Mr. Bones Horror Zone!

Chapter 1

You find yourself walking down an old cobbled road as the sun has just started to dip below the horizon, coloring the sky a soft purple and gray. Your boots make audible clicking noises against the cobbles and as you glance around at the tightly packed homes along either side of the road you feel a sudden tightness in your chest.
You don’t know where you are. You spin on your heels to look back the way you came, but it’s simply the same road boxed in by the same houses as far down as you can see. You try to remember how you came to be here, but your memory is blank. You don’t even remember why you’re out walking alone. As you attempt to reign in the panic that is threatening to overtake you, you decide to ask someone where you are, but as you glance around, you realize that no one else is on the road. No one is standing or sitting outside any of these homes, and as you look closer at each one, you realize that none of them have any lights on inside. None of them have any curtains pulled back, none of them have any cars in their tiny driveways. As you continue to walk, you realize that you can hear no sounds coming from any of them, either. In fact, you realize that you don’t hear any sounds at all, other than the clicking of your boots against the cobbles of the road.
You keep walking, unsure of what else to do, but rationalizing that this neighborhood, this strange stretch of homes can’t possibly go on forever. You rack your brain as you walk, trying desperately to remember how you came to be here, why on Earth you would be walking alone down an unfamiliar street. Nothing comes to you. It is utterly blank.
A cold breeze brushes past you, chilling your cheeks and ears and making your eyes water. You pull your heavy coat tighter around you.
The sun has gone completely now, and without any street lights, it’s almost impossible to see beyond the next bit of road in front of you. Your heart begins to beat faster than it ever has. You have the overwhelming sense that something is closing in on you. That something has, in fact, been silently watching you the entire time, and that now with you full cover of the dark it can strike. You try to convince yourself that this is your imagination, that it’s merely a result of the fear you already felt, but you can’t shake the feeling. A long hiss fills your ears, and you at first tell yourself it was just the wind. But then you realize that you felt no breeze against you this time, and you want to scream the terror you feel right out of you.
A light, bright and pulsating suddenly appears in the distance. You immediately break into a run towards it. You don’t care what it is or where it’s leading you, it is infinitely preferable to the all consuming darkness and whatever horror lived inside of it that you’re rapidly leaving behind.
The light, as you soon see, is coming from one of the houses. It is identical to all the others, except for the light, pulsing as if in time to a beat. You can hear no music, or indeed, any sound other than your heart inside your own chest. You walk up to the front door, thinking these people may be able to help you. Tell you where you are and how you can get back home. You think about how much of a relief it would be to have the door swing open and be greeted by another person, a room full of people.
The door swings open as soon as you knock twice. It creaks loudly as it does, and you don’t quite understand what you’re seeing once it fully opens. There is no one there, and no foyer as you expected, but instead a simple room with a desk at the end and a large red velvet chair behind it. You don’t see any other doors inside this room, but that doesn’t make sense to you. This tiny room can’t be the entire house. Feeling the darkness at your back, you hop inside, and the door closes itself behind you. You turn around as you hear it click lightly, as if it had locked, and try the old bronze handle. It is indeed locked. You look for a way to unlock it, but see none, and don’t understand. Why would it only be able to be locked from the outside?
“Welcome, traveler,” comes a not unpleasant voice from behind you. You whirl around and yelp at what you see. There is a skeleton in a black suit now sitting in the red velvet chair. The absurdity of this gives you some pause, before the thing rattles to life and begins speaking. You scream, and the skeleton takes this in stride.
“Yes,” it says, “that’s to be expected.” It reaches underneath the desk it sits behind and pulls out a large book. It sits the book on the desk with some difficulty, then opens it to a seemingly random page near the middle. You can see that the book is old, worn, with yellowed pages, and  has some water damage.
“What are you?” you whisper hoarsely. “Where am I?” Your heart is beating fast and your back is pressed up against the locked door. You remember the darkness outside, and you suddenly want to cry. There is nowhere for you to go.
“I am Mr. Bones,” the skeleton says. It waits with its jaw open and head cocked. After a moment, it shrugs. “No one ever laughs,” it laments.
“You are in a very special place,” it explains, “a place only accessed in transient spaces on transient days.” You shake your head.
“I don’t understand,” you say.
“You are here to hear these stories,” it says, pointing a finger bone to the book. “You don’t remember?” You shake your head again. The skeleton shrugs.
“Maybe it will come back to you,” it suggests. “But that is why you’re here. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Now. Sit down there, on the floor.” Despite everything, you do as Mr. Bones says. You sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the desk, looking up at a skeleton and its very large, old book.
“This first one is just okay,” it says, almost apologetically. “But it would be a mistake to begin with the best tale anyway. This one is from the late nineteen-nineties, I believe. It is called  

