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

by Charles L. Grant

  “Hey,” she said suddenly, and pushed a hand through her hair. “If I’m gonna get” what you want, I’d better move it, huh?” She reached into the basket and grabbed an apple, shined it on her breast and kissed it, and winked. “I picked this one myself,” she said as she tossed it into his lap, “I didn’t think you wanted all that garbage they spray on them in the store, y’know? They even have artificial coloring, for god’s sake.”

  He didn’t wince when it landed on his groin, didn’t say anything about organic versus cheap. He only picked it up, saw himself in the red that was deeper than a mirror, and winked back as he took a bite.

  “Pretty good, huh? An apple a day, right?”

  “I should have had one before.” She looked away, and he raised an eyebrow. “You have trees in your backyard?”

  It was sweet, juicy, with a slight afterbite.

  She grinned and walked to the door. “Are you kidding? My father can barely grow grass. No, it’s from the orchard. You know it, on the other side of Mainland?”

  He thought, and shook his head. “I’m still new, I guess.”

  “That’s all right. I only found out about it when my sister dragged me on this really gross picnic last spring. Jesus.” Her mouth twisted in disgust. “Kids, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” he said solemnly. “Pains in the ass. “ A laugh, a blown kiss from her palm, and she cautioned him not to eat it too fast. With the food he was getting now, he’d probably throw it up.

  Then she was gone, and he lay there with the bed cranked up and the bed beside him empty and the apple turning warm as he turned it over in his hand.

  He slept, woke just before dinner, and jumped when he saw someone standing beside him. Itwas Rory, huddling in his bathrobe, and he’d been crying.

  Michael repositioned the bed up so he could sit without strangling, realized he still had the apple in his hand, and laid it on the table.

  “Mr. Kolle?” the boy said, wiping a sleeve under his nose. “Mr. Kolle, I want to go home.”

  He didn’t know what to say, and couldn’t say a thing when the orderly wheeled in the supper cart, cheerfully spreading the good word from the gloomy outside, hustling Rory to his bed, and serving the trays with a flourish. After he left, they ate insilence, and when the remains were taken away, he didn’t object when Rory, with a pleading look, climbed onto the bed beside him, shivering, his freckles so dark against the pale white of his face they made his cheeks hollow, his nose too sharp.

  “I hate hospitals too,” he said softly.

  Rory nodded, curled up, and snuggled against his side. When he looked down, he saw the boy .with a thumb in his mouth.

  The window was dark, and in the panes a wavering reflection of the floor’s central hall. A ghost at the nurses’ station, ghosts leaving the elevator, no Janey, no Carolyn, and he wondered what was wrong.

  Rory shifted, and he felt awkward, not knowing whether to stroke his hair, his back, say anything more and try to make a joke about the horrors of temporary living in a place that only knew your name by the chart on your bed. But it was more, he suspected, than not being able to play with his friends.

  “Did you see what happened?” he asked after a while, looking to the open door, looking up the hall at the white-dressed traffic that passed the room in silence.

  Rory shook his head.

  “Did the police come?”

  The boy shook his head again.

  “Just a bunch of doctors and things, huh?”

  Rory nodded once, his forehead thumping Michael’s ribs.

  “I’ll bet,” he said after a few minutes more, “it was a kind of sickness. I mean, sometimes kids get things that spread real fast, like measles and stuff. Some little dope brings it in from the outside and the next thing you know a zillion people are walking around with red spots all over their faces, it happens. So they move the other kids out for a while, until everyone is better.”

  “Really?”

  “Would I lie to you, kid?”

  And when he looked down, the boy was shaking his head, wanting and not knowing how to tell him he was wrong.

  “Thank you. “

  Michael turned his head and saw Carolyn at the door. “Thanks for what?”

