“To rent or buy a creature-feature nightmare-fuel monster that good?” Beth’s pierced eyebrow hoisted in a skeptical slant. “I don’t know, Jake.”
“C’mon, it wasn’t that good,” said Spencer, lying out his ass and fooling nobody. It had been good, it’d been fuckin’ convincing.
Of course, they’d all been pretty hyped up, too. Adrenaline and suggestibility, Paranormal Activity bullshit, their own damn imaginations sucked them right in. Watch, it would turn out to be latex and foam rubber, no scarier than a Halloween decoration.
“And the way it went for him, right for him, just for him,” Jake continued. “Then he could put on his screaming it’s-got-me act.”
Which had also been fuckin’ convincing. Who knew the rich boy prick had any talent?
“So, where is he, then?” Devon gestured around. “Why hasn’t he come out yet to laugh in our faces?”
“He’s probably waiting for us to come back down all embarrassed,” Marty said.
“Or,” said Beth, “when we do, he’s there pretending to be dead or something, hoping to zing us again, like a douche. Then laugh in our faces.”
“Laugh his fuckin’ ass off, bust a gut,” Spencer said.
“Well…so…what do we do?” Devon asked.
“Hey, screw it,” said Marty. “I’m not going back. He can clean up his own mess.”
“Damn right,” Beth said.
“Yeah,” agreed Spencer. “Yeah, let him deal with it; I’m done. When he texts us later, all butthurt, I say we tell him to fuck the hell off.”
“Damn right,” Beth said again. “Do not need his shit.”
“Seems kind of mean to just walk away, though.”
“You can go find him if you want,” Jake said. “I’m with Spence and Beth. What a clusterfuck.”
“My mom’s windchime—”
“Can fuckin’ wait ‘til tomorrow!” Spencer said.
Jake nodded. “I need to get those silver dishes back, too, but yeah. Tomorrow. For now, I just want to go home.”
Chapter Nine: Inebriation
Howie found a flashlight in his shopping cart. Took some rummaging to dig it out, mixed in as it was amid a box of scavenged electronics odds-and-ends. Man had about nine miles of assorted wires, everything from power strips to strings of old Christmas bulbs to the twisty cord off a telephone.
But, he did find the flashlight.
A blue train-shaped plastic one where the light beamed from the front of some dopey-looking cartoon face. Still, it worked.
They waited until the group of kids who’d come caterwauling-ass-hauling up from the bunker had shoved off, then waited a while longer to make sure they weren’t coming back.
While waiting, they shared around a couple 40-ouncer cans, a quart-sized box of what Nelson called ‘cardbordeaux,’ and a fifth of no-name-brand popskull Tater had in his pack.
Then, fortified and emboldened and curious, they trooped on down to see what they could see. Like the bear going over the mountain.
Normally, they steered clear of the bunker complex below the park. Sure, it might’ve made a decent camp, secure against wind and weather, out of sight of cops either of the well-meaning or asshole variety…but none of them liked being closed in.
Too much like prison. Too much like the state hospital.
Underground. Dank. Echoey.
Too many ways to get cornered. Too many ways to get lost or locked in or trapped.
Nelson said it was closter-fobic.
Al said it was damn spooky.
Like a dungeon. Like a basement. Like a tomb.
Or, like what it really was, which was the real issue to worry about.
Government installation.
The disused defense bunker thing could be just a cover story. A cover story for military bases and secret labs. The fact there was still power to some of the lights and water in some of the taps proved somebody must be up to something.
Well, they’d get more than they bargained for if they tried to mess with him. He was wise to their tricks.
He patted his parka hood as he followed Al’s careful both-hands-on-the-handrails one-foot-two-foot stairwell descent. The foil cap—six layers of it, the heavy-duty kind, a roll he’d tucked under his coat while helping after-dinner cleanup at a soup kitchen over in Winston City—made a comforting squish-crinkle against his matted, oily hair.
Nobody would be reading his mind, and it wasn’t as if they could make him talk, either. Not a single word in, what, thirty, forty years? However long it’d been since the babysitter told him what she’d do if he said anything to anyone, ever ever again.
