Deacon Byars, whose neck was breaking out in hives, at last stepped forward. As the fading lock on a past that had little future, his present might still serve a purpose: to end this madness. Or so it was hoped …
Instead, he removed a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and, coughing into his sleeve, then peering through fogged bifocals, began to deliver baptismal announcements.
The congregation could have killed him.
Grizelda herself could have murdered the fool.
Clamping her mouth with the cuff of one sleeve, she strained for a fleeting glimpse of her nephew. Along with Colin and Gideon, hunched in a quiet trance, the boy sat motionless. All of them looked to have gone into shutdown.
Behind them, in contrast, Jonathan followed the Deacon’s announcement in rapt attention.
Here it came …
As the congregation hacked its way into a chorus of gurgles, he read the list. For what it was worth (all ceremonies were sure to be put on delay, for the moment) there were seven names. As had been expected for several months, Fannie Hostler was one of the first. But less foreseeably, the seventh, most recent addition was announced as: “Jonathan Becker.”
All at once, Ephraim snapped to attention. Colin and Gideon stirred from their daze. Confused, all three of them looked to Jon for an explanation—a motion of denial, an assurance that someone had misunderstood. Granted, Jon had been out of the running for weeks, which hadn’t gone unnoticed. However, his regular church attendance, as they had always understood it, had served as ongoing vocal training—a means of getting ahead in the game—not as an actual rite of conviction. The Crossbills had never suspected as much. He’d given no indication of joining The Order / leaving his gang, or whatnot. Surely, he wouldn’t have quit without telling them. Surely, there had to be some mistake …
But apparently not. Coughing, he nodded in confirmation of Byars’s announcement. Colin, Ephraim and Gideon watched in disbelief from the Sinner’s Bench. In a roomful of suffocating Plain Folk, they seemed uniquely unaffected by the stench. Jonathan, suddenly aware of their attention, didn’t look back. His gaze remained locked on the Deacon. Grizelda watched as, slowly, Ephraim turned away in apparent bewilderment. He might have remained in that state all day had the Deacon not kept on with autumn announcements, during which Jonathan’s name was mentioned again—this time to surprise all around.
With the hives on his neck in angry splotches, tears streaming into his beard and the room in a state of fuming pandemonium, Deacon Byars lifted his head to announce the betrothal of Jonathan Rubin Becker to Fannie Gwendolyn Hostler, scheduled to marry November 20th.
Ephraim fell to the floor, unconscious.
Forty-three-year-old Hector Shlem had just clocked in for his midnight shift with three other Sprawl Mart security guards—had taken a seat in a cubicle overlooking the superstore’s parking lot, and scarcely broken the seal on a can of sardines—when “the whirlwind” appeared from the south. At first, as it came over the hill in a flurry of movement, Shlem had mistaken the flash for a motorbike—somebody tooling the fields. But then he’d picked up on the silence, the notably total lack of an engine’s roar. Shlem put down his can of sardines and stood, prompted to curiosity. He watched as the movement blazed down the weedy slope from the edge of 342, rounded a light pole and leveled out to the parking lot, heading directly for him. It seemed to be gaining momentum steadily. Its features were blurred in the swarm of activity. Nothing was clearly visible, save for the fact that it wasn’t slowing down. On the contrary, it was accelerating. Without any question, approaching fast … No sooner had Shlem begun to wonder than impact became undeniably imminent. He dodged to one side with scarcely a moment to spare before it crashed through the cubicle. Thirty-five square feet of reinforced glass exploded inward, raining oblivion. Shlem ended up in a crouch on the floor, uninjured. The spray of glass had blown over him. The whole thing was finished before he could stand.
His sardines would later turn up in cosmetics.
A swath of destruction was torn down an aisle, back to the exit and, no less explosively, straight through another wall of glass.
“It was kind of like having a freight train plow through your greenhouse,” Shlem would be quoted as stating.
