Vile Blood (7 page)

He reached out a soft pink hand and snatched the coin, wheezing out a laugh, saying, “Hey, little fellah, come get your dollar.”

Timmy crawled out from under the bench and stood in front of the man, who held up the
dollar
, the sun catching the silver and making it burn.

“Here you go,” the old man said, holding the coin out, but when Timmy reached for it he snatched it away smiling through broken teeth, and the Creepshow started and Timmy saw the man buck-naked on top of a little boy in some dark room, then outside throwing the boy in a hole.

“Timmy! Timmy!”

Daddy’s voice scared away the Creepshow and the old man too, who dropped the silver dollar and hustled to where a bus was ready to go, swallowing him as the doors sneezed closed.

That night, lying in bed, Timmy tried to make sense of what he’d seen. It weren’t no dream, ’cause he was awake. So what was it then? Was he crazy? Then the name just came to him: the Creepshow. Didn’t know from where, maybe from the scary movies Maria the babysitter liked to watch.

He’d learned to recognize when it was going to happen, and most times he could shut it down before it started. But last night, when he’d looked out his window he hadn’t been quick enough and he’d seen Skye-not-Skye.

“Timmy? Hey, Timmy!” Skye said, standing on tip-toe, smiling at him, tapping on the window of the bus which had stopped on the corner near his house.

Timmy slung his pack over one shoulder and walked to the front of the bus and down the two steps onto the sidewalk to where Skye waited.

As she took his hand the bus and the street and the houses disappeared and the Creepshow pushed some pictures into Timmy’s head.

He must’ve fled, ’cause when Skye grabbed hold of him he was halfway home, panting for breath, Skye wheezing too, saying, “Hey, Usain Bolt, what’s with you?”

And he looked into her eyes and tried to laugh, tried not to see the pictures, the sick-making, horrible pictures of bits of men lying torn and bleeding round some old car, Skye-not-Skye prowling among them.

12

Driving back toward town, the crime scene and the hotshots from the city falling away in his rearview, Gene Martindale felt as if the past was stalking him, trapping him in ever tighter circles. Every road, every tract of parched land alive with ghosts.

He should be feeling relieved, he knew, after handing over the responsibility for the carnage at the roadhouse to the state police and the DEA.

A brace of luxury SUVs had sped down from the city that morning. A helicopter, a rare enough sight in these parts to draw the curious from their houses, had clattered in and sunk its skids to the dirt, a DEA man in an expensive suit and dude cowboy boots emerging from the dust like an action hero.

Little white tents, gay as a day at the beach, had been erected around the body parts and crime scene technicians started the business of cataloging the remains.

The DEA man had questioned Gene, abrupt in his manner, offended it seemed that Sheriff Milt Lavender hadn’t risen from his deathbed to be here. He made it plain that he had seen far worse than this. Described the work of chainsaws and machetes and butcher’s blades.

When a technician in protective clothing had advanced the opinion that the savagery was the work of an animal, the DEA man had a ready reply.

“Pit bulls,” he said. “Trained fighting animals from across the border. One of them’ll tear a man limb-from-limb in a matter of seconds.”

A quiet woman with hair that remained unmoved by the
wind
took Gene aside and, standing close enough for him to feel her breath on his face, told him she was from the Governor’s office. The Governor, it seemed, was running for re-election, touting his record of lowering crime in the borderlands. He had no desire for this incident to mar his campaign.

“I think we can safely assume this business was drug related, Chief Deputy?” she said.

‘Yes, ma’am.”

“And that the victims and perpetrators are from the criminal classes?”

“I couldn’t argue with that.”

“So I can count on your co-operation then?”

“And how would I best co-operate?”

“By telling anybody who asks that comment will come from my office, and my office only.”

“That would be my pleasure,
ma’am
.”

Her face twitched with what may have been a smile and she walked back toward the tents, her black court shoes wearing a veil of brown dust. Gene was dismissed.

He stood his men down and drove back toward town, telling himself that he was fretting over nothing. The people back there wanted this contained worse than he did.

But he kept on seeing Skye in the kitchen that morning, something in the way she carried herself that was different. When Gene slowed his car at the crossroads, his gaze was drawn to the ditch where he’d first seen his sister.

