The Stake Read online

  Softened by the memories of that night, she stepped forward and put her arms around Jim. She kissed him gently on the mouth. “Apology accepted,” she whispered. “But I really do have to leave now.”

  His hands slid down her back and caressed her rump. “What about your Pepsi?”

  “Time’s all up. You can walk me to the car, though.”

  He squeezed her against him and kissed her hard, then stepped away. “Guess I’ll just have to wait for next Friday, huh?”

  “It’ll get here.”

  “Not soon enough.”

  “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  “I’ll miss you more.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “Yes I will.”

  “Wanta fight about it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s wrestle.”

  “Oh, you’d like that.”

  “So would you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Holding hands, they walked to the door.

  Thirteen

  Larry stood at the end of the driveway, waving good-bye to Jean and Lane as the car headed off down the road. It seemed strange, being left behind.

  He knew he would miss them. Hell, he alreadymissed them.

  On the other hand, he rather liked the prospect of being on his own for the weekend. He could do whatever he pleased, and not have to answer to anyone.

  Freedom.

  He felt like a kid being left home without parents or baby-sitter.

  The car vanished around the corner. Larry turned toward the house, then raised a hand in greeting as Barbara trotted down the steps next door. A handbag swung at her hip. Larry supposed she was leaving on an errand.

  “So, they took off without you.”

  “Sure did.”

  “Jean told me about that manuscript.” She stopped beside her car in the driveway. “Sounds like the pits to me.”

  “Gives me a good excuse to stay behind,” he said, smiling.

  “If you’re not too busy, why don’t you come over for dinner? We’ll throw some steaks on the barbecue.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Good. Drop in around five, then, all right?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  She climbed into her car, and Larry headed for the house.

  Things are perking up already, he thought.

  In his office he glanced at the savaged manuscript and realized he was in no mood to struggle with it. He’d already fought his way through more than a hundred pages today, scratching out the copyeditor’s misguided corrections and replacing them with scribbles to match the printed lines as they’d originally been written. That was plenty for one day’s work.

  He settled down in the living room with a beer and the Shaun Hutson novel he’d started reading that morning. Though his eyes traveled over the words, his mind kept slipping out of the story. He found himself imagining what Jean’s folks might say when they realized he’d stayed home, wondering what he should wear over to Pete and Barbara’s, thinking about how much he would like to spend all day tomorrow working on ideas for The Box.

  Then he was speculating about the jukebox in the ditch. He wondered how much it weighed. Could two men lift it? In his book they would have to carry it to the van. Would that be possible?

  Have the women lend a hand with it. My main guy isn’t married. Might have a girlfriend with him, though.

  Still occupied with his thoughts, Larry set the book aside. He drained the last of his beer, wandered into the bedroom and took off his clothes.

  Have one of the gals fall while they’re lugging the jukebox up the slope. Good. Foreshadowing that the box is going to cause trouble.

  In the bathroom he turned on the shower and stepped under its beating spray.

  She tumbles down the embankment, he thought as he began to soap himself. Gets banged up pretty much like Barbara did in the hotel.

  He remembered the way Barbara had looked, standing in the doorway afterward. How her legs and belly were scraped. How her blouse hung open.

  The images stirred a pleasant heat in his groin.

  Which turned cold when he suddenly saw himself kneeling under the staircase, gazing at the shriveled corpse.

  God, he wished he’d never seen that thing!

  It always seemed to be with him. Waiting. Like some kind of spook lurking in a dark closet of his mind, every now and then throwing open the door to give him another look.

  So damn grisly and repulsive.

  But fascinating, too.

  As Larry washed his hair, his mind ran through the familiar questions. Who was she? Who drove the stake into her chest? Was her presence under the stairway known to the person who put the brand new lock on the hotel doors? Could she really be a vampire? What might happen if someone pulled out the stake?

  He had no answers.

  He told himself, as always, that he didn’t wantto know the answers. He only wanted to forget about the thing.

  Which wasn’t about to happen.

  Maybe we should’ve reported it, he thought. He’d been against that at the time. Now, however, he saw how it might’ve been for the best. A call to cops would’ve relieved them of responsibility. Like passing the baton.

  We did our part, now it’s your turn.

  Part of the problem, he realized, was carrying the burden of knowledge.

  We’re the only ones who know it’s there.

  But we didn’t do anything about it.

  So the damn corpse is more than just a grisly memory, it’s unfinished business.

  According to the shrinks, that’s what messes up your head more than anything — unfinished business.

  Maybe we need to deal with it, Larry told himself. Take some kind of action to get the thing out of our systems.

  * * *

  “Let’s drive out and get it,” Pete said.

  Larry felt as if his breath had been knocked out. “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “You’re out of your gourd,” Barbara said.

  “Hey, if he’s going to write a book about that jukebox, he ought to haveit. Or better yet, Iought to have it. Larry can keep track of my progress repairing the thing so he gets the details right. You know? There’s nothing like firsthand experience to give a book...”

