“Oh, my God!” she whispered.
Jay turned around, following the direction of the trembling finger. His heart did a little two-step, and he could feel his blood pressure knocking up a few points.
The room was littered with dolls and toy soldiers and clowns. Some with arms missing, some with legs gone, some with dented heads. Tiny gowns and dresses and soldier uniforms lay scattered about on the tattered carpet and sprawled on the worn sofas and chairs.
“God!” Jay breathed.
“Jay I don’t remember those toys being in here.”
“They weren’t. And I can’t believe Aunt Cary would put any of her collection out here.”
“Then what in the hell are they doing out here?” There was a note of hysteria in her voice.
Jay put an arm around her. “Steady now. Settle down, Deva.” Her heart was beating very fast.
She pulled away from him. “I’m going to open some drapes. Let some light in here.”
“Good idea.”
Deva walked to a window and paused. “Jay?”
He turned.
“The drapes, all this furniture, it’s the same as it was two decades ago. The furniture, it’s at least a hundred years old. Maybe, probably more. And this carpet is at least that old. I collect antiques; I know something about them.”
“Probably so. What about it?”
“Think about it, Jay. A hundred years old and still in this good a shape?”
Jay squatted down and inspected the rat-gnawings on a chair leg. They were very old and covered with dust.
He touched the fabric of a chair. Old, but not rotted.
“I can’t explain it, Deva. It’s ... eerie.”
“Yeah.” She pulled on a drape cord and the drapes slid back. Light seeped in through the very dirty windows.
Both sighed with relief. The light was dim, but it brightened both the room and their spirits.
Jay moved across the carpet and slapped the back of an overstuffed chair. The stale, musty air was immediately filled with clouds of dust. He sneezed a couple of times and fanned the air.
Through the dust, Jay thought he detected movement to his left. It stopped his fanning hands and locked his eyes.
“What’s wrong, Jay?”
“I thought something moved over there.” He pointed. “Dust in my eyes, I guess.”
He took a couple of steps to his left as wind suddenly gusted against the house, seeping inside, moving the drapes and the dust.
He heard Deva scream.
Something covered his head, blinding him. He felt himself falling backward.
* * *
The punks stopped their hooting and laughing when they spotted the knives and axes in the hands of the boys and girls.
“Hey, now!” Piggy Carter said. “Would you take a look at that, Robert!”
“I see it, asshole!” There was annoyance in his voice. “You kids better put them knives and hatchets down. You know you ain’t gonna use ’em on us.”
“We won’t if you don’t force us to,” Jenny told him.
“I wonder how she’ll feel when I do it to her,” a pimple-faced young man asked.
“Good,” Piggy said. “Real good.”
“You shut up that kind of talk!” Andy said, his voice shrill.
Robert laughed. “You wanna make us?”
Andy gripped the handle of his hatchet hard as his face paled.
“We gotta pick one,” Piggy said.
“I know, Piggy, I know,” Robert told him. “Just shut up.” His eyes found Ange. “You! Git over here.”
“Don’t count on it!” Ange hissed at him, her eyes wide with fright.
Robert stepped toward her and made a grab for her arm. Kelly sidestepped and brought her axe down hard on his forearm. The sharp blade sliced his arm to the bone, and the blood squirted as Robert screamed out his pain, staggering backward. He stumbled into Piggy and they both went down.
“Now!” Jenny yelled.
The kids raced for their bikes.
Kelly turned and hurled her axe at the group just as hard as she could throw it. The axe blade struck a young man in the center of the forehead, splitting the skull, the blade penetrating into the brain. He dropped without a sound.
Kelly stood rooted to the spot, staring in horror at the small axe, the handle sticking out of the boy’s head.
Robert lay on the ground, blood gushing from the savage wound on his arm. He moaned and struggled up. Their eyes met. “Git that little cunt!” he screamed.
Kelly’s feet found wings and she raced for her bike, scrambling on and pedaling furiously, catching up with her friends, who were pedaling just as frantically.
“Is he dead, Kelly?” Jenny hollered.
“He’s dead,” the girl replied grimly. She wanted desperately to be sick. She knew she did not have the time to stop her bike and throw up. She fought the sickness away and pedaled hard.
Another boy ran out into the street, stepping in front of the kids, his arms wide, his eyes wild. Robert angled in front of the others and smashed into the boy. He screamed in pain and fell to the street, both hands holding his lower belly.
The collision had spilled Robert to the street. He scrambled to his feet, righted his bike, and pedaled hard to catch up.
They rounded a corner, heading for the Clute house, still several blocks away. A gang of boys and girls, most in their late teens, had formed a line across the street, blocking the way.
“Through the yards!” Jenny hollered. “Follow me.”
The kids were conscious of eyes watching them from the windows and doors and porches of the homes as they cut through the yards.
“Help us!” Kelly shouted to a woman standing in her backyard.
The woman grinned at her. Her eyes appeared savage looking.
“What’s wrong with these people?” Kelly panted the question.
But if the other kids knew, they did not reply. They were all too busy ducking clotheslines and garbage cans and lawn furniture as they pedaled toward the next street.
