The Devouring (17 page)
“Yeah. Looks like your mom’s yuppie-tank didn’t get a scratch, but Quinn —”
Aaron looked into the Mustang and saw Quinn slumped on the steering wheel, blood pouring from a gash in his head. “This looks bad, Reggie. He needs an ambulance.”
“You want to rescue a Vour?” Reggie asked. “You’re joking, right?”
Aaron gaped at her.
“What? Quinn’s one of them? I just thought he was an asshole!”
Aaron looked ridiculous behind the wheel of his mom’s SUV.
“I don’t know how she drives this thing,” he said. “It’s like a yacht. And these seats are worse than my grandmother’s sofa. I’m getting sucked in like loose change, and the gas mileage —”
The grunting and thrashing of the captive in back interrupted Aaron’s rant. He grimaced and shifted in the driver’s seat.
“This is messed up,” Reggie said. “I can’t believe we’re kid-nappers.”
“The Vour is the kidnapper. Not us.”
Open farmland gave over to snow-covered oak and birch that crept right up to the edge of the winding road.
Aaron slowed down, wary that one slip on the icy path could land them in a steep roadside gulch. The SUV crawled through the entrance of the camping grounds surrounding Cutter’s Lake.
Reggie stared out the window. “Henry created that place — the fearscape — because of
me.
”
“You know that’s not true.”
“No? Who left scary movies around for him to watch? Who talks about gruesome, gory legends 24/7? I mean, what kind of sister reads
horror
books to her brother as bedtime stories? Like the world isn’t dark and terrible enough.”
“Most of the world is a good place, Reg.”
“The vampire killer from Sacramento? Jack the Ripper? Dahmer? Bundy? BTK?”
Aaron said nothing. The truck coasted to a halt.
“God, we’re monsters. All of us.”
“We all have a dark side, Reggie. You. Me. The old lady down the street. Henry. Everyone. We make the choice not to embrace it, but the dark is there. It’s always there. Inside us.”
“Yeah, well.” Reggie opened her door. “After tonight, I’m only reading cheesy romance novels.”
“Lusty blacksmiths and naughty princesses. Now
that’s
scary.” Aaron climbed out of his side. “We’re as close as we can get. I’ll leave the headlights on to light our way down to the lake.” He took a tire iron from the backseat. “We’ll take this to break the ice, okay?”
Reggie didn’t answer.
“You can do this, Reg. I know you can.”
“I have to.”
The two stood behind the trunk with a grim determination.
“Open it. Let it out.”
Aaron fumbled with the key and popped the lock. A bluish boy in his underwear lay shivering atop a pile of ice cubes. His hands were bound in front of him. Where the cubes touched his skin, sores bloomed and spread.
“Please ... ,” he stammered. “Reggie . . .”
“Henry ... ,” Reggie said softly.
“No,” Aaron snapped. “This thing is not your brother.”
The boy jerked his head and hissed. Black smoke leaked from his mouth. Aaron reached into the trunk, grabbed Henry by the ankle, and yanked him out onto the hard icy ground, where the boy writhed in pain.
“Enough!”
Reggie shouted and shoved Aaron back. She kneeled down beside her brother’s body. “I know you’re inside somewhere, Henry. I’m going to find you.”
“So ... cold ... scared . . .”
“I know.”
Reggie leaned over him and brushed his forehead. Smoke from his mouth morphed into a spider that leaped at her face. The shock was just enough to freeze her for a moment while Henry scrambled to his feet and staggered toward the woods.
Another set of headlights swung into the parking lot. The car sounded like a low-flying biplane. Its muffler and rear bumper dragged against the road, throwing sparks and clattering.
“Go! Catch Henry and get him in the water!” Aaron handed the tire iron to Reggie and stuffed some of the ice cubes from the trunk into his pockets. “I’ll deal with this.”
“Aaron —”
“Do it!”
Reggie raced off as the Mustang prowled toward Aaron.
A familiar silhouette lurked behind the cracked, blood-streaked windshield. The car pulled up next to the SUV, and the splintered but functional taillights of the crushed back end winked out as the car’s smooth engine cut off.
The door opened, and Quinn got out. The gash above his right eyebrow had bled all over his leather jacket. One eye had swollen shut.
“You got blood on my new coat. Not cool.”
“You’re too late, Quinn. Reggie’s got Henry.”
