The Frighteners (24 page)

“What?”

“Will you take another lucky dip into the suitcase beneath your bed? Maybe you’ll pick the wrong bottle and Patricia will be here with you forever.”

Old Lady Bartlett froze halfway down the stairs. Her eyes blazed with fury at the intruder.

“You’ve been in my room,” she said.

“The police might like to look in your closet, too,” Lucy said.

“You’ve been in my closet, too?”

“You have a gun in there, Mrs. Bartlett. It’s Frank Bannister’s gun—the one somebody used to kill his wife years ago.”

The old woman turned pale and ghostly white.

“I know Frank couldn’t have killed his wife, so who did it—you? Did you do it, Mrs. Bartlett? It happened just through the woods from here.”

Suddenly Old Lady Bartlett turned and bolted upstairs and ran into her room. As frightened as a deer, Patricia broke away from Lucy and ran after her.

“Mother! Mother, wait!”

Patricia, too, disappeared into the bedroom, and then silence closed in over the house. Lucy thought to run up after them, but then decided to wait downstairs for Patricia’s return.

Lucy paced back and forth in the downstairs hall. A cool breeze wafted over her, even though no doors or windows seemed to be open. She shivered and hugged herself, looking around uneasily. To one side of her, the wallpaper bulged ever so slightly before returning to normal.

From up the stairs came the faint sound of Old Lady Bartlett crying. Shortly thereafter, Patricia emerged from the bedroom. She stood at the top of the stairs, looking amazingly in control of herself. She smiled down at Lucy.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked.

“Yes,” she replied, starting down the stairs. “Mother wants to talk to the police. She has things she wants to tell them. She’ll be down in a minute.”

Lucy nodded reassuringly. Patricia reached the bottom of the stairs and gave her a hug.

“Thank you for coming tonight,” Patricia said, smiling gratefully.

Lucy couldn’t see it, but at that moment the Reaper stood by her shoulder, and the number forty-one glowed on her forehead.

“It’s no problem,” Lucy said. “I’m a doctor. We help people.”

The Reaper’s face contorted into Bradley’s face. Speaking to Patricia, who understood him perfectly, he said, “I want to kill her now, Patty! That’ll give us forty-one. That’s eight clear of Gacy, that idiot in Chicago who killed children and buried them in his basement.”

“That’s good,” Patricia said, speaking to Johnny but saying words that made Lucy smile anyway.

“You seem to be okay about it,” Lucy said.

“Another nine and we’ll have broken Bundy’s record,” Bradley went on. “I wanna see Ted’s face when he hears the news! That smart-assed college kid thinks he’s so smart. Wait until I tell him you and I wiped out his record.”

“Yes,” Patricia said excitedly.

A bit too excitedly. Lucy looked puzzled, and Patricia said quickly, “Yes, I feel better now that mother’s agreed to confess. I was just thinking out loud. Confession is good for the soul, don’t you think?”

Lucy nodded.

“Let’s wait in the living room.”

“Maybe we should call the police while we’re waiting,” Lucy suggested.

“No. I think we should wait for Mother and let her do it.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, allowing herself to be led into the living room and taken to an armchair. Patricia took a chair across the room from her and sat, looking composed enough to get Lucy a bit worried. This woman had been falling apart a moment ago. Her mother thought she needed to be sedated, and kept a batch of old pills around for that very reason. Yet here she was looking as content as could be.

Then Lucy waved aside her suspicions. After all that had happened, it was natural for her to be a bit jumpy.

Unseen by her, Johnny paced around Lucy’s chair, all wound up and eager for another victim. “That ass-wipe psychic nearly ruined it for us tonight, Patty,” he said angrily. “He made us look stupid.”

“You know,” Lucy said, “you don’t even have to stay in this house. It’s too big for you, and there are too many memories here. You could start your life over somewhere else.”

Johnny rushed over to Patricia’s chair. “That Russian cannibal creep is saying he did fifty-plus,” he said. “It reflects badly on us all, Patty. This record should be held by an American.”

“I quite agree,” Patricia said, smiling and looking straight at Lucy.

Johnny grabbed Patricia’s hand and ran it across his lips and up the side of his cheek. “I mean, that limey Jack the Ripper is the most famous killer of all time, and what did he do? Five hookers, or was it six? What the hell is that? But he went down in history.”

