A note about my 'latest' story

My most recent addition to this blog is in fact an old story I wrote a few years ago that I recently came across again. It's one of the first stories I ever wrote, and was decent enough to be runner up in a short story completion. Although there are things I would now change, I am still very proud of it, and have fond memories of writing it.

Whilst it's not a horror story like the rest on this site, it is seriously fucking dark. I mean darker than the deepest point of the blackest black hole in the outermost reaches of the darkest part of the cosmos.

It's inspired by an incident in the Yorkshire Evening Post around the time I wrote it about a raid on a Leeds brothel. It occurred to me that slavery and sexual violence and exploitation for profit exists amongst the wealth and commercialism of this modern city; the poor, the lost and the dispossessed live out lives we can't imagine, far beneath the cracks, and I guess I wanted to tell a little bit of their story.

Hope you like it.

Short Story: Voiceless

Voiceless

By

Nick Harkins

 

 

From The Yorkshire Echo

A young woman of unknown identity died of stab wounds in Leeds City Library yesterday evening. It is believed that the woman, aged between 16 and 20, could be of Eastern European origin. Police speculate that she may have been a victim of the sex trafficking phenomenon which has exploded in Leeds in the last five years. It seems that she was stabbed as she entered the building, stumbled through the doorway and collapsed. Police are appealing for witnesses, or anyone who may know the woman’s identity to come forward

They promised me work in a nursery looking after children in a big, modern city in Britain with one of the finest Universities in the country. I’d be getting good pay; more than enough to cover my living costs, and my hours would leave me more than enough time to study. I could take evening classes in anything I liked, and I would have unlimited opportunities.

A bright, beautiful girl like me could be anything I wanted there. Anything. The woman put her hand on my shoulder affectionately. Her cold blue eyes peered into mine and seemed to soften; melting like the ice in Riga when the spring comes and the Russian winds stop their remorseless assault.

The couple had approached one night me as I’d finished work at the bar I worked in in Riga. I’d seen them watching me throughout the evening as I moved between the wooden tables, carrying huge trays loaded with flagons of foaming beer for the tables of British men. They scared me these men with their flushed, leering faces and their harsh songs, bellowed at the tops of their guttural voices. Whilst some of the other girls at the bar openly flirted with them to get better tips, I would collect the bills and scurry back behind the bar.

The man and woman were sat alone at a small table in a quieter part of the bar; smartly dressed and polite. Sipping vodka and talking quietly hand in hand, sometimes kissing and often laughing together. They looked to have been in their late twenties, around ten years older than me. I remember thinking of what my parents might have been like at that age, and thinking they would probably have been much the same. My parents had died many years ago, leaving me with just my older brother to care for me.

After the bar had closed and the men had lurched off to the strip clubs, hooting and snorting like hogs, I set off on the short walk back to the tiny apartment I shared with two other girls. As I opened the door and stepped into the street, there they were. Them. The nice couple from the bar that had smiled at me, and given me a large tip and told me to treat myself were waiting for me.

I was already planning on getting myself an IPod so I could carry around all the records that reminded me of home before my parents died. My father had loved The Beatles and used to tell us that they were his brothers. We would sit in our small living room on Sunday afternoons, listening to the illicit cassette tapes my father had kept from his youth behind the Iron Curtain. Warm and happy as the snow drove against the window; big, beautiful snowflakes dancing swiftly through the chill air then tapping softly on the glass. We would laugh at father and ask him how four men from Liverpool could be his brothers, and he would laugh with us and say there were his brothers in his heart.

The lady told me her name was Velna, and introduced the man as Peteris, though as he spoke only Russian in a harsh accent I found difficult to make out, it was Velna that did most of the talking. Velna was blonde and pale skinned, with a slim, graceful figure. Her eyes were an icy piercing blue, and I felt even then that there was pain behind those eyes. I wondered what this beautiful woman had been through in her life, and felt an almost sisterly affinity for her, feeling that she was someone who had suffered like me, knowing that she would never harm me. We were the same. She had seen something in me that made her want to help me, and I was willing to do whatever she thought was best for me.

Leeds was the place, she told me. Leeds. I’d never heard of it, but that night we set out for my new life. I had nobody to tell I was going. My brother was serving in the navy; my parents were dead. I went back to the apartment and threw together some clothes, my few cd’s and the framed pictures of my family together in happier days, and set off for my new life in Leeds.

