He had known that was a distinct possibility when he had set out from the sofa but now that he knew for sure, he suddenly felt vulnerable. But there was nothing to be gained just lying here in front of the door. It was put up or shut up time. He shuffled himself closer to the door and edged his head up towards the handle before taking hold of the key again.
"Come on," he whispered to the key, lifting himself up so that his left shoulder, arm and cheek were up against the door paneling, feeling it judder with every strike from the man on the porch. He turned the key back to the left, gave it a little jiggle – that worked sometimes. Other times, he had seen his mom or his dad remove the key, rub it with their hands and then reinsert it in the lock. After that, it invariably worked. He gave it one more jiggle, exactly at the same time that Yovingham ceased his pounding and an eerie silence fell over the proceedings.
The sound the key made in the lock seemed huge, almost deafening, and Junior saw the thing that was almost certainly not Dick Yovingham drop its head. With glass being frosted, there were no details available, only a dark outline set against the streetlights and the moon. But it was clear that the man out on the porch was looking down at the point where the sound had come from: the lock. And right above the lock was–
"The handle," Junior said, softly.
Junior jiggled the key some more, no longer bothering to be silent. He didn't think he had time to be silent.
He could see what was happening in the thing's head. It was just the same kind of thing that various filmmakers had put into the zombie movies that constantly filled movie theatres: that magical moment when the mindless living dead suddenly discover a simple something that can swing things their way.
A simple something like a door handle.
Junior had a feeling that the door might well just push right open. But most fascinating of all was that the door glass had not been smashed inwards. Something else that was clearly new to the thing on the porch. In light of that, he made a decision to leave the key. After all, he was drawing more attention to both the fact that there was someone inside and also that the general area of the key (which is where the sound would come from) might well hold the means to get in – i.e. the handle.
"See anything out of the window?" Junior asked, crouching low and crab-walking back towards his brother.
"Just Yovingham's car."
Even as the last word was leaving Wayne's mouth, he could see that the statement was not completely true. Kayla Jekt stepped from around the back of the beamer and straight-legwalked over to the bushes that fed onto the sidewalk along the front of the house.
"Kayla," Wayne whispered, the word sounding like a mantra, some utterance without any meaning. Wayne had had this strange situation occur on more than one occasion in the past – like that episode of The Twilight Zone, when everyone started calling dogs "encyclopedias" and their lunch "dinosaur". The most memorable of blankouts took place around the word "door", when Wayne was curled up in his bed, staring at the object in question, and repeating its name ("…door, door, door, door, door…") over and over again, until at last the word ceased to mean anything to him.
And then another car – some kind of a little delivery truck – drifted over the top of the widow McCarthy's house across the street, sidling down onto the old woman's lawn in a flurry of steam jets.
"Oh, shit," was all Junior could think of to say.
"She doesn't find any of that strange, Ju," Wayne said in a low voice. "The van over the roof. Kayla doesn't find it odd, does she?"
Junior looked at his brother, saw the pleading in the boy's eyes and, welling up from nowhere, he felt a sudden rush of strength. "No, she doesn't," he said. But then Junior didn't think that the tall and gangly teenaged girl walking over their lawn was the same one who had pulled down her pants for a five dollar bill a couple years back and let Junior and Arnie Kahn play with the first signs of wispy brown hair she'd got growing down there. "You wanna put your finger inside it'll cost you another five," she told Junior and Arnie. If they'd had the extra five then they'd have willingly done it.
But that was then and this was now. The girl out there in the evening street looked like she could be Kayla's twin sister but she wasn't Kayla. And you could take that one to the bank.
"Junior, I'm scared."
Junior nodded. "Me, too. But we have to keep our heads."
Old Man Yovingham howled some more. Junior thought maybe the good neighbor had heard his last remark – maybe heads were a delicacy where he came from. Headth – they're the betht!
Kayla Jekt turned her own head sideways like she was trying to see something that had rolled under someone's car only there were no cars there to see. All the cars owned by the folks along the street were tucked up in their garages the way all cars were tucked up at night in this affluent suburb of Denver, barely a car ride from the city's sprawling center. And they'd been that way for a whole day now, until the light.
"We have to get out," Junior said, surprised at how calm he sounded. He didn't feel calm.
"Where we going?"
Junior thought about that a few seconds before he shrugged. "Away from here," he said at last. "Maybe into town."
"How we gonna do that?"
"Well, first off, we're gonna hole up in the drugstore. They got food and stuff in there so at least we won't starve."
"And how we gonna get to the drugstore?" Even with his very limited take on what was happening out there in the night – I mean, flying cars anyone? – Wayne didn't think the folks walking out on the street, all of them wearing dark glasses when there was no sun, and gloves when it wasn't cold, he didn't think they'd stand back and wave a couple of kids through – You all come back now, you hear? No, Wayne didn't think that was going to happen at all.
