Dark Vanishings 2: Post-Apocalyptic Horror Read online

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE Okbeth

  CHAPTER TWO An Uninvited Guest

  CHAPTER THREE Look At Me

  CHAPTER FOUR Somewhere West of I-40

  CHAPTER FIVE The Fat Man's Porterhouse

  CHAPTER SIX Goodbyes

  CHAPTER SEVEN Following Jacy's Map

  CHAPTER EIGHT Mall Life

  CHAPTER NINE Viper Goes to the Store

  CHAPTER TEN Ashes to Ashes

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Speed Demon

  CHAPTER TWELVE Will's Headache

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Tree House in the Sky

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Lance and Mitch

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Pictures of Amy

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Searching

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Beach House

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Beast in the Woods

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Ouija Boards and Water Glasses

  CHAPTER TWENTY The Boogeyman Escapes

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Sneaking Out

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Wolf Man

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Beast Arrives

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Real Monster

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  Dark Vanishings Two - Sneak Preview

  Author's Note

  Copyright Information

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Okbeth

  The village had no name. Or rather, it was identified by its generic description—VILLAGE—on a wooden weather-beaten sign that had lost two-thirds of its facing in a windstorm. The decaying remnants of the sign lay as shrapnel strewn along the roadside of a dark country road a half-hour east of Red Bud, Illinois. When intact, the sign had read—

  Village of Okbeth

  Population 487

  EST. 1835

  He stood in a field at the village’s northern border, waist-high in wheat, the wind slithering through the grass like invisible snakes. To his side sat an animal that vaguely resembled a humongous wolf or dog, but with crooked, hooked fangs jutting below its lower lip and orange eyes that glowed like twin hurricane lanterns.

  Victor Lupan observed another of the strange beasts from a mile away as it stalked through the village center, past a general store, and then past a gas station whose windows had been boarded shut since 1992. The store’s sign advertised unleaded gas for $1.09. The beast stopped and sniffed the air, catching scent of prey upwind, then padded into the shadows as though confused.

  As he searched the village and surrounding countryside for his vanished third beast, everything felt wrong with the night to Lupan, though he couldn’t determine why. No mortal could stand against him, and it would take a pack of wolves to challenge a single one of his beasts, yet as he peered into the thickening gloom, his skin prickled. The village concealed danger.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated on the beast prowling Okbeth.

  What do you see?

  The beast did not respond. Lupan considered entering its mind to see the village from the beast’s perspective. He queried the beast again, losing patience. This time it answered. The beast couldn’t find anyone inside Okbeth, but it sensed the same undefinable danger as Lupan.

  Where is the third beast?

  He watched the second beast as it stopped behind the general store. The beast sniffed at the air, its fur standing on end as though surrounded by enemies. It couldn’t sense the vanished beast, which was troubling because the beasts sensed each others’ presence from several miles away. That left only one possibility. The third beast was dead. Lupan’s heartbeat quickened. Since entering the southern third of Illinois, he had felt eyes upon him. The beasts acted skittish, howling and darting erratically into the night in pursuit of shadows. Now as he watched from the outskirts of Okbeth’s abandoned shell, the danger felt more immediate, more palpable.

  He was not far from a glut of interstates—surviving people from the northern and western thirds of the country would travel these highways to reach the southeastern United States. If he reached I-24 and I-40 before daylight, it would be easy for him to kill anyone intending to join the organizers in Florida.

  But there was a more pressing concern. Something had occurred Thursday morning in the first light of day. He had sensed magic to the southeast the way one might feel the aftershocks of a distant earthquake. There was only one explanation: the girl. Tori Daniels had used her power, and if he did not stop her, soon she would harness her magic and become a danger which even Lupan might not be able to handle alone. It was imperative Lupan get south, but something lay hidden in the night between him and his target.

  Could it be the girl? Is Tori inside Okbeth?

