“And now somebody’s painted some sixes on my mailbox.” Cassie sounded unconcerned. “I’m a safe target, so far out of town. You think the cult’s back?”
Tom shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think maybe it’s not random vandalism.”
“Shoot, Tom, of course it’s random.”
“I’d agree with you if Eve hadn’t said that about the sixes. Or if . . .” He trailed off, not wanting to tell her the rest.
“Spit it out, Tom.”
He stared at her a long moment. “Cass, something else happened. One of your goats is dead.”
“That can’t be, Tom. They were both here this morning before I took Evie to school.” She stood and opened the back door and stepped out onto the stoop. “There’s Daisy. Iris? Iris?”
“I found her across the road, by the fort.”
Cassie turned to him, her face blanched white. “A car hit her?”
“No. It was done on purpose. Cassie, by the looks of things, I expect she was stoned to death. Moss needs to go take a look.”
Cassie sat down slowly. “Lord, I loved that rotten old goat.”
“I know.”
“So did Evie.”
“I don’t think you should let Evie go out by herself until Moss figures out what’s going on.”
“You think the goat and the mailbox are connected?”
“I believe I do,” he admitted, wishing he hadn’t been the one to find these things, wishing to be gone from here.
Tears threatened to overflow her eyes and she wiped them roughly away. “Those damned satanists. Somebody oughta stone them.”
“What about the Apostles?” Tom asked.
“Sure, they can do the stoning.”
“No, no. I mean they’ve been getting awful crazy lately with all their apocalypse talk.”
“You think they might have done it?”
“Maybe. You ever hear Sinclair’s radio show?”
“No.” She stared at him. “Tom Abernathy, I’m surprised you’d listen to such garbage.”
“I must confess, I listened once or twice way back when they started the station, just out of curiosity. I thought they were sort of amusing.” He paused, considering. “I thought the Apostles were harmless, you know, like Janet Wister and her UFO-worshiping friends. But the other night, I caught the program again. Sinclair was ranting and raving about floods and earthquakes and how the Four Horsemen are gonna ride right down Thunder Road and herald the end of the world.”
“Sinclair and his group are full of hot air,” Cassie said dully.
“Yeah, they are, but it’s self-righteous hot air, plus they’ve got themselves a time frame. They may be up to something.”
Raising her eyebrows, Cassie said, “Let me guess. The end of the world will come with the eclipse on Sunday, right?”
“Right you are. Sinclair claims he’s been charged with some holy mission to destroy sinners for God. He says the Apostles are the chosen ones.”
“Most religions claim that privilege.”
Tom nodded. “True, but not like the Apostles, at least to hear Sinclair tell it. Calls himself a prophet. Seems to believe it. When he broadcasts those sermons, you can hear the converts in the background hallelujahing everything he says. They’re real riled up. they’re zealots, and zealots worry me.”
“Well, they have been annoying the tourists,” Cassie allowed. “Moss’s had to run ’em out of Madland every weekend lately.”
“I was thinking about that,” Tom said.
“But still, they’re a regular Christian religion.”
“I don’t know, Cass. When Sinclair talks, they’re always ‘the Prophet’s Apostles,’ never ‘Christians.’”
“Their crucifix is pretty weird, I’ll give you that. That big old lit-up cross on top of their church puts me in mind of Las Vegas.”
Tom nodded. “You ever notice how they have it rigged?”
“Yeah. It disappears on Sunday morning and shows up again late at night.”
“Must use it to gussy up their services. Pretty strange, if you ask me.”
“Still, they worship God, not the devil, and I just can’t see them killing a poor defenseless animal.”
“Maybe,” Tom said. “Christians used to sacrifice them all the time and, well, hell, they’re still doing ritual cannibalism.”
“What?”
“Communion. Christ’s body and blood. Thursday night, after the barbecue, maybe we’ll give it a listen, see what everyone else thinks. You’re coming, aren’tcha?”
“I don’t know if I’m gonna feel like socializing, Tom. Moss’ll be there if he can, though.” She shook her head. “Wish he’d get around to hiring a new man, what with all that’s been going on.”
