Midnight Grinding (5 page)

Mark knew he should have run for his life, but he was transfixed. Grunts of pain and the ripping of clothing and flesh echoed across the empty lanes of Interstate 53. The frightened hitchhiker witnessed the awful blood feud, torn between revulsion and fascination. He rooted for neither man, although one had been a newfound friend until only a few moments ago.

The fight ended abruptly when the two men struggled to the pavement and rolled toward the front of the car, away from Mark’s view. A torturous scream split the air, followed by a wet gurgle. For a moment, the headlights revealed only the glistening pavement ahead and the driving rainfall. Then a single form stood up.

“I won,” grinned Clifford Lee.

Mark backed away as the young man started around the car for him. Clifford’s denim jacket was in bloody tatters, his face criss-crossed with deep gashes. He had traded his razor in for the broad-bladed Bowie. “You know when I said I wouldn’t hurt you, Mark?” asked Clifford Lee, brushing aside of flap of loose skin that hung above his left eye. “Well, hell, I lied. I’m sorry, buddy, but I’m gonna have to kill you, too. Can’t leave no loose ends, you know. Hope you understand.”

But Mark didn’t understand. He leaped off the road and into the darkness. With a maniacal cackle, Clifford Lee was in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, there was no solid ground beyond the glow of the car’s high beams, only a steep drop-off into a wooded hollow below. The two tumbled head over heels, landing at the bottom of the grassy incline. Mark was the first one up and that was to his advantage. Clifford Lee was groggy from bashing his head against a rock on the way down. He crawled toward his lost blade, but didn’t quite make it. Mark reached the big knife first and, without a second’s hesitation, drove it between his traveling buddy’s heaving shoulder blades.

“What’d you do that for?” croaked Clifford Lee, blood spraying from his mouth and nostrils. “I thought we were pals.”

“I thought so, too,” replied Mark. “God help me, I really did.” He withdrew the knife and buried it to the hilt one more time, just to be on the safe side.

Moments later, Mark was climbing back up the grassy face of the hollow for the interstate. His wild high of exhilaration and relief faded into confusion when he reached the lip of the thoroughfare. A dark form crouched beside the bloody body of A.J. Rudman, then stood and shucked a revolver from a side holster when he saw Mark stumble out of the darkness.

“Killed him…” Mark managed, trying to explain, pointing back into the hollow. “I killed him…stabbed him…”

The state trooper lifted his .357 magnum in a two-handed hold. “You just stop right there,” he barked. “Drop it and don’t move a muscle.”

Mark couldn’t understand why the lawman refused to listen. “The Butcher…” he gasped. “Dead…I killed the…”

“I said,
drop the knife!
This is my last warning!”

“But you don’t understand…” Mark sputtered. He lifted his hands to reason with the man and there it was, the Bowie knife, completely forgotten until it flashed electric blue in the patrol car’s cascading lights.

Three shots rang out. Three hollowpoint slugs obliterated the top of Mark Casey’s skull and sent his body sprawling across the white borderline of the median. Clumps of brain and splinters of skull littered the dark pavement, but they were soon washed away as the black rains of the storm soaked Interstate 53 and scrubbed it clean.

Officer Hal Olsen holstered his revolver and walked back to the patrol car. He sat down heavily and picked up the mike of his radio. “Unit H-108 to headquarters. Send me additional back-up, will you? I’ve got one hell of a mess out here on I-53, two miles north of the Monteagle exit. I’ve just shot the Roadside Butcher, but not before he killed two others.” When he was assured that help was on its way, the officer replaced the mike and turned his radio off.

He sat and stared at the body lying there in Army fatigue jacket and faded jeans. Shaking his head, he withdrew an object wrapped in canvas from beneath his car seat and walked over to where Mark Casey lay.

“I don’t know who you were, fella, but you just got me off the hook.”

Officer Olsen withdrew a long-bladed machete from the wrapping and hefted its comforting weight in his hand one last time, before tossing it as far as he could into the wet darkness of the backwoods hollow. Then he returned to the car and waited for his fellow officers to arrive.

THE WEB OF

LA SANGUINAIRE

Spiders are another type of critter I’m not particularly fond of. The South is crawling with them. Black widows, brown recluses—we call them “fiddlebacks”
—
and we even have an aggressive “jumping” spider that will literally chase you.

I hear tell there is a nasty breed of spider that frequents the dark swamps of Louisiana…one that the Cajun folk speak of in hushed and fearful tones. An eight-legged monstrosity known as “La Sanguinaire.”

Larousse would not take him there at first. “It not safe to travel de swamp at night,” the old Cajun warned in his heavy French accent.

But Douglas Scott Price was accustomed to having his own way. An extra hundred dollars laid across the old man’s leathery palm soon changed his tune.

The last rays of daylight played through the Spanish moss hanging from ancient cypress trees when the two climbed into Henri Larousse’s pirogue, a canoe-like boat used by many of the trappers and fishermen in the area. “What’s that for?” Price asked his guide when a double-barreled shotgun was laid across the center seat.

The elderly man shrugged. “De gators, dey would rather eat than sleep. Where we are going, dey be plenty of dem.”

