SOMETHING WAITS (19 page)

She sat up, staring solemnly at the dim outline of the bedroom door. “I can’t deny I feel the same, darling.” She swallowed thickly. “But I can’t stay with you tonight, Robert.”

She sat up, slipped to the edge of the mattress. He grabbed her arm. She turned and looked down at him as if praying he could dissuade her.

He talked then. He talked for a long time and he put everything he felt into his words. He talked about love and he talked about forever and he talked about two people standing together as one. He talked about life with her in his arms. He talked about the absence of life without her.

And when he was done, there were tears in his eyes and tears on her cheeks. She moved to him tenderly and placed a cool hand on his cheek and looked at him the way she’d never looked at him before. It was a look of great longing.

And then she ran.

“Glenda!”

She was out of the bed and at the door so quickly he hardly had time to be startled.

“Glenda!”

He vaulted from the bed, grabbed his jeans, leapt after her. But his legs tangled in the bedclothes, which dragged at him, pulled him down. He tore free and lurched for the living room.

In the small hallway he skidded to a halt, looking everywhere at once. “Glenda!” A frigid draft whipped his bare legs from the open front door. He rushed down the narrow corridor frantically, trying to hook his jeans. By the time he got organized he was in the parking lot bucking a black wall of Arctic wind. The fresh fallen snow bore no tire marks. Had she taken a cab here?

Peterson turned, heart hammering in his ears, lurched back to the lobby door. He’d call the police and get help: that was the thing to do! He rushed inside, started back to his apartment--noticed old man Marston’s door down the dim hall. It stood ajar. If Marston had a car! He bolted for the opening.

Peterson pushed inward, stepped inside.

It was pitch black except for a pale greenish light pulsing from somewhere ahead. “Mister Marston! It’s Peterson! Where are you?”

He made his way furtively through the gloom, feeling like a blind man for invisible objects, hidden furniture, eyes trying to bore into the darkness, penetrate indefinable shapes. He kept glancing down. A lake of emerald tendrils misted at his ankles, became a stream, guiding him. Then, a rich, overwhelming stench--searing his nostrils. Peterson craned away, gagging, covered his mouth, stumbled on. “Marston!”

That’s when—eyes finally adjusting to the gloom—he noticed the books. There must have been hundreds of them, thousands, virtually walls of them in all sizes and colors. A hedge maze of books, some in teetering stacks higher than his head. In the pulsing glow they swelled and shrank gelatinously, towering sentinels arranged in a kind of deliberate semi-circle just ahead of him. “Marston!”

Peterson’s moved closer, eyes burning, saw the fat, oriental floor braziers, oozing green smoke, one aligned at each end of a series of angular lines, a five-pointed star chalked crudely at room’s center. It was around this the towers of ancient-looking tomes looked down.

Something lay at the star’s center. A woman’s figure, supine and still sprawling the livid lines of chalk.

Or what had once been a woman.

Little remained of the face save a layer of parchment thin skin stretched mummy-like over protruding cheekbones, sunk deep in hollow eyes. The odor was terrible now. Her hair…

…
her golden hair spilled out like a halo around her…

Peterson’s mind went white.

There was movement behind him. He spun, found the old man hunched naked, an emaciated gargoyle. Yellow eyes burned anger and betrayal. A bony finger indicated the thing on the floor.

“An hour!” the old man hissed. “I told her to be back within the hour! She
promised
!”

The yellow eyes accessed Peterson’s bereft of compassion. “Died that night she left your home last March. Car turned over in the ice. I thought you’d like to see her one more time, I did, always glad to help out! But I can’t hold the spell past an hour! I told her to be back in one hour!”

Peterson sagged. Then chuckled insanely.

An hour. An hour.

It took him far longer than that to stop screaming…

For those interested in keeping track of such things, this story—this last one for
Something Waits
--was also the last one to appear in the original 1987
Twisted Tales
trade paperback. It’s only the second time the story has seen print and it wasn’t originally intended for that first collection. Back then, going over the material for
Twisted Tales
, I decided a couple of pieces might not be palatable to 1980’s reader’s tastes, some being derived from hairy chested men’s magazines of the decade before, a little raw around the edges for a family-oriented publishing house like Blackthorne. That none of them feels that way now is, I suppose, a sign of the times. But removing those stories, I felt, made that first collection slightly wanting in word count. It needed one more tale to fatten up the book. So I sat down in 1987 just before publication and penned (in long hand in those days) a story I’d been meaning to get to for ages. And that’s the one that follows.

As stated, many of the stories for this present iteration were taken (and refurbished in some cases) from the above mentioned
Twisted Tales
--but not all. Some that appeared in the old collection were left out of this new collection because I wanted the new book to lean most heavily toward my mystery/horror yarns (with the exception of “Pride of the Fleet”, I guess). In their place I’ve included some new stories—to my mind—some of my best.

Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of kind requests from fans to reprint the
Twisted Tales
short story collection in its original form. I often seriously considered it. That volume is long out of print and had a somewhat limited run to begin with. Some out there weren’t even aware of the stories, then or now. But after a time I realized their relative scarcity—including the terrific Richard Corben illustrations inside—lent a kind of nostalgic mystique to that first collection I hated to tarnish. Some people actually collect my stuff and might not be thrilled with the idea of making it readily available again.

