FSF, December 2007

by Spilogale, Inc

  Maybe he does, Conlin thought. Or maybe this was a special demonstration Billy had rigged up for Conlin after their talk—maybe he figured Conlin would need some extra convincing that a skeleton could walk by itself.

  All right. It wasn't like Conlin felt any threat. One good shove and Billy would go Humpty Dumpty. Conlin wouldn't follow him into any basements, wouldn't get into a car with him. But he could play along until his instincts warned him otherwise.

  "How do you know what he wants?” he asked, falling into step a pace behind Billy.

  Billy's laugh was like one quick squeeze on a dusty accordion. “I've lived here all my life."

  "That's not an answer."

  Billy was as personable as he'd been at lunchtime. “You'll get your answers."

  The old man led him down Howlet Street to a corner with one called Dee. It was narrower, older, paved with the bricks of a bygone era. Towering evergreens arched over it and formed a nearly unbroken roof, their shaggy, curtainlike branches reminding Conlin of Spanish moss and the deep South. There were no porch lights shining here, no lanterns strung, no crowds. Only tall, stately houses built well back from the street, peering through the trees with blank glass eyes.

  "Why's this one so dark?” asked Conlin as Billy turned right, heading across the bricks.

  "Folks that live here are all back there.” Billy hooked a thumb toward the parade. Hands sinking into his pockets again, he tottered straight up the middle of the street.

  Conlin caught up. “Is this where the Bone Man lives?"

  "He always comes out of the dark. This is where we're supposed to meet him."

  After a few more steps, Conlin halted. He was starting not to like this. It occurred to him that the town might be crazy enough to decide which strangers it didn't approve of—just like kids did. There could be a lynch mob back in the trees. He was just going to tell Billy this was far enough when a light flared ahead.

  Firelight. An old-style lantern. Someone was hanging it on a pole atop a big, dark platform—no, a wagon. A float. Conlin could see the tractor now in silhouette, with a driver sitting in the seat—silent, wearing a hat with a wide brim.

  Conlin squinted, shading his eyes against the bright point of light. A second lamp ignited with a whoosh. Then a third.

  Billy had stopped walking, but he kept his back to Conlin—he, too, studying the float.

  It was parked in the middle of Dee Street, ready to roll toward Howlet, though the tractor engine was not running. Its theme, like some of the yard displays Conlin had seen earlier, seemed to be “Crazy Degenerate Hillbillies.” Five people in repulsive costumes were moving around on the float, lighting lanterns, wrestling wood-slat barrels into place in the corners. Raggy shirts and overalls, unraveling straw hats, unkempt beards, a corncob pipe. Four snaggletoothed men, one of them obese and completely hairless—and one woman, early twenties, with long, unwashed hair, a tattered dress, and haunted eyes. They all looked as if they'd clawed their way out of their graves. An emaciated man waved at Billy, then took a pull from a jug marked with three X's.

  Billy waved back. “The Pollards,” he told Conlin, with a grin that said he was fond of the Pollards. “They always do themselves proud."

  As his eyes adjusted to the firelight, Conlin could read two hand-lettered wooden signs leaning on precarious pickets at the float's front edge. One said WE THROW CANDY—and the other: THROW US YOUR BAD KIDS.

  Conlin frowned, trying to figure out why the float was so high, with the hillbillies about a half-story above the street. He put it together when he began to hear the snorts and grunts, when he caught a barnyard smell. It was a rolling pen. The float housed live animals. He supposed a curtain or something would drop away to reveal the interior during the parade.

  "What—?” Conlin began, but Billy snatched his arm.

  Conlin followed his gaze to one side, up a driveway, across a dying lawn. In the deep shadows, something moved. Conlin had to swallow, his throat suddenly tight. Despite the curiosity that had brought him here, the enchantment of the evening was gone. He'd had his fun. It was pointless to look for the past. You couldn't go back—and there was nothing to go back to. He didn't care what the Bone Man was. He wanted to find his motel, sleep, and get on his way back north. He wanted a stiff drink. For the first time in his life, Conlin could hardly wait for the sun to come up.

  You couldn't go back, but you couldn't jump forward, either. There was only now.

