The Beast House (11 page)

“You look good in your dive habiliments,” Jack told her.

“I look better without ‘em.”

“Bet you do.”

Tyler slid onto the bucket seat and pulled her door shut.

“No funny stuff back there,” Abe said as he started the car.

“Far be it from us,” Nora said with a giggle.

“Are you sure you two are librarians?” he asked.

“Nora’s a librarian. I’m a media specialist. That’s their five-dollar term for a school librarian.”

“I’m a school librarian,” Nora protested.

“Don’t look like one,” Jack said.

“She’s college,” Tyler said. “I’m high school. They don’t fool around that much with projectors and…”

“Just when I’m horny,” Nora said.

Though there were no other cars in sight, Abe signaled his right-hand turn before swinging onto the road. The headlights bore pale tunnels into the darkness. “If this place turns out too sleazy,” he said, “we can always try somewhere else.”

“Let’s hear it for sleaze!” Nora called out. She and Jack clapped and whistled.

“Do we want to be seen with these two?” Abe asked, smiling at Tyler.

“I think we’re stuck with them.”

“He’s trying to pull the wool over Tyler’s eyes,” Jack whispered loudly. “Point of fact, Abe’s an animal. Tell you the time he pissed on Colonel Lockridge? Jesus jumping Christ.”

“Jack!”

“You…urinated on a colonel?” Tyler asked.

“Just on his legs. He had it coming.”

“Right in the fuckin’ officers’ club.”

“In the restroom?”

“Right in the fuckin’ officers’ club,” Jack repeated, louder. “After that, they called him ‘Whizzin’ Abe.’”

Abe, laughing softly, shook his head. “It was a long time ago. My manners have improved.”

“Two years ago.”

“You’re asking for it, Jack.”

“What did this Lockridge do?” Tyler asked.

“Changed his pants,” Jack answered.

“No, I mean…”

“He’d insulted a friend,” Abe explained.

“Remind me never to insult your friends.”

“You’ve nothing to fear.”

“Whizzin’ Abe is a gentleman with the ladies,” Jack said. “Usually. Though I do remember that time…”

“And here we are,” Abe said. “The Last Chance Bar.”

The sign, just ahead, lit up the darkness with red neon letters. An upper corner sported the outline of a tipping cocktail glass. “What do you want to bet,” Nora said, “the other side says First Chance Bar?”

As if to satisfy her curiosity, Abe drove past the sign before turning onto the gravel lot.

“It does, it does!” Nora blurted. Someone back there slapped someone’s bare skin.

The tires crunched over gravel as Abe drove along behind several parked cars. The building, a squat adobe box, had neon beer signs in both its front windows. Tyler heard muffled sounds of music from inside: Waylon Jennings singing “Luckenbach, Texas.” Abe pulled to a stop beside a pickup truck, and they climbed out.

He took Tyler’s hand. The music stopped as they entered the bar. Through the noise of voices and laughter came the jingle of a pinball machine, the clack of pool balls. The warm air was thick with swirling ribbons of smoke. As they made their way toward a table, Tyler saw a few heads turn to inspect them. One of the faces, ruddy and white-bearded, belonged to Captain Frank. He stared at her, one eye squinted almost shut. She nodded a greeting. A corner of his mouth pulled crooked, and he turned back to the bar.

“Know him?” Abe asked.

“We ran into him when we were looking for Dan.”

Abe pulled out a chair for her. She sat at the table, her back to the wall, and saw Captain Frank glance over his shoulder. Then Nora blocked her view of the man.

A barmaid came. As she cleared away a couple of beer mugs and mopped some wet rings and puddles off the table, Nora eyed her costume: cowboy boots, blue denim short-shorts; and a blouse in the pattern of a red bandanna. The blouse was knotted in front, leaving her midriff bare. “What’ll it be, folks?”

“I like your outfit,” Nora said.

“Do you? It’s my own creation. Gives the fellas something to look at.” She winked at Abe. “ ‘Course, Charlie says it’s shameless.” She laughed. “ ‘Struttin’ your wares like a floozy.’ He goes on and on, but we bought us a brand-new twenty-nine-inch Sony TV from my tips, and I don’t hear him squawk about that, do I?”

“Men are just weird,” Nora pronounced.

“Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. You folks on vacation?”

Nora nodded.

“Well, that’s real good. Hope you’re having a ball. Now, what can I fetch you?”

They discussed it for a moment, then Abe ordered two pitchers of beer.

“I’ll be right along with ‘em, and I’ll bring along a nice bowl of popcorn to keep you wanting more.”

