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

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “That selfish bastard!”

  “He was rude, but you can understand his point of view, right?”

  “He was supposed to ease my conscience! Now I’m going to have sleepless nights for the rest of my life! The scorpions that live under my skin will never stop their incessant stinging! I can feel them now! Their pincers slice through my veins! I can see the blood in his eyes! So much blood! So much blood!”

  “Is our business here finished, Mr. Galen?”

  “So much blood!”

  “Please close the door on your way out. Thank you very much.”

  THE HOUSE IN CYRUS HOLLER:

  A WILL CASTLETON ADVENTURE

  DAVID BAIN

  With thanks to Mike Arnzen

  for the instigation…

  1. Incident on a Country Road

  “Really, Will? Do we have to?”

  Will scrolled through the old time radio show mp3s on his phone. “Come on, Sam. Stormy night like this, the atmosphere’s perfect. How about The Phantom Hitchhiker? Or here’s one you’ll like. The House in Cypress Canyon. A true classic—a haunted house werewolf story, fun twist ending. Utterly crazy. Or this other one, Three Skeleton Key, about bad guys trapped in a lighthouse full of rats. Riveting. You’d love it. Or, no, On a Country Road. Just where we are now. Stars Cary Grant. Timeless. An escaped killer, a couple stranded in the boonies. You like Cary Grant.”

  Samantha sighed, gripped the steering wheel of Will’s Jeep harder as she rounded a mountain curve. “I like his movies, yes, but this is stupid.”

  “Fine,” Will said. “What would you rather listen to instead? You can get maybe three stations out here in the hills, and they all seem to play country older than these radio shows. Wait, here’s one. End of the Road. Car salesman takes this dangerous dame for a test drive. It’s killer, both literally and figuratively. You know you love this murder stuff.”

  He hit play.

  “You know what’s stupid, Will? It’s not your damned hundred-year-old spooky radio stories.”

  “They’re not quite a century old yet—mid-1930s to late 1950s, most of them.”

  She ignored him. “What’s stupid is your insistence on no fast food, no chain hotels, no for God’s sakes four-lane roads this trip. This real America crap. What’s stupid is the fact that I’m the one driving through this storm on Kentucky’s backwoods mountainside version of Lombard Street! Without railings, I might add.”

  “So pull over and I’ll drive.”

  “Pull over where? On the berm? Because I don’t see any berm, Will.”

  Will looked at the side of the road, dim in the downpour. She was right.

  On the radio, which was wired into Will’s phone via the electric outlet, an announcer was promising that this show was “well calculated to keep you in … suspense!”

  “Okay, just stop the Jeep. I’ll drive.”

  “Stop in the middle of the road?”

  The old timey radio announcer went into a spiel for Roma Wine—“That’s R-O-M-A!”

  “There’s been no one behind us for—”

  At least one of the front tires exploded and Samantha fought the wheel.

  Will saw a tall figure in the road, but wasn’t sure Samantha had—in a flash, imprinted on Will’s brain before the darkness: a hulk of a man, sharp, vile weapon in one hand—a huge Bowie knife, maybe—other fist raised high as if in victory.

  The Jeep went up on two wheels, a tumble down the Appalachian hillside already inevitable.

  And everything came to a halt.

  Their GPS, a pen, Will’s Glock, Samantha’s Diet Coke, a cupful of change, various other vehicle detritus stopped mid-scatter.

  Silence.

  A roll of thunder above.

  Will realized his head had knocked hard against the passenger-side window in Samantha’s initial swerve. Blood trickled down the right side of his face. He had to swipe it out of his eye. He didn’t think he had a concussion, felt some pain but nothing extraordinary. Even superficial head wounds, he knew, bled like bastards. The mere presence of blood was hardly the way to gauge an injury.

  Wait. No sound.

  But Samantha was mid-scream, in the middle of an attempt to wrench the wheel left, away from the imminent spill down the verdant countryside mountain.

  Outside, the thick forest trees and shrubby overgrowth posed mid-sway in the headlights.

  Raindrops floated immobilized in the humid air.

  Time had stopped.

