Harlan County Horrors Read online

  "Maybe not," the preacher said, "but we have to warn the university. John says he is an anthropologist from Lexington. Don't you see? When John doesn't return, the university will send someone else down to investigate his disappearance. Are we going to let Larson and Cullen kill that person, or that alien, too? Whatever the case, more Shadows will come---they'll make us leave Harlan. They won't understand we're not all like Larson and Cullen."

  Jake stood up. He placed his hands on Jeremiah's shoulders. "Grandfather, how old are you? Eighty-seven? That's a long time to live, and I know you've seen a lot, done a lot more than I ever will. But sometimes there's nothing to be done."

  "Jake..." the old man whispered.

  "And maybe Larson and Cullen know some things you don't?" Jeanette added, breaking her silence.

  Jeremiah stood up, his knees popping, sending the pain of the arthritis shooting through his body. He hugged his grandson. "I know you mean well. May God be with you." He nodded to Jeanette and walked out through the straw curtain into the bright daylight.

  The preacher slowly worked his way back down the hillside to his church. What he saw almost made his heart fall through the pit of his stomach.

  Tied to a freshly built crucifix that had been planted right in front of Harlan Baptist Church was John the Grey. Wood and brush was being collected and deposited around the alien's feet. Cullen watched over the proceedings with a quiet menace and a shotgun resting over his shoulder.

  It felt like it took his creaky old legs decades to reach the church's front lawn where, instead of alien burnings, they held their annual summertime tent revival. Jeremiah's heart pounded, black specks invaded his vision. Dying would almost be worth not having to witness this travesty.

  Reaching the crucifix and the alien, he began to kick out the shrubbery and boards of wood building up around John's feet. Cullen forced himself between the wild old preacher and their Grey captive, before shoving him backwards to the ground.

  The shotgun was leveled at the preacher's face. "Out of respect for who you are, I'm not going to kill you tonight. But if you don't get on out of here, you might just go up in flames like this Grey."

  "You can't do this. Anything but burning..." Jeremiah objected. Cullen pressed the shotgun barrels against the preacher's forehead.

  "One more word, and I'll send you to kingdom come."

  Jeremiah looked past the double barrels, into the placid face of John the grey. A Kentucky yellow warbler landed on top of the horizontal bar of the crucifix and skipped around, chirping a beautiful melody. John looked up with his big almond eyes and whistled.

  Jake and Jeanette came rushing to the lawn and picked up their grandfather by his arms.

  "You can't let this happen, Jake," Jeremiah pleaded. "We have to go."

  A crowd gathered around. Some brought more wood. Others just milled around, somber faces unwilling to screw up the courage to object to the pending murder.

  "Hush, Granddad. It's just another one of your fits."

  As the evening faded to night, and the stars and moon made their appearance in the heavens, Larson struck flint to an oil-soaked torch. Jeremiah had discovered that Larson had dragged every single member of their community to the show, all 128 of them, to bear witness.

  Jeremiah sat with his back against a grand old sycamore tree that spread its branches over the yard and church. Men stood around while chewing tobacco, participating in idle gossip with their friends and neighbors. Children circled around him and the tree, laughing as they played a new game called "catch the Grey." Across the way, he spotted little Mikey with his mother sharing a picnic of buttermilk biscuits and chicken with blackberry pie for dessert.

  It wasn't until Larson took a spot in front of the crucifix that the festivities ceased. For the second time that day, Jeremiah felt the spirits chill his body.

  "Decades ago," Larson bellowed to his congregation, "the Collapse nearly destroyed our civilization. War, famine, plagues..." Larson leveled his gaze at Jeremiah. "All of it in Biblical proportions. Two years later the Shadows appeared, just in time to become our saviors. And since those hard times, we have pressed on in Harlan, relying only on ourselves, our families, our friends."

  Larson turned around and faced John, the torchlight sparkled in the alien's eyes. "We must send a message to the race that brought on the Collapse. We know what you did. We know how."

