Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror

by et al. Ramsey Campbell

  Adam was a good kid. Yeah, he’d fallen into a bad crowd, but nothing really too serious. The typical teen stuff; smoking pot, drinking, missing school. A lot of school. In fact he’d been held back, and would be attending the tenth grade again. Not that anyone would know, not out here. Adam was not a big kid, very slender, and he looked very young, closer to 13 or 14. His long blonde hair, blue eyes, and an almost angelic face contributed to his very youthful looks. And there was the occult stuff. The guys he’d hung out with were into the satanic music and rituals. But Cord felt he was partially to blame for that. Cord was considered one of the foremost experts on occult and satanic crimes. He had books and paraphernalia all over the house, and was usually the one called in to investigate those types of crimes in the city. So naturally Adam had been a part of that growing up. Cord didn’t worry too much about it; a lot of kids went through that stage but it was just part of trying to be different. He knew Adam didn’t take it all that seriously.

  They drove the remainder of the two-hour drive in silence. It was just getting dark by the time he found the Route 60 exit that led to Woodbine, a small town smack in the center of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

  As they drove down the dark road lined with dark trees, Cord said, “Maybe we’ll see the Jersey Devil, huh? Supposedly this is one of the areas where it’s been spotted.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure dad. More likely we’ll run into a bunch of inbred hicks who want to make us their bitches for the night.”

  Cord let out a laugh and said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” His head turned to the faded “Welcome to Woodbine” sign off to the right and he pointed at it. “This is it. We’re here …”

  Adam gripped the dash and yelled out, “Watch out!”

  Cord slammed on the brakes as something swiftly crab-crawled onto the road, stopped briefly, its eyes glowing yellow and staring briefly into the headlights, then ran off the other side.

  Cord’s heart thumped as he heard a faint bumping sound at the edge of the tire.

  “What the fuck was that?” Adam screeched, still gripping the dashboard.

  “I don’t know. Are you okay?” He sat still for a moment, shaken, then pulled over slowly to the side of the road.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Did you see it? You saw that, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure I really saw what I thought I did.”

  “I know what I saw. It looked like a woman crawling in the road!”

  “Yeah, a woman covered in fur and running on all fours. It must have been a dog or some kind of animal.”

  “That wasn’t like any dog I’ve ever seen.”

  “Or any woman. Except for the long hair on its head. C’mon, lets take a look. Hand me the flashlight from the glove box.”

  He turned on the emergency flashers, and they got out and walked back along the road. He soon found the tire marks that ended in a small puddle of blood and a bit of brownish fur.

  “It’s not that much blood, thank god.” A line of small blood drops ended at the edge of the road and he swung the light through the trees, but didn’t see anything.

  Adam said, “It had to have been a dog or something. That looks like dog fur.”

  “Maybe,” Cord murmured, but he knew what he’d seen, and so did Adam. “Go grab the camera out of the car, okay?”

  “Okay.” Adam jogged back to the car as Cord swung the flashlight through the trees again.

  He took the camera and handed Adam the flashlight. “Just shine it right on that puddle and the fur.” After snapping a few pictures, he said, “Let’s just walk a little ways into the trees and see if anything’s there.”

  “Dad, whatever it was is gone. It wasn’t human. They wouldn’t have crawled into the woods, would they?”

  “No, but let’s just look real quick.” He walked into the trees and Adam sighed, then followed. But fifty or so feet into the thicket revealed nothing and they couldn’t go much further, the trees were so thick. “All right, lets get out of here. I want to get a sample of that blood and fur, though.”

  He rummaged through the back of the van until he located his evidence kit, which he always kept handy. Using the tweezers, he stuffed the bit of fur in the vial, and swabbed the blood with gauze, adding it to another vial.

  “What a way to start, huh?” he said, pulling the van back onto the road.

  As they reached the center of town, Cord said, “Look, I’m just gonna stop at the police station real quick and let them know what happened, and drop off the evidence.”

