“You didn’t,” she said bluntly. She looked as though she might slam the door tight right then and there, but then a smile spread across her face, revealing false teeth that couldn’t have been properly glued in. “But I was wondering if you were going to stand out there all day, or if you were going to come in?”
Mike smiled, then hopped up the stairs to the entrance two by two.
She poured the coffee into a small cup for him right next to hers and offered him the sugar bowl, which he refused. He added a splash of milk for colour, then brought the liquid up to his lips. “This is a beautiful home you have, Miss O’Grady,” Mike said politely, the hot liquid burning his lips and making him put it back down onto its saucer.
“Liar,” she said simply, but that smile gave her away again. “I’ve been trying to get around to changing the colour for years, but I can’t find the time. I think I’d like it yellow. Or pink, maybe,” she rambled, her voice very nasal to the point that Mike almost needed to rub his ears to alleviate the pressure. “And it’s August. Nobody has called me Miss O’ Grady since I was back at the school,”
Mike nodded. “Thank you, August,” he said honestly, gazing about at the little white doylies that were thrown about everywhere. “Actually, that’s kind of what I needed to talk to you about, your old days at Coral Beach High--”
“Horrible place,” she interrupted, her voice shaken and unsettling. “I’ll never go back there again. Horrible things happen in those halls, Michael. I didn’t condone absence back in my day... but after what I’ve seen in my tenure, I wouldn’t dare make a child step foot through those doors if they had the strength of mind not to.”
Mike nodded knowingly, then spotted anti-psychotic medication resting on her kitchen counter. The pill bottle was almost behind her microwave, leaning against the plug with its childproof cap. Still, a crazy woman who is right is still right, isn’t she? he thought, turning back to meet her eyes. “I know.”
“Those deaths. They wouldn’t have happened anywhere else.”
“I know,” Mike agreed, ever more readily, his eyes taking on a darker shade. “Something happened to one of the young girls there the other day -- and I think you might know the two boys responsible for it.”
“Me?” August asked, a puzzled looked coming over her. “Why in heavens would I know them?”
“I think they spent time with you, a lot of it. Allan Bishop and Bram Raine?”
She turned ghostly white, staring at him for a long moment. “Is this some kind of sick joke?” she accused, her voice bitter and having lost some of its nasal attribute.
“N-no... I...” he stammered, setting down his coffee and standing, backing up a pace. “They did something. Something horrible. There’s no mention of them in any of your old files, so I -“
“No mention?” she repeated, and her menacing attitude melted into a hysterical laughter. “My boy, you had me plum fooled! But there were stacks of paperwork on those two. It was enough for a small novel! We even started filing them together, so that it’d save time during their daily visits to me!” She stopped laughing abruptly. When she spoke again, her voice sounded dead, her eyes void of emotion. “What would anyone ever want with those boys? You run along now...” She got up and shooed Mike toward the door.
He stepped outside, huffing the entire way. When she was about to slam the door on his nose, he quickly reached inside of his coat pocket and pulled out the picture of Julie Peterson that he had torn from the yearbook. “I don’t give a shit about them, lady. Or you, for that matter. I care about what happened to this girl.”
She shook her head and continued to close the door.
“Look at the picture!” he shouted. The sound startled her, forcing her to see the image for the first time. “They say that she’ll never have children now. That’s how badly they messed her up. That’s what they did to her body.” He stopped yelling and looked down at the ground, then tucked the photo back inside his pocket. He looked around anxiously, pressing his lips together and shrugging wide in desperation. “Doesn’t anybody care?”
August looked at him for a long while, then took a slip of paper out of her blouse and wrote an address on it. “That’s where the police told me they used to hang out. It’s an old building, should’ve been torn down years ago.”
“I know it,” Mike nodded thankfully. “Bless you.”
“Don’t turn your back on them. Those two will kill you, boy. They’re what started the evil in that school.”
