Run to Ground

by Bark, Jasper

  Copyright 2016 Crystal Lake Publishing

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  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-945173-48-6

  Cover Design:

  Ben Baldwin—http://www.benbaldwin.co.uk

  Interior and eBook Layout:

  Lori Michelle—www.theauthorsalley.com

  Proofread by:

  Paula Limbaugh

  Guy Medley

  Hasse Chacon

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  OTHER TITLES BY JASPER BARK THROUGH CRYSTAL LAKE PUBLISHING

  Stuck On You eBook novella

  Stuck on You and Other Prime Cuts

  The Final Cut

  OTHER TITLES BY CRYSTAL LAKE PUBLISHING

  Blackwater Val by William Gorman

  Tribulations by Richard Thomas

  Devourer of Souls by Kevin Lucia

  Tales from The Lake Vol.1

  Tales from The Lake Vol.2

  Wind Chill by Patrick Rutigliano

  Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast by Jonathan Winn

  Flowers in a Dumpster by Mark Allan Gunnells

  The Dark at the End of the Tunnel by Taylor Grant

  Writers On Writing: An Author’s Guide

  Eden Underground: Poetry of Darkness by Alessandro Manzetti

  Modern Mythmakers: 35 Interviews with Horror & Science Fiction Writers and Filmmakers by Michael McCarty

  Or check out other Crystal Lake Publishing books for your Dark Fiction, Horror, Suspense, and Thriller needs, and join our newsletter while you’re there.

  To:

  Jim Mcleod, Kit Power and the whole crew at GingerNuts of Horror,

  Tim Cundle and everyone at Mass Movement Magazine

  Michael Wilson, Bob Pastorella, James Everington, Dan Howarth and the whole This Is Horror massive.

  Your continued support has meant the world to me.

  1:

  There was something wrong with the shed. Jim knew the moment he saw it.

  It was an innocuous little building that sat against the far cemetery wall. Jim kept his tools there, along with his work clothes, the ride-on mower and anything else he needed for groundskeeping.

  Yesterday, Cundle had requisitioned it for all his fancy equipment. Jim had moved most of the tools into the bungalow where he lived, on the outskirts of the cemetery. There were a few things he still needed to pick up, and he was curious to see what sort of mess Cundle had made of the place, with all his seismological apparatus.

  The first thing Jim noticed, as he drew nearer, was the amount of flies buzzing around the shed. They hovered in a cloud and the noise they made was like a distant engine.

  The door was open, creaking on its rusty hinges. There was a thick smell in the air that grew stronger the closer Jim got. It reminded Jim of his father’s overalls when he worked at the abattoir.

  Jim had no idea what Cundle was doing in the shed but it was time to put a stop to it. He didn’t care how high up he was at the university, or how much of an expert he was supposed to be, he was up to no good. Jim wasn’t going to let him get away with it, not in his shed.

  The cloying smell, and the drone of the flies, increased as Jim reached the door. He put his hand over his nose and mouth as he pulled the door open. A wave of flies swarmed out and Jim waved them away with his free hand.

  The dim bulb that hung from the ceiling had been shattered and it took Jim a while to see through the gloom inside the shed. When his eyes had adjusted to the dim light, his brain took a while to process what he was seeing.

  Every piece of equipment in the whole shed had been destroyed. The camp table Cundle brought had been knocked aside and bent out of shape. His laptops and seismological apparatus lay in pieces in the corners of the shed.

  A stray electric cable, with its torn wires exposed, lay crackling in a pool of water. Except the liquid was too thick to be water, and it was the wrong colour. It was dark crimson and covered the entire floor of the shed. Its surface was beginning to congeal as Jim waded into the shed looking for Cundle. It began to seep into Jim’s new trainers.

  That’s when Jim saw Cundle, and wished he hadn’t.

