THE BOOK OF CHILLS, Volume 5
By Norsebard
Contact: norsebarddk@gmail.com
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DISCLAIMERS:
These are original stories. All characters are created by me, though some of them may remind you of someone.
All characters depicted, names used, and incidents portrayed in these stories are fictitious. No identification with actual persons is intended nor should be inferred. Any resemblance of the characters portrayed to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
The registered trademarks mentioned in these stories are © of their respective owners. No infringement of their rights is intended and no profit is gained.
These stories contain some profanity. Readers who are easily offended by bad language may wish to read something other than the Book of Chills, Vol. V
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NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:
As usual, I'd like to say a great, big THANK YOU to my mates at AUSXIP Talking Xena, especially to the gals and guys in Subtext Central. I really appreciate your support - Thanks, everybody! :D
- Thank you for your help, Phineas Redux!
General description: A family's road trip takes a hellish turn through no fault of their own… Incompetent bank robbers look for a big score but end up in big, ghostly trouble… A radar specialist working at Area 63 has a chilling encounter of the third kind… An inner-city gang war gives a meat-wagon driver far too much to do… The Reaper comes for a gravely ill woman but is more interested in the living than the dying ---- Strange encounters, supernatural phenomena and otherworldly events - these are some of the elements you'll find in this anthology… the Book Of Chills, Volume 5.
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All stories written by Norsebard
1. Rizzato's Motel & Cafeteria
- "For Lilly Pierce, her husband Herbert and their two young children Daisy and Herbert jr., a simple road trip to visit Lilly's mother turns hellish when they stop for the night at a traditional motel. Though Rizzato's seems to be a nice, clean and welcoming establishment at first glance, Lilly senses that sinister forces lurk just below the quaint surface…"
- Written: June 11th - 16th, 2023.
2. Right Place, Wrong Time
- "Crime doesn't pay and a life of crime pays even less. The slacker Janeane McClure is already too aware of that, but her more ambitious cousin Conrad Ballard still has to learn that particular lesson - maybe it'll happen at the heist they've planned at the Pembrook Heights Loans & Savings Bank? It could be a big score, or it could be a big disaster. Time will tell…"
- Written: June 28th - 30th, 2023.
3. The Talrinian Encounter
- "A year and a half after the first reported sighting of the so-called flying saucers, the super-top-secret Air Force facility Area 63 operates around the clock tracking countless interstellar travelers visiting our Earth. Over the course of a fraught night in late October 1948, radar specialist Clanton O'Keefe finds out the hard way that analyzing blips on a screen hasn't prepared him for the otherworldly horrors he finds in the harsh, desolate desert…"
- Written: July 27th - 31st, 2023.
4. Coffey & Cream
- "On some nights, the concrete canyons of the city jungle overflow with death and despair. A gang war breaking out between the Street Vipers and the Black Marauders gives Christine Coffey and her colleagues plenty to do as they haul the deceased to the morgue or the police forensic lab. Christine's world is suddenly turned upside down when a man she considers a friend makes a startling confession. She can't ignore it and she can't act upon it - but something must be done or else she'll only be drawn deeper and deeper into someone else's hot mess…"
- Written: July 12th - 14th, 2023.
5. The Reaper Of Souls
- "Everything must come to an end whether we like it or not. Cecilia Winters has been a loyal friend of the gravely ill Emily Seacombe for many years and continues to nurse the former jet-set celebrity through the final stages of cancer. Emily is on her last, but when the Reaper of Souls finally appears, the Dark One's main interest lies with Cecilia who harbors a few secrets of her own…"
- Written: July 4th - 7th, 2023.
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RIZZATO'S MOTEL & CAFETERIA
PLEASE NOTE! This is an intense story with more violence than usual in my works - in movie terms, this would be an 'R'. Sensitive souls should keep that in mind. *Flower*
Even as the leaves gained their magnificent fall colors, 1973 insisted on continuing its endless string of dramas, disasters and tragedies. The Cold War rumbled on with its constant threat of nuclear annihilation never more than five minutes away, and the leaders in the oil-rich countries of the Middle East drew up plans to torpedo the world's economy with an oil embargo. Airplane hijackings in Europe, government cover-ups in the US, military coups in South America, assassinations of elected leaders in Africa and violent protests in South East Asia joined forces with Mafia wars, deadly tornadoes and devastating earthquakes to dominate the year's headlines.
On the silver screen, John Wayne tried to convince everyone that the traditional Western wasn't dead with films like The Train Robbers and Cahill, U.S. Marshal, but those who watched Clint Eastwood's far more stylistic High Plains Drifter or Sam Peckinpah's violent Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid would disagree. Walking Tall glorified an armed vigilante's interpretation of justice, Last Tango In Paris caused plenty of high blood pressure for various reasons, and Jesus Christ Superstar could not escape its built-in controversy - and all three sparked months of debate that inevitably turned heated and entrenched.
On a far smaller, but no less frustrating, scale, most of September and all of October had been overcast, rainy and windy, and the tone of light had never moved beyond a shade of gray best suited for curing insomniacs. People had in fact tried to add some color to the final week of October by putting up various Halloween decorations, but the typically cheap, plasticky scares just weren't enough to offset Mother Nature's gloomy state of mind.
The windshield wipers of the Pierce family's 1970 Chevrolet Townsman station wagon moved back and forth with mind-numbing regularity, and the tires sang a sad, whining tune as their pattern dispersed the standing water they drove through.
Dense forests consisting of tall pines, even taller firs and hundreds of sublimely colorful oaks and chestnut trees lined the winding rural road; its surface had turned slick from the dead leaves and shiny from the rain that had fallen steadily over the past twelve hours.
Undaunted, the driver continued to cut through the evening's murky conditions. "What time is it, darling?" Herbert Pierce said.
In his early thirties, the blond, All-American Herbert stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the majority of his contemporaries: instead of the wild-bearded, long-haired look employed by so many young men of the day, he was clean-shaven and had a short, almost military haircut.
Similarly, the gray business suit, white shirt and black necktie he wore couldn't be further from the bell-bottom pants, ergonomically-shaped clogs, batik T-shirts and home-made knitted vests that most other men seemed to wear almost regardless of their standing in society. As a proud representative of Merton & Sons Quality Household Appliances, he was determined to cut a professional figure at all times.
The twenty-seven-year-old Lilly Pierce sat to the right of her husband. Her golden-blonde hair, greenish eyes and delicate features had made her an attractive prospect for many a strapping young fellow when she had been in her late teens, but the seven years of marriage and the two young children sleeping on the back seat had given her premature crow's feet around her eyes as well as a permanent grayish tone to her skin. A secretary with Merton & Sons when she had first met her future husband, she had accepted his conditions of becoming a stay-at-home wife so their children - that would surely follow - could be brought up by their mother and not a nanny. It would also save a few pennies on their budget.
She pulled back the sleeve of her overcoat to glance at her wristwatch. "It's a quarter past nine," she said before she had to conceal a yawn. "I dearly hope we can find somewhere to pull over soon. Rain or no rain, I need to stretch my legs. Five hours in this horrible weather is more than enough."
"I agree. My neck is killing me," Herbert said and briefly took a hand off the steering wheel to underscore his words by rubbing the area in question. When Lilly didn't offer him the massage he had been fishing for, he turned to shoot her a smile. "Well, if we do find a spot, perhaps you could work your magic a little?"
Lilly returned the smile though it didn't last long. "Certainly, darling."
The large station wagon negotiated a series of S-bends along the winding rural road. The dense forest left no room for even the smallest rest stop, and that fact caused Herbert and Lilly to let out identical sighs.
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Ten minutes on from the brief conversation, the headlights illuminated a roadside sign advertising Rizzato's Motel & Cafeteria - Hot Food & Cold Drinks - Gas & Diesel pumps - 2 miles!
"Oh!" Herbert said as the Townsman zoomed past the sign. He glanced down at the gas gauge; the needle had already crept past the center line on its way down to E. "Darling, did you see that- darling? Are you asleep?" When he didn't get any kind of response, he reached over to nudge his wife's shoulder.
