Ronnie quickly glanced at the lower shelves—the only thing approaching a weapon was a thin metal bookend. She grabbed it and swung wildly at Bari, who had just leapt toward her again. She cut Bari clean across the nose and face, taking out her left eye.
Bari screamed in pain, and rolled to the floor, covering her left eye—or what dangled from the socket—as blood rushed down her cheeks.
Ronnie scrambled to her feet and ran to get the hatchet. Then she picked up the phone by the register, but it was dead.
Outside, several dogs with bloody paws leapt at the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and door.
She thought she heard a scream from the apartment above the bookstore.
She grabbed some of the twine that Nick and Dusty used to tie up books at times. Using the hatchet, she cut off lengths of the twine. Just enough for wrists and ankles. Then, the hatchet held high, Ronnie, confused and terrified but completely prepared to use it to defend her life, went to tie up Bari Love.
Bari’s face was nearly obliterated with the first gushes of blood. Bari lay there, curled up like a kitten, snoring lightly, little bubbles of blood popping at the gash just above her nostrils.
2
Ronnie sat beside the sleeping, bloodied girl, and first wrapped the twine around her ankles. The pain in Ronnie’s shoulders—from where Nick had jabbed her with the scissors—now seemed like a distant thunder of hurt. You will get through this. You will, Veronica Pond. You were a Girl Scout. You can handle wounded and wild animals. Then she thought the most ridiculous thing, given the situation: I want some peach tea. She and Lizzie had a ritual on bad nights when everything seemed to be going wrong. They’d take showers and get in their big bathrobes and make a pot of peach or blueberry tea, and just sit and chat about the five or six things bugging them. Their silly language would come through most at those times. Even the phrase “peach tea” was something they’d say to each other in school if it was a particularly hellish day.
But nothing’s as hellish as this.
Lizzie, where are you when I need you?
Where’s anybody when I need them ?
It’s peach tea time, and I don’t have a teapot to piss in. Ronnie giggled when she thought this. She said it aloud, as if to affirm that she still could talk. “Teapot to piss in.”
She glanced at the fluorescent lights overhead, and then at the line of books—the bestseller shelves on one side, the romance section behind her, and somewhere beyond all this the occasional growl and scratch of a dog at the door. It was as if they wanted to come in here and finish what Bari and Nick had begun.
She glanced at her watch—the face had gotten smashed in the fight and the watch had stopped at 5 P.M.
It would be dark outside; it felt dark inside to her, too.
She watched Bari’s face. Is she faking? How does she fall asleep with her face all gashed up? Why did Nick wake up and kill Dusty? Why?
More questions came at her, and none of them had rational answers. It was as if they had rabies. Can people get rabies fast, like this? Or maybe there was a truck full of toxic crap that overturned out on the highway. Or maybe it’s one of those viruses that mosquitoes carry—even though there aren’t any mosquitoes around anymore. Or maybe there’s some kind of brain swelling going on. The water supply. Terrorists? Maybe they picked Watch Point to ... No, that’s bullshit.
It’s something awful. That’s all you know. It’s something terrible.
Ronnie could not express, even to herself, the way her conception of life had just changed in a matter of seconds. She had lived a fairly quiet, sheltered existence, and had never had to deal with a life-and-death situation except for when she watched her father die in a car wreck. But even that hadn’t left her feeling unprotected. She knew about cars and how they could have accidents and somehow knowing that it happened in the world to other people had softened the idea of his death.
This is different. This is like… like a plague just came down.
The dogs. Bari. Nick.
God, who else? Are there others dealing with this?
She sifted through dozens of scenarios to explain why Nick would kill his life partner, and why mad dogs would be trying to break into the bookstore, and why Bari Love, who truly may have had the bitch gene in her but still—a hatchet?
“It’s like they’re possessed,” she said aloud.
As soon as she said it, she wanted to take back the thought. The word.
The ridiculous word.