  Cundle lay face down with his knees pulled up underneath him. His back was arched. What remained of his head was thrown back and his posterior was in the air. His trousers were torn to shreds and Jim clearly saw the foot-thick column of compacted earth that appeared to have burst up through the boards of the floor and buried itself in Cundle’s impossibly distended rectum.

  Cundle’s buttocks were pushed so far apart to accommodate the shaft of soil, that the flesh around his anus was torn and ruptured. The earth had forced itself so hard and so deep into Cundle’s behind it seemed to have pushed every one of his internal organs out the opposite end.

  Cundle’s mouth had been thrown wide open by the expulsion. His jaw was not only dislocated but the bones had cracked and come apart entirely. The glistening pink tubes of Cundle’s lower colon protruded from his torn and ragged lips, spilling out into the lake of blood and bile in front of him. Jim saw what he thought was a liver and a pair of lungs among the coils of dripping innards and the crawling flies.

  This couldn’t be happening. Jim’s mind just couldn’t make sense of the scene before him. Who could have done this? How was such a thing possible?

  Only this morning Cundle had been fussing around the graves and bossing Jim about as though he was Cundle’s lackey. Looking down his nose at Jim the whole time. Now he was reduced to this.

  Jim felt a wave of revulsion, then a deep, terrible pity. He hadn’t liked Cundle while he was alive. He’d found the man to be pompous and condescending. Jim’s menial job left him beneath Cundle’s consideration. All the same, he’d been a human being, capable of thought and compassion. He didn’t deserve a fate like this.

  Jim wondered what Cundle had been thinking in the final moments, as the fear gripped him and the agony of the violation became unbearable? Did he call out for his mother, or his children, if he had any? Did he long for the touch of an old flame, or just pray it would end quickly so the pain would finally stop?

  It didn’t make any sense. How had the ground just risen up and punched a hole through the floor like that? How had it impaled Cundle and filled him so full of earth that every one of his internal organs had been expelled? Things had been getting weird around the cemetery lately, but this was off the scale.

  Jim felt his stomach turn over. Not from the sight of Cundle but from a new smell that invaded the shed. It was growing stronger by the second. He’d thought it was coming from Cundle, but it was too cloying and putrid. It reeked of decay and rotting matter, so rancid it was almost fertile. A shameful sort of fertility, like the mould that grows on dead things. The smell not only grew, it began to envelop him, as though it were alive—another presence in the shed with him.

  The floor shook and something beneath the wooden boards rumbled, as though it were moving through the earth directly below the shed. It might even be the thing that had killed Cundle.

  Jim’s breathing got heavier and his skin went cold all over, even as the sweat broke out on the back of his neck. He realised he was in great danger, n
ot just of death, but the same slow, hideous torture that Cundle would have suffered.

  He had to leave the shed right now and put as much distance possible between himself and whatever was under it. Jim turned on his heel and fled into the cemetery.

  2:

  He had to get to Sloman’s office. Sloman could call the police, or the fire brigade, or whomever it took to fix this. The cemetery was large, covering many acres, but Jim had worked there nearly six months now, so he knew the quickest route.

  As he ran down the asphalt path Jim felt the ground beside it rumble. Whatever had been underneath the shed was now chasing him. It was in the earth right beneath him. Something was terribly wrong, things like this shouldn’t happen. What had Cundle been doing in the shed to cause this to happen?

  Jim’s heart pumped and the blood sang in his ears, colours seemed brighter and his vision was sharper. Jim could pick out individual blades of grass and petals on a daisy.

  His cousin, a head-case who’d done two tours in Iraq, once told him this happened under fire. In fight or flight situations, all your senses went into overdrive and you knew things without realising how.

  Jim was experiencing that now. He couldn’t tell how, but he knew whatever was pursuing him wasn’t burrowing beneath the earth, it was becoming it. The ground was too smooth and undisturbed for it to be digging. Somehow it was possessing the soil, like a vengeful spirit, converting the earth to whatever it was, then releasing it as it moved alongside the path in pursuit of him.

