Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (127 page)

She had put her job before her love. Before her happiness. Betrayed Grant and herself. She saw it now. Saw it with the kind of scorching clarity that comes like a storm when it’s too late to take cover. When there’s nothing to be done but face your failing, take the pain, and push on.

Sirens pulled her back into the moment.

They were still miles away, and wailing through the mountains like a tragic anthem.

Sophie started to rise.

At first, she thought it was the light from the rescue party, but it couldn’t be with the sirens still too far out, and besides, this light was coming from the sky. From straight overhead. A blinding luminescence hovering just above the trees. Brighter than anything she’d ever witnessed and yet there was no pain, no urge to look away.

As it descended toward her, she lay back in the snow, still holding Grant’s hand.

Closer and closer, but no fear.

Only mystery and peace as it finally enveloped her in a sphere of pure light which held some component of familiarity that broke her heart.

Where are you going, Grant?

I don’t know yet.

I want to come with you.

It’s not your time.

I want to be with you. I always wanted it, but I was too afraid.

I know. I was too.

I’m so sorry.

Have no regret.

Please. I see now. I see everything.

There’s still time for us. This is not the end.

She blinked and the light was gone.

Sophie sat up.

She was alone in the forest and her heart was pounding.

That rush of euphoric joy was fading, and she was still holding her partner’s cold hand. Time had passed—more than felt right. Up the mountainside, she could see the schizophrenic flashing of the light bars, and there were EMTs and lawmen halfway down the hill.

Already she could feel Sophie-the-skeptic muscling in to discredit what she had just experienced, to undermine it, to subject it to the rigid empiricist that had governed her life up to this moment.

And her first instinct was to listen, to carry on as before.

What has your lack of faith ever done but cause you pain and keep you from the man you love?

No.

Something had happened in these trees.

Something beyond her experience.

Something magic.

She could choose to believe.

EPILOGUE

Paige is dying.

Paige is five, chewing a piece of spearmint gum.

He’s in the CR-V.

His father’s ‘74 Impala.

It’s day.

Night.

“Pay attention, guys, you’ll remember this game one day.”

The guardrail rushes toward them through the fog.

The play-by-play announcer says, “The crowd will tell you what happens.”

Paige says, “Daddy?”

Paige moans, “Daddy?”

“Oh shit.”

The engine revving.

Grant bracing, realizing neither he nor Paige is buckled in and wondering does it even matter at this point.

Jim says, “Everything will be—”

Straight through.

The engine redlines, goes silent.

Grant can hear the tires spinning underneath him. He and Paige lift off the seat and his head bangs into the ceiling as they plummet. The urge to hold onto something is overpowering, but he just squeezes Paige, her eyes gone wide.

Don’t be scared, Paige.

But I am.

I won’t let anything happen to you.

You promise?

I promise.

Swear.

I swear to you, Paige. I’ll protect you.

Through the windshield, the white mountainside is screaming toward the front of the car which is now pitched earthward, nothing but g-force pinning Grant to his seat.

He looks down into his sister’s eyes a half second before they hit.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Paige.

Just like me?

Just like you. And she had an older brother named Grant.

Just like you.

Yes, just like me.

Did they have parents?

No. Paige and Grant lived in a beautiful house all by themselves, and they were very brave.

The sound of metal crumpling.

The shock of snow tearing into the car.

Grant, still clutching Paige, accelerating through the windshield.

And then he is outside, the car flipping beneath him down the hillside in a spray of snow and safety glass.

Paige no longer in his arms and still he’s climbing skyward, as high as the tree tops now, the forest falling away beneath him.

The light starts as a pinprick, peeking through the forest below.

It begins to grow.

Slowly at first.

Then faster.

Consuming everything it touches like a fire burning its way through the center of a movie screen. The trees and the fog and the SUV still cartwheeling down the mountain all disappear into its edges, and it seems to Grant that the world is just a shroud for this blinding molten light behind it.

Except for one thing.

Her.

She is below him, crying in the snow.

He is being pulled, but he resists, fighting to descend.

And then he is with her.

The most sensual moment of his existence.

Effortless communication.

Mind to mind.

There is not enough time, but he makes every word, every second count.

He is ripped away.

And then...

Dad? Are you there?

I’m here.

It’s so bright.

Don’t close your eyes. Look right at it. No matter what.

I can’t feel anything.

That will pass. Just keep watching.

The light is everywhere and it touches everything. He feels his body blown away from him like sand. Old and new pain leaving.

The light begins to splinter. To condense into pinpoints. Beyond counting.

Are those stars?

It is Paige. Not her voice. But her.

Some of them.

Is that where we’re going?

If you want to. We can go anywhere you want.

Can we see Mom?

Yes. And others.

I don’t understand.

You will.

Then all at once, those pinpoints of light stretch toward them, as if they’ve been summoned.

The children hesitate, the stars streaming past like whitewater.

It is their father who pulls them forward.

Come on, they’re waiting for us.

There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.

The End

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

BLAKE CROUCH is the author of ten novels and numerous short stories, including
Run, Desert Places
,
Stirred
, and the
Serial
series. His website is
www.blakecrouch.com
.

JORDAN CROUCH was born in the piedmont of North Carolina in 1984. He attended the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and graduated in 2007 with a degree in Creative Writing. Jordan lives in Seattle, Washington. EERIE is his first novel. His website is
www.authorjordancrouch.com
.

Blake Crouch’s Full Catalog

Andrew Z. Thomas thrillers

Desert Places

Locked Doors

Break You

Stirred

Thicker Than Blood
(compilation)

Other works

Run

Pines

Eerie with Jordan Crouch

Draculas
with J.A. Konrath, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson

Abandon

Snowbound

Famous

Perfect Little Town
(horror novella)

Bad Girl
(short story)

Serial
with Jack Kilborn

Serial Uncut
with J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn

Killers
with Jack Kilborn

Killers Uncut
with Jack Kilborn and J.A. Konrath

Serial Killers Uncut
with Jack Kilborn and J.A. Konrath

Birds of Prey
with Jack Kilborn and J.A. Konrath

Hunting Season
with Selena Kitt (short story)

Shining Rock
(short story)

*69
(short story)

On the Good, Red Road
(short story)

Remaking
(short story)

The Meteorologist
(short story)

The Pain of Others
(novella)

Unconditional
(short story)

Four Live Rounds
(collected stories)

Six in the Cylinder
(collected stories)

Fully Loaded
(complete collected stories)

COMING SOON

Pines
by Blake Crouch

Sunset Key
by Blake Crouch

Wolfmen
by Crouch, Kitt, Konrath & Leather

A man channels his dead wife during a paranormal conference, disturbing demons at a haunted hotel where even angels can’t be trusted.

SPEED DATING

WITH THE DEAD

By Scott Nicholson

Copyright 2010 Scott Nicholson

Published by
Haunted Computer Books

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For my #1 fan and #1 stalker…you know who you are.

Speed Dating with the Dead

Chapter 1

“And here’s our most haunted room, Mr. Wilson.”

The brass name plate over the hostess’s breast read “Violet,” an old-fashioned name that didn’t match her JC Penney pants suit. Early twenties and attractive, the make-up failed to hide the hard years around her eyes. But Wayne Wilson had logged his own hard years, and he hid them in the coffin of his heart.

“Call me ‘Digger,’” he said.

“‘Digger’?” Violet said.

“I have this little undertaker thing going on,” he admitted, feeling a bit sheepish under her blue-eyed stare. “The top hat and Victorian coattails. Part of the gig.”

Wow. Beth, if you really are here, you’ll see what a cartoon I’ve become.

But the dead stayed dead, and the best thing about them was they weren’t in a position to second guess. But the worst thing about them was they weren’t around when you needed them.

“So, have you ever had any experiences here?” Wayne asked, eyeing the décor and fighting the rush of memories.

“I’ve never had a honeymoon, and I would choose somewhere a little more exotic than the North Carolina mountains. Like maybe Dollywood or Paris.”

“I meant ‘supernatural experiences.’”

“Just those brain-dead zombies who hit on me at the bar.”

Wayne was only half listening. The master bedroom of Room 318 had changed little since his stay 17 years earlier. The roses on the wallpaper had yellowed, and each wall held an autumnal mountain landscape. Imitation Queen Anne furniture, chipped and scarred by cigarette burns, a plush purple carpet in which rodents could reproduce, and the king-size, four-poster bed were the same as his honeymoon night.

Even the throw pillows appeared unchanged, skinned in greasy satin and leaning against the headboard the same way his and Beth’s heads had leaned on a cold autumn night. Before they opened the door.

“The manager’s pleased you chose the White Horse for your conference,” Violet said.

I didn’t choose. I was chosen.

“You have quite a reputation,” Wayne said.
“
Nobody keeps their ghosts secret for long.”

“Ghosts are good for business. Especially in the off-season.”

“It should be good for both of us.”

“We booked about 50 for the weekend.”

“Too bad you can’t charge your invisible guests. You’ve got at least three here in 318.”

“Ah, you’ve been browsing the Ghost Register,” she said, referring to the journal at the front desk where guests and staff had faithfully recorded their encounters.

One of the victims had been a stock broker who had suffered a heart attack during his honeymoon, and though the urban legend maintained he’d died on top of his new wife, the Rescue Squad report said he’d been discovered on the floor with half a corn dog in his mouth and an empty bottle of champagne sitting in a tin bucket of water.

The second was a jumper, a documented death in which a distraught tool fabricator had launched into a frothing rant about a two-timing, backstabbing bitch before launching himself off the balcony in a fall that would likely have resulted in nothing more than a few fractures if he’d have missed the lamp post. You could call it coincidence, you could call it bad luck, but it made for a better campfire tale if you called it “the Wicked Hand of Evil.”

The third victim was the most interesting to Wayne, because it didn’t have the glib familiarity of the other deaths, which were not much different than those suffered at any of America’s century-old hotels. As the manager, a powder-dry walking mummy named Janey Mays, had put it, any building with a few generations behind it would end up with a slate of strange happenings.

Janey hadn’t recognized him from his long-ago visit. But why should she? He was young and happy then, a clean-shaven newlywed and 100-percent demon free.

“What do you know about Margaret Percival?” Wayne asked Violet.

“Just the stuff in the register.” Violet opened the television cabinet as if to make sure the maids hadn’t stolen the TV.