The Best of Horror Library: Volumes 1-5

by Bentley Little

  Waking groggy, she found herself buried under her seat, a cushion of space surrounded by crumpled metal and fiberglass. Her left shoulder was sliced to the bone, her body a map of swollen bruises. Pulling herself up, the first thing Lisa saw was a large hole in the plane’s windshield. The pilot had ejected through it, leaving behind streamers of red flesh across the jagged shards of glass. Her husband still remained, buckled in, and Lisa crawled slowly between the twisted alloy tubing to his side. In shock, she found him alert and staring at her, his chest cleaved into two halves. Even through his injury, Phil could speak and calmly inquired as to Lisa’s own health, before politely asking for a drink of water. She tried to unbuckle him, but the crevice in his chest began to split wider open. The seatbelt running crisscross over Phil’s body acted as a tourniquet, holding his torso together so its insides didn’t spill out like a burst sewage pipe. When he drank the water Lisa brought him, it bubbled out from under his shirt. She shrieked, and Phil spoke, calm and reassuring to the end. Clenching her hand, he declared that someone would come for her, she would be rescued…

  Lisa shook her head now, telling herself to focus on the footprints. They were becoming fresher, more pronounced in the sand as she shuffled across, although after hours of walking, her stamina began to falter. She grew weak while the sun grew strong. Heat waves rolled upon the land, blurring her thoughts and vision in watery mirages. The wind, too, punished her, a ceaseless beast that gusted in unnatural flurries like small dervishes. It was not a strong wind, but it blew enough to fill the air always with sand, to scratch her face and dull her vision, and to produce strange ghostly images. The wind was also enough to blow away the footprints she followed, if she did not hurry.

  Lisa staggered further until exhaustion forced her to rest. Three days since the crash, with little to eat or drink, had crippled her vigor, while despair chipped away her resolve. She’d followed the footprints into the roasting afternoon, but they still cruelly outpaced her; she couldn’t catch up to whoever left them. She wondered if they might stretch forever across that forsaken land, one mysterious leg dragging tirelessly behind the other.

  Scattered along the trail, thick sagebrush sprouted from the searing desert, and Lisa selected the largest one to rest beneath. She draped the seat cover from the Cessna atop its grey-green needle branches, creating a semblance of shelter, and collapsed under it. Sipping a water bottle, she moaned lonely bleats and closed her eyes, remembering…

  Phil’s final hours after the crash had been ones of agony. Not agony for Phil himself, who bore his death sentence as serenely as a Zen monk, but agony for Lisa, who helplessly watched her husband fade away. She wept and lashed out at the wreckage in frustration, and imagined that the vultures circling high in the sky were helicopters searching for them. Phil and she each had cell phones that were shattered and useless, and the plane supposedly contained an emergency beacon that transmitted in cases such as this, but what that really meant, or if it even worked, Lisa did not know. All she knew was that no one came for them. Dying, Phil drifted in and out of consciousness, repeating the same simple message, urging her to stay calm.

  “Someone will find you…you will be rescued,” he whispered between gasps. “Just stay here. Someone will come to you. People don’t go missing in the desert forever.”

  Phil had said someone would arrive to rescue her, and he’d been right.

  As Lisa lay under the sagebrush, a veil of shade passed above her, blocking the burning bright light. Her eyes fluttered open, blinking at the shadow’s unexpected presence. Before her stood a man dressed in ragged clothes, tattered as if he’d been pulled through a cyclone. His pant legs were ripped at the knees in long drooping angles, and his waistband held up loosely by frayed suspenders. He wore a button-down shirt, once white perhaps, but now torn and blackened from grime and age. A wide-brimmed hat drooped over the man’s head, casting murky shadows across his face. The hat was pockmarked with holes, as if chewed upon by worms and moths.

  The man stared down at Lisa, the features of his face fuzzy under the brim of that rotting hat. Sand coated his skin and seemed to float off him like drifting snowflakes. He spoke to her in quiet earnest, his words monotone, yet sincere in their desperation.

