The Devouring (20 page)
A large chunk of ice broke away right behind Aaron, and he slipped to his knees.
“I just wanted to drown you in fear, Cole,” Quinn said in his human voice. “But it looks like you’ve opted for the real deal, huh?” He laughed and shook his head. “What a story this will make.”
Aaron struggled to stay atop a wobbly hunk of ice. The fissures widened around him.
“‘Troubled Teen Drowns Girlfriend, Then Self,’” Quinn continued. “Now that’s a gripping headline. Cutter’s Wedge folks don’t get the juicy homicide/suicide stories like the big cities, Cole. You’ll be the talk of the town for years!”
Aaron crawled toward the bodies on the adjacent plate of ice.
“They’ll interview your parents, your teachers ... they’ll snoop through your locker and your bedroom. Wonder what they’ll find.”
Aaron crept across the deepening cracks in the ice and reached his friends. He put his hand on Reggie’s back. She was still breathing, still alive. Still in the fearscape with Henry.
Henry felt like a corpse to Aaron’s touch. He gripped the boy’s ankle tightly and, on hands and knees, pulled the entwined siblings inch by inch to the shore. Quinn took another step forward, just as wary of the splitting ice as Aaron.
“You won’t make it to the other side without those two coming apart,” Quinn said.
“Maybe not. But I’ll get them both to safety.”
“Safety? Not much of a girlfriend if her brain’s cooked.”
So, if Reggie and Henry’s physical contact was broken during the trance, she might not ever come back . . .
“Good to know, Quinn. Thanks for the tip.”
“Doesn’t matter what you know. You’re dead.”
Aaron stood up, took hold of Henry’s ankle again, and shuffled toward shore. A few steps across, the ice shifted and upset his balance. He dropped Henry’s ankle to brace a palm against the ice. His left hand touched down on metal instead. It was the tire iron he’d given Reggie to make the hole.
“We’ve taken your girlfriend.” Quinn circled the breaking section of ice, puffs of black smoke rising from his eyes and mouth and writhing in the air like snakes. “We’ve taken her little brother. And we’ve taken more. So many more.”
Aaron picked up the tire iron and wobbled to his feet. He’d dragged Reggie and Henry almost ten feet from the hole. Not far, but far enough away from the thinnest ice. The portion beneath his feet felt thicker, if just barely so. It could hold a few minutes, but not if Quinn came closer. Not if Aaron didn’t make a move.
He charged at Quinn, full of rage, and brought the tire iron down hard and fast. Quinn raised his right arm to shield the blow, and the rod hit it just below the elbow. The monster shrieked, cradling his forearm, but Aaron did not relent. He dove at Quinn, and the two fell down hard onto the ice. The lake cracked under Quinn’s back and a spurt of water splashed over both of them.
Aaron lifted the tire iron again. His body shook from the chill of the frigid water. But as he brought the rod down a second time, Quinn punched him in the throat.
Aaron gagged and bit his tongue. He dropped the tire iron and rolled sideways, clutching his windpipe and gasping for breath. Quinn picked up the tire iron in his left hand. The other arm hung limply at his side.
“You psycho,” Quinn said, waving the iron slowly. “You have any idea how lucky you are that this isn’t my throwing arm?”
He pierced Aaron’s shoe with the sharp end of the iron. Aaron croaked in pain as new veins cracked across the ice. Quinn grabbed the tire iron with both hands and held it over Aaron’s chest, point downward, like an impaling spike.
“I am
so
tempted to stab you through the heart.
But
you need to make a pretty corpse so that when they drag you from the lake, it just looks like your girl put up a good fight.”
He lifted Aaron’s bleeding foot and dragged him toward the fresh crack in the ice.
“So now, you drown.”
With his uninjured leg, Aaron swiped at Quinn’s ankles and knocked his feet out from underneath him.
Quinn crashed through a patch of thin ice and fell into the freezing water. He clawed at the slippery ice, sliding down into the water until only his head and arms remained above the surface. Aaron, still on his back, was afraid to stand up; he was terrified that the ice would give way beneath him. He tried to roll away from Quinn, but a flailing hand caught hold of his ankle and held fast. Quinn was sinking, and dragging Aaron down with him.
Aaron kicked at the clutching fingers, and desperately struggled for a handhold on the ice, but it was of no use. He slid helplessly on his back toward the blackening Vour, the dark water, and death.
