Silas: A Supernatural Thriller Read online

  The farmhouse appeared on my left, rising like a haunted mansion above the overgrown shrubs and evergreens. I parked in the same spot as before, grabbed my backpack, and stepped out. I took a moment to breathe in the morning air, still saturated with dew, before opening the back door for Silas. He exited the car the same way as I, his movements slow yet steady.

  We traced a line down the marked path. Sunlight illuminated the damp grass, making it glow in a rainbow of colors. My breathing kicked up a notch. Even though I told myself there was nothing to worry about, I wanted to turn tail and flee home.

  I didn’t need to tell Silas what to do. He took the lead, pacing ten strides ahead and constantly looking back to make sure I didn’t lose sight of him. He led me across the field and made a beeline through the ravaged cornfield. His shoulders hunched and he kept his nose to the ground, sweeping his head this way and that, searching.

  We arrived at the spot that had affected him so. I knew it was the same place because his half-chewed stick was still lying there, a few feet from the overgrowth. He stopped and allowed me to catch up, then gazed up at me with eyes that seemed to say, you sure you want to do this? I nodded in response to his unasked question. Silas turned around, dropped his nose to the ground again, and sliced through the foliage and into the woods.

  I followed him down a twisting path, shoving aside branches, doing my best to ease the tension by pretending I was Indiana Jones cutting through some South American jungle in search of lost treasure. The path was treacherous and I had a hard time keeping up with Silas’s agile legs as they maneuvered over stumps, rocks, and gullies with ease. I trailed at what ended up being a brisk jog, constantly slipping and at one point coming quite close to tumbling head over heels down a sudden embankment. Silas, ever the keen protector of his loved ones, never let me lag too far behind. Every time it looked like he would disappear from sight he’d circle back and reel me in, sniffing around, following some hidden scent.

  The trail ended but we kept moving forward, working our way down a steep, root-lined hill until we entered a gully. Dense flora covered the furrow, above which the largest maple trees I’d ever laid eyes upon loomed, casting the area into near-darkness. It was a difficult passage; vines tangled my legs and my boots kept slipping on loose rocks. Silas picked up his pace and a shrill buzz, much like a whale’s siren call, escaped his throat. I drew in a deep breath and marched on.

  Silas came to a stop at the edge of the culvert. My beloved dog stood rock-still and leaned forward. I came upon him from behind, careful not to nudge him in any way. He looked frazzled, jumpy, and I feared he’d rip off my head if I surprised him. So I knelt down, placed a gentle hand against his side, and whispered, “It’s okay, boy.” He licked my face in response to that, easing me a bit.

  I leaned over the ground before us. Something looked odd. The usual carpet of leaves and vines had been replaced by a seemingly random collection of fallen evergreen limbs. I glanced up at the dense canopy and saw only broadleaf trees above. The pines were at least a hundred feet away, back at the top of the rise.

  Which meant they’d been stacked there.

  One by one I pulled away the branches and tossed them to the side. Silas didn’t move a muscle as I did this. He stayed still, nose down, eyes staring at the mound of branches as if he could see right through it. I shuffled ahead on my knees to reach another branch and accidentally kicked a small stone. The stone rolled six inches and disappeared beneath the pile of sticks. I heard it strike the ground a second later.

  There was a ditch underneath the pile. Shit.

  My hands moved with a fervor built from equal parts excitement and dread. Sharp knobs of bark cut into my palms, making them bleed. I didn’t care. I was on a mission and wouldn’t be stopped. Slowly, the emptiness before me came into focus. It was a dark chasm, six feet around at most and only God knew how deep. With the broad trees overhead causing a perpetual state of dusk, I could only see the first few inches of upturned, clay-lined soil. I glanced at Silas, who looked back at me with one eye opened larger than the other. I slung the backpack over my shoulder and unzipped it.

  I took out my cheap, dollar-store flashlight and clicked it on. I shone it down the hole and searched for signs of life. It looked like the break extended a good fifteen feet or more into the earth. Exposed roots covered with animal-like fur protruded from the dug-out sides. The gate to hell, I thought, and a shiver stole its way from my tailbone to the base of my skull.

