by Ivan Blake
The Balzer Building had only one entrance on Main Street, a chipped and rusting metal door beneath a burned-out arc lamp. Chris tried the door and it opened onto a dimly lit staircase. At the top of the stairs, a door marked Office had a scrap of cardboard taped to it. Knock before Entering, it read, and beneath that someone had scrawled, If you’re a creditor, fuck off and get in line. Chris wasn’t there to collect anything; he was there to pay a debt.
Inside the offices of Balzer Trucking was a reception counter and behind it, several secretarial desks, all abandoned and dust-covered. Around the room were several closed doors with titles painted on them like Chief Mechanic, Accounting, and Drivers’ Rep. Chris crossed to the door marked President and opened it.
In the half-light that seeped through the filthy windows, a fat, balding figure sat with his back to the door slumped in an old wooden desk chair, an empty bottle of scotch on the desk behind him.
“Don’t you motherfuckers ever give up?” the man muttered.
“I called your home and your wife said I’d find you here.”
“Fuckin’ wife’s gone, run off. That was my idiot girlfriend. I keep telling her, don’t send any more people over here. But does she get it? No goddamn way. Too fuckin’ dense.” He turned slowly to see who’d entered. Ed Balzer, his face unshaven, his skin sallow, eyes sunken, shirtfront stained with God knows what, was a wreck of a man and very drunk. It took Balzer some time to recognize his visitor. Then through his drunken fog, it came to him, and the drunkard’s face reddened with rage. “You, you bastard, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I was passing through town, and I thought I’d look you up. In prison I promised myself that I’d see you one more time. We have some unfinished business.”
“Well I don’t want to see you, you goddamn piece of shit. You destroyed everything.” Ed Balzer struggled to his feet. “You killed my son, you drove away my wife, you destroyed my business, and you humiliated this town. And now you’re trespassing. I could kill you right where you stand, with my bare hands, and they wouldn’t even arrest me. So get the fuck off my property or you’re dead.” He heaved himself away from his chair and staggered around his desk in Chris’s direction, holding tight to its edge to steady himself.
“Not your property for much longer, Balzer. Besides, you killed your own son, everyone knows that, and as for this town, it destroyed itself.”
“I should’a beaten the shit out of you when I first laid eyes on you,” Balzer bellowed and launched himself across the room at Chris. But as soon as he let go of the desk, he stumbled.
Chris caught the flaccid mass before Balzer hit the floor, and pulled him into a close embrace. He tried to ignore the drunkard’s stink as he said in his ear, “Do you remember Mallory Dahlman? I think she remembers you!”
A pale blue light hissed and crackled up near the ceiling fan.
“Let go of me, you fuckin’ pansy!” Balzer tried to swing a meaty paw but Chris just batted it away. Then Chris kissed Balzer on his greasy, bristled cheek. “There, that’s done,” he said, and he let the useless sack of flesh sag to the floor.
Standing over Balzer, Chris said in a voice as cold as ice, “Get this into your head. You killed your own son, and if everything that’s happened to you in this past year hasn’t been punishment enough, then perhaps this will be,” and he stepped out of Mallory’s way.
A wave of white hot anger and flashes of blue lightning swept down from the ceiling to envelope Balzer’s upturned face. Balzer’s bulbous and pockmarked nose was his first feature to be torn away. Blood flew in all directions from the gaping hole as Balzer screamed and tried to pull his head free from Mallory’s grasp. Her black eyes peered out of a mist of blood-red droplets and blue light, and deep into Balzer’s maddened gaze. As Balzer’s body thrashed from side to side, more and more flesh was torn from his face until all that remained was his bloody screaming skull. A white hot whirlwind then crushed Balzer to the floor like a wrecked car in a junkyard compactor. Mallory’s entire face appeared in the whirlwind, grinning, her teeth bared, and she tore into Balzer’s abdomen like a ravenous wolverine.
