Bloodstained Oz Read online

  Eventually he managed to drift toward sleep.

  He hadn’t even begun to snore when he was jarred awake, his eyes growing wide. In the time he'd been at Guilford he had learned to accept most of the noises that came to him in the dark. Even Emmett’s howls were only part of the horrific tapestry of Guilford. But now something had changed. Hank could sense it, but it took him a moment of listening to understand what he was hearing.

  Emmett didn’t sound miserable anymore. He sounded terrified. His howling had become a scream, a full scale, blood-curdling shriek. Even when the guards got nasty with him, he didn’t sound that frantic.

  The guards, Hank thought. Teaching him a lesson.

  He would have loved to help, if only to stop the screaming, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Not from in here.

  Hank turned over on his cot, feeling the sweat of the day pull at his clothes, and let out a small grunt of disgust that helped him hide from the helplessness he felt. He clenched his teeth together and let his hand move down to his pocket, where he fingered the fine chain through the fabric, imagining a day when he would be free from Guilford and have enough money to live comfortably in a place that didn’t make him want to curl up and die.

  A moment later, as sleep was about to catch him again, the screams from outside stopped and left behind a silence that was somehow even worse.

  Chapter Eight

  Gayle crawled into her bed and closed her eyes, a smile playing at her lips. She felt too excited to sleep. Her parents had talked about the dolls she’d found for what seemed like forever and then finally decided that she could keep five of them.

  “It’s like an answer to a prayer, Silas. We can probably get enough to pay ourselves up to date with the bank if we’re shrewd about it.” Her mother had spoken in whispers, as if afraid that speaking any louder would frighten away their sudden fortune.

  Her father had nodded his head and lit his pipe, something he only did when he felt like celebrating. Christmas and Thanksgiving were pipe days. The rest of the time he went without. They'd spoken about the antique stores until the sun was down, carefully assessing each of the figures and settling them on the sofa as if they were guests come to visit. Most of them were only visiting, but five would be hers.

  Which ones? She wondered with all the solemn joy she could manage, as she closed her eyes and drifted into a restful slumber. There were so many to choose from, and each seemed more beautiful than the last. It was not long before she was dreaming of porcelain figures.

  In her dream she was gathering the porcelain dolls in a rusty old wheelbarrow, carefully setting each figure into its spot before reaching for the next. That nasty scarecrow was walking beside her, one gloved hand holding on to the stake that had been driven through its chest and the other reaching for her dolls.

  “They’ll do you no good,” the straw man said earnestly, as wheat straw and blood seeped from the corners of his burlap mouth. “They’ll bring you nothing but blood and pain. They’re his toys, you know, his to do with as he will.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him that she did not, as a rule, speak to scarecrows and that he should be careful, because her father was nearby. But all that came from her mouth was a scraping noise.

  Gayle opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling of her bedroom. Light from the moon outside was her only illumination, and the familiar walls had taken on unusual angles as the shadows hid the corners and swallowed the meager furniture.

  A sound had awakened her from her unsettling dream, but she had no idea what it might have been. Gayle strained to hear any sound at all beyond the wind outside and the floorboards of the old house settling as the air cooled down to tolerable levels.

  Out in the hallway beyond her door, something scraped softly at the wood. Gayle squeezed her eyes shut, wondering if a rat had managed to get stuck in the house. It happened from time to time and the nasty little creatures almost always seemed to find her room. Just last winter her father had sent her into the hallway while he took care of one of the vermin with a pitchfork. Before she could enter the room afterward, her mother had gone in with a bucket and a rag. For over a month she had stared at the clean spot on her floor as if it might suddenly attack.

  But she was older now, and she had to face her fears. That was what her father said was the difference between a good farmer and everyone else. So Gail slid off of her bed and onto the floor. As quietly as she could she put her feet into her slippers and moved toward the door.

  Something heavy fell to the ground in another part of the house, the impact loud enough to shake the floor beneath her slippered feet. Gayle stared at the door and tried to make herself move, but her legs didn’t want any part of the notion. The soft, scrabbling noises near her door stopped and were replaced by several light taps as something moved down the hallway.

  Gayle listened, wishing she could muffle the sound of her own heart in her ears, and when she heard nothing else out of the ordinary she carefully opened her door.

  There was no sign of life in the hallway and nothing moved near the banister but her own faint shadow. Gayle started down the stairs as carefully as she could, her feet testing each floorboard to see if it would creak. Light spilled across the ancient throw rug at the foot of the stairs, coming from the living room where she knew her folks liked to sit and read quietly before they retired. If the lights were on, they were likely still awake.

  She almost called out to them, but hesitated instead. They'd be awfully upset if they found her awake and creeping around the house. As careful as she had been in the hallway, her trek down the stairs took longer and made less noise. Somewhere up ahead she could hear the scraping sounds again and wondered if she was right about the rats. Perhaps they were eating her dolls even now, tearing away the fabric and chewing on the finely crafted porcelain faces.

  The idea finally got her to move faster, and Gayle moved across the foyer and looked into the room where her parents liked to read. Her pulse raced at the notion that anyone would hurt the beautiful figurines and she looked quickly at the couch as if to reassure herself.

