“Jesus H!” proclaimed Dennis. “Full regalia.”
“Brutal,” Jill noted.
Lead vocalist Darren leaped from the passenger side, followed by drummer/driver Horace, then ax men Wes and Madsen.
Pedro grinned. “You cats do not disappoint.”
“Sorry to take so long!” said Darren. “We came straight from the gig.” He hugged Jill.
“Thanks for coming, cuz,” she said.
He ruffled her hair and said, “Anything for family,” then scanned the faces of the Outlines. “So, your instruments have been destroyed. Grim. Grim…” He spoke with a thick Northern European accent.
“Wait.” Jill cocked her head sideways at her cousin. “You guys are doing the Norwegian accent now?”
“Not us,” corrected Horace. “Him.”
“It’s about the music, Horace, you simpleton!” Darren’s reproach was punctuated with a shove, and then he turned back to Jill and company, gesticulating as he expounded. “I want to be authentic. I want to feel it and mean it. You know?”
“Oh, yeah.” Pedro was like a preteen boy meeting his rock gods for the first time. “We can dig it.”
Dennis exchanged a fierce black-nailed clasp of hands with the diminutive metalhead. “Man, you cats are really pulling our asses out of the corpse grinder.”
“Say no more, my friend! It puts broad smiles on our faces to help our fellow subversive artists.”
Dennis looked at the other black metalers, finding no such broad smiles. Only sinister corpse-paint grimaces.
“So, where is the venue for the big show?” Darren asked.
“Movie theater in town square,” Jill explained. “On top of the marquee.”
Horace and the others murmured with appreciation.
“We’ll go there now!” Darren proclaimed.
“Copy that,” said Dennis. But as they moved toward their vehicles, Darren stood still, staring up at the church edifice with dreamy dark eyes.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jill.
“I cannot lie,” Darren began. “This place ablaze, crackling and crumbling. It would be glorious!”
As the Outlines gave each other doubtful looks, Dennis spoke up. “Yeah, well, that might stamp a veto on our contract, so we prefer it to remain flame free, if that’s cool.”
Darren turned to them with what might have been a sinister expression. “Speaking of contracts.”
“You’re not about to demand my soul, are you, Darren?” asked Dennis.
“No, no, my friend. But we do have expectations. You have an executive coming to see you. No?”
“Yeah. Our Kanye-ass manager’s picking her up in the a.m.”
“Very good!” Darren clapped once. “I wish you much luck.”
Pedro got the drift and asked, “You…want us to have her take a look at you guys? Is that it?”
Darren chortled like a maniac as he spun to his bandmates, who peered back from darkened sockets. “Let’s all be realistic.” A glance at their van, not to mention their attire, rendered this statement absurd. “No American record company will ever touch us.” Darren puffed his chest. “And that’s a point of great pride!”
“Right,” said Jill. “So?”
“What do you want?” Dennis finished.
“So simple, my boy. I want you to play one of our songs.”
The Outlines remained incredulous.
“One song? That’s it?” asked Dennis.
“That will complete our agreement and erase your debt to us.”
“I don’t get it,” said Pedro. “What’s the punchline?”
“Yeah, man,” Dennis said. “What do you gain?”
“Oh, my beautiful boy!” Darren said, putting his pale, sigil-tattooed hands on Dennis’s face like a lover, gazeing into his eyes with near madness. “That voice. You sing like you are having such fun. Yet just beneath the surface…so much pain. Such weary wisdom. Like the lamentations of a fallen angel.”
“But we won’t even be here, dude,” Madsen said.
Darren turned and snatched the lapels of his battle jacket. “It’s on TV, you poser!” Then he returned his expectant blackened gaze to Dennis, as if awaiting the answer to a marriage proposal. Madsen, accustomed to the rough play, merely straightened his jacket.
Pedro and Jill shuffled about, as Darren continued to gaze into Dennis’s perplexed eyes. “Yeah. Okay, that’s reasonable,” Dennis said. “Done.”
