A Haunting of Horrors, Volume 2: A Twenty-Book eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Brian Hodge

  Slug was there. Teeter was in the background, still rocking, but Slug had stepped forward. The idiot’s face was slack, but at the same time his brow had furrowed in intense concentration.

  Slug wasn’t watching Jess. He wasn’t paying attention to Mabel, sobbing in her small hole in the pot plants, buried in greenery and shaking. He was looking at his finger. On the tip of that finger, something moved. Something dark, and quick, but not as quick as the mesmerizing motion of Slug’s hand as he turned it and twisted it, keeping whatever walked across it on top and visible.

  “What…” Jess started to speak, and then he was cut off.

  The roar had returned, louder, so loud that the ground shook and the tops of the plants bent beneath it. Jess had heard a tornado once, not far off – maybe a block away, on Grubb Street. It had sounded the same.

  “Holy shit,” he repeated, the mantra beginning to grate on his mind, irritating him even as it released a moment’s pressure. Jess turned and rolled close to Mabel. He grabbed her before she could pull away, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She fought him, screeching and trying to free her arms to pound at his head. He ignored her. Covering her with his body, he lowered his head, careful not to get too close to her flashing teeth or her gouging nails.

  The sound ground thought to dust. It was too loud. It was too close. The tops of the plants were flattening over the small grove, and glancing up, Jess saw that Teeter and Slug were still standing. Teeter was looking up, turning in a circle and rocking with each step, like a record-player that was off-center. Slug hadn’t diverted his own gaze at all. He still watched in fascination as his constantly moving hand forced whatever it was crawling across it to rush this way and that, seeking an escape he prevented each time with a wet chuckle.

  As Leonard’s plane swooped over their heads, much too low for sanity, the air thickened. The sound receded, but it took away the bright moonlight and replaced it with white, billowing mist. Jess kept his head down. He felt the soft, damp touch on his skin, knew they’d been sprayed again, but by then the scent was familiar. So familiar that when the taste of it transferred from mouth to brain as he breathed, it seemed normal. He knew it was not normal, far from it. The taste re-enforced the sizzle, and his head reeled.

  “Mabel,” he whispered. “Mabel, are you alright?” It seemed very important that she answer him. Jess didn’t even care if she started cursing and spit in his face, as long as she didn’t screech and back away like a rape victim in a bad cop movie.

  ‘You fucked up, Cowboy,” she hissed at him. “You fucked up bad.”

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “I’ll live,” she replied, relaxing a little in his grip. “Didn’t know I was making love to Charlie Manson.”

  Jess rolled off of her, the menace of the too-low-flying tornado erased from his mind. He reached for his smokes, found that they’d survived, and pulled the pack free. He slipped one out, lit it – watching the glow on the end of the match for so long he nearly burned the tip of his finger, before handing the cigarette to Mabel. She stared at the grass to one side, not meeting his gaze. She’d pulled her leg away from his where she sat, but she showed no signs of retreating.

  Then she turned to him, saw the cigarette, and took it quickly, bringing it to her lips and inhaling so hard that the tip glowed bright red and stayed that way.

  Jess lit another.

  “Can you hear it?” he asked her finally.

  “Hear what, Cowboy?” she whispered. The fight had gone out of her, and he guessed that her mind was on the same griddle as his own. Leonard’s last pass had upped the stakes. No soaked pot necessary. Whatever the hell he was spraying out of that rusty old death-trap he called a plane, it was fucking people up, and Jess and Mabel were on the express.

  Jess turned his head in the direction the plane had disappeared, toward old State Road 47. He held a finger to his lips. Whether or not it was because he asked her, he didn’t know, but Mabel remained silent. In the distance, a horn sounded. After a couple of moments, Jess would have sworn that he could hear the whine of tires.

  He glanced at Mabel. She watched. Her smoke had burned nearly down to the filter, and she held him tightly in her gaze, as if afraid something would happen that she would not understand. An experience she’d miss.

  “The road,” he said simply. “I hear it. I always hear it. It has a voice. Cars, trucks, busses, tires – horns. All of them mocking me. All of them calling to me. I sit, and I smoke, and I drink, but in my head, that’s what I hear.”

