Decker ran down another passage, weaving and turning, his thin flashlight beam bouncing from one column of boxes to the next.
Where’s the exit?
Up ahead echoed a loud buzzing. He came upon a door covered in flies. They swarmed him, plugging his ears, clotting his eyes, filling his mouth.
“Get off me!” He spun around, slapping his face and spitting. Blindly, he reached for the knob. Opened the door. The swarm flew into the room as if sucked into a black hole. The smell of rot and decay smacked Decker’s senses. Bile burned up his throat. He pressed a hand over his nose. Oh, God. The dark room smelled like a morgue. Before entering, he lanced the light into the room. Another maze. Only these stacks were covered in sheets.
Decker leaned against the threshold, sweat dripping down his face. All the flies had left him, but he could hear them in the next chamber, buzzing in the darkness.
Christ, how the hell do I get out of this place?
Behind him, a few rows back, a stack of crates crashed to the floor. “Alexxxx . . . Where are youuuuu?”
“Fuck off!” Decker screamed.
The demon leaped upward, attaching itself to the ceiling. A face masked in shadow stared upside down. The eyes glowed. Two yellow dots. Claws scraped along the ceiling.
Decker bolted into the next room, the one buzzing with flies, and stumbled over something that jutted out from beneath the draping. It snapped off like a branch. He fell hard, pulling down the sheet with him. The passage clouded with dust. He held up the ice-cold pipe that had tripped him. Only it wasn’t a pipe but a severed arm. “Christ!”
Tossing the limb, he gazed up at the wall. Pale bodies of men and women stared back with blank eyes. The wall of human decay looked like the mass grave of a concentration camp. All the dead were covered in tiny bites crawling with flies. The bodies stacked high were bloated, while the lower bodies had been sucked dry like the prey of a spider.
“You found my sanctuary,” rasped the demon’s voice from the doorway. “Care to confess your sins to Father Mike?”
At the top of the pile, a dead black man dressed like a priest sat up with bone-popping effort.
Decker ran blindly through the chamber.
Behind him claws scraped the wood floor.
Where’s the goddamned door?
He rounded corner after corner. Saw a crack of light along the wall.
The exit!
His aching legs picked up speed. Blood and sweat burned his eyes.
Bodies began to move within the walls of sleeping dead. Cold arms fell in his path like branches, groping him, ripping his shirt. As he barreled through the gauntlet of pounding fists, Decker felt like a teen going through gang initiation. He fought back.
Ahead, the outline of a door took shape. A few more feet.
He reached, fingers touching the knob.
A body leaped onto his back and pummeled him to the floor. Hundreds of teeth bit down. Gasping, he struggled to rise, reaching for the door, when the stacks of cadavers toppled over on top of them. Decker lay face down, pinned beneath a massive weight. Long, slimy tongues wormed into his wounds, draining his will to fight. His mind faded to blackness.
* * *
Decker woke sometime later, unable to move, but semiconscious.
Am I dead? He couldn’t rightly tell. He was no longer in pain.
The room was half-lit by a flashlight beam that swung back and forth. He heard the old man humming. Air was moving all around Decker, and the more his mind cleared he realized he was being dragged down a passage.
He tried to speak. Tried to resist. But had no fight left in him.
"You've caused quite a mess, Alex Decker," the old man said. "I had everything so nice and tidy."
As Decker’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw the bodies had been stacked back into their ordered walls. Each head and limb fit together like puzzle pieces. Decker's body was hoisted onto the top of a human wall in the back. He could feel the cold corpses beneath him. At first it was like lying on a block of ice. But he quickly grew numb.
"Don't worry," the old dealer said. "You're going to love it here in my sanctuary. You get to spend eternity right across from an old friend of yours. See?” The old man turned Decker’s head sideways.
Across the aisle, Father Mike’s shriveled form stared back with lifeless gray eyes.
Decker felt an overwhelming sadness, but couldn’t voice it.
“He knew his search for truth would one day be his penance. He was right.” The dealer slipped one of Decker’s arms neatly into a groove between the bodies below, and the other he folded over and slipped under a person's head that had long stringy hair. Del Toro hummed as he untangled the hair and smoothed it out over Decker’s arm and shoulder.
The dealer then patted him on the chest and disappeared for some time. When he returned, the old Chicano was holding a small ball of white fire.
"This is for you," he said. "I never turn back on a deal." Smiling, he pried open Decker's mouth and filled it with the light. His throat tingled as the heavenly breath of glimmer smoke filled his lungs and coursed through his body.
In time, he lost count of the people who passed by on the way to the room of insatiable needs. Week after week, the demon stacked new bodies neatly upon him. The humming and smell of death eventually faded away as Decker’s mind drifted into its own sanctuary, where his spirit gathered with others—those loved and lost and found again—in blissful clouds of smoke.