  Adam looked around at the small, dismal, buildings lining the road. “Okay. Nice place, Dad. Looks like a real party town.”

  Cord chuckled, “Oh yeah, that it is.”

  He pulled into the parking lot of the station. “Wanna come inside?”

  “No thanks, I’ll wait out here.” Adam stepped out of the van and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, staring into the dark.

  Inside, Cord greeted the officer he remembered as Lieutenant Johnson from his interview, who sat at his desk reading a comic book. He looked over the page, set it down quickly, then stood and held his hand out. It was a big hand. In fact, Johnson was a big man. He stood well over six feet and was, well big. Not quite fat, but getting there.

  “Chief Bergen. Welcome to Woodbine. We’re so happy you made it safely. How was the trip?”

  “Fine, fine. Well, we had a little incident on the way in.” He recounted the event to Johnson, who nodded and tried to look serious and interested.

  “Anyway, I got a sample of the blood and hair.” He pulled the vials out of his pocket and showed it to the Lieutenant, who took it from him and held it up to the light, peering into the glass at the contents.

  “Yup, yup, that’s animal fur. Probably coyote. We got a lot of them out here. No need to worry, sir. Surely ain’t human.”

  “Aren’t coyotes usually gray?”

  “Well, yep. But they can be brown too. It could be dog fur, anyways. Got a lot of strays out here.”

  “I’d like to get some testing done on it anyway, just to make sure. Maybe get a few people to search the area once it’s light out.”

  “Okay, sure, no problem, Chief. You go on and get yourself settled in. I’ll put this away and get the guys out there first light tomorrow.”

  “All right, thanks. I’ll see you in the morning as well.”

  “Good night, sir. And again, welcome. We’re very happy to have you.”

  The house his grandparents had left him sat at the end of a short graveled drive, isolated and dark, surrounded by trees. It was a two story simple wood house, three bedrooms, small but neat. It had been built by his grandfather in the early 50s. All of the furniture was still there of course. On his first trip out here after his grandmother’s death he had covered everything to keep off the dust.

  “Well, what do you think? Lots more room than the apartment, huh?”

  Adam looked quite disgusted as he walked slowly through the front room, wrinkling his nose. “It stinks.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll have to air it out, of course. But wait till you see your bedroom, on the top floor. It’s huge.”

  Adam walked upstairs and to the window, staring out into the dark. He thought he saw someone out there, walking quickly past and around the corner of the house. He rushed to the window on the other wall and looked down. But what he saw what looked like a very large dog running off into the woods.

  The next couple of weeks passed rather uneventfully for Cord. The crimes in the town were pretty much limited to petty theft and vandalism, committed mostly by bored teenagers. A regular Mayberry, he thought, complete with a town drunk. Bergen was happy about that and felt himself settling into life as a small town police chief. Adam had made a friend. Chris dressed in black, had black hair, and wore black eyeliner. Cord really didn’t expect anything else. His son would never fit in with the clean-cut crowd.

  The phone rang on his desk. “Police Chief,” he answered.

  “Mr. Bergen, pl
ease?”

  “This is Chief Bergen.”

  “This is the Forensic Science Center in Trenton. You sent us a blood and hair sample for testing.”

  “Yes, that’s right. You got results?”

  “Well, no. We couldn’t determine the origin of the samples, sorry. It’s possible the samples were contaminated.”

  “Contaminated?”

  “Right. We were unable to determine whether it was even human or animal. We couldn’t match it with any known species, in other words.”

  “Odd. You’re absolutely positive?”

  “Yes, it’s very odd. We ran the test twice. Sorry we couldn’t help.”

  “Sure, no problem. You’ll send us the remainder of the samples and the report?”

  “Yes, well do that as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks.” He hung up the phone, puzzled. In his twenty years of police work he’d never had a blood sample come back as “contaminated” or “unable to determine origin.”

