Red Harvest Read online

  In the epic tradition of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Jonathan Maberry, a chilling new masterwork of small-town evil, centuries-old traditions, and newly-risen terror . . .

  RED HARVEST

  Every year at harvest time, something strange and wonderful happens in the sleepy farm community of Ember Hollow. It comes alive. Truckloads of pumpkins are sent off to be carved into lanterns. Children scramble to create the creepiest, scariest costumes. Parents stock up on candy and prepare for the town’s celebrated Pumpkin Parade. And then there is Devil’s Night . . .

  But this year, something is different. Some of the citizens are experiencing dark, disturbing visions. Others are beginning to wonder if they’re losing their minds, or maybe their souls. One newly sober singer with the voice of a fallen angel is tempted to make a deal that will seal his fate. And one very odd boy is kept locked in a shed by his family—for reasons too horrible to imagine . . .

  Whatever is happening to this town, they’re going to make it through this Halloween. Even if it kills them . . .

  Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Books by Patrick C. Green

  The Haunted Hallow Chronicles

  Red Harvest

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Red Harvest

  The Haunted Hollow Chronicles

  Patrick C. Green

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Contents

  Books by Patrick C. Green

  Red Harvest

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  A Preamble

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Grim Harvest

  An excerpt from Grim Harvest

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Lyrical Press books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Patrick C. Greene

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, and educational or institutional use.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager:

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  LYRICAL PRESS Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp

  First Electronic Edition: September 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0830-5

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0830-2

  First Print Edition: September 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0833-6

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0833-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  Dedicated to Gavin,

  with thanks for many magical Halloweens

  Author’s Note

  This is a dream from a long autumn night. I am helping you to remember—for better or worse.

  This is not the past, though it contains pieces.

  Our cell phones and computers are not here.

  Safety is not as close as we have come to expect.

  A Preamble

  “Trick or treat! Rotten meat! That is what we want to eat!” One of the troupe of tweens was out of harmony.

  “Hm.” Lola, costumed in a short leather nun’s habit, smiled and saluted the kids with her wine glass.

  She was decidedly not mortified by this variation of the traditional rhyme, and only mildly amused, more interested in the TV party a few rooms away. “Well, no rotten meat I’m afraid, but I think I still have a few…”

  She twisted almost sideways and presented a near-empty candy bowl from just inside, dumping the last of the treats into the bags and buckets. “Here you go, kiddies!”

  Lola ignored the disappointed expressions the kids cast at her and at one another, her bleary gaze drawn to the figure standing across the street, just outside a vague circle of street light.

  The figure, wearing an odd costume of rainbow fright wig, Lone Ranger–style eye mask, and an oversized brown raincoat, wasn’t moving, except for his shoulders, which rose and fell as if from suppressed laughter. He hunched over and covered his mouth with both hands, like a toddler who had just stolen a cookie. Did he think she couldn’t see him? How silly.

  “Is this all you got, lady?” asked the kid in the…whichever superhero wore black tights with green trim. She had stopped trying to keep up.

  “Um, well…” She looked inside again. “No more candy,” she said. “But how about this for your chaperone?”

  From the four canisters of silly string beside the candy bowl—in the event of a prank war—she held one over the heads of the children, to offer it to the man on the street. But he was gone.

  “Where’s your grown-up?” she asked.

  The kids turned to see what she meant. “What grown-up? We’re old enough to be without,” explained a rubber-worm-infested zombie, quite indignantly.

  Her wine glass was empty. She didn’t care about the funny skulker anymore.

  “Okeydoke, then,” she said. “Have at it!” She tossed the silly string at the group, then half waved, half shooed, until they shuffled away. Before closing the door, she decided to blow out the jack-o’-lantern.

  Lola re-wined her glass and started back to the den to rejoin her friends in giving old horror movies the MST3K treatment. She was stopped by the doorbell.

  She stepped to the door, unsteady on her spike heels. “Sorry! All out! Happy Halloween!�
��

  She moved to walk away but stopped upon hearing a giggle—silly yet eerie—just outside the door. “Hey!” she shouted. “You better not be TPing our lawn out there!”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Okay!” Lola grabbed a can of silly string. “I warned you!”

  She yanked open the door and poised the canister, finding only blowing leaves, on and all around the front stoop.

  She listened for the sound of giggling or leaves crunching under running feet, bracing for a good hearty “Boo!” as well.

  “Ding dong ditch,” she muttered. “Not even a flaming bag of doggy doo. Kids these days…”

  She closed the door—and felt the icy tingle of intuition. Something was very, very wrong.

