“Come on!” Dale whispered harshly to Donna, who stood there, unable to turn the doorknob clenched in her hand as she watched, fascinated with horror.
“Open the fucking door!”
“You!” Rodgers’ voice suddenly boomed in the room as his face peered around the door jamb.
Dale and Rodgers locked eyes for a frozen instant, then Dale shouldered Donna aside, turned the doorknob, and slammed the lab door open. The harsh smell of formaldehyde was like a solid wall in the room, and Dale had the instant impression that he had suddenly plunged under water. Pulling Donna in behind him, he started to swing the door shut; but when he chanced one last glance over his shoulder, he saw something that took all of the nerve from him.
Rodgers had moved back into the display room, but he hadn’t begun pursuit. Instead, he was standing with his finger pointing to the lab door. His voice like iron when he riveted his eyes on Larry Cole, sitting up in his coffin, and shouted, “Get them!”
V
Lisa woke up about an hour after everyone had left her room. She had some vague sense of people milling around her bed, but she had been lost, spinning backward into a dizzying yet, in a strange sort of way, fun darkness. The feeling was cold, tingling every nerve in her body, but it also had a measure of reassurance, as though she had somehow been transported out of her body.
When her eyes flickered open, though, she knew something was dreadfully wrong! The lamp beside her bed was still on, but the light it shed burned her eyes, making the edges of everything dance with a ripple of vibrating red. She squinted her eyes tightly shut, but the afterimages remained, dancing and weaving with light that for some reason had a sense of touch to it.
How can you feel light? she wondered, as a low whimper struggled inside her for release.
She couldn’t tell how long she lay there, lost in darkness spiked with points of hard light. She tried to will herself out of her body again, to get back to the pleasant darkness, but something held her down, as if hundreds of tiny fish hooks had pierced her flesh and pinned her to the bed, not letting her escape.
Sweat streamed down her face, mixing with the tears that seeped from underneath her closed eyelids. Her hair was plastered against her forehead. She was distantly aware of all of this, but worse than that, she felt as though her very bones were being tormented into different shapes. Her skin and muscles twitched with wet, snake-like ripples, and a distant corner of her mind filled with the fear that she was somehow going to slough off her skin, as a snake does, or worse that her skin was going to crawl away from her on its own accord.
With a sudden, gut-wrenching shout, she sat up in her bed, forcing her eyes to open in spite of the pain that dropped down on her in one heavy, smothering load. Her bedroom was alive with energy. The dark rectangle of the window was dancing with fingers of blue light, slow-motion lightning touched her bed and bureau and reading chair. It touched everything in a slow, sinuous dance. Colors ran and melted into each other, twisting like bubbly plastic, and everywhere light fragmented into bright prisms.
A sound like thunder rumbled behind her. Turning, she looked in horror as two things lurched in through her door and came slowly toward the bed. The light from the hallway behind them poured like a waterfall into the room and seemed to sweep these things up and carry them toward her. There were dark spirals where their faces should have been, and long, tangled fingers reached out of the spirals, grabbing for her throat.
”No… No!” Lisa screamed. Her words reverberated and got increasing louder, rather than fading. In her mind, every syllable she spoke became a different colored foam.
The two dark shapes loomed over her, and Lisa was sure that, within seconds, she would feel a crashing weight flatten the life out of her. She flailed wildly, kicking free of her covers that held her like claws as she scrambled away from the onrushing creatures.
“What’s… the… matter… Lisa?” a voice as cold as death booked. It was so close to her ears it hurt. Each word was drawn out with sludgy, thunder-rolling slowness.
Lisa stood up as tall as she could, stretching to challenge these beings before they got her.
“Go away! Leave me alone!” she wailed, as she battered at them in a flurry of fists.
“It’s… me… Lisa!” the voice droned.
“Go away! Go away!”
The waterfall of light, sparkling silver like a river in the sun, caught her eye. Coiling up all of her strength, Lisa ran past the figures; she dove into the light and, as though her legs belonged to someone else, was transported down the stairs and toward the front door.
