The Stake

Seven

“Happy trails to you,” Dad said, and swatted her butt as she stepped out the door.

She smirked back at him.

“Say hi to Roy and Dale,” he added.

“You should look so good,” Lane said, then turned away and hurried toward the car. The red Mustang gleamed in the early morning sunlight. She stepped around to the driver’s side, feeling fresh and eager in her new clothes: the mottled pink and blue T-shirt; the tie-dyed blue denim jumper with its white lace trim and pink flowerbud decorations on the bib, straps, and hem; and the white, fringed boots.

Dad was always poking fun at her clothes. She supposed this outfit didmake her look like a cowgirl.

One hot, radical cowgirl, she thought, and grinned as she climbed into the car.

At least he hadn’t made any remarks about the length of the skirt. Sitting down, she could feel the seat upholstery high on the backs of her legs. As she waited for the engine to warm up, she leaned close to the steering wheel and looked down. The skirt was short, all right. Any shorter might be embarrassing.

This was just right.

Sexy, but not outrageous.

She especially liked the lace around the hem of the skirt, the way its long points lay like frilly spearheads against her thighs.

I’m going to drive Jim nuts when he sees me in this.

As if he needs any help along those lines.

Laughing softly, trembling just a little with the anticipation of being at school on such a fine day in such a grand outfit, Lane backed out of the driveway. She turned the car radio to “86.2 A.M., all the best in Country twenty-four hours a day!” Randy Travis was on. She turned the volume high and poked her elbow into the warm stream of air rushing past her window.

God, she felt great.

Seemed almost criminal to feel this great.

She leaned her shoulder against the door, tipped her head and felt the wind caress her face, tug at her hair.

To think that she’d put up such a fuss about leaving Los Angeles. She must’ve been crazy, wanting to stay in that lousy apartment in a city full of filthy air and creeps. But she’d grown up there. She was used to it. She’d known she would miss her friends and the beaches and Disneyland. This was so much better, though. She’d made new friends, she loved the river, and the clean, open spaces gave her a constant sense of freedom that made each day seem rich with promise.

Best of all, she supposed, was the release from fear. In L.A. you had to be so careful. The place was crawling with rapists and killers. Not a day went by when the TV news didn’t broadcast stories of such horror and brutality that you dreaded stepping outside. Kids missing. Their bodies usually found days later, nude and mutilated and sexually abused. Not only kids, either. The same thing happened to teenagers, and even adults. If you weren’t kidnapped and tortured, you might be gunned down at a restaurant or movie theater or shopping mall. And hiding at home was no guarantee of safety, either. There were plenty of nuts who simply drove around town, shooting into the windows of houses and apartment buildings.

Nowhere was safe.

Lane’s joy slipped away as she suddenly remembered the chopping crashes of gunfire in the night. They had been home in their ground-level apartment in Los Angeles, sitting close together on the sofa, watching Dallason TV Lane had a tub of popcorn on her lap. Mom sat on one side, Dad on the other. All three were reaching in, hands sometimes colliding. The first blast made her jump so hard that the tub flew up, flinging popcorn everywhere. Then the night exploded as if someone on the street had opened up with a machine gun. Mom had screamed. Dad had shouted “Get down!” but didn’t give Lane even an instant to respond before he grabbed the back of her neck and nearly broke her in half as he rammed her forward. The edge of the coffee table skinned the top of her head. She wept and held her head and shuddered as the roar pounded her ears. Then all she heard was a ringing. The gunfire had stopped. Dad still clutched her neck. “Jean?” he’d asked in a high, strange voice. Mom didn’t answer. “Jean!” True panic. Then Mom had said, “Is it over?”

They stayed on the floor.

Then came sirens and the loud whap-whap-whap of a police helicopter low overhead. The front draperies were bright with flashes of red and blue. Dad had crawled to the window and looked out. “Holy Jesus,” he said, “there must be twenty cop cars out there.”

It turned out that the shots had been fired at a family in a duplex across the street. Both parents, and three children, had been killed by automatic fire from an Uzi. Only an infant had survived the shooting.

Lane hadn’t known the family. That was another thing about L.A. — even most of your neighbors were strangers. But the fact that they’d been gunned down, right across the street, was shocking.

Just too damn close.

Dad had reminded them about a family gunned down by mistake a few years earlier. It was a drug hit. The killers had gone to the wrong house, the one next door to the residence of their intended victims.

“We’re getting out of here,” Dad had said, even while the street outside was still jammed with police cars.

Two weeks later they were on the way to Mulehead Bend.

They knew the town from having vacationed there just a month before the shooting. They’d spent a night in a motel, followed by a week in a houseboat on the river. They’d all enjoyed the area, it was fresh in their minds, and it seemed like a good place to find sanctuary from the mad, crowded hunting grounds of Los Angeles.

Sometimes the wind and heat were enough to drive you crazy. You had to watch out for scorpions and black widow spiders and several varieties of poisonous snakes. But the chances of catching a bullet in the head or getting abducted by a pervert were mighty slim.

Lane looked upon L.A. as a prison from which she and her family had escaped. The freedom was glorious.

She swung her car onto the dust and gravel in front of Betty’s place and beeped the horn once. Betty lived in a mobile home, as did the majority of Mulehead Bend’s population. It was firmly planted on a foundation. A porch and an extra room had been added on. It looked pretty much like a normal house from the outside, though the interior always seemed narrow and cramped when Lane visited.

Betty trudged down the porch stair as if laboring under the burden of her weight — which was considerable. She managed to raise her head and nod a greeting.

Leaning across the passenger seat, Lane opened the door for her. Betty swung her book bag into the backseat. The fabric of her tan shirt was already dark under the armpits. The car rocked slightly as she climbed in. She shut the door so hard that Lane winced.

“Well, look at you,” Betty said, her voice as slow and somber as always. “What’d you do, mug Dolly Parton?”

“Who’d youmug, Indiana Jones?”

“Yucka yucka,” she muttered.

Lane steered onto the road. “We picking up Henry?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Well, is he expecting us?”

“I suppose.”

“You two aren’t fighting again, are you?”

“Just the usual grief about my culinary preferences. I told him he’s no prize himself, and if he thinks he can do better, he should go ahead and try, and good riddance.”

“True love,” Lane said.

She swung around a bend and accelerated up the road to Henry’s house. He was out in front, sitting on a small, white-painted boulder next to the driveway, reading a paperback. When he saw them coming, he slipped the book into his leather briefcase. He stood up, ran a hand over the top of his crew cut, and stuck out his thumb as if hoping to hitch a ride with strangers.

“What a dork,” Betty muttered.

“Oh, he’s cute,” Lane said.

“He’s a nerd.”

That was a fact, Lane supposed. In his running shoes, old blue jeans, plaid shirt, and sunglasses, he could almost pass for a regular guy. But the briefcase gave him away. So did the rather dopey, cheerful look on his lean face. And the way his head preceded the rest of his body made him look, to Lane, like an adventurous turtle.

He was a nerd, no doubt about it. But Lane liked him.

“Good morning, sports fans!”

“Yo!” Lane greeted him.

Betty climbed out, shoved the seat back forward, and ducked into the backseat. Henry got in after her. Hanging over the seat, he managed to pull the door shut. Then his head swiveled toward Lane. “Foxy outfit there, lady.”

“Thanks.”

“ ‘She had a body like a mountain road,’ ” he said. “ ‘Full of curves and places you’d like to stop for a picnic’ ”

“Mike Hammer?” Lane asked.

“Mack Donovan, Dead Low Tide.” He dropped backward, or was yanked by Betty.

“You never talk to me that way,” the girl grumbled.

He whispered something that Lane couldn’t hear over Ronnie Milsap. She turned the radio down, and heard a giggly squeal from Betty. Making a U-turn, she headed down the hill.

“So, you have a big weekend?” Henry asked after a while.

“Okay,” Lane said. “Nothing special. I went shopping yesterday.”

“No dream date with Jim Dandy, King of the Studs?”

“He had to go out of town with his parents.”

“Toobad. And I bet he didn’t even have the courtesy to leave you his biceps.”

“Nope, I had to go without.”

“Rotten luck. Should’ve come to the drive-in with us. Saw a couple of dynamite films. Trashedand Attack of the S.S. Zombie Queens.”

“Sorry I missed them.”

“Sorry Isaw them,” Betty said.

“Well, you didn’t see much of them, that’s for sure. Between your forays to the snack bar and the John...”

“Hush up.”

“We think she got a bad hot dog,” he explained.

“Henry!” she whined.

“On the other hand, could’ve been a bad burrito or cheeseburger.”

“Lane doesn’t want to hear all the gruesome details.”

“What’s going on with your dad?” Henry asked, leaning forward and folding his arms over the seat back. “Have they started filming The Beast?”

“Not yet. They just renewed the option, though.”

“Terrific. Man, I can’t wait to see that one. I’ve got rubber bands holding that book together. Read it five, six times. It’s a classic.”

“I would’ve liked it better,” Lane said, “if it hadn’t been written by my father.”

“Ah, he’s cool.”

“And apparently somewhat demented,” Lane added.

Henry laughed.

At the bottom of the hill Lane turned onto Shoreline Drive. Most of the shops along the road weren’t open yet, and the traffic was light. The station wagon ahead of her was filled with children on their way to the elementary school, which was across the road from Buford High at the south end of town. Quite a few older kids were on the sidewalks, hiking in that direction.

Henry, still resting on the seat back, swung his arm toward the passenger window. “Isn’t that Jessica?”

Lane spotted the girl on the sidewalk ahead. Jessica, all right. Even from behind there was no mistaking her. The spiked hair, dyed bright orange, was enough to give her away.

Her left arm was in a cast.

“Wonder what happened,” Lane muttered. “Anyone mind if I offer her a lift?”

“Yeah, do it,” Henry said.

“Terrific,” Betty muttered.

Lane swung the car to the curb, not far behind the swaggering girl, and leaned across the passenger seat. “How about a ride?” she called.

Jessica turned around.

Lane winced at the sight of her.

“God,” Henry muttered.

Jessica was generally considered the foxiest gal in the junior class, maybe in the entire high school.

Not so foxy now, Lane thought.

From the looks of her now, she might’ve gone ten rounds over the weekend with the heavyweight champ.

The left side of her face was swollen and purple. Her cracked lips bulged like sausages. She had a flesh-colored bandage on her chin, another over her left eyebrow. Lane guessed that the pink-framed sunglasses concealed shiners. The girl usually wore huge, dangling rings in her pierced ears. Today the lobes of both ears were bandaged. The low neckline of her tank top revealed bruises on her chest. Others showed around her shoulder straps. Even her thighs were smudged with purple bruises below the frayed edges of her cutoff jeans.

“How about it?” Lane called to her.

She shrugged, and Lane heard a quiet intake of breath from Henry — likely at the way the gesture made Jessica’s breast move under the tight, thin fabric of her top. Only one showed. The other was discretely hidden under the cloth sling that supported her broken arm. The visible one jiggled as she stepped toward the car.

Maybe she got herself gang-banged.

Nice, Lane. Real nice.

Would’ve been her own damn fault.

Cut it out.

Leaning across the passenger seat, she unlatched the door and swung it open.

“Thanks,” Jessica said.

Henry dropped away from the seat back — no doubt with Betty’s help — and lost his chance to watch the girl climb in. Too bad, Lane thought. He would’ve enjoyed seeing Jessica’s leg come out through the slit side of her jeans. The bruises might’ve dampened his enthusiasm, but not by much.

She pulled the door shut. Lane checked the side mirror, waited for a Volkswagen to pass, then swung out.

“Are you sure you want to be going to school?” she asked.

“Shit. Would you, ib you looked like this?”

“I guess I’d probably call in sick.”

“Yeah,” Jessica replied through her split and swollen lips. “Well, better than habbing by old lady in by face all day. She’s such a bain.”

Lane rubbed her lips together, licked them. Listening to Jessica was almost enough to make them ache.

From the backseat came Betty’s voice. “So, you going to let us in on it, or do we have to guess?”

Scowling, Jessica peered over her shoulder.

“It’s none of our business,” Lane said.

“Yeah. Well, I got trashed.”

“Who did it to you?” Henry asked.

“Who the buck knows? A couple guys. Real asswibes. Beat the shit outa be and stole by burse.”

“Where’d it happen?”

“Ober backa the Quick Stob.”

“Behind the Quick Stop?” Betty asked. “What were you doing there?”

“They dragged be there. Saturday night. I went in bor cigarettes, and they got be when I cabe out.”

“Bad news,” Henry muttered.

“Yeah, I’ll say.” With one hand she opened a canvas satchel and took out a pack of Camels. She shook it, raised the pack to her mouth, and caught a cigarette between her fat, scabby lips. She lit it with a Bic, inhaled deeply, and sighed.

“Did they catch the guys who did it?” Lane asked.

Jessica shook her head.

“I didn’t think stuff like that happened around here.”

“It habbens, all right.”

Lane pulled into the student parking lot, found an empty space, and shut off the car.

“Thanks a lot bor the ride,” Jessica said.

“Glad to help. I’m awfully sorry you got messed up.”

“Be too. So long.” She climbed out and headed away.

“Wouldn’t you just die to know what reallyhappened?” Betty said.

“You think she lied?” Lane asked.

“Let’s put it this way. Yes.”

