Dark Vengeance

  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 Vengeance

  Russell James

  Dark Vengeance

  Print Version

  Copyright 2014 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: 978-1542811989

  ISBN-10: 1542811988

  MLG Publishing

  Dedication

  For the folks in Tennessee, who make every trip there feel like coming home.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my Beta Girls and fellow Minnows, K. P. Hornsby and Teresa Robeson. These royal tasters braved this book first to ensure the rest of you were not poisoned.

  And thanks to my wife, Christy, who supports these bizarre endeavors and endures the pitying looks of her friends who have read my work.

  Chapter One

  The fire left little of Galaxy Farm.

  Only the old barn still stood. The glass in the central cupola reflected the moonlight like some low-output lighthouse. Three deaths had occurred in there: the sheriff, the crazy writer and Vern Pugh. Even before the fire took the main house, the triple homicide had sparked stories of the barn being haunted. Everyone in the nearby small town of Moultrie, Tennessee accepted the tales as fact.

  Later, the foreboding barn would no doubt be where the kids would go. Middle school boys on a dare. High school teens on a date. The only structure left on the fifteen acres would draw them all.

  But the willowy woman who moved through the night didn’t give the barn a thought. She trudged up the long gravel drive to the ruins of the once-proud home. Three of the walls on the first floor still stood. Their ragged, burned edges were all that hinted an upper story had existed. That second story, and all that had been above it, now lay in a charred heap in the house’s open interior. Twenty-four hours after the blaze, the remains were cool, but the humid air was still redolent with the conflagration’s acrid smell.

  The woman crossed the remnants of the front porch. The boards creaked with each hesitant step. There was no telling how badly the fire had damaged the joists below. Her research confirmed that the house had no basement, but even a short fall through to the foundation could break a bone.

  Her long, open black duster flicked the edge of the gaping front doorway as she entered the house’s dead shell. Mounds of shadowy remains covered the floor. Jagged, broken rafters jutted from the pile like limbs of the dead in rigor mortis. Now shielded from the prying eyes driving along nearby US 41, she flicked on a penlight.

  She played the bright, narrow beam across the wreckage. The legacy of the long-dead previous owner, Mabron Hutchington, would still be here somewhere. None of his supernatural works ever left the house after his death, not when his brother owned it afterwards, not when his nephew Vern inherited it and certainly not when Doug and Laura Locke had moved in last year. A tiny rural-Tennessee town like Moultrie would know.

  Mabron had practiced his brand of dark magic here for years. It was Egyptian-tinged, but parallel to her own, tapping the same great sources of natural power.

  She pulled aside a blackened board. Yellow eyes and a set of bared white canines flashed in the penlight’s beam. Her heart skipped a beat and she stumbled backwards against a wall.

  The teeth did not move. She panned the light around them and lit a wolf’s head, long dead, taxidermied for eternal preservation. But the fire had seared away its hide and left just a blackened, clay-infused skull, two marble eyes and the menacing teeth.

  She smiled at the welcome sign, a part of Mabron’s extensive collection of magic-infused taxidermy. When the house went up in flames the night before, Mabron’s possessed possessions had indeed still been here.

  She moved the penlight to her mouth to free up her hands. Tossing aside some boards, she uncovered a collapsed wooden chest. She pried open the warped lid. A stack of charred papers, perhaps once books, filled one side. They disintegrated at her touch, as if whatever magic they once relayed wanted to stay out of her reach.

  On the other side sat a collection of glass eyes, all sizes and colors. Each gazed off in a different direction, like a cyclopean swarm in search of an escape.

  These tempted her, but they were unused. A proper talisman had to have already been infused with magic, already begun on that difficult path between the world of reality and the one that pulsed just under reality’s surface. The wolf’s glass eyes perhaps would do, but they carried a low residual charge. The optimal piece would be a personal item, something Mabron had kept close to him while he cast the spells he’d used to keep souls barred from the hereafter. Perhaps a ring, a watch, a pair of glasses.

  She pawed through the rest of the cinders in the box and found nothing. She turned and shined her light into what had been the living room. A flash of silver winked at her from within a recess in the debris. She picked her way across the unstable wreckage and knelt at the location.

  She pulled off her glove and reached blindly into the small space. Her fingertips tingled. Her pulse skipped a beat. She sensed that this object that called to her from across the ruined house was rich with magic. It had not been an object of it, but instead continually exposed to it, like iron magnetized by passing through an electric field. The house fire’s residual heat rose and enveloped her arm as she reached deeper into the debris. Her fingers touched cold metal and she snatched it.

