*
Chapter Thirty
Smiley didn’t want to go, but he had no choice. Mandy was curled in a ball. She needed help. But she was quiet. The guy in the car was screaming.
‘Just wait here,’ he told her. He didn’t know if she heard him. He couldn’t do anything about it if she hadn’t. The man in the car couldn’t wait.
He turned away from her and splashed into the water, driving his knees at first then using his arms too, as the water came higher.
The policeman wouldn’t be screaming. Someone, something, that could strip his dad of flesh fucked with their minds so badly they didn’t know what they’d done …
No. The policeman wouldn’t be the one doing the screaming.
But then he paused.
What if it wasn’t the policeman, but someone else screaming because the policeman was in the car?
He half turned and saw Mandy, arms clutched tight around her, like she’d drifted off to sleep.
Not good.
He didn’t pay attention in school, when he even went. He didn’t read a lot. He watched movies, though. He’d seen enough movies to know she shouldn’t be sleeping. Sleeping was dangerous. He nearly headed back right then.
She was his responsibility tonight, not the man in the car.
He didn’t think that deeply. It was more instinctive. He’d never thought about responsibility in any kind of rational sense. If he’d stopped to reason it out, he might have turned back, picked up Mandy, gone on to Oak Drive. He would forget about the man in the car. It would take time, but he would forget.
It was tempting. He didn’t know the guy in the car. Mandy was …
What, Smiley? What is she to you?
He shook his head and pushed on, into the frigid water. But then he slowed again.
Out in the open, after the water and in the rain, Mandy was probably freezing. Fuck, so was he.
Could she die?
But whatever was the matter with the two of them, the guy in the car was in a worse way.
Because he’d stopped screaming.
He stopped thinking and started doing. He drove his tired muscles harder, ploughing through the water, all thoughts of Mandy gone, his frozen limbs forgotten for the moment.
The car had made it halfway across the water. Smiley pushed against the water, half swimming now, getting closer. He was panting from the exertion, from the cold. The water seemed heavier than it should have been. But then, he was tired to the bone and probably weak from the cold.
When he was close enough, he could make out the shape of the driver. He wasn’t moving. Probably hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt.
Smiley reached the driver’s-side door, but when he tried to open it, it wouldn’t budge. The weight of the water held it shut. The water level inside the car was rising fast. The driver wasn’t in danger of drowning, but he had sounded like he was in real pain.
Rain drummed off the roof, and while Smiley struggled with the door, it suddenly got heavier.
The man in the car wasn’t saying anything. Wasn’t moving.
“Hey! Hey!” Smiley shouted.
No response.
Smiley, for all his bluster, was just a kid. A teenager who relied on his fists most of the times he was confused. He didn’t have the first idea what to do with someone who was unconscious. It wasn’t something he could flail at. It wasn’t a problem for fists, but for his mind.
A colder, older part of him thought he wouldn’t have to worry about any of that if the guy turned out to be dead.
He leaned down and whacked his elbow against the window, trying to break it. Then he saw who it was in the driver’s seat.
It was the guy with the beard. The guy he thought he’d killed. Smiley backed away.
“No way,” he said.
No way, he thought. The guy’s a fucking ghost.
“I killed you …”
The guy coughed and shifted, his head falling against the window.
Smiley leaped in the water. His foot hit something, and he went down. The vile water got into his mouth. He struggled up, spitting and gagging.
Not dead. Thank God.
The guy was going to be pissed off if he lived. Smiley was done with running, though. With his dad’s death, something had changed in Smiley. Before, he’d been a brave man with a coward’s outlook.
Now he knew himself for a coward, he could be brave.
He was free.
And he wasn’t going to let the guy die. He might beat the shit out of Smiley if he managed to wake him up, but that was a worry for another day.
He tried the door again. He couldn’t move it. So he did the only thing he could. He climbed onto the bonnet and drove his foot through the cracked windscreen. It took a couple of tries, but then it shattered completely.
The man in the car hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt.
His face was a mess of blood. The steering wheel must have smacked him.
Minor problems versus a major problem. Getting him out of the rising water, that was the immediate problem. Getting the guy out of the car before he got in trouble himself from the cold, that was a major problem too.
He grabbed the lapels on the man’s jacket and pulled. He was a big man. Too heavy. His fingers screamed at him, burning with effort, but a cold kind of fire, right in his knuckles. Like his knuckles would crack and his fingers would fall off.
“Come on! Come on, you fucking pussy!”
Shouting at himself. Pumping himself up.
“Come on!”
He roared into the rain. Ignored the agony from his hands and pulled the man over to one side, pulled, shouting, swearing at himself, until the big man’s legs were clear of the steering wheel. If he stopped now he’d got the bastard moving, he wouldn’t be able to start again. He had no strength left to shout. Teeth gritted, Smiley strained with the last of his strength, and finally the man flopped out onto the bonnet, the boy beside him, his hands cradled against his chest, small sobs coming between his gasps for breath.
But the guy didn’t stir.
It wasn’t done. Only half done. Half done now just wasn’t good enough.
“Fuck!”
He slammed his fist against the bonnet.
