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

by Chet Williamson

  “You going to be OK there, Apple Guy?” Brad shouted.

  She shook her head and grinned.

  “I’ll be right back. Charlie will take good care of you.”

  “And me,” Bostwick added.

  “And Dr. Bostwick will help out. And then we’re going home. Just like I promised.”

  Brad took one of the two remaining flashlights from Thomasine. He backed away from the cliff and disappeared into the shaft.

  “All right,” Charlie told Abbie. “Let’s get you strapped in here. You want me to carry you?”

  “Unh-unh,” she answered. “I can walk.”

  “You sure?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said, tottering to her feet with the agility of an octogenarian rising from a rocking chair after a Sunday nap.

  She was almost to the stretcher, was craning anxiously up at the ledge where Thomasine waited alone, when her father reappeared. Without speaking, he walked to the lip of the mine shaft and looked down at her. Their gazes locked. Abbie’s grin re-formed. Brad seemed ready to speak when there was the sound of small stones raining down into the stream. He was losing his footing. His knees buckled. Arms pinwheeling, his fingers clutched frantically at the air. His balance went completely, and he screamed as gravity captured him.

  Abbie watched her father free-fall into the stream. He landed with a sound like a slap, and then he was gone, pulled into the blackness.

  “Dad!” she yelled. Her grin stiffened, and then it was erased by a new look, the look of depthless fright. “Daddy, please!”

  Charlie had watched, unmoving, unwilling to believe. And he didn’t believe what had happened. Didn’t believe because at the exact moment Brad swan-dived he heard the faint but distinct sound of the snowmobile engine finally catching. Didn’t believe because even in the tenebrous light of Thomasine’s lantern the face on the alleged Brad hadn’t looked quite right, had been oddly emotionless, not the bubbling-over man whose daughter had just been brought back from the dead.

  Didn’t believe because George was talking inside his head, informing him, making him understand that it had been an illusion . . .

  . . . a trick.

  One final trick Hobbamock’s personal good-bye.

  “Dad!” Abbie wailed.

  “It’s not Dad!” Charlie screamed.

  “Daddy!”

  The Brad facsimile’s head popped out of the water. One arm shot into the air, then the other. The fingers were wriggling madly. The classic pose of a person going down for the third and final time.

  “Help me, Abbie!” it begged, but it wasn’t Brad’s voice. It was an impostor. Hobbamock. “Help me before I drown! Please, Abbie!”

  “Don’t!” Charlie shouted.

  “Give me your hand!” the Brad facsimile begged.

  With the last bit of Bostwick’s chemical strength, Abbie catapulted onto her feet and stumbled toward the river’s edge. She knelt, stretching for the hand. Reaching. Stretching . . .

  “Just a little farther!”

  She tried.

  And fell in.

  For one agonizing second she floated. Then she, too, was sucked silently under the black-sheened surface of the Styx-like stream.

  They all heard it then: from the deepest bowels of the cave, the unmistakable cackle of a madman’s laughter.

  “Jesus,” Bostwick swore.

  The ice went out of Charlie’s joints, and he stripped his boots and shirt and plunged into the water after Abbie. He was a strong swimmer, had once swum the five-mile water leg of a triathlon on a bet with a professional gambler, but he was not prepared for the intensity of this current. It pulled and clawed at him, beat against him, buffeting his body like a hurricane-force wind. It was cold, unnaturally so, as if here the laws of physics had been suspended and water could be twenty degrees, ten degrees, and still flow. And it was dark. Dark as pitch. Dark as a blind man’s dream.

  He discovered nothing on his first submergence, only the startling force and opaqueness and temperature of the water, jetting into the unknown region beneath the side of the cave.

  On his second try, struggling, exerting superhumanly, he found bottom. The riverbed was not as deep as he expected, perhaps a dozen feet. Before the air in his lungs was consumed, he had a few seconds to feel with his hands. The bottom was water-worn rocks, a few larger boulders, no gravel.

