It Came from the Garage! Read online

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  It was late afternoon when Kevin Coltman reversed the Jaguar XK-120 out onto the road. The engine purred, the gears as smooth as if the car had just come off the production line. Yet he was as nervous as if he had been a learner driver about to take his test.

  He opted to drive on quiet rural roads, preferring to take it slowly and stop if he experienced any problems. The car was over seventy years old, after all, and though it ran well, its reliability was not beyond question.

  He cruised down tree-lined roads, switching on the headlights as dusk moved towards darkness. He had decided upon a circuit, down past the disused quarry to the village below, and then back home.

  The old quarry rolled up on his left, with its towering granite walls and ground strewn with the rock falls over the past century. Picturesque as it seemed, it was a wild and lonely place.

  He hadn’t gone far beyond the quarry when the Jaguar’s engine began to stutter like it was going to cut out. Kevin cursed beneath his breath and accelerated hard, but the revs did not pick up. A warning light on the control panel flickered.

  “Damnation!” he cursed aloud, knowing only too well that the car was going to leave him stranded him here. The fault could be one of a number of things. Doubtless he would be able to fix it, but he did not dare stop on this narrow country road with a sharp bend to his rear. He swung the steering wheel over to his left, bumped his way into the rocky entrance to the quarry as at last the engine cut out with a whine.

  It was pitch dark here, the tall rocky sides of the quarry cutting out the fading daylight. He fumbled in his pocket for the small torch which he carried with him at all times, and, not finding it, muttered a curse. He must have left it on his workbench back home.

  Somewhere an owl hooted like it was mocking his plight. A sense of unease crept over him. This car had been troublesome right from the start. The damn thing was jinxed.

  He made as if to open the door, but the handle appeared to have jammed. The door refused to budge despite his repeated efforts.

  Suddenly he became aware that he was not alone—somebody was standing at the rear of the car. While it was much too dark to make out details, even in the dim light, he could spy movement in his rearview mirror.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded, his voice trembling as fear set his heart to gallop. “Who is it? What do you want?”

  There came no reply. The air was eerily silent.

  The owl hooted.

  Then a voice came from out of the darkness, a hollow tone that sent shivers up Kevin’s spine.

  “You are a thief,” it said, its voice low and funereal. “You have stolen my car, like the others who paid for it with their lives—my beautiful car, from all those years ago.”

  “You…” Kevin stammered. “Whoever you are, you can have it back. I… I want to get rid of it.”

  “It is not so simple as that. Your crime must not go unpunished. Or do you not know whose car this is?”

  Movement from the rear of the car drew Kevin’s gaze. A figure shuffled around to the driver’s side window. He could not see what it was, short of a vague silhouette that blended with the darkness, and yet somehow was darker still.

  Suddenly, the night was awash in the red light of two burning hellfires just outside Kevin’s window. In the glare of those blazes, the face into which these glowing eyes were set came into view. A bleached-white, fleshless skull leered at Kevin.

  “I am Maurice Latcham, who died and yet still lives!” the skull roared at him, “I am Maurice Latcham, the living dead!”

  Kevin was trembling in every limb, scarcely unable to believe what was happening. “Take the car, I don’t want it. I never wanted it in the first place! Please!”

  Latcham’s horrible eye-fires burned into him from out of the darkness. The ghoulish figure remained silent, as though he were considering Kevin’s offer.

  Then, all of a sudden, Kevin became aware of a rumbling sound. It sounded far off at first, though it was quickly approaching. A shower of rock splinters rained all around him, pitting the earth with fallen stones. Several pinged off the Jag’s roof and bonnet, dinging the metal in spots and punching holes in others. A stone the size of his fist punched through the windscreen and shattered it. Kevin raised his arms to cover his face, but too late—a dagger of broken glass slashed his cheek open from his lip to his ear.