Behind him, Tater muttered indignantly, something to do with how it hardly was his fault, now, was it; if the Bodean boy couldn’t handle some simple home-truths. Hadn’t meant anything by it, just honest statement of fact, no reason to go flying off the handle.
And behind Tater, bringing up the rear, Nelson reminded them all how they were only having a look around. He wanted to know what those kids had been doing, what’d gotten them in such a state. Not to land themselves in any trouble. Not to touch stuff, take stuff, break stuff.
Only to have a look around.
“Yeah, yeah,” went Al, stumbling not because of the steps but because he’d reached the bottom and couldn’t seem to cope with level floor. He fished a crumpled empty pack of generics from his pocket, peered into it as if the Cig Fairy had visited since last time he looked, sighed, and put it away again. “’less they left some smokes.”
“I’ve no doubt they were smoking something, sure enough,” Nelson said, turning his shiny bald head this way and that like a skinny eagle. “I can smell it.”
Howie took an experimental sniff, but all he got was his own usual dull and sour funk. He tried to calculate how long it’d been since he changed clothes, and couldn’t. A lady who said she was with a church outreach group had tried a few weeks ago to coax him into letting her take him to the laundrymat, wash a few loads, wash his parka at least, but he’d seen right through her nice-seeming act.
“Had to’ve been more’n smokin’ to account for the way they carried on. Meth or zombie salts or worse, I betcha. Ruinin’ their lives with that bad shit.” Tater paused for a long swig from a brown-bagged bottle, then covered his mouth with the back of one hand to half-stifle a belch.
“Lights thataway.” Al, swaying, pointed like he was making the infinity sign in the air. “Brighter’n these ol’ yellers.” He set off in that direction, more or less, the way a slow-rolled bowling ball made its way along a lane with the bumpers up.
They trailed after him at their own gaits and paces, Howie casting shrewd covert glances at ceiling-mounted ‘sprinklerheads’ and other innocuous-looking fixtures no doubt cleverly concealing spy cams and microphones.
Watching. Listening. Probably content to do just that…for now…not wanting to give themselves away.
The lights Al had spotted were small, but definitely brighter than the yellow bulb above the doorway through which they issued. A couple of thin, conical beams, more like penlights than Howie’s choo-choo ray.
The room they shone from was, even by the standards of people who lived in the park, a mess. Whatever those kids had been up to, they’d trashed the place and for sure. Congealed glop and ashes everywhere, reminding Howie of the time at the soup kitchen when the big pressure cooker exploded. Pork and beans from hell to Harvard, damn near burned down the building.
Al took a single step inside before Nelson collared him by the scruff and yanked him to a halt, making him bark indignantly.
“Look,” Nelson said. His pointing was somewhat steadier than Al’s had been. Somewhat. The outline on the floor was like the writing on the wall; once you saw it, you couldn’t very well unsee it.
“Bad shit,” Tater said. “Bad shit, bad news, I toldya so. They wasn’t just druggin’. This is bad juju black magic shit.”
“Them plates look real silver, though.” Al squirmed and slapped ineffectually at Nelson’s grip.
“Hock shop guy I know, betcha he give us twenny, maybe fiddy—”
Nelson twisted his fist in Al’s shabby collar. “And when those kids get past what scared them and come looking, what do you think they’ll give you?”
Tater vehemently wagged his head. “I ain’t settin’ foot and won’t have no part of devil-money off’n witch-silver or drugs.”
“Dumb drunk fools th’ both ya. Howie?”
Howie waved his hands back and forth in front of his chest, signaling his own no-thanks. Not that he was religious or superstitious, but he knew a set-up, some kind of trick or test, when he saw it.
He turned from the room with its pressure-cooker aftermath residue, scanning the hallway in hopes of detecting the tell-tale glint of a spy-cam lens. Behind one of the vents in the wall, most likely, was his guess.
Further down the hall, a faint greenish-blue glimmer spilled around a corner. Something liquidy and weirdly familiar about it sent a mingled chill and thrill out of nowhere across the nape of Howie’s neck.
It reminded him of…of…
Ripple-bubble-gurgle-glow.