“Supreme!” Darren spun to regard his bandmates with hands held out in messianic triumph—then slumped his shoulders with an exasperated huff, turning toward the church wall. “Wes, don’t piss on this one, man! Show respect to our friends.”
“Sorry.” Wes zipped up and stepped away from the wall. “Habit.”
Darren directed traffic. “All right, you guys, Let’s get this gear moved so these kids can get some sleep!”
Dennis, grinning like the grille of a 1950 Mercury Coupe, gave Jill a lusty kiss and Pedro a hearty fist bump.
Chapter 26
Stella, comfy in flannel pajamas, switched on the television, sank into her recliner with her sewing basket and her half-finished fortune-teller scarf, and soon settled into the comfort of WEFC’s weeklong Bela Lugosi marathon, well into the Hungarian actor’s lesser years working under Ed Wood and various off-Hollywood hacks.
Bernard was away at his weekly poker game with friends from the factory. It was as much a respite for her as a social time for her husband, who tended to be so much smarter than average folk—including her—that it was depressing and lonely for him, as he had confessed.
Thus, this time apart was a form of marriage maintenance, and Stella savored it.
Her pet cockatoo, Catfood, cooed in her blanketed cage, as autumn’s winds made flyby embraces of the quaint ranch house, soothing Stella into a contented fugue.
During a lull in the film, Catfood squawked and fluttered, bashing around in her cage like she had gone crazy.
Before Stella could rise, her scarf project wound itself taut around her arms, pinning her in the chair.
The bird continued its spasm, its human-like shrieks blasting into Stella’s brain until she thought her knitting needle had also come alive and staked itself into her ear—but then she saw the implement fall out of her lap as the scarf tightened further, a flat python.
Then the chair’s corduroy upholstery somehow became malleable, like quicksand, sucking her into depths that were as cold as well water, roiling up over her trapped hips and arms with a squelching sound.
As the alien muck closed over her face, muffling Catfood’s cries, Stella knew it was a dream—must be—and fought to wake herself.
“Wayg uhb!” she cried through near-paralyzed lips, straining to raise her head to keep from suffocating. With great effort, she forced her eyes open—and beheld Bela Lugosi, cape pulled over the lower half of his face, stalking among the Styrofoam graves of Plan 9 from Outer Space. He turned to glare at her with his hungry eyes, as he pointed at a crooked wooden cross standing tall amid the props. A chain was wound around it like the scarf had wound around her, an ancient lock holding the links taut.
He lowered the cape, and it was Bela all right, and not the chiropractor whom Wood had hired to double for him after his death, for this was the Land of the Dead, which extended into Television Land, she realized, and this was not so surprising.
Bela parted his thin black lips and mouthed a single syllable: “Why?”
He extended his finger toward the wooden cross once more, and it was shaking, making the chain jingle. His emphatic movement must have carried supernatural force, for it yanked Stella from the dream and onto the floor, inches from the television.
Bela remained. But the film was Mark of the Vampire, not Plan 9, and his black-and-white image did not acknowledge her in the least.
Stell
a picked herself up, finding her limbs heavy with exhaustion. She went to Catfood’s cage and found the pretty girl content and asleep, raising an eyelid before making a side shuffle toward Stella.
The unfinished scarf was splayed about the foot of the chair. Stella was not in the mood for knitting any longer, and certainly not for the scarf, nor the chair.
She went to her bookshelf in the bedroom and scanned the spines for the only book that mattered, praying that her husband had not tossed it during one of his frequent organizing rampages.
Relief washed over her as she found it—then came dread, for her next step was a drive to the cemetery.
* * * *
The weary Hudson dropped into his chair as two deputies wrestled with a man in a French maid’s costume behind him. He took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and dialed.
Leticia and DeShaun worked at carving the last of at least a dozen jack-o’-lanterns, the finished gourds aligned along the counter like a platoon of orange lunatics, while little Wanda watched from her high chair, a mess of pumpkin pie smeared all over her face and a bib decorated with a cartoon bat captioned i drive my mom batty.
Leticia wiped her hands and answered the phone.
“Hey, there, sweet thang,” Hudson said in his best Barry White.
“Hi ya, love machine,” she replied, making DeShaun roll his eyes at Wanda. She tried it too, rolling her head instead and making herself dizzy.
“What’s up?”
Hudson practically growled. “I’m…busy.”
“Well, duh. How are those kids from the old house?”
“Doctor says they’re gonna be okay, but I can’t talk to them yet. Still one missing from their group. Some other weird shit happening too.” The scuffle behind him grew louder.
“What is all that?” Leticia asked.
“You don’t wanna know. Listen, I’m trying to track down Charlie Plemmons. Something funky is up with him and that girl Ruth from the church.”
“Ooh! That girl is trouble with a capital crazy.”
“Well, all things considered,” Hudson assessed, “it’s about usual for Devil’s Night.”
As the scuffle continued, something fell across Hudson’s head. He snatched it off—a fishnet stocking. His face screwed up in disgust. “I gotta go. Hug the kids.”
“Sure will. Rush it up, Black Dynamite.”
“Ha-ha. Love you.”
“Love you back.” She hung up and returned to the table.
“Was that Dad?” asked DeShaun.
“Yep. Running late.”
“Did he say anything about Albert and Norman?”
“He says they’re gonna be okay.”
“So weird,” DeShaun said.
“That’s why you are never allowed to set foot in that house again. Now get ready for bed.”
“But I wanna show Dad my jack-o’-lantern,” he protested, as he went to the counter and patted a pumpkin carved in a cartoonish image that could only be Hudson himself.
“He’ll see it tomorrow when we get a candle in it. That’ll be even better.” Her tone took on an edge of mock anger, an early-warning system. “Now get your pajamas on and get in bed. You’re helping me take these to the field in the morning.”
“Can’t I stay up a little longer?” DeShaun pleaded. “No way I can sleep after this crazy day.”
“No. Tomorrow’s a big day too, and a lot of people are counting on your help.”
“I could just sit up and watch the Bela Lugosi scare-a-thon for a bit.”
She turned to him with an agreeable expression. “What’s the name of that movie where Bela grounds Son of Dracula to his coffin till the next ice age?”
DeShaun lowered his head in defeat.
“Now go get in your pajamas and brush your teeth, like I asked you to an hour ago! Or you can plan on staying at the community center with Miss Barcroft and me, watching all the little ones!”
DeShaun snapped his heels together and extended a Nazi-style salute. “Sig heil, mein furious! I mean, fuhrer!”
He marched away, goose-stepping, sending Wanda into a giggle fit.
“Oh, don’t you start, little girl,” Leticia warned, wiping the baby clean.
Chapter 27
A Tragedy in Triptych
II
Mamalee held Everett tight against her side, as she did every Sunday. During the course of mass, he had scooted lower, out of her controlling embrace. Then he could sit forward, fidget, and scan all the grim faces.
The head priest, Father Scalia, finished a reading from Matthew and began reciting a chant. He raised a cross, prompting Everett to bring his jacket lapel to his face and issue a defiant vampire’s hiss.
The congregation laughed. All but Aloysius.
When the priest smiled down at Everett, it seemed like a look of patience, even adoration. But it was, in reality, something else.
* * * *
Aloysius went to the baby’s room, driven by the new ubiquitous protective anxiety that was born alongside his baby girl.
When he found Everett standing on a stool, leaning into his new sister’s crib and humming “Monster Mash,” he was filled with dread. Newborn Candace gurgled and cooed but Aloysius did not hear it, his mind scrolling through any number of ways the boy might be mutilating his baby sister.
“What are you doing!” He snatched Everett up and tossed him to the floor, where the boy erupted into a fit of shocked crying. Aloysius ignored this and lunged to the crib, afraid to breathe. “My God!”
