Dark Inspiration

  Praise for Russell James

  James creates powerful intimacy and terror…a seriously creepy page-turner that will keep readers up all night.

  —Publisher’s Weekly on Q Island

  “James has a talent for combining action-packed vignettes into a powerful, fast-paced whole.”

  —Library Journal on Black Magic

  “…made me wish for a sequel. I’d recommend Blood Red Roses to anyone looking for something dark yet intelligent. It kept me on my toes from beginning to end!”

  —Long and Short Reviews on Blood Red Roses

  (Five Stars, A Night Owl Top Pick) “I loved the story so much that I’m eagerly waiting to read more from him. He carefully and very intricately weaved his storyline to have elements of mystery and suspense throughout. I now have a new favorite book I’ll read over and over again.”

  —Night Owl Reviews on Dark Inspiration

  “The book had me at the edge of my seat. The writing is so vivid I even jumped a few times. If you're a fan of the genre, love ghosts and are drawn to the supernatural, then do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this book!”

  —Long and Short Reviews on Dark Inspiration

  This was a wonderful tale that had me drawn in from the beginning, fascinated by the vividness of the storytelling. While there’s plenty of the somewhat gruesome and occult we horror fans love so much, it’s the depth and emotions of the characters that truly make this a fabulous read.

  —The Entertainer Magazine on Dark Vengeance

  Look for these other titles by

  Russell James

  Novels

  Sacrifice

  Dark Vengeance

  Black Magic

  Dreamwalker

  Q Island

  Novellas

  Blood Red Roses

  The Antikythera Answer

  Collections

  Tales from Beyond

  Deeper Into Darkness

  Outer Rim

  Forever Out of Time

  Dark Inspiration

  Russell James

  Dark Inspiration

  Print Version

  Copyright 2011 by Russell James.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  ISBN-13: 978-1542573719

  ISBN-10: 1542573718

  MLG Publishing

  Longwood, FL 32779

  Dedication

  For Christy.

  You were right. Someone else did want to read the stories I used to tell you during long car trips.

  Your faith and support make anything possible.

  Chapter One

  “Son of a bitch!” he yelled at the Tennessee countryside. Immediate and overwhelming pain arced up his arm like a lightning bolt. Dale Mabry was certain he just flattened his finger.

  He dropped the mallet next to the For Sale sign he had forced into the cold earth. His bare hands already stung from the forty degrees temperature and that amplified the effects of the hammer’s impact. He shook and then inspected his finger. It was rooster red and the nail had a white sheen destined to turn a dark, dead purple.

  “Serves you right, dumbass,” he said to himself. “Shouldn’t be out here at all.”

  It wasn’t just because he was underdressed for the March morning in jeans and a flannel shirt. Something inside him had nagged him from the start about putting the Dale Mabry Realty sign on the old Galaxy Farm property. But with the market stinking like a hog pen, he’d rationalized that any sale was a good sale. No matter who bought. No matter what sold.

  Barren oaks swayed in the wind against the slate-gray sky. The breeze kicked up the stale scent of dead, moldy leaves. Dale had pounded his business equivalent of a tiger’s marking scent where the Galaxy Farm gravel driveway met two-lane US 41. The driveway went a half mile uphill and formed a loop in front of the farm’s large main house. The structure still caught the eye, as it had for over one hundred years.

  The house listed as a six bedroom, four bath, but that did not do justice to its forty-five hundred square feet. The sharply peaked steel roof of the white two-story Victorian jutted into the pewter sky. Two small attic dormer windows watched out over the valley. An inviting covered porch embraced two sides of the first floor. The foundation beneath it was two feet tall, made of hand-laid dun boulders mined from the base of the ridge. From the corner closest to the road rose a round turreted room with windows around both stories. Like an aging cinema beauty, she looked stunning from afar.

  But she showed her age in closeups. Her later years had been hard. The iron racing horse weathervane at the turret’s peak rocked back and forth with a wailing screech in each gust of wind. Threadbare white curtains floated like spirits in the windows, unable to shield the rooms from daylight. Black paint peeled off the shutters around each window in long lazy arcs.

  To the right, a low rise blocked the bottom half of the main barn, hiding its similar stone foundation. Its roofline and monochrome paint scheme matched the house. A cupola burst through the center of the curved roof, glass on every side, filthy from lack of care. The cupola was large enough to accommodate the farm’s master as he watched over the acres of his domain that stretched down along the far side of the ridge.

  Even with the grass in winter’s death grip and the dry weeds overgrown along the split-rail fence line, the place had curb appeal. Dale wished he had the money to replace the sagging old mailbox at the entrance. If he kept the gate under the weathered Galaxy Farm sign locked, any looky-loos would have to go through him for a closer inspection. That would be warning enough to go in and make sure any remnants of the previous owners weren’t around. Sure as hell wouldn’t want to explain any of that to a prospective buyer. The bank wanted this place to move fast, and any wind of its history would stop a deal dead in its tracks.

