Anathema (20 page)

Bob turned and was about to go back inside and finish breakfast, when he saw it. He hadn't noticed it before because of the sun was in his eyes.

The front door of Larry Taft's house was wide open.

So was the garage.

Odd.

Bob had been neighbors with Larry a long time. For years, Bob knew Taft's daily activities better than Taft himself. He knew what time Taft left for work
(eight forty-five)
and what time he came home
(six thirty).
He knew the night he grocery shopped
(Friday)
and what kind of beer he drank
(Miller Genuine Draft).
He even knew when the man picked up his mail
(right after work on weekdays; noon on Saturdays).
For Larry Taft to go off and leave his home wide open told Bob something was very wrong

Bob waddled across the lawn and up Larry's front porch. He stuck his head inside the open door.

"Larry? Larry Taft? You in here, Larry?"

There was no answer.

Suddenly, Bob had a thought. It plowed fast and hard into the front of his brain like a bulldozer slamming into a brick wall. What if the noise he heard hadn't come from the quarry, but from inside his neighbor's house? What if a bunch of punks broke in, hurt Larry, and were ransacking the place?

Bastards.

"Larry, it's me, Bob. I'm coming in."

Bob stepped into the entryway and frowned. Every light in the place was on. Larry never did that. Something was definitely wrong

Reaching behind the door, Bob grabbed the old baseball bat he knew Larry kept there. If there really were hoodlums in the house, he'd need something to protect himself in case things got ugly.

Bob raised the Louisville Slugger to his shoulder and took another step into the room. Then, the electricity went out, and the door slammed shut behind him.

On the other side of town, deep in Miller's woods, Jim Anderson, Jarvis Clark, and the others stood at the cave's entrance. They were oblivious to the town blackout, just as they were unaware that Larry Taft suffered a horrible death when his car embraced the electric pole.

The men had other concerns on their minds.

Chapter 28

Jim Anderson stared into the blackest black he'd ever seen. It was a thick, inky blackness that looked as solid as a brick wall.
If I step in there, I'll never come out.

Cal dropped the burlap sack he'd been carrying and opened it. “We're going to need these.” He took out four flashlights and handed each of the men one.

They turned them on. Bright white light shined from the lenses. Outside the cave, the light was almost too bright—like looking at the sun without proper protection—but Jim had a feeling that would change once they were inside.

They took a step forward.

"Wait a minute.” Jim opened the duffel and took out the last bomb. He didn't want to have to search for it in the dark cave. Besides, this way, he wouldn't have to lug the old, cumbersome duffel in with him. “All right. I'm ready."

Pastor Timothy, Jarvis, Cal, and Jim, linked arms and stepped into the mouth of a monster.

When Jim lived in California, when he had a family, they once vacationed in New Mexico. The highlight of the trip was their visit to the Carlsbad Caverns. The caves were the most spectacular sights he'd ever seen. They were also cold and damp, with the kind of dampness that chilled down to the kneecaps, even though the outside temperature was over a hundred degrees. He expected the same temperature sensation this time as well, but he was wrong. Instead of being cold and damp, the cave was hot and moist. It was like being inside a...

Say it!
That annoying voice in his head again.
Say it!

...a living thing.

He'd misjudged the size of the cave as well. From the outside, he speculated it couldn't have been more than fifteen or twenty feet deep, but now that he was inside, he sensed it was much larger.

Jim was right about the light, though. The flash beams appeared muted in the darkness, the bright white color faded to a dusty yellow. It was like all the energy was being sucked from them. Then Jim wondered: If the cave could do that to light, what could it do to humans?

Don't think about it.
But he couldn't help it. No matter how hard he tried, the thought spun around in his head like a familiar song he couldn't get off his mind. No beginning, no end. Over and over again.

Cal turned his flashlight on Jim. His face hung in the darkness like a ghostly apparition. “Are you going to be okay?"

"Yes,” he replied, “I'll be fine. I was just thinking about something."

Cal then trained the light on Timothy. “Do you still remember the way, Reverend?” It didn't seem right to address the pastor by his first name like they did in the outside world. In here, the preacher deserved the special kind of respect reserved for men like him.

