The Patch

By Jason Cantrell

Long ago, something alien and uncanny fell to the earth. For centuries, it lay dormant. Now, this powerful entity has awakened and seeks to overrun the planet.

It's 1972, and many residents have gone missing from the town of Royal Isle, Nebraska--hapless victims of the creature's grisly appetite. Unaware of the true threat, the locals believe a serial killer named Craig Deats is once again on the prowl.

As winter takes a firm grip on the land, the disappearances abruptly cease.

Over forty years pass before the creature's progeny rises again.

Will humanity survive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645366379

Jason Cantrell

Jason Cantrell is an award-winning author from the Texas Gulf Coast. He writes short stories, novels and writes and produces comic books. The horror genre is Jason's area of special interest and he is a lover of horror films and fiction, classic and modern. In addition to writing, he works as a part-time instructor for two local community colleges. He is married to his awesome wife, Jennifer, and has a daughter, Elizabeth. In his spare time, he enjoys playing his guitars, raptor-watching, and drinking dark beer.

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Epilogue

About the Author

Jason Cantrell is an award-winning author from the Texas Gulf Coast. He writes short stories, novels and writes and produces comic books. The horror genre is Jason’s area of special interest and he is a lover of horror films and fiction, classic and modern. In addition to writing, he works as a part-time instructor for two local community colleges. He is married to his awesome wife, Jennifer, and has a daughter, Elizabeth. In his spare time, he enjoys playing his guitars, raptor-watching, and drinking dark beer.

About the Book

Long ago, something alien and uncanny fell to the earth. For centuries, it lay dormant. Now, this powerful entity has awakened and seeks to overrun the planet.

It’s 1972, and many residents have gone missing from the town of Royal Isle, Nebraska—hapless victims of the creature’s grisly appetite. Unaware of the true threat, the locals believe a serial killer named Craig Deats is once again on the prowl.

As winter takes a firm grip on the land, the disappearances abruptly cease.

Over forty years pass before the creature’s progeny rises again.

Will humanity survive?

Dedication

To Jennifer Cantrell, who inspired all of this.

To my parents, especially Patricia Janet Cantrell, who

continuously encouraged me to write down my stories.

Copyright Information

Copyright © Jason Cantrell (2019)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Cantrell, Jason

The Patch

ISBN 9781641829021 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781641829038 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645366379 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939364

The main category of the book —Fiction / Horror

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgement

I’d like to thank Astrid Lowery, my former journalism teacher, for editing a significant portion of the novel and for tutoring me on the fine details involved in fiction writing. Thanks to my wife, Jennifer, for helping me do edit after edit until the book was finished.

1972

Servants

1

It was September. Nebraska’s horizon seemed an endless, flat leviathan of free space, clothed in a thick, fabricated layer of rotten cornstalks. Above, the world’s planetary dome, filled with hues pinkish and purple, was quickly surrendering to the oncoming dusk. Harsh northern winds bore down on the land, torturing man, animal, and plant alike.

Craig Deats crooked his head eerily backward. His fearless, green eyes were met with a searing lash of sunlight that slyly slipped through the stratus clouds above. Momentarily blinded, Deats squished and rubbed his eyes. He had rarely seen the sun during his recent incarceration. Instinctively, his reaction was to cower down and avert his eyes. Somehow, the darkness and solitude had devolved Deats, the infamous killer, into an even more foul, ghoulish caricature of himself.

When his vision cleared, the pale and gangly prisoner, dressed in prison stripes and with a fresh buzz cut, hopped quickly atop a large stump and surveyed the surrounding terrain. All around were the desolate, flowing prairies of corn, with man’s concrete pathways cutting and crisscrossing in random, arbitrary ways. Deats could easily understand how man’s ancestors, only a few hundred years ago, believed in the existence of the entire Earth as a boring, flat place. Most people in the Midwest, and in Nebraska especially, viewed their home as an adequate foundation for life. The area, devoid of spectacle and nature’s simple beauty, impugned an angst-filled, unambitious world-view. Apathy and resignation, unbeknownst to the local citizenry, reigned here.

The signs of autumn were clear. It was mid-September and the fields, the small copses of trees and shrubbery, all became washed in rusty crimson and every iteration of the color brown. The winds were icy blades that tore into the skin. The remains of dead wild flowers haunted the highways and farm-to-market roads.

