Tales from the Crossroad, Volume 1

by Tom Piccirilli

  “Really, that doesn’t matter anymore.”

  The three figures that had climbed from their hidden corners continued forward, faces unclear as they approached. His eyes were focused, everything else was distinct, except for their faces. They came at him sort of frolicking, what they used to call gamboling when people would do that sort of thing. Silently easing nearer. Features dim and clouded, but their names somehow known to him.

  Pia.

  Faust.

  Hayden.

  The closer they got, the more obscured their features became. Pace stepped out in front of Dr. Brandt. Change fell to the floor and she said, “Will?”

  “I think we should leave.”

  “What?”

  “The fish cannery is going to have to do without me.”

  She turned and the three figures slid past him and were on her. Pace thought, This is why she was afraid, she must’ve been expecting this. He shook his head. But if that were true, then why didn’t she let Ernie escort her? Why didn’t she just give me a train ticket to the halfway house and drop me off at the curb?

  Dr. Brandt let out a shout—a strangely feminine sound that was part annoyance, part indignation. He threw a wild punch and missed all three of the intruders, no easy achievement considering how close they were to him. Somebody took one of his wrists and somebody else took the other.

  “My God,” Pia said. “He’s so slow.”

  “He’s not going to be any good to us in this state,” Faust said. “Our father who art inhibited.”

  “He can hear you just fine though,” Pace told them.

  Hayden twisted Pace’s arm. “There was a time when nobody could put a hand on you, if you didn’t want it there.”

  “When was that?” Pace asked, genuinely curious.

  “You were stupid to let them do this to you.”

  “I think I might have to agree.”

  He looked at where the guy’s nose would probably be, waiting for his hands to snap out and break it, but they didn’t. He expected Dr. Brandt to scream or start speaking in that cold, indifferent way, but she didn’t. He couldn’t figure out what was going on and kept hoping something else would happen that he wouldn’t be responsible for. Something that might reveal a truer nature.

  Faust almost came into view for a moment before fading again. The faceless figure approached, inch by inch. Without features it managed to peer into Pace’s eyes and say, “Ah, our father who art indifferent. I think they may have cured him.”

  ALSO FROM TOM PICCIRILLI & CROSSROAD PRESS

  Novels:

  Short Ride to Nowhere

  Nightjack

  The Dead Past – A Felicity Grove Mystery

  Novellas:

  All You Despise

  Fuckin' Lie Down Already

  Loss

  The Fever Kill

  The Nobody

  The Last Deep Breath

  Frayed

  You'd Better Watch Out

  Unabridged Audiobooks:

  Nightjack – Narrated by Chet Williamson

  Gerard Houarner

  BIO:

  Gerard Houarner works by day at a psychiatric institution and writes by night, mostly about the dark. Recent appearances include stories in the anthologies Indian Country Noir, Horror Library 4, Blind Swimmer, Darkness On The Edge: Dark Tales Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, ChiZine.com, and a new Max story in the Crossroads edition of The Beast That Max, first in the Resurrection Cycle.

  The Three Strangers

  By Gerard Houarner

  Previously appeared in the anthology The Last Pentacle of the Sun

  The natives were long gone, but their graves were still around. No one visited them, or even knew exactly where they were. That’s why no one saw the three strangers dressed in black climb out of the earth under the pines on a weathered hilltop on a moonless summer night.

  They weren’t native. Skin as pale as the moon, they might have been mistaken for people of European descent. Except for the glow. They were true children of the moon, rising in the absence of the one they favored as if to take its place in the next generation of night bodies. And like the moon, they had a dark side.

  The three strangers turned their backs on the wilderness and headed for the lights of a town in the near valley. Light drawn to light. Darkness repelled the blackness of night, the glitter of stars that shone but did not illuminate.

  The owls saw. And the raccoons. Ants abandoned their nests, spiders their webs. Brush withered at their heels, and leaves brightened into their Fall colors with a touch of the shoulder. A bobcat slunk away at their approach. The wood rat it had killed came back to life and skittered away.

  The three strangers weren’t quite right, but thought they were. They headed for town where, some said, things weren’t quite right but didn’t always look it, and no one cared, anyway.

  Having traveled such a long way from the place where they were born but never welcomed, all the strangers in black wanted was to come home. It seemed to them that they finally had.

  “Look, as far as I’m concerned, the black man’s been getting a free ride ever since we brought him over from Africa and introduced him to Christianity and a pair of pants,” said Willard, pounding his empty coffee cup on the table for emphasis. The impact sent ripples through his chins.

  Broker laughed and shook his head as he looked up from the paper. He’d finished his breakfast already and really should have been heading to the station, but the radio at his belt was quiet and it was Wednesday morning in Beaumont and things were just about the same as any other morning of the week, so there wasn’t much call to hurry in. His deputy, Ty, had the early rounds today, and his sister Eloise was probably just getting into the office. The Beaumont Boys’ Club was in full session, and there really was no reason to miss a gathering as comfortable and comforting as an old pair of jeans.

