Cracked Altar

By David Viergutz

When darkness falls, evil rises…

 

John's life is a living nightmare. Any chance of digging himself out of the abyss disintegrated long ago.

 

Fired, discredited, buried under crippling debt, and isolated in a west-Texas ghost-town, he's both a pariah and a wanted man.

 

Under an investigation for a crime he didn't commit, he's quickly running out of allies, and even more rapidly, losing his grip on reality.

 

Late at night, long after the lights have gone out, it's there. He doesn't know where it is and what it wants with him. It lurks in the shadows, biding its time before it strikes. It beckons him. If he heeds its demands, he has no way of knowing what awaits him.

 

If he ignores it, the outcome may be worse – far worse…

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Viergutz
• Release date: Oct 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223818267

David Viergutz

Disabled Army Veteran, Law Enforcement Veteran, husband and super dad by nature. David Viergutz is the author of several novels and short stories from every flavor of horror. Take the plunge into David’s imagination as he delivers chill-bringing adventures where the good guy doesn’t always win. David remembers dragging a backpack full of books to class beginning in middle school and leaving his textbooks behind. David takes his inspiration from the greats and fell in love with complex universes from the desks of Nix, Tolkien, King, Stroud and Lovecraft to name a few. David's imagination, combined with his experience in uniform give his books an edge when it comes to the spooky and unnerving. One day, David’s wife sat him down and gave him the confidence to start putting his imagination on paper. From then on out David’s creativity has no longer been stifled by self-doubt and he continues to write with a smile on his face in a dark, candle-lit room.

Book preview

JOURNAL ENTRY #1

I don’t necessarily want to write in a journal, and I don’t see the benefit, but my therapist is recommending it. She said I can stop at any time, but I should at least give it a chance. There was some psycho-babble explanations regarding post-traumatic stress, but most of it went over my head. She said I should write about myself as if I don’t know anything at all about me, like I’m meeting myself for the first time. It’s odd, but I’m a team player and not about to let myself down.

This entire reluctant connection with my therapist was most likely the result of twelve years in the homicide division with Houston PD. The broad I spoke with was Sophia Bennett and she was an uptight shrew of a woman with shoulder-length black hair and even darker eyes. She wore black all the time, even when it was pushing 100 degrees outside at 9am. She looked out of place in her pencil skirt and frilly white blouse that revealed an augmentation fit for a porn star. It was even more out of place when you consider the woman had to be nearly sixty years old. I was immediately bored with her.

I suppose after you’ve seen enough dead bodies, the live ones don’t interest you as much, and my wife and kids have noticed what they think is a change in me. I don’t see it, but that must be what this exercise is supposed to show me. Sophia also agreed I didn’t have to show this to anyone, I just had to participate. So here I am, Dr. Big Boobs Bennett. I’m participating.

I don’t have a lot to say about myself that I haven’t repeated to the rest of the world. I did a few years in the Navy working on satellite communications then tried some odd jobs when I got out, most of them in construction, because in 2001, I bought into the idea of building my own house, you know, to save labor costs. But surprise--your labor is the cost. Nowhere near ready to build my own house, and a few hours into trying to salvage the wet concrete from a failed set of steps during the middle of a mid-afternoon sprinkle, I wrote I QUIT! on the top one with a stick, got in my piece of shit Cadillac, and drove to the nearest Walmart to grab an application.

I hadn’t even written my name on the application before there was yelling and quick footsteps as some thug tried to steal a microwave or some shit. The cop chasing him was overweight and way behind, so I stepped in, planted the thief on the ground, and waited for the officer to handle the rest. He told me I’d make a good cop and I laughed for the first time in a long while.

Later while hunting Craigslist for a job and sipping on some cold tomato soup, I clicked over to the local news channel and saw Houston PD had a shortage of officers and paid nearly double what I was making pouring concrete. I told myself it was just a job, and I would eventually start my own construction company because I didn’t learn the first time, right?

Ten years later, I’m ordering a pizza while standing over the latest John who was just shanked with a nail file for shorting a pimp $20. So much for construction. I ordered extra pepperoni and bagged and tagged the nail file.

One year later, I’m sent to some prissy penthouse to investigate an accident, but there’s something about the table powdered with blow, a stack of sticky cash , and two hookers, a male and a female, both dead, that threw me off. I interview the hotshot who owned the place, the CEO of some tech company who tells me the blow isn’t his, the hookers aren’t his, and the money definitely is not his. I couldn’t stifle my snort and the asshole got in my face, telling me how I should learn my place and just do my job.

Ten years of I-don’t-give-a-fuck had added up, and I hit him. He wasn’t a hotshot after that, but I was dropped from homicide and landed on a beat working school zone traffic. I made it a year before I quit without a job or a penny to my name. My wife Catherine wasn’t happy. My girlfriend was furious. My son Colton, was worried. Just kidding. No girlfriend. Wifey and kiddo were both worried, but I wasn’t. I needed a break, and I knew most of the departments in the area were hiring. It turns out the hunt was harder than I thought it would be, and I was struggling to even get a call back. Hotshot apparently went to the news and then all of Houston knew the name John Nova, but not for a good reason. Definitely not for the 100+ homicides I solved in five years. No. I was the dude who clocked Charlie Espinoza, owner of the software retailer Vamp, who called the cops about two people who’d had a wild party in his house without his consent, then died of a drug overdose. Sure pal.

