Charnel House

by Anderson, Fred

  “What happened?” she said. She looked them over, taking in their bruises and the blood beginning to stiffen Bobby’s clothes. “Are you sure you’re okay? What about you, Amy? Where are your parents?”

  “My head hurts,” Amy admitted, gesturing at the bruised side of her face. “But it’s not so bad. Bobby saved my life.”

  “Your boy is a hero, I reckon,” the manager said, walking over. He tucked the red bandanna into his back pocket and looked up at the front of the dark ride, shaking his head. “Never did care for Dennis, or the way he looked at people. Kids especially.”

  He seemed to realize what he’d just said and cleared his throat.

  “I mean, if we’d ever thought he was the slightest danger to anyone, he’d have been out of here faster than shit through a—er, so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.” His face, already red from the exertion, edged toward purple.

  “Forgive me, but I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Mom said. “What happened?”

  “The man who runs—ran—this ride went crazy and attacked me and Bobby,” Amy said. She looked down at the pavement. “He threw Bobby out of the train and was trying to take my clothes off.”

  Mom’s face blanched.

  “But Bobby stopped him.” She looked over at Bobby, a smile breaking through the worry and fear like the sun on an overcast day, and he felt his heart do a little shimmy.

  “Did you call for help?” his mother asked.

  “Your boy killed a pervert,” the carnival manager said, and spat derisively on the asphalt. “Name was Dennis Ray, but I’ll be just as happy if I never hear it again. Good riddance.”

  Mom’s eyes went wide again and she pulled him to her with a fierceness that raised a lump in his throat. In his ear she whispered, “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Tears stung his eyes, because he wanted to tell her everything but knew he couldn’t. She was too old to understand, had lost the ability to simply believe in something that shouldn’t be possible. It would happen to him too, sooner than he would like.

  “I’m okay,” he said, and tried to smile at her. “He was trying to hurt Amy. I had to do something.”

  But I thought I was killing someone else.

  Someone who had gotten away.

  For now.

  Even so, he had learned something important from the confrontation in the dark ride. Norman—or the thing in Norman’s skin—was afraid of him. It’s not used to someone standing up to it. It had run from him back to its nest, or hidey-hole, or whatever you wanted to call it.

  Because it knew he could hurt it.

  Can kill it.

  The thought pleased Bobby, and he looked up just in time to see a man in a Decatur Daily windbreaker aiming a camera at him. As soon as the man had snapped his picture he began to approach, but a single look from Mom sent him scurrying back across the midway with his tail tucked between his legs.

  The police arrived then, and the afternoon became a blur of activity: telling the story about what had happened inside A World of Love (but leaving out the part about Norman and the thing that squirmed out of him) to three different policemen and a detective (who, Bobby noted, didn’t look a thing like either Starsky or Hutch), getting checked out by paramedics in the back of an ambulance, having Amy’s parents thank him over and over and tell him they always thought he was a great kid and a hero. At some point, his dad showed up with Dana and some clean clothes for him to change into, and they didn’t get out of the carnival until well after dark. When she left, Amy hugged him and thanked him. He thought she would have kissed him if both sets of parents—and Dana, who was making smoochy noises like a great big retard—hadn’t been right there with him.

  “I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” she whispered into his ear. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Miss you, too.” But he wanted to say I think I love you.

  From the carnival they drove in one car to the hospital, where a pretty nurse cleaned all the dried blood off Bobby’s face and arms, then x-rayed his foot to make sure it wasn’t broken. When it was over he asked if they could get something to eat and acted like he didn’t see the look his father shot his mother.

  “Mando’s!” Dana cried.

  Bobby nodded. “Pizza would be good.”

  Even though he joined in the dinner conversation in the candlelit restaurant, smiling and laughing when he had to, answering the occasional question from Dana or his parents (mostly Dana, who looked at him with new wide-eyed admiration), his mind was somewhere else: in the crawlspace under the dilapidated house on Hickory Hill. He thought he was beginning to understand something, and it bothered him: despite being scared of Bobby at the end, Norman was getting stronger.

