by Jeremy Bates
The stack of photographs was facedown. She picked it up and turned it over—and gasped.
The top one was a headshot of a young woman. Her eyes were open and unseeing, her skin pale. She appeared to be lying on a slab of stone.
She almost looked dead.
Heart suddenly pounding, Lynette removed the elastic band and cycled through the rest of the photos. There must have been three or four dozen, all females, all headshots, all closed-eyed, all pale-skinned, all—
Dead, she thought as the photos fell from her fingers. Not almost. Definitely. Definitively. Dead. All of them, dead, dead, dead.
And then she recognized one of the women: the teased hair, the heart-shaped face, the beauty mole on her chin. She had gone missing from Boston Mills the year before. What was her name? Debra? Darla? Her fiancé, Mark Evans, owned the auto repair shop in town—or had owned it. After he admitted to police that Darla went missing the same evening she caught him having sex with an employee from the ski resort, rumors swirled that he’d murdered her. Although no evidence could convict him of any crime, none could clear his name either. His clientele stopped patronizing his shop. The townsfolk whispered about him behind his back and avoided him on the street. Children invented stories of how he fed Darla into a woodchopper, or buried her dismembered body parts in the national park, or tossed her off the top of Brandywine Falls, where you could see her haunting at midnight on a full moon. Eventually Mark sold his business and moved out of state. No one had heard from him, or Darla, since.
But Spencer has a photograph of her face—her dead face.
Had he killed her?
Had he killed all these people—?
Lynette buried her face in her hands and found herself wishing her husband had been having an affair after all.
CHAPTER 17
“Somebody once wrote, ‘Hell is the impossibility of reason.’ That’s what this place feels like. Hell.”
Platoon (1986)
In the current nightmare, Beetle was back on the beach in Grenada. However, there were no bullets whizzing past his head, no Marine Corps Sea Cobras decimating the quaint beachfront hotels and cafés with machine gun fire, no fighter-bombers flying gun runs overhead. Instead the beach was ominously deserted. He stood there alone, the sun burning in the sky, the surf foaming at his feet, the palm trees waving in the breeze. He began to walk, pretending not to see the blood staining the bright sand, or the drag marks where the tide had ferried bodies to their watery graves. Eventually the beach tapered to an end. Sarah stood where the sand met the jungle, waiting for him. At the sight of her his heart raced. He wanted to embrace her and tell her he was sorry and promise her he would change. But she wouldn’t let him get a word in. She yelled at him for being covered in blood, for killing the Russian diplomat, for drinking so much, for becoming a stranger to her.
He became enraged. Didn’t she understand what he’d been through? Couldn’t she understand that and empathize with him? No, no she couldn’t. All she could do was yell and accuse, yell and accuse—
Suddenly the USS Caron, a destroyer armed to the teeth, towered beside him, an impossibility in the shallow water, but there nonetheless. His lieutenant, a brown-noser who looked like a dentist and often pulled rank, yelled to him to put down the pistol, to turn himself in. Beetle pressed the barrel beneath his chin and squeezed the trigger—
Beetle jerked awake bathed in sweat, disorientated, gutted, afraid. It took him a moment to realize he was sitting on a rickety wooden chair on the balcony of the room at the Hilltop Lodge. The full moon hung in the black sky, a moldy white disc poking out from behind a smudge of dark clouds. It had started to rain, which had cleared away some of the fog, or at least thinned it, so he could see much of the forest stretching away below him. He swallowed, discovered he was parched, and picked up the bottle of vodka on the ground next to him. He took a three-swallow belt.
“Yuck!” a woman’s voice said. “That would make me puke.”
Beetle fell sideways off the chair, though he somehow managed to keep the bottle from spilling or breaking. He looked to where the voice had originated and found the woman leaning on the wooden banister that separated the two balconies.
She was tall and had lidded, amused brown eyes beneath arched eyebrows. Her features were too long, her face too gaunt, to be considered beautiful, but she had an unusual attractiveness. “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to startle you so much.” She had a strong German accent.
