Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror Read online

  PRAISE FOR BAD JUJU AND RANDY CHANDLER

  “Chandler's writing is casual, but strong—without pretense. The pace is swift and constant... building up to an explosive ending. Hot and thick, the atmosphere reeks of earth, blood, and decay. The astringent air carries with it a sense of malevolence and resentment. No matter where you look, no matter how shallow you breathe, this town will touch you. Outstanding! Randy Chandler is horror's best kept secret! Buy it immediately, and discover the genre as it should be.”

  —Kelly Tomblin, Horror-Web

  “A full-bore, take-no-prisoners, one-man mission to once and forever completely upend & recontextualize the hallowed traditions of the Southern Gothic."

  —t. Winter-Damon, co-author of Duet for the Devil

  “A high octane read...scary as hell.”

  —Walt Hicks, author of The Deathgrip Collection

  “Reading Bad Juju is like being bitten by scorpions again and again and again, then asking for more because it felt so damned good.”

  —T. M. Wright, author of Bone Soup

  From Barnes & Noble reviewers:

  “Bad Juju may restore your faith in [horror]. Chandler is a wonderful wordsmith who knows how to create interesting characters and get you involved in their world.”

  “Chandler has a poetic flair for language, an original sense of humor, and a knack for creating interesting characters you care about. This fast-paced tale of small-town horror…is the best horror novel I've read in a long time. Bad Juju is as good as it gets.”

  BAD JUJU

  A Novel of Raw Terror

  by Randy Chandler

  Copyright © 2003 by Randy Chandler

  This edition copyright © 2012 by Acid Grave Press

  Cover illustration and design copyright © by 2012 Bob Freeman

  Published by Acid Grave Press

  Edited by Walt Hicks (2003 original) and

  Craig Clarke and David T. Wilbanks (2012 reprint)

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you did not purchase this copy, or it was not purchased for you, then please respect the hard work of the author and purchase your own copy. Thank you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1—Rats

  Chapter 2—A Bad Patch

  Chapter 3—Day and Night

  Chapter 4—Night Vision

  Chapter 5—Snatch

  Chapter 6—Insomnia

  Chapter 7—The Bad Place

  Chapter 8—Fate

  Chapter 9—Night Watch

  Chapter 10—Ride Out the Night

  Chapter 11—Gravedigger’s Sorrow

  Chapter 12—Harlot

  Chapter 13—A Heads-Up and a Take-Down

  Chapter 14—Visions

  Chapter 15—Radio Traffic

  Chapter 16—Road Show

  Chapter 17—Shit-Storm Warning

  Chapter 18—Guardian Angel

  Chapter 19—Playing Hero

  Chapter 20—End of Day

  Chapter 21—Night Moves

  Chapter 22—Bleak Morning

  Chapter 23—Invocation

  Chapter 24—Rays of Darkness

  Chapter 25—In Extremis

  Chapter 26—Sacrifice

  Chapter 27—The Unforeseen

  Chapter 28—Darkness Amok

  Chapter 29—The Dark and the Dead

  Chapter 30—Dark Demise

  Chapter 31—Ghosts

  Acknowledgments

  Also from Acid Grave Press

  CHAPTER 1—RATS

  They left Skeeter’s truck parked just off the red-dirt woodland road and tromped onto the desolate landscape of rubbish and waste, woebegone junk evacuated from the bowels of town and left out here in the elements to rust and decay.

  Skeeter carried his rifle across his shoulders and behind his neck like a weightless barbell, his wrists propped over the horizontal weapon and his bent arms hanging like misshapen V’s.

  Joe Rob toted his rifle in the crook of his arm, its muzzle angled toward the ground.

  “You hold that thing like you’re escorting it to the prom,” said Skeeter. “A regular country gentleman.”

  Joe Rob shot him a cool glance, then said, “The way you got yours up on your shoulders, you look like you’re wearing a yoke. Damn yokel.”

  Skeeter rolled his eyes beneath the bill of his ball cap, then stopped and looked up at the late-summer sky as if he were reading something there.

  “What?” said Joe Rob, stopping beside him.

  “Storm’s coming.”