“Cass, you can’t miss Thursday night.” Over the years, dropping in at Tom’s on Thursday evenings had become a habit set in stone. “I don’t think you should be out here all by your lonesome, anyhow. Especially with this six-six-six business.”
“I’ll think about it, but don’t play daddy, Tom. It’s unbecoming.”
“How come it’s okay for you women to tell us men to be careful, but we get our heads taken off if we say it to you?”
“Changing times.” She grinned. “We gotta be as chauvinistic and obstinate as you boys were and make sure you all know we don’t need you.”
“Why, that’s just silly.”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s the way things work. Bunch of fanatics on one side, bunch on the other, have to fight it out. Finally they find a middle ground.” She smiled. “As for us women, as soon as we know we’ve convinced you we can take care of ourselves, why, then I guess we can all tell each other to be careful.”
“Women don’t make sense,” Tom said, shaking his head.
“Men don’t either.” Cassie gave him a wink. “That’s one of the things I like about them.”
“You got a point.” Tom reached behind him and snagged the phone receiver from the wall. “We need to let Moss know what’s going on.”
“Fine, but don’t you put any of that stuff about paisleys looking like sixes in his mind. If you do, that man’ll be breathing down my neck every minute.”
“I thought you liked him breathing down your neck,” he chided gently.
“Don’t start, Tom.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He left a message for Baskerville, then took his leave, carefully refraining from telling Cassie to be careful. Instead, he put his Stetson back on and said, “Hope we see you Thursday.”
“Tom?”
Hand on the doorknob, he turned and raised his eyebrows.
“What do you think happened to Madge Marquay?” she asked, a tentative tone in her voice.
Once more, those damned goose bumps did a little dance. He stared solemnly at Cass. “Nothing, I hope. Maybe she and Henry had a spat and she took off, and maybe Henry is too embarrassed to say so.” He knew that she knew he was spouting bullshit. “What does Moss think?”
She shook her head, her customary bravado gone. “He thinks it’s bad. Real bad.”
“What about Kyla and Joe?”
“Joe, well, he doesn’t know about him, but he’s afraid whatever got Madge got Kyla. He’s out of leads. None of her friends or relatives have heard from her.” Cassie paused. “He’s worried, Tom.”
“I don’t envy him his job.” He turned the knob and pushed the door open, anxious to be on his way. “I’m sorry, Cass, I’ve got a four o’clock show.”
“You get going, Tom,” she said softly, a little too much understanding in her eyes. “We’ll see you later.”
Outside, he glanced at his watch, then began walking briskly down the road toward the Madland entrance. Because of the goat, he’d have to ride one of the horses in the stunt riders’ corral instead of stopping by the ranch to fetch Belle, who knew his every move. He felt a surge of annoyance, followed by one of guilt. “Abernathy,” he muttered as he crossed the road and walked up the wide rock-lined path to the park’s entrance, “it’s y
our own damn fault. You don’t want to get involved, you shouldn’t be so damned curious.”
2
Justin Martin
S TARING INTO THE MEDICINE CABINET MIRROR, JUSTIN MARTIN carefully placed his forefingers on each side of the single corpulent pimple sprouting in the cleft of his square chin. Slowly he began to squeeze—
“Justin?” His mother’s cloying voice filtered through the closed bathroom door. “Justin? Are you in the bathroom, dear?”
Who the hell do you think is in here? Annoyed, he stabbed his fingers into the blemish. It held. Wincing, he pressed harder, and suddenly yellow pus spewed all over the mirror, leaving only a small red mark on his otherwise perfect chin. He grinned, a wide flash of white framed in dimples.
“Justin? Are you in there?”
“Yeah. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Honey, are you sick?”
Sick of you. “No,” he muttered, thinking that the speckles of pus on the mirror bore an uncanny resemblance to the constellation Orion.
“You’ve been in there a long time. Do you need some Pepto-Bismol, honey?”
“No!” he spat, then added more gently, “I’m fine.”
