I had the chance to watch David Taylor and his Moravian College (Pennsylvania) students at work and formed an ameliorating impression that America’s future is in good hands after all. Kids still read, write, have sunny smiles and manners—once they’ve listened to this passionate, patient, thought-provoking prof who really sells his love of good fiction and good kids. The husband of Diane Taylor, who also debuts herein, David is just short of forty summers and has written a first novel that achieves the impact of most horror writers’ fifth novels.
You may recall Taylor’s horror studies in Horrorstruck. If you’ve read his talcs in Masterton’s Scare Care or Gorezone, you will remember him. Such a fine, compelling story is “Dew Drop Inn.”
DEW DROP INN
D.W Taylor
TEN HOURS ON THE ROAD AND Rick couldn’t remember it ever being day, the night thickening around the highway like grave dust and all he could think was move, move, move, eating up the road with speed. Jonesboro 46, take it; 35 more to Johnson City, maintain the strain. Yeah, this was how the truckers did it—lost in the rhythm of the road, on the move and in the groove. Sixty-five mph, seventy; the BMW was a silver bullet. Didn’t matter. The cops were good ol’ boys too. Besides, everyone was in a hurry. It was Christmas.
“I wanna hear Madonna. See if you can find Madonna.” The irritation went through Rick like a jolt of current, settling right in the amalgams of his teeth. Chrissy had developed one hell of a whine this year. She and her little buddies in the second grade must practice it at recess, trying out different versions at home and comparing notes the next day—honing their art until they had developed the perfect whine, guaranteed to rattle fillings. Make a man do anything. He had seen the little devils giggling together triumphant, out on the Academy’s playground. The expensive Academy’s playground. And this was what he got for his money?
“Jesus, honey, do something to shut her up, will ya?”
Rick glanced over at his wife. Mary Beth was just sitting there sliding the needle across the radio’s dial, slowly, expectantly, deliberately, with all the patience of a goddamn saint.
“You always get to listen to what you want to. I never do.” Absolutely perfect. Her child’s vowels drawn out just so and blended with a touch of the nasal. A pitiful little singsong on the edge of tears.
“Mother of God, hurry up. She’s driving me crazy.” Still nothing but crackle and arruphs from the radio; voices from outer space. They were somewhere in the tip of Tennessee, that sawblade state on the road atlas with a blue stripe called Interstate 40 wriggling like a vein across its middle. Nowhere, man. In between Bristol and Knoxville it was just you and the hayseeds and the stars, good buddy.
All Mary Beth could get was some soul station with Ray Charles singing Christmas carols: “Shepherds quake—Oh, say now, can’t you hear them quakin’—at the sight.”
Rick knew it was coming.
“That’s not Ma-don-na.”
“Mary Beth, do something with your child. Now.”
She bent over into the backseat, her rear end kissing the windshield, and began talking in her Mommy Voice to the pouting face with its little conceited mouth all screwed up. “Daddy’s trying to drive, honey, so we . . .”
God, whatever happened to the good old days? Just the two of them cruising down south to visit Mary Beth’s parents for Christmas. Then maybe to Florida for a few days. They used to go anywhere they wanted, buy anything, anytime. Then the nightly DoveBars got traded in for an Aprica stroller. And ever since it was born, all Rick could remember was dirty diapers, sleepless nights, its constant presence, feeling manacled to it—its slave at home, at the law office earning money for it, watching Mary Beth do everything for it.
He even knew the precise instant everything changed: Mary Beth up on the delivery-room slab, legs in those stirrups, gown pushed up to her waist. She was grabbing at his arm, her face washed in sweat, eyes pleading. Then her mouth made that ugly, grotesque oval of pain while everybody stared between her legs as the plastic-gloved hand reached into her.
Something clicked, snapped, broke; whatever. But his Mary Beth, the slim, sexy, long-blond-hair-on-her-shoulders Mary Beth, the girl he used to wait for at the college dorm while she floated down the stairs like an angel, the girl who took his breath away when she walked into class that day—she was gone. Just like that. She wasn’t his anymore. The it took her away, destroyed her. And now sometimes, only sometimes, mind you, he wished they would both just go away. Just leave him alone. Silently, carelessly, at the low brilliant stars littering the sky with promises, he intoned: “Star light, star bright . . . I wish I may, I wish I might . . .”