  The trees swayed in a chilly breeze. Billy was no longer looking into the yard on the left; now his gaze had darted to the right. Dry weeds crackled behind bushes there, and the wind swirled fallen leaves up in a cone. Conlin watched in all directions, his right hand flexing. He backed up a step, though the move made no sense. He had no idea from where the Bone Man would come.

  The fat, hairless hillbilly, his skin white and shiny as a toadstool, lifted a fiddle. Bracing it in the folds of his chin, he began to play a fast, screechy, seesaw melody. The stringy-haired girl, who had been standing motionless as a fencepost, clapped her hands and bounced in place. A horrible, prolonged sound burst from her mouth that was either a laugh or else she was singing along. This couldn't be an act, Conlin thought. The Pollards were seriously abnormal. Two of the other men linked elbows and spun in a hopping dance. The guy on the tractor tapped his boot on the back fender and lit up his own corncob pipe.

  Conlin turned three-hundred-sixty degrees, searching. He wanted to tell the freaks on the wagon to shut up. He couldn't hear the sounds in the night. Flesh was creeping on his back; cold pinpoints of dread sank into his scalp. He wiped a hand across his face and felt clammy sweat.

  Get out of here, his judgment said. Get back to the car, get in, and drive.

  No.

  He took a deep breath. No fear. Start feeling things now, and he was finished—finished in the job, finished in life. There was nothing to be afraid of, anyway. What danger could there—?

  To the east, out beyond the lanterns’ glow, where only faint starlight shone, something flashed white. White against deep black. A jerky, up-and-down movement, like an old film catching on the sprockets. Conlin was thinking of “Death Tag,” a nastily imaginative version of the game played by first-grade boys. If he touches you, you're dead! In first grade, you knew it couldn't be true, but still there was that merest instant, when the feet pounded behind you and you couldn't get away, when the fingers stretched toward you and you thought no-no-no—

  White-on-black, a glimmer, a whisper of a displaced branch. A shape.

  It was as if a powerful vacuum hose were clamped on Conlin's mouth, sucking out his air. From pictures, from postcards, from childhood nightmares, he knew what he was seeing.

  The Bone Man. Coming toward him at a dead run.

  Dead run. Part of Conlin's mind wanted to shriek with hysterical laughter.

  "Ohh,” said Billy, “there he is."

  "Yeeaahhh!” cried one of the hillbillies.

  Conlin forced himself to breathe. All his life, he'd watched. He'd learned not to embellish, not to assume. React to what was there. He couldn't explain what he was seeing now, but he was convinced. There were no mirrors, no wires, and the thing couldn't be a man in costume.

  It was a human skeleton, running. Bounding over fallen branches, black eye sockets fixed on him. Spreading its gangly arms now, as if in greeting, as if to embrace him. John is a skeleton, John is dead....

  Lips pressed together, Conlin shook his head, pushing away thoughts. No fear. No hesitation. This was how he'd gotten to be the best in the business.

  He unholstered the Glock.

  "What are you doing?” Billy demanded, grabbing his wrist, outraged as if Conlin had pulled a gun on the President.

  Conlin jabbed with his elbow and levered his fist up, catching Billy one-two in the sternum and the chin. As Conlin had expected, the rickety old man went down flat on the bricks. Conlin sent one meaningful glance at the hillbillies, making sure they saw the gun. They shut up at last, the
fiddler lowering his bow, the corpse-girl slack-jawed and staring.

  In the sudden silence, the Bone Man's feet made a crunch, crunch, crunch.

  Conlin went into work mode, laying his fingers in the grooves on the familiar grip. He was a practiced shot, though he rarely had to do it this way. His marks were usually on their knees, hands taped. And they were full of vital organs that a nine-millimeter Luger slug could pierce and rupture. This would take a steady hand. Let the target get close. Conlin set his feet, relaxed his knees, and sighted.

  As the Bone Man cleared the bushes in a flying leap, Conlin squeezed off the first shot. WHAM!—deafening in the silence after the music.

  Tick! Only a piece of a rib flew away, not even breaking the skeleton's stride.

  Twenty feet. Conlin had the gun at the full extension of his arms before him, left hand bracing his right. Nice, level shot. On the pavement, Billy groaned.

  WHAM! Nothing this time. The shot had missed the pipe-thin neck by a hair.

