Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,29
seemed like a ticking time bomb. Mandy had stopped crying and was staring inward.
Cherry checked her Coca-Cola Swatch and saw that only ten minutes had passed since Steve and Noah had left with Jenny. How long would it take them to find a hospital, explain what was going on, and bring back help? Half an hour? Longer?
A nippy breeze ruffled the nearby reeds and saplings and stirred the mist into searching, serpentine tendrils. Cherry folded her knees to her chest for warmth, wrapped her arms around them—and spotted three flashlight beams bobbing between the trees some fifty yards away.
CHAPTER 7
“They’re here!”
Poltergeist (1982)
Mandy hurried over to Austin and Cherry to watch the crisscrossing flashlight beams approach. She frowned as an uneasy feeling built in her gut. She told herself there was no reason to be concerned, whoever was out here had come to help. But there was something about random people in a dark, unfamiliar forest that scared her silly.
“Do you think they’re campers?” Mandy said anxiously.
“Out here?” Austin said.
“Maybe they live nearby?” she said. “They heard the crash and are coming to help?”
“Maybe,” Austin said, though he didn’t sound convinced.
“Why else would they be out here?”
“I don’t like this,” Cherry said. “I don’t like this at all.”
Mandy frowned, momentarily despising the Filipina. She wanted to hear that they were safe, that they were fine; she didn’t want to hear fear and paranoia.
Soon the strangers were close enough Mandy could make out the snapping of branches, the crunch of footsteps on dead leaves, the general rustle of disturbed foliage.
“’Lo there?” one of them called.
“Hello,” Austin said.
A few seconds later three men dressed in checkered lumberjack jackets emerged from the gloom of the night into the firelight produced by the burning BMW. Mandy gasped silently in surprise and horror. The slim one in the middle sported stringy black hair, bushy muttonchops, and a handlebar mustache. Despite skin the color and texture of old vellum, and a hooked beak for a nose, he appeared normal enough. The other two, however, might have just escaped from a carny sideshow. The freak on the left had a round moon face, piggish eyes, stood close to seven feet tall, and must have weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds. The freak on the right had misshapen features covered by a jigsaw of wormy white scars and a vacant expression, as though his brains were nothing but mush.
Mandy forced herself not to stare and focused on the middle one, who was visoring his eyes with his hand while he studied the flaming vehicle.
“Good Lord almighty, will ya look at that,” he crowed.
“We had an accident,” Austin said.
“No fooling,” he said. “Anyone hurt?” His eyes fell on Jeff. “Aw, shit. He ain’t dead, is he?”
“No!” Mandy said, shocked by the man’s blunt manner.
He looked at her. His eyes were dark, unreadable. They appraised her from head to toe and lingered on her breasts. “Well, now,” he drawled, “that’s quite an outfit you got on, ma’am.”
“It’s a Halloween costume.”
“I reckoned as much. And a good choice at that.” He turned his attention to Austin. “How about you, Cueball? No costume?”
Austin twitched at the insult. “I took it off.”
“And you, little lady?”
“I didn’t bring one,” Cherry said quietly.
“All Hallows’ Eve, my favorite night of the year, when all the ghoulies come out to play, ain’t that right?” He grinned, revealing a missing front tooth. “Anywho, the name’s Cleavon. What can I do to help y’all?”
“Our friends have already left to get help,” Mandy said. “They’ll be back any minute,” she added purposefully.
“Any minute you say?” Cleavon said to her. “When did they leave?”
“Forty minutes ago,” Mandy lied.
“Forty minutes, huh?”
She nodded.
“And they ain’t back already? Shit, maybe they got lost?”
“Do you live out here?” Austin asked him.
“Over yonder, in fact.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder.
“And you wander the woods at night?”
Ignoring the question, Clevon took a few steps toward the BMW and said, “Well knock me down and steal my teeth. It’s a genuine Bimmer, boys! Or was, I should say. So you some uppity rich kids, that right? Where you from?”
“New York,” Austin said.
“The Big Apple! Never been there myself. Always wanted to go, but don’t reckon I’d fit in too good. I’m ’bout as country as a baked bean sandwich. Ain’t that right, boys?”
The four-hundred-pound freak nodded. “Right-o, Cleave.”
“My apologies,” Cleavon said. “That there’s me brother Earl. And that’s me other brother, Floyd. Floyd don’t say much. He only got two speeds: slow and stop.