She cleared her throat but didn’t speak. Her foot tapped, once, twice. She thinks I’m beating off. Amused, he put his hands to his face and pinched the flesh out on each cheek, then pulled in and out, shaking his head at the same time. The resultant liquidy noise was just the sound she expected, and almost instantly he heard her retreating footsteps, exactly as he expected.
Grinning again, he pulled his comb out of his back pocket and ran it through his thick dark hair. The first time he’d driven to Supercuts in Barstow and got a real haircut, his mother had nearly had a coronary. She thought she owned his hair, thought only she could cut it. She’d given him a load of shit about wasting his money, but it hadn’t taken him long to charm her into forgetting about it. Keeping parents under control was a pain in the ass, and sometimes he found it very difficult to keep the smile plastered on his face and the cajoling words pouring from his lips. Sometimes he wanted to pull a Lizzie Borden.
Someday, he might, especially if the Voice suggested it. The Voice. It came, sometimes, with the lights in the sky and he had heard it more often in the last year. For several months now, it had been a clear and vital force in his life. It guided and respected him. It gave him what he needed.
He returned the comb to his pocket, took his little bottle of Oxy-10 from the cabinet, and massaged the medicine into his face. The blemishes rarely got out of control, but it was a constant, annoying battle, another pain in the ass, but he supposed it was a small price to pay for the hormones that had, with the advice of the Voice, plus a little weight training and running, turned him from a loose-boned kid into a broad-shouldered jock early last summer. Pseudojock, he corrected, using a hand mirror to check the back of his head. He had no use for the imbeciles who devoted their lives to chasing balls and tackling each other. Bunch of closet queens.
By the time he began his senior year last September, he’d saved enough from his job at the Haunted Mine Ride in Madland to replace his glasses with contact lenses that changed his watery blue eyes—his only flaw—to rich periwinkle. The black ’78 Mustang coupe his parents gave him for his birthday last November completed his physical change. Now, at seventeen and months away from graduation, he was no longer an ugly duckling. He’d become a swan.
Of course, during the last year, he’d had to perform a little surgery on his personality to go with his new look. He read books on sports so that the moronic jocks would accept him, and he read books on dating so that he’d say the right thing to get laid. He also learned to keep his brains hidden and never to talk about his real hobbies.
And it had worked, better than he ever dreamed. People were stupid, easily fooled, and their memories were as long as Coach Butz’s dick. Christie Fox, the bitchy little cheerleader who used to make fun of him, told him last week that he looked like Christian Slater. Of course, she was still going with Rick Spelman, the captain of the football team, but that was just another challenge to be met. Meanwhile, Justin pretty much scored with whomever he wanted whenever he wanted. The girls who threw themselves at him bored him, though he never showed it. After all, he now had a reputation as a great lay to live up to: The sexual technique books he so carefully studied had paid off almost too well. Now he wanted to use those techniques—and others—only on Christie, the last holdout worth having. But she told him she loved Spelman and said she wanted to be faithful. Stupid bitch.
“Jussstinnn!” His mother’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Dinnnner!”
God. His parents ate dinner every day between three and four o’clock and went to bed by eight, the stupid fucks. He took one more look in the mirror, then left the bathroom. Stepping into his room, he grabbed his wallet and keys, and slipped on his Levi’s jacket. Everything else he’d need tonight was already locked in the trunk of his car. Now he just had to get past good old Mom and Dad.
Which was easy. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, his face buried in the Daily Press, and Mom, wearing a pair of Garfield oven mitts, was just setting a big glass pan full of lasagna on the table. His parents were fifties throwbacks. Ward and June. Barney and Betty. Jim and Amanda Martin, all-American dweebs.
“Justin?” His mother crossed her arms, which made the Garfields look like they were humping her elbows. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Gee, Mom. It looks really good,” Justin said, glancing at the casserole. She used cottage cheese and cheddar instead of ricotta and Parmesan because that’s what the old man liked, and Justin knew it tasted like Chef Boy-ar-dee had barfed in the pan. He smiled winningly. “I thought I told you—I have to work. Some schools are out for Easter vacation already and Madland’s doing quite a bit of business.”
