Horror Library, Volume 4 Read online

Thousands of years ago Poas had been a prototypical volcano, cone-shaped. Then subterranean pressure built up to a point where the top blew off, propelling rock through the air for hundreds of miles and ash into the atmosphere for thousands more. As a result, two craters formed. One became extinct and the other remained active. The extinct crater gave way to a beautiful lake with the green jungle that dropped to the water's edge. In the crater that you stand over, a moonlike surface of gray and yellow ridges drop down to a pool of sulfuric steaming liquid, similar in size and shape to the lake in the extinct one.

  Fernando puts his hand on your shoulder and points to a storm cell approaching from the other side of the crater. He says, "No looks good."

  He holds his hand there a little too long for your liking. You study his eyes, and for the first time, notice a complexity about him.

  Is it fear of the storm you see swimming in there? You don't think so. He studies you as well, though you have no idea why. An odd thought percolates. You wonder if Hector is still in the lodge with Estrela.

  Once Fernando takes his hand away, he turns and begins toward the horses, and you follow. The two of you ride back to the spring. Before guiding you down to the lodge he dismounts and walks over to the waterfall. He takes off his cap and tosses it in the direction of his horse. He looks at you, cups his hands and fills them with water. He drinks carefully, then puts his head in the flowing spring to wet his long, dark hair. He stands up and shakes, allowing water to spray in every direction. He grins at you and opens his palm to the spring as though to say, "Your turn."

  You have your doubts about drinking from it, but you are here for adventure, so you dismount. You take off your backpack, set it down and move over to the cascade, where Fernando steps aside for you.

  You kneel and cup your hands just as he did, and fill your hands. You sip the water. It is cool and clean and delicious. No bottle of spring water in the world could taste this good. On your second sip, you notice a piece of red cloth lying on the side of the small brook. It is shredded, and it has a small button attached to it. You curiously un-cup your hands, reach over and pick it up. It is a piece of a shirt collar. The material is not red but light blue with. . .bloodstains?

  The discovery sends a chill across your neck and body. You are just about to stand up and turn to show it to Fernando, when you realize that the chill is more of a dull pain. You look down at your chest, and your right side is rapidly soaking up large amounts of blood. You try to turn but you have no control over that side of your body. The stream below is now clouded in red. You can't move and yet for some reason you are turned around.

  Fernando stands before you with a firm grip on your scalp by the roots of your hair. A fierce hatred has taken over his face. His silver-capped grin is suddenly foul; his eyes wide, the pupils coal black. In his right hand, he holds the machete high. He swings it with absolute tension running from his neck to his wrist. Your last physical sight is that of your bloody, severed body hitting the ground.

  You watch from above in the trees as Fernando methodically finishes his task. The slaying had occurred on the rocks lining the edge of the brook. Fernando lays your body across the periphery and peels the clothes away. He presses the tip of the machete directly into each of your major joints, forcing down with both hands on top of the handle. The cartilage separates more easily than you'd expect, which convinces you that he's done this many times before. He raises the machete and chops down in the same places to cut away cartilage and ligaments. Soon he has twelve leg and arm pieces, a torso and a head all separated.

  He takes the thigh of a leg and holds it at an angle on the rocks. He pulls a sharp knife from another holster and begins to slice the meat away from the bone in large fillets. He places the pieces of meat in one black plastic bag and the bones in another. He does this for each of the limb parts and then the torso.

  When cutting into the midsection, he doesn't bother with the breast plate and ribs. He cuts around the hips and pulls out the kidneys, liver and heart. They each are placed into the meat bag. He slices liberal amounts of muscle from the shoulders and waistline. You were a lean person, so he leaves what little fat there is on the meat. When he's done, he drops your head in the meat bag, and you wonder about all of it.

  He takes each of the two plastic sacks and double bags them. He walks over to Pinto and drapes them over the horse's saddle, tying the knotted part to the saddle horn. Pinto, the horse who had taken to you earlier, is indifferent. You are no longer a rider, but now cargo.

