Charnel House (32 page)

“Say, this is some
sweet
pussy you left for me, Bobby,” Norman called. His voice sounded distant. “Don’t mind if I do!”

A fresh scream shattered the cocoon of misery that wrapped him. Bobby jerked his legs from under the facade and struggled to his feet, looking for the hobo. The room had become a cavern, and the train so far from him now it looked like a toy. The open doors that had been so close only a moment before were nearly a football field’s length away.
The ride isn’t even this big
. He sprinted alongside the track as best he could, hunched against the pain that wracked him.

Norman stood in the front train car facing out the back. He held Amy against him with one hand clenched around her slender neck. The other had disappeared up her shirt, and he rooted around in there like he was searching for treasure... but his yellowed eyes were on Bobby. She fought to get away and he shook her like a rag doll.

“Stop it!” Yelling caused another flare of pain across his back.

Making sure Bobby was watching, the hobo ran his tongue into Amy’s ear and she shrieked.

She sees him. Feels him.

He wasn’t imagining Norman, and Norman wasn’t possessing anyone. Norman was really here.

But he was supposed to come for
me
.

“Let her go!” he cried, and redoubled his efforts. Each step sent burning needles through his testicles and down his legs.

Norman laughed and pulled his hand from Amy’s shirt in order to snake it between her legs. She twisted and bucked, her feet beating a hard tattoo on the seat of the car. Fury and terror twisted her features.

“Nice and tight,” the hobo called. “Just the way I like it. Maybe when I’m done you can have a dip, Bobby, but we’ll need to strap a board to your ass so you don’t fall in!”

Amy drove an elbow into the hobo’s belly and he belched out an
oof!
that might have been funny under different circumstances. His grip on her slipped for an instant and she nearly got away, but then Norman balled up his fist and clouted her on the side of the head. She went limp, her arms dropping loosely to her sides.

This time Bobby was the one who screamed.

He was gaining on the train, but not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. It passed through the open doors and the last thing Bobby saw before they slammed shut behind it was Norman pawing at the button of Amy’s jeans.

Bobby crashed into the metal doors an instant after they closed. He might as well have been running into a brick wall for all the good it did. They rattled, but otherwise did not budge. He stepped back and tucked his shoulder down, then tried again with the same result. Panic bloomed in him like a poisonous flower, threatening to swallow him whole.

The room had shrunk back to its normal size. The ceiling, which had reached almost to the heavens a moment ago, was back to its normal height, and the side walls had closed in around him. It was still hard to breathe, only now it wasn’t just because of the tightness in his chest.

“Help!” he cried, banging his fists against the plywood wall closest to him. The outside was that direction, he thought. This place had him all turned around. The hollow sound boomed in the tight space. If he could get the attention of the attendant, he would come to help. He
had
to.
Please God, let him hear. Let
anyone
hear.
A grownup would know how to open the doors. “Please, help me!”

Fighting the terror, he hastily checked the wall around the metal doors for a switch. Trying not to think about what Norman was doing to Amy in the next room. There had to be something here, because the attendant would need to move around inside when the ride wasn’t in operation. Maintenance, stuff like that. He wished there was more light; he could barely see the wall. Bobby ran his hands over the flimsy painted plywood, feeling for anything that felt like a button or toggle. Nothing.

The track.

Of course. There had to be something there for the train to trip when it was approaching the doors, just like the switches on real train tracks that turned on the crossing guards. He dropped to his hands and knees next to the rail and began to crawl, looking for something, even though he wasn’t sure what. With a little luck he’d recognize it when he saw it. He wanted to run his hands along the rail itself but a small voice in his head told him it might be electrified, the way subways were. Everyone knew touching those tracks could kill you, and if he was dead he wouldn’t be much good for anything. Norman would win.

From beyond the doors Amy screamed, her voice raw with naked terror. The sound tore at his soul. But at least it meant she was still alive. Without thinking, Bobby sprang to his feet and bolted toward that end of the room, faster now because some of the pain in his nuts and lower back was easing. This time, instead of hitting the doors, he rammed the plywood next to them, where it had felt so flimsy when he was searching it for a switch. The wood bowed under the blow, and with a pop as loud as a gunshot the plywood sheet cracked. Fresh pain exploded in his upper arm, but he ignored it. The sound of the breaking board was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard.

Amy screamed again. This time it was cut short.