  Preacher Jeremiah blocked out the rest. Jake started to hold his grandfather back, but he backed down when his grandfather took a path away from the crowd.

  Jeremiah walked upwind of the senseless murder, of the soon-to-be burning alien flesh. Was this truly senseless? Was there any chance Larson and Cullen told the truth about what they had seen? He couldn't be sure. Nobody could be sure, at least not the people in this community.

  A yellow warbler sang off in the distance. Or was that the sound of John being burned alive?

  Perhaps Larson and Cullen did know a few things. But the old preacher man had learned his share of lessons during his years as riverboat captain, as well. Most importantly, he knew the melting flesh of a Shadow cast off a smoky neurotoxin strong enough to kill a horse.

  Now he heard the screams. The sound of a double-barrel shotgun firing---soon they'd all be dead. Like a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

  "Kingdom Come"

  Jeremy C. Shipp

  Jeremy C. Shipp's work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 50 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Apex Magazine, Pseudopod, and The Bizarro Starter Kit (blue). While preparing for the forthcoming collapse of civilization, Jeremy enjoys living in Southern California in a moderately haunted Victorian farmhouse with his wife, Lisa, and their legion of yard gnomes. He's currently working on many stories and novels and is losing his hair, though not because of the ghosts. His books include Vacation, Sheep and Wolves, and Cursed. And thankfully, only one mime was killed during the making of his first short film, Egg. Feel free to visit his online home at jeremycshipp.com.

  My filter edits out the utility wires and pollution so I can truly appreciate the view. And as foggy fingers caress the curves of the earth, I think of heaven. Not the heaven I envision today, with walls and guns and sentinels. No, I'm reminded of my childhood heaven, where everyone wears flip-flops and walks on clouds.

  I was a stupid kid.

  And in my underdeveloped mind, I imagined my parents and my sisters and me living together in a white castle, one big happy family again. I knew this would never happen in my lifetime. But I thought if God embraced my father, forgave him, then my mother would follow suit.

  Back then, I didn't know much about my father. Sure, I knew he was a coward. I knew he refused to fight. And I knew he was the worst kind of man, because that's what my mother told me. But I thought I loved him anyway.

  I loved him even when my mother cried and told me she couldn't go on. And I tried to convince her life was worth living. I talked about her favorite foods, and my good grades, and Christmas.

  After my rambling, she would hug me and say, "You're a brave boy. If you were older, you'd fight for me. I know you would."

  And she was right.

  But the war's over now, and I'm sitting on top of the world, or at least at the highest overlook in Kingdom Come Park and Penitentiary.

  The Cumberland Plateau bursts with fall foliage, dazzling my eyes.

  I feel so small. So connected.

  And as I read in the brochure, these feelings, they're a warning sign. Symptoms. If I don't medicate myself soon, I could develop a full-blown case of Thoreau Syndrome.

  So I hop off the stone column and lead my family to the Art Hut.

  There, I sit on a bench and study the black bears.

  And I chuckle, cured of the reverence plaguing my soul. These creatures look so pathetic, stuffed in glass boxes like the contortionist I once marveled at in my youth. But unlike the performer, these creatures inspire only pity, victims of their own weakness.

  Sure, beasts like these posses a
certain raw strength, but their power can't compare to that of a human being. Of an American.

  Therefore, these bears will live the rest of their wretched lives in these boxes, with tubes jammed in their orifices and flesh.

  I laugh again.

  Then my son cries.

  And I notice a young couple. Pointing, smiling.

  "What's wrong with you?" I say, holding my son's shoulders.

  "They want to go home," he says.

  "Who?"

  "The teddies. Can't we let them go with their mommies?"

  "Stop crying."

  And after I touch my belt, my son obeys.

  "Maybe I should take him outside," my wife says.

  "No," I say. "He needs to see this."

