by Hamlyn, Jack
The funny thing was they’d become friends.
Ever since the plague started, again and again Alger had turned to him. Especially since his wife, Anne, caught the germ two weeks before. Not a day went by when he was not knocking at Luke’s door.
About three days after Luke had seen the rats, Alger again came over.
He wanted Luke to look in on Anne, which he did. She was still breathing. Her pulse was a bit erratic. He gave her an injection and did what he could. Then Alger insisted he sit down and drink coffee. Which pretty much amounted to listening to him while he chain-smoked and trembled, his eyes stark and haunted.
“When’s the last time you took a ride around this town?”
Luke told him he had better things to do. The people of Wakefield were spread out through the neighborhoods of Main Street, Cherry Hill Road, the Grove, and Sewer Street…not to mention the subdivisions beyond. His only interest was here on 13th Street.
“Listen, Luke,” he said between puffs on his Marlboro Red, “you’ve been watching over Sonja and Megan and the rest of us—and we appreciate that, we sure do—and you haven’t exactly gotten out of the house a lot. But things are happening. I think you better know about them.”
Alger was right on all fronts. Except for slipping out for groceries once or twice and getting medications filled at the hospital, all Luke knew about the world came through the TV or over the Internet, and he was not ashamed of it.
“Things have been going on, Luke. Bad things,” he said. “When was the last time you were over to the Crossik house?”
The Crossiks lived in a cute Victorian gingerbread house at the end of the block. They were nice people. What hadn’t been nice was when Luke went over there two weeks before and had to tell them that their eight-year old son was dead. Pulling the blanket over his hollow-cheeked white face was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
He told Alger that he hadn’t been over there since and he honestly felt bad about confessing it.
“We’ll, they’re gone. I was over there last weekend,” he explained. “I knocked and knocked. I went there the next day and the day after that and again yesterday. They didn’t answer.”
Luke sighed. “There’s nothing strange about that. They lost their son for chrissake.”
They probably pulled up stakes, he figured. A lot of people were doing it. After the death of loved ones, there was very little to root them to the area.
“I went in there, Luke. The door was open so I went in.”
Alger did not like what he found. Both cars were still in the garage. Beds had been slept in. Food in the fridge. Dressers and closets were still full of clothes…but no Crossiks. Luke had to admit it was strange. If they were sick, then they’d still be there, alive or dead.
“A lot of families have been disappearing in the night, Luke.”
And of course the way Alger said it—disappearing—implied that they had not left of their own free will, but had maybe been helped along into the darkness. He cited his evidence. He knew of five families that had vanished. The Coreys over on Marble Avenue, the Freniers on 15th Street, the Czerniks and the Bombergs over in The Grove, and the Kings up on Cherry Hill. Luke knew a few of those families, but not well. Jerry and Linda King had six kids. Linda was on the school board and Jerry was the Bayfield County Road Commissioner. There was no way they would just walk away.
“Well, they did,” Alger informed him. “People are dropping out of sight. Kids are missing. There’s a lot of wild talk in town. Maybe you should listen to some of it.”
“I know what people are saying, Alger. They’re terrified and you can’t blame them. They’re seeing ghosts and boogeymen behind every bush these days. But you can’t honestly believe that stuff…it’s fucking Medieval.”
“What stuff is that?” Alger asked, baiting him.
“You know what I mean. You can’t believe that nonsense.”
Alger would not say whether he did or not. “I ran into Shanks last week, Luke. You know, the guy who writes those books? Anyway, he had some interesting things to say. He said this outbreak of Red Death isn’t by accident. That it was planned.”
“By who? Dracula?”
“Or maybe something like him.”
Luke could only sigh. Hawley Shanks was something of a local character. He had written several books on regional “history” that were published privately by academic presses. Nobody had a larger collection of wild tales and high randy bullshit than did Hawley Shanks. He was in great demand as a storyteller every October. Not a bad guy, just out there a bit.
Alger refused to say anymore about Shanks, instead he told Luke a tidy little ghost story.
“You know George Pellston?”
“Of course I know George Pellston. He’s the mayor.”
Alger said George was gone. His wife, Laura, had died of the germ a month back. Luke had already heard that and it pained him some—Mrs. Pellston had been his sixth grade teacher over at St. Mary’s. What Alger knew came from Franny McKee…whom was not only a drunk but perhaps—many thought—the finest bullshit artist in Bayfield County…even surpassing Hawley Shanks. The gospel according to Franny McKee was this: George Pellston had taken the body of his wife over to the receiving mortuary at Salem Cross Cemetery. The Cross, as it was known, had a large mortuary where bodies were stored through the winter until the ground softened up in the spring for burial (Luke’s mom used to call it a holding tomb, which filled his young mind with the most awful images). Not a week later, long past midnight, George was wakened with the feeling he was being “watched”. He heard a scraping sound and turned over to the see the white face of his dead wife staring through the window at him. Franny claimed this went on night after night. The tale ends with George disappearing, leaving nothing behind but a bed that had been slept in and “a smear of blood on the pillow”.
“Somebody cue the vampiric organ music,” Luke said.