"Wha'?" Lilly said in a thick voice. She looked up at the windshield wipers that continued to keep their vision free of the persistent rain. "Oh… I must have dozed off-"
"We'll soon be at a motel and cafeteria. It's perfect timing because we need gas. I also think we should consider renting a room for the night. You wouldn't believe how tiring it is for me to drive in this weather."
Looking at her husband, Lilly shot him a dark gaze that managed to out-gloom even the rainy, windy conditions they drove through. "I believe I do," she said in a voice that held the tiniest amount of sarcasm.
Herbert nodded and rolled his shoulders to illustrate his point.
Lilly let out a grunt and resumed looking through the windshield. "If we do rent a room for the night, I need to call my mother to let her know."
"I'm sure they'll have a payphone we can use, darling."
"I hope so. She'll get nervous if we don't arrive when we said we would," Lilly said as she fidgeted with her fingers. The squeaking wipers and the singing tires took over for a brief moment before she went on: "If there aren't any vacancies, how long do you think it'll take us to reach Penwald Springs?"
"In this weather… well… another three hours at least. Closer to four if the rain gets any worse. The road's treacherous enough as it is. I certainly can't drive any faster."
Another grunt escaped Lilly. "I wish we had traveled by air instead of-"
"Darling, we discussed that. Not only do the airlines demand extortionate prices over the Holiday, my eardrums can't handle the changes in air pressure. You know that."
"Yes, dear."
The conversation was saved from taking a turn for the worse when the first glimpse of the neon signs at the motel complex came into view. "Look, darling, we're almost there," Herbert said as he pointed at the distant lights.
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A tall neon sign placed on the grassy verge between the road and the paved parking lot offered Air-Conditioned Rooms, Color TV, Minibar & More!
Herbert let out a sigh of relief as he noticed Vacancies was still lit up on the lower part of the sign. After activating the turning signal, he slowed the unwieldy station wagon down and drove off the winding rural road.
The time of day and the inclement weather meant that only five vehicles were present on the parking lot that had been built to hold ten times that amount. Two cab-over Freightliner trucks pulling reefer units were lined up next to each other in a corner of the lot reserved for the lumbering eighteen-wheelers.
A bright-orange Plymouth Road Runner of 1969 vintage had been dumped across two parking bays directly in front of the cafeteria so the people in it wouldn't have to suffer getting wet. A dark-gray Ford LTD sedan and a gold-and-purple delivery van from Allied Parcel were parked in a more traditional way a short distance from the entrance.
White arrows and the word GAS & DIESEL had been painted onto the paved forecourt to show the way to the pumps that were located to the right of the main parking lot. A wooden sign listing the pump prices - that were a great deal more expensive than Herbert was used to seeing in the suburbs of the big city where they lived - made him bring the station wagon to a halt.
"Now isn't that typical. These people take advantage of the fact they have no competition," he mumbled while he tapped his fingers on the rim of the steering wheel. He sat like that for a few seconds before he took his foot off the brake to continue toward the pumps. "Oh, we have no choice… darling, I'll fill it up before we drive over to the office."
Lilly replied with a simple, disinterested "Mmmm." She had heard Herbert grumble over financial matters so often that she had become immune to it - not to mention permanently frustrated with his inherently tight-fisted nature.
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Five minutes later, the large station wagon took up plenty of space in front of the motel's office. While Herbert went inside to rent a room, Lilly got out to stretch her legs and back. She took several deep breaths to cleanse her lungs after the interminable road trip. Herbert had abstained from smoking his pipe for the past few hours as the challenging conditions required his full attention, but traces of the rich smoke lingered on inside the car from the hundreds of other times he had smoked in it.
On the back seat, Daisy and Herbert 'Herbie' Pierce, jr. greeted their mother with enthusiastic waving when they spotted her through the rain-covered window. At six and three respectively, the children weren't accustomed to such long drives, so a small amount of sleeping medicine had been added to their afternoon serving of milk and cookies to keep them subdued. The unrestrained way Herbert, jr. bounced up and down on his extra seat suggested the solution had worn off.
Sighing, Lilly opened the rear door and reached in to keep the bundle of energy occupied. A car moving past at slow speed caught her eye: it was a black-and-white cruiser from the local Sheriff's Department. The Deputy Sheriff behind the wheel didn't seem to find anything worth his time as he drove off the parking lot and went back onto the winding road.
Herbert, Sr. soon returned from the office holding a set of keys and a few pieces of paper. "Twelve dollars for one night plus a twenty dollar deposit! Good Lord, this is highway robbery of the worst kind," he said to no-one in particular as he folded the documents and put them into his wallet.
"That does seem rather steep," Lilly said as she tickled little Herbie's chin - the boy rewarded his mother's efforts by giggling.
Herbert responded by letting out a grunt as he slid the wallet back into the gray business suit's liner pocket. "Yes, it's shameless. Well, in any case, we got room sixteen which is over there somewhere," he said as he waved his hand at the one-story, horseshoe-shaped building that made up the motel part of the complex.
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After parking in front of the motel room, Herbert let Lilly deal with the children while he carried their luggage inside. The three leather suitcases soon leaned against the wall furthest from the door so a potential burglar couldn't just reach in and grab one.
The shag wall-to-wall carpet exhibited a shade commonly referred to as burnt orange. The ceiling and three of the walls were pea-soup-green; the fourth was home to the large window that offered a view of the featureless parking lot. A low sideboard carried the minibar, the color TV and a reed basket that held a few worthless trinkets like miniature bags of roasted peanuts. A pamphlet detailing the motel's terms of service had been spread out next to the TV set.
Two separate beds took up most of the floorspace; a small crib squeezed between the two. Beyond the beds and the sideboard, the furniture consisted of a tiny table and a single, uncomfortable-looking chair.
A folding door separated the bedroom from a minuscule bathroom at the back - Lilly had led the children out there at once so they could conduct a little business after the interminable drive.
The sound of little Herbie crying out in the bathroom caused Herbert, Sr. to raise an eyebrow and reach for his pipe and tobacco. After lighting up, a column of rich, pale-gray smoke rose from the bowl. "I'll go over to the cafeteria and order us a late dinner," he said after taking a deep puff. "What would you like tonight, darling?"
Lilly's harried face appeared around the doorjamb to the bathroom. Not only did she still wear her overcoat, a lock of her golden-blond hair had fallen into her eyes to prove she'd had her hands full with their son. "Oh… I… I don't know. Something light. I'm not all that hungry."
"You should eat a little more, darling. Your ribs are starting to show. It's unbecoming," Herbert said before he took another few puffs. "I know it's difficult to imagine given the poor weather, but next summer will be here sooner than we think. I'm very much looking forward to seeing you in that bathing suit I gave you for your birthday, you know."
"I know," Lilly said with a smile before she ducked around the corner to concentrate on helping their son with his little potty-problem.
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Later, Daisy held the cafeteria's glass door open so her mother could push little Herbie's stroller inside. The young girl wore a light winter jacket, a home-knitted, sunflower-yellow sweater and a pair of pale-blue jeans that featured a sewn-on patch depicting Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street. As always, she carried a tiny, polka-dotted suitcase that kept her constant travel partner, her beloved rag doll Marie, safe from harm. Once everyone was inside, Daisy ran ahead to get to the table where her father sat.
The harried look on Lilly's face was still present as she pushed the stroller across the linoleum floor. The cafeteria featured dozens of bare tables that were all framed by three or four chairs - the complete lack of Muzak as well as the low number of customers gave the large room an air of a ghost town.
The kitchen was at the back behind a traditional, diner-style counter. Lilly crinkled her nose at the overpowering smells of food being cooked. Though she hadn't eaten more than a banana and a candy bar since leaving home, the strong scents made her stomach churn.
Herbert had chosen a table almost clear down to the far end of the cafeteria to be close to the counter - it meant Lilly needed to push little Herbie's stroller past the other customers. The two truck drivers had coffee and what appeared to be bowls of beef stew all lined up on trays, but one of them had fallen asleep while the other was too busy reading a newspaper.