Something horrible. Something he hated.
Something he used to love.
“Hey, check’t out!” Al said. “Think that’s one-a them hippie lamps. Ain’t seen one in years! Used’ta have one in my room’n I was fi’teen.” He paused, and grinned. “First time I got laid, by that light.”
Was this it? The start of another experiment? They’d avoided the obvious trap of the room with the occult setup, but now here was this light. This eerie, fluid, familiar, awful light.
“A lava lamp?” Nelson frowned. “No, it’s more like…there’s no…pool down here, is there? A swimming pool?”
“Down here?” Al snorted. “Y’all’re wasted. Hippie lamp, I’m tellin’ ya.”
The glimmer, the glow, spilling and spreading, brighter, strengthening.
And yes, the sounds, the burbling sloosh and slush, low, constant, steady.
As shapes flitted and shadows flicked. Through feathery strands, curves and coves and caves and outcrops. Colorful pebbles. Pearly beads rising from a sunken ship.
The cool blue-green light, playing soft through the glass in the darkened living room.
He would look at the fish. He would look at the fish.
He loved the fish in their big aquarium-tank.
Used to love the fish.
He would look at the fish until it was over.
Count them, if he could.
Bright little fish. Tetras, they were called. Guppies. Stripey ones he didn’t know the name.
Looking at the fish.
Not looking at the babysitter. At what the babysitter was doing.
Not looking, but feeling.
Unable not to feel.
If you tell…if you tell anyone, ever…if you say anything to anyone, ever, ever…
“Went to Hawaii once’t,” Tater said, in a dreamy but choked-up kind of way. “Fr’our honeymoon. She were so beautiful.”
He and Al shuffled a few dreamy paces forward. Toward the strengthening blue-green glimmer. Like it was a good thing.
Nelson hesitated, scrubbing his palm over his bald pate. “Swim team.” He did not look or sound dreamy. He looked and sounded pained. “I was good. They said I had real potential. Olympic potential.”
Howie tilted his foil-capped, hooded head. All these years and had he ever heard Tater mention a wife? Nelson being a swimmer? He didn’t think so, didn’t remember, but he couldn’t focus his mind, couldn’t.
Then, sighing like a sob, sobbing like a sigh, Nelson followed Tater and Al.
Howie felt his own feet start to move along with them. He tried to stop himself short.
A grimy tear trickled into Tater’s beard. “Oh if you’d’ve seen her…bikini and sun-hat with this flowered skirt-wrap thing tied on her hips…we took a sail on a glass-bottom boat…never been happier.”
No. No no no.
A bad thing.
He hadn’t told. Hadn’t told anyone, ever! Hadn’t said anything to anyone, ever, ever!
“I was so afraid they’d…they’d find me out,” Nelson went on. “The other…” He drew a deep, shuddery breath. “Boys. They’d see how I…they’d know what I…”
The babysitter.
If you do, if you tell your mom, your dad, anyone, if you say anything to anyone ever, ever, I’ll get you. I’ll hurt you. I’ll hurt them. I’ll hurt them, and it’ll be all your fault. Your fault.
Nelson kept talking, though Howie was only half-aware of his words. One day, after practice, stayed late, another boy, Eric, so smooth, smooth and taut, lean and perfect, and Eric had known—
“Hey, ya smell that?” asked Al, from further down the hallway. “Smells like pizza! Hot pizza extra cheese!”
“Nah, ‘s biscuits,” Tater said. “Buttermilk biscuits fresh from t’oven.”
“Hell ya say; it’s pizza.”
The blue-green light played its underwater flicker-dance over their faces, dazzling in their eyes like kaleidoscope jewels.
“Popcorn,” said Nelson. “Movie theater popcorn. We went to the movies. We could do that, it wouldn’t seem strange, a couple of friends going to the movies. Side by side in the dark. Arms touching. Knees. Just sitting together, eating popcorn.”
Howie smelled, above or through his own unwashed funk, a whiff of warmth and deliciousness.
Not popcorn, not pizza, not biscuits; they were all wrong. It was pancakes. Thick, fluffy pancakes. Like his mom would make, Sunday mornings, after she and Daddy had their night out, their night when the babysitter came over.
