Edray stuffed his hand into the pocket of B’s sweats and pulled out a wad of cash. He hauled his sister up into his arms and struggled out of the room, Alex close behind.
They ran out of the house, leaving the sounds of snapping wood and inhuman shrieking behind them.
- - -
Edray reached out the window of his Charger and tried to stuff a few hundred dollars into Alex’s hand. He wouldn’t take it.
“You’re gonna need that more than me,” Alex said. “You gonna try and keep it on the straight?”
“I’m gonna try,” Edray said.
“Yeah, you’re gonna need it.”
They shook hands. It was strange: they’d been tight for years, but they’d never shaken hands before. It didn’t feel like goodbye, it felt like farewell.
Edray watched Alex’s image shrink in his rearview as he headed out toward the freeway. Alex didn’t seem to know where to turn. He already seemed a little lost. Edray felt a slight tug in his chest, but what could he do? He couldn’t save everybody. Maybe when they were settled, he could come back for him.
Noelissa was curled up in the front seat. She lifted her head and parted her eyelids. “Where am I?”
“We’re driving. We’re gonna get out of town for a little while.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m not sure yet. We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
“So I’m not dead?” Noelissa said. “I thought I was dead.”
Edray felt a burning behind his eyes when he heard that. “No, you’re not dead.”
“Good,” Noelissa said, half mumbling, curling back up and facing the door, “I’m glad I’m not dead.”
Edray found the freeway entrance and brought the Charger up to speed, heading north. They’d be to San Francisco in six or seven hours, but he thought he’d keep going, head on up to Oregon, get out of the whole state. But it didn’t really matter. Noelissa had said the five words he wanted to hear more than anything else in the whole goddamn world, so it didn’t matter where they ended up.
He shifted in his seat, settling in for a long night of driving as they left the city behind them and headed out for something new.
Beastie
by David Bischoff
There was a man who lived at the edge of a forest. The man's house was an old Victorian affair, gabled and shuttered, that had been restored with all the yuppie amenities. On the other side of this forest was an old cemetery.
The church that once sided the cemetery was long since torn down, but grave markers with dates as far back as the 18th century survived. Of late, a new section of the cemetery had been added, and the people of the 20th and 21st century had begun making it their final home.
The man, whose name was Edward Shwartz, was a lawyer. He had a wife, Dana, and a son named Ted and a daughter named Amber.
He also had a black cat named Beastie.
Beastie had been brought home as a kitten by Amber while Shwartz was out of town. By the time he came home from his business trip the rest of the family was attached to the cat, then called Button. Shwartz, who was not particularly fond of cats, but loved his children and his wife, agreed to allow the cat to stay if he could rename it. He wished to call it 'Beastie' after the song by Jethro Tull.
The deal was struck and the kitten, no longer named Button, had a home.
Beastie, a visitor once theorized, was part Siamese. Entirely black, Beastie was a little skittish around strangers and had attached herself to Amber, but did not like to be picked up, even by other members of the family. This was fine by Shwartz, who was not troubled with the need to hold small creatures. The friend claimed the Siamese based not just on this, but on the kink at the end of the cat's tail. A sure sign, she said, of a Siamese connection.
Like most cats, Beastie was nocturnal. She particularly enjoyed late night jaunts, once she got old enough to roam. Spaying did not stop these at all.
One night—a particularly cold and wretched night—Shwartz was up late preparing a contract for a client. He vaguely heard the cat door flap back and forth, but took no note of it.
Then Shwartz heard a tiny scream.
As Beastie had taken to bringing mice home at night, often only half-dead, Shwartz assumed that this was the case and thought it best to get the carcass out of the house.
In the shadowed area of the back landing he found Beastie with a small object, batting it with feline playfulness.
"Beastie!" he said, stamping his feet.
The light from the kitchen reflected in the cat's eyes like cave water in a spelunker's light. It froze then bounded back, abandoning its prize.
It did not take long to see that the creature was larger than any mouse. Shwartz turned on the light.
