Horror Within : 8 Book Boxed Set Read online

  He’d given up on trying to recreate Momma’s blue-ribbon biscuits, but that didn’t mean he was going to admit his weren’t any good. They were still a reflection of his mother and no matter what the brats said around here, he was going to keep making the biscuits and forcing the kids to eat them. They’d eaten last night’s concoction which he’d actually baked last week. Something about “letting them age” like wine actually made them better, addictive even. Booger had certainly enjoyed them. The kids had darn near devoured them. Maybe they were sneaking back to the mess hall early for breakfast.

  He heard someone breathing.

  Quickly, he turned the knobs on the stove so all the gas burners popped into blazing life, throwing the kitchen into bobbing amber shadows. He turned back around, the flames warming him, but no one was there. Maybe he had imagined the foot and that weird laugh. The breathing. Hoo-hah, maybe he was still dreaming. Mama always said anything was possible. She’d been dead for fifteen years. Maybe she’d come back to haunt him. Nettled about the biscuits.

  Except Mama wouldn’t be caught dead half-naked, and she sure didn’t tolerate tomfoolery in the kitchen.

  That childish chuckle came again from the opposite side of the counter. It sounded liquidy, like someone with a lung full of phlegm. Like he had a cold and was infecting all the biscuits.

  “You know I hear you, right?” he said. “You best not be messing with my grub.”

  On the counter was a large Tupperware tray. He popped the corner and looked in on the biscuits he’d made. All there. They looked all right except—

  Except for the one with the purple fuzz on it.

  He picked it up. Black dots speckled the purple splotch. What in tarnation was that from? He sniffed it. The missing ingredient, perhaps?

  Maybe that pinch of starch he’d added had done the trick. Mama’s biscuits never had any purple splotches, but Momma’s never sat out on the counter for a couple of weeks, either. Nobody could resist them for that long.

  Something scurried across the floor in rapid, wet slaps to the opposite end of the kitchen. Booger moved as fast as he could, but his flashlight didn’t catch anything. He checked all around the island workspace. Empty.

  In the flickering light of the stove flames, the purple mold on the biscuit appeared to quiver.

  “Well, if I’m up anyway, maybe I ought to have a midnight snack,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In the bunkhouse, Sven was on his bed, flipping through thePlayboy while Gregory paced and Pedro sat on the top bunk and swung his legs in what Sven hoped was completely out of rhythm to the music he was listening to on his iPod. Otherwise, that boy was listening to some meth-head metal done to a reggae beat while suffering an epileptic seizure.

  “Where is that noodledick?” Gregory asked for maybe the hundredth time.

  “Chill out, man. He’ll be back,” Sven said.

  “He took the joint. He’s probably out there smoking it himself.”

  Sven smiled. “Don’t worry. Plenty more where that came from.” He pulled out a bag of weed. “Trouble is, how we going to burn it?”

  Pedro looked up, saw the bag, and tugged out his earbuds. He jumped down from the bunk. “Why you holding out on us, compadre?”

  “I scored it from Wallace.”

  “Hell, man, I thought they ran the drug dogs over our mail.”

  “This walked right through the front gate,” Sven said. “Wallace is a local, and his dad’s some hot-shot lawyer. Got him sent here instead of juvenile hall.”

  “That little wuss? What was he up for, shoplifting or something faggy like that?”

  “The way I hear it, he was up for felony assault.”

  “Bullshit,” Gregory said.

  “Whatever.” Sven sniffed the baggie. The sweet smell held that promise of better times, of escape. “You gotta admit, the dude has some sweet connections.”

  “Must give you some serious munchies. Did you see the way Wallace was slamming down dinner? He musta ate three of them goddamn biscuits.”

  “Booger’s biscuits. That fat-ass cook was sure proud of those things.”

  Sven sat up. How could he have been so stupid. The answer was right there. “The kitchen,” he said. “All the stoves run off gas. That means a pilot light—”

  “Holy smoke-a-rolly, Batman!” Gregory shouted.

