Tag: fiction

My Short Story, ‘Santa’s Elves,’ is Published in the ‘Last Christmas’ Horror Anthology

I have a horror short story, ‘Santa’s Elves,’ published in Last Christmas: A Holiday Horror Anthology, from Dark Moon Rising Publications, and edited by Rob Tannahill. The book is currently published in paperback on Amazon. It’s just $15.99. ($3.14 on Kindle.) It’s also available on Godless for $2.99.

My story is about Chinese toy factory labourers who have to work extra hard in December to make toys for the children of rich families in the West. They already work long hours almost every day for barely enough pay to live and/or to send to their families, who live far away from them and so they rarely ever see them. A divine presence from the heavens senses their inner cries for help, and when they make their toys this year, something…lethal…will be added to them, to give those Western families quite a surprise.

There are lots of other great authors whose work is featured on these pages. Please check the back cover in the photo given above to see their names (I hope you can get the image big enough to read them all). Here’s a cool promotional video you can watch.

Please go and buy yourself a copy of this collection of cool Christmas horror stories. You’ll love it! Happy holidays! 🙂

The Alien Buddha’s Best of 2024 is Published!

The Alien Buddha’s Best of 2024, which includes Chapter Eight of my novella, The Targeter, is now published on Amazon.

Chapter Eight of my novella is a reverie of the titular character, ‘The Targeter,’ actually named Sid Arthur Gordimer, who is drunk and high on a combination of marijuana, ecstasy, and ketamine. His thoughts drift back and forth in his reverie of being a prince in a mansion watching half-naked strippers dancing to electronic music in a party, then of being in a royal palace with Indian music. 

His parents, the king and queen, are pressuring him into taking on the responsibilities of the crown…but of course, this is all just the reverie of a drunk, stoned man. Outside of Sid’s apartment, in the real world that he’s trying to escape with booze and drugs, a war is going on. Bombs and gunfire can be heard outside. The war has the potential of going nuclear, and he in his despair cannot face it sober.

He knows he’s no saint, and no prince. He’s a goner.

Please check out this collection of the work of so many talented writers (check the list of names on the back cover, if you can enlarge it sufficiently). And please check out my novella. If you like Chapter Eight, you’ll love the rest of it! 🙂

‘The Ancestors,’ a Horror Story, Chapter Thirteen (Final Chapter)

“Al, no! Please, tell me what’s happening?”

But when Hannah looked in Al’s face, she no longer saw him in there.

She saw Mei instead.

Mei’s cruel, malicious eyes were what was looking back at her.

In total control over Al’s body again, the evil spirit made him raise the knife and point it at Hannah. Mei made him grab her by the throat and shove her against the dining room wall.

Shaking, she gasped, “Al…Al…” through what little voice Mei allowed her to let out.

Mei had Al bare hateful teeth, like a wolf’s fangs, as the knife came slowly closer to Hannah’s chest. Though Al was trying desperately to keep the blade from getting any closer to the woman he loved, she saw only Mei in his eyes–her malevolence, her single-minded wish to stab Hannah to death.

“It’s your…turn…to die, Hannah,” Mei’s feminine voice said through Al’s mouth.

“This…isn’t you, Al,” Hannah gasped, her one hand on the wrist of Al’s knife-gripping hand, her other trying to loosen Mei’s grip on her neck. “Fight it.”

The hand holding the knife was shaking, but for the moment not getting any closer.

“Of course…this isn’t…Al,” Mei said. “It’s Mei.”

“You’re a…split…personality?”

“No. I’m…one of…Al’s…ancestors.”

“That’s…nonsense. Al, you’re ill. You need…help.”

“Al needs…to die. As soon…as I’m finished…with you.”

The shaking knife was getting closer to her chest.

Hannah kept searching for Al in his eyes.

She still saw only Mei in them.

Al was feeling a splitting headache in his efforts to regain control over his body.

No, Mei, he thought. I won’t let you kill Hannah.

The tip of the blade was now a millimetre or two away from Hannah’s skin, just above the top button of her dress. The knife shook a bit, and the blade cut off the button, exposing more of her skin to the sharp tip.

“Al…please!”

A slight scrape of the tip let out a little red.

She looked in his eyes…and she saw Al again.

He was pulling the shaking knife away from her, with all of his strength, his headache killing him, and the soreness in his arms–from Mei’s attempt to keep control–adding to his agony.

Finally, with the knife-gripping arm safely away from Hannah, he started regaining control of his other hand, which loosened its grip on her neck. She pulled free and got away from the wall.

He turned to face her, having most of his control back. He was bent over, panting.

“Al? Are you OK? Are you back?”

“Yeah, I’m back, for the moment. Mei just left me, completely.”

“As soon as we call the police and explain what happened, we’ll find a therapist for you, and you can tell them all about this ‘Mei.'”

“No, Hannah. This can’t go on. I have to die.”

He was looking at that knife in his hand.

“What do you mean, you ‘have to die’? You won’t go to jail, Al. You’ll be found not guilty by reason of…no offence…insanity. We’ll get you the psychiatric help you need. I won’t abandon you.”

“You don’t understand, Hannah. My problem isn’t mental illness, though I’m sure it must look that way to you. The spirit of Mei, one of the family ancestors, is still inside my body. She relinquished control…I don’t know why, but she’ll come back and take control of me again. Then she’ll try to kill you again. I can’t fight her off forever. She will succeed, sooner or later. I can’t let that happen. To save you, I must kill myself.” Sobbing, he pointed the sharp end of the blade at his chest.

“Al, no! What are you talking about? There’s no evil spirit inside you. Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of. We’ll get help for you. I still love you. I’m sorry I said we were through. I still want us to be together.” Now she was sobbing.