Possessed.
Like some gooney idea of devils and demons.
Possessed by some infernal agent of hell.
Witchcraft. Demons. Supernatural.
All crap. All ridiculous. All irrational.
Like those dreams you’ve been having. The ones that started the night Lizzie made you promise to tell no one that she had been at the house.
Harrow.
Beyond the village, up and down the streets that sank farther into the woods, beyond those “No Trespassing” signs.
Harrow. One of the oldest houses in Watch Point. Falling apart. Nearly abandoned.
You once knew some boys who went there when it was a prep school. You read about the murders that had happened there when a new owner bought it a few years back, but you didn’t really believe many of those stories going around because . . .
Because it’s all so fucking irrational.
Possessed. Ridiculous.
Possessed.
It seemed so medieval to even think it. And yet, it was the word that stuck with her as she wrapped twine around Bari’s ankles. She knotted it up as tightly as she could get it without cutting off the circulation in Bari’s legs. Then she took Bari’s limp hands and bound them behind her back. To do this, Ronnie had to turn Bari to the side. She held her breath, certain that Bari would wake up at any moment.
In the impression in the carpet where Bari’s head had lain, a spattering of more blood.
Ronnie felt sick to her stomach as she laid Bari’s head back again.
Taking the hatchet with her, she rose and began walking back toward the storeroom.
Each step felt like an eternity, and she began to have a feeling of deja vu, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Somehow it reminded her of dreams she’d had in the summer, but she could not for the life of her remember the specifics of any one dream. Yet images flashed before her as she went, dreading the door itself. Like movie clips in her brain, she remembered masks coming off faces. And behind the masks, the face of a single child. Behind every mask, that little boy who had no eyes and whose teeth shone like metal.
Ronnie took a deep breath and held it for four seconds before letting it out. Calm down. Calm down. You’re alive. You have a cut in your shoulder, but you can get to the Emergency Room later. Worst thing that’ll happen is you get a tetanus shot and some penicillin. You’ll live. This will all turn out okay somehow. Somehow.
She reached the door to the storeroom, and got out the keys. She put the key in the lock, her fingers trembling.
When she opened the door, the puddles of blood had become dark stains.
Dusty lay where he’d fallen, a mass of bones and blood and flesh and torn clothes. She quickly looked away.
Nick had gone back to the cot and lay down again.
Asleep.
When she went into the storeroom, she locked the door behind her. She walked through the room, feeling numb and gulping back a genuine need to scream which had begun growing within the pit of her being. She held the hatchet in midair, ready to bring it down on Nick’s head as she looked down at him.
His nostrils flared slightly, then sank inward; his eyes were closed but fluttering in sleep; his lips moved slightly as if he were talking in a dream.
She glanced around the shelves and boxes as if sure that someone else might be lurking there. Then she began walking toward the back door of the building, hoping that there were no dogs or girls with hatchets on the other side of that door.
3
&nb
sp; Ronnie emerged into the dusky twilight—the sun had begun going down and a chilly dark had set in. She stood in the gated alleyway and for just a moment sent a prayer up to whatever god might be listening. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you are. I don’t care if you’re going to own my soul. Just please keep my mother and sister safe. And my friends. And please let this have been just a hallucination on my part. Please don’t let this be real. I don’t want real.
The silence of the moment was interrupted by the piercing shriek of a woman—no, it’s a man, he’s just screaming like a girl—from a building down the block.
She saw little boys up on a housetop, and they had a woman with them. It looked like they were holding her hands. There were four of them—and although she wasn’t sure who they were, she was fairly certain that the house was the Moldens’. She babysat those boys all the time.
She watched as the boys pushed the woman—their mother?—off the roof.
Ronnie clutched the hatchet, and went through the back gate into the alley behind the shops. She glanced each way along the narrow street, noting its green plastic trash cans and cars parked on each side. Fences along the other side of the alley defined the beginning of a neighborhood.
