Totentanz Page 4

  "Town owns the land, of course. Your daddy never did settle his claim on it."

  The other spit on the ground, not missing the mayor's white shoe. "I saw what you did with that farm. Couldn't wait to get your hands on it. The house and barn are already half torn down."

  The sweat had disappeared from the fat man's lips and brow. "Soon be ten new homes out that way, with ten more planned next year."

  He brought his war gun up, but hands not the mayor's were laid on it. His eyes swiveled to see that others had come onto the darkening street.

  "I think we got us a suspect in that little girl's death last week," the man who laid his hand on the rifle said. He had a dull five-point star on his shirt. Firmly he took the rifle away. "Shame about your brother at Gettysburg," he said. “Heard he was a real brave boy." The sheriff grinned, a yellow, dull, tobacco-stained smile. "And don't you worry about Lucius. Him telling you all those stories. We know he was the one killed your daddy. We'll catch him yet. Reckon we only got to look from where you came." He said quietly to the mayor, "I fear we'll be having a hanging, maybe two, before long."

  The mayor replied, his hands finally finding safe passage on the lawman's shoulders, squeezing them, "I think we best have one of those hangings before another sun gets high."

  In the night he heard quick hammers working. Steel nails met and kissed wood, and at dawn, through the bars of his cell, he watched them prove the rope tight and true.

  They led him up the scaffold and put the rope around his neck. He still wore his dusty uniform. He did not look at any of them, but stared straight ahead as they tightened the noose and stood back. There over the hill, he could just make out in the rising light his father's farm, the ruined beams of the barn, the skeleton of the carousel. . . .

  He felt the floor give way beneath his feet and the rope close like two cruel hands around his neck. It was then that he screamed, not in pain but in raging promise, spitting out one word over them, one word that echoed around the low hills long after his feet stopped kicking at the air.

  "Rise and shine."

  He was jarred from his memories by the rough, metal-scraping sound of the back doors of the truck opening. A dark figure stood outlined there. The figure smoked, and the smoke that came from his long cigarette was as black as his hooded eyes and the suit he wore. He lifted his cigarette to his mouth. His nails were neatly trimmed and pale, his skin as white as flour. He pulled the cigarette from his lips, blew black smoke.

  "Our workers are up," the dark man said, smiling. "Don't you think you should be up too?" His voice both soothed and mocked.

  The other grunted, rolling up into a sitting position on the cot. He spat on the floor.

  "They'll be finished by morning," the dark man said.

  "Good."

  "Come, come, now. Can't we have a little enthusiasm?"

  He spat again. "Lay off it, Ash."

  Ash was silent, smoking, and then he said, "Could it be that we're feeling just the tiniest bit anxious?"

  There came now the dull sounds of equipment being moved, along with the sounds that saws and hammers make. There were no shouts or greetings; it was as if some inevitable engine had ground into life and set about doing its work. Ash smiled, turning to look at the proceedings outside, and after a moment the man on the cot rose stiffly and joined him. He held his right leg as he rose, though he gave no evidence of pain.

  "Look the same?" Ash inquired.

  "A little," he answered, not really wanting to say anything. His eyes roamed the low hills, finally resting on the church steeple, the rows of new houses, the stores. It was the same, yet not the same. His gaze fell to the scene before him, the piles of boards and metal struts, the rolls of white lights and the red and green pennants. The ground they stood on was the same but utterly different; the barn, the house, everything was gone; even the huge oak had been uprooted, and other trees, low, scrubby, unhealthy things, had grown in its place. They, too, would soon be uprooted.

  He eyed the ranks of silent workers; more were wandering down from the squat hill next to the church. A few bony-looking wooden structures had already been raised, and one was being covered in dull green canvas trimmed with red fringe. A few bright lights from the line of humming trucks gave the scene ghostly, intermittent spots of illumination.

