Knowing that it offended her, it grinned with a hacked mouth that made her knees feel weak. There were no lips, just a ragged hole as if it had chewed away its own mouth in a feeding frenzy. Its slat-like gray teeth looked capable of just about anything.
Soo-Lee did not move away fast enough, though God knew the will to do so was most definitely there. It reached out for her and grasped one of her arms in a hand that was like a loose glove, the fingers digging in painfully. The creature whispered something to her, but in her state of abject terror she could make no sense of the garbled words or the scraping puppet voice that spoke them.
It spoke again and this time she heard what it said all too clearly: You will be my beautiful bride, doll-face. And upon our marriage bed, I will know you.
No, not an it, not exactly, but a he and his intentions were obvious.
Soo-Lee screamed and fell back, tripping over her legs and hitting the floor on her ass. She scrambled away, finding her feet, as the scarecrow man got closer and closer still.
He was grinning… if that lopsided, cadaverous grimace could indeed be called such a thing. Loose ends of stitching twine dangled like yarn from his face, which, up close, was yellow and white and gray, corrugated and cracked open like dry clay. It was in constant motion as if there was something beneath it that badly wanted out.
The scarecrow man seized her again with a speed that seemed impossible.
She reacted immediately this time, peeling its fingers away from her arm. They were strong, their grip like iron… yet they were hideously spongy. She managed to peel them free, one of them squishing with a hot spray of slime like a swollen, juicy caterpillar. With a cry of disgust, she turned away and felt the scarecrow man groping for her. Guided by sheer instinct, she clawed out at him with her nails, catching him in the face. Her pinkie snared a loop of twine and she heard it pull free with a sound like thread yanked through a buttonhole. He let out a cry that was half-anguish and half-rage.
Before she could make good on her escape, one of his hands grabbed her by her swinging ponytail and dragged her back. With what seemed little effort, he swung her around and launched her directly at the bed. Her head cracked against one of the posts. She recovered, but not very easily. She climbed to her feet, dazed and sluggish, clawing out at him again but missing entirely.
For godsake, run! If he catches you, he’ll rape you!
Somewhere in the depths of her brain, a voice that was not hers tittered at the very idea. A mannequin raping a woman? A dummy exhibiting physical love? A horny puppet? Yes, the mind certainly boggled and it made no sense whatsoever, yet there was no doubt in her mind that he was going to force himself on her and if he was successful, she would go mad. There would be no alternative. She would go stark-raving mad.
As she tried to escape, her head gradually clearing, her legs ready to move, he seized her again. He battered her head against the bedpost until she went limp. She felt fingers like hooks rake across her back, tearing her shirt open and scraping against her spine. The pain was bright and energizing, but when she tried to fight, he slammed her face into the bedpost again.
When she came to, she was on the bed and he was on top of her, pressing himself down. His face was badly unraveled, the entire left side sagging like a wet paper sack. She could feel the dark sweet stink of his breath blowing in her face as he panted excitedly, the black sockets of his eyes like ragged holes. His entire face was inflating and deflating as he breathed, a sloughing expanse of stitches and seams and loose flaps.
She screamed and threw him, sliding off the bed and hitting the floor on her knees. Her head hurt and there was blood all over her face. But the truly frightening thing was that she was naked. He had meticulously stripped her and she was crawling across the floor, nearly out of her mind.
The lights went out.
The darkness was absolute and unbroken.
Soo-Lee got to her feet and stumbled about, bumping into things and upsetting other things that thumped to the floor or shattered at her feet. She could hear him breathing. Was it to the left? The right? Just behind her? She had to find the door. Her outstretched fingers brushed against a leathery mask and she screamed again. She whirled, moving this way and that, trying to find the door and trying to keep away from him as he stalked her silently.
Something touched the nape of her neck.
She clawed out at it.
Something clutched one of her breasts and she knocked it aside.
She circled, started, stopped, searching, feeling her way around and knowing that she would never find the door because that wasn’t part of the game. Sobbing and terrified, nearly in shock, she tried once more and he grabbed her by the throat. “Is that you, doll-face?” he asked as his other hand roughly kneaded her left breast. She fought and clawed and kicked, but it was no good. His breath was hot and searing now like the air from a blast furnace. His excitement was making him burn from the inside out.
“Please,” she heard her voice whimper. “Oh… please…”
“No need to beg, doll-face,” he breathed. “No need at all…”
She clawed out at him in defiance one last time, fingers tearing into him, and he came apart in moth-eaten rags and mildewed shifts, dusty wrappings like those of an Egyptian mummy. But none of the damage she did cooled the fire that burned in him.
The next thing she knew she was on the bed and something rough and knobbed like a rawhide bone was pressing into her and she screamed one last time, venting her horror and madness and violation… at least until his mouth closed over her own in a flaccid and rubbery pouch.
39
By that point, Lex had no idea where he was or what the hell was even going on. He remembered the eyes, the many eyes, how they crawled like insects and then digging into the walls that held him that felt like living tissue. And then, and then—
Then he couldn’t be sure because everything was twisted up and turned inside out. He tried to make sense of it, to apply logic, but even his fine and reasoning brain could not explain any of this. He recalled the car that had taken Creep away, then getting separated from Soo-Lee and what followed.
Jesus, had that just happened?
His sense of time was distorted, stretched like taffy until minutes seemed hours and days seemed seconds. He had to get a grip. He had to put this in some kind of perspective. He had to find Soo-Lee. The amazing thing was that he was outside. He was sitting on his ass in the cool grass outside the house. He had no memory after he began trying to dig his way out. Somehow… the house had ejected him.
Ejected?
No, he had a sense that it had been more along the lines of vomiting. Like a dog that couldn’t keep something down, it had regurgitated him. And why was that? Because he was refusing to accept any of it and refusing to buy into it? Was that it? Maybe. Yet, he felt there was more to it than that. Hell, something in him was certain there was more to it than that.
Why does a dog vomit something out? Why must it get something out of its belly?
But the answer was simple: a dog—or any other living creature with a stomach—vomited things out that were destructive to it, that would make it ill. Lex proceeded along that line of thought. Okay. Why was he destructive? Partly because of his stubbornness. That made sense. But there was another reason that he was a diseased cell in the body of Stokes.
And the answer to that was obvious.