Henry shoved the seat back forward. “Why would she lie about a thing like that?”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

Eight

Larry drank coffee and read a new Shaun Hutson paperback for an hour after Lane went off to school. Then he set the book aside, said, “I’d better get to it,” and rose from his recliner.

“Have fun,” Jean told him, glancing up from the newspaper as he strode past her.

He shut his office door and sat down in front of the word processor.

He had already decided not to work on Night Strangertoday. The book was going well. Two more weeks should take care of it.

Then what?

Ah, he thought, there’s the rub.

Normally, by the time he was this close to finishing a novel, the next was pretty well set in his mind. He would already have pages of notes in which he had explored the plot and characters, and have several of the major scenes worked out.

Not this time.

Gotta get cooking, he told himself.

When the day came to write “The End” on Night Stranger, he wanted to slip a fresh floppy disk into his computer and begin Chapter One. Of whatever.

Two weeks to go.

That should be plenty of time.

You’ll come up with something.

You’d better.

Eighty, ninety pages to go. Then he would find himself facing an empty disk, a void, a taunting blank that would push him to the edge of despair.

It had happened a few times before. He dreaded going through a period like that again.

I won’t, he told himself.

He formatted a new disk and brought up its directory; 321,536 bytes to play with.

Let’s just use up a couple thousand today, he thought.

A page or two, that’s all it’ll take. Maybe.

He punched the Enter key and the screen went blank. A few seconds later he had eliminated the right margin justification, which would’ve left odd spaces between the words, spaces that drove him nuts when he tried to read the hard copy. He punched a few more keys. “Novel Notes — Monday, October 3,” appeared in amber light at the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

Then he sat there.

He stared at the keyboard. Several of the keys were grimy. The filthy ones were those he used least often: the numbers, the space bar except for a clean area in the shape of his right thumb, some keys at the far sides that could apparently be used to give commands for a variety of mysterious functions. He didn’t know what the hell half of them did. Sometimes he hit one by mistake. The consequences could be alarming.

He spent a while cleaning the keyboard, scratching paths through the gray smudges with a fingernail.

Stop screwing around, he told himself.

He scraped Saturday’s ashes out of a pipe, filled it with fresh tobacco and lit it. The matchbook came from the Sir Francis Drake on Union Square. They’d had lunch there during a vacation along the California coast two summers ago. The vacation he thought of as the “wharf tour.”

He set the matchbook down, puffed on his pipe, and stared at the screen.

“Novel Notes — Monday, October 3.”

Okay.

His fingertips tapped at the keys.

“Come up with something hot. Original and big. Try for at least 500 pages, more if possible.”

Right. That accomplished a lot.

He typed in, “How about a vampire book? Ha ha ha. Forget it. Vampires are done to death.

“Need something original. Some kind of a NEW threat.”

Good luck, he thought.

How about a sequel? he wondered.

“Maybe a sequel. The Beast II, or something. Worth considering, if you can’t turn up anything better.”

Come on, something new.

Or a new variation on an old theme.

“Nobody but Brandner’s done anything decent with werewolves. Come up with a fresh werewolf gimmick? Forget it. That TV show’s got the whole thing covered. But that’s not a book.”

Larry scowled at the screen.

“Forget werewolves.

“What else is there?”

His pipe slurped. He twisted the stem off, blew a fine spray into the wastebasket beside his chair, put the pipe back together and lighted it again.

A few minutes later, he had a list:

werewolves

ghosts (boring)

zombies

aliens

misc. beasts

demonic possession (shit)

homicidal maniac (done to death)

curses

wishes granted (“Monkey’s Paw”)

possessed machinery (King’s realm)

crazed animals (see above, and BIRDS)

haunted house (possibilities)

“How ABOUT a haunted house book?” he wrote.

He’d always wanted to do one, and always reached the same stumbling block. By and large, he didn’t consider ghosts sufficiently scary. Something else had to be in the house. But what?

That question took him back to the list.

He stared at it for a long time.

“Something horrible inside the house,” he wrote. “But what?”

How about a vampire under the staircase?

Right. Just thinking about it made his insides crawl.

He was on his knees beside the coffin again, staring at the withered corpse. Feeling fear and disgust.

He wanted to forget he ever saw the thing, not spend the next few months dwelling on it.

Wouldmake a good story, though.

“A blond corpse under the hotel stairs,” he wrote. “A stake in its chest. Found by some people exploring a ghost town. Could tell it just the way it happened. Fun and games.”

He wrinkled his nose.

“But they don’t run off, scared shitless, like we did. Maybe some of them do. But one is fascinated. Is this a vampire, or isn’t it? A character like Pete, but a little crazier. He hasto know. So he pulls the stake. Right in front of his eyes, the thing comes back to life. Changes from a hideous brown cadaver (use Barbara’s line about looking like salami?) into a gorgeous young woman. A gorgeous, naked young woman. Pete character is enthralled. And turned on. He wants her. But she has a different idea, and bites his neck.

“They don’t come out, and don’t come out. The others get worried, go back into the hotel to see what’s keeping the guy. Nobody under the stairs. The coffin is empty.

“Little problem, bud. Vampires don’t screw around in the daytime. So how come our merry band is exploring a ghost town after dark?

“Easy. They’re driving through town, on the way home from an outing in the desert, and the van breaks down. Flat tire, or something.”

Ah, he thought, the old car-breaking-down-in-just-the-worst-possible-place gag.

It could work, though.

And it had a nice bonus: that wasn’t the way things happened yesterday.

“Make it different enough from the truth,” he typed, “and maybe you can handle it.

“How about taking One Big Step, and changing what’s under the stairs? Not a dead gal with a stake in her chest, but a... a what? (A crate with a monster in it? Been done.) Could be anything. The body of a creature from outer space? A troll? Have open spaces between the stairs, and it reaches through and drags people in by the feet. Gobbles ‘em up. He he he.

“Chicken.

“What’s wrong with the way it really was?

“Yuck. Horror’s supposed to be fun.

“But there’s a real story there. Who is she? Who put the stake in her chest? Was the lock (brand new) put on the hotel doors by the same person who hid her under the stairs? Best of all, what happens if you pull the stake?

“Lies there. Dead meat.

“But what if life flows into her? Her dry, crusty skin becomes smooth and youthful. Her flat breasts swell into gorgeous mounds. Her sunken face fills out. She is beautifiil beyond your wildest imagination. She is breathtaking. (And bloodtaking.)

“She doesn’t bite your neck, after all.

“That’s because she’s grateful to you for freeing her to live again. Feels so indebted that she’ll do anything for you. You’re her master, and she will do your bidding. In effect, you have this gorgeous thing as your slave.

“Real possibilities.”

Nine

Lane shoved her books onto the locker shelf, took out her lunch bag and shut the metal door. As she gave the combination lock a twirl, an arm slipped around her stomach, a mouth pressed the side of her neck. She cringed as chills scurried up her skin.

“Stop it,” she said, whirling around.

“Couldn’t help myself,” Jim said.

Lane looked past him. The hallway was crowded. Kids were wandering by, talking and laughing. Those who weren’t with friends all seemed to be in a great hurry. Lockers slammed. Teachers stood near their classroom doorways, on the lookout for trouble. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to Lane and Jim.

“Did you miss me?” Jim asked.

“I survived.”

“Uh-oh. Am I in trouble?”

“I don’t much care to be grabbed in public. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Oooh, touchy. Are we on the rag?”

Lane felt heat rush to her face. “Real nice,” she muttered. “Who died and made you king of the jerks?”

He smiled, but there was no humor in his eyes. “I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke?”

“Obviously not.”

He dropped the smile. “I don’t need this.”

“Good. Adios.”

Scowling, he muttered something Lane couldn’t hear, turned away and joined the flow of the hallway crowd. He walked about twenty feet, then glanced over his shoulder as if he expected Lane to come rushing after him.

She gave him a glare.

He smirked as if to say, “Your loss, bitch,” then continued down the hall.

Creep, she thought.

On the rag. What a shitty thing to say.

She leaned back against her locker and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She felt hot with embarrassment and anger. Her heart thudded. She was trembling.

Who needs him, anyhow? she told herself.

I waspretty rough on him, she thought as she started down the hallway. It wasn’t as if he did anything all that awful. Just kissed my neck, really. No big crime. But he shouldn’t have done it right in front of everyone. He knows how I feel about that kind of thing.

Even if I did give him a hard time, it was no reason to make a crude remark like that.

She hadmissed him. All weekend she’d looked forward to seeing him again.

She suddenly felt cheated and sad. Her new outfit made it worse. Like getting all dressed up for a party and being left at home.

Why did he have to act like that?

He can be such a jerk sometimes.

Whenever he didn’t get his way, Lane got to see his snotty side. Afterward, though, he was usually quick to apologize, and he could be so sweet that she found it difficult to hold onto her anger.

She supposed the same thing would happen this time.

One of these days, she told herself, he’ll go too far and that’ll be the end of it.

Maybe he just did.

But the thought of breaking up with Jim made her feel empty and alone. He was the only real boyfriend she’d had since starting at Buford High — ever, for that matter. They’d shared so much. He might act like a creep sometimes, but nobody’s perfect.

You’re just too chicken to dump him, she thought.

In no time at all everyone in school would know they had split up. When that happened, she would be fair game. She’d either have to become a hermit or risk going out with virtual strangers — and some of them were bound to be creeps.

At least you know you can handle Jim.

True love, she thought. I must be out of my gourd. You don’t keep going with a guy forever just because he’s okay and you’re afraid you might do worse.

When he tries to make up this time, I should just tell him to drop dead.

On the rag. A, I’m not. B, screw him anyway.

In the cafeteria she spotted Jim at one of the long lunch tables, surrounded by his jock friends. Betty and Henry were at a corner table, sitting across from each other at its far end, several empty chairs between them and the rowdy clique of girls occupying the other end.

After buying a Pepsi at the “drinks only” window, she went to join them. “Mind if I sit here?” she asked.

“Okay with me,” Henry said. “Just don’t embarrass us by sticking a straw up your nostril.”

“The hell with that. How’ll I drink my pop?”

“Take a load off,” Betty said.

She pulled out the metal folding chair and sat down beside Henry.

“So how come you’re not eating with Jim Dandy?” he asked. “Did your taste buds finally rebel at the prospect?”

“Something like that. We had a little problem.”

Betty, about to take a bite, frowned and set her sandwich down. “Are you all right?”

Lane realized she suddenly had a lump in her throat. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she nodded.

“The dirt bag,” Betty said.

“Want me to kick his butt?” Henry asked.

“You’d need the Seventh Cavalry,” Betty told him. “And they already bought it at the Little Big Horn.”

“Very funny.”

“I don’t know why you put up with him,” she said. Her cheeks wobbled as she shook her head. “Good Lord, girl, you know darn well you could have any guy in the school. Except for Henry, of course. I’d be forced to kill him if he made a play for you.”

“You ladies could shareme,” he suggested.

“But I mean it, though. Seriously. Jim’s always giving you grief about one thing or another. Why do you stand for it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because he’s so cute,” Henry said.

“Stick it in your ear. This is serious.”

“Maybe I will dump him,” Lane said. “It’s just getting worse all the time.”

Grinning, Henry leaned sideways and slipped an arm around her back. “Saturday night. You and me. We’ll make beautiful music together.”

Lane saw a quick look of alarm on Betty’s face. Then the girl narrowed her eyes and said, “Prepare to meet your maker, Henrietta.”

“Sorry,” Lane told him. “I’d hold myself responsible for your demise. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

“I’d die happy.”

Betty’s face went red. She pressed her lips together.

“That’s enough, Henry,” Lane said.

He tried to hang on to his silly grin but it fell off. He pulled his arm in. “Just kidding,” he said.

Just kidding. That’s what Jim had said. What was it, the standard excuse when a guy makes an ass of himself?

Lane opened her bag and took out the sandwich. It was wrapped in cellophane. She saw egg salad bulging out between the bread.

“Just trying to make you jealous, sweet stuff,” he said to Betty.

“You’d stand as much chance with Lane as an ice cube in a hot skillet.”

Tears suddenly burned Lane’s eyes. She slapped her sandwich down hard on the table. “I’m sorry!” she blurted. “Goddamn it! Don’t do this! You’re my friends!”

They both gaped at her.

“I’m sorry. Okay?”

“Gee,” Henry said.

“It’s all right,” Betty murmured. “You okay?”

Lane shook her head.

“I know just the thing to make you feel better.”

“What?” Lane asked.

“Let me eat that sandwich for you.”

She gasped out a laugh. “Not a chance.”

“Grab it off her, Hen, and I’ll forgive you.”

He reached for it. Lane caught his wrist and pinned it to the table. “Try it again,” she warned, “and you’ll be picking your nose left-handed.”

“He’s such a klutz, he’d put out his eye.”

Lane let go. When she finished unwrapping her sandwich, she tore it down the middle and offered half to Betty. The girl leered at it but shook her head. “Go on,” Lane told her. “I don’t have much of an appetite, anyway.”

“If you’re sure...” She took it.

They ate their lunches and chatted, and everything seemed normal again. But Lane knew that damage had been done. Obviously, Betty had seen through Henry’s joking around — realized he would dump her in an eyeblink if he thought he stood a chance with Lane.

Break up with Jim, and sooner or later Henry probably willask you out. Then you’ll be minus your two best friends.

