He stopped in confusion, and the hands nudged him forward again. Their owner was playing a game with him, he realized, mocking his frantic efforts to reach the bedroom yet at the same time seductively urging him to try even harder. And the whisperings made words, or seemed to. “Come Norman . . . sweet Norman . . . come come come . . .”
In the upstairs hall, too, the swirling mist challenged him, deepening into a moving mass that hid the door of the room. But he needed no compass to find that door. Gasping and cursing—“Damn you, leave me alone! Get out of my way!” He struggled to it and found it open as Linda and he had left it. Hands outthrust, he groped his way over the threshold.
The alien presence here was stronger. The sense of being confronted by some unseen creature was all but overwhelming. Yet the assault upon him was less violent now that he had. reached the room. The hands groping for him in the eerie darkness were even gentle, caressing. They clung with a velvet softness that was strangely pleasurable, and there was something voluptuously female about them, even to a faint but pervasive female odor.
An odor, not a perfume. A body scent, drug-like in its effect upon his senses. Bewildered, he ceased his struggle for a moment to see what would happen. The whispering became an invitation, a promise of incredible delights. But he allowed himself only a moment of listening and then, shouting Linda’s name, hurled himself at the bed again. This time he was able to reach it.
But she was not now sitting there staring into that secret world of hers, as he had expected. The bed was empty and the seductive voice in the darkness softly laughed at his dismay. “Come Norman . . . sweet Norman . . . come come come . . .”
He felt himself taken from behind by the shoulders, turned and ever so gently pushed. He fell floating onto the old mattress, half-heartedly thrusting up his arms to keep the advancing shadow-form from possessing him. But it flowed down over him, onto him, into him, despite his feeble resistance, and the female smell tantalized his senses again, destroying his will to resist.
As he ceased struggling he heard a sound of rusty hinges creaking in that part of the room’s dimness where the door was, and then a soft thud. The door had been closed. But he did not cry out. He felt no alarm. It was good to be here on the bed, luxuriating in this sensuous, caressing softness. As he became quiescent it flowed over him with unrestrained indulgence, touching and stroking him to heights of ecstasy.
Now the unseen hands, having opened his shirt, slowly and seductively glided down his body to his belt . . .
He heard a new sound then. For a moment it bewildered him because, though coming through the ancient wall behind him, from, the adjoining bedroom, it placed him at once in his own bedroom at home. Linda and he had joked about it often, as true lovers could—the explosive little syllables to which she always gave voice when making love.
So she was content, too. Good. Everything was straightforward and aboveboard, then. After all, as that fellow at the club had suggested, mate-swapping was an in thing in this year of our Lord 1975 . . . wasn’t it? All kinds of people did it.
He must buy this house, as Linda had insisted. Of course. She was absolutely right. With a sigh of happiness he closed his eyes and relaxed, no longer made reluctant by a feeling of guilt.
But—something was wrong. Distinctly, now, he felt not two hands caressing him, but more. And were they hands? They suddenly seemed cold, clammy, frighteningly eager.
Opening his eyes, he was startled to find that the misty darkness had dissolved and he could see. Perhaps the seeing came with total surrender, or with the final abandonment of his guilt feeling. He lay on his back, naked, with his nameless partner half beside him, half on him. He saw her scaly, misshapen breasts overflowing his chest and her monstrous, demonic face swaying in space above his own. And as he screamed, he saw that she did have more than two hands: she had a whole writhing mass of them at the ends of long, searching tentacles.
The last thing he saw before his scream became that of a madman was a row of three others like her squatting by the wall, their tentacles restlessly reaching toward him as they impatiently awaited their turn.
WHITE MOON RISING
by Dennis Etchison
Dennis Etchison is a young Californian whose chilling “Soft Wall” was featured in Whispers #4 and subsequently chosen for inclusion in Gahan Wilson’s First World Fantasy Awards anthology. Dennis’s stories often deal with the psychology of fear, and this new tale depicts a college campus, where a chilling experiment in terror and death slowly unfolds.
It went like this: in her room at the top of the stairs in the empty sorority house she lay warm and rumpled in her bed, trying hard to sleep some more. It was now near noon and the light streaming through the open curtains had forced her awake again. She did not seem to care if she ever got up; she had no classes, not for a week. Still she could not make herself relax. The late morning flashed a granular red through her eyelids. Then she heard the front door down below open and close, the click echoing through the abandoned house like a garbage can dropped in an alley at dawn. Probably it was one of the few remaining girls returning from an overnight date or to pick up books before leaving for vacation. Lissa hoped so. Now she could hear footsteps treading up the stairs. She tried to imagine who it was. The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and stopped. Firmly, deliberately the footfalls turned and came down the hall, toward her room. Maybe it was Sharon. She wanted it to be Sharon. She kept her eyes tightly closed. The shoes thumped deep into the rug; the loose board in the middle of the hall creaked. Finally whoever it was reached her room—there, just on the other side of the door. Lissa felt ice crystals forming in her blood. She waited for the knock, for the clearing of a familiar throat, for the sound of her own name to come muffled through the door. But there was no sound. Still she waited. She held a breath. The blood pulsed coldly in her ears like a drum beaten underwater. She wanted to speak out. Then the sound of a hand on the loose doorknob. And the almost imperceptible wingbeat of the door gliding open.
I know, she thought, I’ll lie perfectly still, I won’t let anything move in my body and I’ll be safe, whoever it is won’t see me and will go away. Yes, she thought, that’s what I will have to do. Now she clearly felt a presence next to her bed. She was sure that someone was standing there in the doorway to her right, a hand probably still on the knob. She had not heard it rattle a second time. Time passed. She counted her heartbeats. At last she knew she could hold her breath no longer. She would have to do something very brave. With a rush that screamed adrenalin into her body she sat bolt upright, at the same instant snapping her head to the right and unsticking her eyes with a pop. There was no one there. The door was still closed and locked. The room was empty. Suddenly she realized that her kidneys were throbbing in dull pain. She knew what that was. It was fear.
The sunlight washed in through the window.
“Oh, Joe,” said his wife, “it make me sick, just physically ill. And I know it gets to you too.”
Joe Mallory cleaned up the steak and eggs on his plate with a last swipe, then hesitated and let his fork mark a slow pattern through the smear of yolk that remained.