Charnel House (26 page)

Bobby moaned and struggled to get out from under the hobo. If that oozing black thing touched him he was going to die of a heart attack. Norman laughed hoarsely, his hot breath washing over the boy like a foul tide.
What would Starsky and Hutch do
? That was easy, they’d pull out their guns and shoot the bastard, then read the corpse his rights. But Bobby didn’t have a gun. He didn’t have a weapon of—

He realized he could feel the piece of pipe under him, pressing against his hip where he’d tucked it into the back of his pants. With a wrenching twist that sent bright streaks of pain from his elbow to his shoulder, Bobby yanked his arm from between the two of them and thrust it under his behind. His fingers brushed the tarnished copper, but he couldn’t get a grip to pull it out. The man was bearing down on him too much.

“Come on, kid. Show Norman a good time!” The man let go of himself so he could press both palms to the ground and lift himself enough to push his body higher on Bobby’s... bringing that wretched blistered black thing closer to his
mouth.

Bobby bit back a scream and dug his fingers into the loose dirt under his hip, scooping out a handful. The awkward angle made it hard to get very much. When he tried a second time, his hand went a little further under him and he scraped out more soil. Then the hobo was coming down on him again, face to face now, his breath hot on Bobby’s neck. Bobby squirmed and twisted under him, trying to get a good grip on the piece of pipe.

“That’s it, son. Wiggle for me. I like that.”

The hobo ground his crotch against Bobby, and Bobby imagined he felt wetness through his jeans as more of those terrible soft blisters burst between them. Something warm and slick slithered up his neck and under his chin. Norman’s tongue. A thin cry escaped him before he could stop it, but almost as it did he realized the man might try to slip that slimy tongue into his mouth, and if that happened, friends and neighbors, you could just say good night to Bobby Frank because his heart would stop just as surely as the sun would rise in the morning.

“What’s going on in there, Bobby?” Joey called. “Did you find Jeremiah Barlowe for real? Tell him I said hello!”

Bobby ignored the laughter that followed. He clamped his mouth shut so quickly that his teeth clacked, and redoubled his efforts to get hold of the pipe. The hobo grunted and shifted himself a little higher. His tongue slid up Bobby’s jawline and flicked at the lobe of his ear, rough whiskers scratching Bobby’s smooth cheek. Blackflies buzzed in the crater where his nose had once been, feeding on the glistening mess within. The infernal sound seemed to be coming from the center of Bobby’s head. Something hard pressed against his belly now, down low where the hobo straddled him. He pushed that horrifying realization to the back of his mind in favor of one far more important: the hobo’s new position meant that Bobby could raise his butt off the ground just enough to get his hand completely under it. His fingers wrapped around the cool metal jutting out of the waistband of his jeans, and he pulled the pipe free.

“That’s the way, boy,” the hobo whispered in a husky voice, misinterpreting Bobby’s movement. He pressed his suppurating lips against Bobby’s own and his questing tongue felt for a way in.

The world went gray for a moment.

The pipe wasn’t heavy enough to do any real damage if he hit the hobo in the head with it. Its walls were thin, and it would probably just bend around his skull the way pipes in cartoons always did when people got clobbered with them. Instead, he stretched out his arm and, holding the length of copper like a dagger, drove it into Norman’s side as hard as he could. A hot rush of fetid air forced its Chocolate-tainted bile burned the back of his throat.

Norman flinched away from the blow, and Bobby thrust the pipe into his ribs a second time. The hobo bellowed... and rolled even further to the left. Bobby countered his movement, lurching hard to the right, and was able to get most of the way from under the writhing man. Norman’s shirt had come untucked in the ruckus, riding up to expose pale, flabby flesh. Bobby drew back once more and this time rammed the pipe viciously into the hobo’s belly.

Norman roared in real pain this time, and the sound filled Bobby with savage glee. The hobo rolled completely off him, the copper spear jutting from his gut like an exclamation mark. Blackflies boiled from the hole in his face in a humming cloud. Bobby wriggled away as fast as he could. The man seemed hurt, but Bobby knew it could be an act. That’s what bad guys did: they feigned an injury, or overacted the slightest pain, and invariably lulled the good guy into a false sense of confidence. He’d seen it plenty of times, and wasn’t falling for it.

