Contents
Reader Survey
Horror Story Compilations
Download The Last Hand
Read Online
Reader Survey
I’m running a quick one-question poll to better understand my readers and help me reach more people who enjoy my books.
FREE Horror Story Compilations
If you want more nightmares, you can also find my work, and others’, here:
Not-So-Comfortable September Reads: 127 FREE horror titles, including ‘The Blighted Child’, ‘The Scream’ and ‘The Coconut Killer’.
Download ePub / PDF
The ePub file should work with most e-readers. For Kindle, use Send to Kindle and upload the ePub file here:
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/sendtokindle
US: https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle
The Last Hand
By Newton Webb
Monday, 29 August 1881. London, England.
Richard Maynard paused, a strip of toast in one hand and a telegram in the other.
Ten years after Charles Dunn had vanished on the Hagelspitze, he had returned.
He dropped his toast onto his plate and re-read the telegram.
BODY RECOVERED BELOW HAGELSPITZE. EFFECTS BEAR DUNN INITIALS. PRESENCE REQUIRED FOR IDENTIFICATION.
Richard folded it along its original crease and placed it beside his congealing egg.
Outside the dining-room window, rain blurred the houses across the square. A cab passed through, its wheels hissing over the wet road. Richard watched it until it disappeared around the corner.
His hand began to shake.
He closed his fingers around the coffee cup. The china clicked against the saucer.
Charles was dead. Richard had told himself so for ten years. Now he had the confirmation he’d always dreaded.
No man could have survived three nights on the north shelf of the Hagelspitze. Not in that storm. Not without food or a route down. Renowned mountaineer Lukas Haid had led two searches after the weather cleared, funded by Charles’s family and subscriptions from members of the Alpine Club. Richard had contributed a generous cheque himself.
Nothing had been found except a strip of green cloth caught on a spur of rock five hundred feet below the ridge.
Charles’s climbing coat had been green. The material matched. The colour matched.
It was good enough evidence. It had to be.
Even so, Richard had seen Charles in London crowds, at railway stations and reflected in darkened windows. A tall man in a green coat would turn a corner ahead of him, always just too quickly to be followed. On winter nights, Richard sometimes woke to the scrape of hobnails on the pavement beneath his bedroom. When he looked out, the street was empty and white with frost.
But not having seen his friend’s corpse, he’d always had a nagging doubt that Charles had died on that ridge.
Until now, when the mountain provided proof.
Richard left for Switzerland that afternoon.
Thursday, 1 September 1881. Grindelwald, Switzerland.
A hired carriage carried Richard up the valley from Interlaken. The rain had followed him across Europe. It hung over the Bernese Alps, concealing the summits and turning the track to brown mud.
The driver hunched beneath an oilskin cape. Richard sat behind him with a blanket across his knees and watched water course down the black rock faces. Every stream had swollen into a white torrent.
The valley narrowed as they approached Grindelwald. Mountains appeared between breaks in the cloud. The blunt shoulder of the Eiger. The pale sweep of the Wetterhorn. The dark, icy cleft through which the Lower Glacier descended.
He’d made a fortune from describing those views in lecture halls across Britain. Audiences had listened in reverent silence as he told them about the majesty of the Alps and the death of his dearest friend. He’d written about the expedition in his memoirs.
Richard had even wept once, in front of an audience of students at Oxford. The tears had been genuine, which only made the memory more shameful.
The hotel stood at the upper end of the village. Its white walls and dark shutters hadn’t changed, although the stable was larger and a glass awning now protected the entrance. An attractive young man waited beneath it.
He was broad-shouldered, with rain shining on his black beard.
“Mr Maynard?”
Richard stepped down from the carriage. “Yes.”
“Jakob Haid.”
Richard looked at him more closely. He did look a bit like Lukas, with his pale eyes and square jaw.
“You were a boy when I was last here.”
“Yes, sir. Sixteen. I carried equipment for the search party.”
Richard removed his gloves. “I remember your father. He was a good man.”
“He died four winters ago.”
Richard winced. “I’m sorry to hear that. We became close during the search.”
Jakob took Richard’s hand in a warm grip. “My father never stopped looking for Mr Dunn, nor did I. It was I who found him.”
Richard withdrew his hand. “Where did you find the body?”
“At the lower edge of the ice.” Jakob glanced towards the glacier. “There was a fall four nights ago. Part of the face broke away. He was inside.”
“The lower edge?”
