A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Chet Williamson

  “Let’s go into the park!” Sammy said suddenly. It was the first time she had ever heard him sound like a grownup – almost in a hurry.

  She crossed the street and entered Rainer Park. The trees near the main road were covered with toilet paper. Farther on, the park was almost empty. She passed a few mothers with babies in strollers; all of them bundled up against the cold. Some of the babies wore Halloween costumes, cat whiskers, pink angel’s wings. A touch football game was just breaking up; the football, tossed errantly, came to a rolling stop at her feet and she stood looking down at it until an older boy came and scooped it up. He paused to look into Kathy’s face, and at her blood-dried arm.

  “Man, you’re weird,” he said and ran off, scooping up the ball.

  Keep walking, Sammy said, and suddenly his voice was a bit more urgent. He had begun to talk inside her head. You know the spot.

  Kathy was cutting diagonally across the park, toward its farthest borders. There was a grove of trees here. It was the site of picnics in the summer, with its permanently mounted barbecue grills. But once the weather chilled it became almost empty. Kathy had seen no one here the last time she had visited, the day before. There was no one now.

  “Ah!” Sammy said. His voice was natural and jolly again. He seemed to be walking along beside her, though she couldn’t see him.

  And then she could see him, his black cape that swirled in and out of focus, like fog, his laughing face hidden, a hint of chalk white…

  “It’s still here, Kathy! Just like we left it!”

  She stopped before a huge oak, one branch reaching out over its own fallen leaves like a long thick arm. From it hung a perfect hangman’s noose. Below it was a three-legged stool Kathy had stolen from Uncle Edward’s basement bar.

  “What do you say, Kathy?” Sammy laughed, but then he became very urgent indeed –

  Do it.

  Kathy heard a faraway noise, a group of voices growing louder – but then Sammy was filling her head with his voice:

  Do it now, Kathy. Climb onto the stool. You’ll see your ma and pa. Put the rope around your neck. Just like I promised. Tighten the noose. Kick the stool away.

  Away–

  Kick it–

  Away!

  And then she was floating in air, her ears filled with a roaring sound, Sammy’s laughing voice, other sounds like voices carrying across a crashing surf. She felt the faint cold breeze of her own swinging body, then something very indistinct opened in front of her and the voices all went very far away, pulled down a long tunnel away from her like chattering little mice and there before her and there was a flat and desolate place with strange shapes –

  “Ms. Marks!”

  She was in two places at once – then and now. She was yanked back and was there, in 1981, feeling her body hoisted up and opening her eyes and choking, gagging, unable to breathe, the boy with the football gawking at her from below, a policeman, and the other men who were lifting her while another ripped the noose from her neck–

  –and now, in the present, she opened her eyes and saw that she had climbed up onto Annabeth’s chair, put Annabeth’s rope around her neck, and kicked the chair away–

  Now, Kathy.

  Finish it. Not like when you were eleven, not like the second time after your boyfriend Corrie Phaeder left you.

  Go there.

  Third time’s the charm.

  See your ma and pa.

  Annabeth was standing in front of her, screaming. Then she turned and ran toward the house. There was a great commotion and noise, and then the girl reappeared, running toward the tree, a long knife in her hand.

  “…Cut you down…” the librarian heard Annabeth say.

  Kathy began to struggle, trying to reach up and release the pressure on her neck.

  Finish it or I’ll take the girl.

  Annabeth stopped halfway to the tree and began to fight for breath. She collapsed, the knife falling from her grip, and began to writhe on the ground. The caped figure materialized over her, like a black swirling cloud. For a brief moment it turned its cowl toward Kathy and she saw a horrid paste-white flat face within, black holes for eyes and a thin red-lipped mouth in the shape of a perfect ‘O’, full of emptiness.

  She dies unless you finish it.

  The girl was fighting to draw something from her pocket, and then found it, an inhaler. It rolled from her grasping fingers onto the grass.

  Do it now.

  Kathy let go, and closed her eyes.

