Dire Harvest Book 2 Chapter 1

Dire Harvest Book 2, Bol

Copyright © 2021. Robert Ferencz. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. All character names and places are fictional. Any similarity to real life is purely coincidental.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Rochelle Kelley. Without her love and support, I could have never finished it.

Quotes

Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. You can either ignore it, or help me stop it.

—Dr. Sam Loomis, Halloween 1978

Just what I saw in my old dreams. Were they reflections of my warped mind staring back at me? 'Cause in my dreams it's always there. The evil face that twists my mind and brings me to despair.

—Number of the Beast, Iron Maiden

The Spirit clearly says that in later times, some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

—1 Timothy 4

Preface

On a warm summer afternoon in 1979, my sister and I were walking to our neighbor’s house, just down the street from ours. I was eight-years-old, and Val (my sister) was six. Our neighborhood was a picture perfect small town where all the neighbors knew each other, and kids (myself included) rode bicycles freely throughout the streets nearly every day. There was no fear here. It was a place of friendship, warmth, and family. To this day, I count growing up in my little town of Belle Vernon, PA as one of my life’s greatest blessings. However, on that one perfect summer afternoon in 1979, my life as I knew it had nearly ended.

There wasn’t much traffic in our corner of the world; you wouldn’t drive through on your way to somewhere else. If you ended up in my neighborhood, it was because you came there intentionally. Intentionally… that word is important. You see, on that beautiful summer day in 1979, while my sister and I were walking to our friend Jimmy’s house, a man pulled up in a car, jumped out, and tried to abduct me. It happened in the blink of an eye. I had no idea what was happening. My sister’s scream as the man reached for me is what snapped me back into the moment and made me avoid his reaching hands. We both ran inside Jimmy’s house (thank God his mother had left the front door open for us), screaming and yelling. 

The part that still gives me shivers is that this person had to have been stalking us. As I said, you don’t just drive through our neighborhood. You have to make it a point to go there for a reason. I imagine he had staked out the area in advance, noting all the kids (there were dozens of us) who played freely in the streets. My sister and I just happened to be in his sights at the right time and place. Luckily, the failed attempt scared him off, and nothing like that happened to anyone else in our town.

At the time, I couldn’t think for some reason. I knew something had happened, but the details were so strangely fuzzy I couldn’t put together a description of the guy. I remembered he was wearing a brown and yellow checkered sport jacket, but that was about it. There wasn’t much we could do but let the other families in the neighborhood know to be on the lookout for suspicious vehicles or anyone out of the ordinary. 

Thankfully for my family, a crisis was averted and life went on. I have enjoyed all of my days since that summer day in 1979 and have lived an amazing life I wouldn’t trade a second of for anything on earth. 

But what if my sister hadn’t screamed as this predator reached for me? He was so fast! I didn’t know I was in danger until Val’s shriek made me aware. What if he would have succeeded? As I do my best to recall the moment, I swear the guy came within a foot of grabbing me. I was mere inches away from God only knows what sort of hell he had planned. 

Years later, when I was in high school, my friend Leo bought an old beige Plymouth Volare. The first time I saw his car in the student parking lot, the memory of that day in 1979 punched me right in the face. The man who had tried to abduct me had leaped out of a beige Plymouth Volare. I didn’t recall it then, but as soon as I saw Leo’s car, the image rushed back into my mind. My body filled with anxiety the instant I saw it. I couldn’t say it was the exact vehicle, but it was close enough to pull the memory out of the depths of my mind. I only wish I could have remembered that detail on the day of the incident.

That moment in 1979 has never left me. When I’m having a great day, enjoying life and the friends and family I’ve been so blessed with, I always look up and thank God that a man wearing a brown and yellow checkered sport jacket, driving a beige Plymouth Volare, missed me by inches. I can only hope and pray he didn’t try this bullshit with any other children, and if he did, they had a sister with a set of lungs like mine to protect them. 

As you know from already reading the first book in this series, child abduction is a theme. And yes, my writing on the subject stems from my own personal experience. Was the man who attempted to abduct me possessed by a spirit guiding him to do so? I doubt it very much. My attacker was probably no more than a deviant pervert, unable to control his own disgusting urges. And if I could write his ending (as I have done so many times in my daydreams), he sped away after missing me, wrapped that shit box car around a tree, and the last cognitive thing he saw on earth was the inside of his blood splattered windshield. I have other endings for him in my thoughts, but those aren’t fit to share with a general audience. 

We write what we know. I don’t know of a truer statement. I didn’t set out at all to write about this subject, but as the words came from my head through my fingers and onto the keys, this came out. The book writes itself. I believe I heard Stephen King say that, but I’m sure others have said it as well. And it does. When I sat down to write Dire Harvest, I only had the slightest inkling of an idea. All I could see was a half dead body in a potting shed and a cop outside puking his guts out. Now I’m in the middle of a three novel series (four with the prequel). That’s the most wonderful thing about writing: just let it happen. Don’t allow the blank page to rule you; pound those keys and own it! I can’t wait to sit down at my keyboard and find out what happens next. God only knows what other deep-seated memories I’m about to dig up…

Robert Ferencz (November 8, 2021)

ONE

The dampness of cold earth seeped into her body through the soft skin of her bare feet. The feel of dirt, coarse and unforgiving, added subtle jolts of pain to each step she took. How did she get here? Where was here? Who was here?

She gazed ahead in the dim light of dozens of old-fashioned kerosene lanterns which hung along the walls on each side of the corridor—the earth corridor. The walls were chiseled rock, as were the floor and ceiling (made by man, but not built). An engineer of a different sort created this place. Hollowed out earth, blasted, shoveled, and removed. This was a mine. But how the hell did she get here?

“Hello,” Lauren Rivers called out. “Is anyone here?”

Her call received no reply. 

She took a hanging lantern off the wall and continued into the tunnel. Behind was only darkness, deep and black, coupled with fear. The thought of venturing in that direction sent a shiver to her soul. 

Lauren had no recollection of how she got here. She tried to remember, but a dense fog had shrouded her mind, as if life before this point had never existed. 

“Hello!”

A subtle laugh softly broke the silence from the murk behind her. Nothing pleasant or reassuring came from the laugh, only malice and hate.

She had to move. The laugh meant to harm her, to devastate her. She couldn’t stand here and allow it to fulfill its sinister objective. Whatever lay ahead couldn’t possibly be worse than what came from behind.

Unsure of each step, Lauren carefully walked.

“You smell divine, young miss,” the voice said with laughter underscoring its tone.

The words chilled her; they hated her.

Something awful accompanied the voice: a smell… garbage, offal, human and animal waste. The odor of everything the civilized world had discarded or cast into a refuse pit. It reeked of indignity.

Lauren put a hand over her mouth, attempting to push back her gag, but the fetor forced its way through her fingers and aggressively attacked her nose and mouth. It would not be held at bay. It had power; it had an agenda; it loathed her.

She felt sick. Air! Lauren needed air right now. She had to get away from the source of this stench and find a place to breathe. Forward was the only way, into the unknown.

She ran ahead, ignoring the pain the rugged soil unleashed on her bare feet. 

Sinister laughter intensified from behind as the voice gave chase. “Lauren!” it said. “Don’t be afraid, my dear.” Its tone had changed from a deep baritone to a high cackle, all within that short sentence, as if it were more than one.

A scream pushed out of her chest and broke the air. 

The voice laughed harder. “You’ll soon scream louder than you ever thought possible, whore!”

The hollowed out corridor turned to the left and the hanging lanterns on each side went no further. She grabbed the last lantern from the wall—giving her two—and proceeded into the blackness in front of her. 

Terrified of what may lie in wait just outside of her lantern glow, she slowed her pace to a trot.

She came to a T in the tunnel, left or right her only choices. To her left was pure darkness, but to her right and further into the tunnel, she saw dim light and subtle movement. She focused, trying to understand what was up that way.

“We’re going to have such fun together, Lauren. You’ll see!” the voice said. It was closer now, so close. 

She had to move; this thing would be on her in seconds. Lauren darted off toward the dim light and movement, her two lanterns creaking and clanking as she ran. Whatever was ahead in that soft glow couldn’t possibly be worse than the thing charging behind her. Nothing could be worse.

Men! The moving shapes were men with lanterns and picks and shovels. They chopped at the cave walls with power and ferocity. Men who could help her, save her. Men who could protect her from this thing on her heels and could hopefully get her out of here. 

“Please help me,” she called out to them as she approached, out of breath and weak in the knees.

The figures ignored her. They continued chopping at the walls and shoveling the rock they had broken loose into a metal cart. 

She mustered up the courage to grab one of them by the arm. “Help me, please!” she cried. The man ignored her as if she didn’t exist. He continued driving his pickaxe into the wall, breaking off lumps of black rock. “Can’t you hear me? I need help!”

Lauren gave up and moved on to another man who was shoveling the loosened debris into a different cart. She stood in front of him, grabbed both his shoulders, and shook him. “Hey, asshole! Listen to me! I need help!” 

The man went on with his work, unfazed by Lauren’s attempt to communicate. 

She felt their clothing in her fingers and the muscle underneath. She could feel them move, and her hands moved with them as she grabbed hold, but they remained unaffected by her, as if she didn’t exist.  

A strange thought occurred to her: these men looked like they came from another period in history. Their clothes, their tools, their shoes… none of it matched the modern world. 

The smell pierced her nose once again, and she knew the thing was right behind her. She screamed and ran, dodging her way around the metal cart, the men, and the loose rubble they had picked off the walls. Her feet sent flashes of hot pain throughout her body, causing tears to fill her eyes. 

“Lauren,” the voice spoke slowly. “Why are you running? You have nothing to fear from me. I only wish to destroy you and tear you to pieces!” Its fiendish laughter echoed off the walls and ceiling. 

Feelings of dread and anguish came over her in a flush. Her body shook with anxiety. This had happened before, but when? She searched her muddled memory, straining to remember. Images flashed through her mind in no discernible order, clouded pictures of faces who looked familiar, yet she couldn’t recall their names. 

