Then the writing on the walls began, and though I locked the gates each night, I knew one of the outsiders snuck down into the tunnels after dark to try to scare us away. The first appeared, written in charcoal at most recently unearthed portion of tunnel.
Return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. And the first of the three outsiders quit, cursing his way up the tunnels and back to daylight. We were thirty-two.
Another week passed, and I found myself sweating so much from the heat that puddles formed in my boots. Then the second message appeared chiseled into the wall.
Punishment to the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generations.
“It’s Exodus,” breathed the second of the outsiders before he too departed. We were thirty-one.
Then the last message appeared in silver writing.
Greed brought you down here, and greed will bring you back.
The last outsider left, and we were thirty.
But even as the air grew thinner, the tunnels warmer, and the earth looser, I commanded my men to dig deeper. Today I struck iron, and we dug about it, revealing an archway embedded into the rock. There was no writing on it, and I cannot be certain it was human made, but I have never seen something so well formed in nature.
Tomorrow we mine through the archway, and we’ll find silver. I feel it in my bones.
No Swimming Allowed
There’s a beach off the coast of South Carolina where swimming is prohibited – it exists between two small islands, and the force of the current running between them can multiply at a moment’s notice. Dozens have died there over the past decade, whether it was the result of a bet that went wrong, a show-off attempting to display his strength, or simply someone who missed reading the numerous warning signs on the way to the sand.
But I haven’t died yet. Though I’ve only been twice.
I was born and raised near the Pacific – by the time I’d started high school, I’d been through three surfboards. But the waves of the Atlantic aren’t nearly as big. Except for one, that is, one that puts even those in the Pacific to shame. And it only shows up at one particular beach, the no-swimming beach, when the conditions are just right. When the tide is going out, and the moon is full, and the temperature of the water is about to flip, something magical happens between those two islands. Something about the unique geological formation that creates the perfect wave.
I remember hearing the rumors and watching the weather for the conditions to line up. And I’d waited overnight from my car parked in the sand two years ago, seeing the ocean recede and swell up into a glorious crescent, the moonlight illuminating the foam over the murky water. And I knew one day I would have to capture it.
So the next year, I returned with my board, and I waited. Wading out into the sea, the water seeping through my wet suit, the beach empty, the dark shape of seaweed waving below me. Besides the crashing water, it was dead quiet – no frogs croaked nor birds chirped. It was just me; me and the ocean.
Then I saw it forming in the distance as the water level sank like a draining bowl, my eyes widening as I kicked forward. It roared towards me and I prepared to ride it, but just that second, my foot caught on something, a tangle of undergrowth or a branch. I kicked, but the object held firm, something sharp biting into my ankle like briars. Above me, the wave grew taller and I kicked again, unsuccessfully, until the water crashed down upon me and I was ripped free. I tumbled in the darkness, slamming through the thick and slimy undergrowth until I was regurgitated on the beach, gasping for breath, water trickling out my nose and salt stinging my eyes. With blood oozing from my leg in several long scratches that scarred over months later after continual infections.
I’d missed my chance. Until the next year.
That year, I kept my feet higher up, planing out as the wave surged forward. And I caught it just in time, watching as water pulled away from the beach to feed the wave. Leaving just enough water to see the shadows of lay underneath, of what I once thought was seaweed.
Hands. Thousands of hands extended upwards like plants from the sand, their fingers open and searching, only emerging from the elbow up, with nails that reflected the moonlight like scales. And as the water pulled away, they burrowed deeper into the sand, only to return back to full height under the water’s murky protection. Some clutched entire fish, others held driftwood, and others held objects too difficult to discern, but not too difficult to infer.
From my vantage point alone, I could see them, with the water at its lowest point, and looking directly down. And they reached upwards towards me as my surfboard wobbled and coasted forward until it ground against the shore, the fins digging into the sand. Turning around, I could see they were what I had once mistaken for the dark outline of seaweed, rising and falling with each crest. Waiting. Grasping.
And looking at my leg’s scars, five streaks of shining tissue, I realized it wasn’t the currents that pulled swimmers under at the beach.
Bonus First Three Chapters of Eden’s Eye, Leo’s full length horror novel:
Chapter 1 - A Warning
I was born in Pennsylvania, in a slum of a hospital equipped with second rate doctors to care for patients with second rate wallets. As my mother held me in her arms, a nurse scribbled down the date: December 21st, and the time of birth, 12:01 AM. My stepfather tried to name me Leonard, because he wanted to stay true to his Italian heritage, but my mother intervened and I became Caleb. When I was old enough to read (and out of simple curiosity), a quick library search showed the name Leonard is actually Germanic and Leonardo is the Italian derivative.
Of course, I wouldn’t expect my stepfather to know that. That quick library search took more time to complete than he had ever spent on me.
My stepfather drove us home in his gray Ford Pinto when the hospital released me. It must have been a short drive, because the trailer park where I spent my early childhood was within walking distance of the delivery room. I knew from personal experience. I cut my arm on a broken beer bottle in our yard when I was nine years old, and both of my parents were busy at their jobs. Twenty-two stitches later, I walked home from the hospital. After my parents saw the bill, I almost had to return.
