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

by Chet Williamson

  “Don’t call the police,” he said. It was an order, stated flatly, to be obeyed without question. Carolyn experienced a sensation similar to that of walking into a spider web, feeling it stick to your exposed skin, which instantly crawls into gooseflesh. Except in this case the web was inside her. And the spider was crawling around.

  “Douglas … I …” She let her words trail off because she didn’t know what to say.

  “Don’t call the police,” he repeated, and this time his eyes were burning into her like those lasers they used to cut metal. They seemed hot, so hot she could swear they were glowing.

  “I won’t,” she said, her voice a tremulous whisper. And she wouldn’t. She was afraid for Carly, but she was absolutely terrified of her husband.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m going out.” He turned and walked out of the room.

  Carolyn was shaking. She didn’t understand this at all. Why was Douglas acting so strangely? And why was she suddenly so terrified of him? But then that was a question she didn’t want to examine too closely, for she knew, at least on some level, that the emotions burning in his eyes, eyes that seemed to glow when you looked at them for a moment, were intense and cruel beyond her understanding.

  What was happening here? Was her husband going insane? No, she didn’t think so. Insanity was something you could understand, cope with. What she’d seen in Douglas’s eyes just now went way beyond insanity. It was like looking at two people. On the outside was Douglas Pfeil, but underneath was something else, something composed of energy or thoughts or feelings or … or something. And it exuded menace and hate and sensations for which she had no words.

  Impossible, she thought. I’m going crazy.

  But she knew she wasn’t.

  Then she thought about Carly again, looked at the phone she knew she dared not touch. Tears started streaming down her cheeks. Tears of worry about Carly. Tears of fear for herself. Tears born of suddenly being in the middle of something she wasn’t equipped to handle and could never even hope to understand.

  Sinking to the floor, she sobbed.

  3

  Samantha Gordon had just put her eight-year-old daughter, Stephanie, to bed when the doorbell sounded. Her son, eleven-year-old Robert, was allowed to stay up a little later by virtue of his superior age. Feeling this was quite unfair, Stephanie had put up an argument, which Samantha had finally ended with the uncompromising use of strict parental authority.

  She was coming down the stairs from Stephanie’s room when the doorbell sounded, so she shouted, “I’ll get it,” and headed for the front door, wondering who it could be at this hour. She’d about decided it must be a neighbor asking to borrow something, when she opened the door and found out she was wrong.

  “Who is it?” her husband called from the living room.

  “It’s … it’s the minister,” she said, suddenly unable to recall his name. Not being Lutherans, they went to a church on the mainland.

  “May I come in?” the clergyman asked.

  Something made her hesitate, some dimly perceived internal warning.

  “It’s very important,” the minister said.

  “Hello,” her husband, Michael, said, joining them. He looked inquisitively at Samantha, and when she made no response, he said, “Invite him in. We’re letting all the heat out.”

  Samantha stepped back from the doorway. As the clergyman moved past her, a coldness settled over her that seemed to penetrate to her core, as if the minister moved within an envelope of glacial iciness that could instantly suck the warmth from anything it came into contact with.

  4

  Karl Zellner was sitting in his recliner, watching a news special about Pentagon waste. Brute, who still insisted on staying close, was curled up at his feet. The reporter had just started talking about a billion-dollar cost overrun, when Brute leaped up as if the information had startled him. The dog stared intently across the room, his ears cocked forward, his eyes wide. Zellner looked where Brute was looking and saw nothing.

  “What is it?” he asked, leaning forward to pet the dog.

  Brute jumped when Zellner’s hand touched him. Growling softly, the dog pressed himself against Zellner’s leg. The German Shepherd was trembling.

  5

  Don Farraday lay in bed with Allison, knowing sleep wouldn’t come. Although he was a pretty good small-town cop, he’d never handled a murder before. He’d talked the town council into putting up the money to send him to a fingerprinting course at the state police academy, but with that exception he’d never been trained in investigatory techniques. And this whole thing was beginning to come off like something in a mystery novel.

  First comes the stranger who breaks into a cabin to commit suicide with a kitchen knife. Then comes the ex-cop, Kesselring, who lies about why he’s here. Then someone murders Paul Edley by converting him into hamburger with a tire iron. And finally the house in which the murder was committed burns down. Dwyer and Kesselring were connected, although Don didn’t know exactly how because Kesselring wouldn’t tell him the truth. Was Kesselring also connected with Edley in some way? Was the murder connected with the fire? Don rolled over, groaned, tried to make all these questions stop tumbling through his mind.

  Allison put her hand on his shoulder. “Can’t sleep, huh?”

  “Can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Want to talk?”

  “I’d just keep you awake too.”

  “You’re already keeping me awake with all the tossing and turning.”

  Don was silent for a moment, then he said, “You tuned in to the Ice Island grapevine?”

  “Is that a polite way of asking me whether I’m a gossip?”

  “If I answer that, I’m going to get into trouble.”

  Allison laughed. “Well, between my real estate business and my insurance business, I’m talking to people all day, so I’d say I’ve probably got a pretty good idea of what’s going on.”

  “Okay, what do you know about Paul Edley?”