  Fernando walks back to the spring and washes his machete and his knife. Then he splashes water over the rocks, allowing the blood and other tissue to run off. In a few places he uses a piece of your clothing to scrub stains off the stubborn stones. He puts your clothing and boots in a third bag and then lays that over Pinto's saddle. He takes your backpack and pulls his arms through it.

  The two horses and the tranquil rancher begin their trip back down the mountain. It rains and Fernando tilts the bill of his cap to keep direct droplets from hitting his eyes. He reaches a place in the thicket of the woods where a rusted shovel leans against a tree. He dismounts and picks it up. There are dozens of mounds of dirt in this hidden place, some fresh and some settled by the frequent rains.

  Fernando digs.

  ***

  Estrela stands outside in the rain, waiting for Fernando.

  You find Hector in the lodge making calls on his cellular phone. Apparently he has already lined up a buyer for the Toyota Rav-4 in Nicaragua, but is now securing a purchaser for your Daihatsu Terios. He mentions luggage and personal belongings in his calls. He inspects a bulky black trash bag from the refrigerator, the same one Estrela had shown him earlier, and it contains the fresh remains of a guy named Miguel. In his conversations he mentions a second human. A lean female.

  You conclude that the most profitable thing about your death is not the pawning of the vehicle, but rather the sale of your flesh.

  There is a reason you haven't moved on to wherever you are supposed to go from here, and you understand it now.

  You have found an unwitting medium for your message. A writer in Austin, Texas. He too has traveled alone to Costa Rica, and has visited Volcan Poas in a rental car. He has stopped at the same small lodge near the peak of the mountain, though it is not called the Camino Verde. He has parked next to a rented Daihatsu Terios, and days later he has wondered where the renter might have gone off to.

  Inside the lodge he has enjoyed a cup of café con leche and a bowl of hot soup with meat in it. Goat meat, he thinks, but the part-German looking waitress only calls it caldo res.

  He has relaxed on the back terrace of this lodge enjoying the beauty of the valley and working up an idea to write a story about this place, and its nice people. And how they might not be so nice.

  He has taken the private ride by horseback with a friendly guide carrying the razor-sharp machete, who explains it is to clear the trail. He has sipped from the same cool spring. . .with the guide standing somewhere behind him.

  He's lucky to be home.

  He now sits at his computer, has been here since early last night, relentlessly clapping away on the keyboard. It's 4:22 a.m. and his palms and armpits are sweating from the nervous energy that has taken over. The words flow from his fingertips without doubt or hesitation. Never before in his life has he had a surge of creative energy like this. He tells his story in such detail that it frightens even him, and yet he's convinced that this is just a creation of his robust imagination. That the Camino Verde Lodge, though not its true name, is a safe place to visit. He has imposed a paradox upon the reader and he is damned proud of himself for this. After all, if he doesn't believe it himself, how can it be true? Perhaps he is not really the author. And yet he acknowledges this too, by writing it.

  Your message has spread. He has consulted with an editor a thousand miles away in Arizona who wants to publish it. Together they have big plans for it as an intro for their next anthology.

  It
's been several years, and though things should have changed in that evil place, you know they haven't. There is a reason for everything. You know that this message will reach someone, at least one person, who plans to visit Costa Rica, and that will be your salvation, as well as theirs.

  As the last of your blood spills out through a press onto the opening pages of +Horror Library+ Volume 4, you feel the first satisfaction of your afterlife, content that soon peace will finally find you.

  And yet there is disappointment, even amidst this final success, because he himself, the man whom you found as your conduit to make this happen, whom you've haunted for all this time, will never seriously consider the fact that you are real, and that this is not at all a work of fiction.

  —INTO THE AFTER

  by Kurt Dinan

  The room was little more than a cement bunker located in the back of an abandoned grocery store. Dad and I had stood third in line underneath the flickering fluorescent lights for an hour. No one could stop staring at the same white sheet that obscured the area near the front wall. Unseen spotlights backlit the makeshift partition, and the oversized silhouette of an empty chair shone through. I rocked back and forth on my heels, certain at any moment my nerves would give out and send me to the exit.

