by Jack Martin
"You want to wrap it and go to bed?"
"Define your terms," said the producer.
The assistant smiled hopefully.
"Wrap it up here as soon as you can," she said. "As soon as ol' blue eyes falls out of love with himself for a beat."
"And then?"
"Then you and the crew get your tails over to the hospital. This story's the biggest thing to hit Haddonfield since Stoddard's Store stopped carrying HUSTLER."
"Bucking for an Emmy, boss?"
"I'm bucking for a way out of this chicken outfit, Barry. By whatever means it takes. If sleazy sex murders will do it for me, then bring on the blood-and-guts. Just as long as it's not my blood and my guts." She reached out and put her hand over the red light on top of the camera in a last bid to get the newsman's attention.
The assistant cocked an eye at her. "You haven't lived here very long," he said soberly. "You didn't grow up here. You don't know these people like I do. If it was your friends got offed tonight—"
"Spare me," she said, preoccupied. "Barry, don't you know better than to believe everything news people say. . . . even me? Lighten up. I'm only protecting my image. I've really got the heart of a sweet, innocent girl."
The assistant smirked. "Where, boss? In a jar on your mantle?"
"Actually it's in the kitchen. I use it as a doorstop." She found a blank cue card and a grease pencil, wrote "ID" on it and held it below the camera.
"IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE KILLINGS, THE STREETS BETWEEN CHESTNUT AND TENTH ARE JAMMED WITH PEOPLE AND CARS. . . . REPEATING THAT, UH, THESE STREETS ARE CHESTNUT AND TENTH . . . THEY'RE JUST JAMMED WITH BOTH PEOPLE AND CARS . . ."
The producer held up her index finger. She waved it until Mundy could not help but notice. Then she took her finger and slashed it across her throat from ear to ear with finality. She made a gagging expression, her tongue hanging out.
"WE NOW RETURN YOU TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING," said Mundy. "UNTIL THEN, PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER . . ."
"CUT, already!" yelled the producer.
She floored the gas pedal of her Valiant and left the circus behind her.
In her rearview mirror she saw the last of the police lights bouncing off the Wallace and Doyle houses.
"A hot time in Hicksville," she muttered.
She flicked on the radio.
Music blipped past, songs about love or the lack of it, too much or too little, too late or too soon. The old story.
She glanced up. Ahead, a squad car was parked across the intersection of Tenth and Orange Grove.
She left her foot on the accelerator and slid her hands to the top of the wheel as if preparing to run it.
An officer climbed out of the car and flagged her down.
She sighed and eased up with her right foot.
She rolled down her window and pointed to the card in the window, on top of her dash.
"Press," she said.
The officer trained his flashlight in her face. "You alone?"
"What does it look like?" she said.
He sauntered around the car, hitting the dirty windows with his beam.
"You're with the press, you say?"
"WWAR. Don't tell me you're going to ask for my registration. At a time like this."
"Nice night," he said.
"Yes," she said, "it sure is. It might rain tomorrow. Christmas is coming in a month and a half. Listen, can I pass? I've got to get to Haddonfield Memorial. I'm sure you know there's been a—"
"Not a very safe night, though to be out. Alone and all. Pretty young thing like you."
"I'm sorry. It's been a long day. Night." She shielded her eyes from the flashlight and tried another tack. "You're name's Rettig, isn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I thought so. I remember you from that snake hunt out in Russelville last summer. Or was it the two-headed calf story over in Hardin?'' She sat up in her seat, unbottoning another notch on her blouse. "Have you been on this case from the beginning?"
"Since the break-in at Stoddard's this morning, yes, ma'am. You know, Sheriff Brackett left orders with the Highway Patrol to keep reporters away from the hospital till tomorrow. He wants to talk to that Strode girl first. If I were you—"
"You're not. I mean, I'm glad you're not! Lucky for you. Well, I've got to get back to the station. Late updates and all that. You know how it is."
