"Shut up, Harlen," said Dale.
"Make me," said Jim Harlen, flicking some water toward Dale's face.
"Shut up both of you," said Mike. He went on as if he hadn't been interrupted. "What we do is, we follow Roon and Old Double-Butt and Van Syke and the others, find out if they did anything to Tubby."
Duane was playing cat's cradle with a string he'd found in his pocket. "Why would they do anything to Tubby Cooke?"
Mike shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because they're creeps. Don't you think they're weirdos?"
Duane didn't smile. "I think a lot of people are weirdos, but that doesn't give them a motive to go around kidnapping fat kids."
"If it did," said Harlen,"you'd be a goner."
Duane smiled, but turned slightly toward the other boy. Harlen was a foot shorter than Duane and weighed about half as much. "Et tu, Brute?" Duane said.
"What's that mean?" asked Harlen, his eyes narrowing.
Duane went back to his cat's cradle. "That's what Caesar said when Brutus asked him if he'd eaten any Harlenburgers that day."
"Hey," said Dale,"let's get this decided. I have to get home to mow the yard."
"And I'm helping my father clean the milk truck's tank this afternoon," said Kevin. "Let's decide."
"Decide what?" said Harlen. "Whether we're following Roon and Double-Butt around to see if they killed and ate Tubby Cooke?"
"Yeah," said Mike. "Or if they know what happened to him and are covering it up for some reason."
"Do you want to follow Van Syke around?" Harlen asked Mike. "That guy's the only one of the Old Central weirdos nuts enough to kill a kid. And he'd kill us if he found us following him."
"I'll take Van Syke," said Mike. "Who wants Roon?" "Me," said Kevin. "He never goes anywhere except the school and that room he rents, so it shouldn't be hard to follow him."
"How about Mrs. Doubbet?" asked Mike. "Me!" said Harlen and Dale at the same time. Mike pointed at Harlen." "You take her. But make sure she doesn't know you're following her." "I'll blend in with the trees, man." Lawrence knocked Harlen's dam apart with his stick. "Who do Dale and I get?"
"Somebody should check on Cordie and her family," said Mike. "Tubby might come back while we're farting around and we wouldn't know it."
"Aw," said Dale. "They live way out by the dump." "You don't have to go every hour. Just check on them every day or two, keep your eye out for Cordie coming into town, that sort of thing." "OK."
"What about Duane?" said Kevin. Mike tossed a rock into the pond and looked at the bigger boy. "What do you want to do, Duano?"
Duane's string now resembled Lawrence's spiderweb in complexity. He sighed and collapsed the intricate arrangement. "What you guys really want to do is nuts, you know. You want to know if Old Central is behind this somehow. So I'll follow Old Central."
"Think you can keep up with it, lard bucket?" asked Harlen. He'd stepped to the edge of the culvert and was urinating into the dark pool.
"What do you mean you'll follow it?" asked Mike. Duane rubbed his nose and adjusted his glasses. "I agree that something's strange about that school. I'll research it. Get some background information. Maybe I can dig up something on Roon and the others, too."
"Roon's a vampire," said Harlen, flicking away the last few drops and zipping up. "Van Syke's a werewolf." "What's Old Double-Butt?" asked Lawrence. "She's an old bitch who gives too much homework." "Hey," said Mike. "Watch the anguagelay in front of the idkay."
"I'm no idkay," said Lawrence.
Mike said to Duane, "Where would you get this information?"
The bigger boy shrugged. "There's almost nothing in Elm Haven's pitiful excuse for a library, but I'll try to get over to Oak Hill."
Mike nodded. "OK, well, we can get back together in a couple of days to…" He stopped. One or two cars had roared overhead while they had been talking, gravel flying into the leaves and dust drifting down after each vehicle passed, but now there came a rumbling so deep that it sounded like a semitrailer was lumbering overhead. The truck stopped with a screech of brakes.
"Shhh!" whispered Mike and the six of them lay on their bellies in the culvert as if that might conceal them further. Harlen moved back from the opening.
Overhead, an engine idled roughly. There came the sound of a truck door opening just as a terrible stench drifted down and settled around them like invisible but poison gas. "Oh, fuck," whispered Harlen. "The Rendering Truck." "Shut up," hissed Mike. Jim obeyed. Boots crunched on gravel above them. Then silence as Van Syke or whoever it was stood at the edge of the road directly above the pool.
