Hag Night, page 16
The stairs were definitely creaking now.
Creak…creak…creak.
Somebody or something was coming down them, very slowly, only he could not see them. The steps creaked one after the other. A thick mass of terror settled into his throat that he could not swallow down. It spread out, filling him, making his chest feel like it was clotted with ice. He could not see the thing that had been following him, but he could hear it: it made a rustling sound like silk. And he could smell the noxious odor of the disturbed dead it pushed before it. Then he did see something. Not the thing itself, but its breath: as it glided down the steps, it puffed out rolling white plumes of frost-vapor.
Reg stumbled back, tangled up in his own feet and went down. He scrambled back up, leaving the kerosene drum in the dirt and pulling the poker from his belt loop. He would fight. He’d smash it to pulp. Holding the lantern up in a shaking fist, he could no longer see its exhaled breath.
There was nothing.
Not so much as a sound.
He whirled around, looking first this way, then that. It was gone. But as his flesh crept and his heart pounded, he could still smell it. Smell its nearness. It was right next to him.
His own breath was coming out in white clouds now, too.
He was gasping, practically hyperventilating.
And as he breathed out, for one quick moment he saw a face take shape in the cloud of his breath…and he let out a short, sharp little scream as something like fingernails traced along the back of his neck.
He swung out with the poker, but there was nothing there.
Only a voice spoken bare inches from his ear. A woman’s voice: “Are you afraid, Reggie?” it asked. “Are you good and scared?”
He screamed again and ran for the stairs and something hit him with considerable force, driving him back four or five feet and putting him on his ass in the dirt. In the glow of the dropped lantern, he could see a form standing at the bottom of the steps.
It was a woman in a bridal gown.
He could see the fine lacework, the pearl beading, the silken train that led six or seven steps behind her. Seeing her, he suddenly wasn’t afraid because she was so beautiful…absolutely striking. The gown clung to her curves, the lace at the bosom giving him a delicious peek at the full globes of her breasts. Her hair was done up in red ringlets and set with white orchids and laurel sprigs. Her eyes were green like shimmering emeralds, her cheekbones high, her lips full.
That’s what he saw.
Then, blinking, he saw the funeral lilies she clutched in her hands, the smear of blood at her mouth…it had dripped down over her breasts and gown like droplets of cherry juice.
Are you afraid, Reggie? Are you good and scared?
He saw her then as she was, not as he wanted her to be.
She clutched flaking dead roses in her hands. A membrane of furry, gray mold had grown up her dress and over her breasts. Cobwebs were spun in a fine lace over her face. They were like a veil he could see through. She raised one gray hand and peeled them away. Her eyes were red and wet like spilled viscera, her face like some yellow-white terra cotta that was splitting open with hundreds of minute cracks. She was grinning with ensanguined teeth that were long, crooked, and sharp.
He let out a cry that strangled in his throat.
She moved at him with a fluid grace that was part mist and part flesh, and all relentless hunger. Her gown was torn and shredded, blackened with corpse drainage and the stains of what she had been feeding upon through the ages, the train graying, rotten, dragging behind her in dusty ribbons and streamers. Rats clung to her. Swollen graveyard rats, squealing and squeaking, hissing and clawing. They swarmed over her, swam in her, clinging to her trailing cerements, nipping at the mold-specked veil that covered her belly.
And in the back of Reg’s head, a voice was speaking. Not her voice, but a male voice that was scratching and wizened: She is the Queen of the Dead, Mistress of Plagues and Pestilence, the split maidenhead of insanity. She isfilth and mud and dirty straw. A doll that walks and grins, the cackling dementia of low, windy places and hollow catacombs. Her flesh is white glass and her eyes are filtered October sunlight. Her tawdry robes are smudged with grave dirt, winding sheets of the buried dead—
Reg let out a scream at the violation of that cold and forbidding voice.
Then the lantern flickered…the light dimmed.
