by J. Thorn
"J. Thorn has done it again. Not a person for enjoying horror stories, with trepidation I started reading his shorts in Voices from Beyond and I'll admit it was his voice that grabbed me first. He is a gifted writer...I found myself enjoying every well-written tale, especially the unexpected endings."
Mimi Barbour
Author of Roll the Dice
"His stories are not the normal run of the mill horror, with the blood and guts, etc. They are the type that sneak up on you and in the end make you think "well I didn't see that coming." I would highly recommend any of his books to those readers who enjoy good horror, that engages the reader and keeps them guessing."
Robert Pettigrew from Amazon.com
"J. Thorn's gritty, edgy, writing style combined with his ability to develop stories rich in texture and depth make for an amazing reading experience. His books are not to be missed."
SB Knight
Author of Born of Blood
Voices from Beyond
By J. Thorn
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Acknowledgments
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About the Author
Copyright
Table of Contents
Voices from Beyond
Second Edition
Copyright © 2011 by J. Thorn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Edited by Talia Leduc
For more information:
http://www.jthorn.net
[email protected]
For Brady and Brenna, the bestest kids ever.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Targets
At Own Risk
Hearts of Ochre
Ten Days
Fall Fantasy Days
The Limited
Acknowledgments
Other Works
About the Author
Copyright
Introduction
Short stories are dead. Short stories are very much alive.
After dozens of rejections, getting a short story published might pay $25 for a 5000-word piece; if you are lucky. The amount of time it takes to write, edit, revise, and submit a short story is never worth the effort.
However, at the dawn of the eBook age, stories written in shorter form are making a comeback. Dwindling attention spans and reader apps for mobile devices have resurrected the form. The short story provides the reader an opportunity to meet the author, the style, the feel. A collection of these short stories makes the transaction worthwhile and digestible in manageable portions.
Each of the stories included in this collection stand on their own and do not have to be read in sequence. Several have won awards or contests. None have appeared in print.
I hope you enjoy the tales and a glimpse inside the depths of my imagination.
--J. Thorn, June 2011
Childhood fears never relent. Brian and I used to head into the woods with our BB guns and shoot bottles in the days before child molesters, video games, and helicopter parents. We often ignored the evil spirits lurking behind the trees.
* * *
Targets
The musky scent of gun oil spilled into the air as Jack raised the BB gun and put the crosshairs of the scope over the faded, crinkly label of the bottle. With a haughty puff, the BB sailed to the target, shattering it in a spray of colored glass.
“Nice shot,” said Kole.
“Watch this one,” replied Jack.
He spun to the right, locking sights on the row of cans perched on staggered cinder blocks. With two pumps for each shot, Jack’s trigger finger released a flurry of BBs into the cans. The wounded aluminum somersaulted off the broken wall and rolled to a stop amongst the musky leaves of late autumn.
Kole whistled and pumped a fist in the air.
“Got every one of those Al-Qiedy terrorists.”
Jack smiled and rested the rifle against the exterior wall of the crumbling hunting lodge. The oddly shaped stones of the second-story fireplace frowned at the boys through a silent maw of black soot. Remains of plastic milk jugs, yellowed Playboys, and emptied BB containers lay in a heap in the middle of the hearth. The forgotten memory of bitter hops wafted near clusters of emptied bottles. A rusted hook hung from the stone mantel, no longer supporting a good-luck horseshoe. The three outer walls, in all stages of decomposition, framed the remains of the hunting lodge, and jumbled cinder blocks stuck up through the fallen trees like crooked teeth in an old man’s grin.
Kole leapt over a pile of steel rebar. One piece caught the edge of his jacket, ripping the fabric and stopping inches from skewering his kidney. He looked through the empty treetops at the sun held in November’s grip.
“My mom said I gotta be home in time for dinner. Before dark.”
Jack snickered and thrust his hip out at Kole while waving a finger in front of his face. “Be here for dinner, Kole, or your dad will whip you good.”
The two boys laughed and brushed the dust of shattered glass from the smooth, concrete foundation. The northeast corner, the only part of the floor still intact, remained clear of debris except for two upturned milk crates. Jack sat on his, waiting for Kole to join him.
“Forgot my watch,” Jack said.
“We probably have half an hour before it gets too dark to shoot.”
Jack looked at Kole, one eyebrow raised on an otherwise stoic face.
“You don’t believe it, do you?” Kole asked.
Jack shrugged off the question and pumped his gun with a blank stare. “They’re stories. The teenagers like to scare us away so they can come down here and drink, or smoke, or make out, or whatever.”
The blood rushed to Kole’s face. He kicked at a pile of leaves. “Yeah, at least they don’t break the bottles.”
Jack dropped a green one, spilling drops of the pungent beer left to linger in its remains. “That kid in 1986? You think it really happened?”
Kole laughed and then looked up again as if to measure the descent of the sun. “We’re fine as long as we’re here together, right?”
“Yeah, man, best buds hang.”
