Bondurant shouted for help, but he couldn't muster much wind and the cry died in the corners of the hallway. Bondurant gave up on mortal assistance and sent summons to a higher power.
He remembered the tale of the Good Samaritan, how the Samaritan had helped Jesus on the side of the highway. Or maybe it hadn't been Jesus, maybe it was somebody else, or Jesus might have been the one doing the helping. Bondurant was fuzzy on the details, but the long and short of it was that a Christian reached out his hand when someone was down.
Even if that someone was a twisted shambling wreck that the Devil himself might have cast out from the lake of fire in disgust.
'It's okay now,' Bondurant said his voice barely above a whisper. 'What's your name?'
Again the lips undulated the sinuous tongue pressed between the teeth, but still no words came out. The woman raised one eyelid and Bondurant looked into the black well of an eye that seemed to have no bottom.
'Let me help you up,' he said. He closed his eyes and reached for her hands. A cold wind passed over him, shocking his eyes open.
The old woman stood before him now, arms raised.
The woman brought her hands to her face, curled them into claws and began raking at her eyes. In her frenzy, the gown came loose, one shoulder showing pale as a grub.
The woman's mouth gaped open, the tongue flailing inside, and her fingers pulled at the skin of her eyelids. Bondurant could only stare, telling himself it wasn't real, that Jesus and God would never allow something like this in the sacred halls of Wendover.
And even through his fear, he was already scheming his cover-up, planning the story he would give to local authorities.
She broke in, I tried to stop her. No, I've never seen her before…
The woman's gown fell farther down her shoulders, and Bondurant could see more scars criss-crossing the flaccid breasts. Still the gnarled fingers groped and the flesh gave way beneath her fingernails. The lips trembled as if trying to shape a scream, but only silence issued from that dark throat.
Bondurant had been trained to handle violent or aggressive clients. He knew a half-dozen different restraint techniques, from the basket hold to the double wrap. If he could only grab her, pin her arms behind her back, then Then he only had to wait either for her to get tired or for help to arrive.
He reached for her elbows and came away empty. She was moving away from him, retreating back into the shadows. Except she wasn't running away, he saw. She was floating, her obscenely-swollen toes inches above the floor.
The deformed mouth vomited its silent scream as she continued to rake at her eyes. Just before she disappeared into the wall, the forehead scar curved slightly, as if giving Bondurant a smile of farewell.
TWELVE
Freeman was dreaming of his dead grandparents' farm, a hundred and twelve acres of rolling woodlands, the green valleys pocked with cattle, a silver creek winding through the belly of the land. Freeman was in the garden near the barn, the smell of drying tobacco, manure, and hay dust hanging in the warm summer air. Broad leaves of zucchini plants and wires of runner beans surrounded him. He drove his shovel into the black earth, turning up nightcrawlers.
He turned the shovel and the worms spilled out, slimy and as thick as pencils. The shovel blade dipped again, and the ground fell away, becoming a huge black cavity. A monstrous worm reared up, glistening with mucus, its blind head probing the sky. The worm continued to swell, its girth like that of a rubbery tree.
Suddenly, the worm grew a hundred arms and the dark mouth opened: 'Hey, Shit For Brains, what the fuck you doing jerking off in here when I need you?'
Now the worm wore Dad's head, and Freeman struggled against his blankets as the worm's millipedic arms reached for him, strangled him, slapped at him, smothered him, and, worst of all, hugged him 'Psst. Hey, new guy. Freeman.'
Freeman shoved away, cried out, the sunshine of his dream gave way to six walls of shadow, and still the Dad-worm clutched at him.
'Whoa, man. Take it easy.'
Freeman groaned and opened his eyes. In the muted night light of the Blue Room, he could make out the face of the mossy-eyed boy, Isaac, from Group. The boy was shaking him awake.
'You must have been in a bad nightmare,' Isaac said in a loud whisper. He released Freeman and knelt by the cot.
Freeman blinked in the gloom, his heart pounding. Even in here, behind these dense stone walls, he couldn't escape that damned asshole. Dad was deeper inside his brain than a maggot in a corpse, whether he was asleep or awake. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. 'Thanks.'
'You were kicking up a storm. About broke my arm.'
'I was getting away. I've had lots of practice.'
'Who hasn't? You either get away or you're not around very long. You know how they are.'
The Blue Room was fairly quiet. At the far end of the rows of bunks, a couple of boys were talking. It might have been eleven o'clock or three in the morning. 'Where are the house parents?'
Isaac snorted. 'Probably playing kissy-face with each other, for all I know. They make themselves pretty scarce after Lights Out.'
Freeman lowered his voice. 'And Deke?'
He pictured Deke pestering the smaller boys in the night, maybe even molesting them. The thought sickened him as much as the dream had.
'The fearless leader? Listen for a second.'
Among the nocturnal stirrings and small talk, an abrasive, rhythmic sound rose and fell.
'That's his snoring,' Isaac said. 'He's big on sleep. At night, you can always count on being able to tell where he is. I'm Isaac, by the way.'
'I know. Like in the Bible. You ever get sacrificed?'
'Not that I know of. You know how hard it is to put up with all this Christian baloney when you're a Jew?'
'I can imagine. But, if you're like me, you learn to fake it pretty quick. I've been in enough homes to know that the faith-based ones make for easier time, and have better food, too.'
'Damn. Are you Jewish, too?'
'No, but I might as well be. Got nothing better going on.'
'Jews don't trust their kids to be outside a Jewish family. When I got orphaned, my aunts and uncles tried to claim me. But the shrinks wouldn't let them, because, swear to God, I don't trust Jews, either. I mean, we're pretty peculiar sometimes.'
The main door creaked open. 'Hey, keep it down in there,' came an adult voice. A flashlight beam sliced from nowhere and swept over the rows of bunks.
Isaac put his face near Freeman's and whispered, 'Nazis.'
'Ah, the fathers of modern psychiatry,' Freeman said. 'You know that's how the Germans got their taste for genocide, by wiping out nut cases in the 1930s. Then they started on the homosexuals.'
'Hey, I thought the Jews were first.'
'Nah. They were doing that stuff even before Hitler came along. All the while these doctors would twirl their mustaches and talk about what a great service they were doing by putting undesirables out of their misery.'
'Some of the doctors were Jews, I bet,' Isaac whispered.
'Well, Isaac, you present as a classic casebook example of 'paranoia.''
'You talk like a shrink.'
'No, I'm smarter than most of the shrinks I've gone up against,' Freeman said. 'My dad was one. Always shrink your shrink until they're smaller than you are. That's my philosophy.'
'I'll bet you've got a lot of philosophies.'
