Limbo's Child

by Jonah Hewitt

“East Mohler Church Road. Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Second dirt drive past the old white church,” the kid repeated robotically, interrupting Miles.

  They all turned to face the kid. Miles nudged Sky and gave him an “I-told-you-so” look.

  “Fine! So now what? We still have to get past Barney Fife out there. How do you manage that?”

  “Dude,” Tim laughed as if something just occurred to him, “That show was still on when you were alive, right? What was that like?”

  “Some other time, Tim.” Sky rolled his eyes at him. “We’re kinda busy here.”

  “Well, I know it’s not a problem for all the dead people here, but speaking as the only person with a pulse, it’s starting to get cold,” Tim offered.

  Sky looked at him and then back to Miles. “So how ‘bout it Miles? What’s the plan for getting out of here?”

  Miles just stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

  “I thought so,” Sky said leaning against the inside of the door. They all looked around dejected until the kid spoke.

  “Well…I think I can help with that.” Nephys dropped the tub of ice cream, now empty, and wiped his messy face off on his linen robes.

  “Oh, really?” said Sky. “You’ve got a magic wand in your robes that can teleport us out of here?”

  “No, but I have a psychotic bagpipe with a butcher knife.”

  He called over to Hiero in some foreign language. Hiero jumped right to him like a dog, a surly angry dog with a goosefoot and three harpoons in its back, but a dog all the same.

  They all looked on perplexed as he spoke to him in stern tones and the imp replied with discordant notes, foot stomping and more stabbing.

  “He’ll do it,” the kid looked up and said brightly.

  “Do what?” Tim asked.

  “Scare all the people out there away.” The kid was already on his way to pull the spatula from the door handles.

  “Oy!” Miles interjected, “He ain’t gonna hurt anyone is he?”

  “Him? Oh no, well, not much anyway. Imps don’t actually kill anyone, that would defeat their purpose.”

  “Which is?” Sky asked curious.

  “Oh…to scare people mostly, torture their souls forever and ever and extract the full measure of pain and suffering that they can. No sense in killing the cow if you can keep milking it, forever.”

  Miles laughed and hit Sky on the arm. “How about that. He really is like ya!”

  Sky shot Miles a dirty look, but said nothing.

  Nephys said a few more words to the imp, who was hopping up and down with expectation and delight. Then Nephys pulled the spatula free and swung open the door. The imp was out like a bolt of lightning, and Nephys quickly slammed the door shut behind him.

  The other three rushed to the door to press their ears against it.

  “What in the…” came an extremely anxious reply before it was quickly drowned out by a murderous honking sound. What followed was a like the soundtrack of a hundred horror movies sped up and played over the top of each other. There was a lot of screaming and crashing and more noise than a brigade of highlanders shoved through a meat grinder. There were odd snatches of yelling and cursing and swearing and downright panic, but there was at least one moment of vindication.

  “I TOLD YOU IT WAS A BAGPIPE!!”

  Miles took a look at Nephys who was still rummaging around for something to eat. He was a right bottomless pit that one.

  “Oy!” Miles called to him and he turned around with a frozen corndog in one hand and handful of french fries in the other. “This thing of yours. Why was he chasin’ after Lucy?”

  “He was chasing after Lucy?” he sounded surprised.

  “Too right he was. Why would he go an’ do that?”

  The kid shrugged, “I dunno. He feeds on pain and misery. Was she miserable?”

  Miles’s face fell. There was no doubt Lucy was miserable, but he was a bit ashamed to admit to the kid why.

  Miles decided to change the subject. “Well he sure is havin’ a right feast out there tonight, ain’t he?”

  Nephys nodded while trying to gnaw off a piece of frozen corndog. “Food on a stick! This is genius!! Oh…that’s the secret of dealing with imps. Don’t ever let them know you’re afraid of them or they’ll never leave you alone.”

  Miles nodded and filed that useful piece of information away for later.

  Eventually, the screaming and honking died down. It got dead silent and all three leaned in closer to the door to listen when an enormous blade pierced the metal door right between Miles and Tim’s faces. They all jumped back and looked as the imp swung the door open from the other side and stood there, droning and beaming as if it were the greatest day of its life.

