Fear, page 46
But something stopped him.
“Oh God!” moaned Roger. “It’s eyes!”
The eyes of the Seedling were not those of an unthinkable monster, but were, instead, his eyes. Hazel green and as human as human could be. Both Tyler and Cindy had inherited Roger’s eye color and, so it seemed, had his latest offspring.
“Daddy,” whimpered the Seedling pitifully. “Don’t.”
“Don’t look at its eyes, Mr. Perry!” warned Hot Pappy. “Kill it!”
“I… I don’t know if I can!”
The Seedling reached up with a thin hand constructed of knotted roots and twigs. “Don’t Daddy,” it protested. Tears bloomed in those mirror-image eyes as it tenderly stroked Roger’s face. “Love Daddy.”
“Dear Lord, Hot Pappy, I don’t think I can…”
The thing turned its ugly head and regarded the old man. “Kill you. Kill Daddy’s friend.”
Roger felt the thing shaking off the effects of the potion’s smoke. It was growing stronger, threatening to break his hold.
“KILL IT!” screamed Hot Pappy.
Roger Perry screamed himself as he reared back and then brought the edge of the wooden hatchet down upon the Seedling. The head of the axe parted the creature’s skull, splitting it in half. A gelatinous black substance – the thing’s brain, perhaps – spurted from the open wound. When it hit the ground, it sizzled and smoldered with a nasty, sulfurous stench.
“No, Daddy,” moaned the thing. “Don’t. Please…love me…”
Roger yelled hoarsely as he brought the hatchet down again and again. Finally, he felt the Seedling cease to move beneath him. He leapt up and stumbled backward. The thing’s head was a glistening ruin of splintered wood. The only things that remained whole and intact were those human-like eyes of hazel green.
“Oh, dear God, forgive me,” sobbed Roger. He tossed the wooden hatchet to the ground, as though it were a smoking gun.
“Forgive you… for what?” asked Hot Pappy.
“I… I created the thing. It was my…”
The elderly man was suddenly there, gripping Roger firmly by the shoulders. “No! Listen to me, Mr. Perry. It was a monster, plain and simple. True, you brought it to life, but that’s as far as it goes. It was never a part of you. Not a true part of you.”
Roger closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “What do we do with it now? Bury it?”
A look of pure terror shown in Hot Pappy’s ebony face. “Bury it? Oh, dear Jesus, no! Can you imagine what would happen if you buried… planted… a Seedling? Do you want a whole orchard of these sadistic little bastards sprouting up and going to town, looking for their daddy? Looking for you?”
“No!” mumbled Roger, trembling. “God help me, no.”
“There’s a better way. Now stand clear.”
Hot Pappy bent down and picked up the hatchet. Then he took a can of lighter fluid from his shirt pocket. He removed the cap and saturated the crumpled body of the creature. Then he took a book of matches and lit one from the fold. He tossed it at the Seedling and both of them stood there, watching, as it caught flame and burned.
“Is it over?” Roger asked, sounding drained, both physically and emotionally.
“Yes,” the black man assured him. “It’s most definitely over.”
The two were silent all the way back to Hot Pappy’s shack.
When Roger stopped the van and let it idle, the old man turned and looked him. Roger sat there, his head drooping slightly, his eyes still moist from crying. He didn’t need to see the expression on the man’s face to gauge his sorrow. It hung inside the vehicle like something alive and palpable… and he knew it would remain that way for some time.
“It was something that had to be done,” Hot Pappy told him softly. “If you hadn’t, you would have lost your family. A thing like that doesn’t stop until it has its way. Feel fortunate that you had the guts to end it before it was too late.”
“But… but its eyes!”
“I know. It’s a grievous thing to dwell on. But it wasn’t human and it wasn’t actually your child. And what you did could never, in a million years, be considered an act of murder.”
Roger turned and stared at the old man. His eyes were feverish and haunted. “Couldn’t it?”
Hot Pappy reached over and patted the man’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself, Mr. Perry. Maybe we’ll run into each other around town. Or maybe not. If you’d rather not acknowledge me should we cross paths, then that’s okay. We’ll just pretend that it never happened.”
“Please,” said Roger dully, “just take your bottle and go.”
Hot Pappy nodded, took the brown bag bearing the bottle of Johnny Walker Black, and left the Dodge. Almost immediately, Roger Perry took off. A moment later, the red taillights of the van disappeared over a rise in the road and was gone.
The elderly man sighed, feeling ancient and exhausted. He made his way through his junky yard, mounted the porch, and let himself into the shack with a key.
Hot Pappy tossed his cap on the table, then plopped into the recliner. As he uncapped the bottle of Black and took a long swig, he stared at an old, yellowed photograph hanging on the wall. A pretty, young black woman wearing a calico dress and a white apron. She was holding a tiny girl with her hair tied up in cornrows, while a boy of five or six stood next to her, decked out in overalls and a big old toothy grin.
Something scratched at the bedroom door.
He took another drink of the liquor, feeling it burn going down, trying hard to ignore the sound.
The door creaked as it opened.
Hot Pappy tensed – as he always did – when it approached.
