by Ronald Kelly
“We’re not scared,” snapped Tom, climbing shakily to his feet.
“Oh, but you shall be, once you arrive there,” said Leech smugly. He pulled the devil-head watch from the fob of his coat pocket and flipped open its lid. “Now, I do suggest that you get going, if you expect to find them. Time is running out. All four have been given something of a death sentence, you see. And if you don’t arrive in time to save them, they will not be saved at all.”
“You godless bastard!” growled Joe.
Leech’s lips curled, exposing pearly white teeth almost wolf-like in their sharpness. “You will never know just how true that is,” he said softly.
Jasper stared into Leech’s black eyes and saw that the man wasn’t joking. He was dead serious. Keith, Rusty, Maggie, and Chuck were in grave danger. And, whatever horrors they faced, they would not survive them…unless those who loved them acted, and acted swiftly.
“Come on,” he said to the others. “We’ve got to get back and try to go after them.”
“But what if he’s just yanking our chains?” asked Tom.
“Believe me, son,” said Jasper. “He’s not.” The old man turned away from campsite, then suddenly glared back over his shoulder at the man in the top hat. He knew he was playing with fire, but he didn’t care. ”I’m going after my grandsons, Leech. If something happens to them before I can reach them, I’m coming back for you personally.”
The medicine show doctor seemed amused. “The same way your father came after me? With a rifle to back his courage?”
“No,” declared Jasper. “With my bare hands.”
“Bold talk for a feeble, old man,” replied Leech. “Remember what happened to your friend Edwin. I can do the same to you as well, if I have the desire to do so.”
“Let’s go,” urged Susan fearfully, taking her father-in-law by the hand. “We don’t have much time.”
Then, together, they departed.
~ * ~
Augustus Leech watched as the four left the cedar grove and started back for the northern slope of Hell Hollow. He waited until they had made their way back to level ground and was out of sight, then stood up from his place on the stump. Leech chuckled to himself as he turned toward the rear of the wagon. He had nothing to fear from any of them. Oh, they might have posed a threat to his plans, the same as those pesky kids who had happened unexpectedly upon his campsite. But once they entered the realm of the children’s nightmares, that would be the end of them. Leech’s mirror images would strike swiftly and mercilessly, making sure that they would perish, along with those they went after.
Leech smiled. In the past, he had sentenced other meddlesome souls to similar fates at the hands of his nightmarish doubles and, so far, none had ever managed to return to reality. Evil abounded in that dangerous realm beyond the waking side of sleep. An evil so powerful that it could not be conquered, even by those who possessed strength of spirit and an unfaltering faith in God.
Humming a different song beneath his breath – AC-DC’s “Highway to Hell” – Leech opened the rear door of the wagon and climbed in. It wouldn’t be much longer before the daylight hours passed and night fell. Then it would be time for him to crack his whip and send the horse-drawn wagon up the steep embankment to the road above. But, first, he had preparations to make.
In the glow of a single candle, he crouched in the gloom and set to work. He produced a 5-gallon gasoline can that he had stolen from the Texaco station in town the night before. Then he turned to several wooden crates that sat near the back wall, next to the skeletal remains of his former self. Crates with the word ELIXIR stenciled in black ink across their sides.
Leech pried one of the rotten boards loose and lifted a dusty bottle from within. He pulled the cork and inhaled. The enticing aroma of the potion filled his nostrils, causing a devilish grin to cross his gaunt face.
Initially, it possessed the aroma of pure goodness; spring flowers, freshly-baked cookies, the alluring scent of a lover’s perfume, the tang of newly-mown grass on a summer evening. But concealed underneath were darker smells. Smells that conjured images as old as the world. Disease, pestilence, violence, and war. The coppery stench of mass murder and the sweaty sourness of brutal rape. And even further beneath those odors, the sulfurous stench of Hell itself.
He relished the scent of the elixir for a moment longer, then unfastened the top of the gas can and slowly poured the syrupy black liquid deep into its depths. But it would take much more than a single bottle to implement his revenge. One by one, he took the slender vessels from their crates and emptied them into the steel container.