"We have to create a diversion."
They both reflected on that for a while, listening to Mr Yovingham howl out back. Then there was a thud on the window at the front of the house.
And then it sounded as though someone had kicked over the trashcan down the side of the house near the garage.
And then, finally, they heard the squeak of the handle turning.
"I think now would be a good idea," Junior said, and he reached over to tug his brother by his t-shirt and drag him towards the stairs.
"I have to pee."
"No time," said Junior, scanning the front door and the downstairs area to make sure nobody was standing there waiting for them.
"I'll do it in my pants," Wayne moaned.
"So do it in your pants. We'll get new ones at the mall."
"We're going to the mall? Not the drugstore?" Wayne suddenly sounded excited.
"That's the plan."
Wayne nodded. "Always good to have a plan," he said. It was what their father always said – always said about anything, calling to mind that cheesy old TV show starring Mr. T.
"We gonna see Mom?"
Junior wondered a little too long on answering that one so his brother decided to push a little.
"You think she's hiding? In the mall?"
"Hiding?"
Wayne nodded and held onto his pecker through his bunched-up trousers. "Like maybe that's why she didn't answer the phone when you called."
Wayne felt a sliver of pain through his guts. Their mom wasn't hiding. He'd pretty much figured out that one for himself. His dad wasn't hiding either. They were gone – gone to wherever everyone else had gone. After all, someone would have answered the telephone down in the mall offices, even if his mom was – he couldn't bring himself to think of her "taking a pee" so, instead, he thought the phrase "using the bathroom".
"Could be," he said at last. "You better go pee."
Wayne stared at Junior's eyes, glancing from one to the other. "Yeah," he said. He relaxed his grip on his pants' crotch as though he'd never needed to pee in his whole life.
They turned together and stared at the glass door, saw Mr Yovingham – Hey, how you boys doin' this fine day, huh?
The
y didn't think the man – thing? – standing out on the front porch was all that concerned about how Junior and Wayne were doing. And the day was not fine. It wasn't even day any more. And as for having a plan, well…
Right now – even though it was, what, around six or seven in the evening? – it felt like that graveyard time that Grampa August used to tell them about – a little after three in the morning to be precise, the time when, according Grampa August, the corpses in the graveyards rolled back the turf, opened their coffin lids and stepped out to scratch blackened fingernails, all encrusted with soil, on the windowpanes of kids' bedrooms. Kids like them. And corpses like that guy out in front of them right now, beating on the doorframe and howling like a coyote.
"You know," Wayne said, kind of matter-of-factly, "I was wondering."
Without turning from the front door, Junior said, "Yeah?"
"If that's a corpse out there – you know, like Gramps August used to say."
Junior turned around to stare at his brother, his face twisted in a grimace of incredulity.
"I was wondering how they could roll back the grass and then open their coffin." He shrugged, suddenly aware of Junior's staring eyes. "Just wondering, that's all."
"It's Mr Yovingham."
Wayne looked at him then, and, for just a few seconds, Junior felt like the kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. Worse still, he felt that Wayne had assumed the role of parent. Or teacher. Hell, maybe even principal! They both knew it wasn't old man Yovingham out there, just like they knew that something bad had happened. Something real bad.
Junior had no idea why he and his brother seemed to have been ignored or left behind by this thing, whatever it was that had happened. He only knew that they had. Just as he knew that the something bad that had already happened didn't measure up diddly to the something bad that seemed right now to be sizing itself up – and sizing itself up just for the two of them.
"Come on!" Junior snapped, and he grabbed his brother by the sleeve and tugged him away from the door. But even as they moved towards the stairs, the thing that wasn't Mr Yovingham was turning the handle some more.
Junior pushed his brother ahead of him towards the stairs and turned to watch the handle.
Wayne climbed two stairs and, his hand on the banister, turned to watch the handle and his brother, right there in front of it, like he was going to pray to it. And sure enough, the handle was turning.
Junior slowly moved himself into a kneeling position and pulled his hand back from the door, as though the slightest jarring movement might cause the thing to explode in his face. Actually, Junior figured that was probably what would happen, and it would happen soon. As soon as Mork from Ork figured that turning the handle at the same time as pushing would gain him access to the goodies inside.
Mmm, necktht to tree bark, they're the betht!
Wayne edged up to the third stair, and then the fourth, hanging onto the banister as though he were facing a cyclone wind that was about to tear him free and way up into space, like the house in the old Wizard of Oz movie. And now he had remembered his full bladder.
