That Thursday night Carl Krause lay in bed in his upstairs room with his hands at his sides and growled, a vibration in his throat, a liquid pulse at the back of his mouth. He hardly knew he was doing it. If Baldo Bonaldo had felt an affinity with vampires, Carl Krause had an affinity with werewolves, though he didn’t realize it. Yet lying in bed remembering Bobby Anderson, he growled. Remembering the fat boy who he’d seen peeking through the basement window, he growled. If asked what he was doing, then he might say, “Thinking,” since thinking for Carl had become like growling. Recalling his quarrel with his wife and how he slapped her, he growled.
It seems odd he should feel so aggrieved, as if Bobby, Baldo, and Harriet were his tormentors, three names on a long list of tormentors. When someone thinks that, it’s often because he feels he can’t explain himself, that others just don’t understand. This wasn’t Carl’s problem. He felt aggrieved because some people existed. Beyond the confines of his second-floor room, he knew those people were talking to one another. And who was the subject of their conversations? Why, it was he: Carl Krause.
If he lay still, he could hear them. At times his hearing was so sharp he could hear them outside on the sidewalk, even down the street. But tonight he heard them downstairs and at times on the stairs themselves as they neared his door: a single squeaking board, a scraping noise. Then Carl would leap from bed, run to the door, and fling it open. But he wasn’t quick enough; they were gone. So he slammed the door to warn them he knew what they were up to and went back to bed to wait. Then he again heard the whisper of voices like the whispering of leaves, and again he growled. The whispering grew, the creaking of the stairs increased, and once more Carl rushed to the door and flung it open.
Did he think how it must sound to his wife and stepchildren downstairs, trying to watch television, and then later in their beds? How they stared at the ceiling in the dark of their rooms? No, never. These days he hardly thought of his wife and stepchildren as people, as human beings; rather, they were emanations flowing from an unknown source. They were the tentacles of some larger creature. To see them was like seeing fingers and imagining the hand, seeing claws and imagining the paw, imagining the coarse, furred arm and powerful shoulder. Oh, Carl knew how it was connected, just like the eyes shifting across the ceiling were connected. He wouldn’t be surprised if the whole town was connected to make a single creature, a single monstrosity. He wasn’t saying it was true; he was only saying he wouldn’t be surprised.
Carl was lucky not to be plagued by doubt. Not always, but almost always. Had he doubted, he would have worried and been fearful. Being certain made him strong. Weakness was what he’d had ten days ago, two weeks ago, last month. He had worried something wasn’t right, like that time in Oswego. He couldn’t concentrate; he wept. He had imagined terrible things had happened. He’d seen a doctor. In that dark time, he lost his certainty. He’d come out of it like a child—weak and worried, depending on others. He had smiled and let them have their way. It was his long exile from himself.
But then the nervousness passed; the babyness, the girl behavior, the silly weeping was gone. He had felt his certainty growing like a fist within him. That’s when he’d moved upstairs. He needed to be by himself in order to think, which meant to growl.
• • •
Each morning as day broke, as long as it wasn’t raining, Steve Tovaldis took his two yellow Labs, Willie and Sophie, down Liberty Lane for a walk, past the small houses and turf farms to the railroad tracks and then along the tracks to the swamp. And each morning the Acela from Boston to New York would roar past and the dogs would bark their heads off. First they had been frightened, but now they liked it and waited for it to happen. The train roared and they barked back. It was a conversation.
Tovaldis liked to walk the dirt road into the swamp sometimes as far as Worden Pond, except in May, when the mosquitoes hatched and were particularly ravenous. The thousands of frogs ate as many as they could, but they just couldn’t keep up. So Tovaldis bought about a gallon of Ben’s Max 100 to keep them off. He slathered the stuff across his entire head, even when wearing a hat, because Tovaldis was as bald as a billiard ball, which let him, as he liked to say, save a fortune on haircuts—$15 every three weeks, $250 a year, $3,000 in twelve years. Just adding up the figures made him want to go out and buy something.
