Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  He had. I nodded and explained, ‘I didn’t want him overwhelmed with our shared nostalgia.’

  ’Who’s Luke?’ John Wayne asked. ‘There was no “Luke” mentioned in your Christmas card!’

  I could feel Hutch staring at me, and I hoped I wasn’t blushing. ‘We’re not actually living together yet,’ I said carefully.

  Greg rolled his eyes at my coyness. ‘Luke is her fiancé,’ he announced. ‘At least, she told me they were engaged.’

  ’Tick-tick-tick,’ said Hutch.

  ’I think you’ll find that men have biological clocks, too,’ I said, trying not to sound annoyed.

  ’Not in the Hutchinson theory of life and love,’ Greg said, grinning, ’There, women have but a short shelf-life, while men are the eternal hunter-gatherers.’

  Hutch shrugged. ‘It works for me,’ he said.

  John Wayne looked him up and down. ‘It might work now, but what about when your visible assets start to go?’ He struck a pose. ‘Madame Fortuna predicts: a lonely old age.’

  ’Oh, I’ll probably get married eventually,’ he said. ‘Becky’s right—’

  I nearly dropped my drink as he nodded this acknowledgement to me.

  ’—men can afford to leave it till later, but we’ve got the same urge to procreate. And I don’t actually want to be a bachelor forever. Studies show that married men are happier and live longer than singles. I figure when I’m in my late thirties I’ll start shopping around for a er wife.’

  Linda snorted. ‘God, Hutch, you make it sound so romantic! How could any woman resist you?’

  ’I don’t know, but many have,’ he told her, grinning.

  ’Luckily he’s not too picky,’ said Greg, putting his arm around her. ‘When the time comes, he’ll just head for the Generic Wife aisle at le Wal-Mart—’

  ’Target, surely,’ I objected, giving it the French pronunciation.

  ’Come on, let’s move to the dining room,’ Linda interrupted.

  Hutch had been barely nineteen when he’d formulated his theory about men, women and love. But it seemed that nothing which had happened to him during the next eight years had made him change his mind. I knew from Greg that Hutch no longer picked up and discarded women with the rapidity of his college years. Probably, he didn’t find it so easy off-campus. More recently, he’d gone for longer-term, yet easily broken, liaisons with married women.

  Behind me, as we walked through to the dining room, I heard John Wayne quizzing Hutch. ‘So you’re just going out to shop for a good little wifey when the time is right? I know you like to be Mr Unemotional, but get real. What about that crazy little thing called love?’

  ‘He doesn’t believe in it,’ I said, taking the seat the Linda motioned me to.

  ‘Belief has got nothing to do with it, believe me! Is that true?’ When Hutch nodded, John Wayne said thoughtfully, ‘Boy, you are really ripe for a fall! I just hope I’m around to see it when you fall head over heels for...whoever.’

  He was looking, very thoughtfully, at me, as he spoke. I didn’t know why, but I could feel myself blushing. I dreaded Hutch’s rejoinder, his devastating deconstruction of the fraud of romantic love.

  Greg rescued us all from that. ‘Let’s talk about this Hallowe’en party,’ he said firmly.

  ‘That’s what we’re here for,’ John Wayne said. ‘I’m sure once we four put our heads together, we’ll come up with some great ideas. What do you want?’

  ‘I want a haunted house,’ Greg said.

  ‘Not the whole house,’ Linda objected quickly.

  Greg shrugged and shook his head. ‘No, Linda’s right. I can only give you the west wing to work on.’

  ‘This house?’ I asked.

  ‘No, we’ve got a new house under construction on a lot overlooking Lake Travis. Figure it should be ready for a Hallowe’en house-warming. And I’d like to do something really special with it - with the west wing, anyway.’

  ‘Creepy Gothic decor?’ John Wayne suggested.

  Greg nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s part of it - I was hoping I could leave that part to you and Becky. Hire artists or decorators, buy whatever you need - I want it to be scary, but subtle. Disturbing, but not so severely that nobody could stay there. And I want Hutch to provide the ghost.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Hutch said, bowing his head gravely. ‘However, honoured though I am to be proposed as a sacrificial victim, I should warn you that, if murdered, I will not return to haunt you or your house!’

  ‘Hutch, this is your old pal Gregory talking to you. We both know that ghostly phenomena are not caused by the spirits of the dead.’

  ‘Right, right. So what kind of a con-trick do you want from me?’

  ‘Not a con-trick. An experiment.’ His eyes were bright, his round face glowing like a jack-o’-lantern. He paused as a waiter came in to deliver the first course.

  ‘A couple of guys in England did some research into the effects of low-frequency soundwaves on human physiology. The results were reported in several places - I can’t believe none of you guys read about it!’

  ‘Well, we didn’t, so you’d better tell us,’ I said, tasting the bright green soup. Leek, creamy and delicious.

  ‘They found that if you set up a standing wave of about nineteen cycles per second, a person in it is going to start feeling more and more uncomfortable: shivery, oppressed, frightened, just completely creeped-out.’

  ‘And in that state, they’re very suggestible, maybe start imagining ghosts,’ I guessed.

