A light went on in the house.
Frank ducked behind a half-collapsed pile of old bricks, trying to not even breathe, afraid the witch would know he was here and come after him. He didn’t know for sure that the light had been turned on by the professor or that she was really a witch or that she had anything to do with what had gone on tonight, but he was not willing to take that chance, and he crouched lower. Spiderwebs tickled his face and arms—he even thought he felt the quick scurrying legs of the spider itself on the back of his wrist—but he remained in place, silent, unmoving, hoping and praying that the light would go off and she would go away.
The light did not go off. Another light went on. And a creaky door opened.
“I’m scared.”
The girl’s voice was right next to him, soft and frightened, and his heart started thumping hard. Sue, he thought. But it wasn’t Sue. This girl was dark-haired and dressed, wearing what looked like a Catholic school uniform: white blouse, blue skirt. She also looked vaguely familiar, and Frank thought that he had seen her before at the library or the park or the grocery store.
Had she been there the whole time? It was possible, but he had the feeling that she had crept over here from somewhere else, somewhere close, her own hiding place.
“I’m scared.”
“Shhh,” he told her, and the two of them remained quiet, waiting, but there was no further sound, no indication that anyone had come out of the house into the backyard.
His right leg was starting to cramp, and his left wrist still hurt from where he’d fallen on it. He shifted position until he was facing the girl and no longer had to turn his head to see her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, shiny like snail trails in the moonlight.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
She’d been sobbing quietly, but she pulled herself together, sniffled. “I just came here with two friends of mine. I didn’t even want to. They wanted to. They were going to … ask the shrine for… something. But they’re gone. I think they’re dead.”
Frank ignored the hair bristling on his arms. “What makes you think that?”
“There was this little burned doll. It was alive. And it… it…” She started sobbing again.
“What’s your name?” He thought if he could distract her, maybe she’d stop crying and start talking and he’d be able to find out some information.
“Cass,” she said.
“I’m Frank.”
They were still whispering, still very much afraid of being overheard and found out, and the whispering made everything seem so much more… intimate. It was a strange word to be using in such a time and place, but that’s how he felt. He’d never been so near to a girl before—
except Sue
—and despite the circumstances, or maybe because of them, there was something strangely exciting and exhilarating about their close quarters conversation.
“I go to John Adams,” he said.
She wiped her eyes, her nose. “Me, too.”
“I thought you looked familiar. What grade are you?”
“Seventh.”
“I’m in eighth.” Frank looked over her shoulder. He couldn’t see all of the house through the bushes, but he could see that both lights were still on. He heard no one else out here, though, no other sounds save their own breathing and whispers.
He didn’t know what else to say, and she obviously didn’t feel like talking, so they crouched there in silence. Cass shifted position, her fingers accidentally brushing the back of his hand, a touch that felt electric. He wanted to reach out, take her hand in his, hold it.
He shouldn’t be thinking of her like this. His mom had been killed, his dad was probably dead, Chase’s body was lying on the ground less than five feet away, Johnny and his parents had been murdered, and her friends were missing and probably dead. What the hell was wrong with him?
The door of the house creaked again—someone coming out? someone going back in?—and they both froze. Once more, there were no other sounds, no sign of activity, but they remained in place for a long rime afterward, not speaking, afraid to move.
Cass was no longer crying, no longer sniffling, and after what seemed like an hour of doing absolutely nothing but the minimum amount of breathing necessary to stay alive, Frank forced himself to relax a little. “Hey,” he whispered.
“Hey,” she said back.
“So what happened to your friends? Did you see it?”
Silence. At first he thought she was going to start crying again, then he thought she wasn’t going to answer, then finally she said softly, “I saw pan of it.”
When it became clear that she wasn’t going to say any more, he decided to try a different tack. “What were they going to ask for?”
“I don’t know,” she said quickly, embarrassed.
“Come on.”
“What were your friends going to ask for?”
“I asked you first.”
Even in the blue illumination of the moonlight, he thought he could see her redden. “A guy.”
Frank laughed. It was the first funny thing he had heard all night. She punched his shoulder. “So? What about you?”
“Two of us were just along for the ride. But our friend—
Chase
—was going to ask for—” Now it was his turn to redden. “—a girl.”
“Looks like we both got our wish, huh?”
He couldn’t see her face, she’d leaned back into the shadow, and he wasn’t sure how to take that. In his mind, she’d been smiling sadly, but maybe she had a different kind of expression on her face. Against his will, he felt himself responding, felt a stirring in his lap.
Again? Jesus. His mom was dead, his friends were dead, half the neighborhood was dead, and his dad was missing. How could he even think about such a thing at a time like this?
“Maybe we should try to get out of here,” he suggested. “Try to get some help.”
She nodded.
“You think we can make it? You think anyone’s out there?”
“Stay there. I’ll check.” She suddenly stood up to take a look around, and he could see up her skirt.
She wasn’t wearing any underwear.
Now he was completely aroused. It was too dark to see anything clearly, anything specific, but he saw darkness, saw hair, and it was the most exciting sight he had ever laid eyes on.
