The Bone Yard and Other Stories

by John Moralee

  Acutely embarrassed, he paid for the coffee, fries and burger using two ten dollar notes. Peggy sloped off to the counter.

  While drinking his coffee, Newton scribbled amendments to his screenplay, Night Fears, crossing out some dialogue between the hero MIKE RYMAN and the STATE TROOPER. He turned to page 77, the big-scene:

  Night Fears/By Ben Newton: Page 77

  Slowly, STATE TROOPER walks to the side-window and flips open his helmet. His eyes go to the bloodstains on the passenger seat. He points his Smith and Wesson at MIKE RYMAN.

  MIKE RYMAN

  I didn't do it, man. I didn't kill her.

  TROOPER

  Sir, you-all gonna step outa the vehicle?

  MIKE RYMAN

  Man, I've been framed!

  Stop, stop, stop. He could read no more. Now that he looked at it with his critical eye, it didn’t sound realistic. If he wanted a big-shot Hollywood producer to give him the time of day, then it needed to sound, well, more American, not more contrived B-movie diarrhoea. He could not believe he’d written that old cliché “I’ve been framed” and all those “man”s. It made Mike Ryman sound like a hybrid of 1940s and 1970s stereotypes. Newton tore the page out of his ring-binder and scrunched it into a ball, leaving it on his empty plate. Night Fears was intended to be a darkly sinister suspense thriller, a Psycho for the Nineties. (Not like that pointless remake of Psycho starring Anne Heche, but something good.) Unfortunately, the first draft read like a bad TV movie. It was only when he reread it the mistakes burned like magnesium flares. What he needed were genuine Americanisms, a thoroughly realistic submersion in their culture and psyche. Watching Ricki Lake and Oprah was not enough. That was the purpose of his trip, to see America warts and all, the places off the tourists maps as well as the locations of his favourite shows. He’d spent two weeks in LA, soaking up the atmosphere, visiting the studios, and learning everyone had written a movie script. Now was heading up the West Coast for a whistle stop tour of everywhere and anywhere. This holiday was the reason his bank balance was deeply in the red.

  Newton looked around the diner at the other patrons with his critical eye, searching for characters he could borrow from real life. Unfortunately, the diners were mostly fat truckers and fat salesmen, as unreal as the characters in his screenplay. Boring. There had to be something interesting. Two obese children sat with their huge parents, working their way through the menu. Their grunted conversation sounded like pigs wallowing in syrupy mud. Near the toilets, a man with stringy cheese hanging from his open mouth (who looked like an extra from Deliverance) was counting his fingers to see they were all there ... but no one truly inspired Newton’s creative juices. He finished the dregs of his coffee.

  A chair scraped behind him. Turning, he saw two truckers standing up. One guy poked the other in the chest, laughing. “Hell, for all I know, you could be the Midnight Murderer.”

  The poked man dropped his smile. “No, you could be, Hank.”

  “Me?” Hank said. “Frank, I was joking.”

  “The Midnight Murderer’s no joke. Maybe you’re him.”

  “Don’t you go saying that. You’re the one with the knife collection in your rig. Where were you last Friday, huh?”

  “With your wife, buddy.”

  Hank balled his fists. Newton was fascinated and horrified. These two friends were going to fight over some joke gone sour. Hank swung a punch, but his friend dodged it. Frank’s fist connected with Nyle’s gut. Hank doubled up, coughing. Then a Makah Indian rushed out of the kitchen with a machete and stood between them.

  “Frank. Hank. Take it outside. You ain’t fighting in my place.”

  “Humf,” Frank said. “It’s over anyway.”

  Both men left together. The Indian swept his eyes over the tables. “It’s all right, folks.”

  “Excuse me,” Newton said. “Who’s this Midnight Murderer they were talking about?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve been on the road for the last few days.”

  “Some psycho’s been killing innocent people all over the state. Ten so far.”

  “Oh.” Something twisted in his chest. “Why’s he called the Midnight Murderer?”

