Summer of Night (49 page)

She relented. They tiptoed down the hall together, pushing open the dark mahogany door as carefully as they could. It did not squeak.

The smell rolled out of the room even before the blast of superheated air made Mike stagger a step backward. The smell was like the stench from the Rendering Truck and the inside of one of those tunnels, only worse, riding on the waves of hot, stuffy air in the darkened room. Mike lifted his hand to his mouth and nose.

"We keep the windows closed," Mrs. McCafferty said a bit apologetically. "He's had the chills so bad the last two nights."

"The smell…" managed Mike, close to being ill now.

The housekeeper frowned at him. "The medicine you mean? I change the linen every day… Does that little bit of medicine smell bother you?"

Medicine smell? Mike thought that it was a medicine smell if you made medicine out of dead and rotting bodies. It was a medicine smell if you counted the coppery scent of blood and the stench of week-old decay as medicinal. He looked at Mrs. McM. She obviously didn't smell it. Is it in my mind? Mike stepped closer, hand still over his face, blinking into the darkness, fully expecting to see a rotting corpse on the bed.

Father C. looked bad, but he wasn't a rotting corpse. Not quite. But the young priest obviously was very, very sick: his eyes were closed but sunken in pools of blue-black, his lips were white and cracked as if he had been out in a desert for days, his skin glowed-not with the healthy sheen of sunburn, but with the radioactive internal glow of the most intense fever-his hair was matted and spikey, and his hands were curled on his chest like animal claws. Father C."s mouth was open wide and a thin line of drool ran down onto his pajama collar and his breathing rattled in his throat like loose stones. He didn't look much like a priest at that moment.

"Enough," whispered Mrs. McCafferty, shooing Mike toward the stairs.

It had been enough. Mike pedaled toward Mrs. Moon's so fast that the wind brought tears to his eyes.

She was dead.

He'd expected it when he knocked on the screen door and there was no answer. He'd known it when he'd stepped into the small, dark parlor and wasn't instantly surrounded by her cats.

He knew that Miss Moon, the librarian, usually walked over from her 'apartment'-actually a floor she rented in a big old house on Broad that she shared with Mrs. Grossaint, the fourth-grade teacher-to have breakfast with her mother around eight. It wasn't quite seven-thirty now.

Mike moved from room to room in the small house, feeling the same nausea he'd had at the rectory. Quit being so weird. She went out walking early. The cats went with her. He knew that the cats wouldn't be caught dead outside the small, white frame house. OK, the cats ran off in the night and she went hunting for them. Or maybe Miss Moon finally took Mrs. M. to the Oak Hill Home in the past couple of days. It's past time. That was the logical answer. Mike knew that it wasn't the right one.

He found her on the tiny landing at the head of the stairs. The second floor was small-big enough just for Mrs. Moon's bedroom and a minuscule bathroom-and the landing was barely large enough to hold the small body.

Mike crouched on the top step, his heart pounding with such ferocity that it threatened to knock him off balance and tumble him back down the stairs. Except for the funeral of his paternal grandpa years earlier, he had never seen a dead body… if one did not count the Soldier. Now Mike stared with a terrible mixture of sadness, horror, and curiosity.

She'd been dead long enough for her hands and arms to go rigid: the left one was crooked around the banister as if she had fallen and had been on the verge of pulling herself back up, the right hand rose vertically from the green carpet with the fingers curled as if clawing the air… or warding off something terrible.

Mrs. Moon's eyes were open… ·. Mike realized that of all the hundreds of dead people he'd seen while watching other people's TVs, usually Dale's, none of the corpses ever had their eyes open… but Mrs. Moon's were so wide that they seemed to be bulging from their sockets. There was no question that she could see anything; Mike looked at the glazed and cloudy orbs and thought This is what dead is.

