Night Monsters (5 page)

•     •     •

Terry slouched at the counter contemplating a sooty ashtray. He’d lost interest in the sugar dispenser, the mismatched salt and pepper shakers, and the ketchup and mustard squeezies.

He was hungry, but the shriveled pastries in the Plexiglas case discouraged him from eating anything in The Den. He mopped his face and neck, this time with napkins from an overstuffed chrome dispenser. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with that flu.

The slender hands on the Coca-Cola clock over the juice machine signaled the passing of midnight. He sighed and swiveled on the stool.

Where could Slim be? Where was anyone? He peered out the front window at the street. Other than Slim, Terry had seen no one—not even a police cruiser on patrol—since he’d left work. So strange.

He couldn’t sit here forever. Important people took action.

Maybe Slim was sleeping somewhere in the back. Terry skirted the counter and stopped to switch off the Bunn Omatic coffee maker. Both glass pots were crusted with blistered sludge that smelled nasty.

He found no breakroom, and the storeroom, stuffed to the gills like the office, was void of life.

Terry half expected to find Slim in the john, stenching up the place, but the restroom was empty, save for the scuzzy sink and toilet.

Suddenly, he felt very uneasy, as if he wouldn’t find a phone, never make his way home. He shook it off and continued his search.

Crossing the back of the kitchen, Terry noticed brown bags strewn outside the walk-in freezer. French Fried Idaho Potatoes. And cardboard tubs oozing melted ice cream.

He pressed his ear to the corrugated surface of the freezer door. It was cool on his face. He heard nothing but the muffled hum of the refrigeration unit. He yanked the chrome handle, and the door chunked open. Frost breathed out at his feet.

Terry stepped into the blessed cold, leaving the door half-open. It was dark inside, except for the pale trapezoid on the floor cast by the hall light through the open door.

He smelled it then, that sickening stench of decaying flesh. Choking, he fumbled his handkerchief from his pocket and covered his face.

Then it struck him: Slim had been trapped here in the cold while he’d sat outside, twiddling his thumbs. He squinted at someone sprawled on the back floor. He bent forward to see if Slim was still alive.

It wasn’t Slim. It was a pimply-faced kid in checked food service pants and a bib apron spattered with stains. Strings of orange hair veiled opaque blue eyes.

Where were the kid’s hands?

“Thought you’d never find me.” The voice was wet and croupy.

Terry’s heart began to slam. Then he noticed the row of legs behind the kid’s body. He looked up and froze.

A dozen black eyes glinted in the door light. Below them were gnashing maws, gnawing, gnawing, as if devouring fried chicken. But those weren’t chicken bones.

Terry gasped through his handkerchief and began to retch. With his free hand he groped for the door.

An icy hand covered his.

He pitched sideways and crashed into metal shelves.

Slim reached for the door with a long white hand, light glaring off his head.

The pale trapezoid shrank to nothing on the floor, and the door handle latched, leaving them in darkness with the whir of the freezer and the snacking of eaters.

“Gotta keep cool,” Slim rasped, “meat spoils easy in this heat.”

Terry scrambled off the floor and slammed the plunger. The door popped open.

Slim grabbed at Terry’s hair, but Terry broke free and careened into the kitchen where he grabbed a heavy-handled chef’s knife from a steel rack. He hurtled through the seating area, toppling a table and chair. He burst out the front door onto Smithfield, glancing back only once to see Slim and company lurching toward him and, farther down the street, others, inexorably marching toward the diner.

Grasping the knife, Terry knew he must stop them. Law enforcement had obviously failed. But he had to get away, regroup, make a plan. It was important—
important
, dammit. Maybe he couldn’t stop them all, but he would be the first to do his part. It would make a difference, it had to.

Terry dashed onto the Boulevard of the Allies where an oncoming car nearly struck him. Tires screeched, and he saw Melinda, wide-eyed and incredulous, behind the wheel of their Saturn coupe.

He fumbled open the passenger door and jumped in as Slim’s band reached the corner.

“Thank God you’re here. Take off, take off!”

“What on earth is going on?” Melinda asked. “Are those guys chasing you?”

“Just go,
GO
!”

