The Abandoned - A Horror Novel

37 “Miss?” One of the cops leaned out of the car. “Are you all right?” Ronnie and Dory looked at each other. Ronnie had dried blood all over her clothes; and Dory looked as if she’d been thrown in a washing machine and left out to dry. Ronnie nearly grinned, but it was half-hearted and she couldn’t manage more than a flat line of lips. Then Dory started laughing and wouldn’t stop until Ronnie got her to slide into the back seat of the squad car.

38 The red-haired guy driving was named Officer Phil, and the one next to him with the short dark hair said his name was Tappan, which seemed like a funny name. Ronnie wondered if he had been named for the Tappan Zee Bridge, but decided not to let him know she’d been thinking this. She felt lightheaded all of a sudden, and chalked it up to the long, dreadful night of horror and to lack of sleep. Dory began telling the two policemen all that had happened, from the moment the dogs had escaped the pound and she’d seen what had become of Benny Marais, all the way until dawn. She spoke in rapid-fire staccato bursts of words, and when it sounded too ridiculous she dropped certain things (like the squishy thing that had been about to rape her under the supervision of Mr. Spider). By the end of her tale, she could do nothing but laugh, and it became contagious until both cops in the squad car starting giggling, too, even as she described the worst of it. Ronnie laughed, and that’s when she wondered if she and Dory hadn’t gone insane. She shot Dory a look, and Dory seemed to understand. Dory nodded, chuckling. “I know it sounds crazy” she said, covering her mouth with her hands. “Hysterical,” Ronnie said, and she too had to catch her breath in between the maniacal laughing. She also told her tale as the cops listened patiently, laughing now and then in the contagion of Ronnie’s and Dory’s laughter. When she finished up the last bit, she began to feel lightheaded and a little faint, and her need for sleep became overpowering (No shit, Sherlock, you’ve been up for at least twenty-four hours and you’re a nine-hour-a-night girt) and that’s when Officer Phil said, “Well, you two are okay now. It does sound crazy.” “Loony tuney,” Officer Tappan said. “But we got some reports last night that had us calling some cops down here, and nobody made a lick of sense.” “That’s why we’re here,” Officer Phil said. “You two have had it rough. I know we’ve all been laughing, but it’s the shock, believe me. If even a quarter of what you’ve told us is true, well, you’re lucky to still be ‘all there.’” “Let’s just get going,” Officer Tappan said. “The sooner they get settled in, the sooner we can clear this thing up.” Officer Phil turned the key in the ignition, and glanced in the rearview mirror. “You girls just relax. We’ll run you back up to Parham and find you a place to sleep. We’ll get some other officers down here to check out your story.”

“Thanks,” Dory said. As soon as she felt the car moving, she closed her eyes and leaned against Ronnie, who leaned against her. Ronnie smelled like death, which didn’t bother Dory as much as she thought it would. Sleep came so fast it was like a train hitting her from a dark tunnel. When Dory awoke, it was because the car had come to a full stop.

39 Neither officer was in the car with them, and the doors had been flung open. Dory nudged Ronnie awake. She pointed ahead, to Harrow. The police car was parked in the driveway of the house. Harrow looked ordinary and dilapidated, with none of the grandiose overgrowth it had shown them the night before. It had shrunk back down to being a mere pile of a mansion. Ronnie laughed. “What’s so funny?” “Everything.” “Where’d the cops go?” “Probably inside. They’re probably working for the house. I guess I thought that might be the case. I was hoping it wasn’t, but...” “What the hell are we gonna do?” Dory asked. “How’re your legs?” “What?” “Your legs. Mine are good. We can take a lot of back roads and eventually find our way to Parham or maybe go south to Beacon. I don’t really care as long as it’s far the hell away from here.” “Won’t they come after us?” “I don’t know. We need to be more careful. How much sleep do you think we got?” Dory leaned over the back of the driver’s seat to check the car’s digital clock. “Looks like about ten minutes. Or less.” “Well, it’ll have to do,” Ronnie said. “Let’s go.”

40 The first hour, Dory kept looking back along the road as if expecting the cops to show up again, or someone in a car, or even people with pitchforks and hatchets to come wandering out of the woods, but none of it happened. By the second hour, Ronnie pointed down the gravel road they were following to a large street and a small building beyond some oaks. “I know that place. They make good pancakes. Pancakes would be good right about now.” “I think we should keep going,” Dory said. “At least until dark.” “I’m hungry. Let’s go. I have ...” She took her left shoe off and reached into it, under the tongue and between the shoestrings. She drew out a twenty-dollar bill. “‘Always have a little cash tucked away,’ my dad used to tell me.” “I don’t know. What if...” “What if we drop from hunger?” Ronnie asked.

