Ilona sniffed. “How am I supposed to get all the way up to Blairsville? Patrick ain’t about to drive down here for the likes of me.”
“Tomorrow morning I’m gonna take you up myself. I’ve arranged for Dick Crawford to fill in for me. We’ll be all right as long as more — as long as nothing comes up. Then Lorene will bring you back in a week or two, after things have calmed down.”
“I don’t like it.”
Quarles took a long drink of the sweet, strong iced tea Ilona always made. “I sure as hell don’t like the thought of you staying here,” he said. “Have you ever thought it might be somebody tryin’ to get at me?”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But there’s other things goin’ on in town, apart from folks dyin’. Take Mr. Jefferson from the bank. He’s dropped out of sight, almost. I called him today — wanted to see if any of the people killin’ themselves were in money trouble, that he knew of — and they told me at the bank he hasn’t been in for weeks. So I called his house, and he sounded funny. Sick, he said, but gettin’ better. Anyhow, he told the folks at the bank to let me know what I needed to know and it didn’t work out.”
“Sounds to me like Mr. Jefferson’s got a bad conscience.”
“He’s lost his mind.” Quarles pushed his barely touched plate away from him. “That’s what it looks like, anyhow. If I was that sister of his, I’d be getting in touch with Jefferson’s children. He needs to be taken care of. Him out there all by himself all this time and nobody seein’ about him. It ain’t right.”
“Well, he’s never earned the gratitude of too many people in Gaither,” Ilona observed. “Besides, if he’s touched in the head, it might be the best thing for him to stay by himself for a while. Some folks, when they’re sick, the best thing to do is just to let them alone to heal up. I don’t think it’s so terrible for old Mr. Jefferson to stay home if he’s feelin’ poorly.”
“But there’s other things besides Mr. Jefferson, I don’t know, things that just don’t seem right. The town’s got so much trouble right now, and for somebody to be devilin’ us that way looks suspicious.”
“Are you sure it’s anybody?”
“What do you mean?”
“You say you don’t think it was Harmon Presley’s ghost. Are you sure we really saw somebody? That we didn’t just imagine it was somebody lookin’ in the window that night?”
Quarles clinked the ice in his glass, then set the glass down on the table. “There was somebody there, all right. It wasn’t a reflection, and I don’t have hallucinations. Nor you don’t. Somebody was standin’ on our porch lookin’ in.”
“But that doesn’t make sense, Sam. Where would anybody have gone to? There’s no place to run but the front yard, and there’s no place to hide out there. And why would anybody just come up on the porch and look in at us, anyhow?”
“I don’t know all that. Maybe it was just to scare us. Maybe somebody’s got somethin’ against me, and they’re tryin’ to work at me through stuff like that fellow who looked in through our window, tryin’ to scare me away from investigatin’ something. But somebody did look through our window.”
“Harmon Presley.”
Quarles slapped the table so hard his tea fell over. “It was not Harmon Presley!”
“Tea in your lap.” Ilona got up, came back with a wet cloth, industriously cleaned up the spilled tea. “What are you going to do without me here to pick up after you and do for you?” she asked.
Quarles, recognizing his victory in her rhetorical question, did not bother to reply.
3
It was a week of clouds, rain, and a curious, dead calm. From Monday through Thursday some rain fell every day, and from the dark, ragged, swagging clouds that sulked over Gaither lightning fell and thunder rolled. A tension built in the air every afternoon as the air seemed to grow thicker and wetter and warmer — the temperatures by two o’clock were always eighty or better. It was weather to make people park as close as possible to stores, to send them scurrying head-down on their errands.
It made them think of other weathers in other years. There had been a terrible April more than twenty years before when the morning had broken dark as the shadow of God, and toward eight o’clock there had come a roaring as if a gigantic freight train were pounding across heaven. It was the sound of a tornado, and it nearly obliterated the neighboring town of Gainesville — two hundred dead in the twinkling of an eye. And two years later, a smaller tornado had ripped the outskirts of Gaither, killing children and teachers at a school, ripping the roof off a pair of chicken houses and showering the astonished countryside with three hundred white Leghorns, most of them alive but dazed.