“I can’t imagine Henry wanting to work with Madge missing,” said good old Mom.
“I guess it helps get his mind off things.” Seeing that sympathy for Old Man Marquay would work best on his mother, Justin forced his eyes to glisten and poured compassion into his voice. “I think maybe he needs some company, too.”
The paper rattled down from his father’s face. “Justin, what could he possibly want you to do on a weeknight?” He sounded suspicious. The old bastard had always been harder to convince than Mom.
Without missing a beat, Justin replied, “Mr. Marquay wants to get the mine ride all fixed up before the Strawberry Festival. You know, paint the cars, make sure the dummies are all working right.”
His father stared at him a moment. “You know, if you worked for me in the garage, you could earn just as much money—maybe more—and not have to keep such odd hours.”
“Jim,” Mom scolded gently. “Justin is doing the Christian thing. We should be proud of him.” She turned to Justin. “Why, he’s even joined a church, dear. I would think you’d be pleased.”
“That’s no church. It’s a damn circus sideshow,” Dad grunted, and went back to the sports section.
“Justin, you ought to have something to eat before you go,” his mother said as he made for the door.
“Sorry, Mom. I’m supposed to be at work in five minutes. I don’t want to be late.”
She opened her mouth.to mother him again, but dear old Dad said, “Can’t argue with the boy about that.” He pushed the spatula into the lasagna and lifted a big drippy blob onto his plate. It was red and yellow, like the viscera and fat of a chicken.
Justin hid his disgust. “I’ll pick up something in Madland later.”
“Well, I’ll leave you a plate in the oven.” She paused. “Maybe you should take some to poor Mr. Marquay. You wait just one minute and I’ll make up a plate.”
It wasn’t worth arguing about, so he waited while she got a small casserole dish out of the cupboard and spooned some of the glop into it. After covering it with tin foil, she pushed it into his hands.
“See you later.” Carrying the disgusting dish well
away from his body, he headed out the door.
“Honey?” she called.
What now, you old douche bag? “Yes, Mom?”
“You did your homework, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” he said. That question never failed to insult him. He could do a page of trig in five minutes, a thousand-word book report in twenty, without even reading the book, and still get an A. Madelyn High was made for morons. Even the teachers were morons, unable to see past his dazzle of bullshit to realize he didn’t know the material. The biggest moron of them all had been Old Lady Marquay, with her moles and warts, some of them with hairs growing out of them—she didn’t even have the decency to shave them off—and her ability to make English even more boring than it was already. At least she wouldn’t be turning her warty stare and her Julia fucking Child voice his way anymore.
“Give Mr. Marquay our best,” Mom called as he pulled his Mustang out of the driveway. He gave her the dimples and waved.
He looked forward to tonight’s big event as he made a left on Cactus Street. Tonight at midnight, he and Christie Fox’s boyfriend, Spelman the Jock, had a date to play chicken out on Thunder Road. Setting it up had been as easy as Justin had expected. Spelman himself had thrown down the gauntlet, encouraged by a few simple remarks concerning his girlfriend’s sexual talents.
Before tonight, though, he had lots of things to do, like picking up the pair of boots he’d had his eye on at the Thieves’ Market down in Victorville, and stopping in the Waldenbooks in the mall to see if they had any new books . . . he smiled . . . on his hobby. Then he’d come back to town and stop in at the café to see if he couldn’t talk Christie Fox into having a soda with him after she got off work.
Cruising Madelyn’s tacky little suburbs, he checked to see who was home and who wasn’t. Every house looked lower-middle-class, even the few that were owned by people with money. The desert had that effect on everything. Houses, cars, people, they all looked dead and dry and wrinkled.
Before he left town, he had one errand to take care of—he had to check the snare and see if he’d caught anything. He pulled onto Old Madelyn Highway and turned north. “Highway,” he thought, was a fucking fancy name for a rutted dirt road. Everybody in this hick outpost thought they were such big fancy shits, but they weren’t. They were nothing and they didn’t even know it. They were as ugly and stupid as their town. The only exceptions, possibly, were Jim-Bob Sinclair and a few of his flunkies.
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