The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

SPARE THE CHILD by Thomas F. Monteleone

Thomas F. Monteleone is another of those writers who were drawn into the field through an early love for science fiction. His first effort was a juvenile science fiction novel written at summer camp; writer’s block developed by page 40, and his mother later inadvertently threw the manuscript away. Monteleone persevered, and his first published story appeared ten years ago in the March 1973 issue of Amazing, followed in 1975 by his first novel, Seeds of Change. This was the first in the unlamented Laser science fiction line from Harlequin, and the publisher used his novel as a promotional give-away. Subsequent science fiction novels (not for Laser) include The Time Connection and Time Swept City. In ten years Monteleone has had nine novels published as well as about forty short stories; in addition he has edited an anthology, The Arts and Beyond, and has had two of his plays produced. Two more novels are scheduled for 1983: Day of the Dragonstar (with David Bischoff) from Berkley and Night Train, a mainstream horror novel from Pocket Books.

Monteleone was born in Baltimore in 1946 and currently makes his home there with his wife, Linda, and son, Damon. Again, as has happened with other writers who began in science fiction, Monteleone has become disenchanted with the genre: “I don’t write any sf any more, preferring fantasy/horror because of the freedom to work more thoroughly with character development.” Monteleone’s last horror novel, Night Things, has recently been optioned for a film, while the following story has been optioned for a new cable television horror/suspense series called Darkside. Monteleone reports that he is working on “a new horror/suspense novel about Sicily, the Cosa Nostra, and the Devil.”

The nightmare began quite simply.

In fact, Russell Southers had not the slightest inkling that he was entering into a nightmare at the time. He was passing his Sunday as he always did in the fall: seated before the Zenith Chromacolor III, watching the Giants invent new ways to lose a football game, while his wife Mitzi read The New York Times.

“Jesus Christ!” yelled Russell, as the Giants’ fullback bucked the middle of the Packer’s goal-line defense for the fourth time without scoring.

“Oh, Russell, look at this picture…” said Mitzi, showing him a page from The Times Magazine.

“First down on the two! On the two, and they can’t score! I can’t believe it…”

“Russell?”

“What, honey?” He looked at his wife as the thought of how she could dare interrupt him during a football game (especially after thirteen years of marriage) crossed his mind.

“Look at this picture,” she said again.

A razor blade commercial blared from the Zenith, and he turned to regard his wife. She was holding up a full-page advertisement from The Times Magazine, which featured a sad-eyed child in rags, framed by a desolate village background. It was a typical plea from one of those foster-parent programs which sponsor foreign orphans in far-away countries stricken with war, famine, and disease. SPARE THE CHILD said the banner line atop the picture, while smaller print explained the terrible level of life, then informed the reader how much money to send, where, and how the money would help the poor, starving children.

“Yeah, so what?” asked Russell as he glanced at the page.

“So what? Russell, look at the little boy. Look at those big, dark eyes! Oh, Russell, how can we sit here—in the lap of luxury—while those little babies are starving all over the world!”

“Lap of luxury!” The commercial had ended and the Packers were driving upfield from their two-yard line with short passes and power sweeps.

“Well, you know what I mean, Russell… it says here that we can be foster parents for a child for as little as fifteen dollars a month, and that we’ll get a picture of our child and letters each month, and we can write to him too.”

“Uh-huh…” The Giants’ middle linebacker had just slipped, allowing the Packers’ tight end to snare a look-in pass over the middle. “Jesus!”

“So I was thinking that we should do something to help. I mean, we pay more than fifteen dollars a month for cable TV, right?”

“What? Oh, yes, Mitzi…” The Packers’ quarterback had just been thrown for a loss, momentarily halting their surge upfield.

“Well, can we do it?”

Another commercial, this time about the new Chrysler, hit the screen, and Russell looked at his wife absently. “Do what?”

“Why, become foster parents! Russell, look at this picture!”

“I looked at the picture, Mitzi! What do you want me to do with it… frame it and put it over the mantel, for Christ’s sake!”

Mitzi remained calm. “I said I want to join the ‘Spare the Child’ program, Russell. Can we do it?”

