The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  Chapter 32

  5th June

  SAFE AND SNUG inside the belly of his car, Lucien sighed with sweet memories nurturing his deranged mind. Before him, lay his mistress, naked and vulnerable on that bed of straw in the North Turret. His trembling hands slowly advanced on his terrified Delicate Rose with the intent on squeezing the life from her. He gleamed his fangs with the blood fire raging through his body.

  Trapped within the bowels of the asylum, Eternal moaned in her disturbed sleep where frightening visions of her terrible childhood at the hands of Lucien seared her mind, leaving in their wake a scorched trail of misery. She was back in that dreadful prison in the North Turret.

  Although she had tricked the pathetic teenager with her music, The Count was another matter altogether. He was always there, waiting in the shadows, waiting for the Eternal Hour. He had such terrible plans for her and yet she did not try to escape when her Aunt had died. There was always hope and her belief in her divine destiny. She clung to that belief and would never let it go.

  Eternal looked around the circular room of damp stone. All she had for comfort was the moon piercing the thin slit window and a bed of straw. The music told her to bide her time for she knew how impatient Count Lucien was. But hunger had weakened her to a frail state and death was so close she could reach out and touch its leering face. All was dark and silent. Something drifted from the shadows. It pounced.

  She felt suffocated, as if a great pressure crushed her throat. Her eyes flew open. A dark presence hovered above her. She gasped in utter terror. Its feral eyes glowed red with a burning hatred she knew only too well. The Count! She was so close to her destiny. Just a few more hours and that destiny would be fulfilled, but her mind told her she was still trapped in the damp stone prison back at the chateau. She made herself believe this to trick The Count who was seeking her out.

  There was no escape. She summoned her music but this time nothing could save her. Her mouth flew open to scream. No sound came from her.

  Eternal could not scream. She begged the door to open and save her. It remained locked. She struggled to get free of the overpowering stench, sickly and cloying, sucking the air from her lungs. She scurried across the bed of straw to be close to the window. The stinking black specter laughed. She tried to get up, but the demonic Count forced its black torment upon her and gripped her slender throat with smoky fingers. Her exposed neck attracted its long fangs. It hissed with pleasure. It spoke.

  “I am Eternal!” The Count pounced with black fangs.

  Eternal and The Count fought for the right to be eternal. Damn him to Oblivion. Her desperate mind traveled back to her eternal death to confuse him. The room transformed to a wooden podium upon which waited Madame Guillotine. Standing with his hand on the lever was The Count – Robespierre. Eternal was dragged in chains up the steps, emaciated and bled dry. She screamed at the headless body of her true love tossed to the jeering crowds. She glared with hatred at Robespierre, “You have taken my blood ... now you will suffer an agonizing death.”

  The Count laughed with derision and superiority, “You dance with the Devil … you sleep with the Devil.”

  Eternal was placed face upwards into the wooden clamp. Her only thought was to defeat The Count during the next Eternal Moon. The blade was released. She screamed into Oblivion.

  Was she awake? No! The never-ending nightmare continued.

  The Count coalesced into Mordred, the Black Knight. He chased her through dark woods upon his demonic horse.

  With every ounce of strength, Eternal recalled her true love as he once was – Lancelot du Lac, noble, strong and true of heart to defeat The Count. She knew with all her soul he would one day return to her. In her fright she stumbled. She looked up into red eyes of death. Black fangs drifted to her exposed neck.

  She sent that message of bravery to Edouard and screamed her final words, “Save me and we will be Eternal!”

  ###

  More from Simon Okill:

  https://www.facebook.com/simon.okill?fref=ts

  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6590310.Simon_Okill

  TELL ME WHEN I’M DEAD

  -Book One of The Dead Series-

  Steven Ramirez

  Published by the Author

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  Copyright © 2013 by Steven Ramirez.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher at http://stevenramirez.com/permission.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Tell Me When I’m Dead / Steven Ramirez. — 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-0-9898718-0-8

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For George and John. You guys were right. They’re all messed up.

  The world’s gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in import. How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough!

  “Oh, Robert,” she said then, “it’s so unfair. So unfair. Why are we still alive? Why aren’t we all dead? It would be better if we were all dead.”

  —Richard Matheson, I Am Legend

  Chapter One

  In the Shit

  Not all draggers want to eat your flesh. Some want revenge.

  This was what went through my head as I lay frozen in the corner of a cold storage area, my body halfway to dead and my breath like a broken concertina. The pounding on the metal door was deafening. The wailing of the undead tore at my brain like a glass dagger. It was a matter of time before they got in. I might be able to take out one or two—even without a weapon—but in the end they’d finish me.

  I couldn’t get my mind clear. I thought I heard automatic gunfire and the sound of people screaming. How had the draggers broken in? Wasn’t anyone defending the doors? Maybe my captors were passed-out drunk.

