If I survived what was about to happen, though I didn’t see how I could, I wanted to ask Roger a lot more questions. Like: could he walk through some of the guys I saw at school? Even though I was years older than most of them, thanks to the unintended detour in life I’d taken courtesy of doctors, drugs, and bad advice, I suspected some of them might like me. I never knew how to approach them, though. The risk of rejection was pretty high with live people. Dead people didn’t have as many options. Most of the dead people I’d dealt with liked me. I thought.
The stalker guy’s hand was tight around my upper arm now, and getting tighter. It hurt. “Hey,” I said. “Throttle down.”
“What do you know about killing, or Hazel?”
“Only what the ghosts tell me.”
“You are really weird.”
“Gee. News flash.”
He shook me.
I shoved my right hand into my pocket and pulled out my car keys, fisted them with some of them sticking out between my fingers, the way we’d been taught in self-defense class, though doing it one-handed was a lot harder, and raked his face with the keys. He yelped, let go of me, and staggered backward.
I ran for my car, trailed by Roger, Minnie, and Hazel. I couldn’t get the key in the lock, though; I was shaking too hard. “Hurry up! Hurry up!” Roger said. “Damn it, Julia!”
“That’s helping,” I muttered, finally shaking loose the right key and getting it into the keyhole.
Heavy breathing and even heavier steps came up behind me, and then stalker guy crushed me against my car. “You bitch.”
“Oh, that’s original,” I whispered. The keys, caught in the car lock, were digging into my hip. Stalker guy smelled like bad aftershave and sweat. He was bulky under his coat.
“Leave her alone!” Hazel yelled. She flashed and fluoresced and flickered into another state, standing on my car. She looked about nine, with tight braids and freckles and a ragged pink dress with blood streaks on the front. “Get away from her!”
The weight left my back. “What!” said stalker guy.
I grabbed my keys, turned the one in the lock, jerked them loose, opened the door, and dived into the car. I slammed the door and locked it. Then I sat trying to get my breath.
Minnie materialized in the passenger seat, and Roger walked through the front of the car and dropped down into me.
“Come on,” he said, or I said, without meaning to. He jerked my hand up and shoved the key into the ignition, pumped the gas pedal, started the car, put it in reverse, and we drove out of there while I was still adjusting to the roils in my stomach of having another ghost inside me. I was doing an automatic sort on Roger: pulling out what was keeping him here, figuring out how to solve it, sucking his sins free of his ghost self and into me so I could process and release them.
What was keeping Roger here:
Love.
He loved me.
He knew we didn’t have a future, but he couldn’t get himself to let go.
“Julia!” screamed Minnie. I looked ahead of us and realized I was driving thirty-five miles an hour straight toward a tree. I swerved, got the car back on the road, headed for town, tears streaming down my face.
By the time I reached the police station, Roger was gone.
BUCK, GLORY RAE, & THE THREE LITTLE PIGS, by John Gregory Betancourt
The day they move in, I give them till dinnertime before paying my traditional welcome-to-the-house social call. I should be jaded, inured, the way people flow through these doors; but each new arrival strikes me as keenly as a church bell pealing on a still summer morning.
Glory Rae answers my knock. She has her hair up in a red handkerchief and over her shoulder I can see the wreckage of the living room, buried waist-deep in boxes.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
I hold out a foil-covered dish. “I just wanted to welcome you here, Mrs. Osterman.”
She accepts my present, looking puzzled. “Do I know you?”
“I live next door,” I say. “I hope you don’t mind, but I called the realtor and asked your name when I saw the SOLD sign. I’m really glad you got this place—it needs children. A pity about the Johnsons having to leave so suddenly.”
“I heard Mrs. Johnson had a nervous breakdown?”
“Something like that, yes. She claimed this house was haunted and went all to pieces over it.”
Glory Rae laughs. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I can’t really say, myself. I must know plenty of people who’ve seen strange things…”
“My uncle used to drink, and he’d see the little people.”
