Helltown (35 page)

“That woman wasn’t your first, was she? That Mary? How many people you killed, Spence?”

“What does it matter?”

“It don’t. But I’m curious.”

“Forty one,” he said. “Plus Mary and the eight you know about.”

“What’s that? Fifty?” Cleavon whistled. “You’re slicker than greased goose shit, Spence. That’s gotta be a record or something. And I didn’t never suspect nothing. Not ’till that Mary anyhow.”

“Yes, well, now you know,” Spencer said impatiently. “Your older brother is a serial killer. And so are you. Now, I have a long drive ahead of me…” As he spoke he reached into the blazer pocket for the sheriff’s revolver.

Cleavon was unexpectedly fast. He covered the distance between them almost instantaneously, swinging the branch in his hand as he came. The business end struck Spencer in the face with bone shattering force, spinning him about. He landed on the macadam, on his chest, dazed. He rolled onto his back, blinking stars from his vision, wondering what happened to the revolver.

Cleavon loomed over him, backlit by a burst of lighting that electrified the black sky, turning it a deep-sea blue. He raised the branch with both hands.

Spencer opened his mouth but choked on the blood pooling inside his mouth. Nothing came out but a garbled, incomprehensible plea.

Cleavon felt no pity as he brought the tree branch down with all his strength across the top of his brother’s skull. He repeated this action again and again, payback for Earl, for Floyd, for Jesse, even for that dumb shit Weasel.

Then, panting hard with exertion, his eyes tearing from sweat and rain, he tossed the blood-covered tree branch aside and stared for a long moment at what remained of his brother’s head. He spat on his lifeless body and turned to leave, to head back to the El Camino he’d parked up the road, when his eyes fell on the Volvo. The back door was ajar. A suitcase and duffel bag rested on the seat. The duffel was unzipped, and a brick of cash wrapped in an elastic band poked out the top.

Cleavon blinked twice, then went to the car. He tugged the mouth of the bag open wider. “Judas Priest!” he whispered. “
Judas fuckin’ Priest!
” Then he turned his face to the heavens and danced in the rain and laughed like he had rarely laughed in all his miserable life.

CHAPTER 30

“We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!”

Ghostbusters
(1984)

Beetle discovered a set of car keys on Goliath’s body, which turned out to be for the rusted old banger parked in front of the church. He set Greta gently in shotgun and the small woman across the backseat. They were both unconscious but breathing. Then he got behind the wheel and sped to town. Given the late hour, and the full-throttled tempest, the rain-slicked streets of Boston Mills were deserted. However, he came across a twenty-four-hour gas station, where a clerk told him directions to the hospital. He arrived at the emergency entrance of the Boston Mills Health Center a few minutes later. Medical staff wheeled the two injured women away on stretchers while Beetle remained behind in the reception to explain what happened. He was then led to a private room where he changed into a dry paper frock and was checked over by a grandfatherly doctor who, upon finding no serious injuries, advised him to rest until the police arrived to take his statement.

Exhausted and emptied, Beetle fell immediately asleep, waking some eight or nine hours later at eleven o’clock that same morning. He was surprised to find a pretty redhead in the previously empty bed opposite his. She was watching him with haunted green eyes.

“Hi,” she said hesitantly.

“Hi,” he said.

“The police were here for you.”

“When?”

“Three hours ago? I was just admitted then. They questioned me. They wanted to question you too, but they weren’t allowed to wake you up.”

“They questioned you?” he said.

“My friends…” Her face dropped. She looked like someone who had just been told they had a week to live. “You saved one of them. Cherry. The doctor told me she’s going to be okay.”

“She was your friend?”

The woman nodded. “The police told me about you. What happened at the church. I told them I had never met you before.”

“Who were those men at the church?”

“Crazies.”

“Satanists?”

“I don’t know. They attacked my friends and me in the woods. I got away and hid in a school bus. Then when it became light I found the road. I followed it out of the national park. I came to the church—or what was left of it. There were police and firefighters. They brought me here. They said they didn’t know what happened to the rest of my friends. But I think…I think…” She rubbed tears from her eyes, shaking her head. “Where could they be?”

Suddenly Beetle remembered the small woman shouting off the names of three or four people who the man named Cleavon had apparently murdered, along with something about a snake…feeding her boyfriend to a snake?

He decided it was not his place to break this news to the already distressed woman. Instead he said simply, “I’m sorry.”

She nodded, still rubbing her eyes.

He said, “Did you hear anything about someone named Greta?”

“The doctor mentioned her. He thought she was my friend. He said she was also in stable condition.”

Beetle felt a bit of the tightness in his chest loosen. Then he wondered where the police were, when they would return to question him. And after they did, would they contact the army, tell them they had an AWOL soldier in their custody? Or would they release him, let him go…to where?

Beetle frowned. It was a valid question. Where was he going to go? Not back to Savannah. The recent events hadn’t changed his relationship with Sarah; there was nothing left for him in Georgia. However, something else
had
changed. He found he no longer had a desire, a need, to kill himself. Although the night before he had been so sure it had been his only recourse, his only way out from the nightmare his life had become, he no longer felt that way. He didn’t know why this was the case. He wasn’t going to philosophize over it either. Because perhaps this feeling was only a temporary reprieve, perhaps the darkness and despair would return in a week, or a month…perhaps…but he didn’t think so. A switch had been flicked inside him. He felt different, not ebullient—not like he had as a kid on his birthdays, or on the day he wed Sarah—but different. Alive. He had almost forgotten how pleasing, how natural, a feeling that was.

 The door to the room opened. A portly man with salt-and-pepper hair and a too-tight tweed jacket appeared. His eyes fell on the redhead, and his face lit up with joy.

