The Brotherhood of the Wheel (43 page)

“Packs?” Lovina said. “You mean the Black-Eyed Children?”

“They're like larval forms of the shadow people,” Ava said. “Agnes and I saw one of them … change. It was horrible.”

“If the children bite you, unless you're pretty young, it kills you—pretty quick, too,” Carl said. “If a child gets bit, it becomes one of them.”

“Sadly, that's one of the few reasons Chasseur allows human beings to survive in Four Houses,” Agnes said. “To breed children, so he can give them to the packs, to turn them into his shadow hounds.”

“It was one of the signs of Chasseur's power growing,” Barbara said. “The old-timers said there used not to be any shadow people or Black-Eyed Kids; they started showing up in town a few decades ago. He'd send them out into the world to do his dirty work, abduct more kids, make him a larger army.”

“Jesus!” Ava said. “This is hell.”

“I don't care for it,” Lovina said, shaking her head, looking from one tired, scared, but determined, face to another. “No, not one damned bit, and it will not stand. Hell? I'm going to burn it. I'm going to burn it all down.”

Agnes smiled. “The house has been waiting for you,” she said.

*   *   *

It was cold in the garage. Lexi was chained to a group of large acetylene welding tanks in the corner, next to a stack of old tires. Her arms stretched behind her. Her head was fuzzy and thick. She couldn't remember how long it had been since she'd had water or food, and it was almost impossible to sleep with her arms in constant pain. She hadn't had her meds in a long time, either, and she was so far past panic now, she felt numb. It was getting hard to remember things, remember important stuff. How long had she been here? Days? Weeks? Time was a meaningless rubber band. She looked over at the still form of … Cole? Cole—yes, his name was Cole, and hers was … Lexi. Yes, she had that—hang on to that. They had beaten Cole at some point. It had been bad, and the old, mean one—Wald—had used a heavy black piece of exhaust hose to beat him so as to leave as few marks as possible. They had to be undamaged for their big day—when was it again? The day they were going to go meet the Horned Man in the woods. Was it … tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow night they would meet the Horned Man.
Shit, shit, girl, come on! You're going to die in the woods tomorrow night. Focus, damn it … come on.

Lexi blinked a few times and used the pain in her arms and the cold biting her skin to shake off some of the haze she had been feeling for … how long? There were no clocks she could see in the garage bay of Scode's Garage. The bay doors were down, and she saw only darkness beyond the grimy windows.

“Cole,” she hissed. “Cole, we have got to get out of here. Cole!”

Cole didn't stir. He didn't make a sound. The horrible thought that he was dead began to creep into her. She was alone, and Cole, beautiful funny, stupid, vain Cole, was dead now on the floor of a filthy garage in the middle of an unwaking nightmare.

He groaned and moved a little. Lexi almost shouted, but kept her silence. She looked in the direction of the open door of the glass-enclosed office adjacent to the garage bays. Toby was in there. She could hear the shitty old AM radio playing the same scratchy, hissing station they had played when the Scode boys first drove them into Four Houses. It was Gene Autry singing “You're the Only Star in My Blue Heaven.” Wald had left on some errands. When he had left was impossible for Lexi to determine; it was taking a lot of effort to hold the buzzing in her mind at bay and not to space out or just start screaming until she passed out again. None of that would help them.

They hadn't bothered to tie Cole back up after the beating. Lexi was hoping he could crawl over to her and free her arms, then they could grab the tow truck and get the fuck out of this tumor of a town.

“Cole?” Lexi pleaded. Cole groaned again. “Please, come on, you have to get me loose, and I'll take care of you, get us out of here. Come on, Cole. Cole, wake the fuck up!”

He opened his eyes. He grunted and tried to drag himself toward her across the oil-stained, cracked cement. He made it a few feet. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he passed out again. Lexi almost cried, but her fear was stronger, and she knew that she couldn't waste time sobbing.
Think.

