“How’s the ticker, old man?”
“Never better,” Big Al snapped. “Now why don’t you and your friends just move on.” The cane pointed the way.
“Hey … we’re just out for some fireworks, is all. Just like you fine folk. Ain’t that right, drifter?”
“You’re drunk, Ray. Just go.”
“You mind that mouth, woman.”
“I’m not your woman.” Lynn regarded the bottle with disgust as the man drank.
“Well, lookit this,” Ray Bishop said, Georgia Hembruff joining her husband at his side. “Just one big happy family. Where’s that good for nothin’ son a yours?”
“Leave us alone, Ray.” Lynn’s voice trailed off.
“Why don’t you sing me a song, nigger? Come on now … give ol’ ‘Raymond’ a song and dance.” The man stumbled in a stupor as he danced a small jig; it was as ugly as ugly was. “Come on, boys! Join in!”
The boys didn’t. They seemed just as put off as everyone else, at least as uncomfortable. Folks passed, paying little mind to the antics (truth be told, most people who knew him were tired of Ray Bishop, unofficial Village Idiot, and couldn’t have cared less or been less surprised). One child, however, held by the hand on the way to the fireworks, tugged at her mother’s dress and told Mommy to look at the funny man.
“Ray … let’s go,” the gas attendant said, weakly. He straightened his cap, looking down as he did.
Ray Bishop blasted Jake Maxwell with but a look. He wiped a dribble of whiskey from his lips, and then he turned back to Kain.
“You don’t like me, do ya, drifter?”
“Just move along,” Georgia told him. “You and those other hoodlums.”
“You best tell this one to mind her mouth, old man.”
“Listen up, Raymond. You take that crap and—and—”
“Allan!”
“Dad!”
The big farmer drew a thick gasp and brought a hand to his chest. He clutched at it twice, his arm shaking, and for a moment, it appeared he might falter and double to the ground. But the good man, weak of heart, was also stout of it. The cane became his best friend right then. His daughter asked if he needed a pill, and he shook his head. His wife moved up close and put an arm around him, and she took his trembling hand in hers.
“Allan—”
“… I’m all right.” He met Ray Bishop head on. “You boys get a move on. Now.”
“C’mon, let’s go, Ray.”
“Drop dead, Frank. I got business here.” He turned to his little girl, regarding her bandages with a fine eye.
“You done this to her?” The question shot right at the drifter.
“He didn’t do anything,” Lynn told him.
“I oughta kill you, you sonofabitch.”
“Ray.”
“Shut your trap, bitch.”
“Don’t talk to her like that.”
“You got balls, drifter. She’s my woman.”
The man sentenced Kain to a horrible death the way he glared at him. But then, in a complete about-face that was classic Ray Bishop, he took to his daughter with a poisonous sweetness all his own.
“You okay, honey? I’m sorry I didn’t call … you know, after what happened and all. I been busy, you know?”
The girl shrunk back, as if no distance were far enough.
“What’s the matter, baby? Can’t talk to your Pa?”
He motioned to her with open arms. The girl slipped behind her mother.
“Stay away from her.”
Ray Bishop soured at his wife’s sudden and forthright defiance. His face ran cold and hard, and all read the same telling story written there: she would pay.
He stabbed a finger at the drifter.
“You turned my family … turned ’em against me.”
“Leave him out of this, Raymond.”
“Ray,” Jake Maxwell said. “The fireworks …”
“FUCK the fireworks!”
A small family stopped and turned to see what the ruckus was. Others paused a moment and then carried on hurriedly.
“What the fuck you lookin’ at?”
The father pushed up his spectacles and rushed his wife and two little girls away.
Kain stiffened, his body aching suddenly. Something stroked his heart darkly, something burning, draining him. He sensed nothing from this odd trio of Stiffs, but the static all around him dizzied. So too, had the headache come, charging, charging.
The mechanic drained the bottle. He belched hard, drawing it out, the way brainless drunkards do. He grinned. Let the empty drop. He stirred a moment, looking entirely benign, and then, as if some black voice inside possessed him, reached into his pocket and whipped out a switchblade. It slit open with a thhhhit.
