The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

good, but he was already dead. I just sat there for a while as the coins rained
down and the whole structure of the building creaked from the weight of them.
My mind blanked out. His corpse was a kind of life preserver. I hung on because
I couldn’t let go. I was still holding him when the police arrived.”
Jim Bowen stopped talking, and took another sip of his drink. My
Wangadangburger had gotten cold on the plate. The waitress was staring at us.
“That’s the story,” he said. “I don’t expect you to believe it, but that’s the
story.”
“Wait a Goddamn minute,” I said, almost convinced I was the victim of the
most inscrutable, poker-faced put-on in history. “You can’t end it there. I mean,
the police find you half-buried in something like forty million dollars worth of
small change, and Joe Eisenberg is in your arms, crushed to death—you must
have had quite a time explaining.”
“He wasn’t crushed. He’d choked on a single coin. Otherwise the apartment
was its usual mess. All those pennies were gone.”
“Except the one he’d choked on.”
“That wasn’t a penny, Chuck. It was a solidus.”
“A what?”
“An ancient Roman coin. Gold, about the size of a nickel. The figure on it was
Julian the Apostate, who was the last emperor to honor the old gods. ‘He was
heavily into divination, I understand.”
“But what has that got to do with—?”
“I think the devils, or whatever they were, thought it would make a particularly
fine finishing touch, that’s all. It was embedded in his esophagus. A doctor
showed it to me after the autopsy.”
I didn’t know what to say next. Jim Bowen seemed so sincere about all this.
That, as he’d put it, was the scary part.
I rose to leave.
“I suppose it is about that time,” Jim said.
The waitress came with our checks on a little tray. I reached for my wallet, but
Jim said, “No, you listened to my story. I’ll treat you.”
He put some bills down, and the waitress took them away.
Then he picked up his napkin. There were coins under it, nickels, dimes, but
mostly pennies.
He recoiled in disgust, as if the tabletop were covered with live spiders.
What are you going to do when this starts happening to you? Joe Eisenberg
had supposedly asked. Jim was clearly wondering. So was I, just a little bit.