******

Velna told me eventually I’d become numb to the pain, numb to the degradation from the monsters who came to me. I didn’t listen. I would learn to switch off and take myself away somewhere I couldn’t be reached, she assured me every day.  Then before I knew it, my debt would be paid and I’d be free to start my new life. She never wanted to tell me how much of my debt was still outstanding, just that it would be soon. I would search those cold blue eyes for any trace of the kindness I had once believed in, but found none. I knew that she had done the same things many times before, and had pushed the buttons she needed to.

Her face was a brittle mask of cruel indifference at all times, hiding behind the cheap makeup she wore to disguise her diminishing looks. Only once did I see the mask slip, when I asked her how she came to be involved in such things. She had screamed at me, the vilest abuse coming from her once pretty mouth, and tears running from her eyes, no longer blue, but reddened and puffy.

I didn’t ever want to become numb. Comfortably Numb. A song my brother used to play in his room when we were young. His room with its bright, striking posters and strange books; his beloved guitar he had saved for as a teenager, and his paintings. It seemed so magical to me as a child. Dark and wonderful; a place of haunting, psychedelic music and creativity where my brother would paint or read and play his guitar, sometimes showing me how to play the chords of songs I liked, or letting me lay on the floor reading the stack of Marvel comics he loved. I was too young to understand much of the English they were written in, but I loved the vivid, colourful characters that flew through the heavens or climbed skyscrapers, punishing the bad people.

I know about bad people now; real bad people. I knew as I lay on the filthy sheets of the bed in the room they kept me in that no costumed hero was coming to save me. Nobody knew I was there. Nobody. I had wanted to call my brother before I left Riga, but Velna told me I could call when we got to Leeds. But, on arrival I was shut in this room and watched at all times with no contact with the outside world, other than the men whose lust I endure, is forbidden. They told me they know where my brother is stationed and if I try and leave, they’ll kill him. I believed them.

Every city has those who fall between the cracks, the dispossessed and the wretched; living shadowy twilight lives amongst the cafe bars and the huge corporate temples of tinted glass and concrete. I had known this even in Riga, and now I knew I myself had become part of this voiceless underclass. Would any of the countless people that walk past this house of illicit lust every day, oblivious to its true purpose, care if they knew I was here? In the three months since my arrival, each day of abuse had further confirmed my belief that they would not. Voices such as mine are not to be heard.

******

I have no idea how long I languished in that place, losing any hope of release. I rarely saw daylight, and was never allowed to leave the building. Like all the girls, I ate my meals, such as they were, in a squalid basement beneath the parlour. I was allowed one meal a day, and was given six hours to sleep between each shift. At these times, I would huddle under my thin, drab blankets and picture those days in Riga with my parents and my brother.

I soon realised it was pointless to resist the men who came to my room. If I did, I was beaten by Peteris and warned that my brother would be harmed. The men varied in age and appearance, but I rarely saw any spark of kindness or compassion in their eyes. The worst were the married men. The men in smart suits. Men with wives and children and nice houses in nice streets somewhere in the suburbs of a city I had barely seen. I always knew they were married. I knew they wanted to do with me what they wouldn’t with their wives who raised their children; raised them to be cold and cruel and to feed mercilessly on others like their fathers. They forced my flesh into submission and took me without a flicker of emotion, hating me and hating themselves and their wives and the careers they eked out in the cold, featureless towers I’d seen when they brought me here. I was the outlet, the pressure valve that stopped them going crazy; the voiceless, unseen keeper of suburban sanity.

It was one such man that unwittingly afforded me my opportunity of escape. A tall, grey haired man with dark, narrow eyes that burned with malice, I had come to recognise him as a regular visitor. Believing himself to be something of a tower of attraction to women, he had paused in the doorway on his way out to flirt with Velna. Knowing Peteris to have already gone out and that I was safe from his wrath, I fled to the doorway and burst into the street. I gulped in the chill, fresh evening air.

Running frantically, I hoped to find somewhere public I could get help and the safety of a busy place. I made my way through past shops, now all closed for the evening, I passed bars but was afraid to go in and face the kind of men that had been my tormentors. At last, I saw an old official looking building and thought it may have been a police station or a courthouse. As I burst through the doorway, I heard Peteris’s taunting voice as the cold blade slid into my back.

