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

by Chet Williamson

  All of that was fine with Thomasine.

  Her last relationship had been as doomed as his, and that was just fine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Tuesday, September 30

  They did not know emotion. Did not know gratitude.

  But they were almost happy. Were emboldened.

  They could come and go now, unencumbered by the old fool who had set them free.

  Not that he had ever been any serious problem. More an annoyance, the way mothers and fathers were an annoyance.

  Now he was gone, chased away forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Wednesday, October 1

  Abbie requested, and automatically received, “dinosaurs” as her bedtime story.

  What else for the past year? An occasional Berenstain Bears book, or Sesame Street, or My Little Pony, but mostly it was dinosaurs she demanded on the last stop to dreamland. Brad approved; dinosaurs, he believed, were the perfect creatures to feed a child’s robust imagination. They were huge (“Some of them were bigger than houses, Dad!”), they lived long ago and far away (“before there were even people”), and they were the mightiest animals that ever walked the earth (“Even a lion would run away from a Tyrannosaurus rex”). Most amazing of all, they had disappeared forever (“but you can still see their bones in museums and places”).

  He remembered how fascinated he had been at a similar age, and he was secretly pleased that his daughter was now, too (Heather had detested dinosaurs, another of their endless disagreements).

  There seemed to be something universal about the youthful appeal of giant, mythical beings. In some psychoanalytic sense, Brad supposed, dinosaurs and dragons and the like were healthy concepts. A medium through which kids could get acquainted with their fears—without risk of any real-life penalty.

  Abbie sat in Brad’s lap, absorbed in the color drawings as he read the text. Maria, who seemed finally to be housebroken, was asleep on the floor. Abbie knew them by heart, of course, all those Latin names, each about a yard long. Could pronounce each perfectly. It was only a matter of time, Brad surmised, before she could spell them perfectly, too.

  Page by page, they went through the litany. Brachiosaurus, the largest dinosaur. Diplodocus, the longest. Tyrannosaurus rex, the king. Brontosaurus, the thunder lizard. Trachodon, the one with the bill like a duck. Triceratops, which compensated for its relatively small size with armor and three deadly horns. Rhamphorhynchus, a flying reptile. That was about the only one Abbie really didn’t like. It reminded her of a vulture—a giant, scary bird she’d seen once on TV in some cowboy and Indian movie. Vultures were very bad, she’d concluded, because they liked to eat only dead things. Ick. Why, vultures had even eaten people after they’d died, like that poor guy in the movie who’d tried to cross the desert without food or water or a horse.

  “I would never try to pat a meat eater,” Abbie said when Brad closed the book.

  She was stalling for time. Acting out her version of the procrastination drama that is featured nightly in homes across America. The moment of truth had arrived, and she didn’t want to go to bed. Well, let her stretch it a bit, Brad thought. That was OK. He’d been working until seven or even later the last two weeks, and his weekday contact with Abbie had dwindled to a precious two or two and a half hours a day. He missed her, he realized. Until now he hadn’t realized—or acknowledged—how much.

  “And why wouldn’t you pat a meat eater?” he asked.

  “Because he might try to eat you. People are like meat to dinosaurs, you know,” she explained. “They have very sharp teeth. They could swallow you in one bite, and then you would be gone.”

  “It sounds scary?’

  “Yeah, well, you would just have to stay away from them. Maybe you could hide in a cave. A caveman cave. A little one, so they couldn’t even get a claw inside. Then you’d be safe.”

  “Maybe you could pat a baby meat eater.”

  “Daaad,” she groaned. “They’re dangerous, too. The only thing is, their teeth are smaller. But they could still kill you. A baby meat eater is this big,” she said, stretching her arms to the limit.

  “I see.”

  “The only kind of dinosaur you could pat is a plant eater. If they were still alive, you might even be able to have one for a pet.”

  “What about Maria?” The dog’s ears perked up, then flopped down again.

  Abbie looked puzzled.

  “Wouldn’t she be jealous?” Brad said.

