Night Shift (13 page)

Jackson nodded. “Anything else?”

“Bat's blood . . . well, it's a big place. Lots of unlighted nooks and crannies. Bats seem likely, although I doubt if the management would admit to it. One could conceivably have been trapped in the mangler.”

Jackson tipped his head back and knuckled bloodshot eyes. “It fits . . . it all fits.”

“It does?”

“Yes. We can safely rule out the hand of glory, I think. Certainly no one dropped a hand into the ironer
before
Mrs. Frawley's death, and belladonna is definitely not indigenous to the area.”

“Graveyard dirt?”

“What do you think?”

“It would have to be a hell of a coincidence,” Hunton said. “Nearest cemetery is Pleasant Hill, and that's five miles from the Blue Ribbon.”

“Okay,” Jackson said. “I got the computer operator—who thought I was getting ready for Halloween—to run a positive breakdown of all the primary and secondary elements on the list. Every possible combination. I threw out some two dozen which were completely meaningless. The others fall into fairly clear-cut categories. The elements we've isolated are in one of those.”

“What is it?”

Jackson grinned. “An easy one. The mythos centers in South America with branches in the Caribbean. Related to voodoo. The literature I've got looks on the deities as strictly bush league, compared to some of the real heavies, like Saddath or He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named. The thing in that machine is going to slink away like the neighborhood bully.”

“How do we do it?”

“Holy water and a smidgen of the Holy Eucharist ought to do it. And we can read some of the Leviticus to it. Strictly Christian white magic.”

“You're sure it's not worse?”

“Don't see how it can be,” Jackson said pensively. “I don't mind telling you I was worried about that hand of glory. That's very black juju. Strong magic.”

“Holy water wouldn't stop it?”

“A demon called up in conjunction with the hand of glory could eat a stack of Bibles for breakfast. We would be in bad trouble messing with something like that at all. Better to pull the goddamn thing apart.”

“Well, are you completely sure—”

“No, but fairly sure. It all fits too well.”

“When?”

“The sooner, the better,” Jackson said. “How do we get in? Break a window?”

Hunton smiled, reached into his pocket, and dangled a key in front of Jackson's nose.

“Where'd you get that? Gartley?”

“No,” Hunton said. “From a state inspector named Martin.”

“He know what we're doing?”

“I think he suspects. He told me a funny story a couple of weeks ago.”

“About the mangler?”

“No,” Hunton said. “About a refrigerator. Come on.”

Adelle Frawley was dead; sewed together by a patient undertaker, she lay in her coffin. Yet something of her spirit perhaps remained in the machine, and if it did, it cried out. She would have known, could have warned them. She had been prone to indigestion, and for this common ailment she had taken a common stomach tablet called E-Z Gel, purchasable over the counter of any drugstore for seventy-nine cents. The side panel holds a printed warning: People with glaucoma must not take E-Z Gel, because the active ingredient causes an aggravation of that condition. Unfortunately, Adelle Frawley did not have that condition. She might have remembered the day, shortly before Sherry Ouelette cut her hand, that she had dropped a full box of E-Z Gel tablets into the mangler by accident. But she was dead, unaware that the active ingredient which soothed her heartburn was a chemical derivative of belladonna, known quaintly in some European countries as the hand of glory.

There was a sudden ghastly burping noise in the spectral silence of the Blue Ribbon Laundry—a bat fluttered madly for its hole in the insulation above the dryers where it had roosted, wrapping wings around its blind face.

It was a noise almost like a chuckle.

The mangler began to run with a sudden, lurching grind—belts hurrying through the darkness, cogs meeting and meshing and grinding, heavy pulverizing rollers rotating on and on.

It was ready for them.

When Hunton pulled into the parking lot it was shortly after midnight and the moon was hidden behind a raft of moving clouds. He jammed on the brakes and switched off the lights in the same motion; Jackson's forehead almost slammed against the padded dash.

