The Glory Bus Read online

  THE GLORY BUS

  Richard Laymon

  Copyright © 2005 Richard Laymon

  The right of Richard Laymon to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 9181 3

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Also by Richard Laymon

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Richard Laymon wrote over thirty novels and seventy short stories. In May 2001, The Travelling Vampire Show won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, a prize for which Laymon had previously been shortlisted with Flesh, Funland, A Good, Secret Place (Best Anthology) and A Writer’s Tale (Best Non-fiction). Laymon’s works include the books of the Beast House Chronicles: The Celler, The Beast House and The Midnight Tour. Some of his recent novels have been Night in the Lonesome October, No Sanctuary and Amara.

  A native of Chicago, Laymon attended Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and too an MA in English Literature from Loyola University, Los Angeles. In 2000, he was elected President of the Horror Writers’ Association. He died in February 2001.

  Laymon’s fiction is published in the United Kingdom by Headline, and in the United States by Leisure Books and Cemetery Dance Publications.

  Praise for Richard Laymon:

  ‘This author knows how to sock it to the reader’ The Times

  ‘A brilliant writer’ Sunday Express

  ‘No one writes like Laymon and you’re going to have a good time with anything he writes’ Dean Koontz

  ‘In Laymon’s books, blood doesn’t so much as drip as explode, splatter and coagulate’ Independent

  ‘Stephen King without a conscience’ Dan Marlowe

  ‘Incapable of writing a disappointing book’ New York Review of Science Fiction

  ‘A gut-crunching writer’ Time Out

  ‘This is an author that does not pull his punches…A gripping, and at times genuinely shocking, read’ SFX Magazine

  Also by Richard Laymon and published by Headline

  The Beast House Trilogy:

  The Cellar

  The Beast House

  The Midnight Tour

  Beware!

  Dark Mountain

  The Woods are Dark

  Out are the Lights

  Night Show

  Allhallow’s Eve

  Flesh

  Resurrection Dreams

  Alarums

  Blood Games

  Endless Night

  Midnight’s Lair*

  Savage

  In The Dark

  Island

  Quake

  Body Rides

  Bite

  Fiends

  After Midnight

  Among the Missing

  Come Out Tonight

  The Travelling Vampire Show

  Dreadful Tales

  Night in the Lonesome October

  No Sanctuary

  Amara

  The Lake

  The Glory Bus

  Funland

  The Stake

  *previously published under the pseudonym of Richard Kelly

  Chapter One

  ‘You were it. Do you know what I mean? There was never anyone else, not for me. Do you know when it was, the first time I ever saw you? Sally Harken’s thirteenth-birthday party. I hardly even knew Sally, since we didn’t go to the same school. The only reason I got invited to her party, my mom and dad were friends with Sally’s parents. I didn’t want to go, can you believe that? They had to make me go.

  ‘And then you walked in. I’ll never forget it. You had bangs that hung down almost to your eyes, and those blue eyes shining out, and those white teeth. You wore a white blouse. It had short sleeves but you had them rolled way up high on your arms. And you had the cuffs of your shorts rolled up, too. The shorts were blue denim, and looked brand new. The legs must’ve been too long to suit you, so you turned them up. It was like you were all cuffs. Cuffs and smooth, tan skin.

  ‘Speaking of cuffs, how are you doing?’

  Pamela, sitting in the passenger seat with her cuffed hands resting on her lap, stared out the window and didn’t answer.

  ‘Are they too tight?’

  They were too tight. The sharp edges of the bracelets dug into her wrists, and her fingers tingled. But Pam didn’t want Rodney to fool with them. ‘They’re fine,’ she said. She wanted him to leave her alone.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anyway, that’s when I fell in love with you. We were thirteen, and you walked into Sally’s party and . . . It hurt me to look at you, you were so cute and beautiful and . . . you had a freshness, an innocence, something like that. And you also had that twinkle in your eyes. A kind of glint. You’ve still got that. Not at the moment, of course. But it’ll come back. Once you get used to things, it’ll come back.

  ‘Of course, you lost most of that freshness I was talking about. It’s a shame. Everyone loses it, though. Maybe it goes when you start in with sex. Or maybe it’s when some special sort of dream dies in you. Who knows? You kept it longer than most girls. You still had it in your juni
or year. Your first year as a varsity cheerleader. Oh God, the way you used to look . . . that pleated skirt, that sweater. When you jumped, the sweater would come up just an inch or two above the top of your skirt, so there’d be a little strip of bare skin showing. I used to watch you at the games, and want to kiss you there. I knew just how it would feel, and how it would smell.

