by Barry Napier
“I’ll let you know when I do,” she said. “That’s the trouble when people fly on private jets—no keeping them to a schedule. Now, I expect that Bill will be in by lunchtime. I personally won’t be back until later this afternoon. But until then, while you’re waiting on Bill, I’d certainly appreciate it if you could run an inventory check of the supply closets. There’s also a flickering light on the third-floor hallway that needs to be replaced. Other than that, it should be an easy morning.”
Before Matt could ask her any further questions, Missy was already walking towards the elevators. “Also,” she added, “don’t bother taking Iris down to the garden this morning. I don’t want to risk any further episodes. Just to be safe, I’ve asked for another orderly to do it today.”
Matt nodded, thinking, Me neither as he joined her at the elevators. They stepped on together and rode it down to the first floor. There, Matt started his inventory list and tried to put all the new pieces of information Missy had just given him into the equation of his dreams and yesterday’s odd events.
The morning passed too slowly as far as Matt was concerned. After coming up with a list of supplies that the home was running low on, he fixed the light Missy had mentioned. He then wandered the halls for a while, having short conversations with some of the nurses and other staff members. He did his best to discover more information about Missy and Ophelia, but there wasn’t much to be learned.
At least not that anyone was sharing. But there was definitely a lot he didn’t understand. Starting with the math. There were four rooms on the fourth floor, and when Ophelia checked in this afternoon, they would all be occupied. Missy, Iris, Gloria, and Ophelia. They were the girls in his dream—he was sure of it.
But in his dream there had been five girls.
Who was the fifth girl? What had happened to her? Why didn’t she have a room on the fourth floor?
He traveled down to the first-floor lobby and saw a day nurse rolling Iris Spencer into the garden. The nurse parked Iris’ wheelchair in the exact same location as the day before. After saying something softly to Iris, the nurse left her and headed down the hall.
Matt stood on the other side of the window, keeping a safe distance. While he certainly wanted to try to speak with Iris, he didn’t want a replay of yesterday. Not the scream… and not what happened in its aftermath.
But he needed to know.
He supposed it was a good sign that she was out and about, since Missy had told him that she, Iris, had been wiped out after yesterday’s commotion. Slowly, Matt walked over to her, closing the distance with great care.
When Matt got close enough to Iris to reach out and touch the grips on her wheelchair if he so desired, he heard her speaking. She was muttering quietly to herself, and when he heard the words, he froze where he was.
“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. The worms they crawl all about…”
She was skipping lines, patching the song together in her gravel-like whisper. Matt had seen much in his time of chasing after Mr. Dark and the evil he represented, and he didn’t scare easy. But in that moment, Matt thought he might scream.
He took two steps away from Iris and nearly did shout when he walked directly into someone. He wheeled around and saw Bill. He was holding a sandwich in one hand as he gave Matt a curious look.
“You okay?” Bill asked.
Matt nodded, although he was certain he looked distressed.
“You know,” Bill said, “I’d think that after what happened with Iris yesterday, it might be a good idea for you to keep your distance.”
“I’m beginning to think so, too,” Matt said. “Missy said you had a friend that was sent to the hospital. Is he okay?”
“We don’t know yet,” Bill said. “Lost a lot of blood.”
“Was it an accident?” Matt thought of that poor girl pinned to the lamppost by the Audi.
“He was with some good friends last night, playing poker like they do every Wednesday night,” Bill said. “Al was on a streak. By which I mean he’d won a few hands for a total of maybe eight bucks. It’s his turn to deal, and for the first time in his life he draws a straight flush. Plays it cool, gets the others to bet big. Two guys drop out, and it’s just Al and Sid Nevins. Sid thinks he’s got a pretty sweet hand—aces over eights—so he goes all in. Raises five dollars. Al calls it, then throws his hand down and starts doing a happy dance. Because this is probably the biggest pot anyone’s ever won in this game—all the way into double digits.”
Matt could see the rest of it playing out in his head. “Sid wasn’t happy…”
“Called Al a dirty cheater. And before anyone could try to calm him down, he smashed a beer bottle against the fireplace and attacked Al with it. Tore open his face, slashed his neck. If the other guys hadn’t pulled him off, he would have cut Al’s throat open. All over the price of a six-pack.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry,” Matt said. “I hope he pulls through. Sid ever do anything like this before?”
“Sid’s the nicest guy I ever met,” Bill said. “As far as I know, that was the first violent thing he’d ever done. The second was this morning when he hanged himself in his jail cell.”
“Jesus,” Matt said. “Is there anything I can do?”
“If you’re going to stick around Steeple, get used to it. There’s something about this damned town. Sometimes… I don’t know. Sometimes it can just get so mean.”
Matt recalled the faces of the mob that had come after him yesterday after he had come to the rescue of the driver. Yes, he thought he knew exactly what Bill meant.
Bill headed down the hall, and Matt headed to the elevators to revisit the fourth floor. When he was there, he mopped the floor and wiped down the surfaces in the bar/kitchen area. He spent about an hour cleaning the place, and when he was done, he still felt that the room was somehow a bit too stuffy, despite its large size.