Bobby sprinted to the far end of the room, spun, and then raced toward the section of wall he’d cracked.
Please God, just let me do something athletic just this once.
At the last minute he thrust his shoulder forward and tucked, the way blockers did in the rare football games he’d seen. He hit the wall so hard his shoulder went instantly numb, but with a thunderous
CRACK!
the thin plywood split like the Red Sea before Moses. He crashed through the wall—
just call me the Hulk
, he would think later that night, before the pill his Mom gave him sent him off to the land of the sandman—and hit the floor in the next room, rolling as he did so in order to spring to his feet.

This room was much larger than the one he’d come from, and the wooden facades created the Paris skyline. At the other end, where there was another set of closed doors, a ten-foot Eiffel Tower dominated the room, reaching almost to the ceiling. Norman crouched defensively at the base of the monument in front of Amy, leering at him. The girl lay splayed on her back, unmoving, her eyes closed. Her shirt had pulled free of her jeans and her flat belly was partially exposed. The sight of her helplessness ignited something in Bobby, and with a bellow of inchoate fury he launched himself across the room, leaping the track to get at the hobo.

With a roar of his own, Norman rushed forward and caught him in midair then twisted, using his motion to hurl Bobby over Amy and into the Eiffel Tower, a jerry-rigged conglomeration of steel pipes, chicken wire, and scrap lumber that had been painted silver. With a series of splintering cracks and pops, the tower tore loose from its base and toppled onto its side in a shower of sparks and shattered bulbs. The spire smashed into the wall of the room and snapped off, and the tower body hit the floor with a crash that shook the whole ride. Bobby was draped over the skeletal framework like a horse blanket, and the impact sent fresh thunderclaps of pain roaring through him.

Norman was on him in an instant, his flyblown horror of a face twisted into a mocking mask of triumph. The rough hands seized Bobby by the shoulders and yanked him off the remains of the tower. His foot caught in the tangle of wires and pipes and wood, and with a roar of anger the hobo jerked him free. Bobby cried out as something in his ankle separated for an instant. Then he was sailing through the air again, slamming into the plywood wall—this one thicker and much more solid than the one he’d just run through—where the tower had hit it and landing in a heap in the trash that now littered the floor. The world went gray and grainy around him.

“Don’t be so anxious, kid,” Norman sneered. “You’ll get your turn.”

He turned back to Amy.

Bobby struggled to stay conscious. Everything wanted to swim in and out of focus, and it felt like he was laying on the deck of a boat in the middle of the river, where the chop was worst.
Amy
. He knew he needed to get up and help her before Norman did something even more terrible to her, but he couldn’t get his arms and legs to do what he wanted. It was like something had rewired the connections between his brain and limbs. Slowly, he turned his head to look across the room.

Norman straddled Amy. He had hitched her shirt the rest of the way up to her chin, and now ran his hands over her exposed flesh, gaping down at her with raw lust in his eyes. His mouth hung open, the moist tongue running back and forth over his suppurating lips. She was starting to wake up, her eyes opening slowly. Bobby fought the waves of dizziness that crashed into him and rolled onto his stomach, trying not to think about the black blistered thing in Norman’s pants and what he wanted to do to Amy with it. His back was sheer agony, but everything seemed to be working, albeit like he was ninety instead of twelve. He got his hands under him and pushed himself onto his knees.

Coming for
you
, Norman.

Using the plywood wall for leverage, he climbed to his feet. Pressure on his ankle sent white-hot flashes of agony through the joint. He took one shaky step toward Amy and Norman, testing, then another. It hurt like heck, but it held him. Glass crunched under his sneakers but the hobo didn’t seem to notice the sound. He was busy tugging at Amy’s jeans. He had them unbuttoned and unzipped and was trying to slide them down her hips. Bobby bit back the fury that threatened to consume him and focused on staying quiet. If Norman thought he was unconscious or too injured to get up, that was a
good
thing.

He stepped on something that rolled under his foot and he almost lost his balance and fell. If that happened, he didn’t know if he’d be able to get up. His back groaned and his injured ankle wobbled precariously for what seemed like a lifetime before deciding it was going to hold him. Holding his arms out like a tightrope walker, Bobby found his balance and looked down before taking another step and screwing up everything. The spire from the Eiffel Tower lay on the floor at his feet, a two-foot section of thick dowel painted silver and wrapped in white Christmas lights. The end of the dowel had been honed to a point like the world’s largest pencil.

No
, the voice in his head corrected.
Like a stake.

And that was fitting, wasn’t it? Stakes killed vampires, and if Norman was anything, he was a vampire. Maybe not in the traditional sense of the word, because he lacked the pointy teeth and smelled so bad garlic would probably run from
him
, but vampire was the right word. He fed on fear like a movie vampire fed on blood.
That’s right, kid
, Norman had said when they were under the house.
Scream for help. It makes it better.

Vampires could be stopped.

Could be
killed
.

Bobby bent and picked up the spire, and the world went gray around him again.

Please, God. Amy needs me.

Things came back into focus and his grip tightened around the piece of wood in his hand. Its weight was good, reassuring.
Much
better than the section of pipe he’d found the first time they met. If he’d had something like this in the crawlspace he might have ended things then. He yanked the string of lights off the dowel, sending staples flying.

Amy whimpered. Norman had gotten her pants down to her knees and was reaching for her panties, oblivious to Bobby’s presence. She beat ineffectually at the hobo’s face with her small fists, but she was weak and the blows didn’t faze him. Almost casually, he batted her hands away and gave her another wallop on the face with one fist, stilling her.

The resolution to be quiet was swallowed by a tornado of rage that consumed Bobby. The onslaught engulfed the pain racking his body and as he leaped toward Norman, the stake rising over his head almost of its own accord, he let loose with a bestial cry that would have done a warrior ancestor proud. Norman turned, the triumphant look fleeing his face as he did. He brought his arms up to block the stake, the unconscious girl beneath him forgotten, but he was too slow. The point found a home in the grizzled knell under his chin, and slid almost effortlessly into his throat. It punched out the other side in a spray of arterial red. Bobby’s forward motion drove him into the hobo, knocking him off of Amy. They fell to the floor together, man and boy, Bobby’s hands still wrapped around the end of the stake as he rammed it in further.

Norman flopped like a gaffed fish, trying to get away, but Bobby held tight to the stake. Hot blood splattered around them like rain, soaking into Bobby’s clothes and wetting his face. A horde of blackflies encircled them in a cloud, driven into a frenzy by the sudden rush of food. The hobo’s hands rose to grab at the branches that now sprouted from either side of his neck, but his movements were slow. Diminishing. His yellowed eyes rolled in terror, as if he realized he was fading. He opened his mouth to say something, and instead vomited a glut of blood in Bobby’s face. Into his
mouth
, hot and coppery and rotten. Bobby let go of the stake and shoved away, slipping and sliding in the gore, spitting and retching.

“
Gah
,” Norman cried. He got a hand on the end of the blood-slicked stake and tried to pull, but it slipped from his grasp. Sudden wetness spread in the front of his pants, and Bobby crazily wondered if the hobo had peed himself or if the white worms were bursting the blisters down there to escape their dying host.

Dying.
What a beautiful word!

Bobby wiped furiously at his face with a dry part of his shirt, trying to get the foul blood off him. Norman’s feet drummed hollowly on the wooden floor. His head rolled loosely, the eyes searching for the boy. Even though he could see the life ebbing from them, Bobby still felt a chill when they found his own. A final breath escaped the hobo’s sore-covered lips in a bubbling hiss, and then he was still.

Bobby scrabbled across the floor to Amy, feeling sudden heat in his face as he realized he could see the tiny buds of her breasts and her panties, which were the same pale shade of blue as the ribbon she’d had in her hair at church the day before. The side of her face was swollen and beginning to turn purple, but she was breathing okay and he didn’t see any blood on her anywhere.
Thank you, God.
He wiped his hands on his pants, eyes averted, cleaning the hobo’s blood off them. Getting the foul liquid on her would be blasphemous. Norman had touched her enough. Gingerly, almost reverently, Bobby tugged her shirt down to cover her nakedness, then pulled her pants up as best he could without touching her anyplace embarrassing. When he was done, he gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

“Amy?”

Her eyelashes fluttered on her cheeks, then gradually opened. When she saw him over her, her lips spread into a wan smile. “Am I in heaven?”

“No, you’re still down here with me,” Bobby said, smiling back. He felt like his heart was going to burst through his ribs. “More like hell.”

“What happened to the bad man?”

“I think I killed him,” Bobby said, and began to cry. He wasn’t sure if it was more from happiness that she seemed to be alright or relief that Norman was dead.

“Thank you.” She reached up and wiped the tears from his cheeks with a delicate hand. “Don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it,” he said, his voice breaking. “I was so scared.”

“It’s going to be okay,” she told him. “Help me up.”

Bobby climbed to his feet slowly, the forgotten pain settling back onto him like a heavy coat. As he stood, he looked over at the still body lying in what seemed to be a lake of garish red. Making sure Norman was really dead, because he knew evil had a way of coming back.