The Association

by Bentley Little

  Otherwise, he would be killed.

  He reached the north wall and turned to face Calhoun. The old man was running, robes flapping, the lightning heightening his expression of demonic glee.

  Robes flapping.

  Robes.

  That was it! Barry suddenly remembered Mike, volunteering because he was fined a hundred dollars for going outside in the morning to pick up his newspaper while wearing a bathrobe. It was against the rules, Mike said, for a person to appear outside his house wearing a robe.

  But this was inside Calhoun's house, not outside. And he wasn't wearing a bathrobe. It was more like a judge's robe.

  Did the rules specify a bathrobe, though, or was the wording vague? Did it simply say "robe," meaning any robe? He didn't know. But this was a chance he had to take.

  Calhoun was getting closer.

  And while the president might not be outside of his house now, he had been outside of it in his robes before. By the gate, during the confrontation with the Corbanites . And at the annual meeting, in the community center. And when he'd talked to Barry and the FBI agent.

  The old man was almost upon him.

  But what regulation prohibited that? What was it Mike had said? He'd mentioned it specifically, spelled out the exact rule he had broken.

  Think!

  Was it Article Three? Article Five?

  "Article Eight!" Barry screamed. He stepped aside as the president lunged for him, pointed at the old man. "Article Eight! No one may wear a robe outside his house!" It was a paraphrase, probably a gross generalization, and it was all that he recalled from what Mike had said, but it did the trick. Calhoun stopped as if a switch had suddenly turned off inside his brain. He stood there, clawed hands opening and closing, leaking rainwater dripping onto his head.

  "You broke the rules!" Barry said. He looked up at his neighbors in the stands. "He broke the rules! He violated the C, C, and Rs !" He heard distressed murmuring from around the arena, was gratified to see the other board members frantically conferring with one another.

  "What's the punishment for violating Article Eight?" he asked Calhoun.

  "Remain seated!" the president announced, and though his voice was as deep and resonant as ever, it contained a welcome note of unease.

  "He's outside in his robes all the time! He's never without his robes! And it's against the rules!"

  "Article Eight!" someone yelled.

  The cry was taken up by a man across the ring. "Article Eight!"

  Barry's heart was pounding. "Article Eight!" he shouted. He started chanting, trying to prod the crowd, desperate, knowing this was his one and only chance. "Article Eight! Article Eight! Article Eight!"

  Calhoun's expression was one of rage and hate. He advanced on Barry.

  "The battle will continue!" he declared. "Article Ninety."

  Barry ran away, cutting a wide swath around the pole and Dylan's dark hanging head. "Article Eight!" he continued to shout. He raised his hands, trying to get the crowd to chant along with him. "Article Eight!"

  There was still that disgruntled murmuring, but only a few individuals were chanting along with him.

  The old man ran after him, then leaped, wet robes whipping back, reminding Barry once again of some huge bird of prey. It looked for a second as though Calhoun was going to be able to fly, to glide through the air and swoop down on him. But the president landed a few feet away, then took two long, quick strides toward him.

  They were at the south end of the ring, where Barry had come in, Ralph and the volunteers still blocking the exit. There was nowhere for him to go, and Barry ducked left as Calhoun swung at him. He reached out to defend himself, and his hand connected with the top of the president's head.

  Calhoun's hair slipped off. It was a wig, and underneath, the old man was not bald but... something else. Barry saw pulsing black tendrils beneath nearly transparent skin, saw the hint of another form under the mask of makeup, and though he'd imagined such scenarios numerous times as a writer, to experience it firsthand caused his heart to accelerate with terror.

  But he was still levelheaded enough to remember one of the revised C, C, and Rs he had read in passing at the annual meeting. "No baldness in public!" he shouted.

  Calhoun stopped, shrank back.

  "Article Fifteen!" Liz yelled.

  Barry looked up, saw her standing proud and tall in the center of the crowd above him. She caught his eye, nodded, smiled.

  For Ray, he thought.

  "Article Fifteen!" he echoed. He sensed a shift in the mood of the crowd, a shift in his direction, but there was an ugliness to it, an unpleasant undercurrent he did not like. The people had been unsure before, unwilling to commit one way or the other, afraid to take a stand for fear of future retaliation, but they were with f I him now.

  Calhoun obviously sensed it as well, because he turned around in a slow circle, stunned, looking up at the crowd, his fellow members of the association. "Wait!" he ordered.

  But the residents of Bonita Vista were all standing, pointing down into the ring, pointing at him.

  "Article Eight!" the men yelled.

  "Article Fifteen!" the women countered.

  Calhoun seemed to wither visibly under this verbal onslaught, as though the words took a physical toll on his body.

  At the north end of the arena, the other board members were trying to leave, attempting to get out of their seats and make their way up the aisle to escape the growing wrath of the mob, but gowned women and tuxedoed men were streaming into that section of the stands, pushing them down, blocking their way.

  People began dropping over the wall into the sawdust. Barry backed against the concrete, glancing around warily, unsure of where this was going, unnerved by the chaos around him. From above, a shoe came sailing down, hitting Calhoun in the face. A thrown wine glass shattered against his arm.