A short ways past the turnoff to the shooting range, Willie and Sophie ran ahead, barking like crazy. Tovaldis ran after them, calling their names. He was afraid they’d spotted a coyote and would chase it into the swamp. Willie had done that once by himself and came back bitten and torn. Tovaldis imagined one single coyote showing itself to lure the dogs into the swamp. Then a whole pack of coyotes would jump them. He knew that was true, but it was hard to convince anybody. On the other hand, when he had moved to Liberty Lane thirty years ago, there had been no coyotes. Then they snuck in. He didn’t even bother owning a cat anymore. The coyotes had killed five of them, either the coyotes or fishers.
The dogs had stopped at a blue Ford Focus parked on the other side of the barrier, though how it got there Tovaldis had no idea, since the barrier was down ninety-nine percent of the time. He slowed to a walk as he called the dogs, then he shouted, “They’re friendly!” Some people were scared of big dogs, but Willie and Sophie wouldn’t hurt a fly. “They won’t bite!” he added.
As he neared the car, Tovaldis saw someone in the front seat. Presumably the man had been asleep, at least until the dogs started their racket. Tovaldis thought those dogs went through life just looking for an opportunity to bark, as if it were their primary occupation. Perhaps the driver had got stuck on the other side of the barrier and had chosen to wait until a ranger showed up in the morning. Personally, Tovaldis had never been able to sleep in a car.
The car was backed against the barrier, a green metal bar extending across the road. Tovaldis stepped carefully around it so as not to step in the mud. “Down!” he shouted. The dogs were jumping up toward the open window. There’d be trouble if they scratched the finish.
His first thought was surprise that anyone could remain asleep with Willie and Sophie making all that noise. They were running around the car, barking their heads off, and the fur stood up on their backs. Then he noticed the rust-colored smiley face on the side window. He could make no sense of it. Tovaldis leaned forward. He saw the man had spilled more of the rust-colored paint all over his nice Hawaiian shirt. He bent down to see better and with surprise he saw the man’s hair was the same color as the stuff on his shirt. No, that wasn’t right. The man had no hair. He’d been scalped.
SIX
WHEN A TERRIBLE CRIME takes place in a small town, it’s a tragedy. When a second takes place, it’s a curse.
Ernest Hartmann’s murder activated many people in many unexpected directions; people who felt sure they knew how their day would play out abruptly found themselves going elsewhere, while hundreds of other plans, hopes, dreams, whatever, were put on hold—all because of Ernest Hartmann. No, that’s not quite true. The scalping had a lot to do with it. The scalping meant no dawdling, no long coffee breaks. More state troopers, police from South Kingstown, park rangers and officers, Indian tribal police, and then the Massachusetts state police and Watertown police—Hartmann lived in Watertown—and Boston police—Hartmann’s office was in Boston—oh, quite a few were set in motion. They were appalled, indignant, angry, businesslike, hardworking, even a little excited. After all, none had been involved with a scalping before.
Then there was the smiley face. During the night the blood had dried and parts had flaked off, but enough remained to make its effect: a circle about six inches across with a big grin and googly eyes. Most killings are crimes of passion or cold calculation. This one seemed like madness. Certainly, it was preferable to see it as madness rather than as calculation, because what sane person would do such a thing?
If one thinks of these police officers as forming a great body, then the journalists formed that body’s shadow. Na
tional networks and cable news sent helicopters. The print journalists came in cars, but they were fast cars. All assumed the scalping and the stolen baby were linked. Being equally outrageous, in the public mind, how could they not be connected? Though no evidence existed to link these crimes, this was no obstacle to flights of fancy about those responsible, fabrications ranging from a single madman to visitors from outer space. And beneath it was fear—for some it was like a tickling in the throat when getting a cold; for others it was a weight deep in the gut. For all, it formed the dread about what might happen next.
Through this Woody Potter and Bobby Anderson hunched their shoulders and plodded along, though five other state police detectives had joined them.
“Hey, boss,” said Bobby, “you seen the CIA sent a team?”
“The fuck you say.”
“Jes’ kiddin’, boss, jes’ kiddin’.”
“Wouldn’t of surprised me any.”
