Helltown

by Jeremy Bates

  “I trained with Chinese Buddhist monks.”

  “Nice try. Judo’s Japanese.”

  “What do Chinese monks practice?” Mandy asked.

  “Kung fu,” Steve said.

  “Well, maybe the Chinese monks Jenny trained with also practiced judo too.”

  Jeff’s wolf howl sputtered into chuckles. He began shaking his head.

  “What?” Mandy said, planting her fists on her hips.

  “No comment,” he said, shooting Steve a this-is-what-I-deal-with-everyday look.

  “Hey,” Mandy said. “Shouldn’t we put our Halloween costumes on?”

  Everyone agreed and went to the BMW’s trunk. Steve scrounged through his backpack for the white navy cap he’d brought, found it at the bottom of the bag, and tugged it on over his head.

  He heard a zipper unzip behind him. He started to turn around only to be told by Mandy to stop peeking.

  “Peeking at what?” he said.

  “I’m changing,” Mandy said.

  “Right there?”

  “Hey, bro, stop perving on my girl,” Jeff said, eyeing Steve up and down: the white navy cap, the red pullover, the pale trousers. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

  “Gilligan,” Steve said.

  Jeff guffawed and turned his attention to Jenny, who was slipping on a pair of cat ears to go with her black eye mask and bowtie. “Come on, help me out,” he said to her. “A dog? Wait, a mouse? Hold on—someone who is completely fucking unoriginal?”

  “What are you?” Steve asked him.

  Jeff shrugged out of his pastel blue blazer and yellow necktie—he had come straight from work to pick Steve and Jenny up out front NYU’s Greenberg Hall—and exchanged them for a black leather jacket. He held his arms out in a ta-da type of way.

  “No idea,” Steve said.

  “Michael Knight! You know, from that Knight Rider show.” He whistled. “Sexy mama!”

  Steve turned to find Mandy adjusting her boobs inside a skintight orange bodysuit with a plunging neckline. Accentuating this were shiny orange boots, yellow tights, and a feisty yellow wig with black highlights. In the center of her chest was the ThunderCats logo: a black silhouette of a cat’s head on a red background.

  “Cheetara,” she said, smiling hopefully.

  Noah, Austin, and Cherry were approaching from Noah’s green Jeep Wrangler, appearing and disappearing in the swiftly morphing clouds of mist. Austin, carrying an open bottle of beer, was in the lead. He’d shaved the sides of his head and styled the middle strip of hair into a Mohawk a year or so ago. With his satellite ears and angular face, however, he looked more like Stripe from Gremlins rather than a punk rocker. A flock of crows, tattooed in black ink, encircled his torso, originating at his navel and ending on the left side of his neck, below his ear. Now only a couple of the birds were visible, seeming to fly up out of the head hole cut into the cardboard box he wore. Condoms were taped all over box, some taken out of the packages and filled with a gluey substance that surely couldn’t be semen.

  “You get one guess each,” Austin told them, tipping the beer to his lips.

  “A homeless bum,” Steve said.

  “A total jackass,” Jeff said.

  “Homework,” Mandy said.

  Austin frowned at her. “Homework?”

  “That box is a desk, right?”

  “Right—I dressed up as homework.”

  “Don’t keep us in suspense,” Jeff said.

  “A one-night stand, mate!”

  Steve and Jeff broke into fits. After a moment Mandy laughed hesitantly. Then she said “Oh!” and laughed harder.

  “Gnarly, hey?” Austin said, smiling proudly. “So, how the fuck is everyone?”

  “Not as good as you apparently,” Jeff said.

  “This is my first beer. Right, Cher?”

  “I’ve lost count,” Cherry said. She was perhaps five feet on tip toes, though her teased hair gave her a couple more inches. Jeff called her Mighty Mouse, which always ticked her off. She’d grown up in the Philippines, but moved to the States to work as a registered nurse a few years ago. She had nutmeg skin, sleepy sloe Asian eyes, a cute freckled nose, and the kind of sultry lips that would look good sucking a lollipop on the cover of Vogue magazine, or blowing an air-kiss to a sailor shipping off.

