Dreams for the Dying Read online

  Dreams for the Dying

  Copyright © 2021 by Adam Light

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art

  Copyright © 2020 by Mikio Murikami

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-953451-02-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, unless explicit permission was granted for use. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This book or portions thereof may not be reproduced in any form (except small portions for review purposes) without the express written permission of the author or Corpus Press.

  Email: [email protected].

  Versions of these stories have been previously published in Toes Up: Horror to Die For, the Bad Apples: Halloween Horror anthology series, Dead Roses: Five Dark Tales of Twisted Love, Doorbells at Dusk, Harmlessly Insane: Volume One and In Darkness, Delight: Creatures of the Night.

  All have been revised expressly for this collection.

  www.corpuspress.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  by Duncan Ralston

  TAKEN

  Notes on “Taken”

  TOMMY ROTTEN

  Notes on “Tommy Rotten”

  VENGEANCE BY THE FOOT

  Notes on “Vengeance by the Foot”

  GONE

  Notes on “Gone”

  GHOST LIGHT ROAD

  Notes on “Ghost Light Road”

  SERVING SPIRITS

  Notes on “Serving Spirits”

  WAY OUT OF HERE

  Notes on “Way Out of Here”

  VALLEY OF THE DUNES

  Notes on “Valley of the Dunes”

  THE CONTINUANCE AGENCY

  Notes on “The Continuance Agency”

  TRICK ‘EM ALL

  Notes on “Trick ‘Em All”

  PANACEA

  Notes on “Panacea”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MORE HORROR AND WEIRD FICTION

  For Jen—My love.

  FOREWORD

  by Duncan Ralston

  Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further: I’m one of those weird people who believes a foreword belongs in the back of a book. Yes, I’m aware there is a thing called an “afterword,” and that “fore” and “after” tend to mean opposite things, but hear me out.

  Afterwords are a summation or an explanation, meant to offer you, the reader, a deeper understanding of what you’ve just read. They are most often written by the author, but sometimes written by someone else. A scholar or biographer, for instance.

  Forewords are most often written by other writers, typically containing hyperbole and buildup to prepare you for the story or stories you’re about to read. They’re the carnival barker outside the circus attraction. Or the Flava Flav to the book’s Chuck D. A good book doesn’t need hype, just like a skilled rapper or an exciting sideshow doesn’t need a hype man. But many good books (and carnivals and rappers) have them, regardless.

  This book is no exception.

  I’ll return to this argument in a bit, but the comparison between lyricists or carnival barkers and good writing is worth exploring, if you’ll indulge me. A skilled lyricist uses metaphor, simile, alliteration, etc—all of the literary devices in their “author’s toolbox”—to tell the listener a story in the most interesting way they’re able.

  A skilled author or novelist or whatever term you prefer dips into this bag of tricks far less often, in my opinion. Prose littered with figurative language, piled on top of the narrative like appetizers at an all-you-can-eat buffet, feels… well, heavy. A story needs to have flow to it. There are writers who can get away with too much alliteration—James Ellroy, for instance—or metaphor, like Douglas Adams. For most of us, it’s best used sparingly. It’s a seasoning, not the dish itself.

  “Panic and pain were having an orgy inside his skull.”

  “It could have been called a cul de sac, he supposed, but there were no other houses in the sac.”

  These colorful phrases, both somewhat sexually suggestive metaphors for the mundane, are from the first short story in this collection, “Taken,” about a long-haul trucker who kidnaps a diner waitress to bring back to his “Goddess,” a woman named Dianne. Even out of context, there’s a wry humor and natural flow to the phrasing, just a slight tweak of the real to the surreal, the utilitarian prose to the poetic.

  Consider this line from his novella, Panacea: “He puffed out a cloud of dense pipe fog. It billowed up to join the other swirling eddies that drooped and swayed below the ceiling like cobwebs in a dusty room.”

  I bet you could see that room just from reading that paragraph. You could likely even smell it. But it’s not overly flowery. It’s not purple, as they used to say. Adam Light understands the seasoning is not the meal, in other words. It just makes the meal more palatable.

  I first discovered Adam’s writing in 2015 via the massive, macabre collection Harmlessly Insane, a collaboration with his brother, Evans. I bought the collection flat-signed from Evans, knowing very little about either of the self-styled Light Brothers at the time. I admit to mostly being aware of King, Barker, Matheson and a handful of other big “names” in the industry, and shamefully unaware of lesser-known authors from small press and mid-sized publishers. Writers like myself, in other words. I was new to the horror scene, just then meeting fellow writers on social media for the first time. My knowledge of the genre came mostly from library books and local bookstores, which tend to have very little stock from authors not listed above.

  In the years between, I’ve met many writers in the genre. Some of them are very good. Many of them shouldn’t quit their day jobs just yet. (For the record, I enjoy my day job. Though not quite as much as I enjoy writing.) Storytelling isn’t an easy thing, but it’s also not quantum mechanics or working on an oil rig or doing quantum mechanics on an oil rig. We do it because it’s often the only thing we’re any good at, although a good number of male writers seem to also be lead singers and/or guitarists in bands. I won’t speculate about the connection.

