“Jesus.”
“You don’t really think it would’ve...” She shook her head.
“Come back to life? I don’t know. Probably not. But I’m still glad you stopped me.” He managed a smile. “And I also appreciate the way you stuck up for me.”
“That’s all right.”
“You’re a good kid, no matter what everyone says.”
She laughed softly and winced. Her eyes widened as if she were surprised by a sudden pain. Color drained from her face.
“What’s wrong?”
She gave him a very strange look. For a moment Larry thought she was on the verge of telling him something terrible. But she said, “Nothing. I’m just not feeling very swift. Cramps. You know.”
“Are you sure that’s all?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“You could go to bed. You don’t have to stick around for the fireworks.”
“I wouldn’t miss this.”
Pete was first to enter the kitchen. He wore a blue bathrobe over white pajamas, and had mocassins on his feet. His nose was bandaged. From the look on his face, he might’ve been a fourth grader caught red-handed putting a tack on his teacher’s chair. Meeting Larry’s gaze, he mouthed “What’s happened?” but didn’t utter a sound.
Larry felt his lip curl up. He shook his head.
“I don’t know what you boys did,” Barbara said as she followed her husband through the doorway. “But I’ve got a feeling you’re both neck deep in runny shit.” She leaned back against a counter. Her hair was tangled and sticking out in odd places. Though she obviously hadn’t brushed it, she must’ve taken time to dress. She wore white sneakers, tight red sweatpants, and a loose gray sweatshirt with an emblem on the front that read, “Alcatraz Swim Team.”
Any other time, Larry thought, I’d be wondering if she had anything on under the clothes.
He realized he waswondering.
Guess I’m not totally out of it, he thought.
As Pete sat down, Jean came in with an extra chair from the dining room. She placed it near a corner of the breakfast table. “You’d better be seated for this,” she told Barbara.
“That bad?” She pushed herself away from the counter and stepped toward the chair. Larry watched her breasts jostle the front of the sweatshirt. Obviously no bra, he decided.
He imagined Bonnie in her cheerleader outfit, the sweater jiggling just a bit with her movements. He saw the sweater rising above her belly as she leaped. When she came down, her pleated skirt billowed high.
“Larry.” Jean’s voice. “Are you with us?”
“Huh? Sure.” He felt a rush of guilt.
Jean was already sitting down. To Barbara she said, “It appears that our two geniuses, here, decided to do a book about the body we found in Sagebrush Flat. So they snuck back and brought it home with them. It’s in our garage.”
“Holy shit,” Barbara said.
Pete gave her a lopsided grin that lifted one side of his mustache.
She cuffed him high on the arm, and Larry watched the Alcatraz emblem swing.
“Hey! No need to get physical. It’s a brilliant idea, honey. I’m in for twenty percent of the take.”
She socked him again.
“Cut it out, huh? I’ve got a broken nose, for Christ-sake.”
“I oughta smack it for you. Shit! Are you outa your fucking gourd?”
“We knew it’d upset you ladies,” Larry said. “That’s why we tried to keep it a secret until the book was finished and we could get rid of the corpse.”
“Lane caught him in the garage with it tonight.”
Now Petelooked angry at him. “Jesus, man.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Lane said. “He was walking in his sleep.”
“Oh, sure. Jesus, man.”
“You were sleepwalking?” Barbara asked. “That’s wild.”
Sensing an ally, Larry said, “Yeah, it was weird. Ever since we brought that body back with us, I’ve been having all kinds of strange dreams.” He decided not to mention the other sleepwalking incident. “It’s almost as if Bonnie’s been trying to communicatewith me. Like it’s telepathy, or something.”
“Bullshit,” Pete said. “You’re just obsessed, that’s all.”
“Bonnie?” Jean asked.
“That’s her name,” Larry explained. “Bonnie Saxon.”
“You know who she is?” Barbara sounded excited.
“She was wearing a school ring. She went to Buford High, graduated in 1968.”