  “My family needs help.”

  The man’s plea left Lisa feeling sick. It was as she feared: the walker was as lost in the desert as she herself. She replied, “I’m sorry…I’m lost out here, too. Our plane crashed and my husband is dead. What—what happened to you?”

  With a slow shake of his head, the man spoke in a whisper. “We lost the trail. We was travelling to Oregon territory from Missouri. Gonna farm wheat in the Multnomah Valley, but got turned sideways in a great sandstorm. That was a long time ago. We ain’t got no water left, and my children are thirsty.”

  The man’s voice drifted as if borne upon the wind, and dissolved across the vast expanse. Each word formed slowly and creaked from his mouth with a rough texture like coarse gravel grinding upon itself. Lisa shuddered, bewildered. She thought of the impossibility of two lost people finding each other in that desolation, and a sobbing grimace broke free as she imagined the answer.

  “Oh, God, am I dead?”

  “Dead? No, Miss, sunstroke must be getting to you. Please though, I need your help. My family needs your help.”

  Lisa coughed hoarsely, suddenly feeling foolish for having asked such a thing. She uncapped a water bottle and took a delicate sip, sucking tenderly at each drop. She looked back to the man, struck again by his face, fuzzy and dark with dirt, outlining foggy eyes that gazed upon her with such appeal. Hesitantly, she offered up the bottle.

  “I just have a little bit left, but you can have a drink.”

  “No, but thank you, ma’am. If you can spare some, please save it for my children.”

  He stood there, solemn and motionless, staring at her, and she stared back at him, confused and contemplating, until he reached a hand out to help her stand. The movement made Lisa flinch. She declined his assistance and stood on her own.

  “Come with me,” he said. “They’re this way.”

  The man set off, walking through the sand, and only then did Lisa note his feet. They were bare and gnarled, blistered from treading unprotected over the burning earth. He walked with a limp, and she observed as he strode away how each footprint in the sand was formed. The thousands of empty prints she had followed were now filled. The left leg stepped strong, compensating for the weaker right leg, which twisted slightly and stepped at an odd angle. After several yards he paused and turned gravely back to her.

  “Please, we must hurry.”

  That voice again, gravelly and hoarse, flat as the desert land, but whispered light as the air. Apprehensive, Lisa followed.

  They walked for hours. Lisa proceeded slowly, staggering under the pounding sun. She needed to rest often, and the man always waited for her. He never seemed to need rest of his own, and only after several minutes of her sitting motionless, would he quietly urge her on again, pleading that she must hurry. They continued hiking under the blazing sun and through the clouds of sand. Lisa followed each footprint that formed in front of her, until fatigue wore her down.

  “I can’t go on,” she panted.

  “We’re almost there. They’re waiting over yonder.”

  He pointed to a steep dune rising before them. Lisa grimaced, but commanded her legs to keep moving, forcing each to lift just one more time, and then once again after that. She plodded up the dune behind him, trembling in exhaustion.

  Rising over the crest of the dune, she saw wagons below. They were skeletal remains, as if beached whales had inexplicably rotted away in that dry land. Bleached bows rose like arched ribs above the desert floor, their wood cracked and withered from exposure to the elements. The wagon carcasses sat in a semicircle, three of them decaying in unison, with each frame tilted low and borne by many-spoked wheels. Lisa knew those wagons were very old, like the Conestogas pulled by oxen or horses she often sa
w in spaghetti western movies. The man walked down the dune to the nearest one and motioned for her to join him.

  Lisa trailed him to the wagon and saw four skeletons propped against its slumped sideboard. Each skeleton was smaller than the one to its left, as if a row of children were lined up in successive ages. She cried out in sorrow.

  Nearby, another skeleton, this one full-sized, lay sprawled on its back and half-buried under the drifting grit. It wore the tattered remains of a calico dress, and Lisa could only imagine the mother’s grief of watching each of her children wither away and die like poisoned flowers. The skeletons were rotten and crumbling with age, but each skull was positioned so that it looked expectantly at the dune Lisa and the man had just climbed over.