  The earth shook as the quarry side collapsed, sending tonnes of rocks careening downward in a deadly avalanche. Kevin meant to scream, but his dying yell was drowned out by the cascading fury of the rockfall that buried him and the Jaguar.

  The rockfall was over as quickly as it had come on, leaving only swirls of dust in the wind. The owl gave one final hoot, then flew off.

  The night was silent as before.

  Not a single trace of the Jaguar or its occupant showed beneath the stone; not so much as a gleaming shard of twisted bodywork or a splash of blood.

  Latcham’s revenge was at last complete—if he could not have his car, then no one else would. His beloved car was gone forever, along with the last of those who would think to call it theirs.

  About The Author

  Guy N. Smith

  Guy N. Smith is a best-selling author with over 100 books to his name. Genres include: horror, mystery, fiction, westerns, children’s fiction and a number of non-fiction titles. He has also penned many short stories for anthologies and the legendary London Mystery Selection.

  In between his writing he has had a varied and interesting career. He worked in banking, was a private detective and had his own shotgun cartridge loading business before becoming the Gun Editor of The Countryman’s Weekly.

  For nearly four decades he has lived with his wife Jean in a remote area of the Shropshire/Welsh border hills. Guy has his own shooting, deer stalking, and organic small holding. They have four grown-up children and two grandchildren who live in various parts of the UK.

  M.A.D. Mobile

  By: Antonio Simon, Jr.

  The final words he remembered his father saying weren’t chronologically his last, but they were the most impactful, and they’d rattled in Paul’s skull since his old man gave up the ghost a month ago.

  Keep away from that car, son. It’ll kill you.

  But what did he know? Paul and his old man hadn’t seen eye–to-eye in years, and their relationship had warmed only to glacial levels since the stroke that dropped pops in a wheelchair.

  That was the problem with family—blood-relations determined kin, while any number of other factors went into determining friendship. The two rarely matched up. But in this case, by the time his dad lost his battle to a landslide of old-age maladies, he and Paul had forged some semblance of peace such that Paul was back in daddy-o’s good graces—and his will.

  Paul didn’t stand to inherit much, but if he got anything, it was still a windfall. After paying the attorneys and what hospital bills remained, the executor of the estate handed Paul a wire transfer receipt for about fifty thousand dollars. He’d also handed him something else—a sealed manila envelope and instructions not to open it until he got home.

  Inside were four objects: an old Polaroid photo, a handwritten message from his father on the nursing home’s stationery, a key ring with two keys threaded onto it, and a paper napkin.

  The photo was very old. It had faded to washed-out shades that only suggested primary colors. In the photo was an old barn pops had converted into a garage. Paul’s dad took him to visit this place every weekend when he was a kid, but these outings stopped long before he reached adulthood. He figured dad had stopped bringing him here because he’d sold the place, although he’d never bothered to ask, and dad never told him for certain.

  In the barn, parked with its headlights facing out the front door, was an old car. Paul squinted to make out its details, but the photo was so far gone that he couldn’t tell the car’s make or model. Still, he recognized it from his youth. This was the reason dad would come out every weekend, to turn wrenches, top-off oil, and give the car a wash.

  Dad doted upon the car, despite Paul recalling that it was a rusted piece of junk. Young Paul had hated going out to the countryside to help dad maintain it. They’d spend all day in that stuffy barn, and by the time they’d finish, the two of them would stink like gasoline and armpits. The least pops could have done in return is let Paul go for a ride in the car, but as far as he could remember, not once could he recall dad starting the engine.

  Next to come out of the envelope was the message, written in dad’s crabbed handwriting.

  Paul,

  There comes a point when a man’s got to let bygones be bygones. It’s just a part of life, and now that I’m coming to the end of mine, I realize this. All is forgiven.

  I’ve learned, too, that what really defines a man is that he does what must be done. When I’m gone, use the money I’ve saved up to take care of your mother.

  Sell the old car.

  For your sake, I trust you’ll learn these lessons sooner in life than I did.

