Turn Down the Lights Read online

  He squeezed the clutch and toed the gearshift down into first. He rolled up the driveway, banked right, and toed up this time, into second and then third. The road was dirt, and rutted in places, but the bike took the ruts easily, floating Robinson up and down on the seat. His nose was spouting again; the blood streamed up his cheeks and flew off behind him in elongating droplets. He took the first curve and then the second, banking harder now, hitting fourth gear as he came onto a brief straight stretch. The Fat Bob was eager to go. It had been in that goddam lean-to for too long, gathering dust. On Robinson’s right, he could see Lake Pocomtuc from the corner of his eye, still as a mirror, the sun beating a yellow-gold track across the blue. Robinson let out a yell and shook one fist at the sky—or maybe the universe—before returning it to the handgrip. Ahead was the buttonhook, and the sign reading MIND YOUR DRIVING! that marked Dead Man’s Curve.

  Robinson aimed for the sign and twisted the throttle all the way. He just had time to hit fifth gear.

  BAD THINGS HAPPEN IN THIS TOWN.

  One of them happened tonight.

  The man who did that thing stands on a bridge near the city limits. He has a pistol in his hand and a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. He can’t decide which he wants in his mouth—a cigarette or the barrel of the .38. So he stands there in the dark, and he thinks about it, and he tries to make up his mind.

  All that remains of the river below is a summertime trickle through cattails and garbage drowned by a long winter. Just a few blocks away, there’s a house with a thrown breaker switch at the outside electrical box. Everything inside the house rests under a thick blanket of darkness, including two corpses gunned down with the killer’s .38. There’s more darkness than blood, but there’s plenty of blood, too.

  The killer never knew that a man and a woman could have so much blood in them, but this night has taught him the lesson. And though that blood no longer flows, he hears a red river of the stuff rushing through the night. This bit of sensory input, he believes, is a product of imagination. Reality says that there is no river here at all. Just the trickle of a dying creek. And cattails rustling quietly in the hot summer breeze. And garbage drowned by a long winter. And there are shadows, thick and heavy like the shadows in the house with the thrown breakers, because there is only a fingernail slice of moon slivered high in the sky tonight.

  Yes. That’s the way it is. The moon shines down on many other houses in this little town. The killer thinks about them, and about the people inside. He considers entering some of those houses with the .38 gripped in his hand. Though none in this town have wronged him as bad as the two lying dead in the darkness, others here have wronged him, and certainly. And he thinks of those people, and their houses, and the darkness that waits invitingly inside, ready to cover any action he might choose to take.

  He follows the thought. He listens to the river, the one that isn’t there. Suddenly, he is very tired. The moon above seems too much like a wound in the night, so he looks instead at the shadows welling beneath the bridge. These he sees for what they are, like the thoughts in his head. They are only shadows; there is no river of blood.

  Still, the thoughts trouble him...as does the sound. It lingers. And that raw, salty smell—the night is steeped in it. A fine sheen of sweat moistens the killer’s fingers, and the sweat brands the pistol. Suddenly, the end seems very near, and he wonders what it would be like to taste his own sweat while he pulled the pistol’s trigger.

  He’s tempted. Maybe too tempted. So he removes temptation. He drops the gun into the shadows. And just that fast, his heart begins thumping. He’s not tired anymore. In fact, he feels a sudden rush of freedom. The sound below in the darkness is not quite a thud and not quite a splash, but it marks an ending. At least, the killer thinks it does. He lights a cigarette, but he doesn’t even smoke half of it beneath the dull glow of the fingernail moon. Instead he flicks it into the shadows, watching the red dot of burning tobacco tumble through the darkness, hearing it hiss into a trickle of dank water as it joins the gun.

  He hurries away from the shadows and the river that isn’t there. By the time the cigarette is extinguished, the killer is in his car. He starts the engine and drives. And it’s funny somehow. He’s behind the steering wheel. His foot is on the gas. The road stretches before him, and the miles pile up behind him. The town where bad things happen grows distant, as does the blood on the floor in the house with the thrown breakers, as does the scent of that blood.

