by Ray Garton
"Are you kidding?" she shouted, pulling away. "I'm not leaving here until I find Jeff and Mallory."
Frustrated, J.R. turned to the stage again, and the bottom of his stomach fell away.
Mace was staring directly into J.R.'s eyes and smiling as he sang, his voice powerful, solid, a trumpet of flesh and blood making a sound that entered J.R.'s brain like a chilled icepick….
No more deaf ears, no more blind eyes
No spittin' in my face
No more hands that pull away
Goin' to a better place
His smile spread, oozed over his face as he made his guitar scream like an angry demon, still watching JR.
He can't see me, J.R. thought, not with those lights shining in his eyes, he can't.
There was another tremble in the lights; it lasted longer this time.
J.R. held Erin's arm, just in case; if the lights did go out, he didn't want to stick around in the dark.
Through the music, J.R. heard a scream so shrill and so filled with hate that it hovered in the air long after it had stopped, and he turned his eyes to the man in the suit again.
He held his daughter's left arm, pulling her through the mob as he might pull on the leash of a stubborn dog, angrily shouting at her over his shoulder. She was slapping at him with her free hand, spitting and screaming as she snapped her head back and forth.
Mace screamed into the microphone. His voice rose clear and distinct above the band. "That's where we're goin', a better place!"
The girl in the red jumpsuit was still screaming and fighting, but the man was near the edge of the crowd, pulling her toward J.R. and the double doors.
A scream, a cry
A hisssss
J.R. spotted other parents in the group waving and shouting at their kids, arguing, cajoling, but none of the other teenagers was reacting as violently as the girl in the red jumpsuit.
A crack of bone
An open skull
He saw it coming seconds before it happened. He pulled Erin to him as the girl reached under her collar, her fingers fumbling for something just below her throat, pulling out a cord, pulling until something flipped onto her chest, hanging from the cord, swinging back and forth over her breasts.
Gonna say goodbye
She clutched it in her fist and lifted it from her chest.
"No!" J.R. shouted.
Erin sputtered, "What? What?"
Lily saw it, too, and screamed, lifting a trembling hand to her face.
The man's back was to the girl, and he didn't seem to notice that she was no longer resisting him, didn't see her raise the Crucifax to her throat—
To all of this
Yeah, I'm gonna say goodbye
—press the edge to her flesh…
The lights dimmed.
Blinked.
Went out.
The music stopped and a brief, startled hush passed through the darkness, punctuated by a long, gurgling wail.
"Jesus God!" J.R. blurted, pushing Erin back toward the doors, reaching for Lily's hand to pull her with them.
An instant later, the auxiliary lights clicked on, bathing the club in a harsh, antiseptic white light as a grown man screamed like a young girl.
J.R. saw the man in the suit throw up his arms and fall out of sight as a gout of blood spurted from his daughter's open throat. She dropped, twitching, to the floor with her father, buried by the crowd, which was coming back to life with a few cheers and some applause. The man went on screaming, but Mace raised his arms and spoke; even without a microphone, his voice cut through the club like a sharp knife through tender flesh as he said, "What are we waiting for?" and the crowd roared as one, drowning out the man's shrieks.
Mace put down his guitar, lifted his arms, gestured to the band, and jumped off the stage; a path opened in the crowd, allowing him to pass through. The path closed behind him as the teenagers followed, and Mace looked up at J.R. with a happy, confident smile, heading straight for him.
Something at the bottom of the steps below caught J.R.'s eye.
Three of the creatures were hurrying across the floor, loping up the steps toward them.
J.R. pulled Erin and Lily toward the door, calling, "Reverend, come on now!"
"But—Jeff!" Lily cried. "Where's Jeff?"
"Just come on, we're getting the hell out of here now!"
Erin began to protest, too, but J.R. opened the doors and pushed her through. He followed them outside to the parking lot and into darkness.
