Pitch

by William Ollie

  * * *

  Just as Jackie had predicted, the Ritz was packed with damn near every kid in town, as well as a great many adults. All had been waiting for the controversial horror movie to finally make it to Whitley. They’d seen the previews, and heard reports of how other cities had banished the film. Now they would see for themselves what others had been denied. In the front row, where you would have expected to find a group of school kids, Jerry Mays and his cousin Willem sat with some of their friends.

  Candy and cokes and popcorn in hand, the High Street boys took their seats in the middle of the theater, disappointed for not having left earlier so they could have gotten a closer view of Blood Feast.

  Gary Harbus sat directly in front of them, crunching popcorn and slurping loudly on a Coke.

  Junior leaned forward to tap Harbus on the shoulder, but Jackie grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t let him know we’re here,” he whispered. “He won’t shut up the whole time the movie’s on.”

  Junior thought about it for a second or two. Jackie was right, of course, but that didn’t stop Harbus from talking, nonstop. It just stopped him from talking to them.

  Blood Feast was part of a double feature, with The Werewolf of London leading the way. Harbus looked around, delighted by what he saw, a packed theater, a captive audience that wasn’t going anywhere until they had seen Blood Feast. As the first movie opened, showing how the man became the Wolf Man, Harbus started in with the one-liners: “Damn, that boy needs a haircut!” or “How’d ya like to smell that breath?” None of his comments, however, got much more than a mild chuckle. Most received a resounding ‘Shhhh!’, or ‘Quiet’, or ‘Shut the hell up!’ Toward the end, though, Harbus got into a groove, doing everything from a play by play of the Wolf Man’s battles to making a long, loud fart noise when the hero went to kiss the damsel-in-distress.

  Due to the crowd—and the fact that Arnold Stern saw a golden opportunity to make a buck—the regular ten minute intermission was expanded to twenty minutes.

  When everyone returned to their seats, Blood Feast began.

  Harbus made one quick quip, but after the movie’s maniac butchered a woman in a bathtub, even the normally loud-mouthed Harbus sat quietly, stunned, as one after another beautiful woman was butchered and brutally tortured in the bloodiest of fashion.

  Halfway through the movie, a pretty little redhead walked down a dark and deserted sidewalk as the maniac stood in an unlit doorway, watching, waiting. Tension hung in the air like summertime humidity as Harbus lifted his Coke to his lips, his other hand clutching a box of buttered popcorn while Junior grabbed him by the shoulders and screamed, drawing from Harbus a horrified shriek of his own, him and half the audience, as Harbus jumped, spilling Coke all over himself while popcorn flew, and all around him nervous laughter rippled through the audience… But they didn’t laugh very long, because moments after Harbus spilled his drink, the maniac grabbed the pretty little redhead and drove a gigantic butcher knife right through her throat.

  Jimmy sat through The Werewolf of London without any trouble whatsoever, but five minutes after the words Blood Feast rolled across the screen, there was a problem. With each gruesome murder, and every pounding of the tympani drum, Jimmy grew more restless. Eyes wide open, his mouth fixed in a frozen O, Jimmy wondered why the heck he had forced his parents to let him see this horrible movie in the first place. As a blonde-headed woman lay across her bed, bright red blood gushing from her tongue-less mouth, Jimmy jumped up and took off running for the lobby.

  “Jimmy!” Junior called after him.

  “He’s all right,” Jackie said. “He’s just goin’ to the bathroom.”

  “Your brotherly concern is a thing to behold,” E.L. said.

  “Hey, you wanta chase him down, be my guest. If not, shut up and watch the movie,” Jackie said, barely noticing that E.L. had already gone after his brother.

  Billy left the rest room and walked downstairs, surprised to see Jimmy running through the lobby. He hollered, but Jimmy either didn’t hear him, or heard him and refused to stop. It reminded Billy of the way Jimmy had run away from the old man in the pickup. The same way he ran past the ticket booth, whose sole occupant cried out, “I told you!” Jimmy turned his head toward the laughing theater owner, and ran right into a No Parking sign, which sent him stumbling and falling forward, eventually breaking the fall with his outstretched hands, where he stayed for a moment while Billy ran through the lobby and out the door, where he found Jimmy struggling to his feet, his palms bleeding, a hole in the knee of his right pants leg.