  On his third try he was able to patty-cake along the bottom from side to side and back again. He did not find Abbie. He surfaced, panting, snorting a spray of frigid water in Bostwick’s direction. His lungs were shooting shards of pain through his chest, and his skin was numbing fast. In his loins he felt his scrotum tightening uncomfortably.

  “Anything?” Bostwick yelled.

  “No.”

  On the fourth try he found her arm.

  She was snagged, her head sandwiched between rocks. He ran his hand up her arm until he located her shoulders. He tugged at her, but she refused to budge. The water had wedged her with the force of a hammerblow. He tugged again, planting his feet against the rocks for better leverage. His air was gone. He could see the pain, explosions of light in his head. Desperate, he reached for her head, grabbed a clump of hair, and yanked.

  She was free. He swam with her to the surface.

  Charlie laid her on the shore. Her heart was still beating. Broken arm and all, Bostwick began CPR.

  “We’ve got to get her to the ambulance,” he said shortly. “I can’t do any more for her here.”

  Together, he and Bostwick transferred her to the stretcher. In less than two minutes they had her up. Brad was just returning from the snowmobile.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  Christmas

  Charlie remained behind to set the dynamite.

  The others went in the ambulance. The sky had cleared completely, leaving behind a crisp, windless, silvery winter night. They passed snowplows, but no other traffic, on their way over the mountain. The storm had kept everybody in, hanging stockings by the fireplace with care.

  The code team of Berkshire Medical was shooting for another miracle, this time with Abbie in the emergency room, when a slight tremor passed through the building. It was barely perceptible, but Thomasine and Brad both felt it through the molded plastic chairs of the hospital lobby.

  It was midnight— exactly midnight. Brad knew because he’d couldn’t take his eyes off the wall clock.

  Thirty seconds later there was another rumbling, deeper, longer lasting.

  As if Thunder Rise were in great pain.

  EPILOGUE

  Tuesday, January 6

  The Berkshire Medical Center staff stabilized Abbie, but they could not crack her coma. On Christmas morning she was transferred by helicopter to Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. She remained unconscious two days. On the third she opened her eyes and smiled—at her father, who’d not left her side since Pittsfield. The next day she spoke her first words. They were: “I love you, Dad.” Brad wept openly, as did Thomasine.

  On the fifth day the doctors told Brad they could predict with near certainty that his daughter had not suffered any permanent brain damage. She would need periodic checkups and a fairly lengthy recuperation, but unless something utterly unforeseen cropped up, she was going to be fine. For that, they conjectured, everyone could thank the icy temperature of the water in which she’d very nearly drowned.

  A week later Brad bundled Abbie up in a down parka and blanket and drove her home. They stopped once, in downtown Morgantown, where Brad used a pay phone.

  By arrangement, everyone had parked his car far enough up the road so that Abbie didn’t suspect a thing when she and her father turned into the drive.

  “Didn’t I promise you I’d get you home, Apple Guy?” he said.

  “Thanks, Dad.” She beamed.

  “You stay put. I’ll come around and get you. With all this ice, I wouldn’t want you to slip.”

  “Daddy?” she asked as he carried her, still wrapped in her blanket, across the fr
ozen driveway.

  “Yes, hon?”

  “Did you remember to feed Maria?”

  He’d anticipated the question—or one very like it. “Maria’s gone,” he said gently.

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “There was . . . an accident.”

  “Oh, no.” She was close to tears. “She’s not—”

  “We’ll talk about it later, sweetheart,” Brad interjected. “But I think when we get inside, you won’t be so sad. There’s a great big surprise for you.”

  “What is it?” Abbie brightened a bit.

  “You’ll just have to wait and see,” Brad said, fumbling for the key. He found it, turned it in the lock, and the door opened. The fluffiest puppy Abbie had ever seen bounded out. It was a Golden Retriever. Brad put Abbie down, and the puppy was all over her.

  “She’s so cute! She’s just like Maria!”

