Dark Harvest, page 3
So Pete moves quickly, trading the OJ for the machete as he steps into the dining room. The hallway that leads to the other side of the house lies just beyond. At least he’ll be out of sight if he heads down there…
The doorbell rings a second time. A floorboard creaks underfoot. Pete pauses. There’s a little smoked-glass window set at head level in the front door—the kind of glass you can’t see through clearly, but Pete can see well enough to tell that there’s a shadow on it. By the height, his guess is that the shadow belongs to a man…maybe a friend of Ricks’s…maybe another cop—
And Pete knows what the guy’s thinking, because there are only so many things you can think when you’re standing on the other side of someone’s door. Either the guy will leave in another second or two, or maybe—just maybe—he might try the doorknob to see if the door is unlocked.
Just when Pete’s sure that’s going to happen, the shadow disappears from the dimpled glass. Footsteps click against the concrete steps leading down to the walk. In a second Pete’s over at the living room window, just in time to spot a dark figure walking around to the driver’s side of a sleek black Cadillac parked at the curb.
The man climbs inside and starts the engine. The car pulls away. Pete hurries down the hall. Forget food. Even if Jerry Ricks had something worth eating, Pete couldn’t put anything in his stomach right now. He needs to find the thing he came for and get the hell out of here.
The first room Pete enters stinks just as bad as the kitchen. It’s Ricks’s bedroom. Cigarette butts are heaped in an ashtray by the bed. Dirty clothes lie on the floor, along with a couple of unfurled bandages that look like they were shed by a mummy—boxer’s hand wraps.
No sheets or blankets, just a tangled sleeping bag and a pillow without a pillowcase on the mattress. There’s a dresser on one wall, a nightstand in the corner. A bunch of junk in the dresser, and the only thing in the nightstand is a big stack of Playboys. That’s not what Pete’s looking for, either, so he tries the closet. On one side, several police uniforms hang in dry-cleaner bags. On the other side, there’s a brand new vacuum cleaner, still in the box, with dust all over the top of it.
Jesus. Pete turns his back on Ricks’s disaster area of a bedroom. There’s another room at the end of the hall. That’s gotta be the place he’s looking for. He starts toward it, and he notices for the first time that the hallway walls are empty…so were the bedroom walls…so were the walls in the living room.
Every wall in this house is empty. There aren’t any pictures here at all.
But Pete doesn’t have time to wonder about that. He’s thinking about the room at the end of the hall instead. The door is closed…locked. Now he’s really rattled. Because he’s thinking about that guy in the black Cadillac, wondering if he might come back. And he’s wondering if maybe the guy was supposed to meet Ricks here, thinking that maybe Ricks might be a little late, maybe the lawman himself might be coming back any minute now—
Pete hauls back and kicks the door just below the knob. The molding splinters and the door flies open, banging against the wall with a thunderclap Pete’s certain they’ll hear at the police station a mile away.
No pictures in this room, either. Just a desk that looks like somebody’s castoff…a chair with torn upholstery that looks the same…another heaped ashtray…and over there, in the corner, the thing that Pete came looking for.
A locked cabinet.
Yeah. The cabinet’s the one piece of furniture in Jerry Ricks’s house that looks like it cost some money. It’s blond pine, polished to a heavy sheen, with a couple of grizzly bears painted on the locked doors. Those bears are reared up on their hind legs, teeth bared, claws slashing through forest green.
The grizzlies stop Pete cold, just for a second. He’s not sure exactly why. Because now he’s absolutely sure that the thing he needs is penned up in that cabinet, the same way he’d been penned up in his goddamn bedroom for five days and nights.
That thing is quiet.
It doesn’t say a word.
But it can talk, all right.
It can talk in a way nothing alive can ignore.
Pete clenches his teeth and works fast. The machete flashes out, scoring polished wood. Pine slivers fly through the air like needles. A door panel shatters, and Pete tears it loose. A couple seconds later, the lock and its hasp clatter to the hardwood floor, and he’s inside the cabinet.
