HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (22 page)

“
He may win
his way back to heaven, that’s what bothers you so much.
You’re jealous and full of envy because you have never
understood the heart or what love might be. Once you knew love, when
you loved your Creator, but you threw it away. Now you only love
yourself.”

Angelique had
nothing to say about that. It was a fair summary. She turned her
back on the ghost and tried to leave, but it was as if her feet were
mired in deep mud. She swore and struggled, and suddenly realized she
was dreaming.

She turned back to
the old woman’s shade. “You’re dead and this is
just a dream.”

The old woman
smiled. “But I have powers, you already know that. You don’t
think I can haunt you if I want?”

“
Ridiculous.”
Angelique had taken many lives over the hundreds of years she had
been in the child body. Not once had a victim come back, even in her
dreams.

“
They weren’t
like me,” the old woman said, as if she’d read
Angelique’s thoughts.

“
What do you
want?” Angelique put her hands on her hips and scowled.

“
I want to
watch you fail. I want to see that very much.”

“
Well, you’ll
be disappointed because I won’t fail. I never fail.”

“
Oh, you
failed once. And it took you into darkness. Remember? Remember
that?”

The dream changed
and for the first time in eons, Angelique found herself standing
beside Lucifer and behind them the hundreds of other rebellious souls
who had risen up against the Creator. The skies were rent with dark
clouds boiling like no earthly storm. This celestial storm was full
of the raging faces and the black wings of angels in revolt. Anger,
new to angels, had changed their wings, giving them the color of the
empty black void where they would be banished.

The scene, just as
it had been when it happened, caused Angelique to experience a fear
beyond understanding. She was virtually paralyzed with it.

I can’t dream
this, she thought. I can’t experience this again.

She fled in her mind
and in her dream, seeking the sweetness of pure, silent, empty
darkness. The old woman had done this!

She woke, sitting
bolt upright in the bed, the last of a terrified scream leaving her
open mouth. If the old woman appeared here now, she would kill her
again. She would flay her alive, pull out her entrails and drape them
over her shoulders, take her lips and tongue and invite her to speak,
use her eyeballs as missiles to throw against the wall.

“
Damn you,”
she whispered, glancing around the shadowed room as if she might see
the miserable ghost from her nightmare.

She threw back the
quilt and hurried from the haunted bed. Before dawn she was back on
the road, heading west.

CHAPTER 24

AT THE BOTTOM OF
MOUNTAINS

As Nick disembarked
from the bus, bone weary and tired, he shaded his eyes from the sun
overhead. Salt Lake City lay in a valley, a flat bottom bowl of land
where he could see standing mountains in the distance. The other
weary travelers from the bus shuffled into the station to change
buses, to call relatives or friends or cabs to pick them up, or just
to catch a smoke before the next part of their journey. Nick stood
outside on the sidewalk. He only knew one thing. He did not want to
be here. He had enough money to get another ticket and knew he had
to. This place resonated with confusion and an abundance of shadow,
as if the people living here believed deeply but were deathly afraid
of their god.

It was just a
feeling, but the farther away from Angelique Nick moved, the more he
was able to decipher his feelings and relied on them the way a
successful gambler relies on hunches. He couldn’t stay here in
Salt Lake. He had to move on.

At the ticket
counter he vacillated on destination until the clerk said a bus was
leaving in thirty minutes for Nevada. He bought the ticket and
slumped into a wooden platform chair to wait.

He stared at his
shoes and tried not to think, but the thoughts came anyway.

She’s on her
way. She’s coming.

Nick’s head
jerked up in surprise. He had heard those words in his mind, not in
his ears, but the voice wasn’t his own.

“
What?”
he said aloud.

A middle-aged woman
with a kerchief wrapped around her head sat next to him. She glanced
over and frowned.

She found me and
killed me. I told her nothing. But she’s coming.

He knew that voice.
It belonged to the beautiful soul of the bottle tree woman.

Again, Nick hung his
head, knowing he was being contacted even though that had never
happened, even when his wife died. Either he was growing more
powerful, with more supernatural abilities, or the woman speaking to
him was now passed over and had been given the power to speak to the
living. Either way he knew it was true. Angelique had killed his
friend. And Angelique was coming.

How close was she?
Had she found traces of him at Peeple’s Grocery? Was she even
now climbing into a bus headed north?

He did not know if
he would ever be free of her. She was a monster and, after some time,
he discovered he was not. He wasn’t like her at all.

A small person, a
little half man, crossed the open bus station lobby and now stood
before Nick.

Nick raised his head
in question.

“
You going to
Nevada on the next bus?”

“
Yes, I am.”

“
I’ll
sit with you, if that’s all right. I'm going too.”

“
Well, sure
you can.”

The little man held
out a short, stubby, child-sized hand. “I’m Jody and I’m
a midget, not a dwarf. I’m thirty-one years old and I like
women, no matter their size.”

Nick’s
eyebrows rose at all this personal information. “Okay,”
he said, not knowing what other reply he could make. “My name's
Nick.”

Jody jumped onto a
seat to the left of Nick and put his feet up on a black bag. “Nobody
likes midgets, but they don’t like strangers like you either.”