Baby Candace’s face was covered in green and purple ink. Everett had colored her to resemble a little alien. The boy had even drawn little antennae on her forehead.
When startled by his strident father, Everett had shivered, accidentally drawing a haphazard lightning bolt on the baby’s blanket. But Candace was quite unharmed: Everett had avoided his sister’s eyes and mouth.
Still, Aloysius checked her over, frantic.
Mamalee, aproned and sweaty, ran in and hoisted the terrified Everett off the ground. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The boy is possessed!” yelled Aloysius, pointing at Everett like a hanging judge.
“No, Aloy,” Mamalee tried. “You’re overreacting.”
But her scowling husband would not be moved. “I won’t let him hurt Candace!”
Candace joined her brother in bawling. Aloysius plucked her from the crib and skulked out, leaving Mamalee to calm and comfort the older child.
Chapter28
Bathed in garish underlighting, Bela Lugosi stalked into frame.
Sitting on the couch, Stuart paid little attention to the television, plucking at his sticker-covered acoustic guitar. He tried out a few lines from the song he and Dennis were writing.
“Turned thirteen without a warning
Woke up dead that Sunday morning
In the mirror, my worst fear
Overnight, I disappeared
My only consolation
Disintegration…”
His mother walked in. “Sweetie, you knew Dennis probably wouldn’t make it home tonight.”
“I know. I was hoping he would anyway.”
She sat beside him and rubbed his shoulder. “He’s doing fine now. You know that, right?”
“Yeah. Just…it’s a lotta pressure.” Stuart fiddled with the D string. “Like when Dad died.”
“He was just a boy then, hon. Like you.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he’ll drink. Not with Jill and Pedro around. But even so, I don’t want him to feel it. The pressure.”
“After tomorrow night, he’ll probably be a big star!” She glowed at Stuart. “At least, as big as a spook…punky…billy…singer can get.”
“Yeah. But what if he does get that contract? Won’t even more people try to get him to drink and
stuff?” Stuart wondered. “Maybe even worse.”
“Well, that’s why we have to stay close, babe.” The widow stroked Stuart’s longish hair. “That’s our role, like Reverend McGlazer said. To give him so much love and support there’s no time for anything else. So”—she turned him to face her—“we have to support each other too, right? Agree to always hold Dennis up, and hold each other up when our arms get tired.”
Stuart furrowed his brow in thought. “This year, this Halloween, just feels so…”
“Hm.” Mrs. Barcroft blinked. She knew, but wasn’t sure how to phrase it. “Swollen?”
“Yeah. Like it’s gonna pop.”
“It is, Stuart.” She hugged him. “Happy Halloween.”
“Happy Halloween, Ma.”
A willowy actress screamed from the television speaker.
* * * *
Pedro opened the scarred door to the cramped apartment he shared with his cat. “Watch for Joanie.”
Jill and Dennis entered, on the lookout for Pedro’s fat Siamese, Joan Crawford, in case she tried to make one of her occasional escape attempts.
The cat did appear, but she was far too distracted by the visitors to care about the open door. She essayed a sleepy, quacking meow as she trotted to the exhausted couple, rising on her hind legs to rub her cheeks on Jill’s boots. “Aw, there’s the good girl!”
Dennis took his turn, hoisting the feline for a cheek scratch and a kiss. “My best fan.”
“Okay, you guys know where everything is,” Pedro said in a tired slur. “I’ll be on the couch. Mi casket is su casket.”
He turned to them with a pained expression, eyes closed. “Just, could you please keep it to a low shriek please, Jilly?”
Jill pressed herself against Dennis. “Can’t promise anything. My big man goes for the guts.” She patted her lower belly.
“Aw, jeez. Spare me the gore,” Pedro groused. “Just no caterwauling this time, how ’bout? Drove Joanie under the couch for a week last time.”
“Oh yeah, bro,” Dennis said. “That was me, sorry about that.”
Pedro waved them off, then turned to stop them before they headed toward the apartment’s only bedroom. “Hey.”
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