Harlan County Horrors (23 page)

Unsure of what threat to history or the status quo existed in
my vision or their discovery, I left Harlan County and never looked
back.

“
Harlan Moon”

TL Trevaskis

TL
Trevaskis
fell in
love with Harlan the moment he entered the county. Author of the
paranormal romance
The Forgotten
Disturbed
, he resides in Washington State
where he tries to come to grips with the wonderful things he
experienced in Kentucky. He maintains a writing blog at
celticscribblings.blogspot.com.

N
ight always arrived too soon for Brett
“Feral” Branson. It would descend with a deceptively soft landfall,
sliding along the bottom of Ivy Hill and pooling in the hollow of
the small town’s center before rising up the sides of the buildings
like a floodtide. The horseshoe of mountains wrapped around Harlan,
Kentucky, quickened twilight’s descent, making it necessary to turn
on house lights before the darkness actually reached the upper
floors. The sight would have filled Feral with easy pleasure
anywhere or anytime else. But not here. Not now.

Not
that he was afraid of the dark. Twenty-three years working in the
coal mines had cured him of that. Even after the accident, he had
no hesitation about returning to the claustrophobic depths and
continued to work until his injury finally made it impossible for
him to do so. The mines called to him in his disturbed dreams, and
his dreams bled over into the day.

No,
it was definitely not the dark he was afraid of.

The
landscape didn’t help. Occupying a deep, narrow gorge between the
Martins and Clover forks of the Cumberland River, Harlan had no
trouble remaining isolated from the rest of the world. Coal was
everywhere: running down chutes stabbed into the tortured folds of
the mountains; scattered like gravel along the streets; lurking
behind the resigned gazes of the long-suffering people. Its power
to trap the soul emanated from beneath their feet, rising up like
heat currents to fill the very air of the small town. That air
hung, heavy and breathless, like a wet blanket pressing down on the
hearts and minds of a populace that asked nothing more than the
chance to make a living from the miles-long shafts crisscrossing
the interior of the mountains.

Even though it cost them their lives.

A
weight pressed down there, a drawing down of mass and energy that
made itself known in the dullness of the colors, as if light had
trouble propagating in the humid, sluggish air. The town seemed to
sit in a pocket of gravity, as if all the weight of the mountains
had rolled down the gorge to settle in a man’s soul. It pressed
that soul right out of him, down through his feet, where it leeched
into the soil and the rock and the coal, until he could no more
move away from the place than could the trees. He no longer had the
will or the strength or the courage. Over the course of a life hard
lived, the miner and the town and the mountain became as one, and
no one ever left Harlan alive.

The
warped, twisted stone of the mountains, squeezed and thrown about
by unimaginable forces, left its mark in the warped and twisted
contours of men’s minds, their feverish thoughts thrusting through
the bedrock of sanity until nothing remained but nightmare
visions of black shafts and endless dark.

In
that darkness, the terror brooded. And Feral found himself drawn
toward it.

Resthaven Cemetery sprawled around him, a broad landscape of
rolling green grass rising up suddenly to the east beneath dark
pine woods. Harlan County’s most famous citizens and oldest
families were buried here, their graves sometimes marked with
elaborate headstones or graceful sculptures. His own
great-grandfather, a volunteer in the Harlan County Battalion and
hometown hero of the Civil War, lay under this pleasant surface.
Almost every plot held a pot of bright flowers, red and yellow and
orange dotting the grounds as far as the eye could see, like
balloons at a carnival. Those colors were obscured outside of the
flashlight’s beam. As its name promised, this was a quiet place.
But if Feral’s neighbors were to be believed, below its peaceful
façade lurked a terror of unspeakable menace.

They were here, tonight, to find out. And to do something
about it.

