The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman (32 page)

The Goodbye
Place

The old farm house was eternally and intolerably
dark. The old woman wanted it that way and since her hand was
firmly wrapped around the entire family's fortune and inheritance,
she always got what she wanted. But when Janice and her mother, the
old woman's daughter, needed a place to stay, she had opened her
home. It was unexpected, but otherwise they would have been
homeless and the rest of the family assumed the old matriarch would
rather help them than suffer the disgrace of having a family member
live on the street. Janice wasn't sure it was worth it, putting up
with the old hag and her mean-spirited remarks all the time, but a
bed and a safe place to live required sacrifices, at least that's
what her mother kept telling her.

It was called a living room, the place where the
old woman spent most of her time sunk into an old Victorian chair,
but Janice couldn't imagine anything but nightmares living in such
a dark place, populated with so much old junk and stale, heavy air.
She felt as if she were being held prisoner in the house, really,
but there was no one to confide in, no one to listen to her fears.
And the fear was real. She had seen them, the flickering shapes
that darted around the dark house, encircling the old woman like
big black globules of water.

She was apparently the only one who could see
the truth, though. Her mother seemed uninterested or at least
unwilling to entertain anything other than what science said was
real. It was frustrating, and the fact was, the things, slimy,
filthy things oozing through the thick dark air of the house, were
starting to manifest themselves more clearly. Not openly, other
than the faint shapes, but as she slept, they were there, among the
twisted images of birds and butterflies, of the house and woods,
the reinvented memories of the day, the dark things were starting
to show up. At first they were rare, hardly more than a fleeting
glimpse from behind a wall or a dark shadow in a forest of water
maples, but as the weeks passed, the weeks she and her mother had
spent in the house, the things were becoming more blatant, more
prominent in the dream landscape, now turning even mundane dreams
into nightmares.

She was lying in the huge old bed, fighting
sleep like facing down an enemy combatant, but her eyes, the
cowardly traitors, were not cooperating. Her head jerked as she
snapped back awake, only to doze off again and every time she ended
up in sleep, the things were there. She jerked back awake again,
but this time it led to a loud scream and an attempt to scramble
across the bed. But she soon realized the face, the small body
kneeling over her, was the old woman, her grandmother.

"You see them, don't you," the old woman
said.

Janice nodded. "Are... do they belong to
you?"

The old woman crawled to the edge of the bed,
tugging her old white shift back into shape, and sat with her back
toward Janice. "They are mine, but they don't belong to me," she
said.

Janice slid closer to the old woman, but still
kept her distance. The only words she had ever spoken to her were
insults, and even then they had been more statements to the world
at large than anything said to her directly. "Why are they in my
dreams?"

The old woman fell backward on the bed and
seemed to relax as she looked up at Janice. "Because they want to
belong to you, too," she said. "They lust after your young life."
Janice could hear her sigh and seem to sniff away tears. "And once
you let them into your world, they will consume you."

"But how?" she said. "They're nothing I want
around me."

"They don't care," her grandmother said. "You...
your mother can't see them. The blessing... curse... jumped over
her, but you have it, even though you're only seven, you already
have the ability to contact the other side. I knew when you first
arrived and I hoped I could make you leave... leave before they
found you." She spun around and was almost instantly on her knees
with her hands on Janice's shoulders. "But it's too late now,
girl." She pointed a long spindly finger at her face and then slid
up the bed and fell back on the pillow and motioned for Janice to
lie down beside her. "Come, I'll show you more."

Janice started to get out of the bed and run to
her mother, but something held her back; not physically, and it was
nothing evil, just something, perhaps just curiosity, caused her to
lie down beside the old woman. "Don't hurt me," she whispered. Her
eyes were defeated and she fell asleep in only moments.

