From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (163 page)

Starlene looked around at the children playing, at Dipes and Isaac watching her from the gate, a vacant Deke sitting off by himself, plucking at invisible blades of grass. She glanced at the barbed wire and then across the grounds, at the lake where the dead man had walked, at the crumbling building where crews were frantically hauling equipment up from the basement. Then she looked to the mountains beyond.

What would she say to the police or DSS? That a secret agency had conducted mind control experiments and brought the dead back to life? That insane ghosts had risen from the floor? That she had communicated telepathically with the dead? And that she had helped kill six people, some of them innocent and some of them guilty?

She would end up in the loony bin if she told the truth. It all seemed like a strange nightmare, and even though she could still hear the echoes of Freeman’s and Vicky’s final thoughts, they were fading, and she couldn’t be sure they had ever existed.

She couldn’t be sure she had visited the land of the dead.

And she didn’t know for certain which truth was the real one.

Maybe the Trust had already scrambled her memory and she didn’t know it.

She shuddered. She hoped, with all her heart, that
God
knew and understood. And she reminded herself that God didn’t send you anything that you couldn’t handle.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said to Swenson. “You leave the kids alone. You get rid of Bondurant. They’ll shut this place down, but the kids will go to another group home. All of them, together. And I go with them. If your Trust has as much pull as I think, you should be able to swing that easy.”

Swenson waved at a panel truck that was coming up the driveway. She motioned it though the gate and watched as it headed down the gravel road, kicking up small clouds of dust that danced like ghosts before being swept away by the breeze.

“Deal. We’ll make the pistol disappear, too,” Swenson said. “We’re good at making things disappear. Remember that.”

Starlene’s eyes grew watery. Swenson sighed and handed her a wadded-up napkin from her pocket. “Get a grip. Nothing happened, remember? Do your God thing and hold on for
them
. I don’t want to have to come after you. I’d enjoy it, but it would be a real pain in the ass.”

“I was just thinking of something Freeman told me. He said, ‘You carry your dead with you.’”

“Good one. Ought to come in handy during your next skull session. Now, excuse me. I have a lot of work to do. We can’t keep this incident secret forever, and we want to make sure the truth ends up just the way we want it.”

Swenson started to walk away, but Starlene grabbed her arm. Swenson’s face was blank, as impassive as the stones of Wendover.

“Tell them to give it up,” Starlene said. “People shouldn’t try to play God.”

“Who’s playing? You set us back a few years, but you know what else Freeman said? On one of the tapes, when he was six, and Kenneth Mills was first teaching him ESP?”

Starlene looked back at the kids. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“He said, ‘Daddy, is this what it’s like when God talks to you?’”

Starlene looked at the sky, a large blue thing stretching beyond imagination, endless and unforgiving, built of impossible pieces.

“Now get the hell out of here,” Swenson said. “From now on, this is none of your business.”

Starlene went to Dipes and Isaac and put her arms around them. “We need to talk,” she said.

“Charlie.”

“Yeah?” Charlie was in a bad mood. Nothing new there. Wife was diddling around with a manufactured home salesman and the eleven Miller Lites had been great last night, but weren’t so hot this morning. He’d busted his thumb with a hammer and, worst of all, this week’s paycheck was already spoken for. So the last thing he wanted was a jaw session with Jack Eggers.

Jack wiped gypsum dust from his nose. “Look at this.”

Charlie’s hip was pressed against a piece of sheet rock, holding the weight until he could get some nails in. “Come on, let’s get this room hung and get out of here.”

“This is screwed up.”

You’re the screwed-up one, Jack
.

Charlie pounded some six-penny nails into the sheet rock. Once the piece was tacked in place, he slipped his hammer into the sheath on his tool belt. He ran his tape measure to the ceiling. One more sheet and they’d be in the hall. And that was fine with Charlie, because this room was giving him the creeps, even with the quartz work lamps blazing hot enough to spike his eyeballs.

“Give me a hand here,” Charlie said. Jack didn’t answer.

Charlie turned. Dust swirled in the glow of their lamp. Jack stood in the center of the room, the light throwing his stooped silhouette onto the unfinished gray wall. Jack’s hair was white from the gypsum. He was staring at the floor.

“Ain’t got time for this.” Charlie’s hangover pulsed through his sore thumb like a truck barreling through a garden hose. “We got to get it taped and sanded. Painters will be in by Friday, and nobody can mess up a subcontract like a painter. I want to get my check and be gone, else it’ll be ‘Fix this’ and ‘Patch that’ till hell freezes over.”

Jack continued staring at the floor. “You can cover it up, but it’ll still be there.”

Charlie shivered, even though sweat trickled down his back, the dust making a paste on his skin. He and Jack had hung a bedroom once for the widow of an ex-cop. The cop had blown his head off with a twelve-gauge, got brains and slime and blood all over the wall. All
in
the wall, because the studs, insulation, and siding had been pocked with dried meat. They’d slapped three-quarter-inch sheet rock over it, taped and troweled the cracks, but that smell of death had been just as strong as before.

You can cover it up, but it’ll still be there.

That’s what the cop’s widow had said.

“What the hell, Jack, it’s coffee break.” Charlie’s throat was dry from the dust. He had a couple of fingers of Jim Beam resting in the bottom of his thermos, just waiting for ten-thirty.

“Nobody’s been in here, have they?” Jack said.

“Nobody but us chickens.” A crew was hanging some windows upstairs in the building’s west wing, but they were so far away that Charlie only heard an occasional shouted cussword or dropped tool.

