The Horror Megapack
Page 38
Room 4167, then, was on the fourth floor—the topmost floor of the structure. I must confess that the knowledge did not bring any renewed burst of courage! The top floor! Three black stair-pits would lie between me and the safety of escape. There would be no escape! No human being in the throes of fear could hope to discover that tortured outlet, could hope to grope his way through Stygian gloom down a triple ramp of black stairs. And even though he succeeded in reaching the lower corridors, there was still a blind alley-way, sealed at the outer end by a high grating of iron bars.…
* * * *
Escape! The mockery of it caused me to stop suddenly in my ascent and stand rigid, my whole body trembling violently.
But outside, in the gloom of the street, M. S. was waiting, waiting with that fiendish glare of triumph that would brand me a man without courage. I could not return to face him, not though all the horrors of hell inhabited this gruesome place of mystery. And horrors must surely inhabit it, else how could one account for that fearful thing on the grating below? But I had been through horror before. I had seen a man, supposedly dead on the operating table, jerk suddenly to his feet and scream. I had seen a young girl, not long before, awake in the midst of an operation, with the knife already in her frail body. Surely, after those definite horrors, no unknown danger would send me cringing back to the man who was waiting so bitterly for me to return.
Those were the thoughts pregnant in my mind as I groped slowly, cautiously along the corridor of the upper floor, searching each closed door for the indistinct number 4167. The place was like the center of a huge labyrinth, a spider-web of black, repelling passages, leading into some central chamber of utter silence and blackness. I went forward with dragging steps, fighting back the dread that gripped me as I went farther and farther from the outlet of escape. And then, after losing myself completely in the gloom, I threw aside all thoughts of return and pushed on with a careless, surface bravado, and laughed aloud.
* * * *
So, at length, I reached that room of horror, secreted high in the deeper recesses of the deserted warehouse. The number—God grant I never see it again!—was scrawled in black chalk on the door—4167. I pushed the half-open barrier wide, and entered.
It was a small room, even as M. S. had forewarned me—or as the dead mind of that thing on the grate had forewarned M. S. The glow of my out-thrust match revealed a great stack of dusty boxes and crates, piled against the farther wall. Revealed, too, the black corridor beyond the entrance, and a small, upright table before me.
It was the table, and the stool beside it, that drew my attention and brought a muffled exclamation from my lips. The thing had been thrust out of its usual place, pushed aside as if some frenzied shape had lunged against it. I could make out its former position by the marks on the dusty floor at my feet. Now it was nearer to the center of the room, and had been wrenched sidewise from its holdings. A shudder took hold of me as I looked at it. A living person, sitting on the stool before me, staring at the door, would have wrenched the table in just this manner in his frenzy to escape from the room!
The light of the match died, plunging me into a pit of gloom. I struck another and stepped closer to the table. And there, on the floor, I found two more things that brought fear to my soul. One of them was a heavy flash-lamp—a watchman’s lamp—where it had evidently been dropped. Been dropped in flight! But what awful terror must have gripped the fellow to make him forsake his only means of escape through those black passages? And the second thing—a worn copy of a leather-bound book, flung open on the boards below the stool!
The flash-lamp, thank God! had not been shattered. I switched it on, directing its white circle of light over the room. This time, in the vivid glare, the room became even more unreal. Black walls, clumsy, distorted shadows on the wall, thrown by those huge piles of wooden boxes. Shadows that were like crouching men, groping toward me. And beyond, where the single door opened into a passage of Stygian darkness, that yawning entrance was thrown into hideous detail. Had any upright figure been standing there, the light would have made an unholy phosphorescent specter out of it.
I summoned enough courage to cross the room and pull the door shut. There was no way of locking it. Had I been able to fasten it, I should surely have done so; but the room was evidently an unused chamber, filled with empty refuse. This was the reason, probably, why the watchman had made use of it as a retreat during the intervals between his rounds.
But I had no desire to ponder over the sordidness of my surroundings. I returned to my stool in silence, and stooping, picked up the fallen book from the floor. Carefully I placed the lamp on the table, where its light would shine on the open page. Then, turning the cover, I began to glance through the thing which the man before me had evidently been studying.
And before I had read two lines, the explanation of the whole horrible thing struck me. I stared dumbly down at the little book and laughed. Laughed harshly, so that the sound of my mad cackle echoed in a thousand ghastly reverberations through the dead corridors of the building.
It was a book of horror, of fantasy. A collection of weird, terrifying, supernatural tales with grotesque illustrations in funereal black and white. And the very line I had turned to, the line which had probably struck terror to that unlucky devil’s soul, explained M. S.’s “decayed human form, standing in the doorway with arms extended and a frightful face of passion!” The description—the same description—lay before me, almost in my friend’s words. Little wonder that the fellow on the grating below, after reading this orgy of horror, had suddenly gone mad with fright. Little wonder that the picture engraved on his dead mind was a picture of a corpse standing in the doorway of room 4167!
I glanced at that doorway and laughed. No doubt of it, it was that awful description in M. S.’s untempered language that had made me dread my surroundings, not the loneliness and silence of the corridors about me. Now, as I stared at the room, the closed door, the shadows on the wall, I could not repress a grin.
