Descent Into Darkness Read online

  Descent into Darkness

  A Horror Anthology

  Collected Authors

  Copyright © 2017 by Tony Urban & Packanack Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Stories collected by Tony Urban

  Illustrations by David J. Schmidt.

  Created with Vellum

  You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays, everybody’s crazy.

  Charles Manson

  Contents

  Introduction

  Tony Urban

  Baba

  Sylvester Barzey

  Blood Note

  Steve Vernon

  Nail Gun Glissando

  Paul B. Kohler

  The Evil in Devil’s Creek

  Amanda Luzzader

  What’s Been Keeping Me Awake

  R. L. Blalock

  Mark of Perdition

  Gretta Penélope

  The Sun Makes Me Turn Purple

  David J. Schmidt

  Send in the Clowns

  E.E. Isherwood

  The Nine Lives of Captain Osborne

  L J Parker

  If They Want to Die, Let ‘em

  Rachel McClellan

  Simon Says

  Delia Rai

  The Door

  C. A. Verstraete

  Thirteen Horses

  Max Lockwood

  Zombie Apocalypse

  Joe Jackson

  Fetch

  Cindy Carroll

  Knock, Knock

  Brian J. W. Lee

  His Model Son

  G M Sherwin

  Ascension

  Shayne Rutherford

  Through A Dark Wood

  Patrick Logan

  Lock and Key

  Introduction

  I’ve been in love with horror for as far back as my memories reach. From watching Friday the 13th at the age of 6 to dressing up for Halloween as werewolves and vampires and, of course, Jason Voorhees, the horror genre defined my childhood.

  R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series brought me into horror fiction and after devouring all of them, I moved on to Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, John Saul, and more. To this day, while I enjoy a good literary novel, my heart belongs to horror and it comprises 95% of what I read.

  Now that I’ve become a horror writer, I was excited to meet other indie authors who shared my love for the genre that has so greatly shaped my life. I wanted to read and share their work and that is where Descent Into Darkness came to life.

  In this anthology I’ve collected stories from 20 writers from all across the globe. Some are cerebral, chilling tales that will have you afraid to go to sleep, and others are more visceral, in your face sagas filled with gore and gross outs. While every story might not appeal to every reader, I believe there is truly something for everyone and I encourage you to give each of them a try. When you find an author you like, please seek out her or his other work. Who knows, you might just find yourself a new favorite writer.

  So, dear readers, lock the doors, dim the lights, turn off the TV. Immerse yourself in these terrifying tales. And when you hear something go bump in the night or a scratching in your walls, remember that it might just be something, or someone, out to get you…

  Tony Urban, October 2017

  Baba

  Tony Urban

  Baba

  “She was strung up and gutted like a deer!”

  Phil spoke in a rushed, but quiet voice so that no one else in the school lunchroom could overhear.

  Mo wrinkled his nose and pushed his plate of spaghetti, which oozed red sauce, aside. “Dude, that's not funny. That’s not funny at all.”

  “I'm not trying to be funny, Mo. I'm serious. I saw her through the scope on my rifle. Her insides were spilled out all over the ground. She was cut open from her tits to her--” he lowered the volume of his voice even further, “Pussy.”

  I could tell Phil wasn't kidding around. That didn't mean I thought he'd actually seen an eviscerated dead girl, but I believed that he believed it. Mo was speechless as he scooped up a forkful of spaghetti and let it drop onto his plate with a wet splat.

  “What did your dad say?” I asked.

  Earlier in this tale, Phil informed us that he'd been buck hunting - poaching, actually - with his dad on White Horse Mountain. His father had told him he was making too much noise and sent him off on his own. It was while he was alone that he'd discovered the girl.

  Phil shook his head. “I didn't tell him. After I saw her, I tore ass back through the woods. I got turned around somehow and started yelling for him. He found me. Told me he had a huge eight point in his sights when my big mouth scared it off.”

  He rubbed his cheek where the remnants of a purple and yellow bruise lingered. “He was so pissed off he didn't talk to me the rest of the weekend.”

  “Damn...” Mo mumbled through a mouthful of pasta. Apparently, his appetite had returned.

  “You're totally sure it wasn't a deer. I mean, did you get a really good look?”

  Phil nodded vigorously. “She had long blonde hair that almost touched the ground. And she was naked. I know what I saw Kenny and it wasn’t a whitetail.”

  “Did she have nice boobs?”

  Phil and I both groaned. Mo continuously talked about boobs. In his defense, we were all thirteen years old so thoughts and visions of female breasts occupied inordinately large amounts of our psyches, but Mo was obsessed.

  Phil ignored his inquiry. “Did you hear about the girl from Sutter's Mill?”