  “HOOONT-FAARRRANTOOOPANT!!” it hooted triumphantly. It was more than a bit disconcerting.

  “C’mon, let’s get out of here before anyone sees us,” Sky said urgently. He didn’t have to worry. As they cautiously edged around the imp they surveyed the scene. The diner was trashed, not a single window or door left intact and most of the people were gone. What few lay around were passed out or babbling incoherently, but they didn’t look too bloody. Miles hoped none were permanently damaged.

  Out in the parking lot, it was like a scene from a movie. One of the police cars was even overturned and on fire, but all of the law enforcement officers had fled.

  “Dang,” Tim looked around impressed before spying his own baby, “Oh, man!” He ran up to the beaten Impala. “Criminy! Will you look at this?! It’s gonna take me forever to fix all this!” In addition to the dented fender, the cracked windshield, and the damage done by Lucy’s joyride, there were several new scratches and serious dents, but considering the damage elsewhere Miles thought he should count himself lucky.

  “Will it run?” Sky said unsympathetically.

  “Uh…yeah, I think so,” Tim said, obviously depressed.

  “Good. Let’s get on the road. ALL ABOARD!” Sky opened the door and they all piled in the usual spots, with Tim driving, Sky up front and Miles in back. Even Hiero eagerly jumped into the back and began jumping up and down on the vinyl like an excited kid on a trip to an amusement park.

  Sky was ready to pull the door shut when he noticed that Nephys was still standing in the parking lot, hanging back, with an anxious look on his face.

  “Last call kid, there ain’t no other ride,” Sky remarked caustically.

  “Do we have to go in that?” Nephys said nervously, strangely clutching one fist to his chest.

  Sky laughed, “Let me get this straight. You hang out with THAT thing.”

  “FLUBBIT!” Hiero burbled excitedly.

  “And you’re afraid to drive in an Impala?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Family Reunion

  “Who is it?” Yo-yo hoarsely whispered.

  “I don’t know!” Lucy tersely replied. They were peeking over the bed of the old, rusty pick-up, looking through the front door window. Every once in a while the tall figure would pass in front of the door, but it was hard to see what he was doing. He looked like he was pacing, reading a large book. Grandma Holveda had an impressive and odd book collection that Lucy’s mom had squirreled away to the attic or the spare room the first week they moved here. She had insisted on it, but Lucy had never suspected why, until now.

  “Is it…is it another vampire?” Yo-yo asked nervously.

  “I don’t think so,” Lucy answered.

  “A cop?”

  “Cops don’t show up in old pick-ups,” she replied coldly.

  “What are we going to do?” Yo-yo asked after a long pause.

  Lucy didn’t answer. Instead, she just lowered herself behind the pickup and sat on the ground safely out of view. Yo-yo sat down beside her. She pulled her hair behind her ears and hugged her knees. What was she going to do?! Everything was so desperate, so messed up. She went to rub her moist eyes with the heel of her hand but stopped before getting there. Her sadness and frustration was being s
lowly replaced by something else. She had been lied to and manipulated and chased and terrorized by Amanda, Sky, and those loser vampires and creeps with him and even by some crazy, pig-duck thing. Her mother was dead, and her body had been stolen. She was stuck here all alone and now someone was rummaging through her house. Not even her own home had been spared. Something hot was bubbling up inside of her. She was done running. She was angry.

  “I can tell you what we’re not going to do,” she said to Yo-yo without looking at him, “I’m not going to run or hide anymore.” Then she looked down at the princess kitties goggling back at her, mocking her. “Ugh! And I’m NOT leaving here without a change of clothes!” She stood back up abruptly and peeked over the pick-up. The figure was walking down the hallway to the back, somewhere near the kitchen. There was a better view from the backside of the house. Without asking, she grabbed Yo-yo by his shirt, dragged him around the pick-up and ran crouching for the edge of the porch. She peeked around the corner. All clear. She ran quickly to the next corner and then peeking, ran to the abandoned henhouse out back. She yanked Yo-yo around the corner beside her and then gave him the “Shh” sign before he had a chance to protest.

