The Lebo Coven Read online

  THE LEBO COVEN

  By Stephen Mark Rainey

  A Macabre Ink Production

  Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright 2010 by Stephen Mark Rainey

  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

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephen Mark Rainey is author of the novels Balak, The Lebo Coven, Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark (with Elizabeth Massie), The Nightmare Frontier, and Blue Devil Island; over 90 published works of short fiction; five short-fiction collections; and several audio dramas for Big Finish Productions based on the Dark Shadows TV series, featuring several original cast members. For ten years, he edited the award-winning Deathrealm magazine and has edited anthologies for Chaosium, Arkham House, and Delirium Books. Mark lives in Greensboro, NC. He is an avid geocacher, which oftentimes puts him in some pretty scary settings. Visit his website at www.stephenmarkrainey.com.

  Book List

  The Last Trumpet

  Balak

  Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark (with Elizabeth Massie)

  The Lebo Coven

  Blue Devil Island

  Other Gods

  The Nightmare Frontier

  The Gaki & Other Hungry Spirits

  Legends of the Night

  Song of Cthulhu

  Evermore (with James Robert Smith)

  Deathrealms

  The Gods of Moab

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  Dedications

  To my brother, Alan “Phred” Rainey, whose music inspired many of the emotions I attempted to paint in this novel. Thanks, bro.

  To all the unfortunate victims of the Girl Haters’ Club of Martinsville, Virginia, from 1968-1971, when certain young gentlemen knew not what they did.

  And to Danielle D’Attilio, who completely and utterly failed to wreck this novel, despite her thorough and merciless copy-editing. Ha!

  THE LEBO COVEN

  Chapter 1

  “CRIME SCENE—DO NOT ENTER,” warned the bold, black lettering on yellow tape stretched across the front door of the house called “The Ponderago.” An identical plastic strip sealed the back door, as well as all of the ground floor windows of the house. But anyone wishing to cross the police line, Barry Riggs thought as he tore the tape from the front door, needed only to walk inside, since the lock was all-too-clearly broken. More than likely, old George Parrott, the local sheriff, wouldn’t give a rat’s ass even if he himself witnessed some stranger hauling away a truckload of valuables from within.

  Barry pushed the door open, distractedly wrapping the piece of tape around his right fist. The idea of someone breaking in here, the house in which he had grown up, turned his stomach; more, even, than the fact that the place now belonged to his younger brother, Matt. Not that there was much of practical value to him here; as far as he knew, all of his belongings had been removed years ago. But he had to admit to a certain sentimentality about the old house that helped cool the boiling cauldron of bitter memories that persisted from his younger days here. A friendly, reassuring spirit, like a sweet, familiar fragrance, still lingered on the other side of the threshold.

  The spirit of home.

  He stepped into the dim foyer and immediately felt a jab of anger and humiliation in his gut, almost as if he had been raped. The signs of the break-in were all too plain. Shards of glass from shattered vases and picture frames glittered on the carpet, and a twisted lamp leaned against the wall as if someone had tried to hurl it straight through the faux-cherry paneling. Taking a hesitant step forward, he looked to the left, through the columned archway to the living room; then to the right, down the short hallway into the dining room. The extent of the damage—or perhaps more than that, the deliberate thoroughness of the damage—nearly floored him.

  Most of the furniture was overturned—the living room couch, the dining room table, the china cabinet, even the antique grandfather clock in the foyer. Books, pens, pencils, silverware, broken china, and knick-knacks of every variety lay strewn over the floor like the debris of a great explosion. Matt’s stereo system and widescreen television were now useless piles of electronic junk, and the CDs from his apparently extensive collection looked to have been used as Frisbees. Numbly wandering into the kitchen, Barry saw that the doors of all the cabinets hung open and the contents lay scattered over the countertops, in the sink, and on the floor. Broken jars of jam and other condiments oozed inky fluid onto the 1950s-style black-and-white checkerboard tile that his parents—and then his brother—had never bothered to replace. The door of the powerless refrigerator gaped in mute horror at the desecration of the once-opulent dwelling, emitting the sour, nauseating stench of food left to rot.

  But for a moment, in his mind’s eye, Barry saw his mother moving happily about an impeccably clean, quaintly decorated kitchen, preparing dinner for the family, humming a soft tune to herself. Instead of bad meat, he smelled spicy chicken frying. And he saw his dad coming up the stairs from the garage after his long day at the office, eyes lighting up at the sight of his excited six-year-old son waiting to greet him lovingly.

  Then, his mind’s eye no longer in the kitchen but out on the driveway, Barry saw Matt’s face behind the windshield of his four-wheel-drive truck, glaring at him with eyes as bright as the headlights; then, with a grinding of gears and the screech of rubber on pavement, the truck came bearing down on him. He leaped, and oversized tires thudded over the asphalt right where he had been standing.

