From Carolyn McCray the #1 international bestselling author in Horror, Police Procedurals, Hard Boiled Mysteries, War, Men’s Adventure, and Action Adventure comes Supper. A grisly Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style horror short story.
Praise for Carolyn’s most popular thrillers…
Praise for Plain Jane…
“Wickedly macabre and blisteringly paced, Plain Jain marks the debut of a thriller for the new millennium.
Brash, funny, terrifying, and shocking, here is a story best enjoyed with all the lights on.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
NYT Top Ten Best Seller James Rollins
Author of Bloodline
Praise for All Hallow’s Eve…
“Carolyn McCray does it again. After her international best seller, Plain Jane, Carolyn brings to life another thriller that takes you to the edge and beyond. Not for the faint of heart, All Hallow’s Eve is macabre, yet still manages to be heartfelt. But with people dying in the manner of the saints, we knew the body count would be high, and Ms. McCray did not disappoint!”
ThrillersRockT
Book Reviewer
“Scary and smart, All Hallow’s Eve is perfect for anyone who wants to read a horror story that makes them think. From the intricate psychopathology of the serial killer, to the hair-raising tension, to the skewering of pop culture, All Hallow’s Eve is simply a great read.”
Your Need To Read
Book Reviewer
Praise for Ninth Circle…
The first episode of this serial grabbed my attention immediately, and I couldn't turn my Kindle pages fast enough! The sharp sensory detail drops you into every scene, and the superb characterization adds unexpected layers to the storyline. Detective Robi Darcmel is simply fascinating, and the characters around him are the perfect foil for his brilliant peculiarities. 9th CIRCLE is vividly cinematic. I can't wait for the next episode to be delivered to my Kindle!
Stephanie Bond
Author
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Afterword
Other Works by Carolyn McCray
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Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
Delia tried to move the tip of her finger, but it, too, refused to budge. The effort it took to simply keep her diaphragm moving up and down, up and down, required all of her focus.
“I can’t see…” Megan moaned next to her.
Struggling, Delia raised her eyelids, squinting against the harsh, late-afternoon sun. Once she saw Megan’s leathery skin, stretched gaunt over her cheekbones, putrefied fat oozing from the cracks, Delia wished she hadn’t bothered.
“It’s going to be okay,” Delia tried to reassure her friend, but Megan just sobbed, the tears sliding patches of skin off with them. Nothing was going to be okay. Ever again.
How had a stupid end-of-summer road trip ended like this? How could anything ever end like this?
Flies buzzed around them in a swarm, all giddy that they’d hit the human remains jackpot. One landed on Megan’s cheek, and then crawled up her face and onto her eyeball. Megan didn’t even blink.
Next to her “sat” Neko. Only with half the tissue gone from her face and jawbone protruding out, Delia didn’t think Neko really “did” much of anything anymore. Then, poor Roberto. The flies and maggots had nearly picked his skeleton clean.
“Yah, yah, yah!” Ruf chanted, clapping his big fat hands together as he skipped around the adult-sized “playpen.” He leaned over into the overgrown weeds and picked up a moldy soccer ball and threw it. At over six feet tall and three hundred pounds, Ruf sent the ball zinging toward them.
Delia tried to duck, but with her paralysis, she couldn’t even flinch as the ball hit her in the shoulder and then bounced against Neko’s skull, knocking Neko’s head from her shoulders. The ball and skull rolled around at Delia’s feet.
“Oopsy!” Ruf giggled as he leaned over the side of the playpen and grabbed Neko’s skull. “Bad, Neko, bad!”
He tossed the skull in the air, and then kicked it toward the squat and squalid house. The head tumbled under a truck up on blocks. Even out of gas, how had she and her friends not taken one look at this place and not realized that evil lived inside? They should have risked the walk in the dark down that long, lonely country road.
“Oh, God! oh, God!” Megan cried as she lifted up an arm and her fingers melted off.