  “For helping,” she said, coming in, nodding to Rory as she looked at his chart. “A hospital is bad enough for a kid without crap like this. “ She was annoyed, almost mad, but she made an effort to be friendly as she examined the cast, eyed the crutches with a faint frown, then moved Rory to his own bed with a promise he could return. “These,” she said then, pointing at the bandages, “can go. “

  “Thank god. Will I be able to play the violin?” She unwrapped the leg, tossed the soiled bandages into the trash can, wrinkled her nose, and straightened. “God, you could use a bath, Mike.”

  “Ready when you are,” he said.

  The leg was crossed with scabbed scratches, and a large yellowed bruise spread from his knee to his instep. He almost gagged when he saw it, and when he reached down, it was tender, the odor like something he would expect to find in the morgue.

  “I’ll have someone come in,” she told him, pushed him flat with the flat of her hand, and listened to his heart, took his pulse, checked his eyes with a light that reminded him of that afternoon. When she was finished, she scribbled something on the chart and looked at his face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to snap at you before.”

  “My fault. I’m . . .” He shrugged. “I hate being cooped up, helpless, you know?”

  She kissed his forehead, brushed a finger over his lips, and he watched as she attended to Rory, tickling him, mussing his hair because she knew how much he disliked it, finally telling him not to pay any attention to what the ape in the other bed said because he’s only a reporter, and everyone knows that reporters have to take a college course in advanced lying before they get their diplomas.

  “Hey!” he protested.

  Rory looked around her arm and grinned. “Doc, that’s slander.”

  She rose and smiled without showing her teeth. “Sue me.”

  He appealed to the boy, who was trying not to laugh, then widened his eyes when Carolyn left and Janey came in, pushing a cart in front of her with a large chrome bowl filled with steaming water. “What the hell is that?”

  “Your bath, sir,” she said. And looked at Rory.

  “You want to help me scald him to death?”

  It was the best five minutes he’d spent since he’d arrived — Rory kneeling on the bed, giggling and holding his arms down while Janey scrubbed his leg, swearing at the bits of adhesive that wouldn’t come off, comparing the smell of his wizened flesh to charnel houses she had known. He complained, he threatened, he told Rory he would pluck his freckles off one by one if he didn’t let go.

  Rory laughed. Janey laughed.

  And he played the martyr as well as he could until in his feigned tossing he saw the dark window.

  There was something out there looking in. Bending his right arm to bring Rory over his chest, he stared and realized it was only a reflection. A figure in the hall just out of the elevator, looking down to his room, darker than the night that framed it, larger than it should have been, and vanishing as soon as a nurse with a bedpan approached it, walked through it.

  “There!” Janey said, slapping his knee hard.

  “You are now almost civilized.” And exchanged glances with Rory when she saw he wasn’t paying attention. “Hey, Mike, I’m done.”

  Rory looked at the window, and scrambled off to his own bed.

  Janey looked at the window, back to Mike, and adjusted her cap. “It’s dark out, you know. You can’t see anything. “

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was just looking, that’s all. “ She gathered washcloths and towels, told him not to walk too much — she had heard of his around-the-world trip this afternoon and didn’t think it was a good idea to practice every day — and she’d be back in the morning.


  She kissed him lightly.

  He didn’t kiss her back. The affection in her touch wasn’t anything like the blank look in her eyes.

  Then Rory’s parents came for a visit, and he was left alone, finally wishing he had gotten Cora’s home number so he could find out what she had learned from the ward downstairs. If anything, he thought sourly. She probably just flirted with an intern, was intimidated by the head nurse, and decided on her own there wasn’t anything there. Which meant, if he was right, he would have to do it on his own.

  He tried calling Marc, but no one was home. He tried calling Chief Stockton to see if anyone had demanded ransom for the missing Jasper boy, and was told that the chief and the detectives on the case weren’t giving out information, at the family’s request.

  By the time he was finished, four fruitless calls later, he was angry and ready to pack his crutches and leave. It was dumb. It was stupid. How the hell did Marc expect him to work when he was tied down like this? And how the hell, he asked himself, did he expect to get anything done now, at night, when he’d done nothing that afternoon but play hero in crutches?