There were no streetlights, no traffic lights, no lit windows; only the headlights of cars on the boulevard lit the night, reflected on the wet pavement of the parking lot in shifting, glowing patterns.
"Jesus, a blackout," J.R. muttered.
The wind threw the rain into his face, and the drops stung like pebbles; a jagged tentacle of lightning cut the sky to the south, and the thunder that followed sounded like the crack of an enormous tree trunk.
Behind them, beyond Fantazm's double-door entrance, J.R. heard another kind of thunder, the thunder of voices and rushing feet, laughter and screams.
"Where are you parked?" J.R. shouted at Erin.
"A block away."
"I'm closer." He waved at Lily and the reverend. "Come on, let's—"
The doors burst open and hit the walls with the sound of two gunshots, and Mace came out, arms held up, elbows locked, smiling. His arms dropped, and the wind blew his hair around his head as the teenagers followed him into the parking lot, gushing out of the club like blood from an open wound.
Mace led them between two rows of parked cars, passing less than ten feet in front of J.R. and the others as if they weren't there. The teenagers following him were just as loud as they had been in the club and their laughter and shouting was whipped away by the wind, echoing across the parking lot.
J.R. watched with sickening horror as they continued to pour out of the club. He saw, with some relief, that not all of them were following Mace. Some remained apart from the group, keeping pace, shouting as they hurried along.
"—do you think you're going, Matty, what's he gonna—"
"—ease come back, please, something bad is gonna—"
"—this is it with us if you go, do you under—"
There were parents following the crowd, too, staying to the side, keeping a good distance, some arguing among themselves, others calling their sons and daughters.
A heavyset woman wearing a tan raincoat over a nurse's uniform: "Dammit, Rhonda, come back here right now, do you hear—"
A small black woman held her purse over her head to protect her hair from the rain and paced agitatedly as the parade of teenagers passed by. "You be back by eleven-thirty, Beth," she shouted, "or you're grounded for a week!"
There were about fifteen others—not very many, considering how many J.R. had called—looking for their children, shouting disciplinary threats. J.R. recognized a few of them as parents he'd spoken with that day, but one in particular caught his attention. He didn't recognize the face, but the voice was unmistakable. It was Mr. Brubaker, Wayne Bru— baker's father. J.R. had had a very unpleasant telephone conversation with him earlier, and the man looked exactly as he'd sounded on the phone: short dark hair and a bushy beard and mustache, thick neck, a red plaid shirt under a camouflage down jacket. Brubaker had become irate when J.R. explained why he was calling, accusing J.R. of trying to tell him how to raise his son.
"I'm not doing that at all," J.R. had said patiently, "I'm just trying to keep him out of trouble."
"Well, that's my job, okay?" the man had barked. "The trouble stuff is my job, and you stay out of it."
J.R. assumed the timid-looking woman with him was Mrs. Brubaker. Her hands fluttered nervously at the buttons of her long brown coat, and she looked as if she might blow away with the wind.
"I knew we shouldn't've come!" Brubaker shouted. "I wish I hadn't told you about that goddamned phone call."
Mrs. Brubaker craned her neck, searching the pas
sing horde for her son.
"I don't see him!" she cried. "Do you? Do you see him?"
"Oh, Christ, Barbara, he'll come back, he always does."
"But I just saw him a second ago, he was right in front of me. Something's wrong here. Wayne! Waaayyyne!"
"Oh, God, don't go wailin' for him now!"
Mace led the teenagers around the corner of the building and down the sidewalk on Lankershim. There were still some more coming out of the club, hurrying to catch up. J.R. wondered how many there were. A hundred and fifty? Two hundred? More?
"Jeff isn't with them," Erin said, moving closer to him. She sounded weak, sick with fear. "Jeff and Mallory must still be in the club."
"I don't think so," J.R. said. "I think they left earlier."
"We have to go back in and see if—"
"No. We don't know how many of those things are in there."
