The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 1: Nightmare Seasons (Necon Classic Horror) by Grant Charles L

Author:Grant, Charles L. [Grant, Charles L.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Classic Horror #21
Publisher: Necon ebooks
Published: 2012-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

There’s no sense attempting to explain the convulsions I suffered during the next two hours. I can only remember fragments of the drive, moments of rain, the grumblings of the storm. I can barely remember pulling up in front of my house and staggering inside, where I found the bottle of bourbon still on the kitchen table. I was tempted to drink without a glass, but caution somehow managed to get the first hold. I poured. I drank. I poured again, ran into the bathroom and vomited. Washed my face and poured a third time. Now the liquor stayed, and the cold from the storm drained off and was gone.

I returned to the bathroom and stripped. Showered. Toweled dry as roughly as I could. By the time I had dressed and was ready to face the roadhouse I had caught up with myself, and I knew with a sickening certainty that it was, at last, over. If Jackson was so eager to get hold of Elizabeth, it meant that she had somehow latched on to him during the previous night, or perhaps this morning. And if she had, if she had taken him as she had taken Rex and Paul and miserable little Sandy, then it was fairly certain she had given him the last flower. And as horrid as that made me feel, I knew too there was nothing I could do about it. The first time he angered her he was a dead man. It was as simple and as horrifying as that. A dead man. A dead man.

I walked around the house, then, for yet another hour. I was attempting to convince myself that I was in no danger. That there was no reason for me to try Stockton again and tell him my story, Four flowers, four deaths, and Elizabeth and the girl-child would walk back into the park.

Oddly enough, my biggest problem was how to tell Grace. I could picture her sitting in her regular place at the bar, her hair in its twirl, her blouse with its ruffles, her face with that curiously amused, intent look. I could hear her asking me what I thought Elizabeth was, and I could hear me saying that she was a spirit of some kind. Maybe, if such things existed, an extension of a sprite, a faerie . . . though that last rang hollow since all that I’d read of faeries and their realm had been things of gentle, almost otherworldly beauty. What cruelty invaded it came from the land of men, not from themselves. But it was a thought, I could hear myself telling her; a thought better than nothing at all, since I had nothing at all on which to base my speculations.

Nothing, I thought sourly, but the dustgraves of five people.

Finally, close to ten o’clock, I knew I was stalling. I grabbed a raincoat and raced across the ground to the roadhouse’s back door. Righteous was sitting on a stool near one of the

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