Spawn of Hell (38 page)

He didn’t know why he had done what he had done. Looking back on it, it was the act of an insane man, a barbarian, someone worthy only of contempt. And he had never thought of himself as that kind of person. Not until now. No matter how hard he tried to make excuses for his behavior, his conscience was having none of it.

He had lifted that cruel black strap and slashed it across their faces, their skinny arms and bare, shorts-clad legs, as if they were wild dogs threatening to tear him asunder. Thank God he had stopped himself before it had gone too far. Already their lovely faces were marked. He desperately hoped all traces of the wounds and strokes would disappear before they went back to their mother, or else. Or else she could take legal action against him. No one in this world was more despised than a child-beater. And what had they done to deserve it? Surely nothing so severe that such punishment was just or fitting. Maybe a spell in jail was what he needed to atone; a sacrificial offering before he would even begin to forgive himself.

Sitting in the kitchen with his bottle, however, his thoughts began to lose focus; he veered back and forth between self-contempt and self-congratulations. The kids had asked for it, he told himself, not answering him when he called, hiding in the garage.
But they had only been playing,
his other voice said,
maybe they hadn’t heard you. Stop being paranoid.
I Am Not Paranoid! Let’s have another drink to celebrate!

He had come out of his self-induced trance by the time they’d returned home from the quarry. The kids had found it too cool to go in the water, and they had left not long after that couple had gone off into the woods. He didn’t know who the woman had been, but he sure envied the man she was with. A woman like that, what was it like to make love to a woman like that?

After dinner—he’d served three TV dinners to three unsmiling children—he’d given them ice cream, and patted them on the heads, and let them watch what they wanted to see on TV. But at bedtime, there had been no good-night kiss from any of them, no hug. He had never cared before; not he could think of nothing more precious. Little Martin had come that close to giving in, but a harsh look from his sister had deterred him. He had tucked them into their cots in the room down the hall, turned out the light, and gone straight to the kitchen to have, he had told himself, only one tiny little nightcap. Half a bottle later, he was still in the kitchen, still wallowing in self-pity.

He felt suddenly fatigued. He hadn’t realized how tired he was. Better get to bed. He would try even harder to win those kids over tomorrow and he
would
succeed. He had to. Why, if they ever told their mother what had transpired . . .
There you go again,
he admonished himself,
worrying about yourself again.
Well damn it, said the other voice. If I don’t, who will?

He went into his bedroom, so exhausted and intoxicated that he could not be bothered with removing his clothes. Sleep, sleep was all he wanted. His bedroom was large and looked even larger because he had nothing in it but a narrow old bed with metal railings at either end, a small night table and a tall black wardrobe in the corner. His socks and underwear were simply thrown onto the floor of the wardrobe in disarray, as he could not be bothered separating things or buying a dresser to keep them in. Clothes were scattered all over the bed and on top of the tattered straw circular rug that covered the space in front of it.

He lifted an arm that felt like lead and turned off the lamp on the night table, nearly knocking it over in the process. Within moments he was fast asleep and snoring.

He had terrible dreams, so vivid and intense that he could have sworn they were actually happening. Screams were coming from the children’s room, and in his dreams he tried to get up from his bed, but he couldn’t move, and the floor seemed fifty feet away and the door to the hall at least 500 yards. The screams grew louder and louder, and he thought, “The children— something’s hurting the children,” but try as hard as he could, he was simply not able to get up off the bed.

He woke, bathed in sweat, his body odor and whiskey breath mingled together disagreeably. The house was silent. It had been a dream. The children were all right. Thank God for that. Patricia would have killed him if he had let anything happen to them.

