A Haunting of Horrors, Volume 2: A Twenty-Book eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Brian Hodge

  Adam’s stomach ached with hunger, but he focused on coffee. The stench of grease from the kitchen in the back helped push his appetite aside. It would be daylight soon, and he had to decide whether he needed to do some more thinking, or less. Not that the images crowding his head left much room for debate.

  The place was alight with fluorescence. Grimy white tubes of energized gas lit the grill, the counter, and its row of stools. White metal ceiling lights illumined every booth.

  Adam hesitated. There was a blonde woman, fortyish, her hair pulled back but escaping in frazzled ringlets over the scarf that held it, seated near the center of the counter. No one else was present except the thin, dark haired kid running the grill and the register. He wasn’t cooking at the moment. The woman nursed a cup of coffee, eyes downcast, and smoked quietly.

  Adam moved to the counter and took a seat several stools away from the woman, but not at the end. He didn’t want to seem rude; he just needed to think. In the corner, a 20" television with a grainy picture flickered. News. Nothing good there, never was. For the moment, Adam ignored it, but the glow of the screen brought back images of his computer monitor, and that was a memory lane he wasn’t ready to stroll down just yet.

  The dark haired kid moved closer. He had a dirty towel over one arm, and he watched Adam as if he’d interrupted the Superbowl. The boy didn’t offer to get anything, just stared, and waited.

  “Coffee,” Adam said. “Black.”

  The boy turned away, and Adam turned his attention to his hands. He didn’t want to watch the news. He didn’t want to think about his computer, or the words he’d read on the screen so few hours before. He wanted it all to go away. He wanted sleep. He wanted to order a cheeseburger, but couldn’t bring himself to eat.

  The coffee slid in front of him with no perfunctory conversation and Adam dropped two dollars on the counter without glancing up. He didn’t feel like talking; a sentiment that seemed to be shared by all present. The volume on the television was low enough that he could barely hear the hum of voices. It was irritating, but he ignored it.

  It had started so simply. He’d been seated in his cubicle, whiling away an idle hour on the computer, surfing for something interesting. Adam thought he might be a writer one day, so he cruised, now and again, for author’s sites. Earlier that afternoon, he’d found one. The site was the journal of a disgruntled ex-grocery store employee. It was called Food Hell, and Adam had found himself morbidly fascinated from the first sentence.

  “Even though it’s not important, my name is Christopher.”

  It wasn’t the story of the job that had made the words stick with Adam, it was the information imbedded between the lines. It was the image that would not fade of his local grocery store as some surreal, otherworldly place with secrets no one who eats their food should know. It was the stacking of out-dated food near the front. It was the changing of labels in the back. It was wondering what that stock-boy you pissed off might have done to your product before delivering it to you in aisle ten with a smirk.

  It was the girl behind the deli counter who sold pornographic pictures of herself at work and talked loudly about the symptoms of her STD.

  It was the way they shifted the lighting to hide wilted vegetables and sprayed water on them to glitter by day.

  Adam hadn’t slept. It was Tuesday. He had one day until Thanksgiving and thankfully he’d taken the next couple of days off from work. He wasn’t sure he could have coped with the office after what he’d read. Adam worked for an accounting firm, and they handled the accounts for most of the local grocery chains. The logos and names, invoices and ledgers would all draw his thoughts back to that damned computer screen, and he didn’t want to read any more.

  Behind the counter, the young grill cook polished the Formica with a stained towel and stared at the fuzzy television screen. The blonde continued to stare at her own hands, and to smoke.

  Jesus. Was it possible to have a smoking area in a place this small? Was it legal? Adam smoked, so it was a moot point as far as he was concerned, but still, there was something about the bobbing ash on the end of the woman’s cigarette that was morbidly fascinating. She was shaking, or trembling. Maybe crying. Adam couldn’t be certain from where he sat, and the kid behind the counter obviously didn’t give a damn. There was a trail of ashes on the counter in front of her, not quite reaching the ashtray most of the time, and the fan on the ceiling dispersed the detritus of her tension to the air.

