The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 2: The Orchard (Necon Classic Horror)

by Charles L. Grant

  This time they were clearer, and he circled them carefully, scowling because he didn’t know what they were, exasperated because he knew what they weren’t — no animal in the village ever had paws or hooves like these.

  He sighed, and unexpectedly yawned, rubbed his eyes fiercely, swallowed and realized his throat was filled with dust. As he walked to loosen his legs, drive the tension from his back, he knew there was little more he could do now, at least not until he had cleared his head, had something to drink, and had had a chance to find Les and talk.

  The patrolman on guard at the gate nodded when Brett told him to keep the place locked until he returned, and he felt the man watching him keenly as he started for home. He knew what the man was thinking — a cop with a son for a killer, and redemption was something that happened only in the movies.

  Les was in the living room when he came in the door.

  “Jesus, Dad,” he said, standing quickly, his face pinched with worry. “Jesus, what am I gonna do?”

  Brett sagged against the door and waved a weary hand. “Where were you?” he asked. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Out.”

  “No shit,” he snapped. “I’ve been looking for you all goddamned day!” He raised his head and glared. “Stockton wants me to bring you in. To talk,” he added hastily. “There aren’t any charges; you don’t have to worry.”

  Les laughed, but there was no humor in his smile. “Oh, right, Dad, sure. No charges. But let’s not forget that Les was with each of those girls before they died, okay? And I suppose you know that Amy and I went for a walk in the park, too. I know she talked to you. She told me.” And his arm lashed out at Brett’s chair, knocking it several inches to one side.

  Brett nodded, wanting to go over there and put his arms around the boy, comfort him, say something that would banish the fear. But he couldn’t move. Not now. Now he was a cop, and now he was a father, and now he wished to hell Stockton wasn’tso goddamned understanding.

  “So now what?” Les said dully.

  “Now . . . now you tell me how you knew about this. The radio? Someone call? What?”

  “Denise,” the boy said.

  Brett stared at him stupidly. “Denise?”

  “Right. That’s where I’ve been since school practically. Jesus, didn’t you know any of that?” He laughed again, and sniffed as if he were trying not to cry. “She talks to me, Dad. She had the time. She’s, the one who told me I ought to think about moving out.”

  “She . . . what?”

  Les started for the kitchen, changed his mind, and stopped in front of him. “Yeah, right. I’m eighteen, remember? It’s legal. And I sure don’t get much sympathy around here.”

  Brett covered his face, dropped his hands. “That’s crazy, boy. This isn’t the time to talk about it, but you aren’t moving out. Certainly not now.”

  “Why? Because you think I killed my friends?” Brett raised a hand to slap him and Les grabbed the wrist to force it back down. “You can’t hold me anymore, Dad. You can’t. You don’t let me breathe, I have to check in and check out like I was some kind of — ”

  Brett yanked his hand free and slammed its heel against the boy’s shoulder. knocking him back to arms distance. “I told you this wasn’t the time for that. You don’t seem to realize, boy, what the hell’s happening.” He stopped to take a breath, take another. “Now listen to me and no arguments. Get your coat. You’re coming with me so we can straighten it all out. Now. Before it gets any worse.

  “The hell I am I’ll go by myself.”

  He was too shaken to resist when Les moved him out of the way and opened the door, he was too torn between rage and weeping to prevent him from running down the walk, vaulting the gate, and disappearing into the dark. And when he finally stopped trembling, finally dispelled the sensation he was suffocating in a coffin, he grabbed up the telephone and dialed Denise’s number.

  Who the hell did she think she was, handing out advice like that, especially to his son? She knew full well the kind of trouble the boy was facing. What she was doing didn’t make any sense.

  “Hello?”

  And she had told Amy that practical was out and dreaming was all right.

  “Hello?”

  “Denise;” he said, his voice hollow.

  Jesus, it was as if she actually wanted him —

  “Oh, Brett, thank god! I was so worried about you. I heard about poor Amy and I couldn’t imagine — ”

  He hung up

  He stared at the receiver, heard her voice, heard echoes of other words and finally cornered them, listened to them. and realized what they’d been doing.