  In a moment of cold clarity, he considered calling back the second beast and retreating to Iowa. His fingers curled and straightened, curled and straightened. His eyes twitched. How could the third beast have disappeared?

  The beast inside the village squealed. Lupan’s eyes, fixed on the darkness west of Okbeth, darted toward the village. Only shadow existed where he had last seen the beast.

  Impossible.

  As he searched the dark for the creature, he almost forgot the beast still at his side. Snarling at the ghost village, the creature pawed at the fecund earth. But even as the creature growled, it slunk backward, deeper into the wheat. What entity lurked within Okbeth that could challenge a single one of his beasts, let alone vanquish two without making a sound? Lupan looked down and realized that he too, had backed into the field, and this caused his blood to boil with rage. He hissed through his teeth, silencing the beast.

  If the girl is here, I will gut her and end this battle for all eternity.

  Lupan stepped out of the field. With the beast at his side, he entered Okbeth.

  While the first beast lay dead, already collecting flies, a man whose eyes and hair blended with the night crouched against the paint-chipped general store at the village’s center. The sharp outline of his hawk nose was barely discernible in the gloom cast by the cloudy, moonless sky. Joshua Geldon felt the man from the field’s presence pressing against the village like black water overflowing a dam. He couldn’t see the man, but he was sure it was the one who walked the earth for time eternal. The eternal one wore the face of a man, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  The dagger, still glistening with the first creature’s ichor, felt warm in his hand. The hilt vibrated as though the blade needed to kill again. From across the road, he spied Severin blending into the night, crouched behind the service station pumps. He sensed what he could not see—Severin centered both guns on the wolf-like monster sniffing at the air. The bullets were useless against the beast, and worse yet, the gunshots would attract the attention of the man watching outside the village.

  But the dagger proved effective against the first beast to prowl Okbeth, and the weapon killed silently.

  Joshua crept along the wall toward the front of the store. One wrong move, and the beast would sense him. The creature’s fangs severed whatever it caught—fingers, a hand, an entire arm. The dagger’s hilt pulsed against his palm, desiring to penetrate the beast’s hide, to snuff out the abomination’s life.

  He remembered the long stalks through woodlands along the Minnesota-South Dakota border. He recalled silent hunts through meadows and spruce groves, and the sweet smell of conifers after a cool rain. How many decades had he prepared himself for the end of days? He couldn’t recall.

  He moved without sound, the edge of the wall so close that he could grasp it. The huge beast spun toward him, and he froze. It crouched down. He couldn’t see the monster’s body—only its eyes, floating in the darkness like a specter’s candelabra. The beast sniffed the air and grunted.

  Joshua
held his breath. Severin, hidden across the street behind the gas pumps, vanished. The situation grew more dangerous by the second. Joshua couldn’t kill the beast in the street without attracting unwanted attention from the man in the fields. Without Severin, any battle with the creature was too risky.

  As Joshua retreated toward the back of the store, a hand pressed against his mouth. He twisted his head, and there was Severin, his forefinger held to his lips. In the darkness, Severin’s emerald eyes glowed, eerily reminiscent of the beasts’ eyes.

  Crouching low to the ground, Severin crept away from the wall, concealed by darkness. Joshua realized what Severin intended: he planned to lure the beast to him, behind the general store where the man in the field would not see. Severin pawed at pebbles. The sound, too quiet to hear outside the village, caused the beast to snarl. Burning eyes turned toward Severin.

  Severin snapped his finger, and the beast attacked, bounding out of the road, a mammoth shadow amid the darkness. Contours of the monster’s bristled fur sliced through the night. The beast headed straight for Severin. In seconds, the beast would tear him to pieces. Joshua leaped out of hiding, the dagger glistening despite the sky’s infinite gloom. The weapon grew warmer, wanting to kill.

  The beast’s maw opened.

