Rebel Angels

by James Michael Rice

  “All’s I got is a couple of bucks,” Max said, opening the can and taking a gulp. “We'll spark a few jibbers and call it even, okay?”

  Max had about a million different nicknames for marijuana: hooba, ganja, dubage, dubies, and Caribbean Kazoos were just a few of his favorites. But for now he settled on jibbers.

  “Like I have a choice,” Mike groaned, unable to conceal his easy grin.

  Trees lined the road in huge, shadowy masses, concealing the secrets of the infamous Hockomock Forest where, some 300 years ago, the blood of heroes and villains had been spilled in what historians now referred to as King Phillip's War.

  “God, I hate him,” Max said suddenly. He was talking about his father. It was a touchy subject, one that they avoided as often as they could. “I wish he'd just...aw, man, I'd love to just kill the fucker.” There was an uneasy silence. There was little doubt, in any of their minds, that Max meant it.

  “Any parties going on tonight?” Lou asked a few seconds later, trying to change the subject.

  “Naw, not 'til tomorrow night,” Max said, easing up a bit. “It's Thursday, what the fuck do you expect? Thursdays suck. Our chances of getting pussy on a Thursday are like a billion to one.”

  Mike grinned. “Your chances of getting pussy are always a billion to one.”

  Max politely responded with his middle finger.

  Mike turned a corner onto Roller Coaster Road. The first two houses were dark and dead. The third was a large raised-ranch with one light glowing in an upstairs window, and an outside porch light that shone upon an empty driveway. After that, the nearest house was in Futawam, some three miles away.

  There were no other cars in sight. Just a dark and open road, begging to be conquered.

  “Think I can do a buck?” Mike asked. They had traveled Roller Coaster Road many times in the past, and they had once reached 95 mph before they were forced to slow down at the area most commonly referred to as “The Bend,” an elbow-shaped curve about a mile from the Hevven/Futawam line.

  “Fuck, yeah!” Max shouted with newfound vigor, showing the side of himself that they knew best. “Drive like you mean it. Punch it!”

  Mike punched it.

  “Get me another cold one!” he ordered. Another beer appeared by his right shoulder and he took it. He handed the can of beer to Rick, who opened it and passed it back to him. Mike couldn't afford to lift his eyes from the road.

  As the speedometer needle punctured 75 mph, the four friends began to laugh wildly. Mike tapped the PLAY button on his stereo and cranked up the volume until the speakers threatened to blow. Rick chuckled and grinned mysteriously, taking small sips of his beer. Lou held his breath and buckled his seatbelt with trembling hands. Max drummed his hands on the headrest of Rick's seat and bobbed his head to Mike's CD, hair flapping wildly in the wind. They were going to make this a fun Thursday night if it killed them.

  Up and over a blunt hill. Their stomachs dropped. Mike drove faster.

  85 mph…

  No one saw it coming.

  Amid the noise and excitement, not one of them noticed the partially concealed cruiser on the side of the road ahead of them.

  All at once, the blue and white Punk Catcher came to life in a frenzy of sirens and lights. Mike saw the cruiser in his rearview mirror, and his heart tried to run for the hills. They were speeding, drinking, and (it was safe to assume, with Max on board) probably in possession of more than just marijuana. To put it in Max's own terms: They were fucked.

  Officer William Bailey had seen the Thunderbird coming from the moment it had turned the corner, and had clocked it doing 65 mph in a 35 mph zone. And he had watched, with a gleam in his eyes, as the car accelerated past him. And so what if it was just a routine stop? He was only 26, lanky and baby-faced, with a blond crewcut, and he was tired of being called a damn rookie.

  Hot diggety damn! he thought, plucking the microphone from its hanger. My very first car chase! Weeeeee!

  He spoke in a calm voice, trying hard to conceal his eagerness. “Alpha-3 in pursuit of four suspects in a new-model Ford Thunderbird, traveling west on Roller Coaster Road. Color: black. Mass. license plate number 697-VLF. Suspects are white males, approximately 20 years old, driving erratically at a high rate of speed. Copy?”

