“You didn’t tell anyone? Not the police?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I figured they’d find out who did it. Somewhere along the line.”
“Is this the truth, Sam? I mean it. Is this the absolute truth?”
He nodded, looking her straight in the eye.
“And your friends didn’t tell anybody?”
He squinted as if trying to hold back tears. “No. I don’t think so. I’ve had nightmares since then. Nothing but bad dreams.”
“That’s understandable,” she said. And then she added, “What sort of nightmares? Are they about the house?”
“If I told you,” Sam said, “they’d put me away.”
“What happens in them?”
“The boy.”
“Arnie Pierson?” Alice said.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. The kid we saw hanging upside down. Only he’s different. He has teeth like knives. Like sharp little shiny knives,” Sam said. “And he makes you do horrible, horrible, awful,” as he said this, his whole face crinkled up and it was as if she were watching him have to take foul poison down his throat, “nasty things to him. Over and over again. And his teeth start squeaking and making these sawing noises ... he opens and closes his month…he makes you put your hands ... inside ... where he’s cut open ...”
Alice felt her throat go dry as she listened. Sam told more about his nightmares, and then he told about how in his dreams he explored the house, even though he’d never been inside it. “I can see through these windows that are this green swirled glass and outside, there are people, I know there are even though I can’t quite see them, and they’re just waiting for me, but I don’t know why. Someone—a man but I only see his shadow—is repeating these words over and over again, only they’re in another language and it freaks me out every time. And then the kid, no matter how I opened him up, gets up and starts running down the halls and that squeaky scraping sound of his knives, I mean his teeth, gets louder and louder. And so I start going room by room through the house and see all this stuff. All this stuff that just makes me sick.” He looked over at Thad, who still slept. “I think I saw him in one of the rooms there,” he said, unwilling to meet Alice’s gaze. “You, too.”
“You dream about me?”
Sam nodded, looking at his shoes. “And others. Mrs. Houseman. That guy who delivers eggs and milk. The woman at the art studio. Jessie something. A lot of people. And they’re in the rooms and they see me and I see them and they’re doing terrible, awful things. And I pass by this one room and there’s this girl I used to hang out with sometimes only she looks different and she starts coming after me with what looks like an axe, I mean a big axe and she’s chopping at the walls and then sometimes she gets another guy and cuts off his fingers one by one and he just lets her, and sometime she catches me and holds me down and takes the axe and just presses it against my mouth and I can feel it going through my lips into my gums and deeper and I can’t do anything about it and that’s when…”
“You wake up?” Alice asked.
“No,” he said. “That when it gets really, really bad.”
4
Bari Love tore into her father.
First the throat.
Then the right shoulder.
Her mother felt frozen in place as she watched the bursts of blood spatter the walls and cover her daughter completely in brown-red.
Within her mother’s mind, she felt as if she had stepped through to the other side of some mirror—into another place—as if she were dreaming all this, because she knew this could not possibly be happening, not in the real world, not in Watch Point, and not in her own home.
Bari dislodged three of her front teeth tearing at her father. Her mother had stopped screaming and slid in a heap on the floor near Bari’s bedroom door.
Margaret Love’s thoughts were a jumble, and she shivered while tears streamed down her face and small gurgles of moans and mewls came from her mouth. “Make it end,” she whispered. “Make it end. Make it end. Make it end. Make it end.”
When Bari was done tearing at her father, she stood up and went to her mother and crouched down beside her.
“Wake up,” her mother said. “Wake up, Bari. Wake up. You’re dreaming. Make it end. Make it end.”
A ring of bright red stained Bari’s lips and ran down her chin, down her throat, down her breasts—the entire front to her nightgown was soaked a rusty-brown crimson.
Bari stroked her mother’s sweat-slick scalp lightly, like a cat cleaning its kitten. She looked into her mother’s face, freckled with blood.
“Oh, Mommy,” Bari whispered softly. “I can make it end if
you want. I’m gonna get me a hatchet and chop you up into teeny-tinies. But you wait right here, okay? Just you wait right here.”
