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

by Chet Williamson

  He squinted into the dim glow of the kerosene lamp, letting his head rest on the back of the chair. The glass felt solid, somehow comforting, as he held it in both hands on his lap.

  Was it fear or envy that had made him turn from her, made him resent her intellect, poise, and effortless success? Or was it anger? Anger at himself for his timidity, his lack of resolution? No, he thought, it was simple childishness. And it was this childishness, this immaturity, that made him run away from her as he had run away from so many others.

  His colleagues at the Irish bar must have thought him insane when, without a word, he had slammed down his glass of stout with vicious finality and left the room. They, and Andrea, had watched, open-mouthed and silent.

  Harrison felt his face redden in the chill air of the living room. Even now, so long after seeing her for the last time, he felt angry at Andrea for her competence. But he was more angry at himself, because he had avoided her. He’d retreated, a frightened child in a man’s aging body.

  Perhaps Mark had been right; perhaps he was running away.

  The word “coward” came to mind, jabbed at him like the point of a dagger. He quickly suppressed it. No, now he had to be objective, honest. Christ, he should thank Andrea for the challenge. Because of her, Harrison understood he had to be successful at this one thing. He couldn’t back down or turn away. He had to find the monster.

  Willing his mind away from painful recollections, he moved back to his desk and his notes.

  He had spent the day researching at the town library in St. Albans. Before him on page after page of yellow paper was the product of his efforts.

  It was difficult for Harrison to become enthusiastic about his random collection of monster sightings. Which among them had scientific value? There was a lot of theory, a lot of speculation. He had even discovered the names of a few “eyewitnesses” that he might later interview.

  Most promising was that he had located a man from New York state, a schoolteacher named Joseph Zarzynski, who’d been chasing the monster for more than ten years. Mr. Zarzynski was considered an expert on the beast.

  Even at monster hunting, Harrison had a rival.

  The recorded sightings of the creature started in 1609, when Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer after whom the lake was named, saw “a great long monster, lying in the lake, allowing birds to land on its beak, then snapping them in whole.”

  Harrison chuckled; he hoped his quest would not prove as fanciful as Monsieur Champlain’s description.

  Monster sightings continued with persistent regularity. Many lacked the drama of the Oliver Ransom encounter, but the sheer frequency of reports made the beast come slowly to life in Harrison’s imagination.

  It must also have come alive in the imagination of the famous nineteenth-century showman, P. T. Barnum. Barnum had offered $50,000 for the monster’s carcass — a tidy sum for 1877.

  Then, one hundred years later, the famous Mansi photograph was taken. After being thoroughly checked, analyzed, and authenticated, the picture was released to the media in 1981.

  With this first photographic evidence, the monster had come out of the closet. People began to talk about it openly, without fear of ridicule. It was discussed at cocktail parties with the same enthusiasm as periodontists, cholesterol levels, and baseball. Someone nicknamed it “Champ.” Others called it “Champy.” It was cute. It was E.T.

  It had become a friend!

  But, Harrison thought, it had not always been a friend… More contemplative now, Harrison sat back, eye to eye with his reflection in the dark window glass. Why, he wondered, have tales of the monster so frequently inspired fear?

  Walter Hard, former editor of the prestigious Vermont Life magazine, once spotted the creature off Appletree Point near Burlington. Subsequently, he kept track of sightings through the years, speculating that hundreds of people had seen the monster but refused to report it. “They’re afraid of ridicule,” he said.

  Ridicule — was that it? Was ridicule the source of people’s fear?

  Or was there something else? Something darker, more sinister?

  Long before Walter Hard or Barnum or de Champlain, the Indians near Split Rock — which once divided Mohawk and Algonquin territories — believed something dangerous lurked in the invisible depths. They dropped offerings of food from their canoes, a kind of toll to guarantee safe passage on the lake.

  Harrison knew that the Split Rock waters were the deepest part of the lake, measuring more than four hundred feet. Only God knew what could be down there. What kind of fear was it that had caused Indians to make their edible offerings?

  And the photograph? Sandra Mansi’s color picture seemed to depict exactly what so many witnesses had described. Harrison picked up his August 1982 copy of LIFE magazine. The Mansi photograph was reproduced on page thirty-four, much larger than it had been in Time magazine, or The New York Times.

  He looked at the details of what seemed to be a head and long neck protruding from the lake’s calm surface. Where the neck joined the submerged body there seemed to be a hump just below water level. The dark image looked for all the world like some kind of dinosaur swimming away from the camera. It was in a small bay, with bushes visible in the foreground, and on the shoreline across the bay, trees and nondescript vegetation.

  Was the fear experienced by Sandra Mansi during her sighting similar to that experienced by Oliver Ransom?

  Was it an instinctive fear of the creature itself, or simply humankind’s atavistic fear of the unknown?

  And if someday the unknown became known, what might the monster turn out to be?

  Skeptics said it was Dino the Dinosaur.

  Scientists said it was most probably a plesiosaur, a large marine reptile thought to have become extinct seventy million years ago. Or maybe a Zeuglodon, an ancestor of the whale, extinct for twenty million years.

  And for me, what is it? thought Harrison. Just exactly what is it to me?

  Still feeling a restlessness that he was unable to channel into research or even concentration, Harrison rose from his desk, pulled on his parka, and left the house by the front door.

  He stood on the step a moment while his eyes grew accustomed to the night. Then he crossed the road, making his way the short distance through thorny bushes and over nearly invisible outcroppings to the rocky, wind-blasted western shore of the island.

  The moon was high and bright; in its pale brilliance the shoreline looked like a black-and-white photograph. Before him, across two or three miles of churning, breathing water, Grand Isle lay upon the horizon like a long, sleeping serpent.

  The icy wind combed his hair tight against his head as he squinted at the water, straining his eyes to see movement — any movement — that was not tide, not wind, not the white-capped waves nor the undulating reflection of the moon.

  Just what is it to me? he thought.

  Harrison quickly became cold. The rock he was sitting on drained the heat from his body, and his parka was no match for the relentless wind. He stood up, thinking of the warmth in the bottle of Jack Daniel’s that waited for him on the kitchen table. Stepping gingerly from rock to rock, he climbed to the top of the bank that sloped upward from the water’s edge. From there he could see the house, a massive silhouette in the clearing across the road. Behind it, the gnarled shapes of apple trees, unpruned and long abandoned, stood in military formation in the moonlit orchard. It was like rediscovering some moment from the past, some ruin that asserted: Once men lived here, once all of this was important.

  Now only the lake was unchanged, only the wind and the wild berry bushes that grew along the shore.

  And the monster? What of the monster? How long could it swim undisturbed, surviving on fish or vegetation, eluding all cameras and guns?

  As he walked toward home, Harrison felt his unease growing. There was nothing welcoming about the house; there was no real sense of home. The building was distant, ominous, cold. He had never opened the shutters on the upstairs
windows. Now they made the place seem secret and remote. The lower windows reflected the moonlight like staring eyes.

  Harrison knew that something was wrong.

  Hadn’t he left the kerosene lamp burning in the window? It was out now. The house was dark. Could the kerosene supply have run out?

  Harrison laughed at himself. Was his melancholia turning to dread? Was he working up a good fright? He felt as he had when he was a child sitting around the campfire in an unfamiliar wood, telling tales of ghosts, and purple hands, and trees with strange Indian names that walked and killed by night.

  Thorny bushes tugged at his corduroys as he stepped onto the road and crossed it to the gravel yard in front of the house. As he reached for the door handle, he felt something odd on the slate step beneath his foot.

  He jumped, gasped in surprise, feeling something where nothing should have been.

  Looking down, he saw an indistinct cluster of small objects. Apparently they had been placed carefully on the step until his foot disturbed their symmetry.

  The moonlight wasn’t strong enough for him to make out what he was seeing. He opened the door and reached for the flashlight that he kept on a table to the right.

  With light in hand, he was able to examine the objects on his step. There was an ear of dried corn, its spiraled kernels dull red and brown in color, three acorns, a polished white stone the size of a pocket watch, and a tiny rusted frame that might once have contained a picture or mirror.

  Harrison’s forehead tightened, wrinkling into a puzzled frown. He gathered up the objects and brought them to the kitchen, where he arranged them on the table beside his bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  Had someone left these for him while he was at the lake? They definitely had not been there when he walked out of the house; he would have stepped on them. But who would call on him after ten o’clock at night?

  And who would leave such a peculiar assortment of objects?

  Were they some kind of joke?

  Did they mean something?

  And if so, what?

  Or perhaps there was some kind of animal that would do such a thing. A pack rat maybe, or a squirrel.

  But a squirrel wouldn’t put out the kerosene lamp.

  Harrison took a shot of whiskey to fight the chill that pulled his muscles tight against his bones.

  And another for the lesser chill that came with his strange discoveries.

  Chapter 5 - The Lord’s Day

  1

  On Sunday mornings Nancy Wells liked to sleep late. Sunday was, after all, a day of rest, and resting on the Lord’s day was perhaps the last vestige of strict Congregationalist upbringing that she willingly carried with her into adulthood.

  She rolled over groggily, stretched, yawned, and squinted at the drawn shade outlined by brilliant bars of sunlight. A golden beam fell across the face of her alarm clock.

  Nine forty-eight.

  It’s late!

  Getting out of bed was an effort. When she tossed aside the covers, her soft flannel nightgown offered little insulation against the crisp morning air. She crossed her arms over her breasts and shivered, saying, “Brrrrr.”

  She couldn’t see her breath, but when her bare feet hit the cold wooden floor she snapped awake with a painful jolt.

  After her anxious feet found their slippers, she rose and plodded toward the kitchen to heat water for coffee. Then she headed into the bathroom, trying to decide whether to take a shower. The chill morning air made the decision an easy one — she’d stay grubby.

  She was carefully placing her contacts into her eyes when the kettle began to whistle.

  Soon, stirring instant coffee, she smiled at the informality of her lifestyle. Living alone, she had become … what? Careless, maybe? Certainly not sloppy — that was too strong a word. But she was, she had to admit, careless.

  A flannel nightgown, for God’s sake! How perfectly unsexy! And not showering? Downright bestial. Then, to complete her battery of sins, instant coffee.

  She remembered mornings with Eric in Albany. They’d race each other to the shower. Their daily competition had become a private joke. God, what would Eric say if he saw her in a flannel nightgown? Or — heaven forbid if she had dared to serve him instant coffee? Why, he would have been outraged!

  She smiled, amused at the thought. But smiling wasn’t right.

  Fuck him. What difference did it make what he might have said? Or what he might have thought, for that matter. Eric was as much a part of the past as her Congregationalist upbringing, both relegated to the status of slightly embarrassing memories. Youth. Innocence. All of it gone.

  But in a way Eric was partially responsible for her being here today. Perhaps, at the very least she should be grateful to him for that.

  “Why in the name of the merciful Christ would you want to hole up on some godforsaken island in Vermont? An island in Vermont, for Christ’s sake!” Eric was waving his wineglass around, working himself up to one of his fire and brimstone rants.

  “Because it’s my job, Eric, my own job. I’ve got to get started on my own. Please try to understand.”

  “But you can get a job right here. Just wait awhile. I can probably talk to Ed Whalen, get you something at the library. A few hours a week, anyway. Maybe full time. And you can move in with me. Take courses toward your master’s.”

  “How would that be, Eric, shacking up with my psych prof?”

  “We’re practically living together now.”

  “I just can’t do it, Eric. Can’t you see that?”

  “You can. You just don’t want to.”

  “That’s right. I don’t want to.”

  That stung him, and he was silent. He looked blankly at her, all motionless and quiet. Then he took three unsteady steps to the sofa, where he sat sullenly. Nancy watched him as he studied his wineglass, swirling the red liquid and staring as if hypnotized.

  He spoke all too calmly, almost in a whisper. She knew his trick and resisted the temptation to move closer so she could hear him better. “You were just using me,” he said. “Toss the prof and prove what a sophisticated girl I am.”

  Nancy didn’t rise to the bait. She went to him and sat beside him. He didn’t say anything, just cried softly as she held his bearded face to her breast.

  They had made love that night, but it was forced, mechanical, a practiced merging of familiar bodies. It was their physical alternative to continuing a discussion that had already ended.

  She had left in the middle of the night while Eric slept. After that, they never saw each other again. She wasn’t even sure that he knew where she was.

  2

  The shotgun screamed!

  Pellets tore noisily through dry leaves overhead.

  High above, a mallard squawked; feathers flew. The duck dipped in its straight-as-an-arrow course. Then, seeming to recover its balance, it tore like a zipper across the blue sky and vanished out of range.

  “FUCK!”

  Cliff Ransom emerged from the marsh empty-handed. He’d got off a couple of shots at some ducks, and another at a partridge, but he’d missed every friggin’ time. That pissed him off. Can’t even fuckin’ shoot straight no more, he thought in a rare moment of self-criticism.

  He resolve he’d better at least get a squirrel or he’d have to buy something at the general store for supper.

  And that reminded him: on Sunday the general store closed at noon. He dug his father’s watch out of the pocket of his green woolen pants and checked the time.

  Eleven thirty-three. Christ, better haul ass.

  He charged back to his pickup, placed his shotgun in the rack over the rear window, and started the engine. Runnin’ kinda raggy, he thought. Better tune her up ’fore snowfall.

  Tires squealed. Gravel sprayed.

  No speed limits were posted anywhere on the island. Even if there had been, Cliff would have ignored them. They’d be for off-islanders.

  His engine roared.

  3

  Over
a breakfast of orange juice, Nutri-Grain, and instant coffee, Nancy planned her activities for the day. First, she would take a brisk walk around the island. The fresh air would help her to wake up, and a little exercise wouldn’t hurt her one bit. And then? Well, really the place could use a good cleaning. There were two days’ worth of dishes in the sink, and God knew what under the chairs, the couch, and the bed. Maybe she would see if she could borrow someone’s vacuum cleaner.

  No. Too complicated. She wanted to keep things simple. Broom and dustpan had been good enough for Miss Deborah Swain, and by God, they’d be good enough for her.

  And that reminds me, she thought, I’d better get in a bit of wood for the stove. I’ll need it if it gets as cold as last night.

  Toting wood seemed like a lot of work. At the library she had read how in the old days each pupil was required to give the teacher half a cord of firewood. A custom well worth reviving.

  There I go, thinking of school again. The thought of all the papers waiting to be corrected intruded on her Sunday morning reverie, giving her a kind of sinking feeling. I can’t put them off another day. The English, math, and social studies papers were hidden somewhere in the clutter on the coffee table. That’s okay, I’ll find them when I clean.

  “Oh, come on, Nancy,” she said aloud, “don’t be so lazy.” Maybe that was the word: lazy. Not sloppy. Not careless. Lazy.

  Okay, so I’ll get in the wood and clean the house and do the dishes and correct the papers and…

  And what?

  There was something else.

  “Oh, God, how could I forget?”