Deats’ fateful self-liberation from the Hemphill County Criminal Justice Facility was one event in a long line of brushes, nay, crashes with law enforcement. Deats’ choices in life had become quite slim indeed. At this point, his plight was a simple duality: he would escape, or fry on a metal chair, strapped-down, hooded, knowing that his victims’ survivors would be bitter witnesses to his final destruction.

They deserved no such satisfaction, for his crimes in Royal Isle, Nebraska, had been for the greater good. His was a crucial role, forcibly wrapped in the elegance of stealth and secrecy. He was a blackguard of sorts, preying on murderers, liars, cheaters, rapists, and those who displayed a temperament for such malice. The citizens had stayed silent as the hated, the criminal, and even the homeless were sacrificed. The ‘waste’, as Deats referred to them, simply disappeared, as if they had never existed, as if they had been swallowed by the earth, and perhaps to some unknown, infernal plane.

Yet, in the end, the dolts had betrayed him.

They knew nothing.

They were worms.

Or just meat.

He openly laughed at the thought. Such simpletons would never know the truth, for if they did, they would praise Deats as a folk hero, and thank him for their very lives. Yet, some secrets must be kept. The world should not know that there are desolate places and things just outside of its mundane, simple-minded reach, that eons ago, something beyond man’s understanding found its way to this world and became trapped. This creature, that lived below the earth for eons, had finally awakened from its slumber with a fresh appetite and a dire agenda.

As Deats slowly trudged forward, a smell, acrid and sweet, pierced his gnarled and freckle-ridden snout. Knowing that no pursuers were close, and after double-checking the sky in all directions, the killer followed the chemical scent as if they were freshly strewn breadcrumbs. He wildly plodded forward as if returning home after a prolonged stay at some half-hated relative’s home. At all times, his snarky grin betrayed a sinister disposition, as if he were a psychotic game show host of sorts.

Driven by homesickness and a primal need for shelter, this place had often been a refuge for Deats since he decided to make Royal Isle, Nebraska, his personal killing ground. It was always isolated. The creature below clouded the minds of would-be trespassers, leaving few to ever ponder the possibility of what existed in the area that local legends referred to as ‘The Patch’.

It was fortunate for Deats that this unknowable place was located so close to Royal Isle. He hated that town. He hated everything about it. He smirked with joy at the thought, drooling slightly, as he slipped stealthily forward. When he finally laid eyes on the filthy, chemical-ridden marsh, he knew that he had finally escaped the lawmen that surely followed closely behind. In the stillness, he could hear strange hissing sounds which confirmed that the creature below still thrived in his absence.

Deats was filled with instant jubilation. Indeed, he was home!

2

In the old days, during the super-fun-happy-happy-killing days, Deats had never approached ‘The Patch’ from the fallow, forgotten cornfields to the west of town. He had always followed County Road 533 from town towards the Hemphill County Landfill, close to the southernmost city limits of Royal Isle.

A mile past the facility, an unnoticed and disused dirt road led out further into an area of twisted and broken trees. With the exception of Deats, few ever ventured further, or even perceived that the road existed. After a quarter mile, the road ended abruptly at a densely overgrown marsh approximately an acre in size. A large pool dominated there, thoroughly covered in awkward, tangled vegetation. The trees, shrubs and weeds grew strangely, as if avoiding the sun. The waters, even during the day, were mostly cast in shadow and a death-like silence was pervasive. Animals, even vermin, were repulsed and avoided the area completely.

‘The Patch’ was first referenced as such by a small-time real estate broker in 1853. Samuel S. McMann sold the desolate area to Darrel and Ralph Clemson for a mere ten dollars and a quarter share of any profits gained through the brothers’ usage of the land.

The brothers built a large, barn-like structure, and began a full-scale tanning business. Traders, trappers, and merchants fetched top dollar for buffalo hides, animals that were being slaughtered by the millions at the time. For the next decade and a half, the brothers ran an outrageously profitable enterprise.

As time passed, the spent fluids of the tannery gathered in what seemed a natural depression in the land, and a large pool developed during these early years. Most workers avoided this area completely, yet Ralph Clemson became unusually drawn to it. He observed that the flora in and around the small pool of chromium solvents, formaldehyde, heavy oils, and rain water, seemed to grow more vehemently, rather than die off, as had been his previous experience. Ralph, it is said, developed an obsession concerning the pool which bordered on the deranged.

