Shivers 7 (4 page)

Bill and Jason disappear into the thicket.

Red Rover follows the boys.

* * *

It’s dark now.

No more royal purple or dark valentine red in the sky. Bill, Jason, and Red Rover are nested in a blackberry burrow that some animal—or some bum—must have abandoned. They stare up through a crosshatched roof of blackberry brambles, and the only thing they see that isn’t black is a ripe melon slice of moon.

The moon doesn’t provide much light, but it’s enough to reveal tangled vine shadows on Bill and Jason’s faces, enough to expose the terror in Red Rover’s gleaming eyes each time Mr. Rose calls his name.

So far the little terrier has been quiet. Just as quiet as the boys. So far...

But Mr. Rose is coming closer now.

“Red Rover... Red Rover... won’t you come over?’

The dog whines and Bill pulls him to his chest. Mr. Rose’s voice cuts through the blackberries the same way it cut through the cattails—high and keening, like a scythe. Forget Carol Ann’s ghost. Her dad’s voice is all it takes to frighten Bill more than he’s ever been frightened in his life.

Bill closes his eyes, but there’s no escape. He pictures Mr. Rose wandering around out there beneath the slivered moon, his face a mask of drying blood, his eyes hidden behind those blood-splattered sunglasses even in the dark of the night.

“Red Rover... Red Rover... won’t you come over...”

Bill’s eyes flash open. The dog whines. Bill grabs Red Rover’s muzzle. The little mutt’s shaking, his heart thudding against the crook of Bill’s elbow. The boy holds Red Rover tight and doesn’t let go, but he can’t stop the dog from whining.

“That mutt’s gonna give us away,” Jason says.

Bill knows that Jason is right, but there’s nothing he can do about it. Jason can’t run on his sliced-up foot. Bill can’t leave his friend behind. He can’t leave the dog, either. So all they can do is sit tight and hope that Mr. Rose doesn’t find them.

“Red Rover... Red Rover...”

The dog squirms away from Bill.

Red Rover barks.

Not far from the burrow, Mr. Rose laughs.

“That’s a good doggy,” he says.

* * *

Ten or fifteen feet away, something hits the blackberry vines. Bill figures that Mr. Rose probably has a broken branch or something. He’s literally beating the bushes, trying to flush them out.

“Red Rover!” Mr. Rose says. “C’mon, boy! Cheryl Ann’s waiting for you! You want to see her, don’t you?”

Red Rover whines again, and Bill’s hand tightens around the dog’s muzzle. Bill doesn’t feel like a detective anymore. He doesn’t want to solve any mysteries. In the dark under a melon slice of moon, he’s suddenly scared of everything, because everything he imagines seems thoroughly plausible and undisputedly real. Mr. Rose. Cheryl Ann’s ghost. His own shadow, hidden somewhere in a dark pocket of night. All of it boils up in his brain in a hundred wild imaginings, each one real enough to hurt him, each one real enough to
kill
him if he just sits there waiting—

Mr. Rose calls again. The branch hits another tangle of blackberry vines. Every fiber of Bill’s being tells him that he should run, get out of here as fast as he can, run as fast as his legs will carry him and never look back... but he can’t do that. Not with Jason the way he is... and not with the dog trembling in his arms.

So he doesn’t move a muscle and he peers through the vines, watching the deer run for a sign of Mr. Rose. Shadows creep out there in the night, and one of them might be Cheryl Ann’s father gripping a twisted branch in his hands, but Bill can’t be sure.

“Red Rover... Red Rover...”

This time, the voice comes from behind. Bill turns and stares at the back of the burrow, but the only thing he sees through the brambles is that ripe melon slice of a moon, and all he can think of is a scythe because that’s what Mr. Rose’s voice sounds like. He’s coming for them. He’s gonna
get
them. Kill them, just like they’re a couple of characters in Clue. And the cops’ll come out and find their bodies, the same way they found Cheryl Ann’s body.
It was Mr. Rose in the blackberry thicket with a scythe,
they’ll say, but none of it will matter because Bill and Jason will be dead—

Again, the cutting voice, but this time different words.

