The Devouring (21 page)

But so were all the other bodies in Cutter’s Wedge Cemetery. All around them corpses broke through the dirt. Some bodies were covered in decomposing flesh and ragged dresses, recent residents in the graveyard. Others were bone and wiry hair.

“Damn it, Henry! Cut it out!” Reggie pulled her brother out of the grave and dragged him down the slope toward the mirrors. “Your fear is making this worse! Calm down, damn it!”

“You swore, Reggie! Twice!”

Reggie shouldered and shoved her way through the undead hordes, her willpower causing them to collapse and crumble at her touch. Henry followed close at her heels, amazed at his sister’s strength.

They ran into the Hall of Mirrors at the bottom of the hill just as Mom rose from the dirt of Henry’s grave. Inside, horrible reflections played out on the evil mirrors as they stumbled back through the maze toward the carnival.

“Don’t watch,” Reggie said, knowing it was impossible to turn away. “Don’t fear this place!”

They emerged from the mirrors, dashed through the spinning cone and out of the fun house.

“How did you get here, Henry?” Reggie demanded. “Where did you come in?”

“Over there,” said Henry, pointing across the carnival grounds to the red turnstile Reggie had entered on her first visit. She nodded.

“Then that’s how we’re getting out.”

They hopped up onto the carousel to cut across toward the carnival entrance. As Henry passed, horrible metallic groans cried out to him. The hideous beasts on the ride tore away from the carousel platform. Winged gargoyles, demons, and nightmare horses wrenched free from the metal poles and chased Reggie and Henry down the midway. Children with smoking eyes cheered and whistled from all sides.

“Hey, it’s scaredy cat and his loser sister!” shouted the boy in thick glasses. “Where ya goin’, scaredy cat?”

“You guys better quit clowning around!” jeered the blond girl, her head still caved in. “Berzerko’s hopping mad at you now!”

They could see the entrance and the red turnstile that marked the edge of Henry’s fearscape, but before they could reach it, they heard the blare of the air horn. Berzerko hopped onto the midway. He blocked the way out.

Behind, the gargoyles and demons bore down on them in a screeching swarm of teeth, horns, and wings. One of the gargoyles snatched Reggie in its talons and pinned her to the sawdust-coated ground. It grinned with teeth of pointed stone and drooled gray slime on her forehead.

Henry stood in the center of the midway, half frozen. The chil-dren hooted and clapped until an angry roar silenced them all.

“Insolent brats!”

All the fiendish children cowered. The carousel demons went fearfully still, and even the clown dared not move. One fear permeated them all. One fear ripped across all boundaries and flooded over this entire world, briefly freezing time itself.

Mom.

She limped down the midway toward Henry, a broken-heeled shoe in her remaining hand.

“I’ve tried to be a good mother, Henry.” With each step, the ground behind her iced over. “But you just refuse to be a good son. Look at all the trouble you’ve caused.” She lifted up her blackened arm. “And you wonder why I left you?”

“Henry!” Reggie blurted. “Don’t listen to that thing!”

The gargoyle on top of Reggie dug its claws into her chest and she screamed in agony. Now, instead of blood, black smoke poured out of her. She was becoming a part of this place. They needed to get out now, before it consumed both of them.

The deranged clown loomed behind her brother, but in front of him stood a fear so much closer to his heart. He faced the foreboding that crossed all boundaries, the dread that could cut him deeper than any blade.

“Come along, Henry.” The monster dropped the shoe and raised its hand to his cheek. “Come home with Mommy.”

Henry took the photograph out of his shirt pocket.

“You left us,” he said through flowing tears.

“Of course I did, you little toad. You and your useless sister drove me away. I couldn’t stand to be around either of you a day more. All you did was complain. All you did was want. All you did was take.”

“It’s not your fault, Henry.” Reggie’s voice was barely louder than a puff of smoke.

“What if it was my fault?” cried Henry.

Mom’s mouth spread into a cavernous black hole. The gaping maw was like a dark cyclone, poised to pull him in. The air swirled furiously. Reggie thought she could feel bits of herself tearing away, disappearing into the void of the fearscape. Henry was losing.

“I think she did her best to take care of us, Henry,” she whispered. “But something happened inside her. Something made her feel like all she could do was run away.”