  Adam turned his attention back to his coffee. Thanksgiving dinner was at Gail’s parent’s house. He wouldn’t see her until the dinner. She worked nights and was taking extra time to prepare for December mid-term exams during the day. It had been nearly a week and they planned to stretch the dinner into the weekend and unwind together. Right at that moment, if Adam had unwound, he’d have spun out like a top and dug a rut in the floor.

  He was supposed to bring the potato salad. That was his focus. Clean clothes; be on time, potato salad. His hand trembled on the handle of the cup. He’d intended to buy the potato salad at the deli, then carry it home, re-package it neatly, and let them all pretend they thought he’d made it. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Christopher, the writer on the Internet, hadn’t been specific about which grocery he’d worked in. The piece had the odd quality of bending one’s mind to the contours of their own world. Somehow, Adam knew it was the superstore down the street from his condo that was in question. It had to be. He’d seen the girl behind the deli counter, and he’d imagined her …

  Adam shook his head to clear that thought. Suddenly, the image he’d always carried of that young girl, winking at him, was tainted. He could imagine that he’d seen sores at the edges of her lips. He could see a sort of rheumy, yellowish tint in the whites of her eyes. He remembered her veins standing out oddly, or had that been the lighting? What could they do with lighting to hide that?

  The volume on the television set suddenly increased. Adam snapped from his thoughts to the present and turned to the screen automatically, lifting his coffee and taking a long gulp. There was a man on screen, seated behind a desk. He wore all white and was presented against a white-walled background. Framed certificates lined those walls.

  The man was talking about smoking. The boy behind the counter stared pointedly at the blonde woman, who, despite the increased volume of the television, and the message it preached, had not looked up from her un-touched coffee, or her cigarettes. When Adam glanced at her, he saw she’d just tapped another from the pack, though its predecessor still glowed red with each puff.

  As he watched her, words seeped into Adam’s subconscious. Carcinogens. Asbestos. Pesticide. Sweepings off the floor of cigarette factories and traces of so many things it boggled the mind. Adam slowly swiveled his gaze back to the screen. The man behind the desk was gone. In his place a colored diagram pulsed. Dark, black masses seeped through what appeared to be a throat passage and wound their way into stylized human lungs. They weren’t real, just a 3D rendering, but Adam’s mind was whirling again.

  The blonde’s smoke drifted up past the television screen toward the fan. The smoke on the screen flowed down. Hers flowed up. Adam’s throat constricted. His coffee was forgotten. He imagined the taste of insecticide, too-recently sprayed on tobacco leaves and never cleaned away. He imagined the factory where the cigarettes were rolled, huge conveyor belts, dust in the air – germs. Coughing, diseased workers, fighting to make it through the day, oblivious to the miasma of poison they layered on each flat sheet of paper, each pinch of tobacco.

  Adam couldn’t breathe. He rose, nearly overturning the table in front of him. The boy behind the counter stared at him, and even the blonde had broken eye contact with her hands to turn in his direction. Adam held one hand to his throat. His eyes watered, though he couldn’t be certain which of the myriad poisons in the air was causing it. The room wavered, but he caught himself against the wall, closed his eyes, and tucked his chin, breathing as much as possible through the
filter of the soft cotton of his collar. He had to get out.

  Without a word, ushered through the door by the boy’s voice calling out “You crazy, man?” Adam rushed into the street, gripping his shirt collar and nearly tearing the fabric in his efforts to cover mouth and nose. The air outside was clean and crisp. The stars had faded, and the faint orange light of dawn backlit the skyline. Adam stood, shivering and coated in sweat. It wasn’t cold, but he shook like a scared rabbit.

  He leaned over to place his hands on his knees for support as he caught his breath. The motion crinkled the cellophane wrapper of the Marlboros in his pocket. He exhaled sharply, righted himself and clawed at the pocket of his shirt. The material gave way with a loud rip. He whipped out the cigarette pack and sent it twisting and turning through the air. It fell with a soft plop in the gutter, the cellophane catching in the light breeze and waving gently.

