The years passed, with Alan and John Kirby two bachelors in this old house, Alan beginning to write, finally selling a story to Male, then another to Stag, at last several to magazines that didn’t make Ann Lewis blush when she bought them to read his stuff, and finally, in ‘74, his first novel. His father had pushed that book harder than any publication since the Gutenberg Bible, until Alan had complained that the only rare edition of that particular paperback would be the ones without his autograph in them.
There were two more novels in the next two years. And then, just as Alan was beginning to get serious about Janet Brown — Diane England, after trouble with her family, had left town years before, never even having finished high school — his father complained one evening of chest and arm pains. It was only a mild attack, the doctors said, and they sent him back home in a few weeks.
It was on June 18, 1976, that John and Alan sat together in the swing on the front porch, looking across the street at the house Betty and Frank Lessup had vacated for good in ‘70, when Alan’s grandmother Bolton down in Florida had died. John Kirby had said, “I think maybe tomorrow I’ll go back to work,” and had rested his chin on his chest. It took Alan a minute to realize what had happened. The paramedics told Alan it had probably been painless.
In the weeks following, Alan learned a few things about his father that he had not known. Since 1957, for instance, his father had kept a very small savings account in the Trust Bank. Even in 1976, even after nine years of collecting interest, it amounted to only a bit over one hundred dollars. It puzzled Alan for some time, until he remembered how old Mrs. Hudson, Preacher Tate’s landlady, had given his father a little cash that Tate had kept in his room. John Kirby had settled the rent bill and had banked the cash, and here it still waited for Mr. Tate’s wife, should she ever turn up. Knowing she never would, Alan gave the money to charity.
Alan sold his father’s bookshop to a national chain. He had by that time had three or four flashbacks, and the shop for some reason — even though he consciously knew it was a different shop — seemed to stir them up. He and Janet were married in December of 1976. Everyone in town was impressed when Reese Donalds, in the popular mind the best sheriff the county had had in years — Sam Quarles had resigned in ‘60, and he and his wife Ilona had moved away — provided the honeymoon-bound newlyweds with a police escort out of the county.
Ann Lewis never married. She still taught fourth grade, though now at the Greater Consolidated School that had replaced the old brick building in ‘80, and despite the fading of her blond hair toward white she still held a fragile look of loveliness, like fine porcelain touched lightly by the fingers of the years. Whenever it got bad, one of them would call, as he had earlier that night, just to reaffirm the ancient pledge of love she, Alan, and the lost Odum Tate had exchanged in the Gaither Elementary School all those years ago.
Ironically, one of her more troublesome pupils, Jack Harwell, was now a teaching colleague of hers. Jack had been named the district Star Teacher two times, and he had made science about the most popular course in the new high school. He was popular himself, and at parties he could still be induced, after a certain number of drinks (Frye County had voted itself wet back in ‘75), to render his impressions of Bogart or Fields or Cagney — and today even of Nicholson, Pacino, and Cruise.
Other faces, other names. A fellow named Tom Davies, a regional stringer for Newsweek, or was it Time, had photographed him once for a review of his first hardcover novel, a horror tale. Davies had casually mentioned that he himself came from Gaither and had gone on to add that he had gotten out at the right time. Alan pretended not to know what the photographer meant, although he had a strong feeling that he did know. Little Lee McCory, the only surviving member of Andy’s family, had been brought up by her grandparents and was today Lee Patterson, who edited the family section of the Gaither Daily Advocate, which fat Jimmy Jenkins, well past the age of retirement and seemingly possessed of a magic formula to ward off coronaries, still ran with profane energy.
The buildings downtown had changed. The Square was different, the home now of second-rate shoe stores, bargain shops, even the Salvation Army used-clothing store. Only the five-and-dime, Ledford’s Pharmacy, and the Trust Bank remained in the same locations. The ShadowShow, a great empty echoing barn of a structure, stood deserted until the furniture store bought it from the Hesketh family, to whom it had returned when Mr. Badon disappeared. Now it was only a warehouse, stacked with sofas, tables, chairs made in Hong Kong. No one had ever acquired the land where the Jefferson house had stood: it was a jungle, now, overgrown with blackberry bushes, sumac, pine trees tall enough for a boy to climb. The hole where the foundation had been held dark water all year round except in very dry years, and boys frightened each other with tales about it and the things that lurked beneath the surface of the pool.