Before long, the wooden boxes lay scattered and empty across the floor of the wagon and the can was full to the brim with something much more explosive and dangerous than gasoline. And, from within the cramped cabin of the wagon, rang a laughter every bit as dark and evil as the black poison that would soon be unleashed, once again, upon the unsuspecting citizens of the little Tennessee town of Harmony.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Jasper McLeod stared at the card as he stood in the bedroom where his grandson had slept the night before. The ink drawing of the police detective surrounded by tall skyscrapers and rain-soaked streets held an ominous quality; the dark promise of danger and misfortune. The elderly farmer thought of the other three cards and knew that their images held the same potential for disaster for Susan, Joe, and Tom.
But he felt no hesitation; no reluctance at proceeding with their plan to seek out the missing twelve-year-olds. True, it could be perilous, even deadly, but that was a risk they would have to take. If they chickened out, then those four youngsters were as good as dead and buried in their graves.
Jasper tucked the card beneath the goose down pillow, then turned off the nightstand lamp and stretched out on the bed. He breathed in deeply, trying to relax. After laying there fifteen minutes with no sign of growing weary, he sat up. He was simply too wired-up to fall asleep. Anxiousness tingled throughout him like an electric current, refusing to let him rest.
He got up and sent to the bathroom down the hall. In the medicine cabinet, he found a vial of sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed shortly after Gladys’ death. He had had difficulty getting through the night following his wife’s long illness and had needed some help falling asleep. The tranquilizers were nearly two years old and probably outdated, but Jasper was desperate. If he didn’t fall asleep now, his chances of finding Keith before he succumbed to Leech’s evil would be slim.
Jasper shook one of the tablets into the palm of his hand and swallowed it with a sip of water from the bathroom faucet. Then he returned to the bedroom, lay down, and closed his eyes.
Ten minutes later, he felt drowsiness begin to overcome him. He felt himself grow limp as the grayness behind his eyelids darkened. Soon, pitch blackness surrounded Jasper, pulling him down into a deep, thorough slumber.
Almost immediately, the dark veil began to lift. He felt the heaviness drain from his body and abruptly found himself standing in the center of a busy precinct station. Police officers escorted hookers, street hustlers, and pickpockets to booking rooms, while detectives with their sleeves rolled up to their elbows and cups of black coffee next to them tackled the monotonous task of doing paperwork.
“Can I help you, mister?” asked a gruff voice from Jasper’s right.
Startled, the farmer turned and found himself staring at a ruddy-faced police sergeant sitting behind an elevated desk. “Huh?”
“I said, what do you want?” he repeated in irritation. “Hurry up, will you? I haven’t got all night.”
Jasper thought to himself for a moment, trying to adjust to the new role he had been abruptly cast into. “Uh, I was wondering if you could tell me where I could find Detective Bishop?”
A scowl of disgust crossed the sergeant’s broad face. “He ain’t here. No one’s seen the bum since late yesterday evening.”
“Any idea where he went?” asked Jasper. “Does he have any particular place h
e goes after work?”
The desk sergeant thought for a second. “Yeah, he likes to hang out over at Donoghan’s Bar across the street. Good place for him, too. Just a watering hole for has-been cops and private dicks.”
“Thanks,” said Jasper. He made his way through the crowded squad room and ducked out the heavy front doors, into the rainy night.
Standing on the steps of the police precinct, Jasper took a moment to examine his clothing. He was wearing the ill-fitting, checkered suit of a country bumpkin, complete with tight-fitting shoes, a red bowtie, and a flat-crowned straw hat. He looked completely naive and out of place, as though he had just fallen off a turnip truck with nary a bit of street savvy to his credit.
He looked across the bustling city street and saw a flashing neon sign that read DONOGHAN’S on the front of a red brick building. Quickly, he crossed the congested avenue, nearly getting run over several times and surviving an assault of blaring horns and angry curses. Soon, he was on the opposite sidewalk, his coat and hat soaking wet from the downpour.