“She can’t help it, Rick. Ten hours. Why don’t we stop for dinner? It’s almost six.”
“Terrific. Why didn’t you say something before we got past Bristol? We’re in the middle of nowhere out here.”
In the backseat Chrissy was singing to herself: “Like a vir-gin.” What did an eight-year-old know about virgins? He hadn’t even noticed that Annette Funicello had breasts under that Mickey Mouse emblem until he was ten, much less speculated on her sexual status vis-a-vis Frankie Avalon. What was the hold this “Madonna” had on kids? His daughter looked like a miniature bag lady with those droopy socks and fingerless gloves.
“Must have been subconscious,” Mary Beth said. “I’ll die if I have to eat at another Pizza Hut.”
“What’s wrong with franchises? At least you always know what you’re getting.” Rick realized his mistake too late.
“It’s not the food, it’s the people.” Mary Beth launched into her “They’re-so-gross” speech—one of her specialties—describing how the fat women lined up, haunch to haunch, at the all-you-can-eat bar. How the men piled their plates like pharaohs building pyramids, one of every topping, stuffing it all into their faces as if they were scared of ever being hungry again. She added a seasonal twist: “They make me sick, especially at Christmas.”
He had her this time. “Okay, then, at what new place would you like to watch the local yokels stuff their faces?”
But she had learned to ignore loaded questions during the cross-exam. “Look, we have to stop someplace. You promised to call your mom before they shut off the switchboard at seven. You know how she worries.”
Obvious but effective. Rick imagined his mother in her room at the Bronxville nursing home, sitting hunched over in the wheelchair, staring at the phone, arthritic hands curled in her lap like twisted roots. A shy stab of guilt made all the lies troop forward on cue, defenders of the conscience: It was the right place for her. My God, the woman had rheumatoid arthritis so bad she could barely get in and out of the wheelchair or feed herself. And with him and Mary Beth both at the office all day, they’d just have to hire someone anyway. She was better off there with others like her.
Then he remembered the conversation by the Christmas tree the year before, his mother gripping his arm with her cold gnarled hand, the same way Mary Beth had in the delivery room, making him look at her, making him promise never to put her in one of those homes. “Son, I’d go crazy. Son, please . . .”
“Rick, look. The Dew Drop Inn. What do you think?” Mary Beth moved to the edge of her seat. Chrissy popped up out of the back, instantaneously. “I wanna stop. Can we stop? Pie-ease?” Right in his ear. There went the amalgams again.
They had driven this route at least five or six times and he couldn’t remember ever seeing a “Dew Drop Inn.” But there it was, halfway up a dark hillside, red neon “Dew” and “Drop” and “Inn” flashing in tedious sequence. Obviously, Tennessee’s terminal case of corniness had struck again. “Only because my ass is pleading its case for mercy,” Rick said. “But don’t blame me if the real name of this place turns out to be the ‘Do Drop Dead’ after we eat.” Chrissy cheered when he took the exit.
No cars in the gravel parking lot, yet lights were on inside. Strange; usually every pit stop along 1-40 was doing good business this time of year, jammed by station wagons with presen
ts stuffed in the back, presents flowing out the windows and up onto the roof—the bounty of America run-nething over.
“We must’ve missed the ptomaine warning on the radio. Everyone’s left already.” Rick was really getting into this. “Oh, look, it’s built of logs, just like in the old days. Isn’t that clever? Chrissy, I think this could be a valuable educational experience for you.”
“Park it, Dad.” The brat. He’d pay her back later. She was all business now, getting her bag-girl costume ready to impress any potential rival second graders. It would be so easy to show up these hick kids. They probably thought Madonna had something to do with Christmas.
