Toy Cemetery

by William W. Johnstone

  More screaming was heard. But Jay could tell it was not from the same person as before.

  “It’s hungry tonight.”

  “Yeah. I don’t even wanna think about it. What time is it?”

  “Three o’clock. Two more hours to go.”

  “Got anything planned tonight?”

  “Naw. You?”

  “Same ol’ thing. I’ll get the tray.”

  The footsteps faded, the door clanged shut. Jay lay still for a full slow sixty count, not moving, his eyes closed, breathing evenly.

  “That sucker ain’t fakin’ it. He’s really out.”

  Jay had been right in remaining still. He was being watched.

  “Yeah. Well, log it and let’s go see about the others.”

  Jay heard the viewing panel close. He waited for a few more seconds, then sat up on the bunk. One thing he knew for certain: He was going to get out of this place – or die trying.

  Ellis had raped Amy. Sick. Sick and disgusting and dark with evil. Rotten with it. The whole town.

  “Think, Jay,” he muttered. “Look around you and think of something, man. You got to get out of this cesspool.”

  Three o’clock, the man had said. They got off shift at five. So full dark was still several hours away. That must have been lunch he was served. Dinner would probably he around five, maybe six. Right or wrong, physically ready or not, he was going to do something when the orderlies returned with his tray.

  He thought about it. A small plan formed in his mind. Maybe he could pull it off. What did he have to lose?

  Screaming began again. And the words with it chilled Jay. “No!” a man howled. “Not me. Please. Take someone else. I’ll do anything. Not me!”

  * * *

  He let the orderly shake him several times, even though Jay was fully awake and alert. He relaxed, groaned, and rolled over, opening his eyes. Only one man; he could detect no other in the hall. Now or never.

  “Clute!” The man’s bad breath fouled the air. “Here’s your supper. Now you be a good boy and clean your plate.” Chuckling, the man turned around.

  Jay let his right arm fall from the bunk to the floor. He groaned and tried to sit up on the bunk.

  “Need some help, huh, hotshot?” the orderly said. “In two/three days, you gonna be beyond help.”

  The orderly bent over and Jay drove his right fist into the man’s crotch as hard as he could. The man’s eyes bugged out, and he opened his mouth to scream. Jay came off the bunk and hit the man on the jaw with every ounce of strength he could muster. The orderly dropped to the floor, dazed, but still on his knees.

  Jay grabbed the man by both ears and at the same time brought his knee up under the man’s chin. A crunching, sickening sound followed the knee-to-chin contact. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head, and Jay released him. The orderly dropped to the floor. His neck looked broken.

  Working very fast, Jay stripped the man and hauled the dead weight to the bunk, covering him with the blanket. Jay slipped into the orderly’s uniform. A bit loose, but it would have to do.

  He fingered the ring of numbered keys. “Okay, Clute,” he muttered. “Let’s do it.”

  With his heart hammering, Jay took a deep breath and stepped out into the hall. He looked up and down. Empty. He closed the door behind him, smiling as the lock clicked shut.

  A pushcart in the hall, food trays on it. He pushed the cart to the next room and opened the slide panel, looking in. A man he did not know was lying naked on the bunk. His skin was an unnatural color. Like –

  Jay swallowed hard. Pure white porcelain. A doll. Jay fought back sickness. He looked in the cell across the hall. Amy was sitting naked on a bunk. Her face and body were bruised, but at least she was alive; and of a natural color.

  “Amy!” Jay called in a stage whisper, at the same time matching the number on the door with the number on a key. He opened the door and waved her out.

  She flew into his arms.

  “Hang tough, kid,” Jay told her. “We’re gettin’ outta here.”

  “I’m so embarrassed . . .”

  “I’ve seen it all before, remember?”

  She forced a smile. “It was a lot more fun with you. My own father . . .”

  “I know. I heard the guards talking. Come on, Amy.”

  Jay shoved the cart into Amy’s cell and closed and locked the door.

  “What happened to the man who had that cart first?”

