Twilight Hankerings

PEACEMAKER

The last full moon of the cycle drove Joe Tanner from his human form and, before the night was out, he again stalked the western wilderness, that maddening lust for flesh and blood pounding feverishly through his brain.

By the time the change was complete, he had reached the desert canyon where last night’s hunting had gone so well. It was a lonely gorge on the Colorado-New Mexico border; a route used only by wild animals and desperadoes running from the law. Tanner returned there, vividly remembering the feast he had indulged in the night previous. He had crouched atop a high bluff overlooking the outlaw canyon, when the sound of shod hooves rang through the darkness and the scent of humanity came to him on a gentle summer breeze. Patiently, he had waited as two riders appeared, obviously traveling together, but spaced a good fifty feet apart. Choosing the second horseman as his victim, Tanner had pounced. He tore away the appaloosa’s gullet as he drove his massive weight against the horse’s right side. The impact had toppled both horse and rider into a shallow drywash. So silently had the entire attack been launched, that the first rider continued onward, oblivious to his companion’s fate until it was too late.

Tanner’s prey had been an Indian dressed in fringed buckskins. He immediately drew a revolver from his hip, but the beast gave him no chance to fire, no opportunity to alert his friend of what confronted him. With a swipe of razor claws, the Indian’s right arm sailed into a clump of prickly pear, the six-shooter still clutched in his hand. Tanner circled the injured man, playing his usual game of cat and mouse, savoring the rich scent of fresh blood and fear. When he finally moved in for the kill, the Indian drew a knife with his remaining hand. If Joe had been in his human form, he would have surely laughed. But in his wolfish state he could only growl savagely in triumph as he tore full into the red man’s body, ignoring the ineffective slashing of the hunting blade against his own skin.

He had ended it swiftly, devouring what he wished of the man, then of the dying horse. By the time the other rider realized that his partner was absent and backtracked to find his mutilated body, the thing that was Joe Tanner’s horrid other-half was far from that dusty draw, satisfied until the influence of the lunar cycle overtook him once again.

It was that overpowering force that brought him there tonight. He scouted the area thoroughly before taking his place on the edge of the cliff. The remains of the spotted horse had been dragged by ropes deep into the drywash and left as food for buzzards and coyotes. The unfortunate Indian had been buried along the trailside, a crude stone of gray slate serving as a makeshift headstone. A single word was scrawled in memorial, but Tanner could not read it. In his animal state, he could not interpret the English language, whether it be written or spoken aloud. All he could understand in such a primal condition was the produce of the moon-inspired hunts; the screams, the blood, the insatiable yearning for human flesh.

Now, as he crouched on the lip of the bluff and awaited his next victim, Tanner reminisced. He had been stricken with that godawful curse in the summer of 1863, after the bloody battle of Gettysburg. He had been separated from his unit during the heat of the fray and, as he quietly skirted an enemy encampment in the dead of night, he became suddenly aware that something was stalking him. Before he could even raise his musket, it was upon him, ripping, tearing him apart. He awoke in a dense thicket the following morning, soaked in his own blood. His fatal wounds were all but healed and in his palm was emblazoned the sign of the pentagram. He had heard enough of this Grandma Tanner’s fireside stories about werewolves and such to know exactly what he had become. He knew from that moment on that his life would be tainted with bloodshed and deep despair.

Twenty years had passed since that awful night. Joe Tanner had traveled many miles in that time; across the muddy Mississippi from Tennessee, across the Ozarks and the plains of Kansas, to finally settle in the Great Divide. He found honest work whenever he could; mining, riding herd on cattle drives, blacksmithing. He was a decent, well-liked man, but on those nights when the moon grew full he endured the horror of the change and roamed the mountains in search of two-legged prey.

It was nearing midnight when hoofbeats roused him from his thoughts and he watched as a lone rider traveled the canyon from the west. Tanner recognized him as the surviving horseman of the night before. He licked his fanged chops as he watched the man reign his snow-white steed to a halt before the grave, dismount, and, removing his hat, kneel in prayerful remembrance.

The hunger was nearly unbearable as the wolf slowly and tediously crept down the rocky wall of the canyon, careful to make no sound. The albino horse caught his scent and snorted aloud, but his master paid his skittish behavior no mind. His grieving mind was deep in thought and unconscious of the grave danger that approached him from behind… or so Tanner thought.

The beast was across the canyon floor, no more than twenty feet away, when the man whirled, one of two shiny Colts drawn from a holster of hand-tooled leather and held at the hip with cold confidence. Again, Tanner wanted to laugh. Instead, he threw back his shaggy head and howled long and loud. It was a sound that would have driven most men to the brink of madness. However, this one regarded him calmly, eyes veiled in the dark shadows of his crisp, white Stetson.

The fool, thought the hellish fiend, moving forward. Let him fire if he will! Let him empty both guns and reload… but it will do him no good. I shall have my feast tonight… gun or no gun!

As he advanced, the nightrider calmly thumbed back the hammer and fired.

The first shot caught the hungry beast completely by surprise. Tanner had expected the dull ache of common lead to enter his system impotently, to be absorbed and forgotten. But, instead, a searing agony bore through him; a pain he had never once experienced during all his years of nocturnal stalking. He stumbled backwards a few steps, then pressed onward, much more slowly than before. The man stood from where he had crouched before the single-worded grave and began to fire rapidly, fanning the spur of the gun’s hammer with the heel of one black-gloved hand. Five more shots speared through Tanner’s malformed body, each more agonizing than the one before. Four hit him squarely in the chest, while the last tunneled though his long, toothy snout into his brain.

With a dying shriek, the creature collapsed, his breath growing shallow and ragged. As he endured the slow and painful transition from man to wolf one last time, Joe Tanner stared up at the man with the nickel-plated Colt. Shaking his head, the gunman idly unloaded his pistol, letting the spent casings fall before reloading. Tanner’s outstretched hand reached for one, but withdrew when the flesh of his fingertips burnt at the mere touch of it.

Pure silver, he thought in bewilderment. Both the bullets and the cartridge casings… pure silver. But how? How did he know?

Looking into that impassive face cloaked in shadow and dark cloth, Tanner knew that the man had not really known after all. For some unknown reason, the man in the pale blue uniform always carried his pistols loaded with sterling silver.

A fresh throe of agony gripped Tanner as mats of coarse hair fell away and his muscles resumed their original form. A great relief washed over him, driving away that awful cancer of lycanthropy from the depths of his soul. The nickname of “Peacemaker” that had been bestowed upon Sam Colt’s firearm in recent years never rang truer than it did that night in the outlaw canyon. He stared up with tears in his eyes, wanting to thank the rider… thank him for releasing him from the monthly damnation that had plagued him most of his adult life. But when he looked up, the man was gone. The clatter of departing hooves and the pale form of the white horse could be discerned from a distance, before the night engulfed them.

Just before Joe Tanner closed his eyes and slipped into that dark abyss of eternal peace, he could not help but wonder… just who was that masked man?

THE BOXCAR

“Hello the camp!” I yelled down into that dark, backwoods hollow beside the railroad tracks. We could see the faint glow of a campfire and shadowy structures of a few tin and tarpaper shacks, but no one answered. Only the chirping of crickets and the mournful wail of a southbound train on its way to Memphis echoed through the chill autumn night.

“Maybe there ain’t nobody down there,” said Mickey. His stomach growled ferociously and mine sang in grumbling harmony. Me and Mickey had been riding the rails together since the beginning of this Great Depression and, although there were a number of years between us – he being a lad of fifteen years and I on into my forties – we had become the best of traveling buddies.

“Well, I reckon there’s only one way to find out,” I replied. “Let’s go down and have a look-see for ourselves.”

We slung our bindles over our shoulders and descended the steep grade to the woods below. We were bone-tired and hungry, having made the long haul from Louisville to Nashville without benefit of a free ride. It was about midnight when we happened across that hobo camp. We were hoping to sack out beside a warm fire, perhaps trade some items from our few personal possessions for coffee and a plate of beans.

As we skirted a choking thicket of blackberry bramble and honeysuckle, we found that the camp was indeed occupied. Half a dozen men, most as rail-thin and down on their luck as we were, sat around a crackling fire. A couple were engaged in idle conversation, while others whittled silently, feeding the flames of the campfire with their wood shavings. They all stopped stone-still when we emerged from the briar patch and approached them.

“Howdy,” I said to them. “We called down for an invite, but maybe y’all didn’t hear.”

A big, bearded fellow in a battered felt fedora eyed us suspiciously. “Yeah, we heard you well enough.”

I stepped forward and offered a friendly smile. “Well, me and my partner here, we were wondering if we might – “

My appeal for food and shelter was interrupted when a scrubby fellow who had been whittling stood up, his eyes mean and dangerous. “Now you two just stay right where you are.” I looked down and saw that he held a length of tent stake in his hand. The end had been whittled down to a wickedly sharp point.

“We’re not aiming to bother nobody, mister,” Mickey spoke up. “We’re just looking for a little nourishment, that’s all.”

One of the bums at the fire expelled a harsh peal of laughter. “Sure… I bet you are.”

“Go on and get outta here, the both of you,” growled the fellow with the pointy stick. He made a threatening move toward us, driving us back in the direction of the thicket. “Get on down the tracks to where you belong.”

“We’re a-going,” I told them, more than a little peeved by their lack of hospitality. “A damned shame, though, folks treating their own kind in such a sorry manner, what with times as hard as they are these days.”

Some of the men at the fire hung their heads in shame, while the others only stared at us with that same look of hard suspicion. “Please… just move on,” said the big fellow.

Me and Mickey made the grade in silence and continued on down the tracks. “To heck with their stupid old camp,” the boy said after a while. “Didn’t wanna stay there anyhow. The whole place stank to the high heavens.”

Thinking back, I knew he was right. There had been a rather pungent smell about that hobo camp. It was a thick, cloying odor, familiar, yet unidentifiable at the time. And, although I didn’t mention it to Mickey, I knew that the hobos’ indifferent attitude toward us hadn’t been out of pure meanness, but out of downright fear. It was almost as if they’d been expecting someone else to come visiting. Our sudden appearance had set them on edge, prompting the harsh words and unfriendliness that had let us know we were far from welcome there.

We moved on, the full moon overhead paving our way with nocturnal light. The next freight yard was some twenty or thirty miles away with nothing but woods and thicket in-between. So it was a stroke of luck that we turned a bend in the tracks and discovered our shelter for the night.

It was an old, abandoned boxcar. The wheels had been removed for salvage and the long, wooden hull parked off to the side near a grove of spruce and pine. We waded through knee-high weeds to the dark structure. It was weathered by sun and rain. The only paint that remained was the faint logo of a long-extinct railroad company upon the side walls.

“Well, what do you think?” I asked young Mickey.

The freckle-faced boy wrinkled his nose and shrugged. “I reckon it’ll have to do for tonight.”

We had some trouble pushing the door back on its tracks, but soon we stepped inside, batting cobwebs from our path. The first thing that struck us was the peculiar feeling of soft earth beneath our feet, rather than the customary hardwood boards. The rich scent of freshly-turned soil hung heavily in the boxcar, like prime farmland after a drenching downpour.

We found us a spot in a far corner and settled there for the night. I lit a candle stub so as to cast a pale light upon our meager supper. It wasn’t much for two hungry travelers; just a little beef jerky I had stashed in my pack, along with a swallow or two of stale water from Mickey’s canteen. After we’d eaten, silence engulfed us – an awkward silence – and I felt the boy’s concerned gaze on my face. Finally I could ignore it no longer. “Why in tarnation are you gawking at me, boy?”

Mickey lowered his eyes in embarrassment. “I don’t know, Frank… you just seem so pale and peeked lately. And you get plumb tuckered out after just a couple hours walking. How are you feeling these days? Are you sick?”

“Don’t you go worrying your head over me, young fella. I’m doing just fine.” I lied convincingly, but the boy was observant. The truth was, I had been feeling rather poorly the last few weeks, tiring out at the least physical exertion and possessing half the appetite I normally had. I kept telling myself I was just getting old, but secretly knew it must be something more.

Our conversation died down and we were gradually lulled to sleep by the sound of crickets and toads in the forest beyond.

~ * ~

That night I had the strangest chain of dreams I’d ever had in my life.

I dreamt that I awoke the following day to find Mickey and myself trapped inside the old boxcar. It was morning; we could tell by the warmth of the sun against the walls and the singing of birds outside.

We started in the general direction of the sliding door, but it was pitch dark inside, sunlight finding nary a crack or crevice in the car’s sturdy boarding. We stumbled once or twice upon obstructions that hadn’t been there the night before and finally reached the door. I struggled with it, but it simply wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be fused shut. I called to Mickey to lend me a hand, but for some reason he merely laughed at me. Eventually I tired myself out and gave up.

We returned to our bindles, again having to step and climb over things littering the floor. I lit a candle. The flickering wick revealed what we had been traipsing over in the darkness. There had to be twelve bodies lying around the earthen floor of that boxcar. The pale and bloodless bodies of a dozen corpses.

I grew frightened and near panic, but Mickey calmed me down. “They’re only sleeping,” he assured me with a toothy grin that seemed almost predatory in nature.

Somehow, his simple words comforted me. Utterly exhausted, I laid back down and fell asleep.

~ * ~

The next dream began with another awakening. It was night this time and the boxcar door was wide open. The cool October breeze blew in to rouse me. I found myself surrounded by those who had lain dead only hours before. They were all derelicts and hobos, mostly men, but some were women and children. They stared at me wildly, their eyes burning feverishly as if they were in the heated throes of some diseased delirium. There seemed to be an expression akin to wanton hunger in those hollow-eyed stares, but also something else. Restraint. That kept them in check, like pale statues clad in second-hand rags.

I noticed that my young pal, Mickey, stood among them. The boy looked strangely similar to the others now. His once robust complexion had been replaced with a waxy pallor like melted tallow. “You must help us, Frank,” he said. “You must do something that is not in our power… something only you can perform.”

I wanted to protest and demand to know exactly what the hell was going on, but I could only stand there and listen to what they had to say. After my instructions had been made clear, I simply nodded my head in agreement, no questions asked.

~ * ~

The dream shifted again.

It was still night and I was standing in the thicket on the edge of that hobo camp in the hollow. Carefully, and without noise, I crept among the makeshift shanties, performing the task that had been commanded of me. I removed the crude crosses, the cloves of garlic that hung draped above the doorways, and toted away the buckets of creek water that had been blessed by a traveling preacher man.

I spirited away all those things, clearing the camp, leaving only sleeping men. They continued their snoring and their unsuspecting slumber, totally oblivious to the danger that now descended from the tracks above.

I stood there in the thicket and listened as the horrified screams reached their gruesome climax, then dwindled. They were replaced by awful slurping and sucking sounds. The pungent scent of raw garlic had moved southward on the breeze. In its place hung another… a nasty odor like that of hot copper.

“Much obliged for the help,” called Mickey from the door of a shanty, his eyes as bright as a cat’s, lips glistening crimson. Then, with a wink, he disappeared back into the shack. The hellish sounds continued as I curled up in the midst of that dense thicket and, once again, fell asleep.

~ * ~

That marked the end to that disturbing chain of nightmares, for a swift kick in the ribs heralded my true awakening. It was broad daylight when I opened my eyes and stared up at an overweight county sheriff.

“Wake up, buddy,” he said gruffly. “Time to get up and move on.”