  He and Pedro high-fived each other and Pedro did some stupid little dance. Looked like the two of them were doing some kind of Egyptian mating dance or something. “You sweethearts can save that for lights out. Right now, let’s go get a major buzz on.”

  Pedro stopped him before he’d gone two feet. “What if somebody catches us?”

  Sven sighed. He held up the baggie. “How’s reality working out for you so far? Or are you buying the happy horseshit slogan, ‘Meat Camp: Clean air and clean minds’?”

  Pedro hesitated, nodded. “Let’s roll, man.”

  Sven led the way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The cleanup took longer than expected. When Lewis had tried to move the wrapped dog off the autopsy table, a pile of organs spilled out of the wrapping and gooped onto the floor. Samantha had shaken her head like he was the town idiot or something. He cleaned up the guts and left the dog on the table beneath the plastic sheeting. Experts might want to examine the corpse anyway. Not that there were many of those anywhere nearby.

  Samantha had her eye stuck to the only microscope they owned. She’d been looking at something for a while and making those “mmmhm” sounds she always made when she found something interesting or particularly delicious.

  “Lewis. Come look at this.”

  He sighed. “I was hoping you were eating a cookie or something.”

  “You have to see this.”

  “It’s sleepy time. Can’t it wait?”

  “The tissue sample from the dog’s brain . . .”

  “The one we’re supposed to send upstate—that tissue sample, you mean?”

  “Are you going to look or not?”

  He looked. What he saw was a bit unnerving. The cells were dividing rapidly, reassembling into deformed versions of themselves, and dividing again. More than unnerving, actually. Freaky.

  “Whoa,” he said. “That’s some serious cellular mutation.”

  “Should we call it in?”

  “Hold on,” Lewis said. His hand shook just slightly. Samantha saw it, too. “No need to start a panic.”

  “What if it’s contagious?”

  The dog waited on the autopsy table. Should have cremated it. “Even Ebola doesn’t jump that easily. We’re fine.”

  Samantha went to the phone. “I’m at least reporting it to the sheriff’s office. They should keep an eye out on the Meat Camp area. There might be more stray dogs around, and if this spreads . . .”

  “Sure,” Lewis said. His voice sounded weak. He looked through the microscope again.

  Even Ebola doesn’t jump that easily.

  Sure, but this wasn’t Ebola. Who knew how it jumped?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Delphus trailed behind the sheriff and his daughter the whole way to camp. He followed them through the camp gate where the metal sign reading “Meat Camp” dangled from a crooked post with rust splotches forming one of those Rorschach ink blots.

  The boys’ bunkhouse was the first building on the trail. The door was open and the building was dark. “They’s supposed to be in before breakfast,” Delphus said. “Might be the ones who trashed our house. A little vandalism to get the blood flowing and the stomach grumbling.”

  The sheriff walked to the front door, peered in. Eva Dean stood back a few steps. Delphus wished he had his shotgun.

  “Who’s in charge out here?” the sheriff asked.

  “The counselors,” Eva Dean said. “Mark and Jenny.”

  “We’d better let them know about the Jenkins boy.”

  Delphus snorted up some snot and spat it out. “You folks go on. I’m going to have a look a
round.”

  “Daddy, don’t go doing anything foolish. We don’t know it was these boys.”

  “That’s right, Delphus,” Hightower said. “Let the law handle it.”

  “Sometimes it comes down to God’s law,” Delphus said. “Down to good and evil.”

  “They’re not evil, Daddy. They’re just kids.”

  Delphus smiled. His little girl always was a softie. If there was true evil to be found anywhere, it was in the young. That was a fact he knew to be true.

  “Come on,” the sheriff said to Eva Dean and took her arm. “Let’s go check with the counselors.”

  Delphus watched the two of them head up the trail to the other cabins. Eva Dean glanced back at him but Delphus waved her off. He wasn’t some pantywaist. Old, sure, but not a feeb. Not yet anyway.

