She could get the hang of this line of work. Lying was just another part of the job. Hell, this wasn’t much of a stretch from her usual day.
Howard nodded and grunted.
"You let me know when you want a second helping," she said. This was no worse than playing Sleeping Beauty.
But there was no magic, no redemption. All she had was emptiness.
And fifty bucks. Don’t forget the fifty bucks.
She reached for a cigarette and lit it as she looked at the clock. Little Mack would be home in about fifteen minutes and Junior might be home in an hour, if he bothered to make it home before dinner. Junior was becoming as unpredictable as the man he'd been named after.
"My kids will be home soon, Howard. Maybe you'd better just hit the road. But you come on back sometime, when you have the money," she said, running her tongue over her lips. She winked at him and he almost blushed. He was getting excited again.
"But not right now. You’re broke." She laughed and pulled the sheet over her body. She didn't feel tired, but she wanted to straighten up the trailer before Little Mack got home.
She would wash the dishes and pretend that everything was normal. Maybe even mop the kitchen. A regular housewife.
Howard nodded dumbly. "You're purty," he said, putting on his pants. He draped his shirt over his shoulder and headed for the door.
"Glad you think so, big man. Tell Jimmy to get his scrawny hind end back here on your way out, will you?" She stubbed out her smoke and the ashtray spilled over. Brown tarry butts rolled off the night stand to the vinyl flooring.
She locked her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling, at the little swirls she had studied while the men sampled the goods. She had seen faces up there and wondered if she would see them now. The door opened and Howard grunted again. She looked at the doorway, expecting to see Jimmy's scraggly grin.
Instead, she saw her husband of twelve years standing there like a sick stranger. Howard screamed in a girlish voice, fell, and crawled on his hands and knees down the hallway, the sleeve of his shirt caught on his foot and trailing behind him. Sylvester stepped past him toward Peggy, but something was wrong. His eyes were like radioactive marbles. Sylvester had changed, turned like a sweet potato that had fallen behind the stove and gone rotten.
Her mind was a Popsicle, cold and sweet and hard, as she watched her husband slog to the bed and stand over her with his ragged jack-o’-lantern smile and his moist, impossible flesh, as he slid onto the bed with a noise like sixty pounds of earthworms. Sylvester pulled the blanket away and she crossed her arms over her breasts, feeling shy in the face of this insane homecoming. He touched her bare thigh and his finger was slick with pulpy rot. The jack-o’-lantern gaped and she thought he was trying to speak, to perhaps whisper her name or tell her that she looked good enough to eat.
Then she saw that Sylvester had no tongue, only wiggly things that flickered out in the direction of her face. She smelled her husband as his swamp gas fog overwhelmed her and then she was in the grasp and surrendered without a fight because it was her husband, after all, and this was his rightful place between her legs and she embraced his neck and pulled his impossible swollen head to her lips because she was staring deeply into his eyes and seeing the Magic Land and she was Frenching him with a fierce desperation because she wanted to feel the Magic and shu-shaaa throbbed in time to her last heartbeat as the cosmos puked magic into her throat and she at last became Sleeping Beauty again, this time forever.
She had never felt so loved.
Little Mack was scared.
He heard the noises in the trailer and didn't want to go inside, even though the door was open. The truck with the big tires wasn't here, so maybe that mean, skinny man wasn't with his Mommy. But somebody was in there. And it sounded like a whole lot of somebodies.
He ducked down by the steps and looked into the living room. He couldn't see because his eyes were full of sun. But he heard people moaning like the ghosts did in those scary movies that Junior made him watch when Mommy was out late at night. Or else when she and Daddy went to bed early and Junior turned the television up real loud.
He wished, wished, wished Daddy was home, but Daddy didn't come home much these days. Little Mack thought it might have something to do with the skinny man. Little Mack didn't like the skinny man, even though the man fluffed Mack's hair and gave him a nickel once. Mack didn't like him because he smelled like those green pellets that the janitor put on the floor when some kid threw up at school.
He didn't see the skinny man and he didn't see Mommy, but he heard people moving around in the back of the trailer. He almost yelled for Mommy but all of a sudden he was afraid, because he saw the one-eyed old man from next door who looked like he was two hundred years old, except right now he looked like he was four hundred, because his skin was the color of art paste and something that looked like rubber cement poured out of his nose and mouth.
And the eye that didn't have a patch moved funny, like it couldn't see anything but still wanted to look.
The old man tried to stand, but his legs didn't work right. He rolled over on the floor and he must have seen Little Mack, because he smiled real funny. Smiling like he had a secret. A bad secret.
Little Mack turned and ran, hoping that his Mommy wasn't in there with that bad man, that she wasn't part of the secret. He ran into the woods where he always hid, ducking under the blackberry briars and clamping his hands over his ears because he didn't want to hear the scary things that were in his head. He was afraid that the dark might get here before the scary things left.
He hoped Daddy would come home soon and make everything all right again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tamara turned up the old dirt road and started to climb the winding grade. The Toyota's engine whined in protest as she downshifted. The steep slopes of Bear Claw rose before her, taunting her, solid and ancient. The car juddered as it fought over the ruts and granite humps.
This was the mountain in her dream. And she trusted her dream. If she didn't trust her dream, something bad might happen. Or something bad might happen no matter what she did.
The Gloomies are up there somewhere, not in my head this time. They're real. They're here.
She considered turning back, running away from the thing that had haunted her for the past few days, the feelings that had gripped her heart, the unease that lingered in the base of her skull like a hibernating snake. But she knew these Gloomies were different. They wouldn't let her hide. They had secret spy lights.
They wouldn't be satisfied until they had her. And she wouldn't be satisfied until she had faced the enemy.
Because, in the dream, it had taken her family.
The Gloomies had already taken her father.
No way in hell would she lose anyone else.
Chester leaned against a locust tree and waited for DeWalt to catch up. DeWalt was slowing him down plenty, even more than the age and arthritis and fear that had leadened his legs. Twenty years ago, Chester would have covered twice as much territory in the last hour. But, twenty years ago, he hadn't been looking for neon-eyed freaks or strange green lights.
He glanced up at the treetops as he fumbled for a refresher hunk of Beechnut. The trees looked like October witches, with long arms and sharp elbows and dark skirts. He could hear himself wheezing through his nose. He was glad he had never taken up smoking. Maybe that was what was causing his Yankee sidekick's ass dragging.
Chester looked down the slope at DeWalt, whose face was plum colored and whose jawbone was hanging like an over-chased fox's. DeWalt's eyes were fixed on the ground as he stepped over stumps and fallen logs, shuffling over the brown carpet of leaves as if his high-dollar boots were filled with mud.