The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror (34 page)

“Shut up,” Keith ordered, took his hand and pressed it to the tree.

Ian struggled, tears filling his eyes because he knew he’d angered his friend and didn’t know what to do next.

“Feel it!” Keith snapped, and dragged the boy’s palm over the bark. “Feel it!”

Ian fought him for half a minute before looking away to stare at the tree, before standing and using both hands to read it like Braille. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Keith, is it some kind of new tree?”

“Don’t be a dope,” Keith told him angrily. “The thing’s made of stone!”

Dirk couldn’t make up his mind whether to stand up, sit down, use a crouch, climb the tree, or get down on his hands and knees and go after Archie. There were three slender trunks to the caged birch, two of them in his hands, one foot propped for support against the back one. He saw the hand rise and fall again, and was positive that this time he had seen part of her bare knee and a white sliver of thigh.

God god god, he thought; Archie, you creep, you’re gonna ruin it all.

One hand slipped then and and he fell forward. The side of his head slammed against the white bark, and he bit down on his lower lip to keep the pain and the bright lights inside.

Damned thing’s like glass, he thought, and kicked back as hard as he could to teach the tree a lesson.

Archie couldn’t believe his luck, and wished Barry were here to see what real luck is. Right out here was this woman taking off all her clothes. She knew he was watching; he could tell. He really could tell. He knew she was doing it just for him, and when that hand came up like that a second time and it waved at him like that, he almost dropped his pants he was so surprised. Now his fingers were hurting from holding up all that weight, but he didn’t dare drop to his knees or they’d get all cut up, and he didn’t dare stand because then she would see him before he got any closer.

He didn’t want to take the chance that he was wrong, and he didn’t want any of the stupid guys to come out and get him. That’d be just like them, to screw things up just when he got lucky. Too bad the four-eyed shrimp was along; he didn’t know diddly about women, he was too little, and all those stupid questions . . .

The flower bed rose like a wall ahead, and he forced himself to slow down. The light was dim, but he could still see through the stems a jigsaw piece of her skin, white and soft and shivering a little. He licked his lips, tried to suck in his stomach, and after a moment’s hesitation decided to try to get even closer.

There was just enough room between the outer stems for him to slip through without much trouble. But he moved slowly, so carefully it seemed as if he wasn’t moving at all.

She was there, right there now. He could see more of one leg, and holy Jesus that was her breast he was looking at! There it was, as big as the women he had seen in the magazines his father kept in the bottom drawer of his dresser, under the sweaters. Big. Humongous! Shaking a little, the nipple brown and covered with little brown dots.

He had no idea what he was going to do when he finally got there, but he was sure glad Keith wasn’t with him. If he had come, he would have to tell him that he’d been lying about all the virgin stuff, and Keith wouldn’t ever let him forget it.

The stems were closer together toward the middle, and he began to lose sight of her as his shoulders pushed them aside, and they snapped back like whips. He swiveled his head to look up at the blossoms, and looked back just as the stems started to sway again.

He hadn’t touched them.

They were moving, and he hadn’t touched them.

Something slammed suddenly and sharply across his hips. He barely restrained a yelp, and cursed as he swung his head around to see who had gotten close enough to throw the damned stone.

The flower swayed.

There was no wind.

He looked ahead again, upper lips curled as he searched for the woman, and again he was struck, this time on the left shoulder. When he looked, something hit him on the right, and immediately on the rump. He couldn’t help crying out then, more in rage than in pain, but when he tried to stand up to defend himself he was cracked on the head.

“Hey, damn you, Keith, Dirk, cut it out!”

There were pretty whirling stars—he thought that was only in the cartoons—and there was a pain that brought unashamed tears to his eyes.

He stared, hoping the naked woman in the flowers hadn’t heard him, but he groaned when he realized it was no use, she was gone; there was nothing ahead but the damned rattling flowers, and strands of stray mist that slipped between the stems to coil on the ground.

“Aw . . . shit!” He spat, rolled over until he was sitting, and glared back in the direction he’d just taken. “Aw, damn!”