  She turned fast.

  It was the man from across the street, now less than two feet away.

  He had entered through the rear kitchen door.

  The fright wig he was wearing, vaguely haloed by the hallway, did its job. From there down, it only got worse.

  His Lone Ranger–style mask framed eyes filled with something like joy—but more like hopeless insanity. His face was white, as if bleached.

  Then there was the blood.

  Streams of it ran down gaunt cheeks to cracked smiling lips from the staples that held the mask on.

  The figure raised a meat cleaver with a blade the size of a notebook.

  Lola’s heart skipped a beat, until she saw that the weapon was mere plastic—a toy. Lola smiled, issuing a relieved, “Whew!”

  “So funny, Greg.” She leaned forward to look more closely at him. “Where’s the ol’ ball and chain?”

  As she reached for his mask, the figure stepped back from her grasp. He lowered the cleaver and slid the toy plastic blade—merely an improvised sheath—off of a very shiny, very real butcher knife blade.

  The oversized trick-or-treater displayed the implement.

  “Oh, my God, Greg.” Lola rolled her eyes and raised both middle fingers.

  The trickster slashed the knife in a sideways arc, severing the fingers.

  She was too breathless to scream, trying to reconcile the sight of her shortened digits and angry that Greg had taken his little joke this far.

  Not-Greg squatted to gather the fingers and drop them into his treat bag.

  Trying to back away from her own ruined hand, Lola fell like a toddler onto her rump, sucking breath for a scream she would never have time to release.

  Chapter 1

  Ember Hollow, North Carolina

  October 29

  “Helen, a few weeks ago, the empty field you see behind me was home to roughly twenty-five thousand Autumn’s Pride pumpkins,” pronounced local reporter Kit Calloway. “They’re all gone now, on their way to markets and homes around the country. But a good many are staying right here in Ember Hollow, where they will be carved and decorated for the town’s annual Pumpkin Parade on Halloween night.”

  Viewers were treated to stock footage of parades past, with costumed bystanders hooting and clapping while spooky floats crawled by with more elaborately costumed performers aboard.

  “For, you see, come Halloween, Ember Hollow becomes Haunted Hollow, Halloween Capital of the World.” The handsome reporter gave a charming raise of his eyebrow. “And this year promises a little something extra, as the town’s very own homegrown rock band The Chalk Outlines takes the stage above The Grand Illusion cinemas to play a full set. Now the band has taken the local club scene by storm, but this year, with their performance at the theater, they hope to garner the attention of a special guest.”

  “Kerwin Stuyvesant—Talent Manager” read the screen caption under a man in his fifties who wore a bright green suit and funny-looking little hexagonal spectacles. He smiled into the camera with huge teeth that made the tiny glasses seem like toys. “The kids have been rehearsing and hitting the gigs hard, and if I didn’t believe they had what it takes to make it to the top, I wouldn’t have signed on to manage ’em!”

  A quick snip of the trio of Halloween-themed punk rockers, awash in strobe-lit fog at some dive club, flashed on the screen before a cut back to Calloway, who concluded the report with a graceful nod. “Helen, as always, I’ll be right here in Ember Hollow covering the parade and enjoying the company of these great citizens! Back to you!”

  * * * *

  Thirteen-year-old Stuart Barcroft woke to the sound of his mother’s low humming as she breezed past his door to the room of his older brother, Dennis. He hopped from his bed and hurried into his clothes, eavesdropping on the conversation between mother and brother.

  Ma—Elaine Barcroft to you and me—exclaimed, “Oh my word, Dennis! Is that going to wash out of my sheets?”

  And he knew Dennis had blood on him again.

  As Stuart headed toward Dennis’s room, he saw a sheet of sunlight spill onto the hallway floor from the doorway—Ma opening the curtains on his poor brother.

  “That makeup is a mess,” she huffed, but was not really that sore about it.

  At the doorway, Stuart looked his big brother over to make sure he was okay. Dennis, taking a long drink of water from the glass he kept at his bedside, was still in performance attire. His hair, already way too long on top, was disheveled and sticky. Surely exhausted, he hadn’t changed out of his stage attire of torn black denim pants and a hospital scrub top spritzed with the offending stage blood, over a black long-sleeve T-shirt with bones printed on the arms.

  “Oh yeah, Ma. I checked the package. Washes right out.” Despite his exhaustion, he was as patient and respectful with his mother as always.

