Charnel House (33 page)

The ride attendant lay on his back in the pool of blood, his half-open eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling of his amusement. The section of dowel jutted from each side of his neck like an obscene linchpin. The front of his work pants were dark with wetness.

“Bra
vo
, Bobby. Well done. Gonna get called a hero for this.”

The thick, clotted voice came from behind him. Bobby whirled, moving in front of Amy automatically. Norman stood by the shattered section of plywood wall Bobby had burst through, grinning his black-toothed grin, unharmed. He clapped his hands together in a slow mockery of applause.

“Why won’t you
die
?” Bobby moaned.

“What’s wrong, Bobby?” Amy asked. “What are you talking about? Turn around and look at me.”

“You first, kid,” Norman said. “Then maybe I’ll show your little cooze what a
real
man feels like.”

But something flickered in those rheumy yellow eyes when the hobo spoke, something that looked a lot like fear to Bobby.
Good.
Norman hadn’t expected him to fight back.
Caught you off guard, didn’t I?
He felt fresh anger welling in him
.

“So come kill me,” he said, crooking his fingers in the universal
come on
at the hobo.

“Stop it!” Amy cried. “Who are you talking to? You’re scaring me!”

I think maybe I’m scaring
him
, too, Amy.

“Not just yet,” Norman said, and one eye drooped in a wink at Bobby. “Soon.”

Bobby took a step forward. Norman took a step backward. The grin still curved his scabbed lips, but it had slipped just a little. It looked forced now.
Like he really wants to scream.
Without another word, Norman turned and darted through the opening in the plywood.

Bobby gave chase.

He leaped through the broken section of wall after the fleeing hobo—

—and found himself on his hands and knees in the cramped space under the front porch of the Barlowe house. He wasn’t really surprised. Norman was on the run, and it made perfect sense that he would go back to the place where he felt safe. In control. He’d already shown he could come and go at will, even if no one else seemed to be able to see him.

Until now
, the voice in his head reminded him.
Amy saw
.

The low-hanging sun cast everything in a surreal orange light. Bobby smelled the faint grape Kool-aid odor of kudzu blooming nearby. Norman’s scrawny backside was just disappearing into the opening to the crawlspace, going so fast he left a swirl of dried leaves in his wake.

Scared to death
.

Or that’s what he wanted Bobby to think.

Bobby followed the hobo, cautiously. Wary of a trap. It would be just like Norman to lure him here under false pretenses and attack him when he was over-confident. He crept to the opening and poked his head in, eyes snapping from spot to spot, searching. Norman was halfway across the crawlspace, working his way under the sagging joist.
Going back to his nest.

Bobby scuttled forward on all fours before he lost his nerve and caught hold of one of the hobo’s legs. Norman reacted as if the boy had touched a live wire to his skin, kicking and flailing and, best of all,
screeching
in his terror. The sound was even sweeter than the one the plywood wall had made when it split open under his shoulder, and made him forget how much his back and ankle hurt.

“You sound like a little girl,” he said, and tried to drag the hobo from under the beam. Wishing he had his father’s gun right now, or another stake.
Something.
He thought Norman could be stopped, now that he had the
real
Norman, and not just someone he had possessed.

“Leave me alone, kid!” the hobo cried, and the shrillness in his normally gruff voice brought a grim smile to Bobby’s face. Norman clawed at the loose dirt, trying to stop his inexorable backward slide. Bobby reached out and grabbed onto the belt running around the man’s waist and pulled even harder. Norman bellowed and redoubled his efforts to get away.

I’ll beat him to death with my hands if I have to.
Then, wonderingly.
I really think I could.

“Bobby?” Amy’s voice drifted in through the entrance. “What are you doing in there?”

Sudden fear jabbed him in the heart. Had she followed them here?

“Go back to your girlfriend, kid,” Norman said. Pleaded. “She needs you.”

The hobo heaved himself forward mightily and the leg in Bobby’s hand seemed to go loose and fleshy as something inside it pulled loose. At the same time, he felt the body
shift
under his other hand where he held on to the ratty belt. With a terrible purring sound, the skin of Norman’s scalp split and something underneath it began to force its way out. Flaps of leathery flesh carpeted with unruly gray hair furled away to either side as the thing inside the hobo struggled to escape. Norman’s hands took hold of the flaps and ripped them even further, freeing the thing inside to the shoulders.

Peeling himself like a banana.