  Finally the beam illuminated what appeared to be a human form, lying prone at the bottom of the pit. I couldn’t tell for sure because the light wasn’t very strong, and I cursed myself for being such a cheapskate. Should’ve gotten one of those high-powered spotlights. Not like I don’t have the money.

  “Hey down there!” I shouted. “You okay?” I listened for a reply. None came. “Bridget?” I screamed. “Bridget Cormier?”

  Still nothing.

  Silas finally moved. He trotted to the large tree behind us, stopped in front of it, and stared at me. He drummed his front paw on the ground like he was growing impatient.

  “I got it,” I told him, feeling more than a bit dull-witted that I was taking unspoken instruction from a dog.

  From my backpack I took out the coil of vinyl rope. I wrapped it around the tree, tied it in one of the few Boy Scout knots I could remember, and tossed the remaining length over the edge of the hole. I pulled on my gloves and straddled the ledge. I silently prayed that I was in good enough shape to climb back out once I went inside, for as big as Silas was I didn’t think he had enough strength to drag a nearly two hundred pound man from a cavernous gap in the earth.

  One hand over the other, I lowered myself into the chasm. The flashlight, gripped tight between my teeth like Silas with his Frisbee, caused my saliva to run dry. I tasted the deadened tang of cheap plastic, along with the dirt and dust my feet kicked up whenever they found purchase. It made me gag a bit. In a moment of panic I saw myself face-down at the bottom, unconscious, my head split open by a sharp rock. I pushed the image from my head and kept going.

  It seemed to take forever to climb down, but eventually my feet hit solid ground. I removed the flashlight from my mouth and cast a wide arc over the space around me. I didn’t have to look far. Sure enough, there was someone down there with me.

  It was a small girl. She was naked and covered with streaks of black gunk. Her head was tilted to the side as if she was sleeping and her eyes were closed. I got down on one knee, careful not to fall over with the wall pressing into my back – the chasm seemed to have gotten thinner at the bottom – and placed my fingers against her neck. I couldn’t find a pulse.

  I removed my gloves, wrapped my arms around the small of her back, and lifted. Her flesh, oily to the touch, made it hard to hold her steady. She weighed next to nothing and stunk of rotten milk and dirty socks. The scent invaded my nostrils and made me want to vomit.

  Throwing the little girl’s limp body over my shoulder, I grasped the rope. It proved difficult to manage the extra weight without slipping, but I pulled myself up an inch at a time regardless, wincing when threads of vinyl cut into my now-gloveless hands. Silas barked from above – a serious yet relieved woof – and pranced along the edge of the crater. “I’m coming,” I muttered between wheezes. Only a few short feet remained.

  I emerged from the hole like a zombie from the grave, gasping for air and frantically searched with my left hand for something to hold on to. Eventually I found a sturdy root and used it to help guide my torso over the loose, moist dirt. Silas hurried over and snatched the collar of my shirt between his teeth. He tugged as hard as he could, but all he really ended up doing was to yank my shirt over my head. His saliva drenched my neck.

  Before long I was out. I lay on my stomach, the girl still draped over my shoulders. Silas sniffed at her. The weight on me seemed to expand, causing pinpricks of phantom pain from loss of circulation. I rolled to my side, trying to make sure I didn’t crush her in the pr
ocess, and laid her out on the ground beside me.

  I looked her over, and the world grew all the darker.

  Bridget Cormier was no more. The innocent, pure beauty that played in my backyard as her father built my shed had been transformed into something poisoned and unclean. A gaping wound stretched across her throat, from one ear to the other. Her upper body was drenched in dried remnants of her life’s fluid. The rest of her body was unnaturally swollen. Her lips, a pale shade of gray, looked like a pair of slugs. Black and blue pockmarks, the shape of intruding fingers, dotted her flesh. Lacerations covered her arms and legs. Her lower region was caked with a glossy, mucus-like substance. My stomach lurched at the sight. I then caught a glimpse of tiny white specks moving about in her neck wound. Maggots. I did lose it that time, pouring my meager breakfast on a bed of dead leaves.