Dale picked up Lawrence's dropped stick and held it like a skinny club. Mike's face seemed pale as cream. Kevin looked around at the others, his Adam's apple working. Duane folded his hands between his knees and waited.
Something heavy ripped through leaves and splashed into the pool, throwing water on Harlen.
"Shit!" cried Harlen and started to say more until Mike clamped a hand over his mouth.
More gravel crunched, then came the sound of weeds snapping as if Van Syke was starting down the hillside. Another car's engine became audible as a car or pickup came down the hill from Calvary Cemetery. Then the sound of brakes and a horn honking.
"He can't get around," whispered Kevin. Mike nodded. The crunch of weeds paused, receded. A truck door slammed again and the Rendering Truck moved uphill toward the Black Tree with a grinding of gears. The car behind it honked again. Within a minute it was quiet again and the stench had almost gone. Almost.
Mike stood up and moved to the edge of the culvert. "Holy shit," he whispered. Mike almost never cussed. The others crowded to the lip of the culvert. "What the hell is it?" whispered Kevin. He held his t-shirt up to his face to get away from the smell that seemed to rise from the dark water.
Dale looked over Kevin's shoulder. The ripples and disturbed mud were just settling down, the water was not quite clear, but he could make out the white flesh, bloated belly, thin arms, fingers, and the dead brown eyes staring up through the water.
"Oh, Jesus Christ, Jesus," gasped Harlen. "It's a baby. He threw a dead baby in there."
Duane took Dale's stick, got down on his stomach, reached his arm into the water, and poked at the dead thing, turning it over. Hair on the corpse's arms moved and fingers seemed to waggle. Duane brought the head almost to the surface.
The other boys backed away. Lawrence moved to the far end of the cave, whimpering slightly, close to tears.
"Not a baby," said Duane. "At least not a human baby. It's some sort of monkey. A rhesus monkey, I think. A macaque."
Harlen strained to see, but stepped no closer. "If it's a fucking monkey, where's its fur?"
"Hair," said Duane absently. He used another stick to turn the thing over. Its back broke the surface of the water, and they could plainly see the tail. It also was hairless. "I don't know what happened to its hair. Maybe it was sick. Maybe somebody boiled it off."
"Boiled it off," repeated Mike, staring at the pond with an expression of pure revulsion. Duane let the thing go, and they all watched as it settled back to the bottom. Its fingers moved as if it were signaling them or waving farewell.
Harlen tapped the curved cement wall above him in a tense staccato. "Hey, Mikey, you still want to take Van Syke?" Mike didn't turn around. "Yeah." "Let's get out of here," said Kevin. They scrambled out, smashed weeds in their hurry to get to their bikes, and milled around for a minute before pedaling uphill. The smell of the Rendering Truck still hung in the air here.
"What if it comes back?" whispered Harlen, saying what Dale was thinking.
"Dump the bikes in the weeds," said Mike. "Take off through the woods. Head for Dale's Uncle Henry's and Aunt Lena's."
"What if it comes back when we're on the road to town?" asked Lawrence. His voice was shaking.
"Into the cornfields," said Dale. He touched his little brother's shoulder. "Hey, Van Syke isn't after us. He was just dumping that dead monkey in the creek."
/> "Let's get going anyway," said Kevin and they mounted up, ready for the steep uphill slog.
"Wait a minute," said Dale. Duane McBride had just gotten up to the road. The heavy boy was red-faced and wheezing, his asthma audible. Dale turned his bike around. "You OK?"
Duane gestured with his hand. "Fine." "You want us to go back to the farm with you?" Duane grinned at them. "Then you going to stay and hold my hand until the Old Man gets home sometime after midnight? Or tomorrow?"
Dale hesitated. He was thinking that Duane should come home with him; that they should all stick together. Then he realized how silly the thought was.
"I'll get in touch with you guys when I find something out about Old Central," said Duane. He waved, turned, and began slogging up the first of the two steep hills that stood between him and the way home.
Dale waved and joined the others for the tiring pull up their own hill. Beyond the driveway to the Black Tree, the road was as flat as only Illinois roads could be. They pedaled hard and the water tower was within sight as soon as they turned off County Six onto the Jubilee College road.