The thought sent shivers rushing up and down his spine, that there were things out there worse than all he’d seen already. The worst part was that somewhere inside him, he knew it to be true.
Cathy had been waiting for Mike and Xander for over an hour, and now it was starting to get cold on the picnic table where she sat. All the teachers were long gone by now, even that troll Shnieder had called it an early day and gone home to eat cheezies and spaghetti-o’s, or whatever the hell he did at home. She took another look around, sending her hair into another swirl of motion as the wind picked up. She tried for a moment to straighten it, then gave up. Her feet hurt already just looking at the road that stretched out before her, the thought of walking it alone not all that appealing. She wanted to take off her jean jacket. She’d been huddled up into it all day and had made it all warm and sweaty, and it still stank of smoke from Grendel’s party. Her dark eyes danced along the tree line one last time, trying to see if either of the boys were coming even though she knew that they weren’t. She sighed, slapped her palms against her knees, and got up.
Where the hell did they go? she wondered, sighing heavily. Both of her feet feeling like lead weights. Men. Why do they all have to be so stupid? Is testosterone some kind of I.Q. retardant or something? Her book bag straps pressed against her shoulders, making sweat pool there. It itched and made her uncomfortable, as she glared evilly at the setting sun, daring it to come back up. I hate the night. I used to love it, once. Before the crash a few years back, before all this stupidity started. Xander is being such an idiot, bottling up all of his feelings the way he does. No wonder he goes out and kills things in his sleep... I probably would too, if I was that overly repressed. The trees loomed around her, their old branches whining in defiance to the motion that the draft was making them participate in. Their groans started to get to her, her pupils darting to the corners of their sockets every few moments to catch a glimpse of them.
She heard something behind her and turned swiftly on her heels, almost falling to the curb when she did so.
Her eyes darted along a patch of leafy green foliage on the side of the road, only partially obscured by an old metal gate. Even though the sun was still bright, it was dark inside, the leaves creating a blanket of shadow that made everything underneath them look homogeneous.
“Hello?” she called out into the shadows. It was damp here, and she couldn’t help but wonder if this is what it would be like after her and Julie... jumping at every sound in the dusk-hours, waiting for some pervert to jump you.
There was another sound, very faint.
She had to strain to hear it, leaning her ear towards the bushes but keeping them in her field of vision at the same time. It took her a moment to recognize it, but when she did a thousand memories came back to her all at once, as if it had been someone saying her own name.
-click-
The slow, rhythmic tapping of metal upon metal.
“Xander?” she mouthed softly, taking a step back from the trees without even realizing it. Her hands came up to her mouth as she stared into the darkness. Only now instead of seeing nothing, she saw everything. Every misshaped branch was a shoulder, every ragged red leaf was a slanted eye.
She turned and ran, hearing the click of her heels as she did. She listened carefully to the rhythm as she heard each step once, then again as it echoed back at her. Every few seconds, like clockwork, there was an extra click.
Like a hum or tap in your car that you know doesn’t belong, it stood
out amongst all the other similar sounds. Her mind processed the information a million times between each pump of her legs as she ran down the street, beads of sweat pouring from her forehead and falling to the ground somewhere behind her. These sounds were so familiar to her she could have recognized them from a mile away.
But they’re not a mile away, she thought as she closed her eyes briefly, the cold fall air stinging at them as she ran. In fact they’re gaining on me. Each one’s closer then the last.
She bit her lip out of nervous frustration and ended up pushing her tooth into it from the force of her footfalls. She was close now. She still hadn’t turned around. She knew that if she turned around and saw the Womb, she wouldn’t be able to run anymore. Her legs would melt right then and there and it would be on her like a wolf.
She turned sharply into Xander’s driveway, pouring on the steam for those last few strides along his shale walkway. She opened his front door and slammed it shut behind her. She paused for a moment, let out a breath, then turned the deadbolt almost as an afterthought.
