Dark Silence Read online

  DARK SILENCE

  By Rick Hautala

  A Macabre Ink Production

  Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright 2014 / The Estate of Rick Hautala

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Under his own name, Rick Hautala wrote close to thirty novels, including the million-copy best seller Night Stone, as well as Winter Wake, The Mountain King, and Little Brothers. He published three short story collections: Bedbugs, Occasional Demons, and Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala. He had over sixty short stories published in a variety of national and international anthologies and magazines.

  Writing as A. J. Matthews, his novels include the bestsellers The White Room, Looking Glass, Follow, and Unbroken.

  His recent and forthcoming books include Indian Summer, a new “Little Brothers” novella, as well as two novels, Chills and Waiting. He recently sold The Star Road, a science fiction novel co-written with Matthew Costello, to Brendan Deneen at Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s.

  With Mark Steensland, he wrote several short films, including the multiple award-winning Peekers, based on the short story by Kealan Patrick Burke; The Ugly File, based on the short story by Ed Gorman; and Lovecraft’s Pillow, inspired by a suggestion from Stephen King.

  Born and raised in Rockport, Massachusetts, Rick was a graduate of the University of Maine in Orono with a Master of Arts in English Literature. He lived in southern Maine and is survived by his wife, author Holly Newstein.

  In 2012, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association.

  For more information, check out his website www.rickhautala.com.

  Book List

  Novels and Novellas

  Beyond the Shroud

  Cold River

  Cold Whisper

  Dark Silence

  Dead Voices

  Follow

  Four Octobers

  Ghost Light

  Impulse

  Little Brothers

  Looking Glass

  Moon Death

  Moonbog

  Moonwalker

  Night Stone

  Reunion

  Shades of Night

  Star Road

  The Cove

  The Demon’s Wife

  The Mountain King

  The White Room

  The Wildman

  Twilight Time

  Unbroken

  Winter Wake

  The Body of Evidence Series (co-written with Christopher Golden)

  Brain Trust

  Burning Bones

  Last Breath

  Skin Deep

  Throat Culture

  Story Collections

  Bedbugs

  Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala

  Occasional Demons

  Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  Dedication

  This one is for Matti,

  who carries sunshine in a smile

  DARK SILENCE

  CONTENTS

  Introduction (by Matti Hautala)

  PROLOGUE— November 1694

  Prologue: November 1694: A Hanging

  PART ONE: Another Fall—Autumn 1963

  Chapter One: Retard

  Chapter Two: “Smile for the Camera!”

  PART TWO: The “Old Witch Lady”

  Chapter Three: Knife Edge

  Chapter Four: Scratch—scritch—scre-e-e-ch

  Chapter Five: Flatline

  Chapter Six: Summer Shadows

  Chapter Seven: The Witch Is Back

  Chapter Eight: Night Cry

  Chapter Nine: Red Ball

  Chapter Ten: Removal

  Chapter Eleven: Escapee

  Chapter Twelve: The Old Mill

  Chapter Thirteen: Spooked

  Chapter Fourteen: A Bad Day

  Chapter Fifteen: Memory Lapse

  PART THREE: The “Old Witch Lady’s” House

  Chapter Sixteen: The Only Alternative

  Chapter Seventeen: Hearing Voices

  Chapter Eighteen: Shadow Show

  Chapter Nineteen: Unraveling

  Chapter Twenty: Unwrapping

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Portrait

  Chapter Twenty-Two: True Confessions

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Losing It

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Mill Again

  Chanter Twenty-Five: Other Voices

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Into the Cellar

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Up in Flames

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Aftermath

  Introduction

  By Matti Hautala

  When I was asked to write the introduction for Crossroad Press’s digital reprint of Dark Silence, I was at once humbled, excited, and honored to have this opportunity, but I also quickly realized that I had no idea how to write an introduction to a book that is so personally meaningful to me. I know when I read introductions to books I love finding out weird little details about the author’s writing process or the book’s history, and I hate when parts of the plot are given away, so I’ll try to follow my own advice and hopefully keep you entertained.

  Most of my earliest childhood memories take place in rooms with walls lined with books because, well, when you grow up with a parent who’s an author, every inch of wall space is taken up by ugly bookshelves. And it’s not that bookshelves are ugly in and of themselves; it’s just that when you have that many books you need to start making your own bookshelves, and my dad was an author, not a carpenter.

