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

by Chet Williamson

  It did not go away.

  Maureen closed her eyes, thinking that might help, but when she opened them again, it was still there, smelly and black-furred.

  And it was grinning. That was the most awful thing. It might even have been better if it had been growling, but it wasn’t. It was grinning—its huge mouth open, its huge teeth sharp as the knife Daddy used to carve a Sunday roast.

  She closed her eyes again, and a strangled squeak escaped her. It was not loud, but against the perfectly still backdrop of the night, no wind stirring, no dogs barking, no owls in the distance hooting, it was loud enough to wake her mother, a notoriously light sleeper.

  There was nothing in the room by the time Mom was there, hugging her.

  Of course not, Maureen thought. A bear that big that could fit into a room like hers had to be very smart. Knew when to be seen, when to hide.

  Like Jimmy’s mother, Susie McDonald was brimming with explanations. It was only a shadow. You were only half awake. The mind can play funny tricks like that when it can’t decide if it’s awake or asleep.

  It was Maureen’s first nightmare that year, although it would not be the last. It occurred almost a month after that vacation Sunday she’d been sick.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tuesday, September 2

  Almost to the halfway mark of his first day, and so far things had been going—to quote an otherwise forgettable colleague—swimmingly.

  He’d spent the first half hour with the publisher, shooting the shit about Labor Day, about the recent spell of fine, summery weather after all that rain and cold, about Brad’s house hunt. Dexter seemed pleased but surprised they’d found something so nice so quickly, but when Brad told him Mrs. Fitzpatrick had been involved, he nodded understandingly. Mrs. Fitzpatrick belonged to that most respected of small-town species: the community pillar. Knew everyone and everything. Most important, Dexter averred, knew how to get things done. A good one to have on your side.

  Dexter also showed him a dummy of the editorial page for this afternoon’s edition. It had three letters from readers (one about AIDS, another about the upcoming agricultural fair, the third complaining of poor mosquito control in the years since Big Government banned DDT, which said writer still considered God’s gift to insecticides), an Oliphant cartoon (making light of George Bush’s presidency), and an editorial Dexter had penned, cautiously backing AIDS education in Morgantown schools. That would be another of Brad’s million and one duties, personally proofing the editorial page, even contributing editorials when Dexter was on vacation or otherwise indisposed. Brad smiled when he saw that the masthead had already been changed to reflect the new leadership. There it was in black: “Bradford T. Gale, Editor.” No managing or executive or deputy qualifier. Just “editor.” The title had a country flavor that made Brad beam.

  At nine, Dexter had brought him around to meet the staff. All four copy editors were in today, as were the city editor, full-time photographer, and five of the six reporters, including Rod Dougherty, the paper’s newest acquisition. He’d been out of college four years, had cut his teeth at a group of weeklies, but he still looked about sixteen years old, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. That surprised Brad, who had seen elements of maturity in the writing samples Dexter had mailed him in New York.

  Brad pumped hands and traded small talk like a politician on election morning, dumping everyone’s name into the old memory bank, knowing damn well it would be days before he had them all straightened out. He was great with faces, not so great linking them with names. For some reason, his brain needed extra time to hack the right pathways through that neuronic jungle.

  “Read your nuclear waste series,” said Lisa Radeke respectfully. At thirty-one, she was one of the paper’s senior reporters. “Very impressive, Mr. Gale.”

  “Thank you. And call me Brad.”

  “It nearly won the Pulitzer!” Rod Dougherty said.

  “Did you read it?”

  “No,” Rod said unapologetically, “I don’t usually read the Times. But I heard about it. You don’t have a reprint, do you?”

  “I could probably rustle one up somewhere.”

  “That’d be great.”

  “I’d like one, too,” said Lisa.

