Bloodstone (21 page)

He went around back again, this time closer to the house so he could see through the windows. Nobody in the kitchen; but there was a light on in there, just visible as dusk began to fall. Encouraged, he crept along past the dining room where he had replaced the bulbs in the chandelier (empty), to the spacious, elegant living room. Lights on in there, too. He stopped and looked in.

At first the room appeared to be empty. Clothes strewn across the floor. Then a naked foot threw itself up over the back of the couch, seemed to clutch and dig at the soft cushion, a woman’s foot and ankle. He could see the couch rocking back and forth.

And then they sat up. Jeb recoiled; the rose crushed in a tightening grip, the stink of it filling his nostrils. He moaned, as if in pain, watching Julie Friedman, naked, eyes closed and head thrown back, mouth open, and another man bouncing her in his lap. He could not take his eyes away from the scene through the window, the two of them, joined together below the waist. Silently, like two partners in dance, the man bent over her as she arched backward and he took a nipple between his lips.

She was just playing with you, you fool. Just for laughs.
You really think she’d be interested in a little shit like Jeb Taylor?
It was never you, not like that. Stupid ugly little freak
…

He lurched away backwards through the yard, stumbled once and went down into the dirt. Somewhere inside he knew how crazy it all was, that there had really been nothing between them but a little flirting. But to him, this was more than just some horny housewife playing games; this was the end of his last chance. Worse, it had been the last thing between him and something horrible he could not name. He felt himself tumbling, end over end, down that deep, dark, bottomless hole.

Get ahold of yourself, son
.

The words had been spoken against his ear. He whirled, no one in sight, of course. The wide, open yard was crisscrossed with shadows. Sniffling, he wiped the back of his hand across his face, smudging it with dirt. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and a faint, cool breeze had sprung up, rustling the new leaves in the oak tree. There was a chill entering the air as the suffocating heat of the day disappeared by degrees. He looked back at the house. It was quiet, the lights beginning to glow behind glass as night crept in. They were still in the living room. Julie had changed position, and now the unknown man thrust into her from behind. Both of them seemed to be laughing.

She’ll pay, son. She’ll pay soon enough. They all will.
Didn’t I tell you your time was gonna come?

Slowly, he became aware of heat against his chest as the cold breeze tugged at his clothing. He yanked down the v-neck of his sweater and exposed the amulet. It glowed a hot, blood red against his skin. He stared at it dumbly for a moment before understanding dawned.

Jeb Taylor was never meant to be normal; that much was obvious. He had another calling.

He was struggling now to keep his eyes in focus. The bar was almost empty, most of the people of White Falls still at the town meeting; Jeff McDonald, the town drunk (
the
other
town drunk
, Jeb thought, correcting himself with a bitter grin;
you could give him a run for his money
), occupied a booth in the far corner, and he was drooling over a
Jugs
magazine and eating pretzels from a small wooden bowl. Every once in a while he would look up, take a pull from a can of Black Label, and stare at the silent television screen above the bar with vacuous eyes, as if he were playing out a scene in his head. Something by the Eagles played quietly in the background.

And that was when his father walked in. Ronnie Taylor looked good, a little pale, but not at all dead. His hair was thick and black, swept back from his smooth forehead, his deeply hooded eyes sparkling like the depths of some moonlit pool, his cheeks glassy and white, almost transparent. “You look real sharp,” Jeb said. It was the best he could come up with under the circumstances, and seemed oddly appropriate. “What took you so long?”

His father did not answer at once. Johnny the bartender (who had just now returned from the town meeting) looked up, said, “Hmm?” and, getting no response, moved away. He did not seem at all concerned that a dead man was sitting in his bar. After a moment he disappeared into a back room.

Ronnie Taylor was grinning. Even his teeth glowed white, like those toothpaste commercials where everyone ran around looking like they had bars of soap crammed in their mouths.
“I had a long ways to come, boy. You don’t just pick yourself up off a slab and walk out. You got to pay your bills.”

Jeb thought about this as hard as he possibly could. He pictured his dead father under a sheet, suddenly sitting up in a roomful of corpses, paying his bills, and saying
adios
. Wandering over to a bored-looking teenage girl behind a counter snapping gum, saying, “Check, please.”

