Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror (14 page)

The explosion of sound from the front room split the air and rocked the entire house.

Elizabeth screamed. The candle slipped from her hand and fell to the floor, plunging the room into darkness.

Wilbur went rigid beside her.

“It's too late,” he said in a shaken whisper. “They're here. I'm seein' 'em right now . . . and they're coming for us.”

Elizabeth turned to him, her heart a drum in her chest.
It can't be true,
she thought.
It's not possible!

In the next instant the heavens opened overhead. Rain pelted the tin roof like machine-gun fire.

Lightning flashed, and in the fleeting blue strobe Elizabeth found Wilbur's eyes fixed on the open door.

Thunder crashed again, much closer than before.

Elizabeth leaned toward Wilbur and whispered, “What's happening, Wilbur? Please, tell me what's happening!”

Before he could answer, another percussive burst of sound shot out of the living room. The house lurched in a crack of splintering wood. Somewhere a window shattered. A warm wind rushed into the room, swirling around them like grabbing hands.

Elizabeth lunged for Wilbur and lifted him off the bed. His arms wrapped tightly around her neck. Clutching him to her chest, she rushed blindly from the room.

She screamed again when she saw what awaited in the front room.

The creepers had already blocked off the only route of escape.

Against the continuous strobes of lightning, they appeared as humanlike shadows, faceless save for a pair of narrow-slit eyes that glowed bright green.

Their movement was lithe, catlike.

Elizabeth saw two of them enter through the open doorway on wiry limbs. The door itself had been ripped from its hinges and now lay in scattered slats across the floor.

Another creeper entered to her left, slithering over the jagged shards of a broken window set high into the wall. Once inside, the creeper proceeded to crawl headfirst down the wall until it reached the floor and came back up in a low, predatory crouch.

A cloud of dust plumed into the room.

Elizabeth turned. Another creeper had come in through the chimney and now stood coiled in a sprinter's pose atop the ashes in the fireplace.

A cannon shot of thunder shook the house.

Wilbur buried his face into Elizabeth's shoulder.

“Make it stop!” he cried. “Please, make it stop! Don't let them get me!”

But the creepers were already circling in. Elizabeth moved backward on trembling legs until she found herself pinned against the wall, her path to the door blocked by the dark figures closing in with slow, calculated steps.

Holding Wilbur close to her chest, she turned her back on them, using her body as a shield.

“Stay away from him!” she shouted. “He's just a little boy!”

Her plea was met with hungry grins—four sets of jagged yellow teeth splitting the width of the creepers' menacing black faces.

They were only five feet away.

Four.

Three.

“They're gonna kill us!” Wilbur cried. “I can see them! Make them go away!”

“I can't!” Elizabeth shook her head desperately. “I don't know what to do!”

No sooner had she said the words than she realized it wasn't she who held the power to save them.

The only one who could rescue them from their stalkers was the one who had created them—the one who had
imagined
them into existence.

Keeping her back to the creepers, she knelt, setting Wilbur's bare feet on the rain-slick floor. It took every ounce of strength she had to pry the boy off of her. Against his protests, she pushed him back far enough to hold his face between her hands.

“Send them away, Miss Elizabeth!” he cried over the howl of the wind. “Please. You gotta send 'em away!”

“I can't do that, Wilbur! Only
you
can!”

“No . . .”

“Wilbur, listen to me! If you can imagine bad things and make them real, then you can do the same with good things. But you have to
choose
to see the good things, Wilbur. You have to imagine them to make it real. It's the only way to beat them, and I can't do it for you!”

The creepers were upon them now.

Elizabeth felt cold, gelatinous fingers on the back of her neck. She kept her eyes on Wilbur, refusing to move, refusing to let him sense her fear. The hand slithered around to the front of her neck and began to squeeze. Still Elizabeth held firm, unmoving.

The other creepers closed in on Wilbur.

They knelt at the boy's side, their hungry gaze set on his neck, their jaws open wide.

The cold, boneless fingers increased their grip at Elizabeth's throat.

“Come on, Wilbur,” she gasped. “You have the power to end this. You can change your fate just by changing your thoughts.”

Wilbur's eyes opened as the creepers' gaping jaws went for his neck.

“Stop!” he shouted.
“Stop it right now!”

The creepers did as ordered.

The glow of their eyes dimmed.

They tilted their heads in confusion, their prey having become their master in an instant.

Elizabeth felt the eel-like fingers loosen at her neck, then fall away.

She struggled to draw breath into her lungs as Wilbur looked at each of the creepers in turn. She realized the boy wasn't just looking
toward
his stalkers, but actually
seeing
them, seeing them as he imagined them.

And when her own eyes moved to the creepers, it became clear that his image of them had changed. He now saw them as he wanted to see them—scared and defeated.

The fear had vanished from his face, replaced by something much bolder, defiant.

“I am not afraid of you,” he declared. “And I won't let you do this to me anymore. I created you, and now I will destroy you.”

His eyes moved intently toward the ceiling. The swirling wind grew stronger and shifted direction, as though it was being sucked toward the open doorway.

Wilbur's hands reached out and found Elizabeth's shoulders. He squeezed, keeping her close, as the suction of air increased.

The creepers' bodies began to stretch like pieces of warm toffee. They suddenly looked shriveled and weak, their emerald eyes wide with fear. When the force of the wind became too much, they dug their tendril-like fingers into the floor, struggling to hold on.

An infantile cry rang out as the first creeper slid across the floor and flew out into the night as though yanked by a powerful chain. The others followed in quick succession, each clawing futilely at the floor as the wind sucked them out like limp sheets of fabric.

The wind died the instant they were gone.

