Meredith again: Do you still love her? You can be honest with me, Martin.
And Martin: I care about her, but I don’t love her anymore. I can’t after what she put me through. I need something real, something stable. I need you.
Karen pressed the power button, leaned back against the rocky wall, and began to cry. Her sobs were long and loud, pulled up from the deepest recesses of her soul, beginning in hoarse, guttural fits and rising into quick animal shrieks. A coyote returned her cry, its ghostly howl echoing from somewhere below the ridge.
She waited there until morning, sobbing in dry uncontrollable fits until the heat of the rising sun became unbearable. Her throat was swollen from dehydration, and her muscles ached as she climbed to her feet. A pit opened in her stomach and growled with disapproval.
Martin was near, but the thought of facing him terrified her.
Get on with it, possum. He broke your heart after all, but that ain’t no reason to lay down and die.
No, it wasn’t. Karen pushed away from the rock wall, stepping out of the shadow of the ridge and continued her ascent toward the summit.
Blondie hadn’t lied: the altar was at the flattened top of the butte, erected some twenty feet from the edge. A series of stones circled a dusty old refrigerator positioned to serve as a bed of sacrifice. Martin lay sprawled across its surface, his arms and legs tied at uncomfortable angles over the edges, each extremity pointed outward like a perverted form of the Vitruvian man.
At another time, Karen might have rushed to the side of her husband, showering him with kisses, working to untie his restraints, but not this morning. Not now. Not after shedding her humanity and spilling blood in his name. His heart belonged to another now.
Vultures circled overhead, casting brief shadows that flickered over her unconscious husband. Soon they would descend when he was not quite dead, ready to pluck the softer meats from his skull and relishing their sweet flavor. A part of Karen wanted to watch that happen, but she was not yet so removed from herself as to allow such inaction. No, she needed to say goodbye to Martin once and for all.
He stirred as she approached. His lips were chapped and his forehead blistering from sunburn. A puddle of blood had dried beneath his wounded foot, the loafer forever stained a rich shade of scarlet.
“Martin?”
He turned his head, groaning as the muscles popped in protest. He squinted through sun-blasted eyes. “Karen? That you, honey?”
Honey. She let the word roll off her like a bead of sweat, taking a seat at the foot of the hollow refrigerator. A soft breeze lifted up around them, stirring sand among the stones. She closed her eyes, relishing the air on her burned shoulders.
“Karen, you’ve got to get me out of here. Untie me so—” He strained to get a look at her. “My God, honey, you’re covered in blood. What the hell happened? What—”
“When I was young,” she began, “Daddy used to tell me the story about the binding of Isaac by his father Abraham. See, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son at the top of a mountain. He loved his son, but he loved and feared God even more. But an angel intervened, Martin. An angel intervened and saved Isaac from his father’s blade. And you know what Abraham did?” She waited, watching the vultures circle overhead. Martin was too weak, too awestruck to respond, and she went on when he didn’t answer. “He sacrificed a ram instead, because he still owed God something for His mercy.”
“Karen, this isn’t funny,” he croaked. “Untie me so we can get the fuck out of here!”
She turned and glared over her shoulder. He froze at the sight of her. Blood was smeared down her forehead and cheeks, dried and caked in the cracks of her skin like red powder makeup, and her hair was matted to her face.
“Do you think an angel will intervene, Martin? Do you think God will forgive your adultery?” She lifted the hatchet and traced one bloody edge along the side of Martin’s leg. “I’m feeling a bit like Abraham right now, and there’s not a ram in sight.”
Martin’s cell phone rang. Karen looked at the device vibrating in her hand and smirked. Dr. Meredith Tanner’s name lit up the screen, along with a picture of her dark brown curls and bubbly baby cheeks. She glared at her husband and answered the call.
“Hello, Dr. Tanner. My husband is right here and you can talk to him for as long as you want. Until the battery dies, anyway. He said your lips were like heaven and I find that fitting because you’re his angel today.” Karen put the phone on speaker and placed it beside her husband. Meredith’s frantic voice filled the air.
“Martin? Martin? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
“Karen, I’m sorry,” Martin croaked. Tears streamed down the side of his face. “Just let me go and we can sort this out. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was going to tell you, I swear.”
Karen turned back toward the horizon, watching the morning sun begin its arc across the sky.
“I love you, Martin, but you’re in God’s hands now. Maybe your angel will save you.”
She turned back toward the trail, kicking up sand as she plodded down the path, her husband’s scratchy shrieks and Meredith Tanner’s distorted cellular cries a form of intermingling poetry all their own.
-6-
Karen wandered back to the encampment and dug through pockets of the dead. Ezra had the keys, and she took them back to the red pickup. A sorrowful, twangy tune filled her ears as she started the pickup. She smiled.
Hank Williams. Daddy’s favorite.
She drove until the truck ran out of gas just outside of Prescott, and rather than stew in her own thoughts she decided she would walk until someone found her or until her mind baked in her skull. Either way was fine with her.
