Ravenous Ghosts (18 page)

"
Rachel, I really think we should get ready."

She shakes her head, her lips tight.
"We'd never make it."

A frown.
"What?"

"
I've always tried to be as open as I can with you, Bill but I haven't told you certain things because I didn't think they were important. Now I know that was a mistake though I'm not sure what difference knowing would have made. He'd find us wherever we went."

Bill
's eyes narrowed. "Who's 'he'?"

"
Jeff. An old boyfriend of mine from high school."

For now, the wind has died down and that preternatural silence has turned the air to crystal. The sound of the clock ticking hangs in the corners of the small room--an ice pick chipping into the shadows gathered there.

"I loved him and I truly believe he loved me."

Bill, trying to look interested, nods for her to continue and checks the time.

"Until he raped me."

Her husband braces his hands on the arms of the chair as if he
's about to rise, but doesn't. "My God, Rachel. I can't believe you didn't tell me that. How awful."

"
More than once," she says, her voice hollow now, like the wind.

"
Jesus. Did you report him?"

"
Oh no. I couldn't do that. He'd have killed me."

Bill shakes his head, brings thick fingers over his mouth.
"God."

"
Eventually we broke up but he never stopped chasing me.
Never
."

"
Why are you telling me this now?"

Rachel looks directly into his worried eyes.
"Because he's coming here. Tonight. That's who was on the phone."

Bill reacts as if she
's thrown ice water into his face and suddenly he's on his feet and stomping toward the hall. "For Chrissakes Rachel. What the hell kind of mess have you dumped us in now?"

"
Bill, you don't understand. Please wait!"

Ignoring her, he flings the door open; muttering and chewing his unease into digestible chunks, his robe fluttering in the breeze his haste has conjured.
"I'm calling the cops. Jesus Christ, this is insane. You told me it was a wrong number. Why would you lie to me? And speaking of numbers, how did he get ours?"

There isn
't room to argue, so Rachel does the only thing she can think of. She sidles past him and with a vicious tug, rips the phone line from the wall. Like a headless snake, the black cord swings pendulously in her hand. She turns back, a triumphant look plastered on her pallid face. Bill stares at her in abject horror.

"
What…what did you do
that
for?"

"They won't be able to help us. Bullets or restraining orders won't work on the dead."

Bill drops the phone. It clunks to the floor, narrowly missing his bare feet.
"I'm going to fetch Doctor Simmons. You're ill." The light flickers.

"
No, listen to me. I couldn't call the police when he raped me because my father would have killed us both."

"
What?"

"
The man…the
thing
coming here tonight has killed everyone I've ever tried to get close to. I thought…I thought it was over when I killed
him
."

A sound begins in Bill
's throat, a low whine; the inner vacuum perhaps that is sucking the vitality from his face. When his mouth opens at last, he begins to back away, his eyes colder than any autumn his wife has ever seen. "Please don't tell me you believe any of this because if you do I'm afraid I may be losing you."

"
Please," she says and steps toward him but a flutter of angry hands stills her. "You have to understand. I loved him. We loved each other but I never meant for it to be like this. He was supposed to stay dead!" The light flickers again, hums an unfamiliar tune.

Bill
's back slams against the front door, his eyes wide and glassy with pain. "Tell me this is some sick joke. Tell me you're making this up or…"

"
Or what?" They both turn toward the source of a new voice; a voice like an overflowing storm drain or the laughter of children heard through the blades of a combine and Bill's eyes widen for he has heard the voice but is oblivious to the sight of the speaker stepping from the living room. He only hears the voice and knows it is not his.

But Rachel sees. Rachel watches nightmare, memory and fantasy weaving itself into a walking patchwork of shadow, the only focal point in this swimming darkness a razorblade grin from which cerulean light flickers. She is horrified for all the wrong reasons. Horrified because the sight of him excites her. And now she knows she has missed him.

"Who said that?" Bill croaks, pushing himself so hard against the door it groans beneath his weight. "Did you hear it?"

But Rachel will not, cannot answer. Inside her trembling body, something stirs.

She watches, fascinated, repulsed, aroused as the shadow drifts across the hallway and leans in close to her husband, who looks frantically around for the source of his crippling dread. "Oh Jesus, Rachel what's happening? Where's that s-smell coming from?"

The shadow whispers into his ear.
"That darkness, Billy boy…" and Billy shrieks, a high-pitched explosive burst of utter horror that sends him sliding to the floor, urine soaking the front of his robe, a steaming river trickling from between his legs. He is blind to the specter in front of him and it is this very transparency that grants him a glimpse of something infinitely worse.

Rachel, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her eyes glassy and fixed on the whisperer, feels an irresistible urge to go to this seething semblance of memory. Though she is horrified, it tugs her close and she is no longer fully sure that she is struggling against it.

"That darkness," the invisible thing, the unseen horror towering over him hisses, "is her brother."

"
Rachel, help me?" Billy whimpers and his hands twitch. He feels a cold pressure against his palm as his hand is forced to the floor.

Rachel almost floats across the carpet, tears trickling down her face even as a low sensual sigh pours from between her moist lips. Helpless, she moves toward the specter and watches her brother, her
lover
placing the heel of his boot atop her husband's hand. The shadow turns with the sound of snapping twigs and she sees him smile.

