Strangers

by Mort Castle

  Beth said, “Don’t worry. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a guinea pig decide to take a trot around the house. He’ll be all right. I’ll be house-cleaning today so I’ll bet you I find him real quick.”

  “It’s still not my fault Snowball’s loose!” Kim insisted, sticking out her tongue at her sister.

  Beth sighed. “Kim, put your tongue back in your mouth before that gets lost, too.”

  Kissing the girls goodbye as they headed off for the corner to wait for the school bus, Beth again reassured Marcy that Snowball would be found.

  An hour later, she did find the guinea pig.

  After she showered and slipped on “cleaning day grubbies,” Beth vacuumed the downstairs, taking time out to admire lovingly Michael’s beautiful surprise, the—her—antique crystal lamps, then polished the furniture and watered all the indoor plants.

  She went upstairs and dusted the girl’s room, wondering how she might in a nonjudgmental manner suggest that Kim try a bit more organization, order, and (ugh!) cleanliness; dirty underpants did not belong under the bed!

  Hanging Kim’s lightweight vinyl jacket in the closet, thinking that all too soon it would be time to get out winter clothing, Beth happened to look down.

  Snowball was smashed between the dresser and the wall’s baseboard. Beth knelt. It looked as though the animal had wedged itself into this spot and then had killed itself with frantic, futile efforts to escape. Beth touched the guinea pig’s fur. It felt as artificial as the plastic bristles of a hairbrush. She had to move the dresser an inch to free the tiny corpse.

  Stiff and cold, the guinea pig lay in her hand. Marcy loved this furry, innocent thing and now it is dead, she thought.

  And then Beth shuddered and squelched an angry black impulse to throw the guinea pig to the floor, to rid herself not of it but of what it represented—Death!

  Death was everywhere! Death was next door, DustyandBrad, and Death was stalking the Loudens, the skeletal hand of Death brushing Kim, teasing her when the car had almost… And now… Death is inside our house. Death surrounds us, hisses at us, wants us!

  Beth took a deep breath. There were more coincidences in life than there were connections, she told herself, and it was sad that Snowball had needlessly died, but that’s all it was.

  She found a shoebox for Snowball. When the girls came home from school, there would have to be a funeral, a small grave by the garden. As sensitive as Marcy was, that would be of comfort to her. And a lecture about responsibility for Kim as well? Maybe, Beth decided, although perhaps what had happened was lesson enough of itself.

  Beth thought she was all right; she really did. But in the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee, her hand shook. She looked out the window. The sun was shining.

  The sun shone but the day was wrong.

  There really was a business meeting set for 3:30 that afternoon with the St. Louis supplier of paper towels and so, after leaving Park Estates and swinging south onto 1-57, they talked about that. Yes, they were getting the best wholesale price possible; even with a standard eighty percent mark-up, Superior Chemical was able to undercut the price of competing janitorial supply firms. But quality control wasn’t all that it could be; towels sometimes jammed in dispensers. Worse, too often the supplier felt free to make substitutions and maybe there was no difference in the feel of “Pure White,” stock number 34057 and “Creme,” number 34059, but customers did complain, and so the president of Superior Chemical and the national sales manager were going to “iron things out.”

  Of course the ironing out could have been as easily accomplished with a letter or telephone call. This trip’s real business was Herb Cantlon.

  Herb Cantlon! Michael thought. That goddamned bloated piece of meat! Uh-huh, the important meeting—Surprise, Herby, you fat fucker—wasn’t in St. Louis; it was about an hour and a half back on up the road to Mt. Claron, Illinois. Eddie Markell was arranging it. No severance pay for Cantlon. No meaningless, euphemistically worded letters of reference. Herb’s association with Superior Chemical was going to be painfully terminated.

  Goddamn! Michael felt a surge of power within him, electrical in its intensity. It was as though the human shell he was forced to wear was far too small and confining for the reality of his being, The Stranger who walked through the world, his invisible aura glowing with the red promise of blood.

  A promise soon to know fulfillment! Michael thought, as he gazed out the Buick Regal’s window at the endlessly flat landscape of central Illinois that whizzed by. He could picture these drab, quiet farmlands flooded with gore, the, United States, the entire world awash in a unifying ocean of blood—the Time of the Stranger.

