by Curran, Tim
Finally, Mitch said, “Did you…did you see Chrissy?”
Wanda sat down, plucking a cigarette from Tommy’s pack. She snapped off the filter and lit it with a candle. She looked very tired and very old as if the process had taken years from her. “Yes, I saw her. She’s out there now. I cannot say where, but near enough to Upper Main Street I was told. There is danger for her. Paths to freedom and paths to bondage and death. But only she can choose.”
“I guess we’re making for Main,” Tommy said.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Mitch said to her.
“Oh yes, oh yes.” Wanda dragged off her cigarette. “I underestimated before what was about, what had taken hold of this town. I say to you know it is ancient and terrible. That there are those that called this up by practicing forbidden arts.”
Mitch said, “Fort Providence?”
Wanda nodded. “There is a beginning there. An ugly beginning. Seek it out, Mitch, then you’ll know.”
15
The kid who saved them from the clown was named Nigel.
He was a skinny little nothing kid who seemed perfectly at home in the new, devastated Witcham. He was really amazing. Flashlight in hand, old ugly Grimshanks battering his way through that door, Nigel led them down the corridor and then down a back staircase, out a window and back into the water. The route they took from there was circuitousdown flooded alleys and across avenues, up a fire escape and into an old apartment building.
“It’s okay,” he kept saying. “Just follow me! I know the way! I’ll take you to the lady! She’s the one that helped me!”
Nobody argued.
Nobody questioned.
Because really, when some demonic clown from a circus just this side of Hell wanted to maybe skin you and eat you and make balloon animals out of your intestines, what was there to argue or question? You accepted. Any port in a storm, as they said.
And that’s how they came to the dim, candlelit flat on the third floor. The one that smelled of fresh baked bread and platters of cookies hot from the oven. And that’s also how they met Mrs. Crowley. Dear, sweet, coveting Mrs. Crowley who was everyone’s grandma and favorite auntie. She sat in her rocker, knitting of all things, wearing a cranberry-colored dress and support hose that bagged at the ankles. Her hair was gray going to white, lustrous and full, a few stray fingers of it escaping her severe bun and tumbling to her shoulders. Everything about her was kind and comforting, even her finely-wrinkled face and sea-green eyes which were deep and relaxing like a country swimming hole you knew and trusted.
There was a fire going in the hearth and Brian, Chuck, Tara, and Mark stretched out before it like cats come in out of the rain. The wetness steamed from them. The heat and dryness felt so good, like warm fingers gently unlocking kinks in their backs and knots in their joints, massaging the feeling back into their numb limbs. It was all overwhelming and wonderful and how could you possibly question any of it?
“You poor things,” said Mrs. Crowley. “What an awful night! Thank God Nigel found you or you would have all caught your death!”
The heat loosened Tara’s jaw and she started talking. And once she started, it was pretty hard to get a word in edgewise. “…I didn’t think we’d ever get away. What’s going on this town? What’s happened here? I know the rain wouldn’t stop and River Town and Bethany were flooded…but there’s things out there! I saw them! We all saw them! We all saw the clown!”
“Terrible, terrible business,” said Mrs. Crowley. “Well, have no fear, my ducks and darlings, that awful clown won’t get you here! He knows better than to come sniffing around old Mrs. Crowley’s door! He comes knocking and it will be all tricks and no treats for him!”
“But…” Brian began. “But he’s not normal, he’s something else. He’s like some kind of monster.”
“He is,” Mark added.
“A monster?” Mrs. Crowley tittered over this. “Now, you boys and girls are too big for such nonsense! Monsters, indeed. Oh, you do go on.”
“But he was!” Tara said.
But Mrs. Crowley just shook her head, studied them all in turn through her square-rimmed spectacles. “I’ll have no more of that! You’ve been through a lot! Now what kind of world would it be, my ducks and darlings, if such things were! Ghosts and ghoulies and haunts and witches! Hee, a world that would chill my blood to ice!” She looked over at Nigel. “Did you hear this business, my boy?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Madness, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Chuck was thinking that someone around here was crazy or maybe everyone. Sure, their story maybe sounded a little wild when you unwound the guts of it before a blazing fire with a kind old woman in a nice, dry apartment. But there was no way anyone was going to convince him it hadn’t happened. Things had attacked the bus and they had gotten lost in Bethany and that clown…no, it had been real.
“Nigel!” Mrs. Crowley said. “I think that hot cocoa is ready! Bring a platter of cookies!”
Nigel scampered away into the shadows and they heard him bustling about, the clatter of trays and the liquid filling of cups.
Mrs. Crowley looked right at Chuck as if she could sense the confusion settling into him. “And what of you, my fine young master? You look like the responsible type, a practical sort…what do you say of these things?”
Chuck opened his mouth to answer, to fully disagree with her, but then he closed it. Leaning forward as she was, shadows wreathed over her face from the guttering candlelight, there was something almost sinister about her that made him almost afraid to cross her.
“Well?” she said.
He licked his lips. “We saw some things, weird things. I don’t know. I’m just glad we’re here and we’re safe.”
Mrs. Crowley grinned. “Now that is sensible. For you are safe and sound here. And in the morning, back to your families you go! I’ll sweep you straight out the door!”