A swift wind rattled through the barren trees, pushing branches together with a low moan of scraping bark. Jack pulled up the zipper on his jacket and drew the hood over his head. Kole did the same.
“Wanna set up another round of bottles?”
Jack shrugged. “How many we got?”
Kole pointed at each bottle sitting in the wet cardboard box, his lips moving with each mental count. “Thirteen,” he replied.
“Rock-paper-scissors for the seventh?”
Kole shook his head. “You can have it. You need the practice more than me.”
Jack flipped a middle finger into the air. He looked over a shoulder, ready for an adult to reprimand him for the obscene gesture.
Kole grabbed two bottles and stepped over the bricks to the left of the fireplace. Decades of freeze-thaw cycles had knocked cinder blocks from their mortar, leaving a narrow ascent toward the top of the stone chimney. He reached high to set the bottles on the uppermost block when his foot slid, and the bottle wobbled before tumbling backwards off the wall. Jack winced when the sound of breaking glass pierced the silent forest.
“Nice. Guess we don’t have to worry about the extra one.”
> Kole regained his footing, trying hard to catch up with his heaving lungs. A lone bead of sweat ran from his forehead and jumped off his nose. “You wanna climb up here and do this?”
Jack rested his rifle against the milk crate and walked through the leaves. He sighed and moaned with each step as though walking through quicksand.
“Give ’em to me,” he said.
Kole huffed and rolled his eyes before dropping off the back of the wall and landing amidst the wreckage of moss-covered cinder blocks. He looked up at Jack as he climbed higher on the broken wall.
Jack shoved a brown whiskey bottle into his left coat pocket. It clinked against his phone, so he yanked it out, tossed the bottle to the other hand, and jammed it into his right pocket.
“You sure we got time for this?”
Jack stopped and looked down at Kole. “Go home if you’re afraid of getting in trouble with your mommy. I’m staying here, pussy.”
Kole looked at an untied shoelace, hiding a scarlet face from his friend. “I’ll go home when I feel like it.”
“Good. Then shut up and get ready to fire after me. Setters get first shots.”
Jack reached up, hoping to get his whiskey bottle higher, when he felt his left foot slip. His fingers grasped the rotten mortar, sliding from the weathered blocks, and his right foot swung out over the gaping hole that used to be the first floor. He saw the remnants of the concrete slab swing by, his milk crate a mile away. Kole’s yell broke through the pulsing heartbeat slamming his ears. Jack heard the bottle break while he was still in the air, weightless and floating over the forest floor. He saw the top of his white sock block out the sun as his body rotated backwards off the wall, and he felt the stinging puncture as the crooked teeth of the hunting lodge swallowed him whole. He blinked once before the black velvet cape of unconsciousness fell.
***
Jack grabbed at a bed sheet that was not there. The walls of his dreamtime bedroom morphed into the lonely trees. His good eye opened while the swollen one brought a wave of pain. He felt the tickle of dead leaves brushing past his cheek and dancing around his head, bringing a heady tang to his lips. Jack blinked, attempting to focus on the forest. His tongue felt as though it were wrapped in cotton, and he pulled it from the side of his mouth with an audible pop.
Kole’s shoes protruded from behind the opposite wall, the tips of his boots pointed skyward like those of the witch who had that house dropped on her. Jack could not quite remember the name of that movie, but that scene had always upset him. He looked to the right and saw Kole’s socks bunched underneath his jeans. The hole in the knee was twisted to the side. He blinked again and opened his mouth, but no words came out.
The pain in Jack’s left ankle seized his body and sent a jolt through his extremities. His heart lurched in his chest, and nothing but a slight whimper escaped his lips. When he moved, the broken bone retreated from the torn flesh, bringing another wave of violent spasms. Jack turned his head to the side and vomited onto the leaves. Spittle of slimy orange juice ran down his cheek and clung to stringy, shoulder-length hair. He placed a hand on his stomach and discovered a sticky, damp patch of darkness on the white t-shirt. When he lifted his head to get a better angle, the woods swayed and buckled under him. His open eye adjusted to the night, and he looked up at the sliver of moon hanging on the highest branches.
“Kole, you are so busted,” he said.
His own words felt like nails being driven into his head. Jack’s breathing hitched as more pain radiated from the left ankle, creeping up his leg like an angry spider.
“My eye, my stomach, and my ankle,” Jack said. The verbal inventory of injury focused him, allowing him to contemplate the situation. He saw his BB gun about seven feet away, the stock pitched at an angle on a broken cinder block. The barrel hid in the weeds as though ashamed of the fall. Jack sat up and spread his hands on the ground by his hips to brace for the pain. This time, he fought the rising bile in his throat and forced it back down with an acidic belch.
Jack looked at his leg through a stranger’s eyes. Two chunks of ragged cement clamped down on his foot, holding it in a hungry mouth, ready to devour its prey. He saw a red burst on his white athletic sock and noticed that his toe pointed at a ninety-degree angle from his ankle. When he reached out to touch the top of his shoe, the pain of the injury washed through him, and he dropped backwards, arching his back up as a cry roared from his chest and out of his mouth.