Chris left the offices of Balzer Trucking before Mallory was done. He had to hustle if he was going to retrieve his suitcase from the station locker in time to catch the last bus of the day back to Portland. He planned to sleep in the terminal there and get the first bus in the morning heading to Vermont.
Chapter 3
Monday, March 2
Gerald Paget, Mayor Patch to his friends and constituents, was in one hell of a mood. “That bitch better cooperate or…,” he muttered to himself as he marched from his diner to the town library. Rose DuCalice always got under his skin. Well, she wasn’t going to today. He’d spent most of the day steeling himself for this confrontation. He was ready for her. “Last chance, bitch.”
Paget, a man of impressive girth, was already winded by the time he got to the top of the library steps and sweating like a pig after he’d opened the huge oak door. He took a moment to catch his breath, mop his brow and pull off his coat while he looked around the immense room with its towering granite columns and domed ceiling. The room astounded most visitors to tiny Lewis. What in God’s name was a poor quarry town in northern Vermont doing with a library building that would not have been out of place in the Vatican? “Good fucking question,” Gerald muttered to himself. “Biggest goddamn white elephant on the planet.”
Several older patrons sat reading in leather armchairs and a few students were working at desks among the stacks. Okay so this wasn’t going to be a private confrontation but so the hell what. It probably wouldn’t hurt his re-election chances to have an audience when he put the DuCalice woman in her place once and for all. And there she stood, at the end of a shelf, reprimanding some poor kid like she was a sergeant major dressing down a grunt. Goddamn woman thinks she’s a law unto herself. Well not for much longer.
“Mrs. DuCalice!” Paget strode across the terrazzo floor, the sound of his steps echoing in the immense hall.
The woman stopped what she was doing, sighed, and turned toward Paget. Rose DuCalice was tall—perhaps five feet ten—slim, and smartly dressed in a tailored gray pant suit, and vivid red stiletto heels. She had very little makeup on her pale, almost translucent cheeks or around her striking blue eyes. Her long gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun with an ornate silver needle pushed through it. Paget could never tell whether the DuCalice woman was in her forties or fifties or even her sixties, but he always caught himself imagining how attractive she might be if she loosened up a bit, maybe put a bit of color on her lips, maybe showed off those incredible boobs straining to escape her suit jacket. But her face was always so hard and suspicious, at least when she looked at him, like she didn’t trust him as far as she could spit. Her look was unsettling.
“Mr. Paget,” she answered, using the French pronunciation of his name like he was a goddamn frog, just to mess with him.
She looked him up and down and then screwed up her nose like she’d caught a whiff of dog shit on his shoes. What right did this bitch have to judge him? He’d given his entire adult life to trying to save this goddamn town. He’d been Mayor for sixteen years, organized the Maple Syrup Festival and the snowmobilers’ convention and the poker run for a decade. Okay, so all three festivals had petered out for lack of interest, but at least he’d tried to do something for the town, which was a hell of a lot more than most of the lazy pricks in Lewis could say. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let this goddamn woman screw up his latest effort to save Lewis, because this one, he was absolutely positive, had the smell of success about it.
“You’re looking...kind of...nice today, Mrs. DuCalice.” Never hurt to try a little flattery. Some of the ladies in town appreciated his attentions, him being a successful leader in the community and all. Some ladies even said he looked quite smart in his good Penney’s suit.
“And you’re looking your usual sleazy self, Mr. Mayor,” she replied.
&nb
sp; He took a long, calming breath, then chuckled.
“Gonna be like that, is it? Well, look, since you haven’t responded to any of the Council’s letters, I’ve come over personally to tell you how this is gonna play out.”
“You’re wasting your time.”
“This festival is gonna happen, and it’ll be good for the town—”
“You mean it might be good for your motel and diner—although I doubt it.”
“Need I remind you, my businesses are about all that’s left of this town?”