  There were folks in town who didn’t think it right, Dale helping the bank sell the Galaxy. The two big Moultrie, Tennessee, realtors refused to list it. Half the small town thought it was safer to let it sit empty. Dale figured screw them. They didn’t pay for his daughter’s dance lessons.

  A sharp bang came from the house. Dale saw the screen door on the main entrance swing open and shut in the wind.

  “Well I’ll be…” he muttered. He stuck his throbbing finger in his mouth. He wasn’t in the mood to go tempt the house. Not out here alone. But a good gust would tear that screen door clean off the frame and he’d be blamed.

  He trudged warily up the driveway. Desiccated leaves crunched under his boot heels. He knew he had locked that door. With a new barrel bolt. From the inside.

  Dale stepped on the porch and a feeling of dread came over him, thick and black and heavy as lead. The hairs on the back of his neck quivered. He’d been to the house twice before—with Darrell from the bank to inspect the place, and with Billy to walk the survey. But never alone. There was strength in numbers. Having another live person there kept you from thinking about the Galaxy Farm legends.

  He grabbed the wooden screen door as it swung open again. The barrel bolt on the inside of the door was missing. Four neat white screw holes were still in the door, the grooves from the screw threads still crisp and clear. The door didn’t tear open. Someone removed the bolt. Dale smelled something metallic that made him want to gag.

  A dead rabbit lay in the threshold. Its eyes were wide with terror and still glassy, as
if it had only been dead for moments. All that was left of its neck were two jagged edges of slick red fur. The wet blood pooled between the doors and dripped out onto the porch. Above the rabbit, finger-painted in blood on the base of the door in crooked, slashed letters it said— NO SALE, DALE.

  Dale leapt off the porch. The screen door swung shut with a muffled thud as it closed against the dead rabbit’s limb. The realtor sprinted for his truck as if he were still a Moultrie High running back. As he ran through the front gate, he pulled it shut behind him. He closed the lock on the clasp in a flash. His heart pounded against his chest. With steel bars between him and the rabbit, he looked back up at the house.

  “Big joke,” he rationalized. “Guys in town playing a big joke or trying to scare me out of selling this place. Yeah, that’s it. There ain’t no ghosts. Just wives’ tales. There ain’t no ghosts.” He caught his breath and tried hard to believe what he said.

  Dale climbed into his silver Ford F-150. He fired up the engine and Johnny Cash came through the radio singing Ring of Fire. With another wall of Detroit steel between him and the house, Dale calmed down. It was some prank, he thought. Had to be. Vernon Pugh, probably, getting even for the bank taking the house.

  Something moved in the distance behind Dale.

  A gray figure stood in the second-floor window of the turreted room. It turned to face Dale. Dale’s heart stopped cold. The man raised his hands over his head and struck the glass. The thump rolled down the hill like the echo of a battle’s first shot. The figure vanished.

  Chill bumps raced from Dale’s neck down his arms. He turned and squinted hard at the empty window. A gust of wind blew and one of the window panes flexed. The sunlight flicked off the hazed surface. The glass banged in its frame.

  “Jesus, Dale,” he said, shaking his head clear. “Why don’t you just scare the shit out of yourself? Let a damn rabbit turn you yellow.”

  He snapped the Ford’s heater to high. Heat blasted from the vents and he rubbed his throbbing finger in it. He prayed some out-of-towner, or “outsider” as the locals called them, with a bucket of cash would cruise down US 41, fall in love with this dump and pay his commission. It would have to be an outsider. No one in Moultrie would touch the place.

  Chapter Two

  “Stevie Newburn, you’d better think twice!”

  Laura Locke didn’t turn as she reprimanded her student. She kept facing the dry erase board, writing lengthy subtraction equations with a black marker. Her SSS (Student Sixth Sense) saw everything that happened behind her back.

  Stevie Newburn stood stock-still, frozen mid-pitch with a wad of paper aimed at Carrie Ramos’ head. A hushed syllable of awe rose throughout the room. Stevie’s eyes went wide as he slipped back down into his seat.

  “She does have eyes everywhere,” he whispered. He dropped the ball of paper on his desk. The boy behind him gave Stevie’s head a quick shove.

  “She burned you, dude,” he said.

  Laura turned to face the class. The Triple-S said things were about to begin the short, downward spiral to chaos. No one learned in chaos.

  “All right!” she said with two sharp claps of her hands. “There are ten examples on the board. I want them in your notebook and solved properly. Let’s get to it.” Twenty-five heads bowed in unison. “The first one done with correct answers gets today’s Math Gold Star.” The wall chart behind her carried the name of each student, followed by a constellation of stars earned over the semester.

  She paced up and down the rows of desks. The click of her high heels punctuated the rush of scratching pencils. She wore a long black denim skirt and an open black suede vest over a white blouse. She made a conscious effort to layer and lengthen her clothes at school. The better she hid her curvaceous figure, the more seriously she found she was taken. And when it came to her kids, nothing could be more serious.