  The rest of the morning he’d been more or less an observer. That was what he’d penciled in for this week—aggressive observation. In other words, poking his nose into everyone’s business, the better to get a line on how the machine really was put together. He considered himself lucky to have the luxury of a week or two to figure things out. But the Transcript had been without an editor for two months now, and the city editor, a pleasant-mannered sixtyish man who’d neither wanted nor sought the top job, had the daily drill down pat. As Dexter had reminded Brad over coffee, he hadn’t been brought in to rebuild the machine. The nuts and bolts were already securely in place. He’d been signed on to make the sucker soar. Brad’s words, not Dexter’s.

  It was noon now, and Brad was standing at the head of the table in the conference room, conducting his first budget meeting. Going over the day’s events, coming up with a rough idea of what tomorrow’s paper would look like.

  In the world he’d left, budget meetings were hush-hush affairs, held behind closed doors by invitation only to the paper’s top editors and publisher (if he so desired, and he rarely did). An exclusive club. Only after his last promotion had Brad been allowed in. He never got beyond his initial impression that a Pentagon war room drill couldn’t match a Times powwow for gravity and solemnity. It was as if the Times crew believed it was deciding the fate of mankind for the next twenty-four hours.

  Brad wanted a limited democracy at the Transcript, believing he could reap benefits by involving everyone. And so he’d issued a standing invitation for the entire staff to attend budget meetings. About half of them were on hand for the initial session. A good turnout, even if their numbers would dwindle as the novelty wore off.

  He started with an unfortunate—but he felt unavoidable—rendition of a Rotary Club speech. He told everyone how pleased he was to be there, how many good things were in store for him and them and their paper, how his proverbial door would always be open to each and every one of them. He said that while he reserved the final say on news decisions, as a good editor always must, he expected them to contribute fully to discussions leading up to those decisions. Almost unconsciously he ended his pep talk with the inevitable sports analogy. “We’re all on the same team,” he said, “driving toward the same goal, playing for the same crowd. . . .”

  Then it was on to the news. The selectmen’s meeting tonight. The board of canvassers’ meeting. A follow on a car accident that had injured three this morning. District court. The police blotter. A crop update (it had been a crazy season weatherwise this year for hay and corn, the county’s biggest crops, and rumor had it more than one farmer would be belly up by Columbus Day). An advance on next week’s Miss Berkshire County contest, which had a record number of entrants, eleven. A preview of Regional’s cross-country team, which last year had had four all-staters. Nothing to set the world on fire, but a respectable enough first budget for a first-time country editor.

  “Anything else?” Brad asked before breaking up the meeting.

  No one said anything. He decided to interpret that as a positive sign. A compliment on how thoroughly he must have conducted the meeting.

  “OK, class dismissed. Remember,” he said cheerfully, “this is our paper. And that’s not just some happy horseshit from the new boss. I mean it.”

  The staff trickled out, leaving Brad to erase the blackboard. “I did have something I wanted to talk about,” Rod Dougherty said when everyone else had gone.

  “Why didn’t you bring it up at the meeting?” Brad wasn’t scolding, but he was puzzled. It seemed too early in his tenure to be having heart-to-heart chats. “That’s the idea, a chance for us to bounce ideas off each other. Sort of like group therapy.”

  “I—I wasn’t sure if it was a story or
not. I guess I wanted to talk to you alone about it first.”

  “What is it?”

  “The noises.” He pronounced the words solemnly.

  “The what?”

  “The noises. The Morgantown Noises.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Brad said, shaking his head.

  “That’s right, you’ve just moved here,” Rod answered quickly, as if just remembering. “They’re sounds. Deep in the ground. A rumbling, as if an earthquake were coming. Anyone who’s lived here any time has heard them or heard about them. Heck, I’ve been here only six months, and I’ve heard them myself. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought it was a jet taking off somewhere. Only there isn’t an airport big enough for jets within forty miles.”

  Brad was becoming intrigued. “They can’t be constant. I’ve been here a week, and I’ve never heard them.”

  “Oh, no. They’re pretty irregular. Maybe once every week or so. It all depends, I guess—on what exactly, I don’t know, and apparently no one else does either. I’m told years and years have gone by without a peep, and then there’ll be a period of a month or half a year when they’re rumbling every week, which apparently has been the case since early June. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern. Not that I can figure out anyway.”