I stretched and yawned. Much to my amazement, I found myself not in the old boxcar, but in the camp-side thicket. My bindle lay on the ground beside me. Confused, I rose to my feet and stared at the ramshackle huts and their ragged canvas overhangs. They looked to be completely deserted, as if no one had ever lived there at all.

“There were others…” I said as I tucked my pack beneath my arm.

The lawman nodded. “Someone reported a bunch of tramps down here, but it looks like they’ve all headed down the tracks. I suggest you do the same, if you don’t want to spend the next ninety days in the county workhouse.”

I took that sheriff’s advice and, bewildered, started on my way.

After a quarter mile hike down the railroad tracks, I came to the boxcar.

“Mickey!” I called several times, but received no answer. Had the boy moved on, leaving me behind? It was hard to figure, since we’d been traveling the country together for so very long.

I tugged at the door of that abandoned boxcar, but was unable to open it. I placed my ear to the wall and heard nothing.

~ * ~

Since that night, much has taken place.

I’ve moved on down to Louisiana and back again, hopping freights when they’re going my way and when the yard bulls aren’t around to catch me in the act. Still, Mickey’s puzzling departure continues to bug me. That grisly string of dreams preys on my mind also. Sometimes it’s mighty hard to convince myself that they actually were dreams.

Oh, and I found out why I’ve been so pale and listless lately. A few weeks ago, I visited my brother in Birmingham. Unlike me, he is a family man who made it through hard times rather well. He suggested I go see a doctor friend of his, which I did. The sawbones’ verdict was halfway what I expected it to be.

For, you see, I’m dying. Seems that I have some sort of blood disease, something called leukemia. Now ain’t that a bitch?

My dear brother insisted that I check into a hospital, but I declined. I’ve decided to spend my last days riding the rails. Who knows where I’ll end up… perhaps lying face down in a dusty ditch somewhere or in a busy train yard, trying to jump my last freight.

However it turns out, I don’t really mind. When my end does come, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that mine will be a real death, deep and everlasting… and not one that is measured by the rising and the setting of the sun.

CONSUMPTION

Pap Wilson was returning home from a tedious day of digging ginseng down yonder in a backwoods hollow. His spirits were high and his sack held a good eighty dollars worth of the medicinal root. He was only a hoot and a holler away from the old log cabin his grandfather had built shortly after the Civil War, when his foot sank through the dense carpeting of wild kudzu and into what he first thought to be a sinkhole hidden from sight.

“Confound it all!” said the old man as a sudden jolt of pain shot up the length of his right leg. When he attempted to pull his boot from the opening in the ground, a sensation of prickly discomfort gripped him, as if his foot had fallen asleep. However, his injury proved to be much more serious than that. Red-hot needles of agony stitched his flesh in a dozen places, causing him to moan aloud.

Pap, you damned fool! he told himself. You’ve done gone and put your foot into a nest of copperheads!

But snakes were far from being the source of his discomfort.

With a curse and mighty heave, Pap extracted his leg from the knee-deep kudzu and landed hard on his backside in the thicket. For a moment, all he could do was sit there and stare dumbly at his foot. Something had a hold of Pap Wilson. Something he had never seen the likes of during his seventy-odd years in the hills and hollows of Tennessee.

Tiny black eyes glared up at him, burning with an emotion that could only be described as intense hunger. What it appeared to be was a very large and stubby caterpillar, the wooly kind that built great transparent nests in the boughs of blooming dogwoods in the heart of springtime. But several disturbing differences separated that creature from any insect that Pap had ever encountered. A thick coat of bristles covered the cylindrical body of the ugly thing. The old man poked at its back with the end of his walking stick. The cane emerged covered with long quills, five to seven inches in length, each as sharp and barbed at the end as a fish hook.

As the pain grew increasingly worse, Pap’s attention was reluctantly drawn to the bloody, black maw that encircled his lower leg. It worked ravenously, awful sounds of sucking and tearing rising from deep within its gullet. The teeth were triangular ivory razors. The moved along flesh and bone in an odd circular motion, performing irreparable damage, funneling the chewed tissue and gristle into the dark tunnel of its throat. In sudden horror, Pap realized that the mouth had traveled upward a few inches, totally engulfing the swell of his ankle.

The thing was eating him!

Pap Wilson had always been a proud man. He forever balked at help offered by neighbors or kin, and staunchly refused any consideration lest acceptance be interpreted as a weakness on his part. But that evening, deep in that wooded hollow, he screamed long and loud for his life and prayed to the good Lord that someone would hear his frantic cries.

Someone did. Nate and Johnny, the old man’s strapping sons, were in the barn unharnessing a pair of swaybacked mules. Their upper bodies were tanned and slick with sweat, for they had spent all day plowing the hillside acreage that bore their meager crop each year. The two brothers looked at one another. “That sounded like Pap,” said Nate.

They ran out of the barn and down the slope of the hollow. They found their father lying in a tangle of briers and bramble, trembling in a palsy of torment, his life’s blood flowing freely now.

“Good God Almighty!” gasped Johnny, the younger of the two.

The boys stared in disbelief at the thing that pulsated along Pap’s right shin. Nate crouched and curiously extended his hand toward it.

“Don’t touch it, son!” warned Pap through clenched teeth. “The critter’s got barbs as sharp as a porcupine’s.”

“What the hell is it?”

“Don’t rightly know. Put my foot in a sinkhole under the kudzu and the thing latched onto me with a vengeance.” Pap shuddered with another spasm, each more painful than the last. “Well, don’t just stand there a-gawking like a couple of idiots… get me on up to the house!”

Fashioning their brawny arms into a makeshift chair, they carried their papa up the steep embankment to the ancient log house. “Ma!” they yelled as they approached the back porch. “Come on out here quick! Pap’s been bad hurt!”

Mable Wilson rushed out of the kitchen door, drying her hands on her apron. “Lord have mercy!” she cried. “What’s happened to him?” At first, all she could see was her husband’s britches leg saturated with fresh blood.

Then she saw the parasite and nearly screamed.

Pap reached out and took her hand firmly. “Now, don’t you go getting hysterical on me, old woman,” he said evenly, trying to inject an element of calm into his faltering voice. “Ya’ll just get me inside and we’ll see about getting this ugly cuss off’n me.”

By the time they carried Pap to his chair at the head of the kitchen table, the creature had crept to the bulge of the old man’s knee. They tried two things, neither of which showed any positive results. First they tried pouring hot water on the thing. Mable had a kettle of water boiling on the woodstove, knowing that her husband enjoyed a mug of tar black coffee after his forays in the forest. Carefully, she tipped the kettle over the writhing body of jagged bristles. All in the room were silent, watching in nervous anticipation. Mable and the boys prepared themselves for the shrieking and thrashing of the scalded critter as it dropped away and the grisly sight of Pap’s leg, flesh and bone whittled away to a point like a lead pencil. But the boiling water had no effect. If anything, it only riled the creature. It continued its gnashing and gnawing with renewed vigor.

Next, Nate took a carving knife from the kitchen pantry. Careful not to ensnare his hand in the quills, he jabbed at the thing’s body, intending to skewer it. But, still, their good intentions proved futile. The knife’s edge continuously struck a network of hard, interlinked scales, comparable to the chainmail of a knight’s armor.

“Try its head,” suggested Johnny.

He did. After chiseling for a few moments, the point of the blade broke off with a snap. “No good,” sighed Nate. “The blamed thing is as hard as a tortoise shell.”

“What’re we gonna do now?” asked Johnny. He noticed the thing was halfway up his father’s thigh and, amazingly enough, its toothy maw was expanding in width, accommodating the circumference of the morsel it was devouring.

Pap had no more answers. He merely sat there trembling, tears of rage and agony rolling down his leathery cheeks. Mable saw her responsibility and took control. “Carry your papa into the bedroom and make him comfortable.” She followed them to the front room that she and her spouse had shared for over fifty years. After Pap had been laid gently on the big feather bed, Mable led her sons out into the hallway. “Nate… you’ve got the keys to your papa’s truck, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now, listen to me, both of you,” she said, trying to calm herself. “I want you to drive to town and fetch Doc Hampton. Bring him back here as fast as you can.”

“But that thing on Pap…” Nate began to protest, “as fast as it’s going… won’t be nothing left of him by the time we get back.”

“Don’t talk such nonsense!” balked Mable, although her skepticism was half-hearted with dread. “Now get going. And put on a shirt, the both of you. I don’t want you roaring into town looking like a couple of naked savages on a rampage, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” They dressed hurriedly and, soon, the old pickup was heading down the dirt road for town.

“Mable?”

After a moment’s hesitation, she went in to see what Pap wanted.

“Mable?” Pap muttered weakly. His face, once ruddy with good health, now stared up at her as pale as baking flour. “Mable… I want you to do me a favor.”

“Of course,” she said, but there was wariness in her tone.

“I want you to fetch that old shotgun of mine from outta the hall closet and load it for me.”

“Whatever for?” Mable exclaimed. Her mind raced, revealing reasons and quickly discarding them. She had a cold fear that she knew exactly why Pap wanted the gun.

The elderly man avoided looking her in the eyes. “The pain, Mable… oh, dear Lord in heaven, it hurts!” His white-knuckled hands clutched at the mattress, the nails digging deeper into the bedcovers. “Mable, darling… I don’t know how much more of this I can stand.”

Mable Wilson removed her apron and tenderly wiped the sweat from his pasty brow. She was a God-fearing, church-going woman and, at that moment, knew she must draw on her faith to get them both through this terrible ordeal. “I’ll not let you die, Pap Wilson,” she declared, her own tears spilling freely. “Not by your hand or by this… this monster that’s got hold of you!”

“So you refuse to help me?” Once again he was the rawboned mountain man, fearful of nothing and full of piss and vinegar; the man she had wed the summer of her eighteenth year. “Well, if that be the case, then just get the hell outta here! Get out and lock the door behind you! And no matter how badly I scream, woman, don’t come in… do you understand what I’m saying?”

He stared down reluctantly at the quilled parasite. The thing was at the joint of his crotch and thigh now, blood pouring in torrents, more blood than he had seen in an entire lifetime of hardship. The appetite was what mortified him. Could the thing eat and eat and never gorge itself to capacity? Was its devilish hunger eternal? And who would it start on next, once it had its fill of him?

Mable obeyed her husband’s demands. Swiftly, she closed the door behind her, locked it shut with the skeleton key. She stood at the front door screen and watched the evening bleed into twilight. She prayed softly, trying hard to ignore the awful noises of feeding that sounded from the next room.

~ * ~

In the course of a lifetime one rarely endures the kind of living nightmare that befell the Wilson clan that dreadful day in the wooded hills of East Tennessee. A nightmare so horrendous that it crumbles the very foundation of day-lit reality, then pursues the tortured mind relentlessly into the realm of troubled sleep afterwards.

When Nate and Johnny returned with Louis Hampton M.D. in tow, darkness had fallen. They found their mother sitting in her rocker on the front porch, her face buried mournfully in wrinkled hands, her frail body racked with the force of her sobbing. “It was horrible!” she told them. “The screaming… I’ve never, in all my born days, heard such awful sounds as those that came from that room. Oh, your poor papa… how he must have suffered. And, Lord forgive me, I did nothing. I sat right here until the screaming finally stopped.”

Nate left Johnny to look after Ma. Then, accompanied by Doc Hampton, he entered the house. Living so far back in the sticks, the Wilson household, like most of their backwoods neighbors, existed without benefit of telephone or electricity. In pitch darkness, Nate fished in the hall closet, found the old Parker twelve-gauge, and loaded it. Then, flashlight in hand, they unlocked the door and burst in.

The pale beam was directed at the brass-framed bed, as were the twin muzzles of the scattergun. But there was nothing to fire at. The big feather bed was empty.

Nate and Doc stepped closer and examined the spot where Pap Wilson had once laid in agony. The sheets were twisted and soaked through with blood. The only lingering remains of poor Pap appeared in ragged tatters of clothing and the upper plate of his mail-order dentures lying near a chewed and discarded pillow. As for the parasitic worm, the only traces of its horrid existence were a few barbed quills protruding from the mattress ticking.

Where is it? Nate’s mind raced in panic. The beam of the flashlight followed a long smudge of fresh blood, like the slimy residue of a slug’s trail, crossing the hardwood floor toward the open window. Nate caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, but too late. He whirled and fired just as the thing disappeared over the sill and into the outer darkness, leaving only a smear of fresh gore and needles along the ledge… a taunting reminder of the horrible act committed therein.

~ * ~

Nate Wilson struggled from the clutches of that ghastly dreamscape, realizing that the grist of his nightmare had actually taken place several hours earlier. He hadn’t intended on sleeping a wink that night. Since shortly after the hour of ten, when the windows of the house had grown dark, Nate had sat in the loft of the barn, gun in hand, watching, waiting for the first sign of that bristly little monster to emerge from the encompassing thicket. He knew that eventually its awful hunger would overcome its fear and would inch its way across the yard in search of an easy entrance.

A full moon was out, splashing pale light upon the immediate expanse of the Wilson property. Nate quickly dismissed the moonlit patches; it was the dense shadows in-between that worried him. From his vantage point he had a good chance of spotting the thing. If an elongated shadow started through the grass below, he could easily dispatch it with one, well-placed shot.

Or so he had intended, before falling asleep. He was fully awake now, his mind alert and instantly suspicious. Better safe than sorry, he told himself. Nate left his nocturnal perch and climbed down the rungs of the hayloft ladder. After all, this wasn’t exactly some chicken-hungry fox he was lying in wait for.

Moving swiftly, he left the barn and crossed the moonlit yard. He stopped at the long-handled pump near the back porch, set his gun aside, and cranked himself a dipperful of cold well water. Soon, he was stepping through the back door. His brother Johnny was fast asleep on the kitchen table, his breathing heavy and his slumber restless. The flashlight sat on the woodstove where Nate had left it. He now took it and started down the inner hallway. He flashed the light toward the front bedroom, but made no move toward it. The door was locked, the ugly tangle of blood-soaked bed sheets left untouched since Doc Hampton’s confused departure. Tomorrow the county sheriff would be out to investigate the incident, but that was unimportant to Nate at the moment.

A faint noise from behind the adjacent door set his nerves on edge. He turned the knob quietly and stepped inside, sweeping the walls with the beam of the hand-held light.

He had insisted that his mother sleep in the boys’ room that night. She had agreed passively and he had tucked her in, concerned with her listless mood and the glassy look in her eyes. Pap’s death had broken the old woman’s spirit, causing her to withdraw somewhere into her mind, away from the surroundings that might remind her of her husband and set the horror into motion once again.

Nate walked quietly to the bed and directed the light on the fluffy goose down pillow at the headboard. “Ma?” he whispered. His mother’s pale face stared, wide-eyed and unseeing, up at him, the muscles of her shallow cheeks twitching grotesquely. “Ma, are you all right?” Fear crept into the young man. Was she having a fit or was she in the throes of a stroke; a delayed reaction to the strain she had been subjected to earlier?

Nate’s fear changed into the wild thrill of unrestrained terror when he shined his light further downward. The bed sheets were saturated with fresh blood, the lumpy folds shuddering and shaking rhythmically. Whatever it was that moved beneath the gory bed linen, it was not the body of his dear, sweet mother. Swiftly and without hesitation, Nate grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled it aside.

He recoiled a few feet, the light shimmying wildly in his hand. He wanted to scream. Dear Lord in heaven, he wanted to scream with all the abandon of a madman, but he couldn’t. He could only stand there and gawk, repulsed and frightfully fascinated at the sight his eyes were taking in.

