Something Stirs, page 1
SOMETHING STIRS
By Charles L. Grant
A Macabre Ink Production
Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2015 by Kathryn Ptacek
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Meet the Author
Photo by Jeff Schalles
Charles L. Grant taught English and history at the high school level before becoming a full-time writer in the ’70s. He served for many years as an officer in the Horror Writers Association and in Science Fiction Writers of America.
He was known for his “quiet horror” and for editing the award-winning Shadows anthologies. He received the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award in 1987 for life achievement; in 2000, he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from HWA. Other awards include two Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards for writing and editing.
Charlie died from a lengthy illness on September 15, 2006, just three days after his birthday. He lived in Newton, NJ, and was married to writer/editor Kathryn Ptacek for nearly twenty-five years.
Book List
Horror
Novels
Black Oak: Genesis
Black Oak: The Hush of Dark Wings
Black Oak: Winter Knight
Black Oak: Hunting Ground
Black Oak: When the Cold Wind Blows
Fire Mask
For Fear of the Night
In A Dark Dream
Jackals
Millennium Quartet #1: Symphony
Millennium Quartet #2: In the Mood
Millennium Quartet #3: Chariot
Millennium Quartet #4: Riders in the Sky
Night Songs
Raven
Something Stirs
Stunts
The Bloodwind
The Curse
The Grave
The Hour of the Oxrun Dead
The Last Call of Mourning
The Nestling
The Pet
The Sound Of Midnight
The Tea Party
The Universe of Horror Trilogy
The Soft Whisper of the Dead
The Dark Cry of the Moon
The Long Night of the Grave
Collections
Dialing the Wind
Nightmare Seasons
The Black Carousel
The Orchard
Science Fiction
A Quiet Night of Fear
Ascension
Legion
Ravens of the Moon
The Shadow of Alpha
As “Geoffrey Marsh”
The Fangs of the Hooded Demon
The King of Satan’s Eyes
The Patch of the Odin Soldier
The Tail of the Arabian, Knight
As “Lionel Fenn”
The Quest for the White Duck Trilogy
Blood River Down
Web of Defeat
Agnes Day
668, the Neighbor of the Beast
By The Time I Get To Nashville
Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire
Once Upon a Time in the East
The Once and Future Thing
The Really Ugly Thing From Mars
The Reasonably Invisible Man
The Seven Spears of the W’dch’ck
Time, the Semi-Final Frontier
As “Simon Lake”
Daughter of Darkness
Death Cycle
Death Scream
He Told Me To
Shapes Berkley
Something’s Watching
The Clown
The Forever House
As “Felicia Andrews”
Moonwitch
Mountainwitch
Riverrun
Riverwitch
Seacliffe
Silver Huntress
The Velvet Hart
As “Deborah Lewis”
Eve of the Hound
Kirkwood Fires
The Wind at Winter’s End
Voices Out of Time
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SOMETHING STIRS
The bright-eyed lad becomes a man,
The bonny lass a woman shines,
And leave behind both doll and dream.
It matters not that you grow old,
That ghoul and witch are night-told tales;
It matters not for anything.
Believe it then.
Believe it now.
It matters not what you believe.
What matters is what you forgot:
The sun will shine on loch and kirk,
But in the dark, child,
Something stirs.
Part One
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG
Chapter One
Nobody died until Eddie Roman screamed.
Chapter Two
A mild night in November, though not so mild that the season was forgotten. Dead leaves stirred in gutters at the touch of a breeze, dead leaves on branches just waiting for a wind. The air still damp after a sudden day-long rain. Puddles quivering. Neon hissing. A small dog, muddy and white with a wire tail and pointed snout, rooting in the garbage left in an alley behind a closed Chinese restaurant. A large cat, bedraggled and white with a puffed tail and flattened muzzle, tightroping the chain-link fence around the Little League field. A car backfiring, and several young voices in it laughing hysterically, a beer can spinning into the gutter, rattling across the bars of a storm drain before settling against the curb. A wheezing bus stalling at a traffic light, the driver swearing, his four passengers saying nothing, only staring out the windows at the shops long since emptied. On a poncho behind the high school, in the middle of the gridiron, a boy and a girl playing out a dare, though the girl had less qualms about finally taking off her clothes.
A haze that blurred all the lights, even the stars, especially the low and hazy hanging moon.