He flung out a hand, and his knuckles struck one of the stems. He opened his mouth to yell, but nothing came out. His fingers closed around the green, and he stared at it, puzzled.

Jeez, he thought, that thing feels like—

A flower slammed into his temple, and he jerked away, cupping the stinging wound with a palm; a flower cracked across the back of his skull, cracked over his right knee, cracked against his arm and he fell back, sobbing, looking and realizing it wasn’t Keith or Dirk or even the kid.

A beautiful white blossom raked across his ankle, and he felt the blood flowing.

A soft yellow blossom nearly gouged out his eye, and opened his cheek.

Finally, as he rolled helplessly side to side, finally Archie screamed.

The stone flowers swayed, back and snapping forward.

The stone blossoms beat fiercely and rapidly against his limbs, against his chest, against the forearms that were thrown protectively over his eyes.

He heard Dirk screaming.

And the stone petals sliced easily through his shirt, swiftly through his trousers, exposing the black-and-purple welts that swelled on his skin until they burst into red flowers that ran down his side.

Swaying.

Clacking.

Twisting, and bending, and beating Archie to death.

Dirk saw Archie vanish into the flower bed, and decided that the game was over. Any second now that crazy women was going to jump up screaming and hollering and wanting their blood, and before they knew it their folks would be in here with whips a hundred feet long to take off their hides.

The dumb shit.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust, looked over at Keith and Ian and lifted his hands:
what can I say? The sucker blew it.

But Ian and Keith were staring wide-eyed at the flower bed. Dirk peered between the trunks, waving a hand in front of him as if hoping to disperse some of the gloom so he could get a better look.

The flowers were moving.

It must have been Archie plowing his stupid way through, but the flowers were moving, swaying back and forth, drawing wider and wider arcs in the air, finally whipping so fast that their colors began to blur, blur and hurt his eyes.

Archie yelled.

Dirk saw a red blossom rise and fall, and heard a spongy thud, another, saw a yellow blossom lash forward and come back up, dripping red.

Archie was screaming, begging for help.

The flowers, Dirk thought in numb astonishment, holy shit, they’re killing him!

He lunged forward, pushing hard with his foot off the trunk behind him, and grunted in surprise when he discovered that he couldn’t slip out between the boles of the cage the way he had slipped in. There was no time for figuring it out, though. Archie’s screams were filling his ears and making his head hurt, and tears were in his eyes as he spun around and tried to get out another way.

Above him, the leaves clattered together; around him the trunks moved slowly inward.

He put his back to one and grabbed another in both hands. And pushed. Red-faced, sweating, spittle bubbling out of his mouth. He pushed again, harder, and his elbows bent inward. Archie screamed. Dirk closed his eyes, lowered his head, and pushed.
Pushed.
Felt his upper arms sliding back along his ribs, felt his legs straighten as the trunks pressed against his knees.

The leaves clattered and fell around him, bouncing off his head and stunning him not with their weight but with their number, leaves of stone cutting his hair, his scalp, rasping the skin from his nose and cleaving his chin.

“Keith!” he shrieked. “Keith! Help, Keith!”

Archie screamed.

The tops of the three birches merged and spilled their leaves, and the trunks began to wind around each other from the crown, turning slowly, grinding, while Dirk shrieked and wept and the ground beneath him rumbled, while the slick stone bark rubbed the skin from his muscle, rubbed the muscle from his bone, and finally closed tightly, leaving only an arm dangling from the center, only a leg kicking at the ground, two inches above it.

A leaf landed on Dirk’s shoe, and bounced off, and shattered.

Ian began screaming the moment Dirk did. He jumped around and waved his arms because he didn’t know which direction he should take. Archie was out there dying, and Dirk was over there dying, and he couldn’t think of anything to do but shout and shake his hands and wonder why Keith was just standing there, staring at him like that.

“Keith,” he sobbed. “Keith, we gotta—”

“Shut the hell up,” Keith said with a snarl, picking a stone off the ground and shaking it in his face. “Shut up, shrimp, before I bash your head in.”

