Dark Advent Page 5

  “’Night.”

  She hopped out, lightly shut the door. He waited until she disappeared inside the house. Chivalry wasn’t totally dead yet. He geared up the car and pulled away, and a block later cranked up the stereo to drown out his thoughts.

  But he remembered the last time he’d been to the Night Life, talking with Kelly. The man had been right; you couldn’t live in the past.

  Wasn’t even such a good idea to go back and visit once in a while.

  6

  Throughout a world history characterized by change and turmoil, there was at least one unchanging given. Mark Twain knew it. So did Charles Dickens, and certainly the wise sage who said it best: Boys will be boys…

  “You don’t have the guts to.”

  “I do too. Just not tonight, that’s all.”

  Corry’s face screwed up with suppressed laughter. “Chickenshit!”

  Chuck smacked his friend’s shoulder. “Hey, I got plenty of guts. More than you’ll ever have.” His voice, perched on the precarious ledge of puberty, cracked on the ever.

  “Then prove it.” Corry held up a rock the size of his eyeball. “C’mon. Right through his window.”

  “What if I miss?”

  Corry rolled his eyes. “You got your slingshot. You’ll never miss, not the way you practice with that thing.”

  Chuck twisted his mouth one way, then another. Flexed a hand through his red hair in concentration. Ripped up a tuft of grass by his elbow and pitched it across the street, showering dirt. He finally sighed. “Okay, okay. But tomorrow, you do something big.”

  Chuck and Corry had grown up together in Potosi, Missouri, and so far as they knew, they’d always be there. Neither could remember a time when he didn’t know the other, so surely it would be that way the rest of their lives. Theirs was a friendship that had evolved over the years, from the days of early childhood when much affection sprouted between them and they would hug each other freely, to their near-paranoid avoidance of contact these days. Only queers touched other boys. No, these days the true tests of friendship were proved by feats of daring, and the boundaries were limitless.

  “C’mon,” Corry said. “Now.”

  Chuck slipped the stone into the slingshot’s pouch to check its fit. Plenty comfy. He had no ordinary slingshot, no hunk of wood carved into a Y-shape, with a rubber strap. No Tom Sawyer Special for Chuck. He owned a wrist rocket, lightweight fiberglass and metal, well balanced, with a brace extending back to fit over the forearm for improved accuracy. He’d saved up for it from four months of allowances, the longest-term plans he’d ever made in his life.

  Corry’s eyes gleamed, as they usually did whenever he talked the Chuckernaut into a show of guts. And was this ever gonna be good. Tonight’s target was an old fat fart named Mr. Huffman, or more specifically, the plate glass window of his grubby old gas station. Two or three days ago they’d stopped by to air up their bike tires and the air was off, and all they’d wanted was for him to turn it back on. Corry had been toting around his jambox, with Def Leppard the music of choice, and no doubt that’s what had pissed Huffman off. He’d come charging out of the garage bay, screaming some nonsense about jungle music while waving a crescent wrench in the air. His hair was as greasy as the pans he drained oil into, and he always combed it up from the sides, swirling it together into a wet little curlicue. Had his coveralls been white instead of their usual cruddy blue, he would’ve resembled a stout Dairy Queen cone.

  Chuck hopped onto his Predator bicycle and fit the wrist rocket onto his hand. Wiping summer sweat from his forehead, he scanned the three-quarter-block distance down to the station. No customers. The coast was as clear as it would ever get. Now…

  Corry started to cluck like a chicken.

  …or never.

  His feet attacked the pedals and the bike arrowed down the sidewalk. Other than the gas station, it was a residential neighborhood, and no one had ventured beyond their doors. Just a quiet little street in a sleepy little town, and nobody ever did much of anything, and the only notable thing about the place was that it had become the new U.S. center of population as of the last time they studied such things. He was safe. Next week might be a different story, with the Fourth of July and all, and everybody would be out guzzling beer and scarfing burgers and shooting off fireworks, but that was way far away. For now, they had only tonight.

