The Year's Best Horror Stories 16 Read online

  “It sure is,” Sheridan said, glancing inside again to make sure the cop, whom he could now barely see (and who would barely be able to see Sheridan and the boy, should he happen to look up), was still enthralled. He was. “What was your Popsy wearing, son?”

  “He was wearing his suit,” the boy said. “He almost always wears his suit. I only saw him once in jeans.” He spoke as if Sheridan should know all these things about his Popsy.

  “I bet it was a black suit,” Sheridan said.

  The boy’s eyes lit up, flashing red in the light of the mall sigh, as if his tears had turned to blood.

  “You saw him! Where?” The boy started eagerly back toward the doors, tears forgotten, and Sheridan had to restrain himself from grabbing the boy right then. No good. Couldn’t cause a scene. Couldn’t do anything people would remember later. Had to get him in the van. The van had sun-filter glass everywhere except in the windshield; it was almost impossible to see inside even from six inches away.

  Had to get him in the van first.

  He touched the boy on the arm. “I didn’t see him inside, son. I saw him right over there.”

  He pointed across the huge parking lot with its endless platoons of cars. There was an access road at the far end of it, and beyond that were the double yellow arches of McDonald’s.

  “Why would Popsy go over there?” the boy asked, as if either Sheridan or Popsy—or maybe both of them—had gone utterly mad.

  “I don’t know,” Sheridan said. His mind was working fast, clicking along like an express train as it always did when it got right down to the point where you had to stop shitting and either do it up right or fuck it up righteously. Popsy. Not Dad or Daddy but Popsy. The kid had corrected him on it. Popsy meant granddad, Sheridan decided. “But I’m pretty sure that was him. Older guy in a black suit. White hair ... green tie ...”

  “Popsy had his blue tie on,” the boy said. “He knows I like it the best.”

  “Yeah, it could have been blue,” Sheridan said. “Under these lights, who can tell? Come on, hop in the van, I’ll run you over there to him.”

  “Are you sure it was Popsy? Because I don’t know why he’d go to a place where they—”

  Sheridan shrugged. “Look, kid, if you’re sure that wasn’t him, maybe you better look for him on your own. You might even find him.” And he started brusquely away, heading back toward the van.

  The kid wasn’t biting. He thought about going back, trying again, but it had already gone on too long—you either kept observable contact to a minimum or you were asking for twenty years in Hammerton Bay. It would be better to go on to another mall. Scoterville, maybe. Or—

  “Wait, mister!” It was the kid, with panic in his voice. There was the light thud of running sneakers. “Wait up! I told im I was thirsty, he must have thought he had to go way over there to get me a drink. Wait!”

  Sheridan turned around, smiling. “I wasn’t really going to leave you anyway, son.”

  He led the boy to the van, which was four years old and painted a nondescript blue. He opened the door and smiled at the kid, who looked up at him doubtfully, his green eyes swimming in that pallid little face.

  “Step into my parlor,” Sheridan said.

  The kid did, and although he didn’t know it, his ass belonged to Briggs Sheridan the minute the passenger door swung shut.

  He had no problem with broads, and he could take booze or leave it alone. His problem was cards—any kind of cards, as long as it was the kind of cards where you started off by changing your greenbacks into chips. He had lost jobs, credit cards, the home his mother had left him. He had never, at least so far, been in jail, but the first time he got in trouble with Mr. Reggie, he thought jail would be a rest-cure by comparison.

  He had gone a little crazy that night. It was better, he had found, when you lost right away. When you lost right away you got discouraged, went home, watched a little Carson on the tube, went to sleep. When you won a little bit at first, you chased. Sheridan had chased that night and had ended up owing $17,000. He could hardly believe it; he went home dazed, almost elated by the enormity of it. He kept telling himself in the car on the way home that he owed Mr. Reggie not seven hundred, not seven thousand, but seventeen thousand iron men. Every time he tried to think about it he giggled and turned the volume up on the radio.

  But he wasn’t giggling the next night when the two gorillas—the ones who would make sure his arms bent in all sorts of new and interesting ways if he didn’t pay up—brought him into Mr. Reggie’s office.

