The Frighteners (18 page)

“Where has your mother gone?”

“Today is market day. She drove down to the A&P. She’s usually gone for two or three hours, but could come back at any time.”

Lucy was taken into an old lady’s bedroom, dark even at the height of day. From the light of the brass lamp by the door, Lucy was able to discern a meticulously clean bedroom the floor of which bore no trace of the end table and telephone that had been mangled within it just a few nights before. The bed was covered with an old but plush quilt trimmed with yellow fringe that reached right down to the floor.

Patricia knelt beside the bed and lifted the edge of the quilt. Underneath was a big old suitcase with frayed brown leather bound by brass straps. With Lucy’s help she slid it out and opened it up.

Lucy was horrified to see boxes and boxes of old drugs and medicine packed haphazardly in yellowed cardboard containers, stained with leakage and mold. There was Stelazine, lithium, Deloxene, as well as dozens of other tranquilizers, antidepressants, and other such drugs.

Lucy examined them in disbelief. “These are forty years old,” she said.

“Mother says they’re perfectly safe to take,” Patricia maintained.

“Which ones does she give you?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know, Dr. Lynskey. She just gives them to me. There are red and pink ones, purples ones, and sometimes yellow ones. Occasionally pink and sometimes white. A lot of white ones, come to think of it.”

“Your mother shouldn’t even be in possession of these. She’s not a doctor.”

“It’s okay,” Patricia said. “They came from the old hospital. My father was the administrator.”

“It’s not okay, Patricia,” Lucy said. “Your mother has been illegally sedating you.”

“But I need my medication,” the woman insisted.

“What you need,” Lucy said softly, “is a life of your own.”

At that moment they heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, the stones crunching beneath the tires. “My God, it’s Mother.”

“So what, Patricia? You should stand up to her.”

“I can’t. You don’t understand.”

“You’re a grown woman, for God’s sake,” Lucy argued.

“You could never understand,” Patricia stammered, getting to her feet and hurrying out of the room.

“Where are you going?” Lucy said.

“I have to see.”

She ran down the hall and the stairs. Lucy heard her footsteps receding. As she listened Lucy noticed a bundle of yellowing photographs tucked down into the back of the suitcase. She plucked one out and held it up to the light. It showed Johnny Bradley smiling evilly at the camera, one arm wrapped around a young Patricia’s waist.

Lucy heard the sound of Patricia’s footsteps running back up the stairs and hurriedly put the photo back.

“It’s mother,” Patricia said in a panic as she stood in the bedroom door.

“You’re not allowed to see the doctor?”

“Please! She mustn’t know you’re here.”

The front door opened and shut. “Patricia?” Old Lady Bartlett called.

Her daughter was terrified. “She’ll kill me. I’ve got to hide you.”

The stairs creaked as the old woman plodded up them. Patricia looked around frantically, then ran to her mother’s closet. “Hide in here,” she whispered.

“In the closet? You must be joking.”

“I’m begging you, Doctor,” the terrified woman said. “Please hide in the closet. I’ll take her into the kitchen and then you can sneak out.”

Lucy hesitated for a moment, then decided to go along with the ploy. But before she was finished with the suitcase, she scooped up a couple of packets of pills. Then she hurried into the closet and pulled the door shut behind her.

Patricia ran to the bed and shoved the suitcase under it. Then she quickly sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap innocently.

The old woman paused to catch her breath at the top of the stairs, then plodded the final few feet down the hall. “Patricia?” she called.

“In here, Mother.”

The old woman peered into the bedroom. “What are you doing in my room?” she asked suspiciously.

“I thought I heard a noise. Then I got tired and had to sit down. You know I’ve been feeling tired lately.”

Lucy shrank back into a corner of the closet, her nostrils filled with the smell of fur and mothballs. She looked around, surprised by how much light leaked in through the generous spaces between the door and the jamb.

Patricia said, “Would you make me a cup of that hazelnut coffee, Mother? I really need something to pick me up.”

“Of course,” the old lady said. “Come down to the kitchen and you can help me put the groceries away.”

