Storberry

by Dan Padavona

Except for Randy, who had anticipated an opportunity to slip away unnoticed.

  He had grown desperate, utterly desperate. He felt a growing dread when he thought of Benny, like walking past a graveyard at midnight. You wanted to believe that you were safe. And maybe you whistled a happy song. But you knew that if you turned around, they would come. Had he not seen the graveyard come to life in the barn?

  Sleep came quickly for the rest of them.

  Violence and madness encompassed their dreams. Evan found himself in the forest again, this time stalked by the deformed old man from the barn.

  Rory was young again. He stood waist deep in a flowing river of blood. Members of his troop...his friends...lay butchered on the banks in the failing light of dusk. As the forest enveloped the river beyond its banks, he could see eyes of red watching him from the darkness. An enemy he did not know how to defeat. An enemy he feared.

  Mary ran through her basement, as the door to the alcove creaked open behind her. She awoke with a scream that jostled the rest of the group out of sleep. It was 8:30 a.m.

  The brilliant sunshine and depthless blue skies over Storberry improved their disposition. Nobody protested when Mary and Renee offered to cook eggs and toast, but nobody had much of an appetite.

  Rory ate with businesslike commitment. Though he wasn't the least bit hungry after what he had witnessed, he knew his body needed energy for the job ahead. He highly recommended the others do the same.

  “Don't even think about it. Just eat, because your body is going to need it,” he said.

  At 9:30 a.m. they began to fashion a set of weapons, beginning with the damaged fence posts. They had just begun to rip apart the remnants of the fence when the walkie-talkie crackled in static.

  “Rory?”

  Rory recognized Greg Madsen's voice over the radio.

  “Yeah, Greg?”

  “Just checking in. Things are getting cleaned up faster than expected. The telephone company thinks they may have a workaround in place by tomorrow. I'm thinking we need to look into that tower of yours.”

  “Agreed. The sooner we get comms back, the better off we will be.”

  “By the way, where are you at? I hadn't heard anything since you said something about troublemakers on Standish.”

  “That was a false alarm. I'm over at the Moran farm. But, Greg...”

  Rory paused, not sure how to proceed.

  “You still there, big guy?”

  “It's something we all saw last night. It's going to sound crazy if I tell you over the radio, and frankly I don't want anyone else to hear this. Where are you going to be around noon? I want to talk to you in person.”

  “Jesus, Rory, that doesn't sound good. Trust me, though. Nothing is going to sound crazy after the story we heard last night.”

  “Something else happen in town?”

  “Your buddy Pete Cutler stopped by the station this morning. I thought he was going to chew me a new one about not getting that tower fixed yet, and instead he tells me that he shot a monster in his backyard last night.”

  Rory's mouth went dry.

  “Rory?”

  “I'm here, Greg.”

  “Yeah, that story left me a little speechless too.”

  “Hey, Greg, I know you're busy as hell, but maybe you could stop out here for a bit? There are some folks here who will want to talk to you.”

  There was silence on the other end, and after several seconds Rory worried that he had lost the signal.

  “I'll be there at noon. But what's this about?”

  “Just come over, Greg. It's easier if we explain it to you.”

  Another pause, then—

  “Okay, Rory. I'll trust you on this one. But it had better be better than Pete Cutler's story. I'm starting to worry about you amateur radio guys. See you at noon. Over.”

  “Over.”

  By 10:30 a.m. the sun had become a blowtorch, and sweat poured off their bodies. Rory split the fallen fence posts with a wood ax, and then Evan used a rotating saw to sharpen the ends until he had several sharp, sturdy-feeling stakes.

  Randy finished them off with sand paper. He stayed busy, though he never stopped watching the unattended vehicles in the driveway. Soon the police chief would be here, and Randy was sure that Greg Madsen would know. Because even if the police chief wasn't digging into unmarked graves on Randolph Road, he would smell his guilt, like mildew emanating from the carpet of a previously flooded room.

  And time was running out. He needed to get Benny out of Storberry. Out of Storberry before the sun set.

  At 11 a.m. Mary and Renee piled into Renee's hatchback and drove to Main Street for supplies. The reports they had heard over the walkie-talkie mentioned that several businesses had opened Sunday morning, including Downtown Hardware.

  Renee parked the car in front of the Sweet Nothings Café, where Mary was relieved to find her store undamaged and intact. Reopening was the furthest thing from her mind, but seeing the café, with its front door sign a mere flip from reading YES, WE’RE OPEN, and almost being able to smell the cappuccino and the freshly-baked strawberry pie somehow anchored her.

  Downtown Hardware was a great wooden fixture in the center of Storberry. It had somehow managed to dodge the big-box retailers who had devoured their way through the small towns of America in the 1980s. Nicholas Foles, part-time bartender at the Red Lion Tavern and proprietor of Downtown Hardware, could hardly keep up with the activity.

  Almost everyone in Storberry had either had damage of their own to repair or knew someone who did. The graying Foles was behind the counter accumulating the morning’s profits in his head, and thinking about retirement a few years down the road, as the line of customers in the checkout line stretched to the back wall. He had already sold almost every hand tool in the store.

