“But we are gonna reopen,” Buster said.
“Oh, sure,” O’Hara muttered.
Buster stood in the doorway and watched O’Hara and the others scatter. It was a cold, dark Saturday outside, the temperature only forty at eleven A.M., and the clouds overhead seemed pregnant with more rain. Buster shivered and locked himself in the mill. He felt like an ant crawling through a fifty-five-gallon oil drum.
But he made his rounds faithfully, until late that afternoon. That was when, once again on the first floor of the mill, he passed by the closed doors of that freight elevator again and heard something behind them, something moving. Something, from the sound of it, trying to get out.
Buster backed away. He went down the hall that led to the big front doors of the mill, and he kept the doors of the elevator in sight all the while. His back hit the wood just as he saw the twin elevator doors heave apart an inch, fall together, move two inches apart again.
He spun and frantically fitted his key into the lock. Behind him the elevator rattled open. Something stepped out, something that made wet, sucking, squishy sounds when it walked. It staggered toward him.
The key turned.
Buster flew from the mill. He never looked back.
If anything left and headed for Ransom Ridge, Buster did not see it.
2
Ilona Quarles came back home. Her husband looked ill — though he insisted the flu had passed him by. But he had lost weight, had gained haggard new lines in his face and new white streaks in his hair. He sat at the kitchen table with her on that Saturday and tried to put his fears into words.
“It’s more than murder and suicide,” he told her. “Right now I’ve got four or five missing persons. A Yates woman that works for the Advocate; she’s been gone for weeks. The little Johnson girl, who lived next door to the Williamses — she’s dropped out of sight, too. And there are more. Things like that just don’t happen in Gaither, Ilona. It’s something more than I can explain, and you know it.”
“I don’t care,” Ilona said. “If you knew how I’d been treated — if you want me out of Gaither, Sam Quarles, you’re gonna have to take me out yourself.”
“I can’t.”
“Then I’m staying right here with you.” Ilona looked around the kitchen with a contemptuous gaze. “Just look at the mess you been livin’ in. Take me a week just to get things clean.”
Quarles sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Well, you should be.” Impulsively, Ilona reached across to take his hand in both of hers. “Oh, Sam, I know there’s something wrong here in town. But I’d rather be here with you than anywhere else. You know that.”
The sheriff nodded and squeezed her hand. “I was just startin’ to breathe easier. Just for a while there I thought it might be over.” He shook his head. “But it ain’t. Now it’s Cliff Warner.”
Ilona’s eyes widened at the mayor’s name. “What?”
“Yeah, Cliff Warner. He’s gone like Mr. Jefferson did a while back. Locked himself in his house and won’t come out. His wife came to me for help, but I couldn’t give her any. She’s moved out on him now, moved over to Cumming with her eldest boy, I hear. Warner won’t even answer the phone. He’s gone crazy or something, and I don’t know what caused it.”
“But Mr. Jefferson’s better, isn’t he?”
Quarles yawned. “I reckon. He still ain’t comin’ in to work at the bank, but he’s been out and about. He went to — ” Quarles broke off for a moment. When he resumed, it was as if he were speaking to himself, not to Ilona: “He went to visit Cliff Warner a couple of weeks back. Cliff said he came in, had a couple of drinks, and left. Acted strange and talked kinda funny, Cliff said, and laughed a lot. Gave him a ticket to some kind of show. And now Cliff won’t come out of his house.”
Ilona pulled her hand away from him, took a sip of coffee. “People just don’t care anymore, Sam. That’s what bothers me the most. These terrible things happening, and nobody goes over to offer help the way they used to. Remember during the war how we all depended on each other? That’s all gone now. It’s awful the way people don’t care about each other anymore.”
“They’re afraid.”
“Of each other? Of people they’ve been around all their lives? How can they be afraid of each other?”