  Fifteen feet. Conlin closed one eye. WHAM! Again, nothing, and the shot ricocheted in the distance. Any one of these would have put a living man down. Conlin was good, but there wasn't enough to hit.

  Making a decision, he toggled the slide-mounted selector from single-shot to three-shot burst.

  Ten feet. Three rapid blasts. Better. The Bone Man's left leg dropped to the street, severed below the hip. The phantom twirled fully around and was hopping now on the nightmare pogo stick of his right leg.

  "Come on,” Conlin purred, adjusting his aim a few inches, holding the Glock steady.

  The Bone Man came on.

  WHAMWHAMWHAM!

  Yes! The spine splintered and the Bone Man fell in upper and lower halves, chopped through at the waist. The kicking leg drove the pelvis around in a scrabbling doughnut.

  Just in time, too. Conlin had used nine of his ten rounds. He could put the last one through the skull, just like a normal job, and crush whatever was left to powder under his shoe. Blue smoke hung in the air and the Glock's hot smell was invigorating. Old Billy was propping himself up on an elbow, his face a rictus of pain.

  Time to finish this and disappear. The noise would bring every cop in town. They were only a block away.

  He moved forward, standing over his jiggling target. It was ironic—almost sad, if Conlin had allowed for sadness. Nightmares and childhood phantoms, it seemed, could be real—quite a discovery. But you could take them apart with bullets. So much for poetry and mystery. Conlin was right, after all—there was nothing to fear, no justice, no good or evil, no meaning to any of it.

  The jaw, held to the skull by ropy gray tendons, clacked and clacked, open and shut. Gasping? Talking? Biting? Laughing?

  What have you got to laugh about, you—?

  But the Bone Man had one more surprise in his performance. His dance was not quite finished. Floundering forward, rolling on his ribcage, the truncated specter spread both hands on the street, bending his elbows. Then, like some ghastly spider, he sprang upward.

  The gun still down at his side, Conlin felt the fleshless arms encircle him. The dry, dead half-man clung to him like an obscene parasite, the eternal grin nearly touching his face, the black eye-pits inches from his own eyes.

  Conlin stumbled with a hoarse shriek, struggling to throw the demon off, to free his arms. Dust seared his nostrils, and something worse—the malodorous residue of what had once been living tissue, now black, hardened, gummy, and mostly eaten away by the worms of time.

  "Get away!” Conlin rasped, lurching in a circle, swinging his unwelcome partner in an ungainly dance. Behind him, the fiddle began again to play. That long-ago book, that picture—what did the skeleton want beside the boy's bed? What did it want?

  The eyes were caves leading to fathomless blackness that could not possibly be contained inside one desiccated skull. On his knees now, Conlin stopped fighting, transfixed. Deep, deep inside the eyes, he saw something in the darkness. Something huge and moving. Something looking back at him. Something.

  Unable to blink, Conlin screamed. He screamed in a long, mindless wail, full of the terror he'd never let himself feel.

  The Bone Man's jaw fell open in what looked like an expression of recognition and delight. Conlin was sure that a hissing sound came forth, though there were no lungs to drive it.

  "Hhaaaaaaaaa....” whispered the Bone Man.

  Through the jaws rushed a foul, icy vapor, white-blue in the firelight. Its touch was blistering on Conlin's skin, and before he could turn away, it flowed into his nose and mouth, clawing its loathsome way down his throat.

  With an extremity of horror, Conlin ripped free his arm and jammed the Glock's muzzle against the Bone Man's skull.

  WHAMMM!

  The noise seemed to reverberate through the evergreens. Conlin sagged backward, watching the bone fragments blossom upward, outward, spinning, raining on the bricks.

  The bone arms went limp. Conlin burst out of the embrace, shoving away with his feet what was left of the upper skeleton. The torso cracked and came to rest. One of the legs kicked a little, then went still.

  Conlin's own legs moved before the rest of him, scooting him three steps away before he rolled over and got to his knees, then his feet. He caught his balance, poised to run, but spun back at the realization of what he'd seen lurking a step away, a black shadow between him and the wagon's lamps.

  One of the Pollards. The tractor driver, with the floppy hat and the pipe clenched in his teeth. In his back-drawn right hand, Conlin saw the glint of a monkey wrench—a half-second before it smashed against his ear.

