People of the Dark

by Wright, T. M.

  "When?" I tried to control my anxiety.

  "When I fixed your car."

  "Christ, I know that. I meant when did you see her; when did you talk to my wife?"

  "Coupla days ago. When I picked your car up. Toyota's a good car—"

  "Who was she with?" I cut in.

  "No one. A man. Some man. He wasn't really with her. He was around, I guess. Just around. And I thought he was with her. You could ask her, you know. I mean, if she's stepping out on ya—"

  "What did he look like?"

  "I don't know. Why should I know? He looked like the rest of 'em, I guess; I dunno."

  I nodded impatiently at the car. "Will you take a check?"

  "I'll take a check, sure. If it's good."

  I drove into Cohocton an hour later. Driving with only one good arm would have been an easy task under normal conditions, but a light rain had started, and a heavy overcast had cut the daylight in half. So when, a quarter mile from the house, I rounded a hill and saw a group of five or six people walking toward me down the center of my lane, I steered quickly to the left, lost my grip on the wheel, grabbed it again, hit the brake too hard, started skidding on the wet pavement, and shot past them with little room to spare. I spent a long time cursing them, cursing the car, myself, my bad shoulder, Jerry Czech. And yes, Erika. I had these people figured out, you see. They were like Moonies. They were fanatics of one sort or another. Religious fanatics or not, it didn't much matter. They'd seduced Erika away from me. They'd made her an offer she couldn't refuse. Eternal happiness. Inner peace. It didn't matter. I wanted her back, and I was going to find her and bring her home.

  I chalked this up as a distinct possibility: They were convinced, as a group, that they were what Sarah had told me they were—creatures of the earth—that they were creatures the earth had produced. And now they were equally convinced that the earth was somehow calling them back. That was rational, and believable. I began to believe it. I knew very little about them, only what I had seen in Granada (which, upon reflection, began to spook the hell out of me) and what I had seen in Seth's eyes—distance, and confusion. And fear.

  They were everywhere that morning, like deer on a rainy spring night. They were on the road, in the fields to the sides of the road, milling about the several empty and abandoned houses on the way to Cohocton. I stopped once to talk to one of them, a young woman in a blue dress, beige sandals, and white sweater. She was standing at the side of the road, soaked by the rain, facing away from me, and when I pulled up beside her, I had to lean over and roll the passenger window down. "Hello," I said, which got no reaction, so I said it again, louder, more angrily, and because it still got no reaction, I said it once more, and added, "Goddamnit!" That got no reaction, either. I thought a moment. I asked, "What are you doing here?" Nothing. "What in the fuck are you doing here?" I insisted. She'd been standing with her hands at her sides. She appeared to cross her arms now—I couldn't be sure because she was facing away from me—and walked off slowly through the mud at the side of the road, one slow step at a time, so, with each step, her foot could relax and free itself from the mud, into a stand of aspens near the road, through them, up a slight hill, and then into deep brush beyond. I stared for some time in the direction she'd gone. At last I turned back and floored the accelerator. I got to Cohocton minutes later.

  I knew only a few of the townies. Knebel—who had once warned me about "people standing by themselves, in the dark"—C. R. Boring, Ulla Pennon, Larry Whipple, the deputy sheriff, and Jean, a red-haired, thirtyish, matronly woman who worked as a clerk at the post office. There were several other people whom I didn't know by name but who nodded at me when they saw me on the street. I'd come to the conclusion that Cohocton was a typical small town with small town attitudes. Shortly after we'd moved in, Erwin "Bud" Huber, Cohocton's mayor, made a proposal that "all pornography be forever prohibited from sale, public or private, in our lovely little town" because, he explained, "people in Cohocton live on a higher plane." Never mind that the closest thing to pornography available in Cohocton, anyway, was a particularly graphic wrestling magazine: "The idea," he explained, "is to stop this cancer at its source." The proposal drew national attention not only because it was typically small townish, and therefore had lots of human interest potential, but also because it was so blatantly unconstitutional. Eventually it became an embarrassment, and the town trustees let it die.

  And because Cohocton was so typically a small town, I was certain its people would have rallied around this new problem.

