Chuck Waller was so deep inside Mindy Shackleford that he felt like he was diggin’ for clams. Ah, he loved it, loved the feeling of banging her, the thumpity of the hump (he liked to make up words around “the slappy whap of the ugly tap,” as he called sex) and she clung to him like a monkey on the bars of the zoo. He loved reaching the heights of pleasure as it all just ran away from him—the thudding, thumping drumbeat of lust pounding out against flesh.
Chuck was never happier than at these moments, and even though he didn’t like Mindy too much in any other department, she was a vacuum cleaner of a lonely middle-aged housewife whose husband was always away, and whose kiddies never were around when she brought him into the house and had him make love on her teenage daughter’s bed.
He had this whole routine of servicing some of the lonely and horny and sometimes single mothers in the village who were just a little bit older than he was and looking for a little fun when the kids were off somewhere else.
Slap, slam, thank you ma’am, you know baby I don’t give a damn. He let it all out—a growl, a moan, a gruff deep “oh yeah,” and then something happened that had never in his entire adult life happened before. He began to float a little. Not really him. Just something in him. His mind. His consciousness. He felt as if he were whooshed up behind himself, watching the lurches and jackrabbit thwack of his buttocks as he went with the old in-out, and he had never noticed how hairy his back had become over the years, now that he was in his thirties, and how he had a little bit of back fat and a spare tire, too. It all jiggled as he plunged into her depths. It was a sensation he didn’t like. He should have been watching her face for that wonderful sign that she knew he had her pinned, like a butterfly in a little glass case, but instead he watched the back of himself—his round small bald spot almost like a monk’s tonsure, the freckles on his shoulders, and even worse a bit fat zit on his rear end, which made him think he was ugly and kind of gross, not the king of the world as he had been feeling.
I am the king, he thought, and he still felt that buzzing pleasure in his loins, but looking at himself he felt nasty and dirty. Then he noticed her face, from the distance where his consciousness floated—she wasn’t enjoying it. He saw her eyes—she was somewhere other than beneath him. She didn’t love it. She wasn’t an animal in heat. She was just some woman in her early fifties who dreamed of the past too much. She was just thinking she was a teenager again, thinking of another time and another bedroom where maybe she felt loved and taken care of.
But not under him.
Then whoosh! Again he felt a hammer crack his head as darkness enveloped his mind, and he was right back in his body again, looking down at her.
Only she was different.
She was dead.
A dead body.
For some reason, he remembered something that Mindy had told him once, something silly and affectionate when they’d been groping each other down at the multiplex in Poughkeepsie, “My fuck place is a little bit worn out, sugar.” She still clung to that Southern accent even after twenty years in New York State without one visit to Georgia since her first child had been born. When she’d said it during a showing of The Ring, he had laughed out loud because he’d never heard her be quite so specific and blunt about anything regarding sex, even though their relationship mainly consisted of bouts of the old in-out.
And those words came to him as he looked down at her corpse.
My fuck place is a little bit worn out, sugar.
He was sure of it.
Eyes were all blank and staring and her mouth was agape, and her skin was somewhere between pale white and light blue.
My fuck place is a little bit worn out, sugar.
In his memory, her voice was like pulled taffy from a Deep South candyman in Savannah—Mah fuck playice is a leeddel bit who-wen ow-et, shu-gah.
He felt different on the inside now, and something about the way the room around him wavered a bit like a flickering candle flame made him realize that he’d entered a dream.
He drew back from Mindy’s body, and lay on his side using his elbow to prop up his head.
Your fuck place, Mindy? Worn out?
Hell yeah, he thought. What the hell, it’s beyond worn out.
It’s split up the middle.
Shu-gah.
Mindy was definitely dead—her breasts had begun rotting, and half her torso was split up the middle as if someone had taken the Jaws of Life to her and just cut her open. He held tight to the idea that this was a dream, but as it went, he became more convinced that it was—for the room was no longer Mindy Shackleford’s daughter’s bedroom with its posters of Justin Timberlake and other boy band pop stars of the moment.
