Ten Open Graves: A Collection of Supernatural Horror

by David Wood

  “You promised!” Taylor grabbed his arm and shook it savagely. “You promised me we'd get her, and goddammit you're going to do it! If you don't, so help me God I'll break this window out and get her myself!”

  Kyle released the gearshift and looked over his shoulder. “You wouldn't dare.”

  Taylor's jaw muscles bunched as she stared back at her brother, her eyes steady and hard. “Then you don't know me as well as you think you do.”

  A staring contest broke out between the siblings, and Maya felt their conflicted emotions shooting back and forth like gunfire. After a few tense moments Kyle blinked. “Alright. I guess I've let you down enough for one lifetime. Which way do we go?”

  Taylor opened her mouth, but her words were cut off by a horrible wailing sound outside the car. When everyone turned to look through the front windshield they saw a group of people coming around the corner of the bar. Their bodies twitched, their steps halting and jittery. When they shambled into the Honda's headlights, the true horror of what was happening in Stillwater was revealed. Taylor screamed, and Maya felt terror claw its way up her throat at the sight of the convulsing figures. Their clothes were torn and useless, scarcely covering skin that looked covered in rancid puss, so gray and shiny in the light. Their eyes were black, nearly lost in the doughy folds of their faces that barely looked human. The claws, though, nearly drove Maya mad with horror, the black claws that arced from their hands as they stumbled closer and closer. They'd once been people, but now as the ancient evil awoke they were shambling monsters, moaning their pain and hunger into the rain-choked air.

  “Head to Barker Road!” Taylor grabbed the seat in front of her and shook it. “Back around The Basement and on the right!”

  Kyle's head nodded at the sound of his sister's voice, and he reached down like he wasn't sure where he was. But, as one hand shifted the car into reverse and the other curled around the steering wheel, he nodded. “Hold on!” He hit the gas and sent the car rocketing backward, away from The Basement and the mass of twitching bodies.

  Maya was thankful when the headlights slid away from the townspeople, their monstrous appearances like battering rams at her sanity, but when the darkness of the mountains filled the windshield, she knew it was just the beginning. Stillwater was a small town, but there were a lot of miles left to go, and each one would be more dangerous than the one before. For the first time in her life she knew what true terror felt like.

  Stillwater burned. In spite of the rain, fire raged through the small West Virginia coal town, and those homes and buildings that weren't burning were being torn apart by beings who might have once been people but had now become decidedly less. Screams pealed through the air like thunder, but for every call for help that broke through the Honda's windows came a dozen angry growls and bellows. The people of Stillwater were as damned as the buildings they'd spent decades trying to coax through winter after winter, through good times and bad. Though Kyle hated the place, he felt sick in his stomach seeing it spiral into hell.

  “Take the next right,” Taylor’s soft voice reflected off the window she stared out of.

  Kyle didn't give the STOP sign a second look as he turned the wheel, but when the Honda's headlights splashed across two gray figures tearing at something on the ground, he hit the brakes so hard they fishtailed on the wet road. The gray creatures didn't turn or stop what they were doing, their arms and upper bodies moving up and down in a mad rhythm Kyle felt in his heart. A grim curiosity made him look at what they were doing, but when a length of shiny intestine wiggled into the air like wet reddish-green tubing he swallowed back his gorge and hit the gas. The gray monsters heard the engine roar and turned to see him barreling toward them. When Kyle saw the victim at their feet – a kid barely old enough to sport a few feeble whiskers on his blood-splattered face – turn and give him a desperate look, he gunned the engine and veered into the creatures. They jumped out of the way, more agile than they looked, but Kyle felt the tires hit the kid and hoped he'd given him a quicker death than what the beasts who'd been pulling his insides out had promised. That didn’t stop him from hating himself though.

  “Oh my God,” Maya said behind him.

  Kyle wasn't sure what her words were aimed at. The fires? The roaming transformed townsfolk? The kid he'd run over? Maybe she'd been hit by another psychic thunderclap. But he didn't ask her to clarify. He was busy enough dealing with his own horror.