They began their long journey into the Louisiana bayou in silence. Price sat at the bow of the boat as Larousse rowed. Deeper into the swamp they drifted and deeper did the shadows gather, until the Coleman lantern next to the scattergun had to be lit. It cast an orange glow upon the two men. The lack of conversation was awkward, but they really had nothing to talk about. The only link between them was purely monetary.

A loon screamed off in the darkness, causing the young man to jump. The elder man chuckled softly and continued to row with slow, even strokes.

“So, what is it you do for a living?” the Cajun asked. Without conscious thought, he maneuvered the dugout across the dark waters, missing exposed roots and sandbars by mere inches.

“Oh, nothing really,” Price replied with an air of pomposity. “I was born into old family money. Ever heard of the New England Prices? No? Well, I expected as much. Being independently wealthy tends to mean a lot of free time, but I manage to keep myself busy.”

Larousse had a good idea what sort of luxuries occupied Doug Price’s time. Ferraris, eighty-foot yachts, and million-dollar thoroughbreds; a wet bar always at hand and a beautiful woman waiting at every point of the compass. Larousse knew his mind as well as he knew his own. Men of wealth and influence…you could almost smell the good fortune exude from them like the odor of some cheap cologne. The Cajun had been born in backwater poverty and had lived that meager life for nearly eighty years. He could sense a rich man a mile away, like a bluetick hound catching the scent of swamp coon upon a midnight breeze.

Seeing Larousse’s amused eyes in the glow of the lamp, the young man continued. “Despite what you think, old man, I do not spend every waking hour jet-setting with a buxom blonde on my knee and a martini in my hand. No, actually my interests are quite respectable. My passion has always leaned toward the biological sciences, most particularly zoology. I’ve contributed millions to various zoological societies; the Smithsonian, the Audubon, the Sierra. I’ve also devoted much of my time. I’ve traveled the world over collecting rare species of bird, mammal, and insect life, both for public exhibition and for my own private collection.”

“And so dat be de reason we are here, rowing through the bayou at such an ungodly hour?” asked the guide. “To collect something or other?”

“Yes,” said Price, a little peeved. “But don’t complain. You’re being well paid for this little foray. In an hour or so, you’ll be back at your humble swamp shanty, stuffing that three hundred inside your mattress. And I’ll leave this godforsaken place with what I came here to find.”

“And that would be de creature you mentioned before?”

“That’s correct,” said Price. “A rare species of the order
Araneae.
The pronunciation of its Latin nomenclature would likely be way over your head, old man, so I won’t even bother. Needless to say, the common name of the arachnid is the striped swamp spider. It has a pale underbelly, the upper shell pitch black with broad streaks of crimson on the hind section. I do hope this isn’t a wild goose chase you’re taking me on. You are sure that you’ve seen such a spider in these parts?”

Larousse nodded.
“Oui,
a very large and ugly thing. But only at night…never in de light of day.”

“Yes, they are nocturnal in nature,” agreed the collector. “And they are rather large; the size of a man’s fist, or so I’ve heard. That is why I came prepared.” He patted a ten-gallon aquarium at his feet.

The darkness grew thicker, the night sounds more varied, more mysterious to one unaccustomed to the swamps. They rounded a sharp bend between two waterlogged stands of old cypress and came upon a tangle of heavy cobwebs, stretching from one side of the channel to the other. Price directed the beam of a flashlight upon the vast webs, the glow etching each silver strand upon the darkness beyond. Fat-bodied spiders the size of golf balls scuttled away from the silken centers, away from the probing light.

“Hoo-boy!” exclaimed the Cajun. He watched the long-legged things climb swiftly upward into the obscurity of the dark limbs above. “Dere be you some spiders, Mr. Price. Plenty o’ them. Oughta take a bucketful back with you.”

The young man seemed disinterested. “Common water spiders.” He tore away the fragile network of webs with a swing of his arm and they continued on. “They’ve been an item of my arachnid collection for years. It is the swamp spider I’m looking for now.”

They moved on into the bayou, into far reaches where the boldest of poachers dared not come, even in broad daylight. The roar of a bull gator rumbled to their left, but it was too far away to present any immediate danger.

“De thing you seek…de swamp spider…it has an interesting history, it do,” Larousse said. The glow of the kerosene lamp highlighted every little wrinkle, every line and liverspot on his aged face. “Some of de Cajun people, dey still believe in de old ways, de magic and de beliefs of dere ancestors. When de French first settled de bayou, dey believed in such things. De spider of which you search, dey called it
La Sanguinaire
, ‘The Bloodthirsty,’ for it was said to be big enough to catch and devour prey larger than other insects. Birds, rabbits, dere was even a case of one trapping a wild boar in its awesome web. Some, dey say, dat even a man fall prey every now and again, and de Sanguinaire would crawl down out of de trees and drain him of his blood. Many thought, and still do, dat dey are de souls of de damned left upon earth as punishment, left as things repulsive to be loathed by man. Some think dat dey possess magical powers…dat if a man be bitten upon de crown of de head by a Sanguinaire, he is subject to dere very wishes for de remainder of his life…to watch over dem, to protect, to provide food, if it be necessary.”

