Tatterdemon

by Vernon, Steve

Shit.

  A patch of nettles poke-danced along the length of his right forearm.

  He kept crawling, thinking nice thoughts.

  He had to find some help.

  There had to be somebody out there.

  Keep moving.

  Then all at once, he couldn’t move any further. He’d come to the wall of a house. It probably wasn’t smart to stay here, but he liked the rightness of the angles, the straightness of the shingle work.

  Like a long, straight road, it comforted him.

  He heard a voice inside of the house. Whoever it was, she sounded like a woman. She sounded scared. Should he go in? Did she need his help? The more he listened, the more she sounded like Carmen.

  To hell with her.

  What could he do?

  Where the hell was a cop when you needed him most?

  The walkie-talkie belched three more times.

  Roland wondered who the hell was on the other side of it.

  He hoped it was Arnold Schwarznegger.

  Or at the very least, the Lone Ranger.

  Whoever it was, Roland hoped that he would Hi Ho his Silver just as pronto as he could manage.

  CHAPTER 35

  Uneasy Rider

  * 1 *

  Bzzzzzzzz, bang.

  “Damn it!”

  Wilfred hit another pothole.

  Bang!

  “Damn it!”

  He bounced down the road on Wendy Joe’s moped. He did not feel one bit like the Lone Ranger and certainly not Arnold Schwarznegger. If he felt like anything, it was one of those fat motorcycle riding twins from out of the Guinness Book of World Records.

  One thing was for certain. He was learning a whole new brand of respect for dumpy little moped-driving black women. This was tough. Every bump drove his asshole further up his spine. Every bug in existence was magnetically attracted to his gritted teeth and clenched eyeballs. How in the hell anyone could put up with this agony was beyond his imagination.

  Wendy Joe must have hemorrhoids up to her back teeth.

  He thumbed the walkie-talkie three more times.

  It squelched back.

  Come a running.

  Whatever it was it had to be coming from out by Lily’s place.

  That seemed to be where everything started going to hell.

  It was all he had to go on.

  Bang!

  Hell.

  If Earl Toad or whoever was on the end of this walkie-talkie needed a hand, then Wilfred Fell was dealing himself in.

  Hook, line, and moped.

  * 2 *

  In the barn, in spite of her terror, in spite of being trapped with a stick arm stained with Deputy Earl’s lifeblood, and the back-from-the-dead zombified scarecrow of her deeply perverted mailman, Maddy was happy.

  There were tools here, lots of them.

  There had to be weapon she could use.

  Let’s see.

  There were coffee tins full of nails, a couple jugs of paint thinner, diesel fuel, some rags and several bottles of screws.

  Not to mention the grand prize.

  Vic’s welding torch.

  She reached right for it.

  “Maybe we can weld you up.”

  Marvin, scarecrow or not, wasn’t dumb. He stepped between her and the torch.

  “I was just kidding, Marvin,” Maddy said. “You’ve got to loosen up. Folks’ll think you’ve grown into a real stuffed shirt.”

  She was thinking, fast as she was talking, trying to figure a way out of this mess. She reached past the torch and snagged the bottle of wood glue.

  “Glue and clamps. That’s what we need. I just wish I had some wax paper to catch the drips with. Oh well, the mess this floors in, a few drips of glue probably won’t make much difference.”

  Keep talking.

  Hide your fear.

  Don’t let it slow you down.

  “Epoxy’d be better. It dries faster. Let’s see,” she kept on talking to herself. “Is there any epoxy here? Ah, there it is.”

  Buried beneath a half-dozen sheets of dollar store sandpaper, a chipped chisel and an empty box of nails was the epoxy; one of those double barreled hypodermics – the kind that squeezes the gunk and the stickum out in one push.

  She turned to Marvin.

  Shit.

  He looked like nothing more than a boy with a boo-boo, waiting for his momma’s make-it-all-better kiss.

  “There now, Marvin. Don’t feel so bad. I’ll fix you up.”

