999

by Al Sarrantonio

  Not that a power failure mattered. She’d been spending the night by candlelight anyway. There was barely an inch of candle left, but that gave her no clue as to the hour. Who knew how fast a candle burned?

  She was tempted to lift the bedspread draped over the window and peek outside, but was afraid of what she might see.

  How long until dawn? she wondered, rubbing her eyes. This night seemed endless. If only—

  Beyond her locked door, a faint squeak came from somewhere along the hall. It could have been anything—the wind in the attic, the old building settling, but it had been long, drawn out, and high-pitched. Almost like …

  A door opening.

  Carole froze, still on her knees, hands still folded in prayer, her elbows resting on the bed, and listened for it again. But the sound was not repeated. Instead, something else … a rhythmic shuffle … in the hall … approaching her door …

  Footsteps.

  With her heart punching frantically against the inner wall of her chest, Carole leaped to her feet and stepped close to the door, listening with her ear almost touching the wood. Yes. Footsteps. Slow. And soft, like bare feet scuffing the floor. Coming this way. Closer. They were right outside the door. Carole felt a sudden chill, as if a wave of icy air had penetrated the wood, but the footsteps didn’t pause. They passed her door, moving on.

  And then they stopped.

  Carole had her ear pressed against the wood now. She could hear her pulse pounding through her head as she strained for the next sound. And then it came, more shuffling outside in the hall, almost confused at first, and then the footsteps began again.

  Coming back.

  This time they stopped directly outside Carole’s door. The cold was there again, a damp, penetrating chill that reached for her bones. Carole backed away from it.

  And then the doorknob turned. Slowly. The door creaked with the weight of a body leaning against it from the other side, but Carole’s bolt held.

  Then a voice. Hoarse. A single whispered word, barely audible, but a shout could not have startled her more.

  “Carole?”

  Carole didn’t reply—couldn’t reply.

  “Carole, it’s me. Bern. Let me in.”

  Against her will, a low moan escaped Carole. No, no, no, this couldn’t be Bernadette. Bernadette was dead. Carole had left her cooling body lying in her room across the hall. This was some horrible joke. …

  Or was it? Maybe Bernadette had become one of them, one of the very things that had killed her.

  But the voice on the other side of the door was not that of some ravenous beast. It was …

  “Please let me in, Carole. I’m frightened out here alone.”

  Maybe Bern is alive, Carole thought, her mind racing, ranging for an answer. I’m no doctor. I could have been wrong about her being dead. Maybe she survived. …

  She stood trembling, torn between the desperate, aching need to see her friend alive and the wary terror of being tricked by whatever creature Bernadette might have become.

  “Carole?”

  Carole wished for a peephole in the door, or at the very least a chain lock, but she had neither, and she had to do something. She couldn’t stand here like this and listen to that plaintive voice any longer without going mad. She had to know. Without giving herself any more time to think, she snapped back the bolt and pulled the door open, ready to face whatever awaited her in the hall.

  She gasped. “Bernadette!”

  Her friend stood just beyond the threshold, swaying, stark naked.

  Not completely naked. She still wore her wimple, although it was askew on her head, and a strip of cloth had been layered around her neck to dress her throat wound. In the wan, flickering candlelight that leaked from Carole’s room, she saw that the blood that had splattered her was gone. Carole had never seen Bernadette unclothed before. She’d never realized how thin she was. Her ribs rippled beneath the skin of her chest, disappeared only beneath the scant padding of her small breasts with their erect nipples; the bones of her hips and pelvis bulged around her flat belly. Her normally fair skin was almost blue-white. The only other colors were the dark pools of her eyes and the orange splotches of hair on her head and her pubes.

  “Carole,” she said weakly. “Why did you leave me?”

  The sight of Bernadette standing before her, alive, speaking, had drained most of Carole’s strength; the added weight of guilt from her words nearly drove her to her knees. She sagged against the door frame.

  “Bern …” Carole’s voice failed her. She swallowed and tried again. “I—I thought you were dead. And … what happened to your clothes?”