  She would have preferred the rats. They would at least have made sense.

  Instead she saw her father on the ground, his face mashed against the wooden floor, his eyes closed and a thin line of reddish drool trickling from between his clenched teeth. Her mother lay on the couch, her legs spread farther apart than was proper for a lady, and her hands over her head, one wrist crossed over the other. Gayle’s eyes sought the source of the scratching noises. The soft clinks and tinkles of fine porcelain and glass touching hard surfaces assailed her, and she looked down to the foot of the couch where she fully expected to see a black brute of a rat feasting on the delicate dolls she’d somehow managed to bring in from the field intact.

  But there were no rats.

  The dolls were moving on their own, toddling closer to her father’s prone form. Her throat tightened as she watched them tentatively touching him, as if to make certain her was not merely injured but properly dead. Gayle stared for several heartbeats, saw the figure closest to her father grab hanks of his hair and tug sharply, throwing its entire body into the effort.

  Her mother made a soft noise and Gayle turned just in time to see one of the larger dolls—a jester dressed in red and black, with a smile that showed what seemed to be a hundred teeth—take her mother’s hand in both arms and drag the woman’s arm upward. Fine red lines of blood trickled down from where the jester’s cold white fingers touched her mother’s skin.

  Gayle screamed.

  The tiny figures let out screams of their own, angry hisses and cries of warning. She ran for the stairs, her heart thundering in her chest, her eyes wide and lips pulled back in terror. As she reached the fourth step, her foot slipped and her shin scraped along the hard wooden edge, but Gayle only gasped and dragged herself up, moving as fast as she could. The sound of a hundred different porcelain feet followed her, louder and louder, closer and closer, as she asce
nded.

  Limping, wincing with every step, Gayle used her hands on the railings to help steady and propel her upward. She reached the landing and risked a look back. The dolls swarmed up the stairs in a wave of porcelain and paint. Their tiny painted eyes stared at her and their minuscule mouths scowled and laughed and shouted streams of filth and vitriol.

  Throat raw, voice cracking, Gayle shrieked as she ran. Her room was so close, but the pain in her shin was like a hammer pounding her leg. Still, she was almost at her room. She could make it. She could…

  She was wrong. A brilliant lash of pain caught the meat of her calf and Gayle hissed at the sudden explosion. It was the jester, and in his hand he held her father’s whittling knife, the short blade looking more like a sword in his hands. The tip of the blade was wet with her blood.

  Gayle kicked at it with her good leg catching the doll in its grinning face. The thing let out a squawk as her foot slapped against its cold ceramic smile, and it slammed into the wall. The jester shattered, and was silent. The other dolls paused when they saw what she had done. Gayle stared at the fragments of the jester’s head, surprised by the ease of the thing’s destruction.

  And then it stood up again, half of its painted face caved in, and ran at her a second time, crying out in rage as it came. Fragments of the broken head spilled to the ground with every step it took.

  Gayle got through the threshold into her room and slammed the door, pressing her body against the wood to add her weight to the barrier.

  Her father’s whittling blade slid under the door, jabbing through her slipper and into the meat of her right foot. She jumped back, whimpering as the space under the door was darkened by the mass of the tiny figures trying to get in.

  She wanted her father, her mother, anyone who could come to her and take her away from the nightmare. A figure no larger than a mouse was pushing through the gap under her door, and Gayle surveyed the darkness of her room, seeking something to use as a weapon. She dropped to the floor and frantically ran her hands over the boards until she got hold of one of her shoes. The heel was scuffed and worn, but still solid enough for her purposes. The tiny figure screamed as the first blow broke its body in half, and kept screaming until she shattered its head into fine powder. Even then the remains of it twitched and tried to move.

  More of the things pushed against her door and beat at it with their hands, their bodies.

  Gayle could barely breathe. Her pulse was so loud in her ears. She searched the darkness again.

  Her closet!

  She moved as quickly as she could and slipped into the dark cubicle, closing the door and pulling her winter coat from its hanger. Gayle shoved it against the floor and wedged the fabric into the narrow opening.

  The sounds of the things were muffled now, not by one door but by two, and she allowed herself to shiver. The darkness was complete and Gayle curled herself up into a ball and pressed her body against the back wall of the closet. She rocked and whimpered under her breath as the knocking sounds continued.

  How long did it last? She didn’t know. The sounds continued the same way for a long time and then the noises changed, grew louder as the porcelain nightmares finally managed to get through the door and into her room. Their feet tapped across the wood and their voices, small and faint, came drifting through the air with promises of pain and death.

  Gayle made herself stay as still as she could, tears silently burning tracks on her cheeks, nose running. The air in the closet was stale and hot and she wanted her mommy more than ever before in her life. Sweat beaded on her skin and left her thirsty. Her bladder ached and she needed to pee so badly she thought she would just explode.

  Then she heard her father’s voice and in a rush of hope and relief, all of those discomforts vanished.

  “Daddy?” Her heart thumped so hard in her chest she thought it might break her ribs.

  She heard her father’s voice a second time, angry, demanding something. The words were hard to make out, but the tone was clear.