Jessica’s assigned seat in Mr. Kramer’s sixth-period English class was at the front of the room, just to the left of Lane’s desk. Today Riley Benson swaggered down the aisle and sat there. He slumped against the backrest, stretched out his legs and crossed his motorcycle boots. He looked at Lane. His face, with half-shut, sullen eyes, never failed to remind her of television news photos that showed men who put bullets into people for the fun of it.

Twisting around, she saw Jessica in Riley’s usual seat at the rear corner.

“We traded,” he said. “You got a problem?”

“None of my business.”

She turned to the front. The final bell hadn’t clamored yet, and Mr. Kramer rarely entered the classroom before the bell. She hoped he would show up soon. Riley had a reputation for starting trouble, and she was pretty sure that she’d already been chosen as today’s target.

Thanks a heap, Jessica.

The trade had to be Jessica’s idea. Lane could understand that. Battered the way she was, the girl probably wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible.

It crossed her mind that Riley might be the guy who’d beaten up Jessica. She knew they’d been going together, and he sure seemed capable of such things. Maybe Jessica gave him some lip. She could’ve made up the mugging story.

Lane looked over at him. His fingers were rapping out a rhythm on the edge of the desk. He had dirty knuckles, but they weren’t bruised or scraped. He might’ve been wearing gloves, though. Or done the damage with a blunt instrument of some kind.

“You got a problem?” he asked.

“No. Uh-uh.” She turned her eyes to the front.

“Bitch.”

This is really my day.

She stared at Mr. Kramer’s empty desk. Her back felt rigid. Her heart was thumping hard and her face was hot.

Come on, teacher. Where are you?

“Fuckin‘ twat.”

Her head snapped toward him. “Blow it out your ass, Benson.”

The bell blared and she flinched.

Riley’s lip curled up. “See ya after class. Count on it.”

“Oh, I’m so scared. I’m trembling.”

“Ya oughta be.”

In fact, she was. Now I’ve done it, she thought. Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut?

It was little consolation when Mr. Kramer entered the room.

If only he’d shown up a couple of minutes ago.

Roll book in hand, he settled down against the front edge of his desk and fixed his eyes on Riley. “I believe you’re in the wrong seat, Mr. Benson.”

“You got a problem with that?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I do.”

Lane felt a grin spreading across her face.

Give it to him, Kramer.

“Please return to your assigned seat. Now.”

From the back of the room came Jessica’s voice. “I asked Riley to trade with be,” she said.

“Neverthe...” For an instant, he looked surprised. Then concern furrowed his brow. “My God, what happened to you?”

“I got wracked ub. Okay? Can I just stay here?”

“Did somebody do that to you?”

“No, I fell down the stairs.”

Maybe she had a different story for everyone.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Jessica. But I’m afraid I’ll have to insist that you both resume your proper seats.”

Riley mumbled something, gathered his books, and headed for the back of the classroom.

Good show! Lane thought.

No wonder Kramer was one of the most popular teachers at Buford High. Not only young, handsome, and clever, but he had the guts to keep discipline. Plenty of other teachers would’ve backed off and let Riley stay.

Lane suddenly remembered Riley’s threat. She felt herself go hot and shaky again.

Jessica slid into her seat. She sat up straight, facing Kramer. “Thanks a lot, teach,” she muttered.

“You’re not outside, now. Take off those sunglasses.”

That’s going a little too far, Lane thought.

Jessica dropped her sunglasses onto the desktop. Lane could only see her right eye. It was swollen nearly shut. Her upper lid, shiny and purple, bulged as if someone had jammed half a golf ball underneath it.

Kramer pursed his lips. He shook his head. “You may put the glasses back on,” he said.

“Thanks a heab.”

“Okay, we’ve wasted enough time. Take out your texts and turn to page fifty-eight.”

Lane watched the clock. This was the last class of the day. It had forty-five minutes to go.

He won’t try anything, she told herself. He wouldn’t dare.

I’ll be okay if I can just get to my car.

Thirty minutes to go.

Ten.

In spite of the air-conditioning, Lane was bathed with sweat. Her T-shirt felt sodden against her armpits. Cool dribbles trickled down between her breasts. Her panties were glued to her rump.

With one minute to go she piled her books on top of her binder, ready to bolt for the door.

The bell rang.

She pressed the books to her chest, slid out of the seat and stood up.

Kramer met her eyes. “Miss Dunbar, I’d like to speak with you for a minute.”

No!

“Yes sir,” she said.

She sank back onto her seat and put the books down.

Why was he doing this to her? Was he annoyed because she’d seemed in such a rush to get out?

I’m doomed, she thought.

Mr. Kramer stepped behind his desk and stuffed books into his briefcase. The kids hurried out. The room had doors at the front and rear. Riley didn’t leave by the front. He’d probably used the other door, but Lane forced herself not to look.

Maybe he forgot about me.

Fat chance.

Mr. Kramer came around his desk and sat on its edge, facing her. He held some typed sheets in his hand.

He wants to discuss one of my themes?

But Lane could see that it wasn’t hers. It looked like erasable paper. The stuff always felt sticky, and the ink had a tendency to smear if you rubbed it, but she’d used it anyway until her father had told her to “throw away that junk and use some decent bond.” He’d gone on to say that only amateurs fooled with erasable paper, and editors hated it with a passion.

“That isn’t mine,” she said.

Mr. Kramer smiled. “I’m aware of that. What I have here is a book report that I found very interesting. It was written by Henry Peidmont. Is he a friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

Henry, she knew, had Kramer for second period.

“He’s quite a good student, but he does have a peculiar taste in literature. He seems to relish the macabre.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

Kramer fluttered the pages a bit. “This particular report deals with a book called Night Watcher, by Lawrence Dunbar.” He tipped his head sideways and smiled at Lane.

So that’s it, she thought.

I’m not in trouble, after all.

Just in trouble with Riley.

“He’s my dad,” she admitted, feeling a mix of pride and embarrassment.

“Henry mentions that in his report.”

Thanks, Hen.

“We don’t have many real authors living here in Mulehead Bend. In fact, your father is the only one I’m aware of. Do you suppose he might be willing to come in sometime and talk to the class?”

“He might. He’s kind of busy, but...”

“I’m sure he is. We wouldn’t want to impose on him, but I think that the class might enjoy hearing what he has to say. I’ve never read any of his books myself. They’re not exactly my cup of tea.”

“A lot of people feel that way,” Lane said.

“I’ve seen his books on the stands, though. And I’ve seen any number of students with them.”

“They need more parental supervision.”

Kramer laughed softly.

He may be a teacher, Lane thought, but he’s sure a neat guy.

“I understand that the novels are pretty nasty.”

“You were misinformed. They’re extremelynasty. I’m under strict orders not to read any until I’m thirty-five.”

“I’ll bet you’ve disobeyed, though, haven’t you?”

Lane grinned. “I’ve read ‘em all.”

“Under the bedcovers, I presume.”

“Some of the time.”

“Well, I’d really appreciate it if you would talk to him. If he could find the time to come in, I think the kids would get quite a charge out of it. He might want to tell them about how he became a writer, why he chose to specialize in ‘extremely nasty’ novels, that kind of thing.”

“I’ll check with him about it.”

“Fine. I won’t keep you any longer now. But let me know, okay?”

“Sure.” She picked up her books. As she scooted off the seat, she saw him glance at her legs and look away quickly.

At least somebody appreciates the dress, she thought.

Too bad he has to be a teacher.

Heading toward the door, she was hit again by the knowledge that Riley might be waiting for her.

What if I ask Mr. Kramer to walk me out to the parking lot?

No way, she told herself. He might get the wrong idea. Unless I explain about Riley. And that might get Riley in hot water, and then I’d reallybe in trouble.

“See you tomorrow,” she called over her shoulder.

“Have a nice evening, Lane.”

She stepped into the hallway. Leaning against the lockers on the other side was Jim. He lifted a hand in greeting.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to get lost,” he said, coming toward her. “I don’t know what got into me this morning, I’m really sorry.”

“You should be.”

“You can wash my mouth out with soap, if that’d help any.”

“That’s an idea.” She took hold of his hand. “Next time, I just might.”

“Am I forgiven, then?”

“I guess so. This time.”

Together they walked down the hall.

So much for dumping him, she thought. Guess I wasn’t ready for it, after all.

Though she was a little disappointed in herself, she mostly felt relieved.

“I was afraid I’d really blown it,” Jim said. “All day I kept thinking about it, and how much I’d miss you. I really love you, Lane. I don’t know what I would’ve done if... well, anyway. We’re okay again, right?”

“Yeah. We’re okay.”

He squeezed her hand.

In the parking lot Lane spotted Riley Benson sitting on the hood of her Mustang. They were still some distance away, and Jim hadn’t noticed him yet.

But Riley saw them, scurried down and swaggered off.

Ten

She was water skiing on the river at night. She didn’t want to be there. She was frightened.

She wanted to stop but didn’t dare. The thing in the water would get her before the boat had time to swing around and pick her up.

She didn’t know what it was in the water. But something. Something awful.

The boat sped faster and faster, as if it wanted to help her escape. She skimmed over the smooth black surface, clinging to the handle of the tow line, whimpering with terror.

Somehow, she knew that the boat wasn’t quick enough. The thing in the water was gaining on her.

If they were closer to shore! If the boat took her near enough to a dock, she might let go of the line and her speed might take her gliding to safety.

But she couldn’t see the shore.

On both sides there was only darkness.

That’s impossible, she thought. The river’s no more than a quarter mile wide.

Where are we?

Sick with dread, she thought, We’re not on the Colorado anymore.

Clutching the wooden handle with her right hand, she raised her left and waved for the boat to head ashore.

Wherever that might be.

It kept its straight course.

Look at me! her mind shrieked. Damn it, pay attention!

She suddenly realized that she didn’t know who was steering the boat.

Then she saw that it was drawing away from her.

As if the tow line were stretching.

Slowly, the running lights faded with distance, until they vanished entirely. Even the sound of the outboards died away.

There was silence except for the hiss of her skis.

The tow rope led into darkness.

She was alone.

Except for the thing under the river.

Oh God, what am I going to...

Cold hands grabbed her ankles, tugged her straight down. She was still on her skis, still speeding at the end of the tow line, but under the surface. The water pushed at her. It filled her open mouth, muffling her scream as the hands scurried up her legs.

She felt the thing’s icy flesh against her back. It was standing on the skies behind her, riding them, reaching around her front, grabbing her hands, trying to rip them from the wooden bar. She held on with all her might.

If I let go, he‘II have me!

He snapped her left arm. Broke it off at the elbow. Her hand still clutched the bar for a moment, trailing its severed forearm. Then the rushing current took them away.

A hand clamped over her mouth. It pinched her nostrils shut.

She fought to suck in air.

Somehow, she’d been able to breathe in spite of the water gushing down her throat, but the hand was different. It was solid. Her lungs burned.

She grabbed the hand and woke up and the hand was still there, mashing her bruised mouth, pinching her nostrils shut.

“Don’t make a sound, Jessica.”

Frantic for a breath, she nodded. The hand lifted. She sucked air into her starved lungs.

“Had a little nightmare?” he whispered.

He was on the bed, sitting on her, leaning forward and holding her by the shoulders. Jessica was no longer covered by her sheet. In the glow of moonlight from the windows, she saw that Kramer was shirtless. From the hot feel of his skin where he sat on her, she knew that he’d removed all his clothes before climbing onto her. He had slipped her nightshirt up, too. Her left forearm rested against her chest, its cast heavy and cool.

“You bastard.”

“Shhh. If you wake up your parents, I’ll have to kill them. And you. I’ll have to kill everyone. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

“No,” she whispered.

“I didn’t imagine you would.”

“What do you want?” she asked. The stupid question of the year. What he wanted was obvious. But she’d thought it was over.

Saturday night she’d told him it was over, told him that he could find another girl, threatened to get him fired if he didn’t stop. That had been the stupid threat of the year. But after finishing his little “lesson,” he’d said, “I’m sick of you anyway, you disgusting slut.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he whispered. “I’ve been worrying.”

“I’b not going to tell.”

“How do I know that?”

“Don’t hurt be. Blease.”

“I didn’t come here to hurt you, Jessica. I’m here for only one reason. Well, maybe two.” He laughed softly. She squirmed as a hand slid down from her shoulder and squeezed her breast. “I’m here to teach you a lesson. A lesson about safety. For you, there is no safety. Do you understand?“

She nodded.

“If you should ever happen to tell someone about me, I’ll come into your home just as I did tonight. There will be one difference. I’ll have a straight razor in my hand. I’ll begin by slashing the throats of your parents while they sleep. And then I’ll come to you.” A fingernail circled her nipple. “I’ll cut you very badly. Everywhere. It may take all night. And just before dawn I’ll open your throat from ear to ear. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Very good.” The pale blur of his face drifted down. He kissed her sore lips. “Very good,” he whispered again.

Eleven

Except for the struggle on Monday morning to come up with a new story, Larry had spent the entire week on Night Stranger. That book was coming along fine. But what about the next?

He didn’t feel like wracking his mind for a new idea. So much easier to stick with the familiar territory of Night Stranger. He knew where that book was going, and enjoyed the excitement of guiding it there.

This was Friday.

He couldn’t keep avoiding the problem forever.

Think how much better you’ll feel, he told himself, once you’ve come up with a great plan for the next book.

A great plan that does not include a stiff under the stairs with a stake in its heart.