                                                  The Night Mr. Grant Died

Thunder roared and a flash of lightning briefly lit up the cemetery. Robert grimaced and gripped his flashlight and shovel tighter, then continued to make his way past the rows of headstones. He knew that a storm was ultimately in his favor, considering what he was about to do, but it still unnerved him. The entire ordeal unnerved him, but Robert was truly desperate for the money he had been offered. His father had often repeated the phrase “Whatever it takes, Robert” when instructing him on how to survive the cruelness of the world, and he had never forgotten that lesson.
At last, Robert stopped in front of the headstone he had been looking for. It was new, much sleeker and with none of the wear of years that the others had. “James W. Grant” was the name etched into it and the death date was the current year. Robert set the flashlight on the soft grass next to the fresh grave, then started digging with no hesitation.
“Whatever it takes.” he said under his breath, tossing dirt over his shoulder.
Memories came to him as he dug deeper; memories of his father. They had been poor, and Robert had been unplanned. Unwanted too, or at least that’s what his father had always said to him in drunken, angry moments. There had been a lot of them. His father had struggled to make ends meat with an honest job, so, as Robert had later learned, he had turned to less honest work. He had robbed several graves by the time Robert was three years old, taking the valuables and trinkets that people were buried with and pawning them for cash. He had never been caught, but the paranoia of being found out one day had taken a toll on him. He drank at home, only ever at home, and when money became tight as it often did, he had taken his fear and anger out on Robert and his mother. At first, when Robert had been very young, his mother would shield him from the worst of it. But, as the years dragged on, she had cared less and less every time. Robert never blamed her for that. He had understood how hard it must have been.
Lightning peeled across the darkened sky once more, but this time heavy rain followed. Robert cursed, even though he knew this was good for him. The storm would keep others away, and make it harder for those passing by to see his work. The heavy rain would even make the digging easier for him. As he sunk deeper into the grave, closer to the coffin, more memories sprang into his mind.
He had been seventeen when he had robbed a grave with his father for the first time. He had gone willingly, vainly hoping that he could earn the old man’s love or admiration if he helped. Everything had gone smoothly enough, until a dog that had wandered into the cemetery began to bark madly at the two of them, causing Robert’s father to bolt, leaving his son behind. Robert had made it home without being caught, but was met with a beating for coming back empty handed. Robert never forgot that moment, and the realization that he would never earn anything but contempt from his father.
The grave was growing taller around him, and his hands were slick now from the rain. He was nearly there, though, and that kept him going. He was nearly there, and then he would have his money from that woman.
It had only been a few months prior that Robert had crossed paths with Dr. Cushing. She was an older woman, with gaunt features and a clipped, crisp way of speaking, and Robert had first encountered her in a pawn shop downtown. He had been there selling off a few minor things he had stolen from a rich woman’s grave, and she had seemingly been there to buy something, though she never did. She took an immediate interest in him, and after several failed attempts to make her leave him be, she offered him money for, as she said, “to retrieve for me a few items that belong to someone else”. He had been wary of this and refused at first, but her offer was too good, and after some deliberation, he had agreed. The robbery had been simple; the simplest Robert had ever done to his great surprise. He had never thought robbing from the living would have been easier than robbing from the dead. Dr. Cushing had made good on her end, giving him more money than those books had surely been worth.
Over the months, she had requested several more robberies of him and he had done each of them with relative ease. Then, she had asked him for something much more familiar yet also more horrible, completely out of the blue. “A corpse, preferably very fresh, if you can manage” had been her exact words. He had, at first, thought she was joking. However she made it very clear that she was not, and that if he didn’t do this, she wouldn’t work with him again. Then, she had told him the price she was willing to pay. He would never have to rob another grave or house, if he did this for her. So, he had agreed. He had known immediately where he would get the corpse, and that it would indeed be very fresh.