  He was being isolated.

  He was being eased into a room with no doors, no windows, and only she had the means to get him out again.

  Dream, she had told Amy; dream, and it’ll be yours.

  With a directionless oath he raced for the door, flung it open, and charged down the walk. The gate latch jammed, and he yanked the whole thing off its hinges, swung left and ran for the first few seconds paying no heed to a car that sped after him, slowed, and began blaring its horn to stop him. When he did turn, he saw Victoria, and when she braked, he skirted the hood without slowing and jumped in beside her.

  “I saw Les,” she told him as he waved her to drive on. “He was running, and I couldn’t get him to stop. Brett, what’s — ”

  “Later,” he said. “We’ll get him later and straighten it all out. Right now, go to the park. There’s something there I need you to see. I need your help.”

  She kept glancing at him, but he refused to meet her gaze, staring instead at the street ahead, at the clouds of fog in the trees, at the image of Amy in the orchard, and Amy on the ground.

  The patrolman had the gates open as Vicky skidded to a halt at the curb, and said nothing when they ran inside, following the path to the field, slowing, and stopping.

  The lights were still on.

  He took her hand and brought her to the place where Amy had fallen, tersely explaining what he had seen, then took her over to show her the prints. She said nothing as she hunkered down beside them, brushing her hair back over her shoulders, tilting her head from one side to the other, and freezing when they heard someone moving toward them out there, beyond the white wall the fog formed with the light.

  “What are they?” he asked quietly, tapping her shoulder to bring her to her feet.

  The wall of white sparkled like mica when a breeze shifted the mist.

  “Like a horse,” she whispered, “only they’re not quite right.”

  “A horse?”

  She nodded, and looked down again

  “What’s wrong with them? Too small?” He looked around and took her arm

  “No. Just . . . not right.”

  One of the lights snapped out and there was black behind them.

  Slowly, listening to the footsteps, steady and quiet, he pulled her with himas he backed away, shaking his head when she questioned him with a look, damning whatever had made him leave his gun at the house.

  A second light flared to blind them, and died a moment later, spraying sparks to the grass and hissing at the fog. Their shadows crossed on the ground, aiming for the trees.

  “Brett,” she whispered.

  The third light, and the fourth, and he was frozen by the dark, squinting as he waited for his night vision to work, holding her arm tighter, waving his free hand in front of him as if to hold back the footsteps that sounded now like drums.

  And when he saw it, saw the moon over the trees and the grey light it cast, he stopped and released her and waited for Denise.

  He had no idea what she had used for a weapon, but he thought now he knew why — to drive Les away. They were too close, too well knit by the death of their family, and Brett wouldn’t let the boy go. The killings had brought pressures on them both, making him cling even harder and aggravating Les’s drive tor independence. Using Amy, alive, and using Amy, dead. Using his guilt, and his g
rief. Forcing him to remember Grace and his daughter, asking all those questions to prove he couldn’t make it alone, not anymore, not without her.

  He turned to Vicky with a bitter smile, to tell her what he knew, and felt the air leave his lungs as if he’d been punched. She was gone, and he could barely see her making her way toward the low hill, crouching, gun in hand, heading for a dark figure midway up toward the trees.

  He called out and started to run.

  She whirled and gestured angrily, turned again, and Denise had moved to the right, out of the shadows and into the light.

  “Stop! Vicky, Jesus, stop!” he screamed, but he misjudged the way the park rose, and he stumbled, fell, scrambled on hands and knees until he could stand again. Walking now, slowly, finding his breath as he kept Victoria on his left, himself the point of the triangle.

  Then Denise laughed in delight as the moon brightened, and he saw her as she wanted to be seen — young, and lovely, her eyes glinting silver and her teeth gleaming white and the flow of her figure something to hold. But the laugh held no warmth, and the silver was cold, and the gleam turned her mouth to a beast’s, filled with fangs.

  When he stopped, she fell silent, and shook her head with a rueful smile.