She leaned against the door like that for a minute or two, trying to give her mind a chance to catch up with the rest of her body. Both her hands were shaking, the adrenaline in her body working itself off via involuntary spasms now that her legs didn’t need the extra energy anymore.
She turned her head and pulled back the blind to check outside.
A black hand burst through the glass, grabbing her by the mouth and all she could see with her wide eyes were the long, yellow teeth behind it.
She jumped, opening her eyes and slowly letting her head rest back against the door. Sighing, she turned her head and pulled back the blind to check outside. A leaf blew across Xander’s front yard into the Johnson’s, but other than that there was no movement.
She laughed at herself, then took a step toward the stairs.
She stopped after one step and listened, her ears perking. The house was as silent as a tomb, without so much as a heater hum or a vent rustling. For a moment she thought she heard something, but at the same instant she thought that the more rational side of her brain was arguing the difference.
She took another step onto the stairs, then another. Her pace got faster and faster until one of them finally squeaked under the pressure of her weight and she bolted into an all out run. She ran into his bedroom, taking only a moment to regard the shattered computer screen and general shambles of the room, then collapsed onto the bed. She didn’t cry, she didn’t even sob. She just wrapped his warm covers around her body, then slowly drifted off to sleep.
Again, Mike Harris looked up at the building before him.
This time, however, it was distressingly less inviting. It was charred on the outside, a victim of many careless bonfires, and the heat had left the plastic siding melted and black. The stench of marijuana was thick in the air and made him want to vomit onto the step as he assumed many other people had done before. This area of town wasn’t known for being good... Still, it was by no means the ‘bad part’ of town either. That was what made its presence here even more gut wrenching to him. All around him were quiet suburbs painted in tranquil greens and off-whites. Places where you’d expect to see little girls and boys running around their lawns, playing baseball and climbing trees and not worrying about anything. But they couldn’t. That slowly dawned upon Mike as he glared at the black door that must have once been red, judging by the chipped paint between graffiti, Tee gang symbols and profanities involving the reader’s female ancestry. The kids in those houses couldn’t do what they were supposed to be allowed to. They couldn’t play hide-and-seek so late that their parents would have to come find them, or splash in the mud by the road, or even stop to admire the ravishing brunette that just moved in across the way, as he had at that age. They had to stay inside, away from the gaping maw of hatred that was this house, and more specifically the morons that resided there. Morons that didn’t think twice about what they did to Julie Peterson. They did it like it was a part of everyday life, a step in the routine, and would probably do it again, maybe to any one of the little girls and boys that they found playing outside ‘their’ neighborhood.
It’s not right, he thought bitterly, clenching his teeth. Children shouldn’t have to be afraid in their homes, around their friends... at school. He took a step toward the ramshackle house, then another, until finally he was on the concrete stairs and only inches from the door. I won’t have it.
“And just what do you think you’re doing?” came a voice from behind him.
Mike closed his eyes and sighed. He didn’t even have to turn and look. The sheer anger and frivolousness of the statement, the way he said it as casually as though he were asking someone to check the mail for him. The almost child-like joy he took in the danger of the situation. It could only be one person. “Get out of here, Xander,”Mike said with a cold voice, then turned around to face his friend.
“Why would I go and do a thing like that?” Xander asked. He leaned carefully against a rotting fencepost, one knee half-bent, and looked up at Mike. His face was cut through the middle, it seemed, with his eyes deadly serious and ready to kill, but a sly grin spreading its way across his face like butter onto hot bread.
“This isn’t your fight,” Mike argued. “How’d you get here, anyway? I’ve got the lead.”
“True,” he nodded. “But I have something better.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“A friend who has a lead and doesn’t know enough to know when he’s being tailed,” he quipped, stepping up next to Mike and pushing his index finger into the taller man’s chest. “You’re not going in there to get yourself killed, you got that? I don’t care if you feel the need to crack open rapist skulls after what happened to Cathy. I respect and understand it, but I really don’t care. You wanna get killed? Fine. Go grab my dad’s handgun. Feel free to blow your own head off,” Xander said, meeting his friend’s angry gaze with equal amounts of fury. “But don’t expect me to let you go in there and let the enemy do it for you.”