  “Oh. So now you’re the yokel weatherman.” Joe Rob grinned at his own wordplay.

  Skeeter shook his head, unsmiling. “I’m serious. See the way those clouds are piling up? Won’t be long before they’re thunderheads.”

  “Then I reckon we’ll just have to nail some rats before we get struck by lightning.”

  “I thought rats were night feeders,” said Skeeter. “Nocturnal sons-o’-bitches.”

  “Well, they are. But there’s so damn many of ’em out here now, there’s bound to be some early risers looking to get a jump on the competition. Chief Keller says he’s never seen anything like it.”

  “‘A plague of rats’,” Skeeter said in booming imitation of Vinewood’s new police chief.

  “Damn, son, you sound like one of them radio preachers. I ain’t shitting you. You could be pulling down some serious bucks with that act.”

  “Nope. I’m thinking it’d be cool to be a submariner aboard a nuclear submarine.”

  “What about your old man? I thought he wanted you to take over the family business.”

  “I tell you what, bud. No way am I ever gonna be a mortician. I don’t care what he says.”

  “Make good money, though.”

  Skeeter barked a hollow laugh. “There ain’t enough money in the world for me to make my living sucking the guts out of dead people. I’ll just wait and inherit my share of the family fortune when the dad croaks.”

  “Man, that’s cold. And anyway, I thought you wanted to be a relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves,” Joe Rob needled his friend.

  “That was last year. You gotta keep up, Joe Rob. That was high-school shit. We’re all grown up now. Men of the world. This is the part where we put away childish things.”

  “I notice you’re still wearing your senior ring.” Joe Rob wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “And I still say it’s cold, talking about your old man like that.”

  “Hey, everybody dies,” Skeeter proclaimed. “Sooner or later we all end up in extremis.”

  “In what?”

  “In extremis. It means deader than a fucking doornail, the way my old man uses it. He never uses the word ‘dead.’ He’ll say, ‘I got two in extremis. Don’t wait dinner for me.’ Like that. Undertakers don’t ever say ‘dead.’ That’s the first thing they teach ’em in mortician school.”

  Joe Rob shook his head, then swatted at a troublesome gnat in front of his face. Skeeter pulled his rifle off his shoulders, rested it against the side of his leg while he dug a tin of tobacco from his jeans pocket and stuck a healthy pinch of Skoal in his mouth.

  They resumed their trek through the city dump, weaving their way through the clutter of old refrigerators, washing machines, deep freezers, ratty pieces of furniture, a baby carriage with a broken wheel, plastic trash bags stuffed with unseen debris, and various unidentifiable hunks of junk. A water-stained commode sat upright amid the other refuse.

  “Somebody threw away a perfectly good shitter,” Skeeter observed.

&
nbsp; “Must be the throne for the king of the dump.”

  “Well, if you need to take a dump while you’re here, there you go.”

  “Oh shit,” said Joe Rob.

  “Be my guest,” Skeeter guffawed.

  “No, I mean oh shit, there’s Odell Porch.” He nodded his head in the direction of the woods on the other side of the barren landfill. “What the hell’s he doing here?”

  “Seeing as how he’s carrying a rifle, I’d say he’s here to shoot rats. Or us.”

  “Scary dude,” Joe Rob said, lowering his voice. “Crazy as hell.”

  “And mean as a pit bull. Let’s get the hell outta here. Ain’t no rats anyhow.”

  “Just that big one with the fucking deer rifle.”

  “Ten four.”

  “Shit, he’s waving at us.”

  “Walk away. Pretend you don’t see him.” Skeeter’s voice took on a raw edge, the way it always did when he was scared.

  “Too late.”

  A sudden chill made Joe Rob shudder in spite of the afternoon’s muggy heat. He knew then that they shouldn’t be here in the middle of this scabbed-over wound in the earth. The junkyard artifacts were somehow endowed with bad mojo. And Odell Porch was the Mojo Man himself. The Mad Prince of the Realm, come to punish trespassers.

  “What-chew pussies doing here?” Odell challenged. He strode toward them, holding his rifle at port-arms and building up a good head of steam.

  “Nothing,” Skeeter said at the same time Joe Rob said, “Hunting rats.”

