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

by Chet Williamson

  Rod sat looking at his new boss. He wore a peculiar look, as if Brad were some kind of green-skinned Martian who’d just landed his spaceship in the parking lot. Two days, one story . . . yeah, he must be a Martian.

  “Well?” Brad said.

  “Well what?”

  “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  By two-thirty, when the pressmen got the presses cranked up, the newsroom was almost completely empty. Brad finally had a few minutes for lunch. He sat at his desk, stuffing his face with chicken tenders and a double cheeseburger he’d bought from Burger King, located across Main Street from the Transcript.

  The Burger King had come late to Morgantown and still seemed an anachronism, an unwelcome one in the minds of many. It had been open two years (the zoning board meeting at which permission was finally granted had been a tumultuous affair, attended by more than two hundred people, all but a handful—the lawyers and the board chairman—hopping mad), but old-timers still marveled at it, much the same way their grandfathers had been all atwitter when the town’s first movie theater had opened eighty years ago.

  Few other national chains were represented downtown. Western Auto had long been a fixture, as had the IGA and T. J. Miller’s Ford, the county’s oldest dealership. Those and the Mobil station, which stubbornly continued to display the winged-horse logo, and the Exxon station (where a grease- and soot-stained Esso sign still hung next to a Playboy calendar over the garage workbench) were the only trademarks an out-of-state visitor would have recognized.

  The rest of Main Street was taken up by businesses that were jealously owned and operated by local families, businesses which, like the Transcript, had been passed down through the generations. Zeke’s Hardware Store, named for one of the town’s most colorful nineteenth-century characters, Ezekiel Brown. Today Ezekiel’s great-great-grandson was behind the counter. Burton’s Seed and Garden Shop. Nat’s Plumbing and Heating. Paul’s Diner—open only for breakfast and lunch since Paul Bouchard had hit seventy-five. The Oak Tree Tavern, where the hot-stove league was in residence every winter. The office of Dr. Mark Bostwick, family practitioner. Bostwick was thirty-seven, and he’d had a practice for eight years. He, too, was from an old Morgantown family.

  Throw in the Civil War monument, a branch of Pittsfield National Bank, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, the First Congregational Church, and the bandstand where the American Legion staged its annual Memorial Day program, and that was it for Morgantown’s commercial district.

  No malls. No video arcades with stoned-out punks in leather jackets scratching their balls as they take on Darth Vader and fantasize about getting laid tonight in the back seat of a GTO. No mile-long parking lots with Rows A through Triple Z and half a zillion orphaned shopping carts. No K-Marts with nineteen-year-old clerks wearing blue eye shadow and chewing Juicy Fruit gum you can smell on your clothes an hour later. If you wanted that side of contemporary American culture, you made the fifteen-mile drive into Pittsfield, where the local townspeople had actually gone out of their way to attract such ventures—establishing a Mall Commission ten years ago to lure back business lost to Albany. It was a commission that had more than done its job. Today there wasn’t just one mall in Pittsfield. There were three, and a proposal by a Boston developer for a fourth.

  Brad finished his last chicken tender, wiped his fingers, and picked up the phone.

  A small voice answered hello. “Is this a certain Apple Guy?” he said.

  “Hi, Dad!” Abbie fairly shouted. Brad breathed a bit more easily. It sounded as if her first day without him were going better than he dared dream.

  “You being a good girl?” The automatic question.

  “Sure. You know what we did this morning?” Her voice was in the mode that could just about make his spine tingle, all bubbly and little-girlish. Daddy’s little-girlish.

  “Let me guess. You . . . took a ride on a submarine.”

  “Nooo! Guess again.”

  “You . . . made a pet out of a dinosaur.”

  “That’s silly, Dad. Dinosaurs have been ex-stink for millions of years.”

  “You . . . built an airplane.”

  “Daaaaadddddd . . .”

  “I give up.” He sighed deeply.

