The Pines Read online

  The Pines

  Robert Dunbar

  A series of gruesome murders shocks the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Could it be the legendary Jersey Devil?

  __________

  Legends linger in the dark places of this world, legends as old as fear itself. Deep within the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, a series of macabre murders draws ever nearer to the isolated farmhouse where a lonely woman struggles to raise her strange, disturbed son. Does some ancient evil prowl the woods? The boy seems to be in league with a presence that makes itself felt in every rustle of wind, in every gleam of moonlight. As a wave of terrifying violence threatens to engulf them, the young mother must join with a group of demon hunters -- outcasts all -- in a battle for her own survival ... and for the life and soul of her son.

  THE PINES

  ROBERT

  DUNBAR

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to the ogre who lived in my bedroom closet. It’s for the wormy things that crawled the floor around my bed at night.

  This book is dedicated to Lizzie Borden and the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. It’s for Crypt of Horror comics and for the summer wind in the linden trees out front, for “Te Damned Ting.” It’s for evenings when the doorbell rang, and there was no one there.

  I wrote this book for hitchhikers who vanish, leaving only their jackets behind, and for dead linemen who prowl the turnpikes. It’s for Te House of the Seven Gables. It’s for “Te Black Cat” and “Te Dunwich Horror” and for all those forbidden, sleepless, childhood nights I spent reading Something Wicked This Way Comes beneath the sheets by flashlight.

  And, especially…I wrote this book because of mist-shrouded nights on Owl Creek Bridge, nights when you meet the weeping little boy who tells you he’s lost…and slowly you realize he died long ago.

  Mad shouts…Screams of pain…

  Conscious only of the others running in different directions, Casey blinked awake. He hopped up, cocooned in his sleeping bag, then pitched forward on his face. Despairing howls and wild activity surrounded him.

  A snarl ripped the night.

  He grabbed the flashlight, switched it on, swung it wildly about the clearing.

  The throb of the crickets. Everywhere. The throb of blood rushing in his ears. Deafening. The mistiness was not his vision—thin fog curled through the clearing. He realized someone had been shrieking the same thing over and over, but he couldn’t make out the words. There was movement. “Jenny, where are you?” Swinging the tiny arc of light, he stumbled bleeding into the pines, and they closed around him. Crickets rose to a dense pitch. He could hear running. Cries came from all around him. But, near fainting with shock and pain, he could see no one, the flashlight providing only fleeting, distorted glimpses.

  Now he heard something else, a growling, a thrashing. The child’s white face, blank with fear, flashed at him, then vanished, lost in the blackness.

  “Amelia!” Sickened with dread, he held the flashlight out in front of him. The beam thrust forward, the shaft of light striking…

  …a visage out of a nightmare.

  I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,

  I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

  Press close bare-bosom’d night—press close magnetic nourishing night!

  Night of south winds—night of the large few stars!

  Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.

  —Walt Whitman

  PART ONE

  THE BARRENS

  It is a region aboriginal in savagery.

  Atlantic Magazine, 1858

  I have been shocked at the conditions I have found. Evidently these people are a serious menace to the state of New Jersey. They have inbred…till they have become a race of imbeciles, criminals and defectives.

  James T. Fielder

  Governor of New Jersey (1914—17)

  Sunday, July 5

  Here, rancid air hangs heavily in a void, its texture thick, liquid, clinging, in a night full of the hot smells of decay.

  This humid oppression strangely amplifies the dripping, clicking noises: the moldy rasp of dead leaves stirred by tiny animals, the constant murmur of a brook threading the loamy ground, the oozing splash of something that moves heavily through water.

  There is no moon, and clouds screen the light from the stars.

  Gradually now, sunk in the still and viscous murk, the trees become vague shapes. Silent. Waiting. The ragged leaves of swamp elms hang motionless as insects in a web.

  Slowly, the trees begin to glow.

  Through the pines, the headlights were baleful eyes, lost and searching. They glanced off trees as the car first skidded around a turn in the soft sand, then veered from side to side on the narrow road. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, the driver grabbed at the girl’s T-shirt, while the car bounced wildly.

  “Come on, just let ’em out a little. Come on, just let me see ’em.” The old man’s face glistened with sweat. “Come on, honey. Wouldn’t ya like a few bucks? I won’t tell nobody.”

  “Terrific.” With her shoulder already pressed against the door, she couldn’t slide any farther away from him. “What are you, crazy? You seemed like such a nice person. God, all of a sudden, you’re an obscene phone call! Now, would you quit it?” She smacked at his groping hand. “I think you just better let me out of this car.”

  He was undoing his pants, fumbling with one hand. “You don’t have to do nothing. Just play with it a little.”

  “Oh shit, would you look at what you’re doing?” She made a sound halfway between a scream and hysterical laughter. “I don’t believe this is happening. Why me? Would you stop that, please? Stop it!”

  “Well, I can make you do it, you know,” he rasped. “Come on, it’ll only take a minute.”

  “I’ve got news for you. It’s not even gonna take that long. Just who do you think you are?” Clutching her string bag, she considered jumping out of the car. “Just because…” Frightened laughter burst out. “You mean that’s it?”

