Brian Keene - Tequila's Sunrise

He cleaned his hands off in a nearby stream, then got back in the car and drove to the closest convenience store. He bought some cleaning supplies, paid cash, and then found a secluded spot where he could clean out the trunk. Then he returned to the office, unlocked the door, logged himself off the computer, and went home.

Then he went home.

The police knocked on the door a few hours later. Three teenaged boys found Jack’s body. One of them, Seth Ferguson (who was no stranger to juvenile detention) immediately fell under suspicion. When the police cleared him later that day, they questioned the local registered sex offenders, even though Jack’s body had shown no signs of sexual abuse. In the weeks and months that followed, there were no new leads. The case was never solved.

The murder weapon was never found.

***

Daddy…

Gary sat up and wiped his eyes. Steadying himself on his son’s tombstone, he clambered to his feet. His joints popped. He hadn’t aged well in the last two years, and his body was developing the ailments of a man twice his age, arthritis being one of them.

Daddy?

“Oh Jack,” Gary whispered. “Why couldn’t you have stayed home that day?”

Daddy…

His son’s voice grew louder, calling to him, pleading. Sad. Lonely.

Slowly, like a marionette on strings, Gary shuffled towards the water tower.

“Where are you, Jack? Show me. Tell me what I have to do to make it up to you.”

Daddy… Daddy… Daddy…

The voice was right next to him. Gary looked around, fully expecting to see his son’s ghost, but instead, he spied the rabbits. A dozen or so bunnies formed a loose circle around the water tower. They’d been silent, and had appeared as if from nowhere.

Penning him in.

Daddy. Down here.

Gary looked down at the ground.

Jack’s voice echoed from inside a rabbit hole.

The same hole he’d thrown the rock into.

Gary’s skin prickled. Despite his fear, he leaned over and stared into the hole. There was a flurry of movement inside, and then a rabbit darted out and joined the others. Then another. Whimpering, Gary stepped backward. More bunnies poured themselves from the earth, and he felt their eyes on him—accusing.

Condemning.

“What do you want?”

Daddy.

Gary screamed.

***

They found him when the sun went down. He’d screamed himself hoarse while pawing at the ground around his son’s grave. His fingers were dirty, and several of his fingernails were bloody and ragged, hanging by thin strands of tissue. He babbled about bunnies, but no one could understand him. The police arrived, as did an ambulance.

From the undergrowth, a brown bunny rabbit watched them load Gary into the ambulance.

When he was gone, it hopped away.

***

***

This story first appeared on the Horror World website, and was reprinted in my out-of-print short story collection Unhappy Endings . It takes place in the same town as my novels Dark Hollow and Ghost Walk (as does the end of Take The Long Way Home and several other short stories), and alert readers might recognize a few familiar places and people. The water tower exists much as I described it here, but it is far less sinister in real life. My oldest son and I used to play there when he was little. The mishap with the rabbits and the lawnmower is also based on something that happened in real life. I was mowing my lawn and accidentally hit a hidden nest of baby rabbits. It was horrifying and terrible and I felt guilty about it for months afterward. I channeled some of that into the story.

THAT WHICH LINGERS

Sarah awoke to the wailing alarm clock. Blurry-eyed and still half asleep, she went for her morning run—from the bedroom to the bathroom. Three seconds later, she knelt, retching as she’d done every morning for the past two months.

Finished, she collapsed onto the couch and lit the day’s first cigarette while the coffee brewed. A dull ache behind her temples was all that remained from the night before. Sarah frowned, trying to recall the exact details. She remembered arguing with the bartender. He hadn’t wanted to serve her, commenting on her condition . After some flirting, she’d managed to hook up with several men who were willing to buy a girl a drink in exchange for a hint of things to come.

At least she hadn’t gotten completely smashed and ended up bringing one of them home. Her empty bed testified to that. She hadn’t shared it since Christopher walked out on her four months ago. She inhaled, letting the acrid smoke fill her lungs, and fought back tears.

Sarah showered, trying to wake up as the water caressed her skin. Trying to lose herself in a flood of happy thoughts. Trying not to notice the swell of her abdomen as she lathered her lower body. Trying to cope.

She wrapped her long, chestnut hair in a towel, and cinched another around her waist. Then she grabbed breakfast. The coffee was good, but a single bite of the granola bar made her stomach nauseous again.

She let the towels drop to the floor and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. This too, reminded her of Christopher.

They’d dated for three years. The pregnancy had been unplanned. Christopher had been ecstatic—and crushed when he learned that she didn’t feel the same way. She’d tried to explain how she felt. How the timing wasn’t right. She still wanted to go back to school and get her bachelor’s degree. She wanted to do more with her life than working as a waitress. Having a baby now would jeopardize all of that.

What she hadn’t told him was that she worried about his drinking and of how he was turning out to be just like the father he hated. She didn’t express that she had come to seriously doubt their relationship.

Christopher was completely opposed to the abortion.

Sarah noticed how her breasts were growing fuller while echoes of Christopher’s pleas rang in her ears.

The abortion had devastated him, killing whatever chance of love they’d still had. A part of both of them had died that day.

That was four months ago.

Collapsing onto the unmade bed, she began to cry. How could she possibly deal with what was happening to her alone? She needed Christopher.

She’d considered having an ultrasound, but knew that nothing would show up during the procedure.

She wasn’t crazy.

She was haunted.

Deep inside, Sarah felt something kick.

***

***

The original version of this story appeared in my very first short story collection, No Rest For the Wicked , which is long out-of-print . I touched it up a bit for its appearance in A Little Silver Book of Streetwise Stories (also out of print), but left most of it intact. This is one of the first short stories I ever sold for publication, and it remains a personal favorite. When it was first published, it caused a minor stir on early internet message boards among both pro-life and anti-abortion readers. That surprised me at the time, but the internet was young and new then, and things like flame wars and trolls hadn’t been invented yet. Rest assured, I had no political agenda with this tale. I just thought it was a pretty cool ghost story.

TWO-HEADED ALIEN LOVE CHILD

Kaine worked for the government. This was not something he revealed when meeting women or starting conversations. These days, with all of the paranoia and conspiracy theories, it was best to keep silent. When meeting women and starting conversations, Kaine introduced himself as an appliance salesman from New Jersey.

He’d served the department for thirty years, watching it grow from a tiny office into a sprawling bureaucratic monstrosity with buildings in every city of every state. He’d watched administrations rise and fall, witnessed cover-ups and exposures. He’d seen other divisions like the CIA and NSA hide their tracks repeatedly, but his division had never been covert. It worked with and among the civilians it was designed to help. True, in recent decades it had become slower and less efficient, but it still never failed to get the job done.