  “No. I think they would be friends, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  They talked like that until Abbie’s eyes were heavy.

  “Time to call it a day, kid,” Brad said.

  Abbie did not protest. Hand in hand, they went up the stairs. Abbie brushed her teeth while Brad fluffed her pillow and straightened her blanket, twisted into a heap at the foot of her bed, where Abbie had left it on awakening that morning. They were not into making beds in the Gale household. Brad had had his fill of hospital corners during his own growing up.

  The house had six bedrooms. Six large, drafty bedrooms, each with its own turn-of-the-century steam radiator. Two of the bedrooms remained empty. Two were filled with unopened boxes and cartons that Brad knew in his heart of hearts he wouldn’t unpack for months, years, maybe never (one of the boxes dated to his last week at college, when he’d cleared out his dorm). Abbie’s room was on the other side of the bathroom from Brad’s, far enough for privacy, close enough that he could hear her snoring if he listened closely and the house was quiet.

  “Done, Dad,” came her small voice from the bathroom.

  “OK, let’s get you in.”

  She bounded into the room, leaped onto the bed, pulled the blanket around her, snuggled her favorite Barbie doll, and announced, “You forgot my drink.”

  “You’re right, I did,” he said, heading for the stairs. “What do you want?”

  “OJ.”

  “We’re out.”

  “Ginger ale?” she asked hopefully.

  “Don’t have any.”

  “OK, water,” she said, resigned. “With an ice cube. With two ice cubes.”

  “Do we say ‘please’ anymore around here?”

  “Please? Pretty please?”

  “That’s better.”

  Brad went down the stairs.

  Fleetingly, bitterly, he thought of Heather. He often did at Abbie’s bedtime—more than any other time probably. And not for nostalgic reasons. In the last year of their marriage, the year the shit had hit the fan with its ugliest force, Heather had been home very few nights before midnight. At first she had her alibis; at first Brad believed them. Must-see plays. Casting that went over a few hours.

  Acting class, followed by inevitable but innocent drinks with the instructor. Slowly the excuses changed, finally dwindling altogether.

  She was with friends. She was in the Village. It was none of his fucking business. This wasn’t Sicily or Louisiana or some Neanderthal place like that, where wives were the property of their husbands. She had her life. Her rights. Her sadly sputtering career, Brad thought.

  So Abbie’s bedtime ritual had fallen exclusively to Brad. It was one of the few bright spots on the domestic front during that hellish period.

  “Dad?” Abbie said when he returned with the water.

  “Yes, Apple Guy?”

  “Can you check under the bed?”

  “Sure.”

  He was surprised. It had been months since she had asked for that reassurance; he just naturally assumed she’d gotten over another of the standard childhood fears. Well, he wasn’t about to dwell on it. Sometimes fears returned. Sometimes they never went away for good, only hid somewhere for a while, waiting for the right opportunity to pop back out. Sure. The mind was funny when it came to fear. At the Times he knew an editor—a forty-one-year-old editor—who still admitted to checking under his bed occasionally. It was a newsroom joke.

  Brad got on his hands and knees. Nothing
but dust devils.

  “All set,” he proclaimed.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You’re welcome.” He kissed her, then stroked the hair off her face. “Now you go to sleep.”

  She did, almost before he was out of the room.

  Brad followed Abbie at ten-fifteen.

  At eleven forty-five her screams jarred him awake.

  In the seconds it took to jerk into full consciousness, he was sure there was a fire. He was convinced they were back in New York, still living with Heather, and she had stumbled in drunk after midnight and passed out on the couch with one of her goddamn cigarettes just the way he’d yelled at her a million times not to, and her fingers had relaxed, and the cigarette had dropped to the rug, and the rug had started to smolder, and then it was blazing, and toxic fumes were filling the apartment, and they were going to die. . . they’re all going to die . . . Abbie’s going to be incinerated . . . and it’s her fault, all Heather’s fault . . . Heather with her death wish and growing hatred for life. . . . Goddamn egocentric loser psychotic Heather . . .

