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

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “You’d best watch out, Don. Things like that have a way of coming back on you.”

  “What the hell would you know about it? You and Maggie never even had any kids.”

  Goddamn good thing we were on his street already or else he’d’ve had himself one long walk home.

  ««—»»

  Don and I avoided each other at work for most of the next week, but we weren’t what you’d call obvious about it. We sat at different tables during break, and when the other guys went out after work, I’d beg off if Don was going along, or he’d make some excuse about getting home to tend to Kyle if I was gonna be there. I don’t think the other guys suspected anything other than Don being embarrassed about his boy.

  An offer of voluntary overtime came up for that Sunday, and I was the first to get my name on the list. Don signed up for it, as well. I was getting ready to head home that Friday when he stopped me near the doors and said, “I hope everything’s okay with you and me.”

  I shrugged. “How’s Kyle feeling?”

  “He should be able to go back to school next week. Listen, uh…Cathy’s gonna be using the car Sunday to take Kyle over to see his grandma. Could I get you to swing by and pick me up on your way in?”

  “Don’t see why not. I’ve got some comic books that I think Kyle might enjoy.”

  “You read comic books?”

  “Bet’cher ass I do. Some of the best stories being told anywhere. Kyle got me interested in Ghost Rider. You ought to give it a read sometime. Might teach you a thing or two.”

  He stared at me for a minute to see if I was joking. When he saw that I wasn’t he broke out laughing anyway, pretending that I was joking. I went along with him thinking that.

  “See you Sunday,” I said, punching the clock and heading out to my car.

  That Saturday night I sat down to watch another special on PBS about how childrens’ personalities are shaped during the first ten years of their lives. A lot of it was a bit over my head, but then they got to this one psychologist who started talking about something called “…consensual reality.” Way I understood it is that a child is taught from its first day on earth to see the same world their parents see. That seemed simple enough to me, but then the psychologist showed this film of a nine-year-old girl who’d been raised by her mother who was a schizophrenic. The girl had even worse delusions than her mother did, because she’d been taught to see the world her mother saw and once she got old enough to let her imagination kick in, she “amplified the disorder” because she thought she was dealing with the world her mother gave her, “…one of sleeplessness and incoherence and dementia and paranoia.” She was ruined. It broke my heart.

  I started to drift off. It’s strange the connections your mind will make when you’re falling asleep. I thought about the Bog Man and how he looked like the guys I worked with. Then his face became Don Hogan’s and he got up out of the bog and said his name was Chaz Bone-eh. He started screaming at Kyle. Kyle was crying because he was scared and was trying to tell Chaz he could see monsters. Chaz said that was good because monsters were real and they were coming for Kyle. Then he lay back down in the bog and his face became mine, so I curled up with my lunch bucket next to the Wooly Mammoth and went to sleep, waiting for someone to find me in a couple thousand years.

  ««—»»

  They were screaming at the Hogan house when I knocked on the door.

  “…have my goddamn lunch ready on time is all I ask!”

  “So because you got to work today that means I can’t sleep in an extra half-hour?”

  “Bitch! I got a long day ahead of me and—”

  I knocked louder and they got real quiet. Cathy answered the door in her bathrobe. She glared at me and then blew smoke in my face. “Your ride’s here.” She walked away, leaving the door open but not inviting me inside. Don peered out of the kitchen doorway and shouted, “Be with you in a minute, Jackson.”

  “I got them comics for Kyle,” I said. “Mind if I come in and give them to him?”

  “Oh, for chrissakes!” said Cathy. “That’s just what he needs, more comic books!”

  “I’ll thank you not to speak to my friend like that,” shouted Don.

  “Screw him—and screw you, too! And screw that little useless piece of shit of a son you’ve got!”

  That’s when I decided Cathy Hogan was as big an asshole as her husband.

  “You go on up,” said Don to me. “His room’s right at the end of the hall.”

  I knocked on Kyle’s door and he opened it just a crack, then smiled when he saw it was me. “Hello, Mr. Banks.”

  “Hey, Kyle. Got some more comics here for you. Creepy and Eerie and an issue of Famous Monsters.”

  “Thank you very much.” He seemed a bit nervous to me. No wonder, if the screaming I’d heard from his parents was the norm around here.

  “You feeling better?” I asked, ruffling his hair.

  “A little.”

  Downstairs Cathy was shouting, “Pimento loaf’s all we got for sandwiches! I haven’t been to the groceries yet.”

  “I hate that shit!” Don shouted back about twice as loud.

  “Then fuckin’ go hungry today, I don’t care!” This followed by cupboard doors being slammed and a glass being broke.

  Kyle looked at me and shrugged. “They yell a lot, I guess.”

  I nodded. “So you’ll be visiting with your Grandma today?”

  He brightened. “Yeah! My gramma’s really cool.”

  “Treat you nice, does she?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was good to know that there was someone in this world who was good to this kid.

  I started to say something else, but then PIP kicked in over at the quarry and every window in the house shook. I checked my watch and saw that it was only nine-thirty in the morning; they usually didn’t get started until noon on Sundays.

