Halfway House

by Weston Ochse

  Halfway

  House

  By

  Weston Ochse

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2014 by Weston Ochse

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  JournalStone

  www.journalstone.com

  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-48-8 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-49-5 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-50-1 (hc)

  JournalStone rev. date: September 12, 2014

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014942907

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Art & Design: Elderlemon Design

  Edited by: Aaron J. French

  Endorsements

  On Weston Ochse

  “Horror fans will be drawn in by Ochse's cool, collected writing style and then blown away when he peels back reality's skin to uncover the supernatural terrors lurking just beneath the surface."—Publishers Weekly

  "Weston Ochse has always been a wised-up, clued-in, completely trustworthy writer of high-action fiction that deserved a wider audience."—Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of In the Night Room

  "Weston Ochse is perhaps the fiercest and most direct of the latest generation of dark fiction writers. I watched awestruck year by year as the bright candle of his talent grew into a roaring bonfire of brutally honest output, matched only by his deep empathy for the human condition."—Rocky Wood, author of Stephen King: A Literary Companion

  “Weston Ochse is to horror what Bradbury is to science fiction — an artist whose craft, stories and voice are so distinct and mesmerizing that you can't help but be enthralled.”—Dani Kollin, Prometheus Award-winning author of The Unincorporated Man

  “Weston is one of the best authors of our generation."—Brian Keene, Bram Stoker Award-winning author The Rising

  “Weston Ochse is a mercurial writer, one of those depressingly talented people who are good at whatever they turn their hand to.”—Conrad Williams, August Derleth and International Horror Guild Award Winner

  On SEAL Team 666:

  “SEAL Team 666 affords the same pleasures as Jonathan Maberry’s Joe Ledger series or Christopher Farnsworth’s Blood Oath and its sequels: namely seeing supernatural beasties receive a good old military-grade beating…. Ochse’s army background lends authenticity to this snappy, fast-paced thriller.” —Financial Times of London (UK)

  On Grunt Life

  Weston Ochse writes hard-nosed fiction with more grit and imagination than most authors could ever hope to muster. When he turns his skills to tales of the military, the words sing with the truth of personal experience. --Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of SNOWBLIND)

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks for the very special help I received from Jesus Gonzalez for making the Spanglish sing; from H Casper for Keeping the God and the Elvis straight; from Bob Straus, Godfather to Scarecrow Gods and keeper of my foul mood; from Drew “Malvolio” Williams for his foptacular yellow garters; from John Urbancik for his first read; from Kevin McAlonan for cold insights and warm scotch; from Nanci Kalanta for her constant interest and attention; from Paul and Shannon Legerski, Eunice and Greg Magill, and Barbara and Dirk Foster for letting me into your homes and lives; from Bob Fleck for doing agenty things; Aaron J. French for doing edity things; Chris Payne for doing publishy things and from the people of San Pedro for making it a very special place in my heart and memory.

  Most of all, thanks to my wife, Yvonne, for absolutely everything.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  For

  Chili Lily Cactus Eater,

  Goblin Monster Dog,

  Pester Ghost Cactus Eater,

  Evil Ghoulie Sonar Brain,

  And

  Elvis Paper Dog

  Halfway

  House

  Prologue

  February 25, 1942

  Just after midnight, Los Angeles-based radars track an unidentified airborne target 120 miles out to sea. At 02:21 hours, as the target reaches within a few miles of the coast, a blackout of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas is ordered by Regional Command Authority. Shortly afterward, this mysterious object being tracked along the coast between Catalina Island and the Port of Los Angeles vanishes. At 02:43, planes are reported near Long Beach, and a few minutes later a coast artillery colonel spots thirty planes at ten thousand feet over downtown Los Angeles. Three squadrons are sent to intercept. At 03:06 a balloon carrying a red flare is seen over Santa Monica and four batteries of antiaircraft artillery open fire, blanketing the skies with flak.

  Near San Pedro, a hot air balloon appears out of the mist, heading for shore. This is the original object that has disappeared from radar, forgotten in the chaos of other sightings. It sets down in the shallows of a secluded cove. A Japanese demolition crew wades ashore, their targets the cannons of Batteries Farley, Merriam, Leary, Barlow and Saxton—the teeth of America’s West Coast defenses, and the single greatest deterrent to a planned invasion. In silence, the Japanese soldiers march single file onto American soil, each eager to demonstrate the superiority of Mother Japan, even if it costs them their lives.

  * * *

  She feels their presence like insects crawling along her skin. Giving one last brush at the dolphin’s thoughts, she soars, disembodied but as powerful as ever. What is this intrusion? She’s heard the sirens. The lights went out hours ago. Has the war come to America? Has the war come to her land?

