"Huh," Graham said. Multiple flashes of white had caught his eye and now the pattern had made itself clear. "Now, that’s interesting."
In every picture, each new Sheriff had a gauze bandage wrapped around his left hand.
Be Sweet
I
The Bar
WEDNESDAYS AT THE Nine Back were historically slow. Shelly had already let her servers go home. She wiped down the tables and roped off the booths. If anybody wanted a beer or a quick double shot before heading home late to face the old lady, they could just sit at the bar.
The Nine Back had two entrances: one from the parking lot and one from the lobby of the Highlander Lodge. There was a fine mist falling. Shelly could see it drifting like steam in the lights outside. It was the kind of night where you stay home and make bean soup, maybe watch a movie you’ve already seen fifty times on television. That sounded good to Shelly, anyway.
She checked around out of habit, making sure she wasn’t overlooking any customers, even though she was positive the bar was empty. The owner of the place liked to keep the place dark. There were a couple of blue neon beer signs behind the bar. The bar itself was illuminated with strands of black lights under a thick plastic covering. There were the obligatory television monitors for Sunday afternoon sports and either football or wrestling on Monday nights, but on slow nights, Shelly just listened to whatever weird music came shimmering out of WREK. Right now, they were playing "Mr. 44" by the Electric Hellfire Club. A messy sludge of a song for a messy sludge of a night, Shelly thought.
She wandered out into the lobby. Terry was the night clerk for the Lodge. He was a fussy little man, but he made Shelly smile.
"What’s the occupancy rate tonight, Terry?" Shelly asked, as she approached the desk.
Terry breathed heavily. "Oh, a whopping twelve percent," he said. "We’ve had zero walk-in traffic and I’m still waiting on two reservations. We’ll see if they actually show up. I doubt it highly, though, because seriously! If you’re not here by now, you’re not going to be here and I don’t understand why I have to keep holding these fucking rooms open! They’re king rooms! King rooms, microwaves, big tubs. I could have sold these forty times over."
"I thought you said you hadn’t had any walk-ins tonight, Terry," Shelly said.
Terry huffed and folded his hands atop the counter. "Well, if I had, Miss Smarty-Pants, then I could have brought some revenue into this wood-paneled hell-house tonight. Good Lord, is the Old Man ever going to redecorate this place? It’s darker than Paul Bunyan’s S&M room."
Shelly laughed, and the sound echoed thinly off the plate glass windows of the lobby. It made the lodge seem more abandoned than complete silence would have.
"Why don’t you bring me a shot of Jaeger, Shelly? I could use it and you could use the business."
Shelly smirked. "Not sure how ethical that is, Terry."
Terry banged his fist lightly on the desk. "Oh, listen to this. The girl who’s trying to bang the new Sheriff wants to talk about ethics."
Shelly put her hands on her hips. "It’s got nothing to do with ethics. I’m not trying to steal guns or get access to the evidence room."
Terry giggled. "I think that’s precisely what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to unlock that evidence room in his pants. I think you want proof that his cock is as big as you hope it is. Maybe help him unload his gun?"
"Sweet Jesus," Shelly said, shaking her head.
"That’s not a denial," Terry sing-songed.
"You want one shot or two of the Black Death?" Shelly asked.
"You know me," said Terry. "I always make it a double if I can."
Shelly rolled her eyes. "I’ll be right back with your highly unethical drink."
She walked back into the bar, her eyes taking a second to adjust from the carefully designed mood lighting of the lodge lobby to the almost bluish darkness of the lounge. Shelly really didn’t mind giving Terry a drink now and then. Working the front desk was not an easy task. Guests switching rooms, demanding more towels, not understanding how to work their television remotes, scheduling wake-up calls and all of it was somehow the responsibility of the guy working the front desk. Shelly couldn’t deal with that shit. All she had to deal with were drunks who thought the music in the bar was too loud (or not loud enough).
She shimmied her way behind the bar and pulled the liquor out of the freezer. She set a tall shot glass on the bar and sloppily poured slightly more than a double for Terry.
