by Jim Brown
Copyright © 2003 by Jim Brown
No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.
ISBN: 978-1-54395-440-1
DEDICATION
To Kenneth and Beverly Herr, whose wisdom, love, and guidance have helped me more than they will ever know.
And to Kathryn, who holds me at night when the dark things slip off the page.
Best Selling Authors on Black Valley by Jim Brown
“Black Valley is “ . . . utterly terrifying. Ferociously creative, twisting and curving like a serpent, this story kept me awake and turning the pages until the very end.”
– Tess Gerritsen
Author and creator of the Rizzoli & Isles book and TV series
“Terror runs amok in Black Valley – a Dean Koontz – style thriller pulsating with suspense, intrigue, and a twenty-year old vendetta that rises (literally) from the grave.”
– Katherine Neville
Author of The Eight
“Black Valley has it all--an ingenious premise, engaging characters, masterful storytelling, and hair-raising scenes that chilled me to the marrow. Jim Brown is clearly a rising star in this new golden era of suspense fiction.”
– John Saul
Author of Suffer the Children
“Black Valley is an incredible story – I’m still reeling.”
– Douglas Preston
Author of Impact
“A classic page-turner, Black Valley is an intense, intelligent, fast-paced, first-rate thriller. Jim Brown’s new novel will grab you on page one and keep you up late into the night-making your imagination work overtime after the lights are out.”
– Joe Weber Author of Dancing With The Dragon
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
EPILOGUE
24/7
1
2
THEN
1
Whitey Dobbs giggled as dirt struck the top of his coffin. Not a giggler by nature, he was surprised by his reaction but continued to snicker in reply to each flat, dull thump. The coffin shook at first, then settled in as the sound began to recede, dirt on wood, dirt on dirt, becoming fainter, farther, until – nothing.
Quiet as a grave.
He laughed aloud, shattering the new silence, the sound of his own voice rushing back to him, a reminder of his close confines. Whitey put his hands over his mouth to stifle a snicker, chiding himself for his lack of control.
Get a grip. Don’t waste oxygen.
Tentatively, like a newborn, the teenager explored the parameters of his world. His head rested on a thin pillow; his bone-white hair touched one end of the coffin, his feet just two inches shy of the other. The sides, padded and laced, pressed against his shoulders. Add in the extras and there was barely enough room for a body. . . his body.
How do the dead tolerate it? Nicely, he supposed. No one had ever complained.
Maybe he should suggest that as a motto for Perkins Funeral Home: Eight hundred buried – no complaints. The laughter came like vomit, swelling in his throat, rising up and rushing out. He fought to hold it back but feared he would choke.
Get control, get control.
He blinked to see if his eyes were open. Nothing. It was the blackest dark he had ever seen. Can you see the dark? He touched the lid of the coffin. It was just inches from his face, yet completely invisible . . .so close, so oppressively close. No, since I can’t see it, it ain’t there, he decided. It’s easy to fool yourself in the dark.
Or go crazy.
Snicker.
Get control.
Despite the restrictions he managed to work his right hand into the pocket of his jeans. His fingers touched the smooth wood exterior of the knife. With the touch came control. This wasn’t so bad, not bad at all. He was only seventeen, but he had already seen real horror. He’d looked right into its bloodshot eyes, smelled the liquor on its fetid breath and fed it to the blade.
Nah, this wasn’t bad at all.
He eased the knife out of his pocket, his fingers caressing its contours like a man touching a woman’s breast. In his mind he traced his movements, seeing the knife’s cherry-wood handle, painted a glossy ruptured-blood-vessel red, balanced by chrome caps on each end. On one side was a small, flat button – the switch.
He pressed it.
Click.
Flip.
Click.
Flip.
Not the smartest thing to do when you’re as blind as the dead and confined to a coffin, but he wasn’t worried. He knew this blade.
Like a teenage boy knows his dick, his father would say. Only his father couldn’t say that, seeing how he was dead and buried in a coffin all his own.
Snicker.
This switchblade was his friend, protector, collaborator. It would never hurt him. And maybe when this was all over, he would feed it, give it a special treat, a taste of a sassy, spoiled little rich kid. There was a prissy bitch down at the college; he’d his eye on her for some time. Maybe she should be next? Yeah, definitely the next.
He giggled aloud.
Where were they now? He wondered. Where were his four new friends? Had they finished? No, it was a very deep hole, six feet under. They were still up there. He just couldn’t hear them anymore. Must be working up quite a sweat, shoveling all that dirt. The thought of them – four strapping rich kids in expensive shoes and sporting twenty-dollar haircuts – actually breaking a sweat appealed to him.
And what was he doing while they worked, while they performed physical labor for perhaps the first time in their pampered little lives? Nothing.
Just lying, here, me and the worms; as still and quiet as a dead man, while you boys . . .alive.
He couldn’t hold it back; the laughter came in waves.
