The Frighteners Read online

  “We gotta leave,” Frank said urgently, sliding into his chair.

  “Why? Is it that bad?”

  “Is what that bad? Oh, the wine stain; no, it isn’t.”

  “Because if it is, my mom has a surefire way—”

  “Lucy, please,” Frank said. “We have to go right now. Something came up.”

  She looked surprised. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll just go to the bathroom.”

  She got up to do it, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her back into her seat.

  “No!” he said sharply.

  “Hey, when a girl’s gotta go, a girl’s gotta go.”

  “I’ll take you to the Exxon station. Let’s split.”

  “Frank? What’s wrong?”

  He searched his brain for something to tell her and came up empty. Then he saw the Reaper oozing out of the wall and into the restaurant. Frank turned ashen, and he said to her, in an urgent whisper, “Don’t move . . . talk to me.”

  Lucy was rattled by his strange behavior.

  “What’s going on? I have to leave. I can’t go to the bathroom. Then I have to sit back down and talk to you. What gives?”

  Frank didn’t respond. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the Reaper cruised the tables, looking like a cruel, blue-black pointer searching for its next victim. Nobody but Frank was aware of the creature’s progress from table to table, bending and peering into people’s faces, exuding a hideous dark glow. At last the thing moved in on Frank and Lucy’s table.

  Frank said, “I think it’s a good time of year to put your house on the market.” His voice was strained by the necessity of finding something inane to discuss while keeping an eye on the approaching beast.

  “My house, on the market? Frank, Ray just died. Admittedly, I could stand to move into a condo, maybe one of those new ones by the harbor. I don’t need all that space—I certainly don’t need the rowing machine—and it would be good to be away from the place that reminds me of my late husband. But why do we have to discuss it now?”

  “Lucy, please.”

  “Did you meet someone in the men’s room? A real-estate agent who wants to buy it?”

  “No. Nobody in this town talks to me unless it’s unavoidable.”

  She was totally confused by Frank’s behavior. In addition to the strange line of conversation, his body was as tense as a railroad tie and he was perspiring.

  The Reaper swept in close to Lucy, pausing behind her chair, then leaned down until its cowl was right alongside her face. Frank was just able to make out yellowing eyes that appeared as cruel slits in an otherwise black and featureless countenance.

  “Frank, if you want the rowing machine, it’s yours.”

  Frank couldn’t tell if the Reaper was looking at him or her. The thing was only inches away. He could swear he smelled its breath, like someone had just opened the back door to hell, beating hot and mercilessly on his cheeks.

  “Prices will drop before Christmas,” he said.

  “Prices? Of what? Rowing machines?”

  “Of houses. I mean, the price of your house will drop. You ought to sell it.”

  The Reaper moved closer to Frank then. Bannister gave the creature no indication he could see it. He kept his eyes fixed on Lucy, but he was unable to keep up an intelligent conversation. In fact, he was getting lucky if he could make one word match the next.

  “You’re sweating,” she said.

  Then it occurred to him. He got out of the bathroom alive—maybe—because he did what was normal for a man to do who had just seen another man collapse.

  “Let me tell you the truth,” he said.

  “I wish you would.”

  “I saw a man collapse in the bathroom.”

  “Collapse?”

  “I think he had a heart attack.”

  She started to get up, but he grabbed her arm.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I’m a doctor. I can help.”

  “It’s too late. He’s beyond your help now.”

  “How do you know? You’re not a specialist in saving lives.”

  “No, but the specialty I do have gives me a certain insight. He’s dead, Lucy. And I think we should leave this restaurant—now.”

  The Reaper was now an inch away from Frank’s face. The creature’s breath, real or imaginary, was beating on his cheeks and eyelashes, a hot blast from the other side.

  “It’s too damn hot in here,” Frank said, tugging at his collar.

  Then there came another voice, Magda Ravanski’s voice.

  “Mrs. Lynskey!” she said.

  The Reaper pulled away from Frank and wheeled around as Magda drunkenly approached the table. Steve Bayliss was with her, looking a bit like a slave boy being hauled into Rome as booty from one of Caesar’s foreign conquests.

