Harlan County Horrors (21 page)

“
Is there anything I can do?”

“
For me?” I saw shapes, black on black in the gathering
darkness. My sister, leaning over me, touching my hair. Not my hair
but my father’s. I existed inside him, looking out through his soul
like a child watching snow thicken outside a window. Sissy spoke to
him and to me in consequence. My head, his head, moved in response
to her question.

“
Did he know? That by doing this, he would kill
you?”

Something coiled around my heart like barbed wire. It released
and my mouth, his mouth, whispered, “He knew.”

I
feel you, his voice said inside my head. You and I will be one
until the moment my p’ai leaves this plane.

I
shook my head.

His
tone was vicious. You knew it would destroy my heart to take it
over the water without my body or its case to protect it. You knew,
didn’t you, you whelp? And now I can’t get you to teach you a
lesson. And you destroyed your mother’s body.

She
told me to. I directed my thought back toward the source of the
voice in my head.

Liar!

You
think she wanted to be a monster? Spawning the demons you needed to
feed your twisted soul? She did not. No one would.

My
arm reached for my sister’s face, still unfocused in the dim light.
The hand touched her cheek but I felt nothing. “I’m gettin’ weak,
baby. Do remember what you need to do?” His voice gathered thick in
my throat.

“
Everything.”

“
I
need to see you before I fade,” he said.

Sissy flipped back the twin latches on the trunk and eased
open the lid. Through him, I tried to yell to her to stop, not to
open the trunk. She lifted off her heels and eased both arms into
the trunk, emerging with the blood-stained bundle I’d stored away
over thirty years before. She scooted back and placed the lump at
her feet. I felt its pulse, deeper than the pulse I’d felt in the
mine. It beat its tattoo through my body, into the depth of my
soul, the part my father called p’ai.

Tears gathered in my eyes as I struggled to make the body
move. If I could just speak or reach out to grab her arm, I could
stop her from seeing it. My father was much too strong for me,
holding down my will and allowing me just enough to see what was
happening.

“
Yes,” he said, in a long exhalation. I tried to intrude on it
and heard him laughing in my head.

It
was formless, a writhing puddle of flesh, covered with a membrane
like raw, bloodied egg white. It had no arms, legs or head. Sissy
ran both hands over it like it was a mound of dough she meant to
form into bread. She leaned over it, her face moving ever closer to
the gelatinous heap.

I
couldn’t stop her. I could only watch, through my father’s eyes,
exactly what he wanted me to see.

Her
fingers splayed around the creature; she lowered her opened mouth
onto it. Her hands opened and closed, sometimes digging into it as
what seemed to be a kiss melted into a feeding. The pulse deepened
within me, quickening and dying as my sister withdrew her mouth
from the now-still thing that lay before her on the
ground.

Sissy’s image became clearer. Her bare arms were streaked with
blood, her skin had turned pink from what had been a deathly blue.
I saw the long, narrow wounds along her wrists and I knew. He had
done to her what he couldn’t do to our mother: made her like
him.

“
Poppa?” Her voice came clear.

“
You done fine,” he said.

“
Don’t leave.”

“
Can’t help that now, baby. Your big brother made sure I’d
never get to know you.” His voice lost strength, and for a moment I
thought I’d be able to overtake him and speak to Sissy. Instead,
the scene began to fade as he did. I struggled to stay with him.
“Before I go, promise me.”

“
Anything. You know I’d do anything for you Poppa.”

“
Your brother.”

“
Yes?”

“
Find him.”

“
I
promise.”

Sleep well, Peter…

I
blinked and found myself lying on the floor of my room. I sat
upright and exhaled a thin stream of black vapor that evaporated
before my eyes. I snatched my phone out of my pocket and fumbled
through my contact list. The seconds it took to connect seemed an
eternity. As I waited, my hostess knocked on the door. I heard her
set down a tray and leave.

“
Did you land?”

“
Sissy, are you okay?”

“
I’m fine. Why?”

“
I
need to know that you’re okay.”

“
What’s wrong?”

“
Tell me you didn’t…I mean…I don’t know how to say it. I’m
just…”

“
Calm down, Peter.” She didn’t sound unusual.

“
Where are you?”

“
I’m at home.”

“
You’re not out in the Black Mountain woods?”

“
Why in the world would I be up there?”

“
You swear you’re not out in the hollow or at the mine or
something?”

“
I
got the TV on and I’m tryin’ to find something to watch. I have a
meatloaf in the oven and I’m boilin’ potatoes. I haven’t been out
all day except to get the mail.”

I
sighed and sat down on the bed. “He must’ve been messin’ with me,”
I said aloud to myself.

“
What?”

“
Nothing, nothing. You enjoy your supper. Mine’s
waiting.”

“
I
was thinking, Peter. Maybe if you’re still there around Christmas,
I could come and see you. I’ve never been to Scotland.”

“
Sure, yeah I have to go, okay? I’m just glad, you know. Let
me know how you’re doing.”

“
Enjoy your whisky,” she said, a smile in her
voice.

“
I
w…wait. How did you…”

The
line went dead. She must’ve assumed I’d be drinking scotch in
Scotland, I said to myself. It’s a natural assumption.

It
had to have been a dream, I said to myself. Jetlag plus stress.
Worrying about the trunk. Vampires, including chiang-shih, don’t
exist. Simple people trying to make sense of things they can’t
understand. Everything had been a hallucination. Grief and
exhaustion combined.

