Four Corners Dark: Horror Stories Read online

  Copyright © 2012 William McNally

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1463561857

  ISBN 13: 9781463561857

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62110-509-1

  CONTENTS

  Engine 18

  Return to Nowhere

  The Raven Mocker

  The Spinning Wheel

  ENGINE 18

  CHAPTER ONE

  Anna Sanchez kneeled and crossed herself, and prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe for protection. The old church echoed with the murmured prayers of her fellow travelers. She watched them huddled near the altar where one woman stared at pills in her hand. The man called Omar had given them birth control in case they were raped during the three-day trip through the Sonoran desert. Anna had thrown them away. Her late grandfather, a former boxer, had taught her to take care of herself.

  There was a surge of activity and the crowd of people, loaded with backpacks and luggage, moved towards the front doors. They were waiting for the truck to the border town of Sasabe.

  “It is time to leave,” Omar shouted at the travelers.

  Omar was not Mexican but spoke perfect Spanish. He appeared polite and professional, but Anna sensed a coiled snake behind his dark eyes. She followed the others to a 1960s-era farm truck with wood slates lining the open bed. The faded rust-colored paint peeled off in sections. She handed Omar her payment, climbed onto the back of the truck, and sat between two older women.

  “Perdón,” she said, sliding down between them.

  She placed her knapsack on her lap and felt the cold metal of a revolver tucked in her jeans. The truck rumbled to life and started down the dirt road to Sasabe. The truck had a stenciled number thirteen painted on its windshield to enable the town to track the fees due it for allowing the service within its borders. Number thirteen picked up speed and delivered more souls to the dark desert, driving with lights off as the route was popular with bandits looking to rob the unfortunates who travelled it. Omar glanced out the dusty back window of the cab with a satisfied look on his face. Thirty-five heads was a good take for him tonight.

  Anna’s neighbors had told her about Omar, they called him a coyote, a smuggler who could bring people across the border to California in time for harvest. The price wasn’t negotiable, one hundred dollars to Sasabe and two thousand to California. He promised a high success rate but no one really knew for sure, the people he smuggled never returned.

  Anna planned to travel up the California coast working the strawberry and blackberry harvests. She had grown up using her hands and didn’t mind the work. After the summer, she would go north to Redding where her aunt owned a bakery. Earlier in the week she had wired seventeen thousand dollars to her aunt, enough money to start a new life. In seventy-two hours she would be past the desert and free.

  The moon was nearly full and cast a blue glow on the faces of the people huddled on the truck. There were families, a dozen or so younger people and the two older women next to her. Many were loaded with clothing and possessions. Anna carried only her knapsack and wore two sets of clothes. The only possessions she valued were the Colt stuck down the front of her jeans and the forged passport stuck somewhere else. Somewhere no one would find it. She remembered Omar’s cold advice to the women.

  “Take the pills,” he had said. “You don’t want to get to America knocked up. You can’t pick knocked up.”

  She turned to one of the women next to her.

  “Hello,” she said to the woman.

  “Hello. My name is Rosa,” The old woman answered. Her teeth were brown stumps and her face was lined with years of misery. A faded tear drop was tattooed under her eye. “My son is waiting for me,” she told Anna. “He is very successful in the United States and arranged for me to cross. I have waited so long to meet his family.”

  The old woman began to cry and Anna put an arm around her frail shoulder. The landscape sped by in shadows for several hours until the yellow lights of Sasabe appeared in the distance. The truck slowed and then came to a stop. The travelers sat waiting for the next step in their journey. Omar climbed out of the cab, looked around, and then opened the wooden tail gate.

  “It’s time. Get out,” he yelled in Spanish. Anna and the others never saw the driver.

  She climbed down from the back of the truck and then helped Rosa. The travelers were busy organizing their loads. Omar separated them into two groups and Anna was placed with the younger people, Rosa was placed with the others.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Omar walked out into the desert and disappeared from view. An hour passed, then another. People began to whisper to one another.

  “Maybe we have been tricked,” one woman said.

  The truck and unseen driver were long gone. The two groups stood together shielded by a thicket of mesquite. Finally, Omar flashed the signal light for Anna’s group to join him. They scurried across the desert scanning the moonlit ground for snakes and scorpions. When they reached him he signaled for the second group.

  “Silence!” Omar hissed at two men whispering.

  The second group was slower than the first, stopping to pick up items dropped along the way. Anna saw Rosa in the rear of the group struggling to carry her suitcase. She stepped forward to help, but was jerked backwards.

  “You need to stay here,” Omar said flatly. “They must come on their own.”

  Omar led them further into the desert. He walked easily across the difficult terrain avoiding obstacles while the others stumbled blindly behind him. The two groups had spread out considerably by the time they reached the halfway point. The distance was taking a toll on the old and the overloaded.

  One of the women from the second group ran up to Omar. She was out of breath and dropped two bags both sprayed-painted black to help avoid detection.

  “My husband has fallen and is badly hurt,” she said. Omar stopped and stared at the woman.

