The Best New Horror 6

by Stephen Jones

  This, despite her growing drug habit.

  It had started with a little coke and smack at those parties where she wound up screwing important producers who weren’t really producers for important films that never seemed to materialize. And it went on. No stardom. The drugs helped. Niane kept reminding herself that she never took money for screwing on the casting couch. Her only receipts were broken promises and tracks on her arms.

  Niane wanted to go home, wherever that was. She saved some money from tips waiting at the topless bars, made a good bit more dancing nude, and, while she refused to admit it to herself, turned a few tricks for customers whom she really did like and who gave her enough money for smack and crack. One night stands was all. She wasn’t a prostitute.

  Niane was gang-raped one night at a crack house. She was stoned, didn’t remember how many and didn’t care at the time. She seemed to remember that she owed them some money. Afterward, they gagged her and threw her naked body into a dumpster with her wrists bound and her ankles tied back to a noose around her neck. Then they left her to die in garbage. An example to other bitches.

  A bag lady, sleeping inside the dumpster beneath the trash, awoke and found Niane writhing in death throes. She untied her before Niane had completely strangled, and somehow summoned the police.

  Niane could tell them nothing. Her only clear memory was of strange dreams as she lay dying in the trash.

  Her beating was severe enough to hospitalize her for more than a week. She confessed to her drug addiction as soon as the withdrawal started. They put her on methadone, Valium and Xanax, and sent her packing once she could walk. Niane was pleased that there would be no scars.

  So she hurriedly withdrew her savings – enough for a plane ticket and some to live on – packed whatever she had worth packing, and caught the first flight to Knoxville, Tennessee. The boys at the crack house would be looking for her, this time with bullets to make sure of the job. They wouldn’t bother looking as far as Tennessee for a few hundred bucks, and Niane had a girlfriend from Nashville who now worked in Knoxville. Crash space and maybe a job.

  Niane’s friend worked at Kim’s Klub. She was a statuesque black woman named Navonna Wardlow – about three years Niane’s senior and about five inches taller than Niane’s five-foot-six. Navonna had danced at one of the topless bars in Nashville where Niane had worked the tables. They had stayed in touch after both had left Nashville without stardom. Kim’s Klub had opened in Knoxville, and Navonna got a job as waitress/dancer and was in a position to get Niane work there. Good pay, yuppie tips, and crisp bills stuffed into your G-string when you stripped.

  Navonna had a bag of bootleg Demerols in her purse, and Niane needed them really badly. But Navonna knew the signs, and Niane was already into her for fifty bucks and her half of the rent money. Niane had been a little overindulgent with her prescriptions. She was running low, trying to stretch them for another few days until she could renew them, and she really needed some Demerols to see her through. And Navonna wouldn’t let her have them. And here they’d been pillow mates for several months now. And she’d even let Navonna wear some of her dresses from Los Angeles. The ones she’d worn to auditions. And the red bustier she’d bought at Frederick’s of Hollywood. And Navonna was really too tall for Niane’s size. It wasn’t fair.

  It was almost an accident. Niane’s hands were sweaty as she filled a carafe from the coffee urn, but she deliberately let it spill onto her hand as it tipped. She screamed. She hadn’t known it would hurt this much.

  The staff made a fuss. The manager was upset. Navonna sat with her in the employees’ rest room and wondered if she might not need to see a doctor for the scald. Niane said there was no need for that, but she could use some Demerol for the pain. Navonna took her back to their dressing room and gave Niane her packet of Demerols. She would look in on Niane in a few minutes.

  Marti, a blonde from Crossville, finished her striptease and came in not long after to exchange her G-string for her surplus Bunny corselet. She asked Niane to help her into it. At first she thought Niane was just having a nap. Niane was barely breathing. The Demerols were gone. Marti screamed for help.

  Navonna didn’t wait for the ambulance. She picked Niane up in her arms, rushed out to one of the taxis that cruised Kim’s Klub, and had the driver rush to the nearest hospital emergency room. She performed CPR as best she could as they drove.

