Helltown (16 page)

Steve took the steps downstairs two at a time and saw Noah standing outside on the veranda. He stopped next to him and stared in surprise at the car coming toward them through the fog. He recalled the kid’s words:
Pa’s coming back right now, and you’re gonna be in deep shit.

“What should we do?” Noah said. He had gone white as a ghost.

“I’ll tell them,” Steve said.

“I killed their kid,” Noah said.

“I’ll tell them,” Steve repeated.

The car shuddered to a stop next to Noah’s Jeep. The door flung open and a smallish man appeared. He had warthog hair sprouting from a balding crown, a turned-up nose, and a sallow complexion. He wore sagging jean and a hounds-tooth jacket over a faded red T-shirt.

He scowled at them. “Who the hell you?” he said, slurring his words.

Steve said, “We’ve had an accident—”

“It’s just the two of you? No one else? No girlfriends?”

Steve and Noah exchanged confused glances.

“Well?” the man demanded.

“We’ve had an accident,” Steve continued. “Two of our friends are injured. We saw this house, a light was on, we thought we could use the phone and call the police.”

The man’s eyes glinted suspiciously. “Well, did ya?”

“Do you live here?”

“What’s that to ya?”

“A boy lives here.”

“My son, Scottie. And I’ll ask you again—what’s that to ya?”

“You son told us you don’t have a phone.”

The man smiled triumphantly, revealing stained, barnacle teeth. “That’s right,” he said. “Don’t got no phone. Who the hell I need to call?”

“Your son,” Steve said, swallowing the tightness in his throat, “started to attack us with a hockey stick. My friend tried to take the stick from him. There was an accident.”

The man squinted. “What kind of accident?”

“Sir, I’m sorry. Your son is dead.”

“He’s
what
?”

“It was an accident. He bumped into a radiator. It fell on him.”

The man stood there, staring at Steve like he was speaking Klingon. Then he clicked back to reality and bounded up the steps. “Scottie?” he shouted. “Scottie?”

Steve and Noah stepped aside as the man shoved past them, leaving a trail of cheap cologne in his wake. He went inside the house. “Scottie?
Scottie!
”

Steve stared at his feet as he listened to the man wail and blubber and finally break down in sobs. Then he went quiet. Steve glanced at Noah. He was staring off into the trees. Moonlight glinted off his tear-streaked cheeks.

The man appeared in the doorway. His eyes were bloodshot. Snot hung from his nose, stringing off his chin. “Who did that?” he barked hoarsely.

“I did,” Noah said.

“You killed my boy?”

Noah didn’t answer.

“
You killed my boy?
”

“It was an accident,” Steve said.

The man whirled on him. “An accident? An accident! He don’t got no head no more!”

“I’m sorry—”

“Sorry? You’re sorry? I’ll show you sorry.” He hastened down the steps to his car.

Under his breath Steve said, “I think we should get out of here.”

Noah rubbed his eyes and nodded.

In the next instance, however, the man withdrew a rifle from his car. He locked it into his shoulder, pressed his cheek to the side of the stock, and took aim at Noah through the open sight. “I’ll see you in hell, boy,” he said.

Noah’s hands shot up. “Wait wait wait—”

The man rocked the bolt to and fro, feeding a round into the rifle’s chamber, and fired. The report was like a canon blast. Noah flew backward against the house. His left hand crashed through the living room window, and he crumpled to the ground.

“Noah!” Steve shouted, dropping to his knees. “Noah?” He tilted his friend’s head back. A circular hole rimmed with abraded skin and leaking blood marked the center of Noah’s forehead like a bulls-eye. His eyes were open and unseeing.

He had died instantly.

Heart pounding, barely able to breathe, Steve bumbled backward like a crab, trying to stand but finding his legs uncooperative. The man tromped up the steps, pointing the rifle at him. He cycled the bolt, ejecting the spent casing. It struck the lumber planking with a plaintive clink.

“Fuck you!” Steve shouted in crazy defiance. “You fucking redneck piece of shit! You killed him! You killed my friend!”

“And you’re next, boy,” the man snarled as he closed one wild eye, taking aim through the rifle’s sight once more.

CHAPTER 11

“I warned you not to go out tonight.”

Maniac
 (1980)

Panting, her throat flayed raw, Mandy stumbled to a stop before a small butte overgrown with vegetation. She glanced behind her, saw nothing but the dark outlines of tree trunks in the ethereal fog, and sagged to all fours. She crawled forward and pressed her back against the rock wall, wanting to blend into it. She was so deep in shock her brain and lungs felt encased in ice. She couldn’t think or make sense of anything.

She waited, listened, every nerve ending tingling, alert. The night was graveyard silent. She didn’t hear any sound of pursuit. She considered continuing on, putting as much distance between her and the freaks as possible, yet she didn’t think she could coax her body into getting up. She’d only been running for one minute, two at most, yet she was out of breath and exhausted. She might be thin, and look fit and healthy on the outside, but her insides were a different matter altogether. The last time she’d gone for a run—a real run with warm-up stretches and Lycra tights and Nike joggers—would have been as a junior in high school. She’d been nothing but skin and bones then. Her mother had told her this countless times at the dinner table when she refused to finish her meals. “You’re nothing but skin and bones, Mandy,” she would say, looking over the top of her bifocals at her in an uncanny impression of a cross librarian. “No man is going to take a stick-and-bones woman for a wife. Men want femininity, fertility, and that means breasts, hips. Even a nice round tush wouldn’t hurt. Now, eat up.” Whether it was from eating more, or family genes (her mother had been a buxom, curvaceous woman—until the last stages of the cancer, that was) Mandy had definitely developed the breasts, hips, and tush. But in those younger days, as a twelve-year-old girl, it wouldn’t have been hard imagining a strong gust of wind picking her up and blowing her halfway down the block.

Healthy on the outside…rotten on the inside.

Nevertheless, Mandy had gotten away from Cleavon and his brothers. She was safe. As long as she remained still and didn’t make any noise, they wouldn’t find her—

She made out a distant yellow light arcing back and forth in the fog. Her lungs shucked up in her chest.

For a few moments the light seemed to be angling away from her. Then, to her horror, it bee-lined back in her direction. It came closer, growing larger and brighter.

Mandy watched it, hypnotized. Her muscles stiffened as she prepared to flee. She eased herself onto her knees but froze when the leaf litter crackled beneath her weight. It sounded as loud as a gunshot in the still forest.

She couldn’t run, she realized. The person with the flashlight was too close. He would hear her, then see her. He would catch her.

The light came closer.

She pressed her back flat against the rock wall. The person—Floyd? Earl? Cleavon?—was now so close she could hear him. He was stepping heavily, batting branches, making no effort at stealth.

Abruptly he stopped. An unbearable silence ensued. Mandy was sure he had spotted her. But then he aimed the flashlight into the canopy. Maybe he’d heard an animal, a raccoon or possum, or maybe he thought she’d climbed a tree.

He lost interest in the leafless boughs a moment later and started forward once more, sweeping the flashlight beam to his left and right, methodically searching the mist-shrouded night. He couldn’t be any more than twenty feet away. If he kept his path he would spot her. She was certain of that. A few more steps and he would cry out in triumph and charge her. She should have run when she had the chance. She should have ignored her exhaustion. What were a few minutes of discomfort when your life hung in the balance? Surely she could have pushed on, gotten a second breath—

“Cleave?” the man who was now only fifteen feet away shouted. It sounded like Earl. Mandy’s stomach dropped as she waited for him to say, “Found her!” Instead he added, “She’s gone!”

There was no reply for a long moment. Then Cleavon’s voice, gruff and distant, told him to come back.

Mandy said a silent prayer of thanks even as Earl bounced the flashlight beam back and forth a final time. It stopped directly on her, blinding her. She felt as lit up as a fly on a television screen.

If she could have worked her lungs, she would have screamed. If she could have moved her limbs, she would have fled. But she could do neither. She was paralyzed with fear—and it was this instinct that ultimately saved her. Because Earl hadn’t seen her after all. The beam moved off her, the footsteps started away.

Mandy expelled the breath she’d been holding and shook uncontrollably.

Mandy remained where she was for another five minutes, making sure Earl’s departure wasn’t a trick to lure her out of hiding. When she didn’t hear or see anything more of him, she decided she was safe.

She sagged with relief. She had never contemplated dying before. But while frozen there, pinned in the flashlight beam, she’d been convinced it was the end. She was going to die.

Mandy—no more.

She couldn’t get her mind around this possibility. She couldn’t grasp the concept of not being. Maybe older people could. Maybe the longer you lived, the more familiar and understanding you became of whatever awaited you. You came to accept it, the way you came to accept aging.

Nevertheless, Mandy was too young for all this. It was as alien to her as the starving African children on those TV infomercials. She’d watched the LiveAid concert with Bob Geldolf and Michael Jackson a couple years before. She knew about the famine and disease over there. But she hadn’t been able to relate to the images she saw. Babies were supposed to be chubby and gay, not emancipated and buzzing with flies. It had been too far removed from her world. She’d acknowledged that it happened, but tuned out immediately, just as she had always tuned out thoughts on death when they became too philosophical. Even when her mother died, she had not allowed herself to dwell on what became of her soul. Of course she had been overwhelmed with sadness, but at eleven years of age, it was the sadness of loss, of loneliness, nothing deeper.

Slowly, carefully, Mandy stood. She felt strangely energized, like she could run a marathon.
She was alive
. Suddenly the concept of living was as invigorating as the concept of death was frightening.

She took a deep breath and tried to figure out what to do next. She couldn’t remain where she was. Cleavon and his brothers might resume their search for her in the morning when, without the cover of nightfall, she would be much more exposed and vulnerable.

She contemplated finding her way to the highway. She could flag down a passing car, get a ride into town. Then again, wasn’t that what Cleavon would expect her to do? What if he collected his car from the “ol’ McGrady house” and prowled the roads for her. She could unwittingly flag him down, just as the distressed damsel always flagged down her tormentor in the movies.

Could she walk all the way to town then? She had no idea how far Boston Mills was, but right then she was determined to walk all night if she had to. She could keep to the verge. If a vehicle came along, she could duck into the woods and hide until it passed—

She nearly slapped her hand against her forehead when she realized what she’d overlooked.

Steve and Noah!

They were likely already on their way back with help. Paramedics, police officers, firefighters. She had to get to the road, wave them down, warn them about Cleavon and his brothers. She wouldn’t be fooled. She’d recognize a police cruiser, or an ambulance. Their lights would be flashing, their klaxons blaring.

With fresh determination, Mandy went searching for the road.

CHAPTER 12

“That cold ain’t the weather. That’s death approaching.”

30 Days of Night
 (2007) 

Cleavon was pacing back and forth in the middle of the road when he spotted a pair of headlights beyond the veil of fog. He moved to the gravel shoulder so Jesse didn’t run him over and waved his arms above his head. The two orbs of white grew brighter until Jesse’s Chevy El Camino appeared and hunkered to a stop before him. Jesse left the engine running as he hopped out one door, Weasel the other.

Jesse was an owlish looking man who always had his head stuck forward and always looked like he had a question on his mind. His big-framed, thick-lensed eyeglasses made his eyes look bigger than they were, while his perpetually puckered kisser made the rest of his face look smaller. He was freshly shaven and wore a beige jacket zippered to his chin against the chill. He liked to tell people he was the CEO of his own company, and he was, technically. What he didn’t tell people was that the company was a one-man operation called JG Outhouse Kleanin Kompany. He also didn’t tell people, if they asked, how he got the third-degree burns on his arms. He probably wouldn’t have told anybody, ever, had Randy not read about it in the
Akron Beacon Journal
. According to the story, which was now framed behind glass and hanging on the wall of Randy’s pub, Jesse had been working on an emergency toilet hole cleanup job in the middle of the night and had decided he’d needed light and lit a match while down in the hole. He was only lucky he’d been wearing a half-face respirator and goggles, or his face would have gone the way of his arms.