  “Because he only kills folks in the midnight hour. That’s why he’s called the Midnight Murderer, see?” The Indian (or was that Native American?) returned to the kitchen, where he could be heard shouting. Newton was left with the image of the machete in his clenched fist, an almost casual pose.

  Newton called over Peggy and ordered a slice of pecan pie and another coffee. He wanted to stay another few minutes, eavesdropping on the diners now he had something to listen for - rumours about the Midnight Murderer. The Midnight Murderer could add flesh to his own serial killer character. He shuddered just thinking about it. The psychological effect of an on-the-loose serial killer on small town America life was exactly the information he needed. As he watched the people with renewed interest, he could not help but think dark thoughts. What if one of these people was the Midnight Murderer? Was the guy in the plaid shirt and baseball cap secretly a madman? Or the thin black man eating on his own?

  “He uses a hunting knife,” someone said, the words coming from six rows away.

  “Uh-uhn, it’s a machete.”

  “A hunting knife. Two edged. Sharp as a razor.”

  Newton was appalled and riveted by their ghoulish fascination in the murders. Unless he had seen Britain’s morbid fascination with the trial of Rosemary West, he would have dismissed it as a purely American trait. But there was nothing like a serial killer to get people talking. He wrote notes in the margin of his notepad until the pecan pie was eaten.

  Peggy brought the bill. “This is definitely your last order?”

  “Yes,” he said. Then he realised she was expecting a tip. “Keep the change.”

  “Have a nice day,” she recited. “If you want anything else, talk to Maria because my shift’s over.”

  “Thanks,” he muttered. Newton drained his second coffee, which was bitter. Perhaps the diner deliberately made the second cup awful to get rid of customers, he thought. Certainly, the atmosphere had changed to one of suspicion since the subject of the Midnight Murderer had been brought up. People were talking in hushed voices.

  Forcing his notepad into his jacket, he looked through the windows at the pink Cadillac. Angel was waving at him frantically, pointing at her watch. He had forgotten all about Angel. Eating the pecan pie had taken twenty minutes.

  She beeped the horn and performed a mime he guessed was for the food he had also forgotten. When he was in writer mode, his mind loved to wander off the tasks he had to remember. He stood up. Angel beeped the horn again anyway. Newton caught the new waitress’s attention and ordered Angel’s food.

  “Is that to go, sir?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll pay after using your loo.”

  “Loo? Oh, you mean the john? It’s way over there.”

  “Thanks.” Newton walked past a handful of customers, avoiding their stares as Angel continued pressing the horn. They looked at him as if he were the Midnight Murderer. He reached the men’s washroom and hurried inside. Once through the doors, he swore. Some holiday he was having. He used the loo (john, damnit, get in the spirit of things) and washed his hands and face in lukewarm water.

  He was combing his hair when the door slammed.

  A trucker brushed past him. His shirt was red and black. The trucker stopped at the nearest urinal, unzipped his jeans with a grunt. He urinated heavily, then he said something and spat into bowl.

  Newton looked left and right. The trucker was definitely talking to him. “Pardon?”

  “Hey, boy, you ain’t gonna let your girl jess beep your horn?” The trucker zipped up and towered over Newton. Newton could smell the beer on him. “What you say, boy?”

  “Um, right.”

  “There’s something wrong with your voice?”

  “No, I’ll sort it out.”

  “That accent
is goddamn strange.”

  “I’m English.”

  “I’m Irish-American, boy. I’m proud of my blood. You English scumbags been treating my people like dirt for centuries.”

  “Not me,” Newton said, edging towards the door.

  The trucker swung around. Urine spattered the tiles. “I don’t like English. You guys think you better than us? You think you’re better than me, boy? Do you? Do you?”

  “No.”

  “I saw you making lewd comments to my wife, boy. Peggy told me all about you and your ‘twin peaks’.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “I saw you looking at her.”

  “Must go,” he said. Newton hurried out of the washroom and through the diner to the counter. The trucker burst out of the washroom. Newton collected Angel’s order and left. As he was walking across the parking lot, he heard the trucker following him, barely ten feet behind. Newton could not believe it. He did not turn to look, in case he somehow antagonised the man.