John Evans dumped the last shovelful of dirt onto the fresh grave, then patted it down with the back of the shovel. The other three watched silently. Even trading off among the four of them, they were bone tired. John took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped sweat out of his eyes as the last red fingers of sunlight clawed at a purpling sky.
His cousin Mason took a beer from the cooler and opened it. “Hell of a deal,” he said, taking a long, deep drink. He belched. “Hell of a deal.”
“Damn. I can’t believe we did it,” Clyde Watkins said. “We really, really did it.” Clyde Watkins said. Thick locks of auburn hair fell across his forehead. He pushed them back with his fingers.
�
�We?” Mason snorted. “Screw that. Me and John did most of the work.”
“Hey, I helped,” Clyde said, brushing dirt off his trousers.
“You couldn’t do shit for bitching.”
“So? I don’t like rutting around in the dirt like a pig. Shoot me.” He straightened up, smoothed his shirt with the back of his hand, and smiled. “I have to save myself for the ladies.”
“Screw you,” Mason said. He looked at the grave and laughed nervously. “Screw you.”
Nathan Perkins sat on the tailgate of the truck, kneading his hands. His eyes, magnified by thick glasses, seemed tethered to the fresh mound of earth.
“You okay?” John asked.
Nathan nodded, then pushed his glasses up the slope of his nose. His hand shook.
“Did we have to . . . to – you know, bury him so deep?”
“Six feet. No more, no less,” John said, rolling his shoulders and rubbing the back of his neck. His muscles ached and burned. At six two, with a chest that could be rented out as a billboard, John Evans was an imposing figure. Still, standing on the crown of Hawkins Hill, with the town of Black Valley, Oregon, spread out before him like ruined stars banished from heaven, he felt positively tiny.
John stomped on the grave, his heavy boots packing the dark brown earth.
“Jeez, I can’t believe the son of a bitch is down there,” Nathan said.
Mason Evans grinned, his teeth iridescent in the twilight. “He’s down there, all right. You can bet your sweet ass on that.” He cupped a hand to his mouth. “How’s it going down there?” he yelled to the grave.
“Shhhh . . .” Nathan said, casting a cautionary glance at the mound of earth.
“What?” Mason challenged. “You think the son of a bitch can hear us?” Beer and saliva escaped with the words. “You worried big, bad Whitey Dobbs is going to dig his way out and get you?”
He laughed, then looked at the others to join him. But John was too tired, his thoughts coiled in a knot of confusion and anger. Clyde just shrugged and smiled.
John watched the encroaching night, the slow, subtle saturation of dark, the elongating of shadows and pools of indigo and purple expanding languidly.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Nathan said, running his finger between the collar of his shirt and his neck. He licked his dry lips. “I mean, what good can come of it? What’s the best we can hope for?”
“Hey, we talked about this, and you agreed,” Mason said, pointing with his beer bottle for emphasis. “You agreed. We all did.”
“I know, I know, it’s just, well . . . If Dad finds out I’m the one who took the coffin, he’ll kill me.”
“He’ll never know,” Clyde assured him, speaking with a confidence that always gave added weight to whatever he said, even when it was bullshit. He put an arm around Nathan’s shoulder. “Besides, if he does kill you, I bet he would do the embalming for free.”
Mason laughed too loudly. Nathan simpered.
John Evans said nothing, crossing his pylonlike arms across his broad chest. There was little that worried John, less that scared him. Still . . . He looked around the crest of Hawkins Hill. The darkness beneath the Douglas firs was slowly but aggressively crawling toward them.
John took a beer from the cooler. He put the cold bottle on the back of his neck and rolled it with the palm of his hand, letting it cool his tired muscles. A fresh wind moaned in the night, bringing an unexpected chill.
He shuddered. A chill? Why did it always seem colder on Hawkins Hill? Dean would have known.
He looked down on Black Valley. Not much of a town, John thought, but it suited him. He liked the sameness, the continuity. Besides, when outsiders came -
He looked at the mound of earth. Anger flashed anew. He closed his eyes to let it pass. He opened them and looked at the sky. Thick clouds blotted the ambient light, cicadas sang their one-note song, and Whitey Dobbs remained buried in the loamy earth on Hawkins Hill.
“Let’s ride,” John said, hazarding one final look at the grave.
John and Nathan climbed into the old primer-gray truck they had used to haul the coffin. Nathan slid into the driver’s seat as Mason and Clyde pilled into Mason’s ‘65 Chevy. The engine turned over on the first try. John looked back at the crown of Hawkins Hill; it was circled by healthy Douglas firs, but nothing grew in the center except a few faded weeds. No one knew why. Some said the place was spoiled, just bad land; others said it was haunted, that spirits killed whatever was planted.
“Jesus,” Nathan cried, standing on the brakes, truck and passengers pitching forward then rocking to a stop. In the spray of the headlights a black leather jacket hung suspended in the air.