  ‘The human eyeball has a resonant frequency of eighteen cycles per second,’ Greg explained. ‘Infrasound just above that frequency will cause sympathetic vibrations in the eyeball—’

  ‘And you’d start seeing weird things,’ said Linda. She shuddered.

  Greg was already positively vibrating with excitement as he gazed intently at Hutch. ‘Could you repeat the experiment for me? I mean, set up a standing wave which would make the west wing seem to be haunted?’

  ‘If you’re paying for it.’ A slow, wide grin cracked Hutch’s usually solemn face. ‘God, I’d love to try something like that!’

  ‘I thought you would!’ Greg rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ll put you in touch with the architect and Bud, my contractor, so you can all work together. I’ll tell Bud to give you whatever you need. This takes priority. If we have to change the layout of the house, so be it.’

  ‘Just as long as the ghost can’t get out of the west wing,’ Linda said. ‘I don’t want the infrasound affecting anybody anywhere else in the house. There could be health implications.’

  ‘It’ll be a completely localised phenomenon,’ Greg assured her. He looked at Hutch. ‘Bear that in mind - and that there has to be an off-switch, so the west wing doesn’t have to be haunted all the time.’

  We all got caught up in the excitement of planning. It felt almost like old times. Although of course there were differences. Greg was paying for it all. It was real work for John Wayne, but Hutch, who said he couldn’t afford to be caught moonlighting, would design and build the machine for producing the sound in his spare time, for expenses only. As for me, well, I was really just an onlooker, although both Greg and John Wayne were good about asking for my input. I couldn’t contribute anything to what Hutch had to do, and he said flatly that there was no point in trying to explain anything to a liberal arts major, I would just have to wait and see.

  This I got to do, finally, in September, when I flew up to Austin for a private view. There was no way I was going to wait for the formal unveiling on Hallowe’en like some ordinary, gullible member of the public!

  Luke went with me; he wanted to see the house. It was impressive, since Greg had plenty of money and was willing to let the architect have his way rather than insisting on imposing his own (frankly, rather primitive) notions of style, but I was really only interested in the west wing, and seeing the results of Hutch’s experiment. So we left Luke wandering around quite happily while Hutch led me and Greg to the site of his
experiment.

  I was shivering as I stepped through the last door (the gallant gentlemen let me go first), but whether I was already responding to the atmosphere or just anticipating, I have no idea. The room was big, like all the others in the house, but seemed to have been built on a different scale. It was long and narrow, more like a hallway than a room, and although it was perfectly spacious and airy (the ceiling was very high) and light, there was something oppressive about it. I’m not usually claustrophobic, but I started getting a prickly, trapped feeling, as if I’d wandered into a closet by mistake. There were no windows. I must spend half my life in windowless rooms without giving it a thought, but for some reason, it bothered me here. Although I knew perfectly well I hadn’t gone down any steps or ramps, I started thinking that this room was underground. The real problem was that the air-conditioning and ventilation system weren’t working properly. The temperature had dropped - I was actually shivering with cold - but the place was so airless that no matter how much I gulped I couldn’t get the oxygen I needed.

  I was just about two beats away from a full-blown panic attack when I turned to my friends. Hutch was standing and gazing at nothing with a small, proud smile on his lips, and Greg’s bright eyes were darting everywhere. The freckled skin of his bare arms had sprouted goose-bumps, but what parted his lips and made him breathe faster was anticipation, not anxiety.

  Of course. We were meant to feel like this. As soon as I’d realised that it was Hutch’s standing wave which was making my pulse race, I stopped being afraid. There was nothing to fear. I still felt uncomfortable, but now that I knew why, I could deal with it.

  Greg and Hutch had moved further into the room, and I went after them. I thought I heard someone come through the door right behind me, and I turned, expecting to see Luke.

  He wasn’t there, but someone had just slipped past me - from the corner of my eye I caught sight of a slim, grey figure speeding past.

  ‘There, look!’ cried Hutch, and I whirled around, saw him pointing at the wall, saw - I blinked, narrowed my eyes, struggled to make sense of it - a woman, in a long, grey, hooded coat, backed up against the wall. I had the sense that she was frightened, cornered, with nowhere to run, and then she was gone.

  We all sighed simultaneously.

  ‘So this is the haunted west wing?’ Luke entered, and we all looked to see his reaction. He shivered. ‘Creepy. Really oppressive. That’s not just your standing wave, Hutch, it’s the lighting, the shape of the space.’ He prowled up and down, checking it out. Finally he stopped and looked at us. His eyebrows raised. We were all staring at him so strangely, I guess. I went over and slipped my arm around his waist, feeling better for the contact immediately.

  He gave me a squeeze and looked at Hutch. ‘Is it just this creepy feeling, or is anything else supposed to happen?’

  ‘It might,’ said Hutch. ‘Visual disturbances. Tell us if you see anything weird, huh?’

  Luke nodded. We all waited in silence for a bit. I looked at the door, because that was where I’d been looking when I’d first seen something, but Hutch and Greg were both staring at the wall where the figure had disappeared. I could feel Luke’s tension in his arm around me, and he kept jerking his head around.

