Nocturnes

  He found his wallet and removed his Nevada state driver’s license. It was the genuine article. The man who had acquired it for Buddy assured him that it would stand up to scrutiny, and he had told nothing less than the truth. It was worth every penny that Buddy had briefly paid for it before the man’s death made redundant his need for Buddy’s money. He handed it to the cop, and was almost tempted to brush his knuckles against the policeman’s hand. The barest of contacts would enable him to gauge the cop’s sensitivity, as well as delivering a little added dose of mortality, but the policeman was too quick for him.

  “And what is your business, Mr. Carson?”

  “I’m between jobs. I’m just traveling around, trying to take in some of this great country.”

  “We don’t get many people coming all this way just to visit Easton. You know anybody here?”

  “Not yet. If this is anything to go by, doesn’t look like I’ll be making too many friends here in the future.”

  “I guess that depends,” said Lopez.

  “On what?”

  “On how friendly you really are.”

  “I’m the real deal,” said Buddy. “I just want to reach out to people.”

  Lopez told Buddy to stay where he was, then used his cell to call the station house. Ellie answered, and he asked her to do a check on Buddy Carson. He gave her the license number, then waited. He watched Buddy Carson sitting quietly in his booth. He wasn’t looking at Elaine any longer. Instead, he was just staring at the blank wall before him.

  The check came back clean. Lopez was disappointed, but he still had his suspicions about the man in the booth.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked Buddy when he returned.

  Buddy was slightly disappointed that the cop didn’t hand him back his license. Instead, Lopez placed it flat on the table, picture side up, his finger holding down one corner.

  “The Easton Motel,” said Buddy. “It’s real nice. I might extend my stay, it’s so nice.”

  “Let me tell you something, Mr. Carson,” said Lopez. “There’s not a whole lot for a man to do in Easton at this time of year. I reckon that by tomorrow you should have exhausted all of the possibilities, and then it will be time for you to be on your way. You have a safe journey.”

  He flicked the license back across the table.

  “That sounds like I’m being run out of town,” said Buddy.

  “No, you’ll be leaving under your own steam. But if you want me to help you along, that can be arranged. You have a good night.”

  Buddy watched him leave. He had hoped that by goading the cop he might get the opportunity to touch him if he lost his temper and made a move, but the cop had kept his cool. In the end, it was probably for the best. Buddy was storing up his venom now, getting ready for the big play. Making a try for the cop might have dulled his edge, or alerted the policeman to the threat Buddy posed. Better to let him go now, and hope for another chance at him later. Buddy did not consider himself to be a vindictive man, but he would take pleasure in giving the cop a little something if the opportunity presented itself. He envisaged himself squatting on the cop’s chest, his fingers in his mouth and the cop’s tongue slowly turning black in his grip. Buddy allowed himself a small smile. Dealing with the spic cop would be a real pleasure.

  As for the woman, well, in her case the pleasure would be doubled.

  “So?”

  Elaine was driving. Lopez would pick up his car when she dropped him back to town the following morning. Elaine owned a black Mercedes CLK430 convertible, and Lopez reckoned it was a good thing that she had a job with the A.G.’s office because Elaine Olssen had never met a speed limit that she liked. There were times, driving with her on the stretch of 95 between Montpelier and White River Junction, that Lopez doubted even their combined influence would be enough to keep her out of jail or from being recruited for some form of secret NASA rocket-testing program.

  “So what?”

  “You’ve hardly said a word since the bar. Did that guy do something to you?”

  “He got under my skin, that’s all. I’ve never met a guy called Buddy that I liked. It’s one of those names that’s trying too hard. Men named ‘Buddy’ are right up there with guys who call you ‘pal’ or ‘friend.’ ”

  “Are you going to give him the bum’s rush?”

  “I already did. I told him I wanted him gone.”

  “Rough justice. Bet every girl who gets eyed up by a creep in a bar wishes her boyfriend could just have him thrown out of town.”

  Lopez wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or not. He glanced at her. She made sultry eyes at him.

  “I like it,” she purred. “It’s kind of sexy.”

  For the first time since his encounter with Buddy Carson, Lopez grinned back.

  “Next time I’ll beat him up for you.”

  “Ooooh,” she said. “I can hardly wait. ‘Hit him harder, Officer. Hit him harder….’ ”

  IV

  Buddy Carson left the bar and drove his Dodge back to the motel. He hadn’t planned on checking out the next day. He wanted a place to rest up before the night’s exertions, but Buddy had no doubt that the cop would check up on him, and he needed to avoid another confrontation until he was ready. Now that he had scouted out the bar, he was convinced that he could take a dozen people easily without arousing any suspicion at first, maybe more if they were all packed together tight. If his plan of action worked like he hoped, he would gain respite for weeks, maybe months. He liked the idea of moving on to New York, but it would be hard to find skin to touch casually in winter. With his pain alleviated for a time, he could afford to hibernate until spring. Maybe Florida, he thought, or California. San Francisco, with its hobos and tourists, appealed to him.