By 1870, as the buffalo were all but obliterated from the American Great Plains, commerce at the tannery halted. Two years later, a Texas cattleman named Buck Lowry wandered onto the brother’s land and found the remains of Darrel Clemson, fetid and skeletal, hanging from a hemp chord near the brothers’ home. The place had become disused and dilapidated beyond repair. He found that the structure itself had fallen mostly into a large, marshy pool, which had grown to encompass almost the totality of the area. His brother, Ralph, was never found.

Decades later, and after a long period in which the folk of the area gossiped and imagined what had become of the Clemson brothers and their outrageously profitable enterprise, a ‘Hooverville’ developed in the area. Migrant workers and disenfranchised laborers of all kinds established a pathetic shanty town on the very spot where the county landfill remains to this day. The legend of the Clemson brothers, by that time, was ingrained as folklore and many wandering, hopeless migrants would venture into ‘The Patch’ in hope of finding the brothers’ lost fortune. Such individuals were usually never seen again. At the time, newspapers recorded the musings of many of the hopeless men and woman that had lived there as saying that they had ‘been called there by a ghastly voice’ that ‘traveled upon the winds’. Some even claim that it was the voice of God.

For the moment, Deats knew better than to get within the water’s reach. His friend was down there, somewhere, and could be hungry. Until he better understood the creature’s present temperament, he’d keep his distance. The smell was much worse than he remembered, pungent. As a precaution, Deats ripped away a strip of fabric from a farmhand’s shirt that he had stolen earlier in his desperate flight from jail. He tied it haphazardly over his nose and mouth.

Indeed, earlier that day, in an impromptu meeting in the corn, Deats happened upon a young farmhand. The man had been sipping grain alcohol, alone. Deats had caught him unawares, snapping the young farmer’s neck in an impressive show of maniacal strength. From the man’s truck, the acid rock bleats of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Dazed and Confused’ cloaked Deats’ initial approach, making the kill a much simpler process. When their eyes met, Deats harangued the man with a quippy peek-a-boo! still seeing that the young man retained a semblance of consciousness. He loved theater and comedy—especially—and loved to add strange, mocking remarks to the scripts of his kills. Perhaps Deats had read too many dime-store comics as a boy.

Thinking upon his latest kill, Deats grinned. In addition to a fresh change of clothes, he’d looted a full pack of Lucky Strikes, a small .22 revolver that was hidden in the man’s left boot, and a bag containing the half-eaten remains of a Dairy Queen Hunger Buster with all the fixings.

Yum! thought Deats.

This first kill was simply a fresh start for Deats to continue making his mark upon the world. The possible list of victims was endless. For now, the name, Craig Deats, was merely a local sensation. He wanted to be a star. He wanted to be as famous as John Wayne. It was destiny that his acts be renowned the world over, that when people spoke of murder, his face would surpass all others, appearing foremost in people’s minds.

Like a virile primate, yet lanky and pale, Deats moved up and into the disjointed and odd canopy. As he crossed above the fuming waters, he noticed the waning sun’s rays skim the top layer of the large pool, displaying rainbow-like colors in eerie, soft waves.

The pool is much larger, he pondered thoughtfully, stepping out from the branches and back onto semi-solid ground near a broken-down and forgotten shack. It was of archaic construction and rose above the pool on a set of half-rotten stilts. He quickly climbed the porch and huddled inside, pulling the DQ bag from beneath the stolen jacket on which was displayed a small badge with a goofy, blonde-headed farm boy. He snickered that the locals referred to the boy as ‘Herbie the Husker’.

After devouring the burger with rare gusto, he lit up a Lucky and drew back against one of the house’s decrepit interior support columns.

The smoke, instead of lifting into the air, as science dictates, drifted closer to the pool and seemed to diffuse into the black waters, as if something below were also wishing to also enjoy a cigarette.

3

As a child, Deats had been silent, dour, and eccentric. Once, while on a family trip, his uncle, a grumpy, perpetually sweat-covered man, had thrown a loose piece of fruit to the young boy, and exhorted, There’s a quick snack for ya, son.