  All the best to you,

  Your father

  Paul had double- and triple-checked with the attorneys that the will titled his father’s possessions in his name alone. That meant he could do whatever he pleased with everything his father had accumulated in life, even disregard his father’s dying wishes. Unbeknownst to pops, mom had died while the old man was in the convalescent home. Nobody had bothered to tell him of his spouse’s passing out of a fear that it would upset him beyond what his old ticker could handle. Then pops died shortly thereafter, which mooted the point entirely.

  The third item, the key ring, supported an automotive key—no doubt the one that would fit the car’s ignition—and another that would surely open the padlock on the barn door.

  The last object, the paper napkin, was a hand-drawn map done with a fountain pen. It showed the intersection of County Road 1150 and Highway 27, the location of dad’s old barn.

  Paul stuffed each of these things into their envelope and set out that same afternoon, following the winding-up of his father’s estate.

  His Saab 9-3 rolled down a dirt path that ended in a dilapidated old barn. If this was indeed the same place as from his youth, he didn’t recognize it from how sorry a state it was in. Paint that had once been red flaked off the surface of dry-rotted wood trusses. Knotholes the size of his thumb had been excavated further by the structure’s resident termite colony. Rusted iron supports jutted out at odd angles where the wood they once held up had rotted away. The double doors in its front were set square to the ground, but the frame in which they sat was crooked as the building listed to one side, though whether because of a faulty foundation or because it was caving under its own weight, he could not say. A thick iron chain had been snaked through the door handles and padlocked in place.

  An icy sensation ran through him that set his hair on end. Something was not right about this place. His fight-or-flight alarm was sounding. There was danger here, though he could not tell what form it would take.

  Paul jammed the key into the rusted padlock and gave it a twist, but the lock wouldn’t budge. Rust had frozen its internal workings. He turned the key again and snapped it off inside the lock. Not one to be deterred, he returned to his car for the pickaxe he’d stashed in the trunk. A few solid blows shattered the rusted metal, dropping the padlock in two pieces at his feet. Grasping a door handle with both hands, he threw his weight backward and tugged at the door, backpedaling as it grudgingly swung outward, its hinges screaming all the way.

  Once he’d pulled the door open as far as it would go, he did the same to the other one. The barn swayed as the doors were drawn apart. He wiped his hands off on the thighs of his jean pants, then doubled over to catch his breath.

  Dust that had sat undisturbed for decades within the barn swirled out the doors, obscuring what lay within from his sight. With his luck, the place would be empty, and he’d have come all the way out here for nothing. He rubbed his face with the back of his shirtsleeve—it was still a few hours from sunset, and yet it was unbearably hot out.

  He straightened up and withdrew a penlight he kept hooked on his keychain, then entered the barn. He hadn’t gone five feet inside when his knee ran against the front bumper of the vehicle sitting within.

  After all this time, dad’s car was still here.

  It was as he remembered it, except the intervening decades had not been kind. The once vibrant blue paint had faded to a robin’s egg pastel that had gone matte. Rust had bitten holes in the sheet metal he could put a finger through. And in those spots where neither paint nor rust held sway, the car bore patches of gray body putty that hadn’t been sanded smooth.

  It was a shoebox of a car—a Dodge Demon from the early 70’s. Everything about it screamed “big.” It was as long as a hearse and wide enough to seat four passengers abreast in the back. Its hood was open, looking like a patient at an unscrupulous dentist’s office after having been told to say “Ahhh” while the good doctor snuck out to play a few rounds of golf. Shoehorned into the engine compartment was a motor that looked more at home powering a speedboat. Atop a four-barrel carburetor, the engine wore its circular air cleaner like a crown.

  Paul walked the length of the car, his eyes never leaving it. He was as surprised to find it intact as he was to find it here at all. What could it possibly be worth? A few grand in parts, maybe? More, if the car actually ran. He was so transfixed by his find that he hadn’t noticed his hand had already dug into his pocket and retrieved the ignition keys.

