when Grimshanks made them dance!”
Chrissy tried to scream and she just couldn’t. She was just screamed out.
An abomination, that’s what he was. An absolute abomination. Grimshanks was a clown from a mortuary. As he danced around, the bells on his jester’s cap jingled and jingled. And the fact that he was dressed in that silly clown’s outfit with the green pom-poms made it all that much more ludicrous and perverse.
Remember, a voice told her, he wants you to be afraid. He wants you to scream and carry on. Don’t give him the satisfaction.
But how could she not? He had her and he knew it. There was nowhere to run, no way to fight him. Nothing, nothing. This is how it ended. Right here. In these goddamn woods with this fucking obscene clown making a sick game of her death.
Grimshanks roared with laughter. Behind those swollen black lips, his teeth were long and yellow and sharp. He sank them into Gail’s throat and started to chew and tear and gulp.
“There he is!” someone said. “Get him!”
Chrissy felt herself swoon. She went right down to her knees as the cavalry came charging in. It was led by Alona. She had six or seven people with her brandishing clubs and spears made from fenceposts of all things.
Grimshanks hissed at them and barred his bloody teeth. Flies came out of his mouth in droning, black clouds. He tossed Gail’s corpse aside and his fingers became hooks. He made an impressive and chilling show of it, growling and snapping and shrieking at Alona and the others in a weird, shrilling voice that made the hairs stand up on the back of Chrissy’s neck.
But it was all bluff.
The cavalry was coming on, charging through the drizzle.
Grimshanks had tormented them, belittled them, made light of their most private secrets, and boasted on how he would slaughter them all. Not only them but their wives and husbands, children and parents. They were pissed. Beyond pissed. They wanted payback. They wanted their pound of flesh and they planned on having it.
Chrissy could feel their simmering, animalistic rage as they pounded forward in a tribal line. She thought Grimshanks could, too. Because suddenly he did not look so big and scary and omnipotent. In fact, he looked small and nervous and, yes, maybe even afraid.
“They’re coming for you,” Chrissy told him, wiping sweat and rain from her face. “And when they catch you, they’ll pull you apart! They’ll rip you to pieces! Do you hear me, you silly fucking clown? They’ll rip you to pieces!”
Grimshanks screeched in her face with a hot blast of fetid meat and then he made to grab her, but he wasn’t quick enough. She darted under his hands and came back up, just filled with anger and attitude. Her nails were long and she slashed at his face, cutting furrows in that pulpy white flesh, shearing open one blood-veined eyeball and making him cry out, making him fall back.
And then the others were there.
Clubs were in motion, pummeling the clown. Alona took a sharpened fencepost and rammed it right into his side. Black blood poured forth in a torrent, splashing out and steaming. Beetles and flies and maggots rained out. A club smashed his head, another snapped his wrist. They were getting the better of him. They were actually getting the better of him. He screamed and roared and howled as those clubs rose and fell, rose and fell…and then he just collapsed. He hit the ground, broken and bleeding that vile black sap, insects pouring from him and great red worms foaming from his shattered skull.
And then he was not moving.
A gray and foul steam rose from him and everyone just stood around, breathing and staring and hating.
“There,” Alona said. “That does it for that fucking pedophile.”
Everyone just stood there. Chrissy looked from Gail’s corpse to the remains of Grimshanks. She found she could say nothing. She could not believe he was dead. It had seemed too…easy. Things like him did not just die like that. You could not simply beat them to death and wipe your hands clean and say, there, that’s that.
“Goddamn piece of shit,” Alona said. “I should squat and piss all over him.”
“No, don’t get too close,” Chrissy said.
“Why? He’s dead.”
The others mumbled that it was true.
But then Grimshanks began to move. Oh, Chrissy had felt it building like an electrical charge in the air. Shadows seemed to crawl and slither over the clown’s body, rippling and spreading, gathering and shifting.
“What the hell?” somebody said.
His flesh began to move like liquid white rubber. You could hear things rearranging themselves, bones popping back into place. His skull sealed itself and his face smoothed out, those eyes rising out of the mess. He was breathing. Breathing and living, cells dividing, flesh pulsing and repairing and regenerating and nobody did a thing. Nobody could bring themselves to do a damn thing.
“Oh no,” Chrissy said.
Those eyes blazed with malignant life and those yellow teeth slid from their gums. And so quickly nobody could do anything but gasp.
Grimshanks said, “Silly cunts.”
His head darted out with amazing speed like a rattlesnake striking and his jaws fastened on a woman’s ankle, biting right through it. Then he was up, moving and slashing with claws that opened bellies and spitting black acidic juices into faces that liquefied instantly.
Everyone scattered.
Those that were capable, anyway.
The others fell to the grass, bleeding and sizzling and moaning.
Alona and Chrissy fell back and away.
Grimshanks rose up before them and drifted up and up, above their heads, spinning around and around, cackling madly the whole while. As he passed above the treetops, they heard his voice echoing out: “Oh, you’ll pay now! You’ll all fucking pay now and in ways you cannot imagine! ALL OF YOU! PAY! PAY! PAY!”
Then he was gone.
25
The question was: where were they?
Harry Teal didn’t believe for one flipping minute that the waters of Witcham were not crawling…or swimming…with zombies and maybe even things much worse. He was not so naive to think otherwise.
Mitch and Tommy and Deke had been gone over an hour now and night couldn’t be too far away. But there was hope, oh yes, there was certainly hope. A helicopter had passed overhead not twenty minutes before, circled, then flown away. But a voice had announced over the loudspeaker that they would be back. To just wait. It wouldn’t be long.
So they had that going for them.
Wanda had Rita and Rhonda on either side of her. The cat on her lap. The three of them had their backs up against the chimney, were cuddling together under the blankets. Chuck was pretty much keeping lookout with Harry. And what that meant for the most part was swatting at flies and keeping an eye on the water for anything suspicious.
Harry had not known any of them twenty-four hours ago, but now they were like family to him. That might have sounded odd, but after doing time and then being thrust into the madhouse of Witcham, he had bonded to them very quickly. Mitch and Tommy had trusted him with their lives and that’s all he saw now. His duty. Maybe he hadn’t been real strong on duty thus far in his life, but now he saw it and understood it and would not let it go. Like the girls were his nieces, Chuck his kid brother, and old Wanda was maybe his grandma.
He just wished that helicopter would come back.
But there were probably dozens if not hundreds of people waiting on rooftops to be plucked off. They would just have to wait their turn, that was all.
Harry squatted there, the four-ten on his lap, waiting for something. Something good or something bad,