Parched, her skin burning from the late morning sun, Karen walked down that empty highway, her favorite Sunday dress stained with the blood of the damned. Squinting upward to the sun, her daddy spoke up once more in her head:
Remember what I used to ask you when you were little? What would you do when you met your mountain?
Karen Singleton cracked a dry smile as she walked along the desert and away from sanity.
“I’ll climb over it if I have to, Daddy.” Her words were empty, lifeless, but her heart smoldered with a quiet rage that had only begun to burn. “I’ll climb over it if I have to.”
END
A Church in the
Middle of Nowhere
by Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason
Michelle Garza lives in Arizona with her husband and two sons. She has been writing alongside her twin sister since they were little girls. She loves all things horror and heavy metal. She has a project in the works that is going to be published by Damnation books.
Melissa Lason is from Mesa, Az. She has been married to her husband for twelve years and recently had a beautiful baby girl. She loves horror, sci-fi and fantasy. She is one half of a writing team alongside her twin sister. She is excited to have a novella that is set to be published by Damnation books.
The sun seemed unusually bright above her, even for Arizona. Luckily for her it was only mid-April and the summer heat had yet to take hold in the desert. The highway looked like a black river of dried asphalt with the customary adornment of broken yellow lines. A highway like any other she had seen and yet it felt foreign to her all the same.
She guessed that she had fallen asleep in that old man’s front seat and must’ve worn out her welcome for the last thing she could recall was watching the moon through the windshield of that old car. It was riding high in a clear desert sky with its light falling softly on the miles of barren land below. She was now walking along the roadside in broad daylight wondering where she was. She felt her pockets for fear that she had been rolled, but found all of her belongings in place. She swung the lightweight pack from her shoulder and inspected its contents to find all was there.
“Must’ve blacked out again.” She spoke her thoughts out loud. She had a habit of doing that, imbibing a little too much of the flask in her bag or sw
allowing a few too many of the assortment of pills that had become her only companions on the road and losing a few hours - a few days.
There wasn’t any sign of life around, so she continued on her present course in hopes of spotting an oncoming vehicle that she could thumb down… maybe catch a ride up north and spend the summer there amongst the Ponderosa pine trees. Her mother had often complained about her nomadic lifestyle, but to Celia it was the ultimate freedom, living off the grid, drifting around like a feather on the breeze.
She was lost in an imaginary argument with the old woman whose repetitive criticism about hiking around in the middle of nowhere and accepting rides from strangers was met with Celia’s repetitive answer, the same she had flung at her mother since she was seventeen and started her roaming. “You have never lived, only existed. You don’t know what it is to experience anything because you hide in your house afraid of everything. That’s not for me!”
The old woman couldn’t answer her now or ever again, seeing how she had been dead for three years, but in Celia’s moments of self-doubt she chose to lash out at the memory of her mother instead of herself. She would always squeeze the side pocket of her back pack and locate the tiny jewelry box that her mother had given her as a gift and let the old woman have it.
She stood for a moment and looked about. The deserts on the roadsides were akin to those of higher elevations and she wondered how far the old man had taken her before deciding to ditch her unconscious on the roadside. She was irritated, yet relieved she hadn’t woken up to find him groping her. Her concentration was broken by a rumbling in the distance and she thought a thunderhead may be building up, so she continued her wandering. She could see a thicket of mesquite trees a ways on up the road and thought she may rest there. It would be the only reprieve from the rain if it came.
She made it to her only oasis as the scent of rain filled her nose, carrying with it the smell of wet creosote bushes, and she knew the storm would be on her soon. She leaned her back against the rough bark of a mesquite tree and instantly shot from her seat. She swatted at her back that was now burning and irritated, her panic growing until she was certain that no scorpions had crawled down her shirt. She contorted her head as far as it would turn on her neck and inspected what appeared to be a crescent shaped cut. The humidity was building with the approaching storm and her sweat had gotten into the wound.
Celia sighed heavily, relieved that she wouldn’t need to worry about seeking medical attention on top of her present set of needs, consisting of finding another soul that could either offer her shelter for the night or a ride to a place that could provide it. Her thoughts were broken by the sound of music in the distance and she grinned, hoping her troubles had all been resolved.
Beyond the thicket of mesquite trees, there was a dirt road that bisected the main highway and she followed it in hopes of finding some folks. On down the road a ways, she could see a wooden building and she quickened her pace. A light spattering of rain fell down to speckle the dirt road and the lonely girl that walked it. She drew near and realized that the building was a dilapidated church and she paused, looking down at her cut-off jean shorts, tank top and combat boots, worried that the church-going types may not receive her well, but she pushed that concern aside.
The shape of the building, its unsteadily-leaning steeple and dust-covered windows would have caused her to believe it was abandoned if it weren’t for the music. Another thought blossomed in her mind. Perhaps it was a flop house for other drifters. The prospects of possibly finding some other free spirits sent her quickly forward, hoping they were in a sharing mood and she could replenish her stock of booze and pills. Her confusion and rising apprehension over feeling lost for the first time in years was cast aside and she grinned as she stepped foot on the first rickety step that led up to the church door.