  “He didn’t take very good care of his boats, and the company canceled the policy.”

  “You have anything to do with that decision?”

  “The company asked me to inspect the boats and make a recommendation.”

  “And you recommended they cancel the policy.”

  “Actually I recommended they warn him. Nobody wants to lose a paying customer.”

  “What else do you know about Edley?”

  “Well, mainly the things I’m sure you already know. His mother died a long time ago, and he was raised by his father, Bert. When Bert died a few years ago, Paul inherited the house and the boat renting business—which immediately started going downhill. Bert took good care of the boats. To him it was just good sense, a matter of protecting his investment. Paul was lazier, didn’t have the same head for business.”

  “How about Paul’s personal life?”

  “Gossip? Me? How would I know about such things?”

  “Don’t think of it as gossip. Think of it as rumor and innuendo.”

  “Well, that’s different. In the rumor and innuendo department, I hear that Paul Edley spent a lot of time with the wives and daughters of the summer set.”

  “Someone had to keep those sex-craving city women satisfied or Ice Island wouldn’t have been safe for the rest of us.”

  Allison punched him in the ribs.

  “Husband abuse,” Don said. “Did you see that, ladies and gentlemen? Husband abuse. Right here on our own little island.”

  “Shhhh,” Allison said, laughing. “Sarah will hear us and think her parents have gone bonkers.”

  “Bonkers? You’re the first person to use that word since October 22, 1969.”

  “You’re asking for more husband abuse. I hope you know that.”

  Don laughed. No matter how upset he was, Allison could always get him into one of these silly conversations and make him laugh. He slipped his arms around her, gave her a hug. “What about local women?” Don asked.
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br />   “Ummm, I don’t think any of them are your type.”

  “I meant what about Edley and local women?”

  “I hear he was involved with a few of them.”

  “Any names?”

  Allison considered that. “I heard there was a teenage girl who had to get an abortion. And I heard a rumor once about…”

  “Yes?”

  “I hate to spread gossip.”

  “Think of it as helping the police with a murder investigation. The innocent have nothing to fear.”

  “My God,” Allison said. “He’s started talking in slogans.”

  “Come on,” Don said. “Give.”

  Allison sighed. “Irene Waggoner.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Just that she was fooling around with Edley.”

  Don thought about her husband, pudgy Kevin Waggoner, who worked at Ace Hardware and had about as much sex appeal as a stump. The times he’d seen the Waggoners together they hadn’t seemed real loving toward each other, but then a lot of couples didn’t. He and Allison were loving, but he didn’t know whether other people saw them that way.

  “Anyone else?” Don asked.

  “That’s all the rumor and innuendo I’ve heard.”

  They fell silent then. Night sounds, kept at bay by their conversation, sneaked back into the room. A car passing by a block or two away. A dog barking. The creaks and groans of the house.

  “Kesselring was my first suspect,” Don said. “But his prints weren’t on the tire iron.”

  “I know,” Allison said. “You told me.”

  “You know what that means? It means someone who lives on the island killed him.”

  “It’s a little scary to think that someone who lives right here with us could do something like that.”

  “Think about it,” Don said. “Can you picture anyone on the island beating a guy to death?”

  “No.”

  “But one of them did.”

  “You’re thinking it might have been Kevin Waggoner, aren’t you?”

  “I’m going to check it out, yes. But there may be others, women you haven’t heard about. Maybe one of their husbands or boyfriends murdered him.”

  “Can you see Kevin Waggoner as a murderer?” Allison asked. “He’s just sort of chubby and lethargic.”

  “On the outside. Who knows what’s on the inside—of anyone?”

  The night sounds crept back in again, then Allison said, “Maybe there’s another stranger on the island, someone you don’t know about, someone who’s hiding out somewhere—one of the summer cabins maybe.”

  “I considered that,” Don said. “It’s possible, but if someone’s here, no one on the island has seen him. If anyone spotted a stranger—or even a strange car—I’d have heard about it. The murder has people jumpy. I’ve already had half-a-dozen calls from people who’ve spotted Kesselring.”

  Allison snuggled against him. “Hold me,” she said.

  He squeezed her gently, thinking that somewhere out there was a person who’d beaten a man until there wasn’t much left of him. And that person was trapped with Don and Allison and their daughter on a chunk of land four miles wide and ten miles long. The cop part of him was glad that the murderer couldn’t get away. The husband and father would have been just as happy if the murderer had fled—to Cambodia or Africa or the South Pole.

  6

  It was after two in the morning when Reverend Douglas Pfeil left the Gordons’ house. His clothes were covered with blood. So was his face, most of it concentrated around his mouth.

  The hunger had been satiated.

  But he knew it would stir within him again.

  Soon.

  Seven

  1

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Doctor Allen Ingram said when Don stepped into his office.

  Don sat down in a black swivel chair that seemed lower than the doctor’s seat behind the desk. Maybe this was intended to give the physician an air of authority, so his instructions would be obeyed by patients. On the other hand, maybe it was just Don’s imagination.

