Meanwhile, Norman stared at the man with the wings. It was Sharpe standing there in the moonlight. Norman blinked. Looked harder.
No. Those weren’t wings. Sharpe stood with his hands on his hips. Moonlight and shadows did the rest to create the illusion of angel wings jutting out from either side of his torso.
‘Norman, you were hurting Pamela. No real man would force himself on a woman.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Norman protested. He stared up at Sharpe’s face veiled by shadow. His flat-top haircut made his head look almost square in silhouette. His white short-sleeved shirt seemed to glow with its own light in the radiance of the moon.
Sharpe was motionless.
Sharpe was calm.
And Norman sensed that Sharpe had passed judgment on him.
Norman’s heart pounded in his chest. ‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’
‘Worse,’ Sharpe said.
‘Worse? What can be worse than killing me!’
‘I’m gonna put you on my bus, then I’m going to take you home to your family. And then I’m going to stand there while you confess to your mother and father all the bad things you’ve done.’
‘No, you can’t . . . you can’t!’ Norman’s voice rose in a scream as he imagined the scenario.
Him.
Quaking there in the living room. Admitting to his mother and father how he had killed the cops. How he had killed Terry.
Then had tried to rip off Pamela’s clothes.
Oh, Jesus. No way.
Guilt came in dark, sickening waves. Remorse was as bitter as bile rising in his throat.
He had to escape. He couldn’t let Sharpe take him back home to face that kind of shame.
Norman turned, ran.
Ran blindly. Straight over the edge of the cliff.
Fell.
Fell a long, long way.
The cool night air rushed past him. In the moonlight he saw the ground come speeding upward to meet his falling body.
I’ll be fine, Norman told himself. Sharpe will save me. Sharpe’s got wings . . .
Then he remembered that the wings he’d seen were a trick of the moonlight. Just an illusion.
Not like those hard rocks just seconds away.
Norman wanted to cry.
But he didn’t have time.
Chapter Fifty-five
Appetizers
Pits enjoyed its celebration party.
Its inhabitants’ personal thanksgiving that the danger to them was over.
All the people of Pits had turned out. All seven of them. Sharpe, Priest (in his wheelchair), Lauren, Nicki, Wes, Hank and Pamela.
They lit a big fire under the summer stars where they flame-cooked delicate little blood sausages as an appetizer for the main course. Then Lauren broiled steaks on the barbecue. In tubs of ice were about a hundred bottles of beer and sodas of different varieties.
‘You ready for your steak, Wes?’ Lauren asked.
‘Could eat a horse,’ he replied.
‘Horse is one thing that isn’t on the menu.’
Wes sat beside Pamela at a long wooden table. Sitting opposite were Nicki and Sharpe, who had a space beside him for Lauren. Priest sat at one end, his bald head gleaming like a silver dome in the firelight.
At the other end at the head of the table – in his rightful place as mayor – was Hank, looking quite the gent in his best Stetson. Everyone was in good spirits. All were having fun.
Just one week ago the madness had ended.
Of course, this might be another kind of madness, Pamela thought. But it’s a peaceful, well-ordered madness. A happy madness.
After Pamela and Sharpe had walked down from the cliff top that had claimed Norman’s life they’d circled round the hill to Boots, who had still been guarding the pit shaft, gun in hand. Sharpe had distracted her while Pamela had introduced the pig-girl’s head to a piece of lumber. The hard way.
When Boots woke up she was almost relieved that Pamela had survived. She was full of optimism for a future without Duke and Norman.
‘I always thought they was gonna be trouble,’ she’d confided.
‘How’s the steak?’ Pamela asked with a wink. ‘Tough as old boots?’
‘Hey, I heard that,’ Lauren protested as she sat down beside Sharpe.
‘Only kidding.’
‘You know,’ Wes said, ‘it really does taste like pork.’ He smacked his lips in appreciation of the meat’s flavor.
Priest sang out, ‘Now, didn’t I always tell everyone? You’ve not lived until you’ve eaten your fellow man – or, in this case, woman.’
Hank raised his bottle of beer in a toast.
‘Haw! Here’s to Boots. A woman who can satisfy the inner man.’