  “Do you like her, hon?”

  “I love her!”

  “And you’ll have plenty of time to get to know her. The doctor says you’ll be staying home at least a couple of weeks, regaining your strength. In fact, we should get you to bed soon. But first, come with me.” Brad headed into the living room.

  Abbie took the dog in her arms and followed. She was too preoccupied with the puppy to see the tree immediately, or the mountain of gifts underneath it, or the small group of people huddled to one side trying desperately to remain quiet.

  “Merry Christmas, Abbie!” the group burst out.

  Abbie was astonished. “Mrs. Fitzpatrick!” she exclaimed. “Thomasine! Jimmy! Mrs. Ellis! Mr. Moonlight!” The only person she didn’t recognize immediately was Rod Dougherty.

  “Welcome home!”

  “Wow!”

  The gift opening lasted fifteen minutes. Abbie couldn’t believe how many Barbies and Barbie outfits Santa had left. Why, it was as if he’d read her mind! She loved all the clothes everyone had gotten her. She thought the big stuffed rabbit Jimmy had picked out was “really great,” the wooden owl Charlie had carved “really neat.”

  And then she seemed to run completely out of steam. In the time it took Brad to gather all the wrapping paper and stuff it into a trash bag, Abbie was transformed from little dynamo to pale young patient marooned listlessly on the couch.

  “I think a certain young lady needs some rest.”

  “But, Daddy—”

  “No buts. If the doctors knew about even this, I’d be in deep trouble. Come on. Let’s get you upstairs.” Turning toward their company, Brad said, “Of course, you’re all welcome to stay.”

  “We wouldn’t dream of it,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said. Then, in a tone the others could interpret only as strict marching orders, she added, “We’re going. Come on, everyone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Say good-bye to your guests then, Abbie,” Brad said.

  “Bye.”

  They went for their coats.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Brad said to Rod. Brad was still wrestling with how much—if anything—he’d publicly divulge about Hobbamock and what really had gone on up there on Thunder Rise. He was leaning toward letting the facts stand as reported in the Transcript so far: that the CDC and Health Department were every bit as mystified by the disease’s sudden disappearance as they’d been by its strange emergence. That, to paraphrase Charlie, some of life’s greatest enigmas just don’t have rational explanations.

  On the way out, everyone kissed Abbie and thanked her.

  Only Thomasine was left. For one long, awkward moment, Brad stared at her, then his daughter, then back at her. He seemed to be seeking guidance.

  “You two need some time alone together,” Thomasine said matter-of-factly. “I understand. I’ll go.”

  “Please?” Abbie begged. She was holding her new puppy. “Please stay? Pretty please?”

  “How could you turn down a pumpkin like this?” Brad said, as he took Thomasine’s coat.

  “I couldn’t,” she said, and started to close the door.

  As she did, they all heard it: a rumbling, like trucks on a distant highway or far-off thunder on a summer’s eve. A rumbling all three chose to believe was only the wind.

  To be continued in:

  ASYLUM

  A Preview of ASYLUM

  Book Two of the Thunder Rise Trilogy

  CHAPTER ONE

  Champagne

  “Here’s to Nick Emin, successful architect!” announced the thirtyish, raven-haired woman in an apartment on Providence’s fashionable East Side. Sharon Emin raised her champagne and clinked her husband’s glass.

  “Here’s to our future,” agreed Nick, tall and clean-shaven and nearly a decade older. “A future made considerably brighter today by the Cabot Corporation.”

  “Cheers!”

  “Cheers!”

  They drank — single, healthy gulps that drained each of their glasses.

  “Now here’s to our past,” Sharon said, furnishing immediate refills from an ice-bucketed bottle. “Particularly the decision of a certain ex-doctor I know to leave the practice of medicine when almost everyone was saying he must have lost his mind.”

  “It’s been seven years,” said Nick. “Sometimes, it seems like seventy.”

  “Call it paying your dues.”