Somehow the cursed thing had found its way back into the house. Exactly how was beside the point. All Nate knew was that it was here, in front of him now, and it had gotten hold of Ma. Why she had not screamed in agony like Pap had was beyond him. Perhaps it had been her state of grief and numbing shock that had kept her from crying out. It didn’t really matter now. She was far beyond help.

Ma’s body was gone. The spiny parasite had consumed her completely, clear up to the wrinkled neck, which it now sucked and chewed with relentless fervor. Ma’s face stared blankly up at her son, the jaw working, as if trying to utter some meaningful words of parting wisdom that would make her hideous death a fraction more tolerable. But no words rose from her open mouth… only a wet gurgle and a ghastly bubble of bloody spittle. A perfectly-formed bubble that abruptly burst when, with a great shuddering gulp, the toothy maw of the worm engulfed her head completely.

Nate stared at the thing and it stared back with tiny, coal-black eyes. Its prickly body squirmed, bloated to twice its normal size. Instinctively, he brought his right hand up, but it was empty. Suddenly, he remembered the awful thirst that had gripped him during his walk across the back yard. He ran into the hallway, screaming. “Johnny… the shotgun! I left it out by the pump! Get it… quick!”

He heard a frantic scramble, the slap of the back door, and soon Johnny was bolting down the hallway, shotgun in hand. “What’s wrong?” he demanded breathlessly. “What happened?”

The awful look in Nate’s eyes scared Johnny half to death. “It got Ma!” Nate sobbed, strangling on those dreadful words. “The ugly thing got her!” He traded his flashlight for the shotgun and turned toward the bedroom, every nerve in his body alive and on fire. Snapping back the twin hammers, he stepped back into the dark room. Johnny followed and directed the light of the flashlight upon the bloody bed. Nate braced himself, peering down the joined barrels of the antique twelve gauge.

The bed was empty. The petite woman who had raised them from infants to hardworking men was completely gone. But, worse still, so was the devil that had devoured her.

“Where is it?” cried Johnny. “Nate… where is it? Did it get out the window like last time?” They both looked to the room’s single window. It was closed and latched from the inside. An awful feeling gripped them both. The thing… the caterpillar-like parasite with the ceaseless hunger… was still in there somewhere!

They stood stone still for a moment, but no sound alerted them to its whereabouts. No dry rasping of long needles grating one against the other, no gnashing of razor sharp teeth. Only silence and the ragged labor of their own breathing.

“Let’s get outta here,” said Nate, grabbing his brother by the arm.

“What’re we gonna do?” Johnny moaned as Nate herded him into the hallway, then shut the door behind them. locking it and taking the key.

His brother’s eyes were wild. “We’re gonna burn that sucker out, that’s what we’re gonna do!”

Johnny was in no position to argue. Meekly, he joined his sibling in an act that some would have termed as pure madness. They first went to the tool shed and, toting two five-gallon cans of gasoline, returned to the log house they had lived in since birth. With a desperation that was almost wanton in its execution, the two splashed the outer walls with the flammable liquid, soaking the ancient logs. Nate dug a book of matches from his trouser pocket and, igniting the whole thing, pitched it at the dry brush near the eastern wall.

By the time Nate and Johnny reached the peach orchard opposite their bedroom window, the old house was wreathed in flame. Nate checked the loads in his shotgun and waited for the fire to get good and hot. It didn’t take long. The hewn logs and chinking in-between burnt like dry tinder and, before five minutes had passed, the structure was totally engulfed.

Nate took a firm grip on the gun. His attention was glued to that bedroom window, for that was where the horrid thing would attempt to escape. The inner walls of the cabin had ignited now. As the heat rose in intensity, windows began to expand and explode like brittle gunshots. The bedroom window was the third to go.

He raised his shotgun, ready to let loose. The ruptured window stared at him like the empty eye socket of some fiery skull, but nothing moved along its sill except tongues of flame.

“Johnny,” he called to his brother behind him. “Do you see it anywhere?”

No reply. Only the crackling of the fire and the crash of timbers giving way.

Nate was reluctant to turn away from the window, but he did so anyway. “Johnny?”

His brother was nowhere to be seen. Nate stared hard into the pitch blackness, his eyes more accustomed to the brilliance of flame than the inky depth of shadow. It was noise that alerted him… a soft rustle of wet grass. His eyes focused on motion at the base of a tree.

“Johnny… is that you?” He walked a few steps closer.

Yes, it was Johnny. His younger brother lay on the dewy ground, his arms flailing frantically, his legs performing a bizarre dance of torment. The flickering glow from the house reached midway into the orchard, shedding light upon the gruesome spectacle at Nate’s feet.

The thing had somehow escaped the fiery barricade, unnoticed, and had crept up behind them, catching Johnny by surprise. It had a hold of his brother’s head and was at work with the zealous craving it had exhibited at the expense of his ma and pa. Nate raised the shotgun and pointed it at the pulsating column of the critter’s expanding body. If Johnny wasn’t already dead, he would be soon. There was nothing Nate could do for his brother… nothing but avenge his horrible demise. And Nate intended to take care of that right then and there.

The young farmer’s eyes shone with a strange emotion that was a mixture of pleasure and agony, of elation and self-destructive rage. He brought the muzzles of the shotgun flush against the bulbous head of the wretched thing and smiled. “I got you now, you filthy little bastard!”

As Nate was about to exact his revenge, he heard a rustling in the leafy branches above his head. But there was no wind that night.

Before he could pull the trigger, they began falling out of the trees.

THEN CAME A WOODSMAN

The woodsman’s axe cut deep.

In a dappling of sunlight and shade, it struck again and again, its head gleaming like pure silver. It would have taken an ordinary man several dozen blows to have chopped down such a tree. But the woodsman, with his skill and strength, dropped the mighty oak with only eight.

With a splintering crack, the trunk gave way and it came crashing earthward. He heard a grumble from the neighboring trees, but ignored them. Standing abreast of the oak, he finished the job, cleaving away branches for kindling, then separating the trunk into quarters.

When he was finished, he rested. He set his axe aside and sat with his back to a large boulder. He was not exhausted, not even the least bit tired… such was his nature. But he rested nonetheless, before continuing to the next stand of trees.

As he sat there, he listened to the sounds of the forest. Birds sang in the treetops, while toads croaked from a nearby brook. They rang like a symphony in his ears, but he derived no enjoyment from it. He felt little pleasure from such simple things, although he once had.

The sound of footsteps came from the direction of the pathway that wound through the deep forest. They were light and carefree, skipping along happily. He turned his head to see a young girl dressed in a red cloak and hood. She toted a wicker basket in the crook of one arm. From the depths of the basket he could smell the pleasant aroma of freshly-baked tea cakes and gooseberry jam. The woodsman’s stomach was empty, yet he felt no hunger.

He considered calling out to her in greeting, but refrained from doing so. He didn’t want to frighten the child.

Then she was gone on her merry way. The woodsman sat there, remembering a similar child – also a girl – from another time and place. It pained him to think of her, as well as the others. Soon, his thoughts grew heavy… much heavier than the axe he had wielded all morning… and, before long, he had fallen into a light – yet troubled – slumber.

~ * ~

He had once been a happy man; a man of the forest who seemed to be a very part it, both in body and soul. He was thoroughly in tune with nature. Since his boyhood, he had roamed the dense woods, had known every pine grove and canebrake, every rabbit hole and beehive. As a young lad it wasn’t uncommon to find him running with the deer, swimming with the fish in the lake north of the big city, or wrestling with snakes in the green moss beds.

Later, as a man who had taken on the apprenticeship of a woodcutter, his family made his life even more complete. His wife was a lovely, sensible woman from the village and his children – a boy and a girl – were his pride and joy. It was a pleasure to return to his cottage following a hard day’s work to find a bountiful meal on the table and cheerful greetings as he walked through the door. Later, after supper, he would take his pipe and retire to the bench before the hearth. His little ones would sit at his knees, eager to hear about that day’s labor and what strange animals he had encountered .

Then came that fateful night ten years ago, when the woodsman’s life had changed forever.

He had tackled a particularly stubborn stand of timber that day and had lost track of time. As the last tree fell, dusk was giving way to twilight. He set off down the cobbled pathway, aware that it was long past his suppertime. He was certain to receive a sound scolding from his wife for being so late.

As he traveled the dark forest, he became aware that something was wrong. The woods were too quiet. Nary a cricket or toad sang, nor did he hear the lonesome call of the nightbird. There was only a thick and oppressive silence, as though the wildlife of the forest had been startled into a frightened hush.

He quickened his pace. Somewhere ahead came the howl of a wolf; not a long, mournful call, but one that was savage and strangely triumphant. He looked skyward. Above the treetops hung a full moon. It was pale red in color… a blood moon, as the old tales called it. A bad omen that heralded heartache and disaster.

Soon, he was running toward the low, thatched structure of his home. Before long, he saw it ahead in a clearing, but it held none of the inviting warmth it normally did. No smoke drifted from the stone chimney and no lamplight shown from the windows.

The place was dark and desolate… like a tomb.

When he reached the entrance, he found that the door had been ripped from its iron hinges by some brutal force. The oaken boards were deeply scored, as if by the claws of some horrid beast.

As he prepared to enter the house, a cloudbank drifted in front of the moon, casting a blanket of gloom over the forest. He heard movement within the black pit of the doorway, as well a low, guttural breathing. His heart pounded in his chest as he gripped the axe handle firmly and cautiously stepped inside.

“Rebecca?” he called out. “Children?”

For a long moment, complete darkness occupied the cottage. Then the cloudbank moved onward and moonlight shown through the window panes, revealing the horror that stood before him.

It was a wolf, or something much worse than one. It was tall and brawny, its coarse gray fur glistening like spun silver in the light of the full moon. It crouched in the center of the cottage’s main room, tearing at something with its massive fangs. Then, slowly, it rose, standing on its hind legs like a man. The tips of the wolf’s ears touched the oaken beams of the ceiling, which were located a good eight feet from the floorboards.

In the pale glow, the woodsman took in the carnage that had been wrought upon his home. His daughter lay limply across the eating table, amid shattered dishes. His son curled, crumpled and lifeless, on the forestone of the hearth, his head twisted and at odds with the rest of his body. The thick stench of fresh blood hung heavily in the air, the same way the heady scent of honeysuckle fills the air of the forest.

The woodsman took a threatening step forward. The beast stood there, holding the slack form of his wife. Her clothing had been partially torn away and her throat was an ugly, gaping hole. The wolf bared its bloody fangs and grinned, then threw back its massive head and laughed. Laughed much in the same way a man might do.

“No!” screamed the woodsman. He lunged forward, raising his axe for the swing.

But he was not quick enough. Before he knew it, the wolf had flung the woman aside and was leaping toward a side window. It crashed through the opening, taking sash, hand-sewn curtains, and glass with it.

The woodsman followed and pursued him into the dark undergrowth. He caught a glimpse of the beast as it sprang though the trees, attempting to escape. As he set off after the fiend, he found that the forest he had grown to love was now his worst enemy. Tree limbs tore at his face and clothing, and the leafy vines of the forest floor clung to his boots, threatening to trip and drag him down.

For miles, he followed the wolf’s trail, catching only fleeting glimpses of him as dark pools of shadow gave way to moonlight. The earth began to rise from the hollow of the valley. Soon, he found himself climbing the rolling, green hills that stretched to the south. Exhausted, the woodsman fought the terrain, intent on making the monster pay for the atrocity it had committed. He would find the beast and kill it, or die trying.

Finally, he found that he was gaining on the beast. He paused to catch his breath and saw the wolf, crouching on a moss-covered deadfall, staring back at him. Its horrid form – half-human, half-canine – was etched against the broad, pink sphere of the blood moon.

It motioned to him with long, clawed fingers. “Come, mortal!” it rasped tauntingly. “Catch me if you dare!” Then it sprang across the fallen log and vanished from sight.

With a yell, the woodman ran forward, axe raised. He leapt across the deadfall unheedingly… and found himself flailing through open air.

He unleashed the axe and attempted to find something to correct his mistake. He could find no handhold, however. Like a stone, he seemed to fall endlessly. An instant later, he reached the floor of a deep canyon. He caught a flash of sharp shale and granite boulders rushing up to meet him. Then he lost consciousness with the terrible impact.

How long he laid there, he had no idea. He awoke once, in dewy darkness, wracked in agony. He could scarcely move. With incredible effort, he managed to turn his head a few inches. In the moonlight he saw shards of jagged bone jutting from his arms and legs like the quills of a porcupine. It was certain that every bone in his body had been shattered, and that he had broken both his neck and spine. When the pain grew too intense to bear, his mind served him mercifully, dragging him back into numb darkness once again.

When he awoke again it was daylight. He heard something nearby; the squeak of wagon wheels and the clatter of horse hooves on stone. Then, suddenly, he was staring into the face of a huge, giant of a man with a bushy red beard and piercing green eyes. He recognized the man from the trips he had made to the village. Some called him a craftsman, some a magician.

The man crouched down and studied him thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said, gently lifting his broken body in his arms and carrying him to the bed of his wagon. “I shall fix you.”

And so he had.

~ * ~

The woodsman awoke with a start. Nearly overcome with emotion, he rose to his feet. No tears, he told himself. You know what that gets you.

Even after those many years, the night of the blood moon still haunted him. The horrible massacre of his family had taken away his heart. He felt hollow inside.

He picked up his axe and stepped onto the pathway, intending to continue his work. But something caused him to pause. It was the voice of a child.

“Oh, Grandmother, what large ears you have!” she said.

She was answered by a gruff voice. “The better to hear you with.”

The woodsman started down the pathway. There was something disturbingly familiar about that voice.

He had only gone a short distance, when the voices came again.

“Oh, Grandmother, what great eyes you have!” The child was a girl from the sound of it.

Again that awful voice. “The better to see you with.”

The woodsman began to run. He saw a small white house up ahead and knew that it belonged to an old woman. He had seen her before, toiling in her flower garden out front.

“Oh, Grandmother, what terribly sharp teeth you have!” the girl squealed in alarm.

If the woodsman intended to approach the house silently, his plan was futile. His footsteps pounded on the cobblestones of the pathway like the thunderous beating of a war drum.

A savage growl roared from within the little cottage. “The better to eat you with, my dear!”

The woodsman leapt over the gate of the picket fence and was to the door in a flash. A mighty blow from his axe split the door in half. He stepped inside and felt as though his troubled past had suddenly come back to torment him.

The little girl he had seen earlier – the one with the bright red cloak and hood – was running around a long eating table. She shrieked in fright as a lumbering form chased her. It was dressed in the flannel nightgown and frilly nightcap of an elderly woman. But the thing inside the clothing was far from a kindly grandmother. Massive paws bearing sharp talons protruded from the sleeves of the gown, while beneath the nightcap leered the hungry countenance of a giant wolf. A wolf with coarse gray hair.

The woodsman reached out as the girl turned the corner of the table and pushed her protectively behind him. A mixture of horror and exhilaration filled him as he stood before the wolf in grandmother’s clothing.

“At last I have found you, fiend!” he said. “I have searched for you for a long, long time.”

The wolf roared and flexed his hirsute body. The gown ripped at the seams and fell away, revealing his hideous form. “And you have found me! Now step aside and give me my prey!”

The woodsman clenched the handle of his axe. “Never again, beast! Never again!”