  “Wallace had to go ahead an' apologize,” Giffy said, not noticing Willard had only paused for breath and not actually stopped. Giffy’s eyes bulged like they did when his engine was all fired up but the train was derailed. “What the hell was that? Should have shot him in the head and be done with it. At least he would have left us whole, not crippled in the mind like he was. And why did everybody have a fit over old Strom’s yard stray? That girl went to the finest Negro college money could buy, and he took care of her Ma like any man should with what’s his.”

  Willard slipped into Giffy’s catch of breath with the practiced hand of fly fisherman picking a perfect spot between shore and currents and maybe a log or two. “Do you know how much it must have cost to bring over all those folks from Africa?” he continued, sopping up egg with savage dabs of toast. “Of course they had to work their passage off. What the hell they expect? They got to deal with the cost of a bit change. Just like we do. And you can’t say the change hasn’t done their kind some good. Where do you see them now? Mark my words, there’ll be a Black President, like it or not. You see them sitting on the Supreme Court, in charge of the Army, you see them with guns guarding the cities. And look what’s coming up: you see kids in all kinds of colors right out in the open with their folks holding hands like there didn’t use to be good honest laws against miscegenation. Pretty soon that dream of theirs is going to have them working for us at the top in the White House, and it won’t be polishing the silver, either. Don’t really know what I think about all of that. I suppose it’s all right, as long as they fly right and don’t get ideas they’re better than us. A man can take only so much change, after all. A little gratitude for saving their black asses from what’s become of Africa would go a ways in soothing my aching craw.”

  “You were born with an aching craw,” Broker said, folding his paper and sitting back so the waitress, Cindy, could clear away his plate. He put a shine on his badge with a sleeve and said, “There’s nothing no black man will ever do to make that ache go away.”

  “Yeah,” Willard said grudgingly, “but at least they could give it a damn tr
y.”

  Willard and Broker busted out in laughter while Cindy re-filled their cups. Giffy’s grin dimmed as he caught a glimpse of a kitchen worker in the back of the coffee shop. “At least they ain’t Mexican,” he said, with a half-bottle of bourbon edge to his voice.

  “Now leave that boy alone,” Cindy said, tapping the top of Giffy’s head with four fingers. “He’s legal, he’s got papers, and he’s doing a damn fine job.”

  “No better than I would.”

  “But you wouldn’t do the work he’s got to do.”

  “Damn straight I wouldn’t,” Giffy said, still staring at the dark-haired stranger as he sipped from his cup. “He just don’t have to look that way while he’s doing what he’s doing.”

  Cindy’s mouth opened and Broker could already hear her answer: how the hell is he supposed to look doing his job. A mild taint of disappointment in the liberalism creeping through town, even through his good, old buddy Willard, almost took the sweetness of his last bite of jam and butter right out of his mouth.

  The deputy’s car rolled up, lights flashing. Broker looked out the window, checked his radio, wondered why he hadn’t received a call if something had happened to make Ty turn on his lights.

  “Now, Giffy,” Willard said, “he can’t help the way he looks any more than Blacks can help their skin color, except if they marry enough whites and manage to bleach some of it off.” He slapped the table again as he laughed.

  This time Broker didn’t join him. He watched Ty come in, wishing he’d turned the damn lights off. If something had happened that shouldn’t go over the radio, those lights were sure to bring attention to it.

  Willard and Giffy were still going at it as Ty put his hand on Broker’s shoulder, leaned his long, wiry body over the table, and said to the sheriff: “A call just come in, sheriff. There’s three boys in black coming down Camden Road.”

  Willard stopped in mid-sentence and turned to Ty. “Are they our niggers?”

  “They’re white boys, as far as I know,” Ty said, in his slow way, as if he had to test the words to see if they were ripe before picking them off of the tree. “Dressed in black.”

  Giffy grabbed Ty’s forearm. “They got guns? Air support? You see any black choppers, hear any backwash? They can silence the engines, but you cans still hear–“

  ”Who called it in?” Broker said, standing up. Cindy went back behind the counter, called something into the kitchen. The Mexican disappeared.

  “Mrs. Jefferson. Said they were passing by her house without so much as a look in her direction. She called out to see if they wanted to use her phone if their car was broken down, but they didn’t answer. She didn’t like the look of them, not that early in the morning. No guns, no uniforms, just three boys, faces and hands pale as fish belly. Shoes, pants, shirts and jackets all black, even their hair. And she said they had a glow to them, like that fungus that grows on tree trunks deep in the woods.”

  “How about nail polish?” Giffy asked.

  “She didn’t say nothing about nail polish,” Ty said.

  Willard tapped the table in front of Broker. “Could be protestors. Things haven’t quieted down all the way since we ran that faggot teacher out of town.”

  “Still say we didn’t get the nest,” said Giffy.

  “We’ll have to see what’s going on,” Broker said. “Let’s take a ride.” He led Ty by the arm to the cruiser, and didn’t have to look back to know Willard and Giffy were settling the bill so they could follow. Normally he’d advise them to mind their business and let the law handle matters of the peace. But this time around, he had a feeling he’d like to have a set of witnesses he could count on, in case things got out of hand. And if the situation turned ugly, he could always count on them for back up. He was sure the deputizing from the teacher incident was still in effect.