“Lisa… wait!” the voice boomed from up stairs, but Lisa plunged through the door and into the night. Her fleeing footsteps rang hollowly on the walkway, like hammers on stones. All around her, the night jumped and sparkled with trembling purple light. At first it briefly hurt her eyes to look around as she ran as fast as she could from the house. Everywhere she turned, though, it didn’t look like night at all or day, for that matter. The world was suffused with rippling violet light, and now that the threat of those creatures that had tried to destroy her was past, Lisa’s mind was fixed on one thought on her mind…
She was hungry!
VI
Dale watched as Larry swung his legs out of the coffin and dropped to the floor. For just an instant, his legs sagged, and, like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, he looked as though he was going to collapse; but then came Rodgers’ harsh command: “I said get them!”
“Come on, Dale! Run!” Donna shouted as she tugged on his arm.
Dare suddenly snapped to and shouldered the door shut. His fingers fumbled to throw the dead bolt lock, but if he hadn’t been leaning against the door, it would have flung open when something slammed into it with a heavy thud.
“There’s a door to get out of here!” Donna shouted from the far side of the lab.
Dale was still leaning against the door, afraid that thing out there would smash through the door as if it were balsa wood. It’s no longer Larry! he thought. It’s a dead thing! He tried not to imagine those rotted hands, reaching through the splintered door and grabbing him by the throat.
“Come on!” Donna shouted.
Dale found the courage to lean away from the door, but when he turned to run, his eyes finally registered what was all around him. There were three marble slabs, arranged side by side, each one illuminated by a powerful stainless steel overhead work light. Neatly arranged on the slabs and in several handcarts was a wide assortment of tools that looked like surgical instruments. Dale tried hard not to imagine what they were used for. In one corner of the lab there was a large plastic-lined trash can. Sticking up over the rim were two shriveled human arms.
On each slab there was a human corpse, two men and one woman. Each was in a different state of decomposition. The freshest looking one, a young man, was strapped down. As Dale looked at it, he was positive he saw the muscles working against the restraint of the straps.
“Do you see what’s going on in this place?” he shouted, stripping his throat raw, “Look at this!”
Donna was fumbling with one hand to undo the lock and banging the door with her other hand. “I don’t want to see! I don’t want to know!” she wailed.
Dale tore his eyes from the ghoulish specimens spread out on the slabs and dashed over to the door. He practically tore the lock off and, flinging the door open wide, ran out into the night, dragging Donna along behind him. Just as they left the room, they heard the locked door burst open with a loud shattering of wood.
“Run like a bastard!” Dale shouted as he and Donna started off across the lawn toward the woods. Their minds were filled with images of Larry Cole, stumbling after them in the darkness with his dead arms reaching out, his senseless fingers burning to crush their throats. And Dale couldn’t forget what he had heard Rodgers tell Higgins.
“It’s not as though we haven’t, on occasion, arranged a bit of an accident…”
Suddenly the whole of Rodgers’ bac
k yard was flooded with light as every spotlight winked on. Dale and Donna cast long, wavering shadows as they ran, not daring to look back to see how close the pursuing thing that had been Larry was getting.
“You’ll regret this, Mr. Harmon!” a voice suddenly shouted, cutting through the night and echoing all around. “You’ll regret this dearly!”
Dale’s lungs were burning, and his mind was numb with terror and grief over what had become of Larry Cole; but as they ran, he managed to say to Donna, “Don’t worry!… He’s just trying to scare us!”
“He’s doing a… damned… good job,” she said, breathlessly.
They made it down to the road and ran furiously back to the parked car. Dale’s hands were shaking wildly as he fumbled to get the keys from his pants pocket and into the door lock. “Hell of a time to worry about locking the car doors!” he shouted at himself.
