“I don’t know her,” Dory said.
“She runs a day care up on Macklin. In her backyard. You must’ve seen it. Her husband always dresses up as a clown when she’s trying to get people to dump their brats with her.”
“Oh.” Dory grinned. “Yeah. We used to egg him sometimes. Me and my friends. We’d drive by and egg the clown.”
Benny glared at her as if she were at the bottom of all this.
“You’re acting like it’s something I did wrong.”
“She’s got seven three- to four-year-olds over there on the playset in the backyard, scared shitless because a pack of wild dogs is terrorizing them. And just who left the damn cages open?” he said, his hands going to his hips, which made Dory snicker a little because Benny had wide hips and it reminded her of her grandmother when he got all high and mighty like this.
“I didn’t let the dogs out. And how does Mrs. Boswell even know the mutts in her yard are from here?”
“All I know is I need to get my rifle.”
“You’re gonna shoot the dogs?”
“She said they’re growling. If I can’t bring ‘em in, then yeah, I’m gonna shoot ‘em.”
“You are so not gonna shoot those dogs,” Dory said, and by the time they’d gotten the rifle and some leashes and thrown them in the back of Benny’s pickup, she had begun laughing at the whole thing and telling him that Mrs. Boswell probably was rabid herself.
But she stopped laughing when she opened the back gate at the Boswell place and saw the blood.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
The Boswell Clown-A-Round DayCare had a bright yellow and blue and red playset in back with a twisty slide and a rope ladder climb and what looked like plastic monkeybars and a ball pit full of plastic balls with a plastic window on one side. About six little tots were inside the ball pit, up to their necks in the blue and red plastic balls, looking out, bawling to high heaven for their mommies.
Surrounding the playset were six dogs—all of them she’d seen at the pound.
A Doberman, a pit bull mix, a collie, a German shepherd, a spotted mutt, and a pug.
All of them were digging in the dirt beneath the ball pit as if they could dig their way into where the little kids were.
As if they wanted to eat those kids.
That was the thought that came to her.
They want those kids. They want those kids the way they usually want a milkbone.
For a moment, she felt a strange tugging in her brain as if the world had just changed its rules and nobody had told her. As if she were confused and hallucinating and not completely sure that she really was seeing anything the right way.
Blood was spattered all over the backyard, and pooled in small round pits that made it look like the dogs had already been digging holes.
Already been burying something.
She didn’t like to think it, but she was nearly certain that she saw a child’s sneaker sticking up from one of the just-covered-over holes the dogs had dug.
Near one of the holes, a clump of what she had thought was hay ... but it couldn’t be.
Her mind fought what it tried to make sense of—that the clump was hair.
A child’s scalp.
The pit bull started leaping up at the thick plastic that protected the children sitting in the ball pit.
Dory had never seen children’s eyes go so wide.
What the hell is this? What could make them do this? You have to stop the dogs. You have to stop ‘em.
Dory felt as if she were frozen to the spot. Staring at the children whose faces poked up from among the little blue and red plastic balls.
The rifle.
Benny had a rifle in the truck.
The dogs scratching at the play area. It’s impossible. This can’t be happening. Even a mad dog would leave those children alone. No dog would do this. Not like this.
As if a hundred miles away, she heard a ding-dong sound.
Benny.
He’ll know what to do. He knows everything about dogs. He’s even mean to them sometimes. He knows how to control them. He’ll get the rifle. He’ll stop these dogs. Must be rabid. Must be sick. Something must’ve gotten to them. Someone must’ve poisoned them.
Her mind spun a mile a minute as she tried to reason through what could be happening. As she tried to believe that she must be seeing things wrong, that she must be misinterpreting what was right in front of her face, that her own brain was going haywire.
She glanced to the right to see if she could signal Benny in some way.
Benny Marais rang the front doorbell not more than fifteen feet away from her, and an instinct within her wanted to step back from the open gate, and close it and latch it and then run the hell back to the truck.
