Ruth chewed at her nails, stopping to shake the pain away from the exposed quick. She wiped her fingers on her top, then fondled her crucifix. “Lord, help me be prepared and poised in doing Thy will.”
She parked her car at the rear of the drugstore in shadows behind the dumpster and stepped out, opening the first two buttons of her top as she walked toward the front of the drugstore.
Coming to the storefront, she peeked in around the “closed” sign and knocked at the glass. “Gosh darn it,” she muttered to herself, and knocked harder. Movement from the rear shifted the shadows.
Ruth shone a sweet smile at Charlie Plemmons, as he came down the aisle and unlocked the door. “Hello, Ruth. I’m just finishing up. Everything all right?”
“Well, mostly,” she said in a breathy tone. “I’m so sorry to bother you after closing time. Just have to take care of a few last-minute things for the parade.”
“Can’t wait till morning? I’ll be opening early.”
“Well…there are some girly things I need too.” Ruth blinked.
“Oh. Say no more. Come right in.”
“Thank you, Charlie.” She pushed the door closed. “I’ll get that for you. You go finish up.” She locked it.
“Go ahead and gather what you need,” Charlie said. “Register’s closed, so just remember the prices. I know you’re good for it.”
“Oh, thank you.” A shy, innocent blush.
“I’ll be up in the pharmacy for a bit.” He turned toward the back. “Working on something for Hudson, so just let yourself out through the back.”
“There is something else though.” Ruth arched her back a bit, thrusting her chest toward him. “A bit…unusual.”
“Oh?”
“One of the parade wagons has a scary dummy that’s a doctor. An evil, deranged doctor, like a global warming scientist.”
Charlie furrowed his brow. “Reverend McGlazer didn’t mention that one.”
“It was sort of last-minute. Anyway, it would sure set the scene if he had”—she lifted her hands—“a big scary syringe.”
“Oh.” Charlie didn’t seem to notice her delicate sensual hands. “Most of ’em come with the needles already affixed, and that could be a hazard.”
“Oh, that would be perfect! Authentic you know. He’ll be…hanging high, so no danger.”
“Hm. Don’t know about that. Seems like a bad idea.”
“Well, I was going to dull it down anyway,” Ruth explained.
“That’s not as easy as you think. Maybe I should call McGlazer.” He turned and took a brisk step.
“No, please. He’s so busy. I promised him I’d take care of this.”
“Just let me see if we have one without the needle.”
Ruth gritted her teeth in frustration and paced a short line along the aisle, whispering, “Help me, Lord.”
She stopped and examined a wall of kitchenware: knives, pots, pans, meat tenderizing hammers. Confound it! All so messy.
She reached for a long kitchen knife in a plastic package and tore at the package, frustrated by the crackling noise. Then, she spotted a miracle—in an easy-open cardboard blister pack, edged with light from the street like a divine signal, a turkey juicer. A thick syringe for injecting basting juices into the bird via a handy, thick-gauge needle, it would more than serve her purpose.
Ruth snatched it from the hook, just as Plemmons appeared around the corner.
“Here we are.”
Ruth hid the package behind her back as Plemmons presented a small diabetics syringe, its business end neutered.
“Oh! Thanks, Charlie.”
Plemmons noticed her blouse for the first time. “Oh. Say, your, uh, button there.”
“Hm?”
He motioned. “Seems to have popped open.”
“Oh! Why, I’m so sorry. I just can’t seem to keep it closed.” Ruth’s face might have gone red. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Please,” scoffed Charlie. “I’m old enough to be your father. Sewing kits on five, if you need one.” He headed back toward the pharmacy enclosure.
Ruth watched him go, tearing open the turkey juicer.
* * * *
“Well, will you looky there? Still standing!” Pedro faux-gasped as he leaned far into Kerwin’s personal space to feast his eyes on the old Victorian in mock wonder.
“Yeah…” Kerwin acknowledged.
Jill turned to him. “What now? You still look buggy.”
Dennis hit the horn, startling him. “Son of a bitch!” The manager raised his hand to show them it was shaking.
“Relax already, will ya?” Dennis said. “Just giving them a heads-up we’re here, so we don’t scare the bejeesus out of ’em.”
