The Devil Next Door

30

When they got outside, Macy said, “Well, Mrs. Brackenbury said she hasn’t seen mom. It was worth a shot, I guess.”

“Did she say anything odd to you?”

Macy shook her head. “No… well, I mean, she’s always a little flaky, isn’t she? Her and those cats? I told her to be careful, to lock her door, but she wouldn’t listen. I don’t even think she knew what I was talking about. She’s in her own little world or something.”

Louis had to smile. “Well, she’s getting on in years, you know,” he said, trying to be diplomatic.

“Tell me about it. She calls me ‘Nancy’ half the time.”

Louis suppressed a giggle and led Macy over to his Dodge. There was still a smear of blood on the handle from when he’d jumped in there after his encounter with those wigged-out cops. But the driver’s side rear door was open. He hadn’t left it open. He was sure of it. Without alerting Macy to his concern, he casually closed it, but not before noticing that his bag with the steaks in it was gone. Just… gone. Somebody came and stole raw steaks, Louis. What do you think about that? He was not very surprised. He looked down the street. Nobody was around. Not a soul. Was that good or bad? The smell of smoke was heavier in the air now and he wondered what was burning out there. A house or was it maybe a block of them?

“Hey, Louis!” a voice called.

He paused at the car, craned his head back, wondering what it could be now. It was just Earl Gould from next door. Earl was okay. A retired anthropology professor from Indiana U with far too much time on his hands these days, he just liked to talk. Sometimes Louis could barely get out of the yard without a lengthy chat over Earl’s meticulously trimmed hedges.

“I better talk to him,” Louis said. He checked his pockets. “Do me a favor, Macy, will you? Run inside and grab my wallet. It’s up in my room on the dresser. I won’t be a minute.”

Macy strolled away and Louis went over to the hedges. Earl was there with a pair of trimmers and Louis approached him very cautiously. It didn’t look like he was crazy, but then it hadn’t looked like the mailman was either… not at first. Louis wasn’t really too concerned about driving without his wallet, but he thought it might be a good idea to get Macy out of there in case Earl snapped.

“How’s things?” Earl said.

Louis shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest. Pretty weird things going on today.”

Earl nodded, peering up at Louis over the rims of his glasses. “That’s what I’m hearing. Goddamn country is flipping its wig.”

“Whole world, Earl.”

“You know what I say, Louis? Screw the world. Let’s worry about this place.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Small towns can be very funny places, Louis. On the surface they’re boring and ordinary and even serene, but deep down you can never truly say what might be boiling, you know?”

“Sure.”

“Just one day, things happen. Not just one thing, but many. A chain of circumstances that seem to have no common root. At least, not one that you can see. Take Greenlawn for example. No, just humor me. From what I’ve been hearing we suddenly find ourselves faced with what seems to be a wave of random violence. It’s disturbing, isn’t it? Certainly, but it’ll play itself out given time… won’t it?”

“I hope so, Earl.”

“Violence. It’s the core of the human beast. It’s what we are and where we came from and what we descend into with the slightest provocation. It’s true, Louis. We carry within us the animal aggression of our simian and proto-human ancestors. Every beating, every rape, every witch hunt and mass murder is evidence of that. Even a child threatening another with a stick or a gangbanger with a switchblade in an alley is an expression of animal legacy in its purest form. The armed predator. Everything we do—from our urge to find and maintain territory, or real estate, to pecking orders and hostility to those outside our social grouping, the competition for females or males, race hatred and fear of strangers—all of it based on ancient animal patterns, like it or not.”

Louis licked his lips. They were very dry. “But it’ll stop. It has to.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Louis absently looked at his watch. “I don’t know.”

“This town is a perfect microcosm for the world. People don’t see it as such, of course. Because they’re too close, too involved, that’s why.” Earl worked his clippers, taking out a stray twig. “You need a bird’s eye view of this town to understand what ails it. The people who live here can no more examine their lives objectively than you or I can study the tops of our heads.”

Louis just stood there, not in the mood for it.

Earl Gould was a nice old guy and he was very smart, but he had the sometimes annoying tendency to over-analyze and over-intellectualize things. Louis figured it was the fact that he no longer had a classroom to occupy or students to lecture. So he grabbed anybody that happened by—a neighbor, the meter-reader, the guy from the gas company—and discoursed at length on anything from politics to world economy to small town culture to that patch of weeds growing under the elm in the front yard. Louis would have liked to tell him what he’d seen and experienced, but that would mean sacrificing another hour or two that he just did not have. Because Earl would have to minutely examine each shred of evidence and then play devil’s advocate for a time before finally rendering his hypothesis.

