A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Chet Williamson

  To this point the morning had been a whirlwind of activity, none of it particularly pleasant. Final instructions to the movers. Last visit to the bank. A phone call to the Times. A phone call to Dexter. A phone call to the woman who ran the bed-and-breakfast where they’d be staying. A phone call and a final shouting match with the landlord, this one over the security deposit, which Brad knew he could kiss good-bye. He’d been with lawyers too much lately to fight there for it, even if it was thirty-five hundred dollars. Let the yuppie have it, the asshole. And may his next tenants amuse themselves with chainsaws.

  Abbie traced her fingers over the words of her book. For the first time since breakfast, Brad was alone with his thoughts. With more effort than it should have taken, he reminded himself what today was supposed to be: a clean slate. The big Square One. The First Day of the Rest of His Life and all that jazz. A day to march bravely into the future with chin up, shoulders back.

  And he did feel some of that, at least superficially.

  There was a whole new life awaiting them in Morgantown, Massachusetts, as trite as it sounded. Such beautiful countryside, the Berkshire Hills. A part of New England where many of the basic rules of modern living—the ones governing anxiety and stress—seemed to have been suspended. What better place to bring up Abbie, who, Brad was starting to worry, already was showing the first signs of the jadedness that eventually sours every native New Yorker. And his new job . . . the responsibilities . . . the challenge. He honestly couldn’t have hoped for better, salary notwithstanding. Dexter, the old boy, may have been a tad on the constipated side, but all in all, he seemed a good sport. Brad sensed strongly he was the type who would go to the mat for his staff—and it wasn’t every day you could say that about a publisher.

  But no matter how hard Brad tried to be forward-looking, he found his mind wandering to the past, to his ex-wife. Especially while Manhattan’s skyline still filled the rear view.

  She was an actress. Once, in those heady days when the bloom had still been on the rose, a very fine actress. There had been whispers in some very high places that Heather Pratt might be It—the next supernova from the same galaxy that had produced Faye Dunaway, whom she resembled physically, if not temperamentally. Heather’d had several leading roles off-Broadway, some respectable supporting roles and understudies on Broadway, had landed a small part in a forgettable detective movie filmed in New York. She’d done summer stock in Williamstown. Panty hose commercials for TV. And when times were really slow—and that was only twice since she’d come to New York from Ohio at the age of nineteen—she’d dipped into fashion modeling, winding up in Mademoiselle in the process.

  Brad had met her then, at the height of the hype. Six years ago. Heather’s career had already achieved apogee, but no one would have guessed that then, certainly not Heather or the artists and writers and actors and directors in her circle. Everything was still looking up. Rocket Heather. Watch her leave gravity behind. She was twenty-six, and she was so damn good-looking, so fair-skinned and blonde-haired and long-legged and green-eyed, that the average man lost his tongue within seconds of saying hello to her.

  Not that Bradford T. Gale was any slouch himself. Rutgers undergrad, a year on a weekly out in California, a master’s from Columbia, a quick stint at the Boston Globe, and then on to The New York Times, where he quickly established himself as resident wunderkind. The guy had Pulitzer written all over him; it was merely a matter of time. Everyone knew it. And while he wasn’t giving Tom Selleck stiff competition in the looks department, he wasn’t your basic street corner troll either. Heather wasn’t the first woman to get turned on by his looks—the horn-rimmed glasses, button-down shirts, L. L. Bean loafers, the three-day growth long before Don Johnson made it fashionable.

  They met at a party in SoHo. Brad didn’t lose his tongue when they were introduced. He launched directly into a discussion of the hazards of nuclear waste disposal, his latest project for the Times. What did she think about it? Was the government to blame? She liked that kind of talk. Liked the intelligence and biting humor that came with it. Most of all, she liked a man who didn’t seem to give two good shits about her looks and her plays but who actually professed interest in her worldview. Who actually seemed interested in her, not what she had become. That night they smoked two joints, drank six glasses of white wine between them, giggled like high school sweethearts.

  “I want to fuck,” she whispered in his ear.

  They were still making love in Brad’s Upper West Side apartment when the sun came up over Central Park.

  There was no stopping them then. Their early relationship was a crazy and passionate thing, one that would have done F. Scott Fitzgerald’s heart good. Spring, with magic in the air. There were lunches at Mama Leone’s. Parties in the Village. Opening night for an off-Broadway production of a Tom Stoppard play, in which she had the lead. A week on Nantucket, where one midnight they swam naked in the Atlantic, then made love under the moon.

  Two months later they discovered she was pregnant.

  Brad figured it would be easy. A quick abortion, and let the show go on.

  Heather’s decision blew him away.

  Never the most careful female where fertility was concerned, she’d twice gotten nailed, twice opted for abortions. A third was out of the question, she told Brad. She’d wanted a child since she was one herself, had read that more than two abortions raised the chances of miscarriage astronomically, and so this was it. She would have the child. If Brad didn’t want to get involved—well, this was still a free country, last she checked. He could go the fuck back to his nuclear waste and never hear from her again.

  It was his first taste of another side of Heather, the acid side.

