The Frighteners (22 page)

Frank looked around desperately for a way out. A huge Mack truck was rocketing toward him, carrying a load of smoked salmon from Nova Scotia to New York. A flashy yellow logo on its cab read
THE LOX ROCKET.
Frank ran right at it and held up his arms while squeezing his eyes shut and praying that what he had in mind would work.

At the moment of impact, Bannister was scooped up by the truck’s massive grille. His body flattened against the front of the truck as he instantly reversed direction. Instead of running away from the Reaper, he now was speeding straight at him at better than seventy mph. As the Reaper’s eyes widened in shock Frank raised his foot and kicked the beast in the face as the two collided at high speed.

This time there was no hiss, no roar. The Reaper was hurled backward off his feet, disappearing over the highway barrier as Frank sped away, clinging to the front of the truck.

The truck exited the coastal highway at the next off-ramp, heading toward the IHOP rest stop so the driver could fill up on coffee, beef jerky, and audiotapes to carry him through the rest of his journey.

As the huge vehicle slowed, Frank looked around in a desperate search for Dammers’s borrowed police car. He saw it heading up a distant street, into the hills above town. Frank leaped off the truck and began racing across town.

One advantage to being an emanation in a hurry is that you needn’t bother with stop signs, red lights, or difficult directions. You just go straight for your destination. And so Frank ran in a straight line toward Dammer’s car—through fences, yards, parked cars, garages, living rooms, and bedrooms. He went so fast through one living room that the giant-screen TV flickered and switched, mysteriously, from a Bob Dole campaign speech to a Hootie and the Blowfish concert. Bannister ran through the public library, spilling books on the floor as he raced up one aisle as fast as a passing locomotive.

Unaware he was being followed, Dammers stared intently at the road ahead as he steered the car toward the hills. Lucy continued to tug at the handcuffs, making raw, red rings around her wrist, but to no avail. Then she caught sight of Dammers’s black eyes staring at her in the rearview mirror.

“What are you staring at?” she snapped.

“Have you calmed down yet?” he asked.

“I’ll calm down when you’re in jail or dead.”

Dammers held up a hand, as if to calm her. But in so doing he exposed a small swastika tattooed on his hand. She saw it and said, “Is that what you are, a Nazi? Is that what’s behind this?”

“No,” he said tersely.

“One of those neo-Nazis who are killing Turkish immigrants in Germany? Is that who you are?”

Dammers growled. “You’re looking at a war wound, a result of all the horrible undercover jobs I was forced to take over the years.”

“As what this time, a burning-cross lighter for the KKK?”

“It was 1969, do you remember that year?”

“I wasn’t even born,” she said.

“Squeaky Fromme . . . the Spahn Ranch . . . Simi Valley . . . I was her sex slave for six months.”

“Did you help her kill all those people or did you merely stand by and watch? Is that how you get your rocks off, Dammers? By watching?”

“I spent six months in the service of my country,” he said bitterly, “disguised as a filthy hippie.”

Just then Frank emerged out of a warehouse wall, raced onto the road, and stood directly in front of Dammers’s car. With a loud thump he was collected on the hood and frantically grabbed hold of the roof to avoid being blown off.

“I find cemeteries very restful places, don’t you?” Dammers said.

“Let me go, you bastard,” Lucy said again.

“I intend to, Mrs. Lynskey . . . as soon as we’ve watched the sun rise.”

Dammers looked at his watch. It was nine thirty-five.

“In nine hours’ time,” he said.

Frank thrust his face through the windshield. “Lucy!” he cried out.

She didn’t respond. Even if she had heard him, she was too busy being furious at Dammers.

The car pulled through the front gates of Fairwater Cemetery. At that hour of night, the burial ground was darker than a coal mine and creepier than a pit full of vipers, which, to a large extent, it was.

As Dammers drove into the cemetery Frank saw the Reaper in the distance, a black smudge racing through town toward the cemetery hill.

Dammers drove deep into the cemetery and pulled to a halt between tombstones on a bluff overlooking the town. Dammers shut off the engine and got out of the car, unbuttoning his shirt. At that moment two large ghostly paws suddenly grabbed Frank’s shoulders and yanked him off the car.

It was the fearsome Gatekeeper, the ogre spirit who helped keep peace among the emanations. He held Frank as if he were a rag doll.

“State your business,” he said in his guttural voice.

