Jul 24

Jul 24 Led By Beasts

“Horror fans, check this one out”

— J.N. Cameron, Amazon Review

“A beastly reading adventure”

— Thomas S. Gunther, Amazon Review

“This collection is elegantly framed and every story delivers a nice solid punch”

— Brian Bobby, Goodreads

READ REVIEWS IN GOODREADS

Led By Beasts - book excerpt

The Boy

Later in life, he would ponder how different life might have played out had he not followed the beast on that day.

But the little boy did follow, and the beast led him away from his home.

Soon, as if in a dream, the landscape changed so entirely they might have been crossing the surface of a distant and dying planet.

“Should I be scared?” the boy asked.

The beast eyed downward and regarded the boy. It nodded—yes.

“Well…” the boy began. He hesitated as goose-pimples feasted on his neck. Still, he proudly filled his chest with the cold air and proclaimed, “I’m not.”

Only now did the beast offer a claw-like hand; it was desert-bone dry when the boy grabbed ahold.

They walked until the boy’s feet were sore and his legs knotted in cramps.

They reached foothills, where the eye of a cave stared back at them. The looming mountains beyond were so massive they couldn’t possibly have been of Earth.

Together, beast and boy entered the mausoleum-sized lair.

Inside, a perfectly centered fire warmed the cave. It burned industriously, feeding through a copious amount of dead wood. The flames danced shadows against the rock walls—the shadow shapes of four more beasts.

These new beasts hunkered on sitting logs around the fire. Their eyes rolled to the boy when he entered.

A spot was offered, andthe boy sat.

Before taking its own place, the boy’s guide lumbered to a rock shelf where sat a metal cage filled with rodents. The beast unlatched and opened the top. With one massive claw, it dug out a squeaking rat. Drool slavered from upper to lower lip in strings when the beast yawed open its toothless maw and dangled the rat by the tail.

It dropped the rat, and squeal became hellish screams.

The beast’s mouth snapped closed and swallowed the meal whole.Sated, it found its place near the fire and sat with the others.

The boy gazed into the fire, seeing capering shapes that seemed to act out stories.

When the beast across from him spoke, its voice was lower than hell but also as tempting as hell’s games. It conspired with the fire’s warmth to lull the boy.

The beast said, “Shall we share our tales?”

Thoughtless, the boy nodded.

“Then I’ll start,” the beast agreed. The crevice of its mouth formed something of a grin, and story time commenced.

Once upon a time and in a cave, a young boy slept near a fire...

King Me

As a writer, this beast most likely needs no introduction. If the section’s title hasn’t already released the creature from the cage, so to speak, I’m writing about none other than Stephen King.

Since the publication of Carrie in 1974, you’d be hard pressed to name a more influential figure on horror than King, and personally, I don’t think there’s a debate to be made.

King’s influence on me reaches all the way back to even before I was actually reading any of his work. I can recall as a child seeing King’s tomes resting on the side table near my father’s couch. Those books were often splayed open and face-down, displaying those terror-inducing covers. As it turned out, those covers would also be very impressionable. I bet any horror fan can conjure a few images of King’s covers to mind. For me: the monstrous claw grasping the sewer grate on the front of It, Night Shift’s bandaged hand with the staring eyeballs growing from the fingers and palm, and don’t forget Annie Wilke’s ominous shadow with the ax draped over a despondent Paul Sheldon from Misery.

What young boy with a healthy imagination wouldn’t have been fascinated by those covers?

With somewhat morbid curiosity, I’d ask Dad to explain the goings-on in those books.

Dad never went too far, but he’d offer up enough to whet my appetite; I loved it.

So yes, King’s influence has been with me from an early age, and later I became one of his Constant Readers.

Each story in this section, in some way, reflects King’s influence on me as a writer.

Much like the recurring staple throughout King’s obviously much longer works, with “Vengeful Fangs,” I aspired to create a young protagonist for which the reader could root. “Vengeful Fangs” came out the cleanest first draft I’ve ever produced. I tightened up some of the prose, and it was ready for publication.

Dedicated King fans will note the parallels towards the end of “Buffoonville” and King’s “Children of the Corn.” Of course, I’m referring to the short story found in Night Shift and not the corny 1984 movie—pun intended.

“The Witch’s Mushroom” was written for a specific submission call, an exercise that rarely works for me. Usually, I run with whatever idea I’ve been mulling over and then search out fitting publications. The anthology I aimed for with “The Witch’s Mushroom” rejected it, so I sent it to the first re-issuing of Sanitarium, and they quickly accepted the story. When I wrote it, I kept King’s advice in my head—get to the story.

Mr. King, you’ve been THE beast in the horror business for decades. Thankee-sai, for the chills, for the characters, but mostly for the stories.

Vengeful Fangs

Aaron was alone and shirtless in the backyard. The grass felt cool pressed against his back.

Dusk arrived, and with it, shadowy shapes flitted above him. He shouldered his most cherished birthday present from months earlier—the sharp shooterpellet gun—the last present he’d opened that evening, and also the last gift he’d ever receive from his father.

Aaron pointed the barrel skyward. With earnest concentration, his breathing naturally slowed. He closed one eye and squinted the other down the length of the barrel. Setting his jaw, he drew a beat on one of the darting shadows. His father’s challenge from his birthday night rose in his mind—kill a bat with a pellet gun, and you can do anything.

The gun popped when he squeezed the trigger.

Ffffft, the BB shot into darkness.