It nearly measured up in damages, as Rudolf Beaumont would have to concur. As the first responding officer present, he would call in a six-figure estimate. Strange as it may have appeared firsthand, the sheriff’s dispatcher was oddly unfazed by his spluttered attempts to describe the scene. This was due to the fact that the precinct was now being swamped with disturbance reports—the latest of which was about to go out as an APB from Sheriff Highman: priority one on a “high-speed maniac” said to be wrecking the Holtwood Development.
Hector Shlem was left in the rubble with several meandering Sprawl Mart officials while Rudolf Beaumont throttled his cruiser directly to Holtwood, a mile up the road.
He arrived to find four other officers, three private watchmen and one angry contractor present—patrolling the craggy terrain on foot between visibly damaged house foundations, cutting their flash beams over the wreckage.
Officer Beaumont got out of his cruiser to join them. He overheard one of the watchmen complain of not having heard or seen “them” coming and, once under siege, having been outrun. “They were too fast,” he kept saying. “Too fast.”
Rudolf approached them. “How many were there?”
Visibly shaken, the watchman snapped in reply: “How should I know?” He pointed across a series of paths to the opposite bluff. “It started up there, then headed this way. I don’t know. They were just kind of everywhere at once.” He shook his head. “It happened too fast.”
Irritated, Beaumont turned from the group and, unlatching his flashlight, started up the hill. He unholstered his .45 and clicked off the safety.
An oddly unseasonal chorus of locusts split the midnight calm from the ecotone.
Almost immediately, Rudolf felt certain the prowler(s) were gone. For the seventh time in a month, and by far the most damaging yet, they had gotten away. Between Holtwood and Sprawl Mart, loe were sure to exceed all accumulated wreckage to date.
Down the hill, Sheriff Buster Highman’s cruiser drifted into view. He slowed to a stop and got out. He leveled his speaker horn. “Bring it in, ladies!”
Beaumont retraced his steps down the path, joining Officer Kutay along the way. Kutay, a bungling doughboy known as the “precinct pussy,” looked good and spooked. Their radios squawked of intrusion at both the Mayweather stables and a liquor store in Paradise—the first having something to do with a burning scarecrow posted along the drive, and the second a forced intrusion report. As they wound down the slope, talk came through of a wolf chasing traffic on Dillerville Pike.
The sheriff hollered: “Turn off that radio, Beaumont!”
Rudolf cut the volume.
Two more cruisers appeared from the highway, bringing the number of officers present to seven. Highman, pivoting tensely on one heel, got to the point, addressing them.
“I don’t know what we’re dealing with here,” he said, for lack of a better approach. “But whatever it is—kill it.”
Simple.
Order confirmed with no objections.
For over a week, while everyone else had been yukking it up at The Basin’s expense, law enforcement officials therein had been running in circles, to worsening ends. Hoax or not—whether juvenile vandalism or, as had been suggested already, a moon-sick wild man roaming the fields, the Blue Ball Devil had to be stopped. This situation was out of control.
Just that evening, Philth Town 10 had aired a five-minute broadcast dubbed “A Week in the Lamepeter Public Ledger,” which featured sarcastic, embittered and frightened remarks by longtime area residents—something he found less irritating than the newscaster’s subsequent laughing fit. (“Sounds like a serious case of the blue balls—I mean, excuse me: a bad case in Blue Ball.”)
Millions of people ha
d heard the report. And others like it were sure to follow. And with them would come a new wave of visitors—thrill seekers, Wiccans and gothic trash—flooding the local hotels for a week in hopes of catching a glimpse of the creature and adding to the already harrowing plight of nightly patrol in the townships of late. Every cop in the county, by now, was chomping at the bit for a shot at the culprit(s).
Officers Kreider and Hertz were dispatched to a three-mile stretch of Dillerville Pike. Officers Keiffer, Billings and Koch were assigned to the burning scarecrow reports, while Beaumont and Kutay wound up stuck with investigating the liquor store. Rudolf quietly damned the sheriff. Now was no time to be weighted down. Whatever was running amok out there, it was fast—or, in any case, highly elusive. Officer Nelson “Fatty” Kutay was probably the slowest man on the force. In every respect, he would only serve as a ball and chain around Beaumont’s neck.