Frank struggled, but the Gatekeeper had an iron grip on his shoulders.

“It’s me . . . Frank Bannister.”

“Who?”

“Frank Bannister. I died.”

“You ain’t Bannister no more,” the Gatekeeper growled. “You’re just a shitty little spook.”

Desperate, Bannister said, “Listen to me! There’s an evil spirit coming up that hill.”

He pointed in the direction from which he had seen the Reaper coming.

“The only evil here is you, Bannister,” the Gatekeeper growled. “You’re an evil asshole who’s better off dead. That way Hiles and I can keep an eye on you.”

As if summoned, Hiles appeared, marching over, aiming his ghostly Uzi at Frank.

“Shut up, you subhuman emanation,” Hiles snapped. “I heard that you lost your protectors, Cyrus and Stuart. The two emanations you were using to con chump change off innocent humans finally got away from your evil influence and took the corridor.”

“You don’t have time to stand there and insult me,” Bannister said desperately. “A dark spirit is coming up that hill right now and might just chop your loudmouthed head off—the same way he killed Cyrus and Stuart.”

Furious, Hiles said, “You contemptible heap of teleplasmic shit. If there was an evil spirit loose in this town, I would be negligent in my duty!”

Raising his voice to a drill sergeant’s scream, Hiles said, “Are you accusing me of professional incompetence? Are you saying that I am one prize piece of anus breath?”

“You’re gonna die, Hiles,” Bannister warned.

“I wouldn’t listen to you if you were the last emanation on earth, you worthless hunk of shit.”

It was then that an old, familiar, and to Frank, very welcome voice chimed in. “I’ve had as much of your foul mouth as I can stomach, son,” the Judge said.

Hiles spun around and stared in disbelief at the Judge, who peered out of his grave.

“I suggest you treat Mr. Bannister with a degree of respect, boys,” the Judge said.

“Get back in your grave, you senile old goat,” Hiles screamed.

“Get ’em, Rustler,” the Judge snapped.

With that, Rustler suddenly sprang out of the Judge’s grave, leaping through the air and clamping his jaws onto Hiles’s wrist. Howling in spirit pain, Hiles dropped his ghostly Uzi machine gun. The Gatekeeper threw Frank to one side and rushed to help Hiles. The ogre spirit grabbed the big flea-bitten dog and tried to pull it off Hiles’s arm.

Unseen by the two Spirits, the Reaper had made it through the cemetery gates and was rushing toward them at high speed, its scythe still held aloft. Rustler saw the creature, though, let go of Hiles, and with a whimper, dived into the Judge’s grave. The Judge, too, ducked his head below ground as the fearsome Reaper closed in.

At last the spirits saw the Reaper.

“What the hell is that?” Hiles gasped.

“I warned you,” Frank replied from off to one side.

The Gatekeeper jumped in front of Hiles, trying to protect him.

“State your business,” he snapped in the guttural voice that had scared so many others.

The Reaper didn’t hesitate. It gracefully swung his scythe, splitting the Gatekeeper in two from bottom to top. The ogre fell to the ground, two dissipating clouds of ectoplasm.

“Think fast, Hiles,” Frank said, ducking behind a tombstone.

But Hiles had no time to react. He was beheaded by an equally fluid swing of the scythe.

Finished with those obstructions and unaware of Bannister’s presence, the Reaper moved swiftly toward the nearby squad car, closing in on Lucy with remarkable speed.

She was using the clasp of her watch in an attempt to unscrew the roll bar from the side of the car. The Reaper glided in through the door and sat beside her. Its horrible breath touched her cheek. Its bony hand hovered over her chest.

“Don’t fear the Reaper,” the creature said with silky menace.

At that moment Frank leaned over from where he was hiding in the front seat. He swung Hiles’s ghostly Uzi into the Reaper’s face.

“Go to hell,” he snarled, and fired a burst of machine-gun bullets into the creature’s face. The blast sent the Reaper flying out the back of the car. Frank leaped out after him, firing again, a withering burst. The Reaper convulsed and shuddered as the ghost bullets thudded into their target.

The creature snarled and roared as it was literally shot to pieces. Large lumps of its body flew into the air, dark glutinous masses that landed on the ground with wet splats.

Dammers remained oblivious to the firefight. He stood in the bright moonlight, holding his shirt open. He suddenly spun around, showing Lucy a torso covered with a mass of cultish tattoos and scars. She couldn’t see his face at that moment, but watched his finger trace a series of voodoo and other symbols, roughly carved into his chest.

