It was the night after Christmas. Butch and Richie cruised around for a while smoking a joint before they stopped at an apartment complex to see if maybe some idiot had left his car open.
They crept around the lot and left a few minutes later with a leather jacket, a new set of golf clubs, and a suitcase filled with cassettes. Richie was disappointed to find that it contained mostly disco and some new wave stuff. It was around midnight by the time the two of them decided to head down to the bowling alley to play some Asteroids.
They left the Bowladrome around 2:00 and got back into Butchie’s car. They sat there a while, to let the car warm up and for Richie to roll another joint. After a minute, Butchie noticed that something was missing, so he reached over to turn on the radio. A moment later, a three-string guitar started pounding out the same three chords repeatedly and then the singing started.
Help me! Satan’s on my back…
Help me! Satan’s on my back…
Help me! Satan’s on my back…
Butchie was puzzled for a second and looked down to see that it was a cassette playing in the deck. But it wasn’t one of his, and he didn’t remember there being a cassette tape in the player when they went into the bowling alley. He looked over toward Richie and began to ask, “Hey, did you…” before he happened to glance in his rear view mirror.
6
Dugan don’t care
Dugan’s bravado waned considerably as the due date approached. During the week leading up to the deadline for submission, he began to think about and then wrote up the preliminary draft of an idea. He had gone to the new library over the weekend to do some research on a guy named Daniel Shays, who came to town one day in 1786 and left a day later with a dozen Grantham farmers. They marched west to Springfield with a thousand other men whom Shays had rallied to his cause, to participate in what would ultimately become a failed insurrection against the United States government.
Two days before the plans were due, while sitting with the still mute Harris in the library, Dugan was the first to break their silence. He opened up his notebook to the page where he had scrawled some notes about Shays and asked, “You wanna hear my idea or what?” Harris looked up from his slouch and the two made eye contact for the first time.
Harris looked awful. His skin was broken out in large splotches of weeping redness. Sacks of black skin hung down beneath his reddish, stoned-looking eyes. Even Dugan might have admitted—albeit under penalty of death—that Harris had once been a fairly good looking kid. Not anymore.
After he had spoken, Dugan watched Harris bend over slowly to reach into the book bag at his feet and withdraw two thin, plastic- covered reports. He put one of them down on the table in front of him and slowly pushed the other one across to Dugan.
Curiosity got the better of him after a moment. Dugan leaned across the table to pick it up, and when he looked down at the cover sheet, he saw his own name typed neatly in the lower right-hand corner directly above Harris’. He opened the clear plastic cover and began to scan the four carefully typed sheets of high quality onionskin.
The first page was mostly text, with headings that read, “Purpose” and “Overview” and “Background” and the like. The second and third pages contained an outline, with Roman numerals marking each proposed topic. Underneath each Roman numeral were lowercase, indented subsections. The last page contained three paragraphs beneath a heading that read “Conclusion.” After completing his perusal of the document, Dugan looked across the table at Harris.
“We’re doing it on him,” Harris said, looking Dugan straight in the eye. It wasn’t a suggestion.
Dugan placed the document down in front of him, but pushed it about halfway across the center of the table, leaning back in his chair. He was eventually able to break free from Harris’ determined stare. Closing his eyes, he began rubbing his hands against his face, stopping to shove his knuckles deep into his eyes. When Mr. Betancourt popped his head over to ask for the hundredth time if everything was okay, Dugan nodded. He had a thousand questions, but didn’t want to hear any of the answers. Not yet anyway. He decided to stick with those questions he figured might be safe.
“You do that yourself?” Harris nodded. Dugan reached across the table to pick up the document and have another look.
“Nice job.” Harris shrugged just as the bell rang for their next class. They sat there listening to their classmates rush out of the library. After that, it was just the two of them.
It already told Dugan something that Harris would select this topic for the project. It didn’t matter to him what the project was about, anyway. Harris had obviously, for whatever reason, spent a lot of time putting together what he already had. Dugan thought it no skin off his nose one way or the other, and yet something still bothered him about it.
Thinking he’d at least give it one last try, Dugan asked, “You sure you don’t wanna hear my idea?”
Harris looked him in the eye and repeated again what so far were the only words he’d ever spoken to Dugan. “We’re doing it on him.”
Dugan shrugged. “All right.” He reached down to gather up his books and pens to put them into his bag. He got up from his chair and began walking out of the library, but turned around at the door and saw that Harris hadn’t moved. He considered saying something more, but thought better of it.
7
Jimmy knows something
You guys hear about Tommy Swanson?” Larry asked, placing his tray down on the table and taking a seat.
Dugan and Jimmy raised their heads and shook them no. There was just the hint of a smile on Larry’s face as he picked up his slice, took a big bite, and then said through a mouth full of pizza, “He’s missing.”
Jimmy and Dugan turned to look at each other. The conversation that Larry had interrupted had been about the steadily diminishing size of Grantham’s Class of ‘84. What had started with Harris, Cotter, and Walsh, now extended to Richie Brooks, David Fields, Ronny Bartlett, and now Tommy Swanson, though they couldn’t blame Larry for enjoying the moment.