  That was what Jan Pretre had vowed.

  Seeing Jan last Saturday had given him renewed hope in The Strangers’ destiny of death. It had shaken him as well, caught him off-guard and left him with question.

  “Vern?” Michael said

  “Yes, Michael?”

  “I want to ask you something.

  Vern turned his head to smile benignly at Michael. “One inquires and one learns, Michael. Isn’t that American folk wisdom?”

  “I’m serious, Vern.” Michael said.

  “All right.”

  “Did you know Jan Pretre and I knew each other, that we met a long time back?”

  Now Vern was staring straight ahead, his brows set as though he were peering through a misty drizzle and not looking out through the windshield on a remarkably clear day. In a voice devoid of his typical theatrical enunciation, Vern said, “Yes, Michael. I know all about Jan and you. I’ve known for a long time.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me he was going to be at your place, Vern? Is there something I’m being left out of?”

  Vern didn’t answer for over a mile and when he did respond, he did not look at Michael. “There have been things I’ve been told not to tell you, Michael.” Vern spoke quietly but without any note of apology.

  “Told by whom?” Michael said.

  “Jan,” Vern said.

  Michael frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  Vern chuckled humorously. “And I’m sure there are things happening that I don’t understand, either. That’s not important. What is important, Michael, is that Jan understands. He’s been in contact with me for a long time. Oh, years would pass when I wouldn’t hear from him, and then there’d be a letter or a phone call and he’d tell me to do something and I would. We have to trust Jan, Michael. Of all of us, he is the one with the clearest vision, the greatest power.”

  Vern paused and another flat Illinois mile went by. Then Vern said, “There’s something I can tell you now, Michael, that I couldn’t before. Years ago Jan told me to hire you because you were one of us. Do you remember that?”

  Michael’s memory was sharp and vivid. There’d been a letter from Superior Chemical Company, informing him that the firm was seeking a new salesman for the south suburban territory and that…blah-blah-blah. Mr. Engelking, the president of the corporation, invited Michael to dinner and they’d discussed floor mats and urinal deodorant blocks and waterless head-cleaners and then, over dessert—Vern had had a Napoleon, Michael recalled, and he himself had ordered cheesecake—Vern had said, “I do think you ought to give my offer serious consideration. You see, you are a Stranger and so am I!”

  Later, that evening, Michael had proof of what Vern Engelking had said. They went to Chicago’s Rush Street, found a prostitute, and cut her throat, cut it raggedly but so completely that her head was attached to her neck by only stringy tendons and a flap of skin. “I knew you were our kind of man, Michael,” Vern had said. “Welcome to the company.”

  But how had Vern known? Michael had asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to reveal that now, Michael. Can you simply trust me?” Vern Engelking had offered his hand.

  Michael could trust him, did trust him then as now. It was enough to know that, condemned as he was to walk among the sickening, weak, and whimpering normals, he would hav
e another who understood him, who was, indeed, a brother.

  It was enough to know that now, all these years later. Yet he had to ask, “Vern, why are you telling me this now when you couldn’t before. You’ve…”

  “Now, you see, is when Jan said I might tell you,” Vern interrupted. “Jan is our leader, Michael. He’ll lead those who are worthy when it is our time. Trust Jan, Michael.”

  Michael suddenly felt himself a child again, or at least the “pretend” child he had once had to be. He remembered the Jan who had sought him out, who had given him a baptism in blood, who had told him what he was and what he was meant to be. Yes, he trusted Jan Pretre.

  And he trusted Vern Engelking.

  Strangers! They—were Strangers, and all his questions were answered with that realization and joyous acknowledgement.

  Damn, there was someone knocking on the front door of the double-width mobile home and Herb Cantlon didn’t want to be disturbed, not now.

  He slipped a plaid robe over his shorts and undershirt. “Keep it hot and juicy for me,” he said to Gretchen Waller, the nineteen-year-old woman who lay under the sheet. She was a dishwater blond, with a thin face and sad eyes; whenever she wasn’t chewing gum, her expression seemed somehow unnatural. “I’ll be right back, hon.” He waddled to the living room on legs surprisingly thin for such a corpulent man.