“Be that as it may, your festival is an absurd and disgusting idea.”
They’d been through all this before. She was messing with him, winding him up. He knew it and still he gave it one more shot to justify the project to this witch. “Look, we’ve tried everything else to attract visitors to the area, all the crap every other town around here has tried, the craft fairs and the pumpkin festivals and the Oktoberfests. If this idea works, we’ll have something new, something original! We might even reinvent the whole town as a haunted village, like that town out west where it’s Christmas year round.
“But a Goth festival?”
“And a horror film festival and a Goth rock concert on the Common, and ghost walks, and haunted houses. Some of the high school kids are really getting into decorating the old stone polishing mill and the empty houses across the park.”
She shook her head in disgust. “No they’re not. All they’re doing is trashing them and having drinking parties until all hours of the night.”
Paget ignored her. He prattled on. “And there’ll be séances and palm readings and a festival of plays—”
“Plays...in that wreck of a movie theater.”
“Look, lady, I know there was bad blood between your family and the Burgoynes years ago, but the Burgoyne boy is good! He’s made something of himself, veteran and all, and it’s a blessing he’s come back to town with his fresh ideas. They’re what we need. He’s lining up the films and the bands, and he’s putting his own money into rebuilding the theater.”
“He’s not rebuilding the theater.” Rose DuCalice sneered and shook her head. “Have you seen the place? It’s a dangerous mess and Burgoyne loves it that way! And besides, who will ever come to his plays about torture and bloodshed?”
“Goths will, hell, everybody will. Gore is what sells nowadays. Have you heard of this new movie The Fly? The girlfriend and I drove down to Montpelier last weekend to see it, and Christ, I just about crapped my pants! And the place was packed! Besides, we’ll find out if anybody’s interested in the Burgoyne boy’s plays when he opens his first show in a couple of weeks, so what’s the risk to you? If his plays sell, great, and if they don’t, then it’s only his cash down the tubes. And we’ll show more old horror movies during the festival instead, so what’s to lose?”
“We’ll see.”
“Look, I didn’t come to argue about the festival. It’s going to happen whether you like it or not. What I need is your answer on the cemetery and the old village site. I need to send our posters and fliers to the printer as soon as possible if we’re going to pull this festival off in July. The Council is putting in money and rushing through all the permits, and I’m putting my own money into this as well, and we absolutely have to include in our material the haunted hay rides past the Monsegur cemetery, the lost village and the haunted mansion, they’re the best family attractions we have. We’re going to have local high school kids in costumes along the trail scaring the shit out of the kiddies. Don’t you care about summer jobs for our young people?”
“The whole notion of a trail of horror is ridiculous, a nonsensical invention. There are no ghosts at the old cemetery and there’s hardly anything to see at the abandoned village, just some moss-covered piles of rock.”
“So the hell what? That’s what Disney does! He makes crap up! You really think there’s a Fantasy Land?”
“Well, I’m not having you invent anything about my family. The village and cemetery are on my land and those are my ancestors out there, and Marymount Cottage belongs to my brother, and he dislikes what you’re doing as much as I do. We will not permit you or anyone else to desecrate our property and our heritage.”
“Look, lady, I’ve tried to be reasonable. Now I’m warning you, this project is too important to the town—”
“To you, you mean.”
“—to allow some tight-assed bitch and some fuckin’ New York millionaire, who’s never here and never done a goddamn thing for this town, to block it. You will both cooperate or I’ll have the Council take action.”
“Like what?”
“Well, we could close this library and your pathetic little museum, for one thing.”
“Need I remind you, I own this building? I pay for its operation and I take no salary for managing either the library or the museum, so just try to close them.”
“Then I’ll get Council to condemn this place for health and safety reasons, and then appropriate a corridor across your land past the cemetery and village site for a road to Cathy’s Pond, as...as an emergency water supply in case of forest fires.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Daddy? What’s going on?”
