The Night Parade

by Ronald Malfi

  “Those scarecrows look all right to you?” he asked Ellie.

  She pressed her nose against the glass of the passenger window, her breath fogging it up. “They look creepy,” was all she said after a moment.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  He decided not to push the issue.

  Ten minutes later, they drove past a succession of small farmhouses. The lawns were all overgrown and there appeared to be no livestock in any of the pens. There were vehicles in some of the driveways or parked along patches of grass behind the houses, yet David got the distinct impression that these houses were empty. This thought was only confirmed when he noted the red X’s painted over each front door.

  The road emptied them out in the center of a small two-street town. Clapboard buildings ran the length of both streets, squalid mom-and-pop storefronts that appeared neglected and forgotten despite the OPEN signs in some of the windows. The most inviting appeared to be a small sandwich shop, so David parked the car.

  “Put your hat back on,” he said. “And this time, use the right bathroom.” He winked at her. Then he slid the Glock out from beneath his seat and wedged it down into his pants against the small of his back.

  Ellie grabbed the shoe box and opened her door.

  “Wait,” he said. “Leave that here.”

  “I won’t.”

  “It’ll look too weird, you hauling around a shoe box like that. We don’t want to do anything that might cause someone to remember us later.”

  “I won’t leave them behind again.” Her tone was firm, her eyes heavy on him. He knew better than to argue with her when she had her mind set. Her mother had been the same way.

  “Okay,” he relented.

  They entered the sandwich shop, which was no bigger than the claustrophobic little office David had shared with the other instructors in his department back at the college, and went straight to the rear. There were no tables, just a wall-length counter where two burly men sat eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. Keno played on a TV screen behind the counter. The air smelled of grease.

  “Restrooms?” David asked the man in the white apron behind the counter.

  “You sick?” asked the man. He was scrutinizing David’s face.

  “No.”

  “Your kid?”

  “He’s clean.”

  The man pointed to a shabby rectangular cutout in the drywall that couldn’t precisely be called a doorway. “End of the hall,” he said. “You want some menus?”

  Because the tone of the man’s voice suggested the bathrooms were for paying customers only, David said, “Sure.”

  The man placed two menus on the counter in front of two vacant stools while David led Ellie through the cutout in the wall and down a narrow, unlit corridor. There was a single door at the end of the hall with the word RESTROOM written on it in black marker.

  Ellie went first, then waited out in the hall while he used the toilet. The bathroom itself was no bigger than a shower stall, the toilet—and a good section of the wall behind it—caked in black grime. There was a single window here that looked out upon the row of shops and the road they had taken coming into town. Massive black flies, each one the size of a small grape, thumped senselessly against the windowpane.

  The sink looked about ready to give him tetanus, so he decided to forgo washing his hands. In the streaky mirror over the sink he glimpsed his haunted reflection—sunken eyes, poorly dyed hair, beard stubble shading the lower half of his face. The bridge of his nose was still swollen from when he’d rammed his head into Cooper’s chest while trying to wrench the gun from him. But at least it hadn’t started bleeding again.

  Dead man walking, said the head-voice. And he wondered just how true that was.

  I’m not going to let those bastards get to me. They won’t trick me into having a nervous breakdown. They won’t trick me into turning around and driving back to them. They won’t.

  He was just about to leave when he glanced back out the window again. Through the haze of flies, he saw two police cars come rolling up the street. They slowed down as they approached the front of the sandwich shop. One car braked in the middle of the street while the other pulled up alongside the Oldsmobile.

  Shit . . .

  Both cops got out. Their guns weren’t drawn but they had their hands to their hips, ready to draw at a moment’s notice. The cop who’d parked alongside the Olds—a stocky black guy with a goatee—peered in through the Oldsmobile’s windshield. He said something inaudible to his partner. The partner—a young kid in mirrored sunglasses—pointed to the license plate.

  Shit-shit-shit!

  David opened the bathroom door. Ellie stood there, gazing up at some foul graffiti someone had scrawled on the wall in black marker. “Get in here,” he said, his voice a tense whisper.

  She came in and he closed and locked the door.

  “What is it?”

  “Cops,” he said.

  Through the window, he watched as the officer in the sunglasses said something into the radio he had clipped to his shoulder. Then both of them crossed onto the sidewalk toward the sandwich shop.

  “We have to get out of here now,” he said. He flipped the latch on the window, then pried it open. Flies tickled the tops of his hands. “Come here,” he said, grabbing her beneath her armpits. She clutched the shoe box to her chest. “It’s a bit of a drop but not too far.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “No time. Go.”

  He lifted her out and helped her over the sill. She landed on her feet outside in a cloud of rising dust. Then David scrambled out after her.

  There was only one place to go: the alleyway that ran behind the stores. He snatched up Ellie’s wrist and dragged her as he ran. The alleyway zagged twice, sharp right turns that, he feared, would empty back out onto the main road and into the path of more police. But he must have gotten turned around, because when they burst out of the alley they were facing a wooded embankment and, beyond, a sea of cornstalks.

