9 Tales Told in the Dark 3 Read online

  I sighed. What a place, what a bunch. I decided I needed a long vacation. “Anyway,” I said, “we’re all right. Call the police if you wish. I say we vacate the premises.”

  Theresa obviously preferred by plan, but she turned to her man for his response. He gazed at the body for long moments, then snapped alert. “Impossible,” he roared. “Understand this, Mr. Harrow, whether you believe it or not: the guardian is awake and aware, and active on our planet. Our insane host called it up to do his bidding. Look there, down the slope past the parking lot.” My God, how had I missed that big hole, like the mouth of a tunnel, with chunks of solid rock scattered before it? Of course I knew: it hadn’t been there before. Vorchek said, “It burrowed out of its granite shell, clawed into the trailer-- perhaps the door was too small for it-- treated with Mr. Thrushwaite, munching on Madame Larisha in the meantime. Now man and monster are driving away from us. With such power at his beck, why would he run?”

  “Thrushwaite heard the shot,” Theresa opined, “and maybe more. He guessed we were loose.”

  “And might interfere,” Vorchek surmised, “which indicates that his incantations are not complete. He is buying time. It fits. We must pursue, overtake, defeat.”

  “You can’t be serious!” I screamed.

  “Miss Delaney,” He said crisply, “fetch Mr. Harrow’s gun. I will pull your car around. Sir, you are a free agent, but I beg for your help.”

  It should be clear that I refused, that I laughed at him, mocked his fears, laughed at them all and scooted out of there in my own good time. Of course that should be the rest of the story, but with all that talk of guardians and gates, of magic crosses and spells a kind of spell possessed me, and I didn’t forget the telling sound effects, either. In a minute we were packed into Theresa’s sporty coupe, she at the wheel, I at the passenger window, Vorchek squeezed between, barreling down the dark, precipitous mountain road after the madman; after him, and perhaps-- if the professor was right-- who ever kept company with him.

  That girl drove like a demon on that rugged road, granting me a few unwelcome thrills at sharp curves. We hurtled through a murky wonderland in which images flared in the headlights and then vanished forever. In my state of mind I didn’t credit half of what I saw, the way those hoodoos seemed to shift and shimmer and lurch forward from the sides of the road where the snow had been heaped in low walls by the plow. I hadn’t remembered them standing so close to the track, nor leaning into the road in the menacing fashion they did now. Then one toppled forward, crashing to earth across the bare dirt, almost completely blocking the way. That thing must have weighed tons. Theresa shrieked, but she spun the steering wheel until I thought it would break off, ricocheted off the snow bank, whipped us back onto the road like a pro. I overheard Vorchek say to himself, “It could be coincidence.”

  No sooner had we struck pavement than our lights picked up the trailer dead ahead. The obvious question arose in my mind. “What now, Professor?”

  “We ram him, drive him off the road.”

  “That’s nuts,” Theresa exclaimed. “He’s ten times bigger than we are. Besides, do you have any idea what this car is worth?”

  “He dare not risk it,” Vorchek replied. “Bring him to a stop, whatever it takes.”

  The girl said something grossly unladylike, gunned the engine. I would have argued the point if granted the time. Instead I braced myself as the rear end of the trailer swelled to fill my vision. It began to swing slowly through a switch-back. We impacted, a bruising jolt, catching it near the left rear wheel. We bounced, our right front sorely crumpled. Theresa regained control, poured it on once more. Again we struck, and this time our prey ground to a complete halt.

  At Vorchek’s command our driver stopped the car. The headlight beams still slashed the darkness. “Everyone out,” yelled the professor. “Mr. Harrow, oblige me by subduing Mr. Thrushwaite. Surely you can easily take him.”

  I could do that much. Out I went, Vorchek tumbling out behind. I dashed to the side of the trailer, inching toward the cab. The driver’s window was rolled down. I was almost along side when a pistol protruded from the interior. I darted back as it fired. So he packed a piece as well. Another shot boomed from my left and rear; I snapped back a glance, saw Theresa in fighting stance. I rolled to the ground, sprang up before the windshield, hearing Thrushwaite’s screechy voice crying, “It can’t be! I’m so close! It mustn’t be! Just a little more time!” I fired, one shot dead center, and the human shape in darkness behind the wheel jerked, sagged into a motionless heap.