But instantly she was aware, though she wasn't
awake. The old woman held out her hand and Janice gripped it and
allowed her to lead the way. It was a dark street, old brick
paving, the smell of smoke from distant and nearby chimneys, that
they walked along, and Janice struggled to keep on her feet with
the continuous undulations and potholes. It was cold, freezing
cold, but they were both dressed only in old rags, the numerous
holes letting the wind cut into her skin like a knife. She pulled
the woolen remnants of a coat tighter around her and looked up at
her guide. It was still her grandmother, she could tell that, but
not the old woman, she was a young woman, a dirty-faced street
urchin, but with a cheerful and pleasant continence, only a few
years older than she was. "We're almost there," she said.

"Where are we?" Janice said. "What is this
place?"

"It's
hell
," her grandmother said calmly.
"Look! There!" She pointed ahead to a door at the end of a
trash-littered and filthy alley. It was an old wooden door, rotted
and broken along the bottom and bent slightly so that it hung
unevenly open a few inches. "This is our section. The answer is
there."

"But, I don't know what the question is,
Gramma," Janice said.

"Call me
Stella
. I'm too young and pretty
to be called 'Gramma'." She looked down and smiled. "You want to
know what the dark things are, right?"

Janice nodded. "But..."

"If we don't continue they won't leave you alone
until they get you." She reached out and grabbed the corner of the
old door and pulled it open. Inside there was only a long hallway
in near-darkness and as they entered it seemed palpable; Janice
could taste it, could feel it in her lungs like breathing in water.
"Try not to breathe."

"What? How can I do that?" Janice said. She held
her breath a few seconds and then felt she had to exhale... but the
feeling passed. She was scared and started to panic because she
thought she may be dead.

"See?" Stella said. "Your body is still in your
room, what you feel here is just your soul, and that doesn't need
to breathe. But there are things here who will recognize you by the
memory of your breathe."

"Is that why you're so young and pretty? This is
what you dream yourself to be?"

Stella nodded. "Here, you are the age you wish
yourself to be," she said.

"Oh," Janice said. "But, I'm the same, right?"
She thought about it for a moment. "So, I wish to be this age?"

"All children wish to be older, but you can't be
older than you really are," Stella said. "When you get older, you
wish you were younger. Now, hush up and pay attention." She picked
up the pace and was almost dragging Janice through the darkness
until there was a light breeze. In the hideously stifling darkness
the tiny breeze, perhaps no more powerful than a breath, was like a
refreshing ocean wind. But they kept walking. There was a bright
light and music coming from another direction, but still they
walked forward. She was starting to lose some of her fear, starting
to look more carefully at the various things she saw, some
grotesque, some inviting.

But Janice soon lost all the happy thoughts and,
though the darkness, now that her eyes had become better adjusted,
was only as bright as a quarter-moon night, she could make out
shapes. It was them, the things she had seen in her dreams, only
more clearly defined now, slug-like, and sickeningly real. Still,
the light didn't seem to illuminate them; they seemed to exist
as
darkness, non-reflective, simply darkness itself. "That's
them," she whispered.

"This is sort of a holding tank, apparently.
I've been here before." She whistled and they all seemed to pause,
and, as far as a
head
could be made out, turned to face
Stella and Janice. But they did nothing and almost instantly, they
went back to swirling around and rolling around on each other, as
if they were involved in some sort of ritual or orgy. "They only
seem to pick up on ya if you're breathing."

"But, these things, they're demons, right?"
Janice said.

Stella patted her on the head. "Who knows," she
said. "I think 'demons' may just be a name we humans have invented
because most people can't even imagine a suitable name for things
like these. There are good things here, too. That's why I called
what you have a
gift
earlier... though where these things
are concerned, it's a curse."

She looked up at her grandmother, just able to
make out her features. "How do you know about this place? Is it
really hell?"

"It just seems like hell because it's so weird,
so I named it that. This one is ours. Others might be different...
at least I think that's true. There's no manual. I'll need to guide
you when you come here until you're old enough to make your way
around by yourself. Even if I'm no longer around in the real world,
you can find me outside the door when you dream yourself here."

