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

by Chet Williamson

  She’d cleaned his phone and the keys of his Atex terminal, too. It all looked very organized, very professional, as if the executive whose domain this was had everything tightly under control. An illusion, but not an unpleasant one, Brad decided. His work station might actually be therapeutic. It might move his brainwaves, if only momentarily, off the painful pattern they had assumed.

  He sat. In the old days, when he’d broken into journalism, wire copy still click-clacked its way into newsrooms across America on teletypes. There’d been a certain reassurance to the never-ending chatter of those old black machines, a certain Hollywood-style romanticism no one had appreciated until it was gone—another victim of Technology on the Move. Tonight, as never before, Brad longed for that metallic clang. He fancied that it would remind him somehow that the human experience plodded on and on and on, that his troubles, no matter how they seemed poised to overwhelm him, were overshadowed by someone else’s. But newsrooms now had satellite feeds into silent computers that kept silent tabs on humanity around the globe. Except for the never-changing smell of newsprint, modern newsrooms were like the home offices of giant insurance firms: mausoleumlike, windowless environments where so many people piddled their lives away on jobs too trivial to remember five minutes after quitting time.

  The contemporary newsroom, he imagined, could be shaped into a respectable metaphor for the human condition if one worked at it hard enough.

  He tackled the messages first. Call Reed Berghoff, Pittsburgh Press, about story-in-works on Mystery Disease. Call an irate Mr. Driscoll, who claims his yard has the most Christmas lights in Morgantown, “not Harvey Wolcott, as erroneously claimed in today’s page three photo.” Call Mrs. Pinkerston, who is threatening litigation about “deliberate and illegal conspiracy to keep antivivisection news out of the paper.” Let her sue, Brad thought. I’d pay good money for the opportunity to cross-examine one of those animal rights nuts. One message was from Lisa, who wanted Brad’s counsel on a difficult personality profile of a school committeeman.

  One was from his ex-wife, with the “urgent,” “please call,” and “will call again” boxes checked. “She’s driving me crazy, Brad!!!” Gracie had penciled in. “P.S. Sounded drunk again.”

  That’s the last thing I need now, he thought bitterly. A heaping helping of Heather.

  He started into the mail. It was the usual assortment. A brochure of upcoming seminars at the American Press Institute in Reston, Virginia. An entry form for the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ annual contest, in which Brad believed the Transcript had a strong chance of taking a spot news award for its disease coverage. Several resumes and cover letters, including one that began: “Dear Mr. Gale: My good college buddy Rod Dougherty has told me all the incredibly good things happening at the Transcript since you took over. I am a Boston College graduate and have been working at the Observer, a weekly in Smithfield, R.I., and I am eager to —”

  “I was hoping I’d find you here.” The voice, deep and assured, startled Brad. It was Dexter. He’d come into the building through the pressroom.

  “Oh, hi,” Brad said wearily. “Just getting caught up on my mail.”

  “I wanted to give this to you before I left town. I’m spending Christmas with my oldest. I think I told you. Here.” Dexter handed Brad a white envelope with his first and last name typewritten on it.

  Brad fumbled with the envelope, finally pulling out five crisp, fresh-smelling bills. Five thousand-dollar bills. “It’s five thousand dollars,” he said, flabbergasted.

  “Now I know why I hired you. Your powers of observation.”

  “But . . . I don’t get it.”

  “Haven’t you ever seen a Christmas bonus?” Dexter laughed. “You’ve earned it, Brad.”

  “I don’t know what to say . . . except thank you.”

  “The thanks are all mine. I know you newsmen consider ads beneath you—God forbid we should have to talk about such a banal subject!—but the fact is our ad lineage is up nearly fifteen percent since you came on board, Brad. You’ve seen last month’s circulation figures—or have you? They’re in that pile there somewhere. We’re selling almost seven hundred more papers a day. We’re reaching Albany, for heaven’s sake. We’ve never sold papers that far away. And the projections are for us to go nowhere but up. I don’t think these developments and your arrival are pure coincidence.”