And, with that, he swung his axe deftly and without error. The edge of the silver head bit into the sinewy throat of the wolf, severing its skull from its body. The monstrous head spun across the room – ears, snout, and all – and landed in the crackling fire of the hearth.

As the wolf’s ghastly form dropped to its knees, the woodsman saw its stomach bulge. Alarmed, he watched as the imprint of a hand showed against the pale fur of the underbelly.

“My grandmother!” cried the child. “He swallowed her!”

He watched as the bulge in the wolf’s stomach receded. “Take heed, madam!” he yelled loudly. He swung his axe once again, this time putting the very tip of the edge into the wolf’s hide. It opened the flesh from breastbone to crotch with a single, smooth stroke.

A moment later, he was helping the old woman out of the cramped confines of the beast’s abdomen. She was frightened and trembling, but otherwise seemed to have suffered no harm.

The little girl stared up at their rescuer in awe. “Thank you, kind sir,” she gasped. “Thank you for coming to our aid.”

The woodsman’s face gleamed as he smiled down at her. “You are more than welcome, Little Red.”

They urged him to stay and share their meal of tea cakes and gooseberry jam, but he politely refrained. He left the house and went on his way, his step much lighter than it had been before.

Little Red ran to the window and watched as he continued down the pathway. “What a strange man,” she said in wonderment.

“Yes,” said Grandmother, laying out the items that her granddaughter had brought in her basket. “He is a peculiar gentleman, but a good one. He is known throughout the land for his strength of heart… although he would never admit it himself.”

The girl continued to watch him. As he stepped out of the shade of the trees and into a brilliant patch of sunlight, she squinted against the glare that he cast. His footsteps rapped almost musically upon the golden bricks of the road that wound through the deep forest.

Together, Grandmother and Little Red sat down to tea. As they ate, they listened to the steady chopping that signaled that the woodsman had once again returned to his work.

Before their meal was done, thunder rumbled from the heavens and a steady rain began to fall.

Then, moments later, the strike of the axe grew silent and they heard it no more.

OH, SORDID SHAME

By the very nature and eloquence of this writing, few would believe that I was once a man enslaved.

That fact alone may cause some men to dismiss the validity of my story entirely, their suspicion of the negro race conquering their potential for open-mindedness. But the tale that this testament holds is truth. I swear by God that it is. Surely it might have remained untold for all time – and perhaps best so. But a dying man must purge his troubled soul. Therefore, I take pen in hand and cleanse my own of the stain of that horrid incident some sixty years ago.

I first came to know the name of Bellamere in the mid-1800’s. Since my birth, I had been bound body, mind, and soul to the possession of another man… in fact, several over a twenty-five year period. When gold had once again exchanged hands and I was bought by the family of Bellamere, I was a husband and father. Fortunately, the elder Bellamere was a man of compassion and not one to break up the family unit, putting so much faith and stock in his own. So, without ceremony, the three of us, my wife Camilla, my son Jeremiah, and I, were delivered to the Bellamere estate. We arrived with the obvious fears and expectations, figuring to be cast into yet another dismal world of cotton fields, slave shacks, and cruel overseers.

However, much to our surprise, life with the Bellamere family was nearly idyllic. Unlike our more unfortunate counterparts of dark descent, our servitude was pleasant and without conflict. There were no chains, no bullwhips, and never once did we hear the word “nigger” cross our master’s lips. Since the Bellameres’ wealth was one of inheritance rather than the livelihood produced by cotton or sugar cane, the extent of the plantation and its grounds were simply there for the family’s comfort and leisure. I was dressed in the finest of garments, taught the most impeccable of manners, and transformed from an ignorant field hand into a poised and proper butler. Camilla attended to the cooking and housework, while Jeremiah, then a small boy, took care of the stables.

Another benefit of serving the Bellameres was their uncustomary interest in our education, or rather lack of it. Sebastian Bellamere and his wife, Catherine, possessed an immense library of both ancient and current volumes. All manner of books and periodicals were made available to us.

While my former masters had deliberately kept my family and I in intellectual darkness – a common practice in the South during that period, generated more out of fear than hatred – the Bellamere clan seemed to encourage our pursuit of knowledge. The Bellameres’ only daughter, Emily, had hopes of becoming a school teacher someday and we were her first pupils. We became well-versed in the classics, reading Dickens, Shelly, and Keats, and studying the histories and philosophies of the world. I would not be penning this testament this very evening if Miss Emily’s tutorial guidance had not left such a lasting impression.

And we were offered companionship as well. Camilla shared activities with Lady Catherine and Miss Emily, while I often went quail hunting with Master Sebastian and his eldest son, Collin. And the Bellameres’ youngest child, Martin, was my son’s bosom buddy. He and Jeremiah made the whole of the Bellamere estate their private playground; climbing trees, skinny-dipping in the fish pond, and playing their favorite game, marbles, in the earthen circle drawn for that purpose beneath one of the garden’s great, spreading magnolia trees.

So what went wrong? Why were we not allowed to live out the remainder of our lives in such a paradise, void of prejudice and strife? I have asked myself that question often over the years. Perhaps if I had paid closer attention, I could have foreseen the catastrophe to come. Perhaps if I had not been so blinded by my loyalty to the Bellameres, I might have been able to do something to alter the course of events that led to the downfall of that most inoffensive and genteel of Southern families.

The history of the Bellameres was very much a mystery to me, as it was to most everyone in that part of Mississippi. From their accent and customs, it was obvious that they were originally of foreign lineage, most likely British. It was also known that the family had left their native country under the shadow of some great scandal. Sometimes, when partaking of strong drink, Sebastian would slip and mention “exile” and some terrible “shame” that had forever tarnished the family name. He never elaborated on precisely what that shame was; only that it had taken place during wartime. My suspicion was that cowardice was the black mark of which he spoke, since Sebastian and his family were of an overly reclusive and gentle nature. They had very little to do with the neighboring planters and whatever business was done in Vicksburg was performed by myself. Collin and Emily had no interest in people their own age and never attended any of the dances or social functions prevalent during those days of antebellum grace. And young Martin shunned the neighboring children, finding companionship only in the company of my own son.

The only other clue I had to the family’s mysterious background was something I discovered in the Bellamere library. It was a journal belonging to one Woodrow Bellamere, grandfather to my master Sebastian. Woodrow had been a man of medicine, a scientist in the purist sense of the word. He had been most interested in the workings of the human mind and the chemical imbalances that caused negative behavior, such as paranoia, anxiety, and, as in the case of his own heritage, fear and timidity. It was known that the doctor had developed a serum to purge future generations of such weaknesses. A few of the passages even hinted that Woodrow might have tested the concoction on himself. But from what I had witnessed of the Bellamere legacy, Woodrow’s pursuit for genetic strength and stability had proven a dismal failure.

However, I did not allow their eccentricities to affect me. I respected the privacy they demanded and attended to my appointed duties. Camilla and Jeremiah did the same. For a while, things went pleasantly. Then a couple of incidents took place that were both puzzling and frightening to someone familiar with the mild nature of such people.

The first concerned Sebastian Bellamere himself. He and his wife rarely exchanged hostile words; rather, they seemed most loving and considerate of one another. Yet, one evening, their customary civility gave way to a heated argument. It concerned Catherine’s desire to enroll Emily in a finishing school in Vicksburg and Sebastian’s absolute refusal to allow the girl to venture from the solitude of the Bellamere household. The more Catherine pressed the matter, the angrier Sebastian became. His agitation was disturbing, for it was an emotion I had never seen grip the man before. I watched from the open door of the parlor as Sebastian’s face grew deathly pale. And there was something else. His eyes – the whites of his eyes had grown blood red. Not bloodshot like those of a drunken man, but pure blood red, only the pupils showing in contrast to the surrounding crimson orbs.

Sebastian took a trembling step toward the lady, his hand aloft and balled into a fist. I am certain he would have struck her if I had not stepped into the room and drawn his attention. The man turned and regarded me with a fury that could only be described as murderous. At first, I thought he might take his anger out on me, but instead he stormed past, heading downstairs to the wine cellar. I followed at his urgent request and, soon, he and I were alone in the basement. There was an empty storage room at the rear of the dusty bottle racks, one with a sturdy oaken door and iron lock. He instructed me to lock him within the windowless cell and not come to release him until early the next morning. My protests only seemed to feed the fuel of his madness even more, so I complied and did as I was told. The following morning I returned to find him crouched in a corner, his clothes disheveled, but his mind having regained its normal state of serenity.

The second event of this nature had to do with young Martin. He was only five years old at the time and, even then, small and frail for his age. While he and Jeremiah were out cavorting near a neighboring plantation one day, they strayed upon a broad cow pasture. Halfway across, a great black bull appeared from a wooded thicket and gave chase. Both children reached the safety of the bordering fence, but the frantic run had played havoc with poor Martin’s nerves. By the time they returned home, the boy was overcome with fear and trembling. He was put to bed immediately. He developed a high fever the following day, but it did not seem to be from any form of sickness. Rather, it appeared that Martin was in the throes of some bizarre temper tantrum, as if his initial fear had bled away into a creeping rage.

Later that night, while the household slept, young Martin left his bed. Lady Catherine discovered the absence and alerted her husband. On horseback, Sebastian, Collin, and I searched the expanse of the estate, but found nothing. Then instinct nagged at me and I suggested we ride to the pasture where the bull had chased the two boys. As the dawn came, we reached the field and found the child lying in the dewy clover, his nightshirt torn and stained with blood. As father and brother carried the sleeping boy home, I lingered, wondering what had become of the mean-spirited bull. A short time later, I found out. The bull was sprawled in the wooded hollow, cold and dead. Its belly had been torn open and its entrails scattered throughout the brambled thicket.

~ * ~

Nothing else of such a morbid and inexplicable nature happened again for a very long time. Life with the Bellamere family continued as smoothly as it had before, leaving only uneasy reflections of the strange incidents to linger in the dark corners of my mind.

Then came the conflict between abolitionists and slave owners. The Southern states seceded from the Union, the Confederacy was born, and the great Civil War tore the fabric of normal existence asunder.

Men of all ages and social distinction enlisted to fight the Yankee hordes that were sure to march across the Mason-Dixon Line and put a halt to the ways of the Old South. The Bellamere men, however, did not. They remained neutral and refrained from the wearing of the gray. They were content to make the Bellamere estate their private haven from war, intending to spend their time as usual; reading their books, hunting quail and fox, and living quietly and inconspicuously far from the roar of the cannons and the death screams of gutshot soldiers.

They were ridiculed for their decision at first. Men rode onto the plantation in the dead of night and goaded them with curses and stones, calling the Bellameres “yellow-bellied cowards” and “Yankee sympathizers”. During each episode of violent taunting, Sebastian and Collin were locked in the wine cellar, their eyes flaring like red-hot coals with each chiding word.

Eventually, more and more marched off to fight the war in Virginia and Tennessee, and less and less found time to torment the family who wanted no part in the conflict. By the second year, the plantations and cotton mills around Vicksburg had grown quiet and deserted from disuse, and the Bellameres found themselves left alone, just as they wished to be.

And that was the way it remained… until a fateful night in the summer of 1863.

There had been much activity that day; the sound of marching troops and wagons on every road around the city and the roar of cannon fire from the wide channel of the Mississippi River. By nightfall, a division of Union cavalry was galloping up the road from Vicksburg to lay waste to any plantation loyal to the Stars and Bars. When the procession of flaring torches could be seen from the windows of the main house, Sebastian Bellamere gave precise instructions as to what would be done. Rather than fight for their home and honor, he and Collin would retire to the security of the cellar as usual. The rest of the Bellameres, along with my family and I, would hide in the upstairs parlor with orders to stay put no matter what transpired.

I did exactly as I was told. By the time the males had been locked in and the women and children were secure in the mansion’s upper level, I watched from the upstairs window as a group of cavalrymen invaded the Bellamere property, leaving the rest of the division to conquer other pockets of resistance.

No one will resist you here, I thought as the soldiers dismounted and marched boldly to the mansion’s front door. There is no one here but a few frightened women and children… and a couple of craven cowards hiding in the cellar.

But I was wrong about that. Very wrong.

A Union colonel kicked at the door with his dusty boot. “Open up this door, you traitorous rebels, or so help me I’ll burn this house to the ground with you in it!”

There was the sound of breaking glass, the steely rasp of drawn sabers, and the sound of wild laughter as soldiers – some drunk on confiscated spirits – began to ready themselves for the destruction of the massive structure of whitewashed wood and alabaster stone.

I looked to Lady Catherine. She looked frightened, but strangely enough, not because of the gathering of military men below. She held Emily and Martin in her arms, but the gesture did not have appearance of a mother’s loving protection. Instead, she seemed to be holding them in restraint.

The crackle of splintering wood echoed from somewhere downstairs. I was sure that the soldiers had breached the security of the locked and bolted front door. But, upon listening further, I discovered that the noise was too muffled to be coming from the ground floor. No, it seemed to issue from some lower level. From the shadowy depths of the wine cellar.

Then came the most horrifying wail of pure rage that I had ever heard in my life. It was fury torn between the mortal soul of man and the raw bloodlust of the most primal of beasts. It barreled up out of the pit of the mansion’s black bowels, demanding to be vented, filling all who heard it with a fear so strong that it was as paralyzing as the venom of some exotic and deadly snake.

I turned and saw Emily and Martin then. Their faces were as pale as lard, their expressions contorted into a rictus of intense mental anguish. And their eyes… their eyes were the same shade of brilliant crimson as that which their father had exhibited that night so many years ago.

“I can’t hold them any longer!” gasped Catherine, her slender arms surrendering the two struggling children. Emily and Martin ran for the door, their faces like those of demons, their hands curled into pale, fleshen claws. I moved to stop them, but the woman’s voice cried out, “Let them go! Let them go or they will tear you apart!”

I stepped aside and they hit the door with such force that the lock was torn loose from its moorings. With enraged wails that more resembled the fitful snarling of beasts than that of innocent children, they disappeared down the staircase to join in the conflict below.

And what a conflict it was. There came another crack and splinter of wood, again from the inside. There was the sound of the main door being torn from its hinges and tossed aside. And there were screams. Lord in heaven help me, I can still hear those awful screams of fear and torment shrilling through the night air, climbing higher and higher, pushing the limits of the human vocal cords, then faltering into choking silence. Only a few gunshots rang out and there was the clatter of hooves on the flagstones as a few the horses escaped into the summer darkness. After the screams of dying men faded, all that could be heard was the maddening sound of flesh being ripped apart. That and the wailing chorus of earthbound banshees performing atrocities in the outer courtyard.

After a time, the horrible noises ended. “Wait here,” Catherine Bellamere said, then, despite my protests, went downstairs alone. My family and I waited in the upstairs parlor, straining our ears. All that we could hear was the lady’s gentle, soothing voice and the sound of soft sobbing.

Minutes later, Catherine reappeared. Her gown was stained crimson with blood. Quietly, she avoided our questions and went to an iron safe in her husband’s study. She opened the safe and withdrew a small bag of gold coins and a folded document. “Come with me,” she said and the four of us went down to the ground floor of the Bellamere house.

The marble floor was splattered with streaks of fresh blood, leading from the darkness of the courtyard beyond. “Stay here for a moment,” Catherine requested. Her voice was rock steady, despite the carnage around her. As she slipped through the door of the downstairs sitting room, I caught a fleeting glimpse of huddled forms in the golden glow of a kerosene lamp. They were the forms of monsters; hideous fiends clad in blood-dyed rags. As the door swung shut, I watched as one of them looked my way, its eyes running the gamut from crimson to pink to eggshell white.

