Darlington Woods

  Dellosso establishes himself as a front-runner in Christian horror. His books delve into the darkness of evil

  yet come out blazing with the light of God's power and

  forgiveness. Darlington Woods is fast-paced, creepy,

  and sure to spur readers toward a deeper walk with

  Christ. I'm a certified Mike Dellosso fan!

  -ERIC WILSON

  NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF FIREPROOF AND HAUNT OF JACKALS

  Mike Dellosso's brilliant light shines into the dark places of the human heart and illuminates our most terrible fears. Don't look away, because the only way out of Darlington Woods is through it, and it's a journey you'll want to take.

  -ERIN HEALY

  AUTHOR OF NEVER LET YOU GO AND COAUTHOR WITH TED DEKKER OF KISS AND BURN

  Taut, tense, and frightening. A high-speed ride that will keep you guessing until the end.

  -TOSCA LEE

  AUTHOR OF DEMON: A MEMOIR

  Terrifying and exhilarating, Darlington Woods is a heart-wrenching and soul-healing story of a father'sand the Father's-love. One of my favorite writers, Mike Dellosso delivers a book that readers will find almost impossible to put down. Action junkies, mystery lovers, and supernatural fans will be held captive by the dark journey through Darlington Woods. Keep the lights on-and be assured that the talented Dellosso will take you on a journey by the light that always shines in the darkness.

  -KATHRYN MACKEL

  AUTHOR OF VANISHED

  Dellosso never disappoints, and Darlington Woods is no exception. With spine-tingling suspense and Dellosso's trademark spiritual message that lingers long after the last page, Darlington Woods joins The Hunted and Scream as must-read chillers.

  -SUSAN SLEEMAN

  THESUSPENSEZONE.COM

  Once again Mike Dellosso manages to shine the light of God's grace into the darkest crevices of the human condition with amazing clarity. Just when I thought Mike had bested himself in Scream, he brings us faceto-face with monsters so vivid they can only be real. Darlington Woods is his best yet, though I am sure he has even darker corners yet to explore.

  -TIM GEORGE

  FICTIONADDICT.COM

  Dellosso skillfully blends suspense, symbolism, and the supernatural into a compelling thriller in the vein of Dekker and Peretti. Gray isn't a color in Dellosso's moral palette, and Darlington Woods makes that clear. This is a powerful story you'll be thinking about long after closing the book.

  -C. J. DARLINGTON

  COFOUNDER OF TITLETRAKK.COM AND AUTHOR OF THICKER THAN BLOOD

  Most STRANG COMMUNICATIONS BOOK GROUP products are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. For details, write Strang Communications Book Group, 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, Florida 32746, or telephone (407) 333-0600. DARLINGTON WOODS by Mike Dellosso Published by Realms A Strang Company 600 Rinehart Road Lake Mary, Florida 32746 www.strangbookgroup.com

  To all those who have faced and fought

  that monster called cancer-this one's for

  you. Shine your light.

  Acknowledgments

  ELL, HERE WE ARE AGAIN, ANOTHER BOOK complete and many thanks to go around. I'm not one to waste time with copious words, so how about we get to it. Many thanks go out to:

  • My wife, Jen, who nursed me, encouraged me, and loved me through our battle with cancer. She is the inspiration for all my writing, my never-tiring fan, and my partner in all I do.

  • My three sweet little girls-Laura, Abby, and Caroline. You're not old enough to read Daddy's stories yet, but someday you will be ... and I hope I make you proud.

  • My parents, for always supporting me and reminding me to never give up.

  • My agent, Les Stobbe, for navigating me through the murky waters of all the business stuff I hate dealing with.

  • My editors-Debbie Marrie, Lori Vanden Bosch, and Deborah Moss-and my publicist, LeAnn Hamby, for rooting me on and making me feel special. I always know you're on my side. I don't thank you enough.

  • The rest of the folks at the Strang Book Group, from the design team to the sales team to the marketing team and everyone in between. I couldn't have done this without you. That should go without saying... but it still needs to be said.

