The Dark Corner (3 page)

“Waiting for us?” Watch asked. “How do they know we're here?”

The man just smiled again. “You better hurry. You don't want to keep them waiting.”

Feeling confused, Adam left the restaurant with his friends. Sally insisted that they head straight for Adam's house. But both Watch and Adam were having doubts.

“He didn't really answer our questions,” Watch complained.

“He said our other selves would help us,” Sally replied. “He was a nice man—we can trust him.”

“He
seemed
like a nice man,” Adam said. “But I agree with Watch. His answers were too vague.”

“I don't care what you guys say,” Sally replied. “I'm going to see my better half. I can hardly wait to have a deep and meaningful conversation with her.”

“This will be one argument she's finally going to lose,” Watch said.

Since they didn't know why they were reluctant to go, Adam and Watch agreed to accompany Sally to visit their other selves. Finding Adam's house wasn't difficult because it was exactly where it was in the other Spooksville.

Their three counterparts were sitting outside Adam's house.

They smiled when they saw Adam and Cindy and Watch.

All six of them smiled.

Then the counterparts stood up and slowly walked toward them.

As they did so, their faces began to change.

They began to melt. Into hideous demon forms.

I
t was too late. The three demons—they even had horns now—were on them in an instant. Adam was struck across the face with a scaly hand—his arms yanked behind his back. He felt a sharp pain in his spine, and he dropped Bryce Poole's knapsack. For a moment everything went black, and Adam thought he would pass out. Then he realized he was being dragged toward a steel pole, which he had not noticed a second earlier. It stood in the center of his yard, spiked chains hanging off it.

The yard was no longer the same. All around him
the scenery was changing, becoming darker and dirtier, lit with a chilling red glow. The heavenly version of Spooksville was turning into a hellish realm. The demon that had hold of Adam leered in his face. The creature's teeth were sharp, his eyes like those of a wicked cat, green and splintered with thick red veins. The nails on his claws were sharp like razors. He hissed at Adam.

“We have you now, fool!” the demon said as he snapped Adam's wrists into cuffs attached to the chains. Beside him, Adam saw the same torture happening to Watch and Sally. They both had demons leering in their faces. Adam's demon giggled, “You're never going to escape!”

Adam fought to remain calm. “Who are you? What is this place?” The town continued to change into a nightmare realm of ruined buildings and howling creatures. Up and down the street Adam could see many poles where people had been chained. Most hung lifeless, little more than skeletons, but a few still struggled to break free. The demon tugged at Adam's hair and slobbered on his shirt.

“Who am I?” the demon asked. “I am you. I am your dark half. And this place is the Dark Corner.
Those who come here from your world never return.”

“But everything was so nice at first,” Adam said.

The demon howled. “We always put on a show for newcomers! You humans are so stupid!”

Adam tried to sound brave even though he was terrified. Most of the other prisoners looked as if they had been there for ages.

“What are you going to do with us?” he demanded.

“Let you rot until the Gatekeepers come to judge you,” the demon said. He yanked hard on Adam's head, pulling out a clump of hair. He held it up for Adam and the others to see. “With this I can enter your world, and become you! My partners and I will pass through the Secret Path and ruin everything that is yours!”

“No!” Adam pleaded. “Wait! Can't we talk about this?”

But the demons weren't listening. Along with his partners—who had also torn out clumps of hair from Watch's and Sally's heads—he put the hair in his mouth and slowly chewed it down. Then, by some wicked miracle, he began to change back into the form he had assumed when they had first seen
him. Now he looked like Adam, and the other two demons once again resembled Watch and Sally.

“Now we have a piece of you inside us!” Adam's demon sneered. “We're free to go where we wish!”

“You can't go into our world!” Sally shouted at the demons. “You'll never get away with it! Our friends will spot you immediately, and you'll be destroyed.”

Adam's demon laughed in her face. “By the time your friends know who we are they'll be here with you! Rotting in the Dark Corner!”