It was a demon I knew. A demon that possessed a familiar face, as well as a familiar voice. “Oh, what shame,” it moaned tearfully. “What sordid shame!”

A moment later, Lady Catherine exited the den. She handed me the gold sack and the folded paper. “Here is money and your freedom. Take a buggy and two strong horses from the stable and go. Never return to this house again, and for God’s sake, never utter a word of what took place here this night.”

Confused, we did as she said. We left the house and stood for a long and horrified instant in the courtyard beyond the alabaster columns of the Bellamere mansion. In the pale glow of moonlight we laid eyes on the massacre that the Bellameres’ secret shame had brought about. Soldiers and horses lay everywhere, torn and broken, like huge toys mangled by some vicious giant-child and cast aside. Fresh blood glistened in the nocturnal light, as well as the stark whiteness of denuded bone. When I quickly led my family past the awful scene of human devastation, I noticed that some of the bodies appeared to have been partially devoured.

As we made our way through the garden for the stable, the titter of childish laughter erupted from beneath the spreading magnolia tree. “Jeremiah,” called young Martin from the shadows. “Come play with me.”

My son took a step toward the tree, but I pulled him back. Moonlight shone upon the dirt circle where the Bellamere child crouched. His marble game was different that night from the countless times I had witnessed before. For instead of the colorful balls of glass, onyx, and agate, Martin shot the circle with huge black orbs that seemed slick and slimy in appearance. It took me a moment before I realized that what he played with were the gouged eyes of a cavalry soldier’s horse.

We hitched two of the stable’s finest steeds to a wagon and left that horrible place, escaping the Federal soldiers by way of a desolate back road. Although I have never spoken of that horrible night before this writing, I have thought about it many times. I have revisited the Bellamere mansion many times in my dreams, have heard the bestial screams of bloodlust and smelled the coppery scent of violent death in my nostrils. And I always wake with a scream trapped firmly behind my lips. Sometimes that scream escapes, like steam escaping from a boiler, saving my mind from the mounting pressure of certain insanity.

I am an old man now. I have lived past the conquering of the West, past the turn of the century, and now into the time of the Great War. I have watched the world progress before my aged eyes; have seen people live and die, including my own family. And I have watched for word regarding a particular surname. That search has ended with a story from a recent newspaper, a report about a soldier by the name of Bellamere who was court-marshaled for crimes unspeakable, even by the conventions of war. I cannot help but wonder if that poor soldier is a distant offspring of the family I once knew and if he is damned with the same seed of shame that his ancestors were.

I lay here now, bedridden and ill, my frail hands unfolding a document yellowed and crumbling with age. It is the declaration of freedom given to me some sixty years ago… my own private Emancipation Proclamation.

As I stare at the hastily scrawled signature at the bottom of the page, my heart grows heavy with uneasiness. For the name of Sebastian Bellamere is signed not in simple ink, but in the blood of a dozen slaughtered souls.

THE THING AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

The thing at the side of the road worried Paul Stinson something awful.

He didn’t know why. It was nothing more than roadkill. Some unfortunate creature that had strayed past the gravel shoulder of Highway 987 and got clipped by a passing vehicle. Or maybe it had reached the center line, got mashed beneath speeding tires, and crept its way back to the side before curling up and giving up the ghost. Either way, it was dead. Paul had passed it on the way to work and back for the past two weeks and it was hunkered there in the exact same spot… nothing more than a clump of glossy fur amid a fringe of brown weeds and wilted cocklebur.

It was the fact that Paul couldn’t easily identify the thing that bothered him so. The thing was too big to be a possum or a coon. It certainly wasn’t a cat… much too bulky and big-boned for that. If it was a dog it was bigger than anything that Paul had seen running around. And its coat bugged him, too. It was slick and black, almost oily looking, with thin streaks of gray running through it.

What the hell is that thing? Paul found himself wondering every time he drove past.

Not that the thing at the side of Highway 987 was the only thing about HarlanCounty that bothered Paul. No, since the company sent him down from Louisville to take over the local State Farm office, he had found more than enough to be bothered about. The people, the way they looked and acted… hell, even the lay of the land was all somehow wrong. But it was nothing tangible… nothing he could actually put his finger on. Every time he tried expressing his concerns to his superior back at the main office he came off looking like a freaking idiot.

That Saturday evening, on the way home from getting groceries in town with his wife, Jill, Paul decided that he had finally had enough. He wasn’t driving another mile without stopping and finding out exactly what that furry black thing was.

When he slowed the Escalade to the side of the highway, Jill turned and looked at him. “What are you doing?”

Paul sighed and put the vehicle into park. “You remember that thing at the side of the road? The one I pointed out on the way to town?”

Jill nodded. “The dead dog?”

“Yeah, but that’s the point,” said Paul, shutting off the engine. “I don’t know if it’s really a dog or not.”

His wife regarded him with irritation. “What do you care?”

Paul exhaled through his nose and gripped the steering wheel. That was Jill’s typical reaction. March on through life with blinders on. No curiosity, no worries. Just that annoying, sugar-coated, Pollyanna attitude of hers.

“I care because it’s bugging the shit out of me and I need to know, that’s why.”

Jill stiffened up a bit and sat back in her seat. She knew better than to argue with her husband when he was in such a pissy mood.

Paul climbed out of the Escalade, leaving the driver’s door open. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Don’t touch that thing. It could’ve died of a disease or something.”

Paul ignored Jill’s comment. As he walked down the shoulder of Highway 987, a beat-up Ford pickup passed by. The driver – an old man wearing a green John Deere cap – threw up his hand at him, as the old folks did in greeting.

As he walked toward mound of black fur, he surveyed his surroundings. It was nearly six-thirty and the long shadows of dusk were beginning to gather. The valley was narrow, with thin stretches of farmland on either side. Across the road was a small farm; a two-story white house, graywood barn, a few outbuildings. It was early spring, so the pastures were empty of crops. No cows around at all.

A little smile of triumph crossed Paul’s face as he came within eight feet of the questionable roadkill. Now, let’s see what the hell you are. He bent down and picked up a dead branch that lay at the side of the highway.

When he finally stood over the animal, he was struck by exactly how large the thing was. Even curled inward the way it was, it was huge… much bigger than a normal dog. All he could see was that glossy black coat with the strange gray-striped pattern running through it. He couldn’t make out the creature’s head, tail, or legs; they were completely tucked from sight. Standing close to it now, Paul found that the coat wasn’t actually fur, but heavy black bristles, more like that of a wild boar than a canine.

Also, even after a couple of weeks of rotting on the side of the highway, Paul smelled no trace of decay. Instead, there was merely a heavy muskiness to the thing lying on the shoulder.

He should have found all this, well, unsettling. Instead, he found his inability to identify the animal infuriating. “Well, we’ll just flip you over and take a better look at you,” he said. Paul wedged the tip of the branch underneath the thing and started to exert a little leverage.

That was when the thing at the side of the road woke up.

“Damn!” Paul jumped back as it stretched and then lifted its head. Its massive head. The thing’s black-bristled skull was long and narrow, almost rat-like in a way, its tiny ears laid back sharply toward its broad neck. It had silver eyes. Silver like polished chrome. And the teeth. Lord have mercy! How could anything have so many long, jagged teeth within the cradle of two jaws?

Paul Stinson knew then that the thing at the side of the road hadn’t been dead for two weeks.

It had been waiting. Waiting for someone stupid enough to stop by and wake it up.

Paul held onto the tree branch, but knew that it wouldn’t serve as any sort of effective weapon. He’d fare better going against a pit bull with a toothpick. He took a couple of wary steps backward as the thing stood up. Its legs were short and stubby, like a weasel’s, but powerful. It shook its coat off with a shudder, shedding a couple weeks’ worth of debris. Dead leaves, gravel, an old Snickers wrapper someone had tossed out a car window. It yawned, stretching those awful triangular jaws to capacity. The thing could have swallowed a softball without strangling. And all those damn teeth! And a long, thick tongue as coarse and gray as tree bark.

Paul began to back away. “What…what the hell are you?”

The thing cocked its huge head and grinned.

Paul suddenly remembered the Escalade behind him. The driver’s door stood wide open.

The thing saw it at the same time.

Paul turned and began to run. He didn’t get far until he sensed the thing beside him, then outdistancing him. Up ahead, in the passenger seat, sat Jill. Her pretty face was a frightened mask blanched of color. She watched, mortified, as the thing, which was about the size of a young calf, poured on the speed, heading for the open door of the SUV.

“Paul,” he saw her mutter. Then he heard her, loud and shrill. “PAUL!”

“Stop!” Paul muttered beneath his breath. “Stop you, sonofabitch!”

But it didn’t. It knew where it was going and it got there a moment later. The black-bristled thing leapt into the Escalade and, with a long tail as sleek and serpentine as a monkey’s, grabbed the door handle and slammed the door solidly behind it.

“NO!” Paul reached the door as the power locks engaged with a clack! The thing was smart… and it knew what it wanted. And what it wanted at that moment was to not be disturbed.

“Paul!” shrieked Jill, hidden by the thing’s heaving, black bulk. “Oh, God… Paul, help me! Oh, God… it hurrrrrrts!”

Outside the vehicle, Paul could hear the thing at work. Biting. Tearing. Ripping.

Frantically, he looked around; found a large rock at the far side of the highway. He grabbed it up in both hands and battered at the side window. It held fast, refusing to shatter. Damn safety glass!

Suddenly, the inner glass of the Escalade began to gloss over with great, thick curtains of crimson. “Paul!” screamed Jill from inside that slaughterhouse on wheels. “Paul… pleeeeeeease!”

Her husband began to scream himself, loud and horrified, full of utter hopelessness. He paced back and forth beside the vehicle, wishing… no, praying that some ignorant Kentucky redneck would happen along to help him. But the highway remained empty and no one came.

The last window to gloss over with gore was the driver’s window. The thing turned and grinned at him with those awful, four-inch teeth. Pieces of Jill clung in-between. Her ear, the ruptured sack of an eye, the bottom half of those ruby red lips he had kissed so passionately following their wedding vows seven years ago.

The thing licked its glistening gray lips, then turned back to the ugly, jagged sack of seat-belted carrion that had once been Paul Stinson’s wife. Rivulets of blood obscured the horrible sight from view… but far from mind.

At a loss of anything better to do, Paul dug his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed 911.

~ * ~

It was already dark when the police finally arrived.

The first one out of the Harlan County Sheriff’s car was a tall, burly fellow in his fifties. “What seems to be the problem, sir?” he asked. He had a stern, suspicious expression on his broad face; the same severe look that the locals customarily directed toward people who had been born and bred beyond the county line.

Paul quelled the impulse to run up and grab hold of the man in complete desperation. “An… an animal of some kind is inside my car!” he said. “I… I… I think it’s… oh, God… I think it’s killed her!”

The deputy, whose name tag identified him as Frank McMahon, walked briskly toward the Escalade. His eyes narrowed as he saw the blood-splattered windows. “What sort of animal? A dog?”

Paul laughed, almost hysterically, then caught himself. “No… no… wasn’t a damn dog.”

Deputy McMahon tried the doors. They were all locked. He turned questioning eyes toward Paul.

“It locked them… by itself.”

The law officer regarded him suspiciously. “Sir… exactly what is going on here?”

Anger flared in Paul’s eyes. “I told you… some… some thing… it jumped in there and attacked my wife…”

“And it slammed the door behind it and locked it?”

Paul realized how very lame that sounded. “Yes.”

McMahon studied Paul for a long second, then turned to his partner – a tall, lanky young man – who stood in front of the patrol car. “Grab the Slim-Jim, Jasper… and the shotgun.”

Soon, both county deputies were standing next to the Escalade, looking at one another. They then looked at Paul, who lingered at the front of the vehicle, pacing back and forth nervously.

“If there’s an animal in there, sir,” said McMahon, “why can’t I hear anything?”

Paul shrugged. “How should I know? You could sure as hell hear it fifteen minutes ago!” He shuddered at the memory of those wet, ripping, slurping sounds.

“I’ll take your word for it… right now. But you stay put, do you understand?”

Paul swallowed dryly and simply nodded.

The elder officer turned to his subordinate. “Okay, this is how we’re gonna work it, Jasper. You jimmy the lock and open the door. I’ll shoot the thing when it comes out.” He jacked a shell into his twelve-gauge Mossberg with a metallic click-clack.

“Gotcha,” agreed Jasper. His hands trembled as he stepped to the driver’s door and began to slowly insert the narrow length of the Slim-Jim past the blood-soaked window and down into the body of the Cadillac’s door.

Frank McMahon stepped into the center of the highway and lifted his shotgun, bringing the butt securely against his shoulder. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Jasper fished around with the jimmy until something within the door went click. “Get ready. Here goes!” Then he grasped the handle and pulled open the door.

At first, nothing happened. Deputy McMahon peered into the vehicle’s dark interior. Then his eyes widened. “What the shit?”

Paul watched as the thing burst from the gore-encrusted cave of the Escalade, leaping straight toward the lawman. It was bigger… twice as big as it had been before… and, it seemed, twice as fast. It barreled out of the vehicle; sharp jaws gnashing, a deep, thunderous roar rumbling up from out of its gullet.

Deputy McMahon managed to put a load of double-aught buckshot smack-dab in the center of the thing’s chest, but wasn’t able to jack another round into the breech. The creature landed atop him, seemingly unharmed. The officer cried out as he hit the pavement hard, his eyes bulging as the monster’s teeth burrowed deeply into the tender flesh of his throat.

“Do something!” screamed Paul. “Shoot it!”

Deputy Jasper dropped the Slim-Jim and nervously fumbled his service revolver from its holster. He held it in both hands, pointing it at the thing on top of his partner. During his hesitance, the thing brought its powerful jaws together in a bone-shattering crack! His victim’s head separated from the neckbone, rolling lopsidedly across the highway, stump over balding scalp.

Jasper looked over at Paul in indecision. “I… I might hit Frank.”

“Frank’s head is in the freaking ditch!” Paul yelled at him. “Shoot the damn thing!”

The deputy turned back and pumped the contents of his .38 into the back of the creature’s head and spine. Instead of suffering from the gunfire, the thing seemed to regard it as an annoyance. It looked over its shoulder, shook its leering head as if saying “Stupid bastard!”, then lashed out with its bristly black tail. The blow took Jasper’s right hand off at the wrist. Both severed fist and the gun clutched tightly within it crashed through the windshield of the patrol car, leaving a jagged black hole.

“Mama!” croaked poor Jasper, just before the black thing whirled and turned its fury and hunger on him.

“To hell with this!” muttered Paul. He turned and began to run down the dark stretch of Highway 987.

He was crossing the road, intending to head toward the farmhouse, when he heard a great, bellowing roar split the air behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and immediately pissed himself. The thing was bounding down the two-lane blacktop toward him, its paws shattering the asphalt with each heavy footfall. Its awful hunger had fired its metabolism and started a growth process that could only occur in things not fully of this world. The black-bristled creature was nearly as big as the Escalade now. Its open mouth, full of long ivory and ragged meat, looked large enough to swallow a man whole without gagging.