He found the disk from Monday, put it into his word processor and tapped out commands until “Novel Notes — Monday, October 3” appeared at the comer of the screen. As he cleaned a pipe and loaded it with fresh tobacco, he skimmed the amber lines. About three pages worth of material. And nothing.

A lot of crap about their vampire.

“In effect,” he read, “you have this gorgeous thing as your slave.

“Real possibilities.”

Sure.

Better luck today.

Larry lit his pipe. Below “Real possibilities” he typed, “Notes — Friday, October 7.

“How about a tribe of desert scavengers?” he wrote, recalling the idea he’d toyed around with shortly before the van reached Sagebrush Flat. “They arrange ‘accidents’ on the back roads, then fall upon the unlucky travelers.

“Too much like The Hills Have Eyes. Besides, I already did something along those lines in Savage Timber.”

Larry scowled at the screen. He wished he hadn’t reminded himself of Savage Timber. That damn novel, his second, had nearly destroyed his career. A major release, and all it did was sit in the stores, thanks to that damn green foil artsy-fart cover.

Don’t think about it, he told himself.

Come on, a new idea.

“How about a guy who finds the remains of an old jukebox? He restores it to working order, and...”

And what?

“It doesn’t have any records in it. He puts in his own. But it doesn’t play the new ones. All it will play are the oldies-but-goodies that used to be in it. Back before it was shot to pieces by... Hey, maybe it wants revenge on the vandals who used it for target practice.

“Great. A pissed-off jukebox. What does it do, scoot around and electrocute people?

“Could be like a time machine. The guy gets it working, and it shoves him into the past. So he finds himself stranded in Holman’s — or a dive of some kind — back in the mid-sixties.

“Has possibilities.

“Maybe the box wants him there to have a showdown with the jerks who plugged it. A motorcycle gang, or something. A real nasty bunch.

“The poor guy doesn’t know what’s in store for him. But he’s plenty upset. It’s Twilight Zone time. One minute he’s with his wife and kids, has a nice house and a good job. Suddenly, bam, he finds himself in a diner in a dying town twenty-five years in the past. Freaks him out. All he wants to do is get home.

“Until he finds himself falling for a beautiful young waitress. At that point he begins to appreciate his situation.

“Things start to get ugly when a gang of biker thugs thunders into town.

“Suppose the real reason the jukebox took him there was to save the waitress? Neat. The jukebox likesher. Sometimes, alone at night after the diner closes, she has it play her favorite tunes, and she dances alone in the dark.

“The way things went down, first time around, the bikers raped and murdered her. The jukebox has brought our hero back to the diner to alter the course of history — to save her.

“Which, of course, he does.

“Mission accomplished, the box let’s him go home again. But he misses the beautiful waitress. (Okay, he didn’t have a wonderful wife and kids. He was divorced, or something.) He goes looking for the gal. Finds her.

“She’s his mother. He’s his own father. He got her pregnant during their brief time together back in ‘65, and he was the baby she had.

“He’d have to be about thirty years old in the present. She could be about twenty-five when he met her in the diner.

“She had to give up the baby (our hero) for some reason. He was adopted, and always curious about the identity of his parents.

“If she is his mother, we could give him back his wife and kids.

“Neater if he finds the waitress in the present and they resume as lovers. But how would that work with their ages? Say he’s thirty in the present. How could the gal be anywhere near his age when he finds her again? If she’s thirty now, she would’ve been five when he saved her from the bikers.

“What if the waitress he fell in love with was her mother? That would make the daughter just his age in the present. And she is the spitting image of her mother, the gal he loved.

“Not bad. Might work.”

Larry’s pipe had gone out. He could tell by the easy draw that nothing remained in the bowl but ash. He set the pipe into its holder and returned his fingers to the keyboard.

“Our main guy resurrects the jukebox. It seems evil at first, but turns out to be a force for good. And a matchmaker. He falls for the waitress, who happens to have a really cute little girl at the time. Plenty of thrills and spills and nasty crap with the bikers (make them total degenerates, monsters). By facing them down (he’s scared, but comes through, proving to himself that he’s a man), he ends up saving the kid who will later become his true love.

“Why not?”

Larry grinned at the screen.

All right! You’ve got it. Spend the next couple of days working out the details, and...

The next couple of days.

He muttered a curse.

The weekend was shot. As soon as Lane got home from school today, they would be hitting the road for Los Angeles to visit with Jean’s folks.

Just what he wanted to do.

Especially now, with the new idea sizzling in his mind.

Can’t get out of it, though. You’ll just have to put the idea on hold till Monday.

It would give him something to think about while he drove. He might be able to work out a few of the main scenes, maybe even come up with some nifty new angles. But he knew very well that daydreaming about the story while he steered down the freeway would accomplish very little compared to working at the word processor. The act of typing out his thoughts seemed to give them a focus that wasn’t there when he simply let his mind wander. Daydreams seemed to meander and drift. But sentences were solid, and one led to another.

Not this weekend, they won’t.

This weekend’s down the toilet.

Well, he tried to console himself, Jean’s folks are okay. And it is their anniversary. I’ll probably end up having a good time, even though I’d rather be...

He heard the door bell ring.

Jean would take care of it.

He wondered whether he should get back to Night Strangeror spend the rest of the day fleshing out his jukebox story.

Call it The Box, he suddenly thought.

And grinned.

“THE BOX,” he typed. “Great title. Has a mysterious ring to it. And Box not only refers to the jukebox that sends him back in time, but also the ‘box’ or trap he finds himself stuck in. He’s boxed in by circumstances. No apparent way out. Also, the sex thing. Have one of the bikers refer to the main gal as a box. ‘Foxy box.’ And maybe the main guy is a former boxer — killed an opponent in the ring, and swore off fighting? No, that’d be pushing it. Trite, too. But maybe there are some other ‘box’ angles. Fool around with it.”

He heard Jean’s footsteps approaching. She might come in and look over his shoulder, so he scrolled down until “foxy box” climbed out of sight at the top of the screen.

She rapped on the office door and pushed it open. In her hand was an Overnight Mail bag that looked large enough to hold a manuscript. “This just came for you,” she said. “It’s from Chandler House.”

His publisher.

Jean watched while he tore open the bag. Inside, he found a fat manuscript held together by rubber bands. And a typewritten note from his editor, Susan Anderson:

Larry

Here is the copyedited manuscript of MADHOUSE. The corrections are light, so I’m sure you’ll be pleased.

We would like you to make whatever changes you consider appropriate, and return it to us if possible by October 13.

Best,

Susan

Larry grimaced.

“What?” Jean asked.

“It’s Madhouse. The copyedited version. I’m supposed to send it back by the thirteenth.” He glanced at his calendar. “Christ, that’s next Thursday.”

“They didn’t give you much time.”

“That’s for sure,” he muttered. “They’ve had it for about a year and a half, and now I get... six days.”

“Have fun,” Jean said. She left the room, closing the door again to keep his pipe smoke from contaminating the rest of the house.

Larry pushed his chair back, crossed a leg, rested the thick manuscript on his thigh and rolled the rubber bands off. He tossed Susan’s note and the title page onto the cluttered TV tray beside his chair.

Then he groaned.

For “light” corrections, page one seemed to have an awful lot of changes.

Halfway down the page his paragraph used to read, “She tugged at the door. Locked. God, no! She whirled around and choked out a whimper. He was already off the autopsy table, staggering toward her, his head bobbing and swaying on its broken neck. In his hand was the scalpel.”

Larry struggled to decipher the changes. Words had been crossed out, others added. The paragraph was a map of lines and arrows. At last he figured it out.

“Tugging at the door, she found it to be locked. No! Snapping her head around, she whimpered in despair, for she saw that the corpse was staggering toward her with a scalpel in his hand. His head was swinging from side to side atop its snapped neck.”

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” Larry muttered.

He found Jean in their bedroom, gathering clothes from an open drawer of her bureau and taking them to her suitcase. Both suitcases lay open on the bed.

He sat down at the end of the mattress. “We’ve got a problem.”

“The manuscript?”

“I just looked through the whole thing. It’s been wrecked.”

“Not again.”

“Yeah.” Madhousewas his twelfth novel, and the third to be demolished by a copyeditor.

“What’re you going to do?” Jean asked.

“I have to fix it. I don’t have any choice.” He scowled at the carpet. “Maybe I could get them to take my name off and publish it under the name of the copyeditor.”

“It’s that bad?”

“And then some.”

“Why do they let it happen?”

“God, I don’t know. It’s the luck of the draw, I guess. This time, they happened to send my book to some idiot who thinks she’s a writer.”

“Or he,” Jean said, standing up for her gender.

“Or it.”

“Couldn’t you just write a letter to Susan, or something, and explain the situation? Maybe they could send a fresh copy to someone else.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think she’d appreciate that. It’d be like calling them jerks for sending it to some illiterate butcher. Besides, they already paid to have it done. And they’re on a tight time schedule by now, or they wouldn’t want the damn thing back in six days.”

“Maybe you should phone Susan.”

“The last thing I need is to get a reputation as a troublemaker.”

“So you’re just going to take it lying down?”

“I’m going to take it sitting on my butt with a red pen in one hand and a copy of my British edition in the other. If the people in London didn’t fix it, it didn’t need fixing.” He hung his head and sighed.

Jean stepped in front of him. She rubbed his shoulders. “I’m sorry, honey.”

“Fortunes of war. The thing is... it’ll have to be mailed Wednesday for next-day delivery. If I go to your folks’ place, that only gives me about three days to go through the whole damn thing and try to... save it.”

“You could take it along.”

“I wouldn’t be fit to live with, anyway. Maybe you and Lane should just go ahead without me.” As he spoke the words, he realized that he didn’t want to be left behind. Not for this. But he couldn’t go. “If I spend the whole weekend working on it, maybe I’ll be feeling human again by the time you get back.”

“I suppose we could call it off,” she said, stroking his hair. “Go up next weekend instead.”

“No, don’t do that. It’s their anniversary. Besides, you’ve been looking forward to it. No need for all of us to suffer because of this crap.”

“If you’re sure,” she muttered.

“I don’t see any choice.”

Larry went back to his office. His throat felt tight.

You didn’t want to go in the first place, he reminded himself.

But that was before he found out he would have to be laboring over Madhouse.

He stared at his computer screen.

“Maybe there are some other ‘box’ angles. Fool around with it.”

Right. Sure thing. Maybe sometime next week.

No more working out the details for The Box. No more plunging toward the conclusion of Night Stranger.

The next few days belonged to Madhouse, a book that he’d finished eighteen months ago. A book that had already been published in England — and about all they had changed over there was “windshield” to “windscreen” and added u’s to words like color.

“So who said life is fair?” he muttered, and shut his computer off.

Twelve

“I have a special announcement to make,” Mr. Kramer said with two minutes remaining before the bell. “As I’ve mentioned before, the drama department at the city college is putting on Hamletnext week. I’m sure the production will be well worth seeing for all of you, and I urge every one of you to attend if you can. Now, here’s the thing. I’ve obtained four free tickets to the Saturday night performance. Only four of you will be able to participate, but for those lucky students, I’ll provide tickets and transportation.” He smiled. “That way, you won’t have to bug your parents to borrow a car.” A few of the kids laughed. “If any of you would like to take advantage of the opportunity, just stay in your seats after the bell rings.”

Lane gnawed her lower lip. Should she stay? Jim might ask her out for that night.

We can always go out Friday night instead, she told herself.

It wouldbe neat to see the play, especially with Mr. Kramer. Couldn’t hurt, either, in the Brownie points department.

The bell rang. Lane remained in her seat.

As Jessica stepped by, she glanced at Lane and shook her head.

Probably thinks I’m an idiot, wanting to give up a Saturday night to see Shakespeare.

Maybe I am. If it turns out that Jim’s busy Friday night, I’m going to kick myself. He was gone last weekend, I’ll be gone this weekend. That’ll make three weeks in a row if I go to the play and he can’t make it on Friday.

ThisSaturday night was when she’d wanted to go out with him. All week he’d been especially nice. Trying to make up, Lane supposed, for being such a creep Monday morning.

She turned on her seat. Five other kids had remained in the room.

There’re six of us, and he can only take four. If I’m not picked, that’ll solve the problem right there.

“I see I’ve got more Shakespeare fans than tickets,” Mr. Kramer said. “That’s certainly gratifying, but it does present a little difficulty. We want to be fair about this.” He dug a hand into a pocket of his slacks and pulled out a quarter. “I’ll flip a coin. The first two of you to lose will have to bow out. Does that sound okay to everyone?”

Nobody objected.

“Okay, Lane, you first. Call it in the air.” He rested the coin on his thumbnail and flicked it high.

“Heads,” Lane said.

It landed in the palm of his right hand. He slapped it onto the back of his left, kept it covered and smiled at her. “Want to change your mind?”

“Nope. I’ll stick with heads.”

He looked. “Heads it is,” he said, tipping his hand and letting the coin drop into the other.

He didn’t let anyone see it, Lane realized.

What the heck, they’re his tickets.

“Okay, George, your turn.”

George won. So did Aaron and Sandra.

Jerry and Heidi, the losers, called the coin again to determine who would be first choice as an alternate in case one of the chosen was unable to attend. Heidi won.

“Okay,” Mr. Kramer said, “I’ll fill you in on the details later. In the meantime, have a good weekend. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

That comment brought a few chuckles.

