“EEEEEYAAAWWWW!” cried Mother Crow, her mask cracked open to reveal something gray and grinning beneath that looked like the fissured face of a mummy. “DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY BITCH! TREACHEROUS LIKE ALL THE OTHERS! JUST LIKE YOUR LITTLE FRIEND UPSTAIRS! THE ONE WHOSE WOMB BLEEDS FOR THE DARK SINS SHE HAS WROUGHT AND MADE COVENANT WITH! THE GOOK! THE CHINK! THE SLOPE! RICE-PICKING ZIPPERHEAD DOG-EATING RICE NIGGER CHINATWAT!”
The phobic racial slurs blew out of her mouth like vomit, empowered by a black cesspool of a mind that was probably rank and rotting when she was still truly alive. She was nothing but a sack of poison, intolerance, hatred, and fear. Fear because that’s really what this was all about: that’s what had kept her mind, her spirit, her essence on this side of the grave. Fear of change. Fear of anything that was different. Fear that she had lost her omnipotent sway over the good folks of Stokes and that she could no longer squeeze them in her arthritic fists until the blood ran from them. Fear of the loss of control. And, ultimately, the fear of being alone, of having to look the demented, vindictive hag she indeed was right in the face.
Ramona, shouting herself now, battered Mother Crow until the hag’s head split open, half of it sliding down a few inches and giving her the look of some fairground monster reflected in a shattered mirror. Things broke inside her face as Ramona kept hitting her, but she did not go down despite the snapping and cracking of her anatomy or the black viscous-looking blood that ran from beneath the remains of the Mrs. McGuiness mask.
“GO THEN!” she said in a mocking voice. “GO SEE YOUR LITTLE TWO-DOLLAR GOOK WHORE FRIEND WHOSE LEGS ARE HINGED TO SPREAD AND SEE WHAT SHE HAS PUT FORTH!”
Then the mask fell completely away and Ramona saw the sardonic face of Mother Crow revealed. It looked like grinning wicker, the eyes like juicy red meat, the teeth long and sharp… and then she was gone. There was nothing to mark her passing but a wisp of smoke and shards of the Mrs. McGuiness mask on the floor. And overhead, Ramona heard something bump along the floor.
The flashlight in her hand, terror opening her up like knives, she went to the stairs and started up.
To what waited there in the darkness.
It was then she heard the siren ring.
45
Lex heard it, too, as Creep did inside the factory. It registered with all ears in Stokes. Some woke and others trembled. Lex did neither. He was on the twisting road that led up to the factory on the hill and nothing could stop him now. He knew where he had to go even if he had no idea what it was he was supposed to do.
I’m coming for you, he thought. That’s all you have to know. Whether you summoned me or it’s my own idea, it doesn’t matter. I’m coming for you.
As he climbed the tree-lined road and the hulking shape of the factory grew larger, he told himself that whatever he did it would be for Soo-Lee, who was kind and special and good and much better than he had ever deserved. Whatever came now, whatever he had to sacrifice and how much of his own blood that he had to spill, he was doing it for her because he owed her that much.
Up ahead, at the turn of the road, he saw a figure standing there.
His first impulse was to call out to it, but a tremor of anxiety in him canceled that out. He knew it wasn’t a person. There was nothing really alive in Stokes.
He began walking faster.
The shape beckoned to him, then moved off into the shadows. He decided he was going to catch it and tear it apart with his own hands. Nothing less would satisfy him. He was walking even faster now, catching momentary glimpses of the figure as it moved in and out of patches of moonlight with that peculiar seesawing motion indicative of the doll people.
He came up to the next turn of the road and saw a pool of something wet on the road. He knew it was not accidental. Like the song said, it never rained in Southern California and it sure as hell never rained in Stokes… unless whoever or whatever that waited in the factory for him wished it to.
He kneeled down by the pool.
He knew it was blood before he touched it. He dipped his index finger into it and it was very warm, almost hot. More like fluid that leaked from a transmission than something that leaked from a living body.
Standing up, he resumed the chase.
The figure was at the next bend waving to him.
So you’re bleeding, he thought. I suppose that means something but I don’t have time for puzzles right now.
He kept coming upon more and more puddles of blood. If the thing he was following was human, it would have dropped by now. There would have been no blood left in it. Apparently, this thing could bleed endlessly; the reservoir never ran dry. Another splotch of blood followed by another, then a spreading pool that was slowly draining into the ditch at the side of the road.
Lex was now a big-game hunter following a blood spoor.
The puddles were getting bigger and bigger and now he saw that in-between them were footprints. Small, almost delicate-looking footprints that he thought were female.
Soo-Lee, he thought. That’s what the puppet master wants you to think, but you know it’s bullshit. It’s all part of the game.
Now the factory was before him, across a field of shorn grasses. It was a big, industrial-looking place, flat-roofed, squared off, perfectly geometrical like a series of blocks piled atop one another. Though the moon shone down from above, it did not touch the structure. It remained perfectly dark as if it had been snipped from black construction paper. The figure waited for him, beckoning—and bleeding, no doubt—in the freezing penumbra thrown by the place.
Lex stopped.
In fact, it didn’t seem so much that he had stopped but was stopped. It felt like he had run smack into an invisible wall of force. That was purely subjective, of course, but he stopped dead, his feet feeling like they had grown deep roots into the soil. He stared at the shape of the factory as Hansel and Gretel must have stared at the candy cane cottage of the big bad witch. Then he actually did feel waves of force coming out at him, pushing him back, making his knees tremble with his own weight. The force was sheer hate and he thought for a moment he could see bright red eyes looking out at him from one of the upper windows.
Yes, this was it.
If he had doubted it before, well, there was no doubting now. The epicenter of the Stokes nightmare was right here and he could almost feel its lines of force radiating out like the silken threads from a spider’s lair. There was real power here, black and ugly killing power. It was like standing before a transformer. The air was energetic.
Lex knew he could weaken and walk away or he could fight. Only the latter would weaken the puppet master. The former would make it that much stronger.
He took a step forward, then another.
The electric hate of the place made his head ache and droplets of sweat the size of corn kernels ran down his face. He wiped them away, more determined with each step that brought him closer to the diseased heart of Stokes. It was then he felt a blast of heat like demon’s breath. The air was filled with churning smoke and he could hear screams, the screams of souls burning in the inferno around him.
He pushed forward and the smoke cleared and there was the doll person, only it was no doll person but a doll woman and that woman was Soo-Lee reaching out to him with pale white hands, a wolfish hunger seeming to emanate from her.
He could hear her voice: It hurt me. It tore me open. It ripped out everything inside. Why did you let it? Why did you let it hurt me like that?