Try to bring him around now, and chances were they’d be fighting in the middle of the floodwater. Smiley knew he’d lose. He didn’t have a bat this time. He couldn’t even clench his fist.
But he wasn’t going to let the man die now.
He had to get him through the water.
He put an arm under the guy’s chest and dragged him from the bonnet. He was a little lighter, a little easier to handle now the water was taking some of his weight. He was still fucking heavy, though.
Smiley didn’t know how he’d managed to get the better of the man earlier in the night. He was about twice Smiley’s size, broad and tall. He looked like a scruffy wet bear. Not the kind you saw in the wild, on TV. The kind you saw on those adverts, one of those bears forced to dance in some shit country like Russia.
Smiley’s arms, his legs, his chest … everything was burning. His heart pounded as he struggled through the water.
Finally, the swirling water stopped dragging at him, and he was forced to pull the unconscious man scraping over the road’s surface, where he was far heavier. Something popped in Smiley’s back, and he cried out and fell down, his heart beating crazily in his chest. Everything hurt. He didn’t know if kids had heart attacks. He thought he might be having one.
He looked at Mandy. She was snoring softly.
He leaned over the man and took his pulse, from his neck, like he’d seen them do on TV.
The man stirred. He groaned. Then he opened his eyes and grabbed Smiley round the throat.
*
Chapter Thirty-One
The boards were up in Mrs. March’s room, thanks to George.
George probably wouldn’t ever sleep again.
Marion couldn’t worry about things like that. She was handling the situation.
She could handle it. George couldn’t handle it. Margaret couldn’t handle it.
She’d sent George and Margaret to check the first-floor residents.
Marion told them she would be fine checking on the second floor.
“You sure? Maybe best if we all go together,” George had said, worrying his hands round and round.
Marion could see he was scared. He’d seen what was left of Wendy at the top of the stairs. He couldn’t take it. Margaret couldn’t take it.
It was a kindness, really.
“No,” she had told him. “I need a breather. Get my head straight. I’ll be fine. If anything happens, I’ll shout the place down. Don’t worry about that.”
“No heroics,” Margaret told her.
Marion almost laughed at that.
She left them and headed to the foyer, where the lift and the stairs were. She punched in the key code to the door at the bottom of the stairs. A code was only needed to open the doors from outside the stairwell, so she only had to push the door to the top floor open.
Wendy’s skeleton was right where they’d left her.
Who was going to clean it up? She certainly wasn’t, and she couldn’t imagine Margaret or George picking up the wet bone and putting the parts in a bin liner. She could imagine them screaming when a piece fell off. She could imagine that very well. The residents waking to screams. Her and George and Margaret running around the home, trying to soothe thirty-two patients, some who were afraid of the dark, some who had their own nightmares to relive daily, residents who tore at their faces when loved ones came to visit, or spat at their grandchildren, played with themselves in front of the cooks or nurses or even their own spouses.
Yes, she thought. That would be fun.
There were three of them, but she was the one who would be dealing with it. Just like she always had. None of them could leave, because nobody else would take their place. The phones didn’t work, so they couldn’t call out. Were there any people left? Margaret had tried a few of the houses and got no reply.
Were all the people like Wendy? Just bone and blood in front of dead television sets?
That’s the thing with dealing, Marion thought. You take a job, you deal with that, then you deal with the next thing. You couldn’t deal with everything at once.
We’ll all stay, said Margaret. Safety in numbers. She seemed so sure of herself.
Marion knew differently. She’d seen enough. She didn’t waste time on disbelief. Maybe earlier. But now she was sure there was no way to beat it. A thing that could do that to Wendy couldn’t be beaten. You couldn’t hit it or set it on fire. If she could have blown it up with a bomb or shot it with a gun, it would just come back.
Jane knew. That’s why she had to be sedated and put to bed like one of the residents.
There was only one way to finish this, and Marion was the only one with the balls to do it.
She opened the door to Mrs. March’s room as quietly as she could. She didn’t want her awake for this. That just made it harder.
Mrs. March was asleep on the bed. She was curled over to one side, so you couldn’t see where her skull had been caved in by a car. She looked normal. A good-looking woman asleep. There was a curve of a smile on her face. Content. Happy. Maybe dreaming of her man.
Marion closed the emergency lights from the hallway behind out. Closed out Margaret and George and Jane.
It really was a sweet smile.
Get a grip, Marion, she told herself. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. There’s no thought behind that smile. No memories, no personality. She’s just a shell. Just a vegetable. Whatever the policeman wants with her, it’s not for her conversation.
She took a few steadying breaths. She could do it. It wasn’t wrong. She was saving them. Mrs. March wouldn’t know a thing about it.
No one else would know, either. Not for as long as she lived. Just her and Mrs. March. It would be their secret. Even the rain couldn’t see what was happening.
The rain.
Maybe it was the rain doing all this. Some weird rain or something in the rain. It couldn’t make a difference either way. It was out there in the night, behind the plywood boards. All it could do was pound against the boards, trickling down the wall.
She looked at the water running down the wallpaper. It glowed slightly. There was a hint of green light under the door from the hallway, but not enough light to see by.