A couple minutes after that, Pete backtracks through the kitchen, through the back door, across that dead lawn…
His father’s machete is buried in one of Jerry Ricks’s empty walls.
A stolen .45 semiautomatic is gripped in Pete McCormick’s hand.
Pete hops the back fence. His Chucks crunch over gravel as he runs up the alley. That gun feels solid in his hand, but it’s not the .45 that’s driving him. Pete’s doing that job all by himself now. The way he sees it, tonight’s his only chance at a fresh start, and he’s going to grab it.
You want to put a tiger in your tank, that’ll do the job. Our buddy Pete’s all gassed up and ready to go. You remember how that feels. It’s been a long time for you, but you can’t forget, not once you’ve made the Run on Halloween night. So you’ve got a pretty solid idea of the tracks Pete’s laying down as we follow him up a dark street that heads out of Jerry Ricks’s neighborhood. That boy’s motoring, all right, but he can’t keep our pace.
Not now, not where we’re going. Which is straight out of town, like a witch riding a broomstick. We leave our buddy Pete in the dust, whipsawing through the poor side of town and across the tracks, flying so low that the painted line on that black asphalt smears into a yellow streak that marks the whole town for a coward. We pass that movie theater with the Vincent Price double-bill. We blow by that old brick church in the town square. Like a wild stitch of midnight we weave through a crowd of teens prowling Main Street, and they look straight at us but don’t see more than a ripple of shadow and the swirling twist of a dust devil it leaves behind.
Autumn leaves and candy wrappers and wax-paper Bazooka Joe comics churn in the night. And now the town is behind us, and we’re racing down the licorice-whip road. By the time that dust devil stops swirling on Main Street, we’re a mile away.
Rows of dead cornstalks on each side of the road blur by like a crop of bones. There’s something up ahead in the middle of the road, something that’s pulling away even as we gear up the night’s own tach and close on it.
A pair of coal-red brake lights glow in the rusty ass-end of that thing.
A pair of dead-white headlights glare up front, raking the blacktop like a Gorgon’s stare.
Yeah. Mitch Crenshaw’s rattletrap streetrod is dead ahead, chewing a hole through the night. But that doesn’t cut any slack with us. Pedal hits metal that isn’t even there. In a flicker of moonlight, we’re even with the Chrysler’s rear bumper. Another second and we’re eyeballing the driver’s side window.
The window’s down. Inside, Crenshaw’s got a fistful of steering wheel and a brain crawling with pissed-off spiders. He sucks the last drag from a cigarette and flicks it into the night…
The cig sails through the window and kicks up a hail of sparks as if hitting something solid out there in the darkness, but Mitch Crenshaw doesn’t pay any attention to that. He knows there’s nothing outside his window but the night, and a shitload of dead cornstalks, and a pumpkin-headed monster he’s ready to carve up for Halloween pie.
So Mitch does what he does best—he hits the gas and drives straight ahead. He flicks the headlights to high beam, and they cut the belly right out of the sky, and he races along the gash feeling like a guy who’s just about to butt heads with his very own destiny.
Which is exactly what he’s gonna do. And, in this case, Mitch knows that destiny doesn’t stand a chance. The way Mitch figures it, he’s the only guy in town who’s smarter than the average bear. Being behind the wheel of the only car on this road proves that. This year, Mitch has it all figured out and—
“Slow down, Mitch,” Bud Harris says. “You ain’t gonna have a chance to kill the Boy if you kill us first.”
“Yeah.” It’s Charlie Gunther now, chiming in from the backseat like a goddamn alarm clock. “Ease off, buddy. You keep the hammer slammed and we’re liable to miss the whole damn field, let alone Ol’ Hacksaw Face—”
“We ain’t gonna miss nothing,” Mitch says sharply, and his booted foot stays right there on the gas. Because he knows he’s right, and he’s not afraid to say it. Not tonight. Not when he’s been locked up in his room for five days without a thing to eat. Not when hunger’s burning a hole in his belly and his brain is clicking away overtime.