  The killer is in a car, driving fast.

  But he thinks only of a boat.

  And a river called Charon.

  So he drives faster.

  Imagining the deserts that wait to the west.

  The killer’s pistol tumbles through the shadows, slowly, as if descending through the strong currents of a bloody sea. It lands in an old glove—open palm like an empty cradle; fingers curled and dried as if waiting to grasp.

  A sharp slice of moonlight cuts between twisted oak branches and finds the gun and the glove. The pistol grips are still moist with the killer’s sweat, and it dampens the old leather. Only slightly, but still...the killer’s sweat is there, and it mingles with things unseen and unheard on the midnight wind. Magic rides that wind, too—rushing down the dry riverbed and invisible—but tangible nonetheless...and coming from a different source, soon to be revealed.

  Yes. No fires burn and no cauldrons bubble, but there is magic here. This magic is born of blood. The fingers of the glove curl and close, driven by its power. That raw red scent lingers in the air, and the glove grasps it tightly.

  A couple hundred yards up the dry riverbed, a young woman screams. Blood fills her mouth, and a splatter of red sprays the air as a fist connects with her jaw. Punches rain down on her like shadows, and the shadows are heavy with words. The woman hears them, and feels them, and bears their weight. But she can only bear so much. And the words and punches keep coming—an even, studied series as if well-practiced, searching for a particular result. Soon the woman’s screams are almost a conditioned response, for (in many ways) it has always been this way for her.

  The men are policemen. The woman is a witch. Of course, the men do not know this. They only know she’s a hitchhiker who ended up on the wrong side of the city limits after dark. Besides, the woman has never been much of a witch, anyway. Her magic has always been born of necessity, and tentative in the worst way—the result of a few simple tools she carries in her backpack and a family heritage passed down by her grandmother. In the last week, her spells have been the simplest kind: 1) That waitress will forget to bring me the bill, and 2) Tonight I am the only one who knows about Room 23 at the Tradewinds Motor Inn, and 3) Those cops won’t see me hitchhiking...I am not even here.

  Of course, Spell Number Three did not work. If only it had. So now the witch is here at the edge of a dry riverbed, a quick sprint from a bridge she’ll never travel and a possible escape she’ll never make. The cops are almost finished with her. Her backpack is beneath her spine and useless, as is the minor magic it contains. But the blood is spilling—her blood—and that is something else indeed...a kind of magic of which, until now, she was unaware, a kind of magic she’d never dared touch for fear of some incalculable stain her grandmother had warned her against.

  Of course, the witch never understood her grandmother’s warnings. Not really. If she had...well, things might be different now. All things come with a price—especially strength. But perhaps that bit of understanding marks a beginning for the witch. For things are about to change for her, just as things have changed for the killer as he floors the gas pedal and races across a county line twenty miles distant. The road ahead of him is black, and his window is down to welcome the darkness, and (to him) the night still carries the music of a river, a deep one rushing behind him...with (perhaps) deeper water waiting ahead.

  So the killer grips the steering wheel and imagines a tiller. Fading in and out of consciousness, the witch hears a river, too. And then other sounds stir in
the night. They begin beneath the bridge, and the first of them is born of metal. A junked shopping cart begins to twist itself into a skeletal form, and the red bar touched by so many hands stretches as if reaching for one more until it reaches the glove that holds the killer’s gun. The red plastic sheath covering that bar slivers and melts and five red fingers fill the glove. Slithers of old electrical wire weave like veins through a basket of red ribs. Soon a creature takes form, and a thing stands tall that never stood before. And though it’s roller-wheel feet aren’t made for travel through cattails and garbage and muck, it creaks and capers a misshapen path to a junked Chrysler that spent the last winter underwater as a home for catfish.