He became aware that something was in the bed with him. One of the children, of course. They had forgiven him at last! Which one was it? Martin? Yes, little Martin, who frequently had nightmares and called out in his sleep. He had been crying before, and when his father had not come, he had forced himself down the hall and into the safety of his father’s bed. Randall did not stop to think how odd it would be for a frightened child to walk down a dark corridor alone, but he was glad his son had come to him at last. Or
was
it Martin? Maybe it was Teddy, or even Gladys. He seemed to feel pressure way down on his leg, and Martin was not too tall yet. He put his arm around the child and pulled him closer. He was full of fatherly love and affection. God, he wanted the children with him always and he would never, ever, hurt them again.

But it wasn’t Martin, or Gladys or Ted. He pulled back his arm, which was covered with filth. Beneath his own bodily and breathly odors, there was another smell, a stench really, that was nearly indescribable in its foulness. They had played a trick on him, the little beasts, a nasty, revolting trick which he would never forgive them for. Now, when he needed them so badly, they had dared to do this, to put—filth—in his bed, his own bed, while he was sleeping. How dare they do this to him!

But then the filth
moved,
and he knew it was not a mound of earth from the yard, or wet leaves, or a sack of potato peels or a pile of refuse. It was something
alive.
It was fat and thin all at the same time, for it wiggled under his embrace, and seemed to undulate. It made terrible sounds. Grease came off its body and stuck to Randall’s arm and clothes and face.

Randall felt hot breath at his neck. A bite. No, the children could not be doing this. Not
this.
He felt a sharp pinch on his arm. Blood. Blood from both wounds. And those horrible noises.

His eyes had adjusted somewhat to the lack of light. He had to maneuver so that he could turn on the night table lamp, see what was in bed with him. It seemed not much bigger than one of the children, and there was a white head above its oddly shaped body. Were those arms or legs? He fought off his revulsion, reached up and over the thing, and turned on the light.

A face stared into his own. It was no one he had seen before; it was not human at all. It was as if someone had grafted a human head onto—onto a
thing.

Randall froze and pushed backwards, for the face was coming in closer, and already there was blood—his blood—smeared all over it. Randall sunk into his pillow, too shocked to scream. He could not take his eyes off the thing’s most horrible feature. The face did not have a normal mouth. When it opened its “lips,” there was no tongue, no teeth. Instead, there was a strange collection of oddly shaped hooks and tubes, pincers and mandibles made for biting, grasping and sucking. What was worse, they were constantly in motion, the mouthparts darting up and down like the legs of a fly. The effect of seeing such an assemblage of biological equipment in the middle of a human face where the mouth should have been, only inches from his own head, was enough to make Randall succumb almost eagerly to unconsciousness.

And while he lay there in a faint, the animal pulled itself up and over him, its companions clambering up from the floor and onto the bed. They struggled for position, eager to feast, piling on top of one another, not satisfied with the meal that the children had made. Still, they had traveled far tonight and they were sluggish.

And Randall Thorp was eaten alive.

Slowly.

Chapter Fourteen

The following morning, Ted Bartley sat at the breakfast table with his wife while Mimi served the coffee and eggs. It was a sunny day and the temperature had risen nearly ten degrees. Despite the nice weather and the clean air coming in through the open window behind the table, neither the Bartleys looked in the peak of health. Mr. Bartley wore a grim expression and the bags which had lately developed beneath his eyes were more pronounced and bluish than ever. Mrs. Bartley simply sat in her chair and picked at her food, her face a blank mask that seemed to mirror no emotion at all, as if everything had been drained out of her the night before. As usual, Mimi asked no questions and offered no sympathy. She simply did as she was told, and answered any questions put to her. When everything had been put on the table, the woman went back to her dusting, and left her odd employers to their own devices.

The Bartleys made an effort to snap out of their moods, but it wasn’t easy. They both knew that their marriage was over, even though it was unlikely they’d separate or get a divorce or anything messy like that. They had stopped having sex with one another seven years before, simply lost the interest as time went by, and one could say they were
accustomed
to each other instead of being in love. Neither of them wanted out of the relationship entirely. Where would they go? What would they do? They would stay together, each blaming the other for the tragedy that had befallen their son. Mrs. Bartley would feel that her husband had betrayed his own son for the rest of her life, and Mr. Bartley would rationalize that, had his wife not been forever nagging him to get ahead in life, he would never have taken the drastic steps he had.