Jack panted like a dog. If he held very still, the dull, pulsing pain in his ankle would not erupt into a volcanic slide of torment. He turned his head towards the opposite wall. “Kole?”
No response.
“Kole? Are you okay?”
Nothing.
“I’m coming, Kole.”
Jack pushed his hands off the ground as if to stand when his ankle released a fiery explosion of agony. The black wall rushed over him, knocking him back into the realm of the unconscious.
***
The silence shook Jack from his daze. He opened both eyes, although he could see nothing out of the swollen one. He shivered while watching the mist of his own breath float through the night.
Jack listened and heard nothing. No crickets serenaded the autumn forest. No birds fluttered through the trees. No squirrels dropped mouthfuls of nuts on their ascent to a nest. The moon sliver rose and now took its place a few degrees to the right of Polaris.
“Mom’s gonna kill me,” he said. He pulled himself to a sitting position, careful not to put any pressure on his trapped ankle. He looked to the opposite wall, at the silhouette of his still friend.
“C’mon, Kole. This ain’t funny no more.”
Kole did not move. Kole did not reply.
They only found parts of that kid, remember? He wasn’t far from here, back in 1986, was he kiddo? He’s going to get you too.
“Shut up,” Jack said, attempting to quiet the chatter inside his head.
Jack reached to his right for a round stone. “Probably dropped here during the last Ice Age.”
His words echoed through the empty trees, and he grabbed the stone, raising it behind him. With a throwing motion limited to his upper torso, he tossed the rock towards Kole. Jack thought how disappointed his dad would have been with his throw.
Put your body into it, Jack. You can’t get any power with an arm toss.
Jack shoved his dad’s voice from his head and squinted at Kole, willing his friend to move, hoping to prod him into a verbal insult or flip of the middle finger.
The rock landed three feet from Kole and scurried through the leaves until it rested against the boy’s shoe. The silence of the forest returned like a high tide.
Jack wiped a tear from his cheek and suppressed the hitch in his chest. The air of the November night turned colder, even without the harsh winter wind. Jack squinted, listening keenly. And then he heard it.
The blackened sky swayed overhead and threatened to swallow Jack whole. He held his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to block out the sound as the crinkle of leaves grew closer, like the encroaching rumbles of a summer thunderstorm. Jack tried to convince himself it was a deer, but there was no mistaking the rhythmic shuffle of a human.
He kept his eyes closed, afraid to see the source of the noise. The visitor circled the lodge in a great arc, but each pass brought it closer to the walls. Jack kept still as he listened, his ankle throbbing.
The crack of a twig snapped Jack’s eyes open. He could no longer play possum and stifle his morbid curiosity. The sound came from behind the opposite wall, close to Kole. For the first time since Jack had awoken, Kole moved. At first, a flitter of hope rushed to Jack’s lips, words of relief ready to bound from his mouth. When he saw Kole’s left leg rise and then bend the wrong way at the knee, Jack’s heart fell into his stomach. He squinted and buried his face in the rich forest soil.
When the forest settled into solitude, Jack opened one eye enough to see that Kole was gone. Two parallel mounds of leaves bared
the black soil where Kole’s heels had passed moments earlier. The sound of crunching underbrush faded at a steady pace. By the time Jack gained enough courage to open the other eye, the forest had fallen silent yet again. Mumbled words terrified him until he realized they were his own, his friend’s name mingled with unintelligible prayers. He could no longer fight back his sobs.
He reached for his BB gun, as if the copper pellets might ward off the evil spirits of the forest. His fingers shook, his palm outstretched, but his ankle was still caught in place. Jack scanned the ground with one cheek planted in the cold leaves, and he saw scattered cinder blocks, broken bottle necks, and the shapes of twisted trees concealed by the dark of the night. The wall sloped upward to his left, concealing most of his body from the other three sides of the lodge.
He didn’t see me, he thought. He took Kole, but he didn’t see me.
Jack glanced up at the moon as it inched across the inky black sky. It peaked and descended towards the south, a good sign that dawn stood closer than dusk. He closed his eyes and imagined his parents canvassing the neighborhood. He had told them he was going to Kole’s, and Kole had told his parents he was going to Jack’s. With both boys missing, Jack realized the predicament he faced. He cried for his mom and pleaded for his dad, stifling sobs in the crook of his arm.
For the first time, Jack felt a smooth object behind his head. He reached back without turning his waist and snagged the top of the water bottle he had in his backpack. It must have dropped out during the fall. He held it up to the meager moonlight and swished the water around before unscrewing the top and draining the few ounces left inside. The sweet, cool water brought a wave of relief, and he fumbled through the leaves until he found his phone. The screen was dark, but it had survived the fall inside his jacket. He held the power button down with a shaking finger and had to turn away from the bright burst of the LCD display. Jack waited as the phone came to life, but his eyes never left the bars at the top right corner. With the weight of a wrecking ball, the words “No Service” flashed inside a red box.