  “How much farther?” he asked when he came to an intersection. More houses burned up Midwich Street.

  Taylor slowly turned forward and looked at where they were. “Two more blocks down, last house on the left.”

  Grunting, Kyle accelerated. The engine whined, in bad need of a tune-up. He babied it as best he could.

  “What's that?” Maya asked, her arm appearing next to his head and her hand pointing to the far right side of the street.

  Kyle focused his eyes, and at first he thought he was looking at some wobbling ball of jelly rolling up the sidewalk, but as his headlights got closer he saw a pack of gray creatures running in a knot so tight it was easily mistaken for one body. They were howling at each other, their claws and teeth tearing at one another as they lopped along the sidewalk. Kyle's blood ran cold as the Honda neared them, but his heart nearly stopped entirely when he saw what the creatures were chasing after – two kids peddling like mad on bicycles.

  “What are those stupid kids doing out on bikes?” Kyle said.

  When one of the bikes toppled over, spilling the kid on it to the ground, he instantly regretted calling them stupid. In his head he calculated how quickly he could get to the bike and get the kid in the car, but he hardly had time to think about it before the gray creatures pounced and made the matter moot. Screams exploded into the air.

  “At least one of them might get away.” Maya pointed at the other bike, whose rider hadn't slowed for a second.

  Not wanting to look at the carnage, Kyle drove past the creatures and their kill without slowing. He couldn't close his ears, though, and the cries and howls shook the car. When they came close to the still-peddling bike, Taylor gasped.

  “That's Morgana!”

  The Honda was ten yards back from the bike and its rider, and between the rain and the swaying of the bike he didn't know how anyone could tell who was riding it. “How do you know?”

  “I'd know that hoodie anywhere! Hurry up before those things get her!”

  He hadn't thought to notice it before, but on the back of the rider's coat was a white smiley face with fangs poking down and a glittery red bow sitting perfectly above the round eyes. He wasn’t sure if it was funny in spite of the horror going on around them, or because of it.

  As they drove up next to Morgana, the poor girl steered away from them and gave them a panicked look, not unfairly assuming they were going to run her down, but before she could get a few feet into an alley between houses Taylor rolled her window down and reached a hand out.

  “Morgana, stop! It's me! Taylor!”

  That caught the fleeing girl's attention. Her feet locked in place and the bike’s rear tire swerved as she came to a quick stop. “Taylor?” she said, squinting as she looked at the Honda.

  “Yeah, it's me, baby.” Taylor leaned out the window, letting the rain soak her upper half. “Hurry and get in! We gotta get the fuck out of here!”

  Morgana looked at Taylor, then back the way she'd come, and then at the destruction ahead of her before she let the bike hit the ground and jumped into the Honda's front passenger seat. Taylor hugged her from behind before her door even closed.

  “What in the fuck is going on?” Morgana asked. Her eyes, which were circled by so much eyeliner she looked like a drowned raccoon, flicked between everyone in the car. “I mean seriously, what the fuck?”

  “That's the question of the day, isn't it?” Kyle wasn’t sure where to even begin.

  Morgana shook her head and hit her knees with closed fists, the veins on her pale hands standing out like road
maps. “I don't understand. I've been... I've been getting these visions in my head, felt these strange feelings in my chest, and now people are... Jesus Christ, they're becoming monsters! How is this happening?! Are we going to become like that too?!”

  “Not if we can help it, baby,” Taylor said, her voice stronger than it had been minutes before. “We're getting the hell out of this town.”

  Kyle wished he felt as sure as his sister did. Every second sent them spiraling down the toilet bowl faster and faster, and he felt the force of it dragging at him. His foot hit the gas like a hundred pound weight, and the Honda took off. In the rain-streaked rearview mirror the pack of monsters finished off the downed biker before shambling after fresh meat. Rain already started washing the blood away.

  “Leaving town?” Morgana asked. “We need to go to the police!”

  Kyle steered left onto Toluca Avenue and shook his head. “If they haven't already...changed into whatever the fuck those things are...we couldn't trust them anyway.”

