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

by Chet Williamson

  He shoved the barrel into her mouth. “I’ve been a laughingstock all over this town, haven’t I? I bet they’ve been saying all sorts of things about me. Laughing their asses off at fat, old, stupid Kevin.”

  Unable to speak with the barrel of the gun in her mouth, she shook her head, two widened brown eyes staring at him, pleading. He could make her beg if he wanted to; he knew that. But the rage churning and clamoring inside him didn’t want to wait that long. Pull the trigger, it demanded. Blow the bitch’s brains all over the stupid, frilly bedspread.

  The rage traveled to his finger, which began to move the trigger.

  Inside Kevin’s head, emotions he’d never experienced before were dancing and leaping.

  Abruptly he relaxed his trigger finger. Though uncertain where the idea had come from, he knew what he was going to do with Irene. He removed the gun from her mouth.

  “You’re not going to … to shoot me?” she asked. Tears were running down her cheeks. She was shaking.

  “Nope,” he said, feeling quite content with his new plan. “I’m going to do something else.”

  “What?” she whispered, looking at him fearfully. She was still crying and shaking.

  “I’m going to take you to the revival,” he said.

  10

  From a spot near the altar, it surveyed the inside of the church, pleased with the plan it had devised. Never before had things been this good. An entire island from which no one could escape and to which no help could come. It had been feeding well—oh, so very, very well.

  And because of that, it was very powerful now. Soon it might be as powerful as it had been after it caused the plane crash in Dallas. And its increased strength would enable it to feed even more greedily.

  The best thing of all, of course, was war. In a war it could truly gorge itself. But then it was here in this part of the world now, and all the wars were very far away.

  The only thing that troubled it about its situation here on the island was the presence of the man who pursued it. The only human in the world who was able to harm it. Because of the man, it would have to be careful.

  But not so careful it couldn’t take advantage of this glorious opportunity to feed. Someday, perhaps, it could even feed on the one who pursued it.

  Nine

  1

  The next day, Don went to see Irene Waggoner. The house in which she and Kevin lived was a tiny place, maybe seven hundred square feet. It was another warm day. Water from the melting snow was puddling on the Waggoners’ sidewalk. On the way there, Don had seen a front yard in which enough snow had melted to reveal a small oval of lawn. It was the first grass he’d seen since December. He rang the Waggoners’ doorbell.

  Lying in bed last night, he’d asked Allison about Irene. Allison said she didn’t know her too well, but she had some impressions. “Irene always seemed to be one of those people who didn’t know what to do with her life,” Allison said. “She just sort of marked time and did nothing. Meanwhile all her friends were getting married or leaving the island, and one day she found herself single and with no prospects. The only available guy was Kevin Waggoner, so she took him.”

  “Not much of a basis for marriage,” Don had replied.

  “You’d be surprised how many people get married for reasons like that.”

  “That why you married me?”

  “No, I was prepared to search the entire planet until I found someone who was just right, but I got lucky and found him right here on the island.”

  Don squeezed her, told her he felt the same way, and then spent the rest of the night tossing and turning and thinking about the five murders.

  He rang the Waggoners’ doorbell for the third time. He could dimly make out the sound of chimes coming from within the house, so he knew it was working. Apparently Irene wasn’t home.

  Don walked back to his car, which he’d parked at the curb. The puddles in the Waggoners’ walk had become a little stream that trickled along the cement surface to the street, where it joined the bigger stream flowing in the gutter. It was definitely beginning to look like an early spring.

  2

  Inside the small house on Lansing Street, Irene Waggoner struggled with her bonds. She was stretched out on the bed like a big X, ropes extending from the four bedposts to her hands and feet. A sock had been jammed into her mouth, held in place by one of her scarves.

  When the door chimes sounded, she’d struggled with all her might, but all she could do was flop about on the mattress and make muffled noises through the gag. No one outside the house would ever hear her. The bedroom curtains were drawn, so no one could look in and see her.

  The night had been terrible. After removing the gun from her mouth, Kevin had let her up. They’d eaten, watched TV, Kevin always keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn’t bolt for the door. Then they went to bed. Irene had lain there, feeling his weight beside her, smelling that sweaty odor that clung to him even after he bathed. At first she was afraid he’d force her to do things, sexual things, things that might hurt her—just to get even with her for making it with Paul. But he didn’t. He just lay there. And Irene lay beside him, terrified.

  Thinking she might sneak away after he was asleep, Irene waited until she heard him snoring. When Kevin snored, it was like no other sound on earth. His snorts and wheezes seemed loud enough to drown out a jet engine, unearthly and eerie, as if his mouth were letting out sounds of hell. She lost her nerve. If she woke him while slipping out of bed, he’d be furious. Maybe furious enough to get the gun. And maybe this time he’d pull the trigger.

