Tatterdemon

by Vernon, Steve

  The paperboy was dead a lot sooner than that.

  “That’s for you, Daddy. They are all going to be for you.”

  Helliard howled like a blood-sick wolf, and laughed at the way the papers flew. He glanced around to the passenger’s seat where Duane was propped.

  “Some fucking shot, eh Duane?”

  “You’re a bad fucker, Helliard,” Duane croaked in Daddy’s voice.

  Helliard grinned like a crazy man. He didn’t notice Duane’s head was damned near missing. He didn’t notice how hollow Duane’s voice sounded, like talking from beneath a grave. He didn’t notice the slow blue haze tattered around Duane’s body.

  He gave the Mercury its head.

  He let it take him where it wanted to.

  He glimpsed a green road sign flashing past.

  CROSSFALL – 75 MILES

  He’d drive until late.

  He could sleep off the road.

  Just pull up under a tree or into an old barn.

  Come the next day he’d hit town.

  He didn’t have too much of a plan going for him. He just figured on going out in a hell of a blaze.

  Yes sir.

  Next stop, Crossfall.

  CHAPTER 3

  Bad Things Coming

  * 1 *

  Roland Friar liked nothing better than getting off the highway. Just a slice of intermission, no matter how brief, was all the heaven he ever needed. He parked the rig outside the Wandering Lust Motel, one of those places where the desk clerk routinely rented rooms by the hour.

  Roland paid for a couple of hours.

  He didn’t like to be rushed.

  Now he lay on the bed sideways. He liked to feel his toes dangling in midair. He waited for the woman to finish her shower. She took her time, but he didn’t mind. It was important she felt comfortable.

  He’d found her in the bar. He’d bought her a drink because that was the way things worked. The motel got its cut and the bartender got his cut. Everybody got a piece of the action. Roland didn’t complain.

  He figured it was fair all around.

  She was tall, the way he liked them. The kind of skinny that looked damn near anorexic. She probably thought it made her pretty.

  Hell. Maybe it did.

  He wasn’t much of a judge. Most women looked beautiful to him. Damn near every one of them, except one.

  Carmen.

  Forget her.

  Concentrate on who you’re with.

  She was tall, like he’d noticed. He liked that. The taller the better. He liked the way he could meet their eyes when they laid down together. No matter how tall you were standing up, in bed you reached the same altitude. It was the only time in his life except for children and freak shows where he could speak to a person eye to eye.

  They made love for an hour. That was always good. There was nothing wrong with making love.

  Still, it was what came next that excited him.

  “Talk to me,” he would ask her. “Tell me nice things.”

  Then she’d say something like, “You want me to talk dirty?”

  They always asked that.

  A lot of their customers liked to hear all about the different ways they’d done it or all of the different men they’d had.

  Not Roland.

  Roland was different.

  “No, not dirty. No bad things. Just nice. Tonight I want you to just talk nice.”

  It always took a while to get them into the mood for this. It would have been easier if he was asking to handcuff him or to whip him with strings of licorice. It would have been easier asking for a blow job, or to fuck her in the ass, or to beat her.

  He didn’t want any of that.

  He wanted to talk to her of the sunrises he had seen on the highway. To tell her of the nights when the stars winked at him or the time he saw the Northern Lights, unwinding across the heavens like a sky full of celestial cellophane. He wanted her to relax and forget about the clock for a while. He wanted her to fall in love with him, for just a few minutes, even if it was phony or clumsy. He knew it was never real.

  He just wanted it for a while, was all.

  The girl stepped out of the bathroom. For a moment she vanished in the vague haze of light bulbs and steam. She looked like some ancient skeleton stepping out of the mists. Like a puppet made of sticks.

  A scarecrow.

  He felt a brief flash of intuition.

  Bad things coming.

  Look out Roland.

  Bad things coming.

  Then she turned out the light and came back to bed.

  “What do you want next?” she asked.

