The Nightrunners - Joe R. Lansdale.wps

by phuc

  Certainly it would take them long enough that he could defend the area.

  He was trying to figure how to blockade the doors that led into the bedrooms when he remembered that one of them contained paneling and carpentry tools.

  He went in there and came out with a mouthful of nails, a hammer in one hand and some narrow strips of paneling in the other hand. He stacked it, went back for the rest. It took several trips. He nailed the bedroom doors shut, cutting them off from the rest of the house. He used the rest of the paneling to nail over the windows facing the drive.

  Only the two large side-by-side windows facing the lake and the one in the kitchen were unbearded now. But at least he would have less to defend, and the kitchen window, being high up and narrow, would be relatively easy to protect.

  He retrieved the frog gig, and for a moment felt quite pleased with himself, but the pleasure dissolved when the unprotected lake window exploded and a leathery object came hurtling along with glass shards to land on the living room floor. A voice followed it, yelling, "Trick or treat, assholes."

  Becky came out of the kitchen, a hand to her mouth (thinking to herself even as she did it: What a girly mannerism), and saw the glass fragments on the floor and what lay among them.

  Even as Monty kicked the object across the room in disgust, she recognized what it was.

  Bloody testicles.

  SEVENTEEN

  "The lights," Monty said. "Cut the lights." He ducked, moved close to the window, peeped out. He felt for all the world like one of those second-string movie stars in a Western B movie. Next he'd need to finish breaking out the rest of the window with his gun barrel so he could get a good clear shot at the Indians. Only he had no gun barrel— the guns were out there.

  A crazy thing was happening out back, between the shed and the cabin. There was this kid and he was capering. He was a strange-looking kid and his body was doing things that were somehow graceful, yet somehow foreign. He had a knife in his hand (flashing from time to time in the moonlight just like his smile) and he was spreading his arms like a heron spreading its wings for flight, closing them, spreading them, and then he would stand on one leg, then two, then switch and stand on the other leg, then two again, and he was laughing.

  The kid began to dance toward the cabin, moving at first from side to side, but gaining a bit of ground forward every now and then.

  Monty clutched the gig until his knuckles were white.

  He looked at Becky. She had picked up the axe and was standing near the front door.

  The kid capered closer, stopped:

  "Teacher," he yelled, "remember me?"

  Monty heard a thud. He looked at Becky. She had dropped the axe, she was shaking her head.

  "It's him," she said.

  "Him? Who's him?"

  "Clyde . . . the one who raped me."

  "Get your shit together, Becky."

  "It's him, I know that voice. It's—"

  "Pick up the axe," Monty said calmly.

  "Teacher," came Clyde's voice again. "Want to go another round? It sure did feel good inside you. You got a hot box, baby. I can tell your old man that—"

  "Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" It had jumped out of Monty's mouth so fast he could not believe that he had said it.

  The kid capered some more, spun around on his heel and stretched the hand with the knife and let the light of the moon dance on its tip.

  Then he stopped, looked at the cabin, pointed with the knife. "We're waiting, teacher,"

  Clyde's voice said, and Brian's voice continued with: "Hey, buddy, we're going to cut the pretty teacher's heart out."

  Monty saw the kid's posture change with sudden drama, and even from a distance, he could see that the expression on his face had altered considerably.

  Clyde spoke now: "We're gonna cut her cunt out too, asshole. Hear me! Hear me!

  But not before we fuck her goddamned brains out, and I wanta be first!"

  Brian laughing, his voice saying: "We'll be first."

  More laughter. (Had it been the stereo sound of dual chuckles?) Monty blinked.

  He was losing his grip. What was the point of all this—

  A sudden pounding from the front of the cabin explained it. He had been duped by the oldest trick in the book. The others had come up from the other side.

  He glanced angrily back at the kid.

  He was gone.

  Grabbing the frog gig, he advanced toward the hammering, the front door.

  Becky, trembling with remembrance of the voice from beyond the grave, picked up the axe.

  Monty crept to the door, put his ear to it. He heard a dripping sound, as if great globs of water were falling off the eave of the roof and splattering on the front steps.

