out to help Shane up too. But as he grabbed hold of him, his fingers brushed Rachael’s bag, and he remembered the conkers.

            “Shane! The conkers! Spiders hate horse chestnut,” he gasped, grabbing the bag and ripping it open. “Shane, we can use these!”

            But Shane wasn’t listening. His face had contorted into an expression of pure rage, and he shouldered James out of the way as he charged at creature, screaming: “This is for Briony!”

            The spider struck him just above the left shoulder, stunning him but not instantly knocking him to the ground. Instead it shot a trail of sticky thread towards him, fixing him to the floor.

            “No! I’ll kill you! I’ll stomp you!” Shane screamed. “I’m not scared of spiders!”

            James pushed his hand into the bag and pulled out a handful of conkers. Running his fingers over their smooth surface, he raised his arm and took aim, firing them at the spider. The first two missed, landing near Shane’s tethered feet. But the third struck the spider square in one of its eight eyes. Hissing, spitting, the spider recoiled.

            Shane, watching from where he was shackled to the floor, threw his head back and laughed manically as James rushed towards him to free his feet.

            “Conkers!” he laughed. “Saving the world, with bloody conkers!”

            But then came another rustling from the cellar, louder, faster, heavier than before, as a second and then a third spider appeared at the doorway. Shane gasped. Swore. And reached his hands out to shove James hard in the chest as something sharp caught him in small of his back.

            “Get out!” Shane screamed. “Get outside to the conker trees. That’s what they’re there for! Get out now, before…”

            His last words were caught up in a scream as the first spider returned, angry now as well as hungry. It plunged its fangs into his body and James heard Shane cry out for Briony one last time as he turned and fled, out through the front door and down the stairs to the cobbled courtyard that led to the horse chestnut drive.

            But there wasn’t enough of Shane to feed all the spiders, and the slight forms of Rachael and Briony would hardly have provided much of a meal. The second creature saw James’s flight and swiftly followed him down the stairs, moving at impossible speed as James struggled against a sudden, rapidly increasing sense of weariness.

            It was as he reached the centre of the cobbled path that he realised why his back was hurting. Glancing down, he saw that part of the spider’s venomous fang had snapped off in their battle and was impaled to the right of his spine. That was when he knew he was as good as dead; a zombie walking on borrowed time.

            But he couldn’t go down without a fight. For Briony, for Shane, and especially for Rachael, James had a duty to battle these creatures. Raising his head and raising the bag of conkers, he gazed at the creature. As drew back his hand and hurled a conker with all of his might, he felt his legs fold at the knees. James crashed on to the ground as the spider reached him, its one good fang dripping venom on to his upturned face.

            As it moved in for the kill, the last thing that James saw was an army of giant spiders pouring from the door, running across the courtyard and past the cell-like window. Within the darkness of that barred room, James could just make out the shape of three human sized cocoons in white silk thread, food parcels that had been stored for later.

 

Tags: Handsome Devils Bastard Angels

1 Comment to Conkers

Leave a comment