The Demon Road Trilogy: The Complete Collection: Demon Road; Desolation; American Monsters

“Fine,” she said. “What? What would you call it when I change?”

Glen’s grin was immense. “Getting horny.”

“Oh, I hate you so much.”

Milo joined them. “She’s hiding something,” he said. “The moment she guessed where I was steering the conversation she closed down. You find anything?”

“Just a new level of annoyance,” said Amber.

“She wants to join me in my utter hilarity,” said Glen. “You can see it in her face, can’t you? She wants to joke around. Give in to it, Amber. Give in.”

She sighed. “Are you finished yet?”

Glen grinned, and turned to Milo. “What’s microfiche?”

“Microfilm.”

“Ohhh. So it’s not a small fish.”

“Come on,” said Amber, “let’s get something to eat. I’m starving.”

They had lunch sitting in the window of one of the cafes on the square. They watched the high-school kids pass on their way home. A bunch of younger kids came into the cafe, and Amber looked at Milo with her eyebrows raised. He shrugged, and nodded, and she turned on her stool.

“Hi,” she said, keeping her voice down. “I was wondering if you could help me? Have any of you heard of a man called Dacre Shanks?”

The name made the kids draw back in suspicion.

“Ask someone else,” one of them said.

“So you’ve heard of him?”

“We’re not talking about that.”

“Why not?”

“Cos they’re scared,” said the smallest kid, black, with adorably huge eyes. “They’re afraid their allowance might be taken away.”

“Whatever,” the other one said, and got up and walked out, followed by his friends. All except the little kid.

“You’ve heard of Shanks?” said Amber.

“Course,” the kid said.

“And the others – they won’t talk because they’re scared of him?”

The kid laughed. “Scared of who? The boogie man? Naw, they’re scared cos last year a bunch of us trashed two of those dollhouses they got up in the school, and when people found out they beat the hell out of us. I’m talking grown-ups here, y’know? Punching and kicking me while I’m all curled up on the floor, crying for my momma. Disgraceful behaviour, know what I’m saying?”

“I’m sorry, dollhouses?”

“I know, right? Dollhouses. This town’s obsessed with them.”

“What’s your name? I’m Amber.”

“Name’s Walter,” said the kid. “Walter S. Bryant. The S stands for Samuel. Had a teacher once, said my destiny was to become a poet with a name like that. But he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. I can barely spell, and most of the words I know don’t even rhyme with each other.”

“Walter, what’s so important about a few dollhouses?”

“Where you from?”

“Florida.”

“Florida,” he repeated. “Wait, you mean with Disney World and all?”

“Yep, we have Disney World.”

“You ever been?”

“A few times,” she said. Always with friends, though – never with her parents.

“Aw man,” said Walter. “Disney World. I’d like that, walking around and everything looking like it’s out of a cartoon or something. Ever meet Mickey Mouse?”

“I have.”

Walter laughed. “That’s cool. You met Mickey Mouse. That’s cool.”

“I’m from Ireland,” said Glen.

“I don’t care,” said Walter.

“Can you tell me about the dollhouses?” Amber asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Walter. “I knew you weren’t from around here, cos if you were you’d know already. There’s this dumb story everyone’s been telling us our entire lives, and they all expect us to believe it, y’know? Dacre Shanks. He was a real person, back in the 1970s, cos I looked him up. He was a toymaker, right? He had a little store down beside where the arcade once was, but he only made crappy toys like dolls and model railways and stuff. Nothing cool. But what nobody knew was that he was also this serial killer, and he killed a ton of people before the cops figured out who he was and came and shot him.”

“I looked him up, too,” said Amber. “I didn’t see any mention of dollhouses.”

“Course not,” said Walter, “cos that’s the part they made up, isn’t it? The story is, he came back from the dead, right, ten years later, and kept killing and he, like, shrank his victims or something and put them in these dollhouses he made.”

Amber frowned. “He shrank them?”

“How stupid is that, right? Not only do they have him come back from the dead, but they have him shrinking people, too. Anyway, the school had three dollhouses that supposedly held these shrunken victims – although officially they’re just normal dollhouses with nothing weird about them at all. Cos every school has a few dollhouses in a huge glass cabinet right inside the door, don’t they? I mean, that part’s totally normal. Nothing weird about that. Ask any of the teachers; they all say the story’s a load of crap, but they say it in a way that’s supposed to make you think they’re lying. We had to pass those dollhouses every single day. I’m not stupid. I know why they were there. It was a message, wasn’t it? Stay in school. Keep your head down. Don’t question authority. Or Dacre Shanks will get you.

“Well, practically everyone else in my school were cool about going along with it, but me and a couple of others, and you just met them a few minutes ago, got talking one day and figured hey, we were getting a little tired of being treated like fools.”

“So you trashed the dollhouses.”

Walter nodded. “Stomped two of them to splinters before we were caught.”

“What happened then?”