Creekers (64 page)

Mannona, come…

The giant man from the stairs stepped forward, the crevices in his squashed face like gouges in clay. His voice rattled:

“We give you this day your daily flesh…”

Dawnie shrieked a final time as she was thrown into the corner with the thing. Suggestions of limbs reached out, hands more like feet, with clusters of foot-long fingers. Dawnie was quickly pulled into the darkness.

Then came a wet gnawing sound. And then—

thump!

Dawnie was thrown back out onto the floor.

The sunlight blazed. It wasn’t Dawnie anymore, just the vaguely human shape of what was left of her. Radiant wet scarlet limbs askew on the floor. Scalped, faceless now. A tiny wet red body.

Fully and completely skinned.

The giant man’s hand reached out and down like a descending vulture. He hauled Phil up, and then his dark voice grated: “Go now, boy. Run away fast.” The red eyes drilled into Phil’s face. “But we’ll see you again someday.”

««—»»

“Phil? Phil?”

pap-pap-pap

“Phil?”

Repeated slight slaps to the face revived him. His eyes felt glued shut; when he opened them, he actually heard a peeling sound, and then realized that it was blood that had sealed them shut. He looked up at Vicki’s blurred face, which seemed to swim above him. His consciousness corkscrewed.

He muttered one word: “Ona.”

Did she scowl at him? The word seemed to put a pike in her expression. “You were out longer than I was. Are you all right?”

“I think so. Christ, that fucker Sullivan hit me hard.”

“You were dreaming,” she said.

Dreaming. Was he?
Or was I remembering?
Leaning up from the couch, he told her the whole story, twenty-five years late. About that day. About Dawnie, and the House, and the things he’d seen in it. “When I got back to my aunt’s house, I had a bad fever. I was laid up for days, didn’t know anything. The doctor came over, and I told him the story, and he told my aunt that I was hallucinating.”

“You weren’t,” Vicki said.

Phil contemplated that, reserving comment. He looked at her. Her face was bruised, there was blood crusting her red hair, and her clothes were torn. He also noticed that some of her teeth were missing.

“They raped you, didn’t they? I mean, before they beat you up and brought you out to the car?”

Very hesitantly, she nodded. “There were so many of them,” she eventually murmured. “They were taking turns with me. They were all laughing while they were doing it.”

“Don’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s best not to even think about it. Look, I’m gonna check you into the hospital, then I’ve got some things to take care of.” Oh, he had things to take care of all right. First, Sullivan, then Natter.
And fuck the judicial process,
he told himself. Why bother? He was going to tend to this himself.

“Don’t take me to the hospital,” she pleaded. “You don’t know Cody. He’ll figure that’s what you did, then he’ll send someone. You don’t understand these people. They’ll sacrifice themselves for him. He’ll send someone to kill me. Just let me go with you.”

What could he say?
She’s right.
“Okay. Let’s go.”

He helped her up, and aided her down the hall and back out to the car. He had lots of questions, but he didn’t want to pour them on all at once, not after what she’d just been through. “Let me ask you something, Vicki. How did Natter know that I’d seen you?”

“Watchdogs,” she told him. “He had Creekers following me. They must’ve seen me come here… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault.”
Watchdogs, huh?
he thought.
Well, I’ll be putting a leash on them, and fast.
It was close to two in the morning. He drove the Malibu down the Route to the station. “Shit!” he exclaimed when he pulled into the lot. Mullins’ car wasn’t there, and neither was Susan’s.

Phil needed backup. And he needed guns.

“I gotta find some hardware,” he said. “Come on.”

In Mullins’ office there was nothing, just file cabinets full of papers, and an equipment locker hung with junk. He tried calling Mullins, but there was no answer. No answer at Susan’s either. And just as he hung up the receiver, the phone rang…

“Yeah?” he answered, wiping sweat. and blood off his brow.

The ancient voice creaked like an old house in the wind. “Didn’t I tell you, all those years ago, that we’d see you again someday?”

But we’ll see you again someday,
his memories echoed.

He’d known the minute he regained consciousness that the giant figure from his childhood and Natter were the same…

And Natter’s voice, now, rattled on. “An incentive, perhaps? Yes.”

“What are you talking about, you fucker?” Phil yelled into the phone.

“There’s someone here,” Natter guttered on, “who’d like very much to talk to you.” The line crackled, the pause seemed to last hours. Then:

“Phil?”

Phil’s heart dropped. It was Susan.

“Phil, they have me!”

“Where are you?”

“They’re doing…horrible things to me!”

Phil needn’t imagine. “Tell me where you are!”

“Phil, don’t come here! They’ll kill you—”

Her voice was pulled away, and Natter’s returned. “Incentive enough? Or…perhaps not. Listen, lawman.”

A scream shot through the line. Phil winced.

“In case you’re curious as to the cause of that scream,” Natter told him, “I’ll have you know that your good friend Mr. Sullivan just cut off one of your paramour’s nipples with a pair of roofing shears. But perhaps you need even more incentive. Yes?”

“Stop it! I’ll do whatever you say!” Phil yelled.

“Listen.”

“No!”

Another of Susan’s screams shrilled through the line.

“That,” Natter said, “was the entirety of the breast. Your friend Mr. Sullivan really is deft with a knife.”

“Hey, bub,” Phil heard next. “Come on out. Let’s party!”

Phil’s emotions collided. He could picture what they were doing to her. And the only other thing he could picture was killing them all.

“Natter, you there?”

“Indeed.”

“Don’t hurt her anymore. I’ll come out there. Just tell me where.”

“Ah, a test. Think.” Natter chuckled. “You know.”

“No, I don’t know! Tell me where you’re at!”

“Little boy. You remember.”

click

“Goddamn!”
Phil shouted and slammed down the phone.

“They have Susan, don’t they?” Vicki asked.

“Yeah. Why? Why did they take her? Why do they want me to come there when they could’ve killed me earlier at Sallee’s?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Come on!”

They raced outside to the lockup. Maybe Gut, the prisoner, would be able to tell him something. And maybe Mullins had some guns stored there.

But he wilted when he trotted into the room of holding cells.

Gut had been…

Gutted,
Phil observed.

He’d been hung by the neck from the cell’s ceiling, his large abdomen drooping open like fat white lips from a spine-deep knife slash. His innards lay in a pile at his swinging feet.

He pushed Vicki out into the hall before she could see it all. “Go down to the end of the hall and check out the storage room,” he directed. “Look for guns, ammo, anything we can use for weapons. Hurry!”

Distracted, she did so, and Phil went back into the cell rows. Gut’s cell door was unlocked.
Who unlocked it?
And when he looked closer, he noticed a scrap of paper pinned to Gut’s chest.

Phil squinted through the bars.

WE’RE WAITING FOR YOU, someone had written on the note.

In blood.

Christ, they planned this whole thing. But why?

He didn’t waste time. Several more lockers lined the block. Phil rummaged through them all but found nothing in the way of weapons.
What kind of a fucking police station is this?
he outraged to himself. There wasn’t a gun to be found.
Like a fucking gas station with no gas!
All he had was a puny .25, but he’d need a lot more than that for the undertaking he foresaw. A shotgun at least, and a couple of 9mm’s would be nice. But in the last locker, in a box at the bottom, something caught his eye. He picked it up…