  I killed him. And I’ll kill anybody else who tries to stop us leaving this snake pit.”

  “Just get me a club, and I’ll help you.”

  They walked up the hall, Jay looking for a closet. “I think you just might do that.”

  “Try me.”

  “Let’s see what’s behind this door.” Jay shoved it open. A linen closet, filled with sheets and fresh uniforms. “Get into one,” Jay told her.

  He broke off the handle of a heavy industrial broom, then broke that in two parts. He gave one to Amy.

  “Your club, my dear. Now you stay put for a minute. I’m going prowling; find us a way out of this place.”

  He was gone only a moment or two. His face was grim. “It’s not going to be easy. I think we’re underground. I spotted an elevator. Everything goes up.”

  “There was a lot of digging when this place was built, I remember.”

  Jay fingered the ring of keys. At least fifty, maybe more.

  “What are you thinking, Jay?”

  He grinned. “Chaos.”

  BOOK THREE

  A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

  Poe

  There are in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God, the other towards Satan.

  Baudelaire

  1

  They unlocked every door on three long corridors. Most of the people were naked; some were of that unnaturally clear white color, and their eyes were burning with a wild evil light.

  An orderly came around a corner to investigate the sounds of milling and muttering and mumbling. Jay laid his hickory stick on the man’s skullbone. The orderly dropped to the tile like a brick and lay very still.

  One naked man was sitting on the tile floor, fondling himself. Others were singing songs, spit and slobber leaking from their mouths.

  One porcelain-colored man rushed Jay, his mouth working up and down, but no words came out. Jay brought his stick down on the man’s head. The head exploded in a shower of dust. The man dropped to the floor.

  Jay and Amy stared at the broken skull.

  It was empty.

  Amy turned her head. Dry retching sounds came from her throat.

  Others gathered around the doll man, kicking and stomping at him with their bare feet. The doll man was soon reduced to a white powdery dust.

  “Oh, my God!” a man’s voice shrilled from the other end of the corridor.

  Jay turned, recognizing the man. Dr. Stoner.

  Jay ran up the corridor and raised the club.

  “No, no!” The smaller man held up his hands. “My God, not me. I want out of this place as badly as you do. Come on. Maybe there is a chance.”

  “Freeze right there!” Another voice was added.

  Jay turned. Parnell stood facing them, a pistol in his hand.

  Jay hit him with the club before he even had a chance to think about the danger involved. He grabbed the gun before it could hit the floor and perhaps go off. He shoved the .38 behind his baggy pants. It fell through, straight down his pants leg, and bounced off his bare foot.

  “Oh, Jay!” Amy said. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “I never claimed to be James Bond.” Jay picked up the gun and looked at Stoner. “Get Parnell on his feet. He’s going with us.”

  “Kill him now!” the doctor said. “He’s evil through and through.”

  “Get him!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  With surprising strength, the smaller man jerked Parnell to his feet and slappe
d him several times across the face. “You scream, you Godless bastard,” the doctor told him, “and if Clute doesn’t kill you, I will. You understand that?”

  “Ye-yes!” Parnell stuttered, bobbing his head up and down. He looked like he was bobbing for apples in a barrel of vinegar.

  The mindless had gathered at the far end of the corridor, staring in silence at the goings-on.

  Jay didn’t know what to do with them.

  “There is nothing to do for them.” Stoner accurately read his thoughts.

  Jay nodded. “Our clothes?”

  Stoner pointed to a closed door. “In there. But please hurry.”

  Amy ran in the room and was back in a moment carrying two bags. “I got them.”

  The corridor once more began filling with vacant-eyed, mumbling, slobbering, snuffling, naked men and women, now that they realized Jay would not hurt them. Some of them were crawling along; some were weeping. Amy had noticed that some had not left their cells. She looked at Stoner.

  Parnell said, “They ... they’re not ... they’re no longer a part of the scheme of things. As you people know it,” he added.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “Ah ... ah ... ah ...” Parnell’s mouth opened and closed.