“I see you!”

Red Rover explodes from Bill’s arms. Toward the back of the burrow, a shadow darts through the brambles. It brushes Bill’s head, tries to grab a handful of hair, but Bill pulls away and rolls toward the burrow’s entrance where he bumps up against Red Rover, who’s barking his little head off.

“Let’s go!” Jason says, and he shoots out of the burrow, so scared he’s hardly limping at all.

Red Rover follows.

So does Bill.

* * *

Bill figures it’s just dumb luck that gets them out of the blackberries before Mr. Rose. Must have been that he was on another path that snaked around the backside of the burrow when he tried to grab Bill through the brambles. That path didn’t connect up with the deer run, so they managed to give Cheryl Ann’s dad the slip.

They take the lake trail. Bill and Jason and Red Rover. Soon they’re about halfway to the little scab of a beach. Bill can smell the lake, hear frogs croaking out in the cattails. He also hears Mr. Rose swearing as he thrashes around back there in the blackberry thicket, trying to find a way out.

Let him swear
, Bill thinks. He almost wants to laugh. His arms are scratched and his T-shirt is torn courtesy of his stay in the blackberries, but suddenly he’s not afraid anymore. Not of Mr. Rose. Not of the lake, with its cold black water and blankets of water lilies. Not of Cheryl Ann Rose’s ghost—

And now Bill does laugh. If he’s learned anything tonight, it’s that he shouldn’t be afraid of ghosts. No. It’s the living he should fear. The rest of it’s just make-believe. The rest of it’s not real.

Mr. Rose is real. Bill understands that now. The real ghosts are men like Cheryl Ann’s father. Men who can never bury their dead little girls. Men who are forever haunted by tragedy and tortured by regret and—

Up ahead, Jason trips and goes down hard. Bill sees a dark mound in the moonlight. There must be a big rock in the middle of the trail.

Only Bill doesn’t remember there being a rock in this place. He stops short of the mound. Red Rover heels at his side. Jason’s already getting up, dusting himself off.

Together, they look down. Neither one of them says a word, because there on the ground, exactly where he fell after being hit in the head by the rock that Bill threw, lies Mr. Rose.

He’s as still as the grave.

He doesn’t move a muscle.

His lips don’t part for a breath or a word.

Not even when his voice rings out from the blackberry thicket, cutting through the night like a scythe.

“Red Rover... Red Rover... won’t you come over?”

“Oh, God,” Jason says as he gapes at the dead man. “Oh... Jesus!”

And then another voice rises in the distance. It comes from the lake, soughing through the cattails like a cool evening breeze.

It’s a voice that once belonged to a little girl.

“Red Rover... Red Rover... won’t you come over?”

The little dog whines, shivering in the moonlight as the voices join in a duet.

“Red Rover... Red Rover...”

The boys stare down at the dead man.

Mr. Rose doesn’t move at all.

But he comes for them just the same.

Breakbone

Bill Pronzini

The dashboard clock read 7:30 when I pulled into the truck stop west of Tucumcari, New Mexico—and there he was, sitting on a bench outside the café. It was a hot July evening and I’d been on the road for nine hours and nearly seven hundred miles, but after dinner I figured I could make another hundred or more before I packed it in for the day. Pushing it because of the job with Burnside Chemicals but mainly because Karen was waiting in L.A. I hadn’t seen her in two weeks and I was hungry for her and she would be for me, too.

Right now it was food I was hungry for; I hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast. I filled the Audi’s tank and then pulled over into one of the parking slots near the café. On the walk from there to the entrance I had to pass by the guy sitting slumped on the bench.