The group had gathered first at the Dairy Hut south of Harlan,
about halfway to Grays Knob along Highway 421, for a quick dinner
just before dusk. Cars crowded the gravel parking lot surrounding
the fast food place, poised like animals at a watering hole. Feral
sat in the Formica booth under the fluorescent lamps, their stark
bluish light casting too-sharp shadows on the drab white walls,
watching Joe Ellis scarf down his Giant Burger. The thing was the
size of a catcher’s mitt, but the truck driver had already finished
one off, and Feral knew he would have no problem downing his second
one as well. Joe was the
de facto
leader of the believers. At age thirty-two, he
was just under twenty-four years younger than Feral—young enough to
fall for the stories, yet old enough for others to trust in his
judgment. Joe had in turn placed that faith in Feral, talking him
into this excursion by appealing to his own reputation in the town.
Both men had been sports legends in their high school days, and
everyone looked up to them for their past exploits, if not for the
mundane way their lives had turned out.

That’s how Feral remembered it, anyway.

Randy Vaughn sat next to Feral, and next to Randy was his
girlfriend, Kathy Taylor. The two twenty-somethings appeared to him
to be more interested in each other than in hunting demons in the
cemetery. Their bodies were almost indistinguishable, so closely
did they press against each other in the booth. Charlene Williams
was a surprise. Feral would never have expected the town’s high
school librarian to get caught up in this kind of nonsense; she
seldom attended bake sales. Tonight, fear had washed the color out
of her face. That wouldn’t help matters. She sat next to Joe,
nervously sipping a Coke through a straw.

The
others—Harold, Frank, Eliza, and Josh—were all kids from the town’s
high school, eager to test their fighting skills against what they
no doubt imagined would be martial-arts-practicing caricatures like
the demons they had seen on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” They sat in
the booth behind the adults, talking animatedly amongst themselves,
wolfing down hamburgers and fries, itching to head for the
cemetery. Each had given typical teenage excuses to their parents
for being out that night.

Feral wasn’t sure which troubled him more: his suspicion their
parents didn’t know where they were, his own culpability in
bringing them along, or his growing apprehension, as the sun began
to set, of what they might run into.

“
We’re not going to stay there all night,” he said. He spoke
to the group as a whole, but to Joe in particular.

“
We have to wait long enough for them to come out,” Joe said.
“At least until midnight.”

“
How do you know they come out at midnight?”

Joe
didn’t answer.

Josh said, “Our parents won’t mind if we stay out
longer.”

“
Yeah, right,” Feral said, turning. “But I will.” As Josh
opened his mouth to protest, he added, waving a warning finger at
him, “And I’m the one who’s responsible for y’all.”

Josh ducked his head. “Yes, sir.”

“
So,” Charlene asked, “how are we going to go about
this?”

Feral felt compelled to look around the diner before
answering, to see if anyone nearby was listening. No one paid the
group any attention. Keeping his voice low, he said, “I figured
we’d break up into three groups, fan out, and kind of keep watch on
the graves. Especially the newer ones.”

“
Three groups of three,” Charlene murmured, smiling.
“Interesting.”

Feral stared at her, uncomprehending.

“
It’s kind of a Pagan thing,” she offered.

“
Yeah,” he said. “Well, we don’t have enough people to cover
the whole place. We’ll stay within sight of each other, so we can
gather quickly if we have to.”

“
That should be enough,” Joe said.

“
Considering we’re not going to see anything,” Feral said,
“it’s more than enough.”

“
What does it mean if we don’t?” Charlene said. “Not seeing
something doesn’t mean something isn’t there.”

Joe
laughed. “Don’t confuse Feral.” He pronounced the nickname as if it
had only one syllable. “If nothing shows up by midnight, I think we
can pretty much be sure they’re not going to. And at least we can
sleep peacefully tonight.”

“
I
think it would be better if we find one,” Charlene said. “That way
we don’t have to keep wondering.” She glanced quickly at the
others, and just as quickly dropped her gaze. “I would rather be
sure.”

Joe
looked squarely at Feral. “Wouldn’t we all?”