  “All right,” she sighed.

  And then she began to lose consciousness, felt the weight on her neck squeezing, Sammy’s own fingers squeezing the air from her–

  “Ha ha!” Sammy laughed happily. “Time to finish it!”

  She felt the ground begin to tremble again, heard the hush followed by a high keen, darkness enclosing the earth, the stars and moon blotted out, that flat and airless and empty place below her–

  “Time to see ma and pa!”

  As when she was eleven, the dry and airless desert opened in front of her, and what had been only bright clouds began to form into something else, shapes, moving shapes–

  And now for the briefest moment she thought she saw –

  “Ha ha ha–!”

  A curtain dropped down. She fell. Air came back into her lungs, and Sammy’s voice was gone, shut off in mid-laugh.

  Slowly, the night came back to her. She heard the sound of a dog barking, the laughter of children, a far-off shout of “Trick or treat!” She felt the cold of the autumn night breeze on her face, and wetness of dewed grass on her fingers.

  She felt sweet cold air in her lungs.

  Kathy slowly opened her eyes.

  Annabeth Turner knelt on the grass beside her. The inhaler was pressed tightly to her mouth. She drew a long ragged breath and then lowered the inhaler.

  “You–” Kathy began.

  “I wouldn’t let him take you,” she said.

  The librarian raised herself on her elbows. She saw the knife and cut noose beside her on the grass. She looked at Annabeth, who was suddenly crying.

  “He promised to show me–”

  “I… saw…” Kathy Marks began. “I… saw… something…”

  The young girl fell into her arms, crying, and Kathy held her for a long time.

  Around them, Halloween went on. The moon came out from hiding, became sharp and white and round, with a smirking face. On porches, candled pumpkins flickered bright, and, up and down streets, children dressed as monsters of a thousand kinds pounded on doors demanding candy, and filled handled bags and pillow cases to the brim with goodies. Trees rattled their bone branches, and made the wind moan through their wooden instruments. Black cats tiptoed under circling, flapping bats.

  And then – a curious thing happened. There came curfew, and then midnight. The pumpkins lost their fiery faces, the monsters scattered, and the porch lights went dark and the window cutouts were hard to see. The winking Halloween lights went off, and the papier-mâché spiders went to sleep in their vast rope webs.

  The world went quiet.

  Tomorrow it would all be gone, all of it.

  Halloween was over.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  You’ve failed.

  That’s true. What are you going to do: kill me?

  You’re usually not one for levity. You must know how disappointed I am.

  We’ve tried this twice now, and it hasn’t worked. Perhaps it’s time to try other things.

  I agree. We have few enough opportunities. Though, as you realize, it will be more difficult.

  As I said, these… creatures are fascinating in many ways. A mixture of weakness and tenacity and, sometimes, surprising strength. The girl and the woman, and the detective, Grant…

  You sound as if you almost developed feeling for them. They were the reason you failed.

  They were too strong, and, ultimately, too resilient.

  Perhaps we should avoid females in the future, and po
lice detectives.

  Perhaps. But there’s a toughness in many of them, regardless of gender.

  Would you like to return to the time of burning wicker men, stuffed with goat innards and human criminals? Or perhaps to an earlier time still, when they crawled on all fours through their own fetid muck–

  Your own levity is noted, Dark One.

  They have known both of us by many names since the beginning of this wretched place. They will know me again.

  I shall succeed for you yet.

  And then I will rid this world of every speck of life.

  Yes. I’m glad I let the girl and woman possess the merest hint…

  Hint of what?

  Never mind. My own realm. Don’t be alarmed.

  For someone who’s failed me, you show a remarkably cavalier attitude. It seems to me we have much work to do.