  She opened her fist in her flashlig
ht’s bright glow and revealed a silver locket. Its delicate, detailed turn-of-the-century engraving implied it had been a woman’s, but the aura it exuded left no doubt that Mabron wore it during his most intense magic spells.

  She popped it open. Ashes were all that remained of the pictures inside, as if whoever the locket had immortalized had fully passed from this world. But that did not matter. The magic mattered. And with its previous prolonged exposure, this talisman would be powerful indeed.

  She snapped off her light and buried her treasure in her front pocket. She thought better of that and placed the chain around her neck. She flipped her long hair outside the chain and tucked the locket into her shirt. It nestled between her breasts.

  From atop the barn, an owl puffed out two shrill hoots, as if warning that it was time to depart.

  She hopped across the house’s remains and through the missing front door. Her open coat flew behind her like a cape as she broke into a run back to her car. With each stride, the locket bounced against her chest, little taps timed like a countdown clock on the greatest spell her coven would ever cast.

  Chapter Two

  Four months later

  Theresa Grissom awakened to darkness, without and within.

  The clock showed just after 4:00 a.m. Streetlights backlit her bedroom blinds and the weak horizontal slivers of light lit the room in the faintest gray. She had two hours before her alarm would awaken her to get her nine-year-old son, Dustin, up and off to school. With only five hours of sleep, she had no need to be up at this unholy hour. She rolled over and saw the light streaming under her door.

  The darkness within took on a richer, heavier shade of black. Laura Locke was up and awake. As usual. Theresa pulled the covers up over her eyes.

  Four months ago, she’d offered her home to Laura. They had both experienced the real and surreal horrors at Galaxy Farm, solved the mysteries of the hauntings and survived the assault by Laura’s possessed husband, Doug. Laura had sacrificed the house to release the trapped spirits of the twin girls within. It was only right to reward that selfless act with the invitation to use Theresa’s spare bedroom. Laura had been Dustin’s teacher, and he’d made great strides in her class. His withdrawn personality bloomed when Laura introduced him to art and other creative outlets. Shared experiences and the shared goal of guiding Dustin to success should have been more than enough to ensure harmony.

  A pan clanged in the kitchen. Theresa cringed. Laura was going to cook and lately she only cooked one thing—grilled cheese sandwiches, frequently burned. Theresa had trouble explaining to Dustin why he had to eat his vegetables when Ms. Laura, a teacher, didn’t eat many at all.

  A bitter, smoky scent drifted through the air. Theresa whipped off the covers. Something was on fire. Maternal instincts went into overdrive. She bounded out of bed and through her bedroom door. At the end of the hall, smoke filled the kitchen.

  She ran in. A cast iron pan sat on the stove, the bottom glowing red. Black smoke roiled upward from the flames engulfing a cheese sandwich in the pan.

  At the kitchen table, Laura slept, head on hands across the tabletop. Her disheveled blonde hair covered her face like a veil. Her wrinkled T-shirt hung loosely from her shoulders. She droned a light, oblivious snore.

  Theresa grabbed a dish towel and spun it around the pan’s handle. She heaved the heavy, flaming pan into the stainless steel sink, where it clanged like an imperial gong. Laura jerked up, half-awake. Theresa yanked the faucet full open. Water blasted the pan. It sizzled and popped into a thick cloud of black steam. Theresa had to turn away.

  “What’s happening?” Laura said.

  Theresa slammed down the faucet. She stared down Laura in anger and disgust. “You’re burning my house down, that’s what’s happening!”

  “Oh, I was making a sandwich… I must have fallen asleep.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t want to do that at a reasonable hour of the night.”

  Laura’s eyes went wide with shock, but the dam break of Theresa’s pent-up frustration washed out any recognition that she’d touched a raw nerve.

  “I don’t need you to set my house on fire,” Theresa said.

  Laura stood and squared her shoulders. “I’ll buy a new pan. No harm done. Let’s not overreact here.”

  “Overreact? My kitchen’s on fire! How calm do you want me to be?”

  “Okay. Sorry. I made a mistake,” Laura said.

  “Mistakes happen when you stay up all night and sleep all day. You aren’t paying attention to anything lately. You don’t clean up, you don’t do laundry until it’s piled against your door. When was the last time you left the house?”