  Silas inched close to Bridget’s corpse and started licking her face. I wiped vomit from my chin and screamed, “Don’t!” I swatted him with the back of my hand and he backed away from me. I leaned back, pointed my eyes to the sky, and released a pain-filled, ear-splitting howl. I screamed for the lost notions of life and goodness, bellowing in anger at a God who I wasn’t sure cared in the first place.

  Silas, sitting next to Bridget Cormier’s rotting corpse, howled along with me.

  The rage soon subsided, replaced by what I can only describe as a numb sort of separation. I thought of Jacqueline Talbot again, my neighbor’s daughter, and how easy it would be for whatever beast did this to do the same to her. I rummaged through my backpack once more and found the survival knife. I ran the blade across my forearm. So soft. So easy. For a moment I seriously considered digging that blade into my wrist, severing arteries, letting the blood flow. Everything seemed so immaterial. Nothing had meaning any more.

  Silas marched up to me and sat down in front of my drawn-up legs. A hint of a sigh wafted from his slightly parted lips. He glanced first at my face, then at the knife in my hand, and his head tilted ever so slightly. Even in the dim light I could see my reflection in those gentle eyes of his. I looked like a corpse, with dark circles under my eyes and mud caked on my cheeks. I dropped the knife, shuddering. Silas lowered his muzzle between my knees and panted. His tongue coated my legs with slobber. That doggy smile I loved so much creased his maw. I tugged his ear.

  “Don’t worry, boy,” I said. “Momentary lapse of reason. I wouldn’t really do it.”

  With one last glance at Bridget I took my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 9-1-1. A few seconds later the dispatcher answered.

  “My name’s Ken Lowery,” I said. “I live at 34 Chestnut Street in Mercy Hills. I’m calling in regards to Bridget Cormier. I found her…”

  16

  News of our ordeal spread quickly. After returning home from the police station, Silas and I were greeted as heroes. Folks hung out on our front lawn and camera crews hovered nearby, waiting to hear from me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Curling up on my bed and passing out was all I could think about.

  Not surprisingly, Wendy was none too happy with my actions. She passed me dirty looks while she hid behind the curtain, watching the gathered throng. She accused me of not trusting her, of hiding things. I didn’t argue with her. She was right. I should have told her what was going on, or at least called her from the station and given her a warning. If I were to come home from work only to find a massive congregation on my front lawn, I would’ve been rightly pissed, as well.

  Eventually the police, television cameras, and intrigued onlookers left, and I said good riddance to a day full of terror, endless questions, and suspicious stares. Wendy, over her initial shock, went upstairs, telling me I could talk to her about it when I was ready. She seemed genuinely concerned for me, and I promised I’d come to her in a little while. For the moment I wanted to wallow in the one thing I had left, the one thing I could wrap around myself like a cloak.

  Guilt.

  The county medical examiner said Bridget died from a combination of blood loss and dehydration. It turned out the wound on her neck hadn’t been deep enough to sever any major arteries, despite what it looked like after the fact. In other words she died slowly, stuck in a ditch, bleeding, while the heat sucked the moisture from her body and flies laid eggs in her sores. He also told me that with the small amount of decomposition, it was his assumption that she’d only been dead for twenty-four hours when I found her. Bile gathered in the back of my throat when I heard this. I’d taken a walk with Silas on Friday. She died on Sunday. I found her body on Monday.

  You do the math.

  The Great Decline sped up its downward spiral in the following days. Wendy did her best to console me, giving me time off from work, cooking dinner even though I was home alone all day, and making sure to hug me every chance she could. Her efforts didn’t accomplish much. I refused to shower or shave, my beard grew to lengths it had never seen, and the grime from my journey into Bridget’s pit festered on my skin. I could smell my own disgusting odors, rotten pizza and moldy cheese. I’d sit in the house all day, lounging in my recliner while Silas hovered nearby. He tried to comfort me, as well, sticking his head in my lap and nuzzling up against me. It didn’t help. Nothing did.