2
Mrs. Boswell answered the front door, and when she glanced over to Benny again, he was already inside the house.
3
The six dogs kept scratching. One of the little girls inside the ball pit saw Dory and pointed toward her. The girl started jumping up and down and screaming, “Help! Help, lady! Help! Help!”
A little boy cried out, “I want Mommy! Mommy! I want Mommy!”
As if it understood, the pug glanced back, looking at Dory.
Dory felt goose bumps along her arms when it looked at her.
The other dogs kept digging to get down beneath the plastic shield of the ball pit. Dory wondered what the hell Benny was doing in the house, and the pug turned and trotted over to her.
Its muzzle, spattered with blood.
Gristle of some kind in its teeth.
When it reached her, it began growling.
Dory took a step back.
Then another.
The pug advanced toward her, down on its haunches as if getting ready for a full-on attack.
Dory reached for the gate. The dog lunged. Dory jumped backward as best she could, and began to slip on the grass—she kicked out and managed to shut the gate as the pug leapt for it.
She heard its thud as it hit the gate and fell back into the fenced-in area.
The kids inside the ball pit began shrieking even louder.
She lay there on the ground, staring at the wooden gate. She couldn’t see anything beyond it, but she heard the pug digging in the dirt beneath the gate.
It’s coming for me. It saw me. It wants me.
It knows you know about it.
That dog has your smell now. He’s sighted you. He’s not going to let you go.
The thoughts jumbled around her mind, and she felt as if she were reaching a short-circuit point.
She heard someone with a low pitched voice whisper, “Bitch.”
You’re imagining things now. You’ve been pushed. You’re imagining the pug on the other side of the gate just said that.
Finally she pushed herself up and wiped her hands on her overalls. She went around to the front door, which was slightly ajar.
She pushed it open.
The front hallway had dark wood floor with a Persian carpet runner that stretched past the living room to another door at the end of it. To her left, a mirror and a high table, stacked with mail and two rolled-up newspapers. Beyond the table and mirror, a staircase up, and a staircase down.
“Hello?” she asked.
She could barely hear the shrieking children—it was quiet in the house.
As she stepped farther inside the house, other thoughts occurred to her: Why wouldn’t the neighbors be here? And the cops? Why wouldn’t Mrs. Boswell simply have the cops and the fire department out here to help? Why wouldn’t she have opened the back gate to let the dogs out? To try to shoo them away from the kids? Didn’t she have a garden hose? She could’ve tried that.
She called out to Benny, but only silence greeted her. She glanced in the living room. It was a perfect living room, the kind that would be in a magazine layout, magazines like Martha Stewart Living, House Beautiful, City Home, Modern Mansions, or any number of magazines Dory flipped thr
ough on her twice-weekly trips to the public library when she dreamed of getting away and living in some more sophisticated place; where she imagined a better family than the one she had, and finer things, and a kind of homespun happiness that came from the perfection of the home environment. The Boswells had that kind of living room. The sofa was wide and inviting; the drapes, though drawn shut, were thick and a bright yellow; the rugs were tastefully laid overtop the dark floor; and there was an upright piano at one end with several unlit candles upon it.
It seemed curiously unsuitable for day care, and she wondered if Mrs. Boswell always kept the children from playing in the house.
And now they’re trapped in the playset.
She passed by the living room, and as she glanced to her left, up the staircase to the second floor of the house, she saw the clown.
He was standing there with what might’ve been Benny Marais’s head in its hands.
And the worst part was, Benny had a big goofy smile on his face as if he’d just heard the best joke of his life.
4
Norma Houseman went to the door as soon as the doorbell chimed. Opening it, she looked out onto the porch.
“Veronica?” she asked.
“Ronnie couldn’t make it,” Lizzie Bond said.
“Oh. You two look so much alike.”
“Twinsies,” Lizzie said, smiling. “She had an accident.”