  ‘Anyway, that freshness thing was gone when we started our senior year. Even without it, you were . . . wonderful. But a different kind of wonderful. Not so much like an innocent, eager kid, more like a woman. And you sure hadn’t lost that sparkle in your eyes. It’s sort of as if, everywhere you look, you’re seeing things that amaze you. And like maybe you’re hoping to throw in a quip.

  ‘Of course, too, you just got more and more beautiful. I couldn’t believe it when I saw your picture in the newspaper. The picture sure didn’t do you justice, but it about tore me apart. To look at your face again, after so many years. I thought to myself what a fool I’d been, depriving myself of you, making do with a string of gals that were nothing but lousy imitations of the one and only you I longed for in my heart. They were available, that’s all they had going for them. They hadn’t gone off to some damn college halfway across the country, like some people I could name. So I just had to make do with them. I tried to make them look like you. Silly, huh? I made them wear a wig that looked like how you wore your hair. I dressed them up like you, too. And I called them Pamela. Sometimes, when I tried really hard, I could sort of trick myself into thinking they were you. It wasn’t an easy trick, though. Mostly, I was just disgusted by myself. You know? That I’d let myself get so obsessed with you and couldn’t let it go and had to trick myself with a bunch of crummy substitutes.

  ‘So when I saw your picture in the paper, it was like a sign that I oughta quit all that and go after the real thing. So that’s just what I did.

  ‘Bet you must be wondering what took me so long. They ran that picture six months ago, didn’t they? And it gave your husband’s name, and even the address of the newlyweds’ home. So why did it take me six months to show up and claim you? Is that what you’re wondering?’

  ‘I’m wondering what you did to those girls.’

  ‘Oh, mostly the same as what I plan to do to you. Except for one difference, which is that I’m going to keep you. I’ve bought us a house. It’s a fine little place where nobody’ll ever bother us. It’ll be our home. We’ll have a wonderful time.’

  ‘Did you kill them?’ Pamela asked.

  He smiled. ‘I put them out of their misery.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘I guess one might say it’s your fault. All those girls and that husband of yours, all of them died because you went on your merry way just as if old lardass Rodney Pinkham was a nobody. Should’ve paid me more attention, maybe. Should’ve maybe dated me.’

  ‘Dated you? You never even asked!’

  ‘You would’ve laughed in my face.’

  ‘I’ve never laughed in anyone’s face!’

  ‘Bet you called me Piggy behind my back.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘They all did.’

  ‘I never heard anybody call you Piggy behind your back.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘If you wanted to go out with me so badly, why didn’t you just ask!’

  ‘Told you why.’

  ‘I might’ve gone out with you. You didn’t have to kill people. My God . . . how many were there?’

  ‘Including your husband? Oh, sixteen.’

  It numbed Pamela’s mind. Fifteen girls had died because of this man’s obsession with her?

  Not just Jim.

  She’d thought it couldn’t get any worse than last night. It can always get worse, she realized.

  ‘It’s not all that many, fifteen,’ Rodney explained. ‘I mean, it sounds like a lot when you just blurt it out like that. But what you’ve gotta remember, it went on for five years. That only averages out to three a year. That’s not so many. Would’ve been plenty more, except you went and got yourself married and they ran your picture in the paper. Now that I’ve got you, the rest of it’s gonna stop. I mean, why would I want them when I’ve got you? You’re all I ever wanted.’

  He turned his head and smiled at Pamela. It was the way he had smiled ever since she’d known him: an odd, quick lift of the upper lip that showed not only his front teeth but the gums above them. The crevices between his teeth always used to be packed with crud from old meals, and all the snacking in between.

  Which was one of the reasons why everyone had called him Piggy. They’d called him Piggy not only because of his obesity, but also because of his tiny eyes and his filth and body odor and the remains of food decorating his clothes and teeth.

  Pamela had always figured that the nickname was an insult to swine everywhere. She preferred to call the creep Rotney because everything about him seemed rotten, repulsive. Hoglike. Among her friends she’d said terrible things about him. She had always been kind to him, though.

  Maybe that had been a mistake. Not hurrying away whenever he approached, the way most kids used to do. Smiling at him. Talking to him. Treating him like a human being, even though his disgusting appearance and sour smell had sometimes made her eyes water. A couple of times, she had actually gagged in the middle of chats with him. Wanting to spare his feelings, she’d claimed it must’ve been something she ate.