  Will registered this fact for about a second before something grabbed the collar of his jacket and hauled him through the door of the Jeep.

  And he understood in an instant at least part of what was going on.

  The Ghost World.

  The first few times he’d been pulled into this netherworld between the living and the dead he’d thought he was going crazy. Physics, gravity, cause and effect, logic itself. The rules weren’t the same here in The Ghost World. In fact, they seemed to vary each time he was sucked into this realm. Sometimes they weren’t even consistent during the same damn visit.

  Will felt himself hurled headlong by a powerful hand. He tumbled ass over skull and skidded along the macadam, knocking his knees painfully against the pavement, his elbows scraping through the thin skin of his jacket, his cheek on the receiving end of a nasty case of gritty road rash before he finally slid to a stop and managed to lift his throbbing head.

  Will’s huge assailant, large as a bear and just as ugly—twisted nose, snarling, snaggle-toothed visage, matted locks which might as well have been fur clinging to both sides of his jutting jaw—advanced on him. With thunder shaking the mountain, it was almost as if the raging, wind-ravaged rural geography shook with each of the behemoth’s steps—thunder and yet no lightning? With the rain stopped midfall?

  No time to think about this.

  Will scrambled to his feet.

  The man did indeed wield a knife. It was huge, serrated. The handle looked strange, bones or spines that were supposed to represent claws sticking out on the hilt below the grip, all pointing the same general direction, almost like a comb. Will noted this as he barely dodged a swing that came inches from gutting him. He felt the weapon scatter hanging raindrops as it swept past his middle. The blade, gripped in his attacker’s swinging fist, left a hole in the rain, an empty swath while the rest of the rain glittered bloodily in the red of the Jeep’s brake lights.

  Stepping backwards to avoid the giant’s advance, Will slipped on the slick pavement.

  The killer leapt at him.

  Will scrabbled backwards, doing an awkward crabwalk, but Big and Ugly caught his legs, wrapping his arms about them and slicing the back of Will’s right calf in the process. The wound instantly burned like a thin strip of fire.

  Will tried to kick out from the man’s grasp, but the grip was strong as a bear’s.

  The man released one arm and raised the knife.

  Will screamed despite himself—there was no doubt this butcher was aiming for Will’s crotch.

  Straining, contorting into a half-assed sitting position—but also moving more swiftly than he’d thought possible—Will caught the man’s wrist in his hand for a split second. It was just enough to deflect the swing into the pavement and allow Will an instant to get a leg free.

  Or, at least free enough for a lurchy, awkward, sidekick at his attacker’s knife hand.

  A kick that was totally ineffective.

  The monstrous ghost—for surely this was a ghost despite its physicality here in The Ghost World—recovered enough to slice the blade’s edge along the outside hind quarter of Will’s right thigh.

  He cried out in agony, but then, as the monster grinned at the small victory, Will simply grabbed the fur above the man-beast’s face and punched the monster as hard as he could, squashing his large, slightly bulbous nose.

  The too-solid specter roared, instinctively brought a hand to his nose.

  Will used the moment to scramble free and stagger to his feet.<
br />
  So did the freak, free hand still on his schnoz.

  Pain raged in both Will’s leg wounds.

  He’d never had to kill a ghost. How to do this? What were the rules? Were there even any? Why had this ghost pulled him here? How?

  Too many questions, no time. The killer was already up and plowing toward him, linebacker-style, blood pumping out his broken nose, oversized knife pumping in his ready fist.

  But this, an attacker running toward him, was home territory for Will. A knife attack at close quarters is one of the most dangerous situations to be in, whatever your training, but his martial arts, his time as a bodyguard found him at least marginally prepared.

  First rule: get out of the line of attack.

  Second rule: Strike, and keep striking, remaining out of that line of attack.

  Will easily sidestepped Ol’ Big and Ugly.

  One hand deflected the knife hand at the wrist.

  The other jabbed Big and Ugly in the face, part of Will’s fist crunching into the giant’s already damaged nose.

  Big and Ugly keened, a sound between a grunt, a growl and a whine.

  Will kept jabbing.