On a dark street a boy in a black leather jacket, collar turned up, hands jammed into his black jeans pockets with thumbs hanging out, walking slowly, turning around every ten yards or so and looking back, into the dark, turning around and kicking morosely at the shadows. His boots, bulky and black, made too much noise, their pointed chrome studs catching too much of the diffused light when he glanced down at the pavement. His jeans were too thin, too cold when a breeze swung out of a driveway and slapped against his calves. And he should have listened to his mother’s nagging, should have worn some kind of sweater; but no, not him, he was tough, he was cool, he knew he could stand it when the unseasonable warmth finally deserted the night, he could take the chill as the warmth bled from concrete and blacktop and wood and his bones, he didn’t need any damn sweater. He was tough. He could take it.
He shivered.
He was a jerk.
He looked back again, this time only over his shoulder, and resigned himself to the fact that Laine wasn’t going to be there. She wouldn’t follow him. She wouldn’t chase him. She wouldn’t throw herself at his feet and beg his forgiveness. She wouldn’t call out his name, from back there in the dark, and make him feel less like a total jackass. She was going to see this anger thing through, make him suffer.
He stopped at an intersection and looked east, toward Summit Boulevard, thinking maybe he should walk up there and catch a bus. Otherwise he’d have to walk all the way to the South End, another half hour at least, and probably freeze half to death before he got there. Plus which, he’d catch holy hell from his father for being out so late on a school night. Which would serve her right. Serve them all right. On the other hand, walking would give him time to cool off, think a little, and give her a long chance to change her mind and chase him.
Frustrated, he scratched angrily through his ducktailed black hair, sniffed hard, and turned down Lamb Street, heels forcefully loud, his whistle less a recognizable tune than a series of dares to the neighborhood to complain.
Not much, but better, and by the time he had gone three blocks more he had almost forgotten why he was being stupid enough to walk when all he had to do was drop a quarter in the damn collection box and let the bus driver take him practically to his door.
Almost.
“Idiot!” he whispered to his shadow. “Costello, you’re a goddamn idiot.”
He lashed out at a tree trunk, pulling his punch just in time.
She always did this to him, all the time, always made him feel one thing, then another, and left him hanging like a jerk, not knowing which way to turn. Eddie was right. Women, sometimes, just don’t understand guys. They read some books, they listen to some teachers, they figure they got it all nailed.
Especially guys. But they can’t get into a guy’s head, that’s for damn sure. So they play games, brain games, and sometimes they’re lucky and everybody’s cool, and sometimes they just drive him up the goddamn wall.
Eddie was right.
Women aren’t human.
Another street, a third, and the breeze kicked him again, blew hair into his eyes, made him hunch his shoulders.
He wasn’t so sure about this part of town, wasn’t sure he liked it so late at night. His own neighborhood was almost entirely row houses, old and faded, with one or two regular homes so narrow they looked like the rest. Here in the Manor, all the houses were settled behind fences, hedges, shrubs, trees, once in a while a low fieldstone or brick wall tangling with ivy. A place so neat it didn’t seem real. Most of the windows were dark, cars in their garages or, on those rare blocks where the houses were too close together, settled at the curbs, reflecting the streetlights and giving back false color.
His street had a voice most nights of the year, guys hanging out, girls hanging with them, radios and televisions, couples screaming at each other, old people screaming back, cars racing, cats spitting and screaming.
It had a life, he thought; this place is like a graveyard.
It’s too quiet.
He paused for a moment, to listen to some birds arguing in an evergreen.
Quiet.
He looked behind him.
Nothing back there but the dark.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
He came abreast of a tall barberry hedge, taller than he, and he did his best to ignore it, thinking instead about how he would give Laine tomorrow morning to make up her mind to catch up with him in school, to apologize, before he tried to find a date for Friday night. Maybe Tang Porter. A quick grin. Boy, would Laine be pissed. Worse, she’d raise hell, want to know what the hell he thought he was doing, going out with someone else, didn’t he love her anymore?
He rubbed the back of his neck.
Well, he wasn’t so sure about the love part, but he definitely didn’t want to see anyone but her. Not regular. Teach her a lesson, was all. Like Eddie says, you gotta keep ’em in line, don’t let ’em take you for granted. That’s the way they used to do it, before all this sensitive crap started and women started acting more weird than ever.