Jasper opened the door of the bar and stepped inside. The interior was hazy with cigarette smoke and stank of hard liquor and beer. As he passed through the dimly-lit barroom, he began to grow aware of the faces of the establishment’s patrons. They seemed strangely familiar to the elderly man, although he was unable to place any of them at first glance.
He stepped up to the bar and waited until a burly bartender arrived to take his order. “What’ll you have, bub?” he asked, his eyes as flat and expressionless as a couple of copper pennies.
“Give me a Sun Drop,” Jasper replied. “Straight, no rocks.”
The bartender nodded. A second later, Jasper had a shot glass of sparkling yellow soda in his hand. “Uh, I was wondering if you’ve seen Keith Bishop around? He’s a police detective from the precinct across the street.”
“I know Bishop,” said the barkeep. “But he ain’t been in for a couple of nights. You might ask those gentlemen at that table over there, though. They’re pals of his.”
Jasper turned and looked to where the bartender pointed. Through the blue haze of cigarette smoke, he saw three men sitting at a table, splitting a bottle of scotch between them. Like everyone else in the joint, they looked oddly familiar to him. “Thanks,” he said. Then, drink in hand, he walked across the barroom.
When he got there, Jasper stood stunned for a moment. Up close, he recognized the trio at once. In fact, he had seen them time and time again, both on the television and the motion picture screen.
“Can we help you, mister?” asked a middle-aged man in a tan trench coat and gray fedora. He had a sad, world-weary face that had been a staple of suspense and detective cinema during the 30’s and 40’s. It was Humphrey Bogart. Or, rather, Sam Spade from the classic film The Maltese Falcon.
“Uh, yeah,” stammered Jasper. “I’m looking for Keith Bishop. The fella at the bar said you might be able to help me.”
“He said right,” replied a sandy-haired fellow with a husky voice, dressed in the conservative clothing of a G-Man. “Have a seat.” It was a young Robert Stack in the role of The Untouchables’ Elliot Ness.
Jasper pulled up a chair and sat down. “I don’t know exactly where to begin,” he said uncertainly.
“Just give us the facts, sir,” said a short man with a flattop and a face like stone. “Just the facts.” There was no mistaking it. Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragnet.
The old man took a long swallow of Sun Drop and calmly explained his dilemma. As he talked, he looked around the barroom. At a nearby table, Magnum P.I. was playing poker with Starsky and Hutch and Kojak, while at the bar, Lieutenant Columbo and Barnaby Jones occupied barstools, munching on beer nuts and watching a prize fight on a black and white TV set.
When he finished his story, Ness nodded. “I think we can help you, Mister McLeod.”
“You can?”
“Yes,” said Spade. “Bishop’s been on the trail of a crime lord for the past few days. He tried to discover his whereabouts from a snitch named Lester, but two thugs gunned the stoolie down before he could sing. Then he went to a club across town called the Purple Passion late last night to meet some broad named Cassandra. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”
“Do you have any idea who this crime lord is?” asked Jasper.
“They call him the Big Man,” said Friday in his monotone voice. “He’s a known drug dealer, pimp, and extortionist. He has half the police department in his hip pocket and the entire underworld squirming under his thumb. Some have crossed him, but they’ve never been seen alive again.”
“More than likely buried in an unmarked grave or tied to an anchor and tossed into the harbor,” said Ness. “A regular unsolved mystery.”
“Do you think he has Keith?”
“Probably,” agreed Spade. “I’d say the Big Man set a trap for him at the Purple Passion, then took him to his hideout.”
“Any idea where the hideout might be?” Jasper wondered.
“We’ve been doing a little surveillance ourselves,” Friday said. “The Big Man runs his operation out of an abandoned cannery on the waterfront.”
Jasper downed the rest of his Sun Drop. “Will you tell me how to get there? I’ve got to find Keith before they do something bad to him.”
“We’ll do better than that,” replied Ness, pulling a Tommy Gun from beneath the table. “We’ll go with you. I’ll stop by the office and pick up Rico and Youngblood. Then we’ll be on our way.”
