The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 1: Nightmare Seasons (Necon Classic Horror)

by Charles L. Grant

  “Have you seen any of them tonight?” he asked.

  The first woman shook her head. “Heard them, though. They must have stripped that poor man’s house, from the sounds of it.”

  “How do you figure, Mrs. . . .”

  The second woman walked away, spitting on the street.

  “Ferguson,” she said. “Mrs. Howard Ferguson. I heard them.

  Yep, I heard them. Sounded like they was dragging a piano off, for god’s sake.”

  Sam shuddered and looked away.

  Whispersoft.

  Hancock put an arm around the woman’s shoulders and thanked her as he led her back to her group of friends, who surrounded her quickly, chattering while their glances kept bouncing off Sam.

  “Interesting,” the policeman said, and said it again when Sam told him about her conversation with Reg, the conversation and the interruption. She was about to ask him angrily if that was all he could say when a sudden shift of bodies toward the woods forestalled her, a movement accompanied by a man’s summoning call. Hancock instructed her to stay where she was and ran off. She obeyed him. She didn’t want to know what they had discovered, sensing nevertheless that it would be something like Malcolm.

  She waited alone in the middle of the street, moving only when an ambulance squealed around the comer and headed for the concentration of lights at the block’s end. Roadblocks were being set up, and the black air was chopped by darting spotlights that froze the trees against themselves and made all movement seem jerky and uncoordinated. She rubbed the bottom of one foot against her leg, had shifted to the other when Hancock returned and asked if she wouldn’t mind riding with him back to the station; just long enough, he assured her gently, to dictate a statement. And while she was there, sitting at his desk behind the low wooden railing, she overheard two patrolmen talking as they came in, one of them threatening not very seriously to resign if “this damned stuff kept up,” the other insisting that the lower half of Craig’s body had not been cut off with an ax, but bitten at and tom.

  Hancock barely got her into the restroom before she threw up. And when it was done, her face wiped dry with paper towels and her hair shoved clumsily and uncaringly back into place, she saw Vince waiting for her outside. She didn’t care what Hancock or the others thought; she dropped into his surprised embrace and allowed herself to weep, to shudder at the ice that had replaced her blood, to let him drive her home and sit with her in the parlour while she tried to make some sense of Reg’s killing.

  “It’s me,” she said at one point, and felt him stiffen briefly.

  Pushing herself away and into the comer of the couch, she wiped an already damp handkerchief over her face. “I mean, first Mal and now Reg. I knew them, Vince, I knew them.”

  “So did I,” he said softly. He was in shirtsleeves and dark trousers, his hair tousled and face lined as he’d gotten out of bed to come to her. “So did a lot of people, for that matter.”

  “Well, I suppose . . . but they were in love with me.”

  A single lamp cast tasseled shadows over the floor. He stared at them and brushed both hands through his hair. “There are others,” he said.

  A walnut Seth Thomas perched on the radio chimed the half hour.

  “Maybe I’m a jinx,” she whispered.

  “Sure. And Shirley Temple’s a hooker.”

  “I mean it, Vince,” she said, straightening as the notion took hold, found sense, if not reason. “Look, suppose somebody wants me so badly that he’s willing to kill for it. Kind of like getting rid of the opposition.”

  “Good God,” he said, barely hiding his disgust, “you go to too many movies, for crying out loud.” He yanked a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and offered her one. She shook her head, and he took it for himself, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling and glaring at it. “That’s Ellery Queen stuff, Sam. Come on, you’re smarter than that. Besides . . .” He sighed.

  “You want me to give a call to Dave?”

  Her voice was cold: “Why?”

  He smiled. “It’s not because I think you’re cracking up, m’dear. I meant, to get a sedative from him. You’re not going to get much sleep, you know.”

  That much was true. But if he were trying to force her off the subject, he had failed. Once lodged, the idea that there was someone out there who was willing to do . . . to mutilate in order to isolate her took root and would not be ignored. She attempted again to explain it to him, and again he scoffed, albeit gently.

