by Mark Allen
Copyright © 2015 by Mark Allen and Derric Miller. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Tyler Cunningham appears courtesy of Jamie Sheffield and SmartPig Publishing.
Cover designed by Rocking Book Covers.
DEDICATION
This one is for all of the angels and demons in our lives. Because of them, we’ll always have stories to tell.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to Jamie Sheffield, not only for letting us borrow one of his characters for a cameo, but for some awesome beta feedback that helped us make a good book even better.
CONTACT
Mark’s Blog: www.gunsgutsgod.blogspot.com
Mark’s Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/mark.allen.712
Mark’s Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarkAllenAuthor
Derric’s Twitter: www.twitter.com/millerwriter
PRAISE
“Highly original backwoods slasher horror with clever and satisfying plot twists. A precious merging of character definition and Grand Guignol horror.” ~ Slamdance
“I’ve been a fan of Mark and Derric’s writing for years. This is a horrifying read.” ~ Bill Leverty, Firehouse guitarist
ALSO BY MARK ALLEN AND DERRIC MILLER
Mudslingers (rock ‘n’ roll splatter-punk novella)
ALSO BY MARK ALLEN
The Assassin’s Prayer (action-thriller novel)
Worse Than Death (zombie novella)
Resurrection Bullets (vigilante/revenge novella)
The Killing Question (hardboiled action short)
Suck A Bus (horror-comedy short)
An Honest Mistake (action/vampires short)
The Sweetheart Buck (bow-hunting romance novella)
GRISTLE
by Mark Allen and Derric Miller
Prologue
Jack Colter, his wife Trisha, and fourteen-year-old son Kevin sat at their kitchen table, together as a family, dinner spread out before them. It was their evening ritual; not quite sacred, but important enough that they tried to do it as many nights as possible. This being Friday night and nobody had felt like cooking, they had ordered pizza—extra pepperoni and anchovies—from Grub’s Pub and Grill over in Bloomingdale. Usually they spent the time catching up with each other on the day’s events, planning a vacation, debating politics or religion, and just generally bonding. Had anyone asked, Jack would have readily told them that they were a close-knit family and having supper together every night was one of the reasons why.
But tonight, nobody was eating. Because instead of strengthening family bonds, they were being tortured by actual bonds. Their ankles were duct-taped to the legs of their chairs, their hands lashed together behind them with black zip ties. Jack tried to wiggle his hands but their captor knew what he was doing. The ties refused to yield, cutting so deep into his wrists that circulation was sluggish. He could barely feel his fingers. The pungent tang of fear-sweat permeated the room and as Jack looked around at his family, he saw their faces filled with dread. He wondered what they saw on his face when they looked at him. If fear wasn’t carved into every line of his features, it should have been—he was scared to death.
Trisha was sobbing and Kevin was crying but Jack tempered his fear with rage as he glared at the man who had invaded their home. Despite living in one of the quietest towns in the Adirondack Park, the Colters still kept their doors locked at night. But the lock on the front door had proven no match for a .45 caliber bullet. The intruder had burst in wearing a black ski mask, brandishing a 9mm automatic in one hand and a Colt .45 in the other. The handle of the Colt was made of what looked like walnut and there was a dragon carved into the wood, along with five notches.
The two weapons were all the man needed to hold the family hostage. With guns aimed at his loved ones, Jack had done nothing as the invader bound them, his intent still unclear. Jack just fervently prayed that whatever that intent turned out to be, murder wasn’t part of the equation. Whatever else happened, Jack reckoned he could live with it as long as his family came out the other side still alive.
The masked man dangled the 9mm in front of Jack’s face. The light from the elk antler chandelier hanging above the table bounced off the reflective steel and stabbed at Jack’s eyes in silver flashes. The intruder waggled the pistol like a taunt as he growled, “Bet you’d like to have this piece of hot lead hardware right about now, huh?”
Jack didn’t reply. His look said it all.
But his look wasn’t good enough for the masked man. He leaned into Jack’s face until their noses were tip to tip and screamed, “Answer the fuckin’ question!” The man didn’t articulate a threat, but he didn’t need to. It was very clear to Jack that if he failed to answer, there would be serious consequences.
“Yes,” Jack whispered.
“What?” the man yelled.
“YES!” Jack yelled back and instantly regretted it. The invader could interpret the yell as defiance and shift from verbal taunts to physical punishment. Get a grip, Jack. Don’t give this maniac a reason to go kill crazy.
“Yes … what?” the man mocked. His face was hidden under the ski mask, but Jack imagined the asshole was smirking.
“Yes, I’d like to have that gun right about now,” Jack said, following the script. He was an actor in a dark family tragedy being directed by a madman with firepower.
The man slammed the 9mm down on the table in front of Jack so hard that the anchovies jumped off the pizza’s congealing cheese and the salt shaker tipped over, spilling its crystalline contents.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” he asked. “It’s gonna cost you, though, and the price is a real motherfucker.”