“This is no joke, Luke. And if you don’t get your head out of your ass and face a few things…well, I’d just hate to see you turn up missing is all.”
“C’mon, Alger. The walking dead, of all things?”
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”
Luke was not surprised. Not in the least. Ever since that news conference on CNN, the term “Vampirus” was the new catch phrase. It was being used all over the Internet, and politicians were even grabbing onto it. The whackos of the religious right absolutely loved it. And the man on the street? He was simply terrified.
“Like I said,” Alger told him in a weak voice, “things are happening. You might want to listen to what’s being said.”
But Luke had no intention of that. He’d heard plenty of the crazy bullshit being talked on the Internet. He knew that wild stories had a way of mushrooming in the worst of times. Pandemics always created fear, whether that was in 14th century Europe and the Black Death, or in 21st century America and the Red Death. It mattered not. Despite computers, biotechnology and cellphones, modern people were psychologically no different than their ancestors: they mainlined dread and cultivated tragedy. At their core was a black and infectious shadow of superstition they could not escape. Scientists could say that the pandemic was caused by a microscopic virus all they wanted. But such things were invisible and hard for the human mind to grasp. It was much easier to imagine all manner of diabolic evils creeping in the night. It was simpler for the human mind to wrap itself around and much more satisfying to the gourd-rattling primitives within us all.
But there was no point in trying to make Alger see this, that ignorance was the deadliest and most communicable disease of all. He had his ghost stories and he would accept nothing less.
“All right,” Luke finally said to him. “Let’s go over to the Crossiks. Then let’s go to the Kings. I’m willing to bet we’ll find them at home or dying in their beds. I can’t imagine anything else.”
11
After a quick check on Megan and Sonja, he followed Alger over to the Crossi
k’s house, something heavy and booming like a funeral bell tolling inside him. It was starting to snow as they trudged to the end of the block through drifts covering the sidewalk. The sun was nearly blotted out by boiling gray-white clouds in the sky. The radio was saying a blizzard was on the way. Alger said by morning they’d be buried alive in the white stuff.
He walked by Luke’s side all the way, shielding his face from the wind. It had a good nip to it. By the time they reached the Crossik’s front gate, he was lagging behind. His eyes were wide, his face pinched by the cold. He had a funny look about him like a fist had just squeezed his balls and would not let go.
Luke went right up onto the porch. He spent the better part of five minutes knocking but there was not so much as a footstep from inside.
“Go ahead,” Alger said. “It’s open.”
Luke opened the door and stepped inside. Alger clung to his backside like a tick. Luke had to shrug him off more than once. Maybe his dour looks and fearful eyes and goddamn ghost stories were infectious because once Luke stepped away from the door and into the living room, a chill ran down his spine. The atmosphere of the house was wrong somehow. It felt almost…violated. Just being in there made his stomach flop in his belly. There was a vague smell that he associated with salted meat and dryrot.
Sighing, he looked around the ground floor and it was pretty much as Alger had said. Nothing looked disturbed. He could see no evidence of a hasty retreat. Plenty of food in the fridge, some dishes in the sink, car keys hanging on a pegboard. The bathroom looked untouched as well. The cabinets were filled with deodorant and shampoos, fresh towels were laid out. Jack Crossik’s high blood pressure meds were on the shelf. Luke found it hard to believe he’d leave without those.
“See?” Alger said in a conspiratorial whisper like he was afraid he’d be heard. “See? What did I tell you?”
“You looked upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“The basement?” Luke said, remembering what he’d seen in Lester Paduk’s cellar with a chill.
Alger nodded. “Nothing down there except…well it sounded like…”
“What?”
“Rats,” he said. “I could hear ‘em squeaking.”
Luke couldn’t believe that. The Crossiks were fastidious people. Their gingerbread house was very well maintained, and always clean and tidy. It wasn’t some ancient falling down railroad hotel. He checked the basement but heard no rats. Upstairs, they checked the bedrooms and found nothing. What was most disturbing was the look of the place: coats hanging neatly in closets, clothes arranged just so in dresser drawers. Beds made, coverlets turned back. Everything was absolutely normal…except that the Crossiks were gone.
What scared him the very worst was that he found Jack Crossik’s wallet and there was a hundred bucks in it. That in addition to both cars being in the garage made him certain they had not left town.
“Where do you suppose they are?” Alger asked.
Luke had no idea. The only place they hadn’t looked was the attic, but with the way he was feeling by then he didn’t have the heart for it. He kept seeing ghostly images of what might be up there, crouching in dark corners where eave met roofline.
Outside, he felt better. They jumped in his pickup and drove over to the King’s on Cherry Hill Road. They did not meet a single car on the way. Cherry Hill looked deserted, almost shuttered against the daylight as Luke stepped out into the King’s driveway. There was no one up or down the block, just those houses in orderly rows, roofs heaped with snow, icicles hanging from cornices. They looked like tombs locked down against grave robbers. He didn’t like it. What he had felt at the Crossiks was growing, darkening. At the very least there should have been someone shoveling a walk or some kids playing on the snowbanks.
There was nothing.
It looked like a dead-end street in a ghost town.