He was a smart guy, sure, but now was not the time for such things.

“Look at it this way, Louis. There is reason and cause if we can only open our minds to see them. And the people of Greenlawn cannot see beyond the ends of their noses, God bless ‘em, each and every one.” Earl leaned closer over the hedges. “I think, though, if they were able to what they would find would scare them. Because small communities like this are often quite scary to an outsider, eh? Isolated, inbred, insular, paranoid even. Tribal. Oh yes, very tribal. Places like this always have one or two episodes of explosive violence in their pasts. Mostly you don’t hear about them because small towns know how to keep their secrets and to lock their closets most securely so that the skeletons do not get out where they can be seen by shocked eyes.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right, Earl.”

“Oh, I am. You can bank on that. I’m not a native. We only retired here because my wife spent her childhood in this very town. But that gives me an advantage, doesn’t it? No rose-colored glasses or troublesome blinders on this old man’s eyes, eh? I can see the mechanics of this town, where decay has set in and where new growth may yet bloom. The very anatomy of Greenlawn is mine to view.” He chuckled at the idea, but there was a sharpness to his laughter, a darkness welling just behind his eyes. “I think, deep down, Louis, that the good citizens of our fair city of Greenlawn are not surprised at any of this. I think they’ve been expecting it. In the primal blackness of their souls, I think they’ve been waiting for something like this, something terrible to happen for a long time. And now the cork has been popped from the bottle and all that fermented juice is leaking out, spoiling everything and everyone it touches. I think, Louis, some will welcome this, what today has brought and tonight might still bring. They’ll see it as an inevitability, won’t they? All those tensions and frustrations building all these years, needing to vent themselves. Oh yes, Louis, they’ve been running hot and rancid like bad blood for too long now. Something that’s needed purging, a sore that’s needed lancing. Yes, my friend, things have been approaching critical mass for some time and I’ve been watching it happen. Critical mass has been reached and now comes savage fruition. All it took was a catalyst and do you know what that catalyst was?”

“It isn’t just this town, Earl. It’s the whole damn world.”

Earl smiled at that as if he was amused by it. “Of course it is, Louis. The whole world. One race trapped in this disquieting moment in time when the shadows of antiquity are crowding in upon them.” Earl nodded. “Do want to know why this is happening, son? Why the human race is descending into savagery? Why our psychological evolution is being thrown clear back to the Paleolithic? Well, I tell you, I’ll tell you. But first ask yourself this: Why do locusts swarm? Why do lemmings purge themselves? Why, indeed? When their populations reach critical mass, some biological imperative is activated in order to cull said populations. Hence, locusts swarm, lemmings purge. Locusts take to the skies in a swarm, descending on fields and stripping them, going into an eating frenzy. And they do this to cull their populations, for inevitably only a fraction of the population will survive the swarming. And lemmings? They do not consciously purge themselves as some think. They overpopulate, that unknown imperative switches on, and they migrate en masse. Again, only a fraction survive the migration. Most starve. Again, population culled.”

Louis just stared at him, pretty certain now that Earl was mad, too. They had all gone mad, each in their own way. And this was certainly Earl’s way. “That’s very interesting, Earl.”

“Isn’t it?” Earl stabbed a finger at him. “But what does this have to do with human populations? I think you’ve already made the connection. Our population has reached dangerous, critical proportions. We are destroying the environment to accommodate this massive population explosion. Nature has thrown every conceivable stumbling block at us to slow it down… disease, famine, natural disaster. But we’ve beaten them off one by one. And now? Yes, the ace in the hole. That same biological imperative that exists in locusts, lemmings, even rats. We are, essentially, swarming. We are purging ourselves. We are cleansing the stock, so to speak. There was a very intelligent man name of Hutson. Roger Hutson. Hutson was an ethnologist from Oxford, over in jolly old England. He wrote a marvelous book called Swarm Mechanics many years ago where he warned of just such a species-threatening event. He claimed that in each of us, as in the aforementioned animals, there was a rogue recessive gene that would become activated if our population reached hazardous levels. That it would bring about unprecedented savagery, that we would literally exterminate ourselves until our population stabilized. And it has come to pass, has it not? This gene is activated, Louis. God help us, but it is. All of them out there… animals, they are regressing to animals, throwing off the yoke of intelligence and civilization, returning to the jungle and survival of the fittest…”

Earl went on and on, unable to stop himself. He cited studies with rats. How when they were overcrowded as humans were now in their towns and cities they began participating in degenerate, self-destructive behavior just like people. Murder, incest, homosexuality, cannibalism. Anything to weaken the overburdened population, to burn it out at its roots. To poison it out, cull the weak, preserve the identity and genetic purity of the breeding pool.