Toby walked out of the office. He saw that Cole had moved a few feet and was shivering. He took an old, dirty plastic car tarp and pulled it over the boy like a blanket. He then walked to Lexi and knelt so that he was face-to-face with her. Toby's eyes never made it to her face; he was looking at her breasts, jutting out from the clothesline bonds that held her to the tanks. Toby's gaze filled her with dizzy fear and nausea. She had been several days without her meds, and the panic and all the other old ghosts were stirring in the folds of her brain; what he could do to her began to spool out like some awful movie in her mind. She fought with everything in her not to retreat into the fortress of screaming hysteria or catatonia.

“You okay?” Toby asked. “I can get you a blanket or something if you need it.” He rubbed her shoulder with warm, calloused hands that lingered too long, and Lexi fought the urge to vomit. She tried to think, tried to think like Alana. Alana was the most together person she had ever known. Alana would have come and saved her and Cole if she hadn't died in that field. What would Alana do?

“T-Toby, I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.

“I'll fetch the bucket,” he said with a little too much enthusiasm. Lexi knew he had watched her before, as she had had to squat over the bucket to relieve herself, with him and Wald watching her with greasy eyes.

“Can't I go to the bathroom, please?” she asked. A plan was forming, even though she had no conscious awareness of it. Her instincts were babbling like water to her, giving her a tiny sliver of hope. “I'll keep the door open so you can watch me.” She saw the calculations cross his bland, stupid face, and he actually looked around to make sure Wald, who whipped him on a regular basis, wasn't anywhere to be seen. It was so comical you could laugh, but Lexi didn't. She was in character now, looking only at Toby, not checking to see if Cole was even aware of what was going on. Her universe was Toby.
Focus on him, focus.

“I'm not supposed to, but okay,” Toby said. He began to untie her. “Wald would get really mad, but I'll do it for you.”

She smiled. It took an effort, but she reminded herself that her life was on the line. “Thank you, Toby. You're sweet.” She was loose, and she moaned in genuine relief as she let her arms drop. Toby never stopped looking at her chest and legs. She wrapped her arching arms around her chest, covering herself as best she could. For the millionth time, she wished she had her leather jacket from Gerry's car. She struggled to her feet, and Toby helped her up, taking the opportunity to grope her as much as he could. Lexi tried to ignore it. If this was what it took to get free, to help Cole, to live and get the fuck out of here, then she'd handle it. He led her to the single, dirty bathroom and threw open the door. The room smelled of stale piss. She knew Toby was watching everything she did, and she decided it was now or never. She slid her panties from under the black minidress, covered in metal buckles and rings, and down her legs past the torn black fishnets until they rested at her boots. If she got out of here alive, she swore to wear thick, warm, heavy pantyhose the rest of her life. Dressing like this was fun, and she did love her style, but she had been so cold in this outfit, and all she wanted now was to live and to be warm and safe. Granny panties and thick-ass pantyhose—hell, yeah.

She held her knees together as she perched on the cold toilet seat, sticky with old urine.
Obviously, you sick fuckers never had a lady tell you to lift the damn seat, did you?
She looked up at Toby, her dark eyes wide and focused on him with all her shivering will. “You are so sweet, Toby. Thank you. I don't know why Wald is always so mean to you.”

Toby squatted in the doorway. Lexi was beginning to realize that Toby liked to be on the same level with whoever he was talking to; however, his eyes were fixated on her crumpled black-and-purple panties and her shivering legs up to the minidress. If he could rip it off her with his eyes, Lexi was sure he would.

“Wald's always been like that,” Toby said. “When I was little, Father beat me in the head with an ax handle for breaking some green-apple preserves. Those were his favorite, and it was the last jar for winter. At least, that's what Wald told me. Mother had already displeased the Master and been fed to the pack. And by the time I was old enough to ask Father if the story was true, his mind had gone all soft and far away. What the Master does can keep your body alive, but your mind can still rot.”

“God, that's horrible,” Lexi said. She was sincere. “How old did Wald say you were when your dad hit you, Toby?”

“Wald said five, or six, maybe,” Toby replied. “Anyway, that was when my head started feeling like something was broken in there, and it kept rattling around. Wald said that was why I was the town idiot and why he had to correct me the way Father did. All my brothers corrected me, too; Wald made sure they didn't do anything permanent, ever since Luther broke my leg that one time.”

“Jesus!” Lexi said. “Where are all your brothers, Toby?”

“They got taken by the pack. Most of them became the first shadow people, but a few were too old to act as vessels for the Horned Man, and they just died.”