Her mother looked up at her and somewhere inside her body, she’d become paralyzed with the animal instinct of the trapped prey.
She stared at her daughter and just wished for it to be over.
For the nightmare of life to end.
Ten minutes later, after Bari had retrieved the hatchet from her father’s work area in the garage, her mother got her wish.
5
Inside Bari Love’s head, she was doing something very different. She was on top of Andy Harris, bouncing up and down, meeting his thrusts and arching her back and just riding him like he was the devil himself.
“This is for Daddy,” Bari said. In some dream in her head, she swung the hatchet down against her mother’s big toe. “This little piggy went to market!” She swung again, and cut three toes at once.
But in her head, she felt as if Andy Harris were going to explode inside her and give her the baby she’d always wanted. Just a pretty baby. That’s all. A baby for me to love. Give me the seed to plant in my garden, Andy. Gimme. Gimme. Me want a beautiful shiny baby to love forever. A pretty piggy baby. That’s all. I wanna be the mama. I wanna love the piggy.
In the vision in her head, they were on the floor of what looked like an old library, and Andy lay back on the swirling red and black patterns of a Persian rug, while she milked him so she could get pregnant. She knew it was all just a dream, that she wouldn’t really get pregnant, but her desire for that baby was real. She had always wanted to be a mother. She wanted to be Mommy to some beautiful baby.
MOMMY! Here it comes, you ready? Fingers out. Fingers out, Mommy!
This little piggy had none! This little piggy stayed home.
And this little piggy went wee-wee-wee—and bled all over the place!
Chop. Chop. Chippity-chop.
Bari raised the hatchet—a dream within a dream to her—and she began slicing off her mother’s ears as carefully as she could, but one time she grazed her scalp and that made her mother shriek.
WHERE’S MY BABY? she cried out. MY BABY NEEDS TO BE BORN! MY PIGGY BABY!
Bari began giggling as she decided to take her mother’s lips next, but slowly, methodically, so that they’d remain intact. Her mother had big fat lips, and they’d cut nicely, she thought.
MY BABY NEEDS TO COME THROUGH! Bari screamed, as she finished with Andy, and then leaned forward toward his face. He looked up at her as if he wanted to kiss her, but instead she brought her hands to his neck and began choking him.
But in the other dream—she could switch channels now just like it was cable TV—only the colors came in really clear and it was practically HDTV and up-close so she felt as it were almost real—she skinned her mother’s face clean off.
MY BABY NEEDS TO COME OUT NOW! the voice cried, and even though it felt like it was coming from Bari’s mouth, it was some other woman’s voice.
And when she looked at Andy’s face—which melted into her mother’s bloodied skinless meat face—she saw a man with a slightly crooked nose and small dark eyes and a grin that was as wide as a crescent moon.
6
When it was all over with, Bari licked the blood off the hatchet and went out in search of more piggies.
7
At the bookstore, Nick slept on, and Ronnie could not get him to open his eyes even when she snapped her fingers in front of his face.
“I tried to wake him up,” Ronnie said, coming back from the storeroom. “He wouldn’t budge. He’s kicking his legs a little like a puppy dreaming.”
Dusty got down off the stepladder, bringing down a handful of overstock hardcovers, and glanced back at her. “He never naps this long.”
“Well, I did everything but pour cold water on him. Maybe we should let him sleep a little longer.”
“Not with you leaving in a half hour and me having to do four thousand things at once,” Dusty said. He went to the back of the store with her and pushed the door to the storeroom open.
Ronnie had never liked the storeroom much—it was nothing but boxes upon boxes of books, books that needed to be returned to the publisher and metal shelves filled with paperwork and files. But Nick had put in a little cot so that when they had inventory weeks any of the employees could take a catnap on a break.
Nick was curled up nearly in a ball. “Gone fetal,” Dusty said, grinning. Dusty crouched down beside his boyfriend, nudging him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, baby. Wake up.”