The leg inside the one Bobby held pulled through his fingers, leaving him with a deflated sheath. The new thing wriggled its shoulders, shucking the Norman-husk off itself the way a shedding snake did with old skin. Its flesh was pallid and hairless and covered with the sheen of some oily liquid. It grabbed onto the sagging joist with thin bony hands and yanked itself away from the remains of the hobo, then scurried away from him on all fours. Bobby felt a scream boiling up inside him and jerked his hands away from the flaccid shell of skin to wipe them on his pants. Was this real, or just another one of Norman’s tricks?

The sallow thing was slumped and looked awkward, all bony angles, but it moved with the liquid grace of a spider on its thin arms and legs, scuttling toward the far side of the crawlspace where deep shadows provided cover. It looked over its shoulder at Bobby—
making sure I’m not following it because it’s
scared
of me—
and he saw black hollows where there should have been eyes. He had seen those sunken pits before, when he was upstairs and (
remembered
) imagined Jeremiah Barlowe killing his wife. The thing trying to get away from him had been in the kitchen in 1943, watching Jeremiah do his terrible deed with its lipless mouth hooked into a smile like the blade on the Grim Reaper’s scythe.
Its
real
face
, his mind insisted.

But that was thirty-five years ago.

He didn’t think time mattered so much to that thing. Had it been here as long as the house? Was it even alive the same way he was?

“Bobby?” Amy called from behind him. “Please come back in here. I’m really scared!”

Reluctantly, Bobby turned around and began to crawl toward the opening, where the golden sunlight beckoned. He couldn’t see Amy out there, but maybe she wasn’t under the porch. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to crawl in. Before he left the crawlspace he looked back the way he had come, toward the corner where he’d last seen the slumped thing. The Norman-husk was gone now, he saw.
If it was ever even there.
The only thing marking the struggle he had just been in was a cloud of dust hanging in the still air. A disconcerting thought wafted through his mind like a bad smell: what if neither Norman nor the slumped thing had been real? All he saw from the far corner was darkness. But if it
was
there...

“I’m coming back for you,” he said, his shaky voice the only sound in the vast crawlspace.
And the next time I’ll have a gun.

Bobby crawled through the opening and—

—back into the Paris room in A World of Love. Amy sat against the wall farthest from the dead attendant, her legs bent so her knees were almost touching her chin, arms wrapped around them. She rocked back and forth, watching the body with tears on her cheeks.

“I’m here,” Bobby said, and she flinched. Something felt like it broke in his chest. He wanted to pull her close and never let her go, to never let anything else bad happen to her. Instead, he limped over and extended his hand. “Let’s go find some help.”

She grabbed on so tightly that he almost cried out. He helped her to her feet.

Hand in hand, they found their way out of the amusement without looking back.

“Who were you talking to?” Amy asked in a voice low enough for only Bobby to hear. “Inside?”

They were sitting together on the edge of the platform at the front of A World of Love, the massive faux-Disney facade at their backs. Their hands were still clasped, the fingers intertwined. Bobby never wanted to let go. A crowd was gathering, both carnival employees and marks, drawn by the spreading word of the dead man inside the ride. A man who must have been the general manager or owner ran to and fro, shooing lookieloos away from the amusement. Sweat rolled down his brow, and from time to time he pulled out a large red bandanna and swiped furiously at his forehead. Far away, the mournful discordant wail of several sirens sang a haunting song.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked. “Promise not to laugh?”

“Of course.”

“When the guy was throwing me off the train, and when he had you, did he look... different?”

Her brow furrowed, and she winced and put her free hand to the side of her face. “Different how?”

“Older. Scarier.”
Coming apart at the seams.
He felt a sudden urge to giggle and bit it back.

“Sure he looked scary to me.” She cocked her head to one side. “But that’s not what you mean, is it?”

Bobby shook his head. He took a deep breath, and said, “I thought there was someone else in there with us. That’s who I was talking to. His name is Norman, and I see him and hear him but no one else does and I’m afraid I’m going crazy. He’s the one I saw when we were attacked. I think he can possess people and make them do what he wants.”

He watched the ground, unable to meet her gaze. His heart pounded so hard it felt like he’d just run a race. From the corner of his eye he could see Amy staring at him. She looked at him for so long, her face puffy and red and still full of terror, that he thought she was trying to decide whether to laugh in his face or scream and run away. He could almost hear the other kids calling him
Booby
, as in hatch, because that’s where they’d think he belonged once she told them how he screamed and ran after someone who wasn’t there.

Probably ought to keep that whole monster in a human shell thing to myself
.

Then she threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek and said, “You don’t seem crazy to me.”

Bobby wanted to burst into tears. He felt so light now that he had told someone about Norman he wondered if he should grab onto the edge of the platform to keep from floating away. He hadn’t realized how much having the hobo on his back had been weighing him down. The sirens had grown closer, and their undulating howl filled the afternoon. The other rides were shutting down one by one, but no one was going anywhere.

“I met him at a place in Belleville,” Bobby said. “A haunted house. A bully made me go in, and Norman was under there. He tried to do something terrible to me, just like he did to you in there.”

He hooked his thumb back at the plywood facade, thinking
gimme a dollar, kid
.

“I got away from him,” he continued, “but he came after me. First he possessed my mother, then Brother Peavey. I didn’t really fall asleep in church yesterday, I was wide awake and saw Brother Peavey turn into him. He’s the one who... attacked us in there, using the other guy. ”

He knew he was babbling, but now that he had popped this particular (
watery blister
) pimple, the words rushed out like hot pus. He was nearly giddy with relief.

Amy squeezed his hand. “I want to hear everything about it, but...”

She looked pointedly at the general manager, who had given up trying to keep the people back and now stood less than ten feet from them trying to catch his breath, then back at Bobby. Her meaning was clear, and he nodded. The closest siren was so loud now that he wondered if a police car or ambulance was about to burst through the sawhorses and come careening down the midway at them, then someone must have flipped a switch because it wound down to a rusty growl. He could hear more approaching, not as close. While they waited, he stole surreptitious glances at her, wondering how he had found not only a perfect girl who really seemed to like him, but who also didn’t suggest he admit himself to the Lurleen B. Wallace Center for Crazy People Who See Hobos That Aren’t There for a mental evaluation and eventual straitjacket.

“
Bobby!
” his mother shrieked, and he turned to see her pelting down the midway as fast as she could, shoving people out of the way in her haste to get to him, her eyes wide and full of panic.

“I’m okay,” he called, and hopped down from the platform just in time for her to sweep him into her arms in a crushing hug, smothering him with kisses. “It’s not my blood. Not
our
blood.”

“What happened?” she said. She looked them over, taking in their bruises and the blood beginning to stiffen Bobby’s clothes. “Are you sure you’re okay? What about you, Amy? Where are your parents?”

“My head hurts,” Amy admitted, gesturing at the bruised side of her face. “But it’s not so bad. Bobby saved my life.”

“Your boy is a hero, I reckon,” the manager said, walking over. He tucked the red bandanna into his back pocket and looked up at the front of the dark ride, shaking his head. “Never did care for Dennis, or the way he looked at people. Kids especially.”

He seemed to realize what he’d just said and cleared his throat.

“I mean, if we’d ever thought he was the
slightest
danger to anyone, he’d have been out of here faster than shit through a—er, so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.” His face, already red from the exertion, edged toward purple.

“Forgive me, but I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Mom said. “What happened?”

“The man who runs—
ran—
this ride went crazy and attacked me and Bobby,” Amy said. She looked down at the pavement. “He threw Bobby out of the train and was trying to take my clothes off.”

Mom’s face blanched.

“But Bobby stopped him.” She looked over at Bobby, a smile breaking through the worry and fear like the sun on an overcast day, and he felt his heart do a little shimmy.

“Did you call for help?” his mother asked.

“Your boy killed a pervert,” the carnival manager said, and spat derisively on the asphalt. “Name was Dennis Ray, but I’ll be just as happy if I never hear it again. Good riddance.”

Mom’s eyes went wide again and she pulled him to her with a fierceness that raised a lump in his throat. In his ear she whispered, “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Tears stung his eyes, because he wanted to tell her everything but knew he couldn’t. She was too old to understand, had lost the ability to simply
believe
in something that shouldn’t be possible. It would happen to him too, sooner than he would like.

“I’m okay,” he said, and tried to smile at her. “He was trying to hurt Amy. I had to do something.”

But I thought I was killing someone else.

Someone who had gotten away.

For now.

Even so, he had learned something important from the confrontation in the dark ride. Norman—or the thing in Norman’s skin—was afraid of him.
It’s not used to someone standing up to it.
It had run from him back to its nest, or hidey-hole, or whatever you wanted to call it.

Because it knew he could hurt it.

Can kill it.

The thought pleased Bobby, and he looked up just in time to see a man in a
Decatur Daily
windbreaker aiming a camera at him. As soon as the man had snapped his picture he began to approach, but a single look from Mom sent him scurrying back across the midway with his tail tucked between his legs.

The police arrived then, and the afternoon became a blur of activity: telling the story about what had happened inside A World of Love (but leaving out the part about Norman and the thing that squirmed out of him) to three different policemen and a detective (who, Bobby noted, didn’t look a thing like either Starsky
or
Hutch), getting checked out by paramedics in the back of an ambulance, having Amy’s parents thank him over and over and tell him they always thought he was a great kid and a hero. At some point, his dad showed up with Dana and some clean clothes for him to change into, and they didn’t get out of the carnival until well after dark. When she left, Amy hugged him and thanked him. He thought she would have kissed him if both sets of parents—and Dana, who was making smoochy noises like a great big retard—hadn’t been right there with him.

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” she whispered into his ear. “I’ll miss you.”

“Miss you, too.” But he wanted to say
I think I love you.

From the carnival they drove in one car to the hospital, where a pretty nurse cleaned all the dried blood off Bobby’s face and arms, then x-rayed his foot to make sure it wasn’t broken. When it was over he asked if they could get something to eat and acted like he didn’t see the look his father shot his mother.

“Mando’s!” Dana cried.

Bobby nodded. “Pizza would be good.”

Even though he joined in the dinner conversation in the candlelit restaurant, smiling and laughing when he had to, answering the occasional question from Dana or his parents (mostly Dana, who looked at him with new wide-eyed admiration), his mind was somewhere else: in the crawlspace under the dilapidated house on Hickory Hill. He thought he was beginning to understand something, and it bothered him: despite being scared of Bobby at the end, Norman was getting stronger.

The first time they met, the hobo had nearly overpowered Bobby and done something terrible to him—if that was even his intention. Bobby was starting to have his doubts, because despite all the nasty things Norman had said, had he
really
tried to do a sex thing? Even when his dirty fingers were plucking at Bobby’s underwear Norman had stopped short of touching the boy down there, choosing instead to get out his own blistered rotting thing. Hadn’t seeing that soft black tube between Norman’s fingers, leaking snotlike pus and wiggling worms, been about a thousand times worse than the dry fingers? Not to mention the gloating way the hobo had said
why don’t you give it a kiss?
as he waggled it at Bobby.

What if he really
was
some kind of vampire, feeding on fear instead of blood, like Bobby had considered inside the amusement right before he (
staked
) stabbed the attendant? It made sense. From an early age, his parents had taught him to be wary of strangers because they might be perverts. What if Norman was just pretending to be like that to scare Bobby even more... so that he could feed on it?

The second time, he was able to possess Bobby’s mom briefly, and then Brother Peavey for even longer at church, enough for the minister to actually transform into the hobo’s form
(form of... crazy hobo!
a Wonder-Twin voice in his head cried)
.
At least, Bobby thought he was possessing them. It could have been something else entirely, like some kind of mind control that made him unable to tell they were only hallucinations. Either way, Bobby was terrified and Norman fed. With each appearance, the hobo had done more than he had the one before.

Like he was getting stronger.

Or hungrier.

Then today, the hobo had been able to take control of the ride attendant Dennis Ray and make him physically attack the two of them. There was no denying it. Even though Amy hadn’t seen or heard Norman the way Bobby did
(because he wasn’t feeding on
her)
,
she had certainly seen and heard the man trying to rip her clothes off. But then Bobby had killed Dennis Ray and left Norman exposed... and Norman had run from him, so terrified of Bobby that the pallid thing from the house—because that was the
real
vampire in control of all this, wasn’t it?—shed its hobo husk in its frantic escape. Norman was gone for now, Bobby thought, but he’d be back. Just like a vampire in the movies... and just like a bully.

Just like Joey Garraty.

They pick and pick and pick, and run scared if you stand up to them, but if you don’t kick the snot out of them they just come back.
He hadn’t stood up to Joey Garraty under the bridge—though he had wanted to, oh, how he had wanted to—and now here he was, paying for that inaction over and over. He didn’t want to make the same mistake a second time. He needed to do something, and soon, because there was no telling what Norman would do next. Maybe he would tire of feeding on Bobby’s fear and come for Amy again—for
real—
when Bobby wasn’t around to stop him.

Or come for his parents.

Or Dana.

Was anyone he cared about safe anymore?

I have to do more than kick the snot out of it. I have to
kill
it.

As he chewed thoughtfully on the last slice of pizza, an idea began to take shape in his head.