Lane gathered her books and stood up. “I’m glad you’re one of the lucky four,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to meet your father when I pick you up for the play.”

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to meet you.”

“I’ll have to pick up one of his books and get an autograph.”

“That’ll make his day.”

“And maybe we can firm up the date he’ll be coming in.”

“Yeah. He said any time after the first.”

“Well, maybe we can make it more definite.”

Lane nodded. “Have a nice weekend, Mr. Kramer.”

“You, too. Try to stay out of trouble.” He winked.

“What would be the fun of that?” she said, blushing.

As he laughed, Lane waved good-bye and left the room.

The hallway was crowded with kids, noisy with slamming lockers, shouts, and laughter. She leaned against a wall and waited for Jim. A few minutes later he came along.

“I have to drop some stuff off at my locker,” Lane said. They started up the hall together.

“When are you leaving for Los Angeles?” he asked.

“As soon as I get home.”

“What a drag.”

“There’s always next weekend. Next Friday, anyway. I have to go to a play Saturday night with Mr. Kramer.”

“Yeah?” He glanced at her, lifting an eyebrow. “Isn’t he a little old for you?”

“Get real. It’s a school function. He’s taking four of us from his sixth-period class.”

“Great.”

“Oh now, don’t start pouting. I’ve got nothing on Friday night.”

“Nothing on, huh? I’d like to see that.”

“I just bet you would.” She felt a hand slide over the seat of her skirt. “Quit it.”

“Sorry. Just trying to refresh my memory. It’s been two whole weeks, you know, and now it’ll be another.”

“I’m not overjoyed about it myself. Nothing I can do, though.” She arrived at her locker and started spinning the combination dial.

“Maybe you could pretend to be sick,” he suggested. “What if you did that, and they let you stay home by yourself? I could come over to your house tomorrow night and...”

“Dream on, MacDuff.”

She opened the locker and switched books, taking out those she would need for homework. Then she shut the metal door. “Even if I did stay home, boys aren’t allowed in the house when my parents are gone.”

“Who would ever know?”

“I would. Anyway, you might as well forget it. Ain’t gonna happen.” They started down the hallway. “If you promise to behave,” Lane said, “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“What about your goofball friends, Fat and Ugly.”

Lane frowned at him. “I don’t know who you mean.”

“You know, all right. Betty and Henry.”

“Why don’t you refer to them that way, okay? They are my friends.”

“God knows why.”

“Are you trying to start something?”

“No, no. Just kidding. They’re wonderful people, the salt of the earth.”

“You could stand to be a little more like Henry.”

“Uh, duh.” He put a dopey smile on his face and started bobbing his head.

“Very funny,” she said, but couldn’t hold back a smile. “Stop it. That’s not nice.”

“Duh, okay.”

“Anyway, Betty’s mom was picking them up after school and talcing them to violin lessons.”

“So it’ll just be you and me, huh?”

“If you can fit your big head into the car.”

“I can try.”

At the end of the hallway Jim held the door open for her. She stepped out and looked toward the student parking lot. She spotted her red Mustang.

No sign of Riley Benson.

After Monday, she’d expected each afternoon to find him perched on the hood. So far he hadn’t tried it again. Though they crossed paths several times a day, he’d done no more than give her tough-guy looks.

He must’ve given up on his big plan for revenge, she decided.

Maybe Jessica had talked him out of it.

Pays to be nice to people, she thought. Especially if they’re buddy-buddy with someone who wants to wipe up the floor with you.

When Lane opened the car door, hot air poured out. They cranked down all the windows. She took a beach towel from the trunk and spread it over the driver’s seat so she wouldn’t burn her legs on the upholstery.

“You don’t have one for me?” Jim asked.

“You’re not wearing a skirt.”

“You sure are,” he said, and bent forward as if trying for a glimpse of her panties when she climbed in. “Pink,” he announced.

“Wrong.”

She started the engine. She twisted around to look out the rear window as she backed out of the space. She could feel her blouse pull tight against her breasts. Jim, of course, was staring at them.

“If they match your bra, they’re white,” he said.

“Don’t you ever think about anything but sex?” she asked, grinning at him.

“Sure. Instead sometimes I think about sex.”

She shook her head, faced forward again and steered for the parking lot exit.

“Must be hot, wearing a bra all the time.”

“What makes you think I wear one allthe time?”

“Every time I’ve seen you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you kidding? I can tell a mile away if a babe’s got one on.”

“That’s impressive... How long is your car going to be out of commission?” Lane asked, hoping to change the subject.

“I’ll have it off the blocks tomorrow. I wanted it ready so we could go out tomorrow night.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Maybe I’ll give Candi a call.”

“I know, just kidding.”

Jim said nothing. Lane got a tight, sickish feeling deep inside. She kept her eyes on the road.

“You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“Be my guest.”

She knew that Jim was teasing. He had no intention of taking out Candi. He’d dumped Candi in order to start going out with her. The threat of taking up with Candi again was nothing more than a form of punishment.

“You know what they say about a bird in the hand,” Jim said.

“A good way to get a dirty hand.”

“Also, she’s a lot more cooperative than some people I might mention.”

“And probably has the diseases to prove it.”

“Oooh. Mean.”

“But feel free to take her out. It’s your life.”

He reached over and put a hand on Lane’s leg. “You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“I only know what you tell me.”

“I miss you, that’s all.”

“I miss you, too. But there’s nothing I can do about this weekend.”

“Yeah, I know.” He squeezed her knee, and his hand moved slowly up her bare leg to the hem of her skirt. He caressed her thigh. It felt good.

“Just don’t go throwing Candi at me every time you get upset.”

“Jealous?”

“Suppose I was always threatening to dump you for Cliff Ryker?”

“That shithead?”

“You think you’d enjoy it?”

“You wouldn’t. Not if you went ahead with it.”

“He’s cute.”

“Not as cute as me.” Jim’s hand crept under her skirt. She pushed it away. “He’s no gentleman, either.”

“And you are?”

“I’m not like Cliff. He isn’t the kind of guy who takes no for an answer. First time out with him, and he’d bang you till you couldn’t see straight. If that’s what you want, I’ll be glad to take care of it for you.”

“You go out with Candi, and you’ll never get the chance.”

“Hrnmmm. I like the sound of that. You mean, if I don’t, I do?”

“Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

She pulled the Mustang over to the curb in front of Jim’s house. Checking the windows and rearview mirror, she saw nobody nearby. She turned to Jim. She slipped a hand around the back of his neck. “No funny stuff,” she said. “Just a quick kiss.”

“How about coming in for a Pepsi, or something?”

She shook her head. “I have to get home. My folks are waiting.”

“Ten minutes? That won’t throw off your trip by much. Tell them you had to stay after class.”

I didhave to stay after class, she thought. It wouldn’t be a lie.

“Is your mother home?”

Jim answered by swinging a thumb over his shoulder, pointing out the Mazda in the driveway.

“Okay,” Lane said. “Ten minutes. No longer, though.”

She took her hand away from his neck and climbed out. Jim stayed in the lead as she walked up the flagstones to the front stoop. He unlocked the door and held it open for her.

The air was cool.

The house was silent except for the hum of the air-conditioning system.

Jim didn’t call out to announce that he was home.

“Are you sure she’s here?” Lane asked.

“Might be sleeping. Or taking a bath. Who knows?”

They entered the kitchen. Lane leaned against a counter while Jim took a couple of cans from the refrigerator. The air smelled fresh. It was almost too cold on her skin. It chilled the damp back of her blouse.

Jim found glasses, dropped ice cubes into them, and filled them with soda.

A glass in each hand, he stepped in front of Lane. She reached for her drink. Instead of giving it to her, he stretched both arms past her sides and set the glasses on the counter. His arms closed around her, pulled her gently forward until their bodies met.

“What if your mother walks in?” Lane whispered close to his mouth.

“I don’t think she will.” He tugged the tail of her blouse out of her skirt and slid his hands underneath.

Lane let herself sink against him. She kissed him.

Shouldn’t be doing this, she thought.

But she’d intended to kiss him good-bye, anyway. And his hands felt good roaming the bare skin of her back. And she liked the feel of his chest tight against her breasts. She could feel his breathing and his heartbeat.

He started to fumble with the catches of her bra.

She pulled her mouth away. “Oh no you don’t.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t.”

He unfastened the bra anyway. She felt it go loose.

She grabbed Jim’s arms and pushed them down to his sides. “I said no, and I meant it.”

“Come on, what’s the harm?”

“For one thing, your mother.”

“She might be in town at the beauty parlor,” he said, smiling as if he expected Lane to appreciate the news.

“The car...”

“She usually goes with Mary from next door. Right about three on Fridays.”

“You knewshe wasn’t here?”

Still smiling, Jim shrugged.

“You lied to me.”

“Just a little fib.”

“Terrific,” she muttered, reaching up under the back of her blouse to fasten the bra.

“Come on, don’t do that.” He lifted his hands to her breasts.

“Cut it out.”

“Come on, you like it.”

“I told you...” She got one of the hooks fastened. He was squeezing, rubbing. She didlike it. “Damn it, Jim.” Not bothering with the other hook, she swung her hands around and pushed him away. “I have to leave.”

“No you don’t. Hey, come on.”

“This is what I get for trusting you, huh?”

“Look, I’m sorry I lied about Mom being here. Okay?” He looked into her eyes and gently held her shoulders. “I just figured you wouldn’t come in, and... we haven’t been together for weeks. I get crazy wanting to be with you. Sometimes, all I can think about is kissing you and how it feels to hold you. Especially after last time.”

“That was nice,” Lane said, remembering.

She had been under orders to be home by eleven, so they’d skipped the second feature at the movies and parked in the desert outside town. She’d refused Jim’s suggestion to get into the backseat. Staying in the front, they twisted themselves awkwardly to embrace and kiss. But it was wonderful. She felt daring and romantic and sexy in the moonlit car. Her blouse came off early. She managed to keep her bra on, though. In spite of Jim’s begging and his attempts to remove it. In spite of her own desire to rid herself of the garment and feel his touch without a stiff layer of cloth in the way. Finally she’d told him, “It’s almost time to leave.” He didn’t protest, simply nodded and murmured, “I guess so.” Reaching behind her back, Lane unhooked her bra. She took it off. His mouth fell open and he stared for a long time before touching. When he did touch her breasts, his hands were trembling.

Softened by the memories of that night, she stepped forward and put her arms around Jim. She kissed him gently on the mouth. “Apology accepted,” she whispered. “But I really do have to leave now.”

His hands slid down her back and caressed her rump. “What about your Pepsi?”

“Time’s all up. You can walk me to the car, though.”

He squeezed her against him and kissed her hard, then stepped away. “Guess I’ll just have to wait for next Friday, huh?”

“It’ll get here.”

“Not soon enough.”

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

“I’ll miss you more.”

“No you won’t.”

“Yes I will.”

“Wanta fight about it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s wrestle.”

“Oh, you’d like that.”

“So would you.”

“Maybe.”

Holding hands, they walked to the door.

Thirteen

Larry stood at the end of the driveway, waving good-bye to Jean and Lane as the car headed off down the road. It seemed strange, being left behind.

He knew he would miss them. Hell, he alreadymissed them.

On the other hand, he rather liked the prospect of being on his own for the weekend. He could do whatever he pleased, and not have to answer to anyone.

Freedom.

He felt like a kid being left home without parents or baby-sitter.

The car vanished around the corner. Larry turned toward the house, then raised a hand in greeting as Barbara trotted down the steps next door. A handbag swung at her hip. Larry supposed she was leaving on an errand.

“So, they took off without you.”

“Sure did.”

“Jean told me about that manuscript.” She stopped beside her car in the driveway. “Sounds like the pits to me.”

“Gives me a good excuse to stay behind,” he said, smiling.

“If you’re not too busy, why don’t you come over for dinner? We’ll throw some steaks on the barbecue.”

“Sounds great.”

“Good. Drop in around five, then, all right?”

“I’ll be there.”

She climbed into her car, and Larry headed for the house.

Things are perking up already, he thought.

In his office he glanced at the savaged manuscript and realized he was in no mood to struggle with it. He’d already fought his way through more than a hundred pages today, scratching out the copyeditor’s misguided corrections and replacing them with scribbles to match the printed lines as they’d originally been written. That was plenty for one day’s work.

He settled down in the living room with a beer and the Shaun Hutson novel he’d started reading that morning. Though his eyes traveled over the words, his mind kept slipping out of the story. He found himself imagining what Jean’s folks might say when they realized he’d stayed home, wondering what he should wear over to Pete and Barbara’s, thinking about how much he would like to spend all day tomorrow working on ideas for The Box.

Then he was speculating about the jukebox in the ditch. He wondered how much it weighed. Could two men lift it? In his book they would have to carry it to the van. Would that be possible?

Have the women lend a hand with it. My main guy isn’t married. Might have a girlfriend with him, though.

Still occupied with his thoughts, Larry set the book aside. He drained the last of his beer, wandered into the bedroom and took off his clothes.

Have one of the gals fall while they’re lugging the jukebox up the slope. Good. Foreshadowing that the box is going to cause trouble.

In the bathroom he turned on the shower and stepped under its beating spray.

She tumbles down the embankment, he thought as he began to soap himself. Gets banged up pretty much like Barbara did in the hotel.

He remembered the way Barbara had looked, standing in the doorway afterward. How her legs and belly were scraped. How her blouse hung open.