On the floor, huddled in a corner, was a thing.
This thing was like nothing that Shwartz had ever seen before. At first, he thought that his cat had somehow dug up a rotting collection of rats and birds and spiders somehow buried in a mass grave and then stitched together. The thing smelled of old rot and dripped putrefaction. However, even as he looked down at it, stunned, the lawyer saw that miniature human legs and arms stuck out of the mass.
And then a head—the size of a GI Joe doll—righted itself. Tiny eyes opened. They reflected back the fear that Shwartz felt. Matted hair filled with shreds of dead leaves hung long over the head. The eyes swiveled to the cat, hunkered down behind Shwartz, moving back and forth, ready to pounce.
The thing screamed.
It was the scream that he had heard before. Closer, it sounded more awful and less human.
With rodent speed the thing righted itself, surveyed the environs and then scurried toward the cat door. Beastie made to leap upon it but somehow Shwartz was able to grab her and hold her back. Beastie did not struggle, going stiff and compliant as she did when Shwartz picked her up.
The thing whacked into the cat door, squeezed through the opening and was gone, leaving behind only its stench and a trail of ooze.
Shwartz thought he had recognized the face poking above that putrid mass.
- - -
The next day Shwartz nailed the cat door shut. He kept Beastie in that night, and he did not speak of the creature he'd seen to his family. Nor did he sleep well the following night.
However, soon enough his dread left him, and his curiosity crept in. He would often find himself distracted from a meeting with a client or a conference with a judge, wondering just what that creature had been. He was on no prescription drugs and he knew it had been no dream.
Soon enough his children demanded to know why he had nailed shut the cat door. Beastie liked to roam at night. Why shouldn't she? Unable to offer a good answer, Shwartz took out the nails, saying that he'd heard rumors of wolves.
The next weekend he took a walk in the woods.
The woods were on a series of hills. On the other side of the middlemost hill behind Shwartz's house was the cemetery, old and new. It was autumn and the deep dead leaves scrunched beneath his feet. The woods smelled of the creek that ran beside the hill. There was the taste of winter in the air although the sun shone bright. Shwartz saw nothing but squirrels and birds.
When he came home, he saw Beastie in the yard. She was batting something around with her paws. When Shwartz approached her she grabbed up the thing in her mouth and ran away.
It looked like a tiny arm.
- - -
The town he lived in was small. Shwartz practiced general law. Being good enough in most areas, he did a good business and was content. He knew that he was not in the league of big city lawyers, with their cotton shirt creases and their expense accounts and their billing hours, but it hardly mattered. He made a good living. He had a good house and a well-adjusted family. Although the town had its rough edges, he could hardly complain.
He was familiar enough with the political element—the sheriff and deputies, the mayor and judges, and the other luminaries of the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs—to know that there was a ce
rtain cheerfully corrupt aspect to the town. Money exchanged hands sometimes. Graft occurred, as well as other common American political power and money-under-the-table transactions. It seemed to be a tradition in the town going way back. Shwartz did not protest because this was one of the reasons he had a better-than-average income. Besides, there was nothing of modern evil in the questionably legal goings-on. No drugs, no prostitution, no organized crime, no murders, no extortion or racketeering. Just business deals, back-scratching, understandings, and kick-backs. Or so he told himself, despite occasional evidence to the contrary which he happily avoided or, when necessary, refused to see.
Three years before, Shwartz had dealt with a real-estate broker he'd help set up an apartment complex for in a manner that would line a few pockets. Two years ago, the broker, named Sam Harding, had died.
The more he thought about it, the more Shwartz could swear it was Sam Harding's face that had been above that mass that Beastie had dragged through the cat door.
It bothered him. He had insomnia and problems with dyspepsia.
Finally one night his curiosity got the better of his dread, and when Beastie left through the cat door, he followed, holding a powerful modern flashlight and the unregistered .38 he kept in a drawer by the door against burglars and business deals gone wrong.
