Tatterdemon

by Vernon, Steve

  He tilted one stick arm beneath her and yanked her free. She felt bits of herself letting go and shrinking down.

  It was just like old times. There was Vic, just as large as God, and here was Maddy getting smaller by the minute. He shook her like her bones were made of calcium earthquakes.

  “You killed me, didn’t you? You thought you’d get rid of me. Stupid bitch. You ain’t never going to get rid of me. We’re married, damn it. Until death do us part, and then some.”

  He kept on shaking her. He was doing a pretty good job of it, seeing he had no hands and all.

  She tried to break free.

  It was useless.

  He was too goddamn strong.

  “Don’t you know I love you?” Vic roared out.

  He kept on shaking her.

  Then he slammed her against the wall.

  “Love!” he shouted, cracking the side of her face with a hard-swung wrist stump.

  “I - Love - You,” he shouted, punctuating each word with a slap. “Love, you, love, you....”

  He had a hell of a way of showing it.

  “Love, you, love, you...”

  Zigger barked excitedly along.

  Maddy tumbled back down into unconsciousness. She wasn’t sure if she was passing out, falling asleep, or just plain dying.

  “Love, you, love, you...”

  Maybe I’ll wake up dead, was her last remembered thought.

  She wondered if she’d come back like Vic.

  Or what she’d look like if she did.

  * 3 *

  It stank in the station house.

  Wilfred noticed right off.

  It reeked like someone had burned up a dead cat and then farted over the ashes.

  And why in the hell had Wendy Joe turned the filing cabinet to the wall?

  And why had she sealed the filing cabinet up with what looked like two or three rolls worth of duct tape?

  Wilfred moved to check on the filing cabinet but Wendy Joe leaped in his way. There was no other word for it. She leaped, like a mother might leap in front of a car bearing down on her firstborn.

  “Are you happy to see me?” Wilfred asked. “Or not?”

  Wendy Joe swallowed, like he’d caught her without words to say.

  “Is there something wrong?” he continued.

  She shook her head hard.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong at all. You just scared me, is all.”

  “What, you think I was a zombie?” he slid into an East Coast Bela Lugosi. “I’m going to turn you into a zombie.”

  She grinned, like he’d poked her in the ribs with a pool stick and called it tickle. “I just had a rough night, is all,” she replied.

  “Yeah, me too. What the hell is that reek? Has Earl been eating poutine again?”

  “You’d have to ask Clavis,” Wendy Joe said. “It come from his guts.”

  She had a funny look on when she said this.

  “Did he move the filing cabinet, too?” Wilfred asked. “And duct tape it as well?”

  He reached out for the cabinet again.

  “Don’t touch that,” she warned.

  He turned in disbelief.

  “Who the hell do you think you are? M.C. freaking Hammer?”

  “He puked on it, is all. I was trying to walk him around to clear his head when he upchucked. He made a hell of a mess. I sealed it up with the duct tape to keep the files protected. I’ll clean the whole mess up before the day is through.”

  It didn’t smell like any puke Wilfred had ever smelled.

  “Hell, Wendy Joe. I told you never to unlock any of the cells without us around.”

  “It isn’t a cell, Wilfred. It’s a goddamn storage room. Besides, you know that old Clavis wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “He didn’t seem all that harmless waving that hammer yesterday.”

  “So he’s a bad carpenter. It doesn’t make him Hannibal Lector.”

  He supposed she was right. He was being foolish.

  He looked down at the floorboards.

  Hell.

  “Let me try this again.”

  He stepped back outside the door and closed it behind him.

  A moment later stepped back inside.

  “Good morning, Wendy Joe. And what a fine morning it is.”

  She chuckled.

  “Good to see you smiling, girl,” he said, still grinning. “You light the sky up like a Sunday sunrise.”

  “You give yourself a poetry enema this morning?” she asked.

  He grinned and sat down with an audible grunt.

  “Is your leg still paining you?”

  “Only when I use it,” he grunted in reply.

  “I could mix you up a salve, would take the ache right away.”

