“She won’t be there.”
“Okay then,” said Dewey, like he didn’t give a fuck about anything anymore. Christ, it wasn’t his problem. The real deal was, what was he going to do with this fabulous babe? He looked in the rearview again. She had her eyes closed now, breathing deep and slow, looked like she was dead asleep.
“Hey, are you asleep back there?”
“Man, leave her be, she’s tired,” said Dewey.
“No no, I’m awake.” She shuffled around, finding a new backseat sleeping position.
“Okay, babyd—I mean, Sky. But go ahead and catch some z’s if you feel like it.”
Dewey looked at him funny again. What’s wrong now? He didn’t like “babydoll” either?
“This is a weird car,” said Sky.
“It’s not weird, just old. It’s a T-Bird. 1968 four-door coupe,” said Shannon. “A classic.”
“Wow,” she said. “It’s so big. Like a boat. Where’d you get it?”
“It belongs to a buddy of mine.” He didn’t feel like explaining it to her, about how he’d been using it for something like six months now, since the guy’s wife left him and he got all dog-depressed. Staying home alone and drinking all day. Todd made Dewey look like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.
But hey, that gave him an idea. Todd. That was a place where he could put her tonight. Yeah, that was actually a great idea!
In fact, she might even be just what Todd needed to break out of his blues. If you asked him up front if he wanted to meet some girl, he’d say no, but if you asked if he’d let her crash there because she didn’t have a place, he might say yes, like he didn’t give a fuck, but he might really like the idea. Plus, when he’d been around her for a while, maybe she would get to him and he’d start getting human again.
Plus, she definitely seemed like it wouldn’t take much to get her to fuck.
Might be a great fucking thing to do for old Todd. Pay him back for using the T-Bird all these months, even, especially since Shannon really hoped to use it for a little while longer, until worm took off and the money got decent. Oh, and for making worm for him too, since it had really been Dewey’s idea after he read that it was getting popular around the country in some article in Horror Garage magazine.
And if it turned out Todd wasn’t interested, because of the girl in the woods and all, but he let her stay for a night, then maybe Shannon would feel hornier tomorrow, could go back and pick her up and take her somewhere else. Like, to a motel. And if he did that, he’d at least have tried to do a good turn for his unfortunate buddy first.
Then there was Dewey, but, forget him. He wasn’t going to do anything with her, even if he’d like to.
They probably should stop at the Limbo first, though, like Dewey said. Roni will have split, but that way he could tell her he did stop and she wasn’t there. Plus he could call home from there, and that might chill her out some. Then they could go to Todd’s with the chick. Try to call Todd from the Limbo, too, though he didn’t always answer his phone.
“Okay, let’s head for the Limbo,” he said to Dewey. He checked the mirror, looked like Sky had drifted off again.
“The Limbo, now?” said Dewey. He lowered his voice. “I mean, first we gotta do something with,” he motioned, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.
“A minute ago you wanted to go there,” said Shannon.
“That was because—” Dewey groaned. “Never mind. What if Roni is still there?”
“She won’t be. Shit, man, don’t worry about every little fucking thing, okay? Everything’s cool. Let me do the worrying.”
Dewey sighed audibly as Shannon turned off the exit, said nothing more. Christ, Shannon thought, might as well have Dewey’s grandma as a running buddy.
CHAPTER 8
TODD AT HOME, READING
Todd was reading further in the Plan 666 book.
Behind the rise of the three interrelated cult groups Apocalypsis Ordine Angelorum, the Kindred and Paradise Threshold lies the mysterious figure of Alberic Crabtree, Jamaican occultist, musician, and for a while, soft-drink entrepreneur based in New Orleans and deeply involved with the afrocentric culture of Voudou. Crabtree, who bitterly disavowed A.O.A. and likely would have done the same with the Kindred and Paradise Threshold had he lived to see them, also served as an inspiration to certain filmmakers active in the horror genre, though in his voluminous and largely arcane writing he is said to have displayed no interest whatsoever in the cinema. The most notable instance was of the tragic and controversial Italian auteur, Sabatino Scalabrino, whose descent into madness accompanied his increasing involvement with Crabtreeite doctrine.
Another devoted follower, for a time, was Delbert Wingdale, alleged alien-spaceship abductee who founded the once greatly popular Kindred group, ostensibly Christian yet focused on a mission of sexual liberation, until his expulsion by the usurper, Myron Richard Grossman, who himself came to be known to the Kindred faithful as “Daddy Dickie” prior to his own conviction and incarceration for child molestation and kidnapping.
Following Wingdale’s excommunication at Grossman’s orders, he went on to found the tiny, still-more bizarre ufology sect, Paradise Threshold, best known for their conviction that psilocybin mushrooms were actually highly evolved and intelligent intergalactic travelers on a mission to bring spiritual enlightenment to all the inhabited planets of the universe, a concept apparently derived in part from that of the Eucharist…
This didn’t make much sense to Todd, but it was depressing to read anyway because it reminded him of all of Clare’s crazy bullshit that had fucked up their marriage. Or had it?
The big problem with his marriage, really, had been Clare’s refusal to fuck after she had the miscarriage. He understood maybe she was afraid of getting pregnant again, but they could have dealt with that. It was that she took it further, said she was against reproducing before the coming return of the Alien Christ from outer space with his army of Niffs, or something like that. But when he argued against that, said they could practice birth control, that it wasn’t the only problem, it was that he was too rough in bed. He always had been and was getting worse. He scared her, she said. That was bullshit. Wasn’t it?
If they’d had a real marriage and were having sex, the whole episode with Lenore wouldn’t have happened. Or would it have? He didn’t do anything to her except fuck her. Did he?
Everything had been so strange and fucked up ever since that night.
He looked down at his arm, at his tattoo. It was of a naked girl in a cocktail glass, with angel’s wings and bright red hair. That red was the only color in it. He had insisted on red at the tattoo parlor, though the sample had an angel with blonde hair. That was the real—immediate, anyway—reason Clare had left. When he’d come home with the tattoo. Unhinged as she was by then, she knew there was something real significant about it.
CHAPTER 9
DEWEY AND SHANNON BACK AT THE LIMBO
Dewey was more than ready to get home and go to bed. What a stupidly fucked-up night it had been. First, sitting around waiting for drunk and scroungy Todd to get the batch of worm done in his really filthy house while the grossest porn movies he’d ever seen played endlessly on his TV. What was that line about porn somebody came up with? Watching for ten minutes makes you want to fuck, an hour makes you never want to fuck again. In Dewey’s own case, he’d probably never fuck again anyway.