The Dark Sacrifice: A Horror Novel

by Jay Bower

  “I think so, Benny. You know these roads far better than I do. Is there another bridge on Twin Lakes?”

  Benny shook his head. “Nope, just this one here. Let’s go down and take a look.” They stepped carefully in the wet grass, wary of sliding down the small embankment. The thick fog was easily capable of hiding a turn in the road. They got to the bottom and still didn’t see anything.

  “You got your flashlight, Patty?” Benny asked in the darkness.

  “Of course.”

  “Good, you go that way,” he said pointing, “and I’ll take the other way. Watch your step down here and be careful of bears.”

  “Bears? Really?” Patrick asked.

  Benny laughed. “Yeah, Patty, really. They like to come out at night sometimes. Just be careful. You disturb one of those things, and you won’t be going home tonight.” Patrick shook his head and walked on in search of the wreck.

  About twenty yards farther, he turned to the left. Recalling his black mist encounter, he pushed the thought away. It wasn’t real, he told himself over and over.

  His path took him a long way from the road, too far for any car to have gotten through the thick trees and brush. He could see the swinging beam of Benny’s flashlight far off in the distance. He walked forward and slammed his shin against a branch. “Damn!” he said aloud, hopping on one foot, trying to get the pain to subside. The throbbing pain forced him to drop his flashlight to rub the ache.

  “Ouch…damn,” he grumbled.

  He picked up his flashlight, and when he stood up again, Benny’s light was gone. “Oh man,” he moaned. He took a step and pain shot up his leg. Limping, he walked toward where he last saw Benny’s light.

  About halfway to where he thought Benny should be, a bright light shone at him and cast an eerie haze on the wet trees. The fog, thick as it was, let a bit of light seep in. It reminded him of an old horror movie and he steeled himself for the zombies that should be popping out of nowhere. “Shut up,” he said out loud to himself. “Get a hold of yourself. You’re a damn cop!” A branch scraped across his face and he swore.

  “Benny, is that you? Did you find anything?” he shouted to the fog, backlit by the mysterious light. There was no reply. He stumbled forward on his wounded leg toward the light. A sound like sheets fluttering in the wind behind him forced him to spin around.

  In the foggy distance, several humanlike shapes fanned out in his field of vision. The mysterious figures concealed in the fog instantly raised his concern. He glanced at the light and then back to the shapes.

  He stalked after them.

  The fog grew cold as he closed in. One seemed to be just yards in front of him. He took a few steps toward it and stopped in his tracks. The shape was suspended in the air. Something about the silhouette worried him.

  “Hey, are you all right?” he called and ran toward it. The fog opened up as he drew closer to reveal a body swinging by a rope from a tree.

  The figure had long, matted brown hair. He guessed it to be a girl of about ten years old. She wore a long, tattered nightgown that may have been white at one time. Her arms dangled at her sides.

  “What the hell!” he shouted. He ran to untie the noose around her neck, but his hands grasped nothing. The swinging girl had vanished. He looked around. Surrounding him were at least twenty more bodies, all in nightgowns with long hair, swinging from the trees by tight nooses around their necks. Their faces were pale; their eyes closed.

  “Benny! Benny, where are you?” he shouted.

  The bodies swung lazily with the light breeze. The branches creaked. Everywhere he turned, more bodies appeared. One by one, they opened their dark eyes. He found himself staring at countless pairs of fiery red eyes, the lifeless bodies swaying.

  “Oh my God!” he said. He grabbed his gun with a shaky hand. He pointed it at one and then another of the bodies as the fiery glow of their eyes followed him. He dropped his flashlight again, but in his haste to move away from the swinging bodies, he didn’t try to pick it up. He held onto his gun with a trembling hand. With the other, he grabbed his microphone from his shirt, clicking the button to speak. “This is O’Shea. I’m in trouble. I’m surrounded by…I don’t know what. Please, Benny, if you can hear this, come fast!” He let go of the button, then clicked it on again. “This is O’Shea—” And then the things moved.

  One by one, they opened their mouths and started chanting.

