Dust Devils

by Janz, Jonathan

  It was Jim Slauter who believed every word of their story. Because it was Jim Slauter who’d traced Adam Price all the way back to the East Coast and who was preparing to arrest Price and his men on suspicion of mass murder. They’d been working their way from state to state, usually preying on individuals who wouldn’t be missed—the homeless, the hermits who were rarely seen by others. Prostitutes. Only infrequently did they attack entire families, as they had Willet’s.

  By the time the two lawmen arrived in Mesquite, the town had already begun to mourn its losses. The eyewitness accounts of what had happened on the street in front of Marguerite’s saloon were only further confirmation of what Jim Slauter already knew. But despite the uncanny uniformity of the witnesses’ stories, Tom Allison still couldn’t swallow a story about vampires.

  The four of them were sitting at the kitchen table when Marguerite turned to Tom Allison and said, “If we showed you proof, would you then leave us alone?”

  Allison reddened, his fingers stroking the brim of the black hat he’d placed on the table. “It isn’t that I don’t believe you, miss. But you’ve gotta understand what you’re asking of me.”

  Jim Slauter was staring at Marguerite steadily, his small eyes earnest. “You have proof for us?”

  Marguerite’s gaze fixed on Cody for a moment. Cody merely watched her, as curious now as the two lawmen were. Receiving no protest from Cody, Marguerite said, “Follow me.”

  She stood and moved past them. Tom Allison got up immediately and followed her through the main room. Cody and Jim Slauter exchanged a look and then trailed after them. Marguerite paused only long enough to lift a small kerosene lamp off the table and light its cloth wick.

  They passed through the yard and into the barn, and it wasn’t until Tom Allison pulled up short and gasped that Cody realized what it was that Marguerite had brought them out here to see. Cody had thought that they’d burned everything to do with the devils, save the red Concord coach. But the amber glow of the lantern revealed one thing they’d missed, an object lying in the dust outside one of the cattle pens.

  The decapitated head of Steve Penders.

  It lay on its side, facing away from them, but even from this angle Cody could tell Penders’s face was still frozen in its vampiric form. Tom Allison’s face had drained of color, the man’s handlebar mustache aquiver with what might have been horror. Marguerite led them around the head to afford them a better view of the face, and despite a muttered oath from Tom Allison, she brought the kerosene lamp down to rest beside the severed head.

  “Good God Almighty,” Jim Slauter whispered. Beneath the flat brim of his hat, his eyes were wide with fright. Cody couldn’t blame him. The sight of Steve Penders’s face still imbued him with an icy dread.

  The teeth were as long and nasty as Cody remembered. The upper lip was drawn back in a perpetual snarl, the eyes no longer glowing but every bit as orange as they’d been the night before.

  But it was the look of measureless hatred, Tom Allison said a few minutes later—after he’d finally regained the power of speech—that had ultimately convinced him of their story. Leaning on the porch with a stiff drink in his hand, his forehead beaded with huge drops of perspiration, Tom Allison had shaken his head and proclaimed he’d never seen such unmitigated evil in all his life.

  He took a swig of whiskey and dragged a forearm over his trembling lips. “I won’t be advertising what I saw tonight, you understand. I did that, I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of staying sheriff. Not in Las Cruces, not in any town.” He glanced at Cody, then Marguerite. “But I believe you now. God as my witness, I do. And I gotta believe He’s not a bit sad you got rid of those devils the way you did. I know I’m sure as hell not.”

  It was Jim Slauter who’d taken Cody aside before leaving and assured him that he’d personally see to it that no legal entanglements would befall Cody and Marguerite. Furthermore, Slauter informed Cody, he’d make sure the insurance company compensated Marguerite handsomely for her lost saloon and that they’d have plenty of money to keep his father’s ranch afloat for as long as they desired.

  Cody thanked him, thinking he desired very much to live on his father’s ranch with Marguerite.