“Hurry! Hurry!” Donna yelled. She was looking back at the house, now all lit up as brightly as if for Christmas. Around one side of the house, she saw a dark, stumbling figure heading toward the road with lurching strides. When the figure stepped out into the light, she gasped.
Dale finally got the key into the slot, popped the lock, and swung the door open. One hand reached to open Donna’s door as the other fumbled the key into the ignition.
“Don’t choke it out,” Donna said as she dropped onto her seat and slammed her door shut. She locked it, although she was convinced it would do her little good if that thing ever caught up with them. She could see it getting closer to the road, but it seemed to be running with little purpose, darting this way and that, like a bloodhound searching for a scent.
Dale stepped down hard on the accelerator as he cranked the key, and the car mercifully started right up. The engine whined as he floored the gas and popped the clutch. In a shower of dirt and leaves, the car spun out onto the road, its tires squealing as they left twin streaks of black rubber on the tar.
Both Dale and Donna were panting, their lungs burning and their legs aching from their sudden dash. Dale’s relief at getting away was so overwhelming as he sped down Mayall Road toward Main Street that it all suddenly struck him as extremely funny.
What they had seen in Rodgers’ Funeral Home was… funny!
What was happening to the people of Dyer was... funny!
These people couldn’t even die and make an end of it. Instead, as in life, they ended up still working in the potato fields… forever! And that was… simply hilarious!
“Dale…” Donna’s voice said, cutting into his thoughts like a rusty razor blade.
“Huh? What?” He shook his head and tore his eyes away from the road ahead. Curled around the steering wheel, his fingers felt as though they would never straighten out. That, too, struck Dale as funny.
I’m losing it! his mind screamed. I’m heading straight off the deep end!
“I said I think we’d better try to find Winfield,” Donna said, her voice trembling almost to the breaking point. “Rodgers knows it was us, and unless you want both of us to end up like Larry…” She cut herself short, and Dale saw her tremble with the thought.
“I know, I know,” he said, forcing his mind to calm down. Take it easy! he told himself. Let what you’ve seen absorb slowly, and then maybe it will start to make sense.
He automatically snapped on his turn signal for the turn by the town hall to the police station. Just as he made the turn, he saw a small figure dart into a doorway, away from the sweep of headlights.
“Hey!” Donna said, twisting to look behind them. “Didn’t that look like Lisa Grant? Mrs. Appleby’s granddaughter?”
Dale shook his head quickly. “No. What would she be doing out this time of night? I just hope to hell Winfield’s at the station!”
VII
“I’m sorry,” the desk officer said. The nameplate on the front of the desk read: “Officer on Duty—Sgt. Ernie Brooks.” He was speaking into the telephone and nodded a greeting when Dale and Donna burst into the police station. Donna didn’t recognize his name from when she was growing up, but she figured he was probably one of the Brooks boys whose family lived out on Pole Hill Road. Most likely, he had been a few years behind her in school.
“I understand that,” Officer Brooks continued, “but you have to understand that I’m a bit short-handed. I can’t send anyone out to look for her until the patrol officer gets back from the call he’s on presently.” He paused to look at Donna and Dale, rolling his eyes ceilingward. “I understand that you’re upset… I know, but I can’t leave the station unattended, now, just to go… I understand. Yes, I will. Thank you.”
With that, he hung up and, rubbing his forehead with the flat of his hand, said, “Damn! For a slow Monday night, things sure as hell are jumping. What can I do for you?”
Dale raked his fingers through his hair and hurriedly tried to compose himself. If Donna’s looks were any gauge, they must look like quite the pair, Dale thought, standing there disheveled and panting, with sweat glistening on their faces.
“I was hoping Jeff might be on duty tonight,” Dale said. He had to fight the urge to burst out laughing when he considered what Winfield’s reaction would be when they told him what they discovered at Rodgers’ or that Larry Cole had attacked them! At least he still had the tape, the only concrete evidence that this all wasn’t some wild hallucination or nightmare.
