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

by Chet Williamson

  Since late August he’d seen a number of children with symptoms he’d diagnosed as “colds.” So? It was no big deal, he’d been telling himself. Germs go around. In the closed environment of a small-town grammar school, they go around with lightning speed. Schools are like heaven for germs—so many warm bodies in such close contact with each other. School’s been open barely three weeks. Obviously some kid brought back a stubborn virus from summer camp, and now it’s making its merry rounds. That’s all. Nothing to call in the CDC about.

  And because he had always prided himself on how conscientious he was (he could honestly say he hadn’t gone into medicine for the money), it was easy to be paranoid . . . at least fleetingly.

  Until now he’d never tallied them. Jesus, he thought. There must be a dozen kids with some or all of these symptoms. Maybe more than a dozen. If it were January, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. But it’s not January. It’s September twenty-fourth, barely autumn.

  And there’s something else here that doesn’t look quite right either. None of the symptoms have been steady. Not with Maureen, not with the others. There will be a spell for a week or two, then seeming recovery. Then the symptoms again. Or new symptoms. All right, so there’s reinfection.

  But—but—

  Bostwick didn’t like all those buts.

  He made a mental note to watch each case very, very carefully and to follow up in a week on all of them. And that wasn’t all. As soon as the McDonalds left, he was going to have his nurse pull the charts of every child he’d seen over the past two months. He was going to spend the weekend poring over all of them to see what he could come up with . . . if anything.

  He hoped it would be nothing.

  “I want her to get plenty of liquids and rest. Keep her home from school if she doesn’t feel up to it. For the fever, Tylenol. And Triaminic for congestion.”

  “Like before,” Susie said dubiously.

  “Like before. I’ll call when I get the strep results. And I want you to call here in a week, even if the symptoms moderate. I want to know how you make out.” Maureen was dressed now and was waiting by the door with her mother.

  “I’ll call,” Susie said.

  “Make sure you do. Because if I don’t hear from you by next Thursday, I’ll be calling you.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sunday, September 28

  It would not be inaccurate to say that beef stew and his bowels killed Harry Whipple.

  And it would not be inaccurate to say that it started with beer. Whipple didn’t ordinarily drink beer. Once upon a time he’d been crazy for the stuff, but as his alcoholism had progressed, brew had lost its punch, and he’d moved on to the hard stuff. But it had been so damn warm the last two days—Saturday had set a record, eighty-eight degrees, or so the TV weatherman had said—and so damn stuffy in the mine that he’d gotten it into his head that nothing but ice-cold beer could quench his thirst. Yesterday afternoon he’d driven into town and bought himself a case of Genesee sixteen-ouncers.

  It was gone by ten-thirty, the time he passed out on the couch. While he slept, the beer went to work on his intestines—went to work with a vengeance—and by the time he got up this morning, his bowels were gurgling. By midafternoon they were in a state of revolt. By the time he finally gave in and plunked his liver-spotted ass on the toilet, he was poised for the largest crap of his life—or such he adjudged it when, after much huffing and puffing, it was finally over.

  It was like a sick infant’s worst diarrhea. It bubbled and splattered out of him for what seemed an eternity, and there was so much of it that mid-movement, he was forced to flush the hopper for fear it would overflow. And oh, did it stink. Lord amighty. This was so bad that Whipple, who was not endowed with mankind’s most delicate nose, actually thought he might throw up. When he was through, he threw open every window on the first floor.

  Whipple settled onto the couch to have himself a nice tall tumbler of Seagram’s on the rocks.

  He’d worked an hour or so in the mine today, but slaving away in there was wearing very, very thin. Some days just lately he hadn’t worked at all. It was slowly dawning on him that no matter what his dead sister’s map promised, there was probably no gold—or if there was, a greater power than Harry Whipple was needed to get it out. Just what had convinced he’d be luckier than those fools who gone before him anyway? Another couple of days in there, he’d decided, and he was going to pack it in.