  I nodded. The girl was sixteen or seventeen and had gone missing a little over a week prior. Her picture was plastered all over the nightly news and in the papers and my memory assured me that she was blonde.

  “They think she ran off with some boyfriend.”

  “What if she didn't? What if that was her?”

  To my adolescent mind, it almost made sense. Phil had his issues but I knew he wouldn't bullshit us about something like this. “You need to tell the cops.”

  Phil's gaze fell to the table where his own plate of spaghetti had gone completely untouched. “It's been three days. They'll want to know why I waited so long. Besides... I'm not even sure where to tell them to find the place. It was just... there. An old cabin in the middle of the woods. Nothing else around it.”

  “But you know where your dad took you hunting.”

  “Sort of. I mean, yeah, I know where he parked. Out by the old Lyndell farm. But after me and my dad split up, I just wandered around. It could have been anywhere on the whole mountain.”

  He looked up and locked eyes with me, his face confused and fearful. “I want you guys to help me find it. If you're with me and we see the place then I'll know where it was and that it's really real and then I can tell the cops what I saw.”

  Mo's head snapped back and forth between Phil and me like a spectator at a tennis match.

  “Nu uh, guys. I mean, I believe you Phil, sincerely I do, but I'm not going out there.”

  Phil didn't respond, didn't break eye contact with me.

  “Please, Kenny. Please!”

  Before I could a
nswer him, the bell signifying class change squealed. Even though we heard this noise nine times a day, Mo was so startled that he jumped backward in his seat and almost fell onto the floor. Phil glanced at him and I used that distraction to quickly gather together my books and pick up my tray.

  “We'll talk after school, okay?”

  I didn't wait for his answer.

  The final class before Thanksgiving break had ended and the middle school was bursting with cheer as my classmates dashed from the building. They ran like inmates on a jailbreak with no guards to stop them.

  I was in the middle of the pack and Mo was at my side. At barely five feet tall, I was the shortest boy in my class. As if that wasn't bad enough, I was shorter than almost all the girls too. I couldn't see anything but armpits as we were herded along.

  Mo tried to talk to me over the roar of the crowd. “We should go straight home. We wouldn't see him again until next Tuesday and, by then, maybe he'll forget all about it.”

  It didn't sound like a bad idea. My family was leaving in two days to spend Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle's farm in West Virginia. With a hundred or so miles between us, Phil wouldn't be able to come by the house. In that pre-wireless era, he couldn’t even call or text me.

  “Besides, you know there's nothing out there. Ever since his mom, Phil's been...” He twirled his finger beside his head in the universal sign for crazy.

  Phil had been different for the past year, but that was hardly surprising considering the circumstances. The previous Christmas Eve his mother smashed her minivan into a telephone pole at around fifty miles an hour. I heard my parents discussing it once and my mother had commented that there weren’t any brake marks.

  Phil’s mom survived mostly unscathed. Physically, that is. Afterward, she'd been committed to the State Hospital on Torrance where my father, in his own special way of candor, told me she was “Getting shocked in the head”. I didn't know exactly what that meant but I pictured something like Dr. Frankenstein resurrecting his monster via bolts of lightning.

  I once asked Phil how his mom was doing. He curtly replied, “She doesn't talk anymore,” and I never brought it up again. Both Mo and I, who were pretty much the entirety of Phil's social circle, had noticed that he too was prone to extended bouts of silence. He didn't have much interest in playing Nintendo, professional wrestling, or any of the things that had previously monopolized our lives. He spent a lot of time alone now and we were never invited over to his house.

  I knew that, if we bailed on him over this supposed dead girl, it would be the end of the friendship. I hate to admit it, but I wasn't sure if that was a bad thing. It would have been easy to cut ties with him entirely. We only had one class together and every other week we shared the same lunch period, but that was the extent of our forced, in school socialization. If we stopped talking, within a couple months he'd be nothing more than a familiar face in the hallway. Somebody I used to know.

  Before I could decide whether to side with my brain or my conscience, the pack of giddy students burst through the exit and into the bright, cold November afternoon. And, waiting on the sidewalk by the school buses, was Phil. How he beat us out the doors I do not know, but I suspect he anticipated that we might try to dodge him and didn’t plan to allow that to happen.

  He stared off into the distance, not seeing anything. I thought he looked so much older than either Mo or me. His athletic build and deep, blue eyes had made him very popular amongst our female peers and he enjoyed the attention. At least, he did before the issues with his mom. Now he didn't seem to enjoy anything.

  As the crowd dispersed toward their buses or awaiting parents, Phil spotted us and sprinted to our sides.

  “So? Will you go with me?”

  He was back lit by the sun, the light so blinding I had trouble looking at him. Or maybe that was guilt. I shielded my eyes with my hand.

  Mo slunk toward his bus. “I told my mom I'd go straight home and help get groceries.”

