Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

And though they pestered their parents daily, they could get no satisfactory answers about the odd woman’s origins, her designs, why she never invited anyone in for tea or cookies and soda.

She became, simply, the Old Lady, and a superstition instantly born prevented any of the younger children from passing her house on her side of the street.

And then, one cold and snow-ready night, when Hawthorne Street stayed home and huddled, richly, in front of fieldstone fireplaces and gleaming Franklin stoves, the music began. Precisely at nine o’clock the November chill was warmed by glittering sparks that sifted through the windows and doors and startled the people who heard.

Hey, a circus, Eric thought, running to the living room to look up and down the street.

Hey, Mom, Caren had called, there’s one of those guys with the monkey and the thing that you turn.

There was a lullaby, a love song, memories of dance bands, carnivals, and boardwalk calliopes on a hot August night.

For thirty minutes to the second before it stopped, and the notes fell like powdered snow to vanish into the ground.

“Eric?”

He spun around, blinking, then glaring at Caren’s silent laugh.

“What’s the matter, did I scare you?”

“Not me,” he said. “You kind of just snuck up on me, that’s all. What’s the matter? You need something, or something?”

“I was thinking about the time she came,” and she shivered an exaggerated chill, making him laugh. “Remember the time we tried to sneak a look through the back window and Jackie started sneezing because of her hay fever and we didn’t stop running until we must have got all the way to the park?”

“I wasn’t scared then, either.”

“I didn’t say you were, silly.”

“Then why’d you have to say all that? Don’t we have enough troubles?”

“I was just trying to remember, Eric, that’s all.”

“Okay, I’m sorry, but you’d better save it. I think I can feel it coming.”

Remember, he thought in disgust. Just like a girl to waste her time remembering when we got things to do more important. And what good would it do asking for things to be the way they were anyway?

Throughout that winter, it seemed as if what rainbows there were had all spilled into a vast shimmering pot called Hawthorne Street, and all on the heels of the music.

Caren’s brother was accepted into a European university with full scholarship honors; Eric discovered he had a natural talent for musical instruments, and horns in particular, and his teacher told him in all honesty that he would someday be famous; Jackie Potter’s family won a state lottery and planned a trip across the country during Easter vacation; and there seemed nothing at all wrong in standing by the front window and listening to the piano drawing them closer, stirring their emotions while it accompanied snow onto the lawns, ice into puddles, and guided the wind to cradle dead leaves softly into the gutters. The snowmen were bigger, the snow forts more elaborate, and Eric’s father came home twice with promotions and once with a car big enough to hold thousands.

Eric scrubbed his cheeks dryly. It was no good remembering things like that because it wasn’t that way anymore, and it was all because of a vampire witch who sucked them dry with her music.

It was April when the weekly concerts stopped, and while most of the people worried for a while, no one thought to visit the old woman to see if there was anything wrong. It was as if the children’s superstition had been universally accepted, and when Eric suggested they try again to sneak a look into the Old Lady’s house, Caren became angry and told him to leave the poor thing alone.

In May a fire destroyed the oldest house on the street, Caren’s brother was arrested for possession of drugs and assault with a deadly weapon, and Eric’s grandfather died in the guest room, in his sleep. New grass was planted, was washed away during three consecutive storms that knocked out power for three days, flooded every waterproof cellar, and uprooted a maple that was reputed to have been planted by the town’s original settlers.

Caren’s puppy died.

Eric’s father was forced out of work and into a hospital bed by a series of massive heart attacks.

The elms rotted from the inside, and the willows crawled with worms that soon stopped their weeping.

The music came again, at odd hours for nearly a week, stopped just as abruptly, and what grass was left began dying in the middle of a shower.

All the houses needed painting, gardens weeding, and red brick shaded to brown.

Something had been taken away, something was missing, but few people cared, fewer still knew.

“Hey, listen, if you’re going to sleep, I’m going home.”

Eric grinned stupidly. He was sitting against the wall again, and his head felt stuffed with cotton like a baby’s toy.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to be thinking yet.”

“Okay, I’m sorry again,” he said, crossing the room to sit with her on the couch. “I just can’t help it.”

“I know what you mean. Do you . . . do you think we can fight her?”

He looked at her carefully before nodding.

“What if we’re wrong?”

“We’re not, I told you.”

“Then let’s get going.”

The music. It came at them through the dead leaves and grass and age-bent trees. The melody varied, wavered, changed.

“Maybe we should put cotton in our ears or something.”

“Eric, I’m frightened.”

There was a sliver of a tear in the corner of her eye, and he looked away to avoid seeing it slither down her satin cheek. “Don’t be,” he said. “Just remember that time we put the snake in Mrs Green’s desk.”

“That was dumb.”

“It was funny, remember?” He turned back, insistent, a hand reaching to grab her shoulder before it pulled away. “It was funny,” he repeated slowly, and took a breath to laugh.

“Sort of,” she said, hinting a smile, “but not as much as the picnic we went on with the Potters. Remember how you kept falling on your fat face in that sack race thing? I thought you were going to start digging holes with your nose.”

The music, searching for crevices in their conversation, cracks in their memories.

Eric giggled, clamped a hand over his mouth, then leaned back and filled the room with high-pitched laughter.

“You –” he said, gulping for air, “you on that stupid pony. You should have seen your face when the saddle fell off.”

Caren winced. “Well, it hurt, dope. Hey, remember the Christmas your father made me that doll? And your mother made all her clothes? I still have it, you know. Of course, I’m too old to play with it, but I like to look at it now and then.”

“Good,” Eric said, jumping onto the couch to look out the window. “Hey,” he shouted, “what about the time we found the bird in the yard.”

“Robin.”

“Right. Remember how we used the eyedropper to feed it until it learned to fly?”

“A cat could have eaten it,” Caren said, shuddering.

“Yeah, but we saved it!”

Eric clambered to the floor and improvised an impatient dance while he slapped at his sides to jog loose more memories, anything at all he could throw at the music.

“Wait a minute,” Caren said. “What about the time we went to the beach that summer? You won me an elephant at the stand.”

He stopped, almost choking in his desperation to find more words. “Nothing to it,” he said finally. “Them bottles is easy to knock down.”

Her hands stopped and she pushed herself away from the keyboard. Carefully, with the measured steps of the practiced blind, she crossed the bare floor to the old chest and opened it. With deliberate care she pulled out what was once a large black square of satin. It was covered, now, except for one small corner, with colors that danced, sang in harmony, and laughed; never blending capturing light, repelling a tear.