The woman was gone and he slashed out with the poker here and there, right and left, hearing her giggling next to him. A hand brushed his shoulder, fingers like refrigerated meat. He slashed again, crying and shrieking. He saw those red eyes in front of him, saw them wink out like taillights in the distance. They floated above him, below him. They appeared inches from his face and he struck out again, felt the poker tear through something gauzy like ribbons of obsidian crepe.
Then nothing.
He stood there, his breath coming in a sharp, ragged croaking. Cold breath at his neck, something like a leprous tongue licking his cheek, he ran to the stairs and a cold hand grasped his ankle, yanking him to the floor.
The poker was gone.
He couldn’t remember dropping it.
He found his feet and those eyes were right in front of him. It seemed like dozens of broomstick arms and fingers like roofing nails found him and held him, pulling him forward, lips that were cold like the nose of a dog brushing his own. He fought and clawed out at what held him, but it was ethereal and filmy. It tore like wet newspaper and flaked away like crematory ash.
And her voice said, “Are you scared, Reggie?”
And then that hideous mouth was so close he could smell the breath billowing from the throat. It stank like black tumors in specimen buckets and smothered babies putrefying in garbage cans. And then those lips had him, sucking his own into that vile mouth of crawling, burrowing things.
The thing that had him was no woman. It was moving and flowing, made of ropes and snakes, flaps and rotting fabric, hot running tallow and dripping wax. It was moist and powder-dry, skeleton and living meat. A fleshy ghost.
And then he was pulled closer and he knew at that frightful moment that if he did not fight, he would sink like a rock into an oozing sea of sucking mud that was the depraved blackness at the bottom of time and sanity.
He threw himself backwards, striking the dirt floor.
The woman was standing before him, reaching out gray stick-like fingers, her ravenous mouth gleaming with teeth.
He grabbed up the lantern, found his feet, and as she tried to take hold of him again, he smashed the lantern over her head, the kerosene drenching her and the flames spreading. She let out a shrill screeching sound, whirling around and around as the flames engulfed her. But Reg didn’t wait to see what happened. He scrambled up the stairs and down corridors until he found the parlor and threw himself through the door.
And when Doc went to him, asking him what had happened, he had no voice to answer with.
11
Megga amazed Wenda because of her sheer resiliency. After the attack of the wolf-things, it should have been impossible for her to sleep. She should have been stark awake and dreamless, her eyes burning bright and fearful in her face. But that, of course, wasn’t the case at all. She was slumped in the chair, sleeping peacefully. And Morris, well, he was curled up by the fire like a lazy cat. Wenda watched them, almost as a mother watches her children, knowing that it was a hard road they would have to follow and this night went on forever; multitudinous were its evils. These were the things she was thinking about and she could not put them into words exactly…they were more like loose thoughts winging in her head, trying to connect and form a chain, a concept she could figuratively hold in her hand and recognize.
She kept watching them, wondering how they could possibly sleep, and then she knew. They slept because she was on guard and they knew it. They knew she would not let them down. Would not let the night-shapes get them.
But you’re tired, too. You’re wrung out physically, mentally, emotionally. You’re squeezed dry right now and you know it. If one of those things showed right now…would you be able to fight it? Would you be able to rise up against it?
That was the question she asked herself and she had no good answers. When she tried to think all she got was silence in her head. Her ability to reason and make sense of just about everything was slipping away, it was lost in the fog of her brain and she could not part the mists sufficiently to get it back. She was tired. God, she was tired. She was sitting in her chair, eyes moving from the fire to Morris to Megga to the curtained window to the door itself. She knew she could not sleep…yet it was past the point where she could do much else. Her hand still grasped the silver knife but she felt no power in it. It was as weak as she was. Crowding into her brain were images of the things outside—a terrifying panoply of blurring white faces and red smiling mouths and huge, ravenous eyes…all of them coming out of the storm, moving in closer and closer.
You can’t sleep. You know that, don’t you? If they came in as wolves, then they can come in as other things, too, which means—if folklore holds true—that they either do not need to be invited in or, sometime long ago, they were invited in and will strike at any time.
