Stomping Grounds: A Horror Novel (Invasive Species Book 2)
Stomping Grounds
Invasive Species: Book Two
Craig Wesley Wall
Broken Nose Books
Stomping Grounds
Copyright © 2019 by Craig Wesley Wall
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Book cover by The Cover Collection
Created with Vellum
For Brian––big brother, best friend,
and my usher into the theatre
of the macabre.
Contents
Newsletter
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Epilogue
Thanks for Reading!
About the Author
Also by Craig Wesley Wall
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Author’s Note
This book is a follow-up to my novel Song of a Lost Child. I highly recommend reading that book first to fully enjoy this one. Okay, enough chit-chat, the witch is getting hungry …
1
The train thundered along the tracks, ignorant to the threat in its belly.
Jack “Junior” Garret awoke with his face inches from the scarred wall of the rocking train car. His head thumped with each slow blink of his eyelids, pulsing with pain. The early morning light bleeding into the car felt like thumbtacks pushing into his pupils. He moaned as he clutched his clammy forehead with an even clammier hand.
“Damn rotgut.” The words rolled over his desiccated tongue like tumbleweeds in an arid landscape.
The swaying of the car caused his bowels to churn, like something deep inside him had just taken a corner at high-speed. His mouth filled with saliva, bringing bittersweet relief to the parched tongue. Junior spat several times, willing himself not to puke, and stared at the deep gouges in the metal wall, trying to piece together the events of the previous night. The last thing he could recall from his foggy memories was old Popo stumbling into the darkness toward the door of the tilting freight car. The old man had grumbled about having to see a man about a mule, wrestling with the buttons on the front of his overalls with one drunken hand, the other holding the camping lantern aloft.
Junior vaguely remembered lying in the same spot he currently found himself, watching the bright light in Popo’s grasp shrink, swaying with the train’s movements. Then, the grating moan of the door as Popo slid it open had reached his ears, allowing the rushing sounds of the passing night into their temporary home. Bright agonizing sunlight and the lurching train jolting him from his whiskey-induced coma were his next memories, as if several frames of film had been cut away, the remaining ends spliced together.
Junior knew the boxcar door remained open; painful sunshine and the clang of the wheels on the tracks pinballing inside his skull were a dead giveaway.
“Popo?” he said, sounding like a croaking bullfrog. When he didn't receive a reply, Junior shuffled to a seated position, his leaden head threatening to topple from his sore neck.
“Popo?” he said even louder, every pain in his body boiling up to his brain, the pressure pushing on the back of his eyeballs. Moaning again, he squeezed his skull with both hands to keep it from cracking open, mentally begging for last night's dinner of cold canned ravioli to stay in his belly as the train jostled him like a sadistic carnival ride.
After the aches and nausea subsided to a tolerable level, Junior dropped his dirty hands to his lap and searched the opposite end of the boxcar for his friend. Sprawled against the far wall, his back facing Junior, laid Popo.
“You lucky bastard,” Junior said to the still form of his longtime travel companion. “I thought you took a dive with your dick in your mitts, old boy.”
Junior—better known as Garret by most friends, except Popo, who insisted on calling him Junior, leading many to mistake the old man as his father—has traveled this route up and down the east coast of Florida several times over the years with his old friend, working odd jobs to keep food and booze in their bellies, doing their best to keep off the radars of local police. On a couple of occasions they even made it as far north as Maine, but both men preferred mild winters, and always returned to sunny Florida. Then the unbearable summers would drive them back north, to cooler states. Nowadays, these treks along the coast seemed to constitute the majority of their lives—traveling north and south like mercury in a thermometer.
They were making their way north once again, getting a head start before the humidity of summer set in. This would prove to be a decision they’d both regret.
Over the years of travel, the rails have taken a toll on their aging bodies. Not to mention the constant drinking and poor diet, which accelerated their declining health. It’s the life they’d chosen to live, and despite its hardships, it’s the life they preferred. But Junior wondered sometimes—usually during a rare sober moment—how they've managed to survive this long with their train-hopping lifestyle, and why the hell they even still did it. He had that thought right now as he struggled to his feet, wobbling as if on a stormy sea instead of a rocking freight train, suddenly having to see his own man about a different kind of mule. His guts gurgled, protesting the shift in elevation as he stood.
Junior groaned, clutching his flabby paunch. “Oh shit.”
