Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (88 page)
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Authors: J. Thorn
About the Author
J. Thorn believes in the imaginative power of the
horror novel and the escape from reality it provides. He knows that embracing
the entire spectrum of human emotion, even its dark realms, makes for a more
meaningful and authentic life.
"J. Thorn has done it again. Not a person for enjoying horror stories, with trepidation I started reading his shorts in Voices from Beyond and I'll admit it was his voice that grabbed me first. He is a gifted writer...I
found myself enjoying every well-written tale, especially the unexpected
endings."
Mimi Barbour
Author of
Roll the Dice
"His stories are not the normal run of the mill horror, with the blood and guts, etc. They are the type that sneak up on you and in the end make you think "well I didn't see that coming." I would highly recommend any of his books to those readers who enjoy good horror, that engages the reader and keeps them guessing."
Robert Pettigrew from Amazon.com
"J. Thorn's gritty, edgy, writing style combined with his ability to develop stories rich in texture and depth make for an amazing reading experience. His books are not to be missed."
SB Knight
Author of
Born of Blood
Voices from Beyond
By J. Thorn
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Acknowledgments
Other Works
About the Author
Copyright
Table of Contents
Voices from
Beyond
Second Edition
Copyright © 2011
by J. Thorn
All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a
work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from
the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed
as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Edited by Talia Leduc
For more information:
For Brady and Brenna, the bestest kids ever.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Short stories
are dead. Short
stories are very much alive.
After dozens of rejections, getting a short
story published might pay $25 for a 5000-word piece; if you are lucky. The
amount of time it takes to write, edit, revise, and submit a short story is
never worth the effort.
However,
at the dawn of the eBook age, stories written in shorter form are making a
comeback. Dwindling attention spans and reader apps for mobile devices have
resurrected the form. The short story provides the reader an opportunity to
meet the author, the style, the feel. A collection of these short stories
makes the transaction worthwhile and digestible in manageable portions.
Each
of the stories included in this collection stand on their own and do not have
to be read in sequence. Several have won awards or contests. None have
appeared in print.
I
hope you enjoy the tales and a glimpse inside the depths of my imagination.
--J.
Thorn, June 2011
Childhood
fears never relent. Brian and I used to head into the woods with our BB
guns and shoot bottles in the days before child molesters, video games, and
helicopter parents. We often ignored the evil spirits lurking behind the
trees.
Targets
The
musky scent of gun oil spilled into the air as Jack raised the BB gun and put
the crosshairs of the scope over the faded, crinkly label of the bottle. With a
haughty puff, the BB sailed to the target, shattering it in a spray of colored
glass.
“Nice
shot,” said Kole.
“Watch
this one,” replied Jack.
He
spun to the right, locking sights on the row of cans perched on staggered
cinder blocks. With two pumps for each shot, Jack’s trigger finger
released a flurry of BBs into the cans. The wounded aluminum somersaulted
off the broken wall and rolled to a stop amongst the musky leaves of late
autumn.
Kole
whistled and pumped a fist in the air.
“Got
every one of those Al-Qiedy terrorists.”
Jack
smiled and rested the rifle against the exterior wall of the crumbling hunting
lodge. The oddly shaped stones of the second-story fireplace frowned at
the boys through a silent maw of black soot. Remains of plastic milk jugs,
yellowed Playboys, and emptied BB containers lay in a heap in the middle of the
hearth. The forgotten memory of bitter hops wafted near clusters of
emptied bottles. A rusted hook hung from the stone mantel, no longer
supporting a good-luck horseshoe. The three outer walls, in all stages of
decomposition, framed the remains of the hunting lodge, and jumbled cinder
blocks stuck up through the fallen trees like crooked teeth in an old man’s
grin.
Kole
leapt over a pile of steel rebar. One piece caught the edge of his jacket,
ripping the fabric and stopping inches from skewering his kidney. He
looked through the empty treetops at the sun held in November’s grip.
“My
mom said I gotta be home in time for dinner. Before dark.”
Jack
snickered and thrust his hip out at Kole while waving a finger in front of his
face. “Be here for dinner, Kole, or your dad will whip you good.”
The
two boys laughed and brushed the dust of shattered glass from the smooth,
concrete foundation. The northeast corner, the only part of the floor
still intact, remained clear of debris except for two upturned milk
crates. Jack sat on his, waiting for Kole to join him.
“Forgot
my watch,” Jack said.
“We
probably have half an hour before it gets too dark to shoot.”
Jack
looked at Kole, one eyebrow raised on an otherwise stoic face.
“You
don’t believe it, do you?” Kole asked.
Jack
shrugged off the question and pumped his gun with a blank stare. “They’re
stories. The teenagers like to scare us away so they can come down here
and drink, or smoke, or make out, or whatever.”
