By the Light of His Lantern Read online

  BY THE LIGHT OF HIS LANTERN

  ABE MOSS

  Copyright © 2019 by Abe Moss. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by germancreative on fiverr.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Abe Moss

  Visit my website at www.abemoss.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: 2019

  ISBN - 9781797874913

  ABE MOSS NOVELS

  THE WRITHING

  BATHWATER BLUES

  BY THE LIGHT OF HIS LANTERN

  CONTENTS

  PART I 0

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  PART II

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  PART III

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  PART I

  The Curse

  Chapter One

  Nice to Meet You

  He pushed himself up off the sand.

  —at least it felt like sand.

  The sea waves roared and crashed around him.

  —at least it sounded like waves, and smelled like the sea.

  He held himself up on his hands and knees, breathed the cool air, squeezed the sand under him. He was naked…

  He blinked his eyes, repeatedly, and saw nothing.

  He turned his head both ways, eyes peeled wide as a deer in headlights, and nothing but black touched them. Nothing but black.

  He got to his feet. He moved his arms, pressed his hands before him, to the side, behind him. He turned toward the sound of the ocean. A breeze wafted from it, over his damp skin. He stepped toward the waves, toes careful through the smooth sand, hands outstretched, fingers feeling for anything to meet them. One step. Two steps. Three steps. Cold ocean mist sprinkled his eyes and nose. Four steps. Five steps. A wave broke on the shore and swallowed him ankle deep, retreated down the sand again. His mouth gaped, trembled.

  He crouched and put his hands into the muddy shore, splashed them in the water there, held the water to his face, wriggled his fingers before his eyes.

  Nothing but black.

  “Hello?” he called out, jumping to his feet again. “Hello?”

  He started up the shore away from the ocean. He put his wet fingers to his eyes, felt them, touched the slippery surface of his own eyeball and winced. He lifted his head skyward.

  “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

  He stumbled up the shore. He stepped on a splintery wooden plank, curved like a boomerang, and staggered away from it, from any others there might be, the bent rusted nails he imagined sticking out of them. There were dead weeds in the sand—he caught them between his toes, bent to rip them off. He lifted his foot to clear them away and lost his balance. He fell, caught himself with both hands. He sat down and pulled the soggy weeds from his foot and hurled them away into the black.

  “Shit.”

  He continued up the sandy slope until it levelled out a bit, followed it farther still.

  Nothing but black.

  Nothing but black.

  “Hello?”

  The sand slowly gave way to patches of grass and prickly weeds. He stumbled through them, tiptoed over them, stepped directly on them, cursed. Never did he stop his exaggerated blinking. It was a dream. A kind of dream he’d never had before. A visionless dream. Only black. Everything else was heightened. The smell of the beach, the grit of the sand between his toes, the salty taste of the air. He’d never dreamed anything like it, but that’s what it was—a dream. Though, it felt nothing at all like a dream…

  “Hey!!!” he screamed, and felt himself begin to shake. “Someone!!!”

  He turned in a complete circle. He couldn’t help the blinking. One of these times, he thought, he’d shut his eyes, squeeze them shut so tight his head would ache, and then open them to a cool, beautiful evening on the beach.

  Except… why was he on the beach? How did he ever…

  “HELLO!!!”

  He continued deeper through the grass, growing taller around his ankles until he felt it tickling beneath his knees. He swished his arms ahead of him, crossed and spread, crossed and spread, determined not to run headfirst into anything standing in the dark. It was a good thing, too, because it wasn’t much later that he found something blocking his path.

  He whacked his flailing hand against it.

  “Shit!”

  He held his throbbing hand to his chest. He reached out with the other, ran his palm over the rough, slender shape. Tree bark. He put both hands to it, then. He leaned against it and shut his eyes.

  This isn’t a dream. Something’s happened. I’m blind.

  Was it day or night? He couldn’t tell.

  He sat beside the tree for a long while.

  Where am I? How did I get here?

  The waves lapped against the shore, farther away now than before, of course. The fact he could hear waves at all was troubling. The beach was miles and miles from home, almost a two-hour drive.

  His ears perked up at a strange sound. Low and drawn out. It came from somewhere behind him, beyond the trees. He paused to hear it and then it stopped. Maybe nothing…

  Think. Think. Where was I last? Was I sleeping? Could I still be dreaming? No. No, I don’t think so.

  It was dreamlike, however real it may have been—the suddenness of it, the confusion of it, the dreadfulness of it, something unexplainably bizarre, overwhelming, suffocating. But his senses were too sharp. His mind was alert, aware—not muddy or slippery. It was just…

  Impossible.

  Nothing he thought of reminded him of anything which could have led him here.

