Crucifax (38 page)

Almond-shaped spots of gold sparkled in the darkness behind the instruments….

"They're here," Bainbridge said fearfully. "Watching us…"

Jeff sat in the back seat of Brad's Mustang with the burning taste of bile in his mouth. Nick and Keith were in the back with him; Jason sat in front, handing back cans of Budweiser. When Jason offered one to him, Jeff shook his head and turned his eyes to the window at his left and absently watched the watery blur of lights go by slowly as they waited for the traffic on Ventura to get moving again.

"C'mon, Jeffy," Brad said, "you need it."

He considered it, took the can, and popped the tab hoping he'd be able to hold it down. He gulped the beer quickly, deciding to have another as soon as he finished it. Maybe beer would help rid him of the images of his mother reaching between her legs and clutching her ass, swinging her bare breasts, of the leering men throwing down their money and howling like animals each time his mother cocked a hip or jutted her pelvis.

I
know you trust Mom right now,
Mallory had said,
but you shouldn't.

Jeff wondered if she'd known, and if so, for how long.

He wondered how long their mother had been stripping … and what else she'd been keeping from them.

Was that why their father had left?

Was that why Mallory had left?

There are things about her you don't know….

A storm of questions swirled in his mind, but—and this surprised him—he felt nothing, didn't know what to feel, as if he were totally detached from what had happened, as if he'd watched some other guy find his mother dancing in a strip bar.

"Okay," Brad said, "so the Playpen was a bad idea. How about we go back to my sister's place and get some grass, then to Fantazm?"

Everyone agreed but Jeff. He'd heard Brad but was busy finishing his beer and trying not to think.

"Hey, Jeff?" Brad said. "You okay?"

Jeff leaned forward, handed his empty can to Jason, took another beer, and said, "Yeah, I'm okay." It was a lie, but he would be drunk in a while, and he was sure he'd be seeing Mallory at Fantazm; he would be okay soon….

A bullet-shaped man with a goatee and frizzy hair the color of straw approached J.R. and the reverend. He wore an oversized white shirt with several zippers over the chest and sleeves. His left arm was in a cast, and there was a small blood-spotted bandage above his left eye. The blond girl was at his side.

"Marty Bascombe," he said to J.R., glancing around the club as he spoke, preoccupied. "I'm kinda busy, but, uh, what can I do for you?"

J.R. introduced himself and said, "I'd like to talk with you about the band that's playing here tonight."

"Yeah, Crucifax?" He nudged his way up to the bar, and they followed him. "Gimme a Coke, Perry," he said to the bartender. "Okay, what about the band?"

"Well, I was wondering…" J.R. suddenly realized he didn't know what to say to this man. He hadn't given it any thought. He decided shortly before arriving at the club that it might be a good idea to have a word with the manager about Mace. He found himself stammering and at a loss.

"We have reason to believe," the reverend spoke up, "that the band you've scheduled for tonight is a serious danger to the young people who—"

"Hey, I know you," Bascombe said. The bartender brought his Coke, and he swirled the ice for a moment as he eyed the reverend suspiciously. "You're that little Bible-beater who stands out in the parking lot preachin' to everybody. So what's the deal here, you think they're gonna poison the kids' minds? They got Satanic messages in their music?"

"I'm certainly not going to say I approve of that music, Mr. Bascombe," the reverend replied. "But it's nothing like that at all."

J.R. said, "The bandleader—Mace—we think he might—"

"Hey," Bascombe gulped, putting down his drink and looking around him as he took J.R.'s arm. "C'mere, c'mere, c'mon with me." He led them quickly down a short carpeted hall and into an office cluttered with stacks of magazines, papers, loose files, and empty beer cans. Rock music posters were tacked haphazardly to the walls. Bascombe closed the door and turned to them. "Okay, what's this about the band?"

J.R.'s ears rang in the silence of the office. He coughed nervously into a fist and said, "I'm assuming you know Mace."

"Met him."

"He's been connected to some recent suicides. High school kids."