  “Hey, English boy, you listening to me? I said are you listening to me?”

  Newton gritted his teeth. He turned his head. “Um, thanks for the advice. I’m glad you’re proud of your roots, sir.”

  The man kept following him.

  Angel was standing on the rental’s passenger seat. “Ben, where the hell have you been all this time? I thought you’d come straight out with my food, but no, you forgot. Where’s my food?” She grabbed the packages as he opened his door. “Jesus H Christ, I’ve been beeping for you for the last ten minutes!”

  Newton could see the trucker still coming towards the Cadillac.

  “Hey,” the man said, “is she a hooker? You got a hooker in your flashy pink Caddy, English boy?”

  “He called me a hooker,” Angel said. “I’m not hooker, you creep.”

  “Shut up! I think he’s insane.”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up.” Angel looked at the trucker, chewing her bottom lip. “I think we should get driving.”

  “Agreed,” Newton said. “Where’s the key?”

  “You have it.”

  “I ...” He remembered it was in his pocket.

  “Let’s go,” Angel said.

  The trucker reached into his jeans.

  For a weapon? Newton thought.

  Newton could not feel get the key out with his nervous fingers. The trucker walked slowly to the passenger side and leant over Angel, lighting a cigarette as he did so and blowing smoke in her face. “Lady, you got a real mouth on you. Maybe I’ll close it with a kiss.” He stared at Newton. “You got a problem with me kissing your whore, English boy?”

  “Don’t touch her,” Newton said.

  The trucker laughed and put one hand on Angel’s chin, pulling her closer.

  “Get your stinking hands off me!”

  Newton pulled the key from his pocket and fumbled it into the ignition. The trucker was lifting Angel’s mouth towards his own. She scraped her nails over his face, and he staggered backwards. Five red lines ran down his left cheek. Blood dripped down his neck. He touched the cuts, stared at the blood and launched himself at the Cadillac - just as Newton got the car moving backwards, the tyres smoking, the brakes screaming.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  They left the trucker standing in the lot with his fists in the air. He was running for his truck as Newton accelerated onto the road, trees flashing past at sixty miles an hour. They could see no sign of anyone chasing. They both whooped in delight at their small victory, then the adrenaline dried up. Delight was replaced by cold shock.

  “Jesus H Christ,” Angel said, “what did you do to get that weirdo so mad?”

  “Nothing.” Newton explained, missing out Peggy from the story.

  “This was because you’re English?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “He’ll probably have scars.”

  “Good,” Newton said. “He had no right to touch you.”

  “You think he’ll call the cops on me?”

  “After what he did? No. He deserved a lot more.”

  Angel opened the glove compartment, took out a Kleenex and wiped her chin. “God, his hand was so greasy.”

  “Maybe we should call the police on him?”

  “No,” she said, cleaning her fingernails of the man’s blood. “Too complicated.”

  The road curved through dark green spruce trees. Big Foot country, Newton thought. You could loose an entire nation in these forests. Newton kept checking his rear-view mirror, but the road was empty. Angel ate the food, seeming to calm down. But he could see she was shaken by the experience. He drove in silence, glancing back every few miles. There was no one following.

  When the trees fell away on Angel’s side - to be replaced by a dangerous drop - she launched the Marilyn Monroe wig out of the car. It sailed over the edge like a white owl with no wings, falling and falling. Newton noticed Angel’s eyes were wet.

  “You’re crying?”

  “I can’t help think about what he did. I feel used. Dirty.” She wiped her face. Newton reached his arm across the seats, massaging her silky neck. She relaxed, closing her eyes. “At least the creep won’t know what I look like, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can imagine him talking to the cops. ‘Marilyn Monroe scratched my face.’”

  “Jesus H Christ,” she said, laughing.

  “Jesus H Christ indeed.”