No, you cannot sleep. You cannot.
Yes, she thought as she closed her eyes, I know.
Maybe it was ten minutes later or an hour, but she heard a voice calling to her and she knew it wasn’t Morris or Megga. It was the voice of a boy. A little boy. She decided it was a very nice voice. There was no threat in it. First it was singing somewhere far off in the storm, the voice of a little boy lost in the dark woods. Now it was closer, very close.
Wenda, I’m lost and I’m cold. I want to come and sit with you by the fire. I want you to protect me.
She listened to it and tried to answer, but it seemed like her tongue was stuck in her mouth, maybe in her throat. It was caught in some sticky patch of tar and she couldn’t get it loose. The boy kept talking, telling her how lost and lonely he was. He was crying. He needed help and she wanted to help him. She was not about to leave him out there all alone. She couldn’t do that.
When she got her tongue loose finally, she said, “Just follow my voice. Can you do that? Can you just follow my voice and let it lead you here?”
Yes.
“Good. Just hear my voice and keep following it. You can sit by the fire with us. It’s safe here.”
Yes.
Wenda listened to her own voice and was amazed at how nice it sounded. She’d always been so self-conscious of it before, but there was no reason for that because she had a really, really nice voice. It was calm, soothing, confident, and loving. Why hadn’t anybody ever told her she had such a nice voice…unless maybe they had and she hadn’t listened like when they told her she was pretty and something inside her cringed and she quickly changed the subject because her own looks made her very uncomfortable. All she’d ever wanted was to blend in, to not be noticed, but because she was pretty people noticed and she could barely handle their attention without breaking into a cold sweat. Thank God for Vultura. Vultura made everything manageable. You want to look? Go ahead. Go ahead—
I’m getting closer, Wenda. When I’m real close, you’ll have to invite me in.
“I will! I will!”
You’ll like it, Wenda. It’s wonderful to be like us. We live forever. We can run like wolves and fly. We can slide under doors and through keyholes, squeeze through cracks and blow around with the mist. And we can float. We can float high up in the air. Wouldn’t you like to float away, Wenda?
Can I come in, Wenda?
That voice. That terrible voice. It sounded like a little boy, but it was no little boy…it was the scraping voice of something malignant and grim pretending to be a little boy and not doing a very good job of it. The tone was hollow and echoing like a voice from a buried box.
She heard it again in her mind: Can I come in, Wenda?
Then she heard her own voice answering it: “Yes…yes, of course you can.”
Had that just been a dream or had it been something else? Something worse? Had she just invited something black and crawling into the house? She picked up the knife. The fire had died down and the room was cold, yet she didn’t dare get up and feed more wood into it. Her eyes were slipping closed again.
Then a voice: “Wake up, Wenny.”
David.
She listened to the storm outside the house, blowing, moaning, sounding like what she imagined a banshee would sound like. She listened to the encroaching darkness around her. She could hear the wind whispering down the chimney. The old house was moving, it seemed, it was alive as old houses always are, groaning, creaking, echoing with the ancient sounds of the people who’d once lived there. The hollow thud of footsteps in the upstairs corridors. The creaking of a bed. Hands gliding down stair rails. Muffled laughter in a deserted room. Beams and boards strained against nail heads, windows rattled against casements, rafters that were old and tired with the weight of centuries sighed in the night. She heard all these things and something more that she at first could not identify: a skittering sort of sound. A sound of rats in midnight walls. A clawing, creeping, rustling sort of sound.
Then she knew.
As black fear filled her throat and sealed it shut, she knew very well just as she knew she had invited it into the house. She tried to steel herself for what had to be done, but it felt like she was made of old sticks and limp twine. She could not get her body moving, there was no lick in her limbs.
The skittering sound.
Closer.
Can I come in, Wenda?
She got to her feet and she could hear that voice calling out to her through the dark mists of her dreams. It was telling her she could sit back down and relax because the fire had burned low and it would come to her.