  Eloise raised them on the car radio while they were still on their way to Camden Road.

  “We’re on a call, Eloise,” Broker said, hoping to cut off any minor disturbances. “About time you showed up for work.”

  “You better hear this,” she answered. The air crackled for a moment before she continued. “Bobby just found his sister dead when he went over after she wouldn’t answer the phone.”

  Ty pulled over and stopped the car, grabbed the mike from Willard’s hand as he was trying to figure out what to say. “I spoke to Mrs. Jefferson before you got in and she was fine.”

  There was a quaver in his voice that surprised Broker. The boy had been in the Gulf. He should’ve been used to a bit of drama. That’s why Broker hired him.

  “She’s not fine, anymore.”

  “Did he see any kids around the house?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “How about on Camden Road?”

  “Didn’t mention anything. Just about his sister. The boy’s in shock, Ty.”

  “He lives right next to her. She called in a report about three boys in black walking down the road. And he didn’t see them?”

  “I guess he doesn’t look out on empty road as much as his sister liked to, Ty. I don’t know what to tell you except she’s dead and you should be getting over there.”

  Broker took the mike away from Ty and motioned for him to get going. “We’re on our way, Eloise. Thanks for picking up the call. Get the Doc over to Mrs. Jefferson’s place. Tell him forget his black bag, just bring the camera and his recorder so he can make a report on the body.”

  Ty drove steadily to Camden Road. Willard and Giffy caught up and trailed a hundred yards behind as they headed out of the valley. Broker was glad he’d called for backup, and let his hand rest on the gun at his hip.

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky when the cruiser finally came up on the three strangers, but it seemed to Broker that it had gotten darker on Camden Road. Trees loomed overhead, though they were really set a ways back, and the grass and brush seemed to have overtaken the property fencing like the prison road gang hadn’t come by in a hundred years. And the strangers, clean, smooth, white-faced, at least, did have a kind of glow to them that stood out in the gloom, though not as bright as that forest fungus Mrs. Jefferson mentioned.

  Broker stomped down the urge to call Eloise to see if an eclipse was scheduled for today and told Ty to stop.

  The three boys in black kept on coming even as Broker pulled out the shotgun and stepped in front of the car. Ty stayed back by the radio.

  “Are you gentlemen in need of roadside assistance?” the sheriff called out. When the strangers didn’t answer, he took hold of the shotgun with both hands and said, “Is there something I can help you with?” They kept on coming, walking in syncopated rhythm with each other, without a word among them. Broker chambered a shell and said, “You’re going to have to show some identification, now, or I’m going to have to take you into town and let you straighten this mess out from a cell. Do you understand.”

  Still the strangers said nothing, and now that they were only twenty paces away, he had a cold feeling about them. He thought at first it was something to do with their eyes, that didn’t seem to have any whites to them and were all black, or the odd way their arms swung, or the clothes that were such a deep, inky blackness they hardly seemed to show a crease, wrinkle or fold. But he decided it was their faces that didn’t sit right with him, too smooth and even, like they were a bunch of retards that had fallen off an institution bus.

  The glow didn’t help any, either. He reached for the sunglasses he usually kept in his shirt pocket, remembered he’d left them in the car, put his hand up in front of his eyes as if the cruiser’s search light was aimed at him.

  Behind him, someone wept.

  Ty?

  Willard and Giffy pulled up in their truck. “You need any help, sheriff?” Willard called out while hanging out the open door on the driver’s side.

  For some reason, Broker remembered Willard as he was when they’d been boys together pulling pranks in school and in church, cutting school, sneaking into the town movie, watc
hing cousins and uncles and even their fathers planting seed in other men’s fields both light and dark, putting on sheets the way some old folks said they did in the old days. Not everything they’d done was harmless. There was that young black boy they’d lynched in the woods, for fun, not meaning to kill, only to play at the old ways and put a scare in him. And there was the time they both saw his mother with a black man, though they’d never spoken about what happened next since that day.

  Memories of Giffy came back to Broker, too, though they were lean and spare, like the man Giffy had become, the most vivid being what Giffy had done to Broker’s dog when his older sister proved herself too friendly a girl, this time with Broker.

  The sheriff found himself fighting back tears he never knew he had, nor figure where they came from.

  By the time he regained his senses, the strangers were past him. They’d gone by Ty, who hadn’t even taken his gun out of the holster. He just sat in the front seat bawling like his wife had run off.

  The strangers walked past Giffy and Willard, which was a real disappointment, since they’d always been such reliable men. This time neither one of them had anything to say.

  Doc Samuels’ car was racing up the road, but Broker couldn’t keep his gaze on what was coming. The backs of the strangers drew him, and he stared into the blackness that was deeper than the color of the clothes he’d seen from the front. It occurred to him that those fronts were nothing more than shells, like cowboy movie towns made of plywood and paint. And just like those movie towns, Broker thought, the strangers’ false faces seemed to cover up a vast empty space where no one lived, and might very well set the stage for the kind of fantasies to play out that most people watched once and never thought about or remembered again.