When Larry was in the seventh grade, his scout troop stationed themselves outside the supermarket collecting cans and dried goods for the local food pantry. The boys had all pleaded with Mr. Cabrera to wear civvies in public, but the scoutmaster would have none of it. Unfortunately for Larry, Tommy Swanson saw him that day. The following Monday, Larry, Jimmy and Dugan walked into the cafeteria before school and saw a large, handwritten sign posted high on the wall above the clock reading, “Larry Miller is a Boy Scout.”
Larry stopped in his tracks. When people began to see him, they pointed and laughed, and soon the laughter at his friend’s expense roared into a crescendo. Dugan could only stand by and watch as Larry’s face began to burn as red as the sun. But Jimmy sped immediately into action. He dragged a chair underneath the clock and did his best to knock the thing down. They must have used a ladder or something because there was no reaching it. The sign stayed above the clock until just after lunch, when the school janitor finally found his hidden ladder. If not for the sheer cruelty of it, you almost had to give Swanson points for creativity.
After hearing about Tommy Swanson, something else bothered Dugan that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It felt something like that strange sense of déjà vu he had experienced that morning in the cemetery. He knew that the harder he tried to remember it, the further away it would get, so he decided just to let it go for the time being. A moment later, Moon and Mike came over to sit down at the table.
“You guys hear about Tommy Swanson?” Moon asked as he sat down.
They all nodded. The usually loud and rambunctious table fell into an unaccustomed silence that was broken by Jimmy a few minutes later.
“Somethin’s going on.”
“Yeah, something good.” Larry was unable to wipe the smirk off his face.
Dugan had to agree with him. “You can’t argue things have been a lot better around here, can you?” No one took him up on the challenge.
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“I agree,” Jimmy said, “It’s not that, it’s just…it doesn’t make any sense is all.” He paused as if grasping for the right words before asking, “Any of you guys notice anything else strange going on?”
Larry said, “I’ve had a hard on for like a year and a half.”
“How can you tell?” Mike asked.
“I took a green shit the other day,” Dugan added helpfully.
Jimmy would have none of it. “I mean why those kids? Why just the bad kids?”
“Maybe there was finally room enough in hell,” Moon said.
“And Harris wants to get the whole gang together again,” Mike joked.
Jimmy turned to Dugan and asked, “What does Michael Harris have to say about all this?”
Dugan had no answer for that, but he did tell his friends for the first time about the silent treatment he and Harris had engaged in. He told them of the strange manner in which Harris had put together and announced to him their project plan.
“What are you guys doing it on?” Larry asked.
“The Colonel,” Dugan said. The table went silent.
They all knew who he was talking about. You couldn’t grow up in Grantham without knowing something about the Colonel, one of the most famous sons of Grantham and a Civil War hero. There was even a statue of him on horseback in the center of Grantham Green.
What quieted the group at the table was a report in last week’s Chronicle confirming that the Colonel’s body had indeed been stolen from the family crypt during last fall’s vandalism rampage.
“Maybe he wants to find him,” Larry joked.
“You know, that’s not such a crazy idea,” Jimmy said, turning to Dugan. “You gotta at least talk to him about it, Dugan. Find out what he thinks or what he knows. I’m tellin’ ya, there’s something strange going on around here.”
Dugan thought about it for a moment. “Look, the guys a freakin’ zombie. You seen him lately? And as much as I hate the guy, he did lose his brother, or he’s missing or whatever. I’m just not gonna talk to him about it, and you know why? I don’t give a shit, that’s why.”
But Jimmy still wouldn’t let it go. “Just ask him. Dance around it a little bit if you have to, but ask him about it. Okay?”
“What aren’t you telling us?” Dugan tried to look Jimmy in the eye. Jimmy looked away and wouldn’t answer.
“All right, all right,” Dugan said. “I’ll see what I can find out, okay?” Jimmy finally looked back at him and nodded.
8
Winter
The crisp arctic air that settled in over New England just before Christmas that year was part of an enormous high-pressure system that had become stalled by a low-pressure system to the south. On Christmas Day, the temperature fell from a relatively balmy thirty-four degrees to a frosty minus seven before the day was out. In the days and weeks following Christmas, temperatures never left the teens, and that didn’t even account for the wind chill. New Englanders always account for the wind chill. Although the winter that year was relatively snowless, Mother Nature compensated for it by her artful use of cold.
Over the days that followed, she used her entire palette. Some days were bitter, others merely brutal. For seven straight days in January, things were positively chilling. Arctic blended with frigid to create something new, something never before seen on this earth. The temperature at Boston’s Logan Airport on January 12 was seventeen below zero and pipes froze throughout the region. Power usage reached historic levels. Animals died where they stood. Yet in the small central Massachusetts town of Grantham, the newspapers still got delivered.
* * *
“I tell ya, kids today, they donwanna folla the rules, an’ that’s the problem wit’ this country,” the drunk man seated in the almost empty bar said to no one in particular.
