by Ed Gorman
“You must be thinking about dinosaurs again,” Mr. Baines said.
Jake looked up, surprised. The baker was off the phone. Standing behind him now.
“No. Sunlight.”
“Oh,” Mr. Baines laughed, “a new one. You must have got a Funk and Wagnall’s supplement.”
Jake smiled. “No. Same set.”
“You hear my joke about the woman with boobies like balloons?”
Jake nodded and looked down at his donut. He didn’t like “saucy” stories. They embarrassed him. It was great getting dirty magazines when you were alone but—Mr. Baines’s mood changed suddenly.
“I suppose you heard about that girl disappearing last night?”
“Yes.”
“They catch the sonofabitch that did it—” Mr. Baines, for the first time in Jake’s memory, looked angry.
His cheeks got even redder.
His big, flour-covered hands did not look friendly now. Instead they seemed massive, threatening.
Mr. Baines had daughters. Three of them. Fat and red-cheeked as Mr. Baines himself.
“Yeah. That’s real bad,” Jake said.
“They catch him—rip—right off with them.” Mr. Baines made a clawing gesture as if he were castrating somebody by hand.
The bell tinkled and a small older lady wearing an outfit too young for her—designer jeans and a cowboy shirt—came in and smiled at both of them.
“What kind of donuts do you have for me today, Mr. Baines?”
Mrs. Cropmeister’s irrevocable good cheer changed Mr. Baines’s face. He grinned. “The kind I have every morning, Mrs. Cropmeister—the best.”
He handed her over the plate with the donuts and she selected one. Wide-eyed. Like a child.
“Ummmm,” she said.
She even sounded like a teenager, Jake thought, even though she was well into her sixties.
She licked her lips the way erotic young women did on certain candy commercials—Jake knowing very well what they really had in mind when they licked that way-eye-smiled at Jake.
“How are the girls?” Mrs. Cropmeister asked him.
To everybody in town, Ruth Foster and Minerva Smythe were “the girls,” the slightly odd but wholly enjoyable and wholesome ladies who lived in the mansion on the edge of town.
“Oh, they’re fine.”
“You tell that damn Ruth to give me a call. And soon. And you can tell her I said damn,” Mrs. Cropmeister said, “that way she’ll know that I mean it.” Then she shook her head. “I’d drive out there myself but I can’t leave until dark and with that young girl missing—” She shook her head. “Though from what I hear, he may have invented it.”
“Invented what? Who are you talking about?” Mr. Baines asked.
“The father. From what I hear—” leaning in conspiratorially, Jake and Mr. Baines leaning in with her—“the sheriff thinks the father may have done something with her and then made up a story about her being missing.”
“Killed his own daughter?” Mr. Baines said, genuine shock playing in his voice.
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I’m afraid things like that happen all the time, Mr. Baines.”
“In cities they happen, Mrs. Cropmeister. Not in small towns like ours.”
“Well, they’ve happened before, Mr. Baines.”
He scowled, waggled his head no.
“Of course, they have. Over the years different women have been reported missing. Hitchhikers and women with car trouble mostly—but they were seen around here before they disappeared,” Mrs. Cropmeister said.
This time he scoffed. “Oh, back in the hippie days, when all those young ruffians came through here—”
“Long before the ‘hippie’ days, as you call them, Mr. Baines”
Jake enjoyed this sparring.
It was like watching a tennis match.
One opponent, Mr. Baines, played with the bluster of a professional wrestler.
The other, Mrs. Cropmeister, played with the skill of a very highly paid assassin. She went for the deft, subtle jab, often making him do damage to himself.
Jake smiled.
Mr. Baines caught his smile. His red face ignited with anger.
He was no longer the Mr. Baines who handed out free donuts. “Something funny?”
“No,” Jake said quickly.
Meanness came into Mr. Baines’s eyes now. “You don’t have a wife, do you?”
“No.”
“No kids, either, do you?”
“That’s enough, Mr. Baines,” Mrs. Cropmeister said. “Jake’s a very nice man.”
“Then why doesn’t he have a wife and kids?”
“Maybe he’s had a tragic life,” Mrs. Cropmeister said. She was known to read historical novels. This sounded like a line from one.
“Tragic life,” Mr. Baines sneered.
“I need some bakery,” Jake said.
“You do, do you?” Mr. Baines said.
“Ruth and Minerva want some,” Jake said, making it clear that he wanted none for himself.
He looked over the glass case of goodies. The cakes and pies. The cookies and pastries.
Mr. Baines was a jerk sometimes, but there could be no doubting his skill as a baker.
“See now, you went and shot your mouth off to a very good customer, didn’t you, Mr. Baines?” Saying this, Mrs. Cropmeister put her hand on Jake’s elbow and started patting as if she were in the company of an exceptionally friendly collie.
“I still want to know why he doesn’t have a wife and kids.”
Jake offered a sad smile. “Maybe I did, once. Maybe she up and left me one day and took our kid with her.”