  It would’ve been so much better for me had I done the same. I wouldn’t feel anything as I was ripped to pieces by animal-like claws and razor-sharp teeth that reeked of carrion, the filmy grey eyes unseeing and unfeeling.

  In my delirium I prayed Holly and Griffin made it to the Arkon building and under the protection of Warnick and his men. There was no way for me to check. My cell phone was busted. I hadn’t slept for days. I was hurt. Bad. Surrounded by huge aluminum tanks of ice-cold beer waiting to be tapped. Nice touch, Lord. Back atcha.

  Through the pounding and the screaming I wondered if my friend Jim was outside with the others, trying to claw his way in and shred me up out of hate for what happened to him. It wasn’t my fault he turned. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

  In the days preceding this—I don’t remember when—I saw a horde tear a guy apart. Big as he was, he was no match for them. In a matter of seconds they had him on the ground as they ripped his belly open, exposing the soft, pulsating organs. They cored him like an apple, from bottom to top. His head was the last to die, I remember, his eyes frozen in the terror of seeing his own hollowed-out bo
dy shudder into stillness. I wished I had a gun.

  But it was the screaming. I’d never heard a man scream like that before. Was I capable of making that sound?

  I stared at the door, wondering if it would hold. There was no way to lock it from the inside. Besides, I was too weak. The nailheads had left me in here and were planning to kill me according to the one they called Ulie. It didn’t matter that I’d agreed to join their insane movement. Or the draggers would find me instead. You ’member that guy Dave Pulaski? Whatever happened to him? Oh yeah, he’s dead. Just like all the others.

  So far the horde was unable to pull the door open. I needed a beer bad.

  I thought of Black Dragon and the Red Militia. Both proved to be false remedies in these delirious times. The soldiers—private military contractors really—were overwhelmed. And the militia, which started out as a movement to “save” people, turned into ravening chaos and violence. They fought Black Dragon, they fought civilians and they fought themselves, all at the behest of their insane leader, Ormand Ferry, with his dream of a new order, which was disintegrating into a long, debauched night of madness here in this out-of-the-way brewery.

  I didn’t know which was worse—the draggers or Ormand Ferry. Either way you were dead.

  * * *

  It was so cold in here as I sat there thinking about these last weeks—about Holly, Jim and Missy. Everything went wrong after that night—that lost night. And what about me? I was a good person—I am. Used to be … I don’t know. But it was after that monstrous night when everything went sideways and Hell came looking for the good people of Tres Marias.

  Chapter Two

  Rabid

  I remember. It was July 5—the night when Jim got shitfaced and found his way to my house in the dark. He must’ve fallen, because when I answered the door well past ten, his upper lip was bleeding and one of his teeth was chipped.

  “Got any beer?” he said through blood and saliva.

  “You know I don’t.”

  “Communist.”

  Tres Marias was one of those towns in Northern California you passed through on your way to something better. There was nothing to do here except get drunk. Since high school that’s pretty much what Jim and I did. Before that I used to play hockey, and when I wasn’t on the ice I devoured books like a glutton. My favorites were by Faulkner, Steinbeck, Vonnegut and Dick. Somewhere along the line I decided beer was better. There was no reason for it other than it tasted good and got me high. What followed were no college and no high-paying job far away from the stink hole I called home. Instead of promise, every day I looked forward to low wages and getting lit.

  Then I met Holly. I don’t know why she spent two minutes on me. As we lay in bed the first time she said, “I can’t wait for you to become the man I will make you.” Any other guy would’ve walked. I stayed.

  I attended AA meetings and took community-college classes. Poor Jim kept on going the way he was going. Though he was still my friend, it got harder to see him. Because when I was with him, I saw myself—my old self. And I didn’t like it.

  Holly padded down the stairs and stood behind me, her arms folded. I knew she was mad. She told me she disapproved of Jim, fearing he’d get me drinking again. But I knew better. I’d changed my ways for good.

  “What do you want, Jim?” she said in that short tone of hers—the same tone she used when I forgot to take out the trash.

  Holly was a knockout of a girl with a high-school education. Smarter than most people I knew. Her all-time favorite movie was The Notebook. Though she was a head shorter than me, when she got into her power stance, her fine blonde hair hanging over her shoulders and those huge green eyes boring into you like some kind of industrial laser, she was scary.

  Jim opened his mouth to say something and threw up on the star jasmine.

  “Oh, for—Dave, get him out of here. Puh-leeeez.”

  “I’ll drive him home,” I said, getting my wallet and keys.

