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

by Chet Williamson

  Gus pushed the truck into the brush until Matthew couldn’t see him.

  The night deepened.

  It was already quiet enough to make him think he was in Potter’s Field, above, or below, the earth.

  He spun to his left, understanding that perhaps it might have been foolish to stay out in the open until the sun went down. He lifted his collar against the crisp air and called, “Gus, come here. Let’s go, boy, come on.”

  An obscure shade moved against the bushes.

  The asylum, focus of so much of his family’s pain, pulled at his heartstrings with an almost palpable cruel joy.

  In the woods Gusto growled low and mean and dangerous, a troubling and peculiar sound coming from him, made worse by the pervasive silence.

  Something walked within the thickets.

  His father’s furious voice filled out the rest of the utter stillness—his mother’s mirror a torch against his body.

  Gus yelped twice and dashed out of the brush, limping with twigs and brambles hooked in his fur. Cowering, the dog dragged himself to Matthew, whining and peeing. The clouds closed over the half-moon like shutters snapping shut.

  This is not good, Matthew thought, raising his hands to rapidly scrawl messages in the wind, his fists burning as black fire rose. He listened to Gus howling madly as the bushes parted in the darkness and branches snapped, then realized at the last second that he’d been faked out again and stood facing the wrong way in the night. He turned a second too slowly and caught a face full of venom.

  He cried out and stumbled backward, repeating the ballet of agony he’d performed in his bedroom, knowing the steps so well. Choking and sputtering, he dropped to his knees and clawed at his eyes, fighting not to scream and slinging hexes blindly in every direction. He got to his feet and fell over the cobblestone curb and tumbled into the grass. He felt the sagging weight of Gusto crawling beside him. Shrill wind rushed through the park, keening along with the dog’s frenzied snarls.

  Burning, greasy slime dripped down his face. The smell of decomposing meat and rotting fruit drove him to the ground, where he rubbed his sleeves against his nose, trying desperately to clear his nostrils. The poison bit in and held. Matthew wiped his palms over his cheeks, calling up spells and magiks of defense, yanking at the toxin. Revolting, bitter sweetness scoured his tongue and slipped down his throat as if alive. He reeled, thrashing, knowing this attack came from a human agent, not a djinn or ghost. His stomach lurched and he vomited, clearing an airway at last. Finally he was able to clean enough of the ooze off to breathe again.

  Strands of moonlight unraveled, but not enough for him to get his bearings. He dove to his right and saw nothing. His misfired hexes hadn’t come close, only scorched the earth and some dying bushes. Whoever had thrown the venom was long gone through the brush. Gus lay a dozen feet away whimpering, licking at his hind leg, black fur making the dog nearly invisible now in the dark.

  The stench.

  It clung like a living entity, rancid and rippling over every exposed pore. Smoke rose from his clothes. Fumes wafted about him, disorienting him even more. He retched and choked on the overwhelming stink, suddenly recalling passages from arcane tomes, where the pages had been written on dried stomachs, and to learn the lessons you had to taste the book. Fog slowly drifted by his knees.

  “Oh God,” he whispered.

  An elemental ritual, this curse. He couldn’t distinguish between the herbs but knew what they were, remembering the proportions and exact ingredients. They’d called the brew by many names, but the most foolish remained the most accurate. Etienne Dupruis, the seventeenth-century vineyard owner who’d slaughtered children and let their flesh fertilize his grapes, called it Lucifer’s Perfume. He’d bottled and sold it until the local monks drowned him in his own wine vats. So ridiculous a name for an evocation as deadly as this.

  Matthew ripped his shirt and jacket off, mopped his face, and flung the clothes from him. He heard his mother’s mirror break. Some cryptic passage came to mind, so many rules that had to be followed without flaw; someone had a great deal of patience for this, and the most trivial mistake brought death to the conductor of the ceremony. The formula called for the invokers to slit their own wrists in the promise that their hatred would heal the wounds.

  The runes and symbols of the magic circles had to be precisely spelled out in blood and oils. Strength of will and need for wish fulfillment could be nothing short of an all-consuming obsession. He understood the fortitude it took, the strength, and weakness, of character; prayers took hours of total concentration to complete.

