“And you took it, didn’t you?”
“No, I’m afraid not. As Clint Eastwood said, ‘A man needs to know his limitations’.”
“I haven’t seen you fall short yet.”
“I may be pushing it tonight when I make the two of you dinner.”
“You’ve promised grilled steak and Dustin’s hopes are high. Right, Dustin?”
“Steak, steak, steak!” Dustin chanted.
“Sounds like the heat is on,” Sam said. “See you tonight.”
Theresa hung up and turned to her son.
“You like Sam, don’t you?”
“Sure, we’re going hunting together.”
Sam hadn’t cleared anything of the sort with her. Her son was barely taller than whatever shotgun he would carry into the woods.
“We’ll see. You might not be quite old enough to go hunting.”
“Not now, silly,” Dustin said. “Later. We’ll get two big bucks on my sixteenth birthday.”
Theresa was relieved that at least Sam had put this promise well in the future. “He told you the two of you would do that?”
“Why would he have to? I already saw it in the winking.”
“The winking?”
“Yeah, when the future pictures wink by.”
Theresa whirled to face her son. He sat at the table, chewing toast, as if he hadn’t revealed a thing. She pulled out a chair and eased herself down into it, as if afraid to scare off a wild animal.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know, when little bits of the future jump out. Like movie previews.”
“This happens a lot?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes. Like when I did the puzzle paper with the creepy drawing.”
She remembered how rapidly he’d reassembled the journal page of the longarex, as if he already knew where every piece went. Guilt ravaged her. She’d passed her curse on to her son. The one thing she’d hoped for most—that he would enjoy a normal life, free of knowledge of the future—was not to be. She touched his hand.
“I know it must be scary to see these things,” she said.
He looked at her like she was crazy. “Scary? Why? They are always good things.”
That was the opposite of Theresa’s gift, which was only wired into scenes of doom. “Really?”
“Yeah, like birthdays and good grades and fun stuff. I get to wear a cool suit at your wedding and lead you and Sam down the aisle.”
Married? Theresa reeled. She stopped herself from asking how far away that event might be.
She’d hoped to pass down to her son a good moral foundation, a sense of fairness and an understanding of the deep flaws his father had. It seemed that the one thing she didn’t want to give him she had, though it had been turned inside out, no longer foretelling evil. She stroked her son’s silky hair.
“Let’s talk about this ‘winking’,” she said.
Afterword
After the great success of my first novel, Dark Inspiration, I got feedback from many readers who wanted another story about Laura and Theresa. If you are one of them, then here you go, and thanks for getting me started thinking “What did happen to them next?”
Are their adventures over? I doubt it. I have a bad feeling something else is lurking just around the corner for them, and for their kids. Call it one of Theresa’s premonitions.
I’d like to thank all of you who have read my books, reviewed them or dropped me a note about them. Whether online or live at horror cons and book signings, I’ve met so many wonderful people who love to have a chill sent up their spine. Without all of you, I couldn’t do any of this.
And before anyone starts, I took dramatic license with the climb capabilities of a helicopter. Yes, it would take at least 15 minutes to climb to 20,000 feet. You know it, I know it. We’ll keep it to ourselves.
-Russell James
September, 2013
About the Author
Russell James grew up on Long Island, New York and spent too much time watching Chiller, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and The Twilight Zone, despite his parents' warnings. Bookshelves full of Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe didn't make things better. He graduated from Cornell University and the University of Central Florida.
After a tour flying helicopters with the U.S. Army, he now spins twisted tales best read in daylight. He has written the paranormal thrillers Dark Inspiration, Sacrifice, Black Magic, Dark Vengeance, Dreamwalker and Q Island. He has four short story collections, Tales from Beyond, Outer Rim, Forever Out of Time, and Deeper into Darkness.
His wife reads what he writes, rolls her eyes, and says "There is something seriously wrong with you."
Visit his website at http://www.russellrjames.com and read some free short stories.