“The yearbook,” Lane muttered.
“Yeah. I found pictures of her. She was a cheerleader and the Homecoming Spirit Queen.”
“Holy shit,” Barbara said. “That yucky corpse?..”
“And she was murdered the summer after graduation,” he went on. “Somebody thought she was a vampire.”
“Uriah Radley,” Pete added. “The guy who broke my nose.”
“What?” Barbara blurted.
He grinned at her, settled back in the chair and folded his arms across his chest. “We lied about target shooting.”
She didn’t punch him. She gazed at him. She looked astonished.
“We went out there figuring we might take him in for the murders,” Pete explained. “He also killed two other high school girls. Right, Lar?”
“It looks that way.” He turned to Jean. “You know all that time I spent at the library this week? I was studying up on her.”
“God, you’ve been lying about everything.”
He grimaced. “Not about everything. Just about this vampire stuff.”
“You went out gunningfor this guy?” Lane asked. She sounded just as intrigued as Barbara.
Larry nodded.
Pete said, “Yep. And we almost got him. Should’ve seen the bastard slinging arrows at us. He thought wewere vampires.”
“He shotat you?” Barbara asked.
“This is mad,” Jean muttered.
“He was about to pound a stake into Pete, but I managed to stop him.”
“Saved my ass. Or at least my heart.”
Barbara’s lips moved but no words came out. Pete gave her a martyred look. She stretched an arm toward him and rubbed his shoulder. “Oh, honey.”
“This is incredible,” Lane said.
Larry smiled at her. “Make a good book, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“The thing about the book, it’ll all be true.”
“It’ll sell millions,” Pete said. “Just like The Amityville Horror. We’ll be rich and famous.”
“Infamous,” Jean corrected him. “People read something like that, they’ll think you’re a couple of assholes. Like that guy who got ‘beamed up’ by space monsters.” She glared at Larry. “You want to be the laughingstock?” In a dopey, hick voice, she said, “ ‘Hey, there goes Larry Dunbar. Him’s the dork that believes in vampires. Yassir.’ ”
“It won’t be like that,” he said. “It’s just an account of what happened. I’ve got a lot of it written already, and...”
“God, I’ve gotta read it!” Barbara blurted, her hand going motionless on Pete’s shoulder.
“When it’s done,” he said. “It’ll just be a couple more weeks. But the thing is, I make it clear in the book that I don’tbelieve in vampires. I tell it exactly the way it happened... how Pete and I thought it’d be a neat idea for a book. Neither oneof us really believes it’s a vampire.”
“Not me,” Pete said.
“But it’s not really a vampire story anymore. It grew into a lot more than that. Now it’s a murder mystery. Those three girls disappeared in 1968, and nobody knows what happened to them. Nobody but us.”
“And Uriah,” Pete said.
“We know who killed them, and why, and we’ve even got one of the bodies.”
“In our garage,” Jean muttered.
“And you almost got yourselves killed,” Barbara said.
“But we’ve got the story,” Larry said. “We’ve got it. I didn’t think we h
ad anything at first. It’s like you said, Jean. I thought we had nothing but a couple of nuts cart a body home ‘cause it might be a vampire, and they’ve got nothing else to do but pull out the stake to see if she comes alive. And then they do it, and she just lies there. Zip. Big deal. The whole thing falls flat. But it doesn’t matterif she’s a vampire. She’s a homicide, and we can name her killer.”
“Killed her because hethought she was a vampire,” Pete put in.
“Uriah’s wife and daughter were murdered,” Larry said. “Somehow, he got it into his head that they were the victims of a vampire. He had their bodies cremated so they wouldn’t come back. Then he went hunting. He got Bonnie and two other girls.”
Frowning at him, Jean said, “You guys didn’t make any of this up?”
Larry realized she had actually been listening. Though she didn’t seem fascinated like Lane and Barbara, her anger had melted. She was interested.
“Some of it’s speculation,” he admitted.
“More than some, I should imagine.”