Reggie flung the coats on the rack wide open and stared up at the monster that had taken the form of her mother.
“Regina Marie Halloway.” She put her hands on her hips, then she smiled, and Reggie heard the crackle of ice. “Just what do you think you’re doing under there?”
Henry ducked behind his sister, desperately trying to hide.
“Henry?” Mom said. “I’m ashamed of you. We talked about visitors down here, didn’t we? Do you remember what Mommy said about inviting —”
“Shut your hole,” Reggie said. “I don’t need an invitation. I know how this game of yours works now, and I’m taking my brother back.”
Mom reached out a smooth, dainty hand. “Now, I won’t ever claim to be the perfect mother, Regina.” Her arm stretched like taffy and clutched Reggie by the throat. She yanked her out from under the rack. “But I deserve respect in my household.”
Henry scrambled out. “Don’t hurt her, Mama!”
Mom’s face contorted into a gruesome mask with cheeks stretched upwards, eyes bulging. Her skin rippled violently as she pointed a long finger at Henry.
The boy’s mouth disappeared; from nose to chin, there was only a smooth plane of skin.
“Quiet, Henry dear.”
Reggie scratched at the cold grip on her throat.
“Fight her ... ,” Reggie choked.
Mom’s arm reeled Reggie in. The girl wriggled her feet and gasped for breath as the fog closed in again.
“I don’t know how you got this far,” Mom whispered, “but you’ve failed. And once you’re gone I am going to torture your lit-tle brother in ways you can’t fathom. And it will never end —”
As Reggie hung helplessly in the air, General Squeak scuttled up the mother’s long skirt and then climbed onto her back. Reggie craned her head and caught a glimpse of Henry.
Now, instead of fear, his face was twisted with anger. His mouth rematerialized on his face.
“Put her down,” the boy said. “Don’t you dare hurt my sister.”
Mom’s eyes widened as the rodent scuttled down her outstretched arm.
“Tell it to get off of me.” Mom’s head twisted completely around. “Tell it to get down, or I’ll rip her head clean off.”
“No,” Henry said. “I said, put her down!”
The hamster sank its teeth deep into the monster’s wrist, tearing a long gash down her arm. Mom shrieked as black smoke poured from the gaping wound. Reggie pried the icy fingers from her neck and dropped to the ground.
She staggered to her feet and raced for her brother, who now just stared at the wailing vision of their mother.
“Come on, Henry. Let’s go!” She pulled him to the escalator, and the moving steps quickly carried them away. When they reached the top, they stood in the cold hallway of the hospital. The escalator behind them vanished, leaving only a wall of moldering white tile in its place.
A crowd of children rounded the corner at the hallway’s opposite end and shambled toward them. Gray-skinned and blank-eyed, they wore tattered hospital gowns and suffering expressions. They were dead, and they walked, their wounds leaking vile fluids.
Reggie took Henry’s trembling hand.
“Don’t be afraid. They’re not real. Just follow me, and walk through them.”
They waded through phantoms. With mournful cries, the children reached out with tiny dead hands for the siblings. Henry clung to his sister, trying to look straight ahead.
“Don’t go, Henry,” one of them mewed.
“Stay. Don’t leave us,” begged another.
The children’s sadness churned into anger.
“No way out,” one hissed. Another echoed the words. “No way out.” More and more voices shouted. “No way out! No way out!”
“Come on!” Reggie urged.
Reggie and Henry raced through the crowd, scrambling down hall after hall, but there was no sign of an exit; every turn brought them face-to-face with a horde of ghouls. Then they heard the click-clacking of heels approaching.
The ghouls drew nearer. The clacking grew louder, but Henry could not move.
“Henry, they’re not real! It’s your
fear
that’s real! Do you understand? That’s why we’re still trapped here! The Vour thinks you’re just a scared little kid!” Reggie took her brother by the shoulders. “Aren’t you tired of being scared?”
“Yes.”
“So don’t be,” she said. “There’s an elevator here somewhere. Where is it, Henry?”
One little girl reached for Henry and her spectral form passed through him. Henry cried out.
“You just have to calm down long enough to see it! These ghosts can’t hurt you!”
Henry clutched his sister’s hand and shut his eyes. The ghouls pushed forward, but broke against the boy’s small body like a wave.