Paul bounded over the drainage ditch at the far side of the road, then scrambled over a barbed wire fence. He was nearly over, when his left foot became entangled in the strands. As he struggled to kick free, the thing’s head appeared. The jaws found its target, dipped downward, and chomped. As burning agony shot through Paul’s ankle and up the calf of his leg, he looked back to see the thing rolling something around in its mouth. It was a pocket of Eddie Bauer leather with a meaty morsel of Paul Stinson tucked neatly inside. The thing gobbled it down and winked – dear Lord, did it actually wink? – before it began to skitter across the fence toward him.

On half a foot, Paul began to limp toward the farmhouse, gibbering, crying, even laughing for some awful reason he couldn’t figure out. “God, God, God, oh, God,” he sobbed out loud. Funny that he would call upon that name so freely now… since the only way he had used it in the last few years was with the word damn tacked to end.

But, then, Paul Stinson had suddenly gotten religion, as the old folks called it. That awful kind of HarlanCounty religion preached by things that posed as harmless roadkill at the side of deserted country roads.

As he ran, shrieking, toward the old farmhouse, Paul sensed that the thing was toying with him. It would dart out in front of him, then circle him, allowing him to get a head start and then begin the torturous cat-and-mouse game all over again. He was almost to the front porch of the house, when the thing’s long tail lashed out, striking him across the lower back. Paul wailed as his kidneys ruptured and the lower vertebrae of his spine were pulverized into jagged splinters.

He hit the ground hard, facing the house. In the yellow glow of a front porch light, an old woman opened the screen door, looked out, then retreated with an expression of panic and horror. That door isn’t going to help you, lady, he thought. That whole damned house isn’t going to protect you. He doubted that the vault of the Harlan County Bank & Trust would hold up to this demon’s ceaseless hunger.

As the thing pounced and landed atop him, Paul thought of his mother and some of the quirky sayings she used to pass on to him. One came to mind as he felt the thing’s claws meticulously, almost tenderly, separate the back of his leather jacket and the cloth of the shirt just beyond. Curiosity killed the cat?

No, that wasn’t it.

Yeah. Oh, hell, yeah… that was it.

Paul Stinson felt the thing’s long, gray tongue – peppered with taste buds the texture sandpaper and broken glass – run the length of his back, from the nape of his neck, clear down to the cleft of his buttocks. It somehow tickled and hurt all at the same time.

Paul began to laugh.

He laughed wildly, madly, straying far beyond the limits that humor tastefully allowed … until, finally, he could laugh no more.

WHOREHOUSE HOLLOW

Just as they had promised Coach Winters, the Bedloe County Bears delivered the final victory of that football season, as well as the coveted mid-state championship.

Not that such an accomplishment was anything new for the elderly coach or the annually-changing team that he had commanded for nearly twenty years. Under the stern training and no-nonsense guidance of Bud Winters, the Bears had won every single game, both at home and abroad, as well as the midstate championship since the autumn of 1973. Exactly how such a feat was accomplished consistently, year after year, was debated by sports fans and neighboring high schools throughout the state of Tennessee.

Even some of the major colleges in the area, such as Vanderbilt and UT in Knoxville, had attempted to analyze the mixture of skill and pure luck that seemed to bless Winters’ team of beefy farm boys on a puzzlingly regular basis. In fact, entire theses had been written by a number of graduate students, attempting to theorize exactly what the Bears possessed that no other high school team in the state seemed to. But, in actuality, no one really had a clue.

No one, that was, but the members of the team itself. Those strapping, young men who made up the ranks of the victorious Bears certainly knew what the motivation of their unequalled stamina on the gridiron and their infallible will to win was due to. And that magical motivation could, quite simply, be summed up in two words.

Whorehouse Hollow.

Unbeknownst to those who spent their free time debating the phenomenon of the Bedloe County Bears – from blue collar workers in sleazy honky-tonks to state senators at their posh and manicured country clubs – there was one factor and one factor only that made the team an unbeatable winner each and every season. And that factor was plain and simple horniness.

When fall training began on the football field of Bedloe County High every September, the inevitable pep talk was given. Coach Winters drummed the importance of team spirit, organization, and brute force into those young minds. The talk was taken patiently as always, the new members of that season’s team squirming on the risers of the wooden bleachers until that anticipated promise was made by the crabby, cigar-puffing coach. Then the old man would smile and give them what they had been waiting for. “Do it for me, boys,” Coach Winters would say, “Win that mid-state championship for me this year just like all the years before, and at the end of the season, you all will be rewarded. And I reckon you all know what that reward will be, don’t you?”

Snickers of dirty laughter and sly looks were always exchanged by the members of that year’s incarnations of the Bears. Yes, they all knew what the coach’s payment for a successful season of winning was. It had been the same for the past twenty years. A couple of cases of Budweiser … as well as a trip to Whorehouse Hollow.

For a team of teenaged boys with a field of wild oats to sow, such an offer of free beer and unlimited sex was enough to drive them toward an ultimate victory. And that current year, like every one before, proved to be no exception.

~ * ~

Boisterous laughter and shrill rebel yells echoed through the boys’ locker room following that final game, as well as words of congratulation and customary pats on the butt. The Bears had done it once again. They had annihilated the Crimshaw County Cougars, 28 to 0, and taken the mid-state championship, no contest.

A season’s worth of hard work had finally paid off. Now it was time to relax and enjoy the spoils that victory had netted them. Namely the night of debauchery that Coach Winters had promised them that first day at practice.

Among the eighteen seniors who gathered in the locker room, peeling off their sweaty, grass-stained uniforms and taking their turn in the showers, only one seemed to lack the air of excitement that the others shared. Tony Frazier, star quarterback of the Bears, sat on the bench in front of his locker. He grinned triumphantly and exchanged high-fives with his fellow teammates, but, inwardly, he was having second thoughts about the anticipated fulfillment of the coach’s promise.

Tony wasn’t like most of the Neanderthals who made up the ranks of the football team. Unlike them, he had a head on his shoulder, as well as high ambitions beyond the realm of the rural Tennessee high school. Tony was a straight-A student. He was bound to graduate with honors and, hopefully, with a football scholarship to one of the big Southern universities as well. Strangely enough, despite the longstanding winning streak that Bedloe County boasted, not one player in a span of twenty years had gone on to play college football. Tony couldn’t understand exactly why. It seemed like, when scholarships were being awarded at all the other high schools, the star players of the Bears always turned down the opportunity. The reason? Plain and simple apathy. After the big win, the members of the Bedloe County Bears always seemed to lose their drive. Just like the alumni before them, they graduated from high school and led dismal and lackluster lives. They either married too young, ended up with a passel of unwanted kids and spent their days working their fingers to the bone at some dead-end job, or ended up drinking themselves to death or landing in prison. Exactly why those gallant warriors of the gridiron succumbed to such paths was as much a mystery as their constant wins of decades past.

Tony Frazier vowed that he wouldn’t end up like that. He was going to march across the football field on graduation night, proudly accept that football scholarship from Principal Allen, and then go on to a future as a pro player. He wasn’t going to let the apathy that cursed most of the good old boys in BedloeCounty infect him. He was a lover of life and expected only the best for himself in the years to come.

As he finished undressing, he noticed his teammates as they entered and exited the stalls of the boy’s shower room. Most of them already sported raging hard-on’s in anticipation of the night to come. All they had on their minds were a couple of cans of Bud and a trip to the most infamous whorehouse in BedloeCounty.

Tony had heard the stories, passed down in whispers from upperclassmen the year before. The stories of Whorehouse Hollow and the old two-story mansion located deep in the depths of the woods south of town, and how the madam, Fanny Eldritch, and her twelve beautiful daughters awaited the wants and needs of the county’s horny men, willing to do the wants and needs of the county’s horny men, willing to do anything for only a few measly dollars. The pleasures that Whorehouse Hollow boasted were legendary. They said that Fanny and her girls knew everything imaginable about getting a man’s rocks off, and put that well-honed knowledge to good use. What they could do with their hands and mouths – as well as other bodily orifices – well, it just had to be experienced to be believed.

No wonder the Bedloe County Bears had enjoyed such a solid winning streak. Each and every new team that Coach Winters put together was enticed by the carnal pleasures that Whorehouse Hollow promised at the end of the season. The winning machine that made up the high school football team ran off of one chemical and one chemical alone. Pure, 100 percent testosterone.

Tony jumped when he felt a strong hand on his broad shoulder. He looked up to see Coach Winters standing over him. The elderly man grinned paternally down at the quarterback, grinding the butt of his Tampa Nugget cigar between the stubs of his tobacco-stained teeth. “Whatcha doing sitting here, Frazier?” asked the coach. “You’d best get in there and shower. You wanna be fresh and ready for all that hot tail you’re gonna find down there in the Hollow.”

“Yes, sir,” was all that Tony said. He forced a grin and left the bench. As he headed for the scalding spray of the showers, he looked back over his shoulder. Coach Winters continued to grin at him, hands in his pockets, his eyes like tiny black marbles beneath those bushy gray eyebrows. Something about the coach’s expression disturbed Tony. It was almost predatory in nature. He had seen it before, both during practice and in the heat of the actual game. The coach was a man who enjoyed winning at any cost, that was plain to see. And when the winning was over, Winters like to gloat.

The coach savored making the opposition feel as insignificant as a maggot in horseshit, while he himself felt ten feet tall and invincible.

As Tony found a vacant stall and began to soap himself up beneath the hot spray of the shower, he began to wonder if he could actually go through with that night’s secret trip to Whorehouse Hollow. He thought of his steady girlfriend, Pamela Sue Cripps, and began to feel a pang of guilt nag at him. Tony had gone with the pretty blonde since the start of the school year and he really cared for the girl a lot, maybe even loved her. One thing was for sure and that was that Tony saw more in Pamela Sue than any of the other girls he had dated in high school. In fact they had never made love. Their intimacy had never gone further than kissing or petting. She simply didn’t feel comfortable going all the way and Tony, respectful of her feelings, had never forced the issue.

Now here he was on the verge of cheating on her with some whore he would encounter in some sleazy one-night stand. It just didn’t seem right. It seemed somehow dirty and shameful. But he certainly couldn’t make his feelings known to the other guys. They would rag him about his reluctance for the rest of the school year and he simply didn’t need that kind of hassle. As he began to lather his lower abdomen and legs, Tony felt himself become suddenly aroused. He closed his eyes and imagined how tonight would turn out. Although guilt cast its shadow his way, Tony was still a red-blooded teenage boy. His hormones kicked in and he fantasized about Fanny Eldritch and her voluptuous daughters. He imagined the paleness of creamy skin in the moonlight, the solidity of firm flesh and muscle against his body, and the warm wetness of lips and tongues teasing him, from head to toe.

Tony looked down at his crotch and saw that he had hardened, just like all the others. He fought hard to drive all thoughts of Pamela Sue from his mind. Just one night, he told himself as he stepped from the showered and vigorously toweled off. Hell, what could it hurt? She’ll never know.

“Let’s hurry it up, boys!” called Coach Winters from the locker room. “Fanny and her gals don’t like to be kept waiting!”

A cheer of primal lust went up from the ranks of the Bedloe County Bears. And, like it or not, Tony Frazier’s was among them.

~ * ~

A half hour later, they were on their way.

Coach Winters had borrowed one of the BedloeCounty school system’s big yellow buses to take them to their intended destination. After stopping off at a tavern called the Bloody Bucket and purchasing two cases of Budweiser tallboys, as promised, the coach headed the diesel due south along U.S. Highway 70.

After a few miles, fertile farmland gave way to dense forest. Without warning, Winters jerked the wheel to the left, pulling the bus onto a long stretch of uneven dirt road. “Next stop … Whorehouse Hollow!” he called out.

The eighteen young men – half drunk and horny – whooped and hollered in reply as the bus left the familiarity of the open highway and began to descend deeper and deeper into unknown territory.

Tony nursed his can of beer quietly, choosing not to drink quite as freely as the others. He had almost talked himself into enjoying this brief adventure back in the high school locker room, but now he began to have reservations once again. This time it didn’t involve Pamela Sue. Rather, he thought back to the old tall tales and ghost stories that his Grandpa Frazier had told him when he was just a kid. Hackle-raising stories concerning an old house deep down in the south woods where a witch and her brood of daughters lived. The old man had been half-senile, so sometimes the details of his tall tales varied a bit. Sometimes he claimed the daughters were vampires, while other times he said they were ghosts who would suck the very life from a man if they got a hold of him. Tony shook the creepy stories from his head, telling himself they had been nothing but hogwash. More than likely the tales had been concocted by the menfolk of BedloeCounty, hoping to discourage curious children from exploring the vicinity of Whorehouse Hollow. It wouldn’t have done to have little Junior sneaking around the Eldritch house at night and accidentally catch a glimpse of his papa with his pants literally around his ankles.

Another half hour passed. The thick branches of the pinewood forest seemed to interweave over the roof of the bus, shutting out the nocturnal light of the autumn moon. The farther they traveled, the worse the trail became. The road of dusty red clay gradually deteriorated until it was only a couple of deep ruts surrounded by heavy thicket on each side. The group of boys grew uncommonly silent as the bus made several tricky, hairpin turns and then began to make an almost unnoticeable slope downward into the depths of a large hollow. As the Tennessee hills reared up on either side of them, the basin of the hollow grew steeper and steeper. The forest around them neglected to let up, too. Dead honeysuckle vines, thorny blackberry bramble, and prickly pine boughs scratched noisily against the windows of the school bus. A brawny linebacker named Bubba Stewart laughed somewhere in the back, but it wasn’t his usual mule-bray of witless mirth. Instead, it was a nervous laugh, much like that of a boastful child walking through a graveyard that he’s secretly frightened to death of.

Then, abruptly, the downward descent ended and the yellow diesel braked to a halt. “We’re here,” said Coach Winters. His liver-spotted hand reached out and gave the release handle a sharp yank. The bus’s folding doors opened with an unnerving squeal.

In single file, the Bedloe County Bears left the belly of the bus. Quietly, they gathered beneath the shelter of an ancient oak tree, eyeing the big house that stood before them. From the looks of it, it had probably once been one of the finest mansions in the state of Tennessee. It stood two stories tall, not counting its upper attic of four windowed gables, and stretched nearly the entire width of the hollow it sat in. A wraparound porch spanned the ground level and an ornately carved balcony encircled the upper story.

Yes, it would have certainly been a historical showplace, except that time and neglect had paid its toll on the big house. Its paint was peeling clear down to the bare wood, the glass of its windows was cracked and broken, and the roof looked as though it was sagging in places. Also the immaculate grounds that once surrounded the structure were nonexistent now. Thorny thicket and dense kudzu had encroached upon the property. It would have taken a bulldozer to clear away the amount of wild underbrush that surrounded the old Eldritch house.

The boys searched the windows for any sign of light, but none could be detected. Truthfully, the place appeared to be completely deserted.

“Fanny and her girls can only take thirteen at a time, so some of you boys will have to wait your turn,” said the coach. He snapped on the beam of a flashlight and picked out the lucky thirteen – Tony included – then led them through the bramble to the porch of the Eldritch house.

They were scarcely assembled before the front door, when it opened on creaking hinges. The soft glow of lantern light shown from within, causing the boys to squint against the sudden brilliance.

“Please, gentleman,” coaxed a husky voice. “Come on in.”

Tony turned and saw that Coach Winters had already left them and returned to where the other Bears anxiously awaited their chance. Being the leader of the team on the football field, Tony decided to take the first step inside. What he and the others found within the confines of the Eldritch house was in complete contrast to the decay they had encountered outside.