  "I told you they'd be finished by morning," Ash said. He offered his cigarette pack, and when the other said nothing, he took a fresh one for himself, lit it and tucked the pack into a pocket of his sharply creased suit. He laughed, looking at the cigarette for a moment. "They certainly can't hurt you, my friend," he said caustically. "Tell me this," he continued, his voice probing like a knife as he watched his companion, whose eyes stared unswervingly ahead. "How does it feel to know they built you your very own tomb at the top of the churchyard, at the very highest point, and then couldn't find you to put you in it?" Ash's smile stretched into a long, thin, ghastly grin. "How does it feel to be back in Montvale, Jeff Scott?"

  FOUR

  Someone had to be first, and someone had to be second. Mayor Poundridge was second. He tried not to be, tried to burrow himself so deep into his pillow that Montvale and the whole world would go away and not come back. But if he didn't believe in his job this morning, Emily did, and she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and made her way to the front door.

  "All right! All right!" she scolded, opening the door to let in the first man to get up in Montvale. He looked like a scarecrow, all pieces of angle thrust out this way and that, and as skinny as straw. He came flapping in like a blackbird that had just seen a scarecrow come to life.

  "Barney, you calm down," Emily Poundridge said.

  "Got to see the mayor, Emily," Barney Bates said. His face was nearly as flushed as the red baseball cap he held tight in his hand.

  "You just sit down, or at least stand still, and I'll see he gets up." She looked at him sideways. "What's wrong with you, anyway?"

  "Got to see the mayor, that's all."

  "All right, you just stay there." She moved off, taking a last look at him.

  The mayor produced himself five minutes later, rubbing sleep from his eyes. From the back of the house the smell of coffee leaked in. The mayor shuffled around behind his desk and sat down in his chair, yawning.

  "Morning, Barney," he said.

  Barney Bates fluttered up in front of him like that blackbird taking flight again. "Mayor, you got to do something about it."

  "Can't do nothing about it till you tell me what it is, Barney."

  "You got to do something about the park."

  "What's that?" Poundridge was still not truly awake.

  "The park that sprung up outside my back window last night. The one you gave a permit to last month."

  "Barney," Mayor Poundridge said, waking up at last, "slow down and tell me again what you want."

  Barney Bates looked like he would burst a vein. "Goddammit, Mayor, they got a whole goddam park out there!"

  "First of all," the mayor replied, his voice turning stern, "I won't hardly abide swearing in my house. And this being a Sunday, I won't abide it at all. And second, Barney," the mayor said, his face reddening a little in frustration, "what in blazes are you talking about?"

  "Didn't you sell that old patch of land, that old Scott family land, to them carnival people last month?"

  "You were at the meeting, Barney. Everybody voted on it."

  "Well, it's up."

  "What?"

  "The whole amusement park. It's all there."

  "Now, Barney," the mayor began, laying a hand on Bates' shoulder.

  "You can see it from your top window," Barney said. "Come on, Mayor, you can see it from your window."

  Shaking his head, Mayor Poundridge led the way to the top floor.

  The smell of coffee was very strong in the house now. Jonathan Poundridge was fully awake, and he looked forward to that coffee.

  "You'd better not be fooling with me, Barney," he said, realizing that it was entirely
possible that Barney Bates was seeing things. It had happened before, and it wouldn't be the first time that Barney would have to be put away with a fit of the DTs. It had been a while, though, and as Poundridge turned to regard Barney when they reached the top of the stairs, he could smell no liquor on his breath. Still . . . .

  "There, just like I told you," Barney said, pointing.

  A July chill went through Mayor Poundridge as he looked out the small window. There behind the Bates' place was the "park" Barney had been yelling about. It was there in a thousand shades of tent canvas. It twisted and looped and spread itself out over the old Scott land like a lion after a gorging meal. Banners, long lengths of lights, and balloons and streamers formed its perimeters, within which lay a circus array of roller coasters, rides, games and a broad, paved midway waiting to be filled with people. A year's worth of work had been dropped on the town in one night. It looked new, but the rides and tents were in the style of at least a hundred years ago. The carousel, one corner of which the mayor could just see, appeared antique. The highest curve of the Ferris wheel edged up to hang even with the top of the church spire.

  "I just don't get it, Barney," the mayor said. He felt suddenly chilled again.