  That one was easy — he was afraid. He was creating obstacles where none existed because he didn’t want to know if, in all his years of learning, he had learned anything at all.

  Listen, Marc had said, you should know all this stuff already. You don’t belong here, you belong back in Boston.

  What he didn’t say was obvious — as soon as you grow up and stop running.

  The leg under the cast began itching, and he squirmed, reached down, and wasn’t surprised when his fingers were just too short to reach far enough under the cast. He drummed. He gritted his teeth. He hummed a prayer for a miracle to banish the torment. Then he grabbed for his crutches and hauled himself off the bed.

  “I thought you were supposed to stay there.” He spun and nearly fell, gaping until he recognized Rory lying in his bed. “Jesus, I didn’t know you were back.”

  “My mom says I’m as quiet as a mouse. Where are you going?”

  He pointed to the cast. “It itches. I am going to hold a nurse hostage until they get me something I can stick down there. Then I’m going to scratch like crazy.”

  The boy should have laughed, he thought; at least a smile. But he lay there, bathrobe still on, arms down at his sides and fingers grabbing the sheet, his bandaged ear looking twice as large as when he’d left.

  “See you in a little while.” Rory blinked for a nod.

  And as he stepped out into the hall, he heard: “Mr. Kolle, where do monsters come from?”

  He made it to the nurses’ station without falling, testing his newly unbandaged leg and finding it wobbly but reasonably strong. Then he begged the woman on duty to demolish a coat hanger he saw on the desk behind her. She laughed and deftly twisted the wire into something he could use, laughed again when he instantly shoved it into his cast and probed until he found the right place. He worked at it slowly, not wanting to break the skin, and sighed loudly when at last he pronounced himself cured.

  The woman shook her head and ordered him politely back to his room.

  He bowed as best he could, gripped the hanger in his teeth, and turned around with a brisk salute. Then he turned back and asked how the children were doing, if everything was okay downstairs in the ward.

  She stared at him blankly. “What children?” she said.

  He lifted a hand to point, grabbed the crutch quickly when he felt himself tipping, and shrugged. “Nothing,” he said, tasting the hanger as his tongue flicked against it. “Don’t listen to me, I’m hysterical.”

  She sighed and ordered him away again.

  He considered arguing. Someone else on the floor might know what he was talking about, but she was losing patience and good humor, and he decided not to press his luck. A nod, then, a farewell smile, and he steadied himself for the trip home. His foot slipped on the knob at the bottom of the walking cast, and by the time he had righted himself, sweating, cursing, he saw Rory in the doorway, arms tight across his chest and his hair in disarray.

  “Hey,” he called out. “Hang on, kiddo. I’ll be there in a minute. Long John Silver to the rescue, what do you think?”

  Rory ducked back into the room with a quick shake of his head.

  A look to the nurse and a shrug, and he thumped his way past the elevators, glancing at the unlit numbers over the doors, remembering the figure he’d seen, and not seen, here last night. Much more of that, he thought, and they’d be putting him in the psycho ward, brilliant reporter or not.

  At the T-intersection he paused and leaned against the wall. A glance to his left at the visiting room showed him it was empty; to the right, and the window at the end of the hall was blacker, for the dim lights recessed in the ceiling. Then he looked straight ahead, into his room, and saw Rory sitting in the wheelchair. Staring out. Not moving.

  Hobbling to the door, he tilted his head side to side to display the hanger in his teeth and deliberately mumbled something he knew the boy wouldn’tunderstand.

  Rory didn’t move.

  “Hey, pal,” he said gently. “What’s up?”

  “The monsters,” the boy whispered.

  Michael couldn’t help it; he looked over his shoulder.

  There was no one in the hall.

  He spat the hanger out, grimaced at the taste still lingering in his mouth, and sat on the edge of his bed, beckoning until the boy wheeled himself over.