They all hoisted their bottles. ‘Boots!’ Spontaneous applause broke out around the table.
Meanwhile, Boots, or what little remained of her, sizzled over the hot coals of the barbecue.
Entrees
A week after the meal that’d had Boots as dish of the day there was another celebration when Hank did his rightful duty as mayor and conducted a marriage ceremony for which the good people of Pits had been waiting for a long time. Across the town’s two main buildings – the gas station and the cafe – hung banners that announced:
LAUREN & SHARPE
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SPECIAL DAY!
Pamela smiled as she flipped the special-recipe Pitsburgers for the wedding feast. Then she slipped them onto buns for Nicki to distribute. It wasn’t every day that Pits celebrated the wedding of two of its townsfolk. People came from miles around to watch Sharpe slip that band of gold onto Lauren’s finger. Many of the well-wishers were men, women and children whom Sharpe had saved in the past.
Pamela’s smile broadened. She’d never seen a couple more in love.
‘Ouch.’ The final burger on the skillet spat a drop of hot fat onto the back of her hand. Shaking her head, she used a pair of long-handled kitchen tongs to grab the offending burger. As she did so, she couldn’t resist scolding the meat that had stung her. ‘That’s the last time you ever hurt anyone, Norman Wiscoff.’ She laid the Pitsburger on a bed of lettuce, then dropped a slice of cheese on top of the steaming patty of meat.
Norman meat, to be precise. After all, Priest had insisted that it would be a waste of perfectly good eating to leave Norman at the bottom of the cliff for the vultures and the coyotes.
Norman had always wanted to be cool. In the end he got what he wanted. He wound up in the cafe’s deep freeze.
That was after he’d been expertly rendered into cutlets, fillets, chops, spare ribs and burgers.
‘Pitsburger to go!’
‘Is that the last one?’ Nicki asked as she collected the plateful of food.
‘The very last one,’ Pamela announced, beaming.
‘Well, come out and join the party.’
They walked out into the sunshine, where the party was in full swing.
Just Deserts
That evening, after everyone else had gone home, Pamela joined the other residents of Pits as they waved Lauren and Sharpe off on their honeymoon. The setting sun hung low, flooding the Mojave Desert with a light of pure gold. Cacti stood in the sand; they looked as if they were waving, too.
When the bus pulled away, with Sharpe at the wheel and Lauren sitting right behind him on a bench seat, the good folk of Pits cheered and whistled and waved.
Lauren glanced back into the body of the bus. Okay, it might be unusual to take a bus full of passengers on your honeymoon.
But Sharpe was different, she reflected.
Come to that, the bus’s passengers were different, too.
The mannequins sat silently upright in their summer clothes.
Right in the front two seats were three newcomers.
Sharpe has unique ideas. Some might call him a visionary. Though not everyone understands his motives. But Lauren did.
Because the three new passengers on the bus were Boots, Duke and Norma
n. Or, at least, they were three plastic clothes-store mannequins that Sharpe had artfully made to look like Boots, Duke and Norman.
Boots with her short bleached hair, wearing her skimpy tank top and white cowgirl boots.
Norman sat beside her in a white T-shirt and beach shorts, his eyes staring glassily ahead.
Duke lounged by himself in the middle of a seat designed for two. He wore a white T-shirt like Norman’s, blue jeans and motorcycle boots. Sharpe had painted his features well. The bad-boy upper lip still curled. One plastic arm reached back to rest on the seatback. On that arm a tattoo read: BORN TO RAISE HELL. Even though the body was synthetic, he still looked cool.
Why had Sharpe brought replicas of these three onto his bus? Lauren had wondered about that. The other mannequins were Sharpe’s reminders of the people he’d saved from the killing heat of the desert.
At last she realized that these three dummies were a warning.
They were saying:
If you ever come to Pits, California, pop. 7, you’ll be greeted with the warmest of welcomes. But, take care. If you arrive with the intention of causing hurt, then you might end your days just like Boots, Norman and Duke here.
Out on the desert highway.
Riding the Glory Bus until the ‘sweet by and by . . .’
And that, my friends, means until Judgment Day.
Richard Laymon, The Glory Bus
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