“I know that place,” the woman on the other end of the phone said. “I drink there sometimes. What’s this about?”
“It’s about something too strange to say over the phone. Maybe it’s fraud. Or gay bashing.”
“Wait—you’re gay?” the woman asked.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yeah, ‘cause usually they sound a certain way. Funny like.”
Luke could not believe her response. “Can we get a cop out here?”
“You might want to take a few deep breaths.”
“What?”
“Calm down a little. Just take it slow and easy. Relax. Don’t fight it. If you relax, you can take all of it.”
Luke drew the phone back and stared at it, feeling disassociated from it. Then he put it back up to his ear. “I’m not sure what’s going on.”
“You know, when I’m not sure what’s going on,” the woman said, “the last thing I do is pick up the phone and dial 911. This is for serious emergencies only.”
“I tried calling the local police. But nobody answered.”
“Maybe you misdialed.”
“Can you put me through to them?”
“What’s the nature of the emergency?” the woman asked.
“I told you.”
“Oh, right, people think you’re gay or something. Is that a gay bar?”
“What?”
“That place. The Ratty Dog. I thought it was straight, but has it gone gay? ‘Cause if. It has, I don’t want to drink there. Those homos who run the bookstore in the village—I mean, I can take their pansy ways in small doses, but if I’m in that place more than ten minutes I feel like I’m sucked into the homo underworld. And thinking about them— what they have to do to each other. And their toys. They all have toys. Ooh, that grosses me out. I mean, I have toys, too, but they’re for all the right parts, you know what I mean.” Then she seemed to be talking to someone else. “You know what? I can put you through. Hang on.”
He waited. He heard a phone ringing. It rang six times. During those six rings, he saw Bish on screen with his lips slightly parted and his eyes rolled back beneath his eyelids as if he were in heavenly ecstasy. Luke glanced down at the floor.
At least the voice in his head seemed to be gone.
He looked at Bish, who had sat back down at the barstool and was watching the TV Pete leaned against the bar and watched; and the blonde with her guy made noises and faces each time something new happened on screen. The blonde glanced his way and started giggling and pointing at him.
Then, someone picked up on the other end of the phone. A man. “Hello?”
“Hi. My name’s Luke Smithson. I’m at the Ratty Dog.”
“You’re at a dog?”
“It’s a bar. Off Macklin and Westmont Terrace.”
“And ...”
“Did she tell you anything?”
“Who?”
“That woman. From ...” Luke couldn’t think of what to call it. “From 911.”
“Oh, you need to call emergency services,” the man said.
And hung up the phone on his end.
Luke stared at the cell phone in his hand. He tapped it off and on again, and dialed 911.
A different woman answered. “I need help,” he said. “It’s an emergency.” He gave the name and address of the bar.
“Yes, sir,” the woman said. She added, “You’re very calm for someone in an emergency, sir. If you don’t mind my saying.”
“Well,” he said, but had nothing to add.
The woman said, “Oh. It’s you.”
“Me?”
“The gay guy who called Deirdre just a second ago. Right?”
“No. That must be someone else,” he said.
“I bet it’s you,” she said. “Hey, Deirdre, it’s that homo.” “What do I have to do to get a cop out here?”
“Well, maybe in your world it might take a good throating, but here in the real world Mr. Fancy-Pants, we do just fine in the normal way. Missionary if you like. But where all the parts fit by nature’s plan.”
“Wait. What the—” Luke asked. He felt as if he had stepped into another reality. He listened to the woman— there was something hypnotic in her tone, and he had the deja vu of having dreamed this on some level, although he could not for the life of him remember the dream. A mounting unnamed dread took him over, and he did not feel he could close the cell phone as he listened and watched the DVD play out the sex scene between the two young men who looked exactly like him and Bish.
“All I’m saying is if you meet a girl and fall in love with her, that’s normal. I mean, even if you chase her down or something. You’re a man, she’s a woman. Even if she’s sixteen. And you’re older. Maybe much older. Even if you beat her up now and then. I know nice guys who do that. That’s normal. What’s not normal is that whole queer thing you’re into,” she said. Then she giggled. “I mean, your aunt, she was one of those perverts, too. She liked the whole girl-on-girl action. But that doesn’t mean it’s genetic. You can fix yourself. I heard about people who do that. They force themselves to do it with the opposite sex and if you do it enough with any hole, you get used to that hole. Women are a little squishier inside, so it makes it better for the guy. I mean, that’s what I heard. I read about it. I think it was in some magazine.”
“Fuck you” Luke said, his voice faint as if something had just begun to dawn on him. Something about this cosmic joke. Something about Bish and him when they were teenagers and Bish had told him something so secret about himself.
“Exactly,” the woman said, still giggling, and then she hung up the phone.
He shut his cell phone.
He looked up at the movie on the TV screen.
“Turn it off,” he said.
The blonde shouted, “But it’s not over. There’s more! They do it with this other guy, too!”
“Turn it off,” Luke repeated.
But Pete and Bish and the guy at the end of the bar with the girl all kept watching as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.
