When Percy lifted the last doll, the boy stiffened, head swiveling around to where Percy kneeled. He opened his mouth and let out an inhuman howl.
Max still held the chair raised, frozen, unable to bring it down.
The boy leapt from the doctor and ran into the dark tunnel leading back to the woods.
Max heaved the chair away. It hit a wall and splintered.
Percy ripped the doll to pieces.
Max stood in stunned silence, watching the doctor’s coat slowly saturate red. He finally willed his legs to move. He ripped off his t-shirt and stuffed it into the wound in Guy Lance’s neck.
The doctor stared at him, his mouth opened as if to speak, but nothing emerged. The man’s eyes grew distant and then darkened as if a light behind the man’s blue irises had blinked out.
Percy stepped to the doctor and pressed two fingers against his wrist. He leaned close to the man’s face. “He’s dead, Max.”
As Max stared at the scattering of hair and bones, all that was left of the disgusting dolls, the memory came to him.
He had ducked beneath the weeping willow after following Ashley Shepherd, and there, on the picnic table, had been the doll, the same kind of doll he’d seen in the case.
“Holy shit,” he said, hand going to his mouth. “We have to go, now!”
Percy scrambled across the floor, snatching at the bones and teeth, stuffing them into the briefcase.
“Now,” Max shouted, grabbing Percy’s arm and wrenching him to his feet.
Percy clutched the case to his chest, and they ran back into the night.
43
Sid and Shane had taken another path to The Crawford House. This one was well worn and occasionally marked by a kid’s tennis shoe or random spray painted tree, allowing them to ride fast.
Sid tried not to think of Ashley on the opposite side of the woods, crashing through the undergrowth with a monster on her tail.
He had to stop the imaginings right there. Anything more made him want to scream and stamp his feet and rewind the clock three days to when they’d created their stupid plan and take it all back.
But it was too late now. Weird how that happened. One moment you were concocting the most insane scenario, knowing in the back of your mind you’d never go through with it, and in the next moment you were there, five minutes in, which might as well have been a lifetime because you couldn’t turn back now.
The only way was forward, forward to The Crawford House, and what if Ashley didn’t make it? What then?
Shane pulled ahead, and Sid gasped for breath as he tried to keep pace. At the place the forest grew thick, they jumped off the bikes, not bothering to stash them.
Shane reached The Crawford house first, and Sid skidded into the clearing behind him.
The sky had the glazed red color of a day’s end.
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” he whispered, not sure why the words mattered in that moment, but needing to say them anyway. They weren’t sailors, but it still felt like a good omen.
Shane went to the front door and cocked it open. Then he raced all the way to the back where Sid watched him plunge out the window they’d left open, as if doing a trial run. He landed on his feet, wobbled. and then found his balance.
Sid looked at his watch. Seven minutes had passed since Ashley had raced into the woods. He didn’t know how long it should have taken her, but definitely no more than ten minutes.
He paced to the front of the house and then to the back again.
Shane had disappeared, and Sid heard a rustling overhead. He looked up to find Shane in a tree.
“Do you see her?” Sid asked, voice catching.
“No.”
Shane jumped down, opened his backpack and handed Sid a hammer.
“Get ready to nail the door closed. We won’t have much time,” Shane said. “We’ve got to position ourselves so we can see her get here, but still have time to close the window before the monster escapes. You watch from here and yell a warning when she and the monster are in the house, get it? If you yell too soon, the thing might come after you.”
Sid stared at Shane, piecing together his words. He glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes had passed.
“Get it?” Shane repeated, and he eyed Sid wearily as if he knew Sid would screw up.
Even if everything went perfectly, Sid would somehow be the reason the whole plan failed.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it. I’m fine,” Sid assured him, though he wasn’t fine, the situation wasn’t fine, and it took all his strength not to plunge into the woods and race for home.
Fifteen minutes had passed when he heard the first crunching of branches, a stampeding through the forest as if a herd of deer were headed their way.
When Ashley broke from the trees, her face was red and her eyes were narrowed on The Crawford house.
“Ash,” he called out.
He couldn’t help it. His relief at seeing her nearly sent him to his knees.
She glanced sideways. “Travis is behind me,” she yelled, but didn’t have time for more because she was already pounding up the steps and disappearing into the blackhole at the front of the house.
Travis was seconds behind her, his eyes black and sharp as he took the stairs three at a time.
For a moment, Sid thought it was only them, Ashley and Travis, no monster at all, but then it emerged.
Sid stepped back, heart leaping from his chest into his throat. He held his breath.
The boy, for clearly that’s what he’d once been, lurched from the forest. He walked upright a few steps only to fall forward and use his hands. He moved fast. His hair looked grimy and thick with twigs. The skin of his face and arms appeared gray and sore looking. Scratches and welts ran up his arms and over his neck.
The boy crawled up the stairs and slipped into the house.
Two seconds, and then five more, passed, and finally the Sid who wasn’t a total bonehead yelled the warning call to Shane.
He ran to the front of the house, pulled the boards hanging loose into place, and started hammering nails into them.
“Stop, wait,” Shane yelled, running around the house.
