The Frighteners Read online

  DON’T FEAR THE REAPER . . .

  CALL GHOULS ‘R’ US

  Forty years ago, he stalked the streets of Fairwater. A dark, hooded figure who claimed the lives of twelve people. Now he is back for more.

  He enters your home. He lives in your walls. He’s after your soul. Because he is the Grim Reaper. And nothing alive can stop him.

  That’s why the folks of Fairwater have enlisted the help of The Frighteners. They’re more than supernatural experts—they’re the best ghost-hunting team in the business.

  Because they’re already dead . . .

  THE FRIGHTENERS

  THE FRIGHTENERS

  A novel by Michael Jahn.

  Based on the motion picture screenplay

  written by Fran Walsh & Peter Jackson.

  A Boulevard Book / published by arrangement with MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA, Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Boulevard edition / July 1996

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1996 by MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA, Inc. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  The Putnam Berkley World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.berkley.com

  ISBN: 1-57297-187-8

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For David Aaron Jahn

  One

  The rain came down in sheets, driven by a cold Maine nor’easter that blew in off Fairwater Bay, whipping the tips of the pines and the oaks around until they looked like they’d snap. The rain soaked the town of Fairwater, keeping the fishing fleet tied up in the small and picturesque harbor and the people who knew better indoors in snug kitchens and in front of warm fires. It paralyzed traffic on the coastal highway, the one running the length of the state from Kittery to Eastport, with cars crawling along with their wipers keeping time to the light rock music that was the sole fare on the only radio station that came in clearly that far from the rest of the world. And the rain pelted the tiny panes of the old glass windows of the Bartlett House.

  The three-story Victorian was dark and creepy enough when it was built a century and a half ago, its gray slate roof, shadowy gables surrounding narrow attic windows, and sea-green shake siding reflecting the somber mood of the puritanical whale-ship captain who built it. Lightning rods bristled from every corner of the roof, atop which a widow’s walk—also surrounded by spikelike, wrought-iron rails—looked down on both town and bay. The house had, at some point in its long history, served as the center of the Fairwater Tuberculosis Sanatorium, a turn-of-the-century hospital for TB, cancer, and other diseases that, in those days, were cured mainly by locking the patient away for the remainder of his days. The sanatorium had long since been abandoned and padlocked, and the only way an onlooker could spot life in the compound was by the occasional sight of a light in a window of the Bartlett House—that is, when the rain permitted it.

  A massive bolt of lightning hurled down from the sky and incinerated an especially tall scrawny pitch pine that sat atop Widow’s Hill, a scrubby hillock on the far corner of the fenced-off sanatorium grounds. The bolt lit up the huge gingerbread-trimmed Victorian for a second, and then the roar of lightning rattled the windows. The blast nearly, but not entirely, prevented Old Lady Bartlett from hearing the screams of her daughter.

  But the sound came through the thunder and the thick walls, making the old woman sit bolt upright in bed.

  “Why . . . why are you here?”

  The house was sturdily built, constructed to stand up to Maine nor’easters and the long winter nights, yet the sound came through the walls as if they were made of cardboard.

  “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  Patricia Bartlett was a grown woman with a past, yet her voice came through the walls sounding so childlike, so helpless.

  “What do you want tonight?”

  Her mother thought, This has been going on so long. This has been going on too long.

  “No! Not that!” Patricia cried.

  Old Lady Bartlett tossed the covers aside and swung her legs awkwardly onto the cold, planked floor. She was in her late seventies but had been an attractive woman once. Now the old woman was way overweight, cold, and frightened. She pulled on an ancient velvet dressing gown, frayed at the edges and with a hem that hung down in the front where it had been stepped on a few times. Then she pushed her fat pink feet into equally old fox slippers.

  “Oooh! Please! Don’t hurt me!”

