The Horror Megapack
Page 39
“Jason!”
He sighed. He blinked. The alien landscape faded. The creature with the eyes like steel faded, too.
“Yes?” he said, looking at her for the first time that night.
“At last.” She struck her classic Angry Woman pose: hands on hips, feet set, neck tense. “Sometimes,” she said, “I wonder if you’re all here, Jason. And sometimes I know you’re not. What do you think this is?” She held out her hand. In it, crumpled but still recognizable, lay his paycheck.
“Money, dear,” he said. He went back to chopping. “We’ve gone over this before.”
“Only twenty-two dollars! Where’s the rest?”
“I took it in merchandise. Dueling knives, a matched set. They’re the best I’ve ever seen, with ivory hilts and scrimshaw on the—”
“How could you?” she cried. She waved one hand at the racks of cutlery over the cabinets, at the knives under the counters, at the spray of axes mounted on the wall, at the guillotine in the corner. The guillotine was his prize. He’d built himself, and the blade (he had a letter of provenance saying so) had actually snicked off several aristocratic heads in those wondrous days of the La Revolution.
“Enough is enough!” she cried.
“It makes sense,” he insisted. “Weapons hold their value. They’re an excellent investment.”
“Try pearls,” Joanne said bitterly. She turned and stalked from the room. A second later, Jason heard the front door slam.
He winced. And turned back to his knifes. And in a moment stood on that barren plain with his only friend.
* * * *
When Joanne’s father, a prominant local lawyer, filed the divorce papers two weeks later, Jason felt the loss more keenly than he wanted to admit. His wife’s leaving left a hole like a missing tooth, and as he probed the edges he felt a dull unfocussed pain. Realizing she wasn’t coming back, he cried himself to sleep for the first time in his life.
The creature came in a dream to comfort him. “Relax,” it said. “You don’t need her. Now your apartment has more room for weapons.”
Giggling, it told him where to go, what to buy. He sat up and began taking mental notes, distracted for the moment from his grief.
* * * *
A bankrupt jewelry store sold him display cases. The Velvet Handcuff Novelty Shoppe provided padded hooks for his walls and ceilings. Under the creature’s guidance, he set up a private museum. Sabers filled one wall of the living room, axes another, Swiss army knives a third. In his bedroom, greatswords hung over the bed, blades polished until they shone like mirrors. He lay there naked, late one night, with the lights on, and just stared at the reflections.
“So beautiful,” the creature told him, “so beautiful.”
He smiled to himself. And the creature told him he was happy. But still he felt the hole in his life where Joanne had been.
* * * *
The jump from collecting to using those blades came not long after that. He’d worked late at the antique shop cataloguing a new shipment from Canada, and as part of his commission he took a pair of matched dueling knives, both with intricately worked ivory handles. By the time he finished for the evening, he found midnight had come and gone.
He might have made it home all right if it hadn’t been drizzling. Because of the cold and the wet, the streets lay deserted, and the night had an eerie quality. Jason stuck the knives in his overcoat’s pocket and huddled under his umbrella as he trudged homeward.
He started down the subway steps, same as always, same as he’d done a thousand times before on a thousand nights just like this one. But then footsteps echoed behind him. The lightbulb overhead suddenly crunched and went out, little bits of hot glass raining down in the darkness.
Run! something inside him cried, and he dropped his umbrella and fled in terror down the steps. Mugger wolf pack—
Time seemed to stretch. Outside, beyind him, thunder rumbled, lightning flickered. He glanced over his shoulder, saw a black kid of maybe fifteen laughing hysterically, his hair slick with water, his eyes wild. Then it was dark again and Jason slipped and fell, rolling down the last few steps, feeling nothing in the rush of the moment but certain somewhere inside that he hurt.
“Watcha got, man?” The kid stood over him—how had he moved so fast?—and started pawing Jason’s pockets.
Jason grabbed for his billfold, but instead came up with one of the knives. How it got in his hand, he didn’t know. The whole scene was moving too fast for him to follow, too fast for him to comprehend.
“Now!” the creature cried.
Without thinking, he stabbed up, into the black kid’s belly. The blade slit cloth and skin and muscle with ease.
The kid stopped laughing. For a horrible second they just stared at each other in a flash of lightning, both surprised, both too shocked to move. Then the kid began to scream, like a hurt animal, like nothing Jason had ever heard before.
“Excellent,” the creature whispered.
Jason surged to his feet and ran. A train was just pulling up when he reached the platform, and he staggered into it. An empty car, thank God.
A whistle blew. The doors hissed shut, and the train lurched forward. After a minute, Jason realized he still held the knife.
He stared at it in amazement for a few seconds, then quickly stuck in back into his pocket. Shuddering helplessly, he pressed his eyes shut and tried not to throw up. The smell of blood, the kid’s blood, hung on his clothes like a cloying perfume. He gave a sob.
* * * *
He didn’t remember walking home or going to bed. When he woke the next morning, he still had his coat on, and the knife, its blade stained a muddy red-brown, lay in his pocket.
