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

by Brian Hodge

  Rob glanced down at Kraylin, then glared out at her and lifted his fists to the level of his brow. The glare deepened. Cords of muscle sprang up at his chest, drew back his lips until the glare became feral. A damp leaf plastered itself against the center of his chest. Another. And another, while rivers of the same poured in through the doorway, and the mouth of the broken pane.

  “You can’t do it,” she said steadily, not loudly, but sure. “The sorcerer’s apprentice nearly got himself killed.”

  He could not be shaken; he could not hear her. The veins across his brows and the backs of his hands rose and pulsated while he worked on his teaching; and Cyd frowned, wondering, for her parents and Evan had not moved from their spot. Then what—

  She heard it before she saw it.

  Turned.

  The Greybeast snapped its headlights on … one at a time. And the noise she had heard was the tires moving over the leaves; the engine was still, and still the car moved. From the mouth of the drive slowly toward her. Slowly, less slowly, as the grille caught the houselight and seemed to snarl at her, the headlights only bright enough to give them mocking life.

  She backed away.

  Less than fifty yards.

  Looked back over her shoulder and saw her family waiting. Three dead, and waiting; one living, and hating.

  Rob grunted and thrust his arms upward as if lightning were prowling for the word of his command, as if thunder and fire were stalking his direction.

  He can’t do it, she thought as she backed toward Barton; if Kraylin hadn’t the time, and the strength for this magic, then Rob was in the act of taking something he couldn’t handle. And at the moment she knew the only way she could survive.

  And she almost balked when she turned to face her mother, her father, the poor accused brother.

  No.

  Not Mother. Not Father. Not Brother.

  They were dead.

  She spun around to face the Greybeast, saw it lurch into a speed it could not have achieved normally, and she only imagined the growling of the engine as it took the oval widely and bore down upon her. Bore down, glaring, the reflection of the houselight blurring the windshield, reminding her and frightening her, turning her legs to stone …

  …as she lifted her arm defiantly and flung out the iron, heard as she leapt screaming it spear the grinning grille.

  Saw the Greybeast lift as its front tires hit the bricks, lift and leap and soar and snarl, toppling Barton and Myrtle and Evan beneath the chassis, at the last moment hanging there several feet off the ground as Rob stared at it unbelieving, master and master, knowing and knowing, while the wind keen turned to screaming and the beast’s fender caught Rob’s chest, smashed him aside and plunged through the door.

  There was silence in the wind. With Cynthia, weeping.

  Later standing and moving, one thing left to do.

  And the funeral was held on a bright and blue Monday. Most of Oxrun had turned out at the Memorial Park’s service, and most of them were proud, and frankly amazed, at how well the younger Yarrow bore up under the strain. Three coffins at once in three adjoining graves, and her eyes were as dry as were most of theirs. So they passed their condolences and their smiles and their kisses, and they donated flowers in wreaths and bouquets. And avoided the figures on the far side of the gravesite—the two solemn policemen and the man in the wheelchair.

  Ed held her arm loosely, and she patted his hand whenever she could, whenever she dared, feeling her cheeks ache at the smile that she kept there, feeling her eyes ache at the tears already shed. It had been two weeks since the nightmare at the house, but she had insisted that Rob be able to attend. It would kill him, she’d told the police and the judges, if he could not be there with her to watch the family buried. There was no real way of knowing, of course, just why he had done it, but she told Abe Stockton that the business was in trouble, that the bank had been sold and the money was going quickly. Despair, she guessed under Ed’s hard and unbelieving stare, and just like him to think that honor was best served by the honorable way out. In the city they would call it a suicide pact, and a reporter that Marc Clayton had placed on the story had guessed in his article that the smashing of the house and the grey limousine was somehow symbolic of the failure of empires.

  Cyd never took issue. She only planted the ideas and let others grow them. She only waited until Rob was well enough to attend, then forced him to watch as the coffins were lowered. The only thing was, he would probably never understand. When he had been struck by the car, his head had hit the wall … and now, in the daylight under the winter-warm sun, he only stared uncomprehending as the mourners filed away.

