Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (7 page)

“I think you’re the guy I’m looking for,” he said. “What do you

think?”

“I don’t need to think. I’m in.”

“That’s what I like to hear. We’ve got some paperwork to fill out.

An application . . . some other stuff. You’ll have six weeks up north in the training academy. You’ll have to pass a physical, some other tests.

You can talk to the other guys about that. They can let you know

what’s coming.”

“Sounds good.”

“I thought it would. Now let’s go down to the cop shop and I’ll

introduce you around. This is going to work out fine.”

The town had changed while I was gone.

Actually, that’s an understatement.

What had really changed was the whole damn country.

NORMAN PARTRIDGE [53]

It seemed like a century had passed since the lockstep America

of the fifties. The sixties had definitely made their mark. And even though it was 1973, the sixties were holding on, the same way the

fifties had right up until the time that JFK took that bullet down in Dallas. Even in our little corner of the world, it might as well have been the Summer of Love. Grass and acid and downers had come to

town. Hair got longer; guitars got fuzzy. No one remembered Elvis

or Mickey Spillane. Truth be told, most of my contemporaries didn’t remember Jack Kerouac, either.

But in the heart of the town, and the heart of America, not much

was different. Same stores, same people, same crew cuts on the older guy who held the keys to the store. Every now and then some kid got hired, and there were a few twentysomethings checking groceries

at the market or selling TVs over at Sears or working down at the

bank in the teller’s cage. But they came and went. They didn’t stick around long enough to wear out the linoleum or pocket the keys to

the store, like the old guard had. For them, it didn’t seem like ringing up corn flakes was a lifelong ambition, or moving a weekly quota

of Magnavox consoles, or stamping deposits in the Christmas Club

accounts. No. The twentysomethings would catch a whiff of sweeter

possibilities and move on, and the old guys would grind out their

cigs and put up a HELP WANTED sign, and some fresh face would

take the bait and give the forty-hour grind a test-drive while the old guard grumbled about training another kid who wasn’t going to stay the course.

So, in that way, things were pretty much the same, it was just that the faces changed more often. Tote things in those terms, and you’d say that all that had really changed were the clothes and the haircuts and the vices. But around the corners, the town had gotten a little frayed.

Take Charlie Steiner’s house. Charlie’s mother had passed away

when I was in high school. Then one day his father packed up his

pickup and left the place behind. The house sat vacant the whole

time I was in ’Nam, and it was the “20” for one of the first calls I rolled on after Ben Cross pinned a badge on my chest.

I still remember that night. Wind rustling through overgrown

[54] THE MUMMY'S HEART

trees around the place as I pulled up the drive, no lights inside but a fire in the fireplace that cast flickering ribbons against windows dull with grime. I killed my lights as I cut off the dirt road that went out toward Butcher’s Lake, and I killed the patrol cruiser’s engine ten feet after that. We’d had reports of stoners using the place as a crash pad, and I didn’t want to leave them a way out if they had wheels.

The walk to the house was a long one. Not because I was worried

about what I’d find inside. For the first time since the jungle I felt edgy. I mean, really edgy. I had a .38 strapped to my leg, but what I wanted in my hand was an M-16, or even Roger’s Louisville Slugger.

Something familiar, something I could trust. It was a weird feeling, as if yesterday’s baggage were ready to bury me as deep as Charlie Steiner, right along with the new future I was building. I felt like I was on Charlie’s turf, and even though I knew he was six feet under in Potter’s Field, that night he cast a long shadow.

Lucky for me, Charlie’s shadow got shorter once I took charge of

the situation. I banged through the front door and hit the occupants with my flashlight beam. A couple of the stoners rabbited through a back window, and two girls spread out on a mattress in front of the fireplace were so toasted on downers they didn’t even wake up. It was almost comical. Right away I forgot all about Charlie. I nudged those girls and shook them, and after about ten minutes I even got them up walking, but it was tough to manage the both of them. Before I could do anything about it one would wander off and find her way back to the mattress, and when I went to grab her, the other stumbled out the door and fell asleep in the weeds in front of the place.