The deputy made a note of her license plate. "Well, you go ahead then," he said. Reluctantly. "Just be sure you stay on the main road. And don't go picking up any hitchhikers. You see any suspicious characters, you report it to—"
"I'll report straight to you. Or Sheriff Brackett. Whatever." She eased in the clutch and dropped into gear.
The deputy tipped his hat. "You have a nice night now, hear?"
She started rolling.
"Wait a minute," called the deputy.
She groaned.
"Is anything wrong, officer?"
"Better get that left front tire checked. She's runnin' pretty low."
"I'll do that." She waited. "Thank you very much."
"Be glad to give you a hand, if you'll pull over to the side. 'Bout ready to be relieved here, anyway. How's your spare?"
"My spare's fine. I mean, I'll do it myself. I'll stop off on the way. I need gas, anyway."
"No stations open around here this time of night."
"I know where there's one. Hey. I'll bet you'd make a great interview for the Special Report tomorrow morning. Someone like you who knows everything about what's going on. . . . Have you ever seen yourself on television?''
"I'd have to check with the Captain . . ."
"You do that. And then check with us. With me. Or I'll call you. Don't call us, okay? We'll call you."
Before he could change his mind she drew away smoothly, waving out the window.
"Hicks nix pix in sticks," she said to herself.
She drove on.
His red light faded in the distance, finally obscured by trees. Or by shadows across her back window. Shadows of whatever was in the back seat. Boxes or—
Her eyes froze on the mirror.
As a band of light from a mercury streetlamp wavered across the rear upholstery, she reached up and panned the mirror from right to left, coming to a stop at her own stark face.
There was a shape in the back seat.
"Five, she said, "four, three, two one . . . She spun around.
It was her jacket. It was wadded up against the armrest. As she slowed, it slithered down to the floorboard.
"Hick cop," she said. "Could have at least checked the back seat."
She set her shoulders and bore down on the white line.
The periphery of Haddonfield slipped past like a speeded-up filmstrip. A railroad crossing with an X marking the spot. An out-of-business Dairy Queen. A twenty-four-hour laundromat with pale, aqueous lights behind the machines. As she passed, the reflected image of her taillights smeared a red afterimage across the sign in the window. HAPPY HALLOWEEN, said the sign.
She groped for the cassette tape recorder on the seat next to her. Her fingers found the microphone and mashed the RECORD button.
"Special Feature on Haddonfield Slasher," she said. "Open on a montage of the town. City streets in slo-mo. Businesses, all closed. Hand-held shots, moving—use Jeff's car, Portapak Two. Number One's losing its charge again. . . .
"Let's see. Voice over. Use Mundy. No, my own voice. No, get a local with the right accent. Talking about what it's like growing up in this armpit. Strike that. In this typical American town. Then segue into music, pop tunes since the fifties, ending on current top forty. . . ."
Again she toyed with the dashboard radio. Still more of the same. A disco, some new wave, country and western. A lot of country and western.
"No, no, she said, "that's the wrong sound. It's got to be nostalgic. Let's see. How about this one?" She opened her throat and sang.
"Mis-ter Sandman
Send me a dream
&
nbsp; Make him the cutest thing
That I've ever seeeen . . ."
She stopped singing.
She heard a dull clicking sound.
"Great," she said, "no more tape".
She knuckled the OFF button.
The clicking persisted. Louder, more insistent.
It began to rock the car.
"This," she said, "I simply do not believe." She steered to the side.
She got out. The moon was sinking into the top of an oak tree, the edges of its face eaten away like Swiss cheese by the chattering leaves. There was no one around, nothing.
A deslolate intersection on the outskirts of town with a boarded-up beer bar on one corner, a barbershop with its crimson-striped pole on the other, a Weenie Wigwam fast-food stand, a mobile home trailer park with a sign that said DRY LAWN ACRES.