It was a much larger room, more elaborate, with a large gold harp in a far corner, and a door that looked as if it had been carved by master craftsmen in some Italian mansion; the four-poster bed they lay upon was long and wide and had a thick blanket of deep red over snow-white sheets. Above them, a canopy as blue as heaven itself.
Wake up, he said within himself. Wake up. You’re dreaming too much. Something might happen.
What might happen?
Something. I’m afraid.
He hated admitting fear in real life, but in a dream Chuck Waller had no problem being scared shitless.
Narcolepsy, came the word. He hated the word. He suffered from it and he hated it and no matter what medication he tried, none of them worked. And he’d been trying them since he’d been nineteen, when he’d first begun experiencing the sudden sleepiness. The latest round of amphetamines he was using must’ve triggered this—this too-vivid vision. That’s it. It’s the drugs. Too high a dose. I still fall asleep, but I get this bizarre psycho dream where Mindy’s been cut open and I’m in some rich man’s bedroom. But usually he simply blacked out into sleep and awoke a few minutes later.
Now and then, he’d experience hypnogogia—that hallucinatory half-dreaming, half-waking state ... but it was never like this.
His tongue felt dry in his mouth. His limbs, sore. He even felt sleepy in his own damn dream, which scared him, because how could he be a narcoleptic within the dream itself?
Yet his mind was trying to shut down—to sleep. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, feeling sick to his stomach. Half the bed was soaked with dark blood, and his thighs were covered with it. Not his blood, but hers. It’s a dream. Don’t be afraid.
As he sat there, fighting sleep, feeling an urgency to wake up back in Mindy Shackleford’s house and not in this place, he began to hear a tap, tap beyond the great wooden door. Not precisely a rapping at the door. But a tap that echoed slightly, as of someone walking.
Footsteps.
Light footsteps.
He stared at the door.
There was a key jutting out from the keyhole. An old-fashioned kind of mechanism.
If you turn the key, you lock the door, he thought.
The tap tap tap of little feet. Fitter patter. It’s a child out there, running toward the door. Running down a long hall.
Fighting sleep, he rubbed his eyelids with his fingers. Don’t sleep, someone’s coming.
But he closed his eyes—within the dream itself—and for just a second saw blackness. Then he was beyond the bedroom door in a long hallway full of other doors. He ran like a young child down the hallway.
Fitter patter of feet. Coming for your door.
Opened his eyes again, and he was sitting up in the bed of blood next to dead Mindy Shackleford.
He looked at the door.
At the key in the lock.
If you get up now, you can lock the door be fore he comes in. Before that wicked little boy who is pittering and pattering toward you comes in. Get up, you oaf.
He leaned forward to stand, but the falling darkness in his head—that spiraling downward into the feather bed of sleep—kept him on the edge of the bed.
He looked down at his feet.
Just stand up. Put one foot on the floor and stand up.
/> Tap tap tap in the hallway as a little boy ran toward the door.
If you don’t reach the door before he does, he will kill you.
That’s ridiculous, he thought. A little boy running to this room is not going to kill you.
But the irrational belief had taken hold—that beyond this door, there was a malevolence—a boy who ran toward him, and who would have a great jagged cutting instrument in his hands. Giant scissors perhaps, or the Jaws of Life, or even giant teeth in his little round mouth that could cut into human flesh the way that Mindy had been sliced up her center like a big V.
V is for Vaginal Cutting.
Now that was a voice in his head he’d never heard before. It wasn’t his own voice, but a variation of someone else’s voice. He felt he knew that voice, the one that said the V word to him, but he couldn’t quite place it.
Then the voice spoke again in his mind: I know that voice. I do. It’s somebody, oh, somebody on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it.
His feet touched the floor. The floor was icy cold, and his feet, bare, felt like lead weights.
Chuckawalla, you ever swallow anybody on the tip of your tongue?
