Chain Letter Omnibus Read online

  Tony aimed the gun at Alison. “I know that. But you aren’t who you say you are. You lied to me. You’re a whore.”

  “No!” Alison pleaded. “I never cheated on you. I just gave Eric a quick hug and kiss good night. I would have done it right in front of you, and you’d never have minded. Tony! Don’t kill me!”

  “You did do it right in front of me,” Tony said grimly. He cocked the revolver. “Say goodbye to life, Ali.”

  “Say goodbye to life, Ali.”

  The thought floated into Alison’s mind like an echo from a shout in a canyon. But it wasn’t her own thought. It came from the outside. She recognized that fact immediately because there was a harshness to it that pained her. She glanced up at Jane Clemens, who was posed above the grave as if she were being photographed for a men’s magazine. Jane had Tony under some kind of mental control. Alison said the first thing that came to her mind, that belonged to her alone.

  “Tony,” Alison said. “She made Neil do things the same way she is making you do things. She’s the Caretaker.”

  Tony’s aim wavered. The mention of Neil threw him for a second. He blinked and looked around, seeming to discover for the first time where he was.

  “Neil was the Caretaker,” Tony said, confused.

  “No,” Alison said. “Neil was a pawn of the Caretaker. We’ve all been pawns. The girl standing beside you is the Caretaker. Look at her. Does she look human?”

  Tony glanced at the girl. She ignored him at first. She stopped posing and moved around to the far side of the grave. She appeared unconcerned about Tony hesitating. Arrogance dripped from her every pore.

  “You can climb out of the hole if you want, Ali,” the girl said. “I won’t kick dirt in your face.”

  Alison boosted herself out of the hole with difficulty. She brushed the dirt off her pants and stood upright. She was at the head of the grave, with the girl on her left and Tony on her right. Tony looked as if his plug had been pulled. For the moment the girl was not feeding him any evil thoughts. But Alison knew that moment wouldn’t last.

  Her shovel handle stood just below Alison’s right foot. She must have set her shovel upright when Tony clobbered Eric.

  “What’s your plan, Jane?” Alison asked the girl.

  The girl chuckled at the question. “I am not Jane. Jane is in the box. Jane will be staying in the box.”

  “Is that what you’ve planned for all of us?” Alison asked.

  The girl gestured to Eric—almost invisible at the bottom of the hole—and at her. “You two are just props,” she said. “You’ll go no farther than this grave.”

  “But Tony?” Alison asked.

  The girl sighed with exaggerated pleasure. “Ah, Tony. He’s mine, all of him.” She kicked a clod of dirt into the hole. “I’ll take his body to places he’s never imagined.”

  Alison shuddered. “Will he still be inside it?”

  The girl nodded her approval. “Very good, Alison. You see the greater goal. Another Caretaker will come, and then another. An endless chain of them, you might say. There are so many of us who want to come out and play.”

  “And the chain letters?” Alison asked.

  “An initiation process,” the girl said. “It prepares people to welcome us into their hearts.”

  “By damning their souls,” Alison said bitterly.

  “Gee. That sounds impressive,” the girl said, mocking.

  “And if they don’t get ready, they die?” Alison said.

  The girl giggled. “There are worse things.”

  “The box,” Alison said.

  “You think you know about that,” the girl said, and now the tone of her voice became serious, almost sad. “But you don’t. None of you know.” She was silent for a second, introspective, then she shook herself and laughed lightly. She gestured to Tony. “Kill her now, my love. Kill her slowly.”

  “Kill her so that she suffers. Blow off bits of her at a time. I want to see her squirm like a wounded animal.”

  Tony raised his gun as if he were a stringed puppet. The barrel of the revolver shone in the silver light of the moon. “Kill my love,” Tony mumbled. Once more he cocked the hammer.

  Then the girl let out a shout of surprise.

  Alison twisted toward her to watch her topple into the hole.

  Eric had grabbed the witch by the leg!

  Tony’s aim wavered. The dull, confused expression returned to his face as he watched his master fall into the grave. “Sasha?” he said.