  Adam sat in the back seat of the battered Ford Escort. Chris veered around a corner too fast, and the car fishtailed and flung him against the door.

  “Christ Fuck, man, slow down,” Adam said. “I’m trying to roll a joint back here. You want to get us pulled over?”

  Karen giggled from the front seat and leaned over to the back. “Almost done? Light it up!”

  “Yeah, I would be if your dumbass boyfriend can control himself for a minute.”

  “Hah, like I’m scared of your old man Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife.” Chris laughed and tilted the bottle of cheap vodka up to his lips.

  “That’s the road, isn’t it, sweetie?” Karen pointed toward the barely visible dirt path.

  “Yeah, that’s it.” He swerved the car onto the dirt path which gradually rose upwards into a hill. After about a half mile bumping along the narrow path, it ended at a decrepit wooden house.

  “This is it. The gateway to hell,” Chris announced. He had explained to Adam earlier about the legend of the house. Some witch had lived here in the 1930s and had murdered a bunch of kids on the property. She had actually succeeded in conjuring up the devil himself, and in the process had opened up the gateway to hell.

  Adam grabbed the duffle bag and his flashlight out of the back seat and got out. The bag was heavy. It contained ritual objects that were used to invoke demons; black candles, chalices, a small sword.

  They switched on their flashlights and pushed open the door which already stood slightly ajar. Graffiti covered the walls and beer bottles littered the floors and everything was covered with a thick film of dust. Chris led them to a basement door. The stairs groaned and bent as they walked slowly down.

  Adam swept his flashlight around the basement. The room was painted in all black except for the dirt floor, and was empty except for a rickety wooden table. There were no windows to let in even a tiny bit of light.

  Adam removed objects from the bag and set them on the table. He lit the candles, then picked up the old book he had pilfered from his dad’s collection.

  “So what do we do?” asked Chris, looking down at the book.

  “Well, I read from the book, which is supposed to conjure up a demon.”

  “What language is that?”

  “Latin, I think. Anyway, I read the words, then we have to collect blood and semen in the chalice and drink it.”

  “Ewe, that’s gross!” Karen said, making a gagging sound.

  “What? You drink my semen all the time,” Chris retorted.

  “I meant the blood part, idiot. Anyway, you have to drink it too!”

  “Oh, right. That is gross. Do we really have to do that?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s how you do it.”

  “How do you know? Can you understand Latin?”

  “No, that’s what my dad told me. And he would know, he’s a demonologist.”

  “All right, all right. We’ll, uh, worry about it later. Let’s just get on with it.”

  They shut off the flashlights and stuffed them in the bag. Adam turned to a page in the book and starting reciting phonetically in Latin. Chris and Karen repeated phrases lamely when he motioned to them.

  Adam held out a dagger in one hand, and pointed to each compass point, invoking the demon that resided there, and Chris and Karen repeated.

  As he turned to the north, a shuffling sound came out of the corner of the basement, followed by heavy, rasping breathing.

  “What’s that?” Karen whispered.

  The candles blew out before they could answer.

  “Shit! I can’t see a fucking thing!” Chris whispered.

  “Lemme get the flashlight.” Adam fumbled around for it in the bag and pushed the switch. The light didn’t come on. “Fuck.” He grabbed the other as the shuffling sounds got closer, but that one didn’t work either.

  “Turn the fucking light on!” Chris yelled.

  “They don’t work.”

  “Let’s just get the fuck out of here.” Chris said.

  “Yeah, lets go.”

  They hurried towards the stairs in the pitch dark, bumping against each other, scrambling to get out of there. Behind them they could still hear the rasping breath, growing louder and louder. There was an awful fluttering, as though giant wings moved through thick air, causing a faint movement of air.

  They fell through the basement door into the room above. Chris looked around wildly. “Karen?”

  Karen wasn’t with them.

  “Karen!” they both yelled through the basement door. There was absolute silence now.

  “Where the fuck is she?” Adam said, looking around the dark kitchen.

