by Ronald Kelly
“Well, you haven’t always been overly fond of me, that’s all.”
Tom stared at her, feeling a pang of regret. “Well, that’s changed.” He sighed and squeezed his sister’s hand. “When we found out that you guys were gone and went down into that hollow looking for the guy responsible, I kind of found out that you don’t repulse me as much as I thought. To tell the truth, I kind of like having you around.”
“Exactly what are you trying to say?”
The high school student rolled his eyes in exasperation. “That I love you, Maggie! There, I said it. Are you satisfied?”
The girl smiled. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I sure am. And I love you, too, even if you have been a colossal asshole for the past few years.”
Tom’s face reddened in embarrassment. “I guess I deserved that.”
“Anyway, thanks for coming to get me. I couldn’t have gotten out of there without you.”
“You bet,” Tom said. He frowned and shook his head. “But a high wire walker? Couldn’t you have chosen something a little closer to the ground, sis? And that skimpy little costume you were wearing! Wait till Mom and Dad hear about this.”
“Aw, stick it in your ear!” laughed Maggie. She grabbed the pillow off her bed and bopped him upside the head with it. Soon, the siblings were rolling across the floor, giggling and joking. But deep down inside, both were thankful that they had escaped the dark realm of Circus Horrific alive.
~ * ~
Rusty woke up so suddenly, he nearly leapt right off his bed. “Mom?” he called out.
“I’m right here, son,” said Susan McLeod from where she sat on the edge of his bed.
The lanky farm boy stared at her, startled. “It wasn’t just a nightmare, was it?”
“The hanging gallows in Carnage City?” She shuddered. “No, it was for real, that’s for sure.”
Rusty took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. “I’d likely still be back there, swinging on the end of that rope with the buzzards picking at my carcass… if you hadn’t showed up out of nowhere. But how did you do it?”
Susan reached beneath Rusty’s pillow and withdrew the card with the Western scene on its front. “I used the card… the same as you. Son, you shouldn’t have played around with the unknown like that. Do you realize how dangerous that was?”
“Don’t I know it!” said Rusty. “And, believe me, I’ve learned my lesson.”
“What if something bad had happened?” she asked. “What if you’d stayed there for good?” Tears formed in the woman’s eyes. “I don’t think I could have stood it if something like that would’ve happened to you, sweetheart.”
Rusty leaned over and hugged his mother tightly. “What did I ever do to deserve a mom like you?” he asked, his voice cracking. “I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, too, baby,” she said. “But it’s not over yet. Remember what the Duke said back there at Carnage City?”
Rusty nodded. “Yeah, I know. About Leech.”
His relief at making it home with body and mind intact suddenly turned into cold dread. They were back where they belonged, that was true. But they hadn’t left the evil entirely behind. They still had to deal with its source, before it was all over and done with.
~ * ~
“Chuck?” called a man’s voice. “Chuck… wake up.”
Chuck Adkins opened his eyes and found himself cradled in the arms of his father. “Dad? What happened?”
“Don’t you remember?” Joe asked him.
The boy thought for a moment. Suddenly, his face grew pale. “The crematorium!”
“That’s right.”
In spite of himself, Chuck began to tremble. “I almost didn’t make it out of that place alive.”
Joe nodded, his face grim. “Yeah, and I almost didn’t get there in time to save you.” He was silent for a moment. “I almost let you down… like before.”
Chuck turned and stared at his father’s tormented face. “Dad… about what happened at Willow Lake – “
“Let’s don’t talk about it,” said Joe, turning his eyes guiltily away from the boy.
“No,” insisted Chuck. “Let’s do talk about it. Dad, it was just a stupid accident. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. You’ve got to believe that.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that, son,” said the mechanic.
“You’ve got to!” snapped Chuck. “Listen to me. I don’t blame you. I never have. All I’ve ever wanted was you to be there for me. But you shut yourself off instead.” Frightened tears showed in the boys eyes. “Please, Dad… don’t ever do that again.”