The delivery guy from Allied Parcel sat by himself sipping a bottle of Coke and slurping a bowl of hot soup. Further along the tables, it wouldn't pose much of a challenge to identify which of the cars the two denim-clad, wild-haired teenage boys had used to drive to the cafeteria: slouching on their chairs, the duo played with their servings of ketchup and fries while being as loud as the orange lightning bolt they had left sitting across two parking bays.
A family of three - two adults and a young lady in her late teens - sat at such a distance from the other customers that it was obvious they had chosen that spot on purpose. All three were dressed in somber, dark-gray clothes. The two women wore neither makeup nor jewelry save for a silver crucifix around their neck. The man had a neatly-groomed full beard and wore dark, horn-rimmed spectacles.
Lilly nodded a greeting to them as she walked past but found herself thoroughly ignored by the two women. The man offered her an ice cold glare that made her look straight ahead and continue onto her husband's table at once. Daisy was already there, and the young girl waved at her mother.
"Darling," Herbert said and put away the previous day's copy of the Financial Journal he had been studying to kill time, "I've already placed our orders. A shared hot dog for the children and spareribs in brown cream gravy with carrots and sweet peas for us. That's today's special."
Lilly came to a sudden stop to stare at her husband. "Spareribs… Herbert, please, I don't think I-"
"Nonsense, darling. You need to eat. I also ordered us a beer so you can get a good night's sleep. I remember how poorly you sleep in a strange bed."
Lilly's face held an unreadable expression as she parked little Herbie's stroller next to the table. "That… that was very kind of you, dear. Thank you."
Nodding to herself, she pulled out a chair and motioned to sit down; before she could make it that far, she changed her mind and took off her overcoat after all. The pale-brown garment soon rested over the backrest of the empty chair next to her - the action revealed a neat, tan blouse and a pair of pale-gray slacks.
Herbert cast a brief glance at his wife as she sat down. They exchanged a quick smile before the Financial Journal's headlines beckoned once more.
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Their late dinner was ready a few minutes later, but the actual procedure didn't sit well with Herbert: a tall, dark-haired woman came out of the kitchen carrying two soup plates of steaming-hot spareribs in gravy. The plates were placed on the counter before she made a quick detour to the refrigerators to get a canned beer. In closing, she smacked her hand onto a brass bell before she went back into the kitchen and thus out of sight of the customers.
Lilly looked at the plates; then she glanced over at her husband who made no attempt to move. "Dear, I believe that's our food…"
"Can't be. I distinctly asked the waitress to bring it to our table," Herbert said and turned a page in the newspaper.
"Well, she didn't. That's definitely our food. Whose would it be if not ours?" Lilly scratched her chin while she waited for her husband to do something. "Never mind, I'll get it," she said as she pushed her chair back.
"Thank you, darling. Not only was it pricey, the service is poor too. Typical," Herbert said and put away the newspaper.
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Dinner came and went. Lilly did in fact enjoy the terrific cream gravy and the cooked vegetables, but the shared beer was too potent and the spareribs were far too fatty for her tastes - in short, she needed to declare defeat before she had eaten more than half of her first one. Herbert wasn't about to let anything go to waste, especially not at such a steep price, so he finished off the remainder in no time flat.
Back in the motel room, Herbert opened the minibar and soon rummaged through the selection of spirits on offer. A miniature bottle of Kentucky Sour Mash called out to him, so he unscrewed the lid and poured the amber contents into a tumbler. The minibar was equipped with a small freezer compartment that held a tray of square ice cubes - two of which were soon put into the drink where they clinked merrily against the tumbler's sides.
"A night cap, darling?" he said as he sat down on the chair and crossed his legs. A spare pillow had been pressed into a second career as a cushion when they had discovered the chair was as uncomfortable as it looked. A moment later, he reached up to loosen his black necktie.
Sighing, Lilly looked up from her task of tucking in Herbie and Daisy in the third bed. Though called a mere crib, it was large enough for both of them. Daisy held her rag doll Marie in her arms - she and the doll wore matching night gowns that her mother had sewn for them.
Lilly's face had lost much of its natural color as the fatigue created by the lengthy drive had finally caught up with her. She let out a further long sigh as she got to her feet. "Not tonight, dear. Thank you," she said in a quiet voice so the drowsy children wouldn't be stirred awake all over again.
"Your loss. This is an excellent bourbon," Herbert said and sipped the drink. Just to prove it, he shook the tumbler which made the ice cubes jingle loudly.
Lilly sighed for the third time in thirty seconds. Instead of replying verbally, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
---
Hours later.
Lilly tossed and turned just like she knew she would given the fact she was in a strange bed. A quick look at the travel alarm clock proved it was a quarter past one in the morning. Sleep hadn't just been elusive, it was non-existent. The disharmonic symphony of snoring that emanated from Herbert's side of the motel room proved he had no such problems.
Something had to happen or else she'd go crazy. Sighing, she swept aside the winter duvet and swung her bare legs over the side of the bed. It was far too chilly to remain barefoot for any length of time, so she donned a pair of ankle socks she kept in her toiletry bag for that exact purpose.
The bag also held several small doses of her favored sleeping pills. She had intended to give them to the children during the drive in case the first ones wore off too soon, but the timing had turned out to be perfect. Unfortunately, she would exhaust her supply if she decided to mix herself a sleeping potion. Spending the night in a motel had never been the plan. If the rain hadn't made the road trip such a difficult and tiring one, they would have arrived at her mother's home hours ago.
She didn't even need to peek through the curtains to know the rain was coming down as strong as ever - the frantic tapping on the window pane proved that without a doubt. Gusts sweeping across the large parking lot in front of the horseshoe-shaped building made the roof creak and the locked door rattle.
Getting up, she swapped her sleeping gown for her day-time underwear, the tan blouse and the pair of pale-gray slacks. She tip-toed over to the smaller bed to check up on Daisy and little Herbie - she found the children to be sound asleep.
It was out of the question to watch TV to take her mind off her inability to fall asleep - and she could well imagine what kind of entertainment would be playing at that time of the night - so she tip-toed over to the minibar to see if any of the miniature bottles could provide the push that would tip her into the land of the sleeping.
Nothing in there seemed even remotely attractive, so she closed the small refrigerator's door and let out a long sigh. "Warm milk…" she suddenly said in a whisper. The notion of the traditional sleeping aid made a genuine smile spread over her features, and she tip-toed back to the bed to don her shoes.
---
Pulling the overcoat tighter around herself to combat the breeze, she hurried across the wet, windy parking lot. Large puddles that had formed wherever the paving sagged meant she had to take a zig-zag course to get to the cafeteria's glass door. During one of the 'zigs,' she happened to notice that the only car left in front of the cafeteria was the gray sedan that she had surmised belonged to the religious family.
She came to a sudden stop as her eyes zoomed in on the fact the sedan's trunk stood open as if the car had been broken into. The howling wind tore at her overcoat and made her golden-blond hair whip around, but she forced herself to look back at their own station wagon - Herbert had parked it outside their motel room for ease of access - to see if anything had happened to that. A sigh of relief escaped her when it appeared to be untouched.
It was far too wet and chilly to remain on the parking lot, so she resumed her hurried pace and soon entered the cafeteria. Her feeling of achievement was short-lived as an indescribable, but certainly horrible, stench immediately assaulted her senses. To combat it, she thrust her hand into one of the coat's pockets to find a handkerchief that she pressed against her nose and mouth.
"Dear God, what can produce such an appalling smell?" she said in a voice muffled by the handkerchief.
Though her eyes watered from the poor quality of the air, she moved ahead to seek one of the employees. An icy trickle ran down her spine at the eerie sight of the large cafeteria being devoid of life. Suddenly struck by the worry that she was trespassing, she came to a stop at the halfway point to look back at the Open/Closed sign on the glass door - her haste to get out of the rain had meant she hadn't spent a second looking at it.
