Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (41 page)

“He’s gone now, honey,” came the
smooth, reassuring voice of his mother.

“Where?” asked Samuel, a boy of five.

“Up to heaven, with God.”

Samuel squeezed his wolfie doll tight.
He inhaled the scent of stuffed animal and the smell of his sheets.

“Maybe Grandpa wants wolfie doll with
him.”

Samuel’s mother smiled. She dabbed the
corner of each eye with a balled tissue.

“He’d want you to keep wolfie, hon.
Grandpa won’t need him in heaven. God will give him everything he needs.”

Samuel nodded. He looked down again at
the corpse of his grandfather in the casket. The white satin lining made it
appear as though the man was floating within a cloud. Samuel noticed the
wedding ring and yellow, tobacco-stained fingertips of the man who had always
given him spare nickels from his pockets. Samuel thought about the way the
coins felt warm in his palm.

“Will he get his smokes in heaven?”
Samuel asked.

“He will,” his mother said.

Several other goliaths towered over
Samuel as they approached the casket to pay their final respects. Two men wore
dark green uniforms slathered in medals of various sizes and shapes.
They left the folded, triangular American flag next to the casket.

“Your gramps fought like hell for his
country in World War Two,” one man said. The other simply stood with a face of stone.

Samuel’s mother patted her son on the
head and bowed slightly to the uniformed man that spoke.

More adults came forward, each one
speaking to Samuel’s mother with words meant for him.

That little boy closed his eyes, and when
he opened them, Major sat on the ground, wrapping his wounds and staring at the
tree line where the alpha male disappeared.

***

“Are you hurt?” Samuel asked.

Major shrugged. “They bit me.”

“I hurt the alpha male, but he ran away,”
Samuel said.

“I know. It’s okay. You and him ain’t
done yet. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

“From who?”

Major just shrugged and continued
wrapping a strip of cloth around his left wrist.

“Should we get going and find the
others?” Samuel asked.

“I need to rest first. I think we bought
ourselves some time.”

“How much time?”

“Enough.”

Samuel nodded as the last of his
adrenaline subsided. He felt gnawing aches and pains coming from everywhere.
His eyes felt heavy, and his legs became pillars of stone.

“Seems like we both need another night,”
Major said.

Samuel walked back into the cabin. He
dropped his body to the bunk and fell into a deep sleep.

Chapter 7

Samuel was awakened by his own snores,
the sound pulling him from an undisturbed rest, and he blinked and stretched
his arms. Dull pains came to life as a reminder of the combat with the alpha
male and his pack. He looked around the room. The chair sat empty, pushed under
the ancient desk, and the few personal items Major left on the floor were no
longer there. Samuel stood and eased the door of the cabin open. The trees, the
skyline and the forest all sat in perfect silence. Not a single motion
caught his attention. Samuel took a deep breath and could not smell the pines.
He stood over the corpses of the wolves, inhaled and again smelled
nothing.

“Major,” he yelled.

No reply.

He stared in the direction the alpha male
left and then opposite, in the direction he assumed they had to travel. Again,
not a single thing moved. Samuel tried to remember what Major said about
a reverting or a rewinding, but he could not place it. Whatever it was had
accelerated, and Samuel wondered how long it would take before everything,
including himself, would be forever frozen in the solitary landscape. Before he
could ponder that question, an item on the ground near the cabin caught his
eye: one that had not been there the night before. He bent down and picked up a
piece of paper, weathered and folded in half. Samuel glanced to the horizon and
noticed a slight puff of charcoal that faded into deep obsidian. He felt the
looming, endless night and shivered.

He unfolded the paper to reveal a strong
but flowery handwritten script. He recognized “Major” scribbled at
the bottom, and he sat on the step of the cabin to read it aloud.

“Samuel. I am sure you find my appearances and
disappearances troubling. I’ll bet you’re confused about this place, this
existence. The current reversion is accelerating, much like the others I’ve
experienced. I know you’ve felt that. I am probably three to four days from
rejoining you at the Barren, the remnants of a village. It could be a
collection of reflections. I’m not sure. Whatever it is, structures are there
like the cabin. To get to the Barren, you’ll need to follow the path from the
cabin to the summit. Looking down into the valley, you’ll see a winding pass
that will take you through a wide marsh, eventually ending at the foot of
another mountain. You’ll see the peak from the summit of the hill above the
cabin. Stay on the path that cuts east around the base and it will take
you to the opposite side. The Barren sits on a high plain surrounded by
unattended wheat fields. The cabins look like deer nestled in the grass from
above. Wait there for me. I’ve left you a scimitar in the desk drawer. If you
stay on the path, you won’t need it. Stay on the damn path. Until then, Major.”

Samuel shook his hand and reread the
note.

“What about the alpha male?” he asked the
dead air.

He stood and went inside the cabin.
Samuel reached into the desk and retrieved the scimitar Major left. The blade
sparkled as if it had been sharpened, polished and oiled. The leather binding
wrapped around the handle and provided a solid grip. Samuel could not remember
if he saw Major using this knife in the fight with the wolves. He tied
the sheath to his right thigh and the top of it looped through his belt. Samuel
tossed his few personal belongings into the rucksack and wished he had a
flashlight.

The framed photograph hung on the wall in
the same place it had for decades. The undisturbed dust covering it spread out
even and smooth. Samuel stepped forward and brushed the dust from the surface
as he had the first time he noticed it hanging in the cabin. This time,
however, there was no picture underneath the glass, just a black square.
Samuel moved closer to the surface of the glass, imagining his hand might push
through it and the wall, appearing on the outside of the cabin. Instead, his
hand stopped. The picture was gone as Major said it would be.