  And then came the petition to a higher order of daemon to perform certain tasks. Infernal hierarchies had been called upon. Jesus, somebody sure doesn’t like me. He wondered if A.G. had taught Ruth, if she’d remembered everything from that day in the cave after all, and faked her own death. Could A.G. be in on it with her? All of this, just to bring him back home? He could see them roasting in their rage.

  This specific evocation proved difficult, because the ritual had to be acted upon in person, without substitute or minion. The goal had to be stated aloud in the summoning, the conjured controlled through force of desire, venom thrown by the invoker’s own hand.

  Gus cantered toward him. Matthew tried to get the rest of the ooze off, pulling sticky chunks of it out of his hair.

  Gusto sneezed.

  There was a quiet laugh, and something lit a match.

  Even his scars told him to flee, the Goat at odds with this new turn. The clatter of rampaging thoughts built to a crescendo. He held his breath, trying hard not to shiver in the cold wind, not to think, not to live, to be dead now even as his insane mother’s singing tickled his hackles and resounded clearly in his ears as if she were standing behind him. The clouds fluttered the milky light of the moon through a haze of October atmosphere—poetic, delicate, dreamlike, and hellbound.

  By the flare of the match light Matthew saw their eyeless faces.

  He didn’t recognize them from any of the illustrations in the grimoires, but he didn’t expect to—daemons rarely held to a specific shape for any length of time, their hideous narcissism pressing them further into new domains of vanity.

  Even so, he understood the reason for the stench and so knew who they must be. Adiel and Mauels were the names men had once called them, two beasts from different hierarchies of the aethyrs, strangely working as master and pet, devouring prey together. Lovers, in a fashion, perhaps.

  Transcribed tales told of their fondness for mental anguish above the physical, and yet, no matter what form they took, they couldn’t alter those badges of their own damnation, if devils could be damned. These two were always blind, tracking victims by sorcery and the sweet, putrefying flesh scent of the venomous perfume.

  And the human agent would be watching from a distance, scrying in some polished surface.

  “I know your names,” Matthew said, still coughing. “You’d do best to return to the aethyers now. Despite this poison, we’ve no quarrel.”

  This time Mauels had come like a freakish blend of toad and wolf … a contorted miniature mutant being composed of reptile and mammal, hairless and hunched, scraping at the earth, salivating and licking a serpent’s forked tongue over sharp, broken teeth unevenly spaced in a mouth larger than any should be. No snout, though, no nose at all, really—merely two thick slashes of quivering wet nostrils trailing up the length of its entire face, from upper lip to the top of its forehead. The creature seemed to be grinning, if a visage like that could be amused in any mortal fashion. Its needle-thin claws clicked together. Matthew clenched his fists as his power wafted and glowed.

  Adiel, the master, stood as a man, yet too different to be a man. Thinner and longer, stretched and skeletal, yet somehow the same as a man—tall and well-dressed in a cloak, wearing a top hat—Good Christ, you’ve got to be kidding me—and holding a doctor’s black bag. The flame of the match reflected in the mirrored sunglasses perched on an impossibly long and thi
n nose that bulged and gnarled from cheek to cheek, lenses bending inward much too far because there were no eyes concealed behind them. The daemon now played a game of despair. The match it held burned out.

  They starved. They were always starving and would never be satisfied with his body or his pain, no matter how much suffering they inflicted. They stepped from the brush where the moonlight refused to fall. Matthew’s pulse throbbed brutally like a knife repeatedly plunged into his neck. Patterns of flying white sparks traced symbols and sigils playing about his hands. His fear grew trenchant but remained oddly displaced, sinking deeper within, until it felt farther away than the other terrors.

  There were faces yet to be seen, in the shadows of the asylum, in the caves, at the party tonight, waiting to swallow his soul personally. Hard contours of his body grew more rigid and defined as he tensed, the spells working in him now as he called forward his knowledge, preparing for battle in the park he considered a part of his own being … less than a mile from the stronghold of his past. The light swimming from his fists shone down on Gusto’s shaggy bulk.