He was the biggest man I’d ever seen outside a basketball arena. Close to seven feet tall, lean but not skinny; huge hands like a couple of fur-backed catcher’s mitts, the fingers gnarled and scarred from manual labor. Wearing a sweat-stained shirt, dusty Levi’s, and old, heavily scuffed boots. He was bent forward with the hands hanging down between his knees, his chin tipped toward his chest, his gaze on the small, battered duffel between his feet. He had a kind of heavy, bland face, and he looked hot and tired and forlorn, like a kid nobody wanted to have anything to do with. But he wasn’t a kid, exactly. Late twenties, I thought, a few years younger than me.

I went past him by a couple of steps, then stopped and turned back. There was just something about him. That forlorn look, I guess. Karen says I’m a sucker for strays, the lost and lonely in human and animal kingdoms both. I don’t deny it. Better that kind of person than the one who doesn’t give a damn.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but are you okay?”

He looked up. He had big, sad eyes, the irises the color of milk chocolate. “Hot,” he said. His voice was soft, a little dull.

“Sure is that. Why don’t you go inside? Sign there says it’s air-conditioned.”

“Can’t. Run out of money from my last job.”

“That’s too bad. You live around here?”

“No. Just passing.”

“How about your car? Got enough gas?”

“Don’t have a car,” he said.

“How’d you get here, then? Hitchhike?”

“Walked.”

“Walked? From where?”

“Town back there.”

“All the way from Tucumcari? That’s a lot of hot miles.”

“Wouldn’t nobody give me a ride.” He added in melancholy tones, “Won’t hardly ever.”

“Man, you must be exhausted. When did you eat last?”

“Yesterday sometime.”

Exhausted and starving. “Lot of people stop here,” I said. “Have you asked any of them? I mean…you know.”

“Don’t believe in it. Begging.”

I hesitated, but I just couldn’t walk away from a man in his condition. “How about a helping hand from a fellow traveler?”

“Huh?”

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll treat you to a cold drink and a sandwich.”

He blinked. “Do that for me? Why?”

“Why not? You’re hungry and so am I.”

“Nobody ever bought me nothing before.”

“First time for everything,” I said. “How about it?”

“Okay.”

I watched him unfold from the bench. God, he was big—almost twice my size. He towered over me; it was like looking up at a beanstalk giant, only one of the gentle type. We went into the café. The place was crowded, but there was one empty booth at the far wall. Heads turned and faces stared as the giant and I walked over to the booth and sat down. A few of them kept right on staring. He didn’t seem to notice.

A waitress brought over menus and some ice water. The big guy emptied his glass in one long slurp. She couldn’t help staring, either, her eyes round and her forehead washboarded as if he was some kind of sideshow freak. I didn’t open the menu; neither did he. He waited for me to order—a cheeseburger with fries and a large lemonade—and then said he’d have the same.

“My name’s Jack,” I said when the waitress moved away. “Jack Tobin. What’s yours?”

“Breakbone.”

It was my turn to blink. “How’s that again?”

“Breakbone. That’s what they call me.”

“That’s some name.”

“Not my real one. Kind of a nickname. On account of how big I am. And my hands—they’re real strong.”

“I believe it. Do me a favor—don’t shake with me.”

“Okay. Can I have your water?”

“Help yourself.”

One long swallow emptied my glass, too.

“So where are you headed, uh, Breakbone?” I asked him.

“Nowhere in partic’lar. Moving around, different places.”

“Looking for work?”

“Looking,” he said.

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Don’t matter. Any kind I can get.”

“Where’s your home, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Ain’t got one.”

“I mean originally. What part of the country?”

“Midwest.” He didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I got off the subject.

“California’s where I’m going,” I said. “Moving out there from Pennsylvania. I’ve got a good job waiting for me, much better than my old one and lucky to get it. I’m a research chemist.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My girl’s waiting, too. She’s been in L.A. two weeks now, setting up housekeeping for us. We’re getting married as soon as I settle into the new job—September, probably.”

“I never had a girl,” Breakbone said.

“That’s too bad. Every guy should have a girl. Unless he’s gay, of course.”

