Box of Terror (4 book horror box set) Read online

  BOX OF TERROR

  MICHAEL BRAY

  Copyright © 2016 Michael Bray

  http://www.michaelbrayauthor.com

  The moral right of Michael Bray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Dark Corners

  Whisper

  Echoes (Whisper Trilogy book II)

  Voices (Whisper Trilogy book III)

  Funhouse

  Forgotten Fears

  From the Deep

  Return to the Deep

  Spawn of the Deep

  The Island

  Cody Rexell & the Death Worm

  Project Apex

  Eradication: Project Apex book II

  The Last Mutation

  Hope House Chronicles I: The Visit

  Hope House Chronicles II: The Possession

  Art (With Matt Shaw)

  Monster (With Matt Shaw)

  Home Video (With Matt Shaw)

  Trapped (With Matt Shaw)

  The House that Hell Built (With Matt Shaw & Stuart Keane)

  Seat 6A

  Cabin Fever

  Shoebox

  Scarecrows

  Scratchers

  Something in the Dark

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Thank you for purchasing this box set of my work. I have tried to provide a cross section of titles to give an idea of the type of work I write. If you enjoy this book and want to learn more about my titles, please consider joining my mailing list over at www.michaelbrayauthor.com where I offer free titles regularly to members as part of my one time a month newsletter. I really appreciate you taking a chance on me and my work and hope that what you are about to read entertains you.

  CONTENTS

  NOVEL: MEAT

  NOVELLA: SOMETHING IN THE DARK

  SHORT STORY 1: APARTMENT 11

  SHORT STORY 2: MILK

  MEAT

  “But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals,

  Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten.”

  ― Nick Cave

  The Foot

  It was a foot. A human foot. Garrett wasn’t sure quite how to react and looked up and down the length of the supermarket walkway before turning his attention back to the appendage in the freezer. At first, he thought it was a prank – perhaps the next great TV show idea designed to fool the unwitting public- and yet he knew it wasn’t. The foot in the freezer didn’t look like a prop. It wasn’t made of rubber. There were too many details. Ghostly veins were visible just under the skin, and the underside of the toes was cracked and well worn. The full magnitude of the situation hit home, and as if to prove to himself it wasn’t a case of his imagination getting out of hand, he deliberately looked away, focusing his attention on his shoes, allowing his mind to empty and see clearly. He knew how perception could easily fool the brain into seeing things which weren’t real, and he was sure this was exactly that. He turned his gaze back to the freezer, his stomach plummeting to his shoes as he saw how his initial reaction seemed to have been- as impossible as it seemed – correct. The foot was nestled between the vast array of chickens and chunky cuts of beef and housed in a plastic tray on a bed of lettuce. The entire shrink-wrapped appendage had been cut off below the ankle, and the fleshy underside seasoned with pepper. The sandwich he had eaten for lunch quivered a little in his stomach when he realized the foot—as unfathomable as it seemed—was quite real. He leaned closer to examine the label on the front of the package.

  Grueber’s Free Range human foot!

  White male left foot,

  Pre-washed and ready to cook.

  Delicious, hot or cold!

  Garrett saw with dismay that the freezer was filled with severed feet of all races, all sizes, and priced according to weight. It wasn’t just feet. The more he actually looked, the more he saw. Hands sold individually or in pairs. Racks of human ribs which still had the skin on one side for ‘easy roast crackling’. He felt a dizzy giggle dance up to his throat and had to force himself to swallow it back down.

  All thoughts of replenishing the milk were gone, and he discreetly looked around trying to put some kind of rational context to the situation which might enable his mind to cope. He expected to see more horrors, things which would look more at home in the kitchen of Jeffrey Dahmer rather than plain old Ray Garrett, and yet the rest of the supermarket looked perfectly normal and as unremarkable as expected. It followed the same tried and tested design model as countless other markets all over the world with its polished floors and wide, well-stocked shelves that had all the temptations discreetly placed at eye level. It was all so... ordinary. In numb disbelief, he glanced up and down the length of the aisle to see if anybody else but him had noticed what was happening. There was an old couple at the furthest end of the store, the man pushing the trolley whilst the woman carefully checked off the goods on their list. Garrett couldn’t see anything unusual in the inventory they had gathered so far, and certainly no body parts. Either way, they didn’t appear to be at all concerned that the new local supermarket seemed to be trading in human flesh. He desperately wanted to move, to do anything not to draw attention to his horror, but his own feet—perhaps in protest at the treatment of its fellow appendages—refused to co-operate. He glanced at his reflection in the glass-fronted freezer doors and saw a pale-faced, open-mouthed parody of himself looking back.

  “Hey, man, take it easy.”

  The voice in his ear almost made him scream outright, and did nothing for his already fraying nerves. Garrett spun on his heel and was face to face with the man who almost scared him half to death.