  “Come on.” He urged her forward.

  Halfway across the embankment was a chain-link fence; David slammed into it before he actually saw it. It wasn’t too high. He hoisted Ellie over then he scaled it. The chains rattled.

  Only when they reached the corn did he risk a look over his shoulder. He could see no one coming after them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t seconds behind. Just then he heard the sound of a siren.

  “Daddy!” Ellie cried.

  “It’s okay, baby. Come on.”

  They ran through the corn.

  41

  By the time they came through the corn and saw the farmhouse, David was carrying his daughter. There were bits of farming equipment scattered about the lawn here. The house itself looked deserted, and there were even a few boards nailed across some of the windows. A set of rickety wooden stairs led up to a door, the upper half of which was made of glass. A red X had been spray-painted from corner to corner.

  David carried Ellie up the stairs, then set her down beside him. Without pausing to consider a better option, he elbowed the single-paned window. The glass didn’t completely shatter, but he did manage to knock a rectangular section out of the way. He reached inside, fumbled for the lock, praying it was the type of dead bolt that had a knob and wouldn’t require a key.

  His hand found the dead bolt.

  There was no knob.

  He took a step back, figuring he could knock the rest of the glass out and climb in through the window and—

  Ellie reached out and twisted the doorknob. The door creaked open.

  “Stick to me like glue,” he said, slipping inside.

  The air was rancid. David wondered how long the place had been unoccupied. Shafts of daylight slid in between the boards fitted over the windows, cutting through the dimness of an outdated kitchen with cornflower wallpaper and a wall clock that had seized up at 2:18. Dust clung to every available surface, making the light bulbs in the chandelier above the kit
chen table look like large gray Q-tips. Tiny footprints—rats?—had been stamped into the dust covering the countertops.

  “Where are the people who live here?” Ellie whispered against his ribs.

  “They’re gone.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Anything.”

  “What?”

  “Anything could have happened.”

  Along the opposite wall hung a chalkboard on which someone had kept a running grocery list. Next to the board was a wooden plaque affixed with a series of hooks. Depicted on the plaque was a cartoon pig with its hands—or hooves—on its hips. The caption above its head read DON’T HOG THE KEYS! Dangling from one of the hooks was a set of keys.

  He snatched them up, saw that one was a car key with the Chevrolet emblem on it.

  “You doing okay?” he said, grabbing hold of Ellie’s hand. He led her out of the kitchen and down a narrow, gloomy hallway toward the front of the house.

  “Y-yes,” she stammered.

  The front rooms were empty. Even the furniture had been removed, if there had ever been any furniture to begin with. Flies and gnats and large flying beetles crisscrossed in front of his face. David went to the front windows and saw a bright red Monte Carlo in the driveway. It was then that he considered his options—take the car and get the hell out of there, or hunker down in this abandoned farmhouse until the coast was clear. Both options had their benefits and flaws, their wins and losses. Yet in the end he decided it was easier to find a hiding man than a running man.

  Ellie cried out.

  “What?”

  “There. There.”

  It was a dining room with a large oak table at the room’s center, set with what looked like good china for several people. But the meal would never come. David counted six bodies of varying sizes hanging from ropes tied to the exposed ceiling rafters. The smallest one looked like that of a child maybe no older than four or five. The air was black with flies, and the smell, which struck David instantaneously, was as thick and meaty as an abattoir’s—so much so that both he and Ellie began to gag.

  David cradled Ellie’s head against his chest. He tried the front doorknob, found this one was locked, then fumbled through the key ring for the house key. He jabbed two different keys into the lock before finding the correct one. It turned, and David shoved open the door and dragged Ellie out onto the porch.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouted, pulling Ellie toward the car. He unlocked the door, yanked it open, and shoved Ellie inside. He climbed in after her, and in his panic, it took him three or four attempts to jab the key into the ignition. When he finally got it, he had a moment to wonder what he would do if the goddamn car wouldn’t start before he cranked it. The engine roared to life.

  He reversed down the driveway and hit the road hard enough to rock the car on its shocks. Ellie cried out, “Too fast!”

  He slowed down once he was cruising in a straight line toward the highway, the houses with those red X’s on their doors streaming by in a blur. They drove by the field of scarecrows again, and in David’s periphery, they appeared to be shambling down off their posts. David forced himself not to look.

  It seemed to take forever to reach the highway. He took the exit, merged with what little traffic there was, and tried to make this shiny red car look less conspicuous by sheer force of will.

  They were only on the highway for less than thirty seconds when David heard a distant drumming sound.

  “Do you hear that, too?” he asked Ellie.

  Ellie was hyperventilating and didn’t answer. David glanced at her, gripped her knee. She just stared blankly out the windshield, her chest heaving, her respiration disconcertingly labored.

  David looked due north and saw three helicopters descending in the direction of the town he and Ellie had just left. The helicopters passed directly over the highway. David could feel the choppers’ rotating blades vibrating through his bones. He kept waiting for them to change course in midair. He kept waiting for them to pursue.

  But they didn’t.