"Yes.” Timothy's bodiless head nodded in the darkness.

Timothy shined his flashlight at the back of the cave wall, where it illuminated three corridors. The one they wanted was on the left. The opening was narrow; they'd have to enter single file.

"Well, let's get this over with,” Jim rasped. He was surprised he found the courage to speak.

The men moved forward, and the moist darkness surrounded them like a death shroud. Unknown to any of them, a pair of golden eyes followed closely behind.

Chapter 29

When the lights went out, it startled Bob, but when the door slammed shut, it scared him so that he dropped the bat.

Although the inside of the house wasn't nearly as dark as the cave, it might've well been. With Bob's poor eyesight, he had a difficult time seeing much further than the end of his nose. But he knew the door was right behind him, so he turned, took two steps forward, and grabbed the knob. Even though it turned in his hand, the door wouldn't open. It had slammed close with such force, it was wedged tight in the jamb.

Bob turned and fell back against the door. His right foot kicked the baseball bat, sending it across the floor and under the sofa.

"Larry? Larry? Are you here? Answer me, dammit!"

Perspiration trickled down the sides of his face, his mouth tasted like cardboard. He didn't like this. Trapped alone in a dark house, he felt like a fly entangled in a spider's web.

Bob had been in Larry's home often enough to know there was a phone on a plant stand about three feet in front of him. He could call the police. They'd come and get him out. They might have to break a window, or do whatever they do in cases like this to get in, but he'd gladly pay Larry for the repairs. He just wanted out.

Now!

Arms outstretched, Bob shuffled through the house like a blind man. He ran his hands across the back of the sofa until his fingers found the octagonal-shaped table. Feeling the shape of the phone, he worked his fingers around it and picked up the handset.

The light of the key pad spilled across Bob's round face and made it look like a ripening lime. He poised his fingers above the numbers and was about to dial 9-1-1 when he saw her by the stairs.

Millie.

His wife.

His dead wife.

She was dressed in a flowing gown the color of dirty cotton, and her skin was so translucent Bob saw the staircase behind her. An aura of cold, greenish light pulsed and rotated around her.

"Millie?” Bob croaked. His breath puffed in front of him in small clouds. The room's temperature had dropped to near freezing.

"Why? Why did you do it?” The specter's arms reached forward.

"I didn't ... mean to.” The phone slipped from Bob's grip and banged the tabletop. The dial flickered, and then winked out.

Bob Wright murdered his wife. Well, not really, but you couldn't very well reason with someone that was already dead. Like Bob, Millie also had a heart condition, only hers was much more severe.

Doc Addlerson prescribed both of them those little white pills they were to hold under their tongues when they felt an attack coming on. Millie kept her medicine next to her bed in an antique, silver pillbox.

One day last winter, Millie took ill, and Bob took over the household chores. He was cleaning the nightstand, when he picked up the pillbox and dropped it in his pocket while he tidied the tabletop. When he was finished, he intended to replace the things he'd removed, but became distracted by a phone call. When the conversation was over, he'd completely forgotten about the pillbox that was still in his pocket.

Later that afternoon, Millie had an attack. A bad one. She ran into the bedroom and her face twisted into a mask of horror when she couldn't find the pillbox.

"Bob! Bob!” she screamed, clawing at her chest with her right hand. “My pills! Where are my pills?"

Bob shot out of the bathroom, holding up his pants with one hand. “On the table where you always leav—” He stopped in mid-sentence. The pillbox was gone.

He did a quick search of the room, looking under the bed and around the table.

"Jesus jumped-up-Christ,” he muttered. His wife's face had turned ashen and white foam bubbled from her mouth.

Bob grabbed the phone, dialed 9-1-1, but before the call connected, his wife fell to the floor, dead.

Twenty minutes later, after the ambulance hauled her away, he found the pillbox right where he'd put it—in the watch pocket of his Levi's.

