From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (134 page)

But patience was a demanding virtue. That was one of the warnings that her Psych teachers had burned home, that occasionally you’d feel like slapping little Johnny across the face. No matter that he had been abused and suffered a neurochemical imbalance and was diagnosed with an adjustment disorder, you sometimes had to wonder if a particular brand of vermin was, and always would be, a rat.

“Why do you think Freeman is ‘freaky’?” Starlene asked Deke.

“He’s weird. He likes books and stuff. He sits by himself. He don’t talk much, and when he does say something, it’s big words nobody understands.”

“And how would you respond to that, Freeman?”

Freeman shrugged and slouched more deeply into his chair. “Do unto others.”

“Ah, something from the Bible. That’s a good rule to live by.”

“Actually,” Freeman said, straightening, “that’s a basic tenet of many religions. Scientology, Buddhism, Islam.”

“See what I mean?” Deke said. “Weird.”

“He’s a thief, too,” Raymond said.

“Let he who is without sin,” Freeman said.

“Hey,” Cynthia said. “What about ‘she’? Girls can sin as good as you can.”

Raymond let loose with a wolf whistle. “And you ought to know, sweet cheeks.”

“Like you’d ever be so lucky,” she responded.

Starlene cut in before the verbal barrage turned crude. “Why do you accuse Freeman of being a thief?” she asked Raymond.

Raymond and Deke exchanged looks. Vicky, who had been silent thus far, watching the conversation as if it were the ball at a tennis match, finally spoke.

“Because they feel threatened,” she said. “They’re insecure and overcompensate by trying to dominate the other boys. Any time a new guy comes here, Deke and Raymond and their gang have to knock him down in order to build themselves up.”

“I ain’t insecure,” Deke said.

“Dysfunctional. Both psychologically and physically. Remember on the rocks?”

“At least I don’t throw up every time I turn around,” Deke said.

Vicky turned even paler, if such a thing were possible, though two red roses of anger blossomed on her cheeks. Starlene had never known the group discussion to get so intense so quickly. Some hidden hostility had been tapped. She should stop it, guide them back to safe topics such as holidays and sports and the Wendover chapel. But this clearing of the air might be a good thing for the kids, who had so few outlets for their frustration. Better to vent here than in an individual counseling session or a playground fist fight.

“Guys,” Starlene said. “Remember that we’re all here for each other. We’re all in this together.”

“Bull hockey,” Deke said. “Don’t give me that ‘brothers and sisters’ crap. We get enough of that in chapel.”

“Remember that part in the Bible about not coveting thy neighbor’s ass?” Freeman said.

“That’s not in there,” Deke said, and turned to Starlene. “See how
weird
he is?”

“It’s there,” Freeman said. “The unexpurgated version of the Ten Commandments. The long form that usually gets trimmed down when they get posted in the courthouse or the classroom. Lots of other good stuff, too, about slaves and how God is a jealous God. The Big Guy said so himself.”

“You seem to know a lot about the Bible, Freeman,” Starlene said.

“He probably swiped a copy,” Raymond said.

“Yeah, Weasel-brains,” Deke said to Raymond. “I got one personally autographed by Jesus. Want to buy it?”

Raymond rose, fists clenched. Deke held up his palms and smirked. Starlene left her chair and stood between the two boys. “Jesus said to turn the other cheek.”

“His other ass cheek?” Freeman said, and the kids erupted in laughter, even Deke, finally joined by Raymond.

Starlene sighed. Dirty jokes and sacrilege. Things were going to be very interesting with Freeman around. Not to mention having a ghost in the home.

The good thing about doubting your sanity was you didn’t have to worry about dying of boredom.

Bondurant didn’t believe in ghosts. No sane man did, no holy man did. But the incident with Starlene at the lake was the third of its kind in recent weeks. Each of the three people had claimed to see a man in a dirty gray gown.

The first report had been from a kitchen worker, a wrinkled Scots-Irish whose family used to own the farmland where Wendover had been built in the 1930s. The man said the ghost was dressed just like the patients who had shambled these halls when it was a state mental hospital during the Second World War. He’d been a boy back then, and as Bondurant had interviewed him, a childlike fear had crept into the old man’s eyes. Bondurant had written him off as a superstitious hillbilly.