  “Please, can you help them?” he asked. His voice sounded again as a haunting whisper drifting on the wind.

  “Them?” Lisa replied, pointing in horror to the collected bones waiting in the sand. “This is your family?”

  “Yes, they need help. They need water. I swore to them I would come back, that I’d bring help.”

  Lisa covered her mouth to stifle a rising scream and backed away from the strange, pleading man. Past the first wagon’s remains more battered skeletons lay in similar postures of demise. They wore chaps and boots, all with hollow eye sockets staring sightlessly at the crest of the dune, waiting for the man’s return.

  She staggered from the wagons, struggling through sand that sucked at her feet and blew into her eyes. Clawing at the air, Lisa tried to flee, only to abruptly trip upon something half-buried in the earth. The scream escaped then, as she fell. Her ankle twisted with a sickening pop and, attempting to rise, she found her leg could no longer support her.

  When Lisa saw what tripped her she screamed again, scrambling at the ground to crawl away.

  Another skeleton protruded from its grave of sand, although it was not as ancient as the others. Aviator goggles hung around its serrated neck and a torn leather cap adorned the skull, resembling a World War One pilot. Like the dead of the wagon train, this corpse stared toward the crest of the dune, one bony white arm raised above its brow, forever shielding from the sun’s blinding rays as it lay waiting.

  Lisa wailed at her crippled ankle while a gust of sand blew past, then cleared. She dropped her head and crawled on hands and knees from the pilot’s bones. She moved like this until her hand pushed upon another skeleton half-screened by the bleached earth. The sob that broke free as she jerked away was equal parts disgust and despair. The carcass was dressed in high-waisted jeans, with chains and cuffs rolled up to showcase two-tone Keds sneakers, baking under the endless sun. Patches of its crisp dark hair remained, piled high in the style of Elvis or James Dean.

  A wild frenzy overtook Lisa. She wanted to flee, to escape this scene of horror, though her impulse for flight was immediately countered by a sense of submission, as she wondered where she could possibly go. Behind her, the strange man did not give chase, but remained motionless by the first wagon, watching her without expression. Lisa’s mind raced to understand, to unravel this puzzle. How could an aviator and a 1950s greaser be found amongst a wagon train from the 1800s? Had others become lost in this terrible land by coincidence and wandered upon the wagons’ remains, only to perish there themselves?

  As if in response, the wind calmed and the flying sand cleared, and she saw there were many more.

  Beyond the Elvis-kid’s remains lay another skeleton, this one slender and wearing lime-green pedal pushers and a tarnished peace symbol necklace. Past that were row upon row of the dead, circling around the wagon train. She saw one corpse finely dressed in a tattered pinstripe suit that fluttered in the breeze to reveal an old gangster’s revolver. Another body wore the unfortunate attire of a Victorian-era’s stiff velvet dress. To wear drapery like that out here was madness… yet nothing about this desert made any sense. The next skeleton wore the fatigues of an infantry soldier, while beside it lay bones in a prisoner’s uniform, serial number etched across its breast.

  The worst was a dead man in Bermuda shorts and polo shirt sprawled on his side. He was not a skeleton yet, and Lisa could still make out mottled features, partly hidden underneath Oakley sunglasses. The corpse was in the process of decomposing, and the rotting flesh cooked under the sun while insects and lizards feasted on it.

  All the dead stared at the crest of the dune, each waiting for the man she met to bring back help. He calmly appeared next to her, his quiet stride betrayed only by clouds of dust kicked up by each step.

  He asked, “Please, can you help them?”

  “I can’t help them, I can’t help them!” Lisa sobbed. “I’m dying too…I need help, don’t you see? I’m dying out here, like all of them—” She broke off with a wail.