Bradley looked over at Lucy. “Come on, baby, let’s take her out.”

Lucy watched Patricia’s hand rise into the air and rotate in delicate movements. “I could help you, if you like,” she offered.

Johnny nuzzled Patricia’s ear. She giggled. Coming on top of the strange calmness and the odd hand gestures, Lucy realized that her suspicions might be justified.

“That would be nice,” Patricia said, getting to her feet. “I’m making some coffee. Want some?”

“We probably should be going,” Lucy said.

“Oh, Mother takes forever,” Patricia said. “I won’t be long.”

“Maybe we should call the police for her.”

“No. Let her do it. It’s important for her to do it herself. You just sit there and relax while I go get us some coffee. How do you take yours?”

“Milk, one sugar,” Lucy said.

Patricia walked by Lucy’s chair on her way to the kitchen. Johnny scurried along behind her and, as he passed by Lucy, sent up a slight but detectable breeze. It made her shiver, the way she did in the hall.

She craned her neck to watch the younger Bartlett woman as she departed.

Once in the kitchen, Patricia lost the cold calmness that she had been struggling to maintain. She said to Johnny in a loud whisper, “Patronizing do-gooder bitch!”

“You kill her, Patty,” Johnny said. “I’ll watch.”

“The nerve of her barging in here, trying to tell me how to run my life.” She imitated Lucy: “Your mother’s no good for you. She gives you too many pills.” Patricia giggled. “She’s keeping you captive here. She’s your jailer.”

Johnny giggled.

Patricia grinned and opened a drawer, taking from it a huge carving knife—the same one Old Lady Bartlett had used, unsuccessfully, to fend off the Reaper. The shreds of wallpaper hung still from the kitchen wall.

“I love to watch when you do it,” Johnny said. “It turns me on.”

“You
turn me on. This doctor, she wants to take me into her house! She thinks she knows what’s good for me.”

“You know what’s good for you, baby,” Johnny said.

Patricia nodded. “You’re good for me. You were forty years ago and you are now. I’m glad you’re back, Johnny. It was boring without you.”

“I missed you, too, baby.”

Patricia held the knife so that the blade was concealed along the side of her flowered dress. She headed back toward the living room. When she got there, she found Lucy browsing through the contents of a bookcase, examining the many old medical books left over from the sanatorium days, her back turned to the door.

Patricia gripped the knife firmly. Johnny was at her side. They were about to start into the living room when there came a loud knocking at the front door. Patricia froze, standing halfway between the front door and the living-room door. She slid her arm, and the knife, behind her back.

Lucy heard the knocking, too, and turned toward Patricia.

“Maybe that’s the police,” Lucy said.

“What?” Patricia said, stunned and unable to think.

“Maybe your mother called them from her room.”

“She doesn’t have a phone in her room,” Patricia said.

There was another loud knocking at the door. Patricia glanced in that direction.

“Don’t open it,” Johnny said.

Lucy walked toward Patricia, who looked as confused as she was the first time Lucy had seen her.

Seeing this, Lucy said, “Let me get the door for you.”

“I’ll get it,” Patricia said quickly.

She turned and opened the door. It was Dammers, standing on the doorstep, looking madder than a wet hen.

“Agent Milton Dammers,” he said, holding up his badge. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Patricia hesitated for a second, then, without warning, smiled and slashed him with the knife. She brought it across with a wild motion and amazing strength that nearly sliced off his hand and sent it flying—still holding the badge—into the night. Before Dammers could react, Patricia was stabbing him in the chest, over and over again.

Lucy backed away from the front door, a look of horror—and realization—spreading across her face.

“Go, Patty, go,” Johnny shouted gleefully as she gave Dammers one final thrust, burying the blade deep in his chest and then standing stock-still and watching as his corpse slipped off the tip of the knife and crumbled to the porch floor.

Johnny was laughing; then he grabbed Lucy’s arm and flung her against the stairs. She fell onto her back on the first few stairs and looked up in horror at something she couldn’t see but now realized was there—Johnny Bradley, the Reaper.

Patricia spun around and faced Lucy. The woman’s eyes were ablaze, and blood was dripping from the knife and leaving a trail on the floor as she walked away from Dammers’s corpse. Screaming, Lucy scrambled to her feet and ran up the stairs, with Patricia running after her, the knife held high in the air. And Johnny laughed, loudly and uproariously.

