“You’re a cop, Maudlin, and I’m an architect. We both come from the world of black and white. It wasn’t easy for me either. I didn’t believe any of it—didn’t want to. But in the end, I had no choice. There’s a point beyond which it’s illogical not to believe in what’s right before your eyes.”
Maudlin nodded. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not calling myself a believer. I’ve just become open to possibilities.”
Cantrell laughed. “Me too. Good luck on your retirement.”
“Thanks. And I hear good things are happening for you as well.”
“Word travels fast. Yeah, I just picked up a good contract. The owner of one of the old warehouses near the Exeter hired me to draw up renovation plans. It should keep me busy for a few months.”
“Good for you. What are you going to do with that old pile of a building you still own?”
“Keep it. Try to bring people back. I still believe that Derbytown is ready for a renaissance, and that the Exeter will be a big part of it. It’ll take a while, but they’ll come. They’ll forget.”
“I hope they do, Cantrell. You deserve it. And so does your family.”
The detective shook Cantrell’s hand and got into his car. He drove away without waiting for the others.
Anna sat silently in the back seat as they made their way home. She looked out the window as they left the cemetery and passed through downtown.
She gazed at the lines on the roadway, the buildings flashing by.
She thought of her father’s death, on a similar road, not far from here, and of how she’d called out to him, over and over, in vain. How terrified she was as she watched him die. How she cried and cried, and no sound came out. How she forgot how to talk.
She thought of moving into their pretty new home, meeting so many nice people, Dr. Sharon, and especially Alex.
And how, later, things changed.
How those awful things happened to all those others—the married couple, the old gruff man, the young man, Dr. Sharon, the man from television.
She wasn’t supposed to know about those things, but she’d heard people talking about them, in hushed tones, so that she wouldn’t hear.
She knew what happened to Alex, and to her mother. She saw them, in the big room at the front, when they were struggling for their lives.
She knew how afraid they were, and how helpless she felt.
And she knew things nobody else did.
The whispers of a young boy. He told her the stories; put pictures in her mind. He had pleaded for her help. He had made her feel his fear.
She remembered all of this.
And she understood. She knew why those people did what they did. She knew why they died and went crazy. She knew why that animal attacked.
She knew about the fear. She had felt it. She had faced it. She was facing it still.
The car pulled into the empty parking lot in front of the Exeter, and they walked together, silently, to the front door.
Su Ling turned to Anna, brushing the hair from her face.
“What’s wrong honey? Are you okay?”
For a moment, Anna hesitated at the threshold. She looked up at the towering building. its massive round clock that always reminded her of a face, and felt something—a blur of someone running, the barest hint of a smell, a soft sound that an animal might have made, the silence of a stopped clock.
The girl smiled. “I’m fine, Mommy,” she said, and walked inside.
Behind the Exeter, the winter sun set at last, sinking into the horizon in a final blaze of blood red light.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Emanuel Isler, who graduated from Loyola/Marymount University with a degree in film and television, is a former literary agent who sold his first screenplay to Columbia Pictures at the age of 21. He currently works in corporate communications and public relations and has written several screenplays.
Christopher Leppek, a US Navy veteran who studied writing at the University of Denver, has been a journalist for most of his life, working as a reporter and editor for the Intermountain Jewish News in Denver and freelancing for such newspapers as the New York Times and Rocky Mountain News. He is the author of the Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel The Surrogate Assassin, which received honors from Amazon.com.
Leppek/Isler have been writing horror fiction for more than 25 years. Their first short story, “The Eyes of Karma,” written on a whim, was published, which encouraged them to keep going. Another early short story, “The Master of Fear,” won honors in a ghost story contest sponsored by Oxford University Press and judged by Stephen King.
Their debut novel, Chaosicon, was published in hardcover in 2001 to positive reviews. Their more recent work has appeared in Dark Moon Digest and in Dark Moon’s Ghosts and Vampires anthologies.
The collaborators, who credit their visual writing style to old horror films by Universal, Hammer and Alfred Hitchcock, both reside with their families in Denver.
The authors’ website and blog is www.bloodontherainbow.com.
Copyright
DARK MOON BOOKS
an imprint of Stony Meadow Publishing
Largo, Florida
ABATTOIR
Copyright © Christopher Leppek and Emanuel Isler 2012
Cover art © Dark Moon Books 2012
All Rights Reserved
First edition published in May, 2012
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012938243
ISBN-13: 978-0-9850290-7-4
Printed in the United States of America
The stories included in this publication are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