“Just you and Wald left out of all your family?” Lexi asked. Toby nodded. “Why do you and Wald do it, Toby? Serve that psycho, and that creature in the woods?”

“We always have,” Toby said. “Father did and his father before him and so on back. We've been doing it as a family for … two hundred years, I think Wald said once when he was drunk. Us Scodes been doing it since the Master was just a young man, since he came right out of the woods and took over the town. Wald and me, we've been serving him for, I reckon, about … a hundred and fifty years or so. Yeah, that sounds right.”

There was a tea kettle in Lexi's brain, and it was screaming steam. This couldn't be real … this couldn't be happening. Living shadows weren't real, horned gods rising up out of the dark forest weren't real, and centuries-old madmen weren't real. Gerry was dead, Alana was dead. Ava was most likely dead. No, this
was
real, it was, and she was not in the hospital and not lost in her own mind. She looked past Toby to Cole on the floor, shivering, barely alive, and she felt her mind click back, snap into place. No, she was not going to let these freaks sacrifice them to their fucked-up god.

“The Master is old,” Toby said, completely missing the look of horror that had crossed Lexi's face. “He's powerful, too. It has something to do with living in the old cabin in the woods. It's the Horned Man's house, and if he chooses you to live there he gives you powers—you know, like in a funny book. The Master's like a superhero, except he gets his powers from going out and sacrificing people to the Horned Man. He's really good at it. He's been doing it for a really long time.”

“He's killing people, Toby,” Lexi said. She tried to remember that she was talking to a psychotic child in a man's body—apparently, a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old man's body. “Innocent people who didn't do anything to him or you. People with lives and families…”

“Shoot, if they're like my family they were probably happy to be crossing the Master's path,” Toby said, smiling. “'Sides, Lexi, Master says the highway always brings him to his sacrifices, like dowsing for water—they meet him halfway. He did something when they first started building all them big roads all over America; he dedicated a sacrifice out on U.S. 281, near here, to the Horned Man, and he said that made the power moving through the highway pour straight into the Horned Man's house. He got a lot stronger after that. See, Lexi, it's all part of nature's plan, just like what he's doing tomorrow night.”

“Toby,” Lexi said, leaning forward, “Toby, me and Cole, we haven't done anything to you. We just had our car break down. Please, Toby, you can let us go.” Toby's eyes had shifted to her breasts as soon as she leaned toward him. “If … if you let us go, I'll be very grateful to you.”

She saw a rusted tire iron leaning against a stack of tire rims a few feet to the left of the bathroom door. She stood and slid her panties up as she did, letting Toby get just enough of a flash of pale skin to make sure she had his attention—well, at least the part of him that seemed to do his thinking. “If you help us, Toby, let us go, you can … touch me.”

She stepped out of the bathroom and sidestepped toward the crowbar, not looking at it but knowing where it rested. She was looking at Toby, focusing all her energy toward him. He was stronger, and she doubted that he felt pain as much as she did, but it was now or never.

“R-really?” Toby stammered. He actually licked his lips without even being aware that he had done so.

“You ever touched a girl before, Toby?” Lexi took another circular step toward the crowbar. Almost there.

“Not a live one,” Toby said as innocently as he might talk about petting a puppy. “Wald lets me touch the ones the Master's given him—the ‘scraps,' Wald calls them. After he's done with them, and slit their throats, I get them. Sometimes they're still twitching a little. I like it when they're still moving and warm. You're like that all the time, Lexi. That will be nice.”

She couldn't take any more, not after that. She lunged for the crowbar with a shriek and grabbed it. It seemed weightless in that terrifying instant, when she was made of dizzy terror and adrenaline. Toby realized what was happening just as she swung with all her might and struck him on the shoulder. He howled and staggered back, knocking over a large metal tool chest on wheels. The crashing of the tools and the chest sounded like the end of the universe. Toby rubbed his shoulder and looked at Lexi with a mixture of betrayal and rage. She wanted to keep hitting him, but she knew that if she pressed it he would grab her. She moved carefully toward Cole, who was opening his eyes and trying to sit up, stirred by the crashing tools. He failed and slumped back to the floor.