Resurrection (51 page)

Chuck felt something tighten inside, wind up tight like a rubber band to the point of bursting. He was smelling things, too, but right away his mind simply refused what it was receiving. He could not be smelling these things.

Not out here.

Tara’s breathing galloped quickly, then slowed. “That’s…oh my God…that’s cotton candy! Can you smell it? That’s cotton candy! Like at the carnival and the fair!”

“No, it’s not,” Chuck said.

“It is,” she maintained.

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “I can smell it…but why out here?”

“I smell other things,” Brian said.

“Hot dogs…that’s hot dogs,” Jacob said, just beside himself.

Mark nodded. “And popcorn.”

But they were wrong, they were all wrong and Chuck knew it. Sure, he had smelled those things, too…at first. Sweet cotton candy and salty buttered popcorn in little boxes, the smell of hot dogs bubbling in grease and wrapped in doughy, deep-fried buns. Maybe ice cream and root beer in waxed cups, too. Like all of the fall carnival in one swooning breath. But he knew he wasn’t really smelling it. It was in his head, just as it was in theirs. And if he let himself go

and he badly wanted to with a childish glee

he might have smelled the smoke of barbecuing chickens and iced lemonade and hot-buttered corn-on-the-cob, maybe even elephants and the dirty straw from the monkey cages, too.

But he did not let himself go, even though a funny, sing-song voice in his head was saying,
Aw, kid, don’t be such wet blanket! Can’t you smell the circus and the carnival and the fair in August? Don’t you know the fun you’re missing? It’s all out there, it’s all waiting for you and all you have to do is simply roll with it like the others…

No, Chuck was not rolling with it.

Maybe the others were. Maybe they didn’t know that there was something deranged and perverse about all this, but Chuck did. He knew danger when he smelled it and he was smelling it now like the acidic fumes from a battery that was about to explode in his face. He felt it up his spine and along the back of his neck and down deep in his stomach in a thick, expanding mass that made him want to throw up. But maybe the others didn’t and maybe they were so damn scared inside, they were afraid to admit to it. For what could be dangerous about such things? What possible hell could there be in the smell of sweets and junk food?

But Chuck knew.

Because sweets worked on kids, didn’t they? That’s why perverts offered them to kids so they’d get into their cars. Kids liked things like that…carnivals and fairs and circuses and popcorn and hot dogs and cotton candy. Good fun and games and sugary things. And maybe those sweets tasted good when you shoved them into your mouth, but when that dark, evil car rolled to a stop in the shadowy woods and you were dragged screaming into the trees, smelling the vileness of your host, feeling his or
its
hot breath in your face, those eyes like dirty coins appraising you like fresh meat and you smelled the sour rot of his breath…well, the kiddie games were over, now weren’t they, boys and girls? Now comes the touching and the defilement and the juicy blackness that would tear your soul out in bloody, soiled chunks


“No!” Chuck shouted.

The others stopped their daydreaming and their respective fantasy trains ground to a rusty halt. They were all looking at him, thinking he had lost it now. And Maybe he had. Maybe he had at that. And how could he really explain to them that if they kept rolling with this one, they’d roll straight off the biggest fucking cliff they could ever imagine?

They all just stared and he couldn’t seem to find the words to make them understand.

He knew what they thought about him.

He knew what all the kids at school thought about him.

He knew they despised him. Oh yes,
despised
him. That was the word. Because Chuck Bittner was a braggart, he was overstuffed and full of hot air and superior and uppity. Chuck always bragged, always. My dad did this and my dad did that. We own this and we own that. My dad bought me this and my dad bought me that and we’re going to Cozumel and Disneyworld and I have three new game systems and my own checking account…and what do any of you have? You have nothing compared to me because I’m better than you, richer than you, oh so much more important than you. That’s the way they all saw him and he knew it and he always had. Oh, he pretended he didn’t know how they hated him, but he knew. That’s why some nights he woke up, unable to breathe, because he knew he was alone, terribly alone. They hated him and he had no friends but the ones he could buy with daddy’s money. And sometimes it was just too much, like being the only mouse in a snakepit, knowing those kids would kill him if they could, do just about anything to cut him down to size.

