by Dan Alatorre
DAN ALATORRE
DARK PASSAGES Volumes 1-4
A COLLECTION OF SHORT HORROR STORIES AND DARK TALES
Includes:
DARK PASSAGES
DARK VOODOO
DARK INTENT
DARK THOUGHTS
© 2020 Dan Alatorre
Note to Readers
If you have the time, I would deeply appreciate a review on Amazon or Goodreads. I learn a great deal from them, and I’m always grateful for any encouragement. Reviews are a very big deal and help authors like me to sell a few more books. Every review matters, even if it’s only a few words.
Thanks,
Dan Alatorre
Table of Contents
Each volume of Dark Passages is designed to share my varied interests and storytelling styles while still delivering to you the unsavory characters and dark themes you’ve come to enjoy from my anthologies.
What lies within these pages is a unique combination of stories. Some are tales with a dark side; some are short horror stories. There may be an occasional poem with a somewhat evil essence or even a humorous story that will invoke a cruel smile.
I hope you enjoy them.
DARK PASSAGES
DARK VOODOO
DARK INTENT
DARK THOUGHTS
A note from the author, Dan Alatorre
Thriller novels by Dan Alatorre
Volume 1: DARK PASSAGES
The Jemwaju
Best Monday Ever
Dark Questions
The Jemwaju, Chapter 1: Campfire Stories
They were young—only ten years old, on average—but I think most of them could sense I was lying.
“No, there’s no such thing as ghosts, boys.”
I stared at the campfire, watching the orange-yellow flames flicker and pop in the warm evening breeze—and avoiding eye contact. Somehow, these kids seemed to know I didn’t believe the words I’d just spoken.
Stan had ordered a mobile home—a “weekend cabin”—to be delivered on a wooded property he bought out on Dark Lake, and he’d somehow managed to get his son’s scout troop to help him clear a spot for it. I guess the idea was it’d be his little getaway from work, but Stan always seemed to be working; lawyers are like that. So I didn’t see when he’d be using it—until his kid’s scout troop got mentioned. Since the divorce, he was working hard at making father-son time for Mickey.
I got invited because I had a big RV, and you can only say no to a friend so many times before you go from “the friend with a big RV” to “the jerk who isn’t even using his RV and might make a bunch of ten-year-olds sleep out in the rain.”
“You’ll love my lot, Brett. That whole area is still nice and quiet, just like when we were in college.
I said no at first, but a lot of times, the more you tell somebody no, the more they need to hear yes.
The plan was for the boys to pitch tents, but if the weather got rough, to have my RV as a backup. I never much cared for camping in tents for fun, having done plenty of it for work, but Stan loved it. He was raised deep in Florida farm country, where his father had a fire-and- brimstone church, so Stan grew up with that—and with the pastures, woods and swamps of central Florida. He wanted Mickey to share that love of the outdoors with him.
“Besides, it’s time, Brett. Don’t you think?”
I didn’t know. Maybe Stan was right. Maybe it was time.
When we got to his lot Friday after work, the sun was already close to setting. Mickey and his troop had just enough time to pitch their two big tents and roast some hot dogs over the fire—after dousing themselves with enough Deep Wood Off to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Stan had cut down a few trees on some prior weekend, so we had two logs to sit on and a little firewood to burn.
I glanced at the six boys opposite me, their young faces alight in the glow of the fire, swapping campfire stories. Wyatt told the one where teenagers go parking and hear the radio mention a mysterious killer on the loose who has a hook on one hand; the teens get scared and go home, and the next day they discover a hook in the rear car door handle. Luke knew the one about the trucker who gets lost in the fog and picks up a lady in a red dress who’s hitchhiking, and she directs him to a diner; he goes inside, and the waitress says it’s foggy enough out there for Jane Brown. The trucker asks who’s that, and she says it’s a lady in a red dress who used to help lost folks on foggy nights. He says, I met her! She showed me to this place. And the waitress says, mister, you couldn’t; she died eighty years ago.