“It’s okay,” Beetle said, pushing himself to his feet and returning the chair upright. He remained standing, looking at the woman, waiting for her to go away.
“What terrible weather,” she said. “It reminds me of the weather in Bavaria. That’s where I’m from, in Germany. My name’s Greta.” She stuck her hand out over the banister.
Beetle hesitated, then shook. “Beetle.” His head was spinning from the booze. He had to concentrate on standing straight and enunciating clearly.
“Like the…” She made a crawling motion with her fingers.
“Yeah, like that.”
“Better than earthworm, I suppose,” she said, smiling. “No, I’m kidding. So what’s going on? You’re having a big party by yourself?” Her eyes went to the bottle in his hand, then back to his face.
“I think I’m going to go inside.”
“Is that an invitation?”
He blinked at her.
She laughed. “I’m kidding, Herr Beetle. But don’t go inside. Help me smoke this.” She produced an elegantly rolled joint from her pocket.
Beetle’s eyes came awake. He didn’t merely want to get high; he suddenly realized he needed to.
“I’ll take that as a yes?” She lit up, took a couple short drags, and passed the joint to him.
Beetle inhaled, pulling hard and closing his eyes. His mind rode the smoke as it tickled down his throat and floated in his lungs. He exhaled in a long stream.
“Hey,” Greta said. “Did you see the blood on the carpet?”
“No,” Beetle replied, thinking about Shylock and his sons for the first time since waking. The knuckles of his right hand, he realized, ached dully. He took another, longer toke from the spliff, then handed it to the woman.
She accepted it and said, “Yeah, there is. Blood. There’s a trail leading all the way to the stairs. And I swear it wasn’t there before I went to dinner.” She offered him a sly smile. “Maybe it has something to do with the legends?”
Beetle frowned, wondering what legends she was talking about, and why he thought he should know.
“The legends,” she repeated, seeing his confusion. “Like the church.” She pointed.
Beetle followed her finger. The fog had continued to dissipate even as they spoke, eradicated by the rain, and all that remained of it were whiffs of white condensation drifting up here and there through the roof of the moonlit forest. Squinting, he could make out a white structure atop a small rise some distance away.
Beetle remembered the two kids in town telling him something about upside down crosses. He mentioned this.
Greta nodded. “Creepy, right? Everybody says the church was built by Satanists to perform black masses in the basement.”
“Who’s everyone?” he asked, eyeing the joint. She held it between her fingers, letting it burn, wasting it.
“Well, just these two English backpackers I bought the pot from. I met them last night in a hostel in Cleveland. They said this place is called Helltown. It sounded neat, so I drove down this morning to check it out for myself. But the fog was so bad I decided to stay overnight and try again tomorrow.” She finally took a drag of the joint and passed it to him. “Finish it,” she said, and retrieved a paper cup from the table behind her. She held it up for him to see. “Wine. Classy, I know. But it was the only glass in the room. I think you’re supposed to use it to rinse toothpaste out of your mouth.”
Beetle puffed away, and he realized he wasn’t just drunk or high. He was ripped. He wasn�
��t going to be able to walk let alone think in a minute—and that was a-okay with him.
He flicked the roach into the night and gripped the railing so he didn’t fall over.
“Anyway,” Greta said, and he heard her light a cigarette, smelled the burning tobacco. “The church is just one of the legends. There’s so much other stuff.” She gestured to the forest. “Like all abandoned houses. There’re dozens of them, just sitting out there, empty. It’s true. The English guys showed me pictures they took. And there’s a cemetery at the end of a dead-end road that’s filled with kid graves. The English guys said a serial killer waved down a school bus years ago and murdered everyone on board. It’s in the woods, the bus. They showed me pictures of it too. The trees have grown up around it. Hard to find, but I have a map. The English guys drew it for me. The English guys—that sounds so stupid, doesn’t it? I don’t know why I keep calling them that. Anyway, they said they met someone who slept overnight in the bus, and he said he heard all these strange noises. Hey, are you sleeping? Open your eyes.”