  Many people expect horror authors to be strange—thank you, Edgar Allen and Howard Phillips!—but Adam is a family man. He has daughters and dogs. He’s kind and creative and humble. A normal guy, in other words. He straps on his leather harness the same way we all do: one leg at a time. And maybe he has a morbid fascination with the macabre, but I have a theory that people who write with empathy, which Adam does, are often equally attracted to darkness as to light—geddit?—in their writing.

  There’s a fair amount of darkness in these stories. Adam excels at writing body horror, and this book is chock full of it. And like myself, he wears his influences—from Stephen King to The Twilight Zone—on his sleeve. I have this pet theory that a lot of horror writers, maybe even the majority, are kids at heart. Robert Bloch once said “I may write disturbing stuff, but really I have the heart of a small boy... I keep it in a jar on my desk.” It’s often misattributed to King, who’d only quoted it.

  My theory is pretty simple. Children are both attracted and repelled by the darkness. They always have to look behind the door, through the keyhole, under the bed, over the edge, between the stairs. Curiosity killed the kid more often than the cat, I’d bet. Personally, I can’t leave my basement without looking behind myself to make sure nothing is following me, especially at night. It’s that fear and curiosity of the unknown that sticks with us, that makes us want to continue to explore it as adults. Kids also tend to love Halloween. Adam’s appreciation for the holiday presents itself in stories like “Tommy Rotten” and “G
host Light Road.” Does he too have the heart of a boy in a jar on his desk? I won’t speculate, but I doubt his wife would approve.

  Maybe I feel like forewords should be at the end instead of the beginning because I always read them last. For me, a foreword is free breadsticks when I came in for dinner. I could fill up on breadsticks, or I could go straight to the meal. I prefer to pick and nibble at the breadsticks (the forewords and afterwords, the author notes and what have you) while digesting what I’ve just read. But I won’t tell you how to eat your meal.

  Even the best foreword is often just hype. The best books can take you places you weren’t meant to go, into the dark, dangerous recesses of deranged minds. Dreams for the Dying is that type of book.

  Bon appetit.

  —Duncan Ralston,

  author of Ghostland and Salvage

  April 2021

  TAKEN

  It was a few minutes past midnight.

  Jack Harden had a long drive ahead of him. The unending procession of sentinel pines and transplanted date palms which lined Interstate 10 on its long straight course through the Florida panhandle blurred by in his periphery.

  This was the last stretch of highway on a nearly eighteen-hour drive, what truckers referred to as a “turn and burn.”

  Affixed to the dashboard, the GPS streamed a miniature 3D version of the actual view through the windscreen. Nice device, but in his humble opinion, overkill, and a big waste of money.

  Jack had driven well beyond the legal limit of hours, but that was really the least of his concerns. He was breaking the law in the process, something he was normally loathe to do, but justified this lapse in character as merely a miniscule filament in the intricate web he was spinning tonight.

  The sound of the highway rolling under the seventy-seven inch wheels of the cherry red tractor was soothing, almost too soothing. Jack decided that a dose of loud rock music was becoming necessary to help him stay awake.

  His fingers skittered over the compact discs splayed willy-nilly on the passenger seat, and finally settled on one. He quickly slipped it into the CD player, eyes never leaving the highway ahead, a consummate professional. Music began to bray from the truck’s speaker system, a welcome distraction from the eerie silence of the cab.

  The first track was one of his favorites. It was a song that reminded Jack of high school football games—the smell of popcorn and hot dogs, people of all ages decked out in team colors, some of them laughing, lots of them cursing, and more than a few crying, not to mention the shit that went on under the bleachers filled with unsuspecting fans.

  More than anything, the song reminded him of Dianne.

  Dianne, Dianne. Oh sweet Goddamn Dianne.

  Even though she was responsible for his current situation, Dianne was the love of his life, the sun in his sky and all that other bullshit. He knew she rabidly awaited his return. He had to resist his sudden impulse to slow down, lollygag a little, make her sweat it a while longer.

  This was a pivotal time in their relationship. The whole future hinged on how he handled it, and this was not the time for games.

  Jack really didn’t want to think about Dianne right now, but still, this whole situation was her fault. She had lit the fire under the pot in which he was now boiling. Fortunately, his mission had been successful. He was on the home stretch.

  He cranked down the driver’s side window and was greeted by a blast of frigid November wind. It was just what he needed, invigorating him.

  The miles rolled past, and Jack rolled with them.

  Although he was forty-five, he still felt like a young man with plenty of years of driving these lonesome highways still ahead. He’d been a truck driver for more than half his time on Earth, with an impressive skill set and work ethic. The guys he encountered frequently on his routes respected him. He remembered money had been plentiful, and grimaced at the thought of how he was barely scraping by now. Like countless others, he had fallen victim to the country’s economic tailspin.

  His current haul was an easy paycheck for an easy job: a simple drop and pick that had taken him to Slidell, a small town outside of New Orleans on the scenic shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a nine hour drive each way. A quick switch of loads, point it in the other direction and haul ass home, a walk in the early morning sunshine for Jack. He never slept well, so the long hours suited him.