“These woods are absolute madness,” Cara Kline said as she drove through the endless warren of pines that covered southern New Jersey. She’d been lost for over three hours, trying to find the address she’d written down. Her GPS had been no help. She passed by some swamp shacks and a country store that made up a little Dutch village. A faded sign boasted, “Home of the Jersey Devil.” At the end of a dirt road, she finally found the small goat farm surrounded by woods. As she stepped out of her Mercedes, her Louis Vuitton shoes sinking in mud, Cara was greeted by the stink of livestock.
A short ginger-haired man with a cauliflower ear looked at her car, her leather coat and monogrammed purse and said in a Dutch accent, “Come all the way from the city, did ya?”
“Yes, Manhattan. Can we get be quick about this?” Cara said. “We don’t have much daylight left.” The sun, retreating to the west, was threatening to abandon her.
The farmer, who introduced himself as Lars, led her past a decrepit barn to a pen where a herd of goats crowded around a trough. “Pick any one you like, except the female with three horns. Anneke is the mother to all the youngin’s.”
It didn’t take long to decide. Cara pointed to a cute little black goat standing off by itself. “That one.”
“Runt of the litter.” Lars chuckled. He went into the pen and brought the goat out.
Cara petted its rough fur, solid black except for a thin white marking on its forehead. “Aren’t you precious?” The baby goat jerked in the farmer’s arms and bahhed, crying for its mother.
Cara pulled out her pocketbook full of credit cards.
“Plastic’s no good out here in the sticks,” Lars said. “Only cash.”
She paid him the amount they’d agreed upon over the phone. The man kept his hand out. “Plus fifty for the boat ride.”
* * *
The little goat squirmed in Cara’s lap as they rode in a motorboat down the Mullica River. It wound like a giant snake through the pinelands. A cold, biting wind blew against Cara’s face. She clutched a scarf wrapped tight around her head. Along the banks, trees shook and dead leaves fell off the branches. The change of seasons was making the trees bare. It reminded her how all her hair had fallen out three years ago when she’d battled breast cancer. It had been an ugly fight, but she had beaten the beast, losing one breast in the process. Her hair, ash blonde, eventually grew back. She kept it in a short bob, a style currently in fashion. A successful journalist for a women’s magazine, it was Cara’s job to stay in vogue.
She felt
out of place in the wilderness and chided herself for not buying the proper outdoor attire for this backwoods adventure. She had been in such a hurry to reach the south end of Jersey before nightfall that she hadn’t taken time to stop at one of the hunting shops along the way.
Dusk turned the sky gray with streaks of pink. The shadows in the forest grew thicker. A V-formation of geese quacked as they flew south for a warmer climate. Behind Cara, Lars steered the motor. The boat curved around another snaking bend. The river branched off into a still-water lake surrounded by brown woods.
They drew closer to an island crammed with thickets of spiky trees.
“Is that the place?” she asked.
Lars nodded. “Crow Island.”
Living up to its name, the trees on the island were teeming with black birds. Like restless dark angels, they flew from branch to branch. Their constant cawing echoed off the lake.
Cara got the shivers from something other than the wind. She almost asked Lars to turn the boat around. Then she reminded herself of the empty apartment back in New York, the aching loneliness, and how desperately she needed a miracle if she was to ever find true happiness.
Lars navigated the boat through floating sticks to a black muddy beach that rimmed the island. He didn’t bother to help her out, just pointed to a narrow trail that cut between the trees before vanishing in the dark. “Follow that path. You’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Cara climbed onto the beach, tugging the rope tied to the baby goat’s neck. It resisted going with her. The goat bahhed and ran to the middle of the boat, choking itself. The farmer laughed. “This island always spooks the goats.” He picked the kid up and tossed it onto the beach.
“You’ll need this.” He handed Cara a lantern. “Best of luck to you.” Lars steered the motor and turned the boat around. He grew smaller and smaller as the boat sped away.
* * *
The goat, still whining for its mother, followed as Cara pulled its leash down the wooded path. The sun had set behind her and the thick shadows merged into night. Her lantern provided barely enough light to see ten feet in any direction. The path twisted and turned. On either side, a wall of intertwining branches pressed against her. Here and there, faces that looked straight out of folklore were carved into the bark of trees.
She looked back at the goat and laughed. “The measures I’ll take to get what I want.”
Cara had always been tenacious. When she was nine, like all girls she’d wanted a pony. Unlike all girls, she was relentless in her pursuit of owning one. She’d badgered her parents every day until her father finally said, “If you can raise money for the stable fees, Carebear, we’ll buy you a pony.” He had thought she would give up on the pipedream.
For an entire year, Cara had sold brownies and lemonade, pruned her neighbor’s rose bushes, raked leaves in the fall, and shoveled snow in the winter. It was hard work, but every day she repeated the mantra: I want a pony, I want a pony. Do whatever it takes. Eventually she’d earned enough money to cover her side of the bargain. She’d proudly gone with her father to buy her pony on her tenth birthday.