“Hannah, I’m not insane.” His arms were shaking as he brought the tip of the blade to his chest. “I know full well what I’m doing. I know now that we cannot be together. I’m doing this, though, because I love you. Either Mei makes me kill you, or I kill myself. There is no other way out of this.”

“Al! Please, no! It’s just a delusion you’re having. Don’t stab yourself! I love you!”

She reached forward to take the knife from him.

“I love you, Hannah. Never forget that.”

He held the knife with the tip of the blade firmly against his chest, ready to push it in.

“God, no! Al, don’t!“

“Oh, no, NO!“

She saw no more Al in his eyes. She saw Mei’s cruel grin.

“Al, no!“

He shook a bit, then raised the knife, as if to stab her.

“NOOOO!!!” he yelled.

Then the blade swung down in an arc…

…and it went deep in his gut.

“NOOOO!!!” she screamed.

He buckled and fell to the floor, his blood gushing out and staining his shirt.

She put her arms around him and kept screaming. She welcomed his blood on her dress, wanting the stains to stay there so she’d still have at least some of him with her.

I came to this house having everyone, she thought as she kept bawling. Now I have no one.

As she wept and wailed, holding his bloody body tightly against herself and practically bathing in the red, she’d had her eyes squeezed shut, as tight as her hold on his body. Then she opened them.

With her tears obstructing her vision, what she saw was blurry and distorted. In that blurry haze, she saw what at first seemed a hallucination.

She wiped away her tears for a clearer look.

No, it was still there.

And it made no sense.

A glowing vision of three old Chinese in traditional clothes–two women and a man.

In my grief, Hannah thought, I’m truly going crazy.

Thank you, Hannah, for helping us achieve our aim, Po said. You are free to go.

“I’m seeing things,” Hannah gasped. “This isn’t real.”

Oh, we are very real, Hannah, Meng said.

“Wait a minute: your voices sound familiar.”

That’s right, Mei said. You heard me from Al.

And me from Emily, Meng said.

And me from Freddie, Po said.

“I’m imagining this,” Hannah said. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. I’m going crazy.”

If you were going crazy, you wouldn’t think you were going crazy, Meng said. We’re real, we assure you.

Al wasn’t going crazy, either, Mei said. We really were possessing him and his family, and now that our work is done here, we can thank you and say goodbye.

“And what was ‘your work’ that had to be done?”

The destruction of the entire Dan family, Po said.

“Why did they, and the man I loved, have to be killed?”

For failing to pray to us, their ancestors, Mei said.

“I thought Al continued praying to you. He told me so. Why wasn’t that good enough for you?”

Because the snubbing of us by the rest of his family…our family…was already bad enough. We felt too dishonoured to forgive them, Meng said.

And when we aren’t sufficiently prayed to, we spirits turn into demons, Po said. The Dan family is almost an anomaly when it comes to Chinese culture. Most Chinese families are close and loving; this is because they pray to their ancestors. An impious attitude took hold of your boyfriend’s parents, in their adopting of Western secularism.

In rejecting belief in spiritual matters, like most of you in the West, their family unity broke down, and they came apart, Mei said. So many social and family problems that you see in Western society come from rejecting spirituality. This is why Chinese families, on average, hold together far better than your Western families.

“I call bullshit on all of that! My family wasn’t religious in any way, and we were always loving and happy. You destroyed Al’s whole family, and you murdered mine!” She was sobbing again.

She looked through her teary eyes and saw wicked grins on Po, Meng, and Mei.

“Why did you kill my family? Why did you make Al kill himself? What did they do to you?”

Oh, we did that for the sheer fun of it, Meng said. We even put the idea in your mind to have your family meet the Dans for dinner…we prodded you to insist on it, never taking ‘no’ for an answer.

The three spirits were still grinning malevolently at her. Her jaw dropped.

“You’re evil, pure evil, far worse than Al’s family!”

What do you expect? Po asked. We’re devils. Thank you for your help, and goodbye.

The three grinning spirits faded away before her eyes.

Hannah let out a loud, ear-splitting scream.

Her screaming and bawling continued over a period of several minutes. A patrol car was going by the house, and the two police in it heard her. They stopped, got out of their car, and ran up to the house.

They looked in a window that revealed the dining room and saw Hannah, still on her knees and holding Al’s bloody body, always sobbing and shaking. They also saw Freddie’s and Emily’s bodies.

“Holy shit!” the male cop said.

“What the hell happened here?” the female cop said.

They went in the house and ran over to Hannah.

“Officer Wong calling,” the male cop said on his cellphone to the local precinct. “We have…what looks like..a triple homicide in the house at…just a minute, I need to take a look…137 Washington Street. We need an ambulance and stretchers.”

The female cop took Hannah in her arms.

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” she said, trying to soothe Hannah.

“No! It’s not OK!” Hannah screamed.

“What happened here? Who killed these people?”

Hannah’s words came out like a frantic firing of machine gun bullets, much too fast for the cops to process. “The ancestors did it! Three demons, two old women and an old man! They killed all of my family, too, up in the attic! They lured us all into a trap! They…”

“What is she raving about?” Officer Wong asked, sneering. “Three demons? Ancestors? This Chinese family may have believed in ancestors and evil spirits, but why would a white woman believe in that nonsense? My family never believed in that old tradition, and I’m glad they didn’t.”

“I have no answers for your questions, Officer Wong,” his partner said, rocking Hannah back and forth gently. “But I guess we’d better check the attic, too.”

“Alright,” he said. “You stay here with her, and I’ll go up there.” He went searching for the stairs.

The three spirits were waiting in the attic.

I don’t like Officer Wong’s lack of faith in us spirits, Po said to Meng and Mei. Maybe we can go after his family, too…just for fun.

All three spirits were grinning.

THE END

‘The Ancestors,’ a Horror Story, Chapter Twelve

After several minutes of the most painful of efforts, Al was just beginning to feel a regaining of control over his body. Just a bit, at first: he could stir slightly, he could fidget and budge, all while suffering a terrible headache to deter him.

