Little Doors (17 page)

The monster howls, its shadow now a stain of almost total blackness, down in the depths of which Weegee barely sees Tara cowering—but safe.

The light fades slowly from Weegee’s eyes, and he thinks,
She was right. It was me all along, and not the camera.

The camera is a small pile of slag but he doesn’t need it now. It can’t rule him. And the creature cannot frighten him or anyone now. It totters blindly about, groping at air, its costume in rags, seared to ashes, blistering, blackened.

Weegee finds the strength to stand. He pushes past the creature, intending only to grab Tara and run, but Weegee misjudges his force and the murderer trips on his clumsy clogs, falling sideways, flailing. The madman catches the railing with his gut and goes over.

The sound the body makes hitting the street is a familiar one. Still, Weegee leans over the railing to make sure of it.

It’s dark in the depths beneath the track, and he’s somewhat blinded himself. Hard to tell exactly what he’s seeing. But somehow it’s not nearly as dark as it’s been. A subtle light is growing all around him, buzzing between the girders, as if the light from his eyes had leaked into the sky and set off a chain reaction.

He backs up laughing. “Dawn!” he shouts. The trestles and tracks and ironwork angles are threatening to turn to gold. He turns to find Tara, to share it with her. Dawn is coming to the city!

But he’s alone on the platform. Nothing remains of the struggle but a small sprinkling of shattered glass. He kneels and touches a finger to it, sees the stuff glisten with the imminent light; on an impulse, he puts it to his tongue, and grins. Not glass.

Sugar.

It tastes the way he feels. It tastes like the pictures he’ll take from now on.

Right then and there, he resolves to cut the wires of the police radio in his car. He’s through with chasing ambulances, through with being haunted. He’s been saturated with the tears of women and the sight of impoverished children sleeping on fire escapes. From now on, he’ll do all his shooting by daylight. He’ll sleep only at night.

He looks up through the girders at the pinkening sky, and wonders.

What if night never comes?

THE HORROR WRITER

There were figures in the yellow wallpaper.

Moving figures.

He
knew
it, despite what anyone else said they saw. The wallpaper was in his bedroom. His wife had chosen it. Today a contractor was coming over to give an estimate on repapering the room.

The doorbell rang. Its chimes resounded in his skull like the bells of a Black Mass. His wife had chosen the chimes too. They played the theme from the first movie made from one of his novels. He would ask the contractor about also replacing those.

The man on the doorstep was one of those hideously inbred locals, his features a sludge of genetic debris. Hardly able to keep his eyes on the man, the Horror Writer fixed his gaze on the tall wrought iron fence in the distance that surrounded his property.

“Mister Prinze …?” said the contractor, obviously a bit confounded. It was not that there was any mistaking the Horror Writer’s famous face. No, it must be the intensity of his certitude. Yes, that was it. The Horror Writer’s unswerving moral vision in the face of the terrible evil around him—evil that would have overwhelmed a lesser mortal—must have impinged, however dimly, on the contractor’s dull mind.

“You okay, Mister Prinze?”

The Horror Writer roused himself. This was no time for hesitation or inaction. If he was ever to surmount the accursed forces that had gripped his world, he would have to move fast.

“I’m fine,” he said gruffly. “Let’s look at the room.”

Opening the bedroom door with the contractor by his side, the Horror Writer recoiled in shock.

The figures were much more pronounced today, their warty faces contorting into obscene leers at his presence as they scampered around in their two-dimensional space. If they were ever to escape into the world of mankind—

“This the room?” said the contractor, brushing past the Horror Writer, his primitive senses oblivious to the menace contained within.

It was all the Horror Writer could do to step into the bedroom with the ignorant local. He had to take the risk, though—

“Ayup, I remember when Miz Prinze picked this pattern out. We didn’t spare no expense, no sir. Seems a shame somehow to change it now, while it’s practically brand-new.…”

What a fool he had been! How could he have forgotten? This was the very same dupe who had hung the original wallpaper. Dupe? No, of course not! This man was in collusion with his wife! Together, they had conspired to paper his bedroom with this transdimensional portal, knowing that at the proper cosmic moment it would open, sucking him through to an eternity of torture!

The Horror Writer resolved to test his theory, although he had no real doubts.

“I want this paper stripped off. Not a shred of it must remain.”

“Stripped? That don’t seem strictly necessary, Mister Prinze. Mighty big job, and a waste of time to boot. We’ll just put the new paper up on top of it—”

“Get out! Get out of my house right now!”

The Horror Writer hustled the stunned man down to the front door.

“What kind of fool do you take me for? I can read your every thought! Get back to your bestial otherworld masters! Tell them I won’t be taken so easily. I’ve got powers! I know who to contact! I’m not alone against you!”

The contractor picked his cap up off the ground and dusted it before repositioning it atop his head.

“I know you’re busted up about your wife, Mister Prinze, but that ain’t no reason — “

“Get out! There are still places beyond your reach!”

The contractor shook his head, climbed into his truck and drove away.

The Horror Writer would sleep on the couch from now on.

There were many other steps he could take.

* * *

His cat was missing.

He had called it for an hour that morning, but it had not come.

He knew his enemies had taken it, to use against him.

Hostages to fortune, that’s all loved ones were.

Or what was worse—traitors!

Now, against nigh-insurmountable odds, he was forced to search for the animal.

He wondered if he should dig a grave for it in advance.

Arming himself with a stout walking stick and a long sharp kitchen knife, the Horror Writer began a search of his property.