“Then how did
that
get there?” Jack pointed to the floor.

Charlie’s tape measure slid into its box, rattling like a metallic snake.

Don’t look,
Charlie ordered himself.
Damn you, don’t look
.

Because he’d seen plenty enough funny stuff in the two days they’d been hanging this section of the basement. Little movements out of the corner of his eye. Sometimes he’d turn to catch them, but there’d be nothing but the softly spinning dust. That wasn’t so bad, he could chalk that up to the swimming eyes that came from hoisting a few too many.

Except he’d heard those rumors about the kids. What had happened here, and why the building’s new owners were so desperate to give it a facelift and move it on the market. To make it go away.

Charlie swallowed, the dust like gravel going down.

Jack said, “You’re in such a pissy mood today I didn’t figure you for jokes.”

“I ain’t joking today, I’m working. You ought to be, too.”

Jack looked up at Charlie. Jack’s tongue was set between his teeth as if he were thinking hard. Usually, Jack couldn’t get lost in thought if you gave him a Chinese map with nothing but left turns.

“You didn’t do it,
did
you?” Jack asked, then turned and stared at the floor again.

“All right, goddamn it.” Charlie’s voice bounced off the flat, empty walls and the echo slapped his eardrums. He set down the sheet rock and stomped over to Jack. “Now what the hell is it I didn’t do?”

Jack pointed.

Charlie looked at the floor. His balls shrank and his heart took an accounting of a lifetime of cigarette smoke.

You can cover it up, but it’ll still be there.

Whatever happened here still lived in the walls, just like at that suicide cop’s house. Charlie’s hands shook, and he knew the two fingers in the thermos wouldn’t be nearly enough. He’d be knocking off early today, calling the contractor and playing sick from the safety of his apartment couch.

Maybe if he drank enough, he wouldn’t be sick anymore. Maybe he’d drink himself sane.

The floor was covered in a fine silt of dust, marked by their footprints.

Among them, scrawled so that the concrete floor showed cleanly, was a single word:

Free
.

THE END

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Table of Contents

###

About the author:

We made it. Thank you for bringing these dreams to life in your imagination, making them real. I hope you will write a review to share your journey through the book, because another traveler might want to find the path.

I’m the international bestselling author of more than 30 books, including the
After
series,
The Home
,
The Red Church, Liquid Fear, The Harvest, Speed Dating with the Dead,
and many more. My books and their translations have hit the Kindle Top 100 in five different countries.

I collaborated with bestselling author J.R. Rain on
Cursed, The Vampire Club, Bad Blood
, and
Ghost College
. I’ve also written the children’s books
If I Were Your Monster, Too Many Witches
,
Ida Claire
, and
Duncan the Punkin
, and created the graphic novels
Dirt
and
Grave Conditions
. Connect with me on
Facebook
,
Goodreads
,
Twitter
, my
blog
, or my
website
.

I am really an organic gardener, but don’t tell anyone, because they think I am a writer and occasional survivalist nutjob.

Sign up for my newsletter for new releases, free books, and giveaways:
http://eepurl.com/tOE89

Talk to me at
[email protected]
or visit me at
Haunted Computer
. If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and give another Nicholson title a try. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and what
does
kill you is probably lurking in my next book. Read on for more.

Read these other thrillers because it beats than going back to reality:

AFTER: THE SHOCK

A massive solar storm wipes out the earth’s technological infrastructure and kills billions. As the survivors struggle to adapt, they discover some among them have…change. The first book in the After series.

Learn more about it at
Haunted Computer
or view it at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK
.

AFTER #2: THE ECHO

Six weeks after a massive solar storm wipes out billions, a small group of survivors must face a future that may have no room for them. A group of mutants called “Zapheads” are evolving to replace humans at the top of the food chain.

See it for Kindle at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK
.

THE HOME

Experiments at a group home for troubled children lead to paranormal activity—and the ghosts are from the home’s past as an insane asylum. In development as a feature film.

Learn more about
The Home
or view it on
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK
.

By Scott Nicholson & J.T. Warren

In a desperate attempt to save their land from tax foreclosure, Delphus Fraley and his daughter open a camp for at-risk kids, with the goal of building character through experience in the Appalachian Mountain outdoors.

But a strange infection contaminating the camp’s mess hall soon triggers a violent rampage. As the isolated camp turns into a bloodbath, camp counselor Jenny Usher first fights to save the children, and then finds she must fight to save herself.

Because this infection doesn’t just kill, it brings the dead back to life…

Adapted from Scott Nicholson’s original horror screenplay.

View it at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK
.

CREATIVE SPIRIT

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost. The setting of her dream is the historic Korban Manor, which is now an artist’s retreat in the remote Appalachian Mountains.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to Korban Manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban’s form out of wood, he questions his motivation but is swept up in a creative frenzy unlike any he has ever known.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

Learn more about the paranormal thriller
Creative Spirit
or view it at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK

Do you like movies? View the screenplay adaptation at
Amazon US
or
Amazon UK

DISINTEGRATION

When a mysterious fire destroys his home and kills his young daughter, Jacob Wells is pulled into a downward spiral that draws him ever closer to the past he thought was dead and buried.

Now his twin brother Joshua is back in town, seeking to settle old scores and claim his half of the Wells birthright. As Jacob and Joshua return to the twisted roles they adopted at the hands of cruel, demanding parents, they wage a war of pride, wealth, and passion.

But the lines of identity are blurred, because Joshua and Jacob share much more than blood. And the childhood games have become deadly serious.