Bascombe rolled his eyes. "Jesus, what're you, some PMRC nut? You think rock music's making kids kill themselves? Is that what you—"

"It has nothing to do with the music, Mr. Bascombe, it's Mace. He's dangerous. I'm telling you, he's—"

"Get to the point, okay? I don't have all night. Whatta you want from
me?
"

"You have to cancel the concert tonight."

Bascombe laughed, sitting on the edge of his messy desk. "We've got, what, about an hour before the show, a little less? And you want me to tell these guys to, what, go home? Look, these are just local kids getting their first shot at—"

"They're local kids," J.R. said emphatically, "who've been living in the basement of an abandoned building with this guy for weeks. Their parents don't know where they are or what—"

"So what'm I now, a
babysitter?
"

The reverend stepped forward and said, "Don't you feel some responsibility toward these young people?"

Bascombe's irritated smile disappeared. "Hey, c'mon, guys, I'm trying to run a nightclub here, okay? You paid the cover, right? Tell you what, I'll refund your cover, and drinks're on the house, okay? No booze at the bar—this is a teen club, y'know—but I got some here." He went behind his desk, opened a drawer, and held up a bottle of Tanqueray gin. "What about it, huh? Just don't make any trouble for me, okay?"

He's scared,
J.R. thought.

"Mr. Bascombe," he said, "we didn't come here for free drinks."

Bascombe put the bottle down and came around the desk, scowling. "Okay,
you
wanna deal with that guy? Go right ahead.
You
wanna tell him he can't play tonight? Be my guest. But as far as I'm concerned, Crucifax is playing here tonight, and for the rest of the fucking week if they want to, and I don't care if they stand on the stage, whip out their cocks, and piss on the audience!" He stepped between them and opened the door. "Now I've got some calls to make, so if you don't mind…"

J.R. noticed beads of sweat glistening on Bascombe's forehead, saw his lips tremble slightly. The spot of blood on his bandage had spread a bit; it was a recent injury. The cast was clean and white; no one had written on it.

"How did you hurt yourself?" J.R. asked.

Bascombe rolled his eyes again. "I ran into a big door, okay? Now get outta here."

They left the office, and the door closed firmly behind them.

"He's scared," the reverend said, sounding a bit ill at ease himself.

J.R. nodded as they headed back into the club. "I know. And probably with good reason. He didn't run into any goddamned door…."

Erin tried to keep her eyes clear as she drove through the storm, but each time she thought she'd stopped crying, more tears came. She spotted Fantazm a block away. The marquee above the entrance read:

WEDNESDAY

NEW BAND NITE

WED OCT 19

—CRUCIFAX—

The word
Crucifax
sent a spear of ice through her chest, and she muttered, "Mallory…" She suddenly felt twice as weary knowing she would have to face both of them.

The parking lot behind Fantazm was full, so she had to park half a block away and hurry through the rain.

Inside the club, she paid the cover charge and surveyed the crowd with a dismal groan. It was a smoky lake of bobbing heads and shoulders with not a familiar face in sight. Erin regretted the fact that she knew only a couple of Jeff's and Mallory's friends. She knew a lot of names, but few, if any, faces. The only reason she knew Brad was that he'd spent more time at the apartment than any of the others.

What kind of mother are you?
she asked herself bitterly.
You don't even know who your kids are growing up with, let alone what kind of people they might be.

She walked into the crowd looking from face to face, stopping to turn and look behind her. She bumped chairs and tables, was pressed against sweaty, smoky teenagers, even walked onto the dance floor without realizing it.

Erin did not notice the crosses until after she'd been wandering through the club for several minutes. When she did, she stopped in the crowd, saw another… and another….

They looked like small sculptures cut from chunks of dried blood, just as Jeff had described them.

And they were everywhere she looked.

"Mrs. Carr? Erin?"

The voice was a faint mutter at first but became louder, and when she saw J.R. Haskell, she smiled with relief at the sight of a familiar face.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Looking for my kids. Have you seen them?"

"Not yet, but Jeff should be here soon, if he isn't already." J.R. introduced her to Reverend Bainbridge, then said, "You look upset. And you're limping. What's wrong?"