  “Frank, who is this woman?” Lucy asked.

  “William Randolph Hearst with PMS,” he replied.

  “Who?”

  “The managing editor of the Gazette.”

  “What a lovely séance you have going,” Magda said drunkenly. “Have you had lots of meaningful messages from your dearly departed?”

  The Reaper glided up to Magda and glared in her face. If only, Frank thought, she could see him.

  “I beg your pardon?” Lucy said icily.

  “Watch your wallet, darling,” Magda replied. “I’ve heard that Mr. Bannister is quick with his fingers.”

  The Reaper suddenly slid down into the floor and vanished.

  Frank said, “He’s gone!”

  “Who?” Lucy asked. “Ray?”

  “No. Someone else. Something worse.” And with that, Frank leaped to his feet and ran out of the restaurant.

  Magda looked triumphant. “I knew he’d run. He’s a crook and a coward, and they always run.”

  Lucy glared at the woman, then snapped, “Oh, shut up, you drunken old bag.”

  Eight

  Frank rushed out onto the sidewalk in front of Bellisimo’s, looking up and down to see which way the creature went. It wasn’t that Bannister wanted to catch the thing, which could take a life so easily; it was more that anything so horrible had to be gotten rid of, if possible, and studying it was the first step.

  Automobile traffic was rare by that hour, and pedestrians had disappeared from the sidewalk. Fairwater had never been a town in which folks walked much anyway, so when the sidewalk in front of Bannister rippled up with the force of the Reaper beneath it, he was the only one to notice. He ducked behind a parked Volvo to watch.

  It was the same as it had been with the carpet in the Bartlett House. Except this time the sidewalk billowed as if it were a cotton bedsheet blowing in a morning wind rather than solid concrete. And it formed into the shape of the Reaper—tall, sleek, and evil. The creature looked around, the cruel yellow slits that served as eyes scanning the deserted streets looking for victims. As its eyes passed over the Volvo Frank hunched down as close as he could get to the pavement, praying that the thing would pass over him.

  Luckily, it did. Seeing no one in the vicinity of the restaurant, the Reaper began to move down the sidewalk. Bannister would later say it walked, although gliding was probably a better description. In either case, it moved swiftly down the sidewalk to the middle of the block, then cut out across the gutter, moving between a BMW and a Ford. Then the Reaper moved down the middle of the deserted street, picking up speed.

  The creature was so graceful, it could almost be flying. No feet seemed to touch the cold evening asphalt, yet the thing moved along as fast as a steadily moving car. Feeling it was safe to do so, Frank came out of his hiding place and started following the thing.

  The Reaper swept along the street effortlessly, cape billowing, exuding the evil blue-black light that seemed almost liquid. Frank ran steadily at first, then had to begin sprinting in order to keep up. Before too long he was running as fast as he could, yet the creature kept pulling away from him, its otherworldly light becoming fainter and fainter
in the distance.

  Then, suddenly, it stopped, as if it had come to an invisible traffic light. It froze like a monument in the middle of the deserted street, then looked left and right as if deciding which way to go. Frank’s footfalls on the deathly quiet pavement suddenly were as loud as thunderclaps.

  “Oh, my God . . .” He swore to himself when he realized it. He froze, too; then, as the creature whipped its head in his direction, he dived behind a parked Honda.

  Frank huddled down behind the rear bumper, afraid for a time to peek. When at last he worked up the courage to do so, he saw the Reaper moving toward the three-story Federal Bank of Fairwater building, a heavy red-brick structure designed to resemble a much smaller version of the Federal Reserve Bank. The Reaper picked up speed and then ran right through the brick wall.

  Bannister jumped out from behind the Honda and ran quickly down the street. He came to the spot where he saw the creature go through the wall and pulled to a halt, out of breath. The thing had marched into the most secure building in Fairwater and no alarms had gone off! Frank leaned against the brick, panting hard, feeling like a man facing a firing squad.

