Charnel House (27 page)

Heck no.

In the unspoken hierarchy of put-downs, Bobby knew that a faggot was about the worst thing you could be. The lowest of the low. Being considered a fag was the kind of thing that could follow him all the way back to Decatur because this pair of Belleville retards would blab it at school come Monday, and the story wouldn’t take long at all to make the hop over the river. The two towns weren’t
that
far apart, and a story this juicy was bound to be shared.
Hey Johnny, did you hear about the kid from Decatur who gave some old dude a blowjob under the Barlowe house?
He’d never be able to live it down. Being considered a pussy, on the other hand, was just another day in the life of someone like him: small, bookish, weak. Hardly worth a mention at all.

“I saw a snake,” Bobby said. “I thought it was a rattler at first, but now I guess maybe it was just a rat snake.”

“A snake? Jesus Christ.” Joey threw his head back and guffawed. “You pissed yourself over a
rat snake
?”

“I didn’t piss myself. I must have crawled through a puddle or something.”

Ain’t it a beaut? Want to give it a kiss?

Or something.

“Puddle, my ass. You just don’t want to admit that you—”

“Knock it off, Joey,” Tanner said. “Let’s just go home. It’s over.”

“But he—”

“Seriously, would you just shut the fuck up? When did you turn into such an asshole?”

Joey’s mouth snapped shut and fierce color bloomed on his cheeks. Bobby wasn’t sure if he had the good sense to be embarrassed for the way he was acting or was just getting ticked off. Probably the latter; embarrassment required more self-awareness than God seemed to have given Joey Garraty. Either way, Bobby was grateful to his cousin for standing up for him. He didn’t need Joey’s crap right now.

“Oughta kick both your asses,” Joey muttered, but his heart wasn’t in it. He just wanted the last word, Bobby thought.
Fine with me.

He started down Hickory Hill, and after a moment the other boys followed.

After they left Aunt Cindy’s (where Bobby had spent a good ten minutes in the bathroom trying to clean the worms and pus off his jeans with a dry washcloth he then wadded up and hid at the bottom of the trash), Mom took them to Penn’s for hamburgers, but Bobby wasn’t hungry and only picked at his food. Dana jabbered nonstop about the book she’d just finished, something to do with a kid named Milo who got a toy tollbooth in the mail and used it to travel to faraway places that didn’t really exist, while Luke Skywalker perched on the edge of the napkin dispenser as if listening in rapt attention. Mom participated in the conversation like always, but Bobby knew she was watching him. Worry creased her brow—the hole-in-the-wall burger joint was Bobby’s favorite and he usually clamored for a second burger—and she felt his forehead twice to check for a fever. She didn’t ask him if anything was wrong, or if something was bothering him.

That was a good thing, Bobby thought.

Not that he’d have told her about Norman and the Barlowe house, anyway. He knew better. Some things Mom didn’t need to know, and this was one of them. Besides, what if he told her and she cried? Anything but that. Mom tears were the worst kind of tears, because they were so scary. Also, she was guaranteed to call Aunt Cindy if he told her, and when it came to light that Tanner stood by while Joey forced Bobby to go under the house alone with a pervert, well, suffice it to say the metal yardstick in Uncle Roger’s workshop would probably get a workout. Tanner was a butthole, but he didn’t deserve that. Better that his mom come to her own conclusions about his morning, like that he had gotten into an argument—or even a fight—with Tanner or Joey. That wasn’t far from the truth, anyway.

He spent the afternoon in his room, playing quietly with his Erector set while the terror seeped out of him little by little. A child a few years older or younger might not have recovered as quickly (or even at all), but Bobby was at that special age where his resilience was at its strongest and his natural abilities worked a kind of healing magic within him. By dinnertime he was nearly back to normal—albeit very tired—the memories of what happened already receding from the forefront of his thoughts. Not
forgotten
, by any means, and definitely still terrifying, but not quite so... imminent. Norman was miles and miles away, and even if he was a bad guy, he couldn’t
really
track Bobby down. Things like that only happened in books and movies, anyway, and even then only to grownups. Over meatloaf and mashed potatoes, he found himself stifling yawns.