  "You're damn right you don't get it," Barney said, "and I don't get it neither. Can they build like that, with all that stuff right outside my back window?"

  For a moment Mayor Poundridge didn't hear him. He was remembering his grandmother telling him about a carousel like that a long time ago. . . .

  "I don't know, Barney."

  "Dammit, Mayor—do something about it!"

  Mayor Poundridge had the oddest feeling that someone was watching him from the top of that roller-coaster loop, that there were eyes, huge disembodied eyes, boring into him. It was only with great effort that he was able to look away.

  "I suppose," he said, his voice low and thoughtful, "that we'll have to do something about it."

  The Three Musketeers rose early. Something called them together, some magnetic change in the atmosphere that told them it was time for a meeting. The sun was barely up. Sleepily they crept from their beds, all three, dressed and went yawning into the morning air.

  "I had a nightmare," Pup said when the others met him by his garage. "I dreamed there were reptiles all over me, and big laughing mouths with nothing attached to them."

  "I had nightmares too," Jack said. His eyes were half-closed, his words barely yawns. "There were fish, fish attacking me, and I was underwater." Reggie only nodded quietly, "Me too."

  The air was heavy. It was as though the sun was fighting its way up the sky this morning, and there was no blue to blanket it but only a slate-gray slab that made' it look as though it would either drop below the horizon in shame or hurry across to the other side. The day might grow warm later, but now there was a chill in it.

  Pup shivered. Even Sprinkles, his dog, who had followed him out, looked as though he wanted to crawl off to someplace warm, a winter fireplace or the south side of a stove. Pup absently scratched him behind the ears as he whimpered.

  "What are we doing here?" Pup asked peevishly. "It . . . just seemed right," Jack said.

  Reggie's thoughts were elsewhere, far away.

  Pup's mother appeared at the back porch: a small, nervous woman with graying hair and distracted concern in her voice.

  "Pup, are you warm enough?" she asked. "Do you want me to get your jacket?"

  Pup's father came out behind her, his briefcase under an arm. Impeccably dressed, he looked at none of them but walked with deliberate, precise steps around to the front of the house.

  "Jerks," Pup muttered, ignoring his mother, who still stood on the porch, rubbing her hands. "Let's go inside," he said to his friends, turning to the garage as his mother went back into the house.

  They drew open the doors to their treasure house. The garage was huge, a three-car port that Pup's parents never used because he had insisted he needed it all. And it was filled. Along one wall stood a solid block of bookcases, packed with every horror paperback and hardcover book Pup could lay his hands on, each in its proper place, each meticulously cataloged and stamped: THREE MUSKETEERS ONLY. Two other walls were tacked up with pictures and photos: twenty Lon Chaneys, a half-wall of Vincent Prices, group portraits of wolfmen and Frankensteins and mummies. There was a prize picture of Stephen King holding a copy of The Shining. There were other pictures, movie stills and posters, filling every avail-able space. The fourth wall was lined with shelves bulging with boxes. There were crates of fangs and capes and bulbous heads and wigs; outer space faces, Spock ears and Abominable Snowman feet. There were hundreds of costumes and parts of costumes, enough to assemble any monster. Each was labeled and stored neatly. One area was buttressed by benches and workplaces, half-finished models in neat rows, stacks of day-glow paints and jars of brushes side by side with tubes of fresh glue and display cases. A hundred models were already finished: a hunchback on his pedestal, crying "Sanctuary!" Bela Lugosi stepping forward, his cape held at nose height to show his eyes to best hypnotic advantage. Other models lay half-finished in sculpted pieces. The rest of the garage was filled with everything left over: life-sized mannequins covered with mummy tape; a torture rack in pine; a few bicycle parts ready to be made into who knows what.

  They drew open the doors slowly, waiting for the magic to hit them as it always did—and nothing happened.

  The garage was cold. Pup switched on the lights. Bank on bank of neons flickered into gas life over-head, and still the room was cold. It did nothing for them. The magic had disappeared, leaked out of the corners like damp rainwater and siphoned off into the ground. Their clubhouse was suddenly just a big damp room filled with junk.

