The Burning Read online

  The Burning

  Bentley Little

  Now comes the hottest horror yet from the Bram Stoker Award winner...

  They're four strangers with one thing in common-a mysterious train choking the sky with black smoke, charging trackless across the American night...and carrying an unstoppable evil raised from the depths of history that will bring each of their worst fears to life.

  From Publishers Weekly

  In the new book by Bram Stoker Award–winner Little (Dispatch), strangers across the U.S. are each pursued by different supernatural forces as they fall into the path of a ghost train rumbling into the present day from a dark chapter in American history. Switching among characters—college freshman Angela Ramos in Flagstaff, Ariz.; divorced park ranger Henry Cote in Canyonlands National Park, Utah; Jolene, fleeing her husband to Bear Flats, Calif., with eight-year-old Skyler in tow; and Dennis Chen, on his first cross-country road trip—Little turns the screws bit by bit, bringing his unfortunate charges face to face with multiple terrors, including haunted houses, mummified zombies, a pair of succubi and a room full of jarred human body parts. The novel draws from historical record and modern-day hot-button topics, bringing to bear immigration issues from the time of the Transcontinental Railroad to the present. Readers might tire of the revolving door structure—characters switch off on a per-chapter basis—before the stories converge in northern Utah, and might find the multiple strands a bit overstuffed and under-scary; still, this novel offers Steven King–size epic horror for those with the patience for it.

  Review

  [Little] is on par with such greats as Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Peter Straub. -- Midwest Book Review

  Prologue

  The Man from the Government stood at the edge of the windswept plain and stared out at the carnage before him.

  It was far, far worse than he'd been led to believe. He'd been told the numbers, even had in his courier pouch a description of the worst atrocities, but there was no way that the scope of the massacre could have been conveyed by mere words.

  Hardened though he was, he was forced to glance away, looking out beyond the bodies. To the north, he saw barren ground broken by occasional scrub brush. To the south, a series of small hills, beyond which was the lake. Overhead, the sky was full of clouds, their white innocence contrasting sharply with the rent flesh on the field below.

  Girding himself, the Man allowed his gaze to fall once again upon the ground. The bodies-or body parts--lay strewn in every conceivable position, stacked several deep, human mixed with horse, testifying to the unbridled ferocity of the slaughter. Fingerless hands on the ends of severed arms emerged from the rotting viscera of gutted torsos; butchered legs rested atop mutilated man faces and hairy horse heads. The soil had been stained a deep dark crimson, but it was obvious that before the blood had sunk into the ground, there had been pools, rivers, lakes of it, blood so thick the red tide would have reached halfway up his boots.

  As terrible as the sight was, the smell was a thousand times worse, an overwhelming stench of death and decomposition, shit and spoilage, piss and putrefaction.

  The only noise on the plain was the cawing of carrion birds and the buzzing of flies, both so loud and overpowering that it was nearly impossible for him to maintain a coherent train of thought.

  It was his job to scout the location, however, to determine what was needed and then report back. Holding his breath, the Man stepped forward, attempting to pace off the dimensions of the massacre site, though it was impossible to walk a straight line through the jumble of mangled corpses and the constant startled flight of birds and bugs. He advanced carefully, wincing as he trod upon a man's detached genitals, nearly slipping in a still-sticky patch and pitching forward into a battered chest cavity, saving himself only by crunching a skull with his right boot.

  This would not be easy work. The crew would have to be much larger than originally anticipated, and once they were through, their silence had to be assured. If any of this ever got out ...

  But of course it would not get out. President Grant had given strict orders that everything was to be conducted with the utmost secrecy, knowledge restricted to a very few, and it was the Man's duty to carry out the president's wishes and make sure that everything went as planned. Congress was watching Grant like a hawk, but out here in the wilderness there were no overseers and there was still some discretion. The president could deal with the situation in his own way.

  Because General Grant knew war.

  He knew bloodshed.

  He knew horror.

  He knew how to handle this.

  The Man from the Government kept pacing, marking off measurements. He worked as fast as he could, but it was still close to sundown before he finally made his way back to his horse and took off across the countryside the way he had come.

  He returned a month later, after the cleanup, after the bonfire.

  Bone fire.

  It was the only way to dispose of the evidence, but smoke from the burning bodies had been visible for fifty miles, the foul-smelling black soot falling on homesteads more than a day away. They'd had to post a perimeter of guards to keep away people from the city curious to discover what was happening.

  Other than that, though, the cleanup had gone well, and indeed, upon inspection, there appeared to be no evidence of the terrible events that had occurred on this spot. Holding his hat so it would not be blown off, the wind whipping his coattails, the Man from the Government strode over the ground, examining it as he went. He thought that at one point, near a patch of mud, the soil appeared redder than it should, but the variation in hue was so slight that it would be noticed only by someone specifically looking for it.

  He was not slow, but he was methodical, and by the end of the afternoon, he was satisfied that any crisis had been averted, that there was no evidence anything out of the ordinary had occurred here.

  He climbed upon his horse. It was a two-hour ride back to camp, another two days to a telegraph office. It was fortunate that the atrocity had happened here, far from civilization and the prying eyes of humanity.

