The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman (2 page)

He finally got the door opened, though, and
quickly sat down and started the engine and shoved his face close
to one of the air conditioner vents. For a few moments the cold air
on his face and neck caused him to smile and exhale sharply. But
almost instantly, he knew she was there. He tried to just ignore
her, but sitting in the passenger seat was the little girl. He
could see her now even without the camera.

"Do you have a name?" he said. He still refused
to look, but was surprisingly calm. More effects from the heat,
probably, but the hallucination seemed harmless enough. At least
she hadn't ripped his heart out... yet.

"Izbet," she said.

"I'm crazy."

"Probably," she said with a giggle.

He looked over at her. Her hair was blonde,
again, being blown about by the air vent; her eyes were blue. "I
can see you now because you took a part of me?"

She nodded. "You understand," she said. "I
borrowed a part of your soul so you could see me without the glass
lens. My energy vibrates at your frequency, now, as if I am your
child."

"If I drive away..."

The car suddenly switched off. She nodded and it
restarted. She then locked and unlocked the doors with the same
power.

"Are you evil?" he said. He realized there was
no way to run away, now.

"Sometimes," she said.

"A demon?" he said.

"Angels and demons are just words humans created
to describe my kind."

But he had to try. He pulled the handle, pushed
the door open with his shoulder and was on his feet and running
before Izbet was able to react. He ran, not sure where he was
going, but he wanted to be as far from the house and the little
girl as possible. But it was futile. Within only a few strides, she
was standing in front of him, her hair black, blocking his path. He
slid to a stop on the lawn, turned, and even before he could move,
she was again in front of him. "Okay," he said. "I give up." He sat
down on the grass and folded his legs. "Do I die, now? Some sort of
penalty for trespassing on a sacred burial ground or
something?"

"No," she said. She sat down beside him as her
hair changed to blonde, again. She pulled up a yellow dandelion
flower and twirled it between her fingers. "I will tell you a
story. Once there was an old woman. She wanted to live forever and
made a contract with
certain entities
that granted her the
wish. But she had not reasoned her wish properly. Though she would
live forever, she would continue to age... all the illnesses and
pains and diseases that come with age, came to her. But still
she lived on, immortal but wracked with the pains, cancers, and a
hundred different maladies that should have killed her. Even though
her every prayer was to die, to end the pain, the
certain
entities
continued to collect their payment, which, it seemed,
was the old woman's agony." The little girl pointed up to a second
story window in the old house. "She looked out that window every
day for nearly a century, wanting only to end her torture."

"But, we were told she died a long time ago and
her relatives wanted the house sold," he said. "She drowned or
something."

The little girl nodded. "That is true," she
said. "She killed herself."

"But..."

"A contract with those
certain entities
can never be broken," she said. "But she was able to find a way out
of it... with a century of study or perhaps just luck, nonetheless,
she got out." She looked up into the sky and smiled, but as she
looked back at Allan, her hair and eyes changed and her attitude
and personality seemed to go dark, sucking the energy from his
body. "I want to know how she did it." She pointed to the house.
"The answer must be in there, but I can't find it." As she stood,
her hair and demeanor lightened. "But maybe you can."

"And why do you care what the old woman did?" he
said. He flinched as if expecting her to attack him, but she just
stood and stared up into the sky.

"Because I made a contract with them, too," she
said.

"Oh," he said. He suddenly felt sorry for the
little girl, just a child. How could she have made a contract with
anyone? He stood and scratched his head. "You couldn't have
possibly known the consequences..."

"But I did," she said. "Does wishing to
stay forever young sound wrong?"

"No, of course not," Allan said. "You
were..."

"My payment was to become one of the
others
... you would call them
demons
or
angels
," she said. "It was a simple wish after my mother
read me a bedtime story. But, somehow the words I spoke were
perfect, or perhaps sharpened by some childhood desire I didn't
even understand." She smiled and nodded. "But, they found me. A
child in a lonely bedroom after the candles were blown out on a
cold winter night on the day of my grand mother's funeral on
December 12, 1875."

He started to touch her, pat her head, but
pulled his hand back. "If your contract is broken..."

"I'll die," she said with a smile, "simply
crumble with age, probably. You mortals don't know how we dream of
that... how sweet we hold the idea of simply ending the string of
memories and emotions, and giving our battered souls a rest. I
don't even know where mine is, now."

"If I do this, I can go?" he said. "You will let
me go?"

She smiled and nodded. "You can go, now," she
said. "I won't stop you. You listened to my story; that's all I can
expect."

He looked down at the ground and kicked
something with the tip of his shoe. "What are we looking for?"

Izbet smiled. "Clues," she said. "I can't read;
she must have written something. Maybe there is some magical
object? I don't know. But part of the spell would have been to
leave it behind for others to use. Creating new magic has rules to
follow."

"How long have you waited here?" he said.

"Since she disappeared," she said. "Over thirty
years I've wandered this house during the day, searching, waiting
for someone to see me and help."

"Okay, we can start by reading all the old
papers on the floor," he said. "One thing..."

"What?"

"Don't do that scary hair-color changing shit
anymore. I don't like spooky stuff."

"Can't help it. It's part of me."

He smiled. "Why only during the day?" he said.
"I would think you could see and function perfectly well in total
darkness."

"It's not the darkness," she said. "There are
others, ancient and powerful others who exist
only
in
darkness. They visit this house in search of the same thing I'm
looking for, but they want to destroy it."

"How do you know they haven't already found the
answer?"

"Because they still come," she said. "So, we
must work quickly. I always hide in the woods, but they might be
able to detect your human soul."

"And?"

"They'd shred your body and eat the strips like
jerky," she said. "But, don't worry, your soul is pure; they can't
touch that."

