Kill Creek Read online

  There’s a better story in you.

  He touched a finger to the computer’s power button, but he did not press it. He listened as the house gave the occasional pop and creak. Night sounds.

  The sound of settling.

  He closed his eyes.

  He tasted smoke again.

  A boy stood before a burning house, a shadow dwarfed by the inferno.

  Sam let his finger drop away from the power button. The computer would stay off for the night.

  In the master bathroom, he prepared for bed, brushing his teeth, washing his face, and slipping out of his worn blue jeans. From the medicine cabinet, he took an orange prescription bottle and shook out a single green pill, thirty milligrams of Paroxetine. For anxiety, he told himself. But it was for depression. It was to take the edge off the sadness. A pill was supposed to defeat the thing he had fled since he was a child.

  He got into bed wearing only his boxers, even as the chill of mid-October penetrated the walls. He did not bother pulling the covers up over his body. He lay there in the darkness, still restricting himself to “his” side of the bed, eyes fixed on the blackness where he knew the ceiling must be.

  There’s a better story in you.

  Something caught in his throat. Something gray and harsh and of the earth. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want to breathe. He wanted it to take him. He deserved to be pulled into the darkness. The thing in his throat twisted tighter, smoldering, threatening to catch fire. He wished it would consume him. He should feel his body peel into charred strips. He should know the agony again, smell the sickening stench of his own meat cooking.

  He gripped his left forearm, and the scarred flesh beneath his tattoos twisted awake like a reptile in the warm sun.

  The orange light flickered at the base of his skull. Shadows danced on the cave wall.

  It wasn’t enough. He’d gotten off easy. He should have killed himself long ago. God knows he had thought about it countless times. Firing a bullet into his brain. Slicing his arm from wrist to elbow with a box cutter. Hanging himself from a beam in the garage, feet kicking stupidly in the open air.

  Eventually, Sam rolled over on his side. He lay there in the silence, and the deep gray fist in his throat exhaled in a long, resigned breath. He stretched a hand out over the right side of the mattress. Felt the coldness of the sheets that had once been warmed by Erin’s body. Before he fell asleep, in that moment as he tumbled into unconsciousness, Sam swore his fingers sensed her touch. The smoothness of her skin. The invitation of her body.

  Five hours later, Sam woke to sunlight on his face, the bright morning rays streaming in through the bedroom window. It was a new day.

  He closed his eyes as tightly as he could, fighting the light.

  A skinny young sophomore, his unabashed love of the genre worn like a badge of honor in the form of a too-tight Fangoria T-shirt, called down from the second-to-last row. “What about Stull? That place is for sure haunted.”

  The bitter kiss of lukewarm coffee slipped into Sam’s mouth as he took a sip from his travel mug. Having completed the Gothic part of the syllabus, he’d moved on to shallow cuts in supernatural literature, starting with Sheridan Le Fanu and M. R. James and ending with . . . well . . . did it really matter? Once the students had started asking questions, the conversation had quickly gone sideways.

  “Stull.” Sam closed his eyes and rubbed his temple. “Gateway to hell. We’ve all heard the stories. When the Pope flew to Denver in 1993, he’d ordered the pilot to avoid passing over this ‘unholy ground.’ You can read all about it if you can find the 1993 Time interview with Pope John Paul II, which you can’t, because it doesn’t exist. Legend says if you throw a glass bottle against the church’s stone walls, the bottle will not break—which it will, as evidenced by the hundreds of broken bottles littering the churchyard. Stull, I hate to say it, is nothing but an urban legend, albeit a uniquely regional one, which is something to be proud of in itself.”

  Sam left the safety of the lectern and approached the class.

  Careful, he thought. They want to dig. They want to discover your secrets.

  There was a faint crack in the dark abyss at the base of his skull. A shift as uneven levels collapsed upon each other. A pale orange flicker as the pain was consumed. As something fed from it. And then it was gone. Smothered by shadow.