Furious, Rudolf got into his cruiser. He followed the typically idling Kutay back up the drive to 342 and swung onto it, instantly punching the gas. With his siren and lights in a wailing blur, he shot past Kutay’s black and white, then widened the gap between them, leaving Fatty stuck at an intersection. Once in the clear, he left the highway, moving east on Harvest Lane. He was reaching to cut the lights when, ahead in the on-coming lane, a buggy appeared. There were three of them, gliding along in the dark.
What were the Orderlies doing out at this hour?
Beaumont slowed his cruiser to see, as Fatty came over the radio: “-*Rudolf*-?”
Ahead, more buggies topped the hill. The first two drivers were unfamiliar. But Jonas Tulk was manning the third. No doubt about it: Jonas Tulk—and a posse of Amish patrolling the road. Something was happening.
“-*Officer Beaumont?*-” Again, the radio.
Rudolf considered not responding. Then came thoughts of the sheriff’s orders.
“Officer Beaumont, where are you?”
He grabbed the receiver. “En route. Where the hell do you think?”
Kutay sounded ready to cry. “But I lost you,” he burbled.
“Try the accelerator.”
One of these seasons, the sheriff would drop dead of colon cancer or high cholesterol. When that happened, Fatty—along with Officer Koch, the sap, would be out of a job: two walking-the-dog-to-the-breadline, no-house, barbecued-pork-eating welfare cheats …
A sizeable crowd of angry locals had gathered in front of the liquor store. The building’s center bay had been shattered. Sirens were blaring from wall-mounted horns. Every soul in The Basin was sure to be walking the floors. It sounded like war.
On arrival, Beaumont spotted a figure attempting to climb through the ruined display case. He didn’t appear to be looting the store. He seemed to be trying to find the alarm.
As Fatty Kutay pulled in to join them, the crowd turned its anger on both officers.
“Can’t you make it stop?” one man in camo-fatigue pajamas demanded.
Beaumont walked to the front of the store. What he could see inside was a mess. He climbed through the scattered remains of the main display and hopped in. After a bungled attempt to locate and deactivate the security board, and with no sign of personnel forthcoming, he climbed up onto a crate and proceeded to bash the interior horn with his club. On try number three, he succeeded in tearing it out of the wall, but not killing the siren. The siren jammed on an even higher, more shrill and grating pitch than before. Outside, the locals hollered angrily. They hoisted a cinder block into the display case—“Here, try this, God damn it—hurry!”—while others ran to their pickups for crowbars.
All together, they beat the alarms into silence. The last one sounding was blown from the eastern wall by a shotgun blast. The boom echoed back from a nearby rail yard, reverberating west through the settling calm.
For everyone present, it seemed as though all of creation let out a sight of relief.
Except Fatty: “Who fired that shot?” he demanded.
The crowd ignored him. Instead, someone shouted: “Can’t you people control those hippies?”
Cries of disgusted agreement went up.
Beaumont came forward, throwing his shoulders back, warning the group not to test his patience.
“Screw you, Rudolf,” someone replied. “We pay our taxes. You work for us.”
Both officers blinked, abruptly aware of the silhouettes tensed in the darkness around them. Officer Kutay’s breathing deepened, breaking the otherwise total silence.
Then came a distant barrage of gunfire off to the north. Everyone jumped. Torn from its daze, the crowd had already begun to disperse before Fatty stepped forward. “You people go home. This situation is …”
“Eat shit!” came a call in response. On pulling away, someone yelled from a window: “If you won’t do something about it, we will.”
Several pickups took off in succession, barreling north toward a stretch of forest from which more gunfire was sounding steadily.
Rudolf and Kutay were left behind in the parking lot, weighing their yearly salaries.
At last, Beaumont spoke. “Go get ’em.”
Kutay blanched. “You go get ’em.”
“I will,” said Beaumont. “I’ll block the road at Bareville Pike. You drive ’em in.”
Fatty didn’t like the sound of that. “No way,” he refused. “You’re just gonna leave me with the dirty work again.”