He went to the large picture window and drew the red curtains open to let some sunshine in. When the curtains parted, brilliant sunlight filled the room. He looked out the window and was amazed at how the afternoon sunlight seemed perfect, making everything on the other side of the glass look like something out of a cheerful painting. Even the fall-stripped trees that bordered the home’s rear lawn looked extravagant.
Beyond the back lawn of the home and the slim stretch of forest that separated it from the rest of Steeple, things rolled out almost like a sappy picture from a calendar—this would have been the month of September or October. From four floors up, he couldn’t see any sort of expansive view, but he saw enough of the town’s layout to get the gist. Just beyond the strip of forest, a field began to rise and then level out. It meandered along to the west, out of view from Matt’s position at the window.
Yet sitting almost directly in front of him, within that field and far into the distance, he saw a thin dirt road that snaked its way through the green of it all. His eyes wandered farther and a sharp icicle of fear pierced his guts.
There, sitting just past that dirt track, was the white house he had seen in his dream.
11
It was shortly after two o’clock when Matt rushed through the first-floor hallway into the kitchen and found Bill. Or at least his legs. The rest of him was hidden under a massive refrigeration unit.
“Fourth floor is all clean,” he said.
“Great,” Bill replied, his voice almost drowned out by the clanking of metal as he worked on the machinery.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Matt said, “but I opened up the curtains. I thought the place needed some light.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Bill said, clearly more worried about the refrigerator’s guts than Matt’s news.
“So what’s the deal with that house you can see out the window?” Matt said. “It looks like they built the window to look right onto it.”
“That’s the Varner House,” Bill replied. “I don’t know what’s up with it. Some weird thing about Mrs. Crowder’s childhood, I think.”
>
“Oh. Well, hey, I didn’t think to pack a lunch,” Matt said. “You mind if I head out and grab something?”
“That’s fine,” Bill said.
“Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll be back soon.”
On his way out of the home, Matt cast Iris Spencer one last look as she sat on the veranda overlooking the garden. Even through the window of the common room, Matt couldn’t help but shudder. A chill rocketed down his spine when he realized that she was staring directly at him with an empty glare.
Matt’s first reaction when he reached the street was to go back to the hotel, grab his ax, and head for the house he had seen in his dream. But he had learned during the course of his time chasing Mr. Dark that going into the unknown unprepared could often end badly. It was best to be equipped with as much information as possible. That line of thought steered Matt towards Steeple’s library.
The Steeple Public Library was a small but charming building tucked away on one of the less populated blocks of Main Street. When Matt entered just after two thirty, it was basically deserted. A mother sat with her child in the toddler area, reading Oh, the Places You’ll Go. Three people sat at the small row of computers along the far wall while several others wandered the stacks in search of something to read.
Matt approached the desk and waited for the librarian to look up from her magazine. She eyed him, clearly annoyed, and made a show of slamming the cover shut, which might have had the desired effect if it had been a thousand-page hardcover instead of a thin gossip rag.
“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”
“Yes. Do you have any microfilm, preferably on local news and events?”
The librarian rolled her eyes. She looked to be in her late twenties and apparently did not care much for inquisitive people. “Micro what?” she said. “Is that like those little short movies on YouTube?”
Matt sighed, feeling old enough to move into his current place of employment.
“I’m looking for old local newspapers,” he said. “Going back fifty or a hundred years.”
“Well, they’re not on any movie,” she said. “We have a digital archive. On the comp. Pute. Ter.”
That last was delivered as if she was speaking into Matt’s ear trumpet. She reached to her left, pulled something from a stuffed paper tray, and handed it to him. “Directions are on there. User name and password are both SteepleVA.”
“Thanks.”
“M-hmm,” she said, rudely turning her attention back to her magazine.
Matt walked to the small row of computers that sat on individual desks along the far wall of the library. There were eight in all, clunky old machines with CRT monitors covered with dust and grease. For all the girl’s condescension, they were barely steps more advanced than a microfilm reader. Matt took the one closest to him and logged in to the database. He realized that there were numerous places to begin, so he started in the most obvious place. He typed in “Varner House, Varner Property” and was amazed at the results that popped up.
There weren’t any recent articles about the Varner House. The newest one he could find was from 1998. The article told the story of a group of teens who had visited the Varner House on Halloween night. They had gone there to get high and been busted by the cops. The article offhandedly mentioned that the Varner House was popular among the younger crowds in Steeple due to its history.
Curious about this so-called history, Matt continued searching. As he did, he became increasingly aware of a man sitting directly to his right. He was furiously hitting a single key on his keyboard and clicking his mouse rapidly. He grunted and even let out a loud curse as Matt eyed him. Matt saw that he was playing a first-person-shooter game on the computer and doing well, if his mood was any indication. When he let out another loud expletive, Matt glanced back over to the toddler area. The mother and her child were still there. The mother had heard the cursing and was moving to the farthest corner of the toddler nook.
