Ratcatcher

by Chambers, V. J.

  Shane reached for her. “I want you,” he said.

  Lark took his hand. “I want...”

  “Don’t you want me too?” Shane asked. “Did you leave because you don’t want me?”

  Lark hesitated for a second, staring deep into Shane’s dark eyes. How could she explain to him what she had tried to do? “I left because... Of course I want you. I always have. I always will.”

  The doorbell rang. Lark looked at Shane. She sighed. “I guess I’ll get that.”

  “Get rid of whoever it is and come back here,” said Shane.

  “Why don’t you just get out of bed?” Lark asked. “You’re freaking me out.”

  “Get rid of whoever’s at the door, and we’ll talk,” said Shane. “It’s probably a damned Jehovah’s Witness or something, anyway.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  Lark stood up. “God, I’m coming.” She left Shane’s room and went down the steps to open the door. It was Chris Dearborn. He stood at the door looking somewhat disheveled. His shirt was dirty and he had bed head.

  Lark leaned on the door. “What do you want?”

  “Uh, I wanted to talk to Shane,” said Chris.

  “Too bad,” said Lark. “He doesn’t want to see anyone. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

  Chris nodded. “Okay, I guess I deserve that. I know I’ve been an asshole to you especially, Lark. I meant it when I said I was sorry.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” Chris had apologized to Shane because he missed his best friend. She was sure he still felt exactly the same way about her that he did. What had he called her in the car just last night? Bitch? Cunt? Whore? All three?

  Chris held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I get it. I wouldn’t be so quickly to forgive me either. I’ve been a real jackass. I’ll go.” He turned, then stopped and looked back at her. “By the way, who’s car is in the driveway?”

  “What?” Lark asked.

  “Up the driveway, there’s a car. The driver’s side door is open. It’s just abandoned. Is there someone here?”

  “No.”

  “Come look,” Chris said.

  “Um...” Lark guessed there wasn’t any harm in looking, was there? Why would there be a car in Shane’s driveway? An abandoned car? She followed Shane up the driveway. He was right. There was a car sitting there. The door was wide open. The keys were dangling from the door handle.

  Lark looked around as if she expected to see the car’s owner just standing around somewhere. “This is weird,” she said.

  Chris nodded. “It is. You got a pen?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I was thinking we could write down the license plate number. The Wrenching has a P.I. on the payroll. He could run the numbers and tell us who it belongs to.”

  That wasn’t a terrible idea, Lark had to admit. “Okay,” she said. “Wait here, I’ll go get a pen and some paper.”

  She went back to the house, collected the paper and pen, and went back to Chris. “Here,” she said, thrusting them at him.

  Chris went to the back of the car and scribbled. “You think we should close the door? Take the keys inside?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lark. “What if it’s like a crime scene or something and then our fingerprints are on it?”

  “What if this car belongs to a nice person who doesn’t want squirrels building a nest in their front seat?”

  Lark didn’t know. She also didn’t think that squirrels built nests, but she didn’t think that was exactly important. “I guess it would help save their battery, anyway,” she said. The interior light was on inside the car.

  Chris gathered up the edge of his shirt and used it to shut the door. “I’ve avoided leaving fingerprints,” he said and grinned.

  Lark wanted to smile too, but she remembered that she hated Chris Dearborn and he hated her. This whole nice guy thing was just an act. Chris took the keys out of the car door and handed them to Lark. “If we leave them here, someone might steal the car,” he explained.

  “Right,” she said. “I’ll hold onto them.” She shoved the keys into her pocket. “Um,” she said, “thanks for showing me the car, and um, I’ll tell Shane you stopped by.”

  “Can I come in?” asked Chris. “I can call the P.I. He should be able to trace it pretty quick and get back to me, probably within 45 minutes or so.”

  Lark really didn’t want Chris in the house. She wanted to go back up to Shane and keep talking to him. Maybe the two of them could actually have a real conversation for once. “I don’t know. I just don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Listen,” said Chris, “I know I was awful to you. But I guess when you told me that you were trying to get away from Shane so that people didn’t think you were after his money, I started thinking maybe I was wrong.”

