Twelve stories from the warped mind of Billy Wells. Scary Stories- Volume 5 is my eighth collection of short stories mostly in the horror genre with surprise endings.
Please be aware that some of these offerings are quite gruesome and not for those readers whose parents did not let them watch scary movies and TV shows as a child.
These are the stories in this book:
SOMETHING IN THE WELL:
Jules has no choice but to go to the well where a demon granted a wish that saved his father’s life for a price.
SOMEONE TO KILL:
Brent has a butcher knife and he's looking for someone to kill on a lonely
street tonight.
GRANDPA:
The zombie apocalypse has begun and Grandpa is near death in the next room.
THE PARTY:
A man crashes a Halloween party mysteriously held in a dilapidated mansion unoccupied for decades.
THE FEUD:
After twelve years of truce between two feuding families, Jasper Stump is missing and a beast is devouring people in the woods.
THE TOASTER:
The City of Baltimore appropriates funds to move Edgar Allen Poe's gravesite to a new mausoleum.
SHADY REST:
A rehabilitated psychopath, who inherited millions, leaves the asylum with eight friends willing to share her sprawling mansion.
THE LOSER:
A disillusioned wife regrets marrying her loser husband who fathered two pathetic dolts and fantasizes how great life would be without them.
NIGHT VISITORS:
A horror writer fears the torturers he created in his stories will come for him one dark night.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT:
Two young lovers infatuated with one another begin to see imperfections as their wedding day approaches.
THE JOKER:
An author plans to use the comedic M.O. of the way a real serial killer staged his victims in his next novel.
THE VAMPIRE KILLER:
A man claims the iconic rock star he killed with a wooden stake was a vampire not a man.
Excerpt
Something In the Well
“Fasten your seat belts" came the announcement over the intercom. Jules Cooper would soon be landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.
It had been thirteen years since he had been in Virginia. He had a lot of happy memories here he would always treasure. But now his back was to the wall. He had no more options. His life and the welfare of his son depended on a demon in a well, who could grant a wish for a price to deliver them from evil.
Ironically, Jules had lost his faith to believe in anything he couldn't see and touch in Virginia—after he met Todd Logan. Todd, a self-proclaimed atheist, who had become his best friend, had belittled Jules's religious beliefs unmercifully until he had none. Jules had never understood how important believing in something on faith alone could be until now. He shook his head in despair, almost certain his return to his childhood neighborhood would be a waste of time. Nonetheless, he said a silent prayer that what his father had told him so long ago would come true.
Jules had met Todd in The Religions of the World class during their first semester at UVA in Charlottesville. Early in the semester, Jules had learned, to his chagrin, only 20 percent of the world's population believed in his God. When he'd attended church every Sunday as a young boy, he never questioned what his parents had taught him. He had actually believed God knew what every person on his street, in his town, in his state, and ultimately the world was doing, so He could evaluate that person’s chances of going to heaven.
Todd had convinced Jules the concept was as ridiculous as Santa delivering packages to millions of children all over the globe in a single night.
Todd had captivated Jules from the beginning. He had never known anyone as wild and self-confident as his new friend. He never understood why he had clicked so well with Todd, since their personalities were so different. They had double-dated, studied, and hung around together all through college. Then, following graduation, they had applied and landed auditor positions at one of the most prestigious accounting firms in the country at that time, Arthur Andersen & Co., in its Washington, DC, office.
The competition he'd had with Todd greatly contributed to Jules’s success educationally and professionally. Their healthy desire to beat each other made them excel in everything they decided to do, not only in college but also with AA & Co.
Their friendship continued to grow stronger, until Todd became smitten with a big-breasted blonde named Charlotte Prim, who also worked as an auditor for AA.
Jules knew Charlotte was a bitch the first time he met her. He never understood what Todd had seen in her, but Todd married Charlotte only four months after their first date. Jules was best man at their wedding and had to make up some bullshit about how the happy couple would live in bliss for all eternity. After the marriage, Jules rarely saw Todd except at work. It was a loss Jules never got over.
A year later Jules married Denise Rupert, the controller of one of the firms he audited. He tried to rekindle the relationship with Todd and Charlotte by inviting them to join Denise and him for dinner.
The evening was a complete disaster. The two wives hated each other instantly. They had nothing in common. Jules and Todd would never be good friends again.
