The Cold Grip - From The Madness Of The Number Man

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Part Ten

Petunia had tried her best to calm Richard down, but she was well aware that no matter how many positive things she could say in order to distract Richard, nothing was going to change the fact that their mortal enemy was now going to be sleeping under the same roof as his mother.

The two of them had been sitting on the front steps of the Menkin home for almost an hour after Gene had left, and for most of that hour, there was only silence as they both turned over everything in their minds; Richard contemplating how he was going to get Gene out of his life and Petunia, although she wanted to focus on the problem at hand, her mind was fixated elsewhere. With every word she told her friend, her heart was only half in it. She knew that she needed to help Richard out of this fix, but she also knew that unless she were able to confront her obsession with finding her name in that old building, she would never be of any adequate help.

So while she sat there with Richard, the bullet trains of thought were running behind those kinda pretty eyes, as Petunia played out every scenario that was likely to take place over the next few days. Had Richard been looking at her face instead of outwards toward the darkness of Fountain Way, he would have seen her eyes darting back and forth and her lips quivering and moving restlessly as she ran through certain figures in her mind. Once she had figured out what exactly needed to be done concerning everything that she would have to leave behind for Richard, she stood up and looked back down at her friend.

“Listen, I think it’s going to be ok.”

“Oh yeah? Easy for you to say.”

“I mean it. Maybe we can use Gene.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m working on something. I gotta go. You’re gonna be fine Richard. I don’t trust him, and neither should you, but I think you might need him around. Maybe he can show you a few things.” Of course, none of this ridiculous dialogue was making any sense to Richard, but then again, nothing about Petunia had been making any sense lately. What Gene could show him were undoubtedly lessons Richard would never want to learn, but before Richard could even think of exactly what he wanted to say to Petunia, she turned very quickly and walked back to her house without another word.

“Show me what Petunia?!” Petunia had already closed her front door behind herself before Richard even had time to finish the sentence. He took a deep breath and looked up in the branches of the elm tree and found that the milky-eyed squirrel was looking back at him. “Hey Carl.”

The squirrel perked up its ears at a sound that came from behind Richard. Richard also turned toward the rustling that was coming from around the side of his house and stood up. The evening wind had picked up slightly, and he almost thought that he had heard nothing more than leaves blowing through the trees, but there was a small noise underneath, a noise that almost sounded like breathing.

With the thought that Gene was no longer around, Richard began to walk towards the side of his house. That side, the right side of it if you were looking at it from the street, was darker than the left side due to one of the streetlamps being broken. Of course it had been intentionally broken earlier that day, but Richard had no way of knowing that. It didn’t help that the house next to it was always dark now that his neighbors, the Jones’ had moved away. The house had been for sale for the last four months, and there was never a light left on inside or out of it; in fact it was the only house on the whole street that was dark.

Perhaps Richard should have been more cautious as he walked into the darkness; obviously, he wasn’t paying attention. One would think after everything that had happened to him after the death of his father, he would have been on a high alert when going to investigate a strange sound coming from the side of his house, but I think what really happened was that his new, soon to be roommate was the cherry on the top of the mountain of problems Richard was faced with, and his mind could be occupied with nothing else but Gene as he rounded the corner of his house. The only thing that ultimately broke his concentration concerning Gene, was the sudden sound of Carl the tree squirrel barking like a rabid dog. Unfortunately, the sound was too little too late, and just as Richard began to turn back to see what all the fuss was about, he felt the icy fingers of Principle Avery snake their way around his neck.

-

Gene had just pulled his car onto Fountain Way when he stopped his car alongside the first house. It would look odd, out of place, and maybe even a little desperate if he had driven right up to Patty’s house and been spotted, and all three of those options were not descriptions that he wanted Patty to think of when he came to her mind. Besides those obvious reasons, he had hoped to avoid being spotted with Wimmple Bear; after all, how would a man explain to a woman that he was interested in that he was prowling around her house late at night with a seven-foot-tall mechanical bear. Gene had struggled to get out of his car, and he had to admit to himself that his leg wasn’t getting any better. He was limping down the street thinking to himself that he was probably stuck with this limp when he first heard the Squirrel. To the casual observer, and anyone else who was not fluent in the North American dialect of tree squirrels, they were nothing more than a series of guttural high-pitched noises that were echoing in the dark, but to Gene, what was being said was as plain as day.

The words were simple enough, “Man skins”, and although Gene had no idea what those words meant at the time, the tone and the sound of panic in them made him limp a little faster towards the Menkin home.

-

 

“Don’t make a sound boy. Your mother doesn’t have to die like your father as long as she stays inside.” Principal Avery was holding Richard up by the throat with one hand, and as Richard’s legs flailed out from underneath him, he began to realize that the man was taller than he had been in his office just a few hours before, and his arms also seemed slightly longer. “It’s very different seeing you like this. Through these eyes.”

Richard could do nothing but struggle for air and both of his hands were holding onto his principal’s wrist trying to tear it away from his throat. The smile from Principal Avery’s face was more terrifying than his hand around Richard’s throat, and it widened as the man pulled him closer. “As much as I would like to be here in the flesh so to speak, I’ll just have to be content with watching you go this way. As it all goes dark, I want you to know that your friend is going to get it differently. I’m going to walk across the street and take her back down below. Goodbye, Richard.”

The fingers began to tighten around Richard’s throat and the sound of his own heartbeat was deafening, yet somehow, he was able to hear a voice over it all that he never thought that he would be happy to hear. “Excuse me? Is this the Menkin house?” The grip loosened somewhat after the words and Richard was able to bring in a small amount of air.