She had to get home. She knew she had to get home and make sure her mother was okay. She began walking down the alley toward the side street that spilled into Main Street.
Ronnie held the hatchet above her head. She walked slowly at first. She glanced behind a pile of garbage, and wasn’t sure but thought she saw a child’s hand there among the discarded McDonald’s bags and withering vegetables. But she didn’t inspect it further—she just did not want to know.
Lizzie, are you okay? Lizzie?
“Please let me be crazy,” she muttered to herself, as if it were a prayer. “Let me be insane. Let me be insane.”
She began walking faster as a new fear took over—the fear that whatever had gotten into Bari and Nick would creep into her next. Is it passed through blood? How? How does it go? What is it? Is it a plague that comes at you from getting bitten? Do the dogs have to bite you first?
As she turned left, she saw a man in a business suit running between the buildings as if trying to escape from something. Seconds later, a pack of mutts followed him, snapping and growling.
Then her view of the street was empty except for Army Vernon’s florist shop across the way.
She waited to see if it would be quiet on Main Street for at least a minute. She didn’t want to venture out until she felt ready.
She heard the screeching of tires as someone sped along the streets of town, and then a sickening crash and the sound of glass breaking.
In the silence that followed the crash—during which time she tried not to think of her father dying—she began to hear children cheering and clapping. Incongruously, at least for October, she thought she heard the sing-song bells of the ice cream truck. As she thought of it, she said the words, “I scream truck,” as if it could conjure a scene in her mind. Her impulses were in conflict—part of her wanted to run away from the sound of the crash and find some safe place to hide. With my hatchet. Me and my hatchet.
But the other impulse took over. One that she had never been completely sure she’d have, and perhaps no one ever knew they had until faced with it in an irrefutable reality: She wanted to help. She wanted to protect whomever was in that car wreck.
Like I couldn’t protect you, Dad.
With that intention, she stepped out of the building’s shadows into the streetlights. Me and my hatchet.
Just up by the Watch Point Community Bank Building, she saw how the car had overturned right after hitting a lamppost, which leaned near the ground after the accident.
The driver of the vehicle—Mr. Boatwright, who she’d just sold reading glasses to that afternoon—was upside down in the shoulder harness.
There was smoke coming out from the back of the car, and the smell in the air was of fire, although she couldn’t see any.
The dogs that had been scratching at the bookstore windows ran to the accident. As soon as they got there, a girl who looked about eleven grabbed a Chihuahua and began shaking it mercilessly. When she dropped it, it ran off up the street. The other dogs followed, as if on to a new scent.
She recognized some of the little kids from town and a couple of the older ones—Mike Spears and Allie Cooney, who were juniors at her high school. They were trying to open the doors of Boaty’s car.
Boaty was as wide-eyed as anyone could be, and he had kept the windows up and the doors locked. As Ronnie walked up Main Street toward the wreck, which was beautifully lit in the lamplight, she saw what might’ve been someone else in the seat next to the man. Who was it?
Then Mike Spears took a rock and broke the driver’s side window. They all dragged Boaty out of the car, into the street. Something was funny about Mike—and she realized it was that he wore no pants or underwear at all. From the waist down he was naked.
Something rose within Ronnie and she let out what she would only later describe as a warrior’s yelp. She ran up the street, swinging the hatchet as she went, her only goal to make sure that Mr. Boatwright did not get torn up by these maniacs. Without thinking twice, she swung the hatchet into the group of children, and while part of her mind was aware that she’d just lopped off little Mark Malanski’s left arm (the kid didn’t even shriek, what the hell?) the rest of her brain didn’t seem to care. It was as if she’d switched into survival mode, and all she cared about was making sure Boaty didn’t get what Dusty got.
She began to feel almost exalted—and she wasn’t comfortable like that. It wants you to be a god, she thought as she threatened Mike Spears with the hatchet. His face was blackened with what she assumed was blood, and, naked except for his shirt, he sported an engorged erection.
