The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) (22 page)

“What kind of accident did she have?” Norma asked.

“Just an accident. Nothing bad,” Lizzie said.

“What do you have behind your back?”

“Nothing.”

“Elizabeth,” Norma said as formally and snappishly as she could. “What are you hiding?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Something’s wrong with you,” Norma said suddenly, as if she had just sensed something by the unusual look in Lizzie’s eyes. She tasted something bitter in the air. “Something’s not right.”

“Everything’s fine,” Lizzie said, rocking her head back and forth so that her ears nearly touched her shoulders. The effect was somewhat comical, but Norma began to wonder if Lizzie Pond wasn’t disturbed in some way. Her hair was over her eyes too much, her skirt looked like it had rips in it, and her knees were smudged with dirt.

“Well, I appreciate your coming by to tell me,” Norma said, nudging the door shut.

Lizzie’s stepped up so that the door could not be completely closed. “I’m here to substitute.”

“I’m sorry?”

“For Ronnie. I’ll take her place. I can babysit.”

“I think I’ll just cancel my plans,” Norma said.

“Oh please, Mrs. Houseman; Don’t do anything drastic like that. I love your kids. You know I’m as responsible as Ronnie is. And she’s hurt.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I love being around kids. We can play games like Tag and Hide and Go Seek. I can even help them with their homework,” Lizzie said.

“No, I meant you said she’s hurt. Did she fall?”

“Oh, no. She just had a little mishap. It’s nothing serious. Really. It was at the bookstore. You know that awful placewhere those two ... well, you know those two who run it... anything can happen in that place, and I bet it usually does.”

“Look, dear,” Norma said, and an icy feeling moved along her spine. She didn’t like the way the Pond girl kept looking around her as if she were ...
hunting.

That’s what Norma thought. It was as if the girl was hunting for the children.

“Look, I didn’t want to tell you this,” Lizzie said, looking up at her with the face of absolute sweetness. “But Ronnie sometimes drinks a little. Not enough where most people would notice it. But I do. And I think it’s terrible. Just terrible. Our father was an alcoholic. You knew that, didn’t you? An awful man. He used to do terrible things to Ronnie and me when we were just toddlers. I don’t like the smell of liquor because of him. But Ronnie, well, she’s a little too much like him.”

Norma opened the door a bit. Now, the one thing about Norma Houseman was that she loved bad news about other people. And she loved the inner secrets of those around her. She had spent most of her life feeling happy at the misfortunes of others, and though she knew intellectually this wasn’t the right way to be, she could not help herself, any more than the chocolate-lover could resist a ten-pound box from Godiva. She enjoyed hearing the failings of her neighbors, and she took special pleasure in knowing that there were local sinners of any kind.
Makes perfect sense,
she thought.
Veronica Pond always seemed so perfect, but there was that rumor about her. About her and that boy in town. About them being up to no good.

“So,” Lizzie said, her smile brightening.

“All right, dear,” Norma said, opening the door a bit wider and stepping back.

Lizzie stepped in, and drew the small knife from behind her back.

She pointed it at Norma, even while she elbowed the front door shut.

Norma laughed. “Jesus, Lizzie, I don’t know what kind of joke this is, but a knife like that?”

Lizzie quickly jabbed the knife into Norma’s left shoulder. Twisted it slightly. Norma felt the stab of pain shoot out from her arm and up the back of her neck. Lizzie pressed the knife deeply into the doorframe.

“There, you’re pinned,” Lizzie said. Then she reached into her coat pocket and brought out a corkscrew. “Okay, try this.” She brought the metal corkscrew up to Norma’s mouth. “Suck it. Suck it like it’s Chuck Waller’s prick.”

Norma stared at Lizzie as if she’d never seen her before. The pain in her right arm was intense, and she wasn’t sure she could tug away from the doorframe at all without causing more tearing and more pain. “Please, Lizzie. I don’t know ... I don’t know why you feel... why you’re doing ...” The pain was white-hot now, and Lizzie jiggled the corkscrew against her lips.

