“Wait a minute,” Doug said, staggering to the next pole. He looked at the house, and back to the old man. “Are you saying that those people willingly went in there to die?”
“They cannot die, Mr. Muir, if they are already dead.”
The pole turned to ice in his hands, and his breath to acid in his lungs.
“They are not aware of it, of course, and some do not return. A few have an inkling of . . . strangeness now and again, and I do have a few friends who are fully aware and do not mind it at all. Not, you see, when they consider the permanent alternative. No, they do not mind when they realize what they have.”
“Judy,” he whispered.
And Parrish only smiled as he stood again in the doorway, and turned his head slowly.
“Wait!” He reached out a hand almost pleading. “What about Piper and those rocks? What about the earthquake, the gale—”
Parrish raised a silencing palm as the light behind him dimmed, and grew stronger.
“Mr. Muir, when you wake up each morning to a bright new day, you stretch and groan, you rub the sleep from your eyes, you test your muscles before you leave your bed. You flex, Mr. Muir, to be sure all is in order.”
Doug swallowed, thinking of Maggie in her paddock, striking out against the wind.
“And when you have awakened, Mr. Muir, and are ready to engage your schedule for the day, you need a bit of breakfast, don’t you? A spot of lunch, nothing heavy. Just a little something to tide you over until dinner.”
The bile rose again, and Doug grabbed for the last pole, slick from the mist that fell from the writhing clouds.
Parrish sighed; he was growing bored with it all. “As for Piper’s brief travels—and Sitter, too, I might add, though neither really remembers, it’s much more convenient that way—well, Mr. Muir, is not one of the prime rules of survival the necessity of procreation?”
Doug gaped.
“Goodbye, Mr. Muir. I do hate to leave you, but I’m afraid it’s time for dinner.”
Doug pushed away from the tent, reason gone, murder stretching out his hands—and the door slammed in his face. He pounded against the frame, against the door, bellowing at Parrish to let him in, to answer the rest of his questions.
How could he fight, he thought desperately, standing away from the house to stare up at the windows, to stare back at the door; how could he save himself if he didn’t have all the answers?
Dead? They’re—
Liz! “Liz!”
And as he grabbed hold of the doorknob, the screaming began.
5
6:00
“Shhhhh!” Archie hissed in exasperation, waving a hand frantically behind him. “For Pete’s sake, you wanna get caught, you dopes? You wanna get caught?”
The others crowded expectantly around him and made him squirm, Ian and Dirk at his back, Keith beside him and peering through the staggered rows of trees toward the ghostly white figure that walked hurriedly away from them. They could not make out a face, but its outline when it had passed them was clearly that of a woman. A young woman, and she checked behind her constantly to see if anyone was following.
“Know her?” Dirk whispered.
“Heather,” Archie said, and Keith punched him smartly in the middle of his back. “No, of course I don’t, stupid,” he admitted, “but did you see the size of them melons? Did ya see them? Jeez.” Said quietly, almost worshipfully.
“What are melons?” Ian asked. “Hey, Keith, what does he mean about the melons?”
Archie rolled his eyes and nudged Dirk into giggling, and they edged forward again, darting from tree to tree, lining up behind each trunk until the way was clear again. Keith tried to stay by Ian, to reassure him if only by his presence that nothing could go wrong, that they wouldn’t get into trouble. The kid had not joined the Gang’s other spying missions, and probably wouldn’t have understood what they had seen if he had. Keith barely did himself, though he knew most of the language involved; it seemed to him somehow inhuman, more like what animals did in a barnyard than what men and women did on a bed of leaves, or grass, or on a blanket they carried to places they thought no one knew but them.
Archie, of course, claimed to have already lost his virginity (whatever that was), and had unarguably preempted the chiefs slot as resident expert in matters like this (whatever this was).
What bothered him most, however, what really made his skin crawl this time were the trees they were sneaking through. He had been trying like crazy since they entered the grove to figure out what had made him direct their attention here. He hadn’t spotted the woman yet, nor by twisting his face in a painful attitude of thought could he remember ever seeing this place before.
It was strange.
It was creepy.
Ian stumbled over an exposed root. Keith grabbed for the kid’s arm, smiled an it’s okay, and they ran on tiptoe to catch up with the others.
It was much darker now, the foliage above them dimmed almost to extinction in the deep grey light that softened the rough edges off all the bark, blotted out their shadows, and made the lower branches seem to glitter with dewdrops. The breeze scratched through the leaves; an occasional belt of fog wound out of the sky and hung a few inches over the grass until either the breeze or their feet tore it to shreds.
They could hear nothing, and when Keith looked over his shoulder, he could see no sign of Winterrest or the grownups.
He licked at his lips, but said nothing. This wasn’t the time for Archie to see how nervous he was.
“There!” Archie said suddenly, dropping on all fours behind a fat-boled hickory.
They gathered around him, crouching, breathing heavily through their mouths, and finally realizing they couldn’t all use the same tree for cover. With emphatic hand signals and a few mouthed curses, they agreed to separate—Keith crawling to an oak only a few feet away, Dirk dropping back to the left to a cage of white birch, Ian staying with Archie not because he wanted to but because there was no way he was going to be left alone in this spooky place.