One year later, I’m running out of places to apply in Houston...not to mention running out of savings...and Catherine is pulling doubles at the diner just to pay the rent, assuming we weren’t going to eat or pay any other bills. Well, she didn’t deserve that, and my pride was getting in the way, so I started looking out West, mulling over the idea of working in a rural county and convincing myself that the smell of cow shit was that much better than dealing with human shit. Within a week of applying as far West as I could apply, which was almost to New Mexico, I got an offer to work in someplace called Josephine County, population 5,000, on deep night patrol. During the interview I told the chief deputy I needed a break from homicide, and he nodded like he understood. A week after that, I moved the family out to a three-bedroom trailer on a patch of desert and the county commissioners changed the sign to population 5003.

Not many people moved to Josephine County, and I don’t blame them. There were two little towns, Breon, the county seat, and Gale, an even smaller town down south. There were thirteen active churches, one school, and one 24-hour gas station. But it paid the bills, the school was highly rated, and wifey instantly found a job at the doctor’s office--THE doctor’s office, the only one for forty miles--and I got to try something new in law enforcement. I traded hookers and blow for loose cattle and the occasional drunk. Catherine told me it wouldn’t be forever, just until we could head back to Houston, and I believed her. But something wasn’t the same when I moved out there.

While I was investigating shootings and stabbings, I slept like a baby. Now, I close my eyes for eight hours and open them again when it’s time for another shift, but I was never really rested. I started losing weight, despite my insatiable cravings for gas station burritos and Red Bulls. Wifey and I drifted apart. She recommended I see someone about getting some sleeping pills. After the third night of restlessness, I went to the doc and told him I wanted meds. He refused, citing their dangers, (ever tried not sleeping for a few days straight?) and referred me to Big Boobs Bennett for therapy first. So here I am, on my lunch break, scribbling onto a legal pad in my cruiser while watching two roosters fight over half—a—taco at a rest stop in the county. What a life.

JOURNAL ENTRY #2

I scheduled another meeting with Sophia Bennett a week after my first journal entry and we met up in her office, a dank, dim cave off the back of the grocery store in Breon. She sat with legs crossed in a very second-hand leather armchair with a high back. This time, the old bag had a pen and legal pad ready to take notes. I told her I had done the journal and had hoped she’d call the doc and let me get some pills. She smiled weakly and explained some other medical jargon that instantly made me feel small (that’s a shrink’s job, right?). I told her I’m just a ghetto street cop and she explained in a sharp, high-pitched voice that this was a relationship, and we would have to progress a step at a time. I asked her if she had seen my wife, because there ain’t no way I was having any kind of relationship with her. Again, I was denied pills and told to write at least five more entries before we met again a month or so from now. She told me to call her if my sleeping improves, so that was something, and she asked me to write about my time on patrol. It had been nearly seven years since I’d written a ticket or handled a barking dog, and I was rusty. Her suggestion was to write about my shifts to help jog my memory. So here I am.

Last night was February 21 st and I was allowed to work alone without my supervisor. Not because of my twelve years of experience, but because he was out sick along with five other people who decided to try the West –Texas –fish gumbo surprise from a little restaurant in Gale. Me being the smart one of the bunch didn’t so much as nibble at the fried mystery meat. Five people ended up with food poisoning, including my boss. So here I am, solo on taking calls after several reminders not to be proactive until I knew my way around the county.

There was only one road between Breon and Gale and only a handful in the towns themselves. I also had GPS and pretty decent cell phone service. I didn’t know how I could learn my way around any better, but I didn’t argue and instead enjoyed a cool spring night with the windows down, looking for my two favorite roosters at the rest stop.

Anyways, I only got one call that night. It was around midnight, about a 911 hang up on Calgary Road in Gale. This didn’t help me location-wise, as that road ran from Breon up North all the way through farmland. Then to the south and directly through the middle of Gale. It dead ended at the county line near an old church. I called dispatch for a better location, and they said the call originated from a cell phone but was coming from a tower outside of Gale. I did the best I could to find anything out of the ordinary, but for the entire four minutes it took me to cruise down the main strip, I didn’t see or hear anything out of place. I called dispatch, told them I was fine, and found a spot under the only streetlamp in town to update my call log.

There wasn’t much else to say about the night other than I didn’t find my caller, I didn’t find my roosters, and I hate writing in this thing. Not because I dislike writing, but I hate writing about myself. Police reports are fun. The discovery of what happened and the narrative of facts about a case were interesting, and why the crime took place, the fact I aimed to discover, was seductive. I don’t even know if that’s the right way to describe whatever that feeling was when the pieces of a case fell together the right way and I figured it out. Not even when a dirt-bag went to prison or fried in the chair was as sweet as finding out why he or she did what they did. It was alluring, and I get none of that out here. But Catherine is happy working easy hours. And Colton, who’s seven, is happy because he made a new friend at the school, the Principal. He also happens to own the gas station and is the local Baptist preacher. And I’m happy because I get to fuck off and discover things I never knew about myself.