  The whiskey went down smoothly, tumbler after tumbler of it. There were a couple of ball games on TV, but Whipple paid little attention. By late afternoon, when the worst heat of the day was starting to back off, TV was merely background. Whipple had slipped away to his favorite place, the alcohol ozone.

  By six-thirty something vaguely resembling a hunger pang tore at his innards. Whipple hadn’t eaten a thing all day, but that was hardly unusual. It had been years since he’d had a really big appetite, even longer since he’d eaten three square meals in one single day. Food just didn’t have it for him anymore.

  Still, he had to eat. Something to silence his stomach. It always came down to that. He got unsteadily to his feet, tottered into the kitchen, opened the cabinet, and rattled around inside with his free hand. Some selection. A can of tuna. Two boxes of macaroni and cheese. A half-full jar of horseradish, which, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember buying. A dirty jar of peanut butter. A can of Dinty Moore beef stew. That was it, his entire larder.

  He opened the stew and poured it into a blackened pan. He put the pan on the stove, turned the propane to high, nearly fell on his way back to the couch, took a slug of Seagram’s straight from the bottle, thought about taking a piss, and passed out.

  On the stove the stew was getting warm.

  First it bubbled. In ten minutes the gravy had thickened considerably. In another ten minutes it was paste. Five more, and the water content had boiled away completely. The pan was getting very hot. Soon it was glowing. Smoke filled the kitchen.

  Whipple’s snoring was louder than the TV.

  Outside, his dog had been sniffing this new smell. It wasn’t a completely unfamiliar smell; the master had burned food before, many times. But this scent had an unusual intensity, a sharp bite the dog didn’t recognize. Sniffing it almost hurt his nose. In an earlier era the dog might have gone inside to investigate. Seeing Whipple unconscious, sensing something was very wrong, he might even have barked or tugged at his pants leg to awaken him.

  Yes, once upon a time, he probably would have done that.

  But things had not been good lately between Whipple and Eddie. Ever since he had gone into that mine, there had been something different about the man. It was not something the dog could taste, or see, or smell. But it could be sensed, the way a cornered animal instinctively senses entrapment. It was a strong sense. A sense of badness. Of an enemy lurking in the shadows. It scared the dog, could actually make him shiver. Since late spring he had tried hard to keep out of the man’s way. Mostly he had been staying outside or in the barn, where he slept nights now.

  A sudden gust of wind blew down from Thunder Rise. For an instant the ground shook. Shivering, Eddie slunk off to the safety of the barn.

  The pot was red now, its contents completely carbonized.

  The stove itself was getting dangerously hot, too. Not once since moving in had Whipple cleaned it, and the accumulated grease had melted, was smoking now. Hotter and hotter it got until, just before seven-thirty, when it was dark outside, it flashed with a sound like air escaping an overinflated tire.

  The fire might have been confined to the stovetop grease if every window on the first floor hadn’t been open. It might have burned more slowly, penetrating Whipple’s unconsciousness to sound an alarm. But the windows were open, and the wind was blowing mightily. The crosscurrents caught the flame, driving it against the wall, spreading it to the curtains of a nearby window.

  In less than two minutes the house was engulfed.

  Rod Dougherty was
the first to spot the fire.

  He was visiting at Brad’s, was opening a beer in the kitchen—the room with the best view of Thunder Rise—when he thought he saw flames licking up out of the mountain.

  “Brad, come here,” he said excitedly. “Quick.”

  Brad came in from the living room, where Abbie was parked in front of the TV. A Rainbow Brite tape was on the VCR. Twenty more minutes, and she had an appointment with the sandman. Tomorrow was the start of another week.

  “Look,” Rod said. “On the mountain. I think it’s a fire.”

  “I think you’re right,” Brad said after one look. “Shit.”

  “It’s got to be pretty big if we can see it this far away. Are there any houses way up there?”

  “A couple,” Brad said. Then it hit him. “Jesus!” he nearly screamed. “Jimmy Ellis lives up there! The McDonalds, too!”