“What? You want to send money overseas? How do we know the kids are even getting it? Look at that ad—do you know what it costs to run a full-page ad in the Times! They don’t seem like they need our measly fifteen bucks…”

“Russell, please…” She smiled and tilted her head the way she always did when she wanted something. The game was back on, and he was tired of being interrupted. What the hell? What was another fifteen bucks?

“All right, Mitzi… we can do it.” He exhaled slowly and returned to his game. The Giants lost anyway.

About twelve weeks after Russell and Mitzi filled out the Spare the Child application and had sent in their first monthly check (and their second and third), they received a letter and picture from their foster child. The air mail envelope carried the return address of Kona-Pei—a small atoll in the Trobriand Islands group. Russell would not have known this piece of arcane geographical knowledge had not he received an official welcoming/confirming letter from the World Headquarters of Spare the Child several weeks previously. The letter also provided additional data.

His foster child’s name was Tnen-Ku. She was a twelve-year-old girl, whose parents had been killed in a fishing-canoe accident, and who now lived at the island’s missionary post, under the guardianship of her kinship-uncle, Goka-Pon, the village shaman.

Tnen-Ku’s picture was a small, cracked, 3-x-5 black-and-white Polaroid snap, featuring a gangly pre-pubescent girl. She had long, straight, dark hair; large, darker almond-eyes; cheekbones like cut-crystal; and a pouting mouth that gave the hint of a wry smile at the corners. She wore a waist-to-knee wrap-around skirt and nothing else. Her just-developing breasts were tiny, suntanned cones, and she looked oddly, and somewhat chillingly, seductive to Russell when he first looked at her photograph.

Somewhat fascinated, Russell scanned her first correspondence:

Dear Second-Papa Russell:

This is to say many thanks for becoming my Second-Papa. The U.S.A. money you send will let me not live at Mission all the time. You make my life happy.

Tnen-Ku

Mitzi was not altogether pleased with the first correspondence because Russell was named and she was not. And it was Mitzi’s idea in the first place!

Russell Southers tried to placate his wife by saying that it was probably island custom to address only the male members of families, and that Mitzi could not expect the Trobriand Islanders to be as liberated as all the folks in northern suburban New Jersey. The tactic seemed to please Russell’s wife, and soon her little foster child, Tnen-Ku, was the prime subject of conversation and pride at Mitzi’s bridge games and garden parties. In fact, she began carrying the picture of the young girl about in her purse, so that everyone would be able to see what her new child looked like.

Even though Russell found Mitzi’s behavior effusive and a bit embarrassing, he said nothing. After thirteen years of marriage, if he had discovered anything, it was that as long as the indulgence was not harmful or detrimental, it was usually better to give in to make Mitzi happy. And it seemed as though it was the little things in life that gave his wife the most joy. So fine, thought Russell, what’s fifteen bucks, if it makes my wife happy?

And so each month, he wrote a check to the Spare the Child Foundation, and about once every third month, he and Mitzi would receive a short, impersonal note from the young island girl with the hauntingly deep, impossibly dark eyes.

Dear Second-Papa Russell,

This is to say many-thanks for more U.S.A. dollars. Maybe now I never go back to Mission. My life is happy.

Tnen-Ku

Perhaps the most exasperating part of the young girl’s letters was the unvarying sameness of them, and although this did not bother Russell, it began to prey upon Mitzi.

“You know, Russell, I’m getting sick of this little game,” said Mitzi, out of the blue, while she and Russell were sitting in bed reading together.

“What little game, honey?” asked Russell absently. He was right in the middle of The Manheist Malefaction, the latest Nazi spy-thriller on The Times bestseller list, and was not surprised to be interrupted by Mitzi’s non sequitur, since it had been one of her most enduring attributes.

“That foster-child thing…” she said in some exasperation, as though Russell should have known what had been preying on her mind.

“You mean Tnen-Ku? Why? What’s the matter?” Russell laid down the book (he was at a familiar part of the plot—where the confused, but competent, protagonist has just met the standard young and beautiful companion), and looked at his wife.

“Well,” said Mitzi, “I mean, it’s nice being a foster parent and all that, and I guess I should feel good about helping out a poor child, but…”

“But what?” asked Russell. “Is it getting to be old hat?”

