Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror
“Uh, that’s okay,” Nina said, lifting up the phone to call the Calder Mall radio station again, and so end her conversation with Angela. “I’ll grab a ride with Katie from the bank, or someone.”
What did she want to go to a stupid party at Lauren’s for, anyway? None of those people wanted to hang out with her anymore, now that she was broke. It was better for Angela to learn now that Lauren and those guys—the Ryan Calders of the world—would only be your friend when you were on top of the world. As soon as you hit bottom, like Nina had, thanks to her mom, it was See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.
It was as she was waiting for Jerry to pick up that Nina noticed something curious happening across the atrium. A tall man in a long black trench coat had come striding down the concourse, heading with decided purpose toward the bank, the gates of which Rick hadn’t fully pulled down. Something was wrong with his face. At first Nina couldn’t figure out what it was.
Then, a second later, she figured it out. He was wearing a mask. A terrible, grinning clown mask. It was as she realized this that the tall man ducked beneath the half-lowered gate in front of the Eastport Bank. When Rick, the security guard, stepped forward to say something to him, the man pulled something long and skinny from the depths of the black leather trench coat and pointed it at him.
That’s when Rick put his hands in the air.
“Oh,” Nina cried, a physical shock seeming to jolt through her, not unlike the time she accidentally stuck her finger in the electrical socket while plugging in the toaster. “Oh, my God.”
“This is Jerry,” Jerry said, answering the phone she still held to her ear.
“Oh, my God, Jerry,” Nina said, into the phone. “He’s robbing the bank. He—someone’s robbing the mall branch of Eastport Bank.”
“Who is this?” Jerry asked. “Nina? Is that you?”
“It’s me,” Nina said. Her lips felt numb. She watched as the man with the gun made Rick lie down on the bank floor. “Call nine-one-one. Someone’s robbing the bank.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jerry wanted to know. “Is this a joke because I wouldn’t play that Night Hunter song?”
“No, it’s not a joke,” Nina cried, even as Angela, who’d seen what was going on, had dived behind the counter, and was tugging on Nina’s arm to do the same. “It’s happening right now. There’s a man in a clown mask wearing a black leather trench coat robbing the bank. He has a gun. Call nine-one-one right now! Oh, never mind, I’ll do it—”
Slamming the phone down into its cradle, Nina picked it back up and dialed, then handed the phone to Angela, crouched behind the register.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Angela demanded, staring at the phone as if it were a snake about to bite her.
“I’m going out there to see what I can do to help,” Nina said. “Tell nine-one-one what’s going on.”
“Are you insane?” Angela demanded as Nina slipped out from behind the counter. “It’s him! It’s the Night Hunter!”
“No, it isn’t,” Nina said, instantly incensed. “The Night Hunter helps people. He doesn’t rob them.”
“But they say he wears a mask! And that guy—”
“Night Hunter wears a mask so he won’t be recognized and punished for being a vigilante,” Nina snapped. Of all the people she could have been forced to work with, why did it have to be Angela Overton, the stupidest girl on the planet? “And it’s a black mask, not a clown mask. Now stay here.”
“Wh-where are you going?” Angela whispered. “What are you going to do? You can’t do anything to help those people! You’re not the Night Hunter!”
Nina wished she were. She wished she were the Night Hunter. She’d stop the man holding up the bank. She’d force her mother to get her college money back from the boyfriend she’d given it to. She’d also have a cool motorcycle to ride around on. The first thing she’d do as the Night Hunter would be to quit working at Overton’s.
“I’m not the Night Hunter,” she said. “But I can try to make sure that man doesn’t hurt anyone.” The Night Hunter did it. Why couldn’t she? Her heart was pounding in her chest. How she was going to do this, she had no idea. “Just talk to the operator. Have they picked up?”
“You’re crazy,” Angela said, shaking her head, her eyes glittering. “Just stay here. You can’t leave me alone! I . . . I’ll tell my mother!”