  Jay slapped him, rocking the man’s head from side to side. “Later.” He pushed Parnell up the corridor. “Right now, Parnell, you get us out of this hellhole.”

  “Please don’t hurt me,” Parnell whined. “I have a low pain tolerance.”

  “That’s your problem,” Jay told him, jerking him away from the wall where he’d been pinned. “Now, move!”

  With Parnell leading the way, the group wound their way through the mindless and muddled men and women who crowded the hall. Some of them plucked at the sleeves of the group. Others begged for help.

  “Laurie was absorbed this afternoon, you know?” a man told Jay, slobber leaking from his mouth. He grinned foolishly. “It’s one a week now, you know?”

  Jay halted the parade. “Absorbed? What do you mean?” But he thought he knew, remembering the unnatural whiteness of some.

  The man began humming and clapping his hands together. He walked away.

  Jay faced Parnell. “That old . . . thing I saw, whatever it is ... that changing thing . . . what does it do with people?”

  “The Old One does have quite a voracious appetite,” Parnell quickly answered. “It must be fed. It must be obeyed.”

  Amy put a hand to her mouth; she looked ill.

  For a few seconds, Jay felt the old confusion once more returning. He shook his head to clear it.

  He wondered if he’d died and gone to hell.

  “Dr. Stoner!” a woman called from the far end of the long corridor, from behind the milling mass of nakedness. “What is going on here, sir?”

  “A lock malfunction, Miss Hastings,” Stoner quickly called. “Start securing the patients, please. I’ll take this end.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We can’t just leave these pitiful people here,” Amy said.

  “We’ve got to get out first, Amy. We can’t help them if we’re locked down.”

  “That would be wise,” Stoner agreed. “For unless the Old One is in one of his rest periods, he is quite aware of what is taking place.”

  Jay placed the muzzle of the pistol against Parnell’s head. “Lead the way.”

  Parnell was obviously a man who was easily impressed; especially when it was his life on the line. He took them straight to an elevator and unlocked it with a key. They climbed in, Stoner punched a button, and they moved upward.

  “How many levels does this torture chamber have?” Jay asked.

  “Four. You were held on the fourth level.” His lip was cut slightly and puffy where he’d been slapped. But Jay. did not like the look in the man’s eyes. He was going to try something.

  “Ever seen a man gut-shot, Parnell?”

  He shook his head.

  “I have. In ’Nam. It isn’t very nice.”

  “I get the point.”

  “You better. For if we don’t get clear of this place, I’m going to shoot you in the belly and leave you to die.”

  The elevator climbed upward slowly, maddeningly slowly.

  “I knew some of those people down there.” Amy pointed downward. “They weren’t insane.”

  “They wrote letters,” Stoner said. “Their mail was intercepted at the post office.”

  The elevator stopped, and they stepped out into a carpeted office area. “You have a car, Parnell?” Jay asked.

  “A van. Right outside that door.” He pointed.

  “You have a gun in that van?”

  “A snub-nose .38.”

  “Where in the van?”

  “Under the seat.”

  A uniformed guard stepped into the corridor and Jay shot him. He did not think; he just pointed the pistol and fired. The slug took the man in the chest. He fell back against a wall and slid down to the floor. He began hollering and jerking.

  Jay fought back nausea. This wasn’t like earlier, when he’d fired at the pursuing cars; this was close up.

  “Get his gun, Stoner.”

  The doctor ran to the guard, jerking off his Sam Browne belt. “Let’s go. Quickly.”

  “Give me the keys, Parnell.”

  The keys were dropped into Jay’s hand.

  They moved toward the double glass doors, pushed them open, and stepped out into the warm night. They ran to the van and got in; Stoner in the back with Parnell, Amy up front with Jay. Jay cranked the engine into life.

  “Buckle your seat belts.”

  “Are we going back to the house?” Amy asked.

  “Where else?”

  “But . . .” She looked at him. “I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “It was Piper who hit you.”

