They had been there for at least one hundred years, when I traveled by coach through the rugged and backward countryside with three very agreeable companions. One was the young Loup Garou, the wild boy of the Pyrenees, so famous now that he had been educated at court. At seventeen, he was a strapping youth who, it was rumored, could speak with animals and birds. It was also rumored that he had been sired by the Devil himself owing to his wolf-like demeanor and excessive hair. My other two companions for the journey included the ever-youthful dowager from that backward and savage country, Countess Erzebet Bathory, along with one of her lovely young maidservants, Minoru. The Countess had some ugly rumors following her, one of which, to my great amusement, was the story that she was already three hundred years old, but through black magic had retained the youth of a girl barely out of her teens. We often laughed about these tales, since Erzebet often commented that if she were truly three hundred years old, she would not still be depending upon her husband’s money, for she would have soon run out of it given his gambling and general licentiousness. She was quite amiable, and her maidservant not only pleasant to look upon, but with a delightfully wicked streak and an unusual tolerance for her mistress’ constant caresses and pinches. The wild boy and she exchanged the longing glances of the very young, something which the Countess very wisely discouraged.
It took us six days to reach Maupassane, and not without some hostility were we four met by the locals at the tavern, owing to both the Countess’ finery and infamous reputation, Minoru’s childlike beauty, my own sorcerer’s demeanor, and of course Loup Garou’s notoriety. These country hicks believed that if someone were from Paris, he might very well be the Devil’s own. We were deemed bad luck, and it seemed the only folk who would give us shelter were the Holy Sisters themselves.
It was among the sisters, in that cave, that I first came to learn how Good and Evil were twin aspects of the one source of All. The sisters were of an order older than much of the Roman church, and had a creed that included the snake in the Garden of Eden, and believed that Christ on his cross was the fulfillment of temptation into redemption. The snake on the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was their emblem. “The snake is the fruit of the tree. Christ is the fruit of the tree,” so went their creed. This heretical belief had divorced them from the true Church, but their connection to Rome was never quite severed. It seems the Holy Pontiff himself (or so went the local legend) had visited the waters nearby and spoken with the Mother Superior of the Sisters. He had not given them his blessing, but had refused to allow the usual investigation of their heresy. The local priesthood did not touch them, either. They were a peculiar sect. I, of course, was there for something I’d overheard—the rumor of a rumor, the spark from something whispered in the Salons of Paris.
“It is said the Holy Sisters of Maupassane have a relic with them that is more powerful than Rome itself,” a charlatan of disputed reputation whispered in my ear. “They are witches more than nuns, and their convent reaches down to the very seat of Satan himself.”
These words echoed through my head as we were escorted into the famous caverns.
First, we stood in awe of the great and ancient painting, depicting ape-men hunting great horses and beasts along a rugged plain. Then, the pictures on the rock wall showed beasts with the arms and legs of man, but with the antlers of Satan, and the tail and buttocks of deer, and the chest of a bull. The Holy Sisters told us that these frightened them at first, but that they were Brides of Christ, and therefore Brides of Truth, they believed.
And finally, they showed us what they had captured deep in the bowels of their cavern.
A glimpse of the eternal, there. I knew even when I set eyes upon its fire that it was of the Devil, that its great countenance, its jaws, its monstrous eyes, could be none other than tools of Hellish design to lure even these Holy Sisters into perdition.
One sister told me that there had once been two, a mate for this one, but it had burned like a sword of fire across the earth, returning to its home.
“If it had a mate,” I ventured, “then perhaps it had progeny?”
She took me to another well, showing evidence of a mating between human and this terrible creature. I cannot begin to describe what I saw there. Were I to do so, I believe I would go mad, for madness is its name, madness is its form.
We slept at the feet of the trapped creature for seven nights before departing. As we left, the Countess Bathory drew me aside and whispered something to me that I shall never forget.
She said, “These holy women will burn in hell until kingdom come for what they have done here. They are monsters of the worst sort.” Then she offered up a curious smile. “Perhaps you and I shall see them again one day.”
I must say that her words could not seem more true to this humble servant of the Arts of Spirit and Darkness...
* * *
7
* * *
Alan shut the book when he heard the phone ringing. Slipping into his loafers, he got up from the porch table. He walked across the slight landing, up a half dozen steps to the central house. Opening the door, he flicked on the inner light.
Directly across from him, the huge stone with its fossil.
The bones crushed under some great weight, the wings splayed up and behind its hunched shoulders.
He went to the large oak table in front of the stonework. Picking up the phone, he pressed the speaker function, setting the receiver back in its cradle. “Yes?”
Out of breath, the woman on the phone gasped, “Oh, it’s...yes...it’s happening...it’s taking...it’s opening...I can feel it...”
