Charnel House

by Anderson, Fred

  No, the voice in his head corrected. Like a stake.

  And that was fitting, wasn’t it? Stakes killed vampires, and if Norman was anything, he was a vampire. Maybe not in the traditional sense of the word, because he lacked the pointy teeth and smelled so bad garlic would probably run from him, but vampire was the right word. He fed on fear like a movie vampire fed on blood. That’s right, kid, Norman had said when they were under the house. Scream for help. It makes it better.

  Vampires could be stopped.

  Could be killed.

  Bobby bent and picked up the spire, and the world went gray around him again.

  Please, God. Amy needs me.

  Things came back into focus and his grip tightened around the piece of wood in his hand. Its weight was good, reassuring. Much better than the section of pipe he’d found the first time they met. If he’d had something like this in the crawlspace he might have ended things then. He yanked the string of lights off the dowel, sending staples flying.

  Amy whimpered. Norman had gotten her pants down to her knees and was reaching for her panties, oblivious to Bobby’s presence. She beat ineffectually at the hobo’s face with her small fists, but she was weak and the blows didn’t faze him. Almost casually, he batted her hands away and gave her another wallop on the face with one fist, stilling her.

  The resolution to be quiet was swallowed by a tornado of rage that consumed Bobby. The onslaught engulfed the pain racking his body and as he leaped toward Norman, the stake rising over his head almost of its own accord, he let loose with a bestial cry that would have done a warrior ancestor proud. Norman turned, the triumphant look fleeing his face as he did. He brought his arms up to block the stake, the unconscious girl beneath him forgotten, but he was too slow. The point found a home in the grizzled knell under his chin, and slid almost effortlessly into his throat. It punched out the other side in a spray of arterial red. Bobby’s forward motion drove him into the hobo, knocking him off of Amy. They fell to the floor together, man and boy, Bobby’s hands still wrapped around the end of the stake as he rammed it in further.

  Norman flopped like a gaffed fish, trying to get away, but Bobby held tight to the stake. Hot blood splattered around them like rain, soaking into Bobby’s clothes and wetting his face. A horde of blackflies encircled them in a cloud, driven into a frenzy by the sudden rush of food. The hobo’s hands rose to grab at the branches that now sprouted from either side of his neck, but his movements were slow. Diminishing. His yellowed eyes rolled in terror, as if he realized he was fading. He opened his mouth to say something, and instead vomited a glut of blood in Bobby’s face. Into his mouth, hot and coppery and rotten. Bobby let go of the stake and shoved away, slipping and sliding in the gore, spitting and retching.

  “Gah,” Norman cried. He got a hand on the end of the blood-slicked stake and tried to pull, but it slipped from his grasp. Sudden wetness spread in the front of his pants, and Bobby crazily wondered if the hobo had peed himself or if the white worms were bursting the blisters down there to escape their dying host.

  Dying. What a beautiful word!

  Bobby wiped furiously at his face with a dry part of his shirt, trying to get the foul blood off him. Norman’s feet drummed hollowly on the wooden floor. His head rolled loosely, the eyes searching for the boy. Even though he could see the life ebbing from them, Bobby still felt a chill when they found his own. A final breath escaped the hobo’s sore-covered lips in a bubbling hiss, and then he was still.

  Bobby scrabbled across the floor to Amy, feeling sudden heat in his face as he realized he could see the tiny buds of her breasts and her panties, which were the same pale shade of blue as the ribbon she’d had in her hair at church the day before. The side of her face was swollen and beginning to turn purple, but she was breathing okay and he didn’t see any blood on her anywhere. Thank you, God. He wiped his hands on his pants, eyes averted, cleaning the hobo’s blood off them. Getting the foul liquid on her would be blasphemous. Norman had touched her enough. Gingerly, almost reverently, Bobby tugged her shirt down to cover her nakedness, then pulled her pants up as best he could without touching her anyplace embarrassing. When he was done, he gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

  “Amy?”

