Gateway

by David C. Cassidy

  “I know how it sounds. But when I was out, I heard a voice in my head. At least, I think I did. It wasn’t the shape. Not a monster thought.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Tell me it wasn’t God.” She gave him a look. “Not you, too.”

  He raised a brow.

  Marisa threw up her hands. “And what did He say? No. Let me guess. ‘Weather the storm.’”

  Jared nodded, and then regarded the darkening sky. “We need to go. Now.”

  ~ 187

  Jared stopped with Marisa in front of her ruined car. Thunder grumbled above them, and she had to steady him with a hand. His headache was growing worse.

  “Jared?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Just dizzy.” He looked at her car. “I can’t believe you drove it like that.”

  “Glad I did?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “I say we take the Land Rover,” she deadpanned.

  “You drive. I’m not up to it at the moment.” He tossed her the keys.

  They got in and buckled up. When Marisa started the engine, Jared stopped her. He looked at her, clearly confused.

  “Rose Tillman’s,” she said.

  He almost asked her why, then remembered. He nodded.

  “Howard Street,” Marisa said.

  “Yeah. Beside the … the, uh …”

  “The Greenwoods. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  The graying sky grew darker. Thunder rolled, and rain began to fall. Marisa took a shortcut, avoiding Main Street and any traffic. When she turned onto Third Avenue, she stepped on the gas. She had to slow down when she saw someone walking in their direction—right in the street.

  “Get off the damn road,” she groaned. The pedestrian kept on, and she steered into the other lane to avoid an accident. “What the hell?”

  “Mar—isn’t that your boss?”

  “It is,” she said. “Ohhhh, shit!”

  Merritt DeWitt bolted in front of them. Marisa screamed as she hit the brakes, but it was too late. Merritt flipped up onto the hood, her neck snapping as her face thudded against the windshield. Her head slumped to the side. Behind her bent glasses, her bulging eyes were bloodshot, her skin thick with plum veins. Several of the upper teeth in her gaping mouth had been knocked loose. Dark blood slid down the windshield.

  Marisa kept her foot on the brake. Like Jared, she stared in incredulity. Merritt’s dead eyes were still open. The passenger-side wiper was stuck beneath her limp body. The other kept whacking her in the side of the head.

  “Oh, fuck,” Marisa said. “Oh, Jesus, fuck.”

  “Calm down. I’ll handle it.”

  “No. We don’t have time for this shit.”

  The veins in Merritt’s face were dissipating. They looked like thin, shrinking worms. Marisa threw the vehicle into reverse and hit the gas. The body rolled off the hood and smacked the pavement like a bag of rocks.

  “Did you hear that?” Jared said. He buzzed his window down. “Stop the car. Stop the car!”

  Marisa stopped. They heard a definitive pop. It was the same chilling sound that they’d heard outside the community center. Jared couldn’t be sure, but he figured it had come from a couple of streets over.

  “Oh, no,” Marisa said. “No.”

  Another pop came. Possibly a scream; thunder drowned it out.

  Jared turned to her. “It’s happening, Mar.”

  “Hang on,” she said, and the Land Rover shot forward as they headed for Howard Street.

  ~ 188

  Torch Falls has good people. It’s always had good people.

  First settled in 1880, it officially became a town in 1892, just three years after Montana became the forty-first state. It’s been served by twenty-two mayors, the longest term held by George T. Leonard, the son of the town’s founding father and first official steward, William R. Leonard. Young George was handsome and well-liked, and from all accounts had a heart of gold; he was a gentleman’s gentleman with a kind word and kinder acts for all. He held the mayor’s post from 1909 to 1929, when he succumbed to a heart attack at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new water tower.

  In 1918, the year of the Spanish flu, 113 residents perished within a month. It took more young men from the Falls than two world wars. Good, decent men.

  In the post-war years, the number of good people exploded as the town produced its share of baby boomers. The populace tripled in fifteen years to nearly three thousand, reaching its zenith at precisely 2,987 on May 3, 1948, when Everett Charles Horn burst from the womb, screaming. His father, Karl Hoffman, who had taken the name Carl Horn in 1946, was a good man with a good sense of humor, and had joked with the nurses that that boy was going to be trouble.