  And while she was lying rigid in the bed, listening to her husband’s thunderous snores, an unnerving thought had stepped unbidden out of that place in her mind where dark suspicions lurked. Maybe Kevin had killed Paul. Until yesterday she never would have believed him capable of such a thing. But that was before he’d stuffed the barrel of a gun into her mouth, leaving little doubt that he could damn well pull the trigger if that was what he decided to do. Which meant he was capable of murder. Maybe something inside him just snapped when he learned that she’d been seeing Paul, snapped so completely that Kevin had pounded him into a pulp with a tire iron.

  So she’d lain in bed all night, too terrified to move, knowing she could get away after Kevin went to work in the morning. Now she realized not trying to escape while Kevin slept had been a mistake. She might never get another chance.

  Her ankles and wrists were sore from struggling with her bonds. The effort had been useless; the ropes held her as securely as manacles. And her pants were wet. When the door chimes had sounded, her battle with the ropes had turned into panic, and her bladder had let go.

  Kevin had waited until they finished a tense and silent breakfast before taking her into the bedroom and ordering her to lie down on the bed. While he tied her arms and legs to the bedposts, Irene had pleaded with him. He’d made only one comment: “Gotta make sure you’re here so I can take you to the revival tonight.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. Kevin had never been religious. When he saw Jerry Falwell or Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker on the news, he’d often mutter some contemptuous remark like “Bible-thumping assholes are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites, and I wish they’d leave the rest of us alone.”

  So why was he going to a revival? Sometimes crazy people got religion, like the mass murderer you’d see on 60 Minutes or 20/20, sitting in his death-row cell and reading the Bible. She wished she hadn’t thought of that particular example, because it made her think that Kevin might be trying to atone for Paul’s murder, trying to get God to forgive him for it.

  Irene also had no idea what revival he was talking about. She’d lived on Ice Island all her life, and as far as she knew, no one had ever held a revival there.

  She gave a halfhearted tug on the rope attached to her right wrist, and abruptly tears were streaming down the sides of her face, soaking into the bedspread. Suddenly Irene Waggoner was certain that this would be her last day
on this earth. She let out a wail of despair, but, muffled by the gag, it was a hollow, meaningless sound that was heard by no one but her.

  3

  Ice Islanders found the banner on the church puzzling. Anna Neuhaus was on the phone with Barbara Kohler, whose husband owned the hardware store and, like Anna’s husband, was a member of the town council.

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into Reverend Pfeil,” Anna Neuhaus said. “He’s been acting very strangely.”

  “The last thing we need right now’s a revival,” Barbara Kohler said.

  “No kidding.”

  “You’re on the board of trustees. Why don’t you talk to him, find out what’s going on?”

  “I’ve tried to talk to him. You wouldn’t believe what he said to me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I couldn’t repeat it.”

  “You mean he used profanity?”

  “Yes. And that’s all I’m going to say.”

  “Oh, my goodness. What are the trustees going to do?”

  “They’re meeting next week. I think I’m going to suggest that Reverend Pfeil be sent for psychological treatment of some sort. If he refuses, I think he should be terminated.”

  4

  Nora Stromberg, a retired elementary schoolteacher, was in Coleman’s Pharmacy, getting her blood-pressure prescription refilled. She told Joe Coleman how worried she was about the murders, especially being a woman who lived alone, and then the conversation shifted to the revival.

  “What’s it all about?” she asked, watching Coleman count out the pills.

  “Beats me. Just about everybody comes in asks me about it, but I don’t know any more than they do.”

  “Maybe Reverend Pfeil wants to get everybody together. Because of the murders. Because we’re all so worried.”

  “I don’t know,” Coleman said, handing her the refilled bottle of pills. “Nobody I’ve talked to said they were going.”

  5

  At the Ice Island Junior/Senior High School, Hiram Bellamy, the principal, had just finished dictating a letter to his secretary, Cloris Iverson, a prim gray-haired lady who always reminded him of an English nanny. For the past two days, the sole subject of conversation in the shocked school had been the gruesome deaths of two of its teachers and their children. Now, as he sat at his desk, watching Cloris close her notebook, Bellamy realized he wanted to talk about something else—anything else.

  “Have you seen the sign on the church?” he asked.

  “About the revival? Yes. Yes, I have.”

  “What’s supposed to happen at this revival?”

  “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Really?” he said, genuinely surprised. “I thought you hadn’t missed a Sunday service in twenty years.”

  “Fifteen,” she said, blushing slightly. “Nothing’s been said about it at church. I was as surprised as anyone when I saw the banner.”

  “Are you going?” Bellamy asked.

  She hesitated, as if making up her mind. “No, I don’t think I will. I don’t like to go out at night just now.”

  “Knowing people here as well as I do,” Bellamy said, “I’d be surprised if the reverend gets much of a turnout.”

  6

  Ralph Higgins, the retired maintenance engineer who’d worked at the Soo Locks, stepped into the Icicle Lounge shortly after it opened at three in the afternoon. Sitting down at the bar, he said, “Think I’ll drink beer today, Todd.”

  Todd Wolfe, the owner and bartender, said, “What kind?”

  “Whatever brand your fingers touch first.”

  Wolfe put a bottle of Schlitz and a glass on the bar.

