Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

A Room Full of Synchronicity

Carter’s smirk trembles across his lips. “T-The devil made you do it?” he asks, his voice trembling with anticipation. Jenny nods wildly, a grin stretching across her pale face.
“It did—it did!” she gasps, her voice bursting with excitement. For a moment, he finds himself smiling. Her excitement is not just infectious—it spreads like a disease. A cold shiver runs down his spine, like a finger tracing his back, making his skin crawl.

He draws a shaky breath and lets out a stuttering sigh. His smile falters as he tries to compose himself. “I-Is—” he murmurs, pausing to wipe the sweat cascading down his brow with a handkerchief. “I-Is the devil still here?”

Her smile widens, her head jerking with ferocious energy. Her eyes dart to the space between John and Carter. The lights flicker momentarily, casting shadows that dance unnaturally across the room—writhing as if alive. Carter’s heart skips several beats as he tells himself it is a trick of the lights.

He swallows another struggling breath, squeezes his eyes shut, and tells himself to focus. He purses his lips, scrunches his nose, and forces another trembling breath out before opening his eyes again. Slowly, he turns his head. His gaze meets John’s disturbingly vacant, empty stare—but it is something else that truly catches his attention.

A charred arm extends through a gaping hole in John’s back, hoisting his limp body upright like a grotesque ventriloquist’s dummy. Carter bites down on his lip as his gaze follows the arm to its owner. The creature is bestial, with yellow, cavernous eyes and a grotesque mouth of razor-sharp teeth. Its blackened, baked flesh glistens as though bathed in crude oil. Coils of smoke faintly hiss and spit as cracks in its flesh reveal the embers of an underworld fire burning beneath.

It looks at Carter and snarls. He turns his dizzying gaze back to John, who stares at him as emptily as before.

“W-What—is it?” he stammers.

John’s head tilts—or more so, the creature tilts John’s head toward him. Its guttural snarl shifts into something resembling speech—distorted and violently vile. “W-W-What—is it?” it repeats, the words dragged across the air like shards of glass scraping against John’s vocal cords.

Carter’s breath catches. John’s hollow eyes widen, his body convulsing in jerky, awkward movements as the puppeteer manipulates him. The charred arm twitches, pulling tighter on John’s sagging corpse. Then Carter sees it—John’s chest heaving faintly, fighting for air. The motion is futile, like a bird with broken wings trying to fly. When he looks into his brother’s eyes again, he realises John is trapped inside his own flesh—a living puppet.

“You—” the voice rasps, dragging his attention back to the room. But this time, it does not come from John. It slithers through the room, pooling in the corners before folding in on itself like smoke and violently forcing itself into his ears. “Do you think you are whole? Do you think you are—yours?”

Carter’s lips quiver, but no sound escapes. The creature’s mouth splits wider, its razor-sharp teeth grinding together with a screech. The air thickens with the stench of rotting meat and burning earth, catching in his throat and choking him momentarily.

Jenny shatters the choking tension with a sharp, shrill giggle, and Carter screams in fright. She slaps her hands together like a delighted child clapping for no reason but their own amusement. Her disjointed movements mimic a poorly animated cartoon character, her grin stretching impossibly wide and tearing the corners of her mouth. A spray of red spatters to the floor before her, and soon she is awash in crimson gold.

Carter takes a nervous step back, but his eyes catch something new and horrifying behind Jenny—a shadow, a shape. Its charred flesh hisses and spits. He fights the urge to vomit, clutching his mouth.

“Jenny—” he whispers through trembling lips as his eyes well up with tears. “You—”

Jenny’s head leans to the side, her eyes slowly falling upon Carter. Her bloody smile widens further, tearing deeper into her flesh. “Do you think I am whole?” her disembodied voice whispers, echoing the words John had spoken moments earlier. “Do you think I am—me?”

They stay like this for several lost moments before she suddenly sits upright, her eyes wide. “They will fix you,” she announces, her voice rising to a shrill pitch. “They will strip away what is broken. They will make you perfect. Just—like—me! Like when Daddy made us.”

Carter stumbles back, clutching himself as he vomits the contents of his stomach to the floor. She claps excitedly, awkwardly jumping up and down on the spot. To his left, he notices John mirroring her movements.

His blood runs cold. He feels something—or someone—behind him, and his eyes open unnaturally wide. Desperately, he reaches behind his back, searching for an arm protruding through him. To his relief, there is none. Slowly, he turns. Even though he does not want to look, he knows he must.

He turns as a figure steps into the light. He catches his breath in his throat as he stares into his own impossible face. But the proportions seem off—the doppelgänger’s features are stretched and grotesque. Its eyes are enormous pits of tar-like darkness. It smiles at him with a mouth lined with the same razor-sharp teeth as the beast. Its putrid breath wafts over him, and he vomits again, much to the delight of the others.

“W-W-What are you?” he stammers.

“W-W-What are you?” the doppelgänger mimics, adopting the same stance as Carter. Slowly, he raises his hand to the mirror image—and it mimics his movements in perfect synchronicity.

Suddenly, he notices a distinct variation. At first, he thinks it is a trick, but then it becomes clear. The doppelgänger hunches over, and he feels himself doing the same. As a wave of icy horror floods over him, he notices a charred arm extending from the doppelgänger’s back.

The creature’s voice slithers around him again, filling the room before forcing its way into his ears. “Do you think you are whole?” it asks as Carter stares out of his wide-open eyes, unable to answer.