The Reckoning (20 page)

18

Holiday Cheer

Sticky, cloying, loathsome dreaming.

He was sitting in a dark and cozy porno movie house emporium, the kind they used to have before the advent of video. On the screen, John Holmes slammed his huge dick into a full beaver; natural tits jiggled as a slut screeched her orgasmic pleasure.

A stranger wearing a greasy raincoat sat beside him, pivoted in his chair to offer him a box of popcorn.

Royce reached into the box.
A fucking dick
. He snapped his hand back.

“Hey, kid.”

It was Jesse. Jesse Green. Always with the jokes.

Only Jesse’s face looked funny, like all the pores had been sealed with clear sealant. More like a mask than a face. Jesse’s lips didn’t move as he said, “Long time no see.”

“Long time no see, Jesse.”

“I’m really not supposed to do this, but I had to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“The undead. That’s what you’re up against.”

“The undead?”

“Cliff is your basic journeyman bloodsucker, dangerous but likely to screw up. And he’s totally pussy-whipped by Monica. It’s Monica you’ve got to watch out for. A flesh-craving zombie with moxie.”

“Jesse, you okay?”

A low dry wheeze came from Jesse’s chest, like he was trying to laugh. “Wish you’d brought me a cigar. Remember, kid, you’re a long time dead.”

There was a roar as a flood of semen crashed through the movie screen and came down on top of them. He flayed his arms as warm spunk filled his lungs…

Royce’s body jolted with nightmare electricity. He surfaced and spent some time in that hallucinatory limbo between sleep and wakefulness, when ordinary things in your bedroom take on fantastic shapes and characteristics.

Now it was Leslie’s old exercise bike advancing on him. He reached beneath the bed, retrieved the heavy Colt and aimed it at the advancing Huffy.

“Bang,” he whispered. “You’re dead.”

The bike retreated.

He was fully awake now. She was beside him. Medusa McCulloch. If he were to touch her… Stone.

Before zoning off, he’d prayed. Without a script to go by he had rambled. Not much practice at praying, not when you’re a Big Swinging Dick. And, unfortunately, the McCullochs were Episcopalians, at least on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. Such a lightweight religion didn’t prepare you for the fire-and-brimstone stuff.

Still, if there were a church open (weren’t churches always open?) at two a.m., preferably a Catholic church, could he, Leslie and Craig seek sanctuary there? Would it do any good?

He had toyed with the idea of buying crucifixes for every member of the family, then recalled that Christian paraphernalia only worked against vampires.

But maybe that’s exactly what they were, vampires. At least Cliff might be. Isn’t that what Jesse called him, a “bloodsucker”? Monica was something else, a flesh-eater, a zombie. But could you trust information gleaned from a dead man who came to you in a nightmare? A wheezy laugh forced its way up Royce’s throat. Shit, every minute of his life was a fucking nightmare. He made a mental note to pick up some crucifixes at a church store, rent all the vampire and zombie movie videos he could get his hands on and watch them on the QT, for research.

He pressed his fingertips to his temples, squeezed in hard, commanded his brain to stop racing on shit.

Royce eased gently out of bed so as not to disturb the Ice Queen. He took the revolver into the bathroom, where he urinated, sighing. A simple pleasure. Well, they hadn’t taken that away from him yet.

He checked in on Craig on his way to the kitchen, made sure the bedroom window was locked. The boy was enjoying the blissful sleep of innocence, sleep not yet troubled by wet dreams, angst—the gnawing worries and fears of adulthood. Just give him a few years, Royce thought morosely, and he’ll be just as screwed up as I am.

In the kitchen he checked the back door before pouring himself a glass of orange juice. How many times was he going to do this? Locking the place up had become a religion for him. And why? Locked doors wouldn’t stop Cliff, wouldn’t stop
her
. Oh, sweet Jesus. What was he going to do? Down in the basement, secreted behind the Beast, was Marvin Garden’s severed head, in a Hefty bag that was surely ballooned with rot gas by now. Shuddering, he recalled how he’d yanked the head by the ear and quickly opened the bag to receive it.