One face stood out: Clay. That was her husband. Yes, Clay. She remembered. She was married to Clay Rivers. And another face flashed, an older woman with soft bright cheeks and elegant silver hair. Grandmother! The fog was lifting and her life was coming back to her now. The life and the people she loved. Family members, friends, and other loved ones all flooded her mind, and she knew their names and knew all about them. She remembered. The fog had subsided and Lauren Rivers remembered. 

Another face hit her memory, shoving out the others and slamming the door on them. A sunken, pallid face, full of anguish and terror. Its skin like leather. One eye closed, one wide open—inhumanly wide open—black as coal, staring off into nothing… John Doe.

Harsh memories crashed into her head, one after another, individually stabbing at her with sharp, vicious barbs. The smell of sulfur, the dark hissing shadows, the emaciated face, the icy fear, and all the horrors that happened in room 337 of the Cumberland Springs Memorial ICU Ward. 

“No!” she screamed. “You can’t be alive!” 

Lauren still refused to turn around. She couldn’t. She had to continue running, gaining distance between herself and this thing that hunted her relentlessly. If it was John Doe behind her, she would rather die than see his face again.

She pushed her legs as hard as they would allow. Pain, furious and blazing, flared through her feet as it felt like she was running on shards of metal. She continued. Stopping now was not an option. 

“You remember me, don’t you, Lauren?” the voice said. “You remember the time we shared? It was such a glorious time.” The voice continued to change, almost with every word it spoke. Some tones low, others screeching high, some male, and others feminine. Each word more appalling than the last. “It’s so wonderful to see you again. You look ravishing!”

One of her two lanterns went dim, then extinguished all together, leaving her with only the small, flickering glow from the other lamp, hardly enough light to navigate while running. 

“Where are your new friends, my dear?” the voice asked. “Surely they would help if called upon?”

New friends? Lauren did not know what it meant. 

“Yes, of course, your new friends,” it snickered. “The paramedic and the FBI man. You surely haven’t forgotten about them. We should have a reunion of sorts to reminisce about old times. How much fun that would be!”

Lauren remembered. Devon and Agent Ward. Something had drawn her to the hospital chapel on the day John Doe had died, and the two of them were in there with her. No one understood why, but they were all compelled to sit and pray together. She hadn’t seen, heard from, or thought of either of them since that day. 

“We could have such a lovely gathering,” the voice said. “Just the four of us. We could talk and laugh and share intriguing stories about our adventurous lives. Then, perhaps, we could take turns giving it to you, Lauren, harder than your little ass can handle!” It cackled hysterically, louder and more menacing than before. “Oh, and let’s not forget about that pig, Reverend Allen. We can’t exclude him from the party. I know! We could use him for our amusement. We could string him up from the ceiling and make him into our very own piñata. We’ve done this to him before. The sadistic little fuck rather enjoys getting tuned up!”

She tried to block out the voice, but it was unstoppable, taunting her, disgusting her with its foul words. Just run, Lauren, she told herself. Keep running!

The pain had become too much to bear, and Lauren stumbled, barely keeping herself from hitting the floor. She had to find strength somehow. She had to fight the pain and exhaustion and keep moving. Her life could not end like this, in a mine shaft far beneath the earth, far from those she loved. The fight was still in her, in her heart and soul. It could not have her. He could not have her!

“I love your tenacity!” the voice said. “I simply cannot wait to taste it pour out of you when I sink my teeth into your flesh.”

“No!” Lauren screamed, and with that word, her energy was restored. She no longer felt exhaustion or pain or the agony that nearly consumed her seconds ago. She was whole, complete. With a burst of exuberance, Lauren ran like never before. Her legs felt like feathers, flapping in the wind, carrying her with unimaginable speed away from this vile thing. Joy filled her heart, and she knew she would be ok. This thing would not best or break her. 

With barely enough time to understand what lie ahead in the darkness, Lauren glimpsed it in the dim glow of her lantern, just in time. She wasn’t able to stop her momentum completely, but did slow enough not to hurt herself. She hit it, bounced off, and fell to the ground, barely able to keep her lamp from breaking and going out. The corridor had come to its end. Solid rock stood in front of her, a wall of chipped earth that went no further. She sprung to her feet and felt along the stone, trying desperately to find a way through it, but the effort proved pointless. The only way out was back the way she came. And now, more than ever, that option was not on the table. 

“My dear,” the thing said. “It appears we’ve come to our final act.”

The faint glow of the kerosene lantern flickered and grew dim as it warned of its last moments of life. Lauren took a deep breath of hopelessness before turning to face the thing that had chased her into this corner. It was worse than the picture her imagination had painted from the moment she had first heard its laugh coming out of the darkness.

Its flesh, like pale leather, covered with red festering sores, hung on the bones of a man—a naked man—but the man had contorted himself to crawl on all fours like a twisted humanoid arachnid. His body was emaciated, purged of any muscle or fat, nothing but hanging wrinkled skin over a skeleton. He crawled at her like a giant crab coming out of the sea. 

The shock of it all should have made her scream, but she had nothing left to give. 

The face of the man-spider looked up at her and smiled, and Lauren knew him immediately. John Doe. His one black, bulging eye, his chipped and broken teeth, that black greasy hair. This man had caused her more suffering and anxiety than she had ever known or imagined possible. She had watched him die, and, most importantly, she had watched them come for him—those shadow things from a place we shouldn’t know about. But here she now stood, looking down at the twisted, insect-like body of John Doe. He would never give her peace, never stop chasing her. 

She sunk to the ground with her back against the cold, damp wall and cried. The lantern flickered again, but before it faded off for good, she saw John Doe’s face, only a foot from her own. The fingers on both of his hands had turned into long, sharp, predatory claws, which were moving to touch her.

The lantern puffed its last flicker and went out, and Lauren sat in total darkness. Hot breath that smelled like an open tomb full of rotting animals suddenly blew across her face. His face now an inch from her own. 

“Goodnight, my love,” John Doe whispered. 

Bright, fiery agony erupted in her stomach and chest as she felt him ripping at her skin with his clawed hands. She tried to scream, but her throat could only produce gurgling sounds as blood came up from her stomach. The ripping claws stopped and were quickly replaced by a gnawing sensation. The creature had shoved his face into the open hole of her midsection and now chewed at her internal organs. It laughed and grunted through muffled mouthfuls of gore.

Lauren screamed and thrashed and yelled with all her might—

“Babe! Babe! Wake up!” Clay yelled as he shook his wife. “Baby, wake up!”

Her eyes opened. There was light. She was in a room which looked nothing like the mine shaft where she was just losing her life to that creature. She couldn’t breathe. She gasped, but couldn’t take in air. Something shook her body and a distant voice called out to her.

“Lauren! Baby, wake up!”

Finally, her throat opened and allowed in a harsh breath, then another, and another, until she started to gain control. Air, pure and clean, without the slightest hint of that stench, filled her lungs. 

She looked at the man sitting next to her, his face both scared and relieved. Clay. This was Clay. Reality came back to her. The room, the bed, the man next to her. She was in bed with Clay and had had another nightmare. John Doe wasn’t tearing into her stomach with giant claws and hideous teeth. He was dead, rotting in the earth somewhere. And she was safe at home with her husband, the man she loved and adored. 

Clay held his wife for several minutes as she cried, releasing a flood of emotion. He moved to get up so he could get her a glass of water, but she wouldn’t let him. She held him tighter than ever. It took over an hour before she finally stopped shaking. 

TWO

Morning was sacred. Sunny mornings, when the sun’s natural warmth filtered through the breakfast nook windows, were the best, of course, but every morning, no matter what the weather, was sacred. Glen loved his mornings. His time. The time before those sleepy eyed people he lived with would begin rising from their beds and stumble down the steps looking for food. He loved them so much, this family of his, but the hour before their awakening (before the, “Daddy, what’s for breakfast?” and “I don’t feel like going to school today!” and “I can’t find my favorite jeans!”) belonged to Glen Crawford. 

Vickie knew how important mornings were to her husband, and she happily let him have it. Most of the time, it meant he’d take care of breakfast for the kids and she could steal an extra hour of sleep. 

Today was one of those perfect sunshine mornings. Thanks to daylight savings time, the sun had crested bright and early and had filled the breakfast nook with warmth, just waiting to embrace Glen when he came into the kitchen. 

With the excitement of a child at Christmas, he stared at the new toy Vickie and the kids had given him for his birthday. Its chrome exterior glinted from the morning sunlight, as if the two things were holding hands like lovers. He truly admired it, this work of art, this thing of beauty. He had joked about it at the store, knowing it was an extravagance they didn’t need to spend that kind of money on. Vickie knew right away it was the perfect gift for her husband. She and the kids ran back to the store the very next day while Glen was at work and bought it, all three of them excited to keep the secret like a classified, clandestine operation. His shock when he opened the box at his surprise birthday party had said it all. He almost cried. What a wonderful wife she was to have spent over six hundred dollars on an espresso machine, just to feed her husband’s coffee obsession. And obsession was definitely the right word for it. He preferred to call it passion. Everyone who knew him called it obsession. 

Glen didn’t care; people have hobbies. Some folks fly fish, some build bird houses, others collect salt and pepper shakers. Glen studied coffee. From the different beans to the roasting process and the final brewing, he had spent years perfecting the craft. He’d never had aspirations of opening a coffee shop himself—the family and career as police chief left little room on his plate for anything else—though everyone who had ever tasted his brew had told him he should. No, he was perfectly happy keeping it to himself, friends, and family. On good days—such as today—he’d make a few extra cups for his officers at the station. They appreciated this gesture beyond words. 

The new espresso machine looked like a piece of handcrafted art déco sitting atop his kitchen counter. Industrial beauty. And surprisingly, it wasn’t bulky or out of place in the kitchen. It belonged here, like an old friend who had come home and was about to enrich his life forever. 

With a delightful spring in his step, he got to work measuring out the beans for the hopper and filling the water tank full of his secret ingredient: Zero Water. You could buy the most expensive beans from the world’s best coffee plantations, but if the water wasn’t pure, the effort was pointless. He had tried all sorts of filtered, distilled, and even spring waters, but nothing matched the taste of Zero Water. Merging that filtered goodness with a perfectly roasted bean brought a slice of heaven down to earth.

