by Peter Straub
NINE
After the noise of Zack’s receding motorcycle pulled me from the second night in a row of that dreadful dream, I lay in the gray light of early morning, experiencing what seemed an utter desolation. For the second time the thought of Alison Greening brought with it no current of joy and anticipation. The wrong things had happened; I was in the wrong room, the wrong place; I was the wrong man. It must be the way a young soldier feels when after he has enlisted out of a glorious mishmash of ideals, adventurousness and boredom, he finds himself cold, hungry, shouted at and on the verge of battle. I simply could not think of what to do. I had been going to tell Polar Bears what I knew about Zack—but did I really know it? (Yes. I did. Anyway, I thought I did.) But my relation to Polar Bears had irrevocably changed. I could remember all too clearly his telling me that rape was normal. Had he been telling himself that for twenty years?
I saw that both Duane and Polar Bears must have hated my coming back to Arden. I was the last person they wanted to see again. Especially since I had begun speaking about Alison Greening almost from the moment I arrived in the valley.
And then I thought of the slight vulpine figure I had seen last night, leveling her face toward the farmhouse like a loaded gun, and thought too of the vision I’d had when the gas had almost killed me. And of the lights in my grandmother’s house flashing on, all at once, making the place look like a boat floating out of its harbor. I was unforgiven.
I wondered how well I knew—had known—my cousin Alison. Again I saw that face of sewn leaves coming toward me, and I hurriedly left the bed, threw on my robe, and went downstairs.
I thought: now you are almost afraid of it.
And thought: no. You have always been afraid of it.
My bare feet were very cold.
When the telephone rang, I hesitated a moment before lifting the receiver from its hook. Polar Bears, up early from another sleepless night. Do birds cough?, that ardent high electric voice in my ears. But I smelled blubber, and knew that I did not yet have to solve the problem of what to say to Galen Hovre. She said, “Mr. Teagarden? Miles?”
“Present.”
“I can’t come to work today. I won’t be there this morning. I’m sick.”
“Well,” I began, and realized that she had already hung up. Stupidly, I stared at the receiver, as if it could explain Tuta Sunderson’s behavior.
—
The explanation came about an hour later, after I had dressed and was seated upstairs, trying to smother thought by the familiar tactic of concentration on work. I had succeeded in this often enough during my marriage. Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking. Yet I had more problems fighting for mental space than Joan’s infidelity with various Dribbles had given me, and I had written less than half a page of my record before I put my head down on the desk, my face damp with sweat and the desolation back in full strength. I groaned. The admission that I might—did—feel unease, disquiet, fear, all of those, at the enactment of the vow between my cousin and myself had opened up a vast psychic hole. I remembered Rinn’s harsh words—I felt as though I were thrust back into the world of the “blue horror” dream, as though mere wakefulness could not separate me from it. I was still a guilt expert; that was a vocation which outlasted the academic.
Alison Greening was my life; her death had thrown me forever out of significance, out of happiness; but suppose Rinn was right, and that significance and happiness had been flawed and illusory from the beginning. Suppose that by returning to the valley I had brought death with me? Or if not death, its taint? The terror I had felt in the woods flicked at me again, and I pushed myself away from the desk and left the study. All the way down the stairs I felt pursued by that slight figure, that atom of the woods.
Downstairs, I was jerked back into the present. I knew why Tuta Sunderson had refused to come to work. They were there, out on the road, waiting like vultures.
—
Because that is what they resembled, vultures, sitting in their cars just past the walnut trees. I could not see their faces. They had switched off their motors. I imagined them assembling at the prearranged time, each pulling up on the road before the house, coming from all over Arden, all up and down the valley. Somehow, they had heard about Candace Michalski’s disappearance. My throat dried. From where I was standing at the kitchen window I could see perhaps twenty of them, each alone in his car, all men.
At first, like a child, I thought of calling Rinn—of invoking that safety.