Nick snorted a wheezy snore, and for just a second, Ronnie was sure he’d said something.
“He talks in his sleep now and then. It’s sweet.”
“What’s he say?”
“Nothing interesting. Things like ‘where’s the dog?’ and ‘I can’t go home right now.’”
Dusty gave a devilish grin. “I know how to get him up fast.” Then he leaned down and pressed his thumb and forefinger over Nick’s nose.
“That’s so mean,” Ronnie said.
“I know,” Dusty chuckled. “He’ll snarfle himself awake any second now.”
Nick’s eyes opened.
Dusty laughed, and let go of his nose.
“Motherfucker,” Nick said.
Ronnie noticed that something was off about Nick. His eyes seemed a little yellowed and he opened them so wide that it was as if the lids were tucking up behind the eyebrow.
Nick sat up, scrunching his hands across his scalp.
“Sleeping beauty,” Dusty said. “You have a foul mouth on you.”
Nick glared at him, but said nothing. He reached back along the shelf next to the cot.
Ronnie had just turned to go back into the bookstore when she heard a guttural sound, and turned back to see—
Nick jabbing a pair of scissors into Dusty’s chest.
Then Nick withdrew them. Jabbed again.
Dusty wheezed, and Ronnie ran forward, trying to make sense of what this was, and why it was happening, and glancing quickly around to see what she could do to stop this. The first thing to catch her eye was the cutting board they used to slice off the edge of book posters so they’d fit on the walls and shelves. She grabbed it up, figuring that she’d slam it into Nick—and still, her mind could not quite grasp this, but she went on instinct, and knew that she had to stop Nick, protect Dusty, and she had only seconds.
She rushed over with the board, holding the cutting blade down so that it wouldn’t fly up at her face when she slammed it into Nick’s head—
Nick kept jabbing the scissors into Dusty, whose eyes had rolled back into his head. His shirt was a mess of blood and torn flesh.
As Ronnie slammed the board against Nick, she knew she had to run out of the store. The back alley gate would be locked, so she’d have to run back out of the storeroom, through the store, then out the front door.
She knocked Nick over, and he fell quickly.
She held the board up to slam it down on him again, but he seemed to be knocked out. She knelt down, pressing her hands against Dusty’s chest and throat, trying to keep the blood from gushing out, but soon her arms were soaked, and she knew she had to get help or he’d be dead in minutes if not sooner.
She laid Dusty down as gently as she could. Stress tears poured from her, but she fought to keep her thoughts clear. Get help. Come back. Paramedics. 911.
She stood and moved quickly toward the storeroom door, but as she drew it back, she felt something ice cold and sharp in her shoulder.
The scissors.
Nick had risen up behind her, and withdrew the scissors from her, ready to stab her again.
She turned swiftly, fighting the pain in her left shoulder. She balled her right hand in a fist and swung, connecting perfectly with the side of Nick’s face.
It threw him back a bit, and he teeter-tottered. He likely would have regained his balance, but the blood river from Dusty made him slip. He fell onto his back, and the scissors went skidding across the floor.
Ronnie decided it was better to disarm him than to risk fighting him again, so she slipped and slid over to the bloodied scissors, and brought them up. She he)d them in front of her. Tears nearly blinding her, but she fought the undertow of her fear. “I’ll kill you,” she spat at Nick. “I will. You just stay there. Stay there.”
She backed out of the storeroom, and when she was all the way out, her shoes touching the carpet of the bookstore, she shut the storeroom door and then scrambled in her pockets for the keys. Her hand was shivering and shaking but she managed to get the keys out. She used both hands to hold them steady as she aimed the main key for the storeroom door.
The doorknob turned.
She began shivering, and the keys dropped from her fingers.
She grabbed them up again, quickly sorting through them to find the storeroom key.
The doorknob turned again.