  “I’ll pay,” Sheridan began babbling at once. “I’ll pay, listen, it’s no problem, couple of days, a week at the most, two weeks at the outside—”

  “You bore me, Sheridan,” Mr. Reggie said.

  “I—”

  “Shut up. If I give you a week, don’t you think I know what you’ll do? You’ll tap a friend for a couple of hundred if you’ve got a friend left to tap. If you can’t find a friend, you’ll hit a liquor store ... if you’ve got the guts. I doubt if you do, but anything is possible.” Mr. Reggie leaned forward, propped his chin on his hands, and smiled. He smelled of Ted Lapidus cologne. “And if you do come up with two hundred dollars, what will you do with it?”

  “Give it to you,” Sheridan had babbled. By then he was very close to wetting his pants. “I’ll give it to you, right away!”

  “No you won’t,” Mr. Reggie said. “You’ll take it to the track and try to make it grow. What you’ll give me is a bunch of shitty excuses. You’re in over your head this time, my friend. Way over your head.”

  Sheridan began to blubber.

  “These guys could put you in the hospital for a long time,” Mr. Reggie said reflectively. “You would have a tube in each arm and another one coming out of your nose.”

  Sheridan began to blubber louder.

  “I’ll give you this much,” Mr. Reggie said, and pushed a folded sheet of paper across his desk to Sheridan. “You might get along with this guy. He calls himself Mr. Wizard, but he’s a shitbag just like you. Now get out of here. I’m gonna have you back in here in a week, though, and I’ll have your markers on this desk. You either buy them back or I’m going to have my friends tool up on you. And like Booker T. says, once they start, they do it until they’re satisfied.”

  The Turk’s real name was written on the folded sheet of paper. Sheridan went to see him, and heard about the kids and the bot-rahds. Mr. Wizard also named a figure which was a fairish bit larger than the markers Mr. Reggie was holding. That was when Sheridan started cruising the malls.

  He pulled out of the Cousintown Mall’s main parking lot, looked for traffic, and then pulled across into the McDonald’s in-lane. The kid was sitting all the way forward on the passenger seat, hands on the knees of his Tuffskins, eyes agonizingly alert. Sheridan drove toward the building, swung wide to avoid the drive-thru lane, and kept on going.

  “Why are you going around the back?” the kid asked.

  “You have to go around to the other doors,” Sheridan said. “Keep your shirt on, kid. I think I saw him in there.”

  “You did? You really did?”

  “I’m pretty sure, yeah.”

  Sublime relief washed over the kid’s face, and for a moment Sheridan felt sorry for him—hell, he wasn’t a monster or a maniac, for Christ’s sake. But his markers had gotten a little deeper each time, and that bastard Mr. Reggie had no compunctions at all about letting him hang himself. It wasn’t $17,000 this time, or $20,000, or even $25,000. This time it was thirty-five thousand big ones if he didn’t want a few new sets of elbows by next Saturday.

  He stopped in the back by the trash-compactor. Nobody parked back here. Good. There was an elasticized pouch on the side of the door for maps and things. Sheridan reached into it with his left hand and brought out a pair of blued steel Koch handcuffs. The loop-jaws were open.

  “Why are we stopping here, mister?” the kid asked, and the quality of fear in his voice had changed; his voice said that
maybe getting separated from Popsy in the busy mall wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him.

  “We’re not, not really,” Sheridan said easily. He had learned the second time he’d done this that you didn’t want to underestimate even a six year old once he had his wind up. The second kid had kicked him in the balls and had damn near gotten away. “I just remembered I forgot to put my glasses on when I started driving. I could lose my license. They’re in that glasses-case on the floor there. They slid over to your side. Hand ’em to me, would you?”

  The kid bent over to get the glasses case, which was empty. Sheridan leaned over and snapped one of the cuffs on the other hand as neat as you please. And then the trouble started. Hadn’t he just been thinking it was a bad mistake to underestimate even a six year old? The kid fought like a wildcat, twisting with an eely muscularity Sheridan never would have believed in a skinny little package like him. He bucked and fought and lunged for the door, panting and uttering weird birdlike little cries. He got the handle. The door swung open, but no domelight came on—Sheridan had broken it after that second outing.