She walked through the misty beams of her headlights. They were yellow and none too steady; the battery was on its last legs. The dusty gravel in front of the car cast long, jagged shadows, like hundreds of extracted teeth.
"Bitchin' short, Deb," she said to herself. She walked all the way around.
The left front tire was flat as a pancake. The sidewall was cracked out from the rim, and a dirty smell of burning rubber wafted into her nostrils, along with the rich, ripe aroma that left no doubt a dairy farm was nearby.
"The Man," she said, "was right. Give him a gold star for that one." She sighed a sigh that was like all the breaths she had ever drawn going out at once. "Way to go, Deb. Always in a hurry. But like they say, you'll probably be late for your own funeral. . . . "
She leaned in and shut off the ignition, retrieved the keys.
The car creaked, settling. She heard another sound then, a faint cry from the bushes behind the car. She killed her lights and tried to make out its source as she shuffled back to the trunk. The cry was louder.
She started to key the trunk, eager to be out of this place.
The cry became a scream.
She took a look over her shoulder. A red eye appeared over the crest over the hill she had just driven. It was racing toward her down the middle of the road. She saw lettering growing larger:
ECNALUBMA
The red light spun past her and raced like a wolverine through the intersection without stopping. It cornered on two wheels, then disappeared, carrying its screaming siren with it.
"Thanks," she said, "I needed that. Don't worry about me. No time to lose, boys, when you've got a couple of dead ones for the morgue. . . ."
As soon as she touched it, the trunk lid opened like a jaw.
Inside were two old tennis rackets, an empty can of tennis balls, a deflated football, a Frisbee, a ruptured styrofoam ice chest and an old blanket covering God-knows-what
"God knows what," she said.
She found the jack. The handle was impregnated with coarse black grease. It scraped off under her nails like congealed fat one of her nails broke.
"Right," she said.
She kicked the jack under the ass end of the car and started pumping.
Suddenly she saw her own shadow drawn in bas-relief against the pavement as new lights approached. The gutter was full of refuse: an old TV Guide, a plastic six-pack ring, an empty pack of Big Red chewing gum, a rotting, translucent balloon, a matchbook from the Rabbit-In-Red Lounge. She pumped and pumped. The car was about two inches higher.
A red Ford pickup truck whooshed past, blaring a Marshall Tucker tune, "Rumors Are Raging (About You and Me)."
The producer raised a dirty hand and gave it the finger in passing.
Brakes grabbed. Tire treads bit the road.
The truck backed up, bringing Marshall Tucker with it.
"Hi, are you?"
A heavy-duty hee-haw from the cab. "That's right," muttered the producer to herself, "sit there and watch. It's a spectator sport, didn't you know that?"
The truck's door opened, closed. It sounded like the side of a tank slamming shut.
"Out of the frying pan," she said to herself, "and into the fucking fire."
She raised her head.
"Hi, yourself," she said.
He posed there, backlighted by his own headlights. A burly guy, early thirties, moustache, the kind that droops down over the upper lip like a sieve until it bleaches out from too much beer. A red plaid wool jacket. A Toronto Maple Leafs cap. He looked like he handled heavy machinery for a living.
"Oh great, great," she said.
The driver took a long pull from the bottle of Moose Head and smacked his lips.
"Not bad so far." He chuckled. Chortled is more the word. "Nothing like a squeeze who's good with her hands. That's what I always say."
He handed her his Moose Head.
"Thanks, she said, "I guess.
He gave her a slow smile and licked his lips. Then he planted his boots on either side of the jack and wrapped his chunky fingers around the bar. With a series of sure flexions he drove the bumper until darkness showed under the collapsed tire.
"Guess you'll owe me one." He winked.
"Guess I will," she said. "I think the spare's in back."
He bent over and spun off the lug nuts with the jack handle. The way they twirled into his fingers, it was like he was catching watermelon seeds. He stood and hiked up his jeans and held out his empty hand.
She gave him back the beer bottle.
"You do that real well," she said.
