Fiendish Deeds (15 page)

A
fresh white cast pinned Joy’s notebook to her desk. She sat, pen poised, staring at the empty lines as the rest of the class dutifully copied from the blackboard.

Yesterday Joy had woken up from a fitful sleep to realize that there was definitely something seriously wrong with her arm. Unable to get dressed, she had come down to breakfast in her pajamas and reluctantly shown the swollen limb to her parents. Horrified, they had taken her straight to Darlington General. A few X-rays later, they had determined that her arm was fractured in two places.

“That’s two broken arms this shift—a regular epidemic,” the doctor had said, yawning. “The other guy slipped on some candy and fell downstairs. What’s your story, little miss?” he asked Joy with a wink.

Without bringing up the destruction of submarine-like houses by primordial horrors, Joy had been at a loss to explain. So she hadn’t even bothered trying, and instead stared blankly into space. It was the same technique she’d used when her parents had questioned her earlier.

“The young lady appears to be suffering from mild shock,” the doctor had informed her parents. “It’s pretty common. My best guess is she probably ran into a tree or something. Kids get excited on Halloween and don’t look where they’re going—just be thankful it wasn’t a car she ran in front of. Anyway, her arm should be perfectly fine in a few weeks. And she can head back to school as soon as she feels up to it—even tomorrow if she wants.”

Lightheaded from painkillers, Joy had almost confessed that her cast would probably crumble into dust long before she’d ever feel up to heading back to Winsome, but thought better of it. The more she kept conversation to a minimum, the less explaining her mother would keep insisting she do. Besides, there was no way her parents would let her stay off another day now, not after the doctor’s cheerful prognosis.

After the Wells family had returned home, Joy had slept away the remainder of the day. It had been a troubled slumber. She had dreamed of running through a shadowy forest, its muddy floors full of staring eyeballs that popped loudly with each footfall. Then of being trapped in a metal tube rolling around on the bottom of a terrible sea as she screamed and pounded on its walls.

Joy had woken up the next morning with a start.

“Sorry for waking you, my dear, but we need you to go to school today,” Mrs. Wells had said softly, standing at her bedside. “Your father and I missed a lot of important work yesterday, and as the doctor said, the sooner you go back, the better.”

Joy had known there was no point in offering her clear recollection of the doctor’s exact words in argument—she was going to school, like it or not. Instead she had stood wordlessly as her mother helped dress her. In the kitchen she had fully intended to ignore any questions about her well-being, but no such inquiry ever came. Her parents had expressed their concern otherwise: with a round of sighs and an extra-special breakfast of frozen blueberry waffles heated in the toaster.

Joy had then marched out with Byron to meet the bus, which had delivered them to school. Joy now sat quietly at her old desk, feeling like an unmanned ship whose crew was washed overboard in a violent storm—an empty vessel, adrift, her course only determined by the pitching of the sea.

Upon seeing her injured arm, the other children had extended the greatest kindness they were capable of—pretending she didn’t exist. Relieved, Joy thought back to a memory of her mother, sitting in front of the fireplace with an intriguing-looking book.

“What are you reading?” Joy had asked.

“It’s called
The Lonely Gunman of Solipsism
,” Mrs. Wells had answered, marking her place with a slender finger. “It’s a new course book I’m evaluating. My students think it’s
hip
,” she’d added, as if having no idea what the word meant, before pushing away a strand of unfathomably dark hair that had become hooked on her glasses.

“What’s it about?” Joy had asked.

“Oh, it’s just an old theory of philosophy, really,” Mrs. Wells had said. “That nothing really exists other than yourself.”

Joy had become even more curious. “What does that mean?”

“Well, for instance, you know you are Joy Wells. And you know I am Joy Wells’s mother. And you can see the orangey red flames in the fireplace and smell the smoke.

“But how do you know that I see those same flames? Or smell the smoke? Or see or smell anything for that matter?”

“I don’t understand…”

“Well, am I even a real person at all? Maybe you are the only thing that really exists, and I am just a figment of your imagination, saying and doing all the things that your subconscious mind believes I should, being your mother.”

Joy had thought the possibility over. “Could that be true?” she had asked, alarmed.