  Arthur Fisher was born in Butte, Montana, and at fourteen, with two dollars and eight cents in his pocket, left an abusive alcoholic stepfather and thumbed his way to Torch Falls. For four summers he kept the horses for Jack Henneman Sr., and finally won his personal lottery when the new public school opened and hired him as the full-time custodian. Artie didn’t like cleaning shitters, liked some of the smartass kids even less, but he never let it get him down. He always went to work with a smile, and no matter how many plugged toilets he plunged or how much urine or vomit he mopped up, he always came home with one.

  Emma DeWitt—mother to Merritt—was the first librarian of the George T. Leonard Library, and was pretty much loved by everyone. On every dry Saturday for thirty-three years, she staged “Emma’s Story Time,” reading to young children on the library steps, right up until August of ’89 when she and her husband were struck by the early morning train on the north end of town.

  Henry Judge was a fair man, and some would say a good man. He was good to Catherine, and good to Marisa.

  Ricky Cowen, Jim Tate, Bobby Duncan … good men. Simple men. Bobby was weak, to be sure, but his heart had been ripped away. And when you take away a man’s heart, you take away hope.

  Victor Collado had a good soul; so did Wade Kingsley.

  Rose Tillman was as close to a saint as the Falls would ever know. Like a young boy named Christian Judge, she was born with a caul. A lot of folks thought she was strange, a few bricks shy of the proverbial full load, but that said far more about them than it did Rose. She might have frightened some with her gift, but one thing was certain: She always meant well. Sometimes things came to her. Some good. Some not.

  Yes, Torch Falls has good people. It’s always had good people.

  But sometimes, good people do bad things.

  ~

  Jim Tate poked his one-eyed head out from under the hood of Ed Sweeney’s ragtop ’68 Mustang. The mechanic thought he heard thunder over the pounding Metallica from the ghetto blaster. He glanced out the big windows of the Chop Shop’s four-bay garage and saw a dark leaden sky. He didn’t see the fork of lightning to his right, nor the rat creeping along the workbench along the wall.

  Back at his work, he finished installing a new Edelbrock carburetor. Five minutes later he put away his tools, then gently closed the hood of Ed Sweeney’s baby just as it started to rain.

  Bert Humphries—Stumpy Humpy to some—opened the door to the office. “You done? Ed’s been chewin’ my ass for two days. He wants his fucking car.”

  Jim angled his head a little to get a better look at his boss. It was something he did as a matter of course; it was never a conscious thing. Not any more. When he’d first lost the eye, he’d quickly learned three very important lessons. One: Angle the head or bump into shit. Two: Grow a pair and get used to the looks—especially from the ladies. Three: Sit down to piss—ya never miss.

  Lesson One was probably the most important. People with two eyes couldn’t possibly know how fucked up life was with only one. He couldn’t drive any more. He didn’t trust himself to. Just walking down the street was bad enough. He had to turn his head like a goddamn hoot-owl before stepping from the curb. All that and the other shit he had to put up with, just because of a fucking lawn dart. Lesson Four, kids: Don’t toss one i
nto the air and try to catch it—not when you’ve had one too many and you’re bored to tears on a Saturday afternoon.

  Losing the eye was bad enough, but Jesus. The glass replacement was like some Marty Feldman nightmare. Well, not quite that bad, but it felt like it. Still, he was grateful for it. It looked a helluva lot better than that old black patch. Not a lotta pirates in the Big Sky.

  Yes … he was grateful. When he thought about the alternative, having one was better than none. He couldn’t even imagine. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t think of it, not a day that he didn’t thank the Big Guy for the sight he still had.

  “Didja lose an ear, too?” Bert barked.

  Jim winked. “Good to go, Bert.” Asshole. This is the thanks I get for gettin’ you to the hospital after that ’Vette chopped off your fingers.

  “About fuckin’ time,” Bert said. His eyes widened. “What the fuck?”

  “What …?”

  “You little cocksucker,” Bert stammered. He didn’t look like he was talking to Jim, not with that head of steam. Already he was halfway across the garage.

