Toy Cemetery

by William W. Johnstone

  “Nancy.” He extended his hand. “How are you?”

  The same dull stare for a few seconds. “Hi, Jay.” She shook hands. Cool, smooth, artificial. “Nice to see you, Jay. Staying long? That’s nice. Good-bye, Jay.” It was spoken like a recording.

  Jay left his cart and walked outside. His hands were trembling so he had to try the door lock several times before he got the key in the slot. He sat for a few minutes behind the wheel, calming himself.

  He drove straight to the house and called Jim and the other men outside.

  “But they eat!” General Douglas objected to Jay’s theory.

  “Do they?” Jay asked. “They buy food. But do they eat it? Where is the garbage taken for disposal?”

  “There is a huge landfill just outside of town,” Jim said. “But even if we could prove that they don’t eat . . . no laws have been broken.”

  “But dammit, Jim! If they don’t eat, how are they staying alive? Wouldn’t that raise some questions up at Jeff City?”

  The cop sighed. “Maybe. DoubtfuL You might get some doctors in here to investigate how people manage to stay alive without food; but what interest would it raise among cops? None.” He answered his own question. “Jay, you’ve answered another question, but . . .” He let it die.

  “How about reporters?”

  Jim eyeballed him. Like a lot of cops, Jim was no exception in his distrust and sometimes open dislike of the press. “I will not use my badge to convince the press to come in.”

  “But once they’re in here, would you level with them?”

  Jim sighed. “Well, my mother never wanted me to be a cop. And I won’t be if this doesn’t pan out.”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Jay,” Eric said, “but the women are suspect.”

  “I know.” He paused. “Women?”

  “Both of them, and the girls.” Father Pat’s voice was filled with pain.

  “Kelly? But . . . how could that be? No. No, I do not believe it. Piper and Kelly have never been in this area of the state before. Ever.”

  “Did your daughter play with dolls when she was younger?” Father Pat asked.

  “Sure. And I played with toy soldiers, too. Many of the same ones right there in that house. Does that make me suspect?”

  “No, son,” General Douglas said. “It doesn’t. But while you were busy watching Deva and Jenny back at the old house, we were watching Piper and Kelly. There was no difference in their behavior. None at all.”

  “And it might interest you to know,” Eric said, “that before I lost my license, I was a practicing medical doctor. And Deva knows it. Yet when I offered to assist with Ange, Deva would not let me. And Piper said that would be indecent. Think about it.”

  “Kelly’s doctor is a man. That doesn’t make any sense, Eric.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” Jim said. “Kelly is the one who brought the crosses. Why would someone who worships the devil bring crosses? And wear one?”

  “I think I can answer that,” General Douglas said. “They worship the devil in a church, don’t they? So why would any form of religious symbol mean anything to them?”

  “That is something I have been loathe to think about,” the priest admitted. “It means that nothing I can do would be effective.” He cut his eyes. “And stop smiling, Eric. You damned mercenary.”

  “I thought you were a doctor.” Jim said.

  “I had to make a living somehow after I lost my license.”

  “One hell of a switch!” The general remarked.

  “Not really. The courts said I was a murderer anyway. My wife was dying of cancer. I couldn’t stand to see her suffer any longer. I killed her.”

  * * *

  Jim mentally kicked himself for not picking up in six months what Jay had discovered in only a couple of days. That many of the people in the town were only shells.

  “Maybe Mother was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have been a cop. Come on. Let’s go see if we can interest some of the press.”

  * * *

  “The TV people have a team working down at Fort Leonard Wood,” Jay told the group. He noticed that Piper began immediately to fix her face, and Deva looked irritated. “The program director said this team has been working twelve to fifteen hours a day at the base, and he’d promised them three days off after they were finished. He says they’re not going to be happy about this job. But the news director is interested in it, so the team is on their way. Only after they were promised another day off.”

  “When are they due in?” the general asked.