  “Daaaaddd!”

  Brad flew out of bed, out of his room, into the hail, stubbing the toes of his left foot with bone-breaking force on the doorjamb. Later his foot would throb unbearably, two toenails would turn black and peel off, but there was no pain initially; his panic effectively blocked that. He could have taken a bullet right now and not felt it.

  He passed the bathroom.

  Fire.

  Only now was it beginning to penetrate. There was no fire. There was only Abbie desperately screaming.

  He reached her door, which he’d left open a crack so she could see the bathroom light.

  “Daaaadddd!” she kept yelling, her voice pure terror.

  With his uninjured foot, he kicked the door. It banged into the wall and almost fell off its hinges. The knob punched a hole through the plaster into the slats beyond.

  Abbie’s bed was empty.

  She’s being kidnapped. After fire, that was his second thought.

  The window.

  That’s how they came in. That’s how they’re taking her out.

  The window was open. After kissing her good-night, he’d closed it and drawn the shade. He remembered that.

  The shade flapped quietly in the night air.

  Kidnapped. While she was sleeping just like Lindbergh’s son.

  His mind rocketed into warp speed now. In a fraction of a second his brain had cataloged the options: Call the police, get a knife, follow them out the window, shout, threaten, scream, cry, turn on all the lights. . . . His brain was beginning to process the relative merits of each when he heard her again. “Daaaaddddd!”

  The voice was terrified, close by. Brad raced to the far side of her bed, and there she was: on the floor, her legs drawn to her chest, her hands framing her flushed face, crying. In the sallow glow of the night light, she looked pathetically tiny and fragile, like a porcelain doll in a dusty corner of an antiques shop.

  “Oh, honey . . .” He wrapped his arms around her.

  She was quivering. Any worse, and he would have believed she was convulsing. He tightened his embrace. He couldn’t recall ever experiencing such a strong sense of how fragile, how dependent and small a child really is. Not even when she was a baby had the feeling been so powerful. He’d often thought he would lay down his life for his child. Until now he’d never realized how willingly he could actually do it.

  “Shhhhh.” He soothed her. His own breaths were coming in heaves. He was becoming aware of a ballooning pain in his left foot.

  “It w-w-was there,” she cried. “B-b-by the window.”

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “A R-r-rham-pho-rhyn-chus.”

  “It must have been a nightmare.”

  “But it w-w-wasn’t. It opened the window. It was there. It had huge wings.”

  “A nightmare, honey.”

  “No. I saw it. It flew in and—and . . . started coming closer and closer. Right on my bed. I was trying to get away and—and that’s why I’m on the . . . floor.”

  “But there aren’t any dinosaurs anymore,” he reminded her gently. “There haven’t been any for millions and millions of years. You know that.”

  She could not be dissuaded. “But I saw it. And it talked to me. It said it was going to—to take me away. Not tonight, but someday. ‘When it was good and ready,’ it said. And I was going to . . . die. Daddy . . . please don’t let it. . . .” Her crying, which had tapered off, returned with tidal force.

  “Shhhh. Sometimes we think we see things, but it’s only a dream. Dreams can be very real, you know. Very real. I remember when I was just your age, I used to dream that I could fly. I could see trees and roofs and cars and people, all very tiny way down there. It was cold up so high, and I could hear the wind rushing by, and I was sure I was flying. But then I would wake up and know it was a dream.”

  “Can dreams really be that real?” she said. Brad could see her conviction beginning to soften.

  “Oh, sure. Good and bad dreams can both seem that real.”

  “But it looked just like it did in the book,” Abbie said. “If I hadn’t been so ‘fraid, I could have touched it.”

  And maybe we’ll just lay off that book for a few nights, Brad thought. “I can imagine,” he said.

  “Why did it talk, Daddy?”

  “I think that’s just more proof it was a dream. Even if there were some dinosaurs around today, which there aren’t, you don’t think they could talk, do you?”

