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

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Leroy looked up at the sky. The clouds were rolling across the heavens and some of them were very dark and he could smell even stronger the aroma of rain in the air. He saw too that soon all the strands of clouds would pass, and the moonlight would be full. He rushed to the storage shed against the house, jerked open the door and got hold of the shovel.

  He rushed over to Draighton, and as he did Draighton’s eyes opened and the moonlight shone and Draighton’s face began to change. Leroy lifted the shovel with both hands, brought it down with all his might on Draighton’s throat.

  There was a sound like someone cutting a garden hose in two, then there was a spray of blood, and Draighton’s hand that held the razor fluttered a couple of times, opened. The razor lay in the flat of Draighton’s dead hand.

  Just to make sure, Leroy gave Draighton’s throat another slam with the shovel, this time freeing the head from the body completely. Leroy stumbled back and sat down in the yard. The yard was full of moonlight now and it lay over it like a thin coating of butter.

  Leroy didn’t know exactly what to do. He wondered if anyone would come out of the house next door. They didn’t, and lights didn’t go on. No one had heard or seen anything. He looked across the street. The houses over there were dark as well.

  How was he going to explain this? What about Mom and Dad?

  He wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing, but he began to dig, and finally he had a big trench in the yard. He rolled Draighton and the heads of his parents into the trench and kicked Draighton’s head in there with them. He covered it up.

  As he finished, he saw that the razor was lying in the grass.

  He picked it up.

  He carried it in his hand, walked back down the street to his parents’ car. Their headless bodies were there. Blood-covered symbols had been drawn on the inside of the windshield.

  Numb, Leroy walked back to his house and went upstairs and sat on the stool that had belonged to Draighton’s father. He sat there for an hour, then got up and got the composition notebook. He opened it and looked at the drawings, the symbols. They moved on the page.

  He sucked at his papercut.

  He looked out the window.

  It was rainy.

  Soon the rain would pass. It was that kind of rain. Pushing hard and passing quick. It would still be nightfall. The moon, which was full, would come out. Maybe the sky would clear of clouds.

  He sucked the paper cut on his finger and looked at it.

  His finger was the size of a frankfurter and it pulsed. The cut on his finger spread open as he looked. There seemed to be something there. He got up and found a match he used to air out farts, struck it on the window sill and held the match close to his finger. The heat from the match felt good. The cut on his finger spread open and he looked at it carefully. There in the wound made by the composition book with all its symbols, he could see more than eyes should be able to see. It was as if he had telescopic vision.

  He saw his mother and father’s heads hanging on hooks. Draighton’s head hanging on a hook. And beneath them, sitting on a stool made of leg bones and rags of flesh, the Lord of the Razor, looking up and out the wound, smiling those stick-pin teeth. Closer he looked. There were all manner of bodies as well as living human beings, flayed alive, screaming, coming to the fore of the wound to look up with pitiful wounds for faces. All manner of strange bat-like things flapped up against the wound but did not come out.

  The Lord of the Razor waved a hand that was like a flash of shadows and the bat things fled and the flayed things fled, and there was just the Lord’s face, looking up and partially out of the wound. Smiling those silver stick-pin teeth.

  Leroy dropped his hand. He went back and sat on the stool. He looked down at his feet. He needed to do something about the way they looked. He thumbed through the composition notebook, used the razor to cut the paper cut on his finger open wider. The blood came freely. He wiped it on his pants at first, then he used his finger and the blood to draw in the notebook. He understood the symbols. They did things to the world. A small part of it. They helped crack open dimensions. They made things as the Lord, the King of Shadows, wanted them to be.

  When he finished writing, he sat very still on the stool, the open razor in his hand. Waiting for the rain to come. Waiting for it to pass. Waiting for the moonlight. Waiting for the change.