  “They’re leaving out of the north gate around six or six-thirty this evening. That should put them in town about seven or seven-thirty. You heard me give the man directions.”

  “Now what?” Eric asked.

  “I’m going to cruise the town. And I am really going to agitate anybody I come in contact with.”

  “Count me in.” The old soldier stood up. “Just let me lay one of those shotguns on the front seat of my car.”

  “Piper. Will you and Deva stay here and keep an eye on the kids?”

  They both nodded.

  “Do you want to go with the men, Eric?” Amy asked.

  “I would like to.”

  “I’ll stay with Father Pat.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who cut off the barrels of all these damn shotguns?” General Douglas roared from the other room.

  “I did,” Eric said. “In the shop out back. Makes them a much more effective weapon at close range.”

  “Only you would think of that,” Father Pat muttered.

  “Ruined two hacksaw blades, too,” Eric said with a grin.

  “That Caddy of yours is a fine car, Jay,” Jim said. “But let’s take my car. It’s equipped with, ah, a hotter engine and better cornering.”

  “I just bet it is. But why no radio?”

  “Those damned antennas are dead giveaways. But I do have a walkie-talkie that’s good about eight miles, max.”

  “That’s something else,” Jay mused aloud. “I have never seen a trooper in this town.”

  “Or a sheriffs patrol car, either,” Amy said. “I haven’t seen a deputy in months.”

  Jim shrugged. “I told you. Nothing ever happens here. No point in sending in cops where they’re not needed.”

  “Bastards thought of it all, didn’t they?” Eric filled the tube of his sawed-off shotgun and shucked a round into the chamber.

  “They forgot only one thing,” Father Pat said. “God’s little army.”

  Jay watched as the mothers and the daughters exchanged some odd looks.

  * * *

  Jim remarked that they might as well be driving around Perfect Town, USA. The people were friendly and smiling, most of them waving at the men as they drove past; Jay and Jim in one car, Eric and General Douglas in another.

  “If these people get any sweeter their goddamned teeth will fall out,” the old soldier grumbled. “But how do they do it? How do they know when to put on this act?”

  “That is something probably no mortal will ever know, soldier. But I do know this: We’ve got to provoke them into doing something while that camera crew is here.”

  “We could ride up and down the street shooting out streetlights,” the general suggested.

  “You’re a violent old bastard, aren’t you, soldier?”

  “Damn right. Been too many years since I saw any action.”

  Eric put a hand to his forehead and groaned.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. We’re stupid. Nothing ever happens during the day. It’s only at night. We’re spinning our wheels out here.” He beeped the horn and motioned for Jim to pull over.

  “I just thought of that.” Jim had gotten out of his car and walked back to Eric. “But what’s the alternative? We sit in the house all afternoon, looking at each other?”

  “Let’s try the kids,” Douglas suggested. “Ange and Ken and the rest of them.”

&
nbsp; “Good idea.”

  * * *

  “They went on a picnic, out in the country,” Carla’s neighbor told them.

  “They went uptown, shopping,” Andy’s neighbor shouted at them. “Sorry you missed them.”

  “Yeah, I just bet you are,” Eric muttered darkly.

  “Kenny was sent to his aunt’s house, down near Cabool,” the mother said. “Sorry you missed him. He was real fond of you folks. Maybe next summer.” She closed the screen door.

  When they pulled up at Ange’s house, an ambulance was parked out front.

  “Poor little tyke tried to kill herself,” a white-jacketed attendant said. “But I think we got here in time. We’re gonna take her over to the hospital. Excuse us, please.”

  The ambulance moaned away.

  “I’m going in that hospital,” Jay said. “And I am going to see Ange with my own eyes.”

  “Tonight,” Eric said. “You and me.”

  8

  “Why are we here?” Shari said. “God, this must be the most boring place in Missouri. Would you just look at Boring, U.S.A.”

  “Because Al, the king of new directors, sent us here. Remember?”

  Dusk and shadows were just beginning to creep about the town.

