Horror Library, Volume 4 Page 4

  We passed a security checkpoint. The desk had been abandoned in a hurry, a cup of coffee and half a donut abandoned in the rush to flee the building.

  Leo pointed to a door at the far end of the short hallway. A clipboard hung under a small, wire-latticed window. Even from a few feet away I recognized the photograph that topped the medical charts and medication schedules. It was Otto Weissmuller, a few years older than the pictures in the newspaper photos after his arrest, but unmistakable: dark, wide-set eyes, thin, pointed brows, a receding hairline that rose like devil's horns.

  Leo checked his gun, stepped up, and unlatched the door. I inhaled, held the oxygen in my lungs, and shadowed him inside the cell. My feet and legs had gone completely numb. An unsettling detachment flooded my senses and I watched myself move without feeling the floor under my shoes, or the ache of my bum knee, or the weight of the equipment on my back. It was an obscene freedom; it was sickening.

  Silence greeted us inside the cell, as if even the noise of a collapsing, burning building refused to share space with the lunatic who lived there.

  Otto Weissmuller sat on the corner cot, head down, face curtained by a few scraggly strands of dark hair. He rocked forward and stared at us. "Deputy McNeiss, it's good for you to visit. Could you perhaps ask the ward nurse to kindly turn down the heat?"

  Leo straightened his arm. His pistol's aim was locked on Weissmuller's pointed nose.

  Fenley stumbled into the cell behind me, wobbling.

  "Tell me, Leo," Weissmuller said. "Why exactly are there two firemen here?"

  Leo lowered his gun and removed his breathing mask. "There was an inconsistency in the police reports. The initial report had you at five foot ten. The booking sheet listed six one."

  Weissmuller cackled. "I'm six one."

  Leo nodded, turned, and shot Fenley in the chest twice.

  I scampered back toward the door, but my legs buckled and I fell to the floor. I began to reach for my outstretched legs but my arms went rubbery and dropped to my sides. I couldn't even raise my head off the concrete. Inside the mask I screamed—just for a moment, until my vocal cords locked up. I couldn't even blink.

  Unable to turn my head or even shift my pupils, I watched Fenley's last breath escape his lips. His chest settled and the twin jets of gushing blood slowed to a trickle.

  Leo appeared overhead. He removed my breathing mask, sliding it over my head and letting the elastic tug on my ears before it snapped free. "Sorry, bud. Don't try to move, you can't. I injected Pancuronium Bromide into your oxygen filter. It's a muscle relaxant. The disorientation you've been feeling is normal."

  Weissmuller took my legs, and together they dragged me across the cell and propped me against the cot. Leaning down, Leo whispered into my ear, "His people have my daughter. What was I going to do? I help him escape, I get her back. Sorry you got put into play, man, but even as a kid you were an easy mark."

  He tore off my clothes, balled them up, and tossed them into the hall.

  Leo stood up. Weissmuller grinned. "You should Picasso up his face now, like my family told you. Just in case the fire leaves some flesh on him."

  Nodding, Leo pulled back his fist and brought it down. Though paralyzed, I felt the blow, felt warmth spread across my face, felt my skull vibrate, shockwaves fleeing from the epicenter under his knuckles. The second and third blows came just as fast. After that, I lost count, unable to tell when the explosion of pain from one punch ended and the next began. I heard wet slaps. I saw his knuckles glisten with my blood.

  He backed away and Weissmuller bent down and forced my mouth open with his thumbs. Reaching inside, he pried free my loosened teeth until my mouth was empty. Then he stood up, rattling them in his fist like pocket change before emptying his hands into the pocket of Leo's fire jacket.

  Weissmuller smiled. His mouth was toothless, too. He reached under his pillow, retrieved his own teeth, and forced them into my bloody mouth. Cackling through his words, he said, "Now my dental records are your dental records. Like a gift on your birthday."

  I wanted to spit his teeth out. I wanted to vomit. But nothing worked. I was an abandoned marionette dummy, a worthless human husk with severed strings.

  As they turned away, Weissmuller pointed to Fenley's body with both index fingers. "Drag that shit into the hall, wouldn't you? Hate to have the clean-up crew think I kept a dirty cell."