Beaumont shook his head. “You want to block the road yourself?”
“Yes!”
Sucker.
Rudolf conceded. “Fine with me. Just stay off your radio.”
Kutay got in his cruiser and drove off, easily rid of.
Now for the compound.
Ivan Grabers and Eli Stoltzfus, one with a spade and the other his rifle, stood in the drive of the Tulk estate, looking none too pleased by Beaumont’s appearance. Behind them, torches were posted along the outer fence, surrounding the building.
He rolled to a stop and got out of his cruiser, expecting a howling din from the building. Instead, it was quiet. Nary so much as a peep from within. Just the humming of locusts.
Cleon Stoltzfus, with two of his sons, James and Ezekiel, appeared from the shadows. All three of them were carrying rifles. They stopped.
Rudolf approached them, demanding, “What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” said Cleon, turning away.
He unlocked the gate to the yard and, speaking no more, walked off.
James and Ezekiel hung back quietly.
Beaumont wrangled a statement from Grabers, who claimed that nothing had happened, as yet. “The hounds went crazy an hour ago.”
“And now they’re quiet,” Rudolf observed. He scratched his head, regarding the building. “Where’s Bontrager?”
Ezekiel pointed toward the back gate.
“And Tulk’s on the road?”
All three of them nodded.
Officer Kutay’s voice squawked over the radio, booming from Rudolf’s cruiser. “They’re shooting again! They’re shooting!”—just as a flurry of bursts went up to the west.
Everyone listened intently.
Then more from the radio: talk of “an animal under attack” near Cry in the Dark …
Cry in the Dark was a seasonal (Halloween) theme park open for most of October. Featuring hayrides, a haunted barn and the not-so-impressive hall of mirrors, the park had most recently added a new attraction: the Blue Ball Devil Maze—a complex labyrinth chopped out of two square acres of withering Indian corn.
Beaumont grabbed his receiver. “I’m on it.”
Behind him, Ezekiel Stoltzfus snapped to attention. “What?”
“An attack?” said Grabers.
“In Ronks,” added James, turning away.
As quickly, Beaumont got into his cruiser.
In the headlights, Grabers and both of the boys were already moving to bridle their pacers.
Ronks was fifteen minutes away by buggy.
Beaumont was there in three.
O
n the way, he attempted to gather more details, but only wound up in the gray as the dispatcher, given no further information, repeated: “-*an animal under attack*-”
Before he could make any sense of it, Cry in the Dark loomed up to the side of the road, and, before it, a crowd pointing urgently west. Beaumont took his cue. He pulled onto Dillerville Pike and gunned his engine. He rolled up a hill between plots of forest. On rounding a bend, he nearly flattened them: five or six figures with painted faces, blocking the road in a pitted huddle. They seemed to be kicking the shit out of something. Rudolf screeched to a fish tailed halt. The figures scattered into the woods.
A deposit was left behind on the road. It looked like a heap of quivering rugs. Beaumont got out of his cruiser, holding his pistol in one hand and casting the beam of his flashlight across the road with the other. The beam moved over a mound of fur on the pavement. It seemed to be whimpering lightly.
Rudolf looked closer, not understanding. He poked the deposit of fur with his flashlight.
“Ow!” came a voice in response. “Take it easy!” A bloodied face turned into the beam.
He was seventeen, maybe. His nose had been bloodied. He was wearing a suit.
“What are you, a cop?” he said.
Beaumont took hold of the young man’s collar and hoisted him, groaning in pain, upright. Something fell to the pavement between them. Not letting go, Rudolf looked down.
A rubber mask lay torn on the road.
“What?” Beaumont looked closer, squinting.
“I work for the park,” the kid announced. His tone was notably apprehensive.
Beaumont nudged the mask with his foot. It turned over. The face of a wolf looked up at him.
“Listen,” the kid pleaded desperately now. “Just call my boss. He’ll tell you about it.”
Beaumont unhooked his nightstick.
“My father’s a doctor. He won’t …”
A blow to the side of his skull put him back on the pavement, unconscious.
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