The music came from a church organ, yet instead of inspiring the Holy Spirit within her, it made her think of those bands from the sixties and seventies and made her hope the inhabitants of the church also doled out hallucinogens. Her heavy boots bowed the wooden steps as she ascended them slowly. As she reached the door, the music died so suddenly she flinched at the still silence that engulfed her. There wasn’t a bird in the sky, not an insect that came to inspect the perspiration that was now gathering in her underarms. The measly storm had petered out and left only its humidity as a reminder that it had rolled through at all.
A second steady rumble behind her caused her to pause, for it wasn’t the sound of a storm but that of an engine, and it roused such a sense of déjà vu that her body reacted before her brain could make sense of sudden terror that sent her sprinting around the side of the church in the middle of nowhere. She watched from her hiding spot as the shining front end of a black car came into view and her vision blurred. A swooning feeling came over her and the threads of a nightmare began weaving together in her mind. Her stomach knotted as if she had downed a bottle of rot gut whiskey. Her memory was restored and she now recalled most of the happenings of the night before.
A black highway. A black car stopping beside her as she swallowed a handful of downers. The old man with a yellow toothed grin. That old car’s engine roaring as if it had been completely bored out. Her apprehension steadily growing as he pressed the pedal to the floor, and the effect of her narcotic dinner taking hold of her. She could see the moon through the windshield and felt for the door handle. She asked kindly if she could be let out and when he turned, his eyes met hers and her stomach seized, for all he did was smile and continue to push that old car to its limits.
There was something not right in his eyes. They were devoid of humanity and she knew he wasn’t as harmless as his age let on. He laughed and she knew that he was aware of the effect he’d had on her. There was a rancid panting on the back of her neck but she dared not turn around. She pushed at the door and felt the warm desert wind on her face and a sharp pain in her back.
She could recall no more, but she knew that this man was someone to be feared and avoided at all costs. She crouched lower and continued to watch his approach. The car came to a stop and the driver’s side door was flung open as he stepped into the sunlight.
Celia could see him better now. He had white hair, tanned skin and a sweat-stained button-down white shirt. He busied himself with opening the trunk of his car and she looked about frantically for a better place to hide, but all that stretched out for miles was lonesome desert. She wished now she hadn’t left the thicket of mesquite but she would never make it back there. He and that black car stood between her and the withering branches of those trees.
She didn’t wish to find herself lost in the expanses of the desert behind her either. She had always considered herself street-wise, yet she was clueless as to the ways of wilderness survival, and upon calculating her chances of making it out of those barren lands, she knew they were extremely close to nil. She looked back to see him unloading a heavy tool box and hauling it up to the steps before the church but she lost sight of him. Behind him, from the backseat of the car, came bounding a hound the likes of which she’d never seen. As it raised its massive snout to sniff the air, her stomach knotted. The beast was the size of grown man, a hide that was black as pitch and steady streams of thick slobber dripped from its dangling lips. A low growl started in its belly and sprung forth in a drawn out baying as it tilted its head back and leapt forward.
Scrambling from her hiding spot she fled, cursing her limbs that seemed atrophied with fear. A waking nightmare came bearing down on her with ungodly speed, the sound of the hound’s paws tearing the dusty earth beneath it was second only to the pounding of her pulse in her ears. It closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds and, as it leapt, she was flooded with defeat. She went down under its weight, the breath knocked from her instantly. The sensation of its jaws snapping at her flesh elicited cries from her dusty throat that she knew would fall on deaf ears. She attempted to cover the back of her neck with her hands only to provoke the monst
rous hound who reacted by latching onto her wrist and shaking her madly.
She felt her petite body being tossed about without the slightest of exertion. She could hear the snapping of bones and, as her adrenaline waned, the agony of her injuries sank in. A short whistle halted the loyal dog and it released her there in the dirt. The sun above her was blotted out by the man’s silhouette and, before she lost consciousness, she looked up to see him grinning down at her with his mouth of decaying teeth.
* * *
Celia could taste blood and dirt on her tongue as she opened her eyes. She felt drowsy and disoriented. Her heartbeat was slow and heavy and her mind fixated on it, for a moment worrying that it would stop completely. The hot panting of the hound was at her cheek yet she didn’t dare make eye contact with it. Mixed with its rancid exhalation was a smell of rot. As her mind fought to grasp the situation, her eyes began to focus and she could see the old man standing over her. Her gaze went beyond his grinning face to the dilapidated ceiling of the broken down church. The beams were dry rotted and splitting and nailed to those beams were countless driver’s licenses, military I.D. cards and photographs that were yellowed with time and covered in dust. “Sixty eight, why don’t you play us a tune to mark this special occasion?” he spoke. The church organ began to blare, startling her back to full consciousness. She lay upon a splintering wooden altar table. Out amongst the pews were two other women and one more behind the organ. The three of them wore heavy shackles and chains about their ankles, they were filthy and haggard and their eyes held a feral glare. One of them stood and lumbered passed where she lay, hobbling as she dragged her chain behind her. The other woman’s gnarled hands moved over the organ and an off-key rendition of the wedding march played.
Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction Page 69