“Of something. I know how it is, Ilona. I’m afraid, too. That night we thought we saw Harm Presley outside the window — I think it was him, Ilona. I saw him again. No, don’t ask me about it. Maybe someday I’ll tell you, but not now.” Quarles got up to pace the kitchen floor. “It’s like a bad dream. It’s like we can’t wake up from it. Ghosts or monsters or some damn thing. You know what? I called up somebody not long ago, somebody I worked with before, a man in Atlanta. And I started to tell him about the ghosts, about how my jailhouse is haunted, about how nobody can even stay in the building alone for five minutes without seein’ things out of the corner of their eye. And you know what? I couldn’t say a word to him about it. I couldn’t. Not that I didn’t want to — the words just wouldn’t come out, that’s all. And I think it’s that way with almost everybody. They all know there’s something bad wrong, but most of them can’t talk about it, can’t even seem to think about it. And the few that can don’t know what to do.”
Ilona stared down at the coffee cup. “It’s going to get bad again, isn’t it, Sam?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid it is.”
“Well,” she said. “Now we’re together.”
3
On Friday evening Andy McCory had made the arrangements, had paid everyone and had given each a bonus — Beebee Venner bitched a little about it not being two full weeks’ pay, but the others shushed her — and had told everyone not to come in until November 1. “Talked to Mr. Badon, and he says it’s no sense in showin’ pictures to an empty house,” Andy had said, and the others had to agree that was true. The rain and the illness in town had dwindled their audiences to nothing. The big Halloween shock show had to be canceled.
So on Saturday, just before the kiddie matinee was scheduled to begin at noon, Andy hung the sign on the ShadowShow door:
CLOSED
PLEASE CALL AGAIN
Not long after that he came out of the theater with Mr. Athaniel Badon. Badon, walking stiffly, leaning on Andy’s arm in fact, looked older and frailer than he had before, but anyone seeing him would naturally attribute that to a touch of the flu. The two did not lock the door behind them.
Andy’s car was parked behind the theater. Badon paused beside it to look at the crimped left front fender, to touch it with thin white fingers quivering like the antennae of a pale insect. “He died?”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Knocked him up against the buildin’ down there. I didn’t hang around. Somebody found him, and they took him to the hospital but it was too late.”
“Good. You did not think to have the damage to your automobile repaired?”
Andy shrugged and grinned. “Hell, who’d notice a couple more dents in this crate? Besides, nobody saw me. It went just like you said it would.”
“Still. We’d better take my car.”
“Take your car? Where the hell is your car?”
“Around the corner.” Badon, tall and more cadaverous than ever in his black suit, turned on his heel, paused a moment as if gathering his strength, and walked down the alley. Broken glass crunched under his shoes as he passed the broken window. Have to fix that, Andy thought to himself, following.
Aloud, Andy said, “There ain’t no car parked back here. I took the trash out — ” He broke off. The new-old Zephyr was here, black and shiny, parked beyond the dustbins.
“You will drive,” Badon said, climbing in the passenger side. He settled low in the seat with a weary sigh.
“Yeah,” Andy said. He opened the driver’s door. The key was already in the ignition. “Wasn’t even locked. Anybody could of drove it away. But I guess nobody steals your car, right?”
“No one steals it,” Badon agre
ed. “We will go to a place where I have gathered our friends,” he said. He leaned back and closed his eyes. “The body is weak,” he murmured. “Your bodies are heavy as clay. They are wearisome to wear.”
Andy started the engine. “My kid’s sick,” he said.
Badon opened his eyes. A ghost of a smile played over his lips. Staring straight ahead, he murmured, “No.”
“Yeah, he — ”
“He is dead.”
Andy turned his head sharply.
“He died not an hour ago in the hospital.”
“My boy?” Andy asked, his voice choking.
“It does not matter,” Badon said. “You all die.”
Andy began to shake.
“Karen Yates is there,” Badon said. “Where we’re going.”
“Goddamn you,” Andy whispered.
“Yes. If you like. Goddamn me by all means. But you have no choice in the matter anymore, do you? Let’s go.”