  “We baked pies!” Abbie exclaimed.

  “You did?”

  “Yup! Three apple pies and four rhubarb pies.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, we did. Mrs. Fitzpatrick let me roll the crusts. Then we baked tarts. Two tarts. One for you and one for me. You know what, Dad?”

  “What, honey?”

  “I really like Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Can I always stay with her?”

  “Always? Does this mean you want to leave me?”

  “Oh, no. I mean after kindergarten. You said I have to stay someplace after kindergarten because you’ll be working.”

  “That’s true, Apple Guy.” It was the first sour note of the day—the daycare issue rearing its ugly head again. Mrs. Fitzpatrick had agreed to take Abbie for Brad’s first week of work, the last week before Abbie’s kindergarten started, ostensibly to give Brad time to find a more permanent arrangement. With everything else going on, he hadn’t had a chance to look for someone else. And he’d forgotten to place an ad. Even if he placed one, the second he hung up, he would only make the deadline for Friday’s paper.

  “Maybe I can keep coming to Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s. I think I’ll ask her.”

  “No, no,” Brad admonished.

  But Abbie did, right after hanging up the phone.

  And Mrs. Fitzpatrick, without having to think twice, said yes. “You can be part of the staff,” she said. “The afternoon staff.”

  “Goody!” Abbie said, and gave the portly, good-natured woman a great big bear hug.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick had been right on with her tip about the house.

  It was a Victorian, built with care and pride, impeccably maintained except for the last few months, when it had been vacant. Brad’s only reservation was its size—twelve rooms, guaranteed to be a pig to heat. Abbie saw no such drawback. All those rooms—they were like foreign countries waiting to be explored. And that attic. That huge, drafty attic with the two giant windows that let in enough daylight to chase away any lingering scariness. It was just what Mrs. F. had promised: a private little paradise, seemingly designed and built with an adventuresome young girl in mind.

  That night Brad signed the lease.

  The next morning the moving van arrived.

  The next evening they were settling in.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Thursday, September 4

  Brad left work at five-thirty, ridiculously early by the schedule that would soon imprison him, and joined his daughter for dinner at the Boar’s Head Inn. Mrs. Fitzpatrick had a full house, and the dining room was packed, but she managed to squeeze another table into a corner by the fireplace for “my favorite editor and my even more favorite little girl,” as she called them.

  Brad had a surprise for Abbie, but he didn’t spring it on her right away. What kind of fun would that have been?

  “I played with Jimmy today,” Abbie told him over prime rib, which had been the Thursday dinner (absolutely no substitutions) at the Boar’s Head Inn as long as Mrs. Fitzpatrick had run it.

  “Who’s Jimmy?”

  “Jimmy Ellis. He’s my age. Mrs. Fitzpatrick is his grandmother. That means she’s his mommy’s mommy,” Abbie explained.

  “That’s right.” Brad nodded. Ginny and Jimmy. He remembered her mentioning them now. They were the ones who lived not too far from them on Thunder Rise. One of these days Brad planned to drive up and introduce himself.

  “You know what?” Abbie piped up.

  “What?”

  “He’s going to kindergarten this year, too. We’re going to be in the same class!”

  “Really.”

  “Yup. And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “You won’t believe it.”

 
“Try me.”

  “Mrs. Fitzpatrick is going to babysit for him, too. We’re both going to be on the staff for her. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “It’s incredible,” Brad agreed. “Jimmy’s mother’s a teacher, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. But she doesn’t teach kindergarten. She teaches the big kids in the third grade.”

  “I see,” Brad said. “So tell me about your new friend. Do you like Jimmy?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Abbie said as if it were a foregone conclusion and could only have been raised by someone stupid. “He likes dinosaurs, just like me. He’s got all the books. That’s just like me, too.”

  “It’s a match made in heaven,” Brad said approvingly.

  Abbie was baffled. “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s a grown-up saying. It means you two are going to get along.”