He switched off the ignition and the steady thump-hiss-thump became louder. “It's the mangler,” he said slowly. “It's the mangler. Running by itself. In the middle of the night.”

They sat for a moment in silence, feeling the fear crawl up their legs.

Hunton said, “All right. Let's do it.”

They got out and walked to the building, the sound of the mangler growing louder. As Hunton put the key into the lock of the service door, he thought that the machine
did
sound alive—as if it were breathing in great hot gasps and speaking to itself in hissing, sardonic whispers.

“All of a sudden I'm glad I'm with a cop,” Jackson said. He shifted the brown bag he held from one arm to the other. Inside was a small jelly jar filled with holy water wrapped in waxed paper, and a Gideon Bible.

They stepped inside and Hunton snapped up the light switches by the door. The fluorescents flickered into cold life. At the same instant the mangler shut off.

A membrane of steam hung over its rollers. It waited for them in its new ominous silence.

“God, it's an ugly thing,” Jackson whispered.

“Come on,” Hunton said. “Before we lose our nerve.”

They walked over to it. The safety bar was in its down position over the belt which fed the machine.

Hunton put out a hand. “Close enough, Mark. Give me the stuff and tell me what to do.”

“But—”

“No argument.”

Jackson handed him the bag and Hunton put it on the sheet table in front of the machine. He gave Jackson the Bible.

“I'm going to read,” Jackson said. “When I point at you, sprinkle the holy water on the machine with your fingers. You say: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, get thee from this place, thou unclean. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“The second time I point, break the wafer and repeat the incantation again.”

“How will we know if it's working?”

“You'll know. The thing is apt to break every window in the place getting out. If it doesn't work the first time, we keep doing it until it does.”

“I'm scared green,” Hunton said.

“As a matter of fact, so am I.”

“If we're wrong about the hand of glory—”

“We're not,” Jackson said. “Here we go.”

He began. His voice filled the empty laundry with spectral echoes. “Turnest not thou aside to idols, nor make molten gods for yourself. I am the Lord thy God . . .” The words fell like stones into a silence that had suddenly become filled with a creeping, tomblike cold. The mangler remained still and silent under the fluorescents, and to Hunton it still seemed to grin.

“. . . and the land will vomit you out for having defiled it, as it vomited out nations before you.” Jackson looked up, his face strained, and pointed.

Hunton sprinkled holy water across the feeder belt.

There was a sudden, gnashing scream of tortured metal. Smoke rose from the canvas belts where the holy water had touched and took on writhing, red-tinged shapes. The mangler suddenly jerked into life.

“We've got it!” Jackson cried above the rising clamor. “It's on the run!”

He began to read again, his voice rising over the sound of the machinery. He pointed to Hunton again, and Hunton sprinkled some of the host. As he did so he was suddenly swept with a bone-freezing terror, a sudden vivid feeling that it had gone wrong, that the machine had called their bluff—and was the stronger.

Jackson's voice was still rising, approaching climax.

Sparks began to jump across the arc between the main motor and the secondary; the smell of ozone filled the air, like the copper smell of hot blood. Now the main motor was smoking; the mangler was running at an insane, blurred speed: a finger touched to the central belt would have caused the whole body to be hauled in and turned to a bloody rag in the space of five seconds. The concrete beneath their feet trembled and thrummed.

A main bearing blew with a searing flash of purple light, filling the chill air with the smell of thunderstorms, and still the mangler ran, faster and faster, belts and rollers and cogs moving at a speed that made them seem to blend and merge, change, melt, transmute—

Hunton, who had been standing almost hypnotized, suddenly took a step backward. “Get away!” he screamed over the blaring racket.

“We've almost got it!” Jackson yelled back. “Why—”

There was a sudden indescribable ripping noise and a fissure in the concrete floor suddenly raced toward them and past, widening. Chips of ancient cement flew up in a starburst.

Jackson looked at the mangler and screamed.

