“Larry?” His voice was almost a whisper this time.
Larry had not moved. Suddenly, Dugan saw Larry’s knees beginning to bend as though he was about to jump. Dugan dropped his lighter. With his right hand, he grabbed Larry’s belt and yanked him backwards. Both of them collapsed onto the half staircase that led nowhere that they could see.
Still holding his friend’s belt, Dugan began dragging him up the stairs and away from the void, managing to get him through the door and onto the floor of the basement. Larry struggled with Dugan for a moment before turning his head around to look at his friend.
“Hi,” Larry said. Dugan smiled with relief. After a confused moment, Larry crinkled up his nose and asked, “What stinks?”
Dugan didn’t miss a beat. “You do.”
Larry laughed, but he must have half believed it because he began sniffing himself, just before the lights went out and a door slammed. Dugan felt Larry’s hand reach out for his, and he took it into his own and held on tight. The sucking sounds coming out of the hole began to get louder, as if whatever was making them was ascending from the hellhole at the bottom of the stairs.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dugan said.
“Good idea,” Larry said, squeezing his hand.
The two began feeling their way through the basement room as the noise coming from the hidden doorway got louder. They managed to find their way to the stone staircase and walked up, encountering a locked door at the top. Dugan began banging on it and shouting. Larry joined him, both of them yelling at the tops of their lungs. When they paused to catch their breath, they heard something from below: the snap of wood breaking against metal as the painted green door gave way, and then they knew it was in the room. They redoubled their efforts.
Dugan stepped backwards and threw himself against the door but it did not give way. They began to hear wet footsteps and then a sort of giggle and they knew the thing was directly below them. Dugan stepped back once again to throw himself at the door, and when the door opened all by itself, he fell through the opening and smashed his head on the unyielding marble of the floor.
Dazed by the blow, Dugan felt a pair of strong hands reach down and pull him up off the floor, followed quickly by a second pair of hands and then a third. He heard Larry shout “Run!” and then felt himself swept away, half carried and half dragged across the wide expanse of marble floor and then outside, down the steps, and off into the rain and the darkness of the night.
7
Game planning
Cars still sped way too fast through the narrow downtown. The bright lights from those restaurants and shops still open at this time of the evening continued to illuminate the darkened streets of Grantham through the never ending drizzle. The five first stopped by the library so that Dugan could get his bike before walking downtown to the diner. None of them had eaten that day.
As they walked silently through the brightly lit downtown, each of them in his own way was beginning to come to grips with the things that Dugan had told them and what they had witnessed themselves. Still, it was difficult to reconcile all of that with the bright lights of downtown, or the tinkle of silverware and the loud talk of the assembled patrons that greeted them upon opening the door. It somehow made the things they knew even more of a surreal nightmare. As they entered the diner, each of them wondered whether anyone else in this room was aware that the town had… visitors.
The diner was packed, but they found themselves a just emptied booth to the rear and Dugan excused himself to go to the men’s room. It was the size of a closet and the mirror was small and cracked, but it reflected well enough for Dugan to see and wish he hadn’t. He looked as if he’d gone fifteen rounds with Hagler while wearing Don King’s hair. He took off his shirt and washed his neck, chest and arms and then, gently, his face, using paper towels with the texture of sand paper. His unscheduled appointment with the marble floor had reopened the long gash on his chin, and as he cleaned it again, red-flecked specks of water fell off his face to form a small pool in the sink. That word—the V word—came into his mind again, and instead of throwing the bloody paper towels into the trash, he decided to flush them all down the toilet.
He used his fingers as a comb to tame the wildness of his hair, and when he thought he was as presentable as he could make himself, he put his shirt back on and tucked it in. He looked into the mirror one last time and thought himself ready to rejoin the civilized world, and that thought put a cynical smile on his face as he reached over and opened the door. When he got back to the booth there was a thick chocolate shake awaiting him, and after a long gulp he immediately felt better. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and asked if a waitress had come. Jimmy said he’d ordered Dugan his standard cheeseburger and fries.
