Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight

by Randall Boyll

4

  Danny Long, who had been so proud of himself for stopping the theft of his parent’s Bronco at the Eureka Cafe, was not the only young person dying a slow death in the decayed remains of Wormwood, New Mexico, where everybody left and nobody bothered to come back. The name attached to her probation file identified her as Jeryline A. Bascombe, twenty-year-old white female with a record of many enterprising activities such as robbery, burglary, grand theft auto, and possession of controlled substances, to mention a few. In a big city such a record would have surprised few, but in the tiny towns of the Southwest this kind of behavior was utterly scandalous. Eighteen months in prison had hardened Jeryline a little around the edges, and taught her a lot. Lesson One, don’t trust anybody. Lesson Two, don’t ever, ever wind up in prison again. Even if it means being a paid slave at the Mission Inn in Wormwood.

  And it amounted to slavery, really. As part of her work release/probation, Jeryline was paid two dollars and thirty cents an hour to be the Mission’s maid, cook, laundry worker, desk clerk, delivery driver, groundskeeper, and cleaning lady. The owner of the Mission Inn was Irene Galvin, who liked hiring WR/P’s because they would work long and hard, too long and too hard, just to stay out of prison. If not for the cheap labor, Jeryline had decided long ago, the Mission Inn would be out of business in a month. Less, even.

  One thing that helped keep the Mission alive at all was the fact that the building itself was a defunct Baptist church that Irene Galvin had bought, interest-free on a home-drawn contract, for almost nothing per month. Irene was a shrew and a hag and a bunch of other nasty stuff, but she was cunning. The only people left in the town were the poorest, the ones who had no house to sell, no job to relocate to, no future. They couldn’t afford to move away, didn’t have anyone to rent an apartment from as everything in Wormwood folded, and needed a place to stay until Lady Luck might spirit them away to a better life. A boardinghouse, then. Irene Galvin saw the need for a boardinghouse, bought the church for pennies, had it remodeled in exchange for the carpenter’s room and board for a year, and set up shop. How she had latched onto the idea of using work-release cons as labor, Jeryline would never know. The nearest women’s prison was clear off in Colorado. Perhaps they ran newspaper ads.

  Tonight, as life at the Mission Inn was winding towards bedtime, Jeryline was, as ordered, wiping down the big dining table with Lemon Pledge. Irene Galvin had acquired the idea that Lemon Pledge was an antiseptic. Irene Galvin had a lot of blank spaces in her brain, for someone so smart. Jeryline was wearing her usual jeans and cowboy shirt as she worked, and the usual canvas apron Irene made her wear. She was not a bad-looking girl—had been a junior varsity cheerleader in school before kissing that whole scene goodbye—but with her yellow hair tied up in a greasy bandana, her face sans makeup and shiny with sweat, she looked stooped and middle-aged.

  The current house guests were parked in front of the old round-tube color TV Irene had picked up at a yard sale years before. The sound didn’t work anymore but the boarders were used to it. From what Jeryline was picking up as conversation ebbed and flowed in front of the ancient Philco, one of the long-term boarders, screwy little Wally Enfield, had gotten fired today from his post office job in Lost Mesa. This was tragic news both to Wally, and to Irene. If one or two more boarders headed for greener pastures, the Mission Inn would financially wash ashore like a dead mackerel on a beach. Which might mean back to the pokey with Jeryline.

  “But Wally,” the only female resident was saying, “how could they fire you? You didn’t do anything!”

  Wally had sunk himself into a corner of the sofa, and if he sunk himself any lower in his distress, Jeryline thought wickedly, only his shoes would be poking up. “That’s what I told them,” Wally whined. “I don’t know what happened to all that mail. Far as I know, it just disappeared.”

  The female resident, whom Jeryline could barely stand, was Cordelia Jackson, the former elementary school teacher who became a prostitute as soon as the school closed its doors. And perhaps long before, it had been said. “It is simply unjust,” she hummed to the demoralized Wally. “A man like you. A man like you!”

  Wally covered his face with his hands and spoke through his fingers. “God, it was so humiliating. The postmaster ripped off my name tag right in front of everyone. And then, like it wasn’t bad enough, he took my Mr. Zippy patch and cut it up with scissors.”