  He was answered by the annoying crackle of static, and realized that his radio wasn't responding again. The last time it had burned out he was breaking up a keg party at the Cherry Street pits. It hadn't really mattered then and he supposed it didn't matter now, except that the Chief would give him hell for taking out a car with a busted radio again. Officer Bailey wondered if the dispatcher had been trying to reach him, and decided it was best not to think about it. He was in pursuit, and he needed to focus.

  He could do this on his own. Screw dispatch. Screw the Chief. Rookie or not, these punks were his.

  “Piece of shit!” he grunted, slamming the microphone back onto its hanger. Despite his frustration, he couldn't help but smile. He was gaining on them.

  “Aww, shit!” Mike said. It occurred to him that maybe he should pull over, but in a split second he decided that the Punk Catcher hadn't been close enough to get his plate number. So instead he sped up, and in his mirror he saw that the cruiser was already starting to fall behind.

  “What're you doin'?” Lou whined from the backseat. “Are you crazy? Slow down!”

  “I can take 'em,” Mike assured them. Then, aloud to himself, “Get off my ass, you fuckin' whore!”

  “At the bottom of the next hill there's a dirt road on your left!,” Max hollered from the backseat. “Take it!”

  “What?”

  “Just trust me!”

  Mike nodded and put the pedal to the floor, watching as the cruiser in his rear-view mirror became nothing more than a distant, twinkling light. He dimmed his headlights as they raced up and over the hill, foot hovering anxiously over the brake.

  “WHERE?” he yelled.

  “RIGHT THERE!” Max screamed, pointing his finger over Mike's shoulder.

  Barely visible, the mouth of the dirt road appeared out of the darkness. Mike cut the wheel and hit the brakes. The car bounced sideways as the tires searched for solid ground, missing a small grove of saplings by a few bare inches, kicking up clouds of pebbles and sand as it skidded to a halt. Something loud and heavy slammed against the inside of the trunk. Mike braced himself against the wheel with both hands. Rick conked his head on the ceiling and saw stars. Lou's beer foamed over, spraying him in the face, and gushing down onto his lap. Max fell back against the seat with his feet in the air and howled with pure delight.

  Mike threw the shifter into PARK, cut the headlights, and killed the engine. They watched and waited as the dust settled around them.

  The siren grew louder and the lights brighter as Officer William Bailey traveled in pursuit of the black Thunderbird. His boyish face was tight with anger. Now it was more than just a routine stop. Now it was personal. Those punks, he thought, those goddamn punks! What were those bastards thinking, trying to run? The cruiser bounced on its shocks as it passed up and over the steep hill.

  Inside the Thunderbird, muscles tensed. Silent promises were made to God. All at once, it seemed, the four boys collectively held their breath.

  A bright flash of red, white and blue came speeding closer, closer, closer. And with one loud whoop, it was gone. The lights disappeared as the cruiser continued toward Futawam, its siren already fading.

  A few minutes later, Officer Bailey's moment of glory ended as he realized he had somehow lost the punks. For the second time, he was thankful that his radio had gone dead. It saved him from the humiliation of trying to explain himself to Chief Asshole, who was always so eager to critique the shortcomings of others...and punish them for it. He'd forgotten the plate number during the chase, but that didn't matter now. Even if he remembered it, he wouldn't have reported it to the station dispatcher. But he'd remember that car, all right.

  The little bastards were safe for
now, but there would always be next time. No, he would not forget that car.

  Officer William Bailey, a.k.a. The Rookie, crossed over into Futawam's backroads and quickly made his way back toward the center of Hevven, hoping to exchange his patrol car before anyone noticed his radio was dead. After that, he decided he would head downtown to grab a coffee, and see if any townies were out raising a ruckus.

  “Where the hell did they go?” he muttered to himself. “I was right behind them. I had 'em. I know I had 'em. What the hell kinda engine they got in that thing, anyway?”

  Officer Bailey was glad there was no one there to answer him.

  ~Seven~

  The pool told him what to do. Right now, it was telling him to hurry...HURRY!