  Noah joined Steve and took a swig from a bottle of red wine. He was the polar opposite of Austin: wavy dark hair, unassuming good looks, mellow, disciplined. Even more, he was an up-and-coming sculptor. His first exhibit a couple months back had been well-received by critics, and he’d sold a few pieces to boot.

  “You a boxer?” Steve said to him, referring to the black shoe polish he’d smeared around his left eye. He’d also drawn a large P in black marker on the chest of his white long-sleeved shirt.

  “A black-eyed pea, dude.” Noah nodded at Austin and Cherry, who had gravitated toward Jeff and the others, and said, “Those two are a nightmare together.” He was speaking quietly so only Steve could hear.

  “Fun drive?” Steve said.

  “How about I drive you and Jenny back. Jeff can deal with them in his car. We almost crashed into an eighteen-wheeler when Austin was getting into that stupid box.” He took another swig of wine, glanced about at the trees and vegetation deadened by the mist, and said, “So what’s the deal? Why’d we pulled over here?”

  Steve shrugged. “First stop on the haunted Ohio tour.”

  “Can’t believe we agreed to this.”

  “Hey, you never know—we might actually see a ghost.”

  “Yeah, and Austin will get through the night without spewing.”

  “I’d put my money on seeing a ghost.”

  “He’s already had four or five beers in the car.”

  “Maybe he’ll puke on a ghost. That’d be something.”

  Jeff released Austin from a headlock, kicked him in the ass, and hooted with laughter when Austin whimpered. Then Jeff clapped his hands loudly, to get everyone’s attention. “Okay, listen up, ladies and dicks,” he said, immediately commanding attention the way he could. “This bridge—it’s called Crybaby Bridge, and it’s the real deal.”

  “Why do I feel like I’m being sold blue chip stock?” Jenny said.

  “Snake oil,” Mandy said.

  “I’m being one hundred percent legit,” Jeff said. “Hundreds of people have verified that this bridge is haunted. Verified, pussies. And if you want to—”

  “How’d they verify it?” Steve asked.

  “With those spectrometers the Ghostbusters use,” Noah said.

  Jeff darkened. “Will you two twits listen up?” He dangled his car keys in the air. “This is my spare set. I left the other set in the ignition.”

  “Why would you do that?” Mandy asked.

  “’Cause the legend goes, you leave your keys in the ignition, lock the car, and take off for a bit—”

  “How long?” Mandy asked.

  “I don’t know. Ten minutes.”

  “And go where?”

  “Down the bank to the river, I guess. Fuck, Mandy, who gives a shit? We just have to be out of sight of the car. Then we wait ten minutes. When we come back, the car should be running.”

  “You’re serious?” Steve said.

  “As a snake.” Jeff stuffed the spare keys in his pocket and started down the bank to the river.

  Steve glanced at Noah, who shrugged.

  “As a snake,” Noah said, and followed.

  CHAPTER 2

  “It’s Halloween, everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”

  Halloween (1978)

  Thick colonies of blood-red chokecherries and bracken fern and other shrubbery overran the bank, so Steve couldn’t see where he stepped. He lost his footing twice on the uncertain terrain, but didn’t fall. He called back to the others to be careful. A second later Austin stampeded past him, his arms pin-wheeling. Steve was certain his momentum was going to propel him onto his face. However, he crashed into Jeff’s back—on purpo
se, it seemed—which brought him to an abrupt halt, his beer sloshing everywhere.

  “Thanks, mate,” Austin said jocularly, slapping Jeff on the shoulder and sucking on the foaming mouth of the bottle. Lately he’d been adopting a British accent when he was drunk because he got off on saying words like “lad” and “mate” and “geezer.”

  Jeff scowled. “I’m giving you the bill for the dry cleaning.”

  “Fancy rich chap like you can pony up a couple bucks.”

  Steve stumbled down the last few feet and stopped beside Jeff, who had produced a mickey of vodka from the inside pocket of his now beer-stained jacket. Jenny appeared next, emerging from the fog like a wraith. She was moving slowly, cautious of where she stepped. Her leather pants clung to her long legs, the black elastic top to her small breasts, outlining the triangular cups of her bra. She frowned at the vegetation as she passed through it and said, “I hope there wasn’t any poison ivy in there. I got it once as a kid. It bubbles between your fingers.”