But the grin was not long in duration. A six-hour siege awaited me before I could hear the sound of human voice again—six hours of silence and gloom. I did not relish it. Thank God the fellow before me had had foresight enough to leave his book of fantasy for my amusement!
I turned to the beginning of the story. A lovely beginning it was, outlining in some detail how a certain Jack Fulton, English adventurer, had suddenly found himself imprisoned (by a mysterious black gang of monks, or something of the sort) in a forgotten cell at the monastery of El Toro. The cell, according to the pages before me, was located in the “empty, haunted pits below the stone floors of the structure.…” Lovely setting! And the brave Fulton had been secured firmly to a huge metal ring set in the farther wall, opposite the entrance.
I read the description twice. At the end of it I could not help but lift my head to stare at my own surroundings. Except for the location of the cell, I might have been in they same setting. The same darkness, same silence, same loneliness. Peculiar similarity!
And then: “Fulton lay quietly, without attempt to struggle. In the dark, the stillness of the vaults became unbearable, terrifying. Not a suggestion of sound, except the scraping of unseen rats—”
I dropped the book with a start. From the opposite end of the room in which I sat came a half inaudible scuffling noise—the sound of hidden rodents scrambling through the great pile of boxes. Imagination? I am not sure. At the moment, I would have sworn that the sound was a definite one, that I had heard it distinctly. Now, as I recount this tale of horror, I am not sure.
But I am sure of this: There was no smile on my lips as I picked up the book again with trembling fingers and continued.
“The sound died into silence. For an eternity, the prisoner lay rigid, staring at the open door of his cell. The opening was black, deserted, like the mouth of a deep tunnel, leading to hell. And then, suddenly, from the gloom beyond that opening, came an almost noiseless, padded footfall!”
* * * *
This time there was no doubt of it. The book fell from my fingers, dropped to the floor with a clatter. Yet even through the sound of its falling, I heard that fearful sound—the shuffle of a living foot! I sat motionless, staring with bloodless face at the door of room 4167. And as I stared, the sound came again, and again—the slow tread of dragging footsteps, approaching along the black corridor without!
I got to my feet like an automaton, swaying heavily. Every drop of courage ebbed from my soul as I stood there, one hand clutching the table, waiting.…
And then, with an effort, I moved forward. My hand was outstretched to grasp the wooden handle of the door. And—I did not have the courage. Like a cowed beast I crept back to my place and slumped down on the stool, my eyes still transfixed in a mute stare of terror.
I waited. For more than half an hour I waited, motionless. Not a sound stirred in the passage beyond that closed barrier. Not a suggestion of any living presence came to me. Then, leaning back against the wall with a harsh laugh, I wiped away the cold moisture that had trickled over my forehead into my eyes.
It was another five minutes before I picked up the book again. You call me a fool for continuing it? A fool? I tell you, even a story of horror is more comfort than a room of grotesque shadows and silence. Even a printed page is better than grim reality!
* * * *
And so I read on. The story was one of suspense, madness. For the next two pages I read a cunning description of the prisoner’s mental reaction. Strangely enough, it conformed precisely with my own.
“Fulton’s head had fallen to his chest,” the script read. “For an endless while he did not stir, did not dare to lift his eyes. And then, after more than an hour of silent agony and suspense, the boy’s head came up mechanically. Came up—and suddenly jerked rigid. A horrible scream burst from his dry lips as he stared—stared like a dead man—at the black entrance to his cell. There, standing without motion in the opening, stood a shrouded figure of death. Empty eyes, glaring with awful hate, bored into his own. Great arms, bony and rotten, extended toward him. Decayed flesh—”
I read no more. Even as I lunged to my feet, with that mad book still gripped in my hand, I heard the door of my room grind open. I screamed, screamed in utter horror at the thing I saw there. Dead? Good God, I do not know. It was a corpse, a dead human body, standing before me like some propped-up thing from the grave. A face half eaten away, terrible in its leering grin. Twisted mouth, with only a suggestion of lips, curled back over broken teeth. Hair—writhing, distorted—like a mass of moving, bloody coils. And its arms, ghastly white, bloodless, were extended toward me, with open, clutching hands.
It was alive! Alive! Even while I stood there, crouching against the wall, it stepped forward toward me. I saw a heavy shudder pass over it, and the sound of its scraping feet burned its way into my soul. And then, with its second step, the fearful thing stumbled to its knees. The white, gleaming arms, thrown into streaks of living fire by the light of my lamp, flung violently upwards, twisting toward the ceiling. I saw the grin change to an expression of agony, of torment. And then the thing crashed upon me—dead.
With a great cry of fear I stumbled to the door. I groped out of that room of horror, stumbled along the corridor. No light. I left it behind, on the table, to throw a circle of white glare over the decayed, living-dead intruder who had driven me mad.
My return down those winding ramps to the lower floor was a nightmare of fear. I remember that I stumbled, that I plunged through the darkness like a man gone mad. I had no thought of caution, no thought of anything except escape.
