[Criminally Insane 01.0] Bad Karma
Page 19
He always looked to me—in photographs and my childhood memories—like a solid structure. A man created for purpose, duty, and care. Even at his worst (he had his terrible days, as all fathers will), he seemed a moral compass within a world spun out of control.
He liked the people around him to be somewhat predictable, which is no doubt why he remained on Burnley Island most of his life. His main loves were, in fact, the Boston Celtics, what was for supper, home repairs, and his daughter's two dogs, which, by right of whose house they lived in, were his as well. They were rescued greyhounds named for Welsh legend (Mab and Madoc) and might've met terrible fates if he and my sister, Brooke, hadn't gone over to the racetrack in Rhode Island a few years previous to grab two pups that weren't quite right for racing.
Perhaps all he thought about was what was bringing him out in the storm in the first place. There were, at the time, a thousand guesses for this, but none of them got near the mark.
He hadn't called the dogs. This was unusual for him. He might go out to see who was in the driveway or what a certain noise had been, but he nearly always called the greyhounds out when he did that.
Not that he went out often at twilight or most evenings. Not that Mab and Madoc would've gone with him—those dogs dreaded foul weather as much as they did the local veterinarian's office.
But still, he would've called them. If he had, Brooke would've known he was leaving. She was at the other end of the house—down the boxcar hallways that led like a puzzle from one room to another without end, built that way by some ancient Raglan with a bizarre sense that every room should open on another room. Brooke was down in what was called the second Great Room, with the dogs at her feet. Reading a mystery novel, halfway falling asleep, having been up most of the previous night.
That afternoon, Gordie Raglan had drunk half a mug of hot cocoa before he left the house. He had a fondness in November for comfort foods—chicken soup, warm cocoa, and shepherd's pie. Cocoa was his favorite. He loved it more laced with a bit of bourbon, but this particular night there was nary a drop in the house.
He no doubt had chewed gum as he headed for the front door—Wrigley's Spearmint or Big Red, either one could be his favorite of the day. He wore his funny red cap that once belonged to one of his sons, but to which he had become attached over the past several years. He drew on a parka that he'd received as a present the previous Christmas. There were boots by the door, but he chose to wear his scuffed, ten-year-worn Oxfords. It was his storm outfit. No umbrella. Dad didn't believe in umbrellas.
The cap made him look youthful or silly, depending upon who was asked about it. His peppered gray hair no doubt stuck out of its sides. My father was generally late with haircuts once November had begun, unless his daughter had been after him about it.
He rarely left the house after three or four in the afternoon anymore, unless something needed immediate attention around the grounds of his home.
But something got him outside, during the storm.
Barely light out, the fury of the storm brought an early veil of darkness with it.
Something made him put down the mug, slip on his shoes, leaving them untied as he went out the front door of his home. He had a flashlight with him. Around the house, he always kept a flashlight by his side, as much as he kept the kerosene spot heater in whichever room he chose to occupy.
Only a man as stubborn as Gordie Raglan would've traipsed out in the worst storm of November to do some mysterious errand in what amounted to a rundown stone shelter that had been locked up for years.
It had been a tempest out at sea, but on the island it was a rough kind of magic—a Nor'easter blowing down across the bogs and ponds and the slips and beaches, through the woods with their sheltering pines, with all the beauty that a terrific storm brings—the overly dramatic light of creation itself swirling through that island.
(I had loved the winter storms when I was a boy. I had gone out into them sometimes and held out my arms—imagine a boy of ten doing that—as if it were my own magic power that brought the wind and rain.)
This particular night the rain was incessant.
Maddening.
The lightning, a constant flashbulb in the eyes. Thunder roared overhead like drunken Nordic gods.
He must've been swearing under his breath, given his limp and what he had always called the "old pain," doubly frustrated, for at one point his left shoe went into the mud, deep.
He left it there, a few feet from the entrance to the smokehouse.
The smokehouse itself was hardly much of a shelter. It was a small one-room stone house that had at one time been the place where meat was hung to smoke and dry. It had been kept locked for years.
He had the key with him.
He would not have been considered tall by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something in his broad shoulders and barrel chest that indicated a large, imposing figure.
Upon entering the small room, he no doubt smelled the old smoky odor and the pungent stink of earth in the air. Behind him—and I'm guessing—the door slid shut, creaking with the wind that howled outside.
He spun around, annoyed.
The rain had been coming down in sheets for nearly an hour. He directed the flashlight's beam to the small, thick square of glass that was the only window. The sky darkened with clouds and a somber grayness. The door banged back and forth briefly, then shut again. Branches scraped the low rooftop.
He glanced back into the darkness, perhaps.
Then up—the ceiling, highest at about six feet, was arched.
He looked back at the door and its window.
The square of light through its glass.
Twilight outside. Rain began hitting the window.