  An older man in a suit steps closer to me. "It's refreshing to see a father taking an interest in his son's artistic development. You'd be surprised what a rarity that is these days."

  "You're right. I am surprised."

  The old man grins. "I'm John Miller, the curator."

  "Samson Carter."

  We shake hands.

  And after a few minutes of talking about black bears, we shake hands again.

  "See you tomorrow night, Mr. Carter," the curator says. "Assuming you and the missus are planning on attending the show."

  "Show?" I say.

  "I'm surprised you haven't heard. All of Kingdom Come's buzzing about tomorrow's guest. He's supposedly quite the comedian."

  "I doubt we'll be in attendance. I'm not a comedy fan."

  "Well, to each his own."

  Outside the hut, my son approaches one of the glowing rhododendrons, and I have to grab him by the arm.

  "Don't touch those," I say. "Don't even get near them."

  "Why?" my son says.

  "Because I told you not to."

  And that's the end of that.

  One good thing about my son, he knows when to shut up.

  Thankfully, my Filter's sophisticated enough to differentiate between the day-to-day screaming in Kingdom Come and the yelling of my wife. So the machine lets me hear her, and I wake up.

  And I find her on her knees, a few meters from the tent.

  "What's wrong?" I say.

  "It took our son," my wife says. "It took our son."

  I glance around. I don't see him. "Who took him?"

  "A monster." She cries.

  I feel like shaking the truth out of her, but there's no time for that. "Which way did they go?"

  "I don't know. It pushed me into a bush, and when I got up, they were gone."

  By now, a small group has formed around us, and a middle-aged woman steps forward. "I seen what happened. They went that way." She points.

  "Call the Guardians," I say, and look down at my wife. "Don't tell them what you think you saw. They'll lock you up."

  "Your wife ain't tetched," the middle-aged woman says. "I seen the creature too."

  But I trust this hick even less than my wife.

  "Tell them you can't remember," I say to my wife.

  She nods.

  And I run.

  A few times, I stumble on steps and the roots bulging from the earth, and I remember the veins that swelled on my mother's forehead whenever she exercised or threw my father's porcelain horses at the wall. She limited herself to only destroying a couple every few weeks, because she wanted them to last.

  Eventually, I end up catching my breath beside what looks like a fallen petrified tree. But no, I read about this in the brochure. Log Rock's a natural sandstone bridge, and my Filter's supposed to edit out all the vandalism, the names and messages scratched and spray painted into the stone.

  For a few moments, however, I see enormous letters that run almost the entire length of the bridge.

  THE MONSTER IS INSIDE.

  And I hear a chorus of screams.

  Then, silence.

  I follow the escort into the Coal Mining Museum and Guardian Headquarters, up the stairs, to a large office on the fourth floor.

  Standing in front of Warden Rose is almost like looking in a mirror. The same buzz cut. The same color suit. And if you squinted, you might mistake one tie for the other.

  While the escort whispers into the warden's ear, I let my eyes explore the photographs on the wall. Photographs that the warden obviously acquired from the exhibits, because the pictures impart a bloody history of the coal industry. Mining accidents, burning houses, dead families. I also see some newer photos of the reconstruction, when the mines were transformed into the jail it is today.

  Warden Rose shakes my hand, smiles. "Do you always bring suits along on your camping trips, Mr. Carter?"

  "Yes," I say.

  He sits, and motions for me to do the same.

  I obey.

  Then he leans forward, frowning. "I want you to know, we're making every effort to find your son. We already tracked down his Filter, but I'm afraid the device wasn't attached to his head."

  My head vibrates with a shiver. "Would such a removal cause him any permanent damage?"

  "That depends on our enemy's knowledge of Filters and the tools at his disposal. For now, let's assume your son is alive and well."

  I nod. "Do you have any leads?"

