Storberry Read online

  Contents

  Copyright Information

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Connect With Me

  Keep Reading!

  Dark Vanishings

  Author's Note

  Copyright Information

  Published by Dan Padavona

  Visit our website at www.danpadavona.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Dan Padavona

  Cover Artwork Copyright © 2014 by EBook Launch

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter One

  The crawlspace above the garage was boarded shut. From the inside.

  Dew-covered grass glistened beneath the morning sun like fallen stars. Sunrise burned fiery orange against the east-facing buildings of downtown and painted the green grass along Blakely Hill leading out of the town center in gold tones, as though the end of the rainbow could be found here. The rays swept flaxen and auburn up the incline to Becks Pond and Maple Street, where they bathed the side of the Barrows’ white garage in warmth.

  Jen Barrows should have been on her way to school by now. Instead, she stood in the dirt and stone driveway and watched the paint-chipped garage with renewed apprehension.

  She was shorter than most of her classmates at Storberry Central School, quick-witted and pretty. As the morning breeze, too mild for early spring, played through her long black hair like curious hands, she decided that the day was going to be a warm one.

  She had dilly-dallied for too long, and it was too late to catch Tom Kingsley. He was probably halfway to school by now. She would have to walk alone.

  There was still the matter of the garage crawlspace.

  The crawlspace had a front and a back window, both boarded up from the inside. A side room on the garage caught the westering sun during the afternoon through south and west-facing windows, and her mother liked to start flowers within the room.

  Nestled in the room’s corner behind dusty spider webs and a wall of garden tools was a ladder which led up to the crawlspace. An impenetrable trapdoor blocked entry. It too was nailed shut from the inside, evidenced by the rusty nails which protruded from the ceiling like stalactites.

  The conundrum had not mystified her until her critical thinking emerged in grade school. Now sixteen, she had pondered the bizarre puzzle for nearly a decade. The crawlspace had been nailed shut since before her parents purchased the house, four years before she was born. She knew, because her father had told her many times. He had no interest in solving the riddle., nor did he have use for the additional storage space, and—

  “If you think I'm going to break open that door, and have mothballs rain down on my head while you and your mother laugh at me, you're crazy.”

  Many times she had held a crowbar at the ladder’s base, staring fixedly at the trapdoor. If she pried open its secrets, she wondered if she would discover the world's worst carpenter, skeletal and decrepit, proof that Darwin was correct.

  Or maybe she would look upon something darker. Rats as big as cats, spiders the size of bats, and the desiccated remains of a previous homeowner who had tried to lock the monstrosities away from the world. An undefinable whisper of warning from deep within always prevented her from taking the next step. What bothered her more was a sense of subtle coercion, as though the space beyond beckoned her to unlock its secrets and see for herself.

  Jen twirled her hair with her fingers. She didn't like the riddle. And the noises had started again.

  The sounds from the crawlspace didn't happen often, thank goodness. They seemed to come in early spring at the first signs of coming warmth, as though old bones within stirred and desired to move again. When she was a child she had been convinced that a monster lived within the crawlspace, hunkered down in the blackness and waiting for her to fall asleep, so it could creep out of its lair and climb through her bedroom window. She was old enough to know better now but not convinced that her original impression was incorrect.

  Her father called the noises growing pains. The old boards were expanding and contracting with the wild temperature swings. Her mother believed it crawled with vermin and that cats found a way inside to stalk them.

  But the sounds from the crawlspace were too loud to be cats or “growing pains,” and Jen knew this because it was her bedroom window that faced the old garage. Sometimes when the weather was unusually warm, and the dilapidated exterior washed cobalt in the glow of a full moon, she was sure something hideous was trying to claw its way out.

  She shivered despite the building heat. She wished a lightning storm would take the structure away. When she was young, she had prayed for a precision strike to burn her nightmare to cinders. She was alone in the world, the only one who suspected the crawlspace's secrets. And it knew.

  The wind shifted from the southwest. Now the morning breeze traveled from the fields above Becks Pond at the edge of the hill forest, descending through a dense copse which separated the meadow from the backyards of Maple Street. The air should have been redolent with the meadow's wildflowers, which bloomed early this season in the unusual warmth. But it never was from this direction. The air had a stale, mothball quality to its.

  She suddenly felt exposed, as she stood alone in the face of the garage—its boarded window the eye of the Cyclops, the automatic door a maw which might gape open and swallow her whole.

  She clutched her books to her chest and hurried to school.

  Two

  He looked like a stockbroker in overalls.

  The old horse trailer hit a pothole, bounced twice, and settled against the blacktop as he headed west on Winchester Road. Evan Moran was fair-haired and boyish and woefully out of place. As he checked the rear view mirror to ensure that the trailer was still securely connected, General's tail flicked beyond the front grates as if the young horse meant to signal that he was fine. A lesser bump in the road shook the truck and trailer again.