Matt went back to his research and scanned several short articles. All the way back to the early 1950s, the articles were the same. Teens and punks in their early twenties used the Varner House for lewd behavior. They were often caught drinking, doing drugs, and, as was the case in the summer of 1966, conducting orgies. It was in the article from ’66 that Matt finally found more information about the Varner House. He also gleaned bits and pieces from other articles here and there.
According to the articles, the Varner House had been owned by a wealthy plantation owner in the late 1800s. After they moved off to Georgia in the 1890s, it was passed through the hands of a few assorted families. It was eventually sold to a wealthy banker shortly after the turn of the century. One night in 1919, the banker’s girlfriend found him hanging from the attic rafters. While the death had been ruled a suicide, there had been no note. A few weeks later, the girlfriend killed herself in her Manhattan apartment, taking a razor to her wrists in the bathtub.
Matt skipped around the article archive with growing restlessness. Several articles farther down, a headline caught his attention right away: “Local Girl Found Murdered in Varner House. Manhunt for Killer.”
Matt read two words of the article before the disgruntled man next to him actually reached out and punched the side of the monitor. He threw his mouse angrily on the table and uttered another loud curse. The librarian on the other side of the room seemed not to care. Matt cast the man a wary look and said, “Shhh.”
The angry man gave Matt a surprised look and then shook his head, returning to his game. Matt kept his eye on him a bit longer before returning to the article.
As he read, Matt could feel each bit of information falling into place. Almost seventy years ago, thirteen-year-old Tara Idleson had climbed out her bedroom window and disappeared. A few days later, some kids who snuck into the empty Varner House to party found her mangled body at the foot of the stairs. It had been torn apart by wild animals. Even so, the coroner was able to determine that her neck had been slit.
At first no one had any idea what had happened. And then four of her school friends came forward with a story. Tara had told them she’d met a man down by the railroad tracks. He was heading out to California to make it in Hollywood, and he’d invited her to come along. Her friends had urged her to forget about him, and they’d thought she had. But she must have sneaked out to meet him, and he killed her.
Successive papers told the rest of the story: how a massive manhunt had snared a drifter living in a hobo camp, how Tara’s friends confirmed he fit the description Tara had given of him, how he was killed by police while resisting arrest. And how the four young girls could feel peace now that the man who had killed their friend was dead.
Four girls: Missy Crowder, Ophelia Ransom, Gloria Clark, and Iris Spencer.
The four surviving girls had grown up and left town, each one amassing wealth and power. But now they had come back to Steeple. Back to the town where their childhood friend had been so horribly murdered.
Before Matt had time to come to any conclusions, the monitor in front of him flickered. Seconds later, the overhead lights did the same. After a few brief flickers, the lights went out and the library lost power.
Beside Matt, the man who had been playing the violent computer game stood up and shouted a string of obscenities at the top of his lungs. He simply snapped, screaming curse words at the top of his lungs and pounding on the computer.
“Sir,” came a woman’s voice from behind them. It was the mother in the toddler area. “Please try to watch your language. My son is here and—”
The angry man wheeled around and pointed at her. “Fuck you and your dumb son! Why don’t you mind your own business, you stupid bitch?”
He took a large step in the direction of the toddler area. The woman’s son started to whimper. It wasn’t until Matt stood up that he caught a clear view of the man. When Matt had eyed him moments ago, he’d seemed fine. But now he was drastically different as he marched across the library, still screaming obscenities.
His face was eaten alive with rot.
12
The entire right side of the man’s face looked like nothing more than a large blister. His right eye drooped down like melted candy along his cheek. Matt was almost glad to see the rot on the man’s face. At least this was an evil he was accustomed to.
Working on instinct and adrenaline, Matt reached out and grabbed the man by the shoulder. The man whipped around with ridiculous speed. He struck Matt in the face, knocking him back into the computer workstation. That was fine with Matt. At least he had distracted the maniac from the mother and her son.
The man reached out for Matt with a hand that was rotting away to bone. Before he could grab Matt’s throat, Matt delivered a devastating kick to his knee. The man’s whole leg buckled and Matt heard something pop. Undaunted, the man grabbed the computer monitor off the desk and lifted it over his head as if it were as light as a pillow.
Matt leapt out of the way as the monitor came crashing down. His hands ached for his ax as he stood toe to toe with the man, who had apparently been touched by Mr. Dark within the last few minutes—probably when the lights had flickered.
The rotting man came at him with a clumsy left-handed punch. Matt dodged it easily and threw his own punch. His right hand connected with the man’s rotting face. It felt like punching a cracker that had been coated in jam.
Matt knew enough about those affected with the rot to know that he’d have to kill this man. It was the only way he’d stop. The evil that was driving him knew no limits and would push the human body to its last breath.
The man came rushing at Matt, unfazed by the punch. He barreled into Matt like a linebacker, and they went stumbling backward into the nearest bookcase. There was a groaning noise as the case budged and tilted back the slightest bit. Matt held his hands together in a club, raised them over his head, and then brought them down hard on the man’s back. The man buckled only slightly before reaching up to Matt’s throat.