  “What’s wrong?” Jim said, backing up.

  Bert stopped short. “I thought you were just half blind. Fuck.”

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

  Bert glared past him, pointing with his stubby right hand. Bert was born a rightie, and while that fat thumb of his was good for hitching a ride and not much else, he still favored his right from time to time. Times like this.

  Jim had to turn all the way around for a look. He still had no idea what the boss man was on about.

  “Him!” Bert shouted, pounding that stub in the air. “That little cocksucker.” The music was still blaring.

  “Oh! Shit. I’m sorry. But don’t sweat it. It’s just a rat.”

  “You’re a fucking rat. I told you to get rid of that little bastard a week ago.”

  “I know. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Like Ed’s car? What the fuck’s gotten into you lately?”

  “There’s a lotta shit goin’ on, Bert. Bad shit.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. But you see all those vehicles out there? They don’t fix themselves.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Bert.”

  “You better. I’ll start dockin’ your pay if ya don’t.” Stumpy stormed off to his office and stopped at the door. “And turn that shit down.” He slammed the door behind him.

  Jim turned to the windows at a long roll of thunder. Rain was coming hard. He started to think about what was going on in town—again—and the more he did, the more frightened he became. It was like one of those ghost stories that he and the guys used to tell each other, when they camped out in Bobby’s backyard.

  No. It was way worse. It was like one of those creepy novels that Jared wrote. He had a real gift for scaring the shit out of people, and right now, this was just about as scary as scary got. There was that shit with Kyle and Bobby. Artie Fisher. All the others. But that bloodbath at the community center? It was like the whole town just swallowed some kinda wicked Kool-Aid. Like that Jim Jones kind back in the 70s.

  He had wanted to see Jared, but he just couldn’t do it. All the shit people were saying about him—and what was going on—well, it was crazy, yes, but the truth was, it scared him. Jared scared him. Bert might be a four-fingered asshole—as opposed to the eight-fingered variety like Ed Sweeney—but there was one thing about Bert if nothing else: He didn’t like bullshit, and he never spoke it. So when Bert told him how Jared had turned into some kind of zombie at the park that day, that pretty much sealed it. His eyes were bleeding? You couldn’t make that shit up. Well, Jared could.

  He turned down the stereo. At the foot of the red steel tool chest it sat on, he picked up the plastic bucket of Hawk Bait Chunx he’d picked up from the hardware store. He’d meant to spread some of the bait around last week, but with everything that was happening, he just plain gapped it. Bert or no Bert, there were a lot bigger rats running around, ones that were spreading their own kind of poison.

  After he spread the bait, he sealed the bucket and set it on the bottom shelf beneath the workbench. He had to turn as he scanned the length of the bench, and nearly did a whole one-eighty as he scanned the garage. No sign of the rat.

  Lightning flickered at the windows. Thunder boomed, and he winced at the sudden searing in his eye—it even burned around his glass one. Rubbing them did no good. He staggered a moment, and then, just like that, the pain left him.

  He walked to the tool chest and opened the third drawer. A quick scan of the tools found the one he needed. He took it out and slid the drawer closed.

  More thunder came. He stepped slowly to the windows and watched the storm. Bert Humphries swung the office door wide.

  “What the fuck are you doin’?” Bert snapped. When no answer came, only thunder, he made a beeline across the floor. He stopped cold when Jim turned to him. Jim’s good eye was bloodshot. Thick veins rippled around both of them.

  “Arrancar,” Jim said. He knew a little Spanish, but not this word. And yet he did.

  Bert backed up a step. “Jim … Jimmy—”

  Jim put a hand to his glass eye and plopped it out. He let it drop to the concrete, and it rolled to Bert’s boot. Bert stepped back in horror, his eyes glued to that gaping dark socket.

  “Arrancar,” Jim said. A tear had formed in the only eye he had left.

  “J-J-Jim? Jimmy?”

  Jim Tate raised his arm and set the flat-bladed screwdriver to his eye. He tried to fight that word in his head, but he couldn’t. He could taste that wicked Kool-Aid.

