by Tim Curran
9:37 P.M. XXX: yes i’m coming yessss
9:37 P.M. XXX: coming through the rye yessss
Nancy kept staring at the screen, slowly shaking her head. “It’s a big joke to them.”
Ben grabbed her by the arm, pulled her roughly to her feet. “It’s more than a joke, you dumbass,” he snapped at her. “Whoever XXX is, they’re in this town. Don’t you see? They’re here and now they know where we are.”
Nancy began to argue, but Ben didn’t give her the chance to do more than cuss. He dragged her straight through the house and out the front door. He pulled her down the porch, nearly tossing her into the yard. She fought with him, made to slap him, kick him. It did her no good. He clamped a hand over her mouth and put a wristlock on her he’d learned in high school wrestling. It wasn’t until they were hidden behind a row of cedars that he let her loose.
“You stupid sonofabitch!” she railed, but not too loudly. “Who the fuck you think you are? You don’t lay a hand on me, you don’t—”
He clamped his hand over her mouth again. “Shut your hole,” he said sternly, his voice hard, trembling with authority. “Someone’s coming.”
Nancy listened, turning her head this way and that. She heard nothing but the wind in the trees overhead. But then…yes, something. In the distance.
Click, click, click.
She narrowed her eyes.
What the hell was that?
It was getting louder, from the direction they’d come from, from the blacked-out section of Cut River…one of them, anyway. She licked her lips, suddenly aware of the cool mist on her skin, the thunder of her heart. She drew in quick, shallow breaths, trying to do this quietly. Quiet mattered now. Mattered more than anything.
Click, click, click.
Very close now.
Nancy was gripping Ben’s arm with everything she had. He was doing the same. Any other time it would have hurt, now it was just a solid, firm pressure that she needed more than anything. She could smell the damp air, cold and gray, smell the thick green odor of the cedars they hid behind. These were physical things. They grounded her.
Click, click, click.
A woman came up the sidewalk, her stride casual, yet…odd.
Just a woman, Nancy knew, that was all…but that shape coming from the darkness…it filled her with a nameless dread, made her flesh crawl in waves…a woman, yes, but not really. More like something ebon and malignant pretending to be a woman.
She kept coming, tall, thin, hair swinging at her shoulders.
She paused at the walk and they both got a good look at her. She was wearing high heels, a purse on her arm. She carried a high, noisome stink of violated crypts about her.
And she was stark naked.
They could hear her breathing. It was a horrible wet sound like water sucked through a hose. Her white, grinning face said all there was to say about the black depths of human madness, of incarnate evil. Her eyes were yellow, gleaming.
Nancy was shaking, willing herself not to scream.
The woman carried a big knife in one hand.
She walked right up onto the porch, went through the open door.
“Helloooo,” she said, “anybody home?”
Dear God, Nancy thought, that voice.
Raw, rasping, and bestial. The snarl of a mad dog contained more humanity. She kept calling out in the house. Sometimes her voice was remotely human, other times more of a barking, growling noise, an enraged wolf attempting speech.
About the time Ben and Nancy were thinking of making a run for it, she reappeared at the door, electric yellow eyes glistening like wet chrome. She scanned the yard, drool foaming from her lips and dropping in clots to her taut, jutting breasts.
“Hide and seek?” she hissed into the night air. “Is that our game…yesss…come out come out wherever you are. I can smell you out there…”
Nancy wasn’t sure what was holding her together by that point.
Maybe it was Ben. Maybe she was just locked-down hard with superstitious, unreasoning fear. She watched the woman step out into the yard. She started in their direction and then abruptly turned, making towards the truck parked in the driveway. She pressed her face up to the windows, leaving a sticky smear when she pulled away. Then she went to the garage, threw open the door and disappeared inside.
“Now,” Ben said under his breath. “Quietly.”
Still holding onto each other, they rose and darted out from behind the cedar bushes. They scampered across the neighboring lawns, staying on the grass to avoid any noise. Three houses down the block, they paused behind another parked pick-up. In the distance, the Bricker’s house looked peaceful. They waited maybe five minutes, but didn’t see the woman again.
It took some time for Nancy to find her voice. For too long she was concerned only with staying alive, living long enough to draw another breath. “Oh my God, Ben, oh Jesus…” her voice trailed off into sobs. “What are we…what can we do?”
“We have to get out of here. This whole town is bad.”
Nancy nodded silently.
They moved off again through dappled shadows.
There were other lit-up houses ahead and they made for them. They didn’t really expect to find people now, but maybe keys to vehicles, weapons to protect themselves with. Something. Anything that could give them an edge of security in this nightmare.
Whether it was safe or not, they kept away from the road and sidewalks, sticking close to the houses, the shrubs, the bushes. Ben knew very well that at any moment white hands might reach out for them, drag them into the forever night, but there was no choice.
They came around the corner of a neat two-story cracker box, saw something dangling from the porch overhang. They both saw it, there was no way not to. No breath left in his lungs to scream, Ben teetered there on rubbery legs, wondered what could possibly top this.
“My God,” Nancy whimpered. “My God…”
The body of a boy was swinging from a rope.
