Helltown (13 page)

Mandy thrashed through the scrub, out of control, like a drowning swimmer. Her throat, already raw from being strangled, was now on fire. Her breathing came in gasping sobs. The scent of rot and evergreen seared her nostrils. She dodged vegetation left and right, leaping and ducking obstacles she saw at the last second, praying she didn’t poke out an eye. She raised her arms for protection against the brittle branches clawing at her face, but she could do little to prevent them from piercing the thin Spandex of her costume, scouring her stomach and legs, drawing warm blood from a half-dozen different cuts.

Cherry thought she had lost Earl when a hand suddenly seized her shoulder. She felt resistance, felt herself slowing. Then a loud tear. Her top. She was free, picking up speed. But she only made it a few more steps before Earl seized her shoulder again, this time dragging her to the ground.

She scrambled forward on all fours, the giant clawing her back, her rear, searching for purchase. He snagged her leg, his fingers pinching her flesh. She kicked her foot, once, twice, and connected with his face or shoulder. Yet he wouldn’t let go. She rolled onto her back, gasping for breath, struggling to free herself. He raised a fist. She brought up her arms in front of her face to block the blow. His swing came from the side, plowing into her left ear, knocking her senseless. He raised his fist again. She yelled and squirmed. He smashed her jaw.

Holding onto consciousness by a thread, Cherry shoved her hands into his face, pushing him away. One of her thumbs found an eye socket and she dug deep.

Earl reared up with a startled cry. She wormed out from beneath him, flipped onto her front, and crawled away. She didn’t get far. A moment later he appeared next to her and mumbled something that might have been, “Nice try, little girl.” He kicked her in the stomach, lifting her clear off the ground, turning her turtle onto her back. He kicked her in her side again and again, relentless. She heard her ribs snapping with twiggy, gristly sounds, and the certain realization that she was going to die filled her with an incomprehensible terror the likes of which she had never experienced
.

Mandy blundered blindly into a glade of waist-high grass and cattails. She tripped on a root, pin-wheeled forward, and fell, slamming her chin against the ground so hard her upper teeth punctured her lower lip. Blood gushed into her mouth. She attempted to push herself to her knees, but didn’t have the strength. Instead, she was reduced to pulling herself forward, like something primordial that had just slithered out of the ocean for the first time.

When a shrill cry shattered the night, Mandy knew it belonged to Cherry. Still, she didn’t contemplate turning back. What could she do? She’d tried to fight them, and she’d failed. She was too small, too weak, outnumbered. Cleavon and his freak brothers were animals, crazy, sick. They would surely do to her…whatever they were doing to Cherry.

Cherry wailed again in abject pain and misery.

Somehow Mandy regained her feet.

She ran.

CHAPTER 9

“I’m the guy that’s gonna save your ass.”

Feast
(2005)

“Here we are, I guess,” the driver of the white Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am said. “Boston Mills.” He had only spoken a few words since he’d picked up Beetle fifty miles back on Interstate 77, mostly to tell him he could take him as far as the Ohio Turnpike. “Sorry it’s not someplace bigger,” he added. “But I’ll be heading east now to Warren. You’ll be fine here for the night?”

Beetle nodded. His real name was Frederick Walker, but in the army you got nicknames, and they stuck—enough at least Freddy still thought of himself as Beetle, which he’d received because of his thick eyebrows and square face. “I’ll be fine,” Beetle said, “and thanks for the ride.” He got out and watched the Firebird drive off, vanishing into the fog, there one moment, gone the next, like a ghost ship glimpsed momentarily at sea.

The street was deserted. The only light came from a nearby sodium arc streetlamp that cleaved an inverted copper cone through the mist.

Beetle glanced at his wristwatch. 8:40 p.m. Not so late that there shouldn’t be a coffee shop open, or a couple out for a walk. Then again, it being Halloween night, he supposed everyone had closed up to take their kids out trick-or-treating in the residential neighborhoods.

He started walking in the direction the Firebird had gone and passed the typical businesses you found along the main drag in most small towns: a barbershop, a bookstore, a diner, a druggist, a real estate office, a shoe store. The exteriors were weatherworn, most in need of a coat of paint, the display windows as frost-blank as cataracted eyes. Graffiti covered the boarded-up entrance of an out-of-business tavern.

At the end of the block the street signs told him he was at the intersection of Main Street and Stanford Road.

While deciding which way to go he made out voices and laughter from somewhere ahead of him. Some ten seconds later two silhouettes materialized in the gray gloom before resolving into teenage boys. They were sixteen or seventeen, both dressed in torn jeans and wool football jackets with leather sleeves. The one on left had a buzz cut, the one on the right a mushroom cut with bangs that went to his chin. They were each gripping open wine bottles by the necks. They stopped when they saw Beetle. Their bantering ceased. Then, realizing he was too young to be a parent, they continued toward him with the awkwardness of kids who knew they were doing something wrong and were hoping you didn’t say anything about it.