A puzzled grunt escaped her as she was able to read Closed on the reversible sign. It obviously meant the side facing toward the parking lot read Open so she had every right to be there, but the spookiness of being all alone in such a large room continued to test her courage.
She continued toward the counter where she had seen the waitress earlier on. A split second later, she came to another hard stop and stared wide-eyed at a feral, frightening and above all blood-splattered individual who had appeared out of nowhere behind the counter.
The person was a tall, square-built woman whose long hair was almost black. The inner light in the thirty-something woman's pale-blue eyes was so intense it was able to travel fifty feet without losing any of its strength. Her white apron had become scarlet as it glistened with fresh, wet blood; worse, she held what appeared to be a meat cleaver in her right hand and a bone saw in her left.
Lilly clutched her hands in front of her chest to stop her heart from thumping its way through her rib cage. She stared with barely hidden horror at the scary woman until something happened that she had never expected: the blood-dripping woman broke out in a toothy smile that revealed two rows of perfect pearly-whites.
"Hello again," the frightening woman said in a silky-smooth voice as she put down the gruesome instruments and began to wash her hands and arms. "I hope I didn't scare you too much. You and your husband are in room sixteen, right?"
"Y- yes… r- room six- sixteen…" Lilly said in a voice that had gained an earthquake-like tremble. She continued to stare at the woman until she realized she was perfectly normal and did perfectly normal things - the frightening elements had all been caused by her mind playing tricks on her. "Ah… I was… I couldn't fall asleep so I wondered if… well, if you would perhaps make me a glass of warm milk with honey? I'll obviously pay for it."
The tall woman smiled once more as she dried her hands on a towel. A name tag on the waitress' uniform she carried underneath the bloody apron read Valentina. "Certainly, Mrs…?"
"Pierce. Lilly Pierce. How do you do?" Lilly said and walked the rest of the way up to the counter.
"I suppose I'm all right, though I do feel a little funky," Valentina said and held out the apron. "I'm Valentina. I'm in charge of the cafeteria. My brother Matteo owns the motel."
Lilly stared once more at the glistening blood on the apron. "Oh… I hope I'm not… ah, being too nosey here, but… what on Earth have you been doing, Valentina?"
"Our weekly shipment of fresh meat arrived a short while ago. My brother and I carve it ourselves and prepare portion-sized packs that we store in the deep freeze. It saves us quite a few dollars."
"Ohhh… now I understand," Lilly said and leaned against the counter. "Does that account for the horrific stench as well?"
"Yes. Once we've stripped the prime quality meat, we throw the bones in boiling water so the fat and tendons will release. Otherwise, the fat will eventually rot and stink even worse," Valentina said with a grin.
She fell silent as she rinsed the meat cleaver and the bone saw under the hot faucet. Once the instruments were squeaky clean, she wiped off the worst of the water with a tea towel before she put them on hooks to drip-dry.
Valentina continued to smile as she moved away from the sink to begin preparing the warm milk. "I wish we didn't have to spend an entire night on it every single week, but because we're so far away from the central distribution hub in Penwald Springs, the slaughterhouse will only send their refrigerated trucks over once a week. It's a seven-hour return trip for the drivers so I can see their point, but… well, it's tough work."
"I can well imagine," Lilly said as she kept track of the pot Valentina had used for the milk. "Oh, it almost slipped my mind… when my husband and I were in here earlier, there was another family here as well. They were dressed in subdued, almost somber clothes. I'm sure you remember them?"
Valentina moved away from the pot so her face was hidden from view. "I do. What about them?"
"I believe their car was broken into. The trunk is standing open. If nothing else, all that rain will have ruined the carpet by now."
Valentina remained out of sight while she spoke: "I hope a gust of wind did it. Bad publicity might close us down for good."
"Well, that would certainly be too bad. It seems like a nice place. Have you owned it long?"
Valentina kept quiet to begin with, but soon cleared her throat so she could continue: "My brother and I took over from our parents, oh, just shy of ten years ago."
"I see."
"Mmmm," Valentina said and moved back to the pot of milk that was on the verge of entering the active phase. To prevent it from boiling over, she took a large wooden ladle and began stirring the pot.
Lilly watched the circular motions for a short while. The ladle's continuous journey through the warm milk was such a familiar and comforting sight that she couldn't help but smile. "To return to my earlier point, I think we should let the family know so they can at least see if something was stolen. And close the trunk, obviously. Do you happen to remember which room they rented?"
"My brother hasn't told me."
"Oh… all right. Perhaps we should inform the Sheriff… I happened to notice a police car earlier-"
Jerking upright as if she had been bitten, Valentina let go of the wooden ladle that fell out of the pot and clanged onto the linoleum floor. A rasping "Son of a…" escaped her as she picked up the errant tool and threw it under the hot faucet.
"Goodness me! Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Valentina said from somewhere out of sight. "A drop of milk bubbled up and burned my hand. That's all."
"You need to pour cold water on it-"
"I know. I am."
"Oh… of course. Silly me," Lilly said with an embarrassed smile. "It probably happens every single day."
"Close to it." Valentina clammed up before she moved back to the steaming milk to give it a thorough stirring to compensate for the recent lack of attention. "Tell you what… my brother is very busy carving the new meat, so I'll look through the paperwork myself. When I've found the room the family is in, I'll write a quick note and slip it under their door. You don't have to worry about that at all."
"That's a good idea. And you're right, I certainly don't need to seek out new problems to mull over. I have a hard enough time falling asleep as it is. I really hope the warm milk will help."
Lilly briefly locked eyes with Valentina who happened to look up at the exact same time. Though the dark-haired woman smiled, Lilly couldn't help but notice a subtle change to her presence - or rather, in her eyes that had returned to the same, fiercely-bright intensity that had been there before any words had been exchanged between them.
The milk was finally ready, so Valentina poured it into a heat-resistant glass and added a spoonful of golden honey. "Here you are, Mrs. Pierce. It's on the house," she said as she put it on the counter.
"Oh! Oh, thank you… but you don't-"
"I insist," Valentina said and shook her head.
Smiling broadly, Lilly took the warm glass and wrapped her chilled fingers around it. "Thank you! You're very kind. Have a good night."
"Likewise, Mrs. Pierce. Sweet dreams," Valentina said while displaying a smile that perhaps didn't fully reach her bright eyes.
-*-*-*-
Lilly hurried back to the motel room. By covering the glass with the handkerchief, she managed to avoid getting the warm milk tempered by any of the large drops of chilly rain that continued to pelt the entire region. Retrieving the keys from her pocket and unlocking the door one-handed proved to be a challenge, but she managed and was soon back inside.
Tip-toeing over to the sideboard, she put down the glass of milk while she took off her overcoat. The next item on her agenda was to make sure that Daisy and little Herbie were still sound asleep so she knelt next to the extra crib to observe them for a few moments. Everything was peaceful, save for the fact that Daisy had had a disagreement with the winter duvet - it had been pushed aside. Lilly rearranged it so it covered all of the young girl before she got to her feet and inched back to the sideboard.
There was no mistaking the heavy snores that came from her husband's side of the motel room, so there was no need for her to look into his well-being. A brief sigh escaped her before she wrapped her fingers around the warm milk and chugged it down in one go.
A broad, genuine smile spread over her features as the pleasantly warm liquid made its way into her system. It worked its magic at once by dissolving the knot of worry she'd had in her stomach since the driving conditions had grown so challenging far earlier in the day. One by one, her limbs gained the tell-tale leadenness that she knew would allow her to finally get some sleep.
After swapping her outdoor clothes for the sleeping gown, she made a quick stop in the minuscule bathroom to brush her teeth - much as she loved warm milk, waking up many hours later with hairy teeth would present a horrible start to the day.
She had barely returned to the main room when a streak of light flashed across the ceiling above the curtains. The sound of a car rumbling past piqued her interest and made her tip-toe over to the window to peek outside.
By craning her neck, she caught a glimpse of a pale van. The drops of water on the window pane meant she couldn't make out any of the vehicle's features, but it gave her the impression that it belonged to a delivery service of some kind. She was only able to track it for a few seconds before it moved out of her field of view.