Interior decor was definitely “Early Davy Crockett”: oak barrels and fake log counters. There were racks of toy outhouses for sale with tiny doors that opened onto the best in scatological humor; shell ashtrays with a map of Tennessee painted in the middle; a bounty of corncob pipes and Rebel T-shirts. Expensive, classy stuff that you just could not get at Neiman Marcus anymore.
But Rick couldn’t understand how, with no cars out front, there could be people dotting nearly every booth and table in the restaurant section. And they all looked like travelers, too—definitely not local yokels. There was a skinny brunette in one of those trim business suits that made any woman look like a schoolmarm, a salesman type in polyester, a dapper gray-haired gentleman, even a trucker leaning on meaty forearms over his coffee. No kids. Sorry, Chrissy. Just adults sitting quietly alone, one to a table, staring into space, speaking to no one. Not even to the dwarf waitress who waddled from table to table.
Rick smiled privately. The waitress looked just like Mother Teresa—an ancient angular face with great folds of skin, a wide trunk that seemed to stretch almost to the floor, definitely to her kneecaps. Her shoulders swayed up and down with each step. One stumpy leg was shorter than the other—Rick had it figured out by the time she did her little duck walk over to their booth.
“Evening, folks. What y’all gonna have tonight?” Her voice was low and full of gravel, making you want to clear your own throat. All three stared down at her, mesmerized. Her chin was exactly level with the table, which hid the rest of her, leaving just a decapitated head talking on top of the table. John the Baptist come back to life to scold Salome. Silence as she handed out the menus, her little hands brown and fragile as dead leaves.
“I’ll be right back. Y’all take your time now and don’t be in no hurry.” She was saying the usual corny things, but the edge to her dry country-biscuit voice was somehow condescending—maybe even menacing. “That’s a real cute outfit, honey,” the turning talking head said to Chrissy, who started to smile but caught the dwarf’s small sneer and stared quickly down at her children’s menu.
All right! Rick thought appreciatively. Took the starch right out of those mesh stockings! He was beginning to take a shine, as they say, to this little table-waiting curmudgeon. Maybe he could learn a few things. One part churlishness and two parts sarcasm; he’d have to try her recipe.
“I hate her, she’s ugly!” Chrissy blurted out after the dwarf had gone. She was almost beside herself, hurt and angry, the pout threatening to mutate any second into a full-fledged, scrunchy-faced bawl.
“Now, Chrissy, sometimes people don’t mean . . .” Mary Beth went into her mother act about understanding others, how some people just look different, the need for tolerance, and blah blah. Did she really think it would do this kid any good?
Time for the payback. “Here’s a quarter, honey,” Rick said. “See if you can find any good songs on the jukebox.” That should take her at least ten minutes of searching in vain for the one name he knew would definitely not, in this hick joint, be found alphabetically between Loretta Lynn and Mel Tillis. Rick watched her wriggle her little butt across the floor. Too bad Chrissy. No one else even looked up. They just stared at their plates or at the darkness pressed like a hand against the windows, their faces expressionless, as if in a trance, mouths chewing slowly.
“Can you believe that damn little witch? Saying something like that to a child?” A curse word! Saint Mary Beth must really be hot. “What was on her name tag—‘Ida’? I’d a-like to trip her next time she goes by!” Not bad not bad.
“What’s really weird is the customers,” Rick said. “Look around. Everyone’s alone, no one’s talking, no one’s even leaving. And where are their cars? The lot was empty when we drove up.” He leaned forward for emphasis. “This is definitely not the Pizza Hut.”
Ida appeared suddenly at the corner of the table. These damn little midgets could really sneak up on you! The look on her face made Rick feel like a prisoner plotting an escape or something. Maybe she had heard Mary Beth. She looked directly at Rick, though, as if he were the only one at the table, and rasped “Y’all know what you want yet?” Ah, that southern charm had returned.
Mary Beth said sharply, “Yes, we’re having coffee—to go. Chocolate milk for my daughter. And please hurry.” She slapped he menu down on the table as if she were playing a trump card an stared out the window. That was telling her!
“Uh . . . one more thing, if you don’t mind.” Rick just had to know. “Did I park in the right place? I mean, there are all these people in here but no cars out there. For future reference, you understand.” He smiled. Funny how quickly you adapted. It seemed normal talking to a decapitated head with its chin on the table.