* * *
8
* * *
A gull cried out above the sister islands, and flew out across the water, joining a half a dozen other birds as they soared up and then down, skimming the choppy waters, and then up again, now at the mainland, over the towering lighthouse, over the shingled rooftops of Stonehaven.
Tamara Curry took her slingshot and aimed for one of the gulls. “You flying rats, get out of my trash!” She shouted when the small stone she’d shot missed the bird. She ran out to the waterfront behind her house, and began picking up the wadded-up papers the flying rats had scattered. “I wish my guardian angel would tear those damn gulls to bits,” she muttered.
As the birds flew up, against the mist-covered moonlight, someone was crying out, it was a boy, perhaps a little boy lost in the woods, raising his voice to the skies.
No word could be distinguished in the sound, but folks heard it, those who lived on the edge of the woods, heard the cry.
Nora Chance, making her last cup of tea for the night, felt a pain in the back of her skull as if someone had just driven a needle of ice into her.
She reached for a bottle of aspirin up on the shelf over the stove, and tried to block out the memories that throbbed in her head.
* * *
9
* * *
Stony tried calling Lourdes twice, but each time one of her brothers picked up and he hung up the phone. He stared at the infernal machine for another hour, willing her to call him. But it remained silent. Occasionally, he walked into the small living room, and glanced out at the street. Watching for her, or waiting for his mother to come back from work, or his father from the bars. Made (and ate) two baloney sandwiches and drank one of his dad’s beers from the fridge. This gave him courage. Or maybe it was just a goofy feeling, he couldn’t tell.
Have to follow through on this.
It won’t just get better or disappear if I do nothing.
He went up to his small room, and looked through the closet. What do you take with you when you’re gonna run off with your girl and never come back? His jackets all seemed inadequate. He glanced down at the jeans he was wearing. They were filthy and threadbare in parts. He drew out a pair of khakis and a flannel shirt. Okay, good start: clean clothes. On an upper shelf was a stack of Storm King comic books. He drew them down and plopped them on his bedspread. Tossed them
around, opening one at random. The Storm King was fighting the Ancient Enemy, Also Known As the Outcast. Stony grinned. He hadn’t looked at these since he was younger. He remembered his own imaginary battles in the backyard at eight-years-old with the Outcast. The Outcast at nine hundred eyes and seven arms, and each finger on his seven hands was a curved talon. One of the pictures showed The Storm King down on the ground, the Outcast slicing his talons through the air.
Stony tossed this comic aside, and opened another.
What he saw almost made him weep.
A note in a childish scrawl had been thrust between the pages:
Mommy loves me I know.
Mommy loves me I know.
I know Mommy loves me.
I am scared of her.
A memory from years before flashed upon him.
Something he had forgotten, had burned out of his memory...
* * *
10
* * *
He was seven and his mother and father had another of their big fights. He and Van hid in the bathroom, and Van covered his mouth to keep him from crying out. Van had been doing this since as far back as Stony could remember—they’d duck into the bathroom because it was the only room in the house with a lock on the door. They’d lock themselves in, and Van would cover his mouth to shut him up. This time, Stony was tired of not being able to stop the fighting. So he bit down on Van’s hand, and Van released him.
Stony unlocked the door and went running out of the bathroom to find his mother. As he ran into the center of their bedroom, it took him a minute to realize what his father was doing to his mother.
He was holding her down and punching her in the gut.
Stony stood there for a moment as if he could not understand what was happening, and then he began screeching. He ran into the middle of it and grabbed his father’s arm. “NO! DADDY! DON’T!”
His father looked at him, then at his mother.
His father pulled away, shouted some obscenities, and stomped off. A minute later, the front door slammed.
Stony had looked up at his mother. “You okay, Mommy?”
And something was different about her. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t the Mommy he knew.
Something had come into her.
Stony knew it was the Outcast.
Something evil had seeped into her.
She said, “You fucking bastard you ruined everything for us! Everything!”
Then, she lifted him up.
Stony Crawford, fifteen, picked up the note from the comic book.
Closed his eyes.
“You want to know what happens to little boys who ruin things for people?” His mother was shouting and crying, and Stony cried too, flailing his arms and legs around—
And she took him into the kitchen, and dropped him down, still clinging to his hand—a vise-like grip. “You want to know what happens to bad boys who FUCK EVERYTHING UP?” Her voice was like bombs blowing up around him, and he couldn’t see for the tears—
“Do you want to—” She began, and he saw the blue-hearted flame of the gas stove as she turned the front burner on—
And she took him up and brought the edge of his face down so close to the burner that the heat felt as if it were all around him
He could see the blue-white flame turning to yellow and then orange—
Moonfire, he thought. The Storm King could be destroyed by one thing, fire from the moon. It would take his powers away on earth, it was the one thing that could turn him to dust, to nothing...