  Buddy had been sick again in the men’s room of Reed’s bar. It was almost as if the black worm knew what he was planning and wanted to make sure that he didn’t back out by reminding him of its dominion over him. Buddy sometimes wondered what would happen if he tried to resist the impulse, if he took the pain and tried to see it out to the end. Would he die? In the beginning, on that second night after the deaths of the doctor and his receptionist, he had found a gun in the mechanic’s nightstand. He drank a couple of shots of bourbon to give him a little Dutch courage, then placed the gun in his mouth. He closed his eyes and thought about pulling the trigger, but in the end he did not. It wasn’t that he couldn’t pull the trigger if he actually wanted to. That was the thing of it: what he thought of as the black worm couldn’t make him do anything against his will. Sure, it could use pain to force him into a certain course of action, but it didn’t control him. He still had his own freedom of choice.

  No, the reason why Buddy didn’t pull the trigger that night was at once simpler, and infinitely more complex, than mind control. Buddy didn’t pull the trigger because Buddy liked what he was doing. Passing on to others some small aspect of the disease that had colonized his own body gave him not only release, but pleasure. He enjoyed it. He relished the sense of power it gave him, the ability to decide who lived and who died. It was godlike.

  Buddy still did not know for sure if the black worm really existed in the form that he had imagined, sleek and black in its plated carapace, vestigial eyes buried at either side of its pointed front end, its mouth little more than a ridged wound, or if it was merely his mind’s way of picturing the corrosion within himself, the foulness that had always been intrinsic to him. If the worm was truly present inside him, then it was evil, and some part of the pleasure that he felt was shared, or even generated, by that alien presence. But even if it did not exist, there was still evil within Buddy, evil beyond the worst atrocities he had witnessed on his TV screen, and Buddy knew it. He wondered sometimes if there were more like him, if there were others scattered around the country, even the world, passing on their contagion with a single touch, alleviating their own pain by gifting it to others. Buddy didn’t know, and he suspected that he never would. He still had no understa
nding of how he had come to be this way. It might have been the work of some outside agency, but equally it could just have been a consequence of Buddy’s own moral decay. Maybe, he thought, I’m the next step in human evolution: a being whose physical form has become a reflection of his moral state, a man whose soul has corrupted and rotted within him, poisoning and transforming his insides.

  Whatever he was, Buddy was certain of one thing: he was stronger and more lethal than anyone in this shithole town, and pretty soon a lot of people were going to learn that lesson the hard way.

  Buddy was still smiling when he pulled into the parking lot of the Easton Motel and saw someone leaving his motel room.

  Buddy stopped smiling.

  Jed Wheaton had asked Phil to check up on the guy in 12. Phil was about to take over the night shift, but he didn’t have his study books with him like he usually did. Phil wasn’t even carrying a paperback to read. There was a TV behind the desk, but Phil, like his father, usually only turned it on when he was desperate. Perhaps he was hoping to catch up on some sleep: there was a couch in the office, and after two A.M. a sign on the door told people to ring the bell in order to wake the night clerk. Phil certainly looked tired and distracted enough to want to curl up for the night.

  “You okay, son?” Jed asked.

  Phil reacted as if he’d just been woken from a trance.

  “Huh? Yeah, I’m fine, just fine.”

  Jed wasn’t sure that he believed him, but Phil tended to keep things to himself most of the time. If there was a problem, his son would get around to telling him when he felt like it.

  Phil didn’t have much to add to what Jed already knew when he asked him about the night Buddy Carson checked in. Phil said that he had seemed okay. He’d even insisted on introducing himself, his hand outstretched as soon as his bag hit the floor.

  Buddy, Buddy Carson. How you doing tonight?

  His teeth were bad, and his breath smelled some, but that was about the sum total of Phil’s recollection.

  Jed had called Greg Bradley that evening to discuss the health of his new guest, but Bradley, still troubled by Link Frazier’s diagnosis, was already on his way to talk with the oncology people at Manchester Medical. A recording on his machine advised anyone needing a doctor in a hurry to call the doctors over in Brewster, five miles west of Easton. Jed left a message, asking Greg to call him because he was worried about one of his guests, but there was nothing more that he could do for him. He wasn’t even sure that there was anything Greg Bradley could do. After all, it wasn’t as if he could force Carson to consult with him.

  Still, when Phil arrived Jed told him to take a quick look-see at 12. Carson’s Dodge wasn’t in the lot, so Jed figured it was a chance to check the room and make sure that his guest hadn’t bled a gut over the bed.

  “Just stick your head in, take a look at the bathroom, then come back to me,” he said.

  Phil, after what seemed like a couple of seconds while his addled brain tried to make sense of his father’s simple request, grabbed the master key and headed out.

  Phil had found the lump while showering that afternoon.

  Like most men, he wasn’t as careful as he should be about checking his privates. Secretly, and also in common with most men, he had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude toward his own health. The last time he had consulted a doctor was two years before, when he broke his wrist snowboarding. Since then, Phil had suffered nothing worse than head colds and hangovers.

