Incarnata

  Incarnata:

  A Collection of Monstrous Horror Stories

  Brandon Faircloth

  Published by Brandon Faircloth.

  Cover Art by Damir Omic

  Copyright for book and cover art: 2019 Brandon Faircloth

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the author.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you, then please purchase a copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Please visit Verastahl.com for up-to-date news, links, and contact information for Brandon Faircloth.

  Other Works by Brandon Faircloth:

  Mystery

  Darkness

  On the Hill and Other Tales of Horror

  Whimsical Leprosy

  The Outsiders: Book One

  You saw something you shouldn’t have

  One Bite at a Time

  My Uncle Makes Dolls to Replace Souls in Hell

  The Outsiders: Book Two (Coming Soon)

  This book is dedicated to Jubal--the littlest gentleman and one of my best friends.

  Table of Contents

  Someone decorated my house for Christmas

  I found a dead bird in the mailbox

  The Monster of Memory

  The Extra House

  “If you were to eat me, what part would you start with?”

  No one believes that I have a twin.

  I heard seven words and now I’m in Hell

  They took my eyes

  My childhood monster has been trapped in a basement for twenty years.

  Marrowtooth

  Victorian Steampunk Cosplayer Cannibals Just Killed My Wife

  Knife Control

  The Bowl of Pripyat

  The Bowl of Pripyat: Blood on the Mirror

  The Bowl of Pripyat: If you run with wolves, you learn to howl.

  What my bodycam saw at Whispering Oaks

  The Halloween Room

  Someone decorated my house for Christmas

  Part One

  Last month I moved into my new house—not that the house was new, mind you, but it was new to me. My husband died two years ago, and after struggling both emotionally and financially for months, I had gotten a good job at a local software company only an hour’s drive from my hometown. For a time, things started to look up moneywise, but it was still hard to go home everyday to a house filled with memories of my time with Mark. I had started saving up to get a new house next year, but this past September my boss gave me the news that I was being promoted…and transferred.

  The new job was two states away, and while the company was paying for moving expenses and temporary housing until I found a house I wanted, I was still caught between being nervous about moving to a place I didn’t know and worried about losing my job if I couldn’t quickly find a house I could afford. So imagine my relief when, on my first house scouting trip, I found the perfect place.

  It was on the outskirts of town in an older, spread out neighborhood with big yards and wide, quiet streets. The house itself had been built in the 1940s, and while it had apparently sat empty for several years, it was in surprisingly good repair. It was also way bigger than anything I could have afforded back home, with a large front porch and a second story that contained two more bedrooms and a large master bath.

  I was moved in by the middle of November, and by the time I went home for Thanksgiving last week, I was mostly unpacked aside from a few of Mark’s belongings that I was keeping in storage until it hurt a little less to see them. Holidays have been especially hard since he died, but between the new job and house, and being happy to be around my family again, I’ve been pretty occupied and had a really good time during my visit back home. But while I loved my new house, I’d be lying if a part of me didn’t dread driving back to it and the relatively lonely new life it represented.

  Maybe that’s why my first reaction to the plastic snowman in my yard was surprise and delight instead of confusion or concern. It was a very old-fashioned looking three-foot snowman wearing a red scarf and green mittens, and as my headlights swept across it as I pulled into my driveway, it almost looked like it was giving me a little wave. This was late Sunday night, and I was a bit punchy from hours of driving, but I remember letting out a small laugh as I stopped the car and looked at it.

  It was close to the street, but too far in and well-positioned to have fallen out of a truck or been placed in my yard unintentionally. I pulled on up in my driveway and got out slowly, looking around as though I was going to see the responsible party waiting behind a bush at close to midnight. For all I knew, it could have been there for days…I just had no idea where it had come from.

  I’d met all my neighbors, at least I thought I had, and they all seemed like nice, normal people. But most of them were significantly older than I was and I hadn’t become really friendly with anyone in the past couple of weeks. Certainly not “give me a random decoration” friendly. And I didn’t think anyone at my new office even knew where I was living since I had moved out of the company’s extended stay rooms. Maybe Carol in HR might, but she was hardly ever around in the first place, and I didn’t see her trekking out here to stick a weird snowman in my yard.

  Because that was the other thing. The snowman was a little weird. It didn’t look weathered or dirty, but it did look old. Like an authentic prop from a Christmas movie set in the 50s. If someone was going to give me a Christmas decoration, why would they pick something like this? And why would you just randomly stick it in the yard rather than on the porch with a note or something? I didn’t have any answers to any of this, and was too tired to care beyond a certain degree of curiosity, so I patted the snowman on its head and went inside to sleep.

  When I woke up the next morning, there were two reindeer closer in to the house.