  “Adiel and Mauels,” he said, enunciating clearly. There was capability in the names, and in knowing them, he already garnered some strength.

  Sparks spit over the short distance still separating them, where Mauels’ jaws snapped at the flashes, its teeth clashing together with a demented hissing.

  Adiel lit another match, looking so much like Jack the Ripper. “Everyone knows our names,” it clucked softly. “That holds no sway over us.” Its voice was like the sound of shredding vestments, harsh and unholy, almost more symbol than resonance. “Our evident attributes lend us a bit more credence and notoriety than most, though Asmodeus still runs about seducing nuns. Appellations mean nothing at this hour of your undoing, in this coven of ills. We quarrel with all.”

  “Who is your conjurer?”

  The Ripper bowed politely, the game so obvious and yet so obscure. “Pardon. Privileged information.”

  “Have you been called to the village of Summerfell before?” Matthew asked. “To kill the children?”

  “You will not believe me, but the answer is no. We have not.”

  “I believe you.”

  “More the fool, you, Galen, but you have my honest appreciation.” Adiel tipped its hat. Mauels hopped and curtsied.

  “Are you always such a gentleman?” To open conversation was to gain a greater perspective on character, on consequence.

  “For the moment,” the Ripper said. “But please have no delusions that my courteous manner is an authentic representation of my nature. Or that my curiosity and interest in you as a child mage will stop either of us from vivisecting you when the time comes. We will most assuredly enjoy your screams throughout the ages you’ll be with us. And beyond.”

  “No,” Matthew said. “I won’t.”

  “You are already counted among the doomed, though you know not.”

  “I know it, but you’re not my doom. Why the matches?”

  Adiel opened the doctor’s bag and began to search through it. “Inquisitive, eh? As all witches are, else why be a witch? In order to learn so much about the divine and grotesque as you do. I tire of questions.” Of course, Matthew realized, but the Ripper would answer, else why be a daemon? Adiel crushed the match to his nose. “I enjoy the aroma of sulfur.”

  “Me too, actually.”

  Just enough moonlight for him to get a glimpse of Panecraft in the background.

  Adiel extracted a scalpel. “Now, you will come here, won’t you?”

  With a snarling laugh, the human-size toad sprang at Matthew’s chest.

  Matthew brought both fists together in one swift motion that left streaks of liquid white fire spewed across Mauels’ chin. Still, he wasn’t quick enough to keep the sharp points of its jagged teeth from tearing into the meat of his left arm. He shouted, blood squirting against his naked chest, the scars opening to slurp.

  Though Matthew hadn’t hurt the beast, Mauels, like so many of them, refused to acknowledge resistance, and so sat stunned, unbelieving, shaking itself as its tongue slithered toward him, coiling around his wrist and lapping at his streaming blood. The Ripper ran across the field coming for him, its cape swirling about in the wind like unfolding wings.

  Giggling now, its more genuine nature revealed, Adiel lunged. The blade glinted in the arcane light as the daemon raised its scalpel and brought it arching toward Matthew’s sternum.

  He sucked breath and urgently contorted aside, the slicing blade missing his flesh by a millimeter. The rage came on in one consuming burst, and Matthew smiled. Mauels looked baffled, cocking its head, the tongue hanging limply. Matthew spun, grabbed the Ripper by the shoulder, and slipped it over his thigh, the strength of his body feeling so new and yet altogether familiar as he hurled the daemon into its pet.

  “You’ve forgotten a mage has pride, too,” he said.

  Adiel fell in the dirt with a snarl. “In damnation one can afford all things proud. It makes you all the more meaningless.”

  Gusto sat up and began to bay. He leaped forward, growling and biting into Mauels’ throat as the beast prepared to rake at Matthew with its claws. Gus held on as Mauels heaved and lifted the fat dog in the air, trying to rattle him loose.

  Leaves whipped at them all, the field ferocious with winds that rose into a tempest. The Ripper stood in an instant, the lenses of its sunglasses full of spiderweb cracks, the empty paleness of ashen puttylike skin showing through. Its nose beat like a heart, twining and ballooning over its drawn face as Adiel joyously sniffed Matthew out.

