The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Is there a cure?” he asked when he was through. He sat up. His muscles were exhausted, and he risked relaxing them a bit, hoping Bonesy wouldn’t notice.

  Dr. Oliver put down his notebook. “There are a number of ways to treat claustrophobia. First, there are medications, such as tranquilizers, anti-depressants and beta blockers. When we’re through today, I’m going to give you a prescription.”

  Little help that’ll be, Toby thought. Medications would affect him, but not Bonesy, who didn’t have a circulatory system.

  “Another way is hypnosis.”

  That’s not going to work either, Toby thought. He’d be hypnotized, and that’d leave Bonesy in charge. He didn’t know if a skeleton could be hypnotized.

  “Cognitive behavior therapy is another way that sometimes works,” Dr. Oliver said. “For this, you confront and change the actual thoughts that lead to the fear of enclosed spaces.”

  Toby thought this could work, but only if Bonesy actively participated. Not likely.

  “Finally,” Dr. Oliver continued, “you can confront it directly with what’s called ‘flooding.’ You face the fear by exposing yourself to it completely until you become conditioned to it.”

  “No No No No No No No No No.”

  “What are you doing with your fingers?” Dr. Oliver asked. Toby tensed his fingers, shutting Bonesy up.

  Face your fears, Toby thought as he left the doctor’s office, tossing the prescription in a trashcan on the way out. He called a taxi, but instead of going home, he went to several department stores. He found one that sold lockers nearly identical to the one he’d been trapped in so many years ago. He bought it.

  It was a struggle getting the locker out of the box with Bonesy on a rampage. Finally he got it out, and put it on the ground horizontally with the door on top. The sight of it made him increasingly nervous. The corner of his eye began twitching.

  Over dinner he and Bonesy argued. But Toby was determined. When Bonesy managed to slap his plate to the floor, spoiling his dinner, Toby had had enough. It was time to face their fear.

  He tied a piece of string to the door of the locker so he could close it from within by pulling on it. He’d made sure the locker he bought had a latch on it so he could open it from the inside.

  He put on his football helmet and a fresh mouth rag. His ever-present throat guard was already on. He hung the string from the locker door loosely inside the locker so he could get at it easily. He sat down in the locker, and tied his hands and feet together as always did at night, using his teeth to pull the knots on his wrists tight. Then, tensing his muscles against Bonesy’s vigorous disagreement, he lay down in the locker.

  Keep your eyes on the ceiling, he told himself. It’s just an open locker, no different than a bed. Nothing to worry about.

  His body began to shake. He’d expected that from Bonesy. Only, he realized, it wasn’t just Bonesy that was shaking.

  You have to do this, he repeated over and over. Both for himself and for Bonesy. He grabbed the string from the locker door in his teeth and began to pull.

  His body exploded like an earthquake as both he and Bonesy gave in to their fears. Working together for once, they jumped out of the locker, tore the ropes off their hands and feet, and made it to the farthest corner of the room, where they cowered in a corner, staring at the locker. Toby sat there for hours until his trembling came to a halt and he finally fell asleep.

  * * * *

  Toby screamed silently into his mouth rag when the giant with the stubbled red face and thin nose came and swallowed him. In utter wet blackness he fell down the giant’s throat, feet first. He came to a stop. His arms and legs were sucked in different directions into the wet softness, pinning him in the tiny enclosed area as he struggled to move and breath. He was drowning in the giant’s guts.

  Something pulled over his head, like a football helmet. Two peepholes of light appeared. He saw his living room. He tried getting up, but something stopped him. He tried again, but his arms and legs were held firm by what seemed wet and gooey molasses. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breath. He spit out the mouth rag and screamed and screamed and screamed.…

  He jumped to his feet, thrashing his arms and legs about, but they were now free, and he could breath again. He was awake.

  Bonesy was tapping. Please don’t go in locker.

  He had had another nightmare, but it was over. Bonesy’s perpetual nightmare was not. Neither was Toby’s.

  “We have to do this,” he decided. His mouth rag was on the floor; he jammed it in his pocket. “It’s the only way.”

