THE SUBWAY COLLECTION-A Box Set of 8 Dark Stories to Read on the Go (7 page)

             
Abe had been given notice this was not going to happen; it was not set forth in the scheme of things. Abe had been given Frank Nesbeth and he was going to take him. It made Abe's jaws tighten and his saliva glands work overtime to think of it.

             
The flames in the fireplace leaped, the burning logs crackled, snow quietly layered the lead lines in the windows, and the hungry shadows swayed with barely held restraint.

             
#

             
"Here we are!" Frank turned off the car and sat a moment taking in the sight of the house. "Look at that thing!"

             
Dina truly hated it. She couldn't think of a scarier looking place to spend the night. Daylight had failed and from the iron lamps on each side of a massive wood door light scattered over the gray stone blocks to give it a prison like appearance. Straps of iron crisscrossed the door and there didn't appear to be a handle. The house rose up into the dark, disappearing in a shroud of fog. Weak light came from windows on the bottom floor, but it wasn't inviting.

             
"Frank...maybe we could..."

             
He turned to her. "What's the matter, you don't like it?"

             
"It's..."

             
"Spooky? Hell, yeah! But I bet it's going to be great inside. You never stayed in a castle before, have you? It's an adventure."

             
Before she could protest more, he was out the door and opening the back for their bags.

             
She pulled her coat close and took her small purse. The wind buffeted her the instant she was outside of the car. Hurrying alongside Frank to the front door, they were both startled when the door opened abruptly before they knocked or rang the bell. In the doorway stood a tall, thin man with a long face and deep set eyes. His hair was black, thick and full, combed back from the gaunt face. He said, "Come in," and the voice matched his body. Low, deep, as if coming from the bottom of a barrel, a Vincent Price kind of theatrical voice.

             
He stepped out of the way and Frank gave her a little push. She went in, chin in the folds of her coat. The wind had left her frozen. The tips of her ears felt like icicles and even her lungs ached from the cold.

             
The door shut at her back with a heavy sound and she turned to see Frank putting their two small suitcases on the floor and shaking himself like a dog to scatter the snow from his hair and clothes.

             
"Leave your bags there for right now. Come and warm your hands at the fire," their host said.

             
Dina felt the emptiness of the house, the echoing vastness of it, the cold stony clap of their footsteps across the hard floor as they followed the man into a room with a giant fireplace set into a great wall. There was a jeweled lamp on a small table beside a leather chair, and another, larger lamp on an ornate chest against a wall, but neither light made the room cozy. It was too large, the ceilings fourteen feet high, the walls made of stone, the furniture antique and heavy and ominous.

             
"I've made a pot of tea," the man said, gesturing that they sit on a settee upholstered in red velvet. "I'm Abe Abbadon, the owner of this establishment. I imagine your trip was difficult in this storm?"

             
"Like bloody hell," Frank said, and laughed.

             
They accepted white china teacups embellished with gold rims. The tea was hot and fragrant, a good black beverage that Dina sipped gratefully. "Are we the only guests?" she asked.

             
Abaddon nodded and looked sad. "It's been a slow, bad winter and, of course, it's almost Christmas. Most travelers stay on the freeway and choose the chain motels, I imagine."

             
Like I wish we had
, Dina thought, but she kept her gaze on her teacup so as not to let her host see her true feelings. She meant to drink her tea fast and get to their room. She'd plead fatigue if Frank wanted to make love. She couldn't think about sex with him for much longer. Her feelings had...turned. He wasn't the man she wanted, not at all. Not now for the night, not ever. She just had to find a way to let him know.

             
They spoke of the weather, the history of the house which had been around since the time of the War Between the States, and finally Abaddon stood and went to help with the suitcases. Frank demurred, saying he had it, thanks, and Abaddon shrugged. He led them up the stairs saying, "I've given you the best room since we have no other guests. It has its own bathroom--fresh towels. Some of the others don't have a private bath."

             
He took them to Room 12 and handed the key to Frank. "Breakfast in the morning at nine. If you need anything in the night, just use the telephone in the room and dial 77. It rings me."

             
With that he was gone, lost like a tall wraith in the shifting shadows of the hall.

             
"Wow, this is pretty awful," Dina said in a low voice. "And what a strange man!"

             
"You really don't like it?" Frank looked sullen. "I thought you would. I thought it would be fun. A surprise."

             
"It's cold in here." She hugged her arms while he unlocked the door with an old-fashioned skeleton key attached to a small round black button with the number 12 on it.

             
"Maybe it's nicer in the room. You can quit whining now."

             
Dina frowned. "I'm not whining."

             
"Baby, you've been whining for hours." He had the door unlocked and shouldered it open while carrying both bags. Dina followed behind.

             
Dark. Cold.

             
Dina felt for a light switch and wondered why Abaddon hadn't left a lamp on for them. Her hand scratched along the wallpaper in a blind search. "Where's the light?" she asked, a small panic in her voice. She pushed the door open again to the hall and a bar of pale light stole across the carpeted room ending at the foot of a massive bed. She turned to the near wall and found the switch. Overhead a bulb behind a red and blue stained glass globe came on, but the light was weak. She closed the door, turning the lock.