  Of course, that wasn’t what he wanted. He loved her. Over dinner at the Tavern on the Green, he asked her to marry him. She said yes. The ceremony was the Saturday after Thanksgiving at her parents’ Long Island summer home. It was a very small affair, only a few relatives and close friends and almost no one from New York.

  Abbie was born eleven months, three days after they’d met, on April 16.

  It was a textbook labor and delivery, relatively quick, without complications; baby and new mom came home two days after admission. (Despite Brad’s protest, Heather still insisted on calling her Abbie, after her grandmother. “Abigail Gale is redundant and silly,” he said, rehashing the running battle they’d had in the last months of her pregnancy.

  “I think it’s cute.”

  “She’ll get laughed at at school.”

  “You’re paranoid, Brad.” He gave in. There were immediate lifestyle adjustments for both parents. The sleepless nights. Croup. All the standard horror shows. But overall Brad was surprised at how well it was going. Goddamn if everything didn’t seem to be meshing. They both thought they had been too young for this, but now that they were neck-deep in it, they were doing OK.

  Abbie was an incredibly cute baby, all dimples and Ivory Snow skin and smiles. Brad liked her immediately. Love would take longer, but from the instant he saw the top of her head wedged between Heather’s stirrup-bound legs, he was fascinated by her—and far prouder than he’d imagined he would ever be. This was his own flesh and blood. His personalized investment in the future of mankind. He and Heather had done something remarkable. Created a perfectly formed human being, virtually from dust. It was an awesome feeling, and he didn’t know exactly what to make of it on the philosophical level. He only knew that on the gut emotional level, he could be terribly proud.

  The first jolt came from Heather.

  Flush with new motherhood, she’d taken six months off from acting. Six months was exactly how long it had taken for the thrill to be gone. Changing diapers went only so far toward nourishing the artistic soul, she discovered, and it did nothing at all for an ego used to constant public feeding. That fall she was making the rounds of producers again. She thought it would be easy picking up where she’d left off—a matter of presenting her calling card—but she wa
s wrong. There was nothing big out there open for her, she was told politely. Telling herself it was only a temporary measure, she did cattle calls. Nothing doing. After a month the best offer she had was a role in an off-off-Broadway production.

  Brad hadn’t seen enough of it yet to understand the actor’s ego. He was only worried by the woman he was coming home to every night—an increasingly short-tempered and depressed woman. He tried to be encouraging. Tried to tell her that any career has its normal ups and downs, and so long as the wheels keep turning, nothing could remain the same for long.

  He was wrong, she said. Dead wrong.

  Something had changed. She could see it in the directors’ faces, hear it in their voices at auditions. She could feel herself becoming yesterday’s news.

  At first she didn’t blame Abbie. She blamed Brad. Brad had never been supportive of her career. Brad really wanted her to stay home with Abbie. Brad had married her only for her looks. Brad was self-centered. Brad was this. Brad was that.

  It went on like that through the winter and spring. Anger and arguments, and increasing alcohol consumption by Heather. That’s when Brad had his first glimpses of the treacherous current that swirled beneath her fair-skinned exterior. A consummate actress, she’d been able to hide that part of her for almost two years.

  Soon after Christmas, Heather finally landed a small part in a soap opera. It was not a headliner role, wouldn’t stretch her acting abilities to the limit, but it was full-time, and it was decent-paying in a town where three quarters of her peers were waiting tables and clerking at Macy’s. She hated the role immediately. She complained to her producer, and it was there on the set of that soap that the word began to leak out: Heather Pratt is a pain in the ass. Heather Pratt isn’t worth it, folks.

  A month into the soap, she quit.

  That’s when she started to focus on Abbie. If it hadn’t been for the time off . . . if it weren’t for the care now . . . if . . . if . . .

  In their arguments, which more often than not degenerated into bitter shouting matches, Brad recited the litany of actresses who had had children while simultaneously powering their careers to the top. Carol Burnett. Joanne Woodward. Lucille Ball. What the hell do they prove? Heather would shout back. How many hundreds or even thousands of other actresses with children never made it? Was he such a Cro-Magnon that he missed the feminist issue here?

  The line was being drawn. Heather on one side. Abbie and Brad on the other.

  Heather turned twenty-nine. Abbie took her first steps, spoke her first words. Brad was a Pulitzer runner-up for investigative reporting. Heather turned thirty. There were parts, but it was two-bit work, pocket change. Where once the people who counted left messages on her answering machine, now they did not return her calls.

  Brad’s rising salary allowed them the luxury of babysitters. And so Heather would leave Abbie, head downtown to SoHo, the Village, all the old haunts. There were enough has-beens and almost-weres from the good old days still kicking around to provide her with a support network. She could commiserate with them. She could drink and do lines of cocaine with them. It soon developed into the old story: Aging actress-artist comes screaming up on the big three-oh only to find the road she’s on isn’t taking her around the wall, but head-on into it.

  The top finally blew almost exactly a year ago, when Heather, drunk on red wine and high on God-knows-how-many joints of marijuana, slapped Abbie across her face. Not hard enough to hurt her seriously, but enough to open up a river of blood from her nose. Enough that an emergency room visit had been necessary.

  The next day Brad was in a lawyer’s office.

