A Haunting of Horrors, Volume 2: A Twenty-Book eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Brian Hodge

  In a little while the house would be on fire, and she would be standing outside with her mother and Mr. Olson and Mr. Bryce and Mrs. Korpela. But she wasn't afraid of her mother anymore. Without the paint her mother would just be an old woman.

  Amber tugged her hand free of Miss Hoverstein's frail fingers and went to the few canvases left against the wall. The one she wanted was in front: a picture of herself. She was surprised that up close it looked so different from the one she had destroyed in the cellar. It looked older, in fact. And even the paint looked different, thinner and flatter.

  Beverly nodded. "You'll have to keep it with you. Guard it all the time."

  "I know."

  "Are you ready?"

  Amber sat her portrait by the sofa and nodded. At the workbench Paavo had the lid off the can of paint, but Molly had another frame that she had found in the stack.

  "Marjorie is suffering," she said. "If she could say so, she would want this. There’s no point in taking her outside. Start with her, Amber."

  There was a certain poetic balance in the acts of annihilation by the daughter of the woman who had created them. If the line between deity and mortal had been crossed, it was made inviolate again by what went on over the next quarter hour.

  Amber painted quickly with the largest brush she could find. She painted facing away from them, afraid to look, afraid to falter, afraid even to listen. The silence at her back was solemn and profound. The alkyd was white—alas, no pink for Ruta—and that was good too, Amber thought, because Mrs. Armitage had said that about finding a "white universe," a place of light instead of darkness. She did Mrs. Seppanen second and Miss Hoverstein last, thinking about the Taron pygmies of Myanmar and wondering if, in whatever was to follow, Miss Hoverstein would meet them.

  It must have been terrifying behind her. No matter what they hoped or how much they were suffering in their present conditions, it had to be terrifying. She wondered if they were watching each other, or if they closed their eyes. She wondered if it was even working, because there were no gasps or whimpers or clues. And when she was done and she turned around, it was just Mr. Olson staring at her with dull, flat eyes.

  "Are you going to start the fire?" he asked in a voice that rattled like an old car engine shaken by winter.

  "Yes," she answered.

  "Good. Fire is cleansing. I'll go tend to your mother now."

  "Don't you want your picture?"

  She took his portrait off the workbench and brought it to him, and he rolled himself up off the Chesterfield almost jauntily, an elbow leading from his side, and steps that were almost nimble. Amber was surprised at his energy. For the first time she could imagine what she had heard whispered in the parlor, that this man had been the object of her mother's desire before she married.

  As soon as he was gone she turned her attention to finding a smaller brush that would fit through the mouth of the open glass jar of red paint on the workbench. It was important not to think too much about what she had just done to all the old people or that her father was dead or about the horrors in the house, but she couldn't suppress a little rush of power that came with standing in her mother's studio with all her magic paints. It was scary and exciting. And it almost seemed like her painting was made better by the power too, because she had never done fire so well. Getting the curves just right with yellow mixed in, and the flames at different heights all around the walls. The way the fire might spread or the house might collapse were not things she considered. There were chemicals that would explode in the studio, she knew, like the thinner, like the stuff that was used to seal finished paintings, but by then she would be outside with Mr. Bryce.

  When she got to the workbench, she hesitated. Her mother's magic paints were right there in the glass jars.

  There were a dozen of them, all different colors, but the three largest jars must be the ones she mixed the others from, Amber knew. She knew this because they were red, blue and yellow, and back when she was alive the first time, she had seen her mother use primary colors many times to mix regular paint. So there they were. Red, blue, yellow. The source for everything that had come alive in the house.

  (Did she dare …?)

  She had, promised to burn down the house, and she would. But she already had more than half a jar of the red paint buried out by the ashes of the barn, and what if her mother was sorry—truly sorry—for what she had done? What if—not now, of course, but someday—she wanted to bring everyone back and let them be free and healthy again? It could be done if—

  Red, blue, yellow …

  There wouldn't be any danger if she herself kept the paints under control, Amber thought. She had kept the red hidden, hadn't she? And she wouldn't be stupid about it. She wouldn't even tell her mother about them unless things really, really changed in the future.

