Companions in Ruin Read online

  Table of Contents

  COMPANIONS IN RUIN

  Dedication

  OURS IS A GOD OF ANGER

  THE GANG

  BY THE LIGHT OF DAWN

  SENTINEL

  FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  THE END OF HER ROPE

  THE JESUS SHOE STORE

  ANNIVERSARY

  PICK YOUR PATH

  DEBT

  MIDNIGHT SHIFT

  REBECCA WESTON SPEAKS THE TRUTH

  THE DINER

  HOMEBODY

  BEFORE AND AFTERMATH

  WORK IN PROGRESS

  DEPRAVATION

  MUST BE SOMETHING IN THE WATER

  ALONG FOR THE RIDE

  TRUE 2 LIFE

  THE ALARM

  SANTA'S LITTLE SPY

  THE PRICE OF SURVIVAL

  UNKNOWN NUMBER

  THE HOLY BOOGER NAPKIN

  STORY NOTES

  About The Author

  COMPANIONS

  IN RUIN

  Mark Allan

  Gunnells

  Sinister Grin Press

  MMXVI

  Austin, Texas

  Sinister Grin Press

  Austin, TX

  www.sinistergrinpress.com

  January 2016

  “Companions In Ruin” © 2016 Mark Allan Gunnells

  This is a work of collected Fiction. All characters depicted in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without the publisher’s written consent, except for the purposes of review.

  Cover Art by Frank Walls

  Text Design by Brian Cartwright

  Dedication

  To the storytellers whose short fiction inspired and enlightened me, teachers who showed me just how complete and satisfying a short story can be when done right, authors whose collections became my Bibles. Stephen King, Joe Lansdale, Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and Brian Hodge. I thank you for the dreams.

  OURS IS A GOD OF ANGER

  As Chad filled up his tank, he scrolled through the photos he’d taken with his digital camera. He was currently in Gaffney, South Carolina, and he’d found only two signs that suited his needs. One said, “If God is Your Co-pilot, You Need to Switch Seats,” and the other, “God is Like Bleach; He Cleans the Stains Nothing Else Can.” He’d hoped to find more shots in this town, but he’d been disappointed by the lack of appropriate subject material.

  The pump cut off at $49.72. Steep, but the magazine would reimburse him for the gas. He stowed his camera back in the car then headed across the lot to the convenience store. He picked up a candy bar, a bag of corn chips, and a soda before going to the register. He paid with a credit card, making sure to get the receipt so he could turn it in with his expense report.

  “Are there any smaller towns around here?” Chad asked, taking his bagged items.

  “Excuse me?” said the clerk, a bored-looking woman in her forties.

  “Are there any towns around here smaller than Gaffney? Maybe too small to be on a map?”

  The clerk shrugged, yawned, and said, “Well, there’s Cowpens.”

  “Cowpens?”

  “Yeah, used to have only one stoplight, but a few years ago they put in another one.”

  “Sounds like just the kind of town I’m looking for. Where is Cowpens from here?”

  “South down Highway 29, about fifteen miles or so.”

  “Thank you much, ma’am.”

  Back behind the wheel of his car, Chad devoured his candy bar in a few bites, took a swig of his soda, then pulled out of the lot. Highway 29 was a narrow two-lane road that threaded through town, past a couple of large factories, then out into open land. There were a few houses here and there, but it was more undeveloped space than Chad was used to seeing. He passed a few churches along the way, but the signs out front of them bore only the names of the churches and their worship times.

  Snatching his cell phone from the dash, he punched in his editor’s number. He waited for the call to go through but nothing happened. Glancing at the display screen, he saw that his phone was not getting a signal. “Fuck a duck and call him Chuck,” he muttered and tossed the phone on the passenger’s seat.

  There were few other cars on the highway, and those he did pass were headed north away from Cowpens. Apparently not a big tourist town, even with the addition of a second stoplight.

  Chad glanced at the clock and saw it was after six; he would be losing light soon. He would tool around Cowpens for a bit, see if he could find any signs worth shooting, then try to locate somewhere he could bed down for the night. Cowpens didn’t sound like the kind of place that would have a lot of upscale hotels, but he’d hit the interstate and find something.

  Chad rounded a curve in the road and saw a small sign, wooden with a stone base, announcing, “WELCOME TO COWPENS.” He drove past a lot of one-story Ranch homes of weathered brick, none exactly alike but all of a similar structural model. The town was indeed even smaller and sleepier than Gaffney. Quaint, some might call it, but not Chad. He wasn’t exactly what one would call a Big City Boy, but he needed more excitement than a dead little burg like this could provide. Cowpens didn’t seem big enough to support a mall or even its own movie theater.

  Highway 29 became the town’s main thoroughfare, running through its downtown area, which consisted of exactly one block. A line of four stores on either side of the road, and three of the eight were currently unoccupied. A few cars were parked along the curb, and a woman in an ugly sundress with two dirty children tagging along behind her wandered down the sidewalk with vacant eyes.

  “Jesus, welcome to Hicksville,” Chad said and laughed to himself.