We never had a television that lasted longer than a month due to my stepfather’s drunken tantrums. So, unlike many children my age, I learned to keep myself entertained without the benefit of technology. When the sun was up, I raced my single-speed bike, which I had found rusted and abandoned on the side of the highway, through the ranks of trailers, whipping by chained up pit bulls that had no desire to catch me. I explored, I adventured, and I discovered—I did anything to keep myself away from home.
I learned to love reading at an early age. My school, Kingston Elementary, was home to derelict children and teachers alike. Fights were common in its parking lot. I don’t think there was a single day that, after the closing bell, Kingston Elementary had not gained an extra black eye among its inmates. I myself didn't escape unscathed, and I grew accustomed to the yellow detention slips that followed the skirmishes. I should be thankful—those detention slips saved me from following in the shadow of my stepfather’s largely uneducated life.
Mrs. Derundi proctored detention in fourth grade, and that was the first time she had ever met me. Although I, along with the rest of the school, knew her by her reputation in the halls and the rumors of her class. No matter how cool or how badass the students of Kingston Elementary thought they were, the hallways fell silent when she walked by. She could break up a fight with a glance, and she stilled even the most unruly of students with only a whisper. She never yelled or raised her voice above indoor levels, and it was rumored that the year before, a kid shit himself and never returned after she whispered in his ear for fifteen eternity-like seconds. Mrs. Derundi taught me how to listen, if nothing else, because it is not loud yelling and screaming that are most terrifying, but rather the whispering.
The first t
ime I was sent to detention was for losing a fight. Two seventh graders, Jake Kimbrell and Mark Smith, had cornered one of my fourth grade classmates against the chain link fence that separated the parking lot from the ghetto. I would usually keep my mouth shut—in Kingston Elementary, you grow accustomed to brutality and bullying—but the student that the two of them were bouncing between them like a ping pong ball was Danny Roark, the runt of the fourth grade litter. The class knew him by his nickname, “McTwitch,” for his nervous tick and greasy hair that resembled a fast food burger. I don’t think Danny had ever had a full burger in his life though, judging by how skinny he was and the way his freckled skin stretched over his gaunt cheeks.
“Hey! Leave him be!” I shouted. Jake looked up, a sneer crossing his face.
“Oh yeah? Hey McTwitch, I didn’t realize you had any friends. Especially Four-Eyes here.”
“Yeah, McTwitch,” cackled Mark, “looks like you’ve been busy. Did you meet this guy before or after your father dropped you on your head?”
“At least his father stuck around to drop him on his head,” I spat. It was well known around school that Jake’s father had been serving time for the past six years for murdering a store clerk that refused to hand over cash from the register. As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I should have kept them to myself.
On the bright side, Danny got away.
On the dark side, Jake and Mark gave me a beating that day that my stepfather would have been jealous of.
Finding out that I would be serving detention with Mrs. Derundi only made matters worse. But when Mrs. Derundi read the yellow slip over my swollen face the next day, I saw her eyes soften, and she looked at me in a way I had never seen before. Some may call it tenderness.
Though I never had a class with her, throughout the course of elementary school I racked up enough detention hours to take one twice. Mrs. Derundi forced me to read, unlike the other students, whom she sat in the corner and forced to copy lines from the board. On the first day, too scared to do otherwise, I stared at the first page of the book she gave to me for the full length of the hour.
Academically, I was behind the other students in my classes, primarily because of the value my stepfather placed on education. Not once in my life had I completed a homework assignment, let alone tried to read an entire book. But over the weeks sheer boredom forced me to decipher the words on the pages, and slowly I rose to the top of my class, though my grades never showed it.
Despite my objections, I came to enjoy our afternoons sessions and found myself coming even when there were no yellow slips assigned to my name. Mrs. Derundi pretended not to notice.
She understood the neighborhood we lived in and how we weren’t as privileged as the school a county over. Mrs. Derundi never gave up on us, unlike many of the teachers who used our misfortune as grounds to decide our futures were already dismal. Once I saw a classmate turn in an assignment on a paper plate because his family couldn’t afford a notebook. She saved the student the embarrassment of answering questions, just like she never mentioned me coming in after hours.
She exposed me to many things—fantasy, science fiction, and biographies were some of her favorites. I devoured them all. Anything that helped me escape the after-school hours in the trailer park was worth reading.
When night fell, I would hide my bike under our trailer for fear that the cluster of homeless men at the end of the street would sell it for a few cans of beer. I’d enter through the creaky screen door that made sneaking in or out of home impossible, and creep to my room down the narrow hall.
If I was lucky, my stepfather would either be out drinking or would have already passed out from his first round of the night. Too often he would wake again with a hangover before the sun would rise. Those times I would climb out the skinny window and hide beneath the trailer, cradling my bike in case an emergency exit was necessary while my stepfather stomped above like the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk.
It was on the dawn of one of these nights that I first met the preacher man.
A boot crunched on gravel as the first rays of sunlight joined the feral cats, spiderwebs, and myself under the trailer. I heard a tinkling of bells accompanied by ruffling pages as my eyes cracked open.
