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

by Brian Hodge

  He bit the record about an inch into the grooves, grimacing, his teeth dry and white and bone-like. The vinyl cracked and crumbled. He showed the disk, a rough half-moon missing from the edge. He began to chew. His eyes clenched, his jaws vibrated. The plastic broke and ground to powder. He chewed till nothing but black grounds remained in his mouth. He balled the powder into a clod and wiped it into a handkerchief.

  A girl's voice tried to interrupt.

  He held up a hand and went on cleaning his teeth and gums with his fingers. Then, "Hey," he called behind the curtain. He waited, hand out. "You know what I want." The curtain wobbled. A deep, unseen voice grumbled. "Don't give me any of that," he snapped.

  He dropped his eyes to the bottom of the curtain, reached over and picked up a light bulb.

  He turned it in his fingertips. Then he cracked it on the stage like an egg, took a curved, opaque wafer and positioned it in his mouth. He began to chew in a rolling motion, grinding it to dust. He extended his tongue to show the pile of shining particles, then picked off the ground glass cautiously, daubing with the handkerchief.

  "Why don't you swallow it?" asked a girl.

  "Who said that?" he asked coolly, but the spectators were hidden in the shadows. "I can swallow it. You want to see me swallow it?"

  "Don't it hurt your innards?" asked a man's voice. It was one of the sailors, in front, and he sounded genuinely interested.

  "Sure it does. What do you think? Let me ask you something. Wouldn't it hurt you?"

  No answer.

  "What did you say?"

  Finally, "Then—" The sailor did not finish.

  "It's something I do," answered the sword swallower.

  He took a bent pack of Kools from his pants pocket, straightened one with careful strokes. He lit it, inhaling deeply. Seconds passed. A board fell outside, and heavy shoes somewhere.

  "Let's see you put that cigarette in your mouth," said a girl.

  He looked into the darkness, his face hard as rock. Then he laid the cigarette on his tongue, the glowing tip protruding from his mouth, and simply flicked it inside like a chameleon. Smoke blew out his nose. Then he opened his mouth, flicking the cigarette back out and down.

  "Satisfied?" he said to the darkness. He wasn't smiling.

  "Let's see you put it out."

  The sword swallower held a deep breath, let it out slowly and with great control. He cocked an eye knowingly. "Let's hear the rest of it," he said.

  A giggle.

  "No. Come on. You want to say something, say it."

  "Let's see you put that cigarette out in your mouth, I said."

  No, thought Geoff. Don't let her make you.

  The sword swallower sat forward, elbows braced on knees. He stared at the cigarette. His expression was unreadable. He took a hard drag and tapped the ash, rolling the cigarette between his fingers. He made a short, bitter sound that might have been a laugh, straightened his back, crossed his left ankle on his right thigh, dragged again, tapped the ash again so that the bare coal was hot and bright in the air.

  "I can do it, you know. I've done it before. It'll blister for four days, then it'll hurt like hell. But I can do it. What's the matter, you think I can't?"

  Geoff cleared his throat. "Man," he offered, "you don't have to prove anything." Uncertainly he added, "The hell with her, see?"

  The sword swallower looked at Geoff, or as near as he could come to him in the shadows. The eyes, sharp and steely, would not give him away. Strange eyes, Geoff thought. The eyes were looking at him.

  The sword swallower put his feet down and flexed his legs, half-standing. He opened his mouth, showed his tongue. Then, you know what he did. You know what he did then.

  He put out the cigarette on his tongue.

  "Didn't it …" A throat caught. "Didn't it hurt?"

  "Sure it hurt." The sword swallower stepped up to the curtain. "Sure I feel it. Wouldn't you?"

  Geoff pivoted, somewhat unsteadily. The show must be over, he thought.

  Now where was she?

  The others stretched and bumped together like wind-up dolls suddenly activated on the dirt floor.

  "Exit to your left. This show is—"

  "Hey, you're the Pin Head, right? I seen this show before."

  Geoff craned his neck. The fat, rumpled man was speaking. To a new man on the platform, come out from behind the curtain.

  And there was Sherron, edging over.