I called it in to Jack Morrison, who was on duty back at the cop

shop. He said he’d roll out and give me a hand with the girls. In the meantime, he told me to check out the rest of the place. Right away I knew what he meant.

He didn’t mean the house.

He meant Charlie Steiner’s pyramid.

By that time I’d cooled out. Still, you never know what you’ll

find, and I’d tangled enough with Charlie in my dreams that I wasn’t looking forward to a walk up his own personal madman’s trail. But it was my job. So I checked behind the main house and found the little NORMAN PARTRIDGE [55]

deer run path that led up to the A-frame. No lights out there except my flashlight, and the wind had died. If there had been a noise, I certainly would have heard it. A mouse skittering across the porch. A mummy’s padded footfall. Anything. I would have heard it.

But I didn’t hear anything that night.

I walked up to the A-frame.

I swung open the door.

I didn’t know what to expect.

My flashlight beam skittered across the floor and over the walls.

But it was just an empty room. There was nothing there at all. And that taught me something . . . at least for a while. Even though it was a lesson that didn’t stick, I held onto it—and that moment—for a few months.

For a while, it convinced me everything would be okay.

For a while, I actually believed that dreams were ephemeral.

About a month later, the sheriff called me up on a Sunday morning

and asked me to go to breakfast down at the diner. Ben told me he’d bought the old Steiner place, and was thinking he’d fix it up and turn it into a rental. Maybe even look into moving into the place himself when he hit retirement age and was ready to get a little farther out of town. He said it seemed like a good investment, and that he’d make some money if nothing else.

“Sounds like a sweet deal,” I said. “I’m going to bank as much of

my check as I can this year. Maybe one of these days I’ll have enough to start looking around for a place myself.”

“That’s a good plan,” Ben said. “Can’t be easy being under your

parents’ roof again.”

“Well, I’m probably going to grab a studio apartment after I get

a few more checks, but paying rent will definitely cut down on the savings. Can’t have it both ways, though.”

“Maybe I can help you out with that.”

“How do you figure?”

Ben took a sip of coffee. “The Steiner place needs a lot of work.

I’m looking for someone to help me out with it. Way I see it, you

could live there rent-free. Clear the brush around the place. Do some

[56] THE MUMMY'S HEART

carpentry. Some painting. I’d come in on the weekends and help out.

How’s that sound?”

I didn’t know what to say, but I knew I had to say something.

“Well . . . hey, it’s hard to turn down free rent.”

Ben nodded and set down his coffee cup. “Look, I know you have

a history with Charlie Steiner, and this was his house. Maybe this isn’t the best move for you. If you have any second thoughts—”

“I know what you’re saying, Ben . . . but I’ll probably always have second thoughts. But I can’t bury the past, and maybe I shouldn’t

try. Maybe what I need to do is confront it. You know, come to terms with it. And maybe working on that house will help me do that.”

“Okay . . . but if it doesn’t work out—”

“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

We shook on the deal, and that was that. I moved into the Steiner

house, and fortunately the night with the crash-pad girls was still fresh in my mind. I told myself everything would be okay, just as it had been that night, and if it wasn’t . . . well, I’d find a way to tell Ben that it wasn’t going to work, even if that was the last thing I wanted to do after the conversation we’d had.

The first week, I lay awake at night listening to every creak and

moan the old house made, and it seemed like those old fears had

moved in with me. But eventually, spending so much time in that old house made the worries I’d had about moving into the place seem

as out-of-style as a teenager with a crew cut. And it got easier once I started to work on the place. I took one thing at a time, and focused in on each project. A few weeks went by, and I’d cleared all the brush around the house, even chopped a wider path up to Charlie’s pyramid so I could get up there with a wheelbarrow and some tools. I figured I’d use that pyramid as practice before I started on the main house.

