B00N1384BU EBOK

by Unknown

  And by that time, I'd be miles away and off to find the sixth piece of Abramelin's florin.

  ***

  “What've we got?” the detective asked the fire chief.

  “Moonshiners. Stills blew up. Happens every so often.”

  The detective nodded as the men on the fire engine dowsed the remains of the cabin with high-pressure water.

  “And the cabin? They have stills in there too?”

  “Like I said, detective. Moonshiners. I don't really care why the cabin is burning. Surprised that thing didn't collapse years ago.”

  The detective sighed and turned to face the cave where black smoke was twisting into the sky.

  “One of your guys said the wooden doors in the cave were locked from the outside.”

  The chief shrugged.

  “Maybe. The doors burnt and the chains were left on the ground along with the lock. They coulda been hanging on the door but not securing it.”

  “Sounds odd.”

  “We found the old man's remains in his bed in the cabin. The boy's remains were found in the cave. At least we think it’s the boy's. Ain't gonna be much DNA left to test and folks round here ain't all that keen on going to the dentist.”

  “Others?” the detective asked.

  “Yep,” the chief said. “Four bodies in the cave. Seems like the whole crew got blown up in the accident. Won't be enough left of any of them to identify.”

  The detective nodded as the fire chief walked down the driveway toward the first of the arriving media outlets. The local sheriff placed a call to the ATF.

  “No need to send in the feds,” he said. “All of the bad guys are burnt to a crisp. Nothing left to do here but clean up the mess.”

  ###

  Behind the Scenes

  The Black Fang Betrayal features today's best horror, dark fantasy and thriller writers collaborating on a unique and fascinating novel. Armed with nothing but a prompt and a character name, each author became a warlock of The Black Fang and wrote a first-person account as a member of the coven. Using themes and sequences woven throughout the complete narrative, a cohesive page-turner emerges.

  J. Thorn would like to acknowledge the creative guidance of Richard Long who was the perfect sounding board for plotting and conniving. He would also like to thank Rebecca T. Dickson for her careful and precise editing of “The Beginning” and “The End.”

  A note from J. to other authors about the project...

  I wrote a blog post about this project and everything required to make The Black Fang Betrayal a reality. That reflection is on the book's official website, http://theblackfangbetrayal.com. Below is our project timeline.

  Project Timeline:

  October 2013 - J. Thorn has an idea on Halloween, October 31st, 2013.

  November 2013 - The first invitations are sent.

  December 26th, 2013 – Secret Facebook group created.

  January 8th, 2014 – First brainstorming session.

  January 29th, 2014 – First pivot. Group considers unrelated prompts instead of a continuing narrative.

  February 9th, 2014 – Voice chosen (first person).

  February 18th, 2014 – 10th writer joined (J.C. Eggleton).

  February 28th, 2014 – Prompts sent to the writers along with the final set of rules on the world of The Black Fang.

  March 2nd, 2014 – "Levi's letter" sent to writers to help with the prompt.

  March 4th, 2014 – Writer drops out. Michaelbrent Collings joins.

  April 11th, 2014 – Title chosen.

  April 26th, 2014 – First story submitted by TW Brown.

  May 15th, 2014 – Cover design brief sent to Kealan Patrick Burke

  May 24th, 2014, - Writer drops out. J.R. Rain joins.

  May 30th, 2014 – Unofficial slogan created: "The Sopranos but with warlocks instead of the mafia."

  July 7th, 2014 – All pieces submitted, notes created for beginning and end of story.

  July 11th, 2014 – Decision made to add interludes after the selections in which the warlock acquires the piece of gold coin.

  July 12th, 2014 – Cover art approved and finalized.

  August 1st, 2014 – Draft of completed story sent to authors.

  August 14th, 2014 – Short story submissions finalized.

  August 15th, 2014 – Author bios finalized.

  August 22nd, 2014 – Digital and paperback formatting completed.

  August 29th, 2014 – Final versions uploaded to all marketplaces.

  September 1, 2014 – Official date of publication.

  October 31, 2014 – Author selections revealed.

  Bonus Short Stories

  Featuring Dennis Anthony, Magenta Nero and Jay Chastain

  PROWLER

  by Dennis Anthony

  Something is outside.

  Something. I’m not able to hear it but I know it’s there. I sense it.

  Sometimes I can tell it had been there. I’m just never able to put my eyes on the thing. Or animal. Or person.

  Maybe a person. Or something like a person.

  Outside. With the quiet.

  If you're in a new place, even the creak of a new pine floor drying can sound like thunder.

  But jarring sounds are nothing compared to the gnawing panic that clambers up from the closed-tomb, dead-eyed stare of absolute silence.

  My heart pounded so loudly on my first night in this cabin it kept me awake. I thought the sound came from the refrigerator or maybe from the fan over the bed.

  In Birmingham, Alabama, where I live and work when I'm not at the cabin, I hear constant chattering from an Alabama Lifesaver helicopter, the yowling of a train whistle or the robotic clanging of mechanical noise from somewhere.

  Noise is like oxygen. It's always there. No one pays any attention to it. Not until it's gone.

