Led By Beasts

By Clark Roberts

Led by Beasts is a terrifying collection of short stories and essays paying homage to the most powerful voices in horror from the past 50 years: Stephen King, Bentley Little, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, and Laird Barron.

Featuring the Deadman's Tome Meatgrinder Contest winning story, "Craftsmanship for Food," Clark Roberts draws you near the campfire and spins his dark tales.

A boy seeks cosmic revenge on the adults in his life. The darkest of carnivals rolls into the neighborhood. The Devil haunts a man's entire life in a possession story unlike anything you've ever read. A Nazi officer is tormented by time's most cursed seductress. The whole world is truly held in the hands of Gods-and much more.

Take his hand and follow the beast into its lair, from where there is no escape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Next Chapter
• Release date: Jan 20, 2022
• ISBN: 4867522716

Book preview

1 WHY HORROR?

I think that almost anybody can find in his imagination really dark places and can spin them out. [Essentially] everybody is a book of blood; show me a teaspoon of blood and I will reveal to thee the ineffable nature of the cosmos, naked and squirming.

Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story—all our fears add[ed] up to one great fear. All our fears are part of that great fear: an arm, a leg, a finger, an ear. We're afraid of the body under the sheet. It's our body; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.

PETER STRAUB, CLIVE BARKER, LAIRD BARRON, BENTLEY LITTLE, AND STEPHEN KING.

---

They search for me, hunt me out of my home,

like intrusive toddlers picking rocks

to dig up worms;

my fears are huge, 

and when their fat fingers touch me

my only safety is to hole-up where it’s darker.

CLARK ROBERTS

2 LED BY BEASTS: THE BOY

Later in life, he would ponder how different life might have played out had he not followed the beast on that day.

But the little boy did follow, and the beast led him away from his home. 

Soon, as if in a dream, the landscape changed so entirely they might have been crossing the surface of a distant and dying planet.

Should I be scared? the boy asked.

The beast eyed downward and regarded the boy. It nodded—yes.

Well… the boy began. He hesitated as goose-pimples feasted on his neck. Still, he proudly filled his chest with the cold air and proclaimed, I’m not. 

Only now did the beast offer a claw-like hand; it was desert-bone dry when the boy grabbed ahold. 

They walked until the boy’s feet were sore and his legs knotted in cramps.

They reached foothills, where the eye of a cave stared back at them. The looming mountains beyond were so massive they couldn’t possibly have been of Earth.

Together, beast and boy entered the mausoleum-sized lair.

Inside, a perfectly centered fire warmed the cave. It burned industriously, feeding through a copious amount of dead wood. The flames danced shadows against the rock walls—the shadow shapes of four more beasts.

These new beasts hunkered on sitting logs around the fire. Their eyes rolled to the boy when he entered. 

A spot was offered, and the boy sat.

Before taking its own place, the boy’s guide lumbered to a rock shelf where sat a metal cage filled with rodents. The beast unlatched and opened the top. With one massive claw, it dug out a squeaking rat. Drool slavered from upper to lower lip in strings when the beast yawed open its toothless maw and dangled the rat by the tail.

It dropped the rat, and squeal became hellish screams.

The beast’s mouth snapped closed and swallowed the meal whole. Sated, it found its place near the fire and sat with the others. 

The boy gazed into the fire, seeing capering shapes that seemed to act out stories.

When the beast across from him spoke, its voice was lower than hell but also as tempting as hell’s games. It conspired with the fire’s warmth to lull the boy.    

The beast said, Shall we share our tales?

Thoughtless, the boy nodded.

Then I’ll start, the beast agreed. The crevice of its mouth formed something of a grin, and story time commenced. 

Once upon a time and in a cave, a young boy slept near a fire...

3 KING ME

As a writer, this beast most likely needs no introduction. If the section’s title hasn’t already released the creature from the cage, so to speak, I’m writing about none other than Stephen King.

Since the publication of Carrie in 1974, you’d be hard pressed to name a more influential figure on horror than King, and personally, I don’t think there’s a debate to be made.

King’s influence on me reaches all the way back to even before I was actually reading any of his work. I can recall as a child seeing King’s tomes resting on the side table near my father’s couch. Those books were often splayed open and face-down, displaying those terror-inducing covers. As it turned out, those covers would also be very impressionable. I bet any horror fan can conjure a few images of King’s covers to mind. For me: the monstrous claw grasping the sewer grate on the front of It, Night Shift’s bandaged hand with the staring eyeballs growing from the fingers and palm, and don’t forget Annie Wilke’s ominous shadow with the ax draped over a despondent Paul Sheldon from Misery.