  Old Lady Bartlett could take it no longer. Her maternal instincts were stronger than her fear, even after all those years and all the trouble Patricia had been. The old woman padded her way across her bedroom floor and switched on a tabletop light. A softball-sized globe, painted with pink carnations and yellow canaries, glowed atop a tarnished brass stalk.

  She opened the bedroom door and stepped into a second-floor hallway that had been decorated long ago with heavily embossed, gilt wallpaper; its fleur-de-lis and oak-leaf clusters contrasted with the stark oak-plank floor. A lush carpet ran down the middle of the floor, but wasn’t thick enough to stop the old boards from creaking with the first, tentative step she took out of the safety of her own bedroom.

  Patricia’s voice was even louder this time. She cried out, pleading, “No . . . don’t . . . stop!” Then came something like a scream.

  Old Lady Bartlett padded down the hall and hesitated outside her daughter’s door.

  “Patricia?” she asked, way too quietly to be heard. Perhaps she was afraid to be heard by whoever—or whatever—was in there with her baby girl.

  The cry came again, followed by a shouted, “Not again! Not tonight!”

  “Patricia?” the woman said, louder this time.

  She pressed an ear against the thick oak door and listened. Suddenly the noise, the thunderstorm and the screaming, that seemed to emanate from every corner of the gloomy old house, came to an end. Instead there was silence, although the door seemed nearly to breathe, throbbing in slow and rhythmic pulses.

  Old Lady Bartlett’s shaking fingers grasped the brass door handle.

  “Patricia!” she said sharply, summoning up all her courage. “I’m coming in.”

  She turned the handle. At that moment the door did more than pulse. It bulged out, like the skin of a lizard that was taking a giant breath. The old woman jumped away in horror as the very wood itself stretched out, as might the skin of a balloon when a human face is pressed against it. As if alive, the wood formed into the grotesque image of a faceless, hooded man, a man with no features but only the sharp-angled skull of a corpse.

  Old Lady Bartlett screamed and staggered back into the center of the hall.

  “Who are you?” she shouted, bringing her hands to her face in fear.

  There was no answer. Instead, the figure’s chest moved in and out, breathing through an oak door that suddenly was transformed into a second skin. A hand appeared then, bulging out of the oak door, holding something—a scythe, perhaps. Even in her fear, Old Lady Bartlett recognized the horrible figure of the Grim Reaper.

  “What do you want?”

  The only sound resembled breathing, the slow and cold breathing of a large lizard, whose scales the wood of the door resembled as it moved in and out.

  “Leave my daughter alone!”

  The hooded figure suddenly sucked back into Patricia’s bedroom and was gone. The old woman hesitated for a few seconds, then stepped back to the door. She listened, but again all was quiet. Then there was the sound of her daughter’s low moaning.

  “It’s all right, dear,” the old woman said. “
He’s gone.”

  It was then that the once rich-looking wallpaper next to the door bulged out into the shape of the hooded man. This time the features were clearer. The wallpaper sucked around the outline of the Grim Reaper the way plastic wrap enfolds the contours of a piece of raw meat. The embossed gilt pattern now took on the form of the lizard’s skin, with fleur-de-lis scales.

  The elderly woman screamed and fled back toward her bedroom, her slippers clopping along the carpet and her velvet robe billowing. Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of the man following her, running alongside her, taunting her. The Grim Reaper ran inside the wallpaper, between the wall and the paper, which assumed his form as he ran. This hideous blister followed her all the way down the hall and then abruptly disappeared as she ran into her room and slammed the door.

  Her trembling fingers twisted the key in the lock. Leaving the brass lamp on, she backed away from the door, edging toward the safety of her four old bedposts. For a second she was comforted by the return of familiar sounds—the thunderstorm and the beating of the rain against the windowpanes. Then, with no warning, the hooded figure bulged out of the wallpaper alongside the door. This time the man didn’t run, but bulged out nearly a foot, his chest slowly heaving in and out. This time there were two arms, and both hands were empty. She could see the fingertips lightly twitching, the way the tail of a cat does before it pounces.