He was waving his arms, but Sid couldn’t stop the hammer.
Bam-bam-bam, one nail in. Three to go.
“Sid,” Shane shouted, bounding up the steps and ripping the hammer from Sid’s hand.
Sid’s eyes bulged, and he started to grab for the hammer.
“Something happened to Ashley,” Shane shrieked. “She didn’t come out. I heard her inside. She screamed.”
Sid started to shake his head, to refuse his words, but Shane had stopped paying attention to him. He ripped the boards off and threw them to the side before running into the house.
Sid stood on the porch, frozen. The sticky heat of the day plastered his shirt against his soft body. His breath lay trapped in his lungs, full to bursting, and when he finally exhaled, the Sid who wasn’t a coward urged him into the house, whispering in his ear as if he were a little baby.
Come on, Sid. You can do this. Save Ashley, Sid.
But of course, he couldn’t do it, not really. But Shane could. Shane could save Ashley and punch Travis and defeat the monster, and afterward they’d all walk home and share a Dr. Pepper. And this time Sid would take a drink.
Except that was the plot for a Halloween special on television. In real life, monsters ripped out kids’ throats and left them in the woods to die.
* * *
Ashley stood in the corner, paralyzed as the monster, who she realized had once been Vern Ripley, attacked Travis.
Vern clawed and bit at Travis’s back. The boy had curled into a tiny ball and shrieked for help.
Ashley had made it to the window and had almost jumped through when she’d heard Travis’s scream of pain. She could have left him. She almost did.
“Damn you,” she spat.
She grabbed the leg of an old chair, jerking and smacking the chair down to break the leg fr
ee. She hit the monster in the back.
It howled and turned to face her, its mouth red with Travis’s blood. It lunged, grabbed her leg in its teeth and bit down. She screamed, feeling a hot burning as it tore through her skin.
Shane burst into the room, an aluminum baseball bat raised above his head. He swung at the monster.
It released Ashley’s leg, and she stumbled back, her ankle oozing.
The monster’s hands, curling into claws, grabbed the bat and jerked Shane forward.
Shane let go, but the monster had brought him close enough. It jumped, animal-like, and Shane toppled over. Shane put up his hands, but the monster’s face darted around them and bit into the side of Shane’s head.
“No,” Ashley screamed, grabbing the rest of the broken chair and struggling to stand on one knee as she bashed it into the thing’s back. It lifted its head and snarled, jumping onto Ashley.
A rock flew from the hallway and hit the monster in the chest.
The rock bounced off and landed near Ashley’s head.
“Come on,” Sid screamed. “Come get me.”
44
Sid scrambled down the stairs and into the tile room, which had once been used as the embalming chamber.
His breath hitched, and he pressed himself to the wall. Across the room, something moved behind a dirty pane of glass. The room contained a small window that looked into another room. As Sid watched, something pressed close to the grimy glass.
Sid saw its sunken face, mud streaked hair hanging limp on its translucent forehead. The eyes in its skull were as black as midnight.
Walking backward, bumping numbly against the wall, Sid opened his mouth and began to mumble.
“No, no, no, please, no, no.”
The thing in the window pressed its face closer, its mouth against the glass now, bloody from Shane.
Shane was probably dead. And the thing that had killed him stood only a pane of glass away from Sid.
Sid ran from the room, but he couldn’t reach the stairs without facing the monster. He ducked into the room filled with coffins.
Outside, the sun had gone down and soon he’d be surrounded by blackness and trapped in a room of coffins with a child-eating beast.
He cowered behind a coffin as the monster stepped into the room, walking as if he were half dog, using his hands as if they were feet.
Sid crouched and scurried to another coffin and then another until he spotted the open doorway.
He ran for it, the boy monster let out a shriek of rage, but Sid willed his legs up the stairs.
He burst through the front door into the open air, the oncoming night thick with the sound of crickets.
He raced through the trees, thorny branches snatching at his clothes, sweat pouring into his eyes and making them sting.
The monster crashed through the brush behind him. It snarled and sometimes spoke in odd human sounds, yet not.
Sid ran until the stitch in his side felt like a razor blade cutting his abdomen. He’d gotten turned around, though he didn’t know when.
Full night had fallen, and the moon was mostly hidden by thick clouds.
His feet hit hard ground, and his toe caught on a rock. He pitched forward and landed on hands and knees. He suddenly knew where he was at: the pit.
Behind him, branches snapped and breath heaved from the boy monster who stalked him through the woods.
Sid looked around wildly, his mind blank for an escape. Could the creature swim?
Sid imagined diving into the black water and watching as the beast followed him in, circled below him, and reached up to grasp his ankle.
He shook his head and plunged forward, coming to the high cliff and looking down for a dizzying moment. He no longer had time to decide.
The monster had broken from the trees, its face white and leering, black eyes shimmering in the moonlight.
Sid turned and crouched, grabbing ahold of the ledge and lowering himself over the side, planting his feet on outcroppings of rock. His heart hammered. His hands felt slick, as if he’d rubbed oil on them, and he knew any moment, he’d lose his hold and begin to fall.