At first he threw it away. But the creature murmured incessantly about what a prize it was, what a trophy, completely unique in his collection. He covered his ears and still the voice nagged him, prodded him, whispering, whispering, whispering.
Finally, screaming for silence, he rose and fished the knife from the trashcan. Held it in a trembling hand. Admired it, the curve of the blade, the way dried blood picked out the design in its ivory hilt (how had he missed it before?) in the shape of a dragon devouring its own tail.
After breakfast, he carved a new notch in its handle. The physical act of crediting his kill gave him a rush like nothing he had ever felt before, better than drugs, better than sex. He didn’t need a letter to prove this blade had tasted blood!
And, deep inside, at the back of his consciousness, the creature urged him on.
* * * *
The next night, Jason made sure he worked late at the store. Payday. Same as always, he took most of his salary in hard, cold steel, this time a cavalry saber, circa 1860. Engraved on its side were the letters CSA. Perhaps it had fought the Civil War at some southern gentleman’s side. Later perhaps it had carried civilization west, helping defeat the hordes of Indians who waited behind every rock and tree to ambush innocent settlers.
His boss had brought it back from Illinois along with a truckload of other antiques. It had been love at first sight. The worn leather grip fit his hand like a glove. It had been meant for him.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
Nodding, he hefted the saber. Eight little nocks in the hilt; eight deaths attributed to its might. If only Joanne could see it, share it with him. Then life would be perfect.
Slowly, he tested the blade with his thumb. Dull as a butter knife. (“Can’t have that, not with such a fine weapon,” the creature inside him said, and he agreed.) Such a waste otherwise.
Taking a whetstone from his desk, he began to work the saber’s edge back toward razor sharpness. The touch of the steel made his hands tingle.
Finally finished, he wrapped brown paper around it, but loosely, so it could be drawn. Turning off the lights, he set the alarms and locked the doors. Then, trembling, he stood in the doorway for an instant, just watching his breath mist the air. This felt like a turning point in his life, as though he stood on the brink of somethi
ng tremendous, something great and good and powerful, like knowing God or being the first man to walk on the moon. It felt like that, only more so, because it was happening to him and not some stranger on TV.
He could feel the sword’s weight. When he eased his hand into the paper and touched its hilt, an almost electric tingle ran through his arm. Ecstasy.
“You can win her heart again!” the creature inside him cried. “She’ll see reason. She loves you.”
“But—”
“Trust me,” it said. “Do it! Doitdoitdoit!”
He hugged the saber to his chest and cast his lot.
Two blocks’ walk and he came to the subway. He fed the machine his token, then pushed through to stand impatiently waiting. Why did it seem to take forever tonight, when for the first time it truly mattered?
Finally a train came. He boarded with a couple of old men, then sat alone at the opposite end of the car with the saber across his knees. He watched graffitied walls flow away on either side of the car.
At last he reached the right stop. Joanne’s parents’ house lay two blocks away. She was staying with them till she got herself on her feet again—that’s what her father had told him the one time he’d gotten up the nerve to call. He’d just hung up, been too scared to ask to speak to her. But now, tonight, it would all be different.
He climbed the steps. Stood breathing the cool night air. Turned and walked slowly and purposefully toward the right house. In his mind, he rehearsed what he’d say to her. Something debonair, something romantic.
When he rang the bell, she answered. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she started to close the door.
He blocked it with his foot.
“Joanne—”
“I have nothing to say to you,” she said. “Go away or I’ll call the police!”
“I—I’m sorry,” he said. “I miss you. I just wanted you to know that. And…”
“What?” she said. She opened the door a bit.
“I’m sorry.” Her eyes, he saw, brimmed with tears. She missed him! She still loved him! “May I come in?” he asked. “Please?”
She moved back. He entered. The TV blared from the living room, showing the end of some weepy romance. Hugh Grant skidded across a room, a bunch of red roses in his hand.
“Are your parents here?” he asked.
“They went to a play.”
“Good,” he said. “I wanted—I needed—to talk to you. Alone. I love you, Joanne.”
She bit her lip and said nothing.
“Look,” he said. “I brought you something.”
He began to unwrap the cavalry saber. As soon as she saw it, she’d know what it meant to him, to them, and then she’d come to her senses and everything would be perfect. The saber would do it. The creature had promised.
But when she saw what he held, she flinched back.
“Get out!” she screamed. “I’m sick of you and your swords! Get out!”
He stepped forward, and she hit him. He blinked in surprise.
She hit him again and again, flailing wildly, shrieking and screaming
“Now!” the creature commanded.
And he swept the saber up, backhanded, cleanly severing her head. Blood sprayed across the far wall in a huge, silent arc. Her body slumped, twitching; her head bounced a dozen feet, then fetched up against a the coffee-table and stopped, grinning back at him with an impossibly happy expression.
He hacked at her body again and again, stabbing, chopping, killing until blood flowed like water underfoot and the creature inside him roared its approval.
And then her chest lay open and he saw her heart. It pulsed briefly, then lay still.
“No,” he whispered. What had he done? He shuddered. “No!”
He knelt and hugged her body close. Her heart came out in his hands, and he cradled it to his face, softly whispering of his love.