  She felt like a mad doctor, using that big old hypodermic.

  “Hold still, now.”

  She glued the arm and braced it with a makeshift splint, put together with a couple of broken strips of window molding.

  “Keep holding,” she told him. “We’ll clamp it tight in the vise.”

  She felt a little bad, tricking him like this. He looked so goddamn trusting – the fucking peeper-eyed mail bugger. She twisted the periscope arms of the vise, tightening it snugly around the molding, hoping it hurt.

  “Just hold still, now,” she kept repeating, comforting and hypnotizing him with that steady comforting drone. “Here. Hold still. While it dries I’ll give it a coat of spray lacquer and make it all shiny and new. Waterproof, even.”

  She reached for the spray can.

  “Hold still. Hold still.”

  She aimed it at the arm, unpocketed the Zippo lighter, and snapped it. The Zippos caught at the first try, the flame igniting the sprayed lacquer.

  Woosh, instant flame thrower.

  Marvin howled in instant agony, pulling back and slamming himself against the wall of the shed, but the vise held him fast. Maddy showed no mercy. She was going for it now.

  She grabbed the welding iron.

  “Now you’re cooking,” she taunted.

  * 3 *

  Wilfred rolled in at Lily’s trailer like a saddle-sore, one-man cavalry charge.

  He took a quick look around.

  There was Earl’s squad car, just sitting by itself. It gave Wilfred the creeps seeing the squad car like that. It was funny how you never imagined how scary an empty car can be until you see it without someone inside of it that you’re looking for.

  The broken window on the trailer was worse. The broken window frame looked like a set of giant wooden jaws, waiting for some fat, country, lion-taming sheriff to stick his fool head in.

  He laughed to himself.

  He could picture Earl human cannon-balling through the window.

  That was Earl’s style for sure.

  They didn’t grow them any gamer.

  “Goddamn it, Earl. If you’ve got yourself killed, I’m going to have to raise you from the dead somehow and kill you once or twice again, just to show you how pissed off I can be.”

  He kicked the door down.

  That was his style.

  Hey diddle-diddle, straight down the middle.

  Just like John Wayne.

  Besides, he was too fat and ornery to clamber through a window.

  “Hell.”

  It was worse than the station house. There was blood all over the walls. It looked like somebody decided to redecorate in early colonial gore.

  This was bad – real balls to the burning wall kind of bad. He ought to call someone. He searched for the phone. He didn’t want to touch anything, partly for fear of messing up fingerprints and partly just because he was afraid to touch it.

  It was that bad.

  He found the telephone cord under the couch. The cord was ripped from the wall.

  “Damn.”

  For the third time that day he reached for a cigarette.

  No match. Maybe there was some in the kitchen. He found a pack by the stove. The long kind you use for lighting a barbecue. He also found a sack. It looked a little like the kind that paperboys used.

  No, not paperboys.

  It was a mail bag.

  He opened it up.

  He saw what was inside.

  “Sweet Jesus.”

  The
severed head stared back at him. For just an instant he swore he saw the eyes blink. Or maybe it was just the light glinting off the glasses. Then the head made a noise, like it was trying to speak, but couldn’t.

  “Damn.”

  Wilfred dropped the sack to floor. He wouldn’t pick it up for all the tea in Cape Breton. He left the house, just as soon as he made certain there were no other signs of life. He tried hard not to think of the mail sack, or those goddamn staring glasses.

  He climbed into the squad car.

  At least the key was there.

  But where the hell was Earl?

  Damn it.

  He’d drive to the nearest house. Then he’d phone in the provincial cops. Then maybe he’d drive out of the province. Hell, he ought to drive to Antarctica, the way he was feeling about what he kept seeing.

  Something was going bad in Crossfall. There was nothing but death and blood, and not a body to be seen and it made about as much sense as a rooster laying eggs.

  He turned the key and headed the car towards the road.

  He’d be at Maddy and Vic’s home in a matter of minutes.