Jean Sawyer at the Brewster Brew had lots of new customers who drank gallons of coffee, ate pounds of pastry, and tipped well. To all who listened she described her conversations with Ernest Hartmann. These took on greater heft with each retelling. “He asked about Wrestling Brewster, our town founder. I told him Wrestling means wrestling with the Devil, which it does. He said he’d seen the Devil’s work in his time and asked if I’d seen the Devil here in Brewster and I said I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s when he started looking scared. He sat drinking coffee for about four hours and looked scareder by the minute. Then his phone call really set him off. When he left, he could hardly walk, he was trembling so much.” There was more. In fact, there was no end to it. Talk like that—it paid the bills.
Often there are too few police officers working on a case; in this instance there were too many, at least in Woody’s opinion. Too many jurisdictions were involved, and at first there was no task force—a word whose weight seems to solve a problem by its very enunciation—to establish a clear chain of command. Woody and Bobby reported directly to the lieutenant in charge of the area detectives unit, but that was only at the start. Because the troopers involved in Brewster and the troopers involved in Great Swamp came from separate barracks, their lieutenants had to coordinate through the District B commander. And there were other local, state, and federal authorities. The result, to Woody’s way of thinking, was a bunch of freelancers, which was a distraction. Five times he went to interview someone to find the man or woman had already been interviewed by the police or press or both. The first time a person says something it’s a statement, the next time it’s an art piece, and to separate the foundational material from filigree was time wasted.
Although these complications were most obvious in the adult world, some trickled down to a smaller one. Students at Bailey Elementary School were expected to be in their seats at seven-thirty sharp. At seven-twenty-five Baldo Bonaldo was still two hundred yards from the old school on the corner of Gaspee and Bucklin. The elms that once lined Gaspee were long gone, but the oaks, with which they’d been replaced, had reached substantial size and supplied the acorns that succeeding classes of students had used to pelt one another and had led succeeding groups of teachers to say, “Why couldn’t they have planted maples?” Hercel McGarty Jr. stood behind one of these oaks.
Baldo was a dawdler, but his customary tardiness had worked its way up his own particular chain of command to acting chief Bonaldo, whose punishments had grown increasingly severe till they rested on the cusp of the physical. As Baldo hurried, he dwelled on a range of possible chastisements. Then Hercel grabbed him by the collar.
Hercel wore jeans and a dark blue hoodie. Baldo wore jeans, a blue-and-red flannel shirt, and a yellow crewneck sweater that his mother had insisted he wear even though it made him look ten pounds bigger.
Baldo fell back to the sidewalk. “Hey, cut that out! I’ll be late!” Then he saw who it was. Hercel stood above him like Godzilla.
There followed a moment when each boy considered his options. Hercel wanted to beat Baldo black and blue, but he didn’t want to hurt him. Still, he had to scare him.
Baldo was more calculating as he pondered his next move. At last he said, “That was a fantastic trick! Can you teach it to me?”
Hercel stepped aside with a sense of being outwitted. He knelt down by the other boy and pushed him back to the ground. “Have you told anyone?”
“Of course not. You never give away the secret of a magic trick. I mean, it’s immoral. Do you think Houdini talked?”
Hercel didn’t know Houdini. “This is serious. You can’t tell anyone.”
“Hercel, you’re my best friend. I’d never talk.”
Hercel narrowed his eyes. At most he had considered Baldo a mild fifth-grade acquaintance. Now friendship was being thrust on him. Still, Hercel understood the terms—friendship was being asked for silence. He didn’t dislike Baldo, but, as has been indicated, he didn’t understand him—all those weird jokes—and so he never thought of him. Baldo had been like an empty place in the air. Now Hercel stretched out his hand to that empty place and helped Baldo to his feet. “We’ll see,” he said.
“I’m late!” shouted Baldo, throwing up his hands, a gesture indicating a scale of punishments beyond comprehension.
“I’m going to visit my snake,” said Hercel. “It’s in the animal shelter.”
The previous evening Baldo’s father had told him about the snake that had terrorized the hospital and who owned it. It made Hercel even more important in Baldo’s eyes. “What about school?”
