The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (27 page)

“This is some kind of nightmare,” Ty said.

Peck’s gaze drifted upward, and he saw several birds in the sky above the settlement. Red-tailed hawks, he thought, judging from the size. They circled clockwise, all but one—a raptor Peck had no name for, with a broader, crooked span—looping the other way.

He moved on. His stride was long.

“We’re here,” he said.

I can’t tell you what happened in the house because I stayed in the yard. And I wasn’t alone. The coyotes were back, sitting in the long grass with their ears high and their eyes shining. Seemed the devil was all ways and if there was any heaven to be found, I didn’t know where. So I stayed put. And how I screamed, but not as loud as Daddy, and not for as long. Then the house went up. You know when you set fire to a book of matches and it flares in your hand all at once? It was like that. I thought for sure they were both dead, then Cindy stepped out of the flames. She was on fire, but she wasn’t burning. I know how that sounds, but I swear it’s true. It’s like she controlled those flames; like the coyotes, they did whatever she told them to, and ain’t that the devil’s way? I watched her walk across the grass and away, all those coyotes by her side, and for a while I followed her flame and then she was gone. Then I took to my heels. I wanted to find my clearing but got lost in the dark. I wound up by that old truck in the field, and there I hid, and there you found me.

Peck thought ‘settlement’ too grand a word for what amounted to a few tumble-down shacks and trailers. Some were painted faded colours, their windows either blacked-out or boarded over. There were no satellite dishes or barbecues. No washing strung to dry. Peck would think it abandoned but for the feeling they were being watched—and not only by the coyotes, mostly gathered in the grass around the site. Others sat on the tall rocks with their backs straight.

“What is this place?” Ty asked. He was a step or two behind Peck.

“I’m not sure.”

Cogongrass sprung from the baked earth, strewn with trash. A dusty flag Peck didn’t recognise rippled softly. They advanced cautiously and came across four listless hogs tied to a stake in the earth. The smell in the air was that same bitter ammonia, hard to breathe. The sun rode directly overhead and the heat was thick as tar.

“
Anybody home?
” Ty screamed. He brushed at the flies on his face. “
Anybody? I figured hell would be busier.
”

“Hush.” Peck placed a hand on Ty’s chest and he knocked it away.

“Don’t touch me.”

Sound of a door opening, closing with a snap. They turned and saw a boy walking toward them, bare-chested, eating something from a bowl. Five years old, Peck figured, having a boy of his own that age.

“Keep it together,” Peck whispered to Ty. “Remember, we got no jurisdiction here, but these people don’t know that. Keep your weapon holstered. Pull that trigger and you’ll have a lot of questions to answer.”

The boy wore faded blue jeans turned up at the ankles. His feet were soot-black. The bowl was filled with dry corn. It rattled between his teeth when he spoke.

“You probably shouldn’t be here.”

“We’re looking for somebody,” Peck said. He turned on his friendly police officer smile, perhaps to make up for his shapeless hat and the flies on his throat. “Maybe you can help me. Girl. Fifteen years old. Brown hair. Goes by the name of Cindy.”

“She’s with us now,” the little boy said. He took a mouthful of corn that rattled. “And she ain’t Cindy no more.”

Even in the heat, these words sent a chill motoring up Peck’s spine. They mirrored what Mary had said. Not that he needed more convincing. As a lawman he’d always favoured a logical line, but after everything he’d seen and heard, that line wasn’t nearly as solid.

“Where is she?” Ty asked.

The boy softened corn in his mouth. He spat yellow in the dirt, then turned around and walked away.

“Hey!”

“Rubin’s trailer.” He flicked a finger to his left.

The men—bone-weary but still upright—moved in that direction, beyond a screen of raggedy shrubs and toward a trailer the colour of an old dime. It sat on its underbelly, wheels and jack long gone. Dry weed snaked through holes in the panelling and the windows were marked with red Xs. There were two coyotes perched on the roof, coats clotted with dirt and teeth showing. Somebody had buried an axe in the trunk of a nearby tree. A tin bucket hung from a branch by a length of twine.

Peck looked over his shoulder and saw the little boy watching and grinning. In the heat it looked like his black feet were smoking.