The liver marks on her face stood out almost three-dimen-sionally because of the blood drained away from the skin. Her neck was tense even in death, the muscles and tendons of her throat corded and stretched as if to the point of snapping from tension. She was wearing a quilted robe over some sort of pink nightgown, and her bony legs jutted straight out as if she'd fallen straight-legged and stiff, like a comic doing a pratfall in a silent film. One pink, fluffy slipper had come off. The old lady had painted her toenails the same color as the slipper, but that just made her wrinkled, warty, knotted foot look all the more bizarre, staring skyward with its old-lady toes.

Mike leaned forward, touched Mrs. Moon's left hand gingerly, and snatched his hand back. She was very cold, despite the intense heat of the house. He forced himself to look at the most terrible part of all this-her expression.

Mrs. Moon's mouth was open very, very wide, as if she had died while screaming. Her dentures had come loose and hung in the dark cavity like some bright and alien piece of plastic that had fallen in from somewhere else. The lines of her face had been molded and rearranged in a sculpture of pure terror.

Mike turned away and thumped down the carpeted stairs on his rear end, too shaky to rise to his feet. There had been only the slightest hint of decay in the air, like flowers that had died and been left in a sealed car on a hot day. Nothing as bad as the rectory.

Whoever killed her might still be in the house. Might be waiting behind the bedroom door up there.

Mike didn't stand to look or run. He had to sit there for a minute. There was a very loud noise in his ears, as if the crickets had started up again in the daylight, and he realized that small black spots were dancing in the periphery of his vision. He lowered his head between his knees, rubbed his cheeks hard.

Miss Moon'II be here in a few minutes. She'll find her mother like this.

Mike wasn't crazy about the spinsterish librarian-she'd once asked Mike why he even came by the library if he was so slow that he'd flunked fourth grade. Mike had grinned at her and said he was with friends-it had been true that day-but for some reason her comment had hurt him for many nights after that, in those seconds before drifting off to sleep.

Still, nobody deserves to find her mother like this.

Mike knew that if he were Duane, or maybe even Dale, he'd think of some clever boy-detective things to do, find some clues or something-he did not doubt for a second that the same… force… that had killed Duane and his uncle had murdered Mrs. Moon-but all Mike could think to do was clear his throat and call, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Here kitty."

No movement from the upstairs bedroom or bathroom-both doors were slightly ajar-and no motion from the shadows in the kitchen or back hall.

Standing on shaky legs, Mike forced himself to go up the stairs, to stay standing this time, and to look down one final time at Mrs. Moon. She was even tinier and older looking from this angle. Mike had the powerful urge to remove the loose dentures from her gaping mouth so she wouldn't choke. Then he imagined that snapping tortoise jaw coming up, the beak of a mouth snapping down, and his hand caught in the corpse's mouth as the dead eyes blinked and fixed on him…

Stop it, dipshit. When Mike cursed, he often heard Jim Harlen's voice in his mind supplying the vocabulary. Right now Harlen's mental voice was telling him to get the fuck out of the house.

Mike raised his right hand in the motion he'd watched Father Cavanaugh perform a thousand times, and blessed the old lady's body, making the sign of the cross over her. He knew that Mrs. Moon wasn't Catholic, but if he'd known the words to the ritual, Mike would have performed the Last Rites at that second.

Instead, he said a short and silent prayer and then stepped to the slightly open door to the bedroom. The door was ajar just far enough to allow him to get his head in without touching the wood of the door or frame.

The cats were there. Many of the torn and shredded little corpses were lying on the carefully made bed; some had been impaled on three of the four bedposts; the heads of several more of the cats were lined up on Mrs. Moon's dresser next to her brushes and bottles of perfume and hand lotion. One cat, a tawny one that Mike remembered as the old lady's favorite, hung from the beaded chain of the overhead light; he had one blue eye and one yellow eye, and both stared at Mike every time the surprisingly long body revolved in its slow and silent turning.

Mike slammed down the stairs and was almost to the back door when he stopped, his throat burning with the urge to vomit. I can't let Miss Moon come in and find this. He had only minutes, perhaps less.