And now they were all staring at him like he was crazy.

Sure, he was a little spoiled brat and he knew it at that moment like never before. He saw himself as he was and he hated himself, too. Really, truly. And that’s what made this all even harder, because they would never believe him.

Never understand that there was danger ahead.

That he knew things they did not.

And that funny sing-song voice said,
You’re a spoiled rotten little bastard! Ha, ha, ha! That’s all you are and daddy can’t help you out here! He can’t buy you out of this, now can he?

Though he was numb from the chill water, Chuck was sweating profusely, feverish and just sick about who he was and what he now knew. “Listen to me,” he said. “Please just listen, okay? I know you guys don’t like me, but listen to me. You’re not really smelling those things. It’s all a game, you see? Something out there wants to draw us in. It’s using these smells to get us to go out there where it’s waiting…”

3

“He’s tweaked,” Cal said.

“Had to happen sooner or later,” Kyle added.

Chuck fought for the words to adequately express himself. He wished Bobby Luce were there, because he was good with words. He would have made them understand. Sure, those smells were getting stronger now for Chuck, too, but once you accepted the fact that they were not real, they started smelling like other things…like closed-up, mildewy places and wormy corpses and blood bubbling from slit throats.

“Listen!” Tara said. “Do you hear that? Do you?”

They all began to talk at once, but Chuck could not hear them. He could only hear the tinny, rising melody of a calliope, the sort of thing that always provided the background music for merry-go-rounds.

“There’s gotta be some kind of fair out there,” Brian said.

“It’s nuts,” Jacob said, denying it, yet pleased at the idea.

The music kept playing, the rain falling off to that cold, windy drizzle again. The seven of them stood there up to their waists in that filthy water, smelling not sewage and backed-up pipes now, but sweet things and salty things, and the music played on…so wonderful, so inviting. The clouds even parted and a soft down of moonlight lit up the world, washing everything down with a ghostly luminance.

“Look!” Tara cried out. “Over there!”

“A clown!” Cal said. “A real clown!”

And they all got very excited, calling out to him, even though Chuck warned them not to. Because maybe he was the only one who really saw what was standing under that department store canopy, something hunched and wormy and foul.

Then the clown was gone.

But Chuck had seen it. What it was and what it was not.

“C’mon,” he said, barely able to control the terror inside him. “We better go back the other way.”

But Cal laughed in his face. “Why?”

“He’s losing it,” Kyle said.

“No, listen to me

”

But they did not want to listen.

“Maybe the clown can help us,” Tara said.

“Yeah, he’ll know the way out,” Mark agreed.

“Sure,” Cal said.

But Jacob just stood there. “I don’t know…I don’t really like clowns.”

Which got the Woltrip brothers laughing and Chuck wanted to laugh, too. He felt the laughter bubbling up from his belly, because it really was funny, wasn’t it? The absurdity of this situation? The seven of them standing in that reeking water in a flooded, deserted part of town seeing clowns and hearing calliopes and smelling cotton fucking candy? Hee, hee, hee, it was hilarious!

“He’s right,” Chuck said, trying to get a hold of himself. “That’s no clown…it’s…it’s a monster! Like those things that tried to get in the bus!”

“Tell him to stop,” Tara said, the fear encroaching on her now, too.

“Yeah, shut up, faggot,” Cal told him.

“I’m going to talk to that clown,” Kyle said.

He started moving off and Chuck grabbed him and then both Kyle and Cal shoved him away and he went down, sinking into that cold, stinking water, and rising up quickly, gagging. “You…you can’t go!” he told them.

Then just in front of them, a wave of water moved past like something big had skimmed by just under the surface. Like maybe a crocodile. And that served to sober them up, at least for a minute or two.

And then a voice, piping and musical and silly, said,
“Hey, you kids! You gonna stand there and freeze or what? C’mon, it’s dry over here! It’s fun over here! C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”

The clown was only about twenty feet away this time.