Joe Adkins embraced his son tightly. “I won’t, Chuck. I swear to God I won’t.”
“Dad… I…” Chuck faltered, searching for the right words. “Aw, hell, Dad… I love you.”
“I love you, too, son. And don’t ever forget that.”
Chuck nodded, feeling at peace for the first time in two long years. Then the serenity faded when he recalled what General Lee had told him. “Dad, we still have to do something about him, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do,” said Joe. “But at least you won’t have to face him alone. I’ll be there, right by your side.”
His father’s words drove away some of Chuck’s fear. “I know that, Dad. I wasn’t so sure before… but I am now.”
~ * ~
Keith Bishop opened his eyes to find his grandfather lying on the bed next to him. The old man looked alarmingly pale and incredibly old, far beyond his seventy-five years. A horrible thought immediately came to him. What if the trip back was too much for him? he wondered. What if he had a heart attack or something?
Frightened, the boy sat up and shook the elderly man gently. “Grandpa? Are you okay? Oh God, Grandpa, if something’s happened to you –!”
Jasper McLeod opened one of his eyes and stared up at his grandson. “Don’t get so bent out of shape, Keith. I’m a tougher bird than you give me credit for.”
Keith closed his eyes in relief. “Thank goodness! I thought you’d crapped out on me!”
“Fat chance,” said Jasper, sitting up. “I bailed you out of that trouble with the Big Man, remember? I’m not about to buy the farm now that we’re back home again.”
“But how did you know where I was? Or how to get to me?”
“Leech told me,” said Jasper. “When you and your friends turned up missing, we went to see him down in Hell Hollow. He warned us it would be dangerous to go after you, even deadly. But I knew I couldn’t abandon you. I knew I had to find you, even if it was the last thing I ever did.”
Keith stared at the old man. “Grandpa, I want to apologize. You know, for being such a pain in butt since I got here.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Jasper told him. “I knew you were a good apple all along. That rotten attitude of yours, well, that didn’t make me stop loving you, you know.”
The boy seemed surprised. “You love me?”
“Why, of course I do,” said Jasper. “And, I reckon in your own way, you feel the same for this broken down old fossil.”
Keith reached out and hugged his grandfather. “I do, Grandpa. You better believe I do.”
The two embraced for a long moment, not awkwardly, but with the comfort of close loved ones. When they finally parted, they locked eyes and realized that the ordeal was not yet over.
“We’ve still got Leech to deal with, don’t we?” asked Jasper.
“Yes,” replied Keith. He thought to himself for a second. “Grandpa, what do you know about this guy? Anything that might help figure out exactly what he’s up to?”
For the next few minutes, Jasper told his grandson everything he knew about Doctor Augustus Leech; the poisonous elixir he had sold to the folks of Harmony nearly a century ago, the vigilante mob that had chased him into the dark heart of Hell Hollow, and the eventual killing of the sinister medicine show man at the hands of his own father.
When he was through, a pecul
iar look came into the twelve-year-old’s eyes. “I think I know what he has in mind, Grandpa. God help us… I think know exactly what he’s going to do.”
At that moment, the hall phone began to ring. “That must be one of the others. I hope they all made it back okay.” Jasper left the bed and started for the door. Halfway there, he stopped and turned back to his grandson. “Exactly what does that bastard have in store for Harmony?” he asked.
“You’d better answer the phone,” said Keith. “And, whoever it is, tell them to meet up in town as soon as possible. It’s a matter of life and death. And I’m not joking.”
“I can see that,” said Jasper as he left the bedroom and headed down the hallway to the phone.
Keith sat alone on his bed and considered the menace they would be forced to face that night. During their visit to Hell Hollow, he had sensed that Augustus Leech was not the congenial magician that his friends thought him to be. He had sensed someone much darker and dangerous… and his instincts had proven to be right. They had fallen for one of Leech’s perilous parlor tricks – the magical dream cards – and nearly perished because of his deception.