It didn’t take long for him to get the new machine running and all the ingredients ready. He paused for a moment with his finger on the start button, as if he was about to launch a rocket into space. Lift off. Seconds later, it hit him like the sweetest kiss from his beloved wife. The smell of bliss. Dark, rich glory dripped from the spout into his waiting cup, more beautiful than a sunrise. Glen absorbed all the goodness he could handle with a slow, deep inhale. The world was right. It was robust, and it welcomed him into the day with open arms.

After the machine had finished and he had frothed the milk—he had tried to make a leaf design with the froth, but it ended up looking like a glob of foam—he sat at the breakfast nook table with his nose above the cup, gently sniffing and preparing for the first sip. It was, as he had expected, paradise.

THREE

In the soft period of early morning, when darkness understands it must soon surrender to the inevitable arrival of the sun, Reverend Paul Allen found himself once again staring wide-eyed into his computer screen, an empty rocks glass to the right of his keyboard. He had sat down at his desk at 7:00 PM last night, intending to do just a few hours of research before bed. Ten hours and seven glasses of Jameson later, the Reverend had hardly moved, even to take a piss. 

He reached for the glass without taking his eyes off the screen and frowned when he realized how light it was. Fill up time.

As he pushed himself away from the desk and stood up, a feeling hit him like an assassin’s bullet to the back of the head. The room spun out of control, his vision blurred and doubled, and he felt like hell. He lost his balance. Luckily, he hadn’t moved too far from his chair, so he dropped right back into it. He stared up at the ceiling, blinking and shaking his head, trying to make the damn thing stop spinning. The ceiling refused to cooperate. 

“How many glasses did I put down?” he said aloud into the air of his study. The answer was seven, but in his mind, it couldn’t have been more than three. 

He slowly turned the chair around to face the window and was shocked to see—through blurred double vision—the violet sky of an impending sunrise. He looked at his watch, but still couldn’t focus. Best he could tell, from the two blurred watch faces that danced in circles before his eyes, it was somewhere around 5:30 AM. “Holy shit!” the reverend said. 

He was drunk. Plain old, shit-faced, frat boy, beer pong, lineup the shots, drunk!

It wasn’t a new feeling for the reverend, by any means. After his wife had passed away several years ago, he had hit the bottle nightly and awoke in a stupor nearly every morning. But that was all behind him now. Mary Ann had gone on to the Lord and he was still here, serving God’s purpose. He had struggled with the alcohol for a rough two years after she had died, but had successfully found his way off of it. It had only momentarily dulled the pain, anyway; the real agony was always there under the surface, waiting for the buzz to wear off so it could sink its claws back into his soul and pull him deeper into the depths. When he had finally come to terms with her death and realized the world needed him here, the drink no longer served a purpose. Like flicking off a light switch, Reverend Paul Allen simply got his shit together one day and dropped it. That was a good day—a nice, warm September day, full of chirping birds, flowers, the smell of steaks on the grill, and all that.

But why was he sitting in his office now at 5:30 AM, crocked off his ass? What made him fall back into this? The answer was simple: something had come into his life he was ill-equipped to handle. He had always fancied himself a well-grounded man, able to cope with anything life had thrown his way. And that was true, right up to the morning his wife had died. Nothing had ever knocked him down that hard. What now, though? He’d pulled himself out if it back then, got his shit together, and moved on. Sitting here drunk this morning made little sense. 

But it did, actually; it made perfect sense. This had nothing to do with losing Mary Ann or the pain he had endured as she suffered from cancer for two years before passing on. This was over something completely different. He had been through a trauma recently that challenged his faith and beliefs much more so than when he lost his wife. Her sickness and eventual death were natural; people die. These things happen every day. But it’s not every day that people get the ever-loving shit kicked out of them, beat and tormented to within an inch of their life by a demonic force in a hospital room next to an emaciated scarecrow. No, that’s not a normal facet of day-to-day life at all. It had happened to him, though, that’s for damn sure. And he was reminded of it every time he got out of the shower and saw his scar riddled chest, arms, and back in the mirror. 

Six months ago, Reverend Paul Allen had come face to face with evil—not merely a person who committed evil acts, but the full manifestation of spiritual evil. It is not intended for man to see such things, but for some reason the veil had slid open and what lurks beyond the dark under side had come out and tuned him up right proper. And it was so much more than just a beating. The thing hated him, loathed him. It wanted to do significantly more than merely hurt him. It wanted him broken to the farthest sense of the word—humiliated, chastised, stripped of dignity. He felt its hatred of him and could still feel it now. It never left him, like the tattoo of an ex-girlfriend’s name that refused to fade away.

This wasn’t the first night in recent weeks Reverend Allen had found himself in this drunken state. It was happening more and more while he attempted to understand the incident in ICU room 337 at Cumberland Springs Memorial.

They laughed! 

That they did. There were several entities attacking him that night, and they had all laughed as they savaged him. It was sadistic, that cackling which rang in his ears, sinister and vile. They had wanted him to know and feel that he was worth even less than a drop of phlegm spit upon the ground.

He tried to hold it in, but what was the point? He was alone here in his study in the house the church had provided for him; what could it hurt? The reverend broke down and sobbed into his hands. Images flashed before his closed eyes of the scene that night, of him being thrown around the room like a rag doll. Sounds rang in his ears of screeching and taunting—where is your god now, holy man?

“Stop it!” the reverend commanded. 

During the months after the attack, Reverend Allen had deeply withdrawn into his thoughts. He couldn’t simply push this event off as something that had happened, over and done with. There had to be an explanation, an answer as to why he was chosen specifically to endure such madness. Was it simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was there something more?

He had found himself at the computer a lot in recent weeks, along with a bottle of Jameson—that fine Irish goodness. The whiskey seemed to accompany him perfectly as he delved into his research, like having a loyal dog by his side he could pet every so often for comfort. He searched for answers. Did others out there have similar events occur in their lives? Had evil shown its face to anyone else? Aside from the blatant fictional accounts made up by people with too much time on their hands and a deep-seated need for attention, he had discovered that he was not alone. Others had experienced evil and had lived to tell about it. Not “The evil next-door,” or “We didn’t know our kid was evil,” bullshit one might find on true crime television, but spiritual evil from somewhere beyond our understanding. To his surprise, there were many accounts and descriptions that had matched his experience, almost to the letter. Stories which could not have been made up. Stories that, when you read them, you felt the honesty in the words and the emotion in the account. He felt in his heart they were real.

His research had let him to the conclusion that spiritual evil indeed exists beyond fiction. Great! Now what? Should he become a crusader, searching for it and expelling it from the earth in God’s name? Should he learn the rite of exorcism? Probably not. Outside of the Catholic Church, exorcism was mainly just TV and tent revival side show crap. Be gone evil spirit! Now give the church $29.95. Besides, he was a Baptist preacher; switching over to Catholicism wasn’t really an option. 

For now—knowing this stuff honestly existed—the best he could do was warn his parishioners at Sunday services, which he had done weekly since his recovery. 

The sun finally crested the clouds and slapped him across the face. This was going to be a long day.

FOUR

“Tell me you haven’t been up all morning fooling with this coffee machine,” Vickie Crawford said as she came into the kitchen. 

Glen looked his wife up and down in her white fluffy robe and slippers. Her black hair a mess. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes on. “Coffee machine?” he asked. “Did you just call this finely crafted instrument a coffee machine?”

Vickie walked over to her husband seated at the breakfast nook table. He looked like he was in the middle of a splendid morning. “I am so sorry, sir. My intention was not to offend you.” She sat on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Have you been up all morning fooling with your finely crafted instrument?” She kissed his cheek and neck.

“As a matter of fact, miss, that’s exactly what I’ve been up to.”

“Did you get it working?” she asked.

Glen’s face lit up with a smile. “I did. Would you like a cup?”

“Sure.”

Before Glen’s muscles could move, he felt another much lighter weight on his other thigh. “What is this?” he asked. 

“Good morning, daddy,” Sarah, the couple’s eight-year-old daughter, said, joining the hug. She had a radar for whenever Glen and Vickie were having an intimate moment. 

Glen laughed and kissed the top of her head. “Good morning, pumpkin.”

His wife and daughter both gripped him tightly and Glen smiled, embracing the moment, committing it to memory. They amazed him, as did his son, Brandon. They were all happy, healthy, and actually enjoyed each other. So many families suffer one another with little concern about anything other than what comes across their cell phone screens. But Glen and Vickie had nurtured a family who cared and wanted to be together. Even as Brandon had entered his teen years and needed to see more of his friends, he still valued his time with family. 

Vickie and Glen were classic high school sweethearts. They had met in elementary school and had found each other repulsive right up to that fateful day when puberty awakened them both, and suddenly, a whole new set of feelings had surfaced. Glen had approached Vickie at her locker one morning, sometime during their sophomore year in high school, and had playfully put his football jacket over her shoulders. He never got the jacket back from that day forward. There’s even a humorous wedding photo where Vickie is wearing it over her wedding dress. The jacket and wedding dress now hang together in the back of their bedroom closet and bring back fond memories anytime either of them rummage through there. 

They are two people who wanted the same things out of life: a delightful house in the town they grew up in, a few kids, and maybe a family vacation or two every year. It doesn’t happen often in the world, but it’s not Bigfoot either. Every High School class has that couple who show up at their twenty-year reunion, still together, still happy as ever, and still making everyone else gag at their perfect life. They respectfully try not to flaunt it, as they are very well aware happiness like theirs doesn’t exist for everyone. 

Vickie and Sarah hung onto Glen for a few more moments before Vickie finally said, “Ok, Sarah, go upstairs and tell your brother it’s time to get ready for school. Tell him I want to hear movement in no less than five minutes.”

Sarah quickly jumped off of Glen’s lap, excited to complete her mother’s assignment, partly because she always did as she was asked right away, mostly because it was a chance to harass her brother.  

“You’re going to hear more than just movement up there when she jumps on his face,” Glen said, laughing. 

They both looked at the ceiling, smiling in anticipation at the commotion that was about to erupt. They didn’t have to wait long.

“Owe!” Brandon yelled out, muffled under his bedding. “Get off me, brat!”

Morning at the Crawford house had officially begun.

