Tales From the Crossroad Volume 1 Read online

  She should warn these people, but she couldn't very well knock on every door—she wouldn't be able to save herself. Then she saw the rooms one by one fill with fire and there was no one left to warn. Their spirits floated through the walls and accumulated on the ceiling of the hall.

  She fell to her knees and crawled, trying to stay as far away from their toxic spirits as possible. She refused to look at them any longer, even when she heard them weeping, even when their tears drizzled down from the storm clouds they had become. They probably thought she was some heartless bitch. But you can't always control what other people think about you.

  7. TAKE THE STAIRS

  Sometimes in a fire people get turned around and head the wrong way. Don't be one of those people! Let the handrail be your friend—we put it there just for you. Keep as far away from any panicked guests as possible—their chances of survival are slim. Don't let them take you down with them.

  The door to the nearest staircase was difficult to open, as if it hadn't been used in some time, or as if heat had welded it. But it wasn't hot to the touch. It was hard getting leverage in her bare feet, but finally when she pulled on the doorknob while pushing her naked soles against the frame, the door popped open like a cork in a vintage wine bottle, sending her sprawling. She scrambled to her feet and made it through the door before it closed again.

  The staircase had that unfinished look emergency exits so often do: unpainted, the seams of the wallboard exposed, looking as if she had stepped back through time and the building was still under construction. The silence was what she really found disturbing, however. The only sound she could hear was the harsh labor of her own breath as she pounded down the stairs. She needed to work out more, she thought. She was woefully out of shape.

  When Jane's cell phone went off in the midst of all that quiet, she barely stopped herself from tumbling head-first down the stairs. She sat down on a step and fumbled the phone from her pocket, noticing that one of her feet was bleeding as she thumbed the phone on. "Yes?"

  Okay, I'm almost there. I'm calling, just like you wanted.

  Richard. She'd actually forgotten all about him. Amazing. She could barely keep the pleasure out of her voice. "That's right. Good boy. How far are you away?"

  No more than a couple of blocks, I guess. Say, what's with all the smoke?

  She caught her breath. "Smoke? You see it? My god, I was beginning to think I'd imagined ..." She stopped herself.

  What was that? Christ, is there a fire there?

  "No, no. They're throwing a big barbecue up on the upper deck. Texas style. Have you had lunch?"

  I don't feel much like eating, Jane. What do I do when I get there? Do you want me to come up to the room?

  "Oh, you mean our room?"

  Yeah, whatever. Is that where I'm supposed to go?

  "Why, you sound a little angry, Richard."

  He didn't answer right away. You're the one in charge. What do you want me to do?

  "That's a good boy. Meet me down in the lobby. Like I said, ignore the smoke, no matter what else you see or hear. You got that, Richard?"

  I got that.

  "Good. See you in five." Gleefully she switched off the phone.

  8. DON'T PANIC

  There's really nothing to worry about. All members of our staff are trained professionals, ready to deal with any eventuality. We're all consenting adults here. Remember that violence solves nothing.

  It seemed imperative that Jane reach the lobby before Richard figured out what was going on. Before anyone else figured out what was going on. Where was everybody, were they sleeping? She hadn't even heard a fire alarm go off, much less a sprinkler. Shitty hotel. People died in hotels like this, not even knowing what hit them. As far as she knew, the hotel staff already knew about the fire and had made their escape from the building without telling anyone. People were scum, especially people in the service industries. Didn't they give a damn about the people they were supposed to be serving? No wonder customers got angry all the time. You just couldn't get good service anymore.

  Jane threw her head back and howled. The anger rose in great rings of dark cloud up the stairwell. The walls closed in to maximize the echo, becoming like another throat that surrounded her and gave amplification to every bad thing she'd been feeling for twenty-odd years.

  9. MAKE YOUR WAY TO GROUND LEVEL

  There you will find hotel staff eager to assist you. Please take advantage of our complementary beverage tray and cheese basket. Tell your friends. At the Greenmark we are prepared to deal with parties of any size.

  Jane entered the lobby at a dead run. People stared at her, then went back to whatever it was they were doing. It occurred to Jane that they were dressed quite nicely for a fire. And impeccable behavior. No one was crying. No one looked even the least bit scared.

  Obviously no one had told them about the smoke. No one had told them about the fire. Or perhaps they'd been told about it, but they had failed to listen. People were always failing to listen.

  "You know, for a minute there I thought you'd set the place on fire."

  Jane turned and saw Richard standing there, the smug expression on his face, his take-charge stance.

  "Oh, but there is a fire. Can't you smell it, Richard?"

  He was still looking at her with that confident expression when his sleeve burst into flame. This change in circumstance had barely registered in his face when the rest of him fell forward. The fire burned itself out as quickly as it had begun, leaving a dark, warped misery lying on the smoking rug.

  Several in the crowd screamed. A woman standing beside Jane began to cry. Jane turned: she was young, pleasant-looking. She felt sorry for her. "Spontaneous combustion," Jane whispered into her delicate ear. "It's everywhere these days. Didn't you see the spread last month in Cosmo?"

