HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (24 page)

A wagon drawn by two
horses pulled up down the street, long raw hardwood boards sticking
out from the back. It looked incongruous alongside the motor cars and
bicycles moving in a stream past it. This part of the world was just
turning from the old west to the industrial age. The air smelled of
dust, car exhaust, new copper, raw wood, and horse manure. The
constant wind blew the curtains, turning them into lacy sails. Nick
sat swatting the curtains aside as he watched the street and waited
for Jody to awak

CHAPTER 27

OVER THE
MOON-DAPPLED LAND

Entering the state
of Arizona Angelique walked down the side of the two-lane highway.
She peered into the distance, the sun at her back. Her clothes had
become dirty and ragged; she would need to stop in a town somewhere
and buy more. The shoulder bag she carried was heavy with the last of
her cash and coins. It was all she had with her.

Not far over the
state line she paused along the road, squinting ahead. Nisroc had
come this way but he went north somewhere, she felt it, as if his
vibration was a line of bright light leading her on, but in the
distance it angled to the right. She was confident she'd know when to
head north. According to the map in her head there were a few cities
in north Arizona—Kingman, Flagstaff, Phoenix. A bird rising
from ashes formed in her mind and she smiled. He had gone to Phoenix.

Why he thought he
could vanish and evade her she could not imagine. He knew she had
powers of perception that were vastly more sensitive than what he
could ever employ. If it were turned around and he hoped to track
her, he just wouldn't be able to do it. Though he might know when she
got near... The thought niggled at her brain, causing her to chew on
her bottom lip. He might know, but he would never be able to hide.
She stopped worrying and moved on down the highway.

This part of the
country was alien. It was nothing like the mountains and forests of
the Carolinas or the piney woods and long, white beaches of the Gulf
Coast states. This land was a moonscape. A scraped-clean-sunburned
desert. The light was relentless, scouring the land mercilessly.
Barrel and sequaro cacti dotted the landscape like menacing
sentinels. She could see no sign of wildlife, not even a bird in the
blue vault of sky. Very few vehicles drove this long stretch of
highway so that she felt very alone and exposed, like a cow's skull
picked clean by vultures.

If she did not need
Nisroc so desperately, she would never put herself through such a
rigorous trip cross country. And besides, damn it, he owed her. She
was his superior, his savior. It was unconscionable he had left her
high and dry the way he'd done. Just turned his back in that
insulting way and walked out of town...

Ahead she saw a
small settlement sprawling across the desert floor like a little
series of houses and buildings set there by a child's hand. She might
find a clothing store and manipulate the mind of a hotel clerk to let
her rent a room for the night. She could use some sleep in a bed. But
what she'd love more would be a big tub of hot bath water and a real
bar of soap. Her hair felt like a bird's nest and her skin was coated
with dust all the way down into the creases between her fingers and
toes.

She trudged forward,
the sun now overhead and scorching. In that town tomorrow she might
hire someone to drive her to Phoenix. There had to be someone there
in this time of financial turmoil who would gladly take a
fifty-dollar bill in return for a couple hundred mile trip north...

CHAPTER 28

TOGETHER, FOREVER

Jody woke late in
the afternoon to find his new friend sitting at the window, his arms
on the sill.

“
Busy little
place, isn't it?” he asked. He swung his chubby legs over the
side of the bed and slipped to the floor. He went to the wash basin
to clean his face and hands, but he couldn't reach it. When he looked
over, Nick was rising from the chair and coming to his aid.

“
I thought I'd
stay a little while, find a job as a carpenter on one of the hotels
or casinos going up.”

“
They got a
circus here?” Nick had put the wash basin full of water on the
table by the window. Jody cupped water and splashed his face.

Nick smiled. “I
don't see one.”

“
I can sweep
floors then.” Jody dried his face and stood quietly beside
Nick.

“
Did you read
minds in the circus?” Nick asked, not altogether serious.

“
No, but I
guess I could have. I was the littlest clown. The crowd loved me.”

“
I imagine
they did.”

“
I don't
always pick up what you're thinking, you know.” Jody stared
into the street below.

“
I know.”

“
You want to
tell me what you really are so I can stop thinking of you as
Not-Quite-Man?”

“
I'm an
angel.”

Jody stiffened, but
did not look at Nick. “An angel,” he repeated. “Like
from heaven.”

“
No, more like
from out of the deepest, loneliest dark.”

“
You're one of
the Fallen. What's your real name, your angel name?”

Now Nick turned to
look at him. “I keep being surprised at how discerning you are.
My name is Nisroc. I use Nick to make it easy for people.”

“
Can you tell
me why you're here?” Jody asked.

“
The only
answer I have for that is that the void is enough to erode my
sanity.”

“
And because
you love human beings.”

Nick blinked with
more surprise. He hesitated and then said, “I guess you're
right. I love the living. I love living.”

“
Don't we
all,” Jody stated. He turned from the window for the door.
“I'm going out on the street, you coming?”

Nick rose from the
chair and followed Jody out. The city was a siren calling to them.
The clamor and clang of hammers and saws, wagons carrying supplies,
trucks hooting, cars grinding gears, hawkers calling to strangers to
“Come on in, see the show!” filled the air with
quadraphonic sound. Before night fell both men found work as a
builder and store sweeper.

Back in their room
there had been a small fold-out bed installed against the far wall.
They fell into their beds and slept to the music of the night city,
the city's lights casting long shadows, blinking over the room.