  He was one of those indie rocker types with sandy hair down to his collar and over his ears that was styled to look messy but somehow came across as incredibly stylish. He was effortlessly pulling off the ‘too-cool-to-care’ look. His girlfriend—a thin and naturally attractive blonde with nervous eyes— hung on his arm and kept her head low. Garrett tried to look the indie rocker in the eye but was met with his own funhouse mirror reflection in his aviator glasses.

  “What do you mean?” Garrett muttered, still trying to gather his thoughts together and rationalize the situation as aviator leaned closer.

  “I said, take it easy, or you’ll give us all up.” Aviator tried to smile, but it came off as a nervous twitch of the cheek.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Aviator fidgeted from one foot to the other, and Garrett realized the kid was scared. He nodded to towards the freezer. No words were necessary.

  “It’s a joke, surely, right?” Garrett whispered.

  “I wish it was, man. I truly do.”

  “I don’t understand. I…” Garrett began and then couldn’t think of anything else to say. Instead, he looked at the kid in the aviator glasses, who now wore a nervous grin and was absently scratching at his cheek, leaving an angry red mark as he stared at the freezer full of human meat.

  “You see it, though, don’t you?” Aviator asked. “I mean, you know what those are, right?”

  Garrett didn’t know what to do. It all felt too unreal to say out loud, and he couldn’t help himself from sneaking another quick glance of his own at the shrink-wrapped limbs in the freezer. He settled for a nod.

  “Pretty crazy, huh?” Aviator s
aid. “We actually didn’t see the feet. It was the pickled fingers in aisle three that first got us to pay attention.”

  He jammed a thumb over his shoulder as he said it and offered Garrett another attempt at a grin that looked as if it were supposed to be confident, but came out instead as a frightened grimace.

  “What the hell’s happening in here?” Garrett whispered.

  “I don’t know, man. We just called in here on our way to the movies. You ever shopped here before?”

  Garrett shook his head. “No. I didn’t even know this place was here. Last time I came by this way, this was an empty plot.”

  Aviator took off his glasses, and Garrett saw under the wannabe rock star illusion that he was just a frightened boy. His blue eyes darted from Garrett to the fridges, then the aisle—which apart from them was empty.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” Garrett asked.

  “Mark. And this is Leena,” he said, motioning to his girlfriend who, apart from the odd furtive glance, was still staring at the floor.

  “I’m Ray, Ray Garrett.”

  Mark nodded, and the two stood in silence for a few awkward seconds.

  “Walk with me,” Mark said quietly.

  “Why?”

  “Because they are watching us.” Garrett started to turn his head, but Mark saw it and stopped him.

  “No, don’t look. Just walk. Come on, this way.”

  With no reason to argue and not yet able to quite deal with the situation, Garrett did as he was told and followed the couple as they headed away from the gruesome contents of the freezers.

  They walked past the regular meats: the pork joints, rib eyes, and the legs of lamb. Every now and then, they would pass something not so ordinary.

  A large blister pack of human liver.

  A display of jars containing milky, pickled eyeballs.

  A shelf full of plastic containers containing a nasty, fatty liquid labeled ‘human dripping’.

  “We have to get out of here,” Garrett said, his voice sounding like it was an octave or so too high even to him. Mark shook his head.

  “It’s not that easy. Someone tried it earlier. An old guy. He came in and saw the feet. He was standing pretty much where you were when you first saw them, but he freaked and ran back towards the entrance. They cornered him off, and two of the staff members ushered him into a room in the back. We watched for a while, but he never came back. I… I don’t think they will ever let us out of here.”

  “They?”

  “The staff.”

  Garrett felt his stomach do yet another dizzy rotation as Mark’s words sunk in. He also realized with dismay that the store – much like any other – had only one exit and no windows.

  “How long have you been in here?” he asked, pushing such worrying thoughts aside.

  “A while now. We’re trying to put a show on of actually shopping for groceries, but I don’t think we are fooling anyone. It’s all a big fucking act and they know it.”

  “Surely someone has gone for help, called the police or…” His wife’s face projected itself into Garrett’s mind, and he started to scramble for his phone. “I need to call my wife. We need to call the police…”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Mark said, looking at Garrett with that expression which was part grin, part grimace.

  “What?”

  “You can’t call anyone. Nobody can help us now. They’re letting people in, but so far nobody has been allowed to leave.”

  “But if I can just call home…”

  “Phones don’t work in here. We already tried.”

  Garrett looked at his handset, hoping against hope Mark was wrong. Yet, the display read ‘No signal’. He shoved the phone back into his pocket.

  “What do we do, man? How do we get out of here?” Mark asked.

  He watched Garrett, waiting for his reply, searching for hope or reassurance. Garrett had none of either to give, and so avoided both question and eye contact as they walked.

  “They can’t just keep us here,” he said eventually. “It’s a damn supermarket, not a prison.”

