From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (144 page)

The man’s lips finally moved, lifted into a wrinkled smile that might have been hiding swallowed light. “I don’t
need
to hurt you. They’re doing a good enough job of it already. Wendover gets us all, sooner or later.”

As they watched, the man’s form softened and blurred, the edges blending with the moonlit night. His body broke into milky ropes, which then unthreaded themselves until at last only a pale mist hung in the air. The mist drifted from the path, down the grassy slope of the bank to the water’s edge. There, it slowly dissolved, and Vicky and Freeman were left with nothing but the distant chirping crickets and the fireflies blinking against the thicket.

The old man’s words came again from the sky, falling like dead snow:
You can’t go this way
.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Freeman’s heart was pounding so hard he could feel his pulse in his temples. A bullfrog croaked and splashed. From the darkness beyond the rhododendron came the hoot of an owl.

“Let’s go,” Freeman whispered.

“But he said—”

“Who cares what he said? He’s gone and, besides, he’s dead. What can he do to us?”

“I don’t like this.”

Freeman glanced at the night sky. The moon had risen higher. The ground was well-lighted now, and they could make good time if they kept moving. Every minute counted when you were serious about running away.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“Trust doesn’t mean anything. You trusted Starlene Rogers, but you left her back there at Wendover, in that creepy basement. No telling what’s happened to her.”

“She’s a grown-up. She’s one of them. The enemy. You have to stomp people who get in your way, like De Niro in ‘Raging Bull.’ She’d end up shrinking you to nothing if you gave her half a chance.”

“I’m going to be nothing anyway.”

“Someday we’re all going to be nothing. But we have to keep trying, keep dodging, keep running as long as we can. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going down without a fight.”

Vicky pulled away from him and sat on a flat stone at the edge of the path. “And I thought you were brave. You really fooled me, didn’t you?”

Freeman walked away from her, to the edge of the lake. He looked across the water where the mist had disappeared.

“You can stand up to a bully like Deke,” she said. “But you can’t stand to look inside yourself. You play tough but you’re nothing. You’re as scared as any of us. Clint Eastwood, my ass.”

“No fair. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I went inside your head, remember? Triptrapping works both ways when you’re dealing with somebody else who can do it.”

“You didn’t see anything. I’ve got all that stuff locked away. I’m over it. Nothing’s bothering me anymore.”

“Except your Dad. And what he did.”

Freeman balled his hands into fists. He wasn’t going to lose it. Not like Clint in “Dirty Harry.” Though it would feel so goddamned
good
.

The heat rushed through him and he fought the pain in his head. He wasn’t going to cry in front of a stupid girl. Especially one who was nothing but skin and bones, who was so messed up she couldn’t eat a solid spoonful of food. Who was
she
to tell him what was going on inside his own head? The best shrinks in the state system hadn’t been able to touch him. He was by-God bulletproof.

“I know about the acetylene torch,” she said quietly. The water lapped at the shore with a series of tired sighs.

“He didn’t burn me on purpose.”

“Not the first time. And I know what happened to your Mom. What you saw—”

Freeman wheeled and stormed over to her. He could break her in half, she was so scrawny and brittle. He could slap her and make her skull shatter like an eggshell. He could rearrange her face until she shut her big fat mouth.

“You don’t know a goddamned thing about my Dad, or my Mom, or about
me
,” he yelled, so loudly he could hear his own echo across the water. Anyone listening from Wendover could have heard him, but he didn’t care.

“Admit you’re scared, and I’ll show you the way out.”

Freeman had lied plenty of times in his life. Lying was a survival skill when you were in the system, when you were one of society’s mistakes. And right now, he could lie and get his way. He could fool Vicky into thinking he was scared, because girls seemed to get the emotions of anger and fear mixed up. He could play her, manipulate her the way he’d done with every group home shrink and sociologist in the state.