  10. LET SOMEONE KNOW YOU'RE ALIVE

  So many are tempted to continue their escape, stroll out of the building and start a new life under an assumed name. The management would like to disavow any knowledge of, or responsibility for, the actions of this radical minority.

  The young woman stared as the lady walked through the lobby and out the front door in her bare feet. Everywhere the lady stepped, a scorched tear-drop appeared in the rose-colored carpet.

  PREVIEW FROM:

  The Book of Days

  EDITOR'S NOTE: The Following is an excerpt from the novel The Book of Dasy by Steve Rasnic Tem. . A Book of Days is a sort of calendar of words…this is the first entry in the novel, which is soon to be an unabridged audiobook from Crossroad Press.

  SEPT. 1

  He arrived in the small country town in the morning. He immediately went to the local stationery shop and bought all the calendars he could find, over $300 worth. The young clerk's hands were shaking when she handed him the bags full of his purchases. He was particularly interested in the sixteen month calendars which began on September 1, his birthday and the first day of his new life here.

  Calendars were arbitrary constructions anyway– why not one that began on his birthday? Linda would have said he was crazy.

  He would have said this trip was meant to keep him from going crazy. If he had been able to talk to her.

  He didn't want to think what his children might have to say.

  He went back to the cabin and spread his calendars all over the floor of the one room. Art and photography calendars went along the outside edges of his collection, "On This Day In History" and "Peculiar Facts" types of calendars went on the inside.

  He picked up the two that looked most interesting and gazed at September 1. 1875: Edgar Rice Burroughs is born. His favorite author when he was a boy. Now Parker's favorite. During the long summer the twelve-year-old had read a third of the Tarzan books. 1916: Congress passes the Owen-Keating Act. The child labor law. Child labor had been a horror, especially in the southern mills during his grandfather's time. Little kids mangled by machinery– that's the photograph that should have gone on the September page, not som
e flower or movie star. 1983: The Soviet Union shoots down a South Korean airliner, killing 269. How many children? He used to know, but now he couldn't remember. Bad things happened to children all the time, and there was nothing he could do.

  The worst thing a father can do is abandon his children. There is no excuse. The absolute worst thing. But that's what he'd done. Continued to do.

  No excuse. But he'd frozen up. He couldn't do it anymore. Afraid of the risks, all the things that might happen, afraid of life. Afraid to let them go anywhere, do anything. God knows afraid to discipline them in any way. All the things that might happen. Afraid of what might happen to Linda if either Parker or Jennie died. Afraid of what might happen to him.

  So he'd left his wife and children, taking just enough of the savings to live on, and come here where his mother and her old friend had raised him that first year.

  His mother had believed that all the important things in life could be learned from stories. Her own father had told stories to her every day, and after she'd run away from that little country hospital the first day of his life, scared and all broken up inside, she'd told them to him, one each day even though he was too young to know what she was talking about. One each day, like some backwoods Scheherazade, afraid of what her drunken husband would do to her if he ever found her, afraid of what he'd do to the baby he'd never wanted. Terrible things happened to children. Even in fairytales. So the first story she'd ever told him was a nightmare. A nightmare about how he'd been born.

  Not that he'd been aware. She told him all these things years later: about his father, about that night, about the stories. She said she shouldn't have told a baby such a terrible story, but that night it had been the only story she knew. She'd forgotten all the others. But she would apologize to him, again and again. He couldn't have heard her, could he? He couldn't have known. It was just his first day.

  His mother had never understood. He'd known because he'd lived the story. It just took him a while to remember it. She'd only reminded him of it. So it wasn't strange at all that the first story he tried to tell himself after he ran away from his wife and children– the first story out of all those he remembered, made up, or retrieved out of some dark somewhere in order to repair himself– was this story. The story of September 1. The story of his first day.

  His mother had a neighbor lady take her to the hospital in the middle of the night. She'd walked three miles to the lady's house, not having a phone and besides she didn't want her husband knowing. He was sleeping it off thank god because if he'd been awake he would have killed them both, pulled that monster right out of her and thrown it in the creek– he'd promised it a hundred times.

  The hospital there only had one doctor and he was asleep a bottle in his hand and when they dragged him into the delivery room he turned pale and shook his head because he'd known her all her life he was a good man a kind man but he drank too much like almost every other man she knew. Including her father.

  The baby started coming out and the nurses were all excited. "Look how big he is!" one of them cried (ten pounds she found out later) and there was so much blood she couldn't believe it and the doctor reached down and pulled and she could feel herself breaking inside the baby was so afraid to come out.

  The doctor stepped back and one of them said, "Don't drop the baby!" And she could feel him slipping out of her, slipping away from her forever when the nurse stooped down and caught him before his head hit the floor and scattered his dreams across the delivery room (and wouldn't those be a chore to clean out of linoleum!).

  He'd cracked her pelvis in two places but lucky for her they got the bleeding under control. She was in a lot of pain but she left the hospital anyway in the middle of the night headed through the woods to her friend's house who knew a little nursing. Her husband would be awake soon. She could feel his eyelids lifting like two scabs peeling off an infected wound and no way was she going to let him catch up to her in that hospital bed.