Andy McCory started the car. It rolled out into the streets of Gaither, turned east, and headed for Ransom Ridge.
4
John Kirby parked at a slot in front of the theater at twenty minutes past five o’clock. He, Alan, and Ann climbed out of the car into a bleak, cold afternoon, so dark already that the streetlights around the Square had been turned on. John touched the CLOSED sign on the ShadowShow door. Then he tried the door itself and found it unlocked.
“Well,” he said.
They entered the theater in a cluster, drawing comfort from being close to each other. “Should we split up?” Kirby asked.
Alan shook his head. Ann Lewis said, “No. We ought to stay together.”
“I’d feel better that way, too.” Kirby smiled.
Andy McCory had left the houselights on. The three of them looked at the empty box office, at the vacant concession stand. They climbed the stair and peeked into the deserted theater office, into the idle projection booth. Alan thought to himself that the theater seemed different from his memory of it, shabbier somehow, empty of personality as well as of people. “It feels different. He’s not here.”
“Or he’s hiding.” Kirby, like the others, gripped a slim silver knife. He had also brought in a flashlight, but not needing it, he thrust it into his side pocket.
“We d better look in the rest rooms,” Ann said.
They went together. Alan was furiously embarrassed when they looked into the men’s, when Ann Lewis could see the urinals hanging on the wall in a row of three; and he was even more embarrassed when they went into the women’s and he saw the mysterious gray dispenser on the wall.
But the three found nothing. They tried the door beyond the men’s room and explored the long, dim corridor, illuminated by the three widely spaced and inadequate bulbs. They climbed down the spiral stair to the stage and paced the dusty space behind the blank screen. They opened the trapdoor and stood smelling the musty scent of earth.
John Kirby grimaced. “I’ll go down.” He switched on his flashlight and descended. “The smell,” he said. “Like something long dead.” The others followed him down.
They found a stain on the earth floor, roughly man-long and roughly man-shaped, a greasy black stain on the dark oiled earth and the bricks, as if something had rested there a long time. But they did not find Badon, and all climbed back up to the stage. Alan felt disappointment, but he also felt relief.
They stood in a cluster behind the screen, talking in unnecessary whispers. “Where else?” John Kirby asked.
Ann shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Alan started to speak, but afterward he never remembered what he wanted to say.
The lights went out.
Then illumination washed over them from the screen.
Shapes there, moving, without definition yet but colorful, colorful shapes.
“Don’t look!” someone yelled — was it Alan? — but too late.
They had all, involuntarily, turned toward the screen, and Ann Lewis saw herself there in lewd embrace with John Kirby, saw herself naked to the world, displayed on the screen. Yes, she thought, no, she wanted it, she didn’t want it —
She tried to close her eyes and found herself in John Kirby’s bed, next to the long warmth of him. He had an arm around her, lazily fondling one breast — she felt the gentle pressure, the teasing slip of flesh against flesh. Her nipple stood up beneath it, and gooseflesh crept across her arms. John smiled. “What’s wrong?”
She sat up, the covers falling away. She could smell the bedroom smells, the furniture polish, the sunshine smell of sheets new-washed and hung out to dry and put crisp and clean on a marriage bed. “This isn’t right,” she said. “How did we — ”
He pulled her back down, silenced her with a long kiss, and she tasted the spice of his mouth. “You had a bad dream,” he said, his breath murmuring warm into the hollow of her throat. “Just a bad dream. You tossed and turned just before you woke up. Tell me about it.”
It isn’t real
But the covers were warm around her, and his hands tender and warm on her. Through white lace curtains the window looked out into a fall morning, misty, hung with the last late leaves: and there, through the veiling curtains, across the street, she could see the prosaic face of another house. She bit her lip and tasted real pain.
but it isn’t real it isn’t
He nuzzled her, the little spines of his morning beard prickling her bare shoulder. “Come on. You can tell your husband.”