  After another moment he was skidding to a momentary halt on the gas station’s lot, sliding into a 180-degree spin so he faced the same direction he’d come from. He extended his left arm toward the building, slipped the rock back in, drew back the taut rubber tubing, let it fly…

  Bull’s-eye! The crowd goes wild! The rock punched straight through the window with a brittle crack. Chuck allowed himself one split second of glory in gazing upon his handiwork, and then he was history, speeding away, skinny legs pumping furiously.

  Corry…he’d better be waiting up ahead, ready to roll. And tomorrow night Corry had better be willing to do something ballsy in return. Maybe stick a cherry bomb in someone’s mailbox, or flush it down a john. He had Corry by the short hairs, and was he going to take advantage of it? Do bears evacuate their bowels in the woods?

  “Corry?” Chuck called out, hoarse of voice with exertion. “Where are you?”

  He slowed his bike by the clump of evergreens they’d been stopped by, where they’d schemed, where Corry had been waiting. Emphasis on had been. Chuck glanced around, taking in the plain little houses and their small yards and the fact that Corry wasn’t around any of them.

  He’d split early, the little wuss. Now who was the chickenshit?

  Well, he sure didn’t have time to wait, to dork around and see if Corry would come creeping along. Right now, best to shag a little distance between himself and Huffman’s place. Find Corry later, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. But definitely rake him over the coals for turning tail like that.

  Chuck’s feet were just hitting the pedals again when he felt the tiniest shift in the air. As if a cold front were moving in from behind. A faint footstep, then another.

  Corry?

  He knew it wouldn’t be Corry even before he turned around. Corry couldn’t move that quietly if his life depended on it. And then the Chuckernaut—breaker of windows, merciless embarrasser of prepubescent girls, bane of countless birds and small animals—looked into the face of a stranger and very nearly crapped his drawers.

  As he was backlit by the setting sun, his face was next to invisible, but he was taller than Mr. Huffman would ever be, and a lot thinner, and his hair was so blond that if the sun caught it just right, it would look like the color the sun got when it reflected off the Arch up in St. Louis.

  I don’t know who he is and I don’t know if he knows who I am but I don’t think I wanna find out either one.

  The man was grinning, and his hand flicked up, empty, yes, empty, no weapon or anything like that that perverts would whip out on you…only then it wasn’t empty anymore, he’d pulled some sleight-of-hand trick and there was a rock between his fingers.

  “Lose something?” he asked.

  Chuck turned around again in his bike seat, ready to hunch over the handlebars and tuck in his head, just as he’d seen bike racers do. But a firm, firm hand dropped onto his shoulder, like the hand of nasty old Freddy Krueger himself, and those fingers curled in and held tight.

  “Vandalism’s against the law, son,” said the man, the Voice of Doom. “You better come with me.”

  Chuck pressed his feet to the pedals. Maybe, just maybe, cross his heart and hope to die, he could make a break for it and actually pull it off.

  “We might be able to settle this without calling your parents. How does that sound?”

  Chuck’s legs relaxed and he turned around again, looking up into that smiling face. No parents, huh? Of course his folks had, ever since he could remember, drilled into his
little head that he should never ever under any circumstances go anywhere with a stranger. But lately they were also hounding him to show more responsibility, to take care of business. They expected the world of him.

  Childhood is a constant process of weighing alternatives. Actions and consequences. And all at once, the thought of answering to his red-faced and no doubt extremely pissed-off father about a broken plate glass window didn’t seem the least bit attractive.

  So Chuck said sure, no parents, let’s go pay the piper, and they headed back toward Mr. Huffman’s gashole, side by side, a boy on a bike flanked by a tall lean man in bush pants and a denim workshirt. Walking the last mile. And by the time they were standing inside the squatty little building, the reek of oil (and something worse) heavy in the air, the floor slick and gritty underfoot, the blond man was smiling understandably, of all things. As if he didn’t care about the window or didn’t remember or didn’t even know about it anymore.

  “Are you a friend of Mr. Huffman’s?” Chuck asked.

  “We’ve met,” the man said cheerfully. “He’s around here somewhere.”

  Chuck dug his toe into the concrete floor, stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Is he mad about the window?”

  “Him? Mad? Ho ho ho noooo.” He smiled wider, a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes but didn’t actually touch them. And as Chuck’s eyes grew more accustomed to the waning daylight, he could see that the smile held no warmth, only deceit.

  Chuck wanted nothing better than to turn and run like hell. Something was wrong with this man before him, something strange and different, but not in a good way, the way Yoda and E.T. were strange and different. He wanted only to hotfoot out to his bike, pedal home as fast as he could, and face up to whatever wrath his parents would dish up whenever they found out. Because standing here was a thousand times worse than whatever they might do to him. With his folks, bless ’em, you knew what to expect.

  But he couldn’t move. Not yet.

  “I don’t mind telling you, that took some guts to plug that window the way you did. Real guts. You’re just about the gutsiest person I’ve seen in this town the past couple of days.”

  The past couple of days? Oh boy oh boy oh boy. All at once Chuck knew this guy probably had something to do with the weird thing they’d found the day before.

  Yesterday morning some guys had discovered an abandoned semi-truck just outside of town, huge and black and covered with dust and no sign whatsoever of a driver. Chuck had heard his parents talking about it, and they’d said the sheriff had found it to be stolen from someplace way out west several months ago, stolen and disappeared.

  But that wasn’t the weird part.

  The sheriff had opened up the trailer and found it empty…but only after the fleas had emerged. Fleas…thousands and millions and maybe even billions of them, they’d said, swarming out like a big living cloud.

  And somehow, this blond guy was a part of that. Chuck knew it, would’ve bet his wrist rocket and a year of allowances on it.

  “And because you’re so gutsy, and because I appreciate that in a person, believe it or not,” the man continued in his same cheerful tone, “I’m going to make you a very special person. Nobody will know your name, but kid, you’re going to make history.”

  Chuck slowly shook his head, eyes ready to pop from their sockets. Whatever this guy was talking about, he didn’t want it.

  The blond man also shook his head, in a manner that seemed reflective, even sad. “I thought it was going to be him, but I went overboard and ruined it. And now you come along.”

  “Him?” Chuck whispered.

  The man grinned and nodded and took a few steps over to a narrow closet door. Mr. Huffman had turned it into a regular bulletin board, covering it with pinned-up bills and receipts and notes to himself, and in the center hung a Snap-On Tools calendar. This month’s girl was a leggy brunette in a green bikini wrapping her fingers around a big ratchet.

  The blond man rapped his knuckles on the door. “Horace? You decent?” he called. “You’ve got company!”

  The guy swung the door open and Mr. Huffman spilled out and onto the floor like a Hefty Bag stuffed full of rotting garbage. He hit with a wet thud, sprawled half on his back and half on his left side. Even in the dim light, Chuck could see that Mr. Huffman was more than just dead, he was a bloated horror, patches of his skin dark with foul blisters.

  “I think he looks better like that, don’t you?” said the blond man.

  Chuck slapped both hands to his cheeks, furrowing his skin with hooked fingertips, and he worked his mouth mutely, trying for a scream that couldn’t squeeze past his locked throat. He stared at the thing in the floor, trying to relate it to the surly old fart that owned this place. Quite a reach of the imagination.

  And when he managed to tear his eyes away and look back to the blond man—for answers, maybe? Now there’s a laugh, ha ha ha—he saw that his companion held a glass test tube in one hand and was pitching a rubber stopper away with the other. The man slugged from the tube as if he were a wino hitting the tastiest bottle of whiskey on skid row.

  The man took a step toward him slowly, deliberately, as if stalking him like a vampire in a horror picture he and Corry might have watched. Closer, closer, and still Chuck’s stupid stupid stupid feet wouldn’t move. So he stood there and watched the man bear down on him, as he reached out and seized Chuck by the shoulders and lifted him up in a manner anything but friendly. That once-grinning face was all business now, and would you look at this, he was turning out to be a pervert after all…

  Because he leaned in, pressing his face to Chuck’s as the kid squirmed and hollered and kicked in vain. Pressed his face right up against Chuck’s face, his mouth against Chuck’s mouth, and then those terrible wet lips parted as if to kiss him and that even more terrible tongue pushed its way into Chuck’s mouth…

  And all at once the man turned into a bellows, blowing an enormous gust of air into Chuck’s lungs, filling him like a balloon. Chuck drew his head back, coughing and choking, with threads of the man’s spit stringing down his chin. The air forced into him conjured up thoughts of the stench of decay, of death, like an animal dead in the humid air and sun for days.

  That smell worked its way all through his chest and lungs, feeling like a warm moist fist jammed inside him. And when the man lowered him to the floor, Chuck stumbled and staggered and clutched his flip-flopping stomach, convinced he was going to double over and lose it all over his Reeboks. He lurched toward the door, and finally, finally, he could move. Never mind his bike, his slingshot, he didn’t think he could ride or carry anything, but screw it, he’d tell his parents that a bigger kid had knocked him off the Predator and taken both things. Because…

  Surely they’d never ever believe the truth.

  “RUN HOME TO YOUR MOTHER, KID!” the man bellowed, then shrieked with laughter.

  Chuck didn’t need to be told twice. The last floodgates of his mind collapsed and nothing could hold back the tide. He ran screaming into the night, his shoes a fading slap-slap-slap down the street.

  Typhoid Chuck.

  7

  The dream was incredibly vivid.

  Erika saw herself stumbling through streets lit by a bright noonday sun, and knew that behind her, men were pursuing her, men in white. Sterile, like operating room technicians. Give them half a chance, and they’d put her away for good.

  “No!” she screamed back at them. “I’m fine! FINE!”

  She stooped to pluck up a rock, held it, found its sharp edges. She hacked at herself until the blood flowed freely from at least a dozen places, down her arms, her legs, her neck. “Look at this!” she cried. “I’m healthy! I’m alive!”

  But they wouldn’t give up the chase. She ran blindly on, ducking into a mall or something similar. She found a restroom. Looked at herself in the mirror.

  Rec
oiled at the vision she saw reflected back…a haggard witch of a girl with purplish blotches massing on her face and arms.

  The door exploded in behind her, and in streamed the men in white. They brandished weapons, large and chunky gun-things connected with hoses to tanks strapped on the men’s backs. Flames jetted from the muzzles.

  She screamed and twisted, sinking toward the floor, a writhing mass of flames whose flesh blackened and peeled away from her bones. And still she would not die.

  Erika Jennings awoke in the darkness with a shudder.

  “Oh shit, not again,” was the first thing she moaned to herself.

  She tried to relax again, but felt a jittery tension twist up and down her limbs. Turning onto her side and forcing her head into the plush density of her pillow, she tried to force everything out of conscious thought, which, of course, rarely worked. Those last, lingering images danced and capered across the screen of her mind like a morbid vaudeville show, letting her know in no uncertain terms that they were moving in to stay for a while.

  I don’t want this, I never did, I never asked for it, and damn it, it’s NOT FAIR.

  Yeah, but who said life had to be fair? asked that rational little voice within, the one with the tendency to surface at the most annoying moments. The one that told her she’d be better off staying put here in Spanish Lake, Missouri, instead of leaving for Denver or Dallas or Orlando, anyplace that held hope and promise and the possibility of putting the last few years behind her, as if they belonged to someone else.

  Leaving wouldn’t do any good, that voice told her. Because some things can’t be run from. They follow you. Like Larry Talbot in the old Wolfman movies. The full moon was gonna get him no matter where he was.

  He had his curse, and Erika had hers.

  Sleep was out of the question, so she flipped the sheet back and sat on the edge of her bed. The luminous marks on her time-bomb clock read eleven-twenty. Well, at least the night was by no means a total loss. She tugged down the oversized Cardinals baseball T-shirt that hit her at mid-thigh, straightened the elastic of her panties. Then, quietly, she eased out of her room and crept barefoot down the hall, through the dining room, into the kitchen. Dim lights were inset above the bar that partitioned the kitchen from the family room, and she flicked them on. The only thing that appealed to her in the refrigerator was the orange juice. She briefly considered going to her parents’ liquor cabinet for a shot of vodka to go with it, but decided against it. Erika took a seat at the bar, propping her head on one hand while the other tuned a portable radio to KMOX, the CBS affiliate down in St. Louis.