  Easing over to the window, he bent and found a narrow place the paneling hadn't quite covered. He put his eye to it and peeked out.

  He swallowed heavily. There was something hanging from the small front porch roof—a girl. The wind moved her and her head flopped around to look at him. The eyes were wide open and the face was covered in blood. The crotch of her jeans was cut away and her pubic hair was matted with gore.

  "What . . . what is it?" Becky asked.

  "The girl of your dreams," Monty said.

  EIGHTEEN

  With wood, rocks and flattened beer cans behind the back tires, Larry was able to free the car, pull it up alongside a barbed-wire fence. Tree limbs scraped at the side of the car as he went, and when the ditch became narrow, almost flat, he crossed onto the road.

  Ted and Moses ran to get in.

  "As I remember," Moses said, "you hit a stretch of blacktop just before the Beaumont driveway, and it's a long thing. More a short road than a drive."

  "Just say when we get there," Larry said, and he stomped down on the gas.

  NINETEEN

  They put on the Halloween masks Loony had stolen from Pop's store. Brian wore the one with the knife in the skull, the one Monty had thought the most hideous.

  Loony, who was embracing the shotgun, said, "Let's splatter them."

  "We will. But we're going to do this right," Brian said in Clyde's voice. "Stone, you go up the drive there and find you a place to hang out, just in case we should get visitors. What I want to do to them might take awhile and I don't want to be interrupted. I want this bitch to suffer, like I suffered in that jail cell."

  Behind Brian's back Loony looked at Stone and shrugged, put a hand to his head and rotated his finger.

  He ceased the action before Brian turned. In Clyde's voice, Brian said, "I've got other plans for us, Loony."

  Stone stamped his foot angrily.

  Brian turned back to him, and still using Clyde's voice, said, "Don't worry. We'll save something for you. You'll get your fun. Loony, give him the shotgun."

  Loony did as directed and Stone took it, began jogging up the driveway, the Halloween mask bobbing loosely on his head.

  Near the front of the long drive that led to the cabin, he found a small tree with a wide fork. He climbed into the fork, put the slug-loaded shotgun across his knee and waited.

  ........

  Five minutes after Stone was positioned, the Highway Patrol car, driven by Larry, made a wrong turn and went down the road where the '66 Chevy and the Rabbit were parked.

  Larry cursed Moses for the mistake, and they turned around. But not before Ted got out and used his pocket knife to slash the tires on both cars. That way, the only car leaving this area would be their patrol car.

  They backed around and went back up the road, and made the correct turn into the Beaumont drive.

  ........

  Monty and Becky began a system of rotational checks; moving around the house to each panel-boarded window, crouching as low as they could when passing the unprotected lake window.

  So far, there were no signs of anyone trying to break in.

  ........

  From where they leaned against the cabin, Brian and Loony had seen the patrol car's lights through
the trees.

  They watched in silence until Loony said, "Who's that?"

  "What the fuck am I?" Clyde's voice said. "A goddamned crystal ball?"

  "What do we do?"

  "Not a goddamned thing. Not yet, anyway. They turn down this road Stone will blast them."

  They watched the car turn around, watched the lights go away. And soon after, they saw the car come into view as it made the Beaumont driveway.

  What happened then was:

  Moses said he wanted out, but Larry ignored him. He turned the car down the drive, and Stone, nestled in his sniper position, raised the shotgun and fired. The slug hit the right front tire. The car, which was not moving fast, skidded slightly, stopped.

  Stone fired again. This shot cut through the right passenger window, hit Ted just in front of the right ear.

  Fragments of glass, brains, blood and skull flew like a meteorite shower. The slug passed out through Ted's forehead, tumbled over the steering wheel (passing Larry's face by inches) and exited with a spray of glass out the left vent window, but not before glancing along the metal framing and ricocheting with a clatter onto the hood.

