1
One of them shrieked; another shouted a brief but potent profanity; and still another gasped. Josh wasn’t even sure who’d shouted—it might’ve even come from his mouth. They all went running—at least that’s what it seemed like—Josh pushing Bronwyn forward through the final door that expelled them into blinding sunlight. They ran as fast as they could to the car, which was parked just outside the garage bay at the side of the Brakedown Palace Gas and Sundries building. Josh noticed that the gas cap was off, but that didn’t matter. They had to get the hell out of there.
“Where’s Griff?” Tammy cried out, alternately laughing hysterically and whining a bit.
“Just get in!” Josh said, shoving her into the back of the car. Ziggy, somehow, had already managed to squeeze into the back ahead of them.
“Hurry up! He’s crazy!” Bronwyn shouted from the front seat.
Then there was the sound of the shotgun’s blast.
“Griff!” Bronwyn shouted.
But Griff came running around the corner with what looked like a kid in his arms. He was laughing hysterically as he ran.
“Go! Go!” he shouted and then leapt into the shotgun seat of the car, squeezing Bronwyn over into Josh’s driver’s seat. Josh got the car in reverse, and his foot dropped heavily onto the accelerator. The car screeched, and then he tried to put it in drive, but it went in neutral instead. The thought flashed through his mind that the engine would stall, but he knocked the lever into drive, and at that moment, here’s what he saw, frozen in some strange tableau, as if he’d set off a flash camera to stop the action of life for a moment:
Not Charlie Goodrow running from the back of the Palace, but someone who looked big and slovenly and had a little blond sidekick with him. It registered who it was:
Dave Olshaker? What the—
Then the action of life began again, and Dave limped and half-jogged toward them. “I been shot!” Dave shouted, clutching his ass. “I been shot!”
“Sons of bitches!” his sidekick shouted at them.
“Tammy! I love you, baby! Come back to me!” Dave howled, then fell to the pavement, his hands still nursing his butt.
But the Pimpmobile was already heading out onto the service road, kicking up dust and gravel in its wake.
2
“This is just too much to process,” Bronwyn said when Josh finally slowed the car down, having driven off the road a little and out behind a hill at least twenty miles away from the Brakedown Palace.
“What the hell was Olshaker doing? What the hell?” Josh asked, glancing in the rearview mirror at Tammy, who glared back at him.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I dumped him a long time ago. I guess some people just never give up.”
“He’s a prick,” Griff said. “But looks like he got shot up in the hiney.”
Sometime between spinning out of the gas station and getting out onto the dusty road, Josh had realized what Griff had brought with him.
The Unspeakable Scratch.
“Little bastard,” as Ziggy started to call it.
“You stole that thing?”
“Come on. It’s not just a thing. It’s the Unspeakable Mystery of the Ancient Aztecs,” Griff said, holding his prize up on his lap, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Hello, my name is Scratch.”
“I gotta pee,” Tammy said. “Come on. I gotta pee. When I get nervous, I gotta pee.”
“Okay, okay,” Bronwyn said. “Get out and go take a leak.”
“Come with me. I’m scared.”
Bronwyn made a noise of moderate disgust from the back of her throat, but flicked her cigarette out into the dirt and pushed Griff and his stolen Mystery out of the car. “What, are you two years old?” she asked Tammy.
“There might be snakes. And scorpions.”
“One can only hope,” Bronwyn said.
3
“What happened back there?”
“It was funny as hell,” Griff said. “That old man came at us with the gun, but he didn’t know that Olshaker and his buddy were right behind him. God knows what the hell Olshaker’s doing out here. He’s obsessed with my girl, and I guess he’s been trailing us. Well, the old guy spun around, Olshaker squealed like a little kid and tried to grab the shotgun. I was surprised to see the little creep myself, but after you guys took off, you missed the best part—Olshaker and his buddy were fighting with the old guy for the shotgun, and I just saw this little fella and decided he’d be great back at The House.” Griff always referred to his frat house as The House. Scratch would not be the first thing he’d ever stolen for The House. He had a stag’s head from one of the dean’s homes up in the balcony room on the second floor, and he’d even stolen a trophy from a rival football team and they had it in the basement of The House. “Imagine this little guy up on the mantel during a party. Cowabunga!” He laughed, pulling the little mummy’s arms up in the air, pretending to talk with a babyish voice. “I’m the Monster of The House! Wheee!”