But he couldn’t shut up, he had to keep talking, had to keep yelling or else he would hear Dirk and Archie and the way they were crying and the way they were begging and this wasn’t the way the Mohawks were supposed to be, this wasn’t the way Keith said it would be at all.

Keith threw the stone anyway, and it bounced off his chest, making him stagger back and clutch his shirt. His glasses flew off when the next one came too close to his head and he had to jerk away.

“Keith! Keith, stop it!”

Keith told him to shut up, and though he could barely see, Ian knew it didn’t sound very much like his friend. It was a different voice, and he even looked sort of different, and when he picked up another stone, Ian started to run.

There was no trail to follow, but he was always proud of the way he would never get lost because he had what his mother said was a great sense of direction. So he ran, dodging around the trees, listening to Keith shouting at him to come back, come back, it was all right, he wouldn’t get hurt if he would only come back.

He ran anyway, shouting until he was hoarse, crying until his eyes dried up and there were only knife-blade sobs that made his chest hurt and made his stomach hurt and made him stumble into the trees that were made of stone.

The ground began to shake then.

He faltered—there’s no such thing as an earthquake here, move, move, move!—and ran on, scrubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes so he could see better, not looking back because he knew Keith was chasing him, looking for big stones he could throw that would hurt him. He ran around what was supposed to be a birch tree, and as he passed heard it
craaaack
in half and thunder to the ground just after he left it.

Another one, big and dark, falling right beside him, a branch sandpapering down the length of his back, ripping his shirt into gleaming pink tatters, into flapping bloodied ribbons, making him fall onto the grass because the pain was so bad and he could feel the running wet spreading over his back.

He leapt to his feet when he heard Keith yelling.

He spun around, but he was awake, it wasn’t a nightmare and he wasn’t home in his bed.

He ran, swerving blindly—I can’t see, I can’t see! Ma, I can’t see!—when yet another stone tree split and splintered at its base and thundered down to crush him. It missed him by less than the breadth of a shadow. Fragments of stone chipped into the air and rained over his head, cutting him, hurting him, making him shriek, and Keith was getting closer and closer and calling his name, it’s all right, Ian, it’s all right, if you stop they won’t hurt you, stop running, they won’t hurt you.

The thunder again, the ground shook and rumbled, and Keith suddenly sounded just as afraid as he was— and he couldn’t help it, he had to look back because that was the old Keith, the one who was his friend, not the one who wanted to hurt him.

He stopped to look back.

And he blinked.

At the weeping willow behind him, growing and growing and growing and growing and all he could say was “oh” before it slammed him to the ground.

6

6:45

Doug thought the screaming came from inside, then heard it again and leapt back from the stoop. He whirled to his right and saw Keith racing toward him through the odd grey light. The boy was waving frantically, his strides awkward as though exhaustion were about to drive him into the ground. He stumbled twice. The first time, Doug started for him at a hurried walk, calling out and waving a hand to show him he was there; after the second, he was spurred into running himself, seeing the boy’s fear-widened eyes and the horrid contorted features.

They met in a collision, fifty feet from the house.

Keith in his panic tried to swerve away, but Doug lunged to his left to snare the boy’s chest. They fell in a writhing tangle, the boy calling for help until, amid the rolling and kicking, they butted foreheads. The sharp pain dazed them both slightly, but it gave him the chance to gather Keith into an embrace and rock him until he finally quieted down.

“What?” he said then, gently. “What happened, chief?”

“The trees,” the boy said, sobbing again.

Doug looked to the estate’s far corner, saw nothing but the grass and a hard-to-pierce shadow-wall where the hill behind ended its slope. There were no trees, n shrubs.

“Keith,” he said, stroking the boy’s hair. “Keith, where’s the Gang, huh? Where’s Heather? They leave you out there all alone?”

“Heather . . .” He fell silent for a moment, struggling to remember, then lifted his head. “Heather said she was going to feed Maggie. She said she was hungry and ought to be fed.”

Thank god, he thought as the boy wiped his eyes and nose with a sleeve.