Freddie looked over at him and saw his face wincing in pain, the slight movements that suggested someone other than Mei was trying to control Al’s body. Freddie smirked at the amusing sight.

“What’s the matter, loser?” he asked Al. “You trying to hold in a fart? That was directed at Al, not at you, Mei. It looks like he’s trying to regain control.”

“He’s trying to,” Mei’s feminine voice said through Al’s mouth. “He won’t succeed…not for the moment, anyway.”

“Not ever, I’d say,” Emily said. “He’s never succeeded at anything in his life, except annoying people. I’m surprised he can make his body move at all, with you there, Mei.”

“I must say, Mei, that we were wrong to have stopped praying to you,” Freddie said.

“We’re both very sorry about that,” Emily said.

“Just aid us in what we wish to accomplish here, and all will be forgiven,” Mei said.

“He obviously sucked at praying to you all,” Freddie said, “since even his prayers weren’t enough to placate you. As Emily said, Al can’t do anything right.”

“That he actually killed our father, as Meng has told me in my thoughts…”

“And Po told me in mine,” Freddie added.

“…and he didn’t stop his bitch girlfriend sitting over there from killing our mother–that’s all the more reason for Freddie and me to hate Al. Feel free to kill him, too, Mei–we won’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Freddie said. “Kill that loser.”

“Oh, we’ll have him killed,” Mei said. “And we won’t stop with him.”

All three of them looked over at Hannah, bound and gagged in her chair at the other side of the table in the dining room. She was still unconscious.

They stared at her and grinned.

“She’ll make such a tasty dinner,” Freddie said, looking over at possessed Al, and knowing that he could see and hear everything said and done at their dining table…but he could do nothing about it. “Mmm!”

All three of them repeated “Mmm!” even louder while looking at Hannah. She stirred a bit.

Al gained a bit more control of his body, and he made it shake so the legs of his chair rattled against the tiles of the dining room floor.

This was enough to wake Hannah up.

Finding herself bound and gagged, with all three remaining Dan family members staring maliciously at her, she whined through her gag as loudly as she could to produce a scream, while shaking her chair and rattling its legs on the floor as much as Al was.

Assuming her crazy ex-boyfriend wanted her dead as much as his crazy brother and sister did, Hannah couldn’t understand why he was fidgeting in his chair as she was. Was this some pathetic, fake attempt to convince her he still loved her, to make her believe he was indeed possessed by the spirit of one of his ancestors? Did he really think she was stupid enough to believe that?

“You’re gonna taste so good when we’ve cooked your flesh, like a giant turkey,” Freddie said with a laugh, his taunting eyes going back and forth to look into Hannah’s and Al’s. “Yes, Hannah. We’re gonna make Al kill you, cut your body up into pieces, cook them, then eat them…that is, our ancestors will, and Al will. He’ll do it, ’cause he’s so weak! Isn’t that right, loser?”

Al was shaking the chair even more.

“What are you so upset about, loser? You’ve eaten her before, haven’t you?” Freddie laughed.

“Don’t be crude, Freddie,” Emily said.

Al’s shaking and rattling of the chair was getting more and more violent. He almost fell off of it, but he clasped his hand on the table, his fingers inches away from a large, Japanese deba bocho meat cleaver.

“Mei, you aren’t losing control of him, are you?” Meng’s deep, masculine voice said through Emily’s mouth.

“He’s…getting stronger, but I’m…managing,” Mei’s feminine voice said through Al’s mouth.

“If we beat him into submission, will you feel the hurt, or can you leave his body temporarily?” Po asked in that distinctly gravelly, grandmother’s voice, through Freddie’s mouth.

What? Hannah thought with eyes agape. How is Al’s sister talking with a man’s voice, and he and his brother are talking with women’s voices? Can crazy people really imitate voices so precisely, as unnatural as it would be for their biological voices to do? Or am I going crazy?

“Is that you speaking, Po, or is it Freddie?” Meng asked, as if she were as surprised as Hannah. “It sounds like something he’d like to do to Al.”

“It’s most likely a combination of Freddie and me,” Po said, putting a smirk on Freddie’s mouth. “You should be aware that, as we spirits continue possessing these bodies, our wills become more and more merged with those of the bodies.”

“Isn’t that true, Al?” Meng asked him, putting a smirk on Emily’s mouth now, to taunt Al as he continued to shake his body and take it back from Mei.

Meng and Po turned Emily’s and Freddie’s heads back to looking at Hannah as she continued to struggle, in as much futility as Al, to free herself. The two possessed bodies were licking their lips.

“She’s gonna taste so good, isn’t she, Al?” Freddie said in his own voice. “The ancestors are opening my mind to cannibalism; I never imagined I’d develop a taste for it.”

“Same here,” Emily said in her own voice. “Funny what a little demonic possession can do to your head.”

The two noticed that Al’s struggling was abating. He was sitting much more still now.

“Mei, if you have regained control over his body, why don’t you pick up that knife and start cutting her up?” Freddie said.

Al had completely stopped shaking now. Mei looked at Freddie calmly.

“Yes,” Mei said with a smile. “I have fully regained control of the body.”

“Good,” Freddie said in Po’s voice, then got up. “Let’s do this.”

Mei and Meng brought Al and Emily to their feet, Mei gripping that Japanese knife in Al’s hand.

The three of them walked toward Hannah.

She was whining in a shrill, raspy voice behind that gag, fidgeting frantically in her chair. Her tearful eyes looked up into Al’s, desperately looking for his expression rather than Mei’s. All she could see was the cold expression of a killer.

That’s not Al that I see, she thought as the three had almost reached her. It’s not Al at all. Not even a crazy version of him. Could it be a demon inside him?

They were at her chair now. Her ankles were tied to the front legs of her chair, so she couldn’t even kick at her tormentors. She could only squeal and shake.