  “Verisimilitude,” Larry put in.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “I don’t know,” Larry said.

  He took a sip of his vodka tonic and shook his head. He wished he hadn’t mentioned The Box. Normally, he didn’t discuss story ideas with anyone. But Pete and Barbara were part of this one. They’d discovered the jukebox. Pete’s desire to take it home had really been the inspiration. So the story had rolled out.

  Should’ve kept my mouth shut.

  The last thing I want to do is go driving out to Sagebrush Flat.

  Pete got up from his lawn chair and checked the barbecue. The flames had died away, but Larry could tell from where he sat that the briquettes were burning. The air over the grill shimmered with heat waves. “Be another ten, fifteen minutes,” Pete said. He turned to Barbara, arched a dark eyebrow. “Don’t you need to go inside and do something?”

  “Trying to get rid of me?”

  “Just trying to be helpful. We’re going to have those sauteed mushrooms, we’ll want them withour steaks.”

  “They only take a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll do them up when you put the meat on.”

  Good, Larry thought. He wasn’t eager for her to leave. Not only was she the best defense against Pete’s crazy urge to fetch the jukebox, but it felt good to look at her.

  She sat on a lounge in front of him, bare legs stretched out on its cushion. Her long, slim legs looked wonderful in spite of the scabbed areas. She wore red shorts and a plain white T-shirt. The shorts were very short. The T-shirt lay softly against her flat belly and the rises of her breasts. Its fabric was thin enough to show a faint pink hue of the skin underneath, the dark crust of the scabs above Barbara’s waist, the white of her bra.
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br />   He watched the way her muscles moved as she sat up straight to take a drink of her cocktail and settled back again and rested the glass on the moist disk it had left just below the hip of her shorts.

  “You don’t want to go back there, do you?” she asked Larry.

  “Not a whole lot.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “It’s probably too heavy for the two of us to carry, anyway,” he told Pete.

  “Barbara will come along and lend a hand. Won’t you, hon?”

  “Not on your life.”

  “She’s just scared of the vampire.”

  “You know it. Besides, we don’t need that piece of junk cluttering up the garage.”

  “It’d be great for Larry’s book. He can come over and check it out whenever he needs some inspiration.” Looking at Larry, he added, “And we can take pictures of it. You know? A photo of the actual jukebox, all shot up the way it is, that’ll be terrific on your cover.”

  “That would be pretty neat,” he admitted.

  “Jeez, don’t encourage him.”

  Larry smiled at her. “I have no intention of going back to that place.”

  “You’re scared of the vampire, too, huh?” Pete said. “Hey, it can’t hurt you. Not as long as it’s got that stake in its heart.”

  “I’m not worried about any ‘vampire,’ ” Larry told him. “I don’t think it isa vampire. But stiffs give me the creeps.”

  “That’s a good one, coming from you.”

  “I’m scared of my own shadow, man. That’s what makes me good at writing those books. And I tell you, Sagebrush Flat is a lot scarier to me than my shadow. My shadow pales by comparison.”

  Barbara chuckled at his pun.

  “Even if there wereno corpse under the stairway, I’d still want to stay away from that town. Just the fact that it’s deserted is enough to spook me. There’s something basically frightening about a place where people are supposed to be but aren’t. An abandoned town, an office building at night...”

  “That’s really true, you know,” Barbara said. “Like a hotel really late at night when everyone’s asleep.”

  “Or a school,” Larry added. “Or a church.”

  “Yeah.” Her eyes widened. “Church’s are reallyspooky when nobody’s there. I used to go for choir practice when I was in high school. We’d meet on Wednesday nights at eight.” She leaned forward and gazed at Larry. “One night... God, I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about it.” Hunching up her shoulders, she squeezed her arms tight against her sides. “One night, practice had been called off and I didn’t know about it. I think we’d been out of town. Anyway, the choir director was sick, and everybody knew it but me. So my dad dropped me off in the parking lot and I went in.”

  “You taking notes, Lar? Maybe you can use this.”

  “Sounds promising so far.” He could feel himself shivering slightly as if Barbara’s fear were contagious.

  “There was a light on in the narthex. But the stairway to the choir loft was dark. I went up there, anyway. I figured I was just the first to arrive. The choir loft was dark, too.”

  “Why didn’t you turn on some lights?” Pete asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess I thought I shouldn’t mess with anything like light switches. But also, I was afraid somebody might... turning on lights, you know, that’d be like giving away that I was there.” Her mouth stretched, baring her teeth.

  “That’s the thing,” Larry said. “When a place seems deserted, you’re afraid you aren’t reallyalone.”

  “That’s it. Exactly. Because you can’t see what’s out there. God, I started thinking someone was roaming around, sneaking up on me. I even thought I heard someone creeping up the stairs.” Her right hand still held the glass on her lap. Her other hand crossed over to that arm and rubbed it as if she wanted to smooth away the goose bumps. Larry saw that her thighs were pebbled. Though she wore a bra, it was apparently of a light, stretchy fabric. Her nipples made small points against her T-shirt.

