Boys in the Valley(17)
Poole waits, stone-faced. “The hood.”
Andrew stops at the doorway, his curiosity getting the best of him. I must see his face, he thinks, then watches as Sheriff Baker grips the top of the soiled sack.
Baker pauses. Uncertain. Afraid.
The laughter stops.
The room goes still.
“Go on,” Poole says.
In one quick jerk, Baker yanks upward. The hood comes free. He tosses the sackcloth away, disgusted.
Unseen by anyone in the room, the hood slides into a corner and settles beneath a wooden chair, lost in shadow.
All eyes—including Andrew’s—are on Paul Baker’s face.
Andrew gasps despite himself.
It is a nightmare.
That is no man. The force of this sudden belief—a staggering awareness—is stronger than anything he’s felt in his lifetime. That is a demon.
Paul Baker’s pale skin is deeply wrinkled, as if pruned, and tinted an unnatural dark, ashen gray. The eyes are jaundiced, wild and ferocious as a jackal. The hair—a coarse, brittle blonde—has fallen out in places, giving the skull a splotchy, misshapen look. The teeth are rotten and black—and quite evident—as Paul Baker stretches back his pale, wormy lips in an effort to fully expose them in a fiendish rictus. A devil’s grin. The pupils in his yellow, milky eyes are black and misshapen as drops of ink on wet parchment. They dart rapidly between his brother and the other deputies. Then settle on Poole.
The grin vanishes, his eyes sink in a supplication so devious as to be mocking.
“Father,” he rasps, his quiet, tortured voice filling the room. “Wilt thou save me?”
Poole begins to answer when the ghoulish creature jerks his head back, exposing a bony throat, and screams with such force that a deputy covers his ears. His back arches impossibly, and Andrew hears the tap-dance clicking of bones, the strained creaking of bedposts as their strength is tested.
Poole turns, eyes flashing. “Andrew!” he screams. “Go, damn you!”
*
David slips through the door first.
Once they heard the scream, he and Peter shared a look. A silent agreement. Peter had turned back to address the other awakened boys, told them to stay put.
Now, halfway down the dark hallway, they hear raised voices. The sounds of a struggle? There’s a crack and a man shrieks in pain. David is sweating, terrified, but it helps to have Peter with him. He mocks Peter enough, more than he deserves, and enjoys rubbing his nose in all that blue-eyed goodness he exudes, but the truth is that David respects Peter, even if he doesn’t necessarily like him all that much. He assumes it’s a similar feeling to what one might feel for a sibling. A brother. The feeling where you hate having to be in the same room with a fella for more than ten minutes, but if push came to shove, you’d give your life for him.
Peter tugs at his sleeve as they approach the stairs. “Stay down,” he whispers, and David nods. Once they make it to the banister, they’ll be easy to spot for anyone gazing upward from the foyer below.
Side by side, they crawl onto the balcony, stopping short of the dark oak spindles riddled before them like prison bars, each attached to a slanted shadow, flattened by the muted moonlight coming through the foyer’s solitary round window. Cautiously, they glance downward in hopes of seeing the cause of this incredible, late-night disruption.
The foyer is poorly lit. More dark than light. From the hallway leading to the priests’ rooms, an orange glow spreads outward across the floor like spilled paint. Multiple voices can be heard coming from that same direction, and David assumes that whoever was laughing—then screaming—resides somewhere down that hall.
“Look,” Peter whispers.
David leans forward in time to see the chapel door open. A shadowy figure hurries out, then walks into the glow of the orange light before disappearing down the corridor.
“Andrew,” Peter murmurs, and David nods.
“What do you think?” David says quietly.
Peter opens his mouth to answer when another scream shatters the air.
This scream sounds much different. And David realizes, with a sour twist of his stomach, that it did not come from the same man as the first.
10
“BE STILL!”
Andrew re-enters the room to see the bound man writhing like an angry eel atop the bed, his mouth stretched impossibly wide in some unfathomable torment. Wide enough that Andrew notices that it’s not just his teeth that are black, but his tongue and mouth, as well.
Like he’s been drinking ink.
Poole is tearing at the man’s shirt, ripping it off his bleeding torso. The mattress is already heavy with blood. Red tendrils trickle to the floor like ivy.
“Hold him!” Poole yells, and two deputies grab Paul Baker’s arms, careful to keep their hands away from his snapping jaws. He intermittently laughs, cries, or wails, with seemingly no reason for the rapid changes in response to whatever darkness boils within him.
Andrew rushes over to stand behind Poole, placing the surgery kit, book, and vial of holy water on his dresser. “Father, how can I help?”
“Hand me scissors, the large ones.”
Andrew pulls open the bag, sees the array of field surgery instruments neatly displayed, and pulls a pair of hand-sized scissors from a leather loop. “Here!”
Poole reaches behind, grabs them, and begins cutting the shirt off Baker’s contorting, convulsing body. “Hold him steady, please! I don’t want to stab the man.”