Kerwin hopped out. “You’d think you nobodies would wanna show a little more respect to the guy who’s putting you in front of a God damned record label suit in less than twenty-four hours.”
Jill smacked the back of Kerwin’s head from behind, making Kerwin think Pedro did it. “Knock it off, already!”
Pedro just flipped him off as he followed him up the path to the door. Kerwin unlocked it and led them inside.
The inside was as black as soot, its musty atmosphere invading their noses like rushing water.
“Ho there, Stevie!” Kerwin yelled.
“It’s Stuart, squarewad,” corrected Jill.
“Stuart? DeShaun?” Dennis called into the dusty gloom. “Sound off!”
“They better not be in the basement,” Kerwin mumbled.
Jill groaned. “Enough with the basement already.”
“Ooooh shit,” Pedro said.
“What?”
“Who’s got a light?”
Jill drew her Zippo and sparked it, cursing at what it revealed.
“Ah, no.” Dennis’s shoulders sunk. “No way.”
They beheld, in the dancing flicker, their smashed instruments.
“Shit in a sandstorm,” Kerwin said.
Dennis raised the remnants of his guitar, clutching the curled broken strings. “My custom Gib.”
Kerwin turned on them like a mocked prophet whose promised afflictions had come to pass. “I told you! I told you! You shouldn’t have let those kids come in here by themselves!”
“Stuart…” Dennis ignored the outburst and went toward the dark hallway. “Where are you guys? Come on!”
“We’re screwed!” Kerwin cried. “Damn you and your stupid brother!”
Pedro spun and grabbed Kerwin by the lapels. “Better issue some retractions, big mouth.” He lifted Kerwin off the floor like a baby. “Yesterday.”
Dennis stalked back into the room, glowering up at the suspended Kerwin. “They better be okay, little man.”
“Hey, hey hey!” Kerwin mollified. “No need to get testy, guys!” Pedro dropped him.
“I’m gonna check the basement.” Jill was halfway down the hall when Kerwin called, “No!”
She spun on her bootheel and paced back to jerk his tie, drawing him face to face. “Your little basement fetish is really starting to toast my tits, douche face.”
Kerwin found himself crowded into a threatening half-circle of Outlines. “Maybe it’s time you spill on exactly what is the big deal anyway,” Dennis demanded.
Before Kerwin could try to answer, the hall closet door creaked open.
They all crowded close together, their disagreement forgotten, and backed away from the darkened doorway.
A pale and skeletal face, disembodied in the darkness, lurched at them with a moan. Small hands reached out. Then the figure collapsed. “Some kid.” Pedro lunged to catch him. It was Albert. “He’s hurt!”
Jill found Albert’s flashlight on the floor. She flicked it on and examined the boy.
“That’s not Stevie, is it?” Kerwin asked.
Norman emerged in his bloody bear suit, squalling and swatting at the giant insects of his mind’s eye.
Dennis wrapped the boy in a restraining hug. He removed his bear mask and beheld a face that belonged on some poor soul huddled in a forgotten corner of some ancient asylum. “Shit!”
“This kid’s hurt bad, man.” Pedro gathered Albert up. “He needs a hospital.”
“Hey, kid!” Dennis held up Norman’s lolling head. “Is Stuart here?”
Neither Albert nor Norman was in any shape to answer, the former a rag doll from blood loss, the latter still trapped in a tortured fugue of hallucinations.
“Get ’em in the car,” Dennis said. “I’m gonna sweep the place.”
As Pedro turned with the shivering Albert, Dennis stopped him. “Dude.”
“Yeah?”
Dennis picked up the rest of Albert’s foot from the pool of blood where he had found it and handed it to Pedro, who said, “Right. I’ll toss it in the cooler with the sodas.”
Dennis took the flashlight from Jill and headed toward the basement. Stopping at the door, he grabbed the gape-mouthed Kerwin and dragged him. “Since it’s so damn sketchy, you can come along to protect your investment, right, Ker?”
“Shit,” whispered the manager.
* * * *
Had they skirted the outside, Dennis and Kerwin would have stumbled upon the corpses of Maynard and Del and the events of the following twenty-four hours might not have been such a tragedy. Instead, they tromped down the basement stairs, Dennis followed far behind by a less-enthusiastic Kerwin.