  Maybe she should have avoided him, laughed at him, called him Piggy or Rotney to his face. If she’d been really bad to him, maybe none of this would’ve happened.

  All those girls . . . Jim.

  Went away Jim, came back Rodney.

  That’s how it had seemed, anyway.

  The room had been dark last night except for the light from the television. Pamela was in bed, propped up with pillows, watching the tail end of the eleven o’clock news and waiting for Dave to start. Jim had gone off to the bathroom. He seemed to be taking longer than usual. Pamela hoped he was shaving. He usually shaved before bed if he planned to fool around. The VCR was already set, so they would be able to watch the tape if they missed some of Dave’s show.

  When she heard Jim’s footsteps outside the room, she drew the top sheet up to cover her bare shoulders. She wanted it to be a surprise that she had dispensed with her nightshirt. Jim walked into the bedroom. He was wearing his paisley bathrobe, the same robe that he’d been wearing ten minutes ago, but he had grown. He looked as if he’d somehow swollen up – grown taller, spread out until he was so fat that his robe wouldn’t shut all the way. The front of his belly bulged through the gap and looked like uncooked bread dough. Only for an instant did Pamela’s mind stumble with confusion about the sudden change in her husband.

  Then she realized that the man in Jim’s robe wasn’t Jim. He reached toward a light switch.

  The bedside lamps came on and made the room bright. Pamela recognized the man in Jim’s robe. She hadn’t seen him in five years, not since her high-school graduation, but he hadn’t changed very much. His smile was exactly the same – a lift of the upper lip. Same piggy eyes. He raised his arms and spread them wide. ‘My dear! Have you missed me?’

  Pamela could hardly breathe. She felt as if a mallet was pounding her heart. She wanted to call out for Jim.

  But Jim had to be dead, didn’t he? Dead.

  Rodney took a step toward her.

  She whipped the sheet away, flung herself over, squirmed across Jim’s side of the bed and reached down for the night-stand drawer. She grabbed its handle. Jerked it open. Drove her hand down inside the drawer toward the Sig-Sauer .380 that Jim kept there for emergencies.

  Before she could touch the pistol, Rodney kicked the drawer shut. It slammed on her forearm. As Pamela cried out, her arm was grabbed and jerked away from the drawer. Rodney shoved it up high on her back, driving her face into Jim’s pillow. Then he climbed onto her.

  The weight of his body mashed her against the mattress. The robe must’ve come wide open. She could feel his bare,
greasy skin all down her back and rump and legs. With her face in the pillow and his massive weight on her back, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t scream. She could hardly move. She fought to suck air into her lungs, but failed. This is it, she thought. Oh Jesus, I’m gonna die.

  When Pamela woke up, she was surprised to find herself alive. And spent the next several hours wishing that she were dead. Rodney finally dragged her out of the bedroom. In the bathroom he showed her Jim’s body. Then she watched him set the house on fire. She remembered being carried outside in Rodney’s arms, but nothing after that.

  She came awake in the passenger seat of his car. The sun was low and shining in her eyes. Her hands rested on her lap, shackled together with handcuffs as if she’d been arrested by the police. She ached almost everywhere. In some places, she felt raw pain. Rodney must’ve dressed her. She couldn’t remember it, though. It seemed as if she’d still been naked on her way out of the house.

  She was wearing a green pleated skirt. It was very short. It reached only halfway down her thighs, and she could feel the upholstery of the car seat against her bare rump. She was also wearing a gold pullover sweater. It had a crew neck and long sleeves. The wool felt heavy and hot. It was scratchy against her skin. All the outfit really needed was a big green-felt ‘J’ sewn to the chest of the sweater, and it would be a pretty fair replica of the varsity cheerleader costume that she’d worn at Jackson High. Rodney seemed unaware that she’d awakened, so she closed her eyes again and pretended to sleep. She thought about what had happened last night.

  Jim was dead.

  At twenty-three, Pamela was a widow. She’d been beaten savagely and half suffocated. In his grunting, hog-man voice Rodney promised to do so many things to her. He mentioned some of them. With gloating relish. Dirty fucking pervert!

  What if I just throw myself out of the car? Probably bust my head open, but that might be better than going on. At least it’ll be over and done with. In some ways, the idea appealed to her. But she knew that she wouldn’t hurl herself out of the car – not while it was speeding along at sixty. Not gonna kill myself. No way, no how. I’m gonna live through this.