Congregations of the Dead
Page 1
ALSO FROM COHESION PRESS
Action/Horror:
SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror
– Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding (eds.)
SNAFU: Heroes
– Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding (eds.)
SNAFU: Wolves at the Door
– Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding (eds.)
SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest
– Geoff Brown & Amanda J Spedding (eds.)
SNAFU: Hunters
– Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown (eds.)
SNAFU: Future Warfare
– Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown (eds.)
SNAFU: Unnatural Selection
– Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown (eds.)
SNAFU: Black Ops
– Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown (eds.)
Blurring the Line – Marty Young (ed.)
American Nocturne – Hank Schwaeble
Jade Gods – Patrick Freivald
The Angel of the Abyss – Hank Schwaeble
Sci-Fi/Thriller:
Valkeryn: The Dark Lands – Greig Beck
Cry Havoc – Jack Hanson
Forlorn Hope – Jack Hanson
Creature Thrillers
Into the Mist – Lee Murray
Fathomless – Greig Beck
Primordial – David Wood | Alan Baxter
Coming Soon
Snaked – Duncan McGeary
A Hell Within – James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge
SNAFU: Judgement Day
– Amanda J Spedding & Geoff Brown (eds.)
Lysan Plague – Alister Hodge
CONGREGATIONS OF THE DEAD
James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge
Cohesion Press
Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum
Beechworth, Australia
Congregations of the Dead
© 2017 James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge
Cohesion Press
Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum
Beechworth, Australia
Dedication
For Rick Hautala and Bob Booth. Absent friends.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank beta readers Cliff Biggers, Nancy Roberts, Ned Roberts, and Ellen Roberts for reading the manuscript and helping make a better book. And special thanks to Donald F Glut for permission to use his creation, the Ruthvenian.
“The man that wandereth out of the way of wisdom shall abide in the congregation of the dead.”
~ Proverbs 21:16
Autumn.
Isaiah Blackbourne chose the wrong moment to come home. He didn't know that of course. He was still savoring the death of Whit Gramling, the tired old man who had been a thorn in the Blackbourne family's side for far too long. Isaiah grinned at the memory of Gramling's tough exterior finally crumbling when Isaiah had told him of his brutal plans for the old man's family.
Isaiah paused to look at the ancient family house. The place started as a log cabin in the 1800s and had been built out ‒ room by room ‒ over the years, so that its exterior was a mishmash of wood, brick, and tin, with multiple roofs that didn't quite line up. He was rarely there, preferring a more stylish lifestyle in Atlanta to the Blackbourne's traditional home of Crawford's Hollow.
Even Siobhan, the matriarch of the Blackbourne family, didn't really like to stay there. Little brother Merle and his drooling pack of backwoods dope peddlers fit right in though.
Of course every available Blackbourne was inside now. The whole pale skinned, glowing eyed clan. Few were as pale as Isaiah, eldest son and self-styled family enforcer. Most people thought him an albino with his white hair and skin, and his ever-present sunglasses. It amused him to let them think that. They had no way of knowing he was a member of an ancient, pre-human race whom the Cherokee tribes of Georgia called 'the Moon-Eyed Ones'.
The world would know soon enough though, once the ritual inside the house was finished. Isaiah looked at his watch. Mother Siobhan ought to be building things to a climax even now. He'd have to hurry or he'd miss the best part of the show ‒ Siobhan opening the way and bringing one of the outer gods to Earth. When that happened, the Moon-Eyes would reclaim the control over the world they had enjoyed in the old times.
Isaiah stepped over the threshold and into a hallway that seemed to extend forever. Had he been human, and accustomed to living in only one dimension, then the shifting, extra-dimensional nature of the house might have bothered him.
He had to give Merle credit. He had been the one who had thought of using one of the ancient rituals to open an almost endless series of doorways into other worlds within the confines of the house. Doing so was the only way to create an environment that would sustain one of the Old Ones.
The summoning ceremony was being held in a ballroom that actually existed in an alternate-reality England. But the door that led to the room was right here in the Georgia Mountains. Isaiah was almost to that door when everything went to what his more human brethren might have called hell.
The floor began to shudder and a wave of coruscating light burst through ballroom door. Isaiah felt a shift in the dimensions around him and his limbs suddenly felt heavier than normal. It took him a moment to realize that he had been solidly trapped in one dimension. His ability to shift in and out of the planes of reality had been somehow neutralized.
The door seemed to be fading away and Isaiah hurried through it before he lost sight of it entirely. The interior of the ballroom was a shambles. Everywhere he looked he saw dead and dying Moon-Eyes. At the very back of the room, hanging above a wooden stage, a huge circle of energy was dissipating. Isaiah thought he could see a figure in the circle. The Outer One, straining to break through.
Behind the stage, where once had been large windows, was an endless plain of waving grass and squirming moss. Siobhan Blackbourne lay in the grass. She had partially manifested the part of her body that was in another dimension. Multiple limbs and appendages were broken and leaking black blood. Isaiah's freak of a brother, Frank, lay beside her. Both of them were moving weakly.