  Somewhere close by, a police siren wailed hysterically into the cool summer night. Judging by the increase in volume it seemed to be moving in his general direction, but he felt there was little need to be alarmed. What business could the police possibly have out here, in the middle of the forest? More than likely the cruiser was on its way toward Hevven center, because that's where the teenagers hung out on summer nights, smoking their tires, laying patches of black rubber in the parking lots of Donut Hevven and Hockomock Farms Plaza, sitting on the beds of jacked-up pickups, cranking up their stereos, looking to brawl with the kids from Futawam High who sometimes came around trying to score some action with the Hevven girls. That's where the trouble usually started, with the high school Punks trying to prove to one another who had the biggest balls. What filth!

  Still, the pool was calling him, telling him with mad, static, whispering voices:

  (like the sound of a thousand angry wasps)

  HURRY! HURRY!

  The girl was a heavy one, all dead weight, but he was more than capable of the task at hand. As he lifted the body her head bobbed and her mouth popped open, spilling maggots onto the dusty, bloodstained floor. He held her the way a child holds its favorite doll, at arm's length, with her legs dangling. Though her nakedness excited him, her dumbfounded expression struck him as being rather comical. It was almost life-like, that expression. But there was nothing else life-like about her, he'd made certain of that. Oh, yes! The full swing of his muscular legs, armed with a pair of steel-toed boots, had made certain of that.

  He heaved the body up and over one shoulder and began down the hallway, toward the staircase. On his way he heard a soft whispering-whimpering sound coming from one of the other rooms, but he ignored it. All in due time, he thought, and continued down the stairs.

  Out the door, and he crossed through the dead grass and ducked through a wide hole that he had made in the barbed-wire fence that protected his hiding place, careful that the body didn't catch on the protruding metal twists.

  Thorns nipped at his bare forearms, face, and neck, sometimes snagging the limp body that rested on his shoulders, trying to steal her away. Mosquitoes swarmed around him, buzzing in his ears, drinking freely from him. Branches lashed out at him angrily, tearing at his flesh, twisting their malformed fingers in the hair of the corpse. But he ignored these things. Nothing could stop him from what he had to do.

  Nothing.

  Seemingly out of nowhere, the dark pool of water appeared in a clearing of pines, its surface gleaming in the moonlight. His spine tingled at the sight of it. Muscles working like the gears of some magnificent machine, he hoisted the body above his head and held her there. He breathed calmly through his nose.

  It's deeper than it looks, he thought. Much, much deeper. As soon as I throw her in, she'll be sucked under. Just like the others. Sucked down to that cold dark world beneath the surface, where she'll be still. Where everything is still, and everything is saved.

  He loved how the water seemed to take control of the bodies as he tossed them in, as if cleansing them of their sins. It seemed to devour them, to suck them down out of view for some purpose he could not comprehend. Yet it gave him such pleasure to watch the process. It mesmerized him. He knew it was good, because the voices told him so, and the voices wouldn't lie.

  If anything, he would continue to kill just to be witness to that unnatural occurrence, just to feed the pool and keep it...

  Happy?

  Now that he thought of it, the pool always seemed a bit more pleasant after he fed it. The swirling surface, the smiling, ghostly faces that beckoned him for more offerings, the sweetly seductive voices that promised he could join them soon. We want more company, the ghost-voices told him. Bring us more. The time has come that you will join us soon. Yes, very soon. Here, you will be beautiful. Here, you will be saved.

  The pool spoke to him in voices that only he could hear, voices that were both frightening and soothing at the very same time. Even his reflection looked different on the surface of the water...younger, almost beautiful, like a statue.

  The pool told him what to do. It promised him a better life as long as he kept feeding it the bodies. And if that meant he would have to kill again and again, so be it. Killing was one thing he'd always been good at. And he took pleasure in his work.

  The pool told him what to do.

  (in mad, whispering, waspish voices)

  He had to listen, had to obey. Or and he dreaded to think about it—the pool might choose another to take his place. It might even decide that he was a sinner, that he should be killed, that he should be the next to be buried in the tomb of its unfathomable depths. Perhaps, then, the pool would disappear, and never show itself to anyone again.

  But he would not let that happen, could not let that happen.