Keeping the .45 tucked tight against Trisha’s temple, the man whipped a folding knife from out of his pocket. Jack experienced a marrow-freezing moment of panic as the masked man flicked open the blade, imagining the razor edge sinking into his wife’s throat. But the only thing the man slashed open were the plastic ties binding Jack’s hands. The ease with which the plastic parted let Jack know just how sharp that knife was.
He rubbed his wrists, raw from where the plastic straps had gouged into his flesh. The 9mm lay tantalizing before him, looking like lethal salvation in a hard steel package. But he knew it was an illusion. Their captor had a .45 pressed to his wife’s head. No matter how fast he grabbed up the gun, it wouldn’t be fast enough to prevent the man from putting a bullet in Trisha’s skull. So he just left the 9mm laying there, making sure his hands went nowhere near it. The man was looking for a reason to kill and Jack didn’t want to give him one.
As if to prove the point, the man suddenly ground the muzzle of the .45 into Trisha’s temple and snarled, “I want to kill your wife. Or fuck her. I can’t decide which. Maybe both. In that order.”
Trisha gasped in terror. Kevin began crying again. Jack thought his son’s face looked too young to bear the horror he was now facing.
“No!” Jack begged. He desperately wanted to do something, anything, to spare his family further trauma. “Please … don’t.”
“Well, asshole, that’s all up to you.” The man’s voice was one of amused malice, the cat toying with the mouse. “You see, I’m gonna give you a chance to save your wife.”
“Anything! I’ll do anything! Just please don’t hurt her.” Jack practically babbled his eagerness to do whatever it took, whatever the madman wanted.
“Glad to hear it,” the man said. “Now, pick up the gun.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Pick up the gun.”
Jack glanced down at the gun lying in front of him, then back up at the man. Back down at the gun. Back to the man.
His hesitat
ion seemed to piss the man off. “Are you fuckin’ deaf?” he snarled. “Are you having trouble hearing? Pick. Up. The. Fucking. Gun.”
Jack’s hand trembled as he obeyed the command. But once his sweaty palm gripped the cold steel, it took everything he had not to just shoot the bastard. In the movies, right about now the hero would snap-shoot a bullet right between the villain’s eyes, ending the terror and putting the world right once again.
But this was no movie and he for damn sure was no hero.
“Now tuck the barrel under your chin nice and tight,” the masked man said. “Right there above the lump in your throat.”
There actually was a lump in his throat. Jack swallowed hard and did as ordered. The metal of the gun’s muzzle felt surprisingly cool against his skin.
“Good boy,” the man crooned. “Now pull the trigger.”
Jack gaped at him in horror.
“Now!” the man shouted.
Jack just sat there, frozen with fear.
“I said, now!” The man brought the .45 back—for some reason, it seemed to Jack like the dragon etched into the walnut grips was writhing like a snake—and then whipped it forward, striking Trisha across the brow. Not hard enough to knock her out, but the blow split her skin and blood ran down her face. She cried out in pain.
“Do it!” the man snarled. “Or so help me, God, I will bash her fuckin’ brains out all over this pizza.”
Jack wasn’t sure when his tears had started, but he suddenly realized they were streaming down his face in wet mockery of the blood streaking Trisha’s features. Husband and wife, ‘til death do us part, he crazily thought. He slowly curled his shaking finger around the trigger and pulled it back halfway. Another three pounds of pressure would drop the firing pin. Another three pounds and he would feel—or, more likely, not feel—a bullet burn through his brain. Another three pounds and he would save his wife.
But those three pounds proved impossible. His trembling finger simply refused to override his self-preservation instincts.
With the trigger locked at the halfway point, Jack let out a sigh tinged with desperation. “I can’t,” he said weakly. He avoided his wife’s eyes, not wanting to see his shame mirrored there.
“Bad news for the missus then,” the man said. “All right, let’s keep this simple. I'm gonna rattle off a five count. If I reach five and you haven't put a bullet through your head, I'm gonna put one through your wife's. Got it? Whether she lives or dies is entirely in your hands. Right here, right now, you are God. Life or death. The choice is all yours.”
He paused to let it sink in, eyes glittering with menace behind the ski mask. Then he started the countdown. “One.”
Kevin struggled against his bonds as he screamed, “Dad, do something!”
Jack tried again, straining to pull the trigger. Don’t do it! shouted the primal, reptilian side of his brain. You have to do it! the emotional side countered. His hand shook like a meth addict with Parkinson’s. But the trigger remained static.
“Two.”
Beneath the crimson streaks, Trisha’s face was pale white. “Jack?” she whispered, voice quivering with fear.
Jack couldn’t bear to look at her. He kept his eyes fixed on their tormenter. “Why are you doing this to us?” he shouted. “Why?”
The chilling answer offered no comfort. “Because it’s fun,” the man said. “Three.”
“Please stop!” Jack thought he had known panic before but it was nothing compared to the frantic horror he was feeling now.
“You can make me stop,” the man replied. “Just pull the trigger.” He paused a moment, apparently for dramatic effect, then intoned, “Four.”
Jack glanced at his wife just in time to see a terrible serenity come over her face, as if she had accepted her fate. Accepted the fact that her husband would not save her. She squeezed her eyes shut and in a quiet voice murmured, “Jack, honey…”
“No no no no no no…” The single word spilled from Jack’s lips again and again, his frantic mind caught in a nightmarish mental loop.