  Whatever. What was his angle, anyway? Why was he suddenly being so nice to her? She didn’t believe him for a second. “Well, you are. Wrong about me. But I just don’t really want to see you or hang out with you.”

  Chris stared at his shoes. “I’m not really good at apologizing,” he said. “It’s a fault. I know. I guess I just thought you were like all the other girls. Shane’s had a lot of girlfriends, and I just figured you were like them. But when Shane said that I was nothing to him because I wasn’t able to accept you, I realized that he really, really cares about you. And that you’re not going anywhere. And that if I wanted to be part of Shane’s life, I had to accept you. I know I behaved like a fucking idiot. I know I was rude and cruel to you. And I know that there’s really no excuse for my behavior, but I am Shane’s best friend, and I’d really appreciate it if we could try to start fresh. If you could give me another chance.”

  He sounded so sincere. Maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe he really meant it. Lark wasn’t sure. After all, if he did hate her so much, why would he be nice to her now? And if it really was because he wanted Shane back, she guessed it was the same thing anyway. As long as Chris wasn’t disrespectful to her, did it matter if he secretly hated her? “You can come in,” she said finally.

  “Cool,” said Chris.

  They trudged silently back to the house. Once inside, Chris called the P.I. and gave him the license plate number. After he hung up, he said, “He said he’ll call me back soon.”

  The two were standing in the foyer, in front of Shane’s spiral staircase. The house was silent and still. Chris peered around the corner into the main living room that Shane used. “Where’s Shane?” he asked.

  Lark sighed. She walked into the living room and flounced onto one of the couches. She gestured to another one. “You wanna sit down?” she asked.

  Chris followed her and sat down.

  “Shane’s in bed,” said Lark. “He’s been in bed since we got off tour. He never gets out of bed. Mostly, he just sleeps. And plays with his fucking rats.”

  “You don’t like the rats either?” Chris asked.

  Chris didn’t like the rats, huh? This was a little strange. She’d never talked to him like they were friends. “I didn’t used to mind them, but after he told me that he thinks they’re the trapped souls of his dead fans, I’ve just started to feel—”

  “Wait,” said Chris. “He told you what?”

  “Shane hasn’t told you that he thinks his music kills people?”

  “Oh, no, he has,” said Chris. “He had some stupid hallucination years ago, and he’s convinced that—”

  “He made a deal with the devil?”

  “Yeah,” said Chris. “It’s weird, huh?”

  Lark nodded, feeling a huge sense of relief to be able to talk to someone about this besides Shane. She’d been feeling as though she was going crazy. “It’s very weird.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what happened. He wasn’t like until a year ago or so. I’m not sure if the fame went to his head, or all the drugs he’s on, or what.”

  “I don’t know either. Shane is an amazing person, but this stuff he thinks is just crazy.”

  “So, what
’s this about the rats?”

  “Oh, he didn’t tell you that part?”

  “I usually try to shut him down before he gets too into it. It just freaks me out to hear him talk that way.”

  Lark explained about the Pied Piper legend and about the ash man needing bodies. “And I just found a rat outside the house. Shane says it’s a new one and that someone died because he played open mike last night.”

  Chris shook his head. “Wow.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Chris,” said Lark. “I can’t get him out of bed. He’s so violently depressed. It’s really starting to scare me.”

  Chris massaged the bridge of his nose. “I think Shane’s depressed because he’s not playing music. I think if we could convince him to start playing again, he’d be able to break out of this funk.”

  Lark tended to agree. “It’s just that he is so against playing because he thinks it’s killing people. I don’t know. Maybe he should see someone.”

  “He’s already prescribed anti-psychotics. He doesn’t take them. He wants to believe this crap for some reason.”

  “Well,” said Lark, “as much as I hate to admit it, he’s right that people were disappearing. My best friend Rainey, for one. And at least two or three other people from the Entourage that I knew of.”