Lynn gasped. “Ray! What are you doing?”
“He’s got it comin’, baby … he owes me. He owes me.”
“Raymond! Christ … what the hell are you on about?”
“Allan, no—”
“Jesus, Ray,” Frank Wright coughed, not knowing of course that in three short months he’d be diagnosed with lung cancer, leading him to fulfill a lifelong dream by heading west in his pickup. Not quite as he’d planned, mind you, not on the interstate, but trudging over some railway tracks just out of town, until the last things he knew were a horn and a headlight. “There’s kids around.”
Big Al labored forward, but Georgia held him back.
“Come on, drifter.”
Kain was reeling. His color had fallen to stone; his legs were rubber. Static. Static. STATIC. His mind was coming undone. All along his body, pain spiked and ebbed, spiked and ebbed. His heart drummed wildly. Faces and sounds began to drift. Everything was growing fuzzy, as if he were caught in a thick, rippling mist. It was completely crazy, but—
No. NO.
But then, just for an instant, he would swear—
“Jesus, Ray … there’s kids around.”
Big Al stepped forward defiantly, but his wife held him. She shook her head and said No.
“Come on, drifter.”
Kain Richards looked to Lynn Bishop with the same dire expression of confusion and fear that betrayed her. Something—the air; those invasive voices buried in the throng; the music; the static; the very thrum of his heart; perhaps all of these and more—changed. It had been nearly undetectable, he had almost missed it. It had come and gone in the blink of an eye, a sensation not unlike one might experience from simple déjà vu. And yet there had been something concrete there, something he could have touched had he reached out to do so. This was not some trick of the mind. He could not believe it himself, but he was certain that Lynn too had felt it. That strange hiccup (for no better word came to him) in time. Had sensed it.
He tried to settle her with a reassuring nod. It would be all right. It had to be.
He turned away from her. He could barely stand, but he played it gamely, his mind and body screaming as if he’d spent a lifetime in the maw of the Crypt. He struggled to focus. Three Ray Bishop’s … two … one. The wormy scar on the mechanic’s face seemed to sharpen like a fine blade.
“Just you and me,” he said earnestly.
“Kain, no—”
“Now listen, Kain—”
“It’s all right, Lynn … Al … just go.”
“We’re not leaving,” Lynn stammered, and she moved up beside him. She held him firmly by the arm. Her daughter joined her. Her parents stepped up as well.
Ray Bishop glared first at his wife and then at his daughter.
“God … damn … whores.”
“You close that filthy mouth,” Georgia Hembruff snapped. “Lord, you close it.”
“This ain’t worth it, Ray.”
“Shut your fat trap, Jake.”
Ray Bishop stewed. His eyes, full and ebony, ran as deep and mysterious as the ocean. The man lingered in his thoughts, as if wondering how it was the drifter had beaten him again. As if wondering how utterly stupid it was he couldn’t just fix what was bro
ken here, how if only he could fix this drifter as easily as he could fix a carburetor with the turn of a screw. The turn of a knife. He regarded every face along that unbreakable human wall—some muddied, some not, each as hard as stone—and seemed to shrink somehow, as if he had swallowed something sharp.
“Another place,” Frank Wright told him, moving up to him. The man stifled a syrupy cough. “Another time.”
The mechanic heard the words, but just when you thought he might detonate, reluctantly heeded them and folded the blade. Still, something cold stirred behind those piercing eyes, and he took not the drifter to task, as one might have expected; he took them all to task. He said nothing, turning and slinking away as he did, but his silence had said enough.
The fireworks were about to begin.
~ 8
Just about the time that Kain Richards was chowing down on chicken and ribs and some fine sweet potato casserole down by the river, Ben Caldwell’s pickup zipped past the guesthouse and did a wild fishtail as it skidded to a stop. A cloud of dust swept over it. The windows were down, Bobby Vee couldn’t make up his mind whether she was a devil or an angel, and Ryan, while not pleased with the current radio selection, was laughing it up over one of Benny’s god-awfully unfunny limericks, this one about some guy from Nantucket. He got out waving dust from his face, went to get his fishing gear from the back, and told Ben to hell with it, he’d get it next time. And then he remembered the bottle.