"That's not a lot of comfort," he said.

****

"These all seem to be old recipes and stuff," he
said as he stooped down and grabbed another piece of paper off the
front room floor. "
Carrot Cake
. I don't think any of this
stuff is important. Does this house have a library?"

Izbet nodded. "In there." She pointed to a door
behind the stairway. "The old woman seemed to amass thousands of
books." Allan started toward the door and she followed him. He
wasn't sure if she was just trying to be helpful or if she was
carefully guiding him through the old house for some other reason.
But through the door
was
the library. There
were
thousands of books, all old, mostly leather-bound, and had probably
rested untouched for decades on the oak shelves that populated the
walls. "I hate books."

"Because you can't read," he said calmly, almost
playfully, then remembered he was talking to a demon, or angel, or
something
that was no longer human. "Sorry."

"You are right," she said.

"Demons lie, don't they?" he said. He pulled an
old book off the shelf and as he opened the cover a silverfish
disappeared into the binding. "Ick."

"Demons lie," she said.

"And angels tell the truth?"

"Yes."

"But if you are both, then what do you tell?" he
said. "This is
The House Of The Seven Gables
. A novel."

"I tell novels," she said. "The truth told with
lies."

He nodded. "That makes no fucking sense at all."
He pushed the book back into its resting place and ran his finger
along several spines on the shelf. "These are all classic fiction,
probably not a lot of occult spells to be found in those. But her
books might be categorized." He stepped to the next shelf.
"
Beyond Good And Evil
,
Thus Spake Zarathustra
...
philosophy section."

"Frederick Nietzsche," she said.

Allan turned and stared at her. "How did you
know?"

"Just because I can't read doesn't mean I'm
stupid or uneducated. I learn by hearing. Audiobooks, people
reading to me."

"Right," he said. "I guess you like
The
Anti-Christ
the best."

"Yes, it's very funny," she said.

He pulled another book off the shelf and opened
it, and then shook several worms out of it, fitting for the
horror
section. The pages seemed to actually
move
with book lice. "Here's one that might have something in it," he
said. "The
Necronomicon.
"

"You know that's fake, right?" she said. "None
of us actually respond to that 'opening of the gate' bullshit." She
chuckled. "A mortal calling out a demon, as if they could gain some
sort of power over us."

"Still, look,
someone
has marked on the
page," he said. She walked over to him and he held the book down so
she could see it. "She has also circled some of these names of gods
or devils or whatever they are. Friends of yours, probably."

"Read them to me," she said.

"
Marukka
.
Asaruludu
.
Namru
.
Asarualim
," he said, reading only the circled names.

She grabbed the edge of the book and bent it
down to her level. "Did you read these right?" she said. She seemed
excited, if not a bit frightened.

He nodded. "Those were the four circled on that
page."

"But
she
shouldn't have known," Izbet
said. "The book is a novel."

He thought for a moment. "The truth told with
lies?"

"Yes," she said. She backed away from him, and
then flicked her fingers toward him. "Stand back." She closed her
eyes and held out her arms. "
Marukka Asaruludu Namru
Asarualim
!" Suddenly, she rose off the floor, her hair black as
coal, but her whole body emanating tiny sparks. And then suddenly,
with a floor-shaking explosion of light beaming through the solid
building above her and enveloping her, she opened her eyes and
every book, every object in the room, renewed itself. The smell of
freshly printed pages filled the air; the fabric on the chairs was
bright and saturated in color; the wallpaper looked brand new. The
room was reborn. As the light faded, she floated back down to the
floor, and as her hair changed back to blonde, the event was over.
But the room remained rejuvenated and new.

"Holy fucking hell!" Allan yelled. "Holy..."

"Those names, in that order, is a rejuvenation
spell that can only be used by those of us who have obtained a
certain
level."

He looked down at the book he was holding. The
worms and lice were gone, but the marks and circles remained on the
clean, crisp white pages. "Okay, bugs are gone," he said. "I have a
long history with bugs, all bad..."

"Which I don't want to hear about," she said.
"Search through the rest of the pages. Is that a number?" She
pointed at a mark toward the top of the page, set apart from the
rest.

"Yes, number three," he said. He smiled. "So,
this is the third part of whatever she discovered to break her
contract!"

Izbet nodded. "Perhaps," she said. "You are
smarter than you look. Then again, you'd have to be." She smirked,
trying not to laugh.

He looked at her and nodded his head. "There's
nothing else in this book that I can see." He laid it on the big
oak table, and then ran his finger back toward the left. "If that
is
three
, then two should be on this side of it, right?" He
cocked his head. "N."

"What?" she said.

"
Necronomicon
starts with an 'N'," he
said. "So, do the others start with the same letter, or maybe
follow the alphabet?"

"N, M, L?" she said. "
Lydia
?"

He smiled and nodded "That might just be it. He
looked closely at the spines, reading the names to himself. "I need
an 'M'," he said. "Ah!
Malleus Maleficarum
!" He thumbed
through the pages, a very pleasant task now that the books were
reborn. "Here, underlined.
Kehr mir die Zung im Arss umb
,"
he said. He looked at the girl, who was blushing. "I don't know
what that means; it's Spanish or something."

"It's a filthy insult," she said. She thought
for a moment with her head down. "Well, if that came before the
four names, it would negate the spell, make it work in reverse. It
would age... is that how she did it?" She looked back at Allan with
a big grin which probably meant she was happy, but caused him to
back away in fear.

"That smile?"

"Yes, I'm happy," she said.

"I thought you were going to eat me," he said.
He moved further to his left. "'L', right?"

She nodded. "Then we need to go the other way,"
she said. "There might be many."

"We'll run out of letters eventually," he said.
"Here,
Lair Of The White Worm
."