  Jim’s pursuer overtook him and circled round in front, becoming the asphalt path in front of him. The asphalt up ahead rippled like it was suddenly gelatinous and the rumbling took on a harsher tone—the growl of a beast about to attack.

  Jim turned and ran back up the path, tearing away from whatever was blocking his way. He spotted another path, branching off on his right, it would take him a little off course but he could still circle back and get to Sloman’s office. His pursuer followed, keeping time with Jim, sometimes beside the path, sometimes behind him, rumbling loudly like a hound nipping at his heels.

  Jim came to a fork in the path and headed right to Sloman’s office. Whatever was pursuing him sped up and blocked his way again. Jim was forced to take the other fork. It’s playing with me, he thought. Pushing me down the route it wants me to take.

  Jim was panting and his lungs were beginning to burn. He wasn’t in the best shape and the running was taking its toll. Halfway down the new path he saw the grave. He recognised it instantly. The gravestone was unique; Jim knew every inch of it intimately. The moment he saw it he knew why the thing in the ground had guided him here.

  The ground in front of the gravestone had sunk into a deep depression, like a grassy pit. What made it look even odder was the way the turf all around it was folded in on itself. As though the grass was a balloon that had been deflated or the stretched and flabby skin of someone who’s undergone rapid weight loss. It had looked very different several days ago.

  3:

  A Week Earlier . . .

  Cundle rubbed his bald patch, and sighed. He was a short bloke with a neatly trimmed beard and glasses. His belly hung over the front of his jeans, stretching the trendy T-shirt he wore.

  “Any idea what’s causing it?” said Sloman, who was tall and thin with a long face and a liking for tweed jackets, which made him look older than he was.

  “I do have a theory,” said Cundle. “But it’s still hypothetical and not very conventional I’m afraid.”

  Sloman and Jim exchanged a look, Cundle had a habit of talking like he was giving a lecture. Cundle stepped forward and patted the hillock that had sprung up on the grave. The ground all around it was perfectly level, but the grave itself had developed a mini hill that was at least five feet high. Its shape was unusually bulbous and reminded Jim of the distended belly of a famine victim.

  The hill had been growing slowly, like a bulge in the earth, for the past three months, getting noticeably larger by the week. The grave was one of three affected in this way, all of them growing large swollen mounds. Jim was very well acquainted with each of the graves and had originally brought the matter to Sloman’s attention.

  Sloman hadn’t thought it important at first, but when the mounds began to swell up into little hills he’d gotten in touch with the cemetery’s trustees and they’d found some money to get an expert to investigate. That’s when Cundle had been called in. He was a professor at a nearby university.

  “I think the graves are being affected by the moon,” Cundle said. Jim rolled his eyes and Sloman shook his head to quiet him.

  “We know that the moon affects the tides,” Cundle continued. “But it’s my belief that it has a similar effect on the outer layers of the earth’s crust. Usually this effect takes place over such a long period of time we can hardly account for it, but occasionally there are anomalies such as this one. Phenomena that point to the extraordinary effect of the moon on the ground beneath our feet.”

  “Do you know how we can fix it then?” said Sloman. “Without taking a bulldozer to ‘em.”

  “Oh no, you can’t bulldoze these graves. This is a site of great scientific importance. I shall have to come back in a week’s time when the moon’s at its lowest ebb to do some more tests and then some weeks later when it’s at its fullest. All tests will have to be conducted after midnight, so I’ll need access to the cemetery then.”

  Sloman frowned, annoyed that Cundle wanted to study the problem, not fix it. “Jim’ll let you in,” he said. “He lives on the grounds and he’s often up and prowling around at night. Isn’t that right, Jim?”

  Jim blushed at this. He put his hand in his pocket and adjusted his boxer shorts. A few crumbs of soil fell out and he shook them from his trouser leg without the others noticing.