"When you get finished with that, can I get a Puerto Rican screw?"
Shelly jumped, and then laughed at herself. She squinted into the murky twilight of the bar, scanning the room. After a few seconds, she saw the cherry of a cigarette glow brighter and fade down. Someone was seated at a table in the back, in a section Shelly had already closed down. Of course. If the bar had a blind spot, it was that table. Shelly had bitched at the Old Man to let her change the table arrangements, but he had always refused, citing Fire Marshall Certifications and best business practices and shit like that.
"Oh, Jesus," Shelly said, into the shadows. "I didn’t even see you come in. I’m sorry."
The smoking woman who answered sounded friendly enough. "That’s fine, honey. I guess I kind of snuck in on you."
"Listen, I’ll be right back, okay? I just need to run this drink out front."
"Take your time, honey," the woman said. "I’ll be here."
Shelly swooped up the shot glass full of Jaeger and walked briskly out to the lobby.
"Well, it’s about time, lady," Terry said. "I should complain to the manager about such slow service."
Shelly set the drink down on the desk and punched Terry lightly on the arm. "I’ve got a customer, you asshole! Which is more than you can say for your whole night."
"Didn’t realize we were in competition," Terry said, snootily. "I guess we’ll have to make the odds a little more interesting, eh?"
"I don’t have time for your little girl games, Terry," Shelly said. "Nighty-night!"
"You bar-backs are all the same," Terry called after her as she walked back to the lounge.
***
"SORRY ABOUT THAT," Shelly said to the woman, who was smoking and staring at her phone.
"It’s fine, love," the woman said.
Shelly poured orange juice into a tall glass, followed by two shots of silver rum. She filled the glass the rest of the way with ice, and then garnished it with a slice of orange and a straw. Shelly decided not to carry the drink over on a tray, choosing to simply walk it over to the table. It was a more human way of dealing with customers than Shelly employed on busy nights. She had a feeling this lady, silently smoking in the darkest corner of the room, wasn’t going to try to grab her ass, call her names or toss smoldering cigarette butts at her to get her attention.
Shelly’s vision wasn’t as good as it used to be and she, of course, had left her glasses on top of her bedroom dresser. Nine Back had been her second home for years, and she could maneuver it pretty well, even without perfect vision. The trick was to make sure her leg was touching the edge of the customer’s table. That way, she could center herself and make sure nothing got spilled. She pulled a couple cocktail napkins from her apron and set them reasonably in front of the smoking lady. "One Puerto Rican Screw," she announced, and set the drink on top of the napkins.
The lady smiled. "Thank you," she said, her voice ragged, squeaky and growly, as if it she had been yelling. She flicked the orange slice into the glass with her fingernail and removed the straw. The woman grasped the drink as if she were holding a baseball bat and knocked the whole thing back in one gulp. She set the empty glass down loudly, as if she had just won a drinking contest.
"May I get another one of these?" she asked. "A little stronger this time, please."
Shelly nodded. "Sure thing," she said. This could be okay, she thought. The lady seemed nice and, if she got good and hammered, then maybe she would leave a decent tip. Shelly picked up the tumbler, still
rattling with barely melted ice and went back behind the bar. She set the glass next to the sink. Washing it could wait. This woman obviously needed something to drink, again.
There was a dim white light at the mixing station. It didn’t particularly matter. Once she was in her spot, it was like a familiar dance for Shelly. She leaned over and brought a clean glass out from under the bar, passed it from her right hand to her left and placed it on the black counter. A quick step to the left brought her in front of a machine she called the Pelletizer. She reached in with her right hand and pulled a cold metal scoop, filled with small hollow barrels of ice. The ice was dumped loudly into the glass, and she sidestepped back in front of her spot at the mixing station.
