Feral (25 page)

J
enny walked slowly and Charity followed a few steps behind.
 
Neither spoke.
 
The path seemed to go on forever, then it ended as it had on her trip to the cavern; one second a dimly lit path through the darkness, the next they were in the playground.
 
They weren't completely there though.
 
The degraded playground equipment was visible in the energetic torchlight, but beyond the rusted iron fence was pitch black.

Charity wondered how they got out when they made their raiding party visits to what she now thought of as
The Other World
.
 
Through the exit, she supposed, and even as the thought occurred to her, the darkness of the exit lit up with light from the outside.
 
The small wooded area beyond appeared like a picture in a television.

Jenny stood motionless by the sandbox for a moment, her silence enduring.
 
Then she stabbed the end of her torch into the sand and stepped away from it.
 
The dancing lunatic glow of its flames brightened as if feeding from the sand.
 
She motioned for Charity to do the same, and she did, stepping away quickly as hers flared up too.
 
She shielded her eyes from the combined brightness.

“There was a girl who liked to play here,” Jenny said.

Charity moved her hands from her eyes.
 
The glow had evened out and weakened, the torchlight replaced by the pale gray light of a full moon and the phantom glow of Riverside.

“She used to sneak out on nice summer days and on the weekends when she was in school.
 
She came here because it was the only good place to go.
 
There were lots of other kids to play with, and
grown ups
who didn't hit.”

Charity had an image, brief but powerful, of the playground in its heyday, full of screaming, laughing children and playground equipment still shining new.
 
The wood-chip floor was clear of litter and the grass in the park was a short and healthy green.
 
Then the image vanished; the mellow glow of the full moon and lights from Riverside returned.

There was something in the sandbox, mostly buried.
 
She thought she knew what it was, had seen enough of them in her short life to recognize it by the shape and shadow of what little was visible.
 
She felt her stomach tighten as she neared the sandbox.
 
Her heart thumped uncomfortably in her chest and the air suddenly tasted nasty, like the wind blowing off something long dead.

“She liked this place so much she came here the night she ran away, and she never left.”
 
Jenny's voice was distant.
 
She wasn't there—an echo from another reality.

The shape in the sand was a naked torso; only one arm visible, the other lay buried up to the shoulder.
 
It lay at a crooked angle in the sand, dappled and smeared with drying blood.
 
Her head lay against the partially submerged shoulder.
 
The hair was pulled out in clumps, blood seeping from several places on the scalp.
 
Her eyes were bruised, swollen half shut.
 
Her nose was a bloody lump in the center of her ruined face.
 
It had been busted into a surreal new shape.
 
Her bottom jaw was missing, where it should have been gaped a large, red/black hole.
 
The tongue hung out, far too long, resting in the sand.

A feast for the bugs—flies, ants, and beetles teemed around her, wondering in their insect drone where to start first.

“No,” Charity gasped, covering her face with cold hands.
 
She tried to close her eyes against the grisly spectacle, but they would not mind her.
 
She stared, unable to look away.

Then, in one powerful, spastic jerk, the dead girl moved.
 
Her arm shot up into the air, hand groping, reaching for Charity.
 
The eyes fluttered like tiny, dim strobe lights.
 
The tongue rolled over in the sand, pulled back into her wide-open face like a snake slithering backwards, and she let out a horrible, gargling scream.

Charity jumped away with a shriek, and the dead girl was gone.
 
She turned and ran from the playground, stopping dead outside the arched exit.
 
She tried to scream again but all that came out was a feeble whimper.

They were coming at her, hundreds of them.
 
From the woods, from the crumbling walkway on the dike and down the tall, dead grass of the slope.
 
They came from the tall willows by the highway, and from everywhere else.

“They're all Bogeys,” Jenny said in a low, angry voice.
 
“Even the ones who pretend to be your friends, especially them.
 
They'll hurt you again.
 
That's all they know how to do.”

The tall shadow people ambled slowly toward her.
 
Charity couldn't see their faces, but when the closest ones spoke to her she knew their voices.

“Charity,” her dad said.
 
“Come on, baby, let me take you home now.”
 
His voice was a parody, his words dripped with cruel intension.
 
“I want to make up for lost time.”
 
He cackled like a fairytale witch, then raised his face toward the moon and howled.

Beside him, Shannon spoke.
 
“You troublesome little bitch!”
 
She spoke with sincere hatred, her words as painful to Charity as the barbs of a hook.
 
“Look what you got me into.
 
Come here, I'll teach you what happens to little brats who cause trouble.”

“No!”
 
She backed away from them and screamed as someone grabbed her from behind.
 
Large hands gripped her thin shoulders; meaty fingers bit in like the teeth of a trap.
 
Then they spun her around hard enough to whip her head to the side.
 
The pain was fast and bright, making strange colors and stars appear in her vision.
 
When they cleared he was there, staring down at her, all smiling teeth and shining eyes in a vague, dark shape.

“My sweet, precious little Charity,” he said, his voice the whisper of scales on dry leaves.
 