  And then she heard the other voice, a cold whisper that seemed to dry the sweat from her body and chill her feverish flesh. Whatever spoke to her father had a presence she could feel even through the layers of the house, and it made her want to run, to hide even deeper in her closet, as if that were possible.

  Her father did not speak again, but he screamed. Daddy’s sounds were enough to make her cry out loud, and Gayle covered her mouth with both hands to muffle the noise of her sobs. Her eyes were wide open, but there was nothing for her to see, nothing but a darkness that seemed to swallow her and savor the taste of her trembling flesh.

  Then her father’s voice was suddenly silenced.

  Her mother cried out, a short, anguished wail that ended abruptly as the wall behind Gayle shook with a brutal impact.

  Gayle could do nothing but listen. She heard the sounds of the porcelain people moving around her room, trying to find her and then struggling against the closet door, once again striking the wood with their bodies and whatever weapons they could find.

  From somewhere below she felt it move, that fearful thing, that horrid presence that had first made her parents cry and then silenced the sound of their voices.

  After that the dolls quieted down enough that she could hear the sound of footsteps slowly climbing the stairs. She listened for an eternity as those steps came closer, until the door leading to her bedroom creaked open with dreadful slowness.

  “What have we here? Have you found another?”

  The words were spoken with care, enunciated in the tones of a foreigner trying to hide his accent. The voice that spoke them was cold; the words resonated through her body and made her head hurt.

  The dolls answered, one hissed voice talking for the sum of the small army. “She is there, master, a small one, a child of these people.”

  Four more steps and she could feel it, feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise as whatever lay on the other side of the door now stood just beyond it. So close. Her breath plumed with the sudden cold, and goose bumps rose on her skin.

  “Yes, I can smell her.” From above she heard scratching noises, the wood protesting as something dragged across it, clawing the door.

  “Are you there, child? Will you tell me your name?”

  Gayle shook her head, too scared to speak. Her throat felt as if she’d swallowed half the dust in the fields, and Gayle pushed herself against the farthest wall again, and whimpered.

  “Ah, well, I have other things to attend to this evening. For now, I take my pleasure from the scent of your terror. How long will you hide there, girl? It will be interesting to see. I look forward to watching your eyes while fear breaks your mind. Another time, though. I’ll let you simmer in your fear until I return.”

  For a moment, she felt it hesitate. Then the thing left. She could sense its absence, just as she had its presence. Like the air before a big storm, she could feel the atmosphere change when it arrived, and now she felt it again now. She could feel it as surely as she felt the aches from the small wounds she’d earned in the night. The temperature rose almost as soon as it departed, and wherever it might have gone, it seemed to have taken the porcelain people with it, for there was only silence beyond the closet door.

  Still, she stayed in the closet, afraid to move and even more afraid of what she would find when she left the darkness and sought the comfort of her parents.

  Chapter Nine

  Hank woke abruptly, blinking away the darkness of sleep, vision out of focus as he tried to make sense of the gray lightlessness of his prison cell. Not dark, really, not with the dim lights that burned forever out in the corridor of the cell block. But night, as far as night ever went here.

  The illumination flickered as though a lightning storm was passing by.

  A scream rose and fell, the furious roar of a murdered man who didn’t know he was dead yet. Hank blinked and shook the fog of sleep from his head, and then he realized that it wasn’t a scream at all, but a horn blarin
g over and over and over again.

  Red lights began to blink out in the corridor.

  At last, the grogginess of sleep fell away completely and he understood that it was the fire alarm. Somewhere in the prison, a fire burned.

  “Shit!” Hank snapped, jumping up. He pulled his pants and boots on as quickly as he could, wiped his hands on his dirty T-shirt, and then pressed his face against the bars, trying to get a glimpse out into the corridor.

  A guard ran down the hall, muttering the Lord’s name over and over and over again, pumping a shotgun as he went. A dozen prisoners shouted to him but he did not so much as glance into any of the cells.

  “We’re gonna fucking fry in here!” cried a voice from further down the block. “We’re gonna burn!”

  “Maybe that’s fate,” said someone else – Haskell Prosser, he thought. “Hell’s what we deserve.”

  “Speak for yourself, Prosser,” Hank snarled. He stood back and shook his head, glancing around the cell. Much as he hated it, and as much as the fear festered in his gut, the skinny little preacher fuck was probably right. They were going to roast alive.

  “God damn!” Hank roared, and he banged on the bars with his fists, then laid his head on the metal.

  It was cool.

  He blinked, then wrapped his hand tightly around one of the bars. The metal wasn’t just cool, it was downright cold. Wherever the fire was, it was nowhere near this cell block. That was one piece of good news, at least.

  His little blast of hope was interrupted by the thunder of a shotgun further along the hallway, down the way the guard had run. It echoed, but no sound followed it.

  Then, with a clatter, the lights went out. At least, the dim gray illumination disappeared, leaving only the emergency lights, the red blinking that flashed again and again, strobing the cells and the bars and the grim faces of hard men.

  Something rushed back the way the guard had come, moving down the corridor so quickly that it was little more than a black shape in the flashing red light. Hank barely caught a glimpse.