  “I’ve been to the marketing meetings,” Brad said. “The carrier contest’s been a winner. The classified ad giveaway—you know I think it’s a gimmick, but it’s worked.”

  “You can’t sell shit, Brad, no matter how you dress it up. It still stinks. You know that and I know that.”

  “Nothing like an epidemic to boost circulation,” Brad said. “Be that as it may. The bottom line is that envelope is the least I can do. Buy your little girl something extra-special for Christmas. How is she, by the way?”

  “She went into the hospital this morning.”

  “God, Brad,” Dexter said, the authority draining out of his tone. “I’m sorry to hear that. God, am I sorry.”

  When he returned, Abbie was curled up in the same position as when he’d left her.

  “I know it looks uncomfortable, but she’s sleeping well,” a nurse said. “She won’t stir till morning.”

  It was nearing midnight, and still, Brad was not tired. He kissed Abbie, stood, and went into the hall. The graveyard shift had come on; nurses were making their rounds, addressing each other in insubstantial voices, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking across the over-waxed linoleum floor. At the nurses’ station a small artificial Christmas tree had appeared. It was decorated with tinsel and red bulbs. The only thing keeping it from being completely ludicrous, Brad thought, was the absence of any message proclaiming Great Joy! Merry! Happy!

  Damn! One week from tonight’s Christmas, and I haven’t bought a thing!

  “Excuse me,” he called to one of the nurses, a young, terribly serious sort who seemed far too dour ever to be much of a hit on a pediatric ward.

  “Yes?” she said, looking up from her paper work.

  “Are there any department stores open at this hour?”

  “You mean, like K-Mart?”

  “Yes. Like that. Places that sell toys. Barbie dolls, to be specific.”

  “Well, K-Mart’s open twenty-four hours a day until Christmas. So’s Caldor.”

  “Up here at the mall, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Good. You think Abbie’s going to stay sleep for the next hour?”

  “She’s going to sleep for the next six hours.”

  “Then I could leave for an hour.”

  “You could do whatever you want, Mr. Gale,” she said sourly. “I can assure you that we are on top of the situation here.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Friday, December 19

  Things had not improved between Charlie and his sister. Twice he’d tried to talk to her; twice she’d turned him away at the door. Not even Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s mediation could budge her. If it hadn’t been for their mother, if he hadn’t been reading the Transcript, it might have been days, even weeks, before he found out his nephew had been hospitalized.

  But there it was, Jimmy’s name on page one in an exclusive interview Rod Dougherty had finagled out of Ginny. With Brad Gale’s active encouragement, it had become a formula for Rod: quoting anguished parent on the subject of his or her fears, then providing ample opportunity to lambaste “officials” for their reluctance to do anything. The formula, Brad had explained, was a proven one. Eventually those officials felt the nooses tightening around their necks and were left with no choice but to take real action.

  Ginny blamed the CDC people. They were the experts, she said. They had the Federal dollars, the Federal laboratory, the whole weight of the Federal government behind them. And yet “this scourge continues unabated,” she said. Obviously someone somewhere had decided Morgantown was too small to count. That was her opinion, and you didn’t need to r
ead between the lines to see that it was the newspaper’s, too.

  Conspicuous by its absence was any mention of the editor’s daughter. Charlie knew from Thomasine that Abbie had been hospitalized, but that development hadn’t made it into the paper. No quotes from that particular anguished parent, no inside look at their unfolding tragedy, no intimate photographs of the latest young victim. Charlie supposed if he were in Brad’s shoes, he would have done the same thing. He could not be critical.

  If anything, he had softened toward Brad these last few weeks.