Bobby scuttled forward on his elbows, desperate to get out of the crawlspace and end this nightmare. To get somewhere where he could wash the stink of the hobo off him, though he doubted he would ever be able to cleanse his skin of the lecherous feel of the man’s touch. When he dared look back, Norman was laying on his side moaning, curled into a fetal ball.
Good
.

The rectangle of sunlight grew larger and larger, and the joists ascended a little, giving Bobby enough room to get on his hands and knees. Tanner and Joey were still out there laughing, yukking it up like they’d heard the funniest joke ever told.
We’ll see who’s laughing when I tell them—

Something seized his ankle with the strength of a steel trap and Bobby shrieked.

“Where ya going, Bobby-boy?” Norman said, in his grating, clotted voice. “We was just getting started.”

Bobby slid away from the exit, dragged through the dirt by the hobo like a boy-sized doll. He screamed for help, screamed for Joey and Tanner to do something. Hot tears burned his cheeks, and through the terror that seemed to stiffen his joints and render him immobile as Norman pulled him deeper into the (
nest
) crawlspace, he heard the sound of their giggles. A squat shape rose on his left, one of the brick piers that provided a solid foundation for the old house. Bobby grabbed onto it like a drowning person.

The hand on his ankle slipped just a little. Bobby jerked his leg back, squeezing the pier so hard the corners of the bricks bit into the flesh of his arms. Pain flared in his hip for a long moment as the hobo fought to keep his grip—
whee, I’m a human wishbone!
—but then the hand was gone and Bobby was free.

A pale moon face swam out of the darkness. Norman grinned, showing those awful black teeth that were so like the stumps rising from the water Bobby had seen on the way to Belleville, and the boy lashed out with his foot, kicking the hobo square in the festering wound that had been his nose. The man’s face had a sickening
give
to it, as though whatever had rotted away his nose had softened his skull, too.

Norman howled and grabbed for the sneaker but only caught air. Bobby scrambled forward on his hands and knees on auto-pilot, bawling like a lost lamb. His hands found the rough wood of the facing around the exit and he hurled himself through the hole, certain that he wasn’t going to make it, that the clawlike hand would find his leg again and jerk him back into the dark for the hobo to (
fuck
) hurt him. The dried leaves under the porch sang their crackling song as he clambered through them, only this time it sounded like a funeral dirge. Bobby exploded into the sunlight, squinting against the sudden brightness.

“You can run, Bobby, but you can’t run far enough!” the hobo bellowed as Bobby scrambled to his feet and started to run. “I’ll be coming!”

Bobby heard the desiccated crunch of something rushing across the leaves behind him, and then he was bursting through the privet and into the yard again, running as fast as he could. Joey and Tanner stood where he’d left them, stupid grins still curving their stupid faces as they watched him pelt through the weeds. For an instant he was filled with a hatred so pure it drove the terror from him completely, and he wanted nothing more than to let them stand there laughing stupidly until Norman got them.
See how they like kissing him. Feeling his fingers in their pants.

“Run!” he shrieked. He passed them without slowing, their placid bovine faces mere blurs in his periphery. When he reached the edge of the weeds he slowed and risked a panicky look back. Tanner and Joey were jogging across the yard after him, still grinning like buffoons. They didn’t look scared in the slightest. Behind them, Norman lurched from the privet on stiff legs like the Frankenstein monster, his crumbling face even more of a glistening horror in the bright sunlight. His eyes fixed on Bobby, gleaming with that mad avarice Bobby had seen in them before.

“
I’ll be coming for you, Bobby!”
The words boomed across the gently waving grass like a thunderclap.

