Years later, while on a hike in the North Carolina wilderness, four friends discover an old book. When they open it, they black out – only to find on waking that they have released the evil things that live within the pages.
As they fight to keep their neighbors from dying, they unravel a dark secret that the leaders of their town have held since their ancestors first settled.
Excerpt:
Roanville’s
entire existence was archaic. Nothing was truly that modern there. The town was
built on small businesses, a community full of people betting on themselves and
their local companions. It was a logging community in the 1800s, it wasn’t a
sweet place to live; it only existed to make a living. Slowly it crept its way
up through time and modernity to be sustainable for all family types, but it
still had trouble catching up. The locals joked that the slogan for their
lonesome town should have been ‘The town that time forgot’. There were still
pay phones in the city that were frequently used. The police and fire
department shared a building because the cost of running both in separate
buildings would’ve crippled the town. There were only four cops on the force,
the Chief, Frank Gilmore alongside his deputies: Bradley Fine, a lazy native
who was ready to retire at the age of forty. Garrett Brock, a stable and smart
man around the same age as Brad. Brock was Frank’s right-hand man because of
his dedication to the job. He served papers, and wasn’t afraid to give people
he knew speeding tickets. The most important thing to Brock was that he needed
to get paid. The police force worked off a ticket quota system. Brock held no
prisoners. The newest addition to the team was Sarah Mann.
A few years ago,
Sarah got a call from the outskirts of town. The trailer park, ‘Disneyland’, as
it was called by the denizens, was the source of drugs in Roanville. It was
constantly surveyed by the cops.
The caller said
someone had been killing the chickens that the Quinn family owned, butchering
them once a month since the beginning of the year. Sullivan Quinn didn’t even
entertain the thought of someone else doing it. He knew it was his neighbor
Ichabod Turner. Ichabod had a loose grasp on the English language. He was
seventy-five and was skin and bone, Sarah thought he looked like a skeleton
from a Halloween store. He had a yellow-stained beard and long grey frizzy
hair. His eyes were sunken and his face was drawn.
He spoke as if
there was a marble on his tongue. “Da… Sully… he, uh, he say it wah me ’cus I
ain’t never wen to he granpappy fun’ral back een March. I say to Sully ‘daggom,
boy, da’worl don’t stop for nobody granpappy, not even yours’ well… he don’t
like dat much so he been plannin’ a war and dat boy, daggom, he try’na get me
arrested… sheeeeit,” he explained to Officer Sarah Mann when she went down to
mediate the situation.
It was night
when she talked to them. She got called down because one of Sullivan’s chickens
was shrieking, and when he went to go look on the side of his double-wide
trailer where his coop was, its innards had been tossed around like dripping
scarlet streamers. The fresh red blood hadn’t yet permeated the loose dirt.
He looked over
across the street and saw the light inside Ichabod’s house flick off suddenly.
Sullivan began to bang on the door, threatened to grab his .44 and shoot his
way in. Ichabod called the Sheriff’s office. When Sarah arrived, Sully was
pacing in front of Ichabod’s trailer with a revolver in his hand, Sarah jumped out
of her patrol vehicle and yelled, “Put the goddamn gun down, Sullivan!”
“He killed my
chickens! Every month, massacred! He did it, Sarah!” He was Standing in baggy
jean shorts and a stained white tank top, pointing his gun at the house.
Sullivan was a tall, skinny guy who had trouble with pills. He worked the
lumberyard and a log fell off a pile and broke his leg, snapped like a twig,
the bone protruded from his skin and was shattered in multiple places, nearly
having to get it amputated. He got hooked on painkillers shortly thereafter. He
was thirty, but the labor and drugs aged him. He used to be a hirsute young
man, always kept his thick, golden hair shoulder length, and stayed clean
shaven. Now he was nearly bald save for some patches, and had a scuzzy, holey
black beard, speckled with blond and red strands that were so long off his chin
he looked like a goat.
“Drop the gun,
Sullivan, or I will be forced to pull mine out as well,” she yelled, her words
weaved through the alleys between the trailers. She had her hand fixed on her
Glock 17 attached to her hip.
Sullivan dropped
the gun to his side. “Just get him out here so you can arrest him,” He said
condescendingly.