  Their altercation in the restaurant was a fading memory now, one that no longer gave a true picture of who had started it, who had been right or wrong, who really believed what, who was the real racist, who had grabbed the bigger share of the asshole quotient. To be truthful, it probably was split fifty-fifty. Through his continued contact with Thomasine, Charlie had learned that all else aside, Brad’s credentials as a father were impeccable. Trust me, Thomasine had said, he loves that girl like nothing else. And who could blame him? In a lot of ways Abbie reminded Charlie of his nephew: a quality child who was destined to grow up to be a quality adult. Brad would do anything for his little girl. Kill, if he had to.

  Which is why Charlie had been obsessed with an idea since learning Abbie had been hospitalized: Maybe she could carry the spear.

  A crazy idea, but maybe not quite as crazy as it sounded, at least not as it percolated down through the layers of Charlie’s mind. Because what other choice did he have? Some stranger’s child, selected at random from the hospital census, then kidnapped? Even if he had the nerve to attempt it, and for a whole host of reasons he doubted he did, the risk of getting caught was great. Too great. There was a better than even chance he’d wind up in jail, bail denied, whatever slim hopes he’d had dashed for good. Even assuming a miracle and he got away with it, what strange kid would have the frame of mind to perform as he must at the crucial moment? Any kid—never mind one racked by this scourge, away from his parents, and in the company of this Indian stranger—would be scared shitless. Might be scared literally to death.

  Jimmy was not an option either. According to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, Ginny was encamped in her son’s room, staying with him twenty-four hours of the day. Nothing could budge her. She even had nurses bring the food she nibbled at because she couldn’t bear the separation of a ten-minute trip to the cafeteria. Kidnapping Jimmy—pulling it off would be next to impossible. Even if he did, Charlie believed Ginny had so poisoned his nephew that he might freak out, too, at the critical moment—if they got that far. Charlie had little doubt that Ginny would have the police on his trail immediately. And Ginny would know what Charlie was up to.

  Abbie.

  Has to be Abbie.

  Except for Jimmy, she was the only child in Morgantown Charlie knew. He’d contemplated trying it alone, but the pniese and Ben Wilcox had been very specific. Alone, even with the right spear— assuming he would get the right spear—he stood no chance of success. It had to be a child. A child under Hobbamock’s spell.

  He knew what Brad’s reaction would be: Crazy fucking Indian. His reaction would make the restaurant scene look like Massasoit embracing the Pilgrims.

  Well, maybe he could be convinced.

  And if you believe that, I have this bridge I’d like to sell you, he thought.

  Still, it was like almost everything now. There were no more options. No more deals, no rabbits to be pulled out of hats, no first-round draft picks or players to be named later. This was sudden-death overtime. This was five-card draw, winner take all, and everyone still in.

  He had to try for Abbie.

  And he needed Brad’s collaboration. There was no way he could get her into that cave, then have her do what she must without Dad at her side every step of the way.

  If he had any shot, it was through Thomasine.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Saturday, December 20

  Bostwick stood outside his house, not noticing the midnight cold and wind, which were reddening his ears and making his nose run.

  He was smoking. After six years, two months, and assorted days of quitting, he’d taken it up again. Unfiltered Luckies, too. It was only one of many danger signs, perhaps the least worrisome. He and his wife hadn’t slept together in more than a month. That was a more alarming danger sign. No matter how long his days, he needed several good strong drinks to get to sleep. That was another. On those rare occasions when he was home, his children were treating him with the cold indifference they might show a door-to-door salesman. And for the first time in his life he thought a visit to a shrink might be just what the doctor ordered. At the very least he needed a vacation. A long, quiet cruise to Hawaii, say, gone for a month . . . or never to return, never to practice again.

  That was the worst sign, the feeling that he was completely overwhelmed, that he had to get away before the world came crashing in on him.

  Because this horror show seemed to have no end. Three kids were dead. Ten—or was it eleven?—hospitalized. Two dozen sick at home, next stop on the disease express Berkshire Medical. Another twenty-five showing first symptoms, although not yet bedbound. On the basis of Gosselin’s and state Health’s advice, the School Committee had decided to let Morgantown Elementary out three days early for the Christmas holiday; when and under what conditions they’d be back was an open question. Shots of the children boarding buses had made the network news. The National Enquirer had done a piece. Back at the office Bostwick had a stack of messages from reporters from as far away as Chicago. He’d returned none of their calls.