She pushed her way through the toddlers, some of whom were chewing on Boaty’s fingers; others had little butter knives and were trying to cut into his throat with them. She kicked them, swung at them, shoved them, and they all moved away from him.
Boaty looked up at her, trembling. He whispered words, but his throat sent up a dry rasp. She knelt beside him, her hatchet at the ready should anyone jump her, and she got closer to him. He whispered, “Make it fast. Make it fast.”
She drew back. “I’m not going to hurt you, Mr. Boatwright. Please, try to stay calm. Please.”
“Make it fast,” he whispered. “Make it fast. End it. End it.”
He reached up with his right hand, which had been gnawed at enough that two of his fingers were no more than bleeding nubs, and grasped her collar. He drew himself up slightly. “Please, Veronica. Do it.” His feeble voice shivered with his body. “I killed one of ‘em. In the car. My niece. She wanted a ride. But she started touching me. Touching me. I saw all the others. I saw Mary Thompson. I saw what they did to her. How they dragged her.” His breathing became too rapid, and he was in danger of hyperventilating. She wanted to try to keep him quiet, but she felt as if she needed to know why all this had suddenly happened. She glanced back at the blood-spattered children. She saw Allie Cooney down on her knees in front of Mike. One of the little boys had a metal rake in his hands and was slowly advancing on Ronnie, but when she held up the hatchet, he backed off. Some of the others had begun tearing at the Malanski boy. It’s because I cut his arm off. They smelled the blood. They want the blood and meat.
“I’ll get help,” Ronnie said.
“No, no help.”
“You need help.”
“THERE IS NO HELP!” Boaty screamed and the force of it sent a shock through her. “THEY GO TO SLEEP AND THEY DREAM AND YOU CANT DISTURB THEM OR THEY THINK THEY’RE STILL DREAMING!”
Exhausted, he sank back down to the road.
She thought she heard what might’ve been hoof beats— as if horses were running wild through town. She glanced up the road, and noticed that the other children stopped what they were doing—dropping Mark Malanski’s lifeless body to the ground, the
ir mouths dripping—and also looked in the direction of the thudding and clip-clop sound.
Rounding the corner, people.
Not just more children.
Not more teenagers.
But people she recognized from the village.
They had come running. Was it the smell of smoke? Or of blood?
They had made the hoof beat sounds in their heels and Rockports and boots and sneakers and dress shoes.
And they stopped when they saw her.
“Make it end,” Boaty whispered again, his voice fading. “They go to sleep. They go to sleep. I want to sleep, too. Make it end.”
With the shadows of twilight all around them, and the buildings of town seeming emptier than she’d ever noticed, Ronnie Pond looked at the men and women from the village. They stood there as if waiting for a traffic signal to change.
Watching her.
They’re waiting to see what I’m going to do.
They want to see me kill Boaty.
“Wake me up when it’s over,” Boaty gasped, and then closed his eyes as if he were being drawn into sleep.
She tried to lift him, but he was too heavy. Her shoulder throbbed a little from pain.
“There’s nothing I can do,” she said as quietly as she could.
Boaty’s eyes fluttered open. “Kill me. Kill me when I close my eyes.”
“I can’t.”
“If you don’t kill me, it might take me over. I’ve been inside it. I know what it is.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Harrow,” he said. He reached for her right arm—and the hatchet. “Just bring it down on me. It’ll be fast. I won’t feel it.”
“I can’t,” she whispered and didn’t even realize she’d begun crying.
“It’s like you stepped into a nightmare,” he said with a slight smile. “It’s like maybe after you kill me, I’ll wake up. And it’ll be over. And I won’t ever have to dream again. Please. Please. I’ve seen what they do. They’re like wolves.”
The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Thriller, Supernatural), #4 of Harrow (The Harrow Haunting Series) Page 20