Then Phil realized what she was doing to the fat, bearded man.

Jesus to Pete!

Her head was positioned between the fat man's legs. It was going up and down, and what she was doing, exactly, was- Jesus to holy Pete!

-she was sucking the fat man's thing. Her mouth was going up and down over it, slow at first, then faster, then real fast.

Just like Eagle said they do. She's trying to suck out his baby-juice!

Then more of the scene came into focus, and Phil almost upchucked when he saw the rest...

The woman had a b.u.t.t and hair and bubs just like most women. But it was what she didn't have that hit Phil in the face like someone's big fist.

She ain't got no arms or legs!

She had stumps but that was it. The stumps ended where her elbows and knees should be.

"Suzie, Suzie..." Phil jerked his face away from the keyhole.

"Neat-uh, huh?" Dawnie said.

It was not neat. It was gross.

But it all added up. It was just like what he and Eagle had heard Uncle Frank talking about that night they stayed up late to watch The Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k Show when the lady killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then cooked it for the police.

This was a wh.o.r.ehouse.

A Creeker wh.o.r.ehouse, where men paid to do it with Creeker girls who were all messed up on account of their fathers did it with their sisters and their mothers did it with their brothers and stuff like that.

It messed up their genes.

Dawnie tugged at his Green Hornet shirt, pulling him toward the next door. Phil didn't want to see stuff like this anymore, but something made him put his eye to that next keyhole anyway. He couldn't help it. It was like a ghost or something grabbed the back of his head and made him look.

A big naked man was tying a girl up on the bed with rope, stretching her out. Then he began to crack a leather whip across her thighs and belly.

Crack! crack! crack! went the whip.

It left marks on the girl's skin that were so red. Almost like she was bleeding...

She was crying and shivering.

Then the man's thing went up...

And when the girl lifted her head to look at him, Phil saw that her head was huge.

It was big as a watermelon!

"Here, here-uh," Dawnie said next. She was pulling him to a door on the other side of the hall.

"No, Dawnie, I don't wanna look no more," Phil begged her.

But Dawnie didn't seem to care what Phil said, and she was strong, stronger than most girls. She pulled him over and slammed him back down to his knees before the next door.

"Look-it."

Phil's head was hurting bad, and he was sweating so much his Green Hornet T-shirt was fully wet but still he felt cold and shivery. His stomach felt bad too, worse than the times in the past when he'd eaten his aunt's stuffed peppers. His head felt lighter than a birthday balloon.

"Look-it..."

Inside the room another man had his face between a girl's legs. She had a big black plot of hair there, and the man looked like he was licking at it. Phil couldn't understand why anyone would want to put their mouth on the same place a person goes to the bathroom, but this man was doing it sure as h.e.l.l and making more noise than heifers eating. The girl's white legs went up into the air. Phil could see her feet. She had what looked like ten toes on each! And her hands were the same way, more fingers on 'em than two people, and they were running in and out of the man's wiry hair.

Then Phil noticed her legs...

He couldn't do anything but stare.

One leg was surely a foot shorter than the other, and it didn't have no knee. But the other longer leg looked kind of like it was coiling in the air, and Phil soon saw why.

The longer leg had three knees.

The girl was laughing. She seemed to like the man putting his mouth on the place where she went to the bathroom.

And then the man's face came away.

Phil looked into the sprawl of hair...

"She's got two baby-holes! " he shrieked.

"Shhh! Shhh! " Dawnie panicked. " I'll'se get whupped if they'se know we'se lookin'! Nanc'll let that there fella do all that ta me-uh if she's knowed I seed!"

But it was too late. Phil's face trembled as his eye remained over the keyhole.

"What was that?" the naked man asked, jerking his head toward the door.

"Oooo, Dawnie must-uh be lookin' at us," the girl on the bed said. She was grinning, leaning up to look right at the keyhole.

And when she leaned up, Phil saw something else.

He couldn't help it...

"Dawnie! She's got six bubs!"

And she sure's bullp.o.o.p did. Six of 'em, three on each side, and each bub had a big nipple on it the size of the top of a can of beans, only they were stickin' out real far and were real pink. Dang! She's got herself six bubs! he repeated in thought.

But when he looked up at Dawnie, she didn't look too good. She looked like real scared all of a sudden, and then Phil noticed that the front of that crummy dress she wore turned dark in the front.

She done peed herself, he realized.

And Phil knew that people only peed themselves when they were real scared...

The door swung open.

Phil shrieked, and Dawnie was crying real hard, blubbering like and stepping back.

Phil couldn't move.

"What we got here, huh?" the naked man asked. He grabbed Phil by the hair and lifted him up, chuckling. "You part of the deal, boy?"

