The Best of Horror Library: Volumes 1-5

by Bentley Little

  Before he could talk himself out of it, he carried Rose to the closet, put her in a sitting position under a few old lady coats hanging there. There was no lock, so he grabbed a high back chair from the table and tucked it under the handle, just in case she figured out the knob. She was particularly quiet, which concerned him. Better get moving before you traumatize her, asshole.

  Shotgun over his arm, Jeff went outside. The can of formula was in sight, along with a sleeping bag and some other stuff he grabbed in his terror. As he made his way over, he caught sight of something moving in the night. Jeff opened his eyes to their limit, tried to soak up the darkness, process it, read the evil in it. The vulture was there. It was picking at the blanket covering the dead tortoise.

  He took each stair, careful not to make a sound. He had to get close enough. His brother had taken him out to the fields to shoot before. Jeff hadn’t liked it at the time, but now he felt the experience had served him well. Closer, he went on, the vulture scuttling a bit to the side, perhaps aware of him. Jeff took his chance. He aimed at the feathered thing. He squeezed the trigger. The kick sent him back a few steps and a stinging bruise instantly formed in his armpit. Thankfully the earplugs saved his hearing.

  Darkness spread out in front of him. He hurried to see if he’d hit it. There was a wash of blackness around the heap of blanket. Hopefully there were scattered feathers and blood. Jeff approached and peered over the side of the tortoise’s shape. Something shattered in the cabin. Three stabs of pain went from his bicep to his neck. The vulture had landed on his shoulder, its beak parted, black tongue clucking inside, the alien chants rolling out with lethal swiftness. Toptoptoptop-teep-toptoptop-teep-toptoptop. His earplugs hardened and burst and the hideous stream of words ran into his soul, just as that doctor’s voice had that night when Kim left him. That which had denied him a part of his life was doing it again. So deadly and familiar.

  He snatched the bird by its throat, and swung it over his shoulder, slamming it to the dirt. There was a loud snap of bone, and a half-squawk, and the vulture went silent. His reaction surprised him but the result didn’t satisfy him. He’d dropped his shotgun in the struggle, but now he ripped it up from the ground, desert dirt coming with it in his hand. He drove the stock down into the tiny head, three wet times. The air smelled like a barnyard of forged copper, moist feathers, and standing blood.

  The cabin window suddenly exploded in yellowed, brittle shards, like glass from the window of a long dead cathedral. Dark shapes flapped up through the jagged opening. His mind reeled. He ran. The word no beat into his brain. He couldn’t think to breathe but his body needed it. The coughing fit tasted bloody. The taste didn’t register.

  Two obese vultures hunkered at the closet. One stuck its beak down at the bottom of the door, chanting…chanting…chanting. This one’s voice a bit deeper. Topetopetope-toop-toop-topetopetope. He didn’t want to think about how the words sounded like tumors growing, as though that could even have a sound. Not just tumors. All cells, every cell. The expansion made him want to scream until he blacked out. The other vulture suddenly pulled at the stuck chair at the closet with its fine, flesh-tearing beak.

  Jeff yelled through the chanting words but the strength of their cadence overwhelmed any sounds that came from his throat. Each syllable ripped something away from his spirit. He took aim.

  The first shot simultaneously killed the closest bird and maimed the other, sending it backward on a feathery surf of gore. It squawked and thrashed, grounded for life, on the way to its death. It opened its beak, teeeeeep—buckshot blew it apart, peppering the wooden stairwell. Jeff took another shell from his pocket. Filled the barrel. Finished the other vulture.

  The second shot rang loud in his naked ears. A woman’s scream peeled out from the closet. The gun thumped on the wooden floor and he choked on his terror. The sound of the scream overwhelmed him. His stomach turned over. She made incomprehensible sounds, the mewling of a trapped animal.

  “Rose,” he breathed, his body quivering. He kneeled before the closet and dropped his forehead against the door. Some of the coats in the closet screeched on their hangers as Rose backed away from the sound. Jeff mumbled and sobbed and fought with his own mind. It took him a long time to gain control.