Less than twenty feet ahead the trees stopped, forming the arc of a half-circle whose diameter was described by the low Winterrest wall. The woman stood in the clearing, looking around as if searching for someone she was supposed to meet here; at her feet were clustered a profusion of waist-high wildflowers whose colors seemed unnaturally dark against the stark white of her dress. She cupped her hands around her mouth then and whispered a name. None of them could hear it. She whispered it again, stepped away from the flowerbed, and hurried to the wall. With her hands braced on top, she leaned over and called into the woods behind.
Archie rubbed his hands on his trousers and grinned, poked Ian’s arm, and gave him a broad wink.
Dirk watched solemnly.
Keith couldn’t be sure he hadn’t seen her before, and wished she would turn around so he could get a good look at her face.
Then she backed away, hands gone in front of her. Again she stopped among the wildflowers, and shuddered when mist was shaken loose by a gust rattling the leaves. Her hair, Keith saw now, was short and black and curly, and she wasn’t very tall. A dark green ribbon dangled midway down her narrow back, and it flopped from side to side suddenly, like a garter snake with its head caught in a trap.
Keith blinked, and heard Archie gasp.
The woman was taking off her dress, exposing first the gentle, speckled round of her shoulders, then wriggling side to side to inch the soft white material slowly down the undulating length of her spine. Her back was veiled by diamond droplets of mist, her shoulder blades working, the skin flexing and stretching and rippling and moist.
At the same time, she began lowering herself to the ground, as slowly as she slipped the garment from her body, kneeling in the high flowers, her arms folded demurely over her chest, her fingertips peeking over the lush curve of her shoulders.
Keith swallowed dryly, and looked over at Archie, who was gaping and blinking rapidly, forgetting all about Ian who was t
rying to ask him silently what was going on. He couldn’t see Dirk, but he was sure that he was just as puzzled as the rest of them.
The woman dropped forward now, her gleaming white buttocks rising briefly through the stems before she sank, and the blossoms rocked gently to and fro from her passing, from the wind.
They watched breathlessly.
A white hand rose languidly out of the floral sea, spread its fingers wide, and made a loose beckoning fist before lowering again.
Ian finally gave up trying to get an answer from Archie and scurried over to Keith, pressed his cheek against his shoulder and whispered a question in his ear.
“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully from the side of his mouth. “I don’t have any idea.”
“She must be crazy, right? She’s naked, Keith.”
“Yeah, she’s crazy.”
“I think so, too. She’s really crazy.”
Ian scrunched closer, standing in a crouch with his left hand against the tree. Keith could feel his breath on the top of his head, and he shook it, pushing an elbow back so the kid would move away. Ian pouted, but twisted until he was looking around the trunk’s other side.
“Now what?” he asked. “Can we go back now?”
“Not yet, dope. We gotta—”
Archie hushed them with an angry snarl, brandished a fist and jabbed it at the flowerbed. Keep your eyes peeled, Mohawks, the best is yet to come.
The trouble was, Keith didn’t want to see the rest. It was getting wet out here, and chilly, and if that crazy woman was just gonna roll around in a bunch of stupid flowers, he’d rather be back at the tent waiting for dessert. Ice cream, maybe, or chocolate cake. He leaned back as far as he could to see around Archie and catch Dirk’s eye. He jerked a commanding thumb back toward the house, tilted his head toward the flowers and made a face of exaggerated disgust. Dirk frowned, then shrugged his agreement though he made no move to retreat.
Archie was on his hands and toes now, knees and elbows bent as he scuttled away from his position. Keith couldn’t believe it; he couldn’t believe the fat jerk was actually heading for the woman. He wanted to call out, but that would only alert her and get Archie into trouble.
Ian gasped, and stood up in full view of the clearing. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, lookit him.”
Keith lunged to drag him back out of sight, but Ian jumped away, pointing, making strangling noises as if he wanted to yell and dared not. Keith lunged a second time, and cracked a shoulder against the bark, grabbing at the trunk while he shut his eyes tightly and waited for the pain to pass.
Grabbed it, and yanked his hand away.
“Ian,” he said.
Ian shook his head; Archie was almost halfway there.
“Ian,” he insisted, and the kid scrambled to his side.
“I’m sorry,” Ian said. “I’m sorry.”
“Shut up,” Keith ordered, took his hand and pressed it to the tree.
Ian struggled, tears filling his eyes because he knew he’d angered his friend and didn’t know what to do next.
“Feel it!” Keith snapped, and dragged the boy’s palm over the bark. “Feel it!”
Ian fought him for half a minute before looking away to stare at the tree, before standing and using both hands to read it like Braille. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Keith, is it some kind of new tree?”
“Don’t be a dope,” Keith told him angrily. “The thing’s made of stone!”
Dirk couldn’t make up his mind whether to stand up, sit down, use a crouch, climb the tree, or get down on his hands and knees and go after Archie. There were three slender trunks to the caged birch, two of them in his hands, one foot propped for support against the back one. He saw the hand rise and fall again, and was positive that this time he had seen part of her bare knee and a white sliver of thigh.
