Stories from a HARD PLACE: Recent Episodes
R A Jacobson
In the dark where two dusty back roads cross a black car sits waiting. The man inside will make a deal he has many times before and will again. He is known in these parts as The Judge. Folk go to him when they have a powerful need, a want that can’t be satisfied any other way. Some are too young to know better, others are desperate and still others just pain stupid. His price is high and many never believe they will have to pay it but the bill comes due eventually. There is no escape. No lead pill that can free you. Once struck the deal is all that remains.
Frank, like so many near him, has made a deal but when he shook that cold hand he never thought the day would come when his bill would come due. Now that it has, he has a choice to make in Frank.
“Actually, I don’t think I’ll be going back with you this time. I think I have other plans.”
“You can’t beat me. You can’t win. You don’t have what it takes,” The Judge said as he looked down at Jacob.
The gap closed. Jacob could see Brandi sitting in the passenger seat of the oncoming GTO, looking terrified, eyes wide, her mouth a big ‘o’. He wasn’t sure her contract would protect her from the collision. Beside her, forearm resting on the steering wheel, The Judge leaned back, unconcerned, and smiling, always smiling.
When they broke from the trees, Brian caught his breath and could see across the derelict cars to the great tree festooned with deer skulls that stood behind The Judge’s tiny run-down trailer.
The stretch of country road was quiet except for the first tentative sawing of insects. The trees that lined one side had not yet budded out. Brown grass and weeds filled the ditches, and the new green was pushing through the dry flotsam of last summer. Dead-looking fields that waited to be turned and planted stretched into the distance.
An hour past the Ol’ Scratch tavern on 11, Jacob, Brian and Clyde turned off the main road onto a two-wheel trail that threaded itself through the trees opening onto a farmyard.
The light from her phone shone up at Mary Lou’s face, giving her a ghoulish appearance. She clutched it and peered around the dark alley. She had walked this alley hundreds of times at all hours of the night and had never been nervous before.
Many people talk about the night Bob Dylan played at Ol’ Tom's Backroom but no one ever mentions the night John 'Whitey' Burnett woke the devil and made him cry.
The next morning, found Jacob still on the porch. Mary Lou, Gran, Billy, the silver coins, and the Judge swirled through his fevered mind all night.
Matt walked to the police station with the tall grey lady at his side. No one saw them, and they saw no one. At the station, she stopped and gestured for him to continue on. Through the doors of the police station, he glanced back and saw the dark shape of a moose disappear into an alley.
Night was coming on. The sun had set, but there was still a glow of yellowy orange beyond the bare trees.
He began the next song, and people wept, beers and conversation forgotten, remnants from another world. They stared, their mouths gaping.
The last few days scared Mary Lou. Everything she thought was in the past had come back to haunt her. Everything that was sure, suddenly wasn’t.
Saying nothing as he sat down, he noticed the thin man in black as he stepped in and leaned against the back wall.
Miles from anywhere in an abandoned, overgrown farmyard, an old rusty red barn stood, its back broken and sagging. Beyond the trees, the sun had dipped below the horizon, smearing the deep blue sky with purples and oranges.
Tonight, the darkness seemed deeper, somehow menacing. Her dream had kept coming back to her, haunting her. Now, heading for her rehearsal, she felt nervous. Actually, it was more than nervousness. She felt a fear that she had never known before. What she was afraid of, she wasn’t sure, but she was.
Gran Anderson stood at her front door and watched Jacob and Brian drive away in the demon. She looked at the ominous sky.
When he finished, his hands were raw, and the guitar sat, a scarred beauty gleaming in a chair.
Jacob turned to leave when the beam of his flashlight caught something shiny tucked up in the rafters of the shed. “Wait, what’s that?”
“Been a fuck of a day.” Jacob slid onto a bar stool as Brandi started pulling them a pint.
Wincing again, he thought of the song that had forced its way out of him yesterday. He tried to play it, but it would not come.
He needed to speak to someone who had connections in both worlds. There was only one man he could think of who may know what was going on.
His fingers became sore, then painful until they split and tore, but he played on, harder and better than he ever had.
It was quiet and dark, the way he loved it, like his river. Tonight’s group of passengers was downstairs and would be boarded by now, but they would wait for him. Most would be happy to stay on the boat for as long as possible, never in a hurry, afraid of what waited on the other shore.
