Uncle Leroy's Coffin: A Novel of Supernatural Suspense

By Brad Carter

You will face the darkness someday, we all do

“What he saw inside the coffin was not his uncle’s sleeping form laid atop white silk padding. Instead, what he saw was darkness more profound than any he’d ever before seen.”

When Andy Gresham’s son Dylan is abducted from his bed on Halloween night, he realizes that history has caught up with him. Memories he’d buried long ago begin to surface, and he is forced to share with his wife the story of Halloween night in 1991.

His secret history is a strange tale of a confrontation with a supernatural entity that left two of Andy’s friends dead and one institutionalized. And this secret history just might hold the key to rescuing Andy’s child.

With his mentally unstable friend Ben at his side, Andy sets off on a mission to rescue Dylan and do battle one more time with a demon that stole their childhoods.

The time has come for Andy to face the dark.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Post Mortem Press
• Release date: Aug 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781537862613

Book preview

VALIS

PROLOGUE: CRYSTAL FALLS, OCTOBER 1991

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GRACIE BENSON WAITED UNTIL HER mother was out cold before making her escape. She could tell her mom was down for the count, slumped so far over in the recliner that her head lolled sideways onto the armrest. A rerun of Baywatch flickered on the TV while her mom snored softly, clutching the neck of a mostly empty bottle of vodka in one hand and the remote control in the other. Janelle Benson went down hard on Saturday nights, and she stayed down. Gracie didn’t even bother tiptoeing through the living room. Nothing short of an atomic blast could raise her mom.

See ya later, mama.

Gracie breezed through the living room. She left a jet stream of imitation Chanel and Orchard Blossom hairspray and bubblegum-scented lip gloss in her wake as she stepped out of the trailer. The screen door clapped shut behind her.

She stood on the front step and surveyed her surroundings. It was late, but there were still plenty of lights on in the trailer park. The sounds of her neighbors’ TVs and stereos drifted out loud and clear through open windows and doors. And then there was the usual background noise of fighting and fucking. The park was never really quiet—it just got less loud.

Gracie shook her head. This place was gross.

Creepy old Mr. Henderson was outside, seated in a lawn chair in front of his trailer. He had a bottle of something in his lap, and he raised it and took a long pull. Looked like Janelle Benson wasn’t the only one doing some late night soul-searching. That old guy gave Gracie the creeps. Last year, she’d been the only girl in his Industrial Arts class. The way he’d leered at her had almost been enough to make her ask for a transfer into Home Ec with all the other girls. But she’d enjoyed the freedom of Mr. Henderson’s class too much. In Home Ec, there was no way you could sneak cigarettes or cuss right out loud. But just down the hall in shop class, hell, you could do just about anything.

And then there’d been the time that Gracie’s mom had caught Mr. Henderson peeping in the window at her while she was getting dressed. Her mom had refused to call the cops, saying that she thought it was sort of nice that someone still thought of her that way.

Howdy there, Gracie, Mr. Henderson barked. He raised his bottle in greeting.

Hi, Mr. Henderson. Get bent, you old pervert.

Nice night to go looking for trouble, ain’t it? His voice was so screwed-up that it took most of his students a couple weeks just to understand what the hell he was saying. Gracie thought it sounded like someone hawking up a good loogie and forgetting to spit. A loogie full of gravel.

I ain’t looking for trouble. Just going for a walk. And if you tell anyone you saw me, I’ll tell them what a rotten old peeping tom you are.

The old shop teacher licked his lips slowly. It reminded Gracie of that big slug thing from Star Wars.

Maybe trouble’s looking for you, he said.

Yeah, whatever. And since that was about her limit for how much conversation she could tolerate with Mr. Henderson, she hopped down from the front step and got to walking. She could feel the teacher’s eyes roaming over her as she went.

The night air was unseasonably warm, and there were still some mosquitoes left over from the summer. Down by the creek, there’d be even more. Gracie hoped Kevin had enough sense to bring one of those citronella candles. Last time they’d camped out, she’d gone home mosquito-bitten from head to toe. She’d even had them down in the crack of her ass. And damned if those weren’t the ones that itched the most. She’d walked around for a week worrying at the seat of her pants like her underwear was crawling up.

Gracie supposed that was a small price to pay for having a boyfriend who was older, who was an actual man. All those snotty bitches who’d laughed at her for scratching her mosquito-bitten butt—who laughed at her for living in a trailer with her drunk mother, for never having new clothes, for repeating the seventh grade, for always having a beauty school haircut, for a thousand other reasons—none of those bitches had boyfriends who were out of school. None of them had boyfriends who could drive. And so what if she couldn’t tell anybody about her and Kevin? They wouldn’t have to carry on in secret forever. In a year, she’d be sixteen and then she’d ride around with whoever she damn well pleased and no one could say shit about it. She’d squeeze over next to Kevin in the cab of his truck, and he’d drive with his left hand on the wheel and his right arm around her shoulder.