  “What are you saying?” Chris said.

  Great. Now Chris thought she was as nuts as Shane. She could never tell him about what had happened with the painting or about the dreams she’d been having.... “I’m saying that it’s weird. At first, I just figured that it was coincidence. I mean, people leave the tour sometimes. And they don’t really tell anyone. They just go, you know? So, I wasn’t worried. But my friend Rainey would never have gone anywhere without her boyfriend Damien. He was beside himself, and the police are no help. They just don’t care about a bunch of strung-out kids following a band around. Except for that article that Whitney Eros was writing, the media doesn’t report on it. So, it is kind of weird.”

  Chris raised his eyebrows, considering. “I guess I didn’t really know. Or I just didn’t think about it. What do you think is happening to this people?”

  Lark shrugged. She hadn’t been thinking too much about it. She’d been too worried about Shane. “I remember saying maybe it was like an obsessed fan. Someone trying to make ‘Get the Fuck Out of Hamelin’ come true or something.”

  “That’s creepy,” said Chris. “I never liked that song, anyway. It also kind of worried me that it got so popular. Why do a bunch of people want to chant, ‘Die, die, die, little children,’ at the top of their lungs?”

  “Well, Shane wrote it,” said Lark.

  They both stopped for a second and looked at each other.

  “Wait,” said Lark. “You don’t think...?”

  “That Shane...?”

  “Because he’s...”

  Chris swallowed. “He’s my best friend. Okay. So, no I don’t think that. And I’m sure if we thought it out, we’d realize it was impossible anyway.”

  “Right,” said Lark.

  “Uh, he is on a lot of medication,” said Chris. “And he does do crazy things sometimes. Like he used to dress up like this fanatic religious zealot and go out into the crowds and yell at them to go home.”

  “Death Man,” said Lark. “That’s what we used to call him. I figured out that he was Shane. That’s why Shane gave me a ride on his tour bus. I threatened to tell everyone if he didn’t.”

  Chris laughed. “You blackmailed him? You really are devious.”

  “I’m not. I just really needed someplace to stay.”

  “It’s fine,” said Chris. “I was joking. But I don’t Shane’s capable of murdering his fans. He’s just not like that.”

  “I don’t think so either. I really don’t.”

  “So, obsessed crazy fan, then.”

  “Yeah,” said Lark.

  “Who maybe owns that car outside?” Chris asked.

  “Fuck, you don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know. But he could be lurking out in the woods around the house. Maybe I should stick around just in case, you know. I could spend a couple nights here. If Shane’s just lying in bed, he can’t really protect you.”

  Lark chewed on her lip. Chris sleeping here? Could that possibly be a good idea? But if there was some crazy guy outside the house, she had to admit having someone in the house who was moving around and not sleeping fifteen hours a day did make her feel safer. “You would do that?” she asked.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shane ambled down the stairs. He’d asked Lark to come up after she got rid of whoever was at that door. That had been at least an hour ago. He wanted to know what was keeping her. At the back of his mind, he was worried that she’d decided to take off again. He knew he was falling apart, and if he wanted to keep her, he was going to have to try to pull things together. But when he got to the bottom of the steps, he saw Chris pacing in the foyer on the phone. Lark was perched on the couch, watching Chris. She’d been talking to Chris all this time? Without meaning to, Shane felt a stab of jealousy. He bet that with the way he looked and the way he was acting, Chris seemed pretty attractive to Lark right now. But there was no way he was going to let Chris steal this chick from him. No fucking way.

  “Chris is here?” Shane asked.

  “You’re up,” said Lark, running to him and giving him a hug. She felt so nice in his arms. He planted a kiss on her forehead.

  “I’m up,” he said. “Why is Chris here?”

  “Chris is gonna stay here for a couple days,” said Lark. “There’s an abandoned car in the driveway, and Chris and I think maybe it belongs to the person who’s been killing the Entourage or something.”

