Book Two, Chapter Three

Chapter Three

About four thousand miles and one dimensional hop from Val Luminara, the sun was just beginning to set on Derby Mill, Iowa. Shane Dawson glanced at its orange light and sighed as he crossed the office parking lot to where his car was waiting. Barely five o’clock in the evening, and he’d be lucky if there was still a glimmer of sunlight in the sky by the time he got home. Seasonal depression, his doctor called it. Shane preferred to call it being stuck in a windowless office from sunup to sundown.

Before he even had a chance to get into his car, his phone began to ring. Shane sighed and, resisting the urge to hurl the little glass rectangle into traffic, he pulled it out of his pocket and answered it.

“Hey, Shane, it’s Ed,” said the high pitched, nasally voice on the other end. “Sorry to bother you after hours, but this is important.”

“Too important for it to wait until tomorrow,” Shane said dryly, “but not important enough that you could have asked before I left the building?”

He immediately winced. Making comments like that to his boss—while completely justified—were the kind of thing that would leave him jobless if he wasn’t careful.

“Sorry, you broke up for a second,” Ed said. “What was that?”

Gritting his teeth, Shane answered, “I said I’m always happy to help the company that’s done so much for me these past few months!”

“Oh, well that’s good to hear. So listen, what was the name of that client we were talking about earlier? I can’t quite remember…”

“Frank Harrison,” Shane said, rolling his eyes. “It was in the email I sent y—”

“Okay, that’s all I needed! See you tomorrow!”

Shane grumbled a few choice curses under his breath as he got into the car. A more optimistic man than Shane might have found his manager’s complete and total incompetence to be a sign of good things to come in the future. If even one of the higher ups noticed that Ed was more concerned with finding discreet places to wipe the things he picked out of his nose than he was in running his department, and that Shane was doing the majority of the work, he would be on the fast track to a promotion. Unfortunately, life had beaten the optimism out of Shane years ago, and now his greatest ambition was to qualify for the ten cent yearly raise that the company gave to their most “highly motivated” employees.

Giving the office a rude gesture through the window, he gunned the car’s engine and pulled onto the road. Green pastures flashed by in the dying light, interspersed by the occasional building that had probably been built when his Grandpa Charlie was little. Everything around here was old. The newest thing in town was the shopping mall that had opened when Shane was nine. At least the traffic seemed light tonight. These days, even a small place like Derby Mill had enough people living in it to clog the streets when…

Shane blinked in surprise. He had been going too fast to get a good look at it, but…

Had that been a horse skull?

Admittedly, he was driving alongside one of Derby Mill’s dozens of farms right now. The idea that a horse’s skull might end up in a ditch on the side of the road was definitely strange, but not impossible. Barely a day went by that he didn’t spy a dead armadillo, possum, or even deer lying on the side of the street after losing a fight with a pickup truck. Still, the people around here who were wealthy enough to own horses tended to take better care of them than that.

Shane shook his head, putting it from his mind, and set the radio to scan until he found a station that wasn’t playing Christmas music. He rolled his eyes. It was still two days before Thanksgiving. He liked Christmas carols as much as anyone else, but playing them before December was just—

His phone began to ring again.

Sighing, he pulled it out and glanced at the caller ID, expecting it to be Ed with another question that couldn’t possibly wait until Shane was at least being paid to listen to him.

It wasn’t Ed.

It was even worse.

“Hey, Joyce,” he said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. “What’s up?”

“Hey, cuz! I got your text. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” he answered.

“Really? That’s great! Then does that mean—”

“No, I’m still sick,” he quickly interrupted her. “But I was able to keep some food down today, so it’s a little better than before.”

“Oh…” The disappointment in her voice was palpable. “Grandpa Charlie was really disappointed when he heard. He said that…”

She kept talking, but Shane just tuned her out. He hated that he had to lie to her, but what other choice did he have? If he didn’t, Joyce and Grandpa Charlie would expect him to—

A flash of white caught his eye, and he craned his head around to try and get a better look. The honking of an oncoming car jolted him back into the present, and he realized he had drifted onto the wrong side of the road. Jerking the wheel sharply to the right, he swerved hastily back into his lane. He gasped for breath, sweat pouring down his brow. Had he just seen…no, he must have been imagining things. Seeing one horse skull on the way home was a weird enough occurrence. Two of them? There was simply no way.

