Pieces of Hate (29 page)

The man began to pace — a few steps this way, a few steps that way — never taking his eyes off Craven, whose head turned back and forth, watching him.

“You miserable little shit,” the man growled quietly. “All these years of insulting me — I mean directly and personally insulting me — with that crrrrap you call music, that crrrrap that makes you countless millions and gets you enough women and booze and drugs — and, of course, the occasional young boy — for a dozen men! And now, you can’t even show me a sliver of respect. Oh, I am sick of your kind. When you die, it always takes such a tremendous effort to get you to go where you’re going! Do you know that Janis Joplin tried to kick me in the balls? And that pretentious drunkard Jim Morrison actually had the nerve to — ”

“Look, Mister, I’m not insulting you with my music. I don’t even know you. If you don’t like it, just don’t listen to it, okay?”

“If you don’t know me, then why do you — like so many others in your business — target me? Why all the pentagrams and upside down crosses on your album covers? Why all the songs with lyrics about me, about giving your soul to me and worshipping me?”

“Oh, we’re back to the Satan stuff again, huh?” Craven asked with a little roll of the eyes. “Okay, if you insist you’re Satan, I’ll go along with it. Look, that stuff sells, you know? The parents hate it, so the kids love it. It’s rebellious, see, and kids are rebellious. It’s just marketing, that’s all. Trust me, we don’t actually worship Satan or make sacrifices to him or anything. I mean . . . to you,” he added with a quiet chuckle.

“Dammit, I know that! Don’t you think I’d know if you worshipped me? And if you would perform the occasional sacrifice, you would be a hell of a lot more interesting to deal with!” He rushed over to Craven and got in his face again. “I wouldn’t mind so much if you would just get it right . . . but you don’t. And on top of all that. I hate rock and roll . . . but because of you, everyone here thinks it’s my music. Music that I inspire, that I approve of and that I use to collect souls. If I used morons like you to collect souls, Hell would be empty. What does that garbage of yours have to do with me? Why don’t one of you, just once, try something different and put together a group called . . . oh, I don’t know, how about Jesus and the Apostles? Why doesn’t someone go out on stage one time dressed up like the pope? But no, you’re all the same. You all pick on me and I get blamed for that indecipherable trash that makes you so famous . . . and me so hated. But,” he sighed, “I am just wasting time with all this chatter, Sidney. So . . .” He pulled his lips back over his teeth. Each tooth had been filed to razor-sharp points.

Boy, Craven thought, for somebody who doesn’t like rock and roll, this guy puts Alice to shame.

“. . . shall we be on our way?”

The man bent his head forward, evil teeth bared and glistening with saliva, and a narrow strip of wet black tissue slid out of his mouth, forked at the end, and moved slowly back and forth over the teeth.

Craven jerked back and blurted, “Holy shit!”

The man chuckled. “People like you always have to have a little proof.” Then, his grey, deep-set eyes began to glow a shimmering red.

Without even thinking about it, Craven threw himself at the man holding out an elbow. He butted him backward and the stranger flopped to the floor.

Craven dove frantically for the small wooden nightstand, arms outstretched for the drawer.

He watched as his hands passed through the wood as if it were water. He felt nothing. His hands seemed numb. With gaping eyes, he lost his balance and fell forward with a clumsy stumble. He tried to press his hand against the wall, but it only passed through, as if it were less than a shadow. He stood up straight, turned around and looked down.

He was standing in the middle of the nightstand, his legs invisible beneath it . . . almost as if he were wearing it. And still he felt nothing.

Craven lifted his head and saw the man on his feet, arms folded across his chest, grinning around his sharp teeth. Craven said tremulously, “Stay the fuck away from me, y’hear me? Huh?”

