Seven Deadly Pleasures (12 page)

He looked down between his thumbs. Now his hands were pressed to some sort of gross-looking body part that floated in a pool of black phlegm.

Denny dove from the bed and rolled off his elbows toward the closet. His shoulder bashed into an ancient Phonics Bus and the old speaker wheezed "A is A and Ahh," while spinning and flipping to its side. His back just caught the edge of a mini-firetruck's cherry picker, and through the sharp pain Denny tried to recall in a flash every video or computer game he'd ever set hands on.

Nothing came to mind, at least nothing like this.

He crashed to a stop by the closet and turned. The entire bed frame had gone leathery. There were layers to what looked like gums and each ridged level dripped spit. The short bed legs were now knobby stingers and the only thing missing were teeth.

Solved soon enough.

The "bed" split itself width-wise at center and snapped up like a large mousetrap, the top half coming down with a crash. The headboard splintered and what remained of the jagged spindles formed quickly to fangs set fast in a pair of mammoth jaws.

It didn't wait long to make its first move. The huge thing came forward like a giant set of chattering joke teeth with razors, stilettos, and poison spikes stuck in the gums. Hot black venom sprayed off its jowls.

Denny rolled to the side, found his knees, and looked around for an out.

His eyes fell on the PlayStation controller sitting on the floor where the bed had just been. He cut back, sprang in, slid on one knee, and grabbed it two-handed in passing. Score! From the corner of his eye he could see the bed snap back to its original form and bang down to the floor at an odd angle.

Yes!

But the thing in Denny's hands was already squirming, and he did not want to waste time saying hello. He shot for the door and at the same time, threw the new Shifter as far behind him as possible.

He heard it land.

He heard it hiss.

He didn't quite make it to the door.

A barbed coil of sorts whipped around his ankle, brought him to the floor, and dragged him backward on the elbows. He winced, turned back a look, and saw that his PlayStation controller now towered above him, balanced on its wire like a large-headed cobra or thinned-down, limbless black mantis. The left and right button boards had sets of cruel eyes and the palm rests were horns made of bone. The wire tail that had torn itself loose from the console now whipped from the bottom of his right ankle, circled both Denny's shins, and wrapped all the way up to his knees.

It was binding him cocoon style.

He tried to dig his fingers under the tail but the thorny scales spiked up at his touch, puncturing both thumbs and the inner side of his left index finger. He was bleeding now. As if from a dream he began screaming for help, shouting, and thrashing around on the floor.

"Denny?" someone said. "Denny, what's going on?"

It was Josephine standing in the doorway, phone still in hand and a look of amazement spread across her face.

In response, smack in the middle of his current struggle on the floor, Denny felt a bizarre embarrassment strike up inside. He was never one to ask favors. He was never one to beg for help. And regardless of all this, he was still Denny Sanborn the hero, wasn't he? He was still Denny the clown, the one who took the blame for things other kids did, and always made out best on his own.

Wasn't he?

Or did he have it wrong all this time?

"I need you," he said despite himself.

And she came forward. Josephine Thompson came forward in order to help Denny Sanborn, and it was the biggest mistake she ever made in her life.

7.

Josephine made her way into the room and broken glass crunched beneath her shoes. In response, the Slither-Shifter lifted up and cracked down its tail circus-whip style, twirling Denny a number of times in mid-air and sending him spinning toward her in sudden release.

She instinctively hurdled up, but on the way past underneath, Denny's elbow caught on the toe of her shoe. She tumbled forward, swore out loud, and landed in the glass palms first. The swear words became shrieks of pain. She made it to her knees and raised bloodied hands as if making prayer.

No one upstairs was listening.

The living PlayStation controller head swiveled, focused, juked back, and sliced in hard through the air.

It bashed Josephine square in the face. Her head snapped back with the force and when she turned back toward Denny, her eyes were huge. She pressed her hands to her nose and blood squirted between her fingers. She brought her hands down to inspect them and then went back to the wound twice in a touch and look, touch and look. Denny could do nothing but stare at her, hunting for the tough young woman he had met earlier that night on the stoop.

She was gone. And the one left behind in her place was no more than a baby-girl now. A small child lost at the mall. The brave one, the one talented beyond measure and a bit too old for her years was long gone.

As if to prove this, the Shifter twirled its lower end in circles above Josephine's head. In a flash the barbed cord wrapped her throat like a lasso and the beast yanked her up to her feet. It pulled her toward the hall door. She kicked out her heels, clawed at the noose, and her eyes showed nothing but fluttering white.

Denny got to his knees.

By the time he gained a standing position Josephine's flailing feet had disappeared around the corner and into the hallway.

Denny hunched for the run, for the heroic chase scene, but then he just stopped where he was. What possible good could he do for her out there? Was he strong enough to loosen the coils around her throat when he couldn't even budge them an inch off his leg? Who was he fooling?

But to what? The closest things were the bed, some trash-trinkets, and the hard floor itself; three options that looked pretty bad when you realized that the bed was sure death, a tiny Shifter made of, say, a glass sliver would be small enough to get in an ear for a brain invasion, and a touch to the floor held the horrid possibility of a creep to the walls that went to the ceiling that supported the attic which led to the roof. A house-sized monster by connection-infection! No way. That would put them both inside the nasty thing's gut with nowhere to run, and the chance to run was about all they had left.

Josephine's kicking sounds had faded down the hallway, and Denny realized he was sweating, panting, and doing nothing while the precious seconds slipped through his fingers. He had to do something fast, and the idea of doing something "fast" linked suddenly with the thought that the chance to run was really their last.

Denny had to stop it from moving. He had to trap it somehow and lock it down long enough to save Josephine. He looked up at the ceiling fan and thought about what Dad had said years ago when a much younger Denny was scared it would fall on him.

"
Don't be stupid, kid. It's fastened down with toggle bolts. That sucker ain't comin' down, not now and not ever."

Good enough.

Denny jumped no hands to the bed and just before he made his first upward leap, the connection-infection theory again raced through his mind. Would touching the overhead fan-light spread the beast to the ceiling? Where did the disease begin and when did it stop?

He had no choice but to find out the hard way. If she wasn't cooked already, Josephine was damned close to getting there. In fact, right about the time Denny made his first bounding spring there came the sound of a body falling down the hall stairs.

Denny stretched with all that he had and just managed to brush a light bulb with both middle fingers. Instantly, the room was transformed to blackness and Denny stumbled off the bed to get away from the rank garbage wind that whirred from above.

His eyes refocused and on his way out the door he chanced a brief look over his shoulder.

The blades of the ceiling fan were spinning like mad. The four black bulbs, now eyes, arced back and forth in their pivoting hoods, casting thick black beams all around like searchlights on prison walls. The blades spun faster and the new demon began beating those propeller wings up and down with a fury. There was a squeal of steel anchors tearing through ceiling board and a spray of plaster dust that snowflaked the bed.

Denny ran for it.

He ran through the shattered glass to the hallway and slammed shut the door on his way out. He tried to call out Josephine's name but was drowned out by some ripping sounds that came from the room just behind.