Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror

  Irving stared at him liked he’d just fallen out of the sky. “College? What are you talking about, college?”

  “I’m going to college. Princeton. What’s so frickin’ bizarre about that?”

  “You make me sad, kid. What’s Princeton gonna do for you? Teach you to be some kind of stuck-up jerk in a gray suit, is what.” He looked at the stopwatch. “Twooh-five.”

  “Make the call! God!”

  Irving pulled out his phone, hit the speed dial button. “Yes, hi, security?” he said, doing a perfect imitation of a woman’s voice. A very sexy woman. “I’m a little embarrassed. This is Miss Tisdale in accounting. I worked late today, and gosh, I’m just terrified of the parking garage at this time of the evening. I swear the other day there was a man lurking down there. Lurking! Yes, lurking.” Irving nodded his head, getting into his little act. “Could you? Oh, I just hate to trouble you. But it would really . . . yes . . . yes. You’re so sweet. I know. I know. You’re so sweet. I’ll meet you at the elevator on the first floor in two minutes. Byyyyeeeee!”

  “Scary,” Marlon said. “You’re way too good at that.”

  “At least I’m not going to Princeton. Jesus H.—couldn’t you at least go to Pitt, Ohio State, Michigan, someplace with a football team?”

  “Princeton has a football team!”

  “Pffff!” Irving said, waving his hand dismissively. “Forty-eight seconds.”

  Marlon kept working the dial. If the Tisdale had worked and both the security guys went to the elevator on one, it would buy them five or ten minutes. If not . . .

  He knew he was close. In the end safecracking came down to mathematics. You turned the dial at a certain rate, you had to hit the number after a certain amount of time.

  Marlon had a sinking feeling. Maybe he was just never going to get this safe open. He should have been at Olive Garden opening presents.

  It used to be that every birthday his mom and dad would tell the story about the day he was born. They’d go back and forth, interrupting each other in their enthusiasm for the story—all about how it had been a beautiful fall day, the crisp air, the leaves turning, all this junk, and how her water broke in the middle of a job and how she and Dad had to go racing to the hospital with all the loot in the trunk of the car. He was doing ninety right through the middle of town when a cop had pulled them over for speeding. But then, when Marlon’s dad had told the cop that his wife was having a baby, the cop put on his siren and led them right to the hospital. If the guy had only known they had a hundred and ten thousand bucks’ worth of stolen antique silver in the trunk! They’d gotten to the hospital at 9:03 on the dot, Marlon’s hairy little head popping out right there in the lobby of the hospital.

  Well, apparently the story wasn’t interesting to Mom and Dad anymore.

  They had totally, totally forgotten. Not only was there no story—there was no card, no Olive Garden, no present at the breakfast table. Nada. Bubkes.

  It sucked.

  “Fifteen seconds,” Irving said. “I’m clearing out of here.”

  “I’m almost there. I can feel it.”

  “Hey, kid, you can afford to get popped. You’ll just go to juvie. Me, this is my third strike.”

  Marlon looked at his watch. “Five more minutes and I’m legal,” he said.

  “Huh?” Irving’s eyebrows went up. “Hold on, you saying today’s your—”

  “Yeah, today’s my—”

  Bing!

  He glanced up. It was the sound of the elevator reaching their floor.

  Dammit! His college tuition! It was right there. A normal life was right there on the other side of that safe, not six inches from his fingers. He was so close! He was sure he’d have it in seconds.

  He hesitated. His heart was banging away in his chest and his limbs were trembling. His finger twitched.

  And that tiny tremor was enough.

  The little gauge on the scope flickered. The last tumbler had dropped!

  Marlon grinned. “Got it!” he said triumphantly.

  As he grabbed the handle to pull open the safe, he could hear the sound of the elevator doors opening. Frantically, he yanked at the handle. The door must have weighed three hundred pounds. It moved slowly, slowly on its oiled hinges.

  The elevators were about fifty yards from the executive offices. There was still a distant chance they could get away.

  “Light!” Marlon hissed.

  Irving hesitated, then flicked on his flashlight, directing it at the safe. Marlon kept pulling on the handle, the door yawning slowly open.