  Foles, his steel rimmed glasses hanging perched at the end of a crooked nose, raised his eyebrows when Mary and Renee brought out their wallets to pay for five wooden crosses and five duffel bags. The religious symbols were just large enough to fit comfortably in their hands.

  “Anything else I can get you?” he asked, with a perplexed look on his face.

  “No, this is all we need,” Mary said.

  “Praise Be to God,” he said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Indeed.”

  When they returned to the farm shortly before noon, Renee handed each member of the group a duffel bag, which they filled with two sharpened wood stakes and a cross.

  The spring sky stretched away in an endless ocean of blue. Under different circumstances, it would have been the perfect prelude to summer. Instead, the clock seemed to tick off the seconds like a time bomb, reminding them that night would soon return.

  Five

  Dell Lawrence opened his eyes to rust marks on the trailer ceiling. As his eyes squinted against the light pouring in through the southern window, he saw that it was noon and that he had slept in Katy's bed again.

  He didn't remember if he had dreamed, but there was a growing sickness in his stomach when he thought about his missing daughter.

  Still fully clothed from last night, he brushed the sleep out of the corners of his eyes and swung his legs to the floor. The memory of the hospital came back to him like a splash of ice water on his face.

  The prick.

  He toasted a piece of stale bread and smothered it with strawberry jelly. Steak and eggs were a rich man’s dream with a bare refrigerator. He thought he could go for a few drinks, too.

  The Watering Hole would be open by now. Maybe a beer or two could help him figure out what to do about Jeff Branyan. He had thought the boy to be nothing but a soft, athletic type. Tough on the field, but impotent otherwise. But the way Branyan had taken his beating and recovered so quickly unsettled him. The boy was dangerous. And he thought on his feet. Who else would have thought to procure a gun while recovering in a hospital room?

  It was just a matter of time before Branyan recovered and was on the street looking for Dell. He had underestima
ted the boy, and now he would have to deal with him.

  Better deal with him before he deals with you.

  He took a swig of warm beer from an open can—the last of the alcohol in the trailer. He stuffed his wallet into his jeans and took one last look at his daughter's empty bed. She had to come home sooner or later. Didn't she?

  Please come home, Katy.

  Eventually they all left him. Why would this time be any different?

  He shut the door behind him and walked into a wall of heat.

  The beaten Subaru followed him down East Avenue. Erin Lawrence crumpled the piece of paper from the Pink Flamingo's free notepad, on which she had jotted down the address given for a “D. Lawrence” in the Storberry White Pages. She had found him, but where was her daughter?

  Guilt rose through her heart and into her throat, and she had to pull the car to the side of the road to compose herself. She hadn't known how she would feel when she saw him again. A million regrets and what-ifs flooded through her like a tidal wave.

  As she wiped her eyes so that she could see again, she felt for the medicine bottle in her front pocket. She couldn't allow herself to take a pill yet. She needed to ration them if she were to have any left by the end of this ordeal.

  There was still no plan, beyond locating her family. She had no idea of how to approach them. For now, she was content to have found Dell. When she found her daughter, too, maybe she would know how to proceed.

  Dell had grown older, evidenced by the lines on his face. A was hardness was there, like the pool bottom in the shallow end where the sign says NO DIVING. And it frightened her. Had she caused this, too?

  She watched him turn southward on Spruce, and shortly he angled across the parking lot toward a large bar she didn't recognize called The Watering Hole. It was fashioned after a Texas honkytonk, with rustic brown paneling. The bass of country music boomed through the walls, powerful enough to reverberate through the car and make her teeth rattle.

  When Dell opened the door, the wall of sound pounded across the blacktop. The door swung shut, and she lost sight of him. As she exhaled, she watched her hands tap the steering wheel.

  The power of the post-equinox sun burned through the windshield. She thought to roll down the window, but preferred to keep a layer of glass between her and the town. She killed the engine and waited, trying to resist the Siren's song emanating from the pill bottle in her pocket.

  Six

  Greg Madsen's police truck turned into the Moran farm driveway a little after 12:30 p.m. More progress than seemed humanly possible had been made within the town overnight and during the early morning hours, but there was more yet to be done. That the majority of downtown was open, especially on the north end, gave hope to town residents. Open businesses not only provided the items people needed to get back on their feet; they also served as meeting places, where people could share their stories about the wind storm and feed off of each other’s resilience.

  No explanation yet existed for what had happened the previous evening, but Greg no longer cared about the why. The cleanup would continue, and communications would be restored within a day or two. He would see to it that the optimistic schedule was kept. Storberry would rise again.

  As Evan greeted Greg at the door, there was a grave look on his face that gave Greg pause.

  The door opened with the kitchen off to the left. Six chairs sat dispersed around a wooden table, three occupied by Rory Dickson, Mary Giovanni, and Renee Tennant.

  Randy Marks stood in the shadows behind them. An alarm went off in the back of Greg’s head when he saw Marks. There was something in the way he stood back, like a wolf in sheepskin who didn't want the flock to notice the zipper.

  Evan sat at the table, and Greg took the cue to sit across from him, nodding to the others.