  Then the brick next to him buckled out as if a blister had formed in it and was growing a foot per second. The Reaper morphed out of the wall, his cape and cowl at first formed of brick that had suddenly become as pliable as plastic wrap. Frank held his breath and froze as the creature stood there, looking around. Amazingly, it didn’t see him—or if it did, it didn’t consider him worth killing. Without a sound, the Reaper glided across the street, moving with amazing speed.

  Frank watched, relieved, as the creature went through the wall of the Museum Medical Associates Building, a three-story stucco structure filled with the latest in medical equipment. Suddenly lights went on all over the building and Frank swore he could hear the whirring of equipment that had just turned itself on. He took shelter behind a battered Volkswagen van, plastered with Grateful Dead and “Jerry Lives” stickers, and watched.

  Within seconds, the Reaper exited the building, a few yards further down the sidewalk. The second the thing was out of the building, the lights and whirring stopped. Again the Reaper looked around—Bannister was sure then it was looking for victims, but so far it had chosen two buildings that were closed at night. The restaurant had plenty of potential victims in it, and the Reaper had chosen one—as well as given long looks at many others, including Frank and Lucy. Where would the Reaper turn next?

  Frank had his answer in a moment as the creature’s narrow yellow eyes seemed to blaze extra bright when they focused on the banner, visible down the street, announcing the Egyptian exhibit. The creature suddenly took off in the direction of the museum. In a frightening burst of speed, it shot across the street and vanished around the corner.

  “My friends,” Frank gasped. He got out from behind the VW and ran after it.

  With the crowd of dignitaries firmly in her thrall, Janet King stood before an ornate, sealed coffin. As was common practice in ancient Egypt, a likeness of the deceased was carved in the lid of the stone sarcophagus. This one clearly bore the remains of a beautiful woman who had the misfortune to die in her early twenties. Her coffin stood vertically on a plinth set in the middle of a gallery.

  The crowd gathered around it, with museum curator Amos Osborne still on the outside of the circle. He had not entirely recovered from his encounter with Stuart and, while outwardly calm, kept the fingers of one hand wrapped about Frank Bannister’s business card.

  “This is Queen Merytaten from the eighteenth dynasty, or about fourteen hundred B.C.,” Janet said. “In order to better understand ancient burial practice, we have conducted a number of scientific tests that weren’t available to Egyptologists even a decade ago. We have, for example, managed to extract live DNA from her tissue . . .”

  There were several “oohs” from the audience.

  “That’s right, we found still-intact DNA in her intestines and managed to compare it with the DNA of modern humans. It’s interesting that we got a ninety-nine-point-nine-seven-five percent match. In other words, this Egyptian queen who lived thirty-four hundred years ago was just like you or me.”

  “Except she was a queen,” somebody said, and the crowd laughed.

  “That’s right.” Janet smiled. “Furthermore, we used magnetic resonance imagining—MRI—on the body, and found that she suffered from a disease we regard as being one of the hazards of modern-day living . . . rheumatoid arthritis.”

  Several people laughed, and one man rubbed his lower back in sympathy.

  “That diagnosis was also confirmed by X ray,” Janet continued. “Yes, we also X-rayed Queen Merytaten. So you can see another advantage of being an ancient Egyptian queen—today the insurance companies would never pay for all these tests.”

  Janet flicked a switch and a row of monitors lit up behind the large glass screen set into the nearby wall, revealing a full-size X ray of the queen. Her shriveled features were grotesque when seen in X-ray form, not at all like the beautiful sculpture of her face on the sarcophagus.

  Using the laser pointer, Janet drew the audience’s attention to a dark mass situated within the body cavity.

  “This dark area here is, in fact, the queen’s viscera, carefully packaged and returned to the body cavity.”

  Unseen by anyone else, of course, Stuart, Cyrus, and the Judge stood between Janet and the coffin. It was one of the benefits of being an emanation that you never had to peer over anyone’s head to see something.

  “Can you imagine?” Stuart said. “Taking out your intestines, wrapping them up in a bag, and then putting them back in? That’s grotesque.”

