Pain Thieves: A Novel of Horror

By Michael Canfield

For Henry, a man who flushes success and love away at every turn, the Hotel Stephen Crane–shambling Gothic residence at the heart of an aging west-coast metropolis–means one last chance to get clean in the middle of a misspent life.

For a damaged, passionate, young artist like Bryn, it offers her first real try at independence. And happiness.

All the residents, and even the staff, seem to find in its walls an oasis to escape their private demons: alcohol, heroin, gambling, sex-addiction, and the darkness of self-doubt.

Yet, after death mysteriously takes one innocent resident, a curse seems to envelop the lives of the others.

A new threat emerges, testing the strength and will of each survivor. A threat more dangerous–more irresistible–than any drug...than any addiction. An ancient malevolence unlike anything Henry or Bryn have ever battled before.

Michael Canfield writes about monsters, superheroes, couples, bank robbers, babies, astronauts, paranoids, background artists, hobbyists, and other people. He has published mystery, fantasy, science fiction, horror, or just-plain-odd stories on StrangeHorizons, futurismic, EscapePod, M–Brane SF, in dead-tree magazines including Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, Black Gate, Flytrap and other places. His novelette “Super-Villains” was republished in the prestigious Fantasy: The Year’s Best series, edited by Rich Horton. Born in Las Vegas, he now lives, works, plays, writes, and watches television in Seattle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vauk House Press
• Release date: Feb 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465926289

Michael Canfield

Michael Canfield writes about monsters, superheroes, couples, bank robbers, babies, astronauts, paranoids, background artists, obsessives, and other people. He has published mystery, fantasy, science fiction, horror and just-plain-odd stories in the magazines Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Realms of Fantasy, Black Gate, Flytrap, and others.His novelette “Super-Villains” was republished in the prestigious Fantasy: The Year’s Best series, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books). Born in Las Vegas, he now lives in Seattle.

Book preview

1 Raj

Downtown. Hickey Street. Near midnight, and raining. He looked out of the front door of his bodega.

So wet and cold. No one had told Raj this. California should have palms trees and sunshine all year. No one had explained the chill of northern California. Nor the bleak, somewhat European streets of downtown Los Zorros, the city by the icy bay.

Still. California, all in all. Twenty years now. Two children in college. Another, going soon. A good house in the suburbs. A good life.

Across Hickey street, in the middle of the block, a door creaked.

No rain could stifle the creak of the door of the Hotel Stephen Crane.

Through the diffusion—thick layer of Plexiglas, glass store doors, and the rain—Raj watched Catherine step out and struggle through with her grocery cart.

The door fell shut hard. Like the sound of a bed frame thrown from a sixth-floor window.

Why that image? Because that had happened once. Some inmate (no, not the correct word, though possibly the most apt one) of the hotel pushed his single-sized bed out the single window of his single room for some reason of his own. So used to the sound of that massive door, that when the bed frame hit the street Raj had not even glanced up, not until he heard two customers remarking on the commotion.

That happened some years ago.

Without glancing at his phone he knew the time. One a.m. He joked with Catherine that one could set his watch by her. One a.m. constituted his lull. The bodega stayed busy until midnight every night, and would pick up again about 1:45 in a last mad rush before alcohol sales ended at 2. Often, Catherine was his only customer during that lull.

She checked the empty street both ways, before crossing, jaywalking at the middle. She wore a plastic scarf tied around her head, as always. Tonight it protected her from the rain, but she wore it, and even the dingy gray raincoat, most nights. Even the ones it didn’t rain. Her housecoat hem hung below the raincoat. Her beige stockings, she rolled down to her ankles, and she walked slowly—not only because of her age, and condition of health, but in order not to lose a slipper.

Raj had the impression that Catherine was about sixty. He didn’t recall why he thought that; she must have told him once, though she look nearly as old as his own grandmother, who had passed eighty.

Very bad. But this was a part of California people back home didn’t see. The opportunity for wealth existed, and Raj himself felt blessed, and grateful. But poverty existed here too, in many guises. Poverty of spirit.

Of family.

Difficult problems to resolve. So they continued.

Catherine reached the bodega door. She managed to open it, and drag her rickety two-wheel cart in. As always. He couldn’t come out from behind the glass to help her. This wasn’t done.

She dragged the cart to the counter and carefully lined it up straight against it. Not quickly accomplished.

Finally satisfied, she released it. In the stacks she picked out her usual type of items. A can of ravioli. A box of Fig Newtons. A roll of toilet paper. She cradled the items in her arms and shuffled forward.

And my medicine, she said, as she dropped the items into the tray. He rung up the items, bagged them, and added the half pint of Gordon’s.

She pushed across a twenty, and he passed her back the change, and the bag.

Have you seen Harvey? she asked him.

Normally, after all these years, he did not bother himself with questions like this. His customers often said things that made no sense, and he’d learned not to trouble himself about that, because often the speakers didn’t know themselves what they had spoken about, or even, in many cases, that they had. But he always indulged Catherine, for some reason.