  He had good reason to be annoyed at the interruption. Wednesday night was (heh-heh-heh) Herb’s night for nooky, to get the ashes hauled and the sap off his back—and yeah, there was nothing better than tender young poon-tang to keep a guy feeling like the (heh-heh-heh) cock of the walk. His mobile home set-up here at Lake Claron, just a few miles from town, was perfect. It was where he brought the wife and the kids for summer vacations and getaway weekends and where he’d been getting it on with Gretchen once a week for the past six months or so. He had privacy, not another house for nearly a mile, and a good supply of booze, a TV, and a stereo and Gretchen who could get (heh-heh-heh) pretty (Whoo-oo!) wild in the sack.

  Oh, sure, the wife knew, but she acted like she wasn’t on to doodley-squat and Herb figured she’d keep on the way as long as he kept her happy with a fur coat or a microwave or a string of pearls or whatever the hell she wanted. And so what that the whole town was aware of his getting some tail? You could damned well bet that Herb Cantlon wasn’t the only married man who messed around; you don’t throw stones at the next guy ‘cause somebody might bounce one off your bean too.

  Herb opened the door. The man who stood on the wooden deck wore a faded, long-sleeved flannel shirt, jeans, and heavy hiking boots. He was holding a.357 Magnum with a ribbed nine-inch barrel and he pushed the gun into Herb’s stomach.

  “Don’t say word one,” Eddie Markell ordered quietly. “Back your lard ass in.”

  Herb felt the precise octagonal shape of the end of the barrel pressing into his spongy flesh. Oh God, be thought. Oh Christ Jesus! He was going to die. Sure, he’d considered death before now, the sensible, inevitable death that had to occur someday. He had hefty life insurance, a legal will, even “his and hers” funeral plots for himself and the missus. But it had never really struck him, though, that he could die…now.

  And oh, Oh goddamnit, oh shit, oh goddamnit! he did not want to die now. He tried to step back, to lift his foot, but he couldn’t move; then his stomach rumbled. He felt the intestinal fluttering and the gun and he couldn’t help it, he giggled, and stepped back.

  Eddie Markell closed the door behind him. “All right, fat boy, let’s go say hello to your chick. Lead the way.”

  Sweating and freezing, Herb nodded. He took Eddie into the bedroom.

  “What is it? What is it?” Gretchen Waller kept saying, gaping at the gun, at Herb’s sweat-gleaming, porcine face, at Eddie Markell’s grin and bloodshot eyes—and gun, the gun… She lay stiffly in bed, holding the sheet to her throat, like a hospitalized child watching a hypodermic-bearing nurse approach.

  “It’s your ass and everything connected to it if you give me any trouble. Get out of bed.”

  “I…I don’t have any clothes on,” Gretchen said. She blushed.

  Do it, Herb Cantlon silently begged her. Don’t argue. Don’t say anything. Do what he says…

  “Don’t worry,” Eddie sneered, “you won’t catch cold. Move.”

  Gretchen tossed back the sheet. Her eyes were huge. She stood up. Her breasts were small and her ribs and hip bones sharply outlined beneath childishly pink skin.

  “Little tits, baby,” Eddie said. He rapped Herb on the shoulder with the barrel of the revolver. “Thought you country clodhoppers liked ’em big-boobed, Herb.”

  Herb said nothing.

  “Going to give me the old line, lard ass? Tell me ‘More than a mouthful is pure waste?’”

  Gretchen bleated, “Please, mister, whoever you are, don’t hurt us.”

  Shut up, Gretchen! Herb wanted to scream. Don’t say a word and we can live…

  “Into the living room, folks,” Eddie ordered. When Gretchen didn’t move quickly enough to suit him, he gave her a sharp slap across the buttocks.

  She yiped. Eddie laughed. “Skinny tits, skinny ass. Herb, putting it to her must be like doing it with a barbed wire scarecrow.”

  In the living room, Eddie told Herb and Gretchen to sit on the sofa. Eddie stepped across the room to the padded rollaway bar. Casually putting the pistol on the bartop as though he were sure they dared not attempt anything, he found a bottle of vodka, turned the cap, cracked the seal, and drank from the bottle.

  “Thanks for the drink, Herb. You’re a fine fucking host,” Eddie said.