Just thinking about all the romantic stuff had gotten her light-headed. She’d been walking like a robot, her feet taking her through the trailer park and out to Belleview Road on their own. Like the captain of her brain had switched over to autopilot. But she did have enough sense to look both ways before crossing the road, however. It wouldn’t matter that Kevin forgot the citronella candle—or the condom, for that matter—if she got splattered into a road pizza.

She dashed across the two lane blacktop. She was careful going down the short grassy incline on the other side of the road and doubly careful picking her way across the muddy ditch at the bottom. Kevin didn’t seem to care too much about how she dressed, but Gracie went to great lengths to look pretty for him. No, scratch that. It wasn’t pretty that she was after. Pretty was for those snobby bitches on the cheerleading squad. Gracie was too mature for that childish shit. It was sexy that she was shooting for these days. And that night, she’d nailed it, with the fishnet stockings and the high-heeled shoes, with the tight black skirt and the see-through blouse. It was the same knockout ensemble that had gotten her sent home from school on Friday morning, a clear sign that it was the right one to wear.

So she proceeded with caution. She’d saved up forever and a day to buy the outfit. She’d be damned if she was doing to get them soaked through with ditch water before Kevin got to see her. When she’d conquered the ditch, she gave one last look behind her to make sure there was no one around to observe her escape, then slipped into the trees.

The woods around Easy Creek didn’t have a name. At least, not that Gracie knew. And she’d lived in Crystal Falls all her life. They were just the woods that cut the town in half, separating the trailer park from the nicer neighborhoods to the north. Both those facts used to depress her: that she’d lived each one of her fifteen years in crappy old Crystal Falls and that she shared a dirty single wide with her drunk of a mother. Now, with Kevin promising her a future full of romance and adventure, Gracie just counted the days until freedom. When sixteen rolled around, she could drop out of school. Then she and Kevin could watch Crystal Falls disappear in the rearview mirror of his Ford pickup.

Gracie recited this plan over and over in her head like a prayer as she walked down the path to Easy Creek.

The first few times she’d come out here at night to meet Kevin, she was sure she’d get lost in the woods and never find her way out. The path Kevin told her about wasn’t much of a path at all. It was like a less dense patch that had been tromped down by all the kids who used to go to the creek to drink and smoke and screw and do all the fun stuff that needed to be done away from the judgmental eyes of adults. But after those kids had gone missing a few years back—after the Easy Creek Witch got them, if you believed the stories—no one much came down that way anymore. And the path was slowly being reclaimed by the woods.

And that was just fine with Gracie. She and her boyfriend liked their privacy. And besides, she didn’t believe that stuff about werewolves and goblins and what have you. That dumb shit was for kids. And Gracie Benson—in her sexy stockings and shoes—was a woman.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t get a little creeped out by the woods. Shit, who wouldn’t? In the daylight, it was just trees and weeds and tangles of underbrush. At night, however, it was something like another world. The weeds were so thick they snatched at her ankles. The trees looked like huge skeletons. And that wasn’t all. Once she stepped across the little patch of grass that separated the roadside ditch from the woods, the air seemed to change. It got cooler, drier. And it smelled funny, too. Like roadkill mixed up with that metallic smell right before a lightning strike. It was faint enough that you didn’t notice after a few minutes, but it was there. But the air and the smell and odd look of the trees at night, that was all okay. It was stuff she could get used to. What was hard to get used to—what she couldn’t quite explain away as just her imagination—was the sense of being watched and followed. The instant she stepped into the woods, she got the same feeling as when the teacher called her up to the front of the class to solve a math problem on the blackboard. It went away once she was with Kevin. At least, it got easier to ignore.

Bullshit kid’s stuff, she whispered as she picked her way across the path that wasn’t really a path. Ain’t scared of some old story.

The story—at least the way Gracie heard it—went like this:

Back in 1985, some kids from Walnut Junction decided to drive up to Edgewood to watch some movies at the Starlight Drive-In. Between the two towns, someone in the group got the bright idea that instead of going to the drive-in to screw around and get drunk and stoned, they should just find a spot in the woods to party. After all, at the drive-in, they’d have to hunker down with their beers and joints every time one of the security guards walked by. But if they could find somewhere off in the woods, well, then they could just do all of that out in the open.