  No. I fight you.

  Toby stared at the locker as he ate breakfast. Then he once again did his preparations, putting on the football helmet and mouth rag. Staying on the opposite side of the room, he tied his arms and legs again, but loosely for now.

  He stood across the room from the locker, and took a few deep breaths. He gave his mouth rag one more adjustment. Then he ran toward the locker, stumbling with the ropes around his feet, screaming as loudly as he could, the sound muffled by the mouth rag. He dived into the locker, fighting off Bonesy’s sudden opposition. He continued to scream mindlessly as he pulled the knots on his hands and feet tight.

  Unable to think clearly while screaming, he barely noticed what he was doing as he grabbed the string to the locker door with his teeth and yanked.

  The locker door closed over him with a clang, and thus began the longest night of Toby’s life. Before he had screamed himself into a mindless frenzy so he wouldn’t think about what he was doing as he trapped himself in the locker. Now he screamed with the same blind terror as Bonesy.

  He started to reach for the latch to open the locker. It was just over his head, an awkward reach with his hands tied. With Bonesy mindlessly bucking his body about, it was almost impossible. He finally got his hands high enough.

  “No!” he screamed, yanking his hands away from the latch. He worked his hands back down, away from the latch.

  An eternity went by. It’s just like lying down, he thought desperately. He took several deep breaths. He still had the shakes, and Bonesy continued to fight him. He closed his eyes, tensed his muscles, and tried to close his mind. Sweat poured out of him as he kept his muscles tense, hour after hour, periodically resting and letting Bonesy painfully bang his body against the cold, hard steel of their prison. He was thankful for the football helmet.

  Bonesy stopped fighting late that afternoon. Soon afterwards Toby nodded off.

  He woke up exhausted, with no idea what the time was. His shirt was glued to his chest from dried sweat, and every muscle ached. Yet he felt strangely relaxed. He slowly worked the knots on his hands free, and opened the locker. After untying his feet, he stood up and spit out the mouth rag.

  “You okay, Bonesy?” he asked as he made his way to the kitchen, his muscles on edge.

  “I—”

  Toby poured cereal for breakfast as he waited for Bonesy to finish. Finally, after a long pause, Bonesy continued.

  “—am fine.”

  Their nightmare was over. Within a week Toby took down the padding on the wall, removed the locks, and bought real silverware made of actual metal.

  * * * *

  Toby died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 79. During his long writing career he wrote thousands of articles, seven books, and won a number of journalism awards. The nurse at the hospital who noted his death reported a severe case of postmortem spasms as his fingers moved about long after he died.

  The executor of Toby’s estate, a lawyer, had known Toby on and off for many years. When he’d last spoken with him shortly before his death, Toby had given him the sealed will. He’d seemed perfectly normal. The lawyer now read, with growing amazement, the instructions Toby had left in the will.

  First, his casket was to be buried no more than one foot deep, under loose earth. Strange, but no big deal there. Second, the casket was not to be locked. Did Toby expect to take any trips out of his coffin? Third
, he was to be buried with a large and sturdy knife that he had left at his home before going to the hospital the final time. The lawyer could only shake his head.

  And finally, the will specified the words to be placed on his gravestone. The lawyer was fairly sure Toby had never been closely involved with civil rights groups, but perhaps he didn’t know Toby as well as he thought.

  If someone were to challenge this, he thought, there would be a strong case to have Toby declared not of sound mind. However, it was his job to execute the will as written. Besides, who would challenge the will? Toby seemed a near recluse who’d spent his life with himself as his only company.

  The instructions were carried out. At the burial a few days later, the lawyer read the words on the gravestone: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I am free at last!” Why had Toby chosen to put the quote from Martin Luther King on his gravestone? Bewildered and shaking his head, the lawyer left.

  The soil at the base of the gravestone stirred.