  “Intolerable,” Cordelia Jackson said in a voice husky with righteousness. “You should have told him to go screw himself. You should have reported him to the Postmaster General. You still could, too.”

  It was then that Irene breezed in from inspecting the kitchen Jeryline had just finished scrubbing down. Bulging fatly in all the wrong places in her antiquated green pantsuit, she crossed in front of the television while maneuvering two toothpicks between her lips. “Wally,” she said loudly, “if you’ve got any sense you’ll crawl your ass back there in the morning and beg God above for your job back. People are killing each other for post office jobs. You’ve read the papers.”

  “Actually,” Wally said, “those killings were of a different nature.”

  “Nature, shmature,” Irene snorted. “Go back to your boss and offer to suck some body parts.”

  Cordelia nodded. “It never hurts to grease the wheels.”

  Jeryline almost laughed out loud. Bent over while sanitizing the chairs, she managed to package it into a large and sloppy cough.

  Cordelia, who had most surely sucked a few body parts since giving up teaching, snapped her head around. “Don’t be laughing at him, Jeryline Jailbait Bascombe. Have you got my sheets washed yet?”

  Jeryline raised her head. “Yep, they’re all downstairs. I couldn’t get the stains all the way out, though. The whole mess looks kind of . . . green.”

  Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Never again will I work with guacamole, no matter how much he pays me. And Jeryline?”

  Jeryline stood erect, hating the smell of the Pledge and quite willing to set the rag on fire if asked. The table too, come to think of it. “Yeah?”

  Cordelia smiled one of her phony smiles at her. “I’ve got a date coming here real soon,” she said. “Be a sport and put the sheets on my bed while I freshen up.”

  “All in good time,” Jeryline said. “After this I’ve still got the stove to clean.”

  Irene, who had plopped her green-suited self on the sofa beside Wally and was going at her teeth with both of her toothpicks, pulled her eyes away from the silent TV long enough to bark a command: “Paying customers are always right, Jeryline. Put the goddamn sheets on Cordelia’s bed before her boyfriend shows up.”

  Jeryline allowed her eyes to go out of focus, turning everything inside the Mission Inn to a blur of mismatched colors with the voiceless TV a bright spot of flashing lights just to the right. This place was like a nuthouse most of the time: Cordelia was a cheap whore with visions of Hollywood and its money and scandals, Irene was a cheap boarding-house owner, Wally Enfield was a weasely little shit who had been unjustly and terribly fired from every job he’d ever had. There were four other residents, two of them now missing for three days and assumed in jail again, the other two gone off on some madcap venture prospecting for silver in an area that had been stripped clean of silver and everything else before the turn of the century. They could all show up at any time and demand food. Who would be rousted from bed to cook it? The big J.

  Wally Enfield decided now to uproot himself from the sofa and become the rescuer of a damsel in distress. “I will get your sheets for you,” he said regally to Cordelia as he stood. “And, I will put them on your bed.”

  Cordelia eyed him. “That’s a sweetheart,” she said uncertainly. “Go ahead and do that, get those sheets.” She looked over to Jeryline. “Isn’t he just sweet? Isn’t he?”

  Jeryline finished wiping the last chair and shoved it into place. “Wally,” she announced without much enthusiasm, “you are the sweetest of the sweet. The laundry is in the basement.”
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  He blushed to the top of his balding little head, and got interested in the tips of his shoes. Cordelia touched a finger to her chin and stared at him while mental gears seemed to be at work behind her eyes. “Isn’t he just the sweetest?” she murmured wonderingly. “Isn’t he?”

  Irene, who had been busy picking her teeth with her dual toothpicks, went for a rearward molar while raising a leg to let a short, shrill fart whistle between her legs. “Sweet,” she grunted. “Oh so sweet.”

  Wally wandered away, becoming so lobster red with embarrassment that Jeryline feared a tourniquet around his neck might be necessary soon. Cordelia squealed out a twitter of laughter. “Did you ever see such?” she asked, slapping the arm of the couch. “Did you? I should give him a freebie. And you know? If Roach doesn’t show up tonight, I will. You bet I will.”

  “Just what little Wally needs,” Irene muttered back. “Getting screwed again.”

