by Ray Garton
He stopped on the path and looked back again, listening for Nathan’s voice. It was gone.
Mark wanted to go back and find his son, take him away from whatever game he was playing and hold him, talk to him.
“You can’t teach it to him, Mark,” Hester said quietly, standing behind him. “The truth is new to you, too.” He faced her again.
“Let us do it. It won’t take long. When it’s over, you’ll see him, Mark, I promise. You’ll see him the second his education is finished. Please, Mark, tell me you trust me.”
He searched her face for whatever it was he needed to see to give her his trust—to give her his son.
“Please, Mark.”
A thought of Lauren rose up in his mind—the way she used to admonish him for exposing Nathan to the Alliance literature he used to keep around the house—but he pushed it away. Slowly, he nodded, his lips pursed tightly over his teeth. Then he relaxed—tried to relax—and started walking again, walking fast, trying to stop clenching his teeth.
“I’m sorry that happened, Mark, it was my fault. I should have remembered.”
He nodded in response. He couldn’t speak yet, because he was afraid of what he would say, of how he would speak to her. He told himself to trust her—
—You have to trust her, he thought, you’ve left everything else behind, trusting her is all you’ve got—
—and kept walking, barely aware of her at his side.
“Are you angry with me?” she asked.
After a moment, he forced himself to say, “No, I’m not. Really.” It came out in a dry whisper.
She took his arm. “You are. But give it time. You’ll come to understand, and your anger will go away.”
They walked together silently as Mark thought, Please, let it go away, let me understand. I have to. I need to. …
4.
Before it got bloody, it had been a busy day for Joan Maher in the Lemurian Diner, a long parade of rude demanding customers, most of them irritable tourists who expected to be treated like dignitaries, endlessly pondering the two-page menu as if it were a fat Christmas catalog, then changing their orders after Joan had turned in the ticket. They were relieved only by the long-winded regulars who wandered in and talked politics and auto mechanics and made shameless, guffawing passes at Joan as they drank their coffee and chain-smoked at the coffee counter.
The part-time girl who usually came in for a few hours to help during the lunch rush—a voluptuous blond teenager preoccupied with her hair and figure—had called in sick that day, leaving Joan to face the summer tourists by herself. Chelsea, the owner, was in the kitchen working the grill because the cook—a broad-shouldered blond teenager preoccupied with his hair and muscles—had also called in sick. Either the flu was going around, or the cook and waitress were together in some secret place groping one another’s sweaty preoccupations.
Joan rushed a Denver omelette and a chicken salad sandwich to a quiet aging couple at a corner table, then grabbed the coffeepot and went from one end of the counter to the other pouring for the men perched on the blue vinyl-covered stools.
“You pour coffee,” Flash Gordon muttered through his little mouth, “almost as well as you pour yourself into them jeans,” then squeezed out a long wheezing laugh.
Joan smirked and replied affably, “I don’t have to pour the coffee as well, because it’s only ninety-five cents a cup.”
Amos Haas slapped a grease-stained hand on the counter and whopped, “Hoo! She gotcha, Flash!”
“Damn right she’s got me, anytime she wants me.”
“Show some respect,” Wally grumbled as Joan poured his coffee. “Woman with tits like them deserves a little more respect.”
“Tell ya what, honey,” Flash said, beckoning Joan with a crooked finger, “Whyn’t you c’mon over t’my place after work an’ I’ll take you up in my ’copter? You can join the Mile High Club,” he laughed.
Joan tried to ignore him, but couldn’t keep from smirking.
“You couldn’ get that whirly-bird a-yours a mile off the ground,” Shorty Mattocks grumbled, his words slopping out between toothless gums. “Just far enough t’ scare the corny shit outta tourists.”
Flash’s smile disappeared and he frowned down the counter at Shorty. “Howda you know? You couldn’t fly yourself a kite. Why, I bet you never even been up in anything.”
Turning her back on them, Joan replaced the pot with a sigh and a slow shake of her head, running a hand through her short chestnut hair. This reaction to the behavior of the Lemurian’s regulars was a vast improvement over her reaction during her first week on the job. Back then, it was only her desperate financial condition and need for gainful employment that kept her from splashing their faces with hot coffee, shattering the glass pot, and disfiguring them with the shards. But Joan had changed.
When asked what she did for a living, Joan replied with a smile, if caught in just the right mood, “I put up with bullshit.” This was always said jokingly, but with a certain amount of sincerity, because it was true. But the bullshit she encountered at the Lemurian was far more palatable than the chickenshit she’d dealt with at Diamond-Barr, the monstrous insurance company she’d worked for in Los Angeles before coming to Grover. Bullshit was always better than chickenshit.
Bullshit, as Joan saw it, was big and lumpy and clearly visible so you could step around it when you saw it ahead of you; chickenshit, on the other hand, was tiny and messy and, once it oozed between your toes, was hard to shake off.