  Her eyelashes fluttered on her cheeks, then gradually opened. When she saw him over her, her lips spread into a wan smile. “Am I in heaven?”

  “No, you’re still down here with me,” Bobby said, smiling back. He felt like his heart was going to burst through his ribs. “More like hell.”

  “What happened to the bad man?”

  “I think I killed him,” Bobby said, and began to cry. He wasn’t sure if it was more from happiness that she seemed to be alright or relief that Norman was dead.

  “Thank you.” She reached up and wiped the tears from his cheeks with a delicate hand. “Don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said, his voice breaking. “I was so scared.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” she told him. “Help me up.”

  Bobby climbed to his feet slowly, the forgotten pain settling back onto him like a heavy coat. As he stood, he looked over at the still body lying in what seemed to be a lake of garish red. Making sure Norman was really dead, because he knew evil had a way of coming back.

  The ride attendant lay on his back in the pool of blood, his half-open eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling of his amusement. The section of dowel jutted from each side of his neck like an obscene linchpin. The front of his work pants were dark with wetness.

  “Bravo, Bobby. Well done. Gonna get called a hero for this.”

  The thick, clotted voice came from behind him. Bobby whirled, moving in front of Amy automatically. Norman stood by the shattered section of plywood wall Bobby had burst through, grinning his black-toothed grin, unharmed. He clapped his hands together in a slow mockery of applause.

  “Why won’t you die?” Bobby moaned.

  “What’s wrong, Bobby?” Amy asked. “What are you talking about? Turn around and look at me.”

  “You first, kid,” Norman said. “Then maybe I’ll show your little cooze what a real man feels like.”

  But something flickered in those rheumy yellow eyes when the hobo spoke, something that looked a lot like fear to Bobby. Good. Norman hadn’t expected him to fight back. Caught you off guard, didn’t I? He felt fresh anger welling in him.

  “So come kill me,” he said, crooking his fingers in the universal come on at the hobo.

  “Stop it!” Amy cried. “Who are you talking to? You’re scaring me!”

  I think maybe I’m scaring him, too, Amy.

  “Not just yet,” Norman said, and one eye drooped in a wink at Bobby. “Soon.”

  Bobby took a step forward. Norman took a step backward. The grin still curved his scabbed lips, but it had slipped just a little. It looked forced now. Like he really wants to scream. Without another word, Norman turned and darted through the opening in the plywood.

  Bobby gave chase.

  He leaped through the broken section of wall after the fleeing hobo—

  —and found himself on his hands and knees in the cramped space under the front porch of the Barlowe house. He wasn’t really surprised. Norman was on the run, and it made perfect sense that he would go back to the place where he felt safe. In control. He’d already shown he could come and go at will, even if no one else seemed to be able to see him.

  Until now, the voice in his head reminded him. Amy saw.

  The low-hanging sun cast everything in a surreal orange light. Bobby smelled the faint grape Kool-aid odor of kudzu blooming nearby. Norman’s scrawny backside was just disappearing into the opening to the crawlspace, going so fast he left a swirl of dried leaves in his wake.

  Scared to death.

  Or that’s what he wanted Bobby to think.

  Bobby followed the hobo, cautiously. Wary of a trap. It would be just like Norman to lure him here under false pretenses and attack him when he was over-confident. He crept to the
opening and poked his head in, eyes snapping from spot to spot, searching. Norman was halfway across the crawlspace, working his way under the sagging joist. Going back to his nest.

  Bobby scuttled forward on all fours before he lost his nerve and caught hold of one of the hobo’s legs. Norman reacted as if the boy had touched a live wire to his skin, kicking and flailing and, best of all, screeching in his terror. The sound was even sweeter than the one the plywood wall had made when it split open under his shoulder, and made him forget how much his back and ankle hurt.

  “You sound like a little girl,” he said, and tried to drag the hobo from under the beam. Wishing he had his father’s gun right now, or another stake. Something. He thought Norman could be stopped, now that he had the real Norman, and not just someone he had possessed.

