by Jack Martin
“Be careful,” said Challis.
“Why?”
Challis couldn’t answer that. He shrugged. “You’re sure this came off the mask?”
“Sure I’m sure. Oh, believe me, it’s probably some stupid mixup. I told you before. At the lower levels of this organization, they’re just out to lunch. I’m going to throw it smack on that Cochran’s desk first thing in the morning. What a character. Did you know he’s supposed to be one of the richest men in the country? And he got there selling cheap gags and Halloween masks. There’s hope for me yet.” She approached him conspiratorially. “I also heard that he lives here. Right in the factory.”
“Is that right?” It was all too much after the long trip. Challis longed to be outside. “Well, I hope you get some answers. If you do, let me know. We’re in Cabin One.”
“Oh, I will, I will. Now if I can get ahold of some batteries . . .”
“I’ve got to go.”
Marge snapped her fingers. “Package store.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“There’s a store, liquor store I think, on the way into town. Back two or three blocks, then north over the railroad tracks, you know, where they first cut in? They’ve got to stay open after dark or these bozos wouldn’t have anything to do. I don’t even think they get TV here.”
“Thanks,” said Challis sincerely. A liquor store. His mouth was dry just thinking about it. “Take care of yourself, Mrs. Guttman. Maybe we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I hope not. I mean, I hope to get everything straightened out bright and early so I can get back up north. My shop’s on Union Square in San Fran. You can’t miss it. Look me up.”
“Thanks, I will.”
“Oh, and Mr. Smith?”
“Yeah?”
“Do me a favor and see if they’ve got any batteries at that store? I want to find out what this thing does before I go in to see Mr. Big in the morning.” She brandished the piece of microcircuitry, if that was what it was. “Otherwise, I’ll have to start poking around with what I’ve got, hook it up to my hair dryer or God knows what, to find out what it really is. It’s electronic, I can tell that much. I want some answers. And I’m not leaving till I get ’em!”
T. MALONE’S
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The letters of the sign buzzed like fireflies over his head as he witnessed the coming of the night to Santa Mira.
The short street on which he stood led into darkness in either direction. A few strategic sodium-vapor lamps winked on here and there; cones of light extended down from them, revealing nothing except columns of lace-winged insects gathering and flying the beams like souls ascending to Heaven. A large bird passed over the liquor store, beating the air with a disturbing, leathery rhythm.
As far as he could see there was not another human being anywhere, save for the buttered sleepwalker who had rung up his purchase inside. The UPC code lines and automated register had made it easy. It had been all that one could do to take his money.
He clutched the paper sack, zipped his jacket and retraced his way back.
After a block and a half he was sure something was wrong with his ears.
He stood still and listened.
In the distance, another set of footsteps also stopped.
Curious.
Now crickets resumed their sawing chirrup in blackened doorways, and somewhere beyond the ripe fields a great white sound of water boomed like a heart beneath the earth. The night surrounding Santa Mira was alive, but the town itself was as quiet as a graveyard.
He resumed walking.
So did the second pair of shoes.
It was an illusion, he decided. Something to do with the location. The total absence of traffic, so ever-present in the city that it went unnoticed, served to heighten his sense of hearing so that distance played tricks with his ears. A block could turn into acres of impenetrable darkness, another simple street might continue for a mile in the polluted air, the stars multiplying into roadways of diamond dust and the moon close enough to touch. And so the slightest echo would probably ricochet all the way out to the hills and back.
That was enough to throw anybody off.
The important thing was not to forget where you were.
There was the alley. It would lead him back to the motel.
He picked up the pace and entered it.
A single security light illuminated the refuse ahead: a trash bin, boxes, lumber studded with nails, a stack of broken plate-glass windows. Wadded newspapers and packing excelsior blew along close to the ground, the detritus of unknown shipments the purpose of which he could only guess at. But it was getting late, too late to worry about any of that now.
He ignored the would-be clues and pressed on.
In front of him, a tattered figure rounded the corner and nearly knocked him over.
“Jesus . . . !” He jumped back, startled.
Beneath the wide-brimmed hat was an old face, covered with stubble and deeply creased from too many years out of doors and out of luck. The expression in the eyes was rat-shrewd. It was a look Challis had seen all his life, in bus depots and skid-row clinics in every city he had worked. The face was no more than forty years old by the calendar. But they had been forty long, hard years.
“Ho, mister!” Like a whipped dog the tattered man sidled closer while bracing to run. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” His eyes dropped to chest level. “I just saw that bottle of yours and thought it looked pretty heavy.”
Challis realized how tightly he was holding the bag. He was strangling the glass neck through the twisted brown paper.
“I ain’t got no diseases,” said the tattered man, “and I wager I keep myself as clean as you do.” He scratched his T-shirt and tried to close his ill-fitting coat. “How about a drink?”
This place wasn’t so different. Challis was relieved. “Sure,” he said, holding out the bottle.
