“Harrow’s playing tricks on us,” Ronnie said.
“You want to go back in there?” Dory asked, a tremble to her voice.
“No way in hell,” Ronnie said. “I’d rather just go find explosives and blow it up.”
“Does this mean it’s still going?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s just a shred of something. A whisper. I think we shut it down. Even if it has a little energy right now, it would not have let us out,” Ronnie said. “I guess objects in that house are closer than they appear.”
Dory gave her a funny look, as if she didn’t quite understand what Ronnie had meant.
And even if she didn’t completely believe it, Ronnie Pond didn’t care. She looked up at Harrow, with its towers and gabled rooftops and its stone and wood and glass, and she uttered a curse upon it as if curses could actually work.
“I feel like it’s over,” Ronnie said. “Maybe that’s all that matters.”
They carried the body down the driveway.
When the sun finally came up, they were still walking with the boy in between them, along the narrow unpaved roads back toward the village. Dory kept dropping his feet, until Ronnie decided that she’d just carry the boy and deal with the weight of him, but she too was exhausted. When they found an abandoned car with the keys in the ignition but the driver missing, they decided that they’d drive up to Parham. “We can tell the cops,” Ronnie said. “We can get some rest. And they can deal with all this.” She didn’t want to have to mention all the dead. She didn’t want to have to even remember all that she and Dory had seen the previous night.
She just wanted it to be over, and for the shock and numbness to begin.
She opened the back door of the car, and laid the boy’s body down as gently as she could.
Dory got the car started, and said, “Well, at least whoever abandoned this one left us a little bit of gas.”
32
They drove out along the bumpy roads as the sun broke from over the hills, and they ran over some chains that had fallen in the road from “No Trespassing” signs on each side of it. The roads that they took twisted through woods and across fields, and Dory was glad she’d taken the back way so they wouldn’t even see the rooftops of the village again.
They soon found a rural route that Ronnie could identify as meeting back up with the main highway again. They took it and drove another three miles toward the main roads. But then the car coughed to a stop.
“Gas?” Ronnie asked, glancing over at the gauge.
“Maybe,” Dory said, tapping at the dashboard as if it would tell her something. “Well, I guess if you steal a car, you get what you deserve. Want to walk from here?”
Ronnie glanced around at the rocks and the field and the distant woods behind them. “Sure.”
33
By the time they’d reached the main highway, they had walked for more than an hour. The sun had completely risen, and a slight wind picked up. Ronnie sat down on the gravel shoulder, and when Dory joined her, Ronnie leaned against her, and then closed her eyes from sleeplessness.
34
Ronnie opened her eyes a few seconds later and knew she was back in Harrow, but it was only a dream. She knew the difference, and it didn’t frighten her at all to be there.
You’re out on the highway with Dory, and you’re just sleeping. It’s all right. The house is turned off now.
She lay on a bare mattress in a room of the house she hadn’t seen. Above her head, a window was open, its shutters drawn back. A chilly wind came in. Outside, it was night.
She felt as if someone were tugging at the mattress. She glanced down along its edge by her feet. She saw him.
“It’s all right,” she said, softly. “Don’t be afraid.”
He crawled toward her on his hands and knees. He had a beautiful face, nearly radiant and cherubic. His hair had grown long, and so had his fingernails—so long that they curled a bit at the ends. She saw the scar just under his chin, and assumed that it ran all the way down his chest and little belly beneath his shirt.
“I know your name,” she said, as she swung around to sit at the edge of the bed. She patted the place beside her. “You’re Arnie, aren’t you?”
The boy’s grin widened, and small knifepoints in his gums shone in the morning light from the open window.
“Someone did something terrible to you,” Ronnie continued. “But you don’t need to be afraid, Arnie Pierson. I know all about you and how Harrow’s inside you, just a little bit. I know you didn’t mean for all this to happen.”
The boy’s smile faded and he shook his head violently.
“None of it’s your fault,” she cooed, and reached her hand out. “Please. Take my hand.”
The boy waited a minute, glancing about the room as if expecting someone else.
His thick yellowed fingernails scraped her flesh when he touched her, but she closed her fingers around his.
“I don’t have many friends, either,” she said. She reached over with her free hand to stroke his hair. It was tangled and full of dried blood, but she combed it out with her fingers until it had a shine to it.
He drew his hand from hers and then spread his arms wide, making a bleating sound.
He wants me to pick him up, she thought. He just wants love. He just wants someone to care for him.
She bent forward, lifting him beneath his arms, raising him high and bringing him down on her lap. She kissed his scalp lightly. “I will take care of you, Arnie. I will never leave you alone. I promise. I promise you’ll always have me here. I’ll make sure you are never lonely or afraid. Never again.”
Ronnie and the little boy lay down together on the mattress, her arms over him, his clawlike fingernails curved around her hands.
Somewhere far away she heard the sound of a tea kettle’s whistle.
35
Ronnie awoke, her head in Dory’s lap.