  “Leave me alone, kid!” the hobo cried, and the shrillness in his normally gruff voice brought a grim smile to Bobby’s face. Norman clawed at the loose dirt, trying to stop his inexorable backward slide. Bobby reached out and grabbed onto the belt running around the man’s waist and pulled even harder. Norman bellowed and redoubled his efforts to get away.

  I’ll beat him to death with my hands if I have to. Then, wonderingly. I really think I could.

  “Bobby?” Amy’s voice drifted in through the entrance. “What are you doing in there?”

  Sudden fear jabbed him in the heart. Had she followed them here?

  “Go back to your girlfriend, kid,” Norman said. Pleaded. “She needs you.”

  The hobo heaved himself forward mightily and the leg in Bobby’s hand seemed to go loose and fleshy as something inside it pulled loose. At the same time, he felt the body shift under his other hand where he held on to the ratty belt. With a terrible purring sound, the skin of Norman’s scalp split and something underneath it began to force its way out. Flaps of leathery flesh carpeted with unruly gray hair furled away to either side as the thing inside the hobo struggled to escape. Norman’s hands took hold of the flaps and ripped them even further, freeing the thing inside to the shoulders.

  Peeling himself like a banana.

  The leg inside the one Bobby held pulled through his fingers, leaving him with a deflated sheath. The new thing wriggled its shoulders, shucking the Norman-husk off itself the way a shedding snake did with old skin. Its flesh was pallid and hairless and covered with the sheen of some oily liquid. It grabbed onto the sagging joist with thin bony hands and yanked itself away from the remains of the hobo, then scurried away from him on all fours. Bobby felt a scream boiling up inside him and jerked his hands away from the flaccid shell of skin to wipe them on his pants. Was this real, or just another one of Norman’s tricks?

  The sallow thing was slumped and looked awkward, all bony angles, but it moved with the liquid grace of a spider on its thin arms and legs, scuttling toward the far side of the crawlspace where deep shadows provided cover. It looked over its shoulder at Bobby—making sure I’m not following it because it’s scared of me—and he saw black hollows where there should have been eyes. He had seen those sunken pits before, when he was upstairs and (remembered) imagined Jeremiah Barlowe killing his wife. The thing trying to get away from him had been in the kitchen in 1943, watching Jeremiah do his terrible deed with its lipless mouth hooked into a smile like the blade on the Grim Reaper’s scythe. Its real face, his mind insisted.

  But that was thirty-five years ago.

  He didn’t think time mattered so much to that thing. Had it been here as long as the house? Was it even alive the same way he was?

  “Bobby?” Amy called from behind him. “Please come back in here. I’m really scared!”

  Reluctantly, Bobby turned around and began to crawl toward the opening, where the golden sunlight beckoned. He couldn’t see Amy out there, but maybe she wasn’t under the porch. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to crawl in. Before he left the crawlspace he looked back the way he had come, toward the corner where he’d last seen the slumped thing. The Norman-husk was gone now, he saw. If it was ever even there. The only thing marking the struggle he had just been in was a cloud of dust hanging in the still air. A disconcerting thought wafted through his mind like a bad smell: what if neither Norman nor the slumped thing had been real? All he saw from the far corner was darkness. But if it was there...

  “I’m coming back for you,” he said, his shaky voice the only sound in the vast crawlspace. And the next time I’ll have a gun.

  Bobby crawled through the opening and—

  —back into the Paris room in A World of Love. Amy sat against the wall farthest from the dead attendant, her legs bent so her knees were almost touching her chin, arms wrapped around them. She rocked back and forth, watching the body with tears on her cheeks.

  “I’m here,” Bobby said, and she flinched. Something felt like it broke in his chest. He wanted to pull her close and never let her go, to never let anything else bad happen to her. Instead, he limped over and extended his hand. “Let’s go find some help.”

  She grabbed on so tightly that he almost cried out. He helped her to her feet.

  Hand in hand, they found their way out of the amusement without looking back.