The chilled head made it into the sack but hit the concrete floor with a muffled thud.

Sorry, Marvin.

But at least it was over for Marvin.

Not for Royce, though. Not by a long shot.

The phone rang. He lifted it before the second ring, brought it tenderly to his ear.

“Hey, old buddy. Glad you’re still up.”

“Fuck you, Cliff.”

“You seen Marvin lately?”

“Why now?”

“If you wanted to know where I live, Royce, all you had to do was ask. It’s not that I’m ashamed. But I’m not exactly set up to entertain. Anyway, Marvin took to Carly and me just fine. He squealed like a pig, especially when I sucked on his carotid. Then I really went down on him. He was so surprised, he lost his head. Next time you drop by, I’ll share the video I made.”

“Fuck you,” Royce growled. “I’m going to the police.”

“Good luck, then we’d have to spill the beans for sure. Besides, who’s to say they would believe you anyway? Maybe it was you who murdered Marvin? And if the authorities did become involved, I’d simply have to get a full set of photos to little Les, your honey. Maybe have a set made for Mr. Chalmers at your boy’s school. Then it wouldn’t be little Craig they’d be recommending for counseling.”

Cliff giggled malevolently, went on: “Then other parts of Marvin would show up mysteriously. His left leg…yes, I still have it…might end up at police headquarters, and his dick might end up on the desk of Leslie’s boss at the bank. You’d be fucked for sure, old buddy. They couldn’t stick that lethal injection into your arm fast enough.”

Royce gasped; the right side of his face twitched. “Why did you wait until now?”

“No, Royce, the best thing you can do for all concerned is come along with us. It’ll be fun, like old times. You’ll experience things—new, exciting things. We won’t keep you long. You’ll be back soon. Promise, old buddy.”

“Right.”

“I’ll give you a day to get ready. Then Tuesday we do it, go offshore. Carly says to pack light. You don’t want to go with us? Fine. Then we’ll take Mrs. Pancake Tits and the kid. We’d have a grand time with them. Your wife will need a little coaxing to loosen her up; Carly can handle that. And I bet Craig’s one tight little piece of ass.”

“You sonofabitch! I said why now? After all these years?”

“Because now you’ve got something to lose, pal. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Immediately, Royce pressed the on-hook button and asked information for the police department number.

“If this is an emergency you can dial nine-one-one,” the operator said.

Royce said it wasn’t an emergency.

He dialed the number she gave him.

“Baltimore Police Department. May I help you?”

Royce licked his chapped lips. What was he going to say? There’s a frigging head in my basement and I want to know what I should do with it? I’m besieged by vampires and zombies?

“Hello, this is the police department. May I help you?
Is this an emergency?
”

Royce set the phone down on the receiver.

Yeah, sleep tight.

He took two stinky pills, went back to bed with the gun tucked under his pillow.

The dreams, wow.

He was going down on Carly when the woman’s vagina grew fangs—and chewed his face off!

In the morning, Royce offered to drop off both Craig and Leslie on his way to work, but Leslie, still cool towards her husband, wouldn’t have it.

“I’ll take Craig,” she said curtly. “All I ask is that you open the garage door for me. I don’t have the strength.”

So he opened the door for them when they were ready to depart.

“What’s this?” Leslie snapped. She had located his stained overcoat balled up at the far corner of the garage. Damn, he’d forgotten to get rid of it. She held it up and away from her.

“What did you do, Royce? What is this? Is this blood?”

“Sheep’s blood,” he blurted. Well, at least it wasn’t human blood.

She scowled. “How on earth?”

“I can—”

“I know,” she said wearily. “You can explain it. You can always explain it.” She dropped it. “You can explain it later,” she said angrily. “I’m late.”

Royce reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out two crucifixes that he’d made out of Leslie’s emery boards early that morning.

“What are those?” she asked, as if she were looking at a pair of turds.

“I want you and Craig to keep these with you at all times.”

“So you found religion, Royce? Isn’t it a little late?”

“They will protect you, until I can buy better ones.”

