Read Screamscapes: Tales of Terror for Free Online Page B

over his right shoulder.
    The texture of her skin reminded him of silly putty he had played with as a child. For a moment, he had the perverse idea of pushing a color Sunday comic up against her skin to see if a reverse image would remain imprinted on her leg.
    He pictured a comic strip with Charlie Brown sitting in front of Lucy’s psychiatric advice stand, 5 cents, please ; except instead of Charlie Brown sitting on the stool it was him and instead of Lucy seated at the stand it was Miranda, dead and stiff and staring off into the distance with those glassy, bloodshot eyes.
    His sorrow at finding Miranda lying dead in the mud under his house had come to him fast and hit him hard, a sucker punch to the heart. But now he felt another emotion pushing his sorrow away: a sense of anger stronger than any he had ever known before flushed his cold body with a raging heat that boiled in his marrow.
    Kelly would pay, he decided.
    Kelly had done this. Kelly had killed his true soul mate. His fucking bitch of a wife had stolen the last single joy he had left on this whole entire planet.
    Why hadn’t she killed him , instead? Why did she have to murder a perfectly innocent young woman, so full of life and beauty? What had she ever done to hurt anyone?
    Tom pictured his wife standing outside the crawl space door again, arms still crossed in her typical disapproving manner; but this time he imagined seeing her eyes full of delight as she listened to the cries of his sorrowful discovery seep through the door.
    He wanted to kill her, to drag her worthless life straight out of her body and give it to Miranda. Life for the worthy, for the beautiful – not the worthless cunt his wife had become.
    He would kill her himself, he decided.
    Tom let Miranda’s lifeless corpse fall back into the mud; her head landed with a dull plop, free arm dangling over the backside of her body.
    Tom stabbed his dying flashlight into the darkness ahead of him as he crawled furiously back towards the closed crawlspace door. He splashed through the mud and threw himself towards the sealed exit of what had become in his mind a cursed crypt.
    The only remaining vestige of thought in his mind was of revenge: immediate, unyielding and unmerciful retribution.
    The rusted steel door stood resolute before him. As he faced it, he became possessed with the conviction that no mere obstacle of brick, mortar or steel could prevent him from inflicting carnage on the person responsible for the horrendous death of his beloved.
    Tom squatted on all fours, every muscle of his body tensed like a lion, set to pounce on its prey. He lunged at the door as though it were his mortal enemy, letting out a feral growl as he slammed his shoulder into it with every ounce of his rage-fueled strength.
    “You killed her, you bitch!” he snarled through rusted metal with inhuman ferocity. “You killed her. There’s nowhere you can hide, I’m coming for you.”
    He hurled himself against the door again and again, bruising muscle, tearing tendons, ignorant of the absolute futility of his efforts.
    Despite the fury within his soul, his body was human and could only withstand so much abuse. Tom launched himself forward one last time before allowing his body to drop into the mud, but he was far from finished.
    He clenched his muddy hands into fists and began pummeling on the door in a sick, steadfast rhythm, like a drummer settling in for a solo at a rock concert. Tom already knew how this performance was going to end: with that fucking cunt’s head ripped clean from her body, that’s how.
    Unceasing curses billowed from his mouth like an incantation from the depths of hell, a stream of pure hatred manifested in auditory form.
    His effort was wasted; the door absorbed his abuse with stubborn indifference. His fists were not so unaffected; the rough, rusty surface efficiently shredded his skin, creating a foamy mush of blood and flesh above his wrists.
    “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you,”