Behind Dark Doors (the complete collection): Eighteen suspenseful short stories
Susan May
BEHIND DARK DOORS
The Complete Collection
Eighteen suspenseful short stories
SUSAN MAY
Dedication
This book is dedicated to O’Henry, Edgar Allen Poe, Hans Christian Anderson, Alfred Hitchcock, Jeffrey Archer, Stephen King and every other master of the short story form. You’ve inspired me since I was four years old.
Welcome to my world
In the past few decades, short stories have become a lost art.
When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies, they were everywhere: in magazines, anthologies, collections, and comics. I cut my reading and writing teeth on them, and they’ve entertained and inspired me ever since.
The stories that most stayed with me, the ones I read over and over again, are all shorts. Stephen King’s 1972 Battleground, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart, John Wyndham’s Pawley’s Peepholes, Broken Routine by Jeffrey Archer and, of course, all the wonderful fairy tales we all read as children, Hans Christian Anderson, Grimm’s and so many more. They all spring to mind as I write this foreword.
Lets, also, not forget the short storytelling form in television so popular in my youth, such as Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Night Gallery. In my view, many of these ten to fifteen minute shorts are up there in the great fiction realm. The irony in these tales is what hooks me as much as the plot. This storytelling is where I fell in love with the art of the twist.
In a 1985 Twilight Zone story entitled A Little Peace and Quiet (similar to an Arthur C. Clarke short story All The Time in the World), a harried housewife discovers a gold pendant that stops time. Ultimately, she uses it to pause time just as a nuclear warhead is about to hit their town. The camera pans out leaving her smack bang in the middle of the ultimate dilemma. Does she release time and face the world’s end or will she live alone forever? She wished for peace and quiet and got exactly what she wanted.
Exquisite, marvelous irony.
There, too, is the fun of the short story. We don’t even have to know the backstory or the conclusion to enjoy the ride. So often, you are left with an unanswered question and, in fact, the more ponderous the conclusion, the more satisfying the story.
The trick to writing a good short tale is to understand at what point to leap into the story and at what point to leave. Discovering those moments is the part I love most.
For a writer, shorts provide a wonderful way to explore an idea, create a world quickly, or solve the nagging itch of a character or plot that won’t leave you alone until you’ve put it on paper.
My short story writing career began at six, and continued all my life. In 2010, when I approached writing as a serious career, it felt natural to begin again by writing short stories alongside my novels and novellas. Very early on, I was humbled to have many of my stories win awards and find publication in international and Australian anthologies.
With the rise and rise of eBooks, short stories and novellas are enjoying resurgence in popularity. We don’t always have time to plow through a four-hundred-page book, but we can always tackle twenty pages of a short story before bed, on the bus or train, or while waiting at the doctor’s.
Thank you, wonderful reader, for joining me here to partake of these story morsels. Even if you don’t remember my name, if I’ve done my job right, you’ll remember the twists and the irony in these stories.
If you do enjoy them, please come back for more in the companion collections of Behind Dark Doors, to which I will continue to add. From where these darlings came, there are plenty more. I have unlimited access to dark doors and, somehow, was fortunate enough to be given the keys.
Take a deep breath and follow me, you’re entering my worlds now.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Foreword
Do Us Part
Hell’s Kitchen
Mitigating Circumstances
I Hate Emma Carter
It’s In The Genes
The War Veteran
Scenic Route
Hide-and-seek
Harassment Day
The Monster Rules
Where We Once Were
Desperate
Gone
Ring Ring
To Be Or Not To Be
Things That Will Kill You In Australia
Program Delete
Back Again
Excerpt from Deadly Messengers
A Favor
Other Works by Susan May
Contact Susan May
Copyright
Behind Dark Doors 1
DO US PART
Those darling, elderly couples married for decades always look so happy on the news. But when you’ve been married for seventy years, what secret thoughts lie behind the smiles?
HELL’S KITCHEN
Gordon must survive the elimination round in an intense cooking competition. But he’s made a mistake. As the tension mounts, he becomes convinced of his imminent elimination. For him, winning is a matter of life and death.
MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES
Bullying is always a volatile subject, but when a parent-teacher interview goes very wrong, “volatile” is too mild a word. When a mother feels she’s not being heard, sometimes actions can speak louder than words.
I HATE EMMA CARTER
Emma Carter is the new girl in class. Of all people, class bully Angie Dutton is assigned to be her babysitter. Angie is nobody’s keeper, so she devises a way of really showing Emma who is boss. Emma, though, may not be as defenseless as she appears. Perhaps Angie has picked the wrong victim this time.