She flicked on the torch she carried. Panicked at the sudden shadows playing across the wall … just her hand shaking. Nothing more. She passed the beam around the room, scaring away the shadows. There was nothing there. Just the two of them. A broken woman in a bed and a woman with murder in mind.
She put the torch on the bed and gently took the pillow from under Mrs. March’s head. Gently, so as not to wake her.
“It’s for the best,” she said as she held it above the sleeping woman’s face. Then she pressed it down as hard as she could, but only for a moment, because as Karen March’s breathing changed, a voice came from the darkness behind.
“Oh, honey, that’s not a nice thing to do to my bride-to-be, is it?”
“Uh …”
It couldn’t be … she was out in the hall … stripped of flesh …
She picked up the torch in one hand, turned, still holding the pillow in the other hand. She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t stop herself. She shone the torch where the voice had come from.
Wendy leaned against the door, a smile on her face but nothing in her eyes. They were pits in which nothing could live except limitless evil.
“I’ve got a better way,” said the ghost with the black eyes. The black twinkling eyes.
No. It wasn’t just evil in there, thought Marion.
There was humour too.
The fucking thing was laughing at her.
*
Chapter Thirty-Two
Wendy pushed herself from the wall and walked toward Marion.
Marion thought Wendy was shaking, something ethereal, like it was passing through this world and into the next and back again. But Wendy was solid. It was her hand shaking, on the torch.
“Ung …” she said.
“Shh,” said Wendy. “You’ll wake her up.”
She spoke quietly and moved slowly. She reached out and took the pillow from Marion’s hand.
“There. I bet that pillow felt pretty heavy, didn’t it?”
“You’re dead. I … you’re in the hall …”
“Preaching to the choir, my friend. No, hang on, that’s not right, is it?” Wendy laughed, a soft sound like blood dripping on porcelain.
“Now, enough of this childishness. Sit on the bed. Let’s have a nice chat. Like a couple of grown women. We can sort this out, can’t we?”
Marion couldn’t move. She wanted to. She’d never wanted anything more in her life. Just run out of the room. Scream for help.
Wendy shook her head sadly. She pushed Marion to the bed. Marion’s knees buckled, and she went down. The dead woman sat next to her and put her arm around her.
“Let’s be friends, eh?”
“What … what …”
“What do I want? Is that what you’re trying to say? It is, isn’t it?”
Marion managed to nod.
“Well, now, that’s a big question. It’s a big question for a girl like you to handle. But I’ll tell you. Isn’t that what girls do? That’s what we are, right? Like a couple of girls having a sleepover.”
Wendy put her hand on Marion’s thigh. Stroked her there.
“Bit of exploration, maybe experiment a little? Would you like that?” She put a hand on Marion’s neck, pulled her hair aside and kissed her neck.
Marion felt the scream building. Wendy’s hands were freezing. Her lips were slimy. Like a kiss from a corpse. A drowned, bloated corpse that bobs to the surface. A kiss from lips torn apart by small nibbling fish. Marion could feel the teeth behind those pale lips, small perfect teeth that nipped her neck.
&nbs
p; Wendy drew back.
“Maybe later, eh? Feeling a little frigid? Well, never mind. What I want is a wife. Someone to fuck on a cold winter’s night.”
Marion flinched.
“Oh, don’t be such a prude. We’re not Victorians anymore. We’re not in fucking Jordan, eh? All the young girls, they walk around, tits hanging out, their tight little arses wiggling and a-jiggling. Don’t bat an eye at that, do you? But I want to fuck some retard and everyone’s all uppity about it.”
Her tone was light, but Marion wasn’t fooled. She was terrified, but her senses weren’t dimmed. She was in the room with Death herself, and in every way possible, she was mad.
“What I want from you, Marion, my dear, is a little peace and quiet. I’m tired. I’m sure you can understand that. It’s been a rather hectic night. I’ve been … what do you call it? Tying one on. Kind of like a hen night. You could say I’m a little drunk. Drunk on life!”
Wendy laughed again. Marion’s teeth chattered as the room suddenly became freezing. She could see mist rising from Wendy … or whatever this thing was.
She knew she was going to die.
“See, what’s going to happen, Marion my dear, is I’m going to woo my bride. Maybe I’m wasting my time … Ah, I see you think my bride’s a moron. Well, she’s a bit of cabbage, it’s true, but I’m not interested in her mind.” Wendy winked. “Eh? Eh?”
“I … please …”
“Marion, I swear you’re almost as much of a cabbage as my sweet bride. Now what I want from you, and I’ll keep it simple, is for you to go downstairs and kill a few people. Margaret, George and Jane. I’d like the woman called Jane to suffer, if at all possible, but dead is fine, I suppose, if you haven’t got the stomach for it.”
“No!”
“Oh, but yes …”
“I’m not a murderer!” Marion shouted and found her courage. She pushed Wendy back and bolted for the door.
The policeman stood in the hallway, his arms crossed, a smile on his thick, repulsive lips.
“Au contraire, love, as the French would say. You’ve got form, haven’t you, eh? Form as long as my fucking arm.”
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 12