Chain Letter Omnibus Read online

  And they say she almost got away.

  “Damn you for everything!” Alison cried, and whether she did so the instant before the knob turned again and the door began to open or the instant afterward was not clear. The compassion that had touched her heart evaporated, in a boiling wave of bitterness. Her leg lashed out, slamming the door shut in the Caretaker’s face even as she pivoted on the ball of her foot and brought the gun to bear. Ramming the wide barrels into the wood at chest level, she pulled the trigger.

  The recoil was cruel, slapping her aside like she was a paper doll. She landed on her shoulder blades, the butt of the shotgun striking her jaw with a loud crack. She did not lose consciousness, but her hold on it slipped several notches. Her eyes remained open, rolling in a mist. A numbing sheet wrapped her brain. And yet, the unhappy triumph pushed its way through. The breathing on the other side of the door had stopped for good.

  Your hourglass just ran out, baby.

  How long she lay there, she was not sure. There seemed no hurry to get up, not even to bandage her mangled arm, which continued to bleed. A cool current of blessed relief flowed through her nerves. If not for the dread of what she would find on the other side of the ruined door, she could have laughed. Instead, and not for the first time that night, she cried.

  Should have told someone else, Joan.

  When her heart had finally slowed from its shrieking pace and her eyes had run dry, she sat up. A glance at her arm brought a rush of nausea; there would be scars, and a lifetime of having to explain where they had come from. Stretching forward, a half dozen vertebrae popped in her back. She looked up. Even with the absence of streetlights and the closed curtains, the hole in the door was impossible to miss. She reached for a sheet on her bed. She would not look at the body. If she did, she would never be free of this night. She would cover it, immediately.

  She kept her gaze up when she opened the door. The damage the buckshot had done to the hall closet door stared her in the face, shredded and blackened towels hanging through the ruptured boards.

  But where was the blood? Feeling tentatively with the tip of her toe, her almost forgotten panic escalating in quantum leaps, she swept the floor and hit nothing. There was no choice. She had to look down.

  There was no body.

  The Caretaker was still alive.

  The phone beside her bed began to ring.

  Alison did not want to answer it. The only one who could be calling was the one who had originally interrupted the line. And suddenly she began to doubt very seriously that it had been Joan she had been talking to on the other side of the door. Joan was tough but even she couldn’t swallow a twelve-gauge shell at point-blank range with no ill effects.

  But her will was crushed. She felt herself drawn toward the ringing, unable to resist. She was a pawn. Her master wanted to have a word with her. She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  The voice was weak, on the threshold of hearing, possibly because of a bad connection, probably because he wished it so. The tone was neither masculine nor feminine, cleverly disguised, a barren neuter. And yet it was a voice that was not necessarily unkind. Once, so it seemed, she had heard it before.

  “Do you know who I am?” the voice asked.

  “The Caretaker.”

  “Yes.” The voice sighed. “I am here to take care of you.”

  “Don’t kill me,” she breathed, tremors starting in her feet, rising swiftly.

  “You kill yourself.” In the background Alison heard a cough, and then thunder, at the exact moment she heard it outside her own window. “Come to me. I have your task. Hurry . . . not much time.”

  “But I don’t want to die!” she cried, her knees beginning to buckle.

  When the voice spoke next, it was clearer. And it was true, she knew this person. She just couldn’t remember who it was. “You are dead.”

  The Caretaker hung up, and no dial tone came on. She did not replace the phone. She backed away from it as if the cord might come alive and strangle her. There was nothing to be done. He knew her. If they said she was dead . . .

  But I live! I’m the star! And I’m only eighteen years old!

  Her courage wavered like an uncertain candle, but it wasn’t ready to go out just yet. The Caretaker was not omniscient. He had tried once to catch her and had failed. He had in fact retreated, at least far enough away to make the call. It was possible he was wounded. And she had the gun, and one shot left, and could wound again.

  Taking hold of herself and the shotgun, she ran down the stairs. The front door lay wide open and she found her purse where she had dropped it. The Caretaker had made a mistake. Her car keys were still inside.

  She was only ten strides outside before she was soaked, the cold rain stinging her gashed arm. Lightning flashed before her eyes and thunder punched her eardrums. Her soggy socks supped on the concrete walkway and she almost saved the Caretaker a return visit by breaking her neck. Nevertheless, getting out of the house was like climbing out of a coffin.

  The car door was locked. Her chain had three keys on it and two of them were almost identical. She tried one. It didn’t fit. She glanced around. No one in sight. She tried the other key. It didn’t fit! She had it upside down . . . no, she’d had the first one upside down. The door opened and there was no one in the backseat and she climbed inside, immediately pressing down the lock. She was going to make it. Pumping the gas, she turned the ignition. Nothing happened.

  She was not going to make it.

  Her head hit the steering wheel with a thud. Upside down, inside out—there were no more ways for her to be torn. She could look under the hood but she knew that would be futile. The battery cables, the spark plug wires, and probably the fan belt would be cut. The Caretaker had made a mistake, sure Ali.

  She slowly got out of the car, leaning on the door window, the rain melting her wax limbs—she could scarcely move. She tried to consider her options but she had to wonder who she was fooling. Whatever course she picked, it appeared she would end up in exactly the same place. Where was that Caretaker, maybe he wouldn’t be so harsh on her if she turned herself in.

  Huh?

  She heard music.

  Someone farther down the street was playing the Beatles.

  Her spark had died a thousand deaths tonight and she was afraid to let it rekindle once more, but hadn’t her mother mentioned something last week about another family that was ready to move in? And wasn’t that an inhabited house, complete with lit windows, in the same direction as the music? And did this mean that safety had been only a hop, skip, and a jump away all night?

  Alison took a quick three-hundred-and-sixty degree scan of the area and bolted. Tony had run some excellent times in his track career, but even he could not have caught her now. Her socks began to loosen, the stretched toes slapping the pavement, and her drenched hair obscured her vision. Twice she slipped, once taking the skin off her right knee. But none of this slowed her down.

  As she reached the driveway, she felt a tiny, wary thread tug at her expanding balloon of joy. She was not a man dying of thirst in a desert seeing a lake. This music was real. She could see the light pouring out the windows. This was, however, very convenient, and coincidence often bespoke of cunning plans. Above all else, the Caretaker was crafty.

  Was this a trap?

  Without forethought, she had brought the shotgun, and it comforted her as she crept up the walkway toward the front door. But before the pulse of her terror could beat aloud once more, it began to fade. Above the music, sweeter than any melody ever composed, were dozens of human voices: laughing, dancing, happy. She passed under the porch out of the rain, knocking at the door and smiling. A voice shouted, as always happened at parties, for her to come in. Turning the doorknob, she almost burst out laughing. How welcome would she be toting a shotgun! Leaning the weapon against the wall beneath the mailbox, she opened the door and went inside.

  The house was empty: No people and no furniture, except for three unshaded lamps
sitting on the floor, connected by one long extension cord that looped beneath her feet and under the back of the door. The music seemed to come out of the walls. The celebrating crowd was all around but conversing on the astral plane. She stood there for perhaps five seconds, not knowing which corner of the twilight zone she had stumbled in, before turning to look behind the door. It was then the extension cord jerked under her heels, causing her to lose her balance. The music stopped. The lights went out.

  Come to me.

  Darkness had fallen on her on several occasions tonight, but none compared to this, for previously each time she had been alone.

  An arm encircled her neck, locking tight.

  In a flash her pendulum of despair and resolution swung to both extremes. She went limp, giving up, letting her windpipe be closed off. A prayer started in her head and she had all the words in the past tense. Then she thought of Tony, how kind and beautiful he was, how much she would miss him, and how he would be the next victim. And that, more than anything, brought her back to life.

  She cut hard and sharp with both elbows, catching ribs, the Caretaker’s breath whistling in her ear. The hold on her neck loosened slightly and she was able to refill her lungs. “Nooo!!!” she screamed, planting her feet firmly on the floor, shoving up and back. One bang followed the other, a head smacking the wall, her head smacking a jaw. The arm around her neck slipped once more and she jumped forward, grasping for the half-open door. But she was not totally free and the hands that clung to the back of her sweater regrouped quickly, clawing into the material, catching hold of her flesh. So play dirty, she thought, and while you’re at it, take this! Swinging through a wide arc, she caught the Caretaker squarely on the nose with her right fist. Warm blood spurted over her stinging fingers and the shadow, her shadow for the last two months, let go and staggered back. Almost, she could see who was there.

  Had Alison immediately struck again and pressed her advantage, she might have gotten away. But she lacked faith in her strength and she was anxious to end things once and for all. Jumping out of the doorway, she grabbed the shotgun. And she had enough time. She had the barrels up, the stock stabilized on her shoulder, her finger on the trigger and the Caretaker in her line of sight. Then the figure stepped forward, closer to the door, and what light the stormy night could spare caught the face.

  No, she whispered in a cold place deep in her soul.

  The Caretaker was someone impossible.

  Eyes stared into hers and nodded.

  Goddess.

  Her paralysis ended. “It makes no difference!” she screamed. Taking a step forward, she pulled the trigger.

  The Caretaker repaid her earlier favor. The door slammed in her face. Before the shot could spray its flashing orange tunnel of death, the doorknob caught the tip of the gun, tilting the barrels upward, discharging the shell into the ceiling. Since the weapon was not jammed against a relatively immovable object as it had been the first time, the recoil was minimal. That made her downfall, after all her struggles, all the more ironic. Turning to flee, she simply slipped and fell, and hit her head on a brick planter wall and was knocked out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tony found the spot without having to search. Even with the storm and the dark, there were visible signs: the tracks on the soft shoulder of the road that the winter’s worst had failed to obliterate, scraped rubber on the asphalt that would probably be there at the turn of the century. But had there been no evidence, he still would have recognized the place where he had lost control of the car. For him, it was a haunted place, and his ghost, as well as the man’s, often walked there at night. He stopped his car, grabbed his shovel and flashlight, and climbed outside.

  The rain was lighter here in the desert and his waterproof coat was warm. The daylight hours probably would have been a less morbid time to have come but he had wanted the cover of night. Besides, grave robbers should work the graveyard shift. Plus it had only been a little while ago that he had deciphered the Caretaker’s hidden messages. He hadn’t known for sure until then, or so he told himself, as he turned the flashlight on the trembling tumbleweeds; it was a poor excuse. He should have come to this grave immediately after he had left Neil’s grave. But he had been afraid. He was still afraid.

  Slamming the car door shut, taking a firm hold of the shovel, he pressed forward, his tennis shoes sinking in the listless mud, the damp but still sharp shrubs clawing at his pants. A year ago, he had counted fifty paces that they had carried the man into the field, and tonight he counted them again. When he reached the magic number, he found himself standing in a small rectangular clearing of uneven footing. The soil here did not look like it had been left a year to settle, and that reassured him as much as it oppressed him. Finding out what a corpse looked like after a lengthy decay would be about as pleasant as confirming his hunch. Either way, he was going to be sick.

  Confirm what? He gave you his name!

  He set the flashlight down and thrust the shovel into the ground, throwing the earth aside. With the rain and the sandy mixture, it should have been easy going, but each descending inch wore on him. Soon he was sweating and had to remove his jacket, the wind and rain pressing through his shirt. When they’d buried the man, they’d had little to work with and hadn’t dug deep; each stab of his shovel carried with it the fear he’d cleave into something dead. His thoughts were a whirlwind of wordless dark images: vultures circling above parched bones, men in tuxedos holding stakes and bibles in black and white cemeteries, and, worst of all, scenes from his life before the man and the Caretaker—disturbing because the scenes seemed the most unreal.

  He had dug himself waist deep when he stopped to stretch his tiring muscles. Was it possible he had the wrong spot? He had been drunk that night and the terrain here was fairly undistinguished and what did tumbleweeds do if not tumble all over the place? There was no way the man could be under his feet, not this far down.

  Had he not a minute later found the crucifix that Neil had draped around the man’s neck in the mud under his shoes, he might have talked himself into digging a few more holes. But with the tiny gold cross in his hand, still bright in the flashlight beam, he knew his trip had been in vain. The man was not here. What was left of his burned skeleton was in a casket six feet under in Rose Memorial Lawn.

  Tony rested his head in his arms at the edge of the empty grave. He was tempted to replace that which had been taken and lie down in the hole and cover himself. He might have wept had he not known the worst was yet to come.

  He did not remember walking back to the car but a while later found himself exhausted, soaked and muddy, sitting behind the steering wheel. The faded yellow piece of newspaper that had brought him to this forsaken place and that should have spared him the journey lay on the passenger seat. He had only studied the first of the Caretaker’s column two ads, but that had been sufficient.

  Fran: syrilorryeunahokijnieaesknaesedrl

  supwehycoeiojlldoilpulonitcwohig

  Using the given key, starting with the first letter and including every third letter, the message told Fran to streak naked through school at lunch. As the Caretaker’s notes had always been terse, it should have been obvious he was not one to waste words or letters. But surprisingly, none of the group had thought to study the extra letters. What had brought Tony to re-examine the ad had been a desperation to do anything but return here to where they had buried the man. That desperation had been growing all along but it had peaked sharply during his walk back to the cemetery chapel with Alison.

  “I was just afraid that she would feel uncomfortable losing a family heirloom.”

  “I don’t think Neil’s mother even knew he’d had it.”

  “Oh, for some reason, I assumed it had been in the family.”

  He had known for a fact Neil’s mother had not known about the emerald ring because before going to the funeral, he had asked Mrs. Hurly if it would be OK if he gave it to Alison. Also, at Alison’s remark, he had specifically remember
ed that Neil had nodded during their meeting at Fran’s house when Alison had asked if the ring had been in his family.

  “How did you know?”

  “The green matches your eyes. It’s beautiful.”

  Had Neil lied, or had he, in a deranged way, in a manner they were all familiar with from the chain letter, told the truth? Standing on the cemetery road with Alison, surrounded by rows of tombstones, he had realized that only someone who cared deeply for the man, whose soul wept for the man, who actually in some incomprehensible way identified with the man, could refer to the man as family. And on the coattails of the realization he had remembered that the man had been wearing an expensive ring, and that Neil had been the last to touch him when he had folded the guy’s hands over his heart.

  The hourglass runs low.

  Neil had been dying. Neil was dying.

  In more ways than one, Neil had warned them that the Caretaker was right in front of them. Starting backward, using every third letter, Fran’s ad had read:

  Go To Police Please Tony Or I Will Die Yours Neil Hurly

  · · ·

  There was pain. At first it was everywhere, heavy and unbearable, and she struggled to return to unconsciousness. But her aching body dragged her awake, taking back its many parts, each with its own special hurt: her head throbbing, her arm burning, her back cramping. She opened her eyes reluctantly, feeling the sting of a grating, white glare.

  She was in a small square unfurnished room with people that looked familiar, sitting on the floor beside an unshaded lamp that seemed to be emitting an irritating radiation. Her hands and feet felt stuck together and, looking down, she noticed without much comprehension that metal bands joined her ankles and wrists together. Turning her head, a sharp pain in her neck made her cry softly. The people, also arranged on the floor, looked her way, their forms blurring and overlapping before settling down. The face closest to her belonged to someone she remembered as Joan.

  “What are you doing here?” Alison whispered, her throat bone dry. Trying to swallow, she began to cough, which made her head want to explode. It felt as if someone had beaten her repeatedly with a club. Then she remembered that it had been a brick. The rest came back in a frightful rush. She closed her eyes.