by Glenn Rolfe
Trying like hell to block out how high up they were, Rocky clenched his arms and legs around the metal arm and inched his way up like climbing a fireman’s pole or the ropes in gym class.
When he reached the next series of cross bars, he was able to step on one. Standing on the thinner beam placed him just below the body of the white bucket, maybe four feet across. He could see the closed door on the side where you step into the bucket.
In a calmer voice, he said, “Julie, is there any way you can get the side door open?”
“I….” She hesitated. “I think I might be able to kick the latch handle thingy.”
He sucked in a breath as the bucket began to sway.
He heard her kicking at the door.
There was a clank, and the door swung inward.
He moved before he could chicken out. He held the metal arm with one hand and stretched out as far as he could with the other, his fingers gripping the edge of the opening.
“Julie, can you hold the door open, so it doesn’t come back and shut on my fingers?”
He was beginning to sweat like crazy.
“Got it,” she said. “Rocky?”
“Yeah?”
“Please be careful.”
God, if you’re really up there, don’t let me fall.
Zeroed in on the door’s edge, Rocky let go of the wheel’s arm and swung his other hand up over the side. His feet came free of the crossbeam. He felt panic scuttle up his body as the bucket swayed. His breathing quickened. There was another crossbeam an inch below the bottom of the bucket. He’d need to try and wedge his foot in the corner where it met the main frame all while not losing his damn grip. He swung his foot for the intersecting metal arms. He had it for a second, but his foot slipped free.
“Rocky!” Julie called.
He held on tight, his legs and feet swaying with the bucket.
He used the slight momentum to try again.
This time he got it, wedging the toe of his sneaker in good.
Slowly, he extended his leg, letting go with his left hand. He searched the inside of the bucket for something else to hold and found a cylindrical metal grip from the latch system.
“You got it,” Julie said.
He pulled himself up, gripped the upper side of the doorway, climbed into the bucket and put his back to the bucket’s wall in front of Julie’s legs, then he shut the door to catch his breath.
He looked at the dead cop. It wasn’t Officer Nelson but some young guy he didn’t recognise.
He sat up; the bucket swayed slightly. To their right the shore carried on as if nothing were wrong. Waves washed up, lapping at the sand. The pier was dark and empty. To their left he could see Old Orchard Street leading up to Saco Road. Where were the police? How come they weren’t combing the streets looking for the killer? He turned back to the poor dead cop. What if Gabriel had killed them all?
“Rocky,” Julie said.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. He pulled the holy jackknife from his coat pocket. Julie leaned forward as he sawed through the rope around her wrists.
“There,” he said as it dropped free. “Now, the scary part. Are you ready?”
“No,” she said, rubbing the dark marks around her wrists. “But I guess we don’t have a choice.”
He told her where to find the steel crossbars and where to hold the lip of the door’s edge. He held her arm as she got down on her stomach and lowered her legs out the door.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “Feel around with your feet, there’s a spot to wedge your foot. Then you can lower down to the next one and shimmy down.”
She whimpered but he held on to her, reassuring her.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
She began her descent.
Rocky needed something to keep the door from closing and cutting off his fingers.
He looked to the dead cop.
He didn’t want to touch the guy, but he needed to. He dragged the body over and positioned him against the inside of the door.
The name tag over his right breast pocket read Martin.
“Thanks, Officer Martin.”
He dropped to his stomach and lowered his feet over the edge.
Climbing out and down was much less stressful than the ascent had been. Julie was waiting for him on the ladder.
“Rocky, how did you get past that monster?” Julie asked.
“November.”
November’s cry echoed through the night.
“Hurry,” he said, motioning for Julie to keep moving. “I have to help her.”
As they hurried down, November’s cries were cut short.
Please be all right.
* * *
November couldn’t breathe. She tried hitting at her brother’s arms, but his death grip on her throat would not relent. Her right eye was swollen shut, her mouth and nose bloodied, but she’d managed to rake him across the face before he got a hold of her.
Lying on the metal grate walkway of the Tilt-a-Whirl, Gabriel pressed his weight upon her. She felt lightheaded and ready to either pass out or die, whichever came first.
“I should have done this last summer after I killed your first boyfriend.”
In her dizzying mind she saw Bobby’s face.
She tried to speak but couldn’t.
His grip loosened, slightly.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“You…you’re a monster…deserve to….”
“Go ahead, little sister, say it.”
“You deserve…to…die.”
He picked her up by the throat and flung her over the railings.
She crashed down to the pavement shoulder first and rolled into a foetal position, gasping for air as her shoulder flared with pain.
She hoped Rocky had gotten his mother and sister free – she wasn’t going to last much longer.
“I thought you might feel that way,” Gabriel said from the ride’s platform. “I figured you’d like to watch me hurt your little lover boy.”
November rolled over and sat up. Every muscle was sore and weak.
