Showdown (22 page)

Roland lost sight of them as they exited the front window's field of view. He ran to the bathroom and picked them up again. They walked right up the steps, pulled open the saloon door, and disappeared inside.

For a long time Roland just stared at the empty landing. An image of Claude pouncing on Peter skipped through his brain. He swallowed. Freaky, man. Just plain freaky.

He began to pace. His head buzzed. He could/should just go and check it out, of course. But he shouldn't/wouldn't just go and check it out.

Johnny was yelling in one ear telling him to go bury his head under a pillow and not drink the water.

Roland was yelling in his other ear telling him he wasn't Johnny.

Could/should shouldn't/wouldn't freaky. Way freaky.

Another hour passed. He had to go. Could/would. He was missing out.

STEVE SMITHER walked along the back alley toward his saloon, carrying five more sticks under his arm. He'd already taken eight stakes into the saloon and hidden them under the bar. He wasn't sure when he'd taken them there—the hours were running together now like the letters of a foreign alphabet. Like Chinese letters. But he knew it was way past noon now, and he thought it must be Thursday. Or Friday. Maybe even Saturday. No, it couldn't be Saturday.

His dream kept popping in his mind, like a jack-in-the-box. Only it was Black-in-the-box, jumping up to say,
Surprise, Stevie! Oh, I'm sorry, is this
your wife?

Yeah, well, I've got a little surprise for you myself
. He smiled wryly. Somewhere out there Paula was probably wondering where he was. But she would find out soon enough,wouldn't she? And then she would thank him.

He reached the saloon, mounted the steps, and dug for his keys. One of the stakes dropped to the ground and he swore. He fumbled in his pocket, pulled the key ring out, and bent for the fallen stake. A muffled bang filtered through the door, and he snapped upright.

What was that?

Someone's in your saloon, Stevie
.

He froze there in the wind with one hand holding his keys and the other stretching over five cockeyed sticks ready to fall with the slightest movement. Muted laughter drifted through the door. He fingered through the ten or so keys, found the big brass one, and shoved it into the lock.

He pushed the door open. A loud crash. Howling laughter.

Yes, sirree, some fool was in his saloon. Well, he'd better not be. This saloon was closed, locked, off-limits to all fools, which meant
everybody
.

Another crash sounded, loud now. He glanced about the storeroom, set the stakes carefully on the floor with trembling hands. He reached the inner door and placed his hand on the knob.

Black-in-the-box popped up in his mind.
Not thinking too clearly are
you?
It cackled past that plastic smile.
Not too clearly at all. You can't just
walk in there unprepared.

Another laugh peeled through the saloon, a shrill one that reminded Steve of Claude Bowers from down the street. He let go of the handle, shuffled back to where he'd set the stakes, and picked up the largest one. He swung it through the air, pleased at the small
whoosh
it made.

Wanna trip, baby? Here, let me help you trip.

Steve walked back to the door and shoved it open.

The three fools were there in the middle of his saloon, sitting on the only table left standing. Claude Bowers, Chris Ingles, and Peter, Claude's squirt kid. They looked at him with wide grins, like Black-in-the-boxes only without a box. He looked around the saloon.

The tables and chairs had been splintered into a hundred pieces that littered the floor like kindling. The large Coors chandelier over the pool table hung twisted and smashed so that only the white fluorescent housing looked familiar to him. The pool table glistened with a liquid. Maybe vomit. The heat began to rise up his body like an erupting volcano. Dozens of empty bottles stood along the windowsills and in groups around the floor, like bowling pins waiting to be toppled.

Steve felt his eyes bulge, felt the surge of blood in his temples. He looked to the right. The bar had been hacked at with a sharp tool of some kind. A large knife or an ax maybe. The bar stools were gone. Just gone.

Then he realized that they were on the floor, only they were splinters, not stools anymore. The front door had been ripped from its hinges and lay on its side.

“What in the fiery blazes is going on?”

He heard his voice asking the question, but he was thinking,
Where's
Black-in-the-box
, because he knew this was really his doing.

Claude and gang were looking at him like he was a ghost who'd walked in on them.

“Hi, Steve,” Chris said. “We didn't think you'd mind. Just having a little fun.”

Black-in-the-box grinned in his mind.
Have a heart. They're not doing
anything you wouldn't do. Let 'em trip, baby.

“Didn't think I'd mind? What do you mean you didn't think I'd mind?”

Good for you, Stevie. You tell 'em
.

“You little stinkin' weasels! How about I have a little fun with you?” He raised the stake in his hand like a bat. “How'd you like that?”

Peter—the little squirt who was picking his jaw with Steve's furniture—had an ax in his hand, and he laid it carefully on the table.
Clunk.

You think putting that thing down somehow
makes all this okay?

“Take it easy, Steve,” Chris said. “We'll clean it up. Promise.”

“Oh, I know you will, Chris. That's why I'm gonna let you live. If I didn't think you were gonna clean this up, I'd kill you.” He lowered the stick and twirled it in his hand. “I'd run this stake right through your heart.”

Now that would be a trip.

Chris chuckled. “Yeah. But we're gonna clean it up, right guys?” Neither Claude nor Peter answered and Chris glanced their way. “Right boys?”

“Of course, Chris,” Claude answered, but he wore a crooked grin and Steve wasn't sure he liked the look of the fat man's smile.

“How about I give you exactly fifteen minutes to clean it up?” Steve said. “How about I come back in a quarter hour, and if you make this picture perfect I won't run this stake through your hearts?”

“Yeah,” Chris said, chuckling nervously. “What's the use of living if you can't have a little fun now and then, right? We all have our kinds of fun, right, Steve? I mean you have yours”—he motioned toward the stick in Steve's hand—“and we have ours. But we'll clean it up. Swear it.”

It was then, just as he was thinking that Chris had a point, that Steve remembered the eight stakes he'd hidden under the bar. He scanned the floor, searching for a sign of them. But wood was everywhere, broken into splinters.

A tiny sliver of fresh oak jumped into his vision. The rest of the wood faded into the floor and just that one little piece screamed up at him.

Here I am. And yes, I am one of your sticks. What do you think of that?

A dozen other splinters seemed to materialize. Steve's forehead began to throb. A sickening weight thudded into his gut like a bowl of thick oatmeal.

He jumped over to the bar. Rounded it. They had done it, hadn't they? They'd destroyed his sticks! He ripped the velvet draping away from the back of the bar.

The shelves were empty!

With a horrendous growl, Steve leaped over the bar and faced Chris. Black-in-the-box screamed in the back of his mind.
Do it, Stevie! Do him!

Steve rushed.

The weasel raised an arm to protect himself. Steve stopped two feet from Chris, raised his stake high above his head, and swung it down with all of his strength.

Crack!
Chris's forearm snapped like a twig. The man howled in pain and rolled into a ball. His right arm flopped onto the pool table at an unnatural angle. Steve raised the shaft again and beat down again.

Surprise, Chris! Say hello to my stake!

He brought the stick down again, and again, and again, feeling power rush through him like a drug that filled him with a hot pleasure.

Wanna trip, baby?

He hesitated and brought the stick down one last time. Chris crumpled, draped over the pool table, still.

Steve looked up at Claude and Peter, whose faces seemed carved of soap. He ran a hand along his stick and tried to wipe off the blood.

“Clean this up,” he said and walked out the back, into the alley.

What a trip
.

A boy stood in the alley, staring at him. He knew this boy. A rascal named Roland. This was his son.

“Beat it, boy.”

Roland just stared at him with round eyes.

He almost said “beat it” again, but he decided not to bother. Roland was a big boy and could fend for himself. He probably didn't have the guts not to beat it.

Steve headed into the forest behind the bar. He looked back five paces past the first row of trees.

Roland wasn't beating it after all. He was already at the back door, peering in. Steve chuckled.

What a very major trip.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

PARADISE

Saturday morning

MOM WAS holding her own, Johnny thought, but that wasn't exactly encouraging considering what her own was. His mother had already half-lost it. She wasn't like Claude or Chris, but she wasn't her old self either. And no amount of prodding convinced her to explain herself to him.

She'd spent most of Friday afternoon on the couch, picking through the refrigerator and reading a novel by Dean Koontz. At least Johnny finally convinced her to stay away from the water, a promise she tried to break once only to discover that water no longer flowed into the Drake house. Johnny had found the main and turned it off.

She retired just after seven, and Johnny finally drifted off to sleep around midnight, still battling that throb that kept trying to latch itself onto his head. He'd actually become pretty good about deflecting the distortions when they came.

Why was he able to do this, but not everyone else? The best he could figure was that he had been terrified by Black when the preacher killed Cecil, and the moment put him on guard.

That and the fact that Johnny stayed clear of Black's poison, despite having undoubtedly ingested some in the water.

He awoke at ten o'clock Saturday. The clouds that he either saw or thought he saw were now so dark that he could hardly see across the dust-blown street.

Phone was still dead. He considered climbing into his mother's four-wheel drive and taking a shot at driving out of the valley. Sally had refused to take him out yesterday. Probably a good thing in retrospect, considering her condition. But he'd never driven, and the conditions were anything but decent for a trial run. There were too many cliffs bordering the two-lane road out.

Johnny stood in the kitchen and squinted against another headache. Stars popped to life, then faded. A musty smell drifted by. The tastes-like-nothing taste filled his mouth. He wanted it, sure he did.

But he also hated it.

He grunted and decided then that he couldn't just sit here without a plan. He had to talk to someone sane, at the very least. He had to talk to Roland even if it did mean leaving his mother for a few minutes and braving the dark wind.

Johnny poked his head into his mother's room, satisfied himself that she was still dead to the world, pulled on a hoodie for protection, and headed down the back alley.

The town was dark and windy and dusty and dead. Hot though.

He couldn't shake the possibility that he was actually only seeing this in his mind's eye. If so, then Black was probably a messenger from God after all. But after all he'd seen, Johnny couldn't make that fit.

A lone howl drifted above the wind. Johnny froze. What was that? A loud crash on his left, nearby in the forest. Then a loud grunt.

He began to run, straight toward Roland's house.

When he got there, he quickly came to the awful conclusion that the house was deserted. At least no one was stirring. Roland's shade was open and his bed was made, but no Roland. The lights were off in the whole place. Not a soul to be seen.

Main Street was just as empty.

Buffeted by fresh fear, Johnny sprinted back to his house, ignoring an ache in his weaker leg. Things were worse than yesterday, much worse. Where was everyone? And where was Black?

He had to get home.

Inside, the back door slammed shut behind him. Then again, things were no better in here. He stood alone in the hall for a few moments, soaking in the silence.

He wanted to cry. He was alone, wasn't he? And he had no place to go. Maybe it would be easier to walk over to the saloon and ask them for some of Black's crud.
Maybe he should just walk out into the street and scream his surrender to the black sky, let the black angel administer some of his grace and hope.

Johnny checked on his mother again. No movement other than the rise and fall of the sheets with her breathing. No sense in waking her up.

He walked into his room, sat on his bed, and was about to lie down when the one-inch marble he had with him the day Cecil died rolled slowly toward the edge of his dresser.

Johnny blinked at the sight. The red shooter stopped, then rolled back the way it had come. It stopped in its original position.

Johnny's pulse quickened. Had he really seen that? What could have caused a marble to roll like that? No wind in here. No tremors, no tilting. But things rolled on their own sometimes, didn't they? The slightest force could . . .

The marble vanished.

Johnny stood, amazed. The space where the round red marble had sat just a moment ago was empty. Nothing but an oak dresser top.

He ran his hand over the varnished wood grain. He'd seen eyes poked out and an apple turned into a snake. He'd seen warts come and go. He'd even seen Black pull his lip off his face. But this was different.