  He plucked out his eye. It dangled on his cheek, and it was still dangling when he hit the floor. Bert Humphries screamed, and screamed again when he saw that rat skitter across the concrete, to gnaw on Jimmy’s eye.

  ~

  Parker Brooks slid his iPhone into his pocket. “Nels’ll meet us there,” he said to Darren Philips. Darren was leaning up against his locker, far down the long corridor from Principal Tremblay’s office.

  “What’s he doin?” Darren said. “Should we wait?”

  “Fuck no. He’s in the can right now. Fucking guy actually answered on the shitter. Anyway, he says he’s gotta pick up some books in the library.”

  “Shit, yeah. Civil War essay. I gotta get on that this weekend. What’re you writin’ about?”

  Parker snickered. “Like it matters. Let’s go.”

  Ten minutes later they were outside Remi’s Pizza, just as it started to pour. They rushed inside and took a table next to the window. Except for them and the two workers behind the counter, the place was dead. Rain pelted the glass, and Darren started at a loud thunderclap. Parker laughed.

  “Screw you, Parks.”

  “How ’bout I screw your mother? She always wants more.”

  “Do you want to order?” a freckled Tim Hendricks said from the register. He wore a navy blue T-shirt and a matching cap that bore the Remi’s Pizza logo.

  Parker waved him off. “We’re waitin’ for a friend.”

  “Give Nels a call,” Darren said. “See how much longer.”

  Parker called Nelson Kurtz. “Nels? You comin’, or what? We’re already at Remi’s.”

  “You guys go ahead,” Nelson said. “I’m goin’ home instead.”

  “This better not be about Smudge.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Better not be.”

  “See you tomorrow, Parks.” Nelson hung up.

  Parker put his phone away. “What’s that look for?”

  Darren turned to the window. “Nothin’.”

  “Look,” Parker said. “They don’t have jack shit on us. It’s that little prick’s word against ours.”

  “Yeah, well, Mr. Tremblay didn’t look like he believed us.”

  “Tough shit. He’s got nothing. Nothing.” Parker sat back. “Fucking Smudge.”

  “You think Nels’ll keep his mouth shut?”

  “He’d better. B
ut he’s such a wuss sometimes. We were just fucking around.”

  Darren nodded.

  “Don’t you screw this up, Dare. I mean it. We stick to the story. We weren’t there. Period.”

  Darren stared blankly at the rain.

  “Fuck this,” Parker said. “You gettin’ a slice?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Parker got up and ordered a slice of pepperoni and mushroom. He got a root beer with it and sat down as the lights flickered.

  “Is that your dad’s?” Darren said.

  “Huh?”

  “Across the street.”

  Parker looked over into the Thrifty Mart parking lot. That was definitely his father’s silver Lexus SUV. His mother came out of the store and stood under the awning to avoid the downpour. She hugged two bags of groceries.

  “Maybe we should help,” Darren said.

  “Screw that,” Parker said. Lightning lit up the sky. His mother aimed the remote, and the trunk to the Lexus clicked open. She hurried to her car and put the groceries away before getting in behind the wheel.

  The car started and the headlamps came on with the wipers. Then the high-beams came on. Then off. Then on. They kept flickering.

  “Hey—what’s she doing?” Darren said, putting a hand up to block the flashing lights.

  “Fucked if I know,” Parker said. He put up a hand himself. The car continued to idle, the blinding high-beams still flashing. He took out his phone and called his mother’s smartphone. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Mom?”

  She said something, but he couldn’t hear for the thunder.

  “Mom? What did you say?”

  There was nothing. And then there was.

  “Mom? What?” He couldn’t make it out. It sounded like Spanish or something.

  “What’s wrong, Parks?” Darren said. He was watching the Lexus, but when Parker got up, he turned to him.

  “Mom? Mom?”

  The SUV shot forward. It clipped a waste receptacle that spun and toppled. The Lexus sped into the street and headed straight for the pizzeria.

  “Holy shit!” Darren shouted. He dove to his left just in time, but he slipped on the tiled floor. He struck a cement wall with his face, knocking out four of his front teeth. The blow knocked him out cold, and thick dark blood streaked the wall as he slid to the floor.