  Jim lived way out up the 5 at the edge of town near the national forest, in the house his father built. Both his parents were dead—like mine. He used to have a dog named Perro, but he went missing a few weeks back. He’d been following Jim on one of his drunken nighttime hikes along the 299 when an eighteen-wheeler almost ran them over. I always thought the tractor-trailer was meant for Jim and the dog sacrificed himself. But the dog had disappeared. Once I read a story about a dog that saved his owner’s life in a house fire and later died from smoke inhalation. It was the romantic in me, I guess.

  “So what happened?” I said as we glided along the dark highway, not a car in sight.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did you go on another bender?”

  “Thinking about the old days, I guess.”

  Jim Stanley and I used to be best friends, as close as any two brothers. We went to high school together. Got summer jobs together. Celebrated twenty-one together by driving up to the Point and drinking enough beer and vodka to bring down a moose. We passed out up there too. It was December and we almost died of the cold. When we woke, it was in the twenties and we both had hypothermia. Ended up in the hospital. Still, it was the best birthday ever.

  We liked pretending we were badasses, but we never did any real harm. My mom—sick as she was—kept me in line, and whenever Jim came over to hang out and eat, which was much of the time, she went to work on him too. When it came to advice, Jim always did have a tin ear though.

  “Jim, I keep telling you. Those days are gone.” I smelled the beer and puke on his breath, and I was glad we were no longer hanging out. I don’t know how I made it to twenty-four. Holly had everything to do with it, I guess.

  I met her working at Staples, where I managed the copy center. Two years younger than me, she was the new cashier and seemed to have her eye on me from Day One. I don’t think a week had gone by when she invited me to dinner at her mom’s up in Mt. Shasta. Then we went back to her little apartment. She was all over me in bed, but right before anything happened she laid it on the line. I’d have to stop drinking—that was the deal. No sobriety, no Holly. I saw the determination in her eyes—it was like she was on a mission from God. And it made me even hotter for her. So I signed on.

  After Holly and I married, Jim came around less and less. I’d see him downtown sometimes on my lunch break, but mostly he was out of my life. Things changed forever the night he showed up again.

  “Why don’t we hang out anymore?” Jim said. He sounded like a hurt child.

  “Aw, come on, man. Don’t do this.”

  “What?”

  “Lay the guilt on me. I’m married. I have responsibilities.”

  “She’s nothing but a piece—”

  “She’s my wife, asshole.”

  I looked over to see if he was crying and found him trying to pull his lower lip up over his nose.

  “So?” he said. “What about a boys’ night out once in a while?”

  “Next you’ll be wanting a sleepover.”

  “Shit, let’s do it.”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I don’t have time for this anymore, Jim. Why don’t you grow up?”

  I didn’t mean for it to come out like that, but I was pissed off. And it’s not like Jim didn’t know the score.

  The silence carried us for another mile. He started singing the sappy chorus from “Someone Like You.” I don’t know what made me angrier—him knowing this song always brought tears to Holly’s eyes or what he might be insinuating. I smacked him hard across the ear. When I turned back, I saw something in the road coming at us and swerved to avoid it.

  It was Jim’s dog—I could swear it!

  After that I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t get on top of the situation. Next thing, we were going over the embankment, headed for the trees. Neither of us made a sound. It was at this moment I regretted never having fixed the passenger air bag.

  A hundred-year-old pine stood in front
of us. We hit it hard. My air bag stopped me, thank God. Jim wasn’t wearing his seat belt, and his head went through the windshield with a sickening crunch. Then everything got quiet and my eyes closed.

  * * *

  When I woke up I was alone. Beads of glass were everywhere. I looked over and saw a large hole in the windshield, dripping with blood, bits of flesh still hanging from the jagged edges. The passenger door was open.

  I saw raccoons vaguely in the glare of the headlights, their eyes shiny and hungry with anticipation. I knew as soon as I got out they’d be all over the windshield.

  It was hard to move—I was jammed pretty good against the steering wheel. I inched sideways and, feeling intense pain from my neck down, forced the driver’s-side door open and fell out onto the dry pine needles. I heard an owl hooting and the sound of the wind through the trees.

  As I searched for my friend, I called out but got no answer. “Jim! Come on, man, this isn’t funny.”

  It took me almost half an hour to get back up the embankment. I’d get a good start, but there was so much pain in my neck, back and legs. I kept slipping on those damned pine needles and gravel and sliding down to the bottom. Cursing, I’d go at it again, but I needed to rest after each attempt.

  At last I reached the top, and lay there on my side till I could catch my breath. I couldn’t see Jim anywhere. He had to be in pretty bad shape. He might be lying out there in the darkness somewhere nearby, bleeding to death.

  “Jim? Where are you?”

  I was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by silence. I dug into my jeans pocket for my phone and realized I’d forgotten it at home. It was a long walk back. I took one last look at my car down below. A gaze of raccoons pawed at the windshield. I hoped they didn’t cut themselves on the sharp, bloody glass.