He tried to lock away the events of that day, but the guilt haunted him ever since. The past two weeks, the memory had been eating at him like a rat on cheese. He had trouble sleeping, and when he did, he was tormented by nightmares of Millie. Now she had come for him.

The specter moved forward, floating a few inches above the floor. As it did this, her gown billowed around her like it was blown by a gentle breeze, yet there was no air movement in the house.

Bob felt straps of fear clamp around his chest. His heart pounded wildly, missed a beat, and pounded harder. He flexed his left hand. An uncomfortable tingling had started in his arm.

Now, Millie's face peeled back to reveal a black, decaying skull. Worm-eaten eyes hung from their sockets by sinewy, rotting stalks. Hair grew in matted clumps on top of her head. Thick, puss-like goo dripped from the thing's cheeks and chin. Skin sloughed from the arms and hands, exposing the twisted skeleton.

This was the real Millie. This was the remains of a Millie eighteen months dead.

Bob's heart pounded like a worn piston. Each pump felt like a thousand nails being driven into his chest. Sweat coursed like a river down the sides of his face. His throat began to close.

Hissing, the Millie-thing came closer.

Bob squeezed his arm, trying to force the numbness out. He felt his chest tighten, as if steel clamps were squeezing his heart.

My heart!
Bob's mind screamed.
There's something wrong with my heart!

He took a step backward, tripped over the leg of the sofa, and tumbled. On his way down, he hit his head on the corner of the phone table, knocked it over, and opened a gash on the side of his face. He landed so hard on his backside, he bit off the tip of his tongue when his teeth came together. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth like a broken lawn sprinkler.

Crying, he crab-walked away from the Millie-thing. He backed himself into a corner, and the ghost continued to move steadily forward, closing the gap between the two of them.

Bob heard the blood rush through his head. Flashes of red pulsed in front of his eyes. The numbness he felt in his arm had traveled to other parts of his body: his legs, his feet, his buttocks. An odd wheezing sound whistled from his nostrils. Breathing was difficult.

The thing with a melting face kneeled down in front of him. Its breath was like a winter's wind and stank of the grave.

"Do you need your pills?” it croaked. An antique, silver pillbox appeared in its hand. “Well, I needed my pills too, but you kept them from me."

"But I didn't mean to!” Bob pleaded.

A bony hand closed around the tiny tin, and it disappeared in a flash of green fire. Then, the Millie-thing leaned forward and brushed Bob's cheek with its rotting claw.

Bob Wright screamed until his heart exploded.

Chapter 30

Darkness spread across the cemetery like oil spilled from a tanker. It caressed the headstones, shrouding the granite and marble markers in a veil of slime. Greasy fingers penetrated the ground. Darkness seeped into the caskets and covered the corpses within them.

Colors danced within the Darkness, moving faster and faster, as if driven by some unheard beat. Then, as if shocked by a jolt of electricity, the corpses jerked and opened their eyes. A puff of rancid breath issued from rotten lungs. They clawed at the coffin tops, tearing through the silk linings and scraping the worm-infested wood.

Above ground, the reanimated dead of those entombed in the mausoleum roamed the grounds, listening for the wails and scratching of those below. Hearing this, zombies would gather around the grave and scoop dirt away with their twisted, putrid hands until their comrade was free to walk with them. Until all those buried in the cemetery walked among the living.

Pete Underdahl closed the blinds, took off his clothes, and opened the bedroom closet. He took out a blue satin party dress and slipped it over his naked body. Looking at himself in the mirror, he frowned. Something wasn't right. Something was missing.

Opening a dresser drawer, he pulled out half a dozen socks and shoved them down the front of his dress.

Better.
He admired himself in the mirror again.
Much better.

Pete leaned forward and kissed his image, leaving a bright red lipstick smudge on the glass.

He walked into the living room. As the cool satin ruffled against his body, he felt himself become aroused. He turned on the stereo and found a station playing love songs. Pete closed his eyes and let the music wash over him.

Almost as if he were in a trance, Pete moved about the room, dancing with an invisible partner. All the while, the hot passion within him continued to grow, and he knew this dance would end like all the others.