What young boy with a healthy imagination wouldn’t have been fascinated by those covers?

With somewhat morbid curiosity, I’d ask Dad to explain the goings-on in those books.

Dad never went too far, but he’d offer up enough to whet my appetite; I loved it.

So yes, King’s influence has been with me from an early age, and later I became one of his Constant Readers. 

Each story in this section, in some way, reflects King’s influence on me as a writer. 

Much like the recurring staple throughout King’s obviously much longer works, with Vengeful Fangs, I aspired to create a young protagonist for which the reader could root. Vengeful Fangs came out the cleanest first draft I’ve ever produced. I tightened up some of the prose, and it was ready for publication.

Dedicated King fans will note the parallels towards the end of Buffoonville and King’s Children of the Corn. Of course, I’m referring to the short story found in Night Shift and not the corny 1984 movie—pun intended.

The Witch’s Mushroom was written for a specific submission call, an exercise that rarely works for me. Usually, I run with whatever idea I’ve been mulling over and then search out fitting publications. The anthology I aimed for with The Witch’s Mushroom rejected it, so I sent it to the first re-issuing of Sanitarium, and they quickly accepted the story. When I wrote it, I kept King’s advice in my head—get to the story.

Mr. King, you’ve been THE beast in the horror business for decades. Thankee-sai, for the chills, for the characters, but mostly for the stories.

4 VENGEFUL FANGS

Aaron was alone and shirtless in the backyard. The grass felt cool pressed against his back. 

Dusk arrived, and with it, shadowy shapes flitted above him. He shouldered his most cherished birthday present from months earlier—the sharp shooter pellet gun—the last present he’d opened that evening, and also the last gift he’d ever receive from his father.

Aaron pointed the barrel skyward. With earnest concentration, his breathing naturally slowed. He closed one eye and squinted the other down the length of the barrel. Setting his jaw, he drew a beat on one of the darting shadows. His father’s challenge from his birthday night rose in his mind—kill a bat with a pellet gun, and you can do anything. 

The gun popped when he squeezed the trigger. 

Ffffft, the BB shot into darkness.

The shadow he’d aimed at swooped low, and for the briefest moment, an untrained eye might have suspected his accuracy was amazingly true. Aaron, however, knew differently. The BB must have passed through the bat’s sonar with impeccable timing. 

The bat elevated to its original circular path unharmed, more likely bewildered than anything else at discovering no meal where its hunting skills demanded one should have been.

Glumly, Aaron estimated his kill rate stood roughly in the realm of zero for a kazillion, if kazillion was even a real number.

From inside the trailer behind him, a shouting match erupted—his mom and his uncle at each other’s throats. 

A clatter of pots and pans followed by breaking glass.

A breath of silence—then his mother screeching something about Uncle Joe already proving he was more bastard than man.

Uncle Joe, Aaron seethed and instinctively began grinding his teeth. 

He worked the bolt action and checked the breach to make sure a silver BB had chambered. 

Uncle—Fuckin’—Joe. The words practically boiled up his throat.

He imagined pressing the barrel of the pellet gun into each of Uncle Joe’s eyes and pulling the trigger. The deranged fantasy was so complete he envisioned the BBs bursting through the tissue of his uncle’s eyes and burning straight through the asshole’s pupils.

Fuckin’ and asshole, just when had Aaron started speaking and thinking in those terms?

When Dad didn’t come home—that’s when.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d been worried when Dad was absent that Friday night. The following sunrise, there was still no Dad to prepare the Saturday morning pancakes, and Mom called the cops. Aaron’s worry had morphed into a cold sense of fear because Mom’s concern sounded authentic enough on the phone, but after disconnecting, she’d drank her coffee at the trailer’s wobbly kitchen table and too casually smoked her cigarettes.

But fear was a completely different beast compared to the anger that born this new love affair with swearing.

The anger had swelled with Uncle Joe’s arrival just two weeks after Dad’s disappearance. Uncle Joe stayed the night—and then stayed the next night, and the next, and the next—not once sleeping on the couch but instead slipping into the parent’s bedroom, as if he was a stand-in husband and father.       

Aaron knew, absolutely knew, Uncle Joe was behind his father’s disappearance.  