Later, he got between his parents on the couch in the den—Dana was on the floor so close to the television their mother told her she was going to go blind—to watch
Hee Haw
(Bobby didn’t care so much for the music, but the corny jokes made him laugh and the country girls were pretty enough to give Jayna the Wonder Twin a run for her money and had the added advantage of being real), and then
CHiPS
. Ponch and John might not have been detectives like Starsky and Hutch, but they were pretty cool on their motorcycles, tooling up and down the California highways and saving the day every week. Twice during
The Love Boat
he nodded off, but that show was boring anyway so he didn’t think he missed anything. He got up to brush his teeth before Tattoo announced the arrival of
de plane
on
Fantasy Island
, a full half-hour before his designated bedtime.

In his bedroom, he turned off the light and darkness swallowed him. In an instant he was back in the crawlspace with the rough hands tugging at his underwear, the slick wet tongue tasting his cheek. He flipped the wall switch up and blessed light flooded the room. His heart thumped like a bass drum behind his ribs. Even though the house was warm, he felt cold.
You’re being silly.
Maybe. But wasn’t he allowed, if only for a day?

Bobby stood with his hand on the switch, trying to decide what to do.
Sleep with the door open
. If he did that, light from the rest of the house would keep the room from being dark... but it was something he didn’t normally do. He remembered the way his mother had been looking at him across the chipped formica table at Penn’s. Leaving the door open would get her curiosity up and the questions would start. He didn’t want to lie to her, and he didn’t want to get his cousin in trouble.
What I need is a night light.
Wouldn’t
that
be a hoot, if everyone found out that he was using something even Dana no longer needed because he was scared of the dark?
Baby Frank
would only be the beginning of the taunts.

But now that he thought about it, the night already
had
a light, didn’t it? Most of the time, anyway. Bobby crossed the room to the window and pulled the shade back to peer out. The back yard was bathed in a silver-white light that turned everything a shade of blue or black, bright enough that his old—now Dana’s—swingset cast a shadow on the grass. He scanned the clear night sky and saw the moon riding high in a sea of stars, not full but close to it.
God’s night light.

Satisfied, he raised the shade and flipped the switch again, tensing against the encroaching darkness. A pale rectangle of moonlight on the beige carpet lit the room with soft effulgence and kept the worries at bay this time. Not as bright as he might have chosen, but beggars
(gimme a dollar, kid)
didn’t have that option if they wanted to keep their parents in the dark. Bobby grinned at his joke—one corny enough to be on
Hee Haw
, for sure—and climbed into bed. Sleep came easy, and his dreams were of Amy Carmichael and her shimmering blonde hair.

He woke some time later on his side, swimming up to consciousness as though from the bottom of a deep lake. Silence reigned throughout the house, except for the faint hiss of the central heat. The soothing sound reminded him of a far distant ocean whispering against a sandy beach. The comforter was pulled up to his chin and the bed blissfully warm, and in the verdant fields of his mind Amy Carmichael beckoned for him to return to her. He needed to pee, but not too bad yet. Enough that he could sleep a little longer before it became urgent.

Bobby opened his eyes to check the time on the bedside clock—sometimes when he woke in the middle of the night he discovered it was still technically early, like midnight, with hours and hours of sleep left before it was time to get up, and this always made him happy, like he was winning some small victory against the world—and his eyes fell on the silver-white rectangle of light, now halfway up the wall. The shadow of a person filled it, someone with their hands up to either side of their face as if they had it pressed against the glass with their hands cupped around their eyes to block the glare. But it couldn’t be just
someone
, now, could it? He knew exactly who it was.

I’ll be coming for you, Bobby.

The remaining vestiges of sleep fled in tatters, and Bobby gripped the edge of the blanket so hard his fists hurt. Something in his guts clenched, making him feel like he suddenly needed to fart, only he suspected it wouldn’t be a fart at all if he let it out. The shadow on the wall moved, the hands shifting position a little like the hobo was trying to get a better view.
Better to see you with, my pretty.
He wanted to pull the bedclothes over his head, to pretend they would protect him from monsters the way they used to when he was little and got scared in the middle of the night. But that old trick had lost its magic with the passage of time, hadn’t it? If he ducked under the covers now, he would only let Norman know he was awake.