His suit was orange-and yellow checked with great green pom poms running down the front, a bright red ruffled collar and cuffs, and oversized white clown gloves. His face was completely white, the lips painted black, his eyes set inside black harlequin diamonds. On his head was a bright blue jester cap with tinkling bells at the tips. He was grinning happily, a mound of cotton candy on a stick in one hand.

“Cmon!”
he said.
“I won’t bite you!”

Chuck watched the kids begin to slowly move in his direction. They couldn’t see him as he was and they couldn’t smell that awful odor wafting off of him. They were moving towards him and his grin widened and you could see that behind that smile were teeth, really big teeth. Whatever spells he was casting and whatever dark magic he sprinkled into the wind, oh, it worked just fine.

“Don’t,” Chuck heard himself say, that calliope music so loud now it drowned out his words. “Please, don’t…”

Chuck was looking into the clown’s eyes and seeing what was really behind them, that malignant gnawing emptiness, that slimed pit of bones and carrion that it had for a mind.

Don’t be such a spoiled little party pooper!
that sing-song voice said in his mind and he knew it belonged to the clown.
Play along with me, Chucky! You’ll have fun! You’ll have lots of good, gobby fun! I promise you that! Grimshanks promises you and Grimshanks always keeps his promises and especially to fine, plump little boys like you, Chucky-fucky-sucky! Lookit the fun your friends are having! Oh, it’ll be a merry, silly lark we’ll have! You can have fun, too! Just like them! You can laugh and gorge yourself with sweets right to the end! Oh, boo-hoo, Chucky-fucky, you’re no fun at all! And I thought you could play with me, be with me! You hate them as much as I do! Why not play my games with me? I’ll show you what you do with these sweet-meats, I’ll show you how to fuck and suck and slit and tear them! I’ll show you how to play with their great big globs of greasy grimy kiddie guts and fondle their underparts and make balloon-animals from their entrails! Hee, hee, hee, ho, ho, ho!

“Shut up!” Chuck said, hands pressed to his ears. “You just shut up!”

But the clown voice, oh so unfunny now, would not shut up.
How about that Tara?
it said.
I bet she’s got a sweet, saucy little cunt for us to chew and bite! Would you like that? I’ll teach you how to make them scream! What hurts and what feels good! Just you and me, Chucky-fucky! We’ll fuck ‘em and slit them and rip them wide open and then bury what’s left down in dirty, damp cellars! Take my hand, you randy little prick! Because I love you! I alone love you! They won’t be there for you when you fall, but I will! You’ve tasted the darkness and smelled the fear and know what it’s like to be shivering and alone! Just like me! Remember one thing, you humpty-dumpty little cockfuck: when you fall, they won’t be there to put you back together again, but I will! I’ll pick up your pieces and lick the sweet juice from every one, lick, lick, lick, and lick!

“NO!” Chuck screamed into the wind and rain. “NO! I WON’T LISTEN! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME LISTEN!”

And then everyone stopped, because the clown was gone.

The music had stopped.

And the breeze just smelled like dankness and rot again, dead things and moldering things, sewers and nitrous cellars.

“Where did he go?” Kyle asked.

They had all scattered now. They were no longer closely bunched together where even in this terrible situation there might have been a modicum of safety. Now they were scattered out. Kyle in front, Cal at his side. Tara and Jacob four feet away from them, Mark off to the left and Brian to the right. And Chuck standing far behind, gasping and shaking and ready to lose his mind.

Another wave pushed through the rotting leaves in front of them. Then another splashed behind. Something brushed against Chuck’s ankle and he let out a cry.

You know where I am, Chucky!
the clown said in his head.
Tell ‘em all where I am…here, there, and nowhere! Tell ‘em how I hunted down boys in the night, Chucky! Tell ‘em what I did when I got them in my car! Go ahead, Chucky, tell ‘em! Tell ‘em all about Grimshanks! Tell ‘em how I died with that fucking rope around my neck, the water rising and things chewing on me and tunneling up my ass and down the head of my dick! Tell ‘em about it! Tell ‘em how I slink through sewers and giggle outside little boy’s windows at night, the moonlight winking off my teeth!