  “What the fuck?” His face registered disbelief, then blood flushed darkly into his cheeks. Enraged, he grabbed her left breast. She punched him on the nose.

  Brakes squealing, the car skidded to a halt.

  “I’m bleeding! Get the fuck out of my car, you bitch! My nose is bleeding! Get the hell out!”

  “With pleasure!” As she started to open the door, he gave her a hard shove, and the door burst outward. She fell, her knees and elbows making deep depressions in the sand. “Oww! You little shit! Who do you think you’re pushing?” Gears grinding, the car lurched forward as she scrambled furiously to her feet. “Hey! Wait a minute, you can’t…!”

  “Whore!” he screamed, repeating the word as he gunned the motor.

  “Asshole!” she yelled back. “You’re only about two inches!”

  Red taillights pulled away, disappearing around a bend, and droning cicadas drowned out the sound of the motor. She scanned the pressing tangle of vines and fir trees: a motionless horde of pines surrounded her, dwarf shapes with twisted and broken limbs, those along the edge of the road now showing gray beneath the rising moon.

  Picking up the string bag, she brushed grit off her skinned elbows and knees and saw that one elbow bled slightly. “Shit.”

  The hot scent of blood drifted on the night air.

  She could see tire tracks in the sand, but not many. That creep must have come this way because he knew it’d be deserted. Dark and deserted. That’s the last time I hitchhike.

  “I can’t believe this is happening.” Half expecting to see headlights coming back, she rummaged through her bag. Wet bathing suit, makeup, half a candy bar. To calm herself, she ate the candy, licking the melting chocolate off her fingers.


  Even the beach wasn’t this dark at night.

  Though plump, Mary Bradley had fine bones and delicate hands, possessing a limp quality that approached gracefulness. Just now, the creamy skin she generally took such care of was sunburned as well as scraped, and her breast was sore where the old man had squeezed it. Yet she managed to grin at the way she’d told him off. At the office, she was famous for her shrill little rages.

  The weekend at the shore had as usual been one long party. Too much sun, too much loud music and liquor. She had a regular ride home with her girlfriends, but she’d met this cute guy last night…and this morning discovered that the other girls had left without her. At least they took my suitcase with them. It had already been getting dark when she’d started hitchhiking. Bad move. She shook her head. Never again.

  Should of made him let me out sooner. But the old creep seemed so normal. Some of her girlfriends told horror stories about their “dates from hell.” She couldn’t wait to tell them this one. Stranded in the frigging woods.

  She peered up the road. Nothing. God only knew what time she’d get back to Philly. And she had to work in the morning. Not that she worried about losing sleep: enough amphetamines coursed through her system to keep her going. Diet pills didn’t really curb her appetite any, but they sure were great for partying. Maybe one of the girls at work would have some Xanax or Valium or something to help her crash. Otherwise, she’d be a mess tomorrow.

  It’s too hot to breathe. And I still need to pee. She had the jumpy, thirsty feeling she always got after a couple of days on speed, and the crickets set up an echoing vibration in her nervous system. God, these bugs. A breeze stirred now, and it seemed the pines themselves began to resemble giant insects, prickly feelers twitching. I hope I don’t have to wait here forever.

  Soon she became aware of a sound besides the insects, faintly hollow above the constant whir. Cars on the highway? It seemed to come from all around her, and she strained to listen. On second thought, it was almost like the roar in a seashell. Could she be close to a beach? Then she recognized the sound for what it was.

  Trees. Hot night air stirring in the trees.

  She felt very strange and queasy, isolated. Even the air doesn’t smell right. No soot, no gasoline fumes.

  “Shit!” The mosquitoes had found her, and they whirred in her ears and eyes. Mosquitoes and God only knows what else. One flew in her mouth. She slapped at her neck, slapped at her bare legs, squashing something bloated and wet. Terrific. Dressed in cutoffs and a T-shirt, she’d be covered with welts soon. She really began to worry how long it would be before another car came along. An hour maybe? She could be sucked dry by then. And what if there wasn’t another car to night?

  I almost wish the old guy would come back.

  She tried to guess how far she was from the larger road they’d been on and, as she started to walk back that way, wished she hadn’t been so chatty and had paid more attention. This is weird. Spotted with weeds, the white sand glowed in the moonlight, making her feel unreal, as though she floated through deep darkness on fluid silver. A swarm of mosquitoes followed, swimming through the humid air, and she imagined that in the shadows of the trees, the crickets followed as well.

  Her footsteps made no sound. It was like walking on the beach—her calf and thigh muscles began to ache, and the straps of her new sandals cut into her feet. When she took them off, the sand felt soothing between her toes.

  Suddenly, she panicked. I’m lost! The patch of white trailed on into the woods, twisting onward into nothingness. Where’s the road? As she got her bearings and moved back, she shivered in spite of the heat, knowing she’d be in real trouble if she strayed far from this path. Something crawled down the back of her damp T-shirt, and she clawed it out, squashing it, wiping her hand on her cutoffs. She was pretty sure there were things in her hair.