Terrible things could come out of a warm-weather sky, and people in Gaither did not like to look at the ominous purple-gray teats of cloud hanging over them.
Attendance at the ShadowShow fell, despite the new attraction. People were nervous about being away from home in such weather, and there was something daunting about the prospect of being in a movie house just in case a tornado should strike. People had been told from the pulpit often enough that movies were sinful. They wondered, What would happen if I were in the theater and a tornado came and the building fell in and I died?
I’d have to stand in front of the throne of the Almighty God, Jehovah the Lord of Hosts, and He would look down at me and say, “Where were you when you died?”
And I would have to say, “Well, Mr. God, to tell you the God’s honest truth, I was in the aisle seat about five rows back in the ShadowShow Theater, and the roof hit me. And I sure am sorry, Mr. God, sir.”
But it wouldn’t do any good, not if you believed the ministers. God would probably pull a lever or something and you’d fall — zip! — right through the golden trapdoor in the floor of heaven and the next thing you knew, you’d be down in hell. And if the ministers were really right, you could watch movies as long as you wanted then, because everybody knew that the Hollywood stars went straight to perdition as soon as they checked out. But you wouldn’t enjoy the movies then, no, sir.
So you kept pretty close to home, promising yourself that you were going to be good and not go to the theater at all anymore until the weather cleared up.
Andy McCory showed the cartoon and the short subject and the movie of each performance, even though sometimes the audience consisted of only five people. Mr. Badon did not come in all that week, though according to Andy he had telephoned on Wednesday to instruct Andy to pay the employees. Andy would do this on Friday, from the cashbox, counting out even his own pay meticulously. He would take not a penny more than was due him. He had a growing feeling that pay in other form was coming nearer and nearer, and he was willing to wait.
But Friday was the end of the week, and the days before that brought foreboding and a growing unease. Mostly, that stormy week, people stayed home in the afternoons and evenings, watching TV (the new shows weren’t due until next week, and they had to content themselves with reruns until then) or listening to the radio. If you liked country and western music, you could be regaled by Jim Edwards and Maxine and Bonnie Brown singing “I Heard the Bluebirds Sing” or old Jim Reeves singing “Four Walls.” If you liked more sophisticated fare, there was Jane Morgan offering “Fascination” or Patti Page with “Old Cape Cod.” The younger, wilder set listened to Huey Smith’s “Rockin’ Pneumonia and Boogie-Woogie Blues” or wild man Jerry Lee Lewis attacking a keyboard and proclaiming there was a “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”
Radio, however, wasn’t really the answer, not with electricity crackling in the clouds and popping over the speaker. Most people in Gaither just went to bed early and tried to sleep. Some of them, families or friends of the dead, went to funerals, stood by soggy graves in a pouring rain, and wondered what was happening to this little town, but no one really put the thought into speech. No one could have found an answer if the question had been asked.
The Williams funeral was maybe the worst. Delayed by three autopsies, i
t was finally held on a Wednesday, and a lot of the families who attended took their children out of school so they could come, too. Harmony Baptist Church was packed, people jammed hip to hip in the pine pews and even standing in the aisles at the rear. In the humid heat of the afternoon, the cardboard fans (furnished to the church by the Detterley Funeral Home, even though the Loveland Funeral Home was in charge of the actual service) fluttered like the wings of a thousand butterflies. The sanctuary smelled like ferns and peppermint chewing gum, and at the front, just before the altar, were three gun-metal gray coffins, identical except in size.
It would have been possible to open Mr. Williams’s coffin and even Johnny’s for the Last Look, but Mrs. Williams’s was out of the question. The violence had been too thorough for any of Mr. Loveland’s trained morticians to repair sufficiently for that, and after consultation it was decided that a closed-coffin service was best.