“Excuse me,” Beetle said when they were a few feet away.

They slowed but kept walking. Buzzcut eyed him warily. “Yeah?”

“Can you tell me where the nearest motel is?”

Buzzcut stopped. Angry red splotches of acne marred his face. His mouth hung open slightly, and he could have done with a pair of braces, maybe one of those full headset deals. Mushroomcut slouched against a newspaper box and cleared the bangs from his face with a quick, neat jerk of his neck.

“You a soldier or something?” Buzzcut said, eyeing Beetle’s woodland camouflage shirt.

“The motel?” Beetle said.

The kid shrugged. “Only two in town. The Pines has an indoor pool, but it’s way over on the south side. The Hilltop’s closer, down that ways a bit, but no pool.” He pointed north along the cross street. “Keep going for a couple blocks to the edge of town. Then keep going maybe five more minutes. You’ll see it right up on a hill like the name says. Can’t miss it. Oh, and so you know, the church with the upside down crosses is another five minutes farther on, right on the edge of the national park.”

“Upside down crosses?” Beetle said.

Buzzcut nodded. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“To see the church?” Beetle asked.

“The church, the graveyard, the slaughterhouse.” His face lit up with an idea. “Hey, you want a guide tomorrow? I can meet you at Hilltop. Five bucks and I’ll show you everything.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know about the legends?”

“What legends?”

“You know you’re in Helltown, right?”

Beetle shook his head.

“So what you doing out here?” Mushroomcut said. “Passing through or something?”

“Or something.”

“Huh,” Buzzcut said. “Don’t get many passer-throughers. Most visitors come to check out the legends.” He frowned. “So you don’t want a guide?”

“No, but thanks for the directions.” Beetle started away, then hesitated. He took his wallet from his pocket, turned back around, and handed Buzzcut a fifty-dollar note. “Split it,” he said.

“Holy Christ! A fifty! Thanks, mister!”

Buzzcut took off down the street, hollering like an ape, dollops of wine jumping from the mouth of his bottle. Mushroomcut followed on his heels, grasping for the bill, telling Buzzcut they had to share it.

Beetle continued down Stanford Road, in the direction of the motel.

The houses he passed reminded him of those you might find at a military base that had long since shuttered its doors and had been frozen in time, forgotten by the world. Most were dilapidated things with weed-infested front yards littered with rusted bicycles and neglected toys and garden equipment. From inside a bungalow bunkered behind a corrugated iron fence, a woman cried out in a bitter, hysterical voice, something about the dog and dinner and “getting off your ass and helping out!” The husband shouted back, punctuating every few words with expletives.

The arguing made Beetle think of Sarah—or, more precisely, his relationship with Sarah, how it had been at the end. It was funny, he thought, how something so good between two people could go so bad. But that’s how it worked, wasn’t it? If he and Sarah hadn’t loved each other the way they had, they wouldn’t have bothered hating each other the way they had.

Beetle had met Sarah shortly after he’d finished Ranger School. He’d already completed Basic Training, Advanced Individual Training, Airborne School, and the Ranger Indoctrination Program. And he’d already been assigned to the 1st Ranger Battalion for the previous eleven months. Ranger School was more of an old tradition than anything else, but it was a requirement for leadership positions within the 75
^th
Regiment.

To celebrate graduating the two-month course, during which he’d managed on less than three hours sleep a night and one and a half meals a day, Beetle and a few other soldiers secured thirty-six hour passes for the weekend. They rented rooms in a Sheraton in downtown Savannah, Georgia, went for dinner at a steakhouse recommended to them by their commanding officer, then moved on to the bevy of Irish pubs the city was famous for. By midnight only Beetle and a guy named Tony Gebhardt remained from the original group of six; the others had either gone off with girls they’d met, or hookers. Beetle and Tony were contemplating calling it a night when Beetle spotted Sarah at the bar. With her dark hair tied into pig tails, and a splattering of freckles across her nose, she was cute rather than sexy, though still quite attractive.

Tony wiggled his eyebrows at Beetle, and Beetle decided what the hell. He went to the bar, waved to get the bartender’s attention, and said to Sarah, “Hi, I’m Beetle.”

“Hi,” she said, giving him a quick up and down. Drinking and smoking were prohibited while on pass, so he was dressed in civilian clothes to avoid drawing attention to himself.

“I know how this sounds,” he said, “but you remind me of someone.”

“Punky Brewster, right? I get it all the time.”

Beetle laughed. Because she was right. She did look like Punky Brewster, albeit a grownup version. “Maybe that’s it,” he said.

“So—did you come over to buy me my drink?”

“Sure,” he said as the bartender arrived. “Coors for me, and put, uh—”

“Sarah.”

“—Sarah’s drink on my tab.”

Sarah smiled at him, raised her blue cocktail, then started walking away.

“Hey,” he called after her. “Where’re you going?”

“My table—join if you’d like.”