It swayed in the breeze and John saw the thin tree limb.
“Dobbs hung it on a sapling before we put him in the ground,” John said.
“It looked like it was floating, you know?” Nathan said, then laughed nervously.
John glanced back at the hill.
Spoiled land . . . haunted . . . spirits kill whatever is planted.
Well, Whitey Dobbs was planted there now.
Dean Truman cleaned the tabletops with a damp cloth and thought of Judy Pinbrow. He refilled the napkin dispensers, restocked the straw boxes, checked the salt and pepper shakers, and thought of Judy Pinbrow. He collected two stacks of mud-brown plastic trays from the top of strategically placed trash cans, passed them over the counter to the manager of the diner, then bagged and carried out three sacks of garbage, and thought of Judy Pinbrow.
Seven forty-five P.M.
She would get off work in fifteen minutes, be here in sixteen. He threw the garbage into the Dumpster, then walked back to the restaurant. He paused before going inside and took a deep, deliberate breath. The night air was damp and invigorating. Stay calm, stay focused, he told himself. This time there would be no wimping out, no distractions, no excuses.
“Judy, would you like to go out with me sometime?” That’s all he had to say. It was simple, easy, but time dependent.
In two weeks Dean Truman would graduate from high school; then it was goodbye Hooterville and goodbye, Judy Pinbrow – unless he screwed up his courage to at least ask her for a date. Judy was the stepsister of his best friend, John Evans. He had known her all his life and loved her, to some degree, just as long.
But Dean had never said a word. Can’t be rejected if you don’t take a chance. Can’t win either.
I can do this, he told himself. I can do this.
He went back inside. The lights flickered. A second later thunder shook the store. The cash registered pinged.
“Damn.” Mr. Dwyer, the shift manager, cursed. He slapped the cash register on the side, then looked sheepishly at his customer. “Damn thing’s froze up again.”
“It’s the storm,” said the customer in a voice too big for his body. “Damn thing came out of nowhere.”
Larry Pepperdine was a disc jockey at the local radio station and as close as you could get to a celebrity in Black Valley. Dean had met him through Clyde Watkins, who worked at the station on weekends.
The lights flickered again. The cash register pinged. “Doggone. Sorry, Larry, it’s going to take at least five minutes for this to unfreeze. You can wait or – hey, Dean. I got a Buster Burger with cheese, fries, large Coke, and an apple pie.”
“What size fries?”
“Extra large.”
“Comes to five dollars and forty-nine cents.”
Mr. Dwyer gave Larry an is-that-okay? look.
Larry smiled. “Sounds good to me. I’ve got a twenty.”
“Change is fourteen dollars and fifty-one cents,” Dean said before being asked.
Mr. Dwyer paid the customer out of his pocket, then scratched a note to himself to ring up the order later.
“How does he do that?” Larry asked.
&
nbsp; The manager beamed. “That’s nothing: watch this. Dean, what time is it?”
Five minutes until Judy Pinbrow arrives.
“Seven fifty-six,” he said.
Larry checked his watch. “Bingo. And he didn’t look at a clock?”
The manager puffed out his chest as if the trick had been his own. “Not even a glance.” He sacked up the goods. “I’ve tested him, tried to trick him. Doesn’t work. Dean Truman always knows what time it is. Always.”
“Jeez, kid, are you psychic or something?” Larry asked. “Is it some kind of magic?”
The manager made a face. “Don’t say that.”
“Magic?” Dean said, his voice several decibels higher. “Magic? There is no magic.”
“Now you’ve done it,” the manager said, rolling his eyes.
“Magic is the sanctuary of the ignorant. Everything, I mean everything, can be explained with science – if not today, then tomorrow, but eventually and with certainty. This is the most superstitious little town I’ve ever seen.”
“It comes from living beneath the Hill,” Larry said.
“Hawkins Hill?”
“Here we go,” the manager said, shaking his head and chuckling to himself.
“More poppycock. Ghost stories, designed to scare children, that have somehow wormed their way into our collective conscience. The Hill is a fraud, a joke, and we’re fools to be intimidated by it.”
“Told you,” said the manager.
“Is he always like this?” Larry asked.
“Only about science and spooky stuff. A side effect of being a brain, I guess.”
Dean looked down at his feet, suddenly self-conscious. He picked up a cloth and began wiping the counter. “Sorry. I get carried away sometimes.”
Larry Pepperdine laughed. “Hey, I’m with you, buddy. The only magic I believe in is the magic I make with the ladies. Know what I mean?”
He winked and Dean blushed.
The disc jockey took his sack and was about to leave but stopped. “Have you heard from Clyde Watkins and John Evans yet? I’m curious how it went.”
“How what went?”
Larry frowned. “You don’t know? I thought, since you were friends and all . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind. Catch you later.”