A hangover on the rails is no picnic, but having to take a dump off a moving train is even worse.
He staggered toward the open door, which remained out of view behind the stacked wooden crates dominating the left side of the freight car. Using the stacks for support, Junior shuffled in the direction of his old friend, his right foot punting an empty whiskey bottle (the remains of the rotgut shared by the duo the night before). The bottle slid across the floor, ricocheting off the back of Popo's head with a hollow tone. Junior cringed and braced himself for the old man's signature tirade of colorful curses.
&nb
sp; Popo didn't move. He didn't utter a word.
Worried, Junior moved toward the still form. “Popo? You okay, you old rummy?”
As Junior stumbled forward past the crates the open doorway came into view on his left, and so did the little boy sitting on the floor in the center of the opening. The child sat with his back to Junior, legs dangling over the edge above the passing rails. His skinny right arm rested on a rusted gas can as if it were an old chum enjoying the passing scenery along with the young boy.
Junior, realizing he had stopped moving, found his feet again and inched forward. “Hey, kid.” The boy didn't turn around. In fact, he seemed to have not heard the greeting at all.
“Hey … Kid,” he said a little louder, clutching his throbbing skull again. “You all right? Where the hell you come from?”
Still no response.
As Junior inched closer to Popo he studied the gas can under the boy's arm. It was coated with rust, the nozzle gone, the hole capped with a dirty rag. Junior laughed the raspy cackle of a longtime smoker. “You run outta gas, kid?”
The boy moved slightly in response to the question, his right arm sliding the can closer to his body as if protecting it. Other than this small movement, the kid looked to Junior like a sculpture, a strange piece of modern art framed perfectly by the square opening and bright shaft of sunlight falling into the car. Even the exposed flesh of the boy’s skinny arm was an ashen gray, as if carved from stone.
I hate modern art, Junior thought.
An involuntary shiver ran through Junior, and with his attention on the strange kid, he walked into Popo, his grimy sneaker thumping into the old man's back. “Oops. Sorry, Popo.” Junior nudged his silent friend with his shoe once more, his eyes bouncing back and forth from Popo and the odd little boy still sitting in the doorway, frozen like a statue. “Come on old man, walk it off. Train should be stopping soon.”
Junior focused his full attention on the unresponsive Popo, concern for his old friend more important than the weird little stowaway and his inanimate companion. Using the same filthy sneaker as before, Junior rolled the still body toward him. Popo flopped onto his back, looking up at Junior.
Junior stared back into his friend's empty eye sockets.
Stunned by the sight, Junior gasped for air, his whiskey-scented breath huffing from his lungs like a man preparing to dive into a cold lake. Most of Popo's face was gone along with his eyes, dark red sinewy muscle and protruding yellow-white bone all that remained. Tacky blood coated the front of Popo's overalls. A wide canyon had replaced the old man's throat, the wound bloodless, like the gaping mouth of a giant catfish.
Still hyperventilating, Junior stumbled backward, away from the faceless thing at his feet, wondering why it was wearing Popo's favorite beat-up overalls. He stepped on the empty whiskey bottle, his foot flying out like a showgirl’s high kick, sending him to the seat of his pants.
Junior sat there on the floor of the swaying boxcar, unable to speak, unable to take his eyes off the horror at his feet. He was so numb from the sight of his mangled friend he hardly flinched as a small hand grabbed a clump of his greasy hair. The next sensation, however, definitely caught the attention of Junior Garret—the white-hot sting of a blade unzipping his throat.
Confused, Junior watched as a spray of red painted the wall of the boxcar. More damn modern art. The phantom hand released its grip on his hair. Junior grabbed his throat with both hands, hot blood spurting between his fingers, splashing onto Popo and the floor of the car. The pain intensified, snapping Junior from his shocked state. His eyes darted frantically, searching for the person that had cut him—the same psycho that must have murdered poor old Popo. Junior tried to turn, but sitting on the floor with both hands gripping his throat made it difficult.
The boy, he thought, his eyelids becoming heavy. I have … to help … the boy.
He turned his sleepy eyes to the open doorway, eager to somehow warn the child to run, jump off the train if he had to, but the boy was already gone. All by its lonesome, the rusted gas can sat in the vacated doorway, enjoying the beauty of the passing forest.