The images stirred a pleasant heat in his groin.

Which turned cold when he suddenly saw himself kneeling under the staircase, gazing at the shriveled corpse.

God, he wished he’d never seen that thing!

It always seemed to be with him. Waiting. Like some kind of spook lurking in a dark closet of his mind, every now and then throwing open the door to give him another look.

So damn grisly and repulsive.

But fascinating, too.

As Larry washed his hair, his mind ran through the familiar questions. Who was she? Who drove the stake into her chest? Was her presence under the stairway known to the person who put the brand new lock on the hotel doors? Could she really be a vampire? What might happen if someone pulled out the stake?

He had no answers.

He told himself, as always, that he didn’t wantto know the answers. He only wanted to forget about the thing.

Which wasn’t about to happen.

Maybe we should’ve reported it, he thought. He’d been against that at the time. Now, however, he saw how it might’ve been for the best. A call to cops would’ve relieved them of responsibility. Like passing the baton.

We did our part, now it’s your turn.

Part of the problem, he realized, was carrying the burden of knowledge.

We’re the only ones who know it’s there.

But we didn’t do anything about it.

So the damn corpse is more than just a grisly memory, it’s unfinished business.

According to the shrinks, that’s what messes up your head more than anything — unfinished business.

Maybe we need to deal with it, Larry told himself. Take some kind of action to get the thing out of our systems.

“Let’s drive out and get it,” Pete said.

Larry felt as if his breath had been knocked out. “You’re kidding,” he said.

“You’re out of your gourd,” Barbara said.

“Hey, if he’s going to write a book about that jukebox, he ought to haveit. Or better yet, Iought to have it. Larry can keep track of my progress repairing the thing so he gets the details right. You know? There’s nothing like firsthand experience to give a book...”

“Verisimilitude,” Larry put in.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“I don’t know,” Larry said.

He took a sip of his vodka tonic and shook his head. He wished he hadn’t mentioned The Box. Normally, he didn’t discuss story ideas with anyone. But Pete and Barbara were part of this one. They’d discovered the jukebox. Pete’s desire to take it home had really been the inspiration. So the story had rolled out.

Should’ve kept my mouth shut.

The last thing I want to do is go driving out to Sagebrush Flat.

Pete got up from his lawn chair and checked the barbecue. The flames had died away, but Larry could tell from where he sat that the briquettes were burning. The air over the grill shimmered with heat waves. “Be another ten, fifteen minutes,” Pete said. He turned to Barbara, arched a dark eyebrow. “Don’t you need to go inside and do something?”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“Just trying to be helpful. We’re going to have those sauteed mushrooms, we’ll want them withour steaks.”

“They only take a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll do them up when you put the meat on.”

Good, Larry thought. He wasn’t eager for her to leave. Not only was she the best defense against Pete’s crazy urge to fetch the jukebox, but it felt good to look at her.

She sat on a lounge in front of him, bare legs stretched out on its cushion. Her long, slim legs looked wonderful in spite of the scabbed areas. She wore red shorts and a plain white T-shirt. The shorts were very short. The T-shirt lay softly against her flat belly and the rises of her breasts. Its fabric was thin enough to show a faint pink hue of the skin underneath, the dark crust of the scabs above Barbara’s waist, the white of her bra.

He watched the way her muscles moved as she sat up straight to take a drink of her cocktail and settled back again and rested the glass on the moist disk it had left just below the hip of her shorts.

“You don’t want to go back there, do you?” she asked Larry.

“Not a whole lot.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“It’s probably too heavy for the two of us to carry, anyway,” he told Pete.

“Barbara will come along and lend a hand. Won’t you, hon?”

“Not on your life.”

“She’s just scared of the vampire.”

“You know it. Besides, we don’t need that piece of junk cluttering up the garage.”

“It’d be great for Larry’s book. He can come over and check it out whenever he needs some inspiration.” Looking at Larry, he added, “And we can take pictures of it. You know? A photo of the actual jukebox, all shot up the way it is, that’ll be terrific on your cover.”

“That would be pretty neat,” he admitted.

“Jeez, don’t encourage him.”

Larry smiled at her. “I have no intention of going back to that place.”

“You’re scared of the vampire, too, huh?” Pete said. “Hey, it can’t hurt you. Not as long as it’s got that stake in its heart.”

“I’m not worried about any ‘vampire,’ ” Larry told him. “I don’t think it isa vampire. But stiffs give me the creeps.”

“That’s a good one, coming from you.”

“I’m scared of my own shadow, man. That’s what makes me good at writing those books. And I tell you, Sagebrush Flat is a lot scarier to me than my shadow. My shadow pales by comparison.”

Barbara chuckled at his pun.

“Even if there wereno corpse under the stairway, I’d still want to stay away from that town. Just the fact that it’s deserted is enough to spook me. There’s something basically frightening about a place where people are supposed to be but aren’t. An abandoned town, an office building at night...”

“That’s really true, you know,” Barbara said. “Like a hotel really late at night when everyone’s asleep.”

“Or a school,” Larry added. “Or a church.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes widened. “Church’s are reallyspooky when nobody’s there. I used to go for choir practice when I was in high school. We’d meet on Wednesday nights at eight.” She leaned forward and gazed at Larry. “One night... God, I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about it.” Hunching up her shoulders, she squeezed her arms tight against her sides. “One night, practice had been called off and I didn’t know about it. I think we’d been out of town. Anyway, the choir director was sick, and everybody knew it but me. So my dad dropped me off in the parking lot and I went in.”

“You taking notes, Lar? Maybe you can use this.”

“Sounds promising so far.” He could feel himself shivering slightly as if Barbara’s fear were contagious.

“There was a light on in the narthex. But the stairway to the choir loft was dark. I went up there, anyway. I figured I was just the first to arrive. The choir loft was dark, too.”

“Why didn’t you turn on some lights?” Pete asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I thought I shouldn’t mess with anything like light switches. But also, I was afraid somebody might... turning on lights, you know, that’d be like giving away that I was there.” Her mouth stretched, baring her teeth.

“That’s the thing,” Larry said. “When a place seems deserted, you’re afraid you aren’t reallyalone.”

“That’s it. Exactly. Because you can’t see what’s out there. God, I started thinking someone was roaming around, sneaking up on me. I even thought I heard someone creeping up the stairs.” Her right hand still held the glass on her lap. Her other hand crossed over to that arm and rubbed it as if she wanted to smooth away the goose bumps. Larry saw that her thighs were pebbled. Though she wore a bra, it was apparently of a light, stretchy fabric. Her nipples made small points against her T-shirt.

I’ll have to remember that, Larry thought. A woman has gooseflesh, the nipples get erect.

Fear makes them hard.

Or is she turned on?

Turned on by the fear?

Barbara kept frowning, rubbing her arm. She seemed lost in her memory of that night.

“So what happened?” Pete asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Oh, that’s a great story.”

“I waited around for about fifteen minutes. I was almost too scared to move. I kept staring down at the nave and pulpit and everything, and thought someone was down there in the dark. You know, awareof me. Watching me.”

“Coming for you,” Pete added.

“Damn right.”

“ ‘They’re comingfor you,’ ” he said, mimicking the voice of the jerky brother in the graveyard scene of The Night of the Living Dead. “They’re comingfor...”

“Knock it off, would you?”

“Nobody ever showed up?” Larry asked.

She shook her head. “I finally beat it. I was never so glad to get out of a place in my life.”

“Not even the hole in the landing of the Sagebrush Flat Hotel?” Pete asked.

“That was different. I was in pain. That’s not the same as being scared half to death.”

“So you finally just bolted out of the church?” Larry asked.

“Sure did. I didn’t even stop to use the phone and call home. I waited in the parking lot, and Dad finally came along at the usual time to pick me up.”

“That’s it, huh?” Pete asked.

“It was enough. I quit the choir after that. Nothing was ever going to get me back into the church after dark.”

“Pretty drastic, considering that nothing happened.”

“It wasn’t exactly as if nothing happened,” Larry pointed out.

“That’s right. All these years have passed, and it still gives me the creeps if I think about it.”

“Still isn’t much of a story,” Pete said.

“A good setup for one,” Larry told him.

“Think you might use it?” Pete asked.

“I can just see it,” Barbara said, smiling. “You’d probably have a homicidal maniac chasing me through the pews.”

“Something like that. Maybe Jesus gets down off the cross and stalks the gal through the church.”

“Oh, sick.”

Pete laughed. “Hey, goes after her with a nail in each hand.”

“You guys.”

“That’s good,” Larry said. “Next morning, the preacher shows up and she’sthe one on the cross.”

“God’s gonna get you for that,” Barbara warned.

“More than likely.”

“I’d better put the steaks on,” Pete said. “Feed him quick before a lightning bolt comes down and knocks him out of his shoes.”

After dinner, Pete presented his surprise — a plastic bag containing three videotapes. “Thought we’d have a movie marathon, unless you’re in a big hurry to get home.”

With three vodka tonics under his belt, and the two beers he’d had with dinner, Larry knew he was in no condition to write, make corrections on his copyedited manuscript, or even read the Hutson novel.

Nor was he eager to be alone in his empty house.

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” He inspected the tapes through their clear plastic boxes: Cameron’s Closet, Blood Frenzy, and Floater.

“Barb phoned me at the shop,” Pete explained. “So I picked these up on the way home.” He looked quite pleased with himself.

“Oh, this’ll be neat,” Larry said.

“These should put you in a great mood,” Barbara said, “for when it’s time to go home.”

“They freak you out, you can spend the night here.”

“I imagine I’ll be all right.”

They started with Blood Frenzy. Pete watched from a recliner beside the sofa. Larry sat at one end of the sofa, Barbara at the other. After a while she tossed a cushion onto the coffee table and propped her feet up.

When the movie ended, Pete made popcorn. Barbara disappeared for a few minutes. She came back wearing a knee-length blue robe. She filled glasses with Pepsi for everyone. Pete separated the popcorn into three bowls.

Before returning to her place on the sofa, Barbara turned off all the lights.

They munched popcorn, drank their sodas, and watched Cameron’s Closetin a room that was dark except for the glow from the television screen.

Every now and then Larry glanced at Barbara. She was slumped against the back of the sofa, popcorn bowl on her lap, her legs stretched out, feet resting on the cushion she had earlier placed on the coffee table. When she twisted sideways to set her empty bowl on the lamp table, the robe slipped off her left leg. She wore a pink, diaphanous nightgown. It was shorter than the robe. It didn’t reach down much farther than her hip. With a quiet moan of annoyance, she flung the fallen section of the robe back on top of her thigh.

This is sure better than being home, Larry thought.

A few minutes later she took the cushion out from under her feet. She tilted it against the armrest, swiveled herself around and swung her legs onto the sofa. She lay down on her side, head propped on the cushion. “Let me know if I kick you,” she said.

“Maybe I should get out of your way.”

“No, that’s fine.”

Pete looked over. “Oh, here we go. For godsake, Barb, sit up. You won’t last five minutes.”

“I’m wide awake.”

“You won’t be. I’m warning you, I’m not gonna rewind. You drift off, it’s your hard luck.”

“I’m not going to drift off.”

“Famous last words,” Pete said. “Lar, you catch her dropping off, pinch her.”

“Don’t you dare.” She tucked the robe in between the backs of her legs as if to prevent Larry from reaching up inside it for the pinch.

It was the sort of thing that Jean might do.

The casual warning and precaution hinted at an intimacy that was both comforting and exciting.

Larry used the remote to rewind the few seconds of the movie that he’d missed while complaining to Barbara.

She lasted more than five minutes. But not more than ten. Larry realized she was asleep when her legs straightened and one of her bare feet pushed against the side of his thigh. Her touch made warmth flow through him.

He waited for a while, enjoying the sensation. But it made him feel guilty. “Pete,” he finally said. “She’s zonked.”

“Barrr-bra.”

She flinched, lifted her face off the cushion. “No, I’m fine.”

“You dosed off.”

“No, I didn’t. I’m fine.” Her head settled down again. Her eyes drifted shut.

“Forget it,” Pete said. “She can watch it in the morning if she wants to.”

“I’m watching,” she mumbled.

Larry tried to watch the movie. Her right foot made it difficult. So did the way the top of her robe hung open, revealing most of her right breast through the flimsy pink nightgown. The show on the TV screen was good, but the stolen glimpses were better. Sometimes the foot rubbed him.

Near the end of the movie she stretched out her left leg. Its foot pushed across the top of his thigh and rested on his lap. The pressure there made him squirm. He wrapped his hand around Barbara’s ankle and guided her foot down beside the other.

“Huh?” she moaned. “Sorry. Kicking you?”

“It’s all right,” he said.

Pete looked around, frowning. “Christ, Barb, you’re screwing up the movie. Why don’t you just go to bed.”

“Yeah, maybe I better.”

Shit, Larry thought.

She pushed herself up and staggered to her feet. “Night, guys. Sorry I pooped out on you, Larry.”

“No problem. Thanks for the dinner and everything.”

“Glad you could make it. See ya.” She made her way around the coffee table. Larry could see through her robe when she stepped in front of him. Her breasts swayed a little as she bent over and kissed Pete good night.

Then she was gone.

The room seemed empty without her.

During the final moments of Cameron’s ClosetLarry heard a toilet flush.

Pete removed the tape from the VCR. He grinned over his shoulder. “Free at last, free at last,” he said. “Thank God Almighty, free at last.”