He opened the passenger door and snatched the whiskey from his buddy’s hand.
“Hey,” Benny slurred. He had clearly been drinking, and his usually quick shortstop hands had failed him.
“Too slow, Joe,” Ryan said. He took a long swig to drive the point home.
“Had enough anyway,” Ben said. He slumped behind the wheel. His face fell.
“Come on, Ben. Stop sweating it. Jeeze.”
“What if he tells? What if he tells?”
Ryan shook his head. “He’s afraid of me. Afraid of us.”
“Yeah, he’s real spooked.”
“You gonna be all right?”
Ben nodded. “Need a couple hours to clear my head, though.” He belched a good one. “Pop’ll kill me if he sees me like this.”
“Have fun at your aunt’s,” Ryan chuckled.
“Have fun playin’ with yourself.”
Ryan closed the door with a laugh. But then he saw the seriousness in his friend’s expression.
“Nobody’s sayin’ anything, Ben.”
Ben’s somberness grew. He looked as if they’d already been caught and convicted, and some badass in a dark hood was slipping a noose round his throat.
Fact was, no one was going to talk. Not Gabe Milton, and not that sick fuck, Henry Roberts. The barkeep’s thin face had bled white when they had shown up last night, and while Ryan had figured he was more than pushing his luck, the man had simply stood there on those sticks for legs, sucking his Lucky Strike for a good minute or so before coming up with nothing but an empty threat (he had dispensed with the shotgun), and had grudgingly agreed to meet them round back. Ryan had forked over the full twenty he’d lifted from the till, a little steep, but worth it nonetheless; it seemed the going rate, at least for them. They’d stood there, eye to eye, he with his best poker face and the four fivers out, the old bastard with his baggy shorts and those narrowed eyes and his spindly fingers wrapped round the bottle. He had fully expected the man to snatch him with those disgusting digits, try to feel him up (or worse), and thank God nothing of the sort had happened. They had made the exchange, but had an exchange of words as well, with Ryan responding to the man’s insightful comments of his drinking heritage with a one-word reminder of what the sonofabitch had done. As the pickup had backed away, he had hung out the side window slapping the door like the cocky fool that he was, and with a hollering hoot had informed the barkeep he’d be seeing him real soon. Ben had given him right shit for it, had gone on like a schoolgirl again, how they were going to be ratted out, only this time he wasn’t going to just lose his pickup, oh no, they were going straight to prison, and when they did, Rye, big-dick bulls were gonna trade them for a pack a smokes, make them bleed buckets out of their assholes. Not in the mood for his antics, Ryan had yelled at him to shut the hell up. The guy could be so cool on the field, but when Bullshit’s imagination got going like a racehorse, all bets were off.
And looking at his friend right now, Ryan wondered if the race was already over.
Ben was staring at the guesthouse with a grim expression; he was clearly run down. He looked like he was losing his mind. He looked lost. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last few weeks.
“That guy scares me,” Ben said, the words coming surely, as if whatever doom he imagined was imminent. “I can hardly sleep at all anymore.”
“I know, buddy. Take it easy today, all right?”
Ben nodded dimly, and Ryan watched him go. He went in to check on Beaks, took him out back to do his business, then brought him back inside. Out on the veranda, he sat on the steps with the bottle. He wiped the sweat from his brow. Took a drink.
Eyed the guesthouse.
He got up, staggered a moment, and made it halfway before he stopped cold. The bottle slipped from his fingers. He didn’t even try to snatch it before it hit the ground.
“Costello.” Barely a whisper; barely a word.
The black—thing—was sitting up in the shade next to the barn. Kind of leaning against it. As if it needed to. Its bloodshot eyes seemed to glow, eyes far too big for its shrunken head. Its coat was oily and matted, and its ribs threatened to pierce its thinning flesh. It had lost a lot of hair, and there were open sores where the fur had come away. Dead flies stuck to it like ugly moles. It saw him. It hissed. Reddish green goo dripped from its fangs. If it hadn’t moved, he might have thought it dead.