  Huffing, Leo bent down and wrapped his hands around the young firefighter's ankles. Still hunched over, he dragged the body out through the doorway. Weissmuller turned, flashed me duel peace symbols like Richard Nixon, and ducked out of the cell.

  I listened to their footsteps travel down the hall.

  A black spot grew on the ceiling as the fire burnt its way down. Grains of ash trickled down like fine black raindrops, building up like an anthill on the tile floor.

  Four quick gunshot blasts echoed in the hall, close together—desperate, frightened, wild shots. Then there were screams, like wailing pigs, shrieks of absolute panic.

  And then silence.

  The anthill of ash grew into a small hill. The cell darkened. At first I thought I was passing out, but no, the padded walls were wilting from the heat.

  I lay there waiting for a rain of fire to snake down through the hole in the ceiling and devour my flesh. So strange to panic when your heartbeat cannot quicken.

  I heard the clatter of running feet and for a moment feared that Leo and Weissmuller were returning to torment me even more. But there was too much noise, too many feet.

  They appeared in the doorway, twitching, heads jerking. Six men dressed in blue shirts and matching pants, each speckled with blood. I saw fear and frenzy in their eyes, but also hate and vengeance. I knew beyond question that these were patients from Red Ward.

  Moving like an ape with his arms swinging, one of the men bounced over to me and smiled a wild, uneven grin. He had braces, and bits of red stuck in the metalwork. Reaching down, he picked up my hand and shook it.

  Another of the madmen pushed him away and knelt down beside me. He never made eye contact, instead choosing to watch the mountain of ash growing beside us. "I wanted to meet you for a long time, Otto, and here we are, like synchronicity. Looks like they messed up your face real good, shit, but we took care of them. Jimmy, m'man, he bashed in that cop's head with a metal chair leg. So he ain't gonna hurt you no more, not with his head bashed in like that."

  The room darkened more, but this time it wasn't the walls. It was me.

  ***

  When I awoke we were in a van headed south. I don't remember being carried out of the hospital, but I do have a few hazy memories of the Red Ward boys carjacking the van. I don't know where we're headed, but I know that wherever they take me, I'll have to answer to the name Otto Weissmuller. I'd hate to think what they'd do if I told them any different.

  Lorne Dixon lives and writes off an exit off I-78 in residential New Jersey. He grew up on a diet of yellow-spined paperbacks, black-and-white monster movies, and the thunder-lizard backbeat of rock-n-roll. His short work has appeared in such venues as +Horror Library+ Volumes 2 & 3 Cutting Block Press, Darkness on the Edge: Tales Inspired by the Music of Bruce Springsteen PS Press, Traps DarkHart Press, Potter's Field 3 Sam's Dot Press, Dead Science Coscom Entertainment, Lilith Unbound Popcorn Press, Strange Stories of Sand and Sea Fine Tooth Press, and Dark Distortions Scotopia. His novels Snarl and The Lifeless are available from Coscom Entertainment.

  —GHOSTS UNDER GLASS

  by Tracie McBride

  Corey had discovered the first ghosts in a parked car near the bridge they usually slept under. David had run back to the stash of "treasures" he kept in a pilfered shopping trolley and had returned with a huge glass jar with a screw top lid. It was the kind of jar that looked like it should have a pickled fetus floating in it. "I'm gonna catch me one of those," he had said, patting the jar under his arm, "and keep it as a pet." They soon found more of them, all imprisoned within buildings or vehicles, but David
had yet to get brave enough to see what would happen if he opened a door and let one out.

  They walked past McDonald's, and Corey imagined he could smell fries cooking. He hesitated at the door. For no apparent reason, David started to laugh.

  "What's so funny?" asked Julia, but Corey could tell that she didn't really care what the answer was. She was too busy eyeballing the ghosts tapping on the window.

  A couple of the ghosts began to fling themselves against the door with all the strength they could muster, which was completely absent, and Corey took a step back. The ghost of a teenaged boy, his cap on backward, mouthed obscenities at Julia and gave her the finger. Julia reached out her hand and spread her fingertips against the glass. The ghosts flew into a frenzy, swarming across the window in a futile attempt to break through.