The fish, swimming endless loops and laps and circles and figure-eights in their watery fish-world, their silent and bubbling fish-world, ripples of turquoise and shadow on gravel, on glass, secret hollows in rocks and coral.
The fish and he’d loved them, he hated them, the fish who did nothing, who ignored it, or who watched and saw and didn’t help.
And Mom made pancakes, stacks and stacks of them, pancakes with syrup, and what was the matter with little Howie, why was he so quiet today, did he feel all right, was he sick, was he upset, what’s wrong Howie?
Howard answer your mother answer your father why isn’t he talking should we call the doctor what is it honey you can tell us he just sits there and won’t say a word won’t make a sound he hears us I know he hears us he listens he does what we ask him to everything except talk why won’t he talk?
Then they rounded the corner and saw what was there, what filled the hallway, oozing and dripping. They saw the pulsing growths bulging from it, opening, inviting, extending long supple tendrils toward them.
They saw what was suspended in its grasping, slithering, undulous midst—
They heard the noises, the grunts and slurp-smacks and gobbles.
Howie felt his knees just unlock, his body just go boneless. He felt the hot gush-flood wetness of piss soaking his pants.
He felt a peeling, tearing, stinging pain. In his throat. Inside his throat. He tasted, gagged, and choked on thin trickles of blood.
“Babysitter!” Howie screamed. “Babysitter! Babysitter!”
Interlude: Vignettes #3
Well, that kind of went to some darker places in more ways than one. Supposed throw-away comic relief characters having their own poignant backstories and stuff, what the hell’s up with that?
***
And meanwhile, what’s in store for poor Brendan? After all, if you remember back in the prologue, he wasn’t even with the other four guys. Some foreshadowing for ya there.
Along with some other mysteries and unresolved secrets. Jake has some kind of secret ace-in-the-hole mystery going on, which he hadn’t wanted to mention up front in case it didn’t pan out…but, by the looks of it, something sure did!
What our young heroes—or, our bunch of retards, as Beth would say—have summoned in Vault 420 is, in fact, a succubus. They did it. They summoned a demon.
Beware of what you wish
for, am I right?
Hot naked demon chicks with little cute bat wings and tails, indeed. Shape-shifting psychic love-slaves, yeah right.
Just your basic adolescent horndog sex-fantasies.
Honestly, it’s like with mermaids. The notion of big bare buoyant boobs, flowing gorgeous hair, and all the fellatio a guy could ever hope for, but without any of that squicky vagina business. Complicated parts and how weird they might look/smell/taste, and performance anxiety and women are so difficult to please. And let’s not start on the menstrual phobias or the entitlement issue debates about personal grooming.
Reality can be such a disappointment, can’t it?
There’s more than a few folks in Fairmont who could speak to that point...
***
Hank Vilstreet drags himself home after another seventeen-hour shift. He parks in the driveway and sits there a minute, waiting for his favorite song to finish up on the radio, before going in.
House is dark and quiet. No surprise there. Carla had called him earlier to let him know she was laid low with one of her migraines. The dinner she’d promised—her special chicken and dumplings—would have to wait. But he could heat himself up a can of stew or make a sandwich or something, couldn’t he?
He’s a foreman at Le Prestige du Vin winery, a hard-won promotion he’d thought—more fool he!—would mean more respect and less scut-work.
What it really means, he’s discovered, is that if anything goes wrong, it’s his ass. If anything doesn’t get done, it’s his ass.
The vats didn’t get hosed out? There’s a mix-up with the timesheets? Mis-labeled bottles? Worker’s comp issues and union grievances? Someone smoking by the loading dock again? A ‘spill’ in the tasting room?
Hank will take care of it.
Hank will take care of everything.
Why else would he merit a token bump in salary and a spiffy little gold-tone pin to wear on his coveralls?
His house may be dark, but a few lights are still on over at Coach’s place. Coach Lewis Bodean, one of his neighbors. They even used to be buddies, of a sort. Buddies, until Hank just couldn’t take any more of his talk.
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