by Ronald Kelly
Then, one night, Rebecca woke at the hour of twelve. She sat up in bed and stared into the darkness, trying to determine what had roused her from her sleep. It had been a noise—a coarse, monotonous sound that rang with a disturbing familiarity. She strained her ears and heard the sound again. It echoed through the blackness of the outer night. From the direction of the old Lee house.
She rose and walked to the window at the far side of the room. From that vantage point she could see the southern face of the abandoned house. The moment she looked through the dirty panes of the bedroom window, the puzzling noise ceased. She peered at the shadowy overhang of the back porch, certain that she had glimpsed a flash of fiery sparks a second before the sound of grinding had come to a halt.
Which one must I kill first? echoed the voice of Green Lee from the far reaches of her mind, as chilling now as it had seemed fifteen years ago. Tell me, Lord, which one shall it be?
Rebecca stared out at the darkness for a while, then returned to her bed. She lay awake for a long time and listened for the haunting clash of steel against stone, but the only sounds she heard were the chirping of crickets in the dark hours of the night, as well as the soft snoring of her sleeping husband.
***
Spring stretched into summer, and soon the tobacco grew lush and chest-high in the hundred-acre field. The men spent their days weeding and hoeing, while the children played hide-and-seek amid the thick stalks and pretended they were explorers in some great and mysterious jungle.
Rebecca and the other women of the farm camp had planted a small vegetable garden behind the houses and, by mid-July, the patch was ripe with fresh tomatoes, snapping beans, and corn. On one such summer day, Rebecca was digging taters and picking roasting ears for that night’s supper, when the sound of youthful screams cut through her ears like shards of broken glass. The sound froze her heart and, at first, she was sure that one of the children had fallen down the stone well or had been bitten by a copperhead snake.
She stepped from the garden and watched as Mitch and Millie ran screaming from the dense growth of the tobacco rows and ran across the rural road as if Old Scratch himself was fast on their heels. “What’s wrong?” she asked as they clung to her gingham skirt, nearly in tears.
“It was a man!” sobbed Millie. “There was a man in the field!”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Rebecca. “What kind of man?”
“A crazy man,” said little Mitch. “A man with bones for a hand.”
Rebecca’s heart grew as cold and heavy as a winter stone. She grabbed a hatchet from off the chopping stump near the back porch and—despite their squalling protest—made the children show her where their frightening encounter had taken place. She felt her skin crawl with gooseflesh when she discovered it to be the exact same spot where she and her brother had first known the horror of Green Lee.
She walked up and down the adjoining rows, but found no sign of anyone having been there recently. Her husband and the other men were working at the far end of the property that day, a good distance from the spot that Mitch and Millie had shown her. Although she hated doing so, she assured the children that it had merely been their imagination playing tricks on them. They looked doubtful at her explanation, however, and felt that she didn’t believe their fantastic story.
But, secretly, Rebecca Howell had good reason to believe every word of what they had told her, even though it was impossible to consider such a thing actually happening…especially with the culprit long since dead and moldering in the dark depths of his grave.
***
As the summer months slowly gave way to autumn, life in the farming camp continued uneventfully. The routine of each new day remained the same as that of the day before.
The children seemed to have forgotten their harrowing experience in the tobacco field, but Rebecca hadn’t. The screams of Mitch and Millie still lingered in her mind, as well as the distant image of a claw of gnarled bone and the memory of a malevolent whisper from her own childhood. She attempted to drive those thoughts from her mind, for it seemed foolish to linger on such things.
Then, toward the end of September, thoughts of Green Lee resurfaced. Rebecca was awakened by that peculiar sound of metallic grinding. Swiftly, she left her bed and went to the bedroom window. This time she saw a faint hint of irregular light coming from the back porch of the old Lee house. Intrigued, she felt her way through the pitch darkness of the room and made her way to the kitchen for a better view. From her own back porch she saw the flashing bursts of orange sparks and heard more clearly the distinct grating of steel against stone.
Curiously, she padded with bare feet across the weedy stretch of yard that separated the two houses. By the time she got within thirty feet of the rickety porch of the deserted house, both the noise and the light had vanished. Cautiously, Rebecca stepped onto the bowed boards of the porch and approached the old grinding wheel that still sat where it had fifteen years ago.
She put her fingertips to the wheel and immediately jerked them away. The stone was hot to the touch. She crouched down and found that tiny bits of newly-ground steel were scattered upon the dusty boards underneath. But there was no sign of the person who had done the grinding, or the instruments that had been subject to the stone’s whirling edge.