Looking shocked, Melinda floored it, leaving the snackers in the middle of the street, reaching for them. In a few moments, Terry could no longer see Slim’s egglike head through the rear window.

He soughed out a breath and sank down in the seat, still grasping the chef’s knife. “How did you know to come?”

“I got worried. The phone rang once, but no one was there. Called you at work, and no answer. Then the phone quit working. You never have any money on you, so I thought I’d come looking for you. What happened?”

“I don’t know if I can explain. I’ll . . . tell you later. Right now, I’ve got to make a plan.”

“What kind of a plan? I’m in no mood for a crazy scheme—I feel like crap.”

As they hurtled across Grant Street under the sickly yellow streetlight, Melinda began to cough wetly.

As despair gave way to determination, Terry tightened his grip on the knife.

GTO Judge

by
Lee Allen Howard
 

T
he convertible materialized from another dimension. With paint so dark, anyone could miss it in the night, were it not for the burning hood scoops. Cold October air rushed through the spoiler and left in its wake the rancid stench of death.

Inside, three young men pale as moonlight watched the blue spray of headlights search the country road.

•     •     •

Halloween night was cold and overcast, but patches of star-splattered sky peeked through the clouds above the cornfield. Wind rustled dead tassels under the sharp crescent moon. Kids were out roaming and haunting, collecting candy or causing mischief.

Too old for costumes and candy, yet too young to drive, fifteen-year-old Justin followed his friend Drew up the leaf-strewn country road in the darkness. They toted grocery bags filled with field corn they had shelled off the cob earlier. Drew had tried to convince him that corning cars would be the time of their lives.

“What do we do after we throw the corn?” Justin asked.

“Hope it actually hits the car. If it does, we wait.”

“What if it stops and someone gets out?”

Drew turned and walked backwards up the road. “They don’t, usually. But sometimes . . .”

“What then?”

Drew grinned, scrubbing his stocking cap around his stringy red hair. “Run like hell.”

Justin laughed, but out here in the middle of nowhere, in the cold and the dark, he was having second thoughts.

Drew was always so bold, so fearless, and Justin wanted to be like him. Yet what if they corned some old lady and scared her so bad she had a heart attack? What if they startled some mom with a baby and she ran off the road? Or what if they corned an unmarked cop car? That’s all he needed: a juvenile record. Every year, kids got busted for Halloween pranks, and he had no desire to be one of them.

Headlights painted the electric wires, the crown of the hill before them.

“Here comes a car.” Drew mounted the roadside bank.

Justin followed him into the corn stalks where they crouched, waiting for the oncoming car. He reached in his bag for a handful of kernels.

The vehicle crested the hill. It was a late model Lincoln, moving fast. They sprang to their feet and threw the corn, but the car slipped by and the kernels landed on the road behind it.

“We weren’t ready,” Drew said.

“Too fast.” But Justin was relieved they had missed.

They squatted again and soon saw headlights approaching. As the car topped the hill, a plane of light cut through the stalks over their heads.

Drew elbowed him. “Get ready.”

“Now?” Justin tensed.

“Not yet—timing’s everything. Steady . . . steady . . .
now
!”

Arms cocked, they rose and flung corn at the putting Civic. Yellow kernels sailed smoothly through the black and rattled over the windshield and roof.

The car swerved and slowed, then quickly accelerated.

“Score!” Drew said. “See? Nothin’ to it.”

Justin’s heart galloped under his heavy coat. He snickered, exhilarated with the thrill. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

They crouched again, and Justin watched his breath frost the night air. The cold made his braces ache. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

He spotted headlights on the horizon. “Another one’s coming.”

They waited until the vehicle topped the hill. As the pickup came closer, Justin relished the glare of the lights, the roar of the engine, the hum of the tires. His stomach quivered.

“Ready?” Drew said. “Now!”

They launched more corn that danced off the windshield. The GMC screeched to a halt and the driver’s door flew open.

“You rotten punks!” A burly man clambered from the truck.

“God, he’s got—” Drew took off.

Justin chased him through the corn. Mud pulled at his feet and stalks snatched at his coat sleeves. Drew stopped abruptly. Justin slammed into him, almost knocking him over.

