Reborn

1

A form was taking shape out of the darkness, shadows were merging, coalescing into an unholy shape. And it moved. In utter silence the night became flesh and glided toward her.

Jim Stevens leaned back in his chair and stared at the paper in the typewriter. This wasn't going the way he wanted. He knew what he wanted to say but the words weren't capturing it. It was almost as if he needed new words, a new language, to express himself.

He was tempted to pull one of those Hollywood scenes. Rip the paper out of the platen, ball it up, and toss it at the wastebasket. But in four straight years of writing every day, Jim had learned never to throw anything away. Somewhere in the mishmash of all the unpublished words he had committed to paper might lurk a scene, an image, a turn of phrase that could prove valuable later on.

No shortage of unpublished material, unfortunately. Hundreds of pages. Two novels' worth neatly stacked in their cardboard boxes on the top shelf of the closet. He had submitted them everywhere, to every publishing house in New York that did fiction, but no one was interested.

Not that he was completely unpublished. He glanced over to where "The Tree," a modern ghost story, sat alone on the otherwise bare ego-shelf in the bookcase. Doubleday had acquired that two years ago and had published it last summer with the publicity budget accorded most first novels: zero. What few reviews it received had been as indifferent as its sales, and it sank without a trace. None of the paperback houses had picked it up.

The manuscript of a fourth novel sat at the far left corner of his desk, the Doubleday rejection letter resting atop it. He had hoped the astonishing success of Rosemary's Baby would open doors for this one, but no dice.

Jim reached over and picked up the letter. It was from Tim Bradford, his editor on "The Tree." Although he knew it by heart, he read it again.

Dear Jim,

Sorry, but I'm going to have to pass on Angelica. I like its style and I like the characters. But there's no market for the subject matter. No one will be interested in a modern-day succubus. I'll repeat what I said over lunch last year: You've got talent, and you've got a good, maybe great, future ahead of you as a novelist if you'll just drop this horror stuff. There's no future in horror fiction. If you've got to do weird stuff, try sci fi. I know you're thinking of how Rosemary's Baby is still on the best-seller list, but it doesn't matter. The Levin book is an aberration. Horror is a dead end, killed by the A-bomb and Sputnik and other realities that are scary enough…

Maybe he's right, Jim thought, flipping the letter onto the desk and shaking off echoes of the crushing disappointment that had accompanied its arrival in the mail on Saturday.

But what was he to do? This "weird stuff" was all he wanted to write. He'd read science fiction as a kid and had liked it, but he didn't want to write it. Hell, he wanted to scare people! He remembered the ripples of fear and jolts of shock he'd received from writers like Bloch and Bradbury and Matheson and Lovecraft when he'd read them in the fifties and early sixties. He wanted to leave his own readers gasping, to do to them what the masters had done to him.

He was determined to keep at it. There was an audience for his writing, he was sure of it. All it took was a publisher with the guts to go find it. Until then he'd live with the rejection. He had known it was an integral part of a writer's life when he started; what he hadn't known was that it could hurt so much.

He closed his research books on Satanism and witchcraft and got up from the desk. Time for a break. Maybe a shave and a shower would help. He got some of his best ideas in the shower.

As he rose he heard the mail slot clank and detoured toward the front door. He turned on the hi-fi on his way through the living room. The Rolling Stones Now! was on the turntable; "Down the Road Apiece" began to cook through the room. The furniture was all leftovers from when Carol's folks had owned the place: austere sofas, slim-legged chairs, asymmetrical tables, lots of plastic—the "modern look" from the fifties. When they got some money, he promised himself to buy furniture designed for human beings. Or maybe a stereo instead. But all his records were mono. So maybe the furniture would be first.

He scooped the mail off the floor. Not much there except for his paycheck from the Monroe Express—a fair sum this week because the paper had finally paid him for his series of feature articles on the "God Is Dead" controversy.

Great. He could buy Carol dinner tonight.

Finally to the bathroom. "Hello, Wolfman," he said to the mirror.

With his dark brown hair hanging over his thick eyebrows, his bushy muttonchop sideburns reaching almost to his jawline, and tufts of wiry hair springing from the collar of his undershirt, all framing a stubble that would have taken the average guy three days to grow, his old nickname from the Monroe High football team seemed as apt as ever. Of course, the hair on his palms had been the real clincher. Wolfman Stevens—the team's beast of burden, viciously ramming through the opponent's defensive line in play after play. Except for a few unfortunate accidents—to others—his football years had been good ones. Great ones.

He was adopting the new long-haired look. It hid his ears, which had always stuck out a little farther than he liked.

As he lathered up the heavy stubble on his face, he wished someone would invent a cream or something that would stop beard growth for a week or more. He'd pay just about anything for a product like that. Anything so he wouldn't have to go through this torturous ritual every day, sometimes twice a day.

He scraped the Gillette Blue Blade in various directions along his face and neck until they were reasonably smooth, then gave his palms a quick once-over. As he was reaching for the hot-water knob in the shower, he heard a familiar voice from the direction of the living room.

"Jimmy? Are you here, Jimmy?"

The thick Georgia accent made it sound like "Jimmeh? Are you heah, Jimmeh?"

"Yeah, Ma. I'm here."

"Just stopped by to make a delivery."

Jim met her in the kitchen where he found her placing a fresh apple pie on the counter.

"What's that awful music?" she said. "Dear me, it boggles the ears."

"The Stones, Ma."

"You'll be thirty in four years. Aren't you just a little old for that sort of thing?"