  "Yes. But I didn't call you here to brief you on the investigation. Your desire to assist in this case is understandable. However, you aren't qualified---"

  "I fought in the war, Warden Rose. I'm more than capable of---"

  "With all due respect, Mr. Carter, your attempts to help would only reduce your son's chances of survival. I read your file, and I know you're a man of myriad abilities. But this is a matter of harmony. If I allowed you to enter our system, we could no longer synchronize and achieve perfection. I hope you understand, I'm not trying to insult you. I only want to save your son."

  I still feel angry, but I also feel more respect for this man and his organization. "I understand."

  "Good. Now." The warden taps a button on his desk, and a monitor lowers from the ceiling. "As you must know, there are security cameras in place throughout Kingdom Come. One such camera captured the initial moments of the kidnapping." He presses another moment.

  And I see a monster with black matted fur and metallic fangs. It pushes my wife's chest. Snatches up my son. Runs.

  Then the warden turns off the monitor. "I don't blame you for not believing your wife. Like me, you're a man who refuses to accept outlandish stories without empirical data."

  A hint of guilt tingles in my gut, but the feeling's soon overpowered by rage. I told my wife not to talk about the monster, and she did so anyway.

  "But now you've seen the truth," the warden says. "Now you can give your wife the validation she needs. Don't tell her about the recording. Just tell her you believe her. And convince her that what she saw was a man in a suit. I'm sure she'll see reason, if it's coming from you."

  I nod.

  "One more bit of advice," Warden Rose says. "Take your wife to the show tonight. I hear our guest is a genius in his field."

  "I'm not in the mood for comedy," I say.

  "That's exactly why you should attend. Laughter is the best medicine, Mr. Carter. At least promise me that you'll consider the matter further."

  "Alright."

  "Good." The Warden stands, and I do the same. "I'll contact you as soon as I find your son."

  "Thank you."

  We shake hands.

  And halfway to the door, I turn around. I almost forgot. "My Filter's been malfunctioning ever since my son was taken."

  The Warden sits. "How so?"

  "The audio and visual editor shut off once, for a few seconds. And my dialectal translator doesn't seem to be working at all anymore."

  Warden Rose rubs his eyes. "I apologize for the inconvenience. To be honest, the Filters have a hell of a time coping with the effects of heartbreak. Still, this is no excuse. My Guardians assured me they'd stomped all the bugs in this new model, and they're going to suffer for their failure, I assure you. I'll send a
technician to your tent tonight, and he'll fix your Filter while you sleep."

  "Thank you," I say.

  And all the way back to my tent, I search myself for the heartbreak Warden Rose spoke of.

  Sure, I find annoyance, outrage.

  But I don't feel any sorrow.

  In fact, I can't even picture my son's face.

  The Guardian tries to stand, fails.

  So I help him to his feet. "What happened?"

  "I'm sorry, sir," he says. "It ate my gun, knocked me unconscious. I'm sorry."

  I check the tent.

  Empty.

  And still, I don't feel anything but anger.

  Anger at the monster, of course.

  Anger at this pathetic excuse for a Guardian.

  And more than that, anger at myself. Because what kind of man doesn't protect his own family?

  A man like my father, that's who.

  I punch my forehead, hard.

  And a few hours later, I'm lost among the trees. This isn't easy to accomplish, due to my impeccable sense of direction. But I manage, somehow.

  Once again, the natural world makes me feel small, connected.

  Calm.

  And I realize I'm not even looking for my wife and son anymore.

  Because without my fury, I'm numb.

  Empty.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe the words on Log Rock were meant for me.

  Maybe there's a monster inside me.

  I laugh at the thought, and then feel an aggressive desire to return to my tent.

  But I ignore the emotion.

  Eventually, I find myself staring at a patch of thirty-two luminescent flowers, and part of me hopes that my Filter will malfunction again.

  Then my wish comes true.

  And there are thirty-two men and women sitting on blackened circles of earth, weeping, screaming, the hairs on their bodies sticking straight out.

  They look ridiculous.

  I search their faces, looking for my father.

  He was caught four years ago, so there's a chance he's serving his time here.