Scenes from the Secret History

Gil wanted to know how many were living there before he invited himself in. Not that it would matter much. Either way, he was going in and staying for a while. He just liked to know what he was getting into before he made his move.

  One thing was sure: He wasn't going to find any money in there. The old guy had to be next to destitute. But even ten bucks would have made him richer than Gil. He looked at the rusting blue late-sixties Ford Torino with the peeling vinyl roof and hoped it would run. But of course it ran. The old guy had to get into town to cash his Social Security check and buy groceries, didn't he?

  Damn well better run.

  It had been a long and sloppy trek into these marshes. He intended to drive out.

  Finally the mail truck clinked into gear, did a U-turn, and headed back the way it had come. The old guy shoved a couple of envelopes into his back pocket, picked up a rake that had been leaning against the Ford, and began scratching at the dirt on the south side of the house.

  Gil decided it was now or never. He straightened up and walked toward the shack. As his feet crunched on the gravel of the yard, the old man wheeled and stared at him with wide, startled eyes.

  "Didn't mean to scare you," Gil said in his friendliest voice.

  "Well, you sure as hell did, poppin' outta nowhere like that!" the old man said in a deep, gravelly voice. The cigarette between his lips bobbed up and down like a conductor's baton. "We don't exactly get much drop-in company out here. What happen? Boat run outta gas?"

  Gil noticed the we with annoyance but played along. A stalled boat was as good an excuse as any for being out here in the middle of nowhere.

  "Yeah. Had to paddle it into shore way back over there," he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

  "Well, I ain't got no phone for you to call anybody–”

  No phone! It was all Gil could do to keep from cheering.

  “–but I can drive you down to the marina and back so you can get some gas."

  No hurry." He moved closer and leaned against the old Torino's fender. "You live out here all by yourself?"

  The old man squinted at him, as if trying to recognize him. "I don't believe we've been introduced, son."

  "Oh, right." Gil stuck out his hand. "Rick...Rick Summers."

  "And I'm George Haskins," he said, giving Gil's hand a firm shake.

  "What're you growing there?"

  "Carrots. I hear fresh carrots are good for your eyes. Mine are so bad I try to eat as many as I can."

  Half blind and no phone. This was sounding better every minute. Now, if he could just find out who the rest of the we was, he'd be golden.

  He glanced around. Even though he was out in the middle of nowhere at the end of a dirt road that no one but the mailman and this old fart knew existed, he felt exposed. Naked, even. He wanted to get inside.

  "Say, I sure could use a cup of coffee, Mr. Haskins. You think you might spare me some?"

  George lets him in, much to his regret. But Gil regrets it more after he meets George’s tenants. Available in… The Barrens and Others

  Pelts

  Pa Jameson, in case you don’t see it, is the same Piney trapper from the Teen Trilogy. Some people never learn.

  Possibly the only politically correct story I've ever written. I realized "Pelts" was based on a trendy idea, but I wrote it anyway. It springs from the same values that fueled the very incorrect "Buckets" (in Soft & Others).

  "Where do you get your ideas?" It's a question we're all asked. I can tell you the instant this story began. It was the day I opened a copy of Rolling Stone and saw an ad placed by one of the animal rights groups. It featured an animal (a fox, I think) caught in a leg restraint trap. In a series of photos it showed a man approach the animal and crush its throat with his heel. The casual brutality of the act sickened and appalled me. I had to say something. And since I speak through my fiction, I began to write.

  “Pelts” connects to the Secret History through those fabled Jersey Pine Barrens. It’s been reprinted often (including a Best of the Year anthology) and was adapted for Masters of Horror on Showtime, directed by Dario Argento. (My goriest story ever, and he made it gorier.)

  It starts out on Old Man Foster’s land in the Barrens. You remember Old Man Foster, don’t you?

  Pelts

  "I'm scared, Pa," Gary said.

  "Shush!" Pa said, tossing the word over his shoulder as he walked ahead.