And if it hadn’t looked at him the way it did—
It looks crazy, he thought, not realizing he was thinking it an it. It looks completely—
The thing dipped its head into a patch of dead grass and started to gnaw at it … only it wasn’t grass.
He saw the grisly head; half of it was already eaten. Truly, it was more a mash of thick fur and flesh than animal, all of it slick with blood. It had one sad sliver of an eye, and all he really knew was that the other one was likely being digested right now. Its tail had been gnawed off and was lying beside the carcass.
He clenched his eyes shut; forced the sickness in his throat back down. No … NO. His mind convinced him it was not a cat, but a rat, one of those big ones he sometimes found in the barn. Or that really big one they’d found at the bottom of that dried-up well, out at Ben’s place two summers back. Of course it was, what else could it be. But then something snapped inside, for when he opened his eyes, he slipped into a silent scream, at the sight of that small tuft of white on its right hind leg.
Abbott—
The vomit came. He doubled and more came.
Ryan groaned. He turned away, unable to look. And then, when he could, whirled round and bolted forward.
“GET OUTTA HERE! GO ON! GO!”
Costello the Cat-Thing raised its hideous head. It had ripped more flesh from its sibling, the meat hanging from its jaws in sinewy strands, that crimson-green slime dribbling along them. Its big egg-eyes doubled in that impossibly shrunken cat head. It looked insane; looked alien. It wolfed down the flesh, and before Ryan realized what was happening, the thing was coming for him.
He tripped over himself in his stupor. He lost his footing, and just as he tumbled the thing was on him, clawing at his leg. It slashed his ankle, and he cried out, more in terror than in pain. It went to gnaw at his flesh, and he kicked at it, just missing. It swiped at him again, clawing his sock and catching there. He flung his leg up, and up came the cat-thing with it. It hissed wildly and shrieked an awful sound that nearly scared him to death. On his back now, it straddled his leg. He winced. The thing stank like an outhouse that had stood in the blistering hea
t for a month. Stank of rot. The flies, all dead, made him groan with disgust. The cat-thing vomited that horrible slime along his leg; the stuff was warm and thick. He screamed at it, called it a fucking piece of shit, all the while stomping at it with his other foot until it retracted its claws. Its ribs made a disturbing cracking sound on the last kick. It flew up and landed on its side, and all he could think was that it wasn’t a cat anymore, not really, because cats always landed on their feet. Yes, this was a cat-thing, a thing from hell, a thing that would claw out his brain and eat it. A thing that would kill him … if he didn’t kill it first.
He rolled from it. He got to all fours and saw it listing. It was injured, certainly, but raw emotion drove it, kept it hungry and dangerous. He watched it closely, praying it would flee, but then its eyes grew again as if it were ready to strike.
He scrambled back as the thing leapt. It was awkward and terrifying, making a ghastly shriek. Its eyes were hideous—yellowed like old butter—just like Beaks. He rolled left and it missed him, striking the ground hard. It staggered trying to gain its footing. He clawed some dirt and whipped it at it, blinding the thing, and then he managed to his feet and took to a safer distance.
The dirt clung to its oily coat, the dusty flies looking like cancerous cysts. It was sitting up again, listing in that cockeyed manner, as if at any moment it would tip over. But he knew better.
He snatched up a rock and fired quickly.
Missed.
He cursed in frustration. He shouted at the thing, flailing as he flung wild shots at it with a flurry of stones. He nailed it in the side and the beast wailed. It turned away and made its way toward the house. It was surprisingly agile considering its condition, and he chased after it, hurling another rock its way. He lost sight of it as it found its way under the veranda. Almost immediately, that small space exploded with cats, as Mortimer, Samantha, Buddy, and Champ bolted from it, each of them running for their lives. They were crazed with terror, zipping wildly in different directions, and he almost tumbled, dizzied as he was, trying to follow their flight. They just kept running, and he lost them.
He held up short and froze. There was a new sound. A dull gnawing that sent him crawling with gooseflesh. The relentlessness of it, the rawness of it, terrified. Slowly, almost without thought, he slipped to all fours, to peer into the murk beneath the steps.
Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller Page 28