“The human garden will now be weeded,” he said.

“But, Earl—”

“Oh, how arrogant we were!” Earl raged. “To think we were the masters of this planet! To think we could rape the environment and subvert natural law! And all the time, it was not nuclear war or some deadly pathogen waiting to undo us, but ourselves! We are the instruments of our own destruction! Inside each and every one of us there is a loaded gun and radical population explosion has pulled the trigger! God help us, Louis, but we will exterminate ourselves! Beasts of the jungle! Killing, slaughtering, raping, pillaging! An unconscious genetic urge will unmake all we have made, gut civilization, and harvest the race like cattle as we are overwhelmed by primitive urges and race memory run wild!”

“Listen, Earl,” Louis said. “I need to get going, I have to”

“WHO’RE YOU TALKING TO OUT THERE, EARL?”

It was Maureen, Earl’s wife. She was hard of hearing and shouted everything. Even if you were in the same room with her. But Louis was glad for the intrusion.

Earl shook his head. “I’m talking to Louis! Louis Shears from next door!”

“WHO?” Maureen shouted through the kitchen window.

“Louis! Louis from next door!”

“LOUIS? IS MICHELLE OUT THERE?” she cried. “I SAID, IS MICHELLE OUT THERE?”

“No, she’s not!” Earl looked apologetically at Louis and shrugged his shoulders.

“WHAT?”

“I said she’s not out here!”

“WELL, WHAT ARE THE TWO OF YOU DOING?”

“We’re not doing anything! We’re just talking!”

“WELL, IF YOU WON’T ANSWER, I BETTER COME AND SEE MYSELF!”

Earl sighed. “Christ, but she’s getting bad, Louis. Real bad. All day long she asks me what I’m doing. I’m taking out the trash and she wants to know what I’m doing. I’m cutting the grass and she wants to know what I’m doing. What the hell does she think I’m doing? You take out the trash because it’s full and you cut the grass because it’s getting long just like you take down the Christmas tree or throw the Halloween pumpkins in the can, because it’s time! Because it’s time!”

The screen door creaked open and out came Maureen with her cane, looking suspicious as she always did that something was going on and she had not been informed about it.

Louis looked over his shoulder, wondering what was taking Macy so damn long.

“WHAT IS GOING ON OUT HERE? THAT’S WHAT I’D LIKE TO KNOW!”

“See?” Earl said. “It’s like this all day. How would you like to deal with what I deal with?”

Louis sighed. They were a nice old couple, but now was not the time for this shit. But he knew he wasn’t leaving. Not yet. Not until Maureen came over and got her two cents in. She always had to know what was going on even when nothing was.

“LOUIS! DID YOU HEAR ALL THEM DAMN SIRENS?” Maureen shouted. She was a little woman with a bent back, bad knees, and glasses that made her eyes look about the size of golf balls. She looked frail and she probably was, but her lungs were working fine, despite the two packs she smoked every day. “I SAID… DID YOU HEAR THOSE DAMN SIRENS?”

Louis felt a headache building at his temples. “Yeah, I heard ‘em.”

“WHAT?”

“He said he heard ‘em for chrissake!” Earl interpreted.

Maureen nodded and pulled a Benson & Hedges 120 from her pack and lit it. But her eyes were bad and it took some doing. She held the lighter with both hands and as she brought the flame to it, she kept backing away from it as if she was afraid she was going to light her nose on fire. It took some doing, but soon the old chimney was stoked and clouds of smoke were blowing from it.

“WHOLE TOWN’S GOING TO HELL, LOUIS! FROM ROOT TO ROSEBUD, JUST A MADHOUSE! A MADHOUSE, I SAID!”

“She said it’s a madhouse, Louis.”

But Louis had heard just fine and wondered as always why Earl felt the need to repeat a woman who was on the same decibel level as a Metallica concert. Already his ears were ringing.

“WHERE’S MICHELLE?” Maureen wanted to know.

Louis swallowed, wondering the same thing. “She’s at work,” he said, refusing to shout. He just wasn’t up to it. “I have to go pick her up.”

“WHAT?”

Earl tossed his hedge clippers aside. “He said she’s at work! He has to go pick her up!”