The masked man suddenly abandoned his conversational tone and switched to bellowing rage. “I’LL DO IT! I'll PAINT THIS PLACE WITH HER BRAINS! PULL THE FUCKING TRIGGER! I'll DO IT! I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL FUCKING DO IT!” His angry voice bounced off the walls and seemed to consume the room with a reverberating echo.
Kevin added to the chaotic soundscape by shrieking, “Dad! Dad! Dad!”
Yet somehow, someway, in what was maybe meant to be an act of mercy from God but was anything but, Jack clearly heard Trisha’s last words.
“I love you, Jack.”
He looked into her eyes and saw the forgiveness there and his heart shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.
“Five,” his tormentor said, his tone infused with the finality of a death knell. Unlike Jack, he had no trouble pulling the trigger.
The gunshot sounded louder than the screams of ten thousand angels to Jack’s stricken mind. Trisha’s head snapped to the side under the hammering point-blank impact of the .45 slug. The side of her skull disintegrated and sprayed a clumpy mess of crimson brains all over Kevin’s sobbing face. In a single heartbeat, with a single pull of a trigger, she was transformed from loyal wife and loving mother into a lifeless corpse.
Chuckling evilly, the masked man took the 9mm away from Jack, which was easy to do since he was just sitting there slumped in shock and horror. His mind had started shutting down, unable to process the fact that the woman he loved had just died because he had been too much of a coward to save her. Congratulations, Jack, you just killed your wife.
He could take no more. His mind flicked a switch and he slithered down the dark hole into unconsciousness.
He never saw the masked man leave or heard his final taunting words.
“Good luck getting over this one, Jack. God hates a fuckin’ coward.”
Chapter 1
At the Gates of Hell
Jack sat alone in the front pew of the church, staring up at the wooden cross that dominated the wall behind the pulpit. This being a Baptist church rather than Catholic, the cross was just a cross, not a crucifix—there was no impaled Christ. Jack was thankful for that. He understood the whole “Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world” thing, but there had been more than enough blood and violence in his life, so he was glad that he didn’t have to come to church on Sundays and look at an innocent man nailed to a hunk of wood.
A purple banner stretched above the cross and greeted anyone who entered the sanctuary with “Welcome to Vesper Falls Baptist Church.” It was a simple banner and a simple greeting, but this was a simple country church. Nestled in the northern Adirondacks between the quaint mountain town of Saranac Lake and the bustling city of Plattsburgh, Vesper Falls boasted a population of 803. Maybe five percent of that population showed up for Sunday morning worship, double that on Easter and Christmas. As towns went, Vesper Falls wasn’t particularly religious and Jack suspected even those who attended church viewed it more as a social gathering than anything to do with true faith. Not that there was anything wrong with that. In Jack’s experience, true faith usually just ended up in bitter disappointment.
Jack sat on the pew and listened to the congregants in the foyer as they headed home for Sunday dinners with family, voices full of hope and joy, a stark contrast to the bleak and blackened thoughts scorching his own mind. It was probably good his neighbors couldn’t see the darkness caged within him. He didn’t hate them or anything like that, but he sometimes couldn’t help but resent them for their normalcy.
But while he might not have hated his neighbors, there was someone—or rather, Someone—that he had learned to hate.
Staring up at the cross, Jack whispered, “You son of a bitch, you let me kill her.”
A hand gripped his shoulder. Jack jumped up out of the pew and spun around, hands raised for combat or defense. His heart rate immediately doubled.
Pastor Larry Wainwright held up his hands, palms out to show
there was no threat. “Whoa! Hold on, Jack, it’s just me.” With the thinning hair and expanding paunch of middle age and wearing a tweed sports coat, Larry looked more like a professor than a pastor. Someone who should be expounding on the phallic symbolism of Moby Dick to a college class rather than preaching about the follies of Jonah and how running from Jehovah just landed you in whale vomit.
Jack lowered his arms. “Sorry,” he said. “You caught me with my head somewhere else.”
“No need to apologize to me, but I'm betting the word that just went zipping through your brain wasn't exactly church-appropriate,” Larry said, “so you might owe God a ‘sorry.’” His voice was rich and earthy with a dulcet tone that served him well behind the pulpit.
“Yeah, well, me and God aren't exactly on the best of terms these days,” Jack said. “I’m kind of holding a grudge over the whole dead wife thing.”
“No time like the present to patch up that problem,” Larry replied.
Let it go, preacher. Jack could feel himself growing agitated. He made a noise in his throat that might have been a growl, might have been something more benign, and even he wasn’t sure which. “It’s not always that simple,” he said. “God or not, sometimes life just sucks.” He almost added the word dick but caught himself at the last second.
Larry chuckled. “Life sucks. That would make a great sermon title.” He paused for a moment before turning more serious. “Honestly, Jack, I get what you're saying. Twenty years ago my wife died giving birth to Holly, leaving me to raise a baby girl on my own, and then two years ago Holly was killed on that hike. So yeah, I'd say I know a thing or two about the rough stuff.”