The men at the coffee counter were loud and vulgar, but their hearts were big. During her second week at the Lemurian, her car had broken down. She had no money for repairs at the time and had to get up at three o’clock every morning so she’d have time to walk to work from the boarding house where she was living between Grover and Weed. She asked no one for help because she knew no one she liked in the area and was planning to get out as soon as she could afford it. As she was walking to work one morning, Amos passed her in his battered old Chevy pick-up and pulled over to give her a ride. She was reluctant at first; knowing how he acted in the diner every day, she shuddered at the thought of being alone with him. But she was tired and cold and she climbed into the truck against her better judgment. It was the beginning of her love affair with Grover and its citizens because once he learned of her troubles, Amos, the town’s star mechanic, had her Volkswagen towed to his garage and replaced the starter, the fuel pump, changed the oil and tuned the engine. And he charged her nothing.
“Worry about it when you can afford to worry about it,” Amos said with a floppy wave of his hand.
The least she could do, she thought, was pay for his coffee in the diner, but he wouldn’t let her do that, either. She still hadn’t been able to pay him and Amos had never mentioned it once.
That was a whole world more than she could say about anyone she’d worked with at Diamond-Barr.
Bullshit washed off easily; chickenshit left a permanent stain.
The door of the diner rattled open and Joan turned to see a couple, obviously tourists, looking around at Chelsea’s paintings of the little elf-like people with sinister slanted eyes that were hung all over the walls of the diner. When they saw her approaching them, they smiled; first the man—a big warm smile—then the woman—more tentative, but pleasant—and Joan was rather taken aback by the notion that there were actually some friendly people taking a vacation somewhere.
“Smoking or non?” she asked.
“Smoking,” the man replied, still smiling, but still scanning the diner.
Joan led them to a table against the wall, gave them each a menu and, when they said they wanted coffee, went to get the pot. As she poured, she asked, “Are you visiting or just passing through?” She usually didn’t strike up conversations with the customers, but it was such a relief to wait on nice people—people who were pleasant in spite of th
e summer heat—that she wanted to savor it.
“We’re on vacation,” the man said. “From Santa Barbara.”
“Really? I spent a couple weeks there once with my ex-husband. I’m from L.A.”
“Oh? Did you like it?”
“The beach was nice, but … well, no offense, but I thought the town looked a little too much like a giant Taco Bell.”
He laughed. “I feel that way myself, sometimes.”
The woman remained silent, studying the menu.
“Well,” Joan said, “this is a good place to get away from it all. There’s going to be a small carnival over in Weed this weekend, by the way. It comes every year. Do you have kids?”
The man said, “No.”
“Oh. Too bad. The kids love it.”
She tended the other customers, pouring coffee and refilling water glasses until she noticed that the couple from Santa Barbara had set aside their menus. Joan returned to their table, set down the pot and removed her order pad from the pocket of the small apron she wore over her jeans. “What’ll you have?”
They ordered—a burger and fries for him, chef’s salad for her—and she quickly turned in the ticket, then took the order of a man who’d just come in and seated himself by the window. When the couple’s order was ready, she took it to their table.
“Did you come for the Fourth of July celebration?” she asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “Heard it was the best in the state.”
“That’s probably true. It’s a small town, but they know how to throw a party. Especially a patriotic one.”
The woman smiled tentatively, but still said nothing. Joan figured they’d probably had a fight or were perhaps just a little tired of one another after the trip.
When Chelsea slapped the cheeseburger onto the deck of the pick-up window, Joan crossed the restaurant, swept it up and began winding her way around the tables toward the man at the window. He looked very involved in reading a newspaper.
“Here you go,” she said, poising the plate over the table, waiting for him to move the paper.
He didn’t seem to notice her, so she tried again, raising her voice just a little, but she never finished the sentence.
At first, she thought a bird had slammed against the window-pane in flight—it had happened several times before, startling whoever was sitting by the window, then landing stunned or dead on the sidewalk outside—so it took her a few seconds to realize that whatever had struck the window was still there, pressed to the glass. She stopped speaking and turned to it, mouth open, and when she saw it clearly and realized what it was—
—a bloody hand, slapping the glass, leaving a wet reddish-brown smear on the pane, fingers clawing, nails making a sickening screech—
—her fingers weakened and the plate tipped, dumping the cheeseburger and onion rings over the table, then dropped from her hand, landing on the coffee mug and splashing steaming black coffee onto the man, who jerked into a half-standing position behind the table, hissing, “Sshhit!” Then he turned to the window as a face slowly rose above the sill—
—a mangled, broken face, darkened with glistening blood that dribbled like tears down the swollen cheeks, curling around the puffed lips.
It was a man, but that fact was not readily apparent.
His face was a mask of scraped and lacerated flesh and his eyes were swollen to razor-thin slits. And his head …
… it was misshapen … somehow wrong …
Joan slowly pulled in a breath to back the scream that was building in her chest, and as she inhaled, the man lifted his other hand and slapped it against the window, his sausage-like lips trembling to speak, but when he opened his mouth, the only thing that came out was a spray of blood, speckling the window and running down the glass like splashed paint.
She saw the sport coat he was wearing, tan corduroy beneath the dark blood stains, and the face suddenly came together in her mind, conjuring up a familiar name.
“Paul!” she screamed, backing away from the table and lifting her hands to her jaw, curling her fingers over the flesh of her own face, as if to reassure herself that it was still there, still unbroken and smooth. “Paul Kragen!”
