Red Harvest

by Patrick C. Greene

  Dennis wrapped the boy in a restraining hug. He removed his bear mask and beheld a face that belonged on some poor soul huddled in a forgotten corner of some ancient asylum. “Shit!”

  “This kid’s hurt bad, man.” Pedro gathered Albert up. “He needs a hospital.”

  “Hey, kid!” Dennis held up Norman’s lolling head. “Is Stuart here?”

  Neither Albert nor Norman was in any shape to answer, the former a rag doll from blood loss, the latter still trapped in a tortured fugue of hallucinations.

  “Get ’em in the car,” Dennis said. “I’m gonna sweep the place.”

  As Pedro turned with the shivering Albert, Dennis stopped him. “Dude.”

  “Yeah?”

  Dennis picked up the rest of Albert’s foot from the pool of blood where he had found it and handed it to Pedro, who said, “Right. I’ll toss it in the cooler with the sodas.”

  Dennis took the flashlight from Jill and headed toward the basement. Stopping at the door, he grabbed the gape-mouthed Kerwin and dragged him. “Since it’s so damn sketchy, you can come along to protect your investment, right, Ker?”

  “Shit,” whispered the manager.

  * * * *

  Had they skirted the outside, Dennis and Kerwin would have stumbled upon the corpses of Maynard and Del and the events of the following twenty-four hours might not have been such a tragedy. Instead, they tromped down the basement stairs, Dennis followed far behind by a less-enthusiastic Kerwin.

  Finding no signs of Angelo and Ruth’s chemistry project, Kerwin gulped his relief, as Dennis noted, “Doesn’t seem so dicey.”

  “Yeah. I, um…forgot I had some guys come and fix the…ya know, ceiling.”

  “Yo, Stuart!” Dennis called.

  “I think he would probably be too smart to come down here,” Kerwin said.

  Dennis gave him a cold, distrusting glower, holding it for an uncomfortable aeon.

  He returned to inspecting the murky room, settling the flashlight beam on something in the far corner. “Hello…”

  “Wh…what?” Kerwin stammered. “Didja…find something there, Denny?”

  “Did I ever!” Dennis said, walking to the corner, his form hiding the find from Kerwin’s straining eyes.

  Dennis turned and tossed something on the worktable, shining the light on it. It was Angelo’s girls and cars mag.

  Leaning one hand on the table, Dennis opened it and perused. “This is what you’ve been so squirmy about, Kerwin? A boob zine?”

  “Huh? …Oh.” Kerwin leaned in to see, relieved. “That what that is?”

  Dennis’s darkened face was a sculpture titled Dubious. “So, you come down here to spank it.” He shoved the magazine at Kerwin. “No one gives a shit.”

  “Yeah. Heh-heh!” Kerwin’s nervous cackle echoed in the empty room. “I’m like a horny teenager or something, right?”

  “Stuart’s not here,” Dennis said. “Let’s get those guys to the hospital.”

  “Yeah, of course!” Kerwin was eager to leave. “Mind if I, uh, sit up front? Just don’t want, ya know, blood on my suit, or…”

  “You won’t have to worry about that, daddy-o. You’re hoofing it over to the neighbor’s house. To call the sheriff.”

  “Huh? But that’s gotta be…”

  “Quarter of a mile, minimum. Better double-time it.”

  Dennis went back up the stairs, leaving his manager to form a resentful scowl in the dark.

  * * * *

  Returning to the candy Hudson had dropped off, Charlie Plemmons poured some fluid into a test tube, then dropped a bit of the candy into it. The reaction was nothing like Charlie had ever seen.

  Something white, like a tiny serpent, grew from the particle, squirming in the fluid for a second before dissolving. “What in the bloody blue?” he whispered to himself, before a knock at the pharmacy door distracted him. Ruth called to him.

  “Yes, Ruth?”

  “I have a question about something.”

  He went to the counter and raised its heavy steel door.

  Ruth squeezed the syringe behind her back.

  “What is it?”

  “Well…it’s one of the, um, feminine products.”

  “I’ll do my best to help.” He showed no intention of leaving the pharmacy enclosure.