He felt a gentle thumping in the little blue vein above his right temple that always meant he was too tense and one of those big hammering headaches would come on.
They never come on in dreams, he thought. All righty then, we’re back to my own voice in my head. Yay for me. No strange voice that’s disturbingly familiar. This is just a dream. A dream with an extra voice.
This is no ordinary dream, Chuckawalla.
Don’t call me that.
You are a Chuckawalla.
That’s stupid. That’s what kids called me. It’s nothing.
Chuckawallas run on their hind legs through water. They bloat up and they run and if you grab their tails, the tails fall off and wriggle.
Shut up. Is this a dream about fourth grade? I haven’t been called that since I was ten.
Hey, is that a lizard in your pants, or are you happy to see me? Oh, wait, damn, it’s a lizard. Chuckawalla, don’t let what’s on the other side of the door in.
He just wanted to stop and sleep on the floor, but he saw the doorknob turn slightly.
That little bastard is testing. He wants to see if he can get in without you knowing. Go turn the key and lock the door.
He took another step forward.
He glanced at the doorknob. It slowly turned to the left.
Then slowly to the right.
He stepped forward, but had to bend over, his hands clutching his knees. He wanted to drop right there and sleep.
The little bastard is coming. He’s coming back to cut you open. He’s coming back to tear you apart.
Took a deep breath. Better. Feel better.
Stood up again, stretching. Another step forward.
He heard the boy’s voice in the hall. A high-pitched little voice. “Please. Hurry.”
The little bastard wants you to come to the door, but the question is: Will you get there before he does?
That is the million dollar question, Chuckawalla. Will you race like the lizard that is your totem? Will you puff up and bloat and race across that floor and turn that key before he can turn the knob and push his way in?
Shut up, Chuck told his mind. I don’t want to be dreaming this anymore. And I’m not a damn lizard!
Look, Lizard-Breath, you’re not dreaming. This is where you are, and where you’re gonna stay, and nobody’s waking you up or kissing your cheek. She’s really dead back there, and this little bastard in the hall has these cutters that are going to snicker-snack you up and down, the Vorpal Blade of the Jabberwock is in his grubby little pokey fingers, and you are gonna be meat on the floor in about ten seconds if you can’t find your reptilian way to that door and turn that key so that the little bugger can’t get you.
Chuck Waller took another step to the door, and just as he reached it, he heard something behind him.
“Please,” the little boy on the other side of the door said. “Hurry, hurry.”
Chuck glanced behind him, but as he did, he felt all the little hairs on the back of his neck rise up, and even some hairs down below, on his balls.
He wasn’t scared so much by the kid in the hall or the voice in his head or even the noise behind him that probably meant that Mindy Shackleford was rising up on the mattress and grinning at him with teeth black and grimy with blood.
He was scared because he knew where he was, and he had been there when he was a kid, and he’d sworn he’d never set foot in that place again.
It was the house.
The old one.
The one, up on the hill beyond town.
Harrow.
Make it go away. Make this dream go away. I am in Mindy’s house. I am not in this place.
Shu-gah, you’re just in my special little fuck place. You’re all worn out and you’re a big old Chuckawalla lizard running around and I’m gonna have to tear your tail off and watch you run around without it, bleeding while that nasty little boy decides whether he wants to tie a string around your neck or stomp you with his little boy feet.
When he opened his eyes again, he was still sleepy and in the terrible house. He glanced back to see if Mindy Shackleford—the dead and torn open Mindy—might be standing on the mattress as he’d imagined she would.
Instead, it was his father.
His head was still caved in from that long-ago fall from the river cliff (or was it a jump, Dad?) that had killed the old guy, and he still had that bloodied suit on.
Even though his right leg was turned all the way around—as it had been in the accident—he dragged it forward, toward Chuck, and said, “Come here, Chuckawalla, come here my little sleepy boy. Let’s tuck you in good, all right my little man? My little little man? My little shu-gah man?”