“But maybe we can work out a compromise,” Watch suggested. “I can see why you don't like living here. It's a nasty place. We have ghettos back in our world that are like this. Maybe we can help you find a better place to live, and you can let us go.”

The demons howled with delight. “We don't want to let you go!” Adam's demon said. “We love it when humans suffer! We live for suffering! Come, my pals, let's go play with these fools' friends!”

The demons danced away, heading in the direction of the cemetery and the interdimensional portal. Adam had never felt so miserable as he did right then. His wrists weren't simply chained, they
were pinned above his head, and the spikes in the wrist cuffs were digging into his skin. Watch and Sally looked equally uncomfortable. All around them the air was filled with fumes and ash, making it difficult to breathe. Adam coughed as his throat dried out. Sally hung her head as if she were weeping.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “It just seemed like such a nice place.”

“The demons made it seem that way so that we would drop our guard,” Adam said grimly. “But don't blame yourself. We were fooled as well.”

“But we probably wouldn't be in this situation if it wasn't for you,” Watch added truthfully.

“That's true,” Adam had to admit.

Sally moaned. “I said I'm sorry. What else am I supposed to do?”

“If you could reach Bryce's knapsack, we might get his knife and try to pick these locks,” Watch suggested. The backpack was closest to Sally. “See if you can catch the strap with your foot.”

“I'll try,” Sally said and strained forward with her right foot for the bag. Just another two inches and she'd be able to reach it, but even arching her back and kicking out, the tip of her shoe just
missed the straps. After a couple of minutes of struggling she gave up and sighed. “I can't do it. What are we going to do now?”

“Probably rot for eternity,” Watch said.

“Don't say that,” Adam said. “We have to maintain a positive attitude.”

“I don't know if a positive attitude helps when you're in hell,” Sally mumbled.

“We're not in hell,” Adam said. “We're in
a
hell. That's not exactly the same thing.”

Sally stared down the street at the other captured people. A few were moaning and a couple even had bird nests on top of their heads. Black ravens screeched in their dry hair. Sally sighed again.

“Right now I don't think it makes much difference,” she said.

“Look,” Adam said, trying to sound upbeat, “we've been in difficult situations before and we've always managed to find a way out. We'll do the same this time. We just have to come up with a plan.”

“We're waiting,” Watch said.

“Well,” Adam said. “First we have to break out of these chains. Let's concentrate on that.”

“I don't think the power of our concentration is going to break these chains,” Sally said.

“I can't believe you guys are ready to give up,” Adam complained.

Watch nodded down the block. “It looks like a tall demon is coming. I hope it's not one of those Gatekeepers the others mentioned. They didn't sound all that friendly.”

Watch was right. Another monster was approaching.

C
indy was lying in the grass beside Madeline Templeton's tombstone when the others reappeared. Because she was resting with her eyes closed, she heard them before she saw them. She was surprised because they had only been gone a few minutes. She sat up when she heard them talking and watched them as they stood huddled together in front of the tombstone.

“You guys just left.” She was so relieved to see them again she broke into a huge grin. “Did you find Bryce?”

They paused and stared at one another as if
surprised by her question. Then Adam said in a flat voice, “We weren't looking for Bryce.”

Cindy got up slowly. “But that's why you went on the Secret Path. Don't you remember, Sally?”

Sally broke into a smile at being addressed. She was looking around as if she had never seen the cemetery before. “We didn't find him,” she said in a rather heavy voice. “But it doesn't matter. We don't need him.”

Cindy was confused. “But you were worried about him.”

“He's gone,” Watch said simply. “He's not a problem. Take us to town.”

“What did you see on the other side of the tombstone?” Cindy asked. “Anything exciting?”

For a moment their eyes brightened. Indeed, it was as if a faint red light shone in them. Cindy blinked her own eyes, thinking she must have imagined the glow.

“Would you like us to show you what we saw?” Sally asked.

Cindy shrugged. “Yeah. If it's safe.”

Adam turned to Sally. “We're not showing her anything right now. We have things to do here first. Later we will take her.”

“Where will you take me?” Cindy asked.

Adam smiled strangely. “To a nice place. We will take you there tonight.”

“I don't know if I can go out tonight,” Cindy said. “I think my mother wants me to stay in to watch my little brother.”

“We'll take him with us as well,” Sally said, stepping forward. “Enough talk. We want to go to town. We have much to do.”

“OK,” Cindy said, puzzled by their rude attitudes. “We can go to town. Where do you want to go?”

“We need food,” Watch said. “We need meat.”

“Do you want to go to Harry's Hamburgers?” Cindy asked.

“Yeah, let's go get Harry!” Adam squealed.

“Let's go eat Harry!” Sally yelled.

“Eat his meat!” Watch joined in.

Cindy forced a smile. “You guys must be real hungry.”

*   *   *

At Harry's, Cindy's friends continued behaving oddly. They ordered two hamburgers each, nothing else, not even drinks. Then they stopped Harry before he began to cook the food.

“We like our meat rare,” Adam said.

“We like it raw,” Sally added, as she grabbed one
of the uncooked hamburgers and stuffed it in her mouth. In four huge bites she had devoured the whole thing. Cindy stared in amazement. Sally didn't chew at all. She was eating as if she were an animal. Cindy sat down at one of the tables and shook her head.

“What happened to you guys on the other side of the Secret Path?” she asked.

They all grinned. “We had fun,” Adam said. “That's all. Don't you believe us?”

“No, I don't,” Cindy said. “Something happened to you over there. Tell me what it was.”

“What if we don't want to tell you?” Sally asked in a deadly tone.

“I don't know,” Cindy said nervously. “I'll do something. I'll talk to Bum.”

Watch came and sat beside Cindy. He put a hand on her shoulder. When he spoke a big bite of uncooked hamburger showed in his mouth.

“You had better not talk about us,” he said. “We get mad when people do that. We get very mad and then we do
things.”

Cindy stared at him as if struck. “What do you mean? What kind of
things?”

Watch leaned closer. “Horrible things,” he said softly.

Cindy's mouth quivered. “Watch,” she said. “What's wrong with you. You never talk this way.”

“He's talking just fine,” Sally said as she sat on the other side of Cindy. She put a hand on Cindy's bare leg, and Cindy felt as if she were being touched by a lizard. Sally was staring at her with strangely bloodshot eyes. Cindy wanted to look away but found she couldn't. For a moment it seemed that only Sally's eyes existed, eyes that didn't really belong to her friend at all. The pupils of Sally's eyes were windows that opened onto a place of fire and pain. They bore into Cindy's brain, and Sally leaned over and whispered in her ear. Cindy noticed then how cold her breath was, and how it stank of something Cindy could not identify.

Out the corner of her eye Cindy watched Adam approach Harry, who had come around the counter. He was curious about what they were up to. Harry didn't make it all the way around the counter. There was a swift movement and then Harry sat down. Or maybe he fell over, Cindy could not be sure. Suddenly she was unsure of most things. She heard Sally speak in her brain more than in her ear.

“We are normal,” Sally whispered. “We are the way we have always been. You are not to talk to
anyone about us. If you do talk about us, you will feel pain. We will make you feel pain.”

“Yes,” Cindy whispered back as if from far away. A portion of her knew that her friends—if they were her friends—were trying to hypnotize her. But she lacked the will to resist. She did manage to turn her head away from Sally. But she just ended up staring into Adam's eyes, which were now directly in front of hers. His eyes were more frightening than Sally's, if that was possible. They seemed to burn with hateful red flames. He leaned close as she struggled to close her eyes.

“You have no power to resist us,” he said in a cruel voice. “You are under our control. You will go home now and act as if nothing has happened. But later tonight we will come for you and take you and your little brother away.” He grinned and his mouth was full of many sharp teeth. “We will take you to the Dark Corner.”