  “I don’t know! Maybe she got out before us?”

  “Then where’d she go?”

  “Fuck me!” Chris said, growing angry now.

  They both called her name from the top of the stairs again.

  “We have to go down there and look for her,” Adam said.

  “Look at what? It’s pitch fucking black down there! I can’t see a fucking thing! She’s not there, she would have answered.”

  Adam jumped as a shadow passed by the kitchen window. “Someone’s outside.”

  “Maybe it’s Karen, trying to be funny. She’s probably laughing at us right now.”

  They went outside, calling her name, but saw nothing.

  Chris yelled out, “Very funny Karen. You can stop hiding now.”

  They walked around the house, peering into the thick of the trees.

  “Fuck this. Lets just leave her ass here.”

  “We can’t just leave her here, Chris.”

  “Then what do you suggest? Besides, maybe she walked home.” Chris pulled his cell phone out and flipped it open. “Nothing. Dead zone.”

  Adam’s was the same.

  “Come on, let’s go. I’ll try her once we get out of these sticks.”

  Adam reluctantly got into the car. “Maybe we should go to the police, have them come out and look?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Look, I’ll drop you off at your house. No need to get your old man pissed at you about this. I’ll try her on the phone, and if I can’t get her, I’ll go to the police station.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, no problem. Goddammit!” He slammed the wheel with his hand. “All our shit’s down there.”

  Adam held up the book. “Still got this.”

  “Great.”

  The ringing noise cut through Cord’s sleep. He glanced at the clock, 5:07 am, and picked up the phone. “Yeah?” he slurred.

  Johnson’s voice was frantic. “Chief, we got a problem. Get out here, right away!”

  “Where are you?” Cord sat up, already searching around for his clothes.

  “At the town’s border. Right by the welcome sign.”

  “Yeah, okay, I know where that is. I’ll be there in a few minutes. What’s the problem?”

  “I think, I think I’m gonna be sick!”

  There was a horrible retching sound, then dead air. Cord snappe
d the phone shut, got dressed and drove out to the edge of town, muttering to himself, “If this is a dead dog or something, I’m gonna be pissed.”

  As he got closer, however, his brows drew together. There were two squad cars pulled off the road, cherry tops spinning, in front of the two story high billboard. Two officers, Johnson and Tyler, stood at the side of the road, staring at the top. As he pulled over, he looked up at the billboard. Something was wrong with it. His first thought was some kid had spray painted it red, and he felt his ire rising. Woke me up at five for this shit? What was that at the top covering the words “Woodbine?” He stepped out of the car.

  “Oh my fucking god. Fuck me.” He felt himself shaking, felt the gorge rise in his throat, and struggled to pull himself together.

  “Chief!” Johnson yelled and ran towards him. His face was white and his mouth hung open. He stunk of vomit.

  “Who is she?”

  “We think it’s Karen Forman but we’re not completely sure. It’s hard to tell from here.”

  Karen Forman, if that’s who it was, was hanging upside down from the top of the billboard, naked, her legs spread wide and draped over the edge, held up by something as yet unknown. Her torso had been ripped open from pelvis to neck, and her intestines hung down in long, coiling loops, swaying around her head in the breeze. Her long hair and face were soaked in blood, and a huge smear of blood ran down the wood to the edge, already dried and frozen.

  “What’s that between her legs?” he said, but he knew what it was as soon as he said it. A cross, as long as his arm, had been shoved into her crotch. He thought he could make out the end of it protruding from her gutted stomach.

  “Jesus Christ.” The damage done to the girl’s body was more horrific than anything he’d ever encountered. The thought briefly crossed his mind that maybe the Manhattan Monster had followed him out here. But this wasn’t his MO. In fact, this made the Monster look like a Sunday School teacher.

  “How’d she get up there? How we gonna get her down?” Johnson was asking.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to get a fire truck and a ladder out here I guess. Get Shuly out here with the camera. Call the medical examiner. And cordon off this area.