“I ain’t gay.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you were,” I said quickly, even though he didn’t sound annoyed or angry. “I’m sorry you never had a girl. One of these days maybe you will.”

“Naw,” he said. “They don’t like me. I’m too big.”

“Lot of big girls out there that like big men.”

“Not me.”

I let it go. Trying to hold a conversation with him wasn’t easy. His mind seemed to work in a slow and not quite linear fashion. Not that it mattered to me, but I wondered if he was mildly retarded.

We didn’t have much more to say to each other. The food came and he wolfed his, finishing everything on his plate before mine was half empty. Poor bastard, I thought. Probably the first decent meal, if you could call a greasy burger decent, he’d had in a long time. I was glad I’d decided to treat him to it.

I paid the bill and we went back out into what was left of the day’s heat. He stood looking past the gas pumps to Interstate 40 with that forlorn expression back on his face.

“What’re you going to do now?” I asked him.

“Dunno. Ranches around here ain’t hiring this time of year. Not me, anyways. Got a better chance of finding something in a town.”

“It’s a long way to the nearest one.”

“Don’t matter. I’m used to walking, sleeping out.”

I was still feeling sorry for him. “Well, look, Breakbone, I’ll give you a ride as far as Santa Rosa if you want. I’d stake you to a night’s lodging, too, but I’m short on funds right now. Enough for another meal’s the best I can do.”

He gave me a long, solemn look. “Do all that for me, too?”

“The original good Samaritan, that’s me. How about that ride?”

“Sure. Okay.”

We got into the Audi. He was so tall that he had to sit scrunched down with his duffel on the floor mat and his knees up against the dashboard, and at that the top of his head scraped the headliner. He didn’t have anything to say once we were underway. That was all right with me. Having to hold a conversation while I’m driving, particularly after an already long day behind the wheel, tends to distract me, even out in the middle of nowhere.

This was high desert country, pretty desolate, mostly flat with a few rolling hills and mesas in the background. Horse and cattle country, though how cattle could survive on the sparse grass was beyond me. Most of the terrain seemed to be barren except for patches of cactus and yucca and stunted juniper trees.

Traffic was light. We’d gone about ten miles and were making good time when an interchange appeared ahead. As we neared it, I noticed a guy with a backpack sitting on the grassy verge between the entrance ramp and the highway on this side. Another hitchhiker. It’s against the law to troll for rides on an interstate, but there’s always somebody ready and willing to defy laws and take chances.

Breakbone was looking out the side window at the hitchhiker as we rolled on past. He said suddenly, “Stop the car.”

“What? No way. I don’t pick up hitchers—”

“Stop the car.”

“—and even if I did, there’s not enough room in back—”

His body turned and one of his huge hands clamped down in a tight squeeze on my right knee. “Stop the car!”

It was like being caught in the iron jaws of a scoop shovel. I felt cartilage grind; pain shot all the way up into my groin. Reflex made me jam my left foot down so hard on the brake I nearly lost control of the car. The rear end fishtailed, wobbling, the skidding tires smoked and must have laid fifty feet of rubber before I managed to straighten out and then maneuver the Audi off onto the side of the highway. No other car had been close; if one had been….

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what’s the idea? You nearly caused an accident.”

He wasn’t listening to me. He had the passenger door open and was looking back, gesturing. In the rearview mirror I saw the hitchhiker running toward us, his backpack clutched against his chest. Young guy, nineteen or twenty; short and thin, with a long mop of blond hair and a heat-blotched face.

Breakbone got out and opened the rear door. The kid came to an abrupt stop, staring up at him. “Wow,” he said.

“Get in,” Breakbone said. “There’s enough room.”

“Hey, thanks, thanks a lot.” The kid squeezed himself into what little space there was on the rear seat, holding the backpack on his lap. “Man, that air-conditioning feels good,” he said. Then, to me through a friendly grin, “Thanks to you, too, mister. I didn’t think anybody was going to stop and I’d have to spent the night out there.”

