Horror Library, Volume 5

by Boyd E. Harris R. J. Cavender

  The crying went on for hours, then fell silent as night gathered. Every now and then Randolph and Eleanor looked at each other as the house settled, but the child made no more noise.

  The next morning Randolph helped Eleanor out onto the balcony, and they sat there, waiting in silence as the hours dragged on. About midday the crying started again, a weak whimpering this time. Eleanor started to rise out of her chair but Randolph touched her arm.

  “It’s better this way,” he said, and Eleanor knew in her heart he was right, though her yearning to be together again with her child was unbearable.

  The whimpering ceased at sunset, and nothing more was heard.

  * * *

  Slowly life returned to normal. Randolph refused to let liquor past his lips from then on, and kept his visits to town brief and only when necessary. Contact with the outside world, never before encouraged, was actively spurned. Eleanor and Randolph shared the bed in Eleanor’s room and Randolph kept his bedroom looking lived in. Though people rarely passed by, they felt that somehow it was right to maintain the pretence. How could other people understand? How would they understand that they shared an extension of their love? And though it was forbidden by the Good Book, Eleanor and Randolph reasoned with each other that God made all love, and the acting out of that love could be nothing but pure.

  Over the years, arguments and raised voices were rare between them. Their day-to-day demeanour remained as brother and sister.

  This evening, Eleanor smiled to herself as she recalled that it was a beautiful sunset like this the first time they heard the singing. One voice, hushed and hesitant. It should have come from the wind through the eaves, but they both knew it came from inside the attic. They had looked at each other, a little shocked, a little puzzled, until realisation dawned. Eleanor had burst into tears then: cried like her world had ended, cried doubled over and clutching her stomach, cried loud and long and urgently as if her soul had been ripped out through her abdomen. Randolph put his arms around her, his face fraught and drawn with the burden of comprehension, but when she looked up at him, tears still pouring down her face, there was the start of a smile.

  Eleanor had realised the truth. She looked at her brother and saw that he knew it too. His eyes were wide with apprehension and wonder, and then, head to head and with the tremulous voice singing so softly, their tears intermingled.

  * * *

  Their second child was wrapped in a blanket like the first, but this time he did not let Eleanor see. For only the second time in many years, he went into the attic where he laid the newborn next to the decomposed cadaver. Randolph stared briefly at it–the blankets were discoloured, the remaining flesh desiccated and a few lingering insects crawled about the skull. Insect and rodent droppings spattered it. He no longer heard the crying of the infant. He returned to Eleanor and they prayed for their children.

  A few weeks later, towards the end of summer, they noticed the second voice. It was a trembling, thin wisp of sound beneath the first one, only just audible alongside the evening breeze. But it was there.

  Eleanor had laughed then, for the first time since the pregnancy. She recalled how she had said that their singing together was like a choir, a beautiful choir singing in God’s own world, singing in unison in God’s glorious cathedral. She laughed involuntarily now as she remembered, and Randolph looked up from his own private reverie.

  “The first time we heard them together?” he said.

  “Oh yes, but wasn’t it just so wonderful?” Eleanor enthused. “They sang for us, Randolph. They sang, just for us!”

  Tonight, though, the house was silent. Tonight the house waited for them.

  * * *

  “Are you afraid?” Eleanor said.

  Randolph looked out at the open sky, pale blue and brittle.

  “Do you remember you once said to me you thought the whole of the sky is like a huge cathedral, and we are all just living our lives within it? Well, Eleanor, I think now I fully understand what you meant. And now I’m more than ready to become a true part of it. For us all to be one again.”

  They sat in silence then, lost in their own thoughts, waiting for the sun to dip towards the horizon and the night to begin. They had agreed a long time ago that they would listen to the singing and then go into the attic when it had stopped. Because of this, the silence of the house disturbed them.

  The sky was enriched purple and black, as night drowned the sunset.

  “I’m ready Randolph.”

  Randolph smiled and stood up. In his hands he held his Ithaca shotgun, and his hunting knife clung at his belt. He touched the carved handle with the tips of his fingers. An image of Tommy Bones, the hunting knife darkened red in his blood, flashed through his mind and he pushed it away.

