Deeper into Darkness

  Praise for Russell James

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

  —Library Journal on Black Magic

  (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 wove 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

  Also by Russell James

  Novels

  Dark Inspiration

  Sacrifice

  Black Magic

  Dark Vengeance

  Dreamwalker

  Novellas

  Blood Red Roses

  Collections

  Out of Time

  In a Land Far Away…

  Tales from Beyond

  Deeper

  into

  Darkness

  Russell James

  MLG Publishing

  Deeper into Darkness

  All stories copyright 2013 by Russell James, except “Nora’s Visitor” copyright 2010 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 authors, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contents

  Extra Play When Lit

  My Soul Is in the Theater

  Stone Cold

  A Long Stay in Number Six

  Table for One

  Nora’s Visitor

  As Luck Would Have It

  Man’s Best Friend

  The Gift

  Life Amidst Death

  Premonitions

  The Devil’s Eyes

  Wages of Sin

  Dark Vengeance Sample

  Dreamwalker Sample

  Extra Play When Lit

  “So, this is the place my grandfather told me about.”

  Stewart Dixon gritted his teeth at the disappointment in the young deliveryman’s voice. This unappreciative, sun-bleached surfer stood inside Rhapsody Mansion. Didn’t every red-blooded male dream of walking these halls?

  The LA Times had called Rhapsody Mansion “The House that Porn Built.” Of course, back then the LA Times had readers and porn hadn’t turned into amateurs humping on cheap websites. In its prime, Rhapsody Mansion had been the home of Stewart Dixon and his merry-go-round of young starlets. Movies made in the basement beneath, hedonism practiced in the rooms above.

  “Where do you want the crate?” the deliveryman said.

  “Put it in that corner,” Dixon answered. “Watch the tools on the floor.”

  Dixon pointed his withered, shaking hand to the far corner of the room. The years had faded his papery skin to near transparency, save the splotchy liver spots. His comb over of sparse, gray hair didn’t even fool himself anymore. Any semblance of muscle tone had long ago departed, like the entourage that used to populate the mansion.

  The room had been called the Playpen in its day, and still wore the décor of that time, like a stooped dowager forever dressed in her debutante gown. Overstuffed white couches bracketed tables of glass and tarnished chrome, overseen by kitschy ceiling lamps that recalled bad modern art. A full bar covered one wall. A white marble mantle framed a gas fireplace filled with cracked and rusting metal logs. Dust motes floated through the stale, still air.

  Dixon’s portrait hung above the fireplace, a gaudy oil version of him in his prime, forty years younger, in a red smoking jacket, two nude women at his feet wearing looks of adoration. Now his flowing brown locks and the girls in the painting were long gone. He thought he had the smoking jacket in a box somewhere.

  The deliveryman put his shoulder against the shipping crate and rolled his hand truck into Dixon’s appointed vacant corner. He pulled back the hand truck and left the box against the wall. It looked like an L lying on the long side.

  The deliveryman slipped off his black hooded sweatshirt, and took a power screwdriver from the tool pile to the packing crate. He pulled off the top first, reached in, and retrieved a piece of paper. He looked at it, shrugged, and handed it to Dixon. Dixon inspected it.

  BLASTS FROM THE PAST

  Relive your youth with items from our vast collection.

  Pre-war to present. Locator service available.

  Handwritten underneath it read:

  Enjoy your gift!

  The deliveryman removed the last few screws. The sides fell away and revealed the precious cargo within, a gleaming pinball machine.

  “Whoa, a major antique,” the deliveryman said.

  Dixon pushed past him and shoved a fifty into the man’s hand. The deliveryman uncrumpled it. His eyes went wide.

  “Anything else you need done around here?”

  Dixon waved him off toward the door without even a glance. The man sighed and left the room, hand truck in tow behind him.

  This model pinball machine, the Lucky Ace, had been state of the art when it rolled out of the assembly plant in 1962. In the upright backglass art, two improbably buxom women in vintage Daisy Duke-attire bracketed a suave, tuxedoed player at a poker table. Four aces and a king lay before him beside a pile of chips. A lit cigarette hung from the corner of his sly, victorious smile.

  In the play area, twin banks of triple flippers lined the sides of the machine. Four pop bumpers crowded the center. Slingshot kickers stood sentinel throughout the playfield. Thirteen pop-down tabs arced around the upper left side, painted like a full suit of spades, ace up to king. Smack all thirteen of these with the same ball and the phrase beneath them, EXTRA PLAY WHEN LIT, glowed bright red and the player earned another ball.

  The email announcing this gift had amazed Dixon. Fans of the now defunct Rhapsody magazine had sent him this as a token of appreciation for years of illicit arousal. The skin mag had pushed the boundaries until they broke, usually with under-age girls he’d pinned with fake birth certificates.

  Dixon leaned against the base of the machine. He caressed the edges with his wrinkled, tremulous fingertips, then rested them within the familiar indentations of the flipper buttons. He sighed.

