The Year's Best Horror Stories 4

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  But terrifying occurrences had seemingly taken place which had come as no surprise to Timothy and his wild talk had clearly established some kind of relationship between his thoughts and the occurrences. Perhaps Moorehouse had been all wrong about the nature of those relationships. But just the fact that they appeared to exist made caution mandatory.

  The shape that had towered above the couch with its eyes malignantly trained on him had dwindled and vanished a few seconds after Timothy had tripped on the stairs and struck his head in falling. It seemed unlikely that the sudden blotting out of Timothy's consciousness could have been totally unrelated to the shape's disappearance. Unanticipated coincidences were perhaps common enough under ordinary circumstances. But when something happened that was both terrifying and unusual how often did coincidence play a role as well? It was asking too much of the law of averages, was loading the dice in a totally unacceptable way.

  Crewson tightened his hold on the wheel of the speeding car, wishing the sea would not come into view so often. The breeze whipped at his hair, setting it to swirling on his brow and occasionally half blinding him.

  Suddenly the long ledge of rock where Forbes's boat was still bobbing about in the tide came into view and all of his apprehension vanished. It was close enough to the cottage now to bring the car flush with the garage, leap out, and cross the lawn in eight or ten long strides.

  Twenty seconds later he was doing just that, the wind still whipping at his hair. He was almost at the door of the cottage when the wind brought so strong an odor of decaying shellfish to his nostrils that he came to an abrupt halt.

  He started to turn, to see if the odor became stronger when he faced the wharf. But before he'd swung completely about he realized it could only be coming from the cottage. The tide was at its full, and there were no mud flats from which it could have been carried by the wind.

  He remained for an instant motionless, facing the door without jerking it open, choosing to listen instead. The slightest sound from within the cottage—light, unhurried footsteps, Anne's voice or that of the children talking back and forth—would have dispelled the fear which had come upon him, and he desperately needed such reassurance. It was worth waiting for five, six, seven seconds. Waiting longer was unthinkable and when no sounds came to his ears he grasped the doorknob, gave it a violent wrench, and entered the cottage in a kind of stumbling rush.

  He almost stumbled over Anne. She was lying slumped on the floor just inside the door, her face drained of all color. He was instantly on his knees at her side, slipping one arm under her shoulder and raising her to a sitting position. She moaned and stirred a little, but he had to shake her and plead with her to say something—anything—before her terrible limpness vanished and she leaned heavily against him, her voice coming in choking gasps.

  "Ralph, it—it's horrible! Half fish, half hairy animal. I tried to—make it let go of Timothy—and it hurled me across the room. Everything went hazy for a minute. I thought—my back was broken. If you hadn't started shaking me—"

  Her hand went out and fastened on his writs. "You've got to get to them. Timothy was screaming and Susan—"

  "Both of the children!" Crewson couldn't seem to breathe. "Where are they? I don't see them!"

  "It dragged Timothy upstairs. And Susan ran after them. I couldn't stop her."

  "All right—careful now," Crewson cautioned. "Just lean back against the wall when I take my arm away. Don't twist about. And don't try to get up."

  "I won't. But hurry, darling! It may not be too late—"

  Crewson got swayingly to his feet, and in another moment was mounting the stairs, ascending to the floor above with a nightmarish feeling of unreality making it hard for him to believe it wasn't happening to someone else.

  Sunlight was streaming in through the two small windows in the upper hallway but there was a swirling curtain of mist at the end of the hall which prevented him from seeing into Timothy's room. Since Timothy seldom closed the door on summer days Crewson didn't expect to find it shut. But the thought that it might be gave him little concern. He felt fully capable of battering it down, and he moved now with a steadiness of purpose which, for an instant, had almost deserted him on the stairs.

  The odor of decaying shellfish became sickening as the mist swirled up about him, forcing him to cover his face with his hand. Then he was inside the room, staring up with his hand lowered, feeling a wetness start up on his forehead and turn into a cold trickling which ran down both cheeks to his throat.

