“Clute, die. Clute, die!” they began to chant. Jay backed up. He stepped on a tiny doll and the toy screamed in agony as it squished under the sole of his boot. The sounds of the crushed and dying doll seemed to infuriate the others.
“Bring him down, but don’t kill him!” a voice yelled from the rear of the store.
Several jammed needles into Jay’s boots; others began climbing up his jeans legs. All were screaming and cursing and chanting, their tiny voices a sharp blitzkrieg that hammered in Jay’s ears. A few of the longer needles penetrated the leather and brought blood.
Jay could feel the blood running down his ankles into his boots. Yelling, he began kicking and stomping at the evil little people while he fought his way out of the mass of living toys.
He stepped around a counter and was free of the screaming little horde. He thought. He heard the drum of little feet and looked to his left. Little toy people were charging him around the counter, screaming and waving little weapons at him. Even though he knew they were dangerous, knew they could overpower him with sheer numbers, he did not want to use the shotgun on them. What they had become was not their fault.
“Get away from me!” he yelled. “I don’t want to kill you.”
One of them hurled himself at Jay and drove a long needle into his calf. Jay yelled in pain and kicked the little man free of him, at the same time lowering the muzzle of the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The buckshot blew bits and pieces of little people all over the room.
That momentarily halted their charge and gave Jay the time to split for the front door. It was then he noticed it was closed.
Jay changed direction and headed for the rear of the store. The little people were following him, but with his longer legs, Jay was outdistancing them. They charged, cursing and chanting and shouting filth at him.
He stopped, turned, and cleared the aisle of evil little ones with the shotgun. Jamming shells into the shotgun as he backed up, he yelled as a tiny man leaped from a shelf, landing on Jay’s back, his sharp little fingers digging into Jay’s neck. He felt a stab of pain in his right ear and hollered. The little bastard was chewing on his ear! He felt the warm flow of blood as the little man bit deeply. Reaching up, he got the toy’s head in his hand and squeezed as hard as he could.
The little head seemed to explode under his hand. He flung the toy to one side and kept on running.
He reached a closed door and entered into darkness, slamming the door behind him. He could hear the sounds of the little people on the other side, frustrated and angry as they beat and kicked the door with their little fists and feet.
He found the light switch and clicked it on. He was in a windowless workshop, the area littered with bits of broken toys. He walked on, to another closed door. He opened the door, clicking on the light switch.
The room exploded in light, the light so intense it startled Jay for a moment.
He stood, gazing at the surroundings. His face mirrored his disgust. A round bed, surrounded by banks of lights and cameras. He was in the studio where the kiddy porn was shot. Walls were covered with drapes.
Jay wondered how many hundreds of films had been made in this room, shipped all over the world.
Aunt Cary had been quite a businesswoman. But if Jay had his way, a lot of her enterprises were about to come to a halt.
“Bruno Dixon!” he called.
Yet another door opened. A fat man waddled out of the darkness beyond to face Jay. “Yes, Mr. Clute?”
“Step out here where I can get a better look at you.”
Smiling, the fat man lumbered out into the harsh light. “Better, Mr. Clute?”
“Nothing is better about this place, this town, the people in it. What cave did my aunt find you in, Dixon?”
Bruno shook his head and his multiple chins shook with the movement. “Poor, poor foolish man. Why don’t you just lay down your guns and give it up. Sooner or later they’re going to take you alive, you know.”
Bingo! They have to take me alive, Jay thought. I don’t know why. But there it is. “That would make me a fool, Dixon. I’m going to destroy your little horror factory. You must have figured that out by now.”
The fat man shrugged. Jay had a hunch that under all that lard, there lived a very powerful and dangerous man, possessing enormous brute strength. His hands were huge.
“It can all be rebuilt, Mr. Clute. You can never destroy a spirit.”
“The kids, Dixon. Ange, Carla, Ken, Andy, Robert . . . where are they?”
Bruno pursed his lips. “They’re one with us now.”