  It wasn’t what Mark wanted to hear, or the kind of statement Garrett had hoped to give. Even so, it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

  “I’m not so sure you’re right.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I think this place, this building, is like one of those plants. You know, those exotic ones that entice insects to crawl inside by secreting a sweet smell, and then they close up behind them? Well, I think that’s what this place is. It’s here to draw us in.”

  “I don’t understand,” Garrett said.

  “Well, it would be easy. This place is a big box with only one way in or out. Everyone shops, man, everyone. It doesn’t matter if you are the richest of the rich, or poorest of the poor. All they had to do was set up shop and wait.”

  “And that makes us the insects,” Garrett whispered, nauseated by the unreality of it all.

  “Exactly. Which makes me think we’re all in the shit here.”

  “You don’t know that. We might be okay,” Garrett said without conviction.

  “I’d love to believe that, but look at it this way. These guys have to get their meat from somewhere.”

  Garrett could find no suitable response to that, and said nothing. They had moved away from the meat and into the next aisle, which was stacked with canned goods. Although he didn’t want to, Garrett couldn’t help but peek at the labels, his own morbid curiosity overriding his desire to keep his eyes focused ahead or on the floor. To his relief, the products here appeared to be completely conventional. Baked beans, soups, jars of sauces. It was so… familiar. So much so that the horrors he had already seen could almost be forgotten as some kind of misunderstanding or a particularly vivid bad dream. Again, the ghostly vision of his pregnant wife appeared in Garrett’s mind, and his thoughts turned to escape.

  “Roughly how many people are in the store?” Garrett asked.

  He suddenly felt very warm and was finding the urge to panic increasingly hard to resist.

  “A few. Thirty maybe. I haven’t tried to count. We’ve been distracted as you can imagine,” he added, giving Leena’s hand a gentle squeeze.

  “Okay, what about staff? Any idea how many of those there are?” Garrett pressed.

  “Well, there are two girls running the checkout, then there’s the manager, who I saw go into his office. There are a couple of guys stocking shelves, and the butcher up at the back of the store. Oh, and Lurch, the security guard over by the door. So seven in all.”

  Garrett nodded. He had seen the security guard when he walked in. He was a huge hulking eastern European-looking brute with a wide, flat nose, and eyes which didn’t quite look head on.

  ‘One eye going to the shops and the other on the way back with change,’ his mother would have said, and he might—under more normal circumstances—have laughed, if not for the other word that was bothering him more than any other Mark had said.

  Butcher.

  In a place that seemed to do a roaring trade in human flesh, the thought of being locked in with an on-site expert in the art of butchery didn’t bear thinking about. He pushed the thought aside and turned to Mark, who had now removed the sunglasses and hooked them over the ‘V’ neck of his white t-shirt. He looked scared, and Garrett didn’t blame him.

  “Okay, that could work in our favour. We outnumber them, so we might be able to get some kind of plan together,” he heard himself say.

  “Thing is, not everyone is clued in to what’s happening here. It’s not…”

  Mark stopped speaking as they walked past one of the staff members who was busy re-stocking tins of baked beans from a steel-framed caged trolley. He was tall and harsh looking, tipping them a nod as he watched them pass. They waited until they were a little further down the aisle, and then Mark continued.

  “It’s not all over the store, the crazy stuff. A lot of their stock is genuine. Like I said, de
signed to entice us to buy shit we don’t need.”

  “Okay, so other than us, does anyone in here know what’s happening?”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure there is, but people are either too scared to do anything about it, or they’re trying to ignore what their eyes are telling them.”

  Garrett nodded. “Have you tried to talk to anyone about it apart from me?”

  “Not really. I did try to talk to one guy, a big dude who looked as if he might be military. I thought his muscle might come in useful if we had to fight our way out of here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Over by the beer fridges at the other side of the store.”

  “Why isn’t he with you?”

  Mark shrugged his shoulders. “He was all for helping until he saw the human skin lampshades over in household. After that, he seemed to switch off completely. I think he would have made a run for it, but he saw what happened to the guy they took in the back, and I don’t think he has the guts for it yet. He’s been doing his best to get shit-faced ever since, just helping himself out of the cooler.”

  “Maybe we can help him? Both of us try to talk him around?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mark said, shaking his head. “Best leave him be. I’m pretty sure the staff has noticed, and I don’t think it will be too long until they take him.”

  “Take him?”

  Mark licked his lips, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he struggled to find the words.

  “Out back,” Leena whispered.

  It was the first thing Garrett had heard her say since he met the pair. Garrett looked at her. Her eyes shone for a second, and he could almost feel the terror coming off her in waves.

  “What’s out back?” Garrett asked, already dreading the answer. Leena shrugged and returned to staring at the floor or her rainbow coloured flip-flops, or whatever it was she could see down there. Mark took over, letting Leena off the hook.