At long last, his arms aching and feet chilled to the bone despite his boots, he hit the coffin. He uncovered it quickly, then used the shovel to crack open the lid. He hesitated for a moment before opening it completely, afraid of what he might see. He pushed this thought away with a grunt. He knew exactly what he would see, and when he opened the lid, he was not surprised. It was the face of his father, James W. Grant, lifeless and pale and more groomed than he had ever been in life. As he reached to lift his father out of the coffin, fear gripped him again, but he shook it loose. The man was dead. He had watched him die, gasping for breath as his body seized up with a heart attack, begging Robert to call an ambulance. He hadn’t. He had just sat there, and watched. He had watched him struggle, fear and hatred on his pained face, until finally he had stopped moving. The fear and hatred never left his expression, and Robert had grimly thought that had been fitting.
After stuffing the body in a black bag, he began to shovel the dirt back into the hole, as quick as he could. The rain was still coming down in fat drops, chilling him to the bone despite his heavy coat. He took a moment to pause, and give his aching arms a rest. The only sound in the lonely cemetery was the rain hitting the ground, as it seemed the thunder had stopped.
“Robert.” came a voice, clear as day piercing the stormy night, and Robert swung wildly around. His heart was racing, and he was gripping his shovel tight, but he could see no one near him. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the cemetery at all. He continued to search, picking up his flashlight and scanning the area. He had heard the voice as if it had been right beside him. After a few minutes of careful inspection, he finished filling in the hole, guessing he had just imagined the voice.
With his burden on his back and his shovel and flashlight in hand, he made his way from the cemetery to his car, parked just outside the gates. He put everything, including the black bag containing his father’s corpse, in the back seat, then hopped in the driver’s side. Certain that no one had seen what he had done, he started the car and began the drive towards Dr. Cushing’s place. He drove slowly and carefully, the heavy rain obscuring his vision of the road despite his wipers.
Nearly halfway to his destination, Robert heard something other than the rain. It was a shuffling noise, almost like a plastic bag moving. With that thought, panic seized Robert once again. He listened for the noise intently, and to his horror, heard it coming from behind him. It was something in his back seat. At once, he attempted to rationalize it, telling himself that it was just the bag moving around because the car was moving. He instantly dismissed this, as the car was driving smoothly, and the noise was becoming increasingly violent, as if there was something trying to get out of the bag.
His heart racing, he knew there was only one way to ease his mind, and prove to himself that this wasn’t actually happening. Taking his eyes off the road for a moment, he turned to look at the bag in his backseat. Instead, he was greeted by the corpse of his father, sitting up and reaching out to him.
“Robert.” it croaked, as Robert screamed and the car slammed into an embankment, flipping over.
Robert awoke in a painful daze, a bright light shining over him. He could see a figure standing nearby as well, but couldn’t determine who it was. His entire body hurt, but his head most of all. He couldn’t move, and assumed it was due to the crash.
“Oh, you’re awake.” said the figure, who he was then able to recognize as Dr. Cushing.
“Cushing. What?” he managed to say, his throat dry and voice ragged.
“You were in a terrible car accident.” she said, coming into view. “Luckily, close enough to my place that I heard it as it happened.”
“Body.” he said, his memory of what caused the crash coming back to him and causing him to panic once more.
“Yes.” Cushing said, dryly. “The body you procured for me was utterly ruined in the crash. It is completely useless to me now.” This actually caused Robert to breathe a short sigh of relief. Dr. Cushing grabbed a syringe from a nearby table. “Thankfully, I have a replacement right here.” As she turned the syringe towards him, Robert slowly realized what she was implying.
“No, what? Stop!” He tried to scream, but was still too weak, and as he now could feel, strapped to a table.
“I know, this seems rather grisly. I never intended to murder anyone in pursuit of my goals. But, I am willing to do whatever it takes to get results.” She said, jabbing the syringe into his neck. Desperately, he tried to rip himself free from his bonds or scream, but his body refused to comply, and after the injection it became more sluggish, as did his mind. As his vision went black, he heard Dr. Cushing, or maybe his father, repeat “Whatever it takes, Robert.”
   

End