  Screaming again, she retreated more quickly toward the bed. But the Grim Reaper moved with her again, sliding along the wall at a speed matching hers. Old Lady Bartlett backed clumsily into her bedside table, nearly knocking it over. She reached behind her and swept up the smallish cherry table, letting the black dial phone clatter to the floor with a bang and a tinkling of its bell.

  “Get away from me!” she yelled, hurling the table at the figure.

  His reached out then, as if made of rubber, catching the table in his paper-covered hands and crushing it between them. Once a sturdy old piece of Maine furniture, the table crumbled between the man’s hands as if it were a sugar cube.

  “Stay away from Patricia!” she shouted, this time throwing the telephone.

  It met a similar fate. The Grim Reaper caught it in one hand and crushed it like a piece of paper. The bits of plastic and metal fell to the floor.

  The old lady wasted no time. She ran from the room, skirting his outstretched fingers, fumbling open the lock, and hurling the door open. Her slippers again clopping on the floor, she ran along the hall and down the grand staircase to the first floor. As she moved, however, the figure followed. It ripped along the wallpaper, seldom leaving her sight entirely, keeping her terrified.

  Old Lady Bartlett hurried down the stairs, past the old oil paintings of fishing boats in Fairwater Harbor and scenes of the sun rising over Plum Island, visible on clear days from the widow’s walk atop the house. When she got to the landing, she was just a few feet from the front door. Lightning flashed a spectrum of colors through the stained-glass window, which depicted a sperm whale in the act of being harpooned. Despite the storm, the outside of the house looked like salvation to her.

  But as she reached for the door the Grim Reaper, who had disappeared from the stairwell wallpaper, reappeared in that surrounding the front door. This time the arms reached out to draw her into their hideous grasp. The fingertips twitched inward, as if to say, “come to me.”

  Screaming, she spun around and ran across the foyer and through the dark dining room into the kitchen, where it was her habit to have a light burning. Another brass lamp, this one in the form of an oil lamp suspended from the wall above the old, four-burner gas stove, cast long shadows around a kitchen rich in history. A cast-iron meat grinder was bolted to a knife-scarred oak countertop. A white refrigerator with curved edges had toiled noisily since the 1950s. On the stove sat a tin coffee percolator and a cast-iron frying pan. A mayonnaise jar half-filled with bacon fat stood ready for use in frying eggs.

  She looked around for a weapon and her eyes found the knife drawer that sat just a little askew after years of frequent use. As she stepped toward it the man who had chased her through the very fabric of the walls of Bartlett House appeared once again. This time he bulged out of the kitchen’s floral wallpaper—the design showed pink roses, white baby’s breath, and assorted greenery. The wallpaper was stretched as thin as the skin of a soap bubble, yet it didn’t break. The man was tall and seemed not to touch the floor as he walked, and the paper behind him sucked into a narrow band that reached back, like the stalk of a Venus flytrap, onto the wall. His features were finely chiseled this time, but to Old Lady Bartlett he wasn’t human. His eyes were strangely angled, and on his mouth was something that resembled a sadistic grin.

  She whimpered as the paper-clad hands reached for her throat. Then her fingers found the handle to the knife drawer and succeeded in jerking it open. The drawer crashed to the floor, spilling knives onto the black-and-white-checked linoleum. The old woman reached down and fumbled for one.

  She grabbed a large carving knife by the blade, and when she brought it up her fingers were dripping her own blood. Several cuts ran across her fingers between the second and third knuckles. The blood squeezed out between her trembling fingers as she turned the knife around and whirled, whimpering all the while, to face the evil thing that had been tormenting her daughter for such a long time.

  She rained blow after blow on the thing that had bulged out of the wallpaper. She cut it and slashed it, and each time a rip appeared in the fabric of the monster, there was nothing underneath but musty Maine air. Rips healed seconds after they appeared. Old Lady Bartlett kept shredding the beast, but it kept healing, until at last she was exhausted and over the sound of the rain and the thunder she heard a taunting laugh.