Beetle opened them. The world canted. He gripped the railing tighter.
“Wow, you’re trashed,” Greta said, dropping the cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with the toe of her shoe.
“I think I’m going to watch TV,” he said, moving to the door. He tripped trying to get around the chair, but stayed on his feet.
“Hey, wait up! What about tomorrow? Do you want to come with me to check out the church and cemetery and stuff? It will be more fun with someone.”
“Can’t,” he told her. “Thanks for the smoke.”
Greta said something more, but Beetle was already stumbling inside his room. The warmth from the heater made him realize how chilly it had been outside. His hands were stiff and numb. He set the vodka on the Formica table and withdrew the Beretta from the waistband of his pants, comforted and chilled by its cold, heavy weight. Then he remembered he’d told Greta he was going to watch TV, so he powered the thing on.
It was bizarre, he thought, he was going to kill himself in a moment, blow his brains out all over the ugly floral wallpaper, she would hear the gunshot, she would be the one to discover his body, and he was concerned about hurting her feelings?
Sitting carefully on the bed, his back against the headboard, Beetle clicked off the pistol’s safety, pressed the barrel into the soft flesh beneath his jaw, and counted to ten.
CHAPTER 18
“Humans are such easy prey.”
From Beyond (1986)
Jeff’s eyes snapped open. He sucked back a sharp intake of air. His arms shot out from his sides, as if to prevent himself from falling.
Where was he?
He tried to sit up and pain flared in his back. He cried out, a twisted, tormented howl.
What the hell had happened?
He thought back. The crybaby bridge. Tossing the baby shoes he’d brought with him beneath the bridge to scare the others. The hearse—oh shit the hearse! Swerving off the road at the last second. Punching through the forest. Steve kneeling beside him, asking him to squeeze his hand, which he could do, asking him to move his legs, which he could not do.
An icicle of fear skewered his heart.
You’re paralyzed, a jolly, manic voice told him. You can’t walk. You can’t even tie your own shoes anymore. How about that? Try getting someone “more on your level” now, buddy old pal. You would be lucky to find a hooker who won’t feel sorry for you. Speaking of sex—can you even get an erection? Or is your dick as gimped as your legs?
Clenching his jaw against the pain radiating from his back, Jeff maneuvered himself onto his elbows. He tried moving his legs. They didn’t respond. He tried harder, focusing all of his concentration on them. Nothing. It was like trying to move a third arm.
He swallowed the panic that wanted to explode from his mouth in a needle-sharp scream.
“Steve…?” he said instead, his voice rusty, barely a whisper.
No answer.
He felt rough wooden floorboards beneath his palms. He moved his right hand, exploring blindly for his legs. He found them where they should be, though they didn’t register his touch; they felt like someone else’s legs. Nevertheless, they were there. They weren’t amputated.
Jeff’s eyes adjusted to the dark, and he discovered that the blackness was a little less black to his right. He stared in that direction until he understood he must be looking at a door. Dim light was seeping through the crack at the bottom of it.
So he was in some sort of a room. But why were the lights off, and why was he lying on the fucking floor? Shouldn’t he be in a hospital? Had Steve and the others gone to get help? Why would they all go? Wouldn’t someone stay behind with him?
“Mandy…?” he said.
Nobody replied.
Jeff squinted. There was something in the far corner of the room, something large and lumpy. A piece of furniture? Or someone else?
“Noah…?”
Jeff sniffed, detecting the putrid odor for the first time, though he suspected it had been there all along. Urine? Yeah, urine. But not his own. His pants were dry.
Urine and…something musky.
Swallowing fresh panic, Jeff eased himself to his side as gently as he could. His back screamed in protest at the movement. It was as if his vertebrae were being held together with razor blades.
“Ignore it,” he mumbled to himself, blocking out the pain.
