by Lee Goldberg
"No one gave you permission to leave the store, girl," the woman said in a voice as weathered as her skin. "Get back in. I'll tell you when it's safe to come out."
"But he's here," the girl said. "He left with Joan and he came back whole. You know what that means."
"Could mean a lot of things," the woman said, her eyes still fixed on Matt's face. "Could mean he had a night of whoopee with that thing and came here to help out with the dirty work. Could be the bitch queen's found herself a stud."
That settled one question in Matt's mind. They knew about Joan. Knew what she'd planned for him. And they let him go with her anyway. Because they were scared? Or because they'd rather see her take a stranger than one of their own?
"It could," Matt said. "But it doesn't."
The old woman's eyes had never left his face, but somehow they seemed to intensify their glare. "And I'm supposed to believe your word, just like that?" she said. "Because someone – some thing – that's going to join up and do what she does, he's not going to scruple a lie or two on the way."
"I don't care what you believe," Matt said. "I just want to get back to the highway."
"Look at his axe, Orfamay," the little girl squealed. "Look at his axe."
The old woman pulled her eyes away from his face and glanced down at the blade. Then took a step closer, bent forward and ran a finger through the black slime on its edge. Her eyes shot back to his face, then she allowed them a second to examine the ichor she now rubbed between her fingers.
"That's from her, Orfamay," the girl said. "You know it is."
Still keeping her eyes locked on Matt, the old woman smeared the slime off onto her jeans. "That true what the little one says?" she said.
"Go out and look for yourself," Matt said.
"Don't be so tetchy, boy," the woman said, the faintest hint of a smile curling her lip. "You been through what these good folks have endured, you'd be a little cautious, too."
"Is that what you call it when you let an innocent man go off with a monster to save your own asses?" Matt said. "Cautious?"
"We wanted to warn you, Matt," the little girl said, her eyes filled with terror at the thought he might leave again. "We wanted to. But she showed up right behind you. There was nothing anyone could do."
Matt thought back to his arrival. The people of the town had clustered around him, and then drawn back when he'd taken off his helmet. He'd assumed it was because they saw he wasn't the one they'd been waiting for. But Joan had spoken in his ear seconds afterwards. Was it possible that it was her arrival that had caused them to back away from him?
"We lived with that thing for a long time," the old woman said unapologetically. "We knew her rules, and we knew what would happen if we violated them."
"And we knew you were the one who was going to free us," the girl added. "We knew you were our hero."
"I'm no one's hero," Matt said.
But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he began to wonder if that was true. He had been wandering, lost, through his life since he'd been brought back from the dead, searching for his purpose. And while he'd had no idea of what he'd been doing, every step he took had brought him one step closer to Heaven. What had made him buy that motorcycle, head out on that particular highway? What had impelled him to take the exit that led him to this cursed town? Was it possible that this was the reason he'd been reborn?
Standing in the middle of the street, muscles aching, ribs cracked, head pounding, he'd never felt less like a hero. But they'd known he was coming. Known when he hadn't. They'd been waiting for him to liberate them. And he'd done it.
The old woman spat on the street. "Call yourself what you want," she said. "You got the job done, I figure you we owe you."
"I told you," the little girl said. "I told you he'd come."
Ignoring her, the old woman turned back to the open door of the general store. "Time to stop hiding and come on out," she barked. "All of you, come out. The time for cowering's over." She turned back to Matt. "This town owes you. You'll see we repay our debts."
Matt had a vision of himself seated on a golden throne, still clutching his axe, like Conan the Barbarian crowned king on one of those Frank Frazetta paperback covers. It was so absurd he had to suppress a smile.
"You don't owe me anything," Matt said.
"Orfamay Vetch knows something about debts," the old woman said. "This town's books balance. Always have, and as long as I'm in charge, always will. We owe you, and we will repay you."
Behind Orfamay, the street was beginning to fill with people. They all kept their distance, but Matt could see they all had the same expression in their eyes. It was a look of awe.
"All I want is a ride back to the highway," Matt said.
"A ride?" Orfamay said. "The Pingree mule died last winter. Not much here to ride on since it hit the stew pot."
"I was thinking about maybe a car," Matt said, looking for any sign she had been joking. "A truck would be fine. I'm not fussy."
The old woman's eyes narrowed. "A car?" she said. "A private car?"
"I don't really care who owns it," Matt said. "I just need a ride."
"You must think we're all Carnegies around here," she said. "You come to supper tonight, and we'll talk about what we owe you."
Before Matt could say anything, she turned and walked back to the crowd that was still assembling down the street. As he watched her go, baffled, he felt a tugging at his hand.
"Don't worry about her, Matt." It was the little girl, and she was staring up at him with unabashed worship. "Whatever you need, you'll get. The whole town is yours now."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Matt was ten years old, his father had taken him to a travelling carnival where he'd spent two hours and uncountable quarters trying to land a set of plastic rings over a bunch of milk bottles. When he'd finally won – or when the carny behind the counter had gotten sick of seeing his face and declared him the winner – he was granted his prize: a plastic pencil sharpener in the shape of a cartoon bear. When the carny handed it to him, Matt had burst into tears. He couldn't believe that so much time and effort – not to mention so much of his father's money – had earned him such a pathetic prize.