  “Tell me nice things. Only nice things. Please.”

  They talked, slow and fumbling and warm, for the remainder of their last hour.

  * 2 *

  Lily Milton dreamt of gunshots.

  In her dream she saw an old man, shot to pieces, and a shotgun that hit the ground one heartbeat before the old man’s body fell. She saw a skull parted like the Red Sea of Moses. She saw the skull break open beneath the butt of a heavy black revolver, only sometimes the revolver looked like a cast iron fry pan and sometimes it looked like a garden spade.

  Then a big iron bucket, coming down, coming down.

  She didn’t know what any of this meant.

  Her dreams never worked that way.

  All that she saw was a lot of death heading towards the town of Crossfall. She could smell it in the air. Death was on the wind like a swarm of seventeen-year locusts.

  She started walking early, to take her mind off her dream.

  Round and round the kitchen.

  Her kitchen was a little longer than the length of her outstretched body, with her arms steepled over her head, her toes pushed snugly beneath the cupboards. That placed it at nearly six feet.

  She walked that distance like it was a religion, calorie by calorie, slowly burning the weight she no longer wished to carry. She kept count of her circuits, tolling them off like rosary beads, counting once every time she circled the kitchen.

  “Nine hundred eighty-seven.”

  She’d been walking like this for six years.

  Ever since Raoul.

  Melting herself down, one lousy fat cell at a time.

  The radio kept her company.

  She tuned it loud to drown the shushing of her extra layers of skin, trailing behind her like a floppy robe. The reinforced maple floorboards of Lily’s trailer glowed with a soft patina that never tasted a lick of wax.

  She kept on walking.

  “Nine hundred eighty-eight.”

  The framed picture of Lily’s mother watched from the walls. She was a tiny woman with a ball of tight black hair neatly bunned on the back of her skull. It was hard to imagine someone so dainty giving birth to Lily the circus freak – a woman who once weighed over six hundred pounds.

  Tattered broadsheets peeled from the trailer walls. Sketches that Raoul had drawn. More than three hundred signed publicity photographs, layer upon wallpapered layer of illustrations and souvenirs, staring down blindly at Lily while she walked. Each broadsheet announced the impending arrival of Lily the Large, eighth wonder of the civilized world.

  She kept on walking.

  The radio droned on.

  Lap after lap of her tiny trailer, trying to ignore the shushing sound of her skin as it swept the floor behind her.

  “Nine hundred eighty-nine.”

  Trying to escape the memory of her dreams, the sound of history trailing behind her, Lily walked on.

  And on.

  * 3 *

  Maddy stood there, after the backhoe burial.

  She wondered if she ought to say something.

  “There ought to be flowers,” she said, as she wiped at her face from weariness, not grief.

  “What the hell you need flowers for?” Bluedaddy asked.

  “A grave ought to have flowers, doesn’t it? Besides, they’d camouflage any signs of digging.”

  “Are you expecti
ng anybody to come and look?”

  “You never know. People are bound to miss him, sooner or later.”

  “Tell them that he run off. It wouldn’t be that much of a surprise.”

  It was true. Vic always said he’d run off. He swore he’d leave her and all of her bills behind him – or at least that’s what he said. The truth was he was just running from the bills and obligations he’d piled up behind him.

  The farm was hers, free and clear.

  Daddy had left it to Momma, and Momma willed it on to Maddy.

  She glanced at the blue figure, standing beside her. Hallucination or not, she wondered if Bluedaddy had any ambitions of reclaiming the farm or maybe he had vengeance in mind.

  Did ghosts keep grudges?

  “It ought to be covered with some sort of color.”

  “The rain’ll do that, by and by. There’ll be daisies there before you know it. Hell, you could bury the Mormon Tabernacle Choir out here and folks wouldn’t look twice.”

  That got her giggling. It couldn’t be helped. When a body got this tired, the book of Job read like Mad magazine.