I swallowed, and went into the living room and opened the door to the porch. Now I could see them all. Their cars filled the road. Some of them must have gone down to Duane’s driveway to turn around, because they were bunched in a thick pack, all facing the same way, three abreast in places where I could see only the tops of the farthest cars glinting light. From them rose wavy lines of heat. Menace came from them like a physical force. I stepped backward into the dark of the room, and saw them still, framed in the doorway. The men in the cars visible to me sat twisted sideways on their seats, looking toward the porch.
One more impatient than the rest honked his horn.
And then I knew they would not leave their cars, for no one answered the single horn blast with his own: they were just going to sit out there.
I walked out onto the porch where I would be visible. Another car honked, one of those nearest the house. It was a signal: he’s out: and I could see some of the hunched figures in the cars swing their heads sideways to stare at me.
I went back into the kitchen and dialed Polar Bears’ office. A voice I recognized as Lokken’s answered me.
“Hell no, he ain’t in here. All hell’s broke loose since last night. He’s out with two of the others, lookin’ for that girl.”
“The news got out.”
“It was that damn Red Sunderson did it, he and a lot of the boys called on the family last night, and now they got all stirred up, runnin’ around and demandin’ things and holy man, we been workin’—hey, who is this, anyways?”
“Get in touch with him fast and tell him to call Miles Teagarden. I’ve got some trouble here.” And I know who did it, I said silently. “And I might have some information for him.”
“What kind of information would that be, Teagarden?” I had ceased to be Mr. Teagarden.
“Ask him if a doorknob could have been used on those two girls,” I said, and heard my heart thudding.
“Why, you lose a doorknob, Teagarden?” came Lokken’s insufferable yokel’s voice. “Whyn’t you call up your friend Larabee and ask him to find it for you? You outa your skull or something? The Chief ain’t gonna do you no favors, Teagarden, don’t you know that?”
“Just get him over here,” I said.
Some of the men could see me telephoning, and I held the receiver for a few moments after Lokken hung up and stood directly in front of the window with the black cone of plastic to my ear. Two of the cars in front of the column came to life, and drove off after their drivers had tapped their horns. Two others crept up to take their places. I juggled the hook and then dialed Rinn’s number. I could see the man nearest to me watching my arm move. He too tapped his horn and drove off in the direction of the highway. The front end of a blue pickup appeared in his space. Rinn’s telephone trilled and trilled. I didn’t know what I expected from her anyway. I hung up.
I heard cars gunning their engines and tires crunching the road. My throat felt looser. I took a cigarette from the pack in my shirt pocket and lit it with a kitchen match. Cars were still moving off and turning around out on the road, and as I exhaled I saw the blue truck move past the frame of the window, then two cars at once, tan and dark blue, then a gray car with spectacular dents in its side. For two or three minutes I waited and smoked, hearing them wrangle their way out, backing up onto the lawn, noisily bouncing on the drive to the garage, turning around.
When I thought they were all gone I saw the nose of a dark Ford pull into the frame of the window a
nd stop.
I went out onto the porch. Three of them had stayed behind. When I pushed open the screen door, not really knowing what I intended to do, two of them left their cars. The third, whose pickup was nearest the drive, backed his truck around the last of the walnut trees and came about five yards up the drive. When he hopped out of the cab I saw that it was Hank Speltz, the boy from the garage. In front of the house, the lawn had been ripped into muddy tracks.
“Go on up that way, Hank, and we’ll jump the ditch,” called one of the two men out on the road. The boy began coming warily up the drive, his hands spread.
One of the men jumped the ditch and began coming through the line of walnut trees, the second following a little behind. They looked like the men I had seen outside the Angler’s Bar, the men who had stoned me—big middle-aged roughs, with bellies hanging over their belts and plaid and tan shirts open past their breastbones. A circle of red just below the neck, and then the dead white skin usually covered by undershirts.
