Jennifer stopped laughing and looked with concern at her little brother. "Are you okay?" she asked.
Jackie let another wave of nausea pass before he could speak. "My leg ... The troll ... it came out ... it almost got me. It cut my leg." He pointed at his leg where the troll had grabbed him, puncturing his skin with its claws, but the rips in his jeans and the soaking blood were gone. He grabbed his pant leg and pulled it up. His leg was okay. The flesh was untouched; there was no pain now, no blood bubbling out of the holes in his flesh because there were no holes in his flesh any longer.
"You have got the craziest imagination. Can't you tell by now when I'm kidding you?" She put her hand on Jackie's shoulder. She was quickly realizing that she had pushed him too far.
"I knew you were kidding," Jackie said, his face gray, his voice trembling with emotion, "but the troll was there anyway! It kept saying, `Pay the troll! Pay the troll!' over and over again." Tears rolled down his cheeks and dripped from his chin. He began trembling, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.
Jennifer sat next to her brother and hugged him. "You dope," she said with a mixture of fondness and amusement. "That was no troll saying that, it was me! Just me. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were so scared"
CHAPTER 12
There once was an old woman sat spinning
Eleanor Grimm rested her head against the glass of the tower window. She was exhausted. She hadn't had a day this busy since Edmund's death. Below her, in the little clearing of trees near the old wooden bridge Edmund had built nearly twenty years ago, she watched the girl named Jennifer take her crying brother back to the bridge, forcing him to look under it to show him there was nothing there.
Eleanor smiled weakly and her lower lip began to quiver. She never ceased to be amazed with the Machine. She didn't know how, but once she made telepathic contact with someone, the Machine kept that contact going even when Eleanor was out of range or asleep. The Machine could keep dozens of people dancing to her thoughts, both conscious and subconscious, like marionettes until she had no further use for them.
What had just happened at the bridge had been of extreme importance for her plans. She'd been trying to decide what would be the perfect moment and the best way to establish contact with the boy and girl who had moved into the house at the end of her road. She had plenty of time before Halloween, but she wanted to be sure she had her hooks deep into them by then. Her little game with the boy had achieved some contact, and had served to test his willpower.
The funny thing was that without the Machine, she would have missed them out there all together. She had been feeling very sick; the chest and arm pains had returned and though the nitroglycerin pills had helped, she still felt like there was a half-ton weight sitting on her chest. She had been on her way to lie down, after putting the twins in the cage with Davy Torrez when she'd found herself climbing the narrow stairway to the tower room before she even realized what she was doing. When she got there and heard the thoughts of the children in the woods, and identified them, she understood that the Machine had arranged it all, including preventing their mother from picking them up at school so they would be forced to walk home and choose to go through the woods, directly by Grimm Memorials. The rest had been up to her.
She'd always had a special way with children. Edmund's powers may have been stronger-his derisive laughter echoed through the house-and he was certainly smarter than Eleanor, but he didn't have the knack with children that she had. Eleanor had discovered that children are much more survivalist than adults. In Edmund's case the Machine worked against him. He was too eager and children seemed to be able to sense that in him, because he wasn't patient enough to entice and coax and dig inside a child's mind to find ways to win its trust, or find its secret fear.
It was Edmund who had sought out the black-market baby-and-children dealers to supply them with fresh meat for their rituals. For their daily diet, they mostly depended on flesh taken from clients of the mortuary. They became very adept at stripping a body of its meat, yet making it presentable for viewing at a wake. Edmund resorted to letting Eleanor lure children only when they had exhausted all other sources, including an organization of perverted professionals known as NAMBLA, which stood for the North American Man/Boy Love Alliance. This organization ran a series of "boy houses," which were really meat markets for men to buy young boys for their sexual pleasure. Edmund joined the group and was one of their best customers, paying thousands of dollars a year for boys until he died. Unfortunately, for Eleanor, they didn't allow women to join or make purchases. Instead she had to rely on her own ingenuity, and had done very well for herself.
