Ravenous Ghosts (14 page)

He fixed her with a look that demanded answers. Calmly, she leant against the doorjamb, eyes narrowed, arms folded.
"I came home at about two o' clock, Malcolm. I stood right where I'm standing now and asked if you wanted to go to lunch. You ignored me so I went by myself. I met up with Christina for coffee and stopped at the grocery store on my way home. Is that okay with you?"

The sarcasm in her tone went straight over his head and he nodded as if she had genuinely been seeking his approval.
"I was in the zone, baby. You know better than to try talking to me when I'm at my creative peak. Any distractions when I'm in such a frenzy could be detrimental to the integrity of the piece I'm working on."

"
I see," Lynn said, unimpressed.

"
And this piece is a real winner. I can feel it in my bones, Lynn! It's the best stuff I've ever written. Something to shove up the noses of those talentless editors. This'll get my name known, raise my profile, and put me on the hot list! Mark my words, babe. This one is gonna put Pepper on the map!"

She looked at him for a moment as if unsure whether to scream at him or break down in tears. His expression of delirious enthusiasm faded.
"What's the matter?"

"
Nothing," she said and turned away.

He rushed after her and caught her elbow.
"Wait, what is it? You upset about something?"

She shook her head and pulled away.
"I'm fine. Just tired, that's all. The interview was a nightmare. I think I blew it."

Malcolm clucked his tongue and sighed sympathetically, even though he hadn
't the faintest idea what she was blabbering on about. She started to walk away and he halted her. "Hey."

She turned.
"What?"

"
How about you throw on some dinner while I take a shower. I'm starving and I'm sure a bit of food in your belly will make you feel better too. What do you say?"

She stared at him for a moment before nodding.
"Yeah."

Malcolm watched her descend the stairs and smiled.

Poor thing
, he thought,
she'd never make it as a writer
.

* * *

After dinner, Malcolm sat himself down in the den; a thick book on his lap while Lynn lay on the sofa watching a comedy show on television. She had changed from the elegant attire she'd worn to the interview into a t-shirt and sweatpants. Malcolm hated to see her without make-up and dressed like a street thug but his frequent attempts to change this frustrating habit of hers seemed futile so he put up with it. Her eyes were hooded and it wouldn't be long before sleep claimed her.

Good
.

That way he wouldn
't be distracted.

Flipping open the hefty tome, he traced the bold print with his finger until he came to a listing that piqued his interest.

"
Analysis Hall
:
Words for the Wise
," he read aloud.

"
What?" Lynn asked, suddenly alert and looking at him. Though he appreciated her feigning interest as she had many times before, he knew she couldn't care less about his work. He offered her a wink and returned to the spot he had marked with a fingertip.

"
Seeks fiction or non-fiction up to eight thousand words. Pays ten cents a word. Most genres. Circulation 11,000. My, my. Wouldn't that be sweet?"

Lynn sat up.
"What's the…"

He hushed her with a raised hand.
"Wait, Lynn. Give me a second. This is important."

She huffed indignantly and lay down again.
"Fine."

"
Response time, a week! I can scarcely believe it. Usually the pros take forever. I was waiting on Boomhatch for two months!" He rubbed his hands together and grinned. "This is it, Lynn my girl. This is the one. I'll finish 'Editor's Choice' tonight and have it off to the good folk at Analysis Hall in the morning. No crummy editors here, no sir! These people sound like the genuine article, don't you think?"

Lynn opened her mouth to reply.

"Yes indeedy! This is the one," Malcolm continued, giddy with excitement. "Just the springboard I need for my career! First
Analysis Hall
and then
Playboy
! Think of the money, Lynn! You can buy all the…well, whatever you want!"

Lynn shrugged.
"Great."

He curled the corner of the page down to mark his place and shut the book with a slam that made her jump.
"Oh, c'mon Lynn! Be a little bit enthusiastic at least, can't you? I'm doing this for both of us y'know. Sure, it may be small potatoes now but you wait. Give it a year and we'll be out of this crummy neighborhood and living the high life!"

He got to his feet and headed for the door.

"Wait," Lynn said, craning her head to see him. "Aren't you going to ask me about the interview?"

He splayed out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
"You told me you blew it. What else is there to know?"

When she didn
't reply, he blew her a kiss and trotted upstairs to complete his masterpiece.

* * *

The following morning Lynn was in a foul mood and Malcolm thought it best to avoid her, figuring it was that time of the month in which nothing he could do would be appreciated.

He ignored her cold stare as he lovingly paper-clipped a cover note to his pristine white manuscript and slid it into an envelope.

The phone rang just as he was licking a stamp and he raised his eyebrows when his wife looked at him. With a grimace that made her almost remarkably hideous, she shoved her chair back and stalked off to answer it.