  There was a large portfolio bag her mother used to haul things when she painted out-of-doors, and impulsively Amber snatched it up. She would use it to protect her portrait, she told herself. And she did. She stuffed the frame into the widest pocket. But there were other pockets. Each padded to protect the contents. She had carried this bag for her mother decades ago.

  (Red, blue, yellow … and she already had lots of red.)

  It couldn't hurt to keep her choices open until she saw how things went. She would have to destroy the red anyway if things didn't change. What was the difference if she had three bottles to get rid of?

  The pockets were too small, as it turned out. But she placed one jar on either side of the portrait frame. Blue and yellow. There was plenty of room.

  She finished her task of painting the fire by the door, and by that time the flames she had painted first were almost dry. She could feel the heat as a sketch her mother had hung of a sunset began to smolder and turn brown. Lifting the canvas portfolio bag by its shoulder strap, she left the studio for the last time.

  Chapter 35

  His soul was ruined already, so what did it matter? He could never be sorry, never forgive. Danielle's roots ran deep inside him, synergistically intertwined with his own, and so to kill one was to kill the other.

  He was dead, you see. Still dead. Ever dead. His feet on the stairs echoed the dead steps of dead legions. He had heard them in the cosmos, scrabbling talons and mammoth four-toed pads, scraping up red dust and hurling it across collapsing galaxies. Energy sucked dry. Replaced by sheer will. The animus of nether regions croaking to him as Ariel drew him out of his grave: March … march … march with us. Open the gate. And he had. And he would again. Because it was all in the cellar now. The charnel cellar filled with the echoes of old violence and new blasphemies. Silhouettes slipping through, gathering there like desiccated cadavers awaiting the drench of blood to reconstitute them to grayness for their horrific hour. His kind of phantoms now.

  Such a dark act of love he was going to perform.

  He listened at the cellar door to make sure Ariel wasn't on the top step. But no, he could hear her sobbing somewhere down below. Foolish Ariel, still thrashing in selfpity. If she could stop, she might hear the ululant sighs coming from the damp walls or the slither and rasp of papery things unfolding like yellowed parchment. He turned the key, paused to listen again, jerked the door open.

  She was sitting sideways on the bottom step in the dim illumination of the storage room's single bulb, and her great gluey eyes followed him as he clumped down one slow step at a time.

  "You spoiled it," she said when he stood next to her. "You spoiled what could have been paradise, Kraft."

  He put his hand on her gray head as she cried, and it was only a shudder or two before she blinked uncertainly at him. And then he said: "I'm sorry, Ariel."

  She blanched, sat straighter. "You are?"

  "Very sorry."

  "You mean … because I'm down here?"

  He let his hand slide off her hair. "Are you all right?" She inclined her head with just a twitch of disbelief. He moved beneath the light with his back to her, anticipating that she would f
ollow.

  "Kraft?" She rose with new animation and came up behind him. "What did you mean? You're sorry for what?"

  When he turned they were as close as they had ever been face-to-face, and he tried to keep his eyes trained on hers while he reached up to the searingly hot bulb with his left thumb and forefinger.

  "No, not just because you're down here," he said. With a twist they were in darkness. "I'm sorry for everything."

  Her faint exhalation of joy was blasphemous to him. The staircase in the upper reaches of the house gave off its tattoo beneath Amber's descending feet. The fire was started. It was irreversible now.

  Ariel said: "What are they doing up there?"

  "Dying."

  "Dying?"

  "Amber has painted over their pictures."

  "Oh. How stupid. I can just paint them back again." A door slammed in the distance. "At least you didn't go with them, Kraft."

  "I couldn't."

  "Couldn't?"

  "I stayed because of you."