Emily and Freddie held the chair still from the back, while Al stood before Hannah, Mei having him raise the knife high over his head, ready to come down on her with a stab in the chest.

Mei and Hannah looked in each other’s eyes, the latter’s full of pleading, and the former’s utterly empty of pity. Hannah kept looking for Al, somewhere deep inside those eyes. He had to be there. She searched and searched back there, but she still couldn’t find him.

Now, instead of squeals and whining from her gagged mouth, sobs of despair were coming from it.

I shouldn’t have told him I wanted to dump him, she thought. I want my Al back, crazy or not.

And then, she could finally see Al in those eyes.

And no, it wasn’t hallucinatory wish-fulfillment.

The knife came down in a slashing arc…

…and it dug deep in the middle of Emily’s chest.

“Emily!” Freddie screamed. “Al, you piece of shit!”

Her body fell to the floor, soaking it with blood.

“Mei, I thought you had him under your control!”

“She stepped aside for the moment, it seems,” Al said in his own voice with a grin, then he pointed the knife at Freddie. “And you’re next…loser!”

“Oh!” Freddie said with a chuckle. “You think you’re gonna take me on? C’mon, loser, try it!”

They stepped away from Hannah. They faced each other behind her. She kept whining and struggling.

“C’mon, loser, cut me! Let’s see what you got.”

Al slashed from right to left, aiming for Freddie’s chest; but Freddie grabbed Al’s arm by the wrist, squeezed it hard, and made him drop the knife. Then Freddie punched him hard in the gut.

“Ooh!” he grunted, then fell to the floor.

Freddie picked up the knife and smiled.

“I’ve always hated you, Al. You know that. But your killing Dad, letting your big-nosed, white whore kill our Mom, and killing Emily here give me all the justification I need to dice your guts into a million bloody pieces!”

As Al was getting back up, Freddie ran at him with the knife and threw him hard on the floor. Al banged his right shoulder on it; it hurt like hell.

Freddie started by slashing Al’s face several times.

“There,” he panted. “Now you’re even uglier. Think your bitch girlfriend’s gonna like that? If you do, you’re even stupider than I thought, loser.”

He slashed Al’s face again.

“It won’t matter if she doesn’t like it, though, ’cause I’m gonna kill you now.”

He sat up and raised the knife high over his head, ready to come stabbing down.

Hannah was going crazy not being able to see or help Al. Her only comfort was not watching him die.

Freddie brought the knife down, but Al’s left hand caught him by the wrist just in time. The tip of the blade was a few millimetres away from Al’s chest. Both arms shook as they debated over where the knife would go.

Freddie looked in Al’s eyes with much more than his usual non-fraternal malice. Al was at first looking back into his brother’s eyes with the same hate; then he turned his eyes away to look at Freddie’s hand.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Freddie panted, spit dripping from his mouth onto Al’s bloody face. “You’re weak. You always were weak.”

Hannah could only whine and shake in her chair in blind helplessness.

Al brought his mouth over to Freddie’s hand. He bit two of the fingers holding the knife. He sank his teeth in deep, bloodying Freddie’s hand and his own chest.

“Aaah, you fucker!” Freddie screamed, then he dropped the knife to suck on the cut.

Al pushed him off with a strength he never knew he had, then kicked him hard in the balls. As Freddie buckled, Al grabbed the knife and ran at him, knocking him to the floor.

Al held the knife with the handle down. He wanted to bash Freddie’s face in before stabbing him. The wooden handle smashed down on Freddie’s forehead once, on his nose twice, breaking it, on his left cheek three times, his right cheek once, his chin twice, and his mouth four times, knocking out two upper and two lower teeth and soaking his face in blood. His bruises would look like a black-and-blue mask.

“You’re still…a loser, Al,” Freddie gasped in toothless lisps.

Al flipped the knife around to point the blade down. “Yeah, Freddie,” he said. “You’re about to be stabbed to death…by a loser. Be proud of that.”

He plunged the blade deep into Freddie’s throat, shutting him up once and for all.

Al let out a big sigh, then got off of Freddie’s body. He went over to Hannah and cut her feet and hands loose.

She got up from the chair and got the gag off in an impatient hurry.

“Oh, thank God,” she sighed. “And thank you, Al, for stopping them.”

He just stood there–silent, unmoving, frowning, and looking down at the floor, his face dripping blood all over it and his shirt.

“Look, I realize now that…your family…had some serious…well, mental health issues,” she said, searching for the kindest way she could put it. “And it’s…obviously harmed you…emotionally, too. I think we can work this out. We’ll find…a professional…to help you through this.”

Still gripping the knife, he started shaking and twitching.

“Oh, no, NO!!! Hannah, get away…from me!”

‘The Ancestors,’ a Horror Story, Chapter Eleven

Hannah’s heart was beating even harder and faster now that she heard the door open and Freddie and Emily walk into their parents’ bedroom. It wouldn’t take long for them to deduce that she was hiding under their mom’s and dad’s bed.

Her mind was still racing, trying to make sense of all of the craziness that had been happening up until now, and especially now that she was next to be killed. Still, her priority was wondering what she’d do when Al’s brother and sister…and Al himself, once he was to come down from the attic after that kick she’d given him in the balls…found her. She had no time to process any of this.

She listened for Freddie and Emily.

Total silence.

No shuffling around, looking for her.

What were they doing? If they knew she was under the bed, why not just get down, look under, and grab her by the feet? Were they toying with her?

Yes, they were, actually.

The siblings were standing by the bed, looking down at it. There was nowhere else in the room for Hannah to have hidden, anyway–no closet big enough for her to fit into. Emily put her finger to her lips to tell Freddie to be quiet. They were smirking.

Hannah could hear light, unintelligible whispering.

