A grandmother won $100 on a slot-machine and gave me a kiss. A hefty guy in a paper cowboy hat demonstrated his prowess as a line dancer just outside the small restaurant. The jukebox was playing "Achy Breaky Heart." And two old nuns, in formal black habits, sat at the Bingo table crossing themselves just seconds before the announcer called out the next number. They were kind of cute.
I was moving toward the front door when I saw them at a keno table: the two guys who'd been beating up David Rhodes in the parking lot. They'd already seen me. Two women, whom I sensed were their wives, stood next to them.
I don't know what I expected — maybe the bruiser would come after me again, or maybe we'd all haul out weapons and have a shootout on the spot, perfect for the local late news tonight — but what I didn't expect was the young-faced gray-haired man in the natty blue suit to come striding across the floor with his hand out.
"Hey, I'm really glad we ran into you," he said. "My name's Perry Heston, by the way. This is Bryce Cook."
Before I had much choice in the matter, he'd seized my hand and was pumping it with the false hearty manner of a politician.
"Bryce, tell our friend here that you're sorry, too."
It was sort of funny, actually. Bryce wasn't too keen on playing pals. He glowered, he sulked, he frowned, he even made something like a snorting noise. But finally he brought his big hand up as if it were being lifted by an invisible crane.
And brought it down to cover mine.
But Bryce here was no idiot.
Sure he'd shake my hand if that was what Perry Heston wanted. But he'd also grind it into a fine white powder in the process.
His hand clamped onto mine.
I winced. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction, of course. I didn't want to wince. I wanted to show him that I was just as tough and crafty as he was. But I wasn't. The pain was singular and astonishing. Finally, thank God, he let go.
And it was then Perry Heston produced, as if she were part of a stage magic set-up, a very beautiful dark-haired woman in a starchy white blouse and designer jeans. "This is my wife, Claire."
We shook. I was tempted to regain my masculinity by crushing her hand the way Bryce had crushed mine, but maybe she was stronger than she looked and would embarrass me.
I shouldn't have liked her but I did. Beyond the somewhat mannered country club beauty, there seemed to be an actual human being. There was both pain and odd fleeting humor in her cornflower-blue eyes. In her white blouse and blue jeans and black flats, she possessed a casual elegance I found very feminine and sexy. She wore an air of melancholy like a very expensive and subtly sexual perfume.
"Bryce told me what happened. I'm really sorry." She looked quite embarrassed about it all and glanced at her friend, the blonde, for guidance.
The blonde was six foot and not slender in the way of ideal beauty but there was a peasant grace and sensuality to the Nordic features and short white-blonde hair that suggested intelligence, competence and a merry familiarity with the carnal arts.
"David has been pestering our husbands, I'm afraid," the blonde said and put forth her hand. "I'm Evelyn Cook, Bryce's wife."
And speaking of Rhodes, where was he? I'd tried to keep him in view, to see what he was doing the rest of the night. But now he was gone.
It took me half a minute or so but then I spotted him. He'd found the boss, who was planting a wet kiss on the
cheek of an old lady playing one of the slots.
David was animatedly telling his boss something. He touched his stomach and then his throat. Even though I couldn't hear the words, I knew the story: "I'm sick. The flu, maybe. I need to take the rest of the night off."
The boss didn't look happy about it, nor as if he particularly believed it. But he shook his head sorrowfully and then nodded, and shortly afterwards, David left.
I turned back to Perry Heston. "I'm afraid I'm in a little bit of a hurry"
"I didn't want you to get the wrong idea about us, Mr.—. Isn't that funny? I don't even know your name."
I told him my name. "I appreciate the apology." I wanted to get out of there before he had Bryce shake my hand again. "Nice to meet you," I said to the women.
"Thank you." Claire smiled, still looking painfully embarrassed. She did not once look at her husband.
I excused myself quickly and left, moving fast through the casino in search of David Rhodes.
I didn't find him.
I wondered what was going on. He didn't want me to know what the parking-lot scene had been all about and neither did Perry Heston.
David was probably going to go somewhere I'd find interesting. I wondered where that would be.
I hurried to the parking lot.
He was just pulling out as I reached it, intense-looking behind the wheel of a rusty five-year-old tan Ford.
He didn't see me.
A minute later, I was in my rental Chevrolet and following him down the two-lane asphalt toward the main highway.
T
here was fog on the highway, twisting smoky serpents that coiled and uncoiled as I followed the narrow curving road toward Cedar Rapids. The rain had stopped. Rhodes was nothing more than tail-lights that occasionally flared when he tamped the brakes.
We drove a long time this way, passing little towns that appeared then vanished in the fog like images out of nightmares. The neon of tumbledown country taverns was comforting now; at least a little bit of humanity had survived this demon-loosed night.
And then we were in Cedar Rapids.
The fog wasn't so thick here. The deeper we got into the city, heading east on First Avenue, the newer the buildings became, the urban-renewal monster gradually getting everything that wouldn't look good in a four-color brochure. A previous mayor had been obsessed with turning the downtown into a business area, and you could see the results of his handiwork now. What had once been wide open streets had now been narrowed and boutiqued, as if everything on each block were of a single piece. There was a certain obstinate pride about it all.
Rhodes didn't even slow down much through the downtown area.
His speed picked up again around Ninth Street, where the magic of downtown was lost on old and weary buildings that the urban-renewal monster probably dreamt of at night.
