Storberry

by Dan Padavona

  Dark Vanishings: Book 1 is the first episode of the serialized, ground-breaking post-apocalyptic horror series from Dan Padavona.

  Ready to be scared? DOWNLOAD DARK VANISHINGS and turn the lights to low.

  Dark Vanishings

  Read on for an excerpt

  From

  Dark Vanishings: Episode One

  “[Dark Vanishings] will be leaving its serialized footprint all over the subgenre, making Padavona a well-known name in post-apocalyptic horror.” - Horror Novel Reviews

  In the gold-and-flaxen late afternoon sun, cumulus clouds threw cottony shadows against the land, and the park unwound in a lord’s ransom of jade and ruby.

  Where am I?

  Tori awakened to the thick scent of cut grass. Bleary-eyed, she raised herself up onto her elbows and examined her surroundings. Her mountain bike dozed on its side like a sleeping lion. Fifty yards ahead was a blacktop parking lot dotted by three cars. Behind her bicycle, the grass tunneled down between bordering elm rows and sprawling blackberry bushes embellished with white flowers.

  She remembered biking to the park after lunch. But had she stopped to rest? She didn’t recall.

  She did remember promising her mother to be home by three so she could shower and make it to the hairdresser by five. Ted Harrison was picking her up at seven for dinner before the high school prom, which gave her just enough time after her hair appointment to slip into her dress and—

  I am so freaking late. Mom is going to kill me.

  Her red, shoulder-length locks, ablaze in the late day sunshine, were littered with bits of grass and leaves. She thought of Rip Van Winkle and a beard which grew for years and years while life passed him by. How could she have slept for four hours in the town park? Hadn’t the park been crowded with picnickers and fishing boats when she had biked in after lunch?

  Within the desolation of the park, she felt strangely exposed.

  What if Jacob had come for me while I was asleep?

  Jacob Mann, the boy from third period study hall who stared at her daily with a twisted grin that never touched his slate-gray eyes. Jacob Mann, who she had seen last summer, standing among bed sheets hung to dry in her backyard, watching her through her bedroom window. Jacob Mann, who was permanently expelled for threatening Mr. Gilder, the school guidance counselor, with a switchblade.

  Last December she had volunteered to distribute food at the Red Oak homeless shelter, and he had been there, standing across the street among leafless deciduous trees, winter cloak billowing like a vampire’s cape, his dead stare burning holes in her.

  And last month, when the ground had thawed and the community garden had become ready for planting, she had looked up from her trowel, over the rows of leafy greens, to see him watching her from the sidewalk. Crow-black hair matted to his forehead. Those lifeless eyes. That grin: at-once, vacant and baleful.

  Feeling eyes upon her, she sprang to her feet. The copse of elms bordering the decline swayed to the lake breeze, and as dappled light danced amid the branches, she thought she saw a pallid face watching her from the trees.

  Jacob?

  Her heart thundering, she turned her head toward the bike. If Jacob burst from the trees, would she be able to pedal her way to the parking lot before he cut her off?

  When she turned back, the face was gone. Shadows ran deep within the copse, as though night was pooled within, waiting for the sun to depart. But there was no deranged stalker watching her, and she began to feel a little embarrassed for letting her imagination get the best of her.

  Feeling along the back pocket of her cutoff jean shorts, she pulled out her phone and checked the time.

  4:51 p.m.

  She still had time to make the hair appointment.

  As she ran to her bike, her shadow followed her, stretching as though it was reflected in a fun house mirror. Clutching the phone, she double-clicked her mother’s smiling face. After a burst of dial tones, the phone began to ring. And ring. No answer. Stuffing the phone back into her pocket, she pedaled across the bumpy grass and hopped the bike onto the blacktop, picking up speed.

  She whipped past a black Volvo—unoccupied—and accelerated across the lot, catching a glimpse of an empty red Honda Civic. The lot branched out to a winding, tree-lined park access road. She leaned to the left, taking a blind turn without checking first for traffic. Her heart pounded, and she expected to hear a car horn blare before the metal grille crushed her from the side. But the road was empty of traffic, and there was only the leafy-green smell of summer’s approach on the air as she rushed toward the town center.

  Below the shoulder-less two-lane, the land dropped away from a rocky cliff to a gurgling brook thirty feet below. The rear tire caught the edge of the pavement, and as the bicycle wobbled, she leaned hard to the left, righting her balance.

  Two minutes later she left the access road behind and coasted into Red Oak proper, past the town courthouse and village green. Catching her breath, she pedaled harder.

  4:55 p.m.

  As Tori veered north onto Main Street, the modest three blocks of the town center came into view. She passed the police station on her right. Set off to her left was Bob and Mary’s 24-hour diner, the gray, aluminum-sided rectangle flying past in an indistinct blur as her legs pumped faster. Beyond the diner, a half-mile west, meandered the sparkling waters of Cayuga Lake.

  A landscaped island divided Main Street with parking spaces aligned diagonally against the island and along the sides of the street. Though the spaces were choked with vehicles, Tori never saw their red brake lights flare to life. In fact, there didn’t seem to be a single car moving along the street.

