Piercing the Darkness: A Charity Horror Anthology for the Children's Literacy Initiative Page 21

  The woman was standing only a few feet from him.

  “What is this place?” he asked.

  She only raised an arm, pointed to the house. She looked oddly mournful as she did this.

  Ol’ Big and Ugly had roared and grunted throughout their battle, but Will realized this ghost was utterly silent.

  “Can’t you speak?”

  She lowered her hand, her gaze never leaving Will’s.

  She opened her mouth wide, making a large O.

  She had perfect teeth.

  But she had no tongue. It had been severed.

  And now, as he watched, he saw scars rise on her face. Then fingers disappeared, and next an entire arm. Her torso beneath her flannel shirt began to lose its shape in awful ways.

  “He tortured you, the guy I fought back there?”

  Her point made, her wounds sunk back into her spectral body. She nodded, then pointed to the house again, this time emphatically.

  “He lived there.”

  She looked at him like he was an idiot, then nodded slowly and pointed again.

  “You want me to go in there with you?”

  She nodded again, her look again suggesting he was a simpleton.

  Then, without beckoning, she turned and started walking through the skull-bearing crosses toward the house.

  She walked onto the porch—her feet did indeed seem to soundlessly touch the surface, though she left no impression in the water collected there. Will was dripping wet as he stepped out of the hanging rain.

  She stopped at the closed wooden door, stared at it a moment.

  Someone had painted KEEP OUT! on it in the same runny paint.

  The hiker looked at this warning, then, to Will’s surprise, gave it the finger.

  Then she stepped through the door, leaving Will alone.

  So now what?

  Will stood staring at the door, reached out to see if the ancient, old-fashioned iron latch was locked.

  And, of course, his hand passed right through it.

  The hiker’s ghostly hand emerged from the door, beckoned him to follow.

  Will had never been a ghost in the Ghost World before.

  He took a breath and walked through the door, his vision briefly going dark as he passed through the wood. He’d expected a physical sensation of some sort, but there was none.

  The skulls outside hadn’t prepared him for the interior of the cabin.

  A bear skull, poised as if roaring—or perhaps screaming—sat on a small dais as the centerpiece on a long dining table. Other, smaller skulls, some most certainly human, topped with half-melted black candles, currently unlit, were arranged in a circle around the screaming skull. Gallon jars half full with a thick, perhaps amber, viscous-looking substance, sealed, sat in front of two huge chairs at either end of the table.

  Animal skulls as bookends for what looked like a collection of ancient, moldering photo albums. A human skull that had been somehow grafted to the lid of a large ceramic urn standing in a corner. A skull of an unidentifiable mammal—some sort of fanged, taxidermic amalgam of bear and mountain lion?—on top of an antique stand-alone radio. A human skull on top of a monolithic old boxy television set with a gigantic curved screen. Spread out on an end table near a chair was a huge stack of magazines…no, comic books that seemed to be from the same retro era as the TV and radio. They were probably worth a mint.

  Will saw openings to various hallways, shrouded in darkness, and wanted to know what was down these, but the woman stood pointing to the gleaming white skull on top of the TV.

  “You…you want me to…turn on the TV?” Will said.

  She rolled her eyes. Pointed to the skull, then to her face, then back at the skull.

  “It’s…you mean? Holy God,” Will said.

  She nodded.

  She walked to a glass-fronted wooden cabinet, pointed to that.

  Will walked over, looked in. Tiny, dusty ceramic garden gnomes were frozen in place, capering, dancing, mugging behind toadstools. They looked to Will as if they too were victims of time’s temporary stoppage, as if they would come to life the second time resumed. Interspersed among the dwarves were more skulls.

  “Skulls and knickknacks,” Will said. “Nice.”

  She pointed again, more dramatically, at the third shelf down.

  “There’s a little box there,” Will said. “Mahogany, looks like.”

  She nodded. Will reached to open the cabinet, but his hand passed through the wood and glass.

  She held up a finger, her sadness becoming stern. She looked like a grave schoolteacher, wanting her student to take note. She pointed repeatedly at the floor, at the center of the rug in the living room.

  “Something under us?”

  She nodded rapidly. She pointed to the box in the cabinet, to the floor, and repeated this cycle twice more for emphasis.

  “A key in the box?” Will said. “A basement where he did these things to you?”

  She nodded.

  “Why are you showing me all this?”

  She rolled her eyes again. She pointed back in the direction of the road.

  “Yes, time to go. I understand. But what about you? Am I supposed to help you move on? Am I supposed to help you somehow?”

  She shook her head furiously, her hair shaking around her head. She pointed toward the road again, looking angrily at him.

  “I…” Will began. “You want me to just get back to the road.”

  She shook her head again. She obviously didn’t care if he got back to the road just yet. She pointed to herself, then toward the road, repeated this emphatically.

  “He took you from the road? He…he caused an accident? Took you here?”

  She nodded, pointed toward the road again, pointed at him.

  “He…caused our accident?”