“Did she?” Norma said. “Well, this is unusual.”
“I’m as good a sitter as she is,” Lizzie said, glancing around to see behind Norma. “Where are the little rascals?”
“What kind of accident did she have?” Norma asked.
“Just an accident. Nothing bad,” Lizzie said.
“What do you have behind your back?”
“Nothing.”
“Elizabeth,” Norma said as formally and snappishly as she could. “What are you hiding?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Something’s wrong with you,” Norma said suddenly, as if she had just sensed something by the unusual look in Lizzie’s eyes. She tasted something bitter in the air. “Something’s not right.”
“Everything’s fine,” Lizzie said, rocking her head back and forth so that her ears nearly touched her shoulders. The effect was somewhat comical, but Norma began to wonder if Lizzie Pond wasn’t disturbed in some way. Her hair was over her eyes too much, her skirt looked like it had rips in it, and her knees were smudged with dirt.
“Well, I appreciate your coming by to tell me,” Norma said, nudging the door shut.
Lizzie’s stepped up so that the door could not be completely closed. “I’m here to substitute.”
“I’m sorry?”
“For Ronnie. I’ll take her place. I can babysit.”
“I think I’ll just cancel my plans,” Norma said.
“Oh please, Mrs. Houseman; Don’t do anything drastic like that. I love your kids. You know I’m as responsible as Ronnie is. And she’s hurt.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I love being around kids. We can play games like Tag and Hide and Go Seek. I can even help them with their homework,” Lizzie said.
“No, I meant you said she’s hurt. Did she fall?”
“Oh, no. She just had a little mishap. It’s nothing serious. Really. It was at the bookstore. You know that awful place where those two ... well, you know those two who run it... anything can happen in that place, and I bet it usually does.”
“Look, dear,” Norma said, and an icy feeling moved along her spine. She didn’t like the way the Pond girl kept looking around her as if she were ... hunting.
That’s what Norma thought. It was as if the girl was hunting for the children.
“Look, I didn’t want to tell you this,” Lizzie said, looking up at her with the face of absolute sweetness. “But Ronnie sometimes drinks a little. Not enough where most people would notice it. But I do. And I think it’s terrible. Just terrible. Our father was an alcoholic. You knew that, didn’t you? An awful man. He used to do terrible things to Ronnie and me when we were just toddlers. I don’t like the smell of liquor because of him. But Ronnie, well, she’s a little too much like him.”
Norma opened the door a bit. Now, the one thing about Norma Houseman was that she loved bad news about other people. And she loved the inner secrets of those around her. She had spent most of her life feeling happy at the misfortunes of others, and though she knew intellectually this wasn’t the right way to be, she could not help herself, any more than the chocolate-lover could resist a ten-pound box from Godiva. She enjoyed hearing the failings of her neighbors, and she took special pleasure in knowing that there were local sinners of any kind. Makes perfect sense, she thought. Veronica Pond always seemed so perfect, but there was that rumor about her. About her and that boy in town. About them being up to no good.
“So,” Lizzie said, her smile brightening.
“All right, dear,” Norma said, opening the door a bit wider and stepping back.
Lizzie stepped in, and drew the small knife from behind her back.
She pointed it at Norma, even while she elbowed the front door shut.
Norma laughed. “Jesus, Lizzie, I don’t know what kind of joke this is, but a knife like that?”
Lizzie quickly jabbed the knife into Norma’s left shoulder. Twisted it slightly. Norma felt the stab of pain shoot out from her arm and up the back of her neck. Lizzie pressed the knife deeply into the doorframe.
“There, you’re pinned,” Lizzie said. Then she reached into her coat pocket and brought out a corkscrew. “Okay, try this.” She brought the metal corkscrew up to Norma’s mouth. “Suck it. Suck it like it’s Chuck Waller’s prick.”