The old antique against the parlor wall was some sort of writing desk. Lavender stationery lay handy; Mike lifted an old-fashioned nibbed pen, dipped it in ink, and wrote in huge, capital letters: DO NOT COME IN! CALL POLICE!

He didn't know if wiping the pen and ink lid would get fingerprints off, so he stuck them in his pocket, set the note between the frame and screen where anyone coming to the door would see it first thing, opened the door with his t-shirt around his hand, brushed the outer knob as he closed the door from the outside, and then jumped the azaleas and irises, leaped over the lower of the two birdbaths and the low hedge, and was in the alley behind the Somersets' house, running toward home at full speed and thanking heaven for the thick foliage that turned the alley into a tunnel all of its own.

He climbed into the highest level of the treehouse above Depot Street, sitting there concealed in the foliage, shaking hard, then the stem of the pen started poking into his thigh-thank God he'd had the minimal brains to stick it in with the nib pointed out or he'd have a huge ink stain on his jeans now, he could see the headline dimwit local murderer INCRIMINATES SELF WITH INKSTAIN-SO Mike Stuck both pen and lid in a natural crack in the wood and hid them behind some leaves he plucked from nearby branches.

It was possible that someone could find them in the fall when the leaves turned and fell, but Mike figured that he would worry about that in the fall. If any of us live that long.

He sat with his back to the large bole of the tree, hearing the occasional rumble of traffic on the street thirty feet below and the soft scrape of his sister Kathleen playing hopscotch by herself on the sidewalk, and he thought.

At first Mike tried to think through things just to rid his mind of the terrible images he had seen already this hot and beautiful morning, but then he realized that he would never be rid of them-Father C."s fevered breathing, Mrs. Moon's breathless gape of a mouth-so he put his fear and adrenaline to work trying to come up with a plan.

Mike sat in the treehouse for almost three hours. Early on, he heard cars stopping down the block, then the howl of a siren-so rare in Elm Haven-and the babble of adult voices from a block away, and he knew that the authorities had come for Mrs. M. But Mike was deep in thought by then, turning his plan over and over like a baseball being inspected for scratches or missed stitches.

It was late morning by the time Mike came down from the treehouse. His legs had cramped from sitting on the small platform for so long, there was sap on the back of his jeans and t-shirt, but he did not notice. He found his bike and rode to Dale's house.

Both the Stewart kids were wide-eyed with excitement and concern at the news of the death of Mrs. Moon. Had she merely been found dead, with the cats still alive, there would have been no thought of foul play. But the mutilation of the cats had agitated the small town as had nothing in recent months.

Mike shook his head at that. Duane McBride was dead, as was Duane's uncle, but people accepted death by accident-even the terrible death of a child-while the mutilation of a few cats would keep them whispering and locking their doors for weeks or months to come. To Mike, Mrs. Moon's death had already receded to a distant place; it was part of the terrible blackness that had been hanging over Memo and him and the other kids all summer, merely one more storm cloud in the darkening sky.

"Come on," he said to Dale and Lawrence, tugging them toward their bikes. "We'll get Kevand Harlen and go somewhere real private. I have something I want to talk about."

Mike couldn't help looking at Old Central as they rode past on their way west to Harlen's house. The school seemed bigger and uglier than ever, its secrets all boarded up inside, inside where it was dark all the time now, no matter how bright the sun shone out here in the world.

And Mike knew the damn place was waiting for him.

TWENTY-SEVEN

They rode to the ball diamond and hashed it out. Mike talked for about ten minutes while the others stared. They didn't ask questions while he described Mrs. Moon's body. They didn't argue when he said that it would be them lying around dead unless they did something soon. They didn't say a word when he outlined what they'd have to do.

"Can we get it all done by Sunday morning?" Dale finally asked. Their bikes were clustered around the low pitcher's mound. No one was visible within five hundred yards of them. The sun baked down on their short haircuts and bare arms, glinting off the chrome and old paint of their bikes and making them squint.

