TEXAS
STRANGE
3 Book Bundle
By Terry M. West
Copyright © 2016 Terry M. West
Published by Pleasant Storm Entertainment, Inc.
http://www.pleasantstorm.com/
Visit the author at: http://terrymwest.com/
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HONGER
Now available from Morbidbooks!
Hunger knows no friend but its feeder…
Tarrytown, NY
Winter 1679
Willem Tenner is a God-fearing Dutch wheat farmer. After he and his family take in a half-dead old man that has come to their doorstep, a violent and gory nightmare that will last for an eternity begins. Basilius De Vries is an undying creature. He consumes Willem's family and curses the wheat farmer with the bite that never heals. De onheilige honger. The eternal hunger.
Piermont, NY
Winter 1997
Willem Tenner works at a video store and has few friends. He has lived many lives since 1679. He doesn't know what he is. He doesn't even know the name for it. When the hunger comes, he picks victims who have already given their lives away: Junkies, hookers, criminals. He will soon have to abandon this life and start again before people notice that he doesn't age. Willem had thought himself the only monster on this endless, ravenous trek through time. But he was wrong.
An enemy has come for him. And the monster plans on tearing Willem's life, body, and soul apart.
WARNING: This story contains scenes of graphic gore and violence.
All of the Flesh Served Available May 5th! Pre-order here!
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire
Any record of the 45th that does not recognize him as a prophet is propaganda and a lie. False history. The truth is with the 45th. His word is absolute for it is God's word…
Hundreds of years after the great cataclysm, the Ministry of the 45th survive in a network of scientific bunkers. The last bastion of the old holy order, the 45th are bent on rebuilding the scorched earth and eliminating God's enemies. The Ministry wages a war against the mutant topsiders that occupy the dead states of the Soviet Union of America. Defending the 45th are the Red Guard, genetically engineered soldiers who are programmed to obey through their lifebrand. Dr. Morgan is a serviceman for Unit 468 of the Red Guard. His lifebrand being medicine, Dr. Morgan is the longest surviving field medic to serve. But Dr. Morgan is a deeply conflicted man with violent fantasies that contradict his pledge to preserve life. After escaping an abduction by the topsiders, Dr. Morgan's faith is cracked. During a furlough in the high Chancellor's bunker, Dr. Morgan is hailed a hero and taken off the front lines. But he soon realizes that someone has altered his lifebrand and lifted the veil that concealed the greatest deception ever perpetrated. Dr. Morgan has just become the most dangerous man in the wastelands. And when he discovers who the real enemy is, the revelation unleashes a fury strong enough to destroy what is left of the earth.
Join the All of the Flesh Served Thunderclap!
DREG
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This is the expanded and revised version of my debut horror novel, DREG. I want to take this opportunity to thank the following for their faith in this work: Stacey & Wally Bender, Glenn Chadbourne and Steward Noack. And a special thanks to my wife, Regina West, and our son, Terrence, for their ongoing and unconditional love and support.
The Acadian & Cajun mythology in this book has been heavily researched and verified. The French term, traiteur, has two different meanings in French Cajun culture. The word can mean caterer, or keeper of an eating house. But research has proven that it can also describe a folk medicine practitioner or a faith healer (treater). For the story you are about to read, traiteur is being used in the latter context (though there might be an ironic wink to the other definition as well). Creative license has been taken with the mystical abilities, the philosophy and the purpose of a traiteur. The Cajun folklore described in DREG was found in the following books:
The Cajuns: From Acadia to Louisiana by William Faulkner Rushton. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1980.
Cajun Country by Barry Jean Ancelet, Jay Edwards and Glen Pitre. Published by University Press of Mississippi. 1990.
But, again, this is a work of fiction and the legends have been blended with pure fictitious elements to better serve my tale. Further creative liberties have also been taken with certain regions of Louisiana and Texas.
-TMW
01-25-2015
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
PROLOGUE
Deep in the Pointe Au Chien, Louisiana
Summer, 1940
The father shoved the rifle into his son’s hands. “Take it, boy. Time you learned.”
The boy, Dreg was his name, looked at the weapon. Sunlight peeked through the dense foliage of the forest and glinted off of the blue barrel of the shotgun. Dreg's father scratched his moss-like beard, peering into the forest. “Tracks go strai’ ahead,” Father said, pointing to the fresh prints in the mud that trailed toward the swamp.
“It’s getting dark. We gotta get him. If’n we don’t, he’ll get away or the gators will have him. C’mon, boy.” Father began to work his way into the forest, thin branches scraping his sweat-saturated tank top. He looked back at his son. Dreg, who was barely ten, stood rooted to his spot, staring blankly at the weapon in his small hands. Fear was in his eyes and stomach, twisting his insides around the yeast bread and honey he had eaten for breakfast.