  “For the sake of argument, however,” he said, easing back into his own corner and crossing his legs, “let’s say that it’s true. Who, then, are you thinking of? Danny? The kid is a born womanizer, you know that as well as I do. And the only person he really loves is himself. I was in on that little byplay with Reg at the office, remember? You saw what happened: the boy is too easily provoked, and just as easily distracted.”

  “Maybe.”

  He laughed. “No maybes about it, Sam. He is still a kid, a half-baked, slightly weird teenager who’s looking for a quick way to grow up. Although, if I do say so myself, he is quite the chip off the old office block, as it were.” His laughter grew when she looked at him, shocked. “Well, come on, Sam! Why not consider me? You know ... “ He faltered. “Well, you know what I think, Sam. But please don’t take offense when I tell you that I’m not about to risk the pleasures of the electric chair just to win your favors. I do it my way, or no way at all.”

  “Then . . . who?”

  “Then nobody, for god’s sake,” he said sternly. “Sam, for a broker you’re one lousy plotter. It does happen in real life, you know. People who know other people die. They get killed. There is no connection, Sam, only coincidence. Rotten, to be sure, but it’s still coincidence.”

  She wanted to believe him, wanted to agree, and allowed him to think she did until he was unable to stifle a yawn and she urged him out of the house. And once alone, in the kitchen and standing in front of the stove, she stared at the blue gas flame and prayed he was right. Otherwise . . .

  When she slept, just before dawn, there were dreams of walking through the zoo, alone, at night. And in each cage she passed there was a creature—lion, tiger, serpent, something—feeding on pieces of people she knew. Yet she was not revolted; the screams that she heard were the screams of the dying. It wasn’t until she reached the last cage and the largest that she saw her own face lacerated, her own chest devoured. Then she screamed. And then she woke up.

  When she walked to the office, then, she found herself staring at faces. Round, oval, squared, florid, pasty, puffed, trying to see behind the mask to the world and through the eyes to the motivations behind. She found herself flinching whenever someone accidentally brushed against her, starting when a horn blared, shivering whenever she was forced through shadow. By the time she reached her desk her hands were trembling, and she could feel her heart working twice its normal pace to keep her from fainting. Foolish. It was all so damned foolish it made perfect sense. The only thing she didn’t understand was the method.

  By ten o’clock she had had enough. Her eyes weren’t working, and her mind kept wandering. Since Danny hadn’t come in and Angie seemed as nerve-shot as she—the same as after Malcolm, she thought, with a sigh almost relief—she closed the office down and went to the park to think. Sat near the pond and watched the ducks feeding, felt the sun crawl over her, the air chill toward twilight. Returned home saddened because during the whole time she hadn’t seen one small child playing with a pet, realized that people had started walking their dogs in pairs, in groups, and she wondered if Tom had made any progress there.

  And for some reason, that problem seemed as important as hers. Or minor, she thought when she took a look at herself before going to bed.

  Vince called to bid her good night.

  The zoo dream returned, longer and more vivid.

  The Station Herald claimed there was a bear loose in the hills. At the office she kept her door closed, wondering if it
was possible for an animal like that to be trained to kill.

  By noon she was beginning to think she was playing Ingrid Bergman to someone’s Charles Boyer; except that someone was obviously herself, and it was her own continuing reaction to Mal’s death that was nudging her toward the edge.

  She ate lunch by herself, but once done she opened the door and saw Vince on the telephone, Angie at the switchboard, Danny puttering up the aisle with a broom in his hand. Normal. The first shock was over and it was all perfectly normal. Even to the point of John Nesbitt calling in from the Cape, telling her his car had broken down and he would be a couple of days late getting back to work. Every year. Every . . . year. It was normal.

