She felt as if she were watching herself at a distance as she leaned over him and lowered her hands to press them into the dead boy’s body.
When she did, the pleasure that came over her was intense, as if she had never known that tingling sensation before. He was wet and warm in a way she’d never felt anything, and her hands found his beating heart that throbbed as she squished at it with her fingers.
It has you. The house has you. You have to stop. You have to just leave. Just get the hell out, she thought.
But part of her liked milking the dead boy’s innards, and as she found other organs, and little tiny bits of mushy yellow fat, she wanted to put her face inside his open stomach and smell what the insides were like and maybe she would find out why he had this power over her, to make her do this. To make her do this nasty, humiliating act.
This dead boy with his knife teeth.
She played with the dead boy for a long time, and perhaps she dreamed of less repugnant things, but you could not tell it by looking at her.
The Nightwatchman stood in the doorway, and when he felt Dory had reached a pinnacle of unadulterated pleasure at the touching of the dead, he went and took her up in his arms and whispered, “Mrs. Fly. We have a place for you upstairs.”
5
Sam Pratt had been nearly out of breath the whole time he’d been running toward Harrow. He thought of Thad, and Jack Templeton, and the people he saw lying dead in the street. He couldn’t take it anymore—he had to stop all of it from happening. He felt the pressure of guilt for having been there the night that the boy’s corpse had been torn open by someone to start a ritual from hell that launched this night.
As he went, he saw others along the roadside—he saw kids he went to school with, and women who had been his elementary school teachers, and he saw men and women who lived on his block, people he avoided normally, people he ran into at the drugstore, the postman who always had a quick hello for him whenever Sam had to sign for a package ... and they were part of it.
Somehow, they had gotten taken over.
Somehow, Harrow had gotten into them.
Possessed.
He ran between all the praying people and the burning trees, screaming that he was going to stop this once and for all.
But just as he got to the door of Harrow—it was open and he could see an incredible yellow and red light from within as if it were lit with a thousand candles—a little girl with a pitchfork jabbed him in the chest.
Sam looked down at her. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like the little sister of a friend of his from down the block. He had seen her playing jump rope with some of the other kids now and then.
The girl looked up at him, her black braids swinging side to side and her grin nearly an infection as she twisted the pitchfork deep into his chest.
Sam fell to the ground, struggling to breathe. He saw the little feet—the feet of other children gathered around him. He turned over on his back, and the little girl drew the pitchfork back out of his chest.
Sam looked up at the children. One boy had a metal rake, and he pressed this down onto Sam’s stomach until it punctured the skin. Two other boys began spitting in Sam’s face as he fought to stay awake.
He felt his life flowing from him, and knew he had perhaps only minutes, left.
And during those minutes, these children who played on the front porch of Harrow were going to tear him apart.
6
“Put your gun down, Army,” Alice Kyeteler said, reaching over to touch Army Vernon lightly on the shoulder. “That’s Ronnie Pond, from up the way.”
“No,” Ronnie said, tossing her hatchet onto the road. Its clatter echoed in the curious quiet of the night. “Shoot me. Take me out.”
“Stop that,” Army said. “Life’s sacred. Even if it doesn’t seem like it right now.” He lowered his arm, and tucked his gun into his jacket pocket.
“All right then. If you’re not killing me, I’m going up to that house,” Ronnie said wearily. She squatted down and picked up the hatchet, hefting it between her hands.
Alice was amazed, looking at her. It was as if she had seen the exact moment when a teenage girl had become a young woman.
Not just a young woman.
A young warrior.
“We’re coming with you,” Alice said.
7
It took them nearly forty minutes to get to Harrow. They walked slowly, cautiously, along the streets of the village. It was so empty and silent that it seemed to keep the three of them from talking at all. Dead bodies lay in piles along the shop doors. Houses down the little lanes looked as if they’d been abandoned.
“The lost colony” Alice said.
“What?” Ronnie asked.
“In Roanoke. It just disappeared.”
“People didn’t disappear here,” Army said. “But I get your drift.”
“Is everyone dead?”
Alice shook her head. “From what I can tell, if they’re sleeping, they’re alive. If they haven’t woken up.”
“How come? How come they’re sleeping?”
“Who knows,” Alice said. “Maybe the ones who wake up from sleep are living their nightmares in some way. Maybe the ones who sleep are ...”
“They’re in Harrow,” Ronnie said. “That’s what Mr. Boatwright said. He said ...” But she let the thought die. She closed her eyes, and Alice put her arm around her. Ronnie shrugged her away. “I saw my mother dead. I haven’t found my sister. She must be dead, too. A girl I know—Bari Love—attacked me. She went back to sleep after she did it, but she was bleeding bad. I’m sure she’s dead now, too. And Dusty. And Nick. People I cared about. Everybody’s gone. This is a heartless place. What’s the point in living?”
Alice exchanged a glance with Army, who shrugged. “I don’t have answers.”
“I dreamed I was in that house,” Ronnie said. “All summer I’ve had dreams. My sister was there. And others. A little boy who seemed to be behind everyone’s face. Like they were masks. A little boy who seemed ... the ... well, absolute evil. I hate that word evil. It seems stupid. But whatever this is, it’s utterly evil.”