  That afternoon he was in a realtor’s office, signing the lease to a furnished apartment on the Upper West Side.

  That evening he took Abbie and moved in.

  They were in Yonkers now.

  They’d left the Henry Hudson Parkway, the Manhattan skyline had disappeared from the rear view, and they were heading north at a smooth sixty-five miles an hour on the Sawmill River Parkway. He knew it was only his imagination, but it seemed it already was ten degrees cooler. After a rainy start August in New York had finally lived up to its reputation the last couple of weeks.

  “Dad, where are we going to live?” Abbie asked, looking up from her dinosaurs book. “Are we going to have a whole house?”

  “I sure hope so, Apple Guy. That’s the plan.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Well, we haven’t found it yet,” he said. Hadn’t had time to grapple with the central issue: whether he could afford to buy or would have to settle for renting. “We’ll be staying at a bed-and-breakfast while we look.”

  “What’s a bed-and-breakfast, Dad?”

  “It’s like a hotel, only smaller. Sort of like an inn. They have a lot of them in New England. They’re very nice.”

  “Oh. Do they give you breakfast in bed?”

  Brad laughed. “Not usually. You usually have to come downstairs. But I’ve been told that they almost always have doughnuts.”

  “Sugar doughnuts?” she said excitedly.

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Oh, boy!”

  Abbie thought a moment.

  “Dad?” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “When we find our house, can I have a swing set?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Of my very own?”

  “Of your very own.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Abbie was quiet again. She did not return to her Brachiosaurus, Iguanodon, Tyrannosaurus rex. Looking over at her, Brad could see the lines in her face deepen. Even when she’d been a toddler, her face had been an accurate reflection of her moods. Mostly they were happy-go-lucky moods. She was also capable of deep brooding. Living for so long with so much background tension, Brad thought, had done that to her.

  He had learned long ago to read her face. He was reading sadness now.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” he said.

  “Nothing,” she answered unconvincingly.

  “You sure?”

  No answer.

  “Is it your mother?” Since long before the divorce he’d been unable to refer to her as Mommy. That was Abbie’s word. It would never be his. “Mommy” implied affection. “Mother” described a biological connection.

  “Yes,” she said, sniffling. “I think I’m going to miss her.”

  “Of course you are,” Brad said. This was not the first time they’d played this scene out over the last two weeks. But moving away from New York at sixty-five mph gave it a sting it hadn’t had before.

  “Will I ever see her again?”

  “Of course you will.” He stifled the urge to say: “Not if I had the final say in the matter.” The truth was, Heather had visitation rights that, should she decide to exercise them, gave her the opportunity of weekly visits. Brad sincerely doubted she would, but it remained to be seen.

  Abbie’s eyes filled with tears. Green eyes. Her mother’s eyes. It ripped him apart, seeing her like this.

  “Oh, honey,” he said. “Would you like a hug?”

  She shook her head yes. Brad pulled the car off the road, leaned over, and put his arms around her. The tears fell freely. Her body shook with her sobs.

  It took a couple of minutes for her to calm herself.

  “Listen, you Apple Guy,” he said, wiping the tears with his fingers.

  “W-what?”

  “You sure you’re listening?”

  “Y-yes,” she sniffled.

  “Because I have something very important to say.”

  “OK.”

  “As soon as we get our house, I promise you can have a dog. Any kind of dog you want, OK?”

  “OK.” Her face was brightening.

  “Now let’s stop the tears and get back on the road. We have a long drive ahead of us.”

  “Dad?” she said.

  “What, hon?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Ap
ple Guy,” he said, hugging her again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Monday, August 25

  Afternoon

  The man leaning into the pay phone at Harrah’s Casino in Reno, Nevada, had a bucket of newly won quarters, $156.75 in all. The operator told him how many he needed for fifteen minutes. He followed her instructions, put the phone to his ear, and waited for AT&T’s computers to find him a cross-country circuit.

  Someone seeing him might have guessed he had Native American blood; that guess would have been right. Someone hearing him might have guessed he was raised back East, probably in New England; that guess, too, would have been correct. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders, a pockmarked face from a losing battle with teenage acne, dark, unblinking eyes that were no windows to his soul. He looked to be about forty, although it was possible he was five years older or younger. His hair was long and black and done up in a carefully constructed ponytail. Like many of the gamblers in the background, he was dressed in working western: Levi’s; flannel shirt; denim jacket with sunglasses slipped into the vest pocket. Not a man you would want to meet in a dark alley under anything but the friendliest of circumstances.

  A female voice at the other end said, “Hello?”

  “Is this my favorite little sister?”

  “Charlie!”

  “How are you, Little Sis?”

  Little Sis. Ginny Ellis couldn’t remember a time her half-brother had ever called her anything different. She loved the affection written into that name. It seemed to say about their relationship: “This one is special. This one is the real thing.”

  “I’m fine. The question is: How are you?”

  “Same as always,” Charlie Moonlight said. “Getting by.”

  “Where are you? I can tell by the line it isn’t Morgantown.”

  “Reno.”

  “I should have known,” Ginny said, without recrimination.

  “Low on money, so you decided to go to the well.”