Endless Night (23 page)

So then I boosted myself out of the grave. “You guys are a riot,” I said. “Somebody else can fill in the ...” Then I attacked, pretty much taking them by surprise. Before they had time to react, I shoved Minnow into the grave. Tommy dodged away from me and ran. Ranch stayed to fight. We wrestled, but I wasn’t any match for him. He pinned me down. Even though I couldn’t throw him into the grave, he ended up nicely slimed from squirming around with me.

Only Tommy got away unscathed.

He always does.

Anyway, Minnow finally climbed out of the grave. He looked gory, but he was grinning. We gathered up Hester’s clothes and tossed them in with her. After that, we filled in the hole, then scattered leaves and twigs over the dirt until it looked the same as everywhere else.

Tommy reminded us of the .22 shell from the bullet Minnow had fired at her. He said we shouldn’t leave it behind. So we spent about half an hour searching, and I finally found it.

Tommy put it in his shoe. “I’ll get rid of it later. The important thing is that it doesn’t get found near the body. Maybe I’ll throw it in the trash at school, or something.”

When we started picking up the tools to leave, he said, “Wait. We’ve gotta take care of one more thing. Come here.” He held his hands out away from his sides, the way people do when they want you to form a circle and join hands.

We did it.

He said, “As long as Hester stays here where we put her, nobody can ever touch us.”

“The cops, you mean?” Minnow asked.

“Yeah, the cops. The thing is, nobody will ever find her unless they know where to look. And they won’t know where to look unless one of us blabs.”

We all pretty much at once promised we’d never blab.

“We’ve gotta make a pledge,” Tommy said.

Nobody had any objection to that.

“Repeat after me,” he said. “I, Thomas Baxter ...”

We all substituted our own names. As the pledge went along after that, Tommy waited after each phrase so we’d have time to say it. Mine went like this:

“I, Simon Quirt, a full-fledged member in good standing of the Killer Krulls [this was the first I’d heard of our name, though I knew the book where he’d picked it up], do hereby swear on pain of death to myself and my entire family that I shall never betray any secrets of the club to any soul. I also swear to forfeit my own life to prevent the cops from ever taking me alive. I also swear to kill any fellow Krull who breaks this oath, and also to kill his mother and father and sister and brother and dog, if he has them. Amen.”

I almost laughed a couple of times, including when it came to the “amen.” But I held it in because Tommy seemed pretty serious about the whole thing.

He’d probably been up all night, thinking it up.

Back at his house, the garden hose wasn’t good enough to get rid of Hester’s aroma. So we went into the house. Tommy only had to wash his hands. The rest of us, one at a time, took hot showers while he went out to get our clothes.

It felt pretty good to be clean and dressed again. We got together in the den and had Pepsis and potato chips. Tommy told us that, with the body buried and everything, the cops wouldn’t stand a chance of nailing us for what we did to Hester.

I don’t think any of us really believed it.

There would
always
be a chance they’d get us.

For a few weeks, I worried about it all the time. I had plenty of nightmares, too. As time went by, though, it seemed less and less likely that we’d get caught. I quit feeling sick every time the phone or doorbell rang or I saw a cop car.

My nightmares eased off, but they’ve never gone away completely. I have some real doozies. Nightmares are supposed to be manifestations of unresolved shit in your unconscious mind, or something. I don’t know, though. I’ve got this theory that maybe there really is such a thing as ghosts, but they aren’t what people think. They don’t creep through haunted houses. What they do is creep into your head. Maybe through the mouth, when you’re sleeping. Or maybe through the nostrils. They get in there when you’re zonked out, and make nightmares happen.

It’s just a theory. Maybe I’m nuts. But I think somebody should look into it. Maybe scientists can figure out a way to stop the ghosts from getting in. Maybe something along the lines of a gas mask you wear when you go to bed. Call it a “ghost mask.”

Anyway, where was I?

Okay.

What it boils down to is that nothing ever happened. We did all that to Hester, and got away with it.