  “Yippee.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Burnt Pork

  * 1 *

  Marvin went up like a badly trimmed oil lamp, the flames crawling and cracking like they’d burn forever. What was left of him screamed like a poorly snared rabbit. The reek of burning meat reminded Maddy of a pork roast she’d once napped over. She’d woken to smoke and had damn near burned the house down. Vic beat her like a whipping post and called her a stupid bitch, asking her again and again if she thought meat grew on trees.

  The memory only fuelled her hatred.

  “Burn you bejesus bastard.”

  It wasn’t Vic, but it was the next best thing. Now she had to get herself out of here.

  But how?

  Out the door?

  That was blocked.

  The crawl-hole then.

  She slid into the mud of the floor, scrambling like a panicked toddler, barely evading Marvin’s flaming outstretched grasp. With her eyes half closed with terror, she scuttled into the crawl-hole. It stank of dog and dog shit and worse things than that. Vic used to piss down the crawl-hole whenever he was too lazy to walk back to the house.

  To hell with it.

  She kept squeezing herself forward. It was way too snug, but she didn’t have a choice. Already she could hear a fumbling at the workshop door.

  “Maddy!” the Tatterdemon called. “Open up the door.”

  Only Maddy was confused.

  “Stay out, Daddy,” she said. “Stay away from me.”

  “Maddy!”

  Fuck.

  It wasn’t Daddy, it was Vic – the Tatterdemon. Daddy was dead and buried, right where she’d put him.

  Wasn’t he?

  She heard more fumbling, heard the Tatterdemon cursing over his lack of hands.

  That just made her laugh.

  “You always told me I was all thumbs, you toothpicked bastard. How’s it feel to have no thumbs at all.”

  She heard him throw himself at the door.

  Fuck.

  He’d be through that door in no time.

  Come on, girl. Get a move on.

  She snagged herself on an exposed nail.

  Fuck it.

  The straw would heal that. She was more scared of the Tatterdemon. She was scared he might think to call Zigger.

  The thought of what that hound might do to her face in these close quarters chilled her to the bone.

  Which was right when Bluedaddy appeared in front of her, no more than a face, floating in the darkness ahead.

  “Come on, Maddy, don’t give up now,” he told her. “Get a hussle on. There’s rats in the henhouse.”

  Maddy pushed forward out through the filth of the crawl-hole to the freedom of the field.

  In the grass behind the barn, she heard a sound like three throttled crows.

  Squawk, squawk, squawk.

  For a half-second she thought she saw a little man with a big, panicked moon face. Nobody she knew, but somebody for sure. Laying there in a hole covered in grass and dirt, frantically trying to hush the squawking walkie-talkie.

  She’d waited too long.

  A hand grabbed her from behind.

  It caught her ankle and dragged her back through the crawl-hole.

  She looked back behind.

  There was the Tatterdemon and the scarecrowed Earl. The door hung open behind them. Earl’s brand new dogwood hands seemed to be working just like Vic hoped they would. The Tatterdemon was yelling something, but the words were drowned by Marvin’s screams.

  “Put him out, damn it. Put him out!” the Tatterdemon begged.

  Well, what do you know?

  The Tatterdemon was afraid of fire.

  Maddy laughed at that thought.

  “Grab her,” the Tatterdemon ordered.

  Earl caught her with his brand new twig hands. The touch of them felt like stick-legged spiders, clutching all over her skin.

  “Twist her arm.”

  Earl twisted. Maybe he wasn’t used to his hands yet. It felt like he might be holding back, like he could hurt her a lot more if he wanted to. Maybe that was supposed to be a threat.

  Marvin kept screaming.

  “Put him out!” the Tatterdemon shouted.

  Earl twisted, just a bit more.

  To hell with it.

  Maddy yanked herself free and threw a horse blanket over the mailman. She held it down to smother the fire. She bet that perverted stamp-licking bastard liked that part, pain or not.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” the Tatterdemon wanted to know.

  “Because I wanted to see him burn,” Maddy answered back. “Because I couldn’t burn you.”