The floors were of polished marble, the walls decorated with priceless paintings and statuary, and the furniture, while antique, was the finest that money could buy. But that wasn’t what impressed the teenagers the most. No, not by a long shot.

Never in their young lives had they encountered so many beautiful women in one place. The BedloeCounty cheerleading squad couldn’t hold a candle to Fanny Eldritch and her twelve daughters. The matriarch herself certainly didn’t look her age, which must have been fifty years of age or older. Her hair was long and raven black, and her smooth, alabaster skin was totally devoid of age lines. Fanny’s daughters were just as striking as their mother. Each one was tall and willowy, and each possessed the same length of ebony hair and quality of pure unblemished skin. All thirteen women wore long gowns of white silk, sheer enough to give a hint of the perfect bodies that were hidden underneath.

“Welcome,” Fanny told them all. She eyed the young men in their red-and-white letterman jackets as if they were some sexual banquet to be sampled and savored. “We all know why you’re here, so why don’t we cut the formalities and get down to business.”

“Yes, ma’am!” declared Ricky Nolan, one of the Bears’ wide receivers. “We’re ready to party!”

Without another word, Fanny and her lovely daughters mingled with the members of the football team, choosing those they would spend the next hour or so with. Tony was surprised when Fanny herself walked up and took him by the hand. “Come with me, Mister Quarterback,” she breathed in his ear. “I have something special planned for you.”

Tony felt a lump form in his throat as he looked into the dark eyes of the middle-aged woman. The way that she stared at him made him feel light-headed, as if he had ridden some particular heart-pounding carnival ride one time too many. The feeling of mild disorientation bothered Tony a little, but he didn’t let it show. He returned Fanny’s sly smile and followed as the woman turned and led him up the curving staircase to the upper floor.

When he reached the upstairs landing, he glanced down and saw that Fanny’s daughters were doing the same, each woman leading one of his teammates to their own private rooms.

“Don’t drag your feet, handsome,” whispered Fanny, tightening her hold on Tony’s hand. “We have much to do this night.”

Tony nodded and followed her down the hallway to the very last door. Fanny opened it, revealing a richly furnished bedroom. Together, they walked to the huge canopied bed. With little effort, the madam of Whorehouse Hollow pushed Tony to a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

“Just relax,” she told him. “Relax and let me do the rest.” Then Fanny reached up and, slipping the straps of her silken gown off her white shoulders, let the garment fall down the length of her body until it pooled around her feet.

Tony was captivated by the naked woman who stood before him. He had drooled over plenty of skin magazines during his teenaged years, but none of the air-brushed models on those glossy pages could compare to Fanny Eldritch. The woman, simply put, was utterly perfect. Despite her age, she seemed to possess the body of an eighteen-year-old. Her breasts were high and pert, and her arms, abdomen, and legs were tautly muscled and trim, like that of a prime athlete. As she gracefully stepped out of her gown, Tony found his attention glued to the triangle of raven black hair at the junction of her thighs. He felt himself become aroused at the sight of that secret place, the crotch of his jeans tightening in quick response.

Then, a second later, she was there, scarcely a few inches away. Her warm hands reached out and cupped his face, then brought it up toward her. Tony opened his mouth as their lips meshed, allowing her tongue to entwine with his own. He felt an odd taste fill his mouth; the bite of cinnamon, as well as something else that he couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t an unpleasant taste. In fact, as the kiss grew deeper and more passionate, Tony felt himself growing more relaxed, his inhibitions swiftly giving way to abandon.

But, before he could lose complete control, Pamela Sue’s innocent face again popped into his mind. Tony pushed the whore away, his breath ragged. “I … I’m sorry, ma’am … but I can’t.”

Fanny appeared to be amused. “Oh?” she asked. “And why not?”

Tony reddened in embarrassment. “Well, there’s this girl. I’ve been going with her for a while and … well, this just doesn’t feel right.”

Fanny reached out and stroked Tony’s strong face with a long-nailed hand. “It’s all right, handsome. You’re not cheating on your girlfriend. This is only one night out of an entire lifetime.” The woman cocked her head and pointed over her shoulder. “Listen. Hear how well my daughters are treating your friends? Sounds to me like they’re having plenty of fun.”

Tony listened. The hallways of the old house rang with the sounds of passion and pleasure; the moans and cries of both male and female, the jouncing of bedsprings as a dozen couples rutted like wild animals in heat. The sounds once again tore down Tony’s reluctance and he felt the keen thrill of sexual tension course throughout him, raising his adrenaline level to the max.

“I thought so.” Fanny laughed. Deftly, she dropped to her knees before the young quarterback, disengaged the zipper of his jeans, and released him from the discomfort that the denim caused.

At first, he felt the warmth of her breath upon his flesh, then the dampness of her mouth. He groaned out loud as she went to work with the measured precision of a machine. Tony cupped her head in his hands, slowing her pace, then quickening it, urging her on.

The pinnacle of climax was reaching its first stage, when Tony Frazier sensed that something was gravely wrong. First of all, the sensation of light-headedness had returned, much stronger than it had been before. He felt fear blossom in the back of his mind; as if he had lost control and was on the verge of losing something very dear and important to him. Then the physical sensation in his loins began to change drastically. The warmth of Fanny’s mouth disappeared. In its place was an engulfing coldness like that of a deep freeze. The icy sensation began to engulf his lower body, then climb steadily upward.

Tony wrenched at Fanny’s head, intending to disengage her from himself. But she was as stubborn as a leech. She refused to release him. A strange sensation threatened to overcome him at that moment. The feeling that some vital part of his soul was on the verge of tearing loose from its moorings and on the brink of being lost forever.

Tony panicked then and that was the only thing that saved him. He reached over to the nightstand beside the bed, found a heavy statuette of carved jade, and sent it crashing down upon the top of Fanny’s head. Fortunately, that did the trick. The woman fell away, stunned, and laid there on the carpeted floor. As Tony tucked himself back into his trousers and zipped his fly, he was shocked by the transformation that Fanny had undergone.

She was no longer the stunning seductress that she had been mere moments ago. Instead, she was a bony hag with a twisted face as ugly as sin. Her white skin was pocked with festering blisters and boils, and, within her gaping mouth, gleamed jagged teeth with points as sharp as razors.

The thing that was Fanny Eldritch grasped at Tony’s ankle as he left the bed and hurriedly crossed the room. “Come back here!” she rasped, a mist of frosty breath drifting from the ugly hole of her mouth. “I’m not through with you yet!”

Tony thought differently, however. He pushed open the door and burst into the corridor. As he sprinted down the hallway toward the staircase, he found the doors to the adjoining rooms standing open. Inside, his fellow teammates were being assaulted in the same parasitic fashion that he had almost succumbed to. He caught a quick glimpse of Bubba Stewart lying naked across a bed, one of Fanny Eldritch’s daughters straddling his hips. The creature, now just as hideous as her mother, rocked back and forth, as if attempting to pump the very life force from the quivering body of the big linebacker. Bubba’s face was blanched and gray, his eyes duller and less responsive than they usually were.

The boy didn’t stop to help his buddy. Instead, he hurriedly descended the winding stairs and nearly broke his neck, attempting to make it through the front door. As he stumbled down the porch steps and into the cluttered yard, Coach Winters left the others beneath the tree and started toward him. “Wait up, Frazier!” he called out.

Tony looked into the coach’s eyes and saw alarm. But it wasn’t alarm over what was taking place inside the old mansion. Rather, it was alarm over Tony’s apparent escape. He knew then that Winters would be no ally to him. No, it was clear to see that Winters had orchestrated this entire episode and that he knew precisely what was taking place.

Like a wild man, Tony plunged into the thicket, oblivious to the thorns that ripped at his skin and clothing. He heard the coach’s frantic yells behind him, as well as the confused voices of the others. Tony didn’t stop. He fought his way through the woods, heading eastward in the direction of the highway. As he climbed the steep grade of Whorehouse Hollow toward freedom, he couldn’t help but recall that numbing sensation of total apathy that Fanny Eldritch had almost sentenced him to. Luckily, it seemed that he had escaped just in the nick of time.

~ * ~

It was well past midnight, when Tony reached Highway 70. He was a nervous wreck by the time he stumbled out of the thicket and onto the lonely stretch of two-lane blacktop. Several times during his mad dash from the backwoods hollow, Tony had been certain that he heard the grinding roar of the diesel bus struggling up the grade toward him. Also, it may have been his imagination, but he was sure that something much more horrifying in nature also dogged his heels. Several times he had glanced over his shoulder and swore that he saw pale-fleshed forms flitting through the dark forest in hot pursuit.

During his frantic exodus from the woods, questions concerning what was taking place that night preyed on Tony’s mind. He began to wonder if the winning streak that the Bedloe County Bears had enjoyed for two decades was due solely to skill, determination, and the sexual incentive of Whorehouse Hollow. Tony began to wonder if their unparalleled victories had been due to some evil alliance between Coach Winters and Fanny Eldritch. The quarterback recalled some of the plays he had pulled off, seemingly impossible plays, and found himself wondering if perhaps some sort of magic had been responsible. Had Coach Winters made a deal with the witch twenty years ago? Had he promised Fanny and her hellish daughters an annual sacrifice in exchange for a continuous streak of winning seasons? After witnessing what had happened that night, Tony couldn’t help but wonder.

Finally, however, his crazed sprint through the underbrush had ended. He escaped the cramped confines of the woods and made it to the open road. He didn’t slow down, though. He kept right on running until he reached the first farmstead that he came to. Tony recognized the big stock barn and the split-level farmhouse that stood a few yards away from it, and thanked God for allowing him to reach such a haven safely.

Tony staggered around the side of the house to a window with frilly pink curtains. He sagged against the wall of white clapboard and tapped on the glass of the windowpane with dirty, bleeding knuckles. A moment later a light came on and the curtains were pulled aside.

“Tony!” cried Pamela Sue in surprise. She raised the sash and stared with alarm at her exhausted boyfriend. “What happened to you?”

The quarterback could say nothing at first. He fought to catch his breath and motioned for her to help him through the open window. Pamela Sue quickly agreed and, soon, Tony was stretched out on her bed. He breathed in deeply, trying hard to clear his head. He looked around at the posters of teen heartthrobs that papered Pamela Sue’s bedroom walls, as well as the colorful stuffed animals that the girl collected. The innocent surroundings seemed almost surreal in contrast to those deceptive furnishings inside the Eldritch house. Or perhaps lair might have been a better term to describe that hellish structure in the shadowy pit of Whorehouse Hollow.

“Please, Tony,” begged Pamela Sue, herself almost in tears. “Tell me what happened tonight.”

Tony shook his head violently, the full impact of that night causing him to shudder in remembrance. “I can’t,” sobbed Tony. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

Pamela Sue took him in her arms and cradled him as if he were a baby. “Okay,” she told him soothingly. “You don’t have to say anything. Just try to calm down.”

Tony clung tightly to his girlfriend, his face buried in the soft folds of her flannel gown. He half expected Mr. or Mrs. Cripps to burst in to the room, demanding to know what was going on. But fortunately they didn’t. They remained in the dark as to Tony’s presence in their daughter’s bedroom.

After a while, Tony’s nervous palsy decreased and he began to relax. He hugged Pamela Sue closer to him and she returned the favor. He breathed in the intoxicating scent of her; baby powder, herbal shampoo, and a hint of her favorite perfume. Tony stared into the girl’s worried eyes and saw none of the hesitation that had been there during the nights they had dated. He kissed Pamela Sue deeply and, surprisingly enough, she made the next move, rolling on top of him. His trembling hands snaked past the hem of her gown and stopped at the sheer fabric of her bikini panties.

“I wish …“he stammered, “I wish we could …”

Pamela Sue smiled softly. “We can,” she told him. “I feel like it’s the right time now.”

Tony stared up at her gratefully, then gently peeled the panties away from her hips. At the same time, Pamela Sue unfastened Tony’s jeans and slid them down around his legs. Tony thought nothing of safe sex or birth control as he flipped the girl over and began to make love to her. He felt that, if he hesitated, even for a moment, he would most surely lose his sanity. All that kept him from freaking out entirely was his love for this beautiful young girl who gave herself freely underneath him.

As the two coupled quietly and tenderly, Tony felt his excitement begin to reach its peak. Pamela Sue seemed to sense his urgency. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, pulling him closer. “I’m ready for you, lover,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m ready to take it all.”

The girl’s choice of words puzzled Tony. “What?” he asked. But his question came too late to prevent what was taking place. The soft warmth that engulfed him abruptly changed to a searing cold as frigid as a January wind and he knew he had been tricked.

“Don’t fight it, Tony,” said Pamela Sue. Her pale skin seemed to grow soft, merging with his own, locking him into her steely embrace. “Winners always have to pay a price. Believe me, yours is not so bad.” When she saw the confusion in his eyes, she explained further. “The coach knew what sort of guy you were. He knew that you wouldn’t go through with it, so he enlisted me beforehand, just to make sure that everything went according to tradition.”

Thoughts of haunted hollows, witches, and vampires flooded Tony’s mind, as well as an obscure term he had learned in Mr. Bailey’s mythology class earlier that year. Succubus. A creature who, through the act of sexual intercourse, drains the most vital spark of life from the souls of its victims.

Helplessly, Tony stared down at the girl beneath him. “I … I don’t understand.”

“I believe you do,” explained Pamela Sue, her dark eyes cool and devoid of emotion. “You see, Tony, I lied to you. My last name isn’t Cripps. It’s Eldritch. And I was born in Whorehouse Hollow.”

Then, as Tony felt the climax of ecstasy travel the length of his captive body, bringing a sensation both wondrous and horrendous, he noticed that the roots of Pamela Sue’s honey-blond hair were actually jet black in hue.

~ * ~

A year had passed since that night in Whorehouse Hollow.

Tony Frazier stood at the grill of the Lunch & Munch Cafe, flipping burgers and frying onion rings, just as he had for the past ten months.

Life hadn’t turned out like Tony had hoped it would. A month after the end of football season, Tony had strangely lost all interest in school. He had dropped out and, after meeting a white-trash waitress at the local tavern, got the girl pregnant and ended up marrying her. Now Tony was working two jobs, just to pay rent on the rundown trailer they had moved into and trying to keep their heads above water. During his spare time, he occupied a barstool down at the Bloody Bucket, drinking too much and listening to country songs on the jukebox. Mournful songs about hopes and dreams forever lost.

Tony didn’t seem to care much, though. His ability to care about how his life had turned out had been wrestled from his grasp months ago. His fellow teammates had suffered similar fates … or worse. Bubba Stewart was in the Tennessee state pen for grand theft auto and Rickey Nolan had driven his pickup truck into the muddy depths of the HarpethRiver only a few days ago. Rickey had, at least for himself, put an end to the apathy that seemed to curse the majority of the menfolk in BedloeCounty.

Tony didn’t realize that it was the anniversary of his emotional gelding, until the big yellow school bus pulled up outside the Lunch & Munch. The jangle of the cowbell over the door sounded and he turned to find Coach Winters crossing the dining room to the front counter. He held a brown paper bag in his hand.

“How’s it going, Frazier?” greeted the coach, smiling around the stub of his cigar.

“Same as usual,” replied Tony with a shrug. He glanced through the plate glass of the cafe and saw the excited faces of that year’s team grinning from the windows of the school bus. “Another winning season?” he asked blandly.

“Of course,” said Winters. “Are you surprised?”