  “It’s summer,” Laura yelled. Her face was red, her eyes fierce. “I’m a teacher, this is my downtime. I’ve been under some stress, if you haven’t noticed. Mind if I take a break before the whole thing starts again in two days?”

  Laura’s raised voice set off alarms in Theresa’s head. Not since ex-husband Bastard Bobby had gotten the boot had anger darkened her home. She’d sworn that day it never would again.

  “Mom?” said a sleepy little voice. Dustin stood in the kitchen doorway, rubbing his eyes against the light. He wore a set of pajamas emblazoned with the superhero Arrowman’s logo. Half his mop of blond hair stood up on end. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, baby,” Theresa said. She spun him back in the direction of his bedroom and shot an angry glance back at Laura. “We’re just up early. You can go back to bed.”

  “But something’s burning,” he mumbled.

  “All taken care of. Nothing to worry about.” She propelled him back down the hallway. “Go on back to bed.”

  He shuffled back to his bedroom and Theresa reentered the kitchen. “There, are you happy now? He’ll be unable to concentrate all day with his sleep cycle interrupted. You, of all people, should know that.”

  Laura clenched her fists. “Well, if I’m such a bad influence and a burden, I should probably just move out.”

  “You probably should, before you burn a second house down.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d even mentally formed them.

  Shock rolled across Laura’s face, quickly replaced with determination. “No problem.”

  Laura stormed out. Theresa stared down at the charred mess in her kitchen sink.

  Well, she thought. She’d said it. Perhaps not the way she should have said it, but it had to be said somehow. Laura could have turned the place to charcoal, and her son with it. Besides, what kind of example was she setting for Dustin, her being a teacher?

  Every rationalization rang true. None erased her pebble-in-the-shoe feeling of guilt for kicking Laura when she was down.

  Chapter Three

  “No, that goes here. No, no, HERE!”

  Ruby Broadway’s billowing sleeve flapped like a big, blurred flag in a breeze as she repeatedly pointed to the rear wall in the apartment. Her voice was as loud as her bright-blue dress, and both had a bit too much volume for the confined space. Boxes were stacked everywhere and it took a bit of dancing for Ruby to maneuver her three-hundred-pound frame around them as she backed away from the wall.

  Two burly men in gray coveralls sighed and lifted a couch for the third time. They trundled it over to the appointed wall and lowered it to the polished wood floor.

  “That suit you fine?” the taller of the two asked. “Your majesty?”

  “The couch is perfect,” Ruby said. “Your attitude ain’t.” She pointed a thumb to the door. “Now skedaddle before I tell your boss you done lost him my auction business for the next year.”

  The taller mover grumbled an incoherent reply and the two headed out the front door. They passed Laura on her way in. She had her long blonde hair pulled back up on her head. Her jeans hung loosely at her hips from her unintentional summer weight loss.

  Ruby broke into a dazzling smile, accentuated by her cocoa skin. She pointed after the departing movers. “Now, girl, that there’s what we keep men around for. Manual lab
or we women are too smart to do.”

  “So carrying this box in makes me stupid, I guess,” Laura said.

  Ruby popped open the top and pulled out a pack of microwave popcorn and a bag of mini chocolate candy bars.

  “No way. You’re carrying the essentials. Ain’t no trusting this to a man.”

  “Ruby, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your last minute help with this move.”

  “It’s a favor to everyone,” Ruby said. “My friend had the apartment open and needed to rent it. I needed to get some of this furniture out of storage to free up some space. It was a little sudden like though. Any problem you need help with?”

  Ruby made a good living doing high-end redecorating through estate sales. She was one of the few people in town who would actually ask Laura out of caring rather than just out of morbid curiosity.

  “No, no problems. Just decided at the last minute to get my own place before school restarted. I wouldn’t want Dustin to get a hard time from the kids about having a teacher living at his house.”

  “You know how kids is, don’t you?” Ruby said. “My work here is done. These same blockheads need to deliver the rest of what I bought at the auction to my storage space. If I ain’t there to supervise, Lord knows what will happen. Do you know what you call a man with half a brain?”

  “Gifted!” Laura said.

  “Amen, sister.” Ruby slammed the door behind her as she left.

  The apartment went silent. The four small rooms were a corner of an older downtown Victorian home that had been subdivided by the landlord. Being midday, the other tenants were still at work. Even the street outside was deserted.

  So here I am, she thought. All of a sudden, on my own. Theresa had certainly forced her hand on this one. What had gotten into her last night anyway? Sure, I’d been taking it easy over the summer break, but didn’t I rate it?