Lucy sighed as their voices faded and their footsteps receded down the hall and stairs. “This must be why doctors stopped making house calls,” she said to herself, and then her attention was caught by the glint of light off a metal object on the shelf above her. It was the muzzle of a gun.

Lucy reached up and carefully took the gun from its hiding place. She turned it over and over, inspecting it in the light coming from outside. It was a lever-action Ruger with a slender barrel—a .22. Engraved on the barrel, in cursive script, was the name
Bannister.

Stunned, Lucy slid the gun back into its hiding place. Her mind raced. She had found the gun Frank had supposedly used to kill his wife. That in itself made little sense, as Dammers had described it. Was she expected to believe that Frank bought a gun, had it engraved, crashed his car,
then
shot his wife using the gun with his name on it, then hid or lost the gun, and then walked around in a daze? All that was difficult enough to swallow. But what was the gun doing in Old Lady Bartlett’s closet so many years later?

Confident that no one was watching, Lucy let herself out of the closet and crept to the bedroom door and listened. She could hear the sound of people talking and cabinets opening and closing in the kitchen. Walking on tiptoe, she collected her medical bag and moved cautiously down the hall, wincing with every creak of the floorboards.

She thought, This is for sure why doctors don’t do house calls anymore. Maybe she
should
accept that offer to work at a health maintenance organization. To be sure she would make less money. But the patients would have to come to
her,
and she wouldn’t have to spend more than five minutes with each of them. There would be no more skulking around old houses dealing with crazy old women and guns.

Outside, Ray had been pacing back and forth, terrified by his vision of the Bartlett House as an open sore yet too scared to do anything about it. For a time he sat in the car, where he couldn’t see the house. But then his curiosity—and his concern for Lucy—got the best of him, and he wandered back. He peered around the corner of the outbuilding behind which Lucy had parked her car and watched as the very timbers of the big old house bled ghost blood.

“What a nightmare,” he said to himself.

In life Ray had never been a fighter. Sure, he looked the part. He kept himself in shape and pumped up, and he even earned a slight living as a personal trainer, almost, but not quite, working with Sheriff Perry. Around town, Ray was thought of as a macho kind of guy, one who always wore clothes that showed off his muscles. But he had never been in a fight, let alone a fight for his life. It seemed odd to him that fate had waited until after his funeral to involve him in a life-or-death struggle.

But Lucy had walked into that terrible house innocently, obviously not seeing what he had seen. To him it was a place of the devil or someone like him. To her it was just another old house. Bannister was right, Ray thought with chagrin. This emanation stuff is more complicated than I thought.

With that, Ray Lynskey puffed up his chest, flexed his muscles, stepped out into the open, and walked toward the house.

“I’ve got to get Lucy out of there safely,” he told himself. “Even if she can’t see or hear me, I’ve got to do something to save her. What’s the worst thing that could happen to me?” he asked. “I could get killed?”

Ray was about to go up the front steps when there came from behind him a terrible wind, like a tornado but moving much faster. It was cold like an arctic blast and moving with the speed of light. Ray spun around and saw the Reaper moving up the front driveway toward him and, Ray was sure, toward Lucy.

“What the hell is that?” he stammered.

The hooded creature slowed when it saw Ray, then came to a complete halt at the sight of this emanation standing in front of the house. It stood, shimmering blue and black light and radiating evil, glaring at Ray with those slitlike yellow eyes.

Ray realized the time had come for him to stand up like a man. It was his wife who was in danger, after all, and if he hadn’t been able to do much for her in life, he could at least help her in death, maybe give her time to escape or something. Ray knew he had to stop that thing from getting into the house. He folded his arms and stood his ground, blocking its way.

The Reaper hissed, a sound that reminded Ray of a viper he had seen on TV. “You’re not going in there,” he said.

The creature reached under its cape, pulled out its staff, and tapped it firmly on the ground. The curving steel blade popped out and locked into place with a metallic click.

“Jesus Christ,” Ray swore.