  Nightmares started coming my way, horrid, surreal dreams the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since childhood, before the voices in my head stopped their chatter. These dreams didn’t include any concrete fears, only vague sensations of terror taking place in strange, post-apocalyptic lands. It felt as if a notion I couldn’t understand lurked behind every mutated tree or mound of discarded kitchen appliances, waiting to gobble me up. The ambiguity only made the dreams more terrifying.

  For two weeks, even after I’d cleaned up my act and started behaving as if everything had gone back to normal, these awful nighttime plights plagued me. They evolved, turning into disjointed stories instead of undefined snippets of images. In them I was constantly running, chased by creatures I was sure stemmed from my love of old-time horror movies; giant wolves, man-sized bats with dripping fangs, slithering eels the size of a car, outcasts from Skull Island with bones in their noses, tattoos on their flesh, and sharp weapons of malevolence gripped in their hands. But these imaginary entities seemed trivial when compared to the sensation of the experience. The fear I felt was like a bowling ball tethered to a pole, swinging around and around, getting closer to me with each pass.

  Through it all, I couldn’t force the image of Bridget Cormier’s broken, violated body from my mind. She haunted me just like the dreams, her ghost taking the form of my culpability, which ratcheted up a notch with each passing day, with each feeling of regret. I’d seen the way Silas reacted that Friday and ignored it. Why? Because of fear? Skepticism? Or was it just plain laziness? In the end it didn’t matter. I knew it was my fault she died. I may not have slit her throat and tossed her in the pit, but my inaction was just as bad.

  One day – I think it was a Wednesday, but the days kind of ran together at that point – I watched my neighbor Joe and his daughter Jacqueline walking down the street. They talked and laughed, this tall man and diminutive child. Joe was a slender fellow with a head of crazy black hair. He was a widower – his wife had died in a car accident six years earlier, on the eve of Jacqueline’s first birthday. I found myself amazed whenever I thought of how well he coped with both the tragedy and the responsibility of raising his daughter on his own.

  The duo had moved into the house next door a year after Wendy and I arrived. Unlike me, he never took very good care of his yard. Not that I cared. I was captivated by his reflective, almost carefree aura. Even with all the pain he’d encountered in life, he still possessed an enviable desire to go on. I asked him once how he pulled it off.

  “Medication,” he replied in his distant, introspective way. He always sounded like he’d just smoked a bowl when he talked. “Well, that and appreciating what I got. I never look beyond today, bro. I’ll never take the fact I’m here for granted again. I owe that much to Jacky.”
r />   Those words echoed in my mind as I chose to forgo sleep, sit on a stool in the guest bedroom, and stare at their house. Perhaps Joe was enough of a free spirit to live carefree, but I wasn’t. The authorities still hadn’t a clue who murdered the Cormier family, and Jacqueline looked so much like little Bridget. I couldn’t leave her safety to chance, so I took on the duty of looking out for her until the killer was caught. Hell, it wasn’t like I was getting a ton of shut-eye, anyway.

  Every night Silas joined me, a loyal lieutenant to my fixated general. He sat there with his butt and paws firmly planted on the ground, looking like a statue. I appreciated the company.

  I would sit there for hours, until a crescent of the sun poked over the horizon. At that point I’d meander downstairs and cook Wendy breakfast. When she woke she’d eat her food and depart for The Spinning Wheel. We hardly spoke to each other, as if we’d used up the reservoir of well-wishes between us. Then, when she left, I’d lie down on the couch, allow Silas to wedge himself in the space between my legs, and get a couple hours of much-needed sleep.

  This schedule did have its advantages, for the nightmares were absent during the day.

  17

  Come the end of July, a month and a half after my fateful discovery at the Mancuso farm, Wendy offered me her version of the Final Solution.

  “Ken,” she said one night, handing me a manila envelope, “I want a divorce.”

  I stared at the package in her hand. It seemed so meaningless. I grabbed the envelope, opened it, and flipped through the pages, feeling conflicted. We hadn’t discussed the future of our relationship in weeks, but I guess her resolution was inevitable. We’d become clandestine strangers existing in the same house, never sharing even the most innocuous of niceties. Although I understood this, I still felt a twang of panic. Things weren’t supposed to end this way.