Bright took the last of the cognac in a single gulp, put the snifter aside, then lay back to watch the rest of the news. Almost at once the screen filled with a shot of central Bucharest where two large mobs were locked in street fighting. The sounds of gunfire mixed with shouting and sirens. “—began when two Moldavian men were convicted of killing three youths of the pro-Turkish Reconciliation Party last year—” the announcer droned. Bright shook his head, glad he wouldn’t be going to Istanbul again any time soon. He watched the images flickering, and tried to organize his thoughts as the first, welcome nudge of sleep came over him. He reached for the remote to turn it off, but it eluded him, and he sank back on the pillows, already in the twilight between slumber and wakefulness.
Strange, how much this room was like the one in the Grand Colonial House in Buenas Aires. Or perhaps it was more like the Grand Victorian House in Hong Kong?
“—estimated the number of students protesting at 6,000. Early reports say that several hundred were arrested, and dozens sent to hospital—”
Student riots? Not in Hong Kong, surely. But there were men in threadbare clothes howling in the streets, and sporadic gunfire from somewhere. Two men in uniforms that looked old-fashioned stood at the foot of the bed in what looked like the Grand Baroque House in Berlin, but with elements of other Faversham hotels mixed with it. They spoke eagerly, apparently preparing for a night of pleasure, for one of the men removed his tunic while the other took a silver cigarette case from somewhere and lit up, willing to wait his turn. On the bed, a woman reclined, her eyes half-closed and smoky. Bright had the dismaying sensation of being permeated by the woman, so that he and she were transfixed by this partial dream. He tried to twist free, but her presence held him where he was as the men at the end of the bed prepared to have sex with her. Bright felt drugged, and realized that the woman was high on something. Again he attempted to break free of her and again he failed.
“—with the German Chancellor saying that he would oppose funding for such a wasteful project—”
One of the men was naked now, and caressing the woman on the bed in a perfunctory way before he climbed onto her and shoved between her thighs. Bright squirmed in disgust and sternly told himself to wake up. The men faded and he seemed to be in Miss Faversham’s room in Los Angeles at the Spanish House; he recognized the exposed, black beams and adobe-finished walls. A slow wind flapped the draperies on the far wall, and the noise of traffic was loud in the room. Bright strove to wake up, but was left to flounder on the bed while a tall, lean man with a pistol in his hand approached the bed, the barrel leveled at the occupant, who Bright realized was a middle-aged woman in a lavish peignoir. He felt more than heard her say, “You don’t want to do anything so stupid, Ronald, now do you?” and then she extended her arm toward the man. “You don’t have to be a fool.” The decor, Bright realized, was at least one renovation ago, and the clothes were those of the 1950s; the man looked like something out of a gangster movie. Bright squirmed, but only mentally, as the woman reached out for the gun. “You can put it down, Ronald. And put something better up.” No matter how corny this sounded to Bright, the man hesitated and the woman smiled.
“—the penalty phase of the trial. Since Hammond was convicted on eleven counts of first degree murder, it’s likely the jury won’t need much time to decide on the most severe—”
Now it was the Geneva hotel, probably in the 80s, Bright supposed. The room was dark and smelled of scented oil. He felt the woman, now noticeably older, stretched out through him, in spite of aching shoulders and hips. She was stroking her thighs and belly, murmuring, “Too bad about Ronald. Poor man. Too bad about Paul and Ernst, too bad about Demetrios, too bad about Jaime, too bad about Trevor, too bad about Papa, too bad about Claude, too bad about Sergei, too bad about Tazuki, too bad about…” The names went on in a dreamy litany as Bright began to share the old lady’s arousal. He shuddered and tried to break free of the hold she had on him, but to no avail; her need possessed him and he was inextricably bound to her presence. He shivered, unable to banish the cold that engulfed him even as the old woman suborned his body. He could share her memories, the faces and locations for each of the men. “One for each hotel,” she crooned as she shook in ecstasy, and Bright was seized by his own orgasm. “Each hotel a shrine, and a tomb.” She swallowed a pill, and drifted into profound sleep, still reciting the names of men she had—had what? Had killed? Had seduced? Had—Bright moaned even as he lapsed into sleep.
“Before the dam collapsed mandatory evacuations saved more than six thousand residents from drowning. Present damage estimates are at 60 million dollars and climbing. The Premier of Alberta has already dispatched four hundred aid workers to the area most damaged by the dam failure, has ordered an investigation of the explosion that caused it, and has set up an identification and relocation office in West Frazier—”
Bright sat up with a cry, his eyes wild as he stared around the room, and saw only the television set, still on to International CNN; the first pallid, pre-dawn light filled the room, and made everything look slightly unreal. Bright lunged out of bed and staggered toward the bathroom, wanting nothing so much as to wash himself. As he stumbled through the door, he felt the draft again, and noticed the outer bathroom door was once again ajar. ‘What the fuck—?” he muttered, and went to lock the door again. He was about to fill the tub when he hesitated. So much of this bathroom was hers that he could not bring himself to expose himself to her again.