  As I checked Thrushwaite’s vitals-- a mere formality in his case-- I heard a shout, almost a scream, from some point behind the cab. Theresa cried, “The professor is in trouble!” and scampered around back waving her gun. I dashed after her, my thoughts spinning like an exploding galaxy. “Isn’t it over? Shouldn’t it be over? What, really, could harm Vorchek now?” The rear of the trailer had slued off the road, the back door barred by tenacious branches, and as the girl exclaimed, “It’s locked!” I could shoot it open, but that risked injury to the man inside. I pondered for an instant, noting with a thrill of genuine fear the looming presence of two hoodoos very close in the darkness. I hadn’t remembered any down this far.

  “This side is bashed open,” I yelled, charging around to the gaping hole. A hideous voice assailed my ears. Light flashed within that black maw; a flashlight in hand. It was Vorchek, crouched against the desk, staring into the hollow space beyond my vision. I sprang inside, landed in a squat, saw what he focused upon. My brain went hot and dry like an over-baked potato. It couldn’t have been a live thing; nothing looks like that. How could it be alive, yet not resemble anything I’d ever seen or heard of before? I fired once, twice, emptied the pistol, and the indescribable form-- not quite the same from one moment to the next-- turned from Vorchek and came toward me, or extended itself, or protruded something, in some fashion became agonizingly nearer. I heard another scream. I’m afraid it was my own. The thing spoke-- was there a mouth in that mass?-- my mind began to unravel.

  Vorchek held up a hand and loudly uttered gibberish, three unique words or weird sounds. To his chest, partly concealed in his open coat, he clutched something that gleamed in the wavering light. His utterance had an immediate effect. The sickening lurker in the trailer contracted-- yes, that’s the word-- it folded upon itself, red eyes blazing as it hoarsely croaked and bellowed, then appeared to move sideways-- move, not step-- and then it was just gone. There was only Vorchek and I in there, with Theresa’s wondering face peering through the gap at us.

  She called, “You got it under control, Professor?”

  A hoodoo crashed to the ground at the tree line. It made her jump. I laughed crazily.

  A little later, after a lift back to the empty house, I reclaimed my rental car. Vorchek, from inside the girl’s coupe, said, “I suggest that we go our separate ways. This episode has been debilitating enough, without compounding the adventure by broaching the subject to the authorities. I presume, Mr. Harrow, that you are not officially here?”

  “I’m already officially gone,” I said. No one had mentioned it, but even in the dark I could tell that Thrushwaite’s house was sagging, the walls leaning in as if its foundations had been undercut; foundations of solid granite. I didn’t mention it. “Nothing happened here. I can tell that lie with a straight face.”

  “That is wise. Miss Delaney, let us go.”

  “See you, Johnny,” she said with a flippant wave.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I cried. “We’re forgetting the Cross of Xenophor. What about the cross?”

  Vorchek clutched protectively at a bulge in his coat. “What about the money?”

  I grinned. I hoped he was a saner man than our late host. “You folks take care,” I said.

  Theresa gunned the motor, and they sped away down the treacherous mountain road.

  THE END.

  BESS-----By John Grey

  Johnny parked his car in the driveway of
Dale’s raised ranch house. Funny how he’d run into Dale that afternoon. It had been years since they last spoke. Probably right after college. Johnny went to Chicago to pursue his career in medicine. He did his internship at a large suburban hospital, started a private practice in a northern lake-side community. Dale dropped out of medical school and headed right back to Crooked Bend to…what was it Dale did anyhow?

  “Gotta come over. Meet Bessie. You won’t believe how beautiful she is, Johnny. You gotta see her. Man, she’s fantastic.”

  Johnny wasn’t sure why he’d returned to Crooked Bend. He was never one for nostalgia. But there was always curiosity. And not even he was immune to that. So, one free weekend, for no particular reason other than nothing else to do, he drove south a hundred miles to the place of his birth.

  “I wonder how much the old town has changed,” he thought to himself.