“Well, something like that. I mean, those letters she writes, Russell. If you can even call them letters… They’re so boring, and she never says anything interesting, or nice to us… I feel like we’re just being used.”

“Well, we are being used a little, but that’s what it’s all about, Mitzi.”

“Maybe so, but I thought it would be more exciting, more gratifying to be a foster parent for a little foreign child…” Mitzi looked to the ceiling and sighed.

“But we’re supposed to be doing it so that Tnen-Ku feels happier, not necessarily for our own betterment or happiness. Isn’t that what’s important?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Russell. You’ve seen that picture they sent us… that little girl doesn’t look like she’s so bad off.” Mitzi harrumphed lightly. “She looks like a little tart, if you ask me!”

Russell chuckled. “Well, you certainly have changed your tune lately!”

“No, I haven’t! It’s just that being a foster parent isn’t what I thought it would be…”

“Are you sure that you’re not just getting tired of it, that the novelty is wearing off? Remember how you were at first about backgammon? The aerobic dancing? And when’s the last time you went out jogging?”

“Russell, this is different…”

“Okay, honey. We can drop out of the program any time you want. We didn’t sign any contract, you know.”

Mitzi sighed and looked up at the ceiling as though considering the suggestion. “Well, if you really don’t think she needs our help…”

“Wait a minute, this is your idea, remember!” Russell smiled, as it was always Mitzi’s way—to twist things around so that it always seemed like Russell was the one who would bear responsibility for all decisions.

“Well, I know, but I wouldn’t want to do anything behind your back. Besides, I was thinking that we could use some new drapes in the living room. The sun is starting to fade those gold ones, and we could use that fifteen dollars each month to pay for them…”

And so, having planted the seed, not another month went by before Mitzi announced to Russell that it was okay to drop out of the Spare the Child program, having already picked up a sample fabric book, trying to decide which new color would look best in her chrome-and-glass living room. Russell wrote a letter to the Spare the Child offices in New York City, politely explaining that financial pressure had forced them to withdraw from the program. He expressed the hope and good wishes that Tnen-Ku would continue to receive assistance from a new foster parent, and thanked them for the opportunity to be of some help, at least for a brief time.

Before the new drapes were delivered, he received a letter from the Trobriand Islands:

Dear Second-Papa Russell,

The mission-peoples say that you will send no more U.S.A. dollars for me. I am very sad by this. That means I must live at Mission again, and I do not like that. Goka-Pon say a father cannot give up his child. Do you know it is forbidden? Please do not stop U.S.A. dollars. For you and me.

Tnen-Ku

“Now isn’t that strange,” said Russell, reading the young girl’s letter over a Saturday breakfast. “Forbidden, she says… I wonder what that means? And what about this ‘for you and me’?”

“Don’t pay any attention to it dear. She’s probably trying to make you feel guilty. You know what they say about people who get used to charity—they lose all incentive to do things for themselves, and all they learn is how to become professional beggars. By us stopping that money, we’re probably doing the best thing in the world for her. Maybe she’ll grow up now, and be somebody.” Mitzi poked at the bacon which sizzled in the pan, turned over the more crispy pieces.

Russell tossed away the letter and did not think about it for several weeks, until he received a plea from the Spare the Child Program to reconsider canceling his donation. It was similar to the form letters one gets from magazines when you have obviously intended not to renew a subscription. He was going to throw it out but decided that a final, short note to the offices would stop any further correspondence. He wrote telling them that he did not intend to contribute to the foster-parent plan ever again and wished that they would stop badgering him. That ended it, or so he thought.

Two months later, he received a hand-written note from the Trobriand Islands group:

Dear Second-Papa Russell,

Mission-peoples say no more U.S.A. dollars from you. This very bad. Goka-Pon say you must be punished.

Tnen-Ku

Understandably, Russell was outraged and fired off another letter to the Spare the Child Program, enclosing a xerox of what he termed an “ungrateful, arrogant, and threatening” letter. He informed the agency that if he received any more correspondence from Tnen-Ku, he would initiate legal actions against the agency.