  He caught his breath. He hadn’t relived that memory in months, maybe even years; not even a few minutes ago, when he had turned his car into the driveway and seen his brother’s name on the mailbox. That terrible event had been over nine years ago, the night of Matt’s graduation from Virginia Tech. The night Matt had earned his degree in communications and a ten-year prison sentence—all but one of which was suspended—for assault and possession of cocaine.

  Barry shook himself back to the present, having managed to keep that painful recollection at bay ever since he had moved to Atlanta—the “real” world, as it were—not long after Matt had been put away. Except at their parents’ funer
als, he had never again seen or spoken to his brother and didn’t know if he intended to, at least in this life. The property had been willed to the brothers, and Matt had settled right into the house, for despite his hard-earned degree, he had elected to remain in the Aiken Mill, working as manager for some mom-and-pop music store in the town’s diminutive business district. The rest of the fairly extensive estate had been divided equally, and Barry was more than satisfied with the arrangement, for each month, a check for his share of the house arrived in the mail—though never with a note or communication of any kind from his brother.

  Mom and Dad’s old room, now apparently Matt’s bedroom, looked to be in the same condition as the rest of the house. The mattress had been pulled off the bed, the covers slung haphazardly into the corners. The antique, dark cherry bureau that had originally belonged to their grandparents now might as well be used for kindling.

  But it was on the wall above the head of the bed that Barry found the most bizarre and disturbing sign of the violation that had been committed here:

  A single word, painted in large, dripping red letters.

  “LEBO.”

  He leaned close to examine the messy scrawl. A signature, perhaps, left by the responsible party? The dark, heavy texture of the pigment looked ominously like blood. The police had already been through the house, photographed the marking, and taken samples of the paint. But Sheriff Parrott had told him they had found no fingerprints or any other evidence in the house that might help identify the vandals.

  Nor had they discovered any sign of Matt himself.

  Someone, the sheriff had theorized, probably held a grudge against the younger Riggs and, sadly, might have acted on it violently, in addition to practically demolishing the house. A grudge, Barry thought. What an understatement. Unless Matt had by some unimaginable miracle overhauled his nasty disposition in recent years, Barry could more or less understand, if not sympathize with, a vandal’s motivation. Matt had come out of his mother’s womb screaming about the repression of younger siblings, and over the years his contempt for his older brother—not to mention the rest of the world—had not mellowed but intensified. For Barry, something about being nearly run over by a truck had driven home the fact that Matt’s hateful nature was no trivial matter. That near-tragic event, apparently precipitated by a brainful of cocaine, seemed to have been the decisive release of Matt’s seething, pent-up animosity.

  Barry, ever the optimist, had always tried to be supportive and, dare he admit it, even loving, forever hoping to win Matt’s respect, if not his affection. But always in vain. When Matt was put away, a faint, wry voice in Barry’s head told him that his brother had finally reaped the reward he so richly deserved. Now, face to face with the devastation of his brother’s house, Barry heard that same voice returning with that same message, and he found it difficult—not mention very nearly undesirable—to try to silence it.

  Still, in some remote, half-hidden corner of his heart, he found himself hoping, albeit reluctantly, that his kid brother might not have been here when the break-in occurred … that Matt’s life might actually have been spared.

  The Ponderago lay on the southern outskirts of Aiken Mill, a sleepy community of some 10,000 souls that nestled in the valley between Copper Peak, Thunder Knob, and Mount Signal—three peaks that formed a triad amid the Blue Ridge Mountains in the southwestern arm of Virginia. From the front porch, Barry could see the dark hump of Copper Peak in the distance, looming against the western sky like a giant tortoise shell. The Riggs homestead was an aging Colonial that Barry’s father had bought when he and his new wife first came to Aiken Mill from Maine in the early 1960s; Barry and his brother both had been born in this house. Matt advertised its western-sounding name—apparently a recent endowment—by way of a wooden sign, probably stolen, that hung from the porch rafters. Dense woods surrounded the house on three sides, and the broad front yard sloped sharply down toward Amber Hill Road, which wound its way up and over the low ridge to the southeast. Behind the house, the steep side of Mt. Signal rose eastward, cresting at the high rock chimneys known as Dragon’s Roost, which could only be seen in winter when the trees were bare. In the west, an autumn sun, just past the five o’clock mark, blazed between walls of cumulus clouds that might later threaten a storm.

  Despite his seven-year settlement in Atlanta, Barry still thought of Aiken Mill, and this house, as his true home. The big city had never been much more to him than a place to work and make his bed, activities that over the last few years had become increasingly difficult. A once-successful commercial artist, he had gotten up to go to work one morning a few weeks ago, only to find himself out of a job. The agency, Penrow & Associates, Inc., had been floundering for over a year and finally became a casualty of a struggling economy and incompetent management. Unable to secure even a decent freelance assignment, Barry was now living on unemployment and his dwindling inheritance, which he had expected to not only last considerably longer, but to increase via his investments. Alas, since the bottom had dropped out of the stock market a few months before, just the opposite had happened.