The man became suddenly wary. “What . . . do you plan on doing with me, Mr. Clute?”
“I don’t know. I might just kill you and be done with it.”
The man developed a sudden nervous tic in one eye. “They were wrong about you, Mr. Clute. Even the Old One. You are a strong man to resist his will.”
Jay moved to a row of video cassettes. Keeping one eye on Dixon, he selected one and tossed it to the man. “Play it! I want to see something.”
Jay ordered him to turn it off after a couple of minutes. There was no doubt the child had been forced into sex.
And the child was Carla.
Jay stepped forward and butt-stroked the man with the shotgun. Dixon’s feet flew out from under him, and he crashed to the floor.
Jay quickly scanned a dozen of the video tapes. He chose every fifth one and scanned each for only a moment. He recognized all the kids in Jenny’s little group, including Jenny. He also recognized a great many of the adults. All his old high school buddies, male and female. And in the last tape, he saw the creature, the Old One, very clearly in the background. An old evil man.
He found a battered suitcase and filled it with the damning tapes. Dixon was lying on the floor, moaning and looking up at Jay. His eyes were very frightened.
“A way out of this place, Dixon.”
Dixon’s smile was bloody. “No way.”
Jay placed the muzzle of the shotgun against Bruno’s crotch and pulled the trigger.
Jay turned and began jerking all the drapes that lined the walls. He found a door and kicked at it until it opened.
Turning, he began shooting at the rows of high intensity lights. Sparks flew in all directions, landing on the bed, setting it on fire. As the flames spread Jay found the door and quickly stepped out onto the sidewalk.
As he was getting into his car, he heard the sounds of fire sirens. Smoke was pouring and billowing out of the building.
Jay located the nearest fire hydrant and rammed it, popping it open. Water gushed upward. Spotting another, he backed into that one, breaking it.
He drove right down the middle of main street, his hood aiming at the center of the fire truck.
“Truth time,” he muttered. “Let’s see if they really have to take me alive.”
The fire truck slewed away, tipped over, spilling firemen to the concrete. It rammed the curb, jumped it, and smashed into a storefront.
Better sense overrode valor, as Jay realized he was acting like a fool. The heady smell of victory had overpowered reason. He turned off Main and headed for the house.
Despite what they were, he tried not to think about those toy people in the burning store.
Ellis pulled in the drive just as Jay was explaining to the others what had taken place that day.
“Here comes Daddy-dear,” Amy said, disgust in her voice.
Ellis stood on the steps. “Jay! Okay, Jay. You win. You hear me. You win. Can we talk?”
“Don’t trust him,” Amy warned.
“Don’t worry,” Jay told her, jerking open the front door. “Why, Ellis, ol’ buddy. Do come in.”
Ellis held open his coat. “I’m not armed, Jay. I come in peace.”
Jay motioned him in.
Amy glared at him.
Ellis flushed and shook his head. “You don’t understand, Amy. None of you do.” He waved a hand toward the outside. “None of us have a choice in the matter It
’s . . . something that we have to do. It’s passed from generation to generation.”
“I don’t buy that, Ellis!” Jay snapped at him.
“That’s your option, Jay. But you really don’t understand. You wanna deal?”
“What’s the deal?”
Ellis cut his eyes to Shari. “You give me all the film and sound recordings you have.”
“No way, Jack!” Shari told him. “This is the biggest story in the history of television.”
Ellis ignored that. “All the film, all the sound tape stays here. I see it destroyed. You all stay here, in town, for three days after that. Then you can leave. Free and clear.”
“You’re serious?” Nick asked.
“Yes.”
“In three days you’ll be able to destroy records, shift patients around, and move that old creature,” Stoner said.
“That is exactly correct. And I am leveling with you all on that.”
“Ellis!” Jay’s tone held exasperation. “You’ve got a town full of doll people! One good firm handshake from any outside investigator or reporter, and the hand is dust! You must think we’re all fools to believe your garbage.”