It was trying to pull itself out of the concrete, like a dinosaur trying to escape a tar pit. And it wasn't precisely an ironer anymore. It was still changing, melting. The 550-volt cable fell, spitting blue fire, into the rollers and was chewed away. For a moment two fireballs glared at them like lambent eyes, eyes filled with a great and cold hunger.

Another fault line tore open. The mangler leaned toward them, within an ace of being free of the concrete moorings that held it. It leered at them; the safety bar had slammed up and what Hunton saw was a gaping, hungry mouth filled with steam.

They turned to run and another fissure opened at their feet. Behind them, a great screaming roar as the thing came free. Hunton leaped over, but Jackson stumbled and fell sprawling.

Hunton turned to help and a huge, amorphous shadow fell over him, blocking the fluorescents.

It stood over Jackson, who lay on his back, staring up in a silent rictus of terror—the perfect sacrifice. Hunton had only a confused impression of something black and moving that bulked to a tremendous height above them both, something with glaring electric eyes the size of footballs, an open mouth with a moving canvas tongue.

He ran; Jackson's dying scream followed him.

When Roger Martin finally got out of bed to answer the doorbell, he was still only a third awake; but when Hunton reeled in, shock slapped him fully into the world with a rough hand.

Hunton's eyes bulged madly from his head, and his hands were claws as he scratched at the front of Martin's robe. There was a small oozing cut on his cheek and his face was splashed with dirty gray specks of powdered cement.

His hair had gone dead white.

“Help me . . . for Jesus' sake, help me. Mark is dead. Jackson is dead.”

“Slow down,” Martin said. “Come in the living room.”

Hunton followed him, making a thick whining noise in his throat, like a dog.

Martin poured him a two-ounce knock of Jim Beam and Hunton held the glass in both hands, downing the raw liquor in a choked gulp. The glass fell unheeded to the carpet and his hands, like wandering ghosts, sought Martin's lapels again.

“The mangler killed Mark Jackson. It . . . it . . . oh God, it might get out! We can't let it get out! We can't . . . we . . . oh—” He began to scream, a crazy, whooping sound that rose and fell in jagged cycles.

Martin tried to hand him another drink but Hunton knocked it aside. “We have to burn it,” he said. “Burn it before it can get out. Oh, what if it gets out? Oh Jesus, what if—” His eyes suddenly flickered, glazed, rolled up to show the whites, and he fell to the carpet in a stonelike faint.

Mrs. Martin was in the doorway, clutching her robe to her throat. “Who is he, Rog? Is he crazy? I thought—” She shuddered.

“I don't think he's crazy.” She was suddenly frightened by the sick shadow of fear on her husband's face. “God, I hope he came quick enough.”

He turned to the telephone, picked up the receiver, froze.

There was a faint, swelling noise from the east of the house, the way that Hunton had come. A steady, grinding clatter, growing louder. The living-room window stood half open and now Martin caught a dark smell on the breeze. An odor of ozone . . . or blood.

He stood with his hand on the useless telephone as it grew louder, louder, gnashing and fuming, something in the streets that was hot and steaming. The blood stench filled the room.

His hand dropped from the telephone.

It was already out.

THE BOOGEYMAN

“I came to you because I want to tell my story,” the man on Dr. Harper's couch was saying. The man was Lester Billings from Waterbury, Connecticut. According to the history taken from Nurse Vickers, he was twenty-eight, employed by an industrial firm in New York, divorced, and the father of three children. All deceased.

“I can't go to a priest because I'm not Catholic. I can't go to a lawyer because I haven't done anything to consult a lawyer about. All I did was kill my kids. One at a time. Killed them all.”

Dr. Harper turned on the tape recorder.

Billings lay straight as a yardstick on the couch, not giving it an inch of himself. His feet protruded stiffly over the end. Picture of a man enduring necessary humiliation. His hands were folded corpselike on his chest. His face was carefully set. He looked at the plain white composition ceiling as if seeing scenes and pictures played out there.