  Doc Ingram was probably about seventy; no one seemed to know his precise age. He had a mane of white hair that gave him a resemblance to William Hartnell, the original Dr. Who. He had a kindly face with clear deep blue eyes and a warm smile, which made him look like everyone’s favorite grandfather.

  His office looked more like a college professor’s than a doctor’s. The walls were lined with built-in bookcases, all of them full of volumes, and a large globe stood on its floor stand in one corner. He was the island’s only doctor, and he’d been there for more than forty years.

  “What bone is that?” Don asked, rubbing his eyes. He’d managed to get about three hours of sleep last night.

  “You had me bring that body back here so I could look it over, then left me to figure out what to do with the damned thing.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “Phil Deemis has got it.”

  “He’s keeping it at the Shell station? Doc, that body’s evidence. I entrusted it to you so that—”

  “It’s in his freezer. He had a twenty-three-cubic-foot model he bought for deer hunting, but he didn’t get any deer last fall, so he let us put the body in it. No charge to the town.”

  “Thanks for taking care of it,” Don said. Ingram wasn’t really put out, he was just stringing Don along a little—letting him know he owed him a favor.

  “Now that I’ve resolved that messy problem, what else can I do for the Ice Island constabulary?”

  “What did you learn from examining Edley’s body?”

  “I can tell you the cause of death.”

  “You can?”

  “Sure. Somebody beat the hell out of him. If you want to get more specific than that—failure of a vital organ due to extreme trauma or some such thing—you’ll have to wait until you can thaw him out and have a pathologist perform an autopsy.”

  “What I really need is a time of death.”

  “I can’t be very precise.”

  “Do the best you can.”

  “Judging by body temperature, lividity, and the degree of rigor mortis, I’d say he died in the afternoon or the evening of the day before he was discovered.”

  “That’s a period of eight hours or more. Couldn’t you narrow it down just a little?”

  “Between two and eight p.m. That’s the best I can do.”

  Don rubbed his brow. To eliminate anyone as a suspect, he’d have to account for six hours, which included the time people usually get off work and go home, maybe stopping for a beer or picking up some groceries. It was going to be impossible.

  Don said, “I understand Edley had affairs with some of the local women.”

  The physician frowned. “I’ve heard that.”

  “Do you know who any of them were?”

  “Just one.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t say. It would violate the doctor-patient relationship.”

  “This is a murder investigation, Doc.”

  “I know. And you’re wondering whether this could be a reprisal because Edley was involved with someone’s wife or lover or something.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “What I know can’t help you. I’ll tell you this much. It involved a high school girl. She had an abortion. I know her and her parents well, and there just wouldn’t be any question of revenge. Besides, this was two years ago. No one would wait that long to get even.”

  Don decided not to push it, since doing so would be fruitless. Doc had his code of ethics, and absolutely nothing could get him to violate it. The phone rang, and the physician answered it. Don stood up, motioning to Ingram that he was leaving.

  “Hold it,” the doctor said. “It’s for you.”

  Don took the receiver. “Farraday.”

  “Don, this … this is Hiram Bellamy.” Hiram was the principal at the junior/senior high. His voice sounded as thin and brittle as a leaf pre
served between the pages of a heavy volume. “I … I just came from the Gordons’ place. They’re all dead. All four of them. They’ve been murdered.”

  “Wait a minute, Hiram. How do you know they’ve been murdered?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Bellamy said, his voice wavering. “You only have to take one look to know they’ve been murdered.”

  2

  Don took Doc Ingram with him. The Gordons’ house was a log A-frame, which they’d built in the woods off Island Avenue, about a mile west of South Point Road. Samantha and Michael Gordon were both teachers at the junior/senior high. Hiram Bellamy was waiting for Don and Doc outside the house.

  “Neither of them showed up at school this morning,” Bellamy said as Don and Doc climbed out of the Cherokee. “I called and didn’t get any answer, so I came over to see if anything was wrong.”

  Bellamy was a heavyset man with a bushy mustache and curly gray hair that stuck out at the sides. He almost always wore pinstriped suits, and he looked like the political cartoon caricature of a nineteenth-century fatcat. He even smoked cigars. He wasn’t smoking one at the moment, though. His face was ashen, and he was making nervous little gestures with his hands. He looked as though he might collapse any second.

  “Oh, God,” the principal said. “It’s terrible, just terrible. I don’t know what’s happening here on the island. I just don’t know.” He hung back as Don and the doctor went to the front door, which was standing open.

  “Was this how you found the door?” Don asked.

  “No,” Bellamy said. “It was closed but not locked. I went in to make sure everything was okay. I guess I left it open when I ran out.”

  Don stepped into the house. It was the scene at Paul Edley’s house all over again. Except worse.

  The living room looked as though a mad artist had been at work, one of those guys who made pictures that were just a bunch of globs and spatters of paint. Except this artist had only used one color: red. The bodies of two children lay in a corner of the room, one partially atop the other, as if they’d been used then thrown away. The body of a woman lay by the couch, her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. There was terror in those eyes, terror that was absolute and pure. All the bodies were bloody, their clothing ripped and shredded. At first Don didn’t see the fourth body, but then he saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind an upholstered chair. He went to investigate.