Who?

She raised her hand to her forehead and squinted. Oh no ... she said. She struggled to work some more words out. Oh, darnit ...

Then it clicked. You mean Henry?

Henry! she said. Henry.

Not tonight. Though he rarely missed a day, because he only bought one or two packs at a time, and a few candy bars. Though he had said he was trying to cut down on both.

But they all said that.

He’s gonna ... I asked him to ...

Did you knock on his door? Henry lived in the Stephen Crane too.

He’s gonna help me with some chores. I --

Well I’m sure he will find you tomorrow.

No. Tomorrow’s too late. The lady said I have to leave.

Lady?

Said I have to leave.

What do you mean leave? You’re moving?

No, she said. She squinted again. Trying to think. No, I guess not. But the lady said.

Is she your landlady?

I don’t know.

You should go to bed, Catherine. It’s very late.

Oh, it is?

I’m afraid so, said Raj. Go to bed, Catherine, and knock on Henry’s door tomorrow. If I see him, I will tell him you are looking for him.

Oh, you will?

Yes, certainly, Catherine.

She worked her jaw, but did not find what else she had to say. She may have nodded to him, or it may have been that her normal tremors made it appear that she had.

She put her groceries in the bottom of her cart, pulled the cart carefully around in front of her, and pushed it forward.

Back at the door, she had a momentary confusion about how to proceed. Whether to lean forward, across the two-wheel cart and push the door open, or whether to turn around again and try to back out.

He couldn’t go around the glass and help her; it wasn’t done.

A car pulled into the bus zone out front. Two young black men got out, came to the door, and opened it. They talked back and forth to each other while Catherine pushed her cart through.

They came in and bought a six pack. One of them pushed ID under the glass, with the beer and the money.

Raj rang up the sale, and bagged it.

They left.

When their car pulled away from the bus zone, Raj had his ordinary unobstructed view of the street again.

The edifice of the Stephen Crane, was nearly dark. Six floors of dark brown stone. Right now only three windows shone lights. Two on the same floor, a few rooms apart, and one a row higher, and slightly farther south. The edifice put him in mind of a three-eyed animal of some kind. A beast.

Through the thick layer of Plexiglas, glass store doors and the rain, Raj saw the mass across the street on the sidewalk the same instant he realized he had not yet heard the door of the Stephen Crane creak open, let alone a thunderous falling shut.

Raj picked up his cell phone, ran from behind the counter, out into the wet street.

Before he’d covered half the distance to her, he knew nothing could be done.

In life, Catherine, with her tremor, could never have laid so still.

2 Henry

Henry was to have helped Catherine with a stuck bottom dresser drawer.

A few days after someone cleared out the last of Catherine’s belongings, dresser included, a new tenant moved in, but Henry hadn’t seen her yet.

Her, because Dre, the building manager had mentioned it. Dre had been uncharacteristically bothered by Catherine’s death, but it had come at the end of a good summer for the Stephen Crane.

Good summer, said Dre to Henry. But he shook his head, and then muttered it a couple more times.

They were standing in the lobby. Dre was behind the counter and the sliding window of the manager’s office. Henry was leaning on the little lip-like counter on the outside. He’d gotten his mail, which he had put off for a couple weeks, and was sorting through it, for something to do. It was never anything but grocery store coupon fliers that went to everybody, and pleas for causes that had, once upon a time, been able to count on him to help, causes that somehow had tracked him to his Hickey street address, after his ex-wife had put in a change of address regarding him, unbeknownst to him, and contrary to what he would have preferred. It all went into the trash, every time. He didn’t know why he bothered to look at any of it. He didn’t have an SSI check to hunt for, or straight social security (not for some years yet) or unemployment. Nothing came to him. There was nothing to come.

Good summer, muttered Dre again.

You mean because the building’s full, said Henry.

Finally got all the hard cases out of here. No knuckleheads, you know?

Henry knew. Yeah. Nice quiet people. Drunks and drug addicts. Shut-ins and old lonely people. A few arty types. But, he had to agree, no real knuckles.

Now this, said Dre.

A little worse for Catherine, than for us, don’t you think?

No disrespect. Though it was her time and all. That’s it. But just when things settled down, now they’ve got to go in and introduce new elements.

You don’t like the new tenant?

Never met her, never met her. Carl, the day shift manager took her info. She already moved in. Haven’t seen her pass by, not myself.

I’m sure she’s fine.

Actually, she is. At least Carl thinks so. Beautiful he said.

Really? said Henry.

Oh, you’re interested in that, right? Dre joked.

Henry shrugged and smiled. How’s he doing, anyway?

Carl? He all right. Days. That’s good for him.

I would think, said Henry. A promotion to day shift manager, which had meant a promotion to swing shift manager for Dre.

That’s what I’m saying, said Dre. Finally got everything running smooth around here. And this has to happen.

This? Oh you mean Catherine.

