Thirty Miles South Of Dry County (8 page)

“Glad you could make it,” Iris said, and she looked tired. There were great big circles under her eyes and her skin seemed to sag. She were wearin’ a shapeless green dress with holes in it, and her hair looked lank and dead.

“I don’t reckon I had much of a choice,” I told her.

“Nobody does,” she said, with a sad smile. “Not really.”

I wanted to ask if she meant here or anywhere, but I guess it didn’t matter much anyway. A moment later, I heard hurried footsteps and looked from Iris to Kirkland, who were walkin’ unsteadily toward the fountain from the far side.

“He looks like he’s been drinkin’,” I said.

Iris nodded. “You would too if you were him.”

Kirkland were wearing the same sky blue suit he’d been wearin’ the day before, only now it had dark stains all over it. When he reached the fountain and bent over to retch into the murky water, I figured I knew what those stains were. Man looked like he’d been tryin’ to kill himself with liquor. Nobody but me and Iris paid him much mind though.

“What is it that’s supposed to happen here?” I asked her. “Why are we here?”

She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “You already know the answer to that. Me tellin’ you won’t make it seem any less surreal. Nor will seein’ it for yourself. But every universe has an engine. It’s the anniversary, and you’re here to see ours.”

Kirkland settled himself on the same side of the fountain as Cadaver, but didn’t acknowledge him. Didn’t look my way either. It were as if someone had dropped a bunch of strangers into the middle of a ghost town as a lark, or an experiment.

We waited for what felt like hours, no one sayin’ a word.

Then, there came the sound of an old fashioned bicycle bell. It were faint at first and I might have thought I’d imagined it if everyone there hadn’t jolted as if struck. Tired eyes became wide with fear, spines snapped straight, and folks began to look off in the distance behind them, where there weren’t nothin’ to see but apparently there were plenty to be nervous about. They were watchin’ the north end of the square, farthest away from us, where there stood an abandoned store. The sign were so faded it couldn’t be read, and the window were clouded up with dust. I strained to try to make out what it were I were supposed to be seein’, cursin’ my poor vision.

And then he were there.

I think I staggered back a step out of fright. Whatever I did, suddenly Iris, without lookin’ away from the man outside the store, grabbed my elbow, steadying me. I did not thank her, not then. Couldn’t. I just let loose a breath and stared at the spot on the street outside the store where a moment before there had been nothin’ to see.

There was somethin’ to see now.

It were the man from my dreams. The Bicycle Man. A myth we’d heard once or twice over the years and never believed because it made no sense. Of course that day I knew sense weren’t somethin’ that could be measured in places like Milestone, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a man step, or rather, ride out of thin air into the square. But I were. When I’d dreamed him, I’d woke up screamin’. Seein’ him in the flesh made me feel no better.

With a
tring!
of his little bell, he rode just as slow as you please across the square toward us.

He were riding one of those old-fashioned bikes, the kind you used to see on circus posters. A black thing with a small back wheel and a front wheel taller than a man. A penny something-or-other I think you call them. He rode it with the ease of someone who can’t imagine any other way to get around. And he were smilin’ as if he found no greater pleasure in life. He were wearing a top hat and tails and a black and white striped pair of pants that ended in thick black clogs with enormous heels, though they didn’t seem to interfere with his pedalin’. His hair were long and black as crow’s feathers, and he had no eyes. It weren’t like he’d lost them somehow. There just weren’t any, as if he’d been born without them. Though the kind of woman who might have shoved a thing like this into the world didn’t bear thinkin’ about neither. His waxy, chalk-white face were perfectly smooth on both sides of his nose.

This, I realized, were what I had almost expected Kirkland to be, though I’d never have been able to imagine somethin’ this bad.

This were the engine of the Milestone universe. And trottin’ right behind him were Moses the stray, lookin’ like he belonged nowhere else. His tongue lolled as he kept pace with what I knew from the dream to be his master, the only one that mattered now. June Wheeler would get to keep her hundred bucks.

