Five World Saga 01 Hornets and Others Page 7

  "I won't kill her," Harry hisses at the coat.

  "You say something, sweetie?" the girl says from the bed behind him.

  You will kill her, the coat says to him, mildly, but there's anything but mildness behind the words.

  "I won't!" Harry nearly shouts, turning around to see this innocent prostitute, this proto-Noreen, staring at him with real concern, the smile on her face turning to a question, parted legs angling closed as she sits up, nipples hard against the room's chill.

  "You okay?" she asks.

  Harry's mouth is forming the word "No," but even before he tries to say it, which he never does, the coat has made him thrust his hand into the long pocket of the long coat, drawing the scalpel out like a sabre.

  She barely cries out, the knife drawing across at her, cutting her almost in two at the neck line.

  Harry cries out, "Noreen!" and then Harry is gone, and the coat is hacking and cutting with strength and finesse, and the night turns red and wheels away from him.

  This time when the coat tells him to wake up he is still on the bed in the room. He can barely lift his arms from exhaustion. By the weak light coming in the window it looks like dusk. On the table in front of the window, unopened, silhouetted in pale light, is the bottle of French wine and he feels an overwhelming need to rise and take the bottle like a nipple into his mouth.

  He sits up and sees what he has done.

  Harry loses what little is in his stomach, retching bile when there is nothing left. He's still vomiting when a sound comes on the stairs outside, and then a knock at the door.

  "Damniit, Ginny, get up!" someone growls outside. "You gonna sleep all night, too? You got five minutes or I'll be back to kick your ass onto the street."

  Footsteps retrace down the stairs.

  Move, the coat commands.

  He is up, cleaning the room, cleaning himself and his instrument. The water is cleaner here, and in no time the blade is shining like new, the coat scrubbed free of stains and brushed. He washes his hands and face and combs his hair, and then the coat makes him look into the mirror and smile the smile of a man ready to do again what he likes to do.

  Fine, the coat says. Walk.

  He walks out of the bathroom toward the door to the hotel room. But then, as he passes the table with the unopened bottle of wine on it, Harry, with supreme effort, stops walking.

  I said walk.

  "No," Harry says.

  He puts his hand on the bottle. The coat gives a shriek of rage in his head but Harry holds on. Slowly, fighting for control of his own fingers, he peels the foil from the top of the bottle. His hands shake like he has the DTs. The coat is screaming at him, ordering him to put the bottle down, but he has actually pulled the cork out and is lifting the wine spastically to his lips when the knock comes again on the door.

  "Ginny? What the hell are you doing in there?"

  There is rough handling on the doorknob, and then banging.

  The bottle drops from his hands, spilling wine into the worn rug, and in a second the coat has regained him and he is climbing over the table in front of the window, shoving it up and crawling out onto the fire escape. Down! The coat commands, and he descends the rusted, half-stuck ladders to the street. The coat makes him look coolly from right to left, smoothing his lapels, then makes him swagger away towards Port Boulevard, whistling a song he knew as a boy.

  And then he sees Noreen.

  She is just descending the stone steps of the SeaHarp to the pavement, leaving the walled fortress of the hotel behind. He is right in front of her, and though he tries to keep walking, their eyes meet.

  She gasps, and Harry tries to walk by her but the coat stops him dead where he stands and smiles.

  "Hello, Noreen," he says, and now the coat makes him bow.

  She stands speechless, but the shock has left her face. There is something different about her, her clothes or her hair, and, looking into her eyes, Harry can't help thinking that his absence has only strengthened her resolve to save him.

  "I've missed you, Noreen," the coat makes him say.

  "What's happened to you, Harry?" she asks in her mild voice, smiling at his politeness—but, with horror, Harry sees that she likes the change in him, she approves.

  "I'm a different man," the coat makes him say, and then the coat makes him smile, and Noreen smiles too, looking as if she has stepped into a dream.