  Timothy was suspended between the floor and ceiling by long tendrils of mist that crisscrossed and held him enmeshed, as if he had stumbled by accident into a vast, glowing spider web and been elevated to its exact center by his own furious struggles to escape.

  Lower down in the web Susan Jane was also enmeshed. But she had seemingly given up struggling and dangled as limply as a calico doll tossed carelessly across a bedpost for the night

  Behind the bed a huge shape towered, beaked and taloned and faintly rimmed with sunlight from a window which its bulk had nine-tenths blocked out

  When Timothy saw his father he stopped struggling so abruptly that his limbs seemed still in motion, for the web continued to tremble for a moment in the same violent way. Timothy could not have looked more frightened and despairing, and that seemed to be keeping him from surrendering to another kind of emotion.

  It was only what he said that startled Crewson and made him stare unbelievingly.

  "If you don't go it will kill you, Dad. I don't want you to die. Tell Mom good bye. I love her very much. You, too, Dad."

  Timothy's voice seemed so startlingly calm and adult it was hard for Crewson to realize it was his own son speaking.

  Crewson's throat had tightened up, and for an instant he could say nothing in reply. His mouth felt as dry as death, and that made speaking even more difficult. But he made a supreme effort, and when he heard himself saying, "No one in this house is going to die, Timothy," his voice seemed even calmer than Timothy's had been.

  "I can't get free, Dad," Timothy said. "And Susan can't either. But if you go right back downstairs it may not kill you."

  "Listen to me," Crewson pleaded. "Stop thinking. Can you do that? Try—make your mind a total blank. I'm not here, you're not here. You're in a different place and you've stopped thinking about anything. You're just waiting for something to happen. It's so wonderful, so certain to happen, you don't even have to give it a thought."

  Crewson suddenly realized that he'd let himself forget that Timothy was only nine. Could a trancelike state, with all immediate awareness blotted out, be self-induced by a boy that young and bring about a change in his conscious thinking? If he failed to comprehend exactly what he was being urged to do—

  Timothy seemed to understand, for his expression changed, and although he continues to look directly at his father an unmistakable look of remoteness began to creep into his eyes.

  "You're far away, Timothy," Crewson murmured. "There's nothing to be afraid of, and you're being protected from all harm and you're not letting anything frighten you. You're thinking about nothing at all, because you know that thinking can make people unhappy for no reason at all."

  It happened more quickly than Crewson had dared to hope. The beaked and darkly towering shape behind the web began to waver and dissolve. First the shining beak vanished and then the ghastly bulk of the creature dwindled and fell away, until nothing remained of it between the web and the window but a few floating filaments of mist that took just a little longer to disappear.

  The web vanished then, in a sudden, almost blinding burst of light and both children tumbled to the floor.

  If Timothy had been shaken up by the fall or was still a little under the sway of the trance that had brought a look of remoteness into his eyes, he displayed no evidence of it. He was almost instantly on his feet, helping his sister to rise.

  As soon as both children were on their feet Crewson hurried them out of the room without saying
a word, gripping Timothy by the wrist and encircling Susan Jane's waist almost fiercely with his free arm. His only thought was to keep Timothy from talking about any part of what had happened until they were downstairs and out of the house and—

  Timothy began remembering before they were halfway down the stairs.

  "Dad, for a minute I didn't know where I was. What happened—"

  "You just now helped Susan to get up," Crewson told him. "You mean—you did that with your mind a blank?"

  "I must have, Dad. How did we get away? It was going to kill me and Susan, and I told you—"

  "Your mother may be badly hurt," Crewson said. "Think about that—nothing else."

  They were at the bottom of the stairs now and Crewson saw with relief that Anne was coming toward them across the sun parlor. She was holding herself very straight and had the look of a fully recovered woman whose only emotion was one of overwhelming gratefulness.