“We find her and go,” Peck said. “We’ll send the big boys back here to ask questions.”

“Amen,” Ty said.

Peck turned back toward the trailer and in so doing walked clumsily into the tin bucket hanging from the branch. A drove of flies were disturbed but didn’t go far. The bucket swung and the branch creaked. Peck looked inside and saw Beau Roth’s head, parched and blistered. One eye was filled with flies.

“Christ and Jesus.” He staggered backward and drew his gun and Ty drew his too. Peck flapped a hand at him that didn’t make any sense and Ty hunkered, confused, and the barrel of his weapon moved unsurely. The flies settled again on the bucket. The coyotes on the roof howled. Peck looked the way they had come and saw the little boy laughing. He imagined the corn rattling between his teeth and had an urge to run a bullet through his narrow chest, then a door squeaked open and he turned to see Cindy Roth standing outside the trailer. Not the same girl who sat quietly at the back of the class while Peck gave one of his school talks, or the girl he often saw walking the mile from Sunshine Shopper to her house, weighed down with groceries, and who wouldn’t accept a ride when he offered it. Cindy Roth now was fierce-eyed, closer to a woman, and with a charge about her—some deep thing desperate to break out. She smiled and stepped toward Peck. Her feet were black.

“Hello, Chief,” she said.

#

All Peck wanted was a shred of solid evidence, something to lend credence to Mary Roth’s story, enough for the state police to investigate further. He’d brought Ty along because he didn’t want to be alone, but also because Ty—unlike Calloway—was green enough to follow, even when they went beyond the town limits.

He hoped he’d live to regret his decisions.

It all happened quickly.

There came a whirl of heat and dust and suddenly they were surrounded by black-footed boys, including two atop Rubin’s trailer—thin and naked both—in place of the coyotes. Peck backed away and raised his gun in warning. Ty showed no such restraint. He fired two shots at the boys on the trailer and missed them both. Peck screamed at him to cease fire but he didn’t listen. He turned and shot the little boy dead. Blew him backward, black feet smoking. His bowl of corn spilled everywhere.

Peck recalled Mary gesturing at the sky—at everything—and saying that it all seemed lesser, like something that could be opened and poured out, and now he knew exactly what she meant. He did then the one thing he thought would save his hide: turned his gun on Ty and shot him in the throat. Ty went down, dead as stone before he hit the ground.

Still the fire came.

The crooked raptor landed in a flurry of thick black feathers, squawking as flames ripped suddenly, viciously, around the site. Peck shielded his eyes and when he looked again, the bird was gone. A man strode toward him—black-footed, like the boys—over eight feet tall and narrow-faced. Smoke rippled from his eyes and he spat coal and bones. Peck was lifted into the air without being touched, fully ten feet above the ground, and then dropped. The boys howled and Peck tried to reel away but was lifted again. He saw the site burning and the fields beyond. He saw Cindy Roth twisting in the flames and laughing. Embers burst from her mouth and spiralled around her. Again Peck was dropped and he landed hard, breaking both legs. Still he tried to crawl.

Fire surrounded him. It sucked the oxygen from the air and he wheezed and reached for help that would never come. His skin bubbled in the heat but did not blacken.

The man stood over him. Flames crackled from the tips of his fingers.

Peck lifted his gun and pulled the trigger desperately. The first and second shots hit the tall man square in the chest. Fire and feathers flew. The third hit Cindy Roth and threw her thin, fifteen-year-old body back through the door of the trailer. Eleven rounds left in the mag and Peck spent them all. Some of those shots went astray but most found a home. Bodies and fire all around.

Peck tried to scream but there wasn’t the air. He wished he’d kept a bullet for himself. He crawled a little way and then fell chest down in the dirt. The cogongrass crackled as it burned and he heard the hogs squealing.

The last thing he saw before passing out was the little boy Ty had shot, back on his feet and scooping corn—popped now—off the ground and into his mouth. His smile was almost beautiful.

#

He came around with the fires still burning and the skin on his face and hands blistered. All the shacks and trailers were gone. The boys with the black feet were gone. Not a body in the dirt, nor a drop of blood. Not even Ty’s.