Junior kept edging back from the door, keeping his eyes fixed on the shadow in the glass, watching the shadow tilt its head to one side as it reached out – he could see the thing's arm lift and move towards the door. Still moving, as slowly as he could – so that Yovingham didn't notice he was there.
Yeah, right. And what exactly did the guy think had been banging on the key? Termites?
Junior dropped his gaze to the handle and, as if by magic, the door started to move forward, very slightly, as the handle continued to turn.
"Wayne, get up the stairs."
"Ju, I–"
"Wayne, this is not the time for bullshitting me, now get up the stairs and go pee."
Wayne moved up to the fifth stair and then the sixth, still holding tight onto the banister with one hand and his pants crotch with the other.
If the figure suddenly decided, right now, to combine a strong forward motion at the same time as he turned the handle then that would be it. All bets would be off and the tiger would be loose in the house. That, and the first few stairs leading up to the bedrooms would be awash with Wayne the Dwain's pee.
The handle turned noisily a couple of times and then, after one more squeaky turn, there was a dull thud followed by a sharp clatter, and then a creaking noise as the door drifted slowly open.
Junior could smell the outside, suddenly.
It came into the house on a cool breeze that smelled of new mown grass and maybe just a hint of rain. There were other things on that breeze though, things that Junior could not identify. He hissed at his brother to get up the stairs and clambered across the hallway floor like a crab, skidding slightly on the throw-rug Alice Talbert had placed midway between the stairs and the front door.
By the time Junior reached the top of the first long flight and was standing hugging the newel post just before the short flight up to the main landing, Wayne was mostly in shadow, although a thin shaft of moonlight was illuminating his left side all the way up to his chin – his head was totally in shadow, though Junior could make out the shape of his brother's head. Junior took a couple of steps and was then aware that there had been no noise from the doorway behind him. He paused where he was and looked around.
Dick Yovingham was still standing out on the porch, the screen door still open and resting against his right side. In the street behind him, lights – searchlights – washed the roadway and the tops of the bushes before moving up the side of the house towards the bedroom windows and, Junior presumed, the roof. There was no engine noise, only the sound of something passing through air, though the speed that whatever was out there was moving hardly suggested great wind friction.
Yovingham moved his head side to side again, jerky movements, like the mime artists with the painted faces made up to look like statues or robots that they used to hire in down at the mall around Christmastime, and then he straightened his head and looked right across at Junior. Junior knew the man was looking at him even though he couldn't see his eyes. It was the slight hint of a smile on the man's face that gave him away.
And then he started into the house, striding slowly – and, it seemed, a little awkwardly – along the hallway. "Hey," Wayne said, almost forgetting to whisper, "we got all the lights switched off and he's still wearing his sunglasses."
"Get into one of the bedrooms," Junior hissed. And he ran up the last few stairs to the landing, taking two steps at a time, after Wayne's disappearing figure.
A dull clump sounded on the stairs. Then another.
The boys raced into their parents' room – chosen unconsciously because it had a lock and an en suite bathroom – and immediately skidded to a halt.
Outside and directly in front of the window were two cars, hovering about twenty feet from the house. In addition, above the house right across the street, a flatbed pickup was swooping around to move closer to the Talberts' stronghold – there were three men and a woman standing in back, none of them holding onto anything. Junior couldn't help thinking of the young men who rode the carnie rides out in the park come the Fourth and Thanksgiving – that kind of balance was a real art.
"Uh oh," Wayne said.
"Don't worry about them," Junior said, his words not particularly convincing.
"It's not them I'm worried about," Wayne said, "it's them!" And he pointed to the right.
A large fire engine had just made the turn out of Walnut, dragging with it a whole mess of overhead wires and its ladder – bearing two men outstretched on the rungs – already extending and scraping along the tops of trees as it snaked its way towards the house.
The clumping on the stairs was getting louder.
Junior turned around and closed the door as quietly as he could. As he turned the key in the lock, his brother began to cry.
(41)
"–the hell are you?" the boy said to Rick as Rick pulled himself up the bus's steps.
&nbs
p; The boy was good looking, lean and muscular. He was standing facing Rick as he reached the main flooring. Behind him, over by the window, was a young girl – a child, couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old. She was sobbing into a doll that she was holding up to her face. Kneeling on the floor was Paul Giamatti – or what must have been his doppelganger – his arms folded around his gut, shaking like a bowl of jello.
Rick felt a hand pushing him from behind.
"What is it?" Melanie shouted.
"He's right," Rick shouted to the guy facing off against an old man wearing a corduroy jacket. The old man looked like he'd just stepped out of a boxing ring – there was a thick gash down the left hand side of his face but no blood that Rick could see.
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