  Phil ignored him and focused on me. “Tomorrow. We can go tomorrow. You're not leaving until Wednesday and it'll only be a couple hours. That's all it'll take, Kenny.”

  As much as I wanted to avoid this whole scenario, the pained yet hopeful look in his eyes made me feel like a scumbag. He was my friend and he needed me.

  “Let's meet at the farm at nine a.m. You can show us the way from there.”

  Mo's eyes turned into giant, white saucers and he looked at me like I was the crazy one. Then, Phil did something I never could have expected. He hugged me. It wasn't the sort of awkward, effeminate hug boys give their grandmas, he held on tight and for so long that I grew self-conscious and pushed him away. A few classmates cast sidelong glances and I could lip read a variety of homophobic put downs. My momentary embarrassment washed away when I saw the joy on Phil's face.

  “Thank you! Thank you for doing this for me.”

  “If you can't count on your pals, who can you count on?”

  Phil didn't hug me again, but he did playfully punch me on the shoulder. He did the same to Mo before jogging to his bus. He looked happier than I'd seen him in a year. As soon as he boarded the bus, it was Mo's turn to punch me in the arm, and not playfully.

  “Are you freaking nuts?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Maybe I was but this felt right.

  “He really needs us to do this, Mo. Can't you see that?”

  Mo's face was locked in a scowl as he stomped away. “You're still nuts. My mom's gonna have a shit fit that I'm hanging out in the woods with you two retards when she's trying to get ready for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  The bus carrying Phil belched smoke as it backfired, lurched forward and rolled out of the parking lot. Phil grinned and waved to us as it passed by. Mo saw that, then looked back at me and chucked me the finger.

  Despite my good intentions, I felt sick on my stomach the rest of the day. At supper that evening, my father who was normally as observant as a blind squirrel, noticed that I was picking at my food rather than eating it.

  “What, you too good for meatloaf now?”

  I assured him that I wasn't and that I didn't feel well, which sent my mother into a tizzy, worried that I was going to be sick over Thanksgiving. I promised her I was fine, just a little queasy and wanted to lay down. She excused me and I moved into the den where my grandfather, Pop, watched Jeopardy. I flopped down on the couch.

  Pop was in his seventies but sharp as a tack. He lounged in the recliner, his feet in the air and his plate of food balanced on his stomach as he ate. He wore the red silk pajamas I bought him the previous Christmas. The shirt top sagged open, revealing the wiry, white hair which densely covered his sagging chest and bulbous belly. The hair reminded me of frost on pine needles. Dad said the pajamas made him look like a fat Hugh Hefner and Pop always replied that he took that as a compliment.

  One of the contestants took Potent Potables for four hundred and a mustachioed Alex Trebek read off the answer. Pop called out the question and was correct, as he usually was. I waited until the commercial break before speaking up.

  “Pop?” He looked away from the TV and in my direction. “Have you ever heard anything weird about White Horse Mountain?”

  He muted the TV, then set the remote aside. “Weird, how?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I wasn't ready to tell anyone about Phil's experience. Doing so would betray his trust, but I was more concerned that they would think I was nuts for even considering that his story was true.

  “I don't know. Some kids were telling stories in school. Like it was haunted or something.”

  Pop arched his lower back which cracked loud enough that I could hear it. I could tell he was crafting his response before giving it.

  “You know the Lyndell Farm? Where your momma buys sweet corn in the summer?” He asked.

  My breath caught in my throat and I couldn't speak. I barely managed a nod.

  “When I was around your age, every fall they used to have the carnival out there. Lot
s of flat fields to set up the rides and concessions. You ever been to the carnival, Kenny?”

  “Mom took me to the circus once,” I managed to squeak out.

  Pop chortled. His laugh was deep and phlegmy. He smoked all his life. Mom thought he quit but I caught him with his pipe on more than one occasion. It was our secret.

  “Circus is a kiddie show. Animals doing tricks. Grown ups performing stunts. The carnival, well there were parts of it suited for the kiddies. Games and rides, mostly. But the carnival was really for grownups. It was... dark. The folks who set it up, we called em carnies back then, they spent their whole lives moving from town to town. Everyone said they were drunks and crooks and gypsy thieves and that was probably true of most of em. A shady bunch, that’s for certain.”

  Even though he was looking in my direction, he wasn't looking at me now. He was seeing the things he was talking about.

  “They had big tents but inside there weren't any elephants with beach balls or bears on tricycles. The grown-up attractions were in those tents. I poked my head between the tent flaps once and saw a woman, naked as the day she was born, with tassels on her titties. She was spinning them like propellers and they were going in opposite directions. I still don't know how she did that.”

  He snapped out of the daze momentarily, glanced toward the kitchen. “Don't you tell your momma I told you about that.”