“All right then,” Luke said. He went first to the television set over the door, and pulled a wooden chair out from a table and stood on it. He flicked the TV off. Got down. Went over to the television by the pinball machine, and shut that one off, too. Then he stepped over to the end of the bar, around the guy and the blonde, and lifted the counter gate to get behind the bar. He walked over near Pete, and switched off that television set, too. He glanced beneath the bar, and there on one of the shelves was the DVD player. He crouched down and played with the buttons on it until the DVD popped out. He slipped it into his jacket pocket.
As he stood up again, Pete the bartender had what looked like a double-barrel shotgun nearly up against his nose.
The couple at the end of the bar were laughing at the TV screen again, and when Luke glanced up, only slightly, so as not to piss off the bartender, he saw a different movie that showed him making out with Bish against a tree. The laughter grew louder in the bar, and he felt his face burn from shame, even though it could not possibly be true. This can’t be happening, he thought. Rewind this world. Rewind it. This cannot be happening. This is not the world. Something s changed. Something broke here.
And then the thought came to him
The Nightwatchman looked into the hearts of the dreamers, and found their secrets.
His cell phone sounded, and even with the gun pointed at him, he opened it and put it to his ear, all the while watching Bish.
On the phone, the voice that had been only in his head before was now talking to him on his cell phone.
“Oh, the things you’ll do for me,” the voice said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
“Here comes the weirdo of Watch Point,” Army Vernon said to his wife as they loaded up the van to deliver the last of the flowers to the funeral home that day. His wife, Brenda, glanced over the dozens of white roses to the street. “Benny’s out.”
Brend
a watched the dogcatcher truck swing by and then turn up Macklin. “I saw some dogs running around,” she said. “I wish people would just take care of their pets.”
“That guy likes killing those animals too much,” Army said, and then went to help his wife lift up one of the larger funeral arrangements. “You ask me, they should’ve kept him up at the hospital for observation.”
“He’s fine,” Brenda said, shooting her husband a look. “Just stop that. He’s fine.”
“I don’t know. I was up there a couple months ago to get rid of that old loveseat, and he and the weird girl who works with him were playing the soundtrack of Oklahoma! and dancing around with these big mastiffs on their hind legs. A few bats in the belfry’s all I’m saying.” He noticed it was getting dark earlier, as it did each day, and he said to his wife, “After this run, let’s go grab a bite out tonight. I feel like celebrating.”
“What’s the celebration for?”
Army shrugged a little as he crouched down to pick up a couple of fallen blooms by the back tire of the van. “I don’t know. I’ve been feeling a little old lately.”
“It’s the routine,” she said. “We’re stuck in it.”
“I’ve been dreaming a lot about winter. About a bad winter coming up.” He said the words as if they carried a heavy weight for him. “As if a frost is covering me.”
“It’s our age.” She smiled, fondly. “We’re feeling it.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Smells like snow, doesn’t it?”
Both of them took a couple of deep breaths, their nostrils flaring.
“Smells like October,” she said. “Leaf mold and brisk winds.”
“I smell snow,” Army said. “Like winter’s coming too fast. Or maybe it’s me. I feel aches and pains now I never had before.”
“We can take a little time off,” Brenda said.
“Naw,” Army said. “It’s just a feeling. That’s all. Maybe it is my age after all. We’re entering winter.”
“A few more months,” his wife said, and went to touch him lightly on the shoulder.
“No, I mean in life. We’re leaving fall behind now. Winter’s coming,” Army Vernon said, and he went over and shut the back of the van. “I don’t want it to come. I don’t want to feel that frost on my bones. I just don’t want it. I want summer. I want nothing but summer.”
2
As Alice Kyeteler finished the last of the massage with Thad on her table, she decided she’d try a little Reiki to help soothe him a bit. “His process of Reiki was mysterious to her, and sometimes felt like a laying on of hands. Just by meditating over key spots on his body, she felt the heat and warmth of life between them. She heard his sighs as she cupped her hands just above his neck.
Then he began snoring.
She grinned. That was sometimes a side effect of the relaxation. She didn’t love that he fell asleep when she’d like to lock up the shop and get home. But the truth was, Alice cared deeply for Thad, though she hated admitting it to herself. So she let him sleep on the massage table, his face poked through the round doughnut-hole at one end of it, his feet hanging over the other end, a towel around his middle.
She heard the light ring of her shop door opening. Thought I locked it.
She passed by the shelves and counters, and parted the bead curtain just before the shop’s front door. There stood a very rough-and-tumble looking Goth teen. Alice began to wonder if it was Sam Pratt, who she had seen running around on his skateboard just a year or two previous, with his hair too long and too scrawny for his frame. He’d filled out since then, if this was him, but had begun moving toward the sloppy and dumpy side of things. Still, she saw that cherubic little boy face behind the too-black hair and the dark oversized T-shirt and remembered his mother, who used to talk to her a few years back, before some cloud had passed over the family.
“Miz Kyeteler,” the young man said, nodding. “Just want to look around.”
“We’re closed,” Alice said. “Sam? Sam Pratt?”
He nodded and glanced over her shoulder.
