HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  “What made you?” she asked.

  “Probably whatever made you,” he said. “Wasn't it God Himself who did that?” His head hung over her and his eyes were glassy and malevolent as if he dared her to lie to him.

  She nodded her head yes. His questioning gaze held her and then he leaped away.

  Henry scrambled back onto the bed, hopping like a frog, using his muscular legs to propel himself. He sat with his knees pulled up. Saliva dripped from the slimy teeth. He wiped his mouth with the back of a clubbed hand. She noted that everything about him was disfigured in some way or other. Even his toes were blackened and scaled and bent in unnatural positions.

  “Well, no matter, who made me, I don't think it matters,” he said. “Here we are, the two of us finding ourselves united. Now that we've been properly introduced, turn out the light. And put those wings away. You don't need them with me.” He lay back and his body morphed into the scarecrow human who turned onto his side away from her. He pulled the sheet up over his body and was soon snoring again, dead to the world.

  Outside the motel room a small branch near the window blew back and forth in the wind sweeping down from the mountains. The branch scraped the glass like long nails searching for a way inside. The moon rose and cast yellow light over the small parking lot where gum wrappers and empty cigarette packs blew about the scarred tarmac.

  Angelique's wings withdrew and she pulled the light string. Darkness embraced the two non-humans, silence wrapped around them, and Angelique lay thinking about Henry until she fell into an exhausted, uneasy, dreamless slumber.

  CHAPTER 33

  WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT

  Nick and Jody rode a bus from Reno, Nevada to Sacramento, California. They spent the night in the bus station lounging uncomfortably in waiting chairs. Nick sat slouched down, his long legs propped in a chair across from him. Jody simply curled up across two chairs, tucking his hands between his fat thighs. A bus left the next morning for San Francisco, but they were too tired to take it. Instead, Nick found them a motel room and they spent the rest of the day catching up on sleep. Later that night they walked down the road from the motel and found an all-night cafe. They had hamburgers and fries and chocolate sundaes. Full and sleepy once again, they trudged to the motel and by eleven were sound asleep again.

  The following day Jody got a stomach virus that kept him in the motel bathroom. Nick offered to go get him some something, but Jody told him hold off, I'm going to be fine.

  He wasn't fine, not by a long shot, and by afternoon was weak from the runny runs. He let Nick go out to get something from the pharmacy. It turned out to be a thick white nectar that smelled like coal tar and tasted worse. But by supper time he had stopped hogging the toilet.

  “Man,” he said. “Those burgers must have had laxatives in 'em. At least mine did.”

  Nick offered to go out and bring something back for him to eat, but Jody demurred. “I don't think I can eat for a while. Maybe tomorrow.”

  The next day he felt strong enough to try breakfast, but they took it at a different cafe. Around noon they got back to the bus station and had tickets for San Francisco.

  That is where Nick felt they could find a steamer or tramper leaving the country. Having arrived finally in the port city, they both had been on buses so long they felt the land under their feet was still moving. Jody swayed a little and Nick reached out to grip his shoulder, steadying him.

  “We need a room,” Nick said, scanning the street outside the downtown bus station. Together they had little money left, but enough for a couple of nights lodging and food. He began to walk west and Jody strode at his side, shoulders thrown back. People gave them wide berth—the tall, handsome blond man and the midget. They paid them no mind other than to stay out of their way.

  They found quarters in a run-down hotel eight blocks from the bus station and near the wharves. The lobby was layered in torn linoleum of various color and pattern and the stairs leading up to the rooms looked rickety. The counterman took Nick's money and handed over a key without ever really looking into his face.

  In the morning after a quick wash, they went into the streets and had a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and biscuits at a cafe. By noon they had found jobs, Nick as a new bartender, though he'd have to be trained, and Jody as a clean up man for the same speakeasy bar. It was an illegal bar breaking the Prohibition Act and the owners named it the Red Casket, which Jody said meant it was for dead people, and Nick said it meant what held the whiskey.