“Watch it, stupid!” Drew peered back through the corn.

“What are you doing?”

“Seein’ if he’s following us.”

“
Following
us?”

The shot crashed like thunder through the corn.

Drew dropped to a squat and pulled Justin down by the hem of his coat. They flattened themselves between the rows. Justin bit a knuckle to keep his teeth from chattering.

Two more blasts ripped through the corn, each one closer. Justin choked back a scream.

The stalks crackled only a few yards from where he and Drew were hiding. The smoking barrel of the shotgun and the bill of the man’s cap stood silhouetted against the charcoal sky, but the man was looking off to their left. Justin held his breath and lay motionless, hoping the guy wouldn’t see them.

“You think it’s real funny,” the man said, “but people get killed pullin’ tricks like this. Next time, I’ll hunt you down!”

Grumbling, he turned and stomped back to his truck. When the door slammed and the engine revved, Drew broke into hysterics. His laughter echoed across the countryside.

“That was great!” Drew pounded him on the back.

Justin shoved his arm away. “We could’ve gotten killed, you idiot.”

“Ya big wuss, he was just trying to scare us, that’s all. He’d’ve never shot us.”

“Says you.”

“
Wuss
.” Drew stood and brushed himself off. “C’mon. Let’s get back down there—here comes another car.”

Reluctantly, Justin followed him through the corn to the edge of the road.

“People get killed pullin’ tricks like this,” Drew growled, mocking the man.

Justin hunkered behind his bag of corn. He said nothing more to Drew, but he’d had enough of corning cars. If Drew wanted to risk his life, he could do it alone. Yet Justin didn’t want Drew to think he was a wuss. One more car and then he would head home.

Low-slung and black, the car approached at a crawl.

“Look,” Justin said, “the headlights are blue.”

They muttered between themselves, trying to identify the model of the car.

“Nineteen-sixty-nine Pontiac GTO,” Drew said.

“Nope, it’s a seventy. It’s got exposed headlights. And it’s not just a GTO, it’s a Judge. See the spoiler?”

Justin was positive it was a 1970 GTO Judge, of which only 168 convertibles were produced. He knew because his dad had given him a model of one last Christmas. He’d painstakingly assembled it and displayed it on the shelf above his bed. Gran Turismo Omologato, the coolest car ever made. But why would anyone take such an awesome car out on Halloween night when it could get egged or soaped—or corned?

Justin peeked through the ragged stalks at the oncoming Judge. The windows were tinted black, and its surface reflected no light, as if painted with darkness. It made Justin’s skin crawl.

A red glow smoldered under the hood scoops, yet no exhaust plumed from behind it.

“Ready?” Drew hefted a handful of corn.

Justin dug a fistful and squeezed. The hard kernels bit into the palm of his hand. But then he released his grip, letting the corn trickle to the ground.

Drew tossed his corn at the windshield—or where the windshield should have been. When the corn hit the car, there was no clatter. The kernels just disappeared—faded into the car and were gone.

The car stopped abruptly. No squealing tires, no engine rumble. The doors remained closed. The convertible top jerked back silently, revealing the pale figures of three guys not much older than Justin and Drew.

Justin knew he should run, but something was different about these guys, and he couldn’t break his gaze.

As if linked to the same cog of some hidden machine, the guys’ heads turned together toward the corn. When their eyes met Justin’s, a chill shot through him. Were they wearing masks? Makeup? Whatever it was, it sure looked gruesome.

They clambered noiselessly from the vehicle. Wispy black and white beings, they were like guys climbing out of an old photograph.

When they approached the bank, Drew pushed Justin, and they scrambled through the corn patch. Justin took the lead this time. He couldn’t shake the image of their swiveling heads, their shining eyes like jewels set in gypsum.

Who were they? Did they have guns? Would they fire?

He ran as fast as he could, but every time he looked over his shoulder, it seemed their pursuers were drawing closer. A corn stalk sliced his face. He ducked and kept going. Drew followed close behind.

Glancing back, Justin saw the three figures marching nearer, clawing the chill air, reaching for them. Was this some kind of sick prank? He dodged a mudhole and kept running.