by Bryn Roar
His left ankle rolled outward, sending a shockwave up his leg. Queasy sweat suddenly swamped his brow, flooding his stinging eyes. He got up on one leg and looked up at the treehouse…
Tansy Wilky was staring down at him, her grisly features ablaze with hate, hurt, and hunger.
Fear can be a helluva pain reliever. It lit a fire under Rusty’s ass, and he took off like a bottle rocket. Seconds later he heard Tansy drop to the ground beneath the treehouse, landing as softly as a cat with sore paws. He’d always been fast, but today, even with the sprained ankle, Rusty Huggins was grease lightning. His Converse All Stars pounded the bricks in a blue blur, his footfalls echoing frantically along the dank corridor, in concert with the more fleshy strides of his pursuer. As he had done earlier, Rusty thought he could outdistance her, only he didn’t have nearly the head start as before. Tansy was gaining on him. She was twenty yards behind him now, her guttural gibberish bouncing off the brick walls in 5.1 surround. The stark echoes only served to stoke his adrenalin, which in turn drove him well beyond his usual physical limitations, keeping him in a race he otherwise would’ve lost right from the start.
On his wings of fear, Rusty seemed to fly through the remainder of theKing of Horror, only to lose half his precious lead inside theHollywood section of the museum. The exit to theChamber of Retribution was coming up fast now. So was Tansy. Six yards and closing. The iron bars blocking the entrance didn’t give Rusty pause. He knew them to be painted-plastic, and were of course never locked. He slammed through them, throwing the bars behind him, hoping to catch the bitch on her ugly kisser.
Crowing victoriously, Tansy Wilky stripped the prison bars from the brick wall. She was right behind Rusty now, her stink a noxious wave, her rotting breath, moist and hot on his neck…
*******
“Did you hear that?” Bud asked his father. Bill was looking up curiously at the Stand By Me tree house, wondering where why the sound wasn’t working.
“You mean the absence of audio coming from—”
“No, sir. Listen…”
*******
Josie peeked through the space between the steering wheel and the dashboard of the ’57 Fury. After turning Christine’s electrics off, she’d helped Tubby into the back seat, with instructions to lie down. She locked the doors, though not for a second did she believe it would keep out any of the maniacal Rabid. Still, she felt safe in the auto her Bud had put so much of himself into restoring—it was as if he was in the car with her, his arm draped over her shoulders.
As she waited for the Rabid to show itself, Josie toyed with the rabbit’s foot keychain, dangling below the ignition, hoping some of its good luck would rub off on her. Then again, she thought with a wry smile, it sure didn’t do the poor bunny rabbit any good.
*******
Tansy’s hand landed heavily on Rusty’s shoulder. It’s over! Alllll over! his mind reeled hysterically. Curtains! The End! Tout fine! T-t-t-that’s all folks! The race was done, and the finish line was still nowhere in sight.
“NOOOO!” Rusty wailed. “LET GO OF ME! YOU NASTY HATEFUL BITCH!!!”
Tansy laughed behind him, her hand tightening on his shoulder, her fingers cutting cruelly through his shirt…
I’m going to die, Rusty thought, crazy with fear. Die all alone in this overgrown mouse hole…
And then…
At first, Rusty thought the eyes rushing at him in the dark belonged to yet another Rabid, eager to join in the carnage. Then he realized these eyes were golden—not red!
A screech followed, the screech of a hunting owl, a pissed off owl, paralyzing its prey right before the strike. His sharp claws extended, Boris flew right over Rusty’s head. So close he could smell the dusty feathers.
Tansy screamed as the heavy owl slammed into her face like a tawny bowling ball, his black talons ripping yet even more flesh from her skull. Her hand left Rusty’s shoulder at once, as the owl brought her down to the floor, their battle cries eerily similar…
Rusty ran throughMurderers Rowwithout once looking back, quickly leaving it and the Rabid behind him. And poor Boris, too. Rusty closed his eyes for a second and thanked God for His timely intervention.
He ended the prayer by pleading for the owl’s life. Please God. Please don’t let that bitch kill Boris.
He plunged through the next-to-the-last set of doors and into the fog-enshrouded cemetery, where Eddie Gein toiled endlessly in the same old grave.
For a second there, Rusty thought he’d heard someone call out his name, further back in the tunnel, after Boris had rescued him. But as the doors closed behind him, they silenced any hope he might have had. Now that he was safe, at least for the time being, Rusty’s injured ankle began to throb. It felt as if his heart had relocated to his ankle, the pain reaching a crescendo with each beat of his pulse. He hobbled to a halt at the mouth of the tunnel, where the bright lights of the lobby were but one push away…
Breathing hard, Rusty rested his hands on his knees, keeping one eye on the exit behind him. He stood up, had his hand pressed on the double doors, and was about to enter into the lobby, when he thought he heard his name called out again. Rusty stared at the opposite doors, across the misty cemetery. Listening…
“Rusty!”