Norma stared at Lizzie as if she’d never seen her before. The pain in her right arm was intense, and she wasn’t sure she could tug away from the doorframe at all without causing more tearing and more pain. “Please, Lizzie. I don’t know ... I don’t know why you feel... why you’re doing ...” The pain was white-hot now, and Lizzie jiggled the corkscrew against her lips.
“Suck it. Suck it like a good girl. Well, a good bad girl.”
Norma said nothing.
She tasted the cold metal against her lips as Lizzie pressed the corkscrew to her. The girl nudged her lips apart with it so that it clacked against her front teeth.
“Suck it like a whore,” Lizzie said.
“Get out of my house,” Norma with her teeth clenched, but tears streamed down her face. She was too frightened to move, fearing that this crazy Pond girl might stab her again if she moved too fast or did anything untoward. Her mind raced as she tried to figure a way out of this. If I tear my arm away, it may hurt. But I need to. I need to face it. Face the pain. Face it.
And somewhere in the pit of her stomach, Norma Houseman had begun to feel a strange excitement. Fear and pain all messed up with a tingling inside her, as if she were about to have an adventure the likes of which she’d never before experienced. It was as if she were getting an adrenaline high from all this—as if she could smell something sweet and rancid that somehow made her all tingly.
Like I’m dreaming.
It’s my dream, she thought.
Norma had had the dream just weeks earlier, and had been unable to shake it. It didn’t involve Lizzie Pond, but a handsome stranger who had taken his fingers and pried her lips apart to thrust them inside her mouth. Oh, she realized. Not a stranger at all. It was Chuck. She had a sex dream about him, and in it, he’d been forceful and overpowering—something she normally didn’t like at all. But in that dream, he had taken her like some primitive male force. And she had sucked his fingers in the dream, feeling dread and excitement at the same time, while his other hand had explored her body.
It was just like this. The terrible fear. The tingling.
The thrill.
“You don’t suck, your kids will die.” Lizzie Pond said this with such conviction that Norma nearly believed her. “If you don’t take this corkscrew into the ba
ck of your hot little throat, Mrs. Houseman, I will go upstairs and into your backyard and I will murder each of your children. But first, I will tie you up so that you watch each of them die. And I will prolong their deaths for as long as I can. I will play with their suffering for your entertainment. Well, really for my entertainment.”
You’re insane. This is insane. Insane but somehow... somehow it’s what I dreamed of.
“Suck,” Lizzie said. “I will kill your kids, Mrs. Houseman, if you do not. I’ve always hated you. And I’ve always hated them. And unless you want to see their little faces screaming in pain, you will take this in your mouth and give it a nice polishing.”
“Why are you doing this?” Norma asked feebly. “Why?”
Then Norma parted her lips and felt the cold metal enter her mouth.
5
Elsewhere in the village, other boys and girls entered their parents’ rooms. A boy named Zack Holmes grabbed the wheel of the car from his mother as she drove him and their father out to an early dinner. He twirled the wheel so that the car spun out, then aimed it right for the telephone pole at the intersection of Macklin and Main. Inside the supermarket, four little tow-headed kids, ranging in age from eight to thirteen, had begun running down people with shopping carts and then kicking them in the head. Roland Love might be seen with a large wooden cross that he’d begun dragging up the hill toward the mansion beyond the village. A school bus that was bringing Parham’s sixth grade back home late after a field trip at the planetarium over in Wheatley was hijacked by two of the girls, who slammed the bus driver’s face into the windshield until he passed out. Gunfire was heard if you listened for it; screams now and then let out, although those who wished to scream sometimes had been cut down well before the sound could make its way up from their throats. Wild dogs and feral cats ran along the side streets, sometimes dragging bits of human flesh. Still others awoke or went into dreams or lay down for naps and blamed overwork and the change in weather and the lack of good sleep as the reason for wanting to wander off into dreamland.
The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Thriller, Supernatural), #4 of Harrow (The Harrow Haunting Series) Page 17