  The snowman was still there, but now he was turned facing the house and seemed a few feet closer as well. And nearer still were the two plastic reindeer that had the same old but well-preserved look as the snowman. They were also turned toward the house as though part of some mass Christmas exodus across the lawn toward my front door.

  I was running late for work, so I only had time to snap a picture with my phone and jump in my car. I sent the picture to my sister and asked her what she thought. As I expected, her response was basically that it was fucking awesome and I should keep her updated if “they” kept adding more cool shit to the yard. The fact that “they” were trespassing and that it was rarely a good sign when mystery people started weirdly fixating on you seemed to escape her.

  Still, maybe she had a point. Maybe it was a practical joker neighbor with a twisted sense of humor trying to welcome me to the street. Or maybe I had a work acquaintance with too much time on their hands. Maybe Carol was never at work because she was roaming the streets in a panel van filled with antique decorations, scouting out yards for her next guerilla art exhibition.

  Or maybe a dangerous nutjob had taken an interest in me.

  This last thought worried me, but it seemed unlikely at first. And when I woke up on Tuesday with no change in the decorations, I was actually a bit disappointed. I even texted my sister and told her that I thought the phantom decorator might be done.

  I had to go by the grocery store that night, so it was well after dark before I got home. When
I did, I saw a third reindeer and a small pair of what I supposed were meant to be carolers were sitting at the bottom of my steps. At first I felt a little happy thrill of excitement, and I grinned as I noticed that the other two reindeer and the snowman had made their way closer in as well. But my smile faltered when I saw the front of the carolers.

  Just like the older decorations, they were of well-kept but ancient-looking plastic, and based on their height and the shape of their plastic “hair”, I assumed they were meant to be a small boy and girl. But it was hard to be sure because their faces were gone.

  I don’t mean they were like some decorations where the face has no features by design. This was like someone had taken a hot iron to them. In the place of a nose and eyes and singing mouth were tangled mounds of rough, melted plastic.

  That’s when I called the police.

  As you might expect, that amounted to very little. I couldn’t really blame them. It looked like a vaguely creepy prank of some kind, and they said there hadn’t been any similar pranks reported this year. They promised to touch base with my closest neighbors just to see if anyone heard or saw anything, and one of the officers assured me that just having them ask around would likely spook whoever was doing it enough that it might very well stop.

  The next morning, when I sleep-stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee, I froze. Sitting on my kitchen table was a gingerbread house. It looked as though it had been sprayed with some kind of sealant at some point in the past, and while it didn’t look nearly as old as the yard decorations, the translucent film coating every surface of it was run through with cracks and yellowed like an old man’s toenails. And underneath the film, exploiting all the wounds in the protective seal, were the house’s inhabitants.

  Tiny roaches. Worms. Other small specks of hungry movement that roamed across the sugary snow-topped roof and bit little holes through the candy window panes. I could faintly smell a dry rotting odor coming from the gingerbread house, but it was a combination of that endless movement and the sour pang of fear in my belly that made me dry retch into the sink several times before I was able to call 911 again.

  ****

  That was on Wednesday. The police seemed more concerned, but could still do very little. They said the neighbors hadn’t seen anything, but that they would follow back up with them about this latest invasion. So I had the locks all changed during an extended lunch break, and that night after work, I spent money I didn’t have to buy a couple of little security cameras. You know, the WIFI type you can put pretty much anywhere and that have okay night vision.

  This morning I woke up with my bedroom filled with tiny Christmas figurines, all made of discolored, cracked porcelain and ranging from cardinals wearing festive hats to dancing elves with hands full of toys. They were everywhere, from my nightstands to the dresser and on both windowsills. I eased out of bed slowly, thinking to check underneath before putting my feet down. There was nothing there, but as I stepped back from the bed something else caught my eye. A small porcelain angel was laying on my pillow next to where my head lay. And like the carolers outside, its face had been burned away.

  I’m too shaky to drive at the moment, so my sister is coming to pick me up and carry me back to my parents’ house for the next couple of days. Maybe police will find something, someone, and make it stop. At least I think I have their attention now.

  Because aside from the figurines, I also thought and pulled up the cloud-recorded camera video from last night on my phone. For the most part there was nothing, but at 3:38 a.m., one of the cameras caught seven seconds of movement. It was the faint silhouettes of three shapes moving up the stairs toward my bedroom.

  And one of those roaming shadows seemed to be dressed like Santa Claus.

  Part Two

  I wake up to the sound of my sister drowning.

  I’m tied to a chair, and it’s one of my kitchen chairs that I’ve always been so proud of because it was the first set of furniture me and Mark bought as a married couple. Hard wood and well-made. So well made that it doesn’t even creak as I thrash against it, the cords of the Christmas lights binding me to the chair cutting into my arms and breasts as I push and pull against them. I have the crazed thought that I’m all lit up because someone has bothered to plug in the lights, but I push it aside as I hear a new terrified gurgle as they begin drowning my sister again.