Finding no signs of Angelo and Ruth’s chemistry project, Kerwin gulped his relief, as Dennis noted, “Doesn’t seem so dicey.”
“Yeah. I, um…forgot I had some guys come and fix the…ya know, ceiling.”
“Yo, Stuart!” Dennis called.
“I think he would probably be too smart to come down here,” Kerwin said.
Dennis gave him a cold, distrusting glower, holding it for an uncomfortable aeon.
He returned to inspecting the murky room, settling the flashlight beam on something in the far corner. “Hello…”
“Wh…what?” Kerwin stammered. “Didja…find something there, Denny?”
“Did I ever!” Dennis said, walking to the corner, his form hiding the find from Kerwin’s straining eyes.
Dennis turned and tossed something on the worktable, shining the light on it. It was Angelo’s girls and cars mag.
Leaning one hand on the table, Dennis opened it and perused. “This is what you’ve been so squirmy about, Kerwin? A boob zine?”
“Huh? …Oh.” Kerwin leaned in to see, relieved. “That what that is?”
Dennis’s darkened face was a sculpture titled Dubious. “So, you come down here to spank it.” He shoved the magazine at Kerwin. “No one gives a shit.”
“Yeah. Heh-heh!” Kerwin’s nervous cackle echoed in the empty room. “I’m like a horny teenager or something, right?”
“Stuart’s not here,” Dennis said. “Let’s get those guys to the hospital.”
“Yeah, of course!” Kerwin was eager to leave. “Mind if I, uh, sit up front? Just don’t want, ya know, blood on my suit, or…”
“You won’t have to worry about that, daddy-o. You’re hoofing it over to the neighbor’s house. To call the sheriff.”
“Huh? But that’s gotta be…”
“Quarter of a mile, minimum. Better double-time it.”
Dennis went back up the stairs, leaving his manager to form a resentful scowl in the dark.
* * * *
Returning to the candy Hudson had dropped off, Charlie Plemmons poured some fluid into a test tube, then dropped a bit of the candy into it. The reaction was nothing like Charlie had ever seen.
Something white, like a tiny serpent, grew from the particle, squirming in the fluid for a second before dissolving. “What in the bloody blue?” he whispered to himself, before a knock at the pharmacy door distracted him. Ruth called to him.
“Yes, Ruth?”
“I have a question about something.”
He went to the counter and raised its heavy steel door.
Ruth squeezed the syringe behind her back.
“What is it?”
“Well…it’s one of the, um, feminine products.”
“I’ll do my best to help.” He showed no intention of leaving the pharmacy enclosure.
Massaging the crucifix, Ruth was close to uttering an internal profanity. “I’ll, um, go get the package. It’ll be easier.” Ruth shuffled down the aisle, gritting her teeth. She stood still, then, “You know what? I figured it out! Thanks, Charlie!”
She heard his sigh of relief as the metal door came back down—but Charlie left it a good eight inches open. “Darn your hide, Charlie Plemmons,” she murmured. “The devil must be watching over you.”
In the enclosure, Charlie returned to the candy, stunned to see the test tube bubbling over, smoking. “Great jumping jack-o’-lanterns!”
Ruth grabbed a step stool from a half-completed Christmas display.
She padded to the pharmacy counter and set the stool under it, then pulled back the stopper on the turkey baster and put it between her teeth. She eased up onto the stool and worked her way under the sliding door with the calm stealth of a sociopath.
With tweezers held in a steady hand, Plemmons positioned another fragment of the candy onto a slide and placed it under the lens of a microscope. He squinted into the lens, adjusting the magnification.
What he saw made him take a step back from the eyepiece.
Ruth eased to the pharmacy floor and snuck toward him. In the half-light she did not see the little box in her path. She kicked it, startling Charlie. He spun to find her raising the syringe. “Ruth? What are you doing? That’s not a toy, you know.”
Ruth ignored his statement. “So glad you’re a church member, Charlie.” She jammed the syringe into his chest. “Make that were a church member.”
She pushed the plunger, filling Plemmons’s heart with air.
He clutched at his chest.
Ruth withdrew the syringe as though raising a pen from a shopping list and cocked her head to watch him die. “Praise Jesus. Nice and clean.”