Later, she heard two car doors slamming shut, but she couldn't tell if it meant there had been two people in it, or if the sole driver had been inside the cargo compartment to pick up something - not that it mattered.
Shrugging, she moved over to her bed and swept the duvet aside.
---
Though her feet and legs had grown chilly during her nightly excursion, it took less time than she feared to regain a strong level of comfort underneath the warm winter duvet. Sleep fueled by the warm milk knocked on the proverbial door, but a few thoughts had time to flash through her mind before she surrendered to the Sandman:
The sight of the religious family's car with the trunk standing wide open continued to poke at her mind. There was something strange about the fact that some random thief would come by, zero in on a vehicle as dull and nondescript as a gray family sedan and then force open the trunk rather than the doors. What would any burglar expect to find in the trunk? Perhaps it had merely been vandals?
The next, and final, thought was perhaps more unsettling. On her way back to the motel, she had noticed that a special cardboard sign that read Vacant had been put around the doorknob on all the rooms except their own - their particular sign was still on the sideboard where Herbert had put it when they arrived.
If all the other rooms were vacant, where had the religious family gone? Perhaps they had thought it was a Do Not Disturb-sign and had left it on the door, or perhaps they had simply forgotten to remove it when they had entered the rented room? Neither suggestion seemed too plausible.
Before Lilly could delve deeper into the mystery, her breathing evened out and she fell into a sound sleep filled with bright, positive dreams for a change.
-*-*-*-
The travel alarm clock on Lilly's bedside table read 5:56 AM as she sat on the bed after brushing her teeth - she and her husband had already been up for twenty-five minutes so they could hit the road early. Concealing a wide yawn, she donned her outdoor shoes and packed her toiletry bag so she wouldn't accidentally leave anything behind.
She'd had to settle for a quick upper-center-lower morning wash at the bathroom's washbasin. Although the shower did in fact work, the sickly-green, moss-like substance growing in the stall's lower corners and on some of the tiles had made her stomach churn - the sound of the regular faucet running in the bathroom proved that her husband had come to the same conclusion.
A short minute went by before Herbert ducked around the doorjamb with a faceful of shaving foam. "Darling, when we had dinner last night, did you happen to notice the cafeteria's opening hours? I need my regular morning coffee and slices of toast, you know. We still have a three-hour drive ahead of us. I hope they can serve us… I can't imagine we'll find a bakery or anywhere else that's open at this time of day."
"I'm afraid I didn't pay any attention to that, dear," Lilly said as she got up from the bed. Behind her, Daisy played with her rag doll Marie by telling her she needed to go into the magic suitcase because they had to leave soon.
"Actually," Lilly continued after she had watched her daughter play for a few moments, "now you mention it… I'm not sure it was listed anywhere. I only recall seeing the open-closed sign on the glass door."
"Well, if they have an open-closed sign, they obviously close at some point. I need my morning coffee. You know how cranky I'll get if I don't."
Lilly had nothing to add to her husband's statement, so she moved over to the third bed to make sure little Herbie was safe and satisfied with life.
Herbert, Sr. let out a somewhat disappointed "Hmmm!" before he went back into the bathroom to finish shaving. 'Perhaps you could go over there and find out?' he continued after a short pause.
The joyous babbling of their littlest tyke almost drowned out his father's comments, and Lilly pretended that it in fact had. To the elder Herbert's credit, nearly a full minute went by before he peeked around the corner once more to see why his question hadn't been answered.
"Darling? I think you should go-"
"I heard you the first time, Herbert. I was tending to our son. But perhaps you would like to assume that responsibility?" Lilly said in a voice that held all the silky smoothness of a pair of angel wings.
Herbert and Lilly locked eyes for a brief moment before Herbert disappeared back into the bathroom.
"Didn't think so," Lilly mumbled under her breath. Once she had made sure Daisy and her young brother were all right, she got up and moved the curtains aside to peek out onto the gray parking lot.
A smattering of raindrops were present on the window pane, but their number was greatly reduced compared to the previous day - it helped that the worst gusts seemed to have died down overnight. Though only a modest amount of rain fell at present, large puddles created by the evening and night's monsoon-like conditions were still visible across the uneven parking lot.
Lilly craned her neck to look at the cafeteria but was unable to get a clear picture due to the crooked angle. She sighed as she reached for her overcoat. "I'll go over there now. If they're already open for business, do you want me to buy breakfast and bring it back-"
"No. Let's eat over there. I want to read my morning newspaper in relative peace and quiet. Once we hit the road, we'll find neither for hours on end until we reach your mother in Penwald Springs," Herbert said while standing in the doorway to the bathroom wearing a sleeveless undershirt and a towel that he had wrapped around his waist to protect his fine pants from stains. He had slapped enough aftershave on his cheeks and lotion in his hair to make the mirror above the washbasin mist over, and the strong fragrances soon spread through the motel room.
"All right… please look after the children until I get back," Lilly said and left the room before Herbert had time to make any objections.
---
She didn't need to hurry quite as much crossing the parking lot as she had done when she had gone for the warm milk during the night, but the scattered raindrops that continued to fall seemed obsessed with aiming for her petite frame.
Almost at the glass door to the cafeteria, she remembered her late-night thought about the Vacant-signs hanging from the doorknobs. When she turned to give the horseshoe-shaped motel building a closer look, she discovered at once she had been right: such a sign was present on the doors to all the rooms save for their own - and their particular sign had been put on the sideboard next to the color TV. So where had the religious family gone?
Turning around again, she had soon spotted the missing family's gray Ford LTD sedan. The vehicle continued to be parked outside the cafeteria in the exact same bay it had occupied during her evening and late-night visits. The trunk had been shut, but she would need to be a clairvoyant to say whether one of the family members or Valentina had been out to close it, or if a gust of wind had dealt with it.
A second vehicle had arrived at some point during the past five hours: a medium-sized, pale-brown delivery van from Hermes International that Lilly didn't think was the same one she had noticed after returning with the warm milk.
She was given an unwelcome reminder of the previous day's inclement weather when a sudden gust made her hair fly about. Folding up the overcoat's collar, she hurried over to the glass door to get out of the firing line - and to investigate their opening hours.
The sign in the door said Open, so she did just that and stepped inside. A brief grunt escaped her when she realized it was as devoid of life as it had been during the night.
The thirty-something driver of the Hermes delivery van was the only customer in there; he had chosen one of the tables seating four to have room to spread out a tabloid newspaper in addition to the tray that carried a serving of bagels and coffee. His uniform-like garments consisted of boots, a pale-brown coverall and a traditional driver's cap - the cap was presently on the table next to a glass ashtray that held a smoking cheroot. He looked up when Lilly entered but didn't offer her any kind of greeting.
Not only was the driver the cafeteria's only customer, he was the only person in there at all. Lilly shook her head as she moved up to the counter where Valentina had made the warm milk during the night. Nobody was around, and no sounds of any kind of activity could be heard from anywhere beyond the counter. "These people need to learn a thing or two about customer relations," she said to herself in a mumble. "No wonder it's a ghost town… who'd want to come back here with such poor-"
She suddenly noticed the brass bell that Valentina had used whenever a serving was ready to be picked up. Moving over to it, she gave it a good smack which made it let out a loud, brassy Ding!
While it made the delivery driver glance up at her, it didn't prompt any kind of activity from beyond the counter. Lilly was about to try the bell again when she changed her mind. "Sir," she said as she turned to the driver, "would you happen to know where the waitress has gone? My husband and I have a long drive ahead of us and we really need some breakfast before we get going."
"Naw. She was here and then she wasn't," the driver said before he took a long pull from his cheroot. He looked at Lilly for all of three seconds before he returned to the combo of the tabloid newspaper, the bagels and the coffee. His daily allocation of words had clearly been exhausted despite the curtness of the reply.
"Thank you, Sir. You've been most helpful," Lilly mumbled. She chewed on her cheek for a short while before she began to walk back toward the glass door.