  The footsteps were growing closer and closer and closer.

  He could almost taste it now. Inside the safe was a stack of very specialized computer chips, each one of them worth twenty-four thousand bucks on the black market. His cut of the take would pay for four years of Princeton. He wouldn’t have to crack another safe, cut another fence, nitro another lock—nothing.

  And then he could have a normal life. Be an accountant or a salesman or a middle manager at a life insurance company. He could be anything!

  The door swung all the way open.

  The footsteps halted. Keys jingled. He glanced over, saw the shadow underneath the door.

  He looked back at the safe.

  And a wave of sadness and horror swept through him. Except for a manila folder that lay at the bottom like some neglected piece of trash, it was utterly and completely empty.

  All this for nothing!

  Outside, the key slid into the lock. Marlon shook his head. It was all over.

  He glanced at his watch.

  He was seventeen now. He had been eligible to serve hard time in the Big House for one minute and thirty-eight seconds.

  He wanted to cry.

  Irving’s light flicked off as the door began to open. Marlon couldn’t even move. He knelt there, staring into the black empty safe. All his hopes and dreams, gone. Normal life, gone. Princeton, gone.

  “Surprise!”

  The lights flicked on.

  Marlon whipped around.

  Suddenly people were coming from everywhere, crowding out of the closets and the cabinets and the executive bathroom.

  “Happy birthday!”

  Marlon fell to his knees.

  His father, grinning like a Cheshire cat, was walking into the room, followed by his mother, who carried a cake with seventeen candles on it.

  Ray-Ray was walking out of the bathroom.

  His friends Jerry and Justin and several members of his father’s crew—they were appearing from everywhere.

  Marlon put his hands over his face. “God, you guys!” he said. “You scared the crap out of me! I can’t believe it. I thought you forgot my birthday.”

  Marlon’s father laughed loudly and gave him a hug.

  “Come on,” his mother said. “You think we’d forget this day?”

  “I don’t know,” Marlon said.

  “I can remember the day you were born like it was yesterday,” she said.

  “We were on a job . . .” his father said.

  “It was a crisp fall day . . .”

  “. . . and the leaves were turning . . .”

  Marlon gratefully let them tell the same old story. The cop who pulled them over, the antique silver in the trunk, the siren, the lobby of the hospital . . . A wave of relief and comfort swept through him.

  “So this was all a setup, huh?” Marlon said. “I opened that safe and it was stone empty. I about had a heart attack.”

  “Empty?” his father said.

  Marlon squinted at him. “Yeah. Nothing there.”

  His father walked over to the safe, reached in, pulled out the folder lying in the bottom. “No, son. It’s not empty.”

  Marlon looked curiously at his father’s face. He was smiling broadly

  “Son, I’ve been saving for years.” His smile faded a little. “You know for a while it made me sad to see that your heart wasn’t in this business. You have such talent! And it hurt me a little to thi
nk that you were going to squander it all. You could have been one of the great ones.” He sighed. “But you know what? You don’t go into crime for the money. You do it because you love it. It’s a calling.” Marlon’s father spread his hands. “Son, I just want you to be happy.”

  He handed Marlon the manila folder he’d just taken out of the safe.

  Marlon looked at it blankly.

  “Open it, son.”

  Marlon opened the folder. Inside was a slim document It said:• PRINCETON UNIVERSITY •

  OFFICE OF FINANCIAL AID

  Prepayment Plan

  “Four years, kid,” Marlon’s father said. “Paid in full.”

  Marlon’s jaw dropped. “You mean this . . .” He made a gesture with his hands, taking in the whole office, the Mosler 37B, the folder, the circle of friends and family.

  “All a setup. Last night when I said I was going down to watch the ponies? I broke in here and planted this document.” He clapped Marlon on the shoulder. “This is it, kid. You’re done. Last job. You’re a citizen now.”

  His father looked at his watch, clapped his hands sharply. “All right, guys, we’ve had our fun. It’s nine fifteen. The security guards will be back in seven minutes. We gotta get out of here.”