  A gust of damp air kicked across Jeryline’s shins, followed by the spiritless clanking of the cowbell hanging above the front door. A familiar pile of rags walked in: Uncle Willie. Trailing him was a stranger whose thick black hair had been worked into knots by the wind, whose clothes were dirtier than most, whose face was tight and distrusting. An image sprang instantly into her mind: prison guard. Tough, weary, and sick of it all.

  “Well, looka here!” Uncle Willie brayed as the doorspring tried to pull the door shut against the weather. “Gangway, I’m bringing in business!”

  Cordelia frowned, eyeing the stranger. “What kind of business? My kind of business?”

  “Well, actually,” Willie said, “more like Irene’s business. He’s looking for a private room.”

  Jeryline watched Irene Galvin push herself off the couch to greet the sight of a new paying customer. “Why, Uncle Willie,” Irene giggled, and stroked his hairy cheek as she rounded past him. “Had I known you would be bringing me some business, I never would have said the things I did. Do forgive me.”

  Willie frowned. “What things? What?”

  “And how shall I register you?” she asked the man. “Monthly? Yearly? There is no better long-term accomodation in New Mexico than the friendly family here at Mission Inn. Are you new to the area?”

  “Just give me a room,” he said. Jeryline noticed a thin crust of dried blood under his nose, as if he had been in a fight and scrubbed at it a lot. He ran a hand through his hair. “A bed, a room, one night, two nights, bill me later.”

  Irene Galvin snapped suddenly into her more familiar personality. “I don’t do short-term rents, mister. This is not a motel where you check in and then out. I serve meals here, I have an entertainment center here, and I have to make a profit here in order to survive. One week minimum, paid in advance.”

  The man took a slow, purposeful breath. Across the room, Jeryline was already writing the whole episode off and mentally preparing herself to tackle the cleaning of the stove. Irene had chased one-nighters away before. It was nothing new.

  “Here,” she heard the stranger say. “You want what, fifty? Two-fifty? Ten thousand goddamn fifty? Here!”

  He raked a hand in and out of his jeans pocket as fast as a gunslinger unlimbering a Colt .45. The wad of bills he pulled out was very round and very fat. Jeryline almost gasped. The visible ones were fifties, a couple others looked like hundreds as they lazily uncoiled from the roll in his open hand. She had never seen a thousand dollar bill, but guessed there might be a few at the core of such a treasure.

  Irene, acting as if this took place every single day, remained prim: “One-hundred dollars per night will be fine, sir.” She plucked at the sheaf of bills, her bony little fingers tweezing and pecking like the beak of a chicken. “Jeryline!” she barked when she was done. “Show this gentleman to the available room.”

  Jeryline propped her hands on her hips. “I thought cleaning the stove was a matter of life and death.”

  Irene swept the man toward the front desk, produced for him a guest register—which had never seen the light of day at all during the entire five months Jeryline had worked here—and produced enough verbal syrup to coax him into signing it. When he laid the pen down, Irene raised a hand over her head and began snapping her fingers. “Jeryline? Jeryline dear? Show Mr. Brayker to his room, please. Number Five should be perfect.”

  Jeryline put the Lemon Pledge down on the table, wiped the palms of her hands on the sides of her jeans, and became the Mission Inn bellboy, which she had not known, until now, was part of her work-release/probation agreement. Amazing how varied and sundry such programs were, and how they could expand themselves into a bit of everything. In a few years she could head the Wormwood city council as the local work-release mayor—as if Wormwood had a city council, har-har.

  “This way to the presidential suite,” she groused. “Any carry-on luggage for this flight, Mr. Brayker?”

  Irene clicked her tongue. “Jeryline, loose lips sink work-release ships. Keep your smart-mouth to yourself. And see to it that Mr. Brayker gets some supper.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Jeryline said curtly. “Mr. Brayker? Walk this way.”

  She turned and goose-stepped a couple paces. Looking back for a grin from Brayker, she got only a cold, dead stare. “Mr. Congeniality he ain’t,” she muttered under her breath, and hiked up the stairs.

  Room Five was down the short hallway to the right. She whisked the door open and snapped on the light. Brayker pushed past her and stalked to the window. He studied the night for a moment.

  “Let’s see,” Jeryline said, tapping her chin. “Breakfast starts at seven, maybe later if I oversleep. The bathroom’s just down the hall.”