  "Cool," said Julia. "Like one of those lightning plasma ball thingies." Her eyes shone in the light from the crackling ectoplasm. Corey couldn't stand to look at them for more than a few seconds at a time; they made him feel nauseous. He slapped her hand away.

  "Don't tease them," he said.

  "Why not?" said David. "We know they can't get out. It's the only thing we do know. That, and the fact that we'd better figure out where we're gonna find some food without having to tangle with those." He nodded in the direction of the ghosts and hefted his jar nervously from side to side.

  "There's always vending machines. . ." said Corey.

  "Glass," said Julia abruptly. "They're all behind glass. Could be the vending machines are haunted too."

  "Nope," said David authoritatively. "I've got it all figured out. Wherever there were people inside last night—and that was just about everybody—they were wasted. Wiped out. Nuked. Ghostified. Whatever you want to call it. We were safe, see, 'cos we were sleeping outside." He nodded, obviously pleased with himself.

  Julia leant closer to the window and pressed her swollen belly against it. The ghosts froze for a moment, their phantom eyes stretched improbably wide, then renewed their assault on the glass, moving so fast they turned into a blur. David and Corey simultaneously yelled and pulled her away, one on each arm. The blur slowly resolved back into distinct shapes.

  "For fuck's sake, Julia!" said David. "You don't know what effect those things might have on the baby." Julia pouted and looked away. Her gaze stopped on a small stuffed toy left lying in the gutter, and she wandered over to retrieve it, David's reprimand already forgotten. David and Corey looked at each other and sighed. Julia's baby might have been Corey's, or it might have been David's, or for all they knew its father might be floating behind glass somewhere. But they had taken responsibility for her. Julia was special, a genuine, free-spirited innocent, or at least that was how Corey saw her. The way her mind was wired up, she alone needed full-time attention. He didn't want to think about how they would cope with her baby as well. The boys trailed after her. It had started to rain again, and they scuttled between shop awnings.

  "Look!" said Julia. "There's somebody else! A live person!"

  David looked up, swore, and pulled her into a doorway.

  "Sssh!" he whispered, clamping his hand over her mouth. "It's a cop!"

  "Yeah, but it's a live cop," Corey whispered back. "He's the first real human being we've seen all day. Maybe we should all stick together—you know, safety in numbers and all that."

  David gave him a withering look. "If you really believe that, then how come you're not rushing out there to greet him with open arms? Betchya it was some government conspiracy or fucked-up military experiment that did this, anyway."

  Corey peeped around the doorway at the cop, silently conceding that David had a point. The cop crept down the street away from them, holding his gun outstretched in shaking hands. As he turned the corner, Corey caught a glimpse of his wide, manic eyes. He ducked back into the doorway until they could no longer hear the cop's footsteps. They stepped out of hiding and headed off in the opposite direction.

  "So if we're not going to look for other survivors, what do you suggest we do instead?"

  "Maybe we could hotwire a car and head out to the coast," David said. "There's bound to be plenty of those million dollar beach houses sitting empty in the off season."

  "And if they're empty, fuckwit," said Corey, "their pantries will be empty as well."

  David scowled and kicked viciously at an empty Coke can.

  "Or we could go to my folks' place," said Julia. Corey started; he hadn't thought she was listening.

  "They went on holiday in Europe three weeks ago," she continued. She cradled a small purple teddy bear in her arms and stroked it as if it were alive. "They were supposed to be coming home on Sunday. . .anyway, Mum had a Natural Disaster kit, so there'll be plenty of tinned food in that."

  David gaped at her. "I thought you said your parents were dead."

  "They probably are now," she said, shrugging. "Every now and again they used to track me down. Give me some money, ask me to come home, tell me what's been going on with the family, shit like that." Corey nodded. Now that she mentioned it, he had seen her a few times talking to a well-dressed middle-aged couple, and once or twice seen money change hands, but he'd dismissed them as a couple of Christian do-gooders.