  The walker’s expression changed. He looked down at Lisa in grief, sympathizing at her incapacity. She too needed help, and her words repeated the unendurable plight of his past. His sinking eyes flickered black and white, and he knelt to her. The man took Lisa’s hands solemnly into his own, so that her fingers were buried deep within his firm and gritty grasp. She felt sand moving beneath his skin, flowing deep through the veins and arteries of his being. It was cold, unlike the sand of the desert that burned hot to the touch.

  “Please, then you must wait here. I will go out and find someone to help us.” He gently brushed back a loose lock of hair that fell across her brow. “I make this oath to you, that I will not rest until I have found rescue for us all.”

  Lisa nodded, gazing into his face, her only hope.

  “I must leave now to search. Wait here. I’ll be back, and I will bring help. I’ll return over that rise.” He pointed at the crest of the dune he so recently had led her across.

  “I swear it,” he whispered solemnly, and Lisa knew he was a man who kept his promises.

  The man stood, sand dripping from his arms, dust floating from his mouth, and turned to trek back up the dune. Lisa wondered how many times before had he left? How many times had he sought rescue in others, only to find they too were lost and wandering in hopeless despair? How many years of searching the desolate wasteland had it taken to wear off the very boots he once walked in? Someday he would find help, he would never cease until rescue was brought to her and those others lost in the desert.

  The man walked away, slowly and eternally, his twisted right leg dragging with each limp step. He left a fresh set of tracks in the sand as he departed, rising up and over the dune’s crest. She lay there waiting, as the sun melted to moon and was born back again. She lay there staring at the dune and watched as his footprints faded in the desert.

  The Vulture’s Art

  by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  Taking the baby to the desert wasn’t crazy. Hardly surprising, Jeff’s family thought differently. Since that terrible night in the delivery room, emotional family members tiptoed around his feelings, the nonconfrontational avoided him completely, and the bewildered offered tough love. Yet, with the baby, everybody was on the same page: he wouldn’t be able to raise her alone—just look at the stupid decisions he was making already.

  People treated the psychologically wounded with an odd xenophobia that granted them license to say things like, “This too will pass,” “This will not kill you, but give you strength,” “It’ll be hard, but you’ll weather this storm,” and of course, Jeff’s mother’s favorite speech, “You have little Rose to think of now. Remember her. Remember that baby has a whole life ahead of her and you need to be there. Kim wouldn’t have wanted you to mope around forever.”

  It hadn’t been forever, though. Not even close. The baby was only five months old. And Kim was only five months dead. With the world outside the tragedy, there were no in-betweens. Extremes were in abundance, though, and frankly, Jeff had had enough of those to last him a lifetime.

  During his annual vacation, he didn’t want to stick around the condo where all of Kim’s belongings sprung out of closets to sabotage him. And he didn’t want to go on the cruise
with his parents—he and Kim did that same Mexican Riviera deal for their honeymoon. Jeff just wanted to take Rose somewhere left untouched by the world. The cabin had running hot and cold water, heater and A/C, filled refrigerator, cable TV, and a bed. The property manager also set up a crib in the guest room.

  For over a month Jeff had daydreamed about those boulders lit pink from the setting sun. Anza Borrego had been his favorite place as a kid, and he hoped that any memories Rose formed would plant the same naturalistic awe deep in her mind.

  Maybe later. For now, the baby slept peacefully in her car seat.

  The cabin was eight miles off the main road outside the state park. Jeff worried whether the road’s increasingly deep ruts would wake Rose. She’d had two restless nights (along with Jeff) and this was finally the sleep she needed. Luckily the cabin soon came into sight. A turkey vulture glided around the area. Great, Jeff thought. Hopefully whatever died wasn’t close enough to stink up the house.

  He put the car in park and glanced back. Rose’s head remained cocked to the side, a diamond of slobber in the corner of her mouth. Lord, she was heartbreaking. Seeing her sound asleep made him worry about whether she was still breathing or not. At home he’d woken her a couple times when he nervously pressed his ear to her chest, questioning the obvious pulse of her heart. To think, without the frequencies of that little organic pump, that relatively simple muscular device, his own heart would surely twist shut—there would be no need to go on.