Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Epilogue
About the Author
‘‘BENTLEY LITTLE KEEPS THE HIGH-
TENSION JOLTS COMING.’’
—Stephen King
The Burning
‘‘Stephen King-size epic horror.’’—Publishers Weekly
Dispatch
‘‘Little has the unparalleled ability to evoke surreal, satiric terror . . . should not be missed.’’
—Horror Reader
The Resort
‘‘An explicitly repulsive yet surrealistically sad tale of everyday horror.’’ —Publishers Weekly
The Policy
‘‘A chilling tale.’’ —Publishers Weekly
The Return
‘‘A master of horror on par with Koontz and King . . . so powerful that readers will keep the lights on day and night.’’ —Midwest Book Review
The Collection
‘‘A must-have for the author’s fans.’’
—Publishers Weekly
‘‘Little’s often macabre, always sharp tales are snippets of everyday life given a creepy twist.’’ —Booklist
‘‘[BENTLEY LITTLE] IS ON A PAR WITH
SUCH GREATS AS STEPHEN KING, CLIVE
BARKER, AND PETER STRAUB.’’
—Midwest Book Review
The Association
‘‘Haunting . . . terrifying . . . graphic and fantastic . . . will stick with readers for a long time. Just enough sex, violence, and Big Brother rhetoric to make this an incredibly credible tale.’’ —Publishers Weekly
The Walking
‘‘A wonderful, fast-paced, rock-’em, jolt-’em, shock-’em contemporary terror fiction with believable characters and an unusually clever plot. Highly entertaining.’’
—Dean Koontz
‘‘Bentley Little’s The Walking is the horror event of the year. If you like spooky stories you must read this book.’’ —Stephen King
‘‘The Walking is a waking nightmare. A spellbinding tale of witchcraft and vengeance. Scary and intense.’’
—Michael Prescott, author of Final Sins
‘‘The overwhelming sense of doom with which Bentley Little imbues his . . . novel is so palpable it seems to rise from the book like mist. Flowing seamlessly between time and place, the Bram Stoker Award- winning author’s ability to transfix his audience . . . is superb . . . terrifying. [The Walking] has the potential to be a major sleeper.’’
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The Ignored
‘‘This is Bentley Little’s best book yet. Frightening, thought-provoking, and impossible to put down.’’
—Stephen King
‘‘LITTLE POSSESSES THE UNCANNY
ABILITY TO TAKE EVERYDAY
SITUATIONS AND TURN THEM INTO
NIGHTMARES.’’
—Publishers Weekly
‘‘A singular achievement by a writer who makes the leap from the ranks of the merely talented to true distinction with this book. This one may become a classic.’’ —DarkEcho
‘‘Little is so wonderful that he can make the act of ordering a Coke at McDonald’s take on a sinister dimension. This philosophical soul-searcher is provocative.’’ —Fangoria
The Revelation
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award
‘‘I guarantee, once you start reading this book, you’ll be up until dawn with your eyes glued to the pages. A nail-biting, throat-squeezing, nonstop plunge into darkness and evil.’’ —Rick Hautala
The Store
‘‘Frightening.’’ —Los Angeles Times
The Mailman
‘‘A thinking person’s horror novel. The Mailman delivers.’’ —Los Angeles Times
University
‘‘By the time I finished, my nerves were pretty well fried, and I have a pretty high shock level. University is unlike anything else in popular fiction.’’
—Stephen King
ALSO BY BENTLEY LITTLE
The Burning
Dispatch
The Resort
The Policy
The Return
The Collection
The Association
The Walking
The Town
The House
The Store
The Ignored
The Revelation
University
Dominion
The Mailman
Death Instinct
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, August 2007
Copyright © Bentley Little, 2007
All rights reserved
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Printed in the United States of America
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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http://us.penguingroup.com
eISBN : 978-1-4406-2095-9
This book is dedicated to all of my loyal readers,
especially Lisa Allen and Paul Legerski. I know
you’re out there. And I appreciate it.