“My mom and dad will be worried,” Tara said.
“So they will, so they will, child,” the old woman said. “But what choice is there? No phones, no nothing. Just the night and us gathered here, our candles keeping the shadows at bay. Of course, you’re hardly prisoners, if you wish to go back out there to what waits in that stinking water…”
“No way!” Mark said.
“Smart boy. We’ll have great fun. We’ll have cookies and cocoa and tell stories and when you’re tired, I’ll tuck you away safe and sound! Certain I will!”
Chuck looked around, smelling the cookies now and the cocoa. His stomach began to growl. You couldn’t see much of the apartment in the candlelight, but the rooms were large and high-ceilinged. Old fashioned, really. The wallpaper floral and gaudy, the woodwork carved oak. The chairs were plush and comfortable, the fireplace like something out of a fairy tale. The atmosphere was one of comfort and rest and protection. You knew instinctively this was the sort of place you would never be turned away from. The door would always be open and arms would always enfold you. There would be soft, warm blankets and deep feather beds. When he closed his eyes, he could no longer smell the fetor of the streets. He smelled fine memories and warmth, old books and yellowing photographs sitting on dusty mantels. The trace odor of baked muffins and soups bubbling away on stovetops.
Over the hill and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.
And that was funny, wasn’t it?
Isn’t this what gramma’s house was supposed to look like? Isn’t this what your imagination always described after years of being weaned on fairy tales and quaint childhood fables? Wasn’t this it? Wasn’t this the place he himself had seen in his dreams but thought he would never actually visit? His own grandmother lived in a time-share in Key West, took her vodka neat, and liked to argue things like annuities and blue chip stocks with his father. Her idea of a home cooked meal was to be found on the menu at Perkins and when she had cookies for you, you generally had to cut the plastic wrap free before you
dug in because they always came from a store.
But this woman? Mrs. Crowley?
She was the real thing.
Brian asked her what she was still doing in Bethany, why she hadn’t gotten out with the others.
“Well, I knew there would be trouble and I’ve been here far too long to go running off with half-cocked notions,” she explained. “I am here to help and help I will! As to see is to sow, I always say. Old Mrs. Crowley leave? Ha! It’s not in her old bones! She’s a stain on these very walls that no hand can scrub free!”
“I was just wondering,” Brian said.
“Well, let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, shall we?”
Chuck swallowed something down that just wouldn’t stay. Was it entirely his imagination or had there been some kind of threat in her words? He couldn’t be sure. But as warm and toasty as he now was, the old lady’s tone made the goose pimples rise on his arms. He didn’t know what he was thinking exactly. Sure, she was a nice old woman and wasn’t that enough?
Well, wasn’t it?
Yes, yes, of course it was.
It had to be. Yet…yet he felt almost threatened by all this. He likened Mrs. Crowley to a friendly old dog, but a strange dog that you did not know. Maybe it wagged its tail and smiled up at you in that comical way dogs have, but you still took a chance by petting it. You still took a chance by trusting it. Because when you petted it, it might wag its tail and lay its head against your leg…or it might sink its slavering fangs into your hand.
Stop it, he told himself, you’re just being stupid!
Yes, of course he was. Tara and Mark and Brian were perfectly happy. They knew that Mrs. Crowley’s place was an oasis, that outside these upright and sensible walls there was death. Things beyond death, white-faced and hollow-eyed that reached from the shadows and rose from the stinking water, grinning with yellow teeth. But he still could not relax completely. There were bad things outside, but what about inside? Trust did not come easy to him now. He was suspicious. He worried about himself, he worried about the others. Sure, him, Chuck Bittner whose old man was a ruthless moneyed stuffed shirt that spent his days acquiring more money and more capital by screwing people out of theirs. Chuck had been a selfish, conniving brat for ten years now, all his life, but something had happened out in those flooded streets and in that storm, something had woken up inside him and made him realize how silly all that was.
He cared about these kids even if they couldn’t stand him…or who he had been. And maybe that was part of it. He needed them to survive, he needed to help them survive, and if for no other reason than that they could see that he wasn’t so bad after all. That when this was done with, maybe they would actually like him and call him friend.
Chuck didn’t know what had happened inside him.
But it was there. It was real and, yes, it was very important.
So he was suspicious, paranoid, he did not trust. He felt responsible for these kids. He had to lead them home, no one else, only him. They seemed fine with all this, with Mrs. Crowley and her grandmotherly ways, but they’d also thought that clown was just Bozo or Clarabelle or Cookie, friendly and harmless. And they’d been wrong, hadn’t they? Terribly, dangerously wrong…
The cookies and cocoa came and the other kids dove in.
Who could blame them? Platters of hot steaming cocoa that smelled chocolatey and rich. Trays of peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies and mint cookies and lemon cookies. Cookies with cherries on them and white frosting, chocolate kisses and vanilla swirls. And all of them warm to the touch as if they’d just come from the oven and they must have.
Chuck watched Tara and Brian and Mark stuffing their faces, greedy fingers putting delicious cookies into greedy mouths. Cups of cocoa were raised and ooohed and aahed over. The faces of the kids were grinning and happy. They were laughing and crying tears of joy.