“Yes, sir.” Jakob nodded. “It wasn’t where we were expecting to find him. You must have been confused about your location. The weather can do that on the peaks.”
“Are you certain? Truly certain it’s Charles?”
“As certain as I can be. That’s why we asked you to confirm it.” Jakob stood, his hands behind his back. “I’m sorry that we’ve had to dredge this up again. I know how much you miss your friend.”
The hotel proprietor hurried out to supervise the luggage.
Jakob led him through the hotel and down a narrow flight of stone stairs. The air became colder with every step. At the bottom stood a thick wooden door reinforced with iron straps. “Dr Schwank is waiting inside the ice cellar. We couldn’t leave his body in the church. He’s begun to ripen.”
Richard held his hanky to his nose. Jakob hadn’t exaggerated. The cellar smelled of wet stone and the faintly sweet scent of death. Blocks of ice lay packed against the walls beneath layers of sacking and straw. Water dripped steadily into a grated channel cut across the floor.
An elderly man in a black coat stood beside two trestles. A long shape rested upon them beneath a grey sheet.
“Dr Schwank,” Jakob said. “This is Mr Richard Maynard.”
The doctor bowed. “I am sorry to request your presence. Thank you for coming, especially all the way from England.”
“I would endure far more for my dear friend, as he would have done for me.”
Dr Schwank drew back the sheet.
Charles lay on his back with his head turned towards the door. The ice had drawn the colour from his hair and flattened it against his skull. His cheeks had sunk until the skin stretched across the bones.
One side of his face was flattened, but the other retained the long jaw and high cheekbone Richard remembered.
His green climbing coat was stiff with ice. A hemp rope remained wound twice around his waist. The broken end trailed across his chest and hung from the side of the trestle.
His left arm lay straight beside him. The sleeve had been cut away, exposing a blue heart tattooed on his shoulder.
Richard stared at it. Beneath his shirt, its twin lay hidden.
They’d acquired the tattoos in Portsmouth after their first Alpine expedition. They’d drunk rum with a group of sailors until dawn, then slept beneath a billiard table. Charles had insisted they needed something to commemorate their first triumph together.
“It’s him.” Richard ran his fingers over the cold, dead flesh. “It’s Charles Dunn.”
Dr Schwank covered the face but left the arms exposed. “There are other means of identification. A watch engraved with his initials. Letters in an oilskin wallet. This is sufficient, however.”
Richard’s eyes narrowed. “Letters? Has anyone read them?”
“No, his effects are in a leather pouch, waiting to be collected. You can take them when you are ready.”
He could make out four water-damaged cards frozen together between Charles’s blackened fingers.
Richard stepped closer. “Cards.” The sweet smell strengthened.
Dr Schwank peered through his spectacles. “Playing cards? It’s possible. His body would have frozen fast on the cliff face.”
In his mind, Richard felt the freezing wind whipping against the cold stone. He heard snow hissing across a ledge. He remembered holding a pack of cards between numb fingers.
Jakob watched him from the doorway.
“The body must soften before I can examine the hand,” Dr Schwank said. “Come tomorrow morning.”
“No, I want to see the cards. Can you thaw them?”
Dr Schwank raised his eyebrows.
“It’s important that you finish tonight,” Richard explained. “I’ve travelled a considerable distance.”
The doctor replaced the sheet. The outline of Charles’s face remained visible through the damp cloth. “Tomorrow.” Dr Schwank turned away.
Richard followed them upstairs.
Dinner was served at eight. He sat alone beside the window while the other guests talked about the rain. Richard cut his veal into smaller and smaller pieces. Instead of eating, he drank brandy.
Four playing cards.
He’d left the cards with Charles. He remembered that clearly.
They’d thrown down their hands into the snow.
Why had Charles picked them up?
Friday, 1 September 1871. The Hagelspitze, Bernese Alps, Switzerland.
At half past three that morning, Lukas Haid stood in the stable yard refusing to let them pass.
Stars filled the valley. Frost whitened the road beyond the hotel, and the lantern in Haid’s hand threw his shadow across the gate.
“This is madness, lads.” Lukas blocked the exit with his body. “There’ll be snow before noon.”
“Nonsense, man.” Charles looked at the clear sky. “There isn’t a cloud over the valley.”
Lukas shook his head. “There are clouds beyond the Wetterhorn. Just because you can’t see them yet doesn’t mean they aren’t there waiting. It’s going to be bad up there, mark my words.”
