Richard Davis (ed) - [Year's Best Horror Stories 02] Read online

  EDITED BY RICHARD DAVIS

  THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES II

  Table of Contents

  1: Gerald W. Page - Thirst

  2: Brian Lumley - David's Worm

  3: Gary Brandner - The Price Of A Demon

  4: Basil Copper - The Knocker At The Portico

  5: Steve Chapman - The Throwaway Man

  6: Rosemary Timperley - The Woman With The Mauve Face

  7: Ronald Blythe - Shadows Of The Living

  8: Robert Block - The Animal Fair

  9: J. Ramsey Campbell - Napier Court

  10: T. K. Brown III - Haunts Of The Very Rich

  1: Gerald W. Page - Thirst

  Prologue

  "Hush," said his mother. "A child your age shouldn't even know about such a thing. They shouldn't even let you see those picture shows and horror movies…"

  The boy's grandfather stopped eating and looked up at his daughter, the fork poised in mid air above the beans that were his supper. "He ought to know. A boy lives this close to Overhill Mountain ought to know about the things that go on up there."

  "He won't live here all his life," she said. "He'll get an education… You'll see. He'll go North to live,"

  "But it's daylight, Ma," the boy said, courage bolstered by his grandfather's words. "Everybody knows they crumbles up in daylight. I saw a movie where-"

  "They don't die in sunlight," said the grandfather. "Sunlight robs their strength. They're things of the night and have no strength in the day-but it doesn't kill them if they aren't exposed too long. How long, depends on how strong they are to begin with. But they do hate the sun. I think the reason they're scared of crosses is that the holy things shine like the. sun to them-"

  "I don't want my boy to know about them, Daddy!"

  The old man went on, ignoring her. "They do have to go back to their grave, like in the movies, but it don't kill them to spend a day away from it. It's the need for that grave, though, that's strong in them. That and the fear of the sunlight. Those are strong in them and only thing that's any stronger is the Thirst…"

  1

  Sam Coleman hated to argue with his wife. He loved Grace and he loved the three boys; but Grace didn't seem to understand his feelings and problems. The latest argument stemmed from the fact that six months ago Coleman had been fired from his job at Custis' Garage in Celine-the only good job he'd held since his discharge from the Army. Since then, arguments between Coleman and Grace seemed more and more commonplace. This latest one drove him out of the house on a Friday night and because he had enough money for only five beers, Coleman returned earlier than he wanted to.

  He sat in the car, parked by a grove of trees in the back yard and watched the house. In front he could see a light on and after a few minutes the back light came on. Grace did not come out. Coleman knew she was probably at one of the windows, staring out, wondering if it was late enough for Coleman to need help getting into the house. He felt some relief at the fact she did not come out. He didn't want to continue the argument. After a few minutes, he got out of the car and walked off into the dark woods.

  Coleman's problem was that he was a mechanic, not a farmer. The house he owned stood on farmland which he also owned: he inherited both from his mother. He didn't farm the land. Why should he? Some of the timber might bring a small price as pulp wood, but as a whole the land wasn't much good for raising anything-and there wasn't enough to make a steady profit of pulpwood. Cumbermill County just didn't have much good farm land. And Grace couldn't understand that not even a good farmer could make a living from poor land. Coleman was far from being a good farmer.

  Coleman was too preoccupied to notice the direction he was walking. He did not realize he was on Overhill Mountain until he came to the clearing and saw the gaunt wood skeleton that once had been a cabin. It was years since the cabin's burning but the clearing was only weed grown, not yet taken over by brush and forest. Although the farm was only a couple of miles from the foot of the mountain, and although it was an easy mountain to climb-you could walk up the easy slopes, hindered only by the thick overgrowth -Coleman had never, set foot on Overhill before.

