Shivers

THE ATTACK

He crouched in the alleyway, listening with all his senses to the night as it surrounded him. Once more he was picking up those hideous thoughts, the chanting of a thousand condemned souls crying out in desperate supplication.

And so they came for him.

There was a clanking sound, like a manhole lid being forced open from below. There were no other sounds save the pounding of Philip’s heart. There were no cars, no pedestrians.

Only Philip and that thing from the sewer.

It waited there, its glaring red eyes searching, searching. It had an odor, both foul and sweet, like perfume-covered excrement. Then it moved down the street toward the alley.

The thing that had been stalking him lunged out. He felt a claw rake his shin. Then came sharp pain, the warmth of dripping blood. He continued to run. Another thrust—the claw dug into his back, scraping away nuggets of flesh. Philip cried out, his screams high as those of the thing that was attacking him. He could feel the breath of the creature as its mouth found his neck, the hungry teeth digging into his skin.

For the first time, he saw clearly what it was . . .

Also by William Schoell:

SPAWN OF HELL

A LEISURE BOOK

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc. 6 East 39th Street New York, NY 10016

Copyright©1985 by William Schoell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

Printed in the United States of America

PROLOGUE

I
N A SMALL
room in an old hotel, an elderly man wrote feverishly. Sitting at a desk and scribbling in a notebook, he would stop now and then to pull his sweater more tightly around his shoulders. Cold. He was cold.

Mr. Peterson got up and crossed to the window. Sighing heavily, shivering, he closed the window and shut out the draft. No good—his weary old bones were still chilled. He was still shivering. He knew what
that
implied.
So little time,
he thought,
so little time.
He went back to his desk and continued writing:

The change was slow at first, subtle. We didn’t even realize it was happening. A few of us seemed to act . . . peculiar. But then the oddest thing—after awhile we thought their behavior was perfectly normal, because we were behaving that way too.

Something shuffled out in the hall. There was a knock on the door. “Peterson—you in?”

It was another tenant, Mr. Baloos. Mr.
Blues,
they called him.
Not now,
Peterson groaned. He dared not be disturbed before this was finished. He didn’t know how long he might have left.

The knocking was more insistent. Blues wanted to chat, play poker, or borrow money. It was always one or the other. “Go away!” Peterson yelled. “Not
now!
I must have my rest.”

Offended, Mr. Baloos didn’t answer. The shuffling resumed, fading away down the hall. Peterson, eagerly embracing the quiet, concentrated and began writing again.

At first they thought it was primeval in origin. Primeval, ha!—Prime Evil is more like it. They discovered the capsule by chance, while building the foundation for a new chemical plant. No one could have guessed what they’d find inside. Instead of something to study and dissect and probe, it studied and probed and dissected them. It took over their minds. It took over our minds. God help me, it took over
mine.

It wasn’t long before everyone was under its spell, under the control of our “visitor. “And we knew—for it had planted the information in our minds—that we dare not rebel against it. Those of us who had seen it, been . . . touched . . . by it, had been
treated.
If our actions, our thoughts, were in any way interpreted as being a threat to its survival, a threat to its mission, we would . . .

Peterson was shaking now, his arms and legs trembling so badly it was all he could do to stay in his chair and hold on to the pen. He forced himself to Write.

It’s happening. I’ve fought successfully against it for as long as I could, kept my thoughts from reaching it. But—I knew I could only do this for so long.

He had to rest. Sweat poured down his face, mingling with tears. He must write, he had to get it all down—before . . . The world must know. The city must be warned. He knew what was going to happen. The creature’s control had a side effect—the minds of it and its victims were inextricably linked. It knew what they were doing and thinking, but
they
knew what it was doing and thinking too. They knew, Peterson knew, its monstrous plan.

So little time.

He struggled against the fear and the shivering and wielded his pen like a dagger, wedging words into paper. He saw spots in front of his eyes. The thing was making a last-ditch attempt to dissuade him from his task—soon the hallucinations would come. With the hallucinations would come death—unless he stopped, relaxed, let down his guard, and let his mind be taken once again.