Sarah walked to
Ichabod’s front door, her eyes never leaving Sullivan. She was born and raised
in Raleigh and ended up going to North Carolina State University. She had no
extracurricular activities, no significant other. The idea of being a police
officer took all of her time and thought. Frank found her by chance when he
visited the Raleigh NCSU campus to meet with a friend that happened to be her
Professor. She was in his office when Frank came in. He offered her a job by
the end of the conversation. She was twenty-two years old, even in a small town
she was making sixty thousand a year. Many scholarships through the state for
women in policing gave her some extra bumps. Now she had been with the Chief
for about four years and was sick of all the hick bullshit she had to deal
with. A feud over killing chickens? What happened to my life? Now she was a
cantankerous, young cop in a trailer park.
She banged on
Ichabod’s door, the way only a cop can. He swung it open immediately. She led
him into the middle of the trailer park’s road underneath a yellow-orange
mercury streetlight. There was one every fifty feet, and in between each post
was pitch darkness. As soon as someone would step out of the ten-foot diameter
light beam, they would be completely gone.
Sarah asked,
“Sullivan, what makes you think Ichabod did this?” She started writing in her
notebook.
“He has had a
vendetta against my family for some time now, Sarah. He didn’t go to my
grandfather’s funeral a few months back and they were best friends,” he said
politely, with a southern drawl.
“Now das just
boolshit… Aaron hated my guts, boy, he tol me a few week back ‘fore he died dat
he hated me for my, uh, demeanor or some shit. Dat I was jus too nasty and he
didn’t wan to be seen wit me. But let me tell you bof dat he was nastier den a
hooker lickin’ a frog to find her prince charmin’ ’cause he sexed he goddamn
cousin… I caught him, too, in the back of his old pick-up back by route
one-one-six, where da, uh, post office is. Dats why he hate me, boy.”
Sarah tried to
understand what he was saying. She had never heard him uppity the few times she
interacted with him. She stopped writing down what he was saying halfway
through his aside.
“Don’t you
fuckin’ slander my dead grandfather, you dirty shit,” Sullivan gritted through
his words.
“Hey, Shut it,
both of you,” Sarah said, looking up from her notebook, then back down again to
write.
“How would I
slaughter dem chickies, boy? I look like a serial killer to you?” Ichabod said,
pulling on the length of his tarnished beard.
“Yeah, you
really do. The guts were thrown out of them, Officer, and I think this man is
sick enough to do it. I saw him standing and pissing off of Arthur Scott’s
truck going seventy miles an hour on the highway coming into town,” Sullivan
said, thinking that would be the final blow. She didn’t even look up and
mumbled, “I expect nothing less from this town.”
“It’s a damn dog
doin dis shit, I’m tellin’ ya’s. Couple miles down da road, that farmer, uh, I
forget his name, two of his sheep, dead. I know it some damn big dog or wolf,
you can quote me on dat one, lady,” Ichabod said.
“Officer,” she
retorted, looking at him with fire in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,
Officer, but dis mother fucking boy, he—what the fuck?” He squinted past Sarah,
three streetlights down the road—an animal.
“What the fuck
is that thing?” Sullivan said.
Sarah turned,
and her throat dried immediately when she saw it. It didn’t move. She pulled
her pistol out of her holster with some difficulty, she never had to pull it
before. She had never seen a dog this big. Even from this distance she could
see every detail of it. On all fours, it was five feet tall with paws the size
of baseball gloves. Its fur was long, dark brown. Sarah could tell that the
head was over a foot long, its prodigiously large vulpine teeth hung out of its
mouth, glittering by the dingy light. The streetlight gleamed in the beast’s
eyes. It stared at her. Her breathing started to sputter, she couldn’t control
it. She shook with her gun in her hand as she raised it. A tear built up in her
eye. She felt a wave of cold throughout her body as gooseflesh raised on her
skin.
The beast stood
on its hind legs, the light painted onto the creature and revealing its
oversized dog-like body. Ichabod and Sullivan both screamed and ran into their
houses.
Full stretch, it
stood at nine feet tall. Sarah didn’t move. She stood there waiting for it to
start coming towards her, the moon was going to reach its apogee in the sky and
that’s when their duel began.
