Helltown (22 page)

Beetle puffed away, and he realized he wasn’t just drunk or high. He was ripped. He wasn’t going to be able to walk let alone think in a minute—and that was a-okay with him.

He flicked the roach into the night and gripped the railing so he didn’t fall over.

“Anyway,” Greta said, and he heard her light a cigarette, smelled the burning tobacco. “The church is just one of the legends. There’s so much other stuff.” She gestured to the forest. “Like all abandoned houses. There’re dozens of them, just sitting out there, empty. It’s true. The English guys showed me pictures they took. And there’s a cemetery at the end of a dead-end road that’s filled with kid graves. The English guys said a serial killer waved down a school bus years ago and murdered everyone on board. It’s in the woods, the bus. They showed me pictures of it too. The trees have grown up around it. Hard to find, but I have a map. The English guys drew it for me. The English guys—that sounds so stupid, doesn’t it? I don’t know why I keep calling them that. Anyway, they said they met someone who slept overnight in the bus, and he said he heard all these strange noises. Hey, are you sleeping? Open your eyes.”

Beetle opened them. The world canted. He gripped the railing tighter.

“Wow, you’re trashed,” Greta said, dropping the cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with the toe of her shoe.

“I think I’m going to watch TV,” he said, moving to the door. He tripped trying to get around the chair, but stayed on his feet.

“Hey, wait up! What about tomorrow? Do you want to come with me to check out the church and cemetery and stuff? It will be more fun with someone.”

“Can’t,” he told her. “Thanks for the smoke.”

Greta said something more, but Beetle was already stumbling inside his room. The warmth from the heater made him realize how chilly it had been outside. His hands were stiff and numb. He set the vodka on the Formica table and withdrew the Beretta from the waistband of his pants, comforted and chilled by its cold, heavy weight. Then he remembered he’d told Greta he was going to watch TV, so he powered the thing on.

It was bizarre, he thought, he was going to kill himself in a moment, blow his brains out all over the ugly floral wallpaper, she would hear the gunshot, she would be the one to discover his body, and he was concerned about hurting her feelings?

Sitting carefully on the bed, his back against the headboard, Beetle clicked off the pistol’s safety, pressed the barrel into the soft flesh beneath his jaw, and counted to ten.

CHAPTER 18

“Humans are such easy prey.”

From Beyond
 (1986)

Jeff’s eyes snapped open. He sucked back a sharp intake of air. His arms shot out from his sides, as if to prevent himself from falling.

Where was he?

He tried to sit up and pain flared in his back. He cried out, a twisted, tormented howl.

What the hell had happened?

He thought back. The crybaby bridge. Tossing the baby shoes he’d brought with him beneath the bridge to scare the others. The hearse—
oh shit the hearse!
Swerving off the road at the last second. Punching through the forest. Steve kneeling beside him, asking him to squeeze his hand, which he could do, asking him to move his legs, which he could not do.

An icicle of fear skewered his heart.

You’re paralyzed
, a jolly, manic voice told him.
You can’t walk. You can’t even tie your own shoes anymore. How about that? Try getting someone “more on your level” now, buddy old pal. You would be lucky to find a hooker who won’t feel sorry for you. Speaking of sex—can you even get an erection? Or is your dick as gimped as your legs?

Clenching his jaw against the pain radiating from his back, Jeff maneuvered himself onto his elbows. He tried moving his legs. They didn’t respond. He tried harder, focusing all of his concentration on them. Nothing. It was like trying to move a third arm.

He swallowed the panic that wanted to explode from his mouth in a needle-sharp scream.

“Steve…?” he said instead, his voice rusty, barely a whisper.

No answer.

He felt rough wooden floorboards beneath his palms. He moved his right hand, exploring blindly for his legs. He found them where they should be, though they didn’t register his touch; they felt like someone else’s legs. Nevertheless, they were there. They weren’t amputated.

Jeff’s eyes adjusted to the dark, and he discovered that the blackness was a little less black to his right. He stared in that direction until he understood he must be looking at a door. Dim light was seeping through the crack at the bottom of it.

So he was in some sort of a room. But why were the lights off, and why was he lying on the fucking floor? Shouldn’t he be in a hospital? Had Steve and the others gone to get help? Why would they all go? Wouldn’t someone stay behind with him?

“Mandy…?” he said.

Nobody replied.

Jeff squinted. There was something in the far corner of the room, something large and lumpy. A piece of furniture? Or someone else?

“Noah…?”

Jeff sniffed, detecting the putrid odor for the first time, though he suspected it had been there all along. Urine? Yeah, urine. But not his own. His pants were dry.

Urine and…something musky.

Swallowing fresh panic, Jeff eased himself to his side as gently as he could. His back screamed in protest at the movement. It was as if his vertebrae were being held together with razor blades.

“Ignore it,” he mumbled to himself, blocking out the pain.

Using only his arms, he began to drag himself forward on his belly. His body felt as though it weighed a ton, and it took all of his upper strength and willpower to move inch after excruciating inch. He didn’t stop once, fearing he wouldn’t be able to start again, and then he was close enough to make out the shadowy shape in the corner.

“Austin?” he croaked in relief at seeing his friend’s face—though it seemed strangely puffy, especially his lips. “Austin—”

Jeff froze in terror.

A gigantic snake was coiled around Austin’s body, from his feet to his shoulders. Its jaw, unhinged and opened impossibly wide, was attached to the top of Austin’s skull in a toothless smile as it worked on swallowing him headfirst.

Austin was having the nightmare again, only this time it was different and somehow worse than all the others. He was in his bar. It was late, long past closing. He was alone. From the back office came the now familiar sneaky, scuffling sound. He knew what was causing it from past dreams. It was his grandmother. He would go back there, like he did every other time, and he would find her rifling through the filing cabinet in which he kept all his receipts and bills. She would tell him she was looking for the inheritance money she’d given him. She would say it had been a mistake leaving it for him, he didn’t deserve it, he was going to blow it all on a stupid investment.

Austin reached for the handle of the door to the office, intent on confronting his grandmother, telling her purchasing the bar wasn’t a mistake, it was doing all right, but his arm didn’t respond. He glanced down, certain he would see a stump where it once existed. His limb was intact. He simply couldn’t move it.

“That’s my stuff, Nana!” he shouted. “Leave it alone!”

The door swung open.

Across the threshold his grandmother lay on the floor, on her back, swaddled in what looked like spider silk. She was missing her eyes.

“Nana?” he said. “What happened? What’s wrong? What happened to your eyes?”

From the darkness Jeff appeared, stopping behind Austin’s grandmother’s head. He was all blond hair and smiles and dressed in the maroon golf shirt and grays slacks of his Monsignor Farrell school uniform. “Hey, dickweed,” he said, buddy-buddy. “How’s it hanging?”

“You can walk?” Austin said.

“How ’bout that?”

“You were in an accident, and you couldn’t move your legs.” He frowned. “What happened to my grandmother?”

“Hell if I know. It’s your dream.”

“I can’t move my arms.”

“It’s not so bad. You’ll get used to it.”

“Get used to what?”

“Being a paraplegic or quadriplegic or whatever you are now.”

“How did you fix your legs?”

“Don’t you know what’s going on?” Grinning easily, the way he would grin when chatting up women he wanted to take back to his place, Jeff stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Dinner time, ’lil buddy.”

Slowly, almost ponderously, Steve slithered from the shadows. But it wasn’t Steve, not completely. He was green and fat and he just kept coming. His tongue flicked in and out of his lipless mouth.

“Jesus, Steve!” Austin said. “You’re a snake!”

Steve headed straight for Austin’s grandmother.

“No!” Austin shouted. “Steve, stop! Don’t touch her!” He tried to intercept his friend, but he still couldn’t move.

Steve reached Austin’s grandmother and slinked around her torso, one loop, then two.

Austin screamed, or at least he tried to. He no longer had any air in his lungs, and nothing came out of his mouth.

Then he was awake, his mouth open, still trying to scream, though the sound remained sunken within his chest.

Something tight and solid squeezed his body, pinning his arms against his sides. His first thought: he’d been locked up in a straightjacket. It took all of one second for his waking mind to equate what his sleeping mind had already surmised.

A snake! A fucking snake’s wrapped around me! Where’s its head? Where’s its fucking head?

Then he saw Jeff. He was a few feet away, on his side, staring at Austin with an expression alien to his usual cocky confidence: helplessness.

Austin wanted to beg him to help, but he couldn’t get any words out, so he begged with his eyes.

Help me, goddammit! It’s suffocating me! It’s crushing me!

Suddenly he became aware of something wet on his head. It felt like an ill-fitting cap, though he knew it was no cap.

Overcome with dismay and repulsion, Austin struggled madly but futilely before giving up and exhaling from the wasted effort.

The snake squeezed tighter.

Jeff hated snakes. They disgusted and terrified him on a primeval level. He couldn’t hold a harmless garter in his hands without shivering. Regardless, this was not the time for phobias.

Austin was dying. Hell, he was being eaten alive.

Steeling his nerves, Jeff dragged himself forward, toward the snake’s tail. He’d once read that’s where you started if you wanted to uncoil a snake that somehow got wrapped around your arm or leg.

The snake’s tail was exposed, not buried beneath its tubular body. It trailed away from Austin’s feet in lazy curlicues, terminating in a tip no thicker than a banana. However, that was not the case where it began to coil around Austin’s ankles. There, it was already a foot in circumference.

Jeff gripped the plump length with both hands, grimacing at the dry and satiny feel of the skin. He pulled. He couldn’t budge it, not an inch. He punched the thing with his fists, more in frustration than in any hope of causing it harm. It was like punching a sandbag.

Jeff changed tactics and dragged himself toward the snake’s head. Austin’s eyes, he noticed, were bloodshot and bulging and crazed.

The snake’s eyes, on the other hand, were black, beady, emotionless.

Jeff hesitated, thinking he didn’t have the balls to do what needed to be done.

“Do it, goddammit!” he told himself.

Grimacing, he wedged his fingers into the corners of the snake’s mouth. A moment later he cried out and yanked his hands back. Teeth he hadn’t seen had pricked his fingers. He thought about bashing the serpent’s head with his fists or elbows, but that would injure Austin as well.

Then, with a pelican-like gulp, the snake’s grinning mouth jerked over Austin’s eyes and nose, so only his mouth and chin remained visible.

“No!”

Jeff stuck his fingers in the snake’s mouth again, one hand gripping the upper jaw, one the lower. He pulled with all his strength but still couldn’t pry them apart. As if to prove it was undaunted by his effort to steal its prey, the snake’s coiled body undulated and its mouth moved farther down over Austin’s face, all the way to his neck.