Garden of Evil

Table of Contents

Recent Titles by Graham Masterton Available from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

TOUCHY AND FEELY

THE PAINTED MAN

THE RED HOTEL

ROOK

THE TERROR

TOOTH AND CLAW

SNOWMAN

SWIMMER

DARKROOM

DEMON'S DOOR

GARDEN OF EVIL

FACES OF FEAR

FEELINGS OF FEAR

FORTNIGHT OF FEAR

FLIGHTS OF FEAR

FESTIVAL OF FEAR

BASILISK

BLIND PANIC

CHAOS THEORY

DESCENDANT

DOORKEEPERS

EDGEWISE

FIRE SPIRIT

GENIUS

GHOST MUSIC

HIDDEN WORLD

HOLY TERROR

HOUSE OF BONES

MANITOU BLOOD

THE NINTH NIGHTMARE

PETRIFIED

UNSPEAKABLE

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First published in Great Britain 2012 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9-15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

First published in the USA 2013 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2012 by Graham Masterton.

The right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Masterton, Graham.

Garden of evil.

1. Rook, Jim (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Horror

tales.

I. Title

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-368-6 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8249-3 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-468-4 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This eBook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

T
he smog was so thick that Jim didn't see the dark figure walking up the college driveway until the very last moment, and he had to stamp on the brakes and swerve sharply to the left to avoid hitting him. His car slewed around with its tires screaming in a shrill, panicky chorus.

For a few seconds afterward, he sat behind the wheel of his car, his heart palpitating. The CD player continued to thunder out Beethoven's
Piano Concerto Number Five
at deafening volume, but the Swiss-cheese-and-pastrami sandwich that he had been eating had dropped into his lap.

‘
Jesus
,' he said. He knew that he had probably been driving too fast, and that he should have had his headlights on and been paying less attention to eating his sandwich and more attention to where he was going. All the same, the figure had been walking right in the middle of the driveway, dressed entirely in black.

Jim picked up the slices of rye bread and cheese and pastrami and pickle that were scattered over his navy-blue chinos and cupped them in his hand. Then he climbed out of his car and looked around. The figure had vanished into the smog, which Jim thought was deeply strange. Like, if somebody almost runs you over, what do you do? Either you scream and shout at him and accuse him of driving like a fricking maniac, or else you tell him that he missed you by inches and that you're fine. What you don't do is simply walk away as if nothing had happened.

‘Hey!' Jim shouted. ‘Hey! Are you OK?'

No answer. And no sign of him, either. Only a suffocating wall of yellowish smog, which muffled the constant roaring of traffic from the San Diego Freeway.

‘Hey!
Hallo
? I'm sorry if I scared you! I just want to know that you're OK!'

His voice was flat and didn't seem to carry at all, as if he were shouting in a soundproof booth. Again, no answer. Jim tossed the bits and pieces of his disassembled sandwich on to the grass, smacked his hands together and returned to his car. He started up the engine, and then crept up the driveway, hunched over the wheel, peering intently ahead of him in case the figure was still walking in the middle of the road.

He reached the top of the slope, where the driveway widened into a large circular turning area in front of the college's main entrance. The college buildings themselves gradually appeared out of the smog like some phantom castle. It was still early, around seven thirty, and only a few students were walking to and fro, although more than twenty of them had gathered under the huge cypress tree in front of the college, which was a favorite meeting place for gossip and banter and flirting before class.

Jim drove very slowly past them, staring at each of them in turn, but not one of them was a match for the dark figure that he had nearly run over. At least a half dozen of them were dressed in black sweaters or black T-shirts, but they all wore jeans or cargo shorts, and four of them wore baseball caps, while three of them had sports bags slung over their shoulders, bulging with books. Apart from that, most of them were far too chunky. The dark figure on the driveway had been tall and very thin, like a stretched-out shadow.

Jim gave up his search and circled around to the faculty parking lot. As usual, he maneuvered his green metallic Mercury Marquis into the space reserved for Royston Denman, the head of mathematics. The Mercury was eighteen feet long and six feet wide and Royston Denman's space was adjacent to the entrance and much larger than any of the others.