Malcolm rolled his eyes and applied the stamp. He had just uncapped the pen and was scribbling the address he had jotted down on a piece of paper onto the front of the envelope when Lynn whooped in delight. He straightened and watched her dance back into the kitchen, a different woman than the ogre who
'd gone to answer the phone.

"
What is it?" he asked, watching her jiggle with excitement as she swiped a piece of cold toast from the table and nibbled at it.

"
Gohjob," she mumbled, her mouth full.

"
You got the job? Why that's great honey!" he said and returned his attention to the envelope.

"
I have to be there this morning for training. I'm taking over from some old guy who's been itching to retire for years. They said they liked my approach and thought I could introduce some new ideas and a fresh perspective into their company! Isn't that great?"

Malcolm nodded absently and held the envelope out in front of his face. After a moment of scrutiny, he turned to Lynn, stooped down and kissed her on the cheek.
"That's outstanding. Could you pop this into the mailbox on your way out?"

Lynn
's chewing slowed as she watched her husband mount the stairs, whistling an off-key rendition of 'We're in the Money' as he went back to his office.

* *
*

The wait was unbearable.

For the next week, Malcolm kept a vigilant watch on the mailman. Day after day, he struggled to keep his excitement at bay as the guy with the blue shorts and light blue shirt popped a wad of mail into the box outside Malcolm
's gate and every day it was the same.

Bills, subscriptions…junk.

With the continual disappointment came the urge to look up the number of
Analysis Hall
and call them up. He could pretend to be asking for confirmation that his manuscript had been received. Ultimately though, he didn't trust himself not to inundate them with questions, sabotaging his chances of acceptance.

Did you read it? What did you think? Well, when are you going to read it? But your guidelines said…

Definitely a bad idea.

Then exactly two weeks later and with Malcolm ready to storm the offices of
Analysis Hall
, the letter came.

It was on the table amid the usual pile of Lynn
's beauty tips, free sample sachets of God-knew-what and women's magazines.

Lynn sat next to the heap, reading
Cosmopolitan
and sipping a cup of coffee.

Although encouraged by the fact that it was a letter and not an envelope—something he had grown accustomed to and which meant return of his manuscript—he was also irritated.

"Why didn't you tell me the letter had arrived?" he asked Lynn, who turned and gave him a casual glance.

"
Good morning," she said sweetly and returned to her magazine. "I didn't know it was something important."

"
What?" he cried suddenly, outraged that she could treat the subject with such indifference. "You should have been watching for it. Don't you listen to anything I say? I've only been going on about this for two weeks."

Lynn shrugged.
"Forgot. Why don't you open it and see what it says before you go running your mouth of about it?"

He stared at her, mouth agape and snatched the letter off the table. Carefully sliding his finger beneath the sealed flap, he shook his head in disgust.
"You could do well to show a bit of interest in your husband's affairs, woman. This is a new publication and the only one I know of that will have the talent and education to see the genius in my work. It may mean nothing to you, but it's damn important to me."

Lynn said nothing.

He removed the letter and opened it out with trembling hands.

As he began to read, the color drained from his face.

It read:

Dear Malcolm,

Thank you for submitting you work to
Analysis Hall
.

After carefully reading your story
'Editor's Choice' I'm afraid I will have to reject it.

The reason for this is mainly due to the fact that your writing is quite simply—awful. Although I did read the whole story despite nearly nodding off after the first paragraph of senseless drivel, I found nothing of value whatsoever in the piece and with that in mind I recommend that you (a) not submit to us again as we receive too many quality submissions to be distracted by such garbage and (b) seriously re-evaluate your ambition in life before the talent you are convinced you have leaves you a bitter and lonely old man with nothing to live for…

Malcolm looked up, his face deathly white.
"Dear God in Heaven," he mumbled.

Lynn pushed back her chair and straightened the lapels of her business suit.
"I'm off to work," she said, smiling.

"
Wait, you have to read this…this…" he pleaded, feeling bile rise in his mouth. "You have to see what they
said
about me…I-I…"

"
What
who
said?"

He looked dumbly at her as she paused before the open door, a flare of sunlight brightening the walls in the hallway and he realized he hadn
't read far enough to see who the author of this travesty had been.

When he did, his eyes widened and he dropped like a gunnysack into the chair nearest him.
"Oh…my."

Lynn looked over her shoulder at him, winked and was gone.

A shawl of misery draped itself over Malcolm's shoulders as he stared at the familiar signature three-quarters of the way down the page.

He willed it to change, to prove itself nothing more than an optical illusion. When it didn
't, it finally occurred to him that maybe he should have asked his wife about her new job.

