A Book of Horrors - [Anthology] Read online

  ‘Indeed we have,’ she said, very slowly continuing to bend the leg. On which he would have been walking by now, if he weren’t such a child about the pain. Such a spoiled baby. On crutches, yes, but walking. And in another year, he would have been able to throw the crutches away. Only in another year he would still be here in this two-hundred-thousand-dollar state-of-the-art hospital bed. And she would still be with him. Still taking his hush-money. How much would be enough? Two million? She told herself that now, but she’d told herself half a million would be enough not so long ago, and had since moved the goalposts. Money was wretched that way.

  ‘We’ve seen specialists in Mexico, Geneva, London, Rome, Paris … where else, Kat?’

  ‘Vienna,’ she said. ‘And San Francisco, of course.’

  Newsome snorted. ‘Doctor there told me I was manufacturing my own pain. “To keep from doing the hard work of rehabilitation,” he said. But he was a Paki. And a queer. A queer Paki, how’s that for a combo?’ He gave a brief bark of laughter, then peered at Rideout. ‘I’m not offending you, am I, Reverend?’

  Rideout rotated his head side-to-side in a negative gesture. Twice. Very slowly.

  ‘Good, good. Stop, Kat, that’s enough.’

  ‘A little more,’ she coaxed.

  ‘Stop, I said. That’s all I can take.’

  She let the leg subside and began to manipulate his left arm. That he allowed. He often told people both of his arms had also been broken, but this wasn’t true. The left one had only been sprained. He also told people he was lucky not to be in a wheelchair, but the all-the-bells-and-whistles hospital bed suggested strongly that this was luck he had no intention of capitalising on in the near future. The all-the-bells-and-whistles hospital bed was his wheelchair. It rolled. He had ridden all over the world in it.

  Neuropathic pain, Kat thought. It’s a great mystery. Perhaps insoluble. The drugs no longer work.

  ‘The consensus is that I’m suffering from neuropathic pain.’ And cowardice.

  ‘It’s a great mystery.’

  Also a good excuse.

  ‘Perhaps insoluble.’

  Especially when you don’t try.

  ‘The drugs no longer work and the doctors can’t help me. That’s why I’ve brought you here, Reverend Rideout. Your references in the matter of…er…healing … are very strong.’

  Rideout stood up. Kat hadn’t realised how tall he was. His shadow scared up behind him on the wall even higher. Almost to the ceiling. His eyes, sunken deep in their sockets, regarded Newsome solemnly. He had charisma, of that there could be no doubt. It didn’t surprise her; the charlatans of the world couldn’t get along without it, but she hadn’t realised how much or how strong it was until he got to his feet and towered over them. Jensen was actually craning his neck to see him. There was movement in the corner of Kat’s eye. She looked and saw Melissa standing in the doorway. So now they were all here except for Tonya, the cook.

  Outside, the wind rose to a shriek. The glass in the windows rattled.

  ‘I don’t heal,’ Rideout said. He was from Arkansas, Kat believed - that was where Newsome’s latest Gulfstream IV had picked him up, at least - but his voice was accentless. And flat.

  ‘No?’ Newsome looked disappointed. Petulant. Maybe, Kat thought, a little scared. ‘I sent a team of investigators, and they assure me that in many cases—’

  ‘I expel.’

  Up went the shaggy eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Rideout came to the bed and stood there with his long-fingered hands laced loosely together at the level of his flat crotch. His deep-set eyes looked sombrely down at the man in the bed. ‘I exterminate the pest from the wounded body it’s feeding on, just as a bug exterminator would exterminate pests - termites, for instance -feeding on a house.’

  Now, Kat thought, I have heard absolutely everything. But Newsome was fascinated. Like a kid watching a three-card monte expert on a street corner, she thought.

  ‘You’ve been possessed, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ Newsome said. ‘That’s what it feels like. Especially at night. The nights are … very long.’

  ‘Every man or woman who suffers pain is possessed, of course, but in some unfortunate people - you are one - the problem goes deeper. The possession isn’t a transient thing but a permanent condition. One that worsens. Doctors don’t believe, because they are men of science. But you believe, don’t you? Because you’re the one who’s suffering.’