“If you want to turn in...”

“Are you kidding?” He pushed the tape of Floaterinto the machine and started it playing. “Back in a second.” He hurried away.

He came back while the screen still showed its warning against unauthorized use of the videotape. He had a bottle of Irish whiskey in one hand and two glasses in the other. He sat next to Larry on the sofa. He filled the two glasses. “Party time,” he said.

“I’m gonna be wasted tomorrow.”

“The cats are away. Gotta live it up.”

They watched the movie until their glasses were empty. Pete refilled them both, then pressed the Stop button on his remote. The horror film was replaced by a black and white John Wayne movie. Larry recognized it immediately as The Sands of Iwo Jima.

“Why’d you turn it off?” he asked.

A grin stretched the corners of Pete’s mouth.

Fourteen

“How about a little excursion?” Pete said.

“What do you mean?”

“Sagebrush Flat.”

“You’re kidding,” Larry said.

“Who’s gonna stop us?”

“I don’t want to go out there.”

Pete clapped a hand down on Larry’s knee. His eyes gleamed with mischief, but he wasn’t smiling. He looked like a kid, a kid with a mustache and some gray in his hair and with big plans to pull off a caper. “We take the van. We drive out there, pick up the jukebox, and we’ll be back in two, three hours. Barb’s zonked. She’ll never know.”

“She’ll know when she finds the thing in your garage.”

“Okay, so we’ll leave it over at your place. What do you say, Lar?”

“I think it’s crazy.”

“Hey, man, an adventure. It’ll be great. You can use it in your book. You know, tell all about how the two guys sneak off in the middle of the night to bring the thing back. You can write it the way it happens, you know? Won’t have to tax the ol‘ imagination.”

“It’s crazy.”

“Don’t you want the box?”

“Not that badly.”

“What about a photo for the cover of your book?”

“Well, that’d be neat, but...”

“So we’ll take my camera. Maybe we won’t bring the thing back, you know? Maybe we can’t even lift it. But at least we’ll have some pictures.”

“We could do that during the day.”

“You know the kind of heat I’d get from Barbara. She’d give me all kinds of shit. How about it?”

“You really want to go now?” The digital clock on the VCR showed 12:05.

“No time like the present. A midnight mission.”

The idea frightened Larry. It also excited him. He felt a vibration that seemed to hum through his nerves.

When was the last time, he wondered, that you did something really daring?

If you chicken out, you’ll regret it. And Pete’ll think you’re a pussy.

A real adventure.

“Just like Tom and Huck,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Tom Sawyer climbed out his window in the middle of the night and went with Huck to a graveyard to cure their warts. I always wished I could do something like that.”

“You got warts, man?”

“Let’s go for it.”

Grinning, Pete refilled the glasses. “Fun and games,” he toasted. They clinked their glasses and drank.

Pete took his glass with him. He turned on a lamp at the end of the sofa. Then he removed the tape from the VCR, flicked off the television and left the room. Larry sipped whiskey while he waited. It warmed him but didn’t ease the thrumming vibrations.

When Pete returned he wore a gunbelt. His .357 hung in the holster against his right leg. Dangling by a strap around his neck was a camera with a flash attachment. “I checked the bedroom,” he said in a low voice. “Barb’s out like a light.”

Pete set his empty glass down. He capped the whiskey bottle and handed it to Larry. “You be the keeper of the hooch.”

“We shouldn’t take it with us.”

“Fuck that. Who’s gonna know?”

“If we get stopped...”

“We won’t. Calm down, you’ll live longer.”

They went to the door. Pete turned off the lamp.

They stepped outside. Standing under the porch light, Pete locked the front door with his key.

Larry, shivering, hugged his chest as he hurried toward the van at the curb. A chilly wind pushed at him. He thought about stopping by his house for a jacket. But Pete wasn’t bundled up. Pete still wore his short-sleeved knit shirt and blue jeans.

If he can take it, I can, Larry told himself.

Besides, it’ll be all right once we’re in the van.

The van felt warm. It must’ve been like an oven before the sun went down, and it still retained a lot of heat. Larry settled into the passenger seat and sighed.

“Pass it over.”

He handed the bottle to Pete, who took a swig and gave it back. Larry took a drink. “Are you all right to drive?” he asked.

“You kidding? I don’t hardly even have a good buzz on.”

I do, Larry thought. I’m buzzing, all right. But it isn’t the booze. Just good old-fashioned excitement. And maybe fear.

Pete started the van. He kept the headlights off for a while. After turning the first corner, he put them on. They drilled into the night. “Hey, this is something, you know that?”

“You think you can find the town?”

“No sweat.”

“We stay away from the hotel, though, right?”

“If you say so.” Pete drove in silence for several minutes. They were on Riverfront Drive before he looked at Larry and said, “You know what I don’t understand? How come you want to write about the jukebox instead of the vampire?”

“Vampire books are a dime a dozen.”

“Not true ones. Don’t get me wrong, I think your jukebox story sounds pretty neat. But I’d think the true story of how you found a vampire in a ghost town would be... different, you know?”

“Different, all right.”

“Remember that movie, The Amityville Horror? That was supposed to be a true story.”

“It was supposed to be,” Larry said. “But I’ve heard the whole thing was made up.”

“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. The thing, is, they claimedit was true. And that’s what made it. Would’ve been just another haunted house movie except for that. You’re supposed to think it actually happened, right?”

“Right.”

“It was based on a book, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. And the book was pushed as nonfiction.”

“Did the book sell okay?”

“Are you kidding? It sold a ton.”

“So what’s to keep you from writing up this vampire thing as nonfiction? Have a big best-seller, they make a movie out of it, presto! You’re rich and famous.”

“Shit.”

“What do you mean, shit? You got something against money?”

“I’m doing okay.”

“Sure, you’re doing okay. But how many best-sellers have you had?”

“You can do just fine without ever having a book on the best-seller lists. Those guys on the lists, they’re making millions.”

Pete whistled softly. “That much?”

“Sure. Some of those guys get a million up front. Or more. That’s before paperback rights, foreign rights, movie sales.”

“Christ, and you’re not interested?”

“I didn’t say I’m not interested. I just don’t want to mess with any vampire.”

“Hey, let’s not kid ourselves here. The thing’s not a vampire. It’s just some broad with a stake in her chest. But we don’t knowthat. Not for sure. Neither will your readers. That’s what keeps the story going. Wait till the very end, then you pull the stake. That’s like the final chapter, you know? You pull the stake and see what happens.”

“I don’t know.”

They left the lights of Mulehead Bend behind. Pete turned off the main road and headed west into the desert. There were no more streetlamps. The headlights pushed paths of brightness up the lane in front of them. The moon cast a pale glow over the bleak landscape of boulders, scrub bushes, cacti, and the jagged mountains in the distance. It looked cold and forlorn out there. Larry suddenly wanted to turn back.

It was bad enough, driving through this bleak terrain on the way to a jukebox.

But that obviously wasn’t what Pete had in mind.

“What are we reallydoing?” Larry asked.

“Just what we planned. Bring the jukebox back. Or just take some pictures, if we can’t carry it.”

“Then what’s this vampire business?”

“Just a thought. Hey, you don’t like the idea, fine. I’m not trying to push you into something. But Jesus, why on earth would you want to pass up a chance to make a million bucks?”

“The thing scares me.”

“That’s the point.” He reached over, took the bottle from Larry, drank from it and handed it back. “The point is, you’re in the business of scaring people. Right?”

“Scaring them with fiction. Not the real thing. They want real scares, they can watch the TV news.”

“This wouldn’t be all that different from your novels. Hey, we are talking about vampires, not homicides or nuclear war. The only difference is, this would be a true story. And it’d fit right in with your image, you know? This is the sort of thing that’d make publicity people drool. Get this, ‘Renowned horror writer discovers vampire on weekend outing.’ It’s a natural. They’d put you on the tube, man. And here’s the best part, you could take her with you.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

“Just let ‘em tryto say you made the whole thing up.”

“Great. You’ve got me carting a corpse around on the talk-show circuit.”

“We’re talking about a million bucks, Lar. I’d sure do it.”

“Be my guest.”

“I can’t write for shit. And you’ve got...” His head snapped around. “I’ve gotit! I’ll be the main guy. You can be the guy who takes it all down.”

“Your Watson, your Boswell.”

“Yeah, whatever. God, I wish we had a recorder. We oughta have all this on tape for the book.”

“You’re really serious.”

“Damn straight. Can you remember all this? Hell, we should’ve laid off the booze.”

“Right.” Larry took another swallow of it.

“I see this as a major book and movie. It’s a natural.”

“It does have potential,” Larry admitted.

“Potential? It’ll be a blockbuster.”

“It’d need a story, though.”

“Hey, man, we’re living the story right now. You start it off with last Sunday when we found the thing. You write it just the way it happened. That’s a few chapters worth, right there. Then you’ve got tonight. And how we go off to get the jukebox, but I talk you into getting the vampire instead.”

“That’s maybe fifty pages,” Larry said. “Then what?”

“You just tell it like it happens. Describe us going into the hotel, taking out the corpse, putting it in the van and taking it home.”

“To whose house?”

“Have you got any good hiding places?”

“Nowhere that Jean wouldn’t find it. Besides, I don’t like keeping secrets from her.”

“How do you think she’d react?”

“To having a corpse in the house?”

“In the garage, say.”

“I don’t think she’d be delighted by the idea.”

“Barb would just shit.”

“So much for the blockbuster,” Larry said.

Pete went silent.

Thank God, Larry thought. Good thing we’re both married. That ought to nip the idea right in the bud.

He felt enormous relief. He took a drink of whiskey and sighed.

“I’ve got it!” Pete blurted. “That’s part of the story! We need stuff to happen after we get the thing, right? You can put all the stuff in there about Jean and Barbara giving us grief about the thing. But we talk them into letting us keep it.”

“Now you’re talking fiction.”

“We just explain to them, you know? It’s not like we’ll be keeping the thing forever. Just a couple of months, maybe, while you’re working on the book. With a big jackpot at the end. I think the gals might go for it.”

“Where’s the big jackpot for Barbara?”

“I’m getting a cut, right?”

“Yeah, I may cut your throat. Then I can do a book on that while I’m in prison.”

“What do you say, twenty percent? My idea, after all. You wouldn’t do it at all if it weren’t for me.”

“True enough. Not that I’m planning to do it at all, regardless. The whole thing’s crazy.”

“That’s what makes it so great. It’s crazy. It’s wild! You think Stephen King would pass up a chance like this? Hell, he’d probably do it for the fun of it.”

“Why don’t you give hima try? I’ve got his address.”

“ ‘Cause you’re my pal. I don’t want to take this away from you. This is your big chance.”

“Thanks.”

“So, what do you say? Are you in?”

If you tell him no, Larry thought, he’ll never forgive you. He’s probably already calculated twenty percent of a million bucks. It’d be like robbing him. No more outings with him and Barbara, no more drinks and dinner with them. The end of all that.

He thought about the fun they’d had during the past year.

He thought about Barbara stretched out on the sofa, and the way she had tucked the back of her robe between her legs.

Wouldn’t necessarily end the friendship, he told himself. But it would sure put a strain on it.

And Pete was right about the book. It could be big. It could be another Amityville Horror.

Doing it would mean spending a lot more time with Pete, too. With Pete and Barbara.

It would also mean bringing the corpse into your life.

Probably not so bad, once you got used to it.

“I think we’ll have real trouble with the wives,” he said.

“Nothing we can’t handle. What do you say, man?”

“I guess we could rent a room for it, or something, if they won’t let us keep it around.”

“Sure. We’ll figure something out. Are you in?”

“Maybe.”

“Ah-ha!”

“Let’s just play it by ear, okay? We’ll have a look at the thing. But I still want to do the jukebox book, so let’s take care of that first, and see how it goes.”

“Oh, man. Hey, this is the start of something big.”

“We ought to have our heads examined.”

Fifteen

When the reaching headlights found Babe’s Garage at the east end of Sagebrush Flat, Pete killed the beams and eased off the gas pedal.

They entered the town, moving slowly.

Larry studied the moonlit street ahead of them. He felt trapped by their crazy plan, but he held on to a hope that something might intercede to stop it. They needed privacy. If a car were here... if light came from a doorway or window...

But the street looked abandoned. The buildings were dark.

The van rolled to a halt in front of the Sagebrush Flat Hotel. Leaning forward, Pete peered past Larry.

They both stared toward the doors. But the hotel blocked the moonlight, throwing a black shroud of shadow all the way to the sidewalk. The blackness looked solid.

Unable to see the doors, Larry imagined them standing wide open, imagined he was gazing deep into the lobby, pictured the cadaver on her withered feet beside the staircase, staring out at them.

His skin crawled. His scrotum shriveled, tingling as if spiders were scurrying on it.

“Drive on ahead,” he whispered.

“Right. The box.”

The van moved forward.

He lifted a hand to his chest and fingered a nipple through the fabric of his shirt. It felt like a pebble.

True of guys, too, he thought. You get goose bumps, your nipples get hard.

He remembered the way Barbara had looked as she told her story about the dark church. Focusing his mind on that, he lost the image of the corpse. But he felt guilty about using Barbara that way, so he thought about Jean. Jean on Sunday night after her nightmare. Slipping out of her gown, climbing onto him. But then he was kneeling above her and her slim body looked cadaverous in the shadows, and he was suddenly in the hotel on his knees beside the coffin, staring at the corpse. Dried brown skin, ghastly grin, flat breasts, pubic hair shining like gold in the flashlight’s beam.