Jules felt the sudden jolt of the wheels touching down on the runway. He remembered how Todd had driven Jules to this very terminal on that final evening when he had caught a plane to begin work in the Big Apple. He’d been transferred to the New York office—a much bigger operation—to a more prestigious position with AA. Todd had remained in Washington to manage the DC office.
As the plane taxied toward the terminal, Jules couldn't believe how the years had slipped away. He’d never been given another assignment that allowed him to cross paths with Todd and had never been called upon to work again in the DC office.
Jules had lived with his parents on Route 1, about seven miles south of Alexandria, Virginia, until he’d moved to his own apartment after graduation. When Jules was twelve years old, his father had told him about the demon in the wishing well that had saved his father’s life.
Jules was pushing forty now. A lot had happened since his salad days working with Todd in DC. So many good times but, in recent years, so much tragedy.
Last January, Jules read, in an interoffice memo, how a mugger had shot and killed Todd at the Falls Church subway station, only ten miles from where he was right now. The loss hit him hard in spite of their long separation. Todd had been a dear friend who had contributed a great deal to Jules's successful career.
Jules saw the seat belt light go off, and he joined the other passengers retrieving their carry-ons from the overhead compartments.
Six months after losing Todd, Denise had died from a massive heart attack. She and Jules had enjoyed a blissful life together and had one son, Adam, who was currently attending Yale University. Jules rarely heard from him, unless he needed money.
Jules's successful career with Arthur Andersen declined rapidly after the loss of the love of his life and his best friend all within six months’ time. He drowned his sorrow with habitual drinking. He’d also begun to gamble heavily, which quickly escalated to the point of insanity. So far he'd been able to hide his alcoholism from his boss, colleagues, and clients, but it was getting more difficult as his addictions grew worse.
Each night Jules went to his apartment—which served as a dual reminder of how he had lost Denise and their house—opened a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, and drank until he achieved unconsciousness. He spent most nights on the floor in front of the TV, rather than sleeping in his bed. Before he took his first drink each evening, he would set his alarm to wake him up in time to get ready for work the next day. Arthur Andersen & Co. frowned on even moderate drinking, and Jules knew he would be terminated immediately, if management found out about his problem.
On weekends he gambled and drank even more heavily than on weekdays. Finally the night came when the two vices in their excesses caused him to gamble more than he had to lose. An infamous, crooked loan shark named Hannibal had loaned him $100,000 to place a bet on a sure winner, Watch My Dust, at the racetrack.
Previous losses had caused Jules to take out a second mortgage on his home and to exhaust his line of credit on his credit cards. He lost his home first. Ruined his credit next. In a short time he had frittered away his life savings. Now he had no way to borrow funds to pay back the loan shark.
He’d received the call this morning. If he did not pay the debt with interest by the end of the week, the mob would break his legs to start with and go from there.
So, on Jules’s way to New York’s JFK International Airport, he had been watching the cars behind the taxi to see if he could spot anyone following him. If so, Jules didn't see them. There was no point in following him anyway. Hannibal had made it clear: if Jules skipped town, Hannibal’s thugs would kidnap Jules’s son and break his legs or worse.
Jules could only think of one possible way out of the predicament he'd gotten himself into. The loan shark had to die, but it had to be in a way where no one would suspect his involvement.
He had never owned a gun and couldn't imagine hiring a hit man to murder Hannibal. Jules’s only recourse was to do the same thing his father had done when his back had been to the wall so many years ago.
When his father was fourteen, some gangbangers had threatened to castrate him for talking to the leader’s girlfriend. An old man who hung out at the local grocery store had saved the day when he’d told Jules’s father about a magic well with a demon who could make his wish come true. My father said he’d laughed in the old man’s face, then asked him why he and his cronies weren’t guzzling cognac in the south of France. The old man claimed the wish would only work for someone so desperate he would agree to repayments that would last a lifetime. My father told the man how crazy he was, yet my father eventually resorted to going there himself.
After landing and deplaning at the airport in Virginia, Jules went to the taxi line, and, ten minutes later, one pulled up to the front, and he got in.
"Where to, sir?" the driver asked, looking Jules over as the taxi headed for the exit.
"I don’t have an address. Are you familiar with the Engleside area, about a mile north of Fort Belvoir?"
"Yes, I know it. I went to school at Woodlawn Elementary."
"So did I. When were you there?"
“In 1998."
"I was there in 1980. Anyway, there’s a parcel of land an elderly man named Warbucks owned next to an old abandoned cemetery at the bottom of Round Hill.”