Delia knew that she should be nauseated, but after five days of this? The torment had blurred into a black hole in her heart. If anything, Megan and the rest had been lucky to go out to the smoke shed when they did. Delia had been kept in the house. What Ruf and his sibling had done to her…
She squeezed her eyes shut against the memories. At least they’d tired of her and put her “out back” to tenderize. Soon, she too would melt away. It was probably better that way. Her hair already smelled of hickory chips and piss. After another night in the shack, she wouldn’t be able to smell anything or feel anything.
Like poor Megan simply dripping away.
Delia heard the porch door slam open. She pushed her eyeballs over as far as she could, catching only part of the thin, knobby-jointed brother, Cliver, that stepped out from the house. Her muscles rebelled against drugs in her system, vainly trying to get her legs moving, to run far, far away, but the most they could do was tremble.
“Ruf! A car’s comin’! Get yer mess cleaned up!”
As Ruf picked up Neko’s head and casually tossed it into the playpen, Delia’s mind screamed, “No!” but all that came out was a strand of spittle.
CHAPTER 1
Stacey sat in the backseat watching Jonathan and Tamra, with her blonde locks and big boobs, giggle about something that Stacey couldn’t even hear. Next to her, Leo chuckled as well, sharing in the joke she missed. This was not how this trip was supposed to go.
Fantasies of Jonathan actually giving her a second look were evaporating like spilt milk on a hot summer day. Couldn’t he see that Tamra was nothing but vapid? The only reason she came on this trip was to giggle her way through it.
It was supposed to be Stacey up in that front seat, being Jonathan’s navigator. They had decided that since, you know, Stacey knew the difference between north and south on a map, unlike Miss if-we-are-going-uphill-we-must-be-going-north. Yet somehow, while Stacey helped pack the trunk, Tamra miraculously was already sitting in the front seat. When Stacey had protested, Jonathan had patted her shoulder and told her “not to be like that.”
Not to be like what? Fair?
Frustrated, Stacey crossed her arms, giving Tamra a good glare while she was at it, even though the blonde would never even glance back to see it.
“I feel your pain,” Leo said as he patted her knee. His dark hand stark against her extremely pale leg. The reflection off her pasty-white legs could be literally used as a first-strike weapon.
Stacey glanced at Tamra’s golden-brown shoulder. Maybe Stacey should have used a spray-on tan before leaving. But even that would never have compared to Tamra’s natural glow. Stacey tugged her walking shorts down to cover her knees. She wasn’t wearing short-shorts like Tamra. Those weren’t even Daisy Dukes. They were Daisy-I-hope-you-got-a-Brazilian-yesterday-Dukes.
But she couldn’t be angry with Leo. He was as fascinated with Jonathan as she was. At least she had the fact that Jonathan batted for her team going for her. Poor Leo could only hope to pine away as Jonathan bounced from bimbo to bimbo.
Actually, Stacey and Leo might as well be in the same boat. They both had exactly t
he same chance of getting laid this weekend. Looking over at Leo’s rippling muscles, close-cropped hair, and perfect onyx skin, Stacey sighed. More than likely if Jonathan had to pick, he’d go with Leo. Hell, she’d go with Leo.
Fed up with what was happening inside the car, Stacey’s eyes scanned the trees as they drove by. They weren’t normal trees, or at least none like she’d seen before. Their branches were gnarled, and they dripped with moss or algae or fungus, or whatever the hell made the tree look like it was bleeding. Despite the sweltering heat, Stacey rubbed a hand up and down her arm, trying to chase away the chill that had descended.
How many eyes were there out in those woods? Ever since making the stupid left turn, she had felt that someone was watching them. Tracking them. Like the car was the rabbit and the “watcher” the wolf. But that was stupid, right?
She had to shake it off. The whole point of this trip was to explore “strange” places, wasn’t it? That’s what coeds did, right?
Stacey feared that she was wrong in both circumstances.
“Is that a gas station up ahead?” Jonathan asked.
Tamra shook her head, sending a golden cascade into motion, her hair catching the waning light, nearly blinding the car with its radiance. Either that, or the sun just hit the hood of the car as they entered a clearing in the forest.