I risked a look at Kirkland and saw that he were standin’, and sobbing, weavin’ on his feet like a man tryin’ to anticipate from which direction a blow is comin’.

Cadaver, though he were watchin’ with the rest of us, were still sittin’. I had to admire that. If a sight like The Bicycle Man don’t fill you full of terror, I reckon nothin’ will.

The small crowd parted and The Bicycle Man rode into the heart of it, where he stopped.

It seemed that even the slight breeze that had been blowin’ stopped. There weren’t a sound until The Bicycle Man hit his bell one more time—
tring!
—and stepped down off the bike. He looked around at each of us, his lips spread in a grin full of curved yellow teeth so sharp I were put in mind of a shark. And when his gaze found me I almost fell. For a moment, just a moment, it were like I were awake on an operatin’ table with cold hands rootin’ around in my insides and in my brain. I swear I felt fingers touchin’, feelin’ around, knowin’ me in ways people are only supposed to know themselves. I guess if you want to know the truth it were almost like bein’ raped. And when it were over, I felt sick, and diseased, and…invaded. It knocked the wind right out of me, and this time, I grabbed Iris for support, though now she looked as if she’d been invaded too. Her mouth was turned down in a look of pain, her eyes squeezed shut. I imagined, considerin’ what she did for a livin’, she’d felt that way before, but never like this. This was somethin’ different, somethin’ cruel, and when it were over, I could see on all the stricken faces gathered there, that there weren’t a one of us who hadn’t felt the same. And in my brain there was two single words, spoken in a voice like a gust of wind through the eaves of an old stone house:
It’s you
.

Apparently satisfied, The Bicycle Man took a step back, and, still wearin’ that ugly grin, pulled from one of his pockets a small wooden box, kind of like the ones a woman might use to store her jewelry. The wood were pale and yellowish, like lacquered pine, with gold symbols all over it. With another glance, as if to be sure we was watchin’, The Bicycle Man waved a hand over the box like a magician and set it down on the ground at his feet. Then he straightened.

The lid of the box popped open, and I saw what appeared to be a small porcelain ballerina. It were a music box, and with a wink, The Bicycle Man waved his hand again and the girl began to turn.

The song that played weren’t anythin’ I’d ever heard before, but it tugged at my guts in the same way as The Bicycle Man’s gaze had. I cradled my arms around my stomach, sure I were goin’ to be sick, and then I heard someone else do that very thing. A pained sidelong glance showed me that Kirkland were bent over the fountain again, and vomitin’ like it were a competition. We all watched him, each one of us feelin’ that song as sure as if it were a thousand rusty needles bein’ slowly pushed into our bodies.

Then, thank God in Heaven, it stopped, and The Bicycle Man, with another flourish, reached down, picked the box up and snapped it shut. Then he slid it back inside his pocket. After a moment, he swiveled on a heel to face the fountain.

More words came into mind from a voice not my own:
Council adjourned. So it shall be.

This is where it got worse. Like his blind look, like the terrible music, we could feel somethin’ rotten in the air, somethin’ poisonous and deadly, somethin’ that were buildin’ up with each second that ticked by. The sun seemed to grow dimmer, though since The Bicycle Man had touched me, I couldn’t trust my vision anymore.

He looked at Kirkland.

Kirkland straightened and turned to look at The Bicycle Man. Face wet with the sweat of fear, vomit dribblin’ from his moustache and chin, he tried to square his shoulders, to look as if he were prepared for what were comin’. But he weren’t. We all knew it.

“No,” I murmured, or maybe only thought I did, even though I didn’t even know what I were protestin’, only that it were bad.

The Bicycle Man nodded like a conductor will before a performance. Just one time. But apparently that were all that were necessary, because Kirkland, weepin’ openly now, eyes red and swollen, unbuttoned his coat and from the waistband of his trousers, plucked the gun he’d had tucked there. The silver weapon hardly gleamed in the sick light.