  The president laughed, a deep, booming chuckle that sounded far too loud. Makeup had smeared away from the section of cheek struck by the shoe, and again Barry saw that transparent skin, those pulsating black tendrils. If this had been a movie or a novel, Calhoun would have been revealed as an alien. Or some type of creature from another dimension.

  But Barry somehow knew that neither of these were the case. The old man was not a distinct and separate being. He had been born human.

  He had become this way.

  From being on the association's board of directors.

  Calhoun turned easily in one fluid movement. He was still chuckling, and he spread out one now definitely taloned hand and pressed it against Barry's bare chest, pushing hard.

  Barry felt ribs cracking, found it suddenly hard to breathe. His own hands reached out frantically, trying to find purchase and keep himself from toppling backward. His fingers touched the soft silky material of the old man's robes. He latched on, desperately clutching the fabric even as he tumbled. The material did not rip, and the slight tethering of the robes helped break his fall, allowed him to land sitting on his butt rather than flat on his back.

  Calhoun whirled to face him.

  And then they were upon him.

  There must have been a dozen men on the floor of the arena now, fists clenched, faces filled with anger. More were dropping from the wall.

  Some were carrying weapons--pocket knives, keys, champagne bottles--and they attacked the president. "No robes!" Curtis the gate guard screamed, swinging the butt of his revolver at that strange head.

  An elderly man stabbed Calhoun's back with a pen. "Article Eight!" he yelled. He pulled the pen out, stabbed again. "Article Fifteen!"

  A handful of men were grabbing at Calhoun's robe, and though Barry could not hear the sound over the thunder and the screaming crowd, he saw the material rip, saw the black cloth tear lengthwise, rending the garment. Calhoun let out an ear-splitting howl. From beneath the ripped material, what looked like diseased and blackened organs came tumbling out, still leashed to the body and to each other by clumps of bile-covered ligaments. They sizzled
where the leaking rain water hit them, small jets of steam shooting up from hundreds of pinpoint fissures that erupted on the strange, dark viscera.

  Calhoun seemed to have no skin or muscle on his body. Barry didn't see how that was possible with the robes so loose and flowing, but it was as though the president were some type of mummy and the garments had protected him, acted like a bandage and kept in the disparate elements that made up that loathsome form.

  Twitching spastically, crying out in rage and pain and hate, Calhoun dropped to his knees, then fell flat onto his face. He managed to turn himself over, all trace of makeup gone now, his head a throbbing sac of black wormlike growths, and then he was still, the hole that had once been his mouth wide open and collecting rain.

  He lay there for only a moment.

  Then they tore him apart.

  Barry grimaced and finally had to look away. The killing itself was bad enough, but this crazed animal savagery sickened and frightened him. He could not believe that his mild-mannered neighbors were capable of such barbarism, and he struggled painfully to his feet, then crept along the edge of the curved wall.

  At the opposite end of the arena, the nude, lifeless body of one of the other board members was tossed into the ring to the sound of cheers.

  There was no sign of the other old men of the board, but somewhere in the middle of the crowd a shred of black robe flew into the air.

  Barry reached the doorway through which he'd entered the ring. Ralph, still standing in front of the other volunteers, knelt down before him.

  Barry frowned.

  "Hail to the president!" Paul Henri announced from somewhere up above.

  The crowd was suddenly still, silent. Holding his chest, trying not to jostle his hurt ribs, Barry looked up. Paul Henri blew on his trumpet, and this time the notes were clear and audible: some sort of fanfare.

  From above, a group of women solemnly lowered a ladder. His head felt numb, his ribs hurt like a son of a bitch, but the pain was not crippling and he was able to climb.

  At the top, he was met by Frank, Audrey, and several other men and women whose faces looked vaguely familiar but whom he did not recognize. He looked around for Liz but did not see her. There were open doors at the top of the stands where couples, families, and individuals were exiting, hurrying out into the rain, lightning throwing their scurrying forms into silhouette.

  "Congratulations." Frank bowed to him.

  "What do you want?"

  "You have earned your place on the Bonita Vista Homeowners' Association board of directors." He held out a new black robe.

  Barry knocked it away, though the action made his ribs ache with agony.

  "Go to hell." He pushed through the line of his neighbors, starting up the steps toward the exit. Glancing to his left, he saw the crumpled body of the nude board member on the bloody sawdust, the shredded bits and pieces of Jasper Calhoun.

  This was something he would not tell Maureen, could not tell Maureen.

  "You're free!" he called out to Ralph and the volunteers, still down in the ring. "Go home!"

  But they looked at him blankly, made no move to leave, showed no expression on their faces.

  Barry turned toward Frank. "Tell them it's over. Calhoun's dead, the board's gone, there are no more volunteers."

  Frank met his eyes, and Barry understood. It wasn't over. The association was not simply a group of people, it could not be eliminated by killing its members. It was a sys- tern, a series of rules and regulations that existed apart from and above the individuals who made up its membership. It J.! could only be stopped if those rules were rejected, if people refused to join or participate. He looked down at Ralph and the volunteers. Even they were not victims.

  They were part of the problem.