  “Where is he?” he asked blandly.

  She gestured for Omar to follow her back along the line of travelers. Anna followed behind them. Omar and the woman reached the end of the line and found a middle-aged man groaning in pain. His leg was bleeding and a sharp white bone pierced his skin. Anna found Rosa towards the back still struggling with her suitcase.

  Anna said, “Give it to me. I will carry it for you.”

  “Bless you,” Rosa said. “Bless you.”

  Anna moved closer behind Omar and watched. The injured man lay in a pile of clothing, books and papers he had dropped when he fell.

  Omar turned to the injured man’s wife and said, “Take what you need from him. We are leaving.”

  “No!” she wailed. “We gave you everything we had. You promised to help us cross over.”

  “This is true,” Omar said with a grin.

  He pulled a Luger fitted with a silencer from his vest, aimed the gun and shot the man in the head. The man tumbled forward onto his belongings. His blood pooled in the sand like motor oil. The man’s wife collapsed next to him and began to scream. Omar grabbed her by the hair and put the hot barrel of the gun into her mouth. She struggled, eyes wild, as he slid the long barrel down her throat causing her to gag.

  “That’s enough!” Anna said cocking the hammer of the Colt.

  Her gun was aimed at the small of Omar’s back. He pulled the barrel from the woman’s mouth and turned to face Anna.

  Smiling, he said, “She needs to decide if she wants to crossover with him or with us.”

  “She’s coming with us,” Anna said now aiming the gun at Omar’s chest.

  “Of course,” he answered. “She will get what she deserves. Allow me.”

  Omar extended his hand towards Rosa’s suitcase.
/>   “No,” Anna answered.

  “Very well,” Omar said.

  He walked towards the front of the line and disappeared into the dark. People helped the distraught woman collect her belongings. She clung to her husband’s body, but they implored her to leave.

  “You cannot stay lady. The wolves will come,” one man said.

  “You must leave him. He is with god now,” said another.

  The group of travelers in the front started moving again. The woman, in tears, left her husband and moved on with her group. Anna stayed in the back, walking beside Rosa.

  After an hours walk they reached a guarded crossing and Omar trained a pair of night vision binoculars on the road ahead. Portable observation towers dotted the horizon and unseen sensors ran along the border. He put down the binoculars, walked off to the side and spoke into a radio. When he finished his muted conversation, he holstered the radio and returned to address them.

  “We need to continue west,” he said flatly. “The security is too strong here. I have arranged for a train to take us across the border. There is a depot halfway to El Bajito. Of course, there will be a small additional cost to cover the expense.”

  “How much more?” a woman asked.

  “We must hurry if we are to make the train. We can discuss payment when we arrive.”

  The exhausted travelers continued westward into the Pozo Verde Mountains, each step became more difficult as they climbed the rocky trail towards El Bajito. Some of the people whispered about turning back, afraid they would suffer the same fate as the man with the broken leg, but the fear of facing the desert alone stopped any defections.

  Omar maintained a brutal pace as they walked through the night and the urgency in his stride told them they would be left if they fell behind. Anna walked behind Rosa who had surprising endurance forged from a life of hard labor. Excited whispers filtered through the line when someone spotted a light, but their relief turned to terror when they realized it was an approaching vehicle. Omar gestured for them to be quiet and stepped forward towards the light.

  A pickup truck raced towards Omar and slid sideways, stopping just a few feet in front of him. The truck was painted a dark camouflage and modified with large tires on black rims. A 50-caliber machine gun was mounted in the bed of the truck. One man trained the gun on Omar while another shined a spotlight in his face. Omar stood relaxed in the glare of the light with his hands clasped in front of him.

  “You are trespassing,” the man with the spotlight said. He wore a black and green bandana and smoked a cigarette.

  “Are you sure of that, my friend?” Omar asked calmly. He turned and stared into the eyes of the man on the machine gun.

  “Am I what?” the man shouted back. “Do you know who we are?”

  “Of course I do, Miguel,” Omar answered. “I know you all very well, but the question is how well do you know Francisco?” Omar gestured towards the man behind the machine gun.

  Miguel looked back and bullets began ripping through the cab. Francisco fired four hundred rounds leaving the truck oozing with bloody pulp and the bed filled with shell casings. Francisco sat dazed for a moment, then pulled a knife from his boot and plunged it into his own throat. Blood sprayed and sizzled on the hot metal of the gun barrel. Omar turned towards the travelers and found them all face down on the ground. Anna had her Colt in her hand ready to fire. She put the gun away and helped Rosa to her feet.

  “Let’s move out,” he said. His voice was matter of fact, as if he had just stopped to swat a fly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The travelers were near the point of exhaustion when a brilliant light illuminated the clear desert sky. They followed Omar to a clearing where the outline of a magnificent train depot came into view. The building rose out of the desert sand six stories high. The roof capped two towers connected to a clock in the center of the building. The clock, which had no hands, was two stories high with Roman numerals on its face.

