The Night Parade(57)

Ellie’s grip tightened around David’s hand. She was staring at the vent in the ceiling directly above her head. Motes of dust spiraled down and powdered her hair. She didn’t even blink her eyes.

Then—whump! The sound of a sledgehammer whacking against the trunk of a large tree. It came over and over again, steady as a heartbeat—whump! whump! whump!

“He’ll hurt himself,” Pauline said. Her voice was low and hardly audible over the sickening sound emanating from upstairs. Then she shouted it at Turk: “He’s hurting himself!”

“Goddamn it,” Turk growled. He spun around, charged out of the living room, and bounded up the stairs. Momentarily, his heavy footfalls competed with the throbbing heartbeat that shook the walls.

“What’s he doing?” Bronwyn said. She stepped partway out into the hall and peered up the stairwell.

“He’s slamming his head against the wall up there,” David said. “If I had to guess, anyway, that’s where I’d put my money.”

Pauline glared at him, teeth clenched. “You don’t know nothing,” she growled at him.

“Probably smashing his face to pieces,” David continued. His mouth was dry; his tongue felt like a fat sponge sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“You cut it out!” Pauline shouted. She pointed at Cooper. “You shut him up!”

“Mama!” Sam bawled. He still had his hands clamped to his ears.

“You shut your mouth, buddy,” Cooper said, threatening David with the muzzle of the gun.

“Or what?” David said. “I’m dead anyway, right?”

“Just shut it.” Flecks of spit sprang from Cooper’s lips.

The banging upstairs reached a steady fever pitch—

whumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhump

—until Pauline shrieked and covered her own ears. Bronwyn made a high-pitched whimpering that sounded like air hissing from a deflating car tire. The gun in Cooper’s hand began to shake.

And then the banging stopped. The silence that followed was as loud as an explosion. Sam was sobbing against his mother while Pauline, fists still balled against her own ears, stared at the ceiling, wet tracks sliding down her cheeks.

“They’re okay,” Cooper said. He was staring right at David now. So was the gun. “They’re okay, Pauline. Just relax.”

“That sound,” Pauline moaned. She dropped her hands and hugged her boy.

Bronwyn stepped over to the foot of the stairs; David could see her terrified expression from the living room doorway. She called, “Turk? Turk?” Then her face appeared to collapse. She brought a hand up to her mouth, which seemed to have come unhinged. A high-pitched whine escaped her.

Turk descended the stairs. Cradled in his arms was the limp body of his son Jimmy. When Turk reached the bottom of the stairs, he staggered into the doorway of the living room just as Pauline began to cry. The look on Turk’s face was one of utter shock. The look on Jimmy’s was worse—a slack, pale face, juxtaposed by streamers of dark red gore smeared across his nose and mouth. The boy’s eyelids were open, but the eyes themselves were bright red Christmas balls filled with blood.

Turk surveyed them all, helpless and lost. There was a sound like cloth being slowly torn in half, which David realized was actually the sound of blood spilling from some orifice of the boy and pattering to the floor.

Pauline rushed to her husband, tried to wrangle the lifeless body from his arms. But Turk wouldn’t let the boy go. Pauline wailed and pressed her face to Jimmy’s, soaking her hair in his blood.

Only Cooper seemed fully aware of the situation; his stare kept volleying between the terrible scene in the doorway and David’s face, which was still only inches from the barrel of the gun. “What do I do here, Turk?” he asked.

Turk said nothing; he only gazed down at the dead child in his arms. Pauline had dropped to her knees and was sobbing against her husband’s leg. She clutched at one of Jimmy’s small, limp hands like someone groping for something in the dark.

Cooper cleared his throat and, more agitated, said, “Turk? What you want me to do here, man?”

Turk lifted his gaze. He surveyed the room with dead eyes, resting momentarily on David.

The gun shook in Cooper’s hand.

“Kill them both,” Turk said, turning back toward the stairs.

David sprang up from the couch, but Tre grabbed him and wrapped him in a bear hug. He was impossibly strong. From the couch, Ellie looked at him, then turned to Cooper. Cooper leveled the gun at her face.

“You motherf*ckers!” David screamed.

Cooper eased the muzzle of the gun toward Ellie’s forehead. The gun was nearly touching—

(touching)

—Ellie’s forehead now. David struggled within Tre’s grasp, but it was a futile attempt.

“I’ll kill you!” he shouted at Cooper—at all of them. “I’ll kill you all!”

Ellie glanced at him, then turned back to look at Cooper. She brought up a hand—slowly, so slowly—and let her fingers dance along the barrel of the gun. Cooper watched, mesmerized by the strangeness of it. Those lithe little fingers danced along the edge of the gun until they came to rest along the top side of Cooper’s hand.

“Whatever you’re trying to do, sweetheart,” Cooper said, “it ain’t gonna do you no good.”