  He elbowed his way past Frank and the others, walked up the steps, and out the door. The arena exits came out on the east side of Calhoun's house. Logically, there was no way such a huge structure could physically be located within a residence even as large as Calhoun's, but Barry did not want to think about that. On the wide stretch of lawn, scores of people were running about, many of them heading for the road.

  There was no rain, but the storm was still raging, thunder sounding and lightning flashing, wind whipping the surrounding trees into a frenzy.

  Separating themselves from a nearby group of people talking animatedly among themselves, Mike and Tina came hurrying up to him, trailed by another older couple. "The top of the hill's on fire!" Tina said.

  "It's spreading down toward the houses on Spruce! What should we do?"

  Barry shook his head, tried to push his way past them.

  "Lightning hit the gate!" someone on the road yelled. "It's open and they're getting in! Where's the president?"

  "He's over here!" Mike shouted.

  "No!" Barry said.

  People came running toward him.

  "The townies! They're on a rampage!" "They're going to riot! Call out the volunteers!" He kept walking, ignoring them, striding purposefully toward his car. He could see from a strange glow at the top of the hill that the lightning fire was spreading quickly, fanned by the wildly blowing winds. It was as if the surrounding forest was filled with nothing but dry under, despite the recent monsoons. Behind him, he heard cries of panic, calls for someone to alert the fire department. A woman yelled that lightning had also struck over on Poplar Street and that a partially constructed house was burning, the fire racing through the greenbelt. Several people shouted into cell phones.

  There were no fire hydrants here, he remembered. Even ifCorban's volunteer fire lighters wanted to put out the blaze and save the homes of Bonita Vista--a very big if-there was no water with which to do it.

  The whole place was going to burn to the ground, and Barry felt like laughing. It served those bastards right. So smug and self satisfied, so convinced of their infallibility. Now they'd been brought down by their own shortsightedness, by not doing one of the few things that homeowners' associations were legitimately supposed to do--maintain the community's infrastructure.

  No one chased after him, tried to stop him or even spoke to him, and he felt good, strong as he strode away from the house and through the disintegrating crowd. He could smell the smoke, and he was glad the wind was fanning the flames.

  He hoped the fire consumed Calhoun's house. Especially that evil boardroom and its horrid wall of ever-changing words.

  Article Ninety.

  He had the feeling that if that could be destroyed, all would be well.

  What about the Stumpies ?

  They would probably be killed--unless one of the volunteers in the house rescued them--but Barry found that he could live with that. They had already given most of their lives for the homeowners' association, and he had no doubt they would willingly sacrifice the rest if it would put an end to the excesses of the organization once and for all.

  The people who only moments before had been trying to congratulate him were fleeing, running back to their homes in order to gather valuables or fight off fires. A fight broke out near Calhoun's flagpole. It was a free-for-all. Barry heard a loud, inhuman screech behind him, and he turned to see a well-coifed woman go down, shoved by an angry man in a suit and tie.

  "Mr. Welch! Mr. Welch!" That despicable little toady Neil Campbell was running after him, without his clipboard for once, and Barry stopped to face the association flunky.

  "I can help you," Campbell said breathlessly.

  "With what?"

  "Anything! I'm at the board's service! I'll be your right hand man!

  Any investigations you want conducted, any houses you want kept under surveillance, any--"

  "Neil?" Barry said.

  "What?"

  "Eat shit and bark at the moon."

  Barry turned away, unable to keep the smile from his face as he walked purposefully out to the road. A pickup barreled by and seconds later rammed into a Jeep. From somewhere down the hill, a car alarm sounded.

  Flickering fla
mes could be seen through the trees, and the smell of smoke was everywhere.

  Burn, baby, burn, Barry thought.

  Still smiling, happier than he'd been for a long long time, he jogged up the lawn toward the road. Where the Suburban waited that would take him to Cedar City. And Maureen.

  epilogue The insurance company had paid off on both the house and the property, taking the burned land off their hands. Barry had no idea whether the company planned to sell the lot as is or put up a new house and rent it out. He didn't care. He never wanted to see or think about Bonita Vista again.

  They were moving on.

  The red Acura hugged the curves as Jim J. Johnson drove through downtown Willis and onto a side street that wound up the ridge. Barry reached for Maureen's hand and squeezed it.

  "This is the most remote neighborhood in town," the real estate agent said, turning onto a narrow dirt road that passed through a copse of scrub oak, pinion pine, and juniper. "They're still on the sewer system, but there's no cable out here. Strictly satellite dish." Two empty lots separated by an abandoned half-finished A-frame popped up on the right. A one-room log cabin was set far back from the road on the left.

  "See what I mean?"

  They looked through the car window at an old dented trailer, two duty kids fighting over a spraying hose in the yard.

  "Like I said, I'm not sure you'll be happy here," the agent told them.

  "You look like the kind of people who would appreciate more, shall we say, refined surroundings. Now we have a gated community here in Willis, a new planned neighborhood with two manmade lakes and a private golf course. The views are spectacular, the best in town, and strict zoning ordinances ensure that you'll never have to put up with trashy neighbors. What do you say I