“I almost didn’t.”

“Yeah, I saw. You sure made up your mind in a hurry.”

“Didn’t I, though.”

Breakbone was filling up the passenger seat again. He said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

I wanted to say something more to him in protest; my knee and leg were still smarting. But with the kid already in the car now, it didn’t seem to be worth making an issue of it. Over and done with and no real harm done. I put the car in gear and pulled back onto the highway.

We went a mile or so in silence. Then the kid said, “All this stuff back here. You guys moving somewhere?”

“Just me,” I said. “California.”

“I’m going to Phoenix. Well, Tempe. Arizona State University. I’m a student there. I don’t suppose you could take me that far? Or at least as far as Flagstaff if you’re staying on Forty?”

“Well….”

“I understand if you can’t. I’m grateful for any ride I can get, as far as I can get. My name’s Rob, by the way.”

“Jack.”

Breakbone didn’t offer his nickname.

It got quiet again. I could feel an edginess growing in me. It wasn’t the same having Breakbone along now, after that knee-squeezing business. I didn’t want him in the car anymore. Once we got to the outskirts of Santa Rosa, I’d stop and let him out. The kid, Rob, seemed to be all right; I
could
take him as far as Phoenix because my route plan was to swing down through there and pick up Interstate 10 into L.A. But I didn’t want him with me, either—no more company at all after Santa Rosa. Why had Breakbone forced me to stop for him? Compassion for a fellow traveler, I supposed, like I’d had compassion for him.

The quiet kept playing on my nerves. I turned on the radio, thinking: Music, news, call-in show—anything. The station I was tuned to was playing a song by Willie Nelson. Breakbone immediately reached over and turned it off.

“What’d you do that for?”

“Don’t like the radio playing.”

“Well, I do.”

“So do I,” the kid said. “Jazz is my thing, though. None of that country stuff.”

“Leave it off, Jack,” Breakbone said.

I didn’t argue with him. I wanted to, it was my car, dammit, but I didn’t.

There was something about the way he was sitting there, so damn big and Sphinx silent, those massive hands bulked together in his lap.

The miles piled up, fifteen or so. Dusk had settled; I switched the headlights on. How many more miles to L.A. and Karen? Only about eight-fifty now. And maybe another hundred closer before I called it a day. I could be with her sometime tomorrow night if I got an early start in the morning and drove straight through. I was even more eager to see her now. And it wasn’t just sex. It was her—her smile, her voice, the way she laughed, everything about her. I’d been in love before, but never the way I was in love with Karen….

Twilight was rapidly fading into darkness, the shadows long and clotted on the empty desert landscape. Night came down fast out here. It’d be full dark in another few minutes.

Another mile clicked off on the odometer. And then Breakbone put an end to the silence. “That exit up there, Jack,” he said. “Take it.”

I peered ahead. The exit, according to the sign, was to a secondary road that led to a couple of far-off towns I’d never heard of. There were no services there, just the off-ramp and sign and a crossroad stretching both ways across the desert flats.

“What for?”

“Take it.”

“Now listen—”

His big hairy paw dropped on my knee again, the stone-hard fingers digging in. Not with any pressure, not yet. “Take it.”

I slowed and took it.

“What’s going on?” Rob said from the back seat. He sounded sleepy; he must have been dozing.

“Turn right,” Breakbone said.

Don’t do it, I thought. But I didn’t even hesitate at the stop sign, just swung onto the secondary road heading east. “Where is it you want to go?”

“Keep driving.”

A mile, two miles. Full dark now, no moon, the black sky pricked with stars that seemed paler and more remote than usual. Up ahead, the headlights picked out the opening to a side road that branched off to the left. We’d almost reached it when Breakbone said, “Turn in that road.”

I still couldn’t make myself defy him. We rattled over a cattle guard. The narrow track was unpaved, dusty, rutted—some sort of backcountry ranch road. We bounced along at less than twenty through a grove of yucca trees. I didn’t dare go any faster.