She quickly crouched back down again. “Let’s wait a minute,” she told him.
Frank looked at her, not sure if she was genuinely worried that they might not make it out of the witch’s backyard or if she merely wanted to remain here and spend more time with him. Did she know he could see up her skirt? Had she wanted him to look?
As if in answer, she moved a little closer. “I took off my underwear before I left the house,” she said. “We all did.”
He looked at her, saying nothing.
She knew he’d seen, she’d wanted him to see.
“We heard you and your friends talking,” she admitted. “You were wondering what it would taste like to… to… you know.” She glanced shyly away, nervously licked her lips. “Are you still curious?”
He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to respond. This was like a porno book. Or one of Chase’s lies about his brother.
“It’s okay if you—” she said quickly.
He swallowed hard. “Yes,” he managed to croak out.
Now it was her turn to be tongue-tied.
“I didn’t mean … I wasn’t trying to …” He let the thought nail off, not sure how to finish it.
Cass took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t mind if you… you know … did that.”
They looked at each other, both unsure of what to say next or how to proceed. He was the boy, he supposed he should be the one to take the initiative, so he reached up tentatively, put his arms around her waist, drawing her closer. She didn’t object, and slowly, he moved his head up under her skirt.
He kissed her there, stuc
k out his tongue, pressed it in.
She couldn’t have heard them talking, he realized. They hadn’t talked about that here. They’d talked about it in Chase’s house earlier in the afternoon.
His skin erupted in goosebumps.
She was one of them.
He should have known it. Nothing about this made any sense, scenes like this just didn’t happen in real life, and it was his own fault that he fell for it, that he went along with it. His friends and family were dead, and here he was indulging in some Penthouse Forum fantasy in the filthy backyard of a witch.
But why hadn’t she killed him yet? What did she want? What was she waiting for?
He couldn’t let her know he knew. Surprise was his only chance. So he wiggled his tongue around that area, kept licking. She’d been talking, saying something, and though he hadn’t been paying attention, he noticed now that she was no longer saying words. Her voice had turned into a mechanical squeak, the same sort of noise that the burned thing in the shrine had made. From the direction of the shrine came a pounding, an echoing boom that superceded all other sound.
It was now or never.
He tried to pull away, tried to slowly and unobtrusively move back, in preparation for a mad dash to get the hell out of here… but he could not. His lips were sealed to her genitals, and he felt something moving over his lips, creeping outward over the skin of his cheeks and chin and up by his nostrils. It was like a new skin was growing, fusing the two of them together, joining his lips to her vagina.
He and his friends would’ve joked about this, would’ve laughed if they’d read about it or heard it from someone else. “The dude musta died with a smile on his face,” he could imagine Chase saying. But it was real, it was here, and there was nothing funny about it.
He tried to yank his head away, but that produced only a sharp sensation of pain as the movement threatened to pull off the skin from the lower half of his face. He started punching her in the stomach as hard as he could, hoping it would get her to release him, wondering even as he did so whether she had any control of what was going on between her legs.
The punches seemed to have no effect, and that creeping skin was starting to cover up his nostrils, cutting off his air, so he felt blindly around until his fingers curled around one of the piled bricks. He gripped it tightly, then brought it up and slammed it against her side. There was no reaction, no response, not even any blood. The brick hit her skin and did no damage. She was squeaking loudly now, like a rusted train being pulled down unused tracks, and as her wet skin sealed shut his nostrils, fusing with his face, he knew that he was about to die.
Her skin tightened on his own, squeezing his head. Cartilage in his nose broke, splintered into fragments. The bones in his cheek shattered. He swallowed two teeth that popped out, held two others loose in his mouth. He was getting weak from the lack of oxygen. He dropped the brick, unable to hold it any longer, and his arms and legs dangled loosely, uselessly, as though his body were already dead and only his brain was still alive. He was being held up, suspended by their fused skin. And then …
And then …
He was let go. The skin of his face was his skin again, he was no longer connected to her, and he fell back onto the ground, the back of his head hitting the brick that he’d dropped. He felt a warm gush of blood. He wanted to sit up, wanted to roll away, but he could not move. He was too weak, and he realized with horror that although he was free from her, he had not been saved. He had been too hurt, had been without oxygen for too long, was losing too much blood. He was still dying, and unless he got to a hospital pretty damn quick, he was not going to make it.
Dad?
He could barely see, could not smell at all, and his right ear was filled with blood, making all sound muffled, but he was filled with the certainty that his father was here, nearby, and that he was okay, that he had not been harmed. A sense of relief flooded over him, and for the first time since that burned thing had killed Paul, he had the feeling that everything was going to be all right.
Above him, Cass was still standing, and as he watched she faded away, disappearing into the shadows, into the night, the most devastating expression on her face that he had ever seen, a look not only of the purest physical agony but of a knowledge so horrible that he could not even imagine what it might be.
He was fading himself, dying, his eyelids getting heavier, his vision more blurry, his strength ebbing. He thought he heard his father’s voice, somewhere close, saying “Take that” and he wanted to call out, tried to call out, knowing that if he could get his father’s attention, if his dad could just find him and speed him over to the hospital, all would be well.