No, no, not that. Never that.
She tightened her fist on the knife and looked around. Megga was still sleeping. Morris had not moved. The candles she had lit were still guttering. She saw Megga’s penlight on the table by her chair. Silently, she went over there and grabbed it. She lowered herself to her knees very near Morris.
She made herself breathe.
She made herself ready even though it felt like her belly was filled with a warm, white pulp.
The fire had burned down to a few low flames and a bed of hot coals. The hearth was big. She moved closer to it, cocking an ear. The scratching sound was coming from up inside the chimney and she tried to tell herself it was a bird caught up there or a squirrel frightened by the smoke and heat, but she knew better. What was coming down the chimney was what she had invited in.
The knife in one hand and the penlight in the other, she got her knees as close to the fire as she dared, then craned her neck, leaned forward, and looked up the chimney. As she did so, she clicked on the penlight and it illuminated the black, smoke-stained brick and the pale, naked thing creeping down at her like a spider. She saw the grinning, gruesome oval of its boyish face, how that childhood innocence was corrupted by something vile and noxious. Its eyes were like misty moonlight, its grinning mouth set with sharp teeth that it licked with a black tongue.
Wouldn’t you like to float away, Wenda?
She jumped back and tossed two logs into the fire. They were cracked open with dryness; the coals were glowing orange. The logs caught instantly, flames rising up into bright yellow blades of flame that climbed higher and higher as she threw more wood on it.
And up in the chimney, the little boy who’d come out of the grave on this night of blowing wind and falling snow, screeched with an agonized, eerie cry that was part hatred and part angry denial at being cheated out of the blood it had come for. The cry rose up and echoed off into the night like the screech of an owl.
Morris slept on.
So did Megga.
Wenda figured it was all in her mind. Maybe it hadn’t happened. But that was wishful thinking and she knew better. She could still her that screaming in her brain—it was white-hot and cutting.
Megga sat up. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Wenda almost started to tell her, then she just shook her head. “Just throwing a few logs on the fire. That’s all.”
12
“She’s barely breathing now,” Doc said in an utterly defeated voice that came out dry and tasted bitter in his mouth. He had never felt so utterly helpless and hopeless in his life. This child was dying from loss of blood, from trauma…and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. She needed a hospital. She needed a transfusion and only in movies, he knew, did people even attempt such a thing with materials at hand.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Reg said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement that was almost indifferent in its pain.
“No, nothing. Not a goddamn thing.”
Doc needed a drink. He’d never needed one as badly as he did at that moment, but even if he had a bottle…what was the point? It would only accelerate his guilt and self-loathing because Bailey was dying from his own incompetence. This is what he told himself. This is what he believed. If he only hadn’t waited around with Reg by the window when Burt had gone.
If, if, if…
He didn’t know how much blood was left in her, but it couldn’t have been much because she was white as the proverbial sheet. There was not so much as a hint of blush at her cheeks. Where before she had been hot and feverish, now she was just cold. So very cold. Her flesh felt like refrigerated latex.
“What are we going to do, Doc?” Reg asked then. “I mean, really, what the hell are we going to do?”
Doc didn’t even have the strength to drag his eyes over to him. Maybe he didn’t want to see Reg’s face and the desperation cut into it like knife scars. He brought his head down until his forehead rested on his fist and tried to think, tried to come up with something because, really, what were they going to do? But the thoughts wouldn’t come, the answers were nonexistent in his exhaustion and frustration. He only felt the simple animal need to strike out against something or someone. It made him think of the war, crawling through swamps of the Delta and humping it through the jungled hills of the Central Highlands. He had not understood any of it then. His young mind could not encapsulate the need for war. Maybe it made some kind of vague sense to those who planned it, but on the ground it was incomprehensible. But maybe he understood now. War was born of frustration. War was the result of failed diplomacy. War was what you did when there was nothing left to do: you stopped talking and you started hitting.