He climbed out, took his briefcase out of the trunk, and then crossed over to the students under the cypress tree.

‘Any of you see a guy walking up the driveway a couple of minutes ago? Dark top, dark pants.'

‘
Walking
?' said one of the students.

‘Sure, you know. That thing when you put one foot in front of the other and it miraculously gets you from one place to another.'

Almost all of the students shook their heads. ‘Woulda noticed some dude
walkin'
to college. Jeez.'

‘OK,' said Jim. ‘Just asking. Any of you here in Special Class Two?'

Three of them put up their hands – a very tall African-American boy in a droopy gray tracksuit, a baby-pretty blonde with scraggly curls and a tight pink T-shirt with sparkly silver sequins on it, and a red-headed boy with a buzz cut and raging red acne and a bright green sweatshirt.

‘Good. My name's Mr Rook and Special Class Two, that's my class. So I'll be seeing you characters later.'

Just then, he caught sight of Sheila Colefax mounting the steps to the college's main entrance. He jogged across to catch up with her. Sheila taught Spanish in the classroom next to Jim's. She was a petite, perky brunette but she always wore heavy-rimmed eyeglasses, a blouse that was buttoned right up to the neck and fastened with a brooch, and knee-length pencil skirts. Ever since he had first met her, Jim had harbored a fantasy that she wore a black bustier and black stockings underneath those formal outer clothes, and that once she had taken off her eyeglasses and shaken her hair loose, she would be a tigress in bed.

‘Hi, Sheila!
Cómo está usted
?'

‘Very well, thank you, Jim.'

‘
Cuál es le precio de la salchicha hoy
?'

Sheila didn't even turn to look at him, but continued to hurry up the steps. ‘I suppose you've been practicing that,' she said, sharply.

‘Well, yes, I admit it. Spanish isn't actually my second language.'

She reached the top step and now she confronted him. ‘Sometimes I don't know whether you're ignorant, Jim Rook, or juvenile, or crude, or all three. It isn't exactly seductive to ask a woman how much a sausage costs.'

‘You're kidding me! Is that what it means? I thought it was a compliment. Like – “to me, o my darling, you are more precious than sapphires.”'

There was a moment when Jim seriously thought that Sheila was going to slap him. But then her lips pursed tightly to stop herself from laughing and her eyes brightened up behind her eyeglasses and she shook her head from side to side.

‘You really are one of a kind, aren't you? “More precious than sapphires.” You didn't think it meant that for a moment, did you?'

‘No,' Jim admitted. ‘But it tickled you, right? And I could tickle you all evening, if you let me.'

She pushed her way in through the college entrance, and Jim followed her, catching his briefcase in the revolving doors as he did so. He had to forcibly tug it out, breaking the handle.

‘Shit,' he said.

Sheila turned and said, ‘It's a strict rule of mine, Jim. No dating fellow teachers under any circumstances, ever. I'm sorry.'

‘Ehrlichman doesn't have to know.'

‘That's not the point. It happened to me once before, when I was teaching in San Luis Obispo. No matter how discreet you are, it always ends in tears.'

‘Sheila—'

‘No, Jim.'

With that, she walked off along the corridor toward the faculty room, her heels rapping on the polished vinyl floor. Jim was left standing there for a moment, with his briefcase in one hand and the broken handle in the other. Three students went past and gave him goofy grins. He looked back at them fiercely, and said, ‘
What
?'

He was still standing there when the principal, Dr Ehrlichman, came bustling out of his office. Dr Ehrlichman was short and round shouldered, with a bald head peeling from sunburn and bulging green eyes and a nose that always made Jim feel that he wanted to
parp
! it like an old-fashioned motor-horn. Jim thought that if he hadn't been appointed principal of West Grove Community College, he could have easily found an alternative career as a clown.

‘Jim! Just the man!'

‘Doctor E. How was your summer vacation? You went to Bora-Bora, didn't you, or was it Bolivia?'

‘Bulgaria. My wife has relatives in Sofia. It was very cultural. Well, to tell you the truth, it
could
have been very cultural. But my wife's relatives are a little earthy, if that's the right word.'