  Bernadette raised her hand to her throat. “I tore up my nightgown for a bandage. Can I come in?”

  Carole straightened and opened the door farther. “Oh, Lord, yes. Come in. Sit down. I’ll get you a blanket.”

  Bernadette shuffled into the room, head down, eyes fixed on the floor. She moved like someone on drugs. But then, after losing so much blood, it was a wonder she could walk at all.

  “Don’t want a blanket,” Bern said. “Too hot. Aren’t you hot?”

  She backed herself stiffly onto Carole’s bed, then lifted her ankles and sat cross-legged, facing her. Mentally, Carole explained the casual, blatant way she exposed herself by the fact that Bernadette was still recovering from a horrific trauma, but that made it no less discomfiting.

  Carole glanced at the crucifix on the wall over her bed, above and behind Bernadette. For a moment, as Bernadette had seated herself beneath it, she thought she had seen it glow. It must have been reflected candlelight. She turned away and retrieved a spare blanket from the closet. She unfolded it and wrapped it around Bernadette’s shoulders and over her spread knees, covering her.

  “I’m thirsty, Carole. Could you get me some water?”

  Her voice was strange. Lower pitched and hoarse, yes, but that should be expected after the throat wound she’d suffered. No, something else had changed in her voice, but Carole could not pin it down.

  “Of course. You’ll need fluids. Lots of fluids.”

  The bathroom was only two doors down. She took her water pitcher, lit a second candle, and left Bernadette on the bed, looking like an Indian draped in a serape.

  When she returned with the full pitcher, she was startled to find the bed empty. She spied Bernadette immediately, by the window. She hadn’t opened it, but she’d pulled off the bedspread drape and raised the shade. She stood there, staring out at the night. And she was naked again.

  Carole looked around for the blanket and found it … hanging on the wall over her bed …

  Covering the crucifix.

  Part of Carole screamed at her to run, to flee down the hall and not look back. But another part of her insisted she stay. This was her friend. Something terrible had happened to Bernadette and she needed Carole now, probably more than she’d needed anyone in her entire life. And if someone was going to help her, it was Carole. Only Carole.

  She placed the pitcher on the nightstand.

  “Bernadette,” she said, her mouth as dry as the timbers in these old walls, “the blanket …”

  “I was hot,” Bernadette said without turning.

  “I brought you the water. I’ll pour—”

  “I’ll drink it later. Come and watch the night.”

  “I don’t want to see the night. It frightens me.”

  Bernadette turned, a faint smile on her lips. “But the darkness is so beautiful.”

  She stepped closer and stretched her arms toward Carole, laying a hand on each shoulder and gently massaging the terror-tightened muscles there. A sweet lethargy began to seep through Carole. Her eyelids began to drift closed … so tired … so long since she’d had any sleep …

  No!

  She forced her eyes open and gripped Bernadette’s hands, pulling them from her shoulders. She pressed the palms together and clasped them between her own.

  “Let’s pray, Bern. With me: Hail Mary, full of grac
e …”

  “No!”

  “… the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou …”

  Her friend’s face twisted in rage. “I said NO, damn you!”

  Carole struggled to keep a grip on Bernadette’s hands but she was too strong.

  “… amongst women …”

  And suddenly Bernadette’s struggles ceased. Her face relaxed, her eyes cleared, even her voice changed, still hoarse, but higher in pitch, lighter in tone as she took up the words of the prayer.

  “And Blessed is the fruit of thy womb …” Bernadette struggled with the next word, unable to say it. Instead she gripped Carole’s hands with painful intensity and loosed a torrent of her own words. “Carole, get out! Get out, oh, please, for the love of God, get out now! There’s not much of me left in here, and soon I’ll be like the ones that killed me and I’ll be after killing you! So run, Carole! Hide! Lock yourself in the chapel downstairs but get away from me now!”

  Carole knew now what had been missing from Bernadette’s voice—her brogue. But now it was back. This was the real Bernadette speaking. She was back! Her friend, her sister, was back! Carole bit back a sob.

