The Bleak December

By Kevin G. Summers

Winter is coming.

 

The old timers knew it was going to be a bad winter, but no one could have predicted it would be this bad. A supernatural storm has fallen on New Hampshire and a cult leader is whipping the people of the Granite State into a frenzy. Now a handful of rugged folk from the North Country are all that stand between a tyrant and his plans for dominion. Snow is piling in the Great North Woods and the dead walk among the trees. Beware the winter wasteland.

 

"This story has a ton of heart and hearkens the mind to the works of Stephen King."

—Jason Anspach (Galaxy's Edge)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Literary Outlaw Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201049874

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THE BLEAK

DECEMBER

by

Kevin G. Summers

THE BLEAK DECEMBER

Copyright © 2016, 2022 by Kevin G. Summers

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover & formatting by Kevin G. Summers

Edited by Ellen Campbell:

For more information about the author,

visit his website:

www.literaryoutlaw.com

For

Rose Connary

Ronald Connary

and

Dick Egan

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

~2 Peter 2:1-3

Table of Contents

1 — A Dark Age Coming

2 — Fire and Shadow

3 — The Darkness

4 — A Congregation of Vipers

5 — A Light Shineth

6 — The Shadow of Death

7 — A Reunion Of Sorts

8 — The Hanged Woman

9 — The Talking Dead

10 — The End Of Innocence

11 — The Battle of Stratford Corners

12 — A Long Farewell

13 — The Reshaping

14 — The Witch of Coos

15 — Hard Times

16 — The Old Man of the Mountain

17 — The Jack of Hearts

18 — Christmas Town

19 — The Devil and Parker Warden

20 — Last Kiss

21 — Agiocochook

Coda — The Long Winter

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Grand Patrons

1

A Dark Age Coming

Winter is coming.

The sign was painted on a scrap of plywood and nailed to a tree in front of the Grayson place. It was hardly noticeable amongst all the other junk that nut job had hanging all over his property, but Barbara Campbell noticed it that morning. It was right there between the Red Sox flag and the first flag of the Confederacy. He also had these crazy rock sculptures all over the place, and only God knew what that was all about. But Barbara noticed the sign that morning, probably because it was snowing. It was the first day of December, and even though the official start of winter was technically in twenty days, anyone with a brain in their head would have said the same thing:

Winter is here, you dumb flatlander.

Barbara checked the digital thermometer on the dashboard of her Toyota pickup truck. It was 37° in Stratford Corners, New Hampshire, colder than a witch’s tit, as they say. She would rather have been sitting in her kitchen, sipping a mug of coffee and reading the latest Brian Staveley novel, but instead she was driving south on Route 3 while the snow piled up on the sides of the road. The town’s big snowplow had been through already and it wasn’t too bad in the middle, so that’s where Barbara kept her little Tacoma unless someone was coming the other way.

Route 3 was two lanes all the way to Lancaster, and then she picked up Route 2 for twenty miles or so until she reached St. J. The roads in the North Country weren’t anything like what she was used to back in Virginia. In the south, a storm like this one would have shut down every school system in the state, and the radio announcers would have been offering cash money to whomever came up with the best nickname for that particular weather system. Snowpocalpse... Snowmageddon... Barbara thought it was stupid, but Jack and Wes loved that kind of thing.

For just a second, the image of her ex-husband appeared in her mind and Barbara Campbell shuddered. The divorce was less than a year old now, and sometimes she wondered if she and Jack had done the right thing. Yes, he had cheated on her and yes, he was now living with some twenty-six year old with blond hair and big tits, but maybe there was a chance...

No, she said to the empty cab of her truck. It’s over.

She had taken up talking to herself since returning to her hometown of Stratford Corners, a habit her son Wesley pointed out every time he caught her doing it, but it’s not like she was doing it on purpose. That’s just the kind of thing you slipped into when you were forty-six years old and single for the first time in almost two decades. She was heavyset, which was a polite way of saying fat. Her long brown hair, once her pride, was now streaked with gray. She knew that her chances of landing another man were slim, but she had her freedom and her books and her son at home for just a little while longer.

