The Night Parade(35)

But— “Another one,” Ellie said, pointing toward the shoulder of the road. This figure was standing, arms strangely akimbo, its body propped against the guardrail and leaning at an impossible angle. Its head was missing.

David felt a prickling sensation course down his chest and melt like steam off his body.

“It’s okay,” he said, touching Ellie’s knee. “They aren’t real.”

She leaned forward, staring out the windshield.

David flicked on the high beams and said, “See? They’re dummies. Mannequins.”

“Oh,” she said, still tense. David thought he could feel her heartbeat vibrating through the Oldsmobile’s chassis. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“To scare us?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Like scarecrows,” she said anyway. “But for people.”

“No, hon. I don’t think so.” He pointed farther ahead, to a row of shops that flanked the main road. Several shop windows were broken, and there were items strewn about the sidewalk and street—clothing, furniture, household appliances, a shopping cart tipped on its side. A third mannequin leaned halfway out of a storefront’s busted plate-glass window. The stores here had been ransacked.

David lifted his foot up off the brake and rolled down the street, carving a wide arc around the mannequin in the center of the road. As they went by, the headlights washed over its blank, emotionless features, its eyes dulled to tan orbs, the whole of its nose busted off like the nose of the Great Sphinx of Giza. They cruised through an intersection where the traffic lights were dark. Pages of newspaper whipped along the pavement in the breeze. There were no cars in sight, with the exception of a scorched black frame that sat on four rims, door-less and windshield-less against a curb. It looked like some great slaughtered beast that had been picked clean to the bone by vultures.

At the next intersection, someone had propped up a large white sandwich board in the center of the street. It read:



ATTENTION!

All EMERGENCY RESPONSE SERVICES to this area have been suspended indefinitely.





“What’s that mean?” Ellie asked.

“It means no cops,” David said. He drove carefully around the sign.

When he spied a surplus shop on one corner, he pulled the Olds around the back and parked in a weedy lot. He shut down the engine and felt the car shudder, as if exhausted, all around him.

“Why did we stop?” Ellie asked.

“We need to rest. Just for a bit.”

“Here?” She looked around the lot and at the scarred brickwork of the surrounding buildings, the sagging black telephone lines, the tumbledown collage of metal trash cans at the far end of the lot, the fizzing sodium street lamp—the only working light source—across the street. It seemed like every shadow moved, shifting almost imperceptibly, drawing the night closer to them.

“We’ll try this store, see if the door’s unlocked,” he suggested. There was a metal door back here in the brickwork, situated at the top of some makeshift wooden stairs. Someone had spray-painted a Mr. Yuk face on it in neon green, as if the whole place was poison. “We can find some stuff to keep warm and maybe close our eyes for a bit. We can change our clothes, too, and use the bathroom.” He was trying to sound upbeat, but by the look on his daughter’s face, he could tell his suggestion had frightened her. He touched her shoulder and said, “Don’t be afraid.”

She looked toward the door with Mr. Yuk on it. “I’m not,” she said. “I’m just worried that this isn’t a good idea.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Just a feeling.”

“Should we try a different store?”

“It’s not the store,” she said, looking past him and out at the dark slip of roadway on the other side of the parking lot. The buildings there looked like the smokestacks of a sunken ocean liner. “It’s this whole place. It feels wrong. Like something bad is gonna happen.”

He squeezed her shoulder and said, “It just seems that way because it’s empty. We’ll be okay. I promise.”

The look she gave him showed how little faith she had in his promises now. It was his own fault. He only hoped he could soon regain her trust.

He reached into the backseat and dragged the duffel bag into his lap. Without further protest, Ellie grabbed the pink suitcase and, tucking her shoe box beneath one arm, opened the passenger door.

The night was cold, and the air reeked of gasoline. David went up the wooden stairs and tried the door with the number seven on it. It was locked, and made of an industrial metal that would prove impossible to kick in.

“We’ll try the front,” he said, and they hurried around the side of the lot toward the street. Here, broken bits of glass glittered like jewels in the sidewalk cracks. A cardboard cup hopscotched down the center of the street on the breeze, briefly attracting their attention. At the street corner stood an old-fashioned arc lamppost, a massive spiderweb stretched inside the ninety-degree angle of its arm. Something large struggled in the web, and it wasn’t until they drew closer that David saw it was a small mouse. The thing was partially cocooned in webbing, with only its head and tail exposed. Its tail whipped about frantically . . . then went still . . . then whipped about again.