Christ almighty, woman! Uncle Joe’s voice bellowed out one of the trailer’s opened windows. How many damn times I gotta tell ya’ the insurance money is comin’? We just gotta play it cool and be patient.

Look around us, Joe! Aaron’s mother returned. 

Aaron could picture her in his mind, standing taut as a pulled rope and her shaking eyes nervously searching all the corners for something else to throw. Similar mutations into a madwoman had occurred when his dad was still tucking him in bed each night. 

You seen any new money sittin’ around this shithole? his mother raged. "You seen any gold coins fall from the sky? ‘It’s a sure thing,’ you said, ‘We’ll have the money to scram in a month.’ Maybe you can’t read a calendar from the Chinese bible, but it’s been two months, and all I’ve seen is more cops kickin’ up and down this bog of a road. I’m tellin’ ya, they’re onto us, Joe. All they gotta do is find his...his...his you know what, and we’re toast."

Find his you know what. 

The thought rolled over Aaron’s mind like a road paver pressing the permanent final touches.

Find his body is what his mother meant—find Dad’s body.

Once again, Aaron lifted the pellet gun and peered down the sights, attempting to focus on anything other than that God-awful idea.

They ain’t findin’ my brother, Uncle Joe stated. "They ain’t, ‘cause I made for damn sure there ain’t nothin’ left to find."

Aaron cringed, and for a moment, his vision blurred wetly. A sob, a hiccup—something terribly powerful tried working its way up from deep in his stomach. He swallowed hard, forcing it down like trying to cram shut an over-packed suitcase of emotions. 

This time he fired wildly and knew he wasn’t even close to striking either of the bats above him. He needed to concentrate. Dad had been an emotionally strong man, so he could also be strong when the time called for it.

Kill a bat with a pellet gun, and you can make anything happen. He let those words ring clearly in his head, relishing his father’s unendingly encouraging tone.

...make anything happen.

If literally anything was on the table, Aaron knew exactly what he’d make happen, whom he’d make disappear. 

He missed on his next two attempts but sensed he was closer than ever before, that innately he was figuring out the secret, and then the possibilities would be endless.

From the trailer behind him, his mother’s voice: "I’m just tellin’ ya, Joe, if we ain’t outta here soon and they do find somethin’ I ain’t going down as hard as you will."

Uncle Joe, agitated: One last time, there ain’t nothin’ to find.

Mom: "Maybe not, but if that money don’t show up quick my own mouth might start leakin’, ‘cause I’m gettin’ the thoughts I was better off with him than your sorry ass."

Uncle Joe: You wouldn’t.

Mom: Keep testin’ me and see. 

Aaron heard not only the conviction in his mother’s tone but also the smirk.

Next came a commotion of struggle. He envisioned Uncle Joe rushing forward, his face aflame with unbridled fury. He could see them locking arms—pushing, shoving, spitting on one another in what must be the world’s craziest dance. He heard someone flung to the floor and then his mother’s banshee screams.

A loud whack! —followed by the briefest of silence in which Aaron popped off another round and just barely missed.

Who the fuck you think you’re dealin’ with here? Uncle Joe roared. Maybe my brother was dead on ‘bout you, and you just some bat-shit crazy woman he never should’ve tangled with!

He never said that ‘bout me! Aaron’s mother shrieked. He never would’ve said nothin’ like that ‘bout me!

Yeah, keep singin’ that tune, Uncle Joe spat.

Next was the familiar sound of his mother’s long and desperate wail until it lost steam and became sobbing. He...he...he loved me. I know he did, and I’m sorry for what I agreed to.

Uncle Joe mumbled, but Aaron couldn’t make it out. Boots thundered loudly on the trailer’s floor, tracking Uncle Joe’s movements. The back screen door screamed open and banged shut with an unnatural force. Uncle Joe stomped down the weathered porch. 

Aaron twitched his eyes. Uncle Joe’s march slowed as he approached, and by the time he reached Aaron, he was nearly ambling.

Standing over him and upside-down to Aaron’s vision, Uncle Joe said, Well shit, kid. 

Uncle Joe dug deep into his pockets and pulled out a lighter and a plastic baggie. He opened the baggie and carefully selected before squatting next to Aaron’s side. 

The lighter flamed to life, and soon a familiar skunky, pungent aroma filled the cool night air. Uncle Joe hit the doobie, sucking deeply before holding his breath. When he spoke, it seemed the smoke had filled his voice with effort, That’s the shit right there, kid.