He shook his head to dislodge the images, and let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I can hack this,” he muttered.

“Never fear, Peter’s here.”

Pete drove past Holman’s, made a U-turn and parked in front of the gasoline pumps. He shut off the engine.

They each took a drink of whiskey.

“Let’s take it with us,” Pete said.

“Let’s not. I want my hands free.” Larry capped the bottle and set it on the floor.

They climbed out. Leaning against the chilly wind, Larry trudged to the rear of the van. Pete met him there. He had his flashlight but left it dark. Side by side they walked past the corner of Holman’s. The desert ahead of them looked gray, as if its rock-littered surface, boulders, and bushes were painted with dirty cream.

They were almost to the rear corner of Holman’s when a vague shape darted in front of them. Larry flinched. Pete, gasping, crouched and snatched out his gun. The wind-tossed tumbleweed bounded on by.

“Shit,” Pete muttered, holstering his weapon.

“Good going, Quickdraw.”

I’m not the only one nervous around here, he thought. It pleased him to know that Pete was also feeling jumpy.

“Maybe you should turn on the flashlight,” he suggested.

“It’d give us away.”

“To whom?”

“You never know, man. You never know.”

They left Holman’s behind and headed out into the desert, angling toward the far-off smoke tree that marked the edge of the stream bed. Another tumbleweed crossed their path, but Pete saw this one coming and didn’t draw down on it.

Larry studied the landscape ahead. He wished it didn’t have so many clumps of rock and brush. Hiding places. Each time he approached one, he tightened with fear. Each time he passed one, he quickly looked behind it, half expecting to find someone crouched and ready to pounce.

Nobody’s here except us, he kept telling himself.

But he couldn’t convince himself.

At last they reached the rim of the embankment. Larry turned around. He scanned the area they had just finished crossing.

Pete did the same.

Then they faced forward. The area below them lay in shadow. Pete turned on his flashlight. He played its beam over the slope and started down. Larry stayed close to his side. A few times they stopped while Pete waved his light across the bottom of the gully as if to assure himself that no surprises were waiting down there. The stream bed didn’t look familiar to Larry. He was sure it hadn’t changed since Sunday, but it seemed very different in the darkness. He couldn’t even tell for certain which was the rock that Barbara had been sitting on.

We might not be here now, he thought, if she hadn’t wandered away from Holman’s looking for a place to relieve herself. We wouldn’t have found the jukebox. Maybe the corpse, but I never would’ve started out tonight except for the jukebox.

He realized that he had to urinate, himself.

When they reached the bottom of the embankment, he said, “Hang on a minute. I’ve gotta take a leak.”

“Don’t get any on you,” Pete said. “Want the light?”

“Yeah, thanks.” He took the flashlight. Pete waited while he wandered to the left, stepping around blocks of stone. He clamped the light under his arm to free his hands. With his back to Pete, he opened his pants. The wind felt good against his penis. He aimed his stream straight out. The wind flapped it sideways, but not back at him.

When he was done, he zipped up his pants and started to turn around. The pale beam of the flashlight passed across a circle of black surrounded by rocks. “Hey, Pete. Come here.”

“I don’t want to get my feet wet.”

“Come here.” He took the flashlight out from under his arm while Pete came up beside him. He pointed it at the circle. “Look at that.”

“A campfire.”

“Was that here before?”

“I don’t know. Might’ve been, but I didn’t see it.”

They walked toward it. The center of the fire circle was black with ashes and the charred remains of wood.

And bones. Larry saw half a dozen bones, intact among the dead cinders — gray and knobbed at each end.

“Holy shit,” Pete muttered.

“Rabbit, you think?”

Pete squatted. He picked up a bone that was nearly a foot in length. “This sucker didn’t come from any rabbit,” he said. “A coyote, maybe.”

“Who the hell would eat a coyote?”

“The fuckin‘ Madman of the Desert, that’s who.” Pete tossed the bone down. “This’ll go good in our book.”

“Great,” Larry muttered.

Pete pressed a hand against one of the sooty rocks. “Still warm.”

“Don’t give me that.”

“It is.”

Crouching, Larry touched one of the rocks for himself. It was cold. “Asshole.”

Pete laughed. “Had you going there, huh?”

“Prick.”

“Get out of the way. I’m gonna take some pictures.”

He backed off but kept the light on the fire circle while Pete removed the lens cap, switched on the camera and its flash attachment.

“What if the guy who did this is still around here?”

“No sweat. He’s already eaten.”

“A guy who eats coyotes isn’t someone I want to meet.”

“He’s probably long gone.” Pete raised the camera to his eye, bent over the remains of the fire for a close-up, and took a shot. The flash strobed, hitting the area with a quick blast of white.

He stepped backward. One stride. Two. Then another flash split the darkness.

In that blink of white Larry saw something beyond the fire circle. He found it with the beam of his flashlight. “Oh, my God,” he muttered.

Three rocks were stacked up. At the top rested the head of a coyote, its gray fur matted with blood, a bone held crosswise between its teeth. It had bloody holes where its eyes should’ve been.

Pete lowered his camera and stared. “Wow,” he muttered.

“Maybe we ought to get out of here.”

Pete flapped a hand at him and stepped closer to the thing. He raised the camera. He took a shot. In the stark flick of light Larry saw intothe empty sockets. He started gagging as Pete stepped right up in front of it, crouched, and snapped another picture.

He turned aside and vomited. When he finished, he backed away from the mess. He took out his handkerchief, blew his nose and wiped his lips. He blinked tears from his eyes. He rubbed them with the back of a hand.

“You all right?” Pete asked, coming up behind him.

“Christ,” he muttered.

“Feeling a little queasy myself. Bad scene. Guy that did that must be a fuckin‘ lunatic. You see the way he poked out its eyes? Wonder if he did that beforehe ate.”

Larry shook his head. “Let’s do the jukebox and get out of here.”

“Give me the light. I want to check around, see what else we can find.”

“Are you nuts?” He kept the flashlight and started walking through the gully toward the place where they’d found the jukebox.

“Ah,” Pete said. “What the hell. Don’t want to lose mysupper. Wouldn’t taste half as good on the way out.” His head swung around.

A shiver rushed up Larry’s back. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

“Did you hear something?”

“Probably just the wind. Unless it’s our crazy fuckin‘ coyote muncher sneaking up on us.”

“Cut it out.”

“Wonder if he talked to the thing while he ate. You know? Like put the head up there for a dinner companion. Had a little chat with it. Talked to the head while he ate the body.”

It was an image, Larry realized, that had passed through his own mind while he was vomiting.

“Wonder if he ate the eyes.”

Larry hadn’tthought of that. “He probably just didn’t like the thing staring at him.”

“Maybe. Guess we’ll never know. Unless we get a chance to ask him.” Pete chuckled.

“Give me a break.”

Larry stepped around a large rock. He pointed the light at it. “Is that where Barbara was sitting?”

“I think so.”

He swept the beam forward until it found a thick clump of bushes on the right. He glimpsed chrome and dirty red plastic through the foliage. “There.”

They hurried the final distance.

Larry stared down at the machine resting smashed and bullet-riddled in the bushes. He imagined a photograph of it on the cover of his book. The Boxby Lawrence Dunbar.

That’s the book I’m going to write, he told himself. Not some damn thing about a vampire.

“See if we can lift it?” Pete asked, squatting down.

He saw them struggling to carry it up the steep embankment. He saw himself stumble, fall, roll down the slope. The box tumbled and crashed down on top of him. Pete lifted it off. We’d better not try to move you, Lar. I’ll go get help. Pete left the revolver with him and hurried away. He lay there, alone and half paralyzed. Soon he heard someone creeping toward him. A ragged hermit dripping coyote blood, a knife in his hand. What makes me think there’s only one of them? he wondered.

“What do you think?” Pete asked.

“Let’s not try it.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. God knows what’s under the thing. Or inside it, for that matter. Don’t want to go upsetting a rattler. Or a nest of scorpions, or something.”

“That’s what I like about you,” Larry said. “Adventurous, but not foolish.”

“My mama didn’t raise no morons.” Pete got to his feet. He backed away from the box and lifted the camera.

Larry stepped aside. He faced the length of the gully and probed its darkness with the flashlight. The campfire and the grisly remains of the coyote were well beyond the range of the pale beam. He swept the light from side to side. None of the rocks or bushes in sight seemed large enough to conceal a person.

“You spot Ragu the Desert Rat,” Pete said, “give us a yell.”

“I won’t yell, I’ll scream.”

Pete laughed.

Larry kept watch, his back to Pete. In his peripheral vision, he noticed four blinks of light.

“Why don’t you get into the picture?” Pete suggested. “We’ll get a couple of you with the famous jukebox.”

Though reluctant to abandon his guard duty, he stepped backward until he came to the box. He crouched beside it. A red light on the flash attachment beamed a ray at his face.

“Say ‘cheese.’ ”

“Come on, get it over with.”

“Say ‘head cheese.’ ”

“Screw you.”

White light hit his eyes. Pete took another photo, then stepped closer and fired two more. “That oughta do it.”

“Sure did my night vision.” He stood up, shutting his eyes and rubbing them. Bright sparks and balls fluttered under his lids.

“We done down here?” Pete asked.

“I sure hope so.”

“Want to go back and pick up a souvenir? Take it home with us, put it in the freezer?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you do that.”

“Hah! You think I’m out of my tree?”

“You want to take the corpse back,” Larry said, stepping past the bushes and starting to climb the slope. “What’s the big difference?”

“The corpse isn’t all bloody and gross.”

“It looked pretty gross to me.”

“Well, the coyote head ain’t worth a million bucks. For a million smackaroonies, I’d pick the thing up in my bare hands and walkhome with it.”

“Would you eat it?” Larry asked, starting to feel almost cheerful as he approached the top of the embankment.

“Who’d give me a million bucks to eat it?”

“It’s hypothetical.”

“Would I get to cook it up first?”

“Nope, gotta chow it down raw.”

“You’re sick, man.”

“Me?”

They reached the top and the wind pushed against Larry. It seemed to be blowing much harder up here than in the gully. But he was glad to be out. He felt as if he had been an intruder in the lair of the coyote eater. Ragu the Desert Rat. He hurried forward, wanting to put as much distance as possible between himself and the madman’s domain.

Now and then he glanced back. So did Pete, but not as often.

At last they reached the van. Larry flung himself onto the passenger seat, slammed the door shut and locked it. The warmth felt wonderful. And it was good to be out of the wind. The skin of his face and arms felt tingly from the buffeting. He opened the whiskey bottle and took a couple of sips while Pete climbed in behind the steering wheel.

He offered the bottle to Pete.

Pete shook his head. He flicked a switch and light filled the van. With a nervous glance at Larry, he slipped between the seats.

Larry watched him move in a crouch toward the rear of the van — head darting from side to side, fingers wrapped around the handle of his holstered magnum.

Christ, he’s afraid someone might’ve gotten in.

Pete searched the length of the van and turned around. “It’s cool,” he said, coming back.

In his seat again, he shut off the interior lights. He started the engine. He reached out, and Larry put the bottle in his hand. He drank, then gave it back. “Now, are we ready for the real fun?”

“I think I’ve had enough fun for one night.”

“You aren’t going yellow on me, are you?”

“What’ll we do with the corpse if we dotake it home?”

“You write a book about it.”

“About what? Having a pseudovampire as a house guest?”

“Exactly.”

“It’ll just lie there. That’s if the women don’t make us get rid of it.”

“You’re right. We’ll have to do something with it. Maybe we can find out who she is.”

“How would we do that?”

“First things first, Lar. Let’s take her home, then figure out what’s next.”

“Why don’t we nottake her home till we figure that out.”

“Hey, we’re already here. When’ll we get another chance like this? Come on, man, we agreed. Don’t bail out on me now.”

“I’m not bailing out. I just don’t see what we’ll accomplish. Our book has to be a lot more than a couple of goofs taking a stiff home and freaking out their wives. Even a true story needs action along the way, drama, a climax. Especially a climax. We’ve got nothing.”

“Well, eventually we pull the stake.”

“And the damn thing stilljust lies there.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Oh, come on. You said yourself she’s not a vampire.”

“We don’t know that for sure. Obviously, someonethinks she is.”

“Okay. Suppose we pull the stake and she isa vampire?”

“That’d be something, huh? Then we’ve got a best-seller for sure.”

“If she doesn’t bite our necks.”

“We’ll take precautions when the time comes. You know, have plenty of crucifixes and garlic handy. Maybe buy some handcuffs or tie her up.”

“So what happens if we pull the stake and nothing happens? Which is the way it’s bound to go down. Then what?”

Pete started the van moving forward.

“A big dud, that’s what,” Larry told him.

Pete eased the van onto the road. It rolled slowly toward the Sagebrush Flat Hotel.

“Let’s just go home and forget about it.”

“You said we should play it by ear.”

“My ear tells me to forget it.”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Pete’s head turned toward Larry. In the hazy moonlight his teeth seem to glow as he smiled. “You say we’ve got a dud if we pull the stake and she just lies there. Well, let’s find out tonight if she’s a vampire.” He eased the van to the other side of the street and stopped in front of the hotel. “Let’s go in there and pull the stake.”