“Protect us from what? Vampires? It’s you we need protection from. And another thing, Royce, I may be a lot of things, but I am not a hypocrite. If you’re thinking of dragging me into some kind of right-wing Christian reborn drill just to relieve your guilty conscience, you can forget it.”

So his wife and stepson got into the Civic and Leslie backed it out of the garage.

“Be careful,” he yelled at them, and gave Craig a signal through the windshield glass, as if to say: Hey, Craig, buddy, we have an understanding, right? We’re living in a battle zone, right?

But the boy returned no inkling of recognition. In fact, when it came to dealing with Royce since his mother’s arrival home, little Craigie seemed to have regressed into his imitation of James Dean as a young boy bullshit.

Moody, snot-nosed little shit.

Be careful, he mouthed at the departing Honda.
Be very careful
.

He picked up the coat and deposited it in the alley trash dumpster, then went back inside the house and retrieved the gym bag containing Code Blue from his closet. Next, he went downstairs and picked up the trash sack from behind the furnace. He carried it tenderly, but the sack (was the plastic sweating or was it just his imagination?) kept slapping against his right thigh.

On the way to work he played the radio, then turned it off when all he could find was holiday music.
Jingle Bells
. That sort of crap. It was Monday, December tenth, only fourteen shopping days until Christmas, and a high-pressure zone was building behind his eyeballs, from lack of sleep and tension.

Christmas. Well, it looked as though Royce was going to be spending the holidays alone. At breakfast, Leslie announced that she and Craig would be spending Christmas and New Year’s with her mother and Jules’ family in Billings, if she could get an emergency leave of absence from the bank, that is. He hoped she did.

He scooted behind a Giant Food on Roland Road and discreetly buried the bag in a trash dumpster.

Only when he was nearly downtown did he realize he should have worn gloves for the disposal work. Cursing himself, he parked Darth and walked to his office, totting the gym bag. Had he not had such a dark, resolute look on his face, he might have been mistaken for a middle-aged executive on his way to his morning “paunch buster” workout at the Baltimore Athletic Club.

But in the bag he wasn’t carrying a jockstrap or deodorant or a sweatband or two-hundred- dollar running shoes you pumped up with air.

In the bag was death, and Royce McCulloch was about to unleash it.

The fax had already been busy that morning.

Tomorrow, midnight. My place, old buddy. Be there or be dead! Love, Cliffie.

Royce trashed the message and unplugged the machine. When he got around to reinventing the world, he would ban fax machines and telephones.

The phone rang. He jumped on it.

“Yes?”

“Hey, back off. It’s me, Tony.”

“Yeah. Sorry. What can I do for you?”

“Come again,” the attorney said peevishly.

“Sorry, Tony.” He rubbed his moist, achy forehead. “Sorry.”

“Okay. Guess you’re uptight. Guess you got a reason to be. We still on for tomorrow afternoon? One?”

“Afternoon?”

“The police,” he snapped.

“Oh, yes. The police. Sure.”

“If it’s that bad, you should go right now. You don’t need me.”

“But I do. I do. Look, I’ll be there. Your office. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Royce hung up and realized he’d probably never see Tony again.

19

Chipped Beef on Toast

Punishment food.

The creamed dried beef burped steam in the saucepan on the stove.

“You about done with that toast?” Les snapped at him.

“Yes,” Royce assured her from his station near the toaster. Four more slices popped up, and he placed them on the sizable stack without regard to burning his hands; physical pain felt good for a change.

Leslie opened a can of fruit cocktail, dumped its contents into a bowl. She frowned at his efforts.

“I think you’ve made too much toast.”

“How was your first day back?” he asked her.

“Oh, pretty shitty, if you want to know the truth.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Why?”

She called Craig from his room. The boy made a face when he saw the fare.

He whined, “Can’t we have Taco Bell? I’ll buy. I have the money.”

Royce glowered at the boy, who returned no recognition that a trust had been violated.

“How very generous of you, Craig,” Leslie said dryly. “Perhaps some other evening. I thought you two would enjoy some home cooking.”

“Certainly,” Royce was quick to say. He spread two pieces of toast on his plate and smothered them with the creamed beef. “Certainly.”