Then Isaiah heard a wail of utter despair. He looked up to see the form inside the circle fading away. He felt the air around him being pulled toward the circle and saw dozens of the dead forms of his people dragged upwards. He could only watch as both Siobhan and Frank, too, were pulled into the glowing vortex. Then the circle was gone. The summoning had failed and the outer god had fallen back into the void, taking Siobhan with him.
Isaiah's mother was dead, her dream destroyed. Isaiah didn't feel sorrow. He only felt a deep rage. And lo and behold, he saw someone to vent that rage upon. Sheriff Carl Price was limping toward Isaiah, supported by Wade Griffin.
Griffin had apparently been looking for the vanished door just as Isaiah had stepped through it. So the sheriff and the private eye thought they would get away after saving the day did they?
“No,” said Isaiah. “You're not going to get out of this one. I came home at just the wrong moment. Can't find my way out of this damn house of mirrors, so looks like I'm going down with the family ship.” He grinned at the two men. “But at least I can take you boys with me.”
Griffin let his friend slide to the ground. He was holding a long, slender sword, which Isaiah recognized as the weapon usually carried by Carter Decamp, an old enemy of the Blackbournes.
Without any warning, Griffin lunged forward with the sword. Isaiah was accustomed to using his ability to shift through dimensions as a way to move with incredible speed. Without that power he fe
lt mired in mud. He just managed to avoid the sword thrust.
“You're a quick one,” Isaiah said. “Maybe the fastest human being I've seen. Not fast enough though.”
Despite his words, Isaiah knew he needed to get this over with quickly. Decamp's sword could kill him, and Griffin was just too dangerous. He leaped forward, slashing at Griffin with the claws he had cultivated on the tips of his fingers.
Amazingly, Griffin spun out of the way so that Isaiah's claws only grazed the big man's shoulder. He really was faster than a human had a right to be. And his next move almost proved deadly. Griffin continued the spin, whipping the glittering silver sword around and actually cutting through Isaiah's shirt. Isaiah felt a line of fire along his chest where the tip of the blade touched him.
“You actually cut me,” Isaiah said. “You won't get another shot.”
“Sure he will,” Carl Price said.
Isaiah felt strong fingers close around his ankle and he glanced down. Price had dragged himself across the ground and latched on to Isaiah's ankle. Isaiah gave a snarl and tried to jerk his leg free. Then he felt an even sharper pain and looked down to see that Griffin had buried the silver sword in his chest. A terrible heat seemed to be radiating outwards from the weapon, and Isaiah remembered the mystic runes inscribed on the blade.
All the strength seemed to drain from Isaiah's legs and he fell to his knees. His hands fluttered weakly around the sword. If only he could pluck it out. Blood seeped from Isaiah's lips as he said, “Take more than that... to kill me.”
Isaiah looked up. Griffin was staring down at him. In the distance, the horizon seemed to tilt and Isaiah head a loud roaring noise. The ground shook again.
“I believe you,” Griffin said. Then Isaiah felt another flash of agony as Griffin jerked the sword from his chest. The big man swept the blade back in a glittering silver arc, then swung it back toward Isaiah's neck.
The world went away.
CHAPTER ONE
August in Georgia is its own special kind of hell.
Carl listened to the sound of the ceiling fan rhythmically clicking above him and felt the rush of slightly cooler air on his chest and face. He refused to open his eyes. If he opened his eyes he’d look at the damned fool alarm clock and realize that all of four or five minutes had gone by since the last time he’d looked and that would just piss him off.
He tended to spend enough time pissed off already, thanks just the same.
Outside of his house the wind barely moved; the thick, humid air was still ungodly warm, even at almost three in the morning, and the sky from time to time strobed with a distant flash of heat lightning. Inside the house the air was almost as sticky and the alarm clock kept up its siren call, mockingly calling him to just open one eye and check out the glowing numbers. It couldn’t possibly be as bad as he thought it was.
He finally opened one eye, peeked, and saw that a total of three minutes had slipped past since the last time he gave in. “Son of a damn bitch.” Out of bed then. Into the shower for a blast of cold water to wake him up and then he’d go on his early morning run. He didn’t want to, not really, but there wasn’t much choice in the matter. Sitting in an empty bed and listening to his own brain trying to cover everything he had done in the last week and all the stuff he still had to do was not getting him any closer to sleeping, and he didn’t feel like soaking in his own sweat for one more second.
Ten minutes later he was dressed in his shorts and t-shirt and jogging out the door and into the sultry air of an early morning. His cell phone was clipped to his hip and he had the ear buds in place so he could listen to music and answer the phone if he had to. The sun was hours away from up and the temperature was already in the low eighties. Oh, yes, a hell of a fine summer. He hadn’t made twenty feet from his driveway before he started sweating.
