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

by Chet Williamson

  The thing in the cargo hold scanned its surroundings with grinning, luminous red eyes. It estimated that there might be 80 to 120 people on board. They should last the voyage.

  Although it expected to be very hungry tonight. Traveling did wear on one so.

  And after all, it thought, anyone who’s lived 800 years is entitled to a little excess.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Your Kind Of Messengers, Inc. Can I help you?” The phones were ringing off the hook, and the sweetness in Allan Vasey’s voice was almost purely a matter of routine. Had to be nice to the customers, man. At all costs. You had to keep them happy. In fact, just this morning, he’d pinned a bogus memo up over the dispatch desk: it said BE POLITE, OR WE’LL KILL YOU. Signed, The Management. At least two of the people who came into the office weren’t sure that it was a joke.

  “Jesus Christ, I never seen such a rush!” Tony yelled from the chief dispatcher’s seat. He seemed upset; but Allan knew that Tony wouldn’t have been happier if you laid two lines of coke out for him and gave him a fifty-dollar raise. It had been a miserable, slow summer for the business, and any action was good action when you’d been staring at a dead switchboard for nearly a month.

  Your Kind Of Messengers, Inc., occupied a renovated storefront on Spring Street, in SoHo. Despite its barebones economy, it was a fairly cheery place: large bay windows for the sun to shine through, plants on the ledge, good people working both the phones and the streets. The dispatch phones sat in a line on the western wall, directly opposite the messenger checkout counter, with the customer-line desk between.

  Chester and Jerome were bogged down with calls from clients: law firms, p.r. firms, publishers, fashion designers, art galleries, advertising agencies. It seemed like every client on the books had been waiting all summer for this morning; the sudden volume was staggering. Allan had no choice but to assist them, leaving poor old Tony to dispatch it all.

  The only messenger in the office was a new guy. He stood at about 5’9” in his roller skates, wore a light tan jumpsuit that contrasted sharply with his black messenger bag. He eagerly watched the runs pouring in, waited for his share of the pie. Your Kind Of Messengers worked on a commission basis: the more you worked, the more you made. He was ready for some money.

  Allan hung up the phone and absently massaged his brow. A headache was coming; he could feel it building up behind his deep-set brown eyes. He let his hand slide down his face, tug briefly at his neatly trimmed and mahogany beard. He glanced at the economy-sized bottle of Tylenol next to the phone, decided against it for the moment, then snatched up a pair of tickets from the desk and handed them to the roller-skating messenger.

  “Here’s two for you, Doug,” he said. The messenger smiled appreciatively. “Not too bad for your second day, huh?”

  “It’s great,” Doug replied, taking the runs and copying the information onto the sheet of paper in his battered clipboard’s grip. “Love it.”

  Allan turned back to his phone. The customer lines had mercifully stopped ringing, for the time being; only the messenger lines were lit, seven flashing buttons on hold. Seven guys, calling in from all over the city, waiting for something to do.

  He picked up the receiver and punched in the first button. “Your Kind. Who?” he said.

  “This is Vince,” answered the little voice over the phone. “Listen …”

  “Where are you, Vince?”

  “Uh … Grand Central.” Vince sounded impatient. “Listen, don’t you guys have any work? I mean, I’m gettin’ tired of being told to …”

  “Hold on, Vince,” Allan said, pushing the hold button. If there was one thing he didn’t need, it was idiots like that to contend with. Vince’s light blinked cheerily, like a Christmas tree bulb. Allan punched in the next line.

  “Your Kind. Who?”

  “Hunter, up at Columbus Circle.”

  “Hey, boss! How ya doin’?”

  “Alright.” Even on the phone, Joseph Hunter was a man of few words … most of them surly. “Let me talk to Chester.”

  “You got it, champ.” Allan put him on hold, called across the room. “Hey, Chester! Hunter on seven-oh!”

  “Wait ’til I finish with this jerk,” Chester called back, holding the phone away from his mouth. Then he turned back around and said, “Vince, you always got an excuse for everything. You know that? Always got a fuckin’ excuse.”

  Allan couldn’t hear the response, but he knew that Vince must be laying it on heavy. Chester’s broad shoulders were slumped in resignation, his head shaking back and forth slowly, eyes rolling in the dark face. He flashed a pained glance at Allan. Allan nodded and mouthed the words I know, man. Chester straightened in his chair and cleared his throat.

  “Hey, man. I don’t wanna hear that!” Chester cried, exasperated. “I wanna know why it took you two hours to get from Manhattan Harbor to 57th Street, you know? I mean, did you get out of the van and just push it up the street yourself?”

  You could hear Vince from across the room.

  “That’s bullshit, bro’,” Chester intoned. “That’s bull … no, man, I don’t have anything on my desk … I … listen, pad’nuh. If I did have anything, I wouldn’t give it to you. You are the slowest motherfucker I ever seen!” Jerome got off the phone, looked at Chester, looked at Allan, and started to laugh. “Now … hey. No, man! Now you just drop by the office with your manifest. I wanna make sure that people been signin’ for this shit, you ain’t just been dumpin’ it in the river or somethin’.”

  “Hunter on seven-oh,” Allan reminded him gently. Chester nodded and squared his shoulders.

  “Come into the office, Vince … no. Come. In. To. The. Office. Vince. That’s all … no … goodbye, Vince … goodbye, Vince!” He slammed down the phone and turned wearily to his compatriots.

  “Man, if there’s one thing I don’t need,” he moaned, “it’s Vince.”

  “Vince is the worst,” Tony contributed, turning from the phone for a moment. “A real scumbag.”

  “You know what he said?” Chester exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. “He said they had him carrying coffins! I mean, what the hell does that have to do with anything? Why did it take you two hours to get halfway across town? Two hours! Can you believe that?”

  “Hunter on seven-oh,” Allan said for the last time.

  “Soon as I get another driver, Vince is gone,” Chester concluded, insistent. “That boy is O-U-T.” Then he picked up the phone again and punched Joseph’s button. “Hunter?” he said. “Hey, babe. You don’t know how good it is to talk to somebody sane …”

  “That’s what you think,” said a voice from the doorway. Allan turned and saw Ian walking into the dispatch room. Ten o’clock in the morning, and Ian was already dripping with sweat, pasting the long hair to his head and staining the blue work shirt in innumerable places. His messenger bag dangled at his side from the shoulder strap; his clipboard was already in hand. “Hey, who’s the spaceman?” he jibed, glancing at Doug.

  “Hey, Ian! How’s it goin’, boss?” Allan called, flashing a toothy grin. Then he addressed the question. “That’s Doug Hasken, ace skating messenger.”

  “Pleased ta meetcha,” Ian said, grinning. “Are you for real?”

  “You bet,” said Doug.

  “What happened to your clipboard? Looks like it got fired out of a cannon.”

  “I use it to direct traffic,” Doug quipped, emphasizing this with a swinging motion. “Cabs, especially.”

  “Him, I like,” Ian said, turning to Allan. He flashed a wildass grin and continued. “Hey, I just thought I’d drop by, since I was in the neighborhood and my beeper went off.”

  “You ready to do some work, buddy?” Tony asked, holding up a handful of tickets. Ian’s eyes widened, and he nodded in mute astonishment. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven runs for you, buddy. I’ll tell ya, we’re goin’ off the wall in here.”

  “Seriously,” Allan said, massaging his forehead again, “this is th
e busiest we’ve been all summer. If it would just keep it up …”

  “I could get that condo in Florida,” Ian cut in, “instead of sucking gravel for lunch every day.”

  “It’s just the economy,” Allan went on. “If you want to know how the country’s doing, just check out how many runs are going out. We’re one of the best economic indicators there is.”

  “Who is?” Jerome wanted to know. “You and me?” He was a handsome, fair-skinned black man with a decidedly effeminate air about him. For Jerome, every week was Gay Pride Week, and he didn’t care who knew it.

  “Nobody’s talking to you, Mary,” Tony informed him gruffly.

  “I told you not to call me Mary. My name is Jerome.”

  “Anything you say, Queen Mary.”

  “If nobody’s making any money,” Allan resumed, unflustered, “we’re not gonna make any money, ’cause they’re not gonna be sending anything anywhere.”