  At the center of downtown, on Main Street’s east side, stood Barbara’s Boutique—a red, brick-faced square squashed between a florist and the Red Oak Cafe. Squeezing the brakes, she wiggled the bike between two SUV’s and hopped the curb onto the empty sidewalk.

  That was the moment when she started to worry. Where is everyone? Downtown was resplendent with potted flowers and cardinal splashes of low-angle sunshine. On such a warm Saturday in the upstate New York village, the street should have been busy with pre-Memorial Day shoppers and people going out for an early dinner. But there wasn’t anyone to be seen despite the rows and rows of cars up and down Main Street. She half-suspected that everyone was hidden inside the shops, waiting to jump out in unison and yell Surprise! as if part of a “Twilight Zone”-inspired version of “Candid Camera.”

  Leaning the bike against a maple tree which spread a blanket of shade across the sidewalk, Tori ran up the steps. Her heart sank at the sight of the empty boutique. The boutique never closed its doors early on prom night, yet the interior was vacant.

  Tori grasped the door handle and pulled, expecting to find the boutique locked. She was surprised when the door opened and the chill of air conditioning spilled down her legs.

  Black leather swivel chairs were aligned along the mirrored walls. As she stepped past the cash register into the heart of the boutique, she had the impression of walking through a graveyard. Her reflection paced her on both sides of the elongated room, following her like twin phantoms.

  “Hello?”

  Her voice reverberated hollow against the walls.

  “Mrs. Donnelly? It’s Tori Daniels. I have a five o’clock appointment?”

  Barbara Donnelly did not answer because Barbara Donnelly was not there. Yet the lights were on, the air conditioner was rattling through the ceiling vents, and the front door was unlocked. Anybody could have walked through the doors and cracked open the cash register.

  “She probably just stepped out for a moment. Maybe I should wait for a few minutes,” Tori said to herself. She sat upon one of the swivel chairs at the back of the store, idly spinning back and forth as her doppelgangers watched from the mirrors. The cool air felt nice on her skin.

  Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she dialed her mother again. The phone went on ringing.

  “I know you’re there, Mom. Pic
k up. Please.”

  Apparently Cheryl Daniels lay hunkered down with the rest of the townsfolk, playing their little game of hide-and-go-seek on Tori. She nervously scrolled through her messages and noticed no one had written her for several hours. Several text messages had arrived during lunch hour, the last a 12:30 p.m. note from Jana Davies, suggesting that Tori and Ted meet up with Jana and her boyfriend after dinner. Since then, nothing. No missed calls. No frantic voice mails from her mother wondering where Tori was.

  Is the network down?

  The cooling system whispered white noise. Beyond the front door, shadows grew longer along Main Street, spilling off cars and trees like black ink.

  She glanced at a set of black double doors at the back of the store. The supply room. It occurred to her that anyone could be waiting behind those doors, watching her through the slit. She felt her skin prickle.

  “Mrs. Donnelly? Are you back there?”

  The double doors watched her. The cooling system clanged and bucked as though something was stuck in the pipes. Suddenly the elongated store felt like a crypt, the swivel chairs like torture devices in which scissors sliced and curling irons burned. Tori pushed herself up from the chair.

  The knobs to the double doors rattled behind her. Surely her imagination was playing tricks on her and she actually heard the pipes expanding and contracting, as the air conditioner pumped polar air against the afternoon heat. Tori walked straight toward the front doors. Between the swivel chairs. Past the combs and brushes set in jars of blue liquid like preserved body parts. She didn’t dare look back. Because if she did, those black doors would creak open, and something unspeakable would stalk out of the darkness, running its claws along the backs of the swivel chairs as its maw opened to reveal rows of blood-soaked fangs.

  No matter how fast she walked, the exit door never seemed to draw closer, as though she were walking on a treadmill. The pipes shook harder. Neglected hinges creaked behind her—the sound of the black doors inching open.

  Tori ran for the front door, pulling when she should have pushed. The impact rattled the plate glass, resounding as though a kettle drum had been struck. In her panic, she thought she was locked inside the boutique. Her head cleared. She pushed through the front door and ran for the mountain bike.

  The warm air felt stifling after the chill of the boutique. She threw her leg over the bike seat and pumped the pedals, racing northward past empty vehicles neatly aligned along Main Street. The streets were devoid of people. Her hair appointment and the prom long forgotten, she pedaled toward her house. As the hour passed six o’clock, Tori did not yet feel her world tearing apart at the seams. But she would. Soon.

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  Author's Note

  Writing a novel is a journey which is often full of solitude, but never traveled alone. I would like to thank my wife Teresa Padavona, and our two wonderful children Joe, and Julia Padavona, for supporting me on this journey. You gave me the courage to see this through to its conclusion, and without you this would not have been possible.

  To my editor, Jack Musci, I owe more thanks than I can possibly give. Thank you for the advice and tips which made Storberry possible, as well as for helping me track down those nasty typos, misspellings, wrong words, indefinite pronouns, and other assorted gremlins. There are 110,000 words in this novel, so surely a few slipped through the cracks. But without them the world would never have Gremlins 2.

  Although some of the locations surrounding Storberry are actual places, Storberry itself is wholly of the author's imagination. Any resemblance between the people in this book and people in the real world is purely coincidental and unintended.