Dark Screams, Volume 3 Read online

  “Any of you family?”

  “No,” she said. “We’re concerned citizens.”

  Concerned citizens?

  He sighed. “Okay, so what’s the plan? What do you want from me?”

  Harris stood up. Some of the others did, too. The sisters. An old couple in back.

  “We want to hurt you, Mr. Daniels,” Harris said. “Hurt you the way Elizabeth was hurt, the way Linda was hurt. Linda lived two blocks away from me. She could have been my little sister. She was a lovely, sweet young woman. And you helped kill her. We’re going to take you somewhere you won’t like and hurt you bad.”

  He almost laughed. He did smile.

  “Sorry. But you can’t,” he said.

  “Of course we can. You can yell and scream all you want. There’s nobody around to hear you. It’s a Saturday. We’ve given the janitor a little something to take the day off.”

  “Fine. You still can’t.”

  “You want to tell me why the hell not?”

  “Sure. Congenital analgesia,” he said. “You can hurt me but you can’t hurt me, if you know what I mean. I can’t feel pain. Never have.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Eleanor Bradley. She was on her feet now, too, glaring up into his face.

  “You’re right. It is. I used to worry that I’d bite my tongue off while I was eating. I’d take a fall and wonder if maybe I’d broken my leg.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not. Look. Here.”

  He dug in his pocket and handed her his lighter. Held his left hand out to her, palm up.

  “Light it and hold it under my hand. Let me know when you figure you’ve done enough damage. I’ll wait.”

  It wouldn’t be his first second-degree burn. He’d had to consider this problem all his life.

  She hesitated. Then flicked the Bic.

  Her hand trembled. His burned. He could smell it. Burning hair smelled a little like rotten eggs, he thought. He couldn’t feel a thing.

  “Christ!” she said, and slipped her thumb down off the lighter. She shook her head.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “If you can’t feel pain, how can you possibly write pain?”

  “Imagination,” he said. “Something you people seem to lack. Plus, I read up. Let me ask you something. Were you planning on killing me? Because if you were, you haven’t thought this through. You kill me, all my books go back into print big-time. Including this one.”

  He held up a copy of The Neighborhood.

  “Not to mention the probability of you getting caught.”

  “We won’t get caught,” said Harris. “All the arrangements have been anonymous. We’ve used fake names. Disposable phones. Temporary phone numbers.” He sighed. “But that wasn’t the plan, no. Our intent is to educate you, to make you understand. We’re not murderers. We’re…Christians! Well, except for Rothstein over there. We’re…”

  “You’re ridiculous is what you are. Look, I’m sorry for what you consider your losses. But I had nothing to do with it.”

  He was being rough on them, he knew. If an entire room full of people could have a hangdog look, they did.

  He walked to the door.

  “Excuse me, son,” he said.

  Beard guy stood his ground for a moment and then stepped aside.

  In the car he realized he’d left his books and travel bag behind and thought, Fuck it, let them burn the books if they want. He’d give them that much. He also realized that he felt pretty damn good for the first time in months.

  There was that woman at the last reading with the long dark hair. She’d seemed interested. He had her number.

  He looked at his scorched left hand on the wheel. It was going to take a lot of bacitracin, a lot of bandages.

  But he was going to write about this. He had to thank them.

  —

  He was back.

  Nancy

  Darynda Jones

  The floor and I met somewhere between my fourth and fifth cups of punch. The abrupt face-plant was a memory that would live in infamy. And it was pretty much the only one I had from the night before, besides the dreamlike account where a guy wearing a glow-stick necklace told me I had pretty cuticles. But the floor? That would stay with me only for a while.

  Fortunately, we’d hit it off, the floor and I. It was a brief but tumultuous affair. I was on top most of the time—though I couldn’t be entirely certain, as the world had toppled at least once during the course of the evening. But our tryst ended way too soon when I felt my face being ripped off my newest obsession only to be introduced to a white porcelain bowl that smelled like a litter box. I held on for dear life, begging for someone, anyone, to stop the porcelain-bowl ride so I could get off.