“You took off your lead breastplate, Dammers,” she said. “Are you sure Frank won’t will your heart to stop?”

“Not from where you sent him, he won’t. Look at this one. Nineteen hundred and eighty-one . . . Haiti . . . I infiltrated the Baron Samedi’s Cult of the Dead. I was involved in ritualistic cannibalism, in orgiastic dances, reaching painful thresholds of intense eroticism.”

“I knew it, Dammers. You get turned on by pain. You’re a sick man and need help.”

Just then, the Reaper’s severed right arm sailed past Dammer’s head. The Reaper’s body collapsed as its face flew into the air. Frank stopped firing. He surveyed the multitude of shiny black puddles that had once been the Reaper.

Dammers stepped away from his car. “I have suffered for my country, Dr. Lynskey,” he said.

“I hope you suffer forever.”

He screamed at the night sky, the veins on his neck bulging. “But I cannot be broken!”

Lucy seized the moment. She pulled against the bar with all her might, ripping it free. Within a second she had slipped the cuffs free of the bar and was desperately trying to lock the car doors as Dammers spun around.

He hauled on the back doors as Lucy scrambled over the seats and into the front. She started the car and gunned the engine. The clock on the dash read nine forty-two. Dammers screamed as the squad car rocketed away toward the cemetery entrance. He raced after it.

Frank stood amid the remains of the Reaper. He was looking for something—anything—that could go wrong. He spotted a movement on the Reaper’s face. It lay on the ground like a slice of Jell-O. Its mouth gaped soundlessly . . . eyes following Frank with hatred.

The Judge’s top half walked over on his hands, surveying the remains of the Reaper. “I gotta hand it to you, Frank,” he said. “You’ve taken out Death himself.”

“This ain’t Death,” Frank said, scooping up the twitching face and holding it at arm’s length. It hung from his fingers like a quivering, snarling jellyfish.

“Who are you?” Frank asked.

But the Reaper’s face only sneered.

“Don’t fear the Reaper,” it gasped.

In a burst of anger, Frank swung the face against a gravestone, slapping it hard like a wet towel. “Who are you?” he yelled.

Frank flapped the face against the gravestone again and again, and with each blow the Reaper’s face changed slightly, becoming more human.

At last, Frank threw the face against a grave. It slid to a stop on the stone slab, grinning evilly at Frank. The Reaper’s face had become that of a twenty-two-year-old psychopathic killer the state put to death forty years ago.

“Johnny Bradley,” Bannister said quietly.

John Charles Bradley, circa 1954. His face slowly slid, grimacing, along the stone, oozing a puddle of ectoplasm.

“How’d you know me?” Johnny asked.

“From your mug shots in the papers. I thought guys like you fried in hell.”

Bradley’s face twisted into an arrogant sneer. “I got out, Frank.” He giggled.

Bradley’s face slipped over the edge of the stone slab and slid down the vertical face of the grave, leaving a slime trail like those slugs leave on cobblestone walks on wet mornings.

“I been carrying on the good work. I got me a score of forty.”

“Are you proud of that, Bradley?”

“You bet your ass I’m proud. I’ll be in the history books as the world’s top serial killer. Long after your rotting corpse has turned to dust, people will read about my exploits. How you get to be an emanation, Bannister? Did the cops kill you? Or was it a jealous husband. Maybe that idiot Ray Lynskey?”

“What happened to him?” Bannister asked.

“I got him
twice,
Frank. Think of it, I killed his body. I killed his emanation. That’s two for the price of one. How many other killers do you know of who can claim that?”

An elderly emanation loomed out of the darkness, freed to walk around now that Hiles and the Gatekeeper were history. He offered his hand to Frank.

“Who are you?” Bannister asked.

“Harry Sinclair. I just want to shake the hand of the man who’s finally avenged my death.”

Frank shook hands with Sinclair, and Bradley started giggling.

“Did I slit your throat or rip out your liver, old man? I don’t recall.”

Frank looked at a number twelve etched into Sinclair’s forehead.

“You’ve got a number,” Bannister said quietly.

Sinclair touched his forehead self-consciously. “Bradley carved it into my forehead as I lay dying.”

“You sick bastard,” Frank swore at the disembodied face.

“We’ve got all twelve of them here,” Sinclair said. “One through twelve.”