“That’s just silly,” he told his reflection, and said, more forcefully, “You’ve been immersed in this story. You’re saturated with it. You were worn out. You fell asleep with the news on, and you made up things about Miss Faversham from what the tv said. Come on. You’ve got an assignment to finish.” He stared at himself, doing his best to ignore the breeze that went through the bathroom, and the old, old eyes that looked back at him from his reflection in the mirror.
THE DAMNED THING, by Ambrose Bierce
I
By the light of a tallow candle, which had been placed on one end of a rough table, a man was reading something written in a book. It was an old account book, greatly worn; and the writing was not, apparently, very legible, for the man sometimes held the page close to the flame of the candle to get a stronger light upon it. The shadow of the book would then throw into obscurity a half of the room, darkening a number of faces and figures; for besides the reader, eight other men were present. Seven of them sat against the rough log walls, silent and motionless, and, the room being small, not very far from the table. By extending an arm any one of them could have touched the eighth man, who lay on the table, face upward, partly covered by a sheet, his arms at his sides. He was dead.
The man with the book was not reading aloud, and no one spoke; all seemed to be waiting for something to occur; the dead man only was without expectation. From the blank darkness outside came in, through the aperture that served for a window, all the ever unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness—the long, nameless note of a distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in trees; strange cries of night birds, so different from those of the birds of day; the drone of great blundering beetles, and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seem always to have been but half heard when they have suddenly ceased, as if conscious of an indiscretion. But nothing of all this was noted in that company; its members were not overmuch addicted to idle interest in matters of no practical importance; that was obvious in every line of their rugged faces—obvious even in the dim light of the single candle. They were evidently men of the vicinity—farmers and woodmen.
The person reading was a trifle different; one would have said of him that he was of the world, worldly, albeit there was that in his attire which attested a certain fellowship with the organisms of his environment. His coat would hardly have passed muster in San Francisco: his footgear was not of urban origin, and the hat that lay by him on the floor (he was the only one uncovered) was such that if one
had considered it as an article of mere personal adornment he would have missed its meaning. In countenance the man was rather prepossessing, with just a hint of sternness; though that he may have assumed or cultivated, as appropriate to one in authority. For he was a coroner. It was by virtue of his office that he had possession of the book in which he was reading; it had been found among the dead man’s effects—in his cabin, where the inquest was now taking place.
When the coroner had finished reading he put the book into his breast pocket. At that moment the door was pushed open and a young man entered. He, clearly, was not of mountain birth and breeding: he was clad as those who dwell in cities. His clothing was dusty, however, as from travel. He had, in fact, been riding hard to attend the inquest.
The coroner nodded; no one else greeted him.
“We have waited for you,” said the coroner. “It is necessary to have done with this business tonight.”
The young man smiled. “I am sorry to have kept you,” he said. “I went away, not to evade your summons, but to post to my newspaper an account of what I suppose I am called back to relate.”
The coroner smiled.
“The account that you posted to your newspaper,” he said, “differs probably from that which you will give here under oath.”
“That,” replied the other, rather hotly and with a visible flush, “is as you choose. I used manifold paper and have a copy of what I sent. It was not written as news, for it is incredible, but as fiction. It may go as a part of my testimony under oath.”
“But you say it is incredible.”
“That is nothing to you, sir, if I also swear that it is true.”
The coroner was apparently not greatly affected by the young man’s manifest resentment. He was silent for some moments, his eyes upon the floor. The men about the sides of the cabin talked in whispers, but seldom withdrew their gaze from the face of the corpse. Presently the coroner lifted his eyes and said: “We will resume the inquest.”
The men removed their hats. The witness was sworn.
“What is your name?” the coroner asked.
“William Harker.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“You knew the deceased, Hugh Morgan?”
“Yes.”
“You were with him when he died?”
“Near him.”
“How did that happen—your presence, I mean?”
“I was visiting him at this place to shoot and fish. A part of my purpose, however, was to study him, and his odd, solitary way of life. He seemed a good model for a character in fiction. I sometimes write stories.”
“I sometimes read them.”
“Thank you.”
“Stories in general—not yours.”
Some of the jurors laughed. Against a sombre background humor shows high lights. Soldiers in the intervals of battle laugh easily, and a jest in the death chamber conquers by surprise.
“Relate the circumstances of this man’s death,” said the coroner. “You may use any notes or memoranda that you please.”
The witness understood. Pulling a manuscript from his breast pocket he held it near the candle, and turning the leaves until he found the passage that he wanted, began to read.
II
“…The sun had hardly risen when we left the house. We were looking for quail, each with a shotgun, but we had only one dog. Morgan said that our best ground was beyond a certain ridge that he pointed out, and we crossed it by a trail through the chaparral. On the other side was comparatively level ground, thickly covered with wild oats. As we emerged from the chaparral, Morgan was but a few yards in advance. Suddenly, we heard, at a little distance to our right, and partly in front, a noise as of some animal thrashing about in the bushes, which we could see were violently agitated.
“‘We’ve started a deer,’ said. ‘I wish we had brought a rifle.’
“Morgan, who had stopped and was intently watching the agitated chaparral, said nothing, but had cocked both barrels of his gun, and was holding it in readiness to aim. I thought him a trifle excited, which surprised me, for he had a reputation for exceptional coolness, even in moments of sudden and imminent peril.