  Noreen gives him a long look, and then she takes his arm, her hand brushing along the sleeve of the coat, and she says, "I've missed you too, Harry." She pauses, then turns to look at him, and says, "Harry, are you—'

  The coat, not missing a beat, gives her his most charming smile and says, "I no longer drink, Noreen."

  To Harry, trapped deep within the coat, the evening progresses with horrible predictability. She takes him up the steps to the porch of the SeaHarp, and, though it is cold, she insists they sit at the same table they did that first night. She seems to battle with herself and then, suddenly, with a bright smile, she says, "Stay here, Harry," and she enters the hotel, returning with food from the kitchen, along with a candle. She lights the candle, and there is faerie light between them once more.

  They eat, Noreen shivering, holding her coat tight about her, but gazing through the candlelight at Harry as if he were a god. As the meal is finished, a veal piccata with Harry's favorite dessert, Boston crème pie, which the coat makes him compliment extravagantly, there is a growing look of promise fulfilled in her eyes. The coat makes Harry tell her what she wants to hear, letting him see what it can do to her.

  In the glow of the candle, Noreen takes Harry's hand. "It's cold out here," she says. She pauses, then adds softly, "I want you to come to my room."

  "Of course," the coat makes him answer, tenderly.

  For a moment she loses her composure, and begins to cry. But then she regains herself. "This is the dream I always had for you," she says. "This is what I always knew you could be."

  The coat makes Harry lift her hand to his mouth, and kiss it.

  "I'm all I've ever wanted to be," it makes him say, sincerely, and Harry knows it's speaking the truth.

  Her attic apartment is as Harry remembers it. Big bed neatly made, with the coverlet Noreen quilted herself, patchwork pieces from all the worn covers and sheets she'd collected in her years at the hotel. A clean white bathroom, unchipped tiles, pictures on the walls of the living room, Edward Weston photographs, Renoir prints. Persian rugs. A polished mirror, before which, Harry remembers, she brushes her hair a hundred strokes each night before bed.

  She stands before the mirror now, an aging young woman with a dream fulfilled, and she smiles, shivering, holding her coat tight around her neck. "I must have caught a chill outside, Harry," she says.

  "My Noreen," The coat makes Harry put his hands lovingly on her shoulders and smile at her in the mirror.

  "Oh, Harry," she sobs happily, and turns to let him hold her.

  Deep inside, Harry is screaming, trying to claw his way to the surface and stop the inevitable. But he has lost. The coat has mastered him, and it makes Harry try to gently guide Noreen toward the bed.

  "Wait." She puts the flats of her hands on his chest and stays him.

  "Yes, my dear?" The coat makes him smile sweetly at her, though it really wants to pull the long sharp blade from its pocket now and cut her throat from ear to ear as she gazes adoringly up at him.

  "I just want to tell you that you've made me the happiest woman in the world."

  "Dear Noreen," he says, pressing her close to him, unable to wait for the bed, holding her tightly with one hand while the other slides into the pocket of the coat to feel the smooth cool handle of the scalpel at the same moment he feels the deep cold cut of a blade into the back of his neck, the cold rush of air striking hot blood.

  He staggers back away from her as she brings her scalpel neatly around to find the jugular. A bright wash of blood lifts out of Harry's open neck. He feels himself falling, then feels the vague thu
mping softness of the bed against his back. He hears from far off his own gurgling screams and, in his dimming vision, he sees the ceiling, then the silhouette of Noreen's form above him, raising the knife again to bring it down and...

  She works on him leisurely, the door to her room is locked tight, the long night ahead of her, a butcher's instinct guiding her expertly. She is better than Harry was, tidier, and the strong dark green plastic bags she scatters around, as she learned with the first two, serve her well with packing and disposal later on.

  By the time the sun is climbing tentatively behind the drawn shades of her calico-curtained windows, she is finished, the room cleaned, the long scalpel glinting, the bags dropped into the disposal chute in the hallway, not to be discovered till they are hauled to the dump out beyond the whorehouses on the boardwalk.