  The shelves were stacked with books three times my height and I remember thinking at a pretty young age—so this is why my dad’s so smart; he’s read ALL these books! Of course I know now that 50-60% of those books went unread over the years, but at the time it made the massive collection especially impressive. I remember too that I’d always gravitate towards one book and pull it off the shelf whenever I could—Dark Silence. As a young kid, five or six years old, it doesn’t get much cooler than having a whole, real book dedicated to you. Right there on the fourth page was my name! I was famous!

  Now that I’m an adult I’ve come to terms with
the fact that yes, my dad really did dedicate this book to me. But I get a similar feeling of childlike amazement when I pull any of his books off the shelf now that he’s passed away—he really wrote dozens and dozens of novels, and millions of people have picked up those books and are still reading them today. I only mention this to say that Rick was as equally humbled by that simple fact—he was constantly in awe that he got to dedicate himself to doing what he loved, “and to think that a couple people actually like it.” (Not a direct quote from Rick, but if you’ve read his autobiography or knew him personally, the self-deprecating humility will be familiar.) Rick couldn’t even eat breakfast before he got his writing done for the day and he couldn’t get to sleep at night until he read quietly for an hour or two, so to say he was dedicated to being an author is quite the understatement.

  First and foremost, I think Dark Silence is unique among my dad’s novels in that the story’s backbone relies quite heavily on Rick’s passion for history and his eagerness to jump into the psychological struggles that people in the past had to deal with. When I mentioned those overflowing bookshelves earlier, I think many readers would be surprised to learn that the VAST majority of those books were non-fiction. Rick always claimed he didn’t read that much fiction because it would just remind him of how inferior he was to Hawthorne or James Lee Burke, but I think it was because he found more salient struggles, character development, and poetry in the stories of lives lived and now gone. Without giving anything away that the back cover of the book doesn’t already hint at, Dark Silence was a particularly meaningful book for Rick because he got to write a story that tied in the Salem witch trials and the creepy aura that surrounds myths from that era. Growing up in Massachusetts made the witch trials especially meaningful to him because he could see and experience the places that these events happened—he could connect with that past in a way that I’m jealous of still. I think too that his love for reimagining and reshaping history in his books had something to do with his fear of mortality and his need to believe that people’s stories didn’t die when they died.

  Rick always grounded his stories in what he knew best; exploring the nuances of human emotions in inhumane (and sometimes inhuman) conditions. If you’re already a fan of Rick’s writing then you’ll know what you’re in for here—chapters that you wish would never end, dialogue that draws you in and characters that you feel like you know from the moment they walk onto the page. If you’re reading this book late at night and feel like you might sleep with the light on tonight just in case, then he wrote a successful horror story. (As someone who slept in the room next to Rick and was awoken many nights by muffled screams and bursts of nightmarish ideas mumbled into a tape recorder, I can promise you he scared himself plenty, and I learned young that a lot of good ideas can come out of very dark places.)

  If you find yourself thinking back to the story the next day and wondering how you would act if faced with such terrifying circumstances, then he accomplished his ultimate goal. Rick saw exploring the dark as a way to get to the light, and the best way I can think of to really introduce this book is to leave you with some words from the man himself: “I think, if anything, I’m a frustrated romantic who really does want to see the best of life, the positive aspects of people, but the world and nighttime prove me wrong all the time. The light casts shadows, and I’ve always been drawn to the shadows, the things at the edges of our awareness.” So without further ado, let’s venture into the shadows…

  Matti Hautala

  July 2014

  PROLOGUE

  November 1694

  “… wrong doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and … becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief.”

  —Hawthorne

  The House of the Seven Gables

  Prologue: November 1694

  A Hanging

  The wind came in off the distant ocean, carrying with it a cold drizzle that lashed like a whip against the small group of people who had gathered beneath the wide-spanning, leafless oak tree. Thin, gray clouds raced to the west as though fleeing the tossing waves of the Atlantic. A lone seagull spiraled high overhead, no more than a white speck against the sky. Its lonely cry punctuated the slick whistling of the wind that beat down the yellowed grass and brown weeds covering the slope along the boulder-strewn shore of the Saco River.

  In the clearing beneath the oak, a tall, bearded man wearing a long black cloak that flapped like a raven’s wing in the wind, stood in front of an aged woman. She wore a plain, gray linen dress and had a dark wool shawl thrown over her frail shoulders against the autumn chill. Her white hair hung in a loose tangle down to her shoulders. She was supported by two burly men who grasped her roughly by the upper arms. Behind her back, a thick hempen rope dug into her wrists as she struggled against her bonds. Mist sprinkled her face like the sweat of one in the grips of a fever as she looked at the hard glint in the man’s pale blue eyes. She never had—and now knew she never would—find an ounce of mercy in the eyes of Judge William Talmadge.