             
Frank had the bags on the bed and they both stood still looking around. The room was huge, cavernous. It had to be twenty feet across and thirty wide. The overhead light hardly reached to each wall and it left the corners in deep shadow. The wallpaper was a very old pattern of country houses in brown and rose. The bed was covered with a rose coverlet with matching pillow shams. It was a four-poster bed, high off the floor, the mattress two-feet thick. Each post was carved with galloping horses, leering faces, and what appeared to be Egyptian calligraphy. On each side of the bed were tall tables with spindly legs, each topped with a fresh vase of deep red roses. A chair stood off to the side, plump with brown velvet cushions. A chest stood against one wall, a bowl of roses on top. A closed door led to what they believed to be the bath.

             
"Wild," Frank whispered.

             
"Weird," Dina said. "Cold as a freezer. Brrrr." She hugged her coat around her, having never taken it off since entering the house.

             
Frank slapped the bed. "Feels soft and plush and it has plenty of covers on it. We'll warm up."

             
"I'm taking a bath," she said, taking her bag and heading for the door. She didn't want to talk about warming up together, that just depressed her.

             
"Fine, I'll see if I can make some calls."

             
Dina shook her head and went into the bath. She saw it matched the room in that it was over large, with a claw-foot porcelain tub, a toilet with a pull chain hanging down from an elevated tank, and a pedestal sink. She closed the door. When she turned the taps in the tub, it gushed steaming water that made her smile for the first time in hours. She would take a hot, leisurely bath, at least, and hurry under the covers once she was done.

             
She could hear Frank in the room talking low, calling his pals, arranging...what? Nothing to do with computers, that was for sure. She had never seen him even use a computer, not even her laptop in her apartment. He was definitely not who he said he was.

             
Shrugging it off, knowing she'd find a way to extricate herself from him, she began to undress and breathe in the steam from the big tub.

             
#

             
The trouble began when Dina, bathed, warmly wrapped in a thick cotton robe and fuzzy slippers, couldn't get the bathroom door open.

             
"Frank?"

             
She heard his footsteps as he came to the door. "Yeah? Give me a minute, I have to finish up this call."

             
"No, wait. I can't get the door open." She jiggled the door knob, but it seemed loose and it wasn't working properly.

             
"Oh shit," Frank said.

             
She heard him ending his phone call and come to the door. He tried the knob. He turned it this way and that, but nothing happened.

             
"Open it from in there," he said.

             
"I've been trying!"

             
"Christ, Dina, you bitch about every little thing." He kept rattling the door knob and cursing softly.

             
Dina heard a sound behind her and, startled, turned. The light over the sink dimmed and the shadows at the back of the bathroom came to life, the shadows on the wall behind the tub writhed with energy. They all gathered as if a whole group of dark creatures had come alive and were starting not only to form, but to
move.
Dina tried to scream, but the shadows leaped across the space with incredible speed and with shadowy hands covered her mouth, with shadowy hands covered her eyes, and with shadowy arms caught her fainting body before it hit the floor.

             
#

             
"Dina? Dina, baby, why are you so quiet?"

             
When she didn't answer, Frank mumbled to himself as he kept wrestling with the door knob.
Crazy bitch, nothing's ever good enough, nothing's ever right. Goddamn door knob is just stuck or something, just a loose mechanism, I'm going to complain about this...

             
A knock on the door of Room 12 caused Frank to jump. He let go of the bathroom door knob and quick-stepped to the door, ready to give Abaddon an earful.

             
He swung open the door and there stood...

             
The true Abaddon. The great Satan. The undisputed master of hell. He was no long a thin man with a full head of black hair. He was no longer human in any way. His head was the size of three human heads and the mouth was wide with a grin that showed two rows of razor teeth. The eyes were blazing orbs of molten metal. The creature was eight foot tall, with arms longer than they should have been and his body was a naked, slimy red thing, bunched with muscles, steaming with heat. "Oh my God..."

             
"Go to sleep, Frank."

             
Frank fell back first with fear that suffused his whole brain and then he fell to the floor when his brain went black, taking his consciousness with it.

             
#

             
Room 12 began to sparkle, little firefly lights winking in and out, spreading across the surface of the walls, creeping across the carpet on the floor, covering the windows, changing the bed to a rack and the entire room to a dungeon. There were no windows now and no doors. This was a place where imagination could not perform to make comparisons to anything earthly and reality was warped beyond thought. Shadows slipped from the dank walls to slink around the rack, their forms as tall and forbidding as that of their master.

             
Abaddon lifted the unconscious Frank from the floor and carried him to the rack. He situated the man, clinking shut an iron collar around his neck, iron cuffs on each wrist and ankle. An iron bar went across his midsection and, thusly, he was held fast.

             
Standing back to look at his handiwork, Abaddon grinned with a grin that would have frozen the heart of any human being. "Keep him quiet," he said to his shadow helpers.