Anthony wasn’t sure that he wanted to go through the hassle of a trial, though, especially not in a town where most of the jurors had probably been friends of the murder victim. That could get him tossed into a hardnosed Southern prison or slapped with the death penalty. For a couple of days now, Anthony had been considering the possibility of escape. The Tucker’s Mill jail was a security joke with only one man guarding the place per shift. He was sure that he would have no problem breaking out and vanishing into the rural wilderness. He had connections as close as Atlanta who could furnish him with a new identity and the credentials to go with it, including credit cards and a passport. Within twenty-four hours, he could be on a plane to Jamaica, with European associates wiring him funds from the Stoogeone family bank accounts in Zurich. Then he could relax by the oceanside and stop worrying about some penny-ante murder charge in Hicksville, USA.
He decided to snooze for a couple of hours and then try his hand at the lock around midnight. By then Deputy Dawg would be snoring up a storm in the outer office.
As Anthony stretched out on the bunk and fell asleep, he neglected to notice a tiny stirring in the shadows of the far corner. A black widow spider squeezed through a crack in the cinderblock wall, then descended to the floor on a thread of equally black silk.
The spider climbed the uneven terrain of the discarded magazines, then stopped its journey at the copy of Famous Monsters.
Its multitude of tiny black eyes studied the front cover, as if committing every gruesome detail to memory.
In his dark dream, Anthony heard the distinctive sound of crackling. As the noise grew in intensity, he broke away from the disturbing nightmare and sat up in bed, covered with the clammy sweat of uncompromising fear.
“Damn!” he growled. He listened cautiously in the half-darkness of the jail cell, but heard nothing except his labored breathing. “Stop being so freaking paranoid, Tony!”
He was getting up to examine the lock on the cell door when he heard movement in the far corner.
Someone was standing there in the shadows, his back against the junction of the two walls. The light from the sixty-watt bulb in the outer hallway shone through the thick bars, decorating half the cell in pale slashes of illumination, the other in murky darkness. He peered at the gaunt figure and stood up threateningly, bunching his huge hands into hard fists.
“Who the hell is it?” he demanded. “Come out here and show yourself!”
The night visitor took him up on his invitation and stepped into the light.
It was the Frankenstein monster. Black clothing hung on the creature’s cadaverous body, dark and shiny like velvet. The shoes it wore were cumbersome and weighted at the soles, just like in the old Universal flicks. The gray face was Karloff’s sunken visage, complete with hideous scars and steel bolts through the neck. But the worst feature of all were the eyes. They were blank, ebony orbs that stared out from beneath the jutting brow like those of a great white shark.
“Is that you, Deputy?” asked Anthony, his anger beginning to bleed into desperation. “Did you dig that old monster mask out of your junk at home and decide to put a little scare into me? If that’s the case, then I’m going to bust you up real good!”
The monster merely stared at him with those dark eyes, then displayed that creepy, sadistic grin that had lent an element of dangerous dementia to Karloff’s frightening portrayal.
Anthony knew then that it wasn’t Peck playing a joke on him. Neither was it one of the deputy’s redneck friends. No, the thing that confronted him had to be the lingering remnant of his nightmare. Or else something that he didn’t want to even consider at the moment.
“Well, what are you waiting for, hotshot?” goaded Anthony, trying to quell his fear with bravado. “If you want a piece of me, come and get it!”
The monster moved toward him, but it wasn’t the stiff-legged shuffle of Karloff. It was a fluid, confident walk, much like Anthony’s own. The arms, however, stretched out in the traditional Frankenstein attack. Anthony found himself laughing despite his fear. He had seen enough of the movies to know that the monster always grabbed his victims by the throat and strangled them to death. Such a single-minded offensive would not work on a trained fighter like Anthony Stoogeone, though. He assumed a standard Tae Kwon Do stance: feet spread apart, body easily balanced, the left arm thrust out for blocking, while the right was positioned in an inverted fist at his hip, ready to strike with the speed and accuracy of a king cobra.
“Come on, Frankie!” he taunted. “Come on, you zombie reject! Give me your best shot!”
The monster continued his steady approach. His thin lips curled into a sneer, revealing crooked, gray teeth. “Screw you,” he said.
Anthony was a little taken back by what he heard. “What did you say?”
“Screw you,” repeated the monster, and this time, Stoogeone recognized the voice. It was the voice of a defiant old man. The voice of Fletcher Brice.
“Well, screw you, too, big fellow!” Anthony stepped forward, coming within striking range of the dark creature. He delivered a powerful corkscrew punch to the monster’s solar plexus. But he knew that he was in serious trouble the moment his knuckles collided with his adversary’s midsection. The monster’s body was as hard as reinforced concrete. Anthony howled as the bones of his fist disintegrated on impact.
He backed up a few steps, trying to ignore the sickening wave of pain that engulfed the length of his right arm. The monster advanced, pushing Anthony back against the cell wall next to the toilet. “You filthy bastard!” growled Stoogeone. As the attacker moved in, Anthony snapped his knee up into the monster’s groin, intending on crippling him. But again, his judgment was flawed. The creature s testicles were like iron cannonballs. Anthony’s kneecap exploded like a Black Cat firecracker on the Fourth of July.