He imagined Stone from his and Ashley’s story. Stone, of the cat people with perfect night vision. Stone, who had to descend into the black depths of the deep water to save Sapphire from death.
As he climbed down, his foot swung in, finding open air rather than the rock wall. He’d come to the Witch’s Cave.
Painstakingly, he moved sideways, finally wrapping his arm around the rock and stepping onto the ledge of cave. Unable to see, he crawled on hands and knees into the darkness.
As he crept deeper, his legs trembled, his muscles threatening to seize at any moment. When his hands caught something soft and stringy he gasped, jerking his fingers back.
He fumbled with the lighter he’d stolen from his dad’s pants pocket and struggled to depress the button.
The orange flame leapt out, offering a halo of light.
He stared at the hairy thing on the ground, his brain piecing the image into something sensical. As it registered, he felt the throb of his bladder. It pinched and then let go. Urine seeped out and soaked his pants.
A mass of pale blonde hair lay piled below him. Dark streaks matted the once light hair. Beneath the hair, he saw the slope of a shoulder. The pale skin was mottled and gray.
Sid didn’t move. Shock caused every muscle in his body to firm into concrete. His breath wheezed out from his clenched teeth.
“Oh god, oh god,” he whispered, the stones of the cave biting into his knees, the stink of his piss only mild compared to the other smell, the rancid smell of Melanie Dunlop’s body.
* * *
Sid had lured the monster away.
Ashley stared into the dark forest where Sid and the thing had disappeared.
Beneath her palms, blood oozed thick and warm from Shane’s head. She felt the mush of his ear and the throb of his heartbeat through the pulsing blood. She’d dragged him onto the porch, but he was too heavy.
Her ankle throbbed.
She had to leave him to get help.
It took ages to break from the trees, and when she did, the road lay empty and dark. She limped toward the houses she knew lay several blocks away.
Suddenly, headlights barreled toward her and she paused, gazing at the oncoming car, but unable to move.
The car’s brakes screamed as it skidded to a stop. The driver’s door opened, and a man jumped out. Only when he stepped into the beam of his headlights, did Ashley recognize Mr. Wolf.
“Ashley?” He took her by the shoulders. “Come on,” he said.
To her surprise, he didn’t ask what had happened. He scooped her up and deposited her in the backseat.
“You have to help them,” Ashly begged, blood filling her sock and soon her tennis shoe.
“Sid and Shane. The monster’s after them.”
Max and the man in his passenger seat exchanged a worried look.
“Where’s the doll, Ashley,” Mr. Wolf demanded.
“The doll? What? No! Didn’t you hear me? They’re hurt. They’ll die.”
“The only way to stop Vern is to destroy the doll. We have to get to the doll first,” he insisted, craning around in his seat.
His words sunk in. The doll they’d found in the coffin.
“It’s in my house,” she blurted. “But we have to call the police because Shane Savage and Travis Barron are both hurt. They’re in The Crawford house.”
* * *
Sid didn’t move until he heard the unmistakable sound of something climbing into the cave.
He released the lighter. The darkness immediate and unnerving.
It was coming for him. He would die like Melanie. When his parents went to bed each night his mother would soak her pillow with tears and his father would gaze in sleepless worry at the ceiling above him. But worst of all, he would leave Ashley. He would never see his best friend again.
The thought so jolted him that he stood to
his feet, squaring off against the mouth of the cave.
He didn’t wait for the monster to come in and devour him.
He barreled forward at full speed and pushed the boy as hard as he could.
The creature howled and reached out its bony hands to grab ahold of Sid, but Sid’s own arms and hands were slick with sweat.
The monster plummeted backward into the yawning sky that hovered over the pit below.
The monster shrieked, but his cry was swallowed by the dark water.
45
Ashley sat on her front steps, a blanket draped over her shoulders.
Max had shredded the doll on her kitchen table while the other man had carefully collected the bones and teeth and tucked them into his pocket.
They left Ashley to phone the police while Max had raced to The Crawford House to help the boys.
More than an hour passed before he returned, and when his car pulled into her driveway, she jumped to her feet, wincing at the sting in her ankle.
Mr. Wolf stepped from the car. “Shane and Travis have both been taken to the hospital. They’re alive,” he said.
She nodded, grateful even for Travis’s life being saved, but…
“Did you find Sid?” she asked, balling her fists at her sides.
Max’s face fell.
“I’m sorry, Ash. I looked and I called for him. There are men searching the woods. We’ll find him,” Max promised, but his voice sounded hollow, and Ashley knew they hadn’t destroyed the doll in time.
If only they’d have known. They could have ended it all the moment they’d found it.
“It’s not your fault, Ashley,” Max said, as if reading her mind.
Ashley sat back on the step, dropping her head.
How would she live without her best friend?
Max rested a hand on her shoulder, and Ashley leaned into him and started to cry.
“Wait, what’s that?” Max asked suddenly, standing up.
She squinted into the darkness trying to place the sound. A rhythmic whoosh grew closer and the unmistakable plink, plink of Spokey Dokeys sliding up and down the spokes of a bicycle.
Rag Doll Bones: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel Page 26
