Frazer Lee - The Lamplighters

Then the movement was right beside her.

She turned her head and cried out in anguish to see the man-child gazing at her lasciviously not six inches from her face. This close, his breath smelled particularly foul—an undigested mess of seafood and rank rotting sweetness. He appeared to sniff at her, grinning and baring his teeth as he did so, and she saw the rot in his gums for the first time. The look of old man’s perverse delight on this child’s face was an abomination. His lips were flecked with saliva, which trickled down his chin. He savored the scent of Marla’s fear in the same way a normal child would savor the smell of candy. He voiced his enjoyment in little spasms of breathy laughter. Mirthsome little bubbles of snot formed and burst wetly in his nostrils. It was all Marla could do to stop herself from vomiting. He ignored her discomfort, reaching out into her field of vision with pudgy little boy hands then stroking strands of her hair as though she were a stray cat he’d found somewhere along the way. Marla shuddered at his touch, feeling sure it were those hands that had stoved that poor pussycat’s head in—the one Adam had found by the path that day. The old boy’s eyes were filled with dark mischief now and Marla pictured him at work in the loft of the big house, torturing and maiming his little playthings until they were all dead. The boy sprang up and climbed atop the table, straddling Marla and laughing that peculiar little circus laugh of his as he did so. His voice sounded like it was constantly on the verge of breaking, yet stuck in the shrill tones of a preteen youth. She tried not to look up at him as he knelt above her chest. Then she glimpsed the dirty syringe in his hand, the chamber filled with what looked like chicken fat and blood. He held the needle aloft and Marla winced, waiting for it to pierce her skin.

But then the boy took hold of his twitching member in his free hand and plunged the dirty needle into it, pumping the fatty contents into its head. He moaned in vile pleasure and, discarding the empty syringe, started to rub his newfound erection furiously. He kept rubbing as he nuzzled his face in her neck, cold snail trails of snot tracing across her skin. Then, like a rat, he began nibbling at her clothing, tearing it with his teeth and peeling it back to reveal her nakedness beneath. She struggled and kicked, feeling like one of the dead birds in that loft, pinioned and unable to fight back. The boy’s rubbing and biting and tearing was becoming frenzied now and Marla felt oily drips of sweat drip from his mop of hair into the valley between her breasts. He began to convulse above her, grunting like a beast, his little legs twitching and knees clenching as though he were riding a rodeo horse. Marla closed her eyes tight and cried out in disgust as the boy lurched into the painful throes of orgasm. His ecstasy at fever pitch, he continued rubbing himself frantically and Marla felt globs of cold leaden semen spattering her chest and face. His tepid ejaculate tasted of ruin, of heresy, and she spat it from her mouth. Still trembling from his exertions, the boy thing slapped his palms to her chest and began massaging his seed into her flesh. The act was functional and robotic and, daring to look, Marla saw disinterest in her abuser’s eyes for the first time. He’d done this before.

The very thought made her gag.

“Have to rub the lotion in. Have to get you ready for Daddy. All the king’s horses. And all the king’s men .”

His casual, sing-song tone was too much for Marla. Her eyes gave way to tears and her breasts rose and fell with great sobs. She felt betrayed by her nipples, which stood erect from the sensation of the semen as it cooled like porridge in the chill air of the cave. She looked straight at him, defiant, as he went on rubbing his filth into her. The boy averted his uncaring eyes, idly distracted by the crackle of a damp candlewick as it sputtered and died in its own puddle of wax. As he turned his head, Marla saw a figure standing over both of them. Heart in her mouth, she recognized the face. Vincent. His arms were stretched out above his head. What on earth is he holding onto , thought Marla as if in a dream. She soon realized it was a huge glass jar as it came crashing down on the boy’s head, knocking him sideways from the gurney. Vincent released her from her bonds and quickly pulled her tattered clothing over her nakedness as best he could. Only the aftershock of fear and disgust stopped Marla from grabbing the old man and kissing him in gratitude. Once we’re out of here I’ll do just that she promised herself as Vincent helped her to her feet.

They were almost at the opening to the cave when the scurrying boy-thing began to wail. The sound was an affront, only serving to encourage Marla on her unsteady trajectory to the tunnel beyond the cave wall. She turned, sensing Vincent’s distance from her and saw that sure enough he’d stopped dead in his tracks. The vile thing’s cries were escalating, in that way children cry after a series of sharp intakes of breath when they take a tumble and graze their little knees. Their little knees . Marla shuddered, becoming all-too palpably aware of the child’s ooze drying and forming a crust on the skin of her chest. She wanted only to be away from here and washing herself in the sea. Even if the waves dashed her onto the rocks bludgeoning the last breath from her body, that was where she wanted to be, not loitering in this cavernous rattrap. But even now Vincent took a faltering step towards the boy-thing, then another, his arms held out in supplication and his unblinking eyes saying I didn’t mean to strike you little man, I’m so sorry, let me hold you, I won’t hurt you again! For Vincent’s eyes saw this wretched thing as a child once more, the son that he’d lost so long ago in the stark negative of white foam on black waves. His arms yearned for the embrace of that which he’d lost and he stooped to comfort the boy. Don’t .

“Don’t! Don’t go near him! He’s a fucking monster!” Marla screamed, giving voice to all that she’d endured at the fat wormlike digits of those little hands.

But it was too late. Vincent looked back at her, his eyes veiled with the membrane of his memories. A single tear trickled from his eye, a pure thing winding its way down the crags of his face.

“But he’s my son.”

At this, Marla reeled.

“How can that be…your son?”

“He’s my son,” the old man repeated with sorrow in his voice, “The island took him. The island changed him. But he’s still a boy inside.”

The notion rang with bitterness in Marla’s ears. A boy? No. A boy thing that kills, that poisons and maims and despises. An inversion of all that is pure and good about a child. That’s no boy , she was about to say, when a great jet of blood punched out of Vincent’s throat. A huge shard of jagged glass from the jar emerged from his neck. The boy-thing rammed it further through the gruesome hollow where the old man’s throat used to be until his little fist began to emerge too. Vincent spluttered and fell to the floor, head swimming in a fountain of his own blood.

“No. No, no, no, no!”

Marla backed away from the murderous thing and bolted for the opening in the cavern wall behind her. She’d been stupid to linger here, but her empathy for the old man had made it impossible to just abandon him. But abandon him she should, even as she heard the sound of sharp glass scraping on old bones as the child began his playtime.

“ Pop! Goes the weasel… ”

For the love of God, the boy was singing—a vile distorted sound like the nursery tapes she and Jessie had found at the Big House. A wet popping sound and a guttural giggle followed and Marla turned to see the lad pulling one of Vincent’s eyes from the socket, making silly string of the stretchy optic entrails connecting orb to socket.