  She started to speak, but her voice broke and although Crewson knew how much time a family reunion could consume he released his tight grip on Timothy and Susan Jane, and let them run straight into Anne's outstretched arms.

  He wasn't sure he had done a wise thing, and spoke almost harshly to make his wife realize that all rejoicing must be cut short.

  "We're getting out of the house and into the car and driving to East Windham right now," he said. "Timothy won't be needing the suitcase I told you to pack. He'll be having the time of his life at a boy's camp—camping, hiking, swimming—well into October. We can buy him everything he'll need in East Windham tomorrow. We may even get there today before the stores close."

  Anne looked at him out of eyes swimming with tears. "You got to them in time," she said. "Nothing else matters. I'll miss Timothy. You know that. But if a boys' summer camp is what you worked out for him with Dr. Moorehouse I won't say a word."

  "He couldn't be any more tanned than he is now," Crewson said. "But otherwise you won't know him when he comes back in October. He'll have a real rough-and-tumble look."

  He gripped his wife's hand and pressed his lips to her cheek.

  "Come on," he said, leading the way to the door. "We haven't a moment to lose."

  The children followed.

  "Thank you, darling," Anne said, as they passed out into the clear, bright sunlight.

  THE MAN WITH THE AURA by R. A. Lafferty

  R. A. Lafferty knows more secrets of the universe than can be found in a room full of Rosicrucians, and he generously shares them with us at the rate of one (or sometimes even more) per story. The following Lafferty gem delves into politics and tells us why so many of us eagerly rush out and vote for Certain Candidates.

  "Nor is that the worst of my troubles, James," said Thomas Castlereagh. "Not only has my conscience begun to gnaw me, but my doctor tells me that I will be dead within a month."

  "Good God, Thomas! I thought you were in perfect health," his friend James Madigan cried out in real alarm.

  "Not perfect, but, James, I'm of sound body for a man of my age."

  "But your doctor said—"

  "That he intends to kill me. I've given him reason."

  That was the evening that Thomas Castlereagh told his full story to James Madigan. Halfheartedly he had tried to tell it several times before. He hadn't been believed. He had only gained the reputation of being a delightful man with a certain outré humor.

  He wasn't. He had no humor at all.

  But he had everything else: robust pink-faced health; gold-edged security and impregnable wealth; familial abundance in his later years as recompense for his earlier sorrows; and the glowing regard of every person in America.

  Castlereagh served on many committees and national forums. His heading-up of any body guaranteed its integrity and success. No president felt properly inaugurated unless Castlereagh stood by his side. His was the most sought-after endorsement in the country. He was Respectability.

  Any description of the man would be trite beside the man himself. His face had become the Face of America at its best.

  Rumley had done him. Cassell had done him in the magnificent portrait now in the Great Portraits Room of the Tate Gallery. Arestino had done him. But the finest portraits could give no real indication of the man himself. Anyone in his presence was always pleasantly shaken by the experience. Words cannot give an account of it, though the Castlereagh voice and words were a large part of the effect

  Castlereagh's three sons were respected and notable. Charles had much of the father's business ability and of his pervading charisma. John Thomas was a doctorate professor, and the author of an exciting text, Theoretical Extrapolated Mechanics. Robert Adrian was a gifted artist. All inherited in part from the father's amazing gifts, but all would stand in his shadow forever.

  And Castlereagh's wife was Letitia, an international beauty known equally for her wit and sparkle and for her nearly too perfect beauty.

  And the graciousness and grace of the man failed in nothing. He had brought a new dimension to goodness. He was perfected in fame and fortune; and perfection is not perfect if it ever fails in anything.

  Castlereagh's visitor of this night was James Madigan, a Cabinet Member, Secretary of Crime Prevention. But Madigan was in a bleak mood, even in the golden presence of Castlereagh.