The belief that she could attain anything she wanted only grew stronger. In high school, she had wanted to be the editor of the school yearbook and worked harder than all the other kids until she achieved it. After college, she had set her sights on a successful magazine editor, Gabriel Greenberg. Not only did she win the heart of New York’s most eligible bachelor, she married him. When she wanted to write for the most prestigious magazines in the country, Cara had submitted article after article until she finally made a name for herself. No matter what she went after, through persistence and tenacity, she had always gotten it.
The only thing that eluded her was the one thing she wanted most.
The sound of cracking branches made Cara catch her breath. Above, the crows flapped their wings. They no longer cawed, but she could hear them moving through the tree limbs. She imagined the flock following her, watching with nocturnal eyes. Something larger than a bird walked on dry leaves in the dark.
Cara stopped and whirled with the light. Whatever was out there stayed deep within the thicket. Campfire tales of the Jersey Devil played in her head. They had been funny as a child. Alone in the woods at night, the feeling that such a creature could exist felt too real. After a tense moment, the unseen thing scampered off, and Cara released the breath she’d been holding.
I hope I’m making the right decision coming here.
Yes, of course you did. You’ve thought this through. If it worked for Peggy, it can work for you.
As Cara walked along the trail, she thought of her former classmate, Pitiful Peggy. A portly girl cursed with a homely face and bad skin condition, Peggy had been an outcast all through school. She’d feared no one would ever love her.
Recently, Cara had run into Peggy at a restaurant near Times Square. Cara had barely recognized her. Peggy had dropped twenty pounds and had a voluptuous figure that looked stunning in a red dress. Her porcelain face held an enchanting beauty. The once clunky Peggy now moved with grace and confidence. The spark of love illuminated her eyes. She was having dinner with her fiancée, Jacque, a handsome Frenchman who wore an Armani suit. Cara joined them for a drink, watching in disbelief as Jacque took sweet care of Peggy as if she were a queen. Cara’s divorce from Gabe had just been finalized and she was feeling blue that night. And there was Pitiful Peggy, happy in love. For the first time, Cara envied Peggy instead of pitying her.
Jacque owned the restaurant. When he went down to the cellar to select a bottle of wine, Cara had commented on how delighted she was to see Peggy engaged.
“Isn’t Jacque wonderful?” Peggy beamed. “He’s from Paris. He owns six French restaurants in New York and he’s a fabulous chef. Best of all, he loves me for me.”
“Something’s definitely changed about you,” Cara said. “My marriage failed miserably. You seem to have it all. What’s your secret?”
Peggy laughed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
The journalist in Cara had kept pressing until she pried the secret out of Peggy.
“Do you believe in magic?” her friend asked.
“I used to believe if we work hard enough to achieve our desires, we can eventually make our own magic.”
“Well, I’m living proof that magic works and wishes do come true.” Peggy looked around the restaurant and then leaned forward and whispered, “There’s a secret place in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey called Crow Island. You can get anything you wish for. Anything!”
Cara had laughed at the idea at first, but Peggy was dead serious. The more Cara drank that night and watched Peggy with Jacque, the more the idea of visiting a witch for a wish seemed less ludicrous.
Growing up, Cara had a Jewish grandmother who practiced Kabbalah, so the concept of using mysticism toward desired goals was familiar. Unfortunately, her Bubbe had passed away, taking her mystic secrets with her. Since Cara was going through a big transition in her life, and the threat of cancer attacking her other breast was a frequent worry, she was ready to do something radical to get what she wanted while she was still young and driven.
Cara had followed Peggy’s directions. Step one, buy a baby goat from a farmer named Lars. Step two, ride a boat with him to Crow Island. Step three, follow the trail to the Crow Woman’s home.
The wooded path came to a dead end at a misshapen hovel constructed of logs. The house hunched low to the ground. The roof, covered in pine branches, leaves, and pinecones, was even with Cara’s face. The surrounding forest grew thick around the house, concealing its sides and back. Only a wicker front door was visible in the briars. From the viewpoint of a plane passing over, the witch’s house would be completely camouflaged. Faint light glowed within. A silhouette appeared through the cracks in the door. An ancient voice said, “I’ve been expecting you, Cara Kline.”
Hearing the witch speak her name gave Cara gooseflesh. She hadn’t spoken to the woman before. P
erhaps Lars told her a visitor was coming. But Cara had never told him her last name.
“It’s nice to meet you. My friend, Peggy Mere, highly recommended your services. She said you could help me with—”
“I know this already,” the woman said through the door. “No need to explain. Did you bring a baby goat?”
Cara tugged at the rope, pulling the bleating goat into the light. “He’s two months old. I also brought six white candles, sage, and myrrh.”
DARK NEEDS: Three Twisted Tales of Horror Page 3