  And it was when he was strolling down Main Street and stopped to peer into the window of Patterson’s department store that he realized that absolutely nothing had changed. Same shops. Same bank. Same diner. Same Chinese restaurant.

  That took him all of a few minutes. So what to do next? Drive that hundred miles back? Dale Coogan put a stop to that. He spotted Johnny from across the street, recognized him instantly.

  “Come on Johnny, I’ll buy you a beer. Wait a minute. You never were a beer drinker. How about a scotch?”

  “Sure, a scotch,” he replied.

  “Just gotta make a call to the old lady. Tell her I’ll be late.”

  Dale muttered into his cell phone for five minutes or more, out of Johnny’s hearing.

  They stopped in at the bar. Donovan’s of course. It looked no different from the night of Johnny’s first legal drink, ten or more years before. But after one round, Dale suggested they go back to his place. He had beer in the fridge. He had scotch. And he had Bessie.

  The Coogan home was middle-class, neatly-kept which surprised Johnny because Dale had always been such a slob. The lawn was cut. The curtains in the window went with the fresh paint on the outside. The flower garden sparkled colors in the early spring afternoon. Johnny figured that Bess must be quite a champion home-maker.

  “So how long have you been married?” Johnny asked as he followed Dale through the front door.

  “Married?” A weird look crossed his face. “Oh Bessie and I ain’t married. She just lives here.”

  Johnny tried to slip his old buddy that kind of knowing glance from years before but his eyes wouldn’t cooperate.

  Dale ushered him into the parlor. They both sat and talked for some time. Dale fiddled with the television remote, accidentally turned the large flat-screen on every so often, then quickly turned it back off.

  “Don’t suppose you want to watch anything,” he stammered. “You must excuse me. Don’t get to see much of the old crowd any more. Everybody’s moved out. You’re in Chicago. Shack’s out in…where the hell did Shack go? No one ever comes back to Crooked Bend. Not even for a visit. That’s why I’m surprised to see you here. Not that I blame you or Shack or…there’s nothing here. I’m just fortunate that I got someone like Bess.”

  Dale had certainly changed from what Johnny remembered. He’d been something of a wild guy, footloose, not the type for settling down. He had a different girlfriend every week and was an inveterate card and prankster. Dale was smart sure or else he would never have gotten into medical school. But he lacked Johnny’s dedication. He was too busy having fun.

  “So how long have you and Bess known each other?”

  “Let me see. I want to say ten years. First year of college we met. Yeah, that was it. You must have seen her around.”

  Johnny’s mind drifted back to those university days. His recollection shuffled through names and faces as if they were a pack of cards. But not one of them was a Bess. Dale laughed at the puzzled look on Johnny’s face.

  “Elizabeth Pryor. Remember?”

  The name didn’t ring any of Johnny’s bells.

  “So what have you been doing with yourself?” Johnny asked.

  “Little bit of this. Little bit of that.”

  “Nothing to do with medicine?”

  “Oh no,” replied the other. Johnny detected a trace of nervousness in his voice. “I learned soon enough that the doctor’s life was not for me. It wasn’t the blood and guts and all that. That don’t bother me one little bit. It was the emotional stomach I lacked. You know me, Johnny. I always liked to look on the bright side of shit. How do you tell someone that there’s nothing you can do for them? They’re going to die and that’s that.”

  Johnny admitted it wasn’t the choicest part of his job but, so far, it had only happened to him the once. And there was the other side to his profession: the lives saved, the beaming face on a patient when he hears those magical words, “You’re cured.” For Dale, that could never make up for the terminal cases.

  “You know, meeting Bess in college was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Johnny cast his thoughts back to the Dale Coogan of ten years before. He found himself agreeing with his old friend that he’d made the right decision. Dropping out was the smartest thing he could have done. He had no future in medicine. Why waste all that money. Johnny clearly remembered that very high-strung Dale cringing in the background as the class followed Doctor Wexler around the wards of Crooked Bend General. Johnny’s love for medicine, his great desire to be part of that honored profession, was forged in such visits. To hold the withered hand of a cancer patient who was trying to draw strength from a novice’s boyish assurances made him feel like he could make a difference in the world. But it didn’t happen that way for Dale. He couldn’t face the ones who had no hope of recovery.