  Steve said, “That’ll make gross anatomy interesting.”

  “I know, right? No one will want us on their dissection team if we can’t hold a scalpel.”

  “Yo, nerds,” Jeff told them, “check it out.” He pointed to the bridge’s piers and abutments. “That’s the foundation from the original bridge.”

  “The original one?” Mandy said, pushing through the last of the ferns. Then, higher pitched: “Oh shoot! My tights!” A good-three inch tear had appeared in the yellow Spandex high on her upper right thigh, revealing white flesh beneath. “Stupid branch!”

  “Are you wearing underwear?” Jeff asked.

  “Jeff!”

  “I can’t see any.”

  “Stop it!”

  “Anywho,” Jeff said, “the original bridge was an old wooden thing that washed away a while back during a flood. This one replaced it.”

  “Isn’t that bad news for your ghost?” Steve said, trying to ignore Mandy, who was fussing over the tear and inadvertently making it bigger.

  “What do you mean?” Jeff said.

  “Ghosts haunt old places. Once something’s gone, they’re gone.”

  “You’re an expert on hauntings now?”

  “When was the last time you heard of a ghost haunting something new? You don’t go out and buy a new Ford and find it comes with a poltergeist in the trunk.”

  “You’re blind wrong there, my dear castaway. Ghosts haunt the places where they died. The baby died here, so it haunts here. It doesn’t matter if this bridge is rebuilt a dozen times, it’s still going to haunt here.”

  “What’s so scary about a baby haunting anyway?” Austin opined. “I’m telling you, I see any baby ghost waving its spectral rattler at me, I’m gonna punt it so far downriver it’ll shit its diapers before it touches down again.”

  Steve ducked beneath the bridge and was surprised to find almost no fog there at all, as if the area was somehow off limits. And was it cooler? Or was that his imagination? He took a box of matches from his pocket and ignited a match off his thumb, illuminating the sandy loam before him.

  “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…” Austin sang.

  Ignoring him, Steve troll-walked forward. The dried riverbed was littered with dead leaves that had blown beneath the bridge. He heard someone following him and turned to find Jenny there.

  “Where are you going, mister?” she said, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears.

  “Seeing what’s under here,” he said.

  “I imagine we would have heard the baby by now if there was one.”

  “I’m expecting a Garbage Pail-ish thing.”

  “Cindy Lopper.”

  “Bony Joanie.” She paused. “Hey, where’s the fog?”

  “Strange, I know.”

  The bridge was less than twenty feet in diameter, and Steve could make out the other side where the inky shadows gave to the mist-shrouded night once more.

  He didn’t see the baby shoes until he was nearly on top of them.

  They were newish, white, and so small they would only fit a newborn.

  “What is it?” Jenny asked, moving up beside him. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “Baby shoes!”

  “Some kids probably left them there to propagate the legend.”

  Jenny studied the ground ahead of them, then turned and studied the ground behind them. “There aren’t any other footprints except for ours.”

  She was right, he realized. “Guess they raked them away.”

  “It doesn’t look like the sand’s been raked.”

  “Well, a baby ghost didn’t leave its shoes here, Jen.”

  “Doesn’t this bother you, Steve? Seriously—look at them! They’re just here, in the middle of perfectly undisturbed sand.”

  “Ow!” The flame had winnowed its way down the matchstick to Steve’s fingertips. He tossed the match away. He lit another and said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “I’ve seen one before,” Jenny stated.

  “Where?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  “When?”

  “A long time ago. I was just a kid. I woke up in the middle of the night, and a face was staring in my window.”

  “Maybe it was a neighborhood perv?”

  “My bedroom was on the second floor.”

  “Did your bedroom face the street?”

  “It did, as a matter of fact.”

  “Maybe it was the reflection of a streetlamp?”

  “I don’t think there were streetlamps on my street.”

  “It could have been anything, Jen. That’s the thing with ghosts and UFOs and stuff like that—just because you can’t immediately explain them doesn’t mean they’re real.”

  “It doesn’t mean they’re not real either. I’m simply keeping an open mind.”