  • To my readers, without you I'd just be writing stories, but you make this writing thing a ministry. You make it worth all the hard work. I love your comments. Keep 'em coming.

  • And last but in no conceivable way least, to my Savior and Friend, Jesus, who brought me through the toughest journey of my life, carrying me all the way. I owe everything to You.

  Foreword

  ET'S TALK ABOUT MONSTERS, SHALL WE? LET'S JUST sit down and spend a little time in conversation about things that go bump in the night and images that haunt us while we sleep peacefully in our beds in our own homes.

  They're real, you know, those monsters-just as real as the book you're holding and the words you're reading. Yes, it's a secret I have. Please don't tell anyone. I believe in monsters. I've seen them, even battled them. And no, I assure you, I'm not crazy.

  Oh, I'm not talking about the stuff of old movies or comic books or children's tales. Not even the stuff of grown-up stories like the one you're about to read, but monsters are monsters, and the fear they ignite is all the same and very real.

  The monsters of which I speak are around us every day and come in varying forms. They are called cancer ... Parkinson's ... juvenile arthritis. Or they come in the form of a lousy drunk who can't keep his hands off his teenage daughter, a maniacal boss with an axe to grind, or a husband who has nothing kind to say to his wife and kids. These monsters are abuse and murder and neglect. And the web they spin, the wounds they carve, the hatchet they swing all go by the same name: fear.

  It's funny how things work out in life. During the editing phase of my last novel, Scream, I was diagnosed with colon cancer, a formidable monster in its own right. Scream is all about life and death, and if there's one thing to get you thinking about that dichotomy it's cancer. Now, during the editing phase of Darlington Woods, the story you are about to read, my youngest daughter, just seven, was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis. Darlington Woods is all about the monsters in our life and the fear they instill. To be a parent watching your seven-year-old suffer with the joints of a seventy-year-old is a fearful thing.

  From now on, I think I'll be very careful about the themes behind the stories I write.

  But these are the monsters all of us encounter in life. They're real and scary, and they're not going away.

  I get asked all the time why I write the kind of stories I write. Why am I fascinated with the scary and horrifying? My answer is always the same: Aren't we all fascinated with it? Whether real monsters or the ones of lore and legend, aren't we all fixated on things that afflict us with fear?

  I told my oncologist this once, that people think I'm strange because of the places my imagination goes and the things I pull out of my head. His response was right on. He said (in his Irish accent), "Michael, the things in your head are the same things that are in all of our heads; it's just that you aren't afraid to explore them." Well said.

  So why do I write stories of fright and horror? You ask the question assuming I have a choice. I write the stories that naturally blossom in my head and infuse them with themes that are heavy on my heart. I didn't put them there; they were there all along. I simply go with the natural flow of that river of imagination.

  So how about you embark on a journey with me to a place where reality meets fantasy, a place of monsters that are just as real as the monsters in our own world, a place where fear has teeth and darkness is a thing unto itself. It's not so much different from ou
r own world, you know. It's not so much different from our own hearts. And hopefully, if I've done my job well, you'll see a little of yourself there and discover a way to conquer your own fear and find your way out of the darkness.

  Welcome to Darlington Woods.

  -MIKE DELLOSSO

  www.MikeDellosso.com

  Prologue

  1987

  Darlington Woods, northern Maryland

  HE WERE EVERYWHERE, PIERCING THE darkness like spears. Surrounding him. Closing in. Mixing with the wails and torturous moans of the other men.

  Asher Wiggins ran pell-mell through the woods, blindly rolling over saplings and crashing through clumps of honeysuckle. Thickets pulled at his clothes, left jagged trails of blood on his skin. His bandaged face throbbed in time with his quickened pulse.

  And still the screams grew closer.

  To his right, Jerry hollered then went down in a complicated crash of crunching leaves and breaking sticks. The sound that followed reminded Asher of a pack of rabid dogs in a feeding frenzy.

  Only it wasn't dogs. Far from it.