“Do you mean you actually killed them, or—”

“No.” Impatient flick of the hand. “But I was responsible. Denny in 1967. Shirl in 1971. And Andy this year. I want to tell you about it.”

Dr. Harper said nothing. He thought that Billings looked haggard and old. His hair was thinning, his complexion sallow. His eyes held all the miserable secrets of whiskey.

“They were murdered, see? Only no one believes that. If they would, things would be all right.”

“Why is that?”

“Because . . .”

Billings broke off and darted up on his elbows, staring across the room. “What's that?” he barked. His eyes had narrowed to black slots.

“What's what?”

“That door.”

“The closet,” Dr. Harper said. “Where I hang my coat and leave my overshoes.”

“Open it. I want to see.”

Dr. Harper got up wordlessly, crossed the room, and opened the closet. Inside, a tan raincoat hung on one of four or five hangers. Beneath that was a pair of shiny galoshes. The New York
Times
had been carefully tucked into one of them. That was all.

“All right?” Dr. Harper said.

“All right.” Billings removed the props of his elbows and returned to his previous position.

“You were saying,” Dr. Harper said as he went back to his chair, “that if the murder of your three children could be proved, all your troubles would be over. Why is that?”

“I'd go to jail,” Billings said immediately. “For life. And you can see into all the rooms in a jail. All the rooms.” He smiled at nothing.

“How were your children murdered?”

“Don't try to jerk it out of me!”

Billings twitched around and stared balefully at Harper.

“I'll tell you, don't worry. I'm not one of your freaks strutting around and pretending to be Napoleon or explaining that I got hooked on heroin because my mother didn't love me. I know you won't believe me. I don't care. It doesn't matter. Just to tell will be enough.”

“All right.” Dr. Harper got out his pipe.

“I married Rita in 1965—I was twenty-one and she was eighteen. She was pregnant. That was Denny.” His lips twisted in a rubbery, frightening grin that was gone in a wink. “I had to leave college and get a job, but I didn't mind. I loved both of them. We were very happy.

“Rita got pregnant just a little while after Denny was born, and Shirl came along in December of 1966. Andy came in the summer of 1969, and Denny was already dead by then. Andy was an accident. That's what Rita said. She said sometimes that birth-control stuff doesn't work. I think that it was more than an accident. Children tie a man down, you know. Women like that, especially when the man is brighter than they. Don't you find that's true?”

Harper grunted noncommittally.

“It doesn't matter, though. I loved him anyway.” He said it almost vengefully, as if he had loved the child to spite his wife.

“Who killed the children?” Harper asked.

“The boogeyman,” Lester Billings answered immediately. “The boogeyman killed them all. Just came out of the closet and killed them.” He twisted around and grinned. “You think I'm crazy, all right. It's written all over you. But I don't care. All I want to do is tell you and then get lost.”

“I'm listening,” Harper said.

“It started when Denny was almost two and Shirl was just an infant. He started crying when Rita put him to bed. We had a two-bedroom place, see. Shirl slept in a crib in our room. At first I thought he was crying because he didn't have a bottle to take to bed anymore. Rita said don't make an issue of it, let it go, let him have it and he'll drop it on his own. But that's the way kids start off bad. You get permissive with them, spoil them. Then they break your heart. Get some girl knocked up, you know, or start shooting dope. Or they get to be sissies. Can you imagine waking up some morning and finding your kid—your
son
—is a sissy?

“After a while, though, when he didn't stop, I started putting him to bed myself. And if he didn't stop crying I'd give him a whack. Then Rita said he was saying light' over and over again. Well, I didn't know. Kids that little, how can you tell what they're saying. Only a mother can tell.

“Rita wanted to put in a nightlight. One of those wall-plug things with Mickey Mouse or Huckleberry Hound or something on it. I wouldn't let her. If a kid doesn't get over being afraid of the dark when he's little, he never gets over it.

