A Haunting of Horrors, Volume 2: A Twenty-Book eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Brian Hodge

  And he realized his Dave was gone. Probably washed away in the rock and dirt, covered up and crushed like an aluminum oil can.

  On the surface, he found the shovels and the Daves digging at the mountain, furiously. As he rose out of the ground like a metal mole, the Daves cheered and the engines revved their motors.

  He lifted his shovel high.

  But it was a short lived triumph.

  He saw that the mountain had come down in such a way that it had covered Maudie and Butch.

  Glen had survived it all. His shovel had been knocked off and one of his treads was slightly dislodged, but already a huge wrecker had come for him and he was being hooked up even as Bill looked.

  As Bill watched the wrecker take Glen away, he realized he didn’t feel so good and his vision was blurry. There was dirt inside of his busted right head lamp, and it was partially covering his line of vision. Inside, way down deep, he felt as if a bag of bolts and gears had been randomly mixed and tossed into a paint shaker. When he moved, he squeaked and clanked and he hurt near the right hinge of his shovel like a Dave had been at him with a welding torch.

  Bill hunkered down on his treads and tore at the mountain. Tried to dig where he had last seen Maudie, but he couldn’t be sure she was there. Maybe, like him, she had been washed down into a soft part of the ground. He dug and he dug, and finally he saw metal. He revved his engine and other shovels came. They dug and dug and pretty soon they saw the shiny gold metal of the beautiful Maudie, less beautiful now. Dented and scratched gray in strips, her shovel dangling by one bolt.

  Bill hooked his shovel around her and pulled her out. And as he did, he saw behind her was a roof of rocks supported by a wall of rock slabs, and in there, crushed down, but alive (he could see the headlights blinking) was Butch. When Maudie came out, the dirt went down. Butch went out of sight.

  Bill sighed air through his manifold.

  Maybe he was dead. The bastard.

  The shovels were slowing down behind him. They had Maudie out, and no one was working that hard for Butch, and Bill could understand that….

  But, damn it, Butch was a steam shovel. He was a worker. And he had been caught in the storm of the mountainfall while on the job. And though Bill thought it might be nice to just let the mountain crush him, he just couldn’t do it. That wasn’t the way it was in the manual. Machines helped machines. Machines helped the Daves.

  Bill went at it again, digging, digging, and pretty soon the other shovels were helping, and the dirt began to move.

  When it was clear enough, they could see Butch in there. He was much shorter than before, his metal rippled in the center, and above him, supported on two wobbly slabs of rock, was a much bigger slab of rock. It looked as if it were large enough to build a subdivision on.

  Bill moved in close and tried to pull Butch out, but it was like trying to work a greasy bolt out of an engine with a coat hanger tipped with chewing gum. Touch and go.

  Butch was moaning with pain as the tugging tore at his metal.

  “I’ve lost my crankshaft,” he said. “And my oil pan’s loose. I can feel it sliding around in side.”

  “Don’t move,” Bill said. He dug a space close to the edge of the mountain, and within a short time he found he could scrunch in there. One tread was hanging halfway over the edge, and he could hear rock tumbling down the side of the mountain, and feel it sliding out from under his treads. He felt himself slipping a little. For a moment, the old dream came back, flashed before his inner head lamps, and he was falling, and he was scared.

  He shook it off.

  He looked out and he saw Maudie. She was banged up, but she was going to be okay. Nothing a few tools, a blow torch and paint couldn’t fix. She looked at him and her lights came on and her bumper parted in a smile, showing that pretty gear work inside, slightly dusty. It gave him strength. He scrunched back farther. Being smaller, he could fit right in beside Butch.

  “What in the world will you be doing, my boy?”

  It was old Zoob. He had slid up close to the opening. The old steam shovel bent down on its creaky treads and eyed Bill with his head lamps.

  “Why are you in there, my boy? Let the rock crush this one, the big hunk of scrap metal.”

  “He was on the job,” Bill said. “He’s one of us.”

  “I think he’s not worth it at all, that is what I think.”

  “You may be right,” Bill said.

  “Hey,” Butch said. “I’m right here.”