  “I’ve spent the last year cutting open dead people and sorting through their insides. I’ve yet to find any evidence of a lurking spirit. Have you?”

  “We share different metaphysical beliefs. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Not so fast,” Steve said. “I’m having a hard time believing an intelligent person such as yourself, a future doctor no less, believes in the boogie monster.”

  “I don’t believe in the boogie monster, Steve.”

  “You said you saw something peeking in your window. That’s what boogie monsters do, isn’t it?”

  “I said a ghost. They’re two very different things.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, a ghost, whatever. But can you tell me why a ghost would want to peek in your window? I mean, you’d have to be a borderline megalomaniac to think something made the effort to cross dimensions just to spy on you when you were sleeping.”

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.”

  “Shakespeare’s not going to bail you out of this one, babe.”

  Jenny cocked an eyebrow. “Babe?”

  Steve frowned. “What?”

  “I’m not a ‘babe,’ thank you very much.”

  “Jeff calls Mandy babe.”

  “Maybe Mandy likes being a babe, but I haven’t spent the last year of my life, studying eighty hours a week, to become someone’s possession.”

  “Possession?”

  “Calling a woman a babe diminishes her to a younger and therefore more controllable state—so, yes, a possession.”

  “So what am I supposed to call you?”

  “There are plenty of other terms of affection that don’t have the same degrading connotations, but I can’t help you there. It’s your job as my partner to choose one. You have to think of something that represents the complexities of my personality.”

  “I’ll give it a hard think, princess.”

  “And it shouldn’t be condescending.”

  Steve and Jenny continued to the far side of the bridge. When Steve emerged from beneath it and was standing erect again, he stretched his back, popping a joint in the process.

  Jenny, still crouching next to him, cupped her hands to
her mouth, and shouted: “People! There’re some rad baby shoes under the bridge, if you’re interested!”

  “We’re shaking!” Jeff called back.

  “For real!” Jenny replied.

  Austin said something, though Steve couldn’t hear what he said.

  “Nice friend you have,” Jenny said.

  “What did he say?” Steve asked.

  “Not something I’d care to repeat,” she said, and started up the bank.

  Steve followed, grasping shrubs and saplings for purchase, his glasses bumping against his chest on their cord. At the top, parked on the shoulder of the road, Jeff’s BMW was exactly how they’d left it: dark, empty, clearly not idling.

  “So much for the legend,” he said.

  The night was cold and getting colder, and Noah wished he’d brought a jacket, considering all he wore on his upper body was the shirt with the hand-drawn P. To make matters worse, an icy wind had begun to blow. It came and went in unpredictable gusts and was strong enough to tousle everyone’s hair and to rattle the skeletal branches of the nearby trees.

  Shivering, Noah unfolded his arms from across his chest and produced from his pocket a joint he’d rolled earlier. He was not only cold but restless from the three-hour drive from New York City and wanted to unwind. Moreover, he had a feeling they were going to be in for one long slog of a night. Getting high would be the only way to make it remotely interesting. He wondered again why he had agreed to come. He wasn’t superstitious. In fact, ghosts and ghouls and all that jive didn’t interest him in the least. He didn’t watch horror movies, didn’t read Stephen King. Growing up, he hadn’t even liked Halloween. He’d appreciated the candy, sure, but the idea of witches on broomsticks and skeletons lurking in closets and Frankenstein monsters eating brains never did anything for him. He guessed he simply didn’t have a scary bone, the way some uptight people didn’t have a funny bone.

  Noah sparked the joint, took a couple tokes, and passed it to Mandy, who was standing to his right. She took a mini puff and blew the smoke out of her mouth quickly, probably not inhaling. Noah had to make a conscious effort not to stare at her tits, which were practically bursting out of her top. He thought Jeff was crazy for not appreciating her the way he should. She was drop-dead gorgeous, a real sweetheart too, a rare combination. And she put up with Jeff’s bullshit. Someone “more on his level”—a phrase he’d been using a lot lately to describe his ideal woman—likely wouldn’t. They’d be clashing nonstop. In fact, they’d be just like Austin and Cherry, a recipe for disaster, each with one eye constantly on the big red nuke button.