I look down on my body lying in what I can now see is a library. The ambulance crew are trying to revive me, but I’ve gone. I feel no sadness, for now I am free. Nothing can hurt me again. I got to see Leeds after all, but I won’t stay. Snow is beginning to fall; I can see the first flakes dancing in the amber light of the city outside, falling lightly on the passing cars and tapping gently against the windows. I can hear music playing somewhere close; the slightly muffled sound of an old, much-loved bootleg cassette.

 

 

 

 

 

Mummy Dearest - a brand new 100 word horror story

Mummy Dearest

I assumed if I could contact dead loved ones they’d be just like they were in life.

Ask me how I am, tell me not to worry, they’re happy. Inter-dimensional pleasantries; something to alleviate the loneliness since Mummy died. Just me and Molly now; Molly and her grey muzzle.

How wrong I was. Mummy has changed and not for the better. Didn’t think the Ouija board would work, but it did. She spelled out the words with my finger.

S-H-O-U-L-D

B-E

U

Then Molly’s heckles rose. Her growls guttural words. She sunk her greying muzzle into my throat and tore.

Review of Clive Barker’s NightBreed Issue 1

The first issue of Boom! Studios eagerly anticipated new comic book series Clive Barker’s Nightbreed hit the shelves in the UK on 28 May, finally expanding on the mythos Clive Barker created in 1988 in the novel Cabal, and in the movie adaptation Nightbreed. A dark, horrific, but ultimately quite moving tale of a group of freaks, misfits and monsters living in Midian, a secret underground community beneath a cemetery, Nightbreed has gained a devoted cult following over the past few decades. An Occupy Midian movement was even formed as an online pressure group to demand the release of the full unedited vision of the Nightbreed movie Barker intended, but never got to release.

Occupy Midian haven’t got their way just yet, but the first issue of this new series of comics is sure to delight Nightbreed fans as much as readers new to the gloriously strange world of Midian. Piotr Kowalski’s artwork is exquisite, truly capturing the macabre settings of the original book and film, and resurrecting the strange cast of disparate characters; the savage, the lonely and the seductive with all their drives, hungers and desires.

In the original novel, we discover little about how the various bizarre citizens of Midian came to arrive there, and this is what the comic series sets out to address. The narrative flits back and forward in time, introducing us to characters before they arrived at Midian, building on their back-story and expanding the Nightbreed mythos. The themes of isolation, prejudice and persecution so evident in the novel are continued and developed as the future citizens of Midian struggle to live above ground amongst ‘normal’ people.

Of course as in the novel and movie, the real monsters are not necessarily who they appear to be. The distinctions between good and evil, beauty and beast are often blurred; the hunted can become the hunter, the freak can become an object of forbidden lust. This was always a big part of the appeal of Nightbreed and it’s great to see this spirit continued in this new expansion of the story.

This first issue shows great promise about what could be a fantastic series, and will please existing fans of Nightbreed and gain many more with its blend of gruesome horror, and strange sensuality. Midian has opened its gates once more.

Update on latest story and upcoming work

Children of the Night,

This post comes with some regret and embarrassment that it has taken me so long to add any new material to my blog, or to my work on Popcorn Horror. I've had a two week holiday away, and since my return I have not had as much time to write as I would like.

The office I currently work in is closing and my last few weeks have been a string of leaving parties, meals and of course my own preparations before I start my new job. Life, basically, has got in the way.

Now I am in a more settled position, I aim to step up my writing more than ever before. I have so many ideas dying to burst out onto the page, I'm very excited about exploring them. I hope you will explore them with me, too.

There will be a short story in the next week or so, numerous flash fiction bloody chunks of hideousness, and the planning stages of my first novel are ongoing. Around 10,000 words written to date.

Nick

Flash Horror Story: A Helping Hand

A Helping Hand

I was alone in the wilds when I found it, hiking deep in the Red Cuillin beneath iron skies. I rounded a bend and saw him; a crow trapped in a baited cage.

He stopped hopping around and looked at me. His eyes gleaming, knowing, filled with a hideous intelligence. Guttural words sounded in my mind, harsh, croaking sounds. Instructions.

I crouched by the cage, put my hand between the bars. He gouged at my palm, greedily devouring the oozing blood until I passed out.

Now I’m in the cage. A trapped bird, frantically screeching at the man walking away.