Some of the children got the idea that it was like the funeral of the Three Bears, with a papa-sized coffin, a mama-sized coffin, and a wee little baby coffin, and these children got the giggles early, quickly suppressed. The songs played by Mrs. Vessey at the beginning of the services weren’t as lively as those the congregation could hear on the radio, but they summed up the purpose and excuse for the ritual: “Amazing Grace,” “Precious Memories,” and “Coming Home.”
The minister, Mr. Skelton, spoke haltingly of the lives and the baffling, terrifying way in which they had been cut short. He began to weep before he had finished reading the Bible verses (the Twenty-third Psalm, and Job’s exultant cry that he knew his Redeemer lived), and soon the whole congregation joined in, grown women and men whooping with sobs and little children screaming in baffled but frightened sympathy. The adults wept because they had known Mr. Williams and his wife, because they thought themselves no better or worse than the deceased, because they saw in the terrible murders and suicide a sickening reminder of their own fragility and mortality. The children wept because their parents scared them by their own weeping. Before long only the first four or five rows of mourners could even hear the preacher’s voice.
Mrs. Woodley, who had lived across the street from the Williamses for twenty years, got it in her head that the little boy was still alive in his coffin. She was sure she saw the lid move up fractionally and pictured the child, arms braced, pushing up against the silken lining. He could budge the lid only a little, poor thing, because it was screwed shut already. This notion terribly took hold of Mrs. Woodley’s imagination until she was screaming more than crying. She finally had to get up and stagger outside to get away from the awful, suffocating feeling that he was alive and trying to get out.
She saw Mr. Loveland of the funeral home on the porch of the church. Mrs. Woodley hesitated only a moment before she went up to him and put one white-gloved hand on his arm. “Mr. Loveland,” she said, her voice still raw from crying, “I believe that little boy is still alive.”
“He’s gone to a better world, ma’am,” said Mr. Loveland, misunderstanding.
“No, he’s trying to get out,” Mrs. Woodley insisted. “Please, before you bury them, won’t you open up the casket and just look at him?”
“Ma’am, I don’t need to do that. That little boy is dead in body.”
“I know I saw him trying to open his lid.”
“Ma’am, his neck was broke. And besides he — he can’t be alive.”
“Mr. Loveland, I don’t want to have to go to the police, but I warn you, I will.”
Mr. Loveland, who wore a habitual expression of calm, dignified concern, began to look a little panicky. “Ma’am, I tell you that little boy is dead. He really is. Take my word.”
“I know what I saw.” Mrs. Woodley looked around. “Where is the sheriff? He should be here somewhere. I’ll show you.”
Mr. Loveland grabbed her by the arm. “Ma’am,” he said in a low voice, “the little boy doesn’t have any blood left in him. We pumped it out and put in formaldehyde. And we took out his insides, ma’am. We embalmed him. You can’t be alive if you’re embalmed.”
A second man, a tall, mournful-countenanced man in a rusty black suit, had eased out the door and stood staring at her intently. Another man, Mrs. Woodley thought, feeling herself outflanked and defeated by superior numbers already. Her fear and anguish quickly transformed themselves into anger.
“You men think you know everything,” said Mrs. Woodley, and she turned away and walked a mile and a half home, through constant rain.
4
The world rolled on despite everything. Saturday brought autumn and a job for Alan. His father telephoned him from the store at nine-thirty and asked if, since the last time he had been rewarded with free passes, he wanted to make another delivery to Mr. Badon. Alan, in the middle of compiling a notebook of ideas gleaned from library and paperback books, agreed, but without much enthusiasm. His own sleep was beginning to be interrupted by dreams born of his reading: murder, ghosts, malevolent creatures from beyond reality.