The shadow he’d aimed at swooped low, and for the briefest moment, an untrained eye might have suspected his accuracy was amazingly true. Aaron, however, knew differently. The BB must have passed through the bat’s sonar with impeccable timing.

The bat elevated to its original circular path unharmed, more likely bewildered than anything else at discovering no meal where its hunting skills demanded one should have been.

Glumly, Aaron estimated his kill rate stood roughly in the realm of zero for a kazillion, if kazillion was even a real number.

From inside the trailer behind him, a shouting match erupted—his mom and his uncle at each other’s throats.

A clatter of pots and pans followed by breaking glass.

A breath of silence—then his mother screeching something about Uncle Joe already proving he was more bastard than man.

Uncle Joe, Aaron seethed and instinctively began grinding his teeth.

He worked the bolt action and checked the breach to make sure a silver BB had chambered.

“Uncle—Fuckin’—Joe.” The words practically boiled up his throat.

He imagined pressing the barrel of the pellet gun into each of Uncle Joe’s eyes and pulling the trigger. The deranged fantasy was so complete he envisioned the BBs bursting through the tissue of his uncle’s eyes and burning straight through the asshole’s pupils.

Fuckin’ and asshole, just when had Aaron started speaking and thinking in those terms?

When Dad didn’t come home—that’s when.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d been worried when Dad was absent that Friday night. The following sunrise, there was still no Dad to prepare the Saturday morning pancakes, and Mom called the cops. Aaron’s worry had morphed into a cold sense of fear because Mom’s concern sounded authentic enough on the phone, but after disconnecting, she’d drank her coffee at the trailer’s wobbly kitchen table and too casually smoked her cigarettes.

But fear was a completely different beast compared to the anger that born this new love affair with swearing.

The anger had swelled with Uncle Joe’s arrival just two weeks after Dad’s disappearance. Uncle Joe stayed the night—and then stayed the next night, and the next, and the next—not once sleeping on the couch but instead slipping into the parent’s bedroom, as if he was a stand-in husband and father.

Aaron knew, absolutely knew, Uncle Joe was behind his father’s disappearance.

“Christ almighty, woman!” Uncle Joe’s voice bellowed out one of the trailer’s opened windows. “How many damn times I gotta tell ya’ the insurance money is comin’? We just gotta play it cool and be patient.”

“Look around us, Joe!” Aaron’s mother returned.

Aaron could picture her in his mind, standing taut as a pulled rope and her shaking eyes nervously searching all the corners for something else to throw. Similar mutations into a madwoman had occurred when his dad was still tucking him inbed each night.

“You seen any new money sittin’ around this shithole?” his mother raged. “You seen any gold coins fall from the sky? ‘It’s a sure thing,’ you said,‘We’ll have the money to scram in a month.’ Maybe you can’t read a calendar from the Chinese bible, but it’s been two months, and all I’ve seen is more cops kickin’ up and down this bog of a road. I’m tellin’ ya, they’re onto us, Joe. All they gotta do is find his...his...his you know what, and we’re toast.”

Find his you know what.

The thought rolled over Aaron’s mind like a road paver pressing the permanent final touches.

Find his body is what his mother meant—find Dad’s body.

Once again, Aaron lifted the pellet gun and peered down the sights, attempting to focus on anything other than that God-awful idea.

“They ain’t findin’ my brother,” Uncle Joe stated. “They ain’t, ‘cause I made for damn sure there ain’t nothin’ left tofind.”

Aaron cringed, and for a moment, his vision blurred wetly. A sob, a hiccup—something terribly powerful tried working its way up from deep in his stomach. He swallowed hard, forcing it down like trying to cram shut an over-packed suitcase of emotions.

This time he fired wildly and knew he wasn’t even close to striking either of the bats above him. He needed to concentrate. Dad had been an emotionally strong man, so he could also be strong when the time called for it.

Kill a bat with a pellet gun, and you can make anything happen. He let those words ring clearly in his head, relishing his father’s unendingly encouraging tone.

...make anything happen.

If literally anything was on the table, Aaron knew exactly what he’d make happen, whom he’d make disappear.

He missed on his next two attempts but sensed he was closer than ever before, that innately he was figuring out the secret, and then the possibilities would be endless.

From the trailer behind him, his mother’s voice: “I’m just tellin’ ya, Joe, if we ain’t outta here soon and they do find somethin’ I ain’t going down as hard as you will.”

Uncle Joe, agitated: “One last time, there ain’t nothin’ to find.”

Mom: “Maybe not, but if that money don’t show up quick my own mouth might start leakin’, ‘cause I’m gettin’ the thoughts I was better off with him than your sorry ass.”

Uncle Joe: “You wouldn’t.”

Mom: “Keep testin’ me and see.”

Aaron heard not only the conviction in his mother’s tone but also the smirk.

Next came a commotion of struggle. He envisioned Uncle Joe rushing forward, his face aflame with unbridled fury. He could see them locking arms—pushing, shoving, spitting on one another in what must be the world’s craziest dance. He heard someone flung to the floor and then his mother’s banshee screams.

A loud whack! —followed by the briefest of silence in which Aaron popped off another round and just barely missed.

“Who the fuck you think you’re dealin’ with here?” Uncle Joe roared. “Maybe my brother was dead on ‘bout you, and you just some bat-shit crazy woman he never should’ve tangled with!”

“He never said that ‘bout me!” Aaron’s mother shrieked. “He never would’ve said nothin’ like that ‘bout me!”

“Yeah, keep singin’ that tune,” Uncle Joe spat.