  Adam turned and staggered down the street. He wasn’t far from home. There was the park to cross, and then a quick cut-over from forty-second street. He held his head low and his steps quickened. The surreality of the coffee shop faded, and reality encroached with cold fingers of pain tugging the edges of his mind over the edge into a full-fledged migraine. What was wrong with him?

  He knew he had to sleep. One way or another, he had to get his act together before Thursday. Clean clothes, on time, potato salad – the mantra of his future.

  The park was drenched in morning shadows. There was something strange in that, as if the shadows that had stretched out from trees and benches in the evening were retreating, drawing in on themselves in defeat. It was comforting, and Adam’s breath came easier. He told himself that he was just tired. He told himself he’d worked too long, too hard, and that these were symptoms.

  Halfway through the park, he heard approaching footsteps. It was still pretty dark, and though he wasn’t exactly in Central Park, Adam had enough sense not to discount trouble. He sped up, not running, but no longer walking. The steps behind him were steady and rhythmic, coming closer with each stride. Two choices, run, or don’t. Wait and see who it is, deal with it when they catch up, or run and hope he could outdistance them.

  Adam took off with a lurch. He wasn’t athletically inclined. The last time he’d run more than a block had been to catch a city bus, and that had nearly sent him into cardiac arrest. Still, he ran. He felt the flat, hard heels of his shoes slapping the pavement. They weren’t made for this, and he knew his feet would pay the price. The sound of his own gasping breath and the leather slap of his shoes had drowned out the footsteps, so he couldn’t tell where his pursuer might be. Could be right behind him, reaching out to snag the back of his sports coat. Could have turned off and taken another route through the park. Could be stalking him, eyes narrowed and concentrated, waiting for the right moment to tackle and pound, stabbing him for the meager contents of his wallet and the Bulova watch on his wrist.

  Adam turned to glance over his shoulder. At first he saw nothing, then, just turning the corner behind him, almost at his heels, he saw her. It was a young woman, dark hair pulled back in a pony tail, jogging. He cursed his own stupidity and turned back to the trail. Too late. His leg caught a fallen branch and the world tilted. His hands caught the earth, breaking the fall, skin peeling back in long scrapes across his palms. His knee hit painfully, and he skidded about a foot in the soft grass. Behind him, the footsteps sped, and he heard a voice calling to him.

  “Hey, you all right?”

  He barely heard the words. To the side of the trail, directly in front of him, an overflowing trash barrel had caught his eye. Food wrappers, beer cans, bottles and food scraps dangled over the rim and littered the earth. The same earth he had fallen on, and was pressed closely into. The same earth that filled the scrapes on his palms. Adam tried to answer. He tried to press down and lift himself, but lifted his hands instead. He couldn’t touch the ground.

  How long had the trash been there? What was in it? Where had it come from? Other images intruded. Couples strolling through the park, arm in arm, sharing fluids. Pets, wild animals, strays, urinating on the ground, tromping it in with their feet, spreading it around. Long muzzles tearing at the trash, mixing it with their own saliva and dribbling it across the ground. Adam rolled over convulsively, nearly tripping the young woman who stood, staring at him in alternating concern for him, and fear. His eyes were wide, wild and void of coherent thought. His body was shaking, and he waved his hands in the air as if trying to warn something away, or rid himself of something. Or fly.

  With an effort he wouldn’t have believed possible if it had been suggested to him, Adam wrenched his body from the ground without the use of his hands, and without a word, fled across the park. The young woman stared after him, shaking her head. With a glance at her watch, she started off again, turning the corner and finishing her circuit of the park. Adam had disappeared into traffic on the street beyond.

  The water steamed and streamed from the shower head, and Adam scrubbed. His hands ached, screaming out each time the scalding water or the strong soap reached too far into the scrapes in his palms. His skin was pink from friction, but he couldn’t stop. He could still see that trash barrel, could feel the odd burning in his palms. He felt poisons and chemicals leaking into his system. He knew he was acting crazy, but still, he wasn’t ready to stop.