A few young eyes got bigger at the end of each story, and I figured I might end up with six scouts crowding into the RV if it went on much longer.
I shook my head. “You know, guys, all those things are just stories. Monsters, ghosts, demons—they don’t exist.”
Leo’s hand shot up. “But Mr. Brett, my Uncle Rick used to drive a truck, and he said the exact same thing happened to him in Georgia one time. He was lost and saw that lady in the red dress and she helped him.”
The more you tell somebody no, the more they want to hear yes.
I winked at Leo. “I think your uncle might have been having a little fun with you, buddy.”
Evan shuddered. “I don’t like these stories.”
“What about you, Mr. Brett?” Mickey’s voice cut through the crackle of the fire and the noise of the other boys. “Dad says you’ve explored things all over the world.”
“Hey, no. I don’t think—” Stan waved his hand, glancing at me. “Brett, you don’t have to—”
The boy stood, his tone soft but persistent, his eyes unwavering. “In all your travels, have you ever seen anything you couldn’t explain?”
I shifted on my seat. The gentle crackle of the campfire and the chirps of a few distant crickets were the only sounds. All the young eyes were upon me.
An honest question deserves an honest answer.
But I didn’t give him one.
“No,” I said.
The Jemwaju, Chapter 2: The Dark Passages
After they stocked the fire with enough wood to last through the night, the boys checked their flashlights and lanterns before getting ready for bed.
Mickey came to the fire, standing next to me and the log I’d made my perch. “Mr. Brett, are you sure you never saw anything that you couldn’t explain?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Maybe it was time.
“Okay, you guys.” I peered over my shoulder toward the others. “Gather around.”
When they’d assembled around the fire again, I cleared my throat and let my thoughts drift back to an earlier time.
“When I was in college, I went to Central America with my professor and a few other kids in the paleontology department, to find and chart the tomb of an ancient king. Now, some civilizations believed their kings were gods, and they buried them in pyramids. So you’d think it’d be easy finding that—just look for the big triangle.”
The boys laughed.
“But the jungle grows fast. Nature overtakes a home or a small building quickly. You could even take a house here in Florida like the one you live in, maybe with a shade tree out front and a palm tree in back, and if you didn’t mow the lawn for a year, it’d be a mass of tall weeds and vines, with little palm trees sprouting everywhere. Those things grow quick. If the homeowner abandoned the house, the weeds and vines take over, and maybe twenty or thirty years later the roof falls in . . . stuff would start growing inside, in all that debris. So your home today, all nice, with your couch and your flat screen TV, your X-Box—if you abandoned it—your house would almost be invisible by the time you turned your grandpa’s age.”
The six boys exchanged glances with each other, their mouths hanging open.
“And that was the problem our team had.” I shrugged. “The pyramid had been abandoned and the jungle overtook it. After a thousand years of plants and trees growing and dying, with a new plant coming up through the remains of the old ones, you can’t even find something four stories tall and made of stone. It’s just kind of . . . gone.”
I poked the fire with a stick, sending sparks floating upwards like tiny orange fireflies. “But there are remnants to things. Stuff that gets left behind. And that’s what we had to find. We agreed we couldn’t bring artifacts back with us on this trip, because we didn’t have the right equipment to catalogue and carry them, but also because we were going to spend a lot of time searching through the jungle just to find the pyramid. This was before Lidar, but we had some satellite mapping. We had to travel light. If someone knew where to look, they could find some stacked bricks that used to be the walls of a big mansion—before the swampy Louisiana forest swallowed it up. My team knew we’d find the hand-cut stones of a king’s tomb in the underbrush of the jungle. We just had to search hard enough.”
I glanced up to look a few of them in the eye. “People leave things behind, too. Not just their possessions. The bones of the king might remain, or his hair or teeth—or all of that might have rotted away, just like those old planation houses did. But there can be other things in a tomb. Remnants that aren’t easily erased from time, that can hang around.”