Eleanor loved seducing a child's mind. She seemed to draw as much nourishment from probing the depths of a young child's mind as she did from devouring its succulent, sweet flesh. The fact that, due to her mad mother's influence, she knew all the well-known fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and in many ways was still a child herself, made it easy for her to slip inside a child and draw it to her like a moth to a flame. She loved luring a child with a happy image pulled from the child's mind, then toying with the image, playing on the child's joys and fears. Edmund and she had learned early in life the pleasure of inducing fear and pain. The intense fear children generated, which could never be matched by an adult, brought her near orgasmic pleasure.
Eleanor shivered suddenly and the quivering in her lower lip became more pronounced. Her hands began to tremble and her teeth chattered even though it was very warm in the tower room. Below, the girl and boy continued on their way and were now passing the front of the house. The girl kept looking up and talking, but the boy kept his head down and walked quickly past. Eleanor listened to their contrasting thoughts go by and head off down the road through the woods toward their home.
The boy might be trouble. She hadn't expected him to react the way he had on the bridge. He was supposed to just give in, like all the other children always had. Since the first time she'd seen him outside Roosevelt's Bar in Amherst, she'd sensed something in him that she'd never found in other children: an acute awareness of danger that amounted almost to a sixth sense. She'd have to find some very special way to catch him, but she was sure the Machine would come up with something when the time was right. It had never failed her before.
You should have taken him now while you had the chance!
Edmund's voice echoed out of the gloom around her. But then you never were too smart. He laughed at her.
Smart enough, Eleanor thought. I'm still alive and you're dead, aren't you, Edmund? No answer.
Everything is going according to plan, no matter what Edmund thinks (and he's dead, anyway), she told herself just before a white-hot light exploded behind her eyes. A severe, bone-rattling tremor ran through her entire body and she began to shake to the point of vibrating, as though she were strapped to a reducing machine. Another burst of light exploded in her brain, spreading through her head, down her neck, and through the rest of her body, sending her spinning down into the bottomless pit called unconsciousness.
"What's he doing? " she whispers to Edmund in the darkness. They are in the casket elevator that runs between the chapel on the first floor and the crematorium in the basement. It is their favorite hiding place. She looks at her brother peering through the crack of the elevator door's hinges. He appears to be no more than five or six years old and suddenly she remembers.
He's gonna 'balm her, Edmund says in her head. She crouches beside her brother and peers through the crack also. They are looking at the crematorium, which also functions as the embalming room. On the metal embalming table, with its gutters, drains, and specimen-collecting bottle, is a naked woman. Her skin is tinged a pale, cold blue. Next to the table stands their father wearing a full-length white smock and rubber gloves.
Is she dead? Eleanor silently asks her brother. She doesn't know why, but she doesn't want her father to catch them hiding there.
Of course, stupid, Edmund replies.
Father bends
over the corpse, grasping the woman 's shoulders with both hands. Slowly he slides his hands down her arms, then over her belly and up until he is squeezing her dead breasts. His hands work her breasts roughly, kneading and pulling, tweaking the pale nipples and rolling then between his fingers, pinching them so hard that Eleanor winces in the darkness.
Father is breathing heavily. Beads of sweat dot his forehead though it is cool in the room. His right hand leaves its breast and slides down between the dead woman's legs while the left one continues to maul her other breast.
His right hand begins to slide faster and faster between her legs. Father's breathing speeds up, matching the rhythm of his hand. With a suppressed giggle, Eleanor notices that the front of father's apron is sticking out as though he had something hidden under it.
Suddenly, Father stops his stroking and bends over the womans head. He grasps her face with his right hand, puts his lips to the dead woman's and kisses her passionately. He steps back and, with one quick motion, tears the smock from his body. He is naked underneath. His long, wrinkled penis juts out from his body and bobs up and down. His breathing is loud in the room, drowning out all other sounds. He climbs onto the table, sitting on the corpse's chest. He grabs her head and holds it up, letting the lower jaw fall open. Inching forward, he pushes himself into the cold dead mouth.