One way or another—Gracie was fuzzy on the details—they decided to get off the highway two exits early and find a spot in Crystal Falls. Gracie figured it had something to do with Crystal Falls being the ass-end of nowhere. Who could possibly bust them there?

Anyhow, these four kids from Walnut Junction, they wound up at this little clearing beside Easy Creek. They stashed their car on the side of the road, covering it up with some fallen branches to hide it, and trooped into the woods with their cooler of beer and their portable radio.

Gracie had heard multiple versions of the story, but they all included varying amounts of partying. Some versions restricted the kids’ activities to a little dope smoking and beer drinking. The more explicit versions described outright orgies. Gracie supposed the truth was somewhere in the middle. But none of that—not the toking, the drinking, or the screwing—had much to do with what happened next. All four of those kids were killed by the Easy Creek Witch.

The way Gracie had heard it, they were so torn up that the cops had trouble matching the parts. She imagined a bunch of policemen standing around trying to decide which liver went with which kidney or whatever. The thought was both funny and disgusting.

Now, the story was that the police and the mayor and whoever else was included when people talked about the authorities, they got together and hushed the whole thing up so that no one would start a panic. They—the authorities—knew what had happened to those kids. And they knew there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about solving it. So they called it a disappearance. Officially, all that was found of the missing Walnut Junction teens was an empty borrowed station wagon and a single shoe.

But there were plenty of people who refused to believe that some kids just disappeared. It was more fun for them to believe in witches and ghosts and all manner of Halloween nonsense. Gracie wasn’t one of those people. She’d given up on magic and all that bullshit a long time ago. When Santa Claus and Jesus and the dumbass Easter bunny had all declined to bring her daddy back or even just make her mom put down the vodka, Gracie had known that was no such thing as magic.

She had her own theory about what happened to those Walnut Junction kids. She figured they got out and never looked back. Probably they’d been planning it for a while, saving up money and working up their nerve. They’d ditched the car so the police couldn’t track them down. And then they’d gone somewhere that wasn’t such a damn dump and made something of their lives.

So that story didn’t much scare Gracie Benson. Hell, it inspired her. When she and Kevin finally made their big exit, she planned on leaving a single shoe behind as a parting shot. But not one of her nice heels.

A fucking shoe? Kevin finished his beer and tossed the empty can into the creek. Why in the hell would you want to do a thing like that?

Gracie scooted over on the tailgate, pressing against Kevin’s side. It’s, like, a romantic gesture.

I don’t see nothing romantic about that. Hopping around on one shoe because you left one setting on the creek bank. He grabbed another Budweiser out of the cooler.

Well, it wouldn’t be one of my good ones. She lifted her feet to show off her heels. In the dim light of the lantern, they looked even sexier.

Kevin just laughed. That’s another thing. Who the hell wears high heels to go traipsing through the woods? Sometimes, I swear you ain’t got a brain in that pretty little head of yours.

Gracie moved away. And just to make sure he got the message, she gave him a swat on the back of his head, where his straw-colored hair hung down over the back of his shirt. The blow landed just as he was bringing the beer to his mouth, and it knocked the can right out of his hand. It went end over end, spraying foam as it fell to the ground. Kevin responded with a swat of his own, catching Gracie across the mouth with a backhand.

Goddamn it. That was almost full.

She pressed a hand to her face. I’m sorry.

"Sorry don’t put the beer back in the can."

But I wore these heels for you. Tears threatened the corners of her eyes. I just wanted to look pretty.

Look, I’m sorry about whacking you like that. I’ve just had a lot on my mind, you know. My dad is riding my ass pretty good about getting a full time job. The son of a bitch told me he was fixing to start collecting rent if I didn’t work more. He jumped off the tailgate and moved in front of Gracie, taking her hands in his. Listen, you do look pretty. Real sexy.

She sniffed. You’re not just saying that?

No, I mean it. Real hot. Look here, I’m going to take a piss. When I get back, I’ll show you just how sexy I think you are. Okay?

He tromped off into the trees, cursing as he pushed branches away from his face. Gracie watched him until was out of the lantern’s light then lay back on the sleeping bag spread out in the truck’s bed. She liked that Kevin still walked off into the trees to do his business. Even though she’d seen his thing—and done plenty more than just look over the past few months—she didn’t like the thought of watching him pee. That was nasty. She liked that Kevin had enough respect for her not to just pull it out and go right in front of her.

