People of the Dark (21 page)

"My God, what did you do to it?"

"I put a new engine in it. Wasn't a
new
engine; no, wasn't a
new
engine. It was an
old
engine, but it worked.
Yers
didn't work.
Yers
had a busted block so it didn't work. "

"You should have called me—"

"Your wife said it was okay. I
wouldn'ta
done it but your wife said it was okay—"

"My wife?"

"Sure. Mrs. Harris. She said it was okay."

"When?" I tried to control my anxiety.

"When I fixed your car."

"Christ, I
know
that. I meant when did you see her; when did you talk to my wife?"

"
Coupla
days ago. When I picked your car up. Toyota's a good car—"

"Who was she with?" I cut in.

"No one. A man. Some man. He wasn't really with her. He was around, I guess. Just around. And I thought he was with her. You could ask her, you know. I mean, if she's stepping out on
ya
—"

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know. Why should I know? He looked like the rest of '
em
, I guess; I
dunno
."

I nodded impatiently at the car. "Will you take a check?"

"I'll take a check, sure. If it's good."

I
drove into Cohocton an hour later. Driving with only one good arm would have been an easy task under normal conditions, but a light rain had started, and a heavy overcast had cut the daylight in half. So when, a quarter mile from the house, I rounded a hill and saw a group of five or six people walking toward me down the center of my lane, I steered quickly to the left, lost my grip on the wheel, grabbed it again, hit the brake too hard, started skidding on the wet pavement, and shot past them with little room to spare. I spent a long time cursing them, cursing the car, myself, my bad shoulder, Jerry Czech. And yes, Erika. I had these people figured out, you see. They were like Moonies. They were fanatics of one sort or another. Religious fanatics or not, it didn't much matter. They'd seduced Erika away from me. They'd made her an offer she couldn't refuse. Eternal happiness. Inner peace. It didn't matter. I wanted her back, and I was going to find her and bring her home.

I chalked this up as a distinct possibility: They were convinced, as a group, that they were what Sarah had told me they were—creatures of the earth—that they were creatures the earth had produced. And now they were equally convinced that the earth was somehow calling them back. That was rational, and believable. I began to believe it. I knew very little about them, only what I had seen in Granada (which, upon reflection, began to spook the hell out of me) and what I had seen in Seth's eyes—distance, and confusion. And fear.

They were everywhere that morning, like deer on a rainy spring night. They were on the road, in the fields to the sides of the road, milling about the several empty and abandoned houses on the way to Cohocton. I stopped once to talk to one of them, a young woman in a blue dress, beige sandals, and white sweater. She was standing at the side of the road, soaked by the rain, facing away from me, and when I pulled up beside her, I had to lean over and roll the passenger window down. "Hello," I said, which got no reaction, so I said it again, louder, more angrily, and because it still got no reaction, I said it once more, and added, "
Goddamnit
!" That got no reaction, either. I thought a moment. I asked, "What are you doing here?" Nothing. "What in the
fuck
are you doing here?" I insisted. She'd been standing with her hands at her sides. She appeared to cross her arms now—I couldn't be sure because she was facing away from me—and walked off slowly through the mud at the side of the road, one slow step at a time, so, with each step, her foot could relax and free itself from the mud, into a stand of aspens near the road, through them, up a slight hill, and then into deep brush beyond. I stared for some time in the direction she'd gone. At last I turned back and floored the accelerator. I got to Cohocton minutes later.

I
knew only a few of the townies.
Knebel
—who had once warned me about "people standing by themselves, in the dark"—C. R. Boring, Ulla Pennon, Larry Whipple, the deputy sheriff, and Jean, a red-haired, thirtyish, matronly woman who worked as a clerk at the post office. There were several other people whom I didn't know by name but who nodded at me when they saw me on the street. I'd come to the conclusion that Cohocton was a typical small town with small town attitudes. Shortly after we'd moved in, Erwin "Bud" Huber,
Cohocton's
mayor, made a proposal that "all pornography be forever prohibited from sale, public or private, in our lovely little town" because, he explained, "people in Cohocton live on a higher plane." Never mind that the closest thing to pornography available in Cohocton, anyway, was a particularly graphic wrestling magazine: "The idea," he explained, "is to stop this cancer at its source." The proposal drew national attention not only because it was typically small
townish
, and therefore had lots of human interest potential, but also because it was so blatantly unconstitutional. Eventually it became an embarrassment, and the town trustees let it die.

And because Cohocton was so typically a small town, I was certain its people would have rallied around this new problem.

Here's the scenario I expected: Small groups of townies would have formed here and there—in front of Boring's, in front of the bank, the post office, the IGA. These groups would be discussing the current problem. The discussions would be reasonable, on balance. A few hotheads—like the people in the Electra—might try to run the show, but sweet reason (and that, after all, is what keeps towns like Cohocton together) would prevail and the hotheads would be asked to go somewhere else. Erwin "Bud" Huber would be flitting from group to group, but since the pornography amendment had blown up in his face, he'd be graciously ignored. The thread running through these groups would be an awareness that although the strange people who'd come to the town—or at least to the areas surrounding it—seemed placid enough, and although they did little or nothing that was illegal, they represented an unknown presence and were therefore not to be trusted. At last, the groups would begin to tie together; the one at the IGA would wander over and join the group at the post office. They would, in turn, attract the group at the hardware store, which would, finally, attract the last group. Someone would take charge (and I was hoping that that someone would be me). He'd give the situation a very thorough and reasoned analysis, and then, in the time-honored tradition of all small towns, propose that a vote be taken to decide what to do next.

But the streets of Cohocton were all but empty that morning. A Datsun pickup was parked in front of the post office, and a battered Ford station wagon, its hood up, stood in the IGA parking lot. A young woman carrying a screeching infant on her back was walking slowly through the light rain, smiling—apparently mindless of her wailing child—toward the Cohocton Hotel.

I parked in front of the bank, across the street from the Datsun pickup. When I got out, I heard from behind me, "Jack, hello." I turned. It was
Knebel
. He'd apparently just come around the corner of the bank—the alley there leads to his apartment—and was tugging his old German Shepherd along.

"Hi," I called. He was still a good twenty feet from me. I gestured to indicate the town. "Quiet, isn't it?"

He smiled, had clearly not heard me.

I repeated, "Quiet, isn't it,
Knebel
?!"

"Hi," he called—apparently he had still not heard me—and then he stopped because his dog refused to go on.

I walked over to him, noticed around him the strong, unpleasant odor of the little cigars he smoked. I patted the dog. "He's pretty old, isn't he,
Knebel
?"

"Close to fifteen. Haven't seen you in a while, Jack." He nodded at the cast on my arm. "Broke your shoulder, huh?"

"Cracked it."

"Oh? I heard it was broken." He smiled. "Small town gossip, very unreliable. Got your Toyota fixed, I see. Good car, those Toyotas. They last forever."

I gestured again. "Why's it so quiet, here?"

"Everyone's at the carnival in Penn
Yann
. '
Cept
me, of course." His dog lifted a leg and started cleaning itself.
Knebel
leaned over, pushed the leg down. "No, Hans," he whispered. "Later."

I said, "My wife's missing,
Knebel
."

He looked up from his dog, nodded, looked back; the dog was cleaning itself again. "I know that. Left you for those religious fanatics, I hear. Bad luck, Jack."

His casual attitude made me instantly angry. "Christ,
Knebel
, it's more than bad luck—" I stopped, aware of my anger.

He looked up and grinned. "No need to get upset, Jack. My daughter left us for some religious fanatics in Utah. Not the Mormons. Some other group. So I know what it's like, believe me. I feel for you, but what can I do about it?"

"The question is,
Knebel
, what can we
all
do about it?"

"'All,' Jack? Who's
all
?"

"The people.
Here.
The people in Cohocton."

"What do you want them to do, Jack?"

I hesitated. It was a good question. I shook my head a little. "I don't know." I remembered my scenario. "I don't know," I repeated. "I guess we could all get together and talk about it."

"Talk about what?"

"About the situation, for Christ's sake."

"You're getting upset again, Jack." He leaned over, pushed his dog's leg down once more. "Not now,
damnit
!" he whispered. He looked up at me. "Besides, what situation are you talking about?"

"About these religious fanatics, of course."

Knebel
shrugged. "Who are they hurting? So they're all over the place?! There's not much anyone can do about that, short of running '
em
out of town." He grinned. "And no one can do that, can they? You just watch out for them, Jack. You try not to run '
em
down. And if you want, you go looking for whoever it is they took away from you. That's my advice. They took Erika away from you?" He shrugged again. "Well, you go and get her. Course, you got to know where to look, and that could be a problem, I guess." He pushed at Hans's leg again, whispered an obscenity, looked back at me. "Seen this, Jack?" He nodded to indicate the dog's collar. I looked. It had a series of small lights set around it; the lights were variously blue, green, red, and they were flashing rhythmically.
Knebel
continued, "My own invention, Jack? Works with a battery pack." He lifted a small brown box hanging from the collar. "
Here.
"

I shook my head slightly. "Sure,
Knebel
," I whispered. "I'll see you again, okay?" and without waiting for an answer I turned and walked away from him.

I heard him call behind me, "Hey, good luck there, Jack. Don't get yourself converted."

J
ean, the thirtyish, matronly woman at the post office, said, "Live and let live, Mr. Harris. You know, I've got that on a plaque in my living room, and I really do believe it; I live by it." A short pause for effect. "We
all
should, don't you think?" She smiled a big self-satisfied smile. "Stamps, Mr. Harris?"

"No," I said. "Thank you." And I left.

In the hardware store, C. R. Boring was seated on a tall metal stool behind the counter. He looked happy to see a customer come in. "I like carnivals as much as the next guy, Mr. Ferris—" he began.

"Harris," I corrected.

"Yes?" Momentary confusion. "And this one in Penn
Yann
is a
doozy
, but there's no sense abandoning Cohocton. What's the businessman going to do, Mr. Harris? Which of us can afford to lose a day's worth of business? These are hard times."

"Don't those others shop here?"

He adjusted himself on his metal stool, crossed his legs. He looked very uncomfortable. "You mean these hippies, don't you?"

I nodded.

"I wish they did. But they don't. One of '
em
came in here, once. I asked him what he wanted, he didn't answer, so I asked him again, and he wandered out without so much as a 'How
ya
do?' Damned spooky sons of bitches—"