"
Baby," he whispers and takes her with a force much stronger than the wind that is suddenly raging through the hallway. Her cry is short.

The lights are snuffed out.

SOMEONE TO CAR
VE THE PUMPKINS

It seems that most horror writers are obliged to tackle Ye Olde Halloween Tale at some stage in their careers. Ray Bradbury set the precedent (for me at least) with
The October Game
, a chilling piece of work we have yet to outdo. William F. Nolan's
The Halloween Man
was another great entry, and anything Steve Rasnic Tem has set
On Halloween Street
, is guaranteed to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

While
Someone To Carve The Pumpkins
is nowhere near the range of the aforementioned greats and is itself one of the oldest tales in this book, I have to admit I'm still quite fond of it.

I have no memory of what it felt like to live by time. To have my days and nights governed by something beyond my control.

I stand on this old porch and watch, listening to the dying screams of terror the breeze will soon carry away. And I wait.

They will come again, I know. They always come back, just never all the way.

* * *

"Is that her?"

Joe nodded.
"Told you didn't I? A ghost. A real as you or me, just like I said."

Chuck frowned and hunkered down beside his younger brother. He felt ridiculous hiding behind the hedge like a kid running from bullies, but if the old lady really was a ghost then he didn
't particularly want her dead eyes focusing on him.

"
She doesn't look like a ghost to me."

Joe looked at him as if he
'd just cussed their mother. "Are you crazy? 'Course she does."

"
She just looks like a regular old lady to me. Besides, ghosts are meant to be scary. Why is she just sitting there instead of trying to scare people?"

Joe
's watery blue eyes were wide as marbles as he nodded at the leafy wall. "She's haunting that house!"

Chuck raised himself up enough to peer over the hedge. His knees creaked in protest.

The full force of the cold October breeze made his eyes water. He blinked away stinging tears and looked across Maiden Street.

She was sitting on the porch of a house they had always thought long abandoned.

He found it a little strange that there were no pumpkins to detract from the oaken gloom of the old house. It was Halloween after all and even the weather was playing its part to establish a deliciously sinister mood; burnt-orange leaves skittered along the pavement like giggling children and misshapen orange heads with candles for brains dotted the decks and porches of every house along the street.

Every house except
hers
.

She sat on a rocking chair beside the torn screen door, knitting something that might have been a child
's sweater but looked to Chuck like oatmeal hanging from wickedly sharp needles. Her pallid face was scrunched up in an expression of concentration or worry. Her clothes looked dirty and old, a black shawl draped over her bony shoulders. The longer he watched her, the more he convinced himself that Joe was wrong about her. She wasn't a ghost. If anything, she looked more like a witch.

"
Where are the pumpkins?" he muttered.

Joe thumped a fist on the grass.
"She doesn't
have
any pumpkins 'cause she doesn't
need
them. What would a ghost need a pumpkin for?"

"
Maybe she doesn't believe in Halloween. People who don't believe in things don't usually celebrate them, do they?"

Joe, still crouched on the ground with his chubby fingers splayed between his legs like a catcher at a baseball game, chewed his lower lip.

"But she has to be a ghost, Chuck. I mean she sits on that porch day in, day out. Sometimes late at night you can hear them needles from all the way across town, click-clicking like nobody's business."

"
You think she's a ghost because she likes to knit?"

The excitement on Joe
's face faded a little and Chuck decided it couldn't do any harm to let his brother have his ghost.

"
Okay, so she's a ghost and she's haunting our neighborhood and we're the only ones who know about it, right?"

"
Right," Joe said with utter seriousness.

"
Then we have to do something about it."

Uncertainty flickered in the vibrant blue of his brother
's eyes. "What are you talking about? What can we do? We're just kids."

Chuck grinned inwardly.
"I'm gonna go over and tell her she has no business knitting and scaring people if she's supposed to be dead."

Joe grabbed his brother
's ankle. "No! She'll--" He shrugged and gesticulated with his grubby hands but the words wouldn't come.

"
She'll what? If she really is a ghost then she can't do anything to me, right? All she can do is say 'Boo!'"

Joe tugged harder at his brother
's jeans and Chuck pulled away from him.

"
C'mon Joe! Why don't you come with me and we'll both tell her to go back to wherever her body is?"

Joe shook his head so hard and fast Chuck thought it would fly off.
"I'm scared of her, Chuck. You should be too. It's not right to mess with ghosts."

Chuck felt a pang of pity for his brother and considered forgetting the whole thing, but his own curiosity compelled him to introduce himself to the old lady, if for no other reason than to ask why she didn
't have any pumpkins out on Halloween.

"
I'm just going to go say, 'hello'."

"
Don't," Joe whispered.

"
Aw c'mon. Don't you think ghosts have better things to do on Halloween besides sitting on old porches knitting?"

The sky over their heads was a cold gray, the wind moaning high above them as if caught in a snare of clouds.

Chuck sighed and tousled his brother's dusty blond hair. "Okay. If you stay here and be my lookout, I reckon I'll have nothing to worry about. You can holler if it looks like she's about to change into a monster or something."