by Max Wilde
He shouted in Spanish, his rich voice drawing Marisol from inside the motel room. The woman stared at him, then at Drum, and she stepped back into the gloom. When she reappeared she held the hand of a girl dressed in a poorhouse dress. Barefoot.
“Why don’t you relax a while, Sheriff, while I ask our Heavenly Father for his guidance?”
Drum smiled smoke, flicked the cheroot away and walked toward the girl. She watched him without expression, black hair drawn back from a wide face as yet unpainted. Drum very much doubted if she’d seen her thirteenth birthday.
10
“Him and his woman done tortured and killed a pregnant lady,” emerging as pregger-nant from the big orderly’s mouth, “down near the border, and cut the baby right out from inside her while she was still alive. Heard it told that they burnt the poor little thing, offering it as a sacrifice to the Devil.”
Junior Cotton, parked in his wheelchair and ignored, listened in fascination as Alfonso told the perky Latina nurse, her uniform skirt stretched tight across her bubble butt, his dark and checkered history.
The nurse raised a hand to her face, covering her mouth, her eyes widening in pleasurable terror. “Ay, no. I can’t hear no more of this.” But hanging on every word that spilled from the big man’s rubbery lips.
She was only here for a week, she’d been telling Alfonso, to assist the doctor while his regular nurse was recovering from the flu. She worked in a hospital down in the state capital and was morbidly fascinated by these dangerous lunatics.
“Yeah, baby, this is one mean MF, I’m tellin’ you.”
The nurse shot a look across at Junior in his wheelchair, and he made sure to keep his eyes defocused, his jaw slack, hands dangling near the floor.
“Can’t he hear us?”
“No. His body’s here, but his mind is on a looooong vacation.”
“You are not afraid, Orderly?”
“Alfonso, baby. Al-fonso.”
“Alfonso, aren’t you scared, working with these people?”
He laughed. “Nobody gonna mess with Alfonso, baby. Nobody.”
“Why is he not walking?”
“He’s shut down, girl. Cat-ay-ton-nic. Ain’t moved a muscle since they declared him unfit to stand trial and shipped him on up here. He’s my little baby boy, that Junior. I feed him and wash him and wipe clean his skinny white ass.”
“You are a kind man, Alfonso.”
“I does what I does.”
The nurse was sitting up on the steel desk of the infirmary, kicking her feet, her skirt riding high on her thighs. Alfonso rested a hand on her leg, delicately pinching her skin, fingers crab-walking under the hem of her skirt. She waited a while before she giggled and pushed the hand away.
“Now ain’t you a pretty little thing,” he said. “And shy, too. What’s your name?”
“Nurse Sanchez.”
“Not your title, baby girl, your name.”
She giggled. “Conchita.”
“Conchita? Wasn’t that a song?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, it should be, baby, it should be. What say you come for a little walk with me and Junior?”
“A walk where?”
“Out in the garden. I take him there for a few minutes every day, get him some sun on that white-ass skin of his.”
“You are allowed to do this?”
“Well, who’s to know? And he be harmless, my boy Junior.” Hand back on her thigh. And she left it there. “Come for a little walk, hnnnnn?”
“I can’t today. The doctor he is here any minute. Tomorrow, maybe.”
“That’s a date then.”
“Alfonso, I’m a married woman.”
“Well, that’s good ’cause I ain’t proposin’, baby, just offerin’ you some fun.”
She giggled and the orderly delved deeper beneath her uniform, stepping in closer to the nurse, broad back to Junior, his body blocking her view.
Now.
Junior sent out a hand, still a little slow to react to his instructions, and snagged the scalpel lying on the table beside a kidney bowl and a pair of surgical gloves. He pushed the little blade up the sleeve of his jumpsuit just as the door opened and middle-aged man with a bald head speckled as an egg walked in.
“Yes, Orderly, what can I do for you?”
The nurse stood and clacked across the room toward the flickering computer screen and Alfonso lifted a clipboard from the desk, frowning down at it.
“Aw, Doc, I’m sorry,” the orderly said. “I thought my boy here had an appointment with you, but I’m done got my wires crossed.”