The bartender listened with only half an ear while keeping one eye on the small black and white television set mounted behind and to the left of the seven seat bar. The weatherman from Boston saw no end in sight to the endless cold that seemed to have most of the country in its frozen grip.
There had been a frost in northern Florida the night before that threatened the orange crop. The television switched to showing orange trees wrapped in plastic next to hundreds of barrels with fires glowing that were placed throughout the groves in an effort to keep the trees warm. Looking at it, the bartender thought it was probably a fruitless attempt. He almost turned to share the joke, but saw his audience and thought better of it.
“My own kids, see I got two sonsa my own, oldest still in Canada if ya can believe it, even after the amnesty. Hear he’s got a kidda his own too, but I never seen it.”
The bartender reached down for his coffee. It had been a month and a half since his last drink. He was going to do it on his own too, none of that twelve-step, friend of Bill crap for him. As he raised the shaking mug to his lips, he couldn’t help but glance around the dimly lit barroom.
Whatever color the wallpaper might once have been was blotted out by years of nicotine buildup. There was a cracked Budweiser clock on the far wall above a seldom used dartboard, and eight two-person, rickety white tables arranged haphazardly on the worn hardwood floor.
“Gimme sumthin' ta brush my teeth with, willya buddy?”
Red Dugan put his coffee down on the beer chest and turned to the counter. He filled a shot glass with house brand schnapps and placed it in front of the bus driver, wondering for the first time if this asshole drove his own kid around.
* * *
There was only one other car in the area, but that appeared unoccupied. It was freezing cold, so he left the engine running. He had backed into the spot just in case he wanted to make a quick getaway. He’d turned on the interior dome light so he could review some of the materials from a conference he had attended earlier that day in Boston. The man himself had chaired an afternoon symposium titled, “Intervention and Cancer Therapeutics: Myth vs. Reality.” His session had been very well attended.
Too humble to say so himself, the man was one of the world’s leading experts on new cancer treatment strategies. Most of his peers thought his dissertation, later published, was groundbreaking work. He was in the process of being wooed away from the Rhode Island hospital where he worked by one of the big three pharmaceutical companies, but hadn’t yet made up his mind.
Sensing movement, he glanced up for a moment to see someone standing in front of his car. The person appeared to be beckoning to him, but it was hard to tell. He reached up with his gloved hand to wipe away some of the fog that had built up on the inside of the windshield. The figure seemed lightly dressed for such a cold evening, wearing only a red hooded sweatshirt. The man in the car smiled toward the figure and pointed to the warm passenger seat beside him, but the figure just shook his head slowly and turned around. He began walking toward the edge of the woods.
The doctor could certainly understand the man’s reluctance to enter a strange vehicle. He was also more certain now that whoever it was, he’d been here before. The doctor recognized from the figure’s walk and look that he knew the routine. He put down his papers and zipped up his thick ski parka before shutting off his car. Stepping outside into the cold night air, he began to follow the redhooded figure into the woods.
* * *
Just before Carson ended, while wiping down the now empty bar, Dugan’s father watched a commercial come on the TV. It showed a father in the bathroom shaving, and the next minute he hears something. He looks out the window and sees the garbage truck driving right by his house without stopping. Dad runs over to his son’s bedroom and sees the kid isn’t even out of bed yet. He asks the kid if he remembered to take out the garbage. His son looks up from his bed and shakes his head no.
Just when you expect Dad to fly off the handle, his face softens. The next thing you see, Dad and son are in the car. Dad’s face is still covered with shaving cream as the two of them circle around the block looking for the truck. When they finally catch up to it, the
two run over to the truck with garbage bags in their hands. When the commercial ended, with Dad and son having a good laugh over it with the trash men, Red Dugan looked away from the TV.
Getting his own kid out of bed was one problem he didn’t have, he thought. But as he stood there, he was struck by the sudden realization that he didn’t even know if his own kid shaved yet. He stifled a massive sob when he asked himself: if the kid does shave, who taught him how?
* * *
It was cold, it was very cold, and it wasn’t just the outside air that was cold but the mouth he was inside was strangely cold as well, and it was unpleasant and uncomfortable but it was a bad time to be having these kinds of second thoughts and he really didn’t want to be rude but even so…
…he tapped the figure lightly on the head in order to at least get him to look up, and then the doctor smelled something vile coming from over his right shoulder and he turned his head to see what it was and at his neck he saw a wide open red bloody mouth with curiously not one, but two sets of sharp pointed upper teeth…
…and he couldn’t be certain in the brief moment left to him that it wasn’t the palest face he’d ever seen, and he was thinking it was probably an uncontrolled and advanced anemia of some sort just as all three sets of teeth began ripping and tearing into his neck and groin, and he felt the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life, but a little while after that he felt nothing at all.
* * *
Dugan slept on in his usual position, all twisted up, with his right arm bent impossibly around behind his back and his left leg tucked sharply underneath his stomach. He might also have been enjoying a nice dream when he began to feel soft, muted light from the hallway come into his bedroom to penetrate his closed eyelids.
Applewood (Book 1) Page 10