“My God,” Mrs. Cropmeister said. “See, I told you, Mr. Baines. A tragic life.”
Despite himself, Mr. Baines had obviously been moved. Something very much like pity shone in his tiny eyes. “Hell,” he said, a sudden rasp in his voice, “why the hell don’t you tell a guy things like that?” he said to Jake.
Jake shrugged sadly.
2
“Hey.”
Dave Evans turned as he passed down the hallway on the second floor of Burton High School.
Somebody had just tried getting his attention.
When he saw who it was, he felt a variety of emotions that threatened to gather up and overwhelm him. Dave, much as he hated to admit it, was sure that this was what was meant by love—you felt weak in the knees and every other boy made you jealous and you couldn’t sleep for all the erections her memory gave you.
And now she stood before him in a baby-blue sweater that hugged her perfect breasts with real reverence and a pair of slacks that outlined her genital lips with beautiful precision. Lips he had yet to taste ... lips he would taste tonight. Angie Fuller.
“Hi,” she said, all flirtatious and coy.
“Hi.”
“Still up for a visit to the Foster place tonight?”
“Baby, I’m up for a lot of things tonight.”
She smiled. Hurting him with her power over him. Literally making him dizzy. “Just as long as you don’t back down.”
“I’m not scared, if that’s what you mean?”
“I’ve heard some pretty weird stuff about the Foster place.”
“So have I.”
“And you’re still not scared?”
“No.”
They had started walking down the hall. They were the two best-looking students in the high school. There was something golden and godlike about them. Other students watched them with a mixture of envy and hatred.
Just about the time they reached her locker, Bobby Coughlin caught up with them.
“Why do you hang out with this little nerd, anyway?” Angie said, not caring that Bobby obviously heard her.
“He’s all right.”
“He’s a little jerk. I get tired of the way he looks at me.”
Dave laughed. “How does he look at you?”
Her slap was so sudden,
so startling that he literally rocked on his heels.
“You think it’s funny that a little creep like that undresses me every time he looks at me?” she screeched.
“No, I mean, I—” Dave babbled.
“You can just forget about tonight, as far as I’m concerned.”
With that, before Dave had a chance to say anything, Angie Fuller set off down the hall, instantly surrounded by a number of doting boys.
Dave, cool, handsome Dave, was left standing in the hall, feeling the stares of delighted classmates as they watched him roll in his grief and embarrassment. Angie Fuller was the only girl on record who had ever treated Dave Evans this way and gotten away with it. This was great news for all the people who hated Dave Evans.
“Bitch,” Bobby Coughlin said. “You hear what she called me?”
Dave didn’t know what he was going to do until he did it.
He reached out and grabbed Bobby Coughlin and lifted him off his feet.
Then he slammed him four feet through the air and into the lockers.
Bobby screamed as he hit the ground, rolled, trying to touch his back to see if he was still intact.
Dave, still enraged, did one last thing to his friend.
He spit on him, right there in front of everybody, he leaned down and spit on him.
3
Sometimes he could almost hear them talking, the dead who were buried here.
Sheriff Wayman left his patrol car and wandered into the afternoon.
This was his once weekly visit to his wife, and he felt he needed it more than usual, what with all that was going on in the town.
He looked at the gravestones that slanted like buck teeth up from the ground.
Some of them went back one hundred years.
He tried not to think of what the human animal would look like after all that time.
He had seen his share of horror movies on the tube, but he was sure that reality was even more frightening.
He paused, leaning against an oak, watching birds arc against the blue sky.
With the sun sliding through the clouds, Sheriff Wayman thought of his fishing cabin.
If only he could go there, relax....
Then he closed his eyes and remembered how his wife used to rub his neck....
His wife—
Loneliness had become a part of the man, as much as brown eyes and sandy hair once had been.
He continued up the grassy slope to the marker where his wife lay.
For a moment he had an odd image—of the dead in the ground talking to each other, lying there side by side for all these decades.
Talking.
Sheriff Wayman believed in an afterlife, he just wasn’t sure what form that life would take.
He was nearing his wife’s gravestone when he saw it.
On the edge of a white, plain granite marker.
Unmistakable.
Blood.
He went over, knelt down, put his finger to one of the splotches.
The stuff wasn’t very old.
And he was sure it was human blood.
He must have dragged her through here last night on his way to—
Sheriff Wayman stood up.
He looked in the distance at the woods where Carnes and he had been last night.
Searching.
Shaking his head, Wayman went over to his wife’s grave and knelt down.
He said a good, concentrated “Our Father,” as the minister in the Methodist church had taught him to say it (make it “perfect, give of yourself” the minister always said) and then Sheriff Wayman spoke to his wife.
It was a kind of mental telepathy, and he was sure she heard him.
Knew she heard him.
Told her about all the petty and painful things people did to him and each other.
Told her about the roof needing fixing.
