Lisey's Story(151)
She clawed at Dooley's face with her short but far from nonexistent nails and left three bleeding gouges in one cheek, but the grip on her throat didn't loosen - if anything, it tightened down. The rattle coming from her was louder now, the sound of some primitive mechanical device with dirt in its gears. Mr. Silver's potato-grader, maybe. Amanda, where the smuck are you? she thought, and then Amanda was there. Pounding her fists on Dooley's back and shoulders had done no good. This time she fell on her knees, grasped his crotch through his jeans with her wounded hands...and twisted. Dooley howled and thrust Lisey away. She flew into the high grass, fell on her back, and then scrambled to her feet again, gasping breath down her fiery throat. Dooley was bent over with his head down and his hands between his legs, a painful pose that brought Lisey a clear memory of a seesaw accident in the schoolyard and Darla saying matter-offactly: "That's just one of the reasons I'm glad I'm not a boy."
Amanda charged him.
"Manda, no!" Lisey shouted, but too late. Even hurt, Dooley was miserably quick. He evaded Amanda easily, then clubbed her aside with one bony fist. He tore off the useless goggles with the other hand and threw them into the grass: he slang them forth. All pretense at sanity had left those blue eyes. He could have been the dead thing in Empty Devils, climbing implacably out of the well to exact its revenge.
"I dunno just where we are, but I tell you one thing, Missus: you ain't never goan home."
"Unless you catch me, you're the one who's never going home," Lisey said. Then she laughed again. She was frightened - terrified - but it felt good to laugh, perhaps because she understood that her laughter was her knife. Every peal from her burning throat drove the point deeper into his flesh.
"Don't you run 'at hee-haw sound at me, you bitch, don't you goddam dare! " Dooley roared, and ran at her.
Lisey turned to flee. She had taken no more than two running steps toward the path into the woods when she heard Dooley scream in pain. She looked over her shoulder and saw him on his knees. There was something jutting out of his upper arm, and his shirt was darkening rapidly around it. Dooley staggered to his feet and plucked at it with a curse. The jutting thing wiggled but didn't come out. Lisey saw a flash of yellow, running away from it in a line. Dooley cried out again, then seized the thing stuck in his flesh with his free hand.
Lisey understood. It came in a flash, too perfect not to be true. He had started to run after her, but Amanda had tripped him before he could do more than get started. And he had come down on Paul Landon's wooden grave-marker. The crosspiece was sticking out of his bicep like an oversized pin. Now he yanked it free and threw it aside. More blood flowed from the open wound, scarlet creeping down his shirtsleeve to the elbow. Lisey knew she had to make sure Dooley didn't turn his rage on Amanda, who was lying helplessly in the grass almost at his feet.
"Can't catch a flea, can't catch me!" Lisey chanted, drawing on playground lore she didn't even know she remembered. Then she stuck her tongue out at Dooley, twiddling her fingers in her ears for good measure.
"You bitch! You cunt! " Dooley screamed, and charged.
Lisey ran. She wasn't laughing now, she was finally too afraid to laugh, but she was still wearing a terrified smile as her feet found the path and she ran into the Fairy Forest, where it was already night.
6
The marker that said TO THE POOL was gone, but as Lisey ran down the first stretch - the path a dim white line that seemed to float amid the darker masses of the surrounding trees - broken cackles arose from ahead of her. Laughers, she thought, and chanced a look back over her shoulder, thinking that if her friend Dooley heard those babies, he might change his mind about -
But no. Dooley was still there, visible in the stutters of fading light because he had gained on her, he was really flying along in spite of the black blood now coating his left sleeve from shoulder to wrist. Lisey tripped over a root in the path, almost lost her balance, and somehow managed to keep it, in part by reminding herself that Dooley would be on top of her five seconds after she fell. The last thing she'd feel would be his breath, the last thing she'd smell would be the curdling aroma of the surrounding trees as they changed to their more dangerous night-selves, and the last thing she'd hear would be the insane laughter of the hyena-things that lived deeper in the forest. I can hear him panting. I can hear that because he's gaining. Even running at top speed - and I won't be able to keep this up for long - he can run a little bit faster than I can. Why doesn't that squeeze in the balls she fetched him slow him down? Why doesn't the blood-loss?
The answer to those questions was simple, the logic stark: they were slowing him down. Without them, she'd be caught already. Lisey was in third gear. She tried to find fourth and couldn't. Apparently she didn't have a fourth gear. Behind her, the harsh and rapid sound of Jim Dooley's breathing grew closer still, and she knew that in only a minute, maybe less, she would feel the first brush of his fingers on the back of her shirt. Or in her hair.
7
The path tilted and grew steeper for a few moments; the shadows grew deeper. She thought she might finally be gaining a little bit on Dooley. She didn't dare cast a glance back to see, and she prayed that Amanda wouldn't try following them. It might be safe on Sweetheart Hill, and it might be safe at the pool, but it wasn't a bit safe in these woods. Jim Dooley was far from the worst of it, either. Now she heard the faint and dreamy ring of Chuckie G.'s bell, swiped by Scott in another lifetime and hung from a tree at the top of the next rise.