  "So let me get this straight," said David. He had wedged his jar between his feet and stood leaning slightly toward Julia, his hands gripped together behind his back as if to stop himself from forming them into fists. "You had parents. Parents who were alive, and who loved you, and who wanted you to come home. And you're eight months pregnant, and living on the streets with a pair of losers like us. Why, Julia? Why didn't you go home?" He spoke gently, but he trembled with the effort. Corey groaned and tensed in readiness, just in case David's volatile temper flared.

  Julia smiled sadly. Her hair had gone mousy and lank from the rain, and for a moment all her innocence seemed to drain away from her. She caressed her stomach, and muttered, almost too low for them to hear—

  "Daddy's not getting his hands on this one."

  ***

  The emergency kit at Julia's house proved to be more than amply provisioned, with the added bonus of a well-stocked freezer and a full gas canister on the barbeque. Corey and David finished off their meal with a generous slosh of cognac from the liquor cabinet. Even with the warmth of the alcohol suffusing his body, Corey felt weird sitting there with pictures of Julia as a child gazing down on him from the photos on the wall. It felt equally weird retiring to separate bedrooms to sleep instead of huddling together for warmth like they usually did. Corey sprawled on the bed and stared at the shadows on the ceiling. At some point he must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, David was shaking him awake.

  "It's Julia," David said. "I think the baby's coming."

  Julia's labour matched none of Corey's preconceptions. He had expected it to happen very quickly, and for there to be a lot of screaming. Julia was on her hands and knees on her parents' queen-sized bed, which was soaked with amniotic fluid. She reminded Corey of a cat he'd had as a kid who'd had kittens in his wardrobe. She stared blankly ahead, panting a little, and every now and again she would let out a quiet moan. Corey and David sat with her as the night melded into day. Sometime after noon she got off the bed and began to pace the room. Suddenly she stiffened, grabbed David by the shoulder, gritted her teeth, and yowled like a wounded animal. Blood trickled down her left leg. She drew a deep, shuddering breath and yowled again.

  "Do something!" yelled David, wild-eyed with panic.

  "What, what?" Corey yelled back. "What should I do?"

  "I don't know—go get some towels, or boil some water, or something. Do whatever the fuck they do in the movies."

  Corey fled the room. He huddled uselessly in the corner of the lounge and tried to block out the inhuman sounds coming from the bedroom. After one particularly long, loud, heartrending cry, the house fell silent. He crept back to the bedroom, afraid of what he might see.

  Julia sat on the floor in the corner of the room with her ar
ms wrapped around her knees. An umbilical cord snaked from between her feet, out across the blood-streaked floor to where it was attached to a tiny naked baby girl. The baby curled unmoving on her side as if still in the womb, her eyes screwed shut tight against the world. David stood with his back against the wall, clutching his jar in front of him like a shield. Before Corey's horrified eyes, the infant seemed to deflate. Its skin stretched tight over its frame, then disintegrated altogether, leaving only a mound of bones. Its rate of decay increased exponentially, until there was nothing left but a pile of fine, pale dust. A small, white cloud rose from the remains and coalesced into the shape of a newborn baby. Corey heard the squeak of metal against glass, and turned his head to see David remove the lid from his jar and launch himself across the room to scoop up the tiny ghost and slam the lid on. Momentarily the specter hovered in the jar, still curled in its fetal position. It raised its head and opened its eyes, glaring at them all through the wall of its glass prison with a malevolent expression of awareness. Julia crept toward David and took the jar from his outstretched arms.

  "My baby," she crooned, rocking the jar in her arms. The ghost drew back its lips in a gummy snarl and hissed silently.

  Corey smacked David across the ear with his palm. "What did you do that for, dickhead?"

  "I couldn't leave it just flying around in here," David retorted. "Who knows what it might have done? Anyway, it's all Julia has. Surely it's better than nothing." He glanced at the dust pile.

  Corey looked at Julia, still sitting in the muck of afterbirth, cuddling her macabre offspring.

  "No," said Corey, "I think nothing would have been much better than this."

  ***

  Between them, Corey and David managed to coax Julia into a bath and settle her into bed. She fell asleep almost instantly, still clutching the jar. Sleep came more slowly for Corey, and when it did, it was filled with disjointed dreams. He woke abruptly at 2 a.m. Someone was moving about in the kitchen. He got up and padded down the hallway.