A distant Clunk! suddenly reached her ears - it made her come to a halt and look over her shoulder. She was certain the noise had come from somewhere behind the counter. Moving back to it, she went up on tip-toes to look above the tall glass display cases, but she was unable to see much regardless of how far she leaned forward. "Hello? Hello? Valentina? Is that you?"
When no reply reached her, she moved around the far end of the counter to stand in front of a half-sized swinging door that said Off Limits For Customers. "Hello! Valentina? Are you there?" she said in a stronger voice.
"Give it up, lady," the Hermes delivery driver said while holding a cream-cheese bagel. "The waitress is probably on the can or something."
"Or maybe she's been hurt and needs help," Lilly said in a sharp voice.
Shrugging, the driver took a big bite out of the bagel before he returned to his newspaper.
A sour look fell over Lilly's features. Two could play that game, so she turned her back to the man from Hermes International in a rare display of defiance. "Hello? Valentina?" she tried once more; the silence that greeted her made her take a step ahead. As she did so, she realized the swinging door wasn't locked - she was able to move it aside with the lightest of touches.
She glanced at the low door, the driver and the corridor behind the counter in turn before she made up her mind: taking a deep breath, she stepped beyond the sign that read Off Limits For Customers and entered the cafeteria's private section.
---
The forty-foot-long corridor had a blue linoleum floor and white gypsum walls. A calendar, a few magazine clippings and a menu that was years out of date had been sticky-taped or glued onto the bare walls. Two naked bulbs hung down from the ceiling's wooden rafters.
Every surface glistened with the typical greasy residue that could be found near any open stove - the bulbs even appeared to have three-day stubble as the hot glass and the airborne particles of grease had joined forces to trap the inevitable specs of dust floating around.
Seven doors led away from the corridor: three wooden ones on each side plus a sturdy metal door at the far end that had Fire Escape stenciled onto it in bright-red. Four of the wooden doors had old-fashioned cast-iron handles while the remaining two had to settle for cheap-looking plastic replacements.
Lilly halted her progress through the corridor to listen. No noises, sounds or even distant voices of any kind reached her ears, so she moved over to the nearest door on the left to continue her search. She knocked three times and let out a "Hello? Anyone in here?" before she grabbed the cast-iron handle only to discover the door was locked.
She grimaced as she realized her palm and fingers had suddenly grown sticky after touching the door handle - the same greasy residue found everywhere else in the corridor had also made its way onto the handle. Her grimace deepened when even her trusty handkerchief was unable to wipe the smudge off her palm.
Seeing the handkerchief made her remember the brutal stench she had encountered when she had been by to get the warm milk. The waitress and owner of the cafeteria, Valentina, had explained the cause of the horrible smell, but even thinking about it made her stomach churn.
The worst of the bad smells had evaporated in the intervening hours, but she was still able to pick up faint traces of it if she took deep breaths through her nose - not that she had any particular interest in revisiting the situation.
The next door she tried yielded the exact same result as the first one: none at all. The only success came from the fact that using the handkerchief as an improvised glove had protected her palm from getting even greasier.
She rubbed her brow with her clean hand. She was about to admit defeat when she heard another Clunk! behind one of the doors. It had been close by, so she went over to the first door on her right to try there. "Hello? Valentina?" she said after knocking several times.
Testing the door handle proved it was unlocked; as the door opened, the old hinges made their presence known to the world through a series of metallic squeaks and whines that made Lilly's teeth water. "Hello? Is anyone in here?" she said into the room. Though it was dark, she could see the outlines of a few wooden crates, cardboard boxes and old suitcases.
Grunting, she moved back into the corridor and closed the door behind her. The two remaining doors on the right-hand side were both locked. Five down, one to go. As she moved over to the final door - the last one on the left-hand side of the corridor - the Clunk! she had already heard twice was repeated. This time, there was no doubt it came from beyond the door she had yet to try.
She had already reached for the plastic handle when different, and far more unsettling, noises wafted through the wooden door. Her hand froze in mid-air as she recognized the sound. Someone used a saw - a large one judging by the duration it took the blade's jagged teeth to rasp across whatever hard material it worked on.
Fainter noises accompanied the sawing: smacking, munching and guttural growls produced by some kind of animal. The noises had been very close by. An image of the bone saw that Valentina had carried when she had shown up during the night covered in blood appeared unprompted in Lilly's mind. The noises and the horrific mental images formed an unholy combination that sent an entire pine forest's worth of icy needles trickling down her back.
Knowing she had stuck her nose in far, far too deep for nothing more than wanting to order breakfast, she tip-toed back through the corridor to get out into the cafeteria itself. Before she could make it all the way there, the fire escape squeaked open behind her.
She gasped and jerked around to stare wide-eyed at the fire escape's special handle moving downward. Being caught trespassing was bad enough in and by itself, but the added horror of hearing the sawing and growling behind the closed door threatened to turn the experience into a first-class nightmare.
Time ran out as the fire escape finally swung open. Instead of running back into the cafeteria, Lilly ducked into the dark storage room she had discovered earlier in her search for the waitress. Her heart thumped so hard in her chest that the blood whooshing past her eardrums drowned out all other sounds. She couldn't stay in there forever, so she kept the door an inch ajar to cast a secretive glance at the new individual when he or she walked past - the moment the proverbial coast was clear, she would high-tail it out of there and not stop until she was back in the motel room, breakfast or no breakfast.
The person turned out to be a man in his mid-thirties whose family resemblance to Valentina was so strong it could only be the brother, Matteo Rizzato, who was the actual owner of the motel.
Even taller than Valentina, the fellow had pitch-black hair and bright-blue eyes that shone with such intensity they bordered on the insane. He wore regular, everyday clothes: gray pants and a white shirt that had its sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Instead of a necktie, the shirt's top two buttons were undone giving him a certain Latin flair rather than simply making him look untidy.
Lilly held her breath as she watched the tall, strongly-built man come to a halt out in the corridor. Why he had stopped was beyond her as he did nothing but stand there and look around. She suddenly got the feeling that he could somehow sense they had an unwelcome visitor - or perhaps smell her perfume though she had used it sparingly. Moving back from the narrow gap, she pushed the wooden door shut as a precautionary measure but kept her ear close to it so she could hear what went on outside.
An eternity seemed to go by before the man moved over to the last door on the left. The jingling of keys and the creaking of the plastic door handle soon followed. Once the door stood open, the growling and munching naturally grew louder.
'How are you today, sis?' Matteo said in a voice that was very similar to Valentina's silky timbre.
A few more growls could be heard before Valentina replied: 'Need more. More.'
Across the corridor, an army of goose bumps invaded every single inch of Lilly's skin from top to toe. There was something distinctly inhuman about Valentina's voice; it had a crude, bestial undertone that she could not reconcile with the attractive physical appearance of the woman.
'You'll get more. I've just pulled one out of the freezer. It'll take a while for it to thaw out. You'll just have to be patient.'
'No! Want more now!'
'What's wrong with that-'
'I want a warm one! Now!'
'All right, already. Don't blow your top. We can work something out. The selection isn't good, but we have something to work with. Don't worry, Sis. You'll get a warm snack soon enough.'
Further growls could be heard from the other room. It sent a new torrent of goose bumps all over Lilly's body, and the increasing sense of raw fear made her take a long step back from the door. "Oh God, these people are insane… stark-raving insane…" she uttered in a trembling whisper.
The sound of her own voice seemed to pull her back from the brink of panic. Having something to do helped as well, and she suddenly felt brave enough to crack the door ajar again. She put an eye to the narrow gap to get an update as to the brother's whereabouts - the large man continued to stand in the doorway to the final room.
Matteo's wide frame meant she couldn't see what went on in the other room, and it also meant she couldn't make a run for it as he would spot her at once. "A weapon… I need a weapon…" she whispered to herself.
Scrunching up her face, she moved away from the door and tip-toed further into the storage room. It was too dark to see much, but she held out her arms - like one of the Ancient Egyptian mummies in the old black-and-white horror movies - to find the rear wall before her nose found it for her.