  She glanced around the corner of the dilapidated coop that was little more than a shed, but from here she could see the lean-to that served as the expanded kitchen with its larger window. He was there all right. He was tall and gaunt with short, grey hair and a goatee and a large army overcoat. He had piled several books out on the butcher-block island and he was eating an apple!

  She watched him for a while longer. He was looking for something, looking agitated.

  “There’s only one of him,” she said, trying to sound confident, “We could take him.”

  “What?! Are you crazy?!” Yo-yo said anxiously.

  She quickly pulled back from the corner and crouched to talk to Yo-yo face-to-face.

  “Look. I’m tired of running. That’s my house and I’m not leaving it undefended. They took my mother, and I can’t do anything about that, but they aren’t going to violate my home, whoever they are. That’s all I have left.” She was breathing hard but she was amazed at how steely her own voice sounded.

  “I don’t like it. What if he’s a vampire?!”

  “He’s no vampire.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Do vampires eat apples when they think no one is looking?”

  Yo-yo chewed on that for a while before making his next suggestion, “What about a burglar?”

  “I don’t think so. If he was here to steal something he would have taken it and run, not set up a reading room in my kitchen! Besides, there’s something odd about him…he’s looking for something and I want to know what.” She went back to peek at him from the corner of the chicken coop. Yo-yo crept up right behind her and peeked over her shoulder. He was still there, reading and fuming.

  “What if he’s like that witch thing back in the hospital?” Yo-yo asked.

  “Amanda?” Lucy said a bit nervously. She rolled it over in her mind. This guy didn’t look anything like Amanda. He looked homeless and not that well put together, but he was also odd looking, like someone from another time. Perhaps, but then, perhaps not. “I don’t think so,” she said, not too confident herself, but she didn’t want Yo-yo to worry. “I’m going to sneak in there,” she said at last.

  “No, Lucy! Don’t!” He pulled her back behind the old coop.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to sneak in there and hit him over the head with something…a frying pan, maybe.” She wished she hadn’t said “maybe,” it made it sound like she had made up the plan there on the spot, which of course she had. “Besides, if he’s one of them, I have the magic finger, remember?” She held up the finger, but this was a bluff too. She had no idea why and how it worked. Why did it work on vampires but not on orderlies, for example? Would it work on Amanda? She didn’t know.

  “I don’t know…” Yo-yo said uncertainly, “He’ll see you. You’ll get caught!”

  “Not if he doesn’t see me first. Not if he’s distracted.” She turned to Yo-yo and gave him a nervous smile.

  “Oh, no…” He got up as if to leave but didn’t know where to go. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “No, it’ll work! See, you go knock on the front door. He’ll go to investigate and then I’ll sneak up from behind. I know where the old cast-iron frying pan is. He’ll walk down the hall to the front door and I’ll clobber him – he’ll never see it coming.”

  Yo-yo bit his lip, “I don’t like it.”

  “No, no, it’ll work, and if he gets close, you can just do that disappearing trick you do. He’ll never touch you. You’ll be fine.”

  “That doesn’t mean I like it! I hate doing that!”

  She grabbed him by the shoulders. “Trust me, it’ll be ok.” Then she pulled him into a quick hug and whispered in his ear, “Wait ‘til I sneak up to the back door. Then go.” Then she had a thought, “We have an old ship’s bell with a pull rope on the front porch. You won’t even have to get close to the door. You can just pull that. I’ll wait ‘til I hear you ring it. He’ll go to the front to look, and when he does I’ll sneak up behind him.”

  She let go of him, but he still looked unconvinced. “What if anything goes wrong?”

  She thought for a moment and looked away. “If anything goes wrong, run for the woods, out by the edge of the drive and hide. I’ll come for you, I promise.”