  He had not meant to walk so far-or for so long. His thoughts were jarred not only by the realization that it was late and he had come too far, but by the cut of the bitterly cold wind. A storm seemed to be brewing. Coleman wore only grey slacks and a blue and white checked sports shirt. It was Summer and normally warm but Coleman knew how quickly a storm could develop in this region. It was time to get back down the mountain-back home, to face his wife and maybe work something out: at least a truce. His head was cleared now and as he started home, he shivered against the wind.

  There was no moon now-the sky was overcast. The darkness of the woods was oppressive and in spite of himself he recalled the stories he had heard of Overhill Mountain. Coleman did not think of himself as a superstitious man and he would have been the first to deny that those stories were the reason he had never before set foot on the mountain. But the stories were strangely unsettling, all the same. He couldn't find the path he came by but he was fairly certain that he could get down the mountain and find the main road.

  Tree limbs and brambles slapped and slashed at him in the darkness. More than once he had to pause and worry thorns loose from his clothing. He heard the cloth of his shirt tear and felt it tug at his back in a way that assured him that the shirt was ruined. Wryly he thought, Grace will love that.

  A few minutes later, Coleman admitted to himself that he was lost. Angry, he tried to make his way through woods even thicker than he remembered. The wind was biting here where closely-set trees and bushes should afford protection. After another fifteen minutes of aimless wandering, it began to rain. It rained hard and Coleman was soon soaked.

  The rain hit his face stingingly as rivulets of water poured from his brow and into his eyes, blinding him. He slipped and fell and picked himself up muttering savagely under his breath. There seemed to be no shelter close at hand and the rain seemed to ignore the fact that the trees should afford some protection for Coleman. And then, as suddenly as it began, the rain subsided and became lighter.

  But the rain continued, a light, uninsistent thing that offered only slight annoyance. Coleman discovered that his left trouser leg was torn and it flopped heavily, encrusted with a weight of mud.

  Abruptly, Coleman slipped in a patch of mud and went sprawling on his back, sliding feet first down the mountain as the thick brush gave way to bare ground. He came to a sudden and painful stop against a lightning-blasted tree and for a long moment lay breathless in the mud. He felt an urge to go to sleep but the faint splattering of rain on his face was still too much to permit rest. He struggled to his feet, almost losing his balance in the slippery mud and found, somewhat surprisingly, that he was at the foot of the mountain.

  It was the first really pleasant surprise Coleman could recall in several weeks. There was still a nice long walk in the rain ahead of him but he at least knew where he was now. He was down from Overhill Mountain and the trip home was just a formality.

  Then Coleman saw something.

  A shadow, darkly etched among the pitchblack foliage seemed to be moving toward him. It looked like a man but Coleman could not imagine anyone out on a night like this. He could not make out the features of the person; could distinguish neither sex nor race. The sudden appearance of whoever it was actually startled Coleman and as he realized this, he laughed…But he laughed nervously.

  "Who is it?" Coleman asked, trying to sound pleasant so as to hide his embarrassment. "You must be as crazy as I am
to be out on a night like this."

  The dark figure was silent. The storm made a noise like a tongueless man trying to scream. Coleman felt his nerve slipping further. It occurred to him that the man might be a moonshiner guarding a still but no still was in sight and the storm would drive even moonshiners to seek safety and shelter. There was, Coleman realized, a limit to the number of good reasons a person could have for being out on a night like this. Coleman's own words came back to him: "You must be as crazy as I am…"

  The fear that gripped him was no less real for being irrational. Coleman saw the shadowy person come forward. The man carried something in his hand and Coleman had the sudden clear knowledge that it was a sharpened stick. Before he could move, the man was on him, the point of the stick gouging at his throat, ripping, tearing flesh. He fought, trying to shove the man away. But his attacker had the strength of a madman. Coleman screamed into the night but the wind whipped at the sound and tore it into near silence. Heavy drops of water splattered into Coleman's wide open mouth and his fear multiplied beyond mere fear into utter shock as he realized what his attacker was doing…

  The man was drinking the blood that flowed from Cole-man's torn neck-

  Coleman must have passed out. When he came too, he felt weak. His attacker was gone but there was a numbness in his neck where the stick had gouged. Coleman got to his feet but he was too weak to walk to the road…

  He found a hollowed out place in the mountain, somehow-a shallow cave that had been dug out years ago. Its mouth was covered with brush and that he found it at all was only luck. He stumbled into the cave and collapsed, his strength ebbing at a prolific rate. The dirt over the mouth of the cave was loosened by the rain and as Coleman fell, certain that he was dying, mud jarred loose from the cave roof to cascade down on him.