What was funny, though, was that Eddie Roman didn’t have a steady. Not since he had called at the beginning of the summer, said he had this humongously great idea out of which, within a week, the Pack had been born. Since then, the guy had been pretty much on his own. Oh, he dated now and then, always had a girl when the Pack went down to the movies on the boulevard Strip, or to the Starlite Diner just to hang. But there wasn’t anyone special.
“Like to spread myself around, Joey,” he explained once, before school started. “Keep one to myself, all the others tear my throat out, you know what I mean?”
“Jealous?”
“You got it.”
“Bullshit.”
Eddie had laughed, slapped and grabbed his shoulder. Hard. “Yeah. But what the hell, at least I don’t have no stupid ring through my nose.”
Joey didn’t like that. Laine didn’t have a ring through his nose, his ears, his balls, any damn place. He did what he wanted. It just happened that, most of the time, what he wanted happened to be what Laine wanted. No big deal.
A gust rattled the trees, and droplets spattered his head, his face. He danced into the open, slapping the water away, cursing until he found himself facing the hedge.
A rustle.
Quick; nothing more.
Not exactly a footstep.
More like a gliding.
Cat, he decided, and moved on.
Heard it following.
Rustle. Snap.
On the far side of a driveway, the hedge higher, not really trimmed, a twig snagging his jacket until he slapped it away.
Something on the other side, untouched by a streetlamp that created black caves between the tiny black leaves.
One of the Pack out to tease him.
Furtive. Quick.
Quiet.
It wasn’t them. They never would have been able to stop from laughing for so long.
A breeze carried something light and wet to tickle his neck, and he yelped, spun wildly, spun again and ran a few stumbling steps, giggling when he finally passed the ragged end of the hedging, turning and laughing once he’d run another ten yards.
A cat.
It had been a cat.
He hadn’t seen it, but he knew it.
It had only been a cat.
Now listen, Costello, he said to his shadow, hands back in his pockets, you’re being a jerk-off here, man.
You get into a little fight, you’re letting a stupid damn cat spook you, for god’s sake. You’re a big boy now, right? Like Momma says, practically a man, and men don’t let things like cats in hedges spook them.
Right?
He nodded sharply.
Right.
So get your ass home before your mother tears if off and hangs it in the hall.
Grinning, he walked, and yawned unexpectedly, laughed aloud when his jaw popped.
Quiet.
The creak of a branch.
A wink of light, low to the ground.
You’re spooking yourself, pal.
Damn right.
He passed another hedgewall, trimmed low this time, and glanced at it warily.
Something was behind it.
No there wasn’t.
“Damn.”
The soft sound of a leaf pressed under a careful foot.
Yes there was.
When his pace quickened, boots too loud, he tried to slow down, telling himself that this was his town, damnit, it wasn’t so damn big there wasn’t anything in it he couldn’t recognize, even in the damn dark.
The air stirred into a breeze he could barely feel against his cheek, but the top of the hedge shook for a moment as if someone, something, was trying to climb over.
He stared.
The shaking stopped.
Damnit, it’s a cat.
Another leaf crushed.
No it isn’t.
Of course it is.
When the hedge was left behind, the noise stopped.
Nothing there.
Yes there is.
“Ha!” he said loudly.
Scare it away; make it vanish.
He didn’t look back.
Instead, he moved faster, thinking it would be the weekend before he got home if he didn’t haul ass, and his old man would ground him for the next hundred years just for grins. He grunted. Actually, not much chance of that, practically no way in hell. Grounding would mean he’d have to stay home, wouldn’t be able to work at the old man’s truck yard after school and on weekends, and his father depended too much on his free labor to do that. He didn’t much care, not all the time, because it gave him the chance to work his magic. What Laine called his magic. Look at an engine, dare it to screw up, and when it did, take out his tools and do a surgeon job on it.
No motor, no engine, not a goddamn thing that had moving parts died while Joseph Francis Costello was on duty.
Soon he’d be able to do it to his own motorcycle; as soon, that is, as Momma got over her thinking that only punks and ex-cons and drug dealers used them these days. Soon he’d have his own bike to work his magic on, turn it into a frigging rocket, take him out of this frigging place.
“Laine, don’t say that, okay? It isn’t magic.”
“It is,” she insisted. “Some people do magic with numbers, some do it with rabbits and hats, you do it with motors. I don’t care what you say, it’s magic.”