  He stopped cold before reaching for the driver’s door. This car had sat for years; what were the chances he could get it to start? Slim, and none. The oil in the motor—assuming it hadn’t all seeped out—was by now likely useless gunk that stuck all the internal moving parts together like glue. He was about to reach for his cellphone and call for a flatbed tow-truck when he noticed his phone wasn’t on him—he’d left it in his Saab’s cup holder.

  He glanced back at the key in his hand, then the car door.

  There was no harm in opening her up and sitting down inside, was there?

  Of course not.

  It took some cajoling, but the driver’s side door lock popped open when Paul turned the key. The leather that lined the driver’s seat was cracked and faded from the elements, and bore a few holes where spongy yellow filler spilled out. He sat down, the car’s suspension creaking beneath him. The black rug at his feet sported a cutesy cartoon devil holding a pitchfork. The tines of his fork faced downward, providing the “M” in the middle of the word “DEMON” stitched in yellow thread.

  In front of him, a three-post steering wheel supported a column-mounted gear selector for an automatic transmission. Behind the wheel were rallye-styled gauges—two big dials, one for a tachometer, another for everything else arranged in a cluster; and a smaller one in the middle.

  He put the key in the ignition and gave it a twist.

  Nothing, not even a click from the engine.

  It was to be expected—old as it was, the battery had as much spark in it as a block of wood.

  Suddenly, there was an electric whir, as if something beneath the hood had come to life. The cabin light flickered, then shone weakly onto the car’s dark interior. The backlight on the instrument cluster blinked on, as though to salute Paul and await further instructions. Those instructions came immediately, and they were simple enough.

  Fire it up.

  Paul pegged the ignition switch back and the engine strained heroically, chugging and sputtering like an old man with pneumonic lungs. With every loping chug, the engine grew stronger, each turn coming faster on the heels of the last until they came in rapid-fire succession. Then, with a mighty groan that shook the body panels, the motor turned over and roared to life. The blast of noise and heat from the engine compartment sent helices of dust swirling away in every direction.

  Paul sat behind the wheel, dumbfounded.

  There had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for how an abandoned old car could start up so readily despite years of disuse. If dad had had the foresight to write his last will and testament, then he certainly could have made arrangements for this car’s maintenance in his absence. Dad sure cared for it, what with his weekly pilgrimages out here when Paul was a kid, despite his repeated warnings of late to get rid of the car.

  He clambered out of the driver’s seat and rounded the car to its front. The engine ran like a Swiss watch, its idle sound a symphony of whirs, ticks, and clicks in all the right notes. Everything ran so smoothly that you’d think the car had just been driven off the sales lot, when in fact it hadn’t seen a dealership since pops bought it back in 1971.

  He shut the hood and circled the car, giving it another once-over. Despite looking beat up, the car seemed serviceable enough where it mattered. Without a second thought, he hopped back into the driver’s seat and put it into drive.

  Toeing the gas brought the Mopar V-8 to life. By the reaction he got from how gingerly he’d tapped the pedal, he could tell the car begged for more. The car wanted—demanded to be driven. He could almost feel the engine’s vacuum actuators sucking at him, pulling for more—more fuel, more speed, more foot on pedal, more life!

  Life!

  And what a life he’d have ahead of him. Paul grinned ear to ear. The car was phenomenal. Sure, it wasn’t a looker by any stretch, but a paint job and some body work would do wonders. To hell with what pops had wanted, this car was too awesome to get rid of.

  Besides, Paul was his own man now.

  A free man.

  He had no wife or kids, and now that mom and dad were gone, he had nobody to worry about—or to tell him what to do. First thing he’d do with the cash he’d inherited was fix up this classic cruiser, then take it on the prowl. He was certain it would get him so much tail he’d need a trailer to haul it all back home.