  “They catch the murderer yet?” Higgins asked, pouring the beer into the glass.

  “No, but I sure wish they had.”

  “Me too.” He took a swallow of beer, and the two men fell silent. They’d talked about the murders yesterday, and there didn’t seem to be anything else to say about them. They both knew they were trapped on the island with a madman who might kill again. Talking about it some more wasn’t going to help the situation.

  “Going to the revival tonight?” Higgins asked, breaking the silence.

  “Naw,” the bartender said. “Gotta work. Don’t know anybody who is.”

  “Ever been to one?”

  “Can’t say as I have.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Not really,” the bartender said, absently wiping a spilled drop of beer off the bar with a cloth. “You thinking about going?”

  “No. Don’t think it’s anything I’d be interested in. I was just curious to know exactly what happened at a revival.”

  7

  About four o’clock that afternoon, Don Farraday made his third trip to the Waggoner house, and again no one was home. He drove to the police station, where he sat down at his desk, feeling exhausted.

  He’d spent most of the day talking to friends and associates of the Gordons, asking whether the dead family had any enemies, whether they’d been acting strangely of late, whether they were happy or on the verge of divorce, financially secure or deeply in debt, good parents or bad. What he got was a picture of a pair of happily married teachers who were content with their lives, good parents, and responsible with their income. They were into nothing unsavory and had been well liked by everyone.

  He wondered whether the Gordons were chance victims, targets of opportunity. Did they die simply because the killer was passing by their house and saw the lights on? Or was there someone on the island who didn’t share the widely held opinion that they were such nice people?

  Having two killers loose on the island at the same time, working independently—especially two such brutal killers—seemed too much of a coincidence to accept, so Don had decided to work under the assumption that both Paul Edley and the Gordons had been killed by the same person—or persons, he supposed. Therefore he was looking for someone who had randomly selected both Edley and the Gordons or someone who had something against both Edley and the Gordons.

  He sighed. With brilliant thinking like that, he ought to solve the murders in no more than a decade or two. Without meaning to, he expressed his thoughts aloud. “I’m in way over my head,” he muttered. “Way, way, way over it.”

  “You’ve got no leads, I take it,” Corrine said. She was sitting at her desk, staring at him, looking scared. Don had seen that look on a lot of people lately.

  “I’ve got nothing,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to call Lieutenant Roper and see if he’s found a helicopter, so I can get some help on this thing.” He dialed the number for the state police office in Marquette and asked for the lieutenant.

  Roper said, “I’m working on getting a chopper from the National Guard. They’ve got one we can have, but I’m hung up in bureaucratic bullshit. The Guard says the request has to be approved by its state headquarters, and the state headquarters says the request has to come through the governor’s office, and the governor’s office says it has to come through the chief’s office in Lansing.”

  “How long is all this likely to take?”

  “A day or two.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Both the chief and deputy chief are at a law enforcement conference in Florida.”

  “We’re talking five murders here, Lieutenant. I need help bad.”

  “A day or two. I promise.”

  When Don hung up the phone, he found Corrine looking at him expectantly. “A day or two,” he said glumly. “Maybe those people who want the Upper Peninsula to secede from Michigan are right. At least we’d have our own state police force, with its own helicopter.”

  Corrine nodded, the worry still apparent in her eyes. Don wished she wouldn’t look like that. It was a constant reminder of the situation they were in. Don, Corrine, and everyone else on the island was trapped here with a murderer who didn’t just kill but committed unspeakable acts. Like decapitating a man,
biting chunks out of people, beating a man until he was unrecognizable. For the duration of the Split, neither the killer nor his potential victims could get away from each other, and the local police had no idea who the murderer was.

  Otherwise, everything was great.

  “You going to the revival?” Don asked, just to say something.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t feel like being around a lot of other people right now.” She was still looking at him the same way. Her eyes seemed to be saying, This is real, isn’t it?

  He knew how she felt. This was something from the nightly news, not the stuff of real life. Five die in brutal murders on Ice Island. Film at eleven. You sit there in front of the TV set and watch, seeing what happened to other people and not really feeling as though it’s real—as though maybe all the dead people get up and walk away after the camera’s turned off.

  But these dead people wouldn’t get up and walk away. They were in freezers in Phil Deemis’s place and Doc Ingram’s place. And they weren’t strangers; they were people he’d known, living, moving people who’d bled real blood when their bodies had been violated. And whoever had done it was still out there. And could do it again.

  Corrine was continuing to look at him like that.

  “Smile,” he told her.

  She looked away. She was crying.

  8

  Brooke Neuhaus sat at the dinner table, glowering at her mother. The two of them had had a “discussion” a little while ago. Her mom’s word, discussion. To Brooke it was an argument. Her mother had absolutely refused to listen to reason. She saw only one side of any situation. Hers.

  Anna Neuhaus, looking unperturbed, took a bite of the pork roast she’d made, then turned to her husband. “Conrad, do you see anything to be gained by taking a break between high school and college?”

  “I was in the Army between high school and college,” he said.