The Devil's In The Details: Psychological Thriller and Horror Collection Read online

  The Devil’s in the Details

  A Horror Collection

  J.D. McGregor

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition: September 2018

  The Devil’s In The Details

  Copyright © 2018 J.D. McGregor.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Special Thanks

  This book would not have been possible if it weren’t for the creative efforts of my editor, Lydia Chappel and my cover designer, Christopher Warren. Both have done a superb job and I would recommend their services to anyone.

  Press Here For More on Lydia Chappel

  www.lydiachappel.wixsite.com/website

  Press Here For More on Christopher Warren

  www.horrorcoverdesign.com/p/home.html

  Contents

  1. The Colony

  2. Good Morning, Beautiful

  3. In Between The Dry-Heaves

  4. Swells

  5. The Proposition

  6. Coke

  7. Incomprehensible

  8. Mile High Club

  9. It Hurts So Fucking Good

  10. The Devil's In The Details

  11. Sheldon's Complex

  12. Wheels On The Bus Go Round

  13. Why Am I Still Jealous?

  14. Tunnel Junkies

  15. Tunnel Junkies - Part Two

  16. Evil Within The Institution

  17. Vela Has A Gift For The World

  18. Sky Turns Red

  19. Tundra

  20. Show Me What You Really Are

  21. Danny The Daredevil

  22. All At Someone Else's Expense

  23. Danger: Strong Undertow

  24. Let The Evil In

  25. Fear The Automated Workforce

  1

  The Colony

  The cloud of dust had grown so big, it nearly smothered the entire valley. It would have swallowed skyscrapers if any stood in its path. Its momentum continued to build while it filled the canyon and approached the overhanging cliffs. It pooled against them at first, breaking off little slabs of rock and other sediment. Once it rose over the tops, it would be mere minutes before the entire settlement was engulfed.

  Captain Damon Proudfoot lay flat on his back. The concrete floor beneath him was cold and sterile. He breathed only from his mouth while he stared blankly through the glass ceiling overhead. His focus shifted between two circular objects in the sky.

  The bigger-- blindingly bright and yellow. The smaller-- baby blue.

  Proudfoot knew the dust storm was coming. He'd seen it on the monitor on his last visit to the almost-forgotten communications corridor. That's why he'd made the point to spend so much time on the floor looking up that day. He knew it would be a while before he'd see the Sun and the Earth again.

  The Sun was noticeably smaller in the sky from Mars' surface in comparison to how he remembered it looking from his home planet. It was one of the first of many striking visual details he noticed when his crew first landed close to six Earth years ago.

  He knew why it was one of the first things to catch his eye. The sun rising on the horizon was the last thing he saw before the ship blasted from the launching point back on Saturday, June 3rd, 2034. He knew for a fact the time was 5:41 AM when the rockets first thrust and his last view on Mother Earth disappeared.

  It amazed him how well he could remember the finite details. He figured that’s what happened when all you did was play them over and over in your head all day.

  Wisps of sand smoke started to cloud over the looking glass. Proudfoot groaned with disappointment while his view of the sky above blurred and eventually disappeared altogether. It would be at least a few weeks on Earth’s time that he would be stuck in the underground barracks.

  Reality sank back in, and that had become an increasingly treacherous thing to cope with. Proudfoot had long come to the realization that happiness existed only in escape. Dreaming was the best way to achieve that. It was harder to control during the elusive hours of sleep he would get in his quarters here and there.

  Slipping away into dreams during the day worked best. There was no better venue for that than the floor of the Observation Room.

  Proudfoot pushed himself up into a seated position. His arms had become so slender and devoid of muscle mass that even supporting his own weight had become strenuous. He gingerly lifted one leg and then the other. Slowly, he brought himself to his feet. His stomach rumbled in painful hunger. Reluctantly, he started to wobble through one of the fluorescent-lit hallways in the direction of the Mess Hall.

  Eating had become a chore. Sometimes he fantasized about hiding somewhere and starving himself to the point of weakness where he couldn't eat anymore. That would be an easy way out. That would end the constant nightmare that life had become.

  It was a plan he had yet to find the courage to follow through with.

  Before revealing himself, he stopped briefly and listened around the corner from the Mess Hall. He heard quiet voices whispering amongst each other. He couldn't make out exactly what they were saying, but couldn't imagine it was anything pleasant. He'd long lost interest in social interaction with the remaining members of his crew. He wished there was a way to make them disappear. Then, he could just eat the last of his rations until he wasted away in peace.

