Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Counting Snakes to Forty 

The snow falls gently from the heavens, laying out a silken road of white across everything it touches. Clive stands stalwart, his eyes narrowing, his trembling lips curling as he tightens his grip on the already bloody axe. The white ground quickly soaks up the crimson gold pooling before him. 

His breath shudders as he inhales deeply—for a second, he holds it—his ears twitching as he readies himself for the next attacker. 

Joe Braddock, from number seventeen, charges out of the tree line, his mouth mangled beyond recognition. A mindless gaze fills his eyes. A guttural cry tears from his chest, his arms flailing like they are unattached, as if he never learned how to use them. 

Clive swings the axe high, driving it down into Joe’s skull, splitting it wide open. Joe crumples to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Crimson mush seeps from the jagged wound in his head, his eyes as empty as his decaying flesh. 

Clive exhales sharply. “Thirty-six,” he mutters under his breath. 

Another cry rings out from behind him. Dolores, Joe’s wife, barrels toward him. Clive wrenches the axe free and swings, taking her head off in one clean motion. He allows the moment to play out in his mind several times, and he smiles wryly. “Thirty-seven,” he whispers, the corners of his mouth twitching. 

From either side, their children, Hamish and Emma, collide with him, sending him sprawling into the blood-soaked ground. Emma lunges for his throat, her claws raking the air. Clive grabs her hair, ripping it free in chunks of flesh as he jams a blade between her ribs. She quickly falls silent. 

“Thirty-eight,” he chokes out, dragging air into his lungs as he tosses Emma’s limp form aside. 

Hamish’s teeth sink into his shoulder. Clive screams, shoving the boy off, but Hamish springs back, hunger driving his every move. Clive grabs the six-inch blade from Emma’s chest and, with a backwards thrust, drives it into Hamish’s skull. The boy drops quickly, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. 

“Thirty-nine,” Clive mutters, his voice raw and distant as he collapses onto the crimson-soaked ground. 

For too many moments, Clive lies there, gasping for breath. The silence is heavy, but another piercing shriek terrorises the night, dragging his attention back to survival. Carla Jones, the local babysitter—his own daughter—emerges from the shadows. Her pale flesh reeks of decay, mottled with fresh and faded bruises. 

His lip trembles, and snot and tears smear his bloody, bruised face into an incomprehensible mess. Bite marks cover her arms and neck, some deep and oozing, others old and crusted over. Her face is empty, but recognition flickers in her amber eyes. Her head tilts slightly as she steps forward. 

Clive staggers back to his weary feet, his knuckles whitening around the axe. 
“E-E-Emma, h-honey?” he stammers as he reaches out toward her gently. 

She readies her stance and cries like a banshee. From the shadows, bodies charge, their cries primal—bestial. His lips peel back into a snarl as he launches himself at her, screaming, “Forty!” 

The axe swings through the air as he wields it wildly, his cries mingling with hers—with theirs.