And the creeping, unpleasant certainty that it had been the same one as before? Utterly ridiculous.

“What was that?” Joyce asked. “Shane, are you driving?”

“Of course not,” he snapped, his voice shaking a bit. “I’m quarantined in the house, remember?”

“But I thought I heard—”

“It was the TV,” he said testily. “Look, I’m sorry, but there’s just no way I’m going to be able to make it to Thanksgiving…or anything afterwards.”

Joyce was quiet for a minute, and Shane felt another pang of guilt.

Stay strong, he told himself. You only have to lie because they won’t respect your decision otherwise.

“Grandpa Charlie isn’t getting any younger, Shane,” Joyce finally said. “You need to spend as much time with him as you can before—”

“I think I’m going to throw up again,” Shane talked over her. “I’ll see you on Christmas!”

He hung up, shaking his head as he slid his phone back into his pocket. He really did hate lying to his family, but what choice did they give him? Joyce and Grandpa Charlie could spend their Decembers however they wanted. Unlike Shane, they had the money for it. But Shane hadn’t even been at this job for half a year. Asking them to give him a whole month off would be career suicide! But of course Joyce and Grandpa Charlie were too drunk on holiday spirit to understand that.

He sighed and shook his head. It was nothing a few good Black Friday deals couldn’t fix. He’d be sure to buy them both something nice for Christmas.

A car drove up behind him with its high beams on. Muttering to himself, Shane reached up to the rearview mirror and adjusted it so that the tailgater’s headlights weren’t being reflected straight into his—

The horse skull was in his backseat!

With a strangled gasp, Shane turned around in the seat to see…

Nothing. There was nothing there.

“Maybe I really am sick,” he said.

Ten minutes later, he pulled into his driveway. Some people might have called the house that connected to it weathered or beaten up, but he preferred the term rugged…at least while he was living in it. If he ever moved away, then he would be only too happy to start calling it a heap of wood and metal that was stuck together with those twisty wires you tie bread bags closed with.

With a sigh, he got out of the car and raised the garage door by hand. The stupid thing had already been broken when he’d bought the place, and while he had repeatedly told himself he was going to replace it, every time he got close to saving up enough money his car would break down, or his refrigerator, or literally anything that was a higher priority than fixing a garage door. Oh well. It was nothing a couple beers and a TV dinner in front of the football game wouldn’t…

Shane froze.

Across the street from his house was a field belonging to the farmer who lived down the road. His cattle were kept out of the street with a barbed wire fence, the metal cords wrapped around thick wooden posts that had been driven into the ground every ten feet.

And sitting on top of the nearest post, staring right at Shane, was a horse’s skull.

A strange feeling came over Shane as he looked at it. A sense that something about the world around him had changed in a way that he couldn’t see, but he could feel. Like one of those funhouse rooms where the floor was just so slightly tilted.

“Someone’s messing with me,” he muttered, and forced himself to look away from the bleached white skull. He got back into his car and pulled it into his garage. Killing the engine, he sat there for a minute.

It was ridiculous. Childish. But he still swore that if he got out of his car and turned around, the skull would be sitting on his driveway, right at the edge of his garage.

The sky began to darken behind him, and the growl of his stomach—he had skipped lunch to get more work done—finally drove him to move. He opened his car door, stepped out into the garage, and…

Don’t look, his subconscious warned him. DON’T LOOK!

…turned around to see the skull still sitting on the post where it had been.

Relief washed over Shane like a hot shower. Had he really thought…his face turned red with embarrassment, but at the same time he couldn’t keep from laughing at himself. How stupid could he be? If he hadn’t been convinced that he was running some kind of fever before, this was enough to—

The skull’s eyes lit up.

Shane choked on his own laughter. The light was a dark purple, almost black in a paradoxical way he couldn’t describe, and staring at it made it feel like the temperature had dropped so low that frost was forming on his soul.