  He entered the bunkhouse. There was enough light for him to find the battery-powered lamp and switch it on. The place was barren like all the places on this camp—Eva Dean’s idea of simplistic living, getting back to the basics and whatnot, purifying the tortured adolescent soul. Well, thePlayboy on the lower bunk didn’t quite fit with that philosophy.

  Delphus picked it up, flipped to the centerfold. Wasn’t his philosophy, anyway. He could barely take a fancy to such things anymore. His tastes had changed somewhat since Eva Dean’s mother passed on. He tossed the magazine down and wiped his fingers on his overalls.

  Under the bed, he found a footlocker. Inside, among rolled socks and scrunched underwear, was a framed photograph of him and Eva Dean. It had been on that pedestal stand with the phone. He’d been too busy with the mess to notice it was gone. The glass had been shattered right over Eva Dean’s face, the glass cracking outward to the entire picture. Torn pieces of the patchwork quilt lay beneath the picture.

  Beneath that was a torn dog collar. Delphus picked it up. The brass name plate flickered in the light. It read: Lucy.

  Delphus’s hand clenched around the collar as if in sudden reflex.

  “You bastards are in for it now,” he said.

  He ran out the doorway with more strength than he’d felt in years.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The handle was rattling again. Jenny was no longer even slightly amused. She was getting pissed. “Go away!” she yelled. “I’ll call Eva Dean!”

  She picked up her cell phone. No signal. She tossed it back down again. The whole door vibrated, someone throwing himself against. “Enough, Mark! Stop! This is stupid! You’re scaring me!”

  She backed up to the wall. The bows and arrows were up there next to the target with the two arrows she’d stuck into the bulls-eye during yesterday’s practice. All those tough city kids missed their targets by miles. Even Mark couldn’t get any closer than the outer circle.

  Make that two bulls-eyes you can’t hit, loser.

  From behind the door came slobbery chuckling noises. Not just one person out there. Asshole recruited the boys to help. Males were so pathetic, all testosterone and immaturity.

  “Mark! I’ll make sure you get fired.”

  The banging turned frantic. The door thudded against its thin hinges. It was going to break wide any moment. Then what? What was Mark’s plan? Bust in here, scare the hell out of her, and then expect her to fall into his arms? More like fall into bed.

  The door shook in a reverberating crash.

  Maybe he was going to break in here and force himself upon her. He wasn’t a rapist, at least she hoped he wasn’t, but some men could only take so much before they snapped. Maybe he thought she’d like that sort of thing, being dominated. That didn’t excuse such sociopathic behavior, but it was reality.

  “I’m serious!” she yelled.

  She grabbed a bow from the wall and notched an arrow. She aimed directly at the door. If he broke through, she’d shoot one into the door frame. That ought to stop him in his tracks. If not? Well, she could notch another arrow in a blink without even looking.

  The door trembled with successive hits and then one heavySLAM.

  The door stood still.

  Playing possum. She wasn’t an idiot. She took a few steps toward the door but not too many, and she was careful to keep the arrow ready to fly. “Are you done, Mark? Because this is really stupid and I’m not in the mood.”

  A soft sound came from the other side of the door.

  “Mark?” She stepped closer.

  “Jenny . . .”

  A few more steps. “Mark? What’s wrong?”

  “Help…me . . .”

  “Real funny, Mark.”

  “No, please . . . Serious.”

  A step closer. The floor creaked.

  “I’m hurt . . . Lemme in . . .Please.”

  “If this is your idea of a sick joke—”

  A pool of blood leaked under the door. It looked brown in the lamp light. Was that real? Could he really be hurt? Would he actually go to such lengths as fake blood to play some stupid joke on her?

  Probably, but—

  “Jenny,” Mark’s voice strained. “Please.”

  She turned the lock and before she could grab the handle, the door swung open. Mark slid along the door frame and thumped to the floor. His shirt hung in torn, bloody shreds. Deep lacerations scored his face and shoulders. Blood gushed from his nose, which looked oddly bent. Three slashes on his forehead looked like the work of some garden tool.