  Massaging the crucifix, Ruth was close to uttering an internal profanity. “I’ll, um, go get the package. It’ll be easier.” Ruth shuffled down the aisle, gritting her teeth. She stood still, then, “You know what? I figured it out! Thanks, Charlie!”

  She heard his sigh of relief as the metal door came back down—but Charlie left it a good eight inches open. “Darn your hide, Charlie Plemmons,” she murmured. “The devil must be watching over you.”

  In the enclosure, Charlie returned to the candy, stunned to see the test tube bubbling over, smoking. “Great jumping jack-o’-lanterns!”

  Ruth grabbed a step stool from a half-completed Christmas display.

  She padded to the pharmacy counter and set the stool under it, then pulled back the stopper on the turkey baster and put it between her teeth. She eased up onto the stool and worked her way under the sliding door with the calm stealth of a sociopath.

  With tweezers held in a steady hand, Plemmons positioned another fragment of the candy onto a slide and placed it under the lens of a microscope. He squinted into the lens, adjusting the magnification.

  What he saw made him take a step back from the eyepiece.

  Ruth eased to the pharmacy floor and snuck toward him. In the half-light she did not see the little box in her path. She kicked it, startling Charlie. He spun to find her raising the syringe. “Ruth? What are you doing? That’s not a toy, you know.”

  Ruth ignored his statement. “So glad you’re a church member, Charlie.” She jammed the syringe into his chest. “Make that were a church member.”

  She pushed the plunger, filling Plemmons’s heart with air.

  He clutched at his chest.

  Ruth withdrew the syringe as though raising a pen from a shopping list and cocked her head to watch him die. “Praise Jesus. Nice and clean.”

  But then Plemmons flopped over and fell face-forward onto the counter, smashing his hands into the glass containers, cutting massive gashes into his palms that drizzled blood.

  Ruth’s annoyance rose to near-profanity levels again. “No!” She reached for him, but he was already pushing away from the table and stumbling into a shelf full of liquid-filled glass containers, which all crashed to the floor. Plemmons landed face-forward and hard, into the puncturing shards.

  Ruth glanced heavenward. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  Plemmons rolled over and took hold of a huge piece of glass jutting from his neck. He yanked it loose, sending a pulsing spray from his jugular several feet. Ruth’s gaze followed the stream to the puddle it was forming on the floor. “Oh, you dirty rat.”

  With a furious scream, she stomped on his throat, only succeeding in driving out an even thicker spray.

  But at least he was dead.

  Ruth calmed as she stroked the length of her little gold cross, frown huffing at the mess like a woman whose housework is never done. “Thank the Lord you got all these cleaning supplies here, Charlie.”

  The lights of a car washed over her from the front lot.

  “Judas crud!” Ruth hissed, as she switched off the pharmacy’s fluorescents and dashed down into the drugstore, hiding behind a display of Halloween makeup. Peering around the corner, she watched the front door.

  It was Hudson Lott, squinting into the drugstore.

  Lott knocked on the window with his flashlight, then took a massive key ring from his belt and began working his way through it. He tried one, but it did not work.

  Ruth went toward the door, biting her lip as she thought of a plan. S
he slid the turkey baster into the back of her waistband.

  The next key worked. Lott was opening, about to enter.

  “Deputy Lott!” Ruth called, halfway down the aisle.

  Hudson almost went for his sidearm. “Ruth! You’re gonna kill somebody one of these days. Creeping up on ’em like that.”

  “Oh.” Ruth made droopy lips. “Sorry.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just…helping Charlie.” She gestured toward the rear exit. “Taking some trash out back, and I heard your car.”

  “I swear. You got a monopoly on all the goodness in this town.” Hudson’s compliment was genuine.

  “Aw. You’re sweet to say it.”

  “I came to see him about something, but it’s all dark in there.”

  “Oh, he had to run an errand. Asked me to stay around till he got back.”

  “Hm. His car’s still here.” Hudson’s brow furrowed as he scanned the shadows. “You sure everything’s all right?”

