2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories

by Paul Finch

  I'm not imagining this , Drew thought. I'm not crazy.

  He was reaching out to touch Crew-cut's new, darker face when the phone rang behind him. The sound was jarringly loud in the empty apartment. As Drew went over to pick it up, he thought, Got to make sure to disconnect the service.

  He picked up the phone and heard a woman's stifled sobs on the other end of the line. Drew felt a cold glaze of sweat form on his lower back. The woman made a series of stilted, stuttering sounds, like she was trying to form words but couldn't quite get them out.

  She's going to say it's turning red , Drew thought randomly.

  "Lily?" he said in a dry, croaking voice.

  The woman broke down and started weeping again.

  "Who is this?" Drew demanded.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have called. But I couldn't..."

  "Did you know Lily?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm her brother."

  "I know," she said.

  "Were you one of her friends?"

  "No," she said. Then: "Yes. We worked together sometimes."

  "Were you at the funeral?"

  "No." She said it like the idea was abhorrent to her.

  "What's your name?"

  "Angela."

  "You know what happened to Lily?"

  "I... I read about it in the paper."

  "Do you know anything else?"

  "I don't understand."

  "I think you do. You called me here, at my sister's apartment. You wanted to tell me something."

  "I..."

  "Listen, why don't we get together and talk?" Drew said. "There's a coffee shop on the corner. I can meet you there in an hour."

  "I can't see you," Angela said. "I can't talk to you."

  "Please," Drew said. "Something happened to Lily."

  "She killed herself."

  "There's more."

  The woman sobbed again. "No more," she said. "Please."

  Drew took a shot in the dark. "I've seen the pictures," he said. "The photographs."

  Silence on the other end of the line. Then: "You've seen them?"

  "Lily circled people in each one. The same people. Who are they?"

  "You've seen them?" Angela repeated.

  "Yes."

  "Did you show them to anyone else?"

  Drew hesitated. "No," he said. "Why?"

  "Don't," Angela said, and the line went dead.

  ****

  Next day at the office, Drew stuck his head in Layout and asked if anyone had seen Harris around.

  "He's been off sick the past three days," said Ty Chang, one of the web guys. "Daniel's pissed because he only called in the first day. The last two he just didn't show up."

  "Has anyone called him?"

  Ty shrugged.

  Drew went back to his desk and called Harris's home number. It rang and rang. He was about to hang up when Harris answered.

  "Good-bye," he said.

  The greeting was so unusual and unexpected that Drew didn't respond right away. Then he found his voice and said, "Harris? Is that you?"

  "So far," Harris said, and chuckled dryly.

  "You sound like shit."

  "That's how I feel, chum. She's not looking too good."

  "What? She who?"

  "Nope, she's not looking good at all," he went on. "In fact, she's looking a bit red."

  "Red? What are you talking about, Harris?"

  "I'm sorry, Drew. I really am. But I've gotta run."

  The line went dead.

  ****

  The next day they fished Harris's body out of Lake Ontario. A couple walking their dog on the boardwalk saw him come strolling across the street and walk into the water without breaking stride. They said he didn't swim, he just went under the water and didn't come up again. The man went in after him, but couldn't find any sign of him. The police were called. They sent out boats and some divers found him a few hours later. He was wearing his pyjamas. The police were calling it a suicide.

  He didn't leave a note.

  ****

  Drew went to the funeral.

  Harris wasn't buried in the same cemetery as Lily. If he was, Drew thought that might have been enough to send him right over the edge. He had an image of his world as a table that was being slowly tilted on an angle, and everything that he had thought was safe and stable was sliding away and falling off into the abyss. A part of him was afraid, but another part was glad, almost excited. He didn't care if he went over the edge himself. He wanted to see what lay at the bottom. He wanted to see if Lily and Harris would be there waiting for him.

  After the service he was walking back to his car when he saw something that gave him a sharp jolt of déjà vu: a man standing on a hill at the far end of the cemetery. A man with something dark covering his face.

  The same one who was at Lily's funeral , Drew thought. The one who pointed at me.

  He wasn't pointing at him now-if it was the same man. Drew started walking toward him. Soon he was running. The man was about two hundred yards away, and Drew figured he'd turn and walk away like he did at Lily's funeral. But he didn't. He just took a few steps to the side to stand beneath a tall oak tree.

  When Drew reached him, he saw that a branch from the tree hung down on an angle, concealing the man's face. He reached out to pull the branch away, but the man said, "No" in a firm voice that caused Drew to lower his hand.

  "I think you've seen enough already," the man said. "Don't you?"

  "Who are you?" Drew said, trying to peer through the leaves. "Are you Curly or Crew-cut?"

  "It doesn't matter."

  Drew looked back over his shoulder in the direction of Harris's grave. "You killed him, didn't you?"

  "No," the man said. "You did."

  "How?"

  "You showed him."

  "Showed him what? The pictures?"

  The man said nothing.

  "I saw them, too," Drew said. "Why am I still alive?"

  "Seeing isn't enough," the man said. "We will always be dark to you."

  "What does that mean?"

  "You told him. You showed him."