When she was gone, Nora said, “I wonder if they’ve got any openings.”

“You just want to strut your wares,” Tyler told her.

With a prolonged stare at Nora’s cleavage, Jack said, “She’s already at it.”

“Get in there!” yelled a man at the pool table. “All right!”

From the jukebox at the far end of the room came the voice of Tom T. Hall singing “I Like Beer.”

“Reminds me of Le Du’s joint in Saigon,” Jack said, looking across at Abe.

“Does at that,” Abe said. “Le Du was a great lover of the old West,” he explained. “Found himself a pair of woolie chaps somewhere, and he wore them no matter how hot it was in that bar of his. He had a ten-gallon hat that must’ve been nine gallons bigger than his head.”

“Was he a half-pint?” Tyler asked.

Abe laughed. “That, and then some.”

“He got what he had coming,” Jack said, grinning mysteriously.

“Oh, no.” Nora wrinkled her nose. “Was he a sympathizer?”

“Yup,” Abe said. “A sympathizer with Hoppy, Gene and Roy.”

“Don’t forget Randolph Scott. That was his favorite.”

“Last we heard, Le Du’s the proprietor of the Hole in the Wall saloon in Waco, Texas.”

“Hope he’s improved his costume,” Jack added as the barmaid approached with a laden tray.

She set out the pitchers, the frosty mugs, and a bowl of popcorn. When Abe reached for his wallet, she said, “It’s already been taken care of. Compliments of Captain Frank.”

Abe looked perplexed. “Who?”

“The fella over there.” She nodded toward the bar. Captain Frank had swiveled around on his stool to face them. “Said the girls are old mateys.”

“Did he?” Nora asked. “That’s sweet. Why don’t we ask him to join us?”

Tyler felt a tightening in her stomach.

“That okay with you guys? He’s probably lonely.”

Shaking her head, the barmaid walked away.

“It’s all right with me,” Abe said.

“Long as he doesn’t try to move in on us,” Jack added. “Can’t have that.”

“I’ll go get him.” Nora stood, and made her way toward the bar.

“Who is this guy?” Abe asked.

“Captain Frank,” Tyler said. “Just an old guy who fancies himself a seaman.”

Abe frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I guess. I just find him a little…strange. You ought to see his bus.”

“If he makes you nervous…”

“Too late, now.”

Nora, holding onto the old man’s arm, was steering him toward the table. He drank from a half-empty mug as he walked. He had on the same faded Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts he’d been wearing that afternoon. His scrawny legs looked out of place beneath his massive torso. He moved with a list.

When they neared the table, Nora found an empty chair for him, and placed it next to Abe. “‘Preciate it, mate,” he told her, and sat down.

Nora made introductions.

As Abe filled the man’s mug from one of the pitchers, everyone thanked him for buying. “My pleasure,” he said in a low, thick voice. “My penance.” He raised his mug, winked and drank, and wiped his mouth with the back of a liver-spotted hand. “Sins of our fathers,” he mumbled.

“You’re a seafarer?” Abe asked.

“Fair and foul. A seafarer. Yes, indeed. That’s me, Captain Frank, old salt. Me and my father before me.” He leaned forward and stared with bleary eyes at Tyler. “God forgive him, he brought it here.”

Tyler, unsettled by his gaze, looked down at her beer.

“Brought what?” Nora asked.

“The beast.”

“The Beast House beast?” Jack asked.

“Aye, the filthy spawn of hell.”

“You’re saying that your father brought it to Malcasa Point?”

“That he did, and I’m here to tell you the curse of it’s a heavy burden to bear. Heavy indeed.” He took another drink.

Nora and Jack exchanged a glance as if they thought the man a lunatic. Abe was frowning.

“The guilt.” Captain Frank held up his thick, calloused hands. “Do you see the blood? I do. I see the blood of its victims, and God alone knows how many. They don’t tell it all on the tour. No indeed. Is my father there in wax? Is my sister Loreen, slain by the fiend seven years before I came wailing into this dreary world? No. You won’t find them on the tour. You won’t hear their names. How many others? Ten? Fifty? A hundred and fifty? Only God knows. God and the beast. People vanish. See their blood?” he asked, slowly turning his hands.

“You think it killed your father and sister?” Nora asked.

“Oh yes. Yes indeed. Little Loreen first. She was a child of three when he brought it home from some nameless forsaken island off the Australian coast. He was first mate, then, on the Mary Jane out of Sausalito. The summer of 1901, it was. They were becalmed, not a breath of wind, day after day, to fill the sails. The food went bad. The water casks emptied. They all thought surely they would die, and it’s a shame they didn’t. But on the thirteenth day of their travail, they spotted land. A volcanic island it was—all hills and jungle.