“Why’d you steal it?”
He shrugged. “Chill out. He’s all broke up around the ribs. We’d have had to pay for it anyway.” Then, he held up one of Scratch’s fingernails. “See? Broke right off.” He passed it over to Josh, who nearly pricked his finger on the sharp tip.
“It’s obsidian. Like a knife. Sharp as hell.”
“I think it’s a cool souvenir from this crappy trip,” Griff said.
Ziggy in the backseat had already lit a joint, and he and Griff passed it back and forth, waiting for the girls to come back to the car.
They were all quiet for a minute or two, and then Ziggy said, “Just don’t feed that little bastard.”
“Huh?”
“I said don’t feed it.”
“I wonder what it eats,” Griff said. “I mean, if it eats skin or blood, then I hate to say it, but our buddy Josh already gave it its first meal. Look.” Griff pressed his finger to Scratch’s clenched jaws. He drew his finger back and held it up. A tiny spot of blood. “When you fell on it, buddy. It got a little taste o’ Joshua.”
“We’re so very, very screwed,” Ziggy said.
4
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Josh laughed. “Oh my God, Ziggy, give up the weed. It’s messing with your head. I mean it. Give it up.”
“No, we’re cursed. I know we are. That little bastard was in my vision dream. Shamans used mushrooms and herbs and weed to see things. I saw it. I had a shaman trip. I saw the little bastard in it. We’re up shit’s creek like nobody’s ever been up shit’s creek.”
“Further up the creek than you’d guess, plowboy,” Griff said. He pointed to the gas gauge.
It was just beneath empty.
“Great. Just great,” Josh said, hitting the horn with his fist.
The sound of the horn echoed across the dusty road.
5
After a minute, Ziggy said, “Throw the little bastard out. It’s bad luck.”
6
The trunk of the Pimpmobile popped up.
“This is the ugliest, nastiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Josh said. “When we get going again, we’re going to return it. We are.”
“No way,” Griff said, heaving Scratch into the back of the trunk, among the girls’ suitcases and the guys’ backpacks and clothes.
They both stared at it.
“What were you thinking? What was going on in that mind of yours? You thought, ‘I’ll add robbery to my college career. Not just robbery, but stealing a nasty stupid sick little gas station mummy that’s probably covered with some diseased lice or something.’ ”
“Look. Live slow, die slow if you want. I watched my grampa live like that and he ended up spending ten years in a damn nursing home. You live like that, you get a long, boring life. Go ahead. Have that life. Someday when you’re in that nursing home sucking back puree and poopin’ your diapers, you’re going to remember this moment,” Griff said, chuckling. “You’ll remember its face. Look at it. With its little grin. It’s kinda cute.”
“That’s not a grin. That’s dried-up flesh around clenched teeth in some old corpse with an enlarged skull. That is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Don’t say that about my newborn baby. It’s grinning,” Griff said, then slammed the trunk closed. He slapped his hand around Josh’s shoulder. “It does not get cooler than this.”
“You just put a corpse in with my clothes,” Josh said.
“Don’t think of it as a corpse. Think of it,” Griff said, “as a memento.”
7
Tammy dropped trou and stepped out of her panties to squat down and take a leak.
“You okay?” Bronwyn asked, her back to Tammy.
“Fine.”
“Olshaker must really love you,” Bronwyn said.
“Like a bounty hunter,” Tammy said. When she was done, she got back into her panties and jeans, zipping up. “He’s a guy I’d like to put in jail.”
“He steal something of yours?”
“Maybe,” Tammy said. “You got a smoke on you?”
“Sure,” Bron said. “Here ya go.” She passed her one of the few remaining cigarettes. Then, she slid one out of the pack for herself and lit it up. Sucked in that first taste of smoke. “I know I’m going to have to quit someday. Everybody either quits or gets cancer.”
“Or both,” Tammy said, lighting hers from Bronwyn’s.
“When I’m having a bad day, a smoke just takes the edge off things.”
“How true. I started when I was fourteen because I saw an ad with these beautiful women smoking and I wanted to be one of them. Stupid, huh? But I was fourteen and I didn’t look like much then and I just wanted to be grown up more than anything in the world.” Tammy blew a perfect smoke ring into the air.