Mom towered over the boy, and the ground around them turned to ice.

“Mom wasn’t brave enough, Henry,” said Reggie. “She was the one who was scared. She couldn’t face her fear. Not you. You stand up to it. We practiced together, remember?”

That conversation they’d had on Henry’s bed seemed ages ago now. Could Henry even recall it?

“That’s right, we practiced,” said Henry slowly, as if digging up a memory long buried. He turned to his sister and spoke so softly. “I believe you, Reggie.”

Behind Henry, Berzerko raised the hatchet. The red-slick blade shone in the dull light before it came swinging down.

The boy gazed at the photograph of his family, the last vestige of love and warmth.

“I love you, Mommy, but we’ll be all right without you.”

The distorted image of his mother leaned forward, ready to swallow Henry whole, just as the hatchet sailed through the air. Berzerko’s blade sheared into her neck and passed clean through. Chocolate hair twirled and danced like ribbons in the breeze as her head tumbled, severed, to the ground.

“Oops,” said the boy in the glasses. “I think he missed.”

The clown stumbled backward, smoke wafting from his eyes and mouth. He shook as if being electrocuted and then vanished into a column of golden flames. Only the hatchet-hand remained, laying on the ground and smoldering. Soon it disappeared as well.

The gargoyle on Reggie exploded into white powder. All around her, creatures and children crackled and burst into brilliant flashes of white. The rides quavered and imploded into tiny suns, and the ice and sawdust beneath them turned to cottony down. A deafening roar shook the world as Mom’s body swirled like oily paint down a storm drain. Soon only Reggie, Henry, and the red turnstile remained on the emptied fearscape’s canvas.

Reggie threw her arms around her brother. “You did it, Henry. You battled your worst fears. And you
won.
”

For a moment he hung limp in her arms, and then he hugged her back. Exhausted, they walked to the turnstile.

“Henry,” Reggie said. “I need to tell you something before we go. Our bodies may still be in danger. We might —”

“It’s okay,” said Henry. “Whatever happens, I’m not scared.”

“Me neither.” Reggie gestured to the turnstile, catching just the slightest whiff of buttered popcorn. “After you.”

Henry pushed through the turnstile and Reggie followed.

The entire fearscape collapsed behind them.

25

Reggie gasped and moaned on the ice.

“Reggie!” Aaron shouted. “Reggie! Are you alive?”

The black fog of her mind cleared away, and the frigid air jolted Reggie back into reality. She opened her eyes.

“I’m alive.”

“We won’t be for long if we stay on this lake,” Eben said.

“Henry.” Reggie struggled onto her knees and looked down at her brother. The mottled burns on the boy’s face and body had faded to mere bruise-like shadows, but the whole of him now looked bluish and he shivered wildly. Some of his fingers and toes were black. “Oh, my God,” she gasped.

Eben took off his wool overcoat and wrapped it around Henry. “I’ve got your brother.”

“Eben! What are you doing here?”

“We will talk another time,” he said. “This boy needs medical attention
now.
”

Henry’s eyes popped open, dilated and uncomprehending. As Eben lifted him up, the boy’s shivering lessened, but his breathing seemed even shallower.

“Hold on, Hen,” Aaron said. “We’ll get you all warmed up.”

Hobbling with his cane tucked under his arm, Eben carried Henry to shore. The child hung limply in his arms. Aaron put on his jacket, and then he and Reggie staggered behind, supporting one another.

“Get him in the truck.” Aaron stumbled beside Reggie up the bank. “I have supplies.”

He dragged a duffel from the trunk as Eben laid the boy across the SUV’s backseat. The old man untied Henry’s bonds. Before Aaron could speak, Reggie snatched the bag from him and frantically pulled towels and blankets from it. A hot-water bottle tumbled onto the ground.

“He’s blue.” A twinge of hysteria creaked in her voice.

“He’s cyanotic from exposure. Be calm,” Eben said. “Dry him gently.”

Eben wrapped up the hot-water bottle and placed it on the child’s chest while Aaron swaddled the darkening hands and feet with dry towels. Reggie cocooned her brother with quilts. He remained still as a corpse.

“Henry.” Reggie leaned over him, stroking his hair. “Henry, we made it. Please!”

The boy took a huge shuddering breath, then stirred.

