George kicked Ivan’s feet out from under him. The werewolf fell. George got down with him. Ivan’s eyes were wide with fright as the tiny silver cross continued to do its damage.
Ivan’s entire body began to shift from wolf to human and back again, a wave of transformation that ran back and forth from head to toe.
George punched him in the face, then grabbed him by the hair and pulled him to a sitting position. He didn’t want the cross to burn out through the back of his neck.
Had to get the heart.
Ivan wailed and swiped at George, but they were weak efforts. Another spot of blood appeared on Ivan’s chest, so George tilted him, hoping that he was aiming the cross properly.
Ivan’s face became human. He tried to say something but couldn’t speak. Probably trying to get in one last smart-ass comment.
Too bad for him.
With a sudden burst of strength, Ivan leaned his head forward and bit at George’s arm. His human teeth scraped harmlessly across George’s flesh.
Then Ivan gasped, loudly.
His eyes rolled to the back of his head.
Blood poured from his mouth as all strength vanished from his body.
George let him drop.
Ivan, his body half-human, half-wolfman, lay motionless on the bowling lane.
Dead.
Finally.
George tore off his shirt as he hurried over and pulled Lou to his feet. He quickly wrapped the shirt around Lou’s bleeding stump, as tightly as he could.
“It’s going to be fine,” said George. “I promise.”
Lou looked like a zombie, but he hadn’t completely checked out quite yet. “Is he dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, good.”
“Just come with me,” George said. “If we can beat the cops, everything will be fine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Wrap-Up
“The werewolf is dead,” said Bateman. The phone felt like a live grenade in his hand.
“I know. I saw.” Mr. Dewey’s tone was hard to figure out. Bateman assumed that it was “tightly controlled rage.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Bateman insisted. “The guys we hired had an excellent reputation. It was just a simple transport job. He was in a durable cage. Nothing should have gone wrong.”
“And yet we’re left with a dead werewolf.”
“I’m sorry. We did our best.”
“I have a huge amount of resources at my disposal, Mr. Bateman. Resources that are no longer of any use to me. Therefore, I’m going to devote these resources to making the rest of your life extraordinarily unpleasant.”
Bateman’s throat went dry. “Are you threatening me?”
“Yes, I most certainly am. You have just made yourself the worst, and last, enemy of your life.”
“Hey, you can’t blame me! You want revenge, blame the guys who lost him! You can’t come after me for this! I never had to offer him to you in the first place!”
“But you did, and you gave me false hope. I believe that responsibility always starts at the top. I have no interest in the lowlife thugs you hired to do your dirty work. This is all on you.”
“Let’s talk about this.”
“We are talking. It’s over for you, Mr. Bateman. Goodbye.”
Mr. Dewey hung up. “Hey!” Bateman shouted into the phone. “Hey! You can’t do this!”
He tossed the phone against the wall, shattering it. Oh, God, he was so very screwed. He threw up onto his new carpet, then ran out of his office.
“Dad, what’s wrong?” Bryan asked. The dumb-ass was playing video games, right there in the living room where Bateman could see, even though he’d been strictly forbidden to do so.
“Pack your things!”
“Why?”
“Because I said so, you stupid fuck!”
“But I’ve got a date with Mindy tonight!”
Bateman ran across the living room and kicked the widescreen TV as hard as he could, putting a huge hole in the center of the screen. The satisfaction he felt was minimal, but Bryan did get up and hurry off to his room.
Bateman threw up again, then ran off to pack.
* * *
Jonathan Dewey sat silently in his chair.
Helena put her hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay, honey. We’ll find another way. It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.”
He pulled away from her hand. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I just meant--”
“Werewolves do not die of brain tumors, Helena! I had a chance, and now it’s ruined!”
“But--”
“Shut up. Get out of here and leave me alone. I have to send some people off to bring me Bateman’s head.”
* * *
“We got ripped off, bad,” said George.
“Well, I’m sorry we weren’t given the opportunity to seek medical care that would have been covered by my insurance.” Lou poked at the heavy bandage over his stump.
“We needed that money.”
“Yeah, well, excuse me for getting my hand bit off by a werewolf. If I’d known that it would cause problems with our financial situation, I never would have let him do that. I thought you were going to donate everything to charity anyway. Become a better person.”
“I never said I was going to donate everything to charity. But I am going to become a better person. Deal with it.”
It had been a rough two days. George had thought that Lou was indeed going to bleed to death as they sped away from the bowling alley. He pulled behind the next building, made a tourniquet out of a crossbow bolt and a rag he found in the van, and got the bleeding under control.
The process of cauterization had been ugly.
After a few panicked calls, they found a doctor of ill-repute who was willing to patch up their wounds and hide them away for a couple of days, in exchange for almost all of the cash in the briefcase.
“You couldn’t have got us a car with more legroom?” Lou asked, shifting uncomfortably. “I can’t make it all the way to Canada in this.”
