Johnny Gruesome (46 page)

Light splits the darkness again.

This time I welcome the golden light. I want to bask in its warmth. I’ve had enough of hell on earth.

The silhouettes appear, marching toward me, whispering. Take me away!

Thousands of them advance on me.

Something’s wrong. It’s not like the last time. There’s nothing musical about their voices.

No
!

They reach for me with talons and snap at me with fangs.

Mommy! Help me, Mommy!

Laughing, they tear me to shreds.

Johnny’s final scream sounded both soulful and damned. His eyes exploded, jelly spraying from their gaping sockets. His jawbone fell away, his rotten tongue curling and uncurling like a tentacle. The sinews holding his body together relaxed, and his skull rolled off his neck, dragging his spinal cord after it, his arms and hands collapsing. His body separated and the creek swallowed its parts.

T
hey hoisted him from the creek, and he cried out every time he bumped his leg. They laid him on the shale and Matt shed his coat.

“Take off his jacket,” he said to Carol, who pulled off Eric’s jacket and sweatshirt, both of them heavy with water. She helped Matt dress Eric in his heavy police coat, then Matt pulled his hat down over Eric’s ears.

“We can’t wait for an ambulance,” Matt told him. “You’ll freeze to death. I’m sorry, I know it will hurt like hell, but we have to carry you through those woods.”

Unable to speak, with his teeth chattering out of control, Eric nodded. Matt and Carol wrapped his arms around their shoulders and stood in unison. Eric hopped on one foot, and they supported him as they scaled the shale and entered the woods. On the bridge, they helped him into the Pathfinder’s rear seat and Carol got in beside him. Matt switched on the engine, then the heat.

“Get him out of those clothes and into that blanket on the floor,” he said, getting out again.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to clean up down there.” He closed the door and ran back into the woods.

Carol turned to Eric. “I know it’s embarrassing, but he’s right.”

Eric nodded and Carol helped him out of his clothes. She had difficulty pulling off his jeans, which had shrunk in the cold water. By the time she’d stripped him and wrapped him in the blanket, the interior of the vehicle had heated. Matt returned, throwing the rope and Eric’s wet clothing into the empty seat beside him. He held his .45 for Carol to see.

“You’re taking lessons.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

He detached the radio microphone from the dashboard. “Come in, Ben.”

A moment passed, followed by a short burst of static and a squawk. “Go ahead, Chief.”

“I have Eric Carter with me. He’s alive but wet, and probably suffering from hypothermia. Send an ambulance out to the Willow Creek Bridge right away, and tell his folks to come pick up their car.”

“Copy that.”

“We should take him to the emergency room ourselves,” Carol said.

“He’ll be all right. In the meantime we need to come up with a believable story. There’s no way I’m reporting what I just saw. We’ll all be run out of town. Out of the country.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t have a clue in hell.”

Spring

A
lec Condon, the Green Forest Cemetery groundskeeper, pushed his wheelbarrow down a winding path flanked by polished graves. His son, Ross, had dropped out of Red Hill Community College and run off to Florida with Alec’s nephew, Tommy. He couldn’t blame them; the town had become notorious, and not in a manner that led to opportunities for young men hoping to improve their lives.

When two cable TV networks announced plans to produce competing TV movies based on the unsolved Red Hill Murders, locals objected. They lived in Red Hill to enjoy a slower, quieter lifestyle, and did not wish to see their village portrayed in an unflattering manner. Once it became clear the films would be produced anyway, they decided to make the best of an undesirable situation. If these producers intended to exploit Red Hill anyway, why shouldn’t the village benefit? But no sooner had residents acquiesced to the producers’ wishes than one network abandoned its project, and the other decided to shoot its version in Canada for economic reasons.

Alec spat on the ground. He knew no Hollywood producer would ever make him rich and he didn’t care. A documentary crew had arrived in town a few days after the last murder and the filmmakers had been there ever since, interviewing anyone willing to participate. And more than one writer had arrived to document the definitive account of what had transpired.

As he set the wheelbarrow down and unloaded his tools, he glimpsed a solitary figure limping across the cemetery. The boy carried a bouquet of flowers, and Alec recognized him from the news.

Eric made his way along the dirt path, red roses in hand, searching for Rhonda’s grave. All of Johnny’s victims inhabited graves here, except for the Lawsons. The men whose business had been embalming and interment had been cremated in the fire that consumed the funeral home.

Eric stopped before Rhonda’s marker, a simple stone with a glossy finish. A gentle breeze blew his hair, which had grown longer during his hospital stay. Laying the roses on the ground, he massaged his aching leg. He had been laid up in the hospital for two months, admitted for his broken leg and pneumonia. He’d undergone three operations for his knee, with one more scheduled. He also had spent time at a psychiatric facility in Buffalo after telling state police and FBI agents that he’d gone to the Willow Creek Bridge to kill himself on that terrible night. He reported that Matt and Carol had saved his life, which was true enough. He hadn’t minded the treatment, which had enabled him to sort out some of his feelings.

“Johnny was right about one thing,” he said in a soft voice to the earth at his feet. “I really did love you. I still do, and I miss you. I’m so goddamned sorry this happened. My parents have agreed to send me to Europe for the summer, and when I come home I’m attending college in Syracuse. I just can’t stay in this town any longer. But I want you to know I’ll remember you wherever I go.”

He stood there for a moment, as if waiting for a reply. When none came, he turned and left.

Alec watched the boy exit. From what he’d seen on TV, the kid had been through a lot and he felt sorry for him. But he had problems of his own, and work to do. Approaching a gravestone, he frowned. The dark gray marker said, JOHN VINCENT GRISSOM, followed by dates of birth and death. Over the engraved lettering, someone had spray painted JOHNNY GRUESOME in dripping, crimson letters. It would take him the better part of the morning to remove the graffiti.

Damn kids,
he thought.

G REGORY L AMBERSON photo by Richard Wicka

Gregory Lamberson was a horror storyteller long before unleashing Johnny Gruesome on the world. At the age of 21, he wrote and directed his first horror film,
Slime City,
which became a midnight movie cult classic. He also wrote and directed the microbudget features
Undying Love,
released on VHS as
New York Vampire,
and
Naked Fear,
released on DVD as a second feature with
Slime City.
His first novel,
Personal Demons,
won the Anubis Award for Horror, judged by acclaimed writer T.M. Wright. For the last few years, he’s devoted himself to giving undead flesh to
Johnny Gruesome;
the multimedia monster also exists as a rock CD, an on-line comic book, a collectible mask, and a short film starring Erin Brown, aka “Misty Mundae.”