He looked around the bar to see if anyone else was watching them. But Johnny was still in the back room, and Jeff McDonald had put his head down on the table next to the magazine and was snoring lightly.

Something still wasn’t making sense. “But they burned you. I told them to. Cre-mated.” He had trouble saying the word.

“There’s ways to get out of that,” Ronnie said vaguely. “I’ll show you sometime.” He pointed to the whiskey bottle. “You gonna offer me a drink?”

Jeb reached over the bar and found a glass. He poured a drink for his dead father. Very, very carefully, his eyes squinted in concentration. It wouldn’t do to spill any of it, no sir. His daddy would be pissed off. Might even get out the belt. Jeb could remember the shine of the metal buckle as it whistled through the air. He shivered.

“So are you a ghost, or what?”

Ronnie clapped him on the back. “Son,” he said, “I’m whatever you want me to be. Now you gonna give me that drink?”

Jeb slid the glass down the bar. “That’s it,” Ronnie said when he had wrapped his fingers around it. “Oh, yes. It
has
been a while.” His fingernails were clean and very white, like his teeth. He grinned, drool running down his fine smooth chin, and raised the glass to his mouth.

Jeb watched his father close his eyes in appreciation as the amber liquid disappeared. He could see it running down his father’s throat, a darker color below his pearl-white skin. Ronnie Taylor’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he
swallowed. It was a fine Adam’s apple. Manly looking. As the whiskey went down, Ronnie’s cheeks gained some color, his fingernails began to glow pink.

“Why, I do believe you’re getting a hard-on just looking at me,” Ronnie said. He put the empty glass down on the bar and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Jeb remembered him doing that a long time ago at the kitchen table, and it was then that he knew for certain that this was his father after all.

“I knew you’d come,” he said, unable to keep the trembling excitement out of his voice. “I waited and I waited and sometimes it was hard but I knew you’d come back for me. We’re family, right?”

“Got that right. And family got to stick together. Bartender!”

Jeb looked up and saw with surprise that a new man stood behind the bar, a man in a dark suit with a face that would not come into focus.
You’re not Johnny
.

“Course not,” the man said cheerfully. “Johnny brought me up from Alabama. What’ll you have?”

Ronnie grinned again. “Good to see you again, Mart.”

“You too, Ronnie. Whiskey?”

“You bet. And one for my son.”

“You sure he’s old enough?”

Jeb looked at Mart fearfully, but a moment later the dark man laughed. “Just gettin’ a rise out of Ronnie, kid. Don’t you worry. I know how old you are. Just old enough, right?” He winked, and poured two more shots of whiskey.

They drank together. After a while Jeb noticed that the bar had gotten noisier. He looked around, and saw that Jeff McDonald had disappeared and been replaced by laughing couples and workmen and young teenagers and college kids with long hair, some of them drinking and talking, a few dancing near the jukebox. He didn’t recognize any of them, and that was strange, because he thought he knew most of Johnny’s customers. A couple of the college kids wore little round sunglasses, even though it was dark in the bar.

The bar
. He saw with amazement that Johnny’s looked practically brand new. Well, not quite
new
, but better than it used to look, anyway. The paint that had been chipped and faded a moment ago was now bright and fresh. The cheap plastic booths with the gray electrical tape over the rips had magically healed and shone under the soft lights. And the counter itself was dark, polished wood. He began to feel just a little bit afraid, as if all along he’d known it was just a dream he was having, but now it seemed to be getting out of control and outrunning him.

Jeb leaned over, forced his eyes to focus, and took Mart the bartender by the wrist. The man’s skin was cold and dry and very smooth. “What day is it?”

“Why, it’s Tuesday, son,” Mart said, still smiling genially as if this sort of thing happened all the time.
People coming
up out of nowhere, bars healing themselves, happens everyday
down South. Where you been?