  "Who are you?" Drew demanded. He took a step forward and reached out to grab the man. He was going to get answers, even if he had to shake them out of him. But the man stepped back, and Drew ended up walking into the branch that concealed the man's face. By the time he batted it aside, the man was walking away, down the other side of the hill.

  Drew started after him, then the man, still walking away, turned his head and looked back over his shoulder.

  Drew froze.

  There was something on the man's face, a black cloth that covered it completely.

  No, Drew thought, not a cloth.

  A veil.

  ****

  The day after Harris's funeral, Drew went to talk to Ty Chang.

  "Did he seem upset to you lately?"

  "No," Ty said. "But he was definitely acting a bit off. Strange, even."

  "Strange how?"

  "He was really nervous," Ty said. "Kind of jittery, you know? One time a phone rang at someone's desk and he actually screamed. I asked him if he was okay and he told me he hadn't been sleeping. He said someone was following him, but when I asked him about it, he acted like he hadn't said anything. He gave me this funny look, like he didn't know he had spoken aloud or something." Ty looked around to see if anyone else was within earshot, then said, "To be honest, he was acting kind of crazy."

  Drew nodded and turned to leave. Then Ty said, "He gave me this."

  Drew turned back and found himself looking at one of Lily's photographs. It showed a group of people at an airport terminal, some of them sitting, some of them standing, presumably waiting for their plane to arrive. A woman toward the back of the group was circled in red. The woman, Drew thought, even though he couldn't be sure. Her head was turned to the side and the visible half of her face was cloaked in shadow.

  "Did he say anything to you?"

  "He wanted m
e to post it on the paper's website. But he didn't tell me which article it was supposed to go with, and when I checked with Daniel, he said he didn't know anything about it."

  Drew took the photo from him. "So you didn't post it?"

  "Of course not. I thought Harris had made a mistake. But then, with the way he'd been acting..." He shrugged. "You wanna know something funny about that picture, though?"

  "What?" Drew suddenly felt cold all over.

  "That woman circled in the background? I think I saw her the other day. Or someone who looked just like her. She was right here in the building. On the elevator. Funny, huh?"

  Drew nodded even though he didn't find it funny.

  Not at all.

  ****

  Two days after Harris's funeral, Billy Wurtz went up to the roof of his high-rise apartment building. He'd been up there on several occasions to take pictures; so often that the superintendent had given him a spare key to the door. But Billy didn't go up there to take pictures that day. He didn't even have his camera with him. Instead he walked to the edge of the roof, went over the side without breaking stride, and fell thirty storeys to the ground below.

  He didn't scream or make any sound at all on the way down. Someone looking at his face in the moment before it was smashed on the pavement like an overripe melon would have seen an expression that looked very much like relief.

  ****

  Drew went through Lily's address book and all of her files, but he couldn't find any mention of someone named Angela.

  He unpacked her computer, booted it up, and went through her e-mails. He felt a bit uncomfortable reading his sister's private correspondence, but he was desperate. Three people were dead, and he needed answers. He didn't know if Angela, whoever she was, had those answers, but he had a feeling she was involved in some way.

  Drew found something in a folder called "Work Crap." A series of messages from someone named Angela Corby.

  She was a photographer.

  ****

  The messages that passed between Lily and Angela Corby were brusque and impersonal.

  Lily: I need a photograph of a little kid holding a ball

  Angela: How old?

  Lily: Six or seven.

  Angela: What kind of ball?

  Lily: Rubber. Size and colour don't matter.

  Angela: Give me an hour.

  They didn't talk about anything other than work, and there was no indication that they had any contact with each other beyond the computer.

  Drew opened a web browser and Googled Angela Corby Toronto photographer. He clicked on the first link in the search results and was taken to a website for Corby Studio. There was contact information with a phone number and a Queen Street address. Drew jotted them down on a scrap of paper and clicked on a link that took him to a page titled "About the Photographer." There was some brief biographical information about Angela Corby, where she went to school, some magazines and newspapers she'd worked for, and a photo.

  Angela Corby was an attractive black woman with large eyes, a pert nose, and a wide, lopsided grin that gave her a sly, playful look. Her crossed arms and hip-cocked stance added to this impression. Drew had a hard time resolving the image of this seemingly confident woman with the trembling voice he'd heard on the phone. Was the confidence real, he wondered, or was it something she wore like a mask?

  He didn't know, but he planned to find out.

  ****

  Corby Studio occupied a third-floor loft with a not-so-scenic view of the condominium across the street. Drew stood in the small reception area formed by three walls that reminded him of his own office cubicle.

  Angela Corby was sitting at a desk working on an adding machine. When Drew came in she was tapping at the keys; as he stood and waited for her to notice him, she began to stab at them. The adding machine made a mechanical squawking sound and spat out a curl of paper.

  Angela muttered, "I hate you," then looked up at Drew. "Oh, hi."

  "You want some help with that thing?"

  "Only if you've got a good pitching arm." She gave him the same lopsided grin she wore in her website picture. "I'm thinking about heaving it out the nearest window."