  Larry swung the door open, grabbed the riot gun from the back-seat prop, rolled out of the car and onto the ground. Another shot took out the back glass, and Larry duckwalked to the back door (which had no inside levers) and opened it for Moses, who tumbled out uninjured, but dribbling glass from his clothes. He dragged the rifle out behind him by the strap. He was shaking and moaning.

  "Is ... is he dead?" Moses said.

  "What do you think?" Larry reached up with one hand to touch something that lay on his shoulder like a grisy epaulet—a wormy grey and red mass of brain tissue. "To live, buddy," he said, thumping it off himself, and almost on Moses, "you got to keep this stuff inside your head."

  "Oh shit, Jesus, God," Moses said. "He's going to kill us."

  "No, he isn't. I'm going to blow his ass away."

  Another slug struck the car. More glass flew, rained down on them where they crouched.

  "He's just shooting at the glass because he hasn't any better sense. We take it easy, and he's dead. Now listen here, I'm going to get him. Going to slip off in these woods behind me, cross the road a little farther down, see if I can sneak up on him."

  "You're going to leave me here? You can't do that."

  "Yes, I can. I'm going to get this guy . . . You know, old Ted wasn't bad for a commie, nigger-loving Catholic."

  Moses just nodded.

  "Probably some more of these assholes around, so stay sharp."

  "Don't leave me. This isn't any of my business. You said you'd let me out before we got here."

  "Take your hand off my arm. Good. Now I'm going."

  "You said you'd let me out."

  "You're out, aren't you? Listen here, stay sharp, or you'll end up dead, and anytime you feel like throwing the gun away and giving up, just take a peek in here at old Ted.

  Got me?"

  Moses didn't say anything, and Larry didn't give him time. Quiet as an Indian, Larry disappeared into the woods behind them.

  TWENTY

  Brian pulled the pistol he had taken off Jim Trawler's body out of his belt.

  "What are you going to do?" Loony said. They were still leaning against the cabin.

  They bad seen the patrol car and heard the shots. Now the patrol car was sitting still, its lights shining. And well behind the car, they had seen a shape cross the road at a slouch, disappear into the woods on Stone's side.

  "I'm going to do whatever needs doing. You stay close to the cabin. They try to come out of there, use your knife. I'll be back quick as I can."

  It had been Brian's voice speaking, and Loony, crazy as he was himself, was beginning to find it all a bit disconcerting.

  "Where's Clyde?" he asked.

  "Right here," came Clyde's voice, and as Loony watched, Brian's face twisted, molded, began to look like Clyde's. It was wild. Like when impressionists on TV imitated someone and managed in many ways to look like them. Brian had Clyde's voice and mannerisms down pat. Could it be that he was really possessed? Loony decided he'd find that hard to believe even if he were on glue— which he wished he were. His hands were starting to shake and the reality of life was fanning away the fog of his dreams.

  "Stay," the Clyde voice said to Loony. Then, turning, Brian/Clyde moved into the woods and was gone. Loony thought one more time: How in hell does he do that with his voice?

  ........

  The water on the stove had started to boil and Becky turned the burners to simmer. Then, picking up the axe, she went to Monty's side.

  "Boiling?" he asked.

  "Yes," she whispered. "His voice, Monty . . . that's him, the kid who raped me."

  "It isn't him. He's dead and buried."

  "I know that voice."

  "It's the kid doing it, mocking him."

  "It's more than that."

  "The dead do not return, that's all there is to it."

  "The skeptic is back."

  "Seeing the future is one thing, but possession, which is what you're suggesting, is another. The dead are dead. The kid is imitating the voice. I suppose it is possession of a kind, possession by a memory. The total acceptance of a deranged mind. But there is nothing uncanny or supernatural about it. We all have the ability for that sort of mimicry, and our subconscious is far more alert and complex than the surface, or conscious mind.

  It can pick up all the fine details of a voice, even the words in a language, and teach the conscious mind to speak it.

  "This kid is as mad as a hatter, that's all. You've got to realize that. If we're going to beat him, we have to know we're not up against something supernatural."

  "The psychoanalyst returns."

  "This hardly seems the time for us to get into an argument."