So
there they were, huddled together somewhat self-consciously at
Resthaven, seeing nothing out of the ordinary as the darkness
gathered around them. Feral set them up in teams, making sure each
of the teens had a male adult with them. Since Randy was barely out
of his teens himself, Feral placed his group at the main gate;
Eliza and Charlene went with him. Kathy had protested this last,
but Feral was adamant. He didn’t need Randy and Kathy absorbed in
each other if something
did
happen. And this way, he had those he considered
to be the weakest in the safest place.

Joe’s group consisted of Josh and Harold, who was a linebacker
on the football team. Feral was thus left with Kathy and Frank. He
felt fairly confident that each team could handle itself well
enough. Especially, he kept telling himself, since they wouldn’t
need to anyway.

As
they started out across the grounds, Joe lit a bitumen torch. The
flames shot up with a sound like crinkling paper, lighting up an
area about fifteen feet in diameter. Feral looked at him with a
mixture of surprise and consternation.

“
Joe,” he said, “what the hell d’you think you’re
doing?”

“
Gotta see somehow.”

“
Don’t you think you’re going to scare the vampires
off?”

“
Vamps ain’t afraid of fire.” He fingered the huge silver
crucifix that dangled on a chain around his neck. It glinted with a
sinister light.

Feral sighed, resigned. “Let’s go,” he said.

He
had chosen the eastern side of the cemetery for his team, the side
bordered by thick stands of pine lining the crest of a hill. The
hill made a good landmark, a darker blotch against the night sky.
Directly across from it, in the center of the graveyard, stood a
gazebo, their rendezvous point. The three groups checked their
flashlights, turned on their cell phone vibrators, hefted their
clubs, and set off in their appointed directions, talking softly
amongst themselves. The whole thing would have reminded Feral of
his days walking point in Vietnam had it not all been so utterly
ludicrous.

The
cemetery was characteristically quiet, no more ominous than could
be expected for a harbor of the dead after dark. A light mist
drifted down from the stand of pines, but the full moon peered out
from behind broken clouds, casting its silken web across the
landscape. Even so, Feral preferred to leave his flashlight turned
on. Moonlit shadows had a way of playing with a man’s perceptions,
which in turn put his fears on hair-trigger overload. The
flashlight cut through a lot of illusions. He was embarrassed to
admit to himself that he wouldn’t have minded having Joe’s torch
after all. That torch could be seen, comedic in its bouncing among
the gravestones, across the cemetery from where Feral’s team
meandered. Feral shook his head at the sight.

Then he stopped and turned, facing his little group. “Okay,”
he said, trying to maintain some semblance of authority. “This is
our station. Let’s form a circle so that we can look out in all
directions. We don’t want anything escaping our
attention.”

“
Or sneaking up on us,” Frank said.

“
Right. Or sneaking up on us.”

Feral felt foolish, standing there with his back to the
others. The silence among them quickly became awkward. But he
really didn’t know what to say. He tried instead to concentrate,
peering into the darkness, looking for—what, exactly? Moving
shadows, he supposed. Glaring yellow or red eyes. Bela Lugosi,
maybe.

It
was impossible to tell how long they stood like that. To Feral, it
seemed like forever. The moon peered over his shoulder, witness to
his growing unease.

“
It’s getting cold.” Kathy’s voice, though hushed,
reverberated in the silence.

“
Yeah,” Feral said, surreptitiously pressing his limbs against
his body. “Kinda wish I’d brought my gloves.”

“
Hard to wield a stake with gloves on,” Frank said,
chuckling.

“
I
suppose,” Feral said. He didn’t bother to mention the stakes he was
carrying. Not that he was scared of the dark.

He
turned to peer up at the hill behind him, an inkblot spilling out
of the night sky. The earlier clouds had moved on toward the
southern horizon, leaving the moon above the hillside free and
round and untouched. The moon challenged him. He couldn’t bear to
look for long at its face. Still, he felt silly holding a
flashlight in such a bright landscape, when none of the others had
theirs on. After a moment’s hesitation, in which he somehow had
trouble getting his thumb to move, he switched the flashlight
off.