  Herb Cantlon swallowed hard. “Whatever …whatever you want. I…I have some money…”

  “Turn it off, lard ass,” Eddie said. “You just sit there with your chick and keep your mouth closed.”

  Be quiet! Herb told himself. Not a word, not a sound. Be quiet and live, live, live!

  “We’ve got to wait awhile, folks,” Eddie said. He had another long pull from the vodka bottle. “Some friends of ours are coming over for a party.”

  Some friends of… ours? Herb didn’t understand. He wasn’t even attempting to comprehend what the man had said. He knew he wanted to live and that was all that mattered.

  “ ‘Course, there’s no reason we can’t have some fun and games on our own until they get here.” Eddie snapped his fingers and pointed at Gretchen. She started. “Come here, chicky.”

  Gretchen didn’t move Get up! Go on over there! Herb mentally pleaded.

  “Now, bitch!” Eddie said. He leaned back, his elbows on the bartop’s padding. His right hand lay on the butt of the .357.

  As though drugged, Gretchen staggered over to him. “On your knees, bitch,” Eddie said. She knelt before him. He held the pistol to her temple. “Do it nice, some good head. You make it bad head and you get bad head, too. I’ll splatter your fucking brains all over the room.” Eddie grinned at Herb. “How about it, lard ass? Okay with you if your lady cleans my pipes?”

  There was the hot sting of tears in Herb Cantlon’s eyes. He was helpless, shattered, and Oh shit! he didn’t care, didn’t care what happened to Gretchen or to anyone except Herb Cantlon.

  Time that was timeless passed, nearly three hours. The level in the vodka bottle was under half. The console stereo was playing, side one of a Kenny Rogers album repeating again and again; now it was “The Gambler,” the smoothly rasped advice “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,” filling the room. Gretchen was on the couch, head down, hair in her face, silently sobbing. And Herb Cantlon was still alive and that was all he knew or cared about.

  There was a soft knock at the door. Eddie called. “Come in.”

  Herb Cantlon didn’t believe what he was seeing. Vern Engelking and Michael Louden, the boss and the national sales manager… Then again, he wasn’t sure he believed anything that had happened this night, anything except the stranger with the gun and the tangible reality of death.

  He
rb had a curious, light-headed feeling of relief. He knew Mr. Engelking and Mr. Louden—he worked for them, for Superior Chemical, for God’s sake!

  Michael Louden was grinning as he set a duffel bag alongside the bar. “Good evening, Herbert,” Vern Engelking said. “I do trust you’ll pardon the intrusion!”

  “Aw shucks, aw shoot, aw shit,” Michael drawled. “See, we all jes’ figgered long as we were in this here neck of the woods to drop in on you-all. You glad to see us, Herby? You gladder than hammered shit?”

  “Herb, what is it? What’s going on? I don’t understand,” Gretchen Waller spoke in a monotone as though all emotion had been leached from her.

  “Herb,” Vern Engelking said, grinning broadly, “You’ve always had a delightful sense of humor. Indeed, so many of Superior Chemical’s clients have commented on your vast fund of jokes.”

  “You’re a goddamn million laughs, Herby,” Michael said.

  “Come here, Herbert.” Vern Engelking beckoned him with a crooked finger and a pleasant tone. “I have a joke for you.”

  There was a crooked, dazed smile on his face as Herb walked toward Vern Engelking.

  Vern said, “So a man came up to me and said he hadn’t had a bite in three days. You know what I did?”

  It was weird, it was crazy, and nothing made sense anymore, but the boss—The Boss—was expecting him to answer, so Herb Cantlon, smiling, said, “So you bit him?”

  “No,” Vern Engelking said. “I smartly kicked him in the testicles.” Engelking’s shoe slammed into Herb Cantlon’s crotch.

  “Whuu…” Herb Cantlon grunted, and then the full force of the pain exploded up from his groin, speared his guts and lungs. He dropped to his knees, hugging himself, eyes bulging, tongue protruding moronically.

  Michael stepped alongside him. He sharply pinched his earlobe, twisting it. The sharp needle-like hurt of Michael’s fingers kept Herb conscious, prevented his being washed under the heavy ocean of pain from Vern’s kick. Herb felt himself rising to his feet like a day old helium balloon slowly drifting upward.