A special thanks to Lisa LaMunyon and Doug Lilley,
who lent their names to this novel in order to raise
money for Golden Hill Elementary School.
One
Another gorgeous day in paradise.
Well, it wasn’t really that gorgeous. The sky was white with smog rather than a traditional clear blue, and outside the air-conditioned environment of his Lexus, the temperature was far too warm to be comfortable. And it wasn’t really paradise. Just a few blocks down Sunset, transplanted pieces of used white trash, their dreams of stardom shattered, were either working as record store sales clerks, selling their bodies on the street or dealing drugs in their grim attempts to make ends meet.
But here in Victor Lowry’s world, everything was fine. Tentative tourists were walking up the Rodeo Drive sidewalks with their usual mixture of bravado and nervousness, knowing they didn’t belong but still prepared to aggressively defend their presence at the drop of a hat, while the matrons of Beverly Hills emerged from their gated homes on their way to multihour lunches with their friends and the young brides of older executives jogged along the winding roads pushing elaborately customized baby strollers.
Victor flew by them all, ignoring the speed limit as he swooped down the hill toward Wilshire and his office, CD player cranked up to earsplitting volume. Banners for the latest exhibition at the LA County Museum of Art hung from streetlamps as he turned left off La Brea. His parents were donors and permanent members, and he’d gone to the museum practically once a week when he was a kid. But the exposure hadn’t taken, and it had been years since he’d been inside the buildings. He felt guilty about that—but not guilty enough to actually start going. His interest was in pop culture not high culture, and the way he saw it, life was too short to go around feigning interest in subjects that didn’t appeal to him . . . even if it would impress other people.
Like his dad.
Victor turned hard into the underground parking garage, waving his electronic passkey to open the gate and pulling into the space marked with his name. There was no reason for him to have his own office, really, but apparently his father wanted him to pretend that he was some sort of businessman, that he had skills and talents of his own and wasn’t merely coasting through life on the coattails of his family.
Victor got into the garage elevator and pressed the button for fifteen.
The old man was one of those power-of-positive-thinking guys. He didn’t seem to realize that it was luck more than anything else that had led to his prosperity, and he continued to believe that focus and determination accounted for his success. It was why he had called his son ‘‘Victor.’’ He’d wanted to give him a name that meant something, that was descriptive of something to which he could aspire, and though Victor didn’t really like his name, at least it was a name—as opposed to ‘‘Champion’’ and some of the other appellations that his dad had originally considered, all of which sounded like descriptions of racehorses.
The office had been a carrot, an attempt to woo him into a life of purpose and productivity. He even had his own secretary, Amy. And while Victor still didn’t find the business world at all appealing, he felt obligated to put on the engaged-and-highly-motivated-son act and, at the very least, go through the motions. Because if he didn’t make a go of it, Amy would be unemployed, as would several programmers who did not work out of his office but over whom he was in charge. He didn’t want that on his conscience.
Slowly but surely, against his will, his dad was reeling him in.
Victor resented him for that.
The elevator arrived at the fifteenth floor, and he walked down the carpeted hallway past the mortgage company and the property management firm to the unmarked door that led to his office. Amy was typing something on her computer and she looked up when he entered. ‘‘Good morning, Mr. Lo—Victor,’’ she corrected herself.
He smiled. ‘‘Good catch.’’
‘‘Sorry. I’m still not used to the informality.’’
‘‘That’s what working for my dad’ll do to you.’’
Amy held out a stack of mail. ‘‘Are you in today?’’
‘‘For the morning,’’ he said. He walked past her desk into his private office, pretending to sort through the mail. Victor liked Amy, but he had a sneaking suspicion that part of her job was to keep tabs on him and report back to his dad. It was why, even after six months, the two of them were emotionally still at arm’s length with each other, and why he spent most of his time away from her. Several times, he’d considered letting her know what his dad had told him, that despite her loyalty and hard work, she would be out on her ear should Victor screw up this opportunity. But he had the feeling that she would immediately tell the old man, who would feed her a reassuring lie, and then his relationships with both his father and his secretary would be more strained than they already were.