  Sometime late that night, Jeff limped to the closet and let the woman out.

  The Happiness Toy

  by Ray Garton

  The woman standing on the porch carried a large black satchel, and although Lisbeth had never seen her before, she smiled as if they were old friends.

  “Hello, there!” she said in a voice as sweet as her round face. Bright blue eyes perched atop apple cheeks and white teeth glimmered between smiling red lips. Her golden hair was short and bobbed and she wore colorful clothes. She was quite plump, with red nails on her pudgy fingers. “How is your day going?”

  Lisbeth felt her brow tense in a slight frown. “I’m…good. Are you selling something?”

  “Only happiness.”

  Lisbeth nodded. “You come to tell me about Jesus, then?”

  The woman’s smile faltered. “Jesus? Oh, no, no, not that. I don’t do religion. No, I meant what I said about happiness.” The smile returned as she lifted the bag and patted it with her hand. “I got it right in here. Do you have a few minutes?”

  Lisbeth had no interest in buying anything, whatever it was, but she was tempted to invite the woman in anyway. It would be nice to have a conversation with someone, to hear a voice that wasn’t on the TV or the radio, or that wasn’t Mama’s. But Mama didn’t like having strangers in the house.

  “I, um, really don’t think so,” she said apologetically.

  “Oh, come on, I won’t take much of your time, I promise. And it’ll be fun.” The woman tipped forward and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’tcha wanna see what I got in the bag?”

  “Well, I, um…I—I—I—”

  The woman looked serious for a moment as she reached out and put her hand on Lisbeth’s shoulder. Lisbeth saw it coming, but the contact still made her jerk. She wasn’t accustomed to being touched. By anyone. “Look, honey, no offense, but I can tell you could use a little happiness.” She dropped her hand. “Besides, I’d appreciate a cold drink. It’s awfully hot out here.”

  It wouldn’t hurt to bring the poor woman in out of the miserable August heat for a little while. She stepped aside and said, “Come in.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said, entering the house. “I’m Sunny.”

  You sure are, Lisbeth thought.

  As Lisbeth led her toward the kitchen, she noticed Sunny looking around the room with an arched brow. They never had guests, so it seldom occurred to Lisbeth how odd and even creepy the decor was—all the crucifixes and pictures of a dying Jesus, especially the big one over the fireplace with all its bloody, gory details.

  “I hope I didn’t offend you when I said I don’t do religion,” Sunny said as they entered the kitchen. “Because someone here obviously does.”

  “No, you didn’t offend me. Would you like some ice tea?”

  “That would be wonderful!”

  Nodding toward the table, Lisbeth said, “Have a seat.”

  They were soon facing each other at the table over tall glasses of ice tea.

  “Mama’s pretty religious.”

  “Your mother lives with you?”

  “Well, it’s more like…I live with her. She’s old and pretty sick. I take care of her and…everything else around here.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  Lisbeth paused to listen for the sound of Mama moving around. She had a habit of quietly leaving her room, hobbling through the halls and sneaking up on Lisbeth when she least expected it. When she heard nothing, she lowered her voice and said, “What’s not wrong with her? It’s a long list. She’s old. She had me pretty late in life, and I was…unexpected.”

  “I’m sorry. Like I said, you could use some happiness, darlin’.” She winked, reached down and
opened her bag on the floor. “You don’t have a boyfriend.”

  Lisbeth sniffed, sipped her tea, then shook her head briefly.

  “And you don’t date much.”

  She stared down at her drink, not sure how to respond. She didn’t want to come off as pathetic. But it was probably too late for that. When she was a teenager, the girl who lived next door used to say that Lisbeth had a “cloud of pathetic” floating around her, like the dust that followed Pigpen everywhere in the Peanuts cartoons. The other neighbor kids always had a laugh at that.

  “I know, I know. You’ve never been on a date.” Sunny reached across the table and patted Lisbeth’s forearm comfortingly. “That’s okay, honey.”

  Lisbeth began to feel uncomfortable. These weren’t questions. She glanced at Sunny, wondering if perhaps they’d met, if they knew each other from somewhere.