FIVE

Sunrise during early May in Cumberland Springs is—on most days—breathtaking. The flood of color erupting as the sun breaks over the Appalachian Mountains surrounding the town looks like fire from Heaven. As the trees blossom with vibrant Spring colors, they add to the magnificence, turning the entire scene into a painting brushed by God Himself. Everyone who lives here is well aware of this blessing. On mornings like this, it’s not unusual to see folks sitting on their porches, drinking coffee, and gazing into the sky with a blissful smile of contentment across their faces. 

Lauren Rivers sat on the reupholstered antique chair next to the large picture window in her living room, staring out at the sky. Today’s sunrise was explosive, with colors mankind could never replicate. But Lauren didn’t see it. She had been sitting here for a few hours now, looking out at nothing in particular, and hadn’t even noticed the sun was coming up. Her mind was as far away from the moment as it could get. 

A tear rolled down her cheek. The tears had come and gone several times since she had sat down, but hadn’t yet evolved into a full-on cry.

She wanted this all to stop, to leave her in peace, but the nightmares attacked her fiercely, almost nightly. She had created a severity scale from one to ten that she used to assess the gravity of each dream—based on the pain tolerance scale used for hospital patients to describe their level of discomfort. Some nights, her dreams were minor and amounted to only a simple bad dream (Level 1-3). Most nights, the dreams were more intense, falling into the nightmare category (Level 4-8). Last night’s dream was outright terror (Level 10). 

She had not enjoyed a night of peaceful rest in nearly six months. Even if the dreams stayed down in the lower levels of her assessment scale, they still chipped away at her. She was nearly at her wit’s end with all of it. 

One night she took a sleeping pill, attempting to bypass the dream state all together. That was a mistake she’s regretted ever since. The dream she’d had then was so intense it has stayed with her and shows up in her thoughts almost every day. Not to mention the pill made her sleep so soundly she couldn’t escape. It was like the dream had trapped her and slowly tortured her like a predator with its prey. When she finally awoke from it, Clay was preparing to take her to the hospital. She had convulsed and screamed in such a vicious fury. And he couldn’t wake her up, no matter what he tried. They had checked her out in the Emergency Room that night, then sent her home with a few tranquilizers she never took.

Lauren knew where all this had come from; she had no doubts about it: John Doe. Life was going along just fine until the night he appeared (great husband, nice house, new car, wonderful family, lots of friends, plans to have children, wonderful career). Then that piece of shit showed up in her ICU ward, changing her life forever. Where the hell did he come from, anyway? She thought about asking, then felt the less she knew, the better. There were rumors going around that he was a child killer, or something to that effect. She didn’t doubt it. Nothing good could have come from that creature. 

And then there was the darkness, as she came to call it. The shadow figures that had taunted her and attacked her and tore at her spirit. At first, she was so proud of herself for how she had handled the event. She had stood up to it, right up to the face of evil, and said, “No!” That was something to be extremely proud of, wasn’t it? But her confidence didn’t last. The scene had mercilessly played over and over in her mind as she tried to understand how it could have happened. The answer never surfaced, and she couldn’t accept that some things aren’t meant to be explained. They just happen and that is that. Lauren would never accept that. There was a reason for everything.

“What are you doing up, baby?” Clay said as he entered the living room. His raspy voice telling he’d been awake for only a minute or two. He blinked his eyes several times, trying to focus on his wife. 

She looked up at him, and he saw the tears welling up in her eyes.

He knelt in front of her and took her hand. “I love you,” he said, kissing her wrist. “Maybe it’s time we talk to somebody about these dreams?”

More tears rolled down her cheeks, but she did not speak.

“I’m worried about you,” Clay said. “You haven’t been the same since Thanksgiving.”

Lauren couldn’t hold it back any longer. She sobbed.

Clay held his wife as she let loose a flood of emotions. He kissed her forehead and absorbed her tears into his chest. 

They were entering their third year of marriage and had been working on restoring the grand old Victorian house on Parkins Avenue together. The plan was to get the house finished within two years of starting the project, then have children. Clay wanted four. Lauren thought two would be sufficient, and if a third happened, they’d consider it a compromise. That was all fine until the night terrors showed up. From then on, Lauren had lost interest in everything. Most days, she barely had the energy to get herself to work.

Her new state of melancholia had not gone unnoticed. The other nurses in the ICU and several doctors had all mentioned it to her. Is everything ok at home? How are things with you and Clay? You guys good? Lauren always said, “Fine,” and continued working, not talking to anyone. 

Their group of friends, who got together almost weekly, continuously asked them to go out or would invite them over for house parities or barbecues. They rarely attended. And when they did show up, they never stayed long.  

The only person who wasn’t surprised by Lauren’s behavior was her grandmother. She came over to visit once a week and the two of them would go off out of earshot. Clay didn’t know what they talked about, but he was certain Grandmother knew something. It didn’t help to ask; neither of them would tell him anything.

“I don’t want to talk to a therapist, Clay,” Lauren finally said. 

Clay didn’t answer. At least she was talking; that was a start.

“My problem is deeper than you’ll understand,” she said, and sniffled. “Please don’t be offended. I don’t mean you’re not smart enough to understand. Maybe I’m phrasing this wrong…”

“Why don’t you try me?” Clay asked. “I might surprise you.”

Lauren laughed. “You always surprise me, honey. That’s what I love about you.” She sniffled some more, then let go of her embrace. She looked at him and smiled through the tears. “Something happened to me.”

Clay’s face turned red as he immediately thought someone had done something to his wife; someone had hurt her. Clay was moderately tempered for his size (the gentle giant), but if someone laid a hand on his wife, they’d have to deal with his Western Pennsylvania mountain redneck side, and no one wanted that.

“Honey,” Lauren said, seeing her husband was allowing his thoughts to run wild. “It’s not what you think, so don’t start looking all caveman.”

They both laughed as Clay calmed down. 

“I saw something,” Lauren continued. “Something surrounding a patient back in November. It was evil. And I’m not using the word evil as an adjective; I’m saying it as a noun. I saw evil. And I can’t get it out of my head.”

Clay stared into his wife’s eyes. This woman was not capable of lying, even if it meant her death. She’d never be able to sell it. And at this moment, Lauren was as stone cold serious as he had ever seen her. He had to believe her story, no matter how fantastical it might seem. By the look in her eyes, this was gospel. 

“I do need to talk to someone, Clay,” Lauren said. “But not a therapist. I think I need to talk to our pastor, Reverend Allen.”

“No,” Clay said. “We both need to talk to Reverend Allen. You don’t suffer through anything alone.” Clay seemed angry for a moment. “Why are you just telling me this now? I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong for six months. You could have trusted me with this when it happened.”

“I know, baby,” Lauren said. “I am so, so sorry. It’s just that I was trying to figure it out for myself first before bringing it up to you.”

“Come on, Lauren,” Clay said. “You know that’s not how we do things. When you have a problem, I have a problem, and vice versa. We don’t go through anything on our own.”

Lauren knew her husband was right. They shared everything together, no matter how insignificant. And this was probably the most significant thing that had ever happened to her. She should have come to him right away, and she knew it.

Lauren smiled at her husband, not just to guilt him into dropping his anger—though that was part of it—but because she suddenly felt better. She didn’t feel alone in this anymore. Telling Clay had actually relieved some of the burden. She had been secretly sharing the issue with her grandmother, but it didn’t have the same healing effect telling Clay did. She became angry with herself for not doing it sooner. 

“Clay, honey, you are absolutely right,” Lauren said. “I should never have kept this from you. And I understand if you’re mad at me, baby, I really do. But I am sorry, truly sorry.”

Clay looked at his wife, and again he could see the honesty in her eyes. He smiled. “What do you want for breakfast? I’m cookin’.”  

Though he didn’t say it, she knew her husband well enough to know he forgave her.

SIX

Sound has an interesting way of traveling. You can’t see it dancing in the air, but it is there, bouncing off walls and objects like a rubber ball thrown by an angry child or a fastball pitcher. It starts out strong from its source and eventually dissipates into nothing, all within fractions of a second and all taking place in the invisible world. With the development of computer technology, humans can now record sound waves and display their patterns on monitors for visual analysis. The graphs look strange, but for those who study this kind of thing, the lines on the screen can tell a story.

The FBI has become quite good at studying sound, especially when it comes to recording it. They like to listen. They like to analyze. Well, not all of them, not Special Agent Henry Ward. Agent Ward found the duty of audio analysis to be the most tedious and unfulfilling task he’d ever been assigned. But there he sat, in the audio room at the Pittsburgh field office, about to listen to hours upon hours of recordings from an undercover racketeering case that would bore the ever-loving shit out of him for days. He’d done it before and knew it was part of the job, but damn if listening to this crap didn’t wear him down to sleep.

The room was large, padded from walls to ceiling with acoustic foam, and had five separate work stations at small, uncomfortable desks. Each work station had a computer and a set of fairly expensive—taxpayer funded—sound isolating headphones. No one ever smiled upon entering this room (except for Walt, the tech guy. He loved this crap). 

Agent Ward sat at a workstation and logged in with his FBI credentials. After a moment or two of searching, he located his case file on the main server. Upon opening the file, he sat back in his chair and stared at the screen with a disheartened look on his face. There they were: hours upon hours of recorded audio he had to sift through in search of evidence for a bullshit racketeering case. There was a better than good chance he would spend at least two weeks in this room, every day, listening to this junk and not find a single shred of evidence. But that was the job, right? Sometimes adventurous, most of the time tedious.

The basic gist of the case was that James Micarelli, a regional proprietor of nefarious deeds, was using his restaurant—Micarelli’s, of course—to traffic various illegal items into the Pittsburgh and surrounding areas. Ward knew from experience that guys like Micarelli were too smart to get busted from a wiretap. Most of the time, these people knew they were being recorded and just used it as an opportunity to feed false information to the feds. It was Ward’s job now to sort through it and try to find something—anything—they could use to build a case. Shit work, as far as he was concerned. 

The FBI usually gave these jobs to new agents, the ones hungry to get in the trenches and make a difference. Ward didn’t know why they had stuck him with this. He was approaching fifteen years of experience and heading straight up the ladder. Putting him on a couple hundred hours of wire tap analysis seemed like the waste of a fine resource.

He’d figure it out later. Right now, he just needed to get to work.