He was numb and was perfectly quiet and still, expecting that the Outcast in the guise of his mother would now destroy him.
The heat on the side of his face grew intense.
But then she let out a small yelp.
She brought him back up, hugging him, her tears soaking his face and shoulders as she nuzzled him, her breath all gin, and her kisses smothering. “I could never hurt you, I never could hurt you, oh you poor baby, you poor baby, how could I hurt you, I’d go to hell if I hurt you, I could never—”
Stony set the old note back in the comic book. Closed it.
Time to go, he thought.
Time to leave all this behind.
I will never be like them.
* * *
11
* * *
In his parents’ bedroom, he hunkered down. Beneath his mother’s side of the bed, her candy wrappers and magazines. He pushed some of these aside, and felt around until he located the small box.
Drawing it out, he opened it.
The money was still there.
Because he had only seen it once or twice before—when he’d been too young to know how much was there—he was shocked to see that the bills were all hundreds. Why did she have all this here? Why hadn’t she ever used any of it? Or did she replace it? Did she hide some of her income from his dad?
These were all the questions he’d had ever since he’d first seen the little box beneath the bed.
“I’ll pay you back someday,” he said uneasily to the silent bedroom.
He counted out two thousand dollars.
It would be enough for a start.
He and Lourdes needed it.
His mother would understand.
She would.
* * *
12
* * *
Pulling on his heaviest sweatshirt, bringing the hood up, Stony left his home. He thought he might take his bike, but then figured he’d be better off on foot. He and Lourdes would catch the bus up the highway. In the morning. It all starts tomorrow at dawn. They needed to travel light.
The village was silent that night, or so it seemed to Stony. Perhaps he was feeling guilty for stealing the money, or perhaps his mind was too clouded with worries about the near future, but as he walked out along the damp lanes, the only sound he heard was a dog barking at some distance. The clapboard houses were dark, and only the smoke from chimneys indicated that anyone was home. This was part of what he was looking forward to leaving behind, the life that seemed to close up on itself like a snail in its shell when night came...the way people in Stonehaven never seemed to exist once the sun went down...
He looked at the neighbors’ houses. The Glastonburys and their adult children took up three houses in a row. Stony had spent much of his childhood running between their houses, the summers, watching them sit on their porches with cocktails and lemonade raising their glasses to him, nodding, but not ever really talking to him. And the Wakefields, with their German shepherd that got hit by a truck years ago, still mourning the dog after all those years as if they’d lost a son. The Railsbacks, who owned the butcher shop, used to give Stony old National Geographic magazines to root through for pictures for elementary school projects. He had rock fights with their nephew when he’d come to visit for his summer vacations.
He had known all these people here, and now, he was not going to ever see them again. Not that he was close to them, but he could only imagine what the world beyond Stonehaven would be like. He knew from TV, but he was not stupid enough to think that television had everything about the world. There was more to life than Stonehaven, and more than even Connecticut, more than New England. They could go down to New York by bus, maybe, and he’d get a job and they’d somehow get a place and raise their kid.
Somehow it would work.
It had to work.
God, I hope I never have to come back here again with my tail between my legs.
He took the route back to the Common, passing the library, feeling colder than the night air, feeling more alone than he had ever before felt in his life.
When he followed the roadside trail to the edge of the woods, he saw the feeble candlelight of Nora’s shack glowing within the woods. Stepping over the ditch, and through the moon-scraped trees, he went to the one place he knew would take him in.
* * *
13
* * *
“Tired?” Nora asked, as she stood in the doorway.
“Ye
ah.”
“I got a little supper still. Hungry?”
“No, thanks.”
“Sleepy?”
Stony nodded.
“What time is Juliet coming?”
He almost grinned, but something felt heavy in his face. “Morning.”
“Well, I got a sleeping bag with your name on it all ready. Come on in, Romeo.”
* * *
14
* * *
Nora awoke in the middle of the night, clutching her heart. “Stony!” she cried out.
Stony sat up quickly, tossing the sleeping bag cover away. “Yeah? You okay?”
Nora gasped. “Stony, I can’t tell you what it means, but I had a dream. Not a good one. It was a dream like one of my spins, and it was about Lourdes, baby. It was about your girl.” Nora leaned over the edge of her flat bed, lighting a candle on the floor. “She’s in a place of ice, Stony. She won’t come tonight, or tomorrow. She’s been taken.”
“It was just a dream,” Stony said. He rose from the floor, and went over to turn up the gas lamps. “It was just a dream.”
“True,” Nora whispered. “But dreams aren’t for nothing.”
They were both silent for several minutes.
“I can’t really sleep much I guess,” he said.
“After my dream, I don’t think I can either. You want to just sit up?”
Halloween Chillers: A Box Set of Three Books of Horror & Suspense Page 18