  He shook his head.

  “Stubborn.”

  “Can’t change, I guess.”

  “Anybody can change.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “It’d sure be nice. To change.”

  “Just got to put your mind to it.”

  He grinned.

  “It’d be nice if you could step back and fix something broke before it got that way. Like my car. If I could just step back and ease my foot off that gas pedal, might save this department a hell of a lot of trouble and money.”

  He was talking about the squad car, but thinking about Emma.

  “Everybody thinks that,” Wendy Joe went on. “The truth is, there isn’t a soul around that hasn’t been painted with some kind of regret. Some wrong turn they’d love to have another crack at.”

  She was talking about Wilfred, and thinking about him too.

  “Take marriage, for instance. It doesn’t take a lot to say 'I do.' But once you say it, you’ve stepped halfway down a long old road, and maybe there’s no way back. A body needs to be sure.”

  She looked right at him.

  “Do you ever think about other women?” she asked, not believing her boldness. “I mean, besides Emma?”

  “Hell. Any man says he don’t is a bald-faced liar. We’re like hounds that way, on the trail and sniffing around. But seeing a rabbit doesn’t mean that it’s hunting season.”

  “Was there ever anyone else?”

  “There’s always someone else,” Wilfred admitted. “There are just too many lonely souls out there, for there not to be. All of them, just hoping for someone to listen to them gripe. For someone to pick you up when you trip over your asshole. To be there for you. Someone who knows you’re more than a badge on two legs.”

  “Does Emma do that for you?”

  She ought to be careful. She was getting awfully close to the truth. Wilfred wasn’t stupid, just tired. To hell with it, maybe it was the right time.

  “Emma did, Emma does just fine,” Wilfred replied. “She puts up with my shit, and I put up with hers. That’s all love really is. Forget about all of those valentine cards. Love is just finding someone who can abide your ways and foolishness. Someone who can put up with your foolishness until you die. Someone to share time with. Someone to talk to. That’s all there is to it. The only trick is making that someone special.”

  He looked away, like he was looking back through a long distance scrapbook.

  “Hell,” he went on. “Emma does that fine.”

  Wendy Joe kept pushing.

  “And you never cheated? You never even thought of it?”

  “Never needed the aggravation, I guess.”

  “Don’t have to be aggravating. It could be fun.”

  Hell, she thought, she might as well be wearing a sandwich board saying ROOM FOR RENT, but Wilfred was too damn tired to notice.

  “My Daddy was the cheatingest man you ever met,” Wilfred explained. “The thing was, he never looked happy about it. He was always thinking up the next lie. He was always wearing that shamed look on his face. He knew it was wrong, but he’d turned down that road so long ago there was nothing he could do but see it on out.”

  Right then she knew she would never reach him.


  Not with a million hoodoo dolls.

  “And you know, I don’t know if Mama ever found out. They died together in that fire. The fireman found them locked in each other’s arms. Daddy was leaned over her, protecting her right to the end. I don’t know if she ever knew about his cheating, or if it ever really mattered to her.”

  Wendy Joe shook her head.

  She knew she was beat, but she kept on trying.

  “Wilfred, you are the most honest man I ever met. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, anything at all, you just give a whistle and I’ll come running.”

  She knew what she was and wasn’t saying, but you never knew what fate might roll down the pipeline.

  You just had to stay open, was all.

  The heaviness was too much for Wilfred.

  He looked around, hoping for a savior.

  So in walked Earl.

  CHAPTER 20

  Blame It on the Moon

  * 1 *

  Earl bounced into the police station, whistling like a hungry robin.

  He threw a bright and cheery good-morning grin at Wilfred and Wendy Joe.

  “Hey,” he said, “was there any more trouble last night? No crucifixions? No car crashes? Are all the pitchforks in their proper places?”

  “A cat howled outside the station door,” Wendy Joe answered. “The damn thing nearly kept me awake half of the night. I would’ve shot the little bastard if the chief would let me carry a gun.”