The cat was not in the garage. Nor was it in the barn. But in this latter place, the Horror Writer detected signs of a struggle: some clawed wood, disturbed straw, the half-eaten corpse of a field mouse. Yes, his enemies had taken the cat. Somehow they had gotten past his pentagram and abducted it, probably while he slept and his will was weakened. The animal was probably beyond his help now. Yet still he had to search. He owed it to the dumb beast. Often, they deserved more loyalty than your fellow humans, who would stab you in the back as soon as you looked away.

Haunted woods loomed on three sides of his property, their trees gruesomely contorted like gassed Jews at Auschwitz. He avoided getting within the grasp of their limbs.

By the fence, on the southern side that bordered a neighbor’s lot, he found the talisman under a Druidic oak, and knew his doom was closer than he had thought.

The fetish was a small bundle of rabbit fur. Inside were bones and gristle. Probably the remains of his cat—

“Those owls are amazing, aren’t they?”

The Horror Writer shot erect with his heart pounding.

Beyond the fence stood his neighbor. By the man’s side was his dog. The beast was a huge sheepdog. Its eyes gleamed with more-than- canine intelligence. Saliva drooled from its curled lip. Its teeth looked razor-sharp.

A strong offense would be his best defense, he knew.

“Owls? What owls? Kind of strange to be talking about owls in the broad daylight, isn’t it?”

His neighbor gestured toward the fetish. “That’s an owl’s leftovers you’ve got there. They always wrap it up in a neat bundle. Really something, nature, huh?”

The Horror Writer tossed the bundle down as if it had burned him. “That’s what you’d like me to believe, I’m sure.”

His neighbor shrugged. “Just the truth.” The man turned to go.

At that moment the dog whined and made a move toward the fence.

The knife leaped into the Horror Writer’s hand. “Keep that hellhound away from me! I know what she’s done!”

The neighbor patted the dog’s head as it scratched behind one ear. “Old Tina? She wouldn’t hurt a fly? What’s the matter with you, Stefan? Get a grip on yourself. You’ve been acting kinda crazy lately.…”

A stab of pain like a hot poker some evil imp had just thrust into his ear shot through the Horror Writer’s head at the mention of the dog’s name. “You bastard. Naming that dog after my wife. I hate your fucking guts.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times, Stefan. We owned Tina before you ever moved here. The way you never listen, I swear you think you’re the only human on the planet.”

The Horror Writer whirled on his opponents and stalked off. The charms he had hung on the fence—weather-stained pages torn at random from his many books—would keep them from following.

The only human— How accurate such a statement sounded now.…

All the way back to the house, the Horror Writer could hear the subliminal thump-thump of his cat’s disembodied spectral heart.

Back in the driveway, something protruding from beneath his car caught his eye.

It was the cat’s tail.

He should have guessed. The car had been acting funny lately, almost as if it had a mind of its own. Possession wasn’t limited to living beings—

An engine backfired!

The Horror Writer slowly began to retreat from his car. Mustn’t let it pin him against the wall—

The mailman’s Jeep puffed up the drive. It came to a stop, its engine backfiring once more as the postman turned the key.

“Sorry to bother you, Mister Prinze, but it’s a special delivery letter. Need your signature.”

With relief, the Horror Writer took the letter without looking at it and signed.

From beneath his car his cat emerged, coming up to the postman and rubbing on the official’s ankles.

“Nice kitty,” said the postman, bending to pet the cat.

It was then that the Horror Writer noticed.

The postman’s back, visible where shirt and trousers gapped, was inhumanly hairy!

Werewolf!

The Horror Writer looked at the letter in his hand.

It was from his wife’s lawyer!

Tricked!

“You goddamn son of a bitch!”

The mailman straightened up. “What’s the matter, Mister Prinze?”

“Look at those fucking nostrils of yours!”

“You’ve been working too hard, Mister Prinze. You need a day off.”

“I don’t take any fucking time off! I’m always ready for trash like you!”

“Everybody needs some time off, Mister Prinze.”

“Get the fuck off my land! I’ll see you in hell, you Satan-spawn!”

When the mailman had gone, the Horror Writer considered the traitorous cat.

Perhaps he would stake it out for the owls.

* * *

There was no other way out.

He would have to physically confront his wife, the spider at the center of the web.

Then maybe this splitting pain behind his eyes—he could envision the doll of him she had fashioned, then repeatedly pierced—would stop.

That evil bitch! Never since Morgan Le Fay had there been a woman as wicked as her!

But it wasn’t really her fault, the Horror Writer reminded himself. She literally wasn’t the same woman he had married. No, an uncaring universe had stolen that woman away and put in her place a cruel imitation.

He wanted to wear his lucky shirt to the showdown, the old flannel shirt with the Led Zep emblem sewn on, in which he had composed his first novel, back when he had been a harried schoolteacher, writing nights and early mornings, living in a trailer—

That halcyon period before his wife had died and been replaced by the sadistic succubus.

But the lucky shirt was in a closet in the bedroom, and he couldn’t go in there.

So on the day he had chosen—the Farmer’s Almanac had revealed it to be a new moon, when the succubus’s power would be at low ebb—he began the fateful journey without that particular shield.

At first he had been planning to take his car. But then the memory of the day it had crushed the cat flooded back on him, and he knew he couldn’t trust it. So he had phoned for a taxi. Cleverly—oh so cleverly—he had arranged without giving his name for it to meet him at the Dairy Mart down the road. No one would suspect it was him calling!