But then Plemmons flopped over and fell face-forward onto the counter, smashing his hands into the glass containers, cutting massive gashes into his palms that drizzled blood.
Ruth’s annoyance rose to near-profanity levels again. “No!” She reached for him, but he was already pushing away from the table and stumbling into a shelf full of liquid-filled glass containers, which all crashed to the floor. Plemmons landed face-forward and hard, into the puncturing shards.
Ruth glanced heavenward. “You gotta be kidding me.”
Plemmons rolled over and took hold of a huge piece of glass jutting from his neck. He yanked it loose, sending a pulsing spray from his jugular several feet. Ruth’s gaze followed the stream to the puddle it was forming on the floor. “Oh, you dirty rat.”
With a furious scream, she stomped on his throat, only succeeding in driving out an even thicker spray.
But at least he was dead.
Ruth calmed as she stroked the length of her little gold cross, frown huffing at the mess like a woman whose housework is never done. “Thank the Lord you got all these cleaning supplies here, Charlie.”
The lights of a car washed over her from the front lot.
“Judas crud!” Ruth hissed, as she switched off the pharmacy’s fluorescents and dashed down into the drugstore, hiding behind a display of Halloween makeup. Peering around the corner, she watched the front door.
It was Hudson Lott, squinting into the drugstore.
Lott knocked on the window with his flashlight, then took a massive key ring from his belt and began working his way through it. He tried one, but it did not work.
Ruth went toward the door, biting her lip as she thought of a plan. She slid the turkey baster into the back of her waistband.
The next key worked. Lott was opening, about to enter.
“Deputy Lott!” Ruth called, halfway down the aisle.
Hudson almost went for his sidearm. “Ruth! You’re gonna kill somebody one of these days. Creeping up on ’em like that.”
“Oh.” Ruth made droopy lips. “Sorry.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was just…helping Charlie.” She gestured toward the rear exit. “Taking some trash out back, and I heard your car.”
“I swear. You got a monopoly on all the goodness in this town.” Hudson’s compliment was genuine.
“Aw. You’re sweet to say it.”
“I came to see him about something, but it’s all dark in there.”
“Oh, he had to run an errand. Asked me to stay around till he got back.”
“Hm. His car’s still here.” Hudson’s brow furrowed as he scanned the shadows. “You sure everything’s all right?”
Casting her eyes down in imitation of demureness, Ruth spotted a bloodstain on her white shoe and hid it behind the other foot. “Oh…”
“What’s going on?” A hint of suspicion edged his voice. “Is there something…” He moved to step inside.
“Wait!” Ruth said, and when he turned his assessing eyes on her: “Charlie and I were talking. He… he needed somebody to talk to, and I was just trying to help. He’s in no state to talk to anyone else. We were pray—”
“Hold on.” Hudson raised his big hand. “Ruth, I’ve known you a long time. Are you up to something in here?”
“Why, no! I just…”
“You do know Charlie’s a married man, right?”
“Oh.” Ruth realized what he suspected, and adjusted. “Yes. I…” She lowered her head. “We…let things get out of hand, I suppose.” She tried to summon some mist to her eyes, but it had always been dicey with that tactic. But she did make her voice crack. “I mean, one second we were hugging and praying together, the next we—”
“Not my business,” Hudson interrupted. “But it’s a God damned bad idea, I’ll tell you that!”
Ruth registered appall at the profanity, but held her tongue. “I know. You’re right, Hudson. Is it all right if I call you Hudson?”
“You just go tell Charlie to get himself together, because I’m going in there. And I don’t need to see this kind of irresponsible behavior from either of you!”
Ruth nodded like a chastised six-year-old. Behind her back, she thumbed up the plunger, filling the baster syringe with air.
A sudden shout from outside startled them both—Hudson’s patrol car radio. “Attention all units, we have an injured boy en route to County General via Hennison Road in a civilian vehicle,” called the dispatcher. “Need an escort with sirens to meet.”
“Damn.” Hudson trained severe eyes on Ruth. “I gotta go. I’m coming back in half an hour and everything best be straight as a pin, you read me?”
“Yes, sir!”
Hudson rushed away.
Ruth patted her heart like an old woman. “Oh Lord. Thanks for Thy…mysterious movements, I guess?”