Richard Davis (ed) - [Year's Best Horror Stories 02]

by The Year's Best Horror Stories II (epub)

  Resting against the beacon was a white bag, half as high as Alma. She'd seen such bags before, full of laundry. Yet she could not force herself to pull back the gates and pass. Suddenly the gates were her protection against the shapeless mass, for deep within herself she suppressed a horror that the bag might move toward her, flapping. It couldn't be what it appeared; who would have left it there at this time of night? A car hissed past on the glittering tarmac. Alma choked a scream for help. Screaming in the middle of the street-what would her mother have thought? Musicians didn't do that sort of thing. Besides, why shouldn't someone have left a bag of washing at the crossing while she went for help to heft it to the laundry? Alma touched the gates and withdrew, chilled; here she was, risking penumonia in the night, and for what? The panic of delirium. As a child she'd screamed hoarsely through her cold that a man was bending over her; she was too old for that. Back to bed-no, to find her flute, and then to bed, to purge herself of these horrid visions. Ironically she thought: Peter would be proud of her if he knew. Her flute-need the two years any longer be meaningful? Still touched by understanding, she couldn't think that her parents would hold to their threat, made after all before she'd written to Peter. What must have been a night-breeze moved the bag. Forcing her footsteps not to drag, Alma left the orange radiance and closed the door behind her; her last test.

  In the hall the thing she had thought was Maureen's coat shifted wakefully. Alma ignored it, but her flesh crept hot and cold. At the far end of the hall mirror, a figure approached, arms extended as if blindly. Alma smiled; it was too like a childish fear to frighten her: "enjoyably creepy"-she tried to recapture her mood of the morning, but every organ of her body felt hot and pounding. She broke and ran to her room; the light, oddly, was still on.

  In the rooms below her father's desk creaked; the flower arrangements writhed. Did it matter? Alma argued desperately. There was no lock on her door, but she refused to barricade it; there was nothing solid abroad in the house, nothing to harm her but the lure of her own fears. Her flute-she wouldn't play it once she found it; she'd go to bed with its protection. She moved round the bed and saw the flute, overlaid by Victimes de Devoir. The flute was bent in half.

  One tear pressed from Alma's eyes before she realized the full horror. As she whirled, completely disorientated, a mirror crashed below. Something shrieked toward her through the corridors. She sank onto the bed, defenceless, wishing all were over. Music blasted from the record player, the Nocturne; Alma leapt up and screamed. "In roaring he shall rise," the voice bawled, "and on the surface-" A music stand was hurled to the floor. "die !" The needle scraped across the record and clicked off. The walls seemed on the point of tearing, bulging inward. Alma no longer cared. She'd screamed once; she could do no more. Now she waited.

  When the figure formed deep in the mirror she knew that all was over. She faced it, drained of feeling. It grew closer, arms stretched out, its face inflated grey by gas. Alma wept; it was horrid. She knew who it was; a shaft of truth had pierced the suffocating warmth of her delirium. The suicide had possessed the house, was the house; he had waited for someone like her. "Go on," she sobbed at him, "take me!" The bloated cheeks moved in a swollen grin; the arms stretched out for her and vanished.

  The house was empty. Alma was surrounded by a vacuum into which something must rush. She stood up shaking and fell into the vacuum; her sight was torn away. She tried to move; there was no longer any muscle to respond. She felt nothing, but utter horror closed her in. Somewhere she sensed her body, moving happily on her bedroom carpet, picking up her ruined flute, breathing a hideous note into it. She tried to scream. Impossible.

  Only in dreams can houses scream for help.

  10: T. K. Brown III - Haunts Of The Very Rich

  The six of them were the only passengers in a North American Sabreliner high over the unseen continent, running swiftly southward from New York. None of them knew where they would come to earth again. Purposely, they had not been told.