“Oh Jesus,” I whispered and felt Iris squeeze my hand. It was a warning:
Quiet
.
We have no power here
.

Kirkland hefted the gun and looked from The Bicycle Man to the crowd.

His desperate, sorrowful eyes finally settled on me. “This,” he sobbed. “This is your future if it decides it’s done with you. You’d better be ready.”

I wanted to ask what he meant but I were afraid to say anythin’ more, and then his eyes moved away from me back to the monster at the center of this horrible scene.

“I gave it everything,” Kirkland told him. “For nothing. Eventually someone will kill this place if it doesn’t kill itself first.”

Then he brought the gun up under his chin, whispered a prayer and drew back the hammer.

There was a long ungodly silence.

The Bicycle Man mounted his bike, and, with that shark-like grin, tinged his bell one last time. Over its faint, terrible echo, I heard the vines creak and sigh.

Kirkland pulled the trigger.

* * *

By the time we got over the horror and shock of what had happened, The Bicycle Man and Moses was gone. Nobody had seen them go, but the memory of the music still hung in the air like the threat of a storm. Weak-kneed, I knew I would never make it home, though that were a foolish thought because I knew I would never see my home again. Iris walked me to Kirkland’s house, a relatively sturdy two-story buildin’ atop a hill with a boulder outside that reminded me of the one at the town’s entrance. This one were engraved with the names of all the priests who had worked the parish and called the house their home. And accordin’ to Iris, each one of them were dead, either by their own hand or someone else’s.

“This is yours now,” she explained. “This is where you’ll stay.” And, as if she’d read my mind, she added, “This is your home.”

Some part of me wanted to object as she led me up that long flight of steps, maybe the last little piece of me that still wanted all of this to be a dream. But I knew it weren’t. Whatever The Bicycle Man had done to me with his look and the music, it had made me a believer in a brand new destiny.

My friends was dead. They had been for a year. I’d been lost, lookin’ for a place that would have me, that would save me, a place an old addled man could bring his grief and secrets and ghosts and find a use for them instead of tryin’ to escape them. And I’d found it.

In Milestone. And me the mayor. A town I had feared were now the town I would run.

A blank canvas for my pain.

The appointment had been made on the anniversary of the town, not by me and not by any of its people, but by a myth that were all too real—a thing legend had said came up out of a mine when the workers had tapped a vein and a wall had come down. The engine of this place.

There was questions of course, but Iris would see to them in time if I didn’t learn them by myself, and Milestone would see to the rest. I were too tired to ask them then, and I had nothing but time.

But first, I had to sleep. And when I did, there were no dreams, only a peace of the kind I hadn’t had in years.

* * *

There’s that look again, the one that tells me you think I’m three shades of crazy. And again I don’t blame you at all. It’s a crazy story. If it was you tellin’ it, I’d laugh right in your face. But like I said, I read people real well, and that’s why we’re here. You see, while you’re busy thinkin’ I’m nothin’ but an old fool, I’ve been readin’ you like you was the daily newspaper. And I know what you’ve done. I know too what you’re plannin’ to do to any woman you might meet in Milestone. I know Iris sounds real fine to you and maybe she’ll even scream the way you like them to when you cut her with that huntin’ knife you got tucked into your jacket.

That ain’t gonna happen, son, for any number of reasons.

What are you thinkin’ now?

Are you spooked that I know what you got in mind? Are you plannin’ on takin’ out that big ol’ knife and carvin’ me up? Well go right ahead. You won’t get very far.

Or maybe you can read people too and you know somewhere deep down that I weren’t lyin’ about any of it. Maybe you’ve been listenin’ to those vines whisperin’ and creepin’ their way out of this here liquor store, and thinkin’ you should just cut and run and head back the way you come. Maybe you’re gonna take my advice and just stay well clear of Milestone so it don’t find a use for you.

Well son, I got some bad news about that too.