  The driver had heard many stories of cabbies with women having babies in the back seat on the way to the hospital, but never one of two bimbos in frayed Bunny costumes going at it in a cab. Despite the distraction, he made it to the hospital in time.

  Navonna was carrying her in her arms. They were both wearing only their G-strings, but that was OK, as the leaves were stripping from the trees and fluttering down about them. Niane wanted to say something, but Navonna just said, “Hush now, baby,” and pressed her breast into Niane’s mouth as she carried her along. It was a pathway through wooded mountains – the mountains of Niane’s childhood home. She sucked at Navonna’s breast, tasting her warm, rich milk.

  The fluttering leaves. They weren’t leaves. Only made to look like leaves. Camouflage. They were more like tiny flying manta rays of some sort.

  Beneath their leaf camouflage they had gills, or gill slits, and tiny sharp teeth in rows within wide mouths. Their bellies were white; their eyes coldly rapacious.

  They began to land upon her, biting. Niane tried to warn Navonna, but Navonna only pressed Niane’s mouth harder against her breast, walking steadfastly through the attacking flurry of flying creatures. The leaf-mantas were settling all over both of their nude bodies – biting, sucking.

  “She’s coming around now,” Dr Greenfeld told a frightened Navonna. They had given her a white lab coat to cover her costume and told her to wait in the lobby of the ER. Two patients had mistaken her for a doctor.

  Dr Greenfeld was a stout, fortyish, very efficient, very much overworked woman. She was a little too aggressive for Navonna’s liking.

  “Thank God,” murmured Navonna.

  “Got her here not a minute too soon. Must have been fifty Demerol we pumped from her stomach. Where did she get them?”

  “I have no idea. I do know she has prescriptions for methadone, Valium and Xanax.”

  “What sort of fool would prescribe that witch’s brew!”

  “I can’t say,” Navonna stammered. She hated hospitals. “It was in Los Angeles. She was raped and beaten, left for dead. I think she had been on drugs before that.”

  Dr Greenfeld’s tone softened, but remained brisk. “I see.” She glanced at her chart. “And you, Ms Calloway. What is your relationship to Ms Liddell?”

  “We’re co-workers and share an apartment.”

  Dr Greenfeld had seen their costumes and did not comment. “Next of kin?”

  “None that I know of. She’s from somewhere in Campbell County. I met her in Nashville when we both had stars in our eyes. Look, I can help cover her bill.”

  “That’s a job for accounting. Just now we’ll keep her here under observation until I’m certain that overdose has cleared her system. After that, I’m signing commitment papers, in as much as she is clearly a danger to herself, if not to others.”

  “But she scalded her hand, that was all!”

  “We’ll see that she receives treatment for her substance abuse problems. If she responds well to therapy, I don’t expect her to be an in-patient very long. What idiot prescribed her medications! Oh, and we’ll need your signature on this.”

  “Hello, Ms Liddell. I’m Dr Ashford. But please feel free to call me Keith, if that will make you feel more at ease.”

  “Then please call me Niane. When will I get out of here?”

  Niane was uncertain, but she guessed she had been on the locked psychiatric ward for about a month. Suicide precautions had been dropped. She had been weaned from her witch’s brew of medications and was now coasting along on a minor dose of Mellaril. Someone still seemed to think she neede
d medication of some sort. She didn’t know why.

  “I’ve arranged for a sort of half-way house in the mountains,” said Dr Ashford. “It’s a sort of old resort hotel, nothing fancy, built in the ’20s, and usually rented out to church groups. It’s quiet there, and I’ve already convinced a number of recovering addicts and other patients to spend the week there, sharing experiences, undergoing counseling, before taking the step back to the real world. I feel that this is an excellent therapy opportunity, and, in view of your excellent progress here, I consider you an excellent candidate. This is completely voluntary, of course. What do you say?”

  “Excellent,” said Niane. She’d kill to get out of this prison.

  “Excellent,” agreed Dr Ashford.

  He was thirty-something, tall and very good looking, with wavy brown hair and neatly trimmed beard. Behind his faux tortoise-rimmed glasses, his eyes were a mild hazel. He wore a loose linen jacket, beige, no tie on a blue button-down collar shirt, and beige cotton Dockers with neat Reeboks. Niane guessed he drove a BMW. She guessed right.