A secretary from the Spare the Child offices wrote a perfunctory apology which promised that Russell Southers would not be troubled again, and this seemed to appease both him and Mitzi, until three weeks later, when the cat died.

Actually, their cat, Mugsy, did not die; it had been killed—strangled and then nailed to Russell’s garage door above a jerkily scrawled inscription which could have been in blood: Tnen-Ku. It was as though the young girl had sent them more correspondence, although of a different nature.

At first, Mitzi was horrified and Russell infuriated. They called the police, who did not seem terribly interested; the Spare the Child agency, which denied any culpability; and Russell’s lawyer, who said that perhaps a flimsy case could be made against the agency but suggested that one of Russell’s friends was most likely playing a very bad joke on him.

Russell was shocked to see the high levels of indifference and lack of true concern for what was happening to him but felt helpless to do much more than complain himself. He thought of writing a long threatening letter to Tnen-Ku, but something held him back. After all, it was impossible that the child had anything to do with Mugsy’s demise—the island of Kona-Pei was thousands of miles from New Jersey. But what the hell was going on?

Second-Papa? Second-Papa…?

Russell was awakened from a deep sleep by the voice. In the first moments of wakefulness; he found himself thinking that her voice sounded very much like he would have imagined it to sound.

Whose voice!? Bolting straight up, Russell stared down to the foot of the bed and felt his breath rush out of him. His flesh drew up and pimpled and he felt immediately chilled. There was a figure, a young girl, bathed in a shimmering aura of spectral light, facing him. Her hair was long and dark, and her eyes seemed like empty holes in her face. Her thin, bronzed arms were reaching out to him…

“It can’t be…” whispered Russell, his voice hoarse and full of uncontrollable fear, a fear he had never known.

Second-Papa, said Tnen-Ku. I would have been happy. I would have been grateful to you forever. I would have come to you… like this… for make you happy… not sad.

Russell blinked, looked over at Mitzi, who was still sleeping. For an instant, he wondered why she had not heard the child; then he realized that he was only hearing the words in his mind.

“Why?” he whispered. “What do you mean? Why are you doing this?”

I would have given you this…

Russell stared at the young girl, watching her hands move slowly to her waist, to the simple knot which held the wraparound skirt about her body. With a deliberate slowness, Tnen-Ku worked at the knot.

No! thought Russell, as a conflicting rush of feelings jolted him. He wanted to look away from the vision, but something held him. The shining figure had taken on a strangely erotic, yet fearsome aspect, and he was transfixed.

As the knot loosened, Russell found himself entranced by the deep tan of her flesh, and as the cloth began to slowly fall away, he became fascinated by the suggestion of flaring hips, the roundness of her soon-to-be-a-woman’s belly. He felt himself becoming sexually aroused as he had never in his life, and a fire seemed to be raging in his groin. Tnen-Ku held the fabric of the skirt by a small corner so that it hung limply in front of her, flanked by her naked hips and thighs.

Russell felt that he would explode from the throbbing pressure inside his trembling body, and watching her fingers release the skirt, he screamed involuntarily.

Instantly the vision of the girl disappeared, cloaking the bedroom in darkness and the echo of his scream. Mitzi had jumped up, grabbing him.

“Russell, what’s the matter with you? You’re soaking wet! What happened?”

Still trembling, Russell continued to stare at the foot of the bed. “Bad dream,” he said weakly. “Bad dream… I’ll be okay.”

But he was not okay and was never okay again.

For the first few days after the vision of Tnen-Ku, Russell Southers had convinced himself that it had not actually happened, that he had witnessed nothing more than a singularly, realistic dream of some of his darker subconscious desires. He found that he could not rid his mind, however, of the disturbing image of the young girl untying her native skirt. He was thinking of her constantly as though becoming obsessed. While commuting to work, while at the office in Manhattan, and even at home with Mitzi watching TV, Russell was plagued by the vision of Tnen-Ku at the foot of his bed. When he concentrated on it, he could hear her voice calling out his name.

But that was only the beginning.