  At the end of the block was one of Cowpens’ famous stoplights. He wondered if it was the original or the newer of the two but decided it didn’t really matter. He took a left and headed away from downtown, keeping his eyes open for churches.

  Five minutes later, he passed the Holy Grail Baptist Church, the sign out front reading, “Jesus Died For You, You Should Live for Him.” Chad considered then dismissed it, driving past. Not original enough.

  The road ended, and Chad had to turn either right or left. Choosing at random, Chad went right, cruising past fields where cows grazed on the summer-green grass. The land was flat here, and Chad could see quite a distance ahead. A mile away was a small stone church, dark gray with a high spire. Beside it was a graveyard that was so ill tended, weeds growing high and tombstones chipped and slanting, that it looked more like a movie set of a graveyard than the real thing.

  Chad accelerated toward the church. As the sign out front came into view, his foot involuntarily left the gas pedal and he blinked, not sure he was reading it right. He pulled into the small lot next to the church, empty except for his car, and stepped out. He stared at the words on the sign, trying to make them make sense. Traveling around the southeast this past month, Chad had seen many church signs with bizarre and quirky messages, but this one was by far the strangest and most inscrutable he’d encountered.

  “OURS IS A GOD OF ANGER.”

  Not a very inviting message for a House of Worship. In fact, there was something vaguely threatening about it. And the use of the pronoun ours disturbed Chad as well. It was oddly possessive, as if the god worshipped at this church was not the same god worshipped elsewhere. Chad raised his camera and took a couple of shots of the sign. It wasn’t exactly the type of thing he was looking for, but it was definitely different.

  “What’re you doing, mister?”

  Chad spun around, startled, nearly dropping his camera to the ground. Behind him wa
s a young boy, no more than sixteen, wearing only a pair of faded denim jeans, feet and chest bare. His hair was a dirty shade of blonde, sticking up in tufts, and his squinty eyes were green. His nipples were large and pink, exquisite rose blossoms of flesh, and his stomach flat with a thin line of light hairs running down into the waistband of his jeans. Chad was aroused but had the decency to feel guilty about it, the boy being a mere teenager.

  “Where’d you come from?” Chad said with a nervous laugh.

  The boy pointed vaguely back toward the cemetery then said again, “What’re you doing?”

  “Nothing, just taking some pictures.”

  “Why you taking pictures of the church?”

  “Well, you see, I work for a magazine called Southern Eccentricities, based out of Atlanta. I’m on assignment, doing a series of photo spreads of unique and humorous church signs.”

  The boy stared at him for a moment, glanced over at the church sign then back to Chad. “You think our church sign is funny, do ya?”

  “Uhm, no, but it’s certainly unique. So you go to this church?”

  “Yep, my Daddy’s the preacher.”

  “Really, your name wouldn’t be Billy Ray, would it?”

  The boy just stared at him.

  “Never mind, just a bad joke,” Chad said with a chuckle, unable to look away as the boy readjusted himself through his pants. “So, uhm, who came up with the message on the sign?”

  “Daddy.”

  “And how’d he come up with that line?”

  The boy shrugged and said, “It’s in our Book’a Worship.”

  Chad frowned. He was no Biblical scholar, but that didn’t sound like a Bible verse to him. Maybe something out of the Old Testament, which painted the Lord as a much more petty, cruel deity than the New Testament did.

  “Wanna see something?” the boy asked, a small smile curling his lips.

  “What?” Chad jerked his head up, just now realizing he’d been staring at the sweat gathered on the boy’s chest.

  “In the church basement,” the boy said, already walking toward the side of the building. “Might be something you’d want to take a picture of.”

  “What is it?”

  The boy was walking backwards, his smile pulling Chad along like a leash. “Come see for yourself. You ain’t chicken, are ya?”

  “No, I’m not chicken,” Chad said, following the boy around to the back of the church. He didn’t know what he was getting himself into. If this was a seduction, which he thought (or maybe hoped) it was, it was a very bad idea. The boy was underage, and the son of a minister. If the two of them were to get caught, he had a feeling the boy’s father would be more inclined to call the coroner than the sheriff.

  At the back of the church, set into the ground, were a set of wooden double doors like an old-time cyclone cellar. The boy opened the doors, which banged loudly onto the ground, revealing a set of steps leading down into darkness. The boy’s eyes were alight with excitement, and he licked his lips in a way that suggested his mouth was both talented and experienced.

  “Wait,” Chad said, tearing his gaze away from those wet, glistening lips. “This isn’t a good idea. I think maybe I should just get going.”

  The boy affected a pout, but the humor in his eyes was evident. “You don’t wanna see?” he said then turned away to walk down the steps. The back of his jeans hung low, exposing the crack and swell of a perfectly shaped ass before he disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the basement.

  His resolve crumbling in the heat of irrational lust, Chad felt his feet shuffling forward, carrying him down into the basement. The golden light of the dying day filtered down, allowing Chad to move around without bumping into anything. Cardboard boxes were piled high, making a maze out of the large open room in which he found himself. An old organ, covered by years of dust, a few keys missing like broken teeth, sat in a corner like a hibernating dinosaur. He couldn’t see the boy, but he could hear him somewhere up ahead. The further Chad went into the basement, the further he got from the open cellar doors, the more the shadows took dominion. He turned a corner in the maze and could just make out the boy up ahead, standing in front of a large door, his hand on the knob.