  He pressed a thumb hard into the opposite palm. Gotta get back on track. “Stull . . . it’s . . . Look, we all want to believe, right? Even the way the church was mysteriously torn down, we try to tell ourselves there is a supernatural explanation. Because if we can prove that there are ghosts, that the supernatural does exist, it in turn proves the existence of the afterlife and, finally”—he thrust his index finger into the open air for effect—“of God. And without the weekly obligation of church. It eases our minds because, with that proof, we will be certain that death is not the end.”

  “The Finch House, then,” a girl spoke up. Sam turned to face her and was taken by the fact that she, although completely tangible, seemed to not be there, her dark features fading into the shadows behind her. “I know that place is haunted. I’ve been in it.”

  “Except you haven’t!” an anonymous male shouted down from the top row.

  The girl straightened up in her chair, ready for a fight. “I have. Last summer. Found a hole in the fence and got up to the house. Opened the front door. Walked right in. And I was standing there—I’m serious—I was standing right there and . . . and I heard, like, a moan. Like . . . like, a woman in pain. Coulda been an animal. But something told me . . . it wasn’t.”

  “What’d you do then?” This from a different girl.

  “I got the fuck outta there. What do you think I did?”

  The class erupted in laughter, nearly drowning out the sound of Sam’s phone chiming. He slipped a hand into his pocket and silenced the alarm.

  “And that’s time,” he announced. “See you all on Friday.”

  The lecture hall echoed with the uneven rhythm of six hundred feet shuffling toward the exit. It took a few minutes for all of the students to clear out. And then Sam was alone again.

  Returning to the lectern, Sam snatched up the silver travel mug and swallowed down the last, awful sip of old coffee.

  “Mr. McGarver?”

  The voice was deep, with an Irish accent.

  Sam turned. There at the edge of the first row of seats was a young man in his late twenties, dressed in skinny black pin-striped slacks, a white V-neck shirt, and a dark leather jacket that matched the odd brownish-purple hue of his penetrating eyes. He was handsome with a full head of wavy brown hair, but there was something strange about his face. It was as if the flesh matched too perfectly to the bone structure beneath. It reminded Sam of the smooth clay a forensic scientist spreads over a skull when creating a facial reconstruction. It gave the man’s face the uncanny appearance of being close to his likeness but somehow not exact.

  “Sam McGarver?”

  Sam cocked his head, confused. “Yes?”

  The man grinned and leaned back casually on one foot, his hands in his pockets.

  “Care to tell me why you ignored my email, mate?”

  The door clicked softly as it swung shut. Sam turned to the young man now seated in his tiny office on the second floor of Wescoe Hall, which housed the University of Kansas’s English department.

  He had introduced himself as Wainwright. Just Wainwright. No first name.

  Not that one was needed. Sam knew exactly who he was.

  “It’s good to meet you, but you’re wasting your time coming here.”

  “So you got it then?” Wainwright asked. The heavy bass of his voice did not match his youthful appearance. It was the voice of a much older man, like a second person speaking from deep within his chest.

  Sam sat down in the scuffed leather chair behind his cluttered desk. “Yeah,” he said. “I got it.”

  “And?”

  “And it made no sense.” />
  “How’s that now?”

  “Well, I assumed it was a joke.”

  “And why would I joke about something like that?”

  Sam gave his head a small shake but said nothing. He had no answer for him.

  “It’s no joke,” Wainwright assured him. “I want to feature you on WrightWire.”

  “You want to interview me.”

  “For the site, yeah.”

  “And that’s worth a hundred grand?”

  The young man stared blankly at Sam as if he truly did not understand the confusion. The unforgiving glare of the fluorescent lights only increased the oddness of Wainwright’s face. The dimensions just seemed . . . off. The eyes a bit too far apart. The eyebrows too straight. The lips too thin. And those eyes, such a strange color, as if the irises had been wrapped in the flesh of a long-extinct beast, its skin stripped and tanned and pounded soft. He was at once captivatingly attractive and utterly generic, like a police sketch of a movie star.

  “One hundred thousand dollars for two full, uninterrupted days.”

  “That’s insane.”

  Wainwright did not even blink.

  “Why would an interview take two days?”

  “You know my site?”

