The Waking Moon

Chapter Eighteen

A slouching figure in a wheelchair blocked the doorway. Behind him was a tall, lanky kid with a close buzz cut that showed off a maze of scars on his head. He had a red face and a thick nose that had clearly been broken more than once.

The man in the wheelchair fixed his bulging, red-rimmed eyes on me. He was wearing blue jeans, a long sleeved rugby shirt, and thick leather gloves. His face and body had been ravaged by fire. He was so badly disfigured, it was impossible to guess his age. A Broncos ball cap was propped up on his bald, scaly head. His ears were like hardened drips of candle wax. His face was like a mask of cellophane melted to the muscle and veins above the bones.

“Goodbye, Chapel,” the voice gurgled through a lipless maw.

His grotesqueness was strangely mesmerizing. I couldn’t look away. Chapel stumbled nervously across the room, nearly upsetting a glass carafe on the wet bar before squeezing past the wheelchair at the door. She kept her eyes on the ground.

“Wait outside for me, Ryan,” the man said. He made a vile slurping noise and wiped at his mouth with his hand.

The boy gave me a sadistic grin, before closing the door. The deformed man pushed a lever with his thumb, and the wheelchair hummed into the room. He stopped and slouched back in his chair, drool sliding in shiny streaks down his chin. The ravaged tissue had pulled away from his right eye, tugging at the lid and leaving the socket partially exposed. I found myself staring at the eye, waiting for it to roll right out of his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Grounder. The king of this castle. And you are…?”

“Paulette,” I said, trying hard to sound unafraid.

Spittle congealed into white goop around the creases of his mouth. “Right. So now we know who we are.”

He pushed the lever again, abruptly turning the chair around and rolling to the other side of the room. With an open-mouthed smile, he cheerfully waved me over.

“Come here, sweet pea,” he gurgled.

I hesitated before getting to my feet. But I knew there would be no escape. That was very clear. I limped my way across the large room, willing my wobbly legs to walk straight. Grounder sat waiting beside a strange, elaborate chair I hadn’t noticed in the corner. It had a high back and no arms, and there was a series of pulleys and chords strung up all around it. I noticed that it was positioned below a metal shelf, where a paint tray was balanced. Beside the chair was a large terrarium. In it was the biggest spider I’d ever seen.

Grounder followed my eyes to the terrarium, and he smiled again.

“That is the other woman in my life,” he said, beaming with pride. “Her name is Medusa, my new Goliath bird-eating spider. All the way from South America. Isn’t she beautiful? And a very expensive little whore, too.”

He leaned in close to the glass and tapped his finger near the spider’s head. It moved lethargically, its hairy legs blindly probing the air.

“She doesn’t really eat birds, actually. But she does like rats.” He patted the chair gleefully.

That was enough for me. I turned quickly and stumbled across the room, my eyes scanning frantically for another door, a window, a heating vent, anything. But it was a windowless room that suddenly felt very claustrophobic. Grounder sat stone still, watching me, an amused smile on his face. I saw an iron ash shovel propped beside the fireplace and lunged for it.

“Let me out of here, you freak,” I said, wielding the shovel like a baseball bat, “or I’ll smash what’s left of your face in.”

Grounder chuckled and shook his head, as if I were a tough-talking kindergartner. Then he looked to the door, his voice gravelly and loud. “Ryan!”