IT’S IN THE GENES
It's another morning of Helen yet again struggling to motivate her teenage son to get up and out the door on time for school. Ever since Brandon joined his father on his late night fishing trips he's changed from her happy-go-lucky son. Today, Helen will discover why.
THE WAR VETERAN
For seventy years, World War II veteran Jack Baker has endured vivid flashbacks to that horrific June day on Omaha Beach. But tonight, the flashback will be terrifyingly different. Tonight it becomes real. Tonight, Jack's seventy-year-old secret will come back to claim him.
Behind Dark Doors 2
SCENIC ROUTE
When Pam, Michael, and their young sons take the scenic route through Broken Springs on their way to a family vacation, they stop overnight at a quaint bed-and-breakfast. What they won’t know until its too late, is something is wrong in Broken Springs, Population 402.
HIDE-AND-SEEK
Henry doesn’t like playing hide-and-seek. His brother and sister always find him. When they do, nasty things happen. That is, until the day Henry discovers the perfect hiding spot, where he discovers there are worse things than being found. Not being found.
HARASSMENT DAY
Edwin thought he was spending another lovely afternoon with his daughter and granddaughter. But dammit, they had followed him onto the train and they even had the audacity to get off at her station. Now they were on the platform. What could he possibly do to be rid of them?
THE MONSTER RULES
Harry had survived his eleven years blissfully unaware there really are creatures just itching to steal him away. When his best friend shares the Monster Rules, Harry learns how he can stay safe. Until one hot summer night, he’s awoken by strange, scratching noises. Lucky he knows the Monster Rules.
WHERE WE ONCE WERE
Tamara dreamed of visiting her distant ancestors’ 1897 time world for her PhD research paper. What she discovers i
s a secret two hundred years in the making. History might be about to take a different path.
DESPERATE
Two agitated women, inexplicably, run out into oncoming freeway traffic. One is run over by a lorry; the other flung in the air by a car. They should be dead. Not only do they survive, despite horrific injuries and police intervention, they seem determined to continue to the other side of the roadway. Are they insane or is their desperation due to stakes so high, they’re prepared to give their lives?
Behind Dark Doors 3
GONE
On a rainy night, Crystal’s husband disappears while fetching their car. She waits outside the theater they’ve just left, wondering why he’s taking so long. Should she go in search of him or will they pass and miss each other on the way? Her mind races with the terrible possibilities that may have befallen him. The truth is far more terrible than she can imagine.
RING RING
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, is desperate. It’s January 13, 1887, and today is the day the patent for the telegraphic transmitter will be granted. Bell is racked with guilt. If not for a mysterious phone call from more than a hundred years in the future, he would have nothing to patent. Instead, Elisha Gray’s name would have gone down in history. Where did the mysterious phone call originate? Can Bell live with the choice he makes? Take a trip through a time-twisted history.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Once we hit the Desson Tipping Point, there was no return for the world. The carbon dioxide-oxygen balance had been destroyed. The only hope for mankind now was to create Oxygen Conversion plants to support key cities. All seemed doomed, until they came. With them, came hope. They had come to save the world. So we thought. Now, because of them, Keriss must face a heart-breaking decision. Either way, she loses the most precious thing in her world.
THINGS THAT WILL KILL YOU IN AUSTRALIA
American tourist and blogger R.P. Kraul is on the trip of a lifetime in the Australian outback. These Australians seem very cavalier about the dangers posed by the native wildlife. So R.P. has come prepared for any thing: man-eating sharks to poisonous spiders, he’s ready. Perhaps, he needed a little more preparation.
PROGRAM DELETE
The Intelervate Chip repaired brain-damaged babies, good as new. In fact, better than new: they were superior in so many ways. As the children matured, the differences between chipped children and normal children became the focus of a fearful world. If the children were allowed to survive, would they forever change the balance in society? Could the world tolerate those who were different? Or would history repeat itself?
BACK AGAIN
A tragic accident takes Dawn’s only child right before her eyes. The following surreal days are filled with soul-destroying grief and moments she never wants to live again—until, inexplicably, she finds herself back again, living that day. It’s a second chance to save her son. But changing fate is not as simple as it first appears. Time is not Dawn’s ally.
Do Us Part
Those darling, elderly couples married for decades always look so happy on the news. But when you’ve been married for seventy years, what secret thoughts lie behind the smiles?
After the camera crew left June really started talking.
That is to say, she continued talking at an even greater pace than she had when the crew was there. It was like “lights, camera, and action.” but in reverse. There was no one to listen to her or ask questions, but that failed to stifle her enthusiasm.
George was her only remaining audience, and he would have continued to listen if not for one thing: he had a headache. Not a normal headache, either. One of those throbbing, claustrophobic headaches that felt like a balloon of pain had inflated inside his head.