He stared at the wooden hatchet lying on the table a few feet away.
Feel fortunate that you had the guts to end it before it was too late, he had told Roger Perry. He felt ashamed… giving advice that he had been too cowardly to take to heart himself.
His skin crawled when it laid its knotty, gnarled hand upon his shoulder.
“Papa?” a voice whistled in his ear, cold and lonesome, like winter wind through a hollow log. “Papa… come home?”
Other Ronald Kelly eBooks Available from Crossroad Press
AFTER THE BURN
This collection of two novellas and six short stories follows the exploits of a handful of survivors in a nuclear-devastated world ruled by the dregs of the earth; serial killers, child molesters, rapists, and cannibals, as well as radiation-evolved mutants. This is Ronald Kelly’s most extreme work to date - including his acclaimed novellas FLESH WELDER.
It was a picture-perfect Fourth of July; one that heralded both celebration and pride for millions. Folks enjoyed parades and cook-outs, the playful laughter of children and a velvet sky alive with fireworks. Afterward, they went to sleep, happy and contented, without a care in the world. Then at midnight, the sun came up, brighter than a billion sparklers and hotter than Hell unleashed.
They called it The Burn. The senseless detonation of nuclear devices across the face of the earth; randomly scattered, without rhyme or reason. Civilization as we knew it was consumed in fire that day and, from its ashes, rose a horrifying phoenix of boundless evil and depravity. Those who had once clung to the shadows, because of law and moral restraint, now stepped boldly forward to stake their unholy claim…
An elderly handyman battles one of the most heinous serial killers in history as his picturesque small town slowly becomes a violent nightmare come true.
A well-known TV chef of culinary delights finds herself stranded and struggling for survival in the wilds of Virginia with her only friend, a stray dog named Compadre… and soon discovers that hunger and betrayal goes hand-in-hand.
A band of unlikely survivors take refuge in the castle of an abandoned theme park, attempting to ward off an army of crazed lunatics who have come there in search of the only sustenance they crave… human flesh.
Two children strive to escape the evil clutches of a band of rapists and child molesters. They listen for the happy music of the ice cream truck and pray for the arrival of the Popsicle Man, a white-clad vigilante who has only hatred and fury for those who would prey upon the innocent.
A farm family attempts to forge a solitary life in the lofty mountains of the Tennessee Smokies. That lonesome pursuit for normalcy and peace is derailed when radiation mutates the wildlife and vegetation of their beloved home into their worse enemies… and threatens to evolve them into something less than human themselves.
A middle-aged housewife and an Elvis impersonator journey to Memphis to pay homage to a long-dead rock and roll legend… and discover that iconic ghosts sometimes hold the true key to survival.
The survivors of Ruin Town must face evil in the form of a sadistic military commander known as the General. Their only hope is a man who can repair their broken bodies and, through a unique blending of medicine and mechanics, make them whole again. He is the healer supreme. The medico grande. The Flesh Welder.
A woman and her daughter seek to escape the horrors of an inner-city Hell, strife with murder, torture, and rape, by partaking of a drug which transports them to their own private Heaven. But they soon discover that a chemically-induced paradise is limited in the protection it can provide.
CUMBERLAND FURNACE & OTHER FEAR-FORGED FABLES
Seven tales of terror that could only beat in the dark, diseased heart of Dixie…
- An abandoned furnace stands as a monument to cruelty and torture…as well as a gathering place for old ghosts…
- Grandma’s culinary gifts of comfort and compassion contain a special ingredient conjured from the very depths of Hell…
- A man’s stubborn curiosity awakens an insatiable hunger on a lonesome country road…
- A surprise feature plays on the big screen of a drive-in theatre, revealing a town gathering that should have been left in secrecy and darkness…
- Two boys explore a traveler’s mobile museum of cinematic horrors, only to discover that true horror is not always what it first appears to be….
- Grandpa’s Christmas Eve story brings a yuletide visit from a wandering ghost with a long-unfulfilled mission…- It started out as nothing more than a shortcut home… a detour through a shadowy stretch of forest known as Tanglewood. But what awaited him there, amid the brush and bramble, made a simple flat tire seem like a horrifying journey into madness…
DARK DIXIE
Previously available on audio cassette from Darkscribe Press, this collection was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992. Dark Dixie collects the following works of southern horror by author Ronald Kelly. This book includes all the stories from the audio book and several more:
The stories included are:
* Yea, Though I Drive was previously published in Cold Blood (1991)
* Miss Abigail’s Delicate Condition was previously published in Noctulpa (1988)
* The Cistern was previously published in Cemetery Dance (1990)
* Papa’s Exile was previously published in Deathrealm (1988)
* The Hatchling was previously published in Tri-State Fantasist (1989)
* Uncle Cyrus was previously published in Noctulpa (1988)
* Forever Angels was previously published in Cemetery Dance (1988)
* Black Harvest was previously published in After Hours (1989)
DARK DIXIE II
Volume Two of Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror, the follow on to the immensely popular Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror.