  “Well, we do. The only thing is he doesn’t like to play with My Little Ponies. He said that’s for girls, not for boys. Is it really only for girls, Dad?”

  The answer—as he would feel obliged to give it—could take upwards of an hour. Not tonight, Brad decided. Gender differentiation could wait until another day. “Let’s just say some people think that,” he offered.

  Dessert was a hot fudge sundae with vanilla ice cream, real whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry on top.

  “Wipe your face, honey,” Brad said when Abbie had finished scraping her bowl. “We’ve gotta get a move on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “A surprise?” she parroted.

  “Yup.”

  “Goody! Are we going to get my puppy?”

  “If I told you that, would it be a surprise?” Brad said, disguising the disappointment he felt that she had guessed right off the bat.

  “Well . . . how about a clue? Just one itsy-bitsy clue. Please . . .”

  “OK,” Brad said, rising from the table. “Here’s your clue: It’s a happy surprise. Now that’s it. My lips are sealed.” He patted her bottom and fairly hustled her out of the dining room. As they left, he winked at Mrs. Fitzpatrick, who had been let in on the big secret.

  “Come on, Apple Guy,” he said, “let’s scoot.”

  It was coming on seven o’clock.

  Thunder Rise had already blotted out the sun, and the shadows were lengthening rapidly. They drove north on Route 6, across the residential belt that was tightened around downtown Morgantown. Through a traffic light, the last one for ten miles. Past the Agway store and the John Deere dealership and the milk cooperative. The ranch houses and Capes thinned and disappeared entirely, and they were into gently sculpted farmland. Unlike other parts of Berkshire County, where the agricultural economy of the last three centuries was slowly being transformed into one that was service-oriented, most of Morgantown’s three dozen or so farms were still being worked—dutifully, if not profitably. Brad wondered how much longer they could be worked at all, even with the generous tax concessions he knew the Massachusetts legislature had recently granted farmers. There was a good story in it. Not an original story, but a worthwhile one. A community service story, the kind guaranteed to warm a publisher’s heart. As soon as he got his head above water, he’d assign someone to take a few days and do it.

  Route 6 paralleled the Misquamicut River, which followed the base of a valley glaciers had carved out twenty thousand years ago. The soil was black and rich here, with few of the rocks that normally characterized New England’s user-unfriendly soil. Brad looked across the cornfields and the hayfields, past the dairy barns, over pastures dotted with cows, into the Berkshire woods. The trees were luxurious shades of green, but he could see reds and yellows already creeping into the foliage. He suspected this was the last week the trees would be so lush. Summer was on its way out. Brad felt it strongly for the first time. It had been an August-like day, but now, at dusk, there was a definite nip to the air. It was more like an October night, with a real threat of frost, than the fourth of September, only three days after Labor Day. Christ. It had never been this cold this early in Manhattan. The Mustang’s windows were up, and Brad was even tempted to turn on the heater, but he didn’t. That was a concession it was much too early to make. It would soon enough be fall. Soon enough after, they would be locked in the grip of the long New England winter.

  We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, thought Brad, who wasn’t particularly fond of snow, certainly not the amount they got in these parts.

  He reached into his pocket for the classified ad he’d ripped out of the paper, checked the directions he’d written over it with his distinctive red Flair pen, and concluded they were on target. Only another mile or two.

  Abbie had her face glued to the window. He wondered what was going through her mind. Since leaving New York eleven days ago (was it only eleven days? It seemed like a year . . . a hectic but pleasurable year), Abbie hadn’t mentioned her mother. No, strike that. She had mentioned her. Yesterday, when they’d moved into their new house, she’d observed how her mother probably would like the place. Unless Brad was forgetting some other occasion, that had been it. He didn’t know if Abbie was internalizing her feelings, burying them in some part of her subconscious mind for recall later, or if she was simply too absorbed in mapping out her new world to have time for any other issues. Sooner or later, one way or another, Brad knew, Heather was going to surface.