Barbara was heading down to the hospital at St. Johnsbury, Vermont where she was supposed to retrieve an old man named Luke Egan. He was older than the mountains, so it seemed, and as blind as a bat. He never seemed to age, for he looked the same to Barbara now as he did when she was a little girl. She grew up across the street from his shack, and whenever the snows came he would bundle up and play with the kids on their street just like he was one of them. He was kind of slow, Barbara’s mother had said all those years ago. Not quite right in the head. It didn’t matter to Barbie (as she was called in those days) or her brother. They thought he was great fun, and somehow, almost as soon as she returned to her hometown, Barbara became the primary caretaker for the old man.

She turned on the radio and instantly the cab filled with the voice of Alistair Begg, a Scottish minister out of somewhere in the middle of the country. Ohio maybe? She couldn’t remember. Begg was praying, which meant his show was almost over. Barbara was a wee bit disappointed because she liked his brogue, but she was willing to give the next program a chance so long as they didn’t start in with all that end of the world stuff. She’d had just about enough of all that.

Alistair Begg went off the air and an announcer’s voice replaced him. You’re listening to 88.1 W.Y.R.D., Yes Radio, broadcasting from the top of Mt. Washington. Up next is the Parker Warden show. Barbara rolled steadily southward as Reverend Warden began to speak.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Granite State, this is your friend Parker Warden. I’ve been watching the news and all I see is trouble in every direction. There’s another dark age coming, and if we don’t do something to put a stop to it, everything you and I love about this once great nation is going to...

Barbara switched the station and Charley Pride came on the radio. Her truck rolled on down the highway as the snow continued to fall.

When the call came in that morning that someone had broken into Stimson’s Hardware, Big John Christie dropped a couple of donuts into a brown paper bag and headed for the door.

Everything ok? his wife asked from her customary place in the living room. She was a frail woman that appeared even smaller when she stood up next to her husband. She kept her hair short so she didn’t have to bother with it, and her eyes were tinged yellow because of some trouble she was having with her liver. It hurt John to see his wife wasting away before him, but there was nothing he could do to help her. Lately she had taken to drinking kombucha to try and detoxify her organs. As far as he could tell, it wasn’t helping.

Just fine, Esther. Don’t you worry.

Will you be home for lunch?

Probably not. I’ll grab something in town.

Big John was the Sheriff of Stratford Corners and he took his work seriously. He took everything seriously for that matter. Esther told him all the time that he needed to relax a little or he was going to die of a heart attack. Maybe that was so, but it was better than rotting his brain in front of the TV all day. A heart attack–that was a man’s way to go out, and Big John was a man like no other, at least in a town this size. No one dared to call him a flatlander when he and Esther moved up here from Boston back in ‘96. This was Esther’s hometown, and Big John was the kind of man that commanded respect. Even now, at sixty-one, he was as broad and tall as he was back in the Army, though maybe a bit softer around the middle. He stood six and a half feet tall and weighed close to 300 pounds. Folks had been calling him Big John since he was a kid, probably because of that Jimmy Dean song. The name fit him like a glove. He climbed into his cruiser, looked at the switch that would turn on the blue lights, and then decided against it. Oren Stimson was rattled, that was for certain, but this wasn’t exactly an emergency.

The sheriff stuffed a powdered donut into his mouth as he backed out of his driveway and headed into town. It was a short drive, which you could say about the distance between pretty much any two points in Stratford Corners, and Big John was pulling into the hardware store’s parking lot in less time than it took for the heater to get going. The building was sheathed in T1-11 and had a metal roof that was so rusted it was a miracle that it didn’t just collapse.

The snow started to fall as he climbed out of the cruiser and headed for the front door. There were deep cracks in the pavement–the work of last year’s frost heaves–and Big John wondered if Oren was ever going to get around to fixing them.