“There’s only one problem with that statement, Xander,” Mike spat, his voice like venom.
“What’s that?” Xander asked, mimicking the way his friend had said it a moment ago.
Mike pushed his own index finger into Xander’s chest, giving him a little shove. “You are the enemy.”
Xander took a deep breath, letting the words cut as deep as they could. It didn’t matter. There was nothing Mike could say that he hadn’t already told the person in the mirror. “I’m going in. If anything happens, I need you to bail me out,” he reasoned.
“Why can’t we do it the other way?” Mike shot back.
“Because if something happens to you, I’ll lose my cool and probably finish you off myself,” Xander reminded them both.
Mike stepped away from the door, curtsying toward it. “Ladies first,” he snapped in conceit.
CHAPTER FIVE:
TRANSFORMATIONS IN PAIN
Xander opened the door carefully as it felt about ready to snap off of its hinges. A stream of light bled from beneath his feet, melting back into darkness about three yards from where he stood. He couldn’t see anything of the walls or floor from here, save for a few shards of broken glass strewn about in front of him. The smell of cheap beer and cheaper drugs assaulted his senses, along with a musty aftershave that he was sure he’d smelt somewhere before. He squinted, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the light as the floor groaned beneath him. Something deep inside of him cringed, like your stomach when you haven’t eaten in days, or organs addicted to nicotine and convulsing from withdrawal. He realized too late that it was the true Black Womb warning him of danger.
There was a sound like a firecracker going off right next to his head, something big slamming into it at the same spot. Pain shot through his skull, like shockwaves in a calm pool. The agony exploded out the other side of his brain, trying to find some place to escape. The pain was followed closely by numbness, a tingly feeling tha
t crept over his skin, as though someone were tickling him from the inside out. His ears were ringing. What was worse was the harder he tried to concentrate on the sounds now coming at him, the more he heard the ringing. He clenched his teeth as figures started to emerge from the darkness. There were more than twenty at first, but Xander soon realized that there were really only two. His vision was failing him as well it seemed, the figures before him doubling and then tripling in a shimmering haze. It was as if he’d just gotten off the Twister roller coaster at Wonder World, the one that Sara was always so afraid of. Sara, he echoed, the thought shrieking high inside his skull. It cleared away the cloudiness brought on by the blow, his own personal lighthouse shining to bring him back to port.
The first man stepped out of the darkness, and his form expelled all of the shadows that were left in the room. His shoulders were broad and packed tight with muscles, the sheer width of him surely reminding onlookers of tractor trailers coming towards them full-steam. His nostrils flared, making deep huffing sounds to support that hypothesis. He was powerfully built. Beyond powerfully built, actually. His muscles seemed to defy all laws of human anatomy, Xander thought as his eyes caught some of the glare off of the man’s sweat-covered skin. It wasn’t hard to see a lot of that skin either, as the man wore a simple white wife beater that looked three sizes too small and was clinging to him for dear life. His eyes bulged with rage, but the most striking thing about him was his hair. Long brown hair that hadn’t been combed or styled particularly in his yearbook photos but was now drawn back into a pony tail with a blonde tip, revealing that it had been dyed not too long ago. His hair danced along the edge of his black denim jeans, nearly invisible against the shadows, except for the gleaming belt-buckle in its centre that was shaped like the state of Texas for some reason. His brow furrowed, making his face shrink into itself and his slightly elongated jaw seem even larger, like Jay Leno’s. He patted the piece of two-by-four he’d just used to strike Xander, ready to use it again if the boy moved. Xander recognized him as Bram Raine.
Habeas Corpus: Black Womb (Black Womb Collection Book 1) Page 24