Uneasy Reading: 4 Horror Shorts by Jason Tucker Page B

chips
into his mouth from the half-eaten bag that rested on his gut. He
burped and felt a bit of bile rise. Too many damned chips. He took
a swig of soda to push the vomit down, but it didn't help. He
sighed and pulled his bulk out of the recliner. The Pepto-Bismol in
the kitchen would do the trick – even if it did taste like a
spoonful of hell.
    After a second swig of the pink stuff, the
sound from the television in the other room abruptly disappeared.
He set the bottle down and wiped his mouth with a meaty forearm.
Through the kitchen window, he could see that the porch light was
still shining, so the power wasn't out. Maybe the television
finally gave up the ghost. It was an old tube model, but it had
served him well for nearly ten years. He sighed. A new television
wasn't in the budget of a fifty-five-year-old deputy sheriff. A
couple of good smacks might get it to working again.
    When he returned to the living room,
replacing the television was suddenly the last thing on his
mind.
    A masked man dripping rainwater onto the
scratched and scuffed hardwood floor stood in the center of the
room. Bertram reached instinctively to where his holster should be
and then realized he was in his underwear.
    "Looking for your gun belt?" the man
asked.
    "What do you want?" Bertram asked. He
couldn't make out any of the man's features beneath the balaclava
he wore. If this was someone in the department's idea of a joke,
Bertram didn't find it funny.
    "I want you, Deputy Vick. I took the liberty
of removing this from your gun belt for you." The man held up
Bertram's service revolver. "Kind of old-fashioned, isn't it? I
figured a big man like you would want something with a little more
stopping power than a .38."
    Bertram didn't recognize the man's voice,
yet the intruder knew his name. Silver Point was a little
town and when Vick found out who had the balls to break into his
house and pull this crap, there would be a whole lot of hell to
dish onto someone. Provided the man holding the gun didn't shoot
him first.
    "I don't have money if that's what you're
after," Bertram said. He started to take mental notes on the
intruder. He wasn't overly tall – less than Bertram's six feet by
about three or four inches. He wore a sweater. Not overly muscled,
but compact – and probably stronger than his size would indicate.
He was probably insane too, and Bertram knew that made even the
little ones fight like cornered dogs. Bertram figured he could
probably take the guy.
    Of course, there was the matter of the man
having his revolver, and that complicated things.
    "You are not a nice man," the intruder
said.
    Something about the voice seemed familiar to
Bertram, but he couldn’t place it yet. It flitted just outside of
where his brain could grasp.
    "You come here to scold me? You don't know
me, son," Bertram said.
    "I do know you," the man said. "I know the
things you've done. Now I can fix those things."
    "Who are you?"
    "You were friends with my father. You knew
my sister too."
    5.
    Kidnapping a three-hundred plus pound man
was hard work, and getting Deputy Vick to cooperate wasn't as
simple as Martin had hoped. He tried to make Bertram put on his own
handcuffs – which was no easy feat since the man's width wouldn't
allow him to place his hands behind his back. Martin had to settle
for the cuffs in front. Then he had to knock Bertram unconscious
once he got him into the car. It took three strikes with the butt
of the revolver. On the third blow, Martin heard something crack,
and he thought it was Bertram's skull. It wouldn't do to have him
dead before he got him to the house. Fortunately, the revolver's
wooden handle had snapped: not Bertram's head.
    Once he got home, Cassie started giving him
instructions on the best way to haul the unconscious man's body
from the car… as if she'd done it a thousand times. Martin
listened, although he thought it would’ve been a lot easier if
she'd been able to help. She was dead, so he couldn't gripe