Alger was hanging onto his elbow by then and Luke had to shrug him off again. As he knocked on the door of the King house, his nerves were wound tight as piano wires. All the spit had dried up in his mouth. He knocked at the door and Alger hung back like he was afraid it might be answered.
Luke tried the knob and it was open.
The house was as neat as pin. Nothing was out of place. He called out for Jerry and Linda and his voice echoed back with a dead emptiness. There was no one in the house. That’s what his rational brain was saying…yet, inside him that feeling of enclosing darkness was thickening until it almost became claustrophobic. In the living room, they found a chair overturned and a wine glass lying on the floor. There was a dark crusty stain in the shag rug that looked like dried blood but must have been burgundy. Luke tried to think of a reason why someone would turn over their chair and drop their glass and never bother to clean up the mess. But in the narrowing confines of his brain, such a reason did not seem to exist.
There was a dry smell of ancient corruption in the air as they went upstairs. All the rooms were empty save for the one on the end, the master bedroom.
That’s where they found Linda King.
In the dim room, she lay on top of the quilt, her hands folded at her waist. She looked alive, as though she had just gone to sleep…or been carefully arranged by a mortician to give that impression. She was dressed in a blue nightgown, which only accentuated the seamless chalk white of her hands, legs, and face. The only color to her was a slight blush at her cheeks and a smear of red at her lips.
“Blood,” Alger said, breathing heavily.
Luke was going to tell him that death does unpleasant things to the human form, but he didn’t honestly believe she was dead. He expected her eyes to open at any moment, and if they had, he couldn’t honestly have said that he wouldn’t have screamed. He had gone to school with Linda, dated her once in tenth grade. He saw her around town pretty regularly…but a change had come over her that he couldn’t exactly associate with death. Something was missing from her face. There was an almost cruel lilt to her mouth and a blankness to her features as though her personality and soul had been scrubbed free with a sponge. He couldn’t help thinking there was something corrupt about her.
Swallowing, he took hold of her wrist. It wasn’t easy. Just touching her cool, smooth flesh made his heart skip a beat and something recoil inside him as though he were touching a sleeping spider. There was no pulse. His face was greasy with sweat as he put an ear to her chest. There was only a hollow silence inside.
“She’s dead.”
“She don’t look dead,” Alger said, his voice barely coming. “Shouldn’t she…blacken-up or go purple or something? Swell up? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?”
Yes, that’s what was supposed to happen, Luke knew.
Her belly was firmly rounded, but other than that he saw no signs of death. No lividity. No rigor. Nothing. The heat was on and the house was warm, but he smelled no putrefaction at all. Her face was uniformly white and bloodless, save for the smear of red at her lips and the hint of blush at her cheeks. It made no earthly sense.
“Looks like she could wake up any time,” Alger said.
A fly revived by the heat walked across her cheek. It instinctively knew death. A dozen more buzzed at the window.
Her eyes were closed so Luke pinched one lid between thumb and forefinger and drew it back like a window shade. He gasped. The eye was blank, white, and almost gelid-looking, the pupil nothing but a speck of black like soot. He pulled his fingers away, but the lid remained open. He had seen the eyes of the dead many times and never had they looked like that.
“Well?” Alger said. “You gonna tell me that’s normal?”
Luke ignored him, staring down at her, darkness filling him and wrapping itself around his throat until he could barely breathe. His rational mind was having trouble with this, it was swimming upstream against a colossal superstitious dread that he could not necessarily put a name to. He only knew that it was active, ancient, and frightened.
It was late afternoon and the sun would be down with
in the hour. Already the shadows were thick in the room, tangling up like snakes, sliding out of crevices and sunless corners. That corrupt smell was suddenly stronger, unpleasantly pervasive. There was a dark sweetness to it that made him want to gag.
That inhuman eye seemed to be staring at him.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon.”
Which suggested things and he knew it. But even so, he would not allow his rational brain to connect with that ancient inner sense of impending doom where phantoms wheeled, as if it might contaminate his good sense, foul his thinking brain, or give his fear a name.
They were almost out the bedroom door when there was a thump behind them. In the silent house, they both jumped. Linda’s left hand had shifted. It had fallen from her waist and bumped against the wall where it lay unmoving.
They got the hell out.
Outside, Luke felt marginally better…at least until he saw the shadowy façades of all those houses waiting there.
They cut down Cherry Hill Road to where it intersected with 12th Street and then cut off 12th onto Post Lane, which brought them back to 13th Street the long way. It was the scenic route. He wanted nothing better than to get home, but he needed to take a drive, needed to see some people out and about so he could shake the feeling that Wakefield was slowly becoming a cemetery. He saw some lights coming on in houses. One car idling in a driveway. That was it until they got far down Post to where it joined Springfield. There was a tanker truck parked right in the middle of the road. No flashers on, nothing. Springfield cut up to Sewer Street, which bordered the train yards where the warehouses and freight garages were. The truck must have been heading that way when it died.
As they got up alongside it, they hopped out and saw the cab door on the driver’s side was wide open. There was no one inside. Just the empty cab, keys still in the ignition. The battery was dead.