  VENGEANCE IN HER BONES, by Malcolm Jamieson

  The messenger from the Navy recruiting office found old Captain Tolliver in his backyard. The crabby, sour-visaged housekeeper took him as far as the hedge back of the house and pointed the retired mariner out to him. Captain Tolliver was reclining in a ragged canvas deckchair taking the sun. He had on faded dungarees, soft and pliant as linen from hundreds of scrubbings, and the stump of his handless left arm rested carelessly on his lap. The peg-leg that matched it lay in alignment with the one good leg. The captain had his eyes closed, comfortably drinking in the sun’s good heat, when he heard the crunch of the messenger’s step on the gravel walk that separated the vegetable from the flower beds. The old skipper’s hearing was still alert, though, and at the sound he raised his lids and looked inquiringly at the newcomer.

  “Commander Jason’s compliments, sir,” said the bluejacket, “and would you please step down to the office. He has a ship for you.”

  Captain Tolliver smiled feebly, then he closed his eyes against the glare. His eyes were not overstrong these days—the doctors had said something about incipient cataracts.

  “Commander Jason is confusing me with my son. He already has a ship, working out of West Coast ports. My sea-going days are over. Forever.” To emphasize his point he waved the stump of his left arm, and lifted the pegleg slightly.

  “No, sir. It’s you he wants. He was very clear about that. He has a ship that only you can command. She’s a rogue. They say she a will obey no other skipper. He says they have waived your physical defects and will give you all the help you need. But they’ve got to have you.”

  The captain shook his head.

  “He’s wrong, I say. There is no such a ship. There was one once, but she rotted her life away in the back channel. They sold her finally to a wrecking company and broke her up for scrap. All I have to say to that is whoever bought that scrap had better have a care as to how they use it. For she was a vindictive wench. The Sadie Saxon bore grudges and would have her way no matter what you did.…

  “Yes, sir,” said the messenger, eagerly, “that’s the ship—the Sadie Saxon—a cargo type vessel! They’ve put her back in commission but she won’t leave port. They need ships now that America is at war. Every ship. That’s why they need you. The commander says please come. If you want, he’ll send an ambulance.”

  “The Sadie Saxon,” whispered the old captain, suddenly rapt with nostalgia for World War days when he and she were in their prime.

  Then aloud, “He needn’t bother about the ambulance. I can get there under my own power, son. Give me a hand so I can get up and go dress. The old uniform still fits, thank God.”

  Captain Tolliver’s senility seemed to drop from him as a cloak the moment the well-worn blue garments were back on his lean frame. He looked a little ruefully at the tarnished gold lace on the sleeves and at the cap device the years had tinted with green mold, but nevertheless he brushed the uniform carefully, squared his shoulders, and marched down the steps without availing himself of the sailor’s proffered arm.

  “So they didn’t break her up after all?” said the captain, as they waited at the curb in the hope a cruising taxi would come by. “How come? I know she was sold.”

  “Too expensive. She was part of a contract for scrap to be sent to the Japs some months ago, but they only worked three days on her. She killed nine men the first day they brought their cutting torches aboard, all of them in different ways. One of her booms crashed down the second day and smashed five others. On the third day seven suffocated in a hold, and two slipped and fell overboard. The men said she was jinxed and threatened to call a strike. So they put a tug alongside and hauled her back to her old berth.”

  Caplain Tolliver chuckled.

  “For the Japs, huh? She knew it even before they attacked Pearl Harbor, but I might have told ’em. But what’s this about her refusing to leave port. Doesn’t that sound a little silly to you?”

  His faded old eyes twinkled when he asked the question. It was one that did sound silly, when a person came to think about it. Yet he knew it was not silly and one an experienced sailorman would answer as seriously as he could.

  “There’s no other word for it, sir,” replied the bluejacket, soberly. “She was refitted at Newport News, given a crew and loaded with cargo. They took her out to make a voyage to Spanish Morocco, loaded with grain and automobile tires. But she wouldn’t pass the Thimble. Her rudder jammed and she piled up hard, and at high tide, too. It took four days to pull her off. They took her back to the yard and looked her steering gear over. It was okay. So they started her out again. That time she sheered out to the other side and grounded near Willoughby Spit. The third time they tried to take her out, ahe piled up in the dredged channel and blocked all shipping for hours. The yard still insisted there was nothing wrong with her steering gear and suspected sabotage—”

  “I know,” said the captain. “They didn’t find any evidence of it.”