  She leaned against the jamb and watched as Danny stopped by Vince’s desk and began talking. She overheard fragments, enough to understand that the police had rousted the hobo camp near the tracks, had nearly a dozen of them at the station now for questioning. Danny suspected they were grasping at straws, and she was surprised when Vince snapped at him angrily, driving the boy back to his work. When he finally reached the back of the office she smiled and asked him in for a moment.

  His hands immediately burrowed into his pockets, his gaze stayed on her desktop, everything about his stance readying for a scolding.

  “Hey,” she said lightly, “you’re not fired, you know.”

  His grin was more relief than mirth. “I didn’t mean to bother him. Thought he wanted to hear things, that’s all.”

  “It’s all right, Danny. He’s probably overtired. He was up late last night with me.” Then she couldn’t help a short laugh at his consternation. “He picked me up at the police station and took me home, Danny. I . . . well, Mr. Craig was on the phone with me when it happened.”

  Danny nodded his sympathy. “Yeah, I heard. That’s terrible, Miss England, and I’m sorry. Things like that shouldn’t happen to you.” His face brightened suddenly. “You could have called me, you know. I would have helped you.”

  “Well, I appreciate the thought, Danny, really.”

  He looked away to the floor. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

  ”I’m not.”

  “I mean, I—”

  “That,” she said carefully, “is quite enough, don’t you think?”

  He nodded dejectedly, and she almost spoke to console him, decided against it and picked up a pencil instead to roll between her palms. “Tell me something, Danny. You’re on the street a lot. Do you think those men they picked up—or one of them, anyway—had anything to do with . . . Mr. Craig?” She had tried to sound offhanded, but her voice nearly cracked and she had to clear her throat twice to prevent a coughing spasm. Dumb, she told herself; even Danny would be the first to agree.

  “Oh, no,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder, back again and leaned closer. “I mean, just look at—well, I mean, just look at it, Miss England. You’d have to be crazy to do something like that.” He was nearly crouching now, his face masked conspiratorially. “I get around, you know? I read the paper this morning, that thing about the bears and I think it’s right. People think there’re too many houses and stuff out here, too many people, but in the spring some of them always come back. You ask the farmers out in the valley, they’ll tell you. They usually keep away—the bears, I mean—but sometimes they like to take after the garbage, things like that. Take my word for it, Miss England, them cops going to find themselves a winter-mad bear once they get going.”

  She stared at him blankly, just long enough to start a frown on her brow. Then, remembering her near-hysteria with Vince the other night, the article, and her search for the elusive “method” of killing, she said, “Amazing.”

  “Huh?”

  She gestured at him vaguely. “Nothing. I was just thinking, Danny, just thinking. You know, sometimes people can really be dense, really stupid.” She hesitated. “Danny, are you still planning to see Artie Shaw this weekend?”

  His eyes widened and his chin sagged. “Holy cow, Miss—”

  “Nonono,” she said quickly, smiling and shaking her head.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m still not ready for you yet, Danny. But I know a man, a customer, and he’s what you call a promoter, who just might be able to see to it you don’t lack for space right at the bandstand.”

  Disappointment almost angrily bitter was replaced by something she could only label awe. “You mean it?” “When she nodded he started for the door, stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “But what did I do?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Miss England, you don’t have to tell me nothin’ twice.”

  He ducked out laughing, and she had to restrain herself from blowing a kiss after him. From the mouths of babes, she thought. A bear. A stupid . . . bear. An animal is what her dreams had been trying to tell her, but she had been so caught up in her own egocentric theory that she’d blocked all reason out. The newspaper, Danny, and Vince had all been right. Coincidences and animals. And when she called Tom Hancock, she found out there’d been a hunting party in the hills since yesterday’s dawn. It might also, he said, explain all those damned missing cats and dogs.

  The nose on your face, she thought, is never quite so plain as you think it is.

