hands had her, tossing her back into the water. The dead moved around her, diving and swimming, but they did not take her down with them.
She came up and the lantern was out.
Just darkness.
Russel was maybe in the bedroom or had been pulled down into the deeps. But he was gone, gone, gone and she began to weep, still in the water, clinging to the steps.
If only she could see something.
The water was chill and slimy, things bobbing in it, others things sunken around her. She tried to climb up, fell and went under. She came up, gasping for air, shocked and terrified.
She hung there, with her head and shoulders out of the mire, shivering and mad, thinking things and feeling things and maybe even believing that they wouldn’t come for her. After a time, she moved back towards the stairs, clung to them, waiting for what she did not know.
A drop of water struck her face. Then another.
In the heavy, moist stillness, she could hear someone breathing. Someone was standing over her on the stairs, dripping on her.
“Take my hand,” a voice said, gurgling and waterlogged.
“Oh, please…”
“Take my hand.”
The voice was not necessarily evil or threatening, just morbidly awful like its owner’s throat was packed with wet leaves. She reached out to take the hand offered because there really was no other way. She found the hand and gripped it as it gripped her. It was clammy and spongy, juice squirted from between her fingers. She let out a subtle cry of horror and she was pulled out of the water and pushed against a pulpy, crawling mass. Then a cold and rubbery mouth was pressed against her own and black water was vomited down her throat, filling her.
All things considered, it was not the worst possible death.
32
Don’t breathe.
Don’t move.
Don’t even make a sound.
The dead boys were searching the room now, moving along and patting the walls, pausing to sniff the air like dogs casting for a scent. Chrissy was not only wet with rain, she was wet with hot salty sweat that ran down her face in rivulets. She could taste it on her lips, feeling it pooling beneath her eyes and filling them, making them sting. It was agonizing. She needed to rub them. She had to. She couldn’t sit here like this, terrified and sweating and cramped. She would go mad.
Alona held her tighter than ever, in a grip like a vice. She would allow no movement, no sound.
But sooner or later, those things would find them.
Quiet.
Don’t stir.
Don’t make a sound.
But how long could she possibly do that? How long? You want to move and you know it. Sooner or later you’re going to, Chrissy. And it probably won’t even be voluntary, just a tendon popping or a muscle jerking and making your arm move. Maybe you should just get it over with.
No!
Good God, no. The idea of those things touching her was madness itself. And if that didn’t turn her mind to slush, then what about the party Grimshanks had planned? Oh, now that was really going to be something. He would have hurt and demeaned her in the most unspeakable ways before, but that was before they had injured him, beaten and broken him. Now he would do things she could not possibly imagine. Things beyond mere horror and agony, fresh and untapped realms of psychotic and lewd violation.
The one with the blond greasy hair was stopped right in front of them now. He cocked his head to the side like a puppy, but it was hardly cute. Flies covered his face and exited his mouth when he spoke.
“Chrissy? Is that you? Reach out and take my hand…I’ll see that he makes it quick, then we can be together. Death won’t last. He’ll call you up just like he called us up…”
Chrissy’s breath was coming very fast now and she could do nothing to muffle its sound. He was hearing it and knowing she was near. This was it. This was really it.
Alona sensed the endgame coming, but she wasn’t about to be scared into doing something foolish. At least, not yet. She slid her hand off Chrissy’s arm with nary a sound and picked up a shard of glass from the floor. Counting under her breath, she flung it across the room where it landed near the windows. The dead things began to congregate in that direction, outstretched hands searching the air, fingers wiggling, voices whispering excitedly.
The blonde-haired one had not moved.
He chuckled low in his throat and something like an engorged black beetle crawled out of his mouth. “Neat trick, lady, neat trick. But you’re not fooling me.”
He turned in their direction, looking just above their heads, his hands coming up to seek them out. He moved his head from side to side as if he were trying to form a mental picture of where they were. He turned it this way, then that. Held it there. And they were able to see what they hadn’t been able to before: the other side of his head. It was a great gaping cavity filled with buzzing life. But not flies. These were gray, oily beetles, segmented and winged, looking much like cockroaches. There were dozens and dozens of them in that cavity, crawling about, infesting, brooding over a mass of squirming larva that must have been their young.
One of them flew out.
And then another and another.
They landed on the wall above Alona and Chrissy’s heads, started to crawl down towards them.
Another buzzed in Alona’s face.
One of them hovered in front of Chrissy’s eyes, then landed on her mouth, trying to force its way between her lips.
That was it.
Chrissy slapped it away and the game was up.
“Here,” said the blonde-haired one. “Right here.”
The others were coming now, rushing forward with seeking hands. The blonde-haired one reached out for Chrissy and Alona as they stood up. Alona stepped out to meet him with the crowbar.
“Since you know where we are, dipshit,” she said. “Let me introduce myself.”
As he came forward, she swung the crowbar with everything she had, which was considerable. The bar hit him right between the eyes…or where they would have been…and split his face right down to his jaw with a pulpy cracking. He howled and backed away and Alona hit him two more times, collapsing his skull and letting forth a swarm of those roaches that sought her out, buzzing and nipping, getting in her hair and seeking her eyes. She swung the crowbar again and it struck the boy’s arm and snapped it off beneath the elbow. He hit the floor, his face a discharge of black gummy blood, and his arm hit the wall, dropping to the floor and squirming with life.
Chrissy swatted roaches away from her.
But it was too late for Alona. The others had charged in and buried her in their bodies.
“Run!” she said. “For the love of God, Chrissy! Run!”
Chrissy did as they began to pull her apart and open her up, bathing in her blood. She made it to the door and bolted right out into the hallway, just running with no set destination.
Behind her, she heard Alona give out one last reedy scream.
33