  Rising higher and higher, the mother sees the lights of humanity dotting the spur of California she calls her own; people, her people, huddle in their homes, afraid of what might come with the sirens. Their fear torments her. She can’t will it away, but wishes she could. Like the mother she is, she’d willingly take each and every one of them to bed, whispering courage and contentment, magic from her breath.

  She remembers when her father brought her here, his arm engulfing the coastline as he pointed to the horizon, his words forever etched in memory. This land is our birthright. No one can
take it from us if we don’t want them to. Our power is to the land. Anything else is selfish and wrong.

  A familiar light draws her attention. Reisa. What is her daughter doing out this late? And with someone else? The mother moves toward the pair of lights, noticing how they merge and separate, then merge again, then separate.

  Reisa!

  Remembering the gypsy boy from the ship and the way he’d watched Reisa with his dark eyes, there is no mystery at all as to what her daughter is doing now.

  But that isn’t what she feels.

  Fighting her instincts, the mother slows. She reminds herself that her daughter is an adult and deserves privacy. Her own father’s words send icy stilettos of clarity through her worry. Our responsibility is to the land, and we must not lose concentration. Distraction, any distraction, could be the end of it all.

  The mother almost turns away when the feeling comes again, stronger now, like spiders snipping her bare skin. She attunes herself to the land and searches. Finally she finds them, six men marching near where her daughter lays with the man.

  Giving way to those maternal instincts, she rockets toward her daughter. Flying across the tops of palms, slicing through clouds, skimming over rooftops, her screams go unheard to everyone except the birds. All along the land, everything avian takes wing, her spiritual cries like gunshots to their tiny racing hearts.

  But she is too late.

  The mother sees the soldiers come upon her daughter and the dark-eyed man, soundlessly slitting their throats, then moving on up the hill toward the artillery batteries.

  She watches in horror as her daughter’s blood pumps into the land. The birds flock to her, first hundreds, then thousands. They feel her form and allow her to control their minds, understanding that she is of the land, the land they live on, feed on, and call home. They beat their wings as they move to her commands, a thousand tiny minds feeling her anger, the grief and the loss. At her will, they become monstrous.

  The men halt when they hear the tumultuous crashing of the wings. They search the sky, but can’t see into the darkness. Even the stars are hidden. As the sound grows louder, their fear grows until their steps tremble along the ground.

  The moment that her rage takes shape, a guard from Battery Farley fires a flare into the air, the red rocket sun backlighting her new nightmarish form to the intruders.

  As one, the men scream.

  But that is only the beginning.

  She has learned some terrible things in her life, things she’d never thought she would duplicate.

  But that was before they murdered her only child.

  And these things she does are most terrible.

  Most terrible, indeed.

  Chapter 1

  The crash of surf was as welcome a sound as Bobby Dupree had heard in a long time. He and Kanga had spent the day hoofing it from Long Beach, through the port city cesspool of Wilmington, finally arriving back in San Pedro, all in a fruitless search for a replacement board. They’d gone from surf shop to surf shop, even trolling the secondhand stores, and twice Bobby thought the old man had found what he’d wanted. But each time he’d left grumbling about this defect or that stress crack, invisible to Bobby, whose surfing expertise began and ended at the ocean’s edge.

  Kanga’s board had been crucified on the rocks of Rat’s Cove during a freak current two days ago, and ever since the man had been morose with loss. It had finally taken Bobby, and Kanga’s daughter Laurie, to convince him that a replacement board could be found. Not one of the new, mass-produced, fiberglass monstrosities that every Tom, Dick and Surfer Harry threw on the roof racks of their mommy’s station wagons, PT Cruisers, or wanna-be-retro new VWs, but some throwback, soul-engineered surf machine lost in the dust of a back-alley shop, just begging to twist and cry on the crest of a wave once more before it died a heady death.

  The problem was that nothing could replace Kanga’s 1964 Dextra Gun with its red, yellow and green psychedelic swirls, which he’d won in a contest in Santa Cruz in ’76. Such a board was irreplaceable, not only because of its undeniable quality, but because of the inculcated memories attached to every dive into every wave that came after.

  Still, Kanga and Bobby looked.

  In all the shops they’d gone to, the only boards that Kanga had decreed fitting were a 1962 Santa Cruz Challenger longboard with a Bahne fin and a 1968 mint green Velzy. But when he’d seen the prices, each nearly a thousand dollars of money neither of them had, Kanga declared the journey over and began the forced march back to Jap’s Cove where his beach shack stood against the sheer cliff face of the California Coast.

