She’d be surprised to see herself right now, to realize she was grinning like a ghoul as she charged at him, bloody spike in her right hand, hinge pin in her left.
CHAPTER 52
“Chomp it!” Ricky sang. “I want to hear it grind.”
Something was happening underfoot. It was muffled, but it sounded like a fight. There wasn’t much time. I bit down. A bitterness swept my mouth, so strong it numbed my tongue.
“Whoo-ee!” Ricky said, releasing Junie so he could snatch the bottle out of my hand. “Ed was right about wasting people, how killing someone doesn’t change much at all. Your Wheaties taste the same the next morning. People smile back at you, just like always. But he was wrong about one thing. You know what that was?”
I shook my head. I would tackle him at the waist. Would that buy Junie enough time?
“He called me a baby for not going down to visit that girl. Who’s a baby now?” He tipped his head and dropped in an avalanche of pills, so many that some bounced off his teeth and hit the ground. He chewed up what made it inside, foamy flecks dotting his teeth. “Holy hell, now who’s as much of a badass as Ed Godo? Now who’s the goddamned Stearns County Killer? Let’s have some fun!”
Junie had been inching away from him. He lunged at her and might have caught her if the trapdoor separating me from her hadn’t given a mighty tremble and then begun to slowly open, creaking.
I moaned.
“About fricking time,” Ricky said, blinking rapidly. “Ant, pull that scarf off the lamp. Ed’s not gonna like this room all yellow.”
“I didn’t put no scarf on the lamp,” Ant said, staring at the trapdoor along with the rest of us. “And it’s not yellow in here.”
CHAPTER 53
The trapdoor that had been opening tentatively suddenly shot wide, hitting the floor with a thump. Junie gasped and ran to my side, and we both backed against the far wall, nearer the front door. A bloody hand erupted from the floor like a horror-movie zombie erupting from its grave.
A woman followed.
I gasped. She was covered in blood, her eyes wild, but I recognized her red hair.
Beth McCain.
She moved like a cat, measured, turning her back to me and Junie so she faced Ricky and Ant as she climbed the stairs. The bottom half of Ricky’s jaw had unhinged like somebody’d pulled the fasteners out. It just dangled there. Ant had gone as white as a frog’s belly.
“Oh crap,” he said, staring from Ricky to Beth and then at the trapdoor. “Crap on a holy cracker.”
Beth crept steadily until she stood alongside me and Junie, gaze still locked on Ricky in the kitchen and Ant by the bedroom, the door to freedom at her back, the trapdoor a gaping mouth in the middle of all of us. She smelled of funk and blood. She was painfully skinny, her muscles stretched like jerky over her bones. She clutched a piece ofwood or metal, it was hard to tell which, covered as it was by gore and what looked like a patch of slick black hair.
If I hadn’t been standing so near the door, I may not have heard the gentle rattle of her hand clasping the knob at her back, that’s how stealthy, how hypnotizing her movements were.
She finally turned toward me.
What I saw in her eyes was eternal and terrifying.
“Run,” she said simply.
CHAPTER 54
She took off like she knew the quarries, and I supposed she did. She was a Saint Cloud girl. Junie and I followed. I felt light-headed. I didn’t know if it was the fear or if I’d swallowed a poison pill. I’d taken only one.
That couldn’t kill me, could it?
A roar ripped the air behind us, followed by Ricky yelling, his voice phlegmy, “We’re gonna catch you!”
We skirted the firepit I’d sat at less than a week earlier and raced toward the mountain of granite on the opposite side of the quarry. Beth was leading the way toward the summit, Junie right behind. I brought up the rear. I hoped Beth knew of a road, or even a path up there, so that we wouldn’t reach the top and be trapped. I turned to see how much of a lead we had. The bright moonlight lit up Ricky maybe fifty yards behind me, reflecting off the runners of snot hanging out both his nostrils. He looked furious, racing across the rocks like a goat.
Ahead, Beth appeared as sure-footed on the granite as Ricky did behind. She jumped from one boulder to another, reaching back to offer Junie her hand. Ricky’s scrabbling was growing louder. I tried to pick up speed, but the black water to my left leered at me, warning me to be careful or it’d swallow me whole just like it’d done to Maureen. I’d never gone up the high dive that day at the Muni. Maureen had led theway. Even Brenda had worked up the courage to jump. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to crawl to the top.
“Come on!” Junie hollered from ahead.