I smile. “I wouldn’t know about that. But poor Ruth, it really shook her, thinking this place was haunted. It’s always sad when it happens to someone so young.” I nod for emphasis. “But I didn’t come to mourn the loss of one set of neighbors, I came to celebrate the coming of a new one. A very pretty one, if I may be so bold.”
She smiles back, raises a corner of the foil, and takes an appreciative sniff. “Tuna casserole?” she asks.
“I hope you like it.”
“It’s very kind of you,” she says, backing up a step. “Won’t you come in?”
“I know how busy you must be…” That’s the way you play the game, give them a chance to escape.
“No, really, I could use a break.”
“If you’re sure it’s not an imposition?”
“Of course not, Mr.—?”
“Call me Buck.” I smile. And reel her in.
* * * *
Glory Rae’s husband is dead, it turns out; she doesn’t offer details and I don’t pry. I can find out anytime I want, anyway: her kind is always so easy to read. She works as a receptionist in a factory to keep her children fed and clothed, and dreams of going to Beauty School. I have a sort of knack with people, and she opens up at once, thoughts and words spilling over each other so fast I have trouble keeping up. And as we talk, she oozes that special type of charm women have when they’re looking for a husband. Not that an old geezer like me—age 666, thank you, and mostly retired these days—would be fair game. But I can tell she’s hunting.
My first glimpse of Glory Rae’s children comes when they tumble down the stairs in a laughing, giggling heap. They seem all light and sunshine; like their mother, they have startlingly blond hair, but cropped short and with tails in back. She’s dressed them alike in bib overalls, and from the moment I see them all I can think of is the Three Little Pigs.
I have no sympathy or patience, but feign it well enough. Children have always disturbed me. They see with a clearness their parents never know.
Back, back through the years I can still see them: bunched like rats around my coal-cellar door in their knickers and high-button shoes and little red caps, a midnight gathering, each dared by another to come, all giggling and telling horror stories of the old man inside. “He worships Satan,” they whispered then. “He eats human flesh, and he poisons all the dogs and cats he catches in his yard.”
True, true, but how did they know?
Glory Rae introduces her brood one by one. I nod politely to each, Joey (age 3), Ricky (age 6) and Patrick-not-Pat (age 8).
“You can call me Buck,” I say, and smile.
Joey hides behind his mother and peeps out, wide eyed. Patrick and Joey mumble a hello. They are all clearly uneasy at my presence. Perhaps they sense something about me which their all-too-sane-and-rational mother cannot.
Run, little pigs, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blo-o-w your lives down. I grin at each and ruffle their hair. They dance back out of reach.
* * * *
The casserole leads to my staying for dinner, exactly as I’d planned, and as we sit around the kitchen table (again lost in a sea of boxes), I feel the age-old call to the hunt. Glory Rae has a strength, a vitality, that makes my mouth water and my hands shake. I long to taste it, to tear it from her. With no husband around, it will be easy, not the slow seduction I needed for Ruth Johnso
n.
Slowly I let my facade of age slip away: the gray recedes, the hairline inches forward, the teeth grow straighter, ever so slightly whiter. Am I 65—or 50? 50—or 40? I can see the doubt begin to creep into her eyes; she reappraises me. Perhaps he might make a good husband after all.
Yes, yes, this is what you want. I can feel it. But you must ask me, I cannot take what you do not give.
She licks her lips, hesitates. “Buck—”
* * * *
That night, I make love to Glory Rae. I am thirty going on thirty-five, handsome, confident, everything Bill was to her. The game is over. She can refuse me nothing now.
There is a certain inevitability about everything I do, in more than the physical act of entering her body, of caressing her, of devouring her soul. I have centuries of practice and experience to draw upon. She is mine, as surely as hundreds of others have been mine.
She screams in pain/pleasure, and I smother her lips with kisses, my mind piercing hers. I see all the layers peeling back, and at the core lies a lost and lonely woman. Grew up in a small town. Met Bill at a church dance. Married him, followed his career (architect, how trite) around the country. Allowed herself to be wooed into the domesticity of housewivery. Then—Bill dead in an automobile accident, so sudden, and how sweet the tang of loss.
