Then I remembered the shack—garage, shed, or whatever the heck it was. Eddy nodded. The same thought had struck him. We scampered across the lot, and in less than a minute had a roiling blaze sending up billows of oily black smoke.
"If nobody spots that," Robert said, coming out of his shock, "then they're all blind."
It was pretty dark by now, and the flames lit the side of the building.
There was a shout, and we practically wet our pants as Bib-Overalls came bursting out the door. We pelted across the rutted gravel, skipped over the train tracks, and crashed through alders and scrub willow down the embankment. I last saw Bib-Overalls glaring after us with an animal rage in his eyes.
"If that guy ever catches us," Eddy said, "he'll kill us."
We didn't doubt that for a single minute.
When I got home it was completely dark, and I was hoping I could scoot straight to bed without any explanations. I had things to answer for. I'd lied about where I was going; worse, I'd left the safety of my own front street, and I'd been trespassing, never mind that Eagle Oils had been boarded up for about as long as any of us could remember.
At least my father wasn't in sight. He'd gone to bed to rest up for another demanding day on the sofa. But my mother was there. And after giving me a scolding for coming home late —not too convincing, since she had to do it at a whisper—she kind of softened a little.
"Did you see your mad dog?" she asked me.
I nodded. "Yes."
The following day Eddy emerged from the grocery with a newspaper in his hand—no candy. We were disappointed, but he had a look on his face. A look I'd last seen on him when we'd each paid a dollar to inspect a Sasquatch frozen in a block of ice at the Royal American Shows: amazement, awe, and wonder, all tussling inside him at once.
He held the paper up with the headline showing.
KIDS SAVE YOUNG VICTIM FROM KILLERS
There was a picture of Eagle Oils, and one of the shack belching smoke and flame. Below was an inset of the guy who had been cuffed to the wall, and another of the death's-head who had clobbered him.
"Wow!" Robert and I said together.
"How did they find out about us?" Robert asked.
"They haven't found out anything," Eddy said.
"That Charlie guy saw me," I reminded them. "So did the guy in the overalls."
"That doesn't matter. He doesn't know who you are."
We read the rest of it with our lips moving, and when I was finished I sat back, bewildered. The young man had seen at least two boys, he'd said. And he'd overheard his captors shrieking about a third one. He'd also heard them discussing what they planned to do with him, and had told the cops to take a look under the floor. The authorities had disinterred nine bodies. And they were still digging, the article said.
"We were there," Eddy said. "Corpses all around us."
"I touched one," I said. And felt suddenly queasy. The back of my head ached as if I had rapped it on a joist again.
The mayor wanted the three boys to step forward. He said the police were interested in talking to us, and that we would probably be awarded a citation for bravery. "Cool," Robert breathed, putting his finger under the word. "What is it?"
"Never mind," Eddy said. "What about that last bit?"
"Henry Lingus Malley, of no fixed address," Robert read under the picture of the death's-head, "was remanded by Judge Kohler to the end of the month. He is accused of kidnapping, forcible confinement, murder, and sexual assault. A second man, Joseph Shorki, fled the scene. Shorki faces warrants in North Carolina for desertion from Fort Bragg in 1944." There was a picture of a much younger Shorki with two good eyes.
"So," Eddy said, "anybody want to sashay down to City Hall and claim this whatever-it-is?—sedation? You better realize that the minute our names hit the street we're gonna be on that Shorki guy's hit list. A soldier, for crying out loud."
"He didn't look like a soldier," I said. "He looked like a farmer."
"Don't let the overalls fool you. He deserted years ago. He could be a commando. Or a sniper. Put a bullet through each one of us before we even know what's happening."
"Omigod," Robert mumbled, quivering.
I closed my eyes and felt faint.
"Best thing for us to do is keep our heads down," Eddy said. "Shut our mouths about it. That's the smartest thing."
"What about the sedation?" Robert whispered. We could see in his eyes he really wanted that. Hell. We all wanted it, whatever the heck it was.