His wife said, “Craig, I talked to Mr. Chalmers today. He said your testing came along just fine. He wants to see me tomorrow afternoon at two.” She now glared across at Royce, saying, “I don’t suppose you can make it. Tomorrow afternoon, I mean.”

Chewing, he nodded. “I’ll be pretty busy tomorrow afternoon.” What was he supposed to say?
Honey, I’ll be doing battle with the undead. They want to take me back to hell with them, so please excuse me from visiting with Mr. Butthead Chalmers?

“I see,” she fumed. “Busy.”

“Busy,” he said.

Craig asked, “Can I go back to my room?”

“If you really want to,” his mother said.

“I want to.”

“Very well.”

The boy left, moody as ever.

“So do you want to tell me what happened today?” Royce asked.

Leslie got up from the table, went into the living room and picked her leather folio off the couch. Stern-faced, she pulled a folded fax sheet from the notebook and put it right under his nose, one end soaking in the goo on his plate.

He knew what it was before he unfolded it. Fuck, he and Christine were really getting around. This one had
Mr. R. is a whoremonger
! written above the enraptured expression on his face.

“That was faxed to Stallings while I was in Montana, mister! And today, that bitch of yours, Ms. Monica Big Tits, called and voiced a complaint to the president of the bank, saying something to the effect that did he know one of his officers was married to a degenerate? I tried to call her back, at that whorehouse she runs, to have it out with her, but some snippy tart refused to put me through. Well?”

“Well,” he said with finality, folding the paper.

Her eyes ignited.

“Well, Royce, are you a degenerate or not?”

“No.”

She folded her arms across her slender chest, smirking. “No you’re not or no you are?”

Royce flared. He flipped over his plate of shit-on-a-shingle, rose slowly from the table and snarled, “Go fuck yourself!”

Shocked, his wife sputtered, not saying anything intelligible.

Just then they both heard the door of Craig’s bedroom slam shut.

“And—and I’ve had quite enough of that young man, too!” she blurted, marching down the hall.

Royce followed.

Leslie barged into the boy’s room, didn’t find him and went to the closet. She began to whip the door back when Royce reached out and stopped her.

“Unhand me!” she commanded.

He did, but not before yanking her back from the closet door. She spun, walking backwards away from him, rubbing her arm where he had taken hold of her.

“How dare you interfere,” she hissed.

“Leave him the fuck alone,” Royce demanded. “He’s scared shitless, with good reason. And it helps him to hide in there.”

“Helps him?” she screeched.

Leslie, blush-faced, bumped into the edge of the door, yowled in pain and rushed out, retreating to their own bedroom.

He barged through the door before she could close it behind her. Frightened, she went to the far side of the bed, her back against the wall.

“I don’t even know who you are!” she shrilled. She tugged at the gold wedding band on her finger without success. “Look!” she further charged, displaying her wedding finger, “living with you has made me fat.”

Royce spat, “He’s scared shitless all the time because of us.” He stabbed a thumb into his chest. “No, because of me! You’re right, I am a degenerate. And now I’ve got to pay for it—big time. And I’m not talking about an IRS audit or doing community service time patching potholes, either, but a blood-and-fucking-guts reckoning.”

He stalked her to the far corner, nose to nose, pressing his point, spitting on her.

“Tomorrow I’ve got to resolve it, once and for all, and it’s going to be bloody awful, lady. Only I can do it. I’m the one who’s got to pay. Not you and Craig. It’s not your doing. That’s why I want you both out of this house—now!”

He wiped his runny nose, sobbing, and stepped back from her.

“If you stay here you might get hurt. Get your asses up to Billings. Fast!”

She started to cry.

“I can’t go to Billings,” she said.

He hiccupped. “Why not?”

She trembled. “Because I don’t want to watch my sister die.”

“Okay, then,” he said, exhausted. “Okay.”

“What’s happening to us, Royce?”

“Like I said, it’s me. Not you. Certainly not Craig. I’m being blackmailed—you already know that. The photo.”

She trembled. “I thought it was Monica you had sex with.”

