Then the pedal and the keys released, and McGlazer thought he had missed his opportunity to see an otherworldly presence. He almost ran to the piano in hopes he would see the keys move, feel something cold, see a wispy fog.
It was there—a black figure at the piano.
McGlazer’s terror grew.
“Whoa!” called the pianist as he rose to a defensive posture. “Preach!”
McGlazer recognized the voice. “Dennis?”
Dennis relaxed. “Everything okay, Rev?”
“Maybe.” McGlazer seemed disoriented. “How long have you been here?”
“Five, six minutes.”
“You trying to spook the old preacher man?”
Dennis gave him a dark stare.
“You…had a relapse?”
“I just knocked back half a fifth of Diamante’s.” Dennis said.
McGlazer detected the slur in his words.“Well,” McGlazer said, licking his lips, “at least you’re here now.”
“Yeah.”
“So,” McGlazer intoned, “where’s that bottle?”
They assessed each other for a small eternity. Finally, Dennis raised a carton of cigarettes and a bag of candy corn. “How ’bout a coupla crutches?”
McGlazer held up a hand. “What about your bandmates?”
“Coming soon. We hit a speed bump.”
“The boys at the old house on Gwendon?”
“It’s under control, man.” Dennis slugged McGlazer’s shoulder. “Right now’s smokin’ time.”
McGlazer followed Dennis back to the office.
* * * *
Dennis sat in a haze of cigarette smoke, staring at the candy spilled across the desk.
McGlazer brought him a cup of coffee. “Very hot.”
Dennis raised a toast. “Coffee buzz, meet whiskey buzz.” Dennis sipped, grimacing.
“What made you do it?” McGlazer asked.
Dennis used the cup to form an arc across himself that indicated everything. “I don’t think I can handle this, Rev.”
“It’s been a difficult Devil’s Night,” McGlazer acknowledged.
“That? I can deal with that, man.” Dennis’s intense gaze was only more so under the influence. “If anything, it’s helped keep my mind off shit.”
He took another steamy sip and unwrapped a fresh sweet. “But this, this little lull, while we wait…” Dennis hung his head. “It got me, man. I tried. And I blew it.”
McGlazer waited.
“What if I blow it tomorrow?” Dennis asked. “Hell. What if I don’t blow it?”
“What would be wrong with that?”
Dennis leaned on the desk. “It would mean I’m just gonna blow it later. Only a lot bigger.”
“You believe it’s inevitable?”
Dennis slapped his own chest. “Look at me, man! I’m a God damned drunk. You beat it.” A tear slipped from Dennis’s angry eyes. “I can’t.”
Stronger than even just minutes before, McGlazer felt the pressure too, the need for refuge.
“They’re gonna see now,” Dennis said. “Ma. Stuart. Petey and Jill. They’ll see they can’t count on me.”
“And you’ll be free of your responsibility to them,” countered McGlazer.
“What?”
“You’ll be free and clear then? To drink whenever you want? To stay drunk, if you’re so inclined?”
Dennis glowered at McGlazer. Then he sighed and slumped his shoulders.
“You know, Dennis, that’s quite a good deed,” McGlazer said. “Taking care of those boys, right after you found your equipment destroyed. Likely by them.”
“Yeah, well. Toss one on the scales for good karma, huh?”
“You probably saved at least one life tonight,” McGlazer said. “So maybe you can give yourself a little bit of a break on the relapse, huh?”
* * * *
Ruth walked along the side of the road, hugging herself against the plunging evening temperature, checking and rechecking the multiplying tentacles of her scheme.
An owl called from woods nearby. “Oh, shut up, you devil bird!”
Vehicle lights shone from behind her.
“Oh!” She unbuttoned her blouse by two. “Oh, Lord, please let it be a man.”
As the lights drew closer, she waved, adding a scared-little-girl pout when the vehicle slowed.
It was two farmers, Lowell and Shep, to whom Everett had earlier waved before murdering Trudy. “Ho, Missy!” called Lowell. “You okay?”