  “Pull over there.” Shari pointed. “Let’s ask that yokel how to get to Sixth Street.”

  “Hey!” Shari called to the young man. “Can you tell us how to get to Sixth Street?”

  “Why sure,” the citizen said with a grin. He leaned against the car door and gave them directions.

  Then he reached inside and squeezed Shari’s breasts, using both hands.

  It startled her so she dropped her can of Coke. “Get your goddamned hands off me, you hillbilly!” she shrieked, slapping his hands away.

  Nick was laughing so hard he could hardly see.

  The young man walked away, laughing. There was a odd tilt to his walk. Nick was laughing so he did not notice it.

  “Very funny, Nick! I mean, I’m really amused.”

  “God, I wish I’d had the camera rolling. The expression on your face was priceless.”

  Then Shari started laughing. “But that caught me by surprise. Drive on, Nick.”

  Still chuckling, Nick pulled away from the curb. He had not gone a block before his suspicions were confirmed. “We’re being followed, Shari.”

  “Followed?”

  “Yeah. No! Don’t look around.”

  “Why would anybody follow us? We’re not in a station car.”

  “I don’t know. But that same car has been behind us since four/five miles back. When we pulled over to get your titties squeezed, it pulled over.”

  Shari gave him a dark look. They were both in their mid-twenties, and both on the way up in their fields. Nick was dark and very intense looking, and already rated as the best cameraman in the St. Louis area. Shari was blond and fair and was already making a name for herself nationally. The future was bright for both of them.

  If they could get out of Victory alive, that is.

  “Very funny, Nick. I’m so amused. Turn here. I’m beginning to smell a story in this burg. I really am.”

  “This is a joke, right?” Shari asked, after listening to Jay and Jim and the others. “Our news director has a weird sense of humor, and you guys agreed to play along with it. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  But Nick had been watching the street outside, and ever since he’d done a tour in Lebanon, his senses had been honed fine.

  “I don’t know about that, Shari,” he said. “That same car that followed us is parked just up the street.”

  “Oh, come on, Nick! Ghosts and spooks and doll people? Shit!” She looked at Father Pat. “Excuse me, Father.”

  “Of course. I wonder if the phones are still working. Would you check them, Eric?”

  Eric picked up a phone and listened for a few seconds. “Dead. Completely out.”

  Shari stood up. “So I’ll go next door and ask that old man in the rocking chair to use his phone.”

  “Yeah,” Jay said drily. “You do that, miss.”

  “Hi, assholes!” Milton shouted at them.

  Shari and Nick stood in the old man’s front yard and stared at him.

  Shari recovered enough to speak. “I said, could we use your phone, please?”

  “Don’t work!” Milton hollered.

  “Could we try it?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t give a hoot what you do!” Milton squalled.

  He ignored them as they climbed the steps and entered the house. The sounds of the squeaking rocking chair followed them.

  As their eyes grew accustomed to the dimness of the interior, they could both make out a human form sitting very still in an overstuffed chair.

  “Excuse us?” Shari asked.

  No response.

  “Ma’am?” Nick breathed.

  Shari clicked on a table lamp. She fought to keep the Coke and sandwich down.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Nick hissed.

  The old woman who sat in the chair was dark and leathery. She looked as though she’d been dead for years. Which she had. She looked as though she’d been sitting in the same chair for years. Which she had.

  Shari’s hands were trembling so badly she almost dropped the phone. It wouldn’t have mattered. The phone was just as dead as the old woman.

  “Ah . . . ah . . . ah!” Shari said, hyperventilating badly.

  And Nick was not much better. He was afraid if he didn’t get out of that house, he was going to wet his pants.

  They bumped into each other as they were backing out of the room.

  “The old woman show you the phone?” Milton hollered.

  “Ah ... ah!” Shari managed to gasp.

  “Good! Deader than hell, wasn’t it?”