  “Why?”

  She stared at him.

  It was unbelievable, how truly stupid the man was. He couldn’t conceive of how badly she hated him.

  “Because I hate you, Vic,” she shouted. “You hay-headed bastard. I hate you.”

  The Tatterdemon’s eyes hardened, like ice freezing over a deep black pond.

  Maddy stood and waited.

  “I can grow them faster, Maddy,” he crazily told her. “I can grow them faster than you can burn them.”

  She spat at him.

  “You killed me once already,” she said. “What else can you do?”

  He hit her.

  She grinned.

  “Keep doing that, Vic. Hitting me doesn’t work anymore. Hell, maybe it never did.”

  That was it for Mr. Tatterdemon.

  The last straw.

  He turned to Marvin.

  “If you want her, you can have her.”

  Vic and Earl closed the door behind them.

  Maddy heard the click of the padlock.

  She stared at Marvin’s mute burnt form. She saw the hatred locked and burning in those cold blue eyes. Outside she heard those three strangled crows. The little moonfaced man, he was out there.

  He wasn’t her imagination.

  Who the hell was he?

  Could he help her?

  Then she heard scuttling noises.

  She turned and saw what made the sound, small and hungry, scuttling in the dirt.

  “Rats in the henhouse, Daddy.”

  There were rats in the henhouse for sure.

  * 2 *

  Out beyond the crawl-hole, Roland cowered in the dirt.

  Who the hell was that woman?

  She looked like she’d been through a world of hurt, yet there was something about her. There was something about the way she moved, like her bones were made of paper or maybe straw.

  A katydid jumped.

  The grass made a soft whish-whish sound in the wind, like the sound of an old woman rubbing her dry palms together.

  Fuck, Roland thought. I’m going nuts, aren’t I?

  People always talk of going nuts, like it was a door you could walk through.

  Hell.
>
  Roland had already kicked the door down and jumped right in.

  The radio squawked, three more times. It had been so quiet up until that point, Roland damn near died of shock.

  “Carmen?” He croaked. “Is that you, Carmen?”

  His thoughts cleared. Carmen was in Chicago.

  Wasn’t she?

  The radio squawked, three more times.

  He ought to throw the damn thing away.

  Instead, he punched the squawk button three more times back, just to let whoever was out there know that somebody on the other end was still in the game.

  “I ain’t beaten yet, Carmen. The cavalry’s coming, just around the bend.”

  Hopefully they’d get here before Roland went around it himself.

  He slid back into an uneasy sea of delusion. The field became a battle. He was lying out here, huddled in the dirt getting ready to charge like John Wayne or Audie Murphy.

  Crawling out of a foxhole on a hill in Viet Nam.

  “I’m coming, Carmen.” he kept on crawling, dragging himself back to the barn.

  “Don’t worry Carmen, I’m coming.”

  But he kept on crawling.

  CHAPTER 37

  Marvin’s Desire

  * 1 *

  Maddy was way past worried.

  She was huddled somewhere down around terrified, about half a fret shy of scared shitless. It was bad enough being in the barn, but the rats were worse. The rat squatting in front of her was a big, meaty bastard. She could see the fleas, scuttling on his back. It stared at her with little black beady eyes and more tail than a runaway kite.

  Barn rats are mean.

  And they tend to work in gangs. If you see one rat, you’ve missed ten others was how Daddy used to put it. One rat in the barn meant a hundred in the field.

  Sure enough there were more of them following.

  One after another through the crawl-hole, like they smelled something tasty in here.

  Where the hell were they coming from?

  Maybe the evil in the field had stirred them up.

  Maybe they smelled death.

  Maybe they just liked the stink of barbecued scarecrow.

  They were everywhere.

  One climbed over her shoulder and pushed between her tits before climbing right over her face. She should panic, she supposed. She ought to scream like a banshee on overdrive, but her scream muscles were all worn out. Besides, the touch of those tiny pink feet felt kind of soft against her cheekbone.