  They went into the attic, Randolph leading. This was the first time Eleanor had been up there since before the first child was born. Hand in hand, Randolph led her to the two forms, stopping before them. He frowned, sure he had laid them further apart than they were now, wrapped in individual blankets.

  “My babies,” whispered Eleanor, tears flowing freely down her face. “My own singing babies.”

  Randolph composed himself. It had been many years since he had been here. One blanket had rotted almost to nothing, revealing a skeleton lying on its back, arms reaching out to one side, touching bare-bone hands with its skeletal sibling, whose blanket remained mostly in one piece.

  Eleanor knelt in the dust on the floorboards, an unexpected feeling of elation and reunion filling her entire soul.

  A spider ran from the skull across Eleanor’s hand as she knelt to touch the cold bone of the head. Rocking to and fro she gently stroked the skull.

  Randolph stood behind her. He loaded the shotgun and placed it carefully on the floor, then unsheathed his knife.

  He knelt behind Eleanor.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you,” she replied.

  With one swift and definite movement he drew the hunting knife across Eleanor’s throat, the way he had done with cattle many times, many years ago. Even though this was the way they had planned, the way they had imagined, he was surprised at the heat of the blood as it powered its way through his fingers. He was surprised to hear the gurgling in her throat long after her body went limp. Above all he was surprised at his absence of emotion.

  He ignored the sticky, metallic-smelling blood that pooled about his knees, and he laid her alongside the infant corpses. He kissed her cheek and tasted the salt of her tears on her still-warm skin.

  He sat down, cross-legged, next to her.

  He swallowed the muzzle of the shotgun and felt the weight of his head pressing hard on the cold metal against the top of his mouth. When he pushed the trigger, he was aware of only two things: his dry mouth beginning to salivate as the taste of metal filled it, and a black roar that echoed in his ears until the pain flashed red, then faded into nothing.

  * * *

  The following morning brought another bright and cool day.

  By sunrise, the blood that had oozed through the rafters and seeped into Eleanor’s bedroom stopped dripping. Later, as the evening shadows welcomed the night, a strong and blustering wind tore a piece of rotten wood from the eave.

  As huge clouds moved up from the far horizon and the wind forced itself through every nook and cranny, the house sang.

  But this time the house sang with many voices. This time it sang in joyful reunion, sang in unison, and sang loud and long and jubilant into the vast and magnificent cathedral of the cold night air.

  Andrew Stockton has had short fiction published in the anthologies First Time Dead (pub. May December Publications) and Fortune: Lost and Found (pub. Omnium Gatherum) as well as online and in magazines including Isotropic Fiction and Ethereal Tales. He also writes for a couple of UK soccer-related websites.

  He lives in the Land of Song, Castles and Rain (though sadly not in that order), Wales with his lovely wife and two fabulous daughters.
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  -Bad Seed

  by Anne Michaud

  “Out of the way!” Nurse Ridley shrieked with her hand clutching her eye, a pen poking out at a straight angle. On the floor, a trail of blood coming from the room, tiny drips and puddles.

  “Should we call Doctor Lee?” Ritzy said, entering the chaotic room with a clenched stomach. She stayed by the door while the other three women administrated a syringe of drugs to the patient. Experimental, can’t even spell what’s in the vial.

  “Everything’s under control, thank you,” Nurse Johnson said. Wide and stiff, she looked like a sergeant, controlling the patient’s hand from pulling more hair from her head.

  Ritzy glanced at the girl, now immobilized on her bed, legs and wrists attached with leather straps. Johnson didn’t put the mouth grill on, now that the new patient was stabilized.

  “Watch her, Mizz Pallek.” Johnson said Ritzy’s name like a disease, from the tip of the tongue with a wrinkle of the nose. “If she gives you trouble, another injection of twenty milligrams should do the trick.” She lifted her head toward Ritzy, but her gaze ended at her neck. “Welcome to St. Mary, the Forgotten. I’m sure you’ll just love working here.”

  A whirlwind of white dresses and caps left, restoring silence but for the staccato breathing of the girl. Ritzy’s blood pulsated faster. New assignment: The Killer Girl. She approached the bed, hating herself for being so scared of her patient.