Chuck heard the boy at the door, behind him, crying out, “Please, hurry. You gotta! You gotta hurry!” and realized it was his voice, his own voice, that’s why it had been familiar—and the door wasn’t in need of locking.
You should’ve gone to it. Unlocked it for the boy. He knows how to save you. Only he knows.
“Come on, my little shu-gah man, let me tuck you in, I’ll read you a sleepy-bye story, and you just lay there,” his father’s broken jaw wagged to the left and right as he spoke. “My little little man.”
His father, using a hand that had been broken in twelve places, right at the moment of impact of that long-ago accident, began reaching for the zipper of his pants. “Let’s make you nice and comfortable, my little man,” and Chuck felt himself falling asleep—in the dream, he was going to sleepy-bye, to sleepies, to slumberland, and now he was more terrified than he’d been of anything else that the dream had offered him.
And the shame.
The shame that had been there in childhood that he’d choked down came back. The shame that made him want to shut down and sleep and just make sleep protect him from everything bad.
Dreams protected him.
But not in this place, shu-gah.
He dreaded falling asleep with the mangled corpse of his father coming to him to “whisper a secret to you, just a little secret for my little man,” his father’s words slurred and his jaw waggled and the leg that was completely turned around backward dragged as he moved toward Chuck. “My little man who keeps secrets with his daddy.”
4
Mindy Shackleford opened her eyes.
Chuck lay snoozing on top of her, as he sometimes did, even in the middle of making love.
He was problematic that way for her.
You fall in lust with a narcoleptic, you get used to it.
She shoved him away, sat up on her daughter’s bed, and drew a cigarette from the pack in Chuck’s shirt that hung on the chair by the bed.
Lit it up, took a few puffs, then glanced back at him.
Because she knew about his narcolepsy, she didn’t want to wake him, but she hated him just lying there. Better tha
t he sleep through it.
But a glance at the clock told her that she couldn’t let him sleep much longer.
Particularly since her daughter Judy might be home in another hour, after staying late after school with the debate team. She wasn’t sure when her eldest boy would be home, and she was fairly sure her youngest—who was fifteen—wouldn’t be wandering in until after football practice ended.
But she never knew their exact schedules, and she hated taking the risk, particularly once the sex was over.
“Come on, Chuck,” she said, tapping him lightly on the back of his head. “Hit the showers.”
But forty minutes later, Chuck Waller still remained asleep on her daughter’s bed. Mindy became too nervous to just let him stay there and sleep, so she began shaking him. “Come on, Chuck. You’ve got to wake up.” Her voice was soft and sweet at first, but when she returned from a quick shower and had dressed in her slacks and sweater and was ready to go out and see her friends for drinks, she was pissed. She began yelling at him and slapping his face to try to wake him.
Finally he opened his eyes.
“It’s about time,” she said. “Get your clothes on and just get out, hon. Judy’ll be home any minute and who knows what Pete’s gonna do.”
Chuck Waller looked up at her, and for just a second she felt as if it were not him at all.
“Hey there, shu-gah,” Chuck said as he sat up on the bed.
Hell, Mindy thought. Doesn’t even sound like him. “You makin’ fun of the way I talk?” she asked, teasing a little, annoyed a little. “Back where I’m from, we don’t take to Yankee ways.”
“Come over here a second, okay, shu-gah?” Chuck said, patting his knee.
“You okay?” she asked. He’d told her more than once that if he zonked out to just let him sleep, but she hadn’t assumed he’d be so ... well, cold. That’s what she felt from him. Something almost reptilian in it—as if he were not the warm, fun-loving Chuck she’d known the day he’d come over to work on the kitchen cabinets, the Chuck who had let her touch him while he was working, the Chuck who had taken her in his arms and told her that if she wanted him to, he could be there for her whenever she needed.
The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Thriller, Supernatural), #4 of Harrow (The Harrow Haunting Series) Page 9