The Wicked

  ALSO BY JAMES NEWMAN

  Holy Rollers

  Midnight Rain

  The Forum

  Revenge Flick!

  Animosity

  Olden

  COLLABORATIONS

  Night of the Loving Dead

  (with James Futch)

  Death Songs from the Naked Man

  (with Donn Gash)

  Love Bites

  (with Donn Gash)

  The Church of Dead Languages

  (with Jason Brannon)

  COLLECTIONS

  People Are Strange

  Massachusetts • Pennsylvania • New Mexico • Nevada

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Previously published in limited edition hardcover by Necessary Evil Press.

  This edition has been revised and expanded.

  Cover art and illustrations by Jesse David Young

  Cover layout by Yannick Bouchard

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2012 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC

  Established in 2009

  www.shocktotem.com

  ISBN 978-0-615-41900-8

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Praise for The Wicked

  “You might expect the work of a young Southern writer to show some roots, and you’ll see that clearly in James Newman’s writing. There’s a little bit of Davis Grubb and Joe Lansdale twisting into that dark earth, and a strong straight spike of Robert McCammon digging deep. But the story tree that grows above ground belongs to a tale-spinner who can raise one mean hunk of nightmare all on his own. The Wicked is a well-honed blade.”

  —Norman Partridge

  Author of Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales and Lesser Demons

  “The Wicked is a good old-fashioned, unabashed Horror novel. James Newman remembers when horror used to be fun, and he’s recaptured it here in all of its gory glory. A terrifying page-turner in the tradition of Graham Masterton, J.N. Williamson, and Richard Laymon. WICKEDly good reading from one of horror’s new heirs!”

  —Brian Keene

  Author of The Rising, City of the Dead and Ghoul

  “Demons, depravity and despair, oh my! Reminiscent of the best of 80’s horror and Bentley Little at his most grotesque and unrelenting, The Wicked is the kind of horror we don’t see enough of anymore. This is one wild and bloody ride, and in the capable hands of James Newman, it’s one worth taking.”

  —Kealan Patrick Burke

  Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Turtle Boy and Kin

  “James Newman looks like he’s far too young to be the bastard lovechild of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor...but still, I wonder. In years to come, when we talk about great writers of the Southern gothic, we’ll be mentioning Newman alongside Massie, McCammon, Crews, Farris and the aforementioned. You can smell the magnolias, the kudzu and the blood...”

  —John Pelan

  Author of The Colour Out of Darkness

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Prelude

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Bonus Story

  Click Here for a Full Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  by Mark Allan Gunnells

  I am a child of the 80s. Big hair, Member’s Only jackets, Rubik’s cubes, Ronald Reagan and George Bush (the first one)—I grew up with it all. And as a full-fledged horror geek from a very young age, I also was brought up on 80s horror. I was at the local theater for each new Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween movie that was released. That also meant I was snapping up all the horror mass-markets I could find in the paperback rack of the drugstore down the street from my house.

  Man, how I loved those paperback original horror novels from the 80s. Complete with garish covers, ads in the back, lurid summaries. These books were of varying quality, but for the most part I could always count on them to be fun. Exciting, fast-paced stories with colorful characters and juicy violence. Over the years my taste in fiction has expanded and evolved, but I’ve always retained a warm affection for those old horror novels and have lamented the fact that publishers don’t seem to put out that kind of fiction anymore.

  At least, until I found James Newman’s The Wicked.

  I first discovered Newman with his novel Midnight Rain. While Midnight Rain isn’t really horror, it is an excellent coming-of-age mystery very much in the tradition of McCammon’s Boy’s Life or Lansdale’s A Fine Dark Line. A rich novel full of complex characters, it made me an instant fan and I quickly sought out more by this talented author.

  When I got my hands on his novel The Wicked, I suppose I was expecting something that matched the tone and subject matter of Midnight Rain. I was pleasantly surprised to find something totally different. I was immediately impressed by Newman’s ability to be more than a one-trick pony, writing the same story over and over. I could tell he had the goods to tackle different types of fiction with equal skill. With The Wicked, he succeeded in crafting a novel that paid loving tribute to those paperback horrors of my childhood. And like those books, I found Newman’s story to be engaging and undiluted fun!

  What he offers us here in The Wicked, is the tale of a family moving to the small town of Morganville, North Carolina. At first, Morganville seems peaceful and idyllic—until an ancient supernatural evil infests the town and its inhabitants.

  Now, I could not even begin to count the number of novels from the 80s that had a similar premise. This is not to suggest Newman’s work is at all derivative, however. While working within that framework, he makes The Wicked completely his own. And he brings something else to the table that many of those novels I grew up with lacked—massive amounts of talent. He gives us more than just stock characters, but instead complex individuals that spring from the page in three-dimensional glory. The situations are otherworldly, yet layered with a realism that makes suspension of disbelief effortless.