But Freeman wasn’t going to lie, not this time. “I’m not scared. I just want to see what it’s like to live one night under the stars, to not have somebody tell me when to go to bed and when to wake up, or make me get in touch with my feelings. Or shock me like a freaking lab monkey until I do tricks and turn flips. Even if they catch us, I need one night where I belong to
me.
”

“You know something, Freeman? You’re a selfish bastard. You had people looking up to you, kids like Isaac and that boy Dipes—”

“He’s okay for a little brat.”

“See what I mean? Even Cynthia said she thought you were cool. You give other people
hope
, Freeman. But all you’re worried about is your own damned neck. All you want to do is run away.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“I only run away for a little while. I don’t know if I can handle the world outside these walls.”

“All the more reason to take off.” Freeman’s anger had left him, his soul a deflated tire.

Vicky stood. “I wonder if the old guy in the lake is coming back.”

“He said we couldn’t go this way. But I think he’s as bad as the rest, just trying to keep us boxed in. Even the dead people are against us.”

Vicky laughed, a sound that was out of place in the still night. “You’ve got a hell of a chip on your shoulder, don’t you?”

“You can stay here if you want. I’ve had enough.”

Freeman turned and jogged down the trail. He tried to tell himself it was the mist off the lake that blurred his vision, but the truth stung like salt. Clint Eastwood never cried. Clint Eastwood never looked back, either.

He gained speed, hoping the cold air in his lungs would shock him into numbness. The path thinned and branches slapped at his face. Soon he was among the tall stands of oak and hickory that bordered the rear of the property. The foliage blocked the moonlight, so he crept forward in the silent dark, the fishy smell of the lake now mingling with the odor of rotting leaves.

He reached the fence, and the moon broke through a gap in the branches overhead. The light caught the curled razor wire atop the fence. Insulators hung on poles, and several lines of bare wire ran along the top of the stone wall. The air tingled with ozone.

They had electrified the rear fence.

The dead man had tried to warn them. Somebody didn’t want them to leave. A low growl came from the dark woods beyond the fence. It sounded to Freeman like what a troll might sound like, a monstrous creature whose claws could shred skin, whose teeth could grind bones, whose tongue could lick a skull clean.

Freeman hadn’t felt this afraid since—

He held his scarred wrist to the moonlight. There was more than one means of escape. Except, if he died here, he might become one of those people underneath, the squirrel-turd nutty, the scared, the obsessed, the forgotten.

Eternal losers.

The ones even God couldn’t heal, the ones who had never been defended or protected. Doomed to seek peace in a charnel house of the insane run by the insane.

Freeman suspected this was one fight that would even have Clint holstering his six-shooters.

Bondurant pressed close behind Starlene. God sent along these tests once in a while, and God had so far given Bondurant plenty of latitude. God forgave the drinking, smiled down upon his punishing of the children, and looked the other way when Bondurant falsified state reports. God forgave, just like the Good Book promised. God loved the sinners perhaps even more than He did the saints.

Sometimes He let the sinners crawl up from hell just to be reminded of what they had lost. And this basement was close enough to hell for Bondurant to feel the cold, spiteful breath of the dead things.

“What does it mean?” Starlene said, not understanding the scope of this new reality.

As if everything had to have a meaning. When you gave it all over to the Lord, everything fit the plan. A season for this and that, after all, whatever it was that the Book of Ecclesiastes said. For every season and all that happy whitewash.

But that was for later. Right now, he just needed to keep these ghost voices out of his head long enough to set Starlene on the straight and narrow.

“Don’t mind her,” Bondurant said.

“Who was that?
What
was that?” Starlene peered into the darkness as if she could will the visions free of the walls into which they had evaporated.

“Nothing. Just one of Kracowski’s tricks of the light.”

“Kracowski? Is that what all this machinery is for? His treatments?”

“The Lord’s work.”

Sounds came from the dark corridor. This wasn’t a ghost. This was something larger, something real, something not used to the dark. The ghosts were always silent. Even when they “spoke,” you could still have heard a candle burning.

The glow cast by Kracowski’s machines outlined Starlene’s hair and gave her an aura. Bondurant reached a trembling hand to punish her. Those two brats, Freeman and Vicky, knew he was down here with Starlene. They’d probably tell Randy or one of the other counselors. He’d have to hurry and make her pay for her sins while he had the chance.