  Parnell started chuckling.

  Stoner hit him in the mouth with the guard’s. 357 mag. That shut him up. Parnell put both hands to his bloody and tooth-shattered face and began crying.

  “Amy,” Jay asked, pulling away from the lighted area. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Craig and the others were waiting in the darkness. They’re the ones who took us and put us in this van.”

  Pieces of it returned to Jay. He remembered the little girl dancing about as he fell tumbling into painful darkness.

  Kelly.

  Then there was no more time to think about anything other than getting away – alive.

  A creature, much like the one Jay had seen on the blacktop road that night, stepped out in front of the van.

  Amy screamed at the sight. Jay accelerated and ran over the hideous-looking nonhuman appearing thing. The tires crunched over it, breaking bones and ripping flesh. The creature howled in pain.

  “They’ve blocked the front entrance with cars!” Stoner yelled. “Turn right, right now!”

  Jay cut the wheel, and they plunged into more unlighted area. They could all see the darting shapes of deformed creatures roaming the darkness, caught up in the sweep of the van’s headlights.

  “What are those things!” Amy yelled over the roar of the engine.

  “Products of years of incest.” Stoner returned the yell. “Spawns of hell, now. It’s all out of control. Just keep following this road, Jay. How is it outside?”

  “What do you mean?” Jay twisted the wheel, driving just a little too fast for the winding road.

  “I haven’t been off this compound in nearly two years,” the little doctor said. “I’m guarded around the clock.”

  “Why didn’t they just kill you?”

  “They needed me. My field is twofold. Psychiatry and genetics. I like to think I’m the one who threw the monkey wrench into the operation.”

  “I told them to kill you!” Parnell screamed. “I warned them about you!”

  The rear gate was coming into view. Wooden sawhorses blocked the outer lane.

  “Hang on!” Jay yelled. “We’r
e going through.”

  He smashed through the sawhorses and roared out onto a gravel road, the rear end of the van slewing around sickeningly before he fought it back under control.

  “You can bet on this,” Stoner said. “Every route out of town will be guarded.”

  “Yeah,” Jay muttered. “But I’m not heading that way. I’m going to the house.”

  He roared into the town, blasting through the small business district, shattering the unnatural quiet of the residential area. He bounced over the curb and drove across the front yard of the Clute house on Sixth Street, his headlights catching Milton still sitting on his front porch, talking to the dead guard. The guard looked a bit puffy.

  He parked the van in the drive and sat for a moment, trying to calm his rattled nerves and shaking hands.

  Jim Klein ran out of the house, a shotgun in his hand. Jay opened the door and got out.

  “Jesus God, man!” Jim said. “We thought you all were dead!”

  “Greatly exaggerated, Jim. But it was close.”

  Deva ran to him and hugged him. “Oh, Jay. I’ve been worried sick, and so has Piper.”

  Jay looked at Amy. “I know what I saw, Jay. And I know what we’ve both been through.”

  “Trust no one,” Stoner warned. “Trust only yourself. Believe me. Its power is awesome.”

  Jay looked at the lighted porch as the screen door opened. Piper stood there. The right side of her face was swollen and bruised, one eye closed. Kelly stood beside her. The girl ran to her father, crying, and threw her arms around his waist.

  “Oh, Daddy! I missed you so. Where have you been?”

  He hugged her tightly. “What happened to your mother’s face?”

  “She was attacked,” Jim answered. “The same people who grabbed you, beat her and tried to take Kelly. But Kelly was jumping around so much and screaming they left without her.”

  Jay heard Amy’s sigh of resignation. “Time will tell,” she spoke softly.

  That triggered something else within Jay’s brain. Time.

  Time played some role in all of this. But what?

  “Boy!” General Douglas yelled from the porch, standing beside Piper. “You’ve had us worried.”

  For the first time, Jay looked around his surroundings. Two cars were parked in the Sixth Street turnaround. One car was parked by the curb directly across from the house. A police car was parked just up the street. Jay met Jim’s eyes.