He thought about screaming for his parents, just opening his mouth and letting loose with a yell that would make Tarzan proud. What good would it do, though? Norman would surely hear it and run away, and his parents would believe he’d had a bad dream. He could practically imagine the look they’d share, and the way his mother would tell his father
I knew there was something wrong with him earlier today
when they were back in their bed. Dana would be terrified. Besides, part of him thought screaming was
exactly
what the hobo wanted him to do.
Scream for help,
he’d told Bobby.
It just makes it better.
Made
what
better? For the first time since he left the crawlspace, Bobby wondered if what Norman had done to him—and the thing he’d
almost
done to him—was about sex at all. The lunatic would
like
knowing he was scared enough to call for his parents, maybe even more than he liked the thought of doing bad things to little boys. The shadow moved again, searching, and because there was nothing else he could do, Bobby swallowed his terror and rolled over to face the window. It was the last thing Norman would expect.

There was nothing there.

He scooted across the bed and slipped out, then crept over to the window. Carefully, he peered out into the yard, prepared for Norman’s head to pop up from beneath the sill like the bleached corpse in that underwater boat scene in
Jaws
, which he’d seen on HBO at a friend’s house the previous summer because his parents would never let him watch something so violent. The yard looked the same as it had earlier, only now the shadow from the old swing set stretched toward the house because the fat moon had sunk and hung just above the roof of the house behind theirs, partially obscured by the trees. He pressed his face against the glass and looked straight down, not convinced the hobo was gone. Nothing.

So why did he feel like he was being watched?

There was no way Norman could have gotten out of the yard so quickly. He must be hiding somewhere, waiting for Bobby to relax again. To chill out and let his defenses down. There were still plenty of shadows out there large enough to hold a man.
Unless he was really a ghost
. That was silly thinking, of course, because you couldn’t feel a ghost (
kissing
) touching (
licking
) you, could you? Norman was as real as Bobby himself, just a lot crazier. Maybe the creepy old house had done it to him, the way it supposedly had Jeremiah Barlowe.

Or maybe you don’t see him out there because he’s already inside the house.

An image rose in his head: Norman right behind him, reaching for him with those rough hands. The tiny hairs on the back of Bobby’s neck rose, and gooseflesh sprang up on his arms.
He’s not back there.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, despite knowing deep down that it was impossible for the hobo to be back there. Even if he
could
somehow get into the house, there was no way for him to get all the way to Bobby’s room so quickly. Or so quietly.

Unless the shadow was from something already inside the room.

Certain that Norman was already reaching for him, Bobby spun, sucking his breath in a harsh gasp and raising his hands to defend himself. There was no one behind him... but in the rectangle of light on the wall, the silhouette of a person filled the space, and as he watched, the hands moved a little. He snapped a look over his shoulder at the window. Nothing but the moon shining through the trees in the back yard, their few remaining leaves gently swinging in the breeze, and he realized what he’d been seeing on the wall all along: the shadow of a tree trunk and a couple of branches, the rustling leaves to either side of the trunk making the hand-part of the shadow move. His mind had taken care of the rest, filling in the blanks with his own fears.

Now that he knew what it was, it was almost funny that he’d mistaken something so obvious for a person. It didn’t really look human at all. Bobby shook his head and padded down the hall to the bathroom on legs that felt wobbly, nearly giddy with relief. Thank goodness he hadn’t screamed or run for his parents. Dad would have given him the same look his mom had, but then he’d have wanted to
talk about it
. That’s what hippie-dippies did. They talked about it. And his dad was good at it, too. It wouldn’t take him long to get to the truth—another hippie-dippy trait, perhaps—and that was the last thing Bobby wanted.

When he got back to his bedroom he went to the window and looked out one last time. The moon had dropped even lower and now appeared to loll on the roof of the house behind theirs. No hobos anywhere in sight, crazy or otherwise.
Because he’s not really coming.
He pulled the shade down and climbed back into bed. Moments later, Bobby rejoined Amy Carmichael in the field where she waited.