Red Sky at Night
'That's weird. What is it - some kind of weather phenomenon?' Liam asked over his shoulder, as he paused in his task of closing the bedroom curtains. His wife Angie was sitting on their bed, unclipping her diamond earrings and placing them carefully in the carved wooden jewellery box on her bedside table. At his words, she stood up carefully, cradling her baby bump as though it was the most precious thing in the world. Which - after fifteen whole, heart-breaking years of trying and countless gruelling, invasive procedures - it truly was. 'Come and have a look at this, I've never seen anything like it before.'
'Let's have a look,' Angie stepped up to the window beside him, noticing that her husband was staring out raptly, as though he were hypnotised by what he saw out there. He blinked dazedly. She frowned, and then peered out herself into the dark night. She could not see anything even the slightest bit out of the ordinary. 'Liam - are you alright?'
As she peered closer at him, she saw that he looked clammy, almost ill.
'You've gone terribly pale. Are you sure you're feeling well?'
'What - oh, yes. Yes, I'm fine.' He cleared his throat and blinked slowly again. 'I just feel a little bit sick all of a sudden, that's all. That light - ' He looked back out of the window, and up at the sky. But Angie could still see only a deep, inky blackness devoid even of the sparkle of stars tonight.
'Go and get yourself into bed,' she ordered him firmly. 'I'll fetch you a glass of water from the bathroom.'
'I'm alright, really. I'm supposed to be the one that's taking care of you, remember?'
'Nonsense. I'm pregnant, not some kind of invalid. I'm perfectly capable of fetching a glass of water. Now do as you're told and lay down.' She used the tone of voice that she knew he could not argue with.
'Okay, okay. You're the boss.'
'That's right.'
***
He took off his slippers, leaving them carefully positioned right by his bed just as he did every night. He could hear his wife moving along to the bathroom. She was right, he really ought to just lay down and relax - but he could not help wonder about what that weird light was, where it was coming from. It was the oddest thing that he had even seen. It seemed to light up the entire sky...
'Red sky at night...' he muttered to himself.
***
Angie stifled a yawn as she grabbed the squat plastic tumbler from beside the sink and filled it up from the cold water tap. The pipes banged and clanged loudly from inside the walls as they always did. She rubbed a hand over her gently swollen belly, and turned to begin making her way back into the bedroom. She was definitely ready to go to sleep. She loved being pregnant at long last but it certainly was quite exhausting...
She had just made it through the bathroom doorway and onto the landing when screaming started up from right outside the house. It was a shrill, prolonged sound. The tumbler slipped from her fingers and fell, spilling water all over the carpet. Spikes of fear surged through her body.
'Liam - ' she cried out. 'Did you hear that?' Her feet carried her automatically over to the landing window, and she moved aside the floor-length cream curtain hurriedly in order to peer out. 'It looks like there's some kind of a commotion happening out there.'
She could see not just one but several figures moving around on the pavement down below, their figures illuminated by the stark neon glow of the nearby streetlights. The screaming started up again after a brief pause. Alarmed, Angie leant closer to the glass to get a better look, her breath misting the surface slightly. The sound seemed to be coming from a woman who was out there - she was laying on the pavement whilst a man stood over her, his back to Angie so that she could not see his face. She recognised him, anyway, though, from his distinctive hair - mostly bald on the top but with long, thin wisps of black hair hanging down from the sides of his head over his shoulders. It was Bob, a neighbour of theirs from across the street. And the woman on the ground looked like his wife Violet.
Angie's heart thrummed rapidly in her chest, her mouth growing dry as she watched Violet - clad only in her velvet floral nightgown, try to scramble away from Bob, dragging herself along the pavement. She screamed again as Bob leapt upon her, his hands around her neck as he proceeded to squeeze the life out of her. The screams died away instantly in a pained gurgle -
Angie could hardly believe what she was seeing. Nobody else seemed to pay the slightest bit of attention to the man who was violently attacking his wife - though more and more of the neighbours appeared to be spilling out of their homes and onto the dark, neon-lit streets.
'Liam - ' she opened her mouth and shrieked, her fingernails digging into the wooden sill of the window deep enough to leave marks behind. 'Liam - come quick! It's Violet - she's in trouble! It's - '
The words became lodged in her throat as another scream sounded from outside. And then another, this one from a different place. Angie frantically pressed her face even closer to the cold glass, trying to see what was going on out there.
Frost glittered upon the ground - and carnage seemed to be breaking out all over the place. As she watched with wide, horrified eyes, she saw a car come screeching around the corner at breakneck speed, headlights blazing angrily. It swerved in a screech of tyres - deliberately ploughing into some of the people on the pavement. Bodies went flying, the ground becoming awash with blood. From where Angie stood looking down over the scene in paralysed horror, it looked like a dark, slick oil spill.
Another movement caught her eye -
A man - quite naked, with a dough white beer belly jutting out in front of him - was running down the street whilst brandishing a carving knife. He opened his mouth and began to yell - the words indecipherable to Angie's ears, but the absolute menace upon his face utterly unmistakeable.
'Liam!' she screamed out in alarm. Surely he hadn't fallen asleep already? She wheeled around and ran as quickly as she was able to across the landing and towards the bedroom. She was breathless with panic, a palpating fear running through every inch of her body. 'Liam - quick, we have to phone the emergency services! There's something terribly wrong out there - people are... killing, and - and - '
She burst into the bedroom - expecting to see her husband there, maybe scrambling out of bed with a panicked expression upon his face. But instead, the bed was quite empty. The duvet had been thrown carelessly aside, but of her husband himself there was no sign whatsoever. Fresh fear swirled within her, adding to her already immense state of panic.