  Morgana looked at him like he was speaking gibberish, but before she could protest Taylor wrapped her arms around the girl .

  “We already ran into the cops,” Taylor said. “They tried to kill us. Whatever's going on, they're part of it. The only help we're gonna get is outside of Stillwater. Far outside it.”

  “Do you understand what's happening then?” Morgana’s pale face seemed to float in the shadows created by her dark cloths and flowing black hair.

  Maya nodded in the rear view mirror. “We don't know all of it, but we think we...” She trailed off, her eyes unfocused as if suddenly in deep thought. She tilted her head first to the right, then the left, and then looked out the window next to her. Taylor leaned over and patted her shoulder. Maya didn't respond, but a few seconds later she took a quick breath and leaned forward. “We have to get out of here! Go! Go!”

  “We are!” Kyle replied. “What's wrong now?”

  “He's looking for us!” Maya’s eyes lost focus again as her fingers drummed on the side of his seat.

  “Who?” Kyle asked.

  Maya looked into the rearview and fixed him with a hard glare. “The devil's prince.”

  Interlude- Dreadful Lights

  The creature once named Ash felt warmed in the light of his waking god as the dreadful waters ebbed. The Dark One’s mind woke more and more, his thoughts filling the air like a glorious whirlwind, and Ash felt lifted from his reborn shell.

  Ready my world, a voice said within his mind, the words a fusion of pain and ecstasy. Prepare the way for my coming.

  Ash ached at hearing his god speak, yearned to serve him, please him. “Yes, my Lord,” his cracked, gray lips said as his consciousness rose from the cavern. He passed through coal, rock, dirt, and grass until he was high above the mountain and looking down at Stillwater. What he saw pleased him. The cavern's water had done its job – all over town people were changing, the essence of the Dark One unlocking the shadows hiding inside them, freeing their bloodlust, their desires, transforming them into what they truly were deep down in their souls.

  And it was just the beginning. Tonight it was Stillwater, tomorrow West Virginia, and the day after that...the whole of the world, all of it in flames and drowning in blood, all in service and sacrifice to the dark god in the mountain.

  But, as Ash's mind surveyed the town, not everyone bent to the dark's will. They were the unwashed, tiny points of light defacing the black canvas below. They weren’t of immediate concern being so few and spread apart, but then he noted several clustered together. Their mutual proximity made their light shine balefully bright.

  Incensed, he sent his ethereal body toward them. As he flew close he felt a troubling distinction in one of them, a power that none but he and his lord should have possessed. In that shining mind was the vestige of a primal soul, a soul older than man, and as he observed it he was reminded of the woman he'd been told about earlier. Yes, he remembered her. The nigger bitch with the old blood.

  Well now, he thought, I figured you’d have been put down already. I guess if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.

  Smiling a razor sharp grin in the growing gleam of his rising god, Ash sent orders into the night, preparing the world for what was to come by removing what little trouble remained. One old blood bitch and a few kids weren't much to worry about, but he supposed it was best to be careful and get rid of them all the same. After that, nothing would stand in their way.

  Chapter 21

  Kyle hit the brakes and brought the Honda to a skidding halt. “What do you mean 'The devil's prince'?”

  Maya stared at him through the rearview, her light brown face growing lighter by the second. “I mean—”

  She broke off mid-sentence and gasped like she was about to choke. Kyle twisted around in his seat and reached out to her, but as his hands came close her wide eyes turned black and a sick grin slithered over her lips.

  “She means you're fucked.” Maya’s voice rumbled deeply.

  Taylor and Morgana screamed, but Kyle barely heard it. All he could do was look into the dark eyes of the woman he was falling in love with. No matter what the person in the backseat looked like, Maya wasn't there anymore, of that Kyle was certain. But even with that knowledge he didn't know what to do about it, how to make it right, bring her back. Despair beat against his chest with cold fists, but before he could give into it, Maya smiled again.

  “Don't look so sad.” Her words sounding like stones smashing together. “You'll all be dead soon, and then you'll have nothing more to worry about.”

