And so, sometime between 1890 and 1920, the lurkers had stopped eating meat.
Mostly.
There were still the odd transgressions, of course. Albert Fish, the Werewolf of Wysteria, had claimed he'd eaten close to 100 children. The ritualistic fashion in which he'd carved up his young victims was the work of a truly grotesque gourmand; he did not just enjoy his food, he loved it. "I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his fat little behind" was how he described the meal he'd made of one child. (I'd advise you not to look up the rest of his confessions. If you have any vestige of a soul, it would turn your stomach, as it did mine.)
Fish, aka the Brooklyn Vampire, aka the Gray Man, is not only one of America's first serial killers, he is considered by some to be the first known lurker, though he had never identified himself as such. I imagine they don't call themselves lurkers, anyhow. Likely, it's a pejorative term to them.
Before you ask, the Donner party was mentioned by at least two "experts" on the subject of lurker mythology. Likewise with Jeffery Dahmer, the so-called Master Butcher of Rotenburg, and the Miami Zombie (who'd attacked a man and eaten pieces of his face while under the influence of marijuana, and not "bath salts" as earlier reports had stated, and said man had still been quite alive). Some halfwit suggested Hannibal Lecter be added to the list, and was swiftly rebuked, proving the line between fiction and reality was at least somewhat intact among this gathering of internet delusionals.
Not all cannibals are lurkers, they say, but all lurkers are cannibals by nature. Big Top Video owner Robert Ritter proved that, if you believed Buddy Ames's suspicions. Given the opportunity, a lurker would eat your child, your mother, your grandparents—it was only by choice that they did not feed on us, as Jim had also suspected, and decisions, like leftovers, could be all too easily discarded. Just think of the last New Year's resolution you made, and you'll know what I mean. Not a day passes when I don't wish I could rescind the choice I made to trade in the hard stuff for the non-alcoholic beverage in my hand, as my rocker rocks and the sun sinks beyond the houses opposite. Particularly on those nights I think I've mentioned, with dark clouds gathering on the eastern horizon—east, toward where the Schultz house stood before Jim and Leanne Taymor razed it to the ground.
I suspect Leanne might feel the same about the decision she'd made to follow Jim from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.
Many of the rumored victims of the Mexican chupacabra (roughly translated, it means "goat-sucker") are thought instead to be the work of the lurkers. When a few goats in a field lay disemboweled, most people—sane people—think wolf, or cougar. These people get out their torches and pitchforks and hunt down the monster.
The Algonquin Indian wendigo, if you're familiar with the legend, is thought to be the basis of lurker lore, or the first known example. These ghouls are eternally ravenous, no matter how much they eat. It is this bottomless hunger which drives them to eat humans. The Algonquins believe humans themselves become wendigos, should the flesh of their fellow man be consumed. In Canada, prior to his arrest in 1906, a shaman called Jack Fiddler put fourteen supposed wendigos to death. In some cases, it is said, the afflicted tribesmen turned themselves in to be euthanized.
Fourteen murders... and in his little community, Jack Fiddler was celebrated. Fiddler committed suicide before standing trial, for the record; just as Robert "Red" Ritter would, a little over ninety years later, for reasons unknown—unless you believed Buddy Ames. Fourteen. That's twice as many lurker exterminations as Jim and Leanne were soon to lay claim to, and in Knee High, as everywhere else, they would be reviled.
Rightly so, I have to say. Rightly so.
16
JIM COULD SMELL their shit right through his mask.
The stench was worse than the time he'd found his old dog Rufus wriggling on his back in the tall grass behind his old house. The Golden Retriever had positively reeked, worse than any animal had a right to. The dead coon Rufus had been rubbing his fur in, streaking himself with its scent, lay frozen among the gnarled roots of their giant oak, fangs bared and paws curled into claws. Its guts lay coiled beside it, red as raspberry jam. Ants climbed the sticky, glistening mountain for treasures to bring back to their Queen. There were more ants trudging in the brown, putrid ribbons of raccoon scat and gore in Rufus's fur.