“Let’s wait a while before getting her,” Emily said softly in Freddie’s ear. “Give her a moment to think through what’s happened…also drag out the terror for her, and the false hope.”

“Good idea,” he whispered back in Emily’s ear.

Hannah’s heart still pounding as hard and fast as ever, she began to think through everything that had happened to lead to this nightmare.

This was just supposed to be a pleasant dinner for both of our families to meet each other, she thought. Al was so resistant to me meeting his family, but I assumed it was just going to be some mundane problem. I never would have imagined, in a million years, that his family would be a bunch of murdering psychos…and that Al himself was one of them, too!

“Where is that loser, Al?” Freddie whispered.

“Shh!” Emily said, pointing at the bed.

All in one night, Hannah thought, I went from pleasantly anticipating meeting Al’s family, mine visiting them, and assuming I’d marry Al and unite our families in mutual love, to not only realizing that Al was being bullied by them, but also…having all of my immediate family…brutally murdered (She tried to hold back a sob), and worst of all, Al is one of the killers! I went from hopes of extending my family, to include his, to losing my family, Al’s family, and having to dump the man I love…loved! How could such extremes happen?

Now she let out an audible sob.

“Alright,” Emily whispered. “Let’s do this.”

She and Freddie squatted and looked under the bed.

Hannah at this moment was still far too absorbed in her thoughts to notice the siblings coming down to see her. This craziness has gotten so extreme, she continued thinking, that I have become a killer, too! I stabbed Al’s mom with that knife! It was self-defence, but I’d never in a million years see myself killing someone…wait…

She felt Freddie’s and Emily’s hands on her ankles, pulling her out from the bed.

“Ah!” she yelped, then grabbed onto the bedposts at the head of the bed to stop them from getting her out. The siblings kept yanking and yanking at her shaking legs, their grip irritating her skin and causing her shoulders and wrists to ache, but she kept a firm hold on those bedposts.

The siblings stopped yanking for a second, let out sighs of frustration at the same time, and in the voices of Po and Meng, they shouted, “Fang shou!”

Magic in those Chinese words forced Hannah to let go of the bedposts.

She screamed as Freddie and Emily pulled her out from the bed, her unable to conceive how mere words could force her to let go. Her screams were cut short by a blow from Emily’s fist on her head, smashing her face on the wooden floor, giving her a nosebleed and knocking her out. Meng’s spirit had given Emily’s fist extra strength.

“Let’s tie her up and take her downstairs,” she said in Meng’s deep, male voice.

“There’s rope in the room next door,” Freddie said in Po’s raspy, feminine voice. He left the room.

In the hall, he saw Al having just finished coming down the attic stairs.

“Where have you been, you loser?” Freddie asked in his own voice. “You’re fucking everything up again, aren’t you? Where are Mom and Dad? Emily and I are trying to take care of your girlfriend, and you’re wasting time in the–“

“Don’t talk to me that way, boy!” Al said in Mei’s authoritative, feminine voice. “I was stalled by Al’s determined efforts to regain control over his body. He killed your father, and Hannah killed your mother. I’ve finally subdued Al, so I can help you and Emily now.”

“Sorry, Mei,” Freddie said, bowing and gesturing to her with his hands clasped together. “I have to find some rope in the other room. Meng is with Emily in our parents’ bedroom. Hannah is knocked out. We have to tie her up and take her downstairs.” He went in the room to find the rope.

Mei took Al’s body into his parents’ bedroom.

Though Al’s soul, for the moment, was fully under Mei’s control, he was able to see, however passively, Hannah lying unconscious on the floor. He tried with all of his might to regain control over his body, but Mei was ensuring that he couldn’t make his body budge an inch.

Is Hannah dead? he wondered.

He couldn’t even weep for her.

Freddie returned with the rope, a bandana, and a small rubber ball to use as a gag for Hannah’s mouth. All three Dan family members, under the control of Po, Meng, and Mei, helped tie up and gag Hannah.

They carried her downstairs and into the dining room, and with some remaining rope, they tied her to a chair. They sat next to each other, Emily in the middle, at chairs on the other side of the table.

The whole time, Al had been trying, in all futility, to take control of his body and stop the other two. All he could do was watch helplessly, and be forced to help them through Mei’s possession of him.

“So,” Freddie said in Po’s voice. “What should we do with her, Al? We know you can see and hear us.”

“But you can’t do anything about it,” Emily said in Meng’s voice. “You broke our agreement, Al, so we’re under no obligation to do anything for you.”

“And doing things to upset you has always been much more amusing than doing things for you,” Po said. “What shall we do with her?”

“Kill her, of course,” Meng said.

“Of course, of course,” Po said. “But how?”

“In a way that Al will find the most upsetting. We should make him hold the knife that cuts into her chest.”

Al wanted to scream “NO!!!” at the top of his lungs…but he couldn’t even grunt.

“Then we can make him cut her body into pieces, cook them, and serve them as our dinner. The Dan family may have been sated at dinner, but we ancestral spirits haven’t had a bite to eat. We’ll let Al have the biggest share of Hannah’s cooked flesh.”

Mei curled Al’s lips upward in a smirk.

Al couldn’t even weep.

‘The Ancestors,’ a Horror Story, Chapter Ten

“Oh, my God!” Hannah screamed. “Al! What the fuck are you doing?”

Al dropped the baseball bat on the floor. It bounced a few times, rattling by his feet.

He was shaking and weeping.

“Oh, God, Hannah,” he sobbed. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t me who killed your brother. It was–“

“Sorry?” she yelled. “What do you mean, it wasn’t you? I just saw you kill my brother, you crazy bastard! Why?“

“It wasn’t me. It’s…the ancestors. Their spirits are taking control of our bodies.”

“What on Earth are you talking about, Al?”

“This is why…I didn’t want you to come here…and meet my family. They’re worse than crazy. They’re cursed…by the spirits of our ancestors.”