I drink it all in, and when there is nothing left, push deeper, into primal feelings. Lust. Greed. Ambition. Love.
Ah, love. Her children swim here, larger than life, alongside a glowing Christlike icon that can only be dear departed Bill Osterman. How perfect the skin, how piercing the eyes, how loyal and sympathetic the expression. Idealized, pasteurized, blended with God and Daddy and dreams. And perhaps hidden somewhere just a tad of reality.
I suck that in, too, make it part of me. It buries (for a time) my own true self, buries the darkness within that threatens to overwhelm all that I once was. For a second I am alive—
Then Glory Rae moans and abruptly lies still, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Empty. No more dreams, no more ideals, no more pleasures or pains or joys or fears. Just a bland sort of grayness inside.
I touch her cheek softly, wistfully, wishing I were human, wishing I were Bill. Sated, I withdraw.
I dress, walk catlike down the stairs, let myself out.
* * * *
Next morning, as I lie abed, I can easily imagine the scene next door:
Glory Rae is asleep, her skin ivory, her breath coming soft and rhythmic, hair haloed around her head. How peaceful she seems, how deathlike her sleep.
Suddenly one of her children comes in. Suppose it’s Joey. He climbs up beside her, all light and motion, and shakes her awake. She turns blank eyes on him.
“Mommy,” he pleads, “it’s breakfast time.”
“Breakfast…” she murmurs, and begins to rise with mechanical grace, pulling on housecoat, houseshoes. The fires within her have dulled; her mind has chilled. She looks around, but I am gone. Was I real? Uncertainty flickers through her. But it no longer matters, so quickly it fades. As everything will fade now, in her drab, soulless life.
It’s all so familiar. The lack of dreams, perhaps she will notice that as she lies abed at night. And perhaps she will notice her sudden loss of appetite, of ambition. But surely it’s nothing Valium cannot fix if she goes to a doctor.
Little Joey tugs her arm, gets her moving toward the kitchen.
It happens this way every time. I sigh.
How beautiful Joey is, the image of Bill Osterman made young and small.
Then for the barest moment I feel a pang of guilt. No, I am not beyond these emotions; I feel them more keenly than any human, since I feed on them, need them to survive. Perhaps that is the worst part of my eternal curse: with every soul I take, I become a little more human.
Bill is part of me now, the dream Bill, the idealized Bill. I revel in the life I—he—created: how sweet little Joey is. Now, hunger slaked, I can appreciate the finer things. Little Joey, partly my son. How I…love you.
It makes my skin crawl, but I know the truth. My needs outweigh my morals. Next time I hunger, I will come for Joey, a wolf wrapped in the skin of a father returned from the grave.
And I will suck him dry.
THE HAUNTING OF DORIC LODGE, by James C. Stewart
Even as a kid I’d heard rumours the old Doric Lodge was haunted.
Walking passed the lodge on a fall day it’s not hard to entertain the notion. Clocking in at number five on a list of North Bay’s historic buildings,4 standing dark and solitary between twin bare trees on the corner of First and Frazer, perhaps it had generated such stories merely by its gray, stoic presence. A foreboding two-storey brick box, caught in the melancholy of October, it’s the kind of lonely, looming structure kids love to think is ghost-ridden, daring one another to knock on the door or try the antique handle, passing the ever-inflated stories from generation to generation. Add to the mix the mystery and suspicion already surrounding Freemasonry,5 and you have fertile ground for all manner of outlandish nonsense.
But it wasn’t until after my Initiation into the Craft, during an evening spent in the company of William Decosta, a Past Master of Doric Lodge 323, I really became interested in the lodge’s extraordinary visitations.
We’d finished his wife’s Sunday roast, and retired to a cluttered but cozy living room. And maybe it was the autumn rain tapping at the window, or the esoteric conversation we’d already been enjoying, but for whatever reason, setting myself into one of his leather chairs I said, “You know, I’ve always kind of wondered about those spooky stories.”