We talked about it all the time, at least when nobody was around except the four of us. It was like reliving a championship game where we’d demolished the other team. “Oh, man, did you see the look on her face when ... I meant to shoot her there, you dork ... How about when I took my knife and ... Talk about dead, man, was she dead or what ... How about that stink?” We’d go on and on.

Sometimes, we talked about doing it to someone else. We even made lists. Denise Dennison always topped the list, by the way. It was like a game, though. We had no intention of going after anyone, mostly because we were pretty sure we couldn’t get away with it a second time. So we were just playing with our fantasies.

Four years went by, and it looked as if Hester Luddgate would forever be the one and only victim of the Killer Krulls.

The next killings happened during the summer before our senior year of high school.

By then, Tom had a driver’s license so he could operate his Mercedes legally. He came up with the idea of taking a trip up the California coast and going all the way to Salem, Oregon. He wanted to check out Willamette University before deciding whether to apply for admission there. He thought it would be a kick if the whole gang went on the drive with him.

My parents agreed to let me go, even though they knew we’d be traveling without any adult supervision. For one thing, they trusted Tom. (He’s handsome, polite, intelligent, witty, and rich—what’s not to trust?) Also, they figured it would be a good experience for me.

I’m sure the parents of Ranch and Minnow also would’ve been glad to let their sons go on an adventure like that. Problem was, Ranch and Minnow were out of town on family vacations.

We’d gotten to know some other guys, though. Two of them, Clement Calhoun and Tony “Private” Majors, joined us for the trip.

We had a blast. Clement was sort of dumb, and always up for anything. Private was a goofball. I could go on forever about the stuff we did, but there’s no point. It was all just dumb teenage junk, and pretty harmless. Like mooning a couple of old farts having a picnic by the roadside, that sort of thing. Also, we got drunk quite a few times.

Sometimes we stayed at motels, and other times we slept in our sleeping bags.

We’d been on the road for a few days, and were driving through a forest of giant Sequoias up above Fort Bragg, when we met up with the bicycle riders. Two of them. It was raining like mad, so they wore bright yellow slickers with hoods covering their heads. They were pedalling along single file, heading north just like us.

In the middle of our lane.

Coming down the other lane was a logging truck.

The bicyclists were going about half as fast as us. Tom couldn’t swerve around them because of the truck, so he had to hit the brakes. “Bastards!” he shouted at the windshield.

Those two freaks just kept doodling along as if nothing had happened. They didn’t move over to the side of the road. They didn’t even look back at us. Just stayed hunched over their handlebars and ignored us and pedalled up the middle of our lane.

Truck after truck came along, heading south. We had no choice except to stay behind the bikers—or run them down.

“Fuckers,” Clem muttered. “What’s the matter with ’em?”

“They all act like that,” I said. “Plant somebody’s ass on a bicycle seat, they think they own the road. You ever notice that?”

“I’ve noticed,” Tom said. “I oughta drive right through ’em.”

“Not a bad idea,” I said.

Private was behind us with Clement. He leaned forward and peered over the top of Tom’s seat back. “Do it,” he said. He sounded very eager. “Plow right through ’em. Go on. We won’t tell. Will we, guys?”

Tom and I glanced at each other.

“You don’t really mean it,” Tom said.

“Sure I do. It’d be a gas. Slam right through those two fucks. It’d be a gas.”

“It’d probably kill ’em.”

“Big loss. Right, Clem?”

“Road hogs like them,” Clement said, “they’ll probably get run over sooner or later anyway.”

I smiled over my shoulder. “You guys are
really
cold-blooded.”

“I’m not gonna run over them,” Tom said. “It’d mess up my car.”

“Chicken,” Private said.

“Just give ’em a little bump,” Clement said.

About that time, we reached the top of a rise. Another logging truck roared by, throwing a shower of water at us. Then the road was clear all the way to the crest of the next hill, probably a mile away.

Tom could’ve swung around the bikers, now. Instead, he tooted his horn.

The one at the rear still didn’t so much as glance back, but swung an arm in a gesture for us to go around them.

“How thoughtful,” I said.

So then Tom really laid on the horn and sped toward the rear bike. At the very last second, he swerved to the side. We roared by them both. Still, neither of them lifted a head to look at us. Like they were in their own little world.

