Uneasy Reading: 4 Horror Shorts Read Free Page A

your daddy was right when he said you had problems in
your brainpan."
    "Remind them of how it happened," Cassie
said. "Tell them what I told you. I want them to know why you are
doing this."
    "I think they have a pretty damned good idea
of why I'm doing this, Cassie," Martin said. He snatched the hammer
in one hand and the knife in the other.
    "Shit, he thinks he's talking to his
sister," Cooper said. This brought another fountain of laughter and
coughing.
    Martin looked down at Cooper. "What made you
hurt her? What happened in your minds to make you think it was
okay? Don't you regret what you did to her?"
    "It was your father's idea," Bertram said.
"You know what kind of guy he could be. He made us do it."
    "Fuck, Bertram, don't you try to say you
didn't enjoy it," Cooper said. His eyes glazed over as the memory
took hold. "We all did. And one of us must've smacked her too hard
because she stopped moving. That didn't stop us though. When we
were done, we cut her up and tossed her in the river. You’re the
only sorry sack that actually missed her. So no, I don't regret
what I done."
    "We didn't mean it," Bertram said. His
breathing was rapid and shallow. "We didn't mean for her to
die."
    Martin raised the hammer and hesitated. Once
he swung, there could be no going back. There were no exits or
detours from that path.
    "You ain't got it in you, boy," Cooper said.
"We should've saved your father a lot of grief and killed you when
we –"
    Martin brought the hammer down, striking
Cooper's left kneecap. He heard it break and felt it shatter
beneath the blow. Cooper howled and cried. Martin smashed the other
knee.
    The path was set. Martin knew he'd made the
right choice.
    Bertram tried to squirm away, crying and
invoking the name of God as he rolled his thick body away from
Martin.
    Martin followed Bertram and tried to shut
out Cooper's cries. He drove the blade of the knife deep into the
back of Bertram's thigh and withdrew it slowly. The wound sucked at
the blade as though it didn't want to leave the flesh. He stabbed
again, this time into the other thigh, and again into the buttocks,
and then once more into the lower back, letting the warm blood
splash onto him. He let the knife stay this time, sticking out of
Bertram's bulbous, quivering body. He turned his attention back to
Cooper and worked his way up the body with the hammer. No matter
how hard he struck, Cooper remained conscious and uttering
obscenities the likes of which Martin had never heard. Cooper kept
yelling right down to the final blow that caved in his skull.
    9.
    The shed was a red mess.
    Martin fell against the wall, breathing
heavily and shaking, completely covered in blood. He'd have to burn
his clothes. Not that it would stop them from catching him. The
police would eventually figure out he was the one that killed
Bertram and Cooper, even if they never found the bodies. It
wouldn't take much to sleuth out the information, and he was sure
there were enough physical traces here to tie him to the murders.
Of course, if the other cops in Silver Point were anything like
Bertram, he might not have to worry for a long time.
    The tools he used for the job still lay on
the plastic sheets next to Bertram and Cooper's bodies. The blood
was starting to congeal already. He needed to figure out a way to
get rid of the tools too. He'd already dug a grave for the men, and
he thought he might as well just toss the knife, hammer and saw in
there as well.
    He started to breathe through his mouth so
he didn't have to smell the blood. It was overpowering. Mixed with
the scent of urine and feces – all the nastiness that humans expel
when they die – it was too much.
    "You did great," Cassie said. She was
examining the parts and pieces of the men who had raped and killed
her so long ago. Her ghostly fingers touched the remains and passed
through them. Her ghostly form seemed to shiver as she did. She
smiled and seemed satisfied, almost radiant.
    "I'm glad it's over," he said,