Not likely, he muttered as he climbed the stairs and pushed through the door. It was warm inside thanks to the kerosene furnace in the basement, but Big John was hardly through the door before Oren Stimson was standing in front of him with his arms gesticulating wildly.

It’s those goddamn Starks, he said. Broke in here last night and stole enough ammo to start World War Three.

Slow down, said Big John. How do you know it was the Starks?

Who else could it be? A town this size, they’re the only ones who would do something like this.

You don’t know that.

I do.

It could have been someone passing through after hours... a traveling man.

I have video, Oren said. He was so thin that his clothes all looked too big for him. He was bald on top with a white chin beard that made him look like one of those old-time Shakers. It’s that Lenny Stark or I’m a goddamn flatlander.

Big John sighed. The Starks lived down at the end of Indian Springs Road in a cluster of ramshackle houses and dry-rotted doublewides. The grass was always too high in the summer, and there were always mangy dogs prowling around, barking at anyone who made the mistake of driving into their domain. They called it Starkville, and so did everyone else in town. They were decent people, mostly, but sometimes they found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Fine then, said the sheriff, show me this video.

Oren led him into the back room of the hardware store where he kept an old iMac computer, the kind with a swivel screen that looked like something out of Star Trek, amongst the piles and piles of junk that might have dated back to the First World War when Oren’s grandfather used to run this place. There was a dirty calendar pinned to the wall behind the computer, and the girl pictured there had a hairstyle that was popular when The Waltons was still on TV. Oren leaned over the computer and clicked his mouse a few times. A fuzzy image of the hardware store zoomed up to fill the screen.

You take a look at this, Oren said as he clicked the play button.

Big John leaned close to the monitor and watched as a scrawny figure in green coveralls crossed into the picture. He wore a knit skullcap and had an orange backpack slung over one shoulder. There was a shadow of beard on his cheeks, and without question this intruder was either Lenny Stark or his identical twin. And since Lenny didn’t have a twin...

In the video, Lenny snuck around behind the counter to the glass front cabinet where Oren kept the ammunition. He gave the lock a jiggle and when it didn’t budge he pulled a slim jim from his backpack and used it to smash the glass. He began dumping boxes of ammo into his bag.

What did he take? Big John asked.

Everything. 20-gauge, 12-gauge, .243, even my .22 shells and you know how hard those are to come by these days.

Did he take any guns?

Every damn one of them, even the air rifles.

The sheriff hooked his thumbs into his belt and let out a deep sigh. This is bad, Oren.

You’re telling me. It’s like he’s preparing for ISIS to invade or something.

More likely he wants to sell all that inventory, but you never know...

What are you gonna do about it?

Big John sighed again. I suppose I should go out to Starkville and have a word with Lenny.

All by your lonesome?

Who else is there?

Stratford Corners, population 746 as of the last census, had only one police officer. He might be able to call in the boys from the volunteer fire department, but they weren’t exactly trained for this sort of work.

I hear that Harlan Nash is back in town, Oren said. I’d ask him to tag along if I was you.

Harley’s boy?

Been fighting the camel jockeys overseas. He looks like a man to me.

Big John’s eyes went back to the screen, where the thief was sneaking out of the picture completely oblivious to the fact that he was being recorded. There was no doubt about it, that was Lenny, and the sheriff was going to have to do something about it.

I need you to send me that video, Big John said. Can you do that?

I think so. Gonna be a wicked big file.

Ayuh. I’ll let you know how it goes with Lenny. Big John headed for the door and out to his cruiser. The snow was piling deeper now with no sign of stopping. Trouble, he thought as he got behind the wheel. And I’m about to be right in the middle of it.