  The first time they met, the hobo had nearly overpowered Bobby and done something terrible to him—if that was even his intention. Bobby was starting to have his doubts, because despite all the nasty things Norman had said, had he really tried to do a sex thing? Even when his dirty fingers were plucking at Bobby’s underwear Norman had stopped short of touching the boy down there, choosing instead to get out his own blistered rotting thing. Hadn’t seeing that soft black tube between Norman’s fingers, leaking snotlike pus and wiggling worms, been about a thousand times worse than the dry fingers? Not to mention the gloating way the hobo had said why don’t you give it a kiss? as he waggled it at Bobby.

  What if he really was some kind of vampire, feeding on fear instead of blood, like Bobby had considered inside the amusement right before he (staked) stabbed the attendant? It made sense. From an early age, his parents had taught him to be wary of strangers because they might be perverts. What if Norman was just pretending to be like that to scare Bobby even more... so that he could feed on it?

  The second time, he was able to possess Bobby’s mom briefly, and then Brother Peavey for even longer at church, enough for the minister to actually transform into the hobo’s form (form of... crazy hobo! a Wonder-Twin voice in his head cried). At least, Bobby thought he was possessing them. It could have been something else entirely, like some kind of mind control that made him unable to tell they were only hallucinations. Either way, Bobby was terrified and Norman fed. With each appearance, the hobo had done more than he had the one before.

  Like he was getting stronger.

  Or hungrier.

  Then today, the hobo had been able to take control of the ride attendant Dennis Ray and make him physically attack the two of them. There was no denying it. Even though Amy hadn’t seen or heard Norman the way Bobby did (because he wasn’t feeding on her), she had certainly seen and heard the man trying to rip her clothes off. But then Bobby had killed Dennis Ray and left Norman exposed... and Norman had run from him, so terrified of Bobby that the pallid thing from the house—because that was the real vampire in control of all this, wasn’t it?—shed its hobo husk in its frantic escape. Norman was gone for now, Bobby thought, but he’d be back. Just like a vampire in the movies... and just like a bully.

  Just like Joey Garraty.

  They pick and pick and pick, and run scared if you stand up to them, but if you don’t kick the snot out of them they just come back. He hadn’t stood up to Joey Garraty under the bridge—though he had wanted to, oh, how he had wanted to—and now here he was, paying for that inaction over and over. He didn’t want to make the same mistake a second time. He needed to do something, and soon, because there was no telling what Norman would do next. Maybe he would tire of feeding on Bobby’s fear and come for Amy again—for real—when Bobby wasn’t around to stop him.

  Or come for his parents.

  Or Dana.

  Was anyone he cared about safe anymore?

  I have to do more than kick the snot out of it. I have to kill it.

  As he chewed thoughtfully on the last slice of pizza, an idea began to take shape in his head.

  16

  Later that night, after they’d been back by the Gateway Shopping Center for his mom’s station wagon—t
he carnival was dark and quiet, closed for good—and gone home, he had showered and gotten ready for bed. His mother came to the bathroom door while he was brushing his teeth and set a small pink pill on the counter.

  “It will help you sleep tonight, if you’re worried about nightmares,” she said.

  But it can’t stop the real nightmares, Mom. For that I need something like Dad’s gun.

  He swallowed the pill and padded down the hall to his bedroom. Before he fell asleep, his father came in and lay down on top of the bedclothes beside him.

  “The police called while you were showering,” he said in a soft voice. “They told me the man who attacked you today spent time in prison for doing something very bad to another little girl, in Virginia. In case you’re feeling bad about what you had to do. You shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t,” Bobby said.

  “Glad to hear it, kiddo.”