Hercel shrugged. Compared to snakes, school didn’t mean squat.
“Do you have a bike?” asked Hercel.
Baldo didn’t. His mom had run over it in the driveway and it had to be fixed.
“We’ll take mine.”
Baldo understood that while being late to school was a serious crime, it was nothing compared to missing school entirely. On the other hand, he knew the offer of Hercel’s friendship came with obligations.
“What about that trick with the marbles?”
“Later,” said Hercel, whose bike was lying nearby on the ground.
When Baldo saw that sharing Hercel’s bike meant placing his sneakers on the nubbin-like tips of the rear axle while standing erect and gripping Hercel’s shoulders, he grew doubtful. He had many qualities, but courage was low on the list.
“Do you think I could run along at your side?”
The shelter was across town at the recycling center. Hercel looked at Baldo and didn’t speak.
“Okay,” said Baldo, “I can manage it.” He hoped the terror of balancing on the axle’s nubbins would be offset by the intimacy of clutching Hercel’s shoulders.
They wobbled down Gaspee away from the school. The bike’s spring suspension made them bounce. Baldo was impressed that Hercel could so easily blow off fifth grade considering his stepfather’s temper. Leaning over Hercel’s ear, he described how Carl had chased him down the street yelling threats and how he’d barely escaped.
“Yes,” said Hercel, “he’s like that.” This was said matter-of-factly, then, equally matter-of-factly, he said, “You want to see me ride no hands?”
Before Baldo could say, “Not today, thanks,” Hercel raised his hands from the grips.
There followed a blessed second when gravitational laws were swept aside, then came another and a third, but during the fourth second the bike veered to the right. Baldo vice-gripped Hercel’s shoulder’s so powerfully that Hercel called out, “Hey, that hurts,” and after two more swoops the bike straightened out.
“Maybe I don’t have it down yet. Can you stop squeezing my shoulders?”
Baldo relaxed his grip. “Don’t do it again, okay?”
Hercel didn’t answer. He turned a corner and then another to avoid Water Street, which had become congested with traffic. This wasn’t simply police and journalists, but included thrill seekers who wanted to tell their friends they’d driven through downtown Brewster safely.
After a few mi
nutes, Hercel asked, “What do you think of wormholes?”
Baldo guessed that Hercel wasn’t talking about the worms that robins ate, but ghouls were shot through and through with wormholes, and when it came to ghouls Baldo knew a lot, although they weren’t as interesting as vampires and, indeed, he saw a class distinction between them, since vampires feasted on the living and ghouls preferred their bodies dead. But ghouls, like vampires, were shape-shifters and took the form of hyenas. If Hercel wanted to know about ghouls, Baldo would be an eager teacher.
“Ghouls?” Baldo asked.
The bike swerved.
“Wormholes,” said Hercel, “connect one part of the universe with another part or even with a different universe. They can also be used for time travel. So you could step through a doorway made of exotic matter and end up billions of light-years away. Or, like, you could end up as a different age. I mean, I could walk through a doorway and be ten years older. I can’t decide what I’d like best.”
“Are they real?” Just as Baldo might roam in the gray area between the true and false, so he enjoyed the gray area between the real and unreal. Wormholes might be competitive with ghouls, even vampires.
“Sure, they’re real. They have metrics, like a metric foot or a metric ounce. You use the metrics to work out their space–time geometry, but I don’t know anything about that. Einstein helped discover them; he called them bridges. The only trouble is they’re theoretical. I mean, you can’t just go out and find one. Wouldn’t it be cool to go through a doorway and wind up someplace incredibly far away? And if you didn’t like that place, you could step through the doorway to another place, some new place. I mean, you could do it and do it till you found a place you liked. Wouldn’t that be great?”
“I guess so.” Baldo couldn’t imagine not living in Brewster, despite its limitations.
“Where would you go first?”
“Maybe my grandmother’s. She lives in Narragansett.”
“My dad lives in Oklahoma. I could go there. But then I’d go to the farthest place in the farthest universe, no matter what it was. At least it’d be different.”
The Burn Palace Page 10