  “Ye have heard the charges laid against thee, Rachel Parsons,” Judge Talmadge said in a deep, sonorous voice, “and ye have heard the sentence as decreed by the court. Have ye any last words?”

  For the span of several heartbeats, Rachel Parsons was silent. Her gaze darted from face to face in the crowd as she tried to understand how these, her friends and neighbors for nearly two decades, could turn on her like this. Last month, many of them had been at the mockery of justice that had been called her “trial” for the crime of witchcraft. A few had testified against her, specifying particular instances and incidents where she had worked her evil against them and their kin. John Saunders, whose son was betrothed to Elizabeth Hull, had testified how last spring Rachel had put a curse on his milk cow which she said she wouldn’t lift until he brought her a load of firewood for the winter. And Ester Hull, her nearest neighbor, had told the court that many a full moon night over the past ten years she had seen Rachel leave her house at midnight in the form of a black cat, and go into the forest to revel with Satan and his Dark Legion.

  Behind her, Rachel was aware of the looming presence of the large, leafless oak tree. She could imagine that the lashing branches reached high into the heavens and were shredding the rain clouds, tearing them to windblown ribbons.

  She could hear the dull creaking of the rope that hung from one of the lower branches as it swayed back and forth in the wind. Within minutes, that rope was to be looped around her neck and she would be hanging, lifeless and cold, in the drizzling rain.

  “If ye have no more to say, then gaolers, prepare to carry out the sentence,” Judge Talmadge said.

  Unmindful of the agony it caused, the two men fairly lifted her by the arms. Then climbing up ladders perched on either side of her, they hustled her up the middle ladder that leaned against the branch around which the rope had been tied. While one of them held up her wet hair, the other slipped the noose around her neck and pulled it snugly tight. The thick rope pinched the skin at the back of Rachel’s neck like the stinging bite of a serpent. Rachel winced with pain as the two men scurried back down safely to the ground and removed their ladders.

  “Yea—I do have something to say,” Rachel said in a voice that strained to be heard above the hissing wind.

  In the distance, through the trees, she could see the swift, silver band that was the Saco River. The whispering crowd grew hushed with expectation. Stepping forward, Judge Talmadge looked up at her, his mouth a hard, lipless line.

  “Be brief, Dame Parsons,” he said. “The Lord in heaven—or your Dark Master in hell below—awaits to embrace your eternal soul.”

  The deep trembling in Rachel’s chest made it difficult for her to speak. Words and images, fragments of thoughts raced through her mind. Memories of her life in England, of the dangerous passage to the colonies, of the hard work she and Thomas, her husband, now long dead, had endured, carving out a life for themselves in the rich lands on the north shore of th
e Saco River in the Province of Maine. The joy and pain of childbirth, and the grief of losing all but one of her six children before they turned twelve. Rage and pain threatened to burst out of Rachel like the raging wind, that rattled the branches of the Gallows tree overhead.

  “This is my land,” Rachel said in a tremulous voice that threatened to break on every syllable. “This oak tree, which soon will bear my lifeless body like some unrighteous fruit, is on my property!”

  “I prithee, be brief,” Judge Talmadge said, glaring up at her harshly.

  Rachel eyed him coldly as her anger fanned all the higher. “Then hear me out, Judge Talmadge! I have a daughter—Nancy, who lives in Winnisquam, New Hampshire, with her husband, William, and her daughter, Elizabeth. In my will, which Parson Wells has writ down for me and duly recorded, I bequeath my house and property to her. And I know—”

  For a moment, her voice broke as hot, red anger filled her. Rachel struggled to free her hands so she could shake her clenched fists at the storm-tossed sky.

  “—I know, Judge Talmadge, that ye have long coveted this land which Thomas and I have cleared and made fertile. But I tell ye this: the land now belongs to my daughter, Nancy, and no one else!”

  Her voice trembled as it rose higher so the entire assembly could hear her.

  “And I tell ye all this. I curse this man! May the Lord in heaven smite him and all the liars who have brought me to this untimely end!”

  She caught sight of John Saunders in the crowd as, with downturned face, he glanced at her from beneath the brim of his wide, black hat.

  “None of ye shall escape the cleansing fire of the Lord’s judgment! Do ye hear me? And I say this: after I am gone, if this property ever leaves the hands of my daughter—or her daughter—then I beseech the Lord in heaven to smite with just retribution whomever is living in my house! Let them and all their kin burn in the agony of hellfire!”