  “We are here at last!” one of the women exclaimed.

  Anna helped Rosa to the station fighting a sense of dread that trumped her fear of narcos and the border patrol. When they reached the building, people poured through etched glass doors and onto a balcony that overlooked the station floor. A single set of tracks ran along the far wall of the building and marble staircases led down to the platform. The station appeared to be empty with suitcases, water bottles and articles of clothing littering the polished floors.

  The travelers, tired and filthy from the journey, followed Omar to the floor of the station. He was still perfectly groomed with polished boots and a crisply pressed shirt. He assembled them at the edge of the track.

  “Group one, over here,” he said, gesturing. “Group two, over there,” he said, pointing down the platform.

  Once the groups were in place he inspected and counted them.

  “Thirty four heads” Omar said to himself.

  He stepped over a disgarded suitcase and took his place in between the two groups.

  They had waited in silence for an hour when one of the men finally spoke.

  “Señor. How much longer for the train?”

  Omar glared at the man and walked past him. No one asked again. They waited three more hours sitting on the marble floor of the station.

  Shortly before 3 a.m. a train whistle sounded in the distance. When the whistle blew a second time the black hulk of a locomotive appeared in front of them followed by a coal car, an ornate rail car and twenty box cars. Engine 18 was stenciled in script on its side. The track underneath the train was in flames with hot embers between the smoldering ties.

  The crowd stepped back as flames erupted from the train and spread throughout the station. The travelers were surrounded and began to scream. Anna and Rosa, in the back of the crowd, were knocked to the ground. They watched the flames engulf the travelers. Anna helped Rosa take cover behind a bench. The fire swept across the platform and the travelers disappeared in waves of billowing smoke. Moments later they appeared in the barred windows of the box cars, shouting and pounding on the wooden doors.

  Anna and Rosa were surrounded by fire and began to cough from the smoke. Anna spotted a gap in the flames and pulled Rosa towards the opening. A dark shape formed within the smoke and Omar stepped forward.

  “Ladies?” he said politely, extending his hand.

  “Stay where you are,” Anna said pointing the Colt at Omar.

  “As you wish,” Omar responded.

  Anna cocked the gun and fired a round past Omar’s ear.

  “We want out of here,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said. Steam blew from his lips and caught Anna and Rosa in its scalding embrace.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Anna woke staring at the ornate ceiling of a Pullman car. She was dazed, unable to focus her eyes and her right hand throbbed in pain. Her weapon was gone but an imprint of the gun was branded into her palm. Her grandfather had left the pistol and twenty thousand dollars to her father but he died before he could drink up the money. The police believed he was caught skimming collections from his employers, but Anna knew the truth. He came home drunk one night, began beating her, and she shot him.

  Anna sat up and looked around the room. The walls were covered in satin walnut and polished to a brilliant shine. She tried to stand but collapsed back down in the chair.

  “Don’t try to stand yet. It will pass,” someone whispered.

  Three women she had been travelling with were in the room all dressed in an odd variety of clothing, one in a gown, another in a Roman tunic and the third in a leather bondage outfit.

  The women looked drugged. Anna stood and approached a mirror hanging on the wall and saw a reflection she hardly recognized. She was dressed in a Nazi uniform. She turned towards the other women.

  “Where the hell are we?” she asked.

  “On a train,” the woman in the bondage outfit shouted and began to laugh. She took a large gulp from a silver cup. “You should try this it is
delicious,” she said in a slurred voice.

  A wine decanter full of a deep-red liquid sat on a table covered with white linen. Anna lifted the decanter and smelled the liquid, recoiling from the pungent smell. She put the decanter down in disgust.

  “Where are the others?” she demanded.

  “Back there,” one of the women answered. “In the bad place.” She giggled.

  Anna walked to the back of the train car, swung open the door and stepped out on the observation deck where cold air whipped past her face. A mass of people writhed within the freight car behind her. The train was moving so fast that the landscape was indistinguishable. She needed to find Rosa and escape when it slowed. She walked back inside and found a doorway at the front of the car but the door was locked.

  She peered through a stained glass window into the next room. Two young men were drinking from silver glasses and were dressed as oddly as the women. Anna knocked on the glass and the men waved and laughed. She knocked again and pointed at the door. One of the men stumbled over and opened it. They were in a small office with a built-in mahogany desk and two burgundy leather chairs. The men saluted and began laughing as Anna walked past them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Anna entered a narrow passageway where a wood floor led to a series of doors. She pushed the first door inward. White bed linens were covered with blood and a silver cup had been dropped on the floor. Liquid had soaked into the wool carpeting and in the middle of the spill was a human finger. She put her hand to her mouth and stumbled back out into the passageway.

  Somewhere ahead she heard Omar’s voice. He spoke but she couldn’t understand him, he wasn’t speaking Spanish or English, but something else altogether. She walked to a door at the end of the passageway and listened. Cremo, acquire and piaculum, the language he spoke was Latin. She heard footsteps and slipped into another room; Omar walked past and addressed the women in the back.