Probing the walls proved to be less of a task than she had imagined as the storage room was only fifteen by fifteen feet. There were a few items that could potentially be used as blunt instruments if push came to shove, but even the thought of hitting someone over the head with an old, discarded plank of wood made her stomach churn.
An "Ooof!" escaped her as her shin made an impact with the reinforced corner of an unsighted leather suitcase. Before she could reach down to grab hold of its handle, the suitcase had already made a run for freedom and struck the dusty floor with a Thump! that sounded like a thunderclap in the small room.
Slapping a hand over her mouth, she stared at the door in wide-eyed terror expecting it to be flung open at any moment, but the seconds soon ticked away without any further horrors.
Golden stars dancing in her vision made her release the breath she had been holding; it was followed by a deep sigh of relief. The next handful of seconds were spent on getting her breathing and heart rate back under control - then she reached down to retrieve the errant suitcase.
She furrowed her brow as the items it contained produced a strange tinkling akin to shards of glass moving around. One of the two latches had popped open when it had hit the floor which allowed her to see a faint glimmer of something. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she released the second latch as well to open the lid.
A split-second later, she wished she had put her foot down and insisted that they would fly to her mother instead of taking a cross-state road trip that turned out to be on the highway to Hell.
The suitcase contained hundreds of personal items like dentures, wristwatches, house keys, crucifixes, cigarette cases, spectacles and pieces of jewelry that ranged from $2 ear rings to pearl necklaces and brooches made of gold. Most were smeared in old, dried blood.
She instantly turned as pale as a ghost. Unable to control her limbs, she staggered backward until she thumped against an upright cardboard box and then the rear wall. The suitcase gained a mind of its own and fell onto the floor where it deposited all its gruesome contents in a neat pile.
The glancing knock on the cardboard box made one of its flaps open wide. Torn, blood-splattered clothes fell out and covered her feet and lower legs. The gray, somber garments she had seen the religious family wear the evening before were on top. Like every other piece of fabric in the box, they were caked in blood.
Enough was enough, so she bolted from the rear wall and raced over to the door. Yanking it open, she cared little if an entire army of undead freaks waited for her out in the corridor - turning left at once, she continued at high speed until she reached the cafeteria itself.
She came to a hard stop as the table where the driver from Hermes International had sat came into sight. The chair had been pushed back and he was gone. A half-eaten bagel and a half-full mug of coffee had been left on the plate next to the open newspaper and the cheroot that continued to send out smoke signals in the ashtray. She stared out of the large windows and saw that the delivery van was still parked where it had been earlier.
A roar of surprise behind her made her snap out of her stupor and take off once more. A mere twenty paces into her hasty escape, she slammed into a large, wide body that appeared from around a corner at the exact same time.
The ensuing wrestling match was a no-holds-barred event that found no clear winner; Lilly shoved, thumped and pushed while the other entity pulled, tugged and grappled to break free. They went back and forth for several seconds until Lilly realized her opponent wore a pale-brown coverall just like the Hermes delivery driver had when she had spoken to him earlier.
"Jeez, lady!" a male voice cried from somewhere above confirming that it wasn't Valentina's brother Matteo after all. "What the hell are you trying to do here?! You run into me and then I'm the one who gets used as a punching bag! I mean… will ya knock it off!"
Lilly's breath came in strained bursts as she finally took a step back. She stared at the driver with wide, frightened eyes; her throat unable to release for long enough to form a mere word, much less a sentence.
"Now a guy can't even take a whizz… damn that Women's Lib…" the driver continued as he pulled his coverall straight.
"Y- you need to… we- we need to run away! There's something insane going on here!" Lilly croaked in a trembling voice.
The driver not only shook his head but slammed his hands onto his hips. "You're the one who's nuts, lady! I'm not going anywhere… at least not until I've finished my coffee and my-"
"There's no time for that!"
"Get off my case, for Chrissakes! What the hell's wrong with you?" the driver said before he brushed past Lilly and stomped back to the table to finish his breakfast.
A split second later, they were joined by Matteo Rizzato who came to a sliding halt on the smooth linoleum. The owner of the motel may have looked normal enough at first glance, but the apparent normalcy was offset by the stark-raving insanity that burned brightly in his intense, pale-blue eyes. He held a shiny meat cleaver in his right hand and a ten-inch carving knife in his left.
Lilly wanted to scream but couldn't.
The delivery driver opened his mouth to yell for both of them, but he was silenced for good when the razor-sharp meat cleaver hurtled through the air and embedded itself in his forehead, splitting his skull into two perfect halves.
The body remained upright for the briefest of moments before it toppled over and landed across the table where he had sat. The violence of the impact sent the coffee mug and the plate with the half-eaten cream-cheese bagel flying onto the floor.
Matteo Rizzato let out a maniacal laugh; he looked to his left and took a deep breath. "Fresh, warm meat! Come and get some, Sis!" he said in a strong voice - the call was responded to at once by bestial growls from somewhere out of sight.
For Lilly, her galloping heart was just about the only thing that hadn't frozen solid within her system. She hadn't blinked or even breathed since the grotesque sound of the delivery driver's skull splitting - akin to the cracking of a walnut - had assaulted her ears. Continuing to stare at the dead body with wide, frightened eyes, it barely registered with her that Matteo stepped aside displaying an evil smile.
Though it seemed impossible, the nightmare soon grew worse as shuffling footfalls heralded the arrival of Valentina Rizzato. What had been an elegant lady had turned into a ghoulish, barefoot monster wearing a blood-soaked tunic and little else. Although Valentina's form was still distinctly human, the look in her eyes and her predatory stance and mannerisms proved she was somewhere else on the evolutionary chart.
Fresh blood tainted her teeth and ran down her chin. Similarly, her hands and arms were crimson to up her elbows. She eyed the living Lilly for a few moments before she jumped over to the recently deceased driver with the grace of a she-wolf. There, she ripped the coverall off the dead man's upper back and sunk her teeth into the soft tissue at the neck. A large chunk was soon torn out and champed on with great, blood-squirting relish.
The scream Lilly had been unable to produce finally arrived - and when it did, it had the pitch and volume of an air raid siren. Spinning around, she took off toward the main entrance at a speed that was severely hampered by her rubbery legs.
Another, though briefer, scream escaped her when she realized the glass door had not only been locked, but that an anti-burglary bar made of a two-inch-thick piece of metal had been added to it with the sole purpose of trapping her inside. She wrapped her fingers around the bar to try to lift it out of its clamps, but it did its job too well and all she succeeded in doing was to break several fingernails.
While Valentina continued to tear bloody chunks out of the dead driver's neck and shoulder, Matteo strolled down toward the main entrance and the sole remaining sane human in there. "There's only a little flesh on your bones, but you'll do nicely raw or cooked. Consider yourself an appetizer," he said as he toyed with the carving knife.
Lilly clenched her jaw hard as she tried to stop herself from going under in an unrestrained panic. Her wide eyes darted across her immediate surroundings to find some kind of weapon she could use to fend off the approaching ghoul, but there was nothing there save for the chairs, tables and a few plastic vases carrying dried flowers.
Eyeing the chairs for a second time, she decided to go for it. Jumping forward, she grabbed one of them, turned it around and smashed the pointy legs into the glass door. Although the pane of glass seemed to wobble, nothing else happened to it. Groaning out loud, she pulled back and rammed the chair forward with even greater effort. Still nothing, save for sharp aches that shot up through her wrists and forearms.
"Safety glass," Matteo said with barely hidden amusement. "The door and every window. Burglar-proof, bulletproof and just about fireproof. You can't break it."
Lilly grabbed hold of the chair once more and used it as a buffer zone. Her breathing came in short, strained bursts as her panicky mind tried to ponder her options. The only other way out of the main cafeteria was the fire escape at the far end of the corridor, but getting there meant she would have to go past both of the ghoulish creatures.