  “How long have people been hearing them?” Brad asked.

  “Again, nobody knows precisely. Hundreds of years at least. And probably as long as people have lived in this region, which is probably a thousand years or more. I’ve been doing a little research down in the morgue and at the library. The noises were a part of Indian legend long before the white man settled this area. That was in the 1700s. The Indians told the Puritans it was evil spirits getting angry.”

  “It’s like people today telling their kids that thunder is God bowling,” Brad said.

  “Right. In fact, that’s apparently how Thunder Rise got its name, from one of the early settlers, listening to the Indians. They believed it was evil spirits, trapped inside the rise. According to the Quidnecks—that’s the name of the tribe—they make noise because they’re pissed they can’t get out. Somehow they’re able to shake the ground. Probably by stamping their feet or shaking their spears. Whatever evil spirits do to make noise.”

  “Interesting,” Brad said. It was turning out to be quite the history lesson. A sprinkling of geology and folklore, too. One thing Rod wasn’t was a dope . . . the way Brad already suspected a couple of his fellow reporters were.

  “I thought you’d be interested,” Rod said triumphantly.

  “So there are caves around here,” Brad said with sudden enthusiasm. As a boy he’d been fascinated with caves. For an entire summer, after visiting Howe Caverns, he’d wanted to be a speleologist. Until now he didn’t know the conditions needed for caves extended this far east.

  “A few, yeah, way up on the rise. But not so far up that a Cub Scout wasn’t able to wander off from a camping trip after dark and get stuck for the night. That was in July, before you got here. Page one story. They had the bloodhounds out, and there was talk of bringing in the National Guard when it ended. Lucky for him they found him. Alive and uninjured, although scared out of his wits. Claimed to have been stalked by a wolf all night. Of course, there are no wolves anywhere near here.”

  “Sounds like a good story.”

  “It was.”

  “Did you write it?”

  Rod nodded.

  “I’d like to see it. I’m reviewing everyone’s recent work.”

  “Sure. That’s when I first got interested in the noises, when that Cub Scout got lost. A fire fighter who’s lived here his whole life filled me in on the legend. According to the Quidnecks, the evil spirits were driven into a cave centuries ago during some megabattle with a great Indian warrior. He sealed the entrance. When they couldn’t get out, they started raising hell. After raising hell awhile, they quieted down. A few years later they’d be back to raising hell. They go in cycles, sort of.”

  Brad finished erasing the blackboard and sat down at the table. “My daughter would love this,” he said. “She’s really into Indians.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Five and a half.”

  “It’s a good age to be into Indians,” Rod said. “I was into them myself when I was that old.”

  “So was I. When I was growing up, that’s all we played. Cowboys and Indians. Once in a while, for variety’s sake, Cops and Robbers. Or Army. No Masters of the Universe back then.”

  “Or Rambo.”

  “I take it your research has come up with the real explanation for what causes the noises.”

  “Yes. According to several scientists who’ve studied them—and believe it or not, there have been several, including one from Cornell who published an article in National Geographic about ten years ago, and another guy from the Weston Observatory—the noises are caused by the natural movement of continental plates within the earth. I’m no seismologist, but apparently, when the shifts are big enough, when these plates collide, you get earthquakes. That’s not unusual in some places. California, for instance, which has the San Andreas Fault and earthquakes all the time.

  “What seems unusual, at least to me, is having fault activity so slight that only noise—no broken china or shattered windows—is produced. That’s more or less what we have here. On the basis of what I could find in the library, although there have been several earthquakes recorded over the years in this area, only one—in the eighteenth century—was strong enough to do any damage. It wasn’t serious damage either; a couple of chimneys fell down, a bunch of farmers were terrified, and that was about it.”