  And it was the truth, Bobby thought, even if it made him a bad person to admit it. He hadn’t thought twice about the ride attendant. The only thing that mattered to him was keeping Amy safe, and to do that he would kill a hundred people if he had to. If that meant he was going to go to hell, so be it. She was worth it. Even so, he felt a little better now that he knew Dennis Ray had been a bad man. He wondered if that made it easier for the thing from the Barlowe house to possess him.

  They lay together in comfortable silence for a moment, then his father said, “Your mother is going to take you to see someone tomorrow—a specialist—who you can talk to about what happened and the feelings you have about it.”

  “A doctor for crazy people?”

  “No, nothing like that. Just someone to talk to.”

  And how long after I get there until Norman shows up... or the thing with the big black eyes?

  “Look at it this way,” his father said, and Bobby heard a smile in his voice. “One hour talking is better than having to spend a whole day in school, right?”

  Not when Amy will be at school, waiting for me.

  He didn’t say that, of course, because his dad would never understand the kinds of feelings he was feeling for her. Just one more thing you lost when you got old, Bobby knew. He wanted to argue with his father, to tell him that he’d rather go to school, but if he did that his did might really think he was crazy.

  So he said, “I didn’t think about it that way.”

  His father patted his leg and chuckled, then sat up. “Get some sleep. It’s been a long day. If you have bad dreams and want to come sleep with your mother and me, don’t hesitate.”

  But he didn’t have bad dreams, or any dreams at all that he could remember. When he awoke the next morning a little before nine, sunlight flooded the room and the house was quiet. Birds sang joyously in the back yard, and looking out the window he saw nothing but clear blue through the bare branches. The pain in his lower back was just a dull ache, and his ankle didn’t hurt at all. For the first time since Saturday morning he was completely calm. Even though he would miss seeing Amy, it was a good day for missing school, he thought.

  And for killing monsters.

  His mother sat at the table in the breakfast nook, reading a Harlequin romance. She bought them by the boxful at the used bookstore downtown near Penn’s, and called them her only vice. Bobby wasn’t sure what that meant, but she always smiled when she said it so it must not be too bad. She folded down a corner of the page she was on and closed the book when Bobby walked in.

  “How’d you sleep?” she asked.

  “Good. The pill helped, I think.”

  “You can have another one tonight if you think you’ll need it.”

  I don’t think I will, Mom.

  She stood and set her book on the counter. “Why don’t you go brush your teeth and get dressed, and I’ll make you something to eat? Want some eggs?”

  “Okay.” He turned to go, then turned back. “When are we leaving?”

  “Your appointment with Dr. Potter isn’t until ten-thirty.” She glanced at the clock on the stove. “We’ll leave in an hour or so.”

  Perfect. She would be busy making his breakfast for the next several minutes, and then reading her book after that. She wouldn’t even notice he was gone for an hour, as long as he could get the window in his bedroom up without making any noise to alert her. Bobby passed through the den and into the hallway, but instead of going right, where the bathroom he shared with Dana was, he went left, toward his bedroom... and the one his parents shared.

  He stopped in his room and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, then went back to the hall and paused for a moment, listening. From the direction of the kitchen he heard the rapid clink of metal on glass that meant his mother was whisking milk into eggs for scrambling. Good. He went to the end of the hallway, where the master bedroom was. Slipping through the doorway, he took a quick look around the gloomy room—the only windows faced north, and it was always the darkest place in the house—to make sure his dad had really gone to work. The queen-sized bed was neatly made and the bathroom dark. The bowl on the marble-topped dresser where his dad kept his keys and loose change was empty.

  Bobby went around to his father’s side of the bed and pulled out the drawer of the nightstand. Lying on a washcloth that had been folded in half to keep it from getting scratched, the Ruger revolver was black and ugly and had a malevolent sheen in the dim light. Like a black widow’s body. It looked to him like it wanted to kill, and he was more than happy to oblige it. Picking up the gun by the grip, he was surprised by its heft. Starsky and Hutch always waved theirs around like they didn’t weigh a thing. He turned the weapon over in his hands, examining it, trying to figure out how it worked. He found a latch on the side and pressed it, and the cylinder swung out. The six empty chambers reminded him of a piece of Honeycomb cereal.