  It is chilly in the room, she really must get Victor to send up more heat to the family quarters. She shivers and hugs her coat around her as she puts the scalpel back into its long pocket.

  She yawns, stretches, looking at the growing brightness of day on the window shade.

  It is time to sleep.

  She lifts the quilted coverlet of her bed, ignoring the pale dried red stains on it, and slides beneath.

  As she lays staring at the ceiling for a moment before sleep, she lets Noreen come up from below. Shock has quieted her somewhat, and the crying that has broken through periodically will not be repeated. She is beaten. Her thoughts are revolving nightmares now, centering on the box she found by the service entrance to the SeaHarp four days ago, and the two new coats within. Rich guests always throwing something valuable away, she thought, taking the woman's coat on top out, daydreaming, as she tried it on, how nice it would be for Harry to have the other coat, if only Harry, dear Harry, love of her youth and forever, would come back to her...

  Noreen begins to scream, and the coat, tired and longing for its own dreams, pushes her back down to the depths.

  The coat makes her sleep then, thinking of the coming night, and remembering with pleasure its own thoughts while cutting the long bloody woolen strips from Harry's body, God, I hate men.

  The Haunting of Y-12

  It was business time for the Genial Hauntings Club. Seated after dinner in the well-polished leather chairs of the club's smoking room, pulled up before a glowing fire which threw dark, warm shadows across the walls and ceiling, with brandy glasses and lit cigar or pipes, the members called on the stranger to tell his story. This, of course, was tradition at the GHC, for this was the one time during the year, on the Eve of Christmas (or, Dickens's Spirits' Eve, as it was whimsically called at the club), when a new member might earn admission. Not that admission was so difficult to earn, for the nominee, sponsored by one of the present members (in this case Porutto, a small, olive-skinned fellow of indistinct nationality with glasses and cool brown eyes, an adventurer by trade who was in the habit of tapping his pipe thoughtfully against his palm), need only tell a story. And the story need only be a true one, a story of ghosts—not a tall order for admission to an establishment known as the Genial Hauntings Club; but perhaps yes, since true stories of ghosts do not jump out of every shadow.

  The members settled themselves in—Thomas, the painter; Maye and Podwin, the writers of somewhat Mutt-and-Jeff-esque proportions who had co-written many popular fictions, mostly in the science and fantasy categories; Hewetson, butler of the club (an exalted position, akin to secretary); Petrone, the social scientist; Jenick, the light-bearded editor and wit; Ballestaire, the actor; and the others; even Michele, the somewhat fiery-tempered world traveler—and the stranger began his tale.

  "Well," he said, drawing himself up in his chair and taking a last leisurely puff on his cigar, "my story begins with a computer." He was a young man of short-medium height, working his way toward stocky, with a florid mustache and tight, shiny eyes behind his rimless glasses; there was an air of nervous certainty about him, as if he knew what he was about but hadn't quite discovered how to make others believe it yet.

  "A haunted computer," he continued, pausing a moment for effect. And then drawing himself up once again with a sigh, he began in earnest.

  These events (he said) occurred some twelve years ago, and the computer, called the Y-12, was lodged in my place of employment, what was then known as a think tank. There was a rush-rush project under way, and some very odd things began to happen to a man named Lonnigan.

  Robert Lonnigan was in charge of our project, whose task it was to develop one of the first tabletop computers; you have to remember that at one time a computer that would now rest on your thumbnail would fill an entire drawing room. Anyway, some strange things began to occur.

  Lonnigan was working alone one night when the prototype of the Y- 12 suddenly turned itself on and began to type out a message which read, "Robert, are you there?"

  Lonnigan was a bit shocked, of course, but realizing that there was such a thing as a practical joke and that whatever had happened should not have happened, he turned off the computer and went back to work. But once again Y-12 turned itself on and typed out, "Robert, are you there?" and then added, "This is Father."