  “Cyd,” Ed whispered, “I think it’s time for us to go. Do you want to …” and he nodded toward the policemen who were wheeling Rob away.

  “No,” she said. “He wouldn’t hear me anyway.”

  “Do … do you want me to leave you alone for a while?”

  She gripped his hand tightly, so tightly she knew it hurt. “Please, no. I’ve already done all I can.”

  The Lennons approached them then, with Sandy behind. Iris was still weeping, and Paul was too straight, but Sandy was fiercely calm and held out his hand.

  “I …” He stopped as Iris took light hold of his arm. “We’re sorry, Miss Yarrow. I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s all right, Sandy,” she said, not brave enough to keep one tear from escaping. “I just don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Could get into the store on time for a change,” Iris muttered through her crying; and the laughter Cyd heard then was amazingly her own—the laughter and the tears and the holding of old friends until she was alone with Ed and walking slowly over the grass.

  She was worried about him, but would not let her worry and her grief make her change her mind. His own accident had made him too weak to run his own business, and she was finally making progress in getting him to see a doctor. But she dared not move in with him as he had already suggested. That would be a mistake in more ways than one—primarily letting him think that she would accept his proposal. But not now, not while the nightmare was still clinging to her sleep and she was still working on the life she had been building before it happened.

  At the gates to the Park, then, they stood awkwardly together, watching as the policemen waited with Rob at the curb, waited while an ambulance made a slow U-turn to pull up in front of them.

  “Cyd-”

  Her car was standing not ten yards away. “Ed, we’ve already been over this.”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Now listen to me, you idiot,” she said, turning full toward him, her hands on his chest, one fussing with his tie. “You promised me you would see a doctor, all right? You promised me, Ed. Those black-outs aren’t funny, and you’re not a superman.”

  “Damnit, they’ll go away if I’m careful.”

  “Sure they will, and trees will learn to walk. Confound it, Ed, am I going to have to postpone—”

  He held up his hands in easy surrender. “No, no, don’t be silly. You go ahead and take that trip. You need it. And I promise you that I will see Doc Foster the first thing in the morning. And if he wants to put me into the hospital, I’ll do it. All right? Does that make you happy?”

  She smiled and shook her head slowly. “You need a babysitter, you know that, don’t you?”

  “I know what I need,” he said.

  Attendants moved at their own pace from the ambulance, one of them lighting a cigarette for a cop. With Rob between them they chatted, and laughed, until one of the patrolmen looked over to Cyd and winced his embarrassment.

  Cyd tried to steer the talk away from his proposal, suddenly remembered a gift in the car. She told Ed to wait and hurried to the car and reached in through the open window and pulled out the saber that had hung on her brother’s wall. It was polished now and gleaming, with a garish red bow tied at the hilt. She saw the police staring in frank admiration, saw one of the attendants t
ake Rob’s chair and push it toward the back.

  “No,” Ed said, backing away.

  “Yes,” she insisted, and handed it to him, poking at him with it until, reluctantly, he grabbed hold of the blade. “You’ve loved this thing for years, and you might as well have it. I’ve sold just about everything out of the house, and the realtor told me he may have a buyer for the place and the land.” She stared blindly at the sunlight glinting off the hilt. “I don’t want anything left, Ed. I don’t want anything left at all.”

  She dropped it suddenly as though it had burned her. Ed grabbed for the hilt before it struck the ground, gripping the blade tighter, then cursing loudly as he dropped it. She bent, but he yawned her away, wiping his hand on his coat gingerly.

  “Damn, woman,” he said. “You want to call me lefty from now on?”

  She grabbed at his wrist and turned the hand over. There was a deep crease across the palm.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Stop fussing.”

  The ambulance pulled slowly away from the curb.

  “Damnit, Cyd, what’s the matter with you?”

  The skin had been broken.

  “Cyd?”

  She watched, turning, the ambulance pick up speed. Her brother’s face was in the back window.