  Gary shivered in the frozen predawn dimness and scanned the surrounding pines and brush for the thousandth time. He was heading for twenty years old and knew he shouldn't be getting the willies like this but he couldn't help it. He didn't like this place.

  "What if we get caught?"

  "Only way we'll get caught is if you keep yappin', boy," Pa said. "We're almost there. Wouldna brought you along cept I can't do all the carryin' myself! Now hesh up!"

  Their feet crunched though the half-inch shroud of frozen snow that layered the sandy ground. Gary pressed his lips tightly together, kept an extra tight grip on the Louisville Slugger, and followed Pa through the brush. But he didn't like this one bit. Not that he didn't favor hunting and trapping. He liked them fine. Loved them, in fact. But he and Pa were on Zeb Foster's land today. And everybody knew that was bad news.

  Old Foster owned thousands of acres in the Jersey Pine Barrens and didn't allow nobody to hunt them. Had "Posted" signs all around the perimeter. Always been that way with the Fosters. Pa said old Foster's granpa had started the no-trespassing foolishness and that the family was likely to hold to the damn stupid tradition till Judgment Day. Pa didn't think he should be fenced out of any part of the Barrens. Gary could go along with that most anywheres except old Foster's property.

  There were stories...tales of the Jersey Devil roaming the woods here, of people poaching Foster's land and never being seen again. Those who disappeared weren't fools from Newark or Trenton who regularly got lost in the Pines and wandered in circles till they died. These were experienced trackers and hunters, Pineys just like Pa... and Gary.

  Never seen again.

  "Pa, what if we don't come out of here?" He hated the whiny sound in his voice and tried to change it. "What if somethin' gets us?"

  "Ain't nothin gonna get us! Didn't I come in here yesterday and set the traps? And didn't I come out okay?"

  "Yeah, but–"

  "Yeah, but nothin'! The Fosters done a good job of spreadin' stories for generations to scare folk off. But they don't scare me. I know bullshit when I hear it."

  "Is it much farther?"

  "No. Right yonder over the next rise. A whole area crawlin' with coon tracks."

  Gary noticed they were passing through a thick line of calf-high vegetation, dead now; looked as if it'd been dark and ferny before winterkill had turned it brittle. It ran off straight as a hunting arrow into the scrub pines on either side of them.

  "Looky this, Pa. Look how straight this stuff runs. Almost like it was planted."

  Pa snorted. "That wasn't planted. That's spleenwort – ebony spleenwort. Only place it grows around here is where somebody's used lime to set footings for a foundation. Soil's too acid for it otherwise. Find it growin' over all the vanished towns."

  Gary knew there were lots of vanished towns in the Barrens, but this must have been one hell of a foundation. It was close to six feet wide and ran as far as he could see in either direction."

  "What you think used to stand here, Pa?"

  "Who knows, who cares? People was buildin' in the Barrens afore the Revolutionary War. And I hear tell there was crumblin' ruins already here when the Indians arrived. There's some real old stuff around these parts but we ain't about to dig it up. We're here for coon. Now hesh up till we get to the traps!"

  *

  Gary couldn't believe their luck. Every damn leg-hold trap had a coon in it! Big fat ones with thick, silky coats the likes of which he'd never seen. A few were already dead
, but most of them were still alive, lying on their sides, their black eyes wide with fear and pain; panting, bloody, exhausted from trying to pull loose from the teeth of the traps, still tugging weakly at the chains that linked the trap to its stake.

  He and Pa took care of the tuckered-out ones first by crushing their throats. Gary flipped them onto their backs and watched their stripped tails come up protectively over their bellies. I ain't after your belly, Mr. Coon. He put his heel right over the windpipe, and kicked down hard. If he was in the right spot he heard a satisfying crunch as the cartilage collapsed. The coons wheezed and thrashed and flopped around awhile in the traps trying to draw some air past the crushed spot but soon enough they choked to death. Gary had had some trouble doing the throat crush when he started at it years ago, but he was used to it by now. It was just the way it was done. All the trappers did it.