“A party went ashore. Fresh water was gathered from a spring. Fruit and berries were plentiful, but the men craved meat and found none. Now what kind of jungle is that that has no wildlife? It’s none such as I have ever seen, or any of the men from the Mary Jane. It worked on their nerves, and many were anxious to return to the ship before nightfall. Even my father, as stout-hearted a fellow as ever walked a deck, confessed he greeted the sunset, that night, with unholy dread. But he wouldn’t abandon the island, not until he was certain it bore no wildlife.”

Captain Frank swigged down some beer. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and stared into Tyler’s eyes as if she were alone with him. The noise of the bar—the talk and laughter, the clink of glasses, the clatter of pool balls, the pinging of the pinball machine, Willie Nelson’s clear voice from the jukebox—all seemed strangely distant to Tyler.

“When darkness fell,” he continued, “they surrounded the water hole. Men concealed themselves among the bushes and climbed into trees. Every last mother’s son of them was armed, ready to slay any animal that might come to drink.

“The strategy worked. Near midnight, the creatures came. Twelve or fifteen of them wandered out of the jungle and waded into the pond to drink. My father admits he thought they were humans at first—some primitive tribe—but then he saw their faces in the moonlight. Their snouts. He knew they weren’t human, but loathsome, unearthly beasts. He ordered the men to fire. Every last one of the creatures fell. Not a one of them got away. My father’s face went ghastly pale when he told me of the slaughter, and what happened afterwards—how some of the men had their way with the female carcasses…”

“Frank,” Abe said.

The old man flinched as if startled from his dark reverie.

“I don’t think we want to hear all this.”

“I do,” Nora protested. “It’s fascinating.”

“I don’t mind,” Tyler said. She was trembling. She hated the story, but she had to hear the rest of it, and even resented Abe’s interruption. She took a long drink of beer. Abe gave her a quizzical look, and refilled her glass from the pitcher.

“Go on,” Nora said.

Captain Frank looked to Abe for permission.

“Doesn’t bother me,” he said.

“Then I’ll…the slaughter…When it was done, my father found a survivor, an infant creature beneath one of the females—its mother, no doubt. Her body had shielded it from the storm of bullets. Father took this infant into his care.

“The others, the bodies, were…” He glanced uneasily at Abe. “They provided sufficient nourishment to see the crew safely to Perth.”

“They ate them?” Nora asked.

“My father claimed they tasted rather like mutton.”

“Charming.”

“He named his creature Bobo, and though he was never fond of it he considered the filthy thing a great curiosity and kept it with him in a cage on the journey home. My mother, rest her soul, thought Bobo appalling. She begged him to get rid of it, but little Loreen found the creature delightful and spent hours behind our home, talking to it through the bars of its cage as if it were a playmate. At last, Mother prevailed upon him to dispose of it. He agreed to transport it to San Francisco, where he hoped to sell it for a good price to a circus or zoo. Alas, Loreen must have overheard the talk, for she opened the cage, the very next morning, and Bobo fell upon her. My folks heard her awful screams, but she was past helping when they reached her. The beast, small as it was, had torn her asunder, and was having…” Captain Frank glanced at Abe, and shook his head.

“My father beat it senseless with a spade. He thought he’d killed it. He put the remains in the flour bag, and dragged it up into the hills behind the Thorn house. The place was under construction, then. Lilly Thorn was just having it built. He buried the creature up there.”

“But it wasn’t dead?” Nora asked.

“Not much more than a year went by, and there were three dead in the Thorn house: Lilly’s two sons and her sister. Lilly escaped, but she was never right afterward and they carted her off to a sanitarium. The blame fell on a luckless chap name of Goucher, a handyman who’d stopped by, the day before, to chop wood. But my father’d seen the bodies. He had his suspicions, and spoke up for Goucher claiming a wild animal must’ve got into the house, but he kept shut about Bobo, not wanting to bring blame on himself. Well, the crowd wouldn’t listen. They lynched poor Goucher, strung him up from a porch beam.

“I wasn’t born till six years later, that’s 1909. I ‘spect I’m what you’d call an accident, for I believe my folks were loath to have another child after what happened to Loreen. Oh, they treated me like royalty, but there was always a gloom in their eyes. The Thorn house, all the time I was growing up, stood deserted at the end of town. Nobody’d go near the place. It was said to be haunted. Every now and then, though, we’d have someone disappear. Then, in ‘31, the Kutch family moved in.