  15

  “Who were you talking to?” Amy asked in a voice low enough for only Bobby to hear. “Inside?”

  They were sitting together on the edge of the platform at the front of A World of Love, the massive faux-Disney facade at their backs. Their hands were still clasped, the fingers intertwined. Bobby never wanted to let go. A crowd was gathering, both carnival employees and marks, drawn by the spreading word of the dead man inside the ride. A man who must have been the general manager or owner ran to and fro, shooing lookieloos away from the amusement. Sweat rolled down his brow, and from time to time he pulled out a large red bandanna and swiped furiously at his forehead. Far away, the mournful discordant wail of several sirens sang a haunting song.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked. “Promise not to laugh?”

  “Of course.”

  “When the guy was throwing me off the train, and when he had you, did he look... different?”

  Her brow furrowed, and she winced and put her free hand to the side of her face. “Different how?”

  “Older. Scarier.” Coming apart at the seams. He felt a sudden urge to giggle and bit it back.

  “Sure he looked scary to me.” She cocked her head to one side. “But that’s not what you mean, is it?”

  Bobby shook his head. He took a deep breath, and said, “I thought there was someone else in there with us. That’s who I was talking to. His name is Norman, and I see him and hear him but no one else does and I’m afraid I’m going crazy. He’s the one I saw when we were attacked. I think he can possess people and make them do what he wants.”

  He watched the ground, unable to meet her gaze. His heart pounded so hard it felt like he’d just run a race. From the corner of his eye he could see Amy staring at him. She looked at him for so long, her face puffy and red and still full of terror, that he thought she was trying to decide whether to laugh in his face or scream and run away. He could almost hear the other kids calling him Booby, as in hatch, because that’s where they’d think he belonged once she told them how he screamed and ran after someone who wasn’t there.

  Probably ought to keep that whole monster in a human shell thing to myself.

  Then she threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek and said, “You don’t seem crazy to me.”

  Bobby wanted to burst into tears. He felt so light now that he had told someone about Norman he wondered if he should grab onto the edge of the platform to keep from floating away. He hadn’t realized how much having the hobo on his back had been weighing him down. The sirens had grown closer, and their undulating howl filled the afternoon. The other rides were shutting down one by one, but no one was going anywhere.

  “I met him at a place in Belleville,” Bobby said. “A haunted house. A bully made me go in, and Norman was under there. He tried to do something terrible to
me, just like he did to you in there.”

  He hooked his thumb back at the plywood facade, thinking gimme a dollar, kid.

  “I got away from him,” he continued, “but he came after me. First he possessed my mother, then Brother Peavey. I didn’t really fall asleep in church yesterday, I was wide awake and saw Brother Peavey turn into him. He’s the one who... attacked us in there, using the other guy. ”

  He knew he was babbling, but now that he had popped this particular (watery blister) pimple, the words rushed out like hot pus. He was nearly giddy with relief.

  Amy squeezed his hand. “I want to hear everything about it, but...”

  She looked pointedly at the general manager, who had given up trying to keep the people back and now stood less than ten feet from them trying to catch his breath, then back at Bobby. Her meaning was clear, and he nodded. The closest siren was so loud now that he wondered if a police car or ambulance was about to burst through the sawhorses and come careening down the midway at them, then someone must have flipped a switch because it wound down to a rusty growl. He could hear more approaching, not as close. While they waited, he stole surreptitious glances at her, wondering how he had found not only a perfect girl who really seemed to like him, but who also didn’t suggest he admit himself to the Lurleen B. Wallace Center for Crazy People Who See Hobos That Aren’t There for a mental evaluation and eventual straitjacket.

  “Bobby!” his mother shrieked, and he turned to see her pelting down the midway as fast as she could, shoving people out of the way in her haste to get to him, her eyes wide and full of panic.

  “I’m okay,” he called, and hopped down from the platform just in time for her to sweep him into her arms in a crushing hug, smothering him with kisses. “It’s not my blood. Not our blood.”