41 The Wind Cliff Diner was nearly empty. Ronnie went in first and checked the few patrons at their tables to make sure none of them seemed as if they might suddenly rise up and attack them. Once she noticed that they all seemed fairly ordinary, and the guy with the baseball cap and the flannel shirt was scarfing down so many pancakes it made her mouth water, she stepped all the way in with Dory following. They sat at the counter on stools, and when the waitress with big blue hair and the cat’s-eye glasses came by and asked them if they wanted blueberry or buttermilk, her eyes nearly doubled in size looking at them. “You girls look like you been through the wringer. Somebody hurt you?” “I’d like blueberry, with extra butter and lots of syrup,” Ronnie said. “And a side of bacon. And one egg, over easy. And coffee.” “Me, too,” Dory said. “Instead of coffee, milk.” “I think you should go for coffee,” Ronnie said. “You need to stay awake.” “Oh, right. Coffee’s fine.” “Sure,” the waitress said. Dory glanced at her badge: Marjorie. “Marjorie,” she said. “Hon?” “You live up in Watch Point?” “Nope. I’m down in Beacon.” “I love Beacon,” Dory said. “Me, too,” Ronnie said. “You sure you’re not hurt?” Marjorie asked Ronnie. “You look a little ... well, dirty.” “Oh,” Ronnie grinned. “It’s nothing. Where’s the washroom?” Marjorie pointed it out—at the end of the counter and to the right.

42 In the bathroom, Ronnie splashed her face with water. She squeezed some of the pink liquid soap into her hands and scrubbed at her arms and face until it was all clean. She looked at her face in the cracked mirror. “You’re fine.” She checked the cut in her shoulder from the previous evening. It felt a little sore, but was barely more than a scratch. “You’re fine and it’s over. There are just little whispers still around. Shreds of Harrow. You shut it. But it’s a little leaky.”

43 After breakfast, they again used the bathroom to clean themselves and wash their hair and then dry it and then use the toilet. Dory went to get some Wrigley’s Spearmint gum and a tin of Altoids, while Ronnie paid the check. “You sure you girls are doing okay? Sometimes boys can be trouble,” Marjorie said as she rang up the breakfast and the gum and mints. “We’re fine. We had a little accident. Nothing serious,” Ronnie said. She gave up her twenty, and got the change, and thanked Marjorie for a wonderful breakfast. As she turned toward the door, she looked back toward the restroom and thought she saw someone she recognized.

44 Outside on the steps of the diner, Ronnie tapped Dory lightly on her arm. Dory looked over at her, a question in her eyes. “How do you destroy a house?” “Burn it. I guess.” “I don’t think Harrow burns well. Seems to me someone tried it already.” “I don’t know,” Dory said. “Demolish it.” “Got a bulldozer?” “What about blowing it up?” “Ah,” Ronnie said, surveying the parking lot in front of the diner as if looking for someone. “If I had a bomb, that’s what I’d do.” “You’re actually thinking of going back there to blow it up?” “I’m just keeping my options open,” Ronnie said. As if it were an afterthought, she added, “We never saw that man again, did we?” “Who?” “The one who put you upstairs. The one without pants on.” “Oh. I thought you got him. With the axe.” “I hit him. Maybe twice. But I don’t think he died. I just got a good one in.” “You think he’s still there?” “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t even real.” Ronnie shivered and put her arms around herself. “It’s getting too cold already. I wish I had a good jacket.” “We could just stay in the diner today,” Dory said, glancing back at the glass door with the news rack next to it. “No. We need to be on the move. You know, I felt power in that house,” Ronnie said. “I mean, real power. I had that hatchet in my hands and I felt I could ... well, I could do anything. I felt like a goddess or something. I had this ... energy. Out here, well, I’m just cold. No power whatsoever.” “Maybe if we told that waitress what happened, she’d help us. She seemed okay.” Ronnie glanced at Dory and then back to the parking lot. “Did you feel it? That surge of power?” “In the house? No.” “Truth.” “A little. Just a little. But I didn’t feel it all the time.” “Harrow wanted us because it’s scared of us. ‘You hold your enemies closer than your friends,’ my dad used to tell me. You watch your enemies. It’s afraid