“Suck it. Suck it like a good girl. Well, a good bad girl.”

Norma said nothing.

She tasted the cold metal against her lips as Lizzie pressed the corkscrew to her. The girl nudged her lips apart with it so that it clacked against her front teeth.

“Suck it like a whore,” Lizzie said.

“Get out of my house,” Norma with her teeth clenched, but tears streamed down her face. She was too frightened to move, fearing that this crazy Pond girl might stab her again if she moved too fast or did anything untoward. Her mind raced as she tried to figure a way out of this.
If I tear my arm away, it may hurt. But I need to. I need to face it. Face the pain. Face it.

And somewhere in the pit of her stomach, Norma Houseman had begun to feel a strange excitement. Fear and pain all messed up with a tingling inside her, as if she were about to have an adventure the likes of which she’d never before experienced. It was as if she were getting an adrenaline high from all this—as if she could smell something sweet and rancid that somehow made her all tingly.

Like I’m dreaming.

It’s my dream,
she thought.

Norma had had the dream just weeks earlier, and had been unable to shake it. It didn’t involve Lizzie Pond, but a handsome stranger who had taken his fingers and pried her lips apart to thrust them inside her mouth.
Oh,
she realized.
Not a stranger at all.
It was Chuck. She had a sex dream about him, and in it, he’d been forceful and overpowering—something she normally didn’t like at all. But in that dream, he had taken her like some primitive male force. And she had sucked his fingers in the dream, feeling dread and excitement at the same time, while his other hand had explored her body.

It was just like this. The terrible fear. The tingling.

The thrill.

“You don’t suck, your kids will die.” Lizzie Pond said this with such conviction that Norma nearly believed her. “If you don’t take this corkscrew into the back of your hot little throat, Mrs. Houseman, I will go upstairs and into your backyard and I will murder each of your children. But first, I will tie you up so that you watch each of them die. And I will prolong their deaths for as long as I can. I will play with their suffering for your entertainment. Well, really for my entertainment.”

You’re insane. This is insane. Insane but somehow... somehow it’s what I dreamed of.

“Suck,” Lizzie said. “I will kill your kids, Mrs. Houseman, if you do not. I’ve always hated you. And I’ve always hated them. And unless you want to see their little faces screaming in pain, you will take this in your mouth and give it a nice polishing.”

“Why are you doing this?” Norma asked feebly. “Why?”

Then Norma parted her lips and felt the cold metal enter her mouth.

5

Elsewhere in the village, other boys and girls entered their parents’ rooms. A boy named Zack Holmes grabbed the wheel of the car from his mother as she drove him and their father out to an early dinner. He twirled the wheel so that the car spun out, then aimed it right for the telephone pole at the intersection of Macklin and Main. Inside the supermarket, four little tow-headed kids, ranging in age from eight to thirteen, had begun running down people with shopping carts and then kicking them in the head. Roland Love might be seen with a large wooden cross that he’d begun dragging up the hill toward the mansion beyond the village. A school bus that was bringing Parham’s sixth grade back home late after a field trip at the planetarium over in Wheatley was hijacked by two of the girls, who slammed the bus driver’s face into the windshield until he passed out. Gunfire was heard if you listened for it; screams now and then let out, although those who wished to scream sometimes had been cut down well before the sound could make its way up from their throats. Wild dogs and feral cats ran along the side streets, sometimes dragging bits of human flesh. Still others awoke or went into dreams or lay down for naps and blamed overwork and the change in weather and the lack of good sleep as the reason for wanting to wander off into dreamland.

Yet there were still people in the village of Watch Point, well before nightfall, who had not really noticed how things had changed that day, of how whatever had been planted on a stormy summer night had reached its bloom and opened up, a carnivorous flower, its perfume wafting on the October air.

6

So,
this was what you wanted
—
you wanted to dream about the village, bring them sleep and the monsters that roam in their dreams will come into their flesh. You wanted to wander through their rooms and open their doors and find that part of them that could put you in control.

