Scary Stories: Contract Killer

The job was supposed to be simple. Two targets in a rundown Victorian mansion outside Vernon: an elderly woman and a little boy. Taggart, the narrator and a professional killer working for a ruthless employer named Detley, had seen the photos—a smiling old woman in a garish dress, and a child of four or five hugging a tin toy robot in front of a Christmas tree. He had killed before, including a soccer mom while her children slept upstairs. But a child gave him pause. "Maybe this was a line I couldn't cross," he thought. His partner Kilroy, a coldly efficient woman with a dirty-blond ponytail and a habit of being late, dismissed his hesitation. "The job is the job," she said. And so they drove into the winter night.

The House and What Lived There

The mansion was isolated, surrounded by empty fields, and stank of garbage and rot. The back door swung open easily, rotted and warped. Inside, the only light came from a television in the living room, where the old woman sat in an armchair. But before they could act, frantic footsteps pounded overhead—child-sized feet running on aged hardwood, accompanied by manic giggling. The old woman stood and began babbling: "No, no, God, why won't he stop? Please, God, Roger... Arthur came back. He came back after all these years, after everything we did to him."