Just him and that bucket twisting in the heat.

Peck dragged his broken legs and screamed. The fire raged around him, branding a shape on the land he felt but could not see: a five-pointed star enclosed in a perfect circle, burning hungrily and—from point to point—many miles wide.

THE LIFE INSPECTOR

John Llewellyn Probert

The front doorbell rang at nine a.m. precisely.

Franklin knew it was nine because that was the time Eleanor had told him he needed to take the laundry out of the washing machine. She had put in a load just before leaving an hour earlier, herding Jocasta (eight) and Tobias (seven) in front of her down the garden path and into the shiny silver 4 x 4 she insisted they leave parked outside the house. There was a perfectly serviceable garage tucked away behind the laurel bushes and apple trees that bordered their gravel drive, but, she had explained to Franklin, what was the point of buying a brand new Audi if you were going to keep it hidden away where the neighbours couldn’t see it?

Franklin had merely shrugged and returned his attention to the stock market prices. It was something he was very good at, which was why they lived where they did (a very nice part of Bristol, thank you very much), sent the children to the school they attended (expensive and exclusive and full of other children that might grow up to be useful business contacts in the future, not to mention prospective marriage partners), and why Eleanor was able to squander so much time and money at designer clothes shops. Franklin never questioned her spending habits, and in return she never questioned any of his bedroom predilections. For those reasons, more than any others, it was a relationship that worked very well indeed.

The bell rang again.

Franklin pushed a stray sock back into the shiny confines of the aluminium drum and wiped his hands. The sooner they could get another decent housekeeper the better, he thought, as he made his way to the door, preparing to decline politely the advances of the Jehovah’s Witness waiting there (the most likely possibility); explain that he had no money on him if it was a charity collector (there were more and more of them these days—you couldn’t trip up without some support group being formed to help you and people like you, and of course they all wanted your money); or to use rather more terse terms to let the salesperson know that this was a No Doorstep Selling Neighbourhood, before drawing the hapless individual’s attention to the bright yellow sticker in the front window that signified (and explained in no uncertain terms) that his house was a member of said scheme.

The caller was none of the above.

Franklin was able to take note of the narrow spectacles rimmed in cheap black plastic, the toothbrush moustache that was the same shade of charcoal as the neatly trimmed hair (and the three quarter length raincoat), before the man standing on the doorstep spoke.

“Mr Chalmers?”

Franklin allowed the man a wary nod.

“Mr Franklin Chalmers?”

“Yes.”

That seemed to please the man no end. He smiled without showing his teeth and used a Bic biro to place a heavy tick at the top of the black clipboard he was holding.

“Excellent,” he said. “May I come in?”

No you bloody well may not
, Franklin thought. However he came out with “That really rather depends on why you’re here,” to maintain a semblance of politeness until he was able to determine whether this was some kind of impromptu tax inspection, or whether the fellow had just been sent round to check the drains.

The response was another tick scratched on the form. Franklin could see a little bit of it now that the man was leaning slightly to the left. It was pink and looked very complicated, with more boxes than the lottery tickets Eleanor insisted they buy despite their affluence.

The man noticed Franklin looking and tilted the clipboard away.

“My apologies, Mr Chalmers, for not introducing myself properly.” He reached into the pocket of his raincoat and produced a small piece of white pasteboard. “My card.”

The design sported the characteristic lack of imagination of government departments, right down to the soulless font that announced the following:

Mr M Norton

HM Life Inspection Department

“It’s time for yours,” said Mr Norton, attempting to step inside Franklin’s house.

Franklin stopped him.

“My what?”

Mr Norton raised rat-coloured eyebrows. “Your inspection, of course. Does the card not make it clear? A great deal of work was put into making it understandable to the general public. It went through three committees, seven versions, and ended up receiving a commendation in the 2013 Plain English Awards.” He sniffed. “We were quite proud of that.”

“I’m very pleased for you,” said Franklin, still keeping his temper in case the man really did work for the government. “But I have to confess I have never heard of any department with such a name, nor am I aware of my requiring any kind of ‘assessment’.”