The Altar

13 Pages·2012·0.28 MB·English

by  Anderson James Arthur

BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY JAMES ARTHUR
ANDERSON
The Altar: A Novel of Horror
The Illustrated Ray Bradbury
Out of the Shadows: A Structuralist Approach to Understanding the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2012 by James Arthur Anderson
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For Lynn Llorye
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
PART ONE: PARADISE LOST
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
PART TWO: PURGATORY
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
PART THREE: INFERNO
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epilogue
About the Author
PROLOGUE
JULY, 2002
Bill Johnson let out the decelerator pedal, lowered the blade and rammed the
dozer forward through the tangled grove of blackberry bushes and ragweed. The
treads squealed in protest as the big blade crushed forward to gather its load of
foliage and blackish earth. Johnson puffed contentedly on a Phillips cigar, a
leftover from his daughter Marsha’s wedding last weekend. The hot sun
scorched his tanned arms, raising up beads of sweat on his forearms as he
wrestled with the steering levers to keep his caterpillared beast moving ahead in
a straight line.
It was funny, he thought, inhaling the cigar deeply and tasting its fragrance,
how this open field of bushes and vines appeared out of nowhere in the middle
of acres of thick oaks. It had come as a welcome relief to the construction crew
who had spent the past seven weeks cutting and mulching the trees and
uprooting the stubborn oak stumps.
Bill guessed that a house probably stood here once, long ago from the looks of
it—maybe back as far as Roger Williams’ time for all he knew. The dozer would
uncover it, though, or at least what was left of its stone foundation. The dozer
would uncover it all and by next summer a road would cut the forest in two.
Brand new homes and maybe even a shopping plaza would crop up almost
overnight, like maggots on a piece of meat. Who knows, he thought. Maybe it
would even be a mall someday. He chuckled at the thought—the Chepachet
Mall. The mall would be larger than the town. But why not? Once the road was
finished, anything was possible. It would only be a half an hour to Route 95, and
from there you could get to anywhere in the state in less than an hour.
He took another puff of his cigar, tilted his yellow hard hat over his graying
forehead to stop the glare of the sun, then shifted the dozer into reverse for
another run. He smiled as he felt the power of the dozer beneath him. To his
friends and his family, he was just a small, quiet guy who liked to do paint-by-
numbers and drink a beer or two while watching the Boston Red Sox game on
TV. But Monday through Friday, eight in the morning until four-thirty in the
afternoon, he was ten feet tall riding high on the seat of his twelve-ton black-
and-yellow bulldozer. He could do anything.
Intoxicated by the smell of diesel fuel and exhaust fumes, he dropped the blade
down again and edged the machine forward, bringing order and civilization to
this tract of wasteland in western Rhode Island. It was weird how this, one of
America’s most densely-populated states (at least that’s what they’d taught him
at Aldrich Junior High School) still had so much open space that you could lose
anything in it. He was thinking about that—and how for all that anybody knew
Jimmy Hoffa might be buried right here in this field—when the dozer blade
shuddered as it hit something hard. The tractor ground to a halt, the treads going
round and round in the earth without moving the machine forward. He frowned
as he thought of a turtle flipped over on its back.
“What the hell?”
The cigar popped out of his mouth and fell into the dirt, still only half smoked.
He backed the dozer up, then edged forward again, more carefully this time.
He tried to peer into the furrowed earth in front of him as the blade jammed
again.
“No old foundation’s gonna stop this baby!” He bragged to no one in particular
as he charged the dozer forward.
Still, it wouldn’t budge.
“Shit!” he said as he put the machine in neutral and climbed down from his
perch. Cursing fluently, he walked around the front of the blade to examine the
problem. “Must be one hell of a boulder.”
He scrambled around the front of the blade and over the wall of dirt he had
plowed forward. He looked at the pile of heaped earth and examined the ground
carefully, digging into the soft dirt with calloused hands.
It was a rock, all right. But it didn’t seem that big. In fact, it stood straight up,
like a tall tombstone with only the top edge poking through the dirt. The dozer
should have knocked it over easily. As he felt around the edge of the stone, he
realized that the thing was polished smooth. And despite the heat, it was cold,
almost icy to the touch.
“I’ll be dipped in shit,” he said, yanking his hand away. It felt as if he had
touched something from another world. If it hadn’t been so cold, he would have
thought he’d touched the very gates of hell. But everyone knew hell was hotter
than...well, hotter than hell.
Hot, cold, or whatever, he had hit something very strange. It was a gravestone,
he realized. It had to be. And this open place was—or at least once had been—a
graveyard. It all made sense now, this clearing in the middle of the woods. A
sudden draft chilled his bones. Though he was a practical man who made fun of
ghosts and spooks and vampires, he hissed a final curse and turned back towards
the bulldozer. The historical people would want to see this, he rationalized as he
climbed up on the tread. Meanwhile, his gut feeling told him to just beat it the
hell out of this place, beat it out of here before....
Without warning, the dozer’s tread leaped to life, crawling backward through
the mulch with a sudden life of its own. Johnson gasped once and swore in
defiance before the tread pulled him down, down, and under....
He felt his legs go first—intense, flaming pain shot through his entire being as
the bones broke and twisted like green tree limbs. Then coldness flooded him
where the joint had been. A sticky fluid covered him from the waist down.
Vaguely, he wondered if it were blood, then he knew it was much worse.
The sun blinded him as he tried to roll over and crawl. Then he saw a shadow
moving forward, impossibly forward, as the blade lowed and aimed directly for
him....
He heard a laugh that wasn’t his own. In the few seconds he had left he
remembered his fallen cigar and, with regret, wished he’d been able to finish it.
PART ONE: PARADISE LOST
JULY, 2003
The glory of the One Who moves all things
Penetrates all the universe, reflecting
In one part more and in another part less.
—Dante
When night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
—John Milton