  Wendy Joe was a part-time volunteer. A gun did not come with her employment package. Besides, guns made her nervous, despite all her tough talk.

  “Isn’t shooting a little extreme for a moonstruck cat?” Wilfred asked.

  “Extreme? The little bastard peed on my moped. You know what that stinks like?”

  Was that the stink?

  Wilfred didn’t think so.

  If that stink came from any cat in town, he’d give Wendy Joe his pistol and go looking for a bigger gun.

  “He probably thought your scooter was a cat toy.”

  “It’s a moped, not a scooter.”

  “There’s a difference?” Earl asked.

  “Scooters are for wimps. Real policewoman ride mopeds.”

  It was an old story, and easily ignored.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Wilfred asked Earl. “The schedule says you got the day off.”

  “Call it voluntary overtime. I’ve been doing a little field work to see if I can come up with some kind of lead on that Mercury. That bastard cost us a squad car, nearly half our fleet, counting the moped. I figure he owes us a little retribution.”

  Wilfred snorted.

  “It wasn’t a squad car. It was just my old T-bird decked out with a siren and lights. Besides, I got dibs on that red-headed bastard. I’ll tell you what. If you want to help, hang around here. Make sure there’s no drive-by shootings or unpaid parking tickets, and I’ll take the Volvo out for that field work.”

  “To hell with that, boss,” Earl replied. “It was your car that got totaled. I got squatter’s rights on the Volvo. Any roadwork gets done today, gets done by me.”

  “It’s your bat and ball and I can’t play? Maybe I should borrow your pickup.”

  “After what you did to the T-bird, you think I’ll give you my pickup?”

  “I’ll commandeer it.”

  “You’ll commandeer my ass. You’re in no shape to be chasing bad guys. Somebody’s got to stay in town, and while you’re all lamed up I figure it ought to be you.”

  Wilfred nodded.

  “Just as well,” Wilfred said. “I’ve got some questions for Clavis. I want to try and figure out if he’s going to be trying that stunt again.”

  “It’s still Easter on the calendar,” Earl noted.

  “Clavis is gone,” Wendy Joe blurted.

  Wilfred turned to face her.

  “What the hell you mean, gone?”

  “After he got sick. He said he needed a doctor, so I let him go to the clinic.”

  “By himself?”

  “Well, I had to stay and mind the telephone.”

  “That telephone might as well be petrified, for all the ringing it does.”

  “It rang twice this weekend,” she said. “You never can tell.”

  “Yeah but...” Wilfred began.

  “Yeah, nothing. I made a decision. What are you going to do, fire me? I let him go, and he didn’t come back.”

  Wilfred sighed.

  “Well, girl, you doubled our workload. Now we got two maniacs to keep an eye out for. I still want to talk to Clavis.”

  “Are you a psychiatrist now, Wilfred?” Earl asked.

  “I am a psychiatrist, I am a bouncer, I am a dog catcher. I’m the fireman, the warden, and the high holy keeper of justice. I am the police chief of a two-man police force in a one-horse town,” he filibustered. “I am God, so long as nobody bigger says anything different.”

  “Well, God, can you tell me why Wendy Joe turned her filing cabinet to the wall?”

  “It needed a time out,” Wilfred said contritely.

  “There’s a mess in there, so don’t touch it,” Wendy Joe warned. “Get back to work, both of you. I got cleaning to do, and you kids are in my way. So shoo!”

  “C’mon, Earl. We best get the hell out of here before momma gets riled,” he said, pushing Earl towards the door. “You be a good girl, Wendy Joe, and I’ll pick you up some cat food for your midnight boyfriend.”

  “Cat food my ass,” Wendy Joe said. “You two get the hell out of here.”

  Outside in the street Wilfred turned to Earl.

  “So what the hell’s got into her? When you asked about that cabinet she jumped like a jerked trout.”

  Earl shrugged.

  “It must be that time of the moon. You know, I thought I smelled blood in that room.”

  Wilfred wondered if that was true.

  Soon enough he would find out.