As though a faucet had been shut off, the rain quickly trickled away. Then a final growl of thunder rolled toward a distant sky.

When silence had fallen over the broken house, Elizabeth reached up and dried the tears from Wilbur's cheeks.

She drew him against her.

They held each other for some time before she led him back to the bedroom, relit the candle, and tucked him into bed.

He took hold of her arm as she stood to go. “I don't want you to leave.”

“I'm not leaving.”

“But will you come back? Please, you must . . .”

“Of course I'll come back, Wilbur. Did you really have to ask?”

“It's just that they never do.”

“They? You mean the ones who came before me? Yes, your mother told me they never come back.”

“No. They never do.”

She leaned in close to his ear. “Well, I'm coming back, Wilbur. I will always come back. That's a promise.”

He smiled, reached up to her face, and once again traced her features with delicate hands.

“If you don't mind my saying so, Miss Elizabeth . . . I think you're beautiful.”

“You really think so?”

“I surely do. Beautiful. If only you could see yourself the way I see you . . .”

“Well, thank you, Wilbur. A lady always loves to hear that.”

He fell asleep seconds later.

Elizabeth stood and tiptoed out of the room. Shielding the candle flame with her hand, she returned to the living room, crossed to the window, and looked out into the peaceful night.

A cool breeze drifted in through the broken glass.

The candle flickered, and she caught her own reflection in one of the shards—a green face with slick amphibious skin, blotched with spots.

▼ F. PAUL WILSON ▼

O
ld Man Foster had the signs posted all over his land.

No kidding. And no big deal.

Jack never paid them much attention. He figured since he wasn't involved in the first three, he deserved a pass on the last. No, what caught Jack's eye was the bright red object tacked to the bark just below the sign.

“Hey, check it out,” he said, hitting the brakes. His tires skidded in the sandy soil as his BMX came to a stop. “Who'd put a reflector way out here?”

Weezy stopped her bike beside his. “Doesn't make sense.”

Her birth certificate said Louise, but no one had called her that since she turned two. She was older than Jack—hit fifteen last week, while Jack still had a few months to go. As usual, she was all in black—sneaks, jeans, Bauhaus T-shirt. She'd wound her dark hair into two braids today, giving her a Wednesday Addams look.

“Never noticed it before.”

“Because it wasn't there,” she said.

Jack accepted that as fact. They used this firebreak trail a lot when they were cruising the Barrens, and if the reflector had been here before, she'd remember. Weezy never forgot anything. Ever.

He touched the clear sap coating on the head of the nail that fixed it to the tree. His fingertip came away wet. He showed her.

“This is fresh—really fresh.”

Weezy touched the goop and nodded. “Like maybe this morning.”

Jack checked the ground and saw tire tracks. It had rained last night, and these tracks weren't washed out in the slightest.

“Looks like a truck,” he said, pointing.

Weezy nodded. “Two sets—coming and going. And one's deeper than the other.” She looked at Jack. “Hauled something in or took something out.”

“Maybe it was Old Man Foster himself.”

“Could be.”

Foster had supposedly owned this chunk of the Jersey Pine Barrens forever, but no one had ever seen him. No one had ever seen anyone posting the land, either, but the signs were everywhere.

“Want to follow?”

She glanced at her watch and shook her head. “Got to go to Medford with my mom.”

“Again? What's this—an every Wednesday thing?” She looked away. “No. Just works out that way.” When she looked back, disappointment shone in her eyes. “You going without me?”

Jack sensed she wanted them to go together, but he didn't think he could hold off.

“Yeah. Probably nothing to see. If I find anything, we can come back together.”

She nodded and offered half a smile. “Sure you won't get lost without me?”

He glanced at the sun sliding down the western sky. Every year, people—mostly hunters—entered the Barrens and were never seen again. Folks assumed they got lost and starved. No big surprise in a million-plus acres of mostly uninhabited pine forest. If a vanilla sky moved in, you could lose all sense of direction and wander in circles for days. But with the sun visible, Jack knew all he had to do was keep heading west and he'd hit civilization.

“I'll manage somehow. See you later.”

He watched her turn her Schwinn, straddle the banana seat, and ride off with a wave. After the trees had swallowed her, Jack turned off the fire trail and began following the tire tracks along the narrow passage—little more than two ruts separated by a grassy ridge and flanked by the forty-foot scrub pines that dominated the Barrens. They formed a thick wall, crowding the edges of the path, reaching over him with their crooked, scraggly branches.

The passage forked and the tracks bore to the right. A half-dozen feet into the fork he spotted another reflector. At the next fork the tracks bore left, and sure enough, another reflector.

Odd. He'd figured the first had been a marker for the starting point of the trail. Grass and trees could thicken over a growing season and obscure what had once been an obvious opening. But whoever had come along here this morning was marking every turn, placing reflectors where headlights would pick them up as they approached. That meant he was planning to come back in the dark. Maybe tonight. Maybe many nights.

Why?

Jack found the answer a half mile farther on where the tire tracks ended in a clearing with a large, solitary oak in its center. Near its base someone had dumped a dozen or more fifty-five gallon oil drums—old ones, rusted, banged up, and leaky.

He jumped at the sound of a car engine roaring his way. A few seconds later a weird-looking contraption bounced into the clearing on the far side. It had the frame of a small Jeep, maybe a Wrangler, with no roof, sides, or hood. The engine was exposed, though the fire wall was still in place, and instead of a steering wheel, someone had fixed a long-handled wrench to the column. The front and rear seats had been replaced by a pair of ratty-looking sofas occupied by three kids in their mid-teens. Jack recognized the driver: Elvin Neolin from his civics class. He'd seen the other boy around school as well, but the white-haired girl was new.