One day, a few years after his father enlisted in the Marines, Gene and his mother were driving back from town after shopping, the pavement running out and the road turning to dirt. Still miles from home when the dust storm blew up.

They were in the middle of nowhere with no shelter, the old station wagon buffeted and skittish on the road, when the dust obscured everything and his mother stopped the car and sat gripping Gene’s hand as the wind rocked the car on its springs and howled around them, covering them in a yellow-brown blanket.

With a few last gusts the storm blew itself out and there was an almost eerie silence as the world seemed to get its breath back. Then the silence was broken by the high, thin cry of a baby.

When they stepped from the car Gene spotted the brown cardboard box lying in the ditch beside the road. He opened the box and jumped back when he saw the infant inside, wagging its arms and wailing. His mother scooped it out, pink and naked, hugged it to her breast and silenced its cries. She found a cloth in the back of the car, wrapped the baby and handed it to Gene who held it awkwardly in his lap while they drove home. The baby stopped crying and stared at him with eyes so blue in its dusty face that he couldn’t hold their gaze.

When they got home his mother phoned her sister’s husband, Sheriff Lavender, and in a half-hour he was there, a short balding man with a ready smile, and he inspected the infant and drank coffee as he made a few calls and then it was agreed that the baby would stay with her until more information was available. None ever was and the girlchild stayed on and Gene’s mother named her Skye after the color of her eyes.

When Gene’s father returned at the end of his tour he was even quieter than before. Only now there seemed to be a corked violence in his spare frame. He looked at the child and shook his head and ignored it. Never acknowledged the toddler’s first stumbling steps or its first words either, Skye staring up at him while he drank bourbon—which he was doing in ever greater quantity—and saying “dada.”

Gene’s mother was delighted. “Did you hear that? Did you hear what she called you?”

Gene’s father stood and pushed past them, Skye wobbling and
falling
on her diaper-wrapped butt.

He’d said, “I ain’t no pa to that thing,” and went and got himself another bottle.

The warble of Gene’s phone brought him back to the now, and as he accelerated away from the crossroads he took the call.

 “Martindale.”

“Deputy, this here is Sheriff Drum.”

“Yes, Sheriff?”

“Would you do me the courtesy of meeting me at Earl’s in, say, fifteen minutes?”

“What’s on your mind, Sheriff?”

“It concerns the mess at the roadhouse.”

“Take it up with the state police.”

“Deputy, believe me, you won’t want me breathing a word of this to no state police.”

“Then come to my office.”

“Nossir, my preference is the diner. Fifteen minutes.”

Gene was left holding a dead phone. He cursed the giant, a man
marinated
in corruption. But he
drove to
the diner, and when he arrived the sun was
low
, the far hills
across the border
black against the gaudy oranges and purples.

Drum’s Ford Expedition was parked outside Earl’s, and when Gene shoved open the  door, hearing the jangle of the chimes, he saw the sheriff was the only customer, his bulk squeezed into a booth. He was reading a newspaper, a Coca-Cola on ice in a sundae glass on the table before him.

Skye stood near the serving hatch, her fingers nervous on the ballpoint clipped to her apron. Gene nodded at his sister and sat down opposite the sheriff.

 Drum lowered the newspaper and smiled, a gold tooth winking at Gene. “Thanks for coming by, Deputy.”

“I’m expected at my office, Sheriff. Can we keep this brief?”

“Oh, that we can, son. That we can.”

The newspaper rustled as Drum took one of the pages between thumb and forefinger and lifted it from the tabletop, coy as a chorus girl. Gene saw a ziplock bag beneath. Saw a pair of broken, blood stained eyeglasses in the bag. Looked up as Skye walked toward him, her pen poised above her order book, her face empty of spectacles.

He waved her away, then his attention was on Drum, who let the newspaper settle back onto the tabletop.

“Tell me what you want,” Gene said.

13

Skye saw her brother’s expression shift from loathing, to shock, to naked fear. By the time he looked up and waved her away, he had composed himself, rearranged his features into their familiar blank, unsmiling lines. But as she walked off and stood by the window, staring out through the dusty glass at the coming night, she could feel his terror. This wasn’t some flash of intuition, it was as if she was jacked into him, her nervous system coupled to his, and the heat of his fear flowed into her.