“You hear that?” Dory asked. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
Ronnie sat up. She did hear it, although the noise had seemed part of the tea kettle’s whistling sound from her dream at first. It was the high-pitched squeal of sirens as a police car came around the corner from the direction of the next town to the north.
She pushed herself up from the gravel, feeling groggy and as if she were still half in a dream in a room in the house.
Over the sound of approaching sirens, Ronnie said, “I’m still dreaming about it. I think we need to go back. There may be a shred of it still going. Awake. A whisper of Harrow.”
“I don’t know where I’m going, but it’s not back, that’s for damn sure.”
“Do you feel cold?”
“A little. Like my heart’s an icebox.”
“I guess that’s to be expected,” Ronnie said. “I feel shell-shocked. I feel like the world just ended and we’re still here.”
“Well,” Dory said. “With luck, some people just slept through it.”
36
The sunlight came up brighter, but it was still October and getting colder as the day wore on. Golden and red leaves danced in little whirlwinds at the side of the road, and several birds dipped and rose along the telephone lines. The police car came around the bend, slowing down as the officer driving saw the two young women.
“Just when you think it’s at its worst,” Dory said. The cavalry show up.”
“Let’s hope they always do,” Ronnie said.
“You feel silly?”
“A little. I think it’s the shock. And lack of sleep. I feel like laughing at everything right now. Do you?”
“Absolutely,” Dory said, giggling a little. “Christ, I’d better not be losing my marbles.”
37
“Miss?” One of the cops leaned out of the car. “Are you all right?”
Ronnie and Dory looked at each other. Ronnie had dried blood all over her clothes; and Dory looked as if she’d been thrown in a washing machine and left out to dry. Ronnie nearly grinned, but it was hal
f-hearted and she couldn’t manage more than a flat line of lips.
Then Dory started laughing and wouldn’t stop until Ronnie got her to slide into the back seat of the squad car.
38
The red-haired guy driving was named Officer Phil, and the one next to him with the short dark hair said his name was Tappan, which seemed like a funny name. Ronnie wondered if he had been named for the Tappan Zee Bridge, but decided not to let him know she’d been thinking this. She felt light-headed all of a sudden, and chalked it up to the long, dreadful night of horror and to lack of sleep.
Dory began telling the two policemen all that had happened, from the moment the dogs had escaped the pound and she’d seen what had become of Benny Marais, all the way until dawn. She spoke in rapid-fire staccato bursts of words, and when it sounded too ridiculous she dropped certain things (like the squishy thing that had been about to rape her under the supervision of Mr. Spider). By the end of her tale, she could do nothing but laugh, and it became contagious until both cops in the squad car starting giggling, too, even as she described the worst of it. Ronnie laughed, and that’s when she wondered if she and Dory hadn’t gone insane. She shot Dory a look, and Dory seemed to understand. Dory nodded, chuckling. “I know it sounds crazy” she said, covering her mouth with her hands.
“Hysterical,” Ronnie said, and she too had to catch her breath in between the maniacal laughing. She also told her tale as the cops listened patiently, laughing now and then in the contagion of Ronnie’s and Dory’s laughter.
When she finished up the last bit, she began to feel lightheaded and a little faint, and her need for sleep became overpowering (No shit, Sherlock, you’ve been up for at least twenty-four hours and you’re a nine-hour-a-night girt) and that’s when Officer Phil said, “Well, you two are okay now. It does sound crazy.”
“Loony tuney,” Officer Tappan said. “But we got some reports last night that had us calling some cops down here, and nobody made a lick of sense.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Officer Phil said. “You two have had it rough. I know we’ve all been laughing, but it’s the shock, believe me. If even a quarter of what you’ve told us is true, well, you’re lucky to still be ‘all there.’”
“Let’s just get going,” Officer Tappan said. “The sooner they get settled in, the sooner we can clear this thing up.”
Officer Phil turned the key in the ignition, and glanced in the rearview mirror. “You girls just relax. We’ll run you back up to Parham and find you a place to sleep. We’ll get some other officers down here to check out your story.”
“Thanks,” Dory said. As soon as she felt the car moving, she closed her eyes and leaned against Ronnie, who leaned against her. Ronnie smelled like death, which didn’t bother Dory as much as she thought it would.
Sleep came so fast it was like a train hitting her from a dark tunnel.
When Dory awoke, it was because the car had come to a full stop.
39
Neither officer was in the car with them, and the doors had been flung open. Dory nudged Ronnie awake.
She pointed ahead, to Harrow. The police car was parked in the driveway of the house.
Harrow looked ordinary and dilapidated, with none of the grandiose overgrowth it had shown them the night before. It had shrunk back down to being a mere pile of a mansion.
Ronnie laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Everything.”
“Where’d the cops go?”
“Probably inside. They’re probably working for the house. I guess I thought that might be the case. I was hoping it wasn’t, but...”
“What the hell are we gonna do?” Dory asked.
“How’re your legs?”
“What?”
“Your legs. Mine are good. We can take a lot of back roads and eventually find our way to Parham or maybe go south to Beacon. I don’t really care as long as it’s far the hell away from here.”
“Won’t they come after us?”