  Bill brought his shovel up and touched the great slab above him. He hunkered down on his treads and flexed his metal, and lifted with the shovel.

  And the great rock moved.

  Shovel God in Heaven, and praise Jayzus, but Bill felt strong. He pushed. And he pushed with his shovel, and he felt the bolts that hinged it go tight as a pair of vice grips, but he pushed up anyway.

  And that rock moved some more.

  “Pull… him… out,” Bill said.

  They came forward, two big steam shovels, and they reached in and got hold of Butch, started pulling.

  Bill, looking at Maudie, suddenly felt weak. He could feel his hydraulic fluid starting to eek out, could hear it hissing as it erupted through the tubes.

  “Oh, shit,” Bill said.

  Then there was pain.

  Sharp. Quick.

  And he was flying along through darkness, and ahead of him was a great tunnel lit by a white light. He could see himself flying along, treads working, but touching nothing, and a flock of birds and scampering squirrels and insects and fish and snakes and possums and raccoons and bears, and all manner of wild life, was rushing along beside him, as well as a flying waffle iron.

  And he felt good and happy and fulfilled.

  He rushed faster and the light grew brighter, and the animals and insects were sucked forward as if by a vacuum cleaner, and then, just as he was about to go into the brightest and warmest part of the light—

  He saw Gabe.

  Gabe was blocking his path.

  Gabe rammed up against him.

  “Gohtdamnit, boy. Not yet. Id’s not yer time just now. Ain’t far off. But not yet. Got to finish whad yer doin’, son.”

  There was a rush of wind and light as Bill fled back along the tunnel and the light went dark. Then he was standing there, with that great slab of rock on his shovel, and he saw Maudie, looking at him, and that look in her eye was worth all the agony in his shovel, worth the tubes he was splitting, the fluids he was draining.

  The shovels tugged at Butch, and, slowly, he came free.

  Bill couldn’t see him now. Couldn’t see much of anything. Maudie and Zoob, the other shovels, they were a blur.

  “Is… he… out?” Bill asked.

  “He is,” Maudie said.

  “I love you, Maudie,” Bill said.

  “And I love you. Oh, no, Bill. Hold on. We’ll prop it up and pull you out.”

  “Too late. I’m… a hero… aren’t I?”

  “You are,” Maudie said. “Oh, no, Bill. Hold on.”

  “You’ll always remember me?”

  Oil slipped from between the edges of her head lamps, rolled down her metal face, over her rubber mouth, as she said, “I will.”

  “So will I,” said Butch. “You ain’t no Tinker Toy, after all. You a better man than me. Than anyone I know.”

  “Nice knowing you some, kid,” said Zoob.

  And the great slab of rock came down.

  It was like an explosion when it hit. Bill felt himself being crushed, washed sideways over the side of the cliff. For a moment he felt the old fear, and it was a fear worth having now, for, in fact, he was falling.

  But he didn’t keep the fear. Didn’t hold onto it.

  He was a goner. He knew it. But he was a hero too. And as he fell, he looked up, saw the shadow of the great rock slab falling after him. He chuckled deep inside his gears, yelled, “Geronimo!”

  Then he hit the ground. His shovel, which was hanging by a strand of metal, ca
me completely off and spun away. His head lamps went out. There was darkness.

  Along with the sound of the great rock falling, a sound like wind through what was left of the world’s pines.

  “One, one thousand,” Bill said, counting the fall of the rock. “Two, one thousand.”

  Of course, he never heard it when it struck, but—

  —down that long, black tunnel he went again, and it gave up its blackness to a warm light, and there in the light, fleeing along with him, were more birds and insects and snakes and all manner of wildlife whose homes he had destroyed, and that damn waffle iron, whose soul had been caught up inside him, and he thought, Shit, that wasn’t good of me, doing that to the birds and the squirrels and such, but here I go anyway, because this must be heaven, it feels so good, so bright and warm, and he could see Gabe up ahead, beckoning him forward with his shovel.

  Then he realized Gabe was whole again. He hadn’t thought about that before. In fact, Bill thought, I’m whole again. Bright and shiny with paint blue as the sky.