  Ten minutes after she rang off, Vince left behind a plea of a splitting headache. Angie was gone at the first stroke of five, and Danny was right behind her. Through the drawn curtains and the door’s window shade, the glow from Centre Street’s lights reminded her of the moonhaze that presaged a storm. “Last again,” she muttered as she cleared her desk and reached for the cardigan on her office rack. It was getting to be a habit she would just as soon not perpetuate. Uncle Leonard and his business aside, she would rather not be saddled with the reputation of being all work and no play. Smiling ruefully, then, she paused on the threshold, looking out over the desks to the black wall of the first partition. Funny, but Vince hadn’t asked her out since she’d returned from the hospital. Perhaps it was in deference to Mal’s death, and perhaps she had put him off too strongly over the winter. Whatever the reason, she didn’t like it and decided it was time to contrive a business lunch at the Inn . . .

  . . . and heard the sound as clearly as she heard her breath catch in her throat.

  thin ice clinging to black water, sighs slipping from the lips of dead men still dying

  In the far corner by the front door, a shadow that seemed a blackshade darker than those around it. An exhalation, like slow sighing steam escaping from the radiators that humped against the walls.

  Whispersoft.

  She almost grabbed for her door to slam it shut, to lock herself in her office until someone came to find her. But her hand stayed, and she moved slowly toward Vince’s desk, her feet shuffling over the carpet, her knees slightly bent as her left hand stretched out to sweep for obstacles that might betray her. She paused only once, thinking she would call out for an explanation, to tell the intruder she kept no money here and she would not call the police if he would only leave her alone. And at the same time she was amazed to realize she was more cautious than afraid, feeling as yet unthreatened by whoever was watching.

  Her thumb brushed over the desk’s corner. She stopped again, straining through the lightglow to the darkness at its side, seeing nothing now but pinpoints of color like static that refused to be dialed into sound.

  She tilted her head; the shadow was there.

  And now there was fear as the room filled with the steamnoise, the hissing, the steady patient waiting.

  She glanced quickly to her left at the alley door and its bar latch. Plenty of time to reach it. And if she were quick enough she might be able to get to the street and grab someone to help her. She was known. Most of them out there knew her by sight if not by introduction, and they would know she wasn’t a drinker, was sufficiently stolid not to be called unseemly.

  The shadow waited.

  With her fingers to guide her she inched past the desk, barely avoiding a collision with the chair. Now she was beg
inning to feel more than silly. She felt again she should call out, threaten the police, maybe throw something and run. She should, but she could not because it was only a shadow slightly darker than the others, and the hissing in her ears could indeed be the steam. Too much, they would say; first her uncle, then her lover, then the rock of the firm. Too much to handle for a woman these days.

  The shadow began to melt.

  She saw it and she didn’t believe it: it appeared to flow into the comer, slip down toward the floor. She whirled and started for the door . . . and screamed when the door shade suddenly snapped up, racheting around its bar, the loop slapping the pane.

  She screamed, and she bolted, hands out, shoulder plunging open the door and slamming it hard against the outside wall. She didn’t wait for it to close; she sprinted down the alley toward the street, ready to shout at the first person she saw. Her shin clipped a trash can, and it crashed loudly behind her. She nearly fell headlong when she kicked something soft on the ground. The door clicked shut, and she closed her eyes tightly.

  And she was unable to find her voice until something grabbed at her arm.

  a shifting a settling an expectant satisfaction

  “Miss England . . . I . . . really, I’m sorry!”

  She fell back against the plate glass and looked up at the sky.

  An uncontrollable quivering had spread through her legs, and a pulse ticked a warning of a headache at her right temple. “Danny,” she said tightly, barely moving her lips, “if you ever do that to me again, I swear I’ll skin you alive.”

  “Honest, Miss England, I didn’t mean it! You were running, and I thought you were going to fall so I . . . god, Miss England, I’m really sorry.”

  “All right, all right,” she said, just to keep him quiet. He’d begun his babbling the moment she had yelped at his touch, and he’d released her only when she tugged at her arm. When she finally lowered her gaze to meet his, not even his hangdog expression moved her to relent. “What the hell are you doing here?” she said.