Wesley Campbell approached the free throw line, dribbled the ball a couple of times, and then shot. He missed. He always missed. The other kids in his gym class started laughing–everyone except Travis Mitchell. Travis just stood there glaring at him in his blue P.E. t-shirt as if the future of every life in New Hampshire depended on Wes making the next free throw. And maybe it did. Maybe if Wesley had made the next shot everything would have been different and a great deal of sorrow could have been avoided. But there was no way of knowing. Wesley dribbled the ball again. He wasn’t sure why he did this, but that’s what they did on TV. Everything went quiet for just a minute and Wes could hear the girls, who didn’t have to participate in physical education if they didn’t want to, whispering their secrets over in the bleachers.

He shot. He missed.

The students lined up on either side of the paint began to disperse, ready to continue their game until the end of class, but Travis stormed over to the free throw line, his huge muscles rippling. He had the physique of a professional wrestler, and the rumor around the Stratford Corners School was that Travis was on the juice. Seventeen-year-old boys didn’t end up with muscles like that by lifting weights and eating protein bars, that was for certain. Wesley was almost six feet tall but he felt like a hobbit next to Travis.

Stupid flatlander, Travis said. He shoved Wesley’s shoulder and nearly knocked him to the gym floor. Wes stumbled but managed to keep his feet. It didn’t matter, the other kids were snickering again and Mr. Gettle, the P.E. Teacher, was looking right at him without even a hint of concern on his face. He didn’t do anything back in October when Travis hit him in the face with a dodgeball and nearly broke his nose, so Wesley didn’t expect his teacher to give a rat’s ass if a fight broke out in his class. It wouldn’t be much of a fight either; Travis outweighed him by at least sixty pounds. Wes was lean almost to the point of being scrawny. His dirty blond hair fell down in eyes, which drove his mother up the wall, and he had a collection of comic book t-shirts that he wouldn’t dare wear to school. They would have been cool back in Virginia, but here he was just a flatlander. After six months in New Hampshire he still had no real friends.

Sorry, said Wes. I’ll do better...

We needed those points. If we lose this game, I swear to God I’m going to kick your ass. Travis turned back to the rest of the team and Wesley was dumbfounded. It’s not like the state championship was on the line here, this was a P.E. class in a school whose entire student body (grades K-12) was smaller than the freshman class back at Carmel High School in Virginia. They barely had enough kids to play a five-on-five game, and at least two of those kids were in the eighth grade.

The game resumed and Wes was thankful that his team was in the lead when the bell rang to signal that class was over. He was the first one to the locker room and was dressed and headed to his next class in less than a minute. He skipped the shower–that whole showering with other guys thing, that just wasn’t for him. He was almost to the door when someone stepped up behind him. Wesley tensed, bracing himself for another encounter with Travis.

What’s your hurry? came a soft, sweet voice.

Wes turned around and saw a pretty redhead standing before him. Her name was Melody Stark, or maybe it was Melanie. Wesley wasn’t quite sure–he was still working on understanding the thick Yankee accents up here in the North Country. He hated New Hampshire and would have stayed in Virginia given the choice, but he wasn’t given a choice. Last spring, just before final exams, he came home from school and his parents were there, waiting for him. He should have known at once that something was up. They sat him down in the living room and broke the news that they were getting a divorce. His father wept when he confessed that he had been sleeping with one of his co-workers. He wept, but he didn’t repent. He was going off to live with this homewrecker while Wes and his mother moved to the Great North Woods of New Hampshire. A new school for his senior year.

Winning.

Hey, said Wes. He smiled and avoided eye contact. He realized after a moment that he was staring at Melanie’s (or was it Melody’s) chest. His eyes moved to the floor. He thought it was probably safe to stare at her cowboy boots, but who could say?

Travis is an asshat, she said. Don’t let him bother you.

Wesley laughed in spite of himself. I’d be happy to avoid him, but that’s not so easy in a school this small.

I know. I just... do you like my boots?

What?

You keep staring at my boots. I don’t think they’ll fit you.

Oh. I’m sorry... I didn’t mean... He could feel his cheeks turning red and Wes wanted more than anything to run out of there like The Flash. He dared a look at Melanie’s face and saw that she was smiling. Not a mean smile, but a warm one.