They sat in silence for a while until Mike finally asked, “What are we gonna do?” He looked over at Dugan, who only shrugged before breaking into a smile.
“I’m all ears.” His smile lightened the mood, anyway.
After the waitress brought their food, all other thoughts were forgotten as they tore into their burgers, smothered fries with ketchup, and ordered another round of milk shakes to wash it all down. Dugan stayed quiet through most of the meal, though he laughed along with everyone else when Larry cracked a joke or Jimmy made a face. He was thinking back to the last time he’d been here with his Uncle, and remembered his advice. Hang on tight to the friends you have now, because you’ll never have any better.
He spent his meal looking into his friend’s faces, trying to memorize them. Jimmy’s blond good looks. Larry with his Prince Valiant haircut and nerdy glasses. Scrawny Mike, with red hair and freckles, sitting next to his best friend who was literally twice his size. After taking in Moon’s gentle, oval sphere and cueball crew cut, Dugan realized suddenly just how lucky he was to have them all. When the meal was over, and the laughter stopped, each of them waited for someone else to bring it up.
“What’s the game plan?” Jimmy finally asked.
Dugan had been trying to think of one. He turned and asked Moon, “Did you learn anything at all today?”
Moon shook his head. “Just that there’s a lotta missing people and a lotta missing kids. Did you know they don’t even keep statistics on that stuff? National statistics on missing kids, I mean. Some think there’s maybe tens of thousands of missing kids; others think it’s maybe hundreds of thousands that disappear every year. And nobody seems to care.”
During the silence that followed, Dugan realized he wasn’t surprised to hear that. After all, he had seen a dozen kids from his own town disappear over the past few months and he didn’t notice anyone organizing a posse. Until that moment, he’d just figured it was because of the sorts of kids they were, but after what Moon had said, he had to wonder about that. He began to think about his own rapidly disappearing customer base, but quickly put it out of his mind. He tried particularly hard not to think about Mrs. Skin when he turned Larry and asked, “What about Remlinger? You learn anything about him?”
“Lots, but not anything important, I don’t think. He left all his papers to the town. They were…down there.”
“Is he dead?” Dugan asked. Larry just shrugged.
“Here’s what I think we need to do,” Jimmy said.
They all turned to look at him. Dugan was especially glad to hear someone else take charge. As for himself, he was all out of ideas.
“First of all,” Jimmy began, “we need to stick together. If we can’t be together, then we need to check in with each other every coupla hours. Agreed?”
They all nodded.
“Second, we’ve all seen the movies. I don’t know if it’s crap or not, but I’m gonna sprinkle a little garlic powder on my front porch tonight. Can’t hurt, right?”
His smile lightened the mood considerably, until he added, “I myself plan on keepin’ a crucifix handy.” He paused before continuing.
“Third. Moon.” Jimmy turned to look directly at him. “I’m sorry about this, but
I gotta ask it anyway. What’s your father got to say about…this?”
“Thinks she went off to visit her sister,” Moon mumbled after a moment, not looking up. “She’s…done this kinda stuff before. He isn’t even worried about it yet.”
“You wanna stay over my house tonight?” Dugan asked. Moon just shook his head.
“All right,” Jimmy said, “but be careful then, all right?” He waited for Moon to look him in the eye and nod before he went on.
“Fourth, Dugan.” Jimmy turned to look at him. “What happens when Pope comes home?”
Dugan started to answer before remembering that he hadn’t gotten that far. He looked away, embarrassed, and shook his head to indicate that he didn’t know.
“That’s okay,” Jimmy said kindly. “Finish the book tonight and then let us know tomorrow, all right?” He waited for Dugan to nod before going on.
“We’re all gonna meet up at nine tomorrow mornin’ in Moon’s basement. Is that okay, Moon?” Moon nodded.