The man laughed. “You always need some kind of proof before you start paying attention. Yes, you are all the same. You use me, but you haven’t a single good word for me when I come to get you. A bunch of little spoiled, ill-mannered snots, all of you. Normally, I admire that in a person, but in people like you, Sidney . . . well, it’s just incredibly annoying. But, that’s neither here nor there, I suppose. Right now, it is time for us to go, Sidney. So — ” He held his right hand out and began to move slowly toward Craven. “ — why don’t you take my hand?”

As impossible as it seemed, Craven’s eyes opened even wider and his mouth began flapping open and closed, open and closed, with nothing coming out, until: “No, no, no! I’m not gonna take your fuckin’ hand!” His head was shaking back and forth in big, spastic jerks. “Why don’t you, umm, just . . . j-juh just forget about all this and go without me, huh?”

“You can’t stay here.”

“Why not? Sure I can, I’ll just stay and we’ll both pretend this never happened, huh? I mean, I’ve got my work a-and . . . and you’ve got your work, right? Know what I’m saying?”

“As I said, Sidney, you can’t stay here.” His eyes moved to the bed and he nodded slightly.

Craven’s brow furrowed above his wide eyes and he turned, very slowly, toward the bed.

First, he saw the shape under the blankets . . . the feet sticking upward . . . the splayed arms on each side of the torso . . . and then the worst, the very, very worst . . .

. . . he saw his own head on the pillow, his bushy hair spread over the pillowcase, his eyes closed, his mouth open . . . and there was no movement . . . no stirring, no breathing . . . nothing. Nothing at all.

Craven made a small, pathetic sound in his throat and turned back to the man who was coming nearer. He held up a hand and said, “No, no. Stop! Please don’t come any closer, please, I’m, uh . . . I just . . .” He felt dizzy and sick all of a sudden and found it difficult to speak. So he just stopped and stared, arm still outstretched, his palm open at the end.

“You know, Sidney . . . if you don’t want to come, I have some rather persuasive methods of taking you. I have been doing this for a very long time . . . and I have honed my abilities to a very sharp edge.”

Craven was surprised by the tears that suddenly began to spill from his eyes. He stopped them immediately and took a deep breath, let it out slowly and even mustered a smile.

“Well, y’know.” Craven said, “I like to think I have an open mind. So maybe, um . . . maybe this isn’t so bad after all. A new experience, y’know.”

“That’s a good boy,” the man said as he stopped in front of Craven.

“I mean, y’know, maybe I can put a band together when I get there. Hey, you got Joplin and Morrison and who knows who else, right? We can really jam, huh? Yeah, this might not be so bad after all.”

The man’s smile disappeared in a heartbeat. “Oh, no. No-no-no-no. No, there are no rock bands where you are going. I thought I told you. I despise rock and roll. Now, take my hand.”

Craven jerked his hand away, frowning. “Okay, then, um, what kinda music do you like?”

“Good music. The best.”

“Like who? Like what?”

He smiled again, showing his two rows of fangs. “We have a wonderful sound system. My favorite music is piped everywhere, loudly . . . and it is always playing.”

Craven’s frown deepened. “But what is it?”

“Lawrence Welk and Wayne Newton,” the man said, his smile growing, his fangs sparkling. He grabbed Craven’s hand suddenly and tightly. Very tightly.

Craven began to scream as he saw the room dissolve around him.

In seconds, they were gone . . .

BAIT

This is for every parent who ever thought they weren’t neglecting
 
their children . . . and realized too late that they were.

“Go over to the dairy stuff and get a gallon of milk,” Mom told them as she stood in the produce section of the Seaside Supermarket, squeezing one avocado after another, looking for ripe ones. “Low-fat, remember.”

They knew, both of them: nine-year-old Cole and his seven-year-old sister, Janelle. Their mother always ate and drank low-fat or non-fat everything. And besides, they knew the brand of milk on sight. The two children headed down the aisle between two long produce display cases.

“And hurry up!” Mom called behind them. “I wanna get out of here so I can have a smoke. Meet me up in the front.”