"Yeah," said Mike. "I think so."

"The camping part we don't do Thursday night," said Harlen.

The others looked at him. It was Tuesday morning; why was he worried about Thursday night? "Why not?" asked Kevin.

" "Cause I'm invited to Michelle Staffney's birthday party that night," said Harlen. "And I'm going."

Lawrence looked disgusted. The three other older boys let out a breath at almost the same moment. "Jeez," said Dale,"we're all invited. Half the kids in the stupid town are invited, just like every July fourteenth. What's the big deal?"

It was true. Michelle's birthday party had become a sort of Midsummer's Eve for Elm Haven kids. The party was always in the evening, always filled the Staffneys' huge yard and house with kids, and always ended with fireworks about ten p.m. Dr. Staffney always announced that they were celebrating Bastille Day as well as his daughter's birthday, and all of the kids always cheered, although none of them knew what Bastille Day was. Who cared as long as the cake and punch and fireworks held out.

"No big deal," said Harlen smugly, as if he had a secret that was a big deal,"but I'm going."

Dale wanted to argue but Mike said, "OK, no sweat. We do the camping part tomorrow. Wednesday. That way we'll get it over with. Then everything's cleared away for the Free Show on Saturday."

Lawrence looked dubious. His small nose was red and peeling. "How do you know there's gonna be a Free Show next Saturday?"

Mike sighed and crouched near the pitching rubber. The others crouched also, sealing in their conversation with their wall of backs. Mike drew idly in the dirt with his fingor, as if he were outlining a play-but it was just doodling.”We make sure there's one when somebody goes to see Mr. Ashley-Montague. If we're going camping tomorrow that'll take up most of Wednesday and Thursday morning, and we've got to get ready for Sunday morning by Saturday night, that means we've got to see Mr. Ashley-Montague today or Thursday afternoon." He looked at Harlen and made a wry face. "And Thursday's Michelle's party."

Dale tugged his wool ballcap out of his back pocket and put it on. The shade over his upper face was like a dark visor. "Why so soon?" he said. Mike had said that seeing Ashley-Montague was something Dale would have to do.

Mike shrugged. "Think about it. We can't go ahead with the other stuff unless we're sure. The rich guy could tell us if we're right."

Dale wasn't convinced. "And if he doesn't?"

"Then we use the camping as a test," said Mike. "But it'd be a lot better to know before we go."

Dale rubbed his sweaty neck and looked off toward the water tower and rows of corn beyond. The corn was well over his head now, a green wall that marked the end of the town and offered nothing but slow going and shadows beyond. "Are you coming?" he asked Mike. "To Ashley-Montague's house, I mean."

"Uh-uh," said Mike. "I'm going to find that other person I talked about. Try to get some of the stuff Mrs. Moon was talking about. And I think Father C. may need me."

"I'll go with you," Kevin offered to Dale.

Dale felt better immediately, but Mike said, "No. You've got to go with your dad in the milk truck, set that stuff up the way we planned."

"But I don't need to actually do anything with the truck till the weekend…" began Kev.

Mike shook his head. There was no arguing with his tone of voice. "But you've got to start doing all the cleanup work on the truck in the afternoon, not just helping him. If you do it all the rest of the week, he won't think about it so much on Saturday."

Kevin nodded. Dale felt miserable.

"I'll go," said Harlen.

Dale looked at the diminutive kid with his clumsy cast and sling. It didn't raise his spirits too much.

"Me too," said Lawrence.

"Definitely not," said Dale, all big brother now. "You're the lookout, remember? How are we going to find the Rendering Truck if you don't search?"

"Aw, shit," said Lawrence. Then he glanced over his shoulder toward their house a hundred and fifty yards away under the trees, as if their mother might have heard. "Shit and hell," he added.

Jim Harlen laughed, delighted. "And heck and spit," he said in falsetto.