  The collectors prized this rare model for its unique, offset-triple-flipper design. But this groundbreaking experiment enabled such extended play, that the model was discontinued when playtimes rose and revenue dropped. But Dixon’s elation at the announcement of the machine’s impending arrival was personal. The Lucky Ace had been the machine at the rear of Enzo’s Pizza.

  Enzo’s had been Dixon’s favorite hangout during his lonely high school years. In the rear of the strip mall establishment, he had lavished rolls of quarters and hours of time on the game. Back in the day, he’d mastered this machine, understood how to vary the compression on the plunger for a perfect launch, knew just the right pressure on the flipper to smack the ball into the target of his choice, and could finesse a two-handed nudge to just under the machine’s tilt limit. Only he had ever rolled over the six-digit counter.

  And of course, he’d dreamed of becoming old Lucky Ace, suave and debonair, surrounded by women ready to put out. He’d grown up and lived that dream, an
d unfortunately, continued a few decades beyond it.

  Stevens, Dixon’s burly, clean-cut, head of security entered the Playpen. The creases in his dark suit looked like they could cut paper. Even indoors, he wore his Secret Service-issued sunglasses.

  “Sir,” Stevens said. “The delivery vehicle is clear of the estate.”

  Stevens gave the pinball machine a quick inspection, more like sizing it up as a potential threat than an aesthetic evaluation. Then he resumed his usual stiff, modified military stance, and looked straight ahead.

  “See what this represents?” Dixon said. “Rhapsody fans still remember who the skin king is. It’s not even my birthday.”

  “It looks like it makes you happy, sir.” Stevens’ expression did not change.

  “Why don’t you get the hell out of here, and make sure the front gate locks behind that truck.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Stevens retreated, and closed the door behind him. Dixon checked his reflection in the backglass, superimposed over the self-assured poker player. He’d seen himself there hundreds of times before, a few inches higher, face fuller, eyes brighter, hair far longer and much darker. But old Lucky Ace hadn’t aged a day, the smirking bastard.

  Dixon tapped both flippers twice. The machine awakened like the comatose to consciousness. The upright backglass lit life into the three faces there. Pop bumpers dinged and turned bright white. The score counter rolled back to zero in a grinding symphony of tiny bell rings. The cabinet hummed in his hands.

  Dixon stepped away in surprise. The machine went dead. He peered underneath between the legs. The plug lay on the floor like a road kill snake. Goosebumps crawled up his arms.

  “It’s converted to battery power, or it’s some greenie-weenie solar thing,” he muttered. Neither of the rationalizations made much sense. The idea of the machine running without power filled him with wariness. But at the same time, whatever power lit those bumpers also lit the desire in him to play.

  He placed his fingers back on the flipper controls. The machine revived. A familiar progression of three bell notes sounded, a musical phrase Dixon hadn’t heard in an eternity, though once it had been part of his life’s soundtrack. The two low notes followed by one very high was the Lucky Ace’s call to arms, the announcement to let the games begin.

  On the playfield beneath the thick, clear glass, the pop bumpers flashed. Red and blue lights flickered behind the various extra point scores. In the backglass, a bulb backlit the card player’s eyes. The lines of smoke from his cigarette seemed to waver.

  Dixon touched the flippers. They fired, smooth and swift. A silver ball popped out of a chute with a sharp crack against the cover glass, and rolled into position against the plunger. The ball shimmered like mercury.

  Dixon grasped the plunger handle. The arthritis in his fingers ground like sandpaper between his joints. He pulled the plunger back and released.

  The ball travelled two-thirds of the way up the delivery chute, slowed and rolled back down. It bounced once on the plunger’s rubber tip, and lay still.

  “Damn,” he said to himself. “You’ve become one lame-ass son of a bitch.”

  He gripped the plunger handle again. He pulled back farther, this time adding his shoulder’s protests of pain to those in his hands. He released the handle.

  The ball sailed up and out of the delivery chute like a satellite launch. It entered the maze of upper bumpers, and let loose a cacophony of bells and a flurry of flashing lights. The ball rocketed across the playfield, dropped the tab carrying the six of spades, and ricocheted to the right side, dead on target for the center triple flipper.

  Dixon hit the button. The flipper sent the ball back up the playfield where it hit the deuce of spades, and sent it down out of sight.

  Dixon’s eyes glowed like one of the extra score lights. A pulse of adrenaline primed his flagging heart.

  The ball bounced down in a straight line to the space between the final flippers. It sailed through the gap. Bells rang. The score counter spun and clicked over a new total.

  “Son of a bitch.” Dixon had always hated those straight drops through the center.

  The machine coughed ball number two up to the plunger. Dixon sent the sphere flying. He hunkered down over the machine, squinting against the ravages of age upon his eyesight. He watched the ball the way a stalking lion tracked a flitting gazelle. This play lasted longer. He downed half the suit of spades. A bad bounce sent the ball through a side gate. The scoring numbers cartwheeled over 50,000. Ball number three popped up for play.