And when he spoke the words, she remembered it all, remembered it in bright colors, in Technicolor:
Speaking to him in his shop last August.
His asking her out to dinner.
Their delighted discovery of things they both loved, authors they both read.
Their shopping trip together to Atlanta on Labor Day.
His presenting her with the ring (she looked) that she wore on her left ring finger right now, the diamond that now sparkled next to a plain gold band.
The wedding, yesterday, in the Methodist church.
Last night in bed together.
It’s wrong it never happened
She remembered it all, and her heart cried out with love for him and with the pain of doubt. “Where is Alan?” she asked.
“Alan? He’s staying with his aunt and uncle this week. You know that. But he may be outside already, if that’s what you mean. Boys get up early. He’s probably down at the playground with Reese and Jack.”
“The theater — ”
He began to stroke her naked stomach slowly. “We can go tonight.”
She shook her head. “It’s closed. Everyone’s sick. People have died.”
He laughed. “What? That does it. No more champagne for you, ever, darling. That’s what comes of letting a teetotaling little Methodist have a drink.”
She closed her eyes, but she still saw everything as clearly as before. His hand stroking her stomach, just above her pubic mound, slowly, so slowly. “Jim Bascom,” she said.
“That nigger deserved to die.”
She opened her eyes.
it was John Kirby
She opened her eyes
it was Jim Bascom
She opened her eyes
it was Athaniel Badon
he had a blade in his hand, right over her stomach
With a scream and thrust Ann rolled sideways, off the bed, and fell forever.
Alan Kirby saw Molly Avery in her white, white room. The room had grown, though, had become enormous, stretched back into distance and faint blue-gray haze; and behind Mollie there milled an army of others.
Johnny Williams was there, his black and white dog Tuxedo beside him. Both grinned at Alan. And Cindy Fellows, irony in her eyes and a cigarette in her mouth. And two black men, one in funny old-fashioned clothes and the other repeatedly stroking his arms. And Mr. Ballew Jefferson, smiling, smiling. Others. Too many others.
“We’re all dead, Alan,” Mollie said. “Us and you, too. Not so bad, is it?”
&nb
sp; “No!”
“Oh, yes, we are. All of us. I’m dead, you’re dead. And you don’t feel any different, do you?”
“Shut up!”
She laughed, deep in her throat. He tried to close his eyes to the smooth tan skin, the darker nipples, the triangle of black hair, but still he saw her. “Mr. Badon is too strong, Alan. He’s always been too strong for just people like us. He’s won. He has already won. Your Mr. Tate is here somewhere.”
“No, he’s not!”
“Here he is.”
From far behind her, materializing from the mist like a specter, a tall figure in a somber black suit walked slowly forward, head bent, arms locked behind it. “We failed,” it whispered from all that distance away, and yet Alan heard the whisper clearly. “We failed and now it doesn’t matter.”
Alan shook with weeping.
The man in black came closer through the mist. It wrapped him and clung to him, concealing, revealing, as he neared. And now they were alone, not in the white room, but alone somewhere on a breathless flat expanse of bare ground, surrounded, muffled in the clinging gray mist. Closer, he came closer, his hand reaching out as though in benediction. “All my beliefs were wrong. And I misled you, too, Alan. My prayers were empty, my sins heavy on my head. And now he has you, too. You have joined us in the kingdom of the dead. I am sorry for my false teachings, Alan. My poor boy. My poor, dead boy.”
Alan fell to his knees. “No…. ”
The man in black was almost over him now, reaching for him. “My poor Alan — ”
“You’re not the preacher!”
Hands hooked to claws.
The head jerked back and away.
The mist faded.
With an inarticulate scream, Alan leaped toward the snarling figure of Athaniel Badon. The figure receded impossibly into the distance.
Alan, howling, found himself held back, blocked by a yielding but firm barrier. He snatched at it, felt his hands slide over it, and then he thought of the knife —
John Kirby felt tears streaking his face. “Mary — ?”
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