  Dad motioned to the manila envelope in my hand and said, "Which one did you bring?"

  "Hilton Head."

  He smiled at the memory, but it died quickly, and he returned to his thoughts and vigil watching the chair. I'd chosen the picture of Mom in a flowered sundress from a rubber-banded pile hidden away in the basement where Dad wasn't likely to run across it. Most days he still couldn't even say her name; God knows how he'd react to unwillingly discovering her picture.

  ". . .in December of 2000, I took a job with security personnel at One World Trade Center where every day. . ."

  Ethan Stuckey's story played from a Peavey amp sitting on the floor at the front of the screen. His voice had been on a continual loop since we'd arrived, slithering into my ears and sending an uninterrupted chill through my body as if he stood directly behind me. Even after all the waiting, I still didn't know if I believed his story which had brought us all together. Dad accepted it though, and that was all that mattered.

  Metallic knocking from behind the partition silenced all talk in the room. Burt, the bearded man who'd frisked us upon entry, stopped on his way around the screen and shut off the CD player wired into the amp. I held a breath to ten, hoping to relax. A deadbolt clanged open, followed by the scraping of metal across cement. Seconds later, the outline of Ethan Stuckey, stooped and hobbling, appeared. He moved in jerky motions toward the chair as if his hips had been broken and set improperly. As he passed the screen, his distorted shadow made it appear he was rising from the earth.

  Burt reemerged from behind the sheet and knelt in front of the amp. A low static hum filled the room. Dad drummed his fingers against his legs. He had been anticipating this night ever since he'd transferred a thousand dollars for the two of us through PayPal. The guilt I'd experienced since helping him make the plans flooded through me again. I shut my eyes and swallowed hard, reminding myself that tonight was about saving Dad, not about my fears of a man some labeled a fraud and others called the boogeyman.

  On the screen, Ethan's shadow lifted a microphone. When he spoke, his voice had the scratchy quality of an old blues album.

  "You've all come tonight hoping for answers, and I can promise those to you," he said. "What I can't promise is that you'll necessarily like what you hear. That doesn't really matter to me. All of you have made a deal to hear the truth. Nothing more. What you do with it is up to you."

  He lowered the mic onto his lap. Burt restarted the audio of Ethan's story, then waved forward the woman at the front of the line. I recognized her from a midnight showing of The Lies of 9-11 that Dad had taken me to at an empty warehouse down by the shore. When she reached the edge of the screen, she paused as if reconsidering. I secretly hoped she would turn back, starting a mass exodus that would shake Dad from his waking coma. Instead, she turned the corner. I followed her outline projecting black on white until she knelt at Ethan's feet.

  "I know I said it before, but I appreciate you coming along, Will," Dad said. His eyes were ringed by dark circles like he was looking up from the bottom of a well. "Maybe tonight we'll get some truth."

  The irony wasn't lost on me. In the years since 2001, Dad had avoided the truth by turning our Hoboken home into a cave of wall-plastered newspaper articles and building schematics whose relevance only he understood. Even with no remains ever recovered, Mom was officially classified as deceased nine months after that September. For Dad though, no body meant Mom might have somehow survived, possibly suffering amnesia and living life elsewhere. He remained immobile in The Before, existing in a perpetual 2001 where he hibernated with footage of plane crashes, building implosions, and mystery jumpers. Meanwhile, I lived in The After, alone and feeling orphaned as if I had somehow lost both parents on the same day.

  ". . .a massive rumbling on the street like the ground was opening up. Then I was consumed by dust and ash, and there was nothing but darkness."