"Nah! Brian Jones and I are the same age. And I'm younger than Watts and Wyman."

"Who are they?"

"Never mind."

He ducked into the living room and turned off the hi-fi. When he returned to the kitchen, she had taken off her heavy cloth coat and laid it across the back of one of the dinette chairs. She was wearing a red sweater and gray wool slacks. Emma Stevens was a short, trim, shapely woman in her late forties. Despite the faint touches of gray in her brown hair, she could still draw stares from much younger men. She wore a bit more makeup and tended to wear clothes that were a bit tighter than Jim liked to see on the woman he called Mother, but at heart he knew she was a homebody who seemed happiest when cleaning her house and baking. She was a bundle of energy who volunteered for all the charitable functions in town, no matter whether the beneficiary was Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow or the Monroe High School band.

"I had extra apples left over after I made Dad's pie, so I made one for you and Carol. Apple was always your favorite."

"Still is, Ma." He bent to kiss her on the cheek. "Thanks."

"I brought some Paladec too. For Carol. She's looking a bit poorly lately. Some vitamins every day will make her feel better."

"Carol's just fine, Ma."

"She doesn't look it. Looks peaked. I don't know what to contribute it to, do you?"

" 'Attribute it to,' Ma. At."

"At? I don't know what to contribute it at? That doesn't sound right."

Jim bit his lip. "Well, at least we both agree on that."

"So!" she said, brushing imaginary crumbs off her hands and looking around the kitchen. Jim knew she was inspecting the countertops and the floors to see if Carol was still measuring up to the standards of spotlessness Ma had adhered to all of Jim's life. "How are things?"

"Fine, Ma. How about you and Dad?"

"Fine. Dad's at work."

"So's Carol. She's at work too."

"Were you writing when I came in?"

"Uh-huh."

It wasn't exactly the truth, but what the hell. Ma didn't consider freelance writing Real Work, anyway. When Jim rode the night desk part-time on the Monroe Express, that was Real Work, because he got paid for it. He might sit there for hours, doing nothing more than twiddling his thumbs as he waited for something newsworthy to happen in the Incorporated Village of Monroe, Long Island, but Ma considered that Real Work. Hunching over a typewriter and dragging sentences kicking and squealing from his brain to put on paper was something else.

Jim waited patiently. Finally she said it.

"Any news?"

"No, Ma. There's no 'news.' Why do you keep bugging me about that?"

"Because it's a mother's parenteral obligation—"

" 'Parental,' Ma. 'Parental.' "

"That's what I said, parenteral obligation to keep checking as to if and when she's going to become a grandmother."

"Believe me, Ma. When we know, you'll know. I promise."

"Okay." She smiled. "But remember, if Carol should drop by someday and say, 'Oh, by the way, I'm three months' pregnant,' I'll never forgive you."

"Sure you will." He kissed her forehead. "Now, if you don't mind, I've got to—"

The doorbell rang.

"Are you expecting company?" his mother said.

"No. Not even you."

Jim went to the front door and found the mailman standing on the front step holding a letter.

"Special delivery, Jim. Almost forgot it."

Jim's heart began to race as he signed the return receipt. "Thanks, Carl." Maybe they'd had a change of heart at Doubleday.

"Special delivery?" Ma was saying as Jim closed the door. "Who would—?"

His heart sank as he read the return address.

"It's from some law firm. In the city."

He tore it open and read the brief message. Twice. It still didn't make sense.

"Well?" Ma said, her fingers visibly twitching to get at the letter, her curiosity giving the word a second syllable: Way-elll.

"I don't get it," Jim said. He handed her the letter. "It says I'm supposed to be present at the reading of Dr. Hanley's will next week. I'm listed as one of his heirs."

This was crazy. Dr. Roderick Hanley was one of the richest men in Monroe. Or had been until he died in that air crash last Sunday. He'd been a local celebrity of sorts. Moved here to the Village of Monroe—then truly little more than a village— shortly after World War II and lived in one of the big mansions along the waterfront. A world-renowned geneticist who had made a fortune from analytical lab procedures he had developed and patented; a Nobel prizewinner for his work in genetics.

Jim knew all about Hanley because he had been assigned the guy's obit for the Monroe Express. The doc's death had been big news in Monroe. Jim's research had revealed that the Hanley estate was worth something like ten million dollars.

But Jim had never even met the man. Why would he name him in his will?

Unless…

In a dizzying flash of insight it all suddenly became very clear to Jim.

"God, Ma, you don't think—"

One look at her stricken face told him she had already come to the same conclusion.

"Aw, Ma, don't—"

"I have to go see your father… uh, Jonah," she said quickly, handing the letter back to him and turning away. She picked up her coat and slipped into it as she headed for the door.

"Hey, Ma, you know it doesn't matter. You know it won't change a thing."

She stopped at the door, her eyes glistening. She looked upset… and frightened.

"That's what you've always said. Now we'll find out for sure, won't we?"

"Ma—" He took a step toward her.

"I'll talk to you later, Jimmy."

And then she was out the door and hurrying down the walk toward her car. Jim stood at the storm door and watched her until his rapid breaths fogged up the glass. He hated to see her upset.

When she was gone, he turned away and read the letter again.

No doubt about it. He was an heir to the Hanley estate. Wonder bloomed in him. Dr. Roderick Hanley—genius. His hand shook as it held the letter. The money that might be coming his way meant nothing compared to what the letter didn't—couldn't—say.

He rushed to the phone to call Carol. She'd be as excited as he was. After all these years, after all the searching—he had to tell her now!