Tony remembered the promise the coach had made him and his friends scarcely over a year ago. “No,” he said. “Can’t say that I am.”

The coach’s tiny eyes glinted beneath his bushy brows. “I heard your wife just had a kid. A baby boy.”

Tony nodded. “You heard right.”

“Well, it’s not much, but I bought him a little present,” said Winters. He handed Tony the paper bag. “Could you see that he gets it?”

“Sure,” said Tony. Reluctantly, he took the gift. “Thanks.”

“I’d like to stick around and talk about old times, but I gotta go,” said Coach Winters, heading for the front door. “Can’t keep those ladies down in the Hollow waiting, you know.”

Tony said nothing. He simply nodded and watched as the elderly man left the restaurant and climbed back onto the bus. Soon, the diesel was on its way, first to the tavern for a couple cases of beer, then farther southward along Highway 70.

When the bus was out of sight, Tony stared down at the sack in his hand, afraid to open it. Finally, he gathered the nerve to do so. For some reason he wasn’t at all surprised to see the article of clothing that Coach Winters had bought for Tony’s firstborn son.

It was a tiny football jersey. Red and white, with the emblem of the Bedloe County Bears on the front and the word QUARTERBACK stenciled across the back.

THINNING THE HERD

Chaney waited until the first, pale hint of dawn seeped over the flat Texas horizon. Then, making sure everything was set, he descended the rusty ladder of the old water tower and made his way to the barn across the street.

He was the thirteenth in line. When his time came, he stepped up to the landlord’s desk and appraised the man. He was human, that was easy to see. Fat, lazy, willing to bow to those who had taken command of the new frontier. His name was Hector. He had a patch over one eye, a prosthetic leg that needed oiling, and a monkey named Garfunkel who perched like a growth on the landlord’s shoulder and picked lice from his master’s oily scalp.

Hector eyed the gaunt man in the black canvas duster with suspicion. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before.”

Chaney’s impatience showed as he reached into his coat for his money pouch. “You gonna flap your lips or rent me a bed for the day?” Gold coins jingled within the small leather bag like the restless bones of a ghostly child.

“How do I know you are what you say you are? There are plenty of bounty hunters about these days. Doesn’t pay to rent out to strangers, especially when you cater to the type of clientele I do.”

“Your clientele is going to fry out here if you don’t hurry up and give the man his bed,” growled a customer at the end of the line.

But Hector was not to be rushed. “I’ll need proof.”

Chaney smirked. “What do you want? An ID? How about my American Express card?”

The landlord reached into the desk drawer and withdrew a small, golden crucifix. “Grab hold of this.”

Chaney averted his eyes, as did the others in line. “Is that necessary?”

“It is if you want a bed.”

The stranger nodded and extended a pale hand. He closed his fist around the cross. A sizzling of flesh sounded as contact was made and wisp of blue smoke curled from between Chaney’s fingers. “Satisfied?” he asked in disgust.

“Quite.” Hector pushed the register toward him and collected the gold piece Chaney had laid upon the counter. The one-eyed landlord noticed that Chaney carried a black satchel in one hand. “What’s that?” he asked.

Chaney flashed a toothy grin. “A noonday snack.” He shook the black bag, eliciting the muffled cry of an infant from within.

By the time the first rays of the sun had broken, they were all checked in. The barn’s interior was pitch dark, letting nary a crack or crevice of scorching sunlight into their temporary abode. Chaney found a bed on the ground floor, he removed his long coat, hanging it on a peg over his bunk, and set the satchel close at hand.

He lifted the lid of his sleeping chamber and scowled. Just a simple, pine wood casket. No silk liner, no burnished finish, and no ornate handles on the sides; just a no frills bunk in a no frills hotel. He wasn’t complaining, though. It would suit his purpose well enough.

“Lights out!” called Hector, laughing uproariously at a joke that had lost its humor years ago. The tenants ignored his mirth and set about preparing for a good day’s rest. Chaney followed suit, taking a packet of graveyard earth from his coat pocket and spreading it liberally in the bottom of his rented coffin.

When every lid had been closed, Hector stepped outside the barn, shutting the double doors behind him. He took a seat on a bench out front, laid a pump shotgun across his knees, and started reading an old Anne Rice novel he had bought from a traveling peddler.

The morning drew on, the sun rising, baking the Texas wilderness with its unrelenting heat. The little town moved as slow as winter molasses. Its inhabitants went about their normal business, or as near normal as could be expected after the much heralded End of the World.

The courthouse clock struck twelve o’clock before Chaney finally made his move. It was safe now; his neighboring tenants were fast asleep. Quietly, he lifted the lid of this casket and sat up. “Snack time,” he said to himself and reached for the satchel.

He opened it. The first thing he removed was the rubber baby doll. He laid it on the barn floor, smiling as it uttered a soft “Mama!” before falling silent again. Chaney then took a .44 AutoMag from the bag and began to make his rounds.

He didn’t bother to pull the old “stake-through-the-heart” trick. To do so would be noisy and messy and net him only a small fraction of the undead he had come there to finish off. Instead, he used the most state-of-the-art anti-vampire devices. He placed Claymore mines at strategic points throughout the barn’s interior. But they were not ordinary Claymores. He had replaced the load of ball bearings with tiny steel crucifixes and splinters of ash wood.

After the mines had been placed and the timers set, Chaney knew it was time to take his leave. He walked to the barn doors and, cocking his pistol, stepped out into the hot, noonday sun.

Hector was snoozing on the job, of course. The landlord’s head was resting on his flabby chest, snoring rather loudly from the nose. Chaney stood before the man and loudly cleared his throat.

The fat man came awake. Startled, he stared up at Chaney. “Hey,” he breathed. “You ain’t no vampire.”

“No, I ain’t,” agreed Chaney.

“But I saw your hand burn when you touched the cross!”

Chaney lifted his scarred left palm to his mouth and peeled away a thin layer of chemically-treated latex with his teeth. “Special effects,” he said.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Chaney brought the muzzle of his .44 to the man’s forehead. “That you shall be… traitor.” Then he painted the barn wall a brilliant red with the contents of the man’s disintegrating skull.

The bogus vampire walked to where his primer-gray van was parked near the water tower. He got in, started the engine, and cruised slowly down the empty street of the town. He checked his watch, counting the seconds. “Five… four…three…two… one…”

The Claymores went off first. Their metal shells split under a charge of C-4, sending thousands of tiny crosses and toothpick-sized stakes in every imaginable direction. The projectiles penetrated the caskets, as well as their sleeping occupants. Then they traveled onward, piercing the walls of the makeshift hotel. The old structure, already weakened by time and weather, could take no further abuse. It collapsed in a dusty heap, burying fifty dying tenants beneath its crushing weight.

Chaney watched in his side view mirror for the coup de grâce. It came a moment later. A glob of wired plastic explosive belched flame, splitting the steel reservoir of the water town in half. A cascade of water crashed down upon the collapsed barn, drenching the jagged timbers and whatever lay beneath it. The significance of that crowning touch was that the water was holy. Chaney had blessed it, using a prayer he had bought from a convent across the Mexican border, before he had set the timer and joined the others in line.

“Filthy bloodsuckers!” said Chaney as he headed for the open desert. He pushed a tape into the cassette player and rocked and rolled down the long abandoned highway toward the sweltering blur of the distant horizon.

~ * ~

“You sure you don’t want something to drink?” the bartender asked Stoker, who sat alone at a corner table.

“No,” replied the bearded man. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? Beer, whiskey? Some wine, maybe?”

Stoker stifled a grin. “No, thank you.”

The hefty bartender shrugged and went about his business. The tavern, named Apocalypse After Dark, was empty except for Stoker and the barkeep. A wild-eyed fellow had been playing the slot machine and hour before, but the geek had left after his tokens were depleted. Ghoul, Stoker had thought to himself. Probably rummaging through the death pyres right now, looking for warm leftovers.

But Stoker had no interest in cannibals that night. At least not the kind that sneak around in shame, feeding off disposal plants and graveyards.

He sat there for another hour before he heard the sound that he had been waiting for. The sound of motorcycles roaring in from the west.

Headlights slashed across the front window of the saloon. Engines gunned, then sputtered into silence. Stoker tensed, wishing he had ordered that drink now. His hand went beneath the table, caressing the object he wore slung beneath his bomber jacket.

He watched them through the front window as they dismounted their Harley Davidsons like leather-clad cowboys swing from the saddles of chromed horses. There were an even dozen of them; eight men and four women. Another woman, naked, sat perched on the back of the leader’s chopper. She was chained to the sissy bar, a dog collar around her slender throat keeping her from escaping.

“Poor angel,” whispered Stoker. He was going to enjoy this immensely.

The batwing doors burst open and in they came. Bikers; big, hairy, ugly, and ear-piercingly loud. They wore studded leather with plenty of polished chains, zippers, and embroidered swastikas. On the back of their cycle jackets were their colors. A snarling wolf’s head with flaming eyes and the words BLITZ WOLVEN.

“A round for me and the gang before we do our night’s work,” bellowed the leader, a bear of man with matted red hair and beard. His name was Lycan. Stoker knew that from asking around. The names of the others were not important.

The bartender obediently filled their orders. Lycan took a big swig from his beer, foam hanging his whiskers like the slaver of a rabid dog. He turned around and leaned against the bar rail, instantly seeing the man who sat alone in the shadowy corner. “How’s it going, pal?” Lycan asked neighborly.

Stoker said nothing. He merely smiled and nodded in acknowledgement.

“How about a drink for my silent friend over yonder,” the biker said. “You can put it on my tab.”

The bartender glanced at the man in the corner, then back at Lycan. “Told me he didn’t want nothing.”

“What’s the matter, stranger?” asked a skinny fellow with safety pins through each nostril. “You too good to drink with the likes of us?”

“I have a low tolerance for alcohol,” Stoker said. “It makes me quite ill.”

“Leave the dude alone,” said Lycan. “Different strokes for different folks, I always say.”

The skinny guy gave Stoker a look of contempt, then turned back to the bar.

“It takes all kinds to make a world,” replied Stoker. “Especially a brave, new world such as this.”

“Amen to that,” laughed Lycan. He downed his beer and called for another.

“Blitz Woven? Does that have a hidden meaning? Are you werewolves or Nazis?”

Lycan’s good natured mood began to falter. He eyed the loner with sudden suspicion.

“Maybe a little of both. So what’s it to you?”

Stoker shrugged. “Just curious, that’s all.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” sand an anorexic chick with a purple Mohawk. “Or bat or rat… depending on what supernatural persuasion you are these days.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, dear lady.”

“Well, enough of this gabbing, you freaks,” said Lycan. “Time to get down to business.” They left the bar and walked to the far end of the tavern where a number of hooks jutted from the cheap paneling. Stoker watched with interest as they began to disrobe, hanging their riding leathers along the wall.

“What is this?” he asked. “The floor show?”

“You know, buddy,” said Lycan, his muscular form beginning to contort and sprout coarse hair. “You’re whetting my appetite something fierce. In fact, you might just be our opening course for tonight.”

Stoker sat there, regarding them coolly. “I’m afraid not, old boy. I’ve got business of my own to attend to.”

They were halfway through the change now. Faces distorted and bulged, sprouting toothy snouts and pointed ears. “Oh, and what would that be?” asked Lycan, almost beyond the ability to converse verbally. He stretched his long hairy arms, scraping the ceiling with razor claws.

Stoker stood up, stepped away from the table, and brought an Uzi submachine gun from under his jacket. “I’ll leave that to your brutish imaginations,” he said and opened fire.

The one with the pins in his nose began to howl, brandishing his immortality like some garish tattoo. Then he stopped his bestial laughter when he realized the bullets that were entering his body were not cast of ordinary lead. He screamed as a pattern of penetrating silver stitched across his broad chest, sending him back against the wall. He collapsed, smoking and shriveling, until he was only a heap of naked, gunshot humanity.

“Bastard!” snarled the female werewolf with the violet Mohawk. She surged forward, teeth gnashing, breasts bobbing and swaying like furry pendulums.

Stoker unleashed a three-round burst, obliterating the monster’s head. It staggered shakily across the barroom, hands reaching up and feeling for a head, but only finding a smoking neck stump in its place. The werewolf finally slumped against the jukebox with such force that it began blasting out an old Warren Zevon tune with a boom of bass and tickling of ivory.

“How appropriate,” said Stoker. He swept the barroom at a wide angle, holding the Uzi level with the ten remaining werewolves. One by one, they were speared by the substance they loathed most. The beasts dropped to the saloon’s sawdust floor, writhing and twitching in agony, before growing still.

Lycan leaped the bar, ducking for cover as Stoker swung the machine gun in his direction. Slugs chewed up the woodwork, but nothing more. After a few more seconds of continuous fire, the Uzi’s magazine gave out. Stocker shucked the clip and reached inside his jacket for a fresh one.

That was when Lycan, fully transformed now, sprang over the splintered bar top and tore across the tavern for his intended victim, smashing tables and chairs in his path. “You ain’t gonna make it!” rasped Lycan. It came out more as a garbled snarl than an actual threat.

“Quite to the contrary,” Stoker said calmly. He drew a serrated combat knife from his boot and thrust it upward just as Lycan came within reach. The sterling silver blade sank to the hilt beneath the werewolf’s breastbone.

Lycan staggered backward, staring dumbly at the smoking knife in his midsection. He looked at Stoker with bewildered eyes, then fell over stone cold dead, the impact of silver-shock shorting out his bestial brain cells.

Stoker walked over and withdrew the dagger from the wolf’s body, wiping the blade on the fur of Lycan’s vanishing coat. He slipped the weapon back into its sheath and looked toward the bartender, who was peeking over the edge of the bar. “How much do I owe you for damages?”

“No charge,” the man said, pale-faced but happy. “I’ve been trying to keep this mangy riff-raff outta my joint for years.”

Stoker left Apocalypse After Dark and stood outside for a long moment, enjoying the crisp night air and the pale circle of the full moon overhead. Then he noticed Lycan’s pet sitting on the back of the Harley. He walked over to the girl and smiled at her softly. He cupped her chin in his hand. “Poor angel,” he said soothingly, then blessed her with a kiss.

“What a glorious night, don’t you think, my dear?” he asked as he swung aboard the big chopper and stamped on the starter, sending it roaring into life. The woman was silent, but she snuggled closer, wrapping her arms around his waist, and laying her weary head upon his shoulders.

Together they winged their way into the dead of night.

~ * ~

Chaney parked his van between a black Trans-Am and a rusty Toyota pickup. He left his vehicle and mounted the steps of the Netherworld Café, a local hangout for the natural and unnatural alike.

He walked in and started down the aisle for the rear of the restaurant. A wispy ghost of a waitress took orders, while a couple of zombie fry-cooks slung hash behind the counter. Chaney waved to a few old acquaintances, then headed for the last booth on the right. Stoker was sitting there, poised and princely as usual. There was a girl, too, wearing Stoker’s bomber jacket and nothing else.

Chaney sat down and ordered the usual. Stoker did the same. They regarded each other in silence for a moment, then Chaney spoke up. “Well, is it done?”

“It is,” nodded Stoker. “And what about you?”

“I kept my end of the bargain.”

“Good,” said Stoker. “Then it’s settled. I get the blood.”

“And I the flesh,” replied Chaney.

They shook on their mutual partnership then, Chaney’s hirsute hand emblazoned with the distinctive mark of the pentagram, while Stoker’s possessed the cold and pale bloodlessness of the undead.