“Reggie,” he said, his tiny voice sleepy and slurred.

“Yes.” Tears misted her eyes. “I’m here.”

“The Vour poured out of him while he was still knocked out on the ice,” Aaron said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It just ... vanished. You beat it.”

“I didn’t beat it, Aaron. Henry did.”

Henry closed his eyes again and drifted off, but his breathing steadied, and his color returned. Eben crouched to examine him. The tip of Henry’s left ear was burned black.

“We need to get to a hospital,” he said.

“Eben. Please tell me what you’re doing here.”

“He saved me, Reg,” Aaron said quietly. “He stopped Quinn.”

Eben stood slowly. His face was granite. His long shadow spilled across her, cast by the Cadillac’s headlights.

“I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. But events have unfolded in a way I did not foresee.”

“Who the hell are you?” Reggie backed away, the man she once saw as a second father now an intimidating stranger.

“I’m an old soldier fighting a war you’re just beginning to understand.”

“God,” Aaron said flatly. “You knew. The entire time you knew. Why —”

“Listen to me very carefully,” Eben continued. “The battery is dead on this monstrosity.” He pointed at the SUV. “I’ll jump-start it with my car. But hear me now, both of you.” Eben pointed into the night sky beyond the lake. “Do you see that cluster of stars over there?”

A single asterism burned brighter than the rest, shimmering like a handful of blue sapphires.

“What?” Aaron asked. “You mean the Pleiades?”

“Very good. I figured you’d be interested in astronomy. The Pleiades cluster is at its most visible now.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Reggie snapped. “Why should we care about that right now?”

“Because,” Eben said, “that’s what you all came out here to see, away from the lights of town, out on the lake’s wide-open space. But poor Henry fell through the ice, so you got him out of his wet clothes, wrapped him in a blanket, and rushed him to the ER. That’s your story. Do not waver from it.”

“What about Quinn’s car?” Aaron asked.

“I’ll take care of it. I know a thing or two about making people disappear. Now move.”

Reggie sat in the back of the SUV, cradling her shivering brother. She’d cast aside the wet and unraveling bandages from her hands. Black lesions crisscrossed her knuckles where the mirrors had cut her, and her shoulder burned from the gargoyle’s talons. She looked at her reflection in the window glass. A knit cap covered her charred hair, and dark rings encircled her eyes.

Henry was safe. Nothing else mattered.

Aaron turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared. It took only seconds before blasts of heat filled the interior. Eben turned from them and slipped into the dark night.

“Where’s Quinn?” Reggie asked. “What happened to him?”

“He’s ... gone.”

Aaron reminded himself that Quinn had tried to kill him — that he was a Vour — but he couldn’t help thinking about the real Quinn, the Quinn trapped in his own horrific world for years longer than Henry. And he wondered just how on earth they would explain the death of their town’s golden boy.

Reggie nodded. “Get us to the emergency room. Hurry.”

Aaron spun the truck around and drove toward the few remaining lights that burned in the sleepy town.

“The world of Cutter’s Wedge still spins, Reggie. I didn’t think you’d make it back. I thought you were both lost.”

Reggie kissed her brother’s head and caressed the blackened pinkie finger on Henry’s right hand.

“He’s a tough kid, Aaron.”

“Like his sister.”

The bright red cross that marked the C.W. Hospital Emergency Entrance came into view as Aaron pulled into the circular driveway.

Reggie opened the door and stepped out. She lifted Henry up in her arms and kicked the door shut with her foot. Aaron rolled down the passenger side window.

“Go,” she said. “Find Eben. And call my Dad. Tell him ... tell him we need him.”

“Reggie?” Aaron’s voice was dour. “Quinn told me there were more of them. A lot more.”

“Quinn’s dead now. So is the Vour in the basement. And so is the monster that took Henry. We survived.”

Even as she said it, she remembered the hideous voice that had groaned from her brother’s lips:
“I’ll be here forever.”

“But they’ll come for us again,” Aaron said. “They’ll come for you.”

Reggie carried her brother toward the white, warm light of the emergency room lobby as a gentle snow began to fall. Eben had said that this was a war, one she was only beginning to understand ... and he was right.

“They’ll come.” She did not turn around. “I’ll be ready.”