  “Oh, Bern, I can help! I can—”

  Bernadette pushed her toward the door. “No one can help me, Carole!” She ripped the makeshift bandage from her neck, exposing the deep, jagged wound and the ragged ends of the torn blood vessels within it. “It’s too late for me, but not for you. They’re a bad lot and I’ll be one of them again soon, so get out while you—”

  Suddenly Bernadette stiffened and her features shifted. Carole knew immediately that the brief respite her friend had stolen from the horror that gripped her was over. Something else was back in control.

  Carole turned and ran.

  But the Bernadette-thing was astonishingly swift. Carole had barely reached the threshold when a steel-fingered hand gripped her upper arm and yanked her back, nearly dislocating her shoulder. She cried out in pain and terror as she was spun about and flung across the room. Her hip struck hard against the rickety old spindle chair by her desk, knocking it over as she landed in a heap beside it.

  Carole groaned with the pain. As she shook her head to clear it, she saw Bernadette approaching her, her movements stiff, more assured now, her teeth bared—so many teeth, and so much longer than the old Bernadette’s—her fingers curved, reaching for Carole’s throat. With each passing second there was less and less of Bernadette about her.

  Carole tried to back away, her frantic hands and feet slipping on the floor as she pressed her spine against the wall. She had nowhere to go. She pulled the fallen chair atop her and held it as a shield against the Bernadette-thing. The face that had once belonged to her dearest friend grimaced with contempt as she swung her hand at the chair. It scythed through the spindles, splintering them like match-sticks, sending the carved headpiece flying. A second blow cracked the seat in two. A third and fourth sent the remnants of the chair hurtling to opposite sides of the room.

  Carole was helpless now. All she could do was pray.

  “Our Father, who art—”

  “Too late for that to help you now, Caroler she hissed, spitting her name.

  “… hallowed be Thy Name …” Carole said, quaking in terror as undead fingers closed on her throat.

  And then the Bernadette-thing froze, listening. Carole heard it too. An insistent tapping. On the window. The creature turned to look, and Carole followed her gaze.

  A face was peering through the window.

  Carole blinked but it didn’t go away. This was the second floor! How—?

  And then a second face appeared, this one upside down, looking in from the top of the window. And then a third, and a fourth, each more bestial than the last. And as each appeared it began to tap its fingers and knuckles on the window glass.

  “No!” the Bernadette-thing screamed at them. “You can’t come in! She’s mine! No one touches her but me!”

  She turned back to Carole and smiled, showing those teeth that had never fit in Bernadette’s mouth. “They can’t cross a threshold unless invited in by one who lives there. I live here—or at least I did. And I’m not sharing you, Carole.”

  She turned again and raked a claw-like hand at the window. “Go A-way! She’s MINE!”

  Carole glanced to the left. The bed was only a few feet away. And above it—the blanket-shrouded crucifix. If she could reach it …

  She didn’t hesitate. With the mad tapping tattoo from the window echoing around her, Carole gathered her feet beneath her and sprang for the bed. She scrambled across the sheets, one hand outstretched, reaching for the blanket—

  A manacle of icy flesh closed around her ankle and roughly dragged her back.

  “Oh, no, bitch,” said the hoarse, unaccented voice of the Bernadette-thing. “Don’t even think about it!”

  It grabbed two fistfuls of flannel at the back of Carole’s nightgown and hurled her across the room as if she weighed no more than a pillow. The wind whooshed out of Carole as she slammed against the far wall. She heard ribs crack. She fell among the splintered ruins of the chair, pain lancing through her right flank. The room wavered and blurred. But through the roaring in her ears she still heard that insistent tapping on the window.

  As her vision cleared she saw the Bernadette-thing’s naked form gesturing again to the creatures at the window, now a mass of salivating mouths and tapping fingers.

  “Watch!” she hissed. “Watch me!”

  With that, she loosed a long, howling scream and lunged at Carole, arms curved before her, body arcing into a flying leap. The scream, the tapping, the faces at the window, the dear friend who now wanted only to slaughter her—it all was suddenly too much for Carole. She wanted to roll away but couldn’t get her body to move. Her hand found the broken seat of the chair by her hip. Instinctively she pulled it closer. She closed her eyes as she raised it between herself and the horror hurtling toward her through the air.