  Here's the scenario I expected: Small groups of townies would have formed here and there—in front of Boring's, in front of the bank, the post office, the IGA. These groups would be discussing the current problem. The discussions would be reasonable, on balance. A few hotheads—like the people in the Electra—might try to run the show, but sweet reason (and that, after all, is what keeps towns like Cohocton together) would prevail and the hotheads would be asked to go somewhere else. Erwin "Bud" Huber would be flitting from group to group, but since the pornography amendment had blown up in his face, he'd be graciously ignored. The thread running through these groups would be an awareness that although the strange people who'd come to the town—or at least to the areas surrounding it—seemed placid enough, and although they did little or nothing that was illegal, they represented an unknown presence and were therefore not to be trusted. At last, the groups would begin to tie together; the one at the IGA would wander over and join the group at the post office. They would, in turn, attract the group at the hardware store, which would, finally, attract the last group. Someone would take charge (and I was hoping that that someone would be me). He'd give the situation a very thorough and reasoned analysis, and then, in the time-honored tradition of all small towns, propose that a vote be taken to decide what to do next.

  But the streets of Cohocton were all but empty that morning. A Datsun pickup was parked in front of the post office, and a battered Ford station wagon, its hood up, stood in the IGA parking lot. A young woman carrying a screeching infant on her back was walking slowly through the light rain, smiling—apparently mindless of her wailing child—toward the Cohocton Hotel.

  I parked in front of the bank, across the street from the Datsun pickup. When I got out, I heard from behind me, "Jack, hello." I turned. It was Knebel. He'd apparently just come around the corner of the bank—the alley there leads to his apartment—and was tugging his old German Shepherd along.

  "Hi," I called. He was still a good twenty feet from me. I gestured to indicate the town. "Quiet, isn't it?"

  He smiled, had clearly not heard me.

  I repeated, "Quiet, isn't it, Knebel?!"

  "Hi," he called—apparently he had still not heard me—and then he stopped because his dog refused to go on.

  I walked over to him, noticed around him the strong, unpleasant odor of the little cigars he smoked. I patted the dog. "He's pretty old, isn't he, Knebel?"

  "Close to fifteen. Haven't seen you in a while, Jack." He nodded at the cast on my arm. "Broke your shoulder, huh?"

  "Cracked it."

  "Oh? I heard it was broken." He smiled. "Small town gossip, very unreliable. Got your Toyota fixed, I see. Good car, those Toyotas. They last forever."

  I gestured again. "Why's it so quiet, here?"

  "Everyone's at the carnival in Penn Yann. 'Cept me, of course." His dog lifted a leg and started cleaning itself. Knebel leaned over, pushed the leg down. "No, Hans," he whispered. "Later."

  I said, "My wife's missing, Knebel."

  He looked up from his dog, nodded, looked back; the dog was cleaning itself again. "I know that. Left you for those religious fanatics, I hear. Bad luck, Jack."

  His casual attitude made me instantly angry. "Christ, Knebel, it's more than bad luck—" I stopped, aware of my anger.

  He looked up and grinned. "No need to get upset, Jack. My daughter left us for some religious fanatics in Utah. Not the Mormons. Some other group. So I know what it's lik
e, believe me. I feel for you, but what can I do about it?"

  "The question is, Knebel, what can we all do about it?"

  "'All,' Jack? Who's all?"

  "The people. Here. The people in Cohocton."

  "What do you want them to do, Jack?"

  I hesitated. It was a good question. I shook my head a little. "I don't know." I remembered my scenario. "I don't know," I repeated. "I guess we could all get together and talk about it."

  "Talk about what?"

  "About the situation, for Christ's sake."

  "You're getting upset again, Jack." He leaned over, pushed his dog's leg down once more. "Not now, damnit!" he whispered. He looked up at me. "Besides, what situation are you talking about?"

  "About these religious fanatics, of course."