He kicked the heap of useless timber, then picked it up and flung it across the room. It slammed into the framed photo of his icon, Robert Johnson. It crashed to the floor—bits of glass and wood scattering everywhere.
Skinned bodies, friends bursting into flames; weird smiley dudes offering contracts with who, the devil? How in hell could any of this be real. Could the Devil be real? He shook his head. Next, I’ll be thinking Santa Claus exists.
John held his scarred beauty, felt it hum, felt it sing, and suddenly he felt a frisson of fear.
Once, the lonely house had been painted light green and white, but now much of the paint was peeled, flaked off, revealing weathered grey boards. Some windows still held glass, reflecting a washed-out and colourless sky.
John kept his treasure close, between his legs, under the table. He spoke softly as he stroked its magnificent, scarred body.
Allen screamed, his arms flung wide and his back bent impossibly until it cracked. The scream changed into a feral howl.
“What are you willing to trade? How badly do you want the songs? How badly do you want The Sound?”
They crested a hill and stopped. The dust they had kicked up caught them and blew past. Brian rolled down his window to look across the field at Billy’s farm. He had been right. The place was crawling with cops.
He walked alone down a dirt road on a quiet, moonless night. He came to a sign he could not read. It pointed back to the way he had come.
Matt pushed through the door of the all-night greasy spoon a half-hour after the call. He knew The Brother’s Restaurant well. The cafe was a throwback; its dark wood booths with straight, uncomfortable backs made everyone lean in over their thick mugs and all-day breakfasts.
He sighed. It had been a long day, and there was always more to do. His mind wasn’t on the farm, though. The past few days, he had thought about Billy a lot. It wasn’t fair.
It was late the next night. Matt ambled along the deserted street, back to the office. If spring was coming, it wasn’t in the air.
He placed the guitar on a stand and sat down to look at it. He leaned back and for a split-second saw the dog’s strange eyes.
Jacob stood knee-deep in cattails on the bank of a broad, slow river. The water was black, reflecting the overcast afternoon sky.
He held it up in both hands and looked it over. Was it smoking? It seemed blackened, as if it had recently been in a fire. There was a faint smell of burnt wood in the apartment, though he couldn’t be sure.
The alley behind the Acheron Lounge was dark. The single bulb hung over an old beaten metal door set in the dirty brick wall made the dark seem deeper, more impenetrable. It swung in a breeze below a large, dented shade and cast constantly changing shadows down the length of the alley. The shifting light made the graffiti dance as if alive, made the garbage bins morph as the shadows played over the surfaces, turning them from ordinary to sinister. At the other end, past the old brick building, was the Acheron.
Suddenly, a mad impulse. Hardly believing himself capable of such a thing, he grabbed the guitar, turned, and ran out of the shop.
It was obvious The Judge didn’t get, nor encouraged visitors. After some searching, Jacob found the entrance to the overgrown two-wheel track that twisted through a dense strip of trees. It was rough, riddled with potholes, high dry grass, and weeds that had grown up through the gravel. The track broke from the trees, revealing a massive automotive graveyard.
So here he stood in the dark, waiting for The Judge to roll up in a shiny dark car and grant him his deepest wish.
Matt walked across the crisp marble, each footfall echoing loudly around him. Behind a long counter that looked as if it had been carved from a single block of white stone, a young, clean-shaven man stood expectantly.
Every corner held memories for Jacob. It was his hometown. This is where many good stories began and where many bad stories ended.
A shimmer in the air made Jean look up. The delivery man was frozen, holding a case of beer. It wasn’t the strangest thing he had seen in his role, not by a long way.
Jacob sat at the kitchen table, staring into his morning coffee with Billy on his mind. He was going to miss him.
Matt turned down the street, looking through the windshield of his bug. The wipers stuttered back and forth in the light rain.
Jacob leaned the bike over. He still felt cold from last night, and the troubling dream of the crowd lingered in his mind. He pulled his leathers off, hoping the sun and maybe a little exercise, would warm him. A wry grin played on his lips. He would be getting some of that.
Every Wednesday, Whitey would gather up his guitar, shades, low-slung hat, and head on down to Ol‘ Tom’s Backroom, a dark bar on a street that had seen a better day, that filled its midweek lull with an open mic.
