Ghost Town: A Novella Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  THE SUMMONING (excerpt)

  GHOST TOWN

  A SHORT NOVEL

  BY

  MARK LUKENS

  Ghost Town – copyright © 2010 – Mark Lukens

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reprinted without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or in any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Other Books by Mark Lukens:

  ANCIENT ENEMY: www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

  DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC: www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

  THE SUMMONING: www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

  A DARK COLLECTION: 12 SCARY STORIES: www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

  NIGHT TERRORS: www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

  SIGHTINGS: www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

  THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – Coming Soon

  DEVIL’S ISLAND – Coming Soon

  CHAPTER ONE

  Beth woke up in the desert.

  She sat up a little too quickly and her very first thought was that she was going to be attacked. She automatically reacted by tensing her muscles, squeezing her eyes shut, and bringing her hands up to protect her face. She braced herself for the punches and the kicks that she was sure were coming.

  But no attack came.

  She felt the hot, stifling wind on her skin and the blistering sun beating down on her from a cloudless sky. She was hunched over in a sitting position, her butt and sneakers settled in the sand. She waited as a wave of light-headedness and dizziness passed.

  Beth dropped her arms down from her face and opened her eyes. She saw that she was in the middle of a vast desert that stretched out endlessly in every direction. Her heart skipped a beat and seemed to stop for a moment in her chest as she stared at the shimmering horizon underneath a deep blue sky. Her breath was caught in her throat like a lump, and for a panic-stricken moment she didn’t think she could breathe.

  What was she doing here in the middle of the desert? How had she gotten here? Maybe this was a dream, or it was some kind of realistic nightmare. She closed her eyes and forced herself to finally exhale and then draw in another deep breath of air.

  Then she opened her eyes.

  Still the same desert.

  She looked at the horizon in front of her and saw a line of mountains miles away in the distance. And that was all. There was nothing else; no sign of trees, no sign of green vegetation, no sign of water—no sign of life.

  No sign of life except for the other five people lying in the sand near her.

  The man closest to her, about ten feet away, opened his eyes. He was groggy for a moment, but then he sat bolt-upright and looked around with jerky movements. His dark hair was short and sleep-spiked. He was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling quickly underneath his white T-shirt. He looked around in every direction like Beth had just done only seconds ago, but there was nothing to see but the unending desert.

  His dark eyes settled on Beth.

  “Where am I?” the man asked.

  Beth tried to answer, but her throat was raw and her words wouldn’t come out. She just shook her head no, trying to communicate to the man that she didn’t know where they were.

  “Who are you?” he asked her, his voice suddenly sharper.

  Beth still couldn’t answer. Her mouth and throat were thick with dryness—she was so thirsty.

  The man watched her, and she saw suspicion in his narrowed eyes. He was a thin man, but all ropy muscle. He looked like one of those lean, muscular men who were much stronger than people expected. And he looked jumpy and dangerous. Beth had known many men like this in her life, dangerous men. Men who were coiled up like a rattlesnake, men who wouldn’t hesitate to strike and hurt you.

  Men like her husband.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” the man asked, his voice rising in panic and anger.

  Another person shifted in the sand. The man’s dark eyes darted to that person—she was a Hispanic girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, Beth guessed. The girl was pretty. She wore skin-tight blue jeans, the cuffs of which were tucked down into a pair of worn-out high-top sneakers. She had on a blue flannel shirt over a dark shirt; the sleeves of the flannel shirt were rolled up to her elbows, revealing tattoos on her arms and hands. There was a tattoo on the side of her neck that looked to Beth, even from this distance, like it was a word written in calligraphy. She wore a blue bandana over her dark hair which was tied back in a simple ponytail.

  The girl opened her eyes and groaned as she turned away from the sky, trying to avoid the bright sunlight, shielding her eyes with her hands for a moment.

  “Man, I got a headache,” she moaned.

  Beth had a throbbing headache too, but it was already starting to fade away. She looked away from the girl and stared down at the sand all around her. She touched the sand, scooped it up in each hand and let it slip through her fingers. It was almost like she had to touch the sand, feel its coarseness, feel the heat of it, to make sure it was real and not some kind of nightmare that she was struggling to wake up from.

  “Who are you?” the girl asked the dark-haired man.

  “Who are you?” he shot back with, still wary and suspicious.

  “My name’s Carla Lopez,” the young woman answered. “What’s going on?” She looked around at the desert all around them. “What am I doing here?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” the man growled.

  Not too far away from Carla, a large man was sprawled out on the sand. He was dressed in layers of raggedy clothing. He rolled over in the sand onto his side and sat up slowly, groaning with effort because of his round belly. He looked at them with even slower eyes. His face was slack underneath his long and scraggly hair. He had a week’s growth of stubble on his fleshy, white face. His eyes were set deep and they seemed dull and lifeless.