  Their lovemaking that first night was tender and almost shy. They slept in the following day till well past noon and made love again, this time with all the vigor of newlyweds, despite the soreness plaguing their bodies.

  It was that night, twenty-four hours after the lawmen had departed, twenty-eight hours after he had buried his father’s remains, that he’d taken a knee and asked Marguerite to marry him.

  “Do you think it’s too soon?” she asked him.

  “I can’t see the point in waiting.”

  They were on the porch again, but this time they’d brought out the rocking chairs from the main room. As they rocked together quietly, Marguerite put her hand on Cody’s.

  It was all the answer he needed.

  Sometime later, when full night was upon them and the sky around the homestead was alive with the tenebrous flutter of bats, Marguerite had asked him what they’d do about his ranch in Tonuco.

  “I reckon I’ll sell it to Bailey Griggs,” Cody said. “He’s the one who’s been looking after the stock for me.”

  “What about your cattle?”

  “Next week we can make the trip to Tonuco. The Griggses are good people. I’ll give them a discount on the ranch, and they’ll help me with the cattle drive.” Cody shook his head, peered up at the darting bats. “Course, I’ll only need a couple men to help since my herd is so small.”

  “Will it be enough for us to survive on?”

  “Combined with my dad’s stock, it’ll be more than enough. The days of the big ranches are coming to an end. My dad saw that way back in 1870, even before they came up with barbed wire. Before the drought a couple years ago. He only owned as many as he could manage himself, and I figure I’ll do just fine too.”

  Lying in bed that night, sated and beaded with salty droplets of sweat, Marguerite had asked him in a hesitant voice, “When we have children?”

  Cody turned, gazed into her lovely dark eyes. “Yeah?”

  “If it’s a boy…if any of them are boys…”

  Cody smiled. “Yeah?”

  She bit her lip. “You won’t want to call them Willet, will you?”

  He chuckled at that, though he winced at the throb in his shoulder. “I figure we’ll get a nice marker for Willet instead. Put it in the ground where he’s buried.”

  She seemed to crumple with relief.

  A bit later, after he was sure she’d fallen asleep, she said, “What about Jack?”

  Cody turned to her, took in her closed lids, and thought for a moment she was talking in her sleep.

  Then it dawned on him what she meant.

  He gazed up at the ceiling, the same ceiling he used to stare at on sleepless nights in his teens. He supposed they’d move this bed into the larger bedroom eventually, but that could wait for a while. He thought of his dad sewing on that small blue dress shirt back when Cody was seven, the way the tip of his father’s tongue had jutted out between his lips in concentration as he taught himself how to mend.

  “I think Jack would be a good name for our son,” Cody said. He turned and regarded Marguerite in the near darkness of the bedroom.

  But Marguerite was asleep, her chin resting against his shoulder.

  About the Author

  Jonathan Janz grew up between a dark forest and a graveyard, and in a way, that explains everything. Brian Keene named his debut novel The Sorrows “the best horror novel of 2012.” Library Journal deemed his follow-up, House of Skin, “reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story.”

  In 2013 Samhain Horror published The Darkest Lullaby, his novel of vampirism and demons, and his serialized horror novel Savage Species. Of Savage Species Publishers Weekly said, "Fans of old-school splatterpunk horror—Janz cites Richard Laymon as an inf
luence, and it shows—will find much to relish." Dust Devils is his fifth Samhain Horror novel. His sequel to The Sorrows (Castle of Sorrows) will be published in July 2014. He has also written three novellas (The Clearing of Travis Coble, Old Order, and Witching Hour Theatre) and several short stories.

  His primary interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children, and though he realizes that every author’s wife and children are wonderful and amazing, in this case the cliché happens to be true. You can learn more about Jonathan at www.jonathanjanz.com. You can also find him on Facebook, via @jonathanjanz on Twitter, or on his Goodreads and Amazon author pages.

