Ravenous Ghosts (12 page)

(You
're probably waiting for me to tell you some spooky story behind the name Brimstone Turnpike, right? Well sorry. I don't know anything about that and as far as I know, no one else does either and if they do, they're not telling.)

But whatever else had changed about the diner, Daisy remained just as scowl-faced and ill tempered as always. It wasn
't something that bothered us anymore; in fact we kind of just respected it as part of who she was. Like a rabid raccoon, no amount of kindness is going to change the fact that it's rabid. But you don't poke a stick at it either and that's what the kid at the counter with the dull eyes and bad teeth was doing now.

I was unfortunate enough to be seated downwind of the kid and good
Christ
he stank--kind of a mixture of roll-your-owns and rotten fish. He couldn't have been more than twenty and wore a soiled, dark green army jacket.

I knew by the expression on Daisy
's face when she offered him more coffee and he waved her away without looking up from the tattered paperback he had in front of him on the counter that she was hoping he'd give her an excuse to spit fire.

And now he had.

I wiped my mouth with the corner of a napkin, angry in a sort of distracted way that my quiet meal of ham and cheese bagels was about to be spoiled by another of Daisy MacFarlane's needless outbursts. I was well used to them you understand, but that didn't mean I couldn't wonder why she insisted on doing it every week like clockwork, or be happy about it. Only a fire could clear a place faster than Daisy. I guessed it was as essential a part of her being as the thick greasy makeup she wore which was at least two shades lighter than the skin beneath it.

"
Excuse me?" she said and settled her three hundred-and-something pounds against the counter. A thick, short-fingered hand plunked down beside my plate like an blushing starfish as she steadied herself, the heaving of her massive bosom making Betty Boop's black and white ass poke further into the air on her apron.

The kid looked bewildered for a second and looked to me for support, as we were the only two seated at the counter. Jed MacLean and a bunch of his men from a construction site over in Harperville were seated in the booth behind me. One of them sniggered.

A sidelong glance from Daisy silenced him.

The kid gave her an uneasy grin.
"Christ, sorry. I'm hungry all right, that's all I meant. S'not easy sitting here with an empty stomach and waiting to be served while a guy's sizzling steaks and hamburger right in front of your nose."

The
'guy' was Ralphie Grimm (I know, I know but no story there either), probably the most capable short order cook in the Western hemisphere despite his missing two fingers.

(And there
is
a story there, but it changes every week.)

Poor Ralph had a face that could turn your hair gray if you saw him in partial shadow but I have yet to meet a nicer guy, which makes it all the more upsetting that he died that day.  I can still see him flipping those burgers and whistling soundlessly, occasionally flashing a smile or a lewd wink over his shoulder at Daisy
's trundling form.

Now however I saw his shoulders tense and the whistling stopped.

Daisy's jowls tightened, her thin violet lips curving into a wicked sneer. "A man hungry enough to forget his manners ain't half a man at all," she said in a tone of voice that suggested she was recalling a passage from the Bible.

Over our heads, the old fan rattled. Someone coughed. The griddle hissed.

"Jesus, lady…"

"
Lady
? My name is Daisy and I own this establishment, boy. If you'd looked carefully enough you'd have seen the tag on my uniform." She tugged at the little white rectangle on her bosom. "Day
-Zee
."

The kid shrugged.
"I don't like to peer too closely at ladies' breasts, Ma'am. Gets you in trouble in some places, y'know?"

Mirth bubbled in my throat and the fact that all of Jed McLean
's men were now wheezing laughter into their hands made it all the harder to swallow.

But next to my plate, the starfish had reddened further and the mirth had vanished.

Christ kid
, I thought,
don't make her go postal on you
.

"
A wise-ass," Daisy growled, teeth clenched. "Maybe a turn on the griddle would put some manners into you."

The kid feigned shock.
"Are you threatening
me, Day-
Zee
?"

I ran a hand over my face and briefly considered telling the kid to shut his yap before Daisy rammed a saucepan into it. But I just sat there, trying to mind my own business and hoping Daisy wouldn
't resort to—

"
You little shit!"

--cussing.

"Now you listen here. Get back on whatever pile of junk you used to carry your skinny little hippy ass here and beat it before I beat
you
seven shades of purple."

She had shifted forward a step closer, her face positively swollen with rage. The starfish drew in on itself and was now clenched against Daisy
's side, attached to an arm roughly the size of a small keg. The coffee pot was still gripped in her other hand and if nothing else, I prayed she'd put the damn thing down before the kid ended up wearing it.

"
That's not very nice," the kid said, sounding genuinely hurt. I looked at him, his eyes now hidden beneath his long black fringe as he stared down at the book. "Besides, I walked here."

A flicker of uncertainty passed over Daisy
's face like a ripple over a calm pond. She cackled dryly and looked at Jed's boys and then me, perhaps hoping we'd join in. We didn't.

"
Walked? Son, no one walks in this heat. That road out there is called Brimstone Highway for a reason you know. What kind of a hopped-up lunatic are you anyway?"

Her gaze hardened and she stepped right up to the kid and snatched the paperback out from right under his nose.
"I'm talking to you and as long as your ass is taking up valuable real estate in here, you'll listen." She wiggled it in the air like a playground bully and I saw the name of the book, or at least what the name looked like.

Silver symbols against a black background. No letters, just lines and shapes, and squiggles.

I didn't think much of it at the time. For all I knew the kid was a Muslim and liked to keep up on his religion. I'd never seen Muslim language but I imagined it looked pretty similar to the hieroglyphics on that cover. There was no picture, unless you count a big black crooked rectangle with a speck of amber light in the middle and I don't.

"
Give it back," the kid said, his voice sinking a notch. "I'm just hungry, that's all."

Daisy raised her pencil thin eyebrows and gave the book a cursory glance.
"What's this? Nazi shit, no doubt. You kids are all the same these days, one cult or another as if the world isn't messed up enough without you bringing more crap into it."

Finally I found my voice:
"Daisy, just give the kid back his book would ya?"

She spoke without looking at me.
"Mind your business Tom or you'll be out on your ass too."

And with a casual flick of her wrist, she sent the book flying over her shoulder where it came to land atop the griddle, among Ralphie
's sizzling steaks. Ralphie gave a surprised '
uh
' and gawped at the newest addition to his menu. "What the…?"

Daisy set the coffee pot down on the counter and leaned in close to the kid, her hands clamped onto the counter at either side of her.
"And you stink kid. Anyone let you in on that little secret yet? You smell like road kill. And I'll tell you something else for nothing, this is
my
diner and everyone around here knows that. They also know not to mess with me. Wanna hazard a guess as to why that is?"

I expected a witty retort but the kid
's eyes were growing darker by the minute, his lips thin and bloodless. I wouldn't have crossed him then, despite my having a good sixty pounds over him. He looked like he was about to go bananas. Whatever that face of his was saying, Daisy was encouraged by it. She was grinning from ear to ear, big coffee and nicotine-stained teeth gleaming dully, her face mere inches from the kid.

"
Give me the book back," the boy replied tonelessly.

Ralphie had suddenly become interested in the little scene ever since the book had landed on his stovetop. When he heard the kid ask for the book, he winced and swept it off the griddle and onto the floor, where it lay in a smoldering heap, edges blackened and curled. Daisy, who ordinarily would have pissed petroleum at such a mutinous move, seemed oblivious to everything but the boy
's pale face.

Ralphie looked at me. I shrugged.

"People who mess with Daisy McFarlane tend to wind up in hospital," Daisy was saying. "We tend to favor only polite folk in here and any fool who swaggers through that door thinking he can act just as he pleases because a
woman
is behind the counter finds out the hard way that this is nineteen-eighty seven and not the Dark Ages. If he acts the dick, he's likely to find himself leaving without one. Geddit?"

You had to admire Daisy. Only she could pull off a hackneyed gangster shtick and make it sound convincing. If I had been that kid, I
'd have been soiling my shorts right about then.

But he wasn
't.

Instead, he was staring blankly into her eyes as she spoke, waiting for her litany to end.

"Snot-nosed punk." Daisy straightened with a grunt and nodded in satisfaction. "Teach you to be more polite in future. Now get the hell out of my diner."

She turned to leave.

"My book," he said quietly. "I need it."

Daisy turned back, her face scrunching into a grimace.
"What the hell is with you and that dumb book? I said get out of my diner. Don't make me throw you out."

Jed and his boys finished their meals, bored with a show they
'd seen countless times before and left with muttered goodbyes and shuffling feet. They couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. It was close to a hundred degrees outside but wearing the heat was a damn sight better than wearing Daisy MacFarlane's tongue.

I knew how they felt but I wanted to see how this played out. I wasn
't sure why but something about the kid didn't sit right with me and it wasn't just the dead eyes or the loose-fitting clothes.

Meanwhile, Ralphie had picked up the book and was wafting the burnt edges and blistered back cover with his hand as he walked toward Daisy. She moved aside with a disgusted grunt as he slid the book back in front of the kid.
"There you go, kid. Not too badly messed up. I reckon the words'll still be there."

He offered a broad smile and nodded before turning to leave. The kid muttered something and Ralphie half-turned, the smile still on his crooked mouth.
"What was that, son?"

The kid looked up and I noticed there were tears in his eyes as he caressed the charred cover of the book with his fingertips.
"I said I'm sorry about what's going to happen to you. I don't mean for you to get hurt. It'll be a case of standing in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"
Uh…son, I don't know what…"

Daisy
's sudden outraged bellow almost sent me flying backwards off my chair. "That's a threat if I ever heard one! Tom, call Sheriff McGrath! We got us a little no-good criminal here. In
my
diner!"

I didn
't move. I never had the chance and what happened next would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

The kid wiped his nose against the back of his sleeve and picked up the book. I remember wincing when he cracked it open, tiny pieces of melted binding scattering across the counter. Daisy was still shrieking and at one point she nudged my hand but I didn
't hear what she said. Whatever I'd felt—or sensed or whatever the hell you want to call it—about this boy was going to show itself now. I was sure of it and God himself couldn't have moved me off that chair. I felt the hair prickle all over my body as if the air had suddenly filled with electricity.

The boy opened the book. The pages it seemed were intact though the edges were badly burnt. He raised the book up to his chin.

Daisy had had enough. She shambled forward, shoving Ralphie out of her way and with a muttered curse she reached a hand out to snatch the book from the boy's hands.

The kid blew across the pages like a librarian blowing dust from an old tome, except it wasn
't dust that flew from the pages of the kid's strange book.

It was the words.

As Daisy, Ralphie and I stared transfixed by this most impossible of illusions, a strange circular symbol, tiny, black and round lifted off the page and floated out until it attached itself like a fake tattoo to Daisy's jiggling arm. At first she simply frowned and crooked her elbow to get a better view of the bizarre attachment. "Now how in the hell did you…?"