HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels

HORROR
THRILLERS

A Box Set

by

Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright Billie Sue
Mosiman 2012

Includes the novels
BANISHED, LEGIONS OF THE DARK, and the story, THE SCREAM

Table of Contents:

BANISHED

LEGIONS
OF THE DARK

THE
SCREAM

BANISHED

By

Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright 2011 by
Billie Sue Mosiman, All rights reserved.

Cover art by Neil
Jackson, Copyright 2011

"The Magician
rearranges the Universe to make himself the center, the Mystic
rearranges himself to find the center."

CHAPTER 1

THE LITTLE DEATH

She could barely
breathe she was so hot. She could hear the night birds call and the
rustle of her mother’s palm grass skirt as she moved about the
small hut. She could see just the light from the flames of the fire
in the center of the floor, but she could not make out anything
beyond.

She closed her eyes
to blessed darkness and wondered when she would die. She knew she
would never be well again, never stand and walk, never kiss her
mother’s cheek, or feel the comfort of her mother’s
loving embrace. She had not lived long, a handful of years, so there
was not much to miss. Yet she knew she must fight against death.
She must not willingly let it take her.

A blanket of
coolness slipped over her bare skin and it was not from the water her
mother had been sponging onto her. She tried to reopen her eyes to
discover the cause, but her lids were too heavy. She was so hot!
The coolness that temporarily enveloped her was not helping. She
wished they would carry her to the sea and float her in the waves.

Dark grew darker.
Grew to pitch black. Grew to encompass a vast void. She struggled
to take a breath. It would not come; her lungs would not obey. She
thought, Death has me. Death has slipped his arms around me and
holds me so tightly I cannot breathe.

Faintly she heard
her mother’s wails, but she couldn’t lift a hand for her
to come near, nor could she whisper the compassion she felt for the
loved one she was leaving behind. She couldn’t even say
goodbye.

Take me to the sea,
she begged of Death. Take me from this heat and pain and let me
float in the cool frothy waves. I always loved…I always loved
the sea.

The heat grew like a
malevolent cloud in the darkness until it filled the void. She
couldn’t feel her body. She knew she was but a pinpoint of
matter, a tiny bit of consciousness floating in the emptiness. It
seemed time had stopped or it was moving so slowly it would last
forever and nothing for her would ever change.

I’m not ready,
the child complained. I’m too young.

And then she was
swept off into the dark beyond where there was no more thought or
heat or life.

She was done with
this world.

CHAPTER 2

A NEW TRUE
BEGINNING

“
Life. A
wriggling mass of cells blindly replicating, always in motion,
endlessly in search of food. Is that life? They say it is.”

The girl lay dying.
Her week-long fever had put her into a coma and though her mother
kept bathing her with cool water, her skin felt like hot coals.
Though fevered, her light coffee-colored skin shone smooth and
beautiful as a river stone in the flickering firelight.

In the little
one-room shack made from date palm leaves the heat was stifling. Not
one stray breeze made its way through the open doorway. Flies were
so thick they congealed the air and had to be batted away constantly
from the comatose child.

The mother, frantic
about losing her only child, knowing in her heart death stood close
with a skeletal arm extended, ran from the hut crying to the night
heavens. She sped along the lone path through the jungle to the
witch doctor’s hovel and stood outside wailing loud enough to
wake the dead.

In her native tongue
she told the witch doctor about the dying child and begged for him to
save her.

It seemed to take
him forever to gather his special feathers, shells, rocks, and sticks
tied in bundles with strings of dried pig skin. As the mother raced
back along the path to her baby, the witch doctor stayed at her side,
pacing her, a pale sickle moon at their backs.

Bursting into the
hut where a small fire in the center of the floor burned, grotesque
shadows swathed the little girl who lay against the back wall. Both
mother and witch doctor knew it was over and done with.

The child’s
arm lay limp off to one side, her head was turned toward them, her
eyes open, glazed, and forever stilled.

The mother turned to
the witch doctor and in her grief made the ultimate request. She knew
of the rumors.

“
They say you
have raised the dead. Raise her up!”

“
I have only
raised a few animals,” he said. “Never a human being.”

“
Raise her!”

It was true he was
renowned across the island as the most powerful witch doctor ever to
have lived, but what the woman was asking he thought was surely
beyond his powers. He had brought a dead chicken back to life. A
dead dog. And once, even a dead panther, just to see if he could.
But a human being? He had not dared try. He was not even sure that
the gods would allow him that kind of power.

“
I will give
you anything,” the mother cried. She beat her chest and rolled
her eyes. “Anything! Anything!” She was close to
madness.