“She’s always in a hurry,” Janelle said, matter-of-factly.

“Yeah. Usually to have to smoke.”

They found the dairy section and went to the refrigerated cases, scanning the shelves of milk cartons, different sizes, different brands. When he spotted the right one, Cole pulled the glass door open, stood on tip-toes, reached up and tilted the carton off the fourth shelf up, nearly dropping it. He let the door swing closed behind him as they started to head for the front of the store to find their mother. But Cole stopped.

“Here’s another one,” he said quietly.

Janelle stopped, turned back. “Another what?”

“Another one of those kids. On the milk cartons. See?”

He turned the carton so she could see the splotchy, black-and-white depiction of a little boy’s smiling face. It was such a bad picture — as if someone had run the boy’s face through a disfunctioning copy machine — that he looked more nightmarish than pitiful. But pity was exactly what the black writing on the carton seemed to be aiming for; Cole read it aloud to Janelle:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?
 
9-YEAR-OLD PETER MULRAKES
 
Last seen in Eureka, CA in parking lot of Safeway
 
supermarket. Missing — 1 year, 7 months.

There were a few more details that Cole skipped over, along with a phone number to call if anyone should see the boy or have information regarding his whereabouts. At the very bottom, he read silently, to himself:

A NON-PROFIT COMMUNITY SERVICE
 
OF VALENCIA DAIRIES, INC.

“Where’s Eureka?” Janelle asked.

“Couple hours down the coast from here, I think,” Cole replied, staring at the haunting face with its smeared features and splotchy eyes. “I wonder where they go,” he muttered to himself, thinking aloud. “I wonder what happens to them when they disappear . . . who takes them away . . . and why.”

He turned and went back to the dairy case, opened the door and began turning the other milk cartons around.

“Mom said to hurry,” Janelle said. “She wants to smoke.”

“In a second.”

Each carton had a face on it, some different than others: little boys, little girls, some black, some white and some Asian . . . but all with the same splotchy features and blurred lines that would make the children almost impossible to identify, even if they were standing right there in front of Cole.

“They have ’em on the grocery bags, too, y’know,” Janelle said, in her usual matter-of-fact way.

“Yeah . . . I know.”

“What the hell are you two doing?”

Cole spun around, letting the door close again. Their mother stood with her cart, frowning at them.

“C’mon, now, I forgot the fish,” she said, waving at them. “Hurry up. I wanna get out of here.”

So you can have a smoke, Cole thought.

They went to the seafood counter where, beyond the glass of the display case, Cole and Janelle looked at all the shrimp and scallops, squid and octopus, all kinds of fish, clams, oysters, crabs, lobsters, eel . . .

Like a dead National Geographic special, Cole thought.

Some of the fish were still whole, and their dead, staring eyes looked like glass.

“How did they kill ’em, Cole?” Janelle asked.

He blinked; at first he thought she was still talking about the faces on the milk cartons, because they were still on his mind. “The fish? They caught ’em on hooks.”

“How?”

“With bait.”

“What kinda bait?”

He hated it when she did this. “Sometimes other fish. Y’know, smaller fish than them. And sometimes other things . . . whatever the fish like to eat.”

The man behind the counter offered to help Mom, and she said, “I’d like a couple of swordfish steaks, please.”

“Sorry, but we’re out. Till tomorrow.”

A sigh puffed from her lips. “You mean, we live right here on the coast and you’re out of swordfish?”

“’Fraid so, ma’am.”

“Okay, then . . . how about shark?”

“Oh, yeah, got some fresh shark steaks here. How many?”

“Two. And, uh — ” She looked down at Cole and Janelle.

“What do you guys want for dinner?”

“Not fish,” Cole said. “I hate fish.”

Janelle added, “So does Daddy. He said so.”

“Well, that’s just too bad for him. He could stand to lose weight and red meat is really fattening. Besides, it causes cancer. Fish is good for you, so what kind do you want?”