Helltown (25 page)

Was he unconscious or dead?

Cherry glanced about for the straight razor and realized with dread it must be somewhere inside the truck. For a moment she contemplated jumping up and down on Earl’s skull with her bare feet. But she didn’t. Because what if he was faking, playing possum, waiting for her to come close enough he could spring awake and snatch her?

Earl’s body hiccupped. A moment later his eyes opened. Cherry wasn’t sure whether he could see her or not—then his sightless eyes fell on her. They thundered over. He pushed himself to his knees, weakly, wobbly, like a calf minutes out of the womb.

Cherry stumbled back around the pickup truck’s hood and limped down the driveway. She glanced over her shoulder. Earl was up and loping after her, weaving back and forth like a drunk, one hand to his throat. They were both moving with the speed and grace of geriatric patients, and the scene likely would have been comical had the consequences of getting captured not been so horrifying.

Cherry forced herself to move faster and concentrated on not falling over. She barely felt the sharp crushed stone beneath her bare feet.

Earl, she noticed when she glanced back yet again, was no longer weaving and was closing the distance between them.

Knowing he would soon catch her, Cherry veered left, into the thicket that lined the driveway. Her feet sank into the wet leaf litter and she lost her balance but didn’t fall. She pressed forward blindly, recklessly, batting her way through the spindly branches with her bound hands.

Finally, when she could go no further, she stopped to recuperate. She listened. She could hear Earl behind her, panting, cursing.

Getting closer.

Cherry pressed on. She should have been focused on survival, getting as far away from Earl as possible, and she was, but at the same time her mind was also lecturing her for detouring to the pickup truck. She should have made a straight break for the trees. She might have been alone and wet and lost, but she would have been in a better predicament than she was in right then.

Cherry stumbled into a patch of thigh-high bush. Instead of backing out and feeling her way around, she waded through it. The scratchy shrubbery snagged her skirt and blouse and held her captive. She tugged her clothing, heard the fabric tear, and freed herself.

She only made it another ten feet, however, before she rammed her forehead against a tree trunk and buckled to the ground. She listened for Earl but couldn’t hear anything over her ragged breathing and the drone in her ears.

She didn’t know how long she lay there for, waiting to be discovered, drowsy with pain and despair. Maybe one minute, maybe ten. The cool October air had slipped its icy hands beneath her skin, caressing her bones, whispering for her to relax, to give up the struggle, to slip away—

No!

Consciousness returned with bright urgency. Everything that had occurred over the past ten minutes exploded inside her head in a collage of images—and even as she fought for clarity—
Where was she now? Why was she on the ground? What happened?
—she found Earl towering above her, his face slabs of fat and severe shadows, his eyes dusty white and gleeful.

“Gotcha,” he said, and reached for her.

CHAPTER 21

“They strike, wrap around you. Hold you tighter than your true love. And you get the privilege of hearing bones break before the power of the embrace causes your veins to explode.”

Anaconda
(1997)

After Jeff’s failed attempt to rescue Austin he dragged himself to the door, gripped the knob, and found it locked. Of course it was locked. What had he expected? Someone to open it and tell him, “Golly, what a mix-up! How did you end up in here?” Nevertheless, this understanding didn’t prevent him from shouting as loud as he could, begging for someone to get him out of there, off the fucking slaughter floor. When his throat became raw from this effort, he slumped against the door—and thought his eyes were playing tricks with him. The room was black but not pitch black thanks to the light seeping beneath the door sweep, and in that light he swore he could make out the snake directly ahead of him, perhaps ten feet away. The longer he stared the more convinced he became he was right. But it couldn’t be the snake that had eaten Austin; that nightmare creature wouldn’t be moving for the next few months while it digested it’s man-sized meal.

So a second snake?

Jeff’s heart pounded. The snake—yes, there was no mistaking it for shadows now—lay curled upon itself like a giant garden hose, watching him watch it.

Then it began to move.

Its improbable bulk slinked back and forth, propelling it across the floor toward him. Jeff wanted to scream, but he had no voice. He wanted to run, but he had no use of his legs. All he could do was sit there and watch it come for him.

It went for his legs first. Its serpent head nosed beneath his ankles, lifting them with ease. It looped itself over his shins, then beneath his calves, then back over his shins again. It was one big muscle, he could
feel
its power, and it manipulated him as if he were nothing but a stuffed doll.

As the snake wrapped itself around his waist, it corkscrewed him onto his chest. Screaming now, Jeff thrashed his upper body and pounded the snake with his fists, but none of this did any good.

The eyes!
he thought desperately.
Where are the eyes? Claw the bloody eyes!

But by then it was already too late.

Jeff was floating in a perfect void—perfect because in the void there was a rule, and that rule was no thinking or reflecting or regretting or worrying. All you could do was float and be. Then, he didn’t know when exactly, only at some point during his floating and being, he realized he was thinking after all. But he wasn’t thinking about Austin’s purple and puffy face. Nor was he thinking about the second snake that had slipped itself around his own body and was now in the process of working its monstrous mouth down over his skull. All he was thinking about was his childhood, and that, he decided, was okay, that he would allow.

Specifically, he was thinking of all the Saturday mornings when, after the cartoons had finished, he would go to his garage, stuff a basketball into his backpack, hop onto his BMX dirt bike with the yellow padding around the middle bar so you didn’t smack your balls on it, and ride to the neighborhood school, where he would meet his three closest friends and play whatever game they were into. Bernie Hughes always preferred box ball because he had a curveball you couldn’t help but chase out of the strike zone. Alf Deacon liked Checkers because he was fat and lazy and you didn’t have to run playing Checkers. Chris Throssell always picked basketball because he was taller than the rest of them and could get most of the rebounds.