  Eventually the heat leaked from the water, and as the shower went cold, the water heater’s contents drained. Adam shut the valve and stood in the center of his tub, staring through the water-streaked curtain, it’s pastel flower design fogged by steam. He reached for the curtain, and then he stopped. Was that a smudge of something dark, running down the curtain? Had he only shifted the filth to the plastic, where it could re-enter when he tried to leave the tub? He jerked his arm back and stood, naked and shivering, wet and wide-eyed.

  Carefully, he brushed the top edge of one ring to the side with the back of one fingernail. He worked it over slowly, being careful to make no contact with the offending curtain. He could hose it down later, scrub it with a brush – maybe toss it in the washer. Right now all that mattered was getting out, getting dressed, and trying to sort out the maddening rush of thoughts that suddenly crowded his mind.

  “It will pass,” he told himself. His hunger had faded to a dull, background ache, so familiar by this time he hardly noticed. He wasn’t hungry in the sense that he wanted food to pass his lips, only in that his body was protesting the lack of fuel. He was weak, and just the effort of stumbling from the bathroom to his bedroom for clothes nearly made him faint.

  Despite all of this, he was focused on Thursday. If he could get through that, could make it into a home where they cared about him, to a room where Gail would be waiting with open arms and a ready ear, he could do anything. He could pull it all back together. Maybe he could even eat, if he didn’t ask where the turkey had come from. If he didn’t think about the machinery that processed the wine, or the workers on assembly line, some sick, some bored, some just clumsy. If he didn’t think about how insects and vermin crowded around any place there was food.

  If he didn’t think at all – he could eat.

  Adam dressed slowly. He coated his skin carefully, two layers of socks, long pants, long sleeved shirt. Pants tucked into lace-up boots. No time to worry over what might be inside the material, or growing in the sweat-soaked interior of the boots themselves. There was only so much protection he could provide for himself, but he was determined not to repeat the scene in the park. He had to go out, and he had to get potato salad, and he had to get back to his apartment. He had no one to call, and though he might have called to have the potato salad delivered, the thought of what an inconvenienced, underpaid grocery employee might do with food he or she was delivering was enough to eliminate this as a possible course of action.

  He had to go out. Already he’d wasted his day. No sleep, and it was nearing six o’clock in the afternoon. An entire morning peeling away and destroying clothing, scrubbing and scrubbing his s
kin, his hair and his hands, scrubbing the floor where he’d entered the apartment, where he’d walked and touched. Pulling suspected foods from his refrigerator and running them, one after the other, down the drain, followed by bleach and comet, more hot water. Then scrubbing his tortured hands again. The palms were raw, but he was convinced, for the moment, that they were clean.

  He’d had a bad moment at the sink. He’d suddenly remembered the plumber who’d fixed the goose-neck beneath the cabinet a month before. He remembered how filthy the man had been, how his tools had reeked of grease and things better left un-named. This had led to thoughts about the pipes, which led to the sewers, and to the water company, and to a thousand employees, each with their own problems, their own hatreds, their own schemes and all of this contributing to the final outcome – the water that flowed through the pipes, put together piece by piece by the same hands that pieced together the output of the toilet. Filtered miles away, the water flowed through aged pipes and collected minerals and filth before it reached the spigot where he ran it hopefully over his dirty hands.

  Somehow, he’d gotten past this. There had to be limits. If he couldn’t use the water, he couldn’t wash his hands. He had to wash his hands, and he couldn’t use straight bleach, no matter how appealing that was, because in the end, the bleach itself was poison. He developed it into a mantra. The water is fine. I’ve used the water all my life. I’ve been drinking the water all my life. I’ve bathed in the water, been swimming in the water, some science teacher in long-forgotten classroom had told him he was 98% water himself. He had to trust something, he would trust the water. For now. There was bottled water. There were filters.

  He had to go out.

  In the odd, off-kilter universe he’d suddenly dropped into, the only important thing was potato salad, and the only way to get that potato salad was to buy it. Adam had the culinary skills of a long-term bachelor. He had microwave experience, and a boiled a really mean pot of water. Potato salad was beyond him. He knew the grocery four blocks away on Taft was open 24 hours. All he had to do was stand, make his way out to door and down the street, and make his purchase.