  This shook Lonnigan. There was something eerily familiar about the words, and he had a slight feeling of déjà vu. His own father had died a few years previously, but being of the kind of mind that builds computers he was not about to admit to the possibility that his father's spirit had taken over the Y-12. Still, something made his skin crawl about the whole thing.

  He quickly checked through all of the input files, which only he had access to, and discovered that no one had programmed Y-12—not officially, anyway—for anything that would include the kind of phrasing the machine had evidenced. And as for practical jokes, he couldn't figure out how it could have been rigged up since he was supposed to see every program that went in and since security was so tight due to government involvement in the project; no research assistant was going to jeopardize his security clearance and career by pulling a scary—and somewhat sick—stunt on the program manager. Lonnigan was resolved, that night if possible, to find out what was going on.

  He set up Y-12 for two-way conversation using the IBM keyboard and printout and queried, "Identify program: 'Robert, are you there? This is Father."

  There was no response.

  He tried the same command, in as many variations as he could think of, but Y- 12 remained silent. There was not even an acknowledgment of the query as a viable one, and according to Y- 12 itself, no such statement had ever been made by the computer, nor could be, since it did not exist in its memory banks.

  Lonnigan was dumbfounded, and shut off the computer, beginning to think that maybe he was going crazy. He was bundling up to leave for the night, and had just turned off the lights in the lab, when Y-12 suddenly turned itself on again and repeated once more, "Robert, are you there? This is Father. Please answer me."

  A chill went up Lonnigan's spine and that feeling of déjà vu gripped him again, and he stood staring at the machine he had built, the machine he had turned off with his own hands, its amber and green lights now blinking on and off in the darkness and typing out repeatedly on its printer, "Robert, are you there? Please answer. Robert, are you there? Please answer." Lonnigan finally ended it by shutting down the computer completely and pulling the plug from the power outlet. He then left quickly, fearing that Y-12 would somehow turn itself back on despite the fact that its power source had been disconnected.

  The following morning the bleary-eyed project manager assembled our entire staff and gave us a small speech, demanding that if anyone had tampered with Y-12 he should make himself known. No one stepped forward. Lonnigan pleaded with us, asking that if anyone knew anything at all about what had happened the night before, he should step forward now because he was endangering the entire project. We remained mute to a man, and I must admit we began to look at him a bit strangely.

  There was talk throughout the day that perhaps Lonnigan needed a rest. A decision had actually
been made to put him on at least temporary suspension when Y-12 suddenly burst into life with myself and about ten others present and began once more to type out its ghost message.

  When the pandemonium died down, Lonnigan set us all to work. It was imperative, he said, that whatever was wrong with Y-12 be corrected before the government, which was funding the project, found out and all hell broke loose. One of my friends, a man named Boylston, asked, "But what if it really is haunted?" and Lonnigan, his face showing things he didn't want to show, answered, "Don't even think about it."

  Every nut and bolt on the Y- 12 computer was removed, turned over, and, more often than not, replaced. Every circuit was tapped, checked and rechecked, each memory bank drained and carefully reprogrammed. Nearly three days later, when we were through, Y-12 looked exactly as it had before. "Let's hope we've driven it out," Lonnigan said as we ran it through a test program. "Driven what out?" asked Boylston, and the look Lonnigan turned on him made him not ask again.

  Y-12 ran through the program perfectly, and then ran through it again perfectly. There was a general sigh of relief. But then, almost as soon as it had been shut down, it blinked back into life and began to type: "Robert, are you there?"

  There was complete silence in the room, and Lonnigan's face went white. Heaven knows what thoughts were running through his mind then. Whatever they were he shook his head and refused to dwell on them.

  He ordered the lab sealed, ordered Y-12 pulled to pieces again.

  "Check every component twice, change everything that can be changed. We've got a government man coming tomorrow, dammit, so I want it finished before he gets here."