Jeff, on the other hand, never cared which game they chose. He was equally good at all of them. He hit the most home runs in box ball. He was always one move ahead of them in Checkers. And despite being a few inches shorter than Chris, he scored the most baskets in basketball, zipping around the beanpole, layup after layup.

Jeff didn’t know why he excelled so naturally at sports. He didn’t have the ideal build for them, not then at least. He’d been one of the shortest kids in all his classes up until grade eight when his growth spurt kicked in. It was true he’d always been coordinated. That helped, he supposed. But it wasn’t only athletics he’d excelled at. It was everything. Schoolwork, conversation, visual arts—it all came naturally to him. And being coordinated surely didn’t help with math problems or vocabulary quizzes. So it was something else.

Ironically enough, he got off to a slow start in life. He didn’t start walking until he was well into his first year, and he didn’t start speaking until he was nearly three. Originally his mother feared this might be indicative of some intellectual disability. But their pediatrician assured her that Jeff was in perfect health. And he was right. In his fourth year Jeff was not only speaking but reading fluently. When he entered school at five and a half he found the games and activities of his age-peers babyish and showed little interest in their company. His teacher recommended he skip grade two, though his mother didn’t allow this, fearing it might cause him emotional difficulties down the road.

Nevertheless, in the following years Jeff continued to impress his teachers with his mature questioning, intense curiosity, desire to learn, and advanced sense of humor. In grade five his physical precocity kicked in, and he was constantly picked first for teams during recess or gym. In grade six he was the runner-up for the state’s science fair competition. In grade seven he won first place in the same competition. Whenever his teachers told the class to pair up, everyone wanted to be his partner. Part of this was because he was popular, but it was also because he’d do all the work himself, or at least figure it out, then explain it to the others.

He never paid much attention to when his parents and teachers called him “gifted.” He simply took for granted he was smart and talented and athletic. That was his life, it was easy, and it would always be easy.

Yet now, drifting in the void, Jeff understood how foolish and naïve his worldview had been. Because life was never easy, not for anybody. It threw you curveballs much more devious than Bernie’s had ever been. Models were disfigured in freak accidents, millionaires lost their millions in bad investments, celebrities had their deepest secrets exposed in the tabloids. People like Jeff, who’d won the genetic lottery, lost the ability of their legs and were fed to grotesque-sized snakes.

If Jeff could have, he would have laughed at the absurdity of it all, and by “all” he meant life. But he couldn’t, his lungs were just about crushed to nothing, and as the blackness of unconsciousness and death closed around him, these last thoughts faded from his mind, and he let himself float and be.

CHAPTER 22

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

The Shining
 
(1980)

Boston Mills Psychiatric Hospital was an imposing Victorian structure composed of staggered wings, pointed roofs, and a bevy of turrets. When Spencer Pratt first began working there, doctors were performing lobotomies and electroshock therapy on a whim and sending the unruliest patients into comas with large doses of insulin and metrozol. Today, of course, that no longer occurred. Today, in the great and noble year of 1987, you were held accountable for your actions, and accountable people didn’t perform sadism and torture on others—at least not in public anyway.

Spencer parked the Volvo in his reserved parking spot and shut off the engine. He climbed out and darted through the rain across the lot, spotting four other cars. They would belong to the nightshift orderlies and nurses. He skipped up the front steps of the main administration building and pressed a four-digit code into a metal box affixed to the brick wall. A beep sounded, the locks unclicked, and he stepped inside.

He shook the water from his blazer and proceeded down the drab hallway, his rubber-soled loafers squawking on the polished laminate flooring. He was greeted by the usual smell of cleaning solutions, antiseptic, and laundry starch.

Spencer enjoyed coming to the hospital at nighttime to work. One, it got him out of the house and away from Lynette. Two, it was serene, peaceful even, the opposite of the controlled chaos that reigned during the day.

At the end of the hall he stopped before the nurse’s station. The duty nurse, a twenty-four-year-old local named Amy who had albino skin, horse teeth, and blowfish lips, looked up from the trashy paperback romance novel she was reading.

“Good evening, Dr. Pratt,” she said, flashing an ugly smile that made Spencer wonder if she had ever been laid. “Burning the midnight oil again?”

“Work keeps you young. Isn’t that what they say?”

“I don’t know how you do it, Doctor. All of your late hours, I mean. I think it would make me go crazy.” She pressed her hand to her mouth and looked about, as if fearful she had insulted eavesdropping patients. “Oops, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Quite all right, Amy. We’re all a little crazy, aren’t we? If you need me for anything, I’ll be in my office.”

“Thank you, Doctor. But it’s pretty quiet here at night, as you know.”

Spencer continued to his office, which was located at the end of the adjacent corridor. He withdrew his keys from his pocket, opened the door, and flicked on the overhead light. Without entering, he locked and closed the door again. A window opened to the hallway. The sheers were drawn, but you could see that a light was on inside. He didn’t think Amy would need to contact him for any reason, but if she did, she would see the light and assume he was somewhere else in the building.

Spencer exited the hospital through a side door that led to manicured gardens bordered by neatly trimmed hedges. He made his way back to the parking lot and his car.