The Frighteners

DON’T FEAR THE REAPER . . .
CALL GHOULS ‘R’ US

Forty years ago, he stalked the streets of Fairwater. A dark, hooded figure who claimed the lives of twelve people. Now he is back for more.

He enters your home. He lives in your walls. He’s after your soul. Because he is the Grim Reaper. And nothing
alive
can stop him.

That’s why the folks of Fairwater have enlisted the help of The Frighteners. They’re more than supernatural experts—they’re the best ghost-hunting team in the business.

Because they’re already dead . . .

THE
FRIGHTENERS

THE FRIGHTENERS

A novel by Michael Jahn.
Based on the motion picture screenplay
written by Fran Walsh & Peter Jackson.

A Boulevard Book / published by arrangement with MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY
Boulevard edition / July 1996

All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1996 by MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA, Inc. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

The Putnam Berkley World Wide Web site address is
http://www.berkley.com

ISBN: 1-57297-187-8

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For David Aaron Jahn

One

T
he rain came down in sheets, driven by a cold Maine nor’easter that blew in off Fairwater Bay, whipping the tips of the pines and the oaks around until they looked like they’d snap. The rain soaked the town of Fairwater, keeping the fishing fleet tied up in the small and picturesque harbor and the people who knew better indoors in snug kitchens and in front of warm fires. It paralyzed traffic on the coastal highway, the one running the length of the state from Kittery to Eastport, with cars crawling along with their wipers keeping time to the light rock music that was the sole fare on the only radio station that came in clearly that far from the rest of the world. And the rain pelted the tiny panes of the old glass windows of the Bartlett House.

The three-story Victorian was dark and creepy enough when it was built a century and a half ago, its gray slate roof, shadowy gables surrounding narrow attic windows, and sea-green shake siding reflecting the somber mood of the puritanical whale-ship captain who built it. Lightning rods bristled from every corner of the roof, atop which a widow’s walk—also surrounded by spikelike, wrought-iron rails—looked down on both town and bay. The house had, at some point in its long history, served as the center of the Fairwater Tuberculosis Sanatorium, a turn-of-the-century hospital for TB, cancer, and other diseases that, in those days, were cured mainly by locking the patient away for the remainder of his days. The sanatorium had long since been abandoned and padlocked, and the only way an onlooker could spot life in the compound was by the occasional sight of a light in a window of the Bartlett House—that is, when the rain permitted it.

A massive bolt of lightning hurled down from the sky and incinerated an especially tall scrawny pitch pine that sat atop Widow’s Hill, a scrubby hillock on the far corner of the fenced-off sanatorium grounds. The bolt lit up the huge gingerbread-trimmed Victorian for a second, and then the roar of lightning rattled the windows. The blast nearly, but not entirely, prevented Old Lady Bartlett from hearing the screams of her daughter.

But the sound came through the thunder and the thick walls, making the old woman sit bolt upright in bed.

“Why . . . why are you here?”

The house was sturdily built, constructed to stand up to Maine nor’easters and the long winter nights, yet the sound came through the walls as if they were made of cardboard.

“Why don’t you leave me alone?”

Patricia Bartlett was a grown woman with a past, yet her voice came through the walls sounding so childlike, so helpless.

“What do you want
tonight?”

Her mother thought, This has been going on so long. This has been going on too long.

“No! Not that!” Patricia cried.

Old Lady Bartlett tossed the covers aside and swung her legs awkwardly onto the cold, planked floor. She was in her late seventies but had been an attractive woman once. Now the old woman was way overweight, cold, and frightened. She pulled on an ancient velvet dressing gown, frayed at the edges and with a hem that hung down in the front where it had been stepped on a few times. Then she pushed her fat pink feet into equally old fox slippers.

“Oooh! Please! Don’t hurt me!”

Old Lady Bartlett could take it no longer. Her maternal instincts were stronger than her fear, even after all those years and all the trouble Patricia had been. The old woman padded her way across her bedroom floor and switched on a tabletop light. A softball-sized globe, painted with pink carnations and yellow canaries, glowed atop a tarnished brass stalk.

She opened the bedroom door and stepped into a second-floor hallway that had been decorated long ago with heavily embossed, gilt wallpaper; its fleur-de-lis and oak-leaf clusters contrasted with the stark oak-plank floor. A lush carpet ran down the middle of the floor, but wasn’t thick enough to stop the old boards from creaking with the first, tentative step she took out of the safety of her own bedroom.

Patricia’s voice was even louder this time. She cried out, pleading, “No . . . don’t . . . stop!” Then came something like a scream.

Old Lady Bartlett padded down the hall and hesitated outside her daughter’s door.

“Patricia?” she asked, way too quietly to be heard. Perhaps she was afraid to be heard by whoever—or whatever—was in there with her baby girl.

The cry came again, followed by a shouted, “Not again! Not tonight!”

“Patricia?” the woman said, louder this time.

She pressed an ear against the thick oak door and listened. Suddenly the noise, the thunderstorm and the screaming, that seemed to emanate from every corner of the gloomy old house, came to an end. Instead there was silence, although the door seemed nearly to breathe, throbbing in slow and rhythmic pulses.

Old Lady Bartlett’s shaking fingers grasped the brass door handle.

“Patricia!” she said sharply, summoning up all her courage. “I’m coming in.”

She turned the handle. At that moment the door did more than pulse. It bulged out, like the skin of a lizard that was taking a giant breath. The old woman jumped away in horror as the very wood itself stretched out, as might the skin of a balloon when a human face is pressed against it. As if alive, the wood formed into the grotesque image of a faceless, hooded man, a man with no features but only the sharp-angled skull of a corpse.

Old Lady Bartlett screamed and staggered back into the center of the hall.

“Who are you?” she shouted, bringing her hands to her face in fear.

There was no answer. Instead, the figure’s chest moved in and out, breathing through an oak door that suddenly was transformed into a second skin. A hand appeared then, bulging out of the oak door, holding something—a scythe, perhaps. Even in her fear, Old Lady Bartlett recognized the horrible figure of the Grim Reaper.

“What do you want?”

The only sound resembled breathing, the slow and cold breathing of a large lizard, whose scales the wood of the door resembled as it moved in and out.

“Leave my daughter alone!”

The hooded figure suddenly sucked back into Patricia’s bedroom and was gone. The old woman hesitated for a few seconds, then stepped back to the door. She listened, but again all was quiet. Then there was the sound of her daughter’s low moaning.

“It’s all right, dear,” the old woman said. “He’s gone.”

It was then that the once rich-looking wallpaper next to the door bulged out into the shape of the hooded man. This time the features were clearer. The wallpaper sucked around the outline of the Grim Reaper the way plastic wrap enfolds the contours of a piece of raw meat. The embossed gilt pattern now took on the form of the lizard’s skin, with fleur-de-lis scales.

The elderly woman screamed and fled back toward her bedroom, her slippers clopping along the carpet and her velvet robe billowing. Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of the man following her, running alongside her, taunting her. The Grim Reaper ran inside the wallpaper, between the wall and the paper, which assumed his form as he ran. This hideous blister followed her all the way down the hall and then abruptly disappeared as she ran into her room and slammed the door.

Her trembling fingers twisted the key in the lock. Leaving the brass lamp on, she backed away from the door, edging toward the safety of her four old bedposts. For a second she was comforted by the return of familiar sounds—the thunderstorm and the beating of the rain against the windowpanes. Then, with no warning, the hooded figure bulged out of the wallpaper alongside the door. This time the man didn’t run, but bulged out nearly a foot, his chest slowly heaving in and out. This time there were two arms, and both hands were empty. She could see the fingertips lightly twitching, the way the tail of a cat does before it pounces.

Screaming again, she retreated more quickly toward the bed. But the Grim Reaper moved with her again, sliding along the wall at a speed matching hers. Old Lady Bartlett backed clumsily into her bedside table, nearly knocking it over. She reached behind her and swept up the smallish cherry table, letting the black dial phone clatter to the floor with a bang and a tinkling of its bell.

“Get away from me!” she yelled, hurling the table at the figure.

His reached out then, as if made of rubber, catching the table in his paper-covered hands and crushing it between them. Once a sturdy old piece of Maine furniture, the table crumbled between the man’s hands as if it were a sugar cube.

“Stay away from Patricia!” she shouted, this time throwing the telephone.

It met a similar fate. The Grim Reaper caught it in one hand and crushed it like a piece of paper. The bits of plastic and metal fell to the floor.