by John Farris
Devil worshipers, Smidge concluded, running hard despite a cramp in her stomach, but mortally afraid she was going nowhere. Afraid to look back. Human sacrifice. Shit like that. Last year's ritual murder of a pregnant actress and four other people (Smidge couldn't recall any names) was very much on her mind.
Oh, God. My daddy's a Methodist preacher. Don't let them! Jesus, I'll come back to you! I'll preach if you want me to. I won't do drugs any more. I swear on the cross, just don't let it happen to me!
22
"I think we should go this way," Puff said, pausing to take a breather where the shaft they were following turned into a narrow cone-shaped chamber that angled up so high the beam of the flashlight barely grazed the reflectant chandelier formations beneath the roof. "Alastor, what do you think?"
She'd been going on like that for several minutes, chatting with the sleepy-eyed boy and all but ignoring Duane, except to snap at him when she thought he was doing something wrong as they made their ways up from the lower chamber filled with moths and silk and mummies. Duane already with the low, sick feeling that they were seriously lost, but he didn't have a clue as to how they'd gone wrong. Maybe from the very beginning: the mummy chamber like the inside of an egg, points of reference scarce, numerous holes in the walls, and then the boy—if that's what he was, and Duane wasn't so sure about that any more, about his humanness—had come to life in an unforgettably ghastly manner, which had really cold-cocked all of his senses. Now he was concentrating most of his mental energies on just trying to keep cool and objective and ignore Puffs rambling madness. The lunas fluttering around their heads were of no help. They were probably lost, too.
Some water was trickling over translucent ledges of stone into a pool and Duane, sampling cautiously, concluded that if the water was deadly he didn't really care at this point, and drank his fill. Puff sat down and shifted Alastor's weight into her naked lap with a grimace and a sigh, and rolled her head to loosen stiff neck muscles. Alastor had the indentations of sharks' teeth all over his chest and belly. The lunas would swoop toward him, alight briefly, then take off again. He stared at the necklace, then reached up slowly with the hand that had the thorn and touched it. Puff smiled.
"Puff, do you want to get a drink?"
She looked over at Duane, and at the little waterfall.
"Here, you hold Alastor."
"Puff, I don't think I want—”
"Hold him!"
"All right, just take it easy."
"And don't drop him," she added, getting up and crossing the floor to Duane in her flappy sandals.
Duane's glasses were misted from the waterfall. He took them off and set them beside the flashlight on a shelf of stone and accepted Alastor gingerly. It was like taking a snowman in his arms. He began to shudder right away, his teeth chattering. Alastor's legs clamped him at the waist. Puff went down on one knee to drink. Her hair hung off one side of her head, across the left shoulder. Without his glasses she looked a little blurry to Duane, but because of the angle of the flashlight beam he couldn't miss the thin line of partly dried blood from the nape of her neck and along the pebbled track of her arched spine.
"Puff? Did you know you were bleeding?"
"Where?" she muttered, cupping her hands to her mouth.
Alastor's head came up slowly and he stared at Duane.
"Looks like it's right in the middle of the back of your neck."
"Oh." She reached up with a wet finger and touched the spot. "I did feel something a little while ago. Alastor had his hand on my neck and he must have scratched me."
That's when Alastor went for Duane's left eye with the thorn where his right little finger should have been.
Duane jerked his head back instinctively, and the thorn missed, gouging the bridge of his nose instead, burning like a hypodermic needle. Duane let go of Alastor and cuffed him on the side of the head. Alastor screamed, lost his grip with his legs and fell at Duane's feet.
Puff jumped up at the sound of the scream, Duane cursing contrapuntally, and reached for Alastor, who was sitting spraddle-legged on the floor.
Alastor scrambled away on all fours, and Puff went after him. She stubbed a toe on the uneven floor and pulled up howling and limping.
Out of her reach, Alastor paused, looking around, looking up. Then he got to his feet and went running to a wall and began to climb. Within seconds he was out of Puffs reach.
"Alastor! No! Come back, you'll fall!"