  Drew didn't have it in him to make small talk. He got right to the point. "My name is Drew Patterson. You called me a few days ago. Lily Patterson was my sister."

  Angela Corby's smile vanished and Drew found himself looking at a woman who went with the voice he'd heard on the phone.

  "I can't help you," she said. "You need to leave. Right now."

  "Lily isn't the only one who's dead. Two more people I know committed suicide in the past week. You know something about it, and I'm not going anywhere until you talk to me."

  Angela hung her head. She clutched the adding machine, and for a moment Drew thought she was going to heave it, not out a window but at him. Then she stood up and came around the desk.

  "Come with me."

  Drew followed her out of the reception area and into the studio, which looked like every photographer's studio he'd ever seen in movies and television. High ceiling, exposed brick walls, and an area in the corner with light poles, a camera on a tripod, and a backdrop.

  Angela went over to one of the tall windows, which was open a crack. She picked up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter that were on the ledge. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke out the open window.

  "I knew you'd come," she said. "How did you find me?"

  "E-mails you exchanged with Lily."

  Angela nodded and took a drag of her cigarette. "You said there were two more deaths. Who were they?"

  "A couple of guys I worked with. One of them was a good friend of mine. The police are calling them suicides. Like Lily. But they weren't suicides, were they?"

  Angela stared at the burning coal of her cigarette. "Yes," she said. "But that's not all they were."

  "They were murdered."

  "Murdered, sacrificed. I don't think it matters what you call it. They're dead. Dead because they saw."

  "Saw what? The photos?"

  "The Veils."

  "Veils?"

  "The people in the photos."

  "The photos you took," Drew said with an accusatory tone in his voice.

  Angela looked at him. "I didn't take them. I found them." She flicked her half-smoked cigarette out the window and walked quickly across the room. "This isn't my fault. I didn't cause this. I didn't know what would happen."

  She went over to a kitchenette with a sink, a hotplate, and a bar fridge tucked under the counter. She opened the fridge and took out a can of beer. She popped the top and took a big swallow.

  "What happened to Lily?"

  "I killed her," Angela said in a small voice. "I didn't mean to, but I did it." She raised the can, drained it, then got another one out of the fridge.

  "I don't think you killed her," Drew said. "But I think you know what happened to her. She called me the night she died. She said, 'It's turning red.' I thought she meant the water in the bathtub, but I think she was referring to the photographs. The faces of the people she circled in them."

  Angela nodded. "Sometimes when I look at them, I see something covering their faces, like a translucent cloth. That's why I call them Veils. The ones I saw were black. The first time it happened, I thought I was going to die. But I didn't. And eventually the Veils went away. Then they came back. It's like their faces go into eclipse or something." She gave him a small, forced grin. "And I'm still here, in the land of the living."

  "You didn't die because you found them on your own," Drew said. "Like me. I saw them in the pictures in Lily's office. I think the people we told about them see the Veils, too, only they're..."

  "Red," Angela finished.

  "Yes. I don't know what the significance of that is, but it's clear what happens to them."

  Angela took a sip of her beer and said nothing.

  "You said you didn't take those photos. You found them?"

  "Yes," Angela said. "Your sister contacted m
e a few weeks ago. She was working on an assignment for a magazine. They needed a graphic for a marketing survey, something that showed a crowd of businesspeople on their way to work. Lily contacted me every now and again when she needed a specific photo. If I weren't on deadline for another assignment, I would have gone out and taken some pictures myself. Pretty boring stuff, but at least it gets me out of the studio. Since I didn't have time, I went online to a stock photography website I use occasionally. I downloaded a bunch of crowd shots and printed them out. While I was trying to figure out if there was anything I could use, I noticed some of the same people in several of the photos. I thought I'd accidentally downloaded a series, but when I went back to the website and checked the descriptions, they said the photos had been taken in different cities. I got curious and downloaded more photos from the website, as well as from other stock photography websites. It was almost like a game."

  "Where's Waldo?" Drew said.

  "Yeah, like that. Only it was kind of creepy, too. I had this feeling I had found something no one else had ever noticed before. I also had a feeling that it was something I wasn't supposed to have noticed. Do you know what I mean?"

  Drew nodded.

  "I downloaded hundreds of photographs. All of them group shots. People on the street. People in restaurants. People on subway cars. Eventually I was able to identify three people who appeared in several of the photos."

  "Two men and a woman."

  Angela nodded. "I've seen them in hundreds of photos. I hope I never see them in person."

  "What did you do?"

  "Nothing at first. I thought I was just imagining things. Even if it was true and they were the same people in all those different photos-so what? What did it really mean? It would have been easy to blow off, but there was a part of me that wondered if I was going a little bit crazy. If this was a sign of something... I don't know, wrong with me."

  "So you showed the pictures to Lily?"

  Angela lowered her eyes. "I didn't know what would happen."

  "I don't blame you." Drew waited until her eyes came back up and met his, then he repeated it: "I don't blame you."

  Angela opened her mouth, then closed it. An awkward silence came between them. Drew broke it by nodding at the can of beer in her hand. "Can I have one of those?"