Tatterdemon

by Vernon, Steve

  The radio was turned up way too loud to hear any screaming or gunfire. Besides, she was too busy thinking about that young deputy, with all the passion of her fat, bored romantic soul.

  Earl Toad, such a dull drab name.

  She imagined his unrefined virility. Short and tough and no Don Juan, she’d bet, but his boiled-to-the-bone masculinity reminded her a little of Raoul. She fantasized Earl naked, rubbing his short, powerful body all over her own like a tiny, fuzzy loufa sponge. It was a harmless enough daydream but the fact was, she was old enough to be Earl’s mother. Short of injecting high-test, hallucinogenic Spanish Fly in his next cup or two of coffee she didn’t figure she’d ever have to face that particular moral dilemma.

  Still, a woman never stops dreaming. Folks like to pretend their grandmothers sit around playing Bingo, but truth to tell the only reason a woman hangs out in a Bingo parlor is to meet someone who has to listen for a while and occasionally get naked.

  The sex drive doesn’t know any retirement age.

  As a matter of fact, nothing really dies.

  It’s comforting to think of a harmless dotage, but the fact is getting old has a lot to do with just passing time. It isn’t over. Life’s like a merry-go-round that never ends. It just keeps spinning until the big man pulls the switch.

  She laughed at herself.

  Wasn’t she feeling philosophical?

  Get over this Lily, she told herself. It’s time to throw out the ice cream, forget about the deputy, and get up and walk.

  She stood up.

  What she saw out the window damn near made her scream. It was Marvin Pusser, but he looked nothing like she’d ever seen before. He looked like he’d turned into some kind of a stick man. There was nothing but smears and smudges of dirt and nasty black mold scattered about an unkempt uniform.

  That was the strangest part. The uniform was so untidy, so unlike Marvin. His legs moved like scissors, gawky merciless strides that brought him closer and closer to Lily’s front door. So thin, so gawky, so blue. He looked like a goddamn blue stork, almost funny, but scary and skinny.

  The truth was, everybody looked skinny to Lily, but this was different. She’d seen freak show skinnies before this, seen men more bone than skin, but they were nothing compared to Marvin.

  The police department was number two on the speed dial.

  She screamed when she thought she misdialed.

  The scream accelerated his approach.

  He came charging up the sidewalk, like a maniac on a pair of child-sized stilts.

  Somebody picked up on the other end of the phone line.

  “Hello?”

  Lily kept on screaming.

  The Marvin stick man smashed through the window.

  He grabbed Lily by the collar of her big blue muumuu and tore it from her. Lily kicked back hard but it was as useless as kicking a wooden trestle. She heard the voice on the other line, a long running string of useless hello’s and a half-dozen hells.

  Then the phone was yanked from the wall.

  She wasn’t sure who did it, Marvin or her own kicking panic.

  The Marvin thing opened its mouth. She heard sounds that might have been words bleeding from his mud-stained lips. He began to rub himself against her like a cat in heat. She felt the chaff and splintering of his rancid wooden flesh rasping against her skin. She felt his wood tearing scabs and chunks of flesh from her. Uprooting moles and hauling pimples out by their roots. It was a sudden screaming diet, as Lily’s skin and muscle were torn and worn and eroded in a few swift, merciless movements.

  Her screams became wet and loud with helpless fear.

  Above it all she noticed her right arm, up over her head for the first time in years, pale from loss of blood, streaked and sprinkled with sheeting spirals of blood cascading down.

  Why it looks like a candy cane, was the last thing she thought.

  Marvin kept rooting at her, rubbing her raw.

  After that it got too nasty to talk about.

  CHAPTER 27

  Big Plans, Big Dreams

  * 1 *

  Maddy never cared much for how the field felt in the spring. It was all mud and mulch, like soft, runny flesh. Like a giant amoeba, waiting to suck her down. She’d always thought she was crazy to think that way. Maybe she wasn’t half as crazy as she thought.