  Earthquakes in New England—it didn’t surprise Brad. He’d read somewhere that the region was actually one of the livelier ones in the country in terms of earthquake activity. But as Brad had noted, almost all the activity was very mild, discernible only through instrumentation.

  “By the way,” Rod continued, “we’re not the only game in town, so to speak. There’s a place in Connecticut with similar noises. Moodus, it’s called. South-central part of the state, near the Connecticut River. Its noises are much more famous than ours. I remember reading an article about them when I was living in Boston right after college. The Globe magazine did a big takeout. I bet even the Times has done a piece.”

  Brad leaned over the table. “Let me ask you something,” he said.

  It struck him again, his face three feet from Rod’s, just how young the kid was. How goddamn curious he was. Ideas and new things still fascinated him, still could get the adrenaline flowing; you could see it in his eyes. What a refreshing change from the newspaper denizens of New York and Washington, jaded places both. Rod reminded Brad of himself at that stage of his career, full of the wonder and enchantment of the world. Seemingly full of the same piss and vinegar that had driven Brad.

  “Shoot.”

  “If the noises have been around so long,” Brad said, layering the slightest edge onto his voice, “and you’ve just told me they have, why should we do a story now? What’s the news peg?”

  “The news peg,” Rod said, sounding the tiniest bit pissed, not enough to be surly, but enough to show that he wasn’t cowed, “the news peg is that the noises this summer have been unusually loud. I’d be the first to admit they sounded pretty low-key to me when I heard them, but I’m relatively new here. I don’t have anything to compare them with. The people I’ve talked to have, and they say the noises have never been this loud.”

  “Do they conclude from this that we’re about to slide into the sea?”

  “No, I don’t think anyone’s alarmed or anything, but that doesn’t mean they’re not talking about it. They are. I’ve had half a dozen calls, maybe more. The folks at Town Hall are yacking about it. It even came up at a selectmen’s meeting. Mostly as a joke, but it still shows there’s a lot of interest in it. Something doesn’t have to be bad to be news, does it?”

  “Jesus, you sound like one of our old-lady readers,” Brad said,
laughing. “‘Does it have to be bad to be news?’ The answer is no. Something doesn’t have to be bad to be news. Didn’t they teach you that in J school?”

  “I didn’t go to J school.”

  “Good. No evil habits to drum out of you. Now about these noises—”

  “What I had in mind was talking to some of the old-timers, maybe a few newcomers in town who haven’t heard them before, then getting into some of the Indian legends. I already have a lot of that background stuff. Then I could call a seismologist, maybe luck out and track down one who studied the noises before. It would be a feature story and a news story, all in one. That’s what I was thinking, anyway,” he said, trailing off.

  Brad did some quick mental calculations. “I’m sold,” he said after a moment.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Gale.”

  “Brad.”

  “Thanks, Brad. I was really hoping I could convince you. Some of them”—he gestured toward the newsroom—”some of them think if it isn’t a meeting or an accident, it isn’t a story. I think that’s the legacy of the guy you’re replacing. I don’t mean to badmouth him, but . . . well, let’s just say he wasn’t the most imaginative guy I’ve ever met. I think some of that rubbed off.”

  “And between the two of us, I’m here to rub it away. The publisher is explicit on that point. He wants more pizzazz in his paper, and he’s left it to me to figure out how to do it. Now, I want you to take a couple of days and give me the best story anyone’s ever written about the Morgantown Noises.”

  Rod was incredulous. He’d never had two days to do any story. The news hole, as the space that wasn’t advertising was called, was a devouring beast. It kept reporters churning out an almost unbelievable volume of stories—five, six, even seven or eight of them a day.

  “What about tonight’s board of canvassers’ meeting? I’m down to cover it.”

  “I’ll try to get a stringer,” Brad answered, “and if I can’t, fuck it. It won’t be any different from the last three million board of canvassers’ meetings. No one will miss it. I want you to follow your game plan. It’s a good one. Talk to some of the people who have been hearing them, call a university or wherever you can find a specialist in these things, go back over the clips, go to the library, whatever.”