  But this lump couldn’t be ignored. Hell, Phil could see it when he looked in the mirror, like someone had slipped a grape in there. It was tender, but not unduly painful, and Phil was certain that it hadn’t been there the night before. There was no way that he could have missed something like that. But it couldn’t be anything serious, right? I mean, these things took time. They didn’t just happen overnight. He’d give it a day. Maybe it was just one of those oddities, and by morning it would be gone. He couldn’t get rid of the image of it from his mind, though. Worse, he couldn’t shake off the sensation that he had, like there were worms beneath his skin, burrowing into flesh and marrow, transforming everything within to black.

  Now, as he walked past the motel’s small, clean rooms, he felt the throbbing in his groin, and knew that he would have to talk to someone about it. He had almost told his father what was troubling him, but he was simultaneously concerned about worrying the old man, and mortified at the prospect of Jed Wheaton asking his son to show him his privates. He decided that once the night shift was done, he would head over to Doc Bradley’s first thing and get himself looked at.

  Phil opened the door to 12. There was a smell in there, the kind he always associated with his grandma dying. She’d been in one of those old people’s wards where nobody was ever going to see home again, and the whole ward stank faintly of vomit and piss and mortality, all unsuccessfully masked by cleaning products and industrial-strength deodorant. There was the same smell in 12, except there was nothing strong enough to really hide it. Phil thought he could detect the residue of Maria’s spray, but she might just as well have hung one of those pine tree air deodorizers on a corpse for all the effect it was having.

  The smell was worst in the bathroom, but at least it was clean. The towels were folded and unused. The shower was dry, and even the soaps remained wrapped. The toilet had been flushed, but there was some blood on the floor nearby.

  Phil stepped back into the bedroom. There was a bag in one corner, an expensive-looking leather duffel, but it was locked. It was the only sign that the room was occupied. Everything else was just as Maria always left it for arriving guests, even down to the remote for the TV lying perfectly centered on the cover of the latest HBO schedule.

  Phil killed the light, locked the door, and turned to find himself face-to-face with Buddy Carson.

  “Can I ask what you’re doing?” said Carson.

  In the moonlight, his face looked gaunt and cadaverous, and up close his breath smelled like a distilled version of the stink in his room. Instinctively, Phil backed away from the stench.

  “Just checking to make sure you don’t need more towels. We do it for everyone,” Phil lied.

  Buddy made a big play of looking at his watch.

  “Kind of late to be doing that, isn’t it? You’ll wake folks up.”

  “We got tied up with other stuff this evening, and you’re the only guest tonight. I knew you were out, because your car wasn’t in the lot. Seemed like the best chance I’d have without disturbing you.”

  Buddy didn’t say anything in reply. He just eyeballed Phil, nodding slowly to let the kid know that what he was saying might sound like the most reasonable thing he’d ever heard, and yet he still didn’t believe a damn word of it.

  “Well, I appreciate it,” he said at last. “You have a good night.”

  Phil made as if to walk around him, but Buddy gripped his wrist and, once again, Phil had an image of black creatures moving under his skin.

  “Hey, you feeling okay?” asked Buddy, and although there was concern in his voice the moonlight made his face appear to be leering. “You look kind of sick.”

  “Tired,” said Phil, then winced as something stabbed into his groin. He looked down, half anticipating the sight of a needle sticking into his pants, but there was nothing.

  “I got to go,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Buddy. “You be careful now.”

  He watched the kid stumble away. He’d make for the bathroom. That’s what Buddy would do if he was the kid. He’d go to the bathroom, unbutton his pants, and take a look at what was going on downstairs, because it surely felt now as if that thing were growing and spreading.

  It was, of course, but not in any way that the kid would be able to see. Buddy figured the true pain would start in a couple of hours’ time, as the cancer really started to eat away at him, making steady progress toward the major organs and eroding his spine.

  But in the bathroom, the lump would appear unchanged.
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  Just a lump, folks. Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.

  Buddy closed the door and glanced around his room. His bag had not been touched. That was good. Buddy had things in there that he didn’t want other people looking at. Time was pressing. Buddy figured that the kid would go to the doctor the next day. By then, the bitch maid would probably have discovered the lump in her breast. On top of the old man, that would make three in less than two days, more if some of the other folks he’d touched that day proved weaker than suspected. A cluster like that would not go unremarked. Buddy had done some asking around that day. There wasn’t but one doctor in the town, and he ran his clinic out of a peachy little one-story house on the eastern outskirts of town. It made things easier for Buddy. He would have only one call to make.

  He knelt down and used a small silver key to open the lock on his bag. Inside were a couple of changes of clothes, identical to those he was already wearing; a passport and a driver’s license in the name of Russ Cercan (another of Buddy’s little jokes); and a glass jelly jar. It was this that Buddy now reached for, holding it up to the light the way an entomologist might examine a particularly interesting bug.

  Inside the jar was a black tumor. It had come from inside Buddy’s own body, coughed up that morning as the pain began to tell upon him. He had crawled to the bathroom but didn’t make it to the bowl. Instead, he lay retching on the tiles, coughing up blood and black matter, including the tumor now contained in the jar. It was a reminder of what dwelt within him, a gift from the disease to help him in the work to come.

  Dead cells, thought Buddy. That’s all you are, just dead cells.