After setting his coffee next to the keyboard—a safe distance from the keys—Ward situated himself into the uncomfortable chair, put the headphones on, and opened the first file. His immediate reaction was that these assholes had to be faking their lame Italian accents. Nobody talks like that. They had certainly watched way too many gangster movies.  

A visual graph representing the audio appeared on his computer screen, rising and falling as the voices spoke. Ward didn’t know what the graph actually signified, but it gave him something to look at instead of staring at the grey walls of acoustic foam. The graph was actually hypnotic, soothing. 

“Have you seen that new chick, Ginger, over at the tit joint on Fifth?” the voice on the recording asked. It belonged to Micarelli. Ward recognized him from the recording they had played at the assignment briefing earlier. “That broad is stacked!”

Broad? Ward thought. Does this idiot think he’s Frank Sinatra, now?

“I sure did,” another voice answered. “Those things are like… Boom!” Both men bursted into laughter. “Boom, baby, boom!”

Ward sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. If I have to listen to this shit all day, my head is going to blow off!

His head didn’t explode. Agent Ward continued his job and did it well, keeping his internal complaints to a minimum. At about 11:30 AM he decided to give the recording review another fifteen minutes, then he’d take a long lunch. It felt like a Primanti Brothers kind of day. That sandwich was more than comfort food; it could make even the world’s biggest problems disappear, at least for a little while. 

The voices continued with their locker room banter and terrible attempts at fake Italian accents, and Ward did his best not to be annoyed.

Then something strange came through his headphones. Another voice, over the top of the other two who were talking this whole time. They didn’t acknowledge it as it spoke over them while they talked. 

Ward stopped the recording and backed it up a few seconds to the spot where the unfamiliar voice came in. He listened closely. Yes, it was there, a voice. But what did it say? It was low and crude, almost like a growl. A growl… Maybe they had a dog? He couldn’t make out any words, so perhaps this was an animal. He’d heard dogs make all kinds of strange noises, especially when they were stretching or trying to reach an itch. That was very possible. He rewound it a few more times, but still couldn’t make anything out. On his notepad, he marked the time and made a note to further analyze a “low, growling voice.”

Hearing something other than these two mafia wanna-be jack-offs talking about tits for three hours had sparked Ward’s curiosity. That was weird, and it came out of nowhere. Eleven-thirty rolled around, but he kept going with the recording, hoping he’d hear the anomaly again and get a better perspective on it. 

By 12:30 PM, he’d had no luck. Whatever the sound was did not return. The only new sound he had noticed was a grumbling in his stomach, reminding him he had skipped breakfast this morning. Ward could hear Primanti’s calling his name. He went for it. 

“Hey, Henry,” Molly, the waitress at Primanti’s, said when Agent Ward came in and sat at the bar. She walked up and stood closer than a regular acquaintance would. Ward always knew she’d had a thing for him (she only slipped him her phone number four times. He never called it). “Turkey or Cap today?”

Ward smiled. “It’s a Cap kinda day.”

Molly smiled and patted him on his thigh, uncomfortably close to the groin. Ward didn’t react.

He scrolled through his phone as he waited for that heavenly sandwich of glory to arrive. There were a few work related messages he would attend to after lunch, a funny meme in a group text from his old college buddies, and a text from his mother letting him know that Melissa Holland had recently become single again. He gave a light chuckle at his mother’s text. She was determined to marry him off and get some grandchildren out of him, no matter what. But mother was going to have to wait. Right now Ward’s only interest was the FBI. 

“Need ketchup, babe?” Molly asked as she put the sandwich down in front of him. It came on a small metal tray with paper underneath it, perfect for containing the mess he was about to make. 

“I’m good,” he said.

“I imagine you are,” Molly replied. “But I wouldn’t know.”

The sandwich looked like royalty seated on a throne. It seemed to glow. French fries, tomato, homemade coleslaw, provolone cheese, and Italian Capocolla, all squashed between two pieces of French Bread. It is perfection, and there is no other way to describe this sandwich.

Agent Ward took his first bite. It felt like the last day of school on a beautiful afternoon in May. Nothing else would bother him for the rest of the day.

He got back to his workstation in the audio room at around 1:15 PM and stared at the headphones sitting on the desk. Putting them on meant more hours of listening to two intellectually underdeveloped morons talk about sports, drinking, and tits—they spent more time on tits than anything else. But he had to do it. Once he got back into the groove of the assignment, the day would go fast. And he was definitely not putting in extra time today. 5:00 PM, out.

At about fifteen minutes into the recording, he heard it again, that low, growling voice, murmuring overtop of the other two voices. This time it was louder and more pronounced. He ran it back fifteen seconds and marked the time, then played the file again. That was a voice! It was unmistakable, now. The sound was no animal. There were syllables and words. He thought he could even make a few of them out. Ward looped the recording over a ten second span and listened close. After the fifth time it looped, he thought, Did I just hear that thing say, fuck?

He made a note in his notebook and continued on with the recording. His interest piqued. A challenge had arisen, giving him a problem to solve. His brain had needed stimulus, something to chew on, and here it was, finally.

Five minutes later, he got so much more than he had bargained for. 

“Your time is short, Henry Ward,” the guttural, sinister voice said, so loud it blocked out everything else on the recording. “Soon you will be a whore, trapped in the pit, servicing the desires of the master and his minions for the rest of eternity.” The voice broke into a high-pitched cackle, more wicked than any sound Ward had ever heard before, almost like a murder of crows, laughing in the air.

He shivered. Something inside had alerted all of his fear reflexes. There was much more to this than a simple voice on a recording. The shiver running up his spine, his racing heart, and the gooseflesh on his arms all told him so.

SEVEN

Glen pulled into his parking space at the station, just as the sun had fully awakened the day. Light, welcoming and bright, reflected off of all the buildings in the town square, making everything glow with warmth. The air smelled fresh. A hint of tree and flower blossoms danced within it, gifting everyone—who didn’t suffer from seasonal allergies—a fragrance that made everything feel just fine. 

Three to go mugs full of Glen’s special cappuccino sat in a carrier on the passenger seat: one for Lindsay, the dispatcher/office manager, one for Christian, his officer on duty today, and one for himself to warm up later as an afternoon treat. The cargo made the inside of his car smell like a fine Italian cafe. 

Lindsay’s eyes lit up when she saw Glen get out his police cruiser, holding the carrier of to go mugs. It was a rare treat when the boss brought in his special brew, like someone had just showed up at the elementary school with ice cream. “Glen’s got the good stuff today,” Lindsay yelled throughout the office.

Christian was at his desk down the hall, checking his email, browsing through Facebook, and not doing much of anything. “No shit?” he yelled back and jumped to his feet. He went up to the front to greet his boss and the amazing treat heading his way. 

Glen came through the main door and saw Lindsay and Christian waiting for him, pretending they weren’t. He got a thrill knowing his coffee made such an impression on them—on everyone, for that matter. “You two look like my kids on Christmas morning,” he said. 

“Morning, Chief,” they said, almost in unison.

Glen set the to go carrier on Lindsay’s desk. 

“Is that from the new espresso machine?” Lindsay asked. She—and most of the town—was at his surprise party last week when he had opened Vickie’s gift. The look on his face was priceless.

“Sure is,” Glen said, smiling. “You guys ready for it?”

“Man, Glen,” Christian said. “That smells incredible! If it tastes half as good, you’ve struck gold.”

Glen handed them each a mug. “I won’t tell you what I think. I want your honest opinions.”

They each opened the lids and took a close inhale. The expressions on their faces looked almost erotic.

“Damn, Glen,” Christian said after taking his first sip and savoring it in his mouth for a moment. “I don’t even know what to say. This is just outstanding!” 

Lindsay looked as if she was about to giggle.

“I take it you approve as well?” Glen asked her. 

“Chief, I can’t believe how good this is!” Lindsay said. “You should have your own coffee shop, right here on the square. Or at least sell it at some of the events. This should be shared with the world!”

Glen laughed. “I’m glad you guys like it. I don’t have time to run a shop, but I might consider opening a booth at one of our festivals and sell it for charity. Maybe give the proceeds to the church or something.”

He grabbed his travel mug and headed down the hall to his office. “Come on back, you two,” Glen said. “I want to talk about the schedule before anything else today.”

They filed into Glen’s office with their coffees firmly in hand. Neither was about to let those delicious mugs out of their sights, not for a second. 

“Have a seat,” Glen said from behind his desk.

Lindsay and Christian studied their boss and the way he suddenly seemed so serious. This sternness in Glen had come and gone a lot over the last several months, more so in recent weeks. He would be his normal, jovial self, then seem to catch himself relaxing and snap back into a more serious state, like he didn’t want to let his guard down. There seemed to be a new concern within him these days, as if he was on the lookout for something bad that could happen at any moment. It was clear he was trying to fight it, to not always be on high alert, but lately it looked like he was losing the battle.

“The Mile-Long Yard Sale is coming up,” Glen said. “I want to go over our security plan for the event.”

Cumberland Springs was renowned for its festivals and events, far and wide. Once per month at least—sometimes more—it was a guarantee this community would get together for some reason. May’s event was the famous Mile-Long Yard Sale. Tables from the community center were placed side by side on the street around the entire town square and half way up Parkin’s Avenue (Tom Miller, while home on summer break from engineering school at Penn State one year, measured the table setup and determined the length was a quarter-mile short of a full mile. Everyone he mentioned this fact to told Tom to shut up). Anyone wanting to clear out unwanted junk from their house could reserve a table for twenty-five bucks. Proceeds went to the Cumberland Springs Beautification Project (a group of lovely ladies who planted fresh flowers and hanging baskets all around town). 

Glen pulled up the scheduling program on his computer, then sat back in his chair. “I want everyone working the day of the event, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM and 4:00 PM to 12:00 AM, double shifts. The second shift is overtime pay.”

“Any reason, Chief?” Christian asked. “I mean, we’re usually all at these events anyway, off duty.”

“The reason is because that’s the way I want it,” Glen snapped. His eyes and tone both showing off his authority and attitude. 

Lindsay looked away, not wanting to get involved in the exchange.