  When the rain ceased and morning finally came, he was almost completely buried in the dirt.

  2

  Sheriff Alvin McDonald did not get the chance to go by the Coleman home to see Grace until after nine o'clock although Grace had called his office at seven. It was McDonald's habit to be at work by seven and to stay until six or seven at night. He liked to keep abreast of happenings in his jurisdiction and he was aware of Grace's trouble with her husband. Grace wanted to talk directly to McDonald and he didn't mind. Grace's father had been one of his best friends and since the death of both of the girl's parents in an automobile accident about a year after her marriage to Coleman, McDonald had felt as if he were her only true relative, other than Coleman himself.

  So as soon as he could clear the important papers from his desk, McDonald drove to the Coleman farm and sat across the kitchen table from Grace as she served coffee and told him about Sam Coleman's failure to come home. The boys were playing outside and to all appearances things were normal. But McDonald could guess the strain Grace was living under.

  "I wouldn't worry," he told her. "Sam was in the Army. He's been taking care of himself a pretty long time, Grace. He'll come back today or maybe tomorrow. But you shouldn't let yourself worry too much."

  "I can't help it," she said. "You sure he's not in jail?"

  McDonald couldn't suppress the smile. "I'm pretty sure he's not."

  "Well-You know how he is and it was Friday night and all. I just figured he might have gotten into a fight somewhere."

  "Well, he's not in jail. There was a report about him going to that tent meeting out by John Edgar's place and telling the preacher he couldn't preach worth a damn. But he was thrown out without getting into any real fight."

  Grace smiled at that… "That's just like Sam."

  "He's just sleeping off last night somewhere. Holed up in a barn or at a friend's house. He might have helped the friend kill off a bottle after he left here."

  Grace nodded absently, one finger pushing the handle of her coffee cup so that the cup turned on its saucer. "Thank you, Alvin," she said. "I guess I'm pretty silly, but I get so upset. I feel awful about that fight with Sam…" Her voice trailed off.

  "I guess things are pretty rough. Maybe Sam could go back to school and learn a new kind of work or something."

  "Sam likes garage work. He calls it his trade." She looked at McDonald with those so-clear-older-than-they-should-be eyes of hers. "Sam is a good mechanic. He can do almost anything with a car. He'd be valuable to any service station or the bus company or anything like that. But he always has to get into those arguments and he's funny about the way he takes things people say… You know what he's like, Alvin."

  "I guess I do," McDonald said. He finished his coffee and got up to go. "I've got to be running, Grace. If I see Sam I'll run him home. I'll tell my boys to look out for him. I'll be back fairly soon and see if maybe I can't have a talk with him. Maybe I can do something to help him out.".

  "I'd appreciate that. You don't know how much your help has meant to Sam and me in the past. You just don't know."

  As McDonald got into his car he could see the looming hulk of Overhill Mountain through the trees surrounding the yard. He waved to Grace and the boys who stopped playing long enough to see him off. He drove away. He had said nothing that might worry Grace, but the truth was he did not like the thought of her living so close to that mountain. In the two years he had served as sheriff there was no real trouble with the mountain. But he knew the stories- and the record-and before becoming sheriff he saw plenty of evidence that something about that mountain seemed to attract every form of evil, no matter how unnatural. As soon as he was on the highway, he called in and told Brice Sherman, his chief deputy, to get in touch with old Isaac Smith. Smith was a black man who lived on the other side of Overhill. If anyone could be said to know this region and that mountain, it was Smith.