  "Psst," whispered Geoff, "over here! You're blind as a bat, aren't you? I was looking for—"

  "Is that the Pin Head?" She gave him her hands but not her attention.

  Geoff sighed. "That's all, honey," he said, "there ain't no more."

  "I am the Human Pin Cushion," said the man on the stage.

  "I wanna see some more," said Sherron.

  The man heard her. "Very well," he said, since the sailors had stopped by the tent flap, blocking the others from leaving.

  Her fingers were cold. Geoff wanted to pull away, but made himself hold on.

  The man, the Human Pin Cushion, was old, old. Bushy brows. A tight, unexpected cupid's-bow mouth between his hanging jowls.

  Sherron laughed.

  "Don't—" say any more, thought Geoff. There was something about her voice he did not like.

  The old man checked his watch resignedly, slid back his sleeve as he took out a pair of spectacles. He had an old leather eyeglass case clipped over his pocket. Without enthusiasm, he produced a long, gleaming hatpin from an envelope. He waved the people closer and prepared himself, pinching up the loose rice-paper skin on his wrist. It pulled into a familiar fold.

  "Hey," said a girl, "that picture outside, it shows you sticking pins all over your body."

  "That is correct." The old man hesitated, needle poised. "I have passed steel through all areas of my body. I have performed for The Johnny Car—" He stopped himself, drew off his glasses, gazing out. "What is it you would have me do?"

  "Stick it through your…your…" Giggle. The girl's voice. "Oh, through your tongue."

  Geoff forced himself to look.

  It was Sherron. It had been her voice all along.

  "My God, Sher…" He tried to say her name. "My God."

  The old man was looking at her, and so was everyone else. She had come up close to the stage. "No, not that. I've already seen that. Stick it through…"

  "Yes, young lady?"

  "…Through, oh, your ear," she said impatiently. "Stick it in your ear!"

  The old man checked his watch again. The show was folding. He studied her. He pushed back his hair, badly in need of a cut, folded his long ear forward. Salt-and-pepper hairs encrusted the opening above the pendulous lobe. Light from a single miniature spotlight turned the flesh a warm peach color.

  He raised the long needle. He held his ear with one hand, placed the point behind the lobe, and pushed it through.

  "Not there," said Sherron, "anybody can do that!"

  The old man stared her down. He folded his upper ear and pressed with a slow, trembling force, driving the tip through the cartilage in a tiny stirring motion.

  He stepped to the edge, the needle penetrating his ear in two places. He looked down past his chins at the girl. At Sherron.

  "You are satisfied now?" he asked.

  "How come you don't bleed?" she said defiantly.

  The old man stepped back. He grasped the ball on the end of the needle. "This show," he said, "is over." And then, to Sherron alone, he said:

  "What do you think I am? Don't you think we are human?

  "Of course we bleed."

  He pulled the needle as if lowering a sword from salute. A stream of blood coursed immediately from his ear. It gushed down his neck and spattered to the boards.

  Then he left the stage.

  Geoff forced a path out. He put a hand to his forehead and hurried away from the pike. He was aware of the tarpaulined machinery of thrill rides, canvassed shapes and empty attractions. A mist of dew was already forming
on the glass of the fortune shop but he did not see it as he passed. He zipped his windbreaker and continued to his car, refusing to break stride, and as the girl named Sherron strove to keep pace, laughing at him, cajoling, finally silent and unintentionally merciful as the fog rolled in, he felt, no, he knew at last that he was alone now, after all, quite alone.

  KEEPER OF THE LIGHT

  It is a small thing, really, very slight, but it happens like this:

  Drowsy in the seat, your legs folded by the thick pane, you hear her pattering up the spiral steps. You stand. Your foot is asleep and for a moment you sway before the glass, reeling atop the white masonry tower that is mercifully cushioned from the breaking sea by soft folds of outside fog. Then she comes up behind you, touches your neck with her hand so like a cool fish brushing near in the luminous dark; you turn and take her up in your arms and turn again into the night.

  "How's everybody tonight?" she asks.

  Your eyes follow hers up ladders to the sky. To her friends.

  "They're happy, aren't they? See? They've got all their lights on." She dabs a spot of frost on the glass. "Look at the Seven Travelers. They're not blinking. Calm. Don't you think?"