She pressed her left shoulder against the door. The pain of the wound in her upper shoulder felt like pincers tearing at her; holding the key with her right hand, she pressed it into the lock beneath the doorknob, and turned it.
It locked.
The keys hung there.
She stared at the doorknob.
No movement.
“Let me out,” Nick said, on the other side.
“No way in hell,” she spat.
“Please. Oh God. What happened? There’s so much blood, Ronnie? Blood! What did you do?”
Ronnie stood there, taking deep breaths.
“Please, Dusty needs a doctor, Ronnie,” Nick said. “I don’t know why you did this. I really don’t. But please. Please, he’s gonna die. His blood is” everywhere. Blood! Ronnie! Blood!” Ronnie felt his fists beating against the other side of the door—the thuds sent vibrations through her that confused her even further.
Phone. Call. Get help.
On the other side of the door, Nick rattled the doorknob.
Ronnie dropped the scissors, and ran as fast as she could—but it seemed feeble and slow to her, until she reached the phone by the cash register. She picked it up.
Dead.
“He’s dying back here!” Nick shouted from the storeroom, pounding on the door. “You killed him, you bitch! Blood! Everywhere! You killed him! Oh sweet mother of fuck! He’s gushing. He’s gushing all over the books! All over the bestsellers, Ronnie!”
Ronnie wiped her hands on her shirt, a thousand thoughts going through her mind at once, and she went around the counter and toward the front door of the shop. She drew back the front door—
Bar! Love, a girl she couldn’t stand from school, stood there, completely naked, soaked red, and in her hands, she held a hatchet.
“Let him out,” Bari said, raising the hatchet up and pushing her way through the door, into the bookstore.
Ronnie fell backward, and a lightning bolt of pain shot through her shoulder. She began screaming uncontrollably, “Help! Help me! God! Somebody!”
Even as she screamed at the top of her lungs, Ronnie thought she heard gunshots going off somewhere out on Main Street, and the sounds of car alarms going off, and maybe even the shouts of other people—
But she had known instinctively in these moments since Nick had stabbed Dusty to death that she couldn’t wait for someone else to help her.
“Chippity-chop, chopp
ity-chop,” Bari Love sang an off-key tune. “Okay, here’s the deal, Veronica, I’m going to axe you a question. Now, don’t say anything. Nothing at all. No answer need reply. But I need to know.” Bari raised the axe up and sliced at the air just above Ronnie’s face.
Ronnie thought she heard dogs barking and scratching at the front windows and door. For just a split second she looked between Bari’s legs and saw a Rottweiler and two Chihuahuas at the door, their paws bloodied as they scraped at the glass door, trying to get in.
Then she heard the whoosh of the hatchet as it came down for her head.
CHAPTER TWELVE
1
“Mrs. Boswell, please calm down,” Benny Marais said into the phone.
“You—you get your truck out here now. You get this... these mongrels... and you get them now!” she shouted on the other end of the line.
“Mrs. Boswell, please. Are you sure you haven’t been ...” Benny Marais didn’t want to say what he was thinking. Hitting the sauce. He was sure of it. Nancy Boswell was drinking again, and now she was hallucinating.
“If I have to, I’ll have the police out here and after they shoot them, they can arrest you,” the woman said on the phone.
“I’m not the dogcatcher.”
“You run the pound,” she said. “And these are yours. I got calls from half the neighborhood that wild dogs were roaming the streets. You tell me. Are you missing any dogs? Are you, Mr. Marais?”
Benny Marais decided it was best to shut up about anything that might incriminate him in some way—just in case something happened. He tried to keep his voice even. “Just do what you can to keep them safe. I’ll be over. I’ll take care of this.”
“What the hell?” Benny Marais asked no one, although Dory Crampton stood right next to him. He scratched the back of his head and put the phone down. “That was Nancy Boswell, and she’s up in arms because she said six mangy dogs are in her backyard growling at kids.”
The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Thriller, Supernatural), #4 of Harrow (The Harrow Haunting Series) Page 16