  “Drag the old fart over here where I can get to him,” Vic said.

  “Harold,” Maddy said. “His name was Harold.”

  Vic stared at her like she’d suddenly gone insane.

  “Now how in the hell do you know that?” he asked.

  “His wife screamed his name, right before she died.”

  “So what was her name?”

  “She didn’t scream her own name. Women don’t do that. I didn’t yell, `Oh Maddy’ when I killed you, now did I?”

  Vic shook his head angrily. Maddy recognized that head shake. That particular shake was sign language for shut the hell up, Maddy ’– you are talking faster than I can think.

  Which was never that hard of a trick to manage.

  “Stop thinking of them as people, Maddy,” Vic told her. “They ain’t anymore. Right now old Harry here is nothing more than a sack of planting stock.”

  His name was Harold, was what Maddy thought, but she didn’t bother saying anything. She was too busy looking at the field around her.

  It was a big old field, but right about now it was beginning to look a little crowded.

  Duane dragged Helliard out.

  Vic planted him alongside of the woman and the old man named Harold.

  “You keep an eye on them,” Vic ordered Duane. “Bring them on in when they’re fully grown.”

  And then he turned to Maddy and smiled.

  It was like watching a grin forming in a rotting apple that has begun to fold in upon itself.

  “Me and Maddy got business in the house,” Vic went on.

  Maddy shuddered at the sort of business Vic might mean.

  “You got enough yet, Vic?” she asked.

  “Don’t call me that,” Vic said. “I ain’t Vic no more. Call me the Tatterdemon.”

  “Where’d you come up with a name like that?” she wanted to know.

  “Never you mind, Maddy. Never you fucking mind.”

  He grinned a little harder her way.

  The rotten apple grew a picket fence.

  “And I ain’t got enough Maddy,” the Tatterdemon said. “I need lots and lots more.”

  His eyes cindered brighter, glowing that same tattery blue she’d seen on Bluedaddy.

  “This is a big old field that I’ve just begun to plant.”

  * 2 *

  Earl noticed the broken window as he stepped out of his squad car.

  It was kind of hard not to notice it. The window just sort of gaped there like an open mouth.

  Earl pulled his pistol and stepped for the door, not giving two thoughts to the fact that there might finally be a chance for gunplay. He was too busy doing his job to think about the possibility that he might actually be acting like some kind of a hero.

  Halfway to the door he thought of radioing in.

  To hell with it.

  It’s probably nothing.

  Lily probably slipped on a banana peel and took out the side of her trailer. Besides, the T-bird was busted, and he sure wasn’t giving Wilfred permission to wreck his pickup. If he needed help, the old bugger would have to hitchhike to get here.

  Still, long unused instincts were kicking in. Earl was already checking for footprints. He saw a few, but they didn’t make much sense. The footprints he saw looked more like stilt holes, poked into the dirt.

  Earl stepped around back and popped the back door hook open with his jackknife.

  Earl Toad, cat burglar.

  He grinned at that thought, but stopped grinning when he stepped through the door.

  The house inside was nothing but blood.

  Sheets of it, like somebody washed the walls and floors with it.r />
  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

  He saw a heap of torn cloth on the floor. It looked like a set of old curtains shredded to rags.

  The sort of thing a frugal fat woman might make for herself to wear.

  He saw a mailbag, too.

  Was it Pusser’s?

  It might have been. It looked old and moldy, like it’d been lying under a large, wet rock, three hours past the planting of Eden.

  Earl opened the mailbag up with the tip of his jackknife.

  Shit.

  Maggots, earthworms and pill bugs spilled out of the sack.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  The bag was full of bits of straw and dirt.

  That and the head.

  “Jesus.”

  It was a goddamn human head. It looked fresh cut, an old man with bright, thick glasses. There was a speck of bright arterial spatter on the left lens of the glasses. Earl leaned over and puked in the bag and dropped it before he could find anything else.