Richard had noticed the stars disappearing above the Wetterhorn. He knew what it might mean, but he had waited too long for a triumph bearing his own name. Charles had finally agreed to let him lead the expedition. “It’s fine. We’ll be down before they arrive.” Richard grinned. “I think old Lukas here underestimates us.”
Haid turned to Richard. “The north spur will hold fresh ice. Wait one day and you’ll have a clear climb.”
Richard looked at Charles. Charles stood beside him, tall and straight, his heavy moustache silvered by frost. Before Charles, he’d been a deckhand with no education, no family worth naming and no expectation of becoming anything else. Charles possessed money, breeding and an effortless charm. He could enter a room of strangers and leave with three invitations to dinner. He’d found Richard in a brothel in Portsmouth. They’d both entered seeking female company and left with each other.
Together, they’d completed six difficult ascents. Richard planned the routes and studied the weather, but each one had been reported as another Dunn triumph.
This time, Richard had insisted that the new route up the north spur bear his name. “We go today.” If they climbed it, the triumph would be his.
Haid lowered his lantern. “Then you go without me.”
“Gaze upon English courage, Lukas.” Charles clapped him on the shoulder as they passed. “And keep our table by the fire. We shall want a stiff drink and a hearty dinner when we return.”
Haid didn’t answer. They reached the glacier before sunrise. Blue light filled its fissures.
For the first six hours, the climb went exactly as Richard had planned. They crossed the lower icefall, gained the spur and followed a steep ridge of frozen snow towards the summit. The spare rope lashed across Richard’s pack pulled at his shoulders, but they made good progress. The valley opened beneath them. Grindelwald became a handful of pale marks among dark fields.
Shortly after eleven, Richard slipped.
His left boot tore through a crust of snow and pitched him from the ridge. He swung in for a moment, suspended in the air, before his body impacted the slope and he slid towards the drop.
Charles threw himself onto the other side of the ridge. He buried his axe in the ice, wrapped the rope across his shoulders and held Richard’s weight until Richard found purchase with his knees.
It took several minutes to pull him back.
“Hell’s bells.” Richard lay panting in the snow. “I thought I was done for.”
Charles’s gloves had torn against the rope. “Not while I’m holding you, old boy.” Blood seeped through the wool and leather around his fingers. “You owe me a bottle.”
Richard caught his wrist. “I owe you rather more than that.”
“Then you have the rest of our lives to repay me.”
The first cloud passed over the sun. Richard watched it, his heart sinking. “Charles…”
“I see it. It’s your expedition. How should we proceed?” Charles smiled at him.
“We can’t continue. I must confess, Lukas was right.” The admission felt sour in Richard’s mouth.
Charles nodded. “Well, best not tell him that. Still, I think it’s the right decision. We can always come back.”
They abandoned the summit and began their descent. Within an hour, they could see no farther than the rope between them. Snow covered their tracks as quickly as they made them. The wind rose, driving snow against their goggles until the lenses glazed with ice. Soon they were moving on their hands and knees.
For the rest of the afternoon, they fought their way down the ridge. Richard’s frozen fingers slipped from the rock. Charles’s injured hands left smears of blood on the rope. More than once, they stopped beneath an outcrop and pressed their bodies against the stone while the wind tried to tear them away.
They might have continued like that until dark, had the slope above them not cracked with a sound like a pistol shot. Charles shouted. A wall of snow struck them, tore their packs from their shoulders and carried the climbers out over the ridge.
Richard slid until he struck a low wall of loose stone. The impact drove the breath from him. He wedged himself against it as the rope between them pulled tight.
When the snow settled, Charles hung over the edge of the shelf.
“You need to eat less,” Richard grunted as he dragged Charles back onto the north shelf, a strip of stone beneath a small overhang, where the remains of an old surveyor’s wall offered scant protection from the wind.
Charles looked down. The avalanche had swept away the narrow traverse below, leaving an ice cliff between them and the western gully. “I think we may have bigger problems than my waist.” Their route home lay beyond the ice cliff, but there was no longer a way for both men to reach it.
The avalanche had taken both packs, Richard’s axe and the spare rope.
Charles rose, rubbing his side, and tested the remains of the wall. Several stones shifted beneath his glove. He pulled a crushed silver flask from his coat and dropped it onto the stones. “Nothing here will hold the rope, and now we are out of brandy. One of us will have to lower the other.”
“Please don’t joke.” Richard shook his head. “Whoever does the lowering would have to stay behind. Absolutely not.”
“Only until the other returns with Haid.”