  Spotting Stuart, Dennis raised the glass. “Hey, dude.”

  “Why didn’t you clean it off?” groused their mother. “And you’re still dressed!”

  When Dennis had moved back in (at the ripe old age of twenty-six) it was into a room his mother had kept essentially as he had left it when he moved out at eighteen. The walls remained plastered with punk posters: Misfits, Black Flag, The Addicts, Sex Pistols, Order of the Fly, Nekromantix, and, of course, Elvis.

  “Our gig went over,” Dennis explained in a scratchy voice. “Had three encores.”

  “You’re sure that’s all?” probed Ma.

  “Ma!” Stuart called. When she spun with a quick squeal, Dennis and Stuart broke out laughing. Stuart was just trying to get her off Dennis’s case. Giving her a start was a bonus.

  Ma was a good sport about it. “Just how many scares can I expect this Halloween?”

  Dennis gave her a tight hug and a kiss on top of her head. “All of ’em.”

  Ma took his wrist and pushed up the long sleeves of his black undershirt. “Let me see something.”

  She turned over his heavily tattooed arm and examined his inner elbow. Dennis pulled away. “ What the hell?”

  “I hear so many things about punk music people,” she said in a grim tone. “Promise me you’re not using any hard drugs?”

  “Ma!” Dennis and Stuart rebuked in harmony.

  Ma clapped once, holding her hands together as she gave a satisfied chuckle. “Guess your ol’ Ma can still pull off a Halloween prank herself every now and again, huh?”

  Dennis walked to his dresser, picked up a crumpled orange flyer, and handed it to Stuart. “I’m a drunk. Not a junkie. There’s a diff.”

  “Don’t say that!” she rebuked. “You’re not either one! Not anymore.”

  Stuart read the flyer and grinned.

  Ma sniffed at Dennis’s water glass.

  the chalk outlines! on stage tonight! read the flyer. It was a rough, old-school mimeograph job, featuring a grainy photo of Dennis with his bandmates, a muscular Hispanic and a petite sneering alt chick, all of them dressed in campy Halloween-inspired rockabilly gear.

  “Once a drunk, always a drunk, Ma. That’s the deal.” Even this sounded cool coming
from Dennis.

  She patted his back. “You’re doing so well, Dennis. I’m proud of you.”

  Stuart offered an agreeing smile, not sure if he should say anything.

  “Now hurry!” Ma squealed. “You shouldn’t keep Reverend McGlazer waiting.”

  She kissed him and turned to leave. “Oh! Can you drop Stuart at school? You want to hear how Dennis’s jig went, don’t you, Stuart?”

  Stuart and Dennis snickered at her word choice. “Sure, Ma. No prob.”

  * * * *

  Beaming, Stuart raised the luchador mask off his face and amped up the volume. His favorite part of autumn mornings was this: riding in his brother’s tricked-out hearse as leaves blew across the tree-lined streets and swirled in mini twisters, chasing each other under an umber haze.

  The trees, fences, and mailboxes along the street all wore such elaborate Halloween decorations, it was like a high-stakes contest. Nylon witches and ghosts floated in the trees, wooden black cat cutouts stood in the flowerbeds, wittily inscribed Styrofoam tombstones jutted from front-yard displays.

  Dennis’s 1970 Cadillac hearse was a mobile advertisement for his band, with flames painted on the hood, cartoonish chalk outlines of a voluptuous woman’s corpse stickered on the doors, and a V8 472 cc engine that could roar like an enraged lion. Stuart loved to ride in it, especially to school.

  The familiar punkabilly music emanating from the speakers had Stuart bobbing his head, tapping his fingers on his thigh.

  Dennis looked at him, pleased. “You really dig that track, huh?”

  “I think it’s your best ever.”

  “Let’s hope the record company suit agrees.”

  “She will, dude!” Stuart insisted. “I’d bet on it!”

  The chorus began, and Stuart sang along with appropriate facial contortions.

  “I better watch you, man,” Dennis said. “You’ll end up replacing me.”

  “Yeah, right,” Stuart said and scoffed with a sideways glance at his brother. “Maybe I can be in the band one day though. Keyboards or something.”

  “No way, daddy-o.” Dennis shook his head, as he always did when Stuart raised the topic. “College. Then some more college! After that, college. You’ll be going to college—beyond the grave!” Dennis goosed his brother, right in that spot under his ribs that made him giggle like a baby. But for Stuart, the appeal of one day being like his brother was near irresistible. “We’ll see.”