  Yes. There’s always next Halloween…

  Look for HALLOWS EVE and HALLOWEENLAND, books two and three of the Orangefield Series

  IT’S LOOSE

  By B.W. Battin

  To Jim Wofford, who’s been a friend for more than thirty years

  Prologue

  1

  Opening the oven, Charles Capwell stared at the TV dinner, wondering whether it was done. With the thing covered with foil the way it was, you couldn’t tell whether the food was bubbling or still frozen in the center. Although he knew how long the package said you were supposed to cook a sliced-turkey-with-stuffing-and-carrots frozen dinner, he hadn’t noted the time when he put it in the oven. He almost always forgot to do that, which meant he had this problem often, since frozen dinners were the mainstay of his diet.

  Capwell eyed the foil-covered rectangle, trying to make up his mind. The small oven was in dire need of cleaning. Black crud God knew how thick coated its interior walls. Not surprising, he supposed, since he’d lived here for eight years and had never cleaned it. But then cleaning ovens was woman’s work, simply not the sort of thing a guy did. You made the oven all shiny, and it looked better, but it didn’t work any better. What difference did it make how it looked—especially inside where nobody could see it?

  Finally Capwell did what he always did: he got a fork and poked a hole in the foil. Steam came out. His meal was ready.

  Seated at the scarred wooden table, he peeled back the foil and stared at compartments containing steaming portions of turkey and stuffing and carrots and a square of some sort of dessert. You were supposed to tear off the foil covering the dessert, but Capwell never bothered with that. You did, you didn’t, the stuff tasted the same.

  Like the house itself, the kitchen was small. Worn linoleum with a faded flower pattern, a few cabinets whose white paint had turned a yellowish brown, the result of years of fried eggs and bacon for breakfast. The sink had a permanent brown stain where the faucet dripped. It was nearly as bad as the toilet, whose bowl had turned grungier and grungier over the years Capwell had lived here. He cleaned it occasionally—grudgingly—but the rust-colored crud just kept getting thicker.

  Although he wasn’t much for the inside stuff, the woman’s work, he kept the outside of the place immaculate. Failure to do woman’s work didn’t affect his self-esteem, but letting the lawn go or watching the weeds take over the flower beds would make him look bad in the eyes of his neighbors. They’d think he was lazy, slovenly. So Capwell worked hard in his yard, keeping it among the best maintained in his working-class Pittsburgh neighborhood.

  Capwell figured most of the people living on the block thought of him as a good neighbor! He was quiet, never bothered anyone, always wished people a good day if they walked past while he was outside working in the yard. Except for his job, that was the extent of Capwell’s social contact. He was what people called a loner. He had no friends. Not one.

  Capwell had been married once, back when he lived in Kentucky. He was eighteen, just out of high school, and Lori Ann was sixteen and pregnant. The marriage lasted two years. Lori Ann divorced him so she could marry an evangelist she met at a revival. Got religion, she said, wanted to spend her life in the service of the Lord. That was twenty years ago, and Capwell had seen neither Lori Ann nor his son since. Sometimes he wondered what Jimmy looked like now that he was all grown up. And sometimes he wondered whether Lori Ann was still married to the preacher, whether she still had religion.

  Sometimes. But not very often.

  Lori Ann was just one of the things he’d lost during his life. He’d had a new Cadillac convertible, a business, a chance to be a major league baseball player. They were all gone now, as if they’d never been, as if they’d happened in someone else’s life. He bought the Cadillac when he was a young guy, just starting out. His uncle had gotten him into the electricians’ union, and he was making good money. Not good enough to afford the Cadillac, but he wanted it, and he could make the payments if he skimped on other things, and Lori Ann thought it was the sexiest car she’d ever seen. (The preacher she ran off with had one, now that Capwell thought about it.) He lost the car when he lost his job. Four hundred dollars’ worth of tools and copper wire had been stolen from the company, and somehow he got fingered for it. Wrongly. He’d never taken even so much as a three-cent wire nut. But his boss didn’t believe him. Capwell lost his job. Then, unable to make the payments, he lost the Cadillac.