  He walked across his driveway, past the garage, past last summer’s garden into the back yard. The sky was cloudless. A three-quarter moon glared down, bathing the landscape in harsh silvers and whites. Across the field, rising out of the pines, was Thunder Rise. It looked larger than scale tonight, larger than New England, as if a Colorado peak somehow had been picked up, carried across the continent, and plunked down back East. It looked as if you could never get to the top of it, no matter how long or how hard you climbed.

  He had never been a superstitious man, never been for or against religion, but as he looked up at the rise (staring down at him so enigmatically, or was it only his imagination?), certain things didn’t seem so farfetched anymore. It didn’t seem so farfetched that the death toll conceivably could reach ten, twenty, even twenty-five or fifty . . . or more. It didn’t seem so farfetched that one of his own children might succumb. It didn’t seem so farfetched that this so-called Mystery Disease might cross over into the adult population.

  Just before supper Gosselin had called. The CDC remained stumped, he admitted. So stumped that another two physicians had been assigned, starting Monday, full-time to the case. Within a week the team would be coming back to Morgantown. A field office would be established. A county-wide blitz would be under way. And the cause would be found. Sooner or later they would have answers.

  But it didn’t seem so farfetched that it might take the CDC another month, two months, a half year to nail down the cause, Bostwick thought, because maybe this is one for the medical sleuth texts. Maybe this is the one that will make Legionnaire’s disease, which took months to nail down, look like some kind of parlor game. And even if they found the cause tomorrow, healing would be another challenge. Like AIDS, it didn’t really seem so farfetched anymore that it might be years before a cure or a vaccine or even an effective treatment were found.

  If they were even on the right track.

  He wasn’t so sure they were anymore. This idea Charlie Moonlight was pushing . . .

  Who says Western medicine has all the answers? It was a question that had always intrigued him, never enough to do more than read with great curiosity the occasional piece in the literature about Eastern medicine.

  Bostwick’s last vacation (oh, to be doing it again) had been a two-week visit to China arranged by the New England chapter of the American Medical Association. During a train trip through the southern province
s, he’d seen all sorts of wonders performed: acupuncture, herbal cures for cancer, peasant treatments for colds, the flu, diabetes. He’d heard of village shamans who chased evil spirits away, allowing the sick to become well. Through all regimes these practices seemed to thrive—a testimony, perhaps, to their effectiveness. And what of African witch doctors, whose claims were pooh-poohed by the med school profs, but whose tribal clients lived and died by them? What of Haitian voodoo? What of Roman Catholicism, which holds that souls can be possessed by the devil and freed through the officially sanctioned ritual of exorcism? What of Oral Roberts, for God’s sake, whose claims to faith healing are gospel to his many followers?

  So why not here?

  Why shouldn’t some Indian whose people have been here a thousand years longer than we have be right? We seem to be exhausting the traditional possibilities pretty goddamn fast, don’t we? The star of the show, Mr. Nobel aspirant himself admits he’s stumped, doesn’t he? What hope can there be for the rest of us mere mortals?

  Meanwhile, kids continue to die. Half of the ones in Berkshire Medical tonight will be lucky if they make it another week.

  Merry Christmas, kids. Hope Santa’s good to you, naughty or nice.

  In some sense, I’m responsible.

  And will continue to be, if I leave any stone unturned.

  That was the bottom line. These were his kids. Not the Health Department’s. Not the CDC’s. His.

  Bostwick knew where Charlie lived. It was about a mile up the road. He crushed his cigarette under his heel and set off on foot.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Sunday, December 21

  Since Abbie’s admission Brad had spent every night in her room, tossing and sweating on a cot, returning home only to shower, change his underwear, and feed the dog.