Night Screams, page 1
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DAVID MORRELL—
The Dripping
A man returns home to his widowed mother hoping to breathe new life into the twisted architecture of his childhood home. But when his wife and daughter go missing, the only clues are a cellar full of milk and a whispering old woman. . . .
CLIVE BARKER—
The Book of Blood
The dead walk across thousands of miles of highways and byways. The intersections of these highways create a thin veil between their world and ours. One boy thinks he can interpret their incessant chatter and finds out too late the dead don’t take kindly to lies. . ..
DAVID GERROLD—
. . . And Eight Rabid Pigs
What if there was a bad thing for every good? What if Santa Claus had an alter ego? What if there was a Santa Claus with greasy gray hair, a beard full of slimy things, and an appetite for bad little children? What would happen if people believed in him?
NIGHT SCREAMS
Contents
The Dripping
by David Morrell
The Wringer
by F. Paul Wilson
A Season of Change
by Richard T. Chizmar
Good Vibrations
by Richard Laymon
The Tulsa Experiment
by Lawrence Block
Trolls
by Christopher Fahy
Small Deaths
by Charles de Lint
White Lightning
by Al Sarrantonio
Hitman
by Rick Hautala
Vympyre
by William F. Nolan
. . . And Eight Rabid Dogs
by David Gerrold
Bringing It Along
by A.R. Morlan
Redemption
by Jack Ketchum
The Graveyard Ghoul
by Edward D. Hoch
The Rings of Cocytus
by Katherine Ramsland
Late Last Night
by John Maclay
Beasts in Buildings, Turning ’Round
by J.N. Williamson
Dark Side of the Moon
by Barbara Collins
Honor Bound
by J.M. Morgan
The Instrumentalist
by William Relling Jr.
Corpse Carnival
by Ray Bradbury
The Book of Blood
by Clive Barker
ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of
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Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
First Printing, January 1996
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, 1996
All rights reserved
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Dripping” copyright © 1972 by David Morrell. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Henry Morrison, Inc.
“The Wringer” copyright © 1996 by F. Paul Wilson
“A Season of Change” copyright © 1996 by Richard T. Chizmar
“Good Vibrations” copyright © 1996 by Richard Laymon
“The Tulsa Experience” copyright © 1994 by Lawrence Block. First published in Some Days You Get the Bear. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Trolls” copyright © 1996 by Christopher Fahy
“Small Deaths” copyright © 1993 by Charles de Lint. First appeared in Dreams Underfoot, Tor Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“White Lightning” copyright © 1996 by A1 Sarrantonio
“Hitman” copyright © 1996 by Rick Hautala
“. . . And Eight Rabid Pigs” copyright ©1995 by David Gerrold. First appeared under the title “Satan Claus” in Alternate Outlaws. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Vympyre” copyright © 1996 by William Nolan
“Bringing It Along” copyright © 1996 by A. R. Morlan
“Redemption” copyright © 1996 by Dallas Mayr
“The Graveyard Ghoul” copyright © 1996 by Edward D. Hoch
“The Rings of Cocytus” copyright 1996 by Katherine Ramsland
“Late Last Night” copyright © 1996 by John Maclay
“Beasts in Buildings, Turning ‘Round” copyright © 1996 by J.N. Williamson
“Dark Side of the Moon” copyright © 1996 by Barbara Collins
(The following page constitutes and extension of the copyright page.)
“Honor Bound” copyright © 1996 by Jill Morgan
“The Instrumentalist” copyright © 1996 by William Relling, Jr.
“Corpse Carnival” copyright © 1945, renewed 1972 by Ray Bradbury. First Published in Dime Mystery. Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.
“The Book of Blood” copyright © 1984 by Clive Barker. First published in Books of Blood, Volume 1. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company (U.K.).
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The Dripping
by David Morrell
That autumn we live in a house in the country, my mother’s house, the house I was raised in. I have been to the village, struck more by how nothing in it has changed, yet everything has, because I am older now, seeing it differently. It is as though I am both here now and back then, at once with the mind of a boy and a man. It is so strange a doubling, so intense, so unsettling, that I am moved to work again, to try to paint it.
So I study the hardware store, the grain barrels in front, the twin square pillars holding up the drooping balcony onto which seared wax-faced men and women from the old people’s hotel above come to sit and rock and watch. They look the same aging people I saw as a boy, the wood of the pillars and balcony looks as splintered.