Aaron glanced. Uncle Joe held the doobie between his thumb and pointer. His other fingers fanned into three small arches.

Uncle Joe took another toke. His lips sealed, yet in the same instant, he managed what sounded to Aaron like a painful coughing fit. 

Aaron pointed the gun back to the sky. Fired. Ffffft. No luck.

Did you a solid favor is what I did, Uncle Joe said. He thumped on his ass and then was lying supine in a similar fashion as Aaron. Your old man and all those pipe dreams he had for you—college or some shit. You wouldn’t’ve done nothing but disappoint him in the end. You oughtta be getting’ down on your knees and thankin’ me.

Aaron didn’t speak, only forced even more of his focus above on the tormenting targets.

On your knees, Uncle Joe repeated before taking another forceful toke. 

Distantly, Aaron heard Uncle Joe chortle, but he ignored it. He honestly couldn’t fathom what might be funny about being thankful from one’s knees.

Uncle Joe flicked the blunt, spinning it into darkness. He expelled a great, satisfied sigh. 

Then his hand lashed out and leeched onto Aaron’s leg. The hand squeezed much like Aaron’s dad’s hands had squeezed before Dad would playfully proclaim—the claw! the claw! the claw!—except there was nothing playful about Uncle Joe’s demeanor.

Aaron popped off another round and again missed.

Thankful and on your knees, Uncle Joe said a third time. Deadly serious, maybe even angry, he continued, But you ain’t gotta worry about that kinda crap with Uncle Joe. No way, kid, I ain’t no weirdo.

As fast as Uncle Joe’s hand had grasped him, it released.

"I ain’t no perrrrrv when it comes to kids," Uncle Joe growled as if answering an unasked question from the night. His voice carried a dangerous edge like he wanted to be tested, like he wanted a reason to strike out.

I don’t like you, Uncle Joe. 

The voice in Aaron’s head was calm, so reminiscent of his father’s voice. 

I don’t like how you seem to know what happened to Dad. 

I don’t like how Mom lets you sleep in their bedroom.

I don’t like hearing the two of you yell about insurance money.

I don’t like you out here in the grass with me. 

But what I really don’t like, what I actually hate is you, Uncle Joe. 

You.

Aloud, Aaron asked, Do you love my mom?

In the ensuing silence before Uncle Joe replied, Aaron sensed a grin forming in the darkness. 

Uncle Joe said, When she’s on her knees and thankin’ me. He erupted with laughter.

Aaron still didn’t get the joke, but he definitely comprehended the mean spirit in that laugh. Whether it was directed at Aaron, his mom, or the both of them didn’t make the difference of blue on black.

The control inside Aaron began bubbling.

You gotta stay calm, son. There was no doubting his father’s voice this time. You gotta stay calm and think if you want to win in life. Shoot a flying bat, and you know the rest.

But it’s too hard, Aaron confessed. I can’t hit ‘em.

Hit me? Uncle Joe dumbly voiced. You best watch that mouth of yours, kid. Don’t get yourself to thinkin’ I won’t wallop you the same way I walloped your momma in there.

You have to lead ‘em even more. Keep the BB out of their sonar’s range. Son, don’t ever say you can’t because you can. You can shoot a bat, and then…

A part of Aaron badly wanted to believe the voice truly was his father speaking, that their father-son bond in life had been tethered by a thick chain even death couldn’t snap. That side of Aaron, the still-a-child side, hoped his father was reaching out to him through a magical conduit connecting the living and the dead. Yet the other side, the side that understood life’s circumstances as dealt to him, now required he mature faster than normal, knew the truth of it.

This knowledge was solely Aaron’s. It only manifested in his father’s voice. You have to lead ‘em even more. You can shoot a bat, and then...

With a new resolve, Aaron pushed the pellet gun’s stock tighter than ever into his shoulder. He squinted and singled out a bat. He shut his mind off from the rest of the world—the whirring of crickets, his uncle beside him, his mother inside the trailer most likely blotting a tissue to her bloody mouth. The barrel did not wobble but steadily tracked, memorizing the bat’s repetitive pattern. Instead of squeezing tight, this time, Aaron’s lips slightly parted. For the first time ever, his tongue steadily ticked against the roof of his mouth—a trait directly passed down from his father indicating deep concentration.  

...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick…

...fire.

Ffffft.

In an