She tried to tell him, thinking she could get it out with perhaps a casual chuckle and a toss of her head so he couldn't say "I told you so," but when she started to speak, tears sprang to her eyes again, and she covered her trembling lips. J.R. stepped forward, muttering, "What? What?" and she let him put his arms around her, rested her head on his shoulder. With her mouth close to his ear, she told him what happened.

"I tried to stop him," she said, "but he ignored me and left with his friends. He was… God, he was shaken. When I think of how he must have felt, looking up on that stage and seeing… his mother…"

J.R. pulled back and faced her, hands on her shoulders, his face dark with sudden worry. "How long ago did this happen?"

"Thirty or forty minutes."

He turned away from her suddenly with the look of someone just realizing his keys were locked in the car. He turned to the reverend and said something she couldn't hear, then took her arm and said, "Let's go." There was an urgency in his voice that disturbed her. He quickly led her through the crowd and to the entrance, where it was a bit quieter.

"Could he have gone somewhere else?" he asked, clutching her arms.

He was more than concerned now; he was scared. He waited intently for her reply, his eyes locked onto hers, but as she tried to think of somewhere else Jeff might have gone her thoughts jumbled together with the throbbing noise and her sudden fear.

"I-I don't know, J.R., he might have, but… what's wrong? What's going on?" "Did he say anything to you?" "No, he just left. Now, what's happening?" "I can't give you the details right now, but something very scary is going on. Everything Jeff told us—those things in your apartment?—it all happened just as he said. These kids Mace has rounded up—God knows how many— they've all been hurt, let down recently by someone close to them, someone they trusted. A friend, a sibling, a preacher, maybe. A
parent.
He hooks them by their weak spots and reels them in like fish." "J.R., that's—what are you—how can that be, it's all—" "
Listen
to me!" he growled, shaking her. "You may not believe it, but it's happening, and if you want to save your kids, you're just gonna have to live with it for a while, because it's happening to them! I've been on the phone calling parents all day. Some of them are coming down here tonight to get their kids. At least they
said
they were." He glanced around. "I don't see any of them yet." He turned to her again, and his face was a hard mask of anger and fear. "Some of these kids here, they're scared because they know what's happening. They've seen it happening around them. I met a girl who's looking for her brother, a guy who's trying to find his girlfriend—they're trying to get them away from Mace. Kids are
killing
themselves, Erin. Mace is promising to take them all away to a better place, a place where they're wanted, not ignored, not judged, like Mallory said, but that place is in a box six feet underground. He's poison, but they think he's their friend. They want to think that, need to. Mallory's decided to go with him, and now, after what happened tonight, I'm afraid Jeff might decide he wants to go, too. Unless we can get him—
both
of them—out of here and away from Mace tonight. Because it's gonna happen soon. Don't ask me why, but I can feel it, the reverend feels it, too; something's brewing. And if we don't wake up, we're gonna lose a lot of kids. If not tonight, then soon. Very soon."

Erin didn't want to believe what he was saying, didn't even want to think that he believed it, but his grip on her arms was beginning to hurt, and his eyes burned with such intense conviction and determination that all she could say was "What do I do?"

He released his grip on her arms and, for a moment, looked embarrassed, as if he hadn't realized he was holding her so tightly. "I'm tired of shouting," he said, taking her outside. The music diminished to a hum when the door closed. They stood beneath the marquee, where the rain and traffic noise completely drowned out the rock and roll inside.

J.R. asked, "What kind of car was Jeff in?"

"Mustang. White. Seventy-one or -two."

"I'm going out to the parking lot to look for it. You keep an eye out for Jeff and Mallory. If you find them…" He hesitated, flinched at a flash of lightning overhead. "Well, I can't tell you what to do, but I can suggest. I know you and Mallory haven't gotten along well for a while, and now Jeff… When we find them… well, swallow your pride. Apologize for any mistakes you've made, forget about any they've made, and… I guess I'm suggesting that you start over. And make sure they know that's what you want. A clean slate. Don't get angry, don't snap back at them, because at this point I think the best you can do is to say very little. Just make sure they know you love them."

"Of course they know I love them!" she shouted angrily. "I've busted my—"

J.R. held up a palm. "
That,
" he said, "is exactly what you shouldn't say."