Fright Night (4 page)

C
harley sat in his usual booth at Wally’s, blearily rubbing his forehead. An open-faced Wallyburger sat expectantly before him, awaiting its customary overdose of mustard, ketchup and garlic powder.

Charley was oblivious. To the burger. To the half dozen video games screeching and squonking in the background. To their players, smoking and laughing and absorbing the latest in recreational radiation. To the garbled din of “The Young and the Restless” blasting from the Trinitron bolted to the wall and aimed right at him.

The nonstop chaos that formed the daily fabric of Wally’s Burger Heaven, teen mecca of the Rancho Corvallis Mall, was all but lost on Charley. He wanted nothing more than to continue massaging his face, as if the act might magically revitalize his beleaguered brain.

“My day was a disaster,” he moaned. “My
life
is a disaster . . .”

The burger sat, mutely sympathetic. He slathered it with condiments apathetically.

The unfairness of it all was entirely beyond him.
Stay up all night studying,
then
fall asleep in Lorre’s class. Way to go, Brewster. What a chump. You’ll be in summer school the rest of your stupid life.

The thought made his stomach twist into hard little knots. He stared at the burger, then swept it aside. His life was ruined, utterly ruined.

“Amy hates me,” he mumbled. The words stuck in his throat like a lump of sour milk. Three months of heartfelt emotion and raw animal cunning, right down the dumper.
She’ll never go to bed with me now. Hell, she won’t even
speak
to me!

He wondered if Peter Vincent had such female troubles.

No,
he thought.
Peter Vincent doesn’t have troubles like this. Peter Vincent doesn’t get all wet behind the ears about some creepy guy’s coffin, either. Peter Vincent would stake a vampire with one hand while groping some bleached-blond fraulein with tits the size of basketballs in the other.

He was so engrossed in thoughts of Peter Vincent that Amy slid into the booth beside him without his realizing it. She watched him for a moment, his hands threatening to dig ruts in his forehead. Obviously lost in despair.

Her heart quivered a little. She put on her best sweetie-pie voice and purred, “Hi, Charley . . .”

No reply. Probably lost without her. She resumed, undaunted.

“Hi,
Charley . . .”

Charley looked up. His eyes focused and widened in surprise. “Amy?” Then, recovering somewhat, “Amy! Look, I’m really sorry about the other night. I’m such a putz. I—”

“It was my fault, not yours,” she said, all sweetness.

“It was?” This was not the expected response. He looked like a man who’d been slugged with a sockful of nickels.

“Uh-huh . . .” she nodded, all seduction. She touched his hand lightly.

Charley felt faint. If God Almighty Himself had descended from heaven and sprayed him with a seltzer bottle, he’d have been no less surprised.
This is it,
he thought.

He squeezed her hand. “Look, Amy. I love you. I’m sorry about the other night, and I never want to fight with you again. Okay?”

Amy leaned back in the booth and beamed. “God, I’m so glad we’re getting this whole mess straightened out. I’ve been really miserable these last few days, Charley, and I . . .” She faltered, eyes shifting to the table top. “. . . I’d kinda like to pick up where we left off. Tonight, maybe?”

No response.

“Charley?” She looked up, smiling.

Her smile froze on her face as she realized that Charley was gone, halfway across Wally’s toward the TV on the wall.

“Charley, are you listening to me?”

Charley wasn’t listening to anybody. Charley felt as if his entire consciousness had been stuffed into a cardboard tube and fired straight at the TV screen. The whole world—love, Amy, Wallyburgers, sex—all faded into a miasma of gray mush as Charley stared, transfixed by the four o’clock news.

Another murder. The victim’s face, flashing on the screen.

A face that was all too familiar.

It’s the fox.
His mind reeled.
Omigod, I just saw her yesterday . . .

. . . That scream . . .

His ears strained for the sound, caught it in mid-sentence.

“. . . police are searching for further clues in the mutilation-slaying of Cheryl Lane, a known prostitute who appears to be the latest victim of the ‘Rancho Corvallis Killer.’ Authorities are quick to point out that . . .”

“Know what I heard on the police band last night?”

Charley’s attention snapped back. He turned to find Evil Ed standing beside him, leering like an idiot. Charley grimaced. “Knowing you, it must be bad.”

Evil Ed grinned. “There’ve been two identical murders in the last two days, Brewster. And
get this,”
he added gleefully. “Both of ’em had their
heads
cut off! Can you stand it?” He cackled. “Fuck
Fright Night,
Chucko. We got a
real
monster here!”

“You’re a sick man, Evil. Real sick.”

“Oh, Char-ley . . .” A voice from his past, coming up behind. Charley’s blood froze.

“Amy? . . .” he began.

Charley wheeled around and caught a cold Wallyburger right in the kisser. Amy ground it in for good measure, sending gobs of condiments dripping out the sides onto his down vest. Evil Ed hastily got out of range, enjoying the spectacle immensely.

Amy finished grinding, let go of the mashed bun. It stayed right where she’d left it, plastered to his face like something from a Warner Brothers cartoon. She wheeled around and stomped off, royally pissed but triumphant.

“Amy . . .” Charley stood there, dripping rings of onion, looking absolutely ridiculous. The crowd cast furtive glances and giggled. Evil Ed sauntered up, cooing maternally and wiping away flecks of ground beef with a hankie.