  Look for these titles by Jonathan Janz

  Now Available:

  The Sorrows

  House of Skin

  The Darkest Lullaby

  Savage Species

  Savage Species

  Night Terrors

  The Children

  Dark Zone

  The Arena

  The Old One

  Coming Soon:

  Castle of Sorrows

  Peaceful Valley is about to become a slaughterhouse!

  Savage Species

  © 2013 Jonathan Janz

  Jesse thinks he’s caught a break when he, the girl of his dreams, and her friend are assigned by their newspaper to cover the opening weekend of the Peaceful Valley Nature Preserve, a sprawling, isolated state park. But the construction of the park has stirred an evil that has lain dormant for nearly a century, and the three young people—as well as every man, woman, and child unlucky enough to be attending the grand opening—are about to encounter the most horrific creatures to ever walk the earth. A species so ferocious that Peaceful Valley is about to be plunged into a nightmare of bloodshed and damnation.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Savage Species:

  Shane made his way to the cave entrance and peered inside. Seeing nothing, he was about to trudge back through the muddy floodplain when something—Curiosity? A nasty urge to learn all he could about this new discovery so he could shove it in Patterson’s face?—compelled him forward into the gloom. Shane remembered edging forward, stoop-shouldered, while a gleeful momentum pushed him deeper and deeper into the dark…

  That was all. Had he hit his head? He must have knocked it against the low cave ceiling and lost consciousness. How else to explain the scrim of dried blood painted on the side of his face or the amnesia with which he seemed to be afflicted?

  But what about his legs?

  Maybe, he reasoned, he’d stumbled forward—down a sharp decline, perhaps—and skewered his legs on some jagged rocks.

  Shane heaved a frustrated breath and peered into the murk. It didn’t add up. None of it did.

  He froze at a furtive scraping sound from somewhere behind him.

  Shane licked his lips, his pulse accelerating. It sounded like a small animal. A possum, maybe? It made sense. Possums were nocturnal creatures. He’d crossed the river some time during mid-afternoon. That meant it could be dusk or later by now, and the animals that came out at night would be stirring.

  Sure, he thought, it was a possum. And though disgusting creatures, they were not dangerous ones, unless of course they had rabies—

  “Oh Jesus,” Shane whispered. The wounds in his legs. Had the possums been at him?

  A nightmarish image of the black-eyed, white-haired creatures feasting on the meat of his legs with their disease-infested fangs made his stomach curdle. Gasping, he scuttled forward on knees and elbows, but almost instantly the conflagration in his legs forced him to the ground again. Shane moaned, beat the ground with lacerated fists. He wanted nothing more than to escape this stinking tomb and breathe the beautiful river air again, but first he had to figure out why his legs ached so badly, why with every movement, no matter how infinitesimal, it felt as though his shins had been spitted and were roasting on an open flame.

  With a sharp tug of misgiving, Shane reached down and inspected the sides of his legs. His breathing stopped.

  At first, he refused to credit what his fingers told him. The messy, squishy horrors he touched could not be his upper thighs. Then, though the movement brought on a flare-up so intense Shane felt nauseated, he bent at the waist and forced his fingers to explore his hamstrings.

  It was at that point that he realized where the raw meat smell was coming from.

  Shane shrieked, clambered forward over the slimy rock, oblivious to the protests of his ruined legs, advancing in a wild series of tortured spasms that only served to heighten his pain and terror. His thoughts churned like turbid gray water, unconsciousness tugging at him like a drowning swimmer.

  He’d crawled perhaps ten or fifteen feet when he heard the weird squelching noises echo somewhere behind him. Shane paused, immobile, for a long moment. Then, with a cry, he surged forward again, peering into the darkness for some sign of the cave entrance. If only he could see the daylight or even the starlight, he’d be able to fend off whatever vile animals had been gnawing on him. He imagined the possums chewing on his flesh. Or raccoons, those goddamned garbage eaters. The nasty beasts, they were so unclean they probably carried the goddamned bubonic plague.