Lucy made it to the top of the stairs and dashed down the hall to Old Lady Bartlett’s bedroom. She ran inside, slammed the door shut, and turned the key in the lock.

“Mrs. Bartlett!” she called out.

Then Lucy spun around and saw the old woman’s blood-soaked corpse propped up in bed. A pool of blood spread out around her, soaking the quilt and running down to the hardwood floor.

Lucy put her hands to her mouth and screamed. She took a few, tentative steps toward the bed, then jumped back in horror to the door. Just then, Johnny’s face warped out of the door behind her back, then slunk back before she could see him. Then he slid out of the wall, blistering out the wallpaper the way he had done so many times before, this time clutching the blood-splattered kitchen knife in his paper hands.

This time she saw him and screamed again. Maybe she couldn’t see an emanation or a spirit, even a dark spirit, but she sure could see something that blistered out of the wall. She jumped out of the way as Johnny slashed at her with the knife, sending a spray of Dammers’s blood across the floor.

With a huge, sucking sound, Johnny warped back into the wall. Lucy ran to the center of the room and stood there, knowing the killer was stalking her from within the very fabric of the building. The silence was pounding at her. It was so quiet she could hear her own heart beat, and it sounded like a jackhammer.

For a split second Johnny’s face blistered out of the door, but only an inch or so, enough for her to see the evil grin adorning his face. Lucy spun in its direction, her breath catching in her throat. Then the face went back in and the room fell quiet again.

He’s toying with me, Lucy thought, looking quickly from one wall to the next, trying to guess where it would come from.

It came from behind her, from the wall opposite the bed. The wallpaper blistered out as it had done before and the knife slashed viciously at her head, slicing air an inch from her ear as she screamed and leaped forward. But she jumped too far forward, and tripped and fell into the end of the bed.

Lucy found herself gaping at Old Lady Bartlett’s bloody corpse. She gasped and pushed herself off the bed just as the bloodstained bedclothes blistered out into the form of Johnny and lunged at her. She screamed and hurled herself away from the bed, and once again Johnny’s knife slashed air.

Breathing hard, nearly gasping for air, she stumbled toward the window—the only part of the room the deadly figure hadn’t come from at that point. Between the bed and the window was an antique maple dresser; across the room from it, the closet and more wallpapered wall. Looking from side to side, Lucy edged toward the window.

That was when the wallpaper bulged out again, faster this time. Johnny stabbed at her chest with the knife, sweeping it back and forth as if he still had a scythe. His wallpaper arms stretched out far from the wall, so far it looked like they might break, as Lucy backed away screaming.

Then the sound of her cries was drowned out by shattering glass. The window blew inward, shattered by the force of a kick from a strong leather boot. Lucy gasped as Frank leaped into the room in a crystal shower of tiny fragments of glass.

“Lucy!” he said.

“My God, Frank!” It was him, not an emanation or anything else, and he had come to save her . . . again.

Johnny’s outlandishly stretched arm slashed at her with the knife again. This time Frank caught it, grabbing the arm and forcing it down on a jagged piece of glass that still remained upright in the window frame.

Pushing as hard as he could, Frank slid Johnny’s stretched wrist along the glass. He howled in pain as the glass cut through his wrists, slicing the wallpaper hand off. The now useless paper fingers dropped the knife. Frank grabbed it before it could hit the floor, turned it around, and slashed at the rapidly receding figure of Johnny Bradley. He slipped back into the wall, screaming all the while.

Frank threw away the knife and grabbed Lucy.

“Thank God you’re here,” she said.

“I couldn’t leave you.”

“It’s you . . . really you, not a ghost?”

“As real as can be. Let’s go.”

Their ears rang with the sound of a gunshot. A hole appeared in the bedroom door just above the lock.

“Quick . . . the window.”

He pushed her out the window and followed her as a second gunshot blasted the lock out of the door. The splinters sprayed across the floor, reaching even to the bloodstains that dripped from the corpse on the bed.

Running as fast as he dared in the moonlight, Frank led Lucy along a narrow balcony that skirted the house on the bedroom level. From there they reached a narrow, cast-iron bridge that connected the house with the old hospital grounds.