  The cluster of lights she has named waits above you, wheeling peacefully over the low mist.

  "Well, I don't know. Look at Old Three Eyes," indicating a line of bright, flickering points in another part of the sky. "And what about the porpoise?" A string of white motes spilled across with the familiar milky roadway. Once, years ago, they had resembled a ladle to you, but that was before you met Luanne.

  "Oh, they're flying easy, too," she assures. "See how clear…how they're watching us. 'Content,' I guess, is the word."

  Kiss her by her ear, in the soft place between cartilage and short, wispy strands of hair. "Don't you ever get tired of being here," you ask suddenly, "just us, for so long? Tell the truth. I mean, six months—"

  "—Is beautiful!" she answers. "They are so beautiful, and they seem to want to make a place for us, to remind us what peace is really like. You know. So we won't forget, back in the city." Her eyes sparkle, her lips shine under the billion members of her personal family. In a sense, she has created them, for herself and for you. It makes her happy. You would not have it otherwise.

  It is hard to believe that so many ships have run ashore and wrecked on this coast. So soft, it appears, this fogged haven on the north California shore. Thinking of it, you imagine that you hear the twisting of rusted iron, the buckling of hulls and the cries of the lost washed onto the rocks, but you shake your head to throw it off. Only it doesn't go away.

  "Listen!" she says, incredulous, hearing it, too. Far below on the beach there is the sound again, as of grinding motors and bent propellers thrashing the sand. You look at each other and then head down the stairwell.

  He is squat, rumpled and fatigued, and as he sips coffee in the cottage your eyes are drawn to his pallid hands, smooth and flounder-white.

  "Salesman," he sighs, baring his teeth. "I was on my way to a meet in Marin County this afternoon, figured I'd shave a few hours if I cut down on the cliff road. Jesus, Joseph and Mary, I haven't seen a gas station for two hours!"

  "Listen," you decide, "no way you can get a tow out here tonight. Rest your bones till morning and I'll have a look at her in the daylight. I used to be a half-assed mechanic myself. My wife can make up the couch here, and—"

  "I'll get you a fresh cup," Luanne chimes in. Her eyes crinkle up, smiling, actually pleased to play hostess.

  The man stretches, expands, not at all embarrassed. "Say, what do you folks do out here? Godforsaken place, eh? That is a lighthouse I saw out there, isn't it?"

  "Lu and I stay here every year, spring through fall. Ryman Scientific owns the facility, actually. Bought it all from the Coast Guard when the automatic beacons went up, six-seven years ago. We watch the bottom measuring devices for them, drop the lines, chart wind and rain and, oh, you know, read dials and gauges. We get room and board and a small stipend. Very small." You rise. "You know, it's quite a break from city life. My wife doesn't seem to mind…"

  "I love it!"

  "There you are. Come on. I'll show you around."

  Cursing the terrain, he stumbles out and over the grounds and into the lower levels with you, muttering hmm and yeah and well then there now, disturbed that the whitewash comes off on his hands, bumping his head on the old acetylene-cluster burners on the way up to the light. You fire it up for him, showing off a little, perhaps. 400,000 candles beam out, tipping the water with phosphor. You are proud, somehow.

  "And you? You're in sales?" you ask, crunching back across the field between the vegetable garden and the poppies and daisies, past the mums and roses and giant sunflower plot, touched and ordered by the delicate, ever-widening network of her personality. She has transfigured us all, you think, and the cold leaves you for a minute.

  "Toys," he says, warming to his subject. "Yeah, I sell the little monsters—their mothers, really—one kind of diddlyshit after another. Heh. It's a living. Say, you folks have kids?"

  "We're trying." You wink at Luanne.

  He veers to his car, racked up blind in a ditch. "My compliments, here. You'll use 'em someday. The least I can do, if you won't take my money."

  "Oh, let's see!" says Luanne excitedly.

  "If you'll just give me a hand, then, with these samples…" and he loads you with boxes from the back seat of the station wagon.

  His favorite is a tabletop planetarium. The living room is small but the walls and ceiling make perfect projection surfaces. You switch off the light and as he thumbs the rheostat on the plastic toy, a semblance of stars limns the room, faint, then bright, then unbearably brilliant, unnaturally coruscating aureoles, cold and riveting.

