The Collection

start thinking about it. It takes up more and more of your thoughts. You want to go to it.' He looked at Jan. 'Am I right?'

She nodded.

His gaze turned to me. 'You're going to have to go.'

There was a finality about the words and a determination in the way he said them which scared me. 'I thought you wanted us to stay away,' I said. My voice sounded high, cracked, uncertain.

'Yeah,' he said. 'I did. But once it gets ahold of you, it never lets go.' His voice became softer. 'You have to go there.'

I wanted to argue, to tell him off, to deny his words, but I couldn't. I knew, deep down, that he was right. I guess I'd known from the beginning.

He looked out the door. 'Go after the rain stops,' he said. 'It's safe after the rain.'

But his eyes were troubled.

We walked across the wet ground, our shoes sometimes slipping in the mud, sometimes getting caught in it. The midsummer dust had been washed from the grasses, from the plants, from the trees, and everything appeared excep­tionally, unnaturally green. Overhead, the sky was a dark, solid gray broken by occasional rifts of clear, pure blue.

We walked forward, not looking back though we knew my grandpa stood on the porch of the house, watching. I don't know how Jan felt, but I was surprised to find that I was not scared. Not scared at all. I was not even apprehen­sive. I felt only a strange sort of disassociation; it was as if this was happening to someone else, and I was only an ob­server, a disinterested third party.

We passed through the wall of grasses and emerged in the clearing, just as I had in my dream. And the clearing, the bathhouse, and the other small shacks looked exactly as they had in the dream.

I was conscious of the fact that my reactions were re­playing themselves along with the scene. I knew exactly what the bathhouse would look like, yet once again I was surprised by its smallness.

Jan grabbed my hand, as if for support. 'Let's go in,' she said. Her voice sounded strange, echoing, as though it was coming from far away.

But the spell dissolved as soon as we stepped through the doorway. I was again myself, and, for the first time in my life, I felt fear. Real fear.

Sheer and utter terror.

The room was covered with millions of flies. Literally millions.

Perhaps billions.

They covered every available space—walls, floor, and ceiling—giving the entire inside of the room a moving, shifting, black appearance. They rippled across the floor in waves and dripped from the ceiling in grotesque liquid sta­lactites, all shapes, sizes, and varieties. The noise was in­credible—an absurdly loud sort of buzzing or humming which had definite tones and cadences. It sounded almost like a language.

Almost, but not quite.

Before I could say anything, Jan had stepped forward into the room, her right foot sinking several inches into the sea of squirming flies. But the tiny creatures did not climb up her leg. Indeed, they seemed not to notice her at all. It was as if she had stepped into a pool of black, stagnant water. 'Come on,' she said.

Somehow I followed her, my leg muscles propelling me forward against the protests of my wildly screaming brain. My foot, too, sunk into the flies. They felt soft, rubbery, slip­pery.

We walked to the middle of the room, moving slowly, then stopped. Here, there was a clearing on the floor, a space, and we could see the vague form of an unfinished clay sculpture lying on the ground. It was maybe six feet long and three feet wide, with no definite shape or features. Then the flies rippled over it in a tide, thousands of tiny fly-legs scraping against the soft clay. The wave passed and now there was more of a shape: the sculpture was definitely that of a man. Somehow, via a greater power or some col­lective mind of their own, the flies were metamorphosing this clay into a human figure. Each of their actions and movements, each motion of their miniscule feet, was pur­posefully ordered, planned out. Each step was fraught with symbolism.

Another wave passed.

And it was my grandpa.

Down to the drooping jowls, the backwardly combed wisps of hair, and the slightly askew gimp leg.

He was stretched out on the floor, his hands grasping for something that wasn't there, his eyes rolled upward into his skull. There was a look of intense, searing pain on his face.

I knew what it meant. 'No!' I screamed, running out of the bathhouse and across the clearing. I did not look to see if Jan was following me or not. At that moment, I didn't care.

Behind me, the buzzing lowered into a soft whisper. As though the flies were quietly laughing.

I flew through the tall grasses and ran past the barn. The sky now was almost clear, and the day was beginning to heat up. Steam rose from the plants as I ran past them or hopped over them. I was too late, and I knew I was too late, but I kept running anyway, ignoring the flashes of pain ripping through my chest, ignoring the ragged rebellion of my tired lungs.

I bounded up the porch steps to the kitchen and flung open the screen door.

He was lying on the floor next to his chair, dead, his body in the same position as that of the sculpture.

I sat down next to him on the floor, taking his hand in mine. His face was not the same as that of the sculpture. It did not look terrified or in pain. But neither did it look pleased. Death had not been a hideous shock or a welcome relief. He was neither miserable nor content. He was only dead. His face was yellowish, drained of color, and he looked very slight and very small, almost like a child.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry, but I could not. I tried looking at his face, his face that I had loved, and thinking of our last conversation together. I tried thinking of the times we'd gone fishing. I tried remembering the presents he'd bought me as a youth. But it was no good. I could not make the tears come no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I wanted them to flow.

I just sat there staring at his lifeless body.

Jan burst through the door, her face red and sweating, out of breath. She looked at my grandpa's body on the floor and her face went from red to white. A look of fear, of horror, crossed her features. 'My G-God ...' she stammered, her hands starting to twitch. 'Oh my God ...'

I felt calm for some reason, perfectly in control, and I stood up and helped her into a chair. I got her a glass of water, which she drank with shaking hands. 'Sit here,' I said. 'Don't move. I'll be right back.'

I started to walk into the living room, then stopped as the scrap of paper caught my eye. I bent down next to my grandpa and picked it up. I thought for a minute, then crum­pled up the paper without even glancing at the poem he'd written.

I went to call an ambulance.

Credits

'The Sanctuary' (originally published in Cemetery Dance,

June 1989) 'The Woods Be Dark' (originally published in Touch Wood:

Narrow Houses, Vol II, 1994) 'The Phonebook Man' (originally published in Eldritch

Tales #27, 1992)

'Estoppel' (originally published in 2 AM, Spring 1988) 'The Washingtonians' (originally published in Cemetery

Dance, Fall 1992) 'Life With Father' (originally published in Going Postal,

1998)

'Bob' (unpublished)

'Bumblebee' (originally published in Cold Blood, 1991) 'Lethe Dreams' (originally published in Night Cry, Spring

1987) 'Paperwork' (originally published in The Horror Show,

Winter 1988) 'The Idol' (originally published in Twisted, Summer/Fall

1991) 'Skin' (originally published in The Horror Show, Winter

1988)

'The Man in the Passenger Seat' (originally published in