Could he still be alive? Rebecca wondered. Could Green Lee be alive, despite what I heard before? Or could his ghost be haunting this place after all these years?
As if in answer, the sound of heavy footsteps on aged floorboards echoed from within the darkness of the open door. Rebecca found herself rooted to the spot as a pale form slowly emerged from the shadowy kitchen beyond.
“What are you doing over here?” someone asked her and Rebecca felt her fright melt away at the sound of her husband’s voice.
“I thought I heard something,” she said, catching her breath.
“So did I,” replied Jasper. “A noise and a light. But doesn’t look like nobody’s here now. Must’ve been an old hobo messing around or something.”
Rebecca crossed her slender arms against the night chill and was escorted home by her husband. When they finally settled into bed once again, Rebecca glanced at Jasper’s pocket watch lying on the bureau and saw that it was only a few minutes past the stroke of midnight.
***
During the next few weeks, Rebecca couldn’t shake the dreadful shadow of that night on the back porch of the Lee house. During her daily chores she found herself casting an uneasy glance at the dark, empty windows, as if expecting to see a wild-eyed, whiskered face leering out at her from amid the broken panes.
And it was even worse at night. Her dreams were filled with the threat of Green Lee. Sometimes she would find herself running across a snowy field with Mitch and Millie in tow as a dark form pursued them, fistfuls of honed steel flashing wickedly in the cold, winter moonlight. Sometimes she would dream that she heard the whimpers of children drifting through the ebony night, along with the smell of cooking meat, and she would go into the kitchen and find Green Lee standing over a vast iron pot on the wood stove. From the boiling waters he would drag the bodies of her children, holding them aloft and cackling insanely as the blistered meat slid limply from their naked bones and fell like pale suits of dead gristle into the steaming cauldron.
As if the horrid nightmares weren’t enough, Rebecca began to have suspicions that her husband might be playing a part in her sudden uneasiness. She came to the realization that he was acting strangely and not at all like the man she had married.
Lately, Jasper had chosen to spend his evenings sitting by the door of the big, iron cook stove, smoking his pipe and staring into the glowing slits of the grate, as if searching for the clue to some inner mystery. He also began to talk in his sleep. Not coherently, but in low whispers, reminding Rebecca of the breathy pleas of that lunatic handyman she had once known.
And objects around the house began to mysteriously disappear. One morning in December, Rebecca noticed that Ja
sper was shaving with a new razor. When she questioned him about the whereabouts of his old one, Jasper grew defensive. “I reckon I just misplaced it, that’s all,” he said curtly. Also, the hand-axe she used for chopping kindling vanished without a trace from the stump outside.
There was the matter of the bed linen as well. Sometimes when she did her washing, she would find some of the sheets filthy with mud and dank leaves, as if someone had gone for a nocturnal stroll and then climbed back into bed without wiping their feet.
***
It was on a cold and snowy night in the middle of February that all of Rebecca’s fears and suspicions suddenly came to a head and she found herself lying awake in her bed, filled with a sensation of overbearing dread.
Her hand moved to her husband’s side of the bed and found the space unoccupied. She rose and instantly smelled a sickening scent in the air. It reeked like spoiled meat cooking in its own fetid juices. Uttering a silent prayer, Rebecca stepped into the hallway and checked the bedroom of her children. Mitch and Millie were both gone. Their beds were empty and their blankets had been violently flung across the floor. She looked down the dark corridor and, from the kitchen, thought she heard the boiling of water…and the low, giggling mirth of an unsound mind. Then came the sharp slap of the back door slamming shut.
Bracing herself for the worst, Rebecca Howell entered the kitchen. Despite the cold winter night, the interior of the room was sweltering hot. The stove had been stoked. A crackling fire raged within its iron belly. The narrow slits of the grate winked at her like crimson eyes, privy to some evil knowledge that she was thankfully ignorant of. But not for very long.
As she walked nearer, Rebecca saw that her largest iron pot was on the stove and that plumes of acrid steam drifted from the bubbling waters within. The odor of cooking meat was stronger than ever and Rebecca fought the sickness that threatened to seize her. Taking a step closer, she peered through the warm mist and into the torrid waters beneath.
Something danced in the dark depths, a couple of small, pale objects rising and falling amid the swirling currents. At first she didn’t know what they were. Then, as they rose to the boiling surface, she recoiled in horror.
They were clumps of flaccid skin. Pale blossoms of lifeless flesh that had slipped from the understructure of human bones. The objects waved at her like disembodied gloves. Tiny nails, bitten to the quick, graced each fluttering finger.