  “Where’s the fire, Jimmy?” he said, and Jimmy, his head snapping around, said, “What!... Smart ass.”

  E.L. walked up just as Billy was putting an arm around Jimmy’s shoulders, asking the younger child if he was all right.

  “I just couldn’t take no more of that blood,” Jimmy said. Then, bending over and rubbing a hand across the hole in his pants, “Mom’s gonna kill me. She told me not to go, and now look at me.”

  E.L. smiled. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “Just sneak on back to your room and change. We’ll get you another pair tomorrow.”

  “Really?”

  “No problem. Huh, Billy?”

  “Yeah, sure, no problem,” Billy said, as he stood behind Jimmy pulling out his empty pants pockets, looking at E.L. as if he were crazy.

  “You all right, little buddy?” E.L. said.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “C’mon, then. Let’s go watch the end of Blood Feast.”

  The three friends returned to their seats just in time to see the maniac get crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck, virtually every person in the theater clapping and cheering and stomping their feet as blood ran in dark red rivulets down the back of the compactor.

  On the way home, Billy lowered his voice to a whisper, asking E.L. if he had the money to replace Jimmy’s pants.

  “I don’t, but”—He nodded at Jackie.—“I know somebody who does.”

  “Shoot, you won’t get nothin’ out of that cheapskate.”

  “Sure I will,” E.L. said, then, “Hey Jackie.”

  Jackie turned. “What?” he said.

  “Come here a minute.”

  In a low voice, so Jimmy wouldn’t hear, E.L. said, “You’re gonna have to come off some of that money so Jimmy won’t get in trouble.”

  Jackie gave him a look that said, bullshit! But whispered, “We’ll talk about it later.” And they did talk about it later, Jackie hemming and hawing and raising all kinds of hell, but giving in when E.L. threatened to tell Jimmy about Jackie’s hundred dollar windfall.

  * * *

  Nathan turned the siren off as he crossed the bridge into Bethel’s Holler, leaving only the bubble light swirling as he raced down the dusty road. Minutes later he pulled into the dirt driveway, climbed out of the car and ran up the stairs to the porch.

  Lights were on in the living room as Nathan stood silent on the hardwood floor.

  Maybe this is some sick son of a bitch’s idea of a joke, he thought. Maybe he’s all right.

  But the caller had recited the note word for word, and he knew this was no joke, and that nothing would ever be right again.

  Nathan opened the door to find his father lying in a sticky pool of red, his throat torn wide open, two sets of bloody footprints tracking across the floor, the blood-spattered wall dented where a beer bottle had been thrown against it. Shattered glass littered his father’s body, small shards of which sparkled in the overhead light. The lamp and table beside his father’s easy chair was overturned, the lamp lying in pieces on the floor, the shade crushed, a wide crack running lengthwise on the radio that sat beside it.

  He walked over to the bloody wall, releasing a gut-wrenching scream of anguish as he punched a hole through the sheetrock. Then he punched three more holes into the wall.

  Nathan looked down at his father.

  His knees grew weak, and he flopped onto the couch, picked up the tel
ephone and dialed the one person in the world he thought could help him—Donnie Belcher, who picked up the telephone on the third ring.

  “I need you, Cuz,” Nathan said, his voice quivering with every word.

  “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  “Somebody killed Daddy. I’m at his house. He’s lyin’ over there on the floor. There’s blood everywhere.”

  “I’m leaving now, right now. Listen up, Nathan,” Donnie said. “Get out of there. Wait for me on the porch, or sit in your car, but get your ass out of that house.”