“Fifth, and this is the most important. We’re not gonna keep secrets from each other anymore, all right? Anything happens we’re gonna tell someone about it. Deal?”
“Deal,” they answered in unison.
“Sixth,” Jimmy continued, “and I guess I was wrong before ‘cause this next one is the most important.”
He waited for them all to look him in the eye before asking, “How the hell we gonna get home?”
He began to laugh, and after another moment they all joined in. Dugan said he’d be happy to spring for the cab. After the waitress came over with the check, he reached into his back pocket and felt something that didn’t belong there. He reached in to pull it out, then laughingly threw it across the table to Larry.
“Got somethin’ of yours.”
Larry looked down and started to laugh too, but before reaching for the wallet, he waited to catch Dugan’s eye. “Thanks,” he said.
Dugan knew it wasn’t just for the wallet. He nodded back. As the four walked down to the cabstand through the rain, Jimmy and Dugan separated a little bit from the rest. Under his breath, Jimmy asked, “You tell her yet?”
Dugan shook his head.
“You gotta tell her, you know,” Jimmy said firmly.
Dugan nodded, aware that he already planned to break one of Jimmy’s new rules.
8
Godzilla takes Tokyo
From his seat on the leather couch, Michael looked up and saw it was after midnight. He’d been watching television with the sound down for a few hours, while listening to the never-ending storm rage against his windows. It had increased in intensity sometime around 10:00, signaled by the return of the tooth rattling thunder coupled with blinding flashes of lightning that had been the storm’s hallmark when it first began almost two weeks ago. Michael shut the sound off around that time because he wanted to just listen to the storm. He realized then how grateful he had been during those weeks for the boom of thunder in the nighttime because it was a natural sound, and helped drown out those other sounds, the unnatural ones, that he knew had been there all along too. He had been listening for a few hours when, just before midnight, he knew the storm was finally giving up the ghost.
There had been a booming finale worthy of a hundred July Fourths, but he was listening to the sound of a storm in its death throes. Ten minutes after that cacophonous climax, Michael now heard only the occasional renegade raindrop pelting itself against a window, or the intermittent bathroom sound that a gutter makes as it drains itself. With those other sounds gone, he knew there would be nothing left to stifle the unholy clatter that was being made even now out there, by his brother and his former friends. He heard them knocking every now and again against the vinyl siding, or banging away on the windows. What was worse, they had mastered some kind of “fingernail on a chalkboard” sound that was in the process of driving Michael positively batshit. But of course, his brother would know just what sorts of sounds were guaranteed to do exactly that.
* * *
Dugan looked up from his book, startled by the sudden onslaught of an artillery battery letting loose just outside his bedroom window. He checked the clock beside his bed and noted it was just before midnight. A flash of lightning made him again glance toward his window, and he thought that the storm was getting even worse, although he didn’t know how that could be possible. But after the things he had read that evening, he believed that anything was possible. As he lay there on his bed, more exhausted than ever by the events of the long day and the ill-advised nap he had taken earlier, he flipped forward in the book. He only skimmed the last pages, knowing there were too few of them. There were far too many questions left in his mind for the measly pages that remained to have even most of the answers, but he was now more certain than ever that an ugly history was in the process of repeating itself in his town.
He had been confused when he’d read that the “nighttime creatures” Daniels described had a special affinity for large caves that were up near the quarry, because Dugan knew that area like the back of his hand and there weren’t any caves up there. Another of Daniels’ statements puzzled Dugan. He had written that the creatures’ roaming ground seemed to surround “the orchards and the apple woods.”
Finished now with the old book, Dugan put it onto his nightstand while making a mental note to ask his friends if any of them knew where the orchards had once been. As he reached up at long last to turn his light off for the day, he hoped that his tired mind would remember.