  Sam nodded. I’m a writer. I spend half my day procrastinating on the internet.

  “Then you know I have—I guess you could say, an unconventional way of promoting the genre that I love.”

  Wainwright pinched his thumbs and index fingers together and moved them apart as if stretching an invisible string. “Horror is more popular than ever, right? But until now, no one has figured out a way to reach an online audience beyond hardcore fans.” He chopped the air with his hands to represent a space beyond the invisible string. “What I saw was an opportunity to capture the casual fan, even win over those who have never considered themselves interested in the genre. And I did it by making WrightWire a destination for horror events. It’s why the site gets over one hundred million unique visitors a month. It’s why we’re not only the twenty-first century’s hottest horror destination—we’re the hottest pop culture destination. Period.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen your work.”

  “Have you now? Did you check out the latest? The Underground premiere?” Wainwright didn’t wait for a response. He leaned in closer, as if he were about to share a juicy piece of gossip rather than the description of a video viewed well over fifty million times.

  “We sold it to the public as a simple live stream, the entire cast and above-the-liners—the director, the producers, the studio execs—all taking the movie’s namesake, London’s Underground, to the premiere in Leicester Square. Then we stopped the train right there in the middle of the Tube. Dead stop. No explanation. Soon it was all over the news: ‘Underground stars stranded in Underground.’ And still the live stream continued, our only link to our helpless heroes . . .”

  Wainwright ran a single finger through the air in a straight line to suggest the live stream’s tenuous connection.

  He’s loving this, Sam thought. The thrill of the show.

  “After half an hour, our live viewers grew from ten thousand to over a hundred thousand. And that’s before the creatures began to emerge from the darkness.”

  He smiled, yet only the corners of his mouth reacted; the rest of his rubbery face remained still. Even his eyes seemed to resist the hint of joy.

  “Everyone was in on this, of course. The folks from the movie, the London Underground Limited, even the police. In reality, the train was on a discontinued line. There was never any threat of another train coming through. It was our own private movie set for the evening. The media gobbled it up, and a thousand calls flooded in. For a full day, #underground was trending at number one. It was our own little War of the Worlds. Eventually we got the gang to their movie premiere, everyone alive with limbs intact, and the ruse was up. By the next morning, the video had over a million views. Ten million by week’s end.”

  The internet mogul was out of his seat now, hands gripping the edge of the desk.

  “We transformed what could have been an ordinary movie premiere for a fairly forgettable horror movie into a once-in-a-lifetime experience that blurred the lines between fact and fiction. It was a bigger bloody event than the movie itself.”

  “So you want to, what?” Sam asked dryly. “Put me on the subway and let people watch me type?”

  Wainwright tipped carefully back into his seat. There was a long moment of silence as the young man collected his thoughts.

  “I created WrightWire to not only promote the world of horror and fantasy in general, but to champion the things I believe people should be losing their minds about. Movies. TV. Music. Websites. Books. I want to take the stigma out of this genre and cement it firmly in the mainstream, to show the world that it’s okay to embrace your dark side, to celebrate the unknown. And so, with Halloween coming up, I figured now was the perfect time to remind people that they should be going absolutely mental about Sam McGarver. Remind them about the stories that have scared the piss out of millions of readers. Give them some insight into what makes McGarver tick. Maybe tease them with a taste of your new novel.”

  In a room in a house across town, on a desk below a picture window, a cursor on a computer screen went blink, blink, blink.

  Sam winced as he felt his chest tightening. “Look, Wainwright, I really appreciate it. I do. It’s a generous offer.”

  “You’re right about that, mate. So do it.”

  “Right now I just need to focus on the new book. Maybe when it’s done. Maybe then you can bury me alive or whatever and stream it to your followers.”

  Wainwright’s thin lips pulled tight. He nodded slowly, not in agreement but in acknowledgment of a stalemate.

  Sam suddenly felt compelled to fill the silence. “It’s just not a good time. Things are a little crazy right now.”

  “You’re busy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Writing.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And teaching.”

  “Yes,” Sam said. The word sounded painfully inadequate. Even he didn’t believe it.