“That’s it, Henry. Show this thing it can’t scare you anymore.”
The ghosts halted, as if an invisible fence stood between them and their prey. Suddenly, the elevator appeared.
“Good job.”
Quinn was submerged save for a blistered arm, bent at the elbow and resting flat against the ice. He gripped Aaron’s ankle with the assuredness of death.
Aaron screamed. He howled himself hoarse, his terrified gaze leaping to the silent shapes of Reggie and Henry, then to the dark water. Quinn outweighed Aaron by at least thirty pounds. He would sink — and pull his captive along with him. Aaron sat up, clawing and beating the hand, but it would not let go . . .
Light shone across the lake. Aaron looked over to the parking lot to see a pair of headlights gleam back at him.
Aaron skidded on his butt another half foot toward the frigid water. He flopped back down on the ice. More surface area spread across the ice was less likely to break it. And there was nothing harder to move than dead weight.
Dead weight.
He prayed that he wouldn’t die this way.
A figure, silhouetted by the headlights, made its way across the lake. It moved carefully but quickly.
The ice cracked around the hole, the sound like a cable snapping. Aaron screamed for Reggie, for Henry, for the person on the lake, for God, for anyone. No one answered.
The figure drew closer, taking deft, precise steps over the cracked ice. It balanced itself with a cane.
Aaron slid again, and his legs were dragged into the water. The monster seized his belt, trying to pull itself up, but instead pulling Aaron deeper into the ice hole.
There was a dark blur across Aaron’s vision; it took him a moment to make out the familiar face.
“Eben ... how?”
The old man set his cane to one side, bent over in a wide stance, and with nimble fingers unbuckled the belt. Under Quinn’s weight, the belt slipped its loops, and Eben yanked Aaron back from the water. He was free.
Eben snatched Quinn’s hand by its wrist and pulled.
“No!” Aaron shouted. “He’s one of them!”
Quinn broke the water’s surface, now only a semblance of what he was before. Sheets of wrinkled and blackened skin hung from his face and arms. Eben held him up by the wrist, viewing him not with horror, or fear, or any visible emotion at all; he looked like a fisherman unimpressed with his catch.
The oozing, blistered face stared back at Eben.
“You,”
the Vour said, its voice like a warped cello.
“We killed you a long time ago.”
Eben said nothing. In a single twisting motion, he snapped the wrist like dry kindling, and then he let go.
The Vour opened his mouth wide and smoke poured out in place of a scream. It seeped from his eyes and nostrils and stretched out above his head. The monster dwarfed the size of the Vour in the basement, a shadow blacker than deep space. It smothered Aaron and Eben, wrapping wispy talons around their necks, but the Vour itself had no physical strength.
The spirit stretched and twisted, tethered to the sinking body like a vile kite.
A lucid look flashed across Quinn’s face. “Aaron?” he whispered. And then he went under, dragging the Vour behind him, down into the icy water.
Coughing, Eben stooped to pick up his cane. When Aaron met his eyes, they held a depth, or perhaps a coldness, like he’d never witnessed before. He felt the man’s smile in his stomach.
“What are you doing here? How did you know —”
“Hold your tongue and get on your feet, Mr. Cole. We still have some work to do.”
Reggie and Henry ran inside the elevator, but still the clack of heels neared, and ice began to coat the inside of the compartment. Henry pushed the button, but his finger stuck to the frozen surface. Mom appeared at the other end of the dark hospital corridor.
“Running away from home? Shame on you.”
Reggie pounded the button. The frosty doors closed with a splintering groan. The car raced up and then fell backward. Both Henry and Reggie slammed against the wall just as the corny jazz music cut out and the elevator lights popped. The worms and maggots broke through the rotting coffin and leached onto them, swelling fat and thick on Henry’s mounting fear.
“Don’t let them scare you. Use them!” Reggie shouted. “Command them. Make them dig us out. You said you were tired of being afraid. Get us out of here! Do it!”
Henry closed his eyes. She felt the worms struggle, fighting his will with a fierce determination. It was one thing for Reggie to defeat the fear in this place, but for Henry to conquer it was another game entirely.
“Dig,” Henry said.
“Dig us up!”
Reggie felt the earth and wood dissolve away around them. The worms were obeying. Within moments they were cracking the weedy surface and crawling out from the ground.