About a particularly good western rerun he’d seen with John Payne, an actor she’d always admired, even though he was never truly popular.
Told her about the parakeet—her parakeet—and how well it was doing.
Along with the family dog, Zeke.
And—
Sheriff Wayman again noticed red splotches.
This time on his own wife’s gravestone.
He stood up.
Angry.
Frightened.
He tried not to think of how last night must have been.
Tried not to imagine what it must have been like.
The screams—
The wails for help—
The—
He shook his head, clearing his mind of several grotesque images.
Then he looked up again—all around the graveyard with its venerable iron fence, its mausoleum in the center of the hill, its weeping willow trees and its overgrown grass.
There was rest here.
Eternal rest.
He thought he could hear the dead speaking again.
This time to him.
Calling him.
Inviting him.
He was not afraid.
Indeed, he looked forward to joining her. He had watched a show once about an after-death experience. The white light at the end of the tunnel. This was just after his wife had passed on.
He had wanted to find that tunnel.
Walk down it.
Reach out for his wife’s hand to guide him to eternal peace.
The sweet smell of a nearby farm brought his senses back to the present.
Sheriff Wayman walked around the rest of the graveyard, careful not to step on the burial mounds, checking each for any sign of blood.
On several stones he found more.
Flecks.
As if she’d been dragged through the grass. Kicking.
When he was finished with his investigation he went back to his wife’s stone once more and knelt down again.
This time he told her how much he loved her and missed her. How much he wanted to see her again.
He had the overwhelming feeling that his desire was going to come true.
He stood up and walked back down the hill to his car.
He got in, slammed the door, and drove back to town, fast, the vehicle raising huge plumes of dust.
Sheriff Wayman had started to shudder. And to think about some truly terrible possibilities that might take place if anybody ever found out—
He just wanted the peace of the white tunnel, of his wife reaching out her hand to him....
4
The weirdo was in the shower again.
Angie and the other girls knew what she did, they just weren’t able to catch her at it.
Angie, naked, sleek from the steam in the shower room, stood at the edge of the tile leading into the big room that blasting hot water had turned into a fog bath.
Behind her were two other high school companions, equally naked.
Jane had red hair and huge breasts that seemed to be half filled with water, the way they sloshed around whenever she walked.
Betty was pole-skinny, with buttocks like a boy’s, but she also had a delicately beautiful face that all the other girls envied.
The object of their scorn and ridicule was an odd farm girl named Corrie who always waited until all the other girls were finished before taking off her clothes and running—literally running, so that nobody could see her—into the shower.
Angie and the other girls suspected this was because Corrie liked to play with herself.
Now if they could only catch her at it.
Which was, of course, what they were presently trying to do, peering around the edge of the shower and trying to pierce the fog with their vision.
Corrie always made strange humming sounds.
Like some kind of odd animal calling to others of its kind in the forest.
Angie peeked further in.
Jane and Betty giggled.
Angie shushed them.
Corrie had started to hum. A high, keening sound. Maybe this was what she did when her finge
r found herself and the pleasure started—
Angie, as the most popular of the girls, went in first.
Instantly, she was lost in the rolling steam.
She moved toward the sound of Corrie rather than any real sense of her presence.
Angie wondered if this is how it would be tonight. At the old mansion with Dave Evans.
She smiled to herself as she moved. Dave Evans. He thought he was so neat. All the girls talked about how his cock wasn’t nearly as big as it should have been and how he was really an oaf in bed.
Still, there was his face, which was straight out of a magazine—and his ego, which was going to be fun to deflate.
In the murk, Jane ran into her. Angie could feel the enormous, fluffy breasts move against her back.
“Where is she?” Jane asked.
“Sssssh.”
Instantly, the humming stopped.
“Is somebody there?” Corrie wanted to know.
“Now, see. She’ll never jerk off now,” Angie said, disappointed.
“Is somebody there?” Corrie asked. Obviously she was getting terrified.
Angie stopped her friends from giggling and walked to the right.
Away from Corrie’s voice.
“We saw what you did, Corrie,” Angie said, effecting a ghostly tone.
“Who’s there?”
“We saw where you put your finger.”
“Please. Who’s there?”
“We know that you have abused yourself to the point where you’re not only blind but can’t even work a simple math problem.”
“Yeah, like two plus two,” Jane put in snicker-ingly.
Corrie drifted toward them.
Angie could see her.
A squat girl with dark braids and hands used to hard work.
Angie made a quick decision. As Corrie drew abreast of her—Angie put out a tendrily finger and touched her gently.
Corrie freaked.
Began shrieking in the most bloodcurdling way the girls had ever heard.
And their plan had backfired.
Because now that they’d heard Corrie scream and realized that they were just as lost as she was in the soupy steam here—they were just as frightened as she was.
Angie tried desperately to get out of the shower but she kept running into walls and boobs and crotches.
The shrieks continued.
In the pandemonium, Jane slipped and started crying.