  After reading The Wicked, it was obvious to me that Newman is also someone who grew up scouring the paperback racks for those lurid covers. The book does not come across as parody; it is a fully formed story in its own right. You could almost believe you had laid hands on one of those 80s classics, one written by an author on top of his game.

  Some may consider this novel as less “serious” than Midnight Rain, but I find The Wicked just as serious and equally as impressive. It proves that Newman is a master storyteller who can write different types of tales with equal skill.

  With The Wicked, James Newman pays tribute to the fiction of the past while proving that he is also going to be a major player in the future.

  On the evening of August 12, 2002, a fire raged on the outskirts of Morganville, North Carolina. Into the early hours of the morning it raged, higher and higher, as if the flames fought to devour the moon itself along with everything else. Because of the Morganville Daily Register, the tragedy of that night would come to be known as “The Great Fire of ‘02,” and its casualties would haunt the citizens of Morganville for the rest of their lives.

  Neither ghosts nor spirits were these haunts, but instead the collective disbelief that such a thing could happen to the town’s innocent.

  It happened at the Heller Home for Children, out on Pellham Road.

  Initially the Morganville Youth Home, Heller Home was erected in October of 1952, ninety years to the day Morganville was officially established on paper. Founded by Joseph and Irene Heller (a retired Episcopal minister, he was known
as “Uncle Joe” to the kids, she as “Aunt Reeny”), the place began as a modest two-story farmhouse, by all outward appearances little more than the quaint country home of a typical Southern family. Inside, however, one would find a house full of love and tolerance, a bustling home for children of every race and creed. No less than a dozen kids usually roamed Heller Home’s hallways, playfully roughhousing under Mr. Heller’s watchful eye while less rowdy teens nurtured their artistic talents with brush and easel. Within this makeshift haven for runaways and the like, Mrs. Heller cooked for her young wards nutritious meals which they might otherwise lack, and eventually the kind-hearted couple would convince these prodigal sons and daughters to return home to their families.

  Within a year or two the Morganville Youth Home evolved into an unofficial hospital for neglected and abused children. Mr. and Mrs. Heller were not licensed medical professionals, but thanks to their close relationship with the Morgan County Department of Social Services they were granted funds enabling them to hire several qualified bodies eager to aid them in caring for poor children with nowhere else to go. Although the official licenses and such did not come until a year after their deaths (Mr. Heller died of a heart attack at the age of seventy, Mrs. Heller four years later of natural causes), the Hellers’ dreams were nonetheless posthumously realized. Six months after Mrs. Heller passed away in the first days of Spring ‘79, Morganville dedicated the new “Heller Home for Children” to the couple. It officially opened its doors as a government-sanctioned hospital to not only victims of abuse but also to children from needy families, particularly youth with chronic illnesses. Due to its historical value, the powers that be resolved not to raze the house and begin anew; instead, volunteers and county workers donated their time and money toward adding several new wings onto Heller Home. A local land developer, claiming the Hellers were the only family he’d ever known, dedicated three acres to the hospital and its young wards. There, the children could run through the grassy meadows bordering Morgan County, wade in the creek or climb the grand oak trees that lined the property.

  It seemed as if every person in town did all they could to support the Home, be it through donations or by contributing toys or clothes, and Morganville’s citizens did this not out of pity but from the goodness of their own warm hearts.

  Uncle Joe and Aunt Reeny would have been proud.

  But on the night of August 12, 2002, two months shy of its fiftieth birthday, no one could have expected that the Heller Home for Children would suddenly ignite.

  And burn.

  And burn.

  Until there was nothing left.

  The Morgan County Fire Department received the call at approximately ten-thirty p.m. The caller: one Marietta Rude, an eighty-year-old widow who had nothing better to do, according to most who knew her, than track the whereabouts of others so her bridge club might have ample fuel for gossip every third Saturday of the month. Mrs. Rude had lived across the street from Heller Home for decades, and many could remember the days when she had branded the Home a haven for “no-good runaways.” Of course, to hear the old woman after The Great Fire of ‘02, it had been her duty to watch over those poor children since Heller Home’s inception. Things had been slow for Fire Chief Randall Simms and his crew that evening—“like the calm before the storm,” they would later tell their friends and family. Frank “Beanpole” Deon was kicked back on a sofa in the center of the firehouse, chomping loudly on a meatball sub while flipping through the latest issue of Popular Mechanics; Jack Deese and Ricky Friedman entertained themselves with some late-night Cinemax softcore on the Department’s 13” Magnavox, occasionally making off-color comments about the women on the screen out of extreme boredom more than any desire to be vulgar; Chief Simms, meanwhile, was engaged in a game of chess with Hank Keenan (who, in addition to volunteering much of his time at the firehouse, also served as a Deputy Sheriff and president of Morgan County’s Dads Against Domestic Violence chapter), both of them too bored to admit that neither could beat the other no matter how hard he tried, so why bother?