Duane retrieved his glasses and with the flashlight illuminated Alastor on the inslanting wall. He showed no hesitation in climbing, although finger and toeholds were scarce. He moved like a fly, not in a straight line but zigzagging quickly over the rock face, continuing upward until he was more than halfway to the top of the cone-shaped chimney. A fall from there would have killed an ordinary child, but Alastor didn't fall, confirming Duane's hunch about him: but if he wasn't human and he wasn't animal, what was he?
"Get him down!"
"How?" Duane asked reasonably, shining the light almost straight up through a whirligig of luna moths accompanying Alastor. For a few moments he paused as if searching, hanging upside down on the rock, then altered his course, scurried out of the throw of Duane's flashlight and vanished in near darkness.
"Oh, no, oh, no," Puff moaned. Her foot was bleeding where she'd ripped a toenail. "He's gone! We've got to find him!"
Duane sat down slowly and hung his head, flashlight dangling between his knees. He didn't have even a spark of energy left.
Puff, hopping mad, started kicking him with her uninjured foot.
"Get up! Get up! We have to get out of here and find Alastor!"
"I can't, Puff," Duane said, tears running down his cheeks. "I can't move. Leave me alone."
She tried to rip the flashlight from his hands. Duane resisted her. Her spit flew in his face. Duane buried his head and held on to the flashlight and took a few blows until Puff was too tired to keep it up. Drained of frenzy, panting, she slumped down beside him. He turned the light off.
"Why-did you do that?"
"Save the batteries. I don't know how long it's going to take us to find the way out. Maybe Marjory'll send help."
She crowded closer to him like a denning animal. The cold of her flesh set his teeth on edge. How she could be that cold, and not shaking to pieces?
"I don't feel good," Puff said.
"I don't either."
"If Alastor got out of here, there must be lots of ways. I'll find him. Won't I?"
In the dark Duane remembered Alastor, clinging to the walls. I hope not, he thought. He said, "We'll rest a few minutes, then get started again."
23
The stable in Dante's Mill was clean, for a stable, and dry. Smidge kept a close eye on the girl who said her name was Marjory. She was bigger than Smidge, but seemed harmless. Maybe a little off in the head. Smidge had found a couple of horse blankets that'd probably never been on a horse, and they were wrapped in those. She had changed from the skin out. Marjory was soaked too, but wouldn't take her wet things off. Her teeth chattered rhythmically. She was pale and there was a swelling bruise on one cheekbone where Smidge had slugged her with the flashlight, which had a steel barrel. The lens was cracked, but they still had some light, though Smidge was cautious about turning it on, not wanting to give away their hiding place to whoever might be looking for them. Marjory's nose had bled a little. Her hair was a blond bird's nest. Smidge might have felt sorry for her, but she couldn't forget that image of a half-skinned Wiley being tossed around by a grotesquely nude woman nowhere near his size. The strangest sight Smidge had ever seen, and she'd been in some tough places where far-out was the norm when it came to personal style and adornment. She—they—had stumbled into a witches' coven, all right, and this kid might well be a part of it. Or an intended victim. Smidge couldn't get much out of Marjory, but who could talk with such a case of the shudders?
"Hey, listen, Marjory? I don't think I'm going to stay here too long." Smidge kept her voice lo
w. "If you tell me you weren't involved in that, okay, I believe you. Somehow you don't seem like the type. And I think you're pretty fucking scared like I am."
"W-what?"
"You saw what happened to Wiley, didn't you? But why were you trying to grab me?"
"W-Wiley?"
"Oh, come on! You know what I'm talking about."
Marjory hunched her shoulders, bracing herself for a chill that threatened to tear her apart. She was sniffing, but not fast enough to keep some of the snot from running out of her nose. She looked like she'd been raped by the Turkish army.
"W-who're . . . you?"
"I told you, my name's Smidge! Yeah, I know, that's not a name. 1 just didn't grow until I was almost thirteen, then I got my period and like, wow, all of a sudden I shot up a foot. Kovellis. Paula Kovellis. Akron, Ohio. Do you live around here?"
"Yes."
"They stuck Wiley in the eye with something. Blinded him. The poor dumb son of a bitch. That wasn't the worst thing that happened to him. Jesus, I can't stand thinking about it. So why did you grab me, what were you trying to do? You acted like it was some kind of fucking game."