  She shook her head and walked over to the photo albums, pointed at them.

  “He…?”

  She pointed again at the albums.

  “My God,” Will said. “Someone else who still lives here caused the accident! Is Samantha safe?”

  The ghost’s expression became sad again. She hesitated, then slowly shook her head in the negative. She emphatically pointed once more at the photo albums, then at him, then at the photo albums, but Will bolted from the house, sprinting past the ragged crosses and through the wet forest, hurtling headlong into the night, ignoring the pain in his side and legs, ignoring the labor of his lungs.

  When he got back to the road, his Jeep was still balanced in mid-overturn, Samantha still frozen in futile battle with the steering wheel, the same scream, the same utter panic still filling her face.

  The hiker was already standing there, directly in front of the Jeep, having somehow arrived before him despite his speed. If the Jeep were still in motion, it would’ve mowed her down.

  “But…,” Will said.

  The ghost’s hands had been solemnly clasped in front of her. Now she pointed at the Jeep.

  Will walked over to the vehicle. He tried to pull it back to the ground, but his hands passed through the metal. He tried to push it, tried to move it in any way, but he remained non-corporeal.

  Desperate, he turned once more to the hiker’s ghost.

  She remained solemn, sad. She pointed at his seat in the Jeep.

  “What?” Will said.

  She didn’t move, just stood there pointing.

  “No,” Will said. “No, there has to be something I can do.”

  She was a statue, pointing at the passenger seat.

  “I can’t just get back into that Jeep, lady! If nothing else, I’ll just stay out here forever, keep Samantha from ever getting hurt by this.”

  The ghost, still pointing, started to fade.

  “No,” Will said. “No, come back. There has to be something I can do!”

  But he was already alone.

  ««—»»

  Will lost all sense of time.

  It didn’t take him long to discover the improvised stop st
icks—long nails, twisted together into makeshift caltrops—placed across the road several yards back from where the Jeep now leaned, mid-accident.

  At one point he went back to the cabin, remembering the ghost had wanted him to see something in the photo albums.

  But his hand was solid now when he touched the door’s iron handle. He searched for another entrance, but everything was locked or boarded up. When he tried to break a window or pick up an object with which to break the window, his hand became non-corporeal.

  He considered walking to the nearest town, maybe trying to somehow communicate with someone there—but how, if time was stopped with the Ghost World determined to make his body solid or spirit at its whim?

  Will stood in the hanging rain, that thunder rumbling across the sky, lightning flashing though the storm otherwise never moved. He stared at Samantha, wanting to somehow reshape her scream, her terror, into the beautiful, peaceful face he woke up to each morning.

  Perhaps it was only hours, perhaps it was years, decades, maybe even an age before Will finally, forlornly climbed through the metal of the yellow passenger side door and back into the Jeep.

  4. End of the Road

  He lurched for the wheel, fumbled to somehow reach the brake—as if any of this would help—but the Jeep was instantly solid around him and instantly back in the full velocity of motion, physics tossing him as if he’d never exited the vehicle.

  Up was down. Right was left.

  The roaring and tearing and screaming rage of metal rending his eardrums.

  Samantha’s scream.

  Shattered glass.

  Fireworks of pain exploding throughout the shell of his body.

  An infinite sky of bruised black.

  ««—»»

  Will smelled the woods all around him. It was alive with the sounds of insects, wind, the soft patter of rain after a storm. He was camping, ten years old, the world bigger than infinity. But the wicked flames he’d been staring into caught him.

  Wait, what flames?

  The flames inside him. His life, fading, burning, raging at the latest conflagration, flaring red and yellow and orange. The pain in Will’s ribs as he groggily came to was the color of a blazing bonfire.

  There were minor blazes in various other parts of his body as well. Blood trickled over them, thickening, but still trying to quench the fires.

  Will heard himself moan, and the moan served to more fully wake him.

  He was in a fetal position.

  Legs unnaturally together.

  Wrists bound behind his back.

  He groggily called Samantha’s name.

  There was no response.

  His consciousness fully returning now, Will managed to twist and wriggle his wrists enough to understand he’d been bound by ropes.

  Will twisted and turned, glanced down at his ankles. Thick cord there too.

  No panic. If he could wriggle his wrists like this, he could, likely, given time, get out.

  The Jeep was up the steep hill from him, a mangled wreck.

  He could see the driver’s seat.

  No sign of Samantha.

  He called her name again.

  No answer.

  He called her name again. Louder.

  Nothing.

  Then he noticed the flattened grass.

  Someone had been here and left.

  Dragging something.

  Obviously whoever had come hadn’t been a good Samaritan.

  Unless the binding was a pro job—and Will could already tell this wasn’t—the trick to freeing yourself when tied up with rope is flexing. It’s what magicians did—usually flexing all their muscles even as they were tied up to give them slightly more range of movement, though Will obviously hadn’t had this luxury. Still, this felt like rather cheap twine. All the better. Whoever had done this had taken a quick precaution, but hadn’t really planned on him coming to.