“Yeah, but I screwed one of her girls, too. Christine. The girl in the photo.” He didn’t tell her Monica was a.k.a. Carly, not because of guilt but because at this stage it frankly didn’t matter. He was already in deep shit. Why confuse the situation?

“And these two, Cliff and Monica. They still want you to launder money for them?”

“It’s more complicated than that. They want me to take a trip with them. Tomorrow night. West. An offshore bank, somewhere on the Pacific Rim. It’s nuts, but that’s what they want. If I don’t go, they’ve made threats, threatened to hurt you guys. You and Craig.”

His wife’s eyes widened with terror. “We have to call the police. Right now, Royce.”

He shook his head. “I’ve got to work it out my way. If I can’t, then Tony and I are going down to headquarters tomorrow afternoon. In any event, it is important that you and Craig go away. Tonight. You’ve got to trust me on this.”

She telegraphed him a “You’ve-got-to-be-fucking-kidding” look.

“I know,” he said quickly. “I know I haven’t given you any reason to trust me. You’ve got reason to never trust me again.”

“I want to trust you, Royce. More than anything else I want to trust you, but I can’t. You’ve told me so many lies and half -truths.”

Royce moved closer to her, steeled himself. Time to come clean. He said, “Here it is. I was an investment banker with Drexel, where I was driven by avarice for money and power. I used drugs. I was a womanizer. I ruined a gentle, decent girl’s life through a selfish, terrible act.”

“What terrible act?”

“I coerced a young woman into having breast implant surgery. She didn’t want the operation, but I promised to marry her if she went through with it, which was a lie. The poor girl died on the operating table, and now she’s making me pay.”

“Monica? You’re saying that Monica was that girl? Do you know what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying. Only that now I’ve got to pay. I’m a liar, a six-foot sack of walking, talking shit. It’s over between us, Les. I know that. Now all I can do is just make sure you don’t get hurt.”

She stared at her husband as if she were looking at him for the first time.

Royce snapped, “I won’t let you or Craig be hurt. Do you understand that?”

“Craig,” she said urgently, and rushed to the boy’s room.

He followed her.

This time she gently slid the door back. The boy scooted to the far corner of the closet, knees to chest, crying.

“It’s okay,” Les said softly.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Royce said.

They coaxed him from the closet. His mother kissed him, wiped the wet off him with a Kleenex.

“We’re both very sorry for acting this way,” she told Craig. “What we’re going to do right now is start this evening all over.” She looked to her husband.

“Agreed,” he nodded.

Royce ordered Domino’s pizza, then helped his wife clean up the chipped beef mess he had made. He felt beat, all washed out. Craig located an old movie on TV,
Christmas In Connecticut
, with Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan. Royce was relieved it wasn’t
It’s A Wonderful Life
, which would have been too close to home,
sans
the happy ending, of course.

He reminded himself to call Cal at Old Dominion tomorrow, if anyone at the Virginia brewery had even heard of Cal Jeffries, that is. What did you say to your guardian angel, anyway? Especially when he wasn’t exactly giving you balls-out, pedal-to-the-metal help.

The pizza arrived (with a six-pack of Coke) and they dined before the tube, using yards of paper towel for napkins. As for “things” between him and Les, it wasn’t exactly lovey-dovey, but not antagonistic either. A fever had broken; a truce arrived at.

They talked about visiting the lots and buying a Christmas tree next weekend, and Craig was excited they were going to get a “real one” this year.

The phone rang.

Royce flinched, started for it.

But Leslie beat him to it.

“Why, Monica,” his wife enthused. “So good of you to eventually return my call.”

His bowel twitched.

“Yes, super! I just wanted to thank you for the photo and tell you to go fuck yourself. Yes, I’ve been apprised of all the assorted, sordid details. My husband will not be able to take that junket with you and Uncle Cliffie tomorrow evening…Oh, with the holidays and all, I need him here…What’s that?…Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

Leslie’s face went black.

“And if you ever bother my family again, I’ll personally, joyfully, scratch your eyes out with a fireplace poker, you slut!”

After one more “super,” Les hung up, breathing hard, face flushed but relieved.

“That’s that,” she announced.

Royce smiled, trembling.

“Yes. That’s that.”