  Fuck.

  Tainted evidence.

  What a goddamn rookie move.

  Earl looked around, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Maybe the straw in the bag would soak the puke up.

  Yeah right.

  He stood up slowly.

  There was a stink in the house. Like mildew, only worse, like wet hay.

  He checked the telephone.

  The cord was yanked.

  He checked the kitchen.

  There was a whole lot of ice cream cartons scattered about the floor. Somebody sure had themselves a feed.

  He couldn’t find a body.

  He was kind of glad of that.

  Who had done it?

  Had Marvin Pusser gone postal on Lily?

  It could be.

  It sure as hell looked it, but who was the old man?

  He ought to call Wilfred and fill him in.

  Hell.

  The longer he waited, the likelier the mailman psycho would find another victim. Nobody does this sort of thing once. Earl had seen all the movies and television shows. He had even read Psycho twice.

  You get a taste for this sort of killing.

  It gets in your blood.

  Besides, after his accident Wilfred didn’t like this kind of excitement.

  Earl stared down the road.

  If it was Pusser then Vic and Maddy’s house was next on his route. Assuming there was a route. If he was dealing with a psycho-mailman, odds are he’d follow his route.

  Either that or Earl’s guesser badly wanted mending.

  He saw a movement.

  It looked like a blue figure, hobbling through the field and headed for the Harker house.

  Was it Marvin?

  It might be. It looked like him, only stiffer, like he was carrying something large – like a sack of mail or maybe a body.

  Earl set out across the field, following the mailman, aiming himself like a slow-moving bullet, straight for the Harker house.

  * 3 *

  Back in the house, Maddy watched the Tatterdemon stare at Lily Milton’s mangled remains.

  Remains didn’t begin to describe it.

  It was closer to a sack of badly poured guts minus the sack.

  Damn.

  Maddy wanted to look away but she couldn’t. It looked like every bone in Lily’s body was broken. It reminded Maddy of a jellyfish washed up on a beach.

  “Damn it,” the Tatterdemon yelled. “You ruined her. How in the hell am I going to grow this mess into something worth keeping?”

  He kicked the pathetic husk.

  Something bounced inside like chunky sour milk.

  Maddy sat, afraid to move.

  She was certain the Tatterdemon could read her thoughts. She was equally certain that the Zippo lighter in her pocket bumped out her pants like a small pumpkin.

  “Never mind,” the Tatterdemon said. “I’ll bury her anyway. There’s no telling what’ll pop up.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  Maddy involuntarily giggled out loud.

  It was death come calling, she thought.

  Come to join the fun.

  “Ha!” the Tatterdemon laughed. “You see what I said, Maddy. There’s no telling what’ll pop up. Go answer it, girl.”

  Maddy didn’t argue.

  She was too scared and too tired to bother.

  She got up and opened the door. There was nobody there and nothing but darkness, the open doorway, and the road beyond.

  The road that was calling her.

  Her feet didn’t stop long enough for her head to think.

  She ran, slamming the door behind her.

  “Get her,” the Tatterdemon yelled.

  Which was exactly the moment when Deputy Earl Toad crashed feet first through the living room window.

  CHAPTER 28

  Spring Ahead, Fall Back

  * 1 *

  Five minutes earlier, Earl Toad had squatted and stared in from outside the Harker house at a sight he couldn’t believe.

  He saw figures or maybe shapes moving inside the house. Things that looked more at home at a Halloween party than anywhere handy to real life.

  Hell.

  What were they?

  They looked too real to be masks and too scary to be real. Who the hell would disguise themselves that way? Dirt, rocks, mud and twigs. These were the ugliest bastards that Earl had ever seen – and Earl Toad had come from a long line of ugly.

  Earl watched them for a minute, trying to get a grip on what was going on.

