The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) (26 page)

Then her view of the street was empty except for Army Vernon’s florist shop across the way.

She waited to see if it would be quiet on Main Street for at least a minute. She didn’t want to venture out until she felt ready.

She heard the screeching of tires as someone sped along the streets of town, and then a sickening crash and the sound of glass breaking.

In the silence that followed the crash—during which time she tried not to think of her father dying—she began to hear children cheering and clapping. Incongruously, at least for October, she thought she heard the sing-song bells of the ice cream truck. As she thought of it, she said the words, “I scream truck,” as if it could conjure a scene in her mind. Her impulses were in conflict—part of her wanted to run away from the sound of the crash and find some safe place to hide.
With my hatchet. Me and my hatchet.

But the other impulse took over. One that she had never been completely sure she’d have, and perhaps no one ever knew they had until faced with it in an irrefutable reality: She wanted to help. She wanted to protect whomever was in that car wreck.

Like I couldn’t protect you, Dad.

With that intention, she stepped out of the building’s shadows into the streetlights.
Me and my hatchet.

Just up by the Watch Point Community Bank Building, she saw how the car had overturned right after hitting a lamppost, which leaned near the ground after the accident.

The driver of the vehicle—Mr. Boatwright, who she’d just sold reading glasses to that afternoon—was upside down in the shoulder harness.

There was smoke coming out from the back of the car, and the smell in the air was of fire, although she couldn’t see any.

The dogs that had been scratching at the bookstore windows ran to the accident. As soon as they got there, a girl who looked about eleven grabbed a Chihuahua and began shaking it mercilessly. When she dropped it, it ran off up the street. The other dogs followed, as if on to a new scent.

She recognized some of the little kids from town and a couple of the older ones—Mike Spears and Allie Cooney, who were juniors at her high school. They were trying to open the doors of Boaty’s car.

Boaty was as wide-eyed as anyone could be, and he had kept the windows up and the doors locked. As Ronnie walked up Main Street toward the wreck, which was beautifully lit in the lamplight, she saw what might’ve been someone else in the seat next to the man. Who was it?

Then Mike Spears took a rock and broke the driver’s side window. They all dragged Boaty out of the car, into the street. Something was funny about Mike—and she realized it was that he wore no pants or underwear at all. From the waist down he was naked.

Something rose within Ronnie and she let out what she would only later describe as a warrior’s yelp. She ran up the street, swinging the hatchet as she went, her only goal to make sure that Mr. Boatwright did not get torn up by these maniacs. Without thinking twice, she swung the hatchet into the group of children, and while part of her mind was aware that she’d just lopped off little Mark Malanski’s left arm
(the kid didn’t even shriek, what the hell?)
the rest of her brain didn’t seem to care. It was as if she’d switched into survival mode, and all she cared about was making sure Boaty didn’t get what Dusty got.

She began to feel almost exalted—and she wasn’t comfortable like that.
It wants you to be a god,
she thought as she threatened Mike Spears with the hatchet. His face was blackened with what she assumed was blood, and, naked except for his shirt, he sported an engorged erection.

She pushed her way through the toddlers, some of whom were chewing on Boaty’s fingers; others had little butter knives and were trying to cut into his throat with them. She kicked them, swung at them, shoved them, and they all moved away from him.

Boaty looked up at her, trembling. He whispered words, but his throat sent up a dry rasp. She knelt beside him, her hatchet at the ready should anyone jump her, and she got closer to him. He whispered, “Make it fast. Make it fast.”

She drew back. “I’m not going to hurt you, Mr. Boatwright. Please, try to stay calm. Please.”

“Make it fast,” he whispered. “Make it fast. End it. End it.”

He reached up with his right hand, which had been gnawed at enough that two of his fingers were no more than bleeding nubs, and grasped her collar. He drew himself up slightly. “Please, Veronica. Do it.” His feeble voice shivered with his body. “I killed one of ‘em. In the car. My niece. She wanted a ride. But she started touching me.
Touching me.
I saw all the others. I saw Mary Thompson. I saw what they did to her. How they dragged her.” His breathing became too rapid, and he was in danger of hyperventilating. She wanted to try to keep him quiet, but she felt as if she needed to know why all this had suddenly happened. She glanced back at the blood-spattered children. She saw Allie Cooney down on her knees in front of Mike. One of the little boys had a metal rake in his hands and was slowly advancing on Ronnie, but when she held up the hatchet, he backed off. Some of the others had begun tearing at the Malanski boy.
It’s because I cut his arm off. They smelled the blood. They want the blood and meat.

“I’ll get help,” Ronnie said.

“No, no help.”

“You need help.”

“THERE IS NO HELP!” Boaty screamed and the force of it sent a shock through her. “THEY GO TO SLEEP AND THEY DREAM AND YOU CANT DISTURB THEM OR THEY THINK THEY’RE STILL DREAMING!”

Exhausted, he sank back down to the road.

She thought she heard what might’ve been hoofbeats— as if horses were running wild through town. She glanced up the road, and noticed that the other children stopped what they were doing—dropping Mark Malanski’s lifeless body to the ground, their mouths dripping—and also looked in the direction of the thudding and
clip-clop
sound.

Rounding the corner, people.

Not just more children.

Not more teenagers.

But people she recognized from the village.

They had come running. Was it the smell of smoke? Or of blood?

They had made the hoofbeat sounds in their heels and Rockports and boots and sneakers and dress shoes.

And they stopped when they saw her.

“Make it end,” Boaty whispered again, his voice fading. “They go to sleep. They go to sleep. I want to sleep, too. Make it end.”

With the shadows of twilight all around them, and the buildings of town seeming emptier than she’d ever noticed, Ronnie Pond looked at the men and women from the village. They stood there as if waiting for a traffic signal to change.

Watching her.

They’re waiting to see what I’m going to do.

They want to see me kill Boaty.

“Wake me up when it’s over,” Boaty gasped, and then closed his eyes as if he were being drawn into sleep.

She tried to lift him, but he was too heavy. Her shoulder throbbed a little from pain.

“There’s nothing I can do,” she said as quietly as she could.

Boaty’s eyes fluttered open. “Kill me. Kill me when I close my eyes.”

“I can’t.”

“If you don’t kill me, it might take me over. I’ve been inside it. I know what it is.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Harrow,” he said. He reached for her right arm—and the hatchet. “Just bring it down on me. It’ll be fast. I won’t feel it.”

“I can’t,” she whispered and didn’t even realize she’d begun crying.

“It’s like you stepped into a nightmare,” he said with a slight smile. “It’s like maybe after you kill me, I’ll wake up. And it’ll be over. And I won’t ever have to dream again. Please. Please. I’ve seen what they do. They’re like wolves.”

“How is this happening?”

“When I was a boy, I saw something up there. At Harrow. Something that might have been the devil himself for all I know. Somehow, it leaked out. Something in that house broke open and leaked out like toxic gas. I don’t think there’s any way to stop it. Please. Veronica. I don’t mind dying. Everyone I loved is dead here. I think you will be, too. Soon. I’m sorry.” Then he made a grab for the hatchet, knocking her off-balance, and she fell across him.

When she looked back up, he had the hatchet in both hands, its blade aimed for his head.

“Goodbye,” he said and then slammed the hatchet down onto his face.

In the same moment, the people standing at the corner moved forward.

The little kid with the metal rake began running toward her, and Ronnie had no time—she grabbed the hatchet, pulling it up with a sucking sound from the middle of Boaty’s face.

She rolled upward, standing on unsure feet. She nearly lost her balance, but she came up swinging the hatchet and caught the hand of a girl who worked at the A & P The hand flew, and blood spurted. Ronnie had already begun running, and the people at the corner watched as the children around the car wreck began circling Howard Boatwright’s lifeless body.

Several people began running after Ronnie. She decided to try to run back down toward the train station.

Run along the tracks. Get the hell out of here.

Lizzie? Lizzie are you okay?

Mom?

She had to pretend they were fine. Fear had gotten hold of her, as well as that primal survival sense, that jungle feeling that the leopards and jaguars would leap out from any branch and the snakes would bite and the insects would devour—that human reaction to severe danger that only clicks into place, if you’re lucky, once before you die.

4

In the Houseman home, Ronnie’s twin, Lizzie, had just begun popping the metal corkscrew through Norma Houseman’s cheek. “Don’t cry out,” Lizzie whispered, her right hand petting Norma’s cheek as the point of the corkscrew poked through her skin. “It may hurt, but this is what you want, isn’t it?”

Norma’s eyes were wide and her face had gone pale as the first drop of blood slid like a tear down to her chin.

Lizzie kissed the drop of blood, then turned the corkscrew around and around allowing it to drill through Norma’s cheek until there was a nice big hole. “I know your dreams, Norma. I know this is what you dream of. Of holes in your skin. Holes all over your body. You’re not afraid, are you? Not really. Not in that deep place inside that knows what you want.”

Norma’s eyes still showed fear, watching Lizzie as if she were some kind of ravenous predator. But even in that fear, Lizzie could smell the need. Norma needed the pain. Norma needed to open herself.

The back door slammed, and Norma glanced past the stairs to the kitchen. Her eldest son, William, who was nearly fourteen years old, trooped into the room, carrying her gardening shears in his hands. Norma wanted to tell him to run away, but she felt a strange eroticism as Lizzie Pond drilled holes in her cheek, as the pain in her shoulder tore at her, pinned as it was to the doorframe by the small kitchen knife. She felt a moisture in the pit of her being—a lubrication as if this excited her.

Even with William cutting at the air in front of him with her gardening shears.

She felt an excitement, and realized that Lizzie was right—this was her dream coming true. A dream of cutting and slicing and drilling. A dream where something opened her up so completely that it was as if her flesh were turned inside out and she was nothing but tingling pleasure, electrical impulses of feelings, feelings, and more feelings.

William, his face shiny and fresh as if he’d just had a bath, clicked the gardening shears like crab claws as he approached her. As Norma closed her eyes, she felt the dream coming on.

It’s taking me. It’s going to open me.

My children. My children are going to open me again, as they did when they were born.

5

In the Ratty Dog Bar & Grille, you could hear a pin drop.

Luke Smithson closed his cell phone after hearing the voice of his dead aunt Danni on it. She had spent nearly ten minutes regaling him with stories of the house where she lived. “It’s beautiful, Luke. I want you to come stay with me. Oh, wait ‘til I show you the room. Your room. You can write your novel in it. It’s perfect for that. The inspiration is all there. The Nightwatchman’s story can be written down, at last, and you can be the famous author that you’ve always dreamed of being, although I think it should be called
The Caretaker,
because that seems more true, doesn’t it? He’s not really watching anything; he’s taking care of a marvelous home. You can even work on your diary. The room has a beautiful desk made out of mahogany—brought all the way from an estate in London. It was once owned by one of those famous sad writers who killed himself too young but wrote his masterpiece there. If you look closely at the wood, you can see the scratchings he made on it. Like he had already begun to go mad as he was writing his greatest work. You can be like that, Luke. I want you here with me. I have some rooms all ready for us—you can have an office, a bedroom, and your own bathroom. It’s really wonderful.”

He said nothing. He felt a curious numbness go through his body as he watched Pete the bartender keep the shotgun aimed at his face. He watched his old buddy Bish reach into his own jeans and fondle himself while watching the movie on the TV screen. At this point, he and Bish were no longer kissing or making love on the screen, but instead, Luke had begun biting Bish along his throat as if he were a vampire. He drew small drops of blood from Bish’s skin while Bish—on-screen—thrust his arm toward Luke’s mouth so that he might bite along that, as well.

The blonde with the guy kept laughing and now and then pointing over at Luke, until finally, the movie on the television ended with Luke completely devouring Bish, first the fingers and the hand, and then tearing at his lips, and then chewing his face, until the picture faded into black. On the cell phone, Aunt Danni said, “I’m so lonely here without you, Luke. I want you here, and I know you’ll come. It’s hard to describe because it’s not a place like any other in the world, but you want to see all, don’t you? You want to write about everything, from both sides of life and death, don’t you? You could be the greatest writer that mankind has ever known.”