Forgetful of time while I work, I do not begin the long walk home until late, at dusk. The day has been warm, but now in my shirt I am cold, and a half mile along I am caught in a sudden shower and forced to leave the gravel road for the shelter of a tree, its leaves already brown and yellow. The rain becomes a storm, streaking at me sideways, drenching me; I cinch the neck of my canvas bag to protect my painting and equipment, and decide to run, socks spongy in my shoes, when at last I reach the lane down to the house and barn.
The house and barn. They and my mother, they alone have changed, as if as one, warping, weathering, joints twisted and strained, their gray so unlike the white I recall as a boy. The place is weakening her. She is in tune with it, matches its decay. That is why we have come here to live. To revive. Once I thought to convince her to move away. But of her 65 years she had spent 40 here, and she insists she will spend the rest, what is left to her.
The rain falls stronger as I hurry past the side of the house, the light on in the kitchen, suppertime and I am late. The house is connected with the barn the way the small base of an L is connected to its stem. The entrance I always use is directly at the joining, and when I enter out of breath, clothes clinging to me cold and wet, the door to the barn to my left, the door to the kitchen straight ahead, I hear the dripping in the basement down the stairs to my right.
“Meg. Sorry I’m late,” I call to my wife, setting down the water-beaded canvas sack, opening the kitchen door. There is no one. No settings on the table. Nothing on the stove. Only the yellow light from the sixty-watt bulb in the ceiling. The kind my mother prefers to the white of one hundred. It reminds her of candlelight, she says.
“Meg,” I call again, and still no one answers. Asleep, I think. Dusk coming on, the dark clouds of the storm have lulled them, and they have lain down for a nap, expecting to wake before I return.
Still the dripping. Although the house is very old, the barn long disused, roofs crumbling, I have not thought it all so ill-maintained, the storm so strong that water can be seeping past the cellar windows, trickling, pattering on the old stone floor. I switch on the light to the basement, descend the wood stairs to the
Sarah, my child, has done this, I think. She has been fascinated by the big wood dollhouse that my father made for me when I was quite young, its blue paint chipped and peeling now. She has pulled it from the far corner to the middle of the basement. There are games and toy soldiers and blocks that have been taken from the wicker storage chest and played with on the floor, all covered with milk, the dollhouse, the chest, the scattered toys, milk dripping on them from the rafters, milk trickling on them.
Why has she done this, I think. Where can she have gotten so much milk? What was in her mind to do this thing?
“Sarah,” I call. “Meg.” Angry now, I mount the stairs into the quiet kitchen. “Sarah,” I shout. She will clean the mess and stay indoors the remainder of the week.
I cross the kitchen, turn through the sitting room past the padded flower-patterned chairs and sofa that have faded since I knew them as a boy, past several of my paintings that my mother has hung up on the wall, bright-colored old ones of pastures and woods from when I was in grade school, brown-shaded new ones of the town, tinted as if old photographs. Two stairs at a time up to the bedrooms, wet shoes on the soft worn carpet on the stairs, hand streaking on the smooth polished maple banister.
At the top I swing down the hall. The door to Sarah’s room is open, it is dark in there. I switch on the light. She is not on the bed, nor has been; the satin spread is unrumpled, the rain pelting in through the open window, the wind fresh and cool. I have the feeling then and go uneasy into our bedroom; it is dark as well, empty too. My stomach has become hollow. Where are they? All in mother’s room?
No. As I stand at the open door to mother’s room I see from the yellow light I have turned on in the hall that only she is in there, her small torso stretched across the bed.
“Mother,” I say, intending to add, “Where are Meg and Sarah?” But I stop before I do. One of my mother’s shoes is off, the other askew on her foot. There is mud on the shoes. There is blood on her cotton dress. It is torn, her brittle hair disrupted, blood on her face, her bruised lips are swollen.
For several moments I am silent with shock. “My God, Mother,” I finally manage to say, and as if the words are a spring releasing me to action I touch her to wake her. But I see that her eyes are open, staring ceilingward, unseeing though alive, and each breath is a sudden full gasp, then slow exhalation.
“Mother, what has happened? Who did this to you? Meg? Sarah?”
But she does not look at me, only constant toward the ceiling.
“For God’s sake, Mother, answer me! Look at me! What has happened?”
Nothing. Eyes sightless. Between gasps she is like a statue.
What I think is hysterical. Disjointed, contradictory. I must find Meg and Sarah. They must be somewhere, beaten like my mother. Or worse. Find them. Where? But I cannot leave my mother. When she comes to consciousness, she too will be hysterical, frightened, in great pain. How did she end up on the bed?