  “You never dreamed, you know,” she told him, quietly though he could hear her, sweetly though he tasted bile. “You were always the cop with imagination, but you never dreamed about being rescued, you never wished for a gallant knight to save you from the dragon.”

  Oh, god, he thought, oh, god, she’s insane.

  “I never had to,” he answered gently, taking one step toward her and stopping when she frowned, looking over to Victoria, who still held the gun. “I always had what I wanted. I didn’t have to pretend.”

  She backed away, and the shadow of a broken pine split her neatly in half. “No,” she said. “You never did, you know. You never really had Grace, and you never really had Les, and unless you have me, Brett, you won’t even have you.”

  He didn’t dare look, but he hoped Vicky wasn’t listening and was circling around behind. Though Denise didn’t appear to have a weapon, he remembered the bodies and couldn’t risk taking her on himself.

  “Denise,” he said sadly, “I’m not your knight.”

  She giggled and covered her mouth with one hand.

  A glance behind him, to the ballfield, and all he saw was the fog laying down a rolling grey blanket.

  “Denise — ”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Denise, look, everything you’ve said to me now, you told Amy, remember? The knights and the movie stars. But god, there aren’t any knights left, and there are no movie stars here, and, Jesus, didn’t you tell her to be careful what she dreamed?”

  The shadowed head nodded, and the shadowvoice said, “I know, and I meant it.” And the shadowvoice hardened. “You were so damned worried about yourself, afraid that you’d be alone, that you scared yourself out of living, Brett. You scared yourself to death.”

  “Denise — ”

  A hand lifted, a finger pointed, and Brett felt the cold, and the fog, and night.

  “Dreams,” she said, “can be very real, you know. They can be as real as you want them, when you want them, when you want someone to love.”

  Then Victoria screamed and fired twice. He spun around to yell, and dropped to his knees when Denise didn’t fall and Vicky fired twice again and he saw the night shimmer at the top of the hill.

  Rising like a nightflower against the full of the moon, lifting slowly to a grey silhouette that raised its head high, that held its forelegs still, that turned one red eye to the park spread below it and listened for the sound that would signal its charge.

  Listened, and waited, and as the moon rose higher above the knoll where it stood, it just as slowly lowered itself back to the ground. Its mane was dark and curling in the wind, its tail the same and bannered behind it, though the wind that moved them never touched the grass, never stirred the trees, never whispered to the creatures that burrowed deeper underground.

  A leg lifted and struck the earth softly, and there was a cascade of sparks, a crimson plume of fire, and it backed away quickly and struck fire again.

  Waiting. Always patient.

  Against the dark-crater moon like a daemon in white amber.

  “I did it,” she whispered as Brett crawled toward Vicky, his eye on the creature that watched him, and waited.

  It was a trick, but it cast a shadow, and the grass still smoldered where it had raised crimson fire.

  “I dreamed” she said with a laugh as she carne around behind him, neither stopping nor helping, only following in his wake.

  Then it lifted its head again, and he saw the spiraled horn.

  “I dreamed and dreamed so goddamned hard,” was the whisper out of the dark, out of the fog, “that it came just like it should have, and it put its head in my lap.”

  He reached Victoria and lay a hand on her chest, felt the struggling heartbeat and took the gun, then saw the blood matting her hair, heard the creature stirring, saw its shadow move toward him.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder,” Denise said, kneeling just out of reach, “why all the pictures, all those tapestries, show men hunting them with weapons, why dogs had to be used if they were so gentle? Didn’t you ever wonder what the horn was for?”

  A trick, he thought; a trick, it’s a trick.

  “They’re not, you know. They’re not gentle at all.”

  She hit his shoulder with a heavy stone, and he whirled the gun up and aimed shaking at her breast.

  She smiled in the moonlight and glanced up the hill.

  Victoria groaned and stirred.

  “You’ll have to choose, Brett.”

  Victoria sat up, touched her head gingerly, and gasped when her hand came away running with blood.