Do you even know my name? she asked. She crossed her arms and gave him a pouty look that made him want to kiss her. Her skin was so pale and her eyes so big and green. He blushed even harder.

Melody. He prayed he was right.

Good guess. Come on, you can walk me to class. She slipped her arm through his arm and guided him away from the gymnasium as easily as a dancer leading a partner through the waltz. It felt strange to be so close to a girl and Wes was instantly in love. They were halfway down the main hallway when they heard laughter mocking them from the gym.

Look at that, Travis Mitchell shouted, Melody Bark found herself a new boyfriend. She likes it doggy style, Flatlander! He laughed and slapped his thigh and Wesley thought about hitting him over the head with a metal folding chair.

Come on, Melody said, let’s get out of here. She pulled him away, walking so fast that Wes could barely keep up. She was in good shape. Very good shape.

Melody stopped in front of Mrs. Pearson’s English class and looked at Wes. Her big eyes were shiny with tears, but he could tell right away that they were tears of anger. I have a car, she said. Would you like a ride home after school?

I... um, sure.

Good. I’ll meet you at your locker after school. Ok?

Ok.

Don’t stand me up or anything, because I couldn’t take that right now. A tear spilled from her left eye and Wesley wanted more than anything to reach out and wipe that tear away. Before he could act, however, Melody did it for him. She was trembling with fury.

I won’t, Wes promised.

Good. I’ll see you after class. She smiled and then disappeared into her classroom.

Wesley stood there for a minute, staring at her retreating backside, and wondering what had just happened. One minute he was feeling sorry for himself and the next he was hitching a ride home with a pretty redhead. Maybe New Hampshire wasn’t so bad after all.

The Great North Woods covered most of Coos County and was once home to countless logging settlements. But time had moved on and the logging industry had dwindled as people became more environmentally conscious. Some of the settlements like Kidderville and Twisted River just disappeared. Others, like Stratford Corners, remained stuck in the ground like the granite this state was named for.

The town was beautiful in any season, except maybe mud season, and especially as the woods filled up with snow. The snow was coming down pretty hard now, and Harlan Nash was thankful that he’d managed to get all the firewood up on the porch before the bottom of the sky dropped out. He was home visiting his parents–they said they needed a hand getting in all their firewood for the winter–but the trip wasn’t working out as planned. Harlan Sr., Harley to everyone in the county, and his wife, Lilly, were up to their hunting camp trying to plug a deer before the end of the season. When they said they needed a hand, what they really meant was that they wanted their only son to drive up from Concord and take care of the whole job. Harlan didn’t resent this, at least not too much. They were getting up there and only God knew how many more bucks they might drop before they had to retire their muzzleloaders for good.

Harlan was standing in the kitchen of the house where he grew up, warming that morning’s coffee in a pot on top of the stove. He opened the fridge, looking for some half and half, but the closest he could find was a pitcher of homemade eggnog. His father’s recipe was well known as the best in Coos County. Harley, the elder, won the blue ribbon at the county fair about twenty-five years ago, and the recipe was a closely guarded secret in the Nash family. Realizing that he might have to drink his coffee black, Harlan closed the fridge and took a look out the window just in time to see a police cruiser pull into his parents’ driveway.

He met the sheriff at the front door and invited him inside. Big John was older than Harlan remembered, but so was everyone else in Stratford Corners. That was the way of things, but it didn’t matter if his hair was thinner or his wrinkles deeper, Big John Christie was always the biggest man in the room. Just like that old song–everyone knew you didn’t give no lip to Big John.

Morning, said Harlan.

Morning young man. Big John extended his hand and Harlan shook it. You’re looking good.

Thank you, sir.

Sir? You call me John.

Yes, sir.

You want some coffee? Harlan nodded at the pot on the stove.

Big John seemed to consider it for a moment. I’d better not, he said at last. I’m in a bit of a hurry and I could use your help if you’ve got a few minutes.