If he'd believed the little girl about the whole town being his, he might have felt the same way about today's prize.
He spent a long chunk of his expected lifespan meeting what he assumed was the town's entire population, shaking hands and exchanging rough embraces with an endless stream of well-wishers. He tried to attach names to people, and family members to each other, but after a couple of minutes all the hardscrabble hands and weathered faces began to blur together.
What he did notice is that most of the people from the town shared one of two last names. There were probably eighty men, women and children who introduced themselves as Something Vetch, and another seventy or so who were Gilhoolies. The rest of the population seemed to belong either to the Runcible family or clan Hoggins. Matt couldn't be sure, because everyone kept moving around and there were no clear lines, but it seemed to him that the Vetches and the Runcibles stayed on one side of the street while the Gilhoolies and Hogginses clustered together on the other.
After what felt like an eternity of meeting and greeting, Matt found himself facing Orfamay Vetch again. "Supper's at six tonight," she snarled at him. "It's going to be at the Grange. You'll be needing someplace to stay. The old Delaney place is yours by right."
The thought of stepping foot back in that house sent a shudder of horror through him. "I'll pass," he said.
"Then you can take my place for as long as you need it," she said. A confession extracted through torture might have sounded more gracious. "Need someone to show you the way, or can you handle simple directions?"
"I'll take him, Orfamay." It was the little girl, who had showed up at his side again.
"That's very generous," Matt said. "But I don't need to throw you out of your home. I just need to get back to the highway."
/> "Mouse will show you around," Orfamay said. She turned back to the crowd of Vetches and Gilhoolies, Runcibles and Hogginses. "You going to stand around staring like a bunch of dead sheep? There's work to do preparing for tonight."
She clapped her hands sharply and the crowd immediately started to dissipate. "Six o'clock sharp," she said, and Matt couldn't tell if she was addressing the little girl or him. "We're punctual in these parts."
Orfamay Vetch gave Matt one last, penetrating look and then marched off with the rest of the crowd. The girl slipped her hand into his and pulled him toward a side street.
"I'm so glad you're here," she said. "I knew you'd come if I summ – if I prayed hard enough."
"I can't stay," Matt said. "But thank you. Did she call you Mouse?"
The girl smiled happily at the sound of her name coming from his lips. "My real name is Mary Elizabeth Gilhoolie, but my brother Vern, he's called me Mouse since forever, because I'm little and I can creep around without anyone hearing me. We're going this way."
The road she led him toward ran out of asphalt about six feet from the main street. It was pocked with small, dark, crumbling houses lurking behind rotting picket fences. Between them chicken coops and hog wallows sent clouds of foul dust into the hot air. Matt had grown up in one of the Northwest's dying lumber towns, but he'd never seen any place that looked as poor and miserable as this.
"You prayed for me to come," Matt said, giving into the questions that had been pounding at his brain. "How did you know my name?"
"I dreamed it," she said proudly. "You came to me riding that motorcycle and told me your name was Matt and that you were coming to save us."
Again, Matt flashed on that Frazetta image of himself as King Conan. He tried to laugh it out of his head, but it wouldn't go. Maybe he had been brought back to be some kind of hero.
"Do you often have dreams like that?" Matt said.
"The Book tells me how –" she broke off again.
"The Book?"
"The Good Book," Mouse said quickly, a flush coming to her cheeks. "That's what my mother used to call the Bible. It tells me how to pray."
There was a quaver in her voice, and Matt thought she was hiding something. But it didn't seem worth calling her a liar simply to discover the deepest secrets of an eleven-year-old girl. If he'd known how many deaths he might have prevented if he'd pushed her, no doubt he would have. There was something else she'd said that seemed more important at the moment.
"You say she used to call it the Good Book," Matt said. "Is she …?"
"Dead," Mouse said. "Pa, too. My brother Vern looks after me now. He's the leader of all the Gilhoolies. Hoggninses, too."
"I'm sorry about your parents," Matt said. "Was it Joan?"
"Before Joan came," Mouse said. "That was why I –"
A scream came from behind one of the houses. It was filled with pain and terror. And then it stopped, drowned in a bubbling of blood.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Matt froze, looking for the source of the cry.
"Over there!" Mouse pointed at a small shack on the left side of the road.
Matt ran toward the shack, not noticing that the pain in his ankle had all but disappeared, his cracked ribs seemed to have knit back together. All he could think about was that scream, and what it could mean.
When he got to the far side of the shack, what he saw was worse than anything he could have imagined.
There was blood everywhere, an inch deep even as it soaked into the dry ground. Two men lay on the ground, covered in gore, each with a hand on the other's throat. Their free hands were outstretched as if they were begging not to be killed, and at first Matt thought they had both died this way.
Then he saw them move, and realized they were struggling in the mud and blood. Fighting to reach the machete that lay just out of their reach.
Matt vaulted over a decaying split rail fence, then took three long steps and brought his foot down on the machete just as one of the men reached its handle.
