999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [89]
Carole tried to back away, her frantic hands and feet slipping on the floor as she pressed her spine against the wall. She had nowhere to go. She pulled the fallen chair atop her and held it as a shield against the Bernadette-thing. The face that had once belonged to her dearest friend grimaced with contempt as she swung her hand at the chair. It scythed through the spindles, splintering them like match-sticks, sending the carved headpiece flying. A second blow cracked the seat in two. A third and fourth sent the remnants of the chair hurtling to opposite sides of the room.
Carole was helpless now. All she could do was pray.
“Our Father, who art—”
“Too late for that to help you now, Caroler she hissed, spitting her name.
“… hallowed be Thy Name …” Carole said, quaking in terror as undead fingers closed on her throat.
And then the Bernadette-thing froze, listening. Carole heard it too. An insistent tapping. On the window. The creature turned to look, and Carole followed her gaze.
A face was peering through the window.
Carole blinked but it didn’t go away. This was the second floor! How—?
And then a second face appeared, this one upside down, looking in from the top of the window. And then a third, and a fourth, each more bestial than the last. And as each appeared it began to tap its fingers and knuckles on the window glass.
“No!” the Bernadette-thing screamed at them. “You can’t come in! She’s mine! No one touches her but me!”
She turned back to Carole and smiled, showing those teeth that had never fit in Bernadette’s mouth. “They can’t cross a threshold unless invited in by one who lives there. I live here—or at least I did. And I’m not sharing you, Carole.”
She turned again and raked a claw-like hand at the window. “Go A-way! She’s MINE!”
Carole glanced to the left. The bed was only a few feet away. And above it—the blanket-shrouded crucifix. If she could reach it …
She didn’t hesitate. With the mad tapping tattoo from the window echoing around her, Carole gathered her feet beneath her and sprang for the bed. She scrambled across the sheets, one hand outstretched, reaching for the blanket—
A manacle of icy flesh closed around her ankle and roughly dragged her back.
“Oh, no, bitch,” said the hoarse, unaccented voice of the Bernadette-thing. “Don’t even think about it!”
It grabbed two fistfuls of flannel at the back of Carole’s nightgown and hurled her across the room as if she weighed no more than a pillow. The wind whooshed out of Carole as she slammed against the far wall. She heard ribs crack. She fell among the splintered ruins of the chair, pain lancing through her right flank. The room wavered and blurred. But through the roaring in her ears she still heard that insistent tapping on the window.
As her vision cleared she saw the Bernadette-thing’s naked form gesturing again to the creatures at the window, now a mass of salivating mouths and tapping fingers.
“Watch!” she hissed. “Watch me!”
With that, she loosed a long, howling scream and lunged at Carole, arms curved before her, body arcing into a flying leap. The scream, the tapping, the faces at the window, the dear friend who now wanted only to slaughter her—it all was suddenly too much for Carole. She wanted to roll away but couldn’t get her body to move. Her hand found the broken seat of the chair by her hip. Instinctively she pulled it closer. She closed her eyes as she raised it between herself and the horror hurtling toward her through the air.
The impact drove the wood of the seat against Carole’s chest; she groaned as new stabs of pain shot through her ribs. But the Bernadette-thing’s triumphant feeding cry cut off abruptly and devolved into a coughing gurgle.
Suddenly the weight was released from Carole’s chest, and the chair seat with it.
And the tapping at the window stopped.
Carole opened her eyes to see the