Spooky Stacks: Four Horror Tales Read online

-5-

  Billy thought he said more to Uncle Conch, but he couldn’t hear his own words. Another sob hitched his shoulders.

  But it wasn’t a sob, of course. He knew that. When he opened his eyes, he knew that much.

  Far, far below the Passaic River curved along the edge of Newark, but from up here it looked like a blue ribbon. Billy turned to say something to Uncle Conch, but it wasn’t the old man. It was Cooter. Big and pink and riding free. Billy called out to him, but his voice sounded different. It didn’t sound like his voice. And it didn’t sound wrong. It sounded right. It sounded to right.

  Billy closed his eyes and he laughed in that strange new voice as he and Cooter flew free.

  -6-

  Uncle Conch took his time getting to his feet. He was old but parts of him were even older, used up before their time. He braced himself on his cane and began lumbering toward his car.

  In his chest, his heart hammered like old drums. Fast, insistent, powerful. Pain darted up and down his left arm.

  But he hummed as he walked to his car. He knew that he wasn’t going to die in the next five minutes. Not that soon. When he got to the curb he turned and looked at the debris in the yard. The flamingoes were gone, and that made him smile. For just a moment. It would be the last of Uncle Conch’s smiles to touch that face.

  Then his eyes fell on the little singed and half-melted gnomes. Nasty looking little things. Stupid things. White man’s idea of what looked good on a man’s lawn.

  The eyes that looked on the gnomes was Uncle Conch’s for one blink longer. Then with the next blink the eyes changed from dark brown to fiery red. The smile on the old mouth changed, became broader, brighter. No longer the pained smile of a dying man but the vital smile of something far more powerful. In his chest the old heart began hammering to a rhythm that was many times older than the body around it. A rhythm many times older than the pavement beneath the scuffed shoes. Many times older than the country in which he stood. As old as hate, and that was so very old.

  “Rise up, my brother spirits,” said the voice that was no longer Uncle Conch’s. Nor was the language English, or French or Creole.

  On the lawn, there was a small sound, a tiny groan, a rasp of plastic. One of the lawn gnomes raised its signed and sooty head. The white beard was streaked with ash, the eyes were melted holes. The mouth was stamped into the plastic. But then the plastic lips trembled and the whole body trembled with effort and finally there was a popping noise as the mouth opened. Broken, twisted plastic in a zigzag gash. The little creature smiled, and its wide and wicked grin was exactly the same as what was now stretched across Uncle Conch’s mouth. The mouth that had belonged to Uncle Conch, when there had been an Uncle Conch.

  “Rise up, brother spirits,” repeated Kalfu, using Uncle Conch’s borrowed mouth. Each word was exhaled on a hot breath that blew through the open door of hate in the ancient body. “They are serving dinner on Seventh Avenue. White meat, served rare. All you can eat.”

  One by one the melted gnomes opened empty eyes and ripped open jagged mouths. Hungry mouths. They rose unsteadily to their feet, tottering toward the open car door beside which Kalfu, their brother, waited.

  THE END

  About Jonathan Maberry:

  JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestselling and multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author, magazine feature writer, playwright, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer.

  Novels

  GHOST ROAD BLUES (winner of the Stoker Award for Best First Novel in 2006),

  DEAD MAN’S SONG (2007)

  BAD MOON RISING (2008)

  PATIENT ZERO (St Martins Press 2009)

  THE DRAGON FACTORY (St Martins Press March 3, 2010)

  For Universal Pictures, and Tor Books, the novelization of the re-envisioning of THE WOLFMAN (2010 Tor Books)

  THE KING OF PLAGUES (SMP 2011)

  ROT AND RUIN (Simon & Shuster, September 2010)

  DUST AND DECAY (Simon & Shuster, 2011)

  Nonfiction

  VAMPIRE UNIVERSE (Citadel Press, 2006)

  THE CRYPTOPEDIA (Citadel, 2007 winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction)

  ZOMBIE CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead (Winning of the Heinzman and Black Quill Awards and nominated for a Stoker Award; 2008)

  THEY BITE! (2009)

  WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE (2010)

  His first comic for Marvel, GHOSTS, was released in April as part of WOLVERINE: THE ANNIVERSARY. His upcoming comics include PUNISHER: NAKED KILL, PUNISHER: LAST GUN ON EARTH, MARVEL ZOMBIES 5 and others.

  Jonathan is the co-creator (with Laura Schrock) of ON THE SLAB, an entertainment news show in development by Stage 9 for ABC Disney / Stage 9. Jonathan’s Big Scary Blog (www.jonathanmaberry.com) focuses on the publishing industry.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Fast Zombies Suck by Brian Keene

  Pizza Face by Bryan Smith

  A Farewell to Arms by Scott Nicholson

  Cooked by Jonathan Maberry

  Thank you for reading books on Archive.BookFrom.Net
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