The man unscrewed the cap and took a long pull. His exposed Adam’s apple bobbed in the stray light. “Mmm! God damn.” He handed the bottle back and smacked his lips. “Thank you.”
He made ready to move on.
Challis played a wild card. “Hey!”
The man started to return, expecting everything and nothing.
“You know anything about this big wheel named Cochran?”
“Huh!” The man sneered. “Do I know anything? Why, he made Santa Mira what it is today—a dried-up little pile of nothing!”
His eyes saddened.
“Used to be a pretty nice spot. Good people. Not anymore. He bought ’em all. Every one of ’em. Except me. I didn’t have anything to sell.”
Challis remained patient. The man was eager to talk. His eyes narrowed and his tone became impassioned.
“I tried to get a job in this place.” He might have been testifying before a judge. “Let me tell you something. He brought in every damn one of them factory people from the outside.” He spat. “You think he’d hire me? Local boy? No way. Turned me down flat! So I make my money the hard way . . . You don’t have a dollar to spare, do you?”
The story was worth a dollar. Challis reached for his change from the store. With his other hand he offered the bottle again.
“Mmm! God damn. Thank you.”
The man wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes found Challis.
“All I can tell you, mister, is watch out. You seen the TV cameras yet? He’s watching you, friend, I guarantee you that.”
Emboldened by the drink, he assumed a fighting stance and cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting at the rooftops.
“Hey, Cochran! FUCK YOU!”
Challis grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, take it easy!” He scanned the alley suspiciously. Was that the eye of a lens high up on the fence? He couldn’t be sure. It might as easily have been a cat’s eye, a piece of glass. But he didn’t want to take any chances.
The tattered man backed off and chopped the a
ir with his hand. “It’s all right,” he said pugnaciously. “Don’t matter to me. He’s probably listening. And if he is, I got one thing to say. This is the last Halloween for that lousy factory of his! They’re pulling some wild shit in there. I’ve heard rumors . . .”
He staggered on his way.
“This year I’m gon’ get me about a case and a half of Molotov cocktails, mister. Burn that sum-bitch right down to the ground. The last Halloween, all right . . . !”
He disappeared into the shadows at the end of the alley.
Without thinking Challis found himself pacing the man. Where would the only pedestrian he had seen so far in this town be going?
It was worth another minute of his time to find out.
Beyond the alley was an old railroad trestle and, jutting out of the shadows below it, the jumble of a wrecking yard. The man in the wide-brimmed hat was lecturing himself as he stumbled between rusted auto bodies and old tires on the way to a corrugated lean-to. Challis saw him squeeze inside, and soon an old railroad lantern was fired up. Yellow light poked feebly out of the shack.
Standing there under the stars, Challis had a drink himself.
They survive, he thought, the slow and the stubborn, the old individualist misfit sons of pioneers who won’t allow themselves to be folded, stapled, or spindled. The revolutions come and go, nations are torn apart and rebuilt, the climate changes to make way for the next millenium; the snow on the wheel turns and the century ices. Men like machines walk on the moon and machines like men remake the world in their own image; the iron dream rears its head again in a new age; the old tribes fade from sight in the long night of the human soul.
But, somehow, the old ways survive. They abide, and they prevail. They find a way.
Or it could be I’m just sentimentalizing the whole thing. Poverty, stupidity . . .
Maybe I’ve always overrated my motives. My years at the clinic, the hospital—maybe I’m not so God damned noble as I think. Maybe I’ve never really done it for them. I have to see them as more romantic than they are in order to rationalize the price I’ve paid in my own life. I was willing to do anything rather than face my real needs. Is it possible?
Physician, heal thyself.
Yeah, he thought. Begin at the end of your own nose. The long view doesn’t mean much until you can live in your own house justified.
In the distance, the tattered man reappeared balancing a palmful of soda crackers and a pressurized can of processed cheese food. The air was crystal-clear, the scene as sharp as a magic realist painting. The man suspended his diatribe long enough to unload a long strand of the cheese directly into his mouth. Then he began singing a song. Crackers flew out of his mouth like moths.
The last member of a dying breed in Santa Mira was making it through another night.
Challis didn’t want to disturb him.
He moved on.
Before he got back to the cabin, he did notice two other pedestrians, however. They were at the edge of the grounds, near the tracks. No, this place wasn’t so out of the ordinary, after all. Two typical businessmen in regulation-issue three-piece suits, walking back in the direction of the junkyard, strolling in a slow, relaxed rhythm.
Probably on their way to get a drink, he thought.
His thinking mellowed for the time being.
Behind him, the tattered man’s singing rose in pitch until it was a defiant cry at the moon.
C H A P T E R
8
Ellie came out of the shower wrapped in a towel.
She had the radio on. As he stripped the glasses of their sanitary paper coverings and poured out two husky drinks, she lay down on the bed and pretended not to watch him. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and she was smiling like a cat.
He could have spoken, but thought better of it.
He carried the drinks to the bed and sat down.