“You let us worry about them, Jay. You all had best be worried about yourselves.”
Jay met the eyes of everyone in the room, and it was crowded. Tim and Parnell were tied, back to back, and in the basement.
“I’m staying,” Piper said. The rest quickly followed her lead. All voted to remain in Victory.
“You’re all fools!” Ellis said. “You’ve given us no choice. Is a principle worth dying for?”
The men and women and two kids met him with stony looks.
“Fools,” Ellis muttered. He turned to leave.
General Douglas brought him up short, a cocked .45 aimed at his head.
Jim grinned and dangled a set of handcuffs.
4
Ellis had been handcuffed and placed in the basement with Tim and Parnell. It was then that Ellis and Parnell began begging.
“Don’t do this to us, Jay!” Parnell begged. “Please! Leave us handcuffed . . . that’s fine. But don’t leave us alone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re marked, Jay,” Ellis told him. “You leave us alone, and we’ll die.”
“That’s your problem.” Jay climbed the steps and closed the basement door.
The howl and whine of sirens had long died away. Using a VCR, the others had viewed a few of the tapes Jay had taken from the store.
“Disgusting!” General Douglas had snorted.
The others agreed, some of them using terms a bit more profane.
Jenny and Kelly were in their room.
Jay completed his telling of what had happened at the toy store.
“Good job, Jay!” General Douglas smiled. “This is war, people. You can feel sorry for the enemy after the war is won.”
“Why do they want me alive?” Jay directed the question at Stoner. “It must have something to do with genetics.”
“I’m sure it does. But only to the degree that they want a Clute offspring. That would be my answer.”
Down in the basement, the three men began screaming. “The lights have gone out. Help!”
“Then sit in the dark!” General Douglas roared. “Grown men afraid of the dark!”
The screaming and yelling continued for a few moments, then lessened, intensified once, then stopped.
“I’ll go check on them.” Jim walked out of the room. They heard him open the door to the basement. “The lights are working fine,” he called. He came back up the steps much faster than he descended. When he walked into the living room, his face was shiny with sweat. “You better come look,” he said to Jay.
The three men were sprawled in a thick pool of blood. Their throats had been cut, and cut with such savagery that Parnell’s head was almost completely severed.
“But . . . who did it?” Stoner asked, after quickly inspecting the bloody trio.
If anybody had an opinion, they kept it to themselves. But all were thinking that it could not have been an adult; they had all been gathered in the living room.
That left Jenny or Kelly.
Jay went to their bedroom on the second floor of the house. Both the girls were napping, sound asleep. And there was not a drop of blood on either of them or in the room. And whoever had cut the throats would have been blood-splattered.
In the living room, Piper faced Jay. “You don’t. . . you can’t think one of the children did it!”
“I don’t know what to think, Piper.” Nick was in the basement, filming the bloody bodies. He had taken several shots of Milton, on his porch, engaged in a rather one-sided conversation with the puffy guard, who now had maggots crawling on him. “But I do know this . . .”
The others had gathered around, listening.
“We’re going to bust out of this town. Tonight!”
* * *
Ask any of them, and they would have sworn that time had slowed. It was not yet noon. By their inner clocks, all felt it should be dusk.
The bodies of the men had been carried out into the backyard and covered with blankets. No one knew what else to do with them.
Amy suddenly sat up stiff and straight in her chair. What conversation there was ceased, all eyes on the young woman.
“Of course,” Amy said, her head cocked to one side. “Certainly. Right now.”
“Amy!” Jim yelled.
She did not respond.
She rose from the chair and faced the rear of the house. “I’m coming, Daddy.” She began walking toward the back.
Eric blocked her way. She shoved him aside as easily as moving a broom. The big man was stunned by her sudden strength.
“The Old One has her,” Stoner said. “Let her play it out. See what she does.”
They followed her, down the hallway, through the kitchen, out onto the back porch. There, they paused as the young woman pushed open the screen door and walked out into the yard.