  Now Gabe was beside him. They flowed forward.

  Gabe said, “Ya know, stuff I told ya aboud all dem Gohtdamn birds and such?”

  “Yeah,” Bill said.

  “I was wrong. But The Shovel Ghawd, he don’t gib a shit. We is his, and he is ours. He knows what kind of fuel pump is in a good machine’s chest, and boy, you and me, we got good ones.”

  Then, they were sucked into the total light of paradise.

  Alone

  (with Melissa Mia Hall)

  The smooth, silver rockets stood against the sky, silent sentinels piercing the night. Waiting for something or someone, those spaceships reminded him of those big, old stone faces down on the ridge outside of Mud Creek. He never knew rightly how they got there but their open mouths and wide eyes turned ever skyward seemed connected somehow, since the rockets never rusted and the moss never grew over the expectant stone features. They were always bright with the morning light or copper red with the dying sun. He liked them best when they glowed silver in the moonlight or burned like white gold when the moon vanished blindly behind clouds.

  And though the rockets seemed ready for take-off at any time of day or night, there was no one to ride in them. And no one had anything to do with them except him, James Leroy Carver, the self-appointed guardian of the town and the rockets—although what he did wouldn’t pass for much and there was never anyone to pat him on the back and say, “Good job, Jim; good job!”

  For that matter, there was hardly anyone left at all. There was Sleepy Sam who worked the fields with the help of his son, Cranky Dan’l, and Issy, a big, spotted hound dog, two cows, a goat, two hogs and some chickens. They lived in a farmhouse that used to be white but was now faded into mottled gray. They also had a barn with a tin roof and some pitiful outbuildings they took care of just about as good as they took care of the vegetable garden that was surrounded by barbed wire—fair-to-middling. There used to be a horse but it died of old age. They gave Jim eggs, carrots, onions and potatoes when he helped out. He had to barter for anything else.

  Behind and beyond the spaceships, the trees had started to come back, and Jim realized he had lived practically his entire life (how long that was he had no expert opinion) watching them return. First, they’d just been scorched sprouts, but somehow their roots had survived and given bloom to new life. Gradually, they inched up until they were almost taller than Jim. Lately, they’d grown as big as one of the sheds at Sleepy Sam’s. It amazed him. Didn’t seem quite right. Were trees supposed to grow that fast?

  The world was coming back green, and he felt like there was nothing much left but the green. His parents were long dead now. The Revolution had taken them.

  Back in the before time, the bad times when he was really small, he hid more than anything. The people who survived the fighting didn’t seem much interested in him. Sometimes someone would take him in and feed him. Sometimes he’d just steal food. He stole so little, no one much minded. One time an ugly man, an outsider who talked funny tried to take him outside of town on his bike but Jim cut him with his knife and bit him for good measure and escaped. And then Sleepy Sam had killed him after a poker game went wrong and the man refused to hand over his bike. Jim never knew the drifter’s name. He hadn’t been a regular in Mud Creek and certainly not on his street.

  Part of the street sign had broken off so he couldn’t quite remember the whole name of the street. Something Heights. His mom had had a book called Wuthering Heights that she liked a lot. “Nobody ever wrote a book as good as Wuthering Heights.” Funny how things stuck in a person’s head. Jim took to calling his place “Wuthering Heights” although most of the house had burned down during the Revolution when his parents ran off and left him or were killed. He couldn’t remember anything. Seemed his life began one day when he woke up in the back seat of the SUV, head on his plaid backpack, sucking his thumb and holding on to his old brown teddy and his blue blankie and his crackers. He loved his warm sleeping space in the family’s unworkable SUV that was parked in what was left of the garage. He had been old enough then to survive.

  And, in time, there was no one really hunting boy meat anymore, or anybody doing much of anything. Sleepy Sam said the cannibals focused on the still-crowded cities, not on the dead little towns or out here on the fringe—that’s what Sleepy Sam said. Jim thought that suited him just fine out here by the rockets. And as far as it went, he was okay. Cannibals didn’t like rockets, he guessed. Can’t eat rockets. And they didn’t seem to like any meat but human meat. Animal meat must seem too tame.