  Alison took advantage of the confusion. Bending down, she grabbed the top of the shovel handle and snapped it into her hands. Tony was just beginning to turn back to her when she let fly with a wide sweeping arc. The spade caught the tip of his revolver and sent it flying into the tumbleweed. Stunned, Tony turned to retrieve it. He must have been totally out of it. He didn’t even see the blow coming that Alison delivered to the back of his skull. It sent him to the ground.

  In the grave the girl was wrestling with Eric. She was winning. Eric let out a howl of pain as the girl stood up to climb out of the hole. Alison brought the shovel down on the top of her head, too. The girl grunted and fell backward.

  Now what?

  Alison realized she had done as well as she was going to do with one shovel. Both she and Eric had already lost the element of surprise. Tony was stunned, but recovering swiftly. She could whack him again, but she was afraid of doing him serious damage. The witch was already getting back up. Alison considered searching for the gun, but it would take her at least a minute to find it in the weeds. She glanced down at Eric. Whatever the girl had done to him, he wasn’t going to be of any help in the next ten seconds. She had no choice, and she hated it. She had to take care of herself. She had to make a run for it.

  Alison dropped the shovel and leapt across the grave. She took off for the car. The jagged tumbleweed tore at her legs, but she didn’t let them slow her down. She ran as if she had the devil on her heels, and maybe she did. She had parked with the driver’s side facing the gravesite. She was running so fast she did the majority of her braking by slamming into the car. Frantic, she threw the door open and jumped inside. But she didn’t have her keys. Where were her keys? She couldn’t remember. They were in her pocket. Yes! She stuck her hand in the pocket and pulled them out. But then she made the horrible mistake of sticking the wrong key in the ignition. She yanked it out and dropped the whole key chain to the floor.

  Alison had just leaned over to find the keys when a fist came through the passenger window above her.

  Shattered glass spewed over her. A hand like a claw grabbed her by the hair.

  “Ouch!” Alison cried as she was yanked upright.

  “Going somewhere?” the girl asked, standing just outside the window. Her grip on Alison’s hair was enough to make Alison feel as if she were about to have the top of her skull ripped off. But the girl was not in the best of situations, either. She did, after all, have her arm stuck through a mean broken window. In fact her arm was already lacerated in a half dozen places.

  But she wasn’t bleeding. Instead, the cuts dripped a foul-smelling fluid. Alison had smelled the odor earlier in the day when Tony had spit on her. Then she had just caught a whiff of it. Now the stink of it flooded her nostrils.

  Embalming fluid.

  Jane Clemens had been embalmed before the Caretaker had taken possession of her body.

  “Go to hell,” Alison said. She jammed the right key in the ignition and turned it over. The girl tried tightening her hold on Alison’s hair, but Alison was already slamming the car into gear. It jerked forward, and Alison felt a thousand hair roots yanked out of the top of her head. But flooring the accelerator had worked. The girl let go.

  Oh, but the pain of losing so much hair at once. It sent such shock waves into Alison’s central nervous system that she simply couldn’t drive straight. The car raced straight forward but then immediately veered back off the road and got stuck. She had plowed into a mess of tumbleweed—sort of l
ike Tony had done when he had gone off the road the summer before. Her head struck the steering wheel, and a black wave crossed her vision. But she didn’t let herself faint. She threw the car in reverse and backed out of the wall of weeds. But as she flew backward she hit something hard—maybe a body. For a moment she had the horrible thought that she had run over Tony. She fretted between racing off and checking. The indecision cost her precious seconds. Finally she turned and glanced over her shoulder.

  It was at that instant that the car door was ripped off its hinges.

  The girl stood in the moonlight three feet to Alison’s left, dripping embalming fluid from her crushed guts and grinning from ear to ear. There was a tire mark across her tattered black blouse. Alison saw how the girl could have survived the wreck with Fran. She must have been in the car with Fran, after all.

  “You’re a feisty devil,” the girl said. “I like that.”