"You've g-g-got . . . a dirty m-m-m—"
"Excuse me, sweetie. What church bus did you ride in on?"
Marjory shook her head, swallowed hard. "I didn't—I think I—c-came with Rita Sue-Sue-Sue. Boyce. And, uh, uh, Duane. B-but h-he-s—"
Marjory put her hands over her face, grinding away.
"Hey, Marj, easy."
"Is Duane—still down there?"
"Down where?"
"C-cave."
"There's caves around here?"
"Big one. I s-saw—"
"You saw what?"
"Mr. Horsfall."
"Who's that," Smidge said impatiently, "your fucking Sunday school teacher?" She got up and prowled around. The stable doors were open at one end. Rain fell outside, but thunder was far away. There was a gaslight in front of some building or other halfway up the single wide street—now a muddy lake—of the town. The whole town looked like Bonanza to Smidge. Just a stage set, and deserted as far as she knew. She'd picked out the first doorway they'd come to. But Smidge was worried. The hairless woman had gotten a good look at her. Funny about that. Maybe if you were a woman you could get weird enough to shave your head, but she didn't have a trace of hair on her cunt, either. That look in her eyes—wander through a zoo and distract a predator from its meat, that's the look you'd get. As if she were preparing to eat Wiley. Smidge's throat filled, she couldn't shut it off in time, and she coughed some exceptionally bitter vomit. Mescaline. Pills. She put both hands hard against her stomach where the pain was intense.
"Matter?" Marjory asked, hearing Smidge gag.
"Deke. He's back there. They must have got him too by now. Look, I'm getting out of here. I mean, somebody has to go for help. You'll be all right, don't you think?"
Marjory rose slowly to her feet. "Is Puff . . . a friend of yours?"
"Puff! Hell yes! Where did you see Puff?"
"She was with us. Duane and me. In the c-cave. See, Mr. Horsfall s-stole her radio, and took it into the cave."
"Uh-huh. So that's your story? Well, I'm not worried about Puff right now, she never gave a damn about my ass. I just don't want anybody coming after me, you understand?"
"No."
"Why don't you go way back in one of those horse stalls, nobody'll know you're there unless you make a lot of noise. See you around like a doughnut, Marj."
"I . . . I've got to find Duane."
"Suit yourself. Good luck. Just don't tag along, I don't feel like company." The pain in Smidge's stomach wouldn't quit. All the chemical abuse, catching up to her. Stoned since she was fourteen practically, twenty-two now. Twenty-three, don't lie. One year all but erased from memory. According to her passport, she'd been in Greece, Minorca, Bimini, other sunny ports of call. No reliable memories of anyone except a grossly fat, ever-smiling, apparently rich woman called Punk-A-Doodle. Or maybe that had been the name of her yacht. Cold turkey now at the worst possible time, the ripping twitches starting up all over Smidge's system. Hot flashes behind the eyes, ears ringing. Ring, ring—maybe she could get daddy on the phone, at the manse outside Akron. Maybe he'd be willing to listen, one more time. Daddies never gave up on their little girls, did they?
Smidge put on the backpack, draped the horse blanket from the top of her head and added her muleskinner's hat. The blanket hung to her knees. She walked out of the stables, bearing right, eyes on the flickering gas lamp up the street. The flashlight in her hand kept her out of the worst of the mud and the pooled water. She turned once for a quick look at the stable and smithy, but the doorway was blank, no sign of Marjory.
As she turned back the way she was headed, Smidge saw something, or somebody, scamper across a porch of one of the buildings on the other side of the street. It gave her a jolt that made her forget, momentarily, the hot wires twisting ever tighter throughout her lean body.
It had been low enough to the porch floor, below the railing, to be a dog. Instinctively Smidge flashed the light that way to see if she could pick it up again. She made out the gold-leaf letters "MERC" on a dark window. There was something of human shape motionless behind the glass; she needed a few moments to realize that it was an old-fashioned dressmaker's dummy. Full satiny skirt. White gloves. No further movement on the porch. There was a slat wooden bench under the window, but she couldn't quite—
Smidge held the flashlight at arm's length and ventured a little farther toward the middle of the street, boots sucking mud. The rain down to u drizzle now, lightning farther off, giving the sky a dusting.