Through the phone, Nina could hear a voice asking, “Ma’am? Are you there? Ma’am, this is nine-one-one, how can I help you?”
“Tell them what’s going on,” Nina said, nodding to the phone Angela still clutched in her hands. “I have to go see what I can do to help. You’ll be all right here. Just tell the police to hurry.”
“Don’t leave me!” Angela wailed.
But Nina was already walking out of the store and heading around the waterfall and pool toward the bank. It was odd listening to the music playing over the mall’s sound system—the light rock Jerry always played when it was late. He’d only put on the good stuff now, when the stores had begun closing, and customers were starting to head home—tonight, while watching a man in a trench coat and clown mask forcing the bank tellers to come out from their booths.
That’s Katie, Nina thought as she saw the man in the mask grab one teller who hadn’t moved quickly enough and push her roughly to the floor. Katie just had a baby last spring.
Shoppers were coming toward her end of the mall. And they had kids. Nina knew she had to do something. She had to do something to warn people away from this end of the mall. That’s what the Night Hunter would do. He’d try to help. Why hadn’t Jerry—stupid Jerry—made an announcement over the sound system? Had he even bothered calling the police?
Then, as she glanced around in desperation, she saw it. Of course. The fire alarm on the wall by the courtesy telephone. This wasn’t a fire. But the system would go off mall-wide, and shoppers would know to evacuate. She’d stay put and warn them not to use this exit. . . .
Nina ran for the alarm and pulled it. A split second later, the alarm was sounding in earsplitting whoops, accompanied by flashing strobe lights for the hearing impaired. The shoppers who’d been approaching her end of the mall stopped in their tracks. Waving her arms, she signaled for them to go back the way they’d come. They turned and did so, confused, but obedient.
It was working! She’d done it! She could barely hear herself think, but she’d done it. The bank robber wasn’t bound to appreciate it very much, but who cared what he thought? She’d saved innocent people from getting caught up in an armed bank heist. Just like the Night Hunter would have done!
She glanced at Overton’s to see what Angela was doing, but there was no sign of her. Still hiding behind the register counter. Well, that was all right, as long as she’d let emergency services know what was going on. Inside Eastport Bank, everyone was lying on the floor with their hands over their heads. They all appeared to be breathing. Nina hadn’t heard any gunshots. There was no sign of the robber. Nina assumed he was wherever the money was, stuffing it into his pockets or whatever bags he’d brought along. As long as help came soon, she didn’t—
That’s when the arm—rock hard, like iron—clamped around her throat, and she was dragged backward until she was pressed up against a long, muscular body. Something small and circular was held against her temple.
This, Nina realized, just wasn’t her day.
“Are you the one who set off that damned alarm?” a hoarse voice rasped close beside her ear.
Nina flinched. She didn’t need to turn her head to know who had grabbed hold of her. She could see a bit of red clown fluff sticking out past the mask from the corner of one eye. Just like she could see the gun he was pressing to her head.
“Yes,” she managed to croak. It was hard to talk with the man in the trench coat’s arm pressing so tightly against her throat. She’d instinctively thrown up both hands in order to try to pull that arm away, but it was no use. It was like trying to move a two-ton boulder. “You’d better get out of h
ere. The police are on their way.”
She hoped.
“Not without a hostage,” Clown Mask hissed. It was kind of hard to hear him over the whooping of the fire alarm. But his mouth was so close to her ear, she could feel his hot breath singeing her skin.
“You really don’t want to take me as your hostage,” Nina advised him. “I’d make a terrible hostage.”
“Yeah?” Clown Mask sounded amused. “Who do you suggest I take instead? One of your friends from inside the bank?”
Nina shook her head, her heart pounding. Not Katie. She had that new baby. And not Rick, either. He had a heart condition and kids at home, too.