Paget turned and looked down at the short, plump teenaged girl in a puffy pink parka. It always took him seconds to recognize her as his own child. She didn’t look anything like him, at least he didn’t think so. “Pumpkin? What are you doing here?”
“I told you, Daddy, I work here after school.”
“You did? Well, not anymore, not for this woman, she’s a bad influence. So get the hell home.”
With that the Mayor spun on his heels and headed for the door.
* * * *
Saying goodbye to Gillian had gutted Chris. Over the past months, she’d appeared more beautiful every time he’d seen her. She’d visited him in prison a dozen times since their reunion in September. Over the Christmas holiday, she’d even brought gifts, and eaten Christmas dinner with him in the cafeteria. Two hundred horny idiots staring at her, lewd mutterings from every quarter, even guards ogling her, and she hadn’t been the least bit phased. She’d been so poised, so confident, it had been incredible. She was there to spend time with him, she’d said, and their being together was all that mattered. ‘Their being together!’ He repeated the words to himself many times. And then yesterday, when she’d asked him to stay in Bemishstock, he may have blown it.
She’d wanted him—practically begged him—to move into the back portion of the farmhouse, where he’d lived with his parents for two years, but he’d refused. He’d done so to spare her the danger of his presence, to make sure Mallory never again harmed Gillian or her family, and to make sure the town never took out its resentment of the Chandler family on the Willards. Gillian had been furious, then hurt. Only in the last half hour of his visit had she admitted their parting might be for the best, at least until they’d dealt with Mallory. Gillian said she’d write to Mallory’s father again, track down every source on Torajan religion in New England, and visit Chris as often as possible. Over Gillian’s objections, Chris insisted on transferring ownership of the Buick Roadmaster into her name, in part because he dared not drive with the threat of an attack by Mallory hanging over him, and in part so she could visit him.
How had he ever won the affection of such a remarkable young woman? He was broken, scarred, a shadow of his former self and now had a criminal record. He may have been admired by a few but he was hated by many. Yet Gillian—brilliant, courageous Gillian—loved him. Him! And they couldn’t even touch. That had to be the most maddening part of their whole bizarre relationship. They couldn’t kiss or hold hands. He couldn’t touch her gorgeous cheek, or caress her beautiful hair. They were trapped in some sort of chivalric tale of impossible passion, like medieval knights and ladies condemned to love from afar, their passion forever chaste and pure. Well, to hell with that! He longed to crush Gillian to his chest, take her beautiful face in his hands, smother her with kisses, a
nd feel her wondrous breasts against his chest. “Don’t go there,” he muttered, “or you’ll go stark raving mad.”
His first priority in the next few months was to rebuild his health and get his life back on track. He’d started working out and had taken to writing his parents once a week. His father had wanted to come to Portland to meet him when Chris was released but Chris had implored him not to. He wanted to slip away from Portland without attention. Don’t worry, he’d reassured his parents, when the inquiry was wrapped up, when he’d completed his correspondence courses and received his high school diploma, and when he’d been accepted into a college somewhere, then he’d visit them in Wisconsin, a new man, a son they could be proud of, but not before.
Midafternoon, as the Greyhound from Portland rolled into Lewis, the noise of its brakes woke Chris from an uneasy nap. Shifting painfully in his seat, he wiped the drool from his chin, cleared condensation from the window with his sleeve, and got a first look at his new home. “Oh God,” he muttered.
Lewis, Vermont, looked like a hundred other dying towns across New England, and even smaller and more pathetic than Bemishstock, Maine, if that was possible. Another sorrowful community on its last legs, where the already dead outnumbered the soon-to-be departed by a wide margin. Why in God’s name had he agreed to hide out in Vermont? Why not Florida or Hawaii? The answers were obvious; because the cottage in Lewis was what Felix’s brother Nigel had found for him, and more importantly, because Gillian wasn’t too far away. All the same, what had he let himself in for?