  He had carried all his wounds from the fight with Big and Ugly back here to the real world. His face felt raw with road grit. His ribs sang with a feeling like broken glass grinding together—he’d broken a rib while fighting a serial killer back when he’d first received his psychic “gift” and he knew at least one rib was now, at best, cracked there in his chest. The knife-slices in his legs flared with slits of orange hot fire with every movement, but he had to do this—he was no help to Samantha unless he worked his way free.

  Will writhed, trying to pry off his boots as he flexed and unflexed his arms, putting pressure on the ropes at his wrist. His boots made his feet much thicker; he’d have a lot more wiggle room with them off. Will tried to dig his heels into the ground to give himself leverage, but the mud was far too wet and slippery.

  Mud was also slipping in between the rope and his wrists and he twisted and turned on the ground, the oozing slime slicking down the twine. It would help him in the short term, but the mud would actually constrict the rope, should it start to dry.

  Will continued flexing, gritting his teeth, wishing he hadn’t slacked off on his training regimen as he and Samantha’s vacation had approached.

  He tried to hump along the ground, his goal to maneuver himself next to a tree. He found the motion actually aided his flexing. The rope around his wrists was indeed growing ever so slightly more loose.

  He managed to get close enough to a large maple to start rubbing his boot against it. He was trying to wedge the heel against the bark in order to help him slide his foot out.

  Mud in his nose, his mouth, his eyes. Rain pelting.

  He was on a slight incline, and it was all he could do to fight gravity, stay against the tree.

  The ropes around his wrists loosened further, but still he could not free his hands.

  His left boot finally slid off.

  This loosened the twine around his ankles considerably, but the bony protrusion of his ankles refused to work their way through.

  He flexed, grunting, spitting mud, cursing.

  He could only imagine what was being done to Samantha.

  He flexed again, hard, while trying to wedge the other boot up against the tree.

  And, doing so, he slid down the hill in the small crater of mud he’d dug for himself as he writhed.

  But the other boot caught on the trunk as he slid.

  And his other foot pulled free.

  His feet slipped out of the ropes in a few kicking motions.

  From there, he managed to stand.

  He wedged a low, thin but strong tree branch in between his wrists and, using that leverage, managed to further loosen the ropes.

  His red, abraded, throbbing hands and wrists were soon free.

  ««—»»

  The sun began to rise as Will scrambled up the hill. He was covered with dirt and mud, his hair caked to his head, mud squishing both inside and out of the boots he’d put back on.

  It was rough going, brambles and brush and twigs tearing at him, everything wet. Every step forward, he slid half a step back.

  His muscles burned, his head ached, the cuts on his leg wounds pulsed white hot, his ribs were swords digging into his side.

  Will’s mind raced as he fought the hillside. The ghostly hiker had pointed to photo albums. Family albums, likely. So this was possibly a family endeavor, and Ol’ Big and Ugly had been just one member who’d passed away—a head honcho, hopefully, but who knew what he might be up against back at Cyrus Holler.

  Halfway to the Jeep he found Ol’ Big and Ugly’s knife, glinting in the soft rain, the emerging sunlight, looking wicked as ever. Below the hilt the bone handle had been carved, on the same plane as the blade, into talons with what looked like actual claws from something ursine.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. The worst of the storm was definitely past. There was a pink edge to the receding dawn clouds, like blood on cotton swabs.

  It struck Will that if Ol’ B&U had been a ghost, then this was an artifact from The Ghost World.

  How the hell had it come back with him?

/>   Best not to worry about the hows and whys of the supernatural realm. At least he had a weapon.

  Will tucked the blade into his belt, continued fighting the hillside.

  He made it to the Jeep. Found Samantha’s cell phone.

  Smashed.

  Found his own cell.

  In the same condition.

  Wait!

  His Glock!

  No sign of it.

  He continued making his way up the mountain—hill or mountain, he wasn’t sure which this was officially, but it sure as hell felt like a frigging mountainside as Will struggled to reach the road. How the hell had they—whoever they were—managed to drag Samantha all this way?

  One thought struck him as he climbed: Maybe this wasn’t a family affair after all. Or at least not a big family. Or maybe just not a particularly bright one.

  Because…why had no one stayed behind to guard him?

  Obvious answer: Because the whole happy family wanted in on the festivities with Samantha.

  Will redoubled his climbing efforts, adrenaline now blocking most of the pain.

  ««—»»

  Morning had fully broken by the time Will reached the road. Humidity clung to his sweating skin—he had abandoned his jacket on the hillside in favor of freer movement. Leaves rattled and hissed in the slightest of breezes.

  The air smelled green with a hint of rot, as if the entire forest had gone to mold. Streaks and odd blotches of mud stained the road from near where Will had emerged onto the pavement to the spot where the Cyrus Holler path began. Puddles, drips from the overhanging limbs and dew had conspired to obscure any details, but this must have been where their assailants had dragged Sam. Some of the clumps of mud didn’t make sense for merely dragging a body, though. They were too large, not smeared enough.