by Ben Farthing
Kate looked up. “Dad didn’t get out?”
“He’s getting help,” Mom said. “You were kidnapping us.”
Cessy screamed in her mother’s face. “Where do you think we just were?”
Kate grabbed her. Landis ran to help.
Cessy crumpled. She thought she’d been prepared to sacrifice whatever it took to save her little sister. She’d accepted that she’d carry the guilt of abandoning their parents. But Kate had forced her to make the right choice, and save anybody who’d listen. She felt hope to save their family, just long enough to mourn its loss.
She cried into Kate’s shoulder. “I couldn’t make him listen.”
67
Cessy didn’t know what to do next.
The ruined town below them, the torn apart hillside beside them, the asphalt rubble beneath them.
The 4Runner was crushed between a fallen tree and a fallen boulder.
From this height, it was difficult to be sure, but Cessy counted fewer than twenty buildings still standing in the valley below. She suspected the only survivors were those who Landis and the state troopers had helped escape.
Mom leaned on Kate. She peered up the mountain and down to the river. “Where’s your father?”
A dry, fresh breeze drifted down the road. The young teenager sat on the yellow lines up the road. The forest created a tunnel of green over him.
Kate cried silently, hiding it from Mom.
Cessy agreed with her approach. Let Mom stay in denial for now. Her home was rubble. One trauma at a time.
Kate touched Mom’s arm. “Let’s go make sure that kid’s okay.”
Mom looked away from her tattered home. “I think that’s Wanda’s grandson.”
Kate led her to the boy.
The local man who’d helped clear the roadblock sat off the side of the road, running his fingers through the grass.
Landis came up to Cessy. He staggered like he was drunk. “My head is killing me.”
“Where’s the state trooper who was with you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “The local and I ran towards what we recognized, but the trooper got stuck listening to those voices. He didn’t know what they were. I at least had your warnings, and Mark had apparently been ignoring them the past month.”
A police officer trying to help people, caught up in indifferent forces. Maybe if she’d checked on Kate sooner, got involved before things got out of hand, her brother in blue would be going home tonight.
“What are we going to tell people?” Cessy asked.
Landis shrugged. “There’s over a hundred survivors. No way we could get a story straight. Tell the truth, tell them it doesn’t make sense but it’s what you saw. Suggest maybe someone slipped you hallucinogens. They’ll call it mass hysteria and come up with an explanation.”
Cessy shook her head. “A hundred survivors. Hamlin had two thousand people.”
“I’m sorry. Your dad didn’t make it out?”
She shook her head.
“Ah geez, I’m sorry, Timms.” Landis put an awkward hand on her shoulder. “How’s your mom doing?”
“She hasn’t accepted reality yet. It’ll be bad when she does.” Cessy tried to take in everything around her. The childhood home that’d carved her into an adult while it slowly died, was finally dead. Her father. “I could have done more. If I hadn’t waited so long to check on Kate. If I’d kept in better touch with my parents. I should have noticed what was happening.”
“Don’t do that to yourself. People make decisions, and they have to live with those decisions. Your parents decided to listen to those broadcasts, if that’s what you say happened. Your sister decided to go investigate without asking for help. They own those choices. We’re a shield against bad choices, but not a perfect one.”
“That speech worked when a hostage died,” Cessy said. “This is different.”
“That’s the only speech I’ve got,” Landis said. “You came here to help your sister, and she’s alive, isn’t she?”
Kate sat with Mom next to the boy. The boy cried onto Mom’s shoulder.
“There’s a hundred people who wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t come back when you did.”
Cessy nodded. She tried not think about the hundreds more who might also still be alive if she’d come back earlier. Or if she’d kept a stronger relationship with Dad.
“You did what you could,” Landis said. “That’s all anybody can do.”
Sirens came from over the hill. Within seconds, a fleet of state troopers appeared.
“Let’s go talk to them,” Landis said.
Cessy looked back again at Hamlin, and the devastation the worm had caused after it got what it came for. She tried to believe what Landis had told her. She’d done what she could.
68
Cessy stomped through the snow to Mom’s apartment.
It was hopefully D.C.’s last snow of the year, before spring arrived.
She toted a wrapped bundle of fabric under her arm, along with a gift card to the quilting store. She’d made a guess on what Mom wanted, and then decided a gift card would make up for it if she guessed wrong.
She took a breath, reminded herself to stop second guessing all her decisions.
Seven months had passed since Cessy came to this apartment complex and discovered Kate to be missing. Six months since they’d moved Mom in next door.
Cessy kicked snow off her boots, knocked on the door, and walked inside.