  “N-O-A-H…”

  The lifeless faces stared up at him with fierce glowing eyes and chanted his son’s name.

  “Noah?” he said quietly. “Why Noah? What do you want?”

  The bodies continued swaying from the fog-coated trees, red glowing eyes bobbing up and down as they raised their heads to chant.

  “N-O-A-H…”

  “You leave him out of this! I’m here now. What do you want?” he shouted at them. They chanted Noah’s name, creating a dizzyingly mad murmur all around him. Glowing eyes bobbed up and down and side-to-side as the wind blew the bodies on their nooses.

  “N-O-A-H…” they chanted again and again.

  Some spoke slowly, while others said the name quickly and repeatedly.

  “What do you want?” Patrick shouted again. Then they changed their chant. It started far off on his right and soon they all chanted the same word.

  “S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E.”

  They grew louder and louder.

  “S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E.”

  Patrick’s blood froze. Their chant chilled him to his core. He trembled, but he didn’t want to let them get to him. They wouldn’t win. He had to be strong for his son and his family. They wouldn’t scare him, whoever they were…whatever they were. He closed his eyes and balled his fists, the chants raining down on him. When he looked up, the bodies slowly faded away. He thought it might be a thicker fog rolling in. He stepped closer to one nearby and it winked out of existence. One by one, they faded to nothing until he found himself alone in the midst of the fog. He heard the echoes of their chants of “Noah” and “sacrifice” in his head as if they were still there. “No,” he growled, “this isn’t real.” With clenched fists, he stalked deliberately toward the light. He needed to find Benny and get the hell out of there.

  “Patty,” his radio crackled to life, “Are you out there? I ain’t found nothing. What about you?” Patrick stopped and closed his eyes.

  It’s not real, he thought, it’s in my head.

  Jerking the mic off his shirt, he called back. “No, Benny, I didn’t see anything. Meet you at the car.” He took a couple deep breaths before meeting Benny.

  He needed answers, though he doubted Benny had them. He either needed a shrink, or it was time to talk to Virgil.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SARA CALLED MEAGAN for a playdate for the boys. They met one morning at Longfellow Park, a playground in the center of Brownsville. It had two grass-covered softball fields, tennis courts, a basketball court, a jungle gym, and some cool assorted playground equipment with bridges and covered play sections. Most days, the basketball courts were full of the older neighborhood kids, which didn’t matter to the two younger boys. They were concerned with the playground equipment. As soon as Meagan arrived with Noah, he tore off in Eric’s direction. Meagan walked over to a bench where Sara sat reading a book.

  “Oh, hi Meg. Beautiful day today, isn’t it? It’s going to get really hot later, so I figured we’d start here before all the playground stuff got too hot to touch,” Sara said as she laid the book on her lap.

  “Yeah, good idea,” Meagan replied. She sat next to Sara, her eyes on the boys. “This is a pretty cool park. We’ve driven past it several times on the way to my parents’ house, but never stopped. There were always a ton of kids out here and Noah, as shy as he is, didn’t want to play by himself. I played here a lot as a little girl, but it didn’t have all these fun things like it does now. Maybe that jungle gym over there, but not all the courts and stuff. Basically, it was an open field,” Meagan said. She watched the boys
running between plastic climbing walls and sliding down to the soft ground.

  “Yeah, I remember that, too. They must have added a lot of this stuff after you left. It’s pretty neat. Eric is always bugging me about coming here. It’s just so hard to come out in the middle of summer when it gets so darn hot,” Sara said.

  Meagan watched the boys run around the black rubber bits used to soften the blow of falls from the playground equipment. She imagined it did get pretty hot in the summer, especially since there was nothing to block the sun from scorching the black rubber. At this time of day, the sun hadn’t yet reached its peak and dew still covered some things. It wouldn’t take long for the heat to begin its baking.

