The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the

  product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living

  or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  ©2009 Brian L. Blank. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

  transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  First published by AuthorHouse 6/19/2009

  ISBN: 978-1-4389-3806-6 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4389-3807-3 (hc)

  Cover Art by Ryan C. Edwards.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Bloomington, Indiana

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  First Edition

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2009906013

  Now the Kindle version includes the first chapter for the novel:

  “The Haunting of Stephen Wells: A Horror in Dodsville.”

  To Terry Pernsteiner, who was there

  Acknowledgements

  I wish to thank Patricia Keuer for sharing her invaluable advice after reading my first draft before I began my endeavor of my major rewrite of the novel. I would also like to acknowledge Hemer Funeral Services Inc. for their generous knowledge about preparing bodies for funeral services and also about burials in cemeteries. I also want to thank Michele Feddick-Pierce for her tireless

  proofreading and advice for the final draft. And, finally, my deepest gratitude to Ralph Whittington, my good friend who never gave up on supporting me. I only wish you were here.

  PROLOGUE

  (Twenty-four years ago)

  Little George Pallard knew beyond any reasonable doubt that he and his older brother David would never make it back home before dark. In fact, they wouldn't even be close. His elder brother of two years peddled ahead of him, gradually increasing the distance between them. The idea had been his that they come out this way. Now the sun was almost down, already below the tree line, and Mom was sure to ground them again. That was one of the "big" rules around home--Always be back in the yard before sunset. Always.

  Up ahead David skidded his bike to a stop, and looked back over his shoulder to his little brother. The corner of his lips turned up to form that all-too-familiar smirk, and George knew exactly what jab he would have to suffer before the word was even spoken. "Come along, pussy," David said, the smirk evolving now into a full-fledged shit-eating grin. He knew that was the one name George most hated being called.

  George pulled up next to him and stopped, keeping the poker face he had mastered over his short life span to hide the ire his brother so easily stirred within him. He had learned that complaining only brought the jab to his ears more often.

  They were in the country, almost five miles from city limits, and another two miles after that to home. On their right, hay fields stretched ahead until the land vanished over a hilltop. On their left, on the side of the road they had stopped and were now looking from, was an abandoned two-story house set between a darkening forest on one side and a knee-high corn field on the other. This house was the sole objective behind their excursion out here, and the reason why the inevitable grounding hadn't at first seemed so awful. After all, the house was haunted—or so town rumor had it.

  Of course George and David had known about this reputation long before today. But until yesterday the rumor was only that—a rumor. Last evening, on the way home with their father from a fishing trip, they happened to drive past this house almost right at sunset. Of course, just driving past wouldn't have been enough to make adamant believers out of them, for they had done that many times over their brief life spans. But last night, while David was casually looking out his side window at the house, a light flashed from an upstairs window—almost like the flash of a camera, but not quite. The flash lasted a little too long for that. At least that was what David thought. George didn't know the difference.

  George hadn't wanted to come out here, but David had called him that one particular rancorous word. And George hated being called that. Seven years old, he thought, was too old to be treated with such disrespect.

  "Come on," David said as he dropped his bike in the ditch next to the county trunk highway. He started toward the house, but stopped after a dozen steps and looked back. George was still firmly seated on his bike. "Oh, no." David shook his head in mock disgust. "I didn't ask a pussy to come out here with me, did I?"

  George reluctantly slid off his bike and dropped it, with care, in the ditch behind his brother's. "I'm coming," he said, attempting to sound enthusiastic, but failing. He wanted to be elsewhere—anywhere, in fact, but here. The tones and shadows around him, he thought, were tinted with a touch of bronze—the colors were off just slightly. Enough to cast an ominous gloom over the countryside. He tried to convince himself the only reason he wished he were home right now was because he didn't want to be grounded, with summer vacation just starting.

  But he knew better.

  The house, notoriously known as "Wickerman's," painfully needed a fresh paint job. Chips of white paint lay at the foot of the house immediately below where they had fallen. Enough paint had eroded off to give the house more of a grayish tinge of old weathered boards than of the white it had originally been. Only one window was broken, from what George could see; probably someone on a dare had thrown a rock through it. The wood shingles were weathered, but intact. Curtains framed the windows on the first floor, the curtains open so when the police drove past they could see in without obstruction. The windows on the second floor were bare.

  And it was on the second floor that David had alleged to see the flash of light.

  The door to the front porch was padlocked, but David had fully expected this inconvenience. With a deep, long belch he jumped off the steps to his right and sauntered casually to the one broken window, reached through the jagged edges, flipped up the latch, and pulled up on the sash. The window held against him for few seconds, as if it had strength of its own to prove, then conceded.