  He might not return to his camp and his aides until after nightfall, but that inconvenience was a small price to pay for the ease of completing this mission, which could have been so much more difficult.

  Tomorrow, they would pull up stakes, and once he reached the telegraph office on Friday, he would cable to Hogue, who would inform the president that all was right, that the field had been successfully cleaned and cleared.

  They were safe.

  At least for now.

  One

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  Angela Ramos stood in line in front of the university's housing office and, for the fourth time in ten minutes, looked at her watch. The line had not moved. Oh, there'd been a barely perceptible shift forward, but it was the result of students shuffling their feet, closing spaces, pressing ahead incrementally in the hope that it would somehow spur the workers in the office to speed up, and not the result of genuine progress.

  She was here because she'd been promised on-campus housing, and she held in her hand a computer-printed form stating exactly that. But when she'd arrived and checked in at Admissions and Records, Angela had received notice that, due to overenrollment this semester, she would not be able to stay in one of the dorms. Preference had been given to upper-classmen and returnees, and spaces for freshmen were allotted based on distance from home. As a student from California, she hadn't traveled far enough to merit accommodations.

  This is totally unacceptable, she planned to say when she finally reached the head of the line and got a chance to confront someone from the housing office. In her mind her voice came out firm, resolved and authoritative. She saw herself meeting the eyes of her
nemesis and not backing down. It never worked out that way in real life, though, which was why she was using this time to prepare and practice the speech she would give to the university automaton she would have to face.

  A kid about her age with a huge halo of retro hair who'd been walking down the sidewalk toward the back of the line stopped when he saw how many students were already ahead of him. "How long have you guys been standing on line?" he asked in a thick New York accent.

  "A half hour," a clean-cut young man two spaces in front of her answered.

  "Shit," the hairy guy said, and walked away.

  Angela watched him go. Why, she wondered, did people from the East Coast say "on line" instead of "in line"? People in a queue weren't standing on a line. They were the line. The line consisted of the people in it.

  Already she was getting annoyed by differences in speech patterns?

  This was going to be one long afternoon.

  It was one long afternoon. Either everyone in front of her had unbelievably complicated problems or the people who worked in the housing office were totally incompetent. By the time she was inside the building and at the front desk, her righteous diatribe had been honed to perfection. After hearing a brief outline of Angela's problem and determining that it wasn't the fault of misfiled paperwork, the secretary at the counter instructed her to go down the hall to office 1A and speak to a housing administrator.

  Angela strode purposefully down the corridor, her confidence bolstered by the authoritative click of her heels on the institutionally tiled floor. Man, woman, it didn't matter; she'd been promised a dorm room and she was going to give the housing administrator living hell until her problem was solved. Only she didn't.

  Edna Wong, the elderly woman in office 1A, was friendly, apologetic and understanding, and of course Angela did not have the heart to jump down the old lady's throat as she'd planned. In fact, as always, she eventually found herself apologizing to the housing administrator for being such an inconvenience. She hated herself for backing off even as she did it, but he alternative was to blame this nice old woman for something that wasn't her fault. She was just a part of the machine, a cog in the system.

  "I can't tell you how sorry I am that this happened," he administrator told her. "Rest assured, you will get top priority for housing next semester. But there are roughly twenty-five or twenty-six of you who have been displaced because of this mix-up, and despite our promise to you, I'm afraid we simply have no more room in our on-campus housing."

  "I understand, Mrs. Wong."

  "Call me Edna."

  "-but I have no place to live. I assumed that I did because of the letter you sent me, and now I'm ... 'm homeless. I literally have nowhere to go. I don't know anyone in this state, I've never been here before, I don't have much money. I would have made other arrangements or figured something out if I'd been told ahead of time, but this was just sprung on me today, and ..." She had to stop, look away and bite her lip to keep from crying. Mrs. Wong-Edna-reached across the desk and took Angela's hand in hers. "Don't worry. Everything will turn out all right."

  Angela didn't trust herself to respond.

  "I want to help you," the housing administrator said kindly. She rummaged through her desk. "Since you got such a raw deal, and it is our fault ..." She handed Angela a three-by-five card. "Here. We have a bulletin board out front with students looking for roommates, but I haven't put this on the board yet. Why don't you take it?"

  Angela read the card:

  Wanted. Female roommate, no smoking, no drugs, to share furnished two-bedroom, one-bath apartment. $275 per month plus utilities. Call Chrissie Paige. 555-4532.

  "In fact, let me call for you. I know Chrissie."

  The old woman not only set up an appointment for Angela to meet Chrissie Paige and look at the apartment that afternoon; she also vouched for her, promising that Angela was reliable and trustworthy and would make a great roommate. Just the fact that she was willing to stick her neck out left Angela feeling so grateful that she almost started crying again.

  "Don't do that, dear," Edna begged. She smiled brightly. "Everything's going to be fine. Despite the

  problems computers cause us, people can always find a way to work things out. NAU's a terrific school, and Flagstaff's a wonderful town. You're going to have a great semester. And next term, if you still want it, you'll be at the top of the list for on-campus housing."