  “Now, don’t you go gettin’ all excited, Kyle,” I said. “That’s just—”

  I got real quiet when I looked back up.

  When I was over in Korea during the war, my unit came across a little boy whose entire village had been wiped out the night before. He’d been the only survivor, and our interpreter told us that the kid had seen the whole slaughter. I never forgot the look on that kid’s face. There was this gruesome calm to his features that somehow got worse when you looked into his eyes; he was staring at something only he could see, something so far away and so terrible there would never be words to describe it, so he’d just decided to embrace it.

  The look on Kyle’s face made the one on that kid’s seem like a grin over a birthday cake.

  “What is it, buddy?” I said.

  “You need to leave, Mr. Banks.”

  The whump-whump-whump from PIP was getting a lot louder and a lot stronger.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, sir,” he said, taking hold of my hand and leading me out of the room. “But you really need to go outside.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” I asked him as he led me out onto the front porch. I figured there was something he wanted to tell me and didn’t want his folks to hear. ‘Course, he could’ve done that upstairs, but that look on his face and the hollow sound in his voice told me this was serious, so I went along.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Banks. See? I’m not scared anymore.”

  The next bunch of whumps from PIP were so violent I thought for a second the sidewalk was going to crack open. I could hear Cathy screaming at Don about how it was his fault they couldn't afford to move someplace where this goddamned noise wouldn’t shake loose her fillings every week, and Don shouted something back at her that I couldn’t make out but I heard the slap clear enough, and by then I couldn’t hear or feel anything else but the noise and vibrations from PIP.

  Kyle yanked me off the porch and all but dragged me to my car. “You have to get in now,” he shouted. “Please, Mr. Banks.”

  “What the hell is wrong, Kyle?”

  He stared
at me, then blinked. “Can’t you see it?” He pointed over the roof of the house.

  “See what?”

  Whump-Whump-WHUMP!

  “Please get in your car, Mr. Banks.” He opened my door and started pushing me. He was a lot stronger than he looked. Before I could say anything more, he slammed closed the door and turned back to house, looking at something over the roof, and then the noise became these explosions that rocked the ground so bad I actually hit the top of my head against the inside roof of the car and by the time I got my vision cleared there was another series of explosions that shattered every window of the house and then another one that shook the trees and then another one that caused one of the streetlights to come loose and fall across the middle of the sidewalk in a shower of sparks and broken glass and by this time I was so scared I couldn’t move so I sat there gripping the wheel and wishing to hell I’d never said yes to coming over here today but wishing and ten cents’ll get you a cup of coffee and then Kyle spread his arms wide and lifted them over his head and started laughing and the explosions kept coming closer and harder and louder and faster and I didn’t think that PIP could work that fast and then another part of my brain said I don’t think it’s PIP and I closed my eyes as the vibrations rattled by bones and my dentures and everything there was inside me right down to the stalks of my eyes and all the time I could hear Kyle laughing laughing laughing—

  —and then it all stopped.

  No noise.

  No vibrations.

  No sound or movement at all.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes, I was still that scared.

  “Mommy, Daddy,” called out Kyle. “Come look. It’s so cool!”

  I heard the front door open and then I heard Cathy and Don start yelling for Kyle to get his ass back up on the goddamned porch they were going to give him what-for real good and then Cathy gasped and Don shouted “Jesus H.-fucking-Christ!” and then they both screamed but that was drowned under the sound that came next.

  It was a roar from something so big and so angry that it swallowed nightmares whole for breakfast.

  I pressed my head against the steering wheel and whispered Maggie’s name over and over.

  Then the roar came again, twice as loud as before, and then Kyle laughed again and the whole world became noise and thunder and one massive explosion and then there was a sound like a jet engine sucking in all the air from the earth and then there was a silence the likes of which I hope never finds me again.

  I don’t have to tell you what I saw when I finally opened my eyes, do I? You’ve seen the pictures of the house, the way the whole front of it was smashed to rubble. There wasn’t enough left of Don and Cathy Hogan to scrape up with a shovel. The official explanation was that PIP had accidentally hit on a batch of dynamite embedded in one of the quarry walls and caused an explosion that sent rocks and boulders flying, and that one of them landed on the Hogan’s house and killed them. Which would’ve explained the indentations in the ground, all six-feet-wide and three-feet-deep of each one, except that there was no boulder. They say it must have hit with such impact that it broke apart, because there was plenty of rubble. The fact that the gravel company denied any such accident and that PIP was unharmed didn’t come into it. Every house on that street lost its windows that Sunday. A couple of family pets were killed by furniture toppling over on top of them. One woman had a heart attack from the noise. The gravel company got the pants sued off them and pulled up stakes and Cedar Hill was no longer in the gravel business by fall.

  I asked you once already to not look at me like that. I know how it sounds, believe me. It’s been over thirty years ago that it happened and not a day goes by that I don’t go over it again, and every blessed time I do I keep coming back to the same conclusion. I told Don that putting that kind of fear inside a boy would come back on him somehow. I told him.