"Don't I, though? You should see me when I really get into it."
He drank another third of the beer and set it inside the open trunk. Rolled out the spare. Bounced it to the front. She followed.
"I'll watch you so I'll know how it's done."
"You sure you never done this before?" he said.
He was down low, looking up her skirt.
She stepped back.
He lined up the holes and reached for a nut. His hand brushed her ankle; his callused skin caught against her nylons. She ignored it. When the hand spidered up toward the back of her knee, she high-stepped so that her hip bumped the car and very nearly knocked it off the jack.
"So," he said, "trick or treat?"
"That's it," she said, her voice rising forcefully. "Okay, all right. Listen." Her slender hands pashed the air. "I didn't ask you to stop."
"Who's complainin'?"
"I could have done it myself. So why don't you just get back in your truck and—and roll on out of here. Now."
He looked her up and down, his eyes rolling over her body like ball bearings. He came to a conclusion. He stood. He dropped the jack handle. It twanged on the ground.
He held out his dirty hands, palms up, and shrugged.
"Happy Halloween," he said.
She moved away from him. Her dress whispered against the metal of the car.
"Don't get your pretty little dress dirty," was the last thing he said.
She watched the pickup as it spit gravel and crossed the intersection. She watched until it was completely out of sight.
Her nostrils were flaring and tears of rage were welling in her eyes.
"Fuck," she said, "you."
She snatched up the jack handle.
When she was finished she tightened the lug nuts and lowered the bumper. She rattled the jack free and carried it back to the trunk.
"Ha," she said, "forgot your beer, didn't you, asshole?"
She looked inside the trunk.
The beer bottle he had left there was gone. She puzzled over this for a second or two. "How did he do that?" she said to herself. "I didn't see him go back. . . . Sleight-of-hand artist. Boy, wasn't he? Oh, well."
Her hands were now black as coal.
She reached for the corner of the blanket to wipe them
She yanked it. The blanket fell away.
A shape the size of a mountain on two legs unfolded inside the trunk. It rose up and up. Then it sprang. It took her head back by the hair. Her white throat was suddenly exposed. A flash of silver and her throat had been slashed, with such b
rutal force that her head was nearly severed from her shoulders. It happened like that and then it was over, more quickly than the eye or any camera could have recorded. Even in slo-mo.
There was a jingling of keys. A moment later the car was running again.
Chapter Six
In the staff lounge at Haddonfield Memorial, the movie was still running.
Onscreen, a tall man in a black coat led a group of slow-moving ghouls toward an old house. The house was fortified with boarded-up windows and a barricaded door, but the ghouls were not deterred. The tall man's arms extended stiffly. He approached the porch with hungry determination.
"You ought to watch this flick," said the ambulance driver, Bud. "You might learn something."
"Like what?" said Janet. She was staring past the set, preoccupied.
"Like how to deal with, you know, junk that goes bump in the night. Dead people, for instance."
"Some of us don't have to turn on the television for that sort of thing," said Janet. "Some of us get enough of that right here."
"Yeah, you know about sick people, messed up people. But the ones Jimmy and I had to deal with tonight, hey, they were really messed up. They were dead."
"Why don't you knock it off?" said Jimmy irritably.
"Yes, please," said Janet. "You don't have to dwell on it."
Bud took a long toke from his joint.
"It's not like just a wind that's passing through," he said, sucking his breath in. "It's all around you. I found that out in 'Nam. Look at that dude."
On the TV screen a lanky black man, the hero of the film, lit a torch and thrust it at the walking dead on the porch. They fell back temporarily.
"He knows the score," Bud continued. "Fight fire with fire. The cops know that, too. When they get the guy that did it, they're gonna burn his ass good. It's the only thing creeps like that understand."
"They already got him," Jimmy said.
"Yeah? Then why are all those cop cars still tearassing around town? Listen, you can hear the sirens. He's still out there. Take ol' Bud's word for it. Watch this part—it's good."