The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) (12 page)

Shut up,
Chuck told his mind.
I don’t want to be dreaming this anymore. And I’m not a damn lizard!

Look, Lizard-Breath, you’re not dreaming. This is where you are, and where you’re gonna stay, and nobody’s waking you up or kissing your cheek. She’s really dead back there, and this little bastard in the hall has these cutters that are going to snicker-snack you up and down, the Vorpal Blade of the Jabberwock is in his grubby little pokey fingers, and you are gonna be meat on the floor in about ten seconds if you can’t find your reptilian way to that door and turn that key so that the little bugger can’t get you.

Chuck Waller took another step to the door, and just as he reached it, he heard something behind him.

“Please,” the little boy on the other side of the door said. “Hurry, hurry.”

Chuck glanced behind him, but as he did, he felt all the little hairs on the back of his neck rise up, and even some hairs down below, on his balls.

He wasn’t scared so much by the kid in the hall or the voice in his head or even the noise behind him that probably meant that Mindy Shackleford was rising up on the mattress and grinning at him with teeth black and grimy with blood.

He was scared because he knew where he was, and he had been there when he was a kid, and he’d sworn he’d never set foot in that place again.

It was the house.

The old one.

The one, up on the hill beyond town.

Harrow.

Make it go away. Make this dream go away. I am in Mindy’s house. I am not in this place.

Shu-gah, you’re just in my special little fuck place. You’re all worn out and you’re a big old Chuckawalla lizard running around and I’m gonna have to tear your tail off and watch you run around without it, bleeding while that nasty little boy decides whether he wants to tie a string around your neck or stomp you with his little boy feet.

When he opened his eyes again, he was still sleepy and in the terrible house. He glanced back to see if Mindy Shackleford—the dead and torn open Mindy—might be standing on the mattress as he’d imagined she would.

Instead, it was his father.

His head was still caved in from that long-ago fall from the river cliff
(or was it a jump, Dad?)
that had killed the old guy, and he still had that bloodied suit on.

Even though his right leg was turned all the way around—as it had been in the accident—he dragged it forward, toward Chuck, and said, “Come here, Chuckawalla, come here my little sleepy boy. Let’s tuck you in good, all right my
little
man? My little little man? My little shu-gah man?”

Chuck heard the boy at the door, behind him, crying out, “Please, hurry. You gotta! You gotta hurry!” and realized it was his voice, his own voice, that’s why it had been familiar—and the door wasn’t in need of locking.

You should’ve gone to it. Unlocked it for the boy. He knows how to save you. Only he knows.

“Come on, my little shu-gah man, let me tuck you in, I’ll read you a sleepy-bye story, and you just lay there,” his father’s broken jaw wagged to the left and right as he spoke. “My little little man.”

His father, using a hand that had been broken in twelve places, right at the moment of impact of that long-ago accident, began reaching for the zipper of his pants. “Let’s make you nice and comfortable, my little man,” and Chuck felt himself falling asleep—in the dream, he was going to sleepy-bye, to sleepies, to slumberland, and now he was more terrified than he’d been of anything else that the dream had offered him.

And the shame.

The shame that had been there in childhood that he’d choked down came back. The shame that made him want to shut down and sleep and just make sleep protect him from everything bad.

Dreams protected him.

But not in this place, shu-gah.

He dreaded falling asleep with the mangled corpse of his father coming to him to “whisper a secret to you, just a little secret for my little man,” his father’s words slurred and his jaw waggled and the leg that was completely turned around backward dragged as he moved toward Chuck. “My little man who keeps secrets with his daddy.”

4

Mindy Shackleford opened her eyes.

Chuck lay snoozing on top of her, as he sometimes did, even in the middle of making love.

He was problematic that way for her.

You fall in lust with a narcoleptic, you get used to it.

She shoved him away, sat up on her daughter’s bed, and drew a cigarette from the pack in Chuck’s shirt that hung on the chair by the bed.

Lit it up, took a few puffs, then glanced back at him.

Because she knew about his narcolepsy, she didn’t want to wake him, but she hated him just lying there. Better that he sleep through it.

But a glance at the clock told her that she couldn’t let him sleep much longer.

Particularly since her daughter Judy might be home in another hour, after staying late after school with the debate team. She wasn’t sure when her eldest boy would be home, and she was fairly sure her youngest—who was fifteen—wouldn’t be wandering in until after football practice ended.

But she never knew their exact schedules, and she hated taking the risk, particularly once the sex was over.

“Come on, Chuck,” she said, tapping him lightly on the back of his head. “Hit the showers.”

But forty minutes later, Chuck Waller still remained asleep on her daughter’s bed. Mindy became too nervous to just let him stay there and sleep, so she began shaking him. “Come on, Chuck. You’ve got to wake up.” Her voice was soft and sweet at first, but when she returned from a quick shower and had dressed in her slacks and sweater and was ready to go out and see her friends for drinks, she was pissed. She began yelling at him and slapping his face to try to wake him.

Finally he opened his eyes.

“It’s about time,” she said. “Get your clothes on and just get out, hon. Judy’ll be home any minute and who knows what Pete’s gonna do.”

Chuck Waller looked up at her, and for just a second she felt as if it were not him at all.

“Hey there, shu-gah,” Chuck said as he sat up on the bed.

Hell,
Mindy thought.
Doesn’t even sound like him.
“You makin’ fun of the way I talk?” she asked, teasing a little, annoyed a little. “Back where I’m from, we don’t take to Yankee ways.”

“Come over here a second, okay, shu-gah?” Chuck said, patting his knee.

“You okay?” she asked. He’d told her more than once that if he zonked out to just let him sleep, but she hadn’t assumed he’d be so ... well, cold. That’s what she felt from him. Something almost reptilian in it—as if he were not the warm, fun-loving Chuck she’d known the day he’d come over to work on the kitchen cabinets, the Chuck who had let her touch him while he was working, the Chuck who had taken her in his arms and told her that if she wanted him to, he could be there for her whenever she needed.

“Just come over here a sec, shu-gah honeylamb chile,” Chuck said, a grin breaking across his face. He tapped his knee lightly. “Come on, I got something to show you. Maybe you can bust up a chivarobe for me.”

“Chuck? A
chivarobe?”
The only time she’d heard the term “chivarobe” had been as a little girl, or when she saw the movie of
To Kill a Mockingbird.

“Yeah, honey chile,” he said. She hated the racist overtone of his voice. He was definitely making fun of her being Southern. He was adding a racist edge to it with his minstrel show accent.
The jerk.

“Chuck? Stop it. What’s this about?”

“Come on, my baby, come on my honey, come on my ragtime gal, it won’t hurt,” he said. “It’s a secret. Only you and me will know what it is.” Again, he patted his knee. “Pretty please with shu-gah on top?” he asked. “With cocoa buttah and mmm-mint jellaay and cah-reem cheese and grits and ham biscuits and pig’s knuckles spread all over it?”

“You’re being ... silly. Chuck?”

“Just a sit down here with me, my little honey chile,” Chuck said, and when she stepped away instead of coming toward him, he got up and began moving toward her in a funny way—as if he were shambling along, as if one of his legs was hurt. His jaw seemed to drop. “You woke me up, little shu-gah cube,” Chuck said. “And now ah need to make y’all go sleepies so that weezuns can be all comfy-cozy and get tucked in good, tucked all tight and good, tucked really deep and warm. Shu-gah honey pie lamb.”

Mindy Shackleford had never screamed before—never in her life. Well, perhaps when she’d given birth, but she’d never screamed from fear or as an alarm to others. But now she heard a scream, and surprise of surprises, it came from deep within her, rising up her throat into her mouth. Although it sounded distant to her, it was right there, coming from her, as she watched Chuck shambling toward her.

She stepped back toward the door, but something about Chuck’s eyes didn’t frighten her. She saw that warm lost little boy look in them, the same look she’d seen when he’d confessed what had happened with his father so many years before, and the mother instinct—that same instinct that might drive a woman to hell and back for her own flesh and blood—compelled her to move forward instead of back, to go hold this broken and sad and frightened little boy that she saw inside the thirty-year-old man.