“No, no!” Richard pressed a hand against the blue heart beneath his coat. “If Haid doesn’t get back in time, it’s a death sentence.”
They looked at each other.
The clouds had already swallowed the valley. Snow streamed horizontally past the opening. Their coats were hard with ice. Charles’s lips had begun to turn blue, but he still shook his head. “Nonsense, boy. We English are made of sterner stuff.” Charles flashed Richard a smile, then reached inside his coat and pulled out a pack of cards. “Tell you what. Let’s play a final hand for it.”
Richard’s legs trembled with exhaustion, but Charles was acting as if nothing was wrong. “A single card?” Richard asked. “Highest value wins?”
“Bit bleak for a gamble, old boy.” Charles winked at him. “No. One hand. No exchanging. Best hand goes down.”
Richard stared at him. “Whoever remains may not see morning.”
“Then the fellow who descends had better make haste.”
“Charles.”
“Listen to me, Dickie. If this goes badly, you won’t be cast out. I’ve already signed the will. Mantleford is yours, and there is money enough to keep it.”
Richard had spent three summers at Mantleford, always introduced as Charles’s climbing companion and best friend. It was the first place he had ever thought of as home.
“I don’t want the house without you,” Richard said.
Charles touched his face with the back of his torn glove. Then he kissed him. His mouth was cold. His breath tasted of brandy. “This isn’t where we end,” Charles whispered. “We are together forever.”
Richard gripped the front of his coat and kissed him again. “Together forever.”
Charles pushed the cards into his hand. “You deal. You’ve always been rather good with your hands.”
I will come back for him.
Richard shuffled.
He’s stronger than me.
His fingers moved by habit, separating cards, returning them and letting the edges whisper against his palm. Before mountaineering, before Charles, he had played cards below deck for coins, watches, shifts and favours.
He saw the first ace during the shuffle.
If I stay, I shall die.
Then the second.
His thumb found the other two.
He brought them together at the bottom of the pack and pressed a slight bend into their corners.
Richard dealt them five cards each, one at a time. Charles received his from the top. Four times, when Richard’s own turn came, his middle finger drew from the bottom.
Charles arranged his cards with hands shaking from the cold. “Ready?”
Richard nodded.
Charles laid down two kings, two jacks and a three. “Two pair.”
Richard displayed the four aces.
I will come back for him.
For several seconds, Charles didn’t react. “Well, now, will you look at that?” Snow hissed against the stones. Then he smiled. “You’ve got the devil’s own luck, you do.”
Richard returned the unused cards to their box and left it on the wall. “I will bring Haid.” Richard’s four aces remained face-up between them.
Charles swept his own hand aside. “See that you do. I refuse to die in this ghastly country.”
They kissed once more. Richard held him until Charles pushed him away.
“Enough. The sooner you’re down, the sooner we can both be back by the fire.”
They worked quickly. Charles looped the rope twice round his waist, planted his boots against the remains of the wall and wedged the ice axe into a shallow crack. The axe would not hold by itself. Charles braced it with his full weight as Richard crawled backwards to the edge.
“The western gully. Tell Haid I’m above the black tooth. He’ll know it,” Charles said. “Before morning, Dickie!”
“I promise, Charles.” Richard went over the edge. “I won’t let you down.”
Charles lowered him foot by foot. The rope cut beneath Richard’s arms. His boots scraped the ice, found nothing, then struck the lower snowfield.
He pulled the rope twice to signal that he was safe.
The rope slackened and began to rise as Charles hauled it back onto the shelf. Charles raised one torn hand in salute.
Richard returned the salute and turned towards the western gully.
He reached the village shortly after midnight on Saturday. Blood filled his boots, and ice crusted his beard. Lukas Haid found him stumbling beside the church.
“Where’s Mr Dunn?” Haid demanded.
Richard opened his mouth.
The correct words were simple.
North shelf. Above the black tooth. Western gully.
He imagined Haid reaching Charles before dawn. Charles would return to the hotel, pale and half-frozen but alive. They would sit before the fire in Charles’s room, wrapped in blankets and drinking whisky. Charles would put his arms around him. They would laugh about the hand of cards and swear never to leave each other again.
Then Richard remembered the four aces lying face-up on the shelf.
Charles would have hours to examine them. He would feel the bent corners. He would remember the way Richard had dealt each card from beneath the pack.
Perhaps he’d already noticed. Was he silent before he smiled? He might’ve been. He was. He definitely was.
