Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight (7 page)

“No way,” Brayker said. He was sweating and shaking as he gripped Jeryline tighter. He had, she noticed, a mild case of BO. And no wonder, wearing dirty clothes around. He lowered the knife enough to press it hard against her throat. “Drop those guns or I kill her. Simple as that.”

The cowboy stepped forward. “Sheriff, this man does not have the guts to kill anyone.”

“Hold it!” Tupper shouted at him. “I’m the negotiator here!”

“But there are no negotiations needed, can’t you understand? I can simply walk up and take the knife from him.”

“Freeze,
Mister! Nobody said you had any authority here. And leaving the scene of an accident is a breech of the law in this state, so both of you have things to worry about.”

The Salesman groaned aloud. He stepped back. “Fine, good, whatever. Do your duty. I just want my merchandise back.”

Tupper turned his attention back to Brayker. Jeryline was aware of a strange sense of calm, or perhaps a sense of doom, wafting through her mind. Life had kicked her around a lot, and to die with her throat cut would be a fine capper for a miserable, hopeless existence. She had, for a while as a teenager, dabbled around with the idea of reincarnation, of dying and being born again as someone else. But with her luck, she had decided long ago, she would come back as her own unlucky self and have to wind up in prison again. Imagine that, endlessly repeating your own life. That would be a real, eternal, and inescapable Hell.

“Now, Mr. Brayker,” Tupper said evenly, “I want you to put the knife down. There is no need to spill blood over an attempted theft of a beat-up old Bronco. Do as I say, and let the girl go.”

Bob Martel, who had remained mute since arriving, perked up. “Asshole,” he growled, “are you deaf or just stupid? Drop it!”

Tupper made a motion: shut up. “Brayker,
put down the goddamn knife!”

Jeryline felt every muscle in Brayker’s chest and arm become so taut that they were nearly humming like high-powered electric wires. “Her blood is on your head,” he grunted at Tupper, and raked the knife across her throat. She heard herself, to her own surprise, scream. Over in the corner by the stairway, Irene screamed as well. Brayker dropped Jeryline and she thudded heavily to her hands and knees, choking on . . .

on . . .

air.

She put her hands to her throat. Nothing. She raised herself up on her knees and saw that Brayker had lowered his head. She reached up and easily pulled the butterfly knife out of his hand.

“I got him,” Tupper shouted and thundered over, with the old floorboards squeaking and groaning under his weight. Jeryline rose up and staggered to the table, still clutching her throat with one hand, unable to believe that any of this had happened, unable to believe that she was not dead on the floor.

Sheriff Tupper jerked Brayker’s arms behind his back and rapidly snapped a set of handcuffs over his wrists. “S’cuse me, honey,” he said to Jeryline, and pushed her out of the way. He took a handful of the back of Brayker’s head and mashed his face to the table, simultaneously kicking his feet apart. He patted him down from top to bottom, jerked out his roll of money, then worked his way back up.

“Missed it the first time,” he said to himself, got Brayker upright again, and jerked something out of his shirt. Jeryline saw that it was a small and tattered leather pouch on a cord around his neck.

The cowboy—Jeryline remembered that Tupper had been calling him the Salesman—nodded at Tupper. “I believe you’ll find the stolen item in there, Sheriff.” He took a step, but Brayker immediately squalled a protest.

“You keep that bastard away from me!”

“Get yourself calm,” Tupper snapped, breathing hard. He pawed through the pouch. “Nothing. It’s empty.”

“Can’t be,” the Salesman said.

Tupper let the pouch drop. He laid the roll of money on the table, shaking his head. “Salesman, who in the hell are you exactly?”

“I work for a collection agency. I repossess stolen artifacts. Antiques, like I told you.”

“So you both buy and sell antiques, and chase down people who rob your store. Couldn’t the police back east do that, so’s you don’t have to spend half your life on the road?”

The Salesman formed his hands into fists and began knocking his knuckles against each other. “The antique is somewhere in this building. It is made of bone and iron, is studded with silver rivets and mystic symbols, and was cast in the shape of a large key that is as big as your hand, an old skeleton-style key. It’s value is inestimable, Sheriff. For your benefit, that means expensive.”

“Thank you,” Tupper said coldly.

The Salesman reached into one of the huge pockets of his duster coat and withdrew a battered leather case about the size of a lunchbox. He flipped the latches and levered it open. The inside, Jeryline saw, was made of darkly ancient wood, where an indentation shaped like a huge key had been carved out. Formed into the head of it was an odd bulge, as if a gigantic pearl should be part of the ensemble.

“A piece of antiquity,” the Salesman said, snapping it shut. “Brayker has hidden it nearby. I guarantee it.”

Tupper nodded. “Bob,” he called. “Yo, Bob!”

The deputy had wandered to a window and was standing there like a mannequin, watching the storm. He turned. “What?”

“Get those damned sunglasses off for a change,” Tupper snapped at him. “Go upstairs and check the room for that key thing.”

“Key thing?” He peeled his glasses slowly off and stood befuddled. Though Jeryline had never met him before, it seemed that the man was into drugs of some sort. Shots, pills, nose candy, whatever. He looked at the Salesman and blinked a few times. “The key,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “Sure thing, boss.”

He charged up the stairs. “It’s Number Five,” Irene called to him. Somewhere along the line she had gotten herself behind the desk and was still crouched there. As Jeryline watched, she slowly rose up, a head, a pair of shoulders, a set of breasts, a waistline, all of it hidden from the neck down behind cheap green fabric cut in a style long since abandoned. “You asshole,” she hissed suddenly. She was looking at Brayker. “And to think I let you stay.”

The Salesman strode up to Tupper. “I must have the key,” he demanded.

“And you must get your breath out of my face,” Tupper snapped back. He moved his attention to Brayker. “Tell me where it is, Brayker.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he answered.

Tupper mashed his face to the table once more. “Speak, Brayker, or I’ll see you in prison for taking Jeryline hostage. It’s a very big crime nowadays, even out here in the sticks and boonies.”

Brayker struggled, but not much. “I don’t know,” he pushed out. “None of this.”

Tupper looked up. “Jeryline? You all right?”

She had been wandering around in small circles, and stopped now. “Huh?”

“Call Mavis Dornberry at headquarters in Junction City, could you? I want everything she can find on a—”

He raised Brayker erect again. “Got a first name? Middle initial?”

Brayker remained silent. The jaw muscles in his temples bulged in and out as he worked his teeth against each other. Tupper patted a hand against his back pockets, left, right, left. “Still no wallet. Just give Mavis the name Brayker, have her run it through. Odd enough name, she might find something. It’s B-R-A-Y-K-E-R.”

“No problem,” Jeryline said, and went to the desk.

The Salesman, who seemed perfectly happy not to have a name at all, took off his duster coat and stalked over to where Wally Enfield and Uncle Willie were sitting in front of the television, which was now persuading them to buy a new type of soap called Fresh Splash, not that they were interested in it at all. Wally was mesmerized by the police activity; Uncle Willie, perhaps remembering one or two of his dozens of run-ins with the local constabulary, was shrunken into the sofa à la Wally and was watching the commercial with all the intensity of a medical student witnessing his first brain surgery.

The Salesman tossed his coat across the empty sofa. “Idiots,” he muttered. When he turned Uncle Willie let his gaze creep up to watch him: something across the room had just caught the Salesman’s attention. The Salesman hurried over to where Tupper was allowing Brayker to sit at the table.

“Under there,” the Salesman announced, pointing. “I’ve figured it out by now.”

Tupper touched a finger to his forehead. “Say what?”

“There. A little ledge under the perimeter of the table. He hid the key there when we came in.”

“Zat so?” Tupper looked tired of the whole affair. “Give me a second.” He bent over and felt under the lower edge of the table, grunting against the pressure of his ample stomach as his belt cut into it. His face turned a definite red.

“Whoa-oh,” he blurted suddenly. “We’ve got something here.”

Faintly, something clunked. Tupper backed up and rose to his feet. “Bingo,” he wheezed, and held it up.

An ornamental key. Uncle Willie, looking at it, had one distinct thought:
Big fucking deal.
It was made out of some kind of pounded metal and looked to be worth about twenty-two cents at a recycling place, if you were lucky.

The guy they were calling Salesman clicked open his little leather case. “Sheriff,” he said, “be so kind as to put it in here, would you?”

Tupper eyeballed the key, shook it in his hand while he recovered his breath. “There’s some kind of glass ball toward the top,” he said. “About half full of dark stuff.” He swished it around, holding it to the light. “Looks like maple syrup.”

Feet clopped on the stairs. “Didn’t find nothing in Room Five,” Martel blared, and grinned his famous monkey-grin. “Caught me a whore and her john in the act, though. It’s a three-way bust tonight.”

Behind him were Cordelia and Roach, their clothes ruffled and off-kilter, Roach’s face smeary with red lipstick, his shoes untied. Cordelia’s extensive makeup had been smeared around and she was barefoot. And as mad, Uncle Willie could see as he watched them descend, as a hornet stuck on hot flypaper.

“Sheriff Tupper,” Cordelia brayed as she reached the landing, “I will not tolerate this kind of treatment from your deputy! You and I have known each other since the git-go. We have been more than friends on occasion. Kindly inform your storm trooper that we have an agreement!”

“Ah, jeez, Bob,” Tupper groaned. “Leave these good folk alone.”

The Salesman cleared his throat. “Sheriff, dump that crap out of the orb and put the key in this case, won’t you now? And I’ll be on my way.”

Tupper glanced at him. “Orb? Oh yeah, you’re a hotshot antique dealer from back east. And you’ll be on your way, on foot in a thunderstorm, no car, no map or nothing to guide you back to New York or wherever the hell you came from. Mister, you are as strange a man as Brayker ever will be, and you are not going anywhere until this whole damned mess is figured out. Jeryline!”

She was gone. A length of curly telephone wire led from the front desk, over the top of the nearest door, and into the kitchen. She appeared and waved a hand meaning Hold your horses, Sheriff, I’ll be done in a minute—at least to Uncle Willie’s way of deciphering things.

Tupper cursed softly. “Deputy, take Mr. Brayker here out to the car.”

Martel moved to take control of Brayker, who began to twist and struggle as Tupper started to put the key in its case. “Don’t do it!” he shouted. “You don’t know what will happen, what’s at stake!”

“He’s simply insane,” the Salesman said. “This is obviously the receptacle for the artifact, and I am obviously its owner.”

Jeryline strode out of the kitchen with the phone in her hand. “Mavis has a line through to the crime-net computer, but the only Brayker they show was a petty thief who died four years ago.”

Tupper scowled. “Wouldn’t you know? Okay, Bob, get his ass to the car. As far as we know he has no priors, but attempted auto theft is a good start.” He turned to the Salesman and extended the key. “Here it is.”

“You can’t give him that,” Brayker howled. “He’s not who he says he is!”

The Salesman had taken a step backward. “Well?” Tupper demanded. “You want it, or not?”

“Just place it in the case for me.”

Tupper narrowed his eyes. “What, you can’t touch it? Maybe you don’t want your fingerprints on it?”

“That’s absurd, Sheriff.”

“Then take it. You can wipe the prints off later.”

He hesitated.

“Jeryline,” Tupper said, “keep Mavis on the line. Salesman, let’s see some identification.”

The Salesman looked from face to face, grinning limply. “Are you mad, Sheriff? You think that I’m—”

“I don’t think nothing, yet,” Tupper interrupted. “But if you think I’m mad now, just keep on stalling.”

The Salesman’s grin vanished. “Very well.” He snapped the case shut and set it on the floor. “The time for stalling is over.”

Jeryline was just lifting the phone to her ear again to tell Mavis to get ready for more info, when the Salesman straightened and his right fist shot out toward Tupper in an instantaneous, whipping blur. It was in that millisecond that Jeryline realized, with the speed of sudden, unvoiced recognition, that Brayker was indeed a part of her destiny, of the destinies of everyone present at the Mission Inn on this howling night. The Salesman’s fist clove Tupper’s face in half, passed on through his brain, and with a hideous squelching noise, exploded out of the back of his head. Blood and clots of matter sprayed in a sudden wash across Brayker and Deputy Martel. Cordelia and Irene both screamed in unison, as did Roach, whose tone added a horrible contralto effect. Little Wally’s mouth fell open and he fainted across Uncle Willie’s lap. Uncle Willie himself had become a statue with a scraggly beard and huge, frozen eyes.

The phone dropped from Jeryline’s suddenly nerveless fingers and clunked on the floor. The twitching body of Sheriff Tupper hung from the Salesman’s arm. The Salesman tried to shake it free.

“Get me out of these cuffs!” Brayker shouted at Martel, but Martel was doing an Uncle Willie imitation without the beard. “Dammit!” Brayker howled. “Jeryline! Help me!”

She stared at him. Between her feet Mavis’s voice on the phone was a tiny buzzing.