'Liam - where are you? Please - we need to - '
She wheeled around, just as the bedroom door closed with a sharp snap. Liam had been standing behind it, and now blocked off the only exit from the room.
'Liam - ' she waved a trembling hand over towards the window, feeling sick. 'There's something going on out there. It's bad - really bad. Everyone seems to be going crazy, somehow. They're attacking one another. We have to get some help, right now. Where's my phone?'
She glanced around the room, forgetting where she had left it when they had come up to bed. But then she saw it - held in Liam's hand, along with his own. With his other hand, he reached back and locked the door without taking his eyes off of her. The loud click made her jump, and she found herself feeling more than a little bit unnerved by the expression upon his face. But he was surely just scared, she told herself. Everybody reacted to being frightened differently.
'Good idea,' she panted. She then glanced over to the small window to check that it, too, was secure. 'I don't know what could have happened - but those people out there are extremely dangerous. I saw Bob strangling Violet - Bob! One of the sweetest people I've ever known, and it was like - like he's just suddenly a completely different person...' Sweat began to bead on her forehead as she rambled, trying to convey to him the true horrors of what she had witnessed happening out there.
Liam, far from looking worried or afraid, simply continued to stare back at her with an oddly blank expression on his face.
'Liam - come on... ' she moaned. 'Don't you understand how urgent this is? We need to make the call. Dial 999, now.'
A strong sense of urgency was thrumming through her now, along with the panic. Why did he not seem to understand the seriousness of the situation? Finally, Liam shifted from his posture in front of the door - his movements stiff and unnatural looking, somehow. She felt a renewed flood of horror coursing through her veins as she watched him drop both of the phones down onto the floor. Then - without pausing at all - he kicked them, hard, one after the other, sending them crashing deep into the shadowy gap underneath the bed.
Angie gaped at him for a long moment, unable to comprehend just exactly what it was that she was seeing at first. Time stretched on around her, and the terrible truth began to seep into her brain like a poison...
Liam began to stalk across the room towards her, and she found herself backing away until finally her back slammed into the wall and she had nowhere left to go. She looked into her husband's eyes - and saw only a flat, expressionless abyss gazing back at her.
More screams came from outside, cutting through the night air and reaching her where she stood. It was all so surreal - perhaps in a moment, she would just wake up...
'Liam - ' her voice quaked, but she fought to keep it steady as she spoke to her husband once more. He did not respond to the sound of her voice. Beads of sweat began to trickle down his clammy-looking face. 'Liam - what's the matter? What are you doing?'
He did not reply, merely drew back his lips into an animalistic snarl. The way that he was holding his body - taut with aggression - reminded her forcefully of Bob, outside, just moments earlier. She felt a deep, heavy dread settle into her body.
He lunged towards her then, and she managed to dart to one side just in time - a yell bursting forth from her lips. Standing beside the window, she watched as he veered around to come after her once again.
She ran.
Ran to the door, her fingers scrabbling to draw back the heavy, seldom-used bolt that Liam had just drawn across to lock it. But it was stiff and hard to move - and before she had even got it halfway, she felt his hands fisting into her long hair, dragging her forcefully back into the middle of the room. She screamed.
He flung her violently to the floor and she gave a pained cry as she landed, hard, upon the surface. Sharp spasms of pain shot through her body, emenating from her spine and a terrible fear for the safety of her unborn child filled her with a primal rage. She scrambled up as quickly as she could, facing the man who was no longer her husband. Liam would never have done that - he would never do anything to hurt her or the baby...
And so, she steeled herself, preparing to do whatever she had to do. Not for her own sake, but for her child's. She knew that her son or daughter's very survival was at stake.
Liam raised a fist and struck her a hard blow across the face. She felt her lip split, blood bursting forth as she staggered backwards, grappling her hands out to try and keep from falling again. She needed something to defend herself with -
Panting heavily, she looked around in desperation, with the slick, wet sensation of blood coating her chin. On the bedside table beside where she slept was a heavy, antique lamp that she had picked up at a car boot sale last summer. Her fingers curled around it, and she began to cry.
'Please, Liam - don't, I'm begging you - '
But he was beyond listening now, beyond reason. He snarled again, like an animal, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth. And then he yelled aloud - an angered, deranged sound that mingled with the screams still emanating from outside.
'Bitch!' he cried, the words bursting from him like bullets, each one jolting her with fresh, quaking fear. 'You little fucking bitch! I'm going to kill you! I'm going to kill you and cut you up into little tiny pieces, and then I'm going to - Ugh... '
She had swung the lamp towards him with every bit of strength that she could muster, ripping the cord from out of the socket as she did so. It collided with Liam's skull with a sickening crack. Glass from the bulb exploded, shattering all over them both. And now it was his turn to stagger backwards, injured and confused.
Angie gritted her teeth - and then she hit him again. And again. And again, and again. She did not stop until he lay in a crumpled and bloodied heap upon the floor. Unmoving. She stared down at him for a long moment, the adrenaline still pulsing through her body. Lifting a hand, she realised that her face was wet and couldn't tell whether it was with sweat or tears. Probably both.
She didn't know how much time passed as she stood there, looking down at her dead husband. What finally roused her was a sudden sound coming from downstairs - what sounded like someone trying to break in through the front door -
Her nostrils flared. She tightened her grip on the lamp once again - and then stepped over Liam's body and headed downstairs, prepared to fight to the death.
Samantha Brooke has been writing horror fiction for over a decade, ever since completing a writing course in 2012. Since that time, she has completed three novels, the most recent of which is currently being looked at by agents. She also regularly writes short stories and poetry for magazines and has had work published in both England and America. Her website can be found at https://samanthabrookehorrorstories.wordpress.com/ When not writing herself, she is also a short story competition judge on Reedsy.