Hang Wire (26 page)

Patience, patience.

“I do believe this fine collection is worth something, Mr Callaghan, and I’m not for a moment here pretending to be anything other than an interested customer. So please, you can spare the pretense. The expansion of your commercial enterprise must be both difficult and financially troublesome. Even a layman like my own self can see that.”

Jim’s eyes widened a little. “Well,” he said, “that’s true. After this lot is moved out, we have to clean the workshop up, refit this place, put in a car lift–”

“Five thousand.”

Jim coughed. Joel smiled. Good, good. Time was short. The offer was high. Joel knew that wouldn’t be the end of their little business arrangement, but it would keep Jim satisfied enough to not get in his way, for a while at least. The coin burned and screamed and it was all Joel could do to stop himself screaming along with it.

“OK,” said Jim. He held out his hand, ready to shake on the deal, fire in his eyes. Joel glanced down at the hand and smiled, but he kept his own hands in his jacket.

A scream echoed from down the street. Joel and Jim turned at the sound, which was followed by the long drone of a car horn and screeching tires.

“What the hell is all that?” Jim dropped his hand, the light from his eyes gone. He walked out of the garage, Joel close behind.

Someone ran toward them, down the middle of the deserted street, a block away. The silhouette waved his arms. “Hey, hey!” the running man shouted.

Behind him, a car had stopped across the intersection, its brake lights blazing red, its headlights casting a hazy white cone in the mist hanging low in the air.

“What’s going on?” Jim called out, squinting at the running man. “Drew? Is that Drew Lewiston?”

Drew pulled up in front of them, then bent double and gasped for breath. He pointed back down the road, toward the car.

“We’ve seen it. It’s here again. It’s back.”

Jim sucked in a breath and stood rigid, staring toward the car.

Joel lazily stepped forward, kicking at the gravel. “What’s back, exactly?” he asked. Drew glanced up at him and frowned; then he turned back to Jim.

“The Mothman. The Mothman’s back, Jim, and it’s got Julie. It’s taken Julie!”

Joel sat on the bed, his back against the hard headboard, above him a faded print of a velvet lady, her skin green, her eyes looking to a distant shore. Joel knew how she felt. He was a stranger here himself, not just to Point Pleasant but to the very year. His skin may as well have been as green as the velvet lady’s, his eyes on his own lost horizon.

How much longer he had to go, to endure, he wasn’t sure. Not that it was punishment. It was the opposite, a boon, a gift bestowed upon him by the light.

The light that shines, and it shines on thee.

On the other side of the motel room, beneath the thin red curtains faded to honey orange, was a sideboard, on which sat the TV. The sideboard was empty, the Gideon’s Bible gone. When Joel booked the room he’d made sure to have the motel remove it before he arrived. He wasn’t sure it mattered, but he wasn’t sure it didn’t either. He served another power now, another light, and until his journey was complete he had no intention of drawing the attention of something else that might be looking down upon humanity. In the thirty years since he had posed as a Bible salesman in the dustbowl of Texas, Joel had grown ever more wary – paranoid, perhaps, but as his journey stretched into years, into decades, he had decided to be more careful. No more Bibles.

The glass on the sideboard rattled again. It was upside down, next to the TV. Underneath it was the Double Eagle, the gold coin buzzing like a trapped and angry bee. It vibrated against the thin veneer of the sideboard and against the edge of the glass, slowly pushing it toward the TV.

Joel watched the glass and watched the coin. The light was impatient, but the screaming had stopped. It was as if the cheap glass was a cone of silence, confining the evil within.

It didn’t, of course, but Joel wondered what would happen to him once the evil had left him alone, or if it ever would. If it could let him live until mid-December 1967 without aging a single year since that day in wild Oklahoma, would it let him live until… 2067? 3067? Until the Earth crumbled to dust? Beyond?

That was the dilemma. Life eternal was a dead-end road.