In her room there is no sign of the struggle she must have put up against her attacker. It must have happened somewhere else. She crawled from there to here. Then I see the blood on the floor, the swath of blood down the hall from the stairs. Who did this? Where is he? Who would beat a gray, wrinkled, arthritic old woman? Why in God’s name would he do it? I shudder. The pain of the arthritis as she struggled with him.
Perhaps he is still in the house, waiting for me.
To the hollow sickness in my stomach now comes fear, hot, pulsing, and I am frantic before I realize what I am doing—grabbing the spare cane my mother always keeps by her bed, flicking on the light in her room, throwing open the closet door and striking in with the cane. Viciously, sounds coming from my throat, the cane flailing among the faded dresses.
No one. Under the bed. No one. Behind the door. No one.
I search all the upstairs rooms that way, terrified, constantly checking behind me, clutching the cane and whacking into closets, under beds, behind doors, with a force that would certainly crack a skull. No one.
“Meg! Sarah!”
No answer, not even an echo in this sound-absorbing house.
There is no attic, just an overhead entry to a crawl space under the eaves, and that opening has long been sealed. No sign of tampering. No one has gone up.
I rush down the stairs, seeing the trail of blood my mother has left on the carpet, imagining her pain as she crawled, and search the rooms downstairs with the same desperate thoroughness. In the front closet. Behind the sofa and chairs. Behind the drapes.
No one.
I lock the front door, lest he be outside in the storm waiting to come in behind me. I remember to draw every blind, close every drape, lest he be out there peering at me. The rain pelts insistently against the windowpanes.
I cry out again and again for Meg and Sarah. The police. My mother. A doctor. I grab for the phone on the wall by the front stairs, fearful to listen to it, afraid he has cut the line outside. But it is droning. Droning. I ring for the police, working the handle at the side around and around and around.
They are coming, they say. A doctor with them. Stay where I am, they say. But I cannot. Meg and Sarah, I must find them. I know they are not in the basement where the milk is dripping—all the basement is open to view. Except for my childhood things, we have cleared out all the boxes and barrels and the shelves of jars the Saturday before.
But under the stairs. I have forgotten about under the stairs and now I race down and stand dreading in the milk; but there are only cobwebs there, already reformed from Saturday when we cleared them. I look up at the side door I first came through, and as if I am seeing through a telescope I focus largely on the handle. It seems to fidget. I have a panicked vision of the intruder bursting through, and I charge up to lock the door, and the door to the barn.
And then I think: if Meg and Sarah are not in the house they are likely in the barn. But I cannot bring myself to unlock the barn door and go through. He must be there as well. Not in the rain outside but in the shelter of the barn, and there are no lights to turn on there.
And why the milk? Did he do it and where did he get it? And why? Or did Sarah do it before? No, the milk is too freshly dripping. It has been put there too recently. By him. But why? And who is he? A tramp? An escapee from some prison? Or asylum? No, the nearest institution is far away, hundreds of miles. From the town then. Or a nearby farm.
I know my questions are for delay, to keep me from entering the barn. But I must. I take the flashlight from the kitchen drawer and unlock the door to the barn, force myself to go in quickly, cane ready, flashing my light. The stalls are still there, listing; and some of the equipment, churners, separators, dull and rusted, webbed and dirty. The must of decaying wood and crumbled hay, the fresh wet smell of the rain gusting through cracks in the walls. Once this was a dairy, as the other farms around still are.
Flicking my light toward the corners, edging toward the stalls, boards creaking, echoing, I try to control my fright, try to remember as a boy how the cows waited in the stalls for my father to milk them, how the barn was once board-tight and solid, warm to be in, how there was no connecting door from the barn to the house because my father did not want my mother to smell the animals in her kitchen.
I run my light down the walls, sweep it in arcs through the darkness before me as I draw nearer to the stalls, and in spite of myself I recall that other autumn when the snow came early, four feet deep by morning and still storming thickly, how my father went out to the barn to milk and never returned for lunch, nor supper. There was no phone then, no way to get help, and my mother and I waited all night, unable to make our way through the storm, listening to the slowly dying wind; and the next morning was clear and bright and blinding as we shoveled out to find the cows in agony in their stalls from not having been milked and my father dead, frozen rock-solid in the snow in the middle of the next field where he must have wandered when he lost his bearings in the storm.
There was a fox, risen earlier than us, nosing at him under the snow, and my father had to be sealed in his coffin before he could lie in state. Days after, the snow was melted, gone, the barnyard a sea of mud, and it was autumn again and my mother had the connecting door put in. My father should have tied a rope from the house to his waist to guide him back in case he lost his way. Certainly he knew enough. But then he was like that, always in a rush. When I was ten.