  And he would be ready, as best he could. But he wasn’t going to bring the issue up, certainly not tonight, the night of the big surprise. Let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak.

  Brad started singing their song. “Our Little Song,” as they’d titled it. A song they’d composed together in dribs and drabs over the past two years. An original tune with highly original lyrics.

  My, oh, my, she’s my Apple Guy.

  Give her a kiss, won’t you try?

  Give her a monkey, I don’t know why.

  Take her to a movie, but let’s not cry.

  Climb on a staircase, way up high.

  Along with my favorite little old Apple Guy!

  There were additional verses, dozens and dozens of them, with more being composed all the time, but Brad didn’t get any farther this Thursday night.

  There was the sign. He turned off the road.

  “OK,” he announced. “Here we are.”

  The sign said MORGAN’S FARM. PRIZE HOLSTEINS SINCE 1922.

  These Morgans, Brad had been told, were descendants of the town’s founder, and for longer than anyone could remember they had been dairy farmers. They also bred championship Golden Retrievers, recommended to Brad as the best possible breed for children. There had been only one litter this year. Abbie could hear yipping and yapping the second Brad pulled into the drive.

  “My puppy!” she hollered happily. “We’re going to pick out my puppy!”

  “That we are,” Brad said.

  “Oh, Daddy!” Abbie kissed her father on the cheek.

  And then she was out of the Mustang, barreling down the drive toward a makeshift chicken-wire pen.

  “You must be the Gales,” said the broad-shouldered sixtyish man heading toward Brad’s car. Brad noticed he was wearing a wool coat. Brad took a deep breath and exhaled. His breath came out in a cloud. It had actually dropped several more degrees in the twenty minutes since they’d left the Boar’s Head.

  “Brad Gale,” Brad said, extending his hand.

  “Henry Morgan. Spoke to you on the phone. Have any trouble with the directions?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good. I see the little one can hardly contain herself.” He sounded pleased.

  “She’s wanted a puppy for years,” Brad said.

  “And you’ve been holding out on her this long?”

  “Oh, no.” Brad quickly corrected him. “We lived in New York, in an apartment where pets weren’t allowed.”

  “That’s downright criminal, but it sounds like New York,”

  Henry said disdainfully. “Only good thing to ever come
of that place is the Yankees. Before Steinbrenner, that is. You’re better off out here in the country, believe me.”

  “Dad? Can I go in?” Abbie begged at the kennel gate.

  “I think we should ask—”

  “You go right ahead, young lady,” Henry said, unfastening the wire hook. “You just be careful you don’t step on any of the you-know-what. I haven’t had the chance today to clean it up.”

  “Any one I want?” she said, sounding overwhelmed by the responsibility of choosing the right one.

  “I’m afraid there’re only three left to choose from,” Henry said. “We’re lucky to even have them. As I told you on the phone, Mr. Gale, that litter goes back to late spring. Not the cuddly little pups most kids have in mind. The good thing, of course, is they’re both weaned and nearly housebroken.”

  While Abbie considered the dogs, Henry and Brad talked a bit, mostly about the weather, as farmers are wont to do.

  “Is it always this cold on the fourth of September?” Brad asked.

  “Lord, no,” Henry said. “Been the craziest year for weather I can recall, and I’ve been eligible for Medicare longer than I’m going to admit. Heck, Dad don’t even remember nothing like it, and he’s nigh onto ninety years of age. The first part of the season was the drought. Oh, it was a wicked one. Lasted almost into August. Shriveled most of the corn up into stuff that isn’t fit for a Halloween decoration. Then the rains came.”

  “You must have been relieved.”

  “We were, for about the first three days. That was enough to balance the register. Problem was, they didn’t stop then. It rained on and off—mostly on—for another week. Ten days straight in all. Now this cold. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say we were due for a frost by daybreak.”