Dark Screams: Volume Two by Robert R. McCammon, Graham Masterton, Richard Christian Matheson Page A
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tangible as footsteps that drew closer. Beneath the human cries she thought she heard a moist crackling, like a scab lifted from a half-healed wound.
But she saw nothing now, and hadn’t seen much before on that tiny screen. Maybe it had been only his finger over the lens. The man’s insanity had influenced her, broken through a sense of reality already stretched thin by the tension of unannounced tragedy. She was susceptible.
Susceptible enough to see something now, too, a tear in the space between them, like the flashes of light before a migraine. It seemed to concentrate near the man’s chest. His arms steadied, one hand wrapping in a fist. His face flushed and his feet lifted on tiptoes, chest heaving upward. The man’s eyes glazed in horror, and his body trembled as if something were being pulled out of him—the strip of film she’d imagined earlier, ripped from a camera and overexposed to a shock of bright light.
Too much. Too much for him. He dropped, lifeless, to the floor.
“Thank you.” The voice came from behind her, a familiar, slightly effeminate trill. Robert’s friend was here, as he’d made himself appear previously, but seeming false now, too close to the stereotype of an older gay man. He smiled at her, and Michelle wondered what stereotypes would fit his true identity. His head should tilt slightly down, heavy from the weight of horns. The rustle of leathern wings and a forked tail should flow behind him, his long legs balanced above cloven hooves. Unpleasant as these images seemed, they were at least easier to grasp than the blurred mass of discolored flesh and muscle she’d glimpsed in the tiny camera display. Or the full-size version—invisible, mercifully—that had sludged its way across the tile floor.
“Another time, perhaps,” he said. The man she had known as Robert’s friend walked past her with a confident stride, his shoulders no longer slumped under the weight of feigned grief. Michelle did nothing to stop him. Instead, her mind flashed images of a sick mother in a hospital bed, her fingers curled through arthritis and clenched pain; in a similar bed, a similar room, a man she didn’t quite recognize, his face handsome and soothing, and the sight of his decline filling her with unbearable remorse; and a smaller figure in a glass-enclosed crib, the infant body wrapped in heavy blankets, and she wonders (then? now?) if God could be so cruel to let her finally carry a child to term, to name her, love her, only to watch her fall to sickness before the baby has even learned to walk. Michelle can never trust anyone in these hospital rooms—the doctors, nurses, other visitors to the intensive-care floor—because she’s learned that kind faces can lie, that even a frail, welcoming form can betray you. She wouldn’t know how to identify the demon again, doesn’t know his name or how to fight him, indeed knows nothing except to conceive of her life from this point on as an awful journey from one crisis of faith to the next, a series of horrible extended intervals of uncertainty in which she’s feeding him, feeding him.
If These Walls Could Talk
Shawntelle Madison
The October wind whistled past Eleanor’s ears, bringing an icy chill across her face.
“Let’s hope the inside of the property is as good as the outside.” She surveyed the morose landscape surrounding the three-level expansive Victorian farmhouse. The gray-brick house appeared fairy tale–like. Tall, yet bristly hickory and pine trees dotted the landscape, blocking out most of the overcast sky. Today was yet another test from her boss. Another assignment dropped in her lap that the senior art director let slip through the cracks.
After a long drive from NYC to southern Maine, she was determined to get the Foster farmhouse into shape before the production crew arrived.
“The pictures of the inside don’t do it justice,” her assistant, Gail, said with a smile. “C’mon, just look at this place!”
She
But she saw nothing now, and hadn’t seen much before on that tiny screen. Maybe it had been only his finger over the lens. The man’s insanity had influenced her, broken through a sense of reality already stretched thin by the tension of unannounced tragedy. She was susceptible.
Susceptible enough to see something now, too, a tear in the space between them, like the flashes of light before a migraine. It seemed to concentrate near the man’s chest. His arms steadied, one hand wrapping in a fist. His face flushed and his feet lifted on tiptoes, chest heaving upward. The man’s eyes glazed in horror, and his body trembled as if something were being pulled out of him—the strip of film she’d imagined earlier, ripped from a camera and overexposed to a shock of bright light.
Too much. Too much for him. He dropped, lifeless, to the floor.
“Thank you.” The voice came from behind her, a familiar, slightly effeminate trill. Robert’s friend was here, as he’d made himself appear previously, but seeming false now, too close to the stereotype of an older gay man. He smiled at her, and Michelle wondered what stereotypes would fit his true identity. His head should tilt slightly down, heavy from the weight of horns. The rustle of leathern wings and a forked tail should flow behind him, his long legs balanced above cloven hooves. Unpleasant as these images seemed, they were at least easier to grasp than the blurred mass of discolored flesh and muscle she’d glimpsed in the tiny camera display. Or the full-size version—invisible, mercifully—that had sludged its way across the tile floor.
“Another time, perhaps,” he said. The man she had known as Robert’s friend walked past her with a confident stride, his shoulders no longer slumped under the weight of feigned grief. Michelle did nothing to stop him. Instead, her mind flashed images of a sick mother in a hospital bed, her fingers curled through arthritis and clenched pain; in a similar bed, a similar room, a man she didn’t quite recognize, his face handsome and soothing, and the sight of his decline filling her with unbearable remorse; and a smaller figure in a glass-enclosed crib, the infant body wrapped in heavy blankets, and she wonders (then? now?) if God could be so cruel to let her finally carry a child to term, to name her, love her, only to watch her fall to sickness before the baby has even learned to walk. Michelle can never trust anyone in these hospital rooms—the doctors, nurses, other visitors to the intensive-care floor—because she’s learned that kind faces can lie, that even a frail, welcoming form can betray you. She wouldn’t know how to identify the demon again, doesn’t know his name or how to fight him, indeed knows nothing except to conceive of her life from this point on as an awful journey from one crisis of faith to the next, a series of horrible extended intervals of uncertainty in which she’s feeding him, feeding him.
If These Walls Could Talk
Shawntelle Madison
The October wind whistled past Eleanor’s ears, bringing an icy chill across her face.
“Let’s hope the inside of the property is as good as the outside.” She surveyed the morose landscape surrounding the three-level expansive Victorian farmhouse. The gray-brick house appeared fairy tale–like. Tall, yet bristly hickory and pine trees dotted the landscape, blocking out most of the overcast sky. Today was yet another test from her boss. Another assignment dropped in her lap that the senior art director let slip through the cracks.
After a long drive from NYC to southern Maine, she was determined to get the Foster farmhouse into shape before the production crew arrived.
“The pictures of the inside don’t do it justice,” her assistant, Gail, said with a smile. “C’mon, just look at this place!”
She
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