  “Who are they?”

  “Kids in Abbie’s kindergarten class!”

  “Should we chase it? I’ve got my camera in the car.”

  “After we call the fire department. You call. I’ll get Abbie.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Rod got on the phone. Brad rushed into the next room, grabbing two coats from the closet on his way in. “Here,” he said to Abbie. “Put this on.”

  “Where we going?” she said.

  “Just get in the car,” he said. He didn’t want to take her, but there was no choice. He’d covered enough fires in his day to know that by the time he’d made babysitting arrangements, the house—if indeed it was a house—would be to the ground by the time they got there. And if it were the Ellises or McDonalds, they could be . . . He refused to think of that.

  Rod drove so fast that Brad was afraid a tire would blow out before they got there, but it was a chance they gladly took. Up Thunder Rise Road they went, first seeing the flames, then losing them behind the trees, then seeing them again. Past the Ellises. Past the McDonalds, both houses intact, Brad breathing two audible sighs of relief. Higher and higher they went, the fire brighter and brighter.

  The fire department was already there, but it was too late. The house was on its way to the ground. By the time the engines had arrived, only the frame was still standing. The roof had collapsed, the walls burned through, taking some of the power out of the fire. The firefighters’ only job now was hosing it down so it wouldn’t spread into the woods.

  “Any idea whose house it is?” Rod asked.

  “None,” Brad said. “I don’t even know if it was occupied.”

  The ambulance had arrived simultaneously with Brad, Rod, and Abbie. The EMTs took their time getting out. Brad had a pretty good idea what that meant.

  “Stay in the car,” he ordered Abbie.

  “But, Dad—”

  “No buts,” he snapped. He hardly ever used an angry tone with Abbie, but there was no way she was going to see what they would be loading into that ambulance.

  “Whose house was it?” Rod asked a fire fighter.

  “His name was Whipple.”

  “He was a crazy old thing,” added a man standing near them. “I should know. We’re his neighbors.”

  “Who are you?” Brad asked.

  “Hank McDonald.”

  “Maureen McDonald’s father?”

  “Yup.”

  “Brad Gale.” He introduced himself. “Transcript editor. This is Rod Dougherty, one of our reporters.”

  “Pleased to meet you. Too bad it had to be like this. You’re Abbie’s father, right?”

  “Right.” He dismissed that line of conversation with a curt tone. “Was he home?” he asked.

  “Yep,” McDonald said. “Except for runs into town, he was almost always home, far as I could tell.”

  “Has anyone seen him?” Rod said. “I mean, maybe he got out.”

  The firefighter pointed to Whipple’s Jeep. A small crowd of firefighters was gathered to one side of it. Some were on their knees, examining a dark shape. No one seemed to be moving urgently.

  “Not alive,” the firefighter said. “We couldn’t even find a pulse.”

  “Frankly, I’m not surprised this happened,” McDonald said, in a surprisingly unsympathetic voice.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he was a drunk, that’s why. This for the paper?”

  “Well . . .” Rod was taking notes.

  “Hell, it doesn’t matter. Everyone knows Whipple was a drunk. Everyone knows he was a crazy fool, too. Rumor had it he’s been digging for gold somewhere up here the last few months.”

  “Gold?” Rod said. “He told you that?”

  “Only once. It was the only time I ever talked to him. He was drunk as a lord, wandered into our driveway one evening, babbling on and on about how it was only a matter of time before he was filthy rich. ‘Rich nuff to buy ‘n’ sell all you pisspots,’ I believe is how he put it. I was set to call the police when he relieved himself on my lawn, then wandered back into the woods.”

  “Do you think he was really digging for gold?”

  “Who knows? He was crazy, as I said. And it is an old Indian legend: gold buried somewhere under Thunder Rise. It’s so much poppycock, of course, although it’s true a hundred years ago a company went bankrupt digging for it. There’s supposed to be an old mine shaft left up there. That’s what they say anyway. I’ve never seen it. Not that I’ve exactly gone looking for it.”