“WHY IN THE HELL ARE YOU WHISPERING, EARL?” she wanted to know. “WHEN I ASK A QUESTION HAVE THE DECENCY TO ANSWER IT!”

“I did answer it!”

“NOT THAT I COULD HEAR!”

“Well you can’t hear a damn thing anyway!”

Louis stepped back from the hedges, trying to get a look at his house. Macy had been gone too long. He was starting to get a funny feeling about that. What if she’d decided to dart over to her house to write Jillian a letter… and then gone downstairs?

“WHERE DID LOUIS GO?” Maureen asked.

“He’s right here!”

“HE DIDN’T EVEN SAY GOODBYE! HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?” Maureen just shook her head, staring right at Louis but not seeing him. A few feet out of the direct line of sight and she lost you. She pulled off her cigarette. “WELL, IT’S A WONDER MICHELLE PUTS UP WITH HIM! HOW LONG HAVE THEY BEEN MARRIED AND STILL NO CHILDREN! DON’T TELL ME THERE’S NOT SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT THAT, EARL!”

Louis reddened, but was not surprised. You could pretty much hear Maureen up and down the block when the windows were open in the summer and she routinely gossiped about the neighbors.

“Jesus Christ!” Earl said to her. “Louis is right here! Are you blind?”

“WHAT?”

“I said, Louis is right here!”

Maureen pulled off her cigarette and squinted. “OH! WELL HE CAN’T HEAR ME WAY OVER THERE!”

“I need to get going, Earl. I have some things to take care of.”

“Okay, Louis. Sorry about Maureen.” He tapped a finger to his head. “She means well, but her eyes are shot, her hearing’s no good, and she’s getting soft upstairs.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Louis told him.

“Think about what I said, Louis.”

“IS LOUIS LEAVING?”

“Yes!”

“WHERE’S HE GOING?”

“He’s got errands to run, goddammit!”

“EARL GOULD, YOU QUIT THAT DAMN WHISPERING AND SPEAK UP LIKE A MAN! YOU KNOW I CAN’T HEAR SO GOOD!”

“Shut up!”

“WHAT?”

Louis saw it coming just as he’d seen it coming when Earl started talking about the inevitability of the town going insane, of rogue gene expression sacking civilization as we knew it. The darkness was there. Hiding in the cracks and crevices of his mind and now it was bleeding out like shadows when the sun went down.

He turned to his wife. “I told you to shut the fuck up!”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY? QUIT WHISPERING LIKE A LITTLE GIRL FOR GODSAKE!”

And that was it.

Earl was talking about critical mass and catalysts and all the rest, well here it was for him. Critical mass had been reached and things were about to explode out of control. Race memory descended. He was a fine, gentle old man, but that all changed in an instant. He took two steps right over to Maureen and hit her in the face with everything he had. She went right down, blood splashing from her mouth right up to the bridge of her nose. Her dentures were hanging out like a set of wind-up chattery teeth.

It happened that quick.

Louis actually looked across the street toward the Maub’s house, the Soderbergs, to see if anyone had seen what he’d just seen.

But there was no one around.

“Earl!” he said. “Jesus Christ, what do you think you’re doing?”

But Earl did not hear him or care what he said.

He walked right over to his wife and gave her a good kick in the side and she howled with pain, gagging and gasping and spitting drool and blood into the grass.

Louis was about to intervene, but he heard Macy calling out to him. “Louis! Louis! Mr. Shears!”

Louis suddenly forgot about what he had just witnessed. He turned on his heel and ran to the house. He could hear Macy crying out and whatever was going on, it was bad. Real bad. He jogged up the steps and went right through the front door and it wasn’t hard to follow her voice.

She was in the kitchen, but she wasn’t alone.

She was behind the kitchen table and facing her was Dick Starling from across the street. But not the Dick Louis knew. Not the same Dick that had taken a picture of him with Jillian Merchant over his shoulder, that same funny and wisecracking man that had helped Louis lay the slab for his garage out back or threw Sunday afternoon backyard barbecues during football season.

No, this was not that Dick Starling.

This Dick Starling was covered in mud and dirt, hair wild and matted, completely naked, his penis standing erect. And his eyes… God, cold and dark like undersea caves. A rank stench of blood, death, and moist black earth blew off him. And he had a bloody axe in his hands.

“Hey, Louis,” he said in a clotted, dirty voice. “I’m gonna get me that little cunt and when I’m done, you can have what’s left. It’s only fair that I have some, don’t you think?”

Dick Starling was a monster…