“When you dreamed of the house,” Alice began, “what was unusual? Besides the strangeness. Was there some quality to the dream that you hadn’t noticed in any dream before?”
Ronnie stopped in her tracks. “Yeah. There was. It was more real. That’s what bothered me about the dreams. They were hard. Around the edges. The rooms in Harrow were ... how can I put it? They were ... solid. The floor was solid. I felt the floor. I never feel myself on a floor in a dream.”
“It had the same quality as real life,” Alice said, nodding.
“More than that. It was like real life was the dream. And the dream was more real.”
Finally, they left the last of the buildings in the village and stepped out onto the narrow road that would be the beginning of their travel into the woods to find the house. They grew silent again as they saw the distant fires in the trees.
They thought they heard chanting in the chilly air, as if some ceremony were taking place outside the house—a revival of some kind, with the ecstatic cries of participants and that kind of non-melodic singing that reminded Alice of her studies of ancient religions, where blood thirst was the rule.
Yet when they reached the stone wall that marked the entrance to the property, the place had gone silent. And though the trees still burned, the three of them saw no one in front of the Harrow at all.
“Shit,” Ronnie said, when she looked up the drive to the house.
Alice could not even find the words to say it, but Army had no problem. “It’s... grown. Jesus Christ, has it grown.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
1
Ronnie glanced at Alice. “How could it happen?”
“Don’t ask me,” Alice said.
Harrow was no longer the Victorian monstrosity of the Romanesque and the Greek and the Georgian and its other influences. It had reached higher into the sky—i
ts towers were now buttressed and it had arches coming off them.
“It looks like Constantinople, Jesus H.” Army said.
“Or Notre Dame,” Alice added. “They’ve turned it into a cathedral.”
“We’re dreaming this,” Ronnie said. “Somehow, it’s making us see this. ‘Cause this can’t happen. It can’t.”
Alice whispered, “Anything can happen here. Tonight. I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of this yet. Somehow, it’s gotten its fuel. Somehow, those with sparks of psychic ability have given themselves to Harrow.”
“We could just run away,” Army said, but it didn’t sound like he meant it.
“Those in the village who are still dreaming, are dreaming all this for us,” Alice said. “Somehow, Harrow has crossed over from dreams into reality. This reality. Like Ronnie’s dream. Hard reality, within a dream.”
“But how?”
Alice reached pressed her hand lightly on Ronnie’s scalp. She closed her eyes and tried to summon what she called “the stream,” which was something she felt between other psychics whenever she met them. She felt a faint tingling along her hand. Alice opened her eyes again. “You have a little something, Ronnie. I think most people do but don’t necessarily know it. Maybe they have more powerful dreams than others. Maybe they make good guessers, and aren’t aware that maybe other people can’t guess that well.”
“If I have some kind of psychic ability, it sure as hell is buried deep,” Ronnie said.
“Why us?” Army asked. “Why aren’t we either dreaming or asleep?”
Alice shrugged. “I wish I had the answers.”
“Some psychic.” He said it to try and lighten her mood, but somehow Army knew it didn’t come out right.
“I’m supposed to be. But it hasn’t really been working much lately.” She said this last bit as if she didn’t care if they heard her or not. In a slightly more audible tone, she said, “Harrow collects souls. But it needs that psychic spark for fuel. It must already have one or two with the ability. Sometimes I feel it in the village—a slight tension in the air. Like a static charge. And then I get the sense that someone who has it is nearby—maybe just passing by on their way to school, or work, or out for a walk with a dog. I was attracted to this village. Until tonight, I thought it was because it had a certain pull that reduced my abilities a bit. I liked that. It’s not always fun and games to see things others can’t. But after tonight, I think I came here the same way that others with the ability, or the genetic disposition to it, might come to Watch Point. Harrow is the pull. It’s not anything but this house. It was consecrated for evil, and it will always remain so. But I was sure it had been turned off. Yes, hauntings can be shut down, and it was... for awhile.”
“I wish I could’ve figured out something in my dreams then,” Ronnie said with a slight shiver to her voice. “I wish something in them had prepared me better for this night. My sister Lizzie went in there,” Ronnie whispered. “That night. Last summer. She came home and I felt it. I started dreaming then. I started dreaming about this place then. She was with friends, and they broke into the house and partied a little. Sam was there, I guess, because I made her promise to give him a ride, even though he wouldn’t talk to me afterward. Bari Love was at that party, too.”
“Sam thinks it started that night,” Alice said. “Maybe it did. Maybe that electrical storm we had didn’t help, either. Maybe. It couldn’t have been just the party that set this in motion. But maybe it was that dead boy that Sam saw. The one they found.”
“We’re too scared to go up to the door, aren’t we?” Army asked. “The world is upside down right now and we have watched this town lose its marbles in less than a few hours, and ... well, what isn’t sleeping is murdered. Except for us, I guess. And whoever is in that house.”
“We’re all numb. All of us. But we have to get through this. We’ll turn off whatever got turned on in Harrow,” Alice said.
