Harlan County Horrors Part 16

One of the foreign men came out of the apex of the temple and started down. Behind him appeared more men, but at a slower gait. The charging man unsheathed a gleaming blade, and I roared my defiance.

I raised a long flute-like object to my lips and blew through it. Immediately, a small dart flew from the weapon and lodged in this man's neck. A look of shock spread on his face. He was no tribesman, but a foreign born man as alien to these Quadrules as an animal. He stood, frozen as one of my braves threw a tomahawk, cleaving his skull in half. When he fell, I saw the skin of this man was white. He was Caucasian, but these were not Conquistadors. I saw my reflection on his sword and was taken aback briefly. Surely, this reflection was the true face of the ancient Quadrule, a more civilized, complicated species...but who were these invaders? Their vestments were strange, not Spanish...the era was all wrong.

As I thought my revelatory powers were showing me a mad vision of impossibility, we stopped. For at that moment, the Mage of these interlopers stepped onto the three hundred sixty-fifth stage of the high temple. How did I surmise he was the Mage? He was dressed like a Shriner or a member of a Masonic order. In each hand hung severed heads, tethered down as if spiderwebs grew from his fingers. The warriors with me refused to step forward as the heads chanted! Surely, it was lunacy; surely, it was a trick to fool these primitive men.

Tayanita understood fear, but it did not defeat him. He scoped up the long, heavy sword the white man dropped and charged forward. The Mage was somewhat surprised that I-he-never stopped in horror. The sinister wizard raised both heads, and each severed face howled. The two warriors nearest me gripped their skulls. Blood spurted from the noses of my tribesmen. As they fell, convulsing, I swung the blade, aiming at the heart of the Mage.

The blow should have split the man at the collarbone and continued on into his heart. The blade did cleave in, but stopped in a mesh of metal clothing. Confused but undaunted, Tayanita drew back and chopped the left hand from the Mage. The chanting head tumbled free and headed down the structure, bouncing and leaving wet b.l.o.o.d.y spots as it went. I brought up the heavy weapon, slicing between the legs of the wizard. A high-pitched squeal echoed out as the crude gelding ceased. I left the blade buried in the Mage's pelvis, gripped him by the metallic shirt, and threw him off the temple.

I ran into the apex of the pyramid, followed by many of my brothers. "Show yourself," I shouted in their old tongue, gripping my tomahawk and the sword. "I shall eat the heart of a G.o.d and waste on your bones!"

On a single stone pillar sat an elderly man. His beard was white and his skin shone pale, like the others. Over his face was a mask of gla.s.s or crystal. His vestments were strange, but I can recall them now. NO! It is foolishness! On either side of him sat two gleaming orbs of crystal. When this grey man smiled, the globes glowed red. I knew these were not globes and I drew back my arm to throw.

Many of the brothers crumbled and fell. I felt the power in the air that killed them. The hairs on my arms stood and heat washed over me. I froze as I heard a hideous bellow from below us. On the other side of the wizard I heard a thudding, crushing sound. I heard the screams of the lost, and I heard wet, squelching sounds echo.

Summoning every strength of my ancestors, I threw the tomahawk. It struck the wizard between the eyes and split the crystal mask on his face. His head was unharmed and he wore a look of shock. Something told me I had but one chance to act. I ran forward, shouting a war cry...and the man focused on me. The globes at his hands-crystal skulls-glowed scarlet. Something echoed in my skull as I collided with the wizard. The long blade entered his body, but I hardly had the will to drive it through him. I swept him off the slab and we fell down into a deep chasm. Stretching out before us was an empty sh.e.l.l of the temple arising from the floor...and an identical triangle growing deeper into the earth. As we fell, the man cursed me. The sword fell free and the weight of it disappeared from my mind. I could see strange creatures in the sh.e.l.l of the temple, things unnamable; hideous beasts with hairy legs and tentacles around their bodies...with insectoid eyes and heads like toads.

I fell on top of the wizard and felt his body break as I took him down. My air was gone and the world became dim as I looked back up. The crazy beasts stomped all around my damaged body. The ends of their hairy legs terminated in giant hooves, like something on a beast of burden. One picked up the wizard and opened its toadish mouth. Tiny tusks, not unlike those of a warthog, curled out and inserted into the wizard's ribs. They started to suck the outlander into their mouth and his body relaxed like dead leaves.

I tried to raise my flute to fire a dart, but my arms were paralyzed. The creature towered over me, and its hungry roar filled me with terror.

And then it was over.

"It was bad," I muttered to Agent Alexander. Standing up with my hands trembling, I looked at the small cleft in the earth where confused soldiers still peered out.

"Agent Alexander?" one of the soldiers called out. "Better come look at this. Bring the doc if he feels up to it."

Alexander smirked at me and said, "Ready to go back in there, Blackthorn?"