  Twenty feet away from the large man in rags was another man. Beth thought this man might be in his mid-forties, judging from the wrinkles around his eyes and his mop of gray hair. But his body looked like it belonged to a twenty-five year old. He wore a pair of baggy, stained jeans that looked like work pants and a wife-beater tank top. His arms were tanned and muscular with veins crisscrossing the skin—he looked like a man who had labored his whole life outdoors.

  The dark-haired man near Beth was still eyeing Carla even though the other two men had just woken up. There was only one more unconscious person. Beth glanced over at him. He lay on his back and he looked like he was in his mid-thirties. He had a pair of round, wire-rimmed glasses on his face and he wore an expensive suit and tie.<
br />
  The man wasn’t moving; he didn’t even seem to be breathing.

  Was he dead?

  “I want to know where I am and how I got here!” the dark-haired man yelled at Carla, snapping Beth’s attention back to him.

  Carla eyed the man for a moment, but she didn’t show an ounce of fear. She ignored the man’s demands and looked right at Beth. “Do you two know each other?”

  Before Beth could answer, the man butted in: “No, we don’t know each other! I don’t know anyone here! I don’t know where here is!”

  Carla looked around and then she looked back at the man. “I’d say we’re in the middle of the desert.”

  “No shit. I can see we’re in the desert. I want to know what the fuck I’m doing in the middle of the desert!”

  Carla ignored the man and got to her feet. She stretched slightly like her muscles were stiff and sore. Then she looked at Beth with concern in her eyes. “You all right, lady?”

  Beth was confused for a moment. Why was this woman asking if she was okay?

  Carla took a step towards Beth and she touched the corner of her own mouth. “You got some kind of cut …”

  And then Beth remembered.

  She brought her hand up to her face and brushed her cut lip with her fingers. And then she remembered that she had a bruise around her left eye, too. She nodded at Carla, indicating that she was okay.

  “What’s your name?” Carla asked.

  Beth tried to clear her burning throat. “Beth … my name’s Beth.”

  And Beth jumped when the dark-haired man shouted again. “Hell with introductions! I want to know what the hell’s going on here!”

  Carla gave the man a hard stare. “That’s what I’m trying to do. You think you could try and calm down a little?”

  The man seemed like he was about to scream at her again, maybe even rush at her and tackle her down to the sand, but instead he turned away and sighed. He got up to his feet and brushed some of the sand off of his clothes, and then he walked away a few paces.

  Carla walked over closer to Beth. “Beth? Do you know anyone here?”

  Beth glanced at the others, but she didn’t know any of them. She looked at Carla and shook her head no.

  “I’m thirsty,” the big man dressed in the raggedy clothing said. His voice was as slow and slack as his expression.

  Carla looked at the big man. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Ray, and I’m real thirsty.”

  “We’re all thirsty, pal,” the lean, dark-haired man said as he ran a hand through his hair, trying to tame it back down into place and brush the sand out of it.

  The older man in the wife-beater and jeans got to his feet and looked at the dark-haired man. “Carla is right,” he said to him. “Why don’t you just calm down a little? We’re not going to solve anything by panicking.”

  The dark-haired man turned and stared at the man in the wife-beater. “I’m not panicking,” he growled and then sniffed loudly.

  “What’s your name?” Carla asked the man in the wife-beater.

  “My name’s Adam.”

  Carla nodded and flashed a small, humorless smile. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. You’re Adam. That’s Ray over there, and he’s thirsty. She’s Beth. And I’m Carla.”

  Carla looked at the dark-haired man. “We know everyone except you.”

  “I’m Tony. Okay?”

  Tony nodded at the last man lying on the sand. “We don’t know him. How come he’s still out? You think he’s dead?”

  Adam, the closest one to the man in the suit and tie, shook his head as he watched the man. “No, he’s still breathing. I can see his chest moving.”

  Tony marched through the sand past the others and walked towards the unconscious man. “Time to wake him up.”

  Tony stood over the man and nudged him in the shoulder with the toe of his sneaker. “Come on, pal! Time to wake up!”

  The man’s eyes fluttered for a few seconds like butterfly wings underneath his round glasses. Then his eyes opened wide; he stared up at Tony and that’s when he started screaming.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The man in the suit and glasses screamed in horror and backpedaled like a crab through the sand away from Tony, screaming the whole time, kicking at the sand with his four hundred dollar shoes.

  “No!” the man shouted as he crawled away from Tony. “Please don’t kill me! Not yet! Give me another chance, Frank!”

  Tony was frozen with shock for a moment.

  Nobody else moved.

  The man stopped screaming, and then he stopped trying to crawl away in the sand. He just stared at Tony.