Eddy let out a strange barking laugh. "That's something we're gonna have to forget about. We're gonna have to keep our yaps shut and totally forget about being big brave heroes."
Heroes? No, we weren't that. Brave? Not that either. If we had been, we'd have sashayed down to City Hall for our "sedation," Joseph Shorki be damned. But we were decent kids. And I think we were honest. When I said yes to my mother's question about whether or not I had seen a mad dog that night, I don't think I was telling a lie.
So we followed Eddy's advice. We kept our yaps shut. And we continued to keep our yaps shut for the next forty years, leaving the city's gratitude unclaimed. Oh, I'm not saying we didn't allude to it once in a while, or that we didn't discuss it among ourselves—especially later in life, and usually over a beer. Robert confided he'd had nightmares well into his teens. But by and large we kept it at the backs of our minds, only beginning to lighten up when we realized Shorki was getting old enough to be eating pablum off the end of a spatula.
And now Robert was telling us he'd spotted the aging ogre.
We drove out to the River Glen Home For the Elderly and Infirm in Robert's car. Entering the building, I could see things hadn't improved much since I'd been there last. Major redecorating was long overdue.
"He's changed his name," Robert said. "He goes by Gilbertson now. Which is pretty much what you'd expect, right? That he'd change his name? If he hadn't, they'd have nailed him years ago."
"He'd need some fake ID," I pointed out, but Robert only sniffed in reproach. And, of course, I realized it would have been relatively easy for Shorki to assume the identity of one of his victims. If not somebody from Easton then from some other place. God alone knew what trail of mayhem stretched behind such a man.
The place was cold. There were only a few scattered visitors. Elderly men and women in bathrobes wandered aimlessly in the halls. We followed Robert into one of the older wings, and peered through an open door into room number 8. There was nobody in it. And it was devoid of personal effects.
"This is where I saw him," Robert said. "Glanced in the door, and there he was."
"Maybe he died," Eddy said, putting his head inside and sniffing the air as if death might have left a telltale scent. There was a scent, all right. Of disinfectant and urine. But the walls were bare—no books, no ornaments, no fading photos of happier times.
Then Robert stiffened. "This is him," he whispered, and we stood back against the wall as one of the staff guided a decrepit husk of a man past us into the room where we stood. We stared at the guy as he shuffled past, and I for one knew right away it was Shorki. He had dropped forty pounds and aged a hundred years, but it was him, no question about it. His drooping eye was now closed completely. His once pudgy cheeks had collapsed. He wore a cotton nightdress, and dragged an IV pole with one liver-spotted claw. The pole had a wheel that chirped and wobbled, and he walked with careful, hesitant steps.
The aide studied us suspiciously, and I saw fatigue in her eyes. "Are you visitors for Mr. Gilbertson? Yes? Well, just wait a moment while I get him settled." With her bare, brawny arms, she practically dragged the old killer into the room. "Visitors, Mr. Gilbertson," she snapped. "Make sure you behave yourself."
She dumped him in an ugly, plastic-covered recliner, waved us into the room, and strode away.
We were alone.
Alone with the monster.
Shorki's feet didn't quite reach the floor, and his hairless shins were bruised. His nightshirt had sn
agged on one arm of the chair, pulling up to reveal a blue-veined thigh and a diaper that needed changing. His one eye stayed open—staring at us, through us, past us—perhaps he wasn't aware of us at all.
I wondered if his gaze wasn't so empty after all. I could convince myself without much effort that his glassy orb was fully fixed on me. After all, I was the one he'd seen face-to-face that day, except for a fleeting glimpse of Eddy. So what was he thinking? Had something clicked in that murderous old mind? Had he made the connection?
I scowled at him.
We trouped back along the halls to the exit and Robert's car. We hadn't said one word to the old horror. Eddy climbed into the back, propping his duffle-coated elbows on his knees, while I sat up front with Robert. None of us spoke. Instead of heading back to the restaurant, Robert drove us up the road to the top of the city dump. I still called it that, we all did, but it wasn't officially a dump anymore. It was a park now, Overlook Park, though there wasn't a soul to be seen anywhere.