  Marlon was beaming. “I can’t believe it. This was so perfect. The safe. The locks. The security guards in the hallway. I bought the whole thing.”

  His father looked at him quizzically. “Security guards? What security guards?”

  “That wasn’t you? In the hallway? Pretending to be security guards?”

  Everyone in the room went silent.

  The footsteps in the hallway and the sirens in the parking lot outside went off at the exact same moment that the burglar alarm began to blare.

  Within seconds the room was full of police officers, screaming and pointing guns. “Everybody down on the ground! Down on the ground, now!”

  It was over in seconds.

  Marlon lay on his stomach, a wave of darkness washing over him as the policeman put a knee in his back and cuffed him.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  Marlon said nothing.

  The cop pulled out his wallet, looked at his driver’s license. “Hey, look at this!” the cop said. “Scumbag here just turned seventeen.”

  Marlon lay motionless. The Princeton University financial aid document lay on the floor near his face. A second cop walked by, laughing. His black boot trampling on the financial aid document, ripping the pages apart, and leaving a black shoe print on the torn paper.

  “Happy birthday, kid!” the cop said, hoisting him to his feet. “Happy birthday!”

  TAGGER

  ▼ JAMES ROLLINS ▼

  With a practiced flip of her wrist, Soo-ling Choi shook the spray can and applied the final trail of red paint against the cement wall of the dark alley. Finished, she took a step back to examine her handiwork, careful not to get any paint on her black silk dress.

  She wasn’t entirely happy with the result. She’d done better. It was the Chinese symbol known as fu, her signature mark. Only sixteen, she continued to be highly critical of herself. She knew she was talented. She’d even been accepted for early enrollment at the L.A. Academy of Design. But this was more important than any scholarship.

  She checked her watch. Auntie Loo would already be at the theater. She scowled at the mark.

  It’ll have to do.

  Reaching out, she touched the center of the Chinese glyph. As usual, she felt the familiar tingling that made her joints burn. The warmth spread up her arm and enveloped her in a dizzying wash. The glyph glowed for a breath, pushing back the dark shadows of the alley.

  Done.

  Before she could break contact with the symbol, an icy-cold pain tore at her wrist like talons. It seared deep, down to the bone. With a gasp, she ripped her arm away and stumbled back.

  Ow . . . what the heck was that?

  She examined her wrist. It was unmarked, but an echo of that cold touch remained. She rubbed her arm, trying to melt the ice away, and studied her work with narrowed eyes.

  On the wall, her bright crimson mark had gone black, darker than the shadows of the alley.

  She continued to massage her wrist, bending it one way, then the other, struggling to figure out what had happened. The symbolic glyph—her “tag” for the past three years—was exactly like the hundreds she had plastered throughout the greater Los Angeles area.

  Did I do something wrong? Did I draw it too fast, too sloppily, make some dreadful mistake?

  Worry grew to an ache in her chest. She considered redrawing it, but she had no more time. The curtain for the ballet would be rising in less than five minutes. Auntie Loo would already be in the family’s private box. With little patience for frivolity, her aunt would be furious if Soo-ling was late again.

  As the pain subsided in her arm, the shadows seemed to drain out of the paint. The crimson richness of the fu symbol returned, as if nothing had happened.

  Whatever the problem had been, it seemed to be gone now. She shoved the spray can into her messenger bag and hurried down the alley toward the waiting limousine.

  She shot one last glance over her shoulder as she reached for the door handle. The symbolic character still shone on the wall like a splash of blood. To most Chinese, it was merely a blessing of good fortune associated with celebrations of the New Year. It represented two hands placing a jar of rice wine on an altar as an offering.

  But for Soo-ling, the painted character of fu was power, a ward of protection wherever she painted it. There would be no robbery at this location tonight; the proprietor of this 7-Eleven would be safe.

  Or so she allowed herself to imagine. It was a small way she honored her dead mother and her ancient superstitions. A way to stay connected to her, to a past that both mother and daughter shared that went back centuries, to villages nestled amid rice paddies, to mornings fragrant with cherry blossoms.