  “Turkeys come like that,” Cyrus added. “You got to remember to remove the bag of giblets before putting the bird in the oven.”

  “People aren’t turkeys,” Stuart said.

  “Maybe the turkey growers got the idea from the ancient Egyptians,” Cyrus said.

  “I guess the idea was that the body would stay preserved longer if you wrapped up the guts,” Stuart said.

  “Yeah, and in that way the deceased wouldn’t wind up lookin’ like the Judge.”

  “I told you to mind your manners,” the Judge said. “I won’t have you talking disrespectfully in the presence of a woman.”

  “Who exactly would you be referring to?” Stuart asked.

  The Judge looked at the X ray with dewy eyes. “That’s a mighty fine woman,” he said. “Good teeth. A woman should always have good teeth.”

  “You sound like you’re buying a horse,” Stuart replied.

  Without warning, the Judge spit in his hands and slicked his hair back, then hitched up his pants and began to stagger toward the coffin.

  “Judge?” Stuart’s voice was filled with alarm.

  “Where you goin’?” Cyrus asked.

  The Judge winked over his ectoplasm-covered shoulder. “You boys hurry along and help Frank make some money. I wanna make the acquaintance of this fine young lady.”

  With that, the old emanation disappeared into the ancient sarcophagus, entering it so violently that it began wobbling on its base.

  Stuart was horrified. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed.

  He rushed toward the coffin, which was now rocking back and forth atop its marble plinth.

  “There’s life in the old boy yet,” Cyrus said, with some admiration.

  Janet was shocked. She looked at the rocking coffin—the priceless, thousands-of-years-old sarcophagus that had been excavated so carefully from Egypt’s famous Valley of the Kings—and saw her career disappearing. The crowd gaped at the coffin and then jumped back as curator Amos Osborne clutched the business card in his pocket and squeezed it as if it were a magic charm.

  The coffin was now moving back and forth like one of those pop-up dolls weighted at the base.

  “This can’t be happening,” Stuart exclaimed.

  Then the coffin tumbled over and off its base, landing on the marble floor of the exhibition hall with a
crash that resounded throughout every corner of the museum. The curator closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself basking in the sun on Tahiti as the echoes ran up and down the halls and finally faded away.

  Everyone in the group of dignitaries rushed over to the fallen sarcophagus.

  “Don’t touch it,” Janet yelled. “Oh no, don’t touch it.”

  “The damn thing flipped over like one of those Mexican jumping beans,” Cyrus said, sliding through the crowd. When he got to the coffin, he could see the Judge’s butt bobbing up and down through the lid.

  “The man’s incorrigible.” Cyrus shook his head and reached into the coffin to drag the Judge out by the ankles.

  When he was back on his feet, the old man smiled. “I haven’t felt that way about a woman for nigh on one hundred and fifteen years.”

  Unaware of this little exchange, Janet hurried over to the coffin and looked down at it. “My God, what could have happened?” she asked, speaking to no one in particular.

  Curator Osborne, now white as a sheet and nearly trembling, stood next to her, gaping at the sarcophagus. “At least it stopped shaking,” he said, his voice as shaky as the coffin was a moment ago.

  Cyrus was about to tell the Judge what he thought of his stunt when suddenly his face became a mask of horror. For at that moment he saw the Reaper come down the main hall, racing at unnatural speed, its black cape billowing out behind it, inky blue light streaming away from its body.

  “What the hell is that?” Cyrus gasped as the creature slowed somewhat, sliding through the crowd unobtrusively. The blue light trailing behind it like a slipstream behind a jet plane sucked itself in, until it was just an ominous, unearthly glow about the creature itself.

  “I never seen anything like that in my entire death,” the Judge said.

  And Stuart was struck dumb.

  Moving like the predator it was, the Reaper slid right through people who were completely unaware of its existence. Chief among the innocents was Janet King, who had made a quick assessment of the coffin and finally worked up the nerve to touch it. She bent and gave the sarcophagus a little shove, then straightened back up. “I think it will be all right,” she told Osborne.