  — | — | —

  QUIET BULLETS

  CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

  If Teddy had seen the cowboy’s ghost at night, he probably would have wet his pants. When he thought about it later, he had to admit to himself that if he had been in his bedroom, or reading a book in the sitting room, and looked up to see the gray specter of a gunfighter looming in the doorway or some dark corner—maybe even blocking his ma’s view of the TV, as much as a guy you can see through could block anything—it would have scared him right out of his socks. As it happened, though, the worst he got was a serious case of the chills, and an even bigger dose of curiosity, mostly because, at first, he didn’t even know he was looking at a ghost.

  On that early October day, Teddy walked home from school the usual way. He knew from reading and from movies that October could be nice and cool in some parts of America, but in Tucson, Arizona, most days were still warm, like the heat from the long summer had been stored in the ground and didn’t want to leave even when the days turned gray.

  He walked with Mike Sedesky and Rachel Beddoes most days, except when Sedesky got in trouble and had to stay after school, which seemed to happen more and more often. The boy just didn’t know how to keep quiet. One time Sedesky had told Teddy that his daddy drank some, and took the belt to him if a note came home from the teacher. Sedesky had taken to writing his own notes back and forging his father’s signature. One of these days, Teddy figured his friend was in for a hiding like none he’d had before, but he did not say that to Sedesky. He could see that Mikey—which was what Rachel called Sedesky—knew exactly where all of it would lead.

  Teddy and Sedesky were both ten years old and in the Fifth Grade at Iron Horse Elementary School. Rachel, a year older, had moved on to the upper school right next door, but never seemed to mind walking home with the boys despite the difference in status. Privately, though, the boys had debated whether or not the pleasure of walking home with Rachel—something that did make them stand a little straighter and lift their chins with pride—was worth the beatings it sometimes earned them from Artie Hanson and the goons with whom he palled around.

  The older boys didn’t like Rachel spending time with Teddy and Sedesky, and any time they crossed paths after school, Artie and the others would block their way, or worse. Sedesky made noises about giving those guys “the business,” but Teddy had never been able to figure out what “the business” was, unless it included getting their books dumped in the shrubs, their noses bloodied, and their arms twisted behind their backs so hard they’d ache for days afterward.

  There were Indian burns and wet willies and cries of “uncle,” and those were the good days. On the worst day, Artie had tried to force Sedesky to promise never to speak to Rachel again, and when Mikey wouldn’t promise, the goon had broken the pinky on his left hand.

  Rachel had avoided them for a week after that. For their own good, she said.

  After, when she started walking home with them again, none of them brought it up. Teddy assumed that Sedesky had persuaded her that he wasn’t afraid, but he wished that the two of them had consulted with him before any decision had been made. He liked his pinky fingers just the way they were, thank you very much.

  On the day he first saw the cowboy’s ghost, they had walked home without encountering any sign of Artie Hanson. Teddy and Sedesky had said goodbye to Rachel at her gate, and then a block later Sedesky had taken off between houses, cutting through backyards on his way home.

  Teddy and his mom lived in a small house on a quiet street, but it was neat and tidy and Mr. Graham and Mr. Hess—who lived on either side of them—had pitche
d in to paint the house just this past spring. They’d said it was the least they could do to help out, what with Teddy’s daddy dying in Korea and his mom ailing. Teddy, who’d still been nine, had been their helper that day. He still remembered it with a smile.

  But on the afternoon when he spotted the cowboy in front of his house, his thoughts weren’t on painting or on his daddy. Instead, he mostly thought about Sedesky and Rachel, and how come Rachel seemed not even to see Teddy when Mikey was around. It made him feel bad—kind of small, really—and he didn’t quite know why. Girls were a mystery, and not one he felt in much of a hurry to solve. They just didn’t understand most of the things that were important to him, like cowboy stories and rockets.

  With these thoughts in his head, he turned the corner onto Derby Street and noticed the cowboy walking up to his front gate. A smile blossomed on Teddy’s face instantly. The cowboy looked like the real deal, from the hat to the long coat to the tips of his boots. If Sedesky had been there, Teddy would have bet him a quarter that the cowboy carried a Colt revolver. Maybe two of them. He picked up his pace, wanting to talk to the man, wondering why he seemed to be headed to Teddy’s own house.

  Two things happened at once. First, Teddy noticed that the sunlight passed through the cowboy—that he could see the fence right through him. Second, the man walked to the front door without opening the gate, just stepped right on up as though the gate did not exist.

  Teddy stopped short and stared. The cowboy cast no shadow. The longer Teddy looked, the more transparent the man seemed. It scared him a little, knowing a ghost stood on his front stoop, but with the afternoon sun shining down, and the fact that there could be no denying this was an honest to goodness western gunfighter—maybe someone who’d been shot right here in Tucson—after a couple of minutes he felt a lot more Wow than spooked.

  The cowboy turned, tipped him a wink, and gave a nod toward the door, as if he wanted Teddy to follow him inside. Then the gunfighter passed through the door and vanished within.

  Teddy followed. What else could he do? It was his house.

  ««—»»

  The weirdest thing about opening the door and stepping into his house was how ordinary it seemed. Dust motes swirled in the shafts of light that came in through the windows and eddied along the floor on a breeze from the open door. Teddy stood on the threshold a few seconds, but nothing seemed amiss. The stairs leading up to the second floor were dark with shadow, the hallway vacant, and from the living room came the sound of the radio playing low.

  With a frown, he peeked into the room. His mother lay on the sofa, hands resting on her chest, tuckered out after a long morning. She woke up early every day to fix his lunch and send him off to school and then sat down at her sewing machine. Teddy’s ma did great work as a seamstress—everybody said so—and so her mornings and early afternoons were spent hard at work to earn enough money to buy them food. What little money the government gave her every month—she had explained that they paid the money because Teddy’s daddy had died in the war—covered rent, but not food or clothes.

  In the afternoons, she turned on the radio and took a nap, sleeping so deeply Teddy had to shake her awake at half past four so his ma could make dinner. The radio stayed on, then, until dinner was ready. His ma said she liked the voices. They kept her company. Most days, Teddy did his homework at the kitchen table while Ma made dinner, and sometimes she laughed softly at things he either hadn’t heard or didn’t understand. Radio things. Even when he had no idea what had made her laugh, he would smile. Ma had a beautiful laugh.

  She looked pretty when she slept, but kind of sad, too, and he always wondered if she were dreaming of his daddy. They didn’t talk much about him. Teddy wanted to, but he had the idea that maybe that would hurt too much for his ma.

  So that afternoon after he followed the cowboy’s ghost into the house, it surprised him to find nothing at all out of the ordinary. The radio voices talked and his ma slept on, the sound of her deep breathing filling the living room. A song started to play, one with lots of horns. Teddy always liked music with horns—trumpets, saxophones, anything. Confused, he looked back toward the hallway, but still saw no trace of the ghost. He might have thought he imagined the whole thing if not for the creak of a door opening.

  Now Teddy’s heart skipped a beat. He felt his face flush and his breath quickened. The sight of the ghost outside on the street had seemed weird and wonderful, but that creak of hinges made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  With a glance back at the sofa to make sure his ma hadn’t been disturbed, Teddy went to the doorway and peeked out into the hall. He had left the front door open and a light breeze swirled along the floor, gently swaying the door to the closet under the stairs so that the hinges creaked just a little.

  Teddy frowned—he didn’t recall ever seeing that door open before. Most of the time he forgot it was even there, but now he walked over and gave it a closer look. The top of the door had a diagonal slant that followed the angle of the stairs. At some point the door had been painted over, so that the iron handle and the deadbolt were thick with the same dark green as covered the wood. Even looking at it now, the deadbolt seemed stuck in place, like it would be hard to move. He doubted he could slide it to the right to lock it again, and wondered how it had come unlocked.

  Well, he didn’t wonder much. In fact, a smile spread across his face as he glanced around. It had to have been the cowboy’s ghost. The only other person in the house was his ma, and he could hear her softly snoring in the next room.

  “Excellent,” Teddy said, nodding as he stared into the closet. “Totally, totally excellent.”

  A single bulb dangled from the ceiling in the closet. He pulled the chain, but the light didn’t come on. Nobody had changed that bulb in forever. Still, enough light came down the hall that he could see inside well enough. There were old pantry shelves, mostly full of dingy coffee cans full of buttons and nails, shoe boxes, and faded old table cloths. Teddy could not remember his ma ever using a tablecloth.

  Somebody’s moth-eaten sweater hung from a hook on the back of the door. There were other hooks in the closet, to either side of the shelves, and to the right hung the thing that he had focused on since first glancing inside. The gun belt looked worn by age and coated with the same dust that lay over everything else in the closet. The empty holster disappointed him, but he took the belt out anyway, putting it around his waist. His daddy had been a big man and even at ten years old, Teddy had some of his size, so when he cinched the belt as tight as it would go and cocked it at an angle, he just managed to keep it from sliding down over his hips.

  Now he felt like a gunfighter. He opened his stance a little and imagined himself preparing for a shootout at high noon. His hand dropped to the holster and he made a little face when it closed on nothing. Right. No gun.

  Where had the belt come from? It must have been his daddy’s, maybe the one he had worn in Korea. The thought sent a shiver through him, but the good kind. Curious, now, he investigated the closet shelves more closely and immediately noticed the triangular wooden box with its glass top. Teddy stopped breathing. He took it down from the shelf and looked through the glass at the American flag that had been draped over his daddy’s casket.

  Teddy’s eyes felt hot. He didn’t remember much about that day, but now that he saw the flag a memory surfaced of soldiers folding it up and one of them handing it to ma and then saluting her. The soldier had saluted Ma. Boy, he had loved her that day. Through all the tears he had felt proud.

  He slid the wooden triangle box back onto its shelf, sorry to have disturbed it. As he pushed it back into the shadows it knocked against something else. A frown creased his forehead and he moved the flag box aside, stood on his tiptoes, and reached into the back of the closet. His fingers closed on something round and metal and he drew it out, smiling when he discovered it was a Christmas cookie tin. Through the dust he saw the face of old Saint Nick, an antique-y sort of Santa Claus, and
he remembered that Christmas was only a couple of months away. Maybe if he took the tin out and cleaned it up, his ma would make some cookies to put in it.

  Only the tin felt pretty heavy already, and he wondered what was in it. He crouched and set it down on the floor of the hall with a clunk, and even as he pried off the lid, somehow Teddy knew what he would find inside.

  The gunmetal had a bluish-gray color, which surprised him. He had expected it to be black. Teddy’s heart beat loudly in his ears as he lifted the gun out of the cookie tin, glancing over his shoulder to make sure his ma hadn’t gotten up from the sofa. He held the gun in both hands, barrel aimed at the floor, fingers away from the trigger. If there were bullets inside, he didn’t want to fire the gun in the house. As tired as his ma always seemed to be, and even though she hardly ever got mad at him, he had a feeling he’d get whooped worse than Mikey Sedesky if that happened.

  He whistled through his teeth, the only way he knew how. The cookie tin had a coating of dust, but the gun looked clean and almost new. Handling it like the snake charmer he’d seen down at the grange hall, he slid the gun into the holster on his daddy’s belt, and it fit just fine. Daddy’s gun, he thought. And he knew it had to be true. This was the gun his daddy had taken to war.

  All serious now, no smiles, Teddy backed up from the closet, right hand hovering over the gun as if he were about to draw. Partly he wanted to be a gunfighter, and partly a soldier like his daddy. He turned toward the front door, ready to face off against an imaginary enemy.