A frayed noose encircled his throat, cutting into the flesh. He couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven, if that. He dangled in the breeze, turning back and forth slowly, his hands knotted into fists.
This was the epitaph of Cut River, the ghastly monument reared in its passing. A young boy hung by the neck.
It couldn’t get worse than this.
That was, until his bloodless face hitched into a sneer, lips hooked into a smile, a chattering death grin.
His body began to dance.
Just a shudder at first, then a more fluid motion, arms and legs flopping limply in some macabre imitation of human locomotion. He was like some gruesome puppet, some marionette dangling by the neck, his limbs flowing as if he were walking on air.
Ben stood there, mesmerized by this latest statement of sheer lunacy.
His brain was filled with a thundering black sound like the flap of huge wings, like birds taking flight in his skull. It was maddening. And all he could think of was that old music video by Herbie Hancock, the one with all the motorized mannequins and automatons mimicking human beings—walking, kicking, turning, gyrating. And that’s what this boy was, some cold, whirring machine mocking a little boy, jaws snapping open and shut, head bobbing, limbs thrashing, a garbled dry croaking erupting from his throat.
Nancy began to shake all over.
She started sobbing, then tittering, then both it seemed.
Ben wanted nothing more than to go quietly mad, but now wasn’t the time.
With tremendous effort, he got his legs moving. He spun his wife around by the shoulders and her face, bathed in the yellow moonlight, was crazed, pulled into some tight crying/laughing mask. It frightened him. Probably worse than anything he’d seen thus far.
She came alive under his grip, fighting him, hitting out, trying to scratch his face. He slapped her and she slumped into his arms. He half-carried, half-dragged her away, wondering how long it could possibly be until that rope around the kid’s neck snapped and he came looki
ng to bite at something other than empty air.
“Gonna be okay,” Ben heard himself whisper to Nancy as she collapsed completely and he scooped her up, carrying her away and across the avenue onto the block with the lights on.
He found a row of high bushes and set her gently down behind them.
He sat beside her, stroking her hair.
She was awake then, sobbing. “It can’t be happening, Ben, can it?” she asked. “I know it can’t, I know I’m crazy. I gotta be. That boy, he’s dead, but he’s still moving and that woman…oh Jesus, Ben, I’m losing my mind…”
He pulled her tight against him, kissed the top of her head. “You’re not crazy, girl. This town is crazy, but not you.”
After a time she quieted down and he was afraid for her.
Afraid because she was a tough, ballsy woman who didn’t take shit from anyone or anything and now she was weak and beaten, whimpering like a little girl.
This is what scared him.
She was always a rock and now she was wearing down, flaking away before him.
“Sam and all this…I can’t think straight. I don’t know.”
“Sshh. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll get you outta here.”
Then they both heard something coming up the sidewalk.
At first it was muffled and indistinct, but then it became obvious: the slapping of bare feet. Many of them.
Ben and Nancy hugged one another, drawing strength.
The parade of bare feet came and went, their owners making a series of wet, almost reptilian hissings as they passed. Ben had this almost suicidal, crazy urge to peer over the hedges and see what manner of people made such sounds.
But he didn’t.
He just held Nancy and was held, waiting.
Ten minutes later, they were still clutching one another. Waiting for what came next and not having to wait long. It came from across the street, from a bank of dark homes. Ben could feel his breath catch in his throat and hold there. It was merely a sound, but it conjured an almost physical horror in him.
I can’t take anymore of this, oh God in Heaven, I can’t.
Across the street, he could hear a shrill, eerie giggling.
The giggling of a little girl, demented and loathsome.
10
“All I want to do is live,” Lisa Tabano told the bald, mustached man who carried her into the church. “I don’t even want to know about this…I just want to live.”
Johnny Davis nodded in the darkness. “Seems a simple enough thing, doesn’t it?”
“I used to think so,” she said, her voice weary.
“I’ll try to get you out, but I can’t promise anything.”
“Thank you. Then we can get the police, the army, I don’t know. The authorities. Someone in charge. Maybe…maybe my mom and dad…maybe they’re alive somewhere.”
“Maybe they got out,” Johnny said.
She ignored that. “We’ll get out, get the cops, whatever. Let them sort it out.”
Johnny laughed low in his throat. “Oh, you are naïve, aren’t you? You don’t get it, do you? You don’t even know what this is all about.”
Lisa looked at him. “Do you?”
All that got was laughter.
She saw him shaking his head, massaging his jaw (something he seemed to do whenever confronted by something he didn’t like). “No point in getting into any of this,” he said. They were just inside the main door of the church where Johnny had taken her after finding her on the steps out front. He opened it a crack, peered out. “If you want to get out, we might as well start on that.”
“I was kind of thinking that maybe you were coming with me,” Lisa said. “Or am I mistaken on this?”
“Sadly mistaken, dear.” He pulled a pack of RedMan chewing tobacco from inside his survival vest and stuffed his cheek. “I’m staying right here.”
“For godsake, why?”
“You wouldn’t understand. It would take just too long to explain it and we don’t have the time.”
An enigma?
Oh yes, and then some.