Father stomped back to Dreg and pulled the shotgun away. He smacked the boy on the back of the head. “You got to hunt like Le Loup, boy. You got to learn to kill. Curs and jackals pick bones. Wolves have their fill o’ meat. You want to end up a jackal, boy? Begging for scraps with a tail ‘tween your legs?”
“No sur,” Dreg croaked like a frog. His throat was dry.
“You gotta hunt to survive, lessen you want to end up a purty boy, kissin’ uptown men in Orleans?”
Dreg shook his head, reaching for th
e weapon. Father let him have it. “Then take this and do your papa proud. Be the wolf. C’mon, boy. The sun be sinkin’ fast.”
The boy followed his father into the brush. Thorns and branches worked at his tender flesh. The ground was becoming softer with every step; swamp water filled their footprints as soon as they made them. Dreg pressed on, dogging his father’s steps, as the swamp became visible. Father paused, pressing a finger to his cracked lips. He leaned close to his son. His reeking breath, sour with dental decay and at the same time sweet with corn squeezings, splashed Dreg's face as he whispered: “Stay here, yeh-huh? I’s gonna flush him out. Aim for the head. We jes’ gonna cut it off and feed it to the gators, anyhow. Don’t let me down, boy.”
Father slinked away to the left. The brush rattled for a second, then became still as the boy’s father moved through the forest like a ghost.
Dreg stood on the bank, his hands trembling. The piece of iron in his grip felt like a steel girder. He was a good shot. Dreg could pop melons from a great distance. But melons did not run, breathe or bleed. A melon did not look you in the eye, panic stricken, or piss and shudder after you shot it. His stomach churned into a tighter knot.
The oppressive humidity of the swamp dampened his clothes. He wanted to peel off his shirt, but feared laying the gun down. The sweat that ran from his pores was contaminated by the fear curled and festering in his belly. The sweat stung his eyes and tickled his bald armpits.
Something brown and sleek dove off of a nearby stump into the swamp, disappearing under the murky water. Dreg caught the action from the corner of his eye and leveled the shotgun at the water. His heart pounded and his bladder suddenly felt full. Dreg cursed in French; though he knew Le Loup, lord above, did not take kindly to such, because now he would have to lay the weapon down to relieve himself. He was not about to risk shooting off his business while juggling the shotgun from hand to hand as he undid his fly.
He was going to lean the weapon against a tree when the treetops shook as birds pounded their wings and screeched. The whole forest came alive with activity and animal screams. Dreg’s stomach was so sour that he considered sticking a finger down his throat to let the bile free.
“He comin’ your way, boy!” Dreg’s father shouted from the distance. “Be ready, boy! Here he comes!”
Dreg really had to piss. His stomach felt as if it were going in two directions, up his throat and into his bowels. Despite his discomfort, the boy held the weapon poised, his throat now so dry that he couldn’t swallow. His flat, sunburned belly felt as if it were devouring itself.
“Be ready, Dreg! Be ready, boy!” his father advised from the bush.
Dreg tensed as he heard branches crack and soil slosh. Suddenly, the prey sprang from the bush. The prey froze, staring with wild eyes at Dreg. It jerked and began to bolt. Dreg pulled the trigger, driving the butt of the shotgun into his shoulder.
The prey’s throat exploded. Blood flowed from a blackened wound in its gullet down its chest. The prey gurgled as vomit poured through the hole and it fell to the mud, thrashing the swamp water with its legs. Warm urine ran freely down Dreg’s legs. He finally set the weapon down, turned and retched into the swamp. Very little came from his stomach. Though empty, Dreg still felt sick.
Father appeared from the brush and howled his approval.
“You done me good, Dreg. You done me real proud.” Father surveyed the prize, grunting and nodding at the neck wound.
“Good boy. Gator food anyhow, like I said.” Father took a ball of thick twine from a pouch on his belt. He wrapped it around the prey’s ankles, found a sturdy limb overhead and hoisted the meat off of the ground, tying the twine off around the tree’s trunks.
“C’mere, boy,” the father said, grinning with black teeth. Dreg went to his father. Dreg stared intensely at his kill as he moved. It was a man in his early twenties.
The dead man was wearing a camouflage T-shirt and corduroy pants. He was most likely a city drifter who had decided to sightsee through the untamed parts. He had probably gotten lost, driving deeper into the swamp forest than any sane city man ever would.
Dreg absently stroked the man’s sticky, brown hair. The eyes of the man, dead and glassy, were fixed on him. Dreg closed them, shuddering at the sensation of already cold flesh.
“You a wolf now, boy,” the father said, dabbing with his fingers at the dead man’s wound. He spread hardening blood on the boy’s cheek.