Douglas Price laughed out loud at the old man’s story. “And do you, old timer…” he asked with a grin, “believe these stories of the Sanguinaire?”

“I do not so much believe or disbelieve, as I respect dem. Dere be many things, Mr. Price, that are unknown to us…many strange and awful things. If you are to travel in strange lands and deal with strange people, you would do well to learn to respect local customs and not scoff so easily.”

“Enough of this mumbo jumbo,” said Price. “Back to the business at hand.” He flashed his light upon the routed trunks of the cypress, along the heavy thicket that grew dense on the mossy banks. The wide swath of light swept the shallow bank to the right, then settled there. Movement came from the shadows between a clump of gnarled, exposed roots. “Take me over there…quickly, man, before they get away!”

Larousse steered the pirogue to the far bank as his passenger prepared the glass tank. Price slipped on a pair of heavy, rawhide gloves and, when they reached the tangle of roots, handed the flashlight to the old man. “Shine the light on that opening there,” he indicated. The old man nodded sourly, thinking the whole situation was somewhat ridiculous. All this fuss for a stupid spider! But he remembered the trio of hundred dollar bills tucked in the pocket of his goosedown vest and did as he was told.

The pale light revealed an entire nest of the spiders, great and bulky, glistening black with streaks the color of freshly-let blood crossing their hindquarters. They tried to escape into the webbed tunnels they had constructed beneath the shelter of the cypress roots, but Price quickly dispatched two of the larger ones, placing their writhing bodies into the aquarium and clamping on the screened lid.

“Good Lord!” breathed the young man, his face livid with excitement. “Will you look at the size of these things? They’re three times larger than the common tarantula.” The two swamp spiders clawed at the glass walls, fairly the size of full-grown tree squirrels.

The Cajun laughed, his broad grin showing off raw gums and a few tobacco-stained teeth. “Aw, I have seen much larger than those,” he said, handing the flashlight back to its owner.

Price stared at the old gentleman, unable to determine whether the swamper was serious or just pulling his leg. He studied the two monstrous specimens in the glow of the Coleman, then glanced at his Rolex. It was a quarter after nine. “You get us back to town by midnight, oldtimer, and I’ll up your fee by another two hundred. Fair enough?”

Larousse nodded, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his oily fishing cap.
“Oui,
Monsieur Price. That would be most generous.” He began to guide the low boat back into the channel from which they came.

For hours they traveled the labyrinth of channels that made up the stillwater bayou. For some reason the night sounds that had seemed so prominent before were now oddly absent. Price was aware of this, as well as the unfamiliarity of the swamp they now cruised, a swamp more densely overgrown than the one they had set into earlier in the evening. He wanted to mention the fact openly several times, but the elderly guide seemed so confident in his navigation that Price had let it go.
Probably just a shortcut back to the settlement,
he concluded.
For an extra two hundred, I bet the old geezer could find a shortcut clear to the gulf from here.

Once, a curious gator crossed the dark waters and slammed his blunt snout against the side of the pirogue. The impact caused the lantern to topple off the center seat and over the side with a splash. When Price asked him why he hadn’t fished it out, Larousse only smiled. “I can afford to lose a lantern. I have lost many to de swamp. But I can’t afford to lose an arm. Look.”

Price understood when he directed his flash upon the channel and saw half a dozen hungry gators floating like logs to either side of the boat.

They moved onward down the winding channel. The young collector was gradually aware that the darkness around them had thickened. The full moon that had hung overhead was gone, obscured by overlapping branches, heavy mats of gray moss, and something else.

He directed his beam ahead of them. A velvet wall of light mist choked the inlet a few yards ahead. “Looks as though a fog has rolled in,” he said, gathering his jacket closer around him.

“Oui,”
replied the Cajun. “De fog…it gets as thick as gumbo in de bayou. So thick, in fact, that you can reach out and grab a fistful of it, if you so wish.” His passenger shook his head at the old man’s tale. “Really,
monsieur.
Go ahead and give it a try.”

They were upon a wall of white mist now and, just to show the old man how idiotic his idea was, Price thrust his hand over the bow. His smug expression melted into confusion as his hand sank into something unsolid, yet of definite substance. It was sticky and clinging and, when he attempted to pull his hand away, he found that he could not.

“Something has a hold of me, old man,” he gasped. He batted at the adhesive strands with the aluminum flashlight, but it too became entangled. It dangled in the silky wall, despite its weight. “Help me, Larousse. Dammit, man, get me out of this confounded mess!”

Then he felt the distinct sensation of the boat sliding out from underneath him and realized that it actually was. With a curse, he lost his balance as he attempted to stand up and his entire weight lurched backward into the wall of unyielding mist. He was overcome with sudden terror when he realized that his body was now suspended over the dark water. He craned his head around and saw Larousse rowing the pirogue away from him, maneuvering to head back the way they had come.

“Where the hell are you going, old man?” Douglas Price screamed, his anger quickly passing into blind panic. “Come back here this instant! I’m paying you good money, do you hear me?” He struggled wildly against the gummy strands, trying to pull away. But he only managed to entangle himself more firmly amid the great web.