  She cast up a silent prayer to her mother and climbed into the back of the limo. A gust of sea breeze from nearby Huntington Beach wafted inside, tinged with just a hint of salt—and an underlying trace of rot. A shiver shook through her.

  Just fish and algae, she assured herself.

  Behind the wheel, Charles nodded to her. They didn’t need words. He had been with her family for as long as she could remember.

  Wanting a moment of privacy, she raised the glass partition between them and tried to compose herself. Her reflection hovered in the window before her. Her long black hair had been coiled into a precarious pile atop her head, the cascade held at bay by a pair of emerald-capped hairpins. Her eyes matched the pins in color and shine.

  Like a ghost of Mother.

  Over the past few years, Soo-ling could not help but notice that she was slowly growing into her mother’s image, one generation becoming another. An ache of loneliness and loss hollowed her out.

  She went back to that final bedside visit with her mother before the malignant lymphoma stole her away. The hospital room had smelled of bleach and rubbing alcohol, no place for her fragile mother, who believed in herbal tea remedies, the healing power of statues and symbols, and ancient superstitions.

  “This is passed to you, si low chai, my child,” her mother had whispered, sliding a sheet of hospital stationery toward her. “It is our family’s heritage, passed from mothers to daughters for thirteen generations. You are of the thirteenth generation, and this is the thirteenth year of your birth. This number has power.”

  “Mother, rest please. The chemotherapy is very taxing. You need your sleep.”

  Soo-ling had taken the sheet of paper from her mother and turned it over. In a beautiful cursive script, her mother had drawn the Chinese character for good fortune.

  Fu.

  “My little rose, you are now the guardian of the City of Angels,” she said with a mix of pride and sorrow, struggling to breathe each word. “I wish I could have explained earlier. These mysteries can only be revealed after
the first blood of womanhood.”

  “Mother, please . . . rest . . .”

  Her mother continued, her eyes glazed by both memory and drugs. She told stories of prophetic dreams and the power to block curses with the proper stroke of paint on a wall or door. Soo-ling had obediently listened, but she also noted the bleat of the heart monitor, the drip of the IV line, the whisper of a television down the hall.

  What place did all these ancient stories full of ghosts and gods have in the modern world of electrocardiograms, needle biopsies, and insurance forms?

  Finally, a nurse whisked into the room on rubber-soled shoes. “Visiting hours are over, Ms. Choi.”

  Her mother began to protest, but a quick kiss from Soo-ling calmed her. “I’ll be back tomorrow . . . after school.”

  Glad for the excuse, Soo-ling fled the room, relieved to escape not just the stories but the demon named cancer. Still, her mother had called after her. “You must beware the—” But the closing door cut off those last words, silencing her forever.

  That night, her mother had slipped into a coma and died.

  Soo-ling remembered staring down at the hospital stationery clutched in her hands.

  Blessing and luck, she thought. A lot of good it did her mother.

  “We’ve arrived, Ms. Choi,” Charles said, drawing her out of the past as he pulled the limo to the curb in front of the theater in Santa Monica.

  Soo-ling shook herself out of her reverie and slid across the seat. The driver already had the door open. “Thank you, Charles.”

  As she climbed out, an anxious teenager in a rented tuxedo tripped down the steps toward her. “Soo! About time you got here!”

  A smile filled her at the sight of him, but she did not let it reach her face. It was not proper for a Chinese girl to show strong emotions. Like casting her symbol, it was another way to honor her mother, to adhere to tradition in this small way.

  The young man rushed up to her. He stood a head taller than her, gangly in the overlarge tuxedo. His long hair had been pulled back into a ponytail.

  Bobby Tomlinson was her age. He’d been her friend since kindergarten. One of her few. Both misfits growing up, they had banded together. He was a computer geek and film buff, and she was the shy student who never spoke above a whisper. Over time they had grown to share a secret love of tagging. He had introduced her to it when she was eleven, and she was instantly hooked. It became an outlet for rebellion against the world as her mother became sick, a sliver of freedom and joy that helped Soo-ling cope with her overwhelming grief and anger. Over the next years, they ran the streets together, dodging police, struggling to leave their mark on the city in multicolored splashes of paint.