HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (32 page)

“
Well, Kurt, I
have to stay in here a while and I don't want anyone to know. You
won't tell, will you?”

The silence this
time was longer. The light spear kept striking out in the dark, high,
low, right, left, up, down.

Just as Jody was
about to ask again, the boy said, “It's my place. My place! Are
you a bad boy, too? Are you a dumb boy? Are you a bad, dumb boy?”

Jody's brow
wrinkled. This child didn't speak like other children either. It
appeared he was mentally handicapped. Now Jody sighed, wondering at
all the ailments children were struck down by. He had been a little
shrimp kid, a midget, and life never gets too much better for people
like him and Kurt. He reached out in the dark and lay his hand on the
boy's shoulder, but the boy leaped aside, the flashlight bobbing
about like a firefly.

“
Who're you
hiding here from?” Kurt asked.

Jody realized the
boy thought he was a child, too. He decided to be as open as possible
without scaring Kurt. “I'll tell you who I'm afraid of first,
then you tell. I'm afraid of a little girl. She's a bad girl and
she's coming here.”

The boy moaned low.
The flashlight finally stopped moving. Now it pointed to the floor at
his feet. “Is she dumb bad or smart bad?”

“
Smart bad.”

He moaned again,
louder. “I don't like smart bad girls. They pull my hair and
stick their tongues out. They trip me. They call me names.”

Jody didn't know
what to say to that. He was the one silenced now.

“
You live
here, in the hotel?” Jody finally asked.

“
Upstairs. We
haven't been here long, I don't think. I can't tell time. Time won't
listen to me.”

“
Do you go to
school?”

“
No, I hate
school. I don't know what the books say. I can't hear them.”

“
I see. So
when you get scared, you hide here.”

“
It's my
place! No one finds me here!”

“
Keep your
voice down. I know this is your hideyhole, but is it okay if I share
it with you for a little while? The bad smart girl—she's
coming.”

“
Will she eat
you?”

“
She might.
She's got wings and she's really powerful and scary.”

“
Wings,”
the boy whispered in awe.

“
And she's
bad. She has long black hair and she's got dark skin. If you see her,
get out of the way.”

“
You can stay
here,” Kurt said. “We can both stay here.”

Jody hoped that
wouldn't happen. He hoped the boy would go back to his room soon. He
felt an urge from his bladder and asked, “Where can I go to the
bathroom?”

“
In your
room.”

“
I don't have
a room like you do. I stay here in the closet.”

“
Oh.”
The flashlight swung up and pinned Jody's face. He thought he felt
the child flinch. The light wavered slightly.

“
You're not a
boy like me,” he said, his voice hesitant and shaky.

“
No, I'm a
midget, a little man. It's how I was born. I won't hurt you.”

“
I won't hurt
you neither, cause my momma says I'm too dumb to hurt a fly.”

Jody winced at the
cruelty of some mothers. “About the bathroom, is there one on
the floor above?”

Jody saw the child
point up. “It's that way,” he said. “Go up then
go...” He lost all words and simply kept pointing.

“
Okay, thanks,
I'll find it.” Now his bladder was burning and he felt like an
over-inflated balloon. “I'll be back, okay?”

He slipped from the
closet and rushed up the stairs. He found the bathroom and used it,
hurried back down the stairs and to the closet door, but when he let
himself in he saw it was empty. Kurt was gone, but he didn't know
where to as he'd not passed him on the stairway.

Jody climbed back
onto the stacked boxes and sighed in relief. He decided not to drink
too many liquids. He didn't want to have to run up the stairs often
and be so exposed. Nick could come out of his room and see him and
know he hadn't left as he'd been admonished to do. Or the girl could
appear at any moment and catch him out of the closet, vulnerable. He
shivered uncontrollably. Wasn't fate and fortune supposed to watch
over little children and little men? He had not found that to be the
truth. If anything, fate worked just the opposite, making life for
him harder than it had any call to be.

The door opened
abruptly and Jody stiffened. He needed some way to bar that door. It
was Kurt back again, sweeping in with his fidgeting flashlight. He
closed the door quietly and this time he sat down on the floor, the
flashlight in his lap, his light aimed on the ceiling. It highlighted
his face from below his chin, giving him a ghoulish, gray look. He
didn't have the heavy, slack look of a retarded child, but everything
about his face seemed out of sync as if it was made of malleable clay
that had been massaged into odd angles. One eyebrow was higher than
the other, his nose was overlarge with a dimple in the end of it. His
eyes were big and set wide apart, lash-less and stark. His lips were
skinned back from boxy teeth and he hardly had any chin at all.

“
Where did you
go?” Jody asked. He wondered how often the boy hid here and how
long he stayed.

“
I watched for
the monsters while you went pee,” he said. “If they came
for you I was gonna hit them with my light. I your friend.”

Jody sat with his
mouth open. Why was it that of all innocent children, the broken ones
like Kurt were the most innocent of all? With a soul as unblemished
as a newborn, with faith as strong as a mighty tree deeply rooted in
the earth, this child knew there were monsters and pain and suffering
waiting for them around every corner, but went out to do battle
anyway.

“
I...I
appreciate that, Kurt, but next time you just stay here, okay?
Remember the bad girl? I told you she might be here any minute. I
don't want you out there when she comes.”

“
I hit her
with my light,” Kurt insisted.

If only that would
work, Jody thought. If only there was enough light in the world to
fight against the dark. But maybe there was and he needed the faith
of Kurt. Nick was light. There might be enough light to hold back
evil, but...he just feared that was wishful thinking.

For the next hour he
and Kurt sat in the closet without speaking. It was a companionable
silence, made more poignant by the fact neither of them seemed to
have any better place in the world to be safe than inside a dark
janitor's closet in a bad hotel.

CHAPTER 36

IT MAY ALL END

“
Natural
child,

Terrible child,

Not your mother's or
your father's child,

Our child,

Dreaming wild.

An ancient lunatic
reigns in the trees at night.

Wild child, full of
grace,

Savior of the human
race,

You're two-faced!

You're two-faced!

You're two-faced!

Jim
Morrison, The Doors, WILD CHILD

Angelique and Henry
descended into Sacramento admiring the forests and the river. It was
very late in the night and Henry found a motel on the outskirts of
town. He settled Angelique in the room then went out and came back in
a while with food.

While they ate they
listened to the wind slough in the conifers, those green-blue
sentinels that surrounded the courtyard parking area of the Algonquin
Motel. It was so late that Angelique almost fell asleep over the last
of her food. She pushed it away and went to the bed. “Can I
have the bed tonight?” she asked. “I am very tired. Very
tired.”

She saw Henry nod
his assent while finishing up his own supper. She kicked off her
shoes, pulled off her little socks, and climbed into the bed fully
clothed. She had the covers up to her chin, her face to the wall, and
soon she was in dreamland...

...where things like
Henry roamed a city scape. Everyone was a variation of Henry, the
gargoyle-golem-monster. They were all streaming into the streets and
coming from doors of houses, from cars and trucks, taking their
lumbering time as they waddled into eddying groups. It was dusk and
there were no humans anywhere, not one. This was the golem factory,
Angelique thought in her dream. This is where they come from, their
true home. In the distance behind the creatures she could see a fire
descending the hillsides, coming to the golem-city, black smoke
darkening the sky to ink. The firelight gleamed on the leathery skin
of these creatures as they came ever toward her, clutching together
now, forming a mob. She shivered though the air was dense with smoke
and heat beating its way down the hills toward the valley town.

All the houses were
canted and off-level, even their roofs seeming to slide off,
threatening to topple to the ground. The buildings were misshaped as
well, windows where doors should be, doors in the high dormers and
squeezed around corners. The cars and trucks were from every decade
and they were missing headlights or car doors or had pieces of raw
metal sticking from their hoods or trunks. Nothing was as it should
be, all of it seeming to come from reality, but not of it.

What in God's name
are they? She wondered. What is this haunted place? Surely God did
not make this place or anything like it. All of God's creations where
creatures live are beautiful to behold, perfect in every respect.

It came to her mind
that she had not seen Satan, that most glorious of angels, since the
rebellion. Could he have made this place where monsters walked? Or
were these simply the souls of children, stolen by Henry and tucked
away in a horrible place, caught between heaven and earth, his...his
legion?

Suddenly the
creatures coming toward her sprouted black wings, wings twice as tall
and as wide as their grotesque bodies, and, taken aback, Angelique
stood frozen in place, blasted by wonder. It was not right to give
these monsters her wings, she thought. Not in the least!

She moaned a protest
in her sleep and turned over onto her back. The dream resumed, but it
was a reel that repeated over and over again. They came from the
houses, from the cars and the trucks, from the shops and the
buildings, from the shadows. They came down the street in a swarm and
then they lifted their black wings and she moaned in protest and
turned in her sleep...

Nick was up and
about. Bright, strong cells in his wound had worked their magic
overnight and he was almost healed. The fissures in his insides took
to the neat sewing of the doctor's work and melded back together to
make untouched flesh. On the outside of his midsection, the entrance
wound and the long cut by the surgeon was hardly noticeable—just
red welts growing less swollen even as he stared at them.

He ate an orange,
peeling the sections off one at a time and popping them into his
mouth. The juice exploded with flavor and seemed to turn on lights in
his head.

He glanced around
the small, stifling room and realized it was the worst place to be
caught out. If she was so close, the confrontation with her so soon,
he had to get out of here.

His bag was already
packed. He would leave, go down for a walk, see where it lead him. He
needed to be in an unpopulated place to meet her. There would be
combat between them, he knew that much (a little quake was set off in
his stomach at the thought of it), and they didn't need an audience
for such a supernatural event. What would happen if whole crowds of
people saw two angels, wings extended fully, fighting in the air
above them? They would think the world had come to an end.

No, this was a
private argument. Only between him and Angelique. They needed no
witnesses, no brouhaha, no reporters writing up the conflict for the
papers.

He was down the
stairs and throwing the room key across the counter to the clerk
there.

Out on the street he
saw the sky was just as brilliant and sunny as it could be, no
ominous clouds, no finger of God writing across the sky—not
that he expected any such thing, not for a Creator that cared nothing
for him and less for Angelique.