The colour drained from his face.
“You’re talking about Charlie Galt.”
He rose, agitated, rummaging through a nearby drawer and coming up with a cigarette, “I’ve seen the restless bastard myself, standing in the north, by the Chaplain’s Chair and the third degree tracing board.”6
I noticed his hand had started to shake. It wasn’t obvious, but it was there. He shot a guilty glance at the kitchen and muttered something about his wife. He lit the smoke, exhaling, “And I’m not the only one. The stories go way back. You should talk to Doc Prescott. Over the years, he’s become somewhat of an expert.”
Decosta smoked and fussed with the remote for his television. He avoided eye contact. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about Charlie Galt. And I could sense the evening had suddenly faded—he looked tired, haggard even. Our short discussion seemed to have taken a piece of him. Bill Decosta wasn’t the kind of man prone to bouts of drama or flights of fancy. Whatever had happened, I believed it had indeed happened.
I changed the subject, and left within the hour with a determination to ferret out the truth.
* * * *
A couple of days and a phone call later I met with Dr. Alex Prescott at Doric Lodge 323.
I entered the dusky windowless room silently, and caught the Doctor during an introverted moment contemplating one of the framed documents hiding in the shadows on the wall. I recognized it; a list of Masons killed during World War I, their names memorialized behind glass in 1920. Fascinating when you consider the cornerstone of the building bore the date 1924. I wondered how long Freemasonry had been active in North Bay. Probably since the Voyageurs first traveled the Champlain Trail.
Probably longer.
I purposefully cleared my throat. Prescott turned toward the sound. He was a slight man, and his thin hair was the colour of snow. He wore a beige tweed blazer with corduroy elbow patches. A gold Scottish Rite7 pin gleamed at his lapel. He’d never held a Chair or Office in lodge, but even the eldest of our Past Masters deferred to him. Over the years he’d had a half-dozen or so papers published in various journals, mostly explorations into the history of the Craft.
It took him a couple of seconds to recognize me. Eventually his eyes brightened, “What brings a young man like you into lodge in the middle of the day?”
“Brother Decosta had suggested you might shed some light on a subject I’ve recently bec
ome interested in.”
He clasped his hands behind his back, “And what might that be?”
“Charlie Galt.”
Prescott frowned, “Ah,” he threw a troubled glance toward the Chaplain’s Chair, “That.”
The old Doctor retreated into thought.
I hurried to add, “Bill had mentioned you were well-versed in this area.”
“Indeed.”
He began wandering toward the north side of the lodge, toward the Chaplain’s Chair and third degree tracing board. He spoke as if to himself, “I saw Brother Galt for my first time back in ’57. I’d just been Initiated. My sponsors and I were in lodge going over my Obligation in preparation for my Passing.”8
Prescott put himself into the Chaplain’s seat. The dark chair seemed to fold around him. He stretched a trembling, liver-spotted finger toward a spot on the floor, “That’s where we saw him.”
“Wait…all three of you saw him?”
He gave me a grim-faced nod.
I noted it was the roughly the same location in Decosta’s tale.
Perhaps Prescott sensed my thoughts.
“It’s where he’s always seen. And old Charlie doesn’t care how many people are present. In 1935, Galt appeared in the middle of a second degree. It’s the largest mass sighting I can find in our records. There were seventy-five men at that meeting, and the apparition’s presence was duly noted by the Secretary in the minutes. In fact, he’s appeared during twenty-three degree ceremonies, and at thirty-seven regular meetings over the past eighty-odd years. Add to this my collection of individual anecdotes, and you have Galt showing up an average of three times a year,” he pointed to the guilty spot on the carpet, “and always right there.”
Given the gleam of fear in Prescott’s eye, and the quiet vibe settling over the room, I half expected ol’ Charlie to materialize in front of us. My voice came too loud, “So who was he? And what does he want with Doric Lodge?”
“God only knows what he wants. But as to whom he was…”
Prescott leaned back in the too big chair and formed a steeple with his fingers.
The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories Page 36