“Who’s there?” Starlene called into the yawning black corridor.

He wished she’d shut up. Her mouth was good for only one thing, and that was apologizing to God for her wayward and wanton soul. Why did she waste her lips on asking questions?

Bondurant touched her hair, sought to clutch it, but she moved away. The bitch was ignoring him.

Me! Francis Bondurant, Director of Wendover, a member of the state’s Board of Social Services, a man who crushes careers like yours with one rubber stamp. I’ll give you a goddamned lesson in placement, all right. Let me get my paddle and I’ll teach you to mind your own business
.

Bondurant followed her into the circle of blue light. He staggered a little and fell against one of the tanks. It was cool to the touch. He drew away and went for her. She kept walking down the corridor.

Perfect. If he could corner her in one of the old cells, he could lock her in, accomplish his mission and be absolved in time for his after-dinner meeting. The cells were nasty and rat-infested, and he’d leave her in there until she begged forgiveness in front of God. Kracowski’s ghosts could watch if they wanted, as long as they didn’t put their crazy words in his head again.

Because he had enough crazy words in there already.

Words that the Good Lord might not approve of, but as long as Bondurant didn’t utter them aloud, all would be forgiven. All would be forgiven anyway, because that’s just what kind of guy Jesus was.

Starlene had entered the cell block now, and the stench of rot and mildew made Bondurant’s stomach roil. He fought down the tangy whiskey bile and felt his way along the coarse stucco wall.

“Are you scared of the dark?” he said.

Dark don’t walk, dark don’t talk, dark don’t do nothing but smile smile smile.

At first Bondurant thought Starlene had spoken, because she’d paused near the door to the first cell. But that wasn’t her voice. This was one of Kracowski’s ghosts.

“Did you hear that?” Starlene whispered.

“God speaks in many tongues,” Bondurant said.

She didn’t know enough to ignore the voices. Bondurant had nearly wet himself the first time he’d seen that ragged, stooped old woman with the forehead scar. And when the ghosts started talking to him, putting words right in his head, he nearly signed himself up for a skull session with one of the counselors. But now he’d been exposed to enough of them that he could almost tune them out, as if they were an irritating rock music station on the heathen radio.

He could ignore them, but he couldn’t shut them up. So he accepted them as they came. They were harmless. Like pets you didn’t have to feed.

You can’t keep me here. Don’t you know who I am? I’m Eleanor Roosevelt, you fools. Can’t you tell by my hat?

“Eleanor Roosevelt,” Starlene said.

“Don’t listen to them,” Bondurant said. “They’re trying to drive you mad.”

“What’s going on here? I don’t believe any of this.”

Unbeliever. She had stopped moving, and that gave Bondurant his opening. Take advantage of weakness, that was the way of the world. The black rectangle of a doorway stood out against the dim blue light of the hallway. He would shove her in there—

Shuffle, shuffle.

That sound again. Almost swallowed by the black throat of the corridor. Something bigger than a ghost.

Maybe it was more than one. A dead parade, communion time for the criminally insane, in lockstep search for their scattered reason. Whispering in the walls like mutant rats. Marching in aimless uprising against the agitators of their sorry souls.

But they had no
right
.

They were the imprisoned, and he was the jailkeep.

Wendover was
his
, damn it. Bad enough when Kracowski moved in with his machines and his theories and his secret funding. Now these restless idiot spirits had invaded, crowding his domain and changing the rules. Playing with his head. Making him think their weird thoughts, lending their pain, forcing him to empathize.

A white, white room in which to write.

Not that one again. The same voice, the same sentence over and over. This one was male, cracked, the sentence always taking a different rhythm but the words and their order always the same. An eternal revision that always yielded the same outcome. Crazy as a busy bugbed.

Crazy as a busy bugbed.

Whoa. Wait a second. Did he
think
that, or had one of the ghosty things echoed it back into his head?

“Did you hear that?” he asked Starlene, and he was ashamed that his throat caught. No weakness allowed. He was the one who took advantage of weakness. Wendover was his.