Stephenie’s eyes widened.
The puddle of blood surrounding Susan’s head seemed bigger now, and her uniform looked darker. It wasn’t even yellow now. It was tan. But how the hell was that possible? Simple answer: it wasn’t. It must have been tan originally. Or maybe things looked different because the sun had set. Was that a logical reason? No, probably not. But it was the best she could come up with.
Stephenie opened her mouth to speak and discovered her throat was parched. She swallowed, licked her lips and said, “Carrie, are you here babe? Please tell me you’re here. I’ve come to take you home. “
No answer. Of course there was no answer.
She stepped over Susan’s body. For a moment her thoughts betrayed her. She imagined Susan reaching out and grabbing her by the leg. She imagined the waitress looking up at her with black tar running from her cold and lifeless eyes, a big upside-down grin slapped across her face, and her brains oozing from her skull like they were attached to a pump. She imagined the corpse saying BRAINS, or something equally impossible. But that was stupid, right? Of course it was. Dead people don’t do that. They don’t say BRAINS moments before they tear off your head and eat the goop inside. Never have; never will. Only in low budget movies and expensive Hollywood remakes does that sort of thing happen. Not in real life. So what the hell was Stephenie doing? Did she really need to think such crazy thoughts?
She walked towards the booths sitting in the center of the room, looking at Angela’s corpse.
Then she looked at Angela’s fingers.
The fingers were two inches away from the coffee mug.
Two inches.
That wasn’t right. Wasn’t she holding the coffee mug a few minutes ago? Stephenie could have sworn the woman had been holding the mug. Weren’t her fingers wrapped around…
Stephenie stopped walking. Her eyes widened and her mouth slinked open. Her left hand trembled and her heart pounded her ribs like it was trying to find its way out of her body.
No, she thought. I’m wrong. I have to be wrong.
She was looking at the mug now. Not at Angela Mezzo, and not at fingers that may or may not have been wrapped around the mug’s handle. She wasn’t looking at the two-inch gap between the fingers and the mug’s handle, even though the gap probably hadn’t been there before. She wasn’t even looking at the big pond of blood sitting on the table, or that terrible look of anguish bolted across Angela’s pale and lifeless face.
She was looking at the mug. And it was scaring the shit out of her. More than the waitress that may or may not have shifted her head from one position to another, more than her daughter being gone. The mug. Oh God, the mug. She seriously considered screaming, considered turning around, walking out the door and––
And what? The crazy witch-voice inside her head demanded. Whatcha gonna do? Drive two miles and run outta gas? Go look in the bloody baffroom Stephenie. Go look, right now!
But––
She looked at the mug again.
The smiling yellow happy face was gone. The face had changed. It looked neutral now, not happy. Just… flat.
Fuck da mug, the voice insisted. Walk past it and check the baffroom. For the sake of ya daughter, just go.
Stephenie pressed her teeth together hard enough to make them hurt and squeezed her face into an expression that articulated how much she disliked the current situation. She walked past Angela and the mug, looking at Lee Courtney.
Lee was in a different position. His legs were fully extended and his hands were sitting in his lap. He wasn’t propped up against the bathroom door. Now he was leaning against the booth beside the bathroom door.
And the other bathroom…
The legs, the ones with the pantyhose and the high-heel shoes, they were gone.
What the hell happened? When Stephenie was inside the restaurant the first time, and the second time, a pair of legs were sticking out the doorway, deader than snot. She knew it, one hundred percent for sure. So what happened to them? Did they get up and walk away?
Maybe, the voice suggested. You didn’t see that woman, did ya? No. You didn’t. Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe she was just hurt, or maybe she fainted and passed out on the floor. It’s possible; so don’t worry about it. There’s nothing going on here ‘cept a big ‘ole case of the heebe-geebees. Now go look in the baffroom, your daughter needs ya.
Stephenie didn’t like it.
Stalling, she said, “Carrie? Are you in there? Answer me?”
No answer.
And now Stephenie was hit with a new terror, a new dread. What if the woman with the pantyhose got up and crawled into the bathroom? What if she was waiting?
That’s stupid, she thought.
But was it?
Still, stupid or logical, she didn’t want to go into that bathroom. Her instincts had been against checking the bathroom for a while now. So what did it mean?
She was freaking out. That’s what it meant. It didn’t mean anything except the restaurant was creepy and she wanted to go home.
She decided to look in the men’s washroom first, not the ladies. She figured it would be easier, safer. Did it make any sense? No. Probably not, but that was okay with her.
She stepped over Lee’s legs, pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The room was dark. It smelled like a mix of cheap all-purpose cleaners and harsh disinfectants.
“Isn’t this just great,” she whispered.
Stephenie slid her hand along the wall until she found a light switch. She flicked it up and the overhead light came on.
The room wasn’t very big. There were three urinals, two stalls and a sink. Both stall doors were open. One was empty; the other wasn’t.