But, fortunately, they had all escaped unscathed. And that meant that they were left with the responsibility of preventing Doctor Leech from completing the task he had originally had in store for Harmony ninety long years ago.
Keith just hoped that they could reach him before he had the chance to implement the horrors he intended to inflict upon the little Tennessee town. And, if they did, he prayed that they would survive the confrontation, just as they had survived the awful nightmares that Leech had nearly succeeded in condemning them to… indefinitely.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Augustus Leech reined the wagon team to a halt. For a moment, he sat in the darkness of the roadway, anticipating the evil that was yet to come. A warm summer breeze blew through his long black hair like the breath of a sleeping dragon.
He had waited a long time for this moment. Following the incident at Hell Hollow, Leech had bided his time patiently, enduring decades of nonexistence… waiting for someone to come along and release him from his refuge. That had happened a scant week ago when the Georgia criminal had drank from the elixir bottle and unknowingly taken on a sinister calling he could never have imagined, even in his warped and sadistic imagination.
The courthouse clock a hundred yards away struck the hour of eleven. Almost immediately a cloudbank drifted eastward, exposing a full moon. Nocturnal light bathed the western limits of Harmony, gleaming off the twin rails of the train tracks, as well as the painted metal of the structure next to them. The lean man in the dark coat and top hat leaned forward on the wagon seat and stared upward. The instrument of his imminent vengeance stood starkly against the night sky, resembling an immense granddaddy longlegs of sea green steel.
Leech rocked gleefully to and fro, laughing softly to himself. His long wait was over. It was finally time.
He snapped the reigns, driving the two black horses off the roadside, over a low drainage ditch, and into the grass expanse of a nearby pasture. Again, he reined the wagon to a halt, this time engaging the brake. The ebony roans stood patiently, aware of their master’s intentions. They craned their heads upward and stared silently at the tall structure of the rural community’s one and only source of water; the reservoir tower that loomed directly across the railroad tracks from the Harmony town square.
Leech took the five-gallon gas can in hand, then jumped down from the wagon and crossed the moonlit grass of the pasture, moving stealthfully toward the concrete base of the water tower. He ignored the network of steel pipes and spigots that were linked to the main line, which ran vertically from the vast sphere of the reservoir. Instead, he headed directly for the access ladder that was attached to one of the tower’s four support poles. He stood at the bottom for a long moment, gauging the distance between the ground and the uppermost crown of the reservoir. It had to be a good seventy-five feet at the very least.
He pulled his belt from the loops of his jeans and quickly set to work. Leech looped the length of leather through the gas can’s handle, then buckled it securely. After slipping the makeshift sling over his shoulder, he stared upward at his objective one last time, then, taking one rung after another, began the long climb upward. The can of black death hung like an iron weight at his side, but he failed to acknowledge its heaviness. All that concerned him was to accomplish what he had come to do that night; to pay the unsuspecting town of Harmony back for what they had done to him ninety years ago. And, in the process, net his dark savior a hefty share of souls for his hellish dominion.
Halfway up, Augustus Leech felt his anticipation flag for a moment. He had experienced it four times before, several hours prior to his arrival in town; a disturbing sensation of impending disaster. He couldn’t understand why he should feel such a way. After all, there was nothing whatsoever to stand in his way that night. The children who had nearly hampered his plans had been taken care of and, as of that morning, their retched loved ones were out of the picture as well. All had undoubtedly perished in the nightmare worlds of their own making by now. The mirror-image spawn of Leech’s own evil would have seen to that. But, even still, he found it difficult to shake that annoying feeling of dark dread. It seemed to cling to him, following him up the tower ladder like a tenacious shadow that refused to be left behind.
The sensation passed once he reached the platform that encircled the reservoir’s tank. Leech stood at the railing and caught his breath, staring down at the scattered buildings of Harmony as he did. The little town was already dark and deserted. The last shop on its main thoroughfare had closed at nine o’clock that evening. The only movement he could detect from that height was the slow winking of the town’s one and only traffic light, where the main street forked and made a lazy loop around the acre square of the courthouse lawn. Its center caution light blinked on and off, casting an amber glow across the cracked pavement and the whitewashed structure of the old-fashioned gazebo nearby.