“Screw you,” rasped the monster in the voice of Brice. His stitched hands stretched out, the bony fingers grasping for Anthony’s eyes.
Stoogeone knew then who the monster really was. It was the thing in the cabin, the thing that had slaughtered Frank and Joseph, and afterward had gone barreling down the mountain road with their bodies dangling from its horns. And now here it was, in the locked jail cell with him, hungry for revenge. Anthony stared into those thick, black eyes and knew that he was doomed.
“Screw you,” the monster said again, then plunged his gray thumbs into the man’s eye sockets, gouging out his eyeballs with such force that they shot across the cell and bounced on the mattress of the bunk like bloody ping pong balls.
“Damn you, you son of a bitch!” wailed Anthony. He struck out blindly with his left arm and felt it shatter in a dozen different places.
“Screw you!” rumbled the monster, like some crazed machine out of control. “Screw you, screw you, screw you!”
Anthony felt the dark creature take both his useless arms in its destructive hands and begin to twist, slowly at first, then with increasing fervor. The monster was putting its repetitive threat into action. It was screwing him. Or rather, unscrewing him.
Anthony Stoogeone began to scream shrilly as his arms were wrenched from their sockets. His ears were the last part of his anatomy to leave him, and until then, all he could do was listen to his own agonized cries and the cruel laughter of the Dark’Un.
Gart Mayo was tossing and turning in his sleep, dreaming of man-eating locomotives with gnashing teeth of iron, when the first of the screams awoke him. He sat up, listening to the piercing horror of those awful shrieks, then came out of his bed in a flash. He didn’t waste time dressing. He buckled his gun belt around his long-handle underwear, put on his hat, and ran into the hallway.
“‘What in tarnation is going on over there, Gart?” Miss Mable was leaving her bedroom, shrugging on a housecoat and feeding shells into a Remington twelve-gauge at the same time.
“I don’t know, but it sounds like all hell is busting loose over yonder,” he told her, knowing that it would do no good to suggest that she stay put
. “Maybe that Smith fella has done gone and escaped. If that’s happened, then it must be Homer who’s caterwauling like that!”
By the time they got downstairs, the phone was ringing off the wall. Gart answered it before Miss Mable could. “Hello?”
“Sheriff, this is Homer,” blurted the voice of his deputy. “You’ve gotta get over here fast. Something terrible is happening to Smith!”
“What is it? Is he having some kinda seizure?”
Homer sounded as if he was scared half out of his wits. “Something’s in the cell with him…and it’s tearing him apart!”
Gart hung up the phone and hit the front door running, followed by Miss Mable. As they reached the main street, Glen Tucker was coming out of the general store, carrying a Winchester rifle. “What’s happening, Gart?”
“Homer says our new prisoner has some company in his cell. And from the sound of it, it must be unwelcomed company.”
The three burst through the courthouse entrance and ran to the back of the building where the police station was located. Homer was waiting there beside the door, clutching his service revolver in his hand. He looked as if he was about to faint. “It’s killing him, Sheriff! I looked in there and it’s ripping him plumb apart!”
“What’s in there, Homer?” asked Gart as he marched across the office to the security door.
Homer opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. “You’d think I was crazy if I told you,” he said, joining his superior.
“Then I’ll have to see for myself.” Gart glanced at the landlady and the storekeeper as he unlocked the steel door with his key. “You two stay here.”
“Like hell we will!” declared Miss Mable. She jacked a shell into her scattergun and jutted her jaw at the sheriff. Glen swallowed dryly and worked the lever of his .30-30.
“Okay,” grumbled Gart in irritation. “But let me and Homer do the shooting, if need be.”
The screaming had stopped by the time they stepped through the door. Silence filled the cellblock, except for a small noise like the crackling of static electricity. By the time they reached the cell, that too had faded into nothing.
“Sweet Jesus!” wailed Homer Lee Peck. He took one look in the cell and passed out, nearly bowling over Miss Mable and Glen Tucker with his massive frame. His revolver dropped from his hand and clattered across the concrete floor.
“What is it, Gart?” asked Mable. She hung back, seeming to have lost her usual spunk in the wake of Homer’s collapse.
“Look away!” gasped the sheriff of Tucker’s Mill. “If you value your sanity, just look away!”
But despite his own advice, Gart Mayo found that he could do nothing but stare at the slaughter in the cell. The suspected murderer named Smith was on the floor…and on the walls and on the ceiling. His gore streaked the cinderblocks, while scraps of his flesh littered the floor and clung to the heavy iron bars. Smith’s severed head bobbed in the toilet bowl, his eyes completely gone and his mouth stretched taunt in a rictus of horror and agony.
Although he didn’t want to, Gart found the nerve to unlock the barred door and step inside. Except for the scattered remains of the prisoner, the jail cell was empty.
Then his eyes chanced to settle on a haphazard trail of dislocated bones and eviscerated organs that had been strewn about on the concrete floor. Except that it wasn’t haphazard. The longer Gart looked at it, the more firmly he became convinced that it was something created by a bizarre and depraved logic. He felt the strength drain from his legs and he slumped against the blood-streaked bars in mounting shock as he realized that it was words that he was looking at.