  “You’re right, Bluedaddy. Old Vic’s staying put.”

  Maddy giggled harder.

  “What’s so damn funny?” Bluedaddy wanted to know.

  “Just thinking, is all. You know how you’re supposed to give up bad habits for Easter, don’t you?”

  “That’s Lent,” Bluedaddy corrected. “Comes before Easter.”

  “Depends on what side of the calendar you sit on, now doesn’t it?” Maddy stood a little prouder. “Anyways, I just figured out what bad habit I can give up.”

  She leaned forward.

  She giggled some more, tasting dirt with each new giggle.

  “I’m giving you up for Lent, Vic,” she said. “You and all your bad habits.”

  She kept giggling.

  She just couldn’t help it.

  It wasn’t that funny, but Lord she was tired.

  Bluedaddy had that gray willow broom again. She didn’t know where he kept getting it from. He started sweeping. He raised so much dust that Maddy damn near choked to death. When the broom touched her foot she felt her toes tingling, like an army of goose bumps were running over her grave.

  “Sweep you with a broom, Maddy,” Bluedaddy cackled. “That’s bad luck for sure.”

  “That’s just old superstition, Daddy. You cut it out. You’re raising too much dust.”

  She sat down heavily.

  She worked at catching her breath one pant at a time.

  “Careful,” Bluedaddy warned. “You’re sitting on a worm.”

  Maddy lifted her butt. Sure enough, she’d squashed a worm.

  “To hell with it,” she wiped it from her permanently dirtied pants. “Worms’ll grow back.”

  “So’ll bad habits, if you don’t bury them deep enough.”

  “He’s buried plenty deep. Besides, nothing but trouble ever comes back.”

  “I came back, didn’t I?”

  “Did you?” Maddy wondered aloud. “I ain’t so sure.”

  “You see me here, don’t you? Of course, how you know you’re not just imagining me?”

  Maddy scratched her head. “I figure you’re a ghost, that’s what I figure.”

  “Yeah, but how can you be sure?”

  She cocked one eyebrow. It felt like she needed a cast iron jack-post to keep the eyebrow propped up there. Lord, she was tired.

  “I figure you’re a ghost that’s come back for something. For some reason – good or bad, I ain’t figured out yet.”

  “But if I ain’t?”

  “If you ain’t, then I’ve gone batshit, and it don’t matter what the hell I think.”

  She was just so tired. If she’d known how much trouble would have grown from Vic’s murder she might not have killed him in the first place.

  Yeah, right.

  More giggles. The giggles hurt, coming out, but it was good to laugh. To hell with Vic. Nobody needed to know what happened. She was just gardening, was all, just putting down a little mulch. There was nothing wrong with a woman digging up her back yard, was there?

  She smiled.

  Her yard.

  Her garden.

  That sounded good.

  “My yard,” she whispered. “My own yard.”

  She pushed her lips closer to the dirt.

  “You hear that, Vic Harker? It’s my yard, damn it. My yard, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She paused.

  She thought she’d heard the sound of something shifting in the dirt.

  Something like a sleeper, turning over in a badly made bed.

  She listened.

  Nothing.

  She rubbed her face, slow and hard.

  Calm down Maddy, she told herself. The last thing you need is the neighbors hearing you crow like St. Peter’s rooster over your murdered husband’s grave.

  “Who cares,” she said. “There’s nobody but fat old Lily Milton out there anyway.”

  The truth was, from here on out, Maddy didn’t care what happened to her, just so long as Vic Harker stayed good and buried.

  “MY NAME’S MADDY HARKER, AND I JUST BURIED MY HUSBAND AND IF ANYBODY’S GOT ANYTHING TO SAY THEY CAN CLIMB DOWN IN THIS FUCKLESS GRAVE AND KISS MY WORM-STAINED ASS!”

  Then she noticed the red plaid root.

  How’d she miss it?