  Decked out in faded cammies and combat boots, Odell Porch looked like a soldier in some rag-tag Third-world army. He wore a red bandanna as a headband. A dark stubble of beard shaded the lower half of his sunburned face. With a wolfish grin, he said, “Take more than them little .22 pop guns to nail these varmints. Check this shit.”

  He reached into the gunnysack slung over his left shoulder and pulled out a dead rat the size of a house cat. “Izzat a rat, or what?” he said as he dangled the rodent by its tail, giving them a good look at his blood-matted trophy.

  “Jeez,” said Skeeter, “that’s the biggest rat I’ve ever seen.”

  Joe Rob wanted to ask Odell why he was collecting his kills in the gunnysack, but thought better of it and decided not to. He didn’t want to know what the man was going to do with his dead rats. If only half of what he’d heard about the Porch clan was true, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to imagine Odell’s family sitting down to a Sunday dinner of fried rat and sweet potatoes.

  “Damn right it is,” Odell said, dropping the rat back into the sack. “You girls best high-tail it outta here and leave these varmints to a real shooter.”

  He slapped his rifle for emphasis.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Skeeter warily eyed the darkening western sky.

  Joe Rob said, “Yeah, we were just leaving. Storm’s coming.”

  “Right,” said Skeeter.

  “Hey,” Odell said with an odd glint in his eyes, “you’re the undertaker’s son, ain’t cha.”

  “Yeah?” Skeeter nervously adjusted his ball cap, then rubbed his nose and touched the bill of his cap again, reminding Joe Rob of the ritualistic behavior most pitchers go through before hurling the ball at home plate.

  “Reckon you seen some sights at your old man’s shop, huh?” Odell fingered his nostril, dug something out and flicked it into the air.

  “Not really,” Skeeter answered.

  “Bullshit, you ain’t. You mean to tell me you ain’t never snuck no looks at dead pussy?”

  Odell put his hand on Skeeter’s shoulder and dug in his fingers until Skeeter winced in pain.

  “Don’t bullshit me, boy,” Odell warned.

  Joe Rob thought he smelled booze on Odell’s breath. The Porch clan, it was said, came from a long line of moonshiners and horse thieves, and over the course of the last century Odell’s forefathers had done their part in earning Graves County, Georgia, the nickname “Bloody Graves,” according to local legend and lore. Seeing Odell Porch at close range, Joe Rob didn’t doubt that the man was descended from ruthless outlaws.

  “Tell me,” commanded Odell, keeping Skeeter in his rough grasp.

  “Ow! Okay, okay. I did sneak a look at Judy Moody after she was killed in that wreck,” Skeeter confessed.

  “How’d she look?” Odell’s leer became a ’possum’s grin.

  “I don’t know,” Skeeter stammered, “she looked...dead. You know. But still pretty. She wasn’t too messed up on the outside. She died of internal injuries.”

  “You saw her snatch?”

  Skeeter hung his head and mumbled something.

  “Speak up, boy.”

  “Yeah, I saw it.”

  Odell laughed and slapped Skeeter’s shoulder. “I know you did, Mr. Undertaker’s Son. And I bet you done a lot you ain’t telling.”

  “We gotta go,” Joe Rob said in an attempt to rescue his friend from the clutches of Odell Porch. “Before the storm catches us.”

  As if on cue, a burst of thunder shook the earth. When the thunder rumbled itself out, another sound came to the fore: a girlish scream, or more accurately, a whoop.

  “Damn me,” said Odell. “Looky there.”

  Joe Rob and Skeeter turned in unison and looked where Odell was pointing his rifle. A wraith-like figure in a long, white gown was sliding down the shallow embankment at the edge of the woods. She whooped again before coming to a stop at the bottom of the rocky incline. Then she started sobbing as she buried her face in her hands.

  Odell jogged toward her, with Joe Rob and Skeeter at his heels.

  Hearing their approach, she looked up. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gave them a wide-eyed appraisal.

  “Are you all right?” asked Joe Rob.

  Her eyes darted about wildly.