“Oooooo, Brewster, you’re
sooo
cool. You’ve got such a touch with the ladies . . .”

“Amy!” Charley shouted, but it was too late.

Amy was long gone.

FIVE

T
he Shelby Mustang whipped down the street and into the narrow driveway with practiced precision, hooking around the back of the Brewster house and sliding neatly into the garage. It cleared by inches the lawn mower and garden tools piled haphazardly against the side wall, and stopped just short of going clear through the back.

Charley threw it into park and killed the engine. He checked his reflection in the rear-view mirror; he’d washed his face pretty thoroughly, but there were still some telltale splotches of mustard and ketchup on his vest. That was all he needed right now: to explain to his mother. God . . .

He grabbed his books and started out of the garage. The neighbor’s house loomed before him, as though waiting for some cue to stomp through the hedge, across the driveway and . . .

He shook his head. That was dumb. The house next door had been empty for years. Sure, it looked like your basic haunted house—he sometimes wondered if years of staring out his bedroom window at the place had warped his mind—but it had never before held such a sense of foreboding.

Until last night.

Until the scream.

Charley studied the side of the house: three stories high, Victorian, imposing. The largest house on the block, and the oldest. It had not aged gracefully, its elegance having long since given way to a paint-flecked and gloomy decrepitude.

Twice as big and ten times as ugly,
as Evil Ed was fond of saying.

There was a squat, ill-kept hedge running the length of the driveway, neatly dividing the properties. The neighbor’s lawn had grown wildly out of control where it hadn’t died. Weeds choked the base of the house, partially obscuring the basement windows
(which you couldn’t see through anyway, dammit!),
the long-forgotten coal chute . . .

. . . and the storm doors.

Where they took the coffin.

Charley’s feet were moving before his brain had told them, carrying him across the driveway before he had a chance to argue. Not that he would have put up much of a fight.

He
had
to know what was going on.

And there was only one way to do that.

(Fuck
Fright Night,
Chucko. We got a
real
monster here!)

He had left his books piled in the driveway and pushed his way through the hedge. The yard looked even worse from the other side. He cast a wary glance around, his own house looking like an oasis of cheerful suburbia, and crept toward the storm doors.

Charley climbed onto the doors and tried to peek in the windows. No such luck; there were curtains or blankets or something on every window on the first floor.

He jumped down and studied the storm doors. They were the big, heavy, steel lean-to type, very rugged and almost as old as the house itself. He grabbed the handle and gave it a tug.

No chance. There was a brand new cylinder lock installed. One of the fancy ones, a Fichet or something, the kind that folks who live in big cities might need.
But in this neighborhood?
he thought.
Nobody needs security like that around here.

Unless they’ve got something to hide.

He was about to get on his knees and check out the basement windows when the voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Hey, kid! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

If he’d eaten lunch, he probably would’ve thrown up. The voice wasn’t just stern; it wasn’t just harsh. That voice was
cold:
the kind of voice that says
I’ve killed people for less than that
and means it most sincerely.

Charley put on his most casual face and turned around. He quickly wished he hadn’t.

The source of the voice was, beyond any doubt, one of the coffin-carrying neighbors. He looked like a cross between Harrison Ford and Anthony Perkins: rugged, angular features and deep eyes under prominent eyebrows.

Those eyes. Cold. Incalculable. Any pretense to attractiveness ended with those eyes. He moved a little closer. Charley instinctively backed up, almost tripping over the storm doors. He was very close to panic, fumbling for an excuse.

“Ah,
n-n-nothing,”
he stammered.

The man was dressed in work clothes, a carpenter’s apron around his waist. He held a large claw hammer in his right hand, gesturing with it, dripping casual menace. He smiled; rather, his lips skinned back to reveal perfectly even teeth. There was no affection in it. His eyes remained unchanged.

“See that it stays that way, kid. Mr. Dandrige doesn’t like unexpected guests.”

“Uh, yessir, you bet, no problem.” Charley fumfuhed a few seconds more, trying like hell to be nonchalant when part of his brain kept screaming
don’tkillmedon’tkillmedon’t . . .
He beat as graceful a retreat as possible, under the circumstances, cold sweat trickling down his back as he plowed through the hedge.

When he dared venture a look back, ever so casual as he stopped to retrieve his books, the man was gone. The house seemed just a little darker, more hulking, more . . . dead.

He hoped it was just his imagination.

SIX

T
he Marine Corps Band pumped its last majestic chords, the Blue Angels arced in tight formation into the sunset, and Charley’s head tipped back, mouth open in a full-throated snore.

Channel 13 signed off for the night. Flickering snow filled the TV screen—the only light in the room.

He was supposed to be on stakeout. He was not very good at it. No stamina. He had set it up well enough: lights out, a nice comfy chair, the binoculars and a well-stocked store of munchies. He was determined to know if anything funny was going to occur.

But after four hours of staring intently at the utterly black exterior of the neighbor’s house, boredom and fatigue took their toll. Had he stayed awake, he would have seen the cab pull up and dispatch its lone passenger. Seen the stranger climb the steps next door, and the light flick on shortly thereafter.

The light in the window. Directly across from him.

Instead, Charley slept.