“Then we’ll go to Mexico.”
“Seriously, George. We need to steal something else.”
“Yeah, let’s steal a big roomy clown car with flashing lights that makes wacky sound effects. We certainly wouldn’t want to be in a non-descript automobile when cops, bad guys, and the general public are all looking for us.”
“I didn’t say it had to be a clown car. Just something roomier.”
“At least your arm takes up less room now.”
Lou frowned at him. “Are you really going to make jokes about my hand? Seriously?”
“I’m just trying to make you laugh so you don’t cry.”
“I’m not gonna cry.”
“Good.”
“Do you think I’m a werewolf now?”
“Are you bringing that up again?
“Is it really such a terrible thing if I want reassurance? I got bit. I got bit really, really bad.” He held up his bandaged stump. “See?”
“You saw how quickly it affected Michele. It’s been two days. Maybe it’s a special kind of bite. An injection or something.”
“I hope so.”
“I told you, I’m going to watch over you. You start to feel wolfy, we’ll put you in the trunk. Everything’s going to be fine. I didn’t get my throat torn out by Ivan, so I’m sure as hell not going to get it torn out by you.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m feeling optimistic.”
“So am I.”
Lou turned on the radio. Some hip-hop music blared over the speakers. “Do you like this song?”
“It’s crap.”
“Good. I think we’ll listen to it.” Lou began to move his head back and forth to the beat. “Groove with me, George.”
“You look like an idiot.”
“I’m an idiot with rhythm. C’mon, groove with me.”
George watched him for a moment, then smiled. He cranked up the volume and the two thugs grooved
off into the sunset.
THE END
About Jeff Strand:
Jeff Strand is the four-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of such insane novels as PRESSURE, DWELLER, BENJAMIN’S PARASITE, A BAD DAY FOR VOODOO, and GRAVEROBBERS WANTED (NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY). He is grateful for yet another opportunity to piggyback off of more successful authors. He lives in Tampa, Florida, and complains about cold weather in the 60’s. You can visit his Gleefully Macabre website at www.jeffstrand.com
Other Books by Jeff Strand
A Bad Day For Voodoo
Stalking you Now
I Have A Bad Feeling About This
Dead Clown Barbecue
Faint of Heart
Fangboy
The Sinister Mr. Corpse
Dweller
Benjamin’s Parasite
Pressure
Kutter
Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary)
Single White Psychopath Seeks Same
Casket For Sale (Only Used Once)
Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to “Shirley”)
Gleefully Macabre Tales
The Severed Nose
Disposal
Mandibles
Elrod McBugle on the Loose
Out of Whack
How to Rescue a Dead Princess
The Haunted Forest Tour (with Jim Moore)
Draculas (with JA Konrath, Blake Crouch, and F. Paul Wilson)
Suckers (with JA Konrath)
EERIE
a thriller
by BLAKE CROUCH
& JORDAN CROUCH
EERIE copyright © 2012 by Blake Crouch & Jordan Crouch
EERIE is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Blake Crouch and Jordan Crouch.
From newcomer Jordan Crouch and Blake Crouch, author of the runaway bestseller Run, comes Eerie, a chilling, gothic thriller in the classic tradition of The Shining and The Sixth Sense.
TRAPPED INSIDE A HOUSE
On a crisp autumn evening in 1980, seven-year-old Grant Moreton and his five-year-old sister Paige were nearly killed in a mysterious accident in the Cascade Mountains that left them orphans.
WITH A FRIGHTENING POWER
It’s been thirty years since that night. Grant is now a detective with the Seattle Police Department and long estranged from his sister. But his investigation into the bloody past of a high-class prostitute has led right to Paige’s door, and what awaits inside is beyond his wildest imagining.
OVER ANYONE WHO ENTERS
His only hope of survival and saving his sister will be to confront the terror that inhabits its walls, but he is completely unprepared to face the truth of what haunts his sister’s brownstone.
You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.—C.S. Lewis
OCTOBER 1980
“How much longer, Daddy?” Grant Moreton asks from the backseat of the ‘74 Impala. The boy catches a glimpse of his father’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They aren’t angry or even stern. Just tired and sad—the way they’ve looked for the past year.
“We’re five minutes closer than the last time you asked. Do you remember how long I said it would be then?”
“Twenty minutes?”
“That’s right. So what’s twenty minus five?”
Grant glances over at the girl with braided pigtails sitting beside him. He is two years older than Paige, but his five-almost-six-year-old sister already understands math in a way he never will.
“What is it?” he whispers. “What’s the answer?”
“No cheating,” their father says. “Your sister helps out too much with your homework as it is.”
Grant stares through the window as he tries to calculate the answer. There are mountains out there, but nothing to see at this time of night beyond the occasional glint of light from a distant house or a passing car.