Sitting on the toilet with his pants around his ankles and his hands hanging at his sides was a man named Dan Meltzer. Dan was a big man: two-twenty, maybe two-thirty. He had short hair and a white t-shirt. The t-shirt wasn’t very white. Not now. A massive amount of blood covered both of his shoulders. It had spread along the back of his shirt, across his chest and onto his sleeves. It wasn’t surprising. Dan’s head had been cracked open, possibly with a sledgehammer or a mallet. His eyeballs, which no longer sat in the proper position on his face, seemed black. The overhead light may have been responsible. Or perhaps his eyes had so much blood inside of them they turned extra dark.
Stephenie turned away from Dan and noticed something else.
There was a dead boy under the sink, sitting in a pool of blood. The kid had been chopped up pretty good. His name was Mark Mezzo, son of Angela Mezzo. He had black hair and a schoolboy uniform––sort of looked like that kid from the Omen movie. And like Dan Meltzer––the big man on the toilet––his eyes were wide open.
Stephenie looked at the boy for a few seconds, and when she turned away she saw something in the corner of her eye.
Blink.
Stephenie’s head snapped towards him. But the boy was dead, clearly dead. His face was pale and his chin was smashed apart. The amount of blood that had drained out of him was almost unreasonable.
Stephenie turned away from the child, convincing herself that it was just a trick of the light, deception of the eye. Because that’s what it had to be, right? Nothing else made sense. He didn’t blink. Dead children don’t blink.
She stepped out of the bathroom. Now that she was in the restaurant again, she stepped over Lee’s legs, knowing there was nowhere else to look except the one place she didn’t want to go.
“Okay,” she whispered. “This is it.”
She put her hand on the bathroom door marked LADIES, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
8
As Stephenie entered the room she counted the stalls. There were four of them, four stalls and a pair of sinks. Otherwise the room was empty.
All four doors, she realized, were closed. She said, “Carrie? Are you in here?”
There was no answer.
She walked forward, pushed the first door open. Nothing.
; She pushed the second door open. Nothing.
She pushed the third door open; there was something sitting on the floor, so she crouched down and picked it up.
It was a nametag.
It said:
---NG’S DINER
--- E-ANNE
Looking at the tag, Stephenie said, “King’s Diner.”
She didn’t know about the name on the bottom. Might have been Lee-Anne. Might have been something else. It didn’t really matter.
She approached the fourth stall, the last stall. Still holding the nametag, she pushed the door open with her knuckles.
It was empty.
Strange, she thought. And it was strange. She was sure something would happen in the woman’s washroom, and now that nothing did she didn’t know what to do. Carrie was still missing and there was nowhere else to look. So where did that leave her?
She’s abducted, Stephenie thought.
Immediately Stephenie wished the notion had never come to her mind. She didn’t want to think her daughter had been abducted, not even for a moment. And besides, when could somebody have done that?
Hello, the voice inside said. Stephenie was starting to hate that voice. It was like a nagging crack-whore stepmother that wouldn’t mind her own business. And she wouldn’t be silenced. Not today. Not until she said her piece. You drove ‘way; ‘member? There was a lotta time to stuff Carrie into the trunk of a car and drive off freely, wouldn’t ya think, dearie? They could’ve broken ‘er arms and cut ‘er throat in no time at all.
“Don’t say that,” Stephenie said, horrified.
But it’s true. You know that much; of course ya do. Why do ya think I was protestin’? You left her here; don’t ya get it? If your daughter has already been ‘ducted, don’t come cryin’ to me ‘bout it. It’s your own damn fault.
“Shut up.”
It’s true.
Stephenie didn’t want to hear it. Every time the voice inside her head spoke the words hurt a little more. At first she figured the voice was just a fractured division of her own mind, nothing more, nothing less, but now she wasn’t so sure. Now she was gaining a visual to go with the audio, which was making the experience worse.
At first the woman in her head looked cartoonish, like that cackling Witch Hazel from the Bugs Bunny shows she watched as a child. Witch Hazel, with her green skin, her blue dress, and her little black legs that were too small for her body. But as time moved on the image was changing, becoming more real. She was no longer a funny old coot that rode around town on a broom and left hairpins flying in her wake, but rather a twisted whore that died a long ago, in a time of violence and pain, cursing the Lord’s name and swearing her revenge as they tied the noose and hung her from a tree.
There’s nothing in the bathroom, Stephenie thought.
She opened the bathroom door and stepped into the main room. She looked at David Gayle, the dead man sitting beneath the painting of the two happy boys and their father.
And that’s when she saw it: David’s eyes rolled open.
Stephenie gasped, putting a hand to her mouth. She desperately wanted to look away from the corpse but didn’t. She was afraid––afraid to look away, afraid to close her eyes and afraid to look at the other bodies because she didn’t want to see more eyes open.
What do you do when the dead open their eyes?
David Gayle was looking at her, his cold, dead eyes unmoving. But open.
Stephenie returned the glare for a long as she dared, but she didn’t want to look at the corpse much longer so she looked up, and gasped again.
The painting was different now. Day had turned to night. The two boys inside the image weren’t standing by the tree; they were hanging from the tree. They had nooses around their broken necks and tongues that had flopped from their open mouths and the father looked like he was laughing. Laughing like he thought executed children were the greatest gift of all. Inside Stephenie’s mind she heard a chuckle. And from somewhere in the room, silverware fell from a table and clanked against the floor.