  “Interesting,” Brad said, and the wheels were turning.

  McDonald filled Rod in on what he knew—about Whipple’s sister leaving him the house, about the supposed search for gold, about some of Whipple’s background. He’d been a drifter and a loser—exactly the type who might be mesmerized by the possibility of gold. It would make for a good story. Bizarre as hell . . . a natural hook for readers.

  They left before the body was loaded into the ambulance for its trip to the county medical examiner’s office.

  “Did someone die, Dad?” Abbie asked as they drove home.

  “Yes, honey,” Brad said. “Someone died.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone you don’t know, sweetheart. An old man.”

  “Is he with God now?”

  “Yes, sweetheart. He’s with God.”

  Abbie looked out the window to see if the moon was up there, but clouds had moved in, and she could not spot it.

  “I guess he didn’t see the fire,” she mused. “Because otherwise he would have stopped it, wouldn’t he, Dad? Before the guy was dead?”

  “Yes, he would have, honey,” Brad said, unconvincingly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Monday, September 29

  Brad considered Rod’s story, which led the paper the next afternoon, an outstanding piece of work, and he wrote a note to the publisher suggesting a raise might soon be in order for his star reporter. In twenty-five inches Rod had managed to capture the drama of the fire and—without insult or ridicule—the peculiar nature of the man incinerated in it.

  Thomasine, who’d been holed up inside the Transcript’s library all day, agreed.

  But her interest in the story was not purely journalistic. Her curiosity was piqued by these four paragraphs, which appeared at the top of the jump page:

  Whipple was said by neighbors and some longtime residents of Morgantown to have spent the last several months pursuing mankind’s age-old dream of striking it rich by digging gold. Dating back to when Indians were the only residents of Morgantown, there has been a legend of gold being buried somewhere on Thunder Rise, according to Historic Society Chairman Elizabeth C. Fulton.

  “Near as I can tell, he was digging in an old mine shaft or something up there,” said Hank McDonald, the deceased man’s neighbor. “I guess it was left over from a long time ago, when a company went bankrupt digging for gold.”

  Miss Fulton confirmed that gold speculators in the last century had dug a shaft, abandoning it when no gold was found. She said that there has never been any evidence that the old Indian legend of gold on Thunder Rise has
any basis in fact, although she noted that has never stopped people such as Whipple from looking.

  McDonald said that, to his knowledge, Whipple—like those who came before him—never found any gold inside Thunder Rise.

  Gold.

  Indians.

  Interesting.

  The legend didn’t seem to have any obvious bearing on Thomasine’s thesis, but that didn’t mean somewhere down the line it might not be important. As any anthropology researcher worth her salt learned very early in the game, no scrap of information even remotely relevant to the topic at hand should be discarded. There was no telling when that scrap might become useful. Anthropologists, as her adviser was fond of saying, were the world’s greatest pack rats—or damn well ought to be.

  Thomasine cut the clip from the paper and filed it into a manila folder. That evening, during her daily session with the IBM PC she had set up in the study of her apartment, she entered a synopsis of it into a floppy disk, along with summaries of the other material she had gleaned from the paper’s library. Through cross-indexing, she could find anything in her growing database in a matter of seconds. When she was done, she tuned her stereo to a soft-rock station, poured herself a glass of cold Chablis, and settled onto her couch with The New York Times Magazine. It had not been an especially fruitful day. A microfilm search was painfully slow work, hard on the eyes, but there was no way around it.

  The one bright spot had been lunch again with Brad. Today was the fourth time they’d gone out for lunch or sat together in the paper’s conference room sharing sandwiches.

  She smiled. She was really getting to like this guy, divorce, child (she was a cutie), and all.

  And she appreciated the pace. There was no pressure here, no expectations. If anything was happening between them, it was happening in its own sweet time. “If it turns out we’re only going to be friends,” his words and manner seemed to say, “then that’s all right.”