She took hers from him.
What am I doing here? he thought.
He took the drink down in one toss. He got up, measured out another and brought the bottle back with him.
Her glass was only half-empty.
She doesn’t even need it, he thought.
The silence, broken only by the music and a cricket outside the window, became a barrier. The longer it went on the harder it was to break.
But it did not seem to trouble her. She set her glass on the night table. The light from the aged lampshade gave her skin the texture of warm wax.
My God, he thought. At a time like this Linda would have a million things to say. I would not be able to shut her up. But this one . . . she’s comfortable with herself, and so with me. She knows what she wants.
I wouldn’t want the wrong thing to happen, he thought. We have a lot more time to spend together. There had better not be any problems between us. We already have enough to worry about on this trip.
She uncapped a bottle of baby oil and began stroking it onto her legs.
Pretty sure of herself, isn’t she? he thought.
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” he asked at last.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
The radio played on and she proceeded with her baby oil. Eventually she put some on her arms and neck. Her skin glistened like rose petals with dew. She began to rub it into the hollow of her throat. Then below her collarbone.
The night was a wall outside the window, insulating them from the world.
He touched the underside of her leg. To know how it would feel.
She was still warm from the shower, soft and steamed. It was the softest skin he had ever touched.
She tilted her head questioningly.
He didn’t know the answer.
There was no longer any question.
He moved to her.
The music on the radio gave way to an advertisement.
“TWO MORE DAYS TO HALLOWEEN, HAL-LO-WEEN, HAL-LO-WEEN . . .”
Challis sighed a sigh that was like all the breaths he had ever drawn in his life going out at once.
“I don’t believe this commercial,” he said. Her breath was on him. “It doesn’t stop.”
She turned the radio off.
He laid his mouth into the tenderest part of her neck. It fit perfectly.
There was a sound from the cabin two doors down.
“What was that?” said Ellie.
“Mmm.”
“I mean it. It sounded like—”
“Woman in Three.”
“Marge? I talked to her while you were gone.”
“So did I.”
“I like her. She reminds me of my mother.”
What? thought Challis. Marge Guttman is no older than I am. She’s—
His heart sank out of his body and through the floor.
“How old are you?” he said.
“Relax. I’m older than I look.”
So am I, he thought. “But you are eighteen?” He was only half-kidding.
“Boy, are you dumb,” said Ellie, and rolled over on top of him.
The towel fell away. He gave up and kissed her. He didn’t have to kiss her again. The first one lasted a long time.
There was a louder noise, a chair or table being knocked over this time.
Then a scream.
Challis sat up. “Batteries,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“I told her to leave it alone.” The hair on the back of his neck was standing up. “I shouldn’t have given it back to her. There’s no telling what—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Stay here.”
“Not on your life, Doctor.”
She threw a robe over her and followed him out the door.
“Marge?” called Ellie. “Are you all right in there?”
No answer.
The door was ajar. Had someone else—?
At first they didn’t see her.
The lamp was on the floor, which created harsh shadows on the walls. There was a large pocket of darkness on the chair, something, a pi
le of clothes or—
On closer inspection it was not a pile of clothes.
No.
Ellie clamped her hands over her mouth and was sick.
Challis steadied her, pushed her out.
He had seen many emergency patients arrive at the hospital over the years. He had seen bodies butchered in collisions, skulls crushed like rotten eggs, torsos ripped open by rusty knives, faces smashed to pulp, limbs dangling by threads, gangrenous organs spilling into his hands. Yes, he had seen all of these things and more. Human beings racked by disease, wounds festering, eyeballs driven out of their sockets from within. He had witnessed complete autopsies and open-heart surgery. Once, in medical school, he had dissected a cadaver. And so on, ad nauseum.
But he had never seen anything like this.
He fought down his gag reflex.
This one was not a statistic on a slab. It was a woman he had met only an hour ago. She had been vibrant with the life force and in perfect health, as full of fight as a pit bull and ready to go the limit with anyone or anything for what she believed in.
But not anymore.
The lamp had been knocked over in the first convulsions. On the table was the ceramic chip, now seared white and frosted with ash. It had burned a spot into the tabletop. Next to it was a bent bobby pin and a small jeweler’s screwdriver.
He picked up the chip in his handkerchief. It was still hot.
Somehow she remained upright in the chair in an incomprehensible defiance of gravity. She still wore her glasses, in a manner of speaking. They drooped over what was left of her nose. The frame was melted into her face.
Tiny rivulets of blood seeped from every pore. Her eyes were filled with blood, the pupils gone. And her mouth. Her mouth was open, distended forward and torn to shreds by a force that had snapped off teeth and rendered her lips into streaming filaments of skin.
Challis approached, and heard the barely audible exhaust whisper of a still-human wailing from somewhere deep inside her chest cavity.
As he reached for a pulse, something—something—moved within the woman’s mouth.
What?
Challis bent closer.
It was black and pearlescent. Her tongue? No.