I
stood quickly, too quickly, and the room spun a bit. What was that
smell? It smelled like…pine. Seemed to be on my clothes. Must have
been some kind of air freshener. I eased my way toward the door. I
needed some food and sleep. Some solid sleep without dreaming about
vampires and demon babies. I opened the door.

Things came to me backward, like instinct had outrun common
sense. I heard doors open and footsteps rush toward me as I lay
sprawled across the floor, halfway inside my room. I saw blood on
my palm and remembered Sissy’s arms. I saw the broken glass and
felt alcohol burn my open wound. I struggled to stay present, not
to let the panic fill my mind. The spilled scotch streamed over
what would have been my dinner, dripping off the edge of the plate.
My eyelids grew heavy. I heard someone with a UK accent say,
“Bandage his hand,” and another said I was fainting and to call
9-9-9. Deeper inside my head, I heard someone laughing – the
younger of my sisters.

Sleep well, Peter.

Beside the broken glass, Ching-Ching’s white, still smile,
stained with whisky and blood, faded into the gathering
blackness.

“
Greater of Two Evils”

Steven L.
Shrewsbury

Steven L. Shrewsbury lives, works, and writes in central
Illinois. His horror novel
Hawg
was released by Graveside Tales in 2009, and his
book
Tormenter
 will come out summer 2009 from Lachesis
Publishing. His novel
Stronger Than
Death
will be released by Snuff Books,
August 2009. His collaboration with Nate Southard,
Bad Magick
, will be
released late 2009 from Bloodletting Press’ Morningstar line. While
writing other solo novels, Steven is hard at work on collaborative
books with Brian Keene and Maurice Broaddus. He has had over 350
stories published in print or online media. His work can be found
in
Apex Digest
,
Legends of the Mountain State
2
,
Monstrous
, and
RAW
. He maintains a web site at
stevenshrewsbury.com

He
who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss,

the
abyss gazes also into you.

—Friedrich
Nietzsche

G
ood Christ,
it must be true.” That statement came from the voice of one of the
young men in black overalls. “Blackthorn must really be able to see
the past by touching things.”

This youth conferred with others who carried my
six-foot-ten-inch body out of the cavern in the earth. They lay me
in the grass and put a camouflaged backpack under my long obsidian
hair as a pillow. The blazing sun over Kentucky kissed my face, and
it felt as wonderful as the breath of God.

The
other young soldier looked into my eyes and said to his compatriot,
“Christ, Bill, he about flipped out down there in the chamber. If
he can really see into the past, I wonder what he saw? Better get
the agents over here, pronto.”

Chamber—an amusing name for the underground realm the United
States government covert operations men had found. Always trolling
for new subversive bases in America, they appeared stunned that
such a large domain existed undiscovered under Harlan
County.

“
My gloves,” I muttered and raised my enormous hands to the
sky. “Get me my gloves.”

The
two soldiers stepped aside. A man dressed all in black held a pair
of thin leather gloves. He dropped them on my chest and smiled. A
tremor ran over my heart as I tried to bury the horror of my
psychometric vision in the chamber, but his eerie face was a cold
reminder that my terrors were just beginning.

“
Dr. Blackthorn must wear his gloves,” the tall agent from the
government told the young soldiers, but I am certain he meant for
me to hear his words. “God only knows he would go mad if his
visions of the past never stopped.”

Though moderate for this time of spring in this part of
Kentucky, my hands felt like ice as they entered the gloves. I
watched the stern features of the agent dismiss the two soldiers
with a gesture before kneeling down beside me.

“
God Lord, agent Alexander,” I gasped, not wanting to tell the
truth of what I had seen. “Is this some sort of modern acid-test by
you spooks?”

The
eyes of the thuggish agent narrowed at me. He wore a quizzical
expression, and I knew that my assertion was false. I hoped beyond
reason that my vision was a simple horror conjured up by one of the
aged Nazi scientists working in one of the famed Areas of the
desert.

“
We called on you, Elijah, because we know of your talent to
see the past with a touch of your hands,” agent Alexander stated
plainly as he soothed back his long blond hair. “Though this talent
is not widely known nor accepted, yet, we know that your ability is
real because of the results. I’m sorry to pull you away from the
conference with Cardinal Micah at Miskatonic.”

I
sat up, pushing myself to my backside, and blinked. “I’m sure the
good Cardinal will forgive you. That’s his job. It’s what he
does.”

“
Yes, yes,” agent Alexander responded, wanting me to talk. He
was hungry for what I had seen. His was a world of science and
apparently it had only taken his agency so far. They needed more.
They needed me.

“
If you called on me, you must’ve been concerned over what
really was in the chamber, at one time.”

Agent Alexander rubbed his bearded chin and said, “Our sonic
scans and satellite images could only tell us that this symmetrical
design existed below the surface. Since there was little in the way
of artifacts, we were at a loss. There are enough weirdoes running
around this sector of the United States looking for UFOs,
red-headed mummies, or whatever they chose to believe in, so we
weren’t about to announce the existence of this place.”

“
Nice of you.”

Alexander smirked and looked around at the surrounding
mountains. “Play your cards right, Doctor, and you may be the one
who found it.”

I
glared at him. “But you must have a suspicion that something bad
happened below, no? You must know something—”

Agent Alexander winked and cracked his knuckles. “A good agent
doesn’t tell everything he knows. Tell me what you saw and I can
make everyone happy.”

I
buried my face in my gloves and sighed.

Good Lord, where would I start?

Down in the belly of this mighty place in the earth, a
symmetrical chamber existed, a reverse image of the famed step
pyramids of the Yucatan. It reminded me of a Bundt cake mold that
my son, Jakob, used for making false mud huts in his sand
box.