Alona glared at him in the darkness. “Listen to me, Ed, and listen to me very carefully. What we’re doing is for everyone. If you cause any trouble or slink over to the door to tell Pervo the Clown what we’re doing, I will tear your balls off with my bare hands. And then I’ll make you eat them. Are we on the same fucking page here, Ed?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Glad to hear it.”
Chrissy just stood there speechlessly. Alona was really something. Though she wasn’t much over five-feet tall, she had a ten-foot attitude.
Albert kept prying the board. It groaned once and then he stopped, waited for Grimshanks to say something or come slithering under the door, but he didn’t. Wiping sweat from his face, Albert went back at it. He was making progress, but it was slow.
Then outside the door, there was a scratching. “Hey, hey, Chrissy-poo! Chrissy Barron! I know you can hear me, you little twat! I just wanted you to know that I’m thinking about you! Did you tell your friends how you like to touch yourself? How you like to squeeze your tits and slide your fingers in your hot little la-la! Did you tell them that? I bet you didn’t! Deke likes it when you give him handjobs! No oral yet, but you’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
Chrissy stepped farther into the room with Alona at her side. Maybe it was time to test the waters. What he was saying was private and that made it all that much more creepy to hear. But she was beyond Grimshanks’ little games by that point. Sure, he was evil and wicked and demented, but he was one-dimensional. He liked to get a rise out of you. Liked to piss you off and scare you. He seemed to feed off the negative emotions he created. When you let him get to you, he got louder; when you ignored him, he seemed to shrink away.
Chrissy thought maybe it was time to get him louder, that might cover the sound of what Albert was doing.
“Chrissy, I want you to give me a handjob! Oh, pretty, pretty please, you hot little cunt! And when I come, oh hee hee, I’ll make you suck me off! I’ll shoot my wormy jizz right down your fucking throat! Isn’t that a lark? Isn’t that a funny? Isn’t that a silly game for us to play?”
“Just leave me alone!” Chrissy shouted at the door.
Grimshanks cackled. “But I won’t! I won’t! I won’t won’t won’t! And you can’t make me! I’ll get you, Chrissy-pissy, fingers in her pie, teased the boys and made them cry! I’ll get you! I’ll have you! I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll bleed, you little snatch! Grimshanks will shove his rotten prick in you and hump you, hump you, hump you! Just like Deke wants to! Hump! Hump! Hump! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! And when I’m done, I’ll shoot my happy stuff in you and you’ll get pregnant! You’ll have my baby! I’ll plant my seeds in your hotbox! I’ll sink my eggs into your sweet soil like a wasp injecting its eggs into a spider! Oh, and when my baby is born, it’ll eat you from the inside out! Ha ha ha! Ho ho ho! Little Chrissy, gimme a blow!”
Chrissy was set to open her mouth and scream at him, but Alona stepped in front of her. “You ain’t got any lead in your pencil, you little faggot! You forget that?” she railed at him. “You’re nothing but a little queer-boy, ain’t nothing but a little queer-boy!”
Something thudded into the door out there and Grimshanks growled low and bestial like a rabid dog. “You shut up, biker cunt! You don’t know anything!”
“But I do! We all do! You told us, you told us all about it!”
“I did? Oh yes, I did, didn’t I? Ha, ha, ha!”
“That’s why we know you’re nothing but a little queer-boy! You like boys and you probably always liked boys! Who did it to you, Grimshanks? Who fucked you the first time? Your daddy? Your mommy? Your uncle, your brother?”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, you cunt!” he shrieked out there, scratching at the door like maybe he didn’t have fingernails now, but roofing nails. “You better shut your whoring fucking head up or I’ll come in there! I’ll come in there and get you!”
“Then come and get me!” Alona shouted at him. “You won’t because you’re afraid, you little queer-boy! You’re afraid of women! You’re just a little faggot who got so sick of the pervert he was, that he hanged himself! Just like a little pussy queer-boy!”
Grimshanks was roaring like a beast now, howling and chattering his teeth and pounding the door. Dust fell from the ceiling and plaster fell from the walls. “CUNT! CUNT! CUNT! DIRTY FUCKING BIKER
CUNT! I’LL KILL YOU! KILL YOU! KILLLLL YOOOOUUUUU!”
And then there was nothing but silence out there.
Grimshanks was gone.
There was no doubt of that. He was gone and Chrissy could feel his absence. The stink, the invasive malevolence, the stupid childish hatred…gone and gone. Chrissy knew he was no longer out there, same way you knew when a garbage can full of rotting fish had been removed…by the smell. Alona had scared him away or pissed him off so bad he had to leave before he did something he knew he wasn’t supposed to.
But what was it all about?
All Chrissy knew is what the clown bragged about. That there was going to be a party tonight, a festival celebrating the death of Witcham, and that they?all of them in the pit?were going to be used as party favors. No, Grimshanks had not said they would be dismembered and eaten, but then he didn’t have to.
Albert got his pipe behind the lower board and gently eased it away from the window. There was a creak and a groan, but not much else. He pulled it off and handed it to Alona.
“Can you see where we are?” Chrissy asked him.
“No…not really.”
He started in on the other board. It was looser than the first one. He worked it carefully with his strong hands and it started coming away from the window. Except, of course, there was no window there, just an empty frame where one had been kicked out years before.
Though Chrissy and Albert were too preoccupied to pay attention to Ed Watts, Alona had just been waiting for him to try something. And then, as that second board was almost off, he did. He sprang at the door. “Grimshanks! Grimshanks! Grimsh?”
But there was a meaty thud as the board in Alona’s hands caught him on top of the head and he hit the ground, out cold.
“That’s one worm down,” she said, looking around. “Any you other shitbags want to step up to bat?”
22
It was a sign of faith.
It was a sign of trust.
That’s what Harry Teal was thinking as he waited on that rooftop with Wanda, the girls, and Chuck Bittner. Tommy and Mitch were gone now and Deke had went with them. They had seen an overturned rowboat float by and Tommy had dove right in after it. Then Mitch went. And finally Deke. They got it righted after some moments and paddled it back to the roof. They were going after Chrissy. They were certain that the clown could have taken her only one place: the Bleeding Heart Catholic Orphanage, which, according to Tommy, was pretty much abandoned and the mother of all spookhouses now. A grim and desolate place atop a hill. Deke went with them. The gentle current was carrying everything downtown, in the general direction of the orphanage.
They had left Tommy’s four-ten, some shells, one of the lanterns, a bag of salt, and all the blankets.
It was a sign of trust, that’s what it was.
They trusted him enough, apparently, to leave him in charge of two girls, a young boy, and an old lady, a feisty one, but an old lady all the same. Jesus, if Harry had been in their shoes, he wasn’t sure he would have made the same choice, him being a convict and all. But they seemed to trust him, seemed to know he was no danger