  “That isn’t real, Cowboy,” Mabel said at last. “None of it. You remember back in Ms. Carrier’s English class?”

  Jess nodded absently. He remembered Carrier, as he remembered all of his teachers. Vague, annoying images of things and places he hadn’t wanted to be.

  “You remember the poems, Cowboy? The old ones? The ones that told stories about lives that you just know never happened, but they seem real anyway.”

  Jess turned to watch her as she spoke. He couldn’t remember what she was talking about. He also couldn’t remember her speaking of anything remotely associated with Carrier’s English class, or High School. He could look around at the eerie, dangling plants and up at the moon, mist-clouds still obscuring it in places, joining the clouds above, and believe in mystical, far-away places.

  “Remember Ulysses, Cowboy?” she continued, sliding closer again, as if all the events of the evening hadn’t happened, and they were starting off their night over a beer and a smile. “He was on his way home, fighting monster after monster, saving people and having adventures, but all that time he was fighting to get home. To his wife.”

  Jess nodded now, with more certainty. He wasn’t sure if he remembered the poem, or some movie he’d seen on late-night cable, but the story was the same.

  “It’s like that,” she said softly. “Your road. The voices on your road. They’re sirens, Cowboy. They’re calling to you, promising you things you know in your heart will never be. Down that road there’s a million Old Mills North Carolina’s, a million swamps with their own versions of Teeter and Slug. A million Mabels. Thing is – only this one is yours.”

  She stopped for a moment, and Jess handed her another smoke. After a long drag, she added, “the sirens tried to drag Ulysses to death on the rocks, Cowboy. You up for that?”

  Jess glanced at the plants surrounding them. His throat was numb now, and he wasn’t certain he could move. He could hear a vague murmur to their left that he knew had to be Teeter and Slug. They’d forgotten all about Jess and Mabel and were talking between themselves. None of the words could be made out, but Teeter was excited about something. It didn’t matter. Neither of them mattered.

  “I have to try,” Jess said at last. “I came here tonight hoping this would do it.”

  He spread his arms, waved his hands in a circle that encompassed the clearing in front of them and the plants hanging over their heads and shoulders. “I thought if I took something out of here better than anything anyone had seen, or done, I could use it to buy a ticket on the next boat out, other side of Siren Island.”

  She smiled at his reference to her own words, and then frowned. “That’s why you came here, Cowboy?”

  Jess turned and put an arm around her shoulders. “That’s why I came to The Swamp,” he admitted. “That was a long time ago.”

  Mabel nodded, and without hesitation laid her head on his shoulder. Jess did not let his hand wander over her, though he ached to do it. He held her close and concentrated on a rhythm he imagined to be her heart, pulsing blood through her veins. He heard her words again – “only this one is yours,” and wondered if she’d meant roads, Old Mills, or something more personal. They were both silent.

  Then, suddenly, a rocking shadow loomed, and Teeter was leaning down to grin at them. His teeth were a yellow ruin, and his eyes were so bloodshot it showed even in the dim light, but they were bright, so dilated that his pupils looked like dark chasms. It dulled the inan
ity of his grin.

  “You should see,” he said. His face was closer, further away, closer again. He waited, and when neither Jess nor Mabel replied, he tried again. “You should see. Slug, he …” the words trailed off. Teeter rocked for a few moments longer, and then said simply, “you should see.”

  Jess glanced at Mabel. She started at Teeter. With a shrug, Jess planted his hands on the ground, levered himself to his feet, brushing dust off his jeans and tossing his ponytail over one shoulder. He reached down to Mabel, who took his hand reluctantly.

  “There’s time,” he said. “There’s always time, Mabel. Let’s go see what the idiot’s doing. We can figure out where to go from there.”

  He wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but felt as if he was making sense. Mabel seemed to believe this as well, though her own gaze mirrored Jess’ confusion. “What the hell,” she said.

  Teeter turned and bobbed toward the clearing where they’d left Slug. When they stepped into the clear, tall three of them stopped and stared, and for a moment, even Teeter held still.