“Two blocks to go!” Andy yelled.
“Who says we’re gonna be safe when we get to the house?” Kelly panted.
“Are you kiddin’?” Carla yelled. “Once we’re inside that house, nobody’s gonna mess with us.”
A boy driving a car with very loud mufflers pulled in front of them, coming fast out of a driveway, stopping in the road. The kids weaved around him and with the house in sight, cut in the afterburners. They pedaled into the backyard and stopped.
“Let’s get inside,” Jenny urged. “I got to call someone.”
“Who?” Kelly asked.
“Father Pat.”
* * *
Jay stumbled in his near blindness and sat down heavily in a chair. His hands flailed away at the thing covering his head. He jerked it free and found he was not blind. He looked at the object in his hand. A rotting piece of sheet.
Deva was bent over, laughing at him.
“Very funny,” Jay said. “Jesus Christ! But that scared the crap out of me.”
“That little bit of wind must have blown it loose from the mantel,” Deva told him.
“No more surprises today, Deva. I don’t think my heart could take it.”
He rose from the dusty chair and looked around him. “You told me Aunt Cary owned the toy store, right?”
She nodded.
“I bet you that this is where the broken toys are stored for repair. You wanna bet?”
“No bet. But Bruno Dixon is mixed up in all of this, I’ll bet you on that.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he is an evil, disgusting man, that’s why.”
“Again, why do you say that?”
“He likes little girls and little boys,” she said flatly.
“That’s conjecture?”
“Fact. But the cops never do anything about it. It’s all covered up. He was your Aunt Cary’s closest friend.”
“I have a hard time
imagining Jim Klein covering up anything like that.”
“It all happened before he got to town.”
“And now?”
“A long time before he got to town.”
“Are you telling me child molestation is accepted in Victory?”
“Let’s just say that nothing is ever done about it. It’s no longer reported.”
“That, Deva, is hideous!”
“But true, Jay.”
His mind simply refused to accept that. It could not be. “You ready to go exploring?”
She was silent, looking at him with serious eyes. “All right.”
They paused in the hallway, which, like the other rooms they’d inspected, was littered with bits and pieces of broken toys, not just dolls and soldiers and clowns, but toy trains and trucks and motorcycles and cranes.
“It’s like a ... graveyard for broken and discarded toys, isn’t it, Jay?”
“That sums it up pretty well. I’m going to have to see Parnell and get all of Aunt Cary’s businesses sorted out. It’s getting confusing.”
“It’ll get worse,” she stated.
“I’m afraid you’re right.”
They moved on to what had been, at one time, a study, located just off the hallway. It was littered with broken toys. The eyes of the dolls and clowns and soldiers caught the dim light and glinted as Jay and Deva passed them on their explorations.
They both stopped as a faint tapping sound reached them. They stood, holding hands, listening.
“I can’t tell where it’s coming from,” Jay said. But ... that’s code. That’s Morse code.”
“Can you understand it?”
“It’s been twenty-five years since I was a Boy Scout. Let me listen.”
Jay listened carefully. Dot dot dot dot. Dot. Dot dash dot dot. Dot dash dash dot. Dot dot dash. Dot dot dot.
It was repeated, over and over. The tapping stopped abruptly.
“Help us,” Jay said.
“Help us?”
“I’m sure that’s what it spelled. Yes. I’m positive. Help us.”
“Well ... who is sending it?”
Jay looked at her.
She got the message. “I’m getting out of here, Jay!”
“Deva!”
“No. That’s enough for one day. Come on, Jay, or I’ll start walking up that road.”
“All right, Deva. Okay.”
Together, they walked to the front door. The box Jay had used to block the door had been pushed to one side. The heavy door was closed.
“Jay!” Deva said.
“Easy, now.” He tried the door. It opened smoothly.
They stepped out onto the porch, into the sunlight. Neither of them were aware, until that moment, just how tightly their nerves had been stretched inside the old house. They stood side by side, breathing deeply. A faint odor reached them.
Deva wrinkled her nose and grimaced. “Phew! What is that?”
“Dead animal, I imagine. It’s coming from over there.” He pointed and then walked to the edge of the porch. “It’s a little dog. Dead.” He turned away from the sight of the little animal, then slowly returned his gaze. Something had caught his attention. He climbed down from the high porch and squatted beside the little dog.
Deva walked to the edge of the porch. “What is it, Jay?”
“Something sticking in the animal’s side.” He took a closer look. It appeared to be some sort of small, thin, metal object. He gripped the metal with the fingers of his right hand and tugged, managing to pull it out of the animal’s side. He stared at it in disbelief.
“What is it, Jay?”
“Well, I think it’s a tiny spear.” He looked up, meeting her eyes. “Like the kind a toy soldier, a guard, might carry.”
“That’s crazy, Jay!”
“Yeah. But what isn’t around this place? But that’s what it is.”
“Some kid probably killed the poor little thing.”
Jay shook his head. “I doubt it. For one thing, I don’t know how this spear could have been fired. It’s not notched for a bow string.”
“All right. That’s one thing. What’s the other reason?”
“Deva, what kid would come out to this place?”