“Hovre is coming here,” I called. “You’d better get out with the others.”
A man I did not recognize called back, “Hovre ain’t gonna be here in time to stop us doin’ what we’re gonna do.”
“Where you got the Michalski girl?” shouted the man hanging back.
“I don’t have her anywhere.” I began to sidle toward the garage and the path to Duane’s house. Hank Speltz, his face hanging openmouthed like a wrestler’s, was coming up. I tossed the remaining two inches of cigarette onto the torn lawn, and went nearer the garage.
The man in the plaid shirt who had spoken first said, “Come at him slow,” and Hank Speltz halved his pace, shuffling like a bear from side to side. “Get the hell on up here, Roy,” he said. “Where you got her?”
“He’s got her hid somewhere inside. I tol’ you.”
“I’ve never seen her.” I kept moving to the side.
“He’s going to that garage.”
“Let him go. We’ll get him there.” He had a red hook-nosed face with deep lines, a bully’s face—the face of the schoolyard terror who had never grown up. The two of them were coming at me slowly across the lawn. “Keep an eye on him in case he runs toward that Nash,” shouted the man in the cap.
“Whose idea was this?” I called.
“Ours, smartass.”
Then I was close enough to the garage and I hit the clip off the lock and opened the door. I looked at the curl of smoke coming from my cigarette and knew what I was going to try to do. “Go in there and we got you cornered,” the leader crowed. Knowing that any sudden movement would make them rush me, I backed into the open garage and went into its gloom. The three ten-gallon gas cans were where I remembered them from the day I had broken open the sea chest. I picked one of them up: full. With my back to them, I bent down and screwed off the cap. When I emerged carrying the heavy can, one of them guffawed. “Gonna put gas in your car, Teagarden?”
Only the man in the plaid shirt saw what I was going to do. “Shit,” he yelled, and began to run at me.
With as much force as I had, I threw the gas can toward the curl of smoke. I supposed that the odds were no worse than they were if I’d bet on a horse. Fluid began to spray out in wheels and loops.
For a moment we were all standing still, watching the gasoline come spraying out of the sailing can, but when the crump of the explosion came I was already running up the path toward Duane’s house. I heard them shouting behind me. A bit of flying metal whizzed past my head. One of them was screaming.
I had just about time enough to get to the near side of Duane’s house; when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw them coming through the fire, two of them. The man in the cap was rolling on the ground. Pieces of scattered fire dotted the lawn all the way to the row of walnut trees. Now they were stopping to kneel by the man in the cap.
If I had been right that Duane’s basement was originally a root cellar like my grandparents’, I would be able to get into it from the outside.
“Duane ain’t gonna help you, you son of a bitch!” came a distorted, yelling voice.
I came running past the dogwood and sweetpea and onto Duane’s lawn.
“Cuz he’s gone!”
I don’t know what I was picturing: hiding down there, finding a burrow, defending it with an ax. As I raced across the short lawn I saw that I had been right. The white-painted boards of the entrance cover—the old access to the cellar—extended from the base of the house, just visible around the corner on the side facing the road. I came skidding around the corner and the door I yanked on swung easily upward.
I fell down the earthen steps and rolled beneath the hanging axes. Then I remembered. The far wall, where my desk had been, in cases like mummies. I scrambled up from my knees and ran, crouching, over to the shotguns.
I took one up case and all and dipped my hand into the box of shells and ran back to the earthen steps. Like moving up from water into light, going back toward the slanting rectangle of blue air and sunlight.
I had the twelve-gauge out of the case as the men and Hank Speltz came running around the corner of dogwood and sweetpea. I broke the gun and slotted two shells into the barrels. “Stop right there,” I said, and raised the gun and pointed it at the chest of the man in the plaid shirt. Then I rose up from my belly on the earthen steps and came out of the cellar. My breathing was so harsh that I could scarcely form words. They dropped their arms and stood momentarily still, shock and anger in their faces.