  "Give me a boost." He lifted his left leg and George grabbed onto the soles of his brother's shoe. With a grunt he lifted him onto the sill. From that vantage point, David pulled one leg over the sill, then the other, and fell noiselessly into the house. A second later his upper body appeared back in the window. "Come on." He extended a helping hand.

  George reluctantly grabbed hold of his brother's palm, and David pulled him up and into the kitchen. Or what looked to George to be a kitchen. An old wood-burning stove stood mutely on its four cast-iron legs in the far corner away from the window. The pipe that should have been leading out of the stove and out of the house (George didn't remember what it was called--just that it was named after a disease) was missing. The wood floor underneath his feet was warped and even in some places broken open, showing small cuts filled with dirt and dust. A lone dinette chair rested on its back in the middle of the room, missing one leg, a casualty of a long forgotten battle.

  George looked back out the window behind him. The sun was now down and darkness hastily advanced from the east. A certain somberness settled within the walls of the house, a visitor that George could only wish would have the common courtesy to leave.

  David moved in front of him. "Let's go upstairs," he said, heading out of the kitchen and into the adjacent room. "The flash I saw came from up there."

  George followed him into the next room and stop
ped short of the stairway leading up. He was most definitely in the living room now. A sofa covered with a dust-laden blanket rested under the window on the far side of the room. A worn carpet, which looked to have at one time been red, but was now the shade of a decaying tomato, covered the floor. The stairway leading to the second story rose to George's immediate right.

  And he didn't wish to climb it.

  "I'll wait here and keep an eye out for any trouble." He knew, before David even responded, the futility of his logic.

  David broke out into a wide grin and shook his head again in mock disgust. "OK, you wait here. You'd probably only get in my way up there, anyway." He turned away from George and started up the stairs. "Wait 'till I tell the guys about this. They'll know for a fact you're a pussy now. You won't be able to hide it any more." He chuckled loud enough for George to hear as he disappeared around a corner on the second floor, brandishing a Kodak Instamatic camera from his shirt pocket.

  George didn't care about the threat. He could live with that. What he might not be able to live with, meanwhile, was what might be waiting for his brother in one of the rooms upstairs.

  "You just do that," he shouted after him, though halfheartedly.

  He climbed the first step and stopped. Far enough, he thought to himself with an insecure sigh. I'll just wait right here. He leaned his right shoulder against the wall and strained his neck to look up the stairs. The light penetrating from outside was swiftly depreciating, and George shivered once at the image in his mind of being left in the house after darkness descended.

  And waited.

  He didn't have to wait long. About three minutes (George didn't own a watch, but it felt like a good three minutes to him) after David had disappeared around the corner on the second floor, something heavy fell up there. Something about the size and weight of a nine-year-old boy, George thought, feeling a panic beginning to rise to life within him. Only seconds after the thud George heard what sounded like a muffled scream, but couldn't be sure. The wind had increased a bit outside and the ancient house decided at the same time to embark upon moaning.

  "David?" He climbed onto the second step, pressing his hands against his chest in a futile attempt to calm his heart. "What's going on?"

  No answer. Just the creaking of rafters.

  George ascended onto the third step. "Come on, David, this isn't funny." His voice came out in a choppy whine. The panic in his chest had now come to full life.

  Again came the muffled scream; this time George was positive he heard it. He stood still, straining his ears up the stairwell and clenching his fists unconsciously. The wind picked up once more, and the creaking and moaning of the house prevented him from discerning any other sounds.

  He would have to climb the stairs.

  "George, get--"

  David's sentence was cut off--abruptly. Too abruptly, George thought. And there was terror in the tone of the two words his brother had managed to get out.

  George shivered. His older brother was in trouble.

  Without giving himself time to talk himself out of it, he burst up the remaining steps—two at a time—and didn't stop until he reached the summit. Waiting a minute to catch his breath, he peered cautiously around the edge of the stairwell and down the second-floor hall. There were five doorways that he could see—three on the right, two on the left—all closed. A small rectangular cardboard box rested between the two doors on the left. A breeze blew in from a single broken window at the end of the corridor.

  "David?" His voice was shaky.

  Sounds of a scuffle emanated from the last door on the left, followed by a repeat of the muffled scream. Then a silence ensued, only broken by the constant creaking of the rafters, like that of a ship on choppy seas.

  George unconsciously dropped his left foot back onto the first step down. His mind took him in two different directions: Run! it said. Save yourself! Get help and come back for him! But at the same time his mind told him, Help your brother, you pussy! And the latter statement thundered more prominently within his skull. He lifted his left foot back up to the second floor.

  Maybe, he thought desperately to himself, with my help we can take him—or it. He willed his legs to walk him down the hall. At first they resisted, but finally, slowly, they conceded and carried him to the last door on the left. And stopped cold.