  “We're glad you're here, Greg,” Rory said, his eyes strangely haunted.

  The looks around the table from the remaining group members ranged from mental exhaustion to fear. Greg sensed something was horribly wrong.

  “What's all this about?”

  On more than one occasion as the members of the group told their stories to him, Greg was motivated to push the table away and walk out the door. He couldn't understand why they would waste his time with superstitious drivel when the town was teetering on the brink of collapse. Yet there was a conviction to them—an unwavering insistence that the impossible had occurred—that he could not completely ignore.

  He respected them all.

  Mary Giovanni. A true rock of Storberry if there ever was one. Self-made, determined, and intelligent.

  Evan Moran and Renee Tennant. Educated professionals with world views that he knew could see past small town issues when larger solutions were needed.

  Rory Dickson. Multiple decades of service to his country. An indisputable asset to emergency communications. Trustworthy and courageous enough to wear the badge himself.

  Even Randy Marks. A sharp mind from a venerable town family, destined for great things if he could find the courage to depart the only town he had ever known. But there was a dangerous component to the boy that he hadn't recognized before today, like a rusty nail jutting out of the floorboards.

  All five of the group members asserted the truthfulness of a story which seemed ripped from the screen of a drive-in movie. Their stories, insane as they were, oddly corroborated Pete Cutler's story. Monsters running through the night in Storberry? Vampires, as Rory and Evan assessed them to be?

  When they finished, Greg sat in silence for a long time. He felt as though someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on his head. He might have expected the cast of “Candid Camera” to burst out of the broom closet at any second, if it weren't for the faraway stares that haunted him from across the table.

  He slowly collected himself, not ready to believe that the interpretations of their stories were accurate—walking in on a murder might be traumatic enough to convince someone that they were seeing monsters.

  Dangers existed in Storberry. He was certain of that much.

  Vagrants taking advantage of distress. Killers, even. But vampires?

  “I hope you realize that if I took your story to my department, the town would have my badge by morning. And I would probably be in a straightjacket within a week.”

  Rory nodded.

  “You couldn't have convinced me that any of this was true, either. Had I not seen—”

  “We don't have time to convince you either way,” Mary said. The kitchen clock read 1:00 p.m. “Will you at least agree that there is a real danger out there?”

  “I don't doubt it in the least,” Greg said. “But—”

  “If you were to accompany us tonight, after sunset, you could decide for yourself.”

  Greg regarded her for a moment and then nodded.

  “I can meet you here by sunset.”

  “Until then,” Rory said, with a meaningful glance around the table. “Not a word of this to anyone.”

  “Agreed,” Evan said.

  The others echoed their agreement.

  “Greg, believe me. I know what this sounds like. I need you to keep an open mind, just for a few more hours,” Rory said.

  “I can give you that much,” Greg said.

  He rose from the table and studied them one more time.

  “And you will see that the dangers are human.”

  The door shut, and moments later the rumble of the police truck faded into the distance.

  “He's never going to believe us,” Renee said.

  Rory shook his head.

  “We need him to. We don't have a chance in hell without him.”

  Seven

  When Tom Kingsley opened his eyes, light poured through the south-facing windows in a blinding glare that overwhelmed his vision. It took him several seconds to break through the bonds of post-sleep lethargy. He realized he was on Jen's couch, with one of her bed pillows tucked under his head. He didn't remember it being there when he had fallen asleep.

>   The digital VCR clock read 4:05 p.m. He had slept off-and-on throughout the day, haunted by dreams that he could only somewhat remember. Sometimes she had held him, and he had slept more soundly with her close.

  “Good, you're awake.”

  She knelt next to him and brushed the hair from his eyes.

  “I hope you're hungry,” she said.

  “Not really.”

  “Well that's too bad, Tom Kingsley. ‘Cause you're going to eat. I've been cooking all afternoon, you know?”

  “Is that so?”

  He rubbed his eyes.

  “It is so.”

  “I may not be destined for culinary school, but I swear it smells like grilled cheese sandwiches in the kitchen.”

  “What if I told you they were the best grilled cheese sandwiches you’ve ever tasted?”

  “I'd be inclined to believe you,” he said with a smile.

  “Then get up.”

  Squinting his eyes, he followed her to the kitchen with a hollow ache in his stomach. He tried to forget, but the realization that he would never see his parents again kept flooding into him, like a broken pier in a hurricane.

  She loaded the sandwiches onto white, ornate dishes which could only have been meant for special occasions.

  “These were my mother's favorites,” she said.

  She wore a thin smile on her lips, with a hurt look in her eyes. The old clock ticked upstairs, the vent fan in the kitchen buzzed, and dishes clinked when she set upon the table. Her lips quivered, and before he could respond, she buried her head into his chest and cried.

  “They're never coming back, Tom. I don't know what to do.”

  He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, her hot tears soaking through cotton to his chest.

  “You don't know that.”

  “I do. They wouldn’t leave me alone this long. They just wouldn’t.”

  “The roads into town might still be closed,” he said, knowing the argument was shallow.

  Her parents would have found a way into town by now, even if they had to park the car and walk.

  “What are we going to do?”