“I’s proud, son,” he said, and then noticed that Dreg had pissed his pants.
The father, glowing with pride, suddenly went benign. He stroked Dreg’s head gently.
“You get used to it. I shit my britches first time I killed. It hard at first, but you brave wolf.”
The father took a step back from his son.
“Show me the paw you hunt with,” he said expectantly. Dreg held up his left hand, smooth palm facing his father. The hand shook.
Father gripped Dreg’s hand with his own callused left hand. “You a traiteur, good and proper, boy. You know the secrets. You carry on wi’ the truth, pass it to yo’ cubs who have the sign of magic. Got it, boy?”
“Yes sur,” Dreg replied, feeling some pride at being the only cub with the sign of left-handedness. It made him special. It made Father look upon him more favorably than his brothers or sisters. It created a bond between he and Father that only one per new generation fully embraced and comprehended. He was the chosen one. He would carry the truth to his special cub one day.
Father embraced Dreg, holding him up toward the darkening sky. The falling sun’s final illumination caught the boy’s fair hair and beaming face, forcing him to shut his eyes.
“Le Loup!” father shouted above his son. “Hunter of hunters! Lord above! Look upon this cub! This traiteur! He has taken prey this day! Gaze upon yo’ earthly cub! He does you proud, Le Loup!”
Father let Dreg back down. The boy was overjoyed with his father’s praise.
Dreg's father took a long knife from his boot sheath. “Now, boy, I teach you to gut. Maybe you get sick, but I gotta learn you. So watch now, hear?”
“Yes sur.”
He first cut away the prey’s clothing.
“We eat like uptown folk tonight,” Father grinned, cutting into the dead man’s belly.
***
Dreg crept into the family room of the cabin. His brothers and sisters were running their dinner off outside in the sunset. His mother and father were out there as well. They sat on the front porch and enjoyed the cool breeze coming off of the swamp.
Papere was sitting in the wooden rocking chair in front of the fireplace in the darkened room. The old man slept like the dead.
Dreg’s grandfather was very old. Dreg wasn’t sure how old, but once when he asked his Mother how old Papere was, she had said he was older than dirt and that she couldn’t wait until he was put beneath it (Mother and Papere didn’t care much for one another). Papere may have been older than dirt, but his mind still had a lot of strength left in it.
That sharp mind of Papere’s held the entire history of Dreg’s family. His line had started in a country called Canada. Their blood was ancient Acadian. They were disciples of Le Loup. Their religion ran deep and stood on blood ceremonies and sacrifice. But when people started a thing called religious persecution toward Dreg’s ancestors, they fled and they came to Louisiana and the untamed swamps. Here they found freedom and seclusion from the church of the hanging man. Papere, Father and Dreg were all traiteurs, and this word meant a lot in their religion. A traiteur was a leader, hunter, provider, healer, protector and priest. A traiteur taught the philosophy of Le Loup and passed it down to those pups with the left-handed sign of magic.
Le Loup was the wolf god, and he stared down at his earthly pups with his eye, which was the moon. Le Loup demanded blood by the measure of silver in the night sky. The more the moon shined, the more the wolf rose inside and all meat was fair prey.
The family room of the cabin was hot as a furnace, but
that was how Papere liked it- windows closed, drapes drawn and fireplace blazing. Papere had old people blood and this made it hard for him to be comfortable. Dreg’s grandfather preferred the warmth and said it kept the cold of the grave off of him.
It usually fell to Dreg to look after his Papere. And Dreg didn’t mind this chore. His brothers and sisters, nine of them in all, were either too young or too old for him to socialize with, but that wasn’t the main reason he didn’t associate with them that often. Dreg was different from them. He was ugly and too pale and he had wild staring eyes and crooked teeth. He endured cruel taunts from his brothers and sisters quite frequently. They called him the laid loup fantôme- ugly wolf ghost. They hurt his feelings a lot, but Papere always made Dreg feel better about things. Papere had explained that Dreg was special. He was a wild spirit trapped in man-skin.
Papere slept with an aged book gripped in his bony hands. Dreg quietly approached him. He slid the book gently from his Papere’s weak hold and opened it up. The book was old and the words didn’t speak to Dreg. He couldn’t talk with books. Only Papere and Father were able to communicate with the pages. Dreg flipped through the book which was called la magie noire de dieu- God’s dark magic. It was an antiquated bible of religious mysticism and it was also a family journal that Papere cared for. It held legends and lore, dark prayers for the night, sacred recipes for sacrificial meat and cures for curses. It was the most important thing in the house, and Papere always had an eye or hand upon it.
Dreg stopped at a particular illustration that froze him in fear and curiosity. The illustration showed a baby with evil, feline eyes.
“That be the couchemal,” Papere said softly, startling Dreg.
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