Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (30 page)

“Corny? Why don’t you take that
thing off your head?”

He emerged from the tight tunnel
and stood up straight. Chief Chaney—no, he wasn’t chief anymore—was looking
funny at him. Did he suspect what was happening to him under the magic skull?
Did he have any idea he was about to die?

***

Ree was hiding in the downstairs
closet when the German Shepard’s barking became a yelping whine. It was the
sound a dog makes when it’s been suddenly hurt.
Yip, yip, yip.
Then
silence.

Hondo’s obvious distress spurred
her to action. How could she explain to Luke that she’d been hiding in the
closet like a frightened child while his faithful dog was being done in? She
threw open the closet door, grabbed the scarred baseball bat from the corner
and crept out of her hidey-hole, the bat poised over her right shoulder, ready
to strike. Being naked beneath Luke’s flannel shirt, she felt more vulnerable
than she otherwise would have in these strange circumstances, but she
nevertheless pressed on, creeping up the hallway toward the front door and the
porch where the barking and yipping had originated.

“Hondo? What is it, boy?” she
called in a shaky voice.

She found the wall switch and
flicked on the front-porch light, and then opened the door and peered out
through the screen.

The wet gray wood of the porch gleamed
in the yellow light. Tendrils of fog hung in the air like misty vines.

“Hondo, come here, boy. Where are
you?” she tried to whistle but her mouth and lips had gone dry.

She heard him before she saw him.
His nails ticked against the wood as he came toward the screen door. Ree felt
the deep rumble of his low-throated growling. Then she saw him advancing warily
toward her, his ears laid back, his teeth bared and dropping saliva. His wide
eyes held the reflection of the porch-light and shone a malevolent yellow. He
wasn’t foaming at the mouth, but he certainly was acting like a mad dog.

She put down the bat and squatted
by the screen door and spoke to the snarling beast in a soft, non-threatening
voice: “Hondo, it’s me. What’s wrong, boy?” It was difficult to keep the fear
out of her voice. She tried to cover it by cooing in singsong tones. “What’s
the matter, baby? Did something scare you?”

Hondo stared through the screen at
her, his fierce eyes locked onto hers. She remembered that it wasn’t good to
maintain eye contact with angry animals because they took it as a threat, so
she looked down at his big paws. “I’m your friend, remember? Be a good boy.”

With no further warning the dog
leapt at the belly of the screen. The thin door banged against the doorframe,
Hondo’s weight keeping it firmly shut. Ree fell back on her rear, then grabbed
the bat and scrambled to her feet. The rusted screen was ripped where he’d hit
it with his head and front feet. She slammed the front door and threw the bolt.
The dog barked savagely, frustrated as well as angry now. She knew he would rip
her apart if he could get at her, and getting at her was apparently foremost in
his canine mind.

She considered calling the boarding
house to ask for Luke, but nixed the idea. If there really was trouble there,
she didn’t want to bother Luke or the police with a barking-dog complaint—which
was probably what it would sound like to them. She was safe, after all. Hondo
couldn’t open the door and come in after her. Just the same, she would feel better
if she had a better weapon than a baseball bat. She went into the den and tried
to open the gun cabinet, but it was locked and she had no idea where Luke kept
the key. She could break the glass to get a gun, but that seemed a little
extreme. She didn’t want Luke to think of her as a woman who easily panicked.
Armed with the ball bat, she started up the stairs. She would shut herself
safely in the bedroom and wait for Luke there. But what would happen when Luke
got home? If something really was wrong with Hondo, he might attack an
unsuspecting Luke as he got out of his truck. Maybe she
should
try to
call and warn him.

She was halfway up the stairs when
the dog crashed through the living-room window amid a hail of broken glass. The
window screen hit the floor a second before Hondo did. The dog slipped on it
and rolled over once, then sprang to his feet, growling and slinging saliva.
The beast’s eyes found her and he charged the stairs.