  Ahead, something glinted dimly. Just able to make out the shape, she raced for it, aching muscles forgotten.

  Bullet holes riddled the sign, the red lettering black by moonlight.

  WARNING

  DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS

  HARRISVILLE STATE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

  4 MILES

  The needles of the nearer pines might have been thin talons, stretched out straight and clutching.

  WARNING

  She took a deep breath then giggled shrilly. “Swell.” The sound of crickets receded. “If they find me laughing in the woods, that’s where they’re gonna put me.” The sound of her own voice made her feel better, and she giggled again. “Anyway, I bet they don’t really give weekend passes to the ax murderers.”

  As it wove through massed darkness, the road seemed to narrow again, and she panted, glancing back the way she’d come. Just for a moment, it seemed the pines themselves moved, that they shifted almost imperceptibly, inching onto the road. The crickets resumed. She glanced back and wondered how far she’d walked, but there was nothing by which to judge, no landmarks, only her footprints in the sand. Plodding forward again, she told herself the main road couldn’t be much farther.

  She carried only one sandal.

  “Wouldn’t you just know? And I only wore them the once.” Reluctantly, she started to backtrack.

  Just a few yards away, beside the imprint of her bare feet, the sandal lay on its side in the sand…another set of prints trailing next to it.

  Some sort of animal must’ve made them, she guessed. A deer, maybe. But didn’t deer have pointed feet or hooves or whatever? These tracks looked flat and broad.

  She turned. The tracks were all around her now.

  Clearly etched in moon shadow, the prints crossed her own, sometimes running parallel. She couldn’t have missed them if they’d been there seconds before.

  The night breathed around her, and her teeth clicked together.

  A mosquito hummed in her ear, and something rustled in the woods.

  She ran. The main road had to be just up ahead, just beyond this bend or the next. She sprinted heavily, fleshy arms jouncing, and one foot came down hard on something sharp. She cried out, hobbling, her full bladder feeling as though it would burst with every jolt.

  At last she slowed to check the road behind her. The itch of insect bites was maddening, and her clothes clung tightly.

  Nothing. Beginning to feeling silly, she balanced on one foot and pulled something thorny from the sole of the other. “What’s the matter with me?” Out of breath and trembling, she wiped sweat out of her eyes and gazed down at the imprints her feet had made in the sand. “Talk about being scared of your own shadow.” The pounding of her heart slowed, and she examined the sticky mixture of sand and blood on her foot.

  A rumbling vibration startled her. Blinding lights jerked through the night as a truck shuddered past.

  The highway lay right there. Not twenty yards away in the dark, this dirt track emptied onto it. She went limp with relief and put her sandals back on. The shadows of the pines had shifted heavily, and she decided it was lucky a car hadn’t come along on this narrow road—she could easily have been run down.

  The pressure in her bladder still throbbed.

  More approaching lights. As another car passed, she smiled at the prospect of bending the ear of whoever picked her up. What a story!

  Oh well, last chance to use the facilities. She considered crouching where she stood but figured—just her luck—a car would come along and spotlight her. It wasn’t fair, she thought, scanning the area to her right: men had it so much easier.

  Spotting a clump of pines that might do, she took a few steps toward it. One foot sank deep in muck, and the ground oozed. Her foot made a squishy suck coming out, and she almost lost the sandal. “I don’t believe this.” Fouled with slime to the ankle, she began picking her way back across the marshy ground.

  There came a hideous stench. Behind her, something moved heavily in the underbrush.

  Her legs and arms ached with the sudden pressure of blood, and her bladder voided as, with agonizing slowne
ss, she turned.

  The darkness moved.

  Unaware of the sudden hot tears on her face, she groped her way backward toward the road.

  A shape lurched toward her from the shadows.

  Branches slashed at her plump bare thighs as she ran. Something exploded out of the thicket behind her. Propelled by terror, she ran faster than she’d ever thought she could, her brain screaming too loudly to register sights or sounds. Only her bones felt the pounding that gained on the road behind her.

  Lights! A car ahead—she cried out, but the sandals, plowing through soft dirt, slowed her so that…

  Slammed into from behind, she was spun around with incredible force.

  Distantly, strangely dislocated from herself, from this body whirling through the dark, she wondered if she’d been hit by a car after all. Had the old man come back? It was her last coherent thought.

  She lay, pain humming through her in the night, then felt herself being lifted.

  A large bat scurried across the sky as a car flashed past the side road, red taillights retreating. The thrashing in the thicket gradually diminished, and soon there remained only the droning of insects.

  “You can slow down now, Jack. I told you, there’s no hurry—this one’s DOA. I’d rather we didn’t all wind up that way, if you don’t mind.”

  “Are you saying my driving ain’t all it should be, Doris?”

  “You mean to tell me you didn’t finish filling that out yet?” Ignoring him, she sat down next to the woman in back. “What’s taking so long, kid?”

  The narrow stretcher creaked. Perched on one of the cushioned seats of worn orange vinyl, Athena looked up. “The first one got a little messed up,” she responded, trying to keep dark arterial blood from getting on the report.