Escape From Bastard Town Read online

  The steel caught his evil reflection as he shifted his attention back to April.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  She still couldn’t hear him. So Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot threw that knife so hard, it slammed into the cupboard only inches away from her head.

  It took April a moment to catch up, but as soon as she realized how close she had come to having a massive butcher’s knife buried in her skull, she yanked the headphones off and screamed. Then when she turned and saw Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot standing there with another great big knife in his hands, she screamed even louder.

  The bear waited until all the screaming was finished and she was out of breath.

  April’s eyes were wide, and her jaw was almost on the ground. “What the fuck?”

  “You’re probably wondering what the hell is going on, yeah?” Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot said.

  “Yeah,” she said with a shudder in her voice. “The thought did cross my mind,”

  “Now,” the bear said in an oddly elegant tone, “I fear I may not have been one hundred percent truthful here. My name’s not really Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot. My name, my real name, is Richard Western,” the bear said. “But they call me Richard the Mad.”

  April repeated the name under her breath. She’d heard it somewhere before but couldn’t quite put her finger on where. The name ran over in her mind a couple more times, then it hit her. She knew exactly where she had heard the name Richard the Mad before, and it had been on the six-o’clock news, three days ago.

  “The serial killer,” she said.

  “Correctamundo,” the bear replied.

  “But…” April struggled to find the words. “But…”

  “Richard the Mad isn’t a teddy bear?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “I know,” the bear said. “Messed up, isn’t it? This last chick I killed, her mother—who would have guessed it?—was a gypsy. And this old gypsy didn’t take too kindly to me hacking up her daughter into lots of little pieces, so she threw some sort of gypsy curse on me. When I woke up, guess what? I’m a goddamned teddy bear.”

  The shock of talking to a serial-killing teddy bear was starting to wear off, as much as it ever could, and April was starting to look for a way to get the hell out of there.

  “That sucks,” she said, eyeing the one and only door, which was directly behind the crazed bear.

  “Hell yeah, it sucks, lady. Have you ever tried opening a beer with only three furry fingers on one goddamned paw? It’s a challenge, let me tell you.”

  “Sounds like you’re in a bit of a pickle,” she said.

  “That’s what I was thinking, but do you know what?”

  “No, what?”

  “There is a way to reverse the spell.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “Well, it’s good for me.”

  April could see where this was going. “And for me?”

  “Not so good news,” Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot said. “In order to get out of this body of stuffing and fur, I need three things.” He held up a furry finger. “Number one. I need the blood of a young lady.” He held up another furry finger. “I need a vessel to ascend into.” Then he held up his last and final furry finger. “And I need to chant—not say, but chant—the magic words.”

  “Let me guess,” April said. “I’m the blood, and Danny’s the vessel.”

  “That’s right, sweet cheeks,” the bear said. “And I bring the magic words.”

  “No,” April said, scanning the room for a weapon, a way out, or anything. “I think you’re forgetting one thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  April settled her gaze dead center on the bear. “I don’t play with toys.”

  And with that, she swung her Reebok up and kicked the island bench, sending Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot, the knife block, and a couple of cookbooks slamming to the kitchen floor.

  April didn’t even look back. She just ran for the door and down the hall. When she busted into Danny’s bedroom, despite the noise and screaming, he was still asleep. April had to shake him like mad to wake him.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “We’ve gotta go. Now!” April snapped as she picked him up.

  Danny wrapped his arms around her neck. “Where’s Teddy?”

  “Forget about Teddy.”

  She hit the hall with one destination in mind—the front door to the apartment. April planned to get as far away from the knife-wielding, serial-killing teddy bear as possible.

  Back in the kitchen, Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot pushed with all his might and slid out from under the island bench. He took a breath, gathered his thoughts, and snatched up a meat cleaver from the knife block. “That bitch is dead meat.”

  By the time he stepped out into the hall, April had just slid up to the front door.

  She wrapped her hand around the doorknob, but it was locked. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  The Connors were the paranoid sort, and they didn’t have just one lock on their front door but three locks with three separate keys.

  “You’ve been a bad girl, April. A very, very bad girl.” In typical slasher style, Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot walked slowly toward them, dragging the massive knife on the wooden floor behind him.

  April struggled with the first lock on the door. Her keys slipped and hit the floor. “Shit.”

  She scooped them up, looked over her shoulder at the crazed children’s toy stalking them, and knew she had to kick this escape into high gear and get the hell out of there.

  First lock undone!

  Second lock undone!

  Third lock undone!

  April swung open the door, and just as she and Danny were about to make their run to freedom, they walked straight smack bang into a blonde with a faint scar running down the side of her face and a look in her eye that told anyone who even so much as looked at her that she wasn’t the kind to mess around.

  It was Parker Ames. She looked April square in the eyes. “Duck.”

  April was still in shock, and it took a moment for Parker’s order to sink in, but once it did, she did exactly what she was told and hit the deck.

  Parker yanked a .45 from the holster on her hip and took aim at Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot.