The second report was from a counselor, Nanny Hartwig, who had worked at Wendover for eight years. Nanny was a reliable sort, thick-bodied and dull and as patient as a cow. She’d never been rattled by the children, even when they threw food or cursed or spat. Nanny could slip a child into a restraint hold as smoothly as if it were a choreographed professional wrestling move.

But Nanny had shown up one morning to begin her three-day shift as a house parent, then disappeared. The other counselors noticed her missing and found her several hours later, huddled in a closet, gripping a mop handle so tightly that her knuckles were white. Nanny muttered incoherently about the man in the gown who had walked right through her. Bondurant had given her two weeks’ vacation and hinted that she might consider therapy. In a church, not a clinic.

But this last sighting, with Starlene today, was the worst. Because Bondurant believed that the third time was a charm. The third time meant that the sightings couldn’t be written off as imagination or drunkenness, because Starlene was of good Christian stock. Bondurant could lie to the Board of Directors, give positive spin to the grant foundations and private supporters, even snow the Department of Social Services if it came down to it, but quieting rumors among the staff was like trying to keep water from flowing downhill.

He’d considered approaching Kracowski about the sightings. Kracowski had an easy answer for everything. Usually the doctor could open one of his journals or spew some charts from his computer and Bondurant would be left standing dumbfounded, overwhelmed by terminology and formulas. But Bondurant was always comforted by the doctor’s confident manner. The very lack of humility that made Kracowski irksome also made his explanations believable.

Bondurant leaned back in his chair. The office was quiet except for the faint ticking as the clock hands moved toward nine. Darkness painted the windows, and a few dots of stars hung above the black mountains beyond. The children would be settling down for evening prayers, boys in the Blue Room, girls in the Green Room. Except for the house parents on duty and the night-time cleaning lady, the staff was gone, either in the on-site cottages or far beyond the hard walls of Wendover to Deer Valley.

Bondurant opened the bottom drawer of his desk. His Bible lay next to the wooden paddle and a purple velvet bag. He lifted the bag. Crown Royal. The first sip bit his tongue and throat, the second burned, the third warmed him so much that he shivered.

Someone knocked on the door.

Bondurant traded the bottle for the Good Book, slid the drawer closed, and parted the Bible to a random chapter. The Book of Job. That was one of his favorites, with suffering and a defiant and unrepentant Satan, and someday he was going to get around to understanding it. That and the damned parable of fishes.

“Come in,” he said.

Nothing. He pressed the button on his speakerphone. The receptionist’s office was left unlocked at the end of the day in case the staff needed to get to the patient files.

“Hello?” he said, listening as his amplified voice echoed around the outer office.

Still nothing.

Bondurant rose, annoyed that he should have to answer his own door. He swung the door wide. No one there.

He crossed the receptionist’s office and looked down the hall. There, in the dim angles leading to the cafeteria, a shadow moved among the darkness. One of the boys must have sneaked out of the Blue Room, probably on his way to swipe a treat from the kitchen.

“Hello there,” Bondurant said, keeping his voice level. Even if you were angry, you had to feign calm. Otherwise, you ended up yanking the little sinners by their ears until they cried, or bending the girls over your desk and paddling them and paddling them—

Bondurant swallowed. The person had stopped, blending into the shadows. The hall was quiet, the air still and weighty. Bondurant’s lungs felt as if they were filled with glass.

“Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for Light’s Out?” Bondurant said, stepping forward.

The figure crouched in the murk. Bondurant cursed the lack of lighting in the hall. The budget never seemed to cover all the facility needs, though administrative costs rose steadily, along with Bondurant’s salary.

As he drew nearer, Bondurant realized that the figure was too large to be that of a client. What was a staff member doing creeping around the halls at night? The house parents were supposed to stay with the children, to act simultaneously as guardians and jailkeeps. The cleaning lady would be doing the toilets in the shower rooms in the boys’ wing, the same schedule she’d used for as long as Bondurant had served as director. Maybe it was one of Kracowski’s new supporters, one of the cold and shifty types who acted as if they needed no permission or approval.