Already the Blue Horse spiral notebook was nearly half full of scribbled references, notes, and quotations. No pattern had emerged: it was like the crazy quilt he slept under in the winter, gaudy and garish and somehow a whole, but without discernible design. He had learned a great deal about folk beliefs and folk bugaboos, of succubi and incubi, of astral travel, wraiths, and apparitions of the living. He had read of Sawney Bean, whose entire family had gone cannibal with him, and of the butcher of Düsseldorf, whose specialty was the murder of children. He had followed the career of the fictional Dracula but also had learned of the real Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, a fierce warrior and bloodthirsty leader who had once had the caps of two impertinent ambassadors nailed to their heads. Through it all he seemed to glimpse something not quite in focus, something closer to home... He resolved to let Miss Lewis read over his notes as soon as he saw her again. For the time being, this Saturday morning, he put his books back on the shelf below his night table and carefully hid the notebook beneath his underwear in the third drawer of his chest of drawers.
Alan rode his bike into town under an unsettled sky, partly cloudy but at least presaging no more rain. He saw the usual activity around the Square, pickup trucks loaded with farm families, clusters of men on the benches, talking, women window-shopping along the streets just off the Square. Yet somehow the scene lacked life, as if everyone were a little tentative, a bit unsure.
The stationery Mr. Badon had ordered had finally come in, five huge, heavy boxes of it. Alan managed to heft it all but he was staggering by the time he crossed the street and had to put it all down just beside the ticket booth of the theater. It was only ten o’clock, and the kiddie matinee — a Roy Rogers western today, plus cartoons and a serial — didn’t start until noon. He knocked on the door, and when no one answered, he pushed tentatively. The door swung open.
Having put the five boxes down, Alan found he could no longer pick them up, at least not all at once. He dragged them all into the lobby of the theater, though, and got three of them into his arms. “Hello?” he called out, his voice echoing.
The lights were out, but enough filtered in from the cracks in the doors and the little round windows for him to see the stair. He went that way and climbed the stairs carefully, not being able to see his feet. At the turning he noticed a light switch in the wall, one of the old-fashioned kind with two round push buttons, top one for “on” and bottom one for “off.” Grunting, he elbowed the top button and a row of dim incandescent lights came on overhead, each bulb inset into the ceiling and shining through a round frosted pane of glass. Alan kneed and juggled the boxes the rest of the way up.
The office door was closed. He put the boxes down beside it and knocked, but no one answered. For a few seconds he stood there wondering what to do. He did not like the feeling of being alone in this cavernous building, the sensed emptiness of the auditorium not far away. He knocked on the door behind him, too, the one marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, but no one answered. When he tried the office
door it was locked. The other door opened to reveal the projection booth, a cluttered narrow room dominated by three huge projectors, two of them aimed through small windows toward the screen, the third pushed out of the way against the right-hand wall. Round aluminum film cans were rolled into a kind of rack, and clipped-off ends of film littered the floor.
Out of curiosity, Alan picked up a handful. He couldn’t see in the room — the only light came from the small bulbs in the hall — so he stepped back outside. Holding the pieces of film up against the ceiling light, he saw that he had a piece of I Was a Teenage Werewolf, a shot of the boy’s face looking worried. There were other snippets that he did not recognize, but he also had a color Bugs Bunny (the opening of a cartoon, with the rabbit’s cheerful face superimposed on the Warner Bros. logo). Well, he thought, they were just in the floor. Nobody’s going to miss them.
He thrust the pieces of film into his pocket and went down for the other two boxes. He brought them upstairs, too, and stacked them on top of the first three. Then, his job done, he went down the hall to the stair and descended. He paused at the landing to click the lights out. He took four steps down in the sudden dark and ran into someone.
“Ah,” the man said. “The son of the bookseller, I think.”
For a second Alan was too startled to breathe, let alone speak. The man had a hand on his arm. He turned him easily and sent him back upstairs. The lights came on again. Mr. Badon smiled at Alan.
“I’m glad I didn’t miss you,” he said.
“I — my dad sent me over with your stationery,” Alan gasped out finally.
“Oh. Good, good. Yes, there it is outside my door. Would you be kind enough to move it into my office for me, young man?”
“Sure.” Even though he was breathing harder than he ever had after pedaling his Schwinn up Rainey Hill.
Mr. Badon put his hand on the doorknob.
“It’s lock — ” Alan began.
The knob turned, and Mr. Badon pulled the door open. “Just put them all on the desk, please.”
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