“I don’t know. We need to be more careful. How much sleep do you think we got?”
Dory leaned over the back of the driver’s seat to check the car’s digital clock. “Looks like about ten minutes. Or less.”
“Well, it’ll have to do,” Ronnie said. “Let’s go.”
40
The first hour, Dory kept looking back along the road as if expecting the cops to show up again, or someone in a car, or even people with pitchforks and hatchets to come wandering out of the woods, but none of it happened. By the second hour, Ronnie pointed down the gravel road they were following to a large street and a small building beyond some oaks. “I know that place. They make good pancakes. Pancakes would be good right about now.”
“I think we should keep going,” Dory said. “At least until dark.”
“I’m hungry. Let’s go. I have ...” She took her left shoe off and reached into it, under the tongue and between the shoestrings. She drew out a twenty-dollar bill. “‘Always have a little cash tucked away,’ my dad used to tell me.”
“I don’t know. What if...”
“What if we drop from hunger?” Ronnie asked.
41
The Wind Cliff Diner was nearly empty. Ronnie went in first and checked the few patrons at their tables to make sure none of them seemed as if they might suddenly rise up and attack them. Once she noticed that they all seemed fairly ordinary, and the guy with the baseball cap and the flannel shirt was scarfing down so many pancakes it made her mouth water, she stepped all the way in with Dory following. They sat at the counter on stools, and when the waitress with big blue hair and the cat’s-eye glasses came by and asked them if they wanted blueberry or buttermilk, her eyes nearly doubled in size looking at them. “You girls look like you been through the wringer. Somebody hurt you?”
“I’d like blueberry, with extra butter and lots of syrup,” Ronnie said. “And a side of bacon. And one egg, over easy. And coffee.”
“Me, too,” Dory said. “Instead of coffee, milk.”
“I think you should go for coffee,” Ronnie said. “You need to stay awake.”
“Oh, right. Coffee’s fine.”
“Sure,” the waitress said. Dory glanced at her badge: Marjorie.
“Marjorie,” she said.
“Hon?”
“You live up in Watch Point?”
“Nope. I’m down in Beacon.”
“I love Beacon,” Dory said.
“Me, too,” Ronnie said.
“You sure you’re not hurt?” Marjorie asked Ronnie. “You look a little ... well, dirty.”
“Oh,” Ronnie grinned. “It’s nothing. Where’s the washroom?”
Marjorie pointed it out—at the end of the counter and to the right.
42
In the bathroom, Ronnie splashed her face with water. She squeezed some of the pink liquid soap into her hands and scrubbed at her arms and face until it was all clean.
She looked at her face in the cracked mirror.
“You’re fine.” She checked the cut in her shoulder from the previous evening. It felt a little sore, but was barely more than a scratch. “You’re fine and it’s over. There are just little whispers still around. Shreds of Harrow. You shut it. But it’s a little leaky.”
43
After breakfast, they again used the bathroom to clean themselves and wash their hair and then dry it and then use the toilet. Dory went to get some Wrigley’s Spearmint gum and a tin of Altoids, while Ronnie paid the check.
“You sure you girls are doing okay? Sometimes boys can be trouble,” Marjorie said as she rang up the breakfast and the gum and mints.
“We’re fine. We had a little accident. Nothing serious,” Ronnie said. She gave up her twenty, and got the change, and thanked Marjorie for a wonderful breakfast. As she turned toward the door, she looked back toward the restroom and thought she saw someone she recognized.
44
Outside on the steps of the diner, Ronnie tapped Dory lightly
on her arm.
Dory looked over at her, a question in her eyes.
“How do you destroy a house?”
“Burn it. I guess.”
“I don’t think Harrow burns well. Seems to me someone tried it already.”
“I don’t know,” Dory said. “Demolish it.”
“Got a bulldozer?”
“What about blowing it up?”
“Ah,” Ronnie said, surveying the parking lot in front of the diner as if looking for someone. “If I had a bomb, that’s what I’d do.”
“You’re actually thinking of going back there to blow it up?”
“I’m just keeping my options open,” Ronnie said. As if it were an afterthought, she added, “We never saw that man again, did we?”
“Who?”
“The one who put you upstairs. The one without pants on.”
“Oh. I thought you got him. With the axe.”
“I hit him. Maybe twice. But I don’t think he died. I just got a good one in.”
“You think he’s still there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t even real.” Ronnie shivered and put her arms around herself. “It’s getting too cold already. I wish I had a good jacket.”
“We could just stay in the diner today,” Dory said, glancing back at the glass door with the news rack next to it.
“No. We need to be on the move. You know, I felt power in that house,” Ronnie said. “I mean, real power. I had that hatchet in my hands and I felt I could ... well, I could do anything. I felt like a goddess or something. I had this ... energy. Out here, well, I’m just cold. No power whatsoever.”
“Maybe if we told that waitress what happened, she’d help us. She seemed okay.”
Ronnie glanced at Dory and then back to the parking lot. “Did you feel it? That surge of power?”
“In the house? No.”
The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) Page 32