Shuffling toward their bedroom, he sought the coolness of the dark and the comfort of the soft orthopaedic bed. Even from here he could hear the muffled tones of her voice and, instinctively, he pulled the pillow from her side of the bed and held it over his head. Please make the pain go away, he thought, uncertain whether he was referring to her or to the headache.
The interview replayed in his head.
“How long have you been married?” the vivacious young interviewer had asked.
He was about to answer with the obligatory “too long,” but June had jumped in with “seventy years of wonderful memories.”
Everything was “wonderful” to her: wonderful children, wonderful house, wonderful life. It was as if she had mastered precise control of her memory, blocking out anything not wonderful.
They had now done three of these interviews about their wonderful marriage.
The first was for the local newspaper—accompanied by the customary hand-holding, smiling photo. Then some supposedly witty announcer from a radio station called them. He was really annoying with his constant hinting that a great sex life was the principal ingredient to their successful marriage. Appalling, George had thought. With all those people listening! Including his friends.
Then this producer rang from “Today Tonight”—or “Yesterday Morning,” or something sounding equally clichéd—and asked if he could do a piece on them.
A piece, he thought. He wished he could have done just a piece of marriage, instead of the whole lot. They never ask you that during the wedding ceremony. “How much do you think you can do? Five years? Twenty? Fifty? After fifty we’ll come get you out, George.” No, they do not. They say “until the day you die.” And that is that.
During the interview, with the lights burning into him and a boom mike hanging over their heads, the chirpy girl had asked questions with the kind of humorous frivolity that only the young enjoy.
Where had they met?
June answered, “In a little dance club in the city at the end of the war.”
He’d added (to keep her happy and the house peaceful), “She was the prettiest girl there.”
At that, June turned, touched his face, and said, “My George has always been a gentleman.” What he wished he could have said was, Fighting the war meant it was a long time between drinks, and even a two-headed chicken would have looked good.
Was it love at first sight?
At this, June bounced excitedly on the couch. “Oh yes, he was so handsome in his uniform.”
That response surprised George.
He certainly hadn’t been wearing a uniform that night. Having discovered a stain on the sleeve, he had dropped it at the cleaners earlier that day. George remembered it well. Time may have taken its toll on his body, but little details, even those from decades ago, had always filed themselves very neatly in his memory.
“We kissed that night,” June giggled. “In fact, maybe we did a little more.”
A quiet descended upon George. The scene froze around him, like he was in one of those movies where the camera pans about the actors while they stand motionless.
That a little more memory now sending his wife into giggles had become their son. But that a little more didn’t happen that night. No, that was weeks later. June was right about one thing. George was a gentleman, and he would never have taken advantage of a woman under the influence—which June had definitely been that night.
Silently, he sat staring unblinking into the lights, doing the nine-month math. June clasped his hand tightly, her thin fingers rubbing between his as if she were trying to rub sticks together to start a fire. A few more deep and meaningful questions followed, but he wasn’t listening anymore.
The final question got June laughing and patting his arm. “The secret to the longevity of our marriage? Well, it’s trust and love, isn’t it?”
Leaning toward him, the young interviewer asked, “Well George, what do you think?”
Running timelines through his head, a gluggy ugly feeling was growing in his stomach. George slowly looked at the interviewer, suddenly noticing her too-red lipstick. For a moment, he thought it was blood, and then he understood what they meant by the phrase “seeing red.”
He heard himse
lf answer, “Well in our day, divorce was not an option.” Then his arm jerked as June slapped him hard across the chest while everyone around him burst into laughter.
That’s when the headache began.
Sleep would not come. His headache had become a concrete block hammering on his temple. June lay down next to him and continued to talk, slipping away into silence in mid-sentence. She could always do that—talk herself to sleep.
The words “a little more” kept repeating in his head; a broken record of torment he could not switch off. Seventy years—thanks to “a little more.” Lord knows how many still to come.
June’s piggy-grunt snores filled his ears, and his mind glided through the seventy years he could have enjoyed if not for that “a little more” which he now knew was not his.
Then the pillow was in his hands, and his strength surprised him. How little she struggled. Even in her last breath she tried to talk. God bless her or God damn her. He wasn’t sure.
So there’d be no mistake—because she always liked things crystal clear—he whispered into her ear, “Sorry, but divorce was not an option.”
From the Imagination Vault
“Do Us Part” obviously refers to the marriage vows “Until death do us part.” The idea for the story came upon me one night after I’d watched yet another of those interviews with an elderly couple who’d been married seventy-odd years. They’re so darling, the lovely old folk, aren’t they?
It struck me that every time I watched one of these “good news story” fillers, the woman tended to do all the talking, while the man always looked as if he wished he were a million miles away.