“Mandy!” he said.

“Daddy!” she blurted.

The man rushed to her bedside and wrapped her in an embrace.

“They told me they called you…” she mumbled into his shoulder.

“I came as fast as I could.”

The redhead said something more, though Beetle couldn’t hear what, not that he was listening anyway, for he was suddenly thinking of his own parents, how nice it would be to see them again, and he knew he had a place to go to after all.

EPILOGUE

“Boy, the next word that comes out of your mouth better be some brilliant fuckin’ Mark Twain shit. ’Cause it’s definitely getting chiseled on your tombstone.”
The Devil’s Rejects
(2005)

School had only finished one week before, but eight-year-old Danny Kalantzis was already anticipating the best summer of his life. Most past summers he stayed in Cincinnati and didn’t do much of anything and then September came around and it was time to start school all over again. This year, however, his best friend Roy Egan had invited him to his family’s cottage for a full week. Danny’s family didn’t have a cottage, and he had never been to one before, so he wasn’t sure what to expect. But apparently it was on a small lake in northeastern Ohio, and they could go swimming every day and take rides in the motor boat. He could even try water skiing if he wanted to. He wasn’t sure he did. It sounded difficult. Roy told him there was also a rope hanging from one of the trees along the shore, and they could swing from it into the water. That was probably good enough for Danny.

Nevertheless, what made this week really great was the fact Roy’s sister, Peggy, had come along as well. She was a year older than Danny and Roy, and Danny thought she was the prettiest girl in school. Originally she was supposed to attend summer camp for ballerinas, but then her friend backed out, so she did too.

Because Roy didn’t want to sit beside her during the car trip, Danny got to, and he was fine with that arrangement. In fact, he had been thrilled every time his knee touched Peggy’s, or his shoulder brushed hers.

Ten minutes ago they had pulled into a picnic spot in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Roy’s mother had packed a cooler full of egg-salad sandwiches. Roy had wolfed his down, along with a cold can of Pepsi, then told his parents he and Danny were going to go ahead to check out Brandywine Falls. Danny had wanted to stay behind, so he would be close to Peggy, but he couldn’t say this, of course, and he obediently jogged after Roy, still finishing off his sandwich as he went.

Halfway to the falls, however, Roy left the trail and began making his way through the forest.

Danny hesitated. “Where are you going?”

“Come on!”

Danny followed.

When Roy found a glade suitable to his liking, he plopped down on his butt and took a sad, bent cigarette from the pocket of his shorts, along with a book of matches.

Danny’s eyes widened. “Where’d you get that?”

“My dad. Don’t worry. He doesn’t know.”

Roy stuck the cigarette expertly between his lips.

“You smoked before?” Danny said, impressed.

“A few times,” Roy said proudly.

He lit the cigarette with a matchstick and sucked hard. His face turned gray, then he bent forward and began coughing up a lung.

Danny bust a gut laughing. Roy must have kept coughing for a full thirty seconds. He was holding the cigarette toward Danny, telling him to try it.

“No way,” Danny said.

“Don’t be a chicken!”

“Look what happened to you.”

“Chicken!”

“I don’t want it.”

“You’re such a wimp.”

“
You’re
a wimp.”

“At least I tried it.”

“Try it again.”

Roy contemplated the cigarette, then tossed it away.

“Seriously, Danny,” he said, “you’re such a wimp.”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

“Oh jeez.” Roy rolled his eyes, then jumped to his feet. “I gotta take a dump.”

“Right here?”

“No, not right here, you perv. What, you wanna watch?”

“Then where?”

“In the trees.”

“I think there were toilets back at the picnic area.”

“Those things are disgusting. You can get diseases from the seats.”

“You don’t even have toilet paper.”

“You can lick my ass.”

“You’re so gross.”

“I’ll be back.”

Danny watched Roy forge a path through the trees until he was out of sight. Then Danny lay down to get comfortable, folding his hands behind his head and staring up at the sky. Much of it was blocked by the canopy of branches overhead, but he could see bits and pieces, all bright blue, not a cloud anywhere.

He closed his eyes and wondered where he would be sleeping tonight. Would he have his own bedroom? Or would he share a room with Roy? That would be fun. They could stay up late, talking or reading comic books, like they did when they had sleepovers. Roy’s parents were pretty cool with curfews and stuff like that. They let Roy do a lot of things Danny’s own parents would never let him do. And besides, it was summer break. It wasn’t like they had school the next day.

And what about Peggy? he wondered. She was a girl, so she would have her own room, obviously. Danny wondered if he should try to kiss her at some point. He was a year younger after all. He was only going into grade six. She probably still thought of him as a little kid. Then again, she’d laughed at some of his jokes in the car. Didn’t that mean she liked him? Maybe if he could keep making her laugh,
she
would kiss
him
. Maybe they would even get married one day. That would be pretty neat. Then Roy would be his brother, or half-brother…

As Danny unwittingly drifted into a light sleep, his thoughts turned to what Roy’s dad had told them about Helltown during the car ride. The place was right around here somewhere. Supposedly there had been a bunch of devil worshippers a few years back who lived in the woods and kidnapped people. But then some army guy, Special Forces or something like that, tracked them all down and burned them alive in some church. Roy’s dad stopped there because Roy’s mom told him he was going to give “the kids” nightmares. Roy and Danny protested, they wanted to hear more, but Roy’s dad changed the topic. Sometimes it seemed to Danny that Roy’s mom ruled Roy’s family. It was true she was stricter than Roy’s dad (which was still pretty lenient by Danny’s parents’ standards), and she could be scary sometimes when she got angry, but for the most part Danny liked her. He just better make sure he stayed out of her bad books for the next week…