  As the beast sprang at Severin, Joshua attacked from the side, burying the wicked blade into the monster’s neck. In one motion, Joshua sliced through its larynx as Severin spun away. The creature thudded against the ground, twitching. The lights of the beast’s eyes flickered out. The dagger’s blade glowed red and white. In his hand, Joshua felt the dagger’s need to eradicate the evil. He sensed the blade’s hunger and felt the hilt alternating between hot and cold, as though the dagger drained the life force out of the beast.

  The beast lay still.

  As Joshua pulled the blade free, Severin snatched him by the arm. As attuned to the night as Joshua was, Severin’s senses were more potent. Looking into Severin’s eyes told Joshua what the danger was—the man had left the field. The eternal one came for Okbeth, accompanied by another beast.

  Joshua and Severin rushed for the wall of a dilapidated country home on the village’s southern border. Beyond the house stretched the gray ribbon of a county road, and beyond that, flat rural lands for as far as the eye could see. Though Joshua couldn’t hear the pursuit of the man from the field, he felt him drawing nearer, portending death like autumn’s first chill wind.

  CHAPTER TWO

  An Uninvited Guest

  Evil sleeps in the hearts of men, and when unfettered, it runs amok, tainting all it touches.

  The evil of men was on Blake’s mind when he opened the hotel room door to look in on Tori, who curled up on the double bed beside the window. He didn’t know if she was sleeping or just pretending to sleep, so he quietly closed the door, knowing she wouldn’t talk. He stared at the closed door for several seconds, considered reentering, then decided he needed to take a walk.

  Room 213. I won’t forget which room she is in, will I?

  Down the hall, he automatically pressed the down arrow next to the elevator before remembering no power meant no elevators. Taking the stairs, he crossed through the silent lobby of the Holiday Inn, past the darkened check-in desk, behind which he’d discovered the master room key in the manager’s office. He slipped between the pried-open automatic doors, past the potted palms, past the garbage bins with ashtrays fixed to their tops, and stopped at the sidewalk. The Thursday afternoon Georgia sun felt stifling, but he thought if he stood here long enough, the heat might melt the chill off his bones.

  She killed both of them.

  How?

  Tori Daniels and Blake discovered each other in upstate New York after the unexplained vanishings. Blake, a shy boy who never fit in at high school, had never known a girl like Tori. She was strikingly beautiful, her fiery red hair impossible to look away from. Tori accepted him and made him feel better about himself. They built a mutual trust for one another while traveling south.

  Yet everything had changed this morning. Attacked by three men outside of an abandoned carnival in South Carolina, Blake was certain they would die. Tyler and James held them at gunpoint while the third member, Ricky, ordered the execution. When Blake’s murder appeared an inevitability, Tyler’s body was torn apart by unseen hands, as though an invisible giant reached out of the sky and ripped him to pieces. James was hurled across the parking lot by the same mysterious force, as Tori trembled in the driving rainstorm, her eyes rolled back in her head. Somehow, Tori had killed both men. Blake felt sure of it.

  The image of Tyler’s remains—his insides strewn across the rest stop parking lot as though a bomb had exploded inside of him—was permanently burned into Blake’s memory. He visualized James flying through the sky—how far? Thirty or forty yards?—and crashing against a Grogan’s Wonder World store front, as though whisked away by an invisible tornado.

  Why do so many people want to murder Tori?

  The attempt on Tori’s life was the third in the last week. First Jacob Mann in Red Oak, then Mickey Keller in Pennsylvania. How did I find Mickey’s house so quickly? Because I saw the house lights? Or was there another reason?

  Blake had no explanation for his precognitions. He had known the travel center was dangerous. After Mickey attacked them and kidnapped Tori, Blake awoke to starlight with no idea where Tori was. Yet Blake sensed her presence as he drove into the sleepy Pennsylvania town, and he had found Mickey’s house and rescued Tori.

  Now Blake felt afraid for Tori, and he wondered if he could keep her alive.