  The sun had set into a cloud bank east of Catalina Island. Stopping only for a bag of burritos from Tony’s and a case of Tecate beer from the Lighthouse Mini Mart, they felt glad to be getting home. Even Kanga turned and flashed a grin, his teeth starkly white against a tan so permanent it was like a nut-brown stain. He and Bobby picked their way along the trail leading from the International Youth Hostel, past a gated trailer park, and along a scenic overlook.

  Kanga had used this beach shack for twenty years now, stopping there whenever he passed through Los Angeles. The sanctuary had once been miles from civilization’s edge, but every year the tide of humanity crept closer. The day that the Yuppies found reason to overrun the shack was the day he’d vowed never to return. Bobby glanced at the new homes being built along the hills of Rancho Palos Verdes and knew it was only a matter of months before they settled out here.

  Kanga held up a hand, halted, and crouched. Bobby slid the box of beer and food into the thigh-high grass beside the trail and duck walked over to Kanga. Electric guitar riffs of Los Straitjacket’s Rockula twisted up the path ahead of the onshore breeze. A golden glow brightened the otherwise black night. Bobby smelled the smoke of the fire.

  “Come on, kid. Let’s see who dropped in.” Kanga’s voice promised violence.

  Bobby had learned that dropping in was a surfer’s worst crime, meaning to take a wave when another already owned it. In this case, there were no waves, but the beach shack was just as important. For Bobby, even more so, since his bags were there. They contained all his research on his birthright, which was what he’d come to Southern California to find before hooking up with Kanga.

  Wearing long, peach-colored pants and a T-shirt from Bell’s Cove in Australia, the fifty-five-year-old Kanga reached up and knotted his long white hair to keep it out of his face. The muscles in his arms twisted and bulged. A lifetime of surf bumming on three continents had chiseled the old man’s features into those of a twenty-five-year-old. Only his gray hair and a stubborn, but small, pot belly made from years of burritos and beer were evidence of his age.

  Kanga frowned once more as someone cranked Sterno to painful decibels, speakers spitting the rapid-fire surf guitar like an underwater machine gun. Wary of being seen, he moved in a quick half crouch down the path.

  Bobby, dressed in his typical blue jean cutoffs, Memphis Barbecue T-shirt with sleeves removed, and tennis shoes, scrambled down the slope behind him. He’d seen Kanga take on a college-aged surfer the day his board had been smashed, when he’d gotten mullered after the punk had dropped into his wave. Three smartass remarks from the Laguna Beach preppy and Kanga had front-kicked the boy’s sarcasm down into his throat. It took both the boy’s friends to help him up the slope and back to their Beemer. Before they sped off to mommy and a trust fund, Kanga had made it clear that they weren’t allowed back to the coves, ever.

  At the bottom of the path, Kanga sidestepped a mound of rotting seaweed and peered around a cement retaining wall. In a few moments he straightened and brought his face close to Bobby’s.

  “There are four of them,” Kanga whispered. “Three guys and a girl. Looks like they made themselves at home.”

  Bobby felt a twinge of anger. Other than the orphanage, this was the only other place he could possibly call home. To have someone in it made him madder than he thought he’d be. He realized he’d attached a certai
n amount of ownership to the thatched-roof dwelling. Built on an immense concrete slab, the beach shack was all open air, with two old couches facing the ocean, and raised benches ringing the sides and rear, doubling as places to sit or sleep. Stout support poles stolen from construction sites held up a roof frame constructed of PVC piping. Interwoven throughout the frame were palm fronds that had been liberated from the yards of upscale Rancho Palos Verdes estates, now laid in such a way that any rainfall sluiced off.

  “What do you want to do?” Bobby asked.

  “I want to kick their asses. But that might be unneighborly. Maybe they just want to crash.”

  “We need a signal. Something like snapping your fingers so I know when it’s time to fight.”

  “Sounds good. Stick behind me, kid. I don’t want you getting all beaten and bruised. Laurie would have my hide.”

  Before Bobby could deny there was anything going on between him and Kanga’s daughter, the older man stepped out and strode toward the raging bonfire in the rock pit before the shack. Bobby hurried after him.

  Beside the fire were two shirtless men drinking beers. A woman and a third man sat together on the nearest couch, kissing slow and long like they had a lifetime to do it. The men by the fire saw them first. The one with long red hair, a goatee, and a pair of yellow Hobie shorts stood first.

  The other man followed, leaping to his feet right after. Whereas the red-haired man was tall and lean, this one was built like a Pit bull: shaved head, thick neck, broad chest, with shotgun biceps. He flexed his arms and began opening and closing his hands.