To tell the truth, at first I was tempted to talk to Ben about

knocking the pyramid down. After all, that had really been Charlie’s place. But if part of this deal was about confronting Charlie Steiner, then I knew I couldn’t do that. So I decided to work on it first.

I replaced a few broken windows, then gave the place a coat of

paint inside and out. The further I got with work on the A-frame, the less I thought about Charlie and the past. Instead, maybe for the first NORMAN PARTRIDGE [57]

time ever, I started to think about myself and what lay ahead of me.

I didn’t know what that was going to be. Sometimes it was scary to think about it and sometimes it was exciting, but in the end it didn’t matter.

In the end, I didn’t think about myself for very long at all.

I was working with Ben Cross the night the call came in. Since starting at the cop shop I’d been on day shift with the sheriff, and by this time he was breaking me in to work swings. That way, I’d have my mornings free and could work on the house before clocking in at three, and Ben could come by and do some work of his own after he clocked out

without having to worry about crowding my space. That way we could double-shift projects during the week. The plan was to work together on weekends on stuff that took two pairs of hands, and we’d get the place in shape faster. It made sense, and I knew going in that I’d take swing shift over graveyards any day. I’d pulled those shifts a few times and they made for a long night of patrolling empty streets, rattling doorknobs, and (mostly) trying to stay awake until the sun came up.

It was July. Not too hot for that time of year, with the possibility of a summer storm blowing in. It was around ten p.m. and neither

one of us had had any dinner. We were talking about where to catch a bite when the main line rang. Ben wasn’t on the phone more than a minute. And he didn’t say much besides “yeah” or “uh-huh” before he finished with the important one: “I’ll check it out.”

He cradled the receiver and shot me a look.

“What’s the deal?” I asked.

“You know that guy who owns the dairy farm out by the county

two-lane?”

“You mean Vince Kaehler?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. His ranch backs up against Butcher’s Lake

on the north side. He found a stretch of downed barbed-wire this

afternoon. Turned out some of his stock got loose. A couple cows

wandered up the dirt road that skirts the lake, and Vince spent the evening rounding them up. He just got back to the house after fixing his fence. Says he saw a campfire down there by the water, heard some loud rock ’n’ roll and some screaming, like a party was going on.”

[58] THE MUMMY'S HEART

“Loud rock ’n’ roll? He actually said that?”

“Well, what he really said was
goddamn loud hippie music
, but that’s close enough.”

“Yeah. Well . . . Vince is a Merle Haggard kind of guy.”

“Uh-huh.” Cross smiled. “And he didn’t say
party
. He said
orgy
.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No . . . not even a little bit.”

Quiet hung there between us, but just for a second.

“So you want to roll with me on this one?”

“Sure, boss,” I said, and we strapped on the hardware.

Of course, at that point it hardly seemed worth it. I mean, strapping on our guns or rolling on the call at all. I figured I was in for an instant replay of crash-pad night at Charlie Steiner’s. Maybe I’d even find those same two stoner girls who’d been asleep on the mattress in front of Charlie’s fireplace that night, only tonight they’d be snoozing on a couple of air mattresses out in the middle of Butcher’s Lake.

Man, was I ever wrong.

Dead wrong.

I killed the lights before I pulled up to the rusty guardrail by the eucalyptus grove. The night really wasn’t that much different than that Halloween back in ’63 when I’d met up with Charlie Steiner. But I wasn’t really thinking about Charlie on this night.

Part of that had to do with living in his house. It seemed the

creep factor around the place had reached the point of diminishing returns, as if the work I’d done there had exorcised his spirit. The other part was easier to explain, because it didn’t have anything to do with a ghost of the past—it was all sensory input and gut reaction as Ben Cross rolled down his window and a couple specific varieties of noise spilled up that black little path that led to Butcher’s Lake.

Laughter. Lots of it. And all of it male.

And music. A transistor cranked up to ten, playing Iron Butterfly.

“Goddamn,” Ben said. “It
is
hippie music.”

I couldn’t argue. I couldn’t return the joke, either.