  Laura glanced over the shoulders of the blue-clad students. The school district had belatedly approved uniforms for her school, which had erased the obvious income disparities between the generally poor students. The Long Island school was only minutes from Manhattan’s West Side, but it could just as well have been a galaxy that separated the two islands instead of a river. Most of Laura’s kids had the deck stacked against them with partial parenting and omnipresent gang influences. When she was hired, she called that Idlewild Elementary’s selling point. These were the kids most in need of her help.

  Laura stopped behind Tamika Washington’s desk. The diminutive black girl was pulling on one of her braids, her telltale sign of frustration. Laura bent down just over Tamika’s shoulder. The girl’s answers were blank, though the rest of the class had several completed.

  “What is it, sweetie?” Laura whispered.

  Tamika turned. Laura’s green eyes and long blonde hair reflected in the girl’s thick glasses.

  “I don’t remember…” Tamika said. “If I could start, I could remember.”

  “It’s one number at a time,” Laura said. “First take four from six and what do you get?”

  “Two.”

  “And since you can’t take seven from three, what do you do?”

  Tamika studied the numbers with judicial intensity. Her face lit up.

  “I borrow a one!”

  Laura gave the girl’s back a soft pat.

  “That’s it, sweetie. Now you’re started.” She would sneak Tamika a gold star at the end of the day. It was the first time she remembered the subtraction rule on her own.

  A shout sounded far down the hallway, muffled by the long distance. The principal’s voice broke over the PA system. He did a lousy job hiding the panic in his voice.

  “Code Red! I repeat, this is a Code Red!”

  Code Red meant a lockdown emergency. Laura’s first though was for her children. Someone or something in the halls had to be kept out of the classrooms.

  “Everyone up against the wall!” she commanded. “Now!” Desks scraped and bashed. Kids dashed the way they had drilled and swarmed to the wall that bordered the hallway. They ducked and cowered at the base.

  Laura slammed the door shut and twisted the lock closed. She glanced out through the narrow slit window, but the hallway was empty. A quick glance confirmed the classroom windows were locked. She did a headcount. Twenty-four kids.

  The shouting from the far end grew louder. Her heart pounded out a staccato beat in her chest. She played out a dozen potential threat scenarios simultaneously in her head. All ended badly.

  She slid to the floor and braced her back against the door. Her children radiated anxiety and she could feel the heat. A few whimpers broke the silence.

  “Everyone stay calm,” she said. Her whispered voice dripped with reassurance. “You are all being so brave. This will be over in just a minute.”

  This time the voice in the hallway was clear. Deep, throaty and filled with drunken rage.

  “You can’t keep me from my goddamn daughter!”

  Laura’s racing heart skipped a beat. She recognized the voice from six months ago. Before the man’s domestic violence arrest. Before the restraining order. Before the legal separation. Before the loss of visitation rights. It was Tamika’s father, Darius.

  He was unforgettable. Over six feet tall and linebacker wide, his dreadlocks hung down to his shoulders. A slow-witted testament to the dangers of mixing steroids and narcotics, his dull, steel-gray eyes, devoid of emotion, still haunted Laura.

  Tamika recognized the voice. She tucked her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. Her eyes locked closed and she began a rapid little rocking motion.

  Laura wasn’t letting that lunatic son of a bitch touch Tamika again.

  The handle to the door thunked up and down as the lock foiled Darius’s attempt at entry. He shook the door in fury. It rattled in the hinges and pulsed against Laura’s back.

  “Gimme my daughter, bitch!” he bellowed.

  A sharp crack of something hard against the door window sounded over Laura’s
head. When it repeated, small glass shards fell in her hair. Laura kicked off her shoes and dug her heels in against the force.

  One boy started crying. Like the fuse to a string of firecrackers, others joined in a chorus of panicked sobs.

  The third assault shattered the glass. Darius thrust his thick, tattooed arm into the room, gripping the instrument of the window’s destruction; an ugly black .45 automatic.

  In the split second between that and the rest of her changed life, Laura had no time to think. She had only the moment to feel that combination of maternal and matriarchal instincts that anchored her existence. Those instincts saw mortal danger. This steel intruder threatened her children.

  Reason washed away in a torrent of adrenaline. Her hands shot up before her mind could command them. She grabbed the barrel of the gun, her left palm nearly covering the tip.

  Time slowed to a thousandth of its normal speed. All sound vanished. Everything disappeared for her but Darius’s hand and the potential instrument of a student’s death. The split, stubby fingernail in the trigger guard shone white as a half-moon against Darius’s black skin. Bright red blood smeared the nail’s edge. Then in agonizing slow motion, the finger tightened around the trigger. The pistol’s hammer fell with a deafening click.

  The gun’s blast must have echoed in the closed room, but Laura did not hear it. The bullet tore across her palm leaving a ragged raw gash. There was no pain, just the sensation of heat; the burning line along the rip in her hand, the hot pistol barrel searing her fingers.

  The rest of the world snapped back into place and accelerated to full speed. The window on the classroom’s far side exploded like a crack of thunder. The air reeked with the acrid scent of burnt cordite. The children’s voices wailed like shearing steel. The gunshot reverberated in the center of Laura’s head, though she was sure she never heard it. Her knuckles ached in the death grip she had on the .45.