  He reached for her with one bloody arm. The hand was missing his index and middle fingers. Two gory stumps wiggled. Like they’d been bitten off.

  Jenny dropped the bow and arrow and kneeled. “Jesus Christ, Mark.”

  “Hurry,” he strained as if running out of breath. “They’re out there . . .”

  She didn’t see anything outside but now that she was looking, there seemed to be an awful lot of blood on the ground. Was all that from Mark? What the hell had done this to him?

  Something moved along the edge of the trees, a flitting blur of pale skin. A sound like a wet chuckling echoed through the trees. A night call some demonic bird might make.

  Or something worse.

  She grabbed Mark under the arms and pulled him inside, finally giving him the hug she’d been denying. His blood streaked across the doorway. His foot caught on the edge of the door and she had to strain against his bending foot but eventually it slipped off the frame and she fell back with a hard thunk.

  She was up immediately, slamming the door shut and locking it. She took a breath and went to Mark.

  “What was it? A bear?”

  “Wallace . . .” he whispered.

  She touched his face. It was cold. “Don’t worry, I’ll watch out for the kids. You just—”

  Mark’s hand came up and grabbed her shirt, pulling it halfway down her chest and pulling her toward him. Red splotches bloomed on his face. The fingerless stumps spurted blood across her throat. He wheezed and coughed a spray of blood on her cheeks. Some of it burned her right eye and made it tear.

  “Listen!” he shouted. “Wallace . . .” Energy drained from him as quickly as the color leaked from his face. His head fell back on the floor.

  “I’ll get help. Just hold on.”

  She wiped her sleeve over her face and grabbed the pillow off the bed. She yanked off the pillowcase and began tearing it into makeshift bandages. When she had several, she looked at Mark and froze. His body was torn in deep slashes. A rib bone was incredibly white against the seeping blood. Flaps of skin dangled like open pockets.

  Whatever had done this had been super strong. Or super motivated.

  She laid a swatch of pillowcase on his chest and it stuck to the blood and was saturated in a few seconds. “Oh, Jesus, Mark, I—”

  “The door . . .” he said in a voice going distant.

  For a second, she thought he was speaking in code, or slipping into delusions, and then she looked back at the door. The knob was moving. The door was latched but if whatever had gotten Mark was out there, the lock wasn’t going to do much good.

  The knob turned all the
way and the door pushed against the lock. Jenny reached over Mark to grab the bow and notched an arrow. Her hands were incredibly steady.

  The door smacked open, the lock snapping free and bouncing off the wall.

  Jenny let fly.

  Sheriff Hightower was in the middle of saying “Police, is anyone—” when the arrow slammed into the doorpost with a dullthwonkand vibrated back and forth six inches from his face.

  Time froze for a moment. She could have killed the sheriff. That recognition dawned on her very gradually at first and then suddenly in one freezing rush of cold wind that made her drop the bow and arrow and rub her arms. The shakes started there and spread down to her legs.

  Momma had never told her anything about this.

  Eva Dean appeared from behind the sheriff. Her gaze went from Jenny down to Mark. “Sweet Jesus in a ragtop convertible.”

  She went to him as if she knew exactly what to do but then she was kneeling beside him with her hands levitating over him like she possessed some kind of mystical, healing magic. Mark gurgled a string of blood bubbles and reached up toward Jenny. She hesitated and let him touch her. She felt his warm blood against her ear.

  “Wallace . . .” he said.

  Jenny wondered if whatever had gotten Mark had gotten Wallace, too.

  “I think it was some kind of wild animal,” Jenny said, hoping that saying it would make it true. Please let it be some rabid animal. Something easy to understand. Something easy to kill.

  “Is that why you shot at me?” the sheriff asked, now holding his weapon and looking out at the forest. “Thought a bear was using the doorknob?”

  “Call an ambulance,” Eva Dean said. “Immediately.”

  “There’s no signal,” Jenny said.

  Mark strained off the floor a few inches. “Sorry, Jenny . . .” He hiccuped a string of blood across his chin. Then he closed his eyes and dropped back to the floor.