  Near the north Georgia border along interstate 95, a sign had recently been planted in the median, directing survivors to a place called Florida Bliss. Blake vaguely recalled an Internet article about the experimental neighborhood. The article claimed Florida Bliss was developed by the people behind a popular amusement park. His plan had been to find a quiet place along the coast while the world sorted itself out, but since reading the sign, he thought he and Tori needed safety more. But who could they trust, and how could he break through Tori’s emotional shell? Staring blankly, she had rarely responded to him since Grogan’s Wonder World.

  Across the once-busy six-lane commercial road sat a strip mall anchored by a grocery store. As he passed the Camaro stolen from Ricky and his gang, Blake glanced at the framed photo in the backseat—a pretty, college-age blonde girl surrounded by friends. The picture seemed so out of place. Who was the girl, and why would a group of thugs be driving around with it?

  Hopping over a concrete median, he crossed the road and angled toward the grocery store. Maybe if he convinced Tori to eat something, she would come around.

  If I tore someone into pieces of flesh and gore, would a nice sandwich or an energy bar make me feel better?

  Fortunately the store was fronted by a long strip of south-facing glass, allowing the sun to light the interior. Down lonely aisles farther back into the store, the sunlight died and gave way to shadows. In a shopping cart, he collected a case of bottled water, several packs of beef jerky, energy bars, fruit, and bread beginning to mold along the crust. He avoided the vegetables, which appeared soft and rotten, slowly composting on the store shelves with a pungent decaying smell. He moved quickly through the aisles, avoiding the gloomy back corridors. On his way out, he snagged a flashlight and a pack of batteries.

  Blake wheeled the shopping cart across the road and into the hotel lobby. It took two trips up and down the stairs to carry the groceries to the second floor. When he opened the door with his master key, she was in the same position as before, more like a piece of chiseled art than a live girl resting. The interior of the hotel room baked despite the open window breeze.

  As he looked upon her, he wondered if she might suddenly lash out through black magic and hurt him, too. He immediately felt bad for thinking such a thing. Quietly closing the door, he locked the deadbolt and approached her.

  “Hey. I picked us up some food. I think it’s a good idea for y
ou to eat.”

  She didn’t move. Her legs were drawn up to her chest and her arms folded.

  “Tori.”

  Still nothing.

  Shaking her awake seemed as dangerous as petting a cobra.

  “Look…” He fumbled for words. “Whatever you did to those guys, I want you to know that it’s okay.”

  The wind rippled the drapes. Beyond the window, a blackbird called, and the sun began its slow descent into the parched land.

  “You saved my life, you know? You saved both of our lives.”

  Maybe she had given up wanting to live and simply went to sleep forever. Is she breathing?

  “The last few days…you kept asking how I knew about the travel center, how I knew where to find Mickey’s house. I did know, Tori, and it scares the hell out of me.”

  She turned over so quickly that he jumped. Her eyes drowned in concentric pools of black, appearing as if she hadn’t slept in weeks, traveling over him as though seeing him for the first time. She’s looking right through me, assessing.

  “Why won’t you talk about it?” she asked. “I’ll understand.”

  “For the same reason you don’t want to face what happened this morning.”

  Her lower lip quivered, then a single tear ran down the curve of her high cheekbones. He crossed the room and sat beside her, cautiously placing a hand on her shoulder.

  “I don’t know what I did to those men, Blake. I don’t even remember doing anything. I just opened my eyes and…and…”

  She buried her head into the bedspread and cried.

  “It’s okay,” he said, brushing the auburn locks from her eyes.

  “What’s happening to me? Why is everyone trying to kill us?”

  As she leaned against him, he hesitantly put an arm around her. He rested a hand on her back, and when that didn’t feel right, he slid it up to her shoulder. Brushing her hair back, he told her everything would be all right, as if she were a child coming awake from a nightmare.

  “I think we should follow those signs to Florida.”