Shelly was nodding her head now, barely aware that she was making a drink to the beat of the song on the radio (a slight, reggae-tinged number by INXS called "I Send a Message"). Two sliding sidesteps over to the right and Shelly bent down to open the mini-fridge. The refrigerator light was almost blinding in contrast with the rest of the bar. She put her right hand inside to grab the orange juice. "Ugh," she said aloud. She must have put her hand in something on the bar. It felt sticky and she could see splotches of it on her fingers and her palm. She did have the grenadine out earlier. Maybe she had spilled some. That’s how slow of a night it had been; the grenadine incident had been right when she had come in at three in the afternoon. It was almost ten o’clock at night now. Still semi-dancing, Shelly stood back up and slid back to the ice-filled glass.
"Oh, man," she said, disappointedly. She had gotten red stuff all over the clean glass when she got it out of the rack. She didn’t even think about washing her hands before making her sneaky customer that second drink. She was still a little shaken by her sudden appearance, but that didn’t excuse being gross and not cleaning up. She did a quick countertop check. No rings from the bottom of sticky bottles, no puddles of cherry syrup. Shelly wrinkled her forehead. What the hell could that have been then?
"It’s not mine. You don’t have to worry. It’s not mine." The woman, almost invisible in the black and blue lights of the bar, sat at her table, shaking her head.
Shelly turned toward the general direction of the woman’s table. "I’m sorry, what?"
The woman repeated, "It’s not mine. You don’t have to worry." And then, she began to cry, a high keening sound (a-HEEE a-HEEE a-HEEE) and for a moment, Shelly was afraid the woman was choking. She rushed out to the floor, leaving the woman’s drink unfinished.
a-HEEE a-HEEE a-HEEE
"Oh my God, honey, are you…" And Shelly stopped short as the woman stood up, her eyes wide and blank, staring through the ether at some raw, maddening terror. She slammed her hands into Shelly’s shoulders, nails down, and dug in hard, as if she were trying not to slip down a hill. Shelly’s eyes had adjusted to the dark and, even with her naturally impaired vision, she was able to see that the woman was splattered in blood. The front of her sheer mini-dress was slathered in it, like she had slashed her own throat. The woman’s face was splotched with small pieces of gore and muscle. Thick red arterial blood had dried in strips on her arms and still the dreadful noise (a-HEEE a-HEEE a-HEEE) continued, like Hell’s tornado alert.
Shelly held the woman by the hips, as if she were trying to stop a rocket from launching. "It’s okay," Shelly said, over and over, as if it repeating it would make it true. "It’s okay. It’s okay."
"What the hell is that noise?" asked Terry from the lobby entrance. He was holding the empty shot glass in his hand. "Is there a fire?"
Shelly whipped her head towards the general location of Terry’s voice. "Call the Sheriff, now!" She heard the shuffling of Terry’s loafers on the shiny floor as he ran back to the desk.
Then, like someone flipped a switch on the back of an annoying toy, the woman stopped her caterwauling. She stood totally still, her eyes suddenly tired and dull. She stared at Shelly with the barest hint of a smile. In a low flat voice, the woman said, "Drizzle drazzledruzzle drone. One for Maiden, Mother and Crone. Now, how about that drink?"
And with that, the woman walked back to her table and sat down in her chair. She rummaged about in her purse and, with a bloody hand, brought out a cigarette that she immediately lit. She sat calmly, staring straight ahead, waiting for her drink.
Shelly made the drink slowly, not wanting to turn her back on the strange guest, waiting for Sheriff Strahan to get there and make sense of things.
Outside, the darkness grew thicker, and a low-lying fog began snaking through the cold mist already shrouding the parking lot in silence and misery.
This was shaping up to be a lousy evening.
II
Just Like Romeo and Juliet
IN WAS A well-known fact throughout the Keep that Reddick Boyle was a no-good son of a bitch. He was smug and never attended church. His car was loud, flashy and he bought a new one every six months. There were rumors of untoward behavior towards women and animals, and only a few of those rumors were far from the truth.
Some of the bad talk was jealousy, to be sure. Boyle was young, barely in his twenties, and had amassed more wealth than most people three times his age. Adding insult to injury, the little bastard had the nerve to work from home. He had never actually "worked" a day in his life.