  Simms had just taken Keenan’s bishop, the only move of any significance to occur in their half-hearted charade for the last hour, but the Chief never had time to gloat about it or even remove the piece from the board as the station’s ear-piercing bell suddenly announced it was time to move. Its shrill ring echoed throughout the halls of the firehouse, shattering the calm. A sleepy female voice on each man’s two-way radio informed Simms’ crew of their destination.

  “Move your asses, boys!” Simms yelled, already sliding down the tarnished brass pole in the center of the room. While rookies Deese and Friedman were half his age, Simms could hustle twice as fast as either man; experience had taught him every second was precious. “Move, move, move!”

  Chief Simms and his men responded in record time, sirens screaming and lights flashing over the sleeping gray houses of Morganville in their wake. But Heller Home could not be saved. The house’s main supports had already collapsed by the time they arrived, and no matter how many gallons of water they used to douse the place, Chief Simms and his men found their efforts were ultimately futile.

  Simms cursed himself more than once that night.

  He realized, before long, that they could do little more than stand there.

  Stand there, watch the place burn...and pull out all the bodies.

  The final death toll was sixty. Thirty-seven children dead. Eleven more seriously injured. Six of Heller Home’s care-supervisors who were on shift that night perished in the fire; the others were in critical condition. Of the twenty-odd residents who did make it out of Heller Home alive—be it through the aid of Chief Simms and his men or their own iron will to survive—seventeen of them later succumbed to their injuries.

  The Great Fire of ‘02 was the worst tragedy Morganville had ever witnessed.

  Several days later, after the mass funeral that saw Morganville citizens shed more tears in a single afternoon than they ever thought possible, Chief Simms and a couple professionals called in from the state capital determined that The Great Fire of ‘02 was no accident.

  Someone had caused all that death, all that destruction, on purpose.

  They caught him, eventually.

  The arsonist’s name was Robert John Briggs. He was seventeen years old, a dropout from West Morganville High.

  The investigation revealed that sometime before ten p.m. that night, Briggs had broken into the basement of the Heller Home for Children, placing a series of homemade bombs (i.e., newspapers folded into makeshift “pockets,” each filled with a pinch of fertilizer, topped with cotton-ball masses soaked in diesel fuel) about the earthen floor of the basement. Satisfied, he lit their lengthy fuses, made his escape...then presumably stood nearby to admire his hateful handiwork.

  Bobby Briggs was arrested two weeks later, after his own mother reported to Morganville authorities that she had stumbled upon a notebook in her home that outlined in explicit detail her son’s part in The Great Fire of ‘02. Indeed, the young man’s bedroom revealed a virtual workshop for an arsonist-in-training.

  Briggs said little during the whole ordeal, adamantly refusing to answer questions posed by those in charge of the investigation. Throughout it all, Bobby Briggs’ only official statement was a single murmured phrase: “I wanted to show them that bad things happen to good people. Even to the little kids.”

  None of it made any sense. The grieving citizens of Morganville wanted to know: Why?

  Briggs never showed a shred of remorse. The teenaged mass-murderer seemed proud of what he had done, in fact. Throughout his trial he stared straight ahead with glazed eyes, and the expression on his face was that of someone privy to a secret that will forever change the world. During the proceedings, in all of the pictures snapped by Simon Short for the front page of the Morganville Daily Register, the teenager just kept smiling. Sometimes he would scribble words on his palms with a pen, eyewitnesses later recounted on the steps of the Morgan County Courthouse. Non
sensical words like “MOLOCH,” “LOCHIE,” “MO-MO,” and “MR. M.”

  When it was over, the judge remanded Bobby Briggs upstate to the sanitarium in Fleetwood. Prosecutors fought for the death penalty, but Briggs’ attorney succeeded in convincing the jury that his client suffered “...severe mental problems, the result of unimaginable childhood abuse.”

  Right up to the end, Bobby Briggs kept smiling.

  Smiling.

  As if the troubled teenager knew all along that Morganville, North Carolina would never be the same.

  “Later, folks would look back on The Great Fire of ‘02 as the single worst thing that ever happened to our town. They would remember those whose lives were lost, and they would think nothing could hurt Morganville the way our souls were shattered that fateful August evening.

  They were wrong.

  Because The Great Fire of ‘02...that was just the beginning.”

  —George A. Heatherly

  Excerpt from Evil in the Tarheel State: A True Story of Demonic Manifestation (Eerie-A Press, 2004)

  CHAPTER 1

  Kate Little woke with a start. She pulled the old afghan her grandmother had made for her twenty-first birthday up over her shoulders. She shot furtive glances at her surroundings, temporarily unable to recall where she was or even the time of day. Slowly the images from her nightmare faded, but her brain was still foggy, muddled with the memories her dream had conjured. Sweat beaded her brow, yet she trembled as if she were freezing.