“Really, now. She’s your hero, huh?” Quinn walked around the front of Aaron’s mom’s truck. He shook his head. “Damn SUVs. You crush my back end but what happens to you? Not even a dented fender. No sense of social responsibility with these things.”
“We’ve got you figured out, Quinn. Or whatever the hell you are. She knows how to get inside. We know —”
“You don’t know shit, pansy.”
Aaron kept his hands in his pockets. The ice cubes had already numbed his fingers. The boys faced each other across the car hood.
“You think your lame girlfriend is some sort of savior? She wriggles her bony butt inside one little room of our infinite halls and she’s your King freakin’ Arthur? You know nothing, Cole.”
“I know you’re scared of her. I can see your fear.”
Quinn sprang across the hood and pushed Aaron to the ground. He placed a knee on Aaron’s chest and a hand to his throat.
“Look in my eyes, boy. Do you see fear?”
Aaron flailed as visions of water rose above his head.
He was drowning.
“Hmm. Guess you do.”
Down, down into the murky depths. The smell of seaweed and the sting of salt. Aaron sank into a dark lagoon. He forgot about Reggie, about Henry, about his family. His flailing stopped, his eyes closed, and his heartbeat slowed.
Aaron started to die.
“I could crush your windpipe with my bare hands,” Quinn said, “but isn’t this more fun?”
Catching the monster wasn’t hard. It was freezing. It was in agony. And it could only muster enough strength to propel Henry’s body a hundred feet before finally dropping into a pathetic heap in the snow. Catching it was easy.
Listening to it was torture.
“Reggie,” it said as she scooped the nearly naked child into her arms. “You’re killing me. Can’t you see you’re killing me? I won’t survive the water.”
Reggie closed herself to the mimicked despair. She averted her eyes from the body — the vein-riddled arms and neck, the grotesque black stains across the chest and belly, the white gums. But she couldn’t ignore the lethal cold of the skin.
The thing was made of lies. But she worried that it was telling one truth: the water would kill Henry.
The Vour was in the mind, but the body was still mostly human. If Henry’s
body
died, if its temperature dropped too low, if its heart stopped pumping, Henry — the
real
Henry — would have nothing to return to. But what other choice did she have?
Reggie carried him down to the bank and stood at the edge of the ice. The headlights above eerily illuminated the lake’s frozen surface.
“You’re going to murder me, Reggie. Just like in those movies you made me watch. You’re a murderer, Reggie. A murderer . . .”
She stepped onto the thick shore ice with her brother’s limp body in her arms. A glaze of fresh snow coated the ice and Reggie shuffled forward. The ice center at the lake would be thinner.
“Murderer. Mom knew you were sick. That’s why she left us.”
“I’m coming for you.” Reggie looked down at her brother’s face. “Whatever the hell you are, I’m coming. And I’m not afraid anymore.”
When she reached the middle of the lake, Reggie placed Henry’s frail body down. Then she took the tire iron out of her coat and slammed it into the ice.
“If you break the ice,”
the boy said in a detached, inhuman voice,
“we all go down. You and Henry will both die.”
She brought the iron down a second time.
“So be it. We die together.”
“You really are a stupid one, aren’t you, Regina? You and Henry will die.”
The thing chortled.
“I’ll be here forever.”
A third strike knocked a manhole-size hunk of ice loose. Reggie used the tire iron to pry the chunk out. She grabbed Henry’s forearms and dragged him to the hole. By now the boy was so cold he could barely move. Reggie lowered her brother’s body, feet first, into the glacial water beneath the ice.
“Bitch,”
the thing hissed.
“I’m ready for you.”
The boy’s mouth split open into a hideous grin. Black stains now marred bleached gums, and a plume of smoke poured out of its throat. It towered over Reggie, gathering itself into an enor-mous shadow that eclipsed the distant radiance of the headlights.
The blackness of the monster was all-consuming, deeper than the night that surrounded it. It hung in the sky over the lake for a long moment and then collapsed back into Henry’s mouth with a ferocious jolt that almost made Reggie lose her hold on the child.
She yanked her brother’s body from the water. His skin now looked charred, ravaged completely, but she did not let herself pity or fear for him. Henry, the real Henry, was locked in some horrible world. She laid the boy’s body back on the ice, put her hands to his face, and stared into the wild blue eyes.
“Come on then, little girl,”
the thing said.
“What are you afraid of?”
And then Reggie fell for the second time into the black.
The carnival expected her.