“No, I think it’s a house,” Tamra answered.
“Well, it had better be something,” Jonathan stated. “We’ve been on empty for seven miles.”
“But the sign said ‘gas station,’ ” Leo said, leaning forward between the seats.
He was right. After miles of lonely road, that little sign had promised gasoline, but after about half an hour of windy road filled with switchbacks, they had only found this lonesome house.
The car jumped and lurched as they suddenly hit dirt road. Stacey looked out of the window. The pavement had just stopped. No warning. No sign.
“Sorry!” Jonathan said as he slowed the car to barely a crawl.
Still, rocks and sticks popped under the tires. This sedan was not exactly off-road material. But at this point, after three hours stuck in the car with Miss Ample Bosom, and Jonathan barely able to keep his eyes on the road, Stacey was ready to get out and walk the distance to the house.
Anything had to be better than this.
* * *
Cliver smelled the soup. Somethin’ was missing.
“Ruf!” Cliver bellowed as he stirred the huge pot. They were gonna have guests. They had to do this right.
He heard the huge lummox of a brother coming up the back porch steps long before Cliver saw him. The house shook with the pounding of his feet.
“Ya, Cliver?” Ruf asked puffing from the exertion.
“Did ya put away your toys?” Cliver asked.
Ruf nodded vigorously.
He better have. Ma would have another stroke if Ruf left a head lying around again.
“Did you bring the meat?”
Ruf again nodded his head up and down like a bobblehead doll.
“Well?” Cliver asked as he scraped a little burnt material from the bottle of the pot.
“Well, what?” Ruf asked.
“Do you have it?”
“Oh yeah!” Ruf exclaimed, pulling a partially decomposed foot from his pocket.
“Damn it, Ruf!” Cliver yelled, clanging the spoon on the cast iron pot. His brother was a great butcher. He was just not so clear on what he was supposed to be butchering. “I told you, a hand.” When his brother’s thick brows pinched together in confusion, Cliver put his own hand out. “A hand, Ruf. Not a foot!”
Ruf laughed, though, hearty and loud, his fat stomach quaking in mirth. “Oh, I thought you meant give you a ‘hand,’ like help out with the soup!” His brother’s eyes teared up as he laughed again. “Want me to go out and get you one?”
Cliver snatched the foot from Ruf. “No, we don’t have time. Give it here.”
A foot did not release the same bouquet as a hand, but what were they to do? Their guests would arrive any minute. He tapped the foot on the counter to knock most of the dirt and straw off of it, and then dropped it into the deep pot.
He turned back around to find his brother still giggling. “Hand…”
“Did you put the live one back in the smokehouse?”
“Sure enough,” Ruf said but you could tell he still wanted to giggle.
“The live one?” Cliver asked again. You had to stay on top of Ruf or well, you got a foot instead of a hand.
But his brother nodded again. “Yep. Had to gag her and everything.”
Well, that did give Cliver some hope that Ruf had gotten it right. “Okay, then go get Ma cleaned up. We’ve got company coming.”
Ruf clapped his hands and awkwardly skipped off down the hallway.
Cliver heard footsteps above his head. Bitsy was coming down from the attic. His sister hurried into the kitchen, wiping her dirty hands on her skirt.
“They’re nearly here. Dinner ready?”
“Will be,” Cliver answered, looking at her stringy hair and bony body. If only Ma would let him marry Bitsy. He was getting tired of those outsiders. With all the crying and hysterics. Then if you paralyzed ’em. they just lay there. Why couldn’t his mother let him have what she and Pa had?
“And Ruf?” Bitsy asked. “Is he getting Ma?”
Cliver scowled. Who did Bitsy think she was? He’d been doing this since before she was born. Just because she was the baby of the family and she and her twin sister got all the looks didn’t mean she was the boss of him.
“Of course,” he snarled, suddenly pining for Bitsy’s twin, Betsy. Why’d she have to go off and leave anyway? He bet Ma would let him marry Betsy. Who else was she going to marry? Ruf?