“None of this is making any sense, Al,” she sobbed. “Why did you just bash my brother’s brains in with that baseball bat? What did he do to you? Why did your family kill my mom and dad? What did they do to you?”

“When we moved…from China to here, my family decided…they didn’t want to pray…to the family ancestors anymore. I knew that would bring bad luck to us. I continued praying to them, but it wasn’t enough. The spirits of our ancestors have been plaguing us with bad luck for not praying to them anymore, but it always looks like it’s my fault. Only I pray to them, but I’m blamed for our problems. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.”

“Al, you’re trying to tell me that ‘spirits’ are why you helped your family murder my entire family?!“

“I killed my father, too…to stop him from killing your brother. I never stopped you from killing my mother, so you could save yourself.”

“And then you killed Doug yourself! Do you want a medal, or something?”

“Hannah, you don’t understand…the spirit of Mei, one of the family ancestors, took control of my body. She made me hit your brother with the bat. She killed him, not me.”

“You expect me to believe this nonsense?”

“When my mother tried to kill you, and she said, ‘Goodbye, Hannah,’ she spoke with a man’s voice, remember? Too low to be a woman’s voice. That’s because a man’s spirit, Meng’s, was controlling her body! The moans in the attic are also the voices of the spirits, luring you all up here. You gotta believe me, Hannah!”

“Oh, what does any of that prove, Al? Face the facts: your whole family is insane, including you. I’ve known lots of Chinese who were wonderfully nice people, and I thought you were one of them–the man I fell in love with was certainly one of them, but…” She looked down at the bodies of her family and resumed weeping. “Oh, my God!”

“The spirits tricked me into thinking that if…I gave them your family, they wouldn’t cause the two of us any bad luck, then…”

“There is no more ‘the two of us,’ Al.”

He wept louder. “Then I killed my father…to try to save your brother. The spirits saw that I broke my pact with them, and now they’re trying to ruin my life, to destroy our love! Mei came into me, and made me kill your brother. I’m so sorry, Hannah! I didn’t want any of this!”

“‘Sorry’ won’t fix this, Al. You and I are through.”

“Oh, no, NO!!! Hannah!” He was shaking and wincing.

“Bawling at me isn’t going to fix this either, Al. We shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

“No, you don’t understand. Mei…is coming into me…again. Go! Run! She’ll make me…kill you!”

He was fidgeting before her as if in pain.

All she saw was a crazy person.

He buckled to the floor, then reached for the bat.

“Run, Hannah! Get out…of the house!”

“Al, you need psychiatric help.”

In his pained voice, he said, “Mei will…” Then, with the bat in his hand, Mei hissed, “kill you!”

Hannah sneered at the creepy feminine voice coming out of his mouth.

With a crazed look in his eyes, and all of his teeth showing like bared fangs, Mei made him get up and raise the bat to his left, ready to crack it on Hannah’s head.

She screamed and ducked as Mei had him swing the bat from Hannah’s right to her left. The bat missed its mark, then she kicked him hard in the balls.

She ran for the pull-down attic stairs and got down to the third floor. Then she ran down the hall for the stairs to the second floor, but she heard two voices coming up from there.

“I’ll bet Al’s fucked this all up,” Freddie said to Emily as they were coming up from the stairs to the third floor.

“Without a doubt,” Emily said.

Hannah yelped, then ran back and found Mr. And Mrs. Dan’s bedroom. She looked around frantically for a place to hide as she could hear Freddie’s and Emily’s approaching steps, then she saw the bottom of the bed. She quickly slipped under it.

“Hannah,” Emily said with a smile as she and her brother reached their parents’ bedroom. “I know where she went.”

‘The Ancestors,’ a Horror Story, Chapter Nine

Hannah could no longer contain herself.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” she said, rising from her seat.

“What’s your problem now?” Freddie asked with another of his smug smirks.

“What’s my problem now?” she said, sneering at his attitude with incredulity. “I can’t believe this family of yours!”

“Excuse me?” Mrs. Dan said.

“Yes, I’m saying that without holding it back this time,” Hannah said, her face red, not with embarrassment from making the Dans lose face, but with anger. “Mrs. Dan, my entire family has been missing for the past…what, half-hour at least? Not even Al has returned! What is going on here? Since when is this even remotely how guests are treated?”

“Hanna, please, calm down,” Mrs. Dan said.

“Calm down? All my dad did was go to the upstairs bathroom! All my mom and brother did was go up to find out what happened to them. They should all be back by now! Why aren’t they?”

“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for all of this,” Freddie said, then, with an unmistakeable tone of contempt, “Take it easy.”

“Don’t you tell me to take it easy, Mr. Brother-bully!” Hannah shouted. “You can’t even do a simple thing like treat Al with respect, and you expect me to be cool when my entire family and boyfriend have gone missing for no good reason? There’s a simple explanation for this? You’ll need an extraordinary explanation for all of this, which–if I get it, if I actually get it–will get an extraordinary apology from me. I don’t see any of my family coming back. I don’t see Emily, or your dad or your brother coming back. What secret are you hiding from us?” She glared at both of them.

Mrs. Dan was laughing nervously. “Let’s go upstairs together, my dear,” she said to Hannah as she rose from her seat.

Hannah frowned at her. “And it will be my turn to disappear, I suppose,” she hissed. “At least you won’t have anyone else to complain about your less-than-stellar hospitality, will you, Mrs. Dan? And I’ll finally know the truth…with a knife in my back, I suppose?”

Mrs. Dan laughed again. “I assure you, my dear, at my age, I lack the strength to harm you even if I wanted to. Let’s go up the stairs and find them.”

“Or is this some elaborate prank, and I’m going to find them all up in the attic or something, laughing and partying,” Hannah said with a scowl as she followed Mrs. Dan out of the living room.