  The logic impressed her. “Nah, I guess not,” she conceded.

  “Come on,” he urged. “Let’s get you off this floor.” She had calmed considerably. He helped her to her feet.

  “Can I sleep with you, Dad?” she begged.

  “Of course.”

  It was not a habit he wanted to get into—he could just imagine the child abuse investigation team knocking on the door after Abbie innocently let it slip at kindergarten that she’d been “sleeping with Dad”—but tonight, tonight was fine. After a stop at the bathroom, where Brad took a fistful of aspirin for his aching foot, and Abbie downed a tumbler of water, they crawled together into his king-size bed. Abbie curled herself into a ball. Brad pulled the covers over her, fluffed his own pillow, double-checked the alarm, and put out the light.

  “Can you leave the light on? Please, Dad?”

  “No,” he said firmly. They weren’t going to start that. “I’m right here, Apple Guy. You’ll be fine.”

  “All right,” she said drowsily.

  Only one thing troubled Brad as he struggled to get back to sleep: the window.

  He was absolutely certain he’d closed it. Abbie must have reopened it. Maybe in her sleep (although she’d never once sleepwalked, not that he was aware) or maybe half asleep, during the initial confusion of her nightmare.

  PART TWO

  NOISES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Monday, October 6

  Charlie Moonlight drove straight from Chicago, stopping only for gas and coffee. It was almost midnight when he pulled into Morgantown. He was beat.

  It was going on half a year since he’d been back. Six months that had taken him to Atlantic City, Vegas, Reno. Six months in which his gambling had netted him in excess of $125,000, enough to coast indefinitely, should he hoard it. He was not going to. He was going to buy his sister a new car, his nephew a new bike, his mother whatever she wanted. Most of the rest he was going to donate anonymously to a charity for orphaned Indian children.

  He drove, a Hank Williams tape playing. Nothing much had changed in Morgantown. Nothing much ever did, not measured year to year. Town Hall. The school. Main Street, dead at this hour. Zeke’s Hardware, owned by a childhood buddy. The Transcript, run by a man he didn’t yet know, but whose fate would soon be intertwined with his. The Episcopal church. All of it the same.

  He left downtown and headed toward Thunder Rise. Past his mother’s inn, past Brad and Abbie’s place, p
ast milkweed-choked fields that lay dark and forbidding this moonless night. A quarter mile past his sister’s house, he stopped his Cherokee. Someone not knowing it was there would never have spotted the wooden gate. It was covered with brambles, much more so than his last stay, and it was brown and rotted, blending easily into the surrounding woods. Charlie dug under his seat for his work gloves and stepped out. His breath came out in clouds; he guessed, accurately, that it was forty degrees. He pulled the briars off the fence and swung it open. He got back in.

  The trail was barely passable. One of these years, he supposed, the undergrowth would choke it so completely that a major brush-cutting campaign would be necessary. He would barely make it this time. He drove, his four-wheel-drive bumping and rocking, the branches scraping against the cab with an uncomfortable sound like fingernails across a chalkboard.

  In three minutes he was there. He killed the ignition.

  The cabin was small, only three rooms and a loft. He’d built it by hand in a single frenetic week more than twenty years ago, shortly after spending his life’s savings to buy 325 acres of the only material thing he believed had true value in this world—land. If Charlie Moonlight could call any place home, this building on this spread was it.

  He stepped out of his truck, flashlight in hand.

  The grass had grown up around the small yard, but in the light he could see it had been trampled recently. He was on guard. Once—only once, miraculously—the place had been vandalized. Completely emptied, his stock of canned goods filched, his lanterns smashed, his kerosene drained, his candles broken, his rifles and tools stolen. Of all the goods he’d so carefully stockpiled before leaving, only the woodpile had been untouched.

  He checked for tire tracks. There were none. Whoever had been here this time had been on foot. He went cautiously, silently to the cabin; it was possible someone was still inside. He put his ear to the door, listening for snoring or breathing. He heard nothing, only the hoot of an owl in the distance.