  He lost the business years later. He and a guy named Herschel Sniezek had opened a meat market. Capwell did most of the butcher work, cutting up meat for freezer orders and things like that, while Herschel did the paperwork. The business was barely better than marginal, but it was a living. At least it was until Herschel died in his sleep of a heart attack one night. Under their partnership agreement, Capwell got Herschel’s share of the business, but he wasn’t good at doing Herschel’s part of the work. He didn’t know how to keep records, which got him into trouble with the IRS. He forgot to order ahead, then overreacted and overordered. The business struggled along for six months before Capwell declared bankruptcy.

  Perhaps the loss he regretted most was his chance to be a major leaguer. He’d always been good at baseball. Just sandlot stuff with other kids, but he could pitch so well that his team nearly always won. No matter who else played on it. Could have been all girls, wouldn’t have mattered, almost no one ever got on base. So one day, after Lori Ann had left him, he decided to go to Florida and try out for the Dodgers. He had another car, a used one, and he was working as a forklift operator, which he hated. He had a few hundred bucks. And he’d never been to Florida.

  There were closer places to go, of course, but he’d always liked the Dodgers, and if he was going to play baseball, that was who he wanted to be with. He tried out in Vero Beach. And was selected. His record was seven and one when he was advanced to the Double-A San Antonio team. He pitched only one game for San Antonio. During it he was struck by a hard-hit ball. It broke his arm, which mended, but not well enough for him to pitch again.

  He went back to Kentucky. Back to being a forklift operator.

  And as time went on, he discovered that he’d lost something else. The ability to have a relationship with a woman. Maybe Lori Ann had taken it from him; he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he’d tried to get along with women, tried lots of times, but it never worked, for they were all alike. They’d smile and laugh and come on to you. They’d make love to you. They’d tell you that you were the one, the only, the best. And then they’d hurt you. Always. Without exception.

  He’d relearned that the hard way just last week. There was this girl named Janey at the grocery store where he worked. Kind of thin, with curly blonde hair and the biggest, brightest smile he’d ever seen. She was a checker, and whenever Capwell saw her, she flashed that smile at him, said hi, asked how he was doing. At first he thought it was just friendliness, and then he decided that she was coming on to him, that she liked him. Before long, Capwell was so infatuated with her that she was all he could think of. He’d lie in bed at night, thinking of Janey. He’d fry his bacon in the morning, thinkin
g of Janey. A part of him knew better, kept warning him to leave her alone because she was poison just like all the rest of them. But Capwell hadn’t wanted to hear that. He wanted Janey. She was all he wanted.

  It had taken him a month to work up the courage to ask her out.

  On the surface, she was nice about it. If you just looked at her words, at what they meant if you looked them up in the dictionary, she wasn’t being mean about it. “I like you and enjoy working with you,” she’d said, “but I’m pretty much going steady with this guy, and I just don’t see us having a relationship beyond what we have here at work.”

  Nothing you could point your finger at. No derogatory words. No obvious attempt to hurt. But that’s what it had all been about. Hurting. Making you crawl. Making you feel all twisted up and ashamed inside. Sometimes he thought women practiced it, took lessons in it, maybe even went to college and got a Ph.D. in it.

  Doctor Janey, expert in giving pain.

  Capwell angrily stabbed a piece of turkey with his fork, puncturing the bottom of the foil tray. He studied the spot a moment, but it didn’t look as though any gravy was leaking out.

  He’d started getting even with Janey after that. Once, when she’d stepped away from her cash register, he rang up a fifty-dollar sale just so she’d come up short. If she called over to the meat department to get a price on something, he’d always give her the wrong one, hoping the boss would notice and think she was screwing up. When she said good morning to him, he just scowled at her. He became sullen and grouchy, not just around Janey but all the time he was at work.

  The store manager, Fred Jamison, had called him in for a talk, told him he had an attitude problem, he wasn’t getting along with his fellow employees. Capwell said he was just in a bad mood, it would pass, nothing to worry about. Jamison said he hoped that was right, because if there was one thing he didn’t like it was people with attitude problems.