  Dixon’s legs quivered. One at a time, he raised a knee and wiped his damp palms against his pants, afraid to release the controls and have the machine drop dead mid-play. He took a deep breath to steady himself.

  “Goddamn. Winded playing pinball. Dix, there was a time you could bang chicks for hours on end and not break a sweat.”

  He wiped his brow against his shoulder, and then let the last ball fly.

  Dixon’s long term memory resurrected his dormant flipper skills. Points racked up. He soon downed the full suit of cards, save the three of spades.

  He averted a disaster with a one-two tap on the lower flippers, and sent the ball up the playfield. It smacked the three of spades head on.

  The card dropped. Bells rang like a carillon gone mad. EXTRA PLAY WHEN LIT blazed in fiery crimson. The full suit of cards popped back up, daring a second decimation.

  “Yeah!” Dixon’s pulse thumped. He pounded the flippers in victory, even though the ball bounced in play between the pop bumpers. He teetered on the tips of his toes.

  He racked up another few thousand points before the ball disappeared through a side gate.

  He shivered in exhilaration over the high score. Then he realized it wasn’t the score, which was just a fraction of his youthful all-time high. It was the extended play win, the accomplishment of downing all thirteen cards and the reward of another ball that had pumped him up.

  He reached down to launch the final ball. He gripped the plunger without a trace of discomfort in his hand. He flexed it once, twice. Pain free. He inspected it, and while it might have been his imagination, he could swear that the liver spots on his hands had faded.

  He finished the last ball of the game. The counters finally stilled and the GAME OVER light announced the end of play. The bulb behind the poker player’s eyes flickered as if he winked.

  An addictive desire for a second game infused Dixon. He hadn’t needed a quarter for the first one. Hell, he hadn’t needed electricity, but that odd little incongruity had faded away completely. He tapped the flippers twice. The score counter rolled to zero. The three bells announced a polished silver pinball’s return to launch position. Old Lucky Ace smiled.

  Dixon played a second game, then a third, and then lost count. With each ball, his timing improved, his feel for the game sharpened. He saved questionable rebounds. He picked and hit his targets. Each game’s score rolled higher than the one before.

  “Mr. Dixon?” Stevens called from the doorway.

  The interruption broke Dixon’s concentration. He flubbed a shot and the ball dropped down the middle.

  “Damn it!” he said. “What?”

  He didn’t turn around, afraid to break his grip that kept the machine alive.

  “Just making sure everything is okay before passing it to the night shift, sir. I mean, given the time.”

  Dixon leaned over to check his gold wristwatch. Seven at night? He’d been playing for hours.

  “The kitchen wondered about your dinner, sir.”

  He wasn’t the least bit hungry. “Dismiss them.”

  Stevens retreated and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Dixon inspected his hand again. The spots had faded. No more than the first time he’d checked, but he was certain of it now. And there was no question that the joints in his fingers were less swollen, less painful.

  He tapped up another game. The first two disappointing balls barely scored a point. The thi
rd ball was charmed. He didn’t miss a shot. Bumpers rang, targets dropped. The suit of spades vanished one by one, until only the queen remained. Dixon caught the ball on the right upper flipper. He let it roll down to the tip and tapped the button. The ball sailed up and nailed the queen.

  EXTRA PLAY WHEN LIT turned scarlet. The adrenaline surge swept through him again. A chill shivered up his spine. His shoulders warmed from the inside. He could practically feel the osteoarthritis there melt away.

  By the time GAME OVER lit again, instead of sagging under the weight of the late hour and the fatigue of play, he stood invigorated.

  He smiled at his reflection in the backglass, a smirk that mirrored the card player’s. Dixon’s eyes widened. His image was crisp and clear, as it had looked before time had stiffened his eyes’ lenses. The wattle of flesh beneath his chin had shrunk. The lines around his eyes were finer. He looked closer at his doppelgänger. He stretched his neck. It wasn’t just the lighting. He’d changed.

  The last thing he believed in was magic and all that supernatural crap. But there was no denying that the more he played this game, the better he felt, the younger he became. Knocking down the suit of spades turned back his clock. Extra play indeed.

  Oh, to turn back the clock. Back to when his pecker stood high and hard without a dose of Viagra. Back before amber alerts and the kiddie cops looked for every damn runaway that came to LA, back when he could convince those doe-eyed waifs that their path to stardom started by kneeling in front of his fly.

  Maybe this was his ticket. With the knowledge he had now, with the Internet to leverage, and with a dozen foreign countries without child-porn taboos, he could turn his millions into billions this time around. If he could get this machine to turn the trick, he’d have the time, and the energy, to build the biggest empire yet. He just needed to roll up a few extra plays on this machine. And he wasn’t going to waste time letting luck play any part in it.