She heard a sudden cry from above her.
“Come here,” she heard Gabriel order. He was talking to someone else.
Clarise Zukas, bloodied and bound, appeared above her as Gabriel brought the woman to the ground next to November.
“You did such a fine job with Uncle Artie, I thought—”
No.
“I thought I’d give you another chance to play the hero and save the day…only, you have to be a monster to do it.”
Rocky appeared from the other side of one of the vending booths.
“Let them go,” he shouted.
“Ahh, and here’s our sweet prince now,” Gabriel hissed. He dug his claws into Clarise’s arm, causing her to cry out behind the rag in her mouth and bend at the waist.
Gabriel forced her to her knees next to November.
“Now, your little lover can see his monstrous girlfriend live and in action.”
“You can’t make me,” November said.
“You haven’t a choice, I’m afraid. You see, it’s either you bleed this bitch dry or…I do it and then kill every one of you anyway.”
She had to do something. She had to…. An idea hit her.
“Okay, okay. I’ll do it, but you have to let them go.”
“No!” Rocky screamed. He pulled the knife out of his coat and held it out toward Gabriel.
Julie appeared behind him.
“Mom!” she cried.
“Ah, you saved your sister. My, my, what bravery to scale that wheel. I must say you’re a better brother than I.”
“Haven’t you killed enough people? Haven’t you hurt your own family enough?” Rocky said, stepping toward them.
Gabri
el pressed one of his nails into Clarise’s throat and tilted her head so that they could all watch the blood begin to seep down her neck.
“One more step, lover boy, and I’ll finish this all right now.”
Rocky stopped.
November locked eyes with him and mouthed her message: Trust me.
She saw the fear in his eyes even as he gave a slight nod.
“Give her to me,” November said.
“Not so fast,” Gabriel said. “There is one other stipulation.”
“What is it?”
“You drain her here and now while they watch, then we leave.”
Julie was crying.
Tears rolled down Rocky’s cheeks, too.
November hoped to hell this was going to work.
“Fine, let’s get this over with,” she said.
Gabriel smiled as he pulled Clarise Zukas to November and wrenched the woman’s head back.
“Feed,” he said.
November moved to her knees and sank her fangs into the side of Rocky’s mom’s neck.
She could hear Julie’s screams and Gabriel’s pseudo-sexual moans of delight.
November drew in Mrs. Zukas’s blood, doing her best to hold back and just take enough to follow through with her plan.
She was hit with the surge of fresh blood coursing through her. Her entire body tremored. The pull to suck harder and take every drop crawled over her. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
“November!”
Rocky’s cries came in through the fog enveloping her mind.
“You’re going to kill her! November!”
She pulled her fangs free, gasping air. She didn’t waste another second. November hurled herself at her brother and bit into the front of his throat as he stumbled back startled.
* * *
“Get Mom, put pressure on her neck!” Rocky commanded Julie, grabbing her and shoving her toward their mother, who was now lying on her side, her eyes wide, her mouth gasping for air like a fish out of water. “Go, now!”
He ran past them and straight for the vampires.
He was nearly to them when November was sent flying back and into him.
They both crashed like bowling pins to the ground.
Rocky’s head bounced off the unforgiving pavement.
November rolled toward him.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, her mouth covered in blood. He saw a blossoming crimson patch soaking through the stomach of her t-shirt.
“Now,” Gabriel said, his voice coming out like a needle scratched across a record. The vampire held a hand to his wounded throat as blood continued to pour between his fingers. “You both get to die together.”
Gabriel stumbled to one side, then the other as Rocky gripped the knife hidden at his hip.
Come on, you bastard.
“Any…last…sweet nothings?” Gabriel said.
“Yeah,” Rocky said. “Get it over with, you piece of shit.”
The creature’s face contorted in rage as he drew his free hand back and screeched, launching at him for the final blow. “Die!”
Rocky waited to the last possible second with the monster a foot away and raised the knife, gripping it in both hands and thrusting upward into Gabriel’s chest as he crashed down upon him.
The monster moaned out as he landed.
Rocky had his eyes closed, waiting for the thing to finish him off despite the mortal wound he’d inflicted.
He opened his eyes and watched November nudge Gabriel to the ground. The vampire rested on his back, the handle of Uncle Arthur’s knife sticking out of his chest, a direct shot to the heart. A tremor rocked Gabriel’s body before he fell still. His monstrous features relaxed, leaving behind smooth pale flesh, but Rocky would never forget Gabriel’s true face.
They were all too numb, too hurt to react.
Lights broke into the lot, as two vehicles approached, reflecting in the vampiric black pools of November’s eyes.
“Go,” Rocky said.
She glanced his way, a sombre lift to her lips, before she staggered off behind the Tilt-a-Whirl.
“Don’t move!” shouted Officer Shannon. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Help! He tried to kill our mom,” Julie cried.