  Yo-yo took a deep breath and nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  Another quick hug and she was off. She went first to the edge of the back porch, being careful to stay low. Another pause to catch her breath. She looked back. Yo-yo was looking at her from the edge of the coop with his usual, dead-eyed stare. She shuddered, but his eyes brightened when he saw her looking at him. She gave him a thumbs up, which he meekly returned. Then she was up again and managed to get up the back steps without them creaking and slowly worked her way to the back door. She crouched below the window in the back door and hoped no one had thought to lock it. Mom had lots of rituals, like lighting the candle in the stone lantern, but she never locked the back door until they were home for the night. It was a safe town. She reached up to grab the handle and turned it slowly. It was unlocked.

  She looked back to the chicken coop. Yo-yo hadn’t moved yet. He was still rooted there in place. She gave him an anxious look and pointed with her eyes repeatedly to the left around to the front of the house and mouthed the word “GO” to him several times. He made several false starts before finally going. He was rather noisy, thrashing about too much in the weeds around the corner. She cringed and hoped the man hadn’t heard him. Lucy waited for the bell but it didn’t come. It must only have been a few seconds, but it felt like hours. As she waited, she wondered how she would know when the man inside moved for the front door! She hadn’t thought of that. She thought maybe she could peek through the back door window, but what if she was seen? Then she realized she did have a way to know.

  She closed her eyes and shut out the noises of her mind. She found her own heartbeat. She counted the beats. She listened. There was another heartbeat just inside, in the kitchen. It was slow. Very slow. It had to beat less that forty times a minute. It was like a metronome keeping time for a funeral dirge. There was something peculiarly heavy and leaden about it, like it was very old and very tired, but also burning with deep rage. The sound was almost swallowing her up and she was getting very nervous. “When was Yo-yo ever going to ring that bell!”

  “DING!” rang the bell, clear and bright, a perfect sound to cut the fog, but it only rang once and the sound after it was far from melodious.

  “AAAAAARRGH!” It was Yo-yo. It was surprisingly loud and shrill, but it was him no doubt. “Why is he yelling?!” She thought maybe he had fallen off the porch or something.

  Inside she heard the scraping of shoes on the oak floors and the leaden heartbeat quickened slightly. The heartbeat, or the man attached to it, closed the leather-bound book and began to
walk out the kitchen. “He’s going! This is it!” she thought. She heard the heartbeat grow fainter down the hallway, but she froze. She forced herself to turn the back door knob slowly and she slid in and shut the door slow enough to prevent him from hearing it click shut. Crouching the whole time, she crept into the kitchen. So far so good. She went into the kitchen and carefully opened the bottom cupboard. The cast-iron pan was on the bottom with all the other pans on top. Of course. Dragging it out without clattering the other pans was an immense chore and she was afraid he would get to the front door and back before she managed it, but no, she got it out without making any noise and started down the hall.

  Crouched down she could only see his heavy combat boots. He was moving slowly to the door and got slower with every step as if he was approaching the front door with extreme caution. She was glad she was in bare feet, and that she knew where all the creaky floorboards were so she could avoid them. She had sneaked down to read or listen to music on her earphones or even go for a night swim in the nearby water hole a time or two after all. She slowly stood up and held the frying pan high above her at the ready and tiptoed down behind him. He was very tall and she was worried that she might not be able to hit him on the head even with her arms extended to their full length, but she would just have to manage somehow.

  A few feet from the door, he paused, and then he lowered himself slowly and leaned one ear towards it. She was afraid he might see her, but all of his concentration was on the door. He was expecting something, but wasn’t seeing it. He reached a hand for the doorknob, but then he pulled it back. Then he did the oddest thing. He brought the knuckle of one hand up to his mouth and bit down on it hard with a sickening crunch. When the hand was lowered again, Lucy could see that the knuckle was streaming blood, dripping on the floor. “Ew,” she thought. He then reached over with his left hand to open the door so that he could hold the bloody knuckle at the ready like a weapon. For what, at first she couldn’t imagine. Then she realized he had a magic finger too!

  He began to turn the doorknob slowly. She realized her arms were already tired from holding the frying pan aloft. This was it. She would have to rush forward and strike. She closed her eyes and cringed for just a half second. Her heart quickened and she took a breath to prepare for the lunge, but just then he stopped, stiffened and instantly turned around to face her.