She looked up at the patches of night sky visible through the lattice work of branches. The buzzing insects, the softly burbling creek, and the blatting of tree frogs was a soothing song. On nights like this, she could feel her future so close she could almost touch it. They’d leave Crystal Falls and all its bullshit behind. She’d leave Gracie Benson behind too. Once she and Kevin got married, she’d be Gracie Grady.

Gracie Grady. She said it aloud for the first time, wincing. How in the hell had she not noticed the awful jangle that name had? She’d written it plenty of times. Back at the trailer, she had the better part of a notebook filled with that signature. But, maybe because Kevin was so insistent that their relationship remain secret, she’d never actually spoken it aloud.

She crinkled up her nose and tried once more. "Grace Grady."

That was better. It sounded like a name that a movie star might have. And, who knew, maybe she’d become a movie star. She’d brought up that possibility with Kevin once, and he hadn’t laughed.

Yeah, I guess you could pull it off, he’d said. Probably you’d have to show your tits. Pop that pair out, and I bet you could be in a movie. You felt like really making a career of it, you could show some bush.

You think so? she’d asked, glancing down at the bust line that had been expanding for the past two years.

Gracie Benson was shy, but Grace Grady wouldn’t mind showing her tits. She wouldn’t bat an eye when the director told her to shuck her shirt. Sure, Kevin might get a bit jealous when some cute actor—Christian Slater, maybe—put his hands all over her goodies. But she’d calm him down, make him see that it was all part of her glamorous Hollywood life…

She was teetering on the edge of a full-blown daydream when a sudden burst of noise cut through the steady night song. For a moment, she thought she might have imagined it, but then it came again: snapping branches, crunching leaves, and soft thumps of something smacking against the ground. And then something else. A wet, spilling sound, like when she dropped laundry that had just come out of the washing machine. Then, as abruptly as the noise had begun, it was gone.

Gracie sat up. Kevin?

He didn’t answer. She wondered if maybe he’d been standing there doing his business and had lost his footing. Maybe he fell and conked his head. He had been drinking, after all. But only beer and not that much. Gracie didn’t know how much other nineteen year old boys drank—men, she corrected herself, as if Kevin was standing there ready to slap—but she’d seen Kevin put away more than the few beers and still have his wits.

She tried again. Kevin, honey, are you all right?

And again, silence answered.

Maybe he was just screwing around. He’d done that before on one of their camping trips, jumping out from the shadows and hollering like the boogeyman himself. She didn’t like it then, and she sure as hell didn’t like it now. If he thought he was going to lure her out there just so he could scare her, he had another thing coming.

You want to fool around with me, you better get your butt back here. She tried to put some edge in her voice to let him know she meant business.

But maybe something really was wrong. Maybe he had fallen and needed help. She grabbed the lantern and climbed down from the truck.

A few steps away from the clearing and she started cursing the high heels. On the mostly even ground of the path, they’d done okay. But out here, just a few feet into the real woods, they snagged on the undergrowth and sank into the soft patches of soil. She held up the lantern and looked around.

No sign of Kevin.

She pressed a few steps deeper into the trees. Why had he gone so far? It had only sounded like he’d walked a few steps.

She tried to call out again, but her voice caught in her throat. Something was wrong. An icy shot of queasiness streaked through her belly. Her palms went slick with sweat. Suddenly, the stories she’d heard about the woods around Easy Creek didn’t seem so stupid and childish. And the walk back home seemed very, very long.

Kevin, please! This time she screamed. She didn’t care. Even if he jumped out and laughed at her, that was fine, just as long as this was over with. Please, you’re scaring me!

She couldn’t take it anymore. She was going home. If Kevin had to sleep out in the woods for a night, well, that was just how it would have to be. Even if it earned her a few slaps, she was getting the hell out of there.

She turned and started to pick her way back to the clearing. But after a few steps, something jerked her head around. She yelped as the lantern spun out of her hand. She reached back to grab at whatever had gotten hold of her. Heart hammering in her chest, she thrashed, kicking and screaming and scratching at her attacker. For a panicked instant, she knew that the stories were true, that the witch was real. She felt her fingertips brush the gnarled hands that held her, and she drew in a deep breath to scream again. She lashed out with her right foot, kicking backwards so hard that her shoe came off.

Then she realized, as her bare foot slapped against rough bark, what had happened. Her hair had gotten tangled in a snare of low-hanging branches, and her thrashing around had gotten it hopelessly knotted up. The creature that had grabbed her was nothing more than a dead tree.

Shit, shit, shit! She took a deep breath and began to pull her hair free. It wouldn’t have been so hard if she hadn’t hosed it down with hairspray. She laughed as her shaky fingers worked at the knots of hair. This would be a funny story to tell later. After she found Kevin. Everything would be okay then, and they’d laugh about the whole thing. He’d drink another beer or two, then they’d fool around. Everything would be just fine.