  Add to all that a recently failed engagement, and you had a neurotic in the making, as he had taken to half-seriously quipping. Still, doing his best to avoid self-pity, he somehow managed to stay a few steps ahead of neurosis; lately, he had immersed himself in his painting to at least keep up the appearance of being a productive human being, and he had even sold a couple of pieces for decent prices, which indicated that there might be some hope for his talent after all. He had always been a damn good commercial artist—his work having had no bearing on the failure of his employer—and an even better fine artist, which he had considered his true calling ever since adolescence. He had brought a few canvases and his paints with him from Atlanta, just in case an opportunity arose.

  In his youth, he had created innumerable sketches and watercolors of Sylvan County’s picturesque countryside and, using whatever entrepreneurial talent he possessed, had earned a little money at it. Now, with his years of commercial experience to draw upon, he thought he might really be able to put his art to work for him. Certainly, Aiken Mill had a healthy share of well-heeled residents (mostly old money, at that) who would appreciate his “pretty” landscape paintings and even welcome the chance to help support and promote a local artist. For years, he had entertained the idea of opening his own studio. His current circumstances, however gloomy, might be just what he needed to convince himself to take that great leap.

  From here, facing the ridge to the southwest, he could see the distant rooftops of the venerable Tudor and Colonial homes that belonged to some of the town’s most prominent citizens and their families: mostly the town fathers and the upper management of Sylvan Blue Ridge Furniture—Aiken Mill’s one honest-to-God, big-ass company. Like at least half of Aiken Mill’s population, Barry’s father had been employed as an administrator at that plant for most of his adult life, fortunately during the days when the company was family-oriented and took care of its own for life. Of course, things were different now, as they were most everywhere. By the time his dad died, a new, younger administration, all dollars and cents, had taken over the plant, the concepts of loyalty and family as alien to them as quantum physics to an orangutan—so like the ubiquitous “we’re-sorry-artists-don’t-deserve-to-be-paid-a-living-wage” agencies in Atlanta.

  True American tradition.

  But standing here now, in solitude, Barry could almost believe that he had gone back in time, for everything looked very nearly the same as he remembered it. Some of the trees had grown taller, and a few more houses had been built atop the ridge, but the place still felt undeniably like home.

  But then the depressing reality settled heavily upon him: this wasn’t even his house anymore.

  He had to admit that he was nervous. Inside the house, the wreckage of his brother’s life awaited his attention, and he dreaded going back in to face it. Also worrying at his insides like a persistent drill was the possibilit
y that the violence committed here might not be the climax of some unknown sequence of events involving his brother … but, rather, a beginning.

  Something that could end up involving him, as well.

  He began to walk a circuit around the outside of house, removing the police tape from the doors and windows, for the sheriff had assured him that doing so now was quite legal. Parrott had seen everything he needed to see, and Barry could rest secure in the knowledge that the Aiken Mill police would do everything they could to find his brother and arrest the heinous criminals that had ruined his house. No, Sheriff Parrott had said, he had no idea who or what “LEBO” referred to, but he would do his damnedest to find out. In the meantime, if Barry learned anything that might help in the investigation, would he be so kind as to let the sheriff know?

  Sure. No problem.

  Before commencing the mammoth job of cleaning up, Barry wanted to unpack his things—not the least of which was his highly fashionable Ruger .41 caliber Magnum revolver, a little present he had bought for himself when his neighborhood in Atlanta began turning to slum. Although he had never had any actual use for the weapon beyond target shooting, he was now glad that he had brought it with him. For reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint, that nagging little drill in his stomach seemed to have become more insistent as the shadows began to lengthen and the crickets opened their chirping chorale, signaling that night was rapidly closing in.

  The forest that surrounded the Riggs’s house was a dark, brooding wood that Barry recalled from his childhood with both fondness and apprehension. In daylight, the forest had been an endless, magical place that he explored with unbridled enthusiasm, whereas at night, it became an impenetrable, black abyss from which unknown, nightmarish sounds piped with malevolent furor. It was the latter impression that he remembered most vividly now, for the sun had dropped behind Copper Peak, transforming its eastern slope into a solid wall of shadow. He wondered if parents still enjoyed frightening their children, as his parents had, with the once-abundant stuff of local legendry: the Fugue Devil, which rose up from Hell every few years to claim souls; the ancient, monstrous entity in the forest that had no name but that cried out at night feigning the voice of a whippoorwill; the whispering ghost that wandered the halls of Madison Arms, this particular community’s inevitable haunted house. In his youth, such stories had raised many a goose bump and taught him what it meant to feel his scalp prickle.