“What about your friend in the dress shop there, huh?” Clown Mask breathed. He was pushing her as he spoke . . . pushing her down the concourse, past Overton’s, where she could see the top of Angela’s head, peeking out over the counter, the telephone still clutched to one ear. “Should we go in there and swap you for her? Would you like that better, huh?”
“No,” Nina said, sullenly. Whatever Clown Mask had planned for her—and Nina didn’t kid herself that it was going to be anything too pleasant—Angela wouldn’t last a minute. And if she herself happened to live through it—and Nina wasn’t betting she was going to—it would scar her way less than it would Angela.
Because Angela—whose loving parents only made her work this single weekend shift at their shop to teach her responsibility—had never known hardship in her life. Except the hardship of having not been invited to Lauren van der Waals’s party.
Nina hoped Angela would have a very nice time there without her.
“I didn’t think so,” Clown Mask said, with a low sound in his throat that Nina could only assume was a chuckle. He continued to push her along past the waterfall, toward the side exits.
They burst through the twin doors together, and Nina was greeted with a blast of cold night air in her face—air that was only going to get colder since she didn’t have a coat on—and the welcome relief of no more fire alarm sound.
She was also greeted by the wail of a police siren as a squad car skidded to a halt in the parking lot in front of them. Someone had gotten through to emergency services, at least.
Clown Mask, who’d loosened his grip on her throat only slightly, now tightened it. A young police officer flung himself out from behind the wheel and, using the car as a shield, pointed his service revolver at them.
“Stay where you are,” he yelled, his voice strangely soft after the loudness of the alarm inside. “Put down your weapon, nice and slow.”
“I have a better idea,” Clown Mask said to the police officer. “You put down your weapon, or I’ll blow a hole in this girl’s head. How about that?”
The police officer, who looked barely old enough to have graduated from high school, let alone the academy, seemed confused. Nina could hear other sirens in the distance, but it sounded like it would be a while before they got anywhere close.
“That’s what I thought,” Clown Mask said, sounding smug. “Now, this young lady and I are going to walk over to my car, real slow, and you’re going to let us. Or like I said, I’ll splatter her brains all over the front doors of Calder Mall. And I don’t think your chief would like it if I did that. Do you?”
The cop said nothing. He continued to keep his gun pointed at them, however, as Clown Mask dragged her toward his getaway car, a beat-up four-door sedan parked illegally along the curb right next to where they’d been standing. If there’d actually been a cop patrolling the mall’s parking lot, he’d have gotten a ticket and been towed.
But all the cops were busy on the far side of town, trying to stop real crimes—the kind of crimes the Night Hunter had finally gotten so sick of reading about in the paper, he’d put on a mask and decided to go and fight them himself.
And now look what was happening over at the mall.
“Listen,” Nina said in a low voice to her captor. “Let me go now. He won’t shoot you. He’s too scared. And you’ll make better time without me.”
“Nice try, sweetie,” Clown Mask said with a chuckle. “Now get in the car.”
Nina knew the last thing she ought to do was get inside that car.
But from the way she’d seen him push Katie down back in the bank, she also knew that he wasn’t going to be shy about using that gun . . . even with a cop standing a few dozen yards away.
She let him shove her into the passenger seat of the sedan. It’s all right, she told herself. I’ll jump out when we slow down to take a corner.
It would hurt, but it would be better than whatever waited for her at the end of this.
Then Clown Mask was in the driver’s seat, one hand on the wheel while the other continued to point the gun at her head. As they took off, his tires spun in the bits of sand left over from a recent snowfall. Nina barely had time to buckle her seat belt before he accelerated. He laughed bitterly at this, as if to say she had more important things to worry about than being in a car crash, which she supposed was true.
Then, with a spray of sand and gravel, the sedan careened from the parking lot, heading down 95 and away from the mall, the lights of which grew faint in the distance. Nina held on to her seat belt, conscious of the gun still pointed to her temple. Not yet, she told herself. Soon. He has to slow down sometime. And then she’d jump. And run for all she was worth.