  The atmosphere changed the moment he stepped in. Conversation stopped and six pairs of apprehensive eyes locked on him. They sat there, motionlessly leaning over their own food like they meant to protect it. It was like he had transitioned from being the mission's captain to some kind of extraterrestrial predator, threatening their increasingly fragile existence.

  Proudfoot knew better than to bother speaking. He carefully walked between the tables and towards the refrigeration room. He pushed the steel door open and stepped inside. Immediately, he pushed it closed behind him again. Not to limit the release of cold air, but just to feel alone. That was always a relief.

  He looked over the shelves that lined the walls. A crippling defeat consumed him. They were so much emptier than he had remembered them being. He could have sworn there was more than double the portion the last time he was in there. It couldn't have been more than a few days ago. Not that his judgment of time passing was worth much anymore.

  He grabbed one of the vacuum-sealed packets and hurriedly began his exit. When back with the others, he noticed their eyes darting on and off of him. This time, he figured it wasn’t resentment, but rather fear, that he witnessed in their glances. It was the quiet understanding that it wouldn't be long before the food ran out and they all perished on that god-forsaken planet together.

  Negativity was the predominant sentiment on Mars. It had been that way for a long time. It started shortly after the tr
ansmissions from earth stopped coming through five years earlier. There was always the risk that interference or some other difficulty would arise. It was something that was meant to be fixed by the technical crew members. But try as they did, not a single one of Earth’s scheduled transmissions ever reached them again.

  Other crew members didn't like the explanation of something intercepting communications. Frustration and eventual side-taking boiled up to a point that physical altercations started breaking out. It grew so severe and out of Proudfoot's control that things grew bloody and fatal. The Comms-Specialist and two other key members for the crew's survival and eventual full inhabitation on Mars died in a desperate combat that Proudfoot would eventually call the "Civil War."

  Life plummeted into hell after that for the eight who remained. So long as they were cut off from Earth, it would remain that way.

  For a while, Proudfoot clung on to his sanity in the hopes that Earth would eventually send a second ship. That was a promise made to him during mission training. If all else failed, they would send a second ship. No man or woman would be stranded or left behind.

  It was only four-and-a-half years past-due. Even the strongest can only hang on for so long.

  Proudfoot left the Mess Hall intending to let as much time pass as possible before he ventured for a return.

  Proudfoot struggled to put his suit on. He fell against the grated wall while trying to pull straps secure over his midsection. Pain rippled through his body while he got everything fastened in place.

  What was once a simple process, a rudimentary part of mission training, had become a task bordering on impossibility.

  His eyes kept cheating out the window of the airlock. The storm had finally cleared and he could again see the barren landscape of brown and grey dirt.

  He locked his helmet to the body of his suit. It sealed closed and the little green light clicked on his visual, signalling that it was safe to step outside. He typed in the commands for decompression on the wall panel. While he waited, he checked the oxygen level of the suit. He was delighted to see how much there was.

  Seventy-two percent.

  Proudfoot had broken several parts of protocol by the time he took his first steps outside. There was nothing legal or remotely safe about leaving the living complex and going up to the surface alone. The fact that he hadn't notified anyone didn’t make it any better.

  In fairness, following protocol was something that had long been abandoned by the remaining inhabitants of the colony. This was miniature in comparison to the other infractions that had already taken place.

  Proudfoot went down to a knee. He stayed there a short while, grasping dirt and rocks between his fingers and letting them slide through. Escaping the submerged confines of the mostly underground barracks was always a welcome change. One which he likely wouldn't have the strength to perform for very much longer.

  Worried that someone may take notice, he started a light jog away from the settlement. He held his destination firmly fixed inside his mind-- the jagged, reddish mountains in the distance. They didn't seem so far away once he got outside.

  Proudfoot had done the math. He didn't have the oxygen to get there and return. Even getting there would be a stretch. That's precisely the way he wanted it. All he had to do was fight his survival instinct until he passed the point of no return. Not even his natural and undeniable will to survive could save him then.

  He passed under the solar farm. The giant serrated panels towered overhead and temporarily blocked his view of the Sun and the Earth, which he kept glancing up at as if to reaffirm they were still there. He wondered how many of the panels were still in service and when anybody last bothered to check.

  His suit gave him his first warning beep. His oxygen supply was depleting too rapidly. He was already below sixty percent.