Truly enough, Reddick Boyle’s hands were not calloused. He had never bussed tables or worked in the fields. A child of technology his elders did not care to understand or embrace, Boyle had built up a small fortune selling fictional currency to online gamers.
It worked like this.
Let’s say your game character, potentially a Knight or a Cleric, needed ten thousand virtual "pieces of gold" to finish constructing his magical Mythril Condom. You don’t have ten thousand pieces of gold, but you’re the impatient sort and you need that Mythril Condom right now, so you can have sex with a dragon or ejaculate a castle or something. You contact Reddick Boyle. He’s got millions and millions of these digital doubloons which he will happily sell to you for real money. Ten thousand pieces of medieval game gold will cost you five thousand real dollars. For those who are really into their game, it’s a cheat they can justify and a bargain to boot. After all, who could put a price on online gaming supremacy?
Reddick Boyle could, that’s who. He was the Gamemaster and he leased the dungeons.
He also dabbled in child pornography which, while despicable, played only a small part in his business. That was a special order sideline for a niche group of customers. Reddick was a star to those folks, a prince among pedophiles. He could make the little cuties cry or he could make them cum. His bedroom was rigged with hidden cameras, and he employed a handheld unit. His people liked close-ups, confused faces not fully comprehending the unfixable damage being done to their young bodies.
He considered himself a businessman, an entrepreneur, a ladies’ man. There were other words for Reddick Boyle, but he chose not to hear them, as long as his bank account kept growing, which it did. It swelled like a venom sac, full of secrets, shame and the dark parts of the heart that could not be explained, only bought and compartmentalized.
***
NOBODY WAS REALLY surprised to see Tamara Ogle riding shotgun in Reddick Boyle’s newest pussy wagon. This is not to say that anyone really knew anything about the girl. She was thin, but not scary skinny like some of the girls in town. She hadn’t dieted her breasts away; her bottom was full and round without becoming a caricature of itself. Tamara looked slightly exotic, with her full lips and slightly wider than usual mouth. It was obvious her people weren’t from around the Keep. Her eyes were a strange translucent grey. If a comb had ever touched Tamara’s curly black hair, it would have come back missing teeth. She kept to herself, never saying much. When she did open her mouth, it was usually to laugh. Her laugh was loud and boisterous. It didn’t care if anyone heard and it brightened any place lucky enough to be blessed with the sound of it.
All of these delightful and interesting character traits caused the people of Elders Keep
to think Tamara Ogle was a whore.
Truth be told, Tamara Ogle was twenty-five years old when she lost her virginity to Reddick Boyle over three bottles of red wine and a Meg Ryan movie on basic cable. It hurt, but not as much as Tamara thought it would. She had a pretty high threshold for pain, though, and she realized Reddick was getting off more on his own words than he was the fact that he was popping her cherry.
"Oh yeah, baby," he said. "It’s big, isn’t it? Fucking huge. Yeah, bitch. Your pussy’s all right, but my cock is fantastic. Say it. Say it. You don’t have to say it. I know it. Come on. Knees up, baby."
When it was over, Tamara laid her head on his chest and whispered, "Tell me it’s forever."
"I’ll tell you this much," Reddick replied. "Your ass best go get me a goddamn strawberry wine cooler right now or else you can buy your own pizza later."
So, it wasn’t exactly love. It was more than Tamara had ever experienced, though, and it took her a while to notice some things might not be right. It was ignorance in the truest sense of the word. She had no idea what a good relationship looked like, and her common sense took a backseat to the fact that she was With a Boy.
He was pretty, and he was rich, and the first time he pushed her, she paid it no mind. Surely it was an accident, or maybe he just didn’t realize what he was doing. He did apologize profusely, too. She even got a new set of earrings out of it. That’s how sorry Reddick Boyle was. Tamara looked in the mirror at her pretty new baubles that glinted in the fluorescent bathroom lights like brand new suns. Being With a Boy was even better than she thought it would be.
***
"BITCH," REDDICK SAID in a nonchalant, conversational tone, "I’ve got one nerve left and you’re on it."
Black Friday: An Elders Keep Collection Special Edition Page 5
