Lex walked down to the corner and Creep followed him. Soo-Lee made to join them, but Danielle gripped her arm like a little girl who was afraid of the dark.
Creep looked down the street. “I think someone should go take a look for Ramona and Chazz. What if they’re hurt or something?”
Lex nodded. “I’ll flip you for it. I don’t want us both going. I want one of us to stay with the girls.”
Creep liked that. It was the kind of thing a hero said in an old movie. One of those silly Hollywood clichés. But he was okay with it. He swallowed down his fear. “You stay, Lex. I’ll go. You’re a cooler head than I am. I’ll just make them more nervous.”
Lex didn’t argue the fact; it was obvious.
“I’ll take a quick run down there and run right back.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
Creep took off. He was surprised he had the guts to do this at all. Was it Ramona? Yeah, he figured it was. He had an adolescent fantasy brewing in the back of his mind where he rescued her and she was grateful.
Very, very grateful.
He went down to the block where they’d turned the corner. God, the shadows were everywhere, so black, so reaching. They were strung like knitted yarn. He got to the last storefront, some sort of bank with gold leaf lettering in the windows. Nice and archaic. He peered around the corner.
His heart was pounding and his knees felt weak.
He could see the van down there. Moonlight glimmered off the windshield. One of the doors was open. There was nothing between but glistening wet pavement.
No sign of Chazz or Ramona.
Nothing at all moved down there.
He pulled out his Nokia and called Chazz’s cell. He got his voice mail. He texted him, but got nothing in reply. Either he didn’t have his phone with him or it was dead or he was—
Don’t get going with that shit.
They could have been behind the van, he supposed. That was possible.
No. He wasn’t going to go down there. Too risky. He’d checked on them and that’s all he’d intended on doing. Lex was probably right: they were hiding. Yet… his stomach felt light and fluttery. If it had wings, it could have flown right out of his belly.
The doll man was nowhere to be seen.
Weird. It was all so damn weird.
He peered back around the corner to make sure Lex and the others were still there, they were, then looked back toward the van… except there was no van. It was gone. The moonlight was shining off the pavement where it had been.
Creep blinked his eyes like they did in movies when they couldn’t trust what they were seeing, but the van was still gone. He was confused, disoriented. Reality seemed to be unwinding like a ball of twine. He peered back around the corner, thinking of calling out to Lex, then turned and looked again.
The van was there.
What kind of fucked-up shit is this?
He ran back down until he reached Lex. He leaned up against a building, panting. “They’re not down there. I don’t see anything but the van.”
And maybe I don’t even see that.
Lex sighed. “Well, we can’t wait for ‘em. We have to find some place to hide or a vehicle to get us out of here… unless we chance the van.”
Creep swallowed. “I don’t like that idea.”
“Then we need a car.”
“Man, have you seen a single car? A truck? A bicycle for that matter?”
“No.”
Creep was going to elaborate further on that but Soo-Lee called, “Lex!”
They ran back to her, expecting trouble. Expecting at the very least that Danielle was really losing it or having a breakdown or something. But that wasn’t it at all.
“Look,” Soo-Lee said.
At the end of the block across the street, lights had come on.
9
It took Chazz a good twenty minutes to calm down, to get his heart to stop racing and his skin to stop crawling and that god-awful clamminess out of his bones. But even so, he wasn’t in the best of shape. He was still shaking, his eyes still darting about madly, and his teeth given to strange bouts of chattering. He felt feverish and sick in his belly and he was certain he was going crazy.
After the mannequin woman, he had run and run and run.
He had eaten up some serious yardage out on the gridiron in his time, but he had never, ever run like this. But never before had he run out of complete irrational fear either. He had known fear once or twice in his life, but it was usually mild and fleeting. The time he thought he had knocked up Megan Mundy in high school was a good example.
This was different.
This was Grade-A USDA prime fucking terror.
This was animal terror.
This was the sort of thing rabbits knew when owls swooped overhead or gazelles felt out on the savannah as lions stalked them. Yes, animal terror. The fear of the hunted, the terror of prey.
Don’t-don’t-don’t think about it, he told himself in the vast emptiness of his skull. Worry about explanations and stuff later. For now… for now… just-just worry about getting out of here.
Jesus, his thoughts were stuttering. Was that even possible?
He didn’t know. He didn’t seem to know anything anymore. He was crouched in the shadows in the backyard of a looming dark house. Every house on the block was looming and dark. None of them had any lights on. There had to be people in them, though. And cars in garages. Yet, he had not seen a single one since they arrived.
And that was weird.
No cars, no people… what did that mean?
He waited there, chewing at his nails until they bled.
He knew he had to come up with some sort of plan but, God, he was afraid to move. He wished Ramona was here. She would know what to do. She always seemed to know what to do.
But you left her out there.
No, he didn’t leave her. It wasn’t like that. He’d just run and he thought maybe she was running with him. The fear had gotten the best of him. He knew part of that was true and part of it was a dirty lie, but it went down easier that way because cowardice was something he despised in other people and could not tolerate in himself. That’s why it was better not to think about it, to shove it aside where he didn’t have to look at it or think about it or consider the kind of person he truly was now that his black roots were showing.
The thing was to think about how to get out of this.
He breathed in and out deeply until he calmed. He often used breathing exercises before a big game when his nerves were a little on edge. Coach had taught him that. God, he wished Coach were here now. Like Ramona, he would know what to do.
“Just stop being a pussy,” he whispered there in the darkness.
Yeah, that was the thing. On the good side, he hadn’t really run anyone down, just some kind of dummy that looked like a man but wasn’t really a man, maybe a robot or some kind of big windup toy. The idea of that made him want to giggle, but he was afraid to giggle. He had the most awful feeling that once he started he would not be able to stop.
Regardless, it hadn’t been a man he had hit… just a thing.
And there were more than one of them in this damn town so he had to be careful. The way he saw it, there were really only a couple things he could do. He either backtracked—if such a thing was even possible by this point—and found the others or he tried to find the van. Other than that, he could knock on some doors and try to find some help.
Or keys. If I can find some keys and a car, I’ll fucking steal it.
Either way, he wasn’t going to accomplish anything sitting here shaking in his shoes.