He’s gone, you know. The voice was quiet, just above a whisper.

Gracie froze. Who’s there?

The ragged sound of irregular breathing answered her.

Gracie’s fingers refused to cooperate. They fumbled through her hair uselessly. Her knees felt wobbly. Leave me alone. My boyfriend will be back soon.

The laugh that followed was as rough as the tree bark pressing into Gracie’s back.

Who are you? she asked, her eyes searching the darkness.

I think you know.

Gracie heard a faint rustling of leaves behind her. She struggled to turn around, but the snarl of branches held her. She pulled until she thought her scalp would rip right off. But she didn’t get anywhere.

Don’t struggle. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. The voice was so close now that Gracie could feel hot breath against the back of her neck. We’re going away to a place of wonders.

No, Gracie whimpered.

But isn’t that what you’ve wanted? The voice dropped to a whisper. To go away?

That’s not what I meant…

Hush now.

The hands that wrapped around Gracie’s throat were almost soft.

PART ONE: LITTLE ROCK 2015

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The Most Horrible Time of the Year

1.

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ANDY GRESHAM WAS RAKING A batch of fallen leaves off the front lawn when his wife delivered the bad news: Nemo was dead.

I was putting away little man’s clothes when I saw Nemo floating in his bowl belly-up. Rachel stood on the edge of the porch, one hand in the pocket of her lab coat. With her loose blonde curls spilling over her shoulders, she looked like an actor from one of those ridiculous medical soap operas she watched. Andy never understood how she could spend all day at the clinic then come home and watch a bunch of fresh-faced TV stars pretend to do what she actually did day in and day out. But that was Rachel for you.

Andy stripped off his work gloves and propped the rake against the side of the house. That’s certainly a bummer.

Nemo was a goldfish that belonged to their eight-year old son Dylan. Last year, after a sleepover at his friend David’s house, Dylan had come home begging for a dog. David owned a golden retriever named Maximus, a dog that was, according to Dylan, the coolest thing on planet earth. Rachel and Andy put their heads together and came up with a compromise. They told him that a dog was a lot of responsibility, but if he could prove that he was capable of taking care of a pet, they’d revisit the question in time for his ninth birthday. In the meantime, he could prove just how big and responsible he was by taking care of a goldfish. And for the past three months, the kid had been as conscientious as an eight-year old could be. The goldfish got the royal treatment: precisely measured feedings and thrice-weekly water changes, in addition to a wide array of plastic dinosaurs and other trinkets to spruce up his bowl.

You think he’d notice a replacement? Rachel asked.

Dylan? He’s only the most observant kid in the country.

I don’t mean forever. Just for tonight, so his Halloween isn’t ruined.

Andy chewed that one over. It was possible that, in his excited rush to put on his Harry Potter costume and run around the neighborhood filling his plastic pumpkin with candy, Dylan might not notice that Nemo was suddenly different.

Andy told Rachel that it might work.

She smiled. I can swing by Pets Unlimited on my lunch break, drop off the stand-in on my back to work.

Don’t worry about it. I’ll be out and about today. Think I can handle finding a stunt double.

Rachel’s smile faltered. You’re going over to Cedar Winds?

Andy felt weird standing out there on the grass, looking up at his wife. Even though they were just a few feet apart, it felt like they were shouting across the yard at one another. He climbed the stairs to the porch and put his arm around her. He kissed her head, getting a snootful of the overpriced shampoo she mail ordered. Why she bought shampoo from some catalogue of imported beauty products when the grocery store had plenty of brands to choose from was another one of those Mysteries of Rachel. Then again, Andy was happy with Prell or whatever was on sale, so what the hell did he know?

Yeah, I’m going over there in a little while, he said.

She pressed against him. It’s just I know that sometimes you get pretty upset when you see Ben. And Dylan is so excited about tonight. He couldn’t stand it if his daddy wasn’t fired up for trick or treating.

He held her away just enough to look her in the eyes and assured her everything would be just fine.

Okay. But I’ll hold you to it, she said. I’m serious, too. No moping around the house. You’re going to walk around the neighborhood with us and eat candy corn and be happy.

I’m not eating any goddamn candy corn. And that’s not up for negotiation either, woman. Regular sugar has nightmares about being reincarnated as candy corn. That earned him a laugh, so he gave her one more assurance. I promise it’ll be a good night. Scout’s honor. Then tomorrow, I’ll have the talk with the little guy.