He wrote:
On the surface everything seemed normal. It knew that we could not hurt it or stop it. When it came time for my retirement, I even got the de rigueur gold watch and reception. It let us go off on our vacations, have our sick days, and except for one of us—the most important one—carry on our lives as if nothing untoward had happened. Oh, how we wanted to scream and cry when we were with our friends and family. How we wanted to tell them what had happened. But it wouldn’t let us. And even when we were able for moments to wrest free of its control, the
shivering
would start—it would send us a warning—desist or die. Die horribly. The shivering would start, and we would stop.

Those of us who retired, who left the firm, thought we’d gotten away. That we could forget the past and go on with our lives and never feel its influence again. But no one ever escaped. None of us ever went far. It saw to that. We all knew its influence could only extend so far, that it had limits, geographical limits. So it made sure that our desires were subtly altered, that we stayed close by. Only the most meek among us were allowed our distance.

The one who suffered the most was Everson. He was the strongest—psychologically, physically, in every way—and hence the one who most needed to be watched.

And now, poor Everson . . .
the creature has gone too far.

He underlined the words with a stroke so deep and bold that it literally tore into the paper.

He was getting tired. He was getting weak. The spots were getting bigger. He could no longer see the paper. He could no longer hold the pen. He sobbed, miserably. He lifted his hands to his head and tried to keep himself from screaming.

What does it matter?
part of him asked. What was he but a dried-up old man struggling by on a pension, a brilliant scientist reduced to a pitiful existence in a dreadful hotel. He had never known the value of a dollar, never saved his money, never seen the warning signs—when you’re old and without money, you might just as well be dead. Why hadn’t he seen the warnings?

But the rents had been so high. And he’d had gambling debts to pay, debts which wiped out his savings. Everything he and his late wife Doris had worked so hard for. What does it matter? he asked himself again.
Doris never lived to take that trip we’d planned anyway.

He only hoped that somebody would find his memoirs. Writing them would literally be the death of him. Had he gotten it all down? Could they piece the rest together?

Would they
believe
what he had written?

He was still shivering, only it was worse than before. Much worse.

For a moment he almost screamed that he was sorry and would never do it again, he almost screamed that he would burn the notebook and spend the rest of his miserable life in atonement if only he’d be spared. Anything, he’d do anything to save himself from
that.
But it was too late. This time he had gone too far. The process was irreversible and he knew it. He was shaking like a junkie undergoing withdrawal. He was sweating like a pig, trembling and jerking like a palsied epileptic. He managed to get up from his chair, knocking it to the floor. He took one step.

“No!”

With horror he realized it had regained complete control of his mind. Something compelled him to grab the notebook in his hand, to tear it into shreds.

No. My sacrifice will have been worthless.
“Damn you!” he screamed.

He was jerked over to the window like a puppet on strings. The pages were in crumpled pieces. His hands shot out and crashed bloodily through the glass. He did not cry out. He felt no pain. His mind was filled with utter despair as the papers flew out of his hands to trickle away with the breeze, floating down down into the alleyway to mingle with the trash. Now there really was no hope. Everyone was doomed. All was lost. Lost in a sea of refuse.

The walls were coming closer. The damned thing had picked his brain and discovered his deadliest fear.
Claustrophobia.
The room was closing in. Peterson, still shivering with maniacal fury, reached out his arms to push the walls away.

No! Keep away. Help me!

His heart was pounding wildly. The four walls were pressing against him and his arms were too weak to keep them away. The spots before his eyes were bigger. His arms flailed in every direction, helplessly, as the room became the size of a closet, a trunk, a suitcase.

The size of a
shoebox.

With disbelief, Peterson saw the stuff of his body crumbling, dissolving, running down his legs. Blood and flesh intermingling. Even his clothes were beginning to burn, shred, drip into the stream of gore. How could
hallucination
have done this to him, have squashed him? No, it was not the hallucination that was killing him. He was suffering the fate he’d been
warned
against.

Peterson tottered, slipped, fell back against the wall beside the shattered window. Somehow from his shoebox he saw his blood still sticking to the cracked glass, until it too began to sizzle and dissolve, dropping to nothingness on the floor. As Peterson lay against the wall, his arms raised up in the air, and his legs spread outward, his entire body
melted.

Until he was a mere smear upon the wall.

PART I

Wednesday, October 16th