  My life is full of ironies like that. I escaped the hustle of Birmingham to a one-bedroom cabin on Lookout Mountain – a full area code away from the middle of nowhere – and the silence is making me, well, uneasy.

  As I said, it’s so quiet I can hear the beating of my heart.

  And yet when something large moves around outside – on the porch of my cabin, outside the goddamn window of my bedroom – I can’t hear it.

  Two nights ago a dusting of snow fell on Lookout Mountain. If you're a northern boy like me and haven't seen snow in a while, it’s kind of fun to see a white frosting butter the tree limbs. It didn’t last long, of course. A slight breeze carried some of the snow onto the deck of my covered front porch so it looked as though someone flung a bucket of ash along the floor. Next morning I saw the clear, sharp imprint of footprints in that snow.

  They weren’t animal footsteps. But they weren’t human either. To tell you the truth – and I'm no scout, no tracker or anything – it looked to me like someone, some thing, walked barefoot across the planking. And that, I thought, was why I heard nothing. I don't know why that made me feel better, but it did. For a while, anyway.

  I have a hickory rocking chair on that porch. It was hand-carved by some guy in Georgia. The wicker back and seat give up a agreeable creak when I rock back and forth watching . . . trees, I guess. And the occasional squirrel.

  Here’s the point. I have this rocking chair carefully placed outside my bedroom window on the porch. On the morning of the footsteps-in-the-snow thing, the chair was turned around one-hundred-eighty degrees so it faced the house and not the trees, squirrels and birds I was watching during the day. I didn't move it and I didn't hear it moved.

  That's what I mean about ironies. It's ironic to hear absolutely nothing most of the time and yet miss the sound of what should have been a significant bumping and scraping just outside the window.

  More about ironies. I'm a died-in-the-wool Yankee from that notch in Pennsylvania that really isn't Pennsylvania, but isn't quite Ohio or New York either. I don't understand the South and hadn't met many southerners before I moved here. On top of that, the constant heat and humidity make m
e cranky, even when I’m in air conditioning.

  And yet I end up moving to Birmingham, heart-of-Dixie, Alabama.

  Of course I had my reasons and they have nothing to do with expanding my cultural horizons. I’m a software engineer and learned about a good job here, a hospital position. Hospitals always need someone to bring order to their computer networks. Plus I needed a new place to live when my wife and 6-year-old son decided they didn't really want me around anymore. A judge agreed. He directed me to send regular payments to keep them in meatless chili, veggie burgers and animal crackers for the foreseeable future.

  So how’d I end up in this cabin on Lookout Mountain?

  I blame a hospital singles group meeting I attended. Okay, it was really a bereaved recently-divorced men and women's group.

  Most of the folks were like me: long faces, no confidence, insecure, yadda, yadda. A few ladies seemed especially eager to relate the story of their failed marriages and I listened as their eyes slowly reddened, tears fell and the snot dripped.

  A woman therapist addressed the group one night – which happened to be the last night I attended any of the meetings – and a few of us spoke afterward. She watched it all from a seat in the back row near the coffee. When it was my turn, I related the sorry story of my failed marriage, the estrangement from my little boy and how I now spent my free time mostly watching Wheel of Fortune and old Showtime programs on Netflix. I was the final speaker before the break, and during the donuts and coffee interval, the therapist approached me.

  She was kind of attractive and I tried to flirt a little. But it seemed all she wanted to tell me was that some of my comments suggested I was becoming “socially isolated” and it was important to stay “engaged with people” so that I didn't “sink into depression.”

  She had a way of talking in quotes like that. But she was pretty so I grinned through it all. Then she touched me on my forearm and smiled – not like a beautiful flirtatious woman smiles, but like a distant aunt might smile when she sees a resemblance to your father in your face.

  Despite what the pretty shrink thinks, I get plenty of social interaction at work:

  “Carl, my computer makes this whistling noise all the time” (I'm not a computer tech, sorry....) or, “Hey, you know about computers. My internet connection at home comes and goes. What's up with that?” (I don't make house calls).

  Some people think since I’m a systems engineer, I can fix gurney wheels or bolt hardware to drywall. I don’t expect everyone to understand what a systems engineer does, but Jeez-us people!

  Maybe that’s why I felt the need to get away.

  And why I bought this little cabin only big enough for one and why I drive up here every weekend to watch the trees grow and listen to my heart thump.

  Things in the neighborhood seem to pick up when the sun rises. Unseen birds sing, even in the winter, and from time to time pickup trucks bounce along the road, dropping chunks of soil the size of small northeastern states.

  I usually make some coffee and carry the steaming cup to the front porch rocker, drop into the seat and assess the uneventful scene in my front yard.

  Of course, I first turn the rocking chair around.

  On just about every morning, the rocker is turned to face the cabin at an oblique angle to my bedroom window. Nothing else is ever out of place. A small table next to my chair holds technical periodicals and a bowl of wrapped butterscotch candies I enjoy from time to time. The magazines are never touched and no candy is ever missing.

  The engineer part of me wants answers, but the candy-sucking part of me who enjoys dappled sun on his face and the scent of steaming coffee in his nostrils, is content to just let things be. Most people are pretty good at pretending things don't exist when they're inconvenient, unpleasant or simply confusing.