  “Can my roommate come along? She’s come to visit nearly every day. I don’t know how I’d have made it without her.”

  “Close friends?”

  “Very close.”

  “Then I don’t see why not. Others are bringing family members. Perhaps she’d like to participate in group, or just take in the view.”

  Dr Ashford leaned forward in his chair. “I understand you’ve had two near-death experiences.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “From your charts, of course. After all, I am a consulting psychiatrist with full hospital privileges. It was by my advice that you weren’t given ECT – that’s shock treatment. Totally uncalled for.”

  “Just get me out of here.”

  “I’ll see to all the arrangements.”

  It was a decaying 1920s resort hotel currently named “The Brookstone Haven.” Staff were minimal – this was off-season – and the place had gone to seed. Sprawling pine logs and cement-chinked construction, bathrooms down the hall. Mountain stream flowing beneath double overhanging verandas. Stream-fed pool that no one would want to jump into even in summer. Just now it was spitting snow.

  Niane thought of her mountain home in Campbell County.

  Navonna was having a blast. She bounced up and down on their creaky bed. “Hey, we’re in a Boris Karloff movie, baby! Just send Bela Lugosi in for me. Man, it’s so good to see you out of that place and feeling better. We’re going to party here, honey. Then back to work at Kim’s Klub until we find something better. We’ll do it, girl!”

  Navonna hugged her. “God, girl, I’ve sure missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you,” said Niane.

  Navonna usually wore a wig and had a very short Afro, and that night Niane clung to her hair as best she could, driving Navonna’s mouth deep between her thighs. Once she had climaxed, she buried her face between Navonna’s legs, loving her frantically. The antique bed creaked and rattled awfully, and they were probably keeping whoever was next door awake, but neither cared. It had been a long time apart.

  It was still spitting snow the next morning when Dr Ashford greeted them at breakfast. Scrambled eggs, country ham, red-eye gravy, grits. If you don’t want grits, why’d you order breakfast, as the saying goes.

  There were Niane and Navonna, somewhat red-eyed as well. Dr Ashford and Dr Greenfeld, both looking cheerful. Niane hadn’t realized that Dr Greenfeld was a psychiatrist until several days after her dimly remembered overdose.

  The coffee was good. It smelled like Navonna.

  There were about a dozen others in the group, some of whom had brought along spouses or friends for support.

  Darla King was a burnt out punker, hostile attitude, who had recently nearly overdosed on smack. Dressed in black, hennaed hair, cute, looked ten years older than she was.

  Nathan Morheim was here with his wife. A stroke had left him in a coma for weeks, and his mind had never really recovered. He was a pudgy old man with a happy smile.

  Janet Dickson was a chronic schizophrenic, now maintained on Prolixin. When off her medication, she liked to slash her wrists – once nearly fatally. She looked like an aging diner waitress.

  Maurice Crossman had come apart in ’Nam. Parts of his guts were still there. Medics didn’t give him a chance, but they dusted him off anyway, and he lived to come back, and he did just fine until the screaming would start again.

  Sissy Dexter was a pert blonde teenager. She wasn’t wearing a silly helmet when her ten-speed hit an angry Doberman and her head hit the curb. She could joke about getting last rites, and she was through the worst of it.

  Jeff Vickery was younger than Sissy. He had a problem with crack, in that he smoked a little too much one night, went into cardiac arrest, and by the time paramedics had him ticking, his brain had taken a licking. His mother was with him.

  Alice Shepherd had choked on a bite of steak at a restaurant. By the time someone performed the Heimlich maneuver, she had suffered permanent neurological damage. Her walker and her sister accompanied her.

  Daniel Chase was a chronic schizophrenic taking two grams of Thorazine a day. Once, when he forgot his medication, he jumped in front of a bus to tell the driver that he was Jesus. The driver couldn’t stop in time to hear the rest.

  Tami Malone was a juvenile diabetic. As if acting out her teenage angst, she forgot to take her insulin on occasion in order to get attention. One such occasion had left her near death. Her mother huddled close to her, eating unbuttered toast as an example.

  All of this and more Niane confided to Navonna following their first morning group session. Navonna had passed the time reading a Stephen King novel. She had a trailer-load of Demerol hidden in her suitcase, but she wasn’t about to let Niane know.

  “Let’s go for a walk in the snow!” Niane invited. “It really reminds me of home. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas . . .”

  “Yes. Let’s do it!” Navonna was so pleased to see Niane back to life once again. That thought stirred another thought, and she thought about that thought as she dressed for outside.

  It was a typical east Tennessee snow flurry. Ground frozen enough to hold the flakes, not enough snow to cover the ground. All gone the next day. Unless more came down.

  Some of the others were walking about. Niane tried to make snowballs to throw at Navonna, but couldn’t scrape up enough of the meager dusting.

  They walked giggling along the gravel road, past a series of outbuildings. Garages, storage sheds, individual cabins. All in long disuse. The snow continued to flurry about them.

  Niane was determined to make a snowball. She scraped bits of snow from the gravel as they walked.

  She stopped suddenly. “Oh! What’s this?”

  “Roadkill. Yuck!” Navonna turned away.

  “But what is it?” Niane carefully picked it up from the snow.

  The carcass was flattened and desiccated, about twelve inches in length. Niane at first thought it was a monkey, but this had tiny horns and bat’s wings. She flipped it in disgust toward the base of a tall pine tree.

  “Squashed prop from Wizard of Oz.” said Navonna, peaking. “Leave it lay there. Probably some weird kind of bat from these mountains, and bats can carry rabies. Best you go wash your hands.”

  Niane rubbed her hands on her jeans. That didn’t look like any bat she’d ever seen. Endangered species? Escaped from a zoo?

  “We need to get back. Dr Ashford has us scheduled for another group session after lunch.”

  That night, as they nestled together, Niane suddenly said: “I know what the common denominator is here. With the patients.”

  Navonna was almost asleep. They had wrestled about in a delicious sixty-nine for what seemed like hours. “What denominator? Go to sleep, honey.”

  Niane sat up in bed and persisted. “We’ve all of us had near-death experiences.”

  “Tell me about it in the morning.” Navonna rolled over and gave h
er a reassuring hug, urging her back to her pillow.

  Niane had a morning session with Dr Ashford. She hadn’t taken any Mellaril since leaving the hospital, so she begged another Demerol from Navonna to steady her nerves. It cleared the furtive movements she kept seeing at the edge of her vision.

  Dr Ashford was in his usual positive mood, exuding calm and confidence. “Well, Niane. Please sit down. You seem much more chipper this morning. The mountain air is doing you good, despite this inclement weather.”

  “Thank you, Dr Ashford.”

  “Please do call me Keith, if it makes you feel more comfortable. I like to establish an informal rapport with my patients.” He was dressed from an L.L. Bean catalogue and very relaxed.

  “All right then, Keith.”

  After the usual preamble, Keith said that Niane was doing very well in group; Niane said that it was a relief to be off drugs and that she had no more suicidal thoughts.

  “Let’s explore this,” Keith suggested. “You were nearly murdered in Los Angeles. What were your final thoughts?”

  Niane wanted another Demerol. “I can’t really say. I was really stoned before the . . . the . . . before it all started. I remember being pulled from a car trunk, then a rope tightening about my throat. It hurt. Then I was thrown into a dumpster. Garbage covered my face. There was laughter. I blacked out. Then there were the police.”

  Keith studied some notes, made some more. “According to police reports you may have been unconscious for several minutes before the homeless person managed to untie you. You told the police that you had had strange dreams as you were dying. What sort of dreams?”

  Niane was definitely getting another Demerol after this session. Navonna had hidden her stash, but she knew where to look. “I was walking naked through the snow, back in Campbell County where I grew up. There were things crawling all about. At first I thought they were sticks or snakes, but then I saw they were more like – what do you call them? – lamprey eels. Like leeches. They had sucking mouths all lined with teeth. They began biting me all over, and I couldn’t pull them off!