Eating his toast, Mr. Bartley sat mulling over a phone call he had received from the Corporation early that morning. They had done what Anton had told him they would do. They had not yet determined the death toll, although they insisted it wouldn’t be that high, as only the isolated homes on the outskirts of town had been hit. Still, it would nag at his conscience forever.

Mrs. Bartley had started to make idle chatter. It was such a trial listening to her go on and on about her ladies’ clubs all the time, such an effort to listen. He let her talk, hoping it would take her mind off what she had seen last night. That would have been enough to drive anyone insane. He’d had no idea that things would get that bad.

“She looked just like she does on television,” Mrs. Bartley was saying. Her face held none of its usual animation and she spoke without feeling. Bartley wondered if she even bothered to pay attention to herself.

“What’s that, dear?”

“Anna Braddon. The woman David Hammond was with last night. Such a beautiful creature. Wish I looked like that.”

“You’re perfectly lovely darling, and you know it.” He wiped his lips with a napkin.

She kept droning on, Bartley’s attention wandering. He finished his breakfast and excused himself. He had a phonecall to make. Clair seemed not to notice. She was still talking as he left the kitchen. “I must call David’s father. Must have them over for dinner some night. I’m sure David would love to see George again. And I haven’t seen Laura Hammond in ages.”

Bartley was worried about his wife’s sanity. David Hammond’s mother had been dead for years. This whole thing with George was slowly driving her over the edge. Something would have to be done. When he reached his study, he put her out of his mind and turned his attention to other, more immediate concerns.

Anton answered on the first ring.

“I’ve been told about last night,” Bartley said. “What’s going to happen when they find the bodies? The police—”

“Poor Ted. Don’t you realize that we
own
the police? There won’t be anything
left
to find in any case. Our men went out at the crack of dawn, when it was safe, and took care of things in their own inimitable fashion. A burglary here, a fire there. People will be suspicious, but what can they do? Really, Ted, what can they do?”

“But it’s murder! Cold-blooded murder! What will we do, wipe out the whole town? That would be one way of squelching curiosity.”

“We have already worked out a solution, dear boy. We have the perfect testing ground.”

“What do you mean?”

“The
clearing,
Ted. The clearing in the woods.”

“You don’t mean Felicity Village? But there are families living there. A dozen or more. Bunched together. Isolated. You can’t do that. Besides, some of those people must have developed friendships, connections, with people in town. You won’t get away with it this time.”

“Nonsense. It makes more sense than destroying all of Hillsboro. The village has fewer victims, which should please you, and is also self-contained. There’s less danger of things getting out of control, of the creatures getting so far away from their lair that they’ll set up a new one. Besides, it would be so easy for, say, a ‘fire’ to sweep through the woods, destroying everyone and everything in the village overnight. No one would be the wiser. No one would ever know. We would have done it last night, but we wanted to see again how capable the creatures were of hunting out victims on their own. We simply neglected to supply them with food, and once more they went out under their own initiative. Some of them went quite a long distance in a relatively short time.”

The whole conversation was taking a sickening turn. Bartley was reminded again of how much he wished he weren’t a part of it. “I still think about that poor Harper family.”

“They would have been honored, had they known what hit them. A noble sacrifice for science.”

“Stop it, Frederick.”

“Anyway, tonight we shall again neglect to feed our little pets. Instead we shall release special attractive scents into the air near Felicity Village, drawing them to the clearing like flies. The results should prove most interesting. Would you care to drive up with me tomorrow to see?”

“I can’t believe the Corporation is approving this. I can’t believe they would sacrifice an entire village!”

“You fool! The Corporation
owns
that village. The Corporation
built
it!” Anton’s voice thundered into the phone.
“What do you think they built it for,
you idiot?”