Sam Spade reached into the side pocket of his trench coat. “If you’re going up against the Big Man, you’ll need this.” He laid a blued-steel Colt .45 automatic on the table in front of the elderly farmer. “And don’t hesitate to use it. Understand?”
Jasper picked up the gun and hefted its weight in his hand. He was determined to buck the odds that Augustus Leech had laid down and bring his grandson back to the real world alive. “I’ll do what I have to do,” he said, sticking the gat in the pocket of his checkered jacket.
Joe Friday pulled a snub nose .38 Special from a belt holster and checked the loads in its cylinder. “I just hope we get to Bishop in time. Because if we don’t…”
“Yes?” asked Jasper.
“He may just end up like the rest of the Big Man’s victims…”
The Los Angeles detective paused dramatically.
“Part of a highway ramp. Or standing at the bottom of the harbor in a cement overcoat, with no one to keep him company but fish, garbage, and seaweed.”
~ * ~
Susan McLeod found herself on horseback, riding across a barren Arizona desert. It was still dark, but the pale light of the coming dawn was on the verge of blooming on the eastern horizon behind her.
In the gloom, she looked down at herself. She was surprised to find that she was dressed in a fringed buckskin outfit, boots, and a white cowboy hat; sort of a mixture of Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, and Dale Evans. In a saddle scabbard was an engraved Henry rifle, while buckled around her waist was a hand-tooled gun belt with a hogleg Remington revolver cradled in its single holster.
Where am I? Susan wondered. And where could Rusty be?
The dapple gray mare beneath her snorted and began to trot toward a tall stand of painted buttes that stood like dark monuments against the early morning sky. She couldn’t figure out where the animal was headed until she caught the scent of food. The inviting aroma of strong black coffee and bacon frying in the pan drifted across the desert toward her.
A moment later, Susan found herself descending into the basin of an arroyo. Through a stand of thorny mesquite, she could detect the flickering glow of a campfire. She thought of something she had seen on a western movie once; a precaution against being unnecessarily shot. “Hello the camp!” she called out, letting her presence be known.
“Come on in!” called a familiar voice from the other side of the mesquite patch.
She urged the mare onward, until they were past the brush. There, sitting a
round a small fire, were three men. Men who had ridden the Wild West in dozens of films over the last sixty or seventy years.
“Take a load off, Ma’am,” said a tall, handsome man in the dusty garb of a cowboy. “Sit a spell and have yourself some grub.”
Susan climbed off the mare and tied its reigns to a mesquite branch. As she drew closer, she studied the big man’s tanned face in the firelight. It was a young John Wayne, as he had looked in the movie Stagecoach.
“Yes, please do,” urged the man who held the iron skillet. He forked strips of crispy bacon onto tin plates, along with biscuits as big as the head of a cat. “You’re welcome to share breakfast with us.” He wore an embroidered shirt, chaps over denim britches, and a high white hat. His smiling face was also familiar; a youthful Roy Rogers.
“Thank you,” she said, bewildered. Susan sat on a boulder and accepted a plate and a cup of steaming coffee from the singing cowboy.
“Pardon me for asking, lady,” came the low, clipped voice of the third man, “but what are you doing traveling alone in a godforsaken place like this?”
Susan turned her eyes toward him. He was a tall, angular man wearing a low-brimmed hat and Mexican poncho. When she looked into his stubbled, squinting face, she discovered that it was Clint Eastwood in the role of his gunslinging bounty hunter, the Man With No Name.
“I’m trying to find someone,” she said, taking a sip of black coffee.
“And who might that be?” asked Roy.
“My son. His name is Rusty McLeod.”
The Duke nodded. “The U.S. marshal who was just sent to Carnage City.”
“Yes,” replied Susan. “I believe he’s in danger.”
The three looked at one another. Something shown in their eyes; a mutual expression. It took Susan a moment to identify it as a mixture of concern and loyalty.
“Then I reckon we’d best get to riding,” said the Duke flinging the dregs of his coffee into the fire. “Carnage City’s just a mile or so west of here. If we ride hard, we can make it there by sunrise.”