  But you couldn't try that on the ones that still had some pepper in them. They wouldn't hold still enough for you to place your heel. That was where the Gary and his Slugger came in. He swung at one as it snapped at him.

  "The head! The head, dammit!" Pa was yelling.

  "Awright, awright!"

  "Don't mess the pelts!"

  Some of those coons were tough suckers. Took at least half a dozen whacks each with the Slugger to kill them dead. They'd twist and squeal and squirm around and it wasn't easy to pound a direct hit on the head every single time. But they weren't going nowhere, not with one of their legs caught in a steel trap.

  By the time he and Pa reached the last trap, Gary's bat was drippy red up to the taped grip, and his bag was so heavy he could barely lift it. Pa's was just about full too.

  "Damn!" Pa said, standing over the last trap. "Empty!" Then he knelt for a closer look. "No, wait! Looky that! It's been sprung! The paw's still in it! Musta chewed it off!"

  Gary heard a rustle in the brush to his right and caught a glimpse of a gray-and-black striped tail slithering away.

  "There it is!"

  "Get it!"

  Gary dropped the sack and went after the last coon. No sweat. It was missing one of its rear paws and left a trail of blood behind on the snow wherever it went. He came upon it within twenty feet. A fat one, waddling and gimping along as fast as its three legs would carry it. He swung but the coon partially dodged the blow and squalled as the bat glanced off its skull. The next shot got it solid but it rolled away. Gary kept after it through the brush, hitting it again and again, until his arms got tired. He counted nearly thirty strikes before he got in a good one. The big coon rolled over and looked at him with glazed eyes, blood running from its ears. He saw the nipples on its belly – a female. As he lifted the Slugger again, it raised its two front paws over its face – an almost human gesture that made him hesitate for a second. Then he clocked her with a winner. He bashed her head ten more times for good measure to make sure she wouldn't be going anywhere. The snow around her was splattered with red by the time he was done.

  As he lifted her by her tail to take her back, he got a look at the mangled stump of her hind leg. Chewed off. God, you really had to want to get free to do something like that!

  He carried her back to Pa, passing all the other splotches of crimson along the way. Looked like some bloody-footed giant had stomped through here.

  "Whooeee!" Pa said when he saw the last one. "That's a beauty! They're all beauties! Gary, m'boy, we're gonna have money to burn when we sell these!"

  Gary glanced at the sun as he tossed the last one into the sack. It was rising brightly into a clear sky.

  "Maybe we shouldn't spend it until we get off Foster's land."

  "You're right," Pa said, looking uneasy for the first time. "I'll come back tomorrow and rebait the traps." He slapped Gary on the back. "We found ourselfs a goldmine, son!"

  Gary groaned under the weight of the sack, but he leaned forward and struck off toward the sun. He wanted to be gone from here. Quick like.

  "I'll lead the way, Pa."

  Available in… The Barrens and Others

  …ends in February

  Reprisal

  Definitely my darkest novel. All about the seductiveness of evil. Jack’s story is now bumping into the Adversary Cycle.

  I should say something about the infamous Danny scene in the flashback when Father Bill Ryan enters that cold dark house (Menalaus Manor, later bought by the Kenton brothers of The Haunted Air) on Christmas Eve and finds Danny. It almost didn't get written. I couldn't get the words out. I developed an aversion reaction to my keyboard. Every time I sat down I'd have to get up and walk around the room. I did not want to write that scene, did not want to hurt that little boy, and I especially didn't want to describe what had been done to him.

  But I had to. Someone was trying to crush Father Ryan, utterly destroy him, but it takes a lot to do that to a man of his inner strength and faith. About the only way to strike at him was through Danny, the little hyperactive boy he loved like a son. Trouble was, I'd become emotionally attached to the kid as well. Hurting him was like hurting a real person. If you'll notice, the scene is described obliquely, out of the corner of the eye. It was the best I could do, and actually it works better than a full-frontal exposure. If you let the reader's subconscious fill in the gory details, the effect can be more disturbing than a detailed description.