  I call out for them to leave her alone, to leave us both alone, but I know in my heart there’s no point to my words. So instead I begin trying to shimmy and turn my chair enough that I can see what they’re doing to her, as though bearing horrified and helpless witness will make it better that they’re killing Melanie.

  There are two figures holding her down—one is an average-looking man in his late fifties. Well, average-looking except for the frenzied sweat pouring down his face and his insane expression full of wide eyes and skinned back teeth. It was hard to say if he was angry or excited, but as he grasped Melanie’s ankles tight enough to make his hands go white, I realized it made little difference. He was gripped by the same fervor that was driving the two monsters in the room.

  The first of the others might have been a woman once. It was hard to say because of how twisted her flesh was and how distorted her features had become. I had the thought that she was a candle, made of wax and human fat and carved to look like a person. A candle that was held to some terrible flame long ago until the eyes drooped and ran and the nose pooled away into a flattened bulge with two uneven holes for air.

  And the mouth…the mouth was filled with rotten little pegs of yellowed ivory as it hung open at the bottom of her head like an open, festering wound. She held Melanie’s shoulders and alternated between looking at her and at me with her deep-set, black pig eyes, all the time working a greyish green-striped candy cane at the corner of lips that looked like strips of red, wet meat. The woman-thing let out a titter as Melanie tried to struggle again. My sister was strong, but she was clearly already tired, and the creature easily pressed her shoulders flat again as the next jug was made ready.

  Presiding over it all, dressed in tattered rags that likely had once been a very expensive Santa suit, was the third thing. It looked more like an old sinister tree than a candle or a man, the odd angles of its body and joints making the soiled red coat shift and poke like a sack holding a large, struggling spider. It held the jugs of what smelled like eggnog over Melanie’s face and poured them slowly in the general direction of her mouth and nose, each new gallon causing my sister to sputter and choke again.

  For all the lack of care in getting it in her mouth, the Santa creature seemed very deliberate and intent on its work. Its face was still primarily human, showing the worn features of an old, thin man with a patchy grey beard and sad, roving eyes that sometimes seemed to flicker with a dim green light. The man’s lips were thin and ceaselessly moving as he poured, his eyes locked on Melanie’s as he slowly killed her. He kept saying the same word over and over, his deep, dry voice seeming to constantly be on the verge of breaking with emotion.

  “Believe. Believe. Believe.”

  ****

  Three hours earlier I was sitting at the police station waiting for my sister to come pick me up when I got a text from her.

  At the house. Where R U?

  I felt my heart start thudding in my chest. I had specifically told her that I would wait at the police station for her because I didn’t want to go back to the house. What made her go there? Fumbling with my phone, I tried to quickly call her, but I was interrupted by another text.

  I think I saw you inside. I’m coming in.

  I punched the button to call her, but it just rang and rang before going to voicemail. I tried a second time as I started heading up to the front desk at the station to ask for help. That’s when I saw she was calling me back.

  “Hello? Mel, get out of…”

  “You need to come home, Clarissa.” It was an older man’s voice, but it was unfamiliar. “You need to come home so we can get
started. If we have to start without you, or you ask your police friends to come…well, it won’t go well for her and we’ll still catch up with you later.”

  “Please let her go. I’ll come back, that’s fine. Just let her go first.”

  I thought I heard a brief, sour laugh from the man. “We just need the two of you to help us with something and then we’ll be on our way. Promise.”

  ****

  I went to the house without telling anyone. A dozen times I almost went back to the police or called 911, but each time I saw the image of my sister, torn apart except for her beautiful face. Her dead eyes stared at me, accusing me, saying that she was only dead because she tried to help me. Because of something that…if not my fault, exactly, was at least my responsibility.

  I went back to my house and stifled a gasp as it came into view. The yard was now full of plastic snowmen and reindeer, candles and carolers that had stood too close to a flame. Most of them were pointed toward the house like an angry mob, but a handful were turned to where I parked in the driveway behind Melanie’s car. It was as though they were there to usher me in, and as I stepped out of my car, I saw a path had been cleared all the way to the front door.

  I glanced around for Melanie outside, but it was a dim hope. I knew where she’d be. Stepping up onto the porch, I pushed at the door, feeling no surprise when it swung in quietly. I could already smell the gagging aromas that filled my house—cinnamon and pine needles mixed with spoiled meat and soured milk. Holding a hand to my nose, I stepped in and called out for my sister. When I heard nothing, I called out to them.

  “I’m here, okay? Now please let her go. Use me for whatever it is you need and then please leave us both alone.” I swallowed, trying to not think about what would come next, whatever unknown torture or shame was waiting for me in the shadows. The main thing was to try and get Melanie out. I just had to focus on that.