“Not all that much,” Pete said. “Lar’s got a whole stack of newspaper stories.”
“This is big,” Barbara said, her voice low.
“Big?” Pete said. “Enormous. Now, if we just pull the stake and it turns out she isa vampire...”
“She’ll suck all our blood and there won’t be any book,” Lane said.
Everyone looked at her.
“Just kidding,” she muttered, blushing.
“There’s no such thing as vampires,” Jean said to her.
“I know. I know that.”
“We all know that, don’t we?” she asked. Her gaze roamed the group. She was met by nods of agreement. She looked at Larry. “You’ve got that thing here just so you can pull the stake?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“That’s all you need it for? Once you’ve taken out the stake and proved she isn’t a vampire, that’s it? You’ll be done? We can get rid of it?”
“Yeah.”
Pete scowled, apparently recalling his plans to take the body on the talk show circuit.
Larry said to him, “We’ll have to turn her over to the authorities.” To Jean he said, “They can take up the investigation from there, and go out and try to pick up Uriah.”
Jean nodded. “Okay. Let’s go out to the garage and do it.”
He stared at her.
She raised her eyebrows. “I mean it. You want to pull out the stake, we’ll do it right now. I want that thing off my property. Tonight.”
“It might be better to wait for daylight,” Pete said.
Jean sneered at him. “Get real.”
“Just in case,” Larry said.
Her sneer turned on him. “In case of what?”
“Yeah!” Barbara pitched in, her voice loud and cheery. She was beaming. “What areyou guys, a couple of pussies? Let’s yank the fuckin‘ stake, see if the babe sits up and says hi.”
“What the hell,” Pete said.
“Okay,” Larry said.
“Oh, boy,” Lane said. She looked scared.
Forty-one
Pete went home for his video camera. Jean and Lane left the kitchen to get dressed. Barbara, still seated in the extra chair from the dining room, had her arms folded beneath her breasts and kept shaking her head.
Larry, trembling and wondering if his teeth might begin to chatter, took a sip of coffee. It was lukewarm. He realized they’d neglected to offer any to their guests. “Want some coffee?” he asked.
“Thanks, but I don’t think so. I’d probably wet myself. God, this is exciting.”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
“It islike something from a book. One of your books.”
“Hope it doesn’t turn out like one.”
“You and me both, buster.” She let out a nervous laugh. “I’ll be in it, won’t I?”
“Sure. You already are.” He managed a smile. “You’re the one who found the body.”
“Pete found it. But I’m the one who busted the landing, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t describe me as a big lummox, I hope.”
“No way. You’ll like it.”
Her head nodded, bobbing slowly up and down a few times, then switched directions and shook from side to side. “I can’t believe you guys actually didall this.”
“Neither can I.”
“Jean can, though.”
He groaned. “Don’t remind me.”
“She’ll be okay,” Barbara said. “Once it’s all over and she realizes what’s going on. You know, the fact that it’s true. It’s gonna be hot.”
“Hope so.”
“I bet there’ll even be a movie. De Niro’d be perfect for Pete. They’d need someone big for me. Not big famous, necessarily. Big big.”
“How about Susan Anton?”
She beamed. “Hey, that’d be great. Now, what about you and Jean? Somebody kind of small and cute for Jean. What about that gal with the husky voice from An Officer and a Gentleman?”
“Debra Winger.”
“Yeah. She’d be perfect for Jean. For you, we’ve got a choice.”
“Really?”
“Nick Nolte or Gary Busey.”
He chuckled and felt his face heat up. “Thanks a bunch.”
“No, they’d be great. Either one of them.”
“At least you didn’t suggest George Kennedy.”
Larry heard slow footsteps coming toward them. Lane stepped into the kitchen, dressed in sneakers, jeans, and a heavy plaid shirt. The shirt was very large. It wasn’t rucked in.
In her right hand she held a crucifix.
The one that belonged on the wall of her bedroom.
It looked identical to the crucifix that Larry had seen hanging around Uriah’s neck. The one that had stopped his bullet.