  He came to a ridge where the ground sloped downward at a sharp angle for thirty yards or so, bottomed out, then rose on the other side. Lungs working furiously to keep the oxygen coming, heart in his throat, Asher stole a quick look around. To his left, in the distance, he heard Abe trip on a fallen limb and hit the ground hard. He knew it was Abe by the sound of his wheezing. Within moments he heard them attack-he didn't even know what they were. The sound of Abe's piteous screams for help sent chills racing along Asher's nerves.

  He turned and pushed himself down the slope. He stumbled mostly out of control but somehow was able to keep his feet under him. At the bottom he looked up and saw a dark pulsating shadow at the top of the ridge. It was them.

  "God help me."

  One of them let out a terrible scream, like a woman in great pain, and they all responded similarly.

  Without thinking, Asher turned and started climbing the opposite slope. His legs burned and his lungs were on fire, but adrenaline kept him moving.

  "God help me, God help me, God help me... " he said over and over as he climbed, finding purchase with both hands and feet, grabbing on to saplings and branches where he could.

  The gauze covering half his face-a hastily assembled bandage-was soaked with blood and working loose. It dangled like a lame wing.

  Behind him he heard the crash of the horde as it charged down the slope, screaming and hissing.

  Faster he climbed, clawing at the ground, pulling himself forward and upward. Finally at the top, he ran a few feet and stopped. He could go no further. His legs felt boneless, and every blood vessel in his body beat in sync with his rapid breathing. His vision blurred, and his chest tightened.

  Asher tried to breathe deep, but his diaphragm spasmed and refused to cooperate. The woods started to spin around him, and he collapsed onto his back. The bandage peeled away like an old scab and left his wounds open to the air.

  He could hear the horde coming up the slope now. But there was nothing he could do. He looked up with his one working eye-past the limbs, past the leaves-and found the early morning sky. It was just beginning to lighten with the dawn of day. He'd been in the woods all night.

  His last thought before closing his eyes and accepting what may come was a passage from Scripture he'd used in a sermon recently:

  The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

  PART ONE

  It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.

  -UNKNOWN

  One

  Present day

  S HE PRESSED HIS BEAT-UP FORD DOWN AN UNEVEN stretch of asphalt, Rob Shields had death on his mind. His own.

  The void within him had grown to colossal proportions, opening its gaping black maw and swallowing any hope or happiness he once had. Lost forever. No chance of return. Death welcomed him, enticed him, drew him in with its easy ways and comfortable charm.

  Oh, he knew he would never do it. Taking his own life had a certain appeal to it, held a certain freedom that his bleak outlook on life longed for, but it took a much braveror dumber-man than he to actually pull it off. But still he wanted, maybe needed, to pretend he was as serious as murder. And that meant it was time to see the house. If he was to fantasize about putting an end to his journey, he at least wanted to see the place that had promised a better life. Just one visit, one look, would satisfy him.

  He glanced over at the empty passenger seat then into the rearview mirror at the vacant spot in the backseat. Kelly would be jabbering about what beautiful country this was.

  "Look at the wildflowers. Oh, I love wildflowers."

  And little Jimmy would be singing away to his MP3 player, getting the lyrics all wrong.

  Man, he missed them.

  A familiar sadness overcame him, and he once again thought of his own death. He couldn't bear to live without them any longer...

  Life had become a great burden, an endless source of sadness. Every day was lived in despair. Unhappiness and discontent had become his bedfellows. He would see the house, allow himself one evening of pleasant dreams about what could have been, then return to Massachusetts to live out the rest of his life in isolated misery. And in his mind, that in itself was a form of suicide. A living death.

  Rob depressed the accelerator, and the odometer needle climbed nearer to seventy. On the horizon, heat devils performed an arrhythmic dance, and the sun-scorched blacktop appeared to be glossed with mercury. The road cut through pastureland like a hardened artery. To his right, a handful of horses stood motionless, their noses to the ground. To his left, the land stretched out like a green sea, undulating slowly to an even tempo.