The murderer of Fletcher Brice had been torn asunder and a message had been spelled out in the pieces of his anatomy.
Or more precisely, a warning:
LEAVE US ALONE!
PART TWO
INVASION
IN
PROGRESS
Chapter Fourteen
Jenny Brice drove her red MG convertible down the scenic highway that stretched between the city of Knoxville and the hamlet of Tucker’s Mill. It was a beautiful spring day, a day brilliant with lush greens and the rainbow colors of wildflowers growing along the borders of the two-lane blacktop. The mountains rose majestically to the east, thick with pine, oak, and maple. Above them yawned a vast blue sky with a scattering of fleecy white clouds. The air was warm and fragrant and clean, absent of the stench of automobile exhaust and Mississippi River garbage barges that the woman had grown accustomed to during her five years in Memphis.
But Jenny could find no pleasure in such a perfect day. She could find no solace in the glory of the bright Tennessee morning. Witnessing the grandeur of nature only dredged up old memories; memories of similar mornings on Pale Dove Mountain, as well as memories of her father.
She still couldn’t quite believe that he was actually dead. She kept thinking that maybe it was a bad dream, that she would arrive in Tucker’s Mill only to find her father standing there in front of the general store, waiting to give her a big hug and tell her that it had all been a big mistake. But that was only the cruel fantasies of grief playing games with her mind. Her father was dead and she knew she must accept that, as well as the fact that he had not died a natural death. Fletcher Brice had been murdered, and although the sheriff had neglected to say so, she got the impression that it had been a brutal slaying. There was a small amount of satisfaction in the assurance that the man responsible had been caught and jailed, but that didn’t ease the hurt she felt. And it didn’t even begin to heal the wound left by the violent passing of her last remaining parent.
She had to concentrate to keep the car on the road. She had left Memphis only a few hours after her call to Gart Mayo and had driven all night, crossing the state on a lonely journey along Tennessee’s interstate system. She had reached Knoxville at sunrise and stopped long enough for coffee and a bite of breakfast. The engine of the foreign car sputtered a little as she sped up the rise that lay between her and the valley that cradled Tucker’s Mill in its basin. She knew she should have had the car checked out for the long trip, but filling the tank and checking the tire pressure were the only precautions she had taken before leaving.
A moment later she was over the rise and slowing for the thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit that stretched between the town’s city limits. Of course, nothing there had changed. Everything was the same as it had been during her last visit. In fact, everything looked the same as when she was a child. Tucker’s Mill was an everlasting constant in a world of swift and innovative change. The general store still sold the same type of primitive goods it had thirty years ago when Jake Tucker was proprietor, folks still voted by way of handwritten ballot at the town hall each election day, and Nelson Taggard still sat in the front office of the Amoco station, chewing Red Man tobacco and reading Stock Car magazine between fixing flats and doing oil changes. There were still quiltings, bake sales, and gossip sessions among the town ladies, while the men worked stony mountain farmland, went hunting and fishing, and met down at Rebel’s Roost every weekend for a few beers and a friendly game of poker or pool.
Jenny drove past the two churches and the residential section of century-old houses with their picturesque yards of flower gardens and towering shade trees. As she turned into the driveway of Compton’s Boardinghouse, she noticed that there were a number of police cars parked in front of the courthouse. One was a Peremont County patrol car, while the others were the distinctive black and tan cruisers of the Tennessee State Troopers. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on, with uniformed men making trips to and fro, retrieving boxes of equipment and then going back inside the town hall.
She decided to check in at the boardinghouse first, before going to the sheriff’s office. Jenny dreaded talking to Gart and learning all the details that he had avoided giving her over the phone. She also dreaded looking upon the face of her father’s killer, although she knew that it was something she must do, for her own satisfaction. She
wondered how she would react when she confronted the man. Would she cuss him angrily and claw at his eyes through the bars, or would she break down and begin squawling like a baby?
Jenny unfastened her suitcase from the MG’s luggage rack and walked through the rose garden. As she mounted the steps, the screen door opened and Mable Compton stepped out. “Oh, Jenny girl, it’s so good to see you again,” she said, embracing the short blonde. “I’m just sorry it had to be under such terrible circumstances.”
For a long moment, Jenny simply stood there and relished the closeness of the elderly woman. It had been a long time since she had been in the company of a person who genuinely cared for her. She felt like crying right then and there, but didn’t. She swallowed the hot welling of emotion and stepped back, regarding Miss Mable with a sad smile. “Yeah, I’m sorry it had to be like this, too.”
“Have you eaten breakfast yet?” the landlady asked as they went inside. “I can fix you up some ham and eggs if you’d like.”
“I grabbed a bite on my way through Knoxville,” said Jenny. She set the suitcase next to the stairway and then followed the woman into the kitchen. “I wouldn’t mind a cup of your cinnamon coffee, though.”
“Coming right up.” Miss Mable went to the stove and began to brew a fresh pot. “Lordy Mercy, girl, what a time we had last night! You’d never believe what happened to that fella who killed your papa.”
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