  He saw a weigh station ahead, and knew he would have to pull over and properly secure his precious cargo. If a DOT inspector or Statey happened to get a little too nosey and decided to inspect his sleeper, his goose was marinated, grilled and served with a pineapple syrup sauce with a freshly steamed vegetable medley and garlic toast. This drive home felt more problematic than Chinese math to Jack, but come hell or high water, he would make it home to his Goddess.

  Jack glanced in the rearview mirror at the waitress he had duct-taped and tied down on his bunk in the sleeper. She stared back at him, eyes glaring.

  They had not exchanged words in forever, and she had not stopped staring at him like that since she had awoken. She possessed an air of earthy defiance. He had abducted her, yet she projected so much confidence, he almost felt as though she had the upper hand.

  He had expected her to be frightened and had been prepared for panic and screaming, but she had defied his expectations. She behaved as if being drugged, tied up and stuffed into a stranger’s sleeper cab was as commonplace an occurrence as getting up and dressed in the morning.

  A FEW HOURS earlier, at a greasy spoon just outside Slidell, Jack gnawed at a barely recognizable hunk of charcoal pretending to be a rib eye steak. It had the misnomer “The Bloody Outlaw” on the menu. His order had been medium rare, but the steak was so hard, he could have murdered the “chef” with it.

  He was choking down a mouthful of the charred meat when he first spotted the waitress. She was blonde, with a similar height and build to Dianne, and he guessed she was about twenty-five.

  Her black skirt was tantalizingly short, and she sported several exotic tattoos on her achingly well-toned limbs. A colorful Koi fish on her inner left thigh swam up that curvy leg in search of Zen further north. A vicious looking dragon slithered along her other thigh, evidently racing the fish to paradise.

  She was tanned and beautiful: deep brown, almond shaped eyes, perfect teeth, no wrinkles, at least none that he could see.

  He was enchanted.

  She noticed him staring as she hustled from table to table, stuffing tips into her fanny pack. She stiffened instinctively and Jack looked away, embarrassed. He had been enjoying the guilty pleasure of watching her lithely bend over the edges of the tables. Even seeing her perform the menial task of re-stuffing the napkin holders brought lurid thoughts, as if she were discreetly performing for him.

  In spite of his shame at being caught leering, he glanced again in her direction. To his delight, a smile brightened her eyes. She actually winked at him.

  Godammit, Dianne! I got you one, he thought, and his pulse quickened at the prospect of this being his moment. It was time for him to make his move. He wasn’t certain, but Jack was pretty sure the girl was flirting with him. If only he could lure this hottie outside with him, his plan could be put into action.

  But it wasn’t his plan at all. It was Dianne’s plan.

  He wondered if he really had the courage to kidnap this girl and bring her back to the Goddess. The thought that he might actually pull this off gave Jack a jolt of adrenaline. His heart beat so intensely, he felt it might rupture.

  He picked the gristle out of his teeth as he waited anxiously for the cashier to come out of the back to ring up his check. He was surprised when the cute waitress he’d been watching strode right up to him, boldly. She was a full foot shorter than him and a natural beauty, like Dianne. She wore no makeup he noticed, didn’t need any. Jack pictured her in a tennis skirt, and had to physically suppress the urge to snort like a wild boar.

  The girl held a cigarette in the notch between the first and middle finger of
her right hand. Though she attempted to appear nonchalant, he could tell she was a little timid. It was easy to see she was not a lot lizard, not some floozy looking to fuck for a buck. In fact, she appeared completely normal, quite out of place among the ragtag group of overnighters sullenly downing caffeine and cholesterol in this hellhole.

  Even though she looked worn out from her long shift hustling tips from dirty truckers, she still walked with confidence, seemingly unaware of how she rolled her hips as she approached him. This girl was playing it cool, calm and collected, but it was easy to see a cigarette craving was on her like swine flu.

  She waved her hand in front of his eyes, alerting him to the embarrassing fact that, once again, he was ogling her.

  “Got a light, mister?” she asked. Her name was printed on a name tag buttoned to her shirt: Rayne.

  “You got a spare smoke, Rayne?” he replied.

  Her eyes widened as he said her name, but then she touched her name tag and smiled.

  “They’re menthol . . . ” she shifted on her feet, her eyes darting left first, and then right. He wondered if she sensed something not quite right about him.

  “A smoke’s a smoke in my book, so you got yourself a deal Miss Rayne. I’ve got a mighty fine lighter in my rig out back. I might just let you keep it,” he said as he turned and handed the cashier a twenty and casually declined the change.

  “Let’s go,” the waitress urged, eager for her smoke break. She pushed open the diner’s door with her curvaceous hip and strode purposefully into the chilly evening.

  They walked side by side through the crisp night air toward the rear parking lot where Jack’s cherry red Freightliner waited. Jack shivered as he glanced furtively at his surroundings. The parking lot was all but deserted.

  He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had ever been so nervous.

  To break the tension, he joked with the waitress as they walked to his truck.

  “You sure you should be out here with me?” he smirked as they walked through the dimly lit lot. “It’s awfully dark and I am a perfect stranger, you know.” He smiled mischievously at her and stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets.