The Bighead (39 page)

The doorknob was
turning.

She pulled her aunt into
the closet, closed the door, then nearly fainted in the realization
of what she had done.
I’ve trapped us both
in here. There’s no way out.

Then she heard the bedroom door squeal
open, and then—

THUNK! THUNK!
THUNK!

The thing—whatever it was—was in the
room now, looking for them.

Charity, with her arm around her
aunt’s bosom, stepped back in the closet’s darkness. There was
nowhere to go now, no escape—

What?

Behind her, now, she
noticed—

What the hell…

She noticed that the back wall to the
closet wasn’t a wall at all but…an opening…

An open wall panel…

A passageway.

She pulled her aunt into the opening,
closed the secret panel. She couldn’t imagine why this would be
here, and she didn’t care. It was an escape! But now, in total
darkness, she fumbled forward. There seemed to be a narrow corridor
behind the wall. Where did it lead? “Come on, Aunt Annie! Come on!”
her hot whispers ensued. “Move forward!”

They did so in absolute clumsiness,
Charity biting her lower lip at the sounds they must be making. But
only then did she notice—

Spires? White lines?

Yes, lines of white light,
thread-thin, seemed to perforate the passageway’s gloom. They were
holes—

Holes
in the
wall.

Again, the
why
did not even occur to
her. But she knew this: they were peepholes. And she could still
hear the monstrous
thunking.

The footfalls, she guessed,
had circled Goop’s bedroom, then made their exit.
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!

Then they wound around to the next
room.

Charity put her eye to the bright
hole.

The priest’s room, it must
be,
she thought. A simple piece of luggage.
Black slacks and shirts in the closet. A Bible and prayer book on
the night stand. And—

Charity’s heart skipped a
beat.

The vantage point of what
she could see was very limited: the sidewall of the priest’s
bedroom. But something, suddenly, was
moving
there—

A shadow.

A
huge
shadow.

It washed across the wall, the great,
heavy footfalls resounding in accompaniment. It seemed to waver, a
hulking silhouette, and Charity, even through the tiny peephole,
could smell the earthy, rotten-meat stench. Then—

The figure came into view.

Just its back…

It stood what must’ve been over seven
feet tall. It was wearing overalls, vermiculated with rot, shoulder
muscles so large and defined they looked like tumors beneath the
dark-tan skin.

Then…it turned…

Charity fainted dead-away when she saw
the thing’s face…

(VIII)

“
What did you think? What
did you think? You think it’d be pretty?”

Now it was Annie, slapping Charity
awake.

My God. This is all my
fault,
Annie thought.
I shoulda knowed it’d all come back ta me someday…

And come back it did, with a
vengeance.

Far as she knew now, though, the
thing’d left. Crouched back there behind in the wall, she’d seen it
thunk its way out of the room, then out of the house.

The Bighead.

Yeah, I shoulda
knowed,
Annie realized.

She pulled Charity back
into Goop’s room. Goop—Christ—it had been Goop who’d done this,
finding the walkways behind the walls, drillin’ holes so’s he could
peep on guests.
So help me, I’ll tan his
hide next time I see him…

“
Charity? Charity?” Annie
shook her niece fierce.

No response.

“
Come on, sweetie! We gotta
get outa here!”

Nothing.

One look was all it took, and was
Annie surprised? No. No. She’d never seen it fer herself, ’cept fer
that one time, but she could imagine what it looked like
now.

A shudder traveled through her at the
thought.

“
What—was—that…
thing?
” Charity finally roused,
murmuring up through a fallow face. Her eyes were
shock-white.

“
You know.” Annie patted
her niece’s forehead with a handkerchief. “You know now. It was The
Bighead. Come back after all these years.”

—
| — | —

TWENTY

(I)

“
I just don’t understand,”
Charity nearly wept. Exit was their priority now, escape. The only
thing that would keep them alive was getting as far away from
Luntville as quickly as possible. Once Charity had recovered from
her faint of shock, Annie had gotten her out of the house and into
the pickup truck. There was no time to look for Goop. There was no
time to do anything but leave.

Annie spun wheels out of the front
lot, peeling away. The right rear fender banged against a tree when
she turned off onto the Route and accelerated.

Charity’s consciousness seemed to sift
back into some semblance of accordance, like the focusing ring on a
lens. But again, instantly, too many images and questions delved
into her at once. “Those scars,” she said, a hand to her brow as
she sat slumped in the pickup’s bench seat. “Those awful scars on
your nipples and thighs… What happened?”

Annie’s determined face remained
locked on the road as she drove. “Punishment, honey. Sometimes ya
just cain’t live with things unless ya hurt yerself. I been
punishin’ myself fer a long time now.”

Punishment?
“Why?”

When her aunt refrained from
answering, Charity’s mouth opened to ask the next of a flurry of
questions, but the query stalled when she remembered…

When she remembered exactly what she’d
seen in that peephole.

Hideous. Huge. And, yes,
a
monster.

A great shiny bald head, elongated
like some strange, warped squash. Hands the size of packing hooks.
But when the thing had turned, she was able to glimpse its face,
and the recollection, now, nearly caused her to pass out
again.

Its face…

Lop-sided, bundled ears. A squashed
nose like two dried figs pressed together. One eye large as a
tennis ball, the other tiny as a cherry tomato. But the
mouth…

Charity shuddered again, her stomach
captured by a sudden series of convulsions so intense she thought
she might vomit out the truck window—

A huge stone jaw underpinned a mouth
akin to a chasm, full of teeth like carpet needles.

Oh, God… What is going on
here?

“
Where are we going?” she
asked.

“
Out of here. Anyplace that
isn’t here,” Aunt Annie said.

“
We…can’t,” Charity
insisted, letting her senses surface further. “Jerrica and the
priest. They’re still at the abbey. We
can’t
just
drive away
and forget about them.
That thing… If it cut across the ridge—it could be at the abbey in
less than a half hour. We have to go pick up Jerrica and Father
Alexander.”

Annie seemed stricken by this
suggestion, though she didn’t outright object. “We could die, hon,
you know that, don’t you?”

Charity’s teeth ground.
“We’re
not
leaving
them! We have to at least warn them!”

“
All right.” Annie’s voice
grated like rusted metal abrading. “We’ll go by the abbey. But
don’t blame me if we never make it out of there.”

“
Fine.” But Charity’s mind
swirled in more queries. “You have to explain something to me.
That…
thing
—that
thing I saw through the peephole. It was The Bighead, wasn’t
it?”

“
Yes,” Annie answered,
heading down the dark road.

“
But I saw the grave.
Someone had dug it up. And someone had scratched on the coffin top,
BIGHEAD, BURN IN HELL. If The Bighead was dead and buried as an
infant, how on earth could we have just seen it?”

(II)

It was a question Annie should’ve
expected. By now? After what poor Charity had seen?

The steering wheel felt like slick
bone on her hand. “I’ll tell you, Charity. Only ’cos you gotta
right to know.”

“
What!”

And Annie’s mind fogged
away.

Back, back…

Back to that day thirty years
ago…

(III)

The townsmen had taken
care of the thing, nine months previous. But it hadn’t mattered,
not for Annie’s sister. The men had shot it, killed it. Taken care
of it, she thought.

But that still left Sissy,
didn’t it?

Annie was the town
midwife, never could have a child’a her own on account of some
problem in her belly. But her sister…

Her sister lay before her
now, on the table, her legs spread wide. Her face flushed with the
pain of labor, her vagina distending. Large, ripe breasts sweated
out a sheen of milk.

Annie continued with her
ministrations, her hands outspread below her sister’s parted
thighs. It’s coming, it’s coming, she thought.

But what would it
be?

“
My GOD!”

It wasn’t coming out
right. It was coming out…through the belly…

It was eating its way out
of her sister’s womb…

(IV)

“
What ya have ta understand
is that this all happened a year after you were born, Charity. What
I told ya about yer mama committin’ suicide with the shotgun—that
was just a fib. She died during childbirth. My darlin’ sister
Sissy, yer wonderful mama,” Annie stoically related. She drove the
pickup steadfast, through town, toward the far ridge where the
abbey was.

“
Yeah, a year or so after
yer mama had you,” Annie continued. “Somethin’ happened, that next
winter… It was yer mama who gave birth to The Bighead. And when she
was done havin’ him, she was dead…”

(V)

It shredded its way
out.

It ate its way out of
Sissy’s bloated stomach.

Gnawing, swallowing, teeth
glinting…

“
We knows what it really
is!” one of the townsmen shouted. “It ain’t natt-trull! It gotta be
kilt!”

And it was then that the
thing shouldered its way out of the front of her sister’s
abdomen…

(VI)

“
It was yer mama…who gave
birth to The Bighead,” Annie admitted.

Charity glared forward.
“But I just saw The Bighead’s
grave!
It was dug up! It had
obviously died as an infant!”

Something so large sunk down Annie’s
throat. For a moment she couldn’t speak. What could she say? How
could she admit such a thing?

She felt made of stone when she said,
“It wasn’t The Bighead that was in that grave you saw dug up at the
cemetery. It was…some other child.”

“
Some other child! What are
you talking about!”

“
It was a stillborn,” Annie
went on. “It was Geraldine’s. Larkins’…”

(VI)

Annie’d already heard
about it. Poor Geraldine Larkins had wanted a baby so
bad…

But it was
stillborn.

Too much inbreedin’,
they’d said. Too much moonshine-drinkin’ and bad-livin’.
Geraldine’d given birth to a beautiful baby boy—

But it was a
dead
baby boy.

They’d buried it shallow
in the woods, and Annie’d seen ’em on one’a her walks. She’d seen
’em buryin’ that poor li’l dead baby.

So what she done
was—

(VIII)

“
I dug it up,” Annie
confessed. “I dug Geraldine Larkins’ poor dead baby boy up…and I
switched it…”

“
You…
switched
it?

“
I switched it. ’cos I just
didn’t have the heart to do what them townsmen said. They knew
where The Bighead come from, and they wanted to kill it. But I told
’em
I would.
”

Charity’s face bloomed in
question, like a night flower. “You told them you would do
what?
”

“
I told ’em
I
would kill it. I told
’em I would kill Sissy’s baby, The Bighead. But what I done instead
was switch The Bighead with Geraldine’s stillborn critter. And what
I did then was I…I crushed that dead baby’s head with a skillet,
and all’a them townsmen seen it. And they believed it…”