They’d made it only halfway down the tunnel when they saw the first body. The man, a doctor in a white lab coat, lay face down on the stone floor, a dark pool spiderwebbing out from his neck. Max knew what they’d see if they turned him over, a red gash opening his throat.
In the chamber, they saw four hospital beds with leather straps that had been ripped from the metal frames and lay discarded on the floor. Another doctor sat in a wooden chair, a clipboard on his lap, the white page he’d been writing on saturated in red. His throat lay open.
“They’ve all escaped,” Percy said, touching one of the straps and cringing. “God help us.”
“No!” A voice gasped behind them, startling Max and Percy.
Max turned to find Dr. Lance in the dark tunnel, his eyes bulging as he gazed at the dead man on the ground.
“You did this,” Percy shrieked.
Lance’s head shot up, and he stared disbelievingly at Percy.
“How-”
“How did I escape? How can I form sentences after all the drugs you gave me? Probably wishing you’d performed a lobotomy right now, aren’t you, Guy? How could you?” Percy’s voice shrilled.
But Dr. Lance didn’t seem to understand. His eyes had returned to the doctor on the floor. Blood seeped from the wound at his neck.
Max, too, felt paralyzed by the gruesome scene, unable to think clearly about what must come next.
Lance stepped to one of the beds, he touched a strap. “They couldn’t have,” he murmured.
“You did this,” Percy yelled again, though his accusation had lost some of its power. He stumbled to the wall and braced a hand against the stone.
“Where are the dolls?” Max demanded, finally remembering Percy’s explanation. If they dismantled the dolls, the boys would become children again.
Lance didn’t speak, he walked to the body of the man in the chair. “Fred?” he whispered, leaning close to the man’s ear.
Max felt sick to his stomach. The man’s head hung to the side. The gash looked fake, a horror movie prop too revolting to be believed.
“Guy,” Percy demanded, his hoarse voice revealing his weakening state. “Where are the dolls? It’s the only way to stop them.”
Lance glanced up, his eyes registering Percy, and finally, his words. He looked around the room, and his gaze paused on a briefcase sitting on top of a pedestal that held a huge leather-bound book.
“There,” Percy said.
Max strode to the case and grabbed it.
The leather suitcase was fastened with a small gold padlock. Max smashed the briefcase against the wall. The second time the clasp broke and fell to the floor. He laid the case down and clicked it open. Inside the case, he saw three objects wrapped in linen.
He unwrapped the first and stared at an ugly doll with yellow teeth poking from its cloth face.
The doll jolted him, and as he gazed at it, a disconcerting sense of deja’vu washed over Max.
“Three dolls and four beds,” he whispered. “Where’s the fourth doll?” he demanded of Lance.
Lance stepped away from the doctor in the chair. “Six weeks ago, a boy got away,” he murmured. “He… he took the doll.”
“One of them escaped?” Max demanded.
Lance nodded, walked to the bed and lifted one of the straps. “Vern. His name was Vern.”
“Vern Ripley?” Max said. “Where did he go?”
“We suspect he returned to Roscommon.”
Max frowned and glanced at the doll in his hand, still unnerved by the sense he’d seen it somewhere before.
“Are you saying that the animal who’s killing kids is Vern Ripley?”
The man stared straight ahead. A shudder coursed up his body. “We had two men out there, but…” he opened his palms. “We couldn’t track him down.”
“You low down dog,” Percy huffed, but he barely managed the words, leaning heavily on the wall, finally sinking to the floor.
From the tunnel, a growling emerged, and the doctor’s eyes shot wide.
“It’s one of them-”
But Dr. Lance didn’t have time to complete his thought. The boy lunged from the shadows and shoved the doctor onto his back. His gaunt face sunk into the space beneath the doctor’s chin and a spurt of blood burst from the man’s neck.
“Stop, now. Get off,” Max yelled, grabbing an empty chair and lifting it over his head.
“Don’t hit him,” Percy called, crawling across the floor to the leather case.
He pulled the dolls from the case and ripped them apart. Hair and bones and tattered cloth piled at his knees.
The boy didn’t stop. His hands, the fingernails grown long and yellow, tore at the doctor’s face. The boy’s own face was a smear of blood from nose to chin. He snarled and shrieked, more animal than human.
When Percy lifted the last doll, the boy stiffened, head swiveling around to where Percy kneeled. He opened his mouth and let out an inhuman howl.
Max still held the chair raised, frozen, unable to bring it down.
The boy leapt from the doctor and ran into the dark tunnel leading back to the woods.
Max heaved the chair away. It hit a wall and splintered.
Percy ripped the doll to pieces.
Max stood in stunned silence, watching the doctor’s coat slowly saturate red. He finally willed his legs to move. He ripped off his t-shirt and stuffed it into the wound in Guy Lance’s neck.
The doctor stared at him, his mouth opened as if to speak, but nothing emerged. The man’s eyes grew distant and then darkened as if a light behind the man’s blue irises had blinked out.
Percy stepped to the doctor and pressed two fingers against his wrist. He leaned close to the man’s face. “He’s dead, Max.”
As Max stared at the scattering of hair and bones, all that was left of the disgusting dolls, the memory came to him.
He had ducked beneath the weeping willow after following Ashley Shepherd, and there, on the picnic table, had been the doll, the same kind of doll he’d seen in the case.
“Holy shit,” he said, hand going to his mouth. “We have to go, now!”
Percy scrambled across the floor, snatching at the bones and teeth, stuffing them into the briefcase.
“Now,” Max shouted, grabbing Percy’s arm and wrenching him to his feet.
Percy clutched the case to his chest, and they ran back into the night.
43
Sid and Shane had taken another path to The Crawford House. This one was well worn and occasionally marked by a kid’s tennis shoe or random spray painted tree, allowing them to ride fast.
Sid tried not to think of Ashley on the opposite side of the woods, crashing through the undergrowth with a monster on her tail.
He had to stop the imaginings right there. Anything more made him want to scream and stamp his feet and rewind the clock three days to when they’d created their stupid plan and take it all back.
But it was too late now. Weird how that happened. One moment you were concocting the most insane scenario, knowing in the back of your mind you’d never go through with it, and in the next moment you were there, five minutes in, which might as well have been a lifetime because you couldn’t turn back now.
The only way was forward, forward to The Crawford House, and what if Ashley didn’t make it? What then?
Shane pulled ahead, and Sid gasped for breath as he tried to keep pace. At the place the forest grew thick, they jumped off the bikes, not bothering to stash them.
Shane reached The Crawford house first, and Sid skidded into the clearing behind him.
The sky had the glazed red color of a day’s end.
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” he whispered, not sure why the words mattered in that moment, but needing to say them anyway. They weren’t sailors, but it still felt like a good omen.