“How I've missed you.”

Charity opened her mouth, and this time found the strength to scream.
 
She screamed and screamed until all her strength had flowed out through her mouth.
 
She screamed until the world went a perfect black.

W
hen she opened her eyes she stood where she had before, several feet back from the glowing torches in the sandpit.
 
Nothing had changed except for the glow of the flames, which had dimmed.
 
Jenny stood beside her, and her glow had grown pale too. She was almost transparent.

Charity felt wrecked.
 
Physically, nothing seemed to be wrong, but her head hurt and she felt sick.

The experience had weakened both her and Jenny.

After a few seconds, Jenny looked better, more there.
 
Charity's sickness passed, but her head still pounded.

“That's why we all came here.
 
They're all monsters.”

Charity was silent.
 
Her feelings for Shannon and her father were still mixed—she hated them for abandoning her to the Bogey Man, yet was helpless not to love them.
 
It was a residual attachment, she knew; it would fade.

Jenny took her torch from the sand and started down the path through the Never again.
 
Retrieving her torch, Charity followed.

W
hen they got back to the cavern, Jenny replaced her torch at the foot of her throne, then quickly vanished into the crowd.

When Charity replaced her torch at her new place by Jenny's throne, she found a surprise waiting on her seat.
 
The scissors she had abandoned in the small den.
 
Toni had not meant to keep them.
 
They lay slightly open in the middle of her seat.
 
Menacing.
 
Next to them lay a small heart-shaped locket on a fine gold chain.
 
She picked the locket up with trembling hands and opened it.
 
From inside, Shannon and her dead family smiled at her.

They came back for me
.

“I found it outside,” Toni said behind her.

She tensed at his voice.
 
Her nerves were on the ragged edge.
 
“Thank you,” she said.
 
Her mouth was numb, clumsy, her tongue thick and dry.

Jesse lied to me
.
 
Toni and Jenny lied to me
.
 
They came back
.
 
Dad and Shannon came back
!

She closed her eyes, closed her hand around the locket, and could almost visualize them.
 
Standing alone, staring into the playground hopelessly.
 
She saw Shannon take the locket and toss it in to her, even though they both knew she was already gone.

They came back for me
!

When she opened her eyes again, Toni was still there, watching with a shy smile, waiting.
 
A killer with a hero's face.

“I thought you would like it,” he said, then looked away.

“I do.
 
Thanks.”
 
She slipped the chain around her neck and let the locket slide between her shirt and skin.
 
It lay close to her heart, and for the first time since coming here, she felt warm.

“Wanna go for a walk?” Toni asked, suddenly all business.

“No,” she said.
 
“Not right now.”

“We have to.
 
I have to tell you some stuff.”

“Okay.”
 
She picked up the scissors and shoved them into their place under her belt.
 
They felt warm too, but unlike the locket near her heart, it wasn't a comforting heat.
 
It was a sick heat, like a fever.

Toni grabbed her hand and led her toward the tunnel at the other end of the cavern.

She followed listlessly.
 
She watched the guns bounce against his hips as he led her through the dark.
 
They walked for several minutes without stopping; Charity recognized her den as they passed it.
 
Toni's torch lit the walls with an unsteady light that made her feel a little woozy, like seasickness.
 
She realized with a momentary prick of fear that she had left her torch.
 
It didn't matter though; no one would touch it.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You'll see,” he said.

Finally, they reached the end of the tunnel.
 
There were screams—not of pain but fear.
 
Crying and a surrealistic landscape that could only be the product of some troubled imagination.

They stepped from the cramped tunnel into a wide-open nightmare.

T
he single scream, a child's scream, echoed through the hall joining the Cineplex lobby to theatre #2.
 
There was a second of stunned silence.
 
Everything stopped; pale faces surrounded him.
 
Then more screams, the screams of adults and children mingled.

Gordon pushed his way back through the disorganized line and ran.

It's not dark yet
, he thought furiously.
 
Then on the heels of that,
It is in there
.

“Everybody down!”
 
The voice of a lone adult sounded out.
 
Gordon thought it might be Mr. Plain Clothes but wasn't sure.
 
Then a gunshot, followed by two more, and a scream of pain.

When Gordon pushed through the swinging door into the theatre, shoving past an exodus of screaming children and their parents, he saw Mr. Plain Clothes hanging limp from the outstretched arm of the Bogey Man.
 
The cop was already dead, entrails hanging from his torn gut to the popcorn-specked floor.

The Bogey Man stood at the end of the front row next to where the cop had been seated.
 
Sans his usual weapon, he was ripping the dead man's guts out with his bare hands.
 
Then he noticed Gordon standing by the door only a few feet away, and his shark's grin broke the shadowy darkness of his face.

“Daddy,” he said, dropping the gutted body to the floor.
 
“I told her I would kill you if she tried to run away.”
 
He took a step toward Gordon, stopped, took another step, and stopped again, like a groom practicing his walk down the church aisle.