  Far from being disturbed by that, they were delighted with something new to laugh about and to get acquainted over. The headlines of their discarded copies of the Times -a development in the Common Market talks, the death of that famous what's-his-name rock singer, a tax proposal in Congress that might pinch those in their high bracket just a little more-these stale things were nice to forget. For the moment, they were charmed with their little novelty. The chairs were very soft and they were all getting slightly drunk.

  "Good style! Good style!" said Peter Woodrough as if he were approving something he'd seen at Wimbledon or Forest Hills. Indeed, with his 50ish pink face and his smooth grey hair, he seemed to have just come off a country-club court somewhere. "I like the uniforms of the ground personnel. I like the way the limo brought us right onto the runway and put us aboard without any passport nonsense. I even like those opaque windows-superb touch of mystery, don't you think?"

  "Only unmysterious thing is the price of it all, wowie! Cost-account everything and you'd probably find that martini in your hand is fifty bucks," Albert Hunsicker said. He laughed a stout man's laugh. But Mary, his pinched-faced wife, didn't laugh. Why was he always making jokes about something that was almost sacred? she thought.

  "Don't complain, old boy," Woodrough said. "While you're on vacation, your blue chips will go up a point. I predict it. So you'll be even-steven as far as money goes when you get back. And you want things nice, don't you? You don't want just any old shabby jet, do you? This one costs just over a million bucks. My firm's got three of them and I would've flown one down myself except for my bum ticker and the fact that I'm supposed to be on sick leave."

  "Nuh-uh" said a young man named Martin Dugan, "the resort management would never let you. The place is as secret as the grave-no location ever given out." He stopped to smile. "I know because I tried to bribe one Pan-Am captain, two travel agents, a professor of Latin-American geography and an ex-CIA man. Nobody could tell me where it might be." Dugan and the girl he was with-Laurie-were the real people that all those fashion models are trying so hard to look like. He was relaxed and handsome without any effort. She was delicious-looking, doe-eyed, big-breasted without any props. "Still," said Dugan, "I'd sooner be in my little Piper Cherokee, just setting down on some lake in the Adirondacks. Wouldn't you, baby?"

  "The Adirondacks stink," said Laurie. "I want to find the lost world of El Dorado and the pleasure dome of Kubla Khan." She smiled and took his hand.

  Mrs. Desiree Brooks looked at them through a misty glass of purest Lamp-lighter with just a breath of Noilly Prat around it. "One day," she said. "I calculate one day, right?" Mrs. Brooks looked to be in her mid-30s and she was very pretty, but nobody noticed that-or not first off, at any rate. What you felt immediately was a certain air that seemed to whisper something about great trust funds, vast safe-deposit vaults full of tax-free municipals and big corporate money pumps that had the name Brooks somewhere on the board of directors. "Married just one day?"

  Dugan smiled and admitted it.

  "But how did you pin it down to the exact time?" Laurie asked. "You're uncanny."

  Mrs. Brooks took a long sip, then lowered the glass. "I should know. In fact, I should change my name to Hope because I've triumphed over experience so many times. My dear, there is always a first time when one of the bridal couple shall remark that the other's favourite thing in life actually stinks. This opinion has never been revealed before and boy and girl convulsively hold hands, shocked. After the first day, they begin to get hardened to that kind of revelation. God, these martinis are beautiful."

  The pretty stewardess in a Pucci knew a signal when she heard it, so she came at once with a new pitcher of icy martinis. Woodrough took advantage of this little refueling ceremony and slipped into the empty chair next to Desiree. "From your learned observations, I judge that you are a marriage counselor by profession, and I want to ask your expert advice. I have a problem that's so intimate I'll have to whisper it-I am unmarried. I am all, all alon
e."

  Mrs. Brooks seemed to be amused by this approach. "My advice to you, then, is: Don't blow it. If you're lucky, you can stay that way till you die."

  They clinked glasses solemnly. "To the next three weeks, then," Woodrough said, looking into her eyes.