  ‘You bet,’ Newsome breathed. Kat, sitting beside him on her stool, had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

  ‘In these unfortunates, pain opens the way for a demon god. It’s small, but dangerous. It feeds on a special kind of hurt produced only by certain special people.’

  Genius, Kat thought, he’s going to love that.

  ‘Once the god finds its way in, pain becomes agony. It feeds just as termites feed on wood. And it will eat until you are all used up. Then it will cast you aside, sir, and move on.’

  Kat surprised herself by saying, ‘What god would that be? Certainly not the one you preach about. That one is the God of love. Or so I grew up believing.’

  Jensen was frowning at her and shaking his head. He clearly expected an explosion from the boss…but a little smile had touched the corners of Newsome’s lips. ‘What do you say to that, Rev?’

  ‘I say that there are many gods. The fact that our Lord, the Lord God of Hosts, rules them all - and on the Day of Judgment will destroy them all - does not change that. These little gods have been worshipped by people both ancient and modern. They have their powers, and our God sometimes allows those powers to be exercised.’

  As a test, Kat thought.

  ‘As a test of our strength and faith.’ Then he turned to Newsome and said something that surprised her. Jensen, too; his mouth actually dropped open. ‘You are a man of much strength and little faith.’

  Newsome, although not used to hearing criticism, nevertheless smiled. ‘I don’t have much in the way of Christian faith, that’s true, but I have faith in myself. I also have faith in money. How much do you want?’

  Rideout returned the smile, exposing teeth that were little more than tiny eroded gravestones. If he had ever seen a dentist, it had been many moons ago. Also, he was a tobacco-chewer. Kat’s father, who had died of mouth cancer, had had the same discoloured teeth.

  ‘How much would you pay to be free of your pain, sir?’

  ‘Ten million dollars,’ Newsome replied promptly. Kat heard Melissa gasp. ‘But I didn’t get to where I am by being a sucker. If you do whatever it is you do - expelling, exterminating, exorcising, call it what you want - you get the money. In cash, if you don’t mind spending the night. Fail, and you get nothing - except your first and only round trip on a private jet. For that there will be no charge. After all, I reached out to you.’

  ‘No.’ Rideout said it mildly, standing there beside the bed, close enough to Kat so she could smell the mothballs that had been recently keeping his dress pants (maybe his only pair, unless he had another to preach in) whole. She could also smell some strong soap.

  ‘No?’ Newsome looked frankly startled. ‘You tell me no?’ Then he began to smile again. This time it was the secretive and rather unpleasant smile he wore when he made his phone calls and did his deals. ‘I get it. Now comes the curveball. I’m disappointed, Reverend Rideout. I really hoped you were on the level.’ He turned to Kat, causing her to draw back a bit. ‘You, of course, think I’ve lost my mind. But I haven’t shared the investigators’ reports with you, have I?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘There’s no curveball,’ Rideout said. ‘I haven’t performed an expulsion in five years. Did your investigators tell you that?’

  Newsome didn’t reply. He was looking up at the thin, towering man with a certain unease.

  Jensen said, ‘Is it because you’ve lost your powers? If that’s the case, why did you come?’

  ‘It’s God’s power, sir, not mine, and I have
n’t lost it. But an expulsion takes great energy and great strength. Five years ago I suffered a major heart attack shortly after performing one on a young girl who had been in a terrible car accident. We were successful, she and I, but the cardiologist I consulted in Jonesboro told me that if I ever exerted myself in such a way again, I might suffer another attack. This one fatal.’

  Newsome raised a gnarled hand - not without effort - to the side of his mouth and spoke to Kat and Melissa in a comic stage-whisper. ‘I think he wants twenty million.’

  ‘What I want, sir, is seven hundred and fifty thousand.’