“
Strangers
like me?”

“
What’s
your story?” Jody asked. “You’re good looking and
have a normal body. But no one in here wants to get near you. I see
that woman who had been sitting next to you got up and left. She had
a look on her face that I’ve seen before. A lot of times. From
women, mostly.”

Only now did Nick
notice the woman in the kerchief had moved and now sat forward three
rows in the wooden waiting seats.

He shrugged. “Beats
me,” he said.

“
Oh, come on
now, you know what it is,” Jody said.

Nick was not sure he
was happy this little man had sought him out and meant to ride with
him on the bus leaving in a few minutes. He sure was persistent. And
more than a little perceptive. In some ways he reminded Nick of the
bottle woman, the same woman who now was talking to him in his head
about her untimely death.

“
I’m a
little odd, I guess,” Nick admitted. “Some people pick up
on it.”

Now that he had
gotten a confession, Jody moved on with his conversation. He asked,
“So what’s in Nevada?”

“
Not sure yet.
A job, maybe.”

“
Or another
bus ticket?” Jody asked.

“
Curious
fellow, aren’t you?”

“
Let’s
say I don’t get to talk much, people think I’m such a
freak they won’t talk to me. Sorry, if I ask too many
questions.”

“
No one’s
a freak on this earth,” Nick said. He hadn’t meant to
make such a statement, but the little man must know life in any form
was beautiful. Nothing living was repulsive, no matter how small, how
stunted, how disfigured.

Jody cocked his head
as he stared at Nick. “You take everything so seriously,
chief. You ever lighten up?”

Nick laughed then.
It was true, he was so in love with life on earth that he treasured
humans more than they could understand. It made him an enigma, and
maybe it felt dangerous to others. He should always think before
opening his mouth.

“
I don’t
know any jokes, if that’s what you’re asking,” Nick
said, grinning.

“
I know some
midget jokes, but they only make you smile, not laugh, since they’re
such small jokes.”

Again Nick laughed,
liking Jody more than he first thought he might.

“
There you go,
that’s better, chief.” Now Jody smiled, his teeth
perfectly formed and perfectly white, his face and everything about
him was proportioned perfectly on his little body though his age was
definitely older than what his height predicted.

The station intercom
system announced the bus for Nevada and both Nick and Jody grabbed
their bags. “Well, here we go,” Nick said.

“
Yep, let’s
hurry to get a good seat.” With that pronouncement Jody hopped
off ahead of Nick, rushing through the door and for the bus.

Nick shook his head
in wonder. He hadn’t met so many interesting people in all his
time on earth this time. Probably because Angelique kept him on a
short leash, keeping him busy with business dealings and business
people, who he came to discover were quite ordinary and mannered
people. Out in the world, traveling by himself, he was finding
individuals that colored his life like confetti colors a birthday
party. Cut loose from business, from ambition to make money, cut off
from polite society and pretty much on their own, people were damn
interesting.

Once in the bus and
sitting next to Jody, Nick relaxed, letting his head fall back
against the headrest. He closed his eyes as other passengers claimed
seats.

“
That’s
right, chief, take a nap. I’ll watch your bag for you. Someone
tries to snatch it, I’ll head-butt them in the knees.”

Without opening his
eyes, Nick smiled. What a little comedian he was now traveling with…

CHAPTER 25

ANOTHER LINK ON
THE HIGHWAY

Angelique honed in
on the gas station-café in Texas. It had the same vibrations
emanating from it that had come from the bottle woman’s house.
Nick had been here. She felt his presence everywhere—on the
gravel around the gas pumps, on the handle of the door of the cafe,
on a stool at the counter.

Just inside the door
she paused, relishing the air conditioning. She’d have to wait
around here for a ride. Any further west by foot could mean death. It
was hot, dry, and deadly in West Texas. No place for a nice little
walk.

“
Know anyone I
could hire to drive me further west?” she asked, climbing onto
the stool at the counter where Nick had sat. The man across the
counter had eyed her from the moment she opened the door, maybe even
before she came inside. They were alone and Angelique didn't think
this place ever had much business.

“
Where's your
mama?” Ed asked.

“
She left us.”

“
Us?” Ed
looked toward the door.

“
My dad had to
go on ahead for a job that was waiting. He gave me the money to
follow.”

“
Alone?”

Weary of this old
fellow and his questions, Angelique reached out her small hand as if
to shake saying, “Nice to meet you, I'm Angelique.”

Ed tentatively took
her hand and when he did, his mind went blank as slate. Angelique
held onto his hand tightly, reading him as if he were a book, knowing
instantly he didn't know where Nick was going when he left. Satisfied
this was the truth, she spoke directly into the cafe owner's glazed
eyes. “I don't have time for lies and making you believe me. I
can't walk into that desert out there. I need a ride. Now you will
call someone to come drive me or you will drive me yourself, but you
will do one or the other of those things, do you understand?”

Ed nodded slowly,
but his eyes had not cleared and it was obvious he was no longer
thinking under his own power.

“
I'm waiting,”
she said.

“
I'll call
someone,” Ed said.