The night was another brisk one but he was dressed warmly in a Scottish wool sweater underneath a down jacket. Things crunched beneath his hiking boots and the smell of an afternoon of leaf burning hung in the air. He stepped over a smashed jack-o-lantern from Hallowe'en, a sludge of orange in dead weeds.
Beastie led him a winding chase through the oak and the walnut trees. However, she seemed in no hurry, so it was not difficult to follow.
Finally the black cat reached a slope to the northeast of the hill beside the cemetery. Here grew a number of hedges and evergreens, still bushy and berried. She crawled underneath these. It was difficult to follow but Shwartz managed. When he emerged into a small clearing, he realized he had lost sight of the cat. He swept the beam of light across the straggly side of the slope.
In the side of the hill, mostly hidden by brush, was the opening to a cave. He saw his cat's black tail disappear into its darkness.
"Beastie!" he called. "Beastie, no—"
Of course, calling for a cat is generally fruitless, and he stopped. He peered into the cave, playing his flashlight inside, seeing only rocks and dirt sides, and straggles of roots. He was about to give all this foolishness up. The cold outside was finding its way deep into his inside.
But then, he heard a "Meow!"
"Beastie?"
Another "Meow". It sounded more urgent this time.
"Beastie! Get out of there! Now."
The "meow" sounded again, only this time it seemed more distant.
"Damn it!" Shwartz said. He wanted to leave, to get back to the warmth of his house. A glass of brandy, the fireplace...then his bed and his wife's soft presence. It wasn't just concern for the cat, though that gave him pause. There was some other force involved, something of curiosity, true, but an altogether more alchemical mix than that.
The next thing Shwartz knew he was bending low to go into the cave. The cave widened somewhat, but he still had to stoop his head to navigate it. As it progressed downwards some yards in, he saw that it had stalactites and stalagmites. It was an ancient cave.
After some fifty more yards of steady descent the trail tilted to the right. Shwartz heard odd rustlings and shushings. He called for his cat again but there was no response.
The tunnel swerved again, opening to a twilight tableau.
Upon a mound in the center of the cave sat Shwartz's black cat Beastie, still as a statue. Like a monarch surveying her demesne, she stared down. Below her, darkness covered the floor, except for patches of phosphorescence which limned the scurryings and scutterings of small creatures. A kind of chittering chorus called out. It sounded like distorted cries of worship and praise and supplication. The high pitched voices seemed unearthly, parodies—Alvin and the Chimpmunks, damned.
Shwartz held up the flashlight, which had hung canted to his side. The beam caught a pack of the things as they rolled around on the floor before the feted cat. They were not identical, but there was a theme to each. They all seemed collections of grotesque bits of decayed nature—rats' tails, snake heads, twigs, claws, squirrel feet, bat wings, possum fur, poison ivy sprigs, and all had collections of human legs and heads—often in skeletal mode. However as Shwartz looked closer he could see that other things poked out of these horrors. There were buttons and ribbons and shoelaces. There were coins and bills and fragments of contracts and wills. There were shredded magazine covers and book jackets. One of the things wore a CD-ROM hat upon its doll-like head and bits of computer innards glittered and clanked to its sides.
It did not take long for the creatures to take note of the bright light shining upon them. They cheeped and shrilled and froze.
Dead in the light was slightly larger creature. As Shwartz looked closer he could see that actually it was three or maybe four of the things, fused together like a king rat in the depths of a New York City sewer. From this thing hung shiny objects—badges and bullet casings, twined with shreds of blue uniform. Little spears protruded like a porcupine. Three heads popped out from the front—and Shwartz recognized them. They were older policemen of the town who had died just recently. And in the center was a bigger head—a head from which a cigarette butt dangled. Although the face was scarred and distorted, Shwartz could not help but recognize it. It was a face that stood on the statue in the midst of town. Square jaw, protruding ears, earnest eyes and all. It was Dr. Milton Freeman's head. Milton Freeman, the mayor of the town for thirty years in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Dr. Milton Freeman, founding father of the modern town's government. Church rector and spiritual leader.