No cars or trucks passed before they reached Elm Haven.
SEVEN
The Free Show began at dusk, but people started arriving at Bandstand Park even while sunlight still lay along Main Street like a tawny cat slow to leave the warm pavement. Farm families backed their pickups and station wagons onto the parking-lot gravel along the Broad Avenue side of the park so as to have the best view when the movie was projected against the Parkside Cafe; then they picnicked on the grass or sat on the bandstand and chatted with townfolk they hadn't seen for a while. Most of the local residents began to arrive when the sun had finally set and the bats were beginning to fly against the darkening shield of sky. Broad Avenue under its arch of elms seemed a dark tunnel opening onto the lighter width of Main Street and terminating at the bright promise of the park with its light and noise and laughter.
The Free Show was a tradition dating back to the early days of World War II when the nearest picture show-Ewalts Palace in Oak Hill-had closed due to the Ewalts' son and only projectionist, Walt, enlisting in the Marine Corps. Peoria was the next nearest source of movie entertainment, but the forty-mile trip was too much for most people because of gas rationing. So the older Mr. Ashley-Montague had brought a projector out from Peoria each Saturday evening that summer of 1942 and shown the newsreels and war-bond ads, cartoons and feature attractions there in Bandstand Park, the images cast twenty feet tall on the whitewashed canvas screen stretched against the Parkside Cafe. The Ashley-Montagues had not actually lived in Elm Ha ven since the week their mansion had burned and the grandfather of the current Mr. Ashley-Montague had committed suicide in 1919, but male members of the family still visited occasionally, made donations to community causes, and generally watched over the small town like Old English squires protecting a village which had grown up on their estate. And, eighteen summers after the son of the last Elm Haven Ashley-Montague brought his first Saturday-night Free Show to town in June of 1942, his son carried on the tradition.
Now, on the fourth evening of June in the summer of 1960, Mr. Ashley-Montague's long Lincoln pulled into the space always left open for it due west of the bandstand, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Sperling and other members of the City Council helped him carry the massive projector to its wooden platform on the bandstand, families settled onto their blankets and park benches, adventurous children were shooed from the lower tree branches and their hiding places in the crawlspace beneath the bandstand, parents in the back of pickup trucks adjusted their folding chairs and handed around bowls of popcorn, and the park settled into a pre-show hush as the sky darkened above the elms and the canvas rectangle on the wall of the Parkside Cafe came alive with light.
Dale and Lawrence left late, hoping their father would arrive home in time for the whole family to go to the Free Show. He didn't, but a little after eight-thirty he called from the state line to say that he was on his way and not to wait up. Dale's mom made popcorn for them, gave each boy his own brown bag of it and a dime to buy a soft drink at the Parkside, and told them to come home as soon as the picture was over.
They didn't take their bikes. Normally, neither boy would walk anywhere if he could help it, but walking to the Free Show was a tradition dating back to when Lawrence was too small to have a bike and Dale walked him to the park, holding his hand as they crossed the silent streets.
The streets were silent now. The glow in the evening sky had faded but not been replaced by stars; the gaps between the elms were dark as clouds moved in. The air was thick, rich with the scent of new-mown grass and blossoms. Crickets tuned up for the nightly symphony in the dark gardens and thick hedges, and an owl tested its voice in the dead cotton wood tree behind Mrs. Moon's house. Old Central was a dark mass in the center of its abandoned playgrounds and the boys hurried down Second Avenue past it, turning west on Church Street.
There were streetlights on each corner, but the long spaces between were dark beneath the trees. Dale wanted to run so as not to miss the cartoon, but Lawrence was afraid of tripping on the uneven sidewalk stones and spilling his popcorn, so the two hurried along in a fast walk, moving through leaf shadow as the trees stirred above them. The big old homes along Church Street were either dark or. lighted only by the blue-and-white pulse of television light through bay windows and screen doors. A few cigarettes glowed on porches, but it was too dark to see the people there. On the corner of Third and Church, where Dr. Roon rented rooms on the second floor of Mrs. Samson's old boardinghouse, Dale and Lawrence ran across the street, trotted past the dark brick building holding the skating rink now closed for summer, and turned left onto Broad.