He shot the flashlight beam around the ceiling. He glanced down along the rough stone walk.
He might have heard what would be a clash of metal, like a knife being sharpened on stone.
He heard some noise—perhaps someone behind him?…Read More
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Afterlife
Someone's in the house at night. And they're headed to your room...
A series of terrifying paranormal invasions drive Julie Hutchinson to the edge of sanity. Will she – and her children – survive the chilling touch of the afterlife? “A terrifying thrill ride" of suburban horror "guaranteed to unnerve the reader.” (Publisher's Weekly)
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From Afterlife:
…In the testing room, the boy stared at the others from behind the glass.
He raised his fists and began hitting the thick pane.
The flames shot up in the booth around him, moving rapidly up the boy’s back as he pounded harder, his mouth open impossibly wide.
He shut his eyes as if trying to block it all out or to send his mind to another, safer place.
The others watched, safe on the opposite side of the triple-thick fireproof glass, and waited as the fire burned away the boy’s shirt.
They held hands, and one of the girls said, “Look how scared he is.”
“We need to get out,” a teenager said. “Now.”
And then the fire shattered the glass, moving beyond the booth, beyond the testing room, as if the air itself burned out of control.
In the 1970s, a rumor circulated that a small, privately funded school in Manhattan existed where young children with special talents were being observed and tested for what were then labeled “PSI” abilities.
Little was known about the school, other than what remained enshrouded in the urban legends of the city. The conspiracy theory suggested that the government or several governments funded the school and used it to learn more about the human mind, about child development with extra-sensory ability, and perhaps how to use those abilities in some covert way.
Another story grew that it was simply formed by a group who believed that these so-called “special children” should have a safe place to develop their talents.
Still, most people who’d heard about it believed that this was one of the city’s many small private schools, a target of malicious rumor from a handful of unhappy, overly entitled former students seeking to discredit their alma mater.
One of the rumors had to do with a little boy who precipitated the closing of the secret school when he somehow was responsible for the death of another child.
The school was supposed to have existed somewhere near the Chelsea District of New York City, although its exact location was anyone’s guess.
The school was called Daylight…Read More
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STAND-ALONE NOVELS
Afterlife
Breeder
The Children’s Hour
Dark of the Eye
Goat Dance
The Halloween Man
The Hour Before Dark
Mr. Darkness
Naomi
Neverland
You Come When I Call You
NOVELLAS & SHORT NOVELS
The Attraction
The Dark Game (Two Novelettes)
Dinner with the Cannibal Sisters
Isis
The Necromancer
Purity
The Words
SERIES
THE HARROW SERIES
Nightmare House, Book 1
Mischief, Book 2
The Infinite, Book 3
The Abandoned, Book 4
The Necromancer (Prequel Novella)
Isis(Prequel Novella)
THE CRIMINALLY INSANE SERIES
Bad Karma, Book 1
Red Angel, Book 2
Night Cage, Book 3
THE VAMPYRICON TRILOGY
The Priest of Blood, Book 1
The Lady of Serpents, Book 2
The Queen of Wolves, Book 3
THE CHRONICLES OF MORDRED
Mordred, Bastard Son (Book 1)
Mordred, Dragon Prince (Book 2)
COLLECTIONS
Lights Out: Collected Stories
Night Asylum
The Nightmare Chronicles
Wild Things
BOX SET BUNDLES
Bad Places (3 Novels)
Coming of Age (3 Dark Novellas)
Dark Rooms (3 Novels)
Criminally Insane: The Series (3 Novels)
Halloween Chillers
Harrow: Three Novels (Books 1-3)
Harrow: Four Novels (Books 1-4)
Haunts (8 Novel Box Set)
Lights Out (3 Collection Box Set)
Night Towns (3 Novels)
The Vampyricon Trilogy (3 Novels)
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Copyright ©1997, 2017 by Douglas Clegg
All rights reserved. Published by Alkemara Press.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Bad Karma is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
About the Author
Douglas Clegg is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Neverland, The Priest of Blood, Afterlife, and The Hour Before Dark, among many other novels, novellas and stories. His first collection, The Nightmare Chronicles, won both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. His work has been published by Simon & Schuster, Penguin/Berkley, Signet, Dorchester, Bantam Dell Doubleday, Cemetery Dance Publications, Subterranean Press, Alkemara Press and others.
A pioneer in the ebook world, his novel Naomi made international news when it was launched as the world’s first ebook serial in early 1999 and was called “the first major work of fiction to originate in cyberspace” by Publisher’s Weekly, covered in Time magazine, Business Week, Business 2.0, BBC Radio, NPR, USA Today and more. His book Purity was the first to be published via mobile phone in the U.S. in early 2001.
He is married, and lives and writes along the coast of New England.
Find the Author Online:
www.DouglasClegg.com