  When Donnie got to Bethel’s Holler, Nathan was sitting in his car with his feet on the ground, his face buried in his hands. Donnie walked over and placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder, and asked if he was all right, but Nathan just sat there. He left Nathan and entered the house, freezing and cupping a hand over his mouth when he saw Lester’s body on the floor, the sight of which set the room to tilting, spinning as he leaned back against the wall.

  “God help us,” he said, and then began to look around for the telephone.

  “Oh, no,” Norval said, when he heard the news. “Donnie, Sharon’s been calling over here looking for Nathan. A little while after he hauled ass out of the hospital, Johnny called me. I called her over at Johnny’s to see if she might know what was going on. She got Thelma’s sister to take her home, and she’s been calling ever since. Her and Myrtle are over there waiting for Nathan to get in touch with them.”

  “Jesus. I’ll call her as soon as I hang up. Look… Norval. Nathan’s shook up pretty bad. I think he’s gone into shock or something. Why don’t you get Charlie Butcher to come on out here and get Lester’s body. Then call Doc Fletcher and tell him I’m bringing Nathan over.”

  Donnie called Sharon and explained what had happened, and told her to keep Myrtle there. After checking on Nathan, he walked fifty yards to the nearest house. The house he had grown up in. The house his sister and mother still lived in. He told them Lester had been murdered, and asked if either of them had seen or heard anything unusual coming from Lester’s house.

  They hadn’t.

  ‘Just another Friday night,’ they said.

  Donnie hugged his mother and sister, and left. On his way to Doc Fletcher’s, he tried to engage Nathan in conversation, to start him thinking about what they should do next. But Nathan didn’t respond. He sat motionless in the passenger seat, staring out the window, much like Reverend Carlton Stone had done thirty-nine years before him.

  Norval

  Norval walked through the door, shaken by the sheer brutality of what lay before him. He stood for a moment, taking in the entire scene, and then pulled a pen and a small pad from his pocket and began taking notes on what he found:

  #1- Lester’s throat has been slit with a razor-sharp knife.

  #2- Ribs greatly traumatized due to somebody stomping and/or kicking them. (Footprints were evident on the shirt and also imprinted on the chest.)

  #3- Two perpetrators.

  #4- No sign of forcible entry.

  Norval looked high and low, and kept on taking notes, all the way up to #15, but was no closer to solving the crime now than when he’d left the police station. When Ezra Butcher and his brother arrived to take Lester’s body, Norval sat on the couch and waited for them to finish. After they left, Norval carried on with his investigation, noting the bloody print on the refrigerator, the footprints on the floor. Then he went back to the living room and sat on the couch, wondering if there was anything he could’ve missed. He sat there, eyes sweeping the room like they once had as a child playing I Spy with his cousins, until he caught a glimmer of light reflecting off something under the easy chair. Norval got down on his knees, pushed back the chair and found a small battery-powered tape recorder lying beneath it. He didn’t know if it was Lester’s or something the killers had left behind, but he damn sure aimed to find out.

  He rewound the tape and pushed the play button, listening as the shocking murder and boastful confessions of horrors past filled the room. When it finished, he went back into the kitchen. This time he took out a beer, and drank it down in three long gulps. He didn’t know what to do. Nathan was in a state of shock. Out of it. Larry Dale was laid up in the hospital, closer to dying than he was to living. That left him and Johnny.

  Norval grabbed the recorder and walked out to the patrol car, feeling more alive than he’d ever felt before. He’d always wanted a chance at that child stealer, and now, after only a forty-five minute investigation, he not only knew who the child stealer was, he also knew who had killed Lester Hayes: John Smith. A.K.A. The Charleston Butcher. A.K.A. Newton Hayes.

  Norval Jenkins drove toward Pitch Place, already seeing his smiling face plastered across the front page of every major newspaper in the country:

  Norval Jenkins

  HERO AT LARGE.

  * * *

  At the side of a house on Dingess Street, a few yards away from a busted streetlight, Pitch looked through a window at an empty dining room. To his right, he could almost see into the living room. Almost, but not quite.