Robert snugged the car up tight to the guardrail, giving us a view down the slope to where Eagle Oils had once stood. The building had long since been demolished and carted away, and in its place there now stretched a clutch of pastel-shaded, low-rental apartment buildings.
Eddy cleared his throat. "The old bastard looked terrible."
"Did you see that diaper?" Robert shook his head in disgust.
"I wonder if he knew us," I muttered. "For a moment there . . ." But it was ridiculous. The old man scarcely knew himself.
"What we have to do now," Robert said, "is visit the cops. Turn the bloodthirsty monster in."
"Past time too," Eddy said.
"Long past time," I agreed.
We continued to gaze down the hill. Not only had Eagle Oils been obliterated, but even the train tracks had been removed. Things that had once seemed so permanent, gone. Soon we would be gone as well. Hell, we were each of us pushing seventy.
"If I end up in a place like that," Robert said, "shoot me. I'm serious. Pull the plug on me. Promise me that."
"We'll do it," Eddy replied, "if we can walk the length of ourselves."
We thought about that chilling prospect awhile.
"We'll have another meeting, and we'll make a decision," Robert said. "We'll decide how we should go about this. Decide which one of us makes the call, or if we should all go visit the cops in a group."
"Sure," Eddy and I agreed.
He started the car. Made three attempts before the engine caught. He took us back down the hill and out to the restaurant, and as we got out of the car, he said:
"So we'll do that then?"
"Yup," we said.
"We're all agreed?"
"Yup."
But we never did.
It was a year or two later that I saw the obituary—under Gilbertson. I called a scramble meeting at Pappy's, and we got together, drank wine, and searched our souls.
We'd missed our chance. Why hadn't we turned him in? Not one of us could say for certain. Was it because he was such a feeble old relic? Or because his sins couldn't be put right again anyway? Or were we safe in the thought that the hellhole he occupied was at least as bad, if not worse, than any prison they'd eventually stick him in?
We couldn't agree, though it was probably all those things.
But I sometimes imagine, when it's late in the evening and the sun is casting long red-orange shadows, that it was something else. That at some primitive, reptilian level, the old monster still scared the living hell out of us.
Copyright © 2012 Jas. R. Petrin
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FICTION
COMING UP FROM CAPE FEAR
CHRIS MUESSIG
We sat in the fantail of Difile's fifty-footer enjoying an excellent single malt and the Diamond Crowns he had handed around. The sun had just set, and the marina was left mostly to quiet parties and sessions like ours.
We had been talking about origins, humble or otherwise according to each man's self-narrative, but had yet to hear from our host.
"I've nothing new to offer in that regard," he said, amidst protests. "But, if you like, I can tell you about another genesis—of the business that made all this possible."
The ruby tip of his cigar underscored the rakish superstructures towering all about us.
"It was 9/11, right?" said a youthful voice.
"No. That was just the proof of the pudding for which we had already positioned ourselves. Actually, it goes back to the original changing of the guard. I don't think I've told the hurricane story, have I?"
He drew deeply on the fine, hand-rolled Dominican and in its sanguine glow began the following tale, which he had no idea was being digitally recorded.
Dale Lassiter was waiting for me at the RDU baggage claim with a black-markered sign. He had misspelled my last name, but his penmanship was good.
He was close to fifty then, less than average height, thickening, and a few years past the hairier headshot in the Raleigh brochure. The damp trench coat he wore was an attempt at atmosphere, I think, spoiled by being unbuttoned to a power combination of blue, pink, red, and gray.
His free hand rested genteelly on a loosely rolled golf umbrella. The smile on that naked, genial face was tentative; his eyes were bouncing around trying to deduce which of the male arrivals might be his visiting fireman. Apparently, he'd not done the simple thing of contacting the home office for a description.
I emerged from the crowd and raised my hand.
He spoke out in a homegrown tenor. "Mr. Difile? I'm . . ."
"Dale. I know. Why don't you call me Rocky."