“And he fed the rest of the bodies to the pigs?” his sister pressed.
“Bitsy!” Cliver exclaimed, although honestly he had forgotten to ask Ruf that. Still, what nerve did she have?
“You know how special Ma thinks this next one is, right?” Bitsy asked, her hands on her hips.
Cliver rolled his eyes. Ma had one of her visions. That finally they would find the missing piece to their family. She predicted a wedding within the fortnight. Bitsy and Ruf were impressed. Cliver wondered if it weren’t a bit of another stroke. Why would Ma think they needed another man around the house?
Stirring the pot, spreading the flavor of the foot into the stock, Cliver wondered what any man in that car had that he didn’t.
* * *
Leo got out of the car and stretched his legs. The farmhouse looked like something out of an old, stained Civil War picture. He was sure the thick. gnarled trees had supported plenty of nooses in their day.
Crinkling his nose, Leo wondered what in the world that stench was. He could see a thin trail of smoke snaking up into the sky from behind the house. Behind that it looked like a bunch of pigpens. A dull, rusted sign announced “Tullock Family Farm: The best- tasting pork in the state.”
Leo doubted that very, very much.
The others got out as well, although Stacey made sure to walk to the other side of the car, as far away from Tamra as possible. He had to give the blonde credit, though. God had given that girl some amazing assets, and he wasn’t just talking about her ta-tas, and Tamra used them to her greatest advantage. How she could squish those babies together, push them up, and tilt her head invitingly at the same time was simply amazing.
But then again, how Jonathan wore a pair of chinos was pretty sublime as well.
The porch door opened, and a mousy little woman came out. She laid her hand above her eyes, shielding them from the glow of the setting sun.
“You folks lost?”
Leo grinned. She tried to act like she was surprised that they were here. Come on. How many other cars came down that godforsaken road?
“No,” Jonathan answered. “Well not originally,” he corrected.
Dear Lord, could Jonathan get any cuter?
“But now we ar
e out of gas,” Jonathan finished.
“Ya don’t have enough to get back to the main road? There’s a station just a few miles south.”
Leo glanced over to see Stacey gritting her teeth. The words “I told you so,” were practically stamped on her forehead. She had been the sole voice to continue down the highway instead of turning down the narrow road.
“Nope,” Jonathan said. “We got here on fumes.”
Another figure emerged from the doorway. Barely taller than the woman, the man seemed hunched over, and his joints were malformed. Dark eyes peered out of thick, horn-rimmed glasses.
Seriously, all they needed was a banjo playing. Given Leo’s skin color, and if they found out his sexual preference? Oh boy, this looked to be a lynching kind of place.
“What have we got here, Bitsy?” the man asked.
Tamra stepped forward. “The sign said ‘gas,’ but I don’t see any gas.”
The man looked down on Tamra from the porch, squinting as if trying to see if a lost chick, out of gas, was really being that rude to the people who might be able to help them.
“We’ve told ’em a thousand times to take the sign down,” the man replied. “But you know the government.”
Um, Leo was pretty sure these people didn’t have much contact with the “government.” If they paid taxes, Leo was Liberace’s son. Although, Leo did have to admit, they both looked fabulous in sequins.
Tamra stomped her little foot. “So what are we supposed to do?”
“Well,” The man looked at the setting sun, then to Bitsy, and then back to Tamra “You’ll never make the main road before nightfall. You might as well come on in for supper.”
Jonathan glanced around the yard with the half dozen cars up on blocks. “That is so generous and all, but you guys don’t have any gas lying around? We’ll pay you whatever you want for a few gallons.”
Bitsy shrugged. “Look at ’em. Pa’s been saying he’ll fix them up for years. The only good truck is with him.”
“He took some hogs up to the market and won’t be back until the morning,” the man added.
Tamra grinned a pretty wicked grin. “I say we send Stacey to hike out and get the gas.”
Supper: The Horror Short Story You've Been Craving Page 1