“‘O, come!’ I said. ‘You are not going to fill up a deer with quail-shot, are you?’
“Still he did not reply; but, catching a sight of his face as he turned it slightly toward me, I was struck by the pallor of it. Then I understood that we had serious business on hand, and my first conjecture was that we had ‘jumped’ a grizzly. I advanced to Morgan’s side, cocking my piece as I moved.
“The bushes were now quiet, and the sounds had ceased, but Morgan was as attentive to the place as before.
“‘What is it? What the devil is it?’ I asked.
“‘That Damned Thing!’ he replied, without turning his head. His voice was husky and unnatural. He trembled visibly.
“I was about to speak further, when I observed the wild oats near the place of the disturbance moving in the most inexplicable way. I can hardly describe it. It seemed as if stirred by a streak of wind, which not only bent it, but pressed it down—crushed it so that it did not rise, and this movement was slowly prolonging itself directly toward us.
“Nothing that I had ever seen had affected me so strangely as this unfamiliar and unaccountable phenomenon, yet I am unable to recall any sense of fear. I remember—and tell it here because, singularly enough, I recollected it then—that once, in looking carelessly out of an open window, I momentarily mistook a small tree close at hand for one of a group of larger trees at a little distance away. It looked the same size as the others, but, being more distinctly and sharply defined in mass and detail, seemed out of harmony with them. It was a mere falsification of the law of aerial perspective, but it startled, almost terrified me. We so rely upon the orderly operation of familiar natural laws that any seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a warning of unthinkable calamity. So now the apparently causeless movement of the herbage, and the slow, undeviating approach of the line of disturbance were distinctly disquieting. My companion appeared actually frightened, and I could hardly credit my senses when I saw him suddenly throw his gun to his shoulders and fire both barrels at the agitated grass! Before the smoke of the discharge had cleared away I heard a loud savage cry—a scream like that of a wild animal—and, flinging his gun upon the ground, Morgan sprang away and ran swiftly from the spot. At the same instant I was thrown violently to the ground by the impact of something unseen in the smoke—some soft, heavy substance that seemed thrown against me with great force.
“Before I could get upon my feet and recover my gun, which seemed to have been struck from my hands, I heard Morgan crying out as if in mortal agony, and mingling with his cries were such hoarse savage sounds as one hears from fighting dogs. Inexpressibly terrified, I struggled to my feet and looked in the direction of Morgan’s retreat; and may heaven in mercy spare me from another sight like that! At a distance of less than thirty yards was my friend, down upon one knee, his head thrown back at a frightful angle, hatless, his long hair in disorder and his whole body in violent movement from side to side, backward and forward. His right arm was lifted and seemed to lack the hand—at least, I could see none. The other arm was invisible. At times, as my memory now reports this extraordinary scene, I could discern but a part of his body; it was as if he had been partly blotted out—I can not otherwise express it—then a shifting of his position would bring it all into view again.
“All this must have occurred within a few seconds, yet in that time Morgan assumed all the postures of a determined wrestler vanquished by superior weight and strength. I saw nothing but him, and him not always distinctly. During the entire incident his shouts and curses were heard, as if through an enveloping uproar of such sounds of rage and fury as I had never heard from the throat of man or brute!
“For a moment only I stood irresolute, then, throwing down my gun, I ran forward to my friend’s assistance. I had
a vague belief that he was suffering from a fit or some form of convulsion. Before I could reach his side he was down and quiet. All sounds had ceased, but, with a feeling of such terror as even these awful events had not inspired, I now saw the same mysterious movement of the wild oats prolonging itself from the trampled area about the prostrate man toward the edge of a wood. It was only when it had reached the wood that I was able to withdraw my eyes and look at my companion. He was dead.”
III
The coroner rose from his seat and stood beside the dead man. Lifting an edge of the sheet he pulled it away, exposing the entire body, altogether naked and showing in the candle light a clay-like yellow. It had, however, broad maculations of bluish-black, obviously caused by extravasated blood from contusions. The chest and sides looked as if they had been beaten with a bludgeon. There were dreadful lacerations; the skin was torn in strips and shreds.
The coroner moved round to the end of the table and undid a silk handkerchief, which had been passed under the chin and knotted on the top of the head. When the handkerchief was drawn away it exposed what had been the throat. Some of the jurors who had risen to get a better view repented their curiosity, and turned away their faces. Witness Harker went to the open window and leaned out across the sill, faint and sick. Dropping the handkerchief upon the dead man’s neck, the coroner stepped to an angle of the room, and from a pile of clothing produced one garment after another, each of which he held up a moment for inspection. All were torn, and stiff with blood. The jurors did not make a closer inspection. They seemed rather uninterested. They had, in truth, seen all this before; the only thing that was new to them being Harker’s testimony.
“Gentlemen,” the coroner said, “we have no more evidence, I think. Your duty has been already explained to you; if there is nothing you wish to ask you may go outside and consider your verdict.”
The foreman rose—a tall, bearded man of sixty, coarsely clad.
The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories Page 22