  "Me?" She made a girlish sound—half laugh, half disbelief. "Then you're over being angry with me? You know, I didn't really make things worse for you, Kraft. What I did to Danielle was stupid and desperate, but I wanted you to see—you most of all—I wanted you to appreciate what I gave back to you."

  "I know."

  "I can't believe this, especially now. You talking to me like this. What a difference it makes. You have no idea—do you hear that sound? What is going on up there?"

  "It's just Amber."

  "It sounds like she's running water or something. Oh, Kraft, I can start over. I can make New Eden again. We can all start over. Get it right this time. Would you mind turning on the light?"

  "… Yes."

  "Yes?"

  "I'd mind."

  "Why?"

  "Because I want to kiss you."

  Stung silence. A terrible joy. Her arms groped as his circled smoothly around her withered body and drew her onto his withered lips. Soft at first, then firm, then hard. Hard. HARD!

  She snapped her head back. "Kraft!"

  There was a distant sound of something collapsing.

  Air sieved out of the cellar, leaving parched, vapid breaths.

  "Do you hear it coming?" he whispered excitedly.

  "I smell smoke…. Let me go!"

  "Not the fire. Listen."

  She listened. Heard the scrapings and draggings coming from beyond the laundry room. Not a singular thing, but a procession—twin processions—coming toward them. And for just an instant she had a connection with the insanity, the outer chaos from which she had summoned back the gallery of her life. It was the answer to the question she had incessantly asked: What is death like? And now she could feel it—feel it, because she couldn't know it. How could you know total aberrance? How could you order disorder? No rules, no form, no stability—a total shattering of bonds. Except for the hell of consciousness. That was the one glimpse she got, the one foretaste of her imminent fate. But she was still a part of the rational world and she couldn't let go of that, even for the handful of remaining seconds. Not here in this century-and-a-half-old farmhouse that remained on its foundation. So she told herself that her little family had found another way into the cellar. They hadn't painted themselves into extinction at all, but were coming in some ridiculous mummers' parade to frighten her, punish her, show her that they had her precious paints (which they would never be able to use) and—

  Something even more insidious reached her now. Something similar but distinct from the spank and hiss of flames overhead. A sinuous rush like the undulation of a wave along a breakwater. And then a long, subtle sigh, as of an ancient ache about to be satisfied. Something just around the corner.

  "You didn't think it would stay up in the studio, did you?" Kraft whispered, cinching her to him, heart pounding against heart, triumphant with betrayal. "It's down here. This is where it lives. Shall I turn on the light now?"

  Chapter 36

  Amber didn't count on seeing her father's body on the stairs. When they said he had died there it didn't occur to her to white out his picture, and here he was, twisted and slumped over one wheel of his chair. His shaggy head felt like a cold marble bust beneath her fingers. But he had died before, she assured herself, so this didn't really count. It was like Miss Hoverstein had said. Being alive for the second time in her mother's world was all wrong for them.

  Chest heaving, Amber stood. "Good-bye, Daddy," she mouthed in the searing air, and with the old dried frame of the farmhouse sending out tentacles of fire along its interior seams, she resumed her awkward descent, clinging to the shoulder strap of the portfolio bag.

  The first floor had an eerie stillness to it, as if the air in the middle of the rooms couldn't figure out where to go. She passed through the dining room, and there, leaning against the jamb to the kitchen, was Mr. Olson's portrait. He must have left it there to go to the cellar, she thought. And if she took it outside with her, he might go looking for it when he came up with her mother. So she left it and hurried on to the residents' corridor, where the old school had been, and where all the doors now stood ajar the way they once had at the end of each class day. All the doors ajar, that is, except one. Without pausing to knock, she grabbed the handle and flung it open.

  She could see right away that Mr. Bryce didn't know there was a fire. He was sitting in his chair by the windows with his flannel shirt buttoned up to the neck, even though his forehead was starting to glisten and even though two floors above them there was an inferno eating its way to the ground. The heat was building and smoke crawled out of the radiator grid in little puffs that backed into one another.