Yes! He was certain he’d heard it that time! It was faint, but Rusty thought he recognized the husky voice.
Could his friends really be alive?
“Russssttyyy!”
No doubt about it! That was Bud Brown and he was coming this way! Rusty limped halfway to the door and stopped cold. That evil monstrosity was between him and his friend. Not for a second did he believe that Boris had actually managed to kill the bitch. Boris’s sacrifice had only given Rusty the necessary time to get away.
Could he now do the same for Bud?
Can penguins fly? Rusty didn’t think either of those things likely. Feeling eyes upon him, Rusty turned with a start. Ed Gein was staring at him over the lip of his grave.
As if he had some wisdom to impart.
One runty coward to another…
*******
The thing that had once been Tansy Wilky sniffed the air again.Yes! HE was coming! He…he…HE!She couldn’t quite recall exactly who“HE” was. The swelling in her brain had erased all of her personal memories by this time, but his scent certainly made an impact on her olfactory senses. She wiped the feathers from her lipless mouth and dropped the dead bird by her side. The fact that the owl had managed to rip the rest of her face off didn’t register in Tansy’s reptilian mind—nor would it have mattered if it had. Tansy was on a whole other plane now, as apart from humanity as the little green lizards that infested the island.
She stumbled back the way she’d come, no longer interested in running down the runt. As she approached the Ted Bundy exhibit she shielded her now lidless eyes from the stage lights. It confused her that all she could make out were blobs and blurs. She didn’t need her eyes, though, not when her sense of smell had so dramatically increased.
He’s coming! He’s coming my way!
She lay hidden out of sight behind the wooden electric chair, picking away at the few shreds of flesh still clinging to her skull, thinking her inhuman thoughts…
*******
Bud and his father ran down the tunnel as fast as the shadows on either side would in all practicality allow. The occasional Spirit Eyes, peering out from within the darkest corners of the exhibits, further dulled their progress. Those demonic pinpoints, placed in certain tableaus, to illustrate Hell’s impatient wrath. Even though the Browns’ knew them on sight, the red eyes so closely approximated those of the Rabid that they couldn’t help but be startled into a dilatory pace. Certain they were about to be attacked.
Bud strained his ears, hoping for some sign of life from his lost friend, but the slamming of a door, far ahead, had silenced Rusty’s screams. To Bud, that slamming door had sounded like the heavy oak partition, separatingThe Chamber of Retribution from Murderer’s Row.
<
br /> He’d managed to call out to Rusty, just before the big door banged shut, but his plaintive echoes were all the reply he’d get. He peered intently into the dark, insisting it give up its secrets. Like the cloaking silence, it too was unmoved by his burdened heart. By the rotten smell in the air, they knew that a Rabid had recently passed this way. Close on Gnat’s heels. They had heard Rusty’s screams and knew what was at stake. He might be dead or hurt…or worse. RUSTY! RUUUUSSSTTTTYYYY!!!!!”
“I don’t think he can hear you, son.”
“I can’t get those screams out of my head, Dad. He must’ve been so scared. I really let them down, didn’t I?”
“Who?” Bill asked, shaking his head. “Rusty? Ham? The whole human race?”
“You know what I mean,” Bud blushed. “I promised Ham I would take care of Rusty, and I—”
“Enough,” Bill said, sighing deeply. “Joey’s right, son. You carry too big a load for any one man. All Ham wanted was for you to do your best by his son, and if you’re honest with yourself you know the answer to that one.” Clearly agitated now, Bill hawked a loogey on the floor. Bud let fly with one of his own. A bad habit he’d picked up from his old man, yet something that was rarely done by either of them in their museum—their home. It spoke to their mounting frustration.
“The hell with these shadows, Buddy boy. One way or another, let’s find that poor lost kid.”
They stormed into theChamber of Retribution. Far less cautious now. Jumping over the wreckage of the exit bars. Both felt an urgency to get back to the cellar before Rusty’s fate became that of their friends. Despite what sounded like the boy’s dying screams, they still refused to give up hope. However unlikely, maybe Rusty had managed to get away. Halfway into the exhibit, they came to a dead stop, realizing together that the exit behind them had been destroyed. They turned as one, staring at the mangled prison bars, askew on their tracks.
Something had recently smashed through them…
*******
Josie didn’t recognize the thing stepping out of the tunnel. All she knew, or cared to know, was that it was a Rabid. There was something different about this one, though. She whispered a warning to Tubby in the back seat. “Be quiet,” she told him, though it was in fact unnecessary.
Tubby was sound asleep on the bench seat, his breathing slow and deep. Josie didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried. She recalled something or other about keeping a person with a concussion from falling asleep but wasn’t sure what the ramifications were.