And then the lower door, and the alley of gloom. I reached the grating, flung myself upon it and pressed my face against the bars in a futile effort to escape. The same—as the fear-tortured man—who had—come before—me.
I felt strong hands lifting me up. A dash of cool air, and then the refreshing patter of falling rain.
* * * *
It was the afternoon of the following day, December 6, when M. S. sat across the table from me in my own study. I had made a rather hesitant attempt to tell him, without dramatics and without dwelling on my own lack of courage, of the events of the previous night.
“You deserved it, Dale,” he said quietly. “You are a medical man, nothing more, and yet you mock the beliefs of a scientist as great as Daimler. I wonder—do you still mock the Professor’s beliefs?”
“That he can bring a dead man to life?” I smiled, a bit doubtfully.
“I will tell you something, Dale,” said M. S. deliberately. He was leaning across the table, staring at me. “The Professor made only one mistake in his great experiment. He did not wait long enough for the effect of his strange acids to work. He acknowledged failure too soon, and got rid of the body.” He paused.
“When the Professor stored his patient away, Dale,” he said quietly, “he stored it in room 4170, at the great warehouse. If you are acquainted with the place, you will know that room 4170 is directly across the corridor from 4167.”
THE MAN WHO COLLECTED KNIVES, by John Gregory Betancourt
“Jason? Are you listening to me?”
He stood at the kitchen counter chopping vegetables that last fateful day, snick-snick-snicking the butcher knife through onions and green peppers, half dreaming himself away in a bubble of time.
Escape. Yes, escape.
He felt the room darkening, dropping out of focus. He longed for his freedom.
And the glittery sharp blade of the knife did it. Like always when he immersed himself in his work, when he held a knife of some kind, its edge pulled him like a moth to a flame.
He drew a deep breath and abruptly stood someplace else, someplace far away. A hot, dry wind blew in his face. A sky black with clouds glowered overhead. Jagged rocks crunched underfoot as he took a hesitant step.
“I’m here,” the creature said.
Jason turned, smiling for the first time.
“Jason?” a distant voice cried. “You bastard, listen to me! Jason!”
* * * *
It had started innocently enough, in the summer of 1971, when Jason’s father gave him a Boy Scout knife for his thirteenth birthday. He had stared at it hesitantly before pulling it from its box. Mother never had let him have one before—they were too dangerous, she said.
“You’re almost a man, and a man needs a good knife,” Pa had told him, grinning and winking. “Treat her well and she’ll last a lifetime.”
“She?” he asked slowly.
“Every knife has a personality. Take this one here.”
Pa unfolded the parts one at a time—how could there be so many?—two bright steel blades, an awl, a bottle opener, and even a magnifying glass. Perhaps it was the magnifying glass that did it, pushed him from mere childish interest to awed fascination.
“This knife,” Pa went on, “can do just about anything, from starting a fire to skinning a skunk.”
“Pa!”
“It’s true!” And Pa had laughed and folded all the parts away and pressed it back into his hand. “Just don’t tell your mother I gave it to you, okay? It’ll be our secret, man to man.”
“Cool,” he said solemnly.
Throughout June and July and August he carried it always, carving his initials into every tree he met until a ten-block radius of their house bore his mark. But the knife didn’t last a lifetime; it didn’t last the summer before it fell to pieces, the parts inside worn out from the countless times he’d opened and closed them.
Then Jason started saving his allowance for real hunting knives, not kids’ toys like the one his father had given him. He bought his first real Bowie knife that October, and the strong steel blade fascinated him—certainly better at carving wood than his scout knife had been.
A few months later, he found a set of meat cleavers on sale at Walmart, an impulse buy that left him broke for a month. That Christmas he found his grandfather’s old army sword in the attic and took it to hang on his bedroom wall.
When he graduated, his parents bundled him off to the far-distant University of Pennsylvania, hoping a change of friends and environment might broaden his interests. Instead, it served to focus them. The college fencing team found him an eager student. History courses provided information on ancient arms he might never have encountered otherwise.
He also met Joanne Bleiler there. She had like interests in history (though it was politics that drew her), and they found themselves paired in a little study group that led to a romance that led to marriage in their senior year.
But their interests were perhaps a bit too far apart. While Joanne joined a law firm as a clerk, pushing, always pushing, he found himself left behind. Alone, most evenings, with nothing but his collection of knives.
Then the creature came to him. Small and gray and vaguely batlike, with silvery eyes and needle-sharp teeth, it seemed disturbingly familiar. Perhaps it had always been there, he thought, just waiting to be heard. Or perhaps his desperate, lonely need brought it to him.
Whatever, the creature came whispering soft words, telling him how bright and beautiful his blades were (why did Joanne never see that?), telling him everything he wanted to hear.
He listened. Perhaps that was his greatest mistake.
And as Joanne grew more shrill and insistent, he fled to the creature for comfort and understanding. It always knew what to say. It always made him feel good.
* * * *
Now, in their little apartment, as Jason chopped vegetables for dinner and his mind floated on some other plane talking to a thing which could not possibly exist but somehow did, his wife’s voice broke through the perfection of the moment. It felt like fingernails scratching on slate.