It was too late to run. He cocked his fist and threw a punch at the thing. The Reaper moved slightly to one side, a motion so fast Ray could barely see it. Then the blade came down on his arm and he screamed and tried to cover himself up. Back and forth went the blade across his body, cutting him to shreds, leaving his ghostly body crisscrossed with slashing scars and bleeding like the house behind him.

It was over in a flash. The Reaper retracted the scythe and put the staff back under its cape. Then it turned and, moving as fast as before, swept up the steps and into the house.

Lucy was sure that each creaking step she took was as loud as a rifle shot. Still she moved steadily down the stairs, carrying her bag, her pocket bulging with stolen old pill bottles. Patricia and her mother were still talking in the kitchen. Lucy couldn’t hear their words, but the smell of freshly brewed coffee was wafting up the stairs.

She was unaware of the presence that was watching her and, in fact, circling her. The carpet bulged slightly to the right and the left of her feet. The wallpaper also swelled out in a blister that followed her down the stairs. Even the old oil paintings on the wall swelled out as if pumped up with helium.

With just three steps to go to the front door, Lucy was sure she was home free. Then suddenly Ray staggered in through the door . . . screaming. She couldn’t see or hear him, but he was slashed across his face, his arms and legs, his torso. Ectoplasm drained out of the cuts, the life-force spilling onto the floor.

“Run, Lucy!” he yelled. “Get out!”

He slumped in pain at the foot of the stairs, clutching the newel post. Lucy had one step to go to get out of the house.

“I tried to stop him, honey,” Ray moaned.

Then he heard that wind again, the same tornado sound he’d felt outside. He twisted his pain-filled head and looked up the stairs in time to see the Reaper in full view, sweeping down toward him and his wife.

“Go, honey, go!” he yelled, and with his last breath grabbed the creature around its ankles. That held it up long enough for Lucy to get out the door. She swung the door open and stepped into the fading daylight, a safe place for a time. But Ray screamed and screamed as the Reaper once again pulled out its scythe.

Unaware of what was happening right behind her, she ran across the front of the Bartlett House, around the corner, behind the outbuilding, and got into her car. The hour was growing late and the shadows long as she put the car in gear and started down the drive. And she was still unaware when there came a ghostly thump and Ray’s lifeless hulk was thrown violently onto the hood of her car. Like a slippery, empty wet suit, it slid off and onto the ground as the car swung toward the gate and the road beyond.

Lucy drove away, glad to be putting distance between the Bartlett House and herself, and had no idea she would never be visited by her husband’s emanation again.

Fourteen

T
he same kind of long shadows that swept over Lucy as she drove back down the hill fell upon the sheriff’s office as Stuart and Cyrus slid through the doors. It was just after the shift change, and many of the officers were out on the street or on their way home. As a result, headquarters was sparsely staffed. Only a few deputies went about their jobs as the two emanations walked in.

“Man, cops make me nervous,” Cyrus said, looking at the fat deputy behind the reception desk.

“I never had any contact with them,” Stuart said. “Apart from a traffic ticket once.”

“What did you do, double-park outside Roy Rogers roast beef?”

“Actually, he tagged me for going a hundred in a sixty-five.”

“What were you driving in those days?” Cyrus asked.

“A Viper.”

Cyrus picked up a flyer advertising the annual sheriff’s office clothing drive to benefit the poor, then dropped it, letting it flutter down in the middle of the reception area. Swearing, the desk officer, to whom Cyrus was, of course, invisible, had to get up and walk around to pick it up. He then stood there, trying to figure out where the draft was coming from. He walked to the front door, opened it, saw there was no wind, then shrugged and went back inside.

“Man, I forget that you had money as well as brains.”

“I had a buck or two,” Stuart said proudly.

“If you was so smart, how come you couldn’t figure out a way to take it with you?” Cyrus asked.

“Believe me, I tried.”

“If you did, Frank wouldn’t be so broke now. At least, you could bail him out.”

“So here I am, ready to help
break
him out. If I had any idea dying would turn me into a criminal, I would have stayed alive.”

They continued on through the wall and through the squad room. As they walked past a succession of desks at which the deputies and two secretaries worked, papers flew into the air. A scramble to pick them up followed.