  Realizing that the sight of three strangers with guns was probably not a reassuring sight to the young woman, Joe Rob said, “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  She suddenly scrambled to her bare feet and made a dash for the woods, but Odell grabbed her wrist and held her in place. “Whoa there, honey,” he said. “Take ’er easy now.”

  That’s when Joe Rob saw the plastic wristband on her captive wrist, the kind they gave hospital patients. Odell saw it too, and said, “You ran away from the loony bin, didn’t cha?”

  The loony bin was the private psychiatric hospital located just outside the city limits of Vinewood, three miles south of the dump.

  “Hell, I run away from there myself once,” Odell boasted.

  Joe Rob and Skeeter both had heard rumors that Odell had been committed to Browner Psychiatric Hospital after his early discharge from the Marine Corps, and here was Odell himself confirming it as the truth.

  Still holding her arm, Odell asked, “So where you running to?” He bent her arm so he could read her wristband. “Jessica A. Lowell.”

  She shrugged, eyes downcast. Her auburn hair was a mass of Medusa-like tangles, and her milky complexion was flushed red with the day’s heat.

  “Why did you run?” Skeeter asked her. He scratched his ankle with the toe of his opposite boot.

  She looked at Skeeter, then spoke for the first time. “It knew I was there.”

  “What knew you were there?” Skeeter queried.

  “The dark thing,” she said softly. She glanced about, furtive and fearful.

  Odell grinned, his eyes fixed on the bosom of her thin nightgown. “Well don’t you worry, little lady. We won’t tell it you’re here. No ma’am. You jest let Odell take care of you.”

  Joe Rob knew at once what Odell had in mind for the girl. No way could he let that happen. “I’m Joe Rob Campbell,” he said, “and this is Skeeter Partain. We can give you a ride to wherever you want to go. That’s Skeeter’s truck over there.”

  Odell scowled at Joe Rob. “You boys be on your way,” he said. “She needs a grown-up to help her. Get on, now. Respect your fuckin’ elders.”

  Skeeter started toward his truc
k. Joe Rob stood his ground; he was not prepared to leave the girl in Odell’s dubious custody.

  Maintaining his hold on Jessica Lowell’s wrist, Odell raised his rifle in a one-handed grip and pointed it at Joe Rob’s chest. “I ain’t telling you again, boy,” he said.

  Joe Rob looked into Odell’s eyes and saw the cold-blooded stare of a snake, poised and ready to strike. Reluctantly, he turned and trailed Skeeter to his truck.

  “This is fucked,” he said to Skeeter, who was already behind the wheel. “You know what he’s gonna do to her.”

  “I know better than to go against that crazy sumbitch,” said Skeeter, sticking the key in the ignition. “I ain’t ready to die.”

  The sun made a brief appearance through a small break in the dark clouds. Joe Rob looked back across the dump and saw Odell leading the girl into the long shadows of the moss-hung trees. He cursed and slammed his fist on the hood of the truck. Then the storm clouds swallowed up the sun again.

  “Come on, man,” Skeeter pleaded. “Get in the truck. That chick’s nuts anyway. She don’t even know what’s going on.”

  Joe Rob was about to explain to his friend how that was exactly the point— that the girl didn’t know how to protect herself—when he heard the scream. Not a whoop this time, but an honest-to-God shriek of terror. “God damn it,” he said quietly, then worked the bolt of his rifle, snapping a .22 long hollow-point cartridge into the rifle’s firing chamber. “I’m going to get her.”

  “You’re crazy!” Skeeter snatched the cap off his head and slapped it against the truck’s dash.

  “May be.” Holding his rifle in a high port-arms, Joe Rob started jogging back toward the dump and the woods beyond. Odell be damned, he thought as he leapt over a crumpled cardboard box of decomposing paperbacks, I’m not letting him have her. No fucking way.

  When he reached the edge of the woods, Joe Rob slowed to stealthy walk, his eyes searching the underbrush for Odell and the girl. A white blur caught his eye.

  There she was, lying on her back at the foot of a tall pine, her white gown riding up above her knees as she tried to back-pedal away from Odell, who was standing over her, unfastening his camouflage pants. His gunnysack of dead rats was on the ground near his feet. Surging wind filled the moss-bearded trees.