Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror
Read Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror Online
Authors: Randy Chandler
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.”
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.
Chapter 11—Gravedigger’s Sorrow
Chapter 13—A Heads-Up and a Take-Down
Chapter 29—The Dark and the Dead
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.
“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 truck.
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.