Follow on Twitter @RRJames14, Facebook as Russell R. James, or drop a line complaining about his writing to [email protected].
Doug and Laura thought they bought Galaxy Farm, but the old house is possessing them instead.
Dark Inspiration
© 2011 Russell James
Doug and Laura Locke are New Yorkers who need a fresh start, so they move to Galaxy Farm, an old thoroughbred stable in Tennessee. There Doug finds inspiration to write his epic novel and Laura renews her love of teaching. They also rediscover the love that first drew them together.
But the home has many secrets. There’s a graveyard hidden at the property’s edge, and tragic deaths stalked the previous owners. Doug has become entranced by the abandoned taxidermy he discovers in the attic. And Laura falls under the spell of the ghosts of twin girls she meets in the old nursery. Only a local antiques dealer senses the danger. She has gruesome premonitions of horrible events to come. She knows she must convince Laura of the threat before the dark force in the house can execute its plan. But time is short, and something seems to be very wrong with Doug…
Enjoy the following excerpt for Dark Inspiration:
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled at the Tennessee countryside. Immediate and overwhelming pain arced up his arm like a lightning bolt. Dale Mabry was certain he just flattened his finger.
He dropped the mallet next to the “For Sale” sign he had forced into the cold earth. His bare hands already stung from the 40° temperature and that amplified the effects of the hammer’s impact. He shook and then inspected his finger. It was rooster red and the nail had a white sheen destined to turn a dark, dead purple.
“Serves you right, Dumbass,” he said to himself. “Shouldn’t be out here at all.”
It wasn’t just because he was underdressed for the March morning in jeans and a flannel shirt. Something inside him had nagged him from the start about putting the Dale Mabry Realty sign on the old Galaxy Farm property. But with the market stinking like a hog pen, he’d rationalized that any sale was a good sale. No matter who bought. No matter what sold.
Barren oaks swayed in the wind against the slate gray sky. The breeze kicked up the stale scent of dead, moldy leaves. Dale had pounded his business equivalent of a tiger’s marking scent where the Galaxy Farm gravel driveway met two-lane US 41. The driveway went a half mile uphill and formed a loop in front of the farm’s large main house. The structure still caught the eye, as it had for over 100 years.
The house listed as a six-bedroom, four-bath, but that did not do justice to its 4500 square feet. The sharply peaked steel roof of the white two-story Victorian jutted into the pewter sky. Two small attic dormer windows watched out over the valley. An inviting covered porch embraced two sides of the first floor. The foundation beneath it was two feet tall, made of hand-laid dun boulders mined from the base of the ridge. From the corner closest to the road rose a round turreted room with windows around both stories. Like an aging cinema beauty, she looked stunning from afar.
But she showed her age in close-ups. Her later years had been hard. The iron racing horse weathervane at the turret’s peak rocked back and forth with a wailing screech in each gust of wind. Threadbare white curtains floated like spirit
s in the windows, unable to shield the rooms from daylight. Black paint peeled off the shutters around each window in long lazy arcs.
To the right, a low rise blocked the bottom half of the main barn, hiding its similar stone foundation. Its roofline and monochrome paint scheme matched the house. A cupola burst through the center of the curved roof, glass on every side, filthy from lack of care. The cupola was large enough to accommodate the farm’s master as he watched over the acres of his domain that stretched down along the far side of the ridge.
Even with the grass in winter’s death grip and the dry weeds overgrown along the split-rail fence line, the place had curb appeal. Dale wished he had the money to replace the sagging old mailbox at the entrance. If he kept the gate under the weathered “Galaxy Farm” sign locked, any looky-loo's would have to go through him for a closer inspection. That would be warning enough to go in and make sure any remnants of the previous owners weren’t around. Sure as hell wouldn’t want to explain any of that to a prospective buyer. The bank wanted this place to move fast, and any wind of its history would stop a deal dead in its tracks.