Dre was young, and had the young man’s belief that life was solvable. That problems once fixed, stayed fixed, and new ones did not rise in their place, or more likely, pile on top of them. Henry had maybe been a little like that once. He’d certainly tried hard to set the world straight. It hadn’t quite worked out.

How old are you, Dre?

Me? I’m twenty-six.

He waited, as if wanting to ask why Henry wanted to know. But Henry didn’t have any good reason to want to know. It had been the old need to be in control that had made him ask. Dre didn’t need advice from someone like Henry. Dre was not a recovered junkie like Carl, or a dry drunk like Henry. He never had had an urge to cut himself like Bryn, the girl in #201 whose forearms were lined with rows of symmetrical thin white lines the product of her suburban adolescents. Or Reese, her neighbor in #212 who was so skinny most people assumed he had AIDS, but was not HIV+. He was anorectic.

No. Dre didn’t have any of those types of problem. The only thing that brought him to the Stephen Crane was work.

And that was rare.

You in school?

School? said Dre. I’m twenty-six, he said. As if to emphasize his advanced years. Well beyond the age of school.

So what’s your plan?

What do you mean? The question had cut a little too close to the bone, and Henry regretted it. Not his place. What’s your plan, Henry?

My plan is to smoke and drink coffee until I die.

Is that so?

It wasn’t my first plan, but it’s my backup plan.

How old are you? said Dre.

Dre, feeling defensive, meant the question to sound rude, and probably didn’t think Henry would answer it. But he did.

Dre’s look of surprise, possibly mingled with doubt, did, in spite of himself, stab Henry’s ego pretty good. Henry, whose first ex-wife had full custody of their two children, now both in their late teens, was technically old enough to be the father of someone Dre’s age, had been prepared for some sort of reaction. But clearly Dre thought Henry was even older.

But it had at least gotten them past the point where Dre was feeling offended.

Though now he just acted sympathetic, which might have been worse.

Henry dropped all of his mail into the blue recycle container that management placed out by the mailboxes. He touched the pocket on his t-shirt, and felt the smallness of the pack there. You want anything from across the street.

Monster, said Dre.

The first time Dre had asked Henry to pick up a Monster for him Henry had thought it was some urban slang that he wasn’t privy too. But he discovered it was just a brand of beverage—of the peculiar class known as high-energy drinks.

And it—the can certainly, and the price, most definitely (four bucks at the bodega!) could be described fairly enough as monstrous. Henry himself never had had the urge to try one himself. He intended to stick to coffee. If he got on to Monster or Red Bull or any of those, he’d probably end up grinding and snorting caffeine tablets before it was all over with.

Okay, said Henry. He headed for the door.

No! No! Henry, wait. Wait!

Dre was holding four ones out under the opening in the office window, but Henry waved him off, and went out while Dre continued to call after him.

After child support, ($4000 a month) and alimony to Gretchen (ex number two, $18000), and rent ($800, he not qualifying for any type of assistance), food (say $50 a week), cigarettes (another $100 or so a week) he still had a hundred or two left at the end of some months. He couldn’t send a five-figure check to the Los Zorros Parks Foundation every year like once upon a time.

It wasn’t like one more Monster would kill him.

3 Bryn

She found herself obsessing over the lady upstairs.

Bryn had glimpsed her twice. Both times when the lady had been taking the elevator up from the lobby, and Bryn found herself, inexplicably staying out of the elevator, when she could just as easily stepped in. But she only lived on the second floor, and thought it would seem strange to ride only one floor. Like the lady would not like it, even though Bryn had no reason at all to assume that.

Instead Bryn (each time, the same false motion!) made a slow turn toward the door leading to the stairs. She pulled it open, but before entering, would steal a last glance at the lady, still standing there, straight and regal, behind the cage, while the ancient elevator went about the slow arduous task of lifting itself. The lady had caught her looking, and both times smiled, lips parting to reveal gleaming perfect teeth.

What Bryn would do for those full lips. To hold the lady’s cool white cheeks in her fingers and kiss them, eyes closed, imagining what it would be like to have lips like that—blackberry rich—and creamy cheeks like that, and large gray eyes like that, herself.

It gave her chills. And now this second time, just as she had done the first time, the moment she’d gotten safely inside her own door, she dropped her key and thrust her hand down into her jeans ignored her bracelets and wristbands.

But now, this second time, she burst out with a short barking cry, soon after she finished. A single burst of tears, that made her feel like she never left high school. Like she still spent free period hiding in the toilet, or spent combed her hair over her face to hide acne.

Why? What did one thing have to do with the other? The lady was smiling.

There was nothing behind the smile, which might be a little heartbreaking, but not enough to cause all this. Bryn wasn’t even much into girls anymore.

But this was a lady.

She was tall, and had a shape, like an hourglass Bryn supposed was how they described it. The people who judged and categorized women’s bodies.

And she dressed cool. Not anything Bryn would have thought special of before she’d discovered the lady. No. But things that looked so perfect on her. No black. A white scarf that was probably cashmere. A soft round hat of cashmere too.(Cashmere!