I trembled as I thought of the visions in which I'd seen the beast before. It was an evil, malignant beast conjured from beyond time itself. I'd seen it in Siberia in a vision years ago. An insane doctor at Miskatonic University had tried to clone such a beast in the belly of an elephant and I had stopped him. Now, I saw what had made the local tribe lose their warriors and will to fight.

I looked into the chasm again and murmured, "No wonder so many disappeared. They were meat for the beast."

Just inside the chasm were soldiers carrying a long stone object that almost looked like a crate. They put it down and exhaled, taking the lid off. Alexander swore salty and then said, "d.a.m.n! I told you not to move anything!"

The soldier shrugged and said, "This was hidden right by the surface. I cannot believe it was there. Doc, you gotta look at this."

Again, I ventured deeper in the cavern, my breathing heavy as I looked inside the crate of stone. I took a few steps and swept back my mane of black hair. Looking down, I noted again the dents in the temple mold. Not dents, I knew after witnessing the beasts. Hoofprints.

Alexander peered into the crate and looked at me. "Doc? Elijah? Ya wanna explain this to me?"

He reached down and moved a rotting cloth from the top of the crate. Inside was a perfect crystal skull. Beside this were tubular canisters. Alexander held up the cloth and asked, "Wanna explain what you saw? How does a Crusader banner get in a cavern not opened for seven hundred years?"

I climbed out of the chasm and sat down again.

Alexander followed me, but his confrontational att.i.tude was gone. "Doc?"

"It isn't a Crusader banner," I explained. "It is the blouse of a jerkin worn by a member of the Knights Templar. I can tell by the eight-pointed cross over the heart of the garment worn by the man in my vision. Many think it was a Maltese cross, but that was worn by the Hospitaler Knights. The garment is green, because it was a worn by a Templar chaplain. I slew-Tayanita slew-a Templar sergeant at arms on the steps of a temple that is gone from this place."

"You are serious?"

I nodded. "Most of the Templar order was slain or vanished on a fleet of ships."

Alexander gaped at me and then said, "Are you trying to tell me that the Templars were here in Kentucky, seven hundred years ago?"

I rubbed my eyes with gloved fingers. "That is the theory."

The coda to this tale is not satisfying, but it is funny in a broken p.e.n.i.s sort of way.

I returned to Miskatonic University, mouth sealed and mind abuzz with the new discoveries. Unsure about how the powers that be would be with their take on history, or if I needed to fight them, thus throwing my nuts in the machinery of history, I went back to my usual routine. In cases like this, I usually heard from the men who had previously contacted me. They would give me a call, drop in to see me, or give me a check and a pat on the head.

Nothing happened. I didn't hear jack, nor did I pa.s.s go and get a cookie nor fruitcake arrangement.

Somewhat enraged, but used to the government hand job method, I went about my usual life of searching for ancient relics. However, I did make a few inquires to the agents I met. No words returned. In time, this became annoying, but I knew what I had to do.

After I ferreted out the prow of a Viking vessel rotting in the mud near New Madrid, Missouri, I went over to Harlan County to the site where the new underground base was to be. What I found was aggravating, but par for the hand job course.

The area was fenced off and a few trailers dwelled around the new mound of dirt rising over the spot where the underground chamber existed.

"Landfill?" I said, gaping at the mound of dirt and debris in the picturesque mountains.

One of the workers, truly oblivious of anything under the earth, told me, "Yeah, we got a sanction from the governor to use some cavern underneath to fill in wastes for a good spell. The money to the county is brilliant, and heck, they are bringing in c.r.a.p from as far a way as Chicago."

I turned away and said, "Talk about a sin against the earth."

"You some sorta tree hugger?"

I shook my long hair from side to side. "No, sir, but I hate it when the earth is raped, her history, her life in any regard."

Unsure of what threat to history or the status quo existed in my vision or their discovery, I left Harlan County and never looked back.

"Harlan Moon"

TL Trevaskis.

TL Trevaskis fell in love with Harlan the moment he entered the county. Author of the paranormal romance The Forgotten Disturbed, he resides in Washington State where he tries to come to grips with the wonderful things he experienced in Kentucky. He maintains a writing blog at celticscribblings.blogspot.com.

Night always arrived too soon for Brett "Feral" Branson. It would descend with a deceptively soft landfall, sliding along the bottom of Ivy Hill and pooling in the hollow of the small town's center before rising up the sides of the buildings like a floodtide. The horseshoe of mountains wrapped around Harlan, Kentucky, quickened twilight's descent, making it necessary to turn on house lights before the darkness actually reached the upper floors. The sight would have filled Feral with easy pleasure anywhere or anytime else. But not here. Not now.

Not that he was afraid of the dark. Twenty-three years working in the coal mines had cured him of that. Even after the accident, he had no hesitation about returning to the claustrophobic depths and continued to work until his injury finally made it impossible for him to do so. The mines called to him in his disturbed dreams, and his dreams bled over into the day.