Jody had not only
been born small, but gifted with an insight incomparable to what
“normal” people possessed. He saw through others to their
inner cores, knowing which ones to avoid and which to befriend. This
gift kept him safe at school when he was a child and it saw him
through a strange adulthood performing in a traveling circus. This
night he dreamed, dreams being another way his psyche performed feats
of near magic.

He dreamed of
angels, angels that did not come down from heaven, but instead from a
dark place where no sentient being wanted to be. Specifically, he
dreamed of Nisroc and his companion, the angel who resided in the
body of a little girl. His attention was immediately taken by the
girl—raven haired, petite, her skin the color of old gold. But
in her eyes he saw fire, he saw death, he saw destruction. Together
the two angels stood side by side in a beautifully appointed house
with marble floors. Just the aura he saw around the figures told him
that one was not like the other. Nisroc had a soft, violet glow
surrounding him. The girl walked in a cloud of darkness, like the sky
before a terrible storm.

She was sleeping
now, just as he was, but he knew earlier in the day she had purchased
a new black and white checked dress, a sunhat of straw circled with
red, shiny ribbon, and a pair of black shoes. These items lay on a
divan in the room, waiting for her to don them in the morning. Even
as she slept he feared approaching her in the dream. Had he met this
being in the real world he knew he would be racing the opposite
direction. She was as terrorizing as a box of dynamite with a lit
fuse. Looking over at her reclining on the bed, he felt he was
staring down into a deep abyss. He experienced vertigo and fled the
dream room only to enter a clearing in a wooded area and there again
was the girl, standing before a bonfire. It was night and there was
no moon or stars in the sky. She was alone.

“
So we meet,”
she said in a silky voice that made him quake.

“
What is your
purpose, Black Wing?” For he knew when she raised the wings
from her small back they would be inky black and monstrous. They
would increase her power and make her a creature less human than
demon.

She smiled a little
and stepped closer to the fire so that he could see her face. He
stood across the flames from her and tried not to show the fear he
felt. If he let that fear rule him, his bones would melt and he'd
puddle down onto the forest floor like ice beneath a blow torch, his
entire body liquifying. He straightened his shoulders and placed his
hands on his hips. He knew he could not represent power, but at least
he could let her know he was not the pipsqueak she thought him.

“
Do you think
you can protect him?” she asked, inclining her head to the
side.

He laughed at her
question. “I doubt it, but I can be his friend.”

She laughed now and
it was as if the forest erupted with thunder. Jody clasped his hands
over his ears to shut out the sound. This action was entirely
involuntary. He glanced up at her from where he'd lowered his gaze to
the ground.

Her laughter stopped
and now she looked angry enough to eat him alive. His heart did a
flip-flop so awesome that he dropped his hands from his ears and
clutched his chest.

“
He doesn't
need you, little man. You're just in my way.”

“
Had he not
needed me, Black Wing, I wouldn't have dropped into his life.”
Jody knew it was chancy to engage with her and especially to refute
what she said, but he always acted spontaneously; it was just the way
he was made and he could not stop himself despite the danger it put
him in.

Now she stepped
back, sweeping her hand across the fire so that the flames lessened
and the bonfire turned to a pile of red hot coals gleaming in the
darkness. “Really, I don't care what you do, but if you try to
spy on me again, I promise you a hearty death when finally I catch up
to you.”

Now what he feared
most occurred. She stood with her feet apart and raised her hands.
From her back sprouted the wings, the black wings he knew these
angels possessed. Unholy appendages grew and grew until they dwarfed
the child, rising like swords and spreading out like an unfathomable
darkness to each side.

He turned aside,
wrenching his gaze from her and once again he fled this particular
dream world. He sat on a dry mountainside, panting, shivering all
over with dread. He was alone, thank God. He had escaped her this
time and swore not to go to her, even in sleep, again. She did not
make idle threats. She had shown him a series of violent deaths in
his mind, playing them like movies one death after another and
another, and in all of them he suffered greatly before expiring.

As he shook, trying
to calm himself, he looked up to the sky wondering if there was any
help for him there.

Still, he knew he
would not leave Nisroc unless the angel asked him to go. He did not
end up in places and with people—or angels!--without reason.
There was no coincidence in Jody's life, never had been. He was
exactly where he was supposed to be, even in dream. If that meant his
ultimate demise, then so be it.

He had never been a
coward. He was not so afraid for his own survival that he would
abandon a being who needed him. And evidently Nick needed someone...

CHAPTER 29

FOOTPRINTS OF THE
DAMNED

On waking, Angelique
knew about Nisroc's traveling companion, Jody. The little man. The
circus freak. The tiny speck of humanity that believed he could help
protect an angel. Dressing in new clothes, Angelique laughed. The
Jody man amused her. He was as full of fear as anyone she'd ever met,
but that did not seem to deter him. Well, if she couldn't scare him,
she'd simply dispose of him whenever she found him. And she would
find him.

On the street she
found a cart selling hard fried eggs and onions wrapped in flat
bread. She ate while sitting on a store bench watching people move
about the little town just as if their lives mattered.

She waited for
someone to park near the store. It was more than an hour later, while
she patiently sat waiting, nursing a bottle of cola. The woman was
middle-aged, gray, and weak-minded. She had little in her head beyond
the bolt of gay cloth she meant to buy in the store so that she could
make a new Sunday dress. As she exited her car and walked by
Angelique, she stopped, turning her head to look at the child.