Rebecca moaned with terror. “My babies! What has he done to my babies?”
She recalled the slamming of the back door and, from the darkness of the night beyond, again heard the low chortling of maniacal laughter. She grabbed a heavy stick of firewood from the box, then opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.
It was a frigid night. The ground was inches deep with fresh snow, and moonlit icicles hung like jeweled fangs from the eaves of the overhang. Rebecca breathed frosty plumes of winter air, then, raising the stick of wood overhead, stepped off the edge of the porch. And instantly felt her bare foot sink into the cooling sludge that had once been her husband’s brain.
Before Rebecca could give way to the scream that rose in her throat, she heard the rasping sound of tiny voices.
“Which one must we kill…next?”
Then, from the dense shadows beneath the back porch, came the flash of sharpened steel and youthful bone.
AFTERWORD
I’ve been gone for a while…ten years to be exact. So I have a lot of folks to thank for kicking me in the seat of the britches and urging me to give this storytelling gig another try.
First and foremost, to the good Lord, through whom all things are possible. Thank you for blessing me with this second chance.
To my wife, Joyce, who has been my strength and comfort for the past sixteen years. Thanks for your love and support through the good times and bad—especially those post-Zebra years—and for showing me that there is much more to life than sitting behind a keyboard.
To my precious daughters, who God has gracefully blessed me with. Reilly, my superhero and monster-loving buddy, whose interests in art, music, and writing show great promise. And my little Chigger, Makenna, a bundle of energy with fiery red hair and an Irish temper to match; a lover of baby dolls and fairy princesses, of which, in my eyes, she is both. And to our newest addition, my son, Ryan Alexander.
To my good friend, Mark Hickerson, who stuck with me throughout the years and, eventually, won me back to writing. I’ll be forever grateful for your friendship and tenacity. Most of all, you were influential in orchestrating my comeback. And to Shannon Riley, my small-press pal, who went to bat for me and got the wheels turning. Much thanks to my present and future publishers: Richard Chizmar at Cemetery Dance Publications and Stephen Lloyd at Croatoan Publishing, for your confidence, friendship, and support, and for presenting my work in a way it has never been presented before. I look forward to many wonderful projects together.
To my biggest fan and best friend, Rob McCoy, to whom this collection is dedicated. And to the following folks: James Newman, Katie O’Neil, Mark Johnson, and Alex McVey, for regarding me as much more than simply a name on a book. Thank you for blessing me with the privilege of being your friend.
To my good friend Hunter Goatley, whose generosity and expertise has been phenomenal in bringing the Ron Kelly website to life. Thanks for making this dream a reality. For more info on me and my brand of Southern-fried horror, y’all stop on by at www.ronaldkelly.com and make yourselves at home.
And, last but not least, to my fans, who never forgot me and forgave me for going AWOL for a while. I promise you, folks, the twilight only gets darker from here on out.
Y’all come on back and see me. There is always an empty rocking chair on the ol’ front porch and plenty more tales to be told.
Ronald Kelly
Brush Creek, Tennessee
July 2007
Cemetery Dance Publications
Be sure to visit CemeteryDance.com for more information about all of our great horror and suspense eBooks, along with our collectible signed Limited Edition hardcovers and our awarding magazine.
Our authors include Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Ray Bradbury, PetemStraub, William Peter Blatty, Justin Cronin, Frank Darabont, Mick Garris, Joe R. Lansdale, Norman Partridge, Richard Laymon, Michael Slade, Graham Masterton, Douglas Clegg, Jack Ketchum, William F. Nolan, Nancy A. Collins, Al Sarrantonio, John Skipp, and many others.
www.CemeteryDance.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
Introduction
Breakfast Serial
Miss Abigail's Delicate Condition
Forever Angels
Yea Though I Drive
The Web of La Sanguinaire
The Cistern
Papa's Exile
The Hatchling
Black Harvest
Dead Skin
Consumption
Dust Devils
The Boxcar
The Dark Tribe
Old Hacker
The Winds Within
Oh Sordid Shame
The Cerebral Passion
Thinning the Herd
Blood Suede Shoes
Tyrophex-Fourteen
Scream Queen
Devil's Creek
Impressions in Oak
Bookmarks
Romicide
Whorehouse Hollow
Depravity Road
Beneath Black Bayou
Exit 85
Grandma's Favorite Recipe
Midnight Grinding
Afterword
Cemetery Dance Publications
(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