Stephenie’s head snapped away from the painting and towards the fallen silverware. She didn’t know what to do, what to think. She stepped forward, cautiously, nervously.
David’s eyes shifted in their sockets. He was watching her. Watching her move. A grin touched the corners of his lips and his hands tightened into fists.
She approached Angela’s table. Not because she wanted to, but because she was heading for the exit.
She looked at the coffee mug; she couldn’t help it.
The mug looked different now. The neutral expression was gone and the face didn’t look happy, or neutral.
It looked mean.
Stephenie took another step, followed by another.
She approached Susan. Only now the idea of Susan reaching out and grabbing her by the leg didn’t seem so crazy. It seemed like it could happen, or would happen. And Stephenie didn’t want Susan to reach up with her cold dead hand––oh no, she didn’t––so she ran past Susan and blasted out the door.
9
There was somebody in her car.
Not Carrie.
It was a woman named Julie Brooks.
Julie’s neck was twisted strangely and her head was lying on the steering wheel showcasing the long crack in her skull. Her mouth yawned lifeless towards the open window and her eyes were rolled into the back of her head.
Stephenie slammed on the brakes and said, “Oh my God!”
How did this happen? she wondered. How was it possible?
She approached the car apprehensively, snatching quick glimpses of the area around her. She had a terrible feeling the restaurant door was about to bust open and dead bodies would shuffle their way outside like moviegoers after a Halloween night screening of Dawn of the Dead. And what, exactly, would the game plan be then? Would she run down the road screaming with her fingers clamped against her face or would she pretend that she was a superhero and battle a rot full of zombies?
Looking through the car window, she could see blood dripping from Julie’s chin. She reached out, touched the door’s handle. She was about to open it when she took one final look at the restaurant.
The restaurant door didn’t open. Zombies didn’t come bustling out.
But as she was looking at it, Julie shifted. Her eyes changed position. Her mouth closed. Her head tilted and a string of blood dribbled from her nose.
Stephenie turned away from the restaurant. She opened the car door, causing Julie’s body to shift again. She didn’t notice her eyes watching her with a cold, hateful stare. She didn’t notice Julie’s hands crumpling into fists. She didn’t notice anything really, so she reached out, took the corpse by the shirt and dragged her from the car.
Julie’s body swooped into a new position and fell to the ground with a THUD. Her skull cracked off the pavement and blood splashed across Stephenie’s feet.
Stephenie crouched, grabbed the corpse by the shoulders and dragged her away from the car. She dropped the body carelessly. Then something across the road caught her attention: the bungalow. She had forgotten about it.
Maybe it’s time to give the bungalow a visit, she thought. And with that, it was decided. She stepped over Julie’s body, slammed the car door shut and stepped away from the corpse. Walking across the empty highway, she felt like crying.
* * *
Stephenie made her way across the road and up the stone pebble driveway. She walked up the three steps that led to the front porch quickly, and wasted no time ringing the doorbell. There was no answer, so she rang it again. Still nothing. Third time’s a charm, she had often said, but here and now the third time was no more productive than the first two. She rapped her knuckles against the wood and looked over her shoulder.
She could see Julie’s corpse lying next to the car like a sack of smashed tomatoes. She could see the empty pumps, the yellow school bus and Karen Peel’s body lying against it. The place was like a ghost town. There were no cars on the highway and nob
ody around.
“Screw this,” she whispered, noticing the name on the mailbox.
It said: JACOB. Might have been a first name, might have been a last. She didn’t know, or care.
Stephenie gripped the doorknob and turned it. The door opened. Stepping inside, she said, “Hello? Is there anybody here? Jacob?”
The lights were on, as she knew they would be. But the place seemed empty.
Stephenie stood in a living room; it was decorated with furnishings from the thirties and forties. The walls were dirty and there was a large reclining chair sitting in the center of the room, faced away from the front door.
There might be someone in it, she thought.
She took a step forward, followed by another. “Hello?”
Everything was quiet.
“If somebody’s here, I’ll have you know I need help. Can you hear me? Hello?”
The chair was empty; her shoulders came down an inch.
She walked past the chair and into the next room, the kitchen. The room was disgusting. The stove was dirty and the counter looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in two years or more. There was a fly crawling on the wall and several cockroaches scurrying across the floor. There was a single window that may have been the dirtiest she had ever seen, and a painting on the wall she didn’t bother to look at.
A phone rang.
Stephenie turned towards the sound and saw a staircase leading to the basement.
The phone rang again. The sound was coming from below.
On the staircase wall was a light switch. She clicked it on but nothing happened. Somehow it didn’t surprise her. Nothing was working; nothing was easy. She took a step down the stairs, wondering if the staircase would collapse. It didn’t. She made her way to the basement without incident.
The basement was small and dark, but she could see. There was a television that looked like it belonged inside a museum sitting across from an old couch. In the corner, next to the couch, was an end table. Sitting on the table was a lamp. It was on. Beside the lamp was the phone.
Into Hell Page 5