No. There’s no room for argument on Mitch’s agenda. Tonight the Run belongs to him. It’s his game. His second crack at the October Boy, and this time he’s going to get it right. Mitch doesn’t really count last year, anyway. Last Halloween, he was just two days past his sixteenth birthday. He didn’t even have a driver’s license. But this year, things are different. This year he’s seventeen, and he’s got the Chrysler and a switchblade knife and some other dangerous implements in the trunk that’ll spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E for anyone who gets in his way. But best of all, he’s got the whole deal figured out good.
“Hey, I ain’t kidding,” Charlie says from the backseat. “I think we missed the field. We better turn around, or someone’s going to beat us to the Boy—”
“Didn’t you hear me the first time?” Mitch snaps. “We didn’t miss the goddamn field. And no one’s going to beat us to nothing. I mean, have you ever even heard of anyone doing what we’re doing tonight? You ever hear of anyone jumping the Line?”
“No, Mitch…but—”
“No buts, stupid. I’ve got it all figured out. Those other dipsticks always treat the Run like it’s a game of hide ’n’ seek. They hang around town, waiting for the Boy to come after his ollie ollie oxen free. They don’t bust the city limits. But that ain’t the way we’re gonna play it tonight. We’re gonna take the Run straight to our buddy Sawtooth Jack, and I’m gonna splatter his ass before he even gets a chance to step across the Line.”
“But what if it don’t work? What if the Boy gets past us somehow?”
“You know, Charlie, there are two little words that can get your ass kicked out of this car. One of them is what, and the other is if.”
Mitch shoots a glance at the rearview, eyeballing the dope in the backseat. Charlie’s sitting there with a Mighty Thor comic book rolled up in his hands, and he looks like he just got whacked over the head with the big guy’s hammer. And that’s the way Charlie should look as far as Mitch is concerned. The way Mitch sees it, tonight you can screw what if…and second guesses, too. There’s no room on Mitch’s plate for any of that. He’s up for a one-course meal, and that means winning the Run. Then everything will be different for him. Sure, the town will get what it wants—what it needs to get through another year of raising prize crops from the same old dirt, what it needs to turn those crops into cold hard cash—the whole deal delivered with a king-size platter of blessings from above or below, depending on who the hell you listen to.
Mitch sees it this way: You can screw the blessings, wherever they come from. He doesn’t have a clue how anyone could settle for a life in this nothing little place, and he won’t need one after tonight. Not after he bashes that living Jack o’ Lantern’s head into the pavement and carves those candy bars out of its woven-vine chest. That happens, the whole damn town can bury their favorite spook story in the bottom drawer and forget about it for another year, the way they always do. Until the calendar flips a bunch of pages and another crop gets picked and shucked. Until another pumpkin starts growing in that same dead field. Until someone drives out there one night, hammers together a cross, and nails up an empty suit of clothes for a fresh tangle of growing vines to fill.
But Mitch Crenshaw will be long gone by the time that happens. Once he nails Ol’ Hacksaw Face, things will be different for him. Once he eats himself some of the candy that serves up a heartbeat, there won’t be anyone to stand in his way.
Yeah. Bring down Sawtooth Jack, and he’ll be the winner. And that’ll mean a whole hell of a lot…both for him and his family. The family will get treated differently around town. They’ll get a new house, a new car. They won’t see a bill for a year—not at the grocery store, no mortgage payments, nothing. That’ll make Mitch’s old man particularly happy. But Mitch doesn’t care about his hard-ass father, or his shrew of a mother, or his little snot sisters.
No. Mitch pretty much just cares about himself, and what winning the Run will get him. Do that and he’ll grab a pocketful of green, just like Jim Shepard did last year. Even better, he’ll be on this road again, headed out of town like a bullet, and for the very last time. Guys like Charlie and Bud, they couldn’t even handle that. Wouldn’t want to win. Wouldn’t want to see their hometown in the rearview. Wouldn’t know what to do if they could. Hell, they’d probably break down in tears, run screaming for mommy and daddy if someone kicked there asses across the Line for good.