You wanted to whisper among them, free at last from the brick and wood that had captured you for centuries.

This was why the ritual had changed you
—
you were able to escape from the trap that once had been set for you.

You are the Nightwatchman, and the night has already begun.

The man who thought all this opened his eyes.

I am Mr. Spider. I am the Nightwatchman.

The air tasted crisp and fresh, and he felt as if he breathed for the first time. He felt the opening within his heart, and the electric jangle along his ribcage as it traveled outward.

He watched the little boy named Kazi Vrabec crawl up along the balcony, sidling along the slender ledge, over toward the open window into Harrow.

When the boy slipped through the window, the pane slammed shut behind him with such force that it cracked the glass.

PART THREE

THE MIND OF HARROW

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1

Kazi Vrabec glanced back at the windowpane. From inside the house, the glass looked filthy and was covered with what might’ve been dead flies that had been squished and left in place, pasted by their own mush. He looked back out the window, but the world beyond it looked fuzzy and blurry, and he couldn’t see much beyond the balcony directly to the left of the window. He looked along the edge of the lawn and the driveway for the man called Mr. Spider, but he couldn’t see him. Then Kazi turned to look at the room. It was nearly in darkness, except for the last bit of daylight outside, and three candles that were lit on a table near the door. The room was empty, it seemed, and it smelled like a toilet. The stink began to get to him, so he started breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t smell it.

“You have to help his wife,” he said aloud, hoping it made him sound a little braver than he was feeling. He stepped cautiously across the creaking floorboards, nearly tripping over a loose plank. As he reached the door, he looked over at the burning candles, and saw the source of the stink. It looked like a dead possum lying there. Beside it, two dead crows and tucked back next to the candles were several small dead rats and mice. He stood at the door, his hand nearly touching the knob.

He had stopped breathing through his mouth, and now felt the heaviness of the stench of these dead animals.

He took a deep breath and touched the doorknob, turning it. Opening the door, he looked at the dead animals rather than out into the hallway. He noticed that just behind the animals was torn wallpaper, and in the flickering candlelight he could see what looked like drawings of stick figure people doing awful things to each other.

He looked away and drew the door completely open. Beyond the doorway, he thought he heard someone wheezing. It reminded him too much of his grandmother when she was sick. That heavy inhaling and exhaling with the whistle of a balloon in it, too.

Kazi shot one more glance to the dead animals, then stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind him.

2

Votive candles in mason jars lined the hallway. Kazi glanced down one direction and saw what seemed to be an endless number of doors. At the very end of that hallway was a large, wide mirror with a golden frame and the indication of a stairway that went either up or down—he couldn’t tell. In the opposite direction, the hallway seemed to twist a little and end sooner—as if it turned a corner onto another area. Here, the wallpaper looked perfect and the smell was not so bad. It smelled like cabbage cooking from somewhere, and there was a scent of mild cheese in the air.

You should run downstairs and open the door for Mr. Spider. You should. You should.

And yet, once in the house, Kazi Vrabec did not want to see the man outside again.

You should go get him. He’ll be angry. He may hurt you.

“Hello?” he asked the hallway.

The wheezing sound had become so regular that he nearly had stopped hearing it. It was like a slow, steady thump, and then like moan and a murmur, and then it became a dry, raspy breath. Because he was a little worried about the light, in the house, he squatted down and grasped one of the mason jar candles, and then got up again, using both hands to hold the jar before him.

He didn’t realize that he trembled a little as he took step after step toward the big mirror. The air began to smell sweeter with each step he took, and when he reached the next door, he tucked the jar under his right arm, and pushed the door open without turning the knob.

The door flew back, slamming against the wall, and he looked in at a room that had a bare mattress in the far corner. The window was only partially boarded up. There was a table and a chair near the window. Regular electric lights were on—a bright overhead one and a small lamp next to the mattress—yet these did not fully light the far right side of the room.