  The impact drove the wood of the seat against Carole’s chest; she groaned as new stabs of pain shot through her ribs. But the Bernadette-thing’s triumphant feeding cry cut off abruptly and devolved into a coughing gurgle.

  Suddenly the weight was released from Carole’s chest, and the chair seat with it.

  And the tapping at the window stopped.

  Carole opened her eyes to see the naked Bemadette-thing standing above her, straddling her, holding the chair seat before her, choking and gagging as she struggled with it.

  At first Carole didn’t understand. She drew her legs back and inched away along the wall. And then she saw what had happened.

  Three splintered spindles had remained fixed in that half of the broken seat, and those spindles were now firmly and deeply embedded in the center of the Bemadette-thing’s chest. She wrenched wildly at the chair seat, trying to dislodge the oak daggers but succeeded only in breaking them off at skin level. She dropped the remnant of the seat and swayed like a tree in a storm, her mouth working spasmodically as her hands fluttered ineffectually over the bloodless wounds between her ribs and the slim wooden stakes deep out of reach within them.

  Abruptly she dropped to her knees with a dull thud. Then, only inches from Carole, she slumped into a splay-legged squat. The agony faded from her face and she closed her eyes. She fell forward against Carole.

  Carole threw her arms around her friend and gathered her close.

  “Oh, Bern, oh, Bern, oh, Bern,” she moaned. “I’m so sorry. If only I’d got there sooner!”

  Bernadette’s eyes fluttered open and the darkness was gone. Only her own spring-sky blue remained, clear, grateful. Her lips began to curve upward but made it only halfway to a smile, then she was gone.

  Carole hugged the limp cold body closer and moaned in boundless grief and anguish to the unfeeling walls. She saw the leering faces begging to crawl away from the window and she shouted at them though her tears.

  “Go! That’s it! Run away and hide! Soon it’ll be light and then I’ll come look
ing for you! For all of you! And woe to any of you that I find!”

  She cried over Bernadette’s body a long time. And then she wrapped it in a sheet and held and rocked her dead friend in her arms until sunrise.

  With the dawn she left the old Sister Carole Hanarty behind. The gentle soul, happy to spend her days and nights in the service of the Lord, praying, fasting, teaching chemistry to reluctant adolescents, and holding to her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was gone.

  The new Sister Carole had been tempered in the forge of the night and recast into someone relentlessly vengeful and fearless to the point of recklessness. And perhaps, she admitted with no shame or regret, more than a little mad.

  She departed the convent and began her hunt.

  Chet Williamson

  EXCERPTS FROM THE

  RECORDS OF THE NEW ZODIAC

  AND THE DIARIES

  OF HENRY WATSON FAIRFAX

  Chet Williamson is a funny guy, and here he’s produced a story that’s both funny and horrifying at the same time. He has worked in both humor and horror (fields which are oddly compatible); in another book I edited years ago, I was able to reprint a piece he had originally written for The New Yorker titled “Ghandi at the Bat.”

  Horror readers know Williamson mainly by novels such as Ash Wednesday and Dreamthorp, as well as by such short stories as “Yore Skin’s Jes’s Soft ‘N Purty … He Said,” which originally appeared in the landmark anthology Razored Saddles and which is one of the most singularly brilliant and disgusting tales ever published in the field—and not funny at all.

  (Note: The Zodiac was a New York City dining club established in 1868 and consisted of twelve gentlemen active in New York society. At least two volumes of the collected minutes of the meetings were privately published.)

  September 18th, 20—:

  Before I retired last night, I read a column which suggested that many of the outrages perpetrated by both children and adults might be due to the lack of civility in society. I cannot help but agree.

  The final decades of the previous century witnessed a dreadful decline in civility, and this new century promises to be no more refined. We are on every side beset by adversarial imagery. The media poses everything in terms of battles, wars, and combat, and I find myself falling into this modem-day vernacular.