  “Or the Red Casket's for dead people drinking raw-gut whiskey,” Jody said, grinning in a mischievous way.

  It was a rough speakeasy in a bad part of town, frequented by working class men who held jobs on or near the wharves. On the door was a simple sign in red and there were no outside lights or any other signal that this was a place where people congregated. Once through the door, however, the interior was large, open, with high ceilings of pressed tin. A bar ran along one side of the room and tables were scattered around. In the very back through red curtains stood three tables for card players.

  Nick was often called upon to break up fights or to throw someone out of the club who got too rowdy. Within days, due to tips more than to pay, Jody and Nick had a healthy stash of money saved. Guys drinking rot-gut seemed to be charitable to the help.

  One Monday in their room, Nick rose early considering they'd worked until two in the morning. He began to pack a bag. Jody woke and rolled over onto his side to watch. “You're leaving?”

  “She's still coming--Angelique. If I take a ship out and you go on down South, she won't find you.”

  “What if I want to go with you?”

  “You don't like the ocean. You said so.”

  “Well, I didn't lie, I don't like boats and the sea scares me, but I want to go anyway.”

  Nick stopped packing. “Are you sure? Is it what you really want? We'd have to get you a passport. We'd have to travel on a working ship, a steamer, but I don't think they'll hire you so you'd have to pay for your way. And I'm not coming back, Jody. You'll be in a foreign land.”

  “What foreign land?”

  “I don't know yet, because I don't know what ship I can get on, but it won't be the States anymore.”

  Jody thought about it for only a few seconds before leaping from the bed to pack his bag. “I'm in,” he said. “I figure I'm better off with you than taking my chances here, even if I run south. I'd rather not be on the same continent with Angelique either, thanks. Where can I get a passport?”

  Before Nick ever opened the door of their room to leave, he had a sudden bad feeling. He thought of Angelique and felt she might be outside his door. He paused, his hand on the doorknob. But that was silly superstitious. He'd know when she was there. He'd know for sure.

  “What is it?” Jody asked.

  “I'm not sure.” He shook his head as if clearing cobwebs and opened the door, ready to swing into the hall with his bag.

  Except a madman stood in his way with a knife. For a split second his face morphed into that of a little girl with gleaming eyes. She had sent him.

  “What's this then?” Jody asked.

  Nick paused again, his mind recognizing the truth of the situation—that Angelique had used a man who had gone mad to attack him. And thinking this, giving the attacker just this much leeway was exactly what he shouldn't have done. He saw the darkness welling out of the man's eyes in that instant. It threatened to devour the world.

  “Stay behind me,” Nick said, pushing Jody back.

  He put out his hand as if to stop the man and that's when Nick was struck. He was a bruiser, tall and big, his shoulders like blocks of wood. He hit Nick full in the body and it was seconds after the strike that Nick realized he'd been stabbed. He pushed against the big man while Jody screamed in impotent frustration. The man snarled, the darkness in his eyes floating out and covering Nick's face, blinding him for a moment, and then he withdrew the long blade and rushed away down the hallway to the sta
irs.

  Nick fell back hitting the wall next to the door and slumped to the floor. He had one hand over the bleeding wound in his gut.

  “Oh no, oh no!” Jody bent hover him, his eyes wide and scared.

  “I'll be all right. Just...just get me back in the room.”

  Jody acted as a cane, his shoulder taking the weight of Nick's hand as he pulled himself from the floor and staggered to the open doorway. He fell onto the bed and instructed Jody to close the door.

  When Jody returned to the bed, he saw blood had soaked the angel's shirt and now poured onto the brown twill bed cover, staining it black. “You're dying,” Jody said with great sadness.

  “No, I won't die. I want you to bring me towels and then go for a doctor.”

  Jody hurried to the rusty sink in the small bathroom and found a threadbare towel hanging on a rack on the wall. He snatched it down and hurried back to Nick.