Having played for years on the
women’s softball team, Ree knew how to handle a bat, how to keep her eye on the
ball and connect with it at just the right time; those skills kicked in now and
she substituted the dog’s head for a ball. She cocked the bat over her shoulder
and waited for Hondo to come into range. He bounded up the steps and lunged at
her bare legs. She swung hard and brought the bat down on top of his head. The
bat glanced off the dog’s skull and hit the stairs, but the blow was enough to
stop his first assault. Hondo’s forelegs buckled and his snout thumped against
the edge of the stair-step.

She cocked the bat again and
brought it straight down off her shoulder as the dog was regaining his footing.
The thickest part of the bat struck the flat of Hondo’s skull. The muffled
crack
was not the sound of the bat breaking; it was the sound of a skull fracturing
beneath the fur and skin. Hondo went down with his legs splayed awkwardly on
the steps. Blood leaked from his snout and ears, and his eyes remained open and
quickly glazed over.

A sick feeling gnawed at the pit of
her stomach and she thought she was going to vomit, but she held it down.

I have to get him outside. I
can’t have Luke come home to find his dog dead on the stairs.

But she wasn’t entirely sure Hondo
was dead. He
should
be dead, but if not, it would be dangerous to try to
move him. How did you check a dog’s pulse? Feel his throat? That in itself
could be a dangerous chore, putting your hand that close to the animal’s mouth.
But it had to be done.

She saw no sign that the dog was
breathing, so she reached slowly with her left hand and slipped it underneath
the dog’s throat. She pressed her fingers into the fur and felt for a pulse.
She detected no heartbeat. Hondo’s glazed eyes remained open, seeing nothing.
Satisfied he was dead, she sat on a step and leaned the bat against the wall.
She propped her arms on her bent knees, rested her forehead on her arms and
cried. She had never deliberately killed an animal before, and she didn’t like
the way it made her feel. The fact that she had done it in self-defense didn’t
lessen her anguish. She lifted her head and looked once again at the bright
blood on Hondo’s white fur and sobbed so hard her nose started dripping. She
wiped her nose on the shirtsleeve and put her head back down on the bridge of
her arms.

A whisper of movement. A soft sigh
of air.

She looked up as the dog was
getting to its feet. She threw her arms behind her and tried to climb backwards
up the steps and out of Hondo’s reach. Then she remembered the bat and made a
grab for it.  The dog made no sound as it sprang at her. His teeth sank into
her outstretched forearm, and the bat fell over and slid down the stairs. Her
arm was trapped in the vise of the dog’s powerful jaws. She buried her bare
feet in his belly and kicked out, lifting him into the air. His teeth tore a
chunk of flesh from her arm as the dog went airborne, bounced against the
staircase and tumbled to the foot of the stairs.

Ignoring the searing pain, Ree
turned and ran up the steps, her eyes on the door to the bedroom on the right
at the top of the stairs. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw him
charging after her, already halfway to the landing.

She stumbled through the bedroom
doorway, turned on her side and tried to kick the door shut as the beast leapt
at her, his dead eyes shining in the dim light.

***

Luke decided not to force the
issue. Corny obviously did not want to remove the skull from his head, and the
thing would likely slow him down if he bolted, so Luke pointed at the rope
lying like a thick vine on the length of the asphalt and told Corny to grab
hold and climb out of the sinkhole.

Goolsby watched with a bewildered
expression as Corny pulled himself hand-over-hand up the rope and out of the
hole. Luke imagined that the big-city geologist was wondering just what the hell
he’d gotten himself into with this job in a hick town where a mass killer wore
a freakish skull on his head.

“Stay right there, Corny,” Luke
said as he grabbed the rope and began to walk up the asphalt incline.

Corny began to pace about the rim
of the hole, clearly agitated now. Goolsby stepped away from him, but Corny
suddenly shot out an arm and seized the man’s shirtfront. Street light glinted
on something in Corny’s other hand. Luke recognized it as a knife blade.
Holding onto the rope with one hand, Luke drew his pistol. “No!” he shouted as
Corny jabbed the knife at Goolsby’s abdomen.

Luke squeezed the trigger. The
sinkhole trapped the concussion and amplified the pistol’s report. His ears
rang with sharp pain.