The
blood rushed to Kole’s face. He kicked at a pile of leaves. “Yeah, at
least they don’t break the bottles.”
Jack
dropped a green one, spilling drops of the pungent beer left to linger in its
remains. “That kid in 1986? You think it really happened?”
Kole
laughed and then looked up again as if to measure the descent of the sun. “We’re
fine as long as we’re here together, right?”
“Yeah,
man, best buds hang.”
A
swift wind rattled through the barren trees, pushing branches together with a
low moan of scraping bark. Jack pulled up the zipper on his jacket and
drew the hood over his head. Kole did the same.
“Wanna
set up another round of bottles?”
Jack
shrugged. “How many we got?”
Kole
pointed at each bottle sitting in the wet cardboard box, his lips moving with
each mental count. “Thirteen,” he replied.
“Rock-paper-scissors
for the seventh?”
Kole
shook his head. “You can have it. You need the practice more than me.”
Jack
flipped a middle finger into the air. He looked over a shoulder, ready for
an adult to reprimand him for the obscene gesture.
Kole
grabbed two bottles and stepped over the bricks to the left of the
fireplace. Decades of freeze-thaw cycles had knocked cinder blocks from
their mortar, leaving a narrow ascent toward the top of the stone
chimney. He reached high to set the bottles on the uppermost block when
his foot slid, and the bottle wobbled before tumbling backwards off the
wall. Jack winced when the sound of breaking glass pierced the silent
forest.
“Nice. Guess
we don’t have to worry about the extra one.”
Kole
regained his footing, trying hard to catch up with his heaving lungs. A
lone bead of sweat ran from his forehead and jumped off his nose. “You wanna
climb up here and do this?”
Jack
rested his rifle against the milk crate and walked through the leaves. He
sighed and moaned with each step as though walking through quicksand.
“Give
’em to me,” he said.
Kole
huffed and rolled his eyes before dropping off the back of the wall and landing
amidst the wreckage of moss-covered cinder blocks. He looked up at Jack as
he climbed higher on the broken wall.
Jack
shoved a brown whiskey bottle into his left coat pocket. It clinked
against his phone, so he yanked it out, tossed the bottle to the other hand,
and jammed it into his right pocket.
“You
sure we got time for this?”
Jack
stopped and looked down at Kole. “Go home if you’re afraid of getting in
trouble with your mommy. I’m staying here, pussy.”
Kole
looked at an untied shoelace, hiding a scarlet face from his friend. “I’ll go
home when I feel like it.”
“Good. Then
shut up and get ready to fire after me. Setters get first shots.”
Jack
reached up, hoping to get his whiskey bottle higher, when he felt his left foot
slip. His fingers grasped the rotten mortar, sliding from the weathered
blocks, and his right foot swung out over the gaping hole that used to be the
first floor. He saw the remnants of the concrete slab swing by, his milk
crate a mile away. Kole’s yell broke through the pulsing heartbeat
slamming his ears. Jack heard the bottle break while he was still in the
air, weightless and floating over the forest floor. He saw the top of his
white sock block out the sun as his body rotated backwards off the wall, and he
felt the stinging puncture as the crooked teeth of the hunting lodge swallowed
him whole. He blinked once before the black velvet cape of unconsciousness
fell.
***
Jack
grabbed at a bed sheet that was not there. The walls of his dreamtime
bedroom morphed into the lonely trees. His good eye opened while the
swollen one brought a wave of pain. He felt the tickle of dead leaves
brushing past his cheek and dancing around his head, bringing a heady tang to
his lips. Jack blinked, attempting to focus on the forest. His tongue
felt as though it were wrapped in cotton, and he pulled it from the side of his
mouth with an audible pop.
Kole’s
shoes protruded from behind the opposite wall, the tips of his boots pointed
skyward like those of the witch who had that house dropped on her. Jack
could not quite remember the name of that movie, but that scene had always upset
him. He looked to the right and saw Kole’s socks bunched underneath his
jeans. The hole in the knee was twisted to the side. He blinked again
and opened his mouth, but no words came out.
The
pain in Jack’s left ankle seized his body and sent a jolt through his
extremities. His heart lurched in his chest, and nothing but a slight
whimper escaped his lips. When he moved, the broken bone retreated from
the torn flesh, bringing another wave of violent spasms. Jack turned his
head to the side and vomited onto the leaves. Spittle of slimy orange
juice ran down his cheek and clung to stringy, shoulder-length hair. He
placed a hand on his stomach and discovered a sticky, damp patch of darkness on
the white t-shirt. When he lifted his head to get a better angle, the
woods swayed and buckled under him. His open eye adjusted to the night,
and he looked up at the sliver of moon hanging on the highest branches.