Smoke began to billow out of the skull’s neck hole, like tendrils of solid darkness, and it rose up into the air. A pillar of shifting, writhing shadows was its body, and with its unblinking, unholy gaze trained on Shane, it began to float across the street toward his house.

Toward him.

That realization was enough to break whatever trance it had over him, and he sprinted toward the garage door. The skull was moving toward him steadily, but slowly, and had only reached the edge of the road when Shane grabbed the garage door’s handle and heaved downwards. It slid down with a squeal of ungreased gears and wheels. It got stuck halfway down. Shane pulled harder, his hands slick with sweat. The skull was in the middle of the road now, creeping ever closer to his driveway. Its jaw opened, and a few wisps of smoke curled out of it. Shane swore he could hear a ragged, raspy breath be sucked down its nonexistent throat.

With adrenaline coursing through his veins, Shane gave a mighty pull on the door, and the wheels finally gave in, rolling the rest of the way down their tracks and slamming down to rest on the garage floor.

Shane backed away, gasping for breath. His car door was still ajar, the interior light the only thing that kept the garage from being pitch black.

“Wha—” he whispered, staring at the garage door in disbelief. “What in the name of…”

He turned and ran into his house, slamming the door behind him. That was…had that been real? It had looked real, but how could it have been? He put his hand to his forehead, which was covered in sweat. Was that sweat because he was terrified, or because he really was running a fever high enough to make him see…whatever that thing had been?

Shane ran to his bathroom and threw open the medicine cabinet. With shaking hands, he dug through its contents, letting pill bottles and tubes of disinfectant fall all over the floor in his haste. He had a thermometer in here somewhere. He just needed to stay calm and take his temperature. If he had to, he would get back into his car, without thinking about what was out there waiting for him, and drive himself to the emergency—

DINNNG DONNNNNG!

Never before had his doorbell sounded so ominous. Shane stood in his bathroom, the thermometer in his hand, staring at himself in the mirror.

“Coincidence,” he whispered to his reflection. “It’s just Joe from next door wanting to borrow my lawnmower again. Or maybe it’s those guys with the white shirts and bicycles.”

DINNNG DONNNNNG!

“I- I’m coming!” he called, the thermometer falling from his numb fingers. Even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he stepped out of his bathroom, crossed his living room, and walked up to his front door. It was like his feet were moving on their own. He did his best to stop, to turn around, to dive into his bed and hide beneath the covers the way he used to as a kid whenever thunderstorms rolled in, but his body refused to listen. All he could do was walk up to his door and stop, as if the decision had never been his to make.

“Wh- Wh- Who’s there?” he found himself asking.

At first there was silence, and Shane dared to hope that the…whatever it was…had lost interest and gone away. But then a voice as cold as death, as dark as a moonless night, and as wicked as sin sang to him on the other side of his door.

“Night has come, the bell is rung, and my game we shall now play…”

Silence fell again, and Shane stared at the door in horror. This was no hallucination brought on by a fever. This was a nightmare, but one that he was becoming increasingly convinced was happening while he was awake.

“Wha…What did you say?” he managed to ask.

“Your rhymes are weak, and hope is thin. So please, dear boy, just let me in.”

Shane swallowed. Rhymes? What was it talking about? It seemed to think he was playing a game with it, but…but all that Shane could think about was that bleached white skull, those glowing purple eyes…

It was standing right outside his door. Wisps of smoke were trailing in through the cracks around the doorframe. The smell of rotting flesh and sulfur was almost overwhelming. Even if he could have run, he wouldn’t have. Where could he possibly go to get away from something like this? If he left through the back door, surely it would be right there waiting for him. And if he squeezed into his closet and shut the door behind him like a coward, some deep and primal part of his brain told him it would only be seconds before that voice whispered directly into his ear.

But still nothing happened. It was like the figment of insanity was waiting for something.

“P- Please,” he finally forced himself to say, “go away! Leave me alone!”

That turned out to be the worst mistake he had ever made. The moment those words had left his mouth, there came a soft click, and he realized that his door had just unlocked itself. With icy terror flooding every cell in his body, he watched as the doorknob turned, and the door swung open to reveal…

Shane screamed!

…the last thing he would ever see.