  Pup shuddered; he was reluctant to enter. None of them wanted to enter. It was suddenly different, all of this, childish and merely play. If they entered, someone might start laughing at them for being little boys.

  Quickly Pup turned off the lights, and they watched the banks blink off, one after the other, leaving the garage in gray daylight again.

  Slowly they swung the doors closed.

  Reggie felt colder than the garage. There was a sullen weight on him, heavier than sleep, like wet gray slush hanging around his neck by a cord. Beneath his skin, his bones felt cold. He kept catching the scent of something in the air, something just out of reach and recognition. It teased him. It was a cold, unpleasant smell. Something had been changed, altered. The lightness had been removed from the air. Dread and fear grew inside him.

  "What do we do?" Pup asked. He sounded as irritated as troubled. He waited for the other two to say something, and when they didn't, he opened his mouth to speak again

  Something sounded above them. Something that should have been summer but wasn't. It was like a sound an ice-cream truck makes, like sweet clinky bells, only wheezy, without the sugar and with only the ice in common with ice cream. It was a sound they had heard before—long ago on summer vacations far away in other, larger towns. It ran up and down, bright and organ-like; the song it played was tinkly and ominous. Threatening. They all knew it.

  "That's a calliope," Jack said.

  Speedily they lifted the tall ladder out of the side of the garage and snapped its aluminum sections into place as if it were an erector set. They tilted it against gravity and then up onto the side of the garage. Jack, quick as a rabbit, leaped upon it, forcing the others to hold it steady lest he come down on top of them, ladder in tow. They waited, impatient, as he disentangled his sneaker from a rung halfway up. Finally he was on the roof, holding on to the television antenna mast like a pirate, peering out into the void at the edge of town.

  "Holy cats!" he breathed. Though it should have been a yelp, it came out subdued, and it only sent further chills through all three of them.

  He climbed down carefully, and then the other two in turn climbed up, said something similar and climbed down again.

  "What do we do?" Jack asked, feeling as though he had said nothing else all
morning.

  "We go look," Pup said decisively.

  There was silence from his companions. They all knew what it was: The cold, the chill that was in the air, blew from the direction of the amusement park. They each felt it, the presence of whatever it was, but Pup was adamant.

  "Come on," he insisted. "We'll just go look."

  Reggie nodded reluctantly, and they set off.

  The calliope had sent a spell over the town. It was as though a million sleepwalkers had been set loose at once upon the world. Doorways stood open, and Montvale citizens, most of them in robes or hurriedly donned jeans and shirts, stood with ears cocked toward the amusement park. No one made a move to go farther. The sound alone captivated them. Even Crazy Frances, the town eccentric who lived in front of the barber shop, seemed to come out of her perpetual stupor and stood with her one good ear toward the sound of the calliope. There was a mixture of horror and rapture on Frances' face, and she was so intent upon her listening that she didn't even stop to shout, "He is the resurrection and the life!" at the passing boys as she usually did. Even the dogs in Montvale were alert, sitting with their ears up stiff.

  Above it all, the calliope played leisurely. It played as if at a funeral, slow tink after slower tee-dee-dee in a kind of mock dirge that wove like smoke around the town.

  Over the last row of buildings in Montvale, the Ferris wheel loomed.

  The boys stopped. Something was speaking to them. "Go home," it said. "Wait for the right time. Go home." Their feet moved forward, hesitated.

  "Come on," Pup said impatiently but found that his feet were welded to the spot he stood on.

  Reggie suddenly broke free of the spell, and they followed. The town peeled away behind them, and suddenly there it was.

  Not as wide and big as they would have thought. In fact, there was something old about it. Or rather, antique, because everything was spanking new, coated with fresh candy paint. They could smell it drying, the colors of blue and brown and green and red and yellow, just as they saw a slice of the newly swept midway, the clumps of rides, the Ferris wheel—wrought iron it looked like, and painted Christmas-tree colors—and in front of it, dominating everything, the merry-go-round. This was an antique, the horses real-looking, snarling red lips baring gleaming, yellow-white teeth, smooth flanks of red or yellow, saddles of wet-looking brown leather with real stirrups.