On the radio: game six of the World Series. The Phillies are on the brink of beating the Kansas City Royals and the roar of the crowd comes like white noise through the speakers.
Grant feels a thump on the side of his leg. He looks over. Paige leans in, whispers, “It’s fifteen.”
He glances at the rearview to make sure their father hasn’t noticed this treason.
“Fifteen,” he says.
“You sure about that?”
Grant shoots her a sidelong look.
She responds with an almost imperceptible nod.
“I’m sure.”
“That’s right. Nice job, Paige.”
Grant flushes with embarrassment, but in the mirror, his father’s eyes are gentle.
“No worries, kiddo. That’s what sisters are for.”
Jim Moreton rolls down his window and flicks his cigarette outside. Grant glances back, watches it hit the pavement in a spray of sparks.
A sharp chilled blast of Douglas-fir fills the car.
They ride on in silence listening to the game.
Through the windshield, the road ahead of them winds, steadily climbing, the double yellow emerging out of nothing into the burn of the headlights.
The boy rests his head against the window. He shuts his eyes and retrieves the square of fabric from his pocket. Brings it to his nose. Breathes in the smell of his mother’s nightgown. If he closes his eyes, he can almost pull the scene together, the way it should be—her in the passenger seat, his father’s arm stretched across the back of her headrest. Grant is having a harder time picturing her face lately without help from a photograph, but the timbre of her voice retains sharper and truer than ever. If she were in the car right now, she’d be talking over the game. Playfully arguing with Jim about the volume of the radio, how fast he was driving, the graceless way he slingshots the car through each hairpin turn. Grant opens his eyes, and even though he knows she won’t be there, the shock of the empty seat still registers.
Just fifteen minutes until we’re there.
More than a year has passed since their last visit to the cabin, and so much changed it’s like the memory belongs to someone else. They had driven up into the Cascades in the middle of summer. Their family place backed up to a small pond that stayed cold even through July. They’d stayed a month there. Days fishing and swimming. Hide-and-seek in the groves of hemlock that surrounded the property. The cold nights spent reading and playing games by the fireplace. It had been his and Paige’s job every afternoon to gather sticks and fir cones to use as kindling.
Everything about that summer is so clear in his mind. Everything except for the little boy, because he had a mother and Grant doesn’t and it hurts to remember.
“All right, here we go,” Jim Moreton says, turning up the volume on the radio, the crowd-roar swelling. “Bases loaded. Come on, Phillies. Willie’s got nothin’.”
Grant has no idea who his father is talking about, just knows that he’s done little else but watch baseball this last, awful year.
“My ears hurt, Dad,” he says.
“Mine too,” Paige echoes.
Grant’s father opens the center console and fishes through its contents until he finds an old pack of spearmint gum.
“Chew this. It’ll help.”
He passes two sticks back to the children.
A moment later, he forces a yawn and unwraps one for himself.
“Pay attention, guys,” he says through a mouthful of fresh gum. “You’ll remember this game one day.”
As a man, Grant will know everything there is to know about this game. It will assume an epic aura, in particular these final moments, this last at bat—Tug McGraw throwing to Willie Wilson, Phillies up three, but the bases loaded—Kansas City one swing away from total defeat or the comeback of the centu
ry.
Years later, Grant will watch the last strike on a videotape. See Willie Wilson swing and miss, thinking how strange it is to know what was happening to that ‘74 Impala, to his father, his sister, himself, on a remote highway in Washington State at the exact moment Tug threw his arms into the air and danced off the pitcher’s mound, a World Series champion.
Riding in the backseat of the car as the world waits for the final pitch, Grant sees the headlights fire to life a sign on the side of the highway.
Stevens Pass
ELEVATION 4061
But the pitch never comes.
There is no end to the game.
Grant is trying to slide the patch of his mother’s nightgown back into his pocket when Paige screams. He looks up, a wall of blinding light pouring through the windshield. As the tires begin to screech, he’s thrown violently against his sister who crashes into the door. The last thing he sees is the guardrail racing toward them, glowing brighter and brighter as the headlights close in.
The violence of the bumper punching through is cataclysmic, and then the noise drops away.
No sound but the revving engine.
Tires spinning like mad and nothing underneath them.
Grant’s stomach lifts with the same weightless ache he experienced the time he rode a roller coaster.
The radio is still on, the airwaves now riddled with static.
The play-by-play announcer, whose name Grant will one day learn is Joe Garagiola, says, “The crowd will tell you what happens.”
Paige says, “Daddy?”
Their father says, “Oh shit.”
# # #
Grant opens his eyes.
The engine is hissing and the tires still barely spinning—above him.
The Impala is inverted. The radio gone silent. One headlight is busted; the other blazes intermittently. Through the fractured windshield, he sees the beam shining into an upside-down forest where mist lingers between the tall, straight trunks.
Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set Page 79