  * 2 *

  Wendy Joe cried for ten full minutes after Wilfred and Earl left.

  Damn it.

  She didn’t like lying to either of them, especially Wilfred. But what else could she do? The story about Clavis wandering off was the best she could think of. They wouldn’t find him, and she’d be free and clear.

  Free?

  Clear?

  How long would that last?

  She stared at the filing cabinet like a sparrow spellbound by a snake. Clavis was in there. All that was left of him. Filed under C for Clavis, P for Pusser, and T for torso.

  What the hell was she going to do?

  She wished her Momma was here to help her. Her Momma would know what to do, for sure.

  What would Momma do?

  Wait a minute.

  There might be a way, after all.

  * 3 *

  Helliard lay on the floor.

  He couldn’t move. He wasn’t even certain he was breathing. He didn’t know what that thing was doing to Mad Again. He wasn’t even sure about Duane. All he knew was, he was fucked.

  Major mondo big-time fucked.

  The pain eating through his bones was like nothing he’d felt before.

  It must be cancer.

  The fucking haystack boogerman had given him some kind of super apeshit cancer. Helliard could feel the cancer eating his blood and bones like speed on speed. Damn it, it had to be cancer.

  Didn’t it?

  Was this what cancer felt like?

  Was this how Daddy felt?

  Christ. He should have shot Daddy when he had the chance in the hospital. He should have nuked the whole fucking hospital, torched it to the ground. If this was the shitty pain those cancer ward fuckers were feeling, they’d probably kiss his hairy ass for setting them free. They would have nominated his ass for sainthood, just as soon as they dragged their carcasses through the pearly dripping gates of paradise.

  “Hey, fuckhead.”

  Oh shit.

  King haystack was calling to him. Helliard looked as far up
as he could manage, tilting his head a half degree skyward.

  Shit, shit shit – it wasn’t the haystack.

  It was a tattery blue shadow of an old man, hanging onto a steel guitar that looked just like Daddy’s. The tatter shadow grinned, like he was getting set to tell a dirty joke. Then he started to hack and cough out bits of spittle and bluish black crud, then blood that was tinted like antifreeze. The tattery blue shadow-man stared at Wilfred, the blood and sputum spilled over his beard like poorly aimed chewing tobacco.

  “Just thought you’d like to know,” the tatter blue shadow-man said. “Your Daddy is waiting for you in hell, you deballed sack of snailshit.”

  Then the little blue man was gone.

  “Jesus,” Helliard croaked. “Now I’m seeing little blue leprechauns.”

  Damn it, he must be delirious.

  “Jesus,” he repeated, more a prayer than a curse – only Jesus wasn’t listening.

  Helliard let his head drop to the floor. Damn it, dying was a sorry old bitch. The only problem was, he didn’t think he was anywhere close to dying yet.

  Turns out, Helliard was right.

  CHAPTER 21

  Carmen’s Knife

  * 1 *

  Roland kept the pedal shoved down flat-hard to the floorboard, the big engine grunting with satisfaction as he rolled through the long night.

  He boondocked past the weigh-in station, twenty miles back, catching a back road because they were stickier about tonnage in Nova Scotia then they ever were in New Brunswick. He was dragging about five thousand in solid tonnage over what they figured a red pinstriped cab-over Pete ought to haul in these parts, but who the hell cared?

  He sang with the radio to keep himself awake. He sang off-key, but that didn’t bother him. Nothing much bothered him since he left Carmen.

  Damn.

  He touched the wound on his stomach. The wound that she’d left him with. It was scarred over, but it still pained. The doctor had said the pain was all in his mind, but ghost memories hurt real as real, ask any one-legged man.

  Besides, it was more than the knife that had hurt him. It was the way she told him what she thought of him.

  The way she hit him while she was telling him.

  It seemed funny to talk about. A tough guy like Roland, an ex-marine, getting kicked around regularly by his 155-pound wife. No sir, Carmen wasn’t big, but she sure was competitive. She didn’t like coming second to nobody. If Roland threw a towel, she’d throw a brick.