Reggie awoke in a fetal position. Above her stood a girl holding a pink cotton candy stem in one hand and the freckled boy’s severed head in the other. She pressed her foot against Reggie’s neck.
“Look who’s back,” the girl said as she took a bite of her cotton candy. “We knew you’d come see us again because —”
“Because you’re a moron,” said the skinny kid beside her. He chomped on a long cord of cherry licorice as he pushed his glasses up his long nose. Thick lenses magnified the dark, bestial eyes behind them. Dozens of children crowded around.
“Right. What he said.” The girl ground her foot into the scabbed slash on the side of Reggie’s neck. “Berzerko was so mad you got away he took it out on this poor kid.” She swung the little boy’s head like a toy prize.
The face-painted girl skipped over to them, white larvae dripping from her rotten chin. “Now that you’re back, we’re taking you to the Big Top.”
“We have so much more to show you,” said the boy with the glasses. “You won’t believe your eyes!”
“She won’t have any eyes left when Berzerko finishes with her!” shouted another boy.
The entire crowd laughed, and Reggie’s neck throbbed under the crushing pressure of the blond girl’s heel. The face-painted girl grabbed Reggie’s ankles, and the boy with the glasses tied his licorice around them. The cord burned into her skin like dry ice. She clenched her teeth and stifled a scream. The stench of her own blistering skin wafted into her nostrils.
The other kids lifted her off the ground. Each ghastly finger that touched her body leaked a bitter and venomous cold that sought to paralyze her.
“To the Big Top! To the Big Top!”
The crowd held her aloft and carried her toward a gigantic, foul-smelling pavilion. Screams and wails poured forth from the evil tent. If she went in, she would never come out again. Inside was pure madness.
She closed her eyes and struggled to calm herself. Reggie’s pulse slowed and her mind cleared. The cold burn in her ankles dissipated, and the smell of rotten cherries filled the air.
“Hey!” screamed the boy in glasses. “What’d you do to my licorice?”
Reggie’s legs broke free. She slammed her right foot forward, caving in the face-painted girl’s jaw as if it were papier-mâché. Smoke gushed from the ruin of it, and the girl toppled back-ward.
The children gasped and dropped Reggie. She leaped up, shoved past them, and ran back to the midway; through the game booths, the snack huts, the kiddie rides, past the Ferris wheel and the roller-coaster, the log flume and the bumper cars . . .
Reggie cut across the carousel platform to get to the fun house, and she could feel the eyes of the beasts behind her. Beneath the calliope’s melody, she heard the low growls of hungry things.
The fun house tunnel spun faster now. Reggie tried to run through it, but she lost her balance in the whipping vortex.
Elbows, knees, ankles, head, chin — the tunnel banged her about as she tried to crawl across the slick surface. When she had almost reached the other side, the clown’s horn cut the air.
Behind her, at the entrance of the tunnel, she saw the pasty white face, the curly green hair, and the blood-spattered suit. Berzerko smiled wide and stepped in, swinging the hatchet in front of him. The swirling tube did not affect him, and he steadily advanced.
Reggie lurched for the edge of the tunnel. Her upper body vaulted over the lip of the cylinder, but her legs twisted up behind her, the force nearly pulling her back inside. With one final lunge, she toppled out onto the checkered floor of the fun house. She rose painfully to her feet and ran into the Hall of Mirrors.
Distorted reflections gave way again to horrific images and fears all around her: glistening spiders, dead loved ones, and a newer fear — fire. Her pulse quickened at the sight of flames leaping behind the silvered glass, but Reggie thought only of finding her brother.
“Henry! Can you hear me?” she called out. “Where are you?”
The scraping noise of a hatchet blade across glass sent her racing deeper into the maze. This time no sawdust signaled the way out. She reached one dead end after another, surrounded by ever more freakish reflections: her father’s head served on a platter with an apple in his mouth, her mother rocking a demon infant . . .
Reggie stepped forward, gaping at the images, and felt something squishy beneath her foot. She glanced down to see that she’d trod upon a giant red shoe.
The killer clown stood in front of her, his blade at his side. There was no way around him this time, nowhere to run. Mirrors imprisoned her. Desperate, Reggie punched the clown, and her fist sank deep into Berzerko’s midsection. The sting of bitter cold raced up her arm, and when she pulled her hand out, her fist was laced with ice. Berzerko raised his hatchet with a gleeful smile. He was invincible in here, here among the mirrors.