Legends and Lore at Lochmaben Castle: Spooky happenings with Mostly Ghostly

Legends and Lore at Lochmaben Castle

 

 

A raven greets us from his perch atop the ruins of Lochmaben Castle

 

On Saturday 17th May, my partner Sarah and I attended the Legends and Lore tour at Lochmaben Castle organised by Mostly Ghostly Investigations, a team of paranormal investigators from Dumfries & Galloway in South West Scotland. It proved to be an incredible evening for many reasons, and caused me to reassess my beliefs in the paranormal.

 

We arrived on a cool spring evening to the ruins of Lochmaben Castle, the ancient dwelling of some very illustrious characters from Scotland's often bloody history including Robert the Bruce and James II who took the castle when he defeated the Black Douglas family in 1455. Mary Queen of Scots is also known to have spent at least one night in the castle. Given the history of sieges and bloodshed on the site dating back to the early 1300s, it is perhaps unsurprising that the site is home to a number of local myths and legends, with numerous paranormal experiences reported in and around the ruins.

 

There is an immense sense of quiet and tranquillity at the site; once home to the mighty and the regal, but left to crumble gently by the dark waters of the castle loch since the Union of the Crowns in 1603. That is a very long time for any restless spirits that may reside there to mull over their fate, brutal and bloody as it almost certainly was is most cases. And so, more so than at any other historic building I've ever visited, I felt something beneath the tranquillity. I felt a definite sense of sadness; an aura of melancholy that permeated the whole surrounding area. I'm unable to explain this even to myself. Perhaps it struck me as sad that what would once have been a great place of strength has been neglected for centuries, and the feeling merely came from my own subconscious. Perhaps, but I don't think so.

 

As we waited with the other guests, a large raven landed on top of a crumbling tower and peered down at us, perhaps wondering why this secluded spot had suddenly been invaded. A moment or so later, our hosts arrived dressed in full gothic regalia to make a very dramatic entrance. They led us to the banks of the loch, where we disturbed a group of drunks who'd obviously spent the day fishing, drinking and smoking mind-altering substances. The look of surprise on the face of one particularly intoxicated drunkard was especially amusing as he awoke from his slumbers to find himself surrounded by a ghost tour. Ignoring the slurred and nonsensical contributions of the three drunks, our hosts continued to regale us with tales from the castles dark history, local legends including a reputed local vampire, and tales of otherworldly sightings in the area.

 

 

 

Soon, we moved back to the ruins of the castle to attempt to actually contact any spirits that may dwell there using divining rods and crystals. This was a very interesting experiment and something I'd never heard of before. Using my divining rods, I reached out to anyone or anything that might be able to hear me, and established 'yes' and 'no' movements for the rods. To my surprise the rods did actually move, and it did seem some form of communication was established. I proceeded to ask a number of questions, that seemed to confirm that something could hear me, but not see me, and that it would like to live again. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether I did really establish contact with anything; it could have been the breeze moving the rods, or I could even have been subconsciously moving them myself. But, as with the sense of sadness I picked up on, I did genuinely feel like there was a presence of some kind.

 

The evening concluded in incredibly dramatic fashion when the whole group gathered in one room in the ruin; a place where many inexplicable things have been seen in the past. We were gathered in a circle and Kathleen (pictured above) spoke out to any spirits present to show a sign that they could here us, and distributed question cards amongst the group for people to ask of any entities that may make their presence known. At this point, a number of people in the group became distressed, with one woman close to tears and one gentleman having spotted what appeared to him to be the figure of a small boy. A lady next to me felt a very strong presence, then a few seconds later I felt a cold shock in my left arm and lower back, causing me to jolt my head round. It felt almost like something was tugging me. The atmosphere began to intimidate me a little at this point, and it was a feeling I've never experienced before and can't explain. Of course, it was getting late by this point, the temperature was lowering and there was a breeze, so it could just have been a burst of wind. But I'm convinced it wasn't. Surely I would have felt a gust of wind in more than just my left arm and lower back, and it was  a strong burst of cold energy, far more powerful than a gust of wind.

 

We said our goodbyes on what proved to be an incredibly dramatic evening, and as we moved through the deepening gloom away from the castle, I felt very strongly that I would not have stayed there on my own for the night under any circumstances. Gradually the cars pulled away as we made our way home, leaving the castle alone in the dark once again.

 

Crumbling. Contemplating. Watching?