“Excuse me, did you know it’s after nine?” Bondurant saw that the person was plump and squat, drab in the half-light. Nanny? Had she gotten headstrong and come back to prove she had in fact seen something that couldn’t exist?

“Everything’s going to be okay.” Bondurant wished he’d studied psychology now, because he sounded to himself like a TV cop trying to lure a suicide away from a ledge. He held out his hand and closed the twenty feet of distance between them. What if she broke down and did something crazy, like bite him?

“You can tell me all about it,” he said.

Fifteen feet, and he wasn’t sure the person was Nanny after all. Ten feet away, and he was still uncertain, though he could tell it was a woman.

She huddled face-first in the corner, shoulders shaking with sobs. But no sound came from the woman. She was aged, her hair matted and gray, her legs bare beneath the hem of her gown. The gown was fastened by three strings clumsily knotted against her spine. The skin exposed in the gap was mottled. The woman was on her knees, her broad, callused feet tucked behind her.

Bondurant hesitated. Perhaps he should get one of the house parents, or call the local police. But the police had long complained about Wendover’s runaways and the extra security calls. This was different, though; kids ran away all the time, but how many grown-ups ever ran
to
Wendover?

Before Bondurant could make up his mind, the woman turned.

Bondurant would have screamed if not for the delaying effects of the liquor. Because the woman’s face was twisted, one corner of her lip caught in a rictus, the other curved into a crippled smile. Her eyelids drooped, and her tongue moved in her mouth like a bloated worm. What Bondurant had taken for sobs now seemed more like convulsions, because the old woman’s head trembled atop her shoulders as if attached by a metal spring.

Worst of all was the long scar across the woman’s forehead, an angry weal of flesh running between the furrows of her skin. The scar was like a grin, hideous atop the skewed mouth and slivers of eyes. The woman held out her shaking arms. The tongue protruded like a thing separate from the face, as if it were nesting inside and had just awakened from a long hibernation. The lips came together unevenly, yawned apart, spasmed closed again.

Oh, God, she’s trying to TALK.

Bondurant took an involuntary step backward, forcing another breath into his chest. Sour bile rose in his throat, a quick rush of heartburn. He would have broken into a run if his legs hadn’t turned to concrete. The woman scooted forward on her knees, a shiny sliver of drool dangling from her warped chin. Her soiled gown was draped about her like an oversize shawl.

Her lips quivered again, the worm-tongue poked, but she made no sound.

Bondurant shouted for help, but he couldn’t muster much wind and the cry died in the corners of the hallway. Bondurant gave up on mortal assistance and sent summons to a higher power.

He remembered the tale of the Good Samaritan, how the Samaritan had helped Jesus on the side of the highway. Or maybe it hadn’t been Jesus, maybe it was somebody else, or Jesus might have been the one doing the helping. Bondurant was fuzzy on the details, but the long and short of it was that a Christian reached out his hand when someone was down.

Even if that someone was a twisted, shambling wreck that the Devil himself might have cast out from the lake of fire in disgust.

“It’s okay now,” Bondurant said, his voice barely above a whisper. “What’s your name?”

Again the lips undulated, the sinuous tongue pressed between the teeth, but still no words came out. The woman raised one eyelid, and Bondurant looked into the black well of an eye that seemed to have no bottom.

“Let me help you up,” he said.

He closed his eyes and reached for her hands. A cold wind passed over him, shocking his eyes open.

The old woman stood before him now, arms raised.

The woman brought her hands to her face, curled them into claws and began raking at her eyes. In her frenzy, the gown came loose, one shoulder showing pale in the dimness.

The woman’s mouth gaped open, the tongue flailing inside, and her fingers pulled at the skin of her eyelids. Bondurant could only stare, telling himself it wasn’t real, that Jesus and God would never allow something like this in the sacred halls of Wendover.

And, even through his fear, he was already scheming his cover-up, planning the story he would give to local authorities.

She broke in, I tried to stop her. No, I’ve never seen her before . . .

The woman’s gown fell farther down her shoulders, and Bondurant could see more scars criss-crossing the flaccid breasts. Still the gnarled fingers groped, and the flesh gave way beneath her fingernails. The lips trembled as if trying to shape a scream, but only silence issued from that dark throat.