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

by Chet Williamson

  “And a second-rate blowjob at that.”

  “Come on, you said that—”

  “You look at it one way, though, and there’s no such thing as a second-rate blowjob.”

  “Stop it!” Christine’s voice choked with rage. “You’re a bastard!”

  “You knew that when you moved in with me.”

  “I am leaving!” She began to get to her feet, but Brad reached out, grasped her arm, and pulled her across his body until her face was only inches from his own.

  “And go where?” he snarled in a low voice. “Do what? You gonna be a model in New York, Chris? Or an actress in Hollywood? You gonna find yourself some rich asshole who comes twice a year and be his mistress?”

  “Let go of my arm—”

  “Or maybe you’re too chubby for that. Maybe you could find a job as a receptionist, huh? Oh, but for that you have to be well spoken. What about a waitress, then, or a salesclerk? But for that you’ve got to be friendly and be able to add, and you’re not so hot at either of those. What about a shoe factory, then? You know, I think you’d be perfect for that. Loading boxes in a shoe factory. And it so happens that there’s a job like that. For you. Right here in Merridale.”

  “Stop it.” She was crying now. He had made her cry.

  “A job for Christine Grimes.”

  “I work there, I work there, that’s where I work,” she babbled.

  “For Christine Grimes Meyers.”

  She stopped dead, but the tears kept gliding down her cheeks. “What?”

  “I have to spell it out for you? M-e-y-e-r-s, Meyers.”

  “You … want me to marry you?” Her eyes narrowed distrustfully.

  “What’s wrong? Wasn’t it tender enough?” He touched her hair, let his finger run down the curve of her cheek to rest on her lips. “I give you a pretty rough time, don’t I?” He asked gently, and she nodded.

  “Do you … you really want to marry me?”

  He fell back onto the bed, pulling the sheet over himself. “I don’t know what I want. I just don’t want you to leave, that’s all. Maybe I want you to marry me.”

  “Now it’s ‘maybe’.” Her tone grew sharp again. “Remember what we said when you came here,” he cautioned, “No promises.”

  “Sure.” She stood up and walked to the door.

  “You’re staying. Right?”

  She opened the door and walked across the hall into their bedroom, where the Smurfs were working their way to the next commercial. He followed, and through the door saw her sit on the bed and pick up a bowl of soggy cereal. It was answer enough.

  Then Brad walked into the living room. Joe was there. “Waiting for me, huh?” he said. He walked over to the figure and raised his hand so that his finger seemed to touch the grizzled cheek. “Don’t worry, old-timer. I won’t desert you.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Business as usual,” Beth said, hanging up the phone. “They’ll have classes Monday, though Reed isn’t sure if any kids’ll show up or not.”

  “They’ll be there. The ones who didn’t leave.” Jim Callendar sipped at his second cup of coffee. “Everybody wants to get back to normal. Did he say what the school was like?”

  Beth nodded. “He and Doug Bryant and Harv Kimball visited each school in the district. Nothing in the buildings, but a few of those … things on the grounds.” She laughed uncomfortably. “Indians, he said they looked like. You believe that? Indians.”

  He shook his head. “Incredible. The town is close to the old Conewago Trail. But think how many years ago that must have been.”

  “I can’t believe any of this,” Beth said, sitting across from him. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up soon.”

  “It’s no dream. Yesterday was no dream.” The two of them had driven downtown around noon. It had been like something out of a Bosch landscape. Bodies littered the streets and sidewalks, only half visible in the bright sunlight. The town square had been an island of comfort in comparison, despite the worried concern etched on all the faces. Beth had talked to her acquaintances, Jim standing beside her, but the withdrawn, alien attitude that he had previously felt in the presence of the townspeople had ebbed, as though an emotion stronger than the distaste they felt toward him now somehow made them brothers. He saw Bill Gingrich across the square, talking with a group of people, all of whom carried either cameras, tape recorders, or notepads. When Gingrich noticed him, he beckoned, but Jim only waved, ignoring the summons. They had stayed in the square for nearly an hour until Beth, white-faced, returned to his side.

  “Let’s go,” she had said. “I just want to go home.”

  They had spent the rest of Friday in their house, the sheer curtains in the windows admitting light but nothing else. They played cribbage, watched television (even the network interruptions that grew more frequent as the day faded), and read. Jim tried to work on some card verses, but was unable to concentrate. His thoughts were implacably on his son, and they remained there through Friday night into Saturday morning, hung poised over the strong black coffee, seemed to fill not only his mind, but the world. He had to go out to where the accident had occurred, down in the brushy hollow past which he had never driven since that day. He had to see if Terry was there. And to see how he looked.

  “I’d like to drive around a bit today,” he told Beth, rinsing his coffee cup in the sink.

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “History’s being made,” he answered glibly. “I’d like to see the town, see how far this thing extends.”

  “They’ve got roadblocks up now. To keep out the curiosity seekers.”

  “They know me,” he answered, with a trace of that warped pride that she hated so. “Besides, I have identification.” His mouth curled. “Want to come?”

  “No. “

  “You can’t stay shut up forever.” His urging was halfhearted, perfunctory.

  “That’s good, coming from you.” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re right.”

  “When are you going?”

  He shrugged. “Now,” he said, and picked up the car keys.

  Christ, thought Thornton, what the hell am I getting into? He looked out the window and down at the mottled patchwork of field and forest, and sighed. Clyde Thornton, Ghost Breaker. It was pretty funny at that. Of all the people in the Federal Disaster Management Agency, he gets stuck with this Merridale mess. When he’d been appointed Director for Region I he’d been delighted. Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, sinkholes, mud slides—they were the problems of the boys in the South, the Midwest, California … Hell, nothing happened in the Northeast except an occasional snowstorm. Of course, there were nuclear plants, but they were everywhere, and the NRC boys could take care of anything in that department except for maybe a meltdown.

  Or a bunch of ghosts.

  “You’re our troubleshooter, Clyde,” Weinberg had told him yesterday. “I know you’ve been a little down because you haven’t had all that much to do [Thornton had almost laughed at that], but this Merridale thing should keep you busy.” Thornton had then been briefed on the phenomenon and its possible causes. There was the Thorn Hill Nuclear Station a few miles away, the management of which swore up and down and left and right that there had been no incident, no near miss or unannounced bit of sloppiness that could have released any additional radiation into Merridale’s air. Norton Chemical was another possible industry source. Though thirty miles northwest of Merridale, it did some controlled dumping into the Susquehanna River, which ran four miles west of the town.

  “Wait a minute,” Thornton had said halfway through the briefing. “It’s really a consideration that industry’s at fault here?”

  The wiry little scientist who’d been interrupted gazed back deprecatingly. “Would you suggest a supernatural cause, Dr. Thornton? We don’t deal with witches’ curses and zombies here. No matter how this phenomenon has manifested itself, it must have a natural explanation. Now, perhaps that explanation will change the way we
view certain data, but it will be natural. If the reports from Merridale are true—and that is what you and your team will be sent to find out—then apparently some form of energy exists after what we think of as life has fled the body. If this is the case, then there is a natural reason for why this energy has become visible, and a reason for why at this particular place.”

  “It’s just another investigation, Clyde,” Weinberg added. “Discover the source, define the needs, relay what relief is necessary to the people of the region, and that’s it.”

  “Good enough on the needs and relief.” Thornton sighed. “The source is what’s got me bugged.”

  “That’s what the rest of the team is for. Jackson and Pruett are the best we’ve got. You merely reinterpret their data into a social scenario.”

  “Terrific,” Thornton said softly. And less than six hours later, barely enough time to pack and grab a little sleep, he was landing at Harrisburg International Airport, preparatory to his two-hour drive to Merridale.

  When he saw the white, sleeping cooling towers of Three Mile Island, he smiled, remembering the NRC’s Harold Denton a few years back, during the crisis. Denton, an unknown, faceless bureaucrat, had become an instant hero in those first few days of near-panic. Maybe if he were lucky, he could do the same. Think of it—Clyde Thornton on the cover of Newsweek. He grinned and pulled his seat belt snugly over his paunchy waist. Behind him, Jackson and Pruett extinguished their cigarettes and went on theorizing in guarded tones until the Lear touched down.

  Walking down the dingy yellow hallway of the terminal, Thornton was worrying about finding the car rental station when, rounding a corner, he saw ahead no less than twenty newsmen and photographers. At first he looked behind him to see who was following who would be worthy of such a welcome. But there were only Jackson and Pruett, plodding along behind with their cases of instruments they had not trusted to the small luggage bay.

  “Dr. Thornton?” one of the reporters called above the raucous blur of sound.

  Thornton nodded, confused, and immediately several lights shot on, momentarily blinding him. A dozen voices started to ask questions at once, and on millions of TV sets viewers saw a nondescript, slightly overweight man blink tired-looking eyes as if to exercise the dark patches beneath. Before he could say a word, droplets of sweat seemed to leap out from his skin and hang on his brown bushy moustache and unfashionably long sideburns, as though they were suddenly exhausted from their futile effort to mimic youth. Then the eyes looked about fearfully and the man relaxed somewhat, discovering himself flanked by the flat-faced Jackson and Pruett. Such was the national television debut of Clyde Thornton, FDMA.

  “Please,” he croaked, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Please! One at a time.”

  “Dr. Thornton,” said a middle-aged woman with a piercing voice, “Myra Santel, Newsday.” Thornton squinted, then realized it was an introduction. “What do you expect to find here?”

  “A rental car,” he replied, surprised by the sincere chuckles that echoed off the concrete walls.

  Even Myra Santel smiled. “Seriously though.”

  “Uh, just looking for some answers, that’s all.”

  “Think you’ll find them?” someone cried from the back.

  “We intend to try.”

  “Any theories so far, Dr. Thornton?”

  “A lot of theories, but nothing positive.”

  The questions started to come all at once, and Thornton smiled and held up a hand for silence, which fell slowly. He nodded to a well-dressed man at the side, who asked the next question, which he skillfully and calmly answered. His lucidity and imperturbability were remarkable, considering that Clyde Thornton had never before in his life been interviewed. In fact, not once had anyone paid the slightest bit of attention to Clyde Thornton, Ph.D.

  But now they were, and Clyde Thornton liked it. He liked it very much indeed.

  If Thornton’s arrival at the Harrisburg Airport was warm and friendly, Alice Meadows’s immediate reception at the Merridale train station was entirely the opposite. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been warned. When she’d boarded the connecting train in Philadelphia, the conductor had said, “All those with Merridale tickets, may I have your attention please. Unless you live in Merridale or have some sort of business there, local authorities will not permit you to leave the train at that station. If that is the case, Amtrak will have to charge you the additional fee to Pennbrook, the following stop on the line, plus an additional three dollar on-board sale service charge.” He had repeated the message, and by the time he was finished, several passengers had sourly gotten off the train. Nearly all had cameras, and one carried a portable tape recorder. When the conductor punched her ticket, he asked her if she had heard what he’d said.

  She nodded. “I have friends there.”

  The trip from Philly took two and a half hours. She tried to read a Dick Francis mystery, but found she could not keep her attention on the book’s surprising twists, so she put it in her handbag and watched the scenery change from warehouses and factories to smooth flat farmland, all tinted a dusty yellow by the car’s less than immaculate windows. She drank several cups of coffee, but even so the motion of the train rocked her to sleep.

  When the conductor called, “Merridale,” she awoke with her heart in her throat, as if the sudden awakening had also made her aware of why she had come back, what she was looking for. She scuttled for her coat, her purse, her bags, but stopped when the conductor went on. “Just stay in your seats, please. Local officers will talk to Merridale passengers before permitting you to get off the train.”

  Bob Rankin had been two years behind her in high school, but she recognized him anyway. His police badge gleamed as if he had shined it for this particular occasion, and she thought involuntarily what a handsome man that skinny kid who had had a crush on her had become. Rankin talked to two other passengers before getting to Alice. One he let off after a brief conversation, but the other, a young man, he would not permit to leave the car. Their words grew louder until she could hear from where she sat. “… all this way for nothing?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but unless you have some sort of written evidence, I can’t let you off.”