  The whole kitchen shook as, suddenly, the Grim Reaper sucked back into the wall. The wallpaper snapped back into shape, although shredded paper hung in long strips where she had cut it. Once again the whirring of the old refrigerator filled the room.

  Old Lady Bartlett staggered out of the kitchen, back through the darkened dining room, pausing just long enough to switch on the ornate crystal chandelier suspended above the old oak captain’s table. Outside, the air seemed a bit stiller. The storm was passing over on its way inland from the North Atlantic. The rain still fell, but not in sheets; it ran over the top of the long-untended gutter and spilled onto the cobblestone walkway out front. The thunder was a distant memory, gone inland.

  She staggered to the foot of the stairs, where she collapsed. She let go of the knife and clutched her bleeding hand. She sat there for a minute, two minutes, listening to the sound of the rain and her own sobbing, and then dried her eyes.

  Suddenly the carpet surrounding her bulged up on both sides of her. It formed itself into the shape of gigantic fingers, four and five feet high, that wrapped around her and began to squeeze. She screamed as the fingers crushed through her velvet robe and began to squeeze the life out of her.

  Then came a shout from the top of the stairs. “Leave her alone,” the voice said. It was Patricia.

  Patricia Bartlett looked down from the top of the stairs, a disheveled-looking woman in her early fifties dressed in a white nightgown and gripping the top of the banister. Once she’d had a soft attractive face, but a lifetime of suffering had etched lines of sorrow around her eyes and mouth.

  “It’s me you want,” she said, quieter this time.

  With a guttural rumble, the fist that had encircled the old lady shrank away from her, then re-formed into the figure of the hooded man. Moving as quickly and silently as a panther, the gruesome figure ran up the stairs. Patricia watched with barren eyes and, at the last minute, collapsed onto the floor at the top of the stairs.

  The hooded man moved silently around her, the carpet billowing up as it did around her mother, then grabbed her by the wrists. Silently, the man dragged her into her bedroom. She made no sound; her face was expressionless. The bedroom door slammed shut.

  Two

&n
bsp; Magda Ravanski was one of those New York City career women who was out of place living and working in Fairwater, Maine, but had no clue about it. A tall and self-pampered woman of forty or so with hair dyed chestnut to cover the gray, she dressed immaculately and had a tendency to look down at her carefully tended nails while talking to one of her subordinates at the Fairwater Gazette.

  That was another thing wrong about the woman—the newspaper business, even in New York City, rarely attracted women who were more interested in how they looked than in how well they covered the news. A fashion consultant, Magda fell into the job of managing editor of the Gazette while on summer vacation with her third husband. When he left her high and dry in the Presidential Suite of the Smuggler’s Cove Inn, she needed a job, and fast. Newspaper work was the most glamorous job in town. She had worked on her college paper and written a column for the weekly fashion-industry magazine, and thus she argued her way into the managing-editor job. Besides, being a managing editor mainly entailed making sure the men under her did their jobs, and bossing others around was something that came easily to the woman.

  On this day, when the streets were still glistening from the previous night’s downpour, the man she was bossing around was Steve Bayliss. The Fairwater Gazette’s junior reporter, he was a local lad only one generation away from working the lobster boats. Bayliss was trying hard to make his mark in journalism, even if all he had to prepare himself for the slot was a junior-college degree and a collection of videotapes of classic newspaper movies that included all five film versions of The Front Page as well as every episode of TV’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

  Bayliss was twenty-two but looked seventeen, clean-cut, hardworking, and eager to please, and that made him a perfect target for Magda Ravanski’s ire when she was in a bad mood, which she was a good deal of the time.

  DEATH STRIKES AGAIN read the headline of the story he was composing on his computer. In a window adjacent to the story was the photograph of a smiling yuppie sporting a forty-dollar haircut and an L. L. Bean polo shirt. Beneath the photo was the caption Victim Chuck Hughes, age 30.