Here was a guy who obviously was some sort of survivalist—dressed out in fatigues and survival vest, armed to the teeth. A guy who had positioned himself in the church belfry and, thankfully, picked off those psychos who were about to make hamburger out of her. Hard as a concrete piling, he was built thick and heavy and was definitely no stranger to the business of killing. Not some weekend warrior here. No gun freak wannabe who dreamed of action and jerked off over back issues of Soldier of Fortune, but would piss his pants at the first taste of the real thing.
No, Johnny Davis was the genuine article.
But there was an undercurrent to him Lisa just couldn’t put a finger on, some secret agenda. A mystery.
But right now, despite everything that had thus far happened, neither Johnny Davis or any of the rest of it was a priority for her. She was beginning to feel nauseous and sweaty like maybe she had a good flu bug going.
But it had nothing to do with that.
“We should leave before things get…worse,” he said.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
He sighed, shook his head. “Goddamn women and their bladders.”
She ignored him and he led her through the church to the rectory in the back. He motioned towards the bathroom and left her alone. She closed the door and clicked on the light. She set her guitar case and purse down. When she was sure he was out of earshot, she relieved herself (though that wasn’t the real reason for this visit).
When she was finished, she splashed some water in her face and looked at herself in the mirror. Good God. She was wasted, drawn, her dark eyes and hair standing out in marked contrast to the pale, sweaty skin of her face. Twenty-three years old and already she had discolored rings under her eyes, worry lines at the corners of her lips. Like Keith Richard’s junkie sister.
God, she felt horrible.
She opened her purse, took out a baggie of brown powder. She didn’t have a spoon, so she scooped up a tad and shoved into her nose, sniffing it up. She repeated this and sat down on the toilet, shivering, her eyes watering, her guts flipping and flopping.
When’s the last time you ate? she asked herself. The last time you actually put some food in your body?
But she couldn’t remember.
A day? Two? Three?
Got so after awhile all you needed was the junk, you didn’t need anything else.
She was pencil-thin, nearly emaciated, sporting a classic hard-living rock and roll look: haggard, gaunt, a big head of hair and a skeleton for a body. All those years as a teenager she’d gone on one crazy, punishing diet after another trying her damnedest to look like her heroes—Johnny Thunders, Joe Perry, Nikki Sixx—and now, at last, a rock star in her own right with a hit album, she’d discovered their secret: heroin. You didn’t need diets or fasting or any of that nonsense, all you needed was H. Food of the gods, yes oh yes oh yes.
Already she could feel it canceling out the bad stuff.
Her personal cloud found her, wrapped her up tight. She’d peak in fifteen minutes or so, but the climb was oh-so delicious. Nose full of junk, she could laugh at the psychos outside.
Euphoric and revitalized, born again, she gathered up her stuff and left the bathroom, had a foolish urge to skip and whistle.
This was more like it.
She had nearly six grams left. Plenty to last.
God, if mom and dad are dead, if—
Don’t think about it. That’s for later,she told herself, when you’re safe.
“Took you fucking long enough, rock star,” Johnny said when she returned.
It was dark and Lisa was glad for it. She didn’t want her savior, Johnny Davis Rambo, seeing the change coming over her. She had a pretty good vibe on the guy now and it told her he was not stupid, that he’d been around.
“You gonna lug that guitar case with?”
She looked at him like he was mad. “Of course. It’s very rare, ma
n, worth a bundle. It’s everything to me.”
He was peering out the door again. “No, you’re wrong there, girly. A guitar ain’t nothing but a guitar, just wood and strings and steel and what have you. Your life is all that counts.”
“I’m not going to argue with you.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. Seen cherries like you in the war. Always fretting over good luck charms and religious objects and prized possessions. Didn’t do ‘em no good. You got one life, that’s all you get and all you need. Rest is bullshit. Materialism.”
“Oh, you got me pegged, eh? Material girl.”
“You said it not me.”
“You don’t know shit.” She fished a pack of cigarettes out of her coat pocket, fired one up. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t know, don’t wanna know.”
This guy. Jesus. He was ruining a perfectly good buzz with his attitude. “What about you? That must be quite a story. Look at you…what is that getup about?” she asked him, giving him a sneer she usually reserved for the cameras. “Camouflage for chrissake? Didn’t notice any jungle around here, Rambo. Time to leave Da Nang behind, Chuck Fucking Norris.”
He closed the door. “You wanna get out of here, rock star? That what you want? Then you’d best zip up that pisshole you call a mouth.” He turned back to the door, muttered under his breath: “Fucking broads. Cooking and sucking dick are their high points, rest is crap. Can’t trust ‘em. Can’t trust anything that bleeds for a week every month but don’t have the good sense to lay down and die.”
“Excuse me?” Lisa said, her blood boiling like hot molasses. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“You arrogant, macho shitbag.” She shook her head. “Yeah, just my luck. I get stuck in this fucking mess and who do I get for company? Sexist goddamn loser. What happened, Rambo? What gave you such a high opinion of women? You get dumped too many times? Small penis? Or don’t you even like girls?”
He smiled thinly. “How bad you want to find out?”
“About as bad as I want my tits stapled to the sidewalk.”
“Good place for you, long as your ass is up in the air.”