That’s why those guys aren’t built to win the Run. But Mitch is. Winning the Run is the only way to get out of this squirrel cage of a town, and Mitch wants it so bad he can taste it. Hunger burns in his belly and burns in his brain. He wants that money in his pocket, wants everything that comes with it. Wants the town in his rearview. Wants to see what’s down that black road, and across those dead fields, and out there in the world.
So that’s Mitch’s game. You remember how it feels, don’t you? All that desire scorching you straight through. Feeling like you’re penned up in a small-town cage, jailed by cornstalk bars. Knowing, just knowing, that you’ll be stuck in that quiet little town forever if you don’t take a chance.
So you know what it’s like to want to fly down that road and see what lies beyond it…to want that so bad, you’ll do just about anything to make it happen. Sure. You remember Mitch Crenshaw’s game, the same way you remember that it isn’t the only one running tonight. Glance over at the side of that black road and you’ll see undeniable evidence of that. Might not be any little guy standing there in a black suit to set up the story for you, the way there is every Friday night on TV. But like that little guy says damn near every week, there’s a signpost up ahead, even if it ain’t a hunk of metal you can touch. It’s written on the darkness, and it tells us that we’ve got a few hard miles of prime-time Twilight Zone action ahead on this road tonight.
Picture if you will: The flipside of a game played by a pack of teenage hoodlums in a rusty Chrysler. It’s a solo B-side for a thing born in a cornfield, a requiem for the shambling progeny of the black and bloody earth. Because the October Boy has his own game. It’s played with pitchforks and switchblades and fear, and its first scrimmage is set to begin on a quiet strip of two-lane that marks the midnight trail to town. For this creature with the fright-mask face is both trick and treat. He comes with pockets filled with candy, and he carries a knife that carves holes in the shadows, and his race will take him from a lonely country road to an old brick church that waits dead center in the middle of a town square…in The Twilight Zone.
Uh-huh. That about covers it, if you want the teaser. Hang around for thirty minutes and we’ll give you the payoff. And the show can kick into gear right about here:
The October Boy spots the Chrysler’s Gorgon headlights about a mile off, but he doesn’t freeze. He makes for the side of the road and ducks into a clutch of cornstalks that close around him like a skeletal fist. He stands there with the butcher knife vined in his gnarled grasp, waiting as those lights grow larger…thinking…planning…and his thoughts aren’t so different from those of the boy behind the Chrysler’s wheel, because the October Boy has his own game to play, and it’s played with a deck that’s stacked against him.
Yeah. If there’s one thing the October Boy knows, it’s that. But he doesn’t have another way to go tonight. He’s already crossed the starting line, and there’s nowhere to head but the finish, though he can’t imagine how he’ll get there. It seems impossible. How he’ll make it from this spot into town, and how he’ll run the teenage gauntlet that’s itching to chop him down like a two-legged weed, and how he’ll reach that finish-line church in the town square before the steeple bell tolls midnight…well, it’s gotta be the longest of all long shots.
It never happens that way.
Everyone in town says it can’t happen that way.
But the October Boy has to make it happen that way.
If he wants to win.
So the Boy thinks about how he’ll play it. Not long-range, but step by step. He hears the Chrysler’s engine now, hears too the cool October breeze rushing in the car’s wake as the Chrysler speeds through dead corn a quarter mile away.
He sucks a breath through his arrowhead nose and steadies himself. The car’s coming fast. Forget miles…we’re talking yards, now…and the October Boy’s already moving. He slips free of that cornstalk fist, clutching the knife in his hand…racing through the ditch and up the incline…severed-root feet scrabbling over blacktop as he hits the road and crosses the white line.
The Boy’s head swivels as the Chrysler closes on him. He strains for a glimpse of the driver’s face through the windshield, but the window’s as black as the night. The Boy can’t see anyone behind it.
His carved eyes flicker in the darkness.
The dead-white headlights don’t flicker at all.
Mitch jerks the steering wheel hard to port, just missing a king-sized puppet scrambling across the road. Even as the Chrysler slips into a skid he’s cursing his capacity for instinctive response, because he realizes a second too late that puppet had a big orange head and hitting it head-on would have hammered flat every challenge this night holds as surely as a Sonny Liston right cross.