  "It's got to be something really special," Dugan was saying, "to have the nerve to charge three thousand bucks a week. Even Frenchman's Cove charges only $1300 per couple." He poked at the shrouded window at Laurie's shoulder. "It's got to be the Caribbean-not one of the big vulgar places but some little jewel of an island they can keep top secret."

  Al Hunsicker slowly withdrew from his pocket a small compass and placed it on the table. "I like to know where I'm at," he stated flatly. All craned forward to see, a conspiratorial gleam in every eye. "We've been airborne for three hours, forty minutes. We're headed south-southwest from New York City. The Caribbean is due south of New York. No, my friend. We're over Central America right now. I say we land in Guatemala or Honduras, probably on the Pacific coast and probably in the next half hour."

  "I know that country," Dugan said, with a little drunken edge. "There's not a spot on either coast where you could put what they advertise. In fact, I've got a thousand stalwart men and true who say it won't be anywhere in Central America."

  "You've got your bet," Al said, holding out his hand, which Martin took. "We'll know in a few minutes."

  "How will you know?" Laurie Dugan asked. "Maybe I'm dumb, but will they tell us where we are?"

  "They won't tell us," Al declared importantly, "but I'll know soon enough."

  The plane tilted toward the earth and its speed diminished; in a few moments, they heard the flaps go down and then the wheels. Expectancy was on every face except Martin's, which was dark, and Laurie's, which was taking its cue from his. There was a slight screech as the wheels touched and they were rolling.

  "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Paradise Plage"- and there was, indeed, a beach of white sand, within sight of the landing strip. But they were not on the sea, as all had expected. They were on a lake, in a valley under towering mountains, some of which glowed at their peaks and cast forth smoke. The man who had greeted them was an elegant little Latin with a tiny mustache and peaked eyebrows.

  He said, as they were walking to the limousine, "I am Claudio Montenegro, your host. Please don't trouble to introduce yourselves-you see, I know who all of you are and have been expecting you."

  "Who am I?" young Dugan asked.

  "You, sir, are Mr. Dugan, with your charming bride of one day."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Sir, Paradise Plage makes a point of knowing as much as it can about each of its guests, to be able to give them its personalized and superb service. Thus, we have been able to reserve for you the bridal suite."

  They stowed themselves in the car. The plane that had brought them took off and flew away. "I am afraid you will find Paradise Plage rather empty this evening," Montenegro said. "The fact is, you are the first guests of the new season. But we expect twenty-four tomorrow and another forty or so within the next week. All of them precisely such charming and discriminating persons as yourselves."

  They drew up before the main building, a gleaming, gently curving facade facing the lake, and were shown to their four rooms by respectful Indian servants in livery. There they found champagne on ice and caviar nested in an ice Beluga. The rooms were richly appointed and in each of them, certain events and thoughts now took place.

  Desiree Brooks stripped and took a long, leisurely bath. Later, in a robe, she sat at her window, smoked several cigarettes and contemplated the spectacular prospect of volcanoes and setting sun. Dinner was not for another hour, but she touched neither the caviar nor the champagne. She was 40 years old now, though she looked 35. She was here because she was on the prowl for another husband. With all the money she could want and with all the world to use it in, she found herself obsessed with a single interest-she genuinely liked a honeymoon marriage. The charm wore off, always, in a year or two and she would again find herself divorced, depressed, lonely. She wondered if Wood-rough could have been telling the truth about being single. Probably not, even though he hadn't brought a wife along. She liked that fresh, florid-faced, ex-tennis-champion, moneyed look about him. He seemed charming enough.

  Peter Woodrough knew that it was the thing to do to take a bath, but he did not. Instead, he cast himself on the caviar and made almost a meal of it: He was going to get his money's worth. The deal was $3000 a week and that included absolutely anything you could dream up: There were no extras, no tax, no tips. That included girls, too, and he would look into that in due time. As a matter of fact, he did have a wife and was expecting her to join him in a week. So make hay before the rains came. And make it with Desiree, too-she was acting very much like a lady on the make.