  “Know what I sell? Toys. For grown-ups. Do you know what I mean?”

  Lisbeth frowned, squinted slightly and shook her head again.

  Sunny giggled and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Sex toys.”

  Lisbeth’s frown deepened as she tried to imagine what a “sex toy” would be. She knew it was something that would send Mama into a rage because it included the word “sex,” but beyond that, she was at a loss.

  Sunny said, “You know…dildos? Vibrators?”

  Lisbeth’s frown did not waver. She slowly turned her head from side to side.

  “You’re not familiar with sex toys? At all?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. And if Mama wakes up and decides to come out of her room, you’ll have to go, because if she hears us talking about sex, she’ll get really upset.”

  “Don’t worry about Mama, honey. This is none of her business. This is just for you.” She sipped her tea, then locked her hands together on the table and her thumbs fidgeted with one another. Finally, she said, “You’re 31, right?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I’m very perceptive.” Her eyes moved over Lisbeth’s face and upper body.

  It made her self-conscious. She knew what she looked like. Depending on her mood, what she saw when she looked in the mirror fell somewhere on the spectrum between plain and hideous. Since Lisbeth had been a teenager, Mama often said, “It’s good that you’re ugly. Salvation will be easier if you’re ugly. Beauty brings temptations. Pretty women are sinful women. God did you a favor when he gave you that cleft palate at birth. The scar it left behind will keep the men away. And that’s as good as keepin’ the sin away.”

  Sunny said, “Have you…well, ever had a boyfriend?”

  Lisbeth shook her head.

  “Not even in high school or college?”

  “I was home-schooled. And I didn’t go to college.”

  Sunny pressed her lips together as her eyebrows rose. “Well. I won’t bother with my usual spiel then. We’ll just get straight to the hard stuff.” She chuckled. “So to speak.” She set her drink aside and lifted the black bag onto the table. “I don’t show this to everyone. I’m very…intuitive, you might say. I know—I just know—who needs what I’m selling.” She reached into the bag and fished around. “And this…is what you need.”

  She removed from the bag a smooth, flesh-pink tube of floppy rubber that was flat at one end, rounded at the other. It was about six or seven inches long. Even though she wasn’t in the room with them, Lisbeth could hear what Mama would say:

  Get that thing out of here! That’s a phallus! That’s the root of all evil, not money or the love of it! Put it away right this second!

  “Now, I bet you can guess what this is for,” Sunny said, smiling playfully as she held the ersatz organ in her fist and flopped it back and forth.

  Lisbeth could imagine. But the very thought made her face feel hot and her chest tighten with guilt.

  “You masturbate, right?” Sunny said.

  Lisbeth averted her eyes.

  Sunny giggled. “Darlin’, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all masturbate. Even the people who say they don’t. That includes your mama, believe it or not.”

  Lisbeth already knew that. In the last year, she’d caught Mama playing with herself a few times. She blamed it on Mama’s worsening dementia. Lisbeth had been masturbating since she was a girl. Discussing it bothered her far more than actually doing it. She found it difficult to feel guilty about something that felt so good. It made no sense that God would condemn feeling that way when he’d included it in the physical design of His creations. But then, a lot of things about God didn’t make sense, so Lisbeth just didn’t think about them.

  “This is a dildo, and it’s for masturbation,” Sunny said, offering it to Lisbeth. “But—it’s unlike any other dildo ever made.”

  Frowning, she hesitantly took it in her left hand. Its surface was smooth and featureless.

  Sunny reached into her bag again, removed a small plastic bottle, unscrewed the cap and offered it to Lisbeth. “Put a few drops on the dildo, then rub it all over.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just plain old lube. Any lubricant will work.”

  Lisbeth tipped the little bottle and dribbled some of the clear, thick fluid onto the dildo, then put the bottle down.

  “Go ahead, rub it on,” Sunny said.

  Wincing slightly, Lisbeth spread the liquid over the soft surface, closed her fingers around the dildo and rubbed the length of it until it glistened. Then she gasped and jerked her hand away as if she’d been burned.

  She’d felt the shaft begin to stiffen and swell.