  "Monty, I'm telling you, that's Clyde's voice. And you can give me all the psychological mumbo jumbo you want to, and I won't be convinced."

  "Okay then, you're not convinced." . "Do you remember what he said, about how he wanted to be first . . . with me? I told you that from my dream, remember?"

  "I haven't doubted your dreams, really, since that . . . that image I saw on TV."

  "Everything I saw is coming true. There's nothing—"

  "The girl on the porch, you thought that was you. If you can be wrong about that .

  , . We could pull out of this. It's possible. Aren't you the one that's always belittling me for giving up easily, for being weak? Aren't you the liberated woman, or is that just bullshit talk?"

  "Maybe it is," she finally said. "Maybe everything is just so much bullshit."

  ........

  Loony, without glue fumes in his head, with his nerves pricking his skin like thorns, lost his cool and disobeyed Brian/Clyde's orders. He needed something to burn energy. He wanted to cut someone. Maybe get a little off that woman.

  He looked up the drive, didn't see anyone.

  He should wait, he knew that. If he didn't, Brian (Clyde?) would be angry.

  ... He moved his knife from hand to hand. Thought: To hell with Brian, he's nutty as a pig in a tow sack,'

  Moving around the edge of the house, he ran by the open lake window screaming,

  "Trick or treat!"

  Monty and Becky saw his masked form race by, saw him stick his tongue out at them through the slit in the mask.

  Larry was inching up next to the woods on the other side.

  Stone, who still thought Larry was behind the patrol car, had glanced neither left nor right, and the mask he was wearing did little for his peripherial vision.

  Larry, who had been raised by a father who knew the woods and knew how to hunt, crept slowly toward Stone's position without so much as snapping a twig.

  ........

  "The goblins," Monty said. "The mask. It all makes sense."

  But before Becky could respond, they heard a tinkling of glass. A knife blade slid between the sill and the paneling of one of the win
dows on the driveway side. The blade moved briskly up and down, from side to side, prying the paneling loose.

  Monty laid the gig on the floor. He took the axe from Becky. Trembling, moving quietly, he crossed the room and swung the flat end of the axe against the knife blade.

  He hit the blade solidly, but the knife did not break. Instead, the paneling sagged, struck the floor on the left-hand side. Through the opening, Monty could see the kid, his masked face pressed against one of the unbroken panes. The kid giggled, started to jerk away.

  Monty made a wild swing with the axe, hurled it through the glass. It shattered the window and hit Loony in the forehead, bounced away. Loony made a short barking sound, stumbled backward two steps, wavered a moment, clutched the crown of the mask with a shaky hand and ripped it off.

  A huge saucer of blood widened on Loony's forehead. He made another two steps backward and fell flat on his back. The knife dropped from his hand and he lay still.

  "Gotcha!" Monty screamed.

  Then he heard a shotgun roar.

  ........

  Larry crept up slowly, cautiously, until he pinpointed Stone in the sniper position.

  After a moment he took in that the kid was wearing a Halloween mask. That made him think with a smile: trick or treat? He lifted the riot gun. The weapon was loaded with alternating slugs and double-ought buckshot; Highway Patrol theory being the slug took out the window and the double-ought took out the man.

  No windshield here. Just a kid in a tree with a mask on.

  It was a bit of a distance for the riot gun, but with the slug as the first load, Larry felt confident.

  He eased the trigger, shot Stone through the neck. The slug tumbled at such velocity it snapped the neck bone in two and nearly tore Stone's head off. The Halloween mask went sailing, and the blast launched Stone from the tree and carried him for a Peter Pan dive into the pine needles. His legs thrashed and his left heel beat an unrhythmic tattoo against the ground before body functions ceased and he lay completely still.

  Larry was contemplating the surprising fact that the sniper had been white when he heard a sound behind him.

  He turned, lifting the riot gun. As he raised it, his eyes took in the bore of a revolver which seemed as big as the mouth of a subway tunnel. The tunnel belched. And a train went into his mouth, took his lips and gums with it as it made its exit out the back of his neck.