"Why would I want to come here again?" Janice
said. "It's horrible here."

"You will need to come here again, trust me,"
Stella said. "You will lose things, feelings, people, all through
the rest of your life... but sometimes you can still find them
here. Half of a lifetime is made up of not saying goodbye... here,
you can."

"We could at least have been given underwear,"
Janice said.

"Oh. I actually like that part." she snickered.
"But keep watching," she said. "There!" A small red ball appeared
in the midst of the things and they all attacked like hungry
piranhas, devouring it with snarls and splashes of red. "That was a
heart."

"A heart? A human heart?" Janice said. "I want
to leave, now, please."

"A heart freely given as a sacrifice so that you
can live without them," Stella said. "They were only visiting my
house because of me. These things you see create
Death
."

And with those words, she disappeared, leaving
Janice alone in the darkness, too afraid to move. She had a heart
and she just knew if she moved or cried, even though she had never
wanted to cry more in her entire life, they would find her and rip
it out of her chest and eat it, too. "Gramma?" There was only the
sickening sound of the things wallowing on each other. "Stella?"
She took a few steps backward, and then decided she knew close
enough where the door was and started walking quickly, almost
running, in that direction. And she thought she could see a light,
a long sliver of light where a crooked door might be hanging. But
the darkness closed in around the light and it disappeared like a
distant bird getting lost in the huge expanse of an evening sky.
She had to stop. But the excitement, the fast pace, had caused her
to start breathing again. She panicked. They would find her!

But she suddenly jerked awake in her own bed.
She was alone. She jumped to the floor, ran across her room and
threw open the door. "Gramma!" There was no answer but her mother
had heard her yelling and came through her bedroom door and joined
her in the hall. "It's Gramma," Janice said. They both ran down the
huge stairway and through the wide doorway and into the living
room. And there was the old woman.

"Mom?" her mother said. She walked to Stella's
big chair and knelt down and grabbed her wrist. "Janice, sweetie,
go back to your room, okay?"

"Is she dead?" Janice said.

"Yes, sweetie," her mom said. "It must have been
a heart attack."

"They're gone," she said. "The things that were
around her." She started back up the stairs and then looked back at
the wrinkled old woman slumped over in the worn out chair. She
smiled. "Thank you, Stella."

Natural
Causes

It happened on a pleasant spring day as she was
killing the cat. The girl was never normal; her first words were
vile insults and as she grew, so did her vocabulary. She had been
the first first grader ever charged with assaulting a teacher, and
by second grade she had been expelled over a dozen times. She was
just no good, a bad seed. But as Buttons sucked in his last breath,
Lavidia slipped on the newly polished hardwood floor in the dining
room and fell back against the china cabinet, knocking a heavy iron
down on her head, apparently killing her instantly. She was eight
years old. And when her mother found her small body, blood coating
her long black hair, her black eyes staring blankly at the ceiling,
her stiff fingers still wrapped tightly around the cat's throat,
she panicked. She immediately reasoned that none of the authorities
in town would believe the child died from an accident, not a child
like Lavidia. No, the town would believe her mother reached the end
of her rope and instead of cut it and fall, she had decided to
eliminate the anchor pulling her down. There was nothing to do
except dig a hole in the basement and give the girl a proper,
though very private, Christian funeral.

Some of the people in town might have missed the
little girl, but none spoke up, most likely afraid they would jinx
their good luck if they inquired too intimately. There was no one
in the small town she had not insulted, frightened, or attacked
physically. Many openly believed she was a demon, but some thought
perhaps she was only
possessed
by demons. Either way,
demonic powers were involved, everyone was sure of that. So it was
best to leave well enough alone, and the town, and her mother,
pretended there was nothing improper or unusual about the girl who
was no longer there. She simply ceased to exist, marked off the
ledger like a debt paid in full. And she would have probably faded
completely from collective memory if Lavidia had not decided to
come back.