On the tail of the fear came a lurching sensation low in her belly, like she’d experienced once in a skyscraper up in the big city where she was taken for a psychological assessment, when an elevator had plummeted in free fall from the highest floor, before suddenly braking at ground level. The other passengers were unmoved but Skye was left shaken and disoriented, stumbling out into the sunblasted lobby.

Skye consciously broke the connection to her brother, felt an actual physical uncoupling and pushed through the doors out into the hot, gasoline-scented air. She was dizzy, walked a few steps and leaned a hand on the hood of Gene’s cruiser, the metal still hot to the touch.

She looked up and saw Richie, made green by the fluorescents of the filling station, watching her as he took a rag to the windshield of a dusty Japanese car. He looked away, checking the spinning numbers on the pump, tucked the rag into the pocket of his jumpsuit, drew the nozzle of the hose from the side of the car and clicked it into its housing. The car bumped across the apron toward the road and Richie looked at Skye again, then he turned and disappeared into his hutch.

She’d hurt his feelings earlier and part of her wanted to go across and apologize. But she held back.

On the ride over Richie had spoken more than usual. “Hear about the business by the roadhouse?”

“Yes,” she’d said.

“Them guys in the Dodge that come by the diner got themselves dead.”

“Yes.”

“People sayin’ it’s them cartels.”

“Makes sense.”

He was quiet for a few seconds. “Hear the wounds were something terrible.” She said nothing. “Spoke to some
folk
, today, down by the border post.”

He stopped talking, waiting for her to prompt him. “About what, Richie?”

“They sayin’ it weren’t no cartels. They sayin’ it were the work of a demon.”

“Aw, c’mon Richie, there’s no such thing. That’s old school superstition talking. You’re not silly enough to believe that, are you?”

Her scorn had shamed him into silence.

Skye turned
back toward the diner, seeing her distorted reflection in the window glass, and the questions came again: What am I? What is this thing inside me?

She had always laughed off
the woo-woo chatter of the babysitter Maria, who rolled her eyes and crossed herself as she told breathless tales of Satan’s spawn—shapeshifters and demons and half-men—running amok in the foothills across the border. But now these lurid tales seemed pretty good descriptions of the dark thing inside her.

She submerged these thoughts, her focus shifting to her brother and the giant still seated in the booth. Gene sat upright, his hands on the edge of the table as if he was about to push himself to standing. The huge s
heriff was relaxed, arms resting on the back of his seat. Skye wondered why her brother was here with Drum. She’d overheard enough conversations between Gene and her uncle over the years to understand that Drum was offensive to all they stood for.

“Dellbert Drum makes me ashamed of this uniform,” she’d once heard Lavender say, hunched with Gene at the table in the kitchen of the house she’d been brought up in, the two men drinking coffee, discussing ways to unseat the corrupt lawman who ruled the neighboring county like a feudal lord, the cancer of his corruption eating its way across the county line.

Whatever business he had with Drum was over and Gene stood and took his hat and exited the diner. He stopped and stared at Skye, his face hollowed out.

“What’s wrong, Gene?”

Her brother shook his head. “I’ll talk to you at home.” He got into the patrol car and drove away.

Skye went into the diner as the massive lawmen levered himself upright, set his hat on his head, gave her a wink and strode to the door. There was no mention of payment for his drink.

As Skye cleared the table Minty came in, hurrying toward the locker room, her heels beating a little staccato tune.

“You done something to your hair?” she asked, as she passed in a cloud of scent.

“No,” Skye said, putting the dirty glass on the serving hatch, in time to catch Earl mooning over Minty’s retreating ass.

The night dragged. Earl stayed in the kitchen, nursing his lust and a bottle of whiskey, keeping a maudlin flow of old Willie Nelson ballads piping through the tinny speakers. Minty sat at a table reading a gossip magazine. Every few minutes she’d snap open the compact mirror she kept in her pocket and touch up her lipstick, looking hopefully toward the door. Skye hovered behind the counter, wiping at blemish-free glassware, restless and anxious, dreading the conversation awaiting her at home.