"What the hell do you think –" the man grunted. And then he stopped as he looked up and saw Matt standing over him. His hand fell away from the knife, and then slowly he rolled away from the other man. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was you."
Matt didn't know why that should make a difference. Maybe the slayer of Joan was entitled to some respect in this town. Then he realized he was still carrying the axe. It fit so comfortably in his hand he'd forgotten he'd been holding it the entire time. So it was possible that it was simply a matter of the axe in the hand outweighing the machete on the ground. Whatever the reason, the two men had stopped trying to kill each other.
For the moment.
"Get to your feet," Matt said, then turned to the other one. "You, too."
Both men rose. Matt couldn't tell if they'd been among the ones he met on Main Street. Blood obscured their features and covered their clothes. They stared down at their feet like schoolchildren waiting for a scolding.
Matt tried to figure out what he was supposed to do here. If he was King Conan, he supposed he would just cut both their heads off. That didn't have a lot of appeal for him.
Before the silence had dragged on long enough so that that even these two would realize Matt had no idea what he was doing, Mouse ran up beside him. She gave the two men a quick, dismissive glance, then ducked around them to where a mound of bloody flesh lay on the ground.
"That's Sweetpie," she said accusingly. "Which one of you two did this?"
Mouse kneeled in the blood and gently stroked what Matt could now make out as the head of a large pig. The animal was dead, its throat slit and its body hacked to shreds, apparently with the bloody machete that still stuck out of one wound. Astonishingly, there were still a few dribbles of blood oozing out of the body, despite the flood that covered its sty.
"It was this murdering bastard," the first man said. "Alwyn Hoggins came running in here waving that blade over his head like a madman and killed my poor Sweetpie, and her getting ready to breed again in the Spring."
"Your poor Sweetpie is the only murderer here," said the other one, whom Matt now realized he had met in the line-up with a cluster of other Hogginses. "You Vetches think you own this town and everyone in it. But that doesn't give you the right to let your pigs run free in my chicken coop. Killed eight of my best layers and chased off three more. I told you last time what would happen if that beast got into my hens, and I meant it."
"My Sweetpie wouldn't hurt your damn hens. Just because you can't string chicken wire tight enough to keep out the foxes, you've got to blame your problems on me."
"You're so sure of that, Ezekiel Vetch, then let's cut open that fat sow's belly and see what we got in there," Alwyn said.
"Sure thing," Vetch said. "Right after we cut open yours. You don't have that bitch protecting you anymore."
Ezekiel Vetch dived down to the bloody ground and grabbed for the machete. Matt stepped back, then kicked him hard on the chin. Vetch rolled over, clutching his head. Hoggins jumped on his enemy, flipped him over, and pressed his head down in the blood.
"He's killing him," Mouse squealed. "You've got to do something."
Matt raised the axe over his head and –
"You can't kill them," Mouse said so quickly and frantically that Matt could barely make out the words. "That's not why I summoned you here. You can't do that. You can't."
– brought it down on a galvanized water pan, splitting it in half and letting out a ringing noise so loud it could have been heard at the highway.
The two men broke apart, staring up at him.
"Next time it hits flesh and bone," Matt said. "You understand?"
"Yes, sir," Ezekiel Vetch said.
"You bet," Alwyn Hoggins said.
"Now get up!" Matt had to repress an urge to laugh. He'd seen himself as King Conan, but he sounded more like a kindergarten teacher. In a sane world, both of these men would tell him to fuck himself, and do to him what Hoggins had done to the pig if he r
efused. But this must not have been a sane world, because both men were getting sheepishly to their feet.
What was he supposed to do now? If he walked away again, the two men were going to start trying to kill each other again. Not that he could bring himself to care all that much about either of them. But Mouse did seem concerned, even frantic. He thought back to when he was ten years old and had gotten into a fistfight with his best friend, Eli Messenger. His father had caught them, pulled them apart, and then made them apologize and shake hands, after which the boys went back and finished the Monopoly game that had started the fight. Trouble was, Matt suspected that neither of the two farmers had the maturity and wisdom that he and Eli had possessed before puberty.
There was a tugging at his sleeve. He bent down so Mouse could whisper in his ear. "You've got to settle this," she said.
"Why me?" Matt said. "They're not going to listen to me."
"There's no one else," Mouse said. "If you walk away, they're going to kill each other. You can't let that happen."
Matt suspected that whatever he did, that eventuality would occur sooner or later. But at least he could try to put it off for a little while. He cleared his throat, stalling for time as he tried to figure out how to end this quickly and without any human blood being spilled.
"Alwyn Hoggins," he said.
"Yes, sir." Hoggins actually straightened his back and threw out his shoulders when Matt said his name, as if it was his drill inspector talking to him.
Or royalty.
"You admit that you killed this pig belonging to Ezekiel Vetch?" The words coming out of his mouth were oddly formal, but that seemed to be what both men expected.
"She was killing my chickens," Hoggins whined. "And I warned him and I warned him but he –"
"Quiet!" Matt roared.
Hoggins' mouth snapped shut in mid-complaint.