  Luanne gasps.

  The salesman wields his electric pointer and begins to entertain with an impersonal lecture, rehearsed for his sales conference, no doubt. He traces lines between the points until he has interconnected them all.

  "This one is Ursa Major, of course," he rattles off, "the Big Bear."

  "It's really a porpoise," says Luanne in the dark.

  "No, no," he corrects with cool finality. "And here's Orion, his belt, right?" He raises his bright arrow.

  "Old Three Eyes," she objects.

  "And over here," he explains, rather pompously, "the Seven Sisters, got it? And…"

  And so on and on. He names every constellation in the heavens, rotating the black pin holed shell, whirling you through season after season. The effect is disorienting. Every pet name, every reassuring personification she has created is laid to rest, stripped from the sky, replaced by the neutral abstractions you thought you had forgotten and which Lu had never known, had never wanted to know. Some he calls again and again, until their names become unfamiliar, abstracted beyond meaning, dissociated utterly from your lives. It must seem that way to her. To be honest, you feel something of it yourself. He directs you to Sirius, to Alpha Centauri and to Mars, god of war and dissension, 40,000,000 miles from Earth, far, you think, far, far away. In place of signposts he leaves nomenclature, in place of beacons he leaves disinterested classification, in place of recognition he leaves a universe too distant to know in any meaningful way. In any way at all.

  Luanne breathes moistly across the room. It has gotten to her, all right. Such a small thing, really. You wish you could find her, touch her, warm her, be with her. The salesman breathes heavily, tiring, as his strange, surrogate stars continue to blaze down with an icy certainty, laid out like dots separated forever on a graph of alien geometry.

  In the morning she is awake too early, moving aimlessly around the small house, busying herself without purpose. By noon you have given up on the wagon and phone for the tow truck, and he departs as he had arrived, in a grating moan of machinery.

  She waits between the cottage and the lighthouse. Her eyes are wide, implacable. You walk up to her and she lets you take her arms in your grimy hands. In her eyes is neither r
esistance nor consent.

  "What is the Pleiades?" She says it oddly, as if she does not expect an answer. You don't know what to say. You shake your head, a pale gesture of resignation.

  She slips away. "Hey, wait…!" You try to hold her while you think of something to say, but she eludes you.

  From the top of the tower you can see her puttering around the house in no particular pattern. You try to make sense of it, but it is a random ballet of Brownian motion.

  All day you sit in the tower.

  Then, as night comes in, all the way into the crow's nest, you realize that the beacon is still burning. You shut it off. You sit that way for hours; once you stand to stretch, searching for something like a man looking for an answer in the back of a book and finding the page torn out, and you gaze down at the jagged boulders on which the station is built. The water laps all around. It tears at the rocks in perpetual erosion. Without malice, without design, without end and you remember that one day the rock and all that has been erected upon it will fall into the swirling black-crested waves, and the thought sobers you, and you blow on your greasy hands, still trying to warm them.

  It is something you can live with painlessly enough. You have seen far worse things.

  You want to explain that to her. But you wouldn't know how. Besides, it is a small thing, really, very slight.

  Yet many days in the weeks that follow you find yourself sitting like that, alone in the tower. From there you can see her easily as she comes out from time to time, looking for something to do in the garden. But the plants go untended more and more as the season drags on, and when she moves her gait grows more deliberate each day; once you even see her weeping as she walks softly around the grounds. You stay on to the end, of course, and when you leave she says that she doesn't care if she comes back next year or not. As simply as that. She mouths something about the weather. And so you go back to the city, to pass the years ahead together, and to forget that night soon enough, both of you.

  Still, there are nights when you find yourself trying to call up from within her something she seems no longer to have to give, and that seems strange to you; and on some of those nights you go to the window, to sit by the window remembering from an old dream the way the tule fog used to settle in like a blanket over the coast, masking the stars until they were but microscopic pinholes staring blindly out of an indifferent sky, and that seems to you the strangest of all. It is a small thing, really, a very slight thing in the course of a life for a man to remember at all.