  I recognized most of the people in line behind us. There was the wheel-chaired man who'd been removed by Borders' security after initiating a shouting match with the author of Conspiracies Debunked. Past him, the woman who kept vigil at Ground Zero with a sandwich board covered with her daughter's picture. Then the blogger whose page Among the Missing Dad monitored daily. And the Diane Lane look-alike who brought her young son to the support group meetings. And on and on. Despite our common bond, no one acknowledged each other. Years of attending the same events brought recognition but not friendship, as if suffering alone equated to some sort of valor.

  On the screen, the silhouette of the woman with Ethan convulsed as if overcome by a seizure. Then, after letting out a deep sob, she cracked him across the face with her hand. The sound echoed through the room. Burt was around the screen and on top of her in seconds.

  I unconsciously stepped behind Dad. He showed no sign of my existence, instead watching with everyone else as Burt carried the woman, slumped and weeping in his arms, off to the man standing guard at the back of the room.

  ". . .hundreds of shadowy impressions wandered about. No one had bodies or heads, but I could hear everyone talking. Some told what they'd eaten for breakfast, or how the contract language needed to be settled, or about the goal their kid scored. . ."

  Next up was a man in a business suit. I wondered how his days at the office went. Did he spend work hours searching obscure websites for minutia while management debated how long they had to wait before they replaced him? Or could he sequester away his misery enough to work his job before returning home to ignore his children and resume his real quest? Books tell you there is no one way to grieve. When something terrible happens—something truly horrific—you change. For some it may be for the better, for some the worse, but anyone in horror's path is irrevocably altered.

  For me, it had taken years of school suspensions and police run-ins before I moved into The After and accepted the truth that Mom was gone forever. Unlike other kids I knew who lost a parent that day, I never idealized my mom. She did the best she could but regularly missed my games and school functions due to long work hours. To compensate for her absence, she showed her love by celebrating birthdays and academic achievements with manic enthusiasm. As I got older, she even created what she called "our signal"—running her index finger over her earlobe—in order to initiate a form of closeness with me. Sometimes it meant, "Your father's silly, isn't he?", or "It's time for you to get to bed", or even simply "I love you." Regardless of its use, the signal was a private secret only we shared. The last time I saw her she smiled and touched her earlobe while driving past me on her way to the train station. Even though I was surrounded by friends waiting for the bus, I returned the gesture, a small memory that tempered any resurfacing sadness.

  ". . .naturally began separ
ating into two lines. One was clearly more crowded than the other, stretching far into the distance until it blurred. In that line everyone radiated fulfillment. But from the much shorter line I felt a painful darkness. . ."

  His time with Ethan finished, the man in the suit reappeared from behind the screen and trudged toward the exit. His eyes were vacant like he was sleepwalking.

  ". . .later, a nurse told me I'd been dead for over a minute before the EMT brought me back. But I returned with their lives imprinted on me. They're a part of me now."

  Dad and I were next. My heartbeat pounded in my ear like waves pummeling the beach. From the moment I'd directed Dad to the message board about Stuckey's gatherings I'd regretted my decision, knowing I was entering a game I had no control over. Now that I was about to meet Ethan, I was even more apprehensive. Something about the surroundings, Ethan's shadow, his voice—

  "I think we're up."

  Dad reached out. At first I thought he was going to take my hand, but instead he took the envelope containing Mom's picture. He held it by the corner with only the tips of two fingers. His face was so pale I thought he might throw up.

  "Are you going to be okay?" I said.

  "I'm not sure I can do this," he said, looking exhausted. "What if he tells me something horrible?"

  The nakedness of his admission almost dropped me. It was the closest thing to honesty I'd heard from him in years. I wanted to hurry him from the room before Ethan could whisper his lies. But deep down, past the thick cord of betrayal wrapped inside like barbed wire, I knew this was what we both needed.

  "It'll be okay," I said. "We'll do it together."

  Burt gave the nod and we stepped behind the sheet into the bright shine of the spotlights. I held a hand to block out the light and saw the outline of Ethan sitting close. His dark form appeared to swallow the light around him. Without amplification his voice was a breathless wheeze.