  *

  Little Falls appeared out of the drizzle as a ring of log cabins down in the valley. Rain spattered the hastily erected roof of the convertible, getting louder as Newton descended on the winding and near vertical road. Then they were in Little Falls, and the log cabins didn’t look so small. Angel pointed at the Little Falls Shopping Mall and ordered him inside because she was too embarrassed. Newton entered the general store and walked through the food section to the ladies clothing department. The cashier, a dark-haired woman with thick eyebrows, watched him hunt for a pair of women’s Levis, a bra, panties and a blouse. He felt as if he were a Satanist out shopping for sacrificial kids for the outdoor barbecue. Paying, he explained the clothes were for his girlfriend in the car, but from the way the cashier looked at him, she didn’t believe him.

  “You know Paul Hogan?” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “The Australian, like you.”

  He was about to day he wasn’t Australian and tell her he was English, when he thought of Peggy’s husband and changed his mind. Maybe all of the people around here were English haters.

  “Me and Hoges are like this,” he said, crossing his fingers and winking. “G’day, cobber.”

  “Uh - right.”

  Newton walked out to the car and handed the shopping bag through the window. “I’m now an Australian transvestite, thanks to you.”

  Angel inspected the clothes, holding the blouse up to the light for what seemed like years, finally saying: “This is the wrong colour. I wanted vermilion, this is scarlet.”

  He glared. “It’s all red to me. You women invent colours blokes can’t see.”

  “Scarlet is okay,” she said, climbing into the backseat. Angel stripped off the white dress and began dressing in the new clothes. If anyone had been walking in the rain, Newton thought, they might have seen a glimpse of her naked. It was funny how she could be shy one minute, then completely uninhibited the next. Like she was two different people. A schizophrenic. A psycho.

  Now he was thinking about the Midnight Murderer again.

  Wondering if Angel was the killer.

  As a writer, he loved to play the ‘What if?’ game. What if Angel was the killer? He did not know much about her. He’d met her in a bar in Portland, and they had immediately hit it off. She’d been serving drinks to drunken construction workers. A wild, sexual chemistry as powerful as any drug had passed between them as she smiled, and for once it was not just in his imagination that a beautiful woman liked him. After her shift was over, he’d asked her for a drink. She said yes. He learnt she was only doi
ng the job to pay for college. He explained he was only at the bar as research for his screenplay. A lame excuse, he knew, but it happened to be sort of true. The drinks were a bonus. Angel hated serving leering men. He told her to quit - and she agreed, just like that. Then something excelling his wildest fantasies occurred. They spent one week locked in a bedroom, just making love all day and all night. Glorious. When he’d suggested she join him on his tour of the USA and then go back to Britain with him, she’d said yes. That was two weeks ago and they’d still not made it out of the Washington State. He had vague thoughts about marriage. He thought back to the nights of the past two weeks. They’d done a lot of drinking and smoking pot into the small hours. He couldn’t be sure if he had been awake between 12.00 a.m. and 1.00 a.m.

  Maybe Angel slipped out to kill someone.

  Using his rented Cadillac.

  Using him as transportation.

  And as cover. The happy couple, driving from place to place.

  It was a stupid idea, he said to himself. But ... what if?

  “Ben, what are you doing?”

  Newton snapped out of his thoughts. He realised he’d been standing in the rain for maybe a minute. Cold water had leaked down his shirt and soaked his socks. Angel was in the driver’s seat, waiting. He shivered.

  “Something wrong?” she said.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he lied. “Hold on, I’ll just get a newspaper.”

  Before getting back in the car, Newton bought a copy of the Seattle Star from a vending machine. The boldface headline Midnight Murderer Kills Eleventh Victim made him feel sick. He rolled it up and put it in his jacket for reading later. He was reluctant to return to the Cadillac, but he found himself walking that way automatically. Angel is not the Midnight Murderer. She is not. She is not. They are looking for a man. When he closed the door and was next to Angel, the space seemed very small and hot. How much do you know about her? Nothing. You know nothing about her. She could be like Rutger Hauer in the Hitcher, and you’re driving with her. No - worse - you’re letting her drive

  Soon they were out of Little Falls, driving through forest.