Christian held up an open hand. “Chief, I wasn’t trying to dispute you. Just wondering what the sudden need for extra manpower is about. Something we need to be on the lookout for?”

“Yes, there is,” Glen said. “There’s always something to be on the lookout for. We’ve gotten too comfortable in this town over the years. It’s that comfort level that’s going to cause us to screw up one day and get burned. I don’t want a single incident in Cumberland Springs, EVER!” He didn’t realize it, but he was yelling at them, loud enough to cause an echo in the hallway. 

Glen had never wanted things to be this way. He loved his town and quiet way of life and hoped it would stay like this forever. For as long as he had been aware, the world outside had seemed uninterested in Cumberland Springs. The place was too boring, just the way folks around here like it. That had all changed a few months ago in the backyard potting shed where he had spent so many childhood summers. John Doe—well, Hanson Parker, as he later came to find out—had appeared out of no where one night and changed everything. He had imagined all along, somewhere in the back of his mind, that something like Hanson Parker would happen; that someone would come into Cumberland Springs and bring all the horrors of the outside world along with them.

After he finished his statement, Glen felt bad. He had suddenly realized he was yelling at them for no reason (there actually was a reason, just not a good one). The John Doe/Hanson Parker incident had altered him in a way he could not get over. He didn’t like this paranoia that had jostled its way throughout his system and popped up anytime without warning. He hated it and hated the way it made him act. 

He had recently started waking up two or three times during the night to check the locks on all the doors and windows. He looked in on Brandon and Sarah each time as well, staring at them until he made sure they were breathing. Another thing he started doing—which Vickie hated and voiced her opposition to nightly—was setting his service weapon next to him on the nightstand before bed each night. He’d put a newspaper over it, like that somehow made it discrete. Hanson Parker had altered Glen Crawford in a way he could not understand. He hoped in time he would return to his old self, but for now, everyone was just going to have to adjust. 

Christian and Lindsay said nothing; they didn’t see the point in stoking the fire any further. 

“Will that be all, Chief?” Lindsay said.

Glen could tell by her tone she wasn’t happy with him. It made him feel even worse.

“I’m sorry, guys,” Glen said. “I didn’t mean to snap like that. You didn’t deserve it.”

“No worries, Chief,” Christian said. “Everything ok?”

“Yeah, nothing to worry about,” Glen said. 

Lindsay got up and went back to the dispatch desk. She left her coffee on Glen’s desk.

EIGHT

Waiting rooms are all the same, no matter what type of business you’re visiting: doctor’s office, dentist’s office, the principal’s office, etc… A dozen or so uncomfortable chairs along each wall, a television in one corner—tuned to some daytime melodrama or pointless talk show—several Home Interior framed prints of outdoor scenes or vases full of gaudy flowers hanging around the room, and that poor girl sitting behind the window at the sign-in area (the waiting room is hell on earth, and she has to endure it for a living). It is a place of lost hope. You’re never there for a pleasant reason, unless getting a colonoscopy or root canal is your idea of fun. You do your best to keep your voice down as you make lame small talk with the person you’ve guilted into coming with you to this desolate place. Look, they have Golf Digest. Is that painting a Thomas Kinkade? My mother loves his work! Then someone in a pink or blue linen outfit comes out from another door holding a clipboard. Everyone waits with anticipation, hoping to hear their name, but they usually call the person who only sat down five minutes ago. What about the rest of us? Some have been here for a half-hour or longer! Then, without warning, the moment arrives. The girl in the pink linen outfit and clipboard calls a name. Though severely mispronounced, it is your name. Right this way, please. This won’t take long. We’re just going to poke you, prod you, shove a few things in your ass, and probe you, then bill you for everything your insurance doesn’t cover, which will be most of it. You’ll be right as rain by this afternoon. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Linda took Devon’s hand and kissed it. She could tell her husband was anxious, but it wasn’t his usual type of anxiety. It was somewhere between, I don’t want to be here, and, Let’s get this over with for Christ’s sake! But he was here, and that’s all that mattered. Devon loved his wife enough to get help, real help. The Veteran’s Administration, though they had helped some, wasn’t enough. Devon needed a dedicated counselor who could really understand his problems and show him how to work through them. He had put up so many walls, trying to bury his memories from the war, but that strategy had only made things worse. It was time to get it out of his system for good.

Could someone really identify with the things he had seen over there, just by asking him questions and taking notes? Could they understand what he had felt then and still feels now? Devon didn’t think it was possible. The counselors at the VA were all military people, and they couldn’t seem to help. So how was this woman—who had probably never served—going to understand his problems?

But he had promised Linda he would try for her. And there was nothing worth fighting for more than Linda. She was his life, not Iraq. That was a place where he had spent two horrible years in the service of his country, and now it was over. Nothing on earth could make him go back to that terrible place. Well, except for when he closed his eyes at night, or heard fireworks on the 4th of July, or came across a war movie on TV; Iraq viciously came back in those moments. Within the blink of an eye, he was back in that stinking hot sand, breathing air that seemed to melt the inside of his lungs, and watching countless numbers of good men and women get picked off or blown to bits. It was always there, waiting to pop up from behind his eyelids and scuttle him off to that God-forsaken place and the memories that had burned into his soul. 

How was this new doctor going to understand all of that? There was one thing for certain, at the first sign of a prescription, she could go fuck herself. Devon had had enough pills. They only hid his emotions inside of a fog and turned him into a walking zombie. No more! Most of his doctors liked to throw out prescriptions like Madi Gras beads, not giving a shit where they landed. 

Linda put her hand on Devon’s knee and squeezed, letting him know he was bouncing it up and down like a jackrabbit. He calmed a bit.

“Devon Harris,” a voice said, sending a jolt of adrenaline to his heart. “I’m Doctor Lightner.” 

She wasn’t wearing a pink or blue linen outfit. This woman was nicely dressed, with her hair worn up and wire-rimmed glasses. She didn’t fit the image he’d had in mind at all. It’s funny what the brain will piece together with a lack of information. He knew the doctor was a woman, but he had imagined someone much older and way less Hot for teacher.

Dr. Lightner introduced herself to Linda and Devon and exchanged brief pleasantries. She then invited Devon into her office. Linda kissed him and said, “I love you,” before letting him go. He looked back at her one last time before going through the door.

NINE

The ceiling needed to be scraped and redone. It still had that god-awful popcorn textured crap that was, for some strange reason, so popular in the 1980s and 90s. Was the idea to emulate the inside of a cave? Many older houses, from the late 19th century until the 1960s, had beautiful hand plastered ceilings with intricate designs, brushed on by old world craftsmen—artisans would be a better title. It was the finishing touch, the pièce de résistance, the conversation piece that completed the room and honored the creative spirit. Then the world became lazy. With the invention of a special roller and some paste, we now have popcorn textured ceilings, which are about as interesting as a bowl of melting jello. Reverend Allen stared at his very own popcorn ceiling from his bed as the sun came through the windows and shook him awake. The texture spun in front of his eyes while last night’s seven glasses of Jameson reminded him of what a fool he was. He cursed the idiot who painted that shit up there. 

What in the world had possessed him to drink that much last night (possessed… possession... demonic possession…) He was researching the demonic. That’s what had happened. And a simple drink to take off the edge had turned into seven doubles. Now the price of a maddening hangover needed to be paid. The question, “Why did I do that?” did not come out of his mouth, as it usually does for anyone who feels this way the day after a bender. He knew why he did it. It was the same reason he had done this so many times after Mary Ann had died: drinking numbed the pain. Though this time the pain wasn’t from the loss of a loved one. This pain came from the night he had met evil and evil showed him who was boss. He accepted the consequences of his hangover like a man. It said, “Sure, go ahead, idiot, drink yourself stupid. We’ll be right here in the morning to let you know it.” And that it did. His head throbbed like the head of a marching band bass drum, being pounded by an over zealous drummer. At least the throbbing had a rhythm.

Then an out of rhythm thumping began. A pounding. It was so realistic it seemed to carry an echo. It stopped, then started again, stopped, started… “Reverend?” a muffled voice called out. “Reverend, are you alright?”

He listened to the strange voice, still half asleep. It sounded oddly familiar. 

“Reverend Allen!” another muffled voice called out, this one more masculine. The pounding came next, louder than before.

“Oh shit,” the reverend said aloud. Somebody was at the door. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“Reverend, are you ok in there?”

Why now, of all days? He knew they were his parishioners, and he had to be there for them when they called on him, but couldn’t he just have a freaking day to himself? He took his pillow, covered his face with it, and screamed. The over zealous drummer in his head pounded the bass drum even harder.

Reverend Allen opened his front door to a blast of sunshine that almost knocked him back into his foyer. He held his arm up to deflect the painful rays. All he saw were dark silhouettes in the brilliant morning light, and there were a bunch of them. “Hello,” he said in a raspy, dry throated voice.

“Reverend? Are you alright?” the person closest to the door—a woman—said.

“Alright?” the reverend asked. He paused for a moment as his eyes focused. “Yes. Yes, I’m alright. Oh, hello, Martha.”

He looked around and slowly gained his bearings. There were six members of his church standing in front of him, looking somewhat serious for such a warm spring morning. “Good morning, all,” he said. “What a surprise.”

They studied the reverend for a moment, in his wrinkled t-shirt, disheveled grey hair, and stubbled face. Looks of concern were their collective expressions. 

“May we come in and have a word?” Martha Kosek asked. She had a look on her face she probably wore when disciplining one of her students over at the elementary school.  

“Well,” Reverend Allen said, slightly stuttering. “I was just in the middle of something at the moment. Perhaps another time?”

“This will only take a minute,” she said and stepped toward him. Her movement subconsciously pushed him aside, and she walked past him into the house. The others followed.

Shit!

Six congregation members of the First Baptist Church of Cumberland Springs guided themselves into Reverend Allen’s first floor study and stood waiting for him to join them.

“Just a moment, please,” the reverend said as he passed the arched entrance to his study and headed down the hall to the kitchen. He had to have water. The paste in his mouth was so dry it felt like his tongue might lock to the roof of his mouth at any second. And Ibuprofen. Sweet, sweet Ibuprofen, the only thing that might just save his ass right now.