She nodded her head. “Yes. I didn’t think about that.” She lifted her eyes, squinting, her gaze sweeping past Jay. She pointed. “What’s that pile of things over there?”
Jay rose and followed her pointing finger. He stood for a moment, not really understanding what he was looking at. Then he made it out. It was a pile of bones – skeletons of many small animals: cats, rats, small dogs, squirrels, rabbits. They had been neatly piled under the low branches of some sort of flowering shrubbery.
But why?
And what, or who, had killed them and put the bones here?
Deva joined him. She looked down at the pile of bones. “Disgusting!”
“Yes, I guess so. To us. But look here, Deva.” He squatted down. “Some of the bones are much fresher than others. But there isn’t a scrap of meat left on any of them. It sounds stupid, and probably is, but it appears to me that someone has been killing and eating these animals.”
“Oh, shit, Jay!”
“Well, that’s what it looks like to me.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
Again, he looked at her. His eyes spoke volumes, silently.
She shook her head. “That’s twice you’ve intimated that with your eyes. No. Besides, that looks like a rat.”
“Probably is. It’s hard to tell a rat skeleton from a squirrel. They are related.”
“Thank you, Marlin Perkins.”
“And I’ll go a bit further. I don’t think any of these animals were shot with a gun. No broken bones. The skeletons are all perfectly intact.”
“Jay, you keep flip-flopping. Back in the house, you kept saying there was a logical explanation for all that’s happened. But if I’m reading you correctly, you’re silently hinting that the toys...” She looked at the pile of bones, refusing to say the words.
“I saw one come to life, Deva. And so did Jim and Kelly.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head.
Jay stood up and looked toward the porch, where the little dead dog lay. “I’m going to bury that poor little animal.”
“If,” Deva said, “they are killing and eating animals, why didn’t they eat the dog?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“I saw a piece of metal over there in that pile by the house. I’ll get it for you.”
Jay wrapped the spear in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket. He did not know what to make of any of it. But he knew it was a toy spear. The pile of bones? He didn’t know.
It just kept getting more and more confusing.
The dog buried, Jay and Deva drove away, back toward Victory. Deva looked back at the old house.
“Jay!”
“What?”
“Stop and look back at the house.”
Jay braked and twisted in the seat. His face mirrored the disbelief his eyes were taking in.
The screen door was slowly opening and closing. The shades in the windows were going up and down. And the drapes seemed to be waving at them.
12
Jay stomped on the brake pedal so hard Deva was almost hurled against the dash.
“Jay!”
“Look at the digital clock; look at your watch; look at my watch!”
They compared time. Each timepiece read 3:25.
“But that’s when we arrived here, Jay. I checked my watch.”
“I know. So did I. Time has stopped, Deva. We’re in ... limbo.”
“Whatever that means.”
Jay let off the brake and drove about five hundred yards further on. The digital clock began racing forward. He checked his watch and Deva did the same. They had apparently slipped out of the dead pocket, the limbo – Jay didn’t know what they’d been in to cause their watches to stop.
And Jay was not going to be
the first to bring up the screen door, the shades, and the waving drapes.
Deva did not say one more word the rest of the way back.
They hit the outskirts of town just in time to see an ambulance screaming its way past them. Jay pulled over and waited until the ambulance was beyond them.
Checking his rearview, Jay watched Jim Klein, in a city unit, pull in and motion for him to stay put.
Jim walked up to the driver’s side. “Let me do the talking and then you go straight to your house, Jay. All hell is breaking loose ... and I just might mean that in a literal sense. Some teenage girl works out to Holcomb’s Supermarket. Head exploded. You got company over at your house. And don’t let Chief Craig bully you into doing anything. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“What . . . what?” Jay stuttered. “Whose head exploded?”
“Get to your house, Jay. I’ll be along.”
* * *
Two city police units were parked in front of the house, and another car was parked in the driveway. There were four cops standing on the porch, facing a beautiful blond woman and Kelly.
“That’s Kelly’s mother, Piper,” Jay told Deva. “But I don’t know what the cops are doing here.”
Jay got out of the car and walked to the porch steps.
“Clute,” the older cop with the most ornate of badges snapped at him.
“Craig!” Jay returned the officious greeting.
The cop flushed. “We’ve come to take your kid here, Clute.”
“Well, you’ll play hell doing it.” Jay climbed the steps and faced the man. He cut his eyes to his ex-wife. “Piper. What’s going on here?”
“I’ll ask the questions, Clute,” the chief said.
Another car pulled up, and Jim Klein soon joined the crowd on the porch.
“Did I tell you to drag your smart ass over here, Klein?” Craig snapped at him.
“No, you didn’t.” Jim’s reply was calm. “But since I’m here, why not put me to work?”
“Just stay outta the way.” He glared at Jay. “Your little brat kid killed a young man about an hour ago, Clute. Hit him with a hatchet. She’s goin’ to jail.”
Jay’s mouth dropped open. He shook his head in shock. It was only then that he noticed a priest sitting on the porch. And one of the roughest-looking men he had ever seen in his life standing beside the seated priest.
Toy Cemetery Page 10