She wrapped her arms around him, whispering, “It’s okay. It’s a dream you came out of, Chuck. That’s all, it’s just a terrible dream.” She felt his fingers digging into her sides as if... as if he were trying to cut her open with his bare hands.

“Y all’s
fuck play-ee-ice is awl wohen ow-et, shu-gah,” he said.

5

Lizzie crawled into bed, feeling a little feverish. Her mother called out for her, but she was too sleepy to respond. “Bert’s here, working on the plumbing!” her mother called down to her, but Lizzie was so tired the words made no sense to her.

She stared at the ceiling of her bedroom, trying to imagine emerald islands and diamond skies, images that helped her drift into a dream, but instead, she closed her eyes and she was out like a light.

Even when she felt the man’s breath on her face, she remained in darkness.

Yet she felt him.

6

In the darkness behind her eyes, in what might have been sleep or might have been another reality that Lizzie visited too often when she felt sleepy, the man she had come to think of as the Nightwatchman took her by the hand and led her along the dark corridor.

The windows were boarded up, but cracks of light broke through at the edges, leaving a thin blue-white outline of a window.

She passed by room after room. Many of the doors were closed, but some were open.

She only had a moment to glance in one, and there was the man from town who ran the florist shop—a man old enough to be her grandfather, she thought—and he was down on his knees in front of Andy Harris, who sat naked in a large velvet chair, his arms lazily up behind his head, the whites of his eyes showing as the old florist spread Andy’s legs apart, and then glanced back at Lizzie.

The old man winked at her, and she saw his chin ran with blood that soaked his shirt.

Andy’s entire groin area was bloodied.

Behind Andy, Bari Love lay on a bed, her legs wrapped around a Doberman pinscher’s thighs. Bari opened her mouth as if to scream, but instead she began barking like a little yappy dog.

And still, the man who tugged at her hand in the darkness, took her along the corridor, past other rooms.

7

Bert White leaned over the sleeping girl.

Elizabeth Pond.

So sweet.

She wasn’t quite as intriguing as her sister, but this one would do. She slept through anything. He could kiss her lips, and she would barely wake up in the middle of it. She was that deep a sleeper, and since the beginning of summer, she’d taken nap after nap as if she couldn’t get enough sleep.

Or maybe she’s faking. Maybe she wants you to touch her,
he thought.
Maybe she’s just lying there with her eyes closed, too afraid to tell you how much she wants you to tear her clothes from her, to kiss her in every place she has, to taste the salt of her sweat running down the small of her back.

This was the first he’d gone beyond just tapping her lightly when he found her asleep. He felt an exquisite shiver as his lips brushed against hers.

Her breath was sweet and a little sour, and he longed to part her lips with his tongue, but he was too scared to do it.

If you do it, she might welcome your tongue. She might invite you into her. She might show you how much she appreciates you.

Being the local Peeping Tom had been no picnic for Bert, but the Ponds had presented him with a unique opportunity to go beyond staring through bedroom windows while he “played his fiddle” as his grandmother had called it when she’d caught him as a boy fiddling outside his cousin’s bedroom window.
I’m gonna whip you so bad your fiddling days are through,
she’d said. But all the beatings he’d received made him want to fiddle more and more.

Until he’d reached this—the pinnacle.

Actually kissing a real live girl.

A real Hue sleeping girl.

Like a prince in a fairy tale,
he thought.
Every girl dreams of a prince kissing her while she’s asleep. Awakening her. Every girl.

He sniffed around the girl’s face.
Such aromatic loveliness
—
some cheap teen girl perfume, so simple and light and fruity.

He watched her, his face so close that she was practically out of focus.

This is my dream come true. This is what I want. I want her like this. Sleeping. Unaware. I want her to not know what I might do to her.

Suddenly, the girl’s eyes opened.

She reached up and grabbed him swiftly behind his head, holding him there with great strength while he tried to pull away. She brought his face closer to hers, and then moved her lips to his ear. He tried to shake her off, but she had a grip that overpowered him far too easily.