Deats examined the apple. It was slimy, blackened, and bored with holes. He looked questioningly at the man, and innocently stammered, But—it’s a bad one.

The fellow replied, face contorted and mocking, Yeah, well that’s perfect for the likes of you, boy. The whole of his life would follow, tinged by the man’s jeering insult.

In school, Deats became enthralled by the dark side of any subject that happened to catch his attention. In history class, he was fascinated by Aztec rituals, Nazi concentration camps, and the Black Death. He claimed Edgar Allen Poe as his personal, literary god.

Deats began his career of murder shortly after graduating from Goose River High School, in the affluent area of Auburn Hills outside of Detroit, Michigan. Most of his fellow classmates would move on to college and into cushy, pencil-pushing jobs that ground the mind into dust.

He would have none of it!

After school was over and done with, in June of 1967, Deats left Michigan, having joined a small-time carnival. Over the next few years, he mixed like a social chameleon in and among any group which happened to catch his fancy. Hippies, long-haired cowboys, and urban, ‘artsy-fartsy’ types had all, at one time, called him brother. But Deats was no one’s brother. His cold callousness showed as he continued to perform on stage, another love indulged, temporarily, in high school. He played Richard III to some small acclaim at a local theater in Indiana, but also Caliban, the fish-creature of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as well as an odd, drug-addled caterpillar in an uncanny, hippie-esque version of Alice in Wonderland.

That career ended, and his new one as slasher-killer began one night after a dress rehearsal for Charlie’s Aunt, in which he played a cross-dressing college student. The play’s stage manager had become very unpopular with the actors and technicians and had become aggressive with Deats after Deats had ignored several stage cues during that evening’s performance. After the crew had left the auditorium for the night, Deats made his move. Minutes later, he sprinted away from the small community theater, having broken the man’s head open with a large candelabra, a vintage prop from the show. Additionally, as he was fleeing the initial murder scene, he was confronted by two teenage actresses, who were still wearing their over-sized, frilly, Victorian-style dresses from the show. Seeing the blood, and knowing they would scream and alert the authorities, Deats bashed in each girl’s head as well.

This incident sparked a three and a half year rampage of primal violence in Deats. He loosed his anger at will, with a deft ability to fulfill any role needed, to ‘act’ the part, at any time. At last count, he had released the souls of 42 known victims. The real number was known only to Deats.

Before he first arrived in Royal Isle, Deats had spent several weeks hopping trains, randomly oscillating back and forth between small cities across the Ohio River Valley, methodically hiding his movements, and slaying any who dared raise a suspicious eye at him. His hair grew longer, curlier, and darker, and over time transformed from a reddish brown to a much darker hue. The police rarely looked for a murderer among hippie-types. Harassment, beatings, and such seemed to be enough to purge their angst for that group of outcasts from day to day.

Nebraska, in January of 1972, was a frigid wasteland, as it is in any given year. Deats had heard a ‘calling’ in his head, as if some intelligence whispered across the frigid winds, luring him this way. Once he exited the freight train at Royal Isle, the voice became silent. In such dire weather, the locals were rarely spied in the open. Confused and alone, he wandered the streets, and, after many hours of tromping through the icy slush, he collapsed outside of a strange, new venue in town called ‘Royal Skate’. The redneck establishment’s large, obnoxious billboard announced the place to be: ‘Nebraska’s Place for Family Fun!’

Deats awakened several hours later. The place was warm and dry, and he was draped across an old Army cot, enveloped by the nausea-inducing aroma of foot stink. Hundreds of pairs of roller skates, sectioned off by size and color, surrounded him on poorly designed plywood shelving. A large box of used footwear was to his immediate right, the artificial leather linings stained and peeling. The proprietor, an ex-carnie, named Ron Fielding, was balding, obese and, in general, putrid to any aesthetics’ eyes. His posture was repulsive, and he emanated a stench all his own. Fielding leaned against a small workbench used for repairing roller skates.

Reckon I could call Chief Watt and have ‘im put ya in the slam, son. Ya know, for trespassin’ and vagrancy, the man called at Deats, the statement ending with a short, yet stormy, burst of smoker’s hack. Deats readied for a possible kill, yet before he spied a useful weapon, Fielding interrupted the cerebral vermin that swarmed Deats’ mind, causing him to pause his ultra-violent thoughts.