Jim's father had given Rufus a good couple of swats with a rolled-up copy of the biweekly Knee High Whistler, and his mother had bathed the miserable mutt in V8. Despite the old wives' remedy, Rufus had carried on stinking for almost a week. Kids held their noses and made exaggerated retching sounds as he followed Jimmy to the school bus, no matter how hard he'd tried to send the dog back to the house.
Along with the two Tyvek suits and SCBA masks she bought, Buddy sold Leanne a flare gun at a good discount. I would have approved, even though I would not have approved of its intended use. Buddy also happened to have been storing up a good deal of thermite in the fallout shelter he'd created under his living quarters, enough thermite to take down a skyscraper, he'd told Leanne. The twinkle had returned to Buddy's eyes when he told her that, as if this might be firsthand knowledge.
The creek where Jim and Leanne stood, in the woods between the Schultz house and the fairgrounds, has no name. So far as I know, it never has, though during a particularly wet spring or fall it sometimes rises just about high enough to be considered a river. It is a distributary of the Missouri, I believe, perhaps the Platte. As a child I played near its banks with various groups of friends, most of whom have either moved away or passed on since. Those who are still with us, physically as well as in spirit, I see on occasion. A few of them live—if you want to call it living—at the seniors' home up on the hill, what Gin likes to call the Cripple Castle. We share a nod or a wave, but rarely do we speak. Back then, we'd had nothing but the exuberant curiosity of youth in common, though when you're a kid that seems like enough. Old age isn't quite the grand unifier childhood is, despite what the Castle's advertisements in the Whistler would like you to think.
"I wish I'd thought to bring Vaporub," Jim remarked as he zipped himself into the protective gear. Raccoons are a peculiar animal, obsessive about touch, and about washing their food before they dine. Conversely, they have no misgivings about shitting where they eat. Leanne stood back where the woods cleared for the creek, holding her nose as Jim shoveled scat into the red plastic bucket he used to wash the cars. He scooped up a shovelful of clear, cool water into the bucket next. Then he shook in a good amount of thermite from an emptied paint can. It rose in a gray-black cloud.
"Careful," Leanne said with a wince. She knew it wasn't necessary; Buddy Ames had assured her it was safe until it was ignited—and then stand back, Jack!—but she'd always felt it was best to err on the side of caution.
Jim ignored the warning, using a long branch to stir up the filth into a rich, black paste, indistinguishable from what Leanne had seen the lurkers smear onto their skin. As soon as she'd come within whiffing distance of the latrine, she'd been certain it was the same smell from the Schultz house, though it seemed to Jim she would have said just about anything to step clear of its powerful stench.
"Get the bags ready?" he said over his shoulder, picking up the bucket full of lethal sludge. Leanne shook them out, gagging when he approached. "That's not the first time I've had that effect on a woman," he joked, though it was a pretty lame attempt at levity. Her reaction was somewhere between a laugh and a groan.
He lowered the stinking bucket into the doubled-up trash bags, then took the bundle from Leanne. She ran off to the trees immediately. The bran muffin and coffee she'd had that morning—more cream and sugar today—came up and splashed against the mossy earth, a few rebound droplets spattering her sneakers.
Jim tied the bags and set them down. "You okay?" he said. "I'd hold your hair, but my grip is like a lobster's with these gloves."
Leanne wiped her lips with the back of her hand. "I'll be fine." She rose from the bushes and rega
rded him with a probing look. "Jim... can we do this? I mean really do this?"
"It was your idea," he reminded her.
"Well," she said, "it looked good on paper."
Jim smiled wanly. As their pet phrase, it would normally garner at least a chuckle. He felt like doing a lot of things right then—run was very high on that list—but laughing was not one of them.
"This is the best way," he said. "The only way. Six in one blow."
There were other ways, of course. Buddy had suggested poisoning the feces, a contact poison that would slowly kill them as it seeped into their skin. He'd suggested pumping carbon monoxide in through the unused water pipes while they slept, essentially putting them to sleep for good. He'd suggested using a couple of propane flamethrowers to roast them alive, but it seemed to Leanne this mode of death would require some sort of clever one-liner, and she'd been fresh out.