What the hell were these people doing here today? He understood when the flock needed him, his responsibility was to them, but seriously, today of all days? This better be good. If they were just here over some bullshit church gossip (Lynn Peters is upset and doesn’t want to bake her coconut cream pie for the pot luck anymore. Bill Pritchard has been spending too many Happy Hours at Stoney’s Tavern. Jason Billmore and Alison Fells have been getting a little too close and we’re afraid they’re going to have intercourse!) he was going to toss them all out on their high morale asses and beg forgiveness later.

Four Ibuprofens and two glasses of water. Let’s see what this is all about.

“I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you all at the moment other than tap water,” Reverend Allen said.

Martha Kosek—the group’s apparent leader—looked over at the almost empty bottle of Jameson sitting on his desk. She stared at it for several moments, then slowly returned her gaze to him. “We’re fine, Reverend.”

“Ok,” he said, crossing his arms. “What can I do for you all this morning?”

Martha gathered her thoughts. Clearly she had rehearsed in her mind—maybe even aloud—what she came here to say. “Reverend, we are but a few members of the First Baptist congregation, but we speak for everyone. The change in your sermons over the past few months has not gone unnoticed. Your message has deteriorated from uplifting and hopeful to, well… dark, and… foreboding.”

Reverend Allen leaned against the archway and focused intently on Martha Kosek. The subject of this visit completely took him off guard. He chose not to interrupt or defend himself yet. Clearly, these people had rehearsed this talk well before their arrival this morning. 

“We love you, Reverend Allen,” she said. “We all truly do. Sunday morning service at First Baptist with you at the lectern was the highlight of the week for all of us. Your messages of hope and love and faith and friendship gave everyone the strength to face any burden life could throw our way. But for the last six months, you haven’t given us those messages.” She looked at the floor, then over at the Jameson bottle. “All you have given us since—”

“Since?” the reverend spoke up.

“Since your incident at the hospital,” Martha continued. “All of your sermons since then have been about evil and the devil and daemons and being on the lookout because evil can destroy our lives in an instant. You’re only giving us fear when you used to give us hope. Before the attack, you made this community feel like we were one family, capable of handling anything together. Now we all feel like we should hide in our homes, terrified of the outside world. And frankly, quite a few of the descriptions you’ve used in your sermons have not been fit for all ears.”  

Reverend Allen didn’t have a reply ready. At first, he thought of defending himself and his message. He thought about preaching to them now about the dangers of not being ready when the devil presents himself. But something suddenly clicked in him. An understanding. Ever since that night in room 337, when evil had physically tried to destroy him, he had been forcing his congregation to relive his fears along with him every Sunday morning. They weren’t the ones who were attacked and almost killed. For whatever reason, the beast had chosen him. Yes, getting them spiritually prepared for something like that was a responsible thing for a pastor to do, but there was so much more to his work than guarding against evil. Protecting them was only part of the job. Lifting them up, keeping them straight, letting them know it was all going to be ok in the end as long as they had faith… that was the job, too.

Reverend Allen smiled. “You know what, friends? I can’t argue with that. Not with one word of it.”

The group gave off a collective sigh of relief. They were worried they were about to put a wedge into their relationship with the man they had all loved and admired. But Reverend Allen did not begrudge them. They could tell in his face and in his tone he was not angry in the least. 

Reverend Allen continued: “For reasons far too impossible for any of us to comprehend, God allowed me to have a brush with evil. I failed that night. And for every waking moment after, I have been terrified. So what did I do? I projected my fear onto all of you. I let myself revel in fear instead of facing it head on with strength and faith in the Lord. I not only failed that night in the hospital, but I have failed every day since then. At the very least, I owe you my apology.”

Martha stepped forward and touched his arm. “Reverend, I know I speak for everyone by saying no apology is necessary. We only want you to come back to us, the way you were before. We need you. This community isn’t the same without you.”

Reverend Allen hugged Martha, then reached out to hug everyone in the room. “How could I possibly have fear with all of you by my side?”

After a moment of hugs and handshakes, Martha broke away from the crowd. She took the Jameson bottle, which still had at least four more ounces in it, and walk passed Reverend Allen toward the kitchen. He said nothing as he watched her walk by. Moments later, he heard the kitchen sink running, then the empty glass bottle hitting the bottom of the trash can. Sadness.

TEN

The air definitely smells better on the outside, even in the middle of this stinking city. Bus exhaust, wet dumpsters, sewer grates, body odor from that pack of hipsters who just walked by (or was that weed?). It all smelled better than the smell on the inside. Yes, it is a fact: the outside is measurably better than the inside. Anyone who denied that is full of shit. It didn’t matter that the inside was only a few feet away from where Gary now stood—on the street side of the giant metal door—and the air molecules were identical. That first deep breath on the other side of that door was undeniably exquisite. He was out. Out of that shit-hole where society condemns those who do not play nice with others—the ones who just can’t seem to abide the rules put forth by those who possess a superior intellect. He could walk where he wanted now, drive a car if he felt the desire, check out a movie, eat a burger, smoke a whole pack of cigs, pick up the Glock 9mm he’d stashed in the rafters of his dead girlfriend’s grandfather’s garage, rob an unsuspecting citizen, buy some drugs, and get back to the life he enjoyed before he got caught a few years ago and sent inside. Yes indeed, it sure smells good on the outside.

It was six years, four months, fifteen days, eleven hours and twenty-six minutes since that scrawny little fuck judge passed down his sentence on Gary Elmer. The prick said he was being lenient with the time, but for certain that short q-ball never knew what five minutes in a hell-hole felt like. In fact, he wouldn’t last three minutes out of a five-minute sentence. He’d end up somebody’s bitch in thirty seconds flat, and the rest of his godforsaken life would be spent servicing an ogre named Tiny (or some other name-play on his enormous size).

But that stuff was all in the past. Gary was free now. Well, as free as probation allows. He laughed at the thought. Even the fine people in nice suits from the parole board knew he wasn’t going to any probation meetings. There would be no surprise drug tests, no calls, no halfway house, no curfew. Nope, as far as Gary was concerned, he did his time and paid his debt. Now, fuck ‘em! It was time to get out there and have some fun, just like the old days. 

There was so much to celebrate and so much to be thankful for. He was walking around the streets of Cleveland, a free man, and by all accounts, he shouldn’t be. He should rot in that shitty place for the rest of his life, yet here he stood, smelling the free people’s air. You see, there is only one good thing about prison: nobody rats! Call it honor among thieves—to give it a classier moniker—but it’s true. Even if you do somebody so wrong that it’s not possible to make it right, they will not rat, ever. That’s how he got away with killing Ken Fedder and no one said a thing about it. True, the guards had their suspicions and there were questions and interrogations, but not a shred of proof emerged to show that Gary Elmer had shoved a sharpened plastic toothbrush into Ken’s neck, hitting the sweet spot, causing him to bleed out in a matter of seconds. By the time the guards found Ken in a large puddle of his own blood, staring blankly at the ceiling with a confused look on his face, the entire rest of the inmate population had already known who had done it, but, per the code, not a word was said. These matters get handled internally. That wasn’t the case for Gary, though. Lucky for him, his release date was merely a week away from the day he took out ole Fat Ken the Ditch Head (Fat Ken because he was upwards of 380, and Ditch Head because he had these weird grooves of fat rolling off the back of his bald head into his neck that looked like drainage ditches. They actually did act as drainage ditches when he would perspire, or take a shower, or when the blood ran from his neck after the sharpened toothbrush did its business). Ken didn’t mind the Fat part of the name, it was the Ditch Head thing that bugged him. That isn’t the reason Gary shivved his jugular, though. Their issue ran much deeper than simple name calling—although people have been shivved for less in that place. 

Fat Ken the Ditch Head was in for twenty-five, of which he had already served fifteen. His reason for getting tucked away from society was because of a drug deal gone terribly wrong with a rival biker gang that ended with Ken caving in a lesser man’s skull with a ball peen hammer. The guy hung on for a few weeks as a vegetable before checking out. The jury didn’t buy the self-defense angle Ken’s lawyer played, so they decided it would be better to lock the big guy up for a few years—like twenty-five. 

Gary’s reason for sending Ken to the other side of the veil had nothing at all to do with that business. It really was over something insignificant: dessert. That was it. Sometimes it was a fruit cup, other times a brownie or a small cup of pudding. On the rarest of occasions, it would be a slice of pecan pie. For some odd reason, maybe merely to assert his dominance or some other alpha bullshit like that, Fat Ken decided Gary would never have dessert. He would never be afforded that tiny crumb of comfort. And Ken’s brute squad of reject friends helped to enforce this decree with pride. If Gary didn’t bring his dessert over to Fat Ken first thing, even before he sat with his tray, Ken and the boys would tune him up later. Pecan pie days were the hardest. The glorious smell wafting up to his nose from those toasted brown pecans while he made his walk of shame over to Ken’s table—the other inmates snickering as he walked by. It festered in him like cancer. At first it seemed like a fair trade: give up a little dessert and they pretty much left him alone. But after a year of this shit, he felt disdain for Ken. By the third year, he had constant fantasies of beating Ken to a pulp. Then the plan to take Fat Ken the Ditch Head’s life had formed, giving Gary an unnatural warmth to comfort him in his cold cell.

It was a simple plan that went off without a hitch. In the movies, when someone makes a plan like this, all kinds of things go wrong, leading you up to the last second when the goal is finally achieved and the audience breathes a collective sigh of relief. This went nothing like that. Find him alone, shove a sharpened toothbrush into his neck, say, “Hope you enjoy this dessert, Ditch Head,” in his ear, and leave before anyone knows you were there. And it really was that simple. Gary kept his eye on Ken all day until a lucky break came when the fat fuck was in the shower. He walked in, pegged him in the neck, said his line, and took off unnoticed. He’d kept his hatred of Ken so low key that the guards, the warden, and the other investigators hardly suspected him. His name popped up as a remote person of interest, but with only a week left in his sentence, they couldn’t imagine him doing something so stupid to screw things up. The plan had worked, just like that.