God god god, he thought; Archie, you creep, you’re gonna ruin it all.
One hand slipped then and and he fell forward. The side of his head slammed against the white bark, and he bit down on his lower lip to keep the pain and the bright lights inside.
Damned thing’s like glass, he thought, and kicked back as hard as he could to teach the tree a lesson.
Archie couldn’t believe his luck, and wished Barry were here to see what real luck is. Right out here was this woman taking off all her clothes. She knew he was watching; he could tell. He really could tell. He knew she was doing it just for him, and when that hand came up like that a second time and it waved at him like that, he almost dropped his pants he was so surprised. Now his fingers were hurting from holding up all that weight, but he didn’t dare drop to his knees or they’d get all cut up, and he didn’t dare stand because then she would see him before he got any closer.
He didn’t want to take the chance that he was wrong, and he didn’t want any of the stupid guys to come out and get him. That’d be just like them, to screw things up just when he got lucky. Too bad the four-eyed shrimp was along; he didn’t know diddly about women, he was too little, and all those stupid questions . . .
The flower bed rose like a wall ahead, and he forced himself to slow down. The light was dim, but he could still see through the stems a jigsaw piece of her skin, white and soft and shivering a little. He licked his lips, tried to suck in his stomach, and after a moment’s hesitation decided to try to get even closer.
There was just enough room between the outer stems for him to slip through without much trouble. But he moved slowly, so carefully it seemed as if he wasn’t moving at all.
She was there, right there now. He could see more of one leg, and holy Jesus that was her breast he was looking at! There it was, as big as the women he had seen in the magazines his father kept in the bottom drawer of his dresser, under the sweaters. Big. Humongous! Shaking a little, the nipple brown and covered with little brown dots.
He had no idea what he was going to do when he finally got there, but he was sure glad Keith wasn’t with him. If he had come, he would have to tell him that he’d been lying about all the virgin stuff, and Keith wouldn’t ever let him forget it.
The stems were closer together toward the middle, and he began to lose sight of her as his shoulders pushed them aside, and they snapped back like whips. He swiveled his head to look up at the blossoms, and looked back just as the stems started to sway again.
He hadn’t touched them.
They were moving, and he hadn’t touched them.
Something slammed suddenly and sharply across his hips. He barely restrained a yelp, and cursed as he swung his head around to see who had gotten close enough to throw the damned stone.
The flower swayed.
There was no wind.
He looked ahead again, upper lips curled as he searched for the woman, and again he was struck, this time on the left shoulder. When he looked, something hit him on the right, and immediately on the rump. He couldn’t help crying out then, more in rage than in pain, but when he tried to stand up to defend himself he was cracked on the head.
“Hey, damn you, Keith, Dirk, cut it out!”
There were pretty whirling stars—he thought that was only in the cartoons—and there was a pain that brought unashamed tears to his eyes.
He stared, hoping the naked woman in the flowers hadn’t heard him, but he groaned when he realized it was no use, she was gone; there was nothing ahead but the damned rattling flowers, and strands of stray mist that slipped between the stems to coil on the ground.
“Aw . . . shit!” He spat, rolled over until he was sitting, and glared back in the direction he’d just taken. “Aw, damn!”
He flung out a hand, and his knuckles struck one of the stems. He opened his mouth to yell, but nothing came out. His fingers closed around the green, and he stared at it, puzzled.
Jeez, he thought, that thing feels like—
A flower slammed into his temple, and he jerked away, cupping the stinging wound with a palm; a flower cracked across the back of his skull, cracked over his right knee, cracke
d against his arm and he fell back, sobbing, looking and realizing it wasn’t Keith or Dirk or even the kid.
A beautiful white blossom raked across his ankle, and he felt the blood flowing.
A soft yellow blossom nearly gouged out his eye, and opened his cheek.
Finally, as he rolled helplessly side to side, finally Archie screamed.
The stone flowers swayed, back and snapping forward.
The stone blossoms beat fiercely and rapidly against his limbs, against his chest, against the forearms that were thrown protectively over his eyes.
He heard Dirk screaming.
And the stone petals sliced easily through his shirt, swiftly through his trousers, exposing the black-and-purple welts that swelled on his skin until they burst into red flowers that ran down his side.
Swaying.
Clacking.
Twisting, and bending, and beating Archie to death.
Dirk saw Archie vanish into the flower bed, and decided that the game was over. Any second now that crazy women was going to jump up screaming and hollering and wanting their blood, and before they knew it their folks would be in here with whips a hundred feet long to take off their hides.
The dumb shit.
He wrinkled his nose in disgust, looked over at Keith and Ian and lifted his hands: what can I say? The sucker blew it.
But Ian and Keith were staring wide-eyed at the flower bed. Dirk peered between the trunks, waving a hand in front of him as if hoping to disperse some of the gloom so he could get a better look.
The flowers were moving.
It must have been Archie plowing his stupid way through, but the flowers were moving, swaying back and forth, drawing wider and wider arcs in the air, finally whipping so fast that their colors began to blur, blur and hurt his eyes.
The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror Page 26