FROM HAMLIN TO HARPERVILLE

The inspiration for this story came from Graham Masterton's excellent, award-winning short story "The Taking of Mr. Bill." In Masterton's tale, Peter Pan is portrayed as being a monstrous entity far different from the gleeful adventurer in J.M.Barrie's book. The idea stuck with me and was nudged into being on reading Harlan Ellison's equally impressive tale "Emissary From Hamlin."

At one stage this promised to be a novel. For now, the short story will have to suffice…

They
're hammering on the door again. But how can I really be that afraid when I saw it coming?

They
'll find a way in, eventually. Despite my precautions and lunatic attempts at carpentry (my father would be proud), they are growing in number. Eventually the sheer weight of them crowding against the house will cause those boarded windows to snap, allowing them to spill and tumble and crawl and clamber their way into my crumbling sanctuary.

Before it
's over, I must record this for the benefit of whoever remains out there.

This is a warning.

My death will be the true beginning of the end.

* * *

He walked into the town square at midday on Monday morning. (I find it hard to believe that was only two days ago.)

Although strangers have a pretty good chance of being noticed in a town as small as Harperville, it was Max
's sudden frenzied whimpering and barking that drew my attention to him.

I was standing outside Strickler
's store, loading sacks of groceries into the back of my truck and thumping a fist against the glass of the cab to chasten Max into silence when I saw him.

He was standing in the center of the square, right next to the statue of Harlan Masterson--the town founder--who now presided over a scum-filled pond with an understandably depressed expression on his marble face.

The stranger wore a dark suit that only served to highlight his stark white features, his hair wild and fizzing around his narrow skull like black electricity.

He would have looked odd to anyone else, standing there with his hands behind his back, head cocked slightly while all around him people were going about their business warmed by the pleasant August sunshine. But to me he didn
't look out of place at all.

The dog bared his teeth and growled. I finished putting away my groceries and sat into the truck. Massaging the animal
's shaggy coat as I gunned the ignition, I found it hard to look away from the man by the statue.

After a moment of staring in a manner that would have been considered impolite in any society, I started home.

A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed that the stranger wasn't moving from his place by the statue and before I took my eyes off his dwindling form, I thought I saw him bring something long and thin out from behind his back, something that gleamed in the sunlight. Something he put to his lips.

* * *

I live alone. There are many reasons why that has to be the case but none of them are pertinent to this account. Although I don't consider myself an unfriendly fellow, I think perhaps the sight of the many demons cavorting in my eyes is enough to deter any potential relationships I might have developed with my neighbors.

My house is small, quite literally a
'cracker box' but it is comfortable and clean. At least it used to be before it became necessary to smash up the furniture to use for barricades.

When I got home, I put away the groceries, still troubled by the sight of the pale-faced stranger. He might not have bothered me had he just been going about his business, or acting like a tourist but he had seemed distinctly out of place in the square and I don
't mean in the sense that any stranger might seem out of place in a town where there are no secrets and everyone knows everyone else. If anything, he looked as if he had been imitating the statue next to him. And the thing he'd been holding…

I grabbed myself a beer from the six-pack I had purchased at the store and sat down at the kitchen table, wishing I had something else to preoccupy myself with when the doorbell rang.

I hesitated, debating whether or not to answer.

There is a half-mile stretch between my home and the Sandersons next door. It had been almost six months since they paid me a visit and that had been an awkward affair, all uncomfortable silences and plastic smiles. Apparently, they had decided it was time to get to know their reclusive neighbor but I doubted I
'd ever see them again after that brief encounter. If it wasn't the Sandersons, then it would more than likely be someone selling something and I was in no mood to face fresh-faced salesman on that particular morning. But I decided to see who it was if for no other reason than to distract myself from the inexplicable dread that had wrapped itself around me like a wet blanket.

I opened the door and sighed.

Geoff Sanderson.

He looked excited, double chin flapping and face wrenched into an enthusiastic smile as he did a little two-step on my stoop, as if he needed to go to the bathroom.

"Geoff."

"
Hi Ed, listen! You're not going to believe what's happening in town!"

He was waiting for me to ask him what was going on but I didn
't. I'm not sure I could have even if I'd wanted to. My skin had grown cold and slivers of ice began to slide down between my shoulder blades. Whatever was happening, I had felt it coming and now Sanderson was doing a jig on my porch confirming it.

"
Rats!" he yelped and studied my face for a reaction.

I stared blankly at him, wondering what he was talking about. Had that been an exclamation?

He sighed deeply, looking at me as if I were slow. "Rats, buddy! The whole town has been overrun by rats!"

"
What?" I had a sick feeling in my stomach.

"
Yeah! I just got off the phone with Carl Brandner at the bank. He's a good buddy of mine," he said in a confidential tone as if this was something he was proud of. "He said that about fifty million of the little fuckers just came flooding into the square. Isn't that wild?"

I frowned at him, wondering how he could find such excitement in something that was making me physically ill.