  Like Reborn, the novel starts out with Mr. Veilleur, then switches to a simple groundskeeper… who has a problem with phones…

  Reprisal

  (sample)

  QUEENS, NY

  Rain coming.

  Mr. Veilleur could feel the approaching summer storm in his bones as he sat in a shady corner of St. Ann’s cemetery in Bayside. He had the place to himself. In fact, he seemed to have most of the five boroughs to himself. Labor Day weekend. And a hot one. Anyone who could afford to had fled Upstate or to the Long Island beaches. The rest were inside, slumped before their air conditioners. Even the homeless were off the streets, crouched in the relative cool of the subways.

  The sun poured liquid fire through the hazy midday sky. Not a cloud in sight. But here in the shade of this leaning oak, Mr. Veilleur knew the weather was going to change soon, could read it from the worsening ache in his knees, hips, and back.

  Other things were going to change as well. Everything, perhaps. And all for the worse.

  He had been making sporadic trips to this corner of the cemetery since he’d first sensed the wrongness here. That had been on a snowy winter night many years ago. It had taken him a while, but he’d finally located the spot.

  A grave, which was perfectly natural, this being a cemetery. This grave was not like the others, however. This one had no marker. But something else made this grave special: Nothing would grow over it.

  Through the years Mr. Veilleur had seen the cemetery’s gardeners try to seed it, sod it, even plant it with various ground covers like periwinkle, pachysandra, and ivy. They took root well all around, but nothing survived in the four-foot oblong patch over the grave.

  Of course, they didn’t know it was a grave. Only Mr. Veilleur and the one who had dug the hole knew that. And surely one other.

  Mr. Veilleur did not come here often. Travel was not easy for him, even to another part of the city he had called home since the end of World War Two. Gone were the days when he walked where he wished, fearing no one. Now his eyes were bad; his back was stiff and canted forward; he leaned on a cane when he walked, and he walked slowly. He had an old man’s body and he had to take appropriate precautions.

  Age had not dampened his curiosity, however. He didn’t know who had dug the grave, or who was in it. But whoever lay down there below the dirt and rocks had been touched by the enemy… the Otherness.

  The enemy had been growing steadily stronger for more than two decades now. But growing carefully, staying hidden. Good thing too, for he had no one to oppose him. But he did not know that.
He was waiting. For what? A sign? A particular event? Perhaps the one buried below was part of the answer. Perhaps the occupant had nothing to do with the enemy’s quiescence.

  No matter – as long as the enemy remained inactive. For the longer the enemy delayed, the closer Mr. Veilleur would be to reaching the end of his days. And then he would be spared witnessing the chaotic horrors to come. His Heir would shoulder that burden.

  A shadow fell across him and a sudden gust of wind chilled the perspiration that coated his skin. He looked up. Clouds were moving in, obscuring the sun. Time to go.

  He stood and stared one last time at the bare dirt over the unmarked grave. He knew he would be back again. And again. Too many questions about this grave and its occupant. He sensed unfinished business here.

  Because the grave’s occupant did not rest easy. Did not, in fact, rest at all.

  Mr. Veilleur turned and made his unsteady way out of St. Ann’s cemetery. It would be good to get back to the cool apartment and get his feet up and have a glass of iced tea. He tried to believe that his wife had missed him during his absence, but with her mind the way it was, Magda probably hadn’t even realized he was gone.

  PENDLETON, NORTH CAROLINA

  Conway Street had come to a virtual standstill. Like a parking lot. Will Ryerson idled his ancient Impala convertible between fitful crawls in the stagnant morning traffic and watched the heat gauge. Still well in the safe range.

  He patted the dash. Good girl.

  He glanced at his watch. He’d already had a late start for work, and this was going to make him later. He took a deep breath. So what? The grass on the north campus at Darnell University could wait a few extra minutes for its weekly trim. Only problem was, he was in charge of the work crews this morning, so if he didn’t get there, J.B. would have to get things rolling. And J.B. had enough to do. That was why he’d recently promoted Will.

  Will Ryerson is moving up in the world.