You’ll find them all in the attic, all right, Freddie thought. But they won’t be doing anything but bleeding, as you soon will be, you crabby little bitch.

“Please don’t take it too personally if I stay behind you the whole way up, Mrs. Dan,” Hannah said coolly.

“As you wish, dear,” Mrs. Dan said, then thought, Not that staying behind me will do you any good, of course.

“Of course, you’re not the only one I need to worry about, as far as possibly getting a knife in my back is concerned.”

That’s right, Mrs. Dan thought as they reached the second floor. “Would you like to look around the rooms on this floor, my dear?”

“No, I wouldn’t. I’d like you to show me around, while I keep my eyes open for any…surprises.”

“Very well,” Mrs. Dan said with another giggle, then she opened the door to the nearest of the rooms. She went in first, then Hannah followed, her eyes darting around everywhere for possible attackers. Mrs. Dan turned on the light.

Hannah quickly scanned the room for her family, and of course she found nobody. Then she went back to looking out for any lurking dangers.

“Nothing here,” she said with her permanent pout. “Let’s carry on to the next room.”

They left the room, Hannah always behind her host and looking out for trouble. They approached the next room. There was a noise inside it, something having fallen over.

“What was that?” Hannah snapped, her back straight and rigid.

“Let’s find out,” Mrs. Dan said as she opened the door, then turned on the light. Some boxes lay on the floor in a mess. The women went in the room.

Again, after Mrs. Dan switched on the light, Hannah remained behind her, taking quick looks around the room while remembering to look behind her in case someone was sneaking up on her. She stepped in further.

Apart from the mess of boxes in the middle of the floor, there didn’t seem to be anything of concern going on there. Hannah took a deep breath.

Whatever’s going on up here, she thought, I’m pretty sure I won’t be going back downstairs.

She felt something brush against her calf.

“Oh!” she yelped, then looked behind her and saw nobody. She looked down.

It was the cat.

She smiled, sighed, bent down, and petted it.

“Aww, cute little kitty cat,” she said.

She felt a hand touch her shoulder.

She yelped again and looked up behind her. The cat ran away.

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” Mrs. Dan said, taking her hand away. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to say that we seem to be finished in here, and so we can go on to the next room.”

“Oh, OK,” Hannah said with a nervous chuckle. She got up and followed Mrs. Dan out of the room.

As they went back into the hall, Hannah noticed something jutting out of the right front pocket of Mrs. Dan’s black pants. It hadn’t been there before. It looked like the handle of a knife.

Did she pocket it while I was distracted by the cat? she wondered. I don’t dare ask her about it, but I’m especially making sure she’s always within my field of vision now.

They went through the rest of the rooms on the second floor and found nothing, Hannah always checking to see if Emily or Mr. Dan was about to ambush her, while never taking her eyes off of Mrs. Dan. Then the two women went up the stairs, Mrs. Dan first, of course, to the third floor.

As they went through the rooms on the third floor, Hannah found it increasingly suspicious that there was still no trace of her parents or brother, nor of Mr. Dan, Emily, or Al.

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Hannah said in exasperation. “Where the hell is everyone?”

“I’m sure we’ll find them soon, d–“

“No, you tell me what you’ve done with them! Mrs. Dan, I’ll bet you and your family already know where they are, and you’re leading me into the same trap, aren’t you?”

“Oh, come, come, my d–“

“Don’t you ‘come, come’ me! Something screwy is–“

They heard a moan from up in the attic.

Hannah looked daggers at Mrs. Dan.

“Your plan is for me to be moaning like that, too, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Dan giggled again. “No, not at all, don’t be–“

“Let’s go up there. You first.”

As they went up the ladder to the attic, Hannah looked at that handle sticking out of Mrs. Dan’s pants pocket.

I’m no pickpocket, she thought, but maybe she’ll be too distracted from climbing the stairs to notice me pulling that knife out of her pocket, if that’s what it in fact is. She reached up slowly and carefully.

Another moan was heard from the stack of boxes.

“Over there,” Hannah said when both of them had reached the top of the stairs. She pointed to the boxes, then ran ahead.

Aren’t you worried about me being behind you? Mrs. Dan thought with a smirk.

Hannah went behind the boxes, near a window. A large, long blanket was covering whoever was moaning, or so it seemed. She threw the blanket off a bit and saw her father’s bifurcated, bloody face, and her mother’s bloody, slit throat.

She screamed out loud, then looked up, remembering Mrs. Dan. She could see her in the window reflection, raising the axe that had killed Brad, about to be buried in her back.

“Goodbye, Hannah,” Meng said through Mrs. Dan’s mouth.

Hannah spun around and lunged at the woman’s guts.

“Did you misplace this?” Hannah hissed at her.

Mrs. Dan dropped the axe behind her, looked down at her knife in her bloody belly, and said in Meng’s low voice,” So, it was…you who…took it. No…matter, another…will kill…you.”

She fell to the floor.

Shaking and panting, Hannah looked back at her parents’ corpses. “That psycho-bitch,” she gasped. “I knew something twisted was going on here. This whole family’s fucked up.” Then she turned around again, her eyes darting around frantically for that…other…who would kill her. She saw no one.

She looked back at the bodies, with teary eyes.

“Oh, Mom, Dad,” she sobbed.

Then she noticed the arm of another body beside her father’s. She saw the black shirt sleeve of Mr. Dan.

She threw the blanket further off, and indeed, it was his body, with a bloody gash in the chest.

“Oh, God!” she gasped, then retched. At least I don’t have to worry about him killing me, she thought, then she remembered to look around the attic again for any more attackers. “Freddie? Emily? No? Good.” Where’s Al?”

She heard another moan, from the far side of Mr. Dan’s body, under the blanket.

Where’s Doug? she wondered. “Oh, no.”

There was a slight movement under the blanket’s edge.