  “Go now, ask the man downstairs where to find a doctor.”

  Jody vanished from the room like he was a miniature tornado, slamming the door behind him.

  Nick lay in his blood and pain, surprised at how much it hurt. He hadn't been harmed in a hundred years and now, taken by surprise, he had been knifed. The assailant was mentally unhinged and he'd probably been either drunk or drugged. He'd come at him like a missile, a force of nature. There had been no way for Nick to prepare for such an onslaught. He should have been more careful.

  So this is what it feels like to be truly human, he thought. They feel this pain. They suffer tremendously and then they die. Like his poor Mary, eaten away by nothing more than the body failing itself, dying awash in an ocean of pain before the light went out in her eyes.

  And he had felt all this before—the stabbing, the blood, the dying.

  It had been so sudden, so unpredictable—the man lying in wait right before the door. It was what Angelique wanted—to at least weaken him before she came for him herself. Anything could end him and why did it always have to be knives? As Caesar he'd been stabbed to death and now, again, a knife might bring him to the brink of death. He'd go back into the everlasting void and this time Angelique would not summon him. He'd never leave that loneliness that drove him insane. He'd never see this world again. OH GOD, he whispered into the grimy room.

  He gritted his teeth and pressed down hard on the wound, trying to hold back his blood. If he lost too much before a doctor could come, he'd never make it. He might be angel, but he lived inside a very human body. He was almost as much at risk from a sudden death as any other human.

  He felt his mind slipping, slipping...He tried to concentrate, tried to remain conscious so he could put pressure on the wound, but he was...slipping...

  His thought processes slowed until they fell into nothingness.

  #

  Jody stood aside as the doctor worked. He wasn't much of a doctor. He had an office in an old building that stank of cat urine though there was no cat to be seen. His medical degree, which Jody hadn't had time to read, hung crooked on a dirty plaster wall. He wouldn't even come out until Jody had emptied his pockets and given him every dollar he had on him.

  Now the old doc worked, cutting open Nick with a small incision and probing the wound where it went in to tear and rend intestine and stomach. He sewed back the damage with delicate stitches, sweat forming on his brow. He had to keep pausing to soak up blood with gauze. Jody thought if this old bastard killed Nick, he'd break his legs. He'd take the lone chair standing over by the filmy window and break the man's legs.

  “He needs to be in a hospital for this,” the doctor said.

  “We didn't have time for that.”

  The doctor waggled his head and sweat flew off each side of his face. “I can see that, you fool. If I'd gotten here ten minutes later, he'd have been gone.”

  He finished sewing shut the flaps of skin, his incision neat as a finely sewn hem on a ladies skirt. He dabbed the long scar with a red-yellow disinfectant, applied a salve, then dressed it. He washed up at the sink but had to dry his hands on the sides of his gray slacks. He pursed his lips in disgust.

  “What do I do for him?” Jody asked. “Is he going to make it?”

  “It was a deep injury, but with some luck he can live. I put things inside him back together, but he can't eat any solid food for a couple weeks and you'll have to give him these to stave off infection.” He reached into his worn, black bag and handed Jody a bottle of pills. “They're antibiotics, the strongest I have. Give him three a day until they're gone. Don't miss any.”

  “What if he gets worse?”

  “If he gets a fever that lasts longer than a few hours, come back for me—if you find some more money, that is.”

  “You're not going to come back to see about him?”

  “For the money you gave me I shouldn't even have come this time and done an impromptu surgery in a filthy hotel room. Now get out of my way.” The doctor pushed past the little man and left the room.

  Nick was still unconscious. Jody hoped he would come to soon, but the doctor had given him nothing for the pain. Maybe he wished Nick would stay out until he healed a little.

  Oh hell and damnation, Jody thought, this is bad, this is real bad.

  He couldn't leave Nick and find work and they didn't have enough money to pay for the room for long, not if they wanted to ever book passage on a ship. They couldn't spend their sailing money! What was he going to do? How could an angel be so susceptible to harm this way? He had wings, by God, how could a knife kill him?