  The flora off the road exploded with green leaves and cherry blossoms. It was March 27, 1987, and spring had arrived with its promise of renewal from winter's dormancy.

  He eased the Dodge pickup to the center line to give room for two young boys walking along the side of the road. The taller boy rested a baseball bat on his shoulder, and both carried mitts. If there ever was a day to play hooky, this was it. When Evan was certain the truck had safely cleared the boys, he veered back into the right lane.

  A car approached from the eastbound lane, camouflaged by bright sun reflecting off its exterior. The car, which looked like a shooting star as it rocketed eastward, took shape as it passed. Yellow Corvette with Virginia plates. Surf board sticking out the window. He didn't recognize it, and it most certainly didn't fit in with these back roads.

  Probably headed to Virginia Beach.

  He didn't think that was such a bad idea on a morning as sunny as this, but there was work to be done. The fields were plowed and ready for the new season. The Marks' boy would be spreading seed right about now. General was probably missing his pasture too. There were no days off on the farm.

  When he reached the end of Winchester Road and its sparsely developed farmland, he turned north onto county route 16. The sky was a deep ocean blue, typical of mid mornings in springtime before the humidity of summer turned it to a white-washed haze. “It's going to be an early summer,” he said without needing confirmation from the weather man.

  The pickup traveled past open field and forest for several minutes, interrupted only occasionally by isolated farm houses. As the Dodge wound through a gentle curve, trees at the edge of the road whistling past the vehicle in a blur of green, he t
urned the radio to AM 670 out of Richmond. The morning news droned in the background. He swept around another curve and—

  He slammed the brakes. A tractor and hay cart were stopped in the middle of the road. An old farmer in no rush to move sat upon the huge tractor. The Dodge bucked and skidded as the weight of the trailer pushed it toward the tractor. For a terrifying moment he was sure that the truck would roll, but it righted itself and squealed toward the blockade. Time stopped as he hurtled toward the metal behemoth.

  The pickup lurched to a halt in front of the hay cart. Evan's heart pounded, and his mouth felt cotton dry. He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white and his palms had hummock impressions. Somehow he had stopped in time. He checked the mirror and saw General's tail flick in boredom.

  To Evan’s amazement the farmer didn't move forward out of the right lane. He just sat there, eyes as black as coal, regarding him. It occurred to Evan that it would be an easy thing, such an easy thing, to vanish forever on the outskirts of Storberry. The farmer's unblinking eyes burned holes in him. Isn't that a rifle on the side of the tractor?

  Evan put the vehicle into reverse, shifted into drive, and drove around the cart. He checked the mirror. The farmer's eyes followed the truck, never wavering, until the Dodge wound through another curve and the farmer disappeared from view. Evan exhaled.

  There's your welcoming committee, he thought to himself as the Dodge resumed travel on 16. His pulse raced, and he thought that he could use a cold one right about now. Birds sang in indifference, and the wind whispered through the tall grass.

  The pickup turned left on Jensen Road and started into Storberry. It was a wonder anyone knew the town existed as not a single major thoroughfare was within a twenty minute drive. The isolation prevented the town from attracting industry and outside commerce, and made Storberry a good place to hide.

  The bright reflection of the sun off the ham radio tower caught his eye on the right side of the road. The tower had been there when he was a child, forever guarding the road like a metal titan. It was still standing tall when he had moved north for school and career, and it was here now.

  A wall of trees on the left side of Jensen opened to reveal the brick-faced telephone exchange. He often wondered why the town had located the ham tower and exchange building so close together. All it would take would be one unlucky tornado track and all communications would go down simultaneously. That was forward thinking for you.

  On the right stood a wooden welcome sign:

  WELCOME TO STORBERRY

  EST. 1894 POP 3980

  “Home of Southern Charm”

  “Southern charm,” indeed. I should still be up north.

  Evan had earned a Bachelor's of Arts in Education with a minor in Mathematics at Villanova, and after a year of pounding the pavement and substitute teaching, he landed a full time job in Syracuse, New York teaching tenth grade math. He would have been preparing students for the SAT exams this week had he stayed.

  It was the loss of his father in the last year that had forced him to return. John Moran died young, only 64. Evan's mother, Eva, had gone even sooner at 57 when the cancer got her. John was never the same after Eva left. The great brick of a man had become thinner and thinner in the years following her death, until his heart gave out while working the fields under an uncaring gunmetal sky.

  John had known that his son didn't love the farm the way he did and that he would leave after high school. Evan wondered what his father would think of him now, choosing Storberry over New York. He had kept the farm, after all.

  One mile prior to downtown, the Dodge turned north on Spruce Street, and he took in the changes the town had undergone since he was young.

  The Watering Hole was new. The wooden building was designed to portray an Old West Saloon, minus the swinging bat wings that the villain always pushed through when he called out the hero. The Watering Hole chose its entry to be of reinforced steel.