Joel had excused himself when Julie turned up. Something had landed on the car and Drew had slammed on the brakes as the thing flew off, something large and heavy that had rocked the vehicle on its springs and put a dent in the roof. Drew had fled toward town, Julie in the opposite direction. A cop called Willy had found her back by the Silver Bridge, the girl terrified but still, watching the bridge like the thing was going to collapse into the Ohio River. The police had called out the fire department to help search for the creature, but the town was quiet. Drew had been drinking – Julie too – so the Sheriff didn’t file a report. They were good kids and chances were a heron or something from the river had got lost in the night and hit their car. Herons were a lot bigger than most folk realized.

Joel tore his eyes from the sideboard and the glass shaking on it, and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was two in the morning, December 17th. He needed to acquire a truck, he needed to collect the pieces of the carnival, and he needed to leave the town via the Silver Bridge. His red car had served him well but was, like Joel himself, a relic of another age. Only, unlike Joel, the car was showing its age. And besides, for the collection of large pieces in Jim’s garage, he needed something else.

Jim Callaghan of Jim’s Auto and Gas had a truck. Joel had seen it parked at the side of the gas station just a few hours before. Big enough to carry the pieces from the garage.

The glass buzzed again and glided along the top of the sideboard like it was the star attraction in a séance. It stopped by the edge, and the coin was still.

The size of the find worried Joel. It was a boon, to find so much intact and in one place, and moving it wouldn’t be a problem. But each piece needed an offering, payment on collection, as he thought of it. Sometimes the creeping evil did the work for him: the flood in North Carolina, the end of the farmhouse near Spearman, Texas. Joel’s own death. But sometimes it needed help. It needed Joel to do something, pay the toll, satisfy the hunger of it and of the light so they could move on.

The collection in Jim’s garage was huge. Nearly all of the carousel, as far as Joel had been able to see, and more parts of something else, perhaps the Ferris wheel. The carousel was important. If the carousel was there, then maybe the monkey was too.

The collection payment was going to be large. The carnival demanded payment. The thing stalking the town was a manifestation of the carnival, or at least of the power that leaked from it and into the ground, but aside from scaring teenagers who were out when they shouldn’t be, there didn’t seem to be anything else to it. Red eyes glowing in the night weren’t going to be enough.

Murder, on the other hand. Murder had power. Joel reached over to the nightstand and pulled the drawer open. He took the pearl-handled gun from inside and spun the chamber. Seven shots. One belonged to Jim – a down payment, perhaps. But there would be only six more bullets after that. It wouldn’t be enough.

Unless… unless all he had to do was start the cycle. Seven murders, enough power to feed the carnival and then perhaps that was enough to start a chain reaction. The light would be fed and then the light would feed on the world around it, filling its hunger. Letting Joel move on, taking the pieces with him.

And then he felt the push from behind him, like a heavy hand resting on his shoulders just so. He was right. The cycle. All he had to do was start the cycle and it would do the rest.

Joel slipped off the bed, picked up his holster from the back of the chair, and wrapped it around his middle; then he picked up his stovepipe hat from the seat and carefully pulled it on. He watched the glass on the sideboard for a moment but it was still; he reached forward and the coin sprang to life, dancing on its edge, jumping so hard it hit the side of the glass and cracked it. Joel jerked his hand back. Then he knocked the cracked glass over with the back of his fingers and slapped them down on the coin, sliding it to the edge of the sideboard and then off into his hand.

He squeezed his palm on the coin, feeling the cold burn, listening to the screaming in his head, listening to the death of stars and comets blazing in the night. Then he opened the door and left.

The first step was the truck.

Point Pleasant was in the grip of something, and Joel knew the cause. He’d taken the truck as dawn broke, and then spent the day loading it. Jim’s Auto and Gas remained closed; when people stopped by to ask him as he worked, he feigned ignorance, said Jim was just paying him to clear out the workshop.

Word about Drew and Julie spread during the day. There had been other sightings too. The creature was back, watching the town with its glowing red eyes, flying high overhead.

It was funny, in a way. That the town thought they were playing host to something monstrous and alien, a creature with gray wings and red eyes that appeared to do nothing at all but scare young lovers and children in the middle of the night.