  It stood there just as bold as sin, sticking there, a tiny finger of root poked from the dirt like a lost tent peg. It looked to be streaked a strange plaidish red and black just like Vic’s hunting shirt.

  The one he was wearing when she buried him.

  “What the hell you suppose this is, Daddy?”

  Only Bluedaddy was nowhere to be seen.

  “Huh,” she grunted.

  Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe she’d given up going crazy for a while.

  She reached for the root with her right hand.

  It dodged her.

  How’d that happen? Maybe she was tired, was all. Digging graves all night is bound to mess up a body’s depth perception. She grabbed with her left and caught the red plaid root. It felt weird in her hand. Like she was grabbing a dead snake and feeling it move.

  She tugged the root hard.

  “Come on, you bastard.”

  Her grip slipped.

  A hidden splinter plowed through the web of her ring finger.

  “Tits,” she hissed.

  The blood slid down her hand, spilling into the thirsty dirt.

  “Tits on a goddamned bull,” she reiterated. “You dirty bastard. You’d cut me from the grave out of pure spite.”

  She covered the root with a handful of straw.

  “The rain will take it away,” she whispered, sucking absent-mindedly at the blood that tasted of dirt. “Rain and time and dirt.”

  She turned from the grave.

  She walked for the house, thinking about cleaning the kitchen. Yet when she got to the house, all she could think of was bed.

  She unbuckled her jeans and fell asleep before she could even finish removing them.

  It was Saturday morning.

  The sun was crawling from beneath the distant hills.

  She didn’t know it, but she would sleep until Sunday.

  Behind her, forgotten in the field, the dirt and straw gave way. The root poked out like a blind worm. It twisted this way and that. Then it bent like a thirsty leech and sucked at the blood still soaking in the dirt.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Weird Hootchy Kootch

  * 1 *

  Easter Sunday started quietly enough. The sun got up and scratched itself awake on a few drifting high skeletal clouds. Some folks brewed coffee and some fried eggs and some just stared at the morning and cursed it. A few stubborn souls stumbled into Crossfall’s new church, scattering themselves in the pews like a handful of hired mourners dozing between the hymns and hosannas.

  Maddy awoke to church bells, same as every Sunday. />
  Crossfall just wasn’t far enough to guarantee her a perfect sanctuary.

  She turned on the shower. The water felt good on her back after all that digging she’d done. She soaped clean with a bar of perfumed soap she’d saved from two Christmases past. She lathered her legs and slid her hand down to her love spot.

  “Mmm,” she hummed happily.

  Maybe she’d get herself a new boyfriend. There was definitely a vacancy, needing to be filled. She soaped her tits. They didn’t hang so hard this morning, as if they’d grown lighter overnight.

  She traced her fingers over the row of perfectly circular scars in her stomach.

  Your man has spoke.

  “Not no more,” Maddy whispered. “Not no more.”

  She showered for fifteen minutes.

  Fifteen minutes was a hell of a lot longer than Vic let her. She used to wait until Vic was at work to shower. It was the only way she could really enjoy herself. Vic ragged constantly about how much hot water she loved to waste.

  To hell with it.

  That cheap bastard was as dead as a passed stone.

  This was her house now.

  Just the way it was supposed to be.

  “Are you showered yet, Maddy my girl?” Bluedaddy hollered from behind the door.

  Maddy screamed.

  She’d forgotten about Daddy.

  “Are you all right in there? Do you want me to come in?”

  She stared about wildly, as jumpy as a caffeinated flea.

  “I’m all right, Daddy. Just scorched a little,” she said, reaching for a towel. “You promised you’d stay out on the porch.”

  “What’s that? You want me in?”

  His voice sounded like he was standing on the other side of the shower curtain.

  Maddy started to shake.

  She’d been thinking about getting out and drying herself, maybe walking around in her birthday suit. Vic never liked that. He was always running for the curtains, worried what the neighbors would see.

  Ha.

  He’d been worried some man might see her, was all.