And Alan occupied his father’s house, and his own family slept in its rooms. Long John awoke, stretched, yawned, and leaped from Alan’s lap to swagger over to the food dish and cast an accusing glance over his left shoulder when he found it empty.
The telephone rang. It was 4:27 in the morning. Alan picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
Her voice came to him over distance, across years: “Did you have one tonight?”
“Yes,” he said. “Not too bad this time. You think it will pass?”
“Uh-huh.” Her voice was ragged with cigarettes or whiskey. “Damn, I wish it’d stop.”
A long uneasy silence. Then Alan: “Diane, are you still in California?”
“Long Beach. You’re still in your little crumby house on the hill.”
“Yeah.”
“Well. I don’t guess he’s gonna get us tonight, huh?”
“I guess not.”
“Better go. Got a long time ahead of me. Lotta tricks to turn before sunup.”
“Diane.”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing.”
“I guess we had that conversation already, huh?”
“I guess we did.”
She sighed. “I never got over it, you know? People are such scum. And I never knew it until he did that thing to us in the movies. And he was right. God, he was right. You should see the freaks — ” She broke off.
“I’d like to see you again,” Alan said.
The line scratched, dead air. “Sure,” she said, her voice mocking. “Just one of the freaks myself now, kid. You wouldn’t know me if you saw me. And you’d be lucky at that. Hey, I gotta go. I hope he didn’t shake you up too bad tonight.”
“He didn’t.”
“Wonder when he’ll get us?”
And she was off the line. Alan got up, replaced the receiver. Diane’s call had been a sort of signal: the danger was past, the beast was still dead, the virgin still foolish. Alan went to look in on his children: first his daughter, asleep in his own old room, then his son, sleeping in the room from which Alan had taken the binoculars to spy out the marquee so many sorrows ago. In the doorway, Alan wondered about the past and the future: wondered at the fate that had kept him here and had spun Diane off into her own orbit, lost beyond hope of return.
“I hope it doesn’t come again, son,” Alan said. “Not in my lifetime. Not in yours.”
For he had always known that it wasn’t finally dead, the thing that had called itself Athaniel Badon. Perhaps it couldn’t die. Perhaps it was only in the bottomless pit, waiting to get out, waiting to offer others the intoxicating drink of freedom, the drug of violence, the wine of eternal servitude.
But not tonight, and not in this house. Weary to his marrow, Alan Kirby went to his own bedroom, undressed, and slipped into bed next to his warm wife. She murmured something sleepy and put an arm across his chest. He lay still, thought of the mysterious paths of time and the tortured ways of love, and drifted at last into sleep, deep because he was exhausted, pleasant because it was unvisited by any dream.
The End
Biography
Brad Strickland ha
s written and co-written 67 novels, many of them for younger readers. He is the author of the fantasy trilogy Moon Dreams, Nul's Quest and Wizard's Mole and of the popular horror novel ShadowShow. With his wife Barbara, he has written for the Star Trek Young Adult book series, for Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark? book series, and for Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (Pocket Books). Both solo and with Thomas E. Fuller, he has written several books about Wishbone, Public TV's literature-loving dog. Also with Fuller he is the co-author of the e-book The Dancer in the Dark, a tale of Lovecraftian horror set in Georgia. Together with Joe DeVito, Brad has written three novels about King Kong. When he's not writing, he teaches English at Gainesville State College in Gainesville, Georgia. He and Barbara have two children, Amy and Jonathan, and a daughter-in-law, Rebecca. Brad and Barbara live and work in Oakwood, Georgia.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1988 by Brad Strickland
ISBN 978-1-4804-9622-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Table of Contents
Dedication
A Note from the Author
Part I - The Marquee
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Intverval 1 - Scrapbook
Part II - Coming Attractions
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Interval 2 - Of Souls and Shadows
Part III - Horror Flicks
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Interval 3 - Conflagrations
Part IV - ShadowShow
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Biography
ShadowShow Page 42