  Then I felt a hand, soft and cool on the back of my neck, soothing and reassuring, and the world faded to black. End scene.

  The next thing I remembered was trying to turn off my alarm clock using the smash-anything-within-arm’s-length technique. The damage I’d done the night before lingered in every move I made, every thought I had. It took every ounce of strength I could muster to drag myself out of bed that morning, and now all that strength was being channeled into the concentration it took to stand erect in the halls of Renfield High without barfing up the lining of my stomach.

  It was all I had left to give.

  I tried not to reflect on the fact that I’d had to peel my hair off my face that morning as I watched Samantha Vargas weave toward me through a sea of warm bodies. She had the wherewithal to balance an arm full of books, an energy drink, and a cupcake with a lit candle poking out of the top. I was impressed. I could barely balance my own weight against a wall at that point.

  She flashed me a grin that was disproportionately large against the backdrop of her pale, slender face. Her blond hair had been scooped into what looked like a messy ponytail. But there was nothing messy about Samantha Vargas. I’d been at Renfield High only a week, but I knew enough about Samantha and her kind to know that every hair on her head was exactly where it was supposed to be.

  “Happy first contact,” she said when she got to me, jutting the cupcake in my direction. Her besties, Laura and Carrie Anne, were hard-pressed to keep up with her—having suffered the same fate as I the night before—but most of the other students accommodated them by clearing a path for the trio. Samantha was forever flanked by a pair of her closest, because every popular girl needed an entourage of at least two. More if possible, but RHS was a small school.

  Still, it was the same in every educational establishment I’d attended, and I’d attended a lot. Thirteen, to be exact, because of my dad’s consultant job, and I was only a junior.

  “First contact?” I asked, as I took the very pink cupcake, swallowed back the bile searing a path up my esophagus, and wondered when she’d get a clue. When she’d realize the horrible mistake she’d made. I wasn’t her type. The giggling-superficial-dramatic type. I was more of a reader than a cheerleader, but it always took the kids at a new school a while to figure that out, to lose interest in me and move on to more lucrative ventures. Until then, I played nice. Pretended to care as much about my hair as I did global warming. I laughed at their jokes. Wore the school colors to blend in. And, much to my utter mortification, accepted punch from strangers at parties. In my own defense, I was brand-spanking-new. Everyone at that party had been a stranger.

  “First contact,” Laura said. She had long brown hair and wing-shaped eyebrows over eyes the color of a carbonated soft drink. “You know. The cold hand at the party.”

  My stomach did a 360 at the mention of last night’s fiasco. Thank God my dad had worked late and it was dark when he got home. I was pretty sure there was a trail of vomit from the driveway to the front door.

  I still didn’t get the first-contact reference, so I said, “I still don’t get the first-contact reference.”

  Carrie Anne giggled, her loose red curls bouncing around her face. “It was your first contact with a
ghost, silly.”

  Samantha cracked open the energy drink, the pop and hiss soothing in the noisy hall. “Everyone in Renfield has a first-contact story, and now you have yours.”

  “I don’t think that was a ghost,” I said, letting doubt cinch my brows together even though it kind of hurt. “It was someone with a warm heart who felt bad for me.”

  “A warm heart?” Carrie Anne asked.

  “Warm heart, cold hands,” I explained. “Either way, I’m pretty sure whoever rubbed my neck last night can still order a caramel macchiato at Starbucks.”

  “Too bad we don’t have one,” Laura said, clearly as disturbed about that fact as I was.

  “So what do you think of Renfield so far?” Samantha asked, dropping the ghost thing.

  I opened my mouth to answer just as a procession of recently showered football players strolled past, their wet hair gleaming in the fluorescent light, and Team Spirit decided the guys were much more interesting than anything I would have to say. I couldn’t argue that. Renfield High was in the state finals, so the football team was practicing both before and after school, and we’d been gifted with a parade of freshly showered jocks every morning since my arrival. It was the best part of my day.