  “Make it go away…” the girl’s strained voice pleaded, so small after such a scene of hair pulling. “Take the blood away, please…”

  Ritzy held onto the cold bed rail, level to her ribcage, and squeezed. What to do? Give her more drugs? The girl wasn’t struggling anymore, she just looked… sad. Sad and tired, like she needed a good meal.

  The patient tried to grab her hand, but only her ravaged nails reached Ritzy’s flesh. “They die at night, but come morning, they visit me.” Ritzy leaned in, intrigued by the diseased mind. “My knife scratches the bad out, where there should be a heart is a hole. But blood, so much of it. Every asshole can bleed. Every man should.” Her grip loosened, freeing Ritzy.

  A good nurse, she rearranged the pillows under the girl’s head. Her blonde hair was cut into clumsy clumps to the regimented patient length, and her gray eyes disappeared behind dilated pupils. And all those cuts and bruises on her arms, neck and face. Such a shame, so pretty.

  “They rough me up, steal everything away. As long as they pay, Madam Butterfly says…” the girl stopped, her eyes drooping with drug, but her laugh all the more sinister as it resounded against the room’s walls. “So fat, she can’t move from the room downstairs, but she hears them scream. At first with pleasure, until I bring it out, my knife of truth. And then…” a deep breath, the drug finally taking over.

  Ritzy smiled to herself, neatening up the water tray by the bed. “You’ll be just fine.”

  The girl’s eyes opened for one last plea. “They never leave, their black souls stick around and make me pay for their deaths. But it’s not me, it’s her, it’s all her fault.” Then she was gone for the night.

  Ritzy stood by the foot of the bed, a street lamp providing enough light from outside to create shadows across the girl. Twenty and so fucked up.

  * * *

  “They all fall asleep on their first night.” Johnson’s voice woke Ritzy from a nightmare with a sea of blood and a lost girl drowning in the massive waves. “Good morning, Mizz Pallek. Doctor Lee and I were wondering if you slept well?” A joke, who knew she could smile?

  The frail doctor stared at Ritzy, his deep-set eyes reflecting sleepless nights. “Did she give you any trouble?” he said, checking the girl’s vitals. Her body lay limp and motionless. “She hurt Ridley pretty bad.” Ritzy remembered her professors reminding their classes, four months ago, never to leave anything sharp within reach.

  “I’m fine. Well…” Ritzy ignored Johnson’s glare and approached Doctor Lee. “She mentioned murders, she said she killed these men she was…entertaining. I wondered if maybe meeting with–”

  “The patient suffers from schizophrenia with a high tendency to extrovert her fantasies. Do not get worked up about what she says, Nurse Pallek.” His gaze bore into hers, cutting off any questions she had left. “She never killed anyone,” he added before leaving the room in a flash of lab coat and clapping shoes.

  Ritzy stared at the girl, the end of her shift forgotten as her thoughts wandered to the sharp look in her eyes. Her plea had been genuine, nothing like the other patients she’d met so far. She didn’t look insane, she seemed…

  “Ritzy? Your boyfriend’s here,” the sweet-faced Nurse Garcia sing-songed, not quite entering the room.

  “Fiancé, actually.” Ritzy would have shown her the ring if Johnson hadn’t been hovering, but she opted for professional over flaky. She so badly wanted this job to be a permanent one.

  “Don’t be late tomorrow night, Mizz Pallek,” Johnson sneered. “You start at ten o’clock sharp, don’t you forget.” Ritzy had come in at ten oh two the night before, strike one.

  Tom waited by the front desk, his sideburns clean-cut and his cowboy-tie even. She smiled at him, walking faster, but he only nodded back at her. He opened the door for Ritzy, without a word or a glimpse of happiness at seeing her. He hates to pick me up, he hates to drop me off, he hates my job.

  They both got into the avocado-green Cutlass Supreme, its padded bench so soft after the chair in 29-A, its smell of Marlboros and Stetson so much more pleasant than the septic disinfectant of the asylum.