  Knebel shrugged. "Who are they hurting? So they're all over the place?! There's not much anyone can do about that, short of running 'em out of town." He grinned. "And no one can do that, can they? You just watch out for them, Jack. You try not to run 'em down. And if you want, you go looking for whoever it is they took away from you. That's my advice. They took Erika away from you?" He shrugged again. "Well, you go and get her. Course, you got to know where to look, and that could be a problem, I guess." He pushed at Hans's leg again, whispered an obscenity, looked back at me. "Seen this, Jack?" He nodded to indicate the dog's collar. I looked. It had a series of small lights set around it; the lights were variously blue, green, red, and they were flashing rhythmically. Knebel continued, "My own invention, Jack? Works with a battery pack." He lifted a small brown box hanging from the collar. "Here."

  I shook my head slightly. "Sure, Knebel," I whispered. "I'll see you again, okay?" and without waiting for an answer I turned and walked away from him.

  I heard him call behind me, "Hey, good luck there, Jack. Don't get yourself converted."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jean, the thirtyish, matronly woman at the post office, said, "Live and let live, Mr. Harris. You know, I've got that on a plaque in my living room, and I really do believe it; I live by it." A short pause for effect. "We all should, don't you think?" She smiled a big self-satisfied smile. "Stamps, Mr. Harris?"

  "No," I said. "Thank you." And I left.

  In the hardware store, C. R. Boring was seated on a tall metal stool behind the counter. He looked happy to see a customer come in. "I like carnivals as much as the next guy, Mr. Ferris—" he began.

  "Harris," I corrected.

  "Yes?" Momentary confusion. "And this one in Penn Yann is a doozy, but there's no sense abandoning Cohocton. What's the businessman going to do, Mr. Harris? Which of us can afford to lose a day's worth of business? These are hard times."

  "Don't those others shop here?"

  He adjusted himself on his metal stool, crossed his legs. He looked very uncomfortable. "You mean these hippies, don't you?"

  I nodded.

  "I wish they did. But they don't. One of 'em came in here, once. I asked him what he wanted, he didn't answer, so I asked him again, and he wandered out without so much as a 'How ya do?' Damned spooky sons of bitches—"

  "My feelings exactly," I cut in, my tone dripping with meaning.

  "Like bats," he said, and grimaced. "I hate bats. I know they're not gonna hurt no one. You live here long's I have you get to know what's going to hurt you and what isn't. Bat's not going to hurt anyone. A two-ounce flying mouse with a taste for insects, that's all your basic bat is. But, by God, they scare the piss outa me, Mr. Harris."

  I smiled knowingly. "Just like these people do."

  "Sure," he said.

  "Me, too."

  "But they're harmless."

  I shook my head. "Are they, Mr. Boring? Are they really harmless?"

  "Charlie. That's my first name. I don't much care for being called Mr. Boring."

  "Oh. Yes. I'm sorry."

  "So what can I do for you today? You finally fixing that gutter of yours? I got some good plastic gutter that'll last from now till doomsday—"

  "We're getting off the subject here, Charlie."

  "What was the subject?"

  "These people."

  "Oh. Sure. The hippies. Shoot 'em."

  "'Shoot 'em'?"

  "Sure." He smiled secretively, leaned over, whispered, "You take this," he pulled a small pistol from under the counter, held it up for me to see—"it's only a .22 caliber, but if you put it right up against a person's temple, you can drop 'em good, and then you dig yourself a great big hole and you dump 'em all in it. It's what I do with the bats, Mr. Harris. I know where they live, you see, and I go there and I kill maybe a hundred, two hundred of 'em—"

  "Good Christ," I whispered, and backed away from him.

  He was still smiling. "You wanta come with me sometime? I think you'd like it. And if you ever wanta do that, if you ever wanta drill these hippies, you come here and I'll go with ya. Wouldn't like nothin' better than to drill these hippies. Remember Kent State, Mr. Harris? 1970?"

  I pulled the door open and left. I thought, as I had thought about my brother, Who can you know too well?

  I went to the bank. There were no customers there, and only three tellers—a thin, middle-aged woman in a white blouse and pleated orange skirt, an attractive woman of twenty-five or so wearing a blue pants suit, and a fat man in his sixties who was wearing a gray pinstriped suit and looked very much as if he would rather have been somewhere else.