When it is over and father has covered the body and gone upstairs, Edmund and Eleanor let themselves out of the elevator and go to the embalming table. Edmund pulls back the sheet and looks at the woman 's face. It is bruised and mottled and the mouth hangs open far too wide for a normal mouth. He reaches up and tries to close it, but it falls open again and a trickle of thick white fluid runs out one corner of it.
"Let's play like daddy did," Edmund says softly to Eleanor. "You be the dead lady."
It was dark when Eleanor woke. From where she lay on the floor, legs spread-eagle, her left arm trapped under her, her right one splayed out to one side, she could see stars winking through the room's sole window. She didn't know how long she'd been out. The attack had been a bad one. Her mind was still foggy and she could barely remember what she had dreamed, something about her father and Edmund. The Machine was playing the thoughts of those caught in her web so faintly she had to strain to hear them.
She pulled her arm out from under her. It was numb and she rubbed it until needles and pins made her wince. She looked out the window. The moon wasn't out yet, which told her it was early evening, and the fact that she hadn't soiled herself meant that she hadn't been there more than a few hours.
After much effort, she sat up in the darkness. Her legs were stiff and they throbbed with the pain of arthritis. After much hard rubbing and massaging, she was able to loosen up her legs enough to get to her knees and crawl to the window. Grunting, she forced it open and stuck her head out, breathing deeply of the cool night air.
As her head cleared, the Machine grew louder. The thoughts of the twins in the crematorium cage swelled to a cacophony drowning out all the others. Thoughts of food were prominent in their minds, overriding even fear for the moment. Eleanor smiled to herself. She just loved the way kids' minds worked.
It took Eleanor forty-nine minutes to get down to the kitchen from the tower room at the top of the house. Her legs felt rubbery and, for several seconds when she first stood, they felt completely liquid. She walked a step at a time, steadying herself on the walls and clinging to the stair railings with both hands as she descended three floors.
The hungry thoughts of the starving twins in the crematorium filled the Machine, pushing out everything else. Her ears began to throb and the throbbing became a pounding pain in her head. She had to stop several times and sit on the stairs for fear that the thundering voices in her head would make her pass out. Every thought was a slashing pain between her temples, cutting her brain to pieces.
A memory came with the pain and she saw herself, two years old, experiencing the same thing that was happening now. The voices of her demented mother, stoic father, and domineering brother had become a tumultuous riot of torturing noise in her mind. It had been building for a long time because, unlike Edmund, she had not yet learned how to tune out the thought-voices in the Machine. Eventually, it became a matter of keeping her sanity, of surviving, that forced her to learn how to do it.
Do it now, she willed herself. Through the pain, she imagined that the booming thoughts were a wall. She pictured herself pushing against the wall until it slid back a few inches. The thoughts diminished slightly. She pushed again. The wall moved. The voices grew quieter. The pain in her head slowed its frantic beating. The thought-voices were at a low level now, manageable. Just behind the hungry children's demanding thoughts were the troubled minds of the Nailer family members.
She pulled herself to her feet and staggered down the last steps to the second floor. Eleanor smiled weakly. Once again the Machine had shifted gear, running on according to plan. It was good that the Machine ran even when there was no one at the controls; Eleanor had barely been at the controls at all lately.
The next flight of stairs was much easier to manage. Eleanor was feeling stronger now, drawing new strength from the Machine. She made it all the way to the first floor and the kitchen with only one stop.
In the kitchen, Eleanor took a huge stainless steel pot from the cabinet and placed it on the stove. From the refrigerator, she took a can of lard and several large aluminumwrapped packages and placed them on the kitchen table. Above the stove, on a rack, hung a meat cleaver, which she retrieved and placed on the table next to the foil-wrapped packages.