We got about a couple of hundred yards ahead of them, and Tom pulled off onto the shoulder of the road.

“What’re you doing?” Private asked. He sounded real excited and curious.

“Everybody out,” Tom said.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Clement said. “We gonna pound ’em?”

“Something like that,” Tom said.

He popped the hood. Then we all climbed out and stood in the rain just in front of the car.

“What’re we gonna do?” Private asked for the second time.

“Just do whatever I tell you,” Tom said.

We checked around. The road was still clear—just us and the bike riders. They came at us single file, hunkered down over their handlebars, their heads down so nothing showed except the tops of their yellow hoods.

Tom had been keeping Hester’s old .22 pistol under the front seat, just in case. We all knew about it. Hell, you wouldn’t want to take a long drive without some sort of a gun.

What we didn’t know is that Tom had picked it up before leaving the car.

We didn’t know it until he swung his right hand out from under his jacket, aimed and fired.
Bam bam!
Very quick. The rain was coming down hard, so I couldn’t see where the bullets hit. But the bike in the lead took a quick swerve, skidded and flipped, tossing its rider toward the pavement.

Number two biker looked up. He had a black mustache.
Bam bam bam bam bam!

He flung up his arms and tipped his face toward the sky and fell backward. He hit the rear tire of his bike, which made the bike flip and land on him.

“Let’s go, let’s go!”

Clement and Private, who both looked pretty shocked, bolted for the car doors.

“Morons!” I shouted. “Come on. Quick!”

Tom and I dashed past them. He took the first biker and I took the second. While we dragged them toward the side of the road, we gave the other guys orders to bring along the bikes.

We had the road empty with at least half a minute to spare before anyone came along. We ducked in some bushes and watched a big old Winnebago roll by.

Then we dragged the bikers and bikes deeper into the woods. Mine, Mr. Mustache, was deader than shit. One round had punched a hole in his chin, another had caught him between the eyebrows, and another had demolished his right eye.

Tom’s biker was alive, but unconscious. She was still out cold when we got to a clearing and gathered around her. She had two nicely spaced holes in her left shoulder. We found them when we pulled off her rain slicker. One hole was in her bare skin. The other, half an inch away, had poked through the strap of her tank top. Her tank top was white except for the blood, and very tight. Like it was glued to her. You could see every curve and slope. She wasn’t wearing any bra. Instead of normal shorts, she had on a black number that looked like bikini bottoms.

“Holy shit,” Private said after we’d taken off the gal’s slicker.

“Man,” Clement whispered. “She’s hardly got anything on.”

“We’ll fix that,” I said.

It was pretty funny, the way they acted while Tom and I stripped her. Like the old saying goes, they didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. They just watched and kept their mouths shut. Actually, their mouths hung open. They didn’t say anything, though.

She was nothing at all like Hester. She was damn cute. In fact, she looked a little like my friend from last night. Older, though. This gal was probably in her early twenties. Cute and slim, and shiny all over from the rain. She had very short hair that was wet and matted down. She had firm little tits. I watched the raindrops splash them. Her nipples were puckered up hard.

Gets me horny just thinking about her.

The one last night looked like she was maybe fifteen or sixteen. Man, I wish I had her with me right now, right here.

Anyway, we started messing around with the bike gal. Clement and Private got right in with the program. Probably because of how everything had gone crazy, anyhow, with Tom popping Mustache Boy the way he’d done. When you’ve been part of a deal where a stranger gets shot dead in cold blood, you figure anything goes. You’ve done the worst and you’ve got nothing to lose.

And also we knew the gal would have to be finished off so she couldn’t tell on us. It was like she was dead already. But she wasn’t really.

We were just starting to feel her up and hadn’t even started getting drastic when she came to.

She was a hell of a scrapper.

Good thing she didn’t have a Louisville Slugger.

Private sat on her face.

Uh...

I think I’d better try giving Tom a call.

I’d rather not, but ...

Hell, we’ve been buddies forever. What’s he gonna do to me? It isn’t my fault those two got away. If Tom and the guys had
helped
instead of running away and leaving it all to me, we would’ve nailed ...