  The noises behind him grew louder: smacking sounds like bare feet on a wet floor, the clicking of toenails on stone. Shane shivered. If it was a possum or a raccoon, it was one hell of a big one. Shane heard a deep growl.

  He crawled faster. His legs were a howling blaze, his heartbeat a jittering jackhammer. But ahead—he couldn’t believe it—there was a faint cone of light. It brightened and clarified as he drew jerkily nearer, and though he doubted his savaged legs would support him, for the first time Shane attempted to gain his feet.

  Anguish so huge it obliterated thought squeezed him with a bone-splintering fist and hurled him face first onto the coarse stone. He vomited long and hard on the cave floor and found himself writhing in his own regurgitated lunch. It didn’t matter, though. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing but the pain. Shane abandoned himself to it. He squealed and flopped on the ground in a paroxysm of anguish. It was bright enough to see now, he realized, and unthinkingly he caught a fleeting glimpse of his lower left leg. With a deathly chill he lifted the leg again to confirm what he’d seen.

  His left foot was gone. Reefed with flaps of bloody skin, only a pale, ragged stub of shinbone remained.

  Unable to breathe, Shane peered down at his other foot.

  It was gone too.

  He threw up again, but this time there was nothing in his stomach to eject. Beneath the noise of his own retching and sobbing, Shane heard the approach of whatever horrid vermin had done this to him.

  It’s not fair! he thought. If only they’d given him a chance. If only his dad hadn’t run out, if only his mom wasn’t such a soul-crushing sow, if only his foreman didn’t treat him like the rest of the illiterates on the crew. None of them appreciated Shane, which was why he’d ended up in this cave. He was going to die here, he realized. He was dying already—he had to be. He’d lost so much blood it was a wonder he could still draw breath.

  The footsteps sounded just behind him.

  Whimpering, he pushed up on an elbow and craned his head around, expecting to see a glittering pair of black eyes staring back at him.

  But the eyes weren’t small. They were the size of baseballs.

  And they weren’t black, either.

  As Shane watched in atavistic dread, the glowing green eyes loomed nearer, nearer, until the pale figure crouched over him. Though the creature was bent-backed and moving on all fours, Shane could see it was far taller than any person could be. But this wasn’t a person. This was…this was…

  Shane gasped as the creature scooped him into its long, emaciated arms.

  Something is trapped in the castle, and it wants to feed!

  The Sorrows

  © 2011 Jonathan Janz

  The Sorrows, an island off the coast of northern California, and its castle have been uninhabited since a series of gruesome, unexplained murders in
1925. But its owner needs money, so he allows film composers Ben and Eddie and a couple of their female friends to stay a month in Castle Blackwood. Eddie is certain an eerie and reportedly haunted castle is just the setting Ben needs to find musical inspiration for a horror film.

  But what they find is more horrific than any movie. For something is waiting for them in the castle. A being, once worshipped, now imprisoned, has been trapped for nearly a century. And he’s ready to feed.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Sorrows:

  On the way up the mountain, Ben Shadeland flirted with the idea of killing Eddie Blaze. The problem was, Ben could barely breathe.

  “Good lord,” Eddie said. “You sound like an obscene phone caller back there.”

  Ben ignored him. Between ragged breaths, he asked, “We still on your dad’s land?”

  “Only a small part is residential. Sonoma County owns the rest.”

  Ben looked around. “So we’re not supposed to be here?”

  “Not after dark,” Eddie answered, and in the moonlight Ben saw him grin.

  Great, he thought. Trespassing on government land at one in the morning. Trekking around the wilderness was fine for hardcore fitness freaks, but for out-of-shape guys in their late thirties, this kind of hike was a surefire ticket to the ER. If a heart attack didn’t get him, a broken leg would.

  As if answering his thoughts Eddie said, “You want me to carry you?”

  “Go to hell.”

  When Ben risked a look ahead, the toe of his boot caught on something. He fell awkwardly, his outstretched palms pierced by thorns. He lay there a moment, riding out the pain but relishing the momentary rest.