Nigel just watched.
Mrs. Crowley just watched.
And Chuck watched them suddenly horrified by what was happening here. They watched the kids like a couple slat-thin, ravenous wolves watching the three little pigs gorge themselves on goodies and treats, their fat pink bellies ready to burst. Fattening them up, a voice in Chuck’s head said, fattening them up for the stewpot. Whether it was true or febrile imagination run wild, he suddenly wanted to scream at the intimation of horror he felt. When he looked at the cookies, one word popped into his head: bait. Like when you were fishing, you impaled that worm on the hook, hiding the barb that would catch your fish, that would rip through its mouth in a bloody spray and hold it fast. And then his eyes drifted over to Nigel and he remembered a documentary they’d seen in school last year. How when cattle were led to slaughter, a decoy cow was used. A cow trained to lead the others into the slaughterhouse where they would be stunned and gutted and carved-up.
And that’s what Nigel was.
A decoy.
He had led them here and they had followed him, they had trusted him. If a dark, perverse stranger asked you to get into his car, you ran away. But if another kid said, hey, my dad’ll give us a ride, get in. Well, you went, didn’t you? Because that kid was part of your tribe and you could trust him.
It was about this time, as Chuck’s belly filled with white ice, that he noticed something else, too. Mrs. Crowley and Nigel…they were both drooling.
“Aren’t you going to have some cookies, Chuck?” she asked him, wiping her mouth with a hand that was skeletal and yellow-skinned.
“I’m…I’m not hungry.”
“Sure you are,” she said.
Chuck looked at Nigel. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
Nigel shook his head. “I’m not hungry. I’ll eat later.”
Mrs. Crowley held out a platter of cookies to Chuck. “Have one,” she said, her face very pallid and fissured like dry bark, her eyes behind those spectacles filling with blood. “It isn’t polite to refuse.”
Chuck slid back in his chair, an inch, maybe two or three. He was terrified now, knowing the secret and wishing he didn’t. All a carefully-constructed ruse to pull them in. That’s all it was. This apartment was nothing but one of those Roach Motels you see on TV where the roaches check in, but they don’t check out.
And Chuck thought: How did you bake those cookies and heat that cocoa, Mrs. Crowley? I might just be ten-years old and maybe I don’t know everything, but my dad owns lots of rentals and I know a stove needs gas or electricity or even a tank of propane to operate with. There’s not a bunch of hamsters running on a wheel inside it. And there’s no electricity and no gas now, Mrs. Crowley…so how did you make this happen? Am I supposed to believe that you have one of those big black potbellied stoves in the kitchen like Little Red Riding Hood’s gramma? That you feed it sticks and kindling?
“Have a cookie,” she said and it was not an invitation, but an order.
Chuck felt like he might throw up. Because her breath wasn’t sweet like mints or chewing gum, it was repellent and fetid. It smelled like the fumes coming from a dead cat that had exploded with the gases of decomposition. Like she had been chewing on that cat, licking the graying meat from its bones and sucking the spoiled, jellied brains from its skull.
He almost threw-up.
He looked at the others and they saw nothing, were aware of only the fantasy that had been skillfully woven around them. This was reality to them. They looked fat and happy, their eyes dreamy, all slouching sleepily in their chairs.
“Oh, that was good,” he heard Brian say.
Tara made a purring sound like a contented tabby.
Mrs. Crowley was sitting forward in her chair and her dress was ragged and dirty, clots of earth falling from the hem. Her face was ghostly white, the color of a moist, fruiting fungus you might find beneath a rotting log. And like that fungus, it was puckered and pitted, things scurrying just beneath the skin. Her eyes had gone a sickly yellow, threaded with fat red veins, a shiny membrane covering them.
“Have a cookie
, you little shit, or I’ll jam it down your fucking throat!” she snarled at him.
“No, no, no,” Chuck said.
The other kids did not even notice what was happening. They looked at each other and laughed, yawned, talked about what they were going to do when they finally got home, never realizing they were fattened flies hanging in the web of a spider and that they would never, ever go home again.
“Have a cookie,” Nigel said.
He sat there with the others, a dead little boy in a black burial suit that had grown dark pockets of mold. His face was shriveled and white, his grinning mouth exposing blackened teeth, his empty eye sockets filled with pale, squirming things.
Chuck looked at the platter Mrs. Crowley had shoved in his face.
There were no cookies on it.
Not a one.
There were only the carapaces of dead insects…slabs of festering, greenish meat boiling with maggots…things like decayed eyes and organs and loops of bowel crusted with spots of mildew. Some mummified fingers. Small black ants crawled over everything, a living carpet of them.
Chuck screamed.
All the platters were filled with carrion and insects.
The other kids smiled happily. Brian said something and a plump maggot wriggled out from between his lips and fell to his lap. He brushed it aside like a stray crumb. Mark took a last swallow of cocoa and it spilled down his chin, except that it was blood, a thick and syrupy blood like that which might leak from the belly of a corpse.
In some back room of his mind, Chuck could hear Grimshanks the clown’s grating voice, Now wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?