  He got the kid by the round collar of his Penguins tee-shirt and hauled him back in. He tried to clamp the other cuff on the special strut beside the passenger seat and missed. The kid bit his hand, twice, bringing blood. God, his teeth were like razors. The pain went deep and sent a steely ache all the way up his arm. He punched the kid in the mouth. He fell back into the seat, dazed, Sheridan’s blood on his mouth and chin and dripping onto the ribbed neck of the tee-shirt. Sheridan clamped the other cuff on the arm of the seat and then fell back into his own, sucking the back of his right hand.

  The pain was really bad. He pulled his hand away from his mouth and looked at it in the weak glow of the dashlights. Two shallow, ragged tears, each maybe two inches long, ran up toward his wrist from just above the knuckles. Blood pulsed in weak little rills. Still, he felt no urge to pop the kid again, and that had nothing to do with damaging the Turk’s merchandise, in spite of the almost fussy way the Turk had warned him against that—demmage the goots end you demmage the velue, the Turk had said in his fluting accent.

  No, he didn’t blame the kid for fighting—he would have done the same. He would have to disinfect the wound as soon as he could, might even have to have a shot—he had read somewhere that human bites were the worst kind—but he sort of admired the kid’s guts.

  He dropped the transmission into drive and pulled around the brick building, past the empty drive-thru window, and back onto the access road. He turned left. The Turk had a big ranch-style house in Taluda Heights, on the edge of the city. Sheridan would go there by secondary roads, just in case. Thirty miles. Maybe forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.

  He passed a sign which read THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING THE BEAUTIFUL COUSINTOWN MALL, turned left, and let the van creep up to a perfectly legal forty miles an hour. He fished a handkerchief out of his back pocket, folded it over the back of his right hand, and concentrated on following his headlights to the forty grand the Turk had promised.

  “You’ll be sorry,” the kid said.

  Sheridan looked impatiently around at him, pulled from a dream in which he had just made twenty straight points and had Mr. Reggie groveling at his feet, sweating bullets and begging him to stop, what did he want to do, break him?

  The kid was crying again, and his tears still had that odd reddish cast. Sheridan wondered for the first time if the kid might be sick ... might have some disease. Was nothing to him as long as he himself didn’t catch it and as long as Mr. Wizard paid him before finding out.

  “When my Popsy finds you you’ll be sorry,” the kid elaborated.

  “Yeah,” Sheridan said, and lit a cigarette. He turned off State Road 28 onto an unmarked stretch of two-lane blacktop. There was a long marshy area on the left, unbroken woods on the right.

  The kid pulled at the handcuffs and made a sobbing sound.

  “Quit it. Won’t do you any good.”

  Nevertheless, the kid pulled again. And this time there was a groaning, protesting sound Sheridan didn’t like at all. He looked around and was amazed to see that the metal strut on the side of the seat—a strut he had welded in place himself—was twisted out of shape. Shit! he thought. He’s got teeth like razors and now I find out he’s also strong as a fucking ox.

  He pulled over onto the soft shoulder and said, “Stop it!”

  “I won’t!”

  The kid yanked at the handcuff again and Sheridan saw the metal strut bend a little more. Christ, how could any kid do that?

  It’s panic, he answered himself. That’s how he can do it.

  But none of the others had been able to do it, and many of them had been in worse shape than this kid by now.

  He opened the glove compartment in the center of the dash. He brought out a hypodermic needle. The Turk had given it to him, and cautioned him not to use it unless he absolutely had to. Drugs, the Turk said (pronouncing it drucks) could demmege the merchandise.

  “See this?”

  The kid nodded.

  “You want me to use it?”

  The kid shook his head, eyes big and terrified.

  “That’s smart. Very smart. It would put out your lights.” He paused. He didn’t want to say it—hell, he was a nice guy, really, when he didn’t have his ass in a sling—but he had to. “Might even kill you.”

  The kid stared at him, lips trembling, face as white as newspaper ashes.

  “You stop yanking the cuff, I won’t use the needle. Okay?”

  “Okay,” the kid whispered.

  “You promise?”

  “Yes.” The kid lifted his lip, showing white teeth. One of them was spotted with Sheridan’s blood.

  “You promise on your mother’s name?”

  “I never had a mother.”