Tuesday, of course. That was fine. But still: “What
year?
”

“Ronnie, I do believe your boy’s gone out to pasture,” Mart said. Then he looked at Jeb, and it seemed that his smile faltered, just a little, and his eyes went hard. For a moment, just a moment, they seemed to glow with a red fire. “1985, son. The year is 1985.”

“Oh,” Jeb said. He was currently having trouble making his mind work the way he wanted; the connections wouldn’t come. The year wasn’t quite right, but it
was
still a dream, wasn’t it? And yet it continued to go on and on and it seemed as if someone else was pulling the strings, and he began to think that deciding it was all a dream might be a very, very bad idea.

Mart’s skin felt like scales. Jeb released his grip and sank back on his seat. “The bar,” he muttered. “Looks like new.”

“Ain’t it beautiful, though?” Ronnie said. There were three empty glasses in front of him now, and he knocked back another. “Come on, boy, keep up. You don’t want ’em saying that the Taylor kid’s a pussy, do you?”

Jeb picked up his glass and drank the fiery liquid because damned if it wasn’t easier to just go along and not
rock the
boat
, and a little while later he began feeling pretty good in spite of himself, pretty laid back and cool. Drinking with his father, just like he’d always wanted. The bar was practically new, so what? Why did that have to matter?

Mart poured him another drink. “On the house. We like the looks of you in here, son. You belong here. Just like your daddy. His daddy before him, in fact. Long, full line. Good blood.”

Jeb smiled. That was true enough. He’d been waiting almost twenty years for someone to say he belonged. The amulet throbbed against his chest and there was no pain this time, just the slightest heat on his skin. Like standing a little too close to the fire, that was all.

The party went on around him, and people kept coming up to Ronnie and clapping him on the back, telling him how much they appreciated everything he’d done. When Jeb looked at his father, he began to see what he could become if he set his mind to it. “Power,” he whispered, dry-mouthed. It filled him until he thought he would burst; how had he ever lived without such a thing as this? Such a feeling of utter strength and control, as if nothing and no one on earth could touch him. He was a God.

Like father, like son.

Take your dreams by the balls, boy. Live forever
.

“We’re gonna have some fun,” Ronnie Taylor said. His little hooded reptile eyes gleamed like two coals; for a moment, there seemed to be someone else standing just over his shoulder, hundreds of dim, ghostly shapes filling the bar. “I’m talking
revenge
, son. We’re gonna bring this town to its knees. I got things to show you you won’t believe, and after we get done with them, I got something else. A surprise.”

“A surprise,” Jeb echoed. The amulet was pulsing, throbbing like a blood-filled heart, burning him. The pain was delicious. He could do anything, anything he wanted.

He wanted to tear White Falls apart.

“In time, boy,” Ronnie croaked. “First we gotta rattle a few cages. Take care of some old business.”

Jeb Taylor grinned. He could hardly wait.

Pat Friedman crouched in darkness, listening to the noises coming from downstairs. They were quieter now, but he heard them all the same.
Bastard
, he thought,
fucking fat
ugly bitch. Fucking cunt
. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto the hardwood floor of the closet, ran down underneath his arms, over his soft waist. What Julie called his lovehandles.
Oh, you bitch
. He gripped the barrel of the shotgun so hard he felt like his fingers would leave an impression.

Giggles, a soft sigh and a murmured
yes
from downstairs…

Pat had been crouching in the upstairs closet since returning from the town meeting. His knees throbbed, a dull ache had settled in his ankles, and his neck felt like a pair of red hot nails had been driven through the base of his skull. He saw spots floating in the darkness before his eyes, and spent most of the morning imagining what they might be. He had decided that one of them was his wife’s face, mouth open in that slutty way of hers; one of them was Jeb Taylor.

Just lately though, he thought he might be wrong. They had all begun to look like gravestones.

When he’d returned home, something had told him not to pull into the driveway. He still didn’t know quite why he’d done it, but that same something had told him to walk quietly to the side door, rather than the front, and let himself in without the slightest noise. And he’d heard her, heard what she was doing before he took two steps. Fucking another man in their house.
His
house. The nerve of them, doing it right there in his kitchen! Probably had a sandwich first.
Gotta feed the
bastard before he nails you, huh? Keep his energy up
.