  Trailing the procession was a tight end named Toby MacAfee, and therein lay my weakness. My reason for agreeing to go to a party on a Thursday night in the first place. Boys. Especially pretty boys with dark hair in dire need of a trim and green eyes that sparkled like a moonlit sea.

  The downside of being set upon by the in-crowd the moment I started at a new school was the inevitable breakup once they figured out I wasn’t really one of their kind. The upside was the fact that the prettiest girls knew the prettiest boys. They talked to them. Joked with them. Flirted with them like there was no tomorrow, and there were few things more fun than hanging with the beautiful people while I got my bearings. In a nutshell, being scoped out by the upper echelon had its advantages.

  I wasn’t a ho or anything, but I had a fascination with the opposite sex and enough moral flexibility to use Samantha’s temporary lapse in judgment to my advantage. Sue me.

  “So you’re not scared?”

  I tore my gaze off Toby MacAfee’s ass and blinked back to them, wondering what I’d missed. “Scared?”

  Carrie Anne rolled her eyes. “That you are now living in the most haunted city in West Virginia.”

  “Oh, that.” I blew out the candle, an act that caused Carrie Anne to clap a little too enthusiastically. The sound reverberated through my throbbing skull and danced over my exposed nerve endings, giving me a good sense of what it felt like to be skinned alive. I offered her a tight smile before continuing. “Like I said, I don’t really believe in that stuff.”

  Samantha’s mouth thinned into a severe line. “Duh. Neither do we.”

  “I do,” Carrie Anne said, raising an index finger.

  “Carrie Anne doesn’t count,” Laura said, as though she weren’t standing right there. “She also believes in UFOs.”

  Carrie Anne nodded before hanging her head in shame. I almost laughed for the first time that day, but I was afraid I’d seize.

  “Even if most of us don’t believe in any of that crap,” Samantha continued, “it’s still cool to be known for something.”

  I decided not to point out that it was, in fact, impossible to determine which city, if any, was the most haunted in the country. Just because an overrated show on the Discovery Channel said Renfield held top honors in the creepy and the unexplained did not make it true. But that certainly didn’t stop the town from capitalizing on the idea. The slogan had been posted everywhere, from the welcome sign that read RENFIELD, WEST VIRGINIA: A TOWN OF 13,349 PEOPLE AND A FEW GRUMPY GHOSTS to servers at the local restaurants asking, “And how many of the living will be dining tonight?”

  “But what about all the first-contact stories?” I asked.

  “Rubbish,” she said. “They can almost all be explained, but it’s still fun. It’s part of our culture here in the sticks.” She put her arm in mine and herded me toward our first class. “Then again,” she said, grinning at her friends over her shoulder, “Halloween is a very interesting time of year around these parts.”

  “Sorry I missed it,” I said. And I meant it. While I didn’t believe in the supernatural, I did enjoy the season that celebrated it, and how cool would it have been to spend it in the most haunted city—though the term city was generous—in the country? It was now almost Christmas, but that didn’t stop the town from warning tourists to watch out for the Ghost of Christmas Past, because he was by far the most tenacious.

  I spotted Nancy Wilhoit as we entered the classroom, a girl I’d become fascinated with since starting at RHS. She had thin, brown hair and a light dusting of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and while she was pretty enough, the entire student body treated her like a leper. From what I could tell, she didn’t have a single friend. I quickly learned why. She made odd sounds in class, like soft hisses and low growls. She also twitched a lot, jerked as though someone had poked her or shoved her, but no one was ever around. And she talked to herself, heedless of who else was around. For the most part, the other students had learned to ignore her. But there were always those who had to tease and make fun of her every chance they got.

  And therein lay my second weakness and the reason for the inevitable split from the proverbial in-crowd. I was a sucker for the alienated. For the socially challenged. For the ignored and/or bullied. Sadly, Nancy fit all of the above.