A man stood there, dressed in a black cloak that matched his complexion and drifted down to his ankles. A sky blue rosary swung from one hand, while the other held a Bible so tattered that the Word of God was falling out. He was bald, and the sunlight reflected off the crown of his head in a way that made it hard to gaze at his face.
He took another step forward, raised his head as if sensing a change in the air, and sniffed. His voice was deep when he spoke, and I’ve never forgotten the way it reverberated down the desolate alleyway of trailers. When I dream, I still remember this as the moment that started it all, as if his words conjured my fate.
“There’s evil in this place.”
Chapter 2 - The Preacher Man
“Who the Hell are ya?”
My stepfather stood behind the screen mesh at the top of our trailer steps, framed by a rectangular doorway of flaking rust and his 12-gauge shotgun resting on his shoulder. Visitors were infrequent to our trailer park, and those who did come were often inhospitable.
The man turned, his eyes laying a weight upon my stepfather that even I could feel. My stepfather glared back, a lit cigarette dangling from his lower lip and beer stains striping his sleeveless shirt. He flexed, making the barb wire tattoo on his left bicep dance, but the man remained motionless.
“I am who I am,” he said.
“Are ya here to convert us?” my stepfather asked. “Because we don’t need no conversion. You a Jehovah's Witness? Some preacher man? Or ya lookin’ for money? ‘Cause we don’t have much of that ‘round here.”
“I’m self-ordained. And no, I’m not here for your money. No, that belongs to you, and to your government. Neither of whose laws pertain to me.”
My stepfather frowned. I could see the drunk from the previous night wearing off into a hangover as he squinted in concentration at the preacher man and tried to sift through his words. By now, the rest of the trailer park was stirring, and a small assembly had started gathering around us. Across from me stood Mr. Eliott, a man small in stature, with beady eyes and gnarled knuckles left from years of amateur boxing in his youth. Pete, one of the park’s nastier drug lords, was walking out with one of his many call girls and had stopped to see the gathering. Even at this early hour, his lip was fat with chewing tobacco. More were coming. Shankey, the three-legged bulldog, who often brought back questionably large bones at night and snarled whenever anyone came within a stone’s toss, was curled by the preacher man’s feet.
I had never seen a priest this close before, and my eyes, along with the rest of the entourage’s, were upon him.
“So what the Hell do ya want then?” demanded my stepfather.
“Just a place to lay my head for a night.”
Pete led the circle in laughter, throwing an arm around his girl who shivered from lack of clothing in the frigid morning air. Even to my eyes she looked young.
“Not even my honey can stay here for free—not without giving me some sugar!”
He spat on the preacher man, a globular mixture of tobacco and phlegm that clung to his cloak. A flinch never crossed the preacher man’s face, but Shankey growled at his feet, and Pete backed away.
My stepfather spoke again.
“Either ya tell us why we should let ya stay, or ya leave.” He gestured with his shotgun to the end of the trailers.
“Because, Irad, I am drawn to places where the corners of Hell and Earth meet. Should you cast me out, I assure you it would be a grave mistake.”
“We don’t need none of your type here. Don’t be fooling us, I see the dirt on ya. You’re homeless, a drifter, got no home. And how the Hell did ya know my name?”
And though caked mud fell from the tail of his cloak, it was the preacher man who seemed cleanest amongst t
hem.
“I know many things. Many years have passed during which I have not had my own roof, and many more will come. But that does not make me homeless. Just as having a son does not make you a father.”
The barrel of my stepfather’s shotgun came down so fast that the circle tripped over themselves trying to dismember. The preacher man alone remained unfazed.
“What did ya say to me? Go on, repeat it. I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t happen,” growled my stepfather, his finger on the trigger and the barrel aimed at the preacher man’s chest.
“You heard me, Irad.”
My stepfather squeezed the trigger and it clicked, bringing the hammer down on two shells with enough firepower to rip the preacher man in half. But there was no explosion, no volley of angry projectiles that would leave only blood in their wake.
“Very well,” said the preacher man, “you have not heeded my warning. I would curse you, but you seem to have cursed yourself already.”
He departed, leaving only footprints and my stepfather’s insults in his wake.
“You’re damn lucky these are duds! Go on, keep walking. Don’t ya ever come back, or I’ll be sure to blow your head clean off!”
He ejected the shells and they rattled down the stairs, coming to rest at my feet. My stepfather dragged me by the shirt collar back into the trailer, where my mother was fixing breakfast. She worked at the diner two blocks down and already was in uniform.
“What was all the commotion about, Irad?” Curlers were still in her hair as bacon sizzled on the stove. Each night she took the leftovers from the back refrigerator of the diner so we could have a hot breakfast.
“Shut it, Monica,” my stepfather grumbled, pulling a chair up to the table and filling a glass with equal portions orange juice and cheap vodka.
“And you, don’t you go bringing around nobody who don’t belong here.” My stepfather threw me against the trailer wall so hard that I felt the aluminum buckle outward.
Tales of the Sinister: Twelve Terrifying Stories Page 7