  McDonald was in his office when Sherman called in at eleven. With two deputies, McDonald drove back to the mountain where Sherman met him on the main road. It was necessary to walk to where the body was.

  It was a small cave, actually a place someone had scooped out of the mountain side. Mud had fallen from the cave roof and covered the corpse almost completely.

  "I figure Coleman crawled in here to get out of the rain," Sherman said. "He fell asleep and this mud fell on him. He must have smothered in his sleep."

  "His wife said he went out to get drunk," McDonald said. "That rhubarb in the tent meeting sounds like he was drunk. I guess he just didn't come to when the mud fell."

  "Damndest thing," Sherman said. "Shouldn't take much to dig out of that."

  McDonald talked to Isaac Smith while they were waiting for the ambulance. Smith added nothing to what McDonald already knew. Smith had discovered the body because he figured that if Coleman were in the area, he would have tried to get out of the rain. So Smith checked the places where a man might find shelter and found the body. It did seem to Smith that the ground was torn up as if by someone struggling or crawling. It was possible Coleman had been taken sick before reaching the cave. McDonald thanked Smith and let him leave. Moments later the ambulance boys arrived, somewhat piqued that the ambulance had to be left so far from the body.

  McDonald watched sourly as Coleman was dug from the mud and rolled onto the stretcher. One of the attendants seemed to notice something on Coleman's neck and brushed mud from it. He called McDonald over. "Looks like he was gouged or cut on the neck, Sheriff."

  McDonald squinted at the mud-caked wounds which could have been made with a stick or perhaps a sliver of glass. "Looks like this wasn't an accident, after all," he said.

  He made them wait while Gus Trimble took additional photographs of the body and especially of the wound. While the photos were being taken, McDonald asked one of the attendants. "How soon can we get an autopsy?"

  "It's Saturday," the man said with a sour look. "I can get a doctor in to examine that wound, but we couldn't get a coroner's jury formed before Monday morning. For that matter, the coroner himself is out of town."

  "Then find some place to keep the body until then," McDonald said.

  As the body was carri
ed off to the ambulance, McDonald turned to his deputies. "Gus, I want those pictures right away, Saturday or not."

  "I can have them by tonight," Trimble said.

  "Good. You go back in Brice's car. Brice, you stay here. I'll get some more men out and you can give the place the usual search."

  "Where'll you be if we need to reach you?" Sherman asked.

  McDonald let his features harden as he glanced at the ground. "Somebody has to let Grace know what's happened," he said.

  3

  Coleman came to in darkness.

  He was lying on something hard-hard and cold-and something lightly pressed against his face and naked body… starched cloth. A sheet. There was a moment of confusion and startled, conflicting memories. And behind the memories and confusion was an awareness of cold. And of thirst.

  With something like panic, he threw the sheet off and jumped to a sitting position. His breathing was a heavy sound in the darkness of the room. There was another sound: a loud mechanical sound he could not readily identify. The thirst was a constant burning in his throat and the coldness-which was not as bad as it seemed at first-still made a numbing assault on his sensibilities.

  In spite of the darkness, Coleman could see. His eyes seemed to react to the darkness as they had never reacted before. He was in a small room, lined with low cabinets and without windows. There was a heavy air conditioning unit that was responsible both for the mechanical sound he had been unable to identify and for the cold. Coleman sat on a table and the sheet he threw off was crumpled on the floor. He wore no clothes. He tried to remember how he got here, but he could not. He could remember only the rain and how it pelted him as he tried to climb down Overhill Mountain in the middle of the night. He remembered the misery and fatigue he felt then. And vaguely, something more… Something that persisted at the edge of his memory; and after a moment he realized what it was. He was attacked. His throat- He put his hand up and felt the raw wounds where his throat had been gouged open by the stick. He recalled the way his attacker leaned over him and put his face close to the wound… And-