Harlan County Horrors Read online

  I sat up, pushing myself to my backside, and blinked. "I'm sure the good Cardinal will forgive you. That's his job. It's what he does."

  "Yes, yes," agent Alexander responded, wanting me to talk. He was hungry for what I had seen. His was a world of science and apparently it had only taken his agency so far. They needed more. They needed me.

  "If you called on me, you must've been concerned over what really was in the chamber, at one time."

  Agent Alexander rubbed his bearded chin and said, "Our sonic scans and satellite images could only tell us that this symmetrical design existed below the surface. Since there was little in the way of artifacts, we were at a loss. There are enough weirdoes running around this sector of the United States looking for UFOs, red-headed mummies, or whatever they chose to believe in, so we weren't about to announce the existence of this place."

  "Nice of you."

  Alexander smirked and looked around at the surrounding mountains. "Play your cards right, Doctor, and you may be the one who found it."

  I glared at him. "But you must have a suspicion that something bad happened below, no? You must know something---"

  Agent Alexander winked and cracked his knuckles. "A good agent doesn't tell everything he knows. Tell me what you saw and I can make everyone happy."

  I buried my face in my gloves and sighed.

  Good Lord, where would I start?

  Down in the belly of this mighty place in the earth, a symmetrical chamber existed, a reverse image of the famed step pyramids of the Yucatan. It reminded me of a Bundt cake mold that my son, Jakob, used for making false mud huts in his sand box.

  The climb down the steps of the temple-mold earlier proved disorienting, so I took it slow. Plenty of the soldiers and agents hung around, taking photographs, but they let me walk free. I remembered to count the steps, like in Central America. Just like the Mayans pyramids, there were 364 steps, and the last one made 365. A mighty big coincidence that this total equaled the number of days in a year.

  When the agents shined a violet light on the rocky surface, it glittered like glass. I knelt at the bottom of the inverted pyramid and felt a fine dust...but it was not sand, exactly. On my gloves, I saw it glitter...like crushed crystal.

  My body trembled as I slipped off my gloves. My hiking boot stepped out of the bottom area as I stepped over near the artifacts. The straight lines of the pyramid outline seemed dented as I scuffed my boots in the glassy substance. I absently wondered if a giant stomped these impressions out with the heel of huge boots.

  Agent Alexander and few soldiers stood ten yards above me on the steps. I looked at the artifacts closer and flexed my hands. The fragments appeared to be the remains of a clay bowl and a section of a spear. On the spear appeared to be a chip of some sort, white and fused to the wood...but when I touched it with my flesh, I knew it to be bone.

  And the rest was history.

  No longer was I Elijah Blackthorn, an American with Apache blood...but my eyes opened into the world of one called Tayanita. My brain grew afire as the information flooded fast and had to be false. The Indians of the area were sometimes Cherokees, Shawnees or some other offshoot, but I was a Quadrule native in what would become Harlan County. My skin was not the clichéd "red Indian" of past tales, nor was it the tan hue of my own. My flesh was nearly Caucasian, perhaps no darker than a Spaniard.

  However, I was not in the underground spot where I had picked up the relics. I was outside in warm air. The sun washed over my nude body as I ran with my tribe up a long series of stone steps. Indeed, we scaled a step pyramid identical to those I helped to clear away vines from in the Yucatan. Yet, there was no such object in Harlan County! We gave out a war howl as we rushed up the steps. It was so insane, for the Cherokee were known to be warlike and the Quadrule a peaceful people...

  Was I seeing a different time in Tayanita's life? Did he attack those ancient ones in the Yucatan far from what we call Kentucky? Something felt wrong about that assumption. When I looked off the side of the pyramid, the distant lands looked oddly like the ones I just had lain down in, hemmed by rolling mountains.

  Impossible! There are no step pyramids in Kentucky!

  I knew what Tayanita knew, and that was what drove me to the edge of madness. The rush of information was hard to grasp, but flooded across my mind, ready or not.

  Our warriors were almost gone, driven to extinction by invaders from far-off lands. Some believed them to be the very gods form the sky themselves. Tayanita did not accept this and set out to prove this wrong. These folk we fought had no scent of settlers, as history would come to know them.

  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 bloody 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 god 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 glass 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. Somethin
g 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 shell 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 shell 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, "Damn! 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 attitude 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 penis 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 pass 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 crap 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 Cumberland 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 inte
rior of the mountains.

  Even though it cost them their lives.

  A weight pressed down there, a drawing down of mass 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 grass 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 façade lurked a terror of unspeakable menace.