By the time he reached Coe College, he was rolling again. He was apparently one of those people who feel that adherence to speed limits is an infringement of all those God-given rights we like to talk about when we've been caught breaking the law.
By Nineteenth Street, the fog snakes had started whispering and winding through the air again. Houses were lost behind the coiling gray reptiles and an unnerving silence had descended on everything.
He turned left.
Fog and darkness blinded me momentarily.
He began to drive fast up and down narrow streets. So fast that I wondered if he hadn't maybe spotted me and was now going to humiliate the hell out of me by getting me lost or smashed up.
I cut down to fog-lights, visibility had got so bad.
And then, somehow, we reached a long stretch of open country, several rolling acres of farmland here on the edge of the city.
And then he was gone, vanished utterly inside the fog. Bastard.
All I could do was keep driving, hoping to find the taillights again.
I rounded a sweeping curve, angled up a climbing hill bordered with pine trees that wore the fog like white rags, and then started down an abrupt incline.
At the bottom of which I saw a ghost-image of red taillights. For just a moment — and then it was gone.
I speeded up. I had no choice: I had to find him again.
I drove as sensibly as I could given the conditions.
An oncoming car loomed up out of the fog, its giant headlights obscene in the gloom, glaring at me with great and hungry menace, and then nothing again. Just the fog and him somewhere ahead of me.
I went right past him.
All I got was a glimpse of his car door in the fog and then I was 100 yards down the road.
He'd stopped: I wondered why. Maybe he was hoping I'd go right past him and wouldn't see him. He'd cut his lights. He'd have been awful easy to miss.
There was only one way I could find out. I pulled the rental off to the side of the road, grabbed my flashlight, shut off the ignition, cut the lights and got out.
I was standing on a planet I didn't recognize. Shifting mists and screens of fog cut my visibility down to a few feet.
My footsteps on the muddy gravel of the roadside were loud in the silent gloom. The humidity was oppressive; a cold sweat had started filling my armpits.
Without quite knowing where I was going, following the angle of the road, I walked maybe five minutes until I came to Rhodes' car. I played my light inside. Empty.
Why would he have stopped the car here? If all he'd wanted to do was lose me, he could have simply turned his vehicle around after I passed, and driven back the way he'd come.
But he'd left the car.
More monster sounds; menacing monster eyes. A van was roaring toward me, fog running off its sleek sides like smoke. Gone in moments. Leaving me again to the fog and the silence.
I walked several yards past Rhodes' car and it was there I found it. Narrow asphalt driveway. Rural-style mailbox on a pole.
Was this where Rhodes had gone?
I trained my light on the side of the mailbox, looking for a name. There'd been one once, but it had been crudely covered up with spray paint.
Somewhere down the road, maybe twenty yards, a car engine started and headlights came on. More glowing monster eyes.
Whoever it was, was in a hurry, sweeping quickly from the roadside to the road, and hitting thirty miles an hour by the time they came abreast of me.
I had to jump back. Either the driver didn't see me at all or saw me and wanted to hurt me. All I got was a glimpse of a new green Ford with a crumpled passenger fender.
Then the green Ford was one with night and fog; in moments, I couldn't even hear it let alone see it.
I followed the drive, spending the next ten minutes feeling not unlike a child in a nightmare, the realization slowly beginning to dawn that I had no idea where I was or where I was going. The Grimm Brothers would have loved this place. Any kind of creature from hell you could imagine might lurk in this dark, muggy night.
I was one with the fog now. It was so thick I couldn't even see my own body unless I made an effort.
An owl cried out; and then a dog. The dog sounded nearby.
And then in front of me, running at a frightened angle, a doe on sweet spindly legs rushed to the grass on the other side of the drive. Her eyes were trapped momentarily in the beam of my flashlight. I wanted to give her a reassuring hug but knew that would only scare her all the more. She ran on.
I don't know when the house started to take shape in the murk. It was gradual. First I saw the outlines of the roofs and gables, and then, closer, the square tower or campanile if you want to be technical, and finally, even closer, the shape of the balconies and bay windows. I knew enough about architecture to have a sense of what I was seeing: an Italianate-styled Victorian house.
The owl cried again.
The desolation became overwhelming suddenly and I was once again more child than adult. The fog lapped and swirled, and elongated once more into tatters, and then into sinuous shifting snakes. The moon was lost utterly now
I stepped forward and as I did so, put the flashlight in my left hand. I gave my right hand the responsibility of slipping my Ruger from its holster and making it snug and ready for use in my grip.
The dog barked again and I felt less alone.
Not until I was very close did I notice the charred areas on the stone exterior walls, and then the smashed-out windows.
I went up to one of the mullioned windows, tapped away to remove a shard of glass so it wouldn't cut my knuckles, and angled my flashlight inside.
The place had been gutted.
The walls were coal-black with char; the floor was heaped with debris; the elegant Victorian furniture had been disfigured by flames and smoke. There was no smell of burning, though. Whatever had happened here had happened long ago.
The fog had penetrated the house, too, twisting in and out of the rooms.
I had just pulled my light back when somebody hit me.
It wasn't a good, clean hit — he or she hadn't struck at the most vulnerable spot on the back of my head — but it was strong enough to do the job.
I heard shoe-leather squeak on the grass behind me.
I wanted to turn and see who'd done it, but—
I fought against going out but it was a useless fight. My body simply shut down. Vision first; and then hearing; and then warmth. A terrible chill shuddered through me. And I collapsed to the ground.