  He kept putting one foot in front of the other. He was so convinced that the mountains were getting bigger at the borders of his vision. The tiny optimistic side of him that was still alive believed he would make it there.

  As he grew more tired, it was only inevitable that he would start to dream. He had no problem with that.

  He saw himself as a child again-- one of his favourite things to imagine. He was on one of the many family summer vacations his parents would take him and his brothers on. They'd escape the Littleton suburban sprawl and go up into their little place in the mountains. He reconnected with just how exciting the whole trip was-- to venture so far away from the place you called home. It was that very feeling that would chase down his career path and ultimately make him the first man to step on the Red Planet.

  The Martian mountains ahead of him were distinctly different in colour, size, and shape, but they still reminded him of the Rockies. They made him feel like he was sitting in the back of the old station wagon and watching them get closer.

  Proudfoot checked his oxygen again. Forty-three percent. He was almost at that precious mathematic point where it would be physically impossible for him to make it back.

  He slipped away from reality again. This time, he saw the progression. How his life had been as a child when the mountains outside the city felt like a foreign place so far away from home. How he'd get occasionally homesick at the cabin and cry in his bed until his mother calmed him down, telling him they'd be headed back to Denver in just a couple days.

  It was amazing how small that thought felt to him then. He now understood what it truly meant to feel homesick. He was at home in the Rockies. Earth, in its entirety, was his home. That little blue ball in the sky was the home of humankind-- a dying species never meant to travel into the stars.

  If only he wasn't the captain of the crew to find that out the hard way.

  His suit kept beeping at him in regular intervals. He just kept pushing on. There was no time for rational thought or risk-analysis.

  Something that bothered him for a long time started to feel a little easier to admit. It was the fact that if he was ever given the chance to take it all back, he would. He would have stayed in the Denver area and do so many of the routine normal things a man of his age was meant to do. So many of the basic things that a man neglects when pursuing a life beyond the sky.

  Perhaps never starting a family of his own was what had made the choice so easy. With no offspring to leave behind, captaining the first Mars mission required no second thought. He had nothing to lose. He had nothing to leave behind and miss. The only risk he saw was potentially passing up the opportunity to lead one of the greatest scientific advances in human history. Being the first human being to step foot on another planet should be viewed by the vast majority of the population as a greater feat than mere procreation.

  He kept moving until his suit was beeping non-stop. Oxygen was at eight percent.

  He was well beyond the point of turning back. He focused on the dirt below his feet, which was now starting to move up in a gentle incline. He swore the foothills of the mountains lay just beyond him.

  The suit started reducing the oxygen supply. The inhibiting result was instantaneous. He struggled to breathe and to force his tired body forward. He felt light-headed, and the world around him kept coming in and out of focus.

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't swallow enough air. One more time, he reconnected with his younger self. Suffocation was something he had felt before.

  Again, he was a child in the mountains. The day his older brother pushed his head beneath the surface of the lake and held him there. That feeling of struggling for air, knowing the surface is only a foot above your head and the ladder to the dock is barely out of reach.

  He remembered how strongly and desperately he longed to breathe while stuck below the surface. How vitally important it was to survive and preserve the long and fulfilling life ahead of him.

  He was forced to his hands and knees. This time it was the suffocation itself that he desired. This was his way out. This was how his whole miserable existence would be taken away.

  The world disap
peared. The treads of the vehicle stopped beside him right before he completely lost consciousness.

  Proudfoot was lost in a sea of black for what could have been an eternity. It was somewhere he rather would have stayed, but reality found a way to claw him back.

  The world came back first through one eye, then through the other. Proudfoot's head rolled to the right on the cushioned surface he lay on. A deep, throbbing pain beneath his brow ensued. He tried to move his arms and they flopped helplessly over the edge of the stretcher.

  Given his physical distress, he figured he hadn't died. That fact frustrated him deeply. He really hoped dying was already behind him.

  As things came into focus, he recognized where he was. The colony's Medical Hanger, where the supplies were not surprisingly far fewer and picked-over from his last visit.

  Thomas Reese, the crew’s doctor and biologist leaned over. Compassion was in his face while he ran one finger above Proudfoot's eyes from one side to the other.

  "Can you see me?" he said.

  Proudfoot tried to sit up, but he met Reese's outstretched arm which gently pushed him back down. He held him there, looking at him intently for a long time before releasing.