  Swiftly, silently, Newton Hayes surveyed the two back bedrooms, and found a young black woman sleeping in the right corner room. In the larger bedroom, next to a crib, another woman lay snoring beneath her bedcovers. Newton walked to the side of the house, and found Pitch standing on his tiptoes, peering into the bathroom window.

  “I’ve found them,” Newton whispered. “C’mon.”

  Pitch followed him to the rear of the house, up the stairs and onto the porch, where they stopped while Newton ran his fake driver’s license between the lock and the doorjamb. Moments later, the door swung open and they walked inside, through the kitchen and down the hallway.

  “Where is he?” Pitch said, and Newton nodded to his left.

  “Wait here,” Pitch whispered, and then slipped into the bedroom, to the snoring young woman’s side. He took out a bottle Doc Fletcher had given him and soaked a thick rag with chloroform, forced the rag over her nose and mouth and put his hand around her throat, squeezing and grinning until the struggling woman slipped into unconsciousness. Then he kissed her on the cheek and walked into the hall, and followed Newton to the room, where mother and child were sleeping peacefully. They advanced on her, Pitch on one side, Newton on the other, Pitch soaking the rag and cramming it into her mouth, over her nose as she jerked awake and Newton grabbed her arms, pinning them to her side, until she finally stopped struggling, and her eyes fluttered shut.

  “Now for you, my sweet little friend,” Pitch said. Then he picked up little Johnny Porter and wrapped him in his blanket, and he and the child led Newton to the front door.

  On the way to the old Ford, Newton said, “I still don’t see why we didn’t just kill them.”

  Clutching the baby to his chest, Pitch handed Newton the keys.

  Then the engine rumbled to life and a horrifyingly shrill scream shattered the night, followed quickly by, “MY BABYYYY!”

  Pitch smiled. “That’s why,” he said, chuckling as Newton pulled away from the curb.

  * * *

  Norval had put in ten years on the job without so much as pulling his side arm. Now he was eager to see some action. His heart rate soared as he thought about the hero’s welcome the townsfolk would bestow upon him when these sons of bitches were brought to justice. How old is this prick? he wondered, oblivious to any traffic that might be out roaming the roads this late at night.

  At the red light, waiting to enter the Main Street Bridge, Norval wondered what exactly had happened back in ‘42, how somebody could go off like that, only twelve years old, and then turn into some kind of mass murderer. And then come back twenty-six years later to murder his own father. And this Pitch guy, who was he? What did he mean when he said he forced the Indians to leave Ward Rock? And he made who, some preacher, kill his own wife? Says he told Barney to rob the bank and Billy to shoot Larry Dale? That motherfucker’s crazy. Or what, some kind of hoodoo man?

  I’ll hoodoo
his ass for him.

  An old Ford pickup turned in front of him. The light changed and Norval followed them up the old mountain road. When they turned into the long, winding driveway to Pitch Place, Norval kept going, until he reached the summit of Seeker’s Mountain, where he executed a three-point-turn and headed back the way he’d come.

  Moments later he turned onto the access road, stopped and shut off his lights, clicking off the two-way radio on his way up the hill. At the top of the hill he cut the engine, and even though he knew it was fully loaded and ready for use, Norval checked his pistol anyway. He wasn’t about to take any chances, not after what he’d seen tonight.

  Thick clouds obscured the half moon as Norval walked the tree line, making his way closer to the house. In the shadows, eyes sweeping back and forth, he focused on the open garage door. No sound came from the garage, no sign of movement inside it.

  He forged ahead, out of the tree line and across the huge, open field, into the dark gaping mouth of the garage, pistol drawn, his heart pounding in the darkness, sweat beading along his brow as he walked quietly across the garage, past the old Ford, past a black Cadillac and a white Ford Fairlane, a four-wheel drive pickup, and of all things, a Volkswagen Beetle. He passed a brand new Corvair, and then found himself three feet away from a door he expected would lead into the house. He stood for a moment while a voice inside his head whispered, Are you ready? Can you do this?