  Now, as summer wanes, the Chrysler is home for mosquitoes and centipedes. Of course, these creatures don’t trouble the gloved shambler. It jams the killer’s pistol through a pair of wire ribs, then pops the trunk with its gloved hand. Nothing much in there but an old jack buried under a rotted spare tire, but the jack will do.

  The shambler bends low, and a wiry shoulder without an arm spills forth spider-web twists of red metal, weaving around the jack’s notched armature, drawing it into a waiting socket. Now the shambler has another arm, a second one heavier than the first. The creature swings it. Tests it. And though it has no ears, the thing senses the metal whispering through the darkness, as silent as a slice of moonlight. A few more swings and the metal becomes malleable, as if finding a life of its own.

  Another scream, a couple hundred yards up the dry riverbed.

  Ready now, the thing shambles toward the ruckus.

  It does not have a head.

  Not yet.

  But a head is not important for the business at hand.

  Besides, heads are easy to come by in a place like this.

  After all, there is plenty of garbage waiting along the way.

  “I think the fun’s over with this one,” says Officer Gordon.

  “Naw. I don’t think so,” Officer Parks says. “Fact is, I think this little scag’s ready to go another round. Ain’t you, sweetie?”

  No answer to that question. Parks laughs, wiping his raw knuckles on his uniform shirt. Christ, the laundry room in his house will probably look like a slaughterhouse tomorrow. And the back seat of the patrol car? Where they got started on the little scag? Oh, man. He’s glad the night has plenty of shadows to blanket the nasty red Rorschach mess that must be hiding back there.

  But, hey, that’s the price of power. You want control, you’re going to make a mess. That’s a fact. Ain’t no pretty pictures on the road to Top Dog territory. Parks learned that a long time ago, and he still believes it quite fervently. In fact, right now the thought’s kind of comforting. Parks almost chuckles over it, but—

  A different kind of laughter spills over his shoulder. It’s like the metallic rasp of a saw, not amusing at all. Parks whirls to face it, drawing his pistol in the darkness, not understanding that even a draw that roughly matched the speed of lightning would be just a little too slow at this particular moment.

  Because something is there behind him. Something...and it doesn’t laugh like a man. There’s just a slice of moonlight spilling down through the trees, but Parks can see that the thing is nearly on top of him. Christ. It’s moving fast, and it looks like a skeleton, and it’s laughter echoes around him like a tin-can nightmare...and Jesus. The thing has a bucket for a head, a rusty bucket pocked with holes and—

  The witch sees it all but believes none of it. She must be dreaming. The creature is made of metal and red...like blood. One of its arms—a tire jack—travels a deadly path. A straight shot—pulping the first cop’s eyeball, driving straight through, shattering the bone behind the man’s eye and carving a path through his brain.

  The cop falls as the shambler steps past, its gloved metal fingers raising a pistol and firing. One, two, three quick (and precise) shots. Blood pours from the second cop’s mouth as he topples. In the meantime, the shambler is still moving forward, because there is more work to be done.

  The creature’s glove is off now. Five sharp metal fingers gleam in the moonlight. Then the witch is gone for another moment. Unconscious. A flash fills her skull, like wild electricity, and her mind snaps back. Swollen eyes...blurry vision...but the witch sees the thing coming her way. Wiry gait. Clanking motion. Moonlight threading through its body like a sieve. A misplaced sculpture free of some mad museum...and a misplacer of time, too—for several more moments have vanished.

  And then it happens again. Now the shambler is carrying the witch...now they are away from the trees and the riverbed...now they are climbing together on a switch-back path that rises through the darkness. Yes. The clock has skipped a serious beat. The witch blinks, tries to speak through bruised lips, but words won’t come. The thing moves forward, as if in a hurry. It wears both cops’ badges now, clipped to the gridwork of its chest. And it has a head. She sees that. A rusty bucket pockmarked with holes, and...blood. Blood spills over the edges of the bucket, leaks through the pockmarked holes. And the witch hears things slapping wetly within the bucket—things the creature harvested from the dead cops down by the riverbed.