Junior, his strength draining, slumped to the floor, flopping onto his side. He rolled to his belly, trying his best to crawl to his mutilated buddy, blood still cascading from the fatal gash in his throat, causing his hands to slide out from under him. He folded to the floor of the car, his face splashing in a warm puddle.
His last thought, before he slipped from existence, is that the train-hopping lifestyle has finally caught up to him and his friend. Caught up to them with a vengeance. His hangover, his pains, his need to shit, and his concern for the small boy all seem like distant memories now. Jack “Junior” Garret died next to his longtime friend and traveling companion, his bowels releasing their steamy cargo, filling his pants.
Beautiful morning sunlight and the clanging thump of iron wheels occupied the interior of the boxcar, accompanying the greedy liquid slurps of the small boy as he feasted on the draining corpse.
The train carved through the forest with mindless resolve, delivering the scourge to its terminus.
2
I-95 passed under the tires like a conveyor belt of asphalt, the forest to either side of the vehicle a never-ending green corridor, capped by a ceiling of beautiful blue sky. The lush hallway unfurled in the distance where road and trees converged into a seemingly unreachable destination. The only break in the barrier of trees were the narrow paths cutting through to the northbound lanes where state troopers lurked like cats waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting bird.
The breeze whistling through the open window ruffled Justin Marsh’s shaggy, dirty-blonde hair. He took another sip of sweet gas station coffee, glancing at the speedometer. Justin lifted his foot from the accelerator, letting his speed fall back within the posted limit. The last thing he needed was to be pulled over for speeding. Not because he’s a wanted man, but because he feared stopping his forward motion would cause the guilt to catch up to him, setting in like a cancer. And once that cancer spread, he would have no choice but to turn around and head back home.
Justin shook his head with disgust. I lied right to their faces. To their smiling, sweet faces. I looked them square in the eyes and I lied. Man you’re a piece of shit.
He shook his head harder, not with disgust, but as if trying to dislodge something nasty from his mind—something poisonous.
“It's okay,” he said. “They knew I was lying. They could see it on my face and I could see it on theirs. They would've stopped me if they really wanted to.”
Trying his best to convince himself of this statement, Justin met his own eyes in the rear-view mirror, hoping his reflection would side with him. His eyes stared back, mocking him. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, old pal.
“Shut up,” he said to the mirror, forcing his eyes back to the straight line of highway unrolling before him.
Justin had left his home seven hours earlier. Had left his aunt and uncle in the driveway, their waving hands and loving smiles chasing him until he'd turned a corner. They believed he was headed to spring break in Daytona Beach. They believed this because that’s where Justin had told them he was headed.
But Justin couldn’t shake the sense that they knew. His aunt and uncle weren’t idiots. At the very least, the thought must’ve crossed their minds. Daytona Beach is just a hop, skip, and a jump to the damn place for Christ’s sake.
The place where nothing but bad memories awaited Justin’s arrival.
After the “incident” in Poisonwood Estates, Justin had been sent to live with his relatives: Aunt Anne and Uncle Steve in Dahlonega, Georgia. They were the closest family he had—geographically and emotionally. Growing up, Justin and his family had visited Anne and Steve almost annually, and those memories were all good ones.
Justin realized that without their care, he wouldn't have made it through the loss of his parents and his brother. They were the closest thing he would ever have to a mom and dad again, and he loved them wit
h all his heart—even if he did still call them Aunt Anne and Uncle Steve, never Mom or Dad.
That love was why Justin felt such guilt for deceiving them.
His aunt's eyes—so much like her sister's, Justin's mother's eyes—had welled with tears as he hugged her. He spoke into her ear, the scent of her familiar floral perfume comforting him. “I'll just be a few days, Aunt Anne. It's probably the last chance I'll get to see most of these guys before I start college.”
“I know. I know, Hon,” Anne said, releasing her hold on her nephew, pushing him to arm's length. She swiped his long bangs away from his eyes. “Just be careful, okay?”
Justin stared into her damp eyes, her face so much like his mother's, his deception squeezing his heart. “I will be. I promise.”
A firm hand fell on his shoulder, and a deep voice rang out behind him. “You better. I don't want to get a call that you're in some drunk tank. Cause we'll just leave you there 'til you've learnt your lesson.”
Justin and his aunt shared a grin. His uncle acted tough with him, but they both knew he was a softy, his love for Justin as strong as if he were his own son.