Scott Nicholson Library Vol 3 Read online

  I swung again.

  “Shit!”

  My aim was bad. The blade sunk deep into its soft shoulder. I worked it loose, desperate, breathing heavily, peanut butter still rancid against the back of my throat. The golem did not even bother to look my way, it was so intent on finishing its mission.

  I worked the blade loose. I raised the tool high overhead again, adjusted my aim slightly to the left, and brought the shovel down. I summoned all my strength, even saying a little prayer for all good things and maybe asking for a little mercy for us sinners, and let my rage, fear, and my little reservoir of love all flow into the swing.

  It came down true, and in one clean sweep, with hardly any resistance at all, cut clean through the golem’s neck. The head sprang forward, spinning over Gerda’s own limp head like a football at kickoff.

  I expected the golem to keep choking and fighting. It’s not like a clay thing needed its head. I braced for the sight of it running around like a decapitated chicken, arms flailing ahead like those of Frankenstein’s monster. But it went limp and still.

  What had once been shaped as a man turned into a wet pile of amorphous mud. The hand that had been choking the life out of Gerda dropped to mush around her. As the mud slid out, the clothes collapsed, ending up in a soiled heap beside Gerda, the hat and sunglasses on top like a late-April Frosty the Snowman.

  “Gerda,” I said under my breath, tossing the shovel aside.

  She was tilted to the side and lay in the muddy slush. I checked her breathing. I shook her but her eyes remained closed.

  Then Tabby was beside me. “Here,” she said.

  As Tabby knelt over my wife, administering CPR, I held my son for the very first time.

  * * *

  It was dark when Tabby finally gave up.

  I didn’t say anything about Tabby’s death wish for her. It seemed pointless now. My wife was dead, the mother of my child was dead, Nana was dead, Poochy was dead, and Max Richter was hopefully dead for the final time.

  But Petey was alive, and that almost seemed enough.

  He hugged me and cooed against me, not understanding the carnage around him. To him, it must have simply looked like playtime was now over for the day. I rocked him back and forth, muttering his name, until he drifted into Napland.

  We went inside the house. At least the power was on, so we could flip the lights and avoid walking through any more blood. I wasn’t quite sure if Gerda had successfully conjured any curses, so I kept away from the shadows.

  We found the phone in the kitchen, but the service hadn’t been connected. Tabby dug through Gerda’s purse and found her cell, then put in a call to the police. She didn’t bother trying to explain. We sat at the table, Petey hugged to my chest, as we waited for the flashing lights and sirens. Petey had a few scrapes and scratches, but otherwise appeared to come out of it in the best shape of any of us.

  “What do we tell them?” I asked.

  “The usual. Big ugly clay dude shows up and goes nuts. Kills a couple of people, and then we rain on his parade.”

  I nodded. “Sounds legit to me.”

  “Or we could go the self-defense option. Same story as I was going to use the first time, only now we spin it as a wrestling match instead of a shoot-out.”

  “And I missed it all, because I was down in the hole with the baby and the dead guy.”

  “You look the part.”

  She was right. I was coated in dirt, blood, and some of that sticky clay that I didn’t like having stuck to my skin. It almost felt alive, and I imagined it morphing into little worms that would burrow into my skin.

  “It’s for the best,” Tabby said. “Yes, definitely for the best.”

  I nearly screamed when a tiny shape darted out from the shadows. Jimmy’s mouse!

  But the little creature merely darted to the edge of a splotch of blood, sniffed, sat for a moment on its haunches, and wriggled its whiskers. No white stripe. Just an ordinary mouse. Almost cute.

  “Boo,” I said.

  It scurried back to safety.

  The wind had picked up considerably, whipping through the branches outside. The house shook and I hugged Petey more tightly.

  “What happens next?” I asked.

  “There will be an investigation. I’ll be reprimanded. Perhaps even lose my job over this. Perhaps not. Either way, we found the killer and saved the child, so my bosses might have mercy.”

  “Ah, the good-looking cop who doesn’t play by the rules. Every department needs one of those.”

  She glanced at the book on the table, which had turned out to be another ancient book of spells. Just how many of those damned things were floating around, anyhow?

  “I can always take up witchcraft,” she said.

  I stared at her. “How could you even joke about a thing like that?”

  She shrugged, exhausted. “Who’s joking? It’s in my blood, right? And blood seems to catch up with you sooner or later. Besides...”

  I didn’t like the way she said that word.

  “You never know what people are cooking up out there. And bullets and badges can’t always stop evil.”

  “Great. Don’t hear this, Petey.”

  He didn’t. He was asleep.

  “What happens to us?” I said.

  “We have a child to raise.”

  “We?”

  “I’m not doing it alone, and you’re the guy who couldn’t keep his mouse in his pants.”

  “How do you raise a child?”

  Tabitha looked at Petey. “One day at a time.”

  “Damn. Isn’t that what people say when they quit drinking?”

  “Yeah. So start saying it.”

  I wasn’t sure if this was a happy ending or not. But it was an ending. I’d already survived one greatest fear, maybe two, but I suspected being a father would create fears I’d never known had existed. Gerda had paid for her father’s sins, and I wasn’t going to let Petey pay for mine.

  “You know something?” she said, when we heard the first distant siren wailing across the valley.

  “What?”

  “I don’t hate you as much as I should.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “But I still don’t like you. And I haven’t forgiven you for Amanda yet.”

  I hugged Petey, already used to his weight against me, the small shudder of his snores, the warmth of his smooth skin. “Boy, you Meads sure do know how to carry a grudge.”

  The End

  Table of Contents

  ###

  Teen witch Crystal and her dead best friend Bone must overcome drama queens, coffin cuties, and mangled magic to keep Parson’s Ford from turning into a bad horror movie.

  OCTOBER GIRLS:

  CRYSTAL & BONE

  By Scott Nicholson

  Published by Haunted Computer Books

  Copyright ©2010 Scott Nicholson

  Table of Contents

  This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance between anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. Unless you’re dead. In which case, you shouldn’t be reading this. For Lewis, Matilda, and Cindy.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Crystal loved her best friend Bone, but sometimes she wished Bone was just a little bit deader.

  Like right now, when Bone was trying to ride shotgun on a pesky cash register. And that hunky guy with the stack of DVD’s was staring at her. And that gooey black hole in the wall was full of Lurken, Spooge, and Underlings.

  “Mash three,” Bone whispered.

  “Do what?” Crystal Aldridge had been working at the Tan Banana & Movie Emporium for six weeks, but she was still struggling to master the register. The problem was the sticky keys on the computer terminal.

  But she didn’t want to think about why the keys were sticky. Fatback Bob, who owned the combo video rental and tanning salon, liked to eat fried chicken during his shifts, and the smudges on the numeric keypad were most likely due to fryer oil.

  Most likely.

  �
��Mash three,” Bone said, soft and girlish and a little impatient for someone who had forever.

  “Three it is,” Crystal said, poking the stubborn key.

  “Who are you talking to?” said the hunk on the other side of the counter.

  “Nobody,” she answered. Which was almost true.

  The register sprang open, releasing the inky, sweaty smell of loose bills. She took the membership card from the customer and swiped it, noting his name.

  Dempsey Van Heusen. Ain’t from around here, are you?

  Three-name people were few and far between in the North Carolina mountain town of Parson’s Ford, unless they were Billy Bob, Bobby Wayne, or Fatback Bob. There was probably even a Bacon Bob around somewhere. But “Dempsey Van Heusen” sounded exotic, like an Internet clothes company or a yacht.

  “You got a late fee.” Crystal gave Dempsey a glance and a quick smile. She’d checked him out plenty in the rounded security mirrors that adorned each corner of the store, but the mirrors had distorted him into an Oompah Loompah.

  Up close, though, he was meat candy, lean and dark, his hair as thick as if it had been dipped in cooling asphalt. His black leather jacket was scuffed at the elbows, and he had a few chains dangling from the pockets. Robert Pattinson eyebrows with Brad Pitt lips. A little older than her, maybe 18.

  The only flaw in his man-crushness was the tufts of hair that sprang from each nostril.

  Don’t they have tweezers where you’re from?

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Seven-fifty,” she said. “That was for ‘The Church That Bled’ and ‘The Screaming.’”

  “Well, they were worth it.” Dempsey pushed a bill across the counter.

  “Chain Boy likes his cheese,” Bone whispered, even though Dempsey—or any other living person—couldn’t hear her.

  “Stuff it,” Crystal said, making change.

  “You keep talking to yourself.” Dempsey scratched at his ear. He wore a large silver ring on his middle finger that bore a grinning skull’s face. It might as well have been singing “Bad Boy.”

  “Sorry. It’s just the voices in my head.”

  “I have those, too,” Dempsey said, crushing the change into his jeans pocket without counting it. “With me, though, people think I’m psycho. Because of my movies.”

  “What’s so psycho about your movies?” she asked. She hadn’t paid attention when she’d scanned them, and she couldn’t read the upside-down titles. However, the lettering was in a garish red font and the art dark and brooding, with imagery that suggested graveyards and dead trees and probably vampire sex.

  “I’m a horror freak. Mom’s preacher said I’m dancing with the devil.”

  A chuckle arose from somewhere, or it could have been the October draft skirling under the front door. Crystal threw a scowl beside her and picked up one of the DVD’s.

  “‘The Kiss of the Undead,’” she said, noting the subliminal image of a vampire’s glistening incisors protruding over a collagen-swollen lower lip. The actors’ names were set in smaller print over the title. Didn’t ring any bells.

  “A black comedy that pumps a welcome transfusion into the bloodsucker oeuvre,” Dempsey said, as if reading the marketing material.

  People in Parson’s Ford didn’t use words like oeuvre. Even though the town boasted a community college, the use of foreign words was limited to Tres Amigos Beans & Bowling, the local Mexican restaurant and bowling alley. Maybe there was more to Dempsey than a black leather jacket and what Fatback Bob called a “frequent flyer card,” the punch-out discount coupon that offered a free rental with every ten.

  “You like scary movies?” she said, sounding lame even to herself. Some hottie hits you with a word like oeuvre, you wanted to come back with milieu or something. But the only French she could think of at the moment was “fries.”

  “Yeah,” Dempsey said. “Monsters, ghosts, serial killers, splat pack, torture porn, you name it. The Asians are cranking out some great stuff, too.”

  Fatback Bob had built a tower of horror movies near the front of the store, since Halloween was less than a week away. Dempsey pointed at it and said, “Seen most of these.”

  A mousy-haired old woman who might have been a school teacher playing hooky was the only other customer. Crystal had nicknamed her “Madame Fingers” because of her shoplifting habit. Madame Fingers looked up from her browsing of the comedy films and flared her nostrils as if smelling dog crap or the latest Adam Sandler vehicle.

  “I don’t watch much horror,” Crystal said. An invisible elbow dug into her ribs.

  Talk about your horror. Dead friends sure can be annoying.

  Dempsey took his rentals from her. “That’s cool,” he said, with so much cool he oozed disdain. “What do you watch?”

  “Romantic comedies.”

  Snort. “Chick flicks.”

  “I watch the classics, too.”

  “Shirley Temple doesn’t count.”

  “I’ve heard of what’s-his-name. You know, the ‘Citizen Kane’ guy.”

  “Touché.” He tapped the vampire art on the DVD cover. “I make these.”

  “Fangs?”

  “Movies. I’m an auteur.”

  “Wow.” She felt stupid.

  “A director. And I write my own scripts. Package deal.”

  The chuckle came again, and Crystal just knew what Bone was thinking: Heh, heh, he said “package.”

  “Cool beans and ice rice.” Crystal was annoyed by her need to impress Dempsey. After all, she and Pettigrew had been dating for a couple of years, and he had been there for her through the funeral, the school drop-out, and the long bout of depression.

  But maybe this wasn’t about Dempsey. After all, she had her own personal audience, an invisible friend with a ringside seat to her foibles, flirts, farts, and flat-on-her-buns falls from grace.

  “I do horror,” he said. “I’ll bring you one in and let you check it out.”

  “I can’t wait.” Her lips felt like cotton candy.

  He smirked. “If you can handle it.”

  “What a jerk,” said the dead girl beside them, but Dempsey couldn’t hear. Only Crystal.

  Lucky me. I wish she’d go solid, so Dempsey can see I’m the better-looking one.

  He scraped the movies off the counter and headed for the exit, the silver chains on his jacket jingling with a mixture of menace and mirth.

  He was halfway to the front door when the Orifice opened wider. It appeared first as a black dot of jelly on the wall beneath a Warner Brothers poster. Spreading outward, it soon covered an area the size of a basketball. Gurgling, belching noises issued from inside. It grew deeper and wider, glistening with oily dew.

  Dempsey crinkled his nose and walked past the yawning cavern. Inside it, green slime dripped from stalactites that hung like demon teeth. The cavern seemed to breathe, exhaling a putrid wind that rivaled Fatback Bob’s chili farts. A shadowy form stirred in the depths, swaying like a sea anemone.

  “Want popcorn with that?” she called after Dempsey, pimping Fatback Bob’s five-gallon bags of stale, buttery popcorn that were stacked like sandbags by the counter, blocking out the rows of Goobers, Good-n-Plenty, and licorice twists.

  Dempsey gave one last backward glance at Crystal, grinning as if he’d won over another fan. “I like my horror raw.”

  Then he shoved open the front door and escaped into the sunlight.

  “Loser,” Bone said, flickering beside Crystal. It wasn’t a full materialization, more like a game of existential peek-a-boo probably designed to annoy Crystal and remind her that Tweeners could do things that Breathers could only dream about.

  Crystal was appropriately annoyed. “Don’t do that.”

  “That’s my job. You were giving him the eye and I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”

  “No, I meant don’t just go solid while other people are around.” Crystal checked the store’s lone customer. Madame Fingers was muttering and fidgeting with her oversize
handbag, too obsessed with her shoplifting to notice a little thing like a ghost.

  “Hey, we’re cool. She can’t see me.”

  “Good, because your hair’s a wreck.”

  “Wreck” was a bad choice of words, since it had been a UPS truck that had killed Bone, but it fit because her hair hung in oily red tangles. She was a permanent sixteen, pale freckled skin with rosy cheeks, figure filling out but still carrying a little baby fat. As usual, she wore the dress she’d once said she’d never be caught dead in, a chambray ruffle knit with a shoulder-hugging lace top.

  “And so’s your outfit,” Crystal couldn’t resist adding.

  “Family,” Bone said. “They’ll just bury you any old way.”

  Crystal pointed to the wall. “Umm. Did that follow you here?”

  “Haven’t you noticed?”

  “Noticed what?”

  “It’s how I get here.”

  “I know, but it’s always on the wall in my room, where I can keep an eye on it. Now it’s showing up here.”

  “Yeah, but who cares? It’s just some hole thingy, a little tunnel to Darkmeet and back.”

  “If Fatback Bob finds out, I’m toast. And I need this job.”

  “You’re just here to meet hunks. I saw you checking out Chain Boy.”

  “I’m happy with Pettigrew.”

  “Pettigrew’s okay if you like that sort of thing.”

  “Hey. He’s loyal, and tall, and kind of cute.”

  “He drives a tow truck. You’re going to grow old in Parson’s Ford trying to beat a lump of coal into a diamond.”

  “At least I get to grow old.” The cheap shot gave Crystal a rush, but it quickly faded to guilt when Bone gave a sad, wistful smile.

  “You get old, but I get to be young forever,” Bone said, fading just for spite.

  “Come back here.”

  Crystal cast a glance at Madame Fingers, who appeared to slide a DVD into her purse. If Fatback Bob weren’t such a smelly old pervert, Crystal might care a little more about inventory control.