“You’re never going to make it,” she told Clown Mask as he swerved to merge into evening traffic. She was sure no one suspected that they were slowing down for a psychotic bank robber.
Clown Mask just chuckled. “In this town? With these cops? Watch me.”
He had a point. Eastport’s police department was stretched to the limit, with barely enough men and women to cover routine patrols, let alone any additional emergencies that might occur. The city was bankrupt, and the mayor, in his infinite wisdom, had cut back on city workers first. The police department had been the first to see major layoffs.
“I’ll be home counting my payoff before Jeopardy!” Clown Mask said, with a sneer.
“And what about me?” Nina asked, in a tight voice. She knew she wasn’t going to like his answer. Still, she was hoping he’d lie to her.
He didn’t.
“You?” He used the mouth of the pistol to push back some of her dark hair so he could get a better look at her face. “You, I’m starting to like.”
Oh, no, thought Nina. They were going eighty miles an hour down the fast lane. There was no way she could jump out at this speed and survive. And death, to Nina, did not seem preferable to the alternative at this point. There still might be opportunities for escape when they got to his house, or wherever they were going. There was still hope. He liked her—or thought she was pretty, or whatever. She could get out of this, if she played her cards right. She could still get out of this.
There was still a chance she might live.
“What the hell?” Clown Mask asked a second later, abruptly removing the gun from her hair and glancing urgently into the rearview mirror.
Nina looked back but couldn’t see what was alarming him. She’d hoped to see the red glare of police sirens, but instead she saw only the single headlight of a motorcycle. True, it seemed to be tailgating them. But that wasn’t anything to get upset about.
Then she remembered:
He rides alone/Just a rolling stone.
The Night Hunter was rumored to ride a motorcycle sometimes. Other times—at least according to eyewitnesses, who swore they weren’t making it up—he drove some kind of armored vehicle, like an SUV tank.
But it was too much to hope that the Night Hunter had somehow managed to find them—out of all the cars on the interstate—when even the cops hadn’t been able to. Nina swallowed down the sudden hope that had swelled inside her. She had experienced far too much disappointment in recent months to allow her spirits to be crushed that way again. There was only one person in this life, she knew, who you could count on . . . one. And that was yourself. If she was going to get
out of this, she would have to do it on her own.
“This guy’s riding my ass,” Clown Mask muttered, switching lanes abruptly.
But Nina could tell by the high beam in the rearview mirror and the loud roar behind them that the move had done no good.
“What’s with this guy?” Clown Mask demanded, and switched lanes again.
The motorcycle stayed right behind him, the roar from its engine seeming to envelop them, reverberating in Nina’s chest.
Nina couldn’t help it. She began to feel hopeful. It was an emotion she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in a long, long time.
“Maybe,” she said, “it’s the Night Hunter.”
“What?” Clown Mask asked distractedly as he tried to make his way back to the passing lane.
“You know,” Nina said. “The Night Hunter. That vigilante who’s been making citizen’s arrests of criminals the cops haven’t been able—or had time—to arrest. He left that crime boss Vincent Gamboni tied up in his own car by the docks last week, along with a boatload of seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stolen goods. You’re kind of small potatoes,” Nina added, “compared to him. But then, you are adding kidnapping to grand larceny, which are both felonies.”
“Shut the hell up,” Clown Mask said, pushing a button to bring the driver’s side window down.
“I’m just saying,” Nina said, “a known drug dealer who’s been wanted for murder and aggravated assault and on the run for three years? The Night Hunter found him and brought him in with no shots fired. He’s that good. And you think you’re going to get away? In your little clown mask?” Nina laughed. She couldn’t help it.
Which was when Clown Mask leaned out the driver’s side window and fired a shot behind them, in the direction of the relentlessly pursuing motorcycle.
The sound of the report was so loud that Nina screamed and flung both hands over her ears.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked. “Are you trying to get us both killed?”