  He pulled up the chair to the bed and sat on it, his legs swinging above the floor. His brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed. He could smell the blood, like wet copper wafted below his nostrils. Nick had been lifted and the brown cover throw off the bed. It lay now like a curled black and brown snake on the floor at the foot of the bed. Nick lay back against dingy white sheets and pillowcase.

  Jody watched Nick in the weak lamplight, watched his chest rise and fall rhythmically. What a beautiful creature he was. So tall. So good looking. And his wings when he raised them, though black, were majestic. How could God let a creature such as this be so vulnerable?

  He needed to talk to God about this. But God never talked to people, did He? He'd never answer Jody's questions.

  The dim light at the one window waned and the night came on dark, deep, and mysterious. Lights blinked and streamed from bars along the street and flickered from cars passing by the hotel. Jody was hungry; in fact, he felt he was starving, but he ignored the growls coming from his stomach and kept vigil. He loved this not-quite-man. He didn't know why, but it was as if he could not help himself, as if his own existence depended on this strange being.

  He must keep him alive. Keep him alive and safe at all costs.

  CHAPTER 34

  EATING THE SOUL

  Before they left Salt Lake City, Henry made her come with him into the abandoned places.

  Angelique tried to refuse, but Henry was not someone who took no for an answer. “We'll catch up with your man, don't worry. We have a little time for..shall we say...a hunt, a hide and seek.”

  It was night and they were driving into a seedy downtown neighborhood where the street was lined with bankrupt warehouses and closed businesses. It looked as if the Great Depression had started right here and spread out later to the rest of the country, growing worse as the days passed. Not a soul moved along the sidewalks and there were no bulbs burning in the street lights. They were either burned out and never replaced or had been shattered by thugs throwing rocks.

  “Where are you taking me?” She was annoyed and her child's voice went into a whine when she felt that way. Her weakness and impatience annoyed her even more. She clenched her fists at her sides and walked stiff-legged.

  “Be patient. I can smell them.”

  She flinched. “You can smell children?”

  “Many of them have lost most of their innocence already. They're orphaned or runaways. They have a scent. It's like...burning wires in a car. Or
raccoon nests full of excrement in an attic. Sometimes it's like...ham that's set out too long and grown fluorescent green mold.”

  Angelique wrinkled her nose. She smelled nothing. She had thought she would be the one to find him victims, but this time he was on his own.

  Suddenly Henry pulled to the curb and opened the car door. “Let's go,” he said. “They're here.”

  They were parked in front of one of the warehouses. The windows were dark and those not nailed over with boards shimmered like mirrors under the moonlight.

  Henry headed for the door and pushed against it with his shoulder. It gave but took some effort. The floor inside was littered with fallen, broken brick, layers of dust, and shattered glass. An old ragged blanket lay crumpled in a corner. Strips of pale moonlight fell across the floor, giving the impression of the place being a prison. It smelled of dust and iron, of rotting wood, of things left unfinished.

  Henry paused, turning his head, either listening or sniffing, Angelique couldn't tell which. Then he marched straight ahead and finally Angelique could sense someone. She followed behind, intrigued.

  Rounding a pillar and across the open warehouse they saw them. Three people, one a child. The little group was alert, sitting up on bundled covers. A man rose. In his hand he carried a wooden bat.

  “Hey,” Henry called.

  “What you want?” the man called back. “What you doing here?”

  “Just a place to stay the night.”

  “Not here,” the man called out. “Find somewhere else.”

  “No,” Henry said, “I think we like it right here.”

  Now the man advanced swinging the bat.

  “You don't want to do that, friend,” Henry warned.

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don't. And maybe you ought to take a hint and get the hell out of here.”

  The child, a girl with shoulder-length scraggly brown hair, whimpered and moved behind her still sitting mother. She's not as old as I am, Angelique thought. It's her he wants.