As for the inmate population, that was a different story all together. They unanimously suspected Gary, no question. Six years of handing over dessert burns a hatred into the heart the average person would never understand. Everyone in that place knew how the loss of dignity could make a man volatile, unpredictable, dangerous. Several of Ken’s crew tried to plan a hit on Gary before his release, but he proved to be too evasive for them. That was alright, though, let him have a few days on the outside with his guard down. His day would come soon enough. Ken had an older brother out there named Caleb, who was much meaner and virile than his younger sibling. A quick phone call with a vivid description of how his little brother had died and Gary’s walking days would be short-lived. 

The six-year stint he had finished moments ago was the longest he had done in his thirty years of crime and debauchery. That’s because Gary was one of the smart ones. He was a child with above average intelligence and an attitude that couldn’t be tamed, even with medication. He had loving parents and grandparents he’d never given a shit about, friends whom he had stolen from and used for personal gain, and women he had made into slaves, living under his tyranny in fear of being hurt or even worse—one of them actually got the even worse part. And let’s not forget about the family he ran off the road one night while drunk off his ass. The oak tree their SUV plowed into survived the impact. The family did not. 

His long and heavy chain of depravity began in grade school, stealing from and hurting other students, assaulting teachers, doing and selling drugs, even rape. It’s not like an event had triggered his awful behavior; the boy was simply mean from day one. No matter how much love his family would give or how much counseling they could afford to send him to, it only made him worse. His high school class—Whittington High, class of 1995—secretly named him, “Most likely to get the electric chair.” Secretly because they knew Gary would do something horrible to anyone who said something like that about him. Maybe not right away, but he would get them, and it would be bad when he did. 

It was his intelligence that had kept him away from doing hard time. It kept him moving, kept him solid. He had a skilled knack for getting away with things, even murder. 

Evening turned the May sky into a deep violet with light brush strokes of reds and yellows. For a person who cared about such things, this would be a moment to pause and reflect on the wonders and beauty of the world. For Gary, it meant the sun was going down and shit was about to heat up. Darkness. All the best stuff happens in darkness. Screw that rigorous prison schedule of being at breakfast by 7:00 AM and lights out at 8:00 PM. Night-time was the time to live. His days would now kick off when this happy purple sky shit started and end when that bright orange ball crested the horizon, sending all the roaches scurrying back to their holes. 

First, he’d need to get himself square. There was a gun hidden in the rafters of the garage at Jenna’s grandparent’s old place. He knew this because he had put the thing there, right after he had shot her in the chest with it. She had tried to leave him. Gary had told her she wasn’t going anywhere until he was finished with her, and he wasn’t sure that day would ever come. Jenna had received an unusual burst of courage and had cracked him over the head with a crowbar while he worked on a car in the old garage one night. It would have knocked him out cold if she hadn’t hit into the overhead light first, slowing the velocity as the crowbar came down on Gary’s head. She was about to finish the job when he had hit the floor, unaware that he’d had a Glock 9mm tucked into his belt. He used said weapon to put two rounds in her chest. The entire event could probably have been considered self defense, but after all the shit he had put her through over the course of their two years together, no jury would have let him off. Jenna’s body is now decomposing in a 55-gallon drum full of oil sludge, mixed in with several thousand other 55-gallon drums no one will ever open at Dunnings Hazardous Waste Removal. 

As for the gun, if it was still there, he’d be in business. He could start his cash hunting spree without it, but that would mean getting his hands dirty right off the bat, and he needed to ease back into the life, not burst through the door. Usually when someone sees a gun, they just give you what you want. Without it, he’d have to take a more hands on approach.

The old house at the end of Hemlock Street looked abandoned, as did many other houses on this street. Overgrown bushes, untamed trees, and large strands of vines almost covered the house completely. This part of Cleveland used to be a nice residential suburb when it was developed back in the 1920s, right up until the economy had collapsed in the late 1970s. From the 70s on, these neighborhoods had fallen into decay and had continued on that path to the moment when Gary found his way here. The original idea for these neighborhoods was to provide nice houses that a steelworker could afford to buy and raise a family in, but when there are no more steel mills, hard-working families have no choice but to move on, leaving these once happy neighborhoods to fall into decay. Under the overgrowth, chipped paint, and broken windows—if you looked hard enough—you could still see the ghosts of happy families enjoying a piece of the American dream. That is until reality comes back to let you know the only people still here weren’t the type you’d want to meet in a dark alley. 

Ten years ago, when Gary had had his dispute with Jenna in the garage that sits to the left of the old house, her grandparents were still trying to hang on to the place they had loved for so many years. By the looks of things now, they must not have made it. Maybe they moved, maybe they’re in a nursing home, or maybe some degenerate squatting in one of these empty houses—now crack houses—rubbed the old couple out in their sleep. Gary didn’t give a shit. When Jenna brought him around to meet them for the first time, they didn’t like him, and he didn’t like them—he didn’t like anyone, actually. After thinking about Jenna’s grandparents for another minute or so, he hoped some degenerate actually had bumped the old fuckers off in their sleep.

There was no light or electricity in the garage, and the two windows were both covered up with vines and overgrowth. By now, the sun had fully surrendered to the night, leaving the subjects below to create their own light sources. The city government must have given up hope in this area as well, because none of the streetlights worked, either. 

Under the cover of darkness, Gary found his way through the heavy overgrowth to the wooden front door and cracked it open enough to squeeze his skinny ass inside.

It was rough going at first, fumbling his way around in the dark. God only knew what debris he was bumping into and tripping over. He did find what he identified as big tarp covering a large object, which felt like it was in the center of the room. Guaranteed, it was Jenna’s grandfather’s old Pontiac, the very car Gary was working on the night he killed the old man’s granddaughter. He wasn’t fixing it out of the goodness of his heart or to help the old guy out; his reason for messing with it was because the thing had an original factory four-barrel carburetor, and he was trying to lift it to sell to a car guy he knew who dealt in vintage Pontiacs. Hell, the old fucker never drove the thing, anyway. He probably never would have realized the part was missing, unless he tried to start the car one day. So, the car the old man had once been so proud of was still here under a tarp in his wooden, dilapidated garage, wasting away like the rest of this neighborhood. Gary noted the find. He might come back here in a couple days to see if there was anything of value left on the old clunker. Just from feeling around in the dark, he could only imagine what other kinds of treasures the old man may have stashed away in here. But that was all for anther day. Tonight’s mission was to find the gun. If all this other shit was still tucked away in here, there was a good chance the Glock was, too.

It took a lot of fumbling and getting poked and prodded by all kinds of sharp objects—he imagined he was dirty as hell too—before he found his way to the back part of the garage. He remembered he had wrapped the gun in a towel and put it in a small wooden cigar box, then stashed it in the rafters in the back right corner. Gary had a knack for remembering things, even the smallest details, which is probably what kept him from spending a lot more of his life in prison. He felt around the area, looking for something stable to climb upon. There was so much junk in here! After a minute or two, his hands had discovered pay dirt: a chair! A folding metal chair, like the kind you’d find at every church social hall in America. The thing probably still had “Property of Saint Leonard” or something stamped on the back. It was leaning against the wall as if placed there just for him to find. perhaps he had used this very chair on the night he’d stashed the gun up here. That part of the play, he could not remember. Whatever the case, the chair was here and at his disposal. 

Gary opened the metal chair, which let out a shrill rusty scream that pierced the darkness and made him look around to see if anyone had heard. There was no one to hear or even care, of course, but his reflex was still the same. Anytime a noise rang out when you were up to something nefarious, the common instinct was to check around. Something engrained in all of us. 

With a little effort, he got the rusty chair open, then stepped up onto the seat. It creaked and wobbled as he balanced himself, letting him know if he didn’t want a broken neck out of this deal, he was going to have to work quickly. 

Holy shit! Gary thought when he reached up into the rafters. The fucking thing is still here! His hands had found a small, dust covered wooden box. As he brought it down from the beam, a heavy object shifted around inside. His heart pounded with excitement. It had been ten years since he’d used this little hand cannon to blast two holes into his girlfriend’s chest at pointblank range, and the damn thing was still right where he had left it. Gary stepped off of the chair and opened the box. Though he couldn’t see in the darkness, there was no mistaking the feel of a Glock 9mm pistol wrapped in cloth. He didn’t want to mess with it in the dark, so he closed the lid, tucked the box under his arm, and fumbled his way to the garage door. 

Gary closed the large wooden garage door, which wasn’t easy. It felt like all the overgrown vines and branches had reattached themselves to the doors and were holding on for dear life. But after the right amount of coaxing, he finally won that tug of war.

A few houses glowed with light from inside, but the street remained mostly desolate. Gary walked down Hemlock Street until he came to Warwick Avenue, and after about ten minutes, he finally came to a streetlight. He wanted to see the gun in the light and inspect it before concealing it in his pants. This didn’t look like a place where cops patrolled anymore, so pulling it out in the open on this deserted street didn’t give him much concern. When he raised the cigar box lid, he found an odd surprise he hadn’t accounted for. After finishing off Jenna that night, he had taken a rag and wrapped it around the gun before putting it in the box. What he didn’t realize then was that the rag was coated in blood; blood, which was still very present on the cloth. But who’s blood? It could have been his—Jenna had whacked him pretty hard with the crowbar. It could have also been hers. Was this Jenna’s blood he was looking at? Was he having a tinge of remorse over killing her and stuffing her dead body into an oil drum? Fuck no. He’d always told himself the crazy bitch had got what she deserved. If she hadn’t hit into that overhead light with the crowbar before his head, his ass would have been the dead one. Gary smiled at the thought of what her body must look like now.

The Glock looked brand new, just like the day he bought it from his friend Jonas. No doubt the thing would need a good cleaning and oiling for it to function properly, but he wasn’t planning on popping off any rounds tonight. The gun would serve mainly as a prop to scare the shit out of whoever he was robbing. It could have been a toy gun made of rubber for all he cared. All he needed was the effect. 

He put the rag inside the cigar box and tossed it in a ditch. Five minutes later, he was back in that ditch looking for the damn thing. These days, if someone found a bloody old rag in a cigar box and decided to hand it over to the police, they might just get a wild hair to do a DNA test. He didn’t know if Jenna’s DNA would pop, or if anyone was even looking for her. But leaving a bloody rag lying around from a crime he committed ten years ago was sloppy work. Sloppy indeed. After a minute of searching, he found it, grabbed the rag, then tossed the box once more.