  “Bennie and the Jets’” last notes ended on radio static, and Ritzy spoke to break the uneasy silence. “It went well, considering–”

  “No nuts, please. Not this early in the morning.” She noticed how tired Tom sounded, worn out. Her job tired the both of them, but after three years of nightshifts, she thought, she’d graduate to days and everything would be just fine.

  “Let’s just go home.” Ritzy tried to push the hurt away, but it came back with a sting. Her patients, people she tried so hard to help–he’d always consider them lunatics that didn’t deserve to live.

  Sensing someone watching her, her gaze went up instinctively. The girl, the patient in 29-A, stared back at her from a second floor window, and as the car left the parking lot, Ritzy wondered, How the hell did she get out of her straps?

  * * *

  “Nurse Pallek, we have a situation.” Garcia grabbed her sleeve as they climbed the stairs two by two. Even this late at night, her co-worker’s black hair was tight in a bun, not one strand out of place. “29-A has been asking for you for hours, and now she’s threatening to take her life.” An odd mixture of panic and pride swelled in Ritzy’s chest, and she forgot to take off her coat, rushing upstairs as fast as she could.

  “There she is,” Nurse Johnson said as Ritzy walked into the patient’s room. On the tray, a broken syringe and soaked gauze; on the floor, more of the dark fluid. Blood, so much of it, the thick iron smell constricted Ritzy’s throat. “Restrain the patient, Nurse Pallek.”

  Ritzy froze at the sight of the girl’s eyes, clouded by drugs and rage, her eager fingers kept down by two nurses. Foaming at the mouth, hair stuck to her forehead and neck, the girl growled and spat.

  “I’m here,” Ritzy said with a childlike voice, so scared of the girl that she sounded like a fool, incapable of being stronger. “What can I do for you?”

  The girl stopped struggling, and for one second, she seemed normal. But then, with a voice distorted and guttural, she said, “Don’t trust him. Whatever you do, don’t you trust this man. All of them, they’re all bad and want bad things from you.”

  Ritzy smiled, nodded, and said, “Of course, I won’t trust him. There, there, everything’s going to be okay.” But deep inside, she feared she never would understand the insane.

  * * *

  Adorning the corridor’s walls were pictures of doctors and honored nurses, their frames marked with twenty-year-old dust. Ritzy stared at eac
h, wondering if they’d ever lobotomized someone unnecessarily, if they’d tested electric shocks on patients who didn’t need them. In the fifties, she’d heard this hospital had operated on anyone who caused too much of a disturbance.

  Above her head, neon lights buzzed and flickered as she passed underneath. She stopped between two light tracks and waited, but nothing happened. As soon as she walked below the next, it blinked on and off, playing tricks with her eyes as five shadows surrounded her in the dark. She gasped, a fist of fear clutching her stomach as she felt their cold touch all over her.

  “I just want to see my friend. She’s in 29-A, it says so right here!” a young woman shouted at the front desk. Her voice carried all the way to Ritzy, and instantly she knew something was wrong. An emergency; the stranger panicked. “They just took her away yesterday. I just want to see if she’s okay!”

  Ritzy hurried down the corridor, ignoring Nurse Johnson when she ordered, “Back to your post, Nurse Pallek. This does not concern you.”

  You’re not the boss of me, Ritzy almost blurted but refrained, in case a doctor overheard her. She rushed down the stairs, her plastic soles skidding on the shiny floors–and just in time, as the tall girl was leaving.

  “Wait!” Ritzy cried, out of breath. “I want to ask you a few questions.” She held the young woman’s coat fringes, the suede soft and stretchy in her fingers.

  The woman hesitated in the asylum’s foyer, her hand on the massive wood door. Her large brown eyes showed the fear that sane people felt when entering such an institution. She nodded. “All I’m asking is to see if she’s all right. That’s all.” Her hair reached the peace sign on her jeans pocket, and she smelled of jasmine incense.

  Nurse Garcia stared from the front desk, but then the telephone rang and she answered it.

  “Have you known her long?” Ritzy said, guiding the woman toward the small cafeteria. They entered and sat at a table reserved for staff only. “I’m glad to see someone cares about her. She’s so young…” To be in here, she almost finished.