“Or die trying,” Ronnie said.
“Come on,” Alice said. She held up the gun she’d taken off the body of the sheriff. “Maybe we stop this. Or maybe we don’t.”
“Okay, you two go,” Army said.
“Army?”
“I can’t do it,” Army said. “I can’t. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t. Christ, I’m an old man and I’ve seen some war in my time, but I can’t go in a goddamn house.”
Ronnie and Alice exchanged glances, but Army just started laughing as if he were losing his sanity a little. “We already saw what happens. This is like the meltdown of hell right here in this little piss-ant burg. You try and wake people up, they kill you. You try to talk to people, they try to kill you. How many nine-year-olds did I see chewing on some poor guy in the middle of Main Street? I mean, what’s it gonna take before we all figure out that, yep, that house is gonna eat us all and spit us out, or else everyone we can’t seem to see right now is gonna jump us from behind the trees. But I ain’t walkin’ in to that place. Somebody’s gonna have to drag me. I think it’s a living thing. I think that house,” he pointed at Harrow, “is some kind of organic being with a big fat digesting stomach of the damned or something, and Army Vernon is not about to jump into the belly of the beast. Can’t do it. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.”
“If we wait here, we’re probably doomed,” Alice said.
“Yeah, well, which is more doomed—over there, or over here? I would rather take my chances and stay right here. We can wait ‘til morning. We can stand guard right here. Look, nobody’s bothered us. Nobody cares that we’re standing here, right? Why not wait ‘til morning? That’s the reasonable thing to do. It’s beyond insane to go into that place.”
“I think it’s afraid of us,” Ronnie said.
“What? Why would it be afraid of us?”
“We dreamed about what’s inside it.”
“Others did, too.”
“But they got taken over by the dreams. We didn’t. Why is that?”
Alice nodded. “Ronnie, maybe that’s it. Maybe Harrow is afraid of us.”
“And yet, we end up right here. If it was afraid of us, wouldn’t it chase us the hell away?” Army asked. “Wouldn’t it off us right away? Makes no sense. None whatsoever.”
“It wants us. And it’s afraid of us,” Alice said. “Maybe we’re the only ones it can’t kill. Maybe we’re the only ones who can defeat it.”
“Maybe we’re the only ones it really wants,” Ronnie said.
“How the hell do you defeat... how in hell do you fight a place like that? It’s a monster. It’s not even a building. Look how it’s changed. How it’s grown. Shifted. We don’t even know how much of this we’re hallucinating and how much is real. What do we do to kill a house? Can we burn it? Blow it up? I don’t think guns will do it.”
“I suppose it’s like any other living thing,” Alice said. “You find its heart.”
She paused and thought a little more. “And then, you rip it out.”
Just a second after she’d said this, they heard a scream come from the house. It sounded as if someone’s heart had, in fact, just been ripped from him.
2
Luke Smithson had climbed the stairs and found the room with the writing on the walls. Candles were everywhere in the room, and their flickering light seemed to make the words dance along the walls. He saw the open window where the specter of his aunt had stood. He even saw what looked like her wet footprints—as if she’d just gotten out of the bath, and had walked to the window to call to him.
The words on the walls were from his diary and his notes, and he wasn’t sure what to make of them. Even while he looked at the words scrawled all over the walls of the room, they shifted and changed slightly, and then they became the words he’d written to her in his many letters as a boy, and the ones she’d written back to him.
Dear Luke,
Of course I want you to come stay with me here in Watch Point this summer. We can take a little boat out on the river if you want, or even take the train down to Manhattan if y
ou want some big city living...
Dear Aunt Danni,
Well, things are worse here at home and I can’t stand these people I have to live with. The Good Woman of Stoughton wants me to stay home this summer and I just want to run away...
Dear Luke,
Did you get the apples we sent? We’re hoping they arrived fresh—the farm over in Woodstock certainly assured us they would. . .
Among these letters that he had never shown anyone, now scrawled and scrambled on the walls of the room, new words formed in a blank area, as if someone stood there, some invisible being was still writing out words:
Luke, I can’t ever leave this place, but I’m so lonely here. I want you to stay with me. I came here to kill myself, but when I arrived I got a sense of this place. Of what it could be. It’s like a trapdoor, Luke. It’s a trapdoor to other worlds, and you can go back and forth here. I’m not even really dead. My body fell, but I was a sacrifice to Harrow. I want you to stay here with me. I’m lonely. I can’t see anyone else here. I wander room to room, and I know others come and go.
Luke moved close to the words as they wrote themselves furiously on the wall, and waved his hand near where he estimated the “writer” must be. The scrawl was large and then went smaller and smaller, and there was something about it—a total effect of it—that seemed to him that a mad person was in this room writing. He began to doubt it could possibly be the ghost of his aunt. Something about the words that were being written didn’t seem right for her.
I am so lonely here, Luke. If you could only join me. We could be so happy together. We know about true friendship, and real family, don’t we? I can’t be alone anymore. Not here. It is a lonely place, even when I see shadows of others and forms of those who come and go.
The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Thriller, Supernatural), #4 of Harrow (The Harrow Haunting Series) Page 27