  The nearest town is Turkion. Technically it’s a village, a tight grouping of antique shops, real estate offices and a gas station. It has its own newspaper, published once a month. And a library.

  After finishing my coffee, I stop in.

  A very large boned woman – and by large boned, I mean exactly that. Not fat, but generously structured – looks to be in charge. She’s actually quite pretty though she’s in her late 50s. Two even older gentlemen sit on either side of her – more than really required to handle business today – and they fawn over her and try to engage her in conversation.

  This, I decide, is what passes for action in Turkion.

  “Do you have any books or pamphlets that give a little history of the area?” I ask.

  The woman considers me with very kind gray eyes, almost apologetic. “There is a book like that,” she says. “A pamphlet, actually. It's called, I think, “Turkion through the Years,” but would you believe that we don't have a copy of it here?”

  One of the old men speaks, but doesn’t look at me. “You can buy a copy at the filling station. You know where that is?”

  There’s one filling station within five miles.

  “Yeah, I think I can find it,” I say.

  The actual title is “Turkion through the Ages,” which I think is pretty pretentious for a slim volume about an out-of-the-way village with nothing except solitude to recommend it.

  I spend an enjoyable hour on my outdoor rocker reading through the booklet. Wildlife, I learn, abounds in the area. Lots of deer, foxes, possum and skunk along with migrating geese, wild turkeys and hummingbirds. Critters of all kinds.

  I read on.

  “The red wolf population was extirpated from Alabama and just about all of the southeast United States in the 1920s,” the booklet explains. “Turkion is unique in that numerous sightings of red wolf and its larger cousin, the gray wolf, have been reported in the area. None of these reports have been confirmed and are considered unlikely by wildlife specialists. Gray wolf populations are mostly centered in Canada, in the U.S. along the Canadian border and on special reservations such as Yellowstone National Park, where the breed was reintroduced successfully in the late 20th century.”

  Turkion, it seems, is unique in claiming some kind of wolf presence. It's true that a healthy coyote can look like a wolf to the unschooled – at least according to the book – but most people who have seen both wolves and coyotes would never mistake one for the other. The pamphlet, in a patronizing aside, suggests the influx of new residents from “the urban Gulf Coast” have “doubtless confused the two.”

  I’ve got to be back in Birmingham tomorrow, but I’m curious about these reports. I hurry back to the library just fifteen minutes before closing time. The attractive older lady with the gray eyes is piling up some books on a corner of her desk and effortlessly sweeping them into ordered piles as I walk in. Her two suitors are gone.

  She looks up and smiles at me good naturedly, as though she finds my very presence amusing. She has such an open, honest face, it’s hard to take offense.

  “Did you find your book?” she asks.

  “I did. Finished reading it just a few minutes ago,” I say. “I was curious about the mention of wolf sightings in the area. I wondered if you might have anything else about that.”

  She has well-worn smile lines around the corners of her mouth that dance a little when her eyes light up. “It's been a long time since anyone has mentioned that subject,” she says. “During all the fuss with Mothman sightings up north, there was a lot of interest in unusual animals for a while. We had out-of-towners exploring the area for months. The hunters hated it.”

  As she speaks, she pulls out faded vertical boxes from shelves above the periodicals. After looking a while, she pulls out a thick magazine and brings it to me.

  “To be honest,” she says. “I thought it was much ado about nothing and so did everybody else who lived here. But the bed and breakfasts and the restaurants were happy with all the extra traffic . . .” Her voice trails off as she thumbs through the magazine. “But look at this. You might find it interesting.”

  It’s a 1973 edition of the Journal of Mammalogy. Why th
is tiny library has copies of this periodical is beyond me, but I read the paragraph she points to.

  The article reports on a discovery in 1970 by some cave explorers in a mountainous area in the next county. Experts determined they had come upon the remains of a gray wolf whose remarkable state of preservation suggested the animal lived in recent times. Also discovered nearby were fragmentary remains of two other, even larger, carnivores.

  The finding is described as “unique in their experience” and “quite extraordinary.”

  “That's . . . surprising,” I say.

  She seems a little more serious now. “Yes, it is,” she says. “And there's more to the story. But it's not written down anywhere.”

  ***

  I’m surprised to find a card from my six-year-old son, Michael, in the mailbox when I return to Birmingham. Although it’s a week late, the envelope contains a Valentine's Day card. The card is in the shape of a heart and is covered with red flocking.

  “Daddy, Be my Valentine.” It’s in my ex-wife's handwriting, but my son added his stick-figure signature underneath: “Love, Mike.”

  It’s a sweet gesture from my ex and typical of her thoughtfulness. In the years since she brought home the little guy from the hospital, my love grew for the child each day. From the day he first became mobile, Michael would find my ankle, my shin, and finally my knee and hug me while repeating my name, as if amazed at his good fortune in discovering me again.

  Perversely – and it's how these things often happen, isn't it? – as my love for the raven-haired Michael grew, so did my estrangement from Susan. She was as interested in my manipulation of hardware and software to process a company's payroll as I was in her Yoga classes and tofu breakfast sausages.