  Teddy paused. “Oh, shit.”

  Parker’s finger wrapped the trigger and squeezed. The round blasted out of her .45 so loudly that it sounded like thunder had just erupted inside the building. The bullet left a vapor trail, and everybody from Parker to the bear knew that no matter what happened in the next split second, there were no two ways about it—that bear was going to take a round.

  The round hit the furry little son of a bitch square in his belly and passed on through, taking a tuft of fur with it, before burrowing into the wall behind him. Parker holstered her weapon and smiled, satisfied with herself at the precision bit of marksmanship.

  Teddy, on the other hand, looked down at the hole in his belly and could see clean through to the other side. He shifted his attention back to Parker. “Bitch.”

  He turned on his heels and took off running back down the hall as fast as his little feet would take him, and when he reached the end of that hall, he launched himself into the air and smashed through the second-floor window and out into the Chicago night.

  Parker was not far behind, and she reached the window just as the bear ran out of the alley and onto Campbell Avenue. “Ah, hell,” Parker said, “what a pain in the ass.”

  Two

  Possessed teddy bears weren’t as uncommon as one would think. Parker had come across two possessed Teddy Ruxpins and a Care Bear that had tried to stab her to death with a fork. So when she heard through the grapevine that notorious serial killer Richard the Mad had been cursed by a gypsy, Parker sat up and paid attention. She’d tracked him from Houston to Tampa, where Danny’s grandmother, Elaine, had mistaken him for a real Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot and sent him to her grandson in Chicago. Federal Express was quicker than American Airlines, and Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot arrived twelve hours earlier than Parker.

/>   She busted out of the double doors of the Connors’ apartment building and skidded to a stop. The streets were quiet. There was some light traffic and a few people on the sidewalk, but that was about it. Squinting, Parker looked down the street and caught a flash of brown fur in a waistcoat rounding the corner.

  The little sucker moved quick.

  Parker took off after him, and within a few seconds, she was turning that same street corner, but the street was empty. Absolutely empty. Not a car or a soul in sight. Nothing moved.

  The street was lined with stores on either side, but half of them were boarded up or closed down, while the rest were advertising their going-out-of-business sales with fifty percent off this and fifty percent off that.

  Parker held her breath so she could hear without her breathing masking any small noises and scanned the dark shadows of the still street. Its hidden corners offered a million places for a murderous teddy bear to hide, and just as she was about to think she had lost him for good, Parker heard the sound of a window breaking and snapped her head in the direction it had come from. One of the display windows had been smashed wide open.

  Parker crossed the street with cautious steps, and when she reached the storefront, her eyes drifted to the sign above. Big, bold, and colorful letters spelled out “Toy World.”

  “This is not going to be good,” she muttered as she gently pulled the machete from the sheath strapped behind her shoulder and gripped it in her fist. Parker took a deep breath and was about to step inside and go into battle when a voice yelled out from behind her.

  “Freeze!” it said.

  Parker knew that tone of voice. No matter what part of the country she was in or what she had done, was about to do, or was suspected of doing, when someone yelled the word freeze in that tone, she knew it was a cop. Parker also knew that it was in her own best self-interest to not make any sudden movements.

  Parker slowly turned her head to look at the cop. He was in his early twenties, and although he wasn’t a veteran, he gave her the impression that he wasn’t exactly straight out of the academy, either. His name was Harding, and for a cop, he didn’t look like the ball-busting type.

  “What seems to be the problem, officer?” Parker asked, trying to play it blond and coy.

  “Miss, would you mind explaining what you’re doing by that toy shop?”

  Parker glanced down to the machete in her hand. “I’m not sure if I told you the truth you’d be inclined to believe it.”

  “Why don’t you try me?” Harding said.

  Parker’s throat was dry, but she tried swallowing anyway. “Three days ago, a gypsy cursed a serial killer and trapped him in the body of a Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot. That Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot is in this toy shop, and I’m going to go in there and kill the hell out of him.”

  Disbelief, confusion, and a phone call to the loony bin was usually the response that Parker Ames got when she told people about the things that go bump in the night. But disbelief and confusion weren’t the expressions on Harding’s face after those words left Parker’s lips.

  He lowered his weapon. “Okay, let’s go kill this bear.”

  “None of this is strange to you?” Parker asked.

  He drew a breath. “A bunch of years ago, my big sister was killed by a…” He struggled to find the words.

  “A slasher?” Parker added.

  He nodded. “It was the reason I became a cop.”

  “If you want strange,” Parker said, “follow me.”

  Three

  Nick Harding remembered the night of his sister’s murder like it was yesterday. That was because he relived it in his sleep every single night.