"Yeah, I know the property. Old man Warbucks must be close to a hundred years old by now. Land developers want to build condos on his property, but he refuses to sell, no matter how much they offer. The old codger is nuts. When he kicks the bucket, his children will dump the land right away. That is, if they’re still alive. I hear they're in their seventies now themselves.”
"I need to visit the cemetery. As I remember, it’s off Wolfbane Road."
"Pardon me for asking, but why would you want to go to that desolate place? No one's been buried there for thirty years."
"A wishing well is there in a grove of trees."
"A wishing well?” The driver looked at Jules like he’d lost his mind. “Sorry, fellow. I know Wolfbane Road, but I don't know about any wishing well."
"That doesn't surprise me, but, as far as you know, the cemetery is still there, right? I mean, no one has moved the graves to build condos yet, have they?”
"No, it's still there. It’s as creepy as ever. My dad took me fishing there in the nearby pond when I was little. Wolfbane Road is a dark, scary place, even in daylight. The trees overhang the road like monster claws. It's none of my business, but do you really believe in wishing wells?"
"I understand your skepticism. I never believed in them either all my life, but today, I have no choice but to believe."
“Well,” the cabbie said, rolling his eyes, “to each his own.” The driver had already clocked five miles, and the meter was running when he said, "Do me a favor, and show me some cash before I go any farther."
Jules removed his wallet from his back pocket, took out five twenty-dollar bills, and showed them to him.
The cabbie nodded. "Sorry about that. But if you believe in wishing wells, I just needed to see some cold, hard cash."
"I understand."
As they proceeded farther down Route 1, the taxi driver kept peering at Jules in the rearview mirror with stupefied curiosity. He finally asked, "I hope you don't mind my asking, but what happened out there that makes you believe in a wishing well?"
"Some old man told my father about it many years ago. He claimed the well was magic. My father was about fourteen when some gangbangers threatened to cut off his balls because he looked at the gang leader's girlfriend."
"No shit. How does the wishing well come into play?"
"The afternoon the gang was to pay my dad a visit, an eighteen-wheeler obliterated their Chevy Impala. All four passengers in the car were crushed and mangled up inside."
"Sounds like a weird coincidence to me. Nothing more."
"That's what I told my father too, until he told me no one was driving the truck. It had been parked at a construction site earlier, and the keys were on a clipboard inside the office. They weren’t even in the truck when the police looked inside the cab."
“Come on. What do you mean, no one was driving?"
"Several carloads of people witnessed the accident. They were there when the door of the semi’s cab was pried open, and it was empty.”
The cabbie stared at Jules in disbelief and finally whistled an eerie tune. “Oooo, oooo, oooo, oooo. It's a nice story, but there must be some other explanation. Trucks don't drive themselves."
Jules said nothing and let the cabbie think what he wanted.
As they continued up Route 1, Jules became melancholy as he noticed many of the old places were no longer there. The worst disappointment was the absence of the Dixie Pig Barbecue Restaurant across from Beacon Hill. He sighed and muttered to himself, "I'll never have that recipe again."
The taxi driver missed the first right turn leading to the cemetery but took the next one.
Unlike Route 1, this back road seemed unchanged. They climbed a steep hill and bounded over the top so abruptly it took Jules’s breath away. He hadn't felt a rush like that since he’d ridden the Loch Ness Monster at Busch Gardens.
Then Jules saw the broken picket fence and the leaning tombstones at the bottom of Round Hill, almost entirely hidden in tall weeds. He announced to the cabbie, “This is it. Pull over.” Jules pointed to the right. "There’s the path. I won't be long, fifteen minutes tops. Can you wait?”
"It's your dime."
Jules exited the taxi and took the path. It was late afternoon, and the sun was fading. The gnarled trees along the walkway were foreboding, as the branches seemed to reach out for him while he made his way into the undergrowth. He brushed a limb from his face, and he finally saw the old well in a small clearing.
Somewhere in the distance to the right, he heard a weird screech from some kind of animal. The surrounding woods suddenly became graveyard still. His legs felt like rubber as he approached the stone structure covered with green and black mold. A queer smell emanated from the black hole. A rusty bucket hung from a chain threaded into a circular spool in the center of the opening. The wind whispered through the trees.
Jules remembered the story his father had told as if it were yesterday about the demon who lived here. Jules recalled the look on his father's face when he’d said, "It's an unholy place, son. Promise me that you’ll never go there. Making a wish at the well is like selling your soul to the devil who lives below." His father had never explained what he’d meant by this, only that he had no choice but to go there, regardless of the consequences.
