Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror

David knelt up on one elbow. His hands and his face were smeared in blood. 'Anna…' he said unsteadily. 'Anna…'

Gil looked up at him. Already, he was finding it difficult to focus. 'You've killed me,' Gil said. 'You've killed me. Don't you understand what you've done?'

David looked desperate, 'You know, don't you? You know.'

Gil attempted to smile. 'I don't know, not for sure. But I can feel it. I can feel you — you and all the rest of them — right inside my head. I can hear your voices. I can feel your pain. I took your souls. I took your spirits. That's what you gave me, in exchange for your lust.'

He coughed blood, and then he said, 'My God… I wish I'd understood this before. Because you know what's going to happen now, don't you? You know what's going to happen now?'

David stared at him in dread. 'Anna, listen, you're not going to die. Anna, listen, you can't. Just hold on, I'll call for an ambulance. But hold on!'

But Gil could see nothing but darkness. Gil could hear nothing but the gray sea. Gil was gone; and Anna was gone, too.

David Chilton made it as far as the garden gate. He grasped the post, gripped at the privet hedge. He cried out, 'Moo! Help me! For Christ's sake, help me!' He grasped at his throat as if he were choking. Then he collapsed into the freshly dug flowerbed, and lay there shuddering, the way an insect shudders when it is mortally hurt. The way any creature shudders, when it has no soul.

All over the world that night, men quaked and died. Over seven hundred of them: in hotels, in nouses, in restaurants, in the back of taxis. A one-time German officer collapsed during dinner, his face blue, his head lying in his salad plate, as if it were about to be served up with an apple in his mouth. An airline pilot flying over Nebraska clung to his collar and managed to gargle out the name Anna! before he pitched forward on to his controls.

A sixty-year-old member of Parliament, making his way down the aisle in the House of Commons for the resumption of a late-night sitting, abruptly tumbled forward and lay between the Government and the Opposition benches, shuddering helplessly at the gradual onset of death.

On I-5 just south of San Clemente, California, a fifty-five-year-old executive for a swimming pool maintenance company died at the wheel of his Lincoln sedan. The car swerved from one side of the highway to the other before colliding into the side of a 7-Eleven truck, overturning, and fiercely catching fire.

Helplessly, four or five Mexicans who had been clearing the verges stood beside the highway and watched the man burn inside his car, not realizing that he was already dead.

The civic authorities buried Anna Huysmans at Zandvoort, not far from the sea. Her will had specified a polished black-marble headstone, without decoration. It reflected the slowly moving clouds as if it were a mirror. There were no relatives, no friends, no flowers. Only a single woman, dressed in black, watching from the cemetery boundary as if she had nothing to do with the funeral at all. She was very beautiful, this woman, even in black, with a veil over her face. A man who had come to lay flowers on the grave of his grandfather saw her standing alone, and watched her for a while.

She turned. He smiled.

She smiled back.

THE LIKENESS OF JULIE Richard Matheson

October

Eddy Foster had never noticed the girl in his English class until that day.

It wasn't because she sat behind him. Any number of times, he'd glanced around while Professor Euston was writing on the blackboard or reading to them from College Literature. Any number of times, he'd seen her as he left or entered the classroom. Occasionally, he'd passed her in the hallways or on the campus. Once, she'd even touched him on the shoulder during class and handed him a pencil which had fallen from his pocket.

Still, he'd never noticed her the way he noticed other girls. First of all, she had no figure — or if she did she kept it hidden under loose-fitting clothes. Second, she wasn't pretty and she looked too young. Third, her voice was faint and high-pitched.

Which made it curious that he should notice her that day. All through class, he'd been thinking about the redhead in the first row. In the theatre of his mind he'd staged her — and himself — through an endless carnal play. He was just raining the curtain on another act when he heard the voice behind him.

'Professor?' it asked.

'Yes, Miss Eldridge.'

Eddy glanced across his shoulder as Miss Eldridge asked a question about Beowulf. He saw the plainness of her little girl's face, heard her faltering voice, noticed the loose yellow sweater she was wearing. And, as he watched, the thought came suddenly to him.

Take her.

Eddy turned back quickly, his heartbeat jolting as if he'd spoken the words aloud. He repressed a grin. What a screwy idea that was. Take her? With no figure? With that kid's face of hers?

That was when he realized it was her face which had given him the idea. The very childishness of it seemed to needle him perversely.

There was a noise behind him. Eddy glanced back. The girl had dropped her pen and was bending down to get it. Eddy felt a crawling tingle in his flesh as he saw the strain of her bust against the tautening sweater. Maybe she had a figure after all. That was more exciting yet. A child afraid to show her ripening body. The notion struck dark fire in Eddy's mind.

Eldridge, Julie, read the yearbook. St. Louis, Arts & Sciences.

As he'd expected, she belonged to no sorority or organizations. He looked at her photograph and she seemed to spring alive in his imagination — shy, withdrawn, existing in a shell of warped repressions.

He had to have her.

Why? He asked himself the question endlessly but no logical answer ever came. Still, visions of her were never long out of his mind — the two of them locked in a cabin at the Hiway Motel, the wall heater crowding their lungs with oven air while they rioted in each other's flesh; he and this degraded innocent.

The bell had rung and, as the students left the classroom, Julie dropped her books.

'Here, let me pick them up,' said Eddy.

'Oh.' She stood motionless while he collected them. From the corners of his eyes, he saw the ivory smoothness of her legs. He shuddered and stood with the books.

'Here,' he said.

'Thank you.' Her eyes lowered and the faintest of color touched her cheeks. She wasn't so bad-looking, Eddy thought. And she did have a figure. Not much of one, but a figure.

'What is it we're supposed to read for tomorrow?' he heard himself asking.

'The — 'Wife of Bath's Tale,' isn't it?' she asked.

'Oh, is that it?' Ask her for a date, he thought.

'Yes, I think so.'

He nodded. Ask her now, he thought.

'Well,' said Julie. She began to turn away.

Eddy smiled remotely at her and felt his stomach muscles trembling.

'Be seeing you,' he said.