A pained, almost sobbing, groan escaped her as the gravity of the horrific mess caught up with her - her options were limited: she could give up and end her days as someone's early-morning snack, or she could at least try to make a run for it.
Her self-preservation took over and she bolted from the spot at the main entrance. Although a mocking laugh greeted her efforts, she tore ahead still clutching the chair.
Matteo continued to laugh as he hunched over with the carving knife at the ready. Moving with surprising grace and speed for such a large individual, he kept up with his intended victim who raced past the neatly set tables; his laughter turning into a roar of pain as he suddenly found himself the target of a thrown chair.
The four legs and the seat's hard edges struck him across the chest which made him jerk around and lose all forward momentum. Forced to the left, he crashed into one of the cafeteria's tables that toppled over by the mass that struck it. The sudden obstacle tripped him up and sent him onto the floor in a flurry of arms and legs.
Lilly had no time to celebrate her small victory as she still needed to evade the blood-soaked Valentina. A wild scream escaped her as Valentina seemed to uncoil and jump toward her in an almost wolf-like fashion with her long, bloody fingers spread out like claws.
The female ghoul reached out with lightning speed and grabbed hold of the collar of Lilly's overcoat just as the shorter woman raced past. The fabric was torn at once but mostly remained in place. Valentina's hands were too slick from being coated with the driver's blood to hold onto the overcoat, and she let out a guttural roar as her prey literally slipped through her fingers.
As Lilly continued ahead with great speed heading for the corridor, Valentina jumped back to the dead delivery driver and yanked the meat cleaver out of his skull with a wet, disgusting Schwuppp!
"Get her! Get her!" Matteo cried as he scrambled to get back on his feet. Finally shoving the chair and the broken table aside, he got up to resume the chase - albeit in a hobble that was far slower than his earlier speed.
Lilly reached the fire escape at the end of the corridor. The strange mechanism used to open it reminded her of the type of doors found in hospitals: instead of a regular door handle and a single latch in the doorjamb, it had a metal bar that needed to be pulled toward her to release a pair of catches.
She pulled it; then she pulled it again. The third and final pull yielded nothing but bruised fingers and a row of skinned knuckles. "Oh, God," she croaked as it dawned on her she was trapped there.
An eerie, maniacal laugh reached her ears. Spinning around, she stared in wide-eyed horror at the sight of both ghouls bearing down on her. The blood-soaked Valentina was in front, and the gleeful look on her face proved she couldn't wait to sink her teeth into some tenderloin, a breast or a heart - preferably one that was still warm and pumping.
Lilly realized she stood next to the door to the room where Valentina was kept when she was in her present state. There was no guarantee the room was equipped with windows, but any kind of action was better than giving up.
Kicking open the wooden door, she stormed inside the room but soon came to a hard, dead stop. Every square foot of the room's interior was covered in blood, chunks of flesh, stripped skin and various body parts. The half-eaten corpse of the young woman belonging to the religious family was spread out on a table top.
Lilly's churning stomach finally revolted and sent an entire series of dry heaves up her gullet. A split second later, the gruesome stench made her throat tie itself into a solid knot so no particles could enter her lungs.
She knew she was within a split second of fainting, but she was given a fresh boost of energy at the sight of a grotesquely filthy window not fifteen feet from her position in the middle of the room. Unlike those in the cafeteria, the window appeared to be a regular one that could be smashed.
A roar behind her heralded the arrival of Valentina and her deranged brother. Buying some time would literally be a lifesaver, so Lilly whipped off her ruined overcoat and threw it at the ghouls while she looked for something she could use on the window.
The torn coat only delayed the ghouls for a second or two, but it was enough for Lilly to find and pick up the most gruesome and downright disgusting thing she had ever held in her hand: a human thigh bone that still had some rotten, blackened flesh attached to it. Her stomach responded to the horror with another series of dry heaves, but her self-preservation pushed it all aside and helped her throw the bone at the window with all the strength she could muster.
A strangled cry of joy escaped her as the thigh bone penetrated the pane of glass causing it to collapse in a pile of jagged shards. Just as a bloody hand reached for her shoulder, she jumped ahead and dove through the smashed window without knowing what she would find on the other side.
The cry of joy turned into one of acute pain as her landing was less than graceful: she came down hard on a section of the paved parking lot she hadn't been in before. Her feet did in fact make the first impact, but her forward momentum caused her to go into a roll that gave her left knee, elbow and shoulder bone-rattling knocks.
Moaning and groaning, Lilly staggered to her feet to get away before the ghouls could follow her. Unrestrained roaring somewhere behind her added a dose of adrenaline to her blood; it saw her pick up the pace in spite of the stabs of pain that shot up from her skinned knee and elbow. Plenty of red stars appeared in her vision as she moved her arms and legs in a feeble attempt at running, but she pushed through the pain and set off toward the motel.
---
It only took her a few seconds to reach the far end of the building she had jumped out of. She glanced at the fire escape as she hobbled past it. It didn't move - yet - but the ghouls would obviously have a key that would unlock it. Her life-expectancy would come down to the single question of how long it would take the bizarre siblings to get through.
Several deep puddles turned her route across the back section of the motel's large parking lot into an obstacle course, but she had no time to move around them - she continued straight through and simply ignored the splashes that soon filled her shoes and soaked her pants from her knees down.
The next section of the parking lot - the area around the gas and diesel pumps - was drier, but she couldn't take advantage of that fact as her injured knee objected to the strain and her lungs were on the brink of catching fire. Taking care of her two young firecrackers seemingly around the clock had left her in fine form, but the numerous chores of a stay-at-home wife couldn't prepare her for the drastic situation she now found herself in. The instant she stopped, her pursuers would have her and end her days.
Animal-like, guttural growls followed by a roar celebrating an imminent victory made her clench her jaw and press on in spite of her knee sending volcanic eruptions of pain up through her leg for each step she took. Further growling and roaring soon followed, but she didn't dare look over her shoulder to see how far ahead she was.
Turning another corner made her let out a cry of hope; their Chevrolet station wagon had never looked lovelier. She was sixty feet from her rescue and closing fast, but she couldn't let up for a second. A tangy taste of blood for each rasping breath she took couldn't slow her down, but the locked door to their room could.
"Wha'… what? I didn't… I didn't lock-" she croaked, shaking her head. There was no time to ponder the situation, so she clenched her fist and slammed it against the closed door. "Herbert! Open up! Unlock the door! Now!"
A few precious seconds were wasted before the door was unlocked. Lilly barged inside at once brushing past her husband who stared at her with a dumbfounded expression on his face. Little Herbie sat on the crib between the regular beds and Daisy occupied the hard chair at the round table - the young girl, who wore a light winter jacket, her home-made knitted sweater and the Sesame Street jeans, clutched her tiny, polka-dotted suitcase that contained her beloved rag doll Marie.
"Grab Daisy! We need to get out of here! Now!" Lilly cried breathlessly as she made a beeline for Herbert, jr.; the small boy looking up in surprise as his mother ran over to him with her arms out-stretched.
"Lilly, where on Earth have you been?" Herbert, Sr. said in a voice that carried an indignant tone. Instead of reaching for their daughter like he had been told, he wasted another few seconds by putting his hands on his hips. "And what do you mean-"
Lilly ignored her husband, grabbing hold of their son pulling him up into her arms instead. "You must listen to me… get Daisy! We need to get out!"
The urgency in Lilly's voice made Daisy jump off the chair and storm over to her mother to help where she could - she clutched the polka-dotted suitcase to her chest with all her strength so no harm could come to Marie.
"Well, for your information," Herbert continued in a voice that had lost none of its sour edge, "our son needs to be changed. I certainly hope you didn't expect me to take care of that. Where's your overcoat? And look at the state of your clothes!"
"Will you shut up!" Lilly barked at the top of her lungs - the harsh tone made Daisy jump and little Herbie break out in an ear-shattering wail. "Just shut up and listen to me! Get Daisy! We have to get out of here before those monsters catch up with me!"
Herbert threw his arms in the air. "You're talking nonsense, woman! What monsters? We can't leave… