Chain Letter Omnibus Read online

“Did she take anything with her when she left?”

  “Not that I know of. I didn’t actually see her. I was watching the news. That was tough what happened to those two friends of yours. I was sorry to hear about them.”

  Alison began to turn away. “Thanks, Mr. Zuchlensky. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “It’s all right. You try to stay out of trouble, you hear?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Alison noticed that the little metal door on Zuchlensky’s mailbox at the end of the driveway was lying open.

  Eric and Alison were at odds about where they should go next. He still wanted to talk to the Clemenses. She wanted to check on Tony. She was worried that Joan had gone to Tony’s house—bearing strange gifts. She thought she was being logical. Tony didn’t live that far from Joan. The Clemenses lived all the way out in Riverside, closer to her house. But Eric was insistent.

  “He’s probably not at home,” Eric said as he restarted the car.

  “Are you saying that he’s with that girl?” she asked, hurt.

  “I’m saying we need more information before we confront Tony. The Clemenses can give us that information.”

  “But he could be in danger.”

  Eric ignored her. He was heading for the freeway.

  “Dammit Eric, you saw that he spit on me today. That’s not the Tony I know. That witch has done something to his mind.” She tried to grab the steering wheel. “I love him! I’m not going to let him die!”

  Eric pushed her aside and quickly pulled over to the side of the road. He sat breathing deeply for a minute. He must be furious with her. She had almost yanked them into the oncoming traffic.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He sighed. “Alison, has it ever occurred to you why you might not be at the bottom of the list?”

  She frowned. “We’ve talked about it.”

  “Not really.” He reached out and put his hand on her knee. “It could be that the Caretaker knows you won’t be around when he gets that far.”

  She was incredulous. “Are you saying that Joan’s going to kill me?”

  Eric shook his head and put the car back in gear. “I’m saying that it could be worse than you think.”

  · · ·

  It took them almost an hour to drive to the Clemenses’. They went to the door together. Alison didn’t understand how people could continue to live in the same house where their daughter had impaled herself on a knife. She felt creepy walking up to the front porch.

  Eric had to knock on the door for a long time to get an answer. Finally an elderly man appeared and peered at them through the torn screen. The Clemenses lived in a poor section of town and were obviously of modest means. Alison decided it had to be the same house Jane had died in. The man’s bathrobe seemed to be in as poor shape as the screen.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Eric said. “We’re here to talk to you about the group your daughter Jane was involved with. They’ve been causing us trouble, and it’s important that we find out everything we can about them.”

  “Who are you?” the man asked.

  “We’re a couple of scared kids,” Alison interrupted. “Please, Mr. Clemens, we know it’s weird stopping by like this in the middle of the night. But we need your help.”

  “Did you know Jane?” the man asked.

  “No,” Alison admitted. “But we know of her. We know how she died. We know the man she killed before she died.”

  The man trembled at her remarks. “She wouldn’t have hurt anyone before she got involved with those monsters.” He opened the door for them. “Come on in. You both look decent. If I can help you, I will.”

  “Have we woken Mrs. Clemens?” Alison asked as she and Eric stepped inside. There was a muskiness to the house that Alison found distasteful. She glanced down the short narrow hallway as Mr. Clemens padded into the living room and took a seat. Jane’s room must be down there, she thought. A chamber of horrors. How many times had the Clemenses sat in their quiet living room while Jane got loaded in her room and played music from Black Sex and painted pentagrams on her floor with cats’ blood?

  “There is no Mrs. Clemens,” Mr. Clemens said. Sitting in the light of the living room, he looked close to sixty. They must have had Jane late in life, or perhaps she was adopted. “My wife died shortly after Jane.”

  Eric sat near Mr. Clemens, with his left ear toward the man. Alison had noticed that Eric relied on sight almost as much as his “better” ear to understand what people were saying.

  “May we ask how she died?” Eric asked.

  “She was in Jane’s room one night dusting. I never went in there myself. I couldn’t bear the memories. She let out a single scream and was lying dead on the floor when I got to her.” Mr. Clemens shrugged. “The doctor said it was a heart attack.”

  “It must be hard for you living here all alone,” Alison said.

  Mr. Clemens coughed painfully. He sounded ready to have a heart attack himself. “It’s hard,” he agreed quietly. “Who told you Jane killed a man?”

  “Mrs. Carol Whiting,” Eric said.

  Mr. Clemens twitched. “The poor woman.” He paused. “What can I tell you?”

  “The name of any of Jane’s friends who might have been involved in the cult with her?” Eric asked.

  “Jane didn’t have any friends,” Mr. Clemens said simply. “She was a loner. She was pretty as pie, but boys didn’t ask her out. Girls didn’t call her up. I never understood why. I don’t understand now. I think if she had had a few decent friends, her life might have taken a different course.” He paused again. “But that wasn’t to be.”

  “She must have had somebody she talked to?” Alison said.

  “Sure, she did,” Mr. Clemens said, and there was bitterness in his voice. “The people in that cult. But I don’t know any of their names. I don’t want to know any of them.”

  Eric and Alison looked at each other. Had they hit a dead end already? Jane Clemens was their only lead. But then Alison glanced past Eric and Mr. Clemens to a cluster of family pictures standing on a dusty shelf at the top of an old bookcase. She couldn’t make out much detail from where she sat, but a flash of green in the photograph of a young woman’s eyes caught her attention.

  Alison stood and slowly crossed the room. Suddenly she felt as if she were walking through a space where the normal laws of reality no longer applied. The red and purple lights of her nightmares flashed in her mind. The horrible smells and the crushing despair. They surrounded her as she walked across the simple living room of a poor man living in Riverside, California.

  She reached the cluster of family photos.

  She picked up the one of the beautiful girl with the green eyes. The eyes that shone like polished emeralds, like a cat’s eyes. Alison didn’t have to ask. She knew intuitively that the photograph had been taken after Jane Clemens was already involved in the cult. Jane’s eyes were bright, but the light they put out was as cold as the black water at the bottom of a well. Jane was blond, Mrs. Whiting had been right about that. But who was to say Jane couldn’t dye her hair later in life?

  Like, say, after she was dead?

  Dye her lovely blond hair a deep, dark maroon.

  Maroon—the color of the girl’s hair in Tony’s car.

  The faces were the same. Identical. Jesus help them.

  Dear dead Jane Clemens was sleeping with Alison’s boyfriend.

  “Oh, God,” Alison moaned. She dropped the photograph, and the glass caught the edge of the bookcase and shattered in many pieces. Eric was at her side in an instant. It was a good thing. Alison felt the room spin and go dark, but Eric caught her before she could fall.

  “What is it?” he demanded, holding her upright in his arms.

  “It’s her,” Alison whispered.

  “Who’s her?” Eric asked.

  Alison had to take a deep breath. She opened her eyes, and Eric helped her into a chair. Jane Clemens’s picture had fallen facedown on the fl
oor. Alison nodded for Eric to pick it up.

  “It’s her,” she repeated.

  “You’ve met Jane before?” Mr. Clemens asked from his seat on the other side of the room.

  Eric picked up the photographs and shook the glass off. “Who is this?” he asked.

  “You didn’t get a good look at her this afternoon,” Alison said. “I did.”

  “What are you talking about?” Eric asked.

  “Jane is the same girl who was in Tony’s car,” Alison said.

  “Hold on just a second,” Mr. Clemens said, and he was angry. “My daughter has been dead for over a year.”

  “I saw her today,” Alison said firmly. “She’s back.”

  Mr. Clemens stood and waved his hand in disgust. “I want you people to leave. Now.”

  “Alison,” Eric began. “I don’t think this is the time to be mixing people up. Mr. Clemens was nice enough to invite us into his—”

  “I tell you I saw her!” Alison shouted. “She’s dyed her hair, but it was her. I would recognize those eyes anywhere. Listen to me, both of you, Jane killed James Whiting as part of an elaborate ritual to gain physical immortality. Her body vanished from the mortuary. Mrs. Whiting said it in jest, but I think it was true, I think Jane got up and walked out of that mortuary.”

  Eric took Alison by the hand. “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Clemens. She’s had an upsetting last few days. I’ll take her home. Thanks for your time.” He practically pulled her toward the door. “Goodbye.”

  “She’s alive!” Alison called back toward the old man. “I think she’s the one who gave your wife a heart attack!”

  If Mr. Clemens answered, Alison wasn’t given a chance to hear it. Eric had yanked her out the door, down the steps of the porch, and onto the sidewalk. He was angry, but so was she. She shook him off when he stopped beside her car. She had been letting him drive it all day.

  “You have no right to drag me around like I was your dog!” she shouted at him.

  “And you have no right to scream at a broken-hearted old man that you have just seen his daughter who’s been dead for over a year!” Eric shouted back.

  “She isn’t dead! She’s alive!”

  “Jane Clemens was seen lying naked in a morgue with a huge hole in her chest!”

  “Then she’s come back from the dead! All I know is I saw her this afternoon! She’s the Caretaker! She’s the one who’s sending us these chain letters!”

  Eric quieted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Alison also calmed down. She glanced up and down the block. The houses were all old and shabby. In the bright moonlight they looked like cardboard shacks. They were alone on the street. Their solitude sank deep into Alison’s soul. Was there no one who could help them out of this nightmare? Satanic sacrifices and now the walking dead. And the chain kept going, from one link to the next.

  “A chain. An unbroken chain. It’s very ancient—not a happy thing. But it can be broken.”

  How? With love was all he would say.

  The guy she loved was in the enemy’s camp. But she had felt love in the stranger’s presence in the mountains. It had been a beautiful thing. Sweet and innocent, free of all blemishes. It had been unworldly.

  And yet it had been familiar. As familiar as the guy himself.

  Where had she seen him before?

  Why had she driven to that particular place?

  Alison strained to remember back to the day after Neil died. The day she and Tony had gone for a walk near her house. The first day they had been sure it was all over. Tony had said something to her that was important. But what? Try as she might she couldn’t. . . .

  Then Alison had it.

  “We went to the mountains. It was a pretty place, next to a lake. Neil liked it. I used my parents’ credit card and rented a cabin. . . . We stayed there the whole week. . . . The Caretaker, the man, all that garbage was gone. We didn’t even talk about it. . . . Mainly we just sat by the lake and skimmed rocks and that was good. I fixed him up this old cushiony chair next to the water, and he was comfortable enough. . . . He was sitting in it yesterday morning when he died.”

  She had driven to the spot where Neil had died! Tony had talked about the place later, in more detail. She had known how to get there subconsciously. And she had gone right there when things had looked the darkest. Why? Because she knew she’d get help? Who had helped her?

  “I am your friend I am your greatest admirer.”

  Tony had described Neil as her greatest admirer.

  After Neil’s first funeral.

  Neil had been buried a couple of times.

  But had two times been enough?

  Alison knew now who the guy at the cabin reminded her of.

  Neil. It had been Neil, and yet someone else, too.

  Another form of Neil Hurly.

  Like Tony’s girlfriend was another form of Jane Clemens.

  Oh, God, it just keeps getting worse.

  “Did you hear me, Alison?” Eric said.

  Alison came back to the sidewalk as if from a million miles. She grabbed ahold of Eric. “We have to go out to the desert where we buried the man,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Neil told me I had to go there. He said I had to go back to where it all began. That’s where it really all started. We have to dig up the man’s grave and see if Neil’s body is buried there.”

  “When did Neil tell you that?”

  “You don’t want me to answer that.”

  “But you said Tony buried Neil in the man’s grave in the desert. What makes you think Tony was lying?”

  “I don’t think Tony was lying. I just think Neil’s body might have disappeared.”

  “Why?”

  Alison looked up at the full moon. She was confident she would be able to find the place. And they would have plenty of light to work by. “For the same reason Jane Clemens’s body disappeared,” she said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tony dreamed of the inside of the box. But it was only a metaphor—his unconscious wrestling with the impossibility of it. Because the box was unimaginable to mortals. No one who went in it returned to tell of the tale. Or so they said.

  They. The Caretakers.

  Tony was inside a metal box that was approximately the size of his own room. This made sense because his physical body was actually lying asleep in his bedroom. But his soul was sweating. He was locked in a seamless metal jail that was suspended in a caldron of flames.

  There seemed no way out.

  But that was a lie. Everything that happened in the box was a lie.

  He was so hot. He paced from featureless wall to featureless wall, and as the temperature steadily increased, he began to scream for help. It was then that Brenda suddenly appeared in one corner of the metal room. He had no idea where she’d come from. She carried a long silver knife.

  “Brenda!” he cried. “What are you doing here? Do you know how to get out of here?”

  She handed him the knife and stared at him with whiteless eyes—twin black marbles in a flat face. “Oh, Tony,” she said. “We just have to open our hearts. That’s what they all say, you know.”

  “Then we can leave here?” he asked.

  She flashed a fake grin. He wished her eyes would return to normal. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with them. “Sure. Then we can leave together,” she said.

  “Who are they?” he asked, although he believed he knew the answer to that question.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, wiping away a bead of sweat that actually looked more like a drop of blood. He noticed for the first time that her hands were bleeding and that she was missing several of her fingers.

  “What happened to your hands?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s just get out of here. We can talk about it later. It’s hot!”

  He turned the knife over in his hand. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Op
en our hearts, Tony baby.” She ripped open her blouse. He could see her bra. It was a mess. She had splattered blood on it from her severed fingers. She pointed to the center of her chest “Just stick it right here, and I can forget this place,” she said.

  “You mean, you want me to kill you?” he asked, horrified.

  “It’s not that way, Tony. You just have to open my heart. It’s a simple operation. Go ahead, I don’t mind.” She reached for his hand with the knife in it. “Please hurry.”

  “No,” Tony said, aghast. He pulled his hand away. “There must be another way.”

  Brenda’s face suddenly became ugly. The change was dramatic. Her flesh actually took on lines and wrinkles that made it look like a witch’s mask. Her voice came out high and cruel.

  “You cut out my heart, or I’ll cut out yours, little boy,” she snapped. Magically another knife appeared in her hand, one longer than his. She stabbed at him, and Tony dodged to the side. Instinctively he slashed back with the knife she had given him. His aim proved true. He caught her in the center of her rib cage. The blade sunk in all the way to the hilt, and he felt warm fluid gush over his hand. Brenda’s face relaxed, turning to normal. But a mess of blood bubbled out of her mouth as she sank to her knees in front of him.

  “That hurts,” she gasped in surprise as she died.

  Tony looked down at the bloody knife in his hand.

  He couldn’t believe he had just killed someone. A friend at that.

  He couldn’t understand why it felt so good.

  Then he was outside the metal box. He was floating in the abyss of red and purple lights, loud throbbing, and choking fumes. As before, he was closing on the vast dark wall. A huge black portal grew larger before him, and he felt himself being sucked inside. The lights vanished and all was silent. Once more he saw a slice of a bedroom, held up against a starless void. He moved steadily into the scene, and soon the room was all that existed. Yet the memory of where he had just come from stayed with him, and it was enough to terrify him.

  He was in Neil’s bedroom, and Neil was trying to screw up the courage to call Alison and ask her out. Tony watched as Neil dialed the number twice and then immediately hung up. Finally, on the third try, Neil was able to stay on the line long enough to have Alison pick up.