  Slug stood in the center of the clearing. He had his head back, eyes to the sky, and between his fingers, he held a large, dark, squirming thing. It no longer ran up and down his fingers as it had, and he no longer stared at it in fascination. As they watched in disgust and growing horror, Slug brought his fingers to his lips. His tongue shot out like a large, white slug, sliding over his fingers, and up the back of the thing in his hand.

  Jess stepped forward suddenly, one hand outstretched in negation. As he grew closer, Slug’s head lolled, the slack features of his face turned to Jess and one eye opened languidly. Slug saw Jess, and he started to speak, thought better of it, ran his tongue up the back of the thing he held once again, as if caressing a lover. It was a cricket, large, black, and pissed off. Its back was wet from Slug’s attention, and as he made contact, the big idiot moaned.

  “Gonna … “

  Slug’s voice was weak, far away and confused.

  “Gonna … party.”

  He finished, closed his eyes and nodded in satisfaction. He tossed the cricket aside, and Jess thought he might fall, but instead, Slug turned to the plants on his left. His hand moved in a blur so fast Jess couldn’t follow it, and a moment later, he held it up. He’d plucked something from the leaf, a beetle of some sort. It had long mandibles and a dark, crusty back.

  With a sigh, Slug pulled it close and began to lick the creature slowly, like candy. Jess was certain he saw those mandibles lock down more than once on the moron’s lips and tongue, but Slug paid no attention. His eyes rolled up and back and then, very suddenly, he went slack. With a shudder that began at his feet, rippled up the length of his body, and whipped his spine into an arch, Slug spun in a circle and fell. There was no effort to break the fall. There was no apparent awareness of the world in his eyes. His arms fell out to his sides, and Slug hit the ground, flat on his back, head pressed into the soft soil. He laid there, spread-eagled, eyes closed. Gone.

  “Holy shit,” Mabel breathed softly.

  Jess turned to her. Then he turned to Teeter, who was staring, transfixed by the sight of his friend, unconscious on the ground. A twitch started at the edge of Teeter’s mouth. He started rocking again, slowly, and then faster, as if something was unwinding inside that he couldn’t stop. It was like watching a cartoon where a clock springs open and busts apart, only Teeter wasn’t broken yet. He turned back toward Jess and Mabel. In the distance, the roar of the small plane was growing louder again, but they all ignored it – for the moment.

  Teeter stared right through Jess. A thin line of drool trickled over his lip and rolled down his cheek. His lips were moving, almost a chant, in rhythm with the rocking motion of his body, but the sound formed no words that Jess could understand. Not that he understood much, standing there in the moonlight, watching his friend the drooling metronome rock and holding tightly to Mabel, as much to support himself as to comfort her. His head buzzed with sound, wind flapping the leaves of the plants and the whine of the plane in the distance, drawing slowly nearer.

  Teeter’s chanting grew louder, then louder still. The twitch at the corner of his lips became more pronounced, until the side of his face rippled. Maybe that was just the drugs. Maybe it was the wind, rippling through Jess’ eyelashes or the sweat dripping into his eyes. Maybe it wasn’t Teeter chanting at all, but the echo of the plane as it roared closer, flying low and fast. Too low. Too fast.

  Leonard’s mouth was dry. Sweat coated his brow, and he licked his lips incessantly. His eyes flicked from the sky before him to the gauges and back again. Fuck. How in the FUCK? The fuel gauge was dipping lazily below zero. He’d filled the crop-dusting tanks. He’d done his pre-flights. He’d been careful as hell, had ALWAYS been careful as hell, but there it was.

  Empty. Out of luck, out of fuel, nearly out of air. He had the control on the duster full on, blasting a thick cloud of chemicals out the rear, but it wouldn’t matter soon. He couldn’t land in the field, and the road was too far off. He would try. God knew he’d try, but he wasn’t going to make it. Leonard grabbed his flask, upended it, ignoring the controls - ignoring altitude (where it didn’t apply to his mental state) and wished he had his pipe. The sky was a wash of brilliant lights and flashing stars. He saw The Swamp in the distance. Something was going down there. Flashing lights - police - and a lot of vehicles on the move. No time to consider it. No time to consider anything.