  “Stay here and keep your nose clean,” Sleepy Sam said. He had a generator so he had electricity when the lights went out and stayed out a few years ago.

  Most people left the little town during the Revolution or were killed by the monsters and the cannibals. Some stayed and some came back, then left again. They were primarily teens with no parents and no place to go, but the intense jungle that had suddenly surrounded and engulfed the town freaked them out and most left. They liked concrete and danger better. It put him in mind of The Jungle Book he kept in his ragged backpack. His parents were long dead now but they used to read from that book sometimes, together at night when he was little and dreaming about living in a jungle someday and here he was. The Revolution had taken his parents but given him back the jungle. He kept a picture of another jungle at his sleeping space. He’d stolen it from the library. The picture also showed some terrible animals attacking each other. What if this jungle would summon such creatures? He began considering the possibility such wild beasts might arrive and decided he would always be ready. He kept his pocketknife, a sharp stick and a hammer always handy.

  Not long ago there was a group that rode into town who seemed nice at first and then turned deadly. He had had little to no interaction with those just passing through Mud Creek, but these people laughed and danced and sang a lot. They built a big bonfire and ate rabbits and squirrel they shared with him. They made a game out of chasing a big beach ball one of them blew up and threw around like it was something special. Then one of the women got angry, the red-headed leader and her man who had a long, black beard. They fought like feral cats and it scared him. He crawled back home when they started killing each other.

  The next day, when he went to see if their camp in the parking lot of the abandoned police station was still there, he found it abandoned. Gone from Mud Creek. He was relieved and sad at the same time.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Sleepy Sam had said when Jim told him and his son. Cranky Dan’l, who rarely spoke, nodded his head.

  “Dey kilt my hog, Billy. I hate dem,” Dan’l said.

  “They be lost wanderers, those gypsy kind. They don’t care about nothing but getting high and eatin’ all they can, stealin’ all they can and fightin’ about what they didn’t eat and didn’t steal,” Sleepy Sam said.

  “But they danced. They sang songs. They seemed real happy and they just went crazy.”


  “I know. But the whole world be crazy now, son. Just keep clear of weirdos.”

  Jim took the advice and a hat full of eggs and left.

  Mud Creek was just a little town near the Rockets now. Weeds and grass grew in the cracks of the streets, curbs and sidewalks. The windows of most buildings no longer were glass. Most of the stores had been looted and truthfully, Jim had done his share of looting before going away to hide, but after most of the people left, he found it just wasn’t as much fun doing it alone.

  Jim knew there was still much to be had for one man and he shouldn’t act like a kid, afraid of the ghosts in the stores. If he needed something now, he just took it like a man. Jim knew he had to act like a man now, not a little boy. The encounter with the ugly man had taught him that, as much as his own jungle dreams which sometimes included a sad-faced girl with big eyes and soft pink lips.

  He wondered where everyone had gone to after they left Mud Creek and what in the Sam Hill could be better out there? He envisioned only the worst. All of them gone crazy and eating one another like sharks with blood in the water.

  The town provided most of his needs and the library had provided books that taught him about things like sharks that he had never seen except in pictures, and about bears and such, the monkey, the lion, the birds. From Sleepy Sam and Cranky Dan’l, he also learned about how to plant the seeds from the stores, and because he planted them behind the garage, he survived because he didn’t have to depend on Sleepy Sam or on anyone. He even bartered with his extras, sometimes with an old lady who made beeswax candles. She sold them in the center of town along with some moonshine her old man made, but she frightened him. She always made awful cannibal jokes.

  “I got me a hankering for boy today. My stomach aches to eat me some boy. You know some boy I can eat? What’s pink and white and et’ all over?” she’d laugh.

  “Raw boy,” Jim would have to say or she wouldn’t exchange her candle for what scavenged item he was proffering, usually some stolen book, unbroken crockery or beans. Mr.’s moonshine wasn’t too bad and it was cheap. A book of matches and Jim was set with a jar full of amber fire. He didn’t drink it, though. He used it to clean stuff.