  “Cyd, listen, I just want you to know that I’ll be waiting for you when you get back. I know it sounds like something Sandy would say, but damnit, I love you, and I’ll be waiting when you get back.”

  On Ed’s hand there was no blood …

  “Cyd, I’ll be waiting.”

  … and Rob was smiling.

  SHADOWEYES

  By Kathryn Ptacek

  There was never any other choice.

  For Charlie, co-conspirator in life

  PROLOGUE

  Junior Montoya tossed another piñon branch onto the fire and watched as sparks danced beyond the ring of stones. The flames, yellow as the autumn moon hanging above the ridge, crept closer to the new wood and for a moment smouldered. Resin oozed like amber blood, then crackled as the fire touched it. He rubbed his hands together over the heat, willing his old veins to warm up.

  "Cold night, old man?"

  It was one of the gringos. Junior glanced in the man's direction. Large with a belly just beginning to hang over his turquoise-studded belt. Pink face, grown pinker by the bottle of Jim Beam in his hand. Grizzled sideburns. Trying to make himself look younger, Junior thought, and grinned.

  "Cold, yes. But it gets colder. Way colder in the winter. When the snows come," Junior said. He accepted the bottle the gringo held out to him and, putting it to his lips, leaned back. The whiskey splashed down his throat, trickled out of his mouth. He wiped his damp lips and chin on the sleeve of his red-checked flannel shirt and handed the bottle back.

  He looked at the other gringos. Two men and two women. The men older, probably in their mid-forties; the women not out of their twenties yet. They didn't think he knew what was going on, but he did. They weren't married, although they claimed to be. He shook his head. Texans. Texans always thought they could fool you, especially when you were a no-account half-breed. Indian and Mexican. Lower than vermin—if you were a Texan. But still they used him, came to him and asked for his services! He was the best guide, after all, the best in Albuquerque. And they all knew it.

  "Tell us about this here place," one of the women asked.

  She was a white blonde, with hair all curly and fake-looking. She would have been pretty, but her face was completely pockmarked. In an attempt to hide her ragged skin, she wore a heavy layer of makeup that ended in an orange line under her chin. She must be one hell of a lay; Junior ran his tongue over a broken tooth as he stared at her too-tight pink Angora sweater. Her nipples were hard in the night's coolness, and Junior looked away and licked his lips.

  The other girl, with long blonde hair, hadn't spoken a word all night. She was dressed in jeans and a man's shirt and wore cowboy boots. The second man was just as flamboyantly dressed as his male companion. Silver bob tie with a thumb-sized turquoise nugget set in it, silver and turquoise belt, expensive designer jeans, snakeskin cowboy boots, a satin-looking western shirt and a Stetson that'd never had a sweat stain around its rim. The rings on his fingers flashed as he massaged the back of the woman who'd spoken.

  Tell the gringos about this place, eh? Junior peered around, past the firelight at the surrounding forest. Beyond the piñons and juniper trees he could see faintly the gash in the scarred face of the mountain. Slip in there and you would find… the place.

  He grinned to himself, took a long swallow of coffee from the tin cup by the fire ring and stared at them, his face now quite serious.

  "No one ever goes back there," he said, indicating the break in the cliff with a jerk of thumb.

  "Why not?" the man named Tyler asked.

  "It is haunted."

  "Haunted," the talkative blonde girl echoed. She smiled at him, as though she didn't believe him. "By what?"

  "Ghosts, you silly thing," Hannet, the second man, said. He slapped playfully at her shoulder and she giggled and arched her back so that her breasts thrust forward. The other girl looked at Junior, her brown eyes regarding him seriously.

  "No ghosts," Junior said in a whisper. "Worse than that."

  "What's worse than a silly ol' ghost?" the girl, DeeDee, demanded. She jerked her purse, white leather with a gold clasp, over to herself and reached in for a compact. He had noticed her doing that several times that night. She patted her nose with a pink powder puff, returned the enamel compact to the purse's interior.

  "What are they, boy?" Tyler asked.