No, it was definitely not the dark he was afraid of.

The landscape didn't help. Occupying a deep, narrow gorge between the Martins and Clover forks of the c.u.mberland River, Harlan had no trouble remaining isolated from the rest of the world. Coal was everywhere: running down chutes stabbed into the tortured folds of the mountains; scattered like gravel along the streets; lurking behind the resigned gazes of the long-suffering people. Its power to trap the soul emanated from beneath their feet, rising up like heat currents to fill the very air of the small town. That air hung, heavy and breathless, like a wet blanket pressing down on the hearts and minds of a populace that asked nothing more than the chance to make a living from the miles-long shafts crisscrossing the interior of the mountains.

Even though it cost them their lives.

A weight pressed down there, a drawing down of ma.s.s and energy that made itself known in the dullness of the colors, as if light had trouble propagating in the humid, sluggish air. The town seemed to sit in a pocket of gravity, as if all the weight of the mountains had rolled down the gorge to settle in a man's soul. It pressed that soul right out of him, down through his feet, where it leeched into the soil and the rock and the coal, until he could no more move away from the place than could the trees. He no longer had the will or the strength or the courage. Over the course of a life hard lived, the miner and the town and the mountain became as one, and no one ever left Harlan alive.

The warped, twisted stone of the mountains, squeezed and thrown about by unimaginable forces, left its mark in the warped and twisted contours of men's minds, their feverish thoughts thrusting through the bedrock of sanity until nothing remained but nightmare visions of black shafts and endless dark.

In that darkness, the terror brooded. And Feral found himself drawn toward it.

Resthaven Cemetery sprawled around him, a broad landscape of rolling green gra.s.s rising up suddenly to the east beneath dark pine woods. Harlan County's most famous citizens and oldest families were buried here, their graves sometimes marked with elaborate headstones or graceful sculptures. His own great-grandfather, a volunteer in the Harlan County Battalion and hometown hero of the Civil War, lay under this pleasant surface. Almost every plot held a pot of bright flowers, red and yellow and orange dotting the grounds as far as the eye could see, like balloons at a carnival. Those colors were obscured outside of the flashlight's beam. As its name promised, this was a quiet place. But if Feral's neighbors were to be believed, below its peaceful facade lurked a terror of unspeakable menace.

They were here, tonight, to find out. And to do something about it.

The group had gathered first at the Dairy Hut south of Harlan, about halfway to Grays k.n.o.b along Highway 421, for a quick dinner just before dusk. Cars crowded the gravel parking lot surrounding the fast food place, poised like animals at a watering hole. Feral sat in the Formica booth under the fluorescent lamps, their stark bluish light casting too-sharp shadows on the drab white walls, watching Joe Ellis scarf down his Giant Burger. The thing was the size of a catcher's mitt, but the truck driver had already finished one off, and Feral knew he would have no problem downing his second one as well. Joe was the de facto leader of the believers. At age thirty-two, he was just under twenty-four years younger than Feral-young enough to fall for the stories, yet old enough for others to trust in his judgment. Joe had in turn placed that faith in Feral, talking him into this excursion by appealing to his own reputation in the town. Both men had been sports legends in their high school days, and everyone looked up to them for their past exploits, if not for the mundane way their lives had turned out.

That's how Feral remembered it, anyway.

Randy Vaughn sat next to Feral, and next to Randy was his girlfriend, Kathy Taylor. The two twenty-somethings appeared to him to be more interested in each other than in hunting demons in the cemetery. Their bodies were almost indistinguishable, so closely did they press against each other in the booth. Charlene Williams was a surprise. Feral would never have expected the town's high school librarian to get caught up in this kind of nonsense; she seldom attended bake sales. Tonight, fear had washed the color out of her face. That wouldn't help matters. She sat next to Joe, nervously sipping a c.o.ke through a straw.

The others-Harold, Frank, Eliza, and Josh-were all kids from the town's high school, eager to test their fighting skills against what they no doubt imagined would be martial-arts-practicing caricatures like the demons they had seen on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." They sat in the booth behind the adults, talking animatedly amongst themselves, wolfing down hamburgers and fries, itching to head for the cemetery. Each had given typical teenage excuses to their parents for being out that night.

Feral wasn't sure which troubled him more: his suspicion their parents didn't know where they were, his own culpability in bringing them along, or his growing apprehension, as the sun began to set, of what they might run into.

"We're not going to stay there all night," he said. He spoke to the group as a whole, but to Joe in particular.

"We have to wait long enough for them to come out," Joe said. "At least until midnight."

"How do you know they come out at midnight?"

Joe didn't answer.

Josh said, "Our parents won't mind if we stay out longer."