Brooks shook his head and took a sip of coffee. “Jeff’s on days this week,” he said. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
Dale opened his mouth, about to spill the entire story in a rush; but then he felt Donna’s hand tighten on his, so instead he shook his head. “Uh… No, I guess not. We had some personal business with him.”
They started to turn for the door when Brooks stood up behind the desk. “You’re sure I can’t help you?” he asked.
The expression on his face was sincere, but Dale thought right away there was no way he would be able to convince this man what they had seen was real. He and Donna simultaneously shook their heads.
“Well, when he left here,” Brooks said, “he said he was going to head out to check… Damn! I can’t recall where it was he said he was going… out to check somebody’s house. If he was on-duty, I’d have logged it, but… Anyway, after that, I figure he’d head on home if he didn’t stop at Kellerman’s for supper, first.”
“Could you call him at home?” Donna asked.
Brooks shrugged, picked up the phone, and quickly dialed the number from memory. He waited what seemed like an awfully long time to Dale, then with another shrug, hung up the receiver.
“No answer. Your best bet is to check down at Kellerman’s. You can tell whether or not he’s there ’cause his cruiser’ll be parked out front.”
“Thanks a lot,” Dale said as he turned on his heel and left. Donna followed close behind him. At the exit, as a precaution, they both stopped cold and peered out into the darkness. They were expecting at any moment to see a dark figure shamble toward them across the parking lot.
Dale opened the door a crack and looked along both sides of the building. “Looks okay to me,” he said.
“You folks all right?” Brooks shouted from down the hallway.
Dale glanced to the right and saw a water fountain. “Just getting a drink, officer.” To convince him, Dale flipped the fountain on and off a few times. “You ready?” he asked, looking at Donna.
She was standing at the door, her face pressed against the glass as she looked out on the night. With a quick nod, she knocked the door open with her hip, and they both hurried across the parking lot to Dale’s car. The station door slammed shut behind them with a loud clang.
Dale chanced a quick glance over his shoulder, and he saw a flurry of motion in the darkness near the side of the building; but he wasn’t about to go over and check it out. He glanced quickly into the back seat, saw that it was empty, then unlocked Donna’s door and went around to the driver’s side. Just as he was sliding in behind the steering wheel, he
saw something move up the stairs by the station door. A shifting reflection made it look as though the glass door had swung open and shut again. He started up the car and cut a tight circle and drove around toward the front of the building.
“So…” Dale said as he slowed for the left onto Main Street. “Where do we go from here?”
Donna was silent for a moment, and when she responded, it was with nothing more than a tight squeak. Dale turned to her and immediately saw what the problem was. Heading straight toward the side of the car was a pair of glaring headlights.
“Mother-humper!” Dale shouted as he slammed the accelerator to the floor. The oncoming car darted out at them from the Baptist Church parking lot with cobra-like swiftness. With a squeal of tires, Dale’s car shot forward just before impact, and as he gained speed going down Main Street, he saw, in the rear view mirror, the long, black car swerve and straighten out.
“He’s after us,” Dale saw, setting his mouth in a firm line as he sped down Main Street. His mind clicked faster than the cylinders of this car
Where the hell are the cops now, when you need them? Dale thought bitterly. As a matter of fact, where the hell was anyone? The entire town looked deserted, and it was only eleven o’clock. Had Rodgers known they were at the station and had just waited there for this chance? Or had he just been out cruising, waiting to, literally, bump into them?
“This is your neck of the woods,” he said to Donna. “Where the hell can I go where I can shake him off our tail?”
Donna grunted and pointed to the blinking yellow light up ahead. “Turn left there. Maybe we can outdistance him there. The road’s going to get a bit rough, but it doesn’t have the twists and turns Route 2-A has.”
Dale took the turn fast, and he felt a swelling of satisfaction that his car held the road firmly. When he glanced at the gas gauge, though, his heart skipped a beat. There was only a quarter of a tank left; if this turned into a long chase, they were going to end up sputtering to a pitiful conclusion somewhere on a dark, deserted road.
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