  Mayfield had to be no more than an hour away, but the fuel gauge said he needed gas now. Up ahead, an elderly man in a ball cap was on both knees working his garden. Rob slowed the car and stopped beside him. The older gent turned his body slowly, revealing a patch over one eye.

  Rob leaned across the center console and spoke loudly. "Where's the nearest gas station?"

  The old man cupped one hand around his ear and raised his eyebrows.

  Rob said it louder. "Where's the nearest gas station?"

  The man nodded in the direction Rob had been traveling. "'Bout a mile down the road. Shell station on the left."

  "Thanks," Rob said, and he pulled away. In the rearview mirror he could see the man watch him for a moment then return to his garden.

  Exactly one mile down the road Rob steered into a crackedasphalt lot and up to an old-style analog gas pump, the kind with the rotating numbers. He didn't even know those kind still existed. The station had seen better days. From the sunbleached Shell sign to the grime-coated plate-glass window of the little convenience store to the scarred and faded blacktop, everything spoke of neglect. This was one outpost time had forgotten.

  Rob got out of the car and noticed the handwritten sign on the pump: Pre-pay inside. Management.

  Walking across the lot, he could feel the day's heat radiating through the soles of his shoes. A little bell chimed when he opened the door. A thin, fair-skinned man with shoulderlength hair nodded at him from behind the counter.

  "Thirty in gas," Rob said, reaching for his wallet.

  The clerk punched some buttons on the register and said, "Thirty."

  Rob paid him. "How far to Mayfield?"

  The clerk looked up. "Where?"

  "Mayfield."

  After a quick shrug, "Fifty, sixty miles." He looked like he wanted to say more, so Rob waited. "Not much in Mayfield."

  "A house," Rob said.

  "Your house?"

  "Should have been." Then he turned and left. The bell chimed again on his way out.

  At the pump, Rob unscrewed the fuel cap and inserted the nozzle. Jimmy always loved to squeeze the trigger.

  "Can I pull the trigger, Daddy?"

  That's what he called it, a trigger. He'd pretend the nozzle was a cowboy gun. Thoughts of his s
on flooded Rob's mind, and he did nothing to stop them. Now was a time for remembering, for soaking up every good feeling and every fond image left to enjoy.

  When the rolling numbers hit seventeen dollars, a quick movement caught Rob's attention. He jerked his head up and toward the side of the store where a stand of shrubs sat quiet and motionless. Then he heard it, a muffled giggle, and his breath caught in his throat. He knew that giggle. Knew it like the sound of his own voice. The movement was there again. An image ran from the shrubs to the rear of the store and out of sight. The nozzle snapped off and fell to the ground with a solid clunk. Rob knew that run too, the shortened stride, the slightly exaggerated pumping of the arms. He could feel his heart thudding all the way down to his fingertips.

  It was Jimmy. His little buddy.

  Crossing the lot in large walking strides at first, then a run, Rob rounded the building fully expecting to find his son, Jimmy, red-faced with brown hair matted to his forehead, waiting in a crouch to scare him.

  "I got you, Daddy!"

  Instead, all he found were a few rusted-out fifty-gallon drums, a stack of dry-rotted tires, and a haphazard pile of rebar. His breathing rate had quickened from the short sprint, and beads of sweat now popped out on his forehead and upper lip. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  He walked the length of the building, scanning the field of knee-high grass behind it. "Jimmy?"

  But no answer came. Not even a rustle of grass. And no giggle.

  "Jimmy," Rob said in a normal volume, more to himself than the phantom of his son that had haunted him now for going on two months. The visions-the psychologist called them hallucinations-had come frequently at first, sometimes as much as once a day, then grew more sporadic. Until now, he hadn't had one for over two weeks. At first, Rob was convinced there was a purpose to them, a meaning. Maybe they even meant Jimmy was still alive, waiting for his daddy to find him and rescue him. Maybe. The psychologist disagreed. Rob thought he was a quack and stopped attending the weekly sessions.