  All he had to do was keep sending the bodies down there. As long as he remained obedient, the pool would keep him in its graces. But he had to feed it flesh, had to keep it satisfied. But not just any flesh. The flesh of the damned, the flesh of sinners, those who would taunt him and call him a monster.

  He tossed the body like a ragdoll, all 130 pounds of her, watching as the pool claimed its prize. All at once, the voices stopped. He stood with his head down, feeling very pleased with himself, gazing into the hollowed-out eyes of his reflection. On the nervous water, his face was transformed into something that resembled a Picasso painting.

  Somewhere faraway now, the sound of the police siren was fading, fading...gone. He'd been right, after all. It was heading toward the center of town.

  “Bye, bye, my bad little angel,” he whispered in a gravelly voice. As the surface of the pool smoothed over where the body had been, he stood frozen, eyes wide, seemingly hypnotized by his own black reflection on the moonlit water.

  He smiled, and his reflection smiled with him.

  ~Eight~

  Max was the first who dared to speak.

  “Whew! Shee-it, that was way too close!” he howled, still gripping the headrest of Rick's seat with both hands. He reached over and patted Mike on the shoulder. “Nice drivin', Mikey! You're my fuckin' hero.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said, grinning as he released a sigh. “Thanks.”

  “Holy,” Lou said breathlessly, “shit.” He glanced around nervously, and was suddenly aware of something wet between his legs. I friggin' peed myself! he realized. The thought terrified him. Then he remembered the beer can in his hand, and smiled with relief. How embarrassing would that have been? he wondered uncomfortably. Imagining what the stain would look like, he realized his friends would probably assume the worst, anyway. Just to make sure he said, “Aww, man, I spilled my beer.”

  “What're we gonna do now?” asked Rick, already sounding bored.

  “Let's just lay low for a little while,” Mike said.

  “Sounds good to me. Pull down the road more,” Max said, cracking open another beer. “Just in case that Punk Catcher comes back.”

  “What's down there, anyway?” Mike asked, flicking on his low beams and starting up the car.

  “You guys've never been to the Moody house?” Max sounded genuinely surprised. Mike shook his head. “You're gonna shit when you see this fuckin' place.”

  The driveway they were o
n cut a narrow, winding path through the forest. The black Thunderbird bucked on its shocks as its tires dipped in and out of an endless procession of potholes and stones. A few moments later, as the sky reappeared through the dense mesh of foliage, they found themselves looking at the face of a dark and ominous structure.

  The Moody house squatted menacingly in the moonlight, its long shadow reaching out to them like an unpleasant welcome mat. Its once-white paint had peeled away, revealing the spongy, timeworn gray of rotten wood. Two long, narrow planks had been nailed over the doorway in the shape of an X; each of the four front windows were also boarded over in that same peculiar way, as if to ward off evil spirits. To Mike, they somehow resembled the eyes of a dead cartoon animal. Except he found them more repulsive than funny.

  “Pretty creepy, huh?” Max grinned. He wasn't kidding. The aptly named Moody house looked like something torn from the set of a 1960s horror movie, back when horror movies were actually scary.

  At Max's suggestion, Mike parked his car behind a tall thicket of weeds, as close to the house as they could possibly get, just in case their friendly neighborhood policeman was still looking for them. Mike cut the lights and the engine. As they emptied the car, Max reached back and grabbed a 12-pack of beer from the floor. “C'mon,” he said excitedly. “There's a way in around back.” He handed the box to Lou. “Make yourself useful, dork.”

  Lou was about to tell Max to go screw himself, but before he could open his mouth Max was dumping the twelve-pack into his arms. Instead he settled on saying, “What is this place?”

  In the moonlight, Max stopped and looked at him somberly. His eyes shined with raw meanness. “It's the doorway to Hell,” he whispered without humor.

  Lou froze, his shoulders sagging beneath the weight of the 12-pack. “That's not funny.”

  Two more seconds went by before Max burst out laughing. “Haaa! Man, I had you!” Max cackled. “I had you good. Admit it. The doorway to hell. Aaaaaaah, you're such a little pussy sometimes.”