  So it was through the gray woods with her husband wrapped in his shadows waking and her baby sleeping, falling headfirst into nightmare as she passed the black animal shapes she knew she would be telling her son about in story after story after story.

  ALSO FROM STEVE RASNIC TEM & CROSSROAD PRESS

  Novels:

  Excavation

  The Book of Days

  Daughters (with Melanie Tem)

  Chet Williamson

  BIO:

  Chet Williamson is the author of over twenty books, the latest of which is Defenders of the Faith. Among his other published novels are Second Chance, The Story of Noichi the Blind, Ash Wednesday, Soulstorm, Lowland Rider, Reign, McKain's Dilemma, Murder in Cormyr, Mordenheim, Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller, The Crow: Clash By Night, and the paranormal suspense series, The Searchers, which includes City of Iron, Empire of Dust and Siege of Stone.

  His books have been translated and published in many languages and countries, including France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Japan, as well as British editions of several of his novels.

  Over a hundred of his short stories have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and many other magazines and anthologies. Figures in Rain, a collection of his short stories, received the International Horror Guild Award for Outstanding Collection. He has twice been a final nominee for the World Fantasy Award, the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, and a six-time nominee for the Horror Writers Association's Stoker Award. His work has also been adapted for television, radio, and recorded books. His New Yorker short story, “Gandhi at the Bat,” was recently made into a short film and has been shown in festivals worldwide.

  He is also a member of Actors Equity Association, and has narrated his own audiobooks, as well as works by Michael Moorcock, Tom Piccirilli, Zoe Winters, and David Niall Wilson. His first play, a psychological thriller entitled Revenant, was recently produced, and he has just finished a stage adaptation of The Story of Noichi the Blind.

  Chet also wrote the story and dialogue for the computer game, Season of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders, which can be downloaded at www.bigfish.com.

  He lives in Elizabethtown with his wife Laurie. His son Colin currently works in Seattle as a video game developer for Square Enix.

  Jeaves and the Deteriorating Relations

  By Chet Williamson

  This story first appeared in the anthology Lords of the Razor edited by Joe Lansdale.

  Try as I might, I couldn't see how things could've gotten much worse. I, that is to say Bernard Worster, was in as great a pickle as I've ever been in in my life, and my man, Jeaves, who usually bails me out of such dashed tricky predicaments, was on one of his brief (for him) and frustrating (for me) holidays, blistering himself on some sunny seaside, while I sat perplexed, dismayed, and otherwise flummoxed to the nth degree.

  I mean to say, there I was, firmly ensconced in Binkley Court, the charmingly situated country house of my Aunt Delia and Uncle Tim Traven, at what should have been the most pleasant time of the year, mid-August, of which the Bard of Avon had once penned, if memory serves, "Da-dum-dee-dum as a something in mid-August." Yet the Worster brain was as muddy as a muddy stream, pardon the simile. It seemed that everything had gone helter-skelter at once.

  In short, I found myself once more accidentally engaged to both Marjorie Bucket and Hortense Crayne, and in so doing had simultaneously aroused the ire of these two beazles' former Romeos, Gustie Fink-Tottle and Rodney Spade, both of whom wanted nothing less than to blacken the Worster eye-sockets, break the Worster spine in four or five places, and probably a great deal more; I knew of a dreadful plot by two other blackguards, a husband-wife team, to steal Uncle Tim's precious and highly coveted antique cow-creamer, but could not expose the plot lest the miscreants reveal to my Aunt Delia a minor incident on Boat Night in which I, egged on by my fellow Sluggards, had been arrested for knocking off a policeman's helmet with a lump of horse dung; and Aunt Delia was already
peeved at me for doing nothing to prevent the upcoming purloinage of her prize cook, Monsieur André, by Bungo Liddell, by whom he had been formerly employed.

  I confess that, in Jeaves's absence, and without his all-knowing and guiding hand, I could see no other course but to confront my various fiancées, rivals, mugs, and relatives face to face, decapitate them one at a time, and place all their heads in that idyllic and peaceful lake on the west lawn, the one with the little island on it.

  But I find that I'm getting ahead of myself, as Jeaves has often informed me, so I suppose it best to slow down and let time run backwards in its something-or-other flight and fill you in on how poor Bernie Worster, viz. moi, came to this sorry state.

  I suppose it all began the morning Jeaves made that little slip with the new razor while shaving the Worster phiz. Not that I blamed him at all, mind you. We were both in a rush, Jeaves to go on his holiday, and myself to bung down to Binkley Court and enjoy a fortnight or so of sponging off the old Aunt and Uncle and sopping up André's delicious viands until my stomach was of the approximate circumference of an official medicine ball.

  "New razor, Jeaves?" I sharply observed.

  "Indeed, sir. I hope it meets with your liking," he said as he stropped it back and forth in an almost hypnotic motion. Funny how the simplest act becomes one of those proverbial things of beauty and joy forever in Jeaves's graceful hands. He looked like that Michelangelo chap must have when finishing up daubing the beard of the almighty on that ceiling in Italy.