  "Mr. Bryce, we've got to get out of the house right away," she said, plucking urgently at his sleeve.

  He turned so slowly that she realized he had been nodding off. "Tiffany…"

  "We've got to get out of here, Mr. Bryce. It's a matter of life or death."

  He looked around. "I don't care about dying. You go."

  "Stop talking like that, you've got to come now!"

  She let go of the portfolio bag strap and tugged his wrist, but he simply let the arm extend until the dead weight of his body anchored her.

  "What is this place?"

  "Your room, and you've got to leave it. Please, Mr. Bryce." And then she remembered how he had warned her—warned Tiffany—on so many nights in his wanderings that she had to get out of the house because there was a fire. She thought of how she had burned down the barn, and of how he had been out there calling her name and trying to go into the flames while the others held him back. And when the barn had collapsed, he had collapsed in the dirt like a little kid not caring anymore what happened to him. So now she played on that, telling him she was Tiffany and that there was a fire, and he had to save her.

  Tiffany.

  What made no sense at all to Amber Leppa living in the present made perfect sense to Martin Bryce living in the past. Color sprang into his cheeks and he tried twice unsuccessfully to push himself out of the chair, coming up unsteadily on the third try. And then he got his "land legs" and took her hand while she lugged the portfolio bag, slung by its strap over her shoulder. She had to cue him in which direction to go in the corridor, but by the time they reached the end of it, he was actually leading her instead of the other way around.

  Decades after the fact, Martin Bryce was saving Tiffany at last.

  Out of the house and off the porch they went, the old man's grip on her fingers hurting in its ferocity. Thirty feet from the steps he came around in a wide circle, still holding her hand as if leading a grand cotillion. His gaze came down slowly from the blazing upper story of the farmhouse.

  "What's that?" he asked.

  "What?"

  With his free hand he gestured to the picture frame sticking out of the portfolio bag. "That."

  She unlimbered the bag and pulled the portrait up so he could see it. "That's me."

  "Like the one I've got in my wardrobe."


  "You mean like the one you used to have. You gave me that one already."

  "I did? Yeah, that's right. I gave you one of them. There were two."

  She heard this without impact, his little confusion, the nonhappenings that popped up as facts in old Mr. Bryce's failing memory. But the insidious truth began to drip like ice into her consciousness. Because even though Mr. Bryce could get lost easy as pie, he was very good with numbers. He might not remember his age, but whenever Mrs. Armitage told him what year it was and what year he was born, he would tell her how old he was without missing a beat. And now he was sure he had had two portraits, and he had given her one—the one she had destroyed to annihilate her twin.

  Amber looked hard at the painting she had been carrying precisely as if her life depended on it. The reason it looked different was because it was different. She was older in this picture. Her mother must have painted a third picture of her, only this one hadn't been finished with the magic paints yet, and that was why there wasn't another Amber around. And the real portrait of her—the one Mr. Bryce was talking about—that one was still in his room about to burst into flames.

  She squealed with fear, tried to pull away. "Let me go, let me go! My picture is in your closet and it's gonna burn up!"

  He peered hard at her, and he had her hand in a literal death grip while he tried to fathom, tried to understand why she wasn't saved now that he had led her out of the burning house.

  "I'll die if I don't get that picture. I'll die!"

  And then she yanked away and ran for the porch and danced up the steps and down again, because the heat was blasting out the door and the parlor was already an unearthly orange. Mr. Bryce was coming after her and she thought: his bedroom windows in back! So she ran around the house, which was billowing smoke and popping with small explosions of glass, and she couldn't tell which windows were his. So she broke two of them with bricks from the edging Dana had put around her garden, but all that happened was that yellow smoke came pouring out. With a cry she ran back around the basswood to the front, and there was Mr. Bryce. Only it wasn't old Mr. Bryce. It was young Mr. Bryce.