“Now get the hell out of here,” I said.
They were beginning to circle. They were as wary as beasts.
“I’ve never seen that girl,” I said. “I’ve never seen any of them. I only knew about the Michalski girl because Polar Bears told me she was missing.” Put the gun against my shoulder, pointed it at the opening in the plaid shirt. Expected the recoil. “Get together and stay together. Stop moving around like that.”
They obeyed. I could see the man in the cap limping up behind them, his hands in the air. His tan workshirt was flecked with black, blood leaking through some of the holes. His hands were blackened too. He stood by the dogwood with his hands up. “Walk backward,” I said. “All the way to your cars.”
Hank Speltz took a step backward into the dogwood, looked around wildly, and then began to edge around to the path. The others moved with him, following me with their eyes.
“If you’re so innocent, how come you stuck around up here?” asked the man in the plaid shirt.
I gestured with the shotgun.
“Screwing that old crazy woman up in the woods,” said Hank Speltz. “That’s how come. And what about Gwen Olson and Jenny Strand?”
“You’re asking the wrong man,” I said. “Now I want you to start moving backward toward the cars.”
When they did not move I shifted the barrels to the right, flicked the safety, and pulled one of the triggers. The recoil nearly jerked the shotgun from my hands. The sound was louder than the explosion of the gas can. All of them moved smartly away from the dogwood. I saw that I had shredded the leaves and ruined the blossoms, leaving broken twigs and the smell of powder hanging. “You damn near killed Roy back there,” said the one in the plaid shirt.
“What was he going to do to me? Move.” I raised the barrels, and they began to step backward down the path.
Over their shoulders I could see the mess of the long front lawn. A ragged, irregular black circle ten yards from the drive showed where the ten-gallon can had exploded. Smaller burned patches, a greasy yellow in color, were dotted all over the lawn, churned and rutted by their tires. A large hole had been blown in the mesh of the porch screen. The animals had disappeared down into the far end of the side field.
“We ain’t through yet,” said the man whose name I did not know.
“Hank, get in your pickup and drive out,” I said. “I’ll be coming in to pick up my car soon, and I don’t expect any trouble.”
“No,” he said, and sprinted toward the truck in the driveway.
All three of us watched him roar away scattering dirt as he turned onto the valley road.
“Now you, Roy.” The man in the cap looked at me glumly, lowered his hands, and walked heavily over the lawn to pass between the walnut trees. He stopped to stamp out the small flames licking up at the base of one of the trees.
“Now it’s your turn,” I said to the remaining man.
“Whyn’t you just kill us?” he asked belligerently. “You like killin’. We all know about you. You got sumpun wrong in your head.”
I said, “If you don’t get out of here right now, you won’t believe what’s happening to you. You’ll probably live for a minute or two, but you’ll be glad to die when they’re over.” I cradled the gun in my arms and leveled it at his belt. And then I did an astounding thing—a thing that astounded me. I laughed. Self-disgust hit me with such force that I feared for a moment that I would vomit.
PORTION OF STATEMENT BY HANK SPELTZ:
July 15
I was standin’ there watchin’ Miles and I says to myself, boy, if you ever get outa this I promise I’ll go to church every Sunday, I’ll pray every night, I’ll never say another dirty word, I’ll be good forever, because you never seen anything like the way that Miles looked, crazy enough to chew glass, eat gunpowder, that’s how he looked. His eyes they was just slits. His hair was flyin’ all directions. When he let go with one of those barrels, I thought, uh-oh, the next one’s for me. Because he knew me from the filling station. I didn’t even wanna be there in the first place, I just went because Red Sunderson said, he said we’ll all park in front of his place and scare hell out of old Miles. And we’ll break him down for sure. He’s got that girl put away somewhere. So I said, count me in. Then when the other ones all pulled out, I saw Roy and Don were stayin’, so I thought I’d stick around for the fun.