Sex and Murder Magazine

By Lee Clark Zumpe

It all started in a delicate mist of stagnant night festering just outside the grasp of an old street light. It was a place where innocence was eclipsed by hunger, and sense was devoured by drunken need. In that Stygian pit, something awful came to life, and it haunts me still.

It was uncommonly hot that evening, and the air was heavy with dew. There were no whispers of a breeze to offer promises of relief – just thick, stifling, damp, lifeless air.

They came stumbling home a far cry past midnight. Their heads spinning, they plummeted through the oppressive summer night toward the house. They had shared far too many pints of Guinness down at the pub, and they would soon pay the price.

Emma was a good wife.

She valued her marriage, and had never in the 12 years of our union done one thing to hurt me.

Tonight, she would slip for the first time.

Her friend from the department store – his name was Harold, I think – might well have intended that the evening progress toward its unfortunate climax. On the other hand, it might have never crossed his mind until they reached that place.

In that dark passage between the two houses, where the spidery devices of night had spun such a fine web, they became entangled. The ale, the sweltering heat, the blanket of pitch all came together and in that moment a reckless desire sparked within them.

When his hands came over her shoulders, when his fingers brushed her neck, everything disintegrated. Memories were discarded. Bonds forgotten.

Her lips suddenly were hungry – a hunger she admittedly had not experienced in years. She felt her arms slip around him as they both tumbled to the damp carpet of grass; down, onto the wet soil.

As they made love on the ground outside the room where I slept, as his hands peeled her blouse away to touch her soft breasts and as her bare legs splayed apart to accommodate her newfound lover, something stirred in the soil beneath them.

In the heated moments that ensued, neither one heard it digging its way up through the earth toward the surface. In the blinding brilliance of their coupling, they did not see its ugly worm-white head, all slick with slime, as it poked up through the sod. And in their passion, they did not smell the putrid stench of its rotten hide.

When it was over, it was over.

The memories washed back, and a parcel of regret was neatly tied to each and every one. The bond was weakened, close to the point of breaking.

She picked up her jeans and her blouse and the slivers of her life. She spoke not another word. She just walked away.

I heard her in the bathroom, coughing. I shambled down the little hall, eyes focused on the dagger of light stabbing outward beneath the door. I pushed it open just a crack, found her hunched over the toilet bowl shuddering. I didn’t think much of the tears at the time. I just sat down on the rim of the tub and stroked her bare shoulders until the tremors subsided.

“I’m sorry.” she said. At first, I didn’t understand. I mistook it for another meaning. But the pain waited patiently outside the door.

She passed out not long after that.

I carried her to our bed. I tried to make reasons appear out the shadows of the room, but the truth was as persistent as it was hideous. The tangle of her hair, the dirt and grass she couldn’t brush off, the smear of her lipstick over her chin. I could have looked further, but there was no need.

I find it troubling even now that the tears that bled from my heart could not find their way to my eyes. I simply sat and stared at the ceiling while Emma lay slumbering beside me. I built bridges toward forgiving her, scaled mountains in my soul trying to forget the incident – all in the folds of a few hours of that loathsome night.

And when at last I was teetering on the edge of sleep, it appeared at the foot of my bed.
I gasped. I cringed and scurried up toward the headboard.

It was tall and impossibly lean, a skeleton whose bones were sheathed in a film of dirt and crimson-tinged phlegm. It reeked like a corpse, but it moved like an insect.

It stared at me inquisitively for a moment. Its eyes were two dull red embers of a dying fire. I trembled as it raised its bony hand and extended a twisted finger. It pointed toward Emma. It waited.

Something in my expression must have given it the consent it needed. It turned away abruptly, and its mouth opened wide as it sprung up onto the mattress. I sat, frozen and helpless, as its long and gangly arms embraced my wife. It lifted her off the bed without a trace of effort, and in an instant both she and it were gone.

I do not know how long I stared into the darkness of the hall after them. With the covers drawn up tight over me, I peered out into the night hoping that all this was but a dream. But I knew that was not the case.

At length, and with every bit of courage I could ignite in my humble soul, I stood and gave chase. Outside, I saw no sign of the thing to whom I had given my wife. Yet, I knew instinctively where to find them both.

I found that same pool of darkness between the houses, and there the thing was digging down into the ground. Two bodies were strewn over the lawn beside it: Both Emma and the man I perceived to be her lover this evening. They were stretched motionless – almost as if in death – in the gloom.

“No!” I cried out, but the thing merely shook its head. In that moment back in the bedroom, I had already given my answer: “Yes,” my eyes must have pleaded, “Yes take this filth and be done with it!”

I started toward them, determined to save my wife from that thing. It raised its head and lowered its jaw and hissed at me angrily, and its foul breath alone kept me in check. I could not fight it: It was rage itself that had crept up from the depths of the night.

A moment of anger, of hate, of jealousy could not be reversed by a lifetime of forgiveness.
A second later and they were gone.

They dug the bodies up several months ago.

The trial was swift, and I cannot argue with the verdict. Though I did not place them in their graves, I may as well have.

The image of that vile beast still haunts my dreams. It visits me not long after dusk, burrowing into my soul and chiding me. It tells me I made the right decision; mocks me for doubting myself now. Not a night goes by that I don’t awake screaming, sweat pouring down my face, fingers digging into the mattress. Over and over again I play out the events of that evening, and still I cannot change their course.

But there is more.

Though it does not utter a word of it, I know that it has designs on my body and soul. In that moment of weakness, when I so foolishly forfeited the life of my wife, I sentenced myself to a horrible fate. After mortal justice has extracted its vengeance, my punishment will have only just begun.

No, it is not that the thing taunts me so that frightens me now, here on death row. It is that which I see staring back from the mirror each day that chills my blood and shreds my sanity.

For in the abyss of night, when I gaze at my reflection, I see two dull red embers of a dying fire peering back at me.