  The battle lines were drawn in the eastern end of Storberry. The homes were a growing blight in an otherwise ideal slice of Americana. It was just a matter of time before the residents who cared about the east side gave up and moved, and then the blight would spread unabated.

  The worst of the lot was East Avenue. If you ran into trouble with the law, or drank more than you worked, East Avenue attracted you like a moth to a bonfire. It was as though the town had quarantined its disease to one street. Houses with sagging porches, roofs with upturned shingles, lawns turned into makeshift car repair shops. He saw young shoeless children with blank faces watch him from the corner of Spruce and East as he passed. Why aren't they in school?

  Evan slowed at the railroad tracks and eased the trailer over the bumps. When he cleared the tracks, a chill ran up the back of his neck.

  When the hill forest filled the driver-side mirror, he pulled over to the side of the road and stepped out of the running vehicle onto the rocky shoulder.

  The distant trees crowded forward like members of an angry mob breaking through a barricade.

  Jesus, it spread.

  Left unchecked any forest would expand. Nature always worked to take back what was hers. But not this fast.

  Becks Pond heliographed in a cup halfway up the hill. The trees were much closer to the pond than they had been twelve years ago, and now they encroached on the hillside residences along Maple Street. Hadn't anyone bothered to cut them back? Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference.

  To the left of Becks Pond sat the newly constructed Liberty Cemetery. Evan wondered why the town would build anything up there. If Storberry envisioned hillside development, he didn't believe the forest would allow it. It was a ridiculous thought, but he knew it to be true.

  He climbed into the truck, and as he pulled out, Evan checked the mirrors to ensure the trees hadn't moved closer.

  Three

  There were no traffic lights on Spruce, and just one four-way stop sign. The number of houses diminished along the three mile drive, as residences gave way to meadows of switchgrass and bluestem.

  The Last Stop gas station appeared on the right with no lines and no waiting. Then the road curved westward to become Standish Road, and the red barn of the Moran farm rose up off to the right against the cloudless sky.

  When the Dodge turned right into the dirt driveway and pulled up to the barn entrance, the Marks boy squinted into the sun and moved toward the vehicle.

  “Any problems, Randy?”

  “None. The corn is in and I've got enough hay for another bale.”

  Randy Marks was nineteen years old and one year out of school. The gangly red head still had his boyish freckles. Evan liked him a great deal and knew Randy was cut out for more than this.

  Randy may have been of average intelligence, but he had worked harder than his classmates and flirted with the school honor roll through his senior year. The boy should be sitting in a college classroom, not baling hay.

  Randy unlocked the back trailer and led General out with a click of his tongue. The horse followed him obediently to the pasture.

  “I'm starting to think he likes you more than he does me,” Evan said.

  “He's just gotten used to me is all.”

  The boy returned with a shovel and cleaned out the trailer, but never met Evan’s eyes. As Evan unhitched the trailer and wiped the sweat from his forehead, he was grateful for the breeze moving across the meadows to the east.

  “I thought about what to do with that unused corner you plowed yesterday,” Evan said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thought maybe we'd have some fun for a change. I got my hands on some watermelon seed from an old friend of my father in Georgia. He says they're sweeter than sugar.”

  Randy didn’t reply, but simply nodded.

  “We'll sell a few. But I'm thinking they're more fun to eat.”

  Again Randy nodded without reply and walked the shovel back to the barn. Evan watched him disappear into the shadowed interior. Something was off with the bo
y, but Evan suspected now was not the best time to broach the subject.

  Randy never talked about his parents. The subject was anathema to him. Evan surmised that they did not see a life for him beyond Storberry, and that was why the boy didn't aspire for college. But there was something else, a discomforting veil over the boy that Evan couldn't identify.

  As the sun circled to the southeast at its mid-morning position, Evan shielded his eyes with his hand and glanced toward the southern forest, now front lit by the strengthening sun. Smaller trees along the front swayed in the breeze, as though they were laughing. Larger trees towered behind the new growth like giant wardens.

  And then the wind shifted out of the southwest, and he thought he could discern the scent of decay and carrion. But that was impossible. Not from this distance. The hair on the back of his neck bristled.

  He would never enter the forest again. Not unless he had no other choice. God help him if it came to that.

  Four

  He reached down to her thighs and ran his hands to her calves. A few years ago he wouldn't have been caught dead with the girl. Wouldn't have even looked in her direction. But in this moment he longed for her. He grasped her by the ankles and pulled them forward, pushing into her as she moaned into his ear.

  He had been thinking of her all morning, and when she arrived at his door he could barely contain himself. Now she was under him again, and he knew he would not last long. He never did with her.

  His two room apartment overlooked Main Street from three stories up. There was no air conditioner, and the rising afternoon heat caused beads of sweat to form on their bodies. He could hear the low rumble of car engines and chatter on the street below. It excited him that so many people passed below on the sidewalk, unaware that he was with her.

  What they would all say, if they knew that he was with this girl.

  But they didn't know.