"It feels like Halloween," said Lawrence, his voice small. "Like there're people dressed up in the shadows where we can't see them. Like this is my trick-or-treat bag but nobody's home and…"
"Shut up," said Dale. He could hear the music from the Free Show now, bright and tinny: a Warner Brothers cartoon. The elm-covered tunnel of Broad was behind them, only a few lights showing in the big Victorian homes set far back from the street. First Presbyterian, the Stewart family's church, glowed pale and empty on the corner across from the post office.
"What's that?" whispered Lawrence, stopping and clutching his bag of popcorn.
"Nothing. What?" said Dale, stopping with his brother.
There was a rustling, sliding, screeching from the darkness in and above the elms.
"It's nothing," said Dale, tugging at Lawrence to get moving. "Birds." Lawrence still wouldn't move and Dale paused to listen again. "Bats."
Dale could see them now: dark shapes flitting across the paler gaps between the leaves, winged shadows visible against the white of First Prez as they darted to and fro. "Just bats." He tugged at Lawrence's hand.
His brother refused to move. "Listen," he whispered.
Dale considered slugging him, kicking him right in the seat of his Levi's, or grabbing him by one oversized ear and dragging him the last block to the Free Show. Instead, he listened.
Leaves rustling. The manic scales of a cartoon soundtrack dulled by distance and humid air. The leathery flap of wings. Voices.
Instead of the near-ultrasonic chirp of bats scanning the way ahead, the sound in the motion-filled darkness around them was the screech of small, sharp voices. Cries. Shrieks. Curses. Obscenities. Most of the sounds teetered on the brink of actually being words, the maddeningly audible but not-quite-distinct syllables of a shouted conversation in an adjoining room. But two of the sounds were quite clear.
Dale and Lawrence stood frozen on the sidewalk, clutching their bags of popcorn and staring upward, as bats shrieked their names in consonants that sounded like teeth scraping across blackboards. Far, far away, the amplified voice of Porky Pig said, "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!"
"Run!" whispered Dale.
Jim Harlen had orders not to go to the Free Show; his mother was gone-off to Peoria on another date-and while she said that
he was old enough to stay home without a baby-sitter, he was not allowed to go out. Harlen made up his bed with his ventriloquist's dummy turned with its face to the wall and a bunched-up pair of jeans to extend the legs under the cover, just in case she got home before him and checked in on him. She wouldn't. She never got home before one or two o'clock in the morning.
Harlen grabbed a couple of Butterfingers from the cupboard for his movie snack, got his bike out of the shed, and tore off down Depot Street. He'd been watching Gunsmoke on TV, and it'd gotten dark sooner than he'd planned for. He didn't want to miss the cartoon.
The streets were empty. Harlen knew that anyone old enough to be able to drive but young enough not to be so stupid as to hang around to watch Lawrence Welk or the Free Show had left for Peoria or Galesburg hours ago. He'd sure as hell not hang around Elm Haven on a Saturday night when he got older.
Jim Harlen didn't plan on hanging around Elm Haven much longer in any event. Either his mother would marry one of those greasers she was dating-probably some garage mechanic who sank all his money into suits-and Harlen would be moving to Peoria, or else he'd run away in a year or two. Harlen envied Tubby Cooke. The fat kid had been about as bright as the 25-watt bulb Harlen's mom kept lit on the back porch, but he'd known enough to get the hell away from Elm Haven. Of course, Harlen didn't get hit the way Tubby probably did-based on how drunk his old man was most of the time and how stupid his ma looked-but Harlen had his own problems.
He hated his mother's taking her old name back, leaving him stranded with his father's last name when he wasn't even allowed to mention his dad in front of her. He hated her being gone every Friday and Saturday, all dressed up in the low-cut peasant blouses and sexy black dresses that made Harlen feel funny… sort of like his mom was one of those women in the magazines he kept hidden in the back of his closet. He hated it when she smoked, leaving the lipstick rings around the butts of the cigarettes in the ashtrays, making him imagine that same lipstick on the cheeks of greasers Harlen didn't even know… on their bodies. He hated it when she had too much to drink and tried to hide it, acting the perfect lady-but Harlen could always tell by the precise diction, the slow movements, and the way she got all sloppy and tried to hug him.