She scooped a good amount of lard into the pot and turned the burner on underneath it. As it began to sizzle, she unwrapped the packages, picked up the cleaver, and went to work chopping their contents for stew. As she chopped, several small fingers flew from the table and rolled on the floor. She left them for the dog.
As soon as they heard Eleanor on the stairs, the twins in the cage stopped the whimpering they'd been soothing each other with since their capture. When she opened the door and entered the crematorium they retreated to the back of the cage and hugged each other tightly. Davy Torrez, who, in shock, had remained curled up in a fetal position in the same spot in the rear left corner of the cage, didn't move. Davy's mind had decided to opt out for a while and take a little vacation away from the horrors of his situation. But now, as Eleanor approached, and he felt her evil presence like a cold draft in his head fear began pulling him back to reality and made him aware once more of his surroundings.
Eleanor carried a tray into the room and placed it on the large metal embalming table. Steam rose from the bowls on the tray and filled the room with the succulent aroma of stewed meat. It set the boys' mouths to watering. The twins disengaged themselves from each other's arms and moved cautiously forward, sniffing like animals lured to a hunter's fire. Against his will, Davy Torrez's mouth watered, too, but at the same time the smell of the stew (pease porridge hot!) made his stomach queasy.
On the tray were three large bowls of piping hot stew, bread, a pitcher of milk, glasses, and a box of Devil Dogs. Before opening the cage and placing the tray of food inside, Eleanor removed a small packet of powder from her dress pocket and dumped it into the pitcher of milk.
Normally, she wouldn't have had to drug the children, she could have relied on the Machine to keep each child in a blissful dream state, but in her weakened condition she wasn't at all sure the Machine wouldn't break down at some point. The weakness of the Machine when she had awakened from her latest palsy attack had frightened her. She decided it was safer to keep the captive children quiet with small doses of ground sleeping pills or tranquilizers mixed in their daily milk than risk them coming fully awake to the reality of their situation and wasting away in shock the way Davy Torrez was, and the way the Hall boy before him had.
Edmund had been a connoisseur of drugs, both legal and otherwise, and had always kept a well-stocked supply of every drug he could get his hands on. As she droppe
d the sleeping powder into the milk, Eleanor caught Davy Torrez watching her, but he immediately closed his eyes and feigned unconsciousness again.
"Eat, little ones, eat everything," Eleanor cooed.
Davy opened his eyes. He couldn't get out of his mind the image of the little boy with no arms, no legs, and (Oh Mommy!) no peepee. The boy was no longer in the cage.
The better for stew!
"Eat up like good little boys, and your mommy will be here soon to take you home," Eleanor cooed to the twins. They needed little encouragement to eat and attacked the food voraciously.
Davy Torrez looked up at her with renewed terror in his eyes and something else revulsion. He felt her thoughts enter his mind with a message the twins couldn't hear: Eat or you'll be in the stew next!
The twins paused from their eating as Eleanor left the room, but didn't stop for long. Hunger had overwhelmed fear for the time being and they filled their bellies, oblivious to anything else.
DON'T EAT THE STEW! Davy wanted to scream at them. IT'S MADE OUT OF A LITTLE BOY WHOSE ARMS, LEGS, AND PEEPEE WERE CUT OFF! But his mind was setting off on that long dark road again. The few moments of horrifying reality it had just witnessed had convinced it to go back to the safety of deep shock and forgetfulness. Don't eat the stew, he thought, weakly, one more time and went under.
The twins ate everything on the tray.
CHAPTER 13
Girls and boys, come out to play.
Jackie sat at his desk in the middle of the third row, copying letters from a primer. The tip of his tongue stuck from the corner of his mouth as he practiced his printing, but his mind was not on his work; the events of yesterday kept intruding. From the moment he'd tried to cross the troll bridge, he'd felt as though he'd been thrust into a living nightmare. Jen's proving to him that there was no troll under the bridge, and that he had caught his foot on a tree root, had done nothing to make him feel any better. If anything, he felt worse. He knew what he had seen had not been his imagination, but then, what was it?
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