We shook hands and went over to the carousel.
"I never met a Rocky before. Isn't that a name they preserve for boxers and halfbacks?"
I handed him my card. "It's Anglo for Rocco. And Difile was DiFillippo until it got botched up at Ellis Island."
He compared the pasteboard with his sign and stuffed the latter into a trash bin.
"Oh, right. But don't you have a middle name you could go by? Professionally, I mean."
"My middle name is Cornelius, so I guess I chose the lesser of two evils, didn't I?"
He sensed that it was time to get away from the name game. He asked if I'd been to Raleigh before, and I told him the closest I'd been was Camp Lejeune.
"Jarhead, huh? I got drafted into the Army, but I lucked out and got MP duty at Bragg. How 'bout you?"
"I enlisted, and I guess you'd say I didn't luck out."
My bag was one of the first around. I grabbed it and put it aside.
"You have more luggage?" He was surprised because I was only supposed to be in town for a couple of days, which the one fold-over suitcase should have covered. I pointed at my golf clubs as they pushed through the curtain strips, and watched his face relax. The clubs signaled something less than hard-assed scrutiny, although he looked doubtfully at the rain-spattered windows behind us.
"Rain or shine, I take them wherever I go," I said, playing into his hopes.
"Well, if this weather clears, we ought to get out for a quick nine."
"We'll see. When's our appointment at GlobalSoft?"
"Right after lunch."
Dale insisted on carrying the travel golf bag, and I let him lug it to see if he was in as bad a shape as he looked.
Outside the terminal, the gusts of saturated air felt tropical compared to where I'd come from. I held his umbrella over us both as we walked to the short-term. By the time we reached his sedan, he was changing hands every five steps and breathing with coughlike undertones, but he proved stubborn enough to make it.
The hotel he had put me in rose up into the lowering sky above Hillsborough like an oversized lighthouse. I'm not sure what the chain had been thinking when they built it, but they were stuck with it now. I told him to wait for me in the big glassy lobby while I did my early check-in.
The room was decent an
d offered a great view for someone interested in long-range surveillance or a sniper shot at the government buildings. I tossed my bag on one of the beds, leaned the clubs in a corner, and took out the tiny new cell phone the company had bought me. I called my wife first.
"The Eagle has landed," I said.
"Pounced you mean. How's the local guy? Everything you thought?"
"And more. Or do I mean less?"
"Remember, Rock, no quick judgments—especially down there."
"What else am I good for?" My defiance was wasted, however, for she was chronically bent on changing my impatient and ethnocentric ways.
"And keep an eye on the weather. The tropical storms are backed up like cars on the Expressway."
We talked briefly about back-to-school stuff and the aftermath of the Labor Day shindig and I got off without any more cautions. The next call was to boss number two.
"Hey, Rocky. Got your feet on the ground? I was worried they'd close down the airport."
"Yes, I'm here, and your Mr. Lassiter met me himself. He's a good old boy, isn't he?"
"I know, I know. But when we first set up down there, he was a perfect fit."
"Did you mention this trip to your old man?"
"It did come up. You'll probably hear from him."
"I can't wait."
"What can I say?"
"Tell him to play more golf. Maybe you could introduce him to the shopping channels."
"Careful, you never know when he might be using a wiretap. Anyway, you'll keep me posted, right?"
Dale was lollygagging with a female desk clerk when I got back to the lobby. He parted from her with dramatized regret.
"Did I ask if you had breakfast?" he said. "You can't beat the diner at the Farmer's Market for a kick-ass breakfast."
"I had coffee and croissant courtesy of the airline. That'll hold me. I'd like to see the office."
We had a two-story brick building a block off St. Mary's and not far from the hotel. I could have walked over in a pinch. Were it a calm and sunny day, the office would have lolled in the tranquil shade of the full-grown oaks and maples that agitated now above a rear lot filled with leaf-plastered vehicles. Dale parked in the manager's slot, hospitably leaving me plenty of room to open my door while he struggled out on the driver's side like a contortionist.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 10/01/12 Page 4