  “In here,” the boy said, his voice a soft whisper, as if even the basement of the church demanded reverence.

  Chad stood close, feeling the heat of the boy’s body washing over him. Chad’s mouth was dry, and he had to resist the urge to reach out and run his hands over the boy’s sweat-slicked back. “What is it?”

  The boy opened the door, the hinges creaking loudly in the stillness of the basement. “Go on in and see,” the boy said, leaning forward, his lips nearly brushing Chad’s, whispering the words directly into Chad’s mouth.

  Chad walked into the other room. Judging by the impenetrable blackness that enveloped him, he guessed there were no windows here. He reached his hands out like a blind man as he stumbled forward. He turned to the boy, but instead of entering behind Chad, he slammed the door. Chad heard the sound of a lock clunking into place.

  Chad turned the knob and pushed his shoulder against the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “Ours is a God of anger,” he heard the boy say from the other side of the door.

  “This isn’t funny,” Chad said, claustrophobia seizing him by the throat and throttling him. He began to slam his body against the door, but it was thick and solid. “Let me out of here right now, you hear me?”

  “Ours is a God of anger,” the boy said again, and he sounded almost like he was quoting. “He demands sacrifices to appease that anger. If we do not deliver sacrifices, He will turn His wrath upon us.”

  Chad froze as he heard a low, resonate growling from behind him. He turned slowly, his breath thick in his lungs like molasses. His eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and he could make out the shape of a large form a few feet away, the form unfolding itself like arms opening. The form was as big as the room, bigger than the room, impossible that it could be contained in such a small cramped space. There were eyes that glowed yellow in the darkness, not just one set of eyes, but dozens, all set into one body. And talon-tipped hands, so many hands, reaching out to him. And countless mouths filled with saliva-dripping teeth, sharp and chattering, clicking together to make a sound almost like language.

  Chad felt his bladder loosen, a stain spreading at his crotch as the form approached him, those eyes boring into his soul, those arms inviting him into a wicked embrace, those mouths opening for lethal kisses.

  A single scream, high-pitched and brief, echoed through the church basement, up through the sanctuary, then died on the early evening air.

  THE GANG

  When Betsy saw the four children walk into the bank wearing masks, she noticed that no one paid much attention. It was Halloween, after all. If anyone wondered why they weren’t in school at noon on a weekday, no one said anything.

  It was the boy in the overalls and rabbit mask that approached her teller window. She was already reaching into the bowl of sucking candies, but the boy silently shook his head, stood up on his tip-toes, and placed a folded piece of paper on the counter.

  With a frown, Betsy unfolded the paper and read the words scrawled there in a child’s script. The words under any other circumstances would have terrified her, but now they only made her laugh.

  WE WANT AS MUCH CASH AS YOU CAN FIT INTO FOUR BAGS OR PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET HURT.

  “Ha ha, very funny,” Betsy said. “This your idea of a little Halloween prank?”

  The boy kept his silence, did not move, just stared up at her through the eye holes of his plastic mask.

  “Honey, you better run on home now. You don’t want to get—”

  A string of gasps caused Betsy to look up, and she saw that the girl in the white dress and the panther mask had a gun aimed on Charlie, the old security guard that manned the door. Even from across the bank, Betsy could tell this was no toy. Charlie looked confused but f
rightened.

  The other two children—a girl duck and a boy pig—also pulled out guns and held them out toward the handful of customers that waited in line. Looking back at the rabbit, Betsy found he was pointing at her hand which still held the note.

  It was then that Frank, the bank manager, came out of his office. “What is going on out here?”

  “The children are robbing the bank,” Betsy said, realizing how ridiculous it sounded. But those guns weren’t so ridiculous.

  But Frank seemed to think it was all ridiculous because he just broke into laughter. “Oh, that’s rich. Kids robbing the bank.”

  The kid nearest Frank, the pig, turned the gun on the manager. Frank put his hands on his hips and said, “Now hear this—”

  Only no one got to hear it, because the pig pulled the trigger and Frank’s head disappeared in a spray of blood and skull and brain.

  Everyone screamed, a few people hit the floor, and Betsy was pretty sure she saw the front of Charlie’s trousers dampen.

  Still none of the children had spoken. The rabbit again pointed at the note. Betsy did not move until the duck stepped next to the rabbit and pointed her gun at Betsy. This got the teller moving, and she quickly took four money bags and began stuffing them with cash, handing them down one by one.

  When this was done, and each child held a bag, they started backing toward the door. The rabbit was the first to exit, followed by duck and pig. Panther paused, considering Charlie for a moment then she fired her gun, a ragged bloody hole punching through the guard’s stomach and out his back.

  Then the girl left, and the bank was filled with silence and fear and the stench of death.

  ***

  Betsy had spent hours at the police station, giving her statement dozens of times. As did everyone else in the bank at the time of the robbery. She’d heard that the cops were investigating the whereabouts of every child in town between the ages of 6 and 14.