  “Who the hell’s Frank?” Tony asked.

  The man stared at Tony, and then he glanced at the others. He looked back at Tony. “You’re not Frank’s people?” he asked in a low voice, but it sounded more like a realization now than a question.

  “Who’s Frank?” Tony asked again and took a step towards the man in the suit and tie.

  “I’m thirsty,” Ray said as if nothing had happened. He paced around the group in a large circle and muttered to himself over and over again. “I’m thirsty. I’m real thirsty.”

  “Does Frank have something to do with this?!” Tony shouted down at the man in the suit who was silent now. “Answer me!” Tony screamed at him. “What are we doing here? Who’s Frank?!”

  Carla approached Tony. “Why don’t you let the man wake up a little?”

  Tony turned and stared at her. “I’m trying to find out what’s going on here. Is that okay with you?”

  “Who are you people?” the man in the suit and tie asked. He was still sitting on the sand, but he drew his legs up towards him and wrapped his arms around his knees.

  “My name’s Carla. This is Beth. That’s Adam. That’s Ray out there pacing around us. And your cheerful wakeup call in front of you is Tony.” She stared at the man. “What’s your name?”

  The man looked at Carla for a long moment like he was analyzing the situation, like he was weighing his options of whether he should reveal his name to a bunch of strangers standing in front of him in the middle of the desert. Finally, he sighed and answered, “My name’s Eugene.”

  Tony eyeballed Eugene. “Nice suit, Eugene.”

  Eugene looked down at his clothes, still confused, and then he looked out at the horizon. “The desert,” he said like he was talking more to himself than the others. “When I saw I was in the desert, I thought …” He shook his head and let his words trail off.

  Ray continued pacing around the others in a large circle, wearing a rut into the sand as he walked. “I’m thirsty,” he muttered.

  Adam looked at Ray as he walked past him. “We’re all thirsty, big guy.”

  “Okay,” Carla said. “We’ve all been introduced, and none of us know each other. So why are we here?”

  “Someone must have dumped us here,” Adam said.

  “No shit,” Tony grumbled as he turned away from Eugene and looked at Carla, Adam, and Beth who were grouped together. “I didn’t drive myself out here.”

  Carla did her best to ignore Tony and turned to Adam. “Who would’ve dumped us here?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam answered and then he looked out at the sea of sand beyond the circle that Ray was wearing into the sand all around them. He walked away from Carla and Beth, past the circle of tracks that Ray had made. After Adam was ten steps outside of Ray’s circle, he squatted down in the sand and inspected it closely.

  “I’m thirsty,” Ray said again as he kept on walking, his head down, his long and scraggly hair hanging down in front of his face. The rags of clothes on his body fluttered in the hot desert breeze, and there was a smell coming from him like he desperately needed a shower.

  “Why don’t you just shut up?” Tony growled at Ray. “We’re all thirsty. You whining about it every few seconds isn’t going to help.”

  “Lay off of him,” Carla told Tony.

  Tony’s eyes snapped bac
k to Carla. “What did you say to me?”

  Beth took a step away from Tony and Carla, wanting to get away from the violence that she feared was coming.

  Carla stood her ground in front of Tony. “I said lay … off … of … him.”

  Adam walked through the sand, ignoring the rest of them. He made a much wider circle around the one that Ray was creating in the sand. He kept his eyes on the sand as he walked.

  Eugene ignored everyone else. He sat in the sand in the same spot, his arms around his knees like he was still in shock. He stared at the horizon.

  Even though Tony was trying to stare Carla down, she walked away from his gaze and over to Beth. “What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked Beth.

  “I was at home,” Beth said after thinking for a moment.

  “You don’t remember being taken by someone?”

  Beth shook her head no. The last thing she remembered was being punched in the face by her husband, but she didn’t want to tell Carla that.

  “You don’t remember anything before waking up here?”

  Again, Beth shook her head no.

  Carla looked at Tony who was still watching her. “What about you? You remember being taken by anyone?”

  “No,” Tony answered. He seemed like he was about to say something else, but he snapped his mouth shut like he’d thought better of any further explanation. He looked out at Adam who had nearly made a complete circle around their group, out beyond Ray’s tracks in the sand. Ray kept right on marching along his same tracks, still mumbling that he was thirsty.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Carla asked Tony.

  Tony didn’t answer Carla; he kept his eyes on Adam. “What are you doing out there?” he called out to him.

  Adam stared down at the sand, and then he looked out at the horizon shimmering in the distance.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you!”

  Adam looked back at Tony. If he was annoyed by Tony’s words, he didn’t show it. There was another expression on Adam’s face—confusion. He shook his head like he didn’t understand something.

  “What is it?” Carla asked.

  “I don’t see any tracks in the sand,” Adam answered.