You mean the death talk?

Andy shrugged. Don’t you think this is one of those—what’s the president call them now— teachable moments?

She did that nose-wrinkling thing that told him she wasn’t sure about something. Look, if you’re not up to it…

It’ll probably be a bigger deal for me than him, I bet. Kids these days, you know.

I know it’s not a pleasant subject for you. With your parents and all, I mean. And the other stuff… She glanced at his hand on her shoulder, at the burn scars covering his fingers.

I write about zombies and ghosts and vampires and guys who use axes and chainsaws in ways that aren’t recommended by the manufacturer. I think I can manage the death talk.

He was trying to keep it light, but Rachel didn’t buy it. It’s not the same thing and you know it. You don’t always have to make a joke out of it. And don’t give me that goofy look. Sometimes adults have to talk about things without being a wiseass.

But wiseass is my native tongue. He took his hand away, shoved it in his pocket.

Andy. Rachel’s tone told him that he’d pushed that particular routine to its logical conclusion. He dropped the act.

Look, I don’t even remember them. They were gone before I was out of diapers. And I’ve made my peace with the other stuff. It’s in the past. And it was true, to a point. A lie of omission wasn’t quite a lie, was it? All the same, he felt guilty. He shoved his hand deeper into his pocket.

Still, she said.

"Honey, I can do this. In fact, I think I should do it." He figured if he said it enough, he’d believe it himself.

Okay. I’ve got to get going. Full slate today at the baby factory. She gave him a peck on the cheek. You be good.

Don’t drop any babies. Those suckers are slippery when fresh.

She rolled her eyes. And just like that, we’re back to wiseass.

After Rachel left, he tried to finish the leaves, but his heart just wasn’t in it. He bagged up what he had and went into the house.

Although Dr. Murphy told him at his last physical that he should probably either switch to decaf or radically decrease his coffee consumption, Andy brewed a pot and poured a cup. The fragrant steam tickled his nose as he raised the cup to his lips.

Ah, sweet elixir of creativity, I’ll never abandon you. Take that, medical establishment.

He took his illicit brew into the cluttered spare bedroom that served as his office, booted up the computer, and made a half-assed attempt at writing. He sat back and looked at what he had. It wasn’t worth a damn. Coffee or not, the wheels just weren’t turning. He backspaced to a blank page and got up to pace around.

He had a single house plant in the office—a red and white orchid that sat atop his filing cabinet. Rachel called it the Flower of Invincibility, and she said it in that voice that let Andy know she was imitating comic book dialogue.

The flower had been through four separate moves and several spills, yet it had survived. Hell, it had lived through a stint in a college dorm room. Rachel had often expressed dismay, asking him how he could keep a notoriously finicky plant like an orchid around for decades when he’d managed to kill both a fern and a cactus. He’d smiled and told her it was magic. And in a way, he supposed it was.

Andy spritzed the orchid with a spray bottle of distilled water. Droplets settled on its waxy petals.

Still alive and kicking, he said to the flower.

There was a pinball machine in one corner of the room—an old 1970s relic called Alien Attack!—and he pinged away at it for a few minutes. The racket it made was enormous, and the flashing lights were nearly seizure-inducing. It was Andy’s go-to device for smashing through writer’s block. Something about that silver ball crashing around on the garishly painted surface jarred the good stuff loose in Andy’s brain. But he only allowed himself one game at a time. Any more than that and he’d get sucked in. He could waste an entire morning failing to best Dylan’s highest score. It was infuriating: the kid thought the game was a quaint time-waster from a bygone era when people were deprived of good entertainment. He’d mastered the thing in one afternoon, blowing Andy’s high score away. To add insult to injury, the kid acted bored while he did it. He’d actually yawned.

Andy smiled at the memory. Dylan really was something else. Andy supposed just about every father thought that about his kid. He glanced around at the office walls. They were plastered with Dylan L. Gresham originals in both watercolor and tempura. A few of the early masterpieces—when the artist had still been finding his own vision—were rendered in crayon and finger paints. And although he was sure to most eyes they were just regular old greasy kid’s stuff art, to Andy, they were something more. Dylan’s art had a simultaneously riotous and soothing quality that Andy couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Of course, Rachel had told him that he was just a proud father. She liked the paintings, sure. She affixed them to the refrigerator with little souvenir magnets. She hung a couple on the bulletin board by her desk at the clinic. Andy proposed that the kid had talent beyond the normal child’s impulse to create art. But she’d told him that it might just be a phase, and there was no sense getting their hopes up that they had a prodigy on their hands. Dylan might, in the restless manner of children the world over, drop painting altogether in favor of some new mania.