  4:

  The grave had fallen in that morning, before Cundle arrived with his fancy equipment. He looked crestfallen when Jim showed him. He had no explanation for the dramatic collapse of the hillock, and didn’t understand why it had sunk in on itself in a matter of hours.

  Cundle acted as though his precious theory had collapsed along with the grave. He seemed to take comfort in the fact that there had been localised tremors in the area just before the collapse.

  As Jim tore past the grave now, he noticed something new. At its foot was a long vertical slit in the earth, almost a gash, where the turf had been pulled apart. In the waning light of the early evening, he could just make out that the gash opened onto a small tunnel.

  It took ten minutes to get to Sloman’s office from the grave. Jim’s legs shook, he knew he couldn’t keep up the pace. He wondered for a minute if he shouldn’t just lie down on the grave and get it over with. Then he thought of Cundle and what had been done to him and the fear of that spurred him on. Now that Jim had seen the grave, whatever was chasing him seemed content to hover two steps behind him. If he slowed to a walk, it would move closer and worry him, like a sheepdog herding a stray.

  Sloman’s office was by the main gates, a single storey building with a gabled roof that had once been the cemetery keeper’s cottage. Now it served as a visitor’s centre and workplace for Sloman. The largest room contained a little display about the history of the cemetery and a few shelves with ‘local interest’ books. In the back was Sloman’s office, a small kitchen and a toilet.

  It was usually locked at this hour. Jim fumbled the keys from his pocket as he jogged up. He noticed the main gates were chained and padlocked. Jim hadn’t seen the big padlock before and he had no key for it. He had no idea who’d done it, but it changed all his plans. He’d hoped to get the hell out of the cemetery the minute he’d alerted Sloman. Now he’d have to make his way out of one of the side entrances. That meant facing whatever was out there again.

  Jim’s heart sank the minute he entered the largest room. Something was obviously not right. For a start there was the smell again. It was fainter, but it was definitely there, heavy with rot and a sickening ripeness.<
br />
  The strip lights in the main room were flickering, but the office out back was in shadow. Jim had expected to hear Sloman at work, typing on his laptop or chatting on the phone. Instead the whole place was dead silent, too silent. The door to the office was slightly ajar. Jim couldn’t see beyond it.

  He felt like he was in a horror movie. He realised this was the moment when the audience would scream for him to get the hell out, to turn around, run or do anything other than go in that back office. It was one of the reasons he couldn’t watch horror movies. He couldn’t believe how stupid most of the characters were.

  Yet here he was walking towards the office at the back like there was a horrible inevitability to it, as though he had no other choice but to do this. In real life, he thought, sometimes you don’t.

  Jim pushed open the door and stepped into the office. He let out a sob when he saw Sloman. He sounded like a little school girl. Suddenly he felt very detached from his body, as though he were far away from that office, watching it all from a safe distance.

  He hadn’t liked Cundle very much, but Sloman was a different matter. Sloman was a decent guy and he’d been good to Jim.

  He shook his head and blinked the tears out of his eyes. He couldn’t take in what had happened to Sloman, his brain couldn’t process it. It was like trying to decipher an unknown language or work out an entirely new branch of mathematics, wholly beyond his comprehension.

  Every bit of furniture was shattered. Sloman’s laptop, his cable router and his radio lay in tiny pieces on the ground. The walls, floor and ceiling ran with blood and viscera. Thick, viscose droplets fell all about Jim.

  The bones from Sloman’s disassembled body were scattered around the room in strange geometric arrangements. Bits of cartilage and tendon still stuck to some. Jim couldn’t grasp anymore than that, his mind wouldn’t let him.

  There was a slight tremor in the ground, causing all of Sloman’s bones to rattle. The same fetid odour rose in the office like a sudden increase in temperature. Jim started to back out when his foot kicked something that skittered out of the doorway. He turned to look and saw it was Sloman’s hand, the only part of his body to remain intact. It had been severed at the wrist but Jim could still see his wedding ring.