"I don't like the camping part," said Kevin, his voice all business. "All of us together like that."

Mike smiled. "I won't be together with you."

"You know what I mean." Kevin sounded seriously worried.

Mike did know. "That's why I think it'll work," he said softly, still doodling circles and arrows in the dirt. "We haven't been together that often when we're not around our folks and all." He glanced up. "But we may not have to do it if Dale… and Jim… get information from Ashley-Montague that says it wouldn't be worth it."

Dale was still looking toward the distant fields, his eyes filled with concern. "Problem is, I don't know how to get to Peoria today. My mom won't take me… the old Buick wouldn't make it even if she wanted to… and Dad's on the road till Sunday."

Kevin was chewing a large wad of gum. He turned and spat over his shoulder. "We don't go into Peoria very often. Thanksgiving time, to see the Santa Claus parade. I don't think you want to wait that long, right?"

Harlen grinned. "I just got my ma to stay home from Peoria. If I asked her to take us to some rich guy's mansion on Grand View Drive, she'd probably beat the shit out of me."

"Yeah," said Mike,"but would she drive you afterward?"

Harlen gave him a disgusted look. "Hey, Miko, your daddy works at the Pabst brewery, doesn't he? Couldn't Dale and me hitch a ride with him?"

"Sure, if you want to leave at eight-thirty at night to get there for the graveyard shift. And the brewery's miles south of Grand View Drive… you'd have to hike up that hilly road in the dark, see Mr. A. and M. at nighttime, and wait for my dad to get off at seven a.m."

Harlen shrugged. Then he brightened and snapped his fingers. "I've got transportation, Dale. How much money do you have?"

"Total?"

"I don't mean your Aunt Millie's bonds and Uncle Paul's silver dollars, dipshit. I mean money you can get your hands on right away. Like now."

"About twenty-nine dollars in my sock bank," he said. "But the bus doesn't come through till Friday, and that wouldn't get us to…"

Harlen shook his head, grin still in place. "I'm not talking about the fuckin' bus, amigo. I'm talking about our own personal taxi. Twenty-nine dollars should about do it… hell, I'll throw a buck in to make an even thirty. We can go today. Probably right now."

Dale felt his heart begin to race. He didn't really want to meet with Mr. Dennis Ashley-Montague, and Peoria seemed light-years away. "Right now? You're serious?"

"Yeah."

Dale looked at Mike, saw the seriousness in his friend's gray eyes as he nodded at him: Do it.

"All right," said Dale. He set a knuckle against Lawrence's chest: "You stay at home with Mom unless Mike has some scouting he wants you to do." Harlen had already started pedaling toward First Avenue. Dale looked at the others. "This is nuts," he said sincerely.

No one argued with him.

Dale got on his bike and pushed hard to catch up to Harlen.

C. J. Congden stared at them in squinting disbelief. The pimply sixteen-year-old was leaning against the front left fender of his daddy's black souped-up Chevy; there was a beer in Congden's left hand, he was wearing his usual black leather jacket, greasy jeans, and engineer boots, and a cigarette was dangling from his lower lip even as he spoke. "You fucking want me to do fucking what?"

"Drive us to Peoria," said Harlen.

"You and the pussy here," sneered C. J.

Jim looked at Dale. "Yeah," he said. "Me and the pussy here."

"An' you'll pay me how much?"

Harlen gave Dale a slightly exasperated look, as if to say Didn'11 tell you we were dealing with the walking brain-dead here? "Fifteen bucks," he said.

"Fuck you," sneered the teenager and took a long swig of Pabst.

Harlen shrugged slightly. "We might be able to go to eighteen dollars…"

"Twenty-five or nothing," said Congden, flicking ash from the cigarette.

Harlen shook his head as if that were an astronomical sum. He looked at Dale and then flapped his arms as if he'd been outhaggled. "Well… all right."

Congden looked startled. "In advance," he said in a tone that showed he'd picked up the phrase from shoot-'em-up movies.