  Newsome just stared at him. It was Melissa who asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘I am pastor of a church in Titusville. The Church of Holy Faith, it’s called. Only there’s no church any more. We had a dry summer in my part of the world. There was a wildfire, probably started by campers. And probably drunk. That’s usually the case. My church is now just a concrete footprint and a few charred beams. I and my parishioners have been worshipping in an abandoned gas station/convenience store on the Jonesboro Pike. It is not satisfactory during the winter months, and there are no homes large enough to accommodate us. We are many but poor.’

  Kat listened with interest. As conman stories went, this was a good one. It had the right sympathy-hooks.

  Jensen, who still had the body of a college athlete (he also served as Newsome’s bodyguard) and the mind of a Harvard MBA, asked the obvious question. ‘Insurance?’

  Rideout once more shook his head in that deliberate way: left, right, left, right, back to centre. He still stood towering over Newsome’s state-of-the-art bed like some country-ass guardian angel. ‘We trust in God.’

  ‘In this case, you might have been better off with Allstate,’ Melissa said.

  Newsome was smiling. Kat could tell from the stiff way he held his body that he was in serious discomfort - his pills were now half an hour overdue - but he was ignoring it because he was interested. That he could ignore it was something she’d known for quite a while now. He could battle the pain if he chose to. He had resources. She had thought she was merely irritated with this, but now, probably prompted by the appearance of the charlatan from Arkansas, she discovered she was actually infuriated. It was so wasteful.

  ‘I have consulted with a local builder - not a member of my flock, but a man of good repute who has done repairs for me in the past and quotes a fair price - and he tells me that it will cost approximately six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to rebuild. I have taken the liberty of adding one hundred thousand dollars, just to be on the safe side.’

  Uh-huh, Kat thought.

  ‘We don’t have such monetary resources, of course. But then, not even a week after speaking with Mr Kiernan, your letter came, along with the video-disc. Which I watched with great interest, by the way.’

  I’ll bet you did, Kat thought. Especially the part where the doctor from San Francisco says the pain associated with his injuries can be greatly alleviated by physical therapy. Stringent physical therapy.

  It was true that nearly a dozen other doctors on the DVD had claimed themselves at a loss, but Kat believed Dr Dilawar was the only one with the guts to talk straight. She had been surprised that Newsome had allowed the disc to go out with that interview on it, but since his accident, the sixth-richest man in the world had slipped a few cogs.

  ‘Will you pay me enough to rebuild my church, sir?’

  Newsome studied him. Now there were small beads of sweat just below his receding hairline. Kat would give him his pills soon, whether he asked for them or not. The pain was real enough; it wasn’t as though he were faking or anything, it was just . ..

  ‘Would you agree not to ask for more? Gentleman’s agreement. We don’t need to sign anything.’

  ‘Yes.’ Rideout said it with no hesitation.

  ‘Although if you’re able to remove the pain - expel the pain -I might well make a contribution of some size. Some considerable size. What I believe you people call a love offering.’

  ‘That would be your business, sir. Shall we begin?’

  ‘No time like the present. Do you want everyone to leave?’

  Rideout shook his head again: left to right, right to left, back to centre. ‘I will need assistance.’

  Magicians always do, Kat thought. It’s part of the show.

  Outside, the wind shrieked, rested, then shrieked again. The lights flickered. Behind the house, the generator (also state-of-the-art) burped to life, then stilled.

  Rideout sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Mr Jensen there, I think. He looks strong and quick.’

  ‘He’s both,’ Newsome said. ‘Played football in college. Running back. Hasn’t lost a step since.’

  ‘Well … a few,’ Jensen said modestly.

  Rideout leaned towards Newsome. His dark, deeply socketed eyes studied the billionaire’s scarred face solemnly. ‘Answer a question for me, sir. What colour is your pain?’

  ‘Green,’ Newsome replied. He was looking back at the preacher with fascination. ‘My pain is green.’

  Rideout nodded: up, down, up, down, back to centre. Eye-contact never lost. Kat was sure he would have nodded with exactly the same look of grave confirmation if Newsome had said his pain was blue, or as purple as the fabled Purple People-Eater. She thought, with a combination of dismay and real amusement: I could lose my temper here. I really could. It would be the most expensive tantrum of my life, but still - I could.