But no sound emerged from his mouth, and he found that he could not even move his lips.
His eyes were completely closed now, permanently shut, and he knew finally and with certainty that he was not going to make it. He heard his dad’s voice fading away, heard everything fading away. On his tongue, he could still taste the girl, still taste her sex.
It did taste like honey, he thought.
It did.
It did.
GIL
I don’t know why I didn’t go to work. I don’t know what made me stay home. Pan of it was that I hated the swing shift. I’d been transferred over from graveyard the week before, and while most people think graveyard’s a bitch, it’s a cakewalk compared to swing. Now, I’ve never been one of those guys to use sick days to attend my kid’s baseball game or band concert or school play. Hell, I don’t even use them when I’m really sick. But somehow the prospect of another night of swing, combined with the fact that it was Friday and yesterday I’d been denied a vacation in October that corresponded with Lynn’s … well, let’s just say that the decision to play hooky wasn’t a tough one to make.
I called the plant and told them I wouldn’t be coming in. Luckily, I didn’t have to talk to a real person. I don’t think I could’ve gone through with it if 1 did; I’m not a very good liar. But I got Human Resources’s answering machine—maybe a lot of other people were calling in sick, too—and I quickly left my message and then took the phone off the hook so they wouldn’t be able to call me back.
Home free.
Even though it wasn’t a school night, Lynn made Frank go to bed at eight. He’d done something he wasn’t supposed to before dinner, and while she’d told me about it, I’d only half been paying attention and didn’t really know what it was. Still, I automatically supported her, and when he appealed to me for clemency, I said, “You heard your mother.”
Afterward, the two of us sat on the couch in the living room, snuggling together, watching TV, and it was just like the old times before we had Frank. I was even thinking that I might get lucky. Her pants were unbuttoned, the way they often were after a full dinner, and when I slipped my hand inside them she didn’t object like she usually did and push me away, looking over her shoulder to make sure Frank wasn’t creeping up on us. She let my hand stay there, my fingers pressed against her crotch, and it was nice.
Then Aarfy started barking. That stupid dog was howling up a storm, desperate to go out, and I realized that no one had taken him for a walk after dinner. I’d thought it was Frank’s turn; he’d obviously thought it was mine, so even though it was late, already after nine, I got up off the couch, leashed him up and took him once around the block.
We were almost home when it happened. Aarfy was making one last pit stop at the fire hydrant in front of the Millers’ when I heard screams. It sounded like a bunch of kids, but when I looked up I saw only one guy running toward me.
“Mr. Marotta! Mr. Marotta!”
It was one of the Pittman kids, the older one (I could never remember his name), speeding down the sidewalk, waving his arms. There was panic in his voice, and when he got closer 1 could see that his shirt was torn. There was a big dark stain on it, and while I didn’t know what it was, my first thought was: blood.
Then he reached me, and I saw that it was one of those shirts
that was supposed to be torn and the dark stain was a picture of a monster or something. Still, he was panicked, terrified, and I held up my hand. “Slow down there, bud, slow down. What seems to be the problem?”
I thought it might be a dog that got hit by a car, or maybe even that his mom had a heart attack or had been beaten by his dad. But I wasn’t prepared for the story he told me. It came in confused bits and pieces. He was too rattled to think straight, but I was able to jigsaw fit his frightened disjointed utterances, and what he said seemed unbelievable. He and his friend Paul had snuck into the backyard of the pig sty next to Ed Chris-tensen’s house because there was supposed to be a shrine hidden there that could grant wishes if you approached it in the right way and were willing to pay the price it asked. They hadn’t even gotten around to asking, though, when a monster that looked like a burned-up doll came creeping out of a hole in the middle of the shrine. The Pittman kid was afraid of it, but his friend Paul had a weird reaction and bowed down before it like he was worshiping a god. Then the monster touched Paul and whispered in his ear, and he started having some sort of spastic fit, slamming his own head down on the ground until he’d split it open and was dead.
I wasn’t sure how much of this I actually believed, but I believed it more than I usually would have just because of the kid’s panic. He was terrified, he’d seen something that scared the living shit out of him, and whether he’d added or embellished or exaggerated, I thought the crux of his story was true. Something bad had happened in the backyard of that house and now his friend was dead.
I’d never seen the woman who lived in the house at the end of the cul de sac. In fact, I only knew chat a woman lived there because Ed had told me about her, although I’m not sure he’d ever seen her either. She was supposed to be a teacher at the JC, some sort of physics or philosophy professor. Her house was a mess, the front yard a jungle of dead trees and overgrown weeds, the backyard even worse, and Ed and Tony and some of the other neighborhood neatniks had circulated a petition to have the city crack down on what they said were health code violations. I’d been tempted not to sign it just on general principles. A person’s house wasn’t a democracy. Neighbors didn’t get to vote on how it looked. It was a dictatorship. And the owner had the complete and total right to do whatever he wanted with his house and his land.
Four Dark Nights Page 5