She went over, past the three revealed corpses, and dreaded what she was about to see, but held the hope that her brother was still alive…or was it Al?

She pulled the blanket away. Doug moaned again, his eyes half-open.

“Oh, God! Doug!” she said.

CRACK!!!

She gave a jolt, and screamed at the sight of his now-bloody, fractured skull.

Then she looked up.

The bat was in Al’s hands.

‘The Ancestors,’ a Horror Story, Chapter Eight

After thoroughly checking all of the rooms on the second and third floors, Mr. Dan and Doug approached the bathroom, where Mr. Sandy had been before he was killed.

“Oh, no–now I have to use the can,” Doug said, then went in.

After he closed the door, Mr. Dan thought, And I have to find something just right for you, young man.

But first, he pulled down the attic stairs, then went up them. He peeked his head in, hearing Emily still cleaning up the blood.

“You just about finished up here?” he asked in Chinese.

“Almost,” she said in Chinese. “Just a little more to wipe up.”

“Well, hurry up,” he said. “I’m taking Hannah’s brother up here. He’s in the bathroom. He’s taking his time in there; I guess it’s a number two, but who knows? Maybe not. I’ll send something up to you. Wait to get it, but hurry with the cleaning!”

He went back down, heard Doug fart and grunt, and he surmised that, indeed, it had to be a number two. He’d have a little more time to find…something just right for Doug.

He went into a room next to the one with the boxes, looked around impatiently, and found a baseball bat. He heard some shuffling steps out in the hallway. Oh, no, he thought, Hannah’s brother. Then after a worried pause, he opened the door and looked out.

Nobody out in the hall.

The bathroom door was still closed.

Was Doug still crapping in there?

Mr. Dan went up to the bathroom door to listen. He heard another fart, the slipping out of shit, and a horrible stink.

He squished up his face in disgust, but was relieved that Doug was still in there and suspected nothing. Mr. Dan went up the attic steps with the baseball bat.

“Emily,” he called.

“What?” she said with surprise, looking back at him from the corner where she’d just finished cleaning. “I thought you were already up here. I heard–“

“No, not yet,” he said, then presented the bat. “Put this over there, then get out of here.”

She took the bat, put it in the corner opposite where she’d been cleaning, and rushed over to the attic stairs.

“I’ve got to clean all this blood off my–” she began as she went down the stairs.

“Shh!” he said. “Hurry up and get out of here before he comes out of the bathroom!”

She went down the hall and took the stairs to the second floor. As soon as she’d disappeared, Doug came out of the bathroom.

Mr. Dan let out a sigh of relief.

“What are you so relieved about, Mr. Dan?” Doug asked, looking askance at him.

“Oh, nothing,” Mr. Dan said with a smile and a slightly nervous chuckle. “I was just getting a little impatient waiting for you to finish, that’s all. Sorry about that.” He gestured to the pulled down attic stairs. “Shall we look in the attic now? It’s the only place we haven’t looked.”

“OK.”

They went up into the attic, Doug first.

He heard moaning in one corner of the attic and rushed over to see. “Dad? Mom?” he called out.

Meanwhile, Mr. Dan sneaked over to the other corner, picked up the bat where he’d seen Emily leave it, and hid it behind his legs by the time Doug looked back.

“There’s nobody here,” Doug said. “I heard moaning right from here, but there’s no source for the moans.”

“Really?” Mr. Dan said. “There’s a lot of shadow behind all those boxes. Look again.”

“I’m looking at the shadow behind the boxes, but there’s nothing–wait, under that blanket over there.”

As Doug was approaching it, Mr. Dan raised the bat over his head. “Goodbye, Doug,” he said in a female voice.

“Emily, are you up here?” Doug asked as he pulled back the blanket, revealing his parents’ bloody bodies. He gasped, his eyes widening.

“No, not Emily,” Mr. Dan said in that woman’s voice.

“Mei’s voice,” a young man said from behind Mr. Dan, who turned around to see who it was.

Now he gasped, his eyes widening.

Al swung the axe right at his father’s chest. Blood sprayed out when it dug deep into him.

Mr. Dan fell to the floor, the bat dropping and hitting him on the head. His blood grew into a large puddle all over the floor.

“Al, Jesus fuck!” Doug said. “How could you do that?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Al panted. “That’s for sure. I’m so sorry, Papa.” He bent down and closed his father’s eyes. “Goodbye. Forgive me. I had no choice.” He rose to his feet.

“Why would you kill your own dad, Al?”

“To stop him from bashing your brains in with that bat, of course.”

“What? Al, this is so fucked up! What’s going on? Why would your family…wanna kill my family? Oh, God…Mom, Dad…” He looked back at his parents’ corpses with tears forming in his eyes.

“Because the spirits of my ancestors are taking possession of my family’s bodies to take you all as sacrifices, so my ancestors won’t bother Hannah and me anymore,” Al said in a cold, monotone voice.

“What? What horseshit are you talking about?”

“My family stopped praying to the spirits of our ancestors years ago,” Al explained. “The spirits got angry because of this disrespect, and they’ve been plaguing our family ever since.” He put the axe down on the floor beside him, next to the bat.

“Spirits, Al?” Doug asked, looking at him with a sneer. “Seriously? Let’s face it: You’re a family of homicidal nutjobs. No offence intended to Chinese people in general, but I don’t want you anywhere near my sister!”

“I love Hannah more than anything, and I’m truly sorry for what happened to your parents,” Al said in sobs. “The spirits forced me to agree with this, so I could marry her one day and we could live in peace. If they know I’ve broken the agreement, they–“

“Fuck you, Al, you and your fucked-up family!” Doug bawled.

Al was silent as Doug looked down at his parents’ bodies and wept for them.

“Oh, no…NO!” Al suddenly said.

“What?” Doug said.

But before Doug could turn his head back and see what was going on, he felt a crack of the baseball bat on his head, knocking him out.