“Like a ghost?” Leo’s eyes grew wide. “I don’t like ghosts.”
Tommy punched him in the arm. “There’s no such thing!”
Most of the other kids stayed quiet, as did Stan. Their eyes stayed glued on me.
“Well, I agree, Tommy.” I sighed. “I know ghosts don’t exist, just like you guys do. But the thing is . . .” I looked him in the eye. “For some reason, every culture, going back all the way to before recorded history, they’ve all included some sort of element of the spirit world in their heritage.”
Leo shuddered. Luke clutched a rock to his chest, rubbing it with trembling fingers.
“The Chupacabra is some sort of goat-beast that kills cows. Romania had Dracula. Scotland had the Loch Ness monster. Jamaica has Santeria. Ghosts. Demonic possessions. Today’s Catholic church has actual methodologies on its books to cure a person from being possessed by a demon. And whether ghost stories are just a fun way for adults to tease children, or children to tease other children, or if it’s simply the higher-up and more educated members of a religion creating a method of appeasing the lesser educated, every civilization has embraced ghosts.”
Mickey stared at me, his eyes wide in the flickering firelight. He swallowed hard. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Brett?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. An honest question deserves an honest answer. “I think . . . from what I’ve seen . . .”
An owl screeched in the distance, sending a jolt through the kids. They laughed or shuddered, depending on their nature. Eventually the distraction subsided.
“Let me put it this way. When you’re all by yourself in a dark house—a young kid or a grown man, it doesn’t matter—and you hear a creak, or maybe some other noise that you know doesn’t belong there, a sound you’ve never heard before . . . for that split second, you believe.” I stared into the fire. “That’s when you get a glimpse into the dark passages. Usually it’s late at night. Maybe you roll over and see a shadowy figure at the foot of the bed. You look again, and it’s not there—but you know what you saw. It was real. You believe.”
A low gust of wind whipped the flames of the campfire, sending a few sparks sideways toward the lake. Then the air was still again.
“And you believe for a reason.” I lowered my voice. “I’m a scientist, and science says ghosts and demons aren’t real. We tell ourselves the dark passages don’t exist because we’re afraid. We know we can’t protect ourselves from what’s in there.”
The boys were silent and still. Only the fire moved, its low flames curling upwards to the black sky.
“Boo!” Tommy shouted, grabbing Leo. He shrieked, causing the whole troop to jump. They laughed and swatted each other, shaking heads and venting pent-up nervous energy.
“Did you ever find that king’s tomb?” Mickey’s voice was quiet and calm. “The one in the broken-down pyramid?”
He wasn’t really asking. He knew.
So, I told him and the other boys the whole story.
The Jemwaju, Chapter 3: The Lost Pyramid
“We spent days hiking through the hot jungle, sleeping from nets strung between two trees so we wouldn’t get eaten by the ants. We’d done our research, though, and our satellite photos showed us where the pyramid should be. After we found it, we dug around and found a crypt, but it was empty—the first one. Just blocks on the ground. The second one was like a short, wide, underground cave. That was the burial chamber, and it held the king. He was buried with over a hundred soldiers to help him on his journey to the next world.”
Tommy leaned forward. “Were there skeletons?”
“No, not skeletons. Not exactly.” I sighed, rubbing my chin. “The cool, damp air kept the warriors well preserved, but over a thousand years they’d dried up. Their skin had pulled back over their teeth and they had hollow eye sockets. Their hair was all straggly and their mouths hung open. We had battery powered lanterns, but in that light the soldiers looked pretty gruesome. Their clothes had all deteriorated with the passing of time—some had practically turned to dust—but the skin had become like leather, holding the bones in place. Their round faces still showed white stripes of paint on their cheeks.
“Now, the king, he was dead when he went into the pyramid, but the soldiers, they were buried alive—to guard him on his path to the afterlife. And of course, they got sealed in the tomb so after a while . . .”
“They died?” Leo asked, his voice a whisper.