The job was working its way to hellish and disgusting just as fast as the weather lately. Though it seemed like the dust had barely cleared from the situation at the end of the last October, the spill out was getting uglier and uglier. The county prosecutor’s office had called to warn him there were possible repercussions to the way he’d handled the whole situation with the Blackbourne clan. That was to be expected, really. He and Wade Griffin had put an epic hurting on the people, and more than a dozen members of Brennert County’s premier criminal family were dead as a direct result of their actions.
Some people have no sense of humor when you kill their loved ones. Of course that was a two-way street and the death of an old high school buddy had led to the investigation that in turn ended up in a bloodbath last Halloween. Sometimes you get easy cases and sometimes you get the sort that leaves ripples in your life for months. This was definitely a ripple situation. As the Sheriff of Brennert County Carl had to deal with those waves in the way things were supposed to be. He rather envied Wade the title of private investigator in this situation, partially because he’d done everything he could to keep the affair from blowing back on his old friend.
You do what you have to.
The road curved and Carl followed the flow, stepping onto the sidewalk when he saw headlights coming.
The second he saw the vehicle’s headlights, he suspected the driver of the car saw him. That was when the headlights suddenly died away. Carl felt himself tense. As a rule you don’t kill the headlights on a moving vehicle in the middle of the night. Not unless there’s a reason. In his not inconsiderable experience, that reason normally meant you didn’t want to get seen doing something you knew you shouldn’t be doing.
Carl tended to be exactly the sort that paid attention to shit like that.
Before he could do more than acknowledge the potential problem, the car engine revved hard and the entire thing lurched forward, gathering speed. Not a car, a pickup truck. The engine whined as the vehicle increased speed, and even with the lights gone and his eyes still adjusting to the sudden darkness Carl figured there was a good chance the driver intended to paste him. Eyes left, nothing but road. Eyes right, two very large oak trees. He ran to the right, hurtling a small picket fence and moving into a front yard where the trees waited like islands of possible safety.
The truck came closer, bouncing against the curb and then rising up to the level of the sidewalk – recently installed in the neighborhood to encourage joggers like Carl from standing in the damned road, thank you – and came for him, the engine’s desperate note getting louder and the sound of the tires hissing across the pavement loud enough at last to be heard over the sound of The Beatles playing in his ears.
Carl made it behind the first tree, cursing the lack of a pistol on his hip. Damned hard to carry a holster with your running shorts.
Rather than trying its luck with the tree, the truck swerved back onto the road and accelerated. Carl looked carefully, staring at the rear of the Ford F-150. He could see a tag, but couldn’t make out a single number or letter. Ford pickups were damned near the official truck of Brennert County and the town of Wellman. Might as well look for a blade of grass in a well-mown lawn.
Carl chased after the truck, running as hard as he could in the heat of the early morning, his eyes focused on the tag, without which he would have nothing. It was too damned dark to even make out the color. It could be white, it could be yellow or gray. The tag was a Georgia tag, but beyond that he needed to get closer.
The truck did not agree, moving faster as it took the next curve in the road. Carl spat a curse as the vehicle slowed just enough to avoid flipping over. In the back of the truck a flash of motion, a pale face and wild hair and then a hand slapping the glass of the window, fingers wide apart.
And then a voice screaming, but too far away to hear what was said, only a tone. A desperate, frightened tone.
And then the truck was gone.
Carl cursed a second time and pulled his cell phone free. He had the office on speed dial. He called the number, breathing hard in the hu
mid air and glaring after the truck that was now gone from his sight. “Brennert County Sheriff ’s Department, Deputy Austin.”
“Ryan, this is Carl. You got any cars around my neighborhood?” He looked at the street sign a bit down the road. “Euclid Street. Got a truck down this way that just tried to run my ass down.” He ignored the man’s shocked tone and recited the few details he had, demanding a car in the area as soon as possible. Then it was back to the house. He had to get dressed and quickly if he was going to join the pursuit himself.
Two hours later the sky was growing light and Carl’s eyes were growing tired. Nothing. No sign of any truck with a convenient hostage in the back seat to help identify, and there were too damned many trucks parked to examine them all. Carl pulled into the parking lot of the Rabbit Hutch Diner and scowled as he climbed from his truck – a Ford F-150, of course – and headed for the front door. Breakfast and a couple of gallons of coffee would help. He was absolutely willing to convince himself of that lie if it would get him through the day.
Despite the early hour several of the tables and booths were already occupied. Carl sidled up to the long counter and smiled at Becky, the skinny little thing that served him five days of the week. The woman was in her fifties and looked like a long-time anorexic, but that was just the way she was built. Her hair was exactly the color of red that comes from generic hair dye and her makeup brought to mind a few of the clowns he’d seen the last time he went to the circus – not a comforting thought as he absolutely hated clowns – but aside from the artificial attempts to look twenty years younger she was a sweet lady.
“Mornin’, Carl! Same old thing?” He nodded and smiled his thanks. She smiled back and called to Zeb in the kitchen to set up his usual.
He drank two cups of coffee while he was waiting and checked in at the office to see if anyone, by some miracle, had had more luck than him at spotting the elusive driver from a few hours earlier. Nope. He wasn’t surprised.