of us. I think we’re going to have to go back there someday and make sure that house is brought to the ground. And then salt the ground so nothing grows. And then pour concrete over it or something. Get biblical on its ass. And I think it has to be you and me. It got everyone else it was afraid of, Dory. I don’t think we even have a choice.” Dory looked at Ronnie, who watched the highway beyond the parking lot. Beyond that roadside, a dip in the hill went right down to the Hudson River. Dory said, resignation and determination in her voice, “Okay. We’ll do that. Someday. I promise.” “Good,” Ronnie said. “We’ll be prepared next time. We know what we’re up against now. Because it’s not over, you know that.” “It might be.” “See that Chevy Malibu?” Ronnie nodded to the far end of the parking lot. “Looks kind of dirty?” Dory glanced over at a sleek but dusty car. “Sure.” “That’s my car. I bought it from all my summer jobs. It breaks down all the time, but it runs most days. I let my sister drive it all the time. I loaned it to her that night—the one last summer when Arnie Pierson’s body was cut up out at Harrow. It should be in the driveway at my house. But my mother’s dead. And I’m pretty sure my sister’s dead. So why is it parked here?” Dory asked, “Are you sure it’s yours?” “I know my own license plate. See the cracked back window? It’s mine. It’s the one she drove that night. She drove it most nights when she had a date or a party. And I think I saw someone I know in the diner. From Watch Point. She was sitting at a booth near the restroom. I didn’t see her at first. I noticed her when I was paying the cashier for our breakfast. Like she had come in to sit down just before we left.” “Jesus Christ. Who?” Ronnie shifted uncomfortably. “Someone who should be dead. Or maybe I imagined I saw her. It’s funny, isn’t it? It is like a whisper, the way Harrow gets into you and stays with you. It’s playing games with us now,” Ronnie said. She fell silent a moment. Took a deep breath. “Let’s keep walking. Ignore anyone you see. Don’t stop until we get to Beacon. It’ll be chilly, but we’ll live. Harrow’s still afraid of us. It’s not being direct. Eventually, we’ll get beyond its reach.” “What if—” Dory was about to ask: What if we never get away from it? “For all I know,” Ronnie said, “we’re carriers. We may have Harrow in us just as much as that boy did. I guess if that’s true, there’s not a hell of a lot we can do. We may be spreading the plague wherever we go. Typhoid Mary’s on the

run.” “Thanks for that thought.” Dory grinned, shaking her head slightly. “Glad you kept your sense of humor.” Ronnie slapped her lightly on the back. “You know, it’s good to make new friends.” As incongruous as the words were, Dory felt them, too. “Sure is,” she said with a trace of sadness in her voice. They began walking south on the highway, with the sun shining and the wind picking up. They heard someone calling them back to the diner, and at first neither Ronnie nor Dory wanted to stop to find out who it could be. Dory glanced back, briefly. “I told you,” Ronnie said. “Ignore everyone.” It was Marjorie, standing out at the edge of the parking lot, waving her hands. The waitress shouted to them that she had given them the wrong change, but the two seventeen-year-olds ignored her call, and walked faster down the highway.

EPILOGUE

1 At sundown, the Nightwatchman had decided to take the back roads, the twisty- turny unpaved roads across the fields, between the patches of woods. His old Ford station wagon ran just fine, and he’d filled it with a mattress and some blankets so he could sleep in it, if need be. He no longer knew the name Speederman or Mr. Spider, and felt that he was truly the Nightwatchman, and always had been and always would be. He asked directions, at a gas station in Peekskill, of a twenty-year-old with slicked-back hair whose face was covered with grease as he came to get paid for the gas. “Where you going?” “South, I think.” Even when he spoke, the Nightwatchman saw the look in the young man’s eyes. He feels it. He knows what’s inside me. The Nightwatchman reached out and touched the young man on his shoulder, and the man flinched. The Nightwatchman didn’t know when it would happen, but he knew that the grease monkey’s life would be over sometime soon. It might be in an accident at work, or he might fall down some stairs and hit his head on something hard and sharp. But he had passed a whisper of Harrow on to him. The Nightwatchman grinned as he saw the young man’s reaction to his touch. The gas station attendant’s eyes widened with a slight, and perhaps imagined, fear. It felt good to have that touch, to pass it so easily. “Take care,” the Nightwatchman said to the attendant as he got back into his car. He watched the young man in the rearview mirror as he pulled out onto the road—the attendant was staring at his hands as if they had been plunged into some kind of filth. He drove along the byways of the Hudson Valley, and took a southerly route toward the city, taking hours to get there because he wanted to see the small towns and stop for coffee in Ossining and look at the prison there. He thought about Sing-Sing, and what a delightful place it would be for him, but the voices did not give their approval, so he continued toward New York City, waiting for a sign from within.