  * * * *

  His awareness of what happened next came in flashes through a red haze, punctuated by intervals of darkness—discrete images, almost like photos from The Book of the Bone Man. Something was wrong with his hearing. Sounds walloped and wandered, lost in a night that flickered and smoked. First, someone was dragging him by the arms, facedown, the blood from his aching head dripping on the brick street.

  Then he was being hoisted, hands tugging him upward.

  Then, when the darkness opened again, he was close up under the evergreen branches, and the Pollard girl was mopping his face with a cloth, singing to him in a tender, childlike voice. An engine roared into life nearby. The hard boards beneath him shook, and next the overhead limbs were moving, sliding past. The raucous fiddle sawed on and on.

  Rolling his head to the side, he saw Dee Street below. He was on the high float, which had begun to cruise. No, wait, he wanted to say, but no words came out. Down on the pavement, old Billy limped toward the curb, rubbing his hip as if it pained him. Halting, he looked up at Conlin with a lopsided grin that was half reproachful, half wondering. Chuckling, the old man lifted a brittle hand and waved.

  Conlin felt around for the Glock. But two of the male Pollards leaned over him, grasping his arms and ankles. The one at his feet was chewing tobacco. The one above his head smiled kindly, showing an incomplete collection of yellow teeth. “You ‘bout ready?” he asked, patting Conlin's neck.

  Ready? For what?

  The colorless girl bent close, her filthy hair trailing over his face, and kissed him on the lips. Her taste, her scent prickled in his throat like the musk of a dead skunk. But Conlin felt his mouth stretching to smile back at her.

  "All right, then,” said the man above him when she'd pulled back. “Here y'go."

  The two men flipped Conlin, but not toward the street. He saw in a blur that the float's top was a criss-cross of wide planks with gaps between. He slipped neatly through and plummeted into the wagon's dark interior.

  His cry became a wheezing outrush of air as he slammed against a hot, quivering surface—an animal body. With a screech, the beast squirmed out from beneath him, and Conlin flopped into a slime like mud, with more hard boards beneath.

  Like mud, but not mud. The smell....

  Huge shapes pressed around him, rubbing each other in the dark, and there was the huff, huff of nonhuman breath. Perhaps i
t was the stench that made him think toilet plungers were probing him, squashing themselves against his chest, his legs. No, not—

  Snouts. Round snouts like the ends of logs. Sharp, cloven hooves squishing beside him, one grazing and cutting into his arm. Smart, small eyes in big, jowly faces—eyes in the filtered lantern fire that gleamed red.

  Above the squeals and the grunts, the puff of respiration and the hairy friction of fat body against body, one of the hillbillies put his mouth down into a gap and shouted: “Sooooooouuueeeeeeeeee!"

  Conlin had used a vise once, on the hand of a mark in the mark's own neat workshop, when Conlin had needed to know something. He was remembering that vise now, thinking what it must have felt like; though there had only been one vise then, applied to one part of the victim's body, and it had tightened very slowly.

  * * * *

  Some kind of liquid sloshed over him, smoking and hissing fiercely, but the pain was all gone. That was good. That was good. He tried to close his eyes in relief, but they wouldn't close.

  He was up on the clean boards again, atop the high float of the Pollards, and the sweet girl was dousing him with some chemical solution that fizzed and sputtered and cleansed.

  No pain. No pain at all. He opened his mouth and shook with silent laughter. The Pollards joined him, whooping it up, and the toad-fat fiddler ended his tune with three dramatic squawks.

  The girl sat back on her heels and carefully set down her steaming bucket. Flipping hair from her watery green eyes, she beamed as if admiring a newborn baby. “That's it,” she told him. She could speak. “Y'r all ready!"

  He wondered what her name was. But then, he couldn't remember his own—if he'd ever had one. Had he been somewhere before? Was he going somewhere?

  No. All that mattered was the night of nights, and the Parade. Sitting up, he heard a collective inrush of breath in a thousand throats. Then fingers pointed, all at him. Jaws dropped; murmurs swirled like autumn leaves riding a gale. Cameras clicked and flashed. A different emotion lit the face of each spectator along the curb. Belief. Unbelief. Scorn. Fear. Wonder.