  Toward the back of the drawer, he found a cardboard box labeled HORNADY in wide red letters. Underneath, it read .357 MAG, which he understood, and 125 GR JHP, which he did not. He flipped the tab on the box and opened it. Twenty-five shell casings rested within, the shiny primers centered in each like the yolk on a fried egg. One by one, he removed six and slid them into the waiting chambers in the cylinder, and when he flipped his wrist it snapped back into place with a decisive click. All I have to do is point it and pull the trigger now. He closed the box of rounds and returned it to the drawer, then closed the drawer. As he turned to leave, he caught sight of movement from the corner of his eye, over by the dresser.

  Norman was there, leering at him from the shadows.

  Only that wasn’t quite right, he realized. Norman was there, but he wasn’t there.

  The beveled mirror atop the dresser base no longer reflected the bedroom around him. It looked in on the crawlspace under the Barlowe house like a window. Norman squatted on his haunches in the dirt, his nightmarish face in the shadows between two of the joists supporting the floor above. Despite his resolve, Bobby felt a frisson of fear in his chest and gut. Not really there.

  But he was.

  With dawning horror, Bobby realized he could see blackflies crawling on the other side of the mirror glass, like they were looking for a way through. Norman crept forward into the spill of light that fell from the bedroom into the crawlspace, his yellowed eyes full of malicious glee. The place where his nose had been looked like bloodied hamburger in the light, and his oozing lips glistened. He licked them suggestively, and Bobby felt something in his chest go tight.

  Stronger.

  Norman held up a finger—just a second, that movement said—and poked his hand inside his ratty jacket like magician preparing to perform a trick. He withdrew a crumpled slip of cloth and flicked his wrist to open it up.

  He held a pair of pale blue panties, just the right size for a girl of twelve.

  The hobo must have seen something on Bobby’s face that amused him, because he burst into laughter, although no sound made it through the glass. The fear inside Bobby blossomed into terror and his bowels felt loose and watery. Was it too late already? Then
Norman said a single word that Bobby understood even though he couldn’t hear it.

  Soon.

  The hobo pressed the panties to the gaping wound where there was no nose and pantomimed breathing deeply, then laughed again like he’d done the funniest thing in the world. Before he could stop himself, Bobby raised the revolver with one shaking hand so that Norman could see it.

  Soon, he mouthed back.

  Norman’s suppurating lips curled into a sneer. He casually reached down with the hand not holding the panties and gave his crotch a squeeze, then nodded his head and licked his lips a second time. But this time the motion was nervous, not suggestive, Bobby thought. The hobo’s eyes had widened, and his grip on the panties was so tight his scabrous knuckles had gone white.

  He looked scared.

  Good.

  “Bobby? What are you doing in here?” His mother was suddenly in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Your eggs are—oh my God, put that gun down now!”

  Bobby started guiltily at the accusing sound of her voice, and the gun went off like a thunderclap in the bedroom. The beveled mirror exploded into a cascade of glass shards and the crawlspace and hobo were gone. Bobby let the gun drop from his hand. Wanting to cry, because he knew he would have to face whatever waited for him under the Barlowe house without the gun now. And after what Norman had just done with the blue panties, he couldn’t wait for a chance to get it back. He had to go, and he had to go right now, because Amy was no longer safe.

  “Are you okay?” his mother said, rushing across the room to him, her face a rictus of terror. “What were you thinking, Bobby?”

  “I wanted to stop the monster,” he blurted before he knew he was going to, and then the tears came for real and he felt like something inside him was breaking.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him. “Being scared after what happened to you yesterday is perfectly normal. I’d be worried if you weren’t. But that monster is dead, thanks to you.”

  He loved her so much right then that it almost hurt him. She wouldn’t understand if he told her she was thinking of the wrong monster, and he didn’t correct her. He was almost out of time. He had to leave.