The witch doctor’s
countenance darkened, his eyes took on a glow. His gaze left the
mother and settled on the child. He stepped closer, two steps.
Three. He went to his haunches and studied the girl. She was
undeniably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her skin was
lighter than most islanders, as if it were lit from within by soft
white flame. Her nose and lips and eyes and brow were perfection,
and the face was shaped like a heart. Her long dark hair was smooth,
shiny with whale oil, and it fell in curls like coiled snakes from
her scalp. He reached out and trailed his fingers along her cheek.
It was cold, so cold. It was a shame she was dead. It seemed to
Mujai that the gods were intentionally cruel when children died.

Suddenly, and
without knowing how it happened, the witch doctor fell in love with
the dead child. If he hadn’t known better, he might have
suspected he was under a spell not of his own making. His face
softened, his lips parted, and he let out a little sigh. He swiveled
on his haunches to face the mother at the hut’s door opening.

She was silhouetted
in the firelight, a gaunt figure with clenched hands held before her
breasts. He could feel her grief as if it were an extra person in
the hut. It loomed over her, a dark, heavy figure bearing down on
her thin shoulders.

“
You will give
anything if I raise her up? Anything? You will even give up your
child to me?” He must make sure she meant it.

A look of dawning
understanding and then dismay filled the mother’s eyes. She
hung her head. Her tears kept falling, drenching her sweaty naked
breasts. She had to decide. Bury her child in the cold ground or
see her rise up and walk again, alive and well, but belonging to
someone else. Belonging to…

“
Yes,”
she said, jutting out her chin in defiance. “Yes, I told you,
yes. Anything. If you must take her, then take her, as long as she
is alive again.”

The witch doctor
stood and came to the child’s mother. “When I raise her,
she will be mine. You understand? Forever mine. I will take her
from here and she will live with me. One day, when she is old enough
to wed, she will be my bride. Tell me you understand.”

Since the mother
made no protest beyond the horror of what she was doing to her only
child reflecting from her eyes, the pact was sealed.

“
If you break
your promise, I will kill you,” he said. “I will come in
the night like a shadow and kill you.”

She turned aside,
unable to look him in the face.

He left through the
low door and stood a moment staring up at the starry sky from whence
he derived part of his power. The sky, the earth, the sea, they all
gave him just a particle of their powers, but it was enough. Enough
to raise a human being he did not know yet, but enough to hope to
raise one.

“
I’ll be
back as soon as I can. Keep away the family, let no one see her,
allow no ceremony for her spirit. Tell no one, ever, of what happens
here, good or bad, you understand? And while I'm gone keep the flies
away too,” he added. “She must be kept clean and free of
vermin.”

He hurried off into
the night, loping like a gazelle. His talismans were left behind,
discarded on the floor near the dead girl. For this he would not
need them, and in fact, they would play no part. He required special
plants that grew deep in the interior of the jungle, and water from
the sea, and earth from the foot of the great sacred rock where all
former witch doctors had been buried. Three times he had raised the
dead with the secret potion, but if he was successful this fourth
time it would be such a great accomplishment he might think himself a
king rather than a witch doctor.

And the little girl
would be his queen.

The island the witch
doctor searched in the dark for his magic ingredients had no name for
the people. Later in history it would be called Hispaniola. It was
home to a few hundred aborigines who did not remember how any of them
had come to be on the island and none of whom had ever tried to leave
it. The land was merely home, the place where they lived out their
lives. Centuries later the island would be conquered and ruled by
the Spanish, who changed the name to Santo Domingo. In 1697 a formal
division of the island occurred changing the name again into Santo
Domingo and Saint-Domingue. Finally, it was changed to Haiti, what
an ancient people used to call it. From that period the island was
ruled over by despots and dictators.

But in this time
before time was kept, it was nothing more than a jungle-encrusted
plot of land in the Atlantic, neglected and ignored, its people
savage and superstitious and alone, so very alone.

There were other
witch doctors, and other small tribes, on various parts of the
island, but Mujai knew he was the greatest of all. He had learned
well everything his father and his grandfather had taught him about
the witch arts, until he surpassed them and discovered, really by
chance, the potion that brought the dead back to life again.

His reputation had
spread and, after it was known he raised up a panther, some even
feared him so much they let themselves die of fevers and infections
rather than call for him. Others, however, knowing his value, came
to his door and kept him rich with food and weapons for his prized
wisdom. Perhaps, he thought, they were afraid, too, so they left him
bribes. They gave him feathers of the rare ni-ni bird that had tail
feathers of royal purple and emerald green. They brought beautiful
shells taken by skilled divers from the sea floor, shells radiant
with rainbow colors. And every fruit and every fish and every
varmint that walked the island had at one time or another been
deposited before his door as a gift.