  The big one, the one with the daisies, it looked kind of like Vic, if you squinted. Whoever he was he looked to be the headman-honcho and he seemed to be doing most of the talking. Earl decided that whoever that daisy-chested goober was, he was most likely be what you’d call the straw boss.

  That one on the left might have been Marvin. He had his mail hat on, anyway – but it was a little like looking at a photograph of Marvin after it had been sogged to runny pulp in a flooded basement. All of the mailman’s features had softened and muddied and it was the wrong kind of color for flesh.

  And what the hell was with all that straw?

  The more Earl looked the more it got easier to believe that the town of Crossfall was about to be invaded by an army of mutant scarecrows.

  It was like something out of a goddamn monster movie.

  What the hell should he do?

  He ought to go back to the Volvo.

  He ought to radio for help.

  Only it was way too late for any of that.

  Maddy needed his help right now.

  He had to do something and he knew that he needed to do it fast.

  But what should he do?

  Should he kick down the door?

  That only worked in movies.

  Maybe the window?

  Hell.

  They’d be on him before he climbed halfway in. One look at those things, whatever they were, convinced Earl he didn’t want that to happen, but he sure as shit wasn’t leaving Maddy in the lurch.

  Maybe the front door.

  Wasn’t that something else they did in movies? Knock on the front door and maybe disguise himself as a girl guide or pizza delivery man while he was at it.

  No way.

  He’d left his pizza delivery man disguise at home with his secret decoder frame. Besides, he’d be framed in the doorway like a bull's-eye and dead easy pickings for those mutant Martian scarecrows – whatever the hell they were.

  Still, the door had possibilities.

  He thought a little longer and then he decided what to do.

  He took a moment to check his gun, making certain it was loaded and ready. Then he beat on the door, like a kid playing nick-nock-nine-door, ran like a mad-assed bastard for the window, leaped up on the ledge and swung feet first into the room.

  Ge-fucking-ronimo!

  * 2 *

  Things happened fast, all at once.

  Earl crashed through the window, thinking Tarzan thoughts but livin
g in a Three Stooges kind of reality, landing with the grace of a bag full of drowned wooden cats. His Glock went off like a deadly accidental fart. The bullet slammed into the floor, nearly shooting his ass off.

  Meanwhile, Maddy was off and running.

  “Get her!” Vic shouted.

  Marvin headed for the slammed door.

  Earl looked around wildly for Maddy, but he couldn’t see her anywhere.

  Marvin fumbled with the door knob. Having no fingers made it a damned difficult proposition.

  Maddy reached the front lawn.

  She told herself to run faster but her feet didn’t seem to be listening. The ground shifted treacherously beneath the weight of her footsteps.

  Back inside, the Tatterdemon fell on to Earl like a tinderwood tidal wave.

  Damn, Earl thought. This Martian mutant scarecrow was even uglier close up.

  He smelled funny too.

  The daisies sucked at Earl’s chest like a bunch of petaled leeches.

  Maddy reached the roadside.

  She wasted a precious half-second trying to remember which way the town was.

  Meanwhile, Marvin gave up on the door knob.

  He threw himself at the door, crashed through and tumbled to the porch.

  Earl began to scream.

  He knew he sounded like a sissy, but he just couldn’t help it.

  The Tatterdemon caught Earl’s collar. He hoisted the little deputy up like a fresh caught rainbow trout. Earl squeezed the trigger just fast as he could, emptying his Glock in a handful of seconds. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d hit the Vic-thing. He just knew the bullets had no effect.

  Except for one.

  One bullet that hit, ripping through the Vic-thing’s torso like a jet-propelled rocket blasting through moldy bread.

  The bullet passed through the open doorway and over Marvin’s head.

  If Maddy hadn’t hesitated at the sound of the shot she’d have been fine.

  But she paused and the bullet caught her in mid-flight.

  She arched like a bent bow as the slug socked into her back.

  Then she hit the ground and stopped moving.

  PART THREE