  ‘See anything?’ Hutch asked him after the third sudden movement.

  ‘No - yes - maybe, I don’t know. Just out of the corner of my eye, a sort of grey shape, blurred, like something moving. But when I turn my head, it’s gone.’

  ‘Something or someone?’

  Luke shrugged. ‘No idea. Just a blurry, moving shape. Could’ve been an animal, I guess.’

  For some reason his comment really spooked me - I think it was the image it conjured of the grey woman metamorphosing into a beast. She had seemed to me frightened, not frightening, but the idea of a shapeshifting monster was terrifying.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  ‘Fine with me,’ said Luke, walking me towards the door.

  ‘I’m going to stick around for a while longer,’ said Hutch. ‘Just to see what happens. How about it, Greg?’

  I expected Greg to agree; I’d thought the haunted west wing was going to be his new toy. But he was looking oddly pale. He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so, man. I’ve got kind of a headache ... I got to get out of here for a while. And I really don’t think you should stay too long.’

  Hutch shrugged. ‘I just want to check something out. I’ll meet y’all out front in about fifteen minutes.’

  What a relief it was to leave that empty room. I began to feel better immediately.

  ‘My headache’s gone already,’ said Greg, sounding surprised, as we stepped outside the front door. He sighed happily, inhaling the scent of sunbaked earth and cedar. ‘Whew, I feel like I just came back from some dungeon in the Middle Ages!’ Then he looked at me. ‘You don’t think Hutch will do himself any harm?’

  ‘There are health implications,’ I said cautiously. Since Hutch wouldn’t tell me, I’d looked into the literature about infrasound research myself. ‘But no, I really don’t. And I’m sure it’ll be safe enough for your party guests. Nobody’s going to be in there for more than a few minutes at a time.’

  ‘Only Hutch. And don’t forget, this isn’t his first time.’

  I nodded. ‘But it’s not likely to do him any lasting harm. I’m sure there are factory floors which are worse.’

  Greg took us on a tour of his property. We even went down the rough hillside path - ‘there’ll be steps the next time you come’ - to the lake and a wooden dock. We were away for more than twenty minutes, but when we returned to the house there was still no sign of Hutch.

  ‘I guess I’d better go get him,’ said Greg.

  My heart gave a flutter. ‘Let’s all go.’

  He gave me a look, then dead-panned, ‘Of course. What was I thinking? In the movies, they always get into trouble when they split up. Oh, my God, we should never have left him alone!’

  ‘Don’t look be-hiiiiind you.’ It was Hutch, of course, grinning sardonically. ‘Some friends I’ve got - leaving poor little me all alone in the infamous haunted west wing.’

  ‘Since you’re the one who haunted it—’

  ‘Oh, great, so now I discover my so-called friends think I’m a ghost?’ His hand shot out and gripped my arm. I think the movement was meant as a punch-line, but as his fingers, icy cold against my sun-warmed flesh, dug into me, I lost it, and screamed.

  The men - even Luke - looked at me as if I was insane.

  Hutch yanked his hand away as if I’d burned him.

  ‘Sweetie, Sweetie, it’s okay,’ said Luke - a little belatedly, I thought, but better late than never.

  I hugged Luke to hide my blushes. I felt like a complete idiot. I began to babble. ‘Sorry - sorry - I just - I don’t know, Hutch, you startled me! After-shock, I guess. I mean, even knowing what it was, the whole thing was just so creepy! Really got my adrenalin going. Sorry, Hutch.’

  ‘That’s okay. You were supposed to be scared. It’s good - means I succeeded.’ Hutch twitched his shoulders. ‘I won’t say I was scared myself, because I wasn’t, but my body sure thought I ought to be. It wanted me out of there! If I wasn’t shivering, I was sweating like a pig. Thank the Lord I’ve still got a clean shirt in my case in the car!’

  ‘So, did the ghost come back after we’d left?’ Greg wanted to know. ‘Did he have anything to say for himself?’

  ‘He?’

  ‘The ghost,’ Greg explained.

  I looked at him in surprise.

  ‘What did you see?’ Hutch was frowning.

  Greg shrugged. ‘A grey figure in a long cloak, with a hood, so I couldn’t see his face. I thought he was like a monk.’

  ‘I saw a woman,’ I said.

  ‘So did I,’ said Hutch. There was something in the way he said it, looking at me, that made me tingle.

  I shrugged irritably. ‘But it’s not like there was anything there to see - there’s not a ghost. We didn’t see anyt
hing, really - it’s about perception, not vision. Our eyeballs vibrated, and our brains were just trying to make some kind of shape out of that blurriness.’

  Hutch shook his head slowly. ‘It has to be more complicated than that. In so-called haunted houses people see the same ghosts again and again.’

  ‘Because of tradition,’ Greg put in. ‘People see what they expect to see.’

  ‘And you expected to see a monk?’ Hutch said sceptically. ‘Doubtless one of the world-famous Lake Travis brotherhood.’

  ‘Sure, the Indians wiped them out, burned the monastery to the ground, in ought eight,’ Greg said. ‘I always build my houses on sites of historical and religious significance, didn’t you know that?’