  Big and Ugly tried ineffectually to swing, went down—fell forward, crumpling at the knees due to the pain in his face—funny how that worked.

  Will managed, despite the pain in the sliced spots in his legs, to add a roundhouse kick to Big and Ugly’s rear as he fell, sending the gigantic man sprawling.

  The knife glittered in a flash of lightning as it skittered across the black, slick macadam.

  In his experience, you got rid of ghosts by helping them move on, through compassion, by solving their murder, by loving them into The Light. Although he had been dealing with ghosts for years—had, in one case involving the ghost of a Native American foster child, actually gone to therapy with a ghost—he understood relatively nothing about their world or existence. He’d woken up “slightly psychic”—just psychic enough for it to cause a multitude of problems in his life—after a near-death experience of his own, except he’d experienced only the tunnel and the Light, the usual story most NDE survivors report. He had no specific psychic abilities—his visions, his encounters happened differently every goddamned time.

  Will had a feeling Big and Ugly here was the sort of spirit who abjectly refused The Light. He doubted this abomination would’ve been a willing participant in any twelve-step program in life, much less post-death.

  Will’s training told him apprehension, capture, incarceration, the legal system—life, even if it eventually meant the death penalty—was always the first priority. But there was no apprehending a malevolent preternatural entity such as this. The creature—maybe it had indeed once been human, but Will doubted it had ever had human empathy—emanated pure evil. He, Will, was not an empath, receptive to emotions, as his sole psychic friend Mazie claimed some of their ilk were, but he sensed nonetheless that there was no good, no caring, no love in the specter splayed out on the pavement before him.

  What had happened to this spirit, back in real life…?

  The monster clambered to find all fours.

  Will walked over to where the knife lay, picked it up.

  The freak was on its knees, would find its footing within seconds.

  Will walked over, straddled the monster, grabbed a handful of its hair, pulled its head back, put the knife to its throat.

  He wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to slit its windpipe back in the real world.

  But this was The Ghost World. The rules were different here. This was half-life vs. hellfire.

  Good vs. Evil. Simple as that. A gladiatorial arena. Kill or be killed.

  And, he realized—already knew, in fact, from experience as a Marshal, from experience in the field of personal protection—that this sort of thing, kill or be killed, too much of it, was exactly what broke soldiers, what took fresh-faced boys and transmogrified them into angry men incapable of true inner peace.

  You adapted, had to. Some men became stone killers. Some didn’t.

  But Will knew this much: The Ghost World was inner as well as outer—even if the scars faded, the wounds in his legs would never fully heal; he would remember this battle, brief as it was, with literally every step he would take from here on in.

  And if he were to slit this beast’s throat in cold, vengeful blood, it would be a scar far worse than those on his legs. He served justice, not whatever infernal masters claimed this demon.

  Not knowing he was going to say it, Will said, “I’ve bested you. It’s time for you to move on to your eternal reward, whatever that may be.”

  There was a miserable mewling sound deep in the giant’s throat, a sound filled at once with reproach, dread and a sort of ineffectual rage. Will felt the giant’s body grow suddenly warm, then fever-hot.

  He stepped back, had to let go because of the heat, but kept the knife at the ready.

  Flames started licking through the Goliath’s clothes, and Will suddenly realized Mr. Ugly’s very flesh was on fire from the inside. The mewling turned into a wailing cry of utter pain, despair and anguish, echoing across the mountain hills.

  Then there was nothing but ashes which quickly melted into the rain-soaked pavement.

  2. The Phantom Hiker

  He had no time to wonder how he had attracted Big and Ugly’s attention. Most likely just a fluke—a ghost who happened to be at just the right place at the right time.

  Will tucked the knife into his belt, turned to run back to the Jeep—stopped.

  He was being watched.

  Here in the Ghost World, knowing he was being watched wasn’t just a feeling. It was a fact.

  This same someone, he now realized, had, in fact, watched the entire battle. It had been evident in the hairs on the back of his neck, but he’d been too preoccupied fighting for his life to notice.

  There, on the other side of the road from the Jeep.

  A woman.

  A ghost.

