Authors: Jonathan Maberry
Bad Moon Rising (32 page)
Mark threw back his head and howled like a triumphant wolf, the sound of it making the whole room tremble, but the howl ended in a low, mean laugh. He took a menacing step forward toward Val, hands clutching the air between them with unholy need.
Val rose from behind the autopsy table and in her hands she held Ferro’s shotgun.
“God forgive me,” she whispered as she raised it to her shoulder and fired.
From four feet away the hard lead pellets and viscous garlic oil took the vampire full in the face and blew him back to Hell.
Final Fugue
Mike Sweeney squirmed out from beneath the hay and sat blank-eyed for an hour before he realized who he was and where he was. He zipped his jacket up to his chin and crept out of the barn into the frigid afternoon. Beyond the fields was the dark green wall of the state forest, so Mike went that way, heading in a wandering zigzag course through the woods until he stumbled to a stop at a drop-off that fell away into utter blackness. Going back was out of the question, going left would take him through a dozen farms and then back to town. If he went right he was pretty sure he could make it to Val Guthrie’s farm before full dark.
But he lingered for a while at the drop-off, staring down into the lightless void of Dark Hollow. He wondered what would happen if he just…stepped off? How far would he fall? Would it be a long enough drop so that the fall would kill him? That would be nice. A long drop down into nothingness and to become nothing at the end of it all.
“Mom…,” he said, and just saying it made the lure of the darkness all the stronger.
The air in front of him shimmered and Mike felt as if invisible hands were pushing on him. Not pushing him toward the long dark, but away from it.
A thought came into his head, and it was a strange one because it didn’t feel like one of his own thoughts, but there it was. The thought was
if you take that step he’ll win.
He? Mike didn’t know if his inner voice meant Vic or Tow-Truck Eddie. Or did it mean his
father
?
Mike stood at the edge of the abyss and listened for more from that inner voice, but there was only silence inside. Every tree around him was filled with crows; they were invisible in the shadows, but Mike could hear the soft rustle of their wings.
If you take that step he’ll win.
The voice again, and now he realized that it was a voice, not a thought. It was the same voice that had warned him to run earlier. It was the voice of the man from his waking dream. Mr. Morse.
The crows cawed as if in chorus to that warning.
“You’re not real,” Mike said, addressing the voice in his head.
No. Not anymore.
“Why is this happening to me?” Mike pleaded. “Why me?”
Why not?
“That’s a stupid answer.”
It is what it is.
“I don’t want to be who I am,” Mike said.
Who do you think you are?
“I…I’m a monster. Isn’t that what Tow-Truck Eddie called me? The Beast?”
Damn, son, you can’t listen to what that fool says. His mind is on fire.
“So’s mine!” Mike pawed a tear out of his eye. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be who I am. I don’t want that man to be my father.” A sob broke from his chest. “I want my mom!”
He fell to his knees but the edge of the drop-off crumbled under him, the soil washed out of the roots by all the recent rain. Mike cried out and spread his arms to catch the tangled weeds at the edge of death and the moment froze. Even the crows in the trees held their breath as natural erosion nearly did what Tow-Truck Eddie and Vic and all of Griswold’s armies could not do. Mike fought for balance and nearly—so nearly—fell.
But he didn’t fall. He heaved himself backward onto the grass and fell flat on his back, staring up through the spider-web tracery of the barren trees at the stars above.
It’s not your fault who your parents are,
said Mr. Morse.
“It’s not fair.”
No, it ain’t.
“I don’t want to be like him. I can’t be like my father.”
Then
don’t
be.
Mike sat up slowly. “What?”
Don’t be like him. Don’t be like Vic. Don’t be like your mamma, either.
Mike said nothing, listening.
None of them know who you really are, Mike. They want you to be like them, but they’re afraid that you won’t be. You hear me, boy? They are afraid that you won’t be like them.
“Afraid? That’s stupid. Who would be afraid of me? I’m no one.”
In his mind Mr. Morse laughed, all the crows sent up a cackle.
Who do you want to be?
“I…,” Mike’s voice failed. He had no idea how to answer that question. Instead he lay back and asked, “Why are they afraid of me?”
You know.
“No I don’t.”