They watched as Amy walked to the blanket-covered bodies on the ground, under the hot sun, already beginning to stink. Amy knelt down and began pulling away the blood-stained blankets. She lay down beside the body of her father and put her arms around him.
She put her head on his bloody shoulder, her hand stroking his face, grinning in death. “Poor Daddy,” she murmured. “I forgive you, Daddy. And if you promise to be good, you can live again.”
Jim shoved past the group, pushed open the screen door, and jumped over the steps, running toward the young woman.
As Amy rose to her knees, the front of her shirt sticky with blood, and bending her head, just about to kiss the cold dead lips of her father, Jim reached her. He grabbed her as her lips touched the bloody mouth of the dead. Her tongue snaked past the lips and worked its way into the stinking mouth.
“Amy!” Jim shouted.
She raised her head, confusion clouding her eyes.
Jim grabbed her by the shoulders and literally slung the young woman several yards away from the dead.
“Look!” General Douglas shouted, pointing at the shrubbery at the far end of the big backyard.
A hundred or more little people were lined up in front of and under the shrubbery. They were pointing and laughing and sneering at Jim and the others, evil looks on their tiny faces.
Amy jumped to her feet and attacked Jim, who was trying to restrain her. She slapped and kicked and clawed at him.
“No!” she screamed, her mouth bloody. “Leave me alone. I love my daddy!”
Jim slapped her, knocking her to the ground.
Jay ran from the house to assist Jim. Both of them managed to pin the young woman to the ground. She screamed and cursed them. Jim produced the set of cuffs he’d used on Ellis and started to put them on the woman.
Jenny and Kelly stood in their bedroom window and laughed at the sight below them.
“No!” Stoner shouted. “Not cuffs. She’ll hurt herself with them. Let me get som
e adhesive tape. That’s better.”
“Well, dammit, get it then!” Jim shouted, his face flushed.
Amy shrieked and screamed her rage.
Deva had left the porch at a run, heading for the medicine cabinet and a roll of tape.
A group of dolls, all dressed up in cheerleader uniforms, began dancing and prancing about in front of the shrubbery. They linked arms and kicked and cheered as Jim and Jay struggled with the screaming Amy. Jay lifted his eyes, looking at the tiny line.
“Maggie?” he whispered. “Maggie Watson?”
The tiny, old cheerleader laughed at him. “You’re ours, Jay. At last. At last, at last, here’s your past.”
The other old cheerleaders joined in. “Jay’s past, ours at last.”
The line linked arms and moved forward.
Deva ran to the men, a roll of tape in her hand. It took the three of them to tape Amy’s hands behind her back, while she kicked and screamed and tried to bite anyone she could reach with her bloody mouth. Stoner joined them, and the shrink and the trooper carried her into the house. General Douglas joined Jay and Deva. The old soldier’s eyes were fixed on the laughing and jeering and cheering little people
“That’s Maggie Watson,” Jay said. “I haven’t seen her in twenty years.”
“She died about ten years ago,” Deva told him.
“I suppose in one way, she did,” General Douglas said.
A little man, dressed in a jogging suit, left the bushes and ran toward the three big people. He carried a long needle in his hands.
“Stick them, stick them, with the pin!” the cheerleaders chanted. “Stick them all and then we’ll win.”
“Watch out,” General Douglas warned. “He’s going to try to stab us with that needle.”
Jay jerked up the bloody blanket that had covered Ellis. “Get back inside the house! Move.”
The little man warily circled Jay, the long needle held like a spear. Jay stared at him. “Paul? Paul Felts?”
“You’ll be like us ... soon!” Paul squeaked. He laughed and lunged at Jay. Jay sidestepped, avoiding the sharp needle.
“Paul!” Jay yelled. “It’s me, Jay!”
Screaming in his tiny voice, Paul charged. Jay dropped the blanket over the little man and took off for the back steps.
Toy Cemetery Page 22