  I’ll have to remember that, Larry thought. A woman has gooseflesh, the nipples get erect.

  Fear makes them hard.

  Or is she turned on?

  Turned on by the fear?

  Barbara kept frowning, rubbing her arm. She seemed lost in her memory of that night.

  “So what happened?” Pete asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Oh, that’s a great story.”

  “I waited around for about fifteen minutes. I was almost too scared to move. I kept staring down at the nave and pulpit and everything, and thought someone was down there in the dark. You know, awareof me. Watching me.”

  “Coming for you,” Pete added.

  “Damn right.”

  “ ‘They’re comingfor you,’ ” he said, mimicking the voice of the jerky brother in the graveyard scene of The Night of the Living Dead. “They’re comingfor...”

  “Knock it off, would you?”

  “Nobody ever showed up?” Larry asked.

  She shook her head. “I finally beat it. I was never so glad to get out of a place in my life.”

  “Not even the hole in the landing of the Sagebrush Flat Hotel?” Pete asked.

  “That was different. I was in pain. That’s not the same as being scared half to death.”

  “So you finally just bolted out of the church?” Larry asked.

  “Sure did. I didn’t even stop to use the phone and call home. I waited in the parking lot, and Dad finally came along at the usual time to pick me up.”

  “That’s it, huh?” Pete asked.

  “It was enough. I quit the choir after that. Nothing was ever going to get me back into the church after dark.”

  “Pretty drastic, considering that nothing happened.”

  “It wasn’t exactly as if nothing happened,” Larry pointed out.

  “That’s right. All these years have passed, and it still gives me the creeps if I think about it.”

  “Still isn’t much of a story,” Pete said.

  “A good setup for one,” Larry told him.

  “Think you might use it?” Pete asked.

  “I can just see it,” Barbara said, smiling. “You’d probably have a homicidal maniac chasing me through the pews.”

  “Something like that. Maybe Jesus gets down off the cross and stalks the gal through the church.”

  “Oh, sick.”

  Pete laughed. “Hey, goes after her with a nail in each hand.”

  “You guys.”

  “That’s good,” Larry said. “Next morning, the preacher shows up and she’sthe one on the cross.”

  “God’s gonna get you for that,” Barbara warned.

  “More than likely.”

  “I’d better put the steaks on,” Pete said. “Feed him quick before a lightning bolt comes down and knocks him out of his shoes.”

  After dinner, Pete presented his surprise — a plastic bag containing three videotapes. “Thought we’d have a movie marathon, unless you’re in a big hurry to get home.”

  With three vodka tonics under his belt, and the two beers he’d had with dinner, Larry knew he was in no condition to write, make corrections on his copyedited manuscript, or even read the Hutson novel.

  Nor was he eager to be alone in his empty house.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” He inspected the tapes through their clear plastic boxes: Cameron’s Closet, Blood Frenzy, and Floater.

  “Barb phoned me at the shop,” Pete explained. “So I picked these up on the way home.” He looked quite pleased with himself.

  “Oh, this’ll be neat,” Larry said.

  “These should put you in a great mood,” Barbara said, “for when it’s time to go home.”

  “They freak you out, you can spend the night here.”

  “I imagine I’ll be all right.”

  They started with Blood Frenzy. Pete watched from a recliner beside the sofa. Larry sat at one end of the s
ofa, Barbara at the other. After a while she tossed a cushion onto the coffee table and propped her feet up.

  When the movie ended, Pete made popcorn. Barbara disappeared for a few minutes. She came back wearing a knee-length blue robe. She filled glasses with Pepsi for everyone. Pete separated the popcorn into three bowls.

  Before returning to her place on the sofa, Barbara turned off all the lights.

  They munched popcorn, drank their sodas, and watched Cameron’s Closetin a room that was dark except for the glow from the television screen.

  Every now and then Larry glanced at Barbara. She was slumped against the back of the sofa, popcorn bowl on her lap, her legs stretched out, feet resting on the cushion she had earlier placed on the coffee table. When she twisted sideways to set her empty bowl on the lamp table, the robe slipped off her left leg. She wore a pink, diaphanous nightgown. It was shorter than the robe. It didn’t reach down much farther than her hip. With a quiet moan of annoyance, she flung the fallen section of the robe back on top of her thigh.

  This is sure better than being home, Larry thought.

  A few minutes later she took the cushion out from under her feet. She tilted it against the armrest, swiveled herself around and swung her legs onto the sofa. She lay down on her side, head propped on the cushion. “Let me know if I kick you,” she said.

  “Maybe I should get out of your way.”

  “No, that’s fine.”

  Pete looked over. “Oh, here we go. For godsake, Barb, sit up. You won’t last five minutes.”

  “I’m wide awake.”

  “You won’t be. I’m warning you, I’m not gonna rewind. You drift off, it’s your hard luck.”

  “I’m not going to drift off.”