“It can’t be proven, but it can’t be disproved either, so it’s a possibility. In theory.” Mrs. Wells opened the book and read a passage aloud: “
The only true reality then, is made up of the changes experienced by the self, as the self can know nothing for sure but its own modification. Which suggests the possibility that nothing exists outside of the self, and reality is the sum of the self’s imaginings.”
The possibility that nothing was real except her own imagination had been a strangely cheering notion. But then what about the rest of her family? Did that mean they didn’t really exist?

“Do you believe it?” she had asked her mother. “I mean, do you believe that
you’re
the only one who exists?”

Mrs. Wells had laughed. “Are you just a figment of my imagination, Joy?”

“No,” she answered finally. “I guess.”

“Then of course I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Wells. “Because you wouldn’t lie to your mother about a thing like that.” Mrs. Wells caressed her daughter’s slim shoulder. “It’s all just a silly game, Joy, and an easy way for my students to get out of answering more important questions. I wouldn’t dwell on it.”

But advising Joy not to dwell on such a topic was a bit like suggesting a killer whale quit licking its lips at the sight of an injured seal. So after considerable thumbnail chewing, Joy decided that if the theory were true, it meant that everything in her imagination was just as real as everything that happened out there in the tedious world where she supposedly lived, so long as she was changed by the experience. Which meant in a way that the entire world of E. A. Peugeot, with all its mystery and monsters, was just as real as anything else in her life—or more so, because the stories had in fact changed her forever.

Now, sitting in class, there was even more proof that the theory was true. Because sitting at her desk, oblivious to everything, it was really as if Joy didn’t exist at all. Even Winsome Elementary itself was just a figment of her imagination.

It was bliss.

Then the bell rang. The day was over.

Joy for the first time that day felt exhausted and sore, which didn’t seem like a good sign for someone who supposedly didn’t exist. With every step up the steep stairs of the bus, the scabs on her knees cracked and split.

She sat down beside Byron, who had already taken his seat and was busy staring vacantly into space. But it was not dreaminess, she noticed, still wincing at her stinging knees. His eyes were shadowy and there was something uncommonly grim about the expression on his chalk-colored face.

The bus pulled away.

Then it hit her. What a terrible sister she’d been. That’s what she was really hiding from, pretending not to exist. Byron, her dear loyal brother, had only wanted to get some candy and see a few pumpkins. But instead of leaving him with this happy memory, she’d insisted on dragging him against his will into some black swamp within reach of a vicious, man-eating creature. What unbelievable danger she had put him in! What kind of sister would do such a thing to her little brother?

As the bus weaved its way through Darlington, it became clear to her. She didn’t really believe this
solipsism
business, that nothing existed outside of herself. Because the real reason she had brought Byron to the bog was so that he could be her witness, and be modified by the same experience. Which would make things all the more real for her.

She felt sick to think of what he had been through. What an awful sister she was! And selfish! She deserved to be punished. Instead, she’d lied her way out of it and when that wasn’t possible, pretended to be in a half coma. Meanwhile Byron, her brother and ever-faithful companion, had kept her secret with little more than a frown.

How he had been changed! Utterly and forever by that unholy terror in the dark bowels of the bog. She looked at his pale little hand with an ugly moon-shaped bruise on it. He was only eight years old! Far too young to have had Death clawing at his heels like that.

In the bog Joy had thought there had been nothing to worry about, because according to E. A. Peugeot, it was only clueless meddlers who were mauled and chomped and crushed and throttled.

But wait, wasn’t there another type of character who also usually fell victim to a hideous fate? Joy cast her mind back, running through the scores of stories she’d read in the thick old leather-bound book.

The innocent, she thought. Yes. They were the ones truly eaten like peanuts. Why, Dr. Ingram himself had gone through at least ten hapless assistants alone!

Joy remembered Madame Portia. Her heart rolled over and sunk, just like the poor old woman’s home had done the other night. It felt wrong, not telling anyone what had happened. But who would have believed it?

No one would have listened to her, she knew. Certainly not her parents! They would just ground her for making up stories to excuse her irresponsible behavior. But that wasn’t the only thing worrying her. After last summer’s werewolf incident, Mrs. Wells had threatened to take away
The Compleat and Collected Works
should the book continue to be such a bad influence on her. This time, it would be gone, without a doubt. And with creatures from its very pages on the prowl, that would be a disaster!

So, shouldering terrible guilt unlike anything she’d ever experienced, Joy had resolved to leave the poor old widow where she lay, her home now her tomb, condemned to eternal solitude at the bottom of that black pond.