  "Thomas, the country, the society, is in the worst shape ever," he deplored. "The very idea of honesty has become comical. We have been afraid to publish the revised crime index for the last six months; I doubt if we will ever publish it again; it's horrible. The very appearance of character has all but vanished from the human face. Perhaps that is why you yourself are so remarkable, Thomas."

  "Coals of fire, James! But they don't burn me much. I'm well insulated."

  "What, Thomas? I believe that I catch a glint of your fine humor there, and I certainly need it tonight. How the crimes do weigh on me!"

  "Ah, the crimes!" said Castlereagh. "Murder and arson aren't important in themselves. The effect on a man becomes serious only when followed by a certain hardening. But a man who has done these things to the point of ennui and who has built upon them may eventually become a little coarse. I've seen it happen to others. Who can say that I am immune? Drink, James."

  They were drinking brandy together. The words of Castlereagh seemed delightfully humorous. It was the puckish twist of the mouth, it was the laughing eyebrows, it was the dancing gray of the eyes, the complexity of the voice.

  "I enjoy your piquant humor, Thomas," said Madigan as he savored and sipped the drink that had an aura beyond all others. "There is something beyond hilarity in the idea that you could ever be criminal, or coarse. But even your drollery can hardly distract me tonight. When I was younger I believed that there was nothing darker than a crime of sheer passion. Now I know that there is something much worse. Do you know what it is?"

  "I know it as well as I know the face behind my face, James. But it is you who are in full eloquence. Go on."

  "It is the crime without passion, Thomas, the crime almost without interest. The most vile things are done daily in the most offhand manner. It is a thing colder and more horrifying than sadism. If only I could discover the roots of it! If I could find one clear stripped-down example to study. Thomas, I might develop a specific against this venom."

  "I can give you one, Madigan. I will give you a chance to study at close range a man who has had more opportunities for evil and has made more use for them than anyone in the world. Listen, and believe. It is important to me that someone finally believe.

  "Madigan, I am about to tell you the story of my life. I realize that those are the most fearsome words that one man can ever say to another, but do not be alarmed; I have the virtue of brevity.

  "I was named Tom Shanty, James, and not Thomas Castlereagh. I've come a ways from the shanty to the royal castle, which is the meaning of Castlereagh. The name, you see, James, is one element of the aura. I was a sickly boy and the most luckless ever; and perhaps the most dishonest. The police suspected me of
every misdemeanor in our neighborhood, and they were right to suspect me. My appearance was against me. I was a fox-faced sneak."

  "You, Thomas? Mr. Distinction himself? This is good. On with your tale."

  "I was fox-smart and fox-mean. But a fox is hunted uncommonly, James, before he learns his trade. I was unsuccessful in all my jobs and all my thieveries, and was always poor. I worked for a dishonest photographic portraitist. We collected for these, but we did not deliver them. The samples I showed always made the sale. And this means experience was the beginning of my success. The touchups really were fabulous. My employer was a genius at this—when he chose to work at it. I myself am now a compendium of his best touchups. I learned what the face of respectability and distinction looked like.

  "I worked for a dishonest electronics man. We did bad work for high prices on TV, VVV, and Replica sets. Being fox-smart I picked up technical knowledge. I learned what things may be translated into waves, including things not commonly thought to be translated.

  "I worked for con men. I was bad at this, and my masters were good. I understood quickly why this was so. They had natural advantages for it, and I did not. I had decided to create these advantages for myself unnaturally. More brandy, James?"

  "Thank you. It's a droll old brandy you serve, and a droller tale you serve up. Go on, Thomas."

  "I spent time in the pokey. My face and my aspect were always against me. They drew the finger of suspicion correctly to me every time. Then I became that lowest life-form, an unsuccessful inventor.

  "I married a quiet and rather short-witted girl who was quietly repelled by me. My luck worsened. There came the day when there was no prospect of any job, honest or dishonest; and there was nothing to eat in the house. Little Fox-face had come to the bottom of his burrow.

  "But on that lowest day I had completed a crude model of my oddest invention. I named it the aura machine."