  Albert Hunsicker, as soon as they were alone in their room, took his wife clumsily in his arms and kissed her. "We should have been given the bridal suite," he said. They were both over 50 and had been married for 27 years; yet, there was a brave and pathetic gallantry in his statement. Their marriage was finally on the rocks, after all those years of bitterness and recrimination-Albert had never ceased to marvel at the fire and viciousness in little Mary. They had had a grand confrontation, right down to the bare nerve and hatred; and there had been a voiding of poisons. They would give it one more chance and both would honestly try to gain back what they had once had. This vacation was where they would do it.

  "You're sweet to say that, Al," Mary said; and suddenly, she buried her grey head in his shoulder and he could feel her trembling. "Oh, Al," she whispered, "oh, God, let's get to be in love again!"

  "We will, Mary, we will! We'll forget the past, all that's ever happened. We'll start all over."

  She searched his face. There were tears in her eyes. "We can do it, can't we, Al, if we really try?" she asked, "We can get it back?"

  "Oh, we can," he said.

  As for Martin and Laurie Dugan: There is really no need to describe what went on in their room.

  * * *

  That night, right after dinner, a tropical downpour engulfed the resort, with great sizzling bolts of lightning, stupefying thunder, huge dangerous winds and improbable quantities of water. At nine o'clock, the lights went out and candles were produced.

  "Candles?" Woodrough cried. "You mean this place hasn't got an auxiliary power plant?"

  "It was hit even before the main plant," Montenegro explained. "We have never had such a storm."

  Actually, it worked out very well. Dancing to the excellent combo by candlelight, while the elements raged, was uniquely romantic and intimate, and there were no further complaints. Martin and Laurie, of course, were in their own world, and the Hunsickers could not have hoped for anything more auspicious. Pete and Desiree discovered great merit in each other.

  It was only the next morning-bright, hot and steaming -that the extent of the disaster was revealed to them. They were driven from their rooms by the sticky heat and Montenegro joined them at the breakfast table.

  "I do not know how to apologize,' he said. "It is a calamity. I am up all night. The entire electrical system is knocked out. You will have noticed that the air conditioning is gone."

  "You're goddamn right we noticed," Dugan said.

  "Also the refrigeration, of course. The food will not keep. Oh, I am so embarrassed."

  "Well, send for the parts," Woodrough said.

  "The radio is utterly destroyed," Montenegro said, almost cringing. "There is no phone. Anyway, it would be useless. Have you seen the landing strip? A hundred trenches six feet deep."

  "Then send a car over," Hunsicker said.

  "Mr. Hunsicker, there is no road. That was how we could keep this place so secret-it was all built by air. An engineering marvel!" Then he collapsed. "But now, no road. Not even somewhere for a road to go to. We are nowhere."

  "Where are we, anyway?" Woodrough asked. "Tell us where we are. Maybe I can
do something."

  "There is nothing you can do," Montenegro said mournfully. "There is nothing anyone can do. We are cut off from the world."

  "Boy, oh, boy," Dugan said, slamming down his coffee cup. "This is just what I was hoping to find for my eight hundred and sixty bucks a day on my honeymoon." He leaned over menacingly to Montenegro. "You tell me just how soon you can get us out of here."

  "Of course, your money will be refunded," Montenegro said. Then he seemed to take on a little more dignity, even a little authority. "But there is no way for you to get out of here, Mr. Dugan. No way whatsoever."

  Later, they were seated under a beach umbrella on the terrace, in 100-degree heat and 96 per cent humidity; the air was motionless; all were drenched in sweat. There was mud over everything; the beach had been washed into the lake. Most of the palm trees were down; the hangar had lost its roof; many windows were broken and debris littered the lawn. Hunsicker was trying to collect his bet from Dugan.

  "You say you know this area-well, take a good look. Where in this hemisphere do you find live volcanoes in a jungle? Nicaragua and nowhere else. We're in Central America and you owe me a thousand dollars."

  Dugan said doggedly: "I want to hear it from somebody who really knows. Then you'll have your lousy grand."