“Fools!” he said with a snicker. “You slumber peacefully in your soft beds, unaware that Death has come to call. Some of you shall succumb with the dawn, bathed by showers of dark poison. Others may even rise in the middle of the night for a drink of water and, through that innocent act, fail to awaken in the morning. But you will have deserved it for delaying my mission for so very long. All of you shall pay for the sins of your wretched fathers… with your lives. And with your souls.”
Leech grinned to himself, then adjusted the weight of the gas can and continued onward, scaling the steel ladder that curved vertically along the sphere of the water tank. A moment later, he reached the very top of the reservoir.
Carefully, he stood, gaining his balance. Then, slowly, he crept across the roof of the tank, toward the only portal that gave access to the pure waters that sustained the citizens of Harmony on a daily basis. Leech crouched over the steel door, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. The moment he had anticipated for so very long was finally at hand.
Using the work-toughened muscles of his host, Leech set to work. He gripped the wheel lock in both hands and slowly turned it counterclockwise. It wasn’t long before he had the hatch open. He swung it back on its thick steel hinges and peered inside. Darkness filled the reservoir’s cavity. Underneath that deceptive gloom, he could hear a gentle lapping against steel walls and smell the dank odor of water rising up from below.
Augustus Leech unshouldered the gas can and unscrewed the top. Within, a dark liquid of an entirely different kind shimmered sluggishly, smelling both of heavenly delicacies and hellish poisons. He stood up, holding the open container in both hands, ready to dump its contents through the access door. But first, he stared up into the sky. Only the stars and pale face of the moon stared back, the sole witness of the mass execution to come.
Or so he thought.
Before he could tip the gas can forward, he heard a metallic clang and felt a thrumming vibration shudder thr
oughout the steel shell of the tank. A second alter, another sounded, this time much closer. Something bounced over the edge of the sloping roof and rolled toward him, finally rattling to a stop. Leech looked down to see a rock the size of a golf ball lying next to his feet.
And, suddenly, he understood the meaning of the dreadful sensation he had experienced, both before and during his climb to the top of the tower.
~ * ~
“Try another one,” urged Chuck. He sat in his wheelchair, his eyes glued to the dark form that stood atop the water tower, silhouetted against the pale backdrop of the full moon.
Keith reached down and picked up another good-sized rock from the gravel bed of the railroad tracks. He reared back and let go, sending the missile hurtling skyward. It fell short, bouncing off the railing of the lower platform, instead of reaching the very top of the water tower.
“Dammit!” he said. “I can’t seem to reach him.” He looked over at Rusty. “You give it a try.”
The lanky farm boy nodded. He picked up a stone the size of a tennis ball, wound up with an over the shoulder pitch, and heaved the rock upward. They all watched as the projectile arched over the dome of the tank and struck the man in the stovepipe hat squarely between the shoulder blades.
“You got him!” cheered Maggie, jumping up and down.
“Yeah,” said Jasper, standing nearby. “But I think you only made him mad.”
High above, Augustus Leech whirled and glared down at them. “You meddling worms!” he yelled. He seemed surprised, even shocked, to see the four children and those who accompanied them on the ground below. “What are you doing here?”
“We survived your dadblamed trap, that’s what!” Rusty hollered back at him. “That’s what you get for underestimating us and our folks.”
“We’re here to stop you,” Maggie called out. “Stop you from spreading your evil any further than it’s already gone!”
Leech threw his head back and cackled. The wicked laughter rang across the community of Harmony, more threatening than the rumble of a thunderstorm, more dangerous than the freight train roar of an approaching tornado. “I believe not!” he told them. “I have been waiting far too long for this moment. And I shall not allow it to be taken away by a handful of troublesome children!”