  When Laura and Carrie Anne waved and went to their respective classrooms, I pulled Samantha to a stop before we sat down. “What’s up with Nancy Wilhoit?”

  Samantha wrinkled her nose in distaste as she glanced at her. “You mean besides the fact that she’s an absolute freak?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

  She leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “She apparently has a ghost following her around twenty-four-seven. Like a poltergeist or something. She says it pinches her and scratches her all the time. She was even on 60 Minutes a couple of years ago.”

  My eyes rounded in surprise. “The TV show?”

  “Yep. Her parents claimed what was happening to her was stigmata, but Nancy said it was the ghost of a child tormenting her.”

  “So what happened on the show?”

  “Well, the investigators tried to prove that Nancy was doing it herself, but they couldn’t. Scratches and bruises and blisters just show up on her body and they could never explain it.”

  “What did they say caused it?”

  “They didn’t, really. They brought in all kinds of experts to either prove or disprove the claims and no one could do either.” She offered me an unconcerned smile. “And so Nancy Wilhoit remains a mystery to this day.”

  “That sucks,” I said, eyeing the girl in a new light.

  Nancy glanced over at us. Seeming to realize we were talking about her, she ducked her head and let her hair fall over her face. I cleared my throat and headed for my seat, determined to get her side of the story.

  —

  As usual, the morning was filled with me trying to get a stronghold on current events at Renfield High. Every school seemed to teach things in a different order, and according to my father, getting caught up wasn’t enough. I had to be ahead of the game, always prepared, so I took copious notes and listened carefully, no matter how much pain it caused. The hangover didn’t help.

  By noon, my brain had dissolved into a quivering, slimy substance into which no new information could penetrate. Thankfully, one of our lunch choices was pizza. Pizza would help. Pizza always helped. I took a slice from the nice lady in the shower cap then turned to scan the busy cafeteria for Nancy Wilhoit. I found her sitting in a chair in the farthest corner from the exit doors and headed that way, ignoring the frantic waves from Team Spirit as they tried in vain to get my attention.

  Nancy had the collar of her brown coat pulled up over her ears and her face pressed into
a book.

  “Can I sit here?” I asked her.

  She glanced up at me from underneath long bangs. “I guess,” she said, before a startled gasp escaped her. She elbowed the air beside her then went back to reading.

  I sat down anyway, and she looked at me surprised, as though she hadn’t really expected me to take the seat next to her. She scooped her scattered belongings into a neat pile on the table to make room, took a sip of her juice, then turned back to her book.

  I almost took a bite of pizza, but as wonderful as it had smelled only moments earlier, my stomach gurgled in protest. I put it on the table and nursed my diet soda instead. After a solid minute of uncomfortable silence, I leaned over to see what Nancy was reading. She raised the book slightly to accommodate. It was an old Goosebumps paperback, like the kind we used to read in grade school.

  “I always liked that series,” I said to her.

  She nodded, then went back to reading.

  I smiled then went back to sipping. This was getting me nowhere fast, and I didn’t know how much time I had before Team Spirit could no longer curb their burning curiosity and hunt me down. They had to be dying to know what I was up to, but it was about time to let them in on my secret. I was not in-crowd material. They’d figure it out sooner or later anyway. May as well be sooner. Not that I wanted to be besties with Nancy, but we were off to a good start.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  “If it’s about Peter, no. He gets upset when I talk about him.”

  I straightened in surprise. Insight. We were totally getting somewhere. “Peter? Is that the ghost who follows you around?”

  She jerked back with a hiss, then glared at her side opposite me. “Yes,” she said after a few seconds of glowering at the floor.

  I leaned in for a peek, but she turned toward me, so I refocused on her book, pretending not to notice anything out of the ordinary. “What’s this one about?”

  “Peter.”

  “Oh.” I put an elbow on the table, confused.

  Drawing in a deep, frustrated sigh, she closed the book and offered me her full attention. “Did they send you over here?”