2 He slept most days in the car, parked under bridges down by the waterfront. By dusk, he arose, and went looking for a place to spin a web. One night in November, he found it—an advertisement in The New York Times for a nightwatchman. He applied for the job, and knew he would get it because he had managed to touch the woman who interviewed him, although she had seemed repulsed by him. He had gummed her up good with visions of love and lust for him, and he thought as he started his first night of work that she would make an excellent Mrs. Fly one day soon, and maybe they’d have a whole litter of shiny white maggots. She had even asked him out—right after hiring him—and he had said to her, “Sure. Maybe Friday. You can invite me to your place. We’ll get something to eat.” She had nodded, a slightly confused grin on her face as if she didn’t understand why she felt she had dreamed of this moment. But in her dream, she had seen the man standing in the doorway of a house that loomed against the sky as if it were a bird of prey, descending.

3 You can just see it sometimes, over the tops of the trees if you’re on one of the hillsides or if you’re out on the river in a boat. Not the whole house at once, but parts of it—the spires and the turrets, and the way the treetops seem like fingers clutching its uppermost windows. Few venture up the road to it, to the long private drive, overwhelmed with brambles and grasses and the fences and “no trespassing” and “hunting not allowed” signs posted along the way. Some overcome the fears and the legends and the stories and the signs and the fences. Some go there, because there are always those people— usually very few— who are called to places like this house. Be sure to get all the keys to Harrow – read the books, including: Isis (Prequel) The Necromancer (Prequel) Nightmare House (Book 1) Mischief (Book 2) The Infinite (Book 3) The Abandoned (Book 4)

AFTERWORD Dear Reader, When I wrote this novel, I knew I was taking the fourth Harrow novel into the territory of the heartless. One of my goals with the Harrow stories was to create various aspects of what a haunting might be, and write a novel for each of them - - from the unquiet of Nightmare House, the coming-of-age of Mischief, the psychic investigation of The Infinite, and -- with The Abandoned -- the tale of All-Hell-Breaks-Loose. Sometimes horror is Horror. And The Abandoned is the capital H variety. Now, go back to those nice dreams you had of hatchets and rooms of the strange mansion in the Hudson Valley. Thank you for coming along with me as I visited Harrow. Best, Douglas Clegg

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Publication Information Published by Alkemara Press, in an arrangement with the author. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2005, 2012 Douglas Clegg Cover Design Copyright © 2012 Alkemara Press Cover image courtesy of iStockphoto.com, used with permission. Copyright © 2012 Royce DeGrie eBook Creation by Book Looks Design www.booklooksdesign.com

About the Author Douglas Clegg is the award-winning author of more than 25 books, including Afterlife, The Children’s Hour, The Hour Before Dark, The Harrow Series, The Criminally Insane Series, Purity and many others. Subscribe to his free book update newsletter at http://DouglasClegg.com

Table of Contents THE ABANDONED Dear Reader, Douglas Clegg’s Ebooks On Facebook On Twitter PROLOGUE PART ONE THE DARK PLACE CHAPTER ONE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 CHAPTER TWO 1 2 3 4 CHAPTER THREE 1 2 3 4 5 PART TWO OH, THE DREAMS YOU'LL DREAM

CHAPTER FOUR 1 2 3 4 CHAPTER FIVE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 CHAPTER Six 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 CHAPTER SEVEN 1 2 3 4 CHAPTER EIGHT 1 2 CHAPTER NINE 1 2 CHAPTER TEN 1 CHAPTER ELEVEN 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 CHAPTER TWELVE 1 2 3 4 5 6 PART THREE THE MIND OF HARROW CHAPTER THIRTEEN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 CHAPTER FOURTEEN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 CHAPTER FIFTEEN 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 CHAPTER SIXTEEN 1 2 3 PART FOUR REBORN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 1 2 3 4 5 6 CHAPTER NINETEEN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 CHAPTER TWENTY 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 EPILOGUE

1 2 3 AFTERWORD Get More eBooks Publication Information About the Author