Harlan looked longingly at the coffee on the stovetop and then turned off the burner. He had completely broken the habit while he was serving in Afghanistan, but returned to it, like a dog to his vomit, almost immediately now that he was stateside. Sure thing, he said. What’s up?

The sheriff sighed deeply and hooked his thumbs into his belt. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, he began, should probably call the county office down to Lancaster, but they take their sweet time and... Anyway, I have to pay a call up to Starkville. Seems Lenny’s got himself into a bit of trouble.

You want me to ride along? That old Yankee way of talking around your actual meaning was something else Harlan left behind when he went overseas, and as far as he was concerned, it could stay there with the suicide bombers and the roadside bombs.

Ayuh. I’d feel a might better about the whole thing if I had you along, son. Just in case.

What kind of trouble are we talking about? Harlan asked.

Big John shrugged. Seems he’s stolen some guns and some ammunition. Oren caught him red-handed on his video recorder.

That’s not good. You want me to carry, just in case?

I really don’t think that’ll be necessary. I’ve got an extra piece in the cruiser, just in case, but I think your presence alone will do the trick.

Harlan retrieved his coat–a brown leather aviator jacket with wool lining–and a flat-topped cowboy hat he’d taken to wearing ever since he returned to New Hampshire. He locked up the house and the two men climbed into the cruiser. The snow was really piling up now, getting deeper every minute. He would have checked the weather on his iPhone if the damn thing worked up here, but there wasn’t any signal in town. Stratford Corners was about the last place in the United States that was going to get a cell tower. He might have called Donna and Hope more often if he didn’t have to sit in his parent’s living room when he talked to them. He missed his wife and daughter, but it seemed that he hadn’t quite gotten used to civilian life since his return from the never-ending War on Terror. He promised himself that he would call them as soon as he got back from Starkville.

They drove down Route 3, past the Grayson place with all the crazy signs and rock sculptures, and turned onto Stratford Road. The town’s plow truck passed them from the other direction, and they had a stretch of newly plowed and salted road before them, but not for long. They passed Big John’s place and the old mansion where Mary Egan lived. Mary was the oldest person in Stratford Corners and had been in possession of the town’s Boston Post Cane for more than a decade. Harlan figured that she was close to one hundred by now, but who could say? They passed a bunch of old farms that had ceased operation back when the first Bush was president, and the little shack where Mary’s brother-in-law, Luke, lived until he went blind. Harlan’s grandparents lived in a farmhouse across the street until they died and the bank foreclosed on the property. It had been vacant now for ten years or more.

They turned onto Indian Springs Road and the pavement dropped out from beneath them. The road was packed sand, as slick as snot, and the cruiser fishtailed for a minute before the all-wheel drive kicked in. They moved slowly through the piling snow, their tires cutting wide tracks behind them.

I hear you’re out of the Army now, said Big John. Have you found work?

Harlan stared at the road ahead. The plow truck left short embankments of snow on either side of the road. These would get taller as the winter set in until it began to feel like the road was at the bottom of a canyon. Not yet, he said.

Maybe you should consider police work, he said. The pay isn’t good and the hours are a bitch, but it gets you out of the house.

I’ve been out of the house since I was eighteen, Harlan thought. I missed my daughter being born and more birthdays and anniversaries than I care to count. I was thinking about going into radio, he said.

Spinning records? Big John laughed.

Talk radio. I could tell people what to think and who to vote for, that kind of thing.

Like that crackpot on Yes Radio? His laughter filled the police cruiser and for just a moment it felt to Harlan like everything was good–like everything was going to turn out just fine.

They passed a few rundown houses covered in gray shingles, white smoke billowing from their chimneys from the trash wood that burned in their ancient woodstoves. They passed decaying doublewides that didn’t look fit for human habitation. This was Starkville, where pale faces watched from dirty windows and hearsay was thicker than the ice over to Maidstone Lake.

That’s his place, said