  “Shit,” Sheridan said, disgusted, and got the van rolling again. He moved a little faster now, and not only because he was finally off the main road. The kid was a spook. Sheridan wanted to turn him over to the Turk, get his money, and split.

  “My Popsy’s really strong, mister.”

  “Yeah?” Sheridan asked, and thought: I bet he is, kid. Only guy in the old folks’ home who can bench-press his own truss, right?

  “He’ll find me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He can smell me.”

  Sheridan believed it. He could sure smell the kid. That fear had an odor was something he had learned on his previous expeditions, but this was unreal—the kid smelled like a mixture of sweat, mud, and slowly cooking battery acid.

  Sheridan cracked his window. On the left, the marsh went on and on. Broken slivers of moonlight glimmered in the stagnant water.

  “Popsy can fly.”

  “Yeah,” Sheridan said, “and I bet he flies even better after a couple of bottles of Night Train.”

  “Popsy—”

  “Shut up, kid, okay?”

  The kid shut up.

  Four miles further on the marsh broadened into a wide empty pond. Here Sheridan made a left turn onto a stretch of hardpan dirt. Five miles west of here he would turn right onto Highway 41, and from there it would be a straight shot into Taluda Heights.

  He glanced toward the pond, a flat silver sheet in the moonlight ... and then the moonlight was gone. Blotted out.

  Overhead there was a flapping sound like big sheets on a clothesline.

  “Popsy!” the kid cried.

  “Shut up. It was only a bird.”

  But suddenly he was spooked, very spooked. He looked at the kid. The kid’s lip was drawn back from his teeth again. His teeth were very white, very big.

  No ... not big. Big wasn’t the right word. Long was the right word. Especially the two on the top at each side. The ... what did you call them? The canines.

  His mind suddenly started to fly again, clicking along as if he were on speed.

  I told im I was thirsty.

  Why would Popsy go to a place where they

  (?eat was he go
ing to say eat?)

  He’ll find me. He can smell me. My Popsy can fly.

  Thirsty I told him I was thirsty he went to get me something to drink he went to get me SOMEONE to drink he went—

  Something landed on the roof of the van with a heavy clumsy thump.

  “Popsy!” the kid screamed again, almost delirious with delight, and suddenly Sheridan could not see the road anymore—a huge membranous wing, pulsing with veins, covered the windshield from side to side.

  My Popsy can fly.

  Sheridan screamed and jumped on the brake, hoping to tumble the thing on the roof off the front. There was that groaning, protesting sound of metal under stress from his right again, this time followed by a short bitter snap. A moment later the kid’s fingers were clawing into his face, pulling open his cheek.

  “He stole me, Popsy!” the kid was screeching at the roof of the van in that birdlike voice. “He stole me, he stole me, the bad man stole me!”

  You don’t understand, kid, Sheridan thought. He groped for the hypo and found it. I’m not a bad guy, I just got in a jam, hell, under the right circumstances I could be your grandfather—

  But as Popsy’s hand, more like a talon than a real hand, smashed through the side window and ripped the hypo from Sheridan’s hand—along with two of his fingers—he understood that wasn’t true.

  A moment later Popsy peeled the entire driver’s side door out of its frame, the hinges now bright twists of meaningless metal. He saw a billowing cape, some kind of pendant, and the tie—yes, it was blue.

  Popsy yanked him out of the car, talons sinking through Sheridan’s jacket and shirt and deep into the meat of his shoulders. Popsy’s green eyes suddenly turned as red as blood-roses.

  “We only came to the mall because my grandson wanted some Transformer figures,” Popsy whispered, and his breath was like flyblown meat. “The ones they show on TV. All the children want them. You should have left him alone. You should have left us alone.”

  Sheridan was shaken like a rag-doll. He shrieked and was shaken again. He heard Popsy asking solicitously if the kid was still thirsty; heard the kid saying yes, very, the bad man had scared him and his throat was so dry. He saw Popsy’s thumbnail for just a second before it disappeared under the shelf of his chin, the nail ragged and thick and brutal. His throat was cut with that nail before he realized what was happening, and the last things he saw before his sight dimmed to black were the kid, cupping his hands to catch the flow the way Sheridan himself had cupped his hands under the backyard faucet for a drink on a hot summer day when he was a kid, and Popsy, stroking the boy’s hair gently, with great love.