  “That’s right. They gave her crew a clean bill of health and ordered to sea once more. She won’t budge. She had steam up and stood a good dock trial, but once she was out in the stream her propellers quit turning over—”

  “With full throttle, of course,” remarked Captain Tolliver calmly.

  “Yes, sir. With full pressure in the boilers and throttle wide open. All she would do was drift until she banged into a dock.

  “The tugs got hold of her and tied her up again. The engineers swear her engines are all right and there is no reason why she won’t run. She just won’t—that’s all.”

  A taxi rounded the corner and caught the sailor’s hail. As it slid to a stop before them the captain made one final remark.

  “I see. They looked up her record and found she was always that way. Except when I had command of her. Well, I know what is on that little tub’s mind and what to do about. It won’t be orthodox, but if they want her in service it is the only way.”

  “What’s that, sir.”

  “Give her her head,” said the old man cryptically, then stiffly climbed into the cab.

  It was a week later that Captain Tolliver arrived at Norfolk Navy Yard. An aide of the admiral in charge of transport took him to the dock where she lay. She looked spick and span and new and a painter’s stage swung under her near bow, and was to play her part in keeping supplies going Eastward in spite of havoc to the West. Tolliver climbed up onto it with some difficulty and patted one of the shiny plates of her nose.

  “Up to your old tricks, eh, Sadie?” the astonished aide heard him say. “Well, everything’s going to be all right now. We’ll go hunting together.”

  Was it the wash of a passing tug that caused her to bob suddenly up and down that way? The aide shrugged his shoulders and was glad he as in the regular outfit. He would hate to have to go to sea through the war zone on a rogue ship under the command of a decrepit and senile madman of a skipper.

  “I am ready to take over,” announced Tolliver when he was back o
n the dock, “whenever those three men whose names I gave you have heen replaced by others more acceptable.”

  “Acceptable to whom, sir? I repeat that they are loyal American citizens despite their German ancestry. They have been investigated fully.”

  “Acceptable to me as representative of the ship,” answered the captain with all his old dignity. “When they are off we sail. Not before. Perhaps it is prejudice—Sadie’s funny that way—perhaps your investigation was not as comprehensive as you think. That’s your problem.”

  The aide laughed. The old lunatic, he thought, but I’m stuck I guess. They said give him anything he asked for.

  “Very well, sir,” was what he said out loud.

  Captain Tolliver waited patiently beside the bow until the last of the thee scowling men had come down it laden with their bags and dunnage. Then he mounted to the deck and went straightway to the bridge. His hand reached for the whistle pull. A long, triumphant scream of a blast split the air.

  “Stand by your lines,” bellowed the old man through a megaphone, “and tell the tug never mind. We won’t need her.”

  Two hours later the Sadie Saxon swept through the dredged channel, picked up and passed the entrance buoy to the bay. Throbbing with the vibration of her churning screws and rising and falling to the heavy swell outside, she shook herself joyfully at the smell and feel of the open sea. Cape Henry and Cape Charles Lights soon faded behind. The Captain set a course for Bermuda, for the ship’s orders had been changed. After the long delay in setting out the situation was different. She was to rendezvous with a Gibraltar bound convoy at the island.

  Mate Parker came up to take the watch. It was a cloudy, dark night and the ship was running without lights.

  “Keep a sharp lookout,” warned the captain, “and handle things yourself. I don’t want to be called unless something extraordinary occurs.”

  “Aye, sir,” acknowledged the mate surlily. By rights he should be the skipper of this cranky tub—not this doddering old fool.

  The captain got down the ladder the best way he could and groped along the darkened decks until he came to the door of his room. He did not undress at all but lay down in his bunk as he was. The Sadie Saxon could be counted on to do the unexpected at any time. He closed his eyes wearily, for the excitement of the day had taxed his strength to the utmost. In a moment he was fast asleep.