“Julie Zukas? Is that you?” Officer Shannon said.
“Yes, please, my mom’s….my mom’s dying.”
Rocky’s adrenaline fled him, leaving him weak and woozy. He reached up and touched the back of his skull. He felt the blood and his world began to spin.
* * *
The rest of the night was a blur he later had trouble recounting. The doctors told him he suffered a severe concussion and had to have twelve stitches. Julie was curled up beneath a blanket in the chair beside his bed.
When he asked the nurse checking his vitals about his mother, she dropped her gaze and said she was in the ICU, fighting to hold on.
He was about to demand the nurse take him to her when whatever medicine she’d given him took effect.
He closed his eyes and prayed….
Epilogue
Clarise Zukas is still alive and well. Dr. Naugler said the week following her injuries all those years ago she’d lost more blood and come as close to death as anyone he’d ever seen. My mother has said many times that her love for us and the idea of leaving us without her or our father had given her all the fight she needed. No one tells Clarise Zukas when to say when.
Julie had the roughest time in the years that followed. She dropped out of school senior year and checked in and out of a mental health institute in Portland several times before she could learn to cope with everything that had happened. It was three years later, when she’d finally gotten her GED, that she met a guy named Brett Golden at some church function. They eventually married, had two beautiful girls, and moved up to the Midcoast area to raise them.
I get to see them twice a year, Christmas and Thanksgiving, one at Mom’s and one up at their place.
As for me, I ran off with Axel when we decided to start our own rock ’n’ roll band after high school. We tried making it in Boston, then New York, before I decided it wasn’t happening for us. My Buick Skylark ended up getting stolen in Brooklyn, which was just as well: it held too many memories for me.
When I took the Greyhound home, Axel stayed behind. He’d hooked up with one of the girls from our last gig. He died from a respiratory tract infection two years later. Turned out he’d contracted AIDS somewhere along the way and never told any of us. I never told him what truly happened that summer he was overseas.
No one really knew the truth but me, Julie, Mom, and, well, November.
If they ever discovered anything abnormal about Gabriel Riley, the Beach Night Slayer as he was later christened by the local paper and national media, word never got out. We were his last victims, and the only survivors.
Twenty-three bodies were discovered between the fifteen in the basement of the Segers’, the two in the U-Haul trailer later found abandoned in a vacant lot in Scarborough just a few miles up the road from the marsh where they found those four Bath Iron Works workers, and later Officer Pete Nelson. Plus, the body on the Ferris wheel of rookie officer Matt Martin.
I came home from my rock ’n’ roll days to join the Fire Department.
No serious relationships. Every woman I’ve dated seems to be lacking something.
When I find myself stepping from Duke’s on my nights off, gazing out at the beauty of the Atlantic, moving, swaying, whispering to me, I think of a girl who was more than anything I could have ever imagined.
I think back to February of that following year after the craziest summer of my life.
* * *
She was the only thing on my mind for months. Rage, melancholy, shame, disappointment, longing all mixed up and kept me o
ff balance through the fall and winter of 1986. I’d avoided Palace Playland, the pier, and the beach, choosing instead to stay inside and play video games, or watch movies or TV with my mom.
When I finally decided to walk down to the square and out onto the pier, I sensed her before I saw her.
“I had to see you again,” November said.
I just focused on the ocean.
“I can’t take any of it back and I still think about you every day. Our memories, the two of us here those first weeks…it’s the only thing that makes me smile. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”
“I think of us, too,” I said.
“You do?”
I remember the hope, the joy in her voice.
“Yes.”
“I…know you can’t forgive me—”
“No,” I said.
“Do you think there’ll ever be a chance for us?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine that right now. I’ve tried. I see us and then I see you…and what you’ve done.”
She was silent but near.
“I understand,” she said finally. “I have to go away, but I can give you time…if that’s what you need.”
“I’m sorry, too, you know,” I said.
“Why? What do you have to feel sorry about?”
“I love you, but…I can’t.”
I heard her sniffles.
“I’ll wait for you,” she said.
I wanted to tell her not to bother. To find someone else. To move on and leave me the hell alone, but even then, I couldn’t let her go. Not completely.
“I’m going,” she said. “But I’ll come back around.”
“When?” I asked.
“Maybe when summer comes around.”
I remember her hand on my shoulder. I remember wanting to turn around, grab her in my arms and kiss her. But I couldn’t.
“Goodbye, Heatstroke.”
I closed my eyes and felt the tears there.
“Goodbye,” I said.
* * *
And she was gone.
She never did come back. If she did, she never made her presence known.
Of all the disasters to hit OOB over the years from the storms of 1898 and 1978 that demolished the original piers to the fire of 1907 that burned nearly every hotel and business to the ground, it was the storm of death in the summer of ’86 that sticks with me and plenty of my neighbours here in this great town.