  “What am I looking at here?” Brayker said to the glass. He tapped at it. “Which direction is the highway?”

  “Uh, forty-seven? Or sixteen east-west?”

  “Forty-seven.”

  She walked up beside him and pointed, squatting a few inches to see. “Couple of miles that way. But notice the fine view? This elegant suite features a splendid morning view of nothing. Ditto for afternoons, and the evening view is especially nothing.”

  He looked at her as if puzzled. She reddened; no sense of humor whatsoever, the jerk.

  “Why are you here?” he asked suddenly.

  She arched her eyebrows. “Why? To show you the room.”

  Brayker reached and clamped a cold hand around her forearm. “Not that. Why the hell are you here? What’s here for you?”

  “Just a job,” she said, shying away.

  “You were in jail,” he said. His dark eyes were shiny and emotionless. “What did you do?”

  Jeryline frowned at him, the nosy bastard. “Felonious bed-wetting. Why are you here?”

  He looked back to the window, where the wind was kicking raindrops past the eaves to speckle the glass. “I think,” he stated wearily, “that I am here for the same reason you are.”

  She snorted. “Bed-wetting? Simply rampant these days.”

  He waved her away with a flick of his hand. “Get out of here and make me some supper. I want a beer with it, too. Got that?”

  She strode to the door. “Got that. And by the way, you can go to hell.”

  “Been there,” he said.

  She slammed the door.

  Suppertime.

  The usual crew had eaten hours before, large cube steaks, steamed potatoes, gravy, asparagus, dinner rolls, lemon meringue pie for dessert. The leftovers were pretty skimpy, and Jeryline wanted to make sure Mr. Brayker got enough, so she added a cup of flour to the blender while it churned his entire supper into pudding. She located a large bowl, filled it with the beige-colored Jeryline Special, and poked a sprig of fresh parsley into the middle. “Superb,” she crooned, sniffing it.

  Mr. Brayker was already at the table. He had washed up and tamed his hair a little, but his clothes were unchanged and his beard stubble was still stubbly. Jeryline breezed out of the kitchen and dropped the bowl and a spoon in front of him. When she cruised back with a glass of water,
he was eating, slowly and deliberately, his eyes fixed on an invisible spot on the table. She parked the water at his elbow. She curtsied.

  “Is everything satisfactory, Mr. Brayker?”

  He cranked his head to look at her. “I wanted a beer,” he said.

  She smiled. “And you got water. Enjoy.”

  She joined Uncle Willie and Cordelia at the two sofas aimed at the television, where a black-and-white rerun of “The Fugitive” was soundlessly airing. Willie and Cordelia were staring at Brayker as if he were the most interesting thing within a hundred miles. He noticed and lifted his bowl. “You two want some, or what?” he said flatly.

  Cordelia turned her attention back to the television. Uncle Willie winked. “No thanks, not me. I was just thinking about how much better that stuff looked when it was roadkill.”

  Jeryline covered her mouth with her hands and laughed into them. Mr. Brayker was a weird character and if he thought the two of them had some kind of common bond, that their meeting here was dictated by fate, well then, he was weird and crazy.

  Though the wind outside was hooting and groaning around the building, and the rain was noisily pattering against the roof and windows, Jeryline heard a car crunch its way over the gravel parking area, and stop. It had the peculiar squeak-rattle of a Volkswagen, she thought. One door thumped shut. One of the roomers back from wherever-the-hell? Or a customer for Cordelia’s bedroom talents?

  Brayker had heard it too. She watched as he tensed up, saw a hand go into the pocket of his dirty jacket. His gaze welded itself to the front door. This man, she realized without surprise, was a man of many secrets. Maybe even an escaped mental patient from the cuckoo house over in Cactus Flowers.

  Something black blurred through the bottom of her vision without warning. It zipped up onto the table beside Brayker, froze in place, and became Irene’s cat Cleo.

  Brayker burst up from his chair in a wild scramble, knocking it over and nearly upsetting the table. His bowl of Jeryline Special wobbled near the edge but, thankfully, did not fall off. With one enormous sweep of his arm Brayker shoved the cat off the table, his face twisted up with revulsion and alarm.