  I think it was night, last I remember. Was I at home? I think I may have been… or maybe I’d been going somewhere…

  That low sound came again, a grumbling, louder than before but distant. A tree leaning toward collapse, perhaps. He looked over his shoulder toward it, as though he could spot the source, narrowed his eyes to pick something out of the nothing, anything. Then it stopped again. It was quiet. Just the waves.

  He considered calling out again. That feeling of mounting dread grew stronger, so that his shoulders started to hunch toward his ears. He hugged the tree a bit tighter.

  There’s someone out there. In the trees. Suddenly I don’t want them to know I’m here.

  Using the tree to brace himself he climbed to his feet. He stepped away, got as far as he could until he could no longer touch it with the tips of his fingers behind him. Then he continued on. He swished his arms before him, should there be other trees. He found a few others. He touched them, clung to them, and then left them for the next, using them to follow the edge of the beach. Eventually he would find something, he thought. He would find a road, or a house, or maybe even a person to help him.

  There’s no one to help me.

  An odd thought. He wasn’t sure where he got it. Surely someone would come along. Barring
that he wasn’t completely wrong about the time, that it wasn’t the middle of the night, surely someone would happen upon him wandering along the trees like a drunkard.

  But something else told him differently. He was alone.

  Not truly…

  The time of day was irrelevant, because no matter day or night, no one would find him. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. He hadn’t yet made sense of it, but he could feel it. It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t—

  Blindness.

  It was all wrong.

  He paused his tree-hopping and leaned against the latest. He touched his face again, ran his hands over his cheeks. He clapped his hands before his eyes. They made the sound, but the black around them was impenetrable.

  He whimpered when the sound returned. Despite the distance he’d made, it was even closer than before. A low rumble. He faced the thick of the trees. It continued. He listened. Closer, clearer. It wasn’t a groaning tree, or anything mechanical. It was a voice. And it was moving toward him.

  Heart and stomach aflutter, he pressed on, moved from the tree he leaned against and quickly found the next, and the next after that. Once he paused and listened, and the growling had stopped again. Just the waves. He kept moving.

  Searching the dark with his left hand, right hand behind him on the last tree, he felt nothing. He took a couple steps, hands swishing. He bumped into something at waist level. He bent over it, used it to steady himself. It was wooden. A flat, vertical plank. He felt the rising nub of the post behind it to which it was nailed. A wooden sign. If only he had the vision to read it…

  He played his bare feet along the ground (which had turned from grass and sand to a hard-packed dirt) and found it smooth and clear. He backtracked a bit, found the last tree he’d touched. Then he crossed again until he found the sign. He took a couple steps beyond the sign and found another tree, and another. He returned to the sign. Seemingly, there was a large gap in the trees where this sign was posted.

  It’s a cleared path.

  To test his theory, he took several steps into the gap, carefully feeling the dark. It was clear. He followed it a short ways. He crossed from one side of the path to the other as he went, touched the trees on either side and confirmed a consistent width. Maybe twenty paces into the path he stopped. He listened. The waves were there, but quieter. The trees were silent. The air smelled of damp wood, with a sharp hint of the beach underneath. The low growl was gone, though he worried the mere thought of it would conjure it back. He hurried on.

  The path bent a smidge, serpentine, back and forth, and he followed the best he could. A couple times he found himself wandering into the woods away from the path, slipping through gaps in the trees just wide enough to miss them. It was easy enough finding his way back. The dirt on the path was harder, emptier. He followed it for what felt like ten minutes or more.

  Then the sound returned.

  He held his breath. It was distant. But it was following.

  He quickened his pace. He knocked his shoulder against a tree growing out from the otherwise consistent line he followed and gasped, mistaking it for something else—anything else, besides a tree. He paused very briefly, listened, continued on. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. He looked over his shoulder toward the sound, still growling, even though there was nothing to see. There would never be anything to see.

  He stopped one last time, taut as a pulled rubber band. The growl was louder than ever. It was close, on the path. It was looking at him, he thought.

  Whatever it was, it barked—not quite like a dog, but a deep, phlegmy thing—and the hairs on his arms stood on end, rippled up from his wrists.

  After a brief hesitation… he ran.

  His swollen feet slapped the hard path. He held his hand out, hitting the trees to guide himself as his legs pumped. The thing behind him slapped its feet on the dirt in pursuit.

  A rhythm of two. Two feet. Two legs. It isn’t a dog. Something else.

  “Help!” he screamed. “Someone help!”

  It gained too quickly. He looked over his shoulder, felt its aura against the back of his neck, its smothering hunger. Just as he did, it tackled him. Wet and gooey. It splashed on him. He fell on his side. It dropped on top of him, wet arms and hands on his naked body. He kicked and pedaled himself away, pedaled himself into a tree, knocked the side of his head against it. The thing clambered over his legs, snarling, sneezing, gooey wet something all over his skin.