  “Now what’s all this about monsters?” he said, trying to remain as serious as Rory looked. “Am I in for another one of your crazy stories?”

  The boy shook his head, wouldn’t look up.

  “Where do they come from?” A small voice, a night voice just out of a nightmare.

  Michael shifted awkwardly until he could swing his cast onto the mattress, foot on the pillow, and tuck his other leg underneath. Resting on his elbow then, he was near to eye level and tried not to listen to the silence he heard.

  “In here,” he said, tapping a finger to his forehead.

  Rory blinked. “I don’t think so.”

  “Sure they do, pal. You know what imagination is, right? God, you ought to, with all that stuff you’ve been handing out.”

  Rory nodded, reluctantly, his eyes half closed as if fighting a headache.

  “Well, that’s where they come from. Your imagination. Some guy, see, gets scared of a shadow and they turn it into some really creepy thing that hides under the bed, or in the closet, or under the porch. But it isn’t real because you made it up. So you stick your tongue out at it and it goes away. Or you turn on the light. Something like that.”

  Again the child’s voice: “Are you sure?”

  He looked around the room, wishing the kid’s parents would magically pop out of the bathroom and explain how to deal with something like this. Of course he was sure, but how do you explain it to someone who believes?

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “Imagination is what makes movies and books and comics and television shows. It’s what makes my job, sometimes, when I have to imagine what this guy or that guy was thinking when he did something. It helps to clear away all the garbage and get me what I want.” Easy, he thought then; easy, you’re lecturing. “See, I have to look for facts, Rory. And sometimes my imagination helps me find them.”

  “Don’t . . . don’t you ever get in trouble?”

  He laughed, knowing the boy would never understand. “You, my friend, have just hit the nail right on the head. Trouble? I have been in such trouble, you wouldn’t believe it.” He leaned forward and reached out to tap the boy’s knee. “And you know why I got into trouble, my boy? Because I let my imagination run away with me.”

  Rory looked to his pillow, looked at Michael sideways, and wheeled the chair back to the window. He got up, took off his robe, and climbed into bed, pulling the thin blanket up to his chin. “The monsters?”

  “You mean the ones downstairs or — ”

  “Yes.”

 
“Imagination.”

  Rory put a’ hand on his bandage, winced, and nodded.

  Michael waited, then maneuvered himself under his own covers, sitting under the tiny light that barely reached to his feet. The rest of the room was dark. He could hear Rory breathing, every so often shifting his legs across the sheets.

  “Hey, pal?”

  “What?”

  Michael sat up to see over the bedtable. “Where did you see these monsters of yours?”

  There was no response for several seconds, and Michael thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he pulled one arm from under the blanket and pointed to the floor.

  All night.

  Whispering.

  And the shadows of dreams.

  The next morning Michael screamed.

  The moment he opened his eyes it was there, working out of his throat from the fire rushing through his legs, from the burning on his palms, from the bars that had been thrust through one shoulder to, the other. The effort to keep silent spun the scream into a groan, and he grabbed for the call button on the wire by his head.

  Holding himself rigid. Keeping his eyes closed. Nodding when he heard Janey asking sadly about the pain.

  “You’re just a big kid, you know that, Mike?”

  Janey. Lovely Janey.

  “Now be a good boy and wait, and I’llsee if Doctor Player will let you have something to take care of it.”

  Shit on growing up, he thought, if it means I can’t cry.

  “Janey?”

  Slipping a hand behind his head a few minutes later, holding a paper cup to his lips, putting a pill on his tongue, waiting while she stroked his chest until the medicine, was down. Whispering something in his ear and kissing his cheek, shifting and drawing the curtain around him.

  Drifting.

  Dozing.

  Waking sometime past noon to see a pair of white coats standing by Rory’s empty bed, looking at the boy’s chart, looking up at him and telling him with their eyes he’d best rest, go back to sleep. Carolyn bent over him, brushed back his hair, and whispered something in his ear.

  “Carolyn?”

  “Hush. Go to sleep.”