  She reached inside the car and grabbed Alison by the throat.

  “Please,” Alison croaked, but she was asking the wrong monster for mercy. The girl yanked her out of the car as if she were made of paper. She threw Alison in front of her, in the direction of the grave.

  “Don’t make me carry you,” the girl warned.

  Eric and Tony were waiting for them at the grave. Eric had recovered his wits, and Tony had found his gun. At the moment he had it pointed at Eric’s head. The girl suddenly shoved Alison from behind, and Alison fell at Tony’s feet. Dirt pushed into her mouth. Blood seeped over the side of her head from her clump of missing hair. She spit and looked up. Tony had the barrel of the gun pointed at her head.

  “All right,” she whispered. “I give up.”

  “Good,” the girl cackled. “We are about to start carving you up anyway. It’s a good time to give up.”

  Alison got up slowly. She didn’t know how to reach Tony. She stared deep into his eyes and saw another person at work. She had felt this way once before, when talking to Neil in the throes of his madness. How had they gotten to Neil? With Fran. With the one girl in the whole world who loved him.

  “How can we break it?”

  “With love?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Now she understood. Now she knew what to do.

  She remembered her nightmares.

  Tony could not be put in the box.

  She loved Tony. She really did. It would be all right.

  “Can I ask something before I die?” Alison asked.

  “Of course,” the girl said. “You can ask things while you’re dying, if you can stop screaming. The night’s young. We’ll play a while before you go in the ground.”

  “You’ve got serious psychological problems,” Eric told her.

  “Yeah,” the girl said. She poked Eric in the gut, and he doubled up in pain. “We’ll play with you as well.”

  “Stop that!” Alison cried.

  “I don’t think so,” the girl said.

  “All this, from the very beginning, was to prepare us?” Alison asked.

  “Yes,” the girl said. “But I had to step in. I had to get you to Column Three. Neil couldn’t take you that far.”

  “Because Neil wouldn’t,” Alison said. “He had a good heart. He got away from you in the end.”

  The girl stared down into the grave. She spat out a mouthful of embalming fluid. “It doesn’t look to me like he got very far.”

  “Tony,” Alison said, turning to her boyfriend, and now she was crying. It was hard, what she had to do—so hard. She needed him to help her. “I can help you. Let me help you.”

  Tony blinked and a tremor went through the length of his body. “You lied to me,” he said, but it was without force.

  “But beyond this you must trust what’s in your heart.”

  “This thing here lied to you,” Alison wept. “It lies to you in your own mind. You have to listen to me with your heart. You know me in your heart, Tony. You put me in there and kept me safe and warm. You told me that once when we were alone together.”

  Tony fidgeted. He looked at the girl, then back at Alison. “You came here to get the body to bring to the police,” he mumbled. “You turned against me.”

  “Yes,” the girl said.

  “No,” Alison said. “I was always on your side. I’m on your side now.” She took a step closer to him. The tip of the black barrel was practically touching her, pointed directly at her heart. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”

  But even as she spoke the words, she knew it was no use. The girl stood at Tony’s right, smirking. She was confident. No doubt she had fought similar battles over the course of centuries and always won. The stranger had said the chain was very ancient.

  “Alison,” Tony said, and there was pain in his voice but no strength. Alison knew it would take strength to break the chain. The strength that love gave.

  Alison whipped her hand up and folded her fingers around Tony’s right hand. His index finger was pressed to the trigger. She pressed it tight. Yes, it was she who pulled the trigger. Not her boyfriend.

  Alison heard a loud roar. She felt a painful slap.

  Then she was lying flat on her back, staring up at the sky.

  Tony and Eric and the girl were peering down at her.

  The girl looked more shocked than the guys.

  “What did you do?” she asked in disgust.

  Tony’s face crumpled. “Alison?” he cried.

  Alison smiled through her pain. “Tony.”

  “You witch!” Tony swore, turning on the girl. Before the girl could react he pressed the gun to the side of her head and pulled the trigger. There was a flash of orange light. The girl toppled out of sight. Tony dropped the gun and knelt beside Alison. He reached out for her.