The doctor shrugged and walked toward a door with a frosted pane. “Nurse, I’ll need to see those admission files now.”
The Latina hurried after him, carrying a stack of buff colored folders.
“Tomorrow, baby, after lunch? Okay?” Alfonso whispered and she smiled at him as she followed the doctor and closed the door.
Alfonso gripped the handles of the wheelchair and pushed it out into the long, empty corridor, buzzing fluorescents leaking cold light down onto the shiny linoleum floor. The orderly broke into a sprint, the wheelchair flying, the lights blurring past Junior, then the big man jumped aboard the wheelchair, his feet resting on the frame and they sped down the corridor.
Alfonso laughing, saying, “I done got us a date, my man. With a pretty, pretty lady.”
Junior felt his left pulse drumming against the cool steel of the scalpel.
Oh yes, we got us a date. Muthuhfuckah.
11
On the bus after school Timmy felt kinda quiet and inside himself, just staring out the window, not joining in the roughhousing and joking all around him, the other kids getting so loud Mr. Feeney, the driver, had to holler for them to shut the heck up.
The bus passed the graveyard and Timmy looked over the wall right at the graves of his dead mama and the little sister he never got to see. He thought of his mama waking him last night, like maybe she was trying to warn him about something. Waking him right before the Creepshow got a hold of him.
He hadn’t always called it that: the Creepshow. First time it happened he was too tiny to give it a name. He was just old enough to walk, his head still level with chairs, grown-ups giants to him. It was soon after his mama died, and his daddy was quiet, just sitting and staring, and Skye was trying to love Timmy but she was crying all the time.
Timmy had kept on asking for his mama, and they told him she was gone. Gone to heaven. When’s she comin’ back, he’d wanted to know. Never, Timmy, Daddy had said. Not never.
And Timmy didn’t believe that and went into the bedroom to look for her.
Mama. Mama?
His mama wasn’t there. Just her nightgown lying on a chair. Timmy lifted the nightgown, all soft and smooth and full of Mama-smell, and held it to his face.
And that’s when it happened for the first time. The Creepshow. He was in the bedroom, holding Mama’s nightgown, but he was looking at Mama laying on her back on the sand next to some road, Mama screaming and crying and begging and a Jesus-man and a dirty-looking lady on top of her, cutting at her, blood spraying thick and terrible, and they pulled something red and twisted from inside Mama, who screamed and the Jesus-man and the dirty lady laughed fit to bust.
Timmy had come back into the bedroom with Daddy and Skye calling his name, Daddy lifting him and holding him tight, Timmy crying so hard he thought he would choke.
For the longest time he’d seen no more of those pictures, and as he grew older they were like a fading dream to him, and that’s what he told himself: you were dreaming, Timmy. Just dreaming.
A few years later, when Timmy was four or five, he was with Daddy at a gas station, Daddy filling up the Jeep, Timmy getting out of the car ’cause it was hot and the gasoline was burning his eyes. He had a sliver dollar Daddy had given him and he was flicking it between thumb and forefinger, making it spin on the concrete by the pumps, Daddy talking to a guy in a pick-up truck, nodding at something
the guy was saying.
Timmy spun the coin again, and it wobbled and scooted under a bench by the convenience store. There was an old fat man sitting on the bench, his back to Timmy, who got down on his knees and reached for the silver dollar that had come to rest near one of the man’s shoes, a black loafer with a hole in the bottom.
The man’s legs, white and hairless, came straight out of the shoes—he hadn’t bothered with socks—and disappeared into a pair of green pants, the cuffs frayed and stringy. A nasty old-man smell filled Timmy’s nose as he stretched for the coin. The man shifted, setting down a can of Dr Pepper on the concrete and saw Timmy.
He reached out a soft pink hand and snatched the coin, wheezing out a laugh, saying, “Hey, little fellah, come get your dollar.”
Timmy crawled out from under the bench and stood in front of the man, who held up the dollar, the sun catching the silver and making it burn.