  “Call it a grind,” Nick said, hastening to add: “With the notable exception of your support, kiddo.”

  “And your father’s.”

  “Yes, once he got through with his I-told-you-sos. He always did want me to get into architecture.”

  “I remember the hospital’s reaction when you announced you were going back to school,” Sharon said.

  “They were all surprised.”

  “Stunned is more like it. I don’t think they’d ever had anyone pull the ripcord on them before. Not like that.”

  “Believe it or not, they had,” Nick said. “When I was doing my residency — long before we met — a couple of guys bailed out. And after me, I heard, there was somebody else. Ken Bevilacqua. I don’t think you knew him. He left psychiatry for horse breeding, of all things. But there’s no question, it’s not your everyday event.”

  “I can still remember your retirement party.”

  “We’d just gotten engaged.”

  “In one breath, everyone was congratulating me. In the next, they were telling me how crazy they thought you were — to leave neurosurgery, that is. By the end of the evening, they almost had me convinced.”

  “Well, as the saying goes, if only they could see me now.”

  “If only they could see this now.”

  Sharon picked up the contract and the $25,000 bank draft that had been paper-clipped to it.

  “I think if they saw that now, they’d laugh their buns off,” Nick said. “That’s chicken feed to them. Chicken feed to me, in my former life.”

  “Lighten up, will you? Money’s not why you did what you did.”

  “No,” Nick agreed, “it’s not.”

  In a remarkably short time, the champagne was gone. In its wake was a pleasant buzz — not enough to impair upper-level brain functioning, but enough to make magic from the June air rustling the curtains, the play of the setting sun on the wallpaper, the strains of classical music drifting down from the apartment upstairs. Enough to really savor Nick’s biggest success yet in his fledgling career — renovation architecture.

  It had arrived by Federal Express at 10:00 this morning — a real-life, honest-to-goodness written contract, eleven pages long, signed and stamped, confirmation of an oral agreement reached by phone yesterday after what the Cabot Corporation’s CEO had described as an “exhaustive” and “unbiased” competition among architects “from Boston to L.A.” This project was unique, the CEO took pains to remind Nick in a letter accompanying the contract. This was a plum. This was going to be written up everywhere, in all the technical journals, all the popular magazines. It would even be on TV. This was going to put the design team on the map, by God.
Nick believed it as passionately as the CEO, who just so happened to be his dad.

  The institution was called Elmwood, and once, more than half a century ago, its three dozen buildings had been home to more than 1,000 of life’s also-rans. Twenty years ago, it had closed, its few remaining indigents and septuagenarian schizophrenics shipped off to nursing homes. Two years ago, the last of a long series of blue-ribbon panels had concluded — as had the very first — that there was no feasible public use for Elmwood, that the commonweal would best be served by unloading the damn place. And so sealed bids had been solicited. Nearly 800 acres in the Berkshire Hills, convenient to Tanglewood and dance festivals and summer stock and winter skiing, all barely two hours from Boston, accessible by road and rail and air. Use must conform to all applicable environmental restrictions. Not zoned for industry. Sale contingent upon proof of financing, twenty-five percent down.

  The Cabot Corporation, developers of resorts from Aspen to Bangor, was high bidder.

  Cabot had grand designs for Elmwood. From the ashes would rise Berkshire Acres, a decidedly upper-crust, year-round vacation community with time-sharing units, condominiums, shops and restaurants and a brewpub second to none. There would be sailing. Swimming. Golf. Tennis and racquetball. A health club and night club. Such a unique re-use. The governor, in signing the purchase and sales agreement, said so himself. Now, someone had to take that concept and head Cabot down the road to making money. Someone had to take what was essentially a couple of fancy drawings and a few crisply worded passages and a commitment by one of Boston’s largest banks and buckle down to the nitty-gritty — decisions on what buildings should be razed, which should be saved, where the restaurants should go, how the shops would be clustered, which hills would make the best ski slopes, and how the thing was going to be sewered and landscaped and heated through the long New England winter.