“My car broke down. I could really use a lift,” Ruth answered in a breathy voice.
“Car broke down? I don’t ’member no car off the road back yonder.” Lowell turned to Shep. “You?”
“I sure didn’t see it.”
“Well…Oh, no!” She breathed a damsel-in-distress breath of defeat. The driver lunged at the bait. “Whut?”
“I saw some hood types driving that way.” She bit her lip like she was on the verge of helpless surrender. “I bet they stole it.”
“Yeah, we seen some crazy kids out here too!” said the passenger. “Devil’s Night and all. I believe one of ’em didn’t have no clothes on.”
Ruth put the back of her hand to her head and teared up. “Oh, I don’t know what I’ll do. It’s just so scary out here.”
“Well, don’t worry now. We’ll take you to the sheriff’s. He’ll look after you.”
“Oh, I wish some man would!”
Lowell turned to passenger Shep with a fierce grimace. “Get out and let her in the middle.”
“I can just scoot—”
“Let her in the God damned middle, Shep!”
Shep grumbled as he opened the door and stepped out. Ruth climbed in. “I sure hope there’s room. You fellows have such broad shoulders.”
“We’ll get along just fine,” reassured the driver. And they were off.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Ruth told them. “I mean, I just feel so vulnerable out here, especially with this being Devil’s Night and those hoodlums I saw. Leather jackets and, and…sideburns.” She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. “I hope we don’t run into them again.”
“Well, don’t you worry.” Lowell gave her a smile. “We’ll take fine care of you. Pretty girl like you, you shouldn’t never have to be scared like that.”
“I feel better already,” Ruth cooed. “Except…well, never mind.”
“Never mind what?” For a change, Shep looked her in the eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Well… Must’ve been at least four, maybe five boys in that car I saw.” She shrank her shoulders, squeezing her breasts together. “If we were to run into them, I don’t know if you could protect me.”
“Oh, don’t you worry. We got an equalizer, you might say,” boasted Lowell.
“Really? Like what? A board with a nail through it?”
The men gave a confident chuckle, and the driver elaborated. “Oh, no. Much better than that. Shep, show her my little peacemaker.”
“Well, it’s really mine,” said Shep. “We traded for that Conway Twitty record, remember? Original pressing. Worth a shitlo—”
“Shep, now, watch your mouth. The young lady don’t wanna hear your potty talk.”
Shep dug under the seat and produced a holstered long-barrel .38.
Ruth’s eyes grew wide with wonder. “Oh, my word! That looks like something Charles Bronson might have!”
“It’s seen some action, all right,” bragged the driver, prompting from the befuddled Shep, “It has?”
“Well, we don’t need to get into—”
“Do you think I could hold it?” Ruth asked with a bright grin. “Just for a second?”
Lowell and Shep were quiet.
“I won’t point it or anything,”
she promised. “I just want to feel its, its might in my hands. Stroke it a little bit, you know?”
Lowell and Shep could not refuse now. “Why sure!” the driver said. “Shep, check the safety.”
Shep did so, clicking it off, then back on, with a macho expression. “Yep. She’s locked up tight, all right.”
He handed it to Ruth, who accepted it, like she’d never held such power before. She unsnapped the holster. “Can I…”
Shep nodded. Ruth eased the holster off the weapon, eyes widening as she revealed its full length. “It’s…it’s just so big!”
“Well, I got a bigger one, at home. That’s just for hairy situations like maybe tonight.”
“I don’t know why anybody would be fool enough to mess with you boys. …” exclaimed Ruth. “You men.”
“I hope your car turns up and all,” Lowell began. “But maybe we could call the sheriff from, well, my place. It’s just a mile or so past…”
“Ooh!” Ruth sang. “A fun little stop-off!” She gave a childish giggle, prompting the men to do the same.
Ruth put the barrel to the side of Shep’s head and fired, blowing out his brains and the passenger window.
Lowell screamed, losing control of the wheel, running off the road.
Ruth jammed the pistol’s smoking barrel into Lowell’s crotch. “Do what I say or your little head ends up like his big head. You hear me, you God-forsaken pervert?”
“Yeah! Yes!” said the driver.
Lowell glanced over at Shep’s head. The lower half lying against the dashboard, the rest…“What have you done? Oh, my Lord Jesus…”
“Don’t you dare take His precious name in vain.” She jammed the barrel farther into his groin.
The driver gave a yelp. “Ow! Please! That thing’s still hot.”
“So is hell, you fornicator,” Ruth informed him. “You take the truck road into the next field.”
“That’s Hoke Natson’s property. No…trespassing.”
“You have already trespassed, sir. Now do what I tell you.”
Chapter 25
Four scalding cups of coffee later, Dennis had found an even keel.
“The way the boy was acting. And your neighbor. Did you happen to see any candy lying around?”
“Huh?”
“Hard sweets in black-and-orange wrappers?”
“Nah.” Dennis examined McGlazer through the haze. “Why?”
“I’m thinking there might be a connection to the strange seizures people have been having. Hudson agrees.”
“No sh—uhh foolin’? Like, a bad batch?”
“Maybe,” McGlazer answered. “I was waiting to hear from him.”
“Maybe you should drive over to the hospital and catch him. I don’t think you wanna get too cozy with the crew that’s lending us gear anyway,” Dennis said.
. “Oh?” McGlazer said.
“Let’s just say, I doubt you have much in common with them. But don’t worry. I won’t let ’em burn down the joint.”
McGlazer raised his hand. “Say no more.”
As McGlazer stood, Dennis asked, “Hey. What about you, Rev? You ever find yourself pipe dreaming about some fine vintage?”
McGlazer sat back down, grateful for the opening. “When I was sixteen I had my first drink, and it was moonshine from the mountains,” he said. “Straight out of the jar. I thought it was going to kill me. What does it say that that wretched devil’s urine is what I find myself craving the most?”
Dennis crushed out his cigarette and lit two more, handing one to McGlazer.
“I’ll have to smoke it on the go.” McGlazer rose to put on his jacket. “I tell you, Dennis, I’ll never understand why anyone would come to me for spiritual guidance.”
Dennis snorted. “Yet here I am.”
“Dennis, if I weren’t your sponsor, you’d be mine.”
McGlazer took a drag. “You know, this place will smell like cigarettes for weeks. Ruth is going to kill me.”
“Tell me about it. Pedro and Jill are both all up in my a— uh, case about starting back.”
They shared a long grim look, until Dennis said, “We’re gonna make it through this Halloween, Rev.”
“If it kills us,” McGlazer agreed, turning to leave.
* * * *
Lowell’s jaw throbbed. He realized he had been mashing his teeth together since everything went so terribly wrong.
He turned the truck into the sprawling pumpkin field, now just bare mud cast in dead gray under the autumn moon. Ruth directed him to a wide pit at the far edge of the field beside a tall pile of dirt. “Stop here.”
Moving the gun barrel up to Lowell’s temple, Ruth stretched across Shep’s corpse and opened the passenger door, letting him fall out. “Get out and go get him.”
Lowell did as ordered. Ruth got out behind him on the driver’s side.
He gaped at her with shock as he went to hoist his cousin. “My Lord.” He squinted. “This can’t be really happening.”
Lowell knew well the purpose of this hole, and the countless more like it that pocked the farmscape of Ember Hollow. Damaged and rotten pumpkins were ’dozed into them after harvest, the theory being that any unhatched squash beetle eggs would be buried too deep for spring revival.
“Take him over to the pit.”
He complied, grunting as he took the remains of his relative to the precipice, a grimace of grief and terror on his face. “Now what?”
Ruth waved the gun. “Toss him in.”
“Poor Shep.” The driver scrunched his face at the mess of mushy pumpkins and mud. “I’m sorry, man.”
He wept as he rolled Shep’s body into the rancid mess and turned to Ruth. “Okay. I done what you said.”
“Now you. Get down in there.”