Richard imagined Charles asking him why he’d cheated. He imagined trying to explain that he’d intended to return, that the card trick had meant nothing because both of them would live. He saw the door of Charles’s room closing against him. He saw himself turned out of Mantleford Hall. The wealth and comfort he’d become used to would be snatched away and he’d be returned to grubbing about on the docks.
He’ll hate me.
Haid seized the front of his coat. “Where is he?”
North shelf. Above the black tooth. Western gully.
“The east face,” Richard lied. “A cornice gave way. He went down towards the upper glacier.”
Haid stared at him. “The east face?”
“Yes.”
The search party left before dawn. They searched the east face for two days.
By the time Richard admitted that cold and exhaustion might have confused him, another avalanche had swept the north shelf clean.
Charles’s mother came to Grindelwald in the spring. Richard walked with her to the foot of the glacier and showed her where he claimed Charles had fallen.
“He couldn’t have had a better friend,” Charles’s mother said. She held Richard’s arm while Haid erected a small wooden cross. “He always loved you like a brother.”
Richard kissed her cheek, but remained silent.
Six months later, the Alpine Journal published his account of the expedition. Richard described Charles cutting the rope after the cornice collapsed and sacrificing himself so Richard might live. Newspapers repeated the story. The Alpine Club praised Charles’s courage and Richard’s endurance. Richard delivered a lecture beneath an enormous painted view of the Hagelspitze and received a standing ovation.
Charles’s mother honoured the will without complaint. She said her son had trusted Richard above all other men.
Richard inherited Mantleford Hall.
Success followed. There were other mountains, lectures and invitations to dine with men far above his previous station. A London publisher issued his memoirs.
A sailor born in the gutter now lived like a lord.
Charles couldn’t have survived the first night.
He hung Charles’s portrait above the library fireplace.
The search party could never have reached the shelf through the storm.
It would have been foolish to stay.
Any man faced with freezing to death alone would have dealt those aces.
He filled his glass again.
I don’t regret cheating.
He emptied the glass and reached for the brandy decanter.
Above the fire, Charles watched him pour.
Thursday, 1 September 1881. Grindelwald, Switzerland.
He pushed his uneaten plate away. His empty brandy glass stood beside it.
Jakob Haid was watching him from the other side of the dining room. His coat was wet, and droplets shone in his beard.
Richard beckoned to the waiter, his voice slurring. “Brandy.”
Jakob approached the table. “May I sit?”
Richard gestured towards the empty chair. “Don’t see why not.”
Jakob placed a leather pouch on the table. “These were found with Mr Dunn. Dr Schwank says you may have them.”
Richard looked at the pouch but didn’t touch it. “The district officer has seen them?”
“He comes tomorrow. Dr Schwank says they are personal effects.”
The waiter brought the brandy. Richard swallowed half of it before the man had left the table. “Did your father tell you they searched the wrong face because of me?” A tear rolled down his cheek. “I was half dead. I had been walking for hours in a storm.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Jakob pushed the pouch across the table. “I brought these for you as soon as I could.”
Richard opened it.
Inside lay Charles’s watch, a brass compass, some coins, and a silver flask crushed almost flat along one side. An oilskin wallet contained three letters folded into quarters. Beneath it rested a pencil and a water stained notebook swollen against the leather.
Richard picked up the letters and hesitated for a moment before frantically leafing through them.
They were letters to Charles, not from him, so he tossed them onto the table and lifted out the notebook. The first pages contained sketches of ridges and measurements written in Charles’s sloping hand. The later pages had fused together.
The final readable entry was dated the morning of their climb.
Clear sky. Haid predicts snow. Maynard says all will be well. We shall be toasting yet another victory tomorrow.
Richard closed the book. “There was nothing else?”
“Only what he holds.” Jakob glanced towards the cellar stairs.
“Wait.” Richard looked at his glass. He didn’t remember emptying it. “I want to see Charles again. I need to see him.”
“The cellar is locked.” Jakob shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. Dr Schwank has the key.”
Richard watched him leave, signalling to the waiter.
At ten, Dr Schwank retired from the restaurant to his room. Richard saw him hang the cellar key on a brass hook behind the reception desk. The night porter sat nearby reading a newspaper.
Richard remained in the dining room.
He drank steadily. He could no longer tell which brandy he was drinking. By eleven, he wouldn’t even have noticed if they’d served him whisky instead. The fire sank in the grate, and the remaining guests went upstairs. Shortly before midnight, he was drinking alone.
The porter had disappeared into the kitchen, leaving his newspaper folded beside a steaming cup of coffee.