Phil wailed.

"You wanna come on in with me an' Nanc?"

The man's breath smelled like his aunt's when she'd been drinking, and his belly jiggled when he laughed. "Maybe a good cornholin' would teach ya not ta look in on folks."

Phil tried to jerk away but couldn't. The naked man just grabbed his hair tighter and kept on laughing.

It was a whole lot of madness going on in the same moment: the naked man cackling, Phil wailing, Dawnie blubbering and peeing herself.

Phil barely noticed the sound of bedsprings.

Then another sound: thah-THUMP, thah-THUMP thah-THUMP...

It was the wh.o.r.e-girl.

She had climbed off the bed, and now- Phil's stomach shrank.

-she was walking toward the doorway.

Only she wasn't really walking; she was kind of hopshuffling. The foot on her short leg dragged while the one on her long, three-kneed leg kind of lifted real quick, then snapped forward-THUMP!-and landed on the floor. Her black hair tossed in swaying strands; her head bobbed. Phil could see those blazing red eyes of hers get brighter as she approached.

thah-THUMP, thah-THUMP, thah-THUMP...

Her shoulders pitched back and forth, and each time she took another noisy crutchlike step, all six of her bubs bounced around fierce on her chest.

The naked man cackled. The wh.o.r.e-girl thumped forward.

Then it was Phil who peed his pants.

Her red eyes felt like spikes sticking into his face. "Hey-uh, boy. What'cha peein' yerself fer, huh? Scairt?"

Phil wanted to scream, but his throat felt locked shut. "Yeah, he's a'scairt, ain't he-uh, Eddie?"

"Sh.o.r.e is. Little fella peein' away like a reg-lar racehorse," the naked man who held Phil by the hair said and cackled some more.

Then the wh.o.r.e-girl cackled, too, worse than the man. The cackle sounded like a flock of big catbirds picking at a dead possum in the road.

"Ay-uh, an'yer's real cute, boy. Wannas come in an' let Nanc suck yer thang? That like ya think, boy?"

Phil was shivering like he was buck-naked in the dead of winter. Then the girl's weird ten-fingered hand slowly reached out- "No!" Phil cried, head shaking and eyes pinched shut.

-and trailed tickling down his face. It felt like a bunch of big beetles crawling there on his cheek.

Phil thought he might die...

But then the wh.o.r.e-girl turned real fast and clopped out into the hall.

Toward Dawnie.

thah-THUNK, thah-THUNK, thah-THUNK...

"No-uh, Nanc, pull-eeese!" Dawnie cried.

"What-choo doin' bringin' boys in hee-uh!" the girl yelled, pitching forward. Her hand swept up and- ka-Crack!

-smacked Dawnie in the face so hard she fell down. The girl's hand flailed up and down, then, smacking away at Dawnie's head like it was a tetherball.

"Nev-uh, nev-uh! Girl so dumb you! Nev-uh bring no one up hee-uh!"

ka-CRACK, ka-CRACK, ka-CRACK "Yer daddy gonna so bad whup ya, but ain't's be gonna much left of ya after I'se through..."

It was horrible. Now the girl was not only slapping Dawnie, she sat right on her stomach, pinning her to the floor, and was punching and choking her. " Bringin' boys up hee-uh-crazy you? Bet you's f.u.c.kin' him, were yas? Girl-huh, were yas?"

"Stop it! Leave her alone!" Phil shouted. "She didn't do nothin'!"

Then Phil peed some more in his pants, peed till there was nothing left in his insides.

Other naked Creeker girls on the floor, who must've heard all the noise, one by one opened their doors to look out. A girl with a bunch of belly b.u.t.tons, a girl with a humped back and arms hanging down almost to her feet, a girl with no neck and no mouth. Also the girls he'd already seen through the keyholes: the one with the big watermelon head and whipmarks on her thighs and stomach. And the girl whose arms and legs were just stumps that ended where her knees and elbows should be. She edged out into the hall on all four stumps and jabbered something...

And at once the hall was full of sounds: mish-mash words, cackling and laughter, and dogs barking.

All that sound seemed to press against Phil's head. He'd never been so terrified in his whole life...

The wh.o.r.e-girl climbed off of Dawnie and clopped toward Phil, and then that big weird ten-fingered hand of hers reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed him by the collar of his Green Hornet T-shirt.

"Get you-uh outta hee-uh, boy," she said.

Then, in a split second, she opened her mouth and bared her teeth at him.

Big crooked fang-like teeth, like a dog's.

Phil screamed high and hard, pulled away till his shirt tore to ribbons, then ran for the stairs faster than he'd ever run in his life...

Twenty-Six.