“Here you go,” the old man said, holding the coin out, but when Timmy reached for it he snatched it away smiling through broken teeth, and the Creepshow started and Timmy saw the man buck-naked on top of a little boy in some dark room, then outside throwing the boy in a hole.
“Timmy! Timmy!”
Daddy’s voice scared away the Creepshow and the old man too, who dropped the silver dollar and hustled to where a bus was ready to go, swallowing him as the doors sneezed closed.
That night, lying in bed, Timmy tried to make sense of what he’d seen. It weren’t no dream, ’cause he was awake. So what was it then? Was he crazy? Then the name just came to him: the Creepshow. Didn’t know from where, maybe from the scary movies Maria the babysitter liked to watch.
He’d learned to recognize when it was going to happen, and most times he could shut it down before it started. But last night, when he’d looked out his window he hadn’t been quick enough and he’d seen Skye-not-Skye.
“Timmy? Hey, Timmy!” Skye said, standing on tip-toe, smiling at him, tapping on the window of the bus which had stopped on the corner near his house.
Timmy slung his pack over one shoulder and walked to the front of the bus and down the two steps onto the sidewalk to where Skye waited.
As she took his hand the bus and the street and the houses disappeared and the Creepshow pushed some pictures into Timmy’s head.
He must’ve fled, ’cause when Skye grabbed hold of him he was halfway home, panting for breath, Skye wheezing too, saying, “Hey, Usain Bolt, what’s with you?”
And he looked into her eyes and tried to laugh, tried not to see the pictures, the sick-making, horrible pictures of bits of men lying torn and bleeding round some old car, Skye-not-Skye prowling among them.
12
Driving back toward town, the crime scene and the hotshots from the city falling away in his rearview, Gene Martindale felt as if the past was stalking him, trapping him in ever tighter circles. Every road, every tract of parched land alive with ghosts.
He should be feeling relieved, he knew, after handing over the responsibility for the carnage at the roadhouse to the state police and the DEA.
A brace of luxury SUVs had sped down from the city that morning. A helicopter, a rare enough sight in these parts to draw the curious from their houses, had clattered in and sunk its skids to the dirt, a DEA man in an expensive suit and dude cowboy boots emerging from the dust like an action hero.
Little white tents, gay as a day at the beach, had been erected around the body parts and crime scene technicians started the business of cataloging the remains.
The DEA man had questioned Gene, abrupt in his manner, offended it seemed that Sheriff Milt Lavender hadn’t risen from his deathbed to be here. He made it plain that he had seen far worse than this. Described the work of chainsaws and machetes and butcher’s blades.
When a technician in protective clothing had advanced the opinion that the savagery was the work of an animal, the DEA man had a ready reply.
“Pit bulls,” he said. “Trained fighting animals from across the border. One of them’ll tear a man limb-from-limb in a matter of seconds.”
A quiet woman with hair that remained unmoved by the wind took Gene aside and, standing close enough for him to feel her breath on his face, told him she was from the Governor’s office. The Governor, it seemed, was running for re-election, touting his record of lowering crime in the borderlands. He had no desire for this incident to mar his campaign.
“I think we can safely assume this business was drug related, Chief Deputy?” she said.
‘Yes, ma’am.”
“And that the victims and perpetrators are from the criminal classes?”
“I couldn’t argue with that.”
“So I can count on your co-operation then?”
“And how would I best co-operate?”
“By telling anybody who asks that comment will come from my office, and my office only.”
“That would be my pleasure, ma’am.”
Her face twitched with what may have been a smile and she walked back toward the tents, her black court shoes wearing a veil of brown dust. Gene was dismissed.
He stood his men down and drove back toward town, telling himself that he was fretting over nothing. The people back there wanted this contained worse than he did.
But he kept on seeing Skye in the kitchen that morning, something in the way she carried herself that was different. When Gene slowed his car at the crossroads, his gaze was drawn to the ditch where he’d first seen his sister.
One day, a few years after his father enlisted in the Marines, Gene and his mother were driving back from town after shopping, the pavement running out and the road turning to dirt. Still miles from home when the dust storm blew up.