  "Thank you," Angela said. "Thank you so much."

  "You're welcome, dear."

  State Street was located off what must have once been the downtown district, just across old Route 66 north of the railroad tracks, a series of blocks with closely packed buildings of faded brick or rough-hewn stone, several of them three or four stories tall-what passed for high-rises here in Flagstaff. All looked as though they'd seen better days, but at the same time the area seemed on the upswing. There was a small used bookstore, a health-food store and a couple of cafe-style restaurants. There was even a church with gargoyles lining its peaked roof, and Angela didn't think she'd ever seen gargoyles in real life before.

  The apartment building itself was an old Victorian home that had been subdivided and converted. The Standout in an eclectic neighborhood that included a couple of California-style Craftsman cottages, a Tudor home, a log cabin and several homes that appeared to be made from chunks of lava, the apartment house boasted not only an incredibly ornate facade but a rolling lawn three to four times bigger than any other on the block.

  Chrissie Paige was waiting on that lawn when Angela drove up. Tan and frizzy-haired, wearing a halter top and cutoff jeans, the girl, like a lot of the students she'd seen in Flagstaff, looked somewhat hippieish, which Angela found oddly comforting. That era had always seemed to her to have a greater sense of community than the fractured world in which she'd grown up. There'd always been a few neohippies back in Los Angeles, but as with everything else, that look was inevitably tied to some musical movement or other. Appearance and culture in California were always connected to entertainment. Here the lifestyle seemed somehow more real, more organic. She liked that.

  The other girl stood, brushed grass off her cutoffs. "Are you Angela? I'm Chrissie."

  "Hi," Angela said shyly. She felt slightly embarrassed, as though Mrs. Wong-Edna-had forced Chrissie to see her against her will, but that wore off almost instantly as the other girl led her up the lawn to the house, chatting happily.

  "This place was originally built by one of the Babitts. The Babbitts practically owned northern Arizona. You know Bruce Babbitt, who used to be secretary of the Interior? His family. You'll see buildings up here named after them, department stores, almost everything. Anyway, one of the cousins or something built this place fifty, sixty years ago. I think it was empty for a while-no one could afford it-so eventually someone bought the house and subdivided it into apartments. I think that was in the sixties or seventies. And here we are."

  Chrissie led her through the front door into an elaborate foyer. Straight ahead was a long wide hallway, to the right a curving staircase of dark wood that led to the second floor. Angela followed Chrissie upstairs, where a hallway identical to the one on the ground floor stretched toward the rear of the house. They stopped at the first doorway on the left. "My place," Chrissie said, opening the door. "I don't know if Edna told you or if you saw the ad, but it's a two-bedroom. We have a small kitchen, one bathroom and a sitting room. As you can see, it's pretty big, though. And the view from the bedroom windows is awesome. You have to look over the roof of the house next door, but you get a perfect view of the San Francisco Peaks. By next month, they'll be covered with yellow when the aspens change. It's pretty spectacular."

  Angela peeked through the open doorways of the two bedrooms. Both were larger than her bedroom back home, and though hers was the smaller of the two, it had a full-sized four-poster bed rather than the headboardless twin she was used to, and an oversized dresser that could hold twice as many clothes as she owned.

  "Of c
ourse, you can decorate it however you want, put up pictures, posters, whatever."

  "Wow," Angela said, walking into the room and looking around. She glanced out the window, saw the mountains. "Only two hundred and seventy-five for his place?"

  "It's haunted," Chrissie offered.

  Angela looked over at the other girl to see if she was joking, but she didn't appear to be.

  "It's true. I mean, that's the rumor. I've never actually seen anything. But Winston and Brock, downstairs, say that they've heard stuff. Moaning, mumbling, the usual."

  "Here?"

  "No. In the house. Not your room in particular. In fact, I haven't heard any stories about our apartment at all. They all seem to be downstairs. But supposedly,

  that's the reason the rent's so cheap. I don't believe in ghosts or gods or anything supernatural myself, but in the interest of full disclosure I thought I'd better lay all the cards on the table in case you're the type of person who worries about that stuff."

  Angela was intrigued. "You don't believe in gods?

  ny gods? Not even ... God?"

  "No." Chrissie smiled. "You do, I take it?"

  Angela reddened, feeling embarrassed, though there

  was no reason why she should. "I'm Catholic," she admitted.

  "That's cool. You don't preach to me, I won't preach to you, and the two of us should get along just fine."

  Angela couldn't let it go. She was far from a perfect

  catholic-she'd engaged in premarital sex, was vascilatingly pro-choice-but she couldn't imagine not believing in God at all. It seemed so ... brave.

  "Just so you know, Winston and Brock are a couple, they're gay. So if you have a problem with that-"

  "No, no. Of course not."

  "Good

  "But ... aren't you worried?" she asked Chrissie. "I mean, about not believing in God? What if you're wrong? After you're dead-"

  "I'll be worm food. Listen," Chrissie said, "I really don't want to blow this up into a big deal here. If this is going to bother you ..."