  He was six years old and woke up sometime during the night when he heard something go bump. His sister, Veronica, was sixteen, and while their parents were away for the weekend, she was the one in charge. She wasn’t allowed to have any parties or anything like that, but she was allowed to have her girlfriends around for a slumber party. Carly, Penny, and Jean were all downstairs with her, watching Matt Dillon movies, drinking pop, and eating pizza. They had been giggling and laughing all through the night, and they’d woken Nick a bunch of times, so when he woke that last time he wasn’t really sure why he climbed out of bed and went downstairs. The credits to The Outsiders was playing on the television, and that Stevie Wonder song filled the room as Nick made his way down the first couple of steps, but halfway down, he stopped. Something wasn’t right.

  The blood sprayed across the television screen bathed the room in red, silhouetting the Shape. That was all his six-year-old mind could settle on calling it at the time: the Shape.

  The red light from the television bounced off the knife in the figure’s hand, and the bodies of four teenage girls lay at his feet. The Shape stood there for a moment, just staring straight ahead, not staying a word and not moving. Nick stayed still too. He held his breath, pushed back tears, and stayed very, very quiet. Then the Shape left.

  Later on, when the police arrived, Nick was too scared to tell them what he had seen, but he never, ever forgot the demented face of that slasher.

  He saw it every single night in his dreams.

  Years later, while on patrol, he kept his ear to the radio, hoping to find that Shape and any other slasher just like him. So when it came time to follow that strange blonde with a machete into a toy store to hunt down a possessed Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot, he didn’t even think twice and followed her right on in.

  There were over eight aisles of action figures, Barbie dolls, stuffed toys, and baby’s first books. Plus, a murderous bear was hiding in there somewhere, waiting to stab the hell out of anybody who stood in his way.

  Harding pulled a flashlight from his belt and shined a beam of light through the quiet store. There was no movement. No sounds. Nothing.

  “Should we split up?” he asked.

  “From experience, that typically doesn’t work out,” Parker said.

  “What other choice do we have?” He motioned to the massive toy store laid out in front of them. “He’s going to get away if we don’t.”

  It was a fair point. Parker took the first aisle while Harding took the last, and if neither of them got killed, they would meet in the middle. That was the plan, anyway.

  Carefully, with small steps and sweat running down his face, Harding made his way down the stuffed-toy aisle, which just seemed to go on forever before disappearing into darkness at the end. His flashlight blasted a beam of light across hundreds of inanimate monkeys, horses, Care Bears, and rabbits, all staring down at him with plastic eyes. In that light, each and every one of those stuffed toys looked as if it could jump down from the shelves and attack him.

  Harding wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers and took a few more steps. Then he heard a sound behind him and quickly turned to blast the hell out of whatever was there, but at the last minute he eased up on his trigger finger.

  Nothing was there. Not a single bit of evil.

  “Get a grip, Nick,” he told himself.

  It took a couple of seconds, but after he drew a breath and composed himself, Harding stepped off again and continued his search down to the dark end of Aisle 8.

  What he didn’t know was that behind him, Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot poked his head out from between a stuffed elephant and a stuffed dog, a big grin on his face.

  This really was the part Parker hated the most. Walking alone through some dark house, barn, or in this case, a toy store, not knowing what was in the darkness. Just knowing that something was in the darkness. Just waiting for that perfect time to jump out and scare the living daylights out of her. She had been there a hundred times, but it never got easier.

  Her eyes scanned every shadow and dark corner, but everything was sleepy quiet. Parker stopped and cocked her head at the janitor’s cart at the end of the aisle. It was filled with buckets and cleaning products. Parker picked up the bottle of highly flammable methylated spirits complete with the big skull and crossbones warning symbol on the label, and she got an idea.
r />   Four

  Harding switched his pistol from his shooting hand, wiped his sweaty palm on his pants, and slipped the pistol back again. He had been waiting his whole life for a moment like this—a moment to do something and make a difference. He was nervous and scared, but deep down, he knew he was ready.

  So was Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot. He took his time. He didn’t run or rush. He just stalked the young cop, waiting for his time to strike and stab the absolute living hell out of him.

  “No more fucking around,” the bear said, and with moonlight bouncing from the blade in his hand, he yelled, “Ahhh,” as he ran toward Harding.

  Harding looked back. Too late.

  Little Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot was a nimble little son of a bitch, and he jumped off a stack of Hungry Hungry Hippos board games, launching himself into the air with that massive butcher knife in his hand.

  Harding could have run. He could have ducked or dived clean out of the way, but the fear and surprise of seeing a beloved children’s figure flying through the air with a knife in his hand caused Harding to do one thing—and that was freeze.

  Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot landed on Harding’s chest with his legs around the cop’s neck, his belly in the cop’s face, and that butcher’s knife stabbing into Harding’s back hard and fast. Harding went down, with the bear riding him all the way to the floor, and when they both slammed down on the ground, the Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot lost his grip and was tossed aside. The bear climbed to his feet, dusted himself off, and watched as poor Harding bled out all over the floor of Toy World.

  He stretched out his shoulder as if he had busted up a muscle or something but paused when he saw the blood on his fur. “That’s going to be a bitch to get out.”

  Just then, a scream rang out from another part of the store and echoed off the walls. It was Parker Ames.