Andy supposed she was right. He knew how quickly kids could jump from one thing to another. Hell, anyone in the comic industry knew about hobbies burning themselves out. But he harbored the hope that Dylan would stick with it. In the meantime, he collected as many of the abstract color riots as he could. His office walls were visible only in the small spaces between the dozens of paintings held up with thumbtacks and Scotch tape.

Andy played another couple halfhearted rounds of Alien Attack! Not only did he not approach Dylan’s high score, he didn’t even get within spitting distance of his own. The pinball gods were in a cruel mood, it seemed. When the last ball rattled home and the machine went silent, he stepped away. He sank down into his chair and got back to work. Or at least he made an effort in that direction.

A few sentences stuttered out of his brain, and he strung them together into a paragraph and then a scene, but he gave up after that. He read over what he’d written and knew that it was going nowhere. The writing was decent—far from his worst, equally far from his best—but it didn’t give him that special tingle that said he was onto something.

That was okay. Vicky had the scripts for the next year’s run of The Netherworld Commandos. They were way ahead of the game. Besides, it was a contract year for them with Skybox Comics, and the clock was ticking on their option to renew. If Skybox passed on the option, all that writing would be for nothing. Vicky didn’t seem too worried about it. Easy for her to say: she’d been in the big leagues, doing pencils and inks on two Marvel titles back in the early 90s. Before that, she’d done covers for Vertigo. Victoria Quinn was still a marketable name in the comics world. If The Netherworld Commandos went the way of poor departed Nemo, she could always rely on her contacts to get something going. Most likely, Andy would just be up shit creek.

There was nothing to be done about it for the moment. Either things would work out or they wouldn’t. Besides, his version of shit creek was nothing like the one so many people were forced to paddle. Rachel’s income was what really put the bread on the table. If Skybox saw fit to drop the hammer on the Commandos, it wasn’t like Andy would be facing bankruptcy. The house wouldn’t go back to the bank, and Dylan’s college fund would still be safe. Maybe a Disney vacation would be out of the question, maybe their cars would have to hold out a couple years. That would be about as deep as the cuts would go. But still, it would mean going back to square one for his career.

Hell with it. Either it will sort itself out or it won’t.

He went back to the kitchen to refill his cup, feeling so guilty that you’d have thought Dr. Murphy was in there watching him do it. Then he went into Dylan’s bedroom. The kid’s bed was unmade, and the floor was a minefield of comic books and action figures. Art supplies were piled up on the desk alongside a stack of recently completed masterpieces. Dylan’s conscientious streak didn’t extend from goldfish care to housekeeping, it seemed.

Andy sat down on the bed and looked at the little corner desk that supported Nemo’s home. The bowl was unoccupied at the moment, containing only water, dark blue gravel, two plastic T-Rexes, and a little treasure chest. He wondered what Rachel had done with the corpse and if it was even appropriate to call a dead fish a corpse. Had she flushed it down the toilet? Had she stored it in little box to await a proper funeral? He laughed out loud, but the sound was at odds with how he felt.

It was the season, of course. Autumn scrambled him up. Halloween, especially. Later, when Dylan led him a merry chase through the neighborhood and Rachel held his hand as they kicked through the leaves on the sidewalk, he’d be happy as could be. He hadn’t lied to his wife about that. But sitting there among his son’s little possessions, Andy was awash in melancholy.

He smiled and shook his head as that phrase flashed across his mind. It was the kind of thing that made Rachel roll her eyes and say, You writers and your vocabularies. She’d smile in a way completely her own—completely Rachel—with the right side of her mouth pulled up higher than the left and her eyebrows raised ever so slightly. Depending on her mood, she’d either poke him in the ribs with a playful elbow or grab his face with both hands and plant a kiss on him.

When Andy hit a low point in the days before Dylan came along—and every so often, without warning, he still hit one—he’d needed Rachel the way a swimmer with a sudden, acute cramp grasps for the edge of the swimming pool. One of those crooked smiles, one of those out-of-the-blue smacking kisses could haul him up from the tar pit of depression. The admittedly tiny amount of reading he’d done on the subject told him that this need wasn’t healthy, that redemption had to come from within. He didn’t care. Rachel was his lifeline. No amount of bullshit psychology could convince him that it was bad thing.

They’d met while they were both in college. Andy had been a semi-directionless English major, unsure with each passing week of class that he’d ever be able to scratch a career out of his love of writing and comic books. Rachel was a laser-focused grad student with her plans all but carved into stone. They were on such different trajectories that it was a miracle their paths ever converged. Or maybe it was fate. Whatever cosmic force controlled random car accidents, anyway. Was there a god of traffic collisions? If so, Andy knew that he owed this deity a debt of gratitude.

