Ah yes, the Devil. The original boogeyman. He’d heard plenty of stories about Lucifer in the basement of First Baptist Church, from the fall of Adam and Eve to the temptation of Christ in the desert. Stauford’s local evangelists did their best to put the fear of ultimate evil in Ben from infancy, but as he grew older, the same threats of damnation were tired and worn. When he got down to the heart of the matter, the Devil didn’t scare Ben all that much anymore.
The threat of Jacob Masters, on the other hand…
He thought he heard Toby’s laughter carry across the campsite. Ben sighed, reaching blindly in the dark for his backpack.
Another sharp crack startled him with a jolt. He sat up, his heart running first in a thudding marathon. The side of the tent fluttered as a breeze blew past, rustling the leaves above. He thought about rolling over, but this time another sound caught his attention. Shifting, dragging, the rattling sound of trenches dug through pits of tiny pebbles—just like when he’d kicked his feet through the campsite on numerous occasions the day before.
He held his breath and listened. An owl hooted from somewhere above. After another beat, all he heard was his slowing heart and the rustling of dead leaves in the wind. The crickets ceased their chatter.
One of the other kids must’ve gone to the bathroom.
That made enough sense to set his tired mind at ease, and he was about to stretch out once more before another noise made his blood run cold.
Pained, muffled cries carried along the breeze, followed by more dragging noises across the gravel of the campsite. A cold spike of fear stabbed his gut. Why couldn’t Riley be back? Why did he have to sneak out? He’d know what to do. Ben, on the other hand, cowered in the dark like a terrified animal, and he considered rolling over, closing his eyes, and hoping it was all a bad dream wrought from his brother’s stupid ghost story.
But maybe someone’s hurt, he thought. Maybe one of the other kids tripped on their way to the campground facilities. Probably Kenny Simpson. He was such a klutz at school.
Just take a look, he thought. Open the tent, wave your flashlight around, see what’s out there, and be done with it. It’s probably nothing anyway. Maybe a raccoon. You’ll see. Just take the light—
He did, holding his hand over the lens as he clicked it on.
—unzip the tent—
He pulled the zipper, cringing as each metallic tooth separated with clicks amplified in the silence. When he’d unzipped the door enough to open a flap, Ben sucked in his breath.
—count to three—
“One,” he whispered, his words nothing more than hisses of air through clenched teeth. “Two, three—”
—and take a look. Nothing to it.
Ben exhaled, his chest shuddering violently from his pounding heart, and opened the tent flap. The flashlight’s beam darted between two nearby tents as his hand shook. He steadied himself, angling the light at the other tents, going from one to the next until he fell upon Toby’s tent. His breath caught in his throat as his heart froze.
The flap was open, swaying lazily in a soft breeze sweeping through the forest. Two deep trenches were dug into the gravel, leading away from the tent and into the shadows of the night.
Ben remembered to breathe, and his heart resumed its frantic pace. Trembling, he reached over and unzipped the opening the rest of the way. The flap folded outward with a slippery noise, and he cringed.
You got this, he told himself. Put your shoes on and run like hell to Daniel’s tent. Wake him up. Call the cops. Get help.
But when he’d slipped on his sneakers and surveyed the pair of ruts on the ground, he realized they led off in the same direction as his brother’s tent. His heart sank. He’d have to follow the same path, risk facing whatever it was that took his friend.
His cheeks flushed. How did he know something took his friend? Was he jumping to conclusions? Ben stared hard at the deep grooves. He considered the righteous hell he would catch from Daniel if he woke his brother for something stupid, and then considered the possibility he was right, that Toby was dragged off into the forest by a ghost, a mad man, a wild animal, or all of the above. His imagination ran wild with possibilities, and all the while he sat in the opening of his tent, trembling like a frightened child and wasting time.
“Stop it,” he said aloud, ignoring the trepidation in his voice. “Go get Daniel.”
Ben climbed out of the tent and into the cool night air. His bare arms erupted in gooseflesh, and he was struck by the sheer silence of the forest. There was only the wind, the rattle and hiss of leaves in the trees, and the unblinking gaze of the moon from above.
And choked, muffled noises coming from somewhere in the dark.
Shaking, Ben trained the flashlight’s beam on the ground and followed the ruts down the path toward his brother’s tent.
This is stupid, he told himself. There’s nothing wrong. You’re an idiot wandering in the dark, and you’re about to piss off your brother in a big way by waking him up. There’s nothing out here—
The beam fell upon two shapes in the clearing next to the fire pit. One knelt over the other. Ben remembered to breathe, and he was about to scream for Daniel when the power of his voice drained from him. A puff of warm air rasped out of his throat instead.
The sleeve of Toby’s neon green hoodie glowed in the beam of Ben’s flashlight. His friend’s left foot was bare and twitched uncontrollably as the second, bigger figure held him down. Even in the light, the ghoulish shape was drenched in shadow, his clothes tattered and charred and impossibly carrion black, the very essence of a void.
The ghoul turned toward him, toward the light, and snarled.
Ben’s mind gave way to fear, freezing him in his place, and he struggled to keep his bladder from letting loose. The boogeyman, a figure he was too old to believe in, stared back at him with pale blue eyes glowing in the dark. Black worms wriggled out of holes in his face, and in the dark clump of slimy earth he shoved into Toby’s mouth.
He met the dark figure’s stare and tried to scream. There was no boogeyman, and there was no Devil. There was only the burned minister from his brother’s stupid ghost story. Jacob Masters, the mad cult leader in the woods, knelt over his friend’s body. Thick, maggoty tendrils squirmed out of his forehead and cheeks. His brittle teeth clenched in a skeletal smile that withered Ben’s mind.
“Sinner,” the ghoul rasped.
Ben Taswell closed his eyes and tried to scream, but a shadow fell upon him and clamped a cold, clammy hand over his mouth.
CHAPTER NINE
1
In a small two-story house on the central side of Gordon Hill, Ozzie Bell’s phone rang. Susan stirred behind him, jabbing the back of her foot into Ozzie’s thigh and rousing him from sleep. He opened his eyes and winced. His wrist was still cuffed to the bedpost and his hand was numb.
“Get the phone,” he mumbled, but Susan grunted and buried her face into her pillow. He waited, hoping the caller would give up.
Ozzie opened his eyes. What time was it? He was asleep long enough to leave behind the cloud of booze and stupor of rough sex. The thought of Susan straddling him brought a twinge to his crotch, but the sensation was short lived. His bladder was full and screaming. The phone rang once more and fell silent.
He twiddled his numb fingers while he reached for the key on the nightstand with his free hand. His palm felt disconnected and full of cotton, like a scarecrow’s mitt affixed to a dead arm. Blood rushed to his extremities after he unlocked the cuff, prompting him to grimace and suck in his breath as the prickling pain surged in his fingertips. He waited a minute for it to subside before climbing out of bed and trotting to the bathroom.
Susan hadn’t moved in his absence. Her bare ass stuck out from the tangle of sheets, revealing the black serpent tattoo just above her right cheek, and he contemplated giving her one good smack for leaving him cuffed to the bedpost.
The sharp trill of the phone stole his attention, and he frowned when he saw t
he caller notification light up the screen.
“Goddammit.” Ozzie sat on the edge of the bed and answered the call. “This had better be fucking good, Marcus. I’m tryin’ to have a little personal time, if you get my drift.”
He doubted it. Officer Marcus Gray was barely out of high school and greener than a garter snake, as his daddy used to say. The kid was an officer by act of favor alone, a repayment for a debt Ozzie owed the kid’s father, Harlan Gray. That was the first and only time Ozzie wrote a check his ass couldn’t cash, and he’d learned his lesson the hard way. Harlan Gray’s boy was dumb as a brick.
“Sorry, Chief, but we just got a 911 call from Danny Taswell, and I used to go to school with him a few years ago, but anyways, he called and said someone attacked his little brother and—”
“Slow down,” Ozzie sighed. He wished he had a joint. “Start over.”
“Uh, sorry, Chief. Danny Taswell and Glenda Martin—I went to school with her too—have got a busload of kids out near Holly Bay for some kind of weekend church group thing. We got a 911 call from Danny ten minutes ago, sayin’ someone came out of the woods and attacked Johnny Gilpin’s son and Danny’s little brother, Ben.”
Ozzie squinted at his watch. A quarter past two in the morning. “We got a patrol out that way?”
“Yes, sir. Fugate and Cox are on their way now.”
“Get your boots on. We’re goin’ out to the woods tonight.”
He canceled the call and tossed the phone onto the bed.
Someone came out of the woods, he thought. Probably some tweaker who couldn’t handle his shit.
Ozzie’s thoughts turned to those two idiots from the far side of Moore Hill. Waylon promised him a batch of meth to sell by Sunday. He doubted the inbred prick could boil water, much less cook meth, but Zeke might be able to pull it off. The product might not be entirely pure, but the discerning masses of Stauford’s greater addict population didn’t care about purity if the high was right. He ought to know. He’d put most of them away himself.
Smiling, Ozzie made a mental note to check in with Waylon and Zeke later on. After he dressed, Ozzie sat next to Susan and ran his hand along the length of her back.
“Hey.”
She stirred, rolling over to look up at him. Her eyes fluttered open. “What’s wrong?”
“Gotta go to work. Some kids were attacked out near the lake.”
“Be careful, then.”
“You got it, darlin’.” He leaned down and kissed her, fishing his hand underneath the sheet. He pinched her nipple. Susan bit her lower lip.
“Don’t start what you can’t finish, Chief.”
“I intend to,” he said. “Just keep that bed warm for me. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
2
A few miles north along old US 25, just off the Tom Thirston Memorial Overpass, the fluorescent lights of Garvey’s Gas ‘n Go hummed and buzzed over an empty lot. A red neon sign blinked off and on in the front window, announcing to all who could see lottery tickets were for sale, while a pair of beer lights for Budweiser and Coors flickered in tandem. Three pay phone kiosks stood at the far end of the storefront sidewalk, remnants of a bygone era when collect calls and dial-up Internet were still a thing. Promotional posters for various cigarette brands, propane tanks, and prepaid cell phone minutes littered the store-wide picture window.
And inside this lonely self-service island of commerce, the son of the store’s owner stood behind the counter, bored out of his mind.
David Garvey looked away from his comic book, first to the clock—2:30 a.m.—and then to the parking lot, which sat empty since a few high school kids rolled through a couple hours earlier, celebrating Stauford’s win at tonight’s football game. There were three and a half hours left on his shift before Crystal relieved him at six.
He flipped the last page of his comic book and turned it over in his hands to look at the cover. He’d picked up the comic book from the magazine rack because the cover caught his eye. There was a dark painting in place of the usual hand-drawn gothic superheroes, vivid in its detail and grotesquerie. “Guest Artist Jack Tremly,” the cover read. David thought he recognized the name but couldn’t place where. He was about to pull out his phone and google the name when movement caught his eye.
A short figure in a dirty gray hoodie and black sweatpants trundled across the parking lot. A bright neon yellow baseball cap sat on his head, and thick silver curls spilled from it. David rolled his eyes when he saw the slouching man walking toward the store.
“Not again,” he whispered, and moved around the counter to the front door.
This was the fifth night in a week Gary “Skippy” Dawson visited David at the Gas ‘n Go. David’s generation often referred to Skippy as the town mascot, a waving idiot who’d greet anyone and everyone in town as he walked its streets. Rumors about Skippy circulated for as long as David could remember, ranging from conspiracy (“I heard he was a reject from some CIA experiment, man. MK-something.”) to medical (“Didn’t you know? The guy had a lobotomy, man. They cut out, like, three-quarters of his brain.”), but the truth behind Stauford’s favorite simpleton was far more tragic. Once the star quarterback of Stauford’s football team, Skippy was in a horrible motorcycle crash one night after a game. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and the brain damage he suffered was both permanent and far-reaching.
David pushed open the door and greeted Skippy with a smile. “Skip, what’re you doing out this late? Didn’t we talk about this last night?”
And the night before, he thought. And the night before that.
Skippy pulled off his hat and scratched his head. He grinned, revealing the gap in his front teeth. “I knows, Mr. Gravy, but I’s just needed to check the phones again. I hear ‘em sometimes, callin’ me when I tries to sleep.”
David smirked. He’d been “Mr. Gravy” for a few nights now, although every once in a while, old Skippy would get his name right. A light breeze brushed past them, blowing back the matted curls from Skippy’s shoulders.
“I know, Skip, but I keep telling you those phones ain’t gonna ring any time soon. Hell, I don’t think they’ve rang since I was in grade school.”
“But they will ring, Mr. Gravy. Sooner or later. You’ll see.”
David glanced at the bank of payphones and shook his head. His father mentioned more than once he needed to remove them, but so far, the task sat at the bottom of his to-do list. David caught Skippy standing at the phones around 4 a.m. earlier that week, going back and forth from one handset to the next, asking if anyone was there. No amount of reasoning would deter him from checking those phones, and David idly wondered if there was something Skippy could hear that he couldn’t. Like a phone ringing in his head, he thought. Poor guy, going through life like that.
The folks at Stauford Assisted Living were probably wondering where Skippy was at this hour.
“Skip, I’m gonna call your caretaker, okay? You sit tight. In fact, why don’t you come inside with me—”
One of the payphones rang, filling the night with a shrill and ancient noise David had not heard since he was a child. Both men looked at one another in surprise, although Skippy Dawson was far more elated than his counterpart. The old man hopped up and down in his sneakers, the worn soles squeaking against the pavement and punctuating his hoarse, choked laughter. A chill of fear crept down David’s spine, leaving him frozen in place, one foot on the parking lot and another on the sidewalk. The lines were disconnected a decade ago.
“Ain’t you gonna answer it, Mr. Gravy? I bet it’s for you.”
David glared at Skippy. Don’t you put this on me, you ignorant shit. There’s no goddamn reason that call would be for me. You’re the curious one.
The truth was, David was at least a little curious, if not entirely eager to silence the shrill noise filling the night.
“Maybe you should answer it, Skip.” David looked at him and forced a smile. “I mean, you’ve been coming out here every night for this.”
David’s face fell, a familiar chill climbing back up the length of his spine. “And what’s that, Skip? Care to tell me?”
Skippy grinned and shook his head. “Nuh uh, Mr. Gravy. You has to answer the phone.”
The phone rang once more, driving home Skippy Dawson’s cryptic edict. Frowning, David Garvey padded along the sidewalk in front of the store and approached the ringing payphone. The blaring noise made his head swim, painting the world around him with a frantic uneasiness.
He hesitated, sucked in his breath, and picked up the receiver. The ringing ceased. He lifted the phone to his ear and met Skippy’s gaze.
“Hello?”
Silence answered him. Silence, and a coarse grit of static scraping through his ear. And from that hissing noise spoke a hollow voice with subdued glee, filling David’s mind with terror.
“He lives,” whispered the voice, backed by grating static and the shrill, ululating sounds of laughing children. “He lives.”
The line went dead, but the sounds continued in David’s mind, caught in a permanent loop. He lives, he lives, he lives. He returned the receiver to its cradle and leaned against the wall of the store, rubbing absently at his forehead. A thrumming pressure settled behind his eyes, pulsing in time with his heart.
“Now you know, Mr. Gravy,” Skippy said, laughing as he hopped up and down across the parking lot. “Soon, everybody’ll know! He lives! He lives!”
Skippy Dawson’s prophecy faded into the night as he trotted across the parking lot, into the shadows, and away toward town. David watched him go, thankful he was alone, terrified he was alone. He stared at the bank of payphones with reservation before returning to the store.
Five minutes later, he locked the doors and shut off the lights. He’d think of an excuse to tell his father in the morning.
3
Bobby Tate switched on the bedside lamp and fumbled for his glasses. He’d had the worst nightmare, a tapestry of hellish horrors and agony, but with his eyes open and the light on, those dark phantoms were banished from memory. Only the dread remained. There was something else, though, something his waking mind took a few moments to understand.
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