While watching the evening news after his daily martini, while Mitzi prepared dinner, Russell was shocked to see a bulletin teletype-overlay snake across the screen while the commentator spoke of a warehouse fire in Brooklyn:

TNEN-KU IS WATCHING YOU SECOND-PAPA RUSSELL

“Jesus Christ!” yelled Russell, sitting straight up, staring at the TV screen, waiting for the message to roll across the bottom of the picture again. Impossible! I didn’t see it! But you did see it… He felt a lump in his throat as he sat gripping the arms of his chair, waiting for a repeat of the words which did not come. He thought that he was starting to lose his sanity, and that scared him too. He was thinking about that little sexy brat too much, that was it. Got to stop thinking about it, that’s all.

Shaken, he watched the news commentator drone on about more local happenings, but he heard little of it. He toyed with the idea of telling Mitzi what had been happening but thought that she would think he was losing his marbles. Mitzi had always depended on him to be strong and pragmatic and rational; he shuddered to think of how she would react to him showing such obvious signs of mental weakness. No, Mitzi should not know anything. Russell was going to have to handle this himself.

But it did bother him that Mitzi was not sharing in his… his what? His delusions? His guilt? She was blithely rolling along, having totally forgotten the Spare the Child Program in turn for some new, fleeting, but always enjoyable project. And it was Mitzi who had gotten him into the whole mess in the first place. It wasn’t fair, thought Russell…

That night she returned to him and he sat up in bed, transfixed and captivated by her little brown body, wrapped in a shimmering cloak of light. She held something in her hands, which she slowly placed on the covers of his bed, then quickly disappeared.

Russell’s throat was so tight that he could not swallow, could not have uttered a sound if he had wanted to. His hands were trembling badly, keeping pace with the thumping of his heart and his ragged breath. His mind was slipping away from him, and he sat in the darkness, resolved to see a psychiatrist the next day. Take the afternoon off and see one of his golf partners, Dr. Venatoulis.

Then he noticed something on the covers of the bed, something where the image of the girl had placed her hands, and he felt the fear grip him again. Pushing back the sheets, Russell groped about on the softness of the quilt and felt something hard and solid. What the hell…?

It was a small, hand-carved box with a fitted top which slid open. Shaking it, something rattled inside, and he feared for a moment that the sound might awaken Mitzi. Quickly, Russell slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom, switching on the fluorescent lights around the mirror, and shutting the door. The box, when he opened it, contained scores of small white sticks, about half the size of kitchen matches, of uneven shapes. They seemed to be polished smooth and resembled ivory… or perhaps bone. The thought held him for an instant as Russell stared at the box, realizing fully and for the first time that the presence of the box was physical proof that he was not delusional, that he was not imagining things, and that, somehow, Tnen-Ku had actually been inside his bedroom, ten thousand miles away from her island home.

No! His mind screamed out the rejection of such a thought. And yet he stared at the evidence with eyes that were starting to water and sting from nervous tension.

The little white sticks were scattered across the top of the vanity formica, and as Russell watched them, they began to move. Vibrating ever so slightly at first, tingling as if touched by a slight breeze, the bones—and Russell knew now that they were indeed bones—moved like iron filings over a magnet to form a caricature of a skull.

Screaming involuntarily, he swept the pieces off the counter scattering them across the bathroom tile. It was getting too crazy, too unbelievable!

“Russell, is that you…!” Mitzi was knocking loudly at the bathroom door.

“No!… I mean, yes, it’s me! Who the hell do you think it would be!”

“Russell, are you all right? What’s the matter with you?” Mitzi tried the knob, but it was locked. “Russell?!”

“Oh Christ, what?! Yes, Mitzi, I’m all right. Go back to bed, will you please? I’ve got an upset stomach that’s all…”

“I thought I heard you scream, Russell, are you okay? Why is the door locked? You never lock the bathroom door, Russell.”

“I’ve got some bad gas pains, that’s all. I—I didn’t want to disturb you, honey. I’ll be out in a minute.”

He looked down to the floor and saw that the little bones had been moving while he spoke to his wife, gathering themselves together like a small herd of animals. They were arranging themselves into letters, like tiny runic symbols, which at first were indecipherable. But the more Russell stared at the configurations, he could read the message that was forming:

PUNISH WITH DEATH

He wanted to scream again, and he held the sound in his throat only by the greatest force of will. He could taste bile at the back of his mouth as he bent down and scooped up all the little white pieces, throwing them into the toilet and flushing it repeatedly, until all the bones were sucked into the small porcelain maelstrom.