Jules had asked his father many times to tell him more, but his father never would reveal anything else about the pact he'd made with the demon. His father had died of emphysema years later. During the days leading up to his death, he kept a rosary in his hands and prayed constantly for salvation. Jules would never forget the look of horror on his dad's face the morning he’d died. It would be branded in Jules’s memory if he lived a thousand years.
Another peculiarity after his dad died was how his father had arranged to be buried in the old cemetery close to the well, instead of where his wife—Jules’s mother—was buried at Mount Comfort cemetery, only a few miles away.
Jules wasn't a religious man. He didn't believe in God, the Devil, ghosts, or demons. Why should he? He'd never seen anything supernatural. He’d come here totally as a last resort. Until now he had considered anyone a crackpot who said they believed in such things—someone who needed his head examined. But, like his father, Jules’s back was to the wall. Just like his father, who needed the gangbangers to die, Jules needed Hannibal to die, to protect Jules’s son.
Maybe it was just a weird coincidence, like the cabbie said, that the tractor-trailer had obliterated the car the gangbangers were in. Maybe his father was delusional or off his rocker with guilt and fear when he had told Jules about what had happened. It didn't matter now. This was the final straw. Jules’s only chance. Even though he’d spent his life ridiculing others about God, the Devil, ghosts, and goblins, now he had to make himself believe there really was something magic in this well. His father had always said there are no atheists in foxholes when the bombs are falling. Maybe he was right.
It didn't matter to Jules what happened later on. He didn't believe in heaven or hell anyway. If he could live one more hour, one more day, one more year, it would be worth the consequences. He went to the edge of the well and looked into the abyss. He couldn't see anything past ten feet into the blackness. He picked up a rock from the ground and dropped it in the hole. He listened.
Nothing.
How could this be? He picked up another rock and dropped it in. The same thing happened. Nothing. He didn't hear the rock hit bottom, as if the hole went on forever into the depths of hell.
His previous eternal skepticism started to weigh on his mind. If there were a demon down there, he was a long way down. Jules suddenly felt silly, standing here, believing in a demon in a well who could grant a wish.
It started to rain. The cabbie was waiting. Jules had to get on with it.
He lowered his head in despair and shouted as loud as he could into the well, "I wish Hannibal, the loan shark, who threatened my son and me, was dead. He is a bad man who has hurt many people. The world would be a better place without him."
Jules stood there, waiting. He listened. The rain fell harder. He repeated the wish aloud several times. After each heartfelt pleading, he listened for a sign of salvation. A sign something was down there.
The rain fell even harder. He heard the cabbie toot his horn.
Jules looked into the abyss in exasperation. The sickening dread of defeat and total futility began to envelop him. For some reason he remembered the poignant words of Paul Newman in the movie Cool Hand Luke, when he had reached a critical defining moment in his life, much like Jules had right now. Jules screamed into the black hole, "Just like I thought—I’m just standing here in the rain, talking to myself."
A croak came from the darkness below. "Is that you, son?"
Professional Reviews
stars4.5 THIS IS A TRUE SCARY STORY!!!! :
This book does not disappoint, It is a true scary story! It is incredibly freaky, and it gives you chills and thoughts that stay forever. This is an incredible scary story compared to others. This story is actually, really scary. After reading it, I could not stop having cold chills down my spine!
But the only bad thing about the stories that made me take 5% off is the bad words in the story. Unfortunetly, each and every story has the f word, a word, b word, and sh word which really ruins it for me.
Otherwise, this is an awesome story and it is so worth reading!
IT IS A SCARY STORY AND FOR THE FIRST TIME I WAS ACTUALLY ABLE TO ENJOY A GOOD SCARY! IF ANY OF YOU GUYS NEED A FREAKY STORY, READ THIS ONE! :)
5.0 out of 5 starsSCARY!!!! LOVED IT!!!!
Billy Wells does it again! Awesome read! Crazy suspense throughout each story....A grand old bloody time! Could not put the book down through all the twists and turns....Keep up the great work! The horror fanatic craves more!!
Scary!!!!
Good scary and twisted but good well written and he should write more! I would recommend this to people over 14-15 I really enjoyed this book though
After Satan negotiates a pact with God and unleashes his army of demons, a secret sect battles a diabolical prophecy that threatens humanity.
Release Date: November 21, 2018
