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

The creature came in a dream to comfort him. “Relax,” it said. “You don’t
need her. Now your apartment has more room for weapons.”
Giggling, it told him where to go, what to buy. He sat up and began taking
mental notes, distracted for the moment from his grief.
A bankrupt jewelry store sold him display cases. The Velvet Handcuff Novelty
Shoppe provided padded hooks for his walls and ceilings. Under the creature’s
guidance, he set up a private museum. Sabers filled one wall of the living room,
axes another, Swiss army knives a third. In his bedroom, greatswords hung over
the bed, blades polished until they shone like mirrors. He lay there naked, late
one night, with the lights on, and just stared at the reflections.
“So beautiful,” the creature told him, “so beautiful.”
He smiled to himself. And the creature told him he was happy. But still he felt
the hole in his life where Joanne had been.
The jump from collecting to using those blades came not long after that. He’d
worked late at the antique shop cataloguing a new shipment from Canada, and as
part of his commission he took a pair of matched dueling knives, both with
intricately worked ivory handles. By the time he finished for the evening, he
found midnight had come and gone.
He might have made it home all right if it hadn’t been drizzling. Because of the
cold and the wet, the streets lay deserted, and the night had an eerie quality.
Jason stuck the knives in his overcoat’s pocket and huddled under his umbrella
as he trudged homeward.
He started down the subway steps, same as always, same as he’d done a
thousand times before on a thousand nights just like this one. But then footsteps
echoed behind him. The lightbulb overhead suddenly crunched and went out,
little bits of hot glass raining down in the darkness.
Run! something inside him cried, and he dropped his umbrella and fled in
terror down the steps. Mugger wolf pack—
Time seemed to stretch. Outside, beyind him, thunder rumbled, lightning
flickered. He glanced over his shoulder, saw a black kid of maybe fifteen
laughing hysterically, his hair slick with water, his eyes wild. Then it was dark
again and Jason slipped and fell, rolling down the last few steps, feeling nothing
in the rush of the moment but certain somewhere inside that he hurt.
“Watcha got, man?” The kid stood over him—how had he moved so fast?—
and started pawing Jason’s pockets.
Jason grabbed for his billfold, but instead came up with one of the knives. How