“He’s coming!” Bobby yelled in a shrill voice. “
Run!
”

He turned and sprinted down the ancient driveway, hearing only the occasional crunch of gravel over the rhythmic pounding in his ears.
He knows my name
. Somehow hearing the word come through those scabby lips had been the worst thing. It made the encounter more personal. More
cozy
. A sudden thought sent stutters of fear through his belly. What if the hobo could track him down, since he knew his name?

He only knows my first name.
Even as the thought came to him he heard Joey’s voice, full of mockery.
Oooh, I know.
Barbie
Frank. It has a ring to it, doesn’t it?
Despite the warmth of the sun, he felt chilled.
He doesn’t know you live in Decatur.
Even if the hobo somehow figured it out, there must be at least fifty families named Frank in the city. And looking the way Norman did, he couldn’t very well go door-to-door asking if there was a boy named Bobby living there. Someone would call the cops on him before he made it to the second house.

I’ll be coming for you, Bobby.

“Wait up!”

The voice coming from behind him wasn’t far off. Bobby became aware of footfalls slapping the ground, getting closer. Tanner was gaining on him, his longer legs pumping like pistons in a well-oiled (albeit a little on the chunky side) machine. The road was just ahead, the strip of blacktop a negative line amid the drifts of golden leaves. Bobby allowed himself to slow down. Even if the hobo was following them, he couldn’t be remotely close. Not with that herky-jerky stagger. He was probably shambling across the yard still. Or, more likely, already crawling back into his nest to finish his booze and think about the little fish that got away.

His cousin came alongside him. “C’mon, man,” he gasped. “Stop running.”

They reached the road and Bobby slowed to a walk, holding his sides and gasping. Uphill, Joey trotted easily down the driveway as if he hadn’t a care in the world, that moronic grin still painted on his face. Tanner stopped at the edge of the asphalt and bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Bobby watched the hillside as Joey came down, looking for any sign of Norman. If he had to, he was ready to run all the way back to Tanner’s house. All the way to
Decatur
, if it came down to it, even if it killed him.

“Are you crying?” Tanner asked, just as Joey reached them.

“No!” But Bobby felt wetness on his cheeks and swiped angrily at it with a hand that still trembled.

Joey was more direct. “What the hell, man? Did you see Jeremiah Barlowe’s ghost in there or what?”

“You didn’t hear?” Bobby panted. “You didn’t
see?
”

I’ll be coming for you, Bobby.

“What are you talking about?” Tanner asked. “We saw
you
.”

“We heard you, too,” Joey tittered. Then, in a high voice, “
Help me! Somebody, please help me!
You sounded like a little queerbait.”

Bobby looked into their eyes, searching for signs of deception, but found none. Had they really not seen Norman? Not heard his shouted threat?

“Oh my God,” Joey said suddenly. His eyes were at Bobby’s waist. “Did you piss your pants
again
?”

Bobby looked down at the front of his jeans. Strands of snotlike pus threaded with bright blood splattered the denim, and with startling clarity he saw several thin white worms wriggling furiously in the discharge. He remembered Norman tugging that blackened thing out of his pants, the way the blisters had burst in a hot gush across the man’s hand, and nearly gagged. He wanted to throw himself to the ground like a dog and roll around to clean the foul stuff off—there was no way he was touching it with his bare hands—but knew how it would look to the other boys.
Like I’ve gone crazy.

How could Joey think something so nasty was pee? Bobby looked up and saw nothing in the older boy’s face but mocking derision. No disgust at the pus and blood, no revulsion at the winding worms. He turned his gaze to his cousin and saw a similar look, but concern furrowed Tanner’s brow, too.

Is it that they can’t see it, or that they don’t
want
to?

They wouldn’t believe him if he told them what really happened under the house. The blank looks on their faces said as much. They (
couldn’t
) hadn’t seen Norman, and they (
couldn’t
) didn’t see the muck on his pants. Why would they believe there was a hobo under the house who’d wanted to do terrible things to him? Bobby could almost hear Joey’s taunts now.
So you think some old guy wanted you to suck his dick under the house? Told you he was a faggot, Tanner! Wanna suck
my
dick, Barbie? I’ll bet a queerbait like you is real good at it.