  Casting her eyes down in imitation of demureness, Ruth spotted a bloodstain on her white shoe and hid it behind the other foot. “Oh…”

  “What’s going on?” A hint of suspicion edged his voice. “Is there something…” He moved to step inside.

  “Wait!” Ruth said, and when he turned his assessing eyes on her: “Charlie and I were talking. He… he needed somebody to talk to, and I was just trying to help. He’s in no state to talk to anyone else. We were pray—”

  “Hold on.” Hudson raised his big hand. “Ruth, I’ve known you a long time. Are you up to something in here?”

  “Why, no! I just…”

  “You do know Charlie’s a married man, right?”

  “Oh.” Ruth realized what he suspected, and adjusted. “Yes. I…” She lowered her head. “We…let things get out of hand, I suppose.” She tried to summon some mist to her eyes, but it had always been dicey with that tactic. But she did make her voice crack. “I mean, one second we were hugging and praying together, the next we—”

  “Not my business,” Hudson interrupted. “But it’s a God damned bad idea, I’ll tell you that!”

  Ruth registered appall at the profanity, but held her tongue. “I know. You’re right, Hudson. Is it all right if I call you Hudson?”

  “You just go tell Charlie to get himself together, because I’m going in there. And I don’t need to see this kind of irresponsible behavior from either of you!”

  Ruth nodded like a chastised six-year-old. Behind her back, she thumbed up the plunger, filling the baster syringe with air.

  A sudden shout from outside startled them both—Hudson’s patrol car radio. “Attention all units, we have an injured boy en route to County General via Hennison Road in a civilian vehicle,” called the dispatcher. “Need an escort with sirens to meet.”

  “Damn.” Hudson trained severe eyes on Ruth. “I gotta go. I’m coming back in half an hour and everything best be straight as a pin, you read me?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Hudson rushed away.

  Ruth patted her heart like an old woman. “Oh Lord. Thanks for Thy…mysterious movements, I guess?”

  Chapter 21

  Shivering, Trudy fought to stay quiet, to stifle her sobs and muffle her barefoot stumbling through the underbrush.

  She almost squealed when a constellation of stings burst in her right foot, from a small prickle bush. She clasped her hand to her mouth, rubbing her foot into cold wet soil.

  Then a blessed sight—vehicle lights. She was close to the road!

  Trudy looked behind her, relieved to not see Everett. Perhaps he hadn’t pursued? She took a chance, cupping her hands and screaming: “Help! Help me!”

  But the car continued on, fading into the night. Trudy pranced to the next thick tree, then to another, hiding to glance behind her.

  Another car, and she was closer by a precious three or four yards. “Please stop! Help me!”

  She felt around at her feet and found a fist-sized stone. Hoping to hit the road or even the car itself before it was out of reach, she hurled it. But in her pain and hurry, her throw fell far short. “Damn it!”

  No time to waste on tears, she continued to work her way over the cold stones and sticks, cringing with each step. She almost tripped over a stump, but she stayed on her feet. She was almost to the road.

  A third car came along, an old truck.

  Ignoring her pain, Trudy waved and screamed as she reached the edge of the road at last.

  Then darkness became darker, suffocating. Everett’s heavy Dracula cloak descended over her. She kicked and screamed as Everett wrapped the cloak around her. As the truck slowed, Everett turned to give a friendly wave.

  * * * *

  Ruth searched the vitamin and mineral shelf until she found a bottle that read:

  red eye

  the sandman slapper!

  “Lord Jesus God, give me strength,” Ruth entreated. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

  She opened the bottle and swallowed a handful of the white tablets, then set to work. Pushing one of the pharmacy’s six rusty shopping carts, she gathered heavy-duty trash bags, a squirt bottle of heavy-duty cleaner, rubber gloves, a push broom and dustpan, and a hacksaw, and she took these to the pharmacy platform.

  Humming her medley of hymns, she swept the broken detritus into one corner, then dragged Charlie’s body over to the same pile.

  She sprayed and mopped the blood spillage, jammed debris into trash bags, and turned to regard Charlie’s cadaver, ripping the cardboard sleeve from the blade of the hacksaw.