Out of the corner of her eye, Joy noticed Byron muttering something to himself. That wasn’t a good sign, she thought. In the stories of
The Compleat and Collected Works
, a character had three possible fates: lucky to be alive, horribly killed, or completely insane. The last outcome was a particular occupational hazard for the inquisitive Dr. Ingram, who often fretted about losing his mind recalling the abominations he’d encountered on preceding pages. Could Byron’s experience have pushed him over the edge? Could he end up gibbering away the rest of his life locked up in someplace like Spooking Asylum? Given his already sensitive nature, it seemed like a no-brainer.

The bus was coming up to the bog, Joy realized nervously as she spotted the large muddy patch cleared before it. A number of cars were parked on it today, she saw with surprise, along with a line of bulldozers belching out black smoke.

The Misty Mermaid project.
Those morons
, thought Joy with horror.
They don’t know what’s in there!

Just then there was a terrible impact, throwing the children forward in their seats. Everyone screamed as the bus careened off the road, skidding over the shoulder into the woods. Branches tore at the windows like monstrous fingernails until the vehicle finally came to a stop with a thunderous bang.

T
he afternoon sun was high and bright, causing Phipps to squint as he burned along the road, trying to make up time. His sunglasses lay on the passenger seat, but his left hand was immobilized in the sling and his right was on the steering wheel. It was trembling, he noticed, as he approached the bog.

He hadn’t been back since the terrible events of Halloween, when—ears still ringing from Vince’s hideous screams—he’d torn through the woods, moving impossibly across acres of unyielding sphagnum and passing through whipping branches like a ghost. He’d felt nothing—no pain or fear or fatigue. Everything had felt like a dream—a bad dream—that was becoming less and less distinct with each step, until finally coming apart on him as he’d slipped into welcome blackness.

At the sound of a car, he’d awoken shivering by the roadside in his wetsuit. He’d quickly rolled out of sight under an overhanging rock as the headlights briefly illuminated a bulging sack beside him. It was a pillowcase, he’d discovered with confusion, full of Halloween treats.

The kids, he’d then remembered, the ones he’d seen leaping from the sinking house.

He’d gotten up, groaning as the pain in his arm returned. Picking up the pillowcase with his good hand, he’d begun walking, keeping to the shadows as he’d headed back to where he and Vince had parked, a little way out of view on a dark shoulder.

The car keys, he’d then realized—he’d surrendered them to Vince. The thought of his bandmate brought on a fresh attack of revulsion and he’d doubled over again, gagging. Steadying himself, he’d tried the passenger side door, which, thanks to Vince’s carelessness, was unlocked. He’d then climbed in and rifled through the glove compartment, hoping he’d left a spare key in there, but found nothing but maps and empty wrappers.

Walking hadn’t been an option—someone was sure to call the cops at the sight of a man in a wetsuit limping along the dark streets of Darlington. So he’d slid across to the driver’s seat and prized open the underside of the steering column. It had been agonizing work. His broken arm ached, mashed up against the door, and his filthy fingernails tore back painfully with the effort.

Finally, a tangle of wires had fallen into his lap.

Hot-wiring—it was an old skill. He’d learned it back in the days when the band had toured the entire country, stealing a new gassed-up van after every gig. But back then he’d had both hands to work with, and they weren’t usually trembling from horror and nausea.

Even one-handed, he hadn’t lost his touch, it turned out. Within minutes, the car had awoken with a familiar growl.

He’d driven off without headlights, which were disabled thanks to his sloppy job with the wires. So he’d rolled slowly forward in the dark, stopping by the side a couple of times to let other nighttime traffic pass him. Then, after reaching his building and parking in the lot, he’d slipped quietly in. He crept past the superintendent’s apartment with its TV ever blaring within, scattering a handful of Halloween candy as he went. Then he’d snuck around back, climbing the fire escape to his apartment, where he’d forced open the kitchen window and slithered in.

Squealing in pain, he’d peeled off the wetsuit before getting showered and dressed. He’d then got his spare keys and left his apartment again, dragging the kitchen garbage can out to the main stairwell. There he’d booted it, and it had clattered down, throwing coffee grounds and paper towels and take-out containers everywhere. He’d hurried down after as it rolled to a stop outside the superintendent’s front door.

“What’s going on out here?” a short man with a red face had shouted, exploding moments later from his apartment in a bathrobe. He’d then spotted someone lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. “My heavens, are you all right?”

Phipps had rolled over with a not-entirely faked groan.

“You!” the superintendent had thundered. “I’ve been ringing your door all night and you never answered!”

“I thought you were a trick-or-treater,” Phipps had told him, grimacing. “I’d completely forgotten to buy candy again this year and couldn’t bear the thought of disappointed little faces. I was hiding in the dark, ashamed.”

“Trick-or-treaters?” the superintendent had scoffed. “This is a child-free complex! What trick-or-treaters?”

“The ones dropping their candy all over the stairs where tenants can slip on them,” he’d lied, pointing to the pile at the superintendent’s feet. The man had looked down dumbfounded to see he was standing on a quantity of miniature candy bars. “Now, can you help me up?” Phipps had asked, gritting his teeth as he’d weakly offered his left arm.

The superintendent had then begun hoisting him to his feet. Phipps screamed in agony.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“My arm!” Phipps had bellowed at the wide-eyed little man.

“But I hardly touched you!”

“You’ve gone and broken it, you fool, manhandling me!”

“Don’t blame me! You must have done it falling down the stairs!”

“TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME!” Phipps had shrieked. He’d then limped off toward the parking lot.

“The landlords are evicting you for nonpayment!” the purple-faced superintendent had yelled after him. “That’s what I was ringing your door to tell you! You are out of this complex, buddy, out! Do you hear me?”

Phipps had managed a smile as he’d unlocked the car. The exchange had gone off perfectly. After all, the best alibi is not the word of a friend, he knew, but the testimony of an enemy. Should anyone come inquiring after Phipps’s whereabouts on Halloween, the superintendent would repel them from the premises, listing all the building policies Phipps had violated that night.

At the hospital his arm had been examined by some grinning young doctor.

“Slipped on candy, eh?” the doctor had repeated jovially. “You look a bit old to be going out on Halloween, Mr….?”

“Phipps,” he’d groaned. “Will this take long, Doctor? I’m in quite a bit of pain and completely exhausted, thank you.”

“Sorry, I was just trying to lighten the atmosphere before I snap it back together, which is going to hurt like a b—is going to hurt quite a bit, Mr. Tibbs.”

“The name is Phipps—Mr. Phipps!”

There had been a sudden crack, like the breaking bough of some rotten old oak.

“You also seem to have a nasty gash on that finger,” the doctor had observed as he pried Phipps’s fist from the front of his white coat, which was now smudged with blood. “That will need stitches, Mr. Pips….”

Phipps had then headed home, popping painkillers like breath mints as he drove. Pulling into his apartment complex, he’d managed to wedge his car in crookedly beside the superintendent’s van as his head began spinning. Arm in a sling, he’d climbed unsteadily up the garbage-strewn stairs to find a note on his door—clean up your mess!—which he’d promptly balled up and tossed over his shoulder. He had bigger messes to clean up, he’d thought darkly, fumbling his keys with one hand.

He’d then kicked the door shut behind him and, losing his balance, had fallen face-first onto the carpet. He’d lain there for a moment, craning his neck to gaze at the inviting couch a mere twelve feet away. Then he’d fallen unconscious.

The next day he’d awoken by the front door. His arm was throbbing. Climbing unsteadily to his feet, he’d quickly swallowed a few of the pills the doctor had given him. They landed in his stomach like hot coals. Wincing, he’d then stumbled over to the telephone to call the mayor.

“You’re telling me the old woman’s vanished, without a trace? Phipps, that’s terrific news!” the mayor had shouted over speakerphone as an exercising apparatus whirred loudly in the background. “Well, then, drag that butt of yours down here and get on the blower—I want to get all the local movers and shakers out for a groundbreaking ceremony tomorrow at four. Maybe even get some TV people in on it too.”

“At four tomorrow?” Phipps had repeated.

“Darn right! Let’s get this thing going—we’re already behind schedule as it is.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be in to work today,” Phipps had said, explaining how he’d injured himself falling down some stairs.

“Well, I suppose I can handle it from here,” the mayor had replied wearily. “Okay, take the day off, and tomorrow morning while you’re at it. Just make sure you’re there for the ceremony in the afternoon—I need you to glad-hand the media to make sure we’re the top story.”

“Yes, sir.”

Phipps had put the phone down and collapsed on the leather couch as the powerful painkillers began numbing his system. Nothing could stop the project now. Once completed, the Misty Mermaid Water Park could begin its most important work: the suffocation of Spooking. Tourists and traffic would descend on the area, causing developers to swarm over the hill—buying it up and knocking it down to begin afresh and build anew.

Then the name of Spooking would be gone forever. Oh, perhaps not completely, Phipps imagined. A horror-themed mini-golf course might be erected in its memory, or it might live on as Spooking’s, a family restaurant admired as much for its fine views as its french fries. But the name would never again appear as a town on any maps or on anyone’s lips.

And then the curse would be broken. Or so Phipps hoped. After all, how could anyone return to a place that no longer existed? Even the bitterest hex couldn’t be immune to the forces of irrefutable logic! And what sorcery in history has ever resisted the forward march of progress?

It was a faint hope, Phipps had to admit, but it hardly mattered. No matter what, Spooking would be destroyed. And if he was to be condemned for the deeds of a dead relative, he would have to at least take satisfaction in murdering the man’s precious muse.

Exhausted, Phipps had then closed his eyes. But a vision had kept haunting him: an image of Vince thrashing at the center of a sickening red foam. Terrible sounds had echoed in his skull again, an awful cacophony of fear and agony that made him pitch forward on the couch. The horrible truth, lying in wait at the center of the bog—would it be buried when the bulldozers finally blazed through, or simply unearthed? His mind had spun at all the hideous possibilities until he’d fallen unconscious.

It was the next day and already five minutes past four as Phipps rolled the window back up. He was running late. Braking hard, he signaled to turn off into the muddy lot by the bog. He could already see an impressive turnout of businesspeople milling about as bulldozers stood ominously in the background, belching smoke. A television station van was just unloading, he noted with satisfaction. He felt his nerves calm and his grip on the wheel become confident again as he turned.

Then he saw it, appearing suddenly in his rearview mirror—and bearing down on him like a yellow monster.

The infernal Spooking school bus.

Phipps gunned the engine, the thick tires screeching as he tried to get out of the way. But it was too late. There was a crunch. His head slammed off the steering wheel as the black car was sent flying off the road into the bog.

A flare of pain woke him up. The front of his car was wrapped around a tree stump and white steam hissed up around the crumpled hood. Beyond the cracked windshield, a figure approached at great speed from the depths of the bog itself.

“Are you all right in there?” Phipps heard someone shout as the door was flung open. Turning in a daze, he saw it was a man wearing chest-high fishing waders.

“Huh?” asked Phipps, trying to bring the blurry letters on the man’s cap into focus.

“You’ve been in an accident! Are you all right?”

“Yes,” answered Phipps dully. “I need to get to the ceremony. Wait—did someone bring the ribbon and scissors?”

“Please sir, just relax—we’ll get you out of there!”

Just then the mayor arrived, having raced across the parking area with a group of men and women in business suits trailing behind like baby ducks. They stopped on the bank just opposite, apparently unsure if the dramatic circumstances merited plunging expensive shoes into the dirty brown creek running under the car.

“Phipps, my man!” yelled the mayor. “Are you okay down there? It looks like you overshot the parking lot, buddy!” The assembled businesspeople stood by awkwardly as the mayor laughed at the terrifying accident as if it were part of the scheduled entertainment.

The television crew caught up and began recording, panning from the chuckling mayor to the yellow school bus full of stunned children to the hissing black car.

“I’m fine,” snapped Phipps irritably, coming to his senses. “I just want to get out of here.” He began struggling to undo his seat belt with his right hand.

“Hold still,” the man in the waders ordered. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Ahoy down there!” called the mayor. “And who exactly might you be? I ask because not only is this private property, but a restricted construction area. And the only thing you’re likely to catch in that disgusting swamp is a cold.”

“I’m not fishing,” replied the man in the waders indignantly. He turned, pointing to the letters on his cap. “I’m Field Agent Wagner from FISPA—the Federal Imperiled Species Protection Agency.”

“Ah!” A broad smile suddenly appeared across the mayor’s face. “Ah-ha-ha! Good day to you, sir. I’m Mayor MacBrayne, of Darlington City Council. You’ve come to check on those wonderful turtles, no doubt. Well, I have good news! My assistant—that’s him down there in the car crash—my assistant assures me they have all been happily relocated. Haven’t they, Mr. Phipps?” The mayor flashed his teeth at the video camera.