"There's always thermite," Buddy had suggested, with an eyebrow raised and his eyes twinkling again.
Leanne had urged him to go on.
"Thermite burns fast and hot. It melts right through metal. If you pour water on it while its burning, you'll get hundreds, thousands of tiny little explosions from the superheated water, like dousing a grease fire only much, much worse. It's undetectable by explosive-sniffing dogs, so our lurkers wouldn't be likely to smell it either. You guys sprinkle it along the floorboards, in the ducts, and it looks and smells just like dirt and rust. Mix it with their war paint, camouflage, whatever you want to call it, and they'll become walking—lurking—thermite grenades." With his trade-marked shrewd look, he said, "If you're serious about doing this, and I believe that you are, thermite is the only way to fly."
She'd taken his word for it. The three other paint cans filled with thermite lay in the back of their Suburban, parked on Hammersmith Road at the other end of the fairgrounds. Jim had reasoned that if they were going to accidentally blow themselves up out there looking for turds, one can was sufficient.
It had occurred to her that the thermite squirreled away in Buddy's fallout shelter could easily have blown the entire building sky-high, including La Costina, but the man had seemed unconcerned. Below ground, his supply of assault rifles and handguns, unlike their surplus counterparts on the ground floor, were very functional. Along with the shelves of canned goods, toilet paper and cigarillos lining the walls, Buddy Ames was well prepared for an apocalypse, whatever its cause might be.
17
JIM SLIPPED OUT of his Tyvek and headed back to the car for the rest of the thermite, while Leanne sat on mossy rocks by the edge of that nameless creek (a good distance from the latrine), eating leftovers. They'd left Arnie Jacobs in charge of lunch at the restaurant, and would leave him again with dinner. The man had been at it long enough; in many ways, he was a better chef than Leanne.
"You don't take risks," Arnie had told her once, "that's your problem. You're a fine cook—you should trust yourself to improvise more."
If he could see me now, Leanne thought with grim humor.
The wild mushroom risotto he'd made two days ago was still delicious cold from a plastic container. It occurred to her this whole mess had started because of leftovers; if only Jim had never seen Cordelia Moone chowing down on that cat. If only he'd left it alone. Leanne had been quite happy until then, being blissfully unaware of the presence of the lurkers and their contribution to the town's dwindling pet population—not to mention little Danny Reynolds.
Had they come too far to change their minds?
She had no doubts what they were doing was right, but was the motive genuine? Were they doing it because they believed these were creatures that should not be? Was it because of the slaughtered animals, because what Buddy Ames believed had happened to Danny Reynolds could happen to another child? Or was it simply to save their own hides?
Leanne dumped the last of Arnie's wonderful leftovers in the creek and rinsed the container. She'd lost her appetite. Second-guessing herself at every turn wasn't going to help, and neither was applying conventional morality to an unconventional situation. A distinction had to be made. These weren't people they were killing, after all—hadn't she said as much to Jim the day before?
They were lurkers.
A twig snapped behind her. She twisted round, scared out of her wits, certain he'd be standing there, Dutch Holland, with his massive paws and his glowering forehead.
But it was only Jim. She'd probably been as glad to see him before, though not by much.
"Phew! That's hot work," Jim said, setting down the cans (he'd carried two in one hand; anyone who's tried that knows the murder it can be on the fingers), and rubbing his sore hand. He'd sweated patches in the neck and armpits of his old MIZZOU t-shirt. He grew concerned as he approached Leanne.
"You okay?" he said. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Leanne forced a smile. "I'm fine. Just thought you were someone else."
"Oh." His hand felt like a fat, heavy spider on her shoulder. "Honey, he's at work. You know that. We saw him there. The others, they have no idea what he's been up to."
"You can't know that."
"I do. If they knew, they'd be after more than money. That Dutch, whatever he isn't, he is a businessman."
"Okay," she said, sounding unconvinced.