Also, I was never very thrilled with the ongoing confusion generated by
Twisted Tales
the prose short story collection, and “Twisted Tales” the comic books. They had little to do with each other except having been authored by the same writer, but the identical titles sometimes caused trouble. EBay hopefuls sometimes purchased a book of short stories while expecting a stack of comics—and vice versa. To eliminate the problem this time out, I updated not only the stories themselves but the title as well. Adding the new tales to this latest collection further distances the two editions and offer a nice bonus to you faithful readers.

So, what you will hold in your hands (or Kindle, or Nook) with
Something Waits
is not a clone of
Twisted Tales
. Several stories from that now rare collection not included here are: “Roomers”, “Jessie’s Friend”, “Black Death”, etc. If you want to read those nightmares, you’ll need to dig up a battered copy of
Twisted Tales
online or at Half Price Books. Or, if this volume proves popular, wait until they’re included in yet another compendium of my early New York scribblings.

Meanwhile, here’s one more. If you have a Jones for yet more Jones, please feel free to sample (uh-oh: commercial coming!) my novels as well, gut-wrenching goodies like
The Deadenders
or
Shimmer
or
The Tarn
. Send one to a friend, they make dandy Christmas presents or…funeral tokens, or something: the gifts that keep on giving. Not unlike those to be found in private little clubs like the one below, that caters somewhat exclusively to

M
r. Conway had passed the little shop a thousand times without once thinking about it.

This does not mean he wasn’t aware of it. He was. He didn’t, in fact, much like it. But he didn’t think about it, didn’t dwell on it, because cold weather was cold weather and restless nights were restless nights and little porno shops at Central and Sixth were whatever in heaven’s name they were supposed to be and there was nothing much you could do about such things. Something about freedom of the press, Mr. Conway supposed.

So he ignored the freezing Chicago winters, suffered though the acid indigestion that too many bottles of
Sominex
can provide, and drove airily past the dun colored little porno shop. Every day. On his way to work.

Except today.

Today he pulled before the red street light that shared the corner with the dingy little shop as usual. Glanced casually askance at the shop’s front and the clumsy attempts at rhetorical seduction (
Beaver Books! Nudes! Must be 17!)
and snorted self-sanctification. What was the world coming to? Turned back in disgust to appraise the red light—now turning green—he depressed the pedal and shot away. About two yards. After which the car stalled a moment, then quietly died.

“Oh for God—“ Mr. Conway twisted the silvery ignition key again. Nothing. He twisted it three more times, imploring nonexistent vehicle deities, twisted some more, cursed nonexistent vehicle deities, cursed the guy behind him leaning on his horn obnoxiously, finally flopped back impotently behind the wheel in resigned defeat. The street light turned red again. The guy behind him kept leaning on his horn. Mr. Conway twisted at the stupid key again, banged his knuckles furiously against the wheel, finally rolled down his window to Arctic winds and signaled the jerk behind him around with a freezing arm. Retrieved his cell phone from his expensive Armani overcoat and punched in The Auto Club. Noticed the little screen was blinking up apologetically at him: BATTERY NEEDS CHARGING.

Well, he was going to be late for work, that was obvious.

Not, he supposed, that it mattered a great deal. He’d hand trained his hand-picked staff to practically run the place without him. Wasn’t he, after all, the boss? Didn’t he own the most successful advertising agency in Chicago? Didn’t he still gross millions annually while the rest of the country wallowed in recession? Damn right he did.

So a little stalled Boxter problem on a Wednesday morning of a slow work financial week was, in the scheme of things, hardly a crisis. He’d simply have to find a phone somewhere, call the Auto Club. Be on his way again before lunch. Meanwhile, Stan, his partner and right hand, could watch the store. Run the store if it came to that. Stan was a miracle. Stan was the greatest sales representative Mr. Conway had ever seen—ever hired. That was six years ago this month. In the interim months of remarkable growth, Stan had gotten out there in the field, dazzled and tap danced and secured clients like crazy, furnishing Conway and Associates with some of its highest paying accounts. Microsoft? Was it really true their company represented Microsoft now? Damn right it was. And wunderkind Stan Waterman was largely responsible. Had they made the cover of both
Fortune
and
Time
in the same week? Damn right they had, while continuing, in these economically challenged times, to run roughshod over the competition. Which is why Conway and Associates had gladly altered the logo on its company stationary to Conway and Waterman Associates, simultaneously cementing not only a new family member but a new family of blue chip accounts and Dow Jones averages. Oh, C. J. Conway knew how to pick ‘em, all right, where to find ‘em.
Instinct
, that was the answer. Like his father before him. He could find talent. He could find a panther eating licorice in a coal bin at midnight, as they laughed with him and patted his back at company parties. He could find anything.

But he couldn’t find a phone.

Not anywhere on the entire rundown, disheveled, freezing-ass block. Maybe because most of the block was boarded up or vanished under the wrecking ball. There was the greasy little Mexican grill way down on the corner; they had a phone, one of those old fashioned wall jobs with a rotary dial that was quaint as hell but kept spitting his quarters back indignantly.

Two blocks he wandered through the slush and cold and still could not locate a phone. A pizza parlor he tried had one, but not for customer; a dry cleaner had one but the phone company had shut them down, business was bad. A Chinese restaurant certainly had one but they didn’t speak a word of English no matter how insistent his gestures.