holding her coat tight around her neck. 'I must have caught a chill outside, Harry,' she says.
'My Noreen,' The coat makes Harry put his hands lovingly on her shoulders and smile at her in the mirror.
'Oh, Harry,' she sobs happily, and turns to let him hold her.
Deep inside, Harry is screaming, trying to claw his way to the surface and stop the inevitable. But he has lost. The coat has mastered him, and it makes Harry try to gently guide Noreen toward the bed.
'Wait.' She puts the flats of her hands on his chest and stays him.
'Yes, my dear?' The coat makes him smile sweetly at her, though it really wants to pull the long sharp blade from its pocket now and cut her throat from ear to ear as she gazes adoringly up at him.
'I just want to tell you that you've made me the happiest woman in the world.'
'Dear Noreen,' he says, pressing her close to him, unable to wait for the bed, holding her tightly with one hand while the other slides into the pocket of the coat to feel the smooth cool handle of the scalpel at the same moment he feels the deep cold cut of a blade into the back of his neck, the cold rush of air striking hot blood.
He staggers back away from her as she brings her scalpel neatly around to find the jugular. A bright wash of blood lifts out of Harry's open neck. He feels himself falling, then feels the vague thumping softness of the bed against his back. He hears from far off his own gurgling screams and, in his dimming vision, he sees the ceiling, then the silhouette of Noreen's form above him, raising the knife again to bring it down and...
She works on him leisurely, the door to her room is locked tight, the long night ahead of her, a butcher's instinct guiding her expertly. She is better than Harry was, tidier, and the strong dark green plastic bags she scatters around, as she learned with the first two, serve her well with packing and disposal later on.
By the time the sun is climbing tentatively behind the drawn shades of her calico-curtained windows, she is finished, the room cleaned, the long scalpel glinting, the bags dropped into the disposal chute in the hallway, not to be discovered till they are hauled to the dump out beyond the whorehouses on the boardwalk.
It is chilly in the room, she really must get Victor to send up more heat to the family quarters. She shivers and hugs her coat around her as she puts the scalpel back into its long pocket.
She yawns, stretches, looking at the growing brightness of day on the window shade.
It is time to sleep.
She lifts the quilted coverlet of her bed, ignoring the pale dried red stains on it, and slides beneath.
As she lays staring at the ceiling for a moment before sleep, she lets Noreen come up from below. Shock has quieted her somewhat, and the crying that has broken through periodically will not be repeated. She is beaten. Her thoughts are revolving nightmares now, centering on the box she found by the service entrance to the SeaHarp four days ago,
Noreen begins to scream, and the coat, tired and longing for its own dreams, pushes her back down to the depths.
The coat makes her sleep then, thinking of the coming night, and remembering with pleasure its own thoughts while cutting the long bloody woolen strips from Harry's body,
The Haunting of Y-12
It was business time for the Genial Hauntings Club. Seated after dinner in the well- polished leather chairs of the club's smoking room, pulled up before a glowing fire which threw dark, warm shadows across the walls and ceiling, with brandy glasses and lit cigar or pipes, the members called on the stranger to tell his story. This, of course, was tradition at the GHC, for this was the one time during the year, on the Eve of Christmas (or, Dickens's Spirits' Eve, as it was whimsically called at the club), when a new member might earn admission. Not that admission was so difficult to earn, for the nominee, sponsored by one of the present members (in this case Porutto, a small, olive-skinned fellow of indistinct nationality with glasses and cool brown eyes, an adventurer by trade who was in the habit of tapping his pipe thoughtfully against his palm), need only tell a story. And the story need only be a true one, a story of ghosts—not a tall order for admission to an establishment known as the Genial Hauntings Club; but perhaps yes,
The members settled themselves in—Thomas, the painter; Maye and Podwin, the writers of somewhat Mutt-and-Jeff-esque proportions who had co-written many popular fictions, mostly in the science and fantasy categories; Hewetson, butler of the club (an exalted position, akin to secretary); Petrone, the social scientist; Jenick, the light-bearded editor and wit; Ballestaire, the actor; and the others; even Michele, the somewhat fiery- tempered world traveler—and the stranger began his tale.
'Well,' he said, drawing himself up in his chair and taking a last leisurely puff on his cigar, 'my story begins with a computer.' He was a young man of short-medium height, working his way toward stocky, with a florid mustache and tight, shiny eyes behind his rimless glasses; there was an air of nervous certainty about him, as if he knew what he was about but hadn't quite discovered how to make others believe it yet.
'A haunted computer,' he continued, pausing a moment for effect. And then drawing himself up once again with a sigh, he began in earnest.
These events (he said) occurred some twelve years ago, and the computer, called the Y-12, was lodged in my place of employment, what was then known as a think tank. There was a rush-rush project under way, and some very odd things began to happen to a man named Lonnigan.
Robert Lonnigan was in charge of our project, whose task it was to develop one of the first tabletop computers; you have to remember that at one time a computer that would now rest on your thumbnail would fill an entire drawing room. Anyway, some strange things began to occur.
Lonnigan was working alone one night when the prototype of the Y- 12 suddenly turned itself on and began to type out a message which read, 'Robert, are you there?'
Lonnigan was a bit shocked, of course, but realizing that there was such a thing as a practical joke and that whatever had happened should not have happened, he turned off the computer and went back to work. But once again Y-12 turned itself on and typed out, 'Robert, are you there?' and then added, 'This is Father.'
This shook Lonnigan. There was something eerily familiar about the words, and he had a slight feeling of deja vu. His own father had died a few years previously, but being of the kind of mind that builds computers he was not about to admit to the possibility that his father's spirit had taken over the Y-12. Still, something made his skin crawl about the whole thing.
He quickly checked through all of the input files, which only he had access to, and discovered that no one had programmed Y-12—not officially, anyway—for anything that would include the kind of phrasing the machine had evidenced. And as for practical jokes, he couldn't figure out how it could have been rigged up since he was supposed to see every program that went in and since security was so tight due to government involvement in the project; no research assistant was going to jeopardize his security clearance and career by pulling a scary—and somewhat sick—stunt on the program manager. Lonnigan was resolved, that night if possible, to find out what was going on.
He set up Y-12 for two-way conversation using the IBM keyboard and printout and queried, 'Identify program: 'Robert, are you there? This is Father.'
There was no response.
He tried the same command, in as many variations as he could think of, but Y- 12 remained silent. There was not even an acknowledgment of the query as a viable one, and according to Y- 12 itself, no such statement had ever been made by the computer, nor could be, since it did not exist in its memory banks.
Lonnigan was dumbfounded, and shut off the computer, beginning to think that maybe he was going crazy. He was bundling up to leave for the night, and had just turned off the lights in the lab, when Y-12 suddenly turned