  Wainwright rose from his seat, glancing around at the bare, dingy walls of the eight-by-eight office.

  “Well then.” He extended a hand.

  Sam stood and shook it. “I really do appreciate it.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Sam tried to pull his hand back, but Wainwright tightened his grip. With the slightest twist, he turned Sam’s hand—and with it, his wrist, exposing the scarred forearm covered in ink.

  The streaks of violet in Wainwright’s brown eyes seemed to glow as he grinned.

  “You should do this. It’s only two days of your life, but for your fans, it’s an all-access pass, a chance to see their favorite master of horror in a unique setting.”

  “What setting? What do you have planned?” Sam asked, but Wainwright was already opening the door to the hall.

  “You have my email,” he called back over his shoulder. “When you change your mind—and you will—just respond to that. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  “I really don’t . . . ,” Sam began.

  He was speaking to an empty doorway.

  Wainwright was gone.

  FOUR

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20

  MOORE GRUNTED FURIOUSLY as she thrust the bar away from her chest. The veins in her biceps bulged under the weight. Sweat coursed down the sides of her shaved scalp and into the twisted knot of her ponytail. Her arms were on fire, her back wet against the smooth, rubbery surface of the workout bench.

  She lowered the bar in a slow, controlled descent. Felt the cold iron kiss the bare skin just above her sports bra. She let out another animalistic growl as she forced the bar up again.

  Her right arm quivered, threatening to buckle.

  “Fuck you,” she hissed through clenched teeth. She gripped the bar hard enough to squeeze all color from her fingers.

  The bar clank
ed down on its cradle. Moore sat up straight. Snatched up a towel from the floor. Wiped the sweat from her face. Felt her heart pound, pound, pound in her chest. It felt good, the pain. It was both the threat of death and the reassurance of life. It was nothing to fear. Pleasure and pain, Moore knew, came from the same area of the brain. The extreme of one became indistinguishable from the other. The pleasure of pain. The pain of pleasure.

  She ripped off her sweat-soaked sports bra, pulled her hair free of her ponytail, and marched through an open archway into the bathroom of the walk-out basement. She twisted the shower handle protruding from the wall of white subway tile and, slipping out of her exercise shorts, immediately stepped into the cascading water. Her flesh prickled in the freezing deluge. Gradually, the water grew hotter, until great clouds of steam billowed up around her.

  Barefoot, she was barely five-six, but the power she radiated added half a foot. She was thirty-eight years old and cut like marble. Defined, but not obscenely muscular. Sexy, but not grotesque. Every line, every curve, was deliberate and necessary.

  She cranked the handle hard to the right and the water shut off. Warm droplets fell from the chrome showerhead and onto the nape of her neck as she toweled herself dry.

  She did not bother getting dressed.

  Padding naked up the spiral staircase to the first floor, Moore crossed the sleek, cool living room of her Hollywood Hills home to where a hinged metal stand rose from the floor like the rib of a robotic god. She opened the laptop that rested on a shelf of corrugated steel. For the next two hours, she wrote, her naked body kissed by the early-morning sunlight. This was her pagan ritual, writing nude as the last of the stars were forced from the brightening blue sky. She barely slept, three or four hours at most. Each waking moment was devoted to a necessity: eating, drinking, fucking, exercising, writing. Her mind was like a series of intricately connected traps; as soon as one was sprung, the next one was set.

  Every day, she tried to adhere to the same strict work routine. Three hours of writing, no interruptions, no exceptions. An hour for lunch. At least four more hours of writing in the afternoon. Most writers were lucky if they produced ten pages a day. When her routine went undisturbed, Moore never failed to add twenty pages to her latest novel. If she was working on a screenplay, the total was never less than thirty. Moore never suffered from writer’s block. That was for the weak, she thought, the undisciplined. She likened writing prose to fucking. It was raw. It was rough. And, as long as she was satisfied, nothing else mattered. The readers would feed from her strength, or else they would be cast aside. If they couldn’t handle her stories, she didn’t need them. Let them curl up in their easy chairs with that crusty old Sebastian Cole bullshit.