"No one knows what we're planning except the two of us, hon."
And Buddy Ames, she thought but didn't say. He could have given us up the second I left his store. Two years is a long time to keep their secret—you thought that yourself, remember? Certainly long enough to make a pact with the Devil.
"Nobody's going to spring a trap on us," he assured her. Jim was just as worried as Leanne—hell, he was terrified. But sharing fear works like an echo chamber, one person's jitters playing off the other's until you're screaming at every sound and flit of shadow. "If that's what you're thinking," he hastily added.
"Okay," she said, and this time she made sure to sound persuaded.
18
THE HOUSE WAS cool and dark as they slipped in through the back door on an old kitchen filled with earthy, rusty, rotted smells.
Leanne's breath fogged the clear plastic screen of her mask as her eyes scoured the gloom. Cabinets opened, rotting from their hinges, wallpaper peeling, linoleum cracked and broken and bent up at the corners, rusted silverware scattered just about everywhere, broken plates and tea cups. It was surely her image of Hell, a nightmare version of her own home kitchen. Jim moved into the next room without much thought. After mourning the loss of so much good china, Leanne followed.
Here was more of the same, though it was phonebooks and framed photographs (and their accompanying shards of glass) littering the floors, along with newspapers, and small mountains of dirt and pine needles. It was difficult to tell if the wild patterns on the peeling wallpaper were mold stains or flocking.
The stench of raccoon feces was thick in here. At the far end of the room, Leanne saw the window she'd been looking through the night before. In the middle of the room the floor disappeared like a Wile E. Coyote illusion. Jim crossed to it. He set down the trash bag and paint can. Then he knelt beside it, a man-sized artist's well of rancid black paint, and dipped a gloved finger into the mess. It came up black.
"Still wet," he said as he rubbed the thumb and forefinger together.
"Great," Leanne said, too disgusted to show her enthusiasm.
"Why don't you start shaking that stuff around the room, and I'll get to work here."
"Any particular pattern?"
Jim gave a wearied look.
"Right," she said. She got to work, using the edge of the Suburban's key to pry open one of the cans while Jim untied the trash bag. Then she began shaking it out around the baseboards. She was three-quarters around the large room before the can was empty, and she returned for another. Jim, meanwhile, had dumped the bucket and smoothing out the smelly black sludge with the lid from a paint can.
"It's not a cake," Leanne said over her shoulder. "It doesn't have t
o be perfect."
"I think it was smoother before we started."
"It's shit, James," she said, startling Jim with her sudden bluntness. "They're not going to notice."
With a resigned nod, he dropped the bucket back into the bags. He tied them again as Leanne scattered the contents of the second can. "You've already emptied one? I can't even see it."
"That's the idea, isn't it?"
Jim didn't like her snarky tone, but he kept mum. "You know, I really think this might work," he said with a grunt as he opened the third can and began to distribute it around the room.
19
THEY SAT UNDER the opened tailgate, waiting for the sun to go down and darkness to fall over Knee High. I imagine they thought back on that sunset quite a bit later on, when the lights were dimmed for the night in their respective correctional facilities. I imagine in their minds that orange ball of flame might have warped and distorted into the other fire, the one they were soon to set at the old Schultz place—those images that would burn themselves onto their retinas like the shadows of Hiroshima.
They'd made sure to kick away their footprints in the dust and dirt and thermite as they left the house. Now all they had to do was wait on Dutch and the others to arrive, and hope, when the time came, they'd have the guts to go through with it.
Leanne thought they would, but she wasn't the one holding the flare gun.
"I've been thinking about Olivia," Jim said suddenly.
Leanne turned away from him. "Don't," she said.
He sat silently for a time. But Jim had more to say on the subject, and he could hold his peace no more. "I keep thinking if she had lived..."
"Jim."
"...we never would have opened the restaurant, and none of this would have happened."
"So this is my fault?" She wouldn't turn around; it meant she was probably crying. Leanne dealt with tears like a dog going off alone into the woods to die. Touch her now, and she was likely to bite back with hurtful words.
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