Their cars—Andy’s shitbox Dodge and Rachel’s meticulously clean Toyota—became intimately involved when the Dodge’s bumper crunched the Toyota’s rear quarter panel in the parking lot behind the library. When Rachel emerged from her wounded Camry, Andy had two simultaneous impressions: that she was the angriest woman he’d ever seen and that she was also the prettiest woman he’d ever seen.

Over the years—at social gatherings like the annual Christmas party for the employees at the clinic—when Andy told the story of how he met Rachel, he’d say that he didn’t quite remember how they went from the scene of the accident to sharing a table at IHOP.

It must have been the accident, he’d say, tapping his forehead. I jarred something loose, and in my weakened condition, she bent me to her will.

The joke always earned him a few laughs. But there was a grain of truth at its center. It was hard to recall how they’d gone from exchanging insurance information to exchanging phone numbers over plates of pancakes. Even level-headed Rachel couldn’t really remember exactly how she’d gone from a towering inferno of female rage to a woman smitten with a man five years her junior.

He must have been one smooth talker, she’d say to those gathered at the Christmas party. Then she’d grab his hand and maybe lay her head on his shoulder.

Andy liked to think that she was right, that he had been suave and sophisticated enough to capture the attention of this brilliant woman. But he knew the truth: that he was one of the luckiest men alive. It was a fact that made his lies of omission sting his conscience.

2.

..................

CEDAR WINDS WAS PRETTY FAR from what you’d picture when you heard the phrase long term convalescent care facility. When Andy first heard that Ben’s parents were sticking him in a home, his brain conjured up images of piss-stained carpet, yellowed walls, and rows of ancient hospital beds full of emaciated scarecrow people tended by hatchet-faced nurses. He remembered the horror stories about the old folks’ homes that Rachel visited during her geriatrics rotation in med school.

The first time he’d gone to visit, he’d braced himself for the worst. But upon arrival, he was able to breathe a big sigh of relief.

Cedar Winds looked as much like an apartment complex as a medical facility, with neat little rooms and wide, brightly lit hallways. There were common areas with comfortable furniture and TVs. And the cafeteria looked like it could turn out more than Jell-O and overcooked green beans. The décor had a heavy emphasis on church stuff—portraits of the benevolent Caucasian Jesus abounded—but it was a religious facility, after all. Ben’s parents had gotten more and more religious as the years pressed on, and it didn’t surprise Andy one bit that they put their son in a place that gave him a daily dose of the Good Book along with his medications. But the staff wasn’t a gang of Nurse Ratched lookalikes, and the atmosphere wasn’t oppressive. So what if Honky Jesus presided over the whole thing? It wasn’t like the place was staffed by Appalachian snake handlers.

Nevertheless,

Reviews for Uncle Leroy's Coffin

[danysh2016 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very imaginative storytelling, very reminiscent of a Stephen King tale. Fanciful, scary, thrilling. The only negative that I have is that the climax itself felt very rushed in what was otherwise a well-fleshed out book. Would love to read more from this author.

[key_largo-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Not Kindle Unlimited, not freebie day thing either, one of my here's a free no strings book but it would be really nice if you reviewed it when you were done {yeah do those now and then still, pretty sure this one was via librarything}. Was going to go with a 4, mostly based on my horror 'eh whatever' factor, as didn't realize that that was the basic genre, so don't go by that if you are looking for a horror book, on that basis you'd probably like it, so based on IF I liked horror in general or whatever, would say it's a 5, mostly because at least for the most part it wasn't same old {a little bit yeah but not overall}. *note: this IS available, as it shows, on kindle, BUT there is NO listing on goodreads for the kindle version, just paperbackWhat he saw inside the coffin was not his uncle’s sleeping form laid atop white silk padding. Instead, what he saw was darkness more profound than any he’d ever before seen.”When Andy Gresham’s son Dylan is abducted from his bed on Halloween night, he realizes that history has caught up with him. Memories he’d buried long ago begin to surface, and he is forced to share with his wife the story of Halloween night in 1991. His secret history is a strange tale of a confrontation with a supernatural entity that left two of Andy’s friends dead and one institutionalized. And this secret history just might hold the key to rescuing Andy’s child. With his mentally unstable friend Ben at his side, Andy sets off on a mission to rescue Dylan and do battle one more time with a demon that stole their childhoods.The time has come for Andy to face the dark.