In truth, John ‘Whitey’ Burnett, the legend didn’t exist, never had. He was the invention of Dwain Marsh, his alter ego.
When John played, men like John Hurt, Son House, and even Robert Johnson listened and were in awe.
“If you don’t have any answers and the questions keep adding up, you have to take a moment and decide if you are facing the right direction,”
On the banks of a slow river in the deep south, a newborn’s cries mix with the dry rasp of grass and crickets. A lean man dressed in black stands staring out at the sluggish brown water. He holds a dark guitar with reverence. His grey eyes carry the weight of sadness as he leans forward and regards the baby.
A smudge appeared on the horizon. It was still far away, but he knew his afternoon was about to be ruined.
Prologue
Billy hated contests, especially in-store raffles or scratch and win tickets.
When your day starts with a close friend stopping by and trying to kill you, you know the rest of your week could only get better. Unfortunately, for Jacob, that’s not the case.
Jacob’s hatred had turned into a hard thing, a rock in his heart he couldn’t put down. It weighed on him, every minute of every day, and Clyde was there to remind him of the mistake he made, his deal. But what if the deal he made wasn’t what he thought it was? What if everything he knew to be true was all a lie? Around him, Death stalks and friends will die. His world soon would be coming apart, unravelling.
Matt had only just begun his career as a detective, but already he had a trench coat and an impossible case. Along the path, he would fall in love and realize that the world was far different than he knew.
When Mr. White and The Judge meet at the crossroads, Jacob and Matt could lose everything.
Many people talk about the night Bob Dylan played at Ol’ Tom's Backroom but no one ever mentions the night John 'Whitey' Burnett woke the devil and made him cry.
Many people talk about the night Bob Dylan played at Ol’ Tom's Backroom but no one ever mentions the night John 'Whitey' Burnett woke the devil and made him cry.
Yer listenin’ to SHP666 back road radio, the voice of Hard Place
If you would like to support Stories from a Hard Place please go to
patreon.com/HARDPLACE
Phil, a tired detective that has always relied on his partner to solve the cases while he did the busy work. Now he wants to step up and solve one for himself.
The job that comes in is a simple one. Just find a man, but then when he finds the man in a back alley. Everything he thinks he knows about his world takes a turn to the bizarre.
His partner, Allen, has to unravel the tangled knot that took Phil’s mind and left him locked in a cell talking about a man of flies.
Yer listenin’ to SHP666 back road radio, the voice of Hard Place
If you would like to support Stories from a Hard Place please go to
patreon.com/HARDPLACE
My Gran used to say, “There are times when the only way out is a lead pill.” These are stories when things got that bad.
A Lead Pill is the second collection of short stories from a HARD PLACE.
Stories of loneliness and betrayal, of false hope and shattered dreams, of gifts and regrets, of love and accidental kindness. Each story follows separate paths that lead to the understanding that sometimes the only solution is a lead pill.
His love of numbers led him to ask for something that turned out to be something else entirely in Adding it up.
My Gran used to say, “There are times when the only way out is a lead pill.” These are stories when things got that bad.
His love of numbers led him to ask for something that turned out to be something else entirely in Adding it up.
All your life you have wanted something but maybe you didn’t know what that was in The Touch.
All your life you have wanted something but maybe you didn’t know what that was in The Touch.
All your life you have wanted something but maybe you didn’t know what that was in The Touch.
Finding love in the strangest places can lead to some strange results in Passing it Forward.
A life of stacked years never knowing that it was all in service to a memory in Service Up.
A life of stacked years never knowing that it was all in service to a memory in Service Up.
Never judge a book by its cover, even one with fangs, as a surprise awaits in Doc’s Choice.
Never judge a book by its cover, even one with fangs, as a surprise awaits in Doc’s Choice.
Fame has a dark side, Becoming Famous echoes the age old warning, ‘Be Careful what you wish for’.
When Tommy found love it was as unexpected as it ended. Now he has made a decision that will change everything, and maybe not for the good.
He believes the lie and makes a decision that he will regret.
The head that was found on the blacktop tells a tale in Johnny Fucking Carson.
Written and read by R A Jacobson
music by Noah Zacharin