He threw the mail on his desk and stood next to the window, looking down at the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. He shouldn’t have come in today. He should have just called Amy, told her he was busy, and spent the day cruising around, having fun.
There was still the afternoon.
He flopped down into his chair, turned on his PC and then swiveled around in a circle while he waited for the computer to boot up. There wasn’t really any work for him to do, but if he touched base with the programmers, had Amy send an update memo to their clients and answered his e-mail, it would look like he’d accomplished something today and he could bail, guilt free, after lunch.
Victor accessed his e-mail. There was the usual spam and assorted interbusiness correspondence, but jumping out at him was a message from his father, sent earlier this morning. He called it up, his stomach already tightening. Whenever his dad e-mailed him, it was always with some sort of ‘‘suggestion’’ that was really nothing more than veiled criticism of his job performance, a helpful reminder that he was not as smart or as successful as he should be.
Not this time, though.
Instead of words, streaming video appeared on his monitor, and the knot in Victor’s stomach tightened even further as he watched, his dread growing as he viewed the unfolding images. A close-up of a growling dog’s face pulled back to reveal that the dog’s head was severed and sitting atop what looked like a wedding cake. The camera panned around, finding not only the animal’s lifeless, bloody body on a white-sheeted bed, but a mutilated bride and groom lying on the bedroom floor, their faces shoved into matching dog bowls. Words appeared onscreen, white letters against a black background: THIS IS WHERE IT BEGINS.
Suddenly, two naked old people, an Asian man and a dark, possibly Hispanic, woman, were in what looked like an empty garage, dancing crazily on oil-stained cement, lunatic smiles held tight on their otherwise pain-racked faces.
The man’s genitals had been hacked off.
The woman’s breasts had been sliced from her chest.
Both were bleeding profusely from their wounds, the blood mixing with the dried oil on the garage floor and making a sickening sticky puddle. No audio accompanied the images, and the sight of the two old people in their grotesque dance seemed all the more frightening for the silence. It gave the scene, in a strange way, a documentary verisimilitude that sound would have lessened.
The dancing grew quicker, more jerky, as though the camera had sped up, and the entire scene spun, became blurry, segueing into an extreme close-up of a yellow plaque-covered tooth, which once again pulled back to show the growling mouth of the dead dog.
Victor stared at the blank screen, feeling more unnerved than he’d expected. He’d seen
far worse things in horror movies, but the immediacy of the video and the sense that it was real, that it was a recording of actual events rather than a staged depiction of a fictional narrative, made it seem especially disconcerting to him.
And the fact that it had been sent to him by his dad?
That was the creepiest thing of all.
Of course, lately his old man had been talking about investing some of his money in a movie. A hard-core film fan, Victor was all in favor of the idea. He was well aware that in Hollywood, con artists routinely scammed wealthy businessmen out of millions of dollars with the promise of producer credits and lucrative back-end deals should their false projects get made. Indeed, his dad had been approached numerous times by filmmakers looking for private investors, and none of those movies had ever come to fruition. But recently, with all of the problems at the studios, a lot of legitimate directors had gone the indie route and were lining up their own financing. Victor himself had fielded calls from half a dozen big-name directors on his father’s behalf, and his suggestion was to roll the dice.
Maybe, he thought, one of those filmmakers had submitted the video to his dad as an example of his work, and his father was merely passing it along to him for his opinion.
Why no explanation, though? Why no cover page?
The whole thing was disturbing.
What made it even more unsettling was that the dog looked familiar. And so, come to think of it, did the bedroom. And the garage. He had seen them before, but he could not for the life of him remember where. He thought hard, trying to place everything, but he kept drawing a blank.
He replayed the video once more and was again nagged by a sense of familiarity, although full recognition remained frustratingly out of reach.
The damn thing was even creepier on second viewing.
The Vanishing Page 1