  “Denise, this is — ”

  “Choose now, Brett,” she said calmly. “But think before you do. If you shoot me, that woman will leave you. Sooner or later, she’ll leave because you’ll remind her of what happened tonight, and she’s not strong enough to live with It. She’s not strong at all.” The smile softened, and filled with love. “You’ll be alone, Brett, all alone. No matter what happens, Les will be gone.”

  He couldn’t move, he couldn’t think; he heard Victoria whimpering and the creature pawing the ground, heard Denise still whispering and the blood roaring to his ears, heard Les damning him for loving too well.

  “I can make you forget,” was the promise he heard “And I can make it go away.”

  He shook his head.

  Victoria cried.

  “And if you don’t choose me — ”

  Her scream, then, was the last thing he heard before he squeezed the trigger and watched her flail to the ground; the last thing he saw before he spun on his knee, and knew she was wrong.

  Victoria was standing by the creature’s lowered head, stroking its mane, whispering fondly in its ear. Then she looked down at him and smiled, and stroked the length of its horn.

  “I have dreams, too,” she said. “I have dreams, too.”

  And he saw her m the moonlight, tall and sweet and fair, waiting for his answer on a bed of crimson fire.

  Part Three: The Last and Dreadful Hour

  Summer, in Oxrun, died in a storm.

  The afternoon had been warm for the last day of September, but the leaves had already started to turn, the ducks on the pond already gone in a twilight flight that called out to the village and brought on the dark. No one wore a coat, but sweaters were taken out to be aired in the yard, gloves were found in drawers and closets, and windows were checked for betrayals of draughts. Fur thickened, pavement hardened, boilers and furnaces practiced their steam.

  It was warm tor the last day of September, but those leaving work just after five saw the clouds on the horizon, moving toward the valley east of the tracks: white, and puffed, and sharp-edged against the blue. And the same drifting over the hills south and north, like
desert clouds building their frozen billowing smoke: white. and puffed, and sharp-edged against the blue. And a single massive cloud that crawled out of the west, its shadow creeping across the fields like a shade drawn against the sun: grey, and boiling, and smothering the blue.

  The wind began to blow just after six, in no particular direction as the clouds merged at their rims, forming a funnel above the village that looked up to the blue shrinking to the size of a platter, a coin, an eye that closed tightly when all the clouds turned to black.

  Leaves ran in gutters, paper slapped against doors, dust in dark tornadoes bounced across the grass to explode against walls; hats were blown off, faces turned away, and on Fox Road near the cemetery a loose, flapping shutter chipped its paint against clapboard until a hinge snapped, a nail loosened, and it spun to the ground. The flag over the high school entrance began to shred. A line of wash on Barlow Street tore loose and was snagged on the branches of a dying pine. The sidewalk displays in front of Buller’s Market were carted inside by clerks, who swore angrily when their aprons whipped their legs and their hair whipped their eyes. Neon flickered on, street lamps cast shadows, the amber light at Mainland Road and the Pike jerked and swayed, danced and spun, until it sputtered, brightened, and winked out without a sound.

  The rain began just after seven.

  The film in the Regency started Just at seven-thirty.

  The lights dimmed once, just after eight.

  And summer, in Oxrun Station, died in a storm.

  The Regency Theater was less than two years new, and had been constructed old-fashioned because the owner was tired of tiny figures on tiny screens pretending to be much larger than they were.

  The exterior was deliberately houselike, red brick and white trim, no marquee and no posters, and the ticket booth was flush with the glass doors that flanked it. There were windows as well, white-curtained, with white tasseled shades pulled midway down the sash, and more than one visitor looked in to see what the living room was like.

  What they saw was darkly polished black oak wainscoting topped with pearl-and-silver flocked paper, ivy and leaves and just a suggestion of trees; the three wall-to-wall carpet was Oriental, floral, its background a royal blue and vacuumed three times a night; and along the back wall, between the entrances to the auditorium, were thickly upholstered high-backed couches, Queen Anne chairs, and silver ashtray stands. To the left and right in the corners were red-carpeted staircases leading to the balcony, and in shallow alcoves beside each a small concession stand.