  “I thought too much about death in those days,” Dale continued. “It wasn’t fear but a sheer abhorrence of it – what it did to both the living and the dying. I didn’t want to be part of that cycle, not other people’s, not my own.”

  “I don’t want to sound too obvious but we all have to confront it sometime or other.”

  “I know. I know. But I’ve tried to make it as easy for myself as possible. I have no family. No real friends. There’s just Bess and I. We aren’t afraid of death because there’s no way it can possibly hurt our relationship.”

  Johnny was puzzled at the line the conversation was taking. He both wondered and worried about what was going on in Dale’s head. All this talk about death. It couldn’t possibly hurt their relationship, he’d said. Johnny wondered if that meant he’d found religion. Maybe Bess had set him on the path to Jesus.

  But he felt more comfortable steering the talk away from the church and back to their time together in medical school. Both of them had followed the same route out of Crooked Bend High. If Dale didn’t come anywhere near finishing his degree, they’d certainly had some fun times together. Keg parties, practical jokes, run-ins with the cops and the school administration – they were all a part of it. And, strangely, the more they reminisced, the more the name Elizabeth Pryor began to sound familiar to Johnny. Although, at first, it had drawn a blank, he couldn’t ignore the fact that yes, somewhere, at some time, he had been familiar with that name. He rummaged through the past as best he could, but the face, the context, refused to come into focus. He could easily whip up fond memories of the lovely Amy Sinclair. And gentle, caring, Chrissie Winter – not a problem. Madcap Jessie Lyons – he never forgot her – she was crazy fun back in the day. But Elizabeth Pryor would not come clear for him. For all he struggled to remember, she remained out of reach.

  “I think it’s time,” said Dale, “that you met the little woman.”

  Johnny’s curiosity was piqued. If she’d been home all this time the two men had been chatting, then she must be incredibly shy. Why else would she have stayed in hiding, not showing herself for a least a simple introduction? But that was Dale. Even in medical school, he had been full of little secrets. Why would he be any different now? Maybe the joke is on me, thought Johnny, and Be
ss is nothing more than his pet hamster.

  He hadn’t heard any noise in the background. And the house wasn’t all that big. Maybe she was taking an afternoon nap.

  “Don’t wake her if she’s…”

  “Oh no problem, Johnny. You just wait here.”

  “You know you never did say what business you were in now.”

  “Didn’t I? Oh of course. I thought you knew. Taxidermy.”

  Dale exited the room. Johnny could hear his footsteps on what appeared to be cellar stairs. His thoughts lingered on that word “taxidermy.” Dale had used it before, long ago. And in somewhat bizarre circumstances. Johnny could see a room with bright white walls and ceiling. In the center was a stretcher. On the surrounding cabinets was a selection of shiny steel implements. It was an operating theater.

  Suddenly, he remembered where he had heard of Elizabeth Pryor. No, not “heard of” but seen. It had been on a name card. And in that room. The card was attached to a drawer. He could hear his instructor’s voice in the background. “Don’t worry. She won’t bite.”

  He had opened the door gingerly. Surely Dale had been with him. He recalled turning to catch the expression on his friend’s face. Surprisingly, Dale was quite calm. It was Johnny whose hands trembled that time, who was having difficulty pulling open the drawer and staring into the cold, graphically inhuman face of a corpse.

  She died from a drug overdose. Nobody wanted her body. “Let the medical students have her,” some distant cousin snarled. It was Johnny’s first autopsy. He shuddered at the thought of dead flesh. It was one more reason why he pledged to do whatever he could to keep his patients alive.

  “Elizabeth Pryor,” he muttered to himself. “No, it can’t be. Her remains were incinerated long ago.”

  Dale and he had done the job under the watchful eye of their teacher. They opened her up. They handled and, in some cases, mishandled every internal organ. Their mentor poked and prodded as Dale and Johnny named names. Johnny steeled himself against throwing up. Dale was obviously enjoying it. They struggled to replace everything in its proper place in the body. Then they roughly sewed Elizabeth back up.