They were in the middle of nowhere with no shelter, the old station wagon buffeted and skittish on the road, when the dust obscured everything and his mother stopped the car and sat gripping Gene’s hand as the wind rocked the car on its springs and howled around them, covering them in a yellow-brown blanket.
With a few last gusts the storm blew itself out and there was an almost eerie silence as the world seemed to get its breath back. Then the silence was broken by the high, thin cry of a baby.
When they stepped from the car Gene spotted the brown cardboard box lying in the ditch beside the road. He opened the box and jumped back when he saw the infant inside, wagging its arms and wailing. His mother scooped it out, pink and naked, hugged it to her breast and silenced its cries. She found a cloth in the back of the car, wrapped the baby and handed it to Gene who held it awkwardly in his lap while they drove home. The baby stopped crying and stared at him with eyes so blue in its dusty face that he couldn’t hold their gaze.
When they got home his mother phoned her sister’s husband, Sheriff Lavender, and in a half-hour he was there, a short balding man with a ready smile, and he inspected the infant and drank coffee as he made a few calls and then it was agreed that the baby would stay with her until more information was available. None ever was and the girlchild stayed on and Gene’s mother named her Skye after the color of her eyes.
When Gene’s father returned at the end of his tour he was even quieter than before. Only now there seemed to be a corked violence in his spare frame. He looked at the child and shook his head and ignored it. Never acknowledged the toddler’s first stumbling steps or its first words either, Skye staring up at him while he drank bourbon—which he was doing in ever greater quantity—and saying “dada.”
Gene’s mother was delighted. “Did you hear that? Did you hear what she called you?”
Gene’s father stood and pushed past them, Skye wobbling and falling on her diaper-wrapped butt.
He’d said, “I ain’t no pa to that thing,” and went and got himself another bottle.
The warble of Gene’s phone brought him back to the now, and as he accelerated away from the crossroads he took the call.
“Martindale.”
“Deputy, this here is Sheriff Drum.”
“Yes, Sheriff?”
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“Would you do me the courtesy of meeting me at Earl’s in, say, fifteen minutes?”
“What’s on your mind, Sheriff?”
“It concerns the mess at the roadhouse.”
“Take it up with the state police.”
“Deputy, believe me, you won’t want me breathing a word of this to no state police.”
“Then come to my office.”
“Nossir, my preference is the diner. Fifteen minutes.”
Gene was left holding a dead phone. He cursed the giant, a man marinated in corruption. But he drove to the diner, and when he arrived the sun was low, the far hills across the border black against the gaudy oranges and purples.
Drum’s Ford Expedition was parked outside Earl’s, and when Gene shoved open the door, hearing the jangle of the chimes, he saw the sheriff was the only customer, his bulk squeezed into a booth. He was reading a newspaper, a Coca-Cola on ice in a sundae glass on the table before him.
Skye stood near the serving hatch, her fingers nervous on the ballpoint clipped to her apron. Gene nodded at his sister and sat down opposite the sheriff.
Drum lowered the newspaper and smiled, a gold tooth winking at Gene. “Thanks for coming by, Deputy.”
“I’m expected at my office, Sheriff. Can we keep this brief?”
“Oh, that we can, son. That we can.”
The newspaper rustled as Drum took one of the pages between thumb and forefinger and lifted it from the tabletop, coy as a chorus girl. Gene saw a ziplock bag beneath. Saw a pair of broken, blood stained eyeglasses in the bag. Looked up as Skye walked toward him, her pen poised above her order book, her face empty of spectacles.
He waved her away, then his attention was on Drum, who let the newspaper settle back onto the tabletop.
“Tell me what you want,” Gene said.
13
Skye saw her brother’s expression shift from loathing, to shock, to naked fear. By the time he looked up and waved her away, he had composed himself, rearranged his features into their familiar blank, unsmiling lines. But as she walked off and stood by the window, staring out through the dusty glass at the coming night, she could feel his terror. This wasn’t some flash of intuition, it was as if she was jacked into him, her nervous system coupled to his, and the heat of his fear flowed into her.