  They didn’t know whether the old man was talking about his wife or the phone. And they didn’t wait around to ask. They both ran back to the Clute house.

  “There’s a dead person in that house!” Nick yelled at the group. “An old woman. She looks like she’s been sitting in that chair for years!”

  The news didn’t seem to surprise anyone.

  “Well, call the police!” Shari finally found her voice.

  With a long sigh of resignation, Jim tossed his badge and I.D. on the table in front of the couch.

  Nick picked up the I.D. and badge. “State police?”

  “Yeah. Now maybe you’ll settle down and start treating this seriously. Believe me, it’s no joke.”

  Eric stood up and picked up his shotgun. “It’s getting full dark, Jay. Time to shove off for the hospital.”

  “If we’re not back in three hours,” Jay said, “odds are, we aren’t coming back. Fill them in, Jim.”

  * * *

  “This is a hospital?” Jay said, looking at the high brick walls and the chain-link fence in front of the wall. Twenty-five or thirty feet separated wall from fence.

  A glass-enclosed guardhouse sat in the middle of the pavement, between the two lanes, one lane going in, the other leading out. And the two men manning the post were both armed.

  “I’m curious as to how you plan on getting us in there.” Eric looked at Jay in the dark confines of the car.

  “Why would a hospital be guarded?” Then he remembered that Deva had told him the place served a multiple purpose: hospital, research center, and mental institution.

  Eric told him the same thing.

  “That . . . thing I saw the other night?”

  “Products of incest. There are several hundred in there. Poor pitiful creatures. They are not to blame.”

  “But they’re dangerous?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “How are you about breaking the law, Eric?”

  “I serve and obey God’s law. Man’s law is totally meaningless to me.”

  “Well, then, let’s kidnap a couple of guards.”

  “Suits me.”

  Jay drove up to the guardpost, his window lowered. He stuck a cocked .45 into a guard�
��s face.

  “You wanna live?”

  “Very much,” the guard replied.

  “Then you and your buddy stand real still while my friend collects your guns.”

  “I ain’t movin’, Mr. Clute.”

  “Do I know you?” Jay asked, as Eric jerked their pistols out of leather.

  “Tim Bickham. I was a couple of years ahead of you.”

  “I remember now.”

  “You’ll probably make it inside the compound, Jay. But you ain’t gonna make it out. Nobody ever has done it.”

  “Maybe. But I’ll leave a lot of dead bodies lying around the place.

  “It ain’t our fault, Jay,” Tim pleaded, his face sweaty.

  Jay did not pursue that until the guards’ hands were tied behind them with their belts. And Jay noticed that Eric did what appeared to be an expert job of that. The guards were placed in the back seat and Jay pulled out, toward the huge complex of buildings.

  “What do you mean, it’s not your fault?”

  “If you was given your choice of living or dying, staying human or being turned into . . . a soulless creature . . . which would you choose?”

  Jay pulled into the darkest part of the parking area, away from any lighted area.

  “I would have run just as hard as I could away from this place.”

  “And do what when you got where you was going? Tell the police the devil is in Victory? It’s been tried. That there building,” he said and jerked his head, “is full of them who tried runnin’ away. Them that ain’t in that nut factory is playtoys somewheres.”

  Eric’s face tightened.

  “That . . . thing in there,” the other guard said. “It knows you’re here. It don’t miss nothin’. It sees everything. It knew y’all was comin’ out here tonight. We was alerted not to put up no fight. We know them TV people is in town. Y’all had a chance to leave. You shoulda took it.”

  “What thing?” Eric twisted in the seat to look at the men.

  “It’s a thing!” the guard blurted. “I ain’t never seen it and I don’t wanna never see it. It’s just a... just a thing!”

  “You’re babbling like a demented fool!” Eric snapped. “Get out of the car and lead us inside.”

  “Out here?” The other guard’s voice was filled with dread. “Mister, you might shoot me. But you ain’t gonna get me outside this car; not in this dark spot of the lot, you ain’t.”