The reflections aren’t as strong as
the original, they don’t last long.

That’s what Samuel remembered. He frowned
and stepped back, deciding he did not care much for the reflections. He cared
even less for this place.

***

He decided to keep moving. When he looked
down from the summit, he could no longer locate the cabin. He struggled to find
the path winding through the trees. The horizon melted into the earth. The
reversion was physically manifesting before his eyes as a massive hazy cloud
rolling across the land like a dark, silent avalanche. It was not moving
as fast as a summer thunderstorm, but it was clearly moving from west to east
and swallowing everything below. Samuel told himself to visually mark its
progress. As long as the reversion did not leap ahead, he could manage to stay
ahead of it on the way to the Barren. He laughed and shook his head, wondering
if the Barren would provide a safe haven or simply be the final destination to
succumb.

Samuel put the summit behind him. He
crept down the mountainside, switching back and forth on the path in a steady
descent. He lost sight of the horizon and that skewed his sense of
direction. Without the horizon or a map, Samuel hoped he could find the Barren,
and Major, and whatever stood beyond that. By the time Samuel reached the
valley floor, his muscles ached. He felt the sweat clinging to his clothes and
robbing his body of heat as the exertion slowed him down. He tipped his
forehead underneath his left arm and sniffed. His nose could not detect the
faintest scent.

Samuel walked a few hundred yards on the
path stretching into the valley floor when the landscape began to change. As he
came down the mountain, the trees reappeared in greater number and proximity.
The trail narrowed until it was barely wide enough for him to pass. The
massive, deciduous trees gave way to low-hanging weeping willows and their long
trails of thin leaves. He identified Spanish moss on the trunks of several,
which confirmed he had reached the marsh Major mentioned. Samuel drew a deep
breath and caught the slightest hint of brackish water and rotting vegetation.
He drew another to confirm it was real.

The reversion must unwind from one
direction of this place to the other,
he thought as the cloud oozed from the western horizon toward the
east, much the way natural weather fronts moved.

With the hope he was outpacing the
ominous cloud approaching the summit, Samuel decided to rest. He could no
longer regulate day and night. The light source in this world had burnt out
like an old incandescent bulb in a lonely room, spilling the last feeble rays
into eternal darkness. He laid the rucksack at his feet and looked over a
shoulder at a pile of loose branches near a rock. He gathered them up and ran a
hand over the surface, detecting a hint of moisture, but not enough to keep it
from burning. He was not sure if he was going to need the light or the heat,
but creating a fire for his camp felt like the right thing to do. Samuel
arranged the twigs in an A-frame design and removed the lighter from his
pocket. He bent down low and rocked his thumb back on the flint when a voice
broke the heavy silence.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

***

Samuel spun around, expecting to see
Major. He saw nothing but the faint outline of the willows standing guard over
the marsh. He shook his head and pulled his thumb back again, this time sure he
could ignore the phantom voice in his head.

“Don’t do that.”

Samuel turned his head toward the voice.
He watched as the outline of a human appeared to rise from the marsh. Water
dripped from the ends of patchy strings of hair as the form walked toward
Samuel. Strips of clothing that once covered a body with style dangled from
pointed elbows and knees. It was not until the person stood before Samuel that
he was able to see the face.

The man stood with the dying light
reflecting off of his exposed bone. Clumps of white covered his face where skin
had once stretched over his skull. He had two black holes for eyes, and his
mouth was parted in a demonic grin.

“It speeds up the reversion. I don’t know
why, but it does,” the man said, now standing before Samuel.

“Okay,” Samuel said.

“I’m dead,” the man said.

Samuel shifted his legs and stood to face
the man. He detected a whiff of decay, which disappeared quickly. The flotsam
from the marsh clung to the dead man’s frame like a cape hung from bony
shoulders.

“The dead don’t speak. Or walk.”

“They do here.”

The dead man moved toward the stack of
twigs. He sat on the ground with a wet plop. His hand, stripped of skin,
motioned for Samuel to do the same.

“Let’s talk,” he said.

Samuel nodded and sat on the other side
of the woodpile, never taking his eyes off the dead man. “What should I call
you?” he asked.

“I cannot reveal my name yet,” the man
said. “You can call me whatever you want.”

Samuel nodded again.

“It must have something to do with the
changing form, you know. Wood, to fire, to ash. It’s like an energy tide that
rolls the darkening cloud faster toward the opposite horizon.”

Samuel looked at the lighter in his hand
and dropped it back into a pocket.

“Are you alone?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

Samuel sat there and decided to let the
dead man have what he needed from their interaction. After a prolonged silence,
the man spoke again.

“Do you know of the Jains?” he asked.

Samuel shook his head and thought about
the sleep he craved. “No.”

The dead man rocked backward and placed
both bony hands on his knees.

“They were the first, in your original
locality, to come up with the idea of
ahimsa
– do no harm. They called
themselves ‘the defenders of all beings.’ Do you know why?”

Samuel did not reply, knowing the
conversation would occur anyway.

“The Jains believed in conquering desire
as a way of achieving enlightenment. Enlightenment, for them, was escaping the
cycle of rebirth. Reincarnation was a curse to avoid, not some type of
immortality.”

“Sounds Buddhist,” Samuel said.