The thing hissed at the bright light.
Shwartz stepped back and tripped. The flashlight in his hand bounced up, splashing light upon the roof of the cavern. Old tree roots hung from the ceiling. Shattered bottoms of coffins hung down, skeletons dangling. To one side were newer coffins, fine mahogany coffins. From the base of one of these coffins, a stairway ran.
Beastie turned and looked at Shwartz.
Her eyes shown like gimlet stars in an ancient sky.
Then Shwartz felt a hard thing smack the back of his head. The next thing he knew, he was on his knees, this underworld scene spinning about him. Then he passed out.
- - -
When Edward Shwartz awoke, he lay upon his back.
Above him was sky, heavy with clouds and night. He was cold, and his head hurt terribly. Upon his chest sat Beastie.
He reached up to her and she let him pet her. She was soft and well-groomed and she purred.
Shwartz reached to the back of his head and his hand came away wet. He was bleeding. Beastie walked off his chest and commenced striding away. Shwartz got to his feet. His heart beat heavily. Despite the cold, he sweated. He felt clammy and shivery, but a vast relief swelled over him.
He looked up and saw a break in the clouds, through which gimlet stars stared down, coldly watching him.
He turned to his house just in time to see Beastie calmly push her way through the cat door and disappear toward her other throne.
3 Monkeys
by Adam Howe
We were cleaning up the mess in the D-wing rec room when I first saw the boy.
A slip of a lad. Late teens. Dark hooded eyes and porcelain skin. A bumfluff moustache above squiggle lips. A look on his face like he didn’t knew where he was. Maybe even who he was. Bandages crisscrossed his skull and covered his ears like the bastard offspring of turban and straitjacket. He was staring into space through Rigby and I as we worked; perhaps traumatised by what he had witnessed, though I thought it more likely the Doctors kept him chemically coshed, a method which passed for treatment in this snakepit.
Rigby noticed my mop had stopped working. He
was crouching on the chequered floor, his hands clad in plastic gloves that were speckled with blood. He stabbed a finger at me; it looked like he’d fingered a gunshot wound. “Don’t take the piss, Moss,” he said. “Don’t take the piss or we swap jobs.” He dropped a tooth into the tobacco tin beside him. The chime of tooth against tin brought me round.
I looked away from the boy. “Sorry.” Between Rigby’s task and my own, I had the better deal. The head of my mop sat like roadkill in a bloody puddle.
I went back to work, making gory whorls on the floor.
- - -
Earlier that afternoon, Burrows and Wilson had become involved in an altercation regarding the ownership of a toy tank. Toys kept in the green bin in the corner of the rec room were dealt strictly on a first come first served basis. Not only were the patients regularly reminded of this, but the policy was printed on a sign above the toybin marked SHARE.
Burrows had given Wilson a light shove. Not intending to hurt him, rather to distract his attention from the little tin tank Wilson held like a prize, whereupon Burrows hoped to take the toy for himself. Wilson had responded by hammering the teeth out of Burrows’s mouth with repeated whacks of the tank. The gun-turret had snapped off in Burrows’s gums.
When orderlies, including Rigby and myself, finally managed to wrestle Wilson off Burrows, most of Burrows’s face was dripping from the tank, which Wilson still stubbornly clung to. Only sedation had loosened his grip, and even then it was a struggle prising his fingers free. Out of respect for Burrows, it was decided that the tank should be cleaned and placed by his bedside in the infirmary, in the hope he might wake from his coma.
- - -
Yes, I was fortunate to be mopping. Rigby was not pleased to be scavenging through gore for teeth; in his tobacco tin already was enough to bankrupt the Tooth Fairy. I untangled one of Burrow’s buckteeth from my mop, and feeling helpful I kicked it towards Rigby with the toe of my workboot. The tooth skated across the floor like a runaway checker, striking the tobacco tin with a ping.
One Buck Horror: Volume Two Page 2