Fiendish Deeds (14 page)

“I can’t run anymore,” sobbed Byron. “We’ll never get out of here!”

From somewhere behind them, a shrill cry reverberated, unmistakable in its frustration and rage.

Joy hugged Byron. Wide-eyed, she pointed the flashlight up ahead. Nothing had changed—everything looked the same, brown and featureless. She moaned as a fresh wave of pain radiated up her arm as she held him.

“What’s wrong, Joy?” Byron sounded alarmed.

“It’s nothing,” she lied, biting her lip as another spasm wracked her. She blinked away tears. Then, a short distance away, she spotted something colorful. “Look, over there—it’s a pack of Super Sours!” she shouted with relief. “Come on, Byron! It’s your candy trail. We just have to follow it out.”

The children leaped to their feet, hope giving them renewed energy. They sprinted over to the pack of Super Sours as Joy began sweeping the muddy horizon with her flashlight.

“There! A pack of licorice!” cried Byron. “And my sword!” he shouted, pulling his beloved weapon from the mud.

“Keep going—there’s bubble gum up that hill!” shouted Joy.

And so they raced along the trail of rockets, lollipops, and miniature chocolate bars. At last, they burst through a wall of face-whipping saplings and landed on the road.

A car screeched to a halt in front of them. There was a whir as the passenger window rolled down. “Joy, Byron!” called Mrs. Wells. “Get in the car this instant!” The children tore open the door and flung themselves inside.

“Step on it, Dad!” shouted Joy. “Go! Go! Go!”

At Joy’s command, Mr. Wells began executing a painful three-point turn like a sixteen-year-old with a nervous condition taking his driving test for the first time. Joy exhaled in frustration. It was typical: The one time they would have actually been made safer having their mother at the wheel, she was shotgun. “Hurry up, get us out of here!” Joy shrieked at the back of her father’s head.

“That is enough, young lady!” shouted Mrs. Wells in her high-pitched voice, signaling that she had hit the cathedral ceiling of parental outrage. “Look at the state of you both—you look like you’ve been rolling in mud!”

Joy looked back nervously through the rear window as Mr. Wells slowly drove up the hill. They were in the clear, she finally decided.

“Look at me when I am speaking to you, Joy!” blasted Mrs. Wells. “Where were you? And don’t tell me you went back into those woods again!”

Joy didn’t enjoy fibbing to her parents, especially in front of Byron, but what was she going to tell them? That some witchy old woman they’d befriended had just sunk to the bottom of a black lake before their eyes? Or that they’d narrowly avoided being eaten by the bog fiend, a creature straight out of the book her mother disapproved of? Which proved it was all true, by the way—that Spooking really was the terrible town chronicled by E. A. Peugeot?

Now there was a recipe for a grounding—just heat and serve.

Joy would have to reason with Byron later. He was completely mute at this point anyway. She squeezed his hand gently before adopting a new strategy: going on the attack.

“Where the heck were you guys?” Joy shrieked. “We had to go into the woods to get out of the rain. We could have died of exposure!”

Joy felt Byron’s hand tremble.

“We were waiting at the foot of the hill, Joy,” replied Mrs. Wells defensively, turning in her seat again. “Right where we arranged.”

“And where’s all your candy, kids?” asked Mr. Wells.

“Gone,” said Byron bitterly, breaking his silence. “It’s all gone.”

A
few last obscene-sounding gurgles broke the surface of the pond. Then the old woman’s house was gone. Phipps lay in the mud twitching as Vince staggered around above him.

“I’m serious, Octo,” Vince insisted. “I’m, like, blind, man!”

“You are not blind,” Phipps snapped impatiently. He struggled to pull off his ski mask with one hand as his mud-caked left arm swung uselessly. “It was just a flashlight—you’re dazzled, that’s all.”

“Nah, nah—it was one of those new super-bright LED ones or something, the kind they warn you not to point at anyone’s face. I could have permanent vision damage here, man.”

“Well, at least you didn’t have a house roll over you!” exploded Phipps, whose arm happened to be in the path of Madame Portia’s home as it had become unexpectedly mobile. Thankfully, the soft deep muck had saved the limb from being crushed into pink paste. However, it was now most certainly broken if the white-hot agony and snapping sound were anything to go by. All thanks to the ham-fisted Vince, whose handling of a power saw had proved no more competent than his handling of a guitar.

“And what about the kids?” shouted Vince, throwing down a horrible-looking rubber Halloween mask—the snarling face of a hideously tusked boar. “You never said anything about kids being in there!”

Phipps didn’t answer. He had seen them too—a blond girl and a dark-haired boy, leaping clear of the twisted gangway just before the house slipped into the depths of the pond. Even more strangely, they had looked somehow familiar. Who were they? And what were they doing there? And most importantly, what had they seen? It was weighing on his mind almost more than his throbbing limb.

“And the old broad is definitely dead, you know,” lectured Vince, the yellow striped sides of his black wetsuit glowing in the dim light. His sight had apparently returned as he strode up and pointed a finger directly at Phipps. “You killed somebody, Octo. Just so you know.”

“
I
killed somebody?” protested Phipps. “You were the moron holding the power saw!”

Without warning, Vince kicked Phipps hard in the stomach.

“Hey, you said to make the house uninhabitable!” bellowed Vince, hovering menacingly over Phipps as he writhed in pain. “Can anyone live in that house now? Can they? No. Which means my job was done. Whoever was in there at the time was
your responsibility.
”

Phipps tried to get to his feet but doubled over retching.

“It’s just like back when we were in the Tongs,” continued Vince, pacing back and forth like an agitated bull. “It’s always everybody else’s fault according to you. Well, I’m not in your idiotic band anymore, so let me tell you: That crap is getting real old.”

So this was how it was going to go, thought Phipps wearily. Of course—Vince was like an animal, but the most pathetic sort of predator, only able to pick off prey when it was injured or separated from the herd. And now that Phipps was both, Vince’s fangs were finally showing. Phipps watched nervously as Vince picked up the portable saw and began admiring the vicious-looking blade that had sliced through the thick stilts of Madame Portia’s house as if they were mere sticks of pastrami.

“What a complete waste of time, that band,” muttered Vince. “You know, we only stuck around because you said we’d get a record contract. But nothing, ever, except more promises.” Vince chuckled to himself. “I still can’t believe how long we bought it all. What were we, a bunch of morons?”

Phipps decided not to field such an easy question, not with Vince hulking over him with a dangerous power tool. Instead he continued glaring up at Vince from the ground, remembering how his bandmates had always conveniently cast themselves as victims rather than the masters of their own misfortune.

Phipps recalled the events contributing to the band’s ultimate failure very differently.

Like that stifling hot summer’s night at a music festival in the city, when a record producer had flown in from overseas to check them out. The festival was set in a huge tent on some glass-strewn parking lot lined with portable toilets. It was packed to capacity, an uneasy mix of subcultures colliding violently as a procession of noisy bands blared above them.

The Black Tongs had finally been up, swaggering on stage with uncommon menace. The crowd fell into an eerie silence. Amid the sounds of lazy cymbal crashes and popping guitar leads, Phipps had taken the center, a dented trumpet under one arm and an electrified lute under the other. Squinting at the red-hot stage lights, he’d counted off: One, two three…

“And this is just like another one of your crappy gigs,” spat Vince, startling Phipps from his recollection. “Another dirty hellhole you’ve dragged me into! But don’t say it, you’re right: At least this time, I don’t have to drag my three-hundred-watt amp up four flights of stairs. And at least this time, I’m actually getting paid for once. On that note, I probably should mention that you now owe me double.”

“We had an agreement!” shouted Phipps, outraged. The words were hardly out of his mouth before Vince kicked him again, this time square in the chest. Phipps wheezed horribly as the wind was knocked out of him.

“Well, I’m reopening the negotiations,” said Vince. “Chew this deal over: You pay me double like I said and I’ll agree not to boot you again. How about that—sound fair? And as a bonus, I’ll throw in forgetting this whole business about sinking the little old lady.”

“You don’t understand,” croaked Phipps. “I can’t pay it—I can’t even pay my own rent right now.”

“Not cool,” replied Vince darkly. “Okay then, what else do you got? Let’s see. Hey, I’ve been thinking—I’m really not so hot anymore on this whole taking-the-bus business….”

Phipps looked back at Vince blankly before a look of horror passed over his face. “No!” he shouted. “No way!”

“Octo, Octo, Octo—don’t be like that. A guy my size needs a big ride.”

“You can’t have my car!” screamed Phipps.

“C’mon, I’m trying to do you a favor here. If you’re so poor, do you really need an old gas-guzzler like that hanging around your neck? Plus, let’s face it—you do look a bit stupid, driving a macho machine like that around in that wimpy little suit of yours. Besides, look around you—this is minivan country you’re in, my man.”

“Go to hell!” Phipps told him.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” said Vince, holding the saw up. “Then you and me have a problem.” The blade suddenly sprang to life with an angry buzz, inching toward Phipps’s face.

“All right!” cried Phipps over the noise. For all his faults, Vince always excelled as a thug—it was his one true talent. “All right, I said.”

The blade ground to a halt inches from his eye.

“The keys.”

Phipps struggled to unzip the pocket of his wetsuit with a shaking hand. He threw the keys at Vince, who snatched them greedily out of the air.

“Nice.” Vince laughed, examining the squishy fake eyeball on the end of the keychain. “You’re a sick puppy—but that’s what I always liked about you.”

Phipps stared hatefully as Vince pocketed the keys.

“Thanks. Now to show my good faith, I’ll return the favor.” Vince tossed the saw high over the pond.

Phipps watched in horror as it landed with a splash. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Man, you make a lousy criminal. It’s called getting rid of evidence—also known as covering up your crime,” explained Vince. “Don’t worry, it’s all part of our new agreement, so you don’t have to thank me.”

“You can’t leave the saw here at the scene, Vincent! Our fingerprints are all over it!”

“Oh yeah. Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea,” Vince admitted. “Don’t worry—I’ll get it back,” he promised, wading into the pond.

Phipps couldn’t decide which was worse—his broken arm, his forfeited car, or this final display of staggering stupidity. Together, they had become simply unbearable. Phipps screamed, a long shrill note of despair. Breathless, he then blacked out.

Phipps awoke sputtering and coughing a few minutes later, his lungs burning with foul miasmic fumes. Ooze caked his face and mouth. He retched and spat.

There was a splash nearby. Phipps looked up and saw Vince’s dim outline rising up from the black surface of the water. The moron was nowhere even near it, thought Phipps as Vince dove under. Phipps watched, a glimmer of a smile cracking his face. He was in remarkably less pain now, he realized, climbing unsteadily to his feet. In fact, it suddenly all seemed kind of funny somehow.

“Yeah, right over there,” called Phipps. “You’re getting warmer. Warmer. Warmer…” He pictured with delight the hungry leeches latching onto Vince’s face at that moment. “Colder! Colder! Colder!” Phipps stumbled into the pond after him, laughing uncontrollably as he fished around the shallows with his working arm.

Then he remembered—the festival, the time that record producer had flown in to see them, the Black Tongs, live and onstage. Even twenty-five years later, the memory was just as vivid, but never had it seemed so funny: Vince, out of tune and out of time, knocking a beer into his amplifier and giving himself an electric shock as the guy from the record company wandered off toward the lesser stink of the portable toilets.

Tears of mirth blinded Phipps as he raked his fingers through the sludgy matter of the disgusting pond floor. Something jagged tore open his index finger. It was the saw, right where he thought it was! He hefted the power tool awkwardly with one hand. It looked in a terrible state, dripping and covered in filth. He pressed the trigger and it came to life, spattering mud into his snickering face. It worked! What an amazing device, he marveled, completely dependable, merciless, never questioning its purpose in its master’s hand. What a rare and precious thing to just throw away like that!

Just then, Vince broke the surface, face covered in leeches. Phipps laughed so hard, he was barely able to breathe.

“Something just brushed up against me!” screamed Vince, coughing up pond water. “There’s something in here!” he shouted, thrashing madly toward Phipps. “It’s not funny, man!”

And for once, Vince nailed the exact right note—it really wasn’t funny anymore.