Dark Dixie II is darker in nature, wandering into shadowy places where the first book never ventured. The Southern-fried flavor is still there; from the dankness and decay of the Louisiana swamps, to the dust and sweat of Texas, and into familiar territory of the author’s own, the mossy gloom of the Tennessee backwoods, as well as the turned earth of its fertile farmland. Creatures lurk within these pages as well. Spiders and gators, things dwelling within jars and the currents of the wind, and the abominations of Hell, let loose to run joyfully rampant in the night.
The stories included are:
THE WEB OF LA SANGUINAIRE
DEAD SKIN
DUST DEVILS
THE DARK TRIBE
BLOOD SUEDE SHOES
THE CEREBRAL PASSION
BOOKMARKS
DEVIL’S CREEK
BENEATH BLACK BAYOU
MIDNIGHT GRINDING
HELL HOLLOW
From out of a shadowy backwoods hollow, echoes a dark threat from the past, nearly a century lost and forgotten.
The rural town of Harmony, Tennessee possessed a disturbing secret; a secret so ancient that most of its residents were completely unaware of it. Even the last survivors of a vigilante raid long ago have filed the tragic events of that autumn night away, totally unaware of the evil that remains, dormant, but forever patient, among the tall pines and thick-leaved kudzu of a place known only as Hell Hollow.
There it would have remained, unrevealed, if not for a handful of unknowing participants. Four kids, bored for excitement during one of the hottest summers on record. A killer on the run, dodging his latest atrocity. And a rape victim on a deadly mission – scarred in both body and mind. All have a hand in bringing forth an unspeakable evil from the dark woods of Hell Hollow.
He is a skeletal figure in top hat and tails, brandishing a handful of magical cards and a patented elixir that was brewed in the very depths of Purgatory.
HINDSIGHT
SIGHT UNSEEN
Little Cindy Ann knew things no one else knew; saw things no one else saw. Ever since she’d nearly died of fever, the gift of second sight had been hers. Only it didn’t seem like such a gift when the other children called her a witch and wouldn’t play with her. Or when her visions resembled nothing so much as her worst nightmares.
DEATH UNDYING
Then her older brother disappeared in the vicinity of the old tobacco barn. And Cindy’s visions began to burn with a bloodthirsty relentless hatred. What horrors lay buried in the cold earth of the barn? And how could one innocent little girl hope to fight the terrifying evil - an evil that had taken her brother, and that would now turn on the only witness to its monstrous, merciless crimes…Cindy herself.
LONG CHILLS
A teenage girl with second sight is brought to an abandoned farmstead to locate the bodies of several abducted children, only to find an entire graveyard beneath her feet. A detour on a rural road reveals a horrifying presence that both deceives and feeds. In ancient Ireland, a young priest suffers bestial dreams linked to the dark legend of a werewolf warrior. A physician with a special talent attempts to keep life and dignity sacred in post-apocalyptic Texas, while a sadistic general works equally hard to destroy it. Two children in a farming camp are terrorized by a demented handyman with a crippled hand and a fondness for well-honed steel. Nuclear fallout brings horrors beyond imagining to a mountain family in the form of rampant mutation, as well deceit and derision among themselves.
In Long Chills, acclaimed horror author Ronald Kelly explores the dark hills and hollows of his native South, as well as other disturbing places, with this new collection of thirteen novellas and long fiction stories. The scares are intense and the shadows long and deep as Kelly takes you on lengthy journeys of darkness and depravity, as well as madness and the macabre.
Stories in this collection include:
Midnight Grinding
The Spawn of Arget Bethir
Tanglewood
Flesh-Welder
Tyrophex-14
The Seedling
Devil’s Creek
The Winds Within
Of Crows & Pale Doves
A Shiny Can of Whup-Ass
Mojo Mama
Potter’s Field
Evolution Ridge
THE DARK’UN
It was passed down from generation to generation. The legend of The Dark’Un, the strange beast that roamed Pale Dove Mountain. The dark monster that no one had ever seen — at least not and lived to tell about it — except, so it was said, old Fletcher Brice who lived at the foot of the mountain.
No one really believed in The Dark’Un. It was just a story to make a child’s flesh crawl.
Until Old Man Brice died.
Now, the people of Tucker’s Mill, Tennessee, would be forced to believe.
THE SICK STUFF
Repulsive.
Disgusting.
Beyond the realm of good taste…
A serial killer records the abominations he has committed… on the only journal he has in his possession.
A man moves into a new abode that is plagued with a spider problem… or is it the other way around?
A sadistic fiend prepares for Halloween with razored treats and poisonous prizes…
A young boy’s dreams echo of torture, death, and genocide…
An old man’s living fluids reveal a horrible secret from his past…
A mentally-unstable woman uses a sexual obsession to take an unwilling hostage…
Parasites from within, self-vampirism, and spontaneous decay… all stem from a voodoo curse cast upon the unfortunate survivors of a Louisiana family…
This is the sick stuff.
TWILIGHT HANKERINGS
Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “appetite” as: a) any of the instinctive desires necessary to keep up organic life; specifically: the desire to eat, or b) an inherent craving; an insatiable appetite for nourishment