  No more manners. Shrieking, the fiend came at Matthew again, the scalpel aimed at his eyes. Matthew laughed insanely, and managed to parry the blade with his good hand. He didn’t know what was happening, except that it felt good to laugh, even while terrified. Flames of mystic configurations shot over Adiel and raced along its body like a cocoon of electricity, its cloak flapping up wildly, the Ripper’s elongated arms reaching out to crush Matthew’s groin.

  Matthew kicked at the scalpel and missed, shocked that he’d been smiling a moment before, twirled and let another of Adiel’s stabbing strokes pass him, then twisted and brought his elbow down hard in the middle of the daemon’s back. Something broke inside it. Physical contact, perhaps that was the reason for Matthew’s mania—it had been so long since he’d lashed out at the Goat and its minions. The Ripper snickered.

  Can’t go toe to toe, they’re simply toying with me.

  Gusto’s valiant efforts ended as Mauels viciously flung the dog against a tree. Gus squealed in agony and toppled with a sickening noise in the weeds. Matthew forced himself to concentrate, honing his fury, yes, like this, welcoming it as he must.

  “Bring him to me, my friend,” Adiel said. “My choice of bodies was again poor.”

  Matthew ran into the thickets.

  Shoving past branches, he vaulted bushes in the dark, heading toward his house, trying to reach the lake again. Getting rid of the stench might confuse them long enough to escape—their time here was limited, the spell would lose its potency as he fought them. Matthew also fought his other foe. The human enemy watched but would feel his obsessed will constantly hammered upon.

  “Can you see this, bastard?” he whispered while he ran. “Can you hear me now? You should have done it yourself. This isn’t over, not a chance, not like this.”

  He pushed himself, thorns gashing his arms and cheeks as the daemons pursued him. His sense of self had been mislaid, and now it rushed to meet him again—thinking of Debbi and last night’s dreams, Helen still hungering for him, crying after all this time, and hearing their crazy laughter behind, and his own inside.

  He could almost believe that he ran from his mother, or was hurrying toward her, her songs were still so sharp in his thoughts.

  He broke from the woods near the lake.

  And just as he came to the clearing he and Gusto had walked across, the toad tackled him from behind.

  Mauels st
raddled his back, lashing out at him again and again, tearing and pounding at his kidneys. Spells of defense ignited across its nails, barely protecting him. Matthew choked on dirt, heaved, and tried to throw the slimy fucker off, but it held on, cackling while its claws drew long bloody gouges. He grabbed tufts of grass trying to get a handhold and find enough leverage to flip the beast from him. His hands splayed and he couldn’t get a grip on anything, as the Ripper came on.

  His fingers touched something wet and soft, and he knew what he had to do.

  He shrugged with all his strength, cursing, the words a fusion of systems and beliefs. Mauels laughed, rocking up over Matthew’s head like a cowboy trying not to be bucked, about to bring its needlelike nails down into his eyes. They always took the eyes.

  As the creature dug into his waist with its hindquarters, Matthew flexed his shoulders enough to keep the daemon off balance just one second more.

  Then, without quite believing that this is what would save him, he rolled and scooped up a double handful of Gusto’s shit. He shook his head, reached up, and shoved his fists into Mauels’ quivering wet nose.

  The beast shuddered, convulsed, and fell backward screeching. Its hypersensitive nostrils, opening up into its brain, spilled a river of black ooze that coursed down its maw.

  “Just like Mom’s apple pie, eh, shithead?”

  Matthew stood and took a running step up onto the back of the bench and dove through the air, coming down cutting into the freezing lake in a graceless arcing headlong plunge. Underwater he swam as fast as he could, rubbed at the perfume until most of the dried putrid grime dissipated and floated past.

  He recited prayers, guarding him, warding the powers of the infernal, knowing he had not come this far to die so close to the ashes of his home. He was already numb, and growing more numb as he swam.

  When he came up, Adiel squatted tending Mauels at the shore. “You can’t win, Galen. If I’m unable to torment you now then I’ll simply kill you and await our meeting in Hell, where you’ll spend many cycles in my care. The blade is only a prop, as it always was, even in that slum Whitechapel. This shell is costume, you know that, and it is of no consequence.”