"I think I know where he's taking them," the reverend said, watching the last of the teenagers disappear around the corner.
Lily spoke up: "The health club." She was crying quietly.
The reverend nodded and turned to J.R. "The basement."
It sounded ludicrous at first; surely the basement of that abandoned building was not big enough to accommodate that many people. But he knew Mace wasn't taking them there for a social gathering. An unexpected thought sent a physical jolt through his body:
You can stack dead bodies…
J.R. looked around the parking lot; the parents and remaining teenagers were quickly breaking up, hurrying through the rain to their cars.
"Wait!" J.R. called, stepping away from Erin. "Please, wait a second!"
In a flash of lightning, he saw them turning to him one by one. There were about thirty of them, their skin corpse-white for an instant. After the thunder shot through the sky, J.R. said, "We have an idea where they're going. If we can—"
Mr. Brubaker stepped forward and barked, "Hey! You the guy who called me today?"
"Yes, I called because—"
"Look, who the hell do you think you are, scarin' people like this, makin' 'em think their kids are in trouble when they're just hangin' out at a goddamned nightclub, for Christ's sake? C'mon, Barb, let's get outta here."
J.R.'s jaws burned as he angrily ground his teeth together. Brubaker was probably the type who loudly sucked his teeth after meals, belched his beer, and spent weekends shouting orders from his easy chair in front of the television. He didn't know the man but suddenly hated him as if they'd been enemies for a lifetime.
"Listen, mister!" J.R. shouted. "A girl just killed herself in there, and the man who walked off with those kids is responsible. Maybe for a lot of other suicides, too. And I can promise you, he's not taking those kids to see a movie! I've got a pretty good idea that a lot more are gonna die tonight." He took a few steps toward Brubaker as he went on. "Now, if I'm wrong, and I hope to God I am, then I'm sorry for inconveniencing you. But if I'm right, and you go back home, you might be getting a call later tonight from someone who wants you to come down to the morgue and identify your son's corpse. And if that happens, Mr. Brubaker"—he was inches from the man now and poked his chest with a stiff index finger—"if that happens, I'm gonna look you up, get in your face, and say I fuckin' told you so!"
Brubaker slapped J.R.'s hand away, growled an obscenity, took his wife's arm, and turned toward the car again.
Mrs. Brubaker pulled away and snapped, "No! If you want to go home, you can, but I'm not going until our son is with me!"
Brubaker was clearly shocked at his wife's tone of voice and stared at her openmouthed.
The others in the parking lot slowly gathered closer, looking on like an attentive theater audience.
With quiet threat, Brubaker said, "You're gonna get in that car and—"
"No. No, I am not! I don't think you've noticed in the last sixteen years, but we have a son! And if there's a chance something might happen to him tonight, I'm going to find him, and if you want to go home, then go. Just get in the truck and go. I don't care. I'll find a—"
Mr. Brubaker rushed toward her as if he was going to hit her, instead, he hunched forward and said, "Okay, all right, goddammit, we'll—" His voice dropped to a confidential hiss that was drowned by the wind.
J.R. turned to the others and said, "I think he's taken them to the abandoned health club on the corner of Ventura and Whitley. There are a few things you should know…." He wasn't sure how to go on without sounding like a nut; he needed to warn them about Mace's animals, but he didn't want to destroy any credibility he might have with them. When he turned uncertainly to the reverend, Bainbridge stepped forward.
"This fellow Mace," he said, "he has… animals. Small, vicious animals. Maybe you saw some of them here tonight. They're well trained."
"So we're going to have to protect ourselves," J.R. said. "If anyone has any weapons…"
There was no response at first. They stood in the dark parking lot, soaked and shivering, looking confused and scared. A Hispanic man spoke up.
"Why don't we just call the police?"
"It looks like Mace has some friends in the police department," J.R. replied. "I don't think that would be a good idea."
"Who is this man?" asked the woman in the nurse's uniform. "What does he want with our children?"