There were folks in town who didn’t think it right, Dale helping the bank sell the Galaxy. The two big Moultrie, Tennessee, realtors refused to list it. Half the small town thought it was safer to let it sit empty. Dale figured screw them. They didn’t pay for his daughter’s dance lessons.
A sharp bang came from the house. Dale saw the screen door on the main entrance swing open and shut in the wind.
“Well I’ll be…” he muttered. He stuck his throbbing finger in his mouth. He wasn’t in the mood to go tempt the house. Not out here alone. But a good gust would tear that screen door clean off the frame and he’d be blamed.
He trudged warily up the driveway. Desiccated leaves crunched under his boot heels. He knew he had locked that door. With a new barrel bolt. From the inside.
Dale stepped on the porch and a feeling of dread came over him, thick and black and heavy as lead. The hairs on the back of his neck quivered. He’d been to the house twice before: with Darrell from the bank to inspect the place, and with Billy to walk the survey. But never alone. There was strength in numbers. Having another live person there kept you from thinking about the Galaxy Farm legends.
He grabbed the wooden screen door as it swung open again. The barrel bolt on the inside of the door was missing. Four neat white screw holes were still in the door, the grooves from the screw threads still crisp and clear. The door didn’t tear open. Some one removed the bolt. Dale smelled something metallic that made him want to gag.
A dead rabbit lay in the threshold. Its eyes were wide with terror and still glassy, as if it had only been dead for moments. All that was left of its neck were two jagged edges of slick red fur. The wet blood pooled between the doors and dripped out onto the porch. Above the rabbit, finger-painted in blood on the base of the door in crooked, slashed letters it said:
NO SALE DALE.
Dale leapt off the porch. The screen door swung shut with a muffled thud as it closed against the dead rabbit’s limb. The realtor sprinted for his truck like he was still a Moultrie High running back. As he ran through the front gate, he pulled it shut behind him. He closed the lock on the clasp in a flash. His heart pounded against his chest. With steel bars between him and the rabbit, he looked back up at the house.
“Big joke,” he rationalized. “Guys in town playing a big joke, or trying to scare me out of selling this place. Yeah, that’s it. There ain’t no ghosts. Just wives’ tales. There ain’t no ghosts.” He caught his breath and tried hard to believe what he said.
Dale climbed into his silver Ford F-150. He fired up the engine and Johnny Cash came through the radio singing Ring of Fire. With another wall of Detroit steel between him and the house, Dale calmed down. It was some prank, he thought. Had to be. Vernon Pugh, probably, getting even for the bank taking the house.
Something moved in the distance behind Dale.
A gray figure stood in the second floor window of the turreted room. It turned to face Dale. Dale’s heart stopped cold. The man raised his hands over his head and struck the glass. The thump rolled down the hill like the echo of a battle’s first shot. The figure vanished.
Chill bumps raced from Dale’s neck down his arms. He turned and squinted hard at the empty window. A gust of wind blew and one of the window panes flexed. The sunlight flicked off the hazed surface. The glass banged in its frame.
“Jesus, Dale,” he said, shaking his head clear. “Why don’t you just scare the hell out of yourself? Let a damn rabbit turn you yellow.”
He snapped the Ford’s heater to “high”. Heat blasted from the vents and he rubbed his throbbing finger in it. He prayed some out-of-towner, or “outsider” as the locals called them, with a bucket of cash would cruise down US 41, fall in love with this dump, and pay his commission. It would have to be an outsider. No one in Moultrie would touch the place.
Who can save the children from the Woodsman?
Sacrifice
© 2012 Russell James
Thirty years ago, six high school friends banded together to confront the Woodsman, a murderous specter whose prey was children. None of the friends will ever forget the horror of those weeks…or blood chilling image of the Woodsman.
Now the six have returned to town for a long overdue reunion. Except the Woodsman hasn’t finished with them yet. As a new nightmare unfolds, ripping open old scars and inflicting fresh terror, what will each of them have to sacrifice this time to keep the children safe and the Woodsman at bay?