"Yeah, right," Feral said, turning. "But I will." As Josh opened his mouth to protest, he added, waving a warning finger at him, "And I'm the one who's responsible for y'all."

Josh ducked his head. "Yes, sir."

"So," Charlene asked, "how are we going to go about this?"

Feral felt compelled to look around the diner before answering, to see if anyone nearby was listening. No one paid the group any attention. Keeping his voice low, he said, "I figured we'd break up into three groups, fan out, and kind of keep watch on the graves. Especially the newer ones."

"Three groups of three," Charlene murmured, smiling. "Interesting."

Feral stared at her, uncomprehending.

"It's kind of a Pagan thing," she offered.

"Yeah," he said. "Well, we don't have enough people to cover the whole place. We'll stay within sight of each other, so we can gather quickly if we have to."

"That should be enough," Joe said.

"Considering we're not going to see anything," Feral said, "it's more than enough."

"What does it mean if we don't?" Charlene said. "Not seeing something doesn't mean something isn't there."

Joe laughed. "Don't confuse Feral." He p.r.o.nounced the nickname as if it had only one syllable. "If nothing shows up by midnight, I think we can pretty much be sure they're not going to. And at least we can sleep peacefully tonight."

"I think it would be better if we find one," Charlene said. "That way we don't have to keep wondering." She glanced quickly at the others, and just as quickly dropped her gaze. "I would rather be sure."

Joe looked squarely at Feral. "Wouldn't we all?"

So there they were, huddled together somewhat self-consciously at Resthaven, seeing nothing out of the ordinary as the darkness gathered around them. Feral set them up in teams, making sure each of the teens had a male adult with them. Since Randy was barely out of his teens himself, Feral placed his group at the main gate; Eliza and Charlene went with him. Kathy had protested this last, but Feral was adamant. He didn't need Randy and Kathy absorbed in each other if something did happen. And this way, he had those he considered to be the weakest in the safest place.

Joe's group consisted of Josh and Harold, who was a linebacker on the football team. Feral was thus left with Kathy and Frank. He felt fairly confident that each team could handle itself well enough. Especially, he kept telling himself, since they wouldn't need to anyway.

As they started out across the grounds, Joe lit a bitumen torch. The flames shot up with a sound like crinkling paper, lighting up an area about fifteen feet in diameter. Feral looked at him with a mixture of surprise and consternation.

"Joe," he said, "what the h.e.l.l d'you think you're doing?"

"Gotta see somehow."

"Don't you think you're going to scare the vampires off?"

"Vamps ain't afraid of fire." He fingered the huge silver crucifix that dangled on a chain around his neck. It glinted with a sinister light.

Feral sighed, resigned. "Let's go," he said.

He had chosen the eastern side of the cemetery for his team, the side bordered by thick stands of pine lining the crest of a hill. The hill made a good landmark, a darker blotch against the night sky. Directly across from it, in the center of the graveyard, stood a gazebo, their rendezvous point. The three groups checked their flashlights, turned on their cell phone vibrators, hefted their clubs, and set off in their appointed directions, talking softly amongst themselves. The whole thing would have reminded Feral of his days walking point in Vietnam had it not all been so utterly ludicrous.

The cemetery was characteristically quiet, no more ominous than could be expected for a harbor of the dead after dark. A light mist drifted down from the stand of pines, but the full moon peered out from behind broken clouds, casting its silken web across the landscape. Even so, Feral preferred to leave his flashlight turned on. Moonlit shadows had a way of playing with a man's perceptions, which in turn put his fears on hair-trigger overload. The flashlight cut through a lot of illusions. He was embarra.s.sed to admit to himself that he wouldn't have minded having Joe's torch after all. That torch could be seen, comedic in its bouncing among the gravestones, across the cemetery from where Feral's team meandered. Feral shook his head at the sight.

Then he stopped and turned, facing his little group. "Okay," he said, trying to maintain some semblance of authority. "This is our station. Let's form a circle so that we can look out in all directions. We don't want anything escaping our attention."

"Or sneaking up on us," Frank said.

"Right. Or sneaking up on us."

Feral felt foolish, standing there with his back to the others. The silence among them quickly became awkward. But he really didn't know what to say. He tried instead to concentrate, peering into the darkness, looking for-what, exactly? Moving shadows, he supposed. Glaring yellow or red eyes. Bela Lugosi, maybe.

It was impossible to tell how long they stood like that. To Feral, it seemed like forever. The moon peered over his shoulder, witness to his growing unease.

"It's getting cold." Kathy's voice, though hushed, reverberated in the silence.

"Yeah," Feral said, surrept.i.tiously pressing his limbs against his body. "Kinda wish I'd brought my gloves."

"Hard to wield a stake with gloves on," Frank said, chuckling.

"I suppose," Feral said. He didn't bother to mention the stakes he was carrying. Not that he was scared of the dark.