“Anyway, he died the summer after Shirl was born. I put him to bed that night and he started to cry right off. I heard

what he said that time. He pointed right at the closet when he said it. ‘Boogeyman,' the kid says. ‘Boogeyman, Daddy.'

“I turned off the light and went into our room and asked Rita why she wanted to teach the kid a word like that. I was tempted to slap her around a little, but I didn't. She said she never taught him to say that. I called her a goddamn liar.

“That was a bad summer for me, see. The only job I could get was loading Pepsi-Cola trucks in a warehouse, and I was tired all the time. Shirl would wake up and cry every night and Rita would pick her up and sniffle. I tell you, sometimes I felt like throwing them both out a window. Christ, kids drive you crazy sometimes. You could kill them.

“Well, the kid woke me at three in the morning, right on schedule. I went to the bathroom, only a quarter awake, you know, and Rita asked me if I'd check on Denny. I told her to do it herself and went back to bed. I was almost asleep when she started to scream.

“I got up and went in. The kid was dead on his back. Just as white as flour except for where the blood had . . . had sunk. Back of the legs, the head, the a—the buttocks. His eyes were open. That was the worst, you know. Wide open and glassy, like the eyes you see on a moosehead some guy put over his mantel. Like pictures you see of those gook kids over in Nam. But an American kid shouldn't look like that. Dead on his back. Wearing diapers and rubber pants because he'd been wetting himself again the last couple of weeks. Awful, I loved that kid.”

Billings shook his head slowly, then offered the rubbery, frightening grin again. “Rita was screaming her head off. She tried to pick Denny up and rock him, but I wouldn't let her. The cops don't like you to touch any of the evidence. I know that—”

“Did you know it was the boogeyman then?” Harper asked quietly.

“Oh, no. Not then. But I did see one thing. It didn't mean anything to me then, but my mind stored it away.”

“What was that?”

“The closet door was open. Not much. Just a crack. But I knew I left it shut, see. There's dry-cleaning bags in there. A kid messes around with one of those and bango. Asphyxiation. You know that?”

“Yes. What happened then?”

Billings shrugged. “We planted him.” He looked morbidly at his hands, which had thrown dirt on three tiny coffins.

“Was there an inquest?”

“Sure.” Billings eyes flashed with sardonic brilliance. “Some back-country fuckhead with a stethoscope and a black bag full of Junior Mints and a sheepskin from some cow college. Crib death, he called it! You ever hear such a pile of yellow manure? The kid was three years old!”

“Crib death is most common during the first year,” Harper said carefully, “but that diagnosis has gone on death certificates for children up to age five for want of a better—”

“Bullshit!”
Billings spat out violently.

Harper relit his pipe.

“We moved Shirl into Denny's old room a month after the funeral. Rita fought it tooth and nail, but I had the last word. It hurt me, of course it did. Jesus, I loved having the kid in with us. But you can't get overprotective. You make a kid a cripple that way. When I was a kid my mom used to take me to the beach and then scream herself hoarse. ‘Don't go out so far! Don't go there! It's got an undertow! You only ate an hour ago! Don't go over your head!' Even to watch out for sharks, before God. So what happens? I can't even go near the water now. It's the truth. I get the cramps if I go near a beach. Rita got me to take her and the kids to Savin Rock once when Denny was alive. I got sick as a dog. I know, see? You can't overprotect kids. And you can't coddle yourself either. Life goes on. Shirl went right into Denny's crib. We sent the old mattress to the dump, though. I didn't want my girl to get any germs.

“So a year goes by. And one night when I'm putting Shirl into her crib she starts to yowl and scream and cry. ‘Boogeyman, Daddy, boogeyman, boogeyman!'

“That threw a jump into me. It was just like Denny. And I started to remember about that closet door, open just a crack when we found him. I wanted to take her into our room for the night.”

“Did you?”