  Sunny grinned. “Don’t stop. Keep rubbing it.”

  As Lisbeth kept stroking it, the phallus continued to harden, thicken and even lengthen. The flesh-pink tone darkened gradually as veins rose just under the surface. She made a whimpering sound because it was—

  “Exciting,” Sunny said. “Isn’t it?”

  Lisbeth didn’t take her eyes from the dildo as she continued to stroke. Her breathing changed as her heart rate increased. She tucked her lower lip between her teeth and rubbed it with the tip of her tongue as she felt the penis throb in her hand. It actually throbbed. It had become so warm, hard, and fat. She imagined feeling that swelling and throbbing inside her…as she had imagined so many times…with such bitter frustration and need. For so many years, she’d yearned to have something inside her…to slide luxuriously…to pound her mercilessly. Not her fingers, not the handle of a hairbrush, but something hard and fat wrapped in flesh. A man.

  This wasn’t a man. But it was flesh. It was impossible, of course, but that was what she felt as she slid her hand up and down. It was longer now, harder, and it was, however impossible, flesh.

  “Like I said,” Sunny whispered, “it’s not like other dildos. I call it the Happiness Toy. Because that’s what it brings. You can’t buy it anywhere else. Only from me. Honey, that thing will give you the best orgasm of your life, but it does so much more.”

  Lisbeth barely heard her over the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears as a moist burning grew between her legs.

  “When you use it…it changes you, Lisbeth.”

  “How?”

  “In wonderful ways.” She chuckled. “It would be useless to try to explain it. You wouldn’t believe me. You’d just have to…experience it. For yourself.”

  She imagined how it would feel…in there…moving in and out, as it grew hotter and harder…

  “Lisbeth! Liiisbeth!” Mama’s shrill voice cut through all of it like a gnarled talon. Even though she was in her bedroom at the other end of the house, it felt to Lisbeth as if she were screaming in her ear.

  She dropped the dildo onto the table and her chair scraped over the tile floor as her legs stiffened reflexively, pushing it back. Her breasts rose and fell as she panted. She looked at the clock on the wall. It was time for Mama’s afternoon pills. If she didn’t take a glass of apple juice in there right away, Mama would be hobbling through the house in no time.

  “Do you want to see what she wants?” Sunny said. “
Then we can—”

  “No, you’ll have to go. But…but…”

  “Yes?”

  “How much is it?” Lisbeth whispered.

  “Well, if you’re going to buy it, we need to discuss what it’ll do when you—”

  “Lisbeth! Time for my pills!”

  Lisbeth’s voice was tremulous with fear as she said, “No, I don’t have time. I’ve got some money hidden away. Tell me how much. Then you have to go.”

  * * *

  She handed Mama the glass of apple juice and waited as she took her pills.

  It was hard to believe the powerful voice that carried through the entire house came from such a scrawny, bent old woman. Her arms and legs were knobby sticks, her torso a narrow, ribbed tube, and her wrinkled, sagging skin covered only bones, with no sign of any muscle tissue. As she watched Mama go through the painstaking process of swallowing each one of her pills with apple juice, Lisbeth wondered how they got down that skinny neck without becoming hopelessly lodged.

  Mama sat up with her back against a pile of pillows. A nasal cannula rested above her upper lip and the large, thick glasses on her nose made her eyes look huge and distorted. Her toothless mouth was a withered hole in her face. Wiry hair the color of old bones spiked in all directions on her head. She had her large-print bible on her lap, which she read occasionally. Usually, though, she preferred to have Lisbeth read it aloud to her, interrupting her now and then to say, “Amen!” or, “Yes, Father!” or to tell Lisbeth what a wretched sinner she was.

  “Have you had a man in the house?” Mama said after taking her last pill. She always spoke at a level near a shout, her voice scratchy and harsh, and now, as usual, her entire face was pulled toward the center in a deep, bitter frown of suspicion and disapproval.

  “Of course not.”

  “I heard the doorbell.”

  She couldn’t hear half of what Lisbeth said while standing directly in front of her, but she could hear the doorbell while closed up in her bedroom in the back of the house.