“Ye gods, what happened to you?” She barely recognized him because of his sunglasses and his demeanor, which seemed different than the previous times he’d dropped by the shop. He looked like he was hiding from the world and she was sure she saw a faint discoloration along the left side of his face, almost like a port-wine stain.
“Oh,” he said, removing the sunglasses. She saw two black eyes and the purplish bruise became more prominent. “I got shit-canned by a neighbor.”
She ushered him in the shop, and put her arms around him like he was her own child. “Who did this?”
Sam looked at her as if he were about to start crying. She hated seeing this. “Well, who?”
“Mr. Templeton.”
“Jack?” She said this as if she could not possibly believe it in a million years. “Jack Templeton?”
“Yeah.” Sam’s voice was flat. He sounded exhausted, and his lower lip had a tremble to it. “He came running over to me. I was working on my bike. He was shouting about finding rats or something. He pushed me back and just started clobbering me. I mean, like he had gone crazy. He really knocked the wind outta me. And then he went over to get Cleopatra—my snake—and he started kissing her. And ... he didn’t have his clothes on. And he started rubbing himself all over her and sort of... well, doing things to her. When I got up, he looked at me funny and I just got scared shitless and started running the hell out of there. I came here because ...”
“Because I’d believe you,” Alice said, nodding.
“Because I didn’t know who else to go to. I’m really worried about Cleo.”
Alice cocked her head to the side slightly, trying to figure out how big a whopper of a lie it might be. It was so absurd, it didn’t even sound made up. “Where’s your father?”
“Someplace else this week.”
“He’s on a trip?”
Sam shrugged. “He leaves me home all the time now. I’m almost eighteen. I can keep it together.”
“Be that as it may,” Alice began, then cleared her throat. “Be that as it may, let’s get you over to the hospital. I can close up and drive you to Parham in ten minutes.”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“All right. I’m going to call somebody.”
“Who?”
“The police. If Jack Templeton has gone crazy like this, who knows what he’s doing.”
“That’s the weird part. I mean, on top of every other weird part,” Sam said. “I called the police. On my cell phone. They told me ... they told me... I can’t say it.”
“I’m a big girl,” Alice said. “I used to be a carnie. I’ve heard it all.”
Sam whispered, “They told me to go fuck myself.”
3
Within ten minutes, Alice had tried to call the local police herself, but there was so much static on the line she couldn’t understand a word that was said on the other end. She heated up some cocoa and took it over to Sam, who was slumped in the big Barcalounger she kept near her massage table. “This’ll make you feel better.”
He looked at the steaming mug, then up at her. He took a sip. Set the mug down. He looked over at Thaddeus Allen, who lay on the massage table, snoring lightly. “Who’s that?”
“It’s a friend. He needed some rest.”
“He naked underneath the towel?”
“No.” Alice grinned. “He’s too modest for that. He has his boxers on.”
“Whew. I’m not so fond of these naked guys running around town right now,” Sam said. He nearly grinned, and she felt a little heartened from his slight joke. Then his face darkened again, and he looked so sad she wanted to mother him until he felt better again. “I think stuff is starting to happen because of what we did. On Thirteenth Night last summer. No, I know it is.”
‘At Harrow,” Alice said, and she did not mean it as a question. She had already answered a question in her mind.
Sam nodded. “I’m the first one who saw
that little kid. The one hanging upside down. The one that got torn open.”
Alice tried to put the image of the dead boy out of her mind. “You did that?”
“No. No way. Only he wasn’t put there like they found him. He was hung upside down. It was freaky. When I saw it, I knew they’d blame kids like me.”
“Why? Why you?”
“Look at me. I like horror comics and I read Stephen King and Bentley Little and I listen to Marilyn Manson. My mom thinks I’m one of the signs of the Apocalypse. I know what people think. But I’m not like that. None of my friends are like that. That was some sick, warped creep. It was like a ceremony. It was like somebody really knew what they were doing. He was hung upside down and naked and they had opened him up.”
Alice caught her breath. She closed her eyes briefly, not wanting to think about it. Not wanting to imagine the little boy, though dead, positioned that way. Cut open. She hadn’t read any of that in the papers, but she knew they might keep it hushed up so as to protect the dead boy’s family.
What was his name?
Arnie Pierson. That’s right. She didn’t know the Piersons, but she remembered the name because she had never known an Arnie before. She knew that some mentally ill person from the morgue had stolen the body, and had even been arrested for it. She didn’t know much else about it.
“When I saw the dead kid like that, hanging from that upside-down cross, I screamed and eventually went running back toward the house. And even though it was dark I saw her. I saw a woman at one of the windows. She freaked me out. She had opened the window and was just pointing at me. The other kids all came out of the house wondering why I was yelling, and I’d peed my pants and they all went up and saw the dead kid, too, but I was already running like hell down the road to get out of that place. None of the other kids there told about it. We all saw that dead kid. We all saw it. Someone cut him down, I guess. Closed him up. And when they found the body with clothes on buried a little, I figured it must’ve been whoever strung the dead kid up in the first place.”
The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Thriller, Supernatural), #4 of Harrow (The Harrow Haunting Series) Page 15