  The wind moaned down through the canyon, and overhead the needles on the trees clicked. Junior cocked his head and listened. There were the small rustlings of the night creatures. Crickets sang in the darkness, and off in the distance sounded the husky call of an owl. But there were other sounds as well. Sounds that did not belong to the desert.

  "What's worse, old man?" Hannet asked, his voice rising slightly with fear.

  Junior edged closer to the fire and smiled across at the gringos. The light stained his face yellow, hollowed his eyes, and with the gaps in his mouth he looked like a skull, bits of flesh still clinging to it. He pushed back a strand of greasy grey-black hair and chewed on a ragged fingernail.

  "The Indian spirits," he said at last, as he watched the Anglos fidget. All four of them kept glancing over their shoulders; the women edged closer to their men. They were nervous. Good.

  "Kachinas?" the second girl asked. Her voice was low and pleasant. She didn't sound Texan at all. Maybe she had been picked up someplace else.

  "More than kachinas," Junior said. He fished out a flattened package, moved the cellophane aside and searched with stained fingers for a cigarette. He found a butt two inches long. He pulled it out and put a twig in the fire. It caught and he lit his cigarette with it, then flicked the wood into the campfire. He inhaled and coughed. He scratched his nose and stared at the young woman. He couldn't remember her name. Candy? Sandy? He shrugged to himself.

  "What do y'all mean—more than kachinas?" Tyler asked. "Ah thought they were about as horrible as y'all can get out here."

  "No. Not horrible. Kachinas are representations. That is all. They are not real. But here—" His eyes shifted toward the cliff beyond them—"there is a place of great evil. A dead pueblo of a dead people is there. Indians who have not known this world since before Coronado came."

  "Why hasn't it been excavated?" Tyler frowned at him and thoughtfully tapped a large front tooth.

  "They have tried." His cigarette had burned out and he flipped it into the campfire. No one spoke as he stared into the flames. They shot up without warning and one of the girls squeaked, then giggled nervously.

  "Y'all say people from the University have tried to, uh, excavate this pueblo?"

  "That's right, Meester Tyler. But they all had accidents. Some fall down the cliff. One of them guys got knifed.

  Another foun
d with a bullet hole in 'im. They're all dead now. All dead." Junior grinned at them, the light glistening on his broken teeth.

  "Shouldn't we go back to the city now?" DeeDee twisted a curl around her finger in an attempt to appear casual. She tittered again, nervously. "Ah mean, are we real sure we want to stay up here on this awful ol' mountain tonight after all?"

  "They won't bother you—if you leave them alone." Junior stared across at her. He had seen plenty of her type in his day. They drifted from wealthy man to wealthy man and left when the money went or they got bored, and generally both did pretty fast. Sometimes, when the women like her had been around for a long time, they looked tired and were tired, and weren't particularly choosy about their men. He had seen some of the big Chicano studs with women like this. Castoffs from the Anglos. Always the castoffs, man, the very dregs. He licked his lips. He wouldn't mind a dreg like this.

  Seemingly aware of Junior's musings, DeeDee demurely crossed her legs at the ankle and tucked her feet closer to her body, as if by doing so she would protect what little virtue still remained to her.

  "But what killed them, Mr. Montoya?"

  It was the quiet woman again. He liked her well enough. For an Anglo. "They say that when the wind rises, you can hear voices." He paused as they all listened. Strained. Heard … the wind. The rustle of branches. The … what? Voices? Of what? "You can walk into the canyon and out of the walls, in the shadows, you see them. Watching you."

  "What?" Tyler's voice carried a slight waver. He swallowed another mouthful of whiskey, started to put the bottle down and changed his mind.

  Texan comfort, Junior thought. His mouth was dry; he wanted another drink, but knew he shouldn't. He had still too much to do this night. Too much to do. He needed a clear head.

  "What do you see, Meester Tyler? You see their eyes. Bright eyes that stare at you. Evil eyes that don't look away. Eyes that hate, eyes that—"

  "Ah think that's enough," a rough voice cut in.