The object of her search was under the bench. Huddled with knees up, head bent, eyes just above knee-level and locked on her in the wisping beam of light. She took another mucky step. Human eyes and sticking-out ears. . . not a baby but a child, without visible eyebrows or hair. Not even a rain-slicked coating of pale down on the head.
"Hey!" Smidge called, bolder now although she couldn't imagine what a kid was doing there alone and—as far as she could tell—practically naked. Maybe he (the shape of the face looked wrong for a girl, somehow) belonged to a caretaker family living in the town. Upstairs over the store? But there were no lights in the row of windows above the slant porch roof.
When she took another step the kid changed position, began to creep out from under the bench without taking his eyes off her. A boy, all right, he was sporting a tadpole-size whang. He looked poised to go off on a tear.
"Wait a minute! Don't run off. If there's a phone around here, I need to . . "
Smidge's voice trailed. She had a sickening inspiration. The kid in her light was a scaled-down version of the woman in the woods, the one who apparently had done some unbelievably ghastly things to Wiley. Mother and son? Lord have mercy. She wasn't waiting around to find that out.
Something large and smudgy-wet arced out of the night just within her peripheral vision and smacked coldly against her cheek. Smidge jumped with a shriek and lost her footing in the mud, sat down squarely and hard clawing at her face to get it off. Insect wings, a big bug of some kind—she heard high-pitched childish hooting.
Smidge staggered to her feet. The flashlight, jarred once too often, had gone out. She worked the button. Nothing. He was still making fun of her distress, sounding as shrill as Smidge herself. There was enough illumination from the yellow chimney of the gaslight two buildings away to reveal him crouched on a step of the porch, a froglike posture. Smidge began to run, slipping badly but maintaining her balance.
When she looked back there were luminous moths swirling in the saturated air; her cheek felt quick-frozen where the other luna had touched her.
And the boy was following: running a few steps, stopping, crouching, stalking. Mud to his hips, but he was as swift and sure-footed as she was clumsy.
He ran right up behind her and jumped high on her back, clinging to the mound of the bulky backpack. He rode her facedown into the
mud.
Smidge thrashed and cursed and tried to turn over, to throw him off. He was like a forty-pound blanched spider. She felt icy hands in her hair, uncovering the nape of her neck. Then something sharp as a needle jabbed her a little more than an inch above the occipital bulge and entered deeply through the cerebellum, slipping up under the bone shelf. Smidge saw a couple of flashes of intense blue light like the onset of a migraine, and gradually stopped struggling. Tears streamed from one eye. Her blood seemed suspended in her arteries, bubbly, frothy, intoxicating as wine fermenting in a vat. It was not like any rush she was familiar with. She experienced a cloud-cosy lassitude. She continued to weep softly.
When she came around, aware that his weight was off her, Smidge sat up. She wiped mud from her face. The pin-prick on the back of her neck where he'd jabbed her felt electric. She cleaned a couple of fingers on her shirt and touched the spot. There was a trace of blood. That was all.
He was sitting a dozen feet away in the mud with his knees up again, gazing at her. Some of the luna moths were keeping him company, in spite of the slow rain. He watched one of them, balancing it on the back of an outstretched hand. The little finger of that hand was so dirty it looked black in the available light.
"What the hell did you do to me?" Smidge whined.
With a slight affectionate casting of his hand he put the luna in flight and studied it wistfully. He extended both hands from his sides and made languidly graceful flying motions. Smidge got up, dropping the sodden horse blanket, and took off her backpack. The boy stopped imitating the air show of the comely lunas and got up too, facing her. Smidge felt woozy, not too strong at the knees. Her heart was swollen like a hot-air balloon, a crisis in the making. She came up with the precious reds she'd been hoarding, worked up some spit and swallowed them. What she wouldn't give to be ripped to the tits right now—but she knew that wasn't smart. Smidge located the other item she wanted: a belt-buckle knife which she clenched in the palm of her right hand, two-edged, two-and-a-half-inch blade protruding between the fore and middle fingers.