“Don’t let your mother see that,” Larry warned.
“You’re probably right.” She slipped it underneath the front of her shirt and worked some of the long end down inside the waistband of her jeans. When she finished, the loose shirt showed no trace of the crucifix.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a spare?” Barbara asked.
Lane spread the shirt’s neck and lifted out the small golden cross. The cross, on its thin chain, had come from Larry’s parents. They’d given it to her as a first communion present. He hadn’t noticed Lane wearing it in a long while.
“Bring a vampire around,” he said, “people start discovering religion.”
“You’re sure prepared,” Barbara told her.
“Here, you take it.” Lane started to fool with the clasp behind her neck.
“No, no. Hey, I’m not worried about vampires.”
“Take it anyway,” Lane said, and held the necklace out to her.
“Well...” She looked at Larry.
“Why not?”
“Right. Why not?” She slipped the chain around her neck and fastened it. Then she dropped the golden cross down the front of her sweatshirt. “Thanks, hon. If it looks like the babe might start chomping on me, I’ll just whip this out and send her packing.”
“That’s the idea,” Lane said. “Mom always wears hers, so she’s protected.”
They’re all protected, Larry thought. He told himself that he didn’t believe in vampires. He told himself that the crosses wouldn’t protect them from squat. But still, he was glad they had the things.
Barbara patted her hair. She curled her upper lip. “You wouldn’t have a brush handy, would you? Since Pete’s gonna record this for posterity...”
“Sure,” Lane said. “I’ll get one.”
Barbara stood up. Saying, “I’ll need to use a mirror,” she followed Lane out of the kitchen.
Larry sat alone at the table.
Oh, man, he thought. This is it.
At least we’ll get it over with. No more wondering.
God, Bonnie. So what’s it gonna be?
I’ll be yours, she seemed to tell him.
Sure thing. Right. You’ll just lie there dead.
Don’t count on it.
What if she kills all of them but me?
He pictured himself pulling the stake. And Bonnie suddenly changing. Very suddenly. One second a dried-up grinning hag, the next second a gorgeous teenager, the next second throwing herself out of the coffin with a mad shriek and attacking. Hurling bodies, breaking necks, ripping open throats with her teeth. And Larry stands there helpless, watching the slaughter, too stunned to feel the pain of losing Jean and Lane, Pete and Barbara.
When they’re all dead on the garage floor, Bonnie comes to him, her naked body sheathed with gleaming blood. She raises her dripping hands toward him. Now we’ll be together forever.
Come off it, Larry told himself. My goddamn mind. It’s not going to happen that way. Not a chance.
But he started to imagine himself back in the scene, so he shoved himself away from the table. He hurried into the living room. Barbara was standing in front of the fireplace, watching herself in the mirror above the mantel as she brushed her hair. Lane, beside her, seemed to be gazing into space. He put an arm across her back. She flinched, then looked at him and settled against his side.
As a toilet flushed, off in the distance, the front door swung open and Pete came in. He wore boots and jeans and a blue turtleneck sweater. A leather strap crossed his chest like a Sam Browne belt. He held the video camcorder on his shoulder. In his right hand was a bow.
“All set ‘n’ rarin‘ to go?” he asked.
“We’re just waiting for Jean,” Larry said, staring at the bow.
“Man, I can’t believe we’re finally gonna do it.”
“Me neither,” Larry told him.
“At night, no less.”
Barbara turned away from the mirror and looked at him. “What are you doing with that?”
“This?” He raised the bow. “Got the idea from Uriah.” To Larry he said, “I used to hunt deer with this baby.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Jean said, coming in from the hallway. “You’re not serious.”
“Wooden arrows, darlin‘. Just as good as a stake when it comes to dispatching vampires. Better. You don’t have to get up-close and personal.”
“I thought we all agreed we didn’t believe in any of this nonsense.”
“It can’t hurt to take precautions,” Larry told her.
The Stake Page 36