  “Well, somebody’s doin’ something,” Ian asserted, busily copying the runs onto his manifest, “because I am definitely making some money today.”

  “Enough for a couple of six-packs on Friday night?” Allan sidled up to the counter conspiratorially. “Maybe go back down in the dungeon again?”

  “You know,” Ian said thoughtfully, “Poot the Barbarian hasn’t hacked up anybody in …”

  “Three weeks,” Allan completed the sentence for him. “And I’ve added a couple of new rooms, a few more magic items …”

  “Ah! Renovating, eh?”

  “You won’t even recognize the place.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Jerome was feigning petulance. “You have a dungeon in your basement, or something?”

  “Yeah,” said Ian. “It’s green, and slimy, and …”

  “Do you tie people up there?” Jerome asked, eyes brightening. “Do you hold them in chains?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mary?” Tony commented over his shoulder.

  “I’d like to wrap you up in chains,” Jerome countered, “and flog you silly.”

  “I bet you would, bitch. I bet you would … Hey, Ian! You gonna sit on those runs all day, buddy? Let’s go!”

  “Right!” Ian started writing hurriedly again. “So it’s Dungeons and Dragons on Friday night. My place again?”

  “It already looks like a battlefield, so I don’t see why not.” Allan winked, and they shared a grin. “Think we can get Mr. Hunter to play?”

  “Is he still on the line?” They turned simultaneously to look, but Chester had just hung up the phone.

  “Now, that guy is good,” Chester proclaimed. “I don’t hafta worry about Hunter. He’s okay. He does his work. But fuckin’ Vince …”

  Everybody started rolling their eyes. Chester was going to be on a Vince-trip all day, and it was only ten after ten.

  “All he kept sayin’ was ‘Coffins, man! Coffins!’ I mean, who cares about coffins?”

  Allan and Ian looked at each other, two minds that liked to play with the fantastic. Two sets of eyebrows raised at the same time. A matched set of evil, obsequious leers.

  “Our master,” said Allan, rubbing his hands together in toadyish abandon.

  “Count Vampiro,” said Ian, with fawning adoration in his voice.

  “What a lovely bunch of coconuts we’ve got to work with around here,” Tony griped, lighting up a cigarette. “I kid you not, buddy.”

  “Don’t these guys ever do any work?” Doug asked Tony. Tony shrugged.

  “No,” said Jerome with perfect diction. “They’re too busy serving Count Vampiro.”

  “Nobody’s talking to you, Mary … Ian! Get outta here, buddy! Doug, you too!”

  “I’m going!” Ian grabbed his clipboard, stuffed it into his bag, and ran for the door, Doug skating up in hot pursuit. Allan watched them, and a weird flash of trepidation struck … a shapeless fear, with no identifiable cause, that suddenly loomed up inside him like a monster from his imaginary dungeon.

  A sense of impending doom.

  He started to say something, but the door slammed shut behind them. Allan stood there, frozen, the bad rush just sittin in his chest like a rotting thing. Was it for me, or was it for them? he wondered, staring at the closed door. Or was it just random paranoia?

  He was dimly aware of Chester’s voice, going on and on behind him.

  Saying, “Coffins, man! Can you believe that?”

  As a chill moved up his spine like a snake.

  CHAPTER 6

  At about 3:30 in the afternoon, Stephen Parrish resolved to call Josalyn again. He’d been all over the Village until almost four in the morning, checking every possible hangout, and come up with nothing. He’d finally dragged himself home and collapsed in defeat, slept through the rest of the morning, and awakened at a quarter to two: bleary-eyed, cranky, and not at all rested.

  He’d gotten dressed, made a cup of instant coffee, and gone down to the corner for the Post and the Daily News. The subway murders were relegated to small boxes in the lower left-hand corner of the front page: POLICE SUSPECT DEMON CULT IN SUBWAY SLAYINGS for the first, SUBWAY PSYCHO’S CALL … “THE DEVIL MADE US DO IT!” for the other. They did not make him happy. He bought them and took them home.

  He read them. They were nonsense, pure and simple. Stephen was amazed that the ruse had made it past the copy editor’s desk. Obviously, some fruitcake had called in, dubbing himself High Priest of the Luciferian Order, and claimed to have orchestrated a blood sacrifice to the Dark Prince Himself. The police were checking on it, on the off chance that there might be something to it; but Stephen’s opinion was that “Lord Blood” (as this loony-tune referred to himself) was a sicko publicity-seeker, cluttering the trail with bad jokes and schizophrenia.

  But … how could he know for sure?

  For all he knew, Lord Blood was not only as weird as he seemed, but even weirder. For all he knew, the guy might be a cover for a real group of Satanists, or mobsters, or terrorists, or whatever. For all he knew, it could have been the C.I.A.

  The big question in his mind was beginning to be what difference does it make? If someone got Rudy, it doesn’t really matter who it was. Does it?

  In truth, he didn’t really have any evidence that Rudy was on the train at all, just a gut feeling that got harder and harder to hang on to as time dragged by. By 2:45, Stephen was more than half convinced that he’d been making a complete arse out of himself … that Rudy was out somewhere, sleeping it off, and just not bothering to call.

  Which led to the next question: why, exactly, should I care? Why should I break my neck looking for someone who wakes me up in the middle of the night, says he’ll be right over, and then doesn’t so much as call for two days?

  By 3:15, Stephen had decided that Josalyn was right, and he was wrong: Rudy was a pig. He had no respect for anybody else. He was completely selfish, completely wrapped up in his own cynical world. He treated other people … other artists, even … like trash, and he had a ridiculously inflated sense of his own importance. And ego as big as a Buick. And he wasn’t all that great, really, when you came right down to it.

  Stephen felt extremely guilty, then. He felt like an idiot for letting Rudy jerk him around like that, and he felt even worse about jumping all over Josalyn. She was a nice enough girl, and she certainly wasn’t stupid: she’d seen through Rudy before he had.

  And so it was that, at roughly 3:30, Stephen decided to call her up and apologize. It won’t be pleasant, he told himself, but I really have to do it. It’s the least I can do, considering how I’ve behaved.

  He started pacing around the apartment, trying to figure out how to approach it. Should he just say I’m sorry and forget about it? Should he try to joke around with her, stay within her good graces if it wasn’t already too late? And what if she wasn’t willing to talk with him? Could he blame her? Not really.

  By 3:40, he’d given up on the idea. It would probably just blow over, and the situation was already awkward. Why make it
worse? He spent another ten minutes, just trying to assure himself that he’d made the right decision.

  Then he tried to think of something to do.

  He went downstairs and checked the mailbox. His weekly check from Mom and Dad was there. As an unemployed art school student (who needed lots of time to pursue his main interest, which was writing), it seemed only right that they should cover his rent, tuition, and all other expenses. This will come in handy, he thought. I’m down to thirty bucks. Then he went back upstairs.

  Half an hour later, after another cup of instant, he decided that writing might help him work off some of his nervous energy. The only problem was, he didn’t know what to write about. There were a couple of stories kicking around in his head, but he didn’t quite know where to start with any of them.

  He tried to come up with something new, but it went nowhere. He threw out the sheet and put in a new one. He stared at it for a long, long time.

  When 5:00 rolled around, Stephen put on his jacket and headed for the store. He decided that a nice long walk might do him some good, help him clear his mind for this story he was trying to write, help him to relax. He wanted desperately to be a writer … a great writer … but he just couldn’t seem to concentrate. Too many distractions. He made a private vow to let nothing disturb him until the story was complete.

  By 5:15, he was calling Rudy’s house from a Bleecker Street pay phone. Nobody answered. He decided to get a Coke or something and try again later. Just knowing that Rudy was alright would certainly ease his mind.

  By 9:30, Stephen had decided that Rudy probably wouldn’t be out on the street tonight. He headed home to do some serious writing: a great new idea came to him at McSorley’s, swigging ale … actually, just some insights into collegiate behavior. Their sexual problems. How hard it all was. That kind of thing. It wasn’t a story, but it could be turned into a great one, if only he could think of some way to tie all the pieces together.