  “I told you what was happening,” said Shane, even though he knew Lark didn’t believe him. He guessed that a human being was a much easier idea for her to swallow.

  “I know, baby. But if there was someone crazy out there, I’d just feel safer if—”

  “If Chris was here to protect you?” Shane demanded, feeling almost irrationally angry.

  “Well, you’ve been sleeping a lot, and I just thought... If you don’t want him to stay, he doesn’t have to.”

  Shane sighed. “No, he can stay. It’s fine.”

  Chris hung up the phone. “Hey Shane,” he said. “Welcome to out-of-bed land.” He grinned.

  Shane smiled tightly. “You two made up awful fast.”

  Lark rubbed his arm. “I thought you’d be glad,” she said. “I didn’t think you liked us fighting.”

  She was right, of course. There was no reason to be jealous. He turned to Lark. “I am glad,” he said. “Of course I’m glad. You two are the most important people to me on earth.” He forced himself to smile. He hoped it looked natural.

  “That was Hamill on the phone,” Chris told him. To Lark, “That’s the private investigator.” To both of them, “The car belongs to Halley Coil. You remember Halley, Shane?”

  Shane didn’t. “Uh...should I?” he asked.

  “She used to date Nick Caufield. I thought you hooked up with her once or something.”

  Shane waited for Lark to stiffen or to react, but she didn’t. He guessed that Lark wasn’t really the jealous type. Considering her previous opinion about sex when she’d started staying on his bus, he guessed that made sense. He wished he wasn’t the jealous type.

  Halley Coil. Did he remember her? He’d been with a lot of women during his time, even when he was just a local musician. He’d been kind of popular in town back then. Girls had always thrown themselves at him. Nick Caulfied... Wait. Maybe he did remember something. But he didn’t think he’d had sex with her. He thought they’d just made out or something. “The red head?” he asked Chris.

  Chris nodded. “That’s the one. She was pretty hot.”

  Shane wasn’t going to admit finding some girl he’d once been intimate was hot in front of his current girlfriend! Was Chris deliberately trying to sabotage him? “I don’t really remember,”
he said.

  “Sure,” said Chris knowingly. “Anyway, her car is abandoned in your driveway.”

  Shane didn’t like the sound of that. “Where is she?”

  “Fuck if I know,” said Chris.

  Shane thought he knew where Halley Coil was. She was trapped inside a new rat in his bedroom. “Do you have Anthony’s phone number? From last night?”

  “No,” said Chris. “Why?”

  Because Shane had to find out if anyone had seen Halley since the bar last night. That was why. “I just thought Anthony might know how to get in touch with her. So that we could tell her where her car was or ask her why it’s here.”

  Lark spoke up. “Do you think this Halley person could be capable of...you know?”

  Chris shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t think she was on the tour. She’s probably been in town the whole time.”

  “So her car being here is unrelated then,” said Lark.

  “Unless she’s a victim,” said Shane.

  “Shane,” said Chris, “everyone who disappeared was a member of the Entourage.”

  “He said he’d take my fans. He didn’t say which ones,” said Shane.

  “God, not this again,” said Chris. “I wish you’d stop thinking about that fucking hallucination, Shane.”

  “Give me your phone,” said Shane. He was used to Chris not believing him. Hell, he hoped he was wrong.

  “Why?” said Chris.

  “I’m calling Giulio’s,” said Shane. He began to dial.

  “You remember the number to Giulio’s, but not the name of the girl you fucked?” Chris asked in disbelief.

  Shane glared at him. “I don’t think we fucked. I think I went down on her or something. And I used to call Giulio’s all the time, okay? Halley was a one-time thing.” He put the phone to his ear. It was ringing.

  Finally, someone answered. “Giulio’s.”

  “Hi,” said Shane. “This might sound a little weird. I’m actually calling about Halley Coil.”

  “Dude. You and everybody else. I don’t know where she is. And she hasn’t been here. Maybe she fucking skipped town.”