Gene was standing towards the front of the house and he was pointing his cane towards them. He was making no movements to come any closer, but he had a look on his face that Richard remembered well; the same look he had turned on Richard the first night they met when he threatened Richard with death. Principal Avery’s smile had vanished as he sized up this new development.

“You...the man with the metal animals.”

“Have we met before?” Richard tried to say Gene’s name, but the sound was coming out garbled and he was choking on his own spit. Avery extended his other hand toward Gene and pointed at him. Richard had been correct, his arms were longer, almost twice as long as any normal man’s arms had any right to be.

“Three of you...fascinating really. Soon to be two.” The fingers tightened now to a degree that Richard’s eyes began to bulge in his skull. As the light started to fade, Richard hoped that perhaps Mrs. Gip was somehow going to appear from out of nowhere to save him. But she wasn’t.

The death of Richard Menkin was something both Gene and Principal Avery wanted, but Gene had a much different idea in mind. The thought of him dying at the hands of a man who resembled a ventriloquist's dummy with abnormally long legs and arms had never been one of the scenarios that Gene had played out in his mind, and he had no intention of letting it happen at this moment. Gene had never practiced using his new cane, and if he had, the night may have gone very differently, but in that moment he raised it and pointed it at the spindly man holding Richard by the neck.

“Let him go.”

“No.”

“I’m glad you said that. Wimmple?” A rustling sound was followed by a tearing sound and Richard felt an instant rush of air into his lungs as he dropped to the ground below. The arm that was holding him by the throat fell to the ground along with him, and only after exactly four seconds did its fingers go completely limp. Principal Avery began to turn around to look his attacker in the face, but before he could, the mechanical bear standing behind him swiped again with its paw. All of it happened so fast that Richard could barely register it all until his principal’s head was lying on the ground next to him, staring at him with eyes that still seemed to be alive.

Richard scrambled to his feet and jumped away from the body of his new principal. In spite of himself, he ran over to Gene’s side because at that moment, it felt as if that was the safest place to be. Gene lowered his cane and leaned on it.

“Who in the hell is this?”

“It was my new principle.”

“Really? I’m going two for two.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I forgot my bear.” Wimmple was standing over the limp body and pawing at the severed head on the ground. “We’re going to have to get rid of the body.”

“What?!”

“Look Rich, you and I both know that something wasn’t quite right with your principal, but to anyone else, it looks like there’s a dead human on your side lawn. You wanna explain that to your mom?”

“No.”

“Okay good. I’m going to have to go get my car. I parked at the end of the…” Gene was looking back down the street as he was speaking. He realized that he might seem more than a little cold and flippant about the situation that they were in to Richard, but he had been in the position of disposing of a body plenty of times before and knew the drill. As he was casually relaying his plan to Richard, he was interrupted by the boy pulling on his arm. He looked down and could see that Richard was mouthing words, but no sound was coming out. He followed Richard’s eyes to the ground and was almost taken aback as much as Richard was. The left arm of Principal Avery was moving, more precisely, its fingers were moving, pulling the arm away from the scene of the murder. “Wow. That’s a new one.”

Gene and Richard both slowly walked behind the arm following its progress as it pulled itself toward the backyard. Wimmple stooped down to paw at the arm, but a quick snap of the fingers from Gene made the bear stand up straight and still; Wimmple did however turn and watch the arm as well. The man and the boy and the bear were so fixated on watching it, that none of them were paying attention to what else was moving behind them.

“Where’s it going?”

“Into my backyard. Gene, have you ever seen anything like this?”

“No. But if that thing is still moving, then what about the rest of him?” Gene and Richard both turned in time to see the headless body of Principal Avery bending over and grabbing its head by the hair. They both watched as the body began to run off into the dark with a speed that was far faster than any human, headless or otherwise, should possibly be capable of running. Gene had thought of ordering Wimmple after it, but there was no way the bear would be able to catch up to it, and Gene knew it. “Holy shit. Richard! Grab that hand!”

Richard had already been towards the fleeing appendage before the direction from Gene. He threw a foot down on the elbow, and the arm flailed back and forth under the weight of Richard’s foot.

“Pick it up Richard!”

“I’m not picking it up, you pick it up!”

“Oh for God’s sake!” Gene marched over to Richard and scooped the arm off of the ground. It clawed blindly at it’s captor, while Gene looked around, trying to figure out where to keep it.

“What do you want it for?”

“I don’t know...it might come in... handy.” Gene smiled, unperturbed by the fact that he was holding a disembodied arm, and Richard was stunned at how none of this seemed to be anything more than a curiosity to Gene. “I want to study it.”

“If you want it, then take it home with you!”

“I’m not going to drive around with this in my car, what’re you nuts?! Keep your voice down, you’re going to wake up your mother. Maybe we can tie it up somewhere.”

“My dad has an animal trap in the shed. We can keep it in that.”

“That’s a good idea. Lead the way.”

-

Less than twenty minutes later, Gene was back in his car, driving back to the library without his mechanical bear. The kid was bordering on hysterical and had been threatening to call Petunia’s mother over to the house. Gene had almost agreed, but then another thought crept into his crooked brain. He had told Richard that it would be best to leave Agatha Gip to watch over Petunia and that he would leave Wimmple Bear behind to watch over him. At this point, it was in his best interest to try and get on Richard’s good side and possibly build a little trust. He was also quite interested in learning more about the thing that looked like a human, but was obviously something else.