Kidding. I’m miserable. There are no dead bodies in Josephine County.

I never got another call after the 911 hang up and spent the rest of the night binging the latest episodes of Jerry Springer on YouTube. I had to finish them quick before they got taken down. This was another addiction besides solving cases, that is. Watching sisterwives fight each other stealing their husbands/boyfriends/brothers. It was a wild mess that led to a few cheap chuckles. I dragged my Crown Vic cruiser that was as old as Big Boobs Bennett around an otherwise quiet county, sticking to paved roads. I had calculated that I could circumvent my entire patrol area from Breon down to Gale, past the old church and down a decently paved county road at thirty-five and it would take me an hour to come get back to my spot under the light. I did this same route five more times before I grew crosseyed and hauled ass back to my trailer, pushing the car to 120, because why not? I was the only person out here anyways.

The speed gave me a bit of an adrenaline bump and helped me power through two more hours of Jerry before I called it a night and crawled into bed next to Catherine just as her alarm blared in her ear to wake up.

JOURNAL ENTRY #3

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to writing this way. There aren’t any official requirements, no dedicated slots for the victim or the perpetrator, no time slots. I can drop a fuck whenever I want and even sketch a little something here and there. It’s not ideal and seems like a waste of time, but I haven’t slept in almost two weeks and I could use just one night of rest. I even tried a few beers last night, and I sure as hell fell asleep but I didn’t stay asleep. Damn nightmares every time I closed my eyes. Shadowy figures crawling out of the fields on all fours like dogs. Who the hell dreams that kind of stuff? Me apparently, and that’ll be the last time I try to self-medicate with lukewarm beer and bean and cheese tacos. So here I am, back to this journal.

Yeah, I suppose I could fudge it; claim I’m writing when I’m not. That way Dr. What’s Her Nuts will get off my case and Dr. Old Country can sign the script. I’m a lot of things, but a liar I am not. I’ll write in your little notebook for your thought experiment and tell you exactly what I think about you while I do, but I’ll never lie and say I did something when I didn’t.

The truth is far more interesting.

Besides, there’s something about the way Catherine looks at me while I’ve got a pen in my hand and leaning over a legal pad, scribbling away. I can feel her eyes digging into my skull. At first, I thought she was annoyed or maybe wanted to talk or something, but when I asked her why she was looking at me, she said I looked content. I asked her what she meant and she said she didn’t know why content was the right word but it fit, and she liked that I was following the program.

Then there was the jab. The punch I wasn’t expecting; the little whisper tacked onto the side of what the conversation was really about. I’ll put this in quotes because I need to remember it later. It was subtle, smooth, and knocked me on my ass.

Maybe all those years in homicide got to you.

Ouch.

It stung, but it rang true in my head. My first inclination was to snap, jump up, and declare what I was doing was a damn service to the community, and no one was better than me. When I did it, I did it right. But just as my temper flared, I backed down and remembered Catherine never did or said anything to hurt me; it was always with love that she was able to approach things she felt needed discussing. For my benefit or hers didn’t matter. She was there. She understood me and she was only trying to help. So I did what every good homicide cop is supposed to do. I brushed it off, remained tough, and told her I was doing what I had to do to get a good night's rest. In a few weeks I’ll be done with Bennett and on my merry way to Snoozeville. No more cloaked figures. No more waking up in a pool of cold sweat or hours spent staring at the ceiling until the alarm whined in my ear for another shift. The sooner I got to sleep, the sooner I could move on with things, and the quicker time will pass until we can leave this place behind for good.

On a few hours of restless sleep, I geared up for another shift riding with Chief. I’m a twelve-year veteran, but the man insists I ride around for a few hours at night with him as if I’m going to pick up something new or the layout of the county is just going to magically imprint itself on my brain by moonlight. Whatever. A few more shifts of this and I’ll be free to binge Jerry on a county road somewhere while I wait for daylight. Much to my surprise, Chief sent me a text telling me to roll out alone and only respond to calls, and not initiate anything if I can avoid it. Cool. Finally, a shift alone.

Just to note, I was going to stop writing here, but I just got off a call and I have to say, things are different here out West. Don’t even suggest I’m writing because I like it. I just thought I could document a few things I’m starting to notice around here. Hell, maybe I’ll write a book about it someday; make it big and retire on the side of a mountain somewhere where I can shoot and shit off my back patio and not have to worry if my next-door neighbor happens to see. My next-door neighbor is the mayor, by the way, and no, that didn’t happen, but I want the option. Don’t judge a good patio shit until you’ve tried it. But that’s not why I picked up the pen again. I just got what I’d call a weird call, and I’ve seen weird. I’ve seen stuff that people couldn’t even comprehend. I’ve seen stuff the brightest comedians couldn’t come up with. I’ve seen stuff that would make you just look at the entire scene and say, What the fuck?

This call topped it all. This is the call I can’t even talk