It was hardly her only worry. She wondered if her period would once again lead the Rabids straight to them…
It was sniffing the air like a dog, hot on the trail of some bitch in heat. This was a particularly ugly one, too. Its hair spiky with trash. Its body, like most, was unclothed and covered in filth. This one, however, wasn’t foaming at the mouth like the others. Nor was that the only difference. Josie realized that its eyes weren’t red. All of the others had red glowing eyes. She also noted (with what was almost comic relief) that this Rabid wasn’t sporting an erection. Its penis was a limp, little noodle, hiding in a gnarly nest of pubic hair. What all this might mean, she had no idea.
The Rabid turned towards Christine for a second and confirmed Josie’s suspicions. Nothing but empty space seemed to exist below the bony ridge of its brow. Despite the lack of foaming, the flaccid penis, and the marked absence of shining red eyes, Josie was still certain of one fact: It was rabid. Only, it had weakened somewhat. It shuffled along the black brick road like an old man on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It gave her some confidence to see the thing in its last stages like this.
Weak and perhaps vulnerable.
Josie sighed in relief as the Rabid passed the alley, its shadow receding into the dark until it was gone.
“Heads up, boyos,” she said, trying to mentally impart this information to Bud and his dad. “One’s heading your way—Uh, oh, Tits. Looks like you spoke too soon…”
The Rabid’s shadow had returned, growing larger, looming longer...
*******
The stench had grown exponentially worse as they moved through the Death Row exhibit. They didn’t know where Rusty was, but the boy’s attacker was sure as hell nearby. Waiting to pounce on them from any number of possible hiding places. Even with the power on, theRetribution Chamber was dark and gloomy, a fitting atmosphere for gas chambers, gallows, and electric chairs. And Rabids.
“Jesus. I’d give up my pinkie toes for one of my Maglites,” Bud said, straining to see through the shadows.
Bill grunted his agreement, too focused on the task at hand to converse right now.
Bud looked over at his dad, walking slightly ahead of him. His father’s face was haggard and somehow older looking. It spooked Bud to see Bilbo looking so mortal. Bud told himself it was just the dim lighting in here making his dad look that way, the grim environment highlighting anything worn or gray. They passed the electric chair and were approaching John Wayne Gacy’s gas chamber, when Bill turned to say something to his son.
Bud saw the creature’s reflection in Bill’s blue eyes…right before the old man tossed him out of the way.
*******
Christine was rigged to run electrically along a sixty-five-foot section of track, beginning deep in the hidden alleyway, and ending a few feet from the black brick road. Giving the passersby’s therein the thrill of their lives. Bill had gotten the idea from the old JAWS ride at Universal Studios. It really did appear as if the haunted Plymouth was about to run you down! Christine wasn’t just a museum piece, though; she was a working, street-legal auto that with just a flip of a switch on the dashboard you could easily drive out the back bay doors.
The Browns’ could often be seen tooling around the island in the ’57 Fury, their radio tuned permanently to the oldies station coming out of Savannah, Georgia. Oftentimes with Josie and Rusty in the back seat, singing their lungs out to those dusty rock n’ roll classics. Unlike the two-toned twat in Stephen King’s novel, this version of Christine was a real sweetheart and a valued member of the family, restored faithfully by father and son.
Sitting in the hulking automobile, Josie felt as safe as a baby chick underneath her mother’s sheltering wing.
She tried to recall exactly how Bilbo disengaged the Fury from its tracks and electrical system…
She glanced up at the Rabid plodding towards her and that’s all it took. Its bottomless eyes seemed to reach right into her soul and hold her captive. They were empty of humanity, these unblinking pools of midnight. Alien and aware. And hungry beyond measure. Depthless traps for all living souls unfortunate enough to cross their paths.
Powerless, Josie felt herself being sucked into those vast and endless voids…
The Rabid drew closer to its dazed prey. In anticipation of the pleasures that lay ahead, it licked its cracked lips with a tongue that had no business being in a human’s mouth. Cratered with running pustules, and forked at the end, as if split with a straight razor, it was able to lick the underside of its drooling chin with ease…
As the Rabid drew nigh, Josie realized she had become like one of the wandering rabbits in Watership Down. An animal stunned into stillness. “Tharn,” Adams called it. As in: “Going tharn, right before the red-eyed stoat tears open your throat…”
Josie punched her nose so hard it made her eyes water. The Rabid became an instant blur in her field of vision. The paralysis broke now, Josie tore her gaze away from those spiraling black holes before they could ensnare her again. She focused instead on the control panel bolted onto the dash. It seemed simple enough: Flip the toggle switch to Off, release the anchor chain, which held Christine on the tracks, put her in Park and turn the key…
Christine roared to life, her highbeams flooding the alleyway in sudden, searing light.