  She wasn’t wearing a flowing, spectral gown—that was just the aura she gave off. She was, in fact, despite her transparent state, wearing khaki shorts and a dark, possibly red, flannel shirt. Hiking boots, thick socks. An abundance of hair, the style a bit retro—Rita Hayworth or maybe even Marilyn. She was beautiful.

  She locked her gaze on his, serious, beckoned with a hand.

  This wasn’t an enemy. Will understood that simply from the earnestness in her eyes, the sober cast of her countenance.

  “No,” he said. He pointed to the Jeep. “Samantha, my girlfriend,” he said. “I have to stop this accident.”

  The pretty hiker shook her head. Beckoned again.

  “I have to do what I can. I can’t leave her.”

  The spirit pointed to her wrist. There was no watch there, but Will got it. Time had stopped. Samantha, the Jeep, weren’t going anywhere.

  Will hesitated. “You want to show me something.”

  A well-duh question if ever there was one, Will understood the second after he said it, but the spirit nodded.

  He glanced at the Jeep again, then at the ghost. She was already turning away from the road, heading into the thick underbrush.

  Hating to leave Samantha, but resigned to the fact that he was perhaps here in the Ghost World for a purpose other than merely dispatching a demonic soul, Will followed.

  The female hiker’s ghost did not leave a trail in the stalled raindrops. Will did, however, the mystically hanging water gently imploding on his clothes as he jogged over to where the ghost had stood.

  She hadn’t disappeared into the woods. Rather, there was a scant trail through the forest. She walked, but also seemed to float. Foliage and darkness obscuring his view of her boots, Will couldn’t see if her feet touched the ground, but he wouldn’t have been surprised to find they didn’t.

  She looked over her shoulder as she walked. Will glanced over his shoulder to look at the mid-crash Jeep.

  What if time were to start up again a minute from now?r />
  The ghost stopped, turned toward him up there on the trail, her visage imploring him to come. She waved him toward her.

  Will took a breath and followed.

  Now, as he jogged to catch up, pain burning in his still-open but coagulating knife wounds, he realized this wasn’t just a path, but a seldom-used driveway or road. It was overgrown, grass in the ruts even, but it was obvious a vehicle sometimes made its way through these overgrown twists and turns.

  She moved on ahead, unhindered by darkness, rain or vegetation. It was all Will could do to keep up as the road wound on, sometimes rising, sometimes falling in the shadow-shrouded night.

  Will’s ribs ached from the fight earlier. His face and butt hurt from where the madman had tossed him around on the pavement. Normally this hike would have been nothing to him, but he found his breathing labored.

  A rickety wooden sign was posted at the top of a particularly steep hill maybe three-quarters of a mile or more from the main road. This was apparently where the small road ended.

  3. The House in Cyrus Holler

  CYRUS HOLLER, the sign read in a dark paint that had run slightly before drying.

  Beyond, seen through a sheen of suspended raindrops, was a weedy, unkempt lawn leading to a large, ramshackle cabin. There were tall, ragged crosses at random intervals across the grass, decorated with numerous animal skulls—Will recognized deer, cows, pigs, bears, rabbits, all manner of rodent from groundhog to squirrel to mouse, the latter dangling like Christmas ornaments from ratty ropes tied to the lengthwise beams of the crosses. Some of the crosses bore strange amalgams of different animal bones rearranged, perhaps grafted or, hell, who knew, maybe even superglued together to mimic the structure of a human body—for instance, the nearest had a bear skull at its head but the rib and hip and leg bones were unidentifiable to Will—they were certainly far too large to be human. He caught a glimpse of a pick-up that looked like it had maybe been drivable back during the Dust Bowl parked alongside the house. As for the building itself, the original central cabin, which looked fairly sturdily built, had been added to haphazardly. Awkwardly constructed wings and side rooms branched like mismatched body parts drunkenly attached to the wrong sockets on a Frankenstein monster. Will could imagine the entire structure coming to life, the central cabin rising on the branching side rooms as if these were spider legs, the door and boarded up windows forming a face which would chase you down, devouring your soul, which would then wander those strange, spindly halls forever.