Yes you do. Look inside, Mike. It’s gonna hurt—but they already done hurt you worse than anything else could do. You want to know why they’re afraid, just open up and look deep inside.
“I don’t know how.”
I can help you, if you let me. You got to trust me.
“I’m scared.”
So am I, son. So are we all.
Mike lay for a while and watched heaven spin on its axis. The birds rustled and whispered to one another; Mr. Morse held his tongue.
“Okay,” Mike said at last, and it took nearly everything he had to say that one word.
A sound rippled through the trees above him as if each of the thousand crows uttered a long sigh. Then, as the stars glittered and the crows held their breath, Mr. Morse—the Bone Man—fulfilled his mission on Earth and told Mike everything that he knew. He didn’t know all of it—there were such huge gaps in his own knowledge—but what he knew for sure hit the boy like a shotgun blast.
At first Mike listened in silent horror, and then he wept, and finally he screamed.
Down below, far down in the shadows of the Hollow, the swamp shuddered as things twitched in fury and fear beneath the mud.
When the telling was done, Mike Sweeney did not speak. He could not. He lay there with his eyes open, his lips parted in a soundless
O
of terrible surprise. His body was sprawled in a rough cruciform, arms out to either side, heels dangling over the edge of forever. His chest barely lifted with each breath, and deep inside his heart struggled for each next beat until, as the moon drifted behind a veil of clouds, his broken heart just did not take the next beat, and his lungs did not struggle to fill.
And Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, died.
T
HE
R
ED
W
AVE
October 30 (Mischief Night) to October 31 (Halloween)
And we all know death someday comes Life was never all that certain…
Harry Manx, “Weary When You Run”
With every weary step, you one step closer to the grave; With every single step, on every broken-hearted day you one step closer to the grave. Lay down and die and let the worms have their way.
Oren Morse, “Cemetery Blues”
(1)
For twenty-four hours now Tow-Truck Eddie had been cruising the roads around Pine Deep. When his shift was over he swapped the cruiser for his wrecker and went back out on the road, but there was no sign at all of the Beast. As each moment passed he felt the twin fists of tension and despair beat at him.
He was failing in his Holy Mission. The Beast had actually been in his grasp and he’d lost him. Blood boiled in his veins, and he gripped the steering wheel of the wrecker with such force that the knobbed wheel was slowly being twisted out of shape. Hulking in the cab of the wrecker, he drove through the noisy crowds, praying for guidance, begging for the chance to let his work begin.
(2)
The official version that Ferro concocted was that a pair of criminals in ski masks broke into the morgue, ostensibly to steal medical supplies, and Val and Crow happened to be there discussing the release of her brother’s body with Dr. Weinstock. Ferro and LaMastra had come back up from Philly to interview Ms. Guthrie and officially close the Ruger/Boyd case. The morgue video cameras were still out of commission and the criminals turned off the lights and in the ensuing confusion shots were fired but luckily the only person struck was the already dead Mark Guthrie. However, in the darkness everyone was generally knocked about, and Dr. Weinstock was bitten by one of the assailants. The attackers fled and their identities were still unknown.
It was a load of horseshit, but they only had to sell it to Gus Bernhardt and he would buy swamp real estate from a guy in a shiny suit. Weinstock, injured as he was, was lucid enough to browbeat the hospital staff, and no one questioned Weinstock on anything anyway. Jonatha and Newton were too difficult to fit into the scenario, so they left before Weinstock called it in.
LaMastra was surprised that everyone seemed to buy the story, but Crow pointed out, “Dude, after everything that’s happened since Ruger came to town, this shit actually sounds reasonable.”
Weinstock was admitted into his own hospital. His shoulder needed twenty-two stitches, and he was scheduled for an MRI to see what kind of damage was done to the tendons. Even as he was being wheeled into the ER he was diagnosing himself, bullying the residents and nurses and generally making a pain in the ass of himself.
One of the residents put five stitches in the glass cut on LaMastra’s jaw, and nurses handed out ice packs to Crow and Ferro. Val was hurt, too, but not in a way that required treatment. She sat in Crow’s ER unit and just stared into the middle distance, and Crow could guess what she was seeing. When the ER docs were done with him, Crow dragged a chair over and sat down next to Val, pulling her close, whispering soothing words to her over and over again.
“I’m so sorry, baby…but you did what you had to do.”
It was maybe the fiftieth time he said that during the four hours they were in the ER, and Val finally pushed herself back and Crow could see the fierce hurt in her eyes. Pitching her voice low, she said, “I know that, damn it!”
Crow’s next words died on his tongue.
“I know what I did was right. God, Crow…do you think I’m sitting here torn up with self-loathing for what happened? I thought you knew me by now.”
She turned her angry face away and stared at the wall for a while.
Crow almost said, “I’m sorry,” but didn’t. He was learning.
After a while she turned back. Her eyes were as cold as any Crow had ever seen.
“Honey…listen to me. Do you understand what I’m feeling? Can you guess what’s tearing me up inside?”
He took a moment with that, then said, “Yeah, I think I can.” He licked his lips. “You want to find Ruger, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said in an almost inhuman whisper, filled with urgency. “If he’s still alive, if he’s one of
them
, then yes, I want to find him.”
“And Griswold?”
“Yes!” she hissed, and took his hands in hers, squeezing them with painful force. “Dear God in Heaven, but I want to find them and I want to make them
pay
!”
Crow nodded slowly and bent and kissed her hands.
“Then that’s what we’re going to do.”
(3)
Newton and Jonatha left the hospital and headed back to her hotel room. During the short drive neither said a word, and they remained silent until she had closed and locked her door. She engaged both locks and then stepped aside as Newton dragged over one of the room’s two overstuffed chairs and wedged its back under the doorknob. When he gave it a shake and saw how steady it was, she nodded. Then they checked the window. It was a big picture window and was not designed to be opened. The glass was thick and heavy; there was no balcony, so no need for a sliding door. There were no other windows or doors in the room.
Jonatha went around and turned on all the lights. They turned on the television and sat there, she on the edge of her bed, Newton on the other chair. Newton channel surfed. They watched
Everybody Hates Chris
and even though the studio audience was howling, neither of them cracked so much as a smile. They watched some of
Deal or No Deal.
They watched ten minutes of a Patriots-Vikings game on ESPN though neither of them knew a thing about football. They watched
The Dog Whisperer.
They took none of it in. They didn’t speak at all.
At around ten-thirty Jonatha got up and went into the bathroom. She closed the door and was in there for a long time. Newton could hear the shower running and it made him look at his own hands and clothes. He was filthy. He reeked of garlic and stank of sweat and dried blood. His head hurt terribly where he had struck the floor. He hurt all over. Inside and out.
They had seen a vampire. An actual
vampire
. Not a hypothetical one, but right there in the flesh. It had
touched
him. Newton felt unbearably unclean.
In his mind it wasn’t Val’s brother—Newton had only ever seen him a few times around town and didn’t know him—but even if he had he was sure that what he had seen tonight was not Mark Guthrie. This had been a monster.
He shivered once, then again, and the second time it was a whole frigid body ripple that popped gooseflesh along his skin, stood his hair up on end, and made him feel desperately cold to the core of his being. “Oh God…,” he moaned, but his teeth were chattering so bad they sounded like knuckles knocking on glass.
Newton didn’t hear the bathroom door open. “Newt…?”
He turned at the sound of her voice; Jonatha stood there in a blue terrycloth robe that was pulled close at the throat and cinched tight around her waist. She came and knelt next to him. “What’s wrong?”
He opened his mouth, tried to tell her that he was cold, tried to tell her that she looked beautiful, tried to tell her that it was all over, tried to tell her that he was sorry. A dozen thoughts collided in his head and none of them made it to his lips. His teeth were chattering so bad he couldn’t talk.
Jonatha grabbed the comforter off the bed and wrapped it around Newton even as she pulled him down out of the chair and onto the floor, pulled him close, wrapped him up in a cocoon of the blanket and her own radiant heat. He did not embrace her, or cling to her; but he let himself be gathered in, shivering and shaking as the waves of shock crashed over him. She kept pulling him close and kept shimmying away from the chair until they were both tucked into the corner formed by the big wooden breakfront that served as TV stand and bureau and the wall. Jonatha pulled the blanket tighter and tighter around them and then pulled it over their heads just as the shivers started to hit her, too.
(4)
Ten-thirty on Mischief Night, and the town was lost in a sea of sound and movement. Beyond the parking lot and the iron fences the town was in full revel as Mischief Night burned its way toward midnight. Music blared from the streetlight-hung speakers. Traffic was stopped on Corn Hill to allow a continuous rolling block party. It was Mischief Madness & Mayhem, Pine Deep’s legendary night before Halloween blast, modeled after Mardi Gras and powered by the lingering real-world adrenaline rush of the post–Ruger and Boyd massacre. Instead of driving tourists away, now that the killings were over, the town attracted three times the usual number of merrymakers; everyone wanted to suck in a chestful of real danger, real mystery, real frights—so long as they didn’t actually get hurt and there was beer.
The entire starting lineup of the Pine Deep Scarecrows, wearing only their football helmets, streaked down ten blocks of Corn Hill and then scattered into the crowds, which opened to receive them. Everyone loved it.
BK and Billy Christmas held court at the banquet hall at Harvestman Inn. BK was at the head table, flanked by two screenwriters—Stephen Susco and James Gunn. The three of them were shouting over the noise to discuss Quentin Tarantino’s flick,
Grindhouse
. Across from him, Billy was in his glory, with Brinke Stevens on his left and Debbie Rochon on his right. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning. Brinke was a petite brunette with big dark eyes and a wicked smile; Debbie was bustier and had an infectious laugh. Both of them had a stack of racy studio 8x10s in front of them and there were lines of eager fans stretching all the way down the hall and out into the street. Next to Debbie sat John Bloom who, as faux redneck Joe Bob Briggs, wrote reviews of classic drive-in movies that were legendary. He kept telling jokes in his lazy Texas drawl that had the other three laughing so hard they looked like they were going to stroke out.
Jim O’Rear, a stuntman and fight choreographer who also freelanced as a haunted attraction consultant, was talking movie fight scenes with Sam and Mischa, two of the kids who played monsters at the Hayride. The two adjoining tables were packed with members of the Horror Writers Association and a delegation from the Garden State Horror Writers, all of whom were firing horror trivia at each other faster than automatic gunfire. Whoever lost had to do a shot of tequila. Nobody minded losing.
The other corner of the room had a small stage where Mem Shannon and the Membership were whipping out down-and-dirty blues that had over two hundred people dancing and sweating.
On all four walls there were huge rear projection screens on which horror films played. Susco’s
The Grudge
2 on one screen; Gunn’s
Slither
on another; the original
Dawn of the Dead
played out over the table where its star, Ken Foree, sat in sober conversation with two theater grad students from the college; and opposite that Brinke Stevens was losing her clothes in the legendary B-film,
Sorority Babes in the Slime-ball Bowl-O-Rama
, an event that sent up a howl from the audience loud enough to rattle the windows.
Outside the Inn, the party rolled back and forth, up and down every side street and out into the countryside. There were continuous horror movie marathons at the Dead End Drive-In and on the grounds of the Hayride, and the campus football field was one big blues-rock slam party as Al Sirois and Kindred Spirit set fire to the night.
The members of BK’s team who didn’t draw the long straws that allowed them to come to the gala at the Harvestman Inn were patrolling in pairs on the campus and at the Hayride. A few of them, despite all warnings and threats from BK, were drunk, and the rest were feeling lighthearted and loose. There were a few trouble spots—a pickpocket working the crowds at the concert, a few shoving matches between irritable drunks, some pranks that got out of hand—but nothing the team couldn’t handle. Everything got handled.
Every time BK used his cell phone to call one of his team the only response he ever got was “It’s all good.”
Karl Ruger made damn sure that was all that got onto the radar. Wearing a Count Dracula rubber mask and costume, he wandered through the revelers. His own point men—Golub, Carby, McVey, and a few others—were positioned in key spots around town. Even Polk walked the streets, wriggling through the crowds, keeping an eye out, reporting in as ordered. Lois Wingate, dressed as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, walked arm in arm with Ruger. They made a charming couple.
The Dead Heads were all locked up safe and sound. The vampires who couldn’t pass for human were in the nests. Ruger’s orders for the evening were simple: “Nobody hunts, nobody dies.”
Not tonight; not on Mischief Night.
Tomorrow was Halloween and that was when the killing would begin again.
Yeah
, Ruger thought as he walked hand in hand with Lois,
that’s when the real party starts
.