  As the engine sputtered and the nose dipped, Leonard had a final thought. He thought of war films he’d watched as a boy. He thought of brilliant orange sunrises, white-sand beaches. He imagined the field below as the deck of a great battleship. Closing his eyes and gripping the controls tightly, Leonard slammed his arms forward and sent the Cessna into a final dive.

  “BONZAI!” he screamed. His voice was lost in the engine’s roar.

  Jess remembered the sound of cartoon bombs, whistling out of the sky, rocketing towards caricature coyotes and big bad wolves. He tried to look away from Teeter, to judge the incoming danger, but the muscles in his neck were stiff. The muscles in his back, his arms, and his legs felt as if they’d been encased in mud that was drying slowly and sapping his strength. Mabel wasn’t moving either, and Jess wondered fleetingly if she were clutching him because she cared, or if she couldn’t move. What was happening?

  It was the first time he’d questioned it. What the fuck was happening to them? The world was a huge droning dome of sound. He knew, in some vague distracted way, that the sound was Leonard’s plane, but at the same time it was more. It was the night, a huge, amplified tire whine, screaming to him. He heard it and in that moment, he moved.

  Turning, lurching to the side, Jess fell.

  The sound shifted. The world’s biggest lawnmower had gone insane and was cutting the weeds above his head. Jess rolled. He had no idea how, or even why, really, but he rolled and he rolled, smashing plants and banging his head painfully on stones imbedded in the soft ground. Waves of nausea burst from deep inside him and he stopped the roll, just in time, so that he vomited out and down. He tried to lift himself from the ground, but it wasn’t happening, so he turned his head, using his tongue to press as much of the bile from his mouth as possible and tasting the dirt as it returned, then repeating. Even this sensation throbbed through his brain and sent him reeling. Images of Slug, tongue sliding over the back of a huge, bloated cricket, surfaced in his mind and he vomited again. Fuck, how much could one man puke? He was lying in it, his cheek sticky with mud and bile.

  Then the world exploded, and his mind went blank. A single bright flash, followed by a shock that rolled him to his back and spewed more dirt over his face, his chest and pelted him with grit. Jess didn’t feel any of it. He was beyond that. Gone.

  It was a long time before he moved.

  Rolling to his knees, he looked around. The sun tinted the skyline a rose-red. The air was filled with acrid smoke. The kind of smoke that he associated with a bad engine, burning oil.
Something else. Jess stood, shaky but slowly becoming aware of his surroundings. The drug was still in half-swing, and everything was surrounded by a blurred aura of light.

  The pot plants were a ruin. The small clearing in their center was all but obscured by the cropped tops of the plants, which were stained a bright red. He thought it was the sunlight, had to be, but as he stepped closer, he nearly went into another fit of puking. It was blood. There was blood everywhere, and he spun slowly, trying not to loose his balance, nearly failing.

  “Mabel?” he called out. The sound of his voice was an odd, echoing cry in the lonely, silent field. The only other sound was the crackling of flames in the distance. Flames he knew he couldn’t ignore forever, but just that second he was focused.

  “Mabel?” he repeated. Jess staggered forward. It was hard going through the weeds. They’d been clipped at half-mast and dangled. Jess stopped. His mind wasn’t working well, but he remembered the sound. The plane. He finally straightened and looked out over the field toward the sound of the flames.

  Only the tail end of Leonard’s old Cessna stuck up from the ground. The front end had plowed into the earth, and the entire mess was on fire, blackened and charred. The smoke was billowing out in waves. Jess blinked. He turned to the clearing and fell to his knees, frantically clawing at the weeds. He yanked them and tossed them aside, clearing a small trail through the center. He nearly screamed when he touched something solid, but he bit it back and continued.

  Seconds later he realized it was Teeter. He recognized the filthy jeans. Two more handfuls of weeds, and he reached. Nothing. The jeans ended. There was blood, a lot of blood. It had soaked into the weeds, and there were bugs crawling all over it, slowly – dazedly … bugs after an overdose in the RAID chamber. Dying bugs and the metronome was dead.