  A little over forty minutes later, she jammed the doubled, full trash bags into the back seats and spacious trunk of Charlie’s Crown Vic, then slid into the driver’s seat. On the dash was a smiling little hula girl figurine. “Lord Yahweh, I guess it was your will for Charlie to pass away. He was clearly a pervert.”

  She ripped the little figure away and stuffed it into the trash bag beside her, then drove into the darkness of Ember Hollow’s maze of farming roads.

  * * * *

  With a hoarse scream and great burst of adrenaline, Trudy wrestled and kicked the cape away. Everett covered his eyes at the sight of her nakedness, giving her a chance to scramble into the road.

  Everett looked between his fingers as he drew a meat cleaver from his bloody pillowcase, aimed it with a flourish, like a carnival knife thrower, and hurled it into Trudy’s spine.

  Her breath taken by the pain, Trudy could not scream. But she maintained her momentum, running for her life on cold asphalt.

  Everett plopped onto his butt and covered his eyes with his bloody hands. “All fall down.”

  Trudy ran, feeling the safe distance growing. Then—numbness working its way down the back of her legs. She fell, pain blasting her knees and palms.

  Wailing, she crawled, trying to breathe away the pain, hating the cold pavement for favoring the evil thing chasing her. She heard Everett chuckling, trotting toward her.

  She crawled faster, feeling warm streams of blood crawl down her sides from the cleaver wound.

  Her left leg went limp. She cried in vain for it to work, as Everett’s uneven cadence grew louder. She was ready to give up, when car lights appeared in the distance, heading toward her.

  Hope filled her heart. She pushed up on her hands to scream. “Here! Help! Help me!”

  She knew Everett was closer, but the car was faster, and its approach gave her a burst of adrenaline. “Hurry!”

  Then the car turned off on some dark side road, and all hope drained from Trudy’s heart, just as Everett’s bloody boot appeared beside her face.

  Everett knelt, turning his face away as he draped the cloak over her naked bleeding back. He moved the cloak off the cleaver, positioning the cloth around it to cover as much skin as possible.

 
He worked the cleaver out of her spine, and not delicately.

  As Trudy cried, Everett stroked her head.

  He turned her to her back, making her lie on one half of the cloak while covering her lower half with its corner.

  He put his hand over his eyes and straddled her, opening his fingers to expose her breasts, as he carved deep Xs through them with the cleaver.

  Trudy issued a hoarse scream, as her own hot blood sprayed her face.

  Everett took a mask from his pocket—a happy horse with grass in its mouth—and placed it on her face. He drew his stapler and set it against her face—but it clicked empty.

  Everett put the stapler back in his bag and with a quick short stroke, landed the point of the cleaver in her forehead to pin the mask to her face, where it rustled from the breeze.

  * * * *

  “Hang on, everybody. I’m gunning it.” Dennis Barcroft, in addition to being a soulful musician, had a decent knack for the art of fast driving—since he had quit drinking, at least.

  Bolstered by the urgency of the two endangered boys in the back, he put every ounce of those skills to work, working the chrome skull shifter while Jill held the pale Albert, and Pedro restrained the shivering, blithering Norman in his lap.

  “Jeez, what coulda happened?” Pedro wondered aloud, speaking up over the roaring engine.

  “Neither one of ’em is talking, but Fuzzy Wuzzy there is acting just like Mister Dukes,” Dennis noted.

  “I sure hope Stuart and DeShaun are all right,” Jill said.

  “Call me Pollyanna,’ Dennis said, “I got a feeling they are. But I’ll call Ma from the hospital.”

  “Not to be a Kerwin,” Pedro said, “but what’re we gonna do about our gear? I mean, are we finished or what?”

  “Shit,” Dennis said. “That’s the $666,000 question, Petey.”

  “Well…” Jill said.

  “Well, what?” Dennis said. “Now’s no time for the coy act.”

  “I got that cousin in Craven County in a black metal outfit,” Jill went on.

  “Oh, yeah!” Pedro snapped his fingers. “Scarlet Frost!”

  “Scarlet Frost.” Dennis cocked up an eyebrow. “Those cats scare even me. But if I recall, their shit’s tricked up to fit our theme well enough. Skulls and scars.”