  “Look, I got relatives here.”

  “Names?”

  “Uh … Smith. Name’s Smith.”

  A thick sheaf of papers materialized in the air in front of Rankin. “First name?”

  While the man tried to guess what conceivable first name the Smiths of Merridale might bear, Alice’s attention was distracted by the low hum of voices that had slowly filled the car.

  “… see them?”

  “I think so …”

  “Yes, yes, yes, look—”

  “Oh, my God …”

  She noticed what her concentration on Bob Rankin had not let her see before: nearly all the other passengers’ faces were pressed to the windows, staring out at the town slightly below. Their eyes were wide, their expressions slack-jawed, awed murmurs coming from every mouth. She looked herself then, and saw, far away and very faint in the bright sunlight, patches of pale blue like transparent, oblong bubbles. Fascinated, she stared at the unmoving things, realizing for the first time that it was true. She had not come for nothing after all.

  Then, in the brush a few yards from the track, she noticed a much closer human shape. It was prone, and the upper part of its torso was covered by weeds, but the part from the sternum down was visible. The abdomen was split in two like a ripe fruit, and milky loops of intestine were floating in the pool of blood the chalice of the body cavity had formed. Blue blood, Alice thought with a chill, and looked away, swallowing heavily and hoping there would not be many that looked like that.

  Farther up in the coach, the false Smith had finally surrendered to the inevitable and sat back defeated, while Bob Rankin moved down the aisle toward Alice. She held up her hand and smiled. “Bob?”

  He didn’t recognize her, and could not hide his surprise that she kn
ew his name. “I’m sorry, miss …”

  “Alice Meadows,” she said. “Been a long time.”

  His eyes lit up. “Alice!” he said. “I’ll be darned. Good to see you.”

  “Thanks, Bob.” She cocked her head coquettishly. “You going to let me off?”

  “Oh, sure, sure. Uh … where you staying?”

  “I wasn’t sure. Merridale Inn maybe.”

  “Uh-unh.” He shook his head. “Filled up. Reporters, scientists—you name it.”

  “So soon?”

  “Look, why don’t you go wait for me on the platform. We’ll figure something out.” She did as he asked, and in a short time he reappeared, preceded by an older man, who started to cry as he walked down the station steps, and a heavyset younger woman, whose speed belied her weight. “Miriam Eberhart,” Rankin told Alice when the woman had disappeared. “Came back to be with her mother. Her mother’s alive,” he added uncomfortably. “I don’t remember the old fella, but he has some proof he lived here years back. On Cherry Street. Came back to see if his wife was still here.”

  “Is she alive?”

  “I don’t know. Suppose not.” He looked at her. “And what about you, Alice? What are you back for?”

  “Would you believe … to study reactions of people? For roles?” He frowned. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Tim?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, but the way her face went pale told Rankin the truth.

  “Well, at any rate we have to find you a place to stay. Both motels are booked solid, but I was thinking what about with Kay and me?”

  “Oh, Bob, I couldn’t—”

  “Sure you could. We’ve got an extra room with its own bath, and Kay would love to see you again.”

  “No, she must think I’m awful. I haven’t written for a couple of years, and—”

  “It’ll be all right, really.”

  Alice thought for a moment. She and Kay Weaver had been best friends in high school, even though Kay had been a year younger. They had met when both acted in Oklahoma! in Alice’s junior year, Alice as Laurey and Kay as Ado Annie. When Alice had moved to New York, they’d remained in touch, and Kay had stayed at Alice’s apartment several times, though Bob, whom Kay married a few years after graduation, never came along. “He’s still got a crush on you, Alice,” Kay would say, laughing, “but he hates cities.” Kay always cheered up Alice on her visits, and for Kay it was like being recharged: an annual jolt of New York City rhythm to enable her to get through another year of Merridale. But five or six years back Kay had missed one of her yearly trips, then another, and another. And finally the letters and phone calls slowed and died. Even so, Alice had thought of Kay often, and it was not until today that she knew how much she had missed her.