Death Cycle, page 1
DEATH CYCLE
The Midnight Place Series
By Charles L. Grant
(writing as Simon Lake)
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 2017 Kathryn Ptacek
Original publication by Bantam Books – March, 1993
Copy-Edited by Tony Masia
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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
The Kent Montana Series
The Really Ugly Thing From Mars
The Reasonably Invisible Man
The Once and Future Thing
The Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire
668, the Neighbor of the Beast
The Diego Series
Once Upon a Time in the East
By The Time I Get To Nashville
Time, the Semi-Final Frontier
The Seven Spears of the W’dch’ck
As “Simon Lake”
The Midnight Place Series
Daughter of Darkness
Death Cycle
He Told Me To
Something’s Watching
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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DEATH CYCLE
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Other books
One
Tuesday was without question the worst day of the week. It was still close enough to the weekend for pleasant memories to be fresh, and so far from next Friday that it seemed impossible that a calendar could hold that many days. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been barely tolerable. Today, however, Rosiland wondered if she would make it through last period without bursting into tears or throwing her math book through the window.
Simply sitting at her desk was driving her crazy.
It was bad enough Bart had moved all the way to Oregon without even saying goodbye except for a hasty phone call; bad enough some of her friends hadn’t the grace not to say I told you so; and bad enough she absolutely could not get him out of her head no matter how hard she tried.
What made today worse was the weather.
Spring, she thought wistfully, was supposed to be a vibrant and beautiful season—flowers waking up to return color to the world, grass turning a vivid new green, leaves finally back on the trees where they belonged, birds returning from their winter homes to nest, and the air smelling different, clean, and bracing.
It was also the season when she began to run in earnest, stretching her long, slender legs on the school track and around town, taking in that newly minted air and forcing winter from her lungs and bones. It was a time when she no longer felt self-conscious about her height, but used it to her advantage, helping in her drive to become the school’s best long-distance runner.
It was a goal that, if last season had been any indication, wasn’t all that unattainable.
But because of the weather, she wouldn’t be able to practice either.
Today just was not beautiful.
As a matter of fact, today was rotten.
Her row, in which she had the last seat by choice, was next to the first-floor windows overlooking the playing fields behind Ashford North High. Usually this time of year she’d be able to see gym classes messing around on the practice fields, or some of the football players getting into shape for spring workouts, and some of the track and baseball team members puffing their lungs out on the track.
But not today.
Since dawn the sky had been low and overcast, the air a miserable motionless gray, and a constant chilly mist back in the trees looked like waiting fog. The tall classroom windows were spattered with droplets, smearing the view as they ran like skittish snakes from one pane to another. There was no wind, no breeze.
She sighed. It looked like November.
And to make matters worse, she was stuck in last-period geometry. Not just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill last-period geometry, either. It was geometry with Mrs. Ecland, who was famous for making the subject supremely, if not terminally, boring. To see her name on your schedule in September was to know that your sophomore year was absolutely not going to be filled with cheer and laughter and straight A’s. “Miss Jordan?”
Blinking rapidly, Roz looked to the front, trying not to appear panicked. The teacher, in a severe black dress, her wiry salt-and-pepper hair looking like unruly steel wool, slapped a pointer against a complicated diagram on the blackboard. Her penciled eyebrows lifted in silent question while her lips, which were practically nonexistent, pursed in forced patience.
Great, R
“I don’t know,” she admitted, not having the faintest idea what the question had been.
She braced herself then, anticipating the reprimand that surely would be like baring her back to a cat-o’-nine-tails. No one giggled at her dilemma. No one even moved. In Mrs. Ecland’s class, even breathing wrong was grounds for a week’s detention.
Miraculously, however, the math teacher only shook her head in exasperation and called on someone else.
The class droned on.
Roz sagged in relief and looked back out the window. She feigned taking notes, but she really was preparing to write Bart a scathing, vicious note—part of which would include her devout wish that he take his precious damn motorcycle and ride it off the highest cliff the West Coast had.
But instead she stared and frowned.
Something was out there.
At first, because the view was so blurred, she thought some of the seniors had rolled a boulder into the soccer field. She figured it was a practical joke, maybe, or some kind of revenge thing against one of the coaches. They were always doing something dumb like that.
But when she squinted she could see that it wasn’t a rock at all.
It was a motorcycle.
She checked to be sure the teacher wasn’t watching, and she rubbed her eyes quickly with the knuckles of one hand, stared again, and couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t mistaken.
It was there.
So what was a motorcycle doing out there, in the middle of the grass? Weird. The coaches were going to have a cow if those tires ruined the turf.
It was easily the largest machine she had ever seen, and it was a solid deep black from front to back, including the handlebars, which didn’t seem made of chrome. She noticed that the motorcycle didn’t have a windscreen, saddlebags, a support behind the seat, or reflectors that she could see. In another time, another place, it could have been a black stallion covered in black armor. And even in the dim afternoon light, it gleamed, almost glowed.
Roz glanced once again to the front—Mrs. Ecland was scratching another problem on the board—and she quickly looked out again.
This time she nearly gasped.
Someone was on it.
She swallowed nervously, her right hand drifting up to her throat.
Bart?
Could it be Bart? Was he back?