“No.” Billings regarded his hands and his face twitched. “How could I go to Rita and admit I was wrong? I
had
to be strong. She was always such a jellyfish . . . look how easy she went to bed with me when we weren't married.”

Harper said, “On the other hand, look how easily
you
went to bed with
her.
”

Billings froze in the act of rearranging his hands and slowly turned his head to look at Harper. “Are you trying to be a wise guy?”

“No, indeed,” Harper said.

“Then let me tell it my way,” Billings snapped. “I came here to get this off my chest. To tell my story. I'm not going to talk about my sex life, if that's what you expect. Rita and I had a very normal sex life, with none of that dirty stuff. I know it gives some people a charge to talk about that, but I'm not one of them.”

“Okay,” Harper said.

“Okay,” Billings echoed with uneasy arrogance. He seemed to have lost the thread of his thought, and his eyes wandered uneasily to the closet door, which was firmly shut.

“Would you like that open?” Harper asked.

“No!” Billings said quickly. He gave a nervous little laugh. “What do I want to look at your overshoes for?

“The boogeyman got her, too,” Billings said. He brushed at his forehead, as if sketching memories. “A month later. But something happened before that. I heard a noise in there one night. And then she screamed. I opened the door real quick—the hall light was on—and . . . she was sitting up in the crib crying and . . . something
moved.
Back in the shadows, by the closet. Something
slithered”

“Was the closet door open?”

“A little. Just a crack.” Billings licked his lips. “Shirl was screaming about the boogeyman. And something else that sounded like ‘claws.' Only she said ‘craws,' you know. Little kids have trouble with that ‘l' sound. Rita ran upstairs and asked what the matter was. I said she got scared by the shadows of the branches moving on the ceiling.”

“Crawset?” Harper said.

“Huh?”

“Crawset . . . closet. Maybe she was trying to say ‘closet.' “

“Maybe,” Billings said. “Maybe that was it. But I don't think so. I think it was ‘claws.'” His eyes began seeking the closet door again. “Claws, long claws.” His voice had sunk to a whisper.

“Did you look in the closet?”

“Y-yes.” Billings' hands were laced tightly across his chest, laced tightly enough to show a white moon at each knuckle.

“Was there anything in there? Did you see the—”

“I didn't see anything!”
Billings screamed suddenly. And the words poured out as if a black cork had been pulled from the bottom of his soul: “When she died I found her, see. And she was black. All black. She swallowed her own tongue and she was just as black as a nigger in a minstrel show and she was staring at me. Her eyes, they looked like those eyes you see on stuffed animals, all shiny and awful, like live marbles, and they were saying it got me, Daddy, you let it get me, you killed me, you helped it kill me . . .” His words trailed off. One single tear very large and silent, ran down the side of his cheek.

“It was a brain convulsion, see? Kids get those sometimes. A bad signal from the brain. They had an autopsy at Hartford Receiving and they told us she choked on her tongue from the convulsion. And I had to go home alone because they kept Rita under sedation. She was out of her mind. I had to go back to that house all alone, and I know a kid don't just get convulsions because their brain frigged up. You can scare a kid into convulsions. And I had to go back to the house where
it
was.”

He whispered, “I slept on the couch. With the light on.”

“Did anything happen?”

“I had a dream,” Billings said. “I was in a dark room and there was something I couldn't . . . couldn't quite see, in the closet. It made a noise . . . a squishy noise. It reminded me of a comic book I read when I was a kid.
Tales from the Crypt,
you remember that? Christ! They had a guy named Graham Ingles; he could draw every god-awful thing in the world—and some out of it. Anyway, in this story this woman drowned her husband, see? Put cement blocks on his feet and dropped him into a quarry. Only he came back. He was all rotted and black-green and the fish had eaten away one of his eyes and there was seaweed in his hair. He came back and killed her. And when I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought that would be leaning over me. With claws . . . long claws . . .”