  ‘And where is it?’

  ‘Everywhere.’ It was almost a moan. Melissa took a step forward, giving Jensen a look of concern. Kat saw him shake his head a little and motion her back to the doorway.

  ‘Yes, it likes to give that impression,’ Rideout said, ‘but it’s not so. Close your eyes, sir, and concentrate. Look for the pain. Look past the false shouts it gives - ignore the cheap ventriloquism - and locate it. You can do this. You must do it, if we’re to have any success.’

  Newsome closed his eyes. For a space of ninety seconds there was no sound but the wind and the rain spattering against the windows like handfuls of fine gravel. Kat’s watch was the old-fashioned wind-up kind, a nursing school graduation present from her father many years ago, and when the wind lulled, the room was quiet enough for her to hear its self-important ticking. And something else: at the far end of the big house, elderly Tonya Andrews singing softly as she neatened up the kitchen at the end of another day: Froggy went a-courtin’ and he did ride, mmm-hm.

  At last Newsome said, ‘It’s in my chest. High in my chest. Or at the bottom of my throat, just below the windpipe.’

  ‘Can you see it? Concentrate!’

  Vertical lines appeared on Newsome’s forehead. Scars from the skin that had been flayed open during the accident wavered through these grooves of concentration. ‘I see it. It’s pulsing in time to my heartbeat.’ His lips pulled down in an expression of distaste. ‘It’s nasty.’

  Rideout leaned closer. ‘Is it a ball? It is, isn’t it? A green ball.’

  ‘Yes. Yes! A little green ball that breathes!’

  Like the rigged-up tennis ball you undoubtedly have either up your sleeve or in that big black lunchbox of yours, Rev, she thought.

  And, as if she were controlling him with her mind (instead of just deducing where this sloppy little playlet would go next), Rideout said: ‘Mr Jensen, sir. There’s a lunchbox under the chair I was sitting in. Get it and open it and stand next to me. You need to do no more than that for the moment. Just—’

  Kat MacDonald snapped. It was a snap she actually heard in her head. It sounded like Roger Miller snapping his fingers during the intro to ‘King of the Road’.

  She stepped up beside Rideout and shouldered him aside. It was easy. He was taller, but she had been turning and lifting patients for nearly half her life, and she was stronger. ‘Open your eyes, Andy. Open them right now. Look at me.’

  Startled, Newsome did as she said. Melissa and Jensen (now with the lunchbox in his hands) looked alarmed. One of the facts
of their working lives - and Kat’s own, at least until now - was that you didn’t command the boss. The boss commanded you. You most certainly did not startle him.

  But she’d had quite enough, thank you. In another twenty minutes she might be crawling after her headlights along stormy roads to the only motel in the vicinity, a place that looked like the avatar of all roach-traps, but it didn’t matter. She simply couldn’t do this any longer.

  ‘This is bullshit, Andy,’ she said. Are you hearing me? Bullshit.’

  ‘I think you better stop right there,’ Newsome said, beginning to smile - he had several smiles, and this wasn’t one of the good ones. ‘If you want to keep your job, that is. There are plenty of other nurses in Vermont who specialise in pain therapy.’

  She might have stopped there, but Rideout said, ‘Let her speak, sir.’ It was the gentleness in his tone that drove her over the edge.

  She leaned forward, into his space, and the words spilled out in a torrent.

  ‘For the last sixteen months - ever since your respiratory system improved enough to allow meaningful physiotherapy - I’ve watched you lie in this goddamned expensive bed and insult your own body. It makes me sick. Do you know how lucky you are to be alive, when everyone else on that airplane was killed? What a miracle it is that your spine wasn’t severed, or your skull crushed into your brain, or your body burned - no, baked, baked like an apple - from head to toe? You would have lived four days, maybe even two weeks, in hellish agony. Instead you were thrown clear. You’re not a vegetable. You’re not a quadriplegic, although you choose to act like one. You won’t do the work. You look for some easier way. You want to pay your way out of your situation. If you died and went to Hell, the first thing you’d do is look for a tollgate.’