  “What have I done?” Tony moaned.

  “Don’t move her,” Eric cautioned Tony, trying to stop him.

  “Let him take me,” Alison whispered, and now the pain was coming in red tidal waves. She felt as if her chest had exploded, which it had. She could feel a mess of blood under her blouse, dripping down her belly. “I want to die in his arms.”

  Tony began to weep. “You’re not going to die.” He bit his lip and hugged her face to his shoulder. “Oh, God, what have I done?”

  Alison was having trouble breathing. But she managed to smile. It felt good to be held by him again. “You didn’t do anything. I did it. No one can put you in the box. You’re free. You’re—” It was difficult to get out the words. “You’re mine.”

  Tony continued to hold her, but he shook them both as sobs racked him. He implored Eric, “Can’t you do anything for her?”

  Eric was sad. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Alison felt herself growing faint. The pain was receding into the distance. She closed her eyes, and Tony eased her back onto the ground. It was good to lie down and be still. It had been a long time since she had had a chance to rest. Now she could. She was at peace. She had done what had to be done. That was the best that anybody could do.

  Far away, a million miles perhaps, she heard footsteps. Someone was approaching. But she couldn’t get her eyes to open to see who it was. Yet she knew it was someone good, and she felt happy.

  Epilogue

  Tony and Eric watched the stranger walk out of the dark with a mixture of awe and fear. He was nothing to look at—a slightly built guy with sandy brown hair and an innocent expression. Yet he walked with power. The white light of the moon shimmered around him. They rose as he stepped into their small circle.

  “Who are you?” Tony asked.

  The stranger didn’t say anything for a minute. He just stared down at Alison as she lay dying on the ground. But his eyes—they were warm and green, somehow familiar to Tony—were not unhappy. Finally he looked at them.

  “I am a friend,” the stranger said.

  “Can you help my girlfriend?” Tony asked. A stupid question. Nothing could help Alison now. Any fool could see she was dying.

  “Your madness has passed
,” the stranger said. “You’re all right now.”

  Tony nodded. His heart was broken, his girl was dying, but suddenly he felt lighter. The stranger spoke the truth—a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He looked down at the girl in disgust, a bundle of stinking fluid and blood lying beside the grave. He couldn’t imagine how he had ever gone to her.

  “I’m all right,” Tony agreed. He gestured helplessly to Alison on the ground and began to cry miserably. “But Ali isn’t.”

  The stranger seemed unconcerned. He stepped over to the fallen girl with the bloody head. Incredibly her ruined body had begun to stir. This didn’t disturb the stranger, either. He stood over the grotesque heap until something began to worm its way out of the dead girl’s mouth. It was black and slimy. It looked like a slug, but it was as big as a snake. The thing stuck its head into the nighttime air, then focused on Alison’s dying figure. Suddenly it darted out of the girl’s mouth, and its full length was revealed, more than five feet long. It dashed straight for Alison. But the stranger was too quick for it. He slammed his heel down on the head of the snake, crushing it. The thing rolled over in the mud and fell into the hole and was gone.

  “Did you see that?” Tony gasped to Eric.

  “No,” Eric said.

  “That thing that just came out of the witch’s mouth,” Tony said.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Eric said, confused.

  The stranger regarded both of them with calm. “This Caretaker is gone. It will not return. And Alison has passed a great test. She is ready for great things. There’s no need to grieve over her. She’ll be in good company soon.” The stranger turned to walk back into the desert. “Goodbye, Eric. Goodbye, Tony.”

  Something in the way the stranger said his name touched Tony in a deep way. He knew that voice. It was the voice of a friend, the voice of his friend. But that was impossible, Tony told himself. They were standing beside the grave of that friend. He had buried the guy.

  The stranger sounded like Neil.

  Tony jumped at him, catching the guy by the hand just before he was out of their circle. “Neil!” Tony cried and threw himself to the ground at his feet. “Don’t leave me. Don’t let her leave me.”