"We aren't sure who he is, but whatever he wants, it's not good. Now. Weapons?"
No reply for a moment, then Brubaker nodded and said hesitantly, "Yeah, I've… I've, um, got some guns at home."
Relieved, J.R. said, "Okay. We'd better get moving. We may not have much time…."
Part V
Crucifax Exodus
Twenty-Eight
Kevin had not followed Mace and the others out of the club; he'd gone out the stage door, furiously slamming it behind him, and down the manhole in the alley. He had no light but felt his way along the walls and flicked his butane lighter as he hurried through the black, cobwebbed passages where he could hear the raspy breathing of bums curled in the corners.
Kevin was angry and hurt; he felt betrayed by Mace. The band had performed only two songs, and neither had been songs Kevin had written. Once the crowd in Fantazm began to get out of hand, it didn't take Kevin long to realize that he and his band were being used. He wasn't sure exactly how or why, but it was obvious that Mace's intentions went beyond merely giving a performance. Kevin had heard of working a crowd, but Mace had done much more than that; the moment he'd stepped onto the stage, he'd owned that crowd. Kevin realized that a lot of the kids in the audience already knew Mace, but even those who didn't acted as if they'd been waiting for him, needed him. It was a little scary. Kevin was already kicking himself for putting his trust in Mace, but after the concert at Fantazm, it seemed more than just a betrayal; he felt he'd been deceived on a deeper level, in a way that he was just now beginning to see and might never truly understand.
He'd taken no drugs since returning from the center. Perhaps, he'd considered, his gullibility had been due to his perpetually altered state of consciousness; maybe he was seeing his mistakes now because his head was finally clear. Mace had been very persistent in his offer of drugs during their first meeting….
As if it weren't enough that the band's first performance had been a huge disappointment, Mallory had left shortly after they'd begun playing the first song.
Like she all of a sudden didn 't give a damn, he thought as he ducked through the hole and into the sub-basement of the health club. Mallory had been so supportive, so excited about the concert, that Kevin had nearly stopped playing when he saw her rushing out of the nightclub followed by her brother.
But the worst thing of all was the girl who had dragged the edge of her Crucifax across her throat and collapsed in a convulsing, bleeding heap onto the floor. The blackout had helped to cover it. In fact, it made him wonder if that was really what he'd seen or if, in all the noise and smoke, he'd been mistaken. But the more he thought about it, the more certain he became that he had not imagined
the girl's suicide. And with her Crucifax…
Kevin felt his own Crucifax shifting beneath his shirt and thought of the sharp edges, the first time he'd touched one and cut his finger….
This will be your escape from all that you hate, from all the people who don't understand you….
Mace had also said something about the Crucifax being a key. A key to what?
A place where no one will ever lei you down again…
The girl in Fantazm had not hesitated for an instant when she lifted the Crucifax to her throat….
… a place where everyone is equal and there are no lies.
… as if she was not only willing to cut her throat open, but eager.
Mace had been talking about going to someplace better, someplace perfect, ever since they'd met—
… a place where everyone is equal and there are no lies.
—but that place no longer sounded so perfect after all.
Lantern light glowed from the deep end of the pool, and Kevin went to the edge. Mallory was sitting naked against the side of the pool, a blanket gathered around her. There was a lantern at her side, the cover off, the reflected light of the flame glimmering in a spoon that rested on a fold of the blanket. Jeff lay across Mallory's lap, his body limp, eyes only half open, naked but for the blanket that covered his legs. A belt was wrapped tightly around his upper arm. Mallory was lovingly stroking his hair.
Kevin took a breath to call her name, to ask her what she was doing, but stopped when he saw the syringe in her right hand.
"Mallory!"
She looked up slowly, her eyes heavy, and stared at him as if he were a stranger.
"Mallory, what the hell…"
Recognition dawned in her dulled eyes, and her mouth worked silently, then smiled.
"Hi," she said.