"Half now, half when the job's done," said Harlen in the same Humphrey Bogart tone.

Congden squinted hard at them through the smoke of his cigarette, but evidently the hit men in the movies always agreed to that arrangement, so he didn't have much choice. "Pay me the first half," he ordered. Dale did so, counting out twelve dollars and fifty cents from his savings.

"Get in," Congden said. He stubbed out his cigarette, spat, hitched up his pants, and squinted at the two boys as they scrambled into the backseat of the matte-black Chevy.

"This isn't a fucking taxi," snarled Congden. "One of you little fucks rides in the fucking front seat."

Dale waited for Harlen to comply, but Harlen moved his broken arm in the sling as if to say I need room for this and Dale unhappily got out and moved to the passenger seat in front. C. J. Congden tossed the beer can into his side yard and got into the Chevy with a solid slam of the door. He jangled keys and the huge engine roared Jo life.

"You sure your daddy lets you drive this?" Harlen asked from the comparative safety of the backseat.

"Shut your fucking hole before I kick the shit out of you," said Congden over the heightened roar as he revved the engine.

The teenager slammed the Hurst shifter to the left and forward and the big rear wheels threw dirt and gravel all over the front of Congden's house as he peeled out, sliding onto the blacktop of Depot Street with a wild screech of tires, spinning the steering wheel left, completing a sliding, screeching ninety-degree turn, and then roaring east on Depot until he came to Broad. That sliding turn was even wilder, using up the entire wide avenue before he got control, spinning the steering wheel lock to lock and sending a cloud of blue smoke up behind them. They were doing sixty by the time they reached Church Street and Congden had to stand on the brakes to slide to a stop on the gravel at the intersection of Broad and Main. The skinny, pimply apparition at the wheel pulled the pack of Pall Malls from his rolled-up t-shirt sleeve, lipped one out, and lighted it with the dash lighter while pulling out in front of an eastbound semi-trailer on the Hard Road.

Dale closed his eyes as air horns blared. Congden flipped the trucker the bird in the rearview mirror and slammed up through the gears.

The sign in front of the Parkside Cafe said speed 25 mph electrically timed. Congden was doing sixty and still accelerating as he roared past it. He screeched around the wide bend beyond the Texaco and the last brick house on the left, and then they were out of town and picking up speed, the roar of the Chevy's dual exhausts racketing off the walls of corn on either side of the Hard Road and bouncing back in their wake.

Dale had actually skidded his bike to a stop when Harlen had told them where they were going. "Congden? You've got to be kidding." He was truly and sincerely and deeply horrified. All he could remember was the bottomless black pit of the.22 muzzle the town punk had aimed at his face. "Forget it," Dale had said, spinning his bike around and ready to ride home again.

Harlen had grabbed his wrist. "Think, Dale. Nobody else is gonna drive us all the way up Grand View Drive in Peoria… your folks'd think you were nuts. The bus doesn't come through till Friday. We don't know anybody else who's got a license…"

"Mike's sister Peg…" began Dale.

"Flunked her damn driving test four times," finished Harlen. "Her folks won't let her near a car. Besides, the O'Rourkes just have the one junker and Mike's old man uses it to drive to work every evening. No way he's going to let it out of his sight."

"I'll find some other way," insisted Dale, pulling his wrist free.

"Yeah, right." Harlen had folded his arms, straddling the bar of the bike, and glared at Dale." "You do have a bit of pansy in you, don't you, Stewart?"

Dale had felt the heat flush of rage then and would have been quite happy to dismount his bike and beat the shit out of Harlen-he'd done it before in years past, and even though the smaller boy fought dirty, Dale knew he could take him again-but he forced himself to grip his handlebars and think.

"Think," said Harlen, echoing Dale's scurrying thoughts. "We've got to do this today. We've got nobody else. Cong-den's so dirt stupid that he'll do it for money without wondering why we're doing it. And it's probably the fastest way to get there except for an F-86."