  That man at the milk shake place—Ninety-nine Cutlass, am I right?—had seen the Maryland tags, had seen the young “boy” coming out of the women’s restroom, and he had called the police. Or maybe he had been a cop himself. A detective like Watermere.

  “You’re bleeding,” Ellie said. She had gotten herself under control and was staring at him now with concern in her eyes.

  He touched his nose but his fingers came away clean. He looked at his face in the rearview mirror.

  “No,” Ellie said. “There.”

  He glanced down. There was a swath of blood across the front of his shirt and more smeared along his left arm. His palm was sticky with it, and he had gotten some on the steering wheel. He turned his arm over and saw a gash in the flesh just above the left elbow. It must have happened when he elbowed the glass while breaking in to the house.

  “I’ve got towels and shirts and stuff in my bag,” he said.

  She just stared at him.

  “In the back!” he shouted.

  Ellie shook her head.

  “What?” he said. “What?”

  “You’re thinking of the wrong car,” she said.

  42

  There were napkins in the Monte Carlo’s glove compartment, which David used to staunch the bleeding. The owner’s manual was in there, as well, wrapped in a plastic folder bound with a large rubber band. David used the rubber band to bind the napkins to his injured arm. The band was tight enough to slow much of the bleeding, which was good; the wound was deep enough to require stitches, but he couldn’t stop and worry about something like that right now.

  He repaired his arm while driving, and when he finished, the steering wheel was tacky with drying blood. He’d gotten more blood down the side of his shirt and on the inside of the door, too. When he began to feel a little light-headed, he fought to keep his gaze steady on the road ahead.

  He took mental inventory of all the things they’d left behind in the Olds. At least I’ve still got the gun, he thought. Also, the money. How much was left? He was burning through it too quickly, and he had splurged on unnecessary purchases in an attempt to keep Ellie in a state of complacency as best he could. Milk shakes had soothed her, much as the pizza lunch. As had the motels. Had he been alone, he would have risked sleeping in the car and been frugal with every dime, but he was also trying to keep some semblance of normalcy in his daughter’s life. It was a delicate balance.

  Not to mention I wouldn’t even be doing this if I was alone . . .

  Red bands of light were stretching across the horizon while, at their back, the sky had darkened to a starry black. He had thought Ellie was sleeping all this time, but when he looked at her, he could see that her eyes were halfway open as she reclined in the passenger seat. She watched the scenery without really seeing anything, blinking languidly every once in a while like someone under the influence of a strong sedative.

  She had the shoe box in her lap, and it struck him as peculiar that she had insisted on taking it into the sandwich shop with her and refusing to leave it behind. As if she had known they’d never return to the Olds. The thought caused a chill to ripple through him.

  Perhaps sensing his eyes on her, Ellie rolled her head so that she faced him. Her skin looked mottled and fluid in the dusky light. For an instant, she looked so adult—so much like Kathy—that David felt a sudden ache in the center of his chest.

  “What would those cops have done if they’d caught us back there?” she asked. Her voice was just barely above a whisper.

  “They would have taken us into custody.”

  “They would have taken me away from you,” she said.

  “They would have tried.”

  “They would have hurt you to get to me,” she said. It was Kathy talking now: Ellie’s face looked so different in the dark.

  “I’m not sure the local police know exactly how important you are,” he said.

  Ellie turned her he
ad away from him.

  Western Kansas had given way to the lush switchbacks of Colorado. The trees that flanked the highway were enormous black pikes driven into the earth. At the horizon, the sky continued to darken as the sun settled beyond the western hills. They were roughly two hours from Funluck Park, according to the road map he’d found in the glove compartment and the calculations he’d worked out in his head.

  “How exactly did those doctors kill Mom?” she asked, still not looking at him.

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “Explain it to me.”

  “I’m not sure if it’s the best thing for you to know, honey. You don’t need to think of your mom that way.”

  “I want to know.”

  He considered this. Finally, he said, “Mom was okay at first. The doctors were just drawing blood. But then Mom started to get worried that she might get sick. She stopped eating and grew weaker. And the doctors, they just kept taking more blood.”

  “Why did you let them?”

  It was like an arrow thwacking into the center of his chest. When he opened his mouth, he found it difficult to speak at first. He cleared his throat and said, “Your mother didn’t want to leave at first. She was afraid of getting sick if she left the hospital.”

  This was close enough to the truth that he didn’t feel like he was telling a lie, although it wasn’t the complete truth. Ellie didn’t need to hear the complete truth.

  “In the end, she’d just grown too weak. Her body just gave out.”

  Enough silence passed between them that he thought he’d answered all Ellie’s questions. But then she said, “Would I die like Mom if we gave up and went back home? If they took me to some hospital to study me and take my blood?”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I’m just asking a question. Would I die, too?”

  He slammed a palm down on the steering wheel. “I don’t know, El! I can’t predict the goddamn future. I’m just trying my best to keep them away from you.”

  “It makes me feel sick,” she said. “It makes me feel like what we’re doing is wrong. It makes us no different from those people back in Kentucky. Those people with the skull . . .”