  The young woman looked over when I came in; she smiled appealingly and said, "Good morning. May I help you?"

  I grinned, shook my head. "No."

  She looked disappointed.

  "I wanted to talk," I went on.

  "Oh?" she said, and looked confused.

  I heard the door open behind me and I stepped out of the way. A scruffy, unshaven man of about forty-five, who smelled vaguely of cigarettes and cow manure, came in. He was counting a stack of bills—"Four hundred twenty," he whispered, "four hundred thirty, thirty-five . . ."

  "May I help you?" the young woman said to him, and he went over to her, pushed the stack of bills at her, asked her to count it, told her he wanted to make a deposit.

  I went over to the middle-aged woman, said "Hi."

  "Hello," she said coolly.

  "I wanted to talk," I said.

  "Beautiful morning," she said.

  "No," I said. "It's been raining."

  "Rain's good."

  "Uh-huh." I fished my wallet out of my back pocket, withdrew thirty dollars, said I wanted to make a deposit.

  "Deposit slips are over there," she said, and nodded at a table behind me.

  "I don't know my account number," I said.

  "We can look it up. Your name is?"

  I told her my name. Then I added, "Actually, I just wanted to talk."

  "You don't want to make a deposit, Mr. Harris?" She looked suspiciously at me.

  "Sure, I'll make a deposit."

  "I'll get your account number, then. Deposit slips are over there," and again she nodded at the table behind me.

  "Yes," I said. "In a moment. I wanted to talk about these people wandering about."

  The older man at the next teller's cage said loudly, "Bring back the loitering laws, that's my solution. Then you can throw those bums in the slammer. That'll get rid of 'em."

  And the scruffy man making the large deposit said, "Steal my corn and they'll get their fannies fulla buckshot."

  The young woman looked offended, but said nothing.

  The middle-aged woman waiting on me said, "My son hitchhiked to Wyoming once, and he did what I guess these people do—he slept where he could, under the stars, and that's okay. Brings a person closer to God."

  "I think they're religious fanatics," I said, which got several moments of stiff silence. Then the scruffy man announced, "I'm a Bible Baptist, young man, and we ain't fanatics."

  "No," I said, my tone apologetic, "I was talking about these people wandering the countryside. I think they've taken my wife." I felt good saying
that, as if I'd gotten over the hump of the conversation.

  "Taken her where?" asked the middle-aged woman.

  "They've seduced her away from me."

  The fat man said, "That's an aberration; these religious groups are moving into untried areas, like sex . . ."

  The young woman said, "Sex is hardly an 'untried area,' Lou."

  "They're probably all fucking their brains out in the woods," Lou said.

  "Ladies are present," the scruffy man admonished. Lou apologized.

  The middle-aged woman said, "If she's a consenting adult, Mr. Harris, then she is at liberty to go where she pleases and with whom she pleases. Your savings account has been closed; would you like to open a new one?"

  "It's been closed? I never closed it."

  "No. Your wife did. Several days ago. When you were still in the hospital, I think. How's your arm, by the way?"

  I ignored the question. "Who was she with?"

  "She was by herself, Mr. Harris." She paused. "I think there was someone waiting outside for her. A man about your age, maybe. Would you like to reopen the account?"

  "No. Thank you." I turned to leave; Lou, the fat teller, called after me, "Once deer season opens, these hippies will go away, couple of 'em get shot. You wait and see." And he grinned knowingly.

  "No one's gonna get shot," the scruffy man said.

  "Someone always gets shot," the young woman said.

  I turned back. "My God," I said stiffly, "none of you people sees the importance of this thing. My God, you don't even care, do you?"

  "Mister Harris," Lou said, "there's no problem. And if a problem should develop, we'll deal with it."

  "I don't even live here," the young woman said. "I live in Canandaigua, and we don't have a problem there."

  "What can we do with these people, anyway?" asked the middle-aged woman. "You can't just tell them to go away. It's a free country, Mr. Harris."

  "Oh, for God's sake—"

  She cut in, "Your wife didn't look at all unhappy, either. I think it's important that you realize that. She was smiling, in fact."

  "That makes me very happy," I said, my tone thick with sarcasm.