  George's heart pounded loudly in his chest, and he felt for sure the thumping could be heard on the other side of the door. He reached reluctantly with his right hand and, quietly, grabbed hold of the doorknob. A gust of wind blew freely through the broken window next to him and ruffled the hair on his head, causing a single strand to fall over his left eye.

  He hesitated a moment, attempting to gather all his courage together at once, then slowly turned the knob. The second the latch clicked, George kicked open the door with all his might and prepared himself to either run for his life back down the stairs and out of the house or to help his brother with his attacker. He hadn't yet made up his mind.

  But the room was empty.

  No furniture. No carpeting. Just a wood floor covered with a thick layer of dust. And footprints in the dust. And the signs of a struggle in the middle of the room in the dust.

  Outside the sky was rapidly darkening as night set in, but enough light still penetrated from the lone window in the room for George to see fairly clearly. In a couple of minutes, however, he knew that slim advantage would be gone until morning.

  No footprints headed back out of the room. They entered the room. They led to the middle of the room. The dust was scattered in the middle of the room, showing the scuffle; and two drag marks, each the width of a shoe, led from the scuffle area to a mirror on the right wall next to a closed closet door. Or what appeared, George thought, to be a closet door. David, and whatever had him, must be hiding in that closet. Yet, he thought, there was just the set of drag marks leading up to the mirror next to it. No other footprints were visible.

  George's heartbeat lessened a degree, and he sighed heavily. If there were no other footprints in the room, then that must mean . . .

  "All right, David," he said as he breathed more easily and walked without fear up to the closet, his heart slowing like a train coming into a station. "The game's over. I know you're playing a trick on me, trying to scare me." He opened the door. Other than an old gray flannel suit covered with plastic on a hanger, dangling by itself and clinking against other hangers, the closet was empty.

  George stared silently for a minute into the closet, trying to determine exactly what this new information meant, when he heard the muffled scream again. He turned quickly on his feet to face whatever was behind him in the room. But again nothing was there. The wind blew down the hallway and the door creaked open another half an inch, and George wrinkled his brow in confusion.

  He was about to head out of the room when a thud sounded to his immediate right. And there was no doubt in George's mind exactly where the noise came from--the mirror. Or rather, from behind it.

  George walked two steps over to his right and stopped directly in front of the mirror. It was full sized, starting two inches off the floor and ending three feet above George's head and was about three feet across. His own reflection stared balefully back at him in the darkening room. A definite expression of fear broke over his face. The game had taken a sudden twist.

  "David?" His voice cracked out in a whimper. He reached out with his right hand to grab the edge of the frame to see if it would swing open to reveal a room on the other side.

  But his fingers never touched the wood. A misshapen, wrinkled dark human hand shot out of the mirror and grabbed tightly onto George's outstretched arm and pulled him toward his own image. George saw his own scream in the reflection as he fell forward through the looking glass.

  Outside the house, in the forest, an owl awakened to the scream, glanced fearfully around in search of any intruders, and satisfied there were none, closed its solemn eyes again. The wind picked up briefly, shaking a few leav
es in the forest. Then that, too, died down.

  Part One

  Stephen

  CHAPTER ONE:

  Arrival

  It was a cold, misting, wet day; and I was glad I decided not to drive and, instead, take the train. The windows were fogged over on the inside, and every once in a while a drop would form and slowly, gathering speed with weight, slither down the cool glass.

  I tried desperately to get some sleep, but memories kept creeping back into the fog that also seemingly filled the spaces of my mind. Reed was dead, but I kept picturing the two of us, through a haze, standing by Brunner's Pond, bored after a bad morning of fishing, and giving names to water plants. Reed had the better imagination, so it only followed that he always came up with the better names. Now, at my current age of twenty-four, I wished I was back at those more innocent times, no matter how dull what we did then may have seemed to adults. We had laughed more that one afternoon back by that pond than I could ever remember seeing the grownups around me enjoying themselves. Just letting loose, being ourselves; not caring what anyone else thought.

  Now Reed was dead.

  And I was going home to a funeral.

  I still remembered clearly the day I moved out of Dodsville, after the sudden demise of my parents in a freak car accident. Reed and I were both eleven years old, and the summer between sixth and seventh grade was just beginning. My maternal grandparents drove from Milwaukee to pick me up and take me back home with them. They were my only living relatives as both my mother and father were the only child in each of their original perspective families, and my paternal grandparents had both passed on before I was even born into this world. I fit the last of my belongings into the back seat of their car, and turned around to face Reed for the last time. He was actually crying because I was leaving--the first time in several years, since the first grade in fact, when he fell out of the willow tree in my backyard and broke his arm, that I could remember him in tears.