* * *
From underneath both thick pillows thrown over his large head, through the heavy glass of his second floor bedroom window, Moon still heard his mother call his name. Sometimes, she sounded the same as she always did. He would catch himself smiling as he listened, when she reminded him of something funny, or told him about something he had done when he was a kid. Other times she sounded heartbroken, and he knew the only way he could fix her broken heart was to go over to the window and open it in invitation. A few times this past week he’d found himself halfway to the window before coming to his senses. He had awoken one evening to find himself standing at the window. His nose was pressed against it, both arms raised holding back the curtains. When he saw what she was now, what she had become, he had to stifle his scream. He pulled the curtains shut and leaped back into bed, throwing the pillows over his head and repeating to himself: this isn’t my mother, this isn’t my mother, this isn’t my mother. He knew on some level that however much he might be tempted, the absolute worst thing he could possibly do was to invite her in.
* * *
He hadn’t been sleeping; it was more like time had merely slipped away. Michael glanced up at the clock, surprised to find it was after 2:00 a.m. now. There were at least three more hours before he would be able to get any sleep at all. Noticing that he still had the remote in his hand, he flipped it onto the couch beside him and began taking a long stretch. He was mid-stretch when he realized something was wrong. Freezing for a moment, he jerked his head around looking for the source of his anxiety. It occurred to him then that the sounds had stopped, and he couldn’t remember exactly when that had happened, and he knew that was stupid.
Glancing up to the TV, he saw they were now showing an old black and white monster flick. Godzilla was on the outskirts of Tokyo and people were running away. Curiously, a few of the running people would stop every now and then, turning around to point as if somehow the other running people didn’t know the monster was there. Screw that, he thought. If Godzilla was coming at him, he was going to run, and if the other people around him didn’t see or hear the monster coming, well that was just too bad for them. He grabbed the remote and turned up the sound real loud. The screams of the running people blended with the pounding of the monster’s feet and collapsing buildings to create a symphony of destruction. It occurred to him that what he really ought to be doing right now was just exactly what those people on the TV were doing: running for his life.
It was a revelation to h
im. He could do it, he thought, sitting up a little bit to think about the idea. He could do it. Where he would run to, he had no idea, but anything had to be better than Grantham, or this house. As he sat there, he imagined himself going up to his bedroom, filling a duffel bag with clothes and throwing it on his back, and he decided he was going to do it. He grabbed the remote and shut off the TV, shocked for a moment by the silence. He was starting to get up from the couch…
…when he heard a buzzing, drilling kind of sound, like a million angry bees, and it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. Then, through his butt and through the palms of his hands, he began to feel a vibration. He realized that the sound and vibration were coming from beneath his feet. He watched as an area of floor in the center of the room began to ripple and then slowly sag. It bubbled up again a little bit and then sagged downward, and Michael saw the depression, a rounded depression in the middle of the room that had no business being there. He stared as the blood red carpet began breathing up and down, in and out, taking deeper and deeper breaths that moved the carpet ever higher into the air, so that after a while it began to look like a bloody mouth blowing bloody bubbles.
A moment later he heard the carpet begin to rip and tear in places, and he turned his head toward the sound of carpet nails popping up from the floor in one corner. He heard a loud exhalation and looked around in time to see that the carpet now hovered over that depressed area three feet above floor level. A small hole appeared suddenly in the dead center of the breathing rug as the tension became more than it could bear. From that small hole, Michael began to smell something and he moved his hands up to cover his mouth and nose.
He watched the carpet float for another moment, before it began fluttering back to earth like a balloon slowly losing its air. It sank into the newly formed depression that Michael now saw clearly was the outline of a hole, about eight feet across and perfectly round. The carpet itself began to be wrenched violently down into the hole. Amidst the sound of popping carpet nails that screamed like machine gun fire, Michael felt movement, and he realized that the fine leather couch he was on, everything on that carpet, all those expensive toys, were going down into that hole whether they wanted to or not. Foosball and billiards tables, the wet bar, and now even the big screen television set were moving, being pulled inexorably toward the hole.
Applewood (Book 1) Page 17
