Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set by F. Paul Wilson, Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson, Jeff Strand, Jack Kilborn, J. A. Konrath, Iain Rob Wright, Jordan Crouch Page A

and chartered, filled with sightseers pointing and gazing up in open-mouthed awe.
    Within, the ceilings were high, the rooms open and airy.  The dining room, the kitchen, Arthur’s office, and the bedrooms made up the two lower levels. 
    Arthur paused on the first landing and surveyed the sprawling expanse of his favorite place in the world, the pride of Paraiso—the great room that occupied the entire top floor.  The afternoon sun beat through the glass ceiling; he adjusted a switch on the wall to his left, rotating the fine louvers above to reduce the glare.  He gazed outward through the convex expanse of glass before him and watched the whitecaps flecking the surface of the Pacific.  Carved into the living rock of the room’s rear wall was a huge fireplace, dark and cold.  He and Olivia had planned to spend the rest of their days entertaining friends and family in this room.  Since her death he’d converted it to a chapel of sorts.  No pews or crosses or stained glass windows, just a quiet place to pray and contemplate the wonder of this majestic corner of Creation.  It was here that he felt closest to God.
    Be with me, Lord, he thought as he tore himself away from the view and continued toward the lower levels.
    He found Charlie in his bedroom, its walls still decked with the Berkeley pennants and paraphernalia leftover from his undergraduate days.  He was sipping coffee from the lunch tray Juanita had prepared for him.  He looked up and slammed his cup on the tray.  His eyes blazed.
    “Damn you to hell.”
    Arthur stood in the doorway, unable to move, unable to speak, staring at the son he hadn’t seen in nearly two years.
    Charlie looked awful.  The old gray sweatsuit he’d worn to bed hung around him in loose folds.  He looked a decade older than his twenty-five years.  So thin.  Cheeks sunken, face pale, his black, sleep-tangled hair, usually so thick and shiny, now thin and brittle looking.  His eyes were bright in their deep sockets.  The dark stubble on his cheeks accentuated his pallor.
    “Charlie,” he said when he finally found his voice.  “What’s happened?”
    “What’s happened is I’ve become the Prisoner of Zenda.”
    Charlie had never been a sturdy sort, but now he looked positively gaunt.  Arthur wanted to throw his arms around him and tell him how much he’d missed him, but the look in Charlie’s eyes stopped him cold.
    He sat on the foot of the bed, carefully, so as not to upset the tray.
    “You know better than that.  This is your home.”
    “Not with turnkey Sanchez around.”
    “Charlie, I brought you back for your own good.  That’s not the kind of life for you.  For anybody.  It’s an abomination in the eyes of God.”
    “It’s my life.”  Charlie’s eyes flashed. 
    Arthur had never seen him so defiant.
    “It’s a sinful life.”
    “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—isn’t that what a United States Senator is supposed to protect?”
    “I want to help you turn your life around.”
    “Just in time for the primaries?”
    If only it were that simple, Arthur thought.  If that was all there was too it...
    He shuddered as old memories surged to the fore.  Violently he thrust them back down into the mire where they belonged.
    No.  This was not only for himself.  Charlie’s sodomite urges were a test.  If Arthur could help his son out of this moral quagmire, he would prove himself, he would... redeem himself.  And God would know what a weapon he had in Arthur Crenshaw.
    “Do you like the life you’re living, Charlie?”
    “It’s the only one I’ve got.”
    “That doesn’t answer the question.”
    “It has its moments.”
    “In the wee small hours, Charlie...when it’s just you and God and the dark outside the window...how do you feel?”
    Charlie’s gaze faltered for the first time.  He fiddled with a slice of toast on his breakfast tray. 
    “I wake up at three or four in the morning, shaking and sweaty.  And I sit