There was a stir in the diner; voices rose and chairs scraped over the floor.
But Joan’s attention was focused on the torn man in the window as he slid down the glass, one cheek pressed flat and trailing blood, until he disappeared beneath the sill.
A woman in the back of the diner screamed as Joan staggered toward the door, jerked it open, and rushed out to the sidewalk where Paul Kragen lay in a heap beneath the window, the sidewalk smeared with blood around him.
Joan’s feet skittered over the cement as she jerked to a halt a few feet away from him, her body frozen, mind numb.
She had never seen so much blood.
“Good god!” barked a winded voice as heavy footsteps rushed up behind her. “What’s happened?”
She vaguely recognized Bill Coogan’s voice but couldn’t turn to him, couldn’t move at all, could only stare as Paul Kragen’s head turned stiffly, something dark and gelatinous dribbling out of a small opening on the balding crown of his skull; he stared up at her with eyes that looked no different from the cuts that covered his face. The lips writhed again, like slugs caked with raw meat, and he inched his shattered right hand over the cement, trembling as he lifted it toward her.
Joan stumbled forward and knelt beside him, wincing suddenly; she’d always heard that blood had a very distinct scent, but she’d never actually encountered the smell before.
“Whuh-what, Paul?” she croaked through the coming tears that burned in her throat. “What ha-happened? How did this happen, Puh-Paul?”
He tried again, moving his lips, making small but labored sounds, until he managed, “Chuh.” Something fell from his mouth and chittered over the sidewalk. Two teeth.
“What?” She leaned closer to hear.
“Don’t move him,” Coogan said, kneeling beside her out of breath. He pounded a knuckle on the window of the diner and shouted, “Somebody call an ambulance!”
Faces peered through the glass, eyes fastened to the bloody mess on the sidewalk; none of them moved.
“Lord, somebody sure …” Coogan raised his voice. “Paul. Who did this to you?”
“Chuh,” Kragen said again. “Chil … dren.”
“What?” Joan asked.
They began coming out of the diner now, gathering around. The couple from Santa Barbara stepped forward and the man hunkered down beside Coogan.
“Any idea what happened?” he asked.
Coogan shook his head, his face pulled into a tight wince.
“Who is he?”
“Reporter for the Sentinel.” Coogan tossed the man a suspicious glance. “Why, Mr. Cusack?”
“Because somebody doesn’t like him a whole lot. I was just wondering.”
“Yeah,” Coogan nodded slowly, “you wonder a lot, don’t you? Okay,” he barked, “everybody back off now, c’mon.”
“Children,” Kragen rasped.
“What?” Joan asked again.
“Cuh-cave … children in … the cave …”
“Something about children,” someone muttered.
“Children?” The woman from Santa Barbara hunched beside Joan. “Did he say something about children?” she whispered. She sounded frightened; she looked it, too, as she clutched Joan’s arm. “Did he?”
Feeling ill, Joan could only shake her head. “I’m … not sure.”
“C’mon, honey.” The man put his hands on his wife’s shoulders and gently tugged her away, but she stayed.
Joan gulped and asked, “What… what did you say, Paul?”
In the pool of shadow cast by the small crowd around him, Paul Kragen’s breathing degenerated from a rasp to a thick wet rattle.
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“Sounds like he’s got some broken ribs,” a woman in the crowd said.
Coogan stood and waved them back. “C’mon, let’s clear away, huh?”
“Caaaave …”
“Cave?” Joan asked. “Is that what you—”
“The chil … dren … in … the cuh-cave …”
Joan felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see the man Coogan had called Cusack leaning forward, looking intently at Kragen.
“What children?” he asked.
“Sons … duh … daughters … in the woods … the cave …”
“Who did this to you?” Coogan asked in a throaty whisper. “Was this Alliance, Paul? Did they do this?”
“Mon … ster… horrible monster… big … stinking …” His breathing worsened still and he began gasping, dragging bloody breaths into his lungs, which sounded like tattered cellophane. His good fingers clawed the sidewalk, curled into fists, and his swollen eyes parted slightly, tried to widen, but failed. With mouth yawning, blood dribbling from his swollen lips, he began to thrash, desperately trying to breathe.
When the ambulance siren began wailing in the distance, Paul Kragen uttered a horrible wrenching cough that spewed blood over Coogan and Joan and the Cusacks. Then he died.
Coogan slapped his thigh and stood, clamping a hand over his mouth as he turned and walked away.
Joan moved much more slowly: stood, backed away, swallowing rapidly, her vision blurred by tears.
The ambulance arrived and the crowd dispersed, losing interest, some going back to their tables in the diner, others strolling on down the street.
“Did you know him?”
Joan wiped her eyes, sniffed, and looked at the Cusack woman. “Yes. We were … friends.”
“Who could have done that?”
“I don’t know,” Joan lied. “He … he was a nice guy and everyone liked him. Everyone. I don’t know … who would want to hurt him.” She spoke haltingly, unable to look the woman in the eye, because she did know who would want to hurt him, but she was too upset to talk about it and didn’t think it was any of this woman’s business anyway.