“Uh . . . yeah.” I kicked a pebble into the fire and eyed the boys. They were still, hanging on my every word. “Yeah, the soldiers died. I don’t know how long the air lasts when you do something like that. Maybe a couple of hours, maybe a couple of weeks. They knew they were going to die and I’m sure some of them thought it was an honor, but I bet a lot of them did not. There were rows and rows of them all painted the same, with their spears by their sides. I walked past a hundred of them, at least, all lying on the remains of their little wooden cots.
“And that’s when I saw the writing. There were stone tables and things, all filled with the things the king would need in the next world, but there was a lot of stuff on the ground, too. Clothing the soldiers had worn, and other artifacts. From the pictures they had painted on the walls inside the tomb, they wore leather on their shoulders and around their waists—most of that had deteriorated over time—but there were a few things, like metal breast plates and spear tips, that had survived. Even though some of it was made out of iron, so it had rusted and decayed, there were still pieces. And on one of the walls, they had written a word. Some said it was a prayer. I felt like it was more of a warning.”
Mickey stared at me with wide eyes. “What did it say?”
“It was written in an ancient Mayan type of language, so it didn’t really translate as English or Spanish. It was half hieroglyphics, but it looked like Jemwaju. It was painted in red, over a skeleton that was painted red, too. He had a shaved head, and he was all rotted and falling apart, but you could tell he was important to the king. Probably a high priest.”
“What do you think the word meant?”
“I don’t know, Mick. I only know that it wasn’t for us. Like reading somebody’s love letter or a note they passed in school, it was intended for someone else’s eyes, not mine. Reading a word on the wall was fascinating. Seeing it there, a thousand years later, still in bright red paint . . . but I also felt like I was breaking some sort of rule. I guess the fact it was in red made me think it was a warning.”
I leaned back and put my hands on my knees. “Now, the king’s tomb was a lot less or
nate than I’d expected. Painted stone, mostly, with lots of vases and lamps. There were more cups, and spears, and things like that. But the whole place just really seemed off to me. I’ve explored a lot of places before that and after, but nothing . . .” I pursed my lips, gazing into the distant trees. “The worst thing was, there was a smell to the place. The crypt was dirty and musty from a thousand years of decay, and it was like my lungs didn’t want that . . . the dead in the air going into them. Like if I breathed that air from the crypt, I was breathing parts of the decaying bodies and ingesting them into me, allowing it to pass through my lungs and into my bloodstream. I went from being a scientist to an unwelcome intruder. Someone who had stayed too long at a party he was never invited to. I just felt like we shouldn’t be there anymore, like we were disturbing things without permission, and being disrespectful of the dead. Now, we had to explore the crypt, and I had to breathe, but I took a break and went outside—and I huffed and puffed the hot jungle air like I’d just run a mile. I wanted that tomb air out of my lungs and out of my body.” I shook my head, poking the fire with my stick. “I’ve explored a lot of stuff. I never had that feeling before. It was like I was suddenly hollow inside, and ashamed. Like people were watching me do something I shouldn’t be doing. That’s a weird feeling, like shoplifting from a friend’s store. You can put the stuff back later, but you’ll always carry that bad feeling inside you. You feel like you owe them something else. Something that can’t be repaid. There are lines that aren’t supposed to be crossed. But I wiped my sweaty cheek with the shoulder of my t-shirt and I remembered why I was there. The scientist side of me forced the rest of me to go back inside.”
Their young faces glowed orange in the firelight, the dark woods a black silhouette behind them.
“The professor had us take things—artifacts for our school displays, and for museums—so we stuffed our backpacks full of cups and lamps, but some cultures believe the things that are in the room when someone dies, they become like witnesses to a murder. They are forever part of the crime scene and it’s almost like they become infused with some of the parting energy from the dead. Like overspray from a spray paint can. You put a model car on newspaper to paint it, and the car gets painted but some of the paint gets on the newspaper. They believe that essence doesn’t come off, that it stays with the artifact forever, and if you take the artifact with you, you bring the essence, too.