  “Gahh-haaa!”

  A mouth took hold of his inner thigh. The teeth released, rapid fire, and bit him again higher up, again and again. He covered his genitals and the jagged mouth clamped over the back of his hand. He jerked away. The mouth held fast, shook his hand back and forth like a dog with a rope. He screamed.

  Then a second mouth sank its teeth into his side.

  What the fuck?

  With a gust of sudden strength and effort, he kicked the creature off himself, onto the dirt beside him. He rolled once, twice, scrambled forward on his hands and knees. Trees brushed his body on all sides. He put his hand on one and climbed to his feet.

  The creature slapped its wide, sludgy hands on his back and he stumbled forward. He caught himself on another tree. The hands moved over him, around him. He felt something, another hand perhaps, slide around his throat. He clutched at it. He squeezed it in both hands, a thick tendril of sorts, and pulled. It only tightened. He wheezed. He was tugged down onto his knees, tugged again onto his back. The hands wrapped him in a backwards embrace there on the ground in the dirt and leaves. They rocked on the ground together, a struggle of panting and fruitless grasping. Then, softly in his ear, the rope around his neck made a sound. A hiss.

  It opened, a zipper of teeth, and with a fierce chainsaw buzz it decapitated him.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Screaming into the dark, shielding himself from a threat that was no longer there, he jerked upright as though from a terrible dream. He shuddered.

  Oh god. I’m okay. I’m all right.

  He sat, panting, covered in cold sweat. He touched his hands to his throat where a sliver of sensation remained, a tingly pinpricking, and rubbed dried sand from his skin…

  The sea waves roared and crashed around him.

  He tensed. He touched the floor beside him where he sat, sank his fingers into the cool, damp sand…

  Terror creeped over him like an insect. He opened his eyes wide, blinked them. Nothing.

  “What…”

  He heard his voice, though he didn’t mean to speak. He couldn’t help it.

  “What the hell…”

  He jumped to his feet. He spun around, eyes pried like a lunatic, and saw only the same black he’d awoken from. He felt his throat again, just to be sure, and found everything intact. He touched his side, where the teeth had been, and felt only his own smooth skin. He felt lower, over his naked privates, to the places on his thighs where the biting had started, and found nothing.

  No. No, this isn’t real. I’m still dreaming…

  He stumbled dumbly down the shore into the water again, felt the mild waves lap at his shins. Horrified, he hurried up the shore, a blind man marching, and nearly tripped over a plank of wood. He dropped to the ground and picked it up, passed his hands over it desperately. L-shaped. Like a boomerang. Broken on the ends.

  “Holy shit, this can’t be real.”

  He dropped the wooden plank and got back to his feet.

  What the hell is happening to me?

  He ventured beyond the wooden plank farther up the shore until his hands found the trees. He paused and listened at the tree line and heard only the waves at his back. The growling hadn’t come yet. Would it come at all? Would everything he’d just experienced repeat itself?

  What is this place?

  Not waiting to find out, he turned to the right and headed in the opposite direction as his last attempt. He walked faster this time, slapped the trees beside him to stay on a consistent route. Maybe he’d find another
path into the trees this way, a different one. And maybe he wouldn’t follow it.

  It can’t have been real. That thing…

  It wasn’t anything he’d ever seen before. Of course, he hadn’t actually seen it. But he thought if he had, it might have driven him mad. Something out of this world…

  What world am I really in?

  He touched his neck again as he hurried along, and remembered the pain there, the teeth through his flesh. He could still feel them, a faint shadow of them. It had happened. He was sure of it. It was too intense to be anything else—a dream, hallucination, whatever. Something horrible and grotesque was in the woods. It… it…

  Perhaps I’m not even blind…

  He followed the trees for what felt like twenty minutes or more. His feet touched sand, then grass, then sand again. There were odd gaps in the trees, but nothing intended. No paths. He never closed his eyes except to blink, though keeping them open offered nothing.

  The ground started to incline, a sandy slope, and he followed it up. The trees fell away beside him but he paid them no mind. It was a change, something different, when he thought he might follow the edge of the forest endlessly. The slope became so steep that he crawled on all fours, digging his way upward through the loose sand. Then there were rocks. Big boulders. He scrambled between them, over them, until finally he pulled himself up on a small grassy ledge. There, he rolled onto his back and caught his breath.

  Where am I going? What do I expect to find?

  The ground was flat here. He got to his feet. The waves lapped at the shore below him. He took a few steps forward and stopped. Was he on a hill? A cliff? He’d climbed to higher ground, but it was hard to know for how long it would remain ‘higher ground’. One step too many and he could fall down the other side of it, back to the beach.

  Very carefully, he shuffled his feet through the grass, never lifting them completely. He did this for maybe thirty feet before something in the distance caught his eye.