The moment the notion struck her, she almost rose from her seat in equal parts joy and rage, then told herself she was being worse than stupid. It couldn’t possibly be him. He was gone, to the other side of the country, and had been there for over a month. He wasn’t coming back, ever. And his bike definitely wasn’t anything like that monster sitting out there.
Neither was the rider anything like Bart.
Even sitting down, it was clear he was tall, much taller than the boy who had stolen her heart and hadn’t bothered to give it back. He was dressed in black as profound as the enormous vehicle beneath him, wearing a thick leather jacket with the collar turned up, gloves, jeans, and heavy boots. His sleek helmet was black, and the black visor was pulled down. It was as if he and his machine were made of the same ebony steel.
And he sat there.
Just sat there, facing the school.
“Miss Jordan?”
She started, and stared intently at the blackboard, willing herself to come up with something, anything, that didn’t sound too outrageous. One more mistake and she’d be locked in detention for life. “Isosceles triangle,” she answered firmly, slipping her left hand under the desk and crossing her fingers.
Mrs. Ecland smiled.
Roz nearly fainted.
The sweatered girl seated in front of her glanced over her shoulder, dropped her purple-rimmed glasses to the tip of her nose, and winked congratulations.
“Miss Bannon, is there a problem?”
“Oh no, ma’am, no,” Melanie Bannon answered quickly; turning back so fast her glasses nearly fell off. She grabbed them and set them on more firmly. “No problem at all. Really.”
“Wonderful. Then suppose you explain to the class, in the few minutes we have left, just how the isosceles triangle got its name.”
Roz swallowed a laugh and forced herself to pay attention. Math wasn’t her best subject—it didn’t matter who the teacher was—and she was barely squeaking by as it was. Nevertheless, she couldn’t ignore the rider out there, sitting motionless in the mist. She could feel him. She could sense him. And for the first time since spotting him, she sensed he was looking not just at the building; he was looking at her.
Now that’s ridiculous, she argued to herself while Melanie fumbled through her answer. I can’t see his face—how could I know where he’s looking?
She dared a glance.
He was still there.
Then the rasping roll and grating squeal of a library cart being pushed down the hall made Roz realize, with a puzzled frown, that she hadn’t heard the motorcycle drive up. She also realized that the windows weren’t so thick that they’d be able to smother the sound a huge bike like that would make.
His arrival should have been announced by thunder; instead, there’d just been silence.
She shivered and rubbed her arm with one hand. That was wrong; of course it was. She’d been concentrating, that’s all, and simply hadn’t heard him. After all, he certainly didn’t just appear in place, or drop out of the sky, or rise out of the ground. That was stupid.
A sudden explosive gust rattled the windowpane, and Roz jumped, dropped her pencil, and watched helplessly as it rolled under Kyle Munroe’s desk across the narrow aisle.
The room became ominously silent.
Then Kyle scooped it deftly off the floor and handed it over with a smile. Her own grateful smile was weak, and faded the moment she settled back and saw Mrs. Ecland staring at her.
“We’re having a problem today?”
“No, ma’am,” Roz answered.
The teacher looked at the wall clock. “One minute. Do you think, Miss Jordan, you can hold on to that instrument long enough to take down tonight’s assignment?”
Roz nodded, her face carefully blank.
Papers whispered, chalk scratched on the blackboard, and she took one more look outside.
He was gone.
The field was empty.
With her mouth slightly agape, she looked down at her paper and watched the numbers of the problem appear on the lines, but she couldn’t feel her hand moving the pencil, couldn’t hear the graphite scratch across the paper, couldn’t hear herself breathe.
She looked outside again.
There was nothing there but the mist, the grass, and a slow-rising wind.
Two
There has to be a trick to it, Roz thought. There just has to be.
She leaned against the back corner of the school’s north side and stared intently out at the grass. Mist tickled her cheeks, and her windbreaker wasn’t quite enough protection against the chill that rode the breeze. Her left hand pushed absently through her short black hair, tucking it behind her ears. Her eyes closed slowly, opened again, but nothing had changed—there were no depressions in the turf, no signs anything that heavy had been rolled, or ridden, to the place where she had seen the rider and his bike.
She shook her head.
How did he do it?
She pushed away from the building and walked slowly toward the spot where she had seen him. The whole area was deserted, and her running shoes crunched over the wide red cinder track that served as the playing field’s perimeter. When she reached the edge of the grass, she stopped and looked over her shoulder at the two-story brick building. Her math classroom was the last one on the left, the fluorescent ceiling lights still burning, and she could see Mrs. Ecland working at her desk.
The shades were halfway down, but Roz picked out her own desk with no trouble at all.
He could have seen her, she supposed.
She stepped onto the grass, walked a few feet, and checked behind her.
There were footprints. True, they were faint, but the blades were still young, still glittering with moisture, and her weight had left a trail of dark impressions so obvious that a blind man could see them.
So where were the tire marks?
She walked out to where she figured the bike had been, turned, and her frown deepened.
A trick, she thought again; it had to be a trick.
She scratched her cheek lightly. Of course it had taken her a good fifteen minutes to get to her locker after the last bell, grab her books, check the gym bulletin board to make sure there was no practice today, and get out here. It might have been just long enough for the grass to bounce back.