Richard crossed the reception hall. The floor seemed to sway beneath his feet, and he steadied himself against the desk.
The cellar key hung from its hook. He grabbed it and held it against his chest.
An oil lamp waited on the landing above the cellar stairs. It took Richard a few attempts to light it. He swore until it caught, then began his descent. The flame trembled inside its glass chimney.
Water could be heard dripping behind the cellar door. He fiddled with the key until it turned with a heavy clunk.
Richard entered and locked the door behind him.
It was just Richard and Charles now.
The cellar was colder than before, but Charles had continued to thaw. Blocks of ice stood against the walls beneath layers of sacking and straw. Their exposed edges glistened in the lamplight, making the cellar gleam like a crystal mausoleum. Several had been dragged forward and packed around the trestles to slow the thaw. The staff had chipped them to fit, leaving irregular corners jutting into the narrow passage beside the body.
Richard pulled away the sheet. Charles’s once proud walrus moustache lay dark and flaccid against his upper lip. His eyes stung at the sight of the man. Water pooled beneath the trestles. Charles’s clothes sagged against his body. He lay on a broad wooden board.
Richard set the lamp on an upturned crate. “It wasn’t my fault.” His voice caught. “It wasn’t my fault!” he repeated, louder.
Charles’s face had changed. The flattened cheek had lifted as the ice released it. His mouth hung slightly open, showing brown teeth. Meltwater ran from his hair and gathered in the hollow of his throat.
The sleeve of his green coat remained cut away. The blue heart on his shoulder had darkened as the skin thawed.
Richard pressed two fingers against its twin beneath his shirt. “We were supposed to be together forever.”
Charles stared at the ceiling.
Richard lowered his hand and concentrated on the clenched fist against Charles’s chest. Four white corners protruded between the blackened fingers.
He took hold of the first and pulled. It didn’t move.
“Damn you.”
He brought the lamp closer. Warmth touched the dead fingers. Droplets formed along the knuckles and ran over the cards.
Richard waited.
Charles released a long, damp sigh.
Richard recoiled and struck the crate. The lamp rocked, then settled.
Thawing lungs. That’s all.
Charles stared past him.
Richard returned to the hand. The fingers yielded when he pulled them apart. One cracked at the middle joint. A strip of dark skin tore from the palm.
The cards came free. They were Richard’s four aces. The cards had softened and swollen with moisture. Richard carefully laid them across Charles’s chest.
Their corners still carried the shallow bends he had pressed into them with his thumbnail. Ten years in the glacier had not removed them.
There was writing in pencil across the ace of hearts. The pencil marks were faint but legible when he smoothed out the cards.
Charles had written. I forgive you, Dickie.
Richard stared. He’d spent ten years justifying the cheating, the false direction, and the search on the east face. The storm had confused him. The cold had fuddled his memory. Charles couldn’t have survived either way.
He’d spent ten years drinking his way through the guilt.
Charles had known about the aces before Richard left the shelf and had still forgiven him.
The east face.
Richard had repaid that forgiveness by sending Haid to the wrong face.
“You don’t get to forgive me!” Richard hurled the oil lamp. It flared before dying in the drainage channel, plunging the room into darkness. “You can’t judge me. You aren’t better than me.”
Charles remained silent.
Richard pounded his fist against the cold corpse. “Say something!” Richard cried out and lurched backwards. His hip struck the trestle. One foot skidded through the meltwater. The back of his skull struck the sharp corner of an ice block.
Light burst behind his eyes.
Warm blood spread beneath his head. He planted one hand against the stones, but his arm folded beneath him. His boot caught the wooden leg and dragged it sideways as he fell, the trestle collapsing.
Beside him, Charles fell from the board.
His body struck the floor with a wet, heavy thud. It lay beside Richard.
In the darkness, Richard knew that Charles’s face was turned towards him. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Close to his ear, he heard a waterlogged whisper.
“Together forever.”
THE END
Tales of the Macabre
You can find my stories on Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited, eBook, Paperback or Hardback.
This collection of stories is designed for quick reads, whether over a coffee or during a commute. Either way, they promise to deliver exquisitely disturbing nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after.
FREE on Kindle Unlimited
Available to order on AMAZON.
Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-4 are intended for mature audiences.
Read a collection of free short stories or listen to free audiobooks by Newton Webb on his website.
I took your survey but also wanted to add that I answered "most weeks." When I can't read them right away, I save them for later, so I do end up reading them all eventually. Thanks for these stories!