  Kyle’s doing fine. Went to live with his grandmother who made sure he got the right kind of care. He still wears glasses, but he ain’t lost his sight yet. He writes me every month and calls me every other weekend. He’s real excited about how well his new book’s doing—you know that boy’s had three Number Two bestsellers in the last few years? Seems folks can’t get enough of his spaceships and monsters. He sends me copies of every new book and story he publishes, and he always inscribes them the same way: To My Buddy Jackson, Who Knows What the Bog Man Knows: It’s Always Dinosaur Day.

  He signs him name Chaz Bone-eh.

  Kid’s got a lot on the ball, he does.

  — | — | —

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  David Bain is the author of thrillers such as Gray Lake and the Will Castleton series (Death Sight, The Castleton Files, Purgatory Blues, Return to Angel Hill) which mix crime and the supernatural, as well as several story collections—his boxed set Until You Can Scream No More contains more than 700 pages and more than 50 stories. Subscribers to his newsletter—http://smarturl.it/FriendsOfBain—get a free, exclusive Will Castleton story just for signing up, plus a brand new free story every 90 days—you can vote on which story Dave writes next at http://smarturl.it/VoteForBain.

  Gary A. Braunbeck is the acclaimed author of the Cedar Hill Cycle of stories and novels that includes In Silent Graves, Destinations Unknown, and the forthcoming A Cracked and Broken Path. His award-winning non-fiction book, To Each Their Darkness, is now being used in some university Creative Writing classes. His short story “Rami Temporalis” was made into the award-winning short film One of Those Faces. His work has won 6 Bram Stoker Awards, an International Horror Guild Award, 3 Shocklines “Shocker” Awards, a Black Quill Award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination. He hails from Newark, Ohio (the city that serves as inspiration for his fictional Cedar Hill) and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio where no one has heard of him. As a result, he takes much medication. If you see him at a convention, approach with caution.

  Born and raised in Dungarvan, Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of five novels (Master of the Moors, Currency of Souls, Kin, The Living, and Nemesis: The Death of Timmy Quinn), over a hundred short stories, four collections (Ravenous Ghosts, The Number 121 to Pennsylvania & Others, Theater Macabre, and The Novellas), and editor of four acclaimed anthologies (Taverns of the Dead, Quietly Now: A Tribute to Charles L. Grant, Brimstone Turnpike, and Tales from the Gorezone). He also played the male lead in Slime City Massacre, director Gregory Lamberson's sequel to his cult B-movie classic Slime City, alongside scream queens Debbie Rochon and Brooke Lewis. When not writing, Kealan designs covers for print and digital books through his company Elderlemon Design. To date he has designed covers for books by Richard Laymon, Brian Keene, Scott Nicholson, Bentley Little, William Schoell, and Hugh Howey, to name a few. His short story "Peekers" is currently in development as a feature film from Lionsgate Entertainment.

  At present, Sandy DeLuca is a full-time writer and painter. She’s written and published numerous novels, two poetry collections and several novellas, including the critically acclaimed Messages From the Dead and Descent. She was a finalist for the Bram Stoker award for poetry in 2001. She lives with three faithful felines in an old Cape Cod House in Rhode Island.

  Robert Dunbar is the author of several novels, including The Pines and The Shore, and the collection of short stories, Martyrs & Monsters. His latest project—Vortex—is a nonfiction book about the intersection of folklore and horror fiction, which explores some of his major obsessions. To learn more about his work, visit www.uninvitedbooks.com.

  The son of teachers, Greg F. Gifune was educated in Boston and has lived in various places, including New York City and Peru. Often described as “one of the best writers of his generation” (Roswell Literary Review & author Brian Keene) and “among the finest dark suspense writers of our time” (author Ed Gorman) Greg is an acclaimed, internationally published author who has penned several novels and novellas as well as two short story collections. His work has been published all over the world, has been transl
ated into several languages, and has recently garnered interest from Hollywood. His work is consistently praised by critics and readers internationally (including starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus, Midwest Book Review and others), and his novel The Bleeding Season is considered by many to be a modern classic in the horror genre. Also an accomplished editor, for seven years Greg served as Editor-in-Chief of the popular fiction magazines The Edge and Burning Sky, where he helped launch the careers of many name writers working in various genres today. Greg was also Associate Editor at Delirium Books for three years, and for more than a decade has worked as a freelance novel editor for numerous up-and-coming as well as established professionals. He currently holds the position of Senior Editor at Darkfuse Publications. Greg resides in Massachusetts with his wife Carol, their dogs Dozer and Bella, and a bevy of cats. For more information on his work, visit his official website: www.gregfgifune.com or visit him on Facebook.

  Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of such novels as Snowblind, Of Saints and Shadows, The Myth Hunters, The Boys Are Back in Town and Strangewood. He has co-written three illustrated novels with Mike Mignola, the first of which, Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, was the launching pad for the Eisner Award-nominated comic book series, Baltimore. Golden has also written books for teens and young adults, including the Body of Evidence series, Poison Ink, and Soulless. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies The New Dead, The Monster’s Corner, and Dark Duets, among others. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts , where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.