  Maya raised her hands and lunged forward. Lost in the moment, Kyle didn’t realize what was happening, and she had him by the throat before he registered he was being attacked. Her fingers were freezing cold, and when they locked around his neck they burned his skin. He grabbed her wrists, but the flesh felt like iron in his grip and he didn't budge them a bit. The girls screamed again, but then Taylor threw herself against Maya, hitting at her arms in a flurry of motion.

  “Stop it!” Taylor yelled. “Let him go!”

  Morgana grabbed Maya's right arm and yanked on it. Kyle watched them try and help him, but the icy burn of her fingers clamping down on his throat and the lack of new air in his lungs shrunk his world down to the space between him and the thing using Maya's body. Dark red splotches peppered his vision, and black fog narrowed his world more and more. He pulled at her wrists, grabbed her forearms, and tried to rock her back and forth, but she seemed welded to the car frame, as immovable as steel.

  “Why fight it?” she asked, her mouth curling at the edges. “There's nowhere you can run to, nowhere to go. The dark god of the mountain is rising, and soon the world will sing his song. You're doomed, you stupid shits. Give in, die now. Take what small mercies you can find before we burn them all aw—”

  The blackness in Maya's eyes swirled like oil being sprayed off pavement, and the smile on her lips faltered. Kyle felt her grip on his throat relax just a touch, but it was enough for him to take her wrists again and pry them loose. Taylor grabbed Maya's arms and tackled her into the seat, holding her down with all her strength.

  Strange sounds erupted from Maya's mouth, a mixture of rocks cracking, dogs barking, and crazed laughter. The blackness returned to her eyes, then swirled away again. She lunged upward, then fell back, over and over until Kyle feared her neck would snap from the pounding, and then it all stopped. The calm silence that followed was almost as terrible as the chaos that came before it because Kyle expected it to shatter at any moment. It wasn't until Maya coughed and looked into his eyes, her face sweaty but her expression relieved, that he sat back and breathed again.

  “What the fuck was that?” Taylor asked. She kept her hands on Maya's shoulders and didn't look away for a second.

  “I think that son of a bitch got in me,” Maya replied without moving or trying to get free. “I don't know how, but...that was awful. He was in my head like a...a diseased dog, dripping with filth and death
.”

  Kyle shook his head and took another deep breath. “It wasn't exactly a party out here either.”

  “Is he...it...gone now?” Morgana asked.

  Maya nodded. “I think so, yeah. He had his claws in pretty deep, but this is my goddam head, and I'll be damned before I let him have it.”

  “From the sound of it, we're all damned.” Taylor let go of Maya and sat back.

  Exhaling in a blast of air, Maya nodded again and looked at all three of them with a quick turn of her head. “Probably, yeah, but...maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?” Kyle asked. Maya looked exhausted, but there was a small glint in her eyes, and it sparked an echoing light in his heart.

  “I mean... That fucker was in my head, but I was also kind of in his. The water that's kept that beast asleep for so long is nearly gone. When the cavern's empty, it'll rise up and do exactly what that son of a bitch said. That I saw clearly enough. But, I also saw something I don’t think he wanted me to – we can stop it by refilling the cavern. I think the beast will return to its sleep if we can drown it again and block it up.”

  The flittering glimmer of hope in Kyle's chest dimmed. “Oh, is that it? And how are we supposed to do that? It's not like we can flip the pump's direction since the pipe leading out of the caves doesn't dip into the river, and though I'm sick as hell of this rain, it's not enough to fill a mountain with. For a flood like that we'd need...”

  Kyle's face went numb, and his mouth stopped moving as ideas and plans suddenly filled his head. After another few moments of contemplation he cleared his throat and tried to explain the craziness that had popped into his brain. It was a long shot, but it was all they had. First, though, he needed to get his sister and Maya to safety.

  “Need what?” Maya’s eyes were intense as they stared into his.

  He shook his head and turned around. “It doesn’t matter right now. After I get you three out of here, then I’ll deal with it.”