Nobody in the town knew what was coming. Joel didn’t himself, but his head was filled with screaming and he felt cold, so very cold, no matter how hard he worked dragging the metal and wood from the garage.

He’d been right about the parts. It was nearly all of the carousel superstructure, though no horses or soldiers and nothing of the pipe organ and engine. The monkey was missing too, the most important part, the center of it all, but while Joel was disappointed, he knew that finding that keystone would be the most difficult quest of all.

And there was something else in the town. Joel could feel it. There were still seven bullets in his gun but it was as if something knew he was here, who he was, what he was doing. He’d kick-start the cycle and he knew that, once it was started, it couldn’t be stopped. He was on a deadline. He had to get out and across the Silver Bridge.

After the first flurry of disappointed visitors to Jim’s garage, Joel was left alone. A cold wind blew and people stayed indoors. When the truck was loaded, Joel dusted his hands off on his coat, his fingers lingering over the fob pocket, feeling the ice brand deep into his flesh, into his soul.

The sun was setting, and Joel knew Point Pleasant would never be the same again, not after tonight. He also knew that there was more to do. He had to make the payment.

Taking the gun from its holster, Joel turned on his heel. He let himself into the gas station and walked through the empty store to the counter, and then around it. He reached down and pulled a trapdoor open, revealing stairs leading down to a small cellar Jim used for storing cartons of cigarettes and old oil cans.

Jim rolled on the floor and looked up as Joel descended the stairs, gun before him. His eyes were wide and wet and he shouted something, but it was just a muffled moaning behind his gag.

Joel glided across until he was standing over Jim. He smiled and raised the gun.

Murder had power and payment was due. And tonight, Point Pleasant had to pay a steep price indeed.

“I follow the light, friend,” said Joel, pulling the hammer of the revolver back with his thumb. “And tonight the light, it shines for thee.”

“Hey,” said someone near. Then footsteps followed, heavy boots pounding on the road. Joel clicked the door of the truck shut and turned, key still in his hand. The fireman was young and built like one of the engines he drove, with a sharp buzz cut and ears that stuck out like jug handles.

“There a problem, friend?” asked Joel. The fireman pulled up in front of the truck and looked it over. It was white, JIM’S AUTO AND GAS, POINT PLEASANT, WEST VIRGINIA inscribed in elaborately scrolled, hand-painted black and red letters on the driver’s door. Beneath that was a telephone number in a type little more functional.

“Where are you taking Jim’s truck, exactly?”

Joel sighed. The man was still wearing his gear, big and bulky and unzipped to the waist, despite the cold. The man’s skin was slick with sweat and the white T-shirt he wore under the heavy fire jacket was stuck to his skin.

“And what’s in the back there?” the fireman asked. He walked around to the back of the truck and grabbed the edge of one of the yellow enameled metal signs. Immediately he pulled his hand back and shook it, like he’d got a shock.

“Hey!” the fireman yelled. Behind Joel came the sound of more booted feet running. Joel turned and saw two more firemen, just as large as their colleague.

The coin whispered to Joel, and pulled, pulled, pulled him toward the fireman. With one hand Joel brushed the edge of his jacket aside and unclipped the strap that held his gun in its holster.

“See, I’m wondering,” said the fireman. “Things go to shit in town just as you blow in. Nobody has seen Jim all day and people have been talking about a whacko in a top hat messing with his stuff. And here you are with Jim’s truck – what, he just give you the keys, did he?”

The man held his hand out, palm up. After a second Joel laughed and dropped the truck’s keys into it. The fireman nodded, his fist closing as his two companions stepped forward.

“Now,” said the fireman, “you want to tell me again where the hell Jim is and why you think you can just drive away in his truck?”

One of his friends cracked his knuckles. Joel smiled at him. Then he pushed the edge of his jacket to one side, revealing the gun. The firemen backed up immediately, the unpleasant smirks gone, their expressions now a mix of fear and surprise.

“Hey, cut it out, will you? All we want to know is what you’re doing here and where Jim is.”

“And I, friend,” said Joel, “will tell you that I’m on a mission that no man can stop.”