Luckily, when he returned to bed, Mitzi was already asleep.

He could not bring himself to tell his wife about the delusions he had been suffering, and he was ashamed to call up a psychiatrist, especially someone he played golf with on occasion. Since no real, hard evidence, no proof actually existed, Russell had convinced himself that what had been happening to him was the product of an overworked mind, a heavily wracked, guilty conscience, and too much displaced imagination. And so he tried to ignore the messages which Tnen-Ku sent him: the warning headline on the New York Post which disappeared when he picked up the paper from the subway newsstand; the skull-like configuration of the coffee grounds in his cup at Nedick’s in Grand Central; the pair of dark eyes which seemed to be staring at him through the glass of the speedometer of his Monte Carlo; the familiar, half-whispering voice that he thought he could hear in the telephone in between the beeps of the touch-tone dial; the movie marquee he glanced at from the corner of his eye on 56th Street, which for a moment, until he had looked for a second time, had said: “Tnen-Ku Is Coming!”

Normally Russell Southers would have been greatly disturbed by the portents and omens jumping up unexpectedly from all parts of his everyday life. But he was becoming almost accustomed to the preternatural for one simple reason: he was losing his mind. Simply and totally. He just didn’t care anymore.

Let her come, goddamn it! he thought as he rode the train home that night. Let her come, ’cause I’m sure as shit ready for her…

The conductor called out his stop, and he stood up in ritual-commuter fashion, single-filing out of the car and onto the platform with his fellow riders. Descending the staircase to the parking lot below, Russell scanned the amassed cars for his white Monte Carlo where Mitzi would be waiting to pick him up. It was wedged in between a big Ford station wagon and a TR-7, and as Russell approached the familiar vehicle he was shocked to see the dark eyes and long straight hair of Tnen-Ku watching him from behind the wheel. His first impulse was to stop in shock and surprise, but instead he forced himself to walk naturally, even waving and smiling as he approached the car. Better, he thought, not to let the little shit think she had rattled him. He would take the element of surprise and twist it back into her face. Surely the girl would not expect him to act so naturally.

He tried to keep thoughts of Mitzi from his mind, tried not to think about what that young brat might have done with his wife so that she could be replaced behind the wheel. No, it was better to concentrate on what must be done…

“Hello, Second-Papa Russell…” she said as he opened the passenger’s side door and slid in beside her.

She was smiling and leaning forward as though she would like him to kiss her. The little tramp! Russell looked past her face to her slim neck, then reached out and wrapped his fingers around it. As he began to squeeze and he felt her struggle helplessly under his grip, he smiled slowly, feeling a wellspring of elation bubble through his mind.

“I’ve got you!” he screamed. “I’ve got you now, and you won’t get away this time!”

Tnen-Ku opened her mouth, no longer a tart, sly curve to her young lips, but a silent circle of panic and pain. Russell tightened his grip on her neck and began to yank her back and forth. His hands and forearms were enveloped in a numbness, an absence of sensation, as though he were watching someone else’s hands strangling the darkly tanned woman-child.

As her face seemed to become bloated and puffy, the color of her cheeks turning gray and her bottomless eyes bulging whitely, Russell’s other senses seemed to desert him. The lights from the station parking lot grew dim, and he could barely discern the features of the dying face in front of him. He could hear nothing but the pounding of his own pulse behind his ears and was not aware of the excited shouts of people who were crowding around his Monte Carlo. Nor did he feel the strong, capable hands grabbing him, separating him from his dead wife, pulling him from the car.

Hitting the hard surface of the parking lot, Russell looked up at the ragged oval of faces peering down at him. Someone called for the police as he lay still, feeling the shadows of evening and fear crawl across his eyes. When the sound of the sirens pierced the night, Russell began to scream, spiraling down into the mind-darkness of defeat.

Somewhere in Manhattan, someone opened to a full-page ad in The Times Magazine.