“I started smoking when my folks split. I was a little younger than that. I thought I was intellectual to do it. I thought all these French intellectuals smoke,” Bronwyn laughed, coughing out a brief white cloud. “I think that’s pretty stupid, too. I snuck cigarettes from my mother’s purse. She didn’t smoke much, so she always had a full pack. She never mentioned the ones that were missing.”
“We have a lot in common.” Tammy grinned. “I snuck smokes from my older brother’s sock drawer. They always smelled a little like dirty feet because he rarely ever washed his gym socks. He just balled them up and threw them in there on top of his packs of Marlboros.”
Bronwyn let out a guffaw. “I had a boyfriend once who never washed anything. He smelled like a locker room half the time.”
They both puffed on their cigarettes.
Tammy said, softly, “You still love Griff.”
Bronwyn took a breath. “Yeah, I guess I do. I guess I do.” She glanced over at Tammy and chuckled slightly. “It’s stupid, I know. I’m practically the top of our class, I’m planning to get a master’s and then maybe even a Ph.D., and he probably wants the kind of woman who . . .” Realizing what she’d just begun saying, she added, “I don’t mean . . . what it sounds like . . . I mean . . . I mean, what I mean—”
Tammy cut her off. “I know how you think of me. I know what the other girls think, too. But what you don’t know about me could fill a book. But I know what you mean.”
“I’m a jerk,” Bronwyn said.
“I like him,” Tammy said. “But he’s not the kind of guy you’re really supposed to fall in love with.”
The sky was beautiful and Bronwyn’s eyes started filling with tears, which she quickly wiped away.
Tammy slung an arm over Bronwyn’s shoulder. “You should find someone new. He’s not the best guy. He’s a fun guy. But he’s not right for you. Or for me. We’re gonna break up.”
“What? You have all this . . . sex all the time.”
“Sure,” Tammy said, puffing on the cig. “I like sex with him. He likes sex with me. But there’s not much else.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I know what that ‘oh’ means. ‘Oh, you’re happy being a slut.’ Just because I like to party and have a little fun, doesn’t mean I’m just some mindless bimbo. Look, we’re in college. Someday I’m going to be like my mother. I know it. I can feel it. All uptight and full of rules and making sure the silver’s polished for Thanksgiving, even if I have some half-assed career. I know I’m headed that way. And I want to put that off as long as possible. I don’t want to get an M.R.S. degree. I don’t want a ring on my finger, not yet. Not for years. And Griff is . . . Griff is a pretty boy. He’s a jock. He’s a guy who’s young and has fun and gets along with nearly everybody when he’s not acting like a four-year-old. He’s not long-term for me. Or for you.”
“Says you.”
“That’s right,” Tammy said. “Says me.”
“You don’t think you might be hurting yourself?” Bronwyn asked.
Tammy drew back a little and began walking to the car. She turned around to glance at Bronwyn, after just a few steps forward. “You might just ask yourself that same question.”
8
After the girls got back, they all piled back into the Pimpmobile. Josh drove another few miles along the road, but finally the car came to a sputtering halt.
“End of the line,” Ziggy said. “Nowheresville, USA.”
Josh felt a pain in his stomach—a knot of tension. “You know, you’d think I’d be smart enough to fill up with gas at a gas station.”
“I didn’t think it was near empty,” Griff said. “I’m almost positive we had half a tank left.”
“Almost,” Tammy said, somewhat archly.
Bronwyn said, “It’s nearly six. I wonder what time it’ll get dark.”
“We’ve got food in the back,” Griff said. “We still have the cooler full of beer, too.”
“And a mummified body stolen from a gas station,” Josh said. “Or did you forget that? Will the beer taste better with a little corpse on it?” He slapped his forehead. “Christ Almighty! My dad told me to get a CB radio in case I ever got stuck somewhere. He told me. He said, ‘Josh, you never know when the car’s going to break down.’ He doesn’t really give a flyer about me most of the time, but this was one of those few times when he did,” Josh said, slowly, softly. “I’m so stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
“I wonder if the guy at the Brakedown Palace is calling the cops,” Ziggy said. “We stole his big attraction.”
“That piece of crap?” Griff snorted. “He’ll dig up another corpse in some old Indian graveyard around here. It’s just one of a thousand out there. He probably puts a new one in every year.”
9
Somewhere nearby, in some dark, nearly airless place, a breath was exhaled, and motes of dust and nearly microscopic bits of bone coughed from a jaw that had not opened in a long, long time.