Lowell’s face took on the weight of a decade’s despair. “No. Come on.”
“In Jesus’ name do it!” Ruth shrieked.
He leaped in, finding himself standing to his thighs in the cold putrescence, the edge of the pit just higher than his head. “Shit, shit, shit…”
His gaze fell upon something that was not a pumpkin, and not Shep.
A bloated face bobbed up from the morass, slimy things writhing in the eye sockets and the ragged hole where a nose had once been. Lowell backpedaled from the noseless head of Angelo Betzler. “Holy mother of Jesus!”
“Shut your blasphemous mouth!” Ruth stood glaring down at him from the pit’s edge. “Now. Get down on your knees and beg the Lord for forgiveness. Give your life to him.”
“Wait…” pleaded the driver.
“Ask him to come into your heart.”
“Come on, please!” he said through sobs. “I done that way back in Sunday school, ma’am!” Lowell’s voice had become hoarse, pitiable. “I…I just need to start living it, is all!”
Ruth was unmoved. “That’s not an option anymore.”
“Wh…what about Shep?”
“He died so that you might see the light,” preached Ruth.
“Oh, please, please, please don’t kill me!” begged the farmer. “Please.”
“Don’t beg me. Beg God. Now get on your knees.”
Ruth groaned in irritation. “I’ll do it for you.” Ruth closed one eye, keeping the other aligned with the pistol sight on Lowell’s heart. “Lord God, this man is a sinner.”
Lowell did fall to his knees, splashing the cold gooey mess onto his face and hair, and did pray. “Jesus, get me out of this. I’ll pour out my shine. I’ll throw away my cigars…”
Ruth raised her voice, to drown out Lowell’s. “He is not worthy of your mercy or forgiveness, just as none of us are!”
“I’ll tithe, and then some!” swore Lowell, louder still.
“But he knows he is a sinner and he knows this is his last chance
to be with you in heaven!” shouted Ruth.
Lowell gave up on Jesus and addressed Ruth. “No!”
“Come into his heart and forgive him his wickedness.”
He scrambled through the mess, reaching for Ruth’s feet. “You ain’t pure! This is the devil’s wo—”
She shot him, and he fell backward with a splash, sinking into the mess.
“Praise be!” Ruth raised the smoking gun and her other hand to the heavens. “Thank you, Jesus, for moving in this man’s life through me.”
With an expression of peace, she went to the truck and left.
* * * *
Jill sat on the steps of the church’s outer archway between Dennis’s legs, holding out a church service program and slicing it into ribbons with her nails.
Dennis, hiding the signs of the mild headache from his micro binge, stroked her hair with one hand while dangling a cigarette from the other. Pedro leaned against the pillar, watching the church’s graveyard gate.
Yawning, Pedro took a piece of orange-and-black-wrapped candy from his pocket that he had picked up somewhere. Standing still for too long had enervated the big bassist. He needed a sugar pickup.
Just as he tugged at the wrapper, a low rumble reached his ears.
The rumble was not a motor though, but rather dirge-like guitar notes, propelled by the unmistakable sonic assault of black metal blast beats, portending the red-tinted headlights that appeared in the distance.
Pedro tossed the candy away into the bushes, no longer needing it. “Funeral procession’s arriving.”
Dennis crushed his cigarette and lifted the slinky Jill to her feet, telling her, “I owe you for this.”
She turned to him with an arched eyebrow and said, “Warm up your singing muscle, superstar,” then spread two fingers under her mouth and flickered her tongue at him.
Scarlet Frost’s van, a matte-black ’70s Chevy with red and white runes spray-painted on the body, soon pulled into the grass of the church’s yard, the artful dissonance going silent.
Tied to the front grille was an inverted cross made of two large cow bones, with a horned skull posted on “top.”
The red headlights died, as doors opened and four longhaired twentysomethings emerged, dressed in spiked wristbands and belts, torn black jeans, pentacled jewelry, their faces unrecognizable in black-and-white corpse paint.
Red Harvest Page 18