“Overnighters. Cars in the permanent lot. Cain’t be too careful, ‘specially at Christmas.” She started to waddle off, her broad ugly shoulders dipping up and down, tilted slightly to starboard. Then she turned. “You folks welcome to stay, if you’ve a mind to.”
“Gosh, right kindly of you,” Rick said hoping he wasn’t being too obvious; but this one was for Chrissy and Mary Beth. “But we’d better be moseyin’ on down the road a spell.” The dwarf’s old face lit up in a repulsive grin. She loved it! This was the kind of thing she fed on. You could never get to a person like that. The more you gave, the more they wanted.
Chrissy waited until Ida had disappeared before slinking back into the booth. Now she was really depressed. No Madonna in this place, only midget witches. While Mary Beth and Chrissy went to the rest room, Rick slipped a tip under his coffee saucer before leaving. Mary Beth would have said the second curse word of her life if she had found out—but, he told himself, you had to maintain your class around hicks. Besides, the old crone was a bit scary.
It was a relief to be back inside the BMW, the silver bullet of I-40, strapped in and ready for ignition.
Nothing.
He tried again. Still only that helpless sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and a voice at the back of his head saying, “No, no, no!” as the engine growled over and over, lifeless, recalcitrant, inexplicable.
“Goddamn son of a bitch.” Rick slapped his palm against the leather-covered steering wheel, took a deep breath, and tried again, telling himself this wasn’t happening even while the engine kept grinding. “Come on, come on, come on.” Mary Beth and Chrissy, perfectly still—watching, listening, depending.
The grinding slowed as the battery weakened. And Rick finally gave in, slamming his fist against the padded dashboard above the digital AM/FM stereo cassette combination, throwing himself back into the anatomically contoured bucket seat and announcing to the dead cold silent night all around them, “This lousy piece of shit!”
Mary Beth waited until it was safe. “Rick,” she said softly, ever so cautiously, “I think we might be out of gas. Look at the gauge.” It couldn’t be. He always filled up when it got just below half-tank. They’d had plenty of gas, pulling in here; he’d checked. But the little red stick was lying flat on its back under the big “E,” asleep or dead. Same thing. He flipped the ignition switch off, and back on. Still no sign of life.
Dew Drop Inn. And they sure as hell had.
Rick shifted restlessly in one of the rickety beds; Mary Beth and Chrissy were curled up together in the other. He had been sleeping alone since it was born, but toni
ght, sleep wouldn’t come because those damn faces were there, racing back and forth in front of his eyes like a film in continuous forward and reverse. When he’d walked back in—defeated know-it-all city slicker—every blank face from every table and booth had turned toward the door, given a collective suck of air, and stared in wide-eyed greater knowing, straight at Rick. Then there was the little hag’s face from behind the register where she perched on her stool, her mouth twisted into the same wicked grin as before, victorious, eager for its pleasure.
Nope, fillin’ stations done closed around here. Yup, might as well stay here till the mornin ‘and things open up. We’ll take care of ya then.
God, what did these people have against vowels and inflectional endings anyhow? Like a mouthful of marbles! Why did everyone stare . . . Damn zombies . . . Ugly bitch . . . Early start . . . Tomorrow . . .
Blades of light from the closed Venetian blind fell like prison bars across the room, casting a faint gray light against the walls, along the hardwood floor, and beneath the furniture where it was trapped in the tiny ghost balls of dust and hair that hid there, glowing dimly.
Rick pressed his fingers hard into his eyes and released blinking as the bare room took shape around him—tan dresser and nightstand, wrought-iron beds, an old chifforobe that towered beside him like a guard. No ashtrays, no phone. Not even a Gideon’s Bible in this hellhole.
And no Chrissy or Mary Beth.
Damn, it must be late! But they knew better than to awaken him. They were probably eating breakfast. Now he’d have to hurry around like a . . . what did Beth’s mother always say, a chicken with its head cut off? How utterly charming. No, that was a cow. He absolutely had to get this farm talk straight.
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