***

The voices told him to kill the
stranger. Corny’s buzzing brain made the connection that the stranger was the
sinkhole-expert his aunt had mentioned and that the dark thing didn’t want the
man poking around in the warren of tunnels and caves. Obedient, he pulled the
bone-handle hunting knife from its hiding place under his shirttail and stabbed
at the man’s belly. The man was too quick and the tip of the blade caught
nothing but shirt. At the same time there was a loud bang and Corny felt like
he’d been kicked in the stomach. He wobbled on rubbery legs and almost fell
back into the hole. He lifted his shirt and saw blood pouring out of the hole
in the left side of his belly. The voices jabbered like a flock of blue jays,
and Seemoan the snake shrieked hisses as she writhed inside him, and he knew
she was dying. It was odd, but he didn’t feel any pain. He knew he’d just been
shot, but all he felt was a wet, numb feeling where the bullet hole was, and
his legs felt a little weak. He looked down at Chaney who was still hanging on
the rope and pointing the gun at him. He didn’t want to get shot again, so he
threw down the knife. With the crazy voices making all kinds of racket inside
his skull-within-a-skull, something
clicked
in Corny’s brain. It was
like somebody had actually flipped a switch in there, and all at once he saw
everything in a different light—a light the dark thing didn’t like at all. He
saw the terrible things he’d done back at the house, saw himself hacking Aunt
Mattie and the others to death with his machete and he was sickened by what
they had made him do. Chaney was right! The voices had lied to him. They used
him. Instead of being the town hero, they had turned him into a monster. A
killer. A psycho retard. But now he
knew
what they were and what they
really wanted. When he heard the distant train whistle, he knew he had one last
chance to be a hero. The train was calling him. He
was
a railroad man at
heart—just like that writer had said—and the train was showing him the way. He
was going to be a hero, but nobody would ever know it. But that was all right.
It was like his daddy always told him: “A good man does the right thing even
when there’s nobody around to see him do it.” Well, they would see it but they
wouldn’t really understand it. He would be the best kind of hero—the
unsung
hero. He remembered that word from some movie and he understood its meaning for
the first time. Nobody would sing songs of his heroic deed, but God would know,
and that would be good enough. He looked out over the row of dragon teeth at
Chaney climbing out of the hole, then he turned and ran down the street and cut
through the narrow alley that would shoot him toward the train yard and to his
heroic destiny.

***

Ree shoved the heavy cedar chest
against the bedroom door. She didn’t think the dog would be able to knock down
the door to get at her, but this was no ordinary dog. This was some kind of
demon dog who had come back from the dead to attack her. When the beast had
leapt at her the last time, she had kicked the door shut on its head, and because
this was an old house with doors of solid wood, the door had saved her from
being ripped apart by teeth and claws.

It was scratching and pawing at the
door now. Ree grabbed the cordless phone off its base on the bedside table and
took it into the adjoining bathroom and shut herself inside. Then she sat on
the toilet seat and called the Vinewood Police Department. When the man
answered, she said, “This is Ree Tyler. A mad dog has me trapped in an upstairs
room at Luke Chaney’s house. It bit me once, and it won’t go away. It wants to
kill me.”

The officer said he would send help
as soon as possible. She thanked him, then broke the connection. For the moment
she wasn’t the least concerned with the gossip her call was certain to
generate. Her only concern was the living-dead dog that wanted to tear her to
pieces.

***

After making sure that Goolsby
wasn’t hurt, Luke went after Cornelius Weehunt. He jogged into the alleyway
between the Economy Hardware Store and Robert’s TV Repair. The alley was dark.
His foot kicked a piece of wood and something skittered over the toe of his
boot. In the distance a dome of glowing fog hung over the railroad yard, and he
saw Corny start down the embankment to the yard, the ridiculous skull bouncing
on the boy’s shoulders. He ran across the parking lot behind the row of Main
Street shops, his boots crunching gravel as he made for the spot where Corny
had dropped out of sight.

The wail of a distant train whistle
gave Luke the idea that Corny intended to hop a freight and ride the rails out
of town. Luke couldn’t let that happen. He was thankful the gunshot he’d
inflicted on the boy hadn’t been fatal—not yet—but if he had to shoot him again
to stop him, he would; this time he would bring him down with a shot to the
legs.