Classic country music played on the stereo. Thrift shop furniture made up a cozy living room. A photo of Dad on the wall, next to a family photo from a few Christmases ago. The only photos of Dad that had survived--Kate had them on her phone.
Kate walked in from the kitchen, saw Cessy, and called behind her, “Cessy’s here!”
She helped Cessy with her coat.
“How’s she doing today?” Cessy whispered.
“Not great. I guess a birthday is like any other holiday. She’s thinking about what it’d be like with Dad here.”
“It’s weird without him.”
Kate set Cessy’s gift atop a small pile. “I had that dream again.”
“Back in the mine?”
“This time, I was in my apartment, but it was dark and dusty like the mine. The walls were bulging with the worm behind them.”
“Dreams can be stressful.” Cessy gently prodded, inviting Kate to dispute that it was a meaningless dream.
“My shrink says I’m learning to stop reliving trauma.”
The police psychologist had told Cessy something similar. “Do you agree?”
“Some days. Others, I go to work and there’s a client who reminds me of Dad, so I bring hell down on his scummy landlord. It’s not proportionate, but it feels good.”
Mom walked in from the kitchen. She gave Cessy a genuine smile, overlapping moist eyes. “I told you not to worry about a gift.”
“It’s your birthday, Mom.”
“I wish you’d tell that to your friends at the FBI. They called not two hours ago, wanting to ask more questions.”
“Just tell them the truth.”
“They’ll think I’m crazy.”
They thought it was a sinkhole that released hallucinogenic gasses, but that didn’t explain why they’d only found bodies for half the missing persons.
A timer beeped. Kate hurried into the kitchen.
“I invited some girls from the quilting circle,” Mom straightened a shelf of porcelain angels that were already straight. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.” They’d set Mom up with every social group they could think of, trying to avoid her turning back on talk radio. Mom didn’t like the D.C. and Fairfax culture, didn’t feel like she fit in. The quilting group was the only one that’d stuck. “A bunch of small town girls who moved in with their kids,” Mom had called them.
“Here, let me turn this off.” Mom went to the radio to switch off the music. As she flipped the knob from CD to OFF, i
t passed over FM, and then AM. A quick burst of modern country, followed by a quick burst of talk radio ranting.
Cessy’s heart leapt to her throat. Kate appeared in the doorway, hands in oven mitts. “What was that?”
Mom laughed and waved them off. “I wanted some peace and quiet now that my daughters are here.”
It hadn’t been Lockler. The voice was too young, too nasally.
Cessy and Kate held each other’s gaze, silently asking if everything was okay.
Cessy forced a laugh. “I got spooked there. No worries.”
Kate blinked slowly, and then disappeared back into the kitchen.
Cessy looked at her mother and saw a partially rehabilitated woman, who’d let anger drain her of compassion. She and Kate had done everything they could to separate her from preached hate.
As Mom babbled about quilting circle gossip, and the burst of staticky hate lingered in the living room, Cessy hoped they’d done enough.
<<<<>>>>
From the Author:
I’m glad you survived The Piper’s Graveyard.
If you enjoyed the ride, I’d be eternally grateful if you could leave an Amazon review. Even just a star rating is beyond helpful.
If you’d like to find out what happened to Jackson after he was swallowed by the worm, download my free short story, “Esophagus.”
>>>Tap here to claim your free copy of “Esophagus”
When you click that link, you can also sign up for my newsletter where I’ll keep you updated on upcoming books, and try to convince you to watch the weird indie horror movies my wife won’t watch with me.
Speaking of other books, keep reading to see what else is on the menu…
If you want more regular folks confronting cosmic horrors, check out my book It Waits on the Top Floor.
It starts with a skyscraper springing up overnight, an over-eager 9-year-old breaking in to search for treasure, and a terrified dad chasing after him.
By the end… well, I won’t give anything away, but let’s just say that it gets as cosmic and Weird-with-a-capital-W as The Piper’s Graveyard. Probably moreso.
>>>Tap here to start reading It Waits on the Top Floor
One last note:
If you’ve already read my book BOOM, then you may have noticed some overlap with the supernatural threats in The Piper’s Graveyard. That’s intentional. My horror novels have so far been regular people confronting horrors that slip out of the infinite dimensions of the Periphery.
If you haven’t yet read BOOM, I hope you do. It’s a dark urban fantasy thriller, where people use reality-bending magic to protect themselves against horrors like you just experienced in The Piper’s Graveyard. If you’ve ever read Dresden Files or Neverwhere, and wished that the world and monsters were more like something from Jeff VanderMeer or Clive Barker, then BOOM is for you.
>>>Tap here to start reading BOOM
Once again, thanks for reading.