Using only his arms, he began to drag himself forward on his belly. His body felt as though it weighed a ton, and it took all of his upper strength and willpower to move inch after excruciating inch. He didn’t stop once, fearing he wouldn’t be able to start again, and then he was close enough to make out the shadowy shape in the corner.
“Austin?” he croaked in relief at seeing his friend’s face—though it seemed strangely puffy, especially his lips. “Austin—”
Jeff froze in terror.
A gigantic snake was coiled around Austin’s body, from his feet to his shoulders. Its jaw, unhinged and opened impossibly wide, was attached to the top of Austin’s skull in a toothless smile as it worked on swallowing him headfirst.
Austin was having the nightmare again, only this time it was different and somehow worse than all the others. He was in his bar. It was late, long past closing. He was alone. From the back office came the now familiar sneaky, scuffling sound. He knew what was causing it from past dreams. It was his grandmother. He would go back there, like he did every other time, and he would find her rifling through the filing cabinet in which he kept all his receipts and bills. She would tell him she was looking for the inheritance money she’d given him. She would say it had been a mistake leaving it for him, he didn’t deserve it, he was going to blow it all on a stupid investment.
Austin reached for the handle of the door to the office, intent on confronting his grandmother, telling her purchasing the bar wasn’t a mistake, it was doing all right, but his arm didn’t respond. He glanced down, certain he would see a stump where it once existed. His limb was intact. He simply couldn’t move it.
“That’s my stuff, Nana!” he shouted. “Leave it alone!”
The door swung open.
Across the threshold his grandmother lay on the floor, on her back, swaddled in what looked like spider silk. She was missing her eyes.
“Nana?” he said. “What happened? What’s wrong? What happened to your eyes?”
From the darkness Jeff appeared, stopping behind Austin’s grandmother’s head. He was all blond hair and smiles and dressed in the maroon golf shirt and grays slacks of his Monsignor Farrell school uniform. “Hey, dickweed,” he said, buddy-buddy. “How’s it hanging?”
“You can walk?” Austin said.
“How ’bout that?”
“You were in an accident, and you couldn’t move your legs.” He frowned. “What happened to my grandmother?”
“Hell if I know. It’s your dream.”
“I can’t move my arms.”
�
��It’s not so bad. You’ll get used to it.”
“Get used to what?”
“Being a paraplegic or quadriplegic or whatever you are now.”
“How did you fix your legs?”
“Don’t you know what’s going on?” Grinning easily, the way he would grin when chatting up women he wanted to take back to his place, Jeff stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Dinner time, ’lil buddy.”
Slowly, almost ponderously, Steve slithered from the shadows. But it wasn’t Steve, not completely. He was green and fat and he just kept coming. His tongue flicked in and out of his lipless mouth.
“Jesus, Steve!” Austin said. “You’re a snake!”
Steve headed straight for Austin’s grandmother.
“No!” Austin shouted. “Steve, stop! Don’t touch her!” He tried to intercept his friend, but he still couldn’t move.
Steve reached Austin’s grandmother and slinked around her torso, one loop, then two.
Austin screamed, or at least he tried to. He no longer had any air in his lungs, and nothing came out of his mouth.
Then he was awake, his mouth open, still trying to scream, though the sound remained sunken within his chest.
Something tight and solid squeezed his body, pinning his arms against his sides. His first thought: he’d been locked up in a straightjacket. It took all of one second for his waking mind to equate what his sleeping mind had already surmised.
A snake! A fucking snake’s wrapped around me! Where’s its head? Where’s its fucking head?
Then he saw Jeff. He was a few feet away, on his side, staring at Austin with an expression alien to his usual cocky confidence: helplessness.
Austin wanted to beg him to help, but he couldn’t get any words out, so he begged with his eyes.
Help me, goddammit! It’s suffocating me! It’s crushing me!
Suddenly he became aware of something wet on his head. It felt like an ill-fitting cap, though he knew it was no cap.