If ya’s hungry, ya’d better get on upstairs then, belched Fielding and quickly mounted a wobbly staircase near the storeroom’s exit. Over a split can of Campbell’s Vegetable Beef Soup, Deats regaled the man with some of the best impressions he could think of. The old buzzard especially loved Charles Manson and Elvis, two of Deats’ favorite people.

Afterward, Fielding gave Deats a job, an assistant manager’s position, and, after discovering the carnie’s vast hoard of costumes, make-up, and associated props, Deats dressed anew each day in a plethora of new and ingenious guises to amuse the paying customers. Of course, the truth was something substantially more diabolical. Hiding in plain sight, well-fed and with the old man’s trust, he was ready to hunt. Soon, the whispering voice returned and began to call him forth. Within weeks, the killing began anew.

Early in 1972, Deats heard stories of the area just outside of town that the locals referred to as ‘The Patch’. It intrigued him at a constitutional level. The thought of such a dire, remote, and taboo location filled him with a primal urgency, a demonic focus. He began to believe that the voice that spoke through the winds must originate from that place. Somehow, the entity could see into Deats’ thoughts and answered him repeatedly, night after night, when he was alone. With such revelations, Deats knowingly pledged himself to the entity’s service, becoming the lone disciple of an unknown god.

A few weeks later, Deats and a young, naive, 20-year-old woman named Mandy Burton, having drunk a liter of Jim Beam after hours at the Royal Skate, decided to see the place for themselves. In the wee hours, Deats and Mandy took her beat-up, cream-colored Thunderbird down County Road (CR) 533, listening to Hendrix on the radio and pawing at each other’s genitals.

Deats thought, I love a good, thick-hipped blondie! She’ll be so much fun!

Stopping the Ford near the dank marsh, the pair fell into a sexual abyss, fueled by an extreme bourbon buzz. Mandy placated his every whim. The sex was deliciously good, yet, unbeknownst to the young woman, Deats’ desires were dangerous. He wanted blood. He wanted to break the blonde’s delicate bones. He wanted to hear her final, fading whimper.

The girl’s bone-freezing wail, like a banshee in the night, unheard by anyone but Deats, broke the night’s solace. Seconds later, the killer emerged from the Thunderbird, belt undone. A fresh, bloody, red skid mark was painted across his tight-fitting Hanes T-shirt. Deats pulled the slaughtered girl’s warm corpse from the car, plopping her onto the muddied dirt road. Like a toddler’s security blanket, he tugged Mandy forward into the moonlit darkness and towards the liquid pit of murky, legendary death.

He had found sanctuary. And he had brought the demanded tribute.

Hisses and crunches in the dark signaled to Deats that he was not alone.

Suddenly, a whip-like tentacle, oily and scalloped with linear serrations, latched onto Mandy’s corpse, and slowly, grudgingly, pulled away the meat into the waters.

At first, Deats backed off, but then he bent down on one knee and watched as the pool burbled and spat forth. The smell was feral, primitive. He could see the blood spin into the soup-like waters, even in the dark, black on black.

The immediate feeling of empathy, of symbiosis, was overwhelming. The opportunity to use his skills in the service of his new ‘friend’ awakened his spirit, setting a new path for the killer of men.

He said aloud, mocking an old Disney flick, and sounding like Dick Van Dyke, Oh, what fun…is to come! He had either heard that tune in Mary Poppins or he just made it up on the spot. He wasn’t sure.

From the pool, a ghastly, vaporous voice mocked back.

(Oh…what…fun…)

His heart filled with a black joy. The voice invaded his person directly. He had heard nothing, yet somehow, he felt an intelligence, dreadful and dire, straight in the brain, much stronger than before.

He looked, eyes wide, at the pool, and diplomatically said, I got lots of good impressions, man. How about this one?

Deats tore into his best Elvis, shaking, and snarling and tapping one leg. He even added a bit of pelvic motion. He kept on for hours, performing a grand show for his new god.

The next morning, he drove the Thunderbird into the thick underbrush between ‘The Patch’ and the landfill, then used CR 533 to return to Royal Isle, humming softly and wearing an exaggerated, madman’s smile.

Over the next few months, Deats preyed heavily on the wayward and warped souls that plagued the dark, frigid evenings of Royal Isle, and, as the body count rose, he