Enjoy the following excerpt for Sacrifice:
Lightning arced across the night sky. In its flash, the Sagebrook water tower stood like a gleaming white beacon above the trees on the hill. Ten seconds later, thunder rolled in behind it, the way every event has an echo that follows.
Five figures scurried along the catwalk around the tower, one of the old-fashioned kinds, where a squat cylinder with a conical hat sat on six spindly steel legs a few hundred feet in the air. A newer tower served the people’s water needs, but the old girl was an icon for the Long Island town, so the trustees kept it painted white and emblazoned with the “Sagebrook-Founded on 1741” logo to remind themselves of their heritage. Once per year, the logo changed to celebrate the graduation of the Whitman High senior class.
The boys on the catwalk were going to see that this year it changed twice. These seniors had committed more than their fair share of pranks; stolen street signs, a tap into the high school PA system, swapping the state flag in front of school with the Jolly Roger. But this stunt would top them all
They had all met in the sixth grade, where their teacher had dubbed them “The Dirty Half Dozen” due to their inseparability and penchant for trouble. (The title had stuck.) They hadn’t done anything as dangerous as tonight’s foray, but anything worth a good laugh was worth doing.
“Who’s got the red?” Bob whispered, though no one but the boys could be within earshot. He crouched at the base of the new banner that read “Congratulations Class of 1980” with “Go Minutemen” painted underneath in red letters. Bob was rail thin with an unruly head of brown hair that consented to a part on the right and little else. An unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.
“Right here,” Paul said. He handed Bob a can of red spray paint. Paul stood several inches taller than the rest of the boys and his broad shoulders made the narrow catwalk a tight fit. He wore his Minutemen football team jacket, though Dave had told him the white leather sleeves would look like two glow worms crawling across the tower at night. His hair was cropped close and he sported the shadow of what he euphemistically called a moustache.
A blast of cold wind hit the tower. The snaps on Paul’s jacket hit the metal railing with a reverberating ping.
A third boy, Jeff, hung over the catwalk railing. He had a long face with ears that had stuck out just enough for a good round of elementary school ribbing. He held his New York Mets ball cap tight as he looked dow
n at the perimeter fence. A ten-year-old Olds Vista Cruiser station wagon idled near the hole in the fence. There was a slight lope to the modified V8’s rumbling exhaust through the turbo mufflers. The headlights were off, but the parking lights lit the edges of the car. Jeff spoke into a cheap Japanese walkie talkie.
“Dave,” he said. “What the hell are you doing with the lights on?”
“Damn,” Dave answered from the Vista. “Sorry man.” The marker lights in the car went dark. “It’s clear down here.”
“At two a.m. it had better be,” said Ken, a red headed kid with a rash of freckles across his cheekbones. He slipped behind Jeff to join Bob and Paul. He brushed against Jeff’s butt as he squeezed by.
“Watch it, homo,” Jeff said.
“It’s your ass,” Ken said. “It’s so enticing. We’re here in the dark…”
“Hey,” Bob snapped. “You girls want to shut the hell up and start spraying?”
Twin lightning flashes lit a big cloud like a floating anvil-shaped lantern. Thunder crackled across the sky five seconds later.
Marc, the last boy on the tower sat at the opening where the access ladder met the catwalk. His feet dangled through the opening. Both hands gripped the catwalk rail. He was the slightest of the group and he had to brace himself against a renewed gust of wind that rocked his thick curly black hair back and forth. There were only four cans of paint, so he could have stayed in the car on watch with Dave. But there was something to prove by climbing the tower, though he wasn’t sure of it was to the others or to himself. The journey did enlighten him about one thing. He was definitely acrophobic.
“We better hurry,” Marc said. “We don’t want to be up here in the rain.”
“You said we’d have clear weather,” Paul said to Ken as Ken handed him a can of white spray paint.
“No,” Ken said. “I said there was a twenty percent chance of a shower. When I have a few free hours, I’ll explain probability to you, Jockstrap.”
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