  A brain, no doubt...and maybe a heart. Again, the witch fades. The wiry shambler inclines its bucket head, and blood spills on her face, and blood awakens her.

  Drip drip drip, she thinks. This is how it starts. And then the dam begins to break, like dams always do. And then the river—

  The witch screams, one last time. No longer in the creature’s arms. Afraid where she might be. Because time is spinning like a plate balanced on a stick. Time is beginning to tumble like that very same plate ready to hit the floor. She’s on a picnic table now, beneath a sky littered with stars, near a twisting, narrow road. In the distance—houses, city streets. The bucket-headed thing stands above her, bending over...almost solicitously. Drip drip drip.

  Blood rains down. The witch looks up, red trickles on her face. The thing does not move. The badges on its chest gleam in the moonlight. The creature defies easy description. Not quite a skeleton. Not quite a scarecrow. Not quite hero or monster.

  A walking shadow, she thinks.

  A walking shadow.

  And, then, quite suddenly, the witch drifts away.

  Past the place where shadows dwell.

  Into the waiting embrace of true darkness.

  Bucket Head stands over the witch. The arm built from a jack is gone. It has been replaced with a shotgun. The basket of the thing’s pelvis, likewise, has been repurposed. Once that basket held children while shopping. Now it holds several .38's, none of them secured with a requisite safety strap.

  Of course, none of these things can help a witch who has slipped into a coma. Bucket Head does not understand this. Understanding is not in the creature’s basic skill-set. Still, it tries to rouse her but is unable. So it takes hold of the witch’s arm, and it pulls her off the bench, and it drags her to the patrol car. These actions seem correct, and Bucket Head considers no others. Quiet calculation is not the shambler’s game, for it is a creature born from a killer’s cursed gun and witch’s dream. Not human at all, but like men and women everywhere it has a set of parents. The thing its parents share is blood, and this is what they have given Bucket Head.

  Yes. Blood is the creature’s heritage, and blood is its future. This is all Bucket Head knows. Two dead men in its wake, but there are many houses ahead. Thick blankets of darkness. Outside breaker switches waiting to be thrown. A whole town full of them. Those who wronged a killer; those who would wrong a witch. A whole town...just waiting for Bucket Head.

  The creature opens the rear door of the squad car. The witch’s blood has dried on the seats. Bucket Head slides her across the upholstery. She draws a shallow breath. A sign of life. This is important, as important as the deaths of others.

  Bucket Head slams the door and climbs behind the wheel.

  Metal fingers key the ignition. Headlights flare, cutting through the night.

  Just ahead, hell is murk
y.

  Bucket Head drives toward it.

  The police cruiser’s motor is well-tuned, and it purrs like a contented panther. In the backseat, the witch drifts deeper into a coma, and deeper still.

  Headlights cut through the night as the patrol car advances on the town where bad things happen. The witch hears the river behind her, rushing away in the distance. Rushing, and not in reverie. The sound takes her, as does the river. Suddenly she’s floating...as if swept away on a fast current. The current is red, and it is hers, in the same way that everything in this night is hers except the killer and his gun. And it carries her quickly and safely, just as Bucket Head carried her, for this river is the creature’s brother. It washes beneath a bridge where a killer once stood, and it fills the night like great Neptune’s ocean, and not all the perfumes of Arabia could sweeten the smell of its salty stench.

  The river is here, and it is everywhere. In this moment, it rushes as surely as the blood that fills the witch’s veins. Red and rich, it wells around the tires of a killer’s car as he races across a state line to the west, and it rises from storm-drains in the streets of the town he left behind, and very soon it will spill across the floor of a dark house with thrown breakers where two corpses wait.

  Yes. The river is rising...and fast.

  Here and everywhere.

  Blood, after all, will have blood.

  “SHOOT ’em IN THE HEAD, FOR LORD’S SAKE,” SAID SAM Pitts.

  “Sometimes I like to play ’em a little,” said Chunk Colbert.