  In the distance, the birds crowed. In the middle of the large park, there were a few trees used as a divider between the playground and the ball fields. The birds there were especially chirpy this morning. She watched a black bird fly overhead, cawing down at them. It rested on top of one of the covered sections where Eric and Noah were playing and cawed loudly. It seemed to stare right at her, but she dismissed it. The boys peeked out and looked up when they heard the bird. The bird perched above them. It cocked its head one way and then the other, cawing at the boys.

  “Hey, get away from the bird,” Meagan called out. She didn’t need to add an injury by bird to the list of things that had happened over the summer so far. The boys looked at her, back at the noisy bird, and then ran across a bridge to another covered section.

  “So how is the school here, Sara? Noah is actually kinda excited about going. He’s getting tired of spending his school days with me.”

  “Did you homeschool him? I didn’t know that. I thought about doing that a long time ago, but since Eric is an only child, I decided it best if he went to school and spent time around other children. I always heard homeschooled kids were socially awkward, but Noah seems just fine. I would’ve never guessed you homeschooled him.”

  Meagan nodded. “I know. Patrick was worried I’d mess him up.” Both women laughed.

  “Yeah, I can see him saying that,” Sara said. “But the schools here are pretty good. Maybe the boys will be in the same class. Who’s his teacher?”

  Meagan thought for a moment. “I think her name is Mrs. Ward. What about Eric?”

  “The same! Cool, the boys will love that,” Sara said, smiling as she watched the boys run about. As she did, she noticed the black birds flying above, circling like vultures. “Hmm, look at that,” she said, pointing up in the sky. “Why do you think they hover like that? I’ve seen them do that around here at other times, but I still find it strange,” she said. Meagan looked up, shielding her eyes from the morning sun. She didn’t reply. Sara turned to her and then back up to the sky. “There must be what, thirty or so of those nasty birds? I hate them. They remind me of road kill.”

  Meagan giggled a little. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  The birds cawed loudly, and then one veered away from the rest and dive-bombed the boys, narrowly missing Noah’s head. “What the—” he said, startled. “Mom, did you see that?”

  Another followed and dove straight for him. He threw himself to the ground to avoid its outstretched claws before it swooped back up in the air. Meagan and Sara jumped and ran to the boys, waving their arms.

  “Shoo, get away!” Meagan yelled. Sara yelled something unintelligible at the birds, but it didn’t work. More dropped from the sky, swooping down at Noah. They paid no attention to Eric, who fell to the ground beside Noah and stared at the black mass of birds attacking.

  “No!” Eric said, his voice feeble and his breathing quick. “Get away from my friend!” He stood and tried to sweep them away with his arms. Tiny yellow claws struck him and ripped his flesh. Sara shrieked in horror when she saw the birds peck and gouge at her son.

  Noah lay on the ground with his head covered, but even though the birds swooped down on him, they only grazed him and didn’t drew blood. They teased attack but pulled off as soon as they were close enough for him to feel their feathers on his skin. Meagan ran to him, trying to scatter the birds, flailing her arms wildly in the air. She dropped down and covered him with her body. Sara stood up, yelling and waving her arms to ward off the attackers. Eric stopped trying to scare the birds away when there were more streaks of crimson on his arms than he could count. He fell to his knees, his face pale, as he inspected his arms. Tears welled up in his eyes and he sobbed from the pain and confusion.

  A few birds struck Meagan on the back as she lay curled over her son. “Get away you, bastards,” she growled. “He’s not yours! Go!” she said. Sara picked up handfuls of black rubber bits from the ground and threw them at the birds. It didn’t stop their merciless attacks. One by one, they dove at Noah, careful not to make a mark on him and striking anyone in their path.

  Some of the other kids and parents at the park came running when they saw the dark streak reaching down from the sky to the people on the ground. Several yelled at the birds and threw baseballs and basketballs at the heaving black mass of birds. The birds moved out of the way of the objects as though they anticipated every danger.

  A couple of the kids took their baseball bats and swatted at the birds, finally connecting with some of them, sending birds flying with gruesome cracks. It seemed to have an effect, as fewer and fewer birds flew at Noah. Meagan didn’t budge, trying to cover Noah with her entire body, keeping him wrapped in her arms. Her tattered shirt now barely covered her injured back. The boys kept swinging, breaking necks and bodies of the black birds.

  Soon, only a few birds were left. They circled above slowly, screeching and cawing. Then, just as quickly as they descended on Noah, they were gone.

  In the center of the playground, Meagan clung to Noah. Sara rushed to Eric, inspecting his wounded arms. The boys with the baseball bats breathed heavily, bats up at the ready. A man and woman came to Meagan’s aid as another woman rushed to Sara.

  “What happened?” the man asked Meagan.

  “It’s okay now,” the woman said softly, “the birds are gone. I think the boys scared them off with their bats. You’re lucky you only have a few scrapes,” she said as she put her arm gently across Meagan, trying to comfort her. Meagan was now crying hysterically. Noah lay under her, trembling.

  “Noah! Noah, are you all right?” Meagan asked through her tears. He shook and didn’t remove his hands from his face when Meagan finally moved off him. The man and woman looked at each other and then to Noah.

  “You’re lucky, kid,” the man said. “They never touched you. Look,” he pointed to Noah’s arms. “No scratches!” Noah looked up and saw the people crowding around him. He turned to Eric and his lip quivered when he saw the red streaks on his arms.

  “Eric!” he said and pushed himself off the ground to get closer, “what happened? Did the birds do this?” Eric nodded. Sara held him close to her.

  “You guys might want to go see a doctor,” the man said. “Who knows what kinds of diseases those filthy things carry?”

  Meagan nodded, looking up in the sky for any trace of the birds. Small black bodies were strewn on the ground with twisted heads and oddly shaped wings.

  The man whistled. “You boys did a heck of a job with those bats. You guys saved them.” The two boys smiled at each other and then noticed the dead birds. Twisted beaks and legs looked back in permanent sick grins.

  One of the boys turned to Noah. “A sign. It’s got to be a sign.”

  “Huh?” the man asked.

  Meagan turned her head. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, just that it’s got be a sign of some sort, right? Those kinds of birds don’t do that. Ever. That’s the craziest thing I ever saw. Just saying, it’s got to be a sign.”

  Meagan raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth to say something, but the words refused to come out.

  “Look, you just did something awesome,” the man said to the boy, “please don’t make it bad for these people again. You’ll scare the boys.”

  “I’m just
saying—” he replied before being cut off by Noah.

  “You were just saying it’s a sign. Thanks, I got it,” Noah said.

  “Noah, please!” Meagan said with shock on her face. “This young man saved us from a freak attack. There’s no need for an attitude.”

  Noah hung his head. “Okay. Sure, Mom.”

  The sound of Eric whimpering made Noah look up. Eric sat on his knees with Sara holding him. His arms oozed crimson, shreds of skin peeled back on his arms and hands.

  The crowd dispersed, and the man asked Meagan if she needed any help. She declined, and eventually he and the woman took their departure.

  “Sara,” Meagan asked, “do you want me to take you to the hospital? His arms are pretty bad.”

  She shook her head, “No, I’ve got it, Meagan.” She coaxed Eric up. He stood with his arms outstretched to keep them from touching each other. Meagan and Noah walked them to their car, opened the door, and helped Eric get in his seat. He winced and cried a little when Noah accidentally hit his arm with the seat belt.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  They watched as Sara drove off in a hurry.

  “Mom,” Noah said to Meagan as the car drove out of view. She turned toward his dirt-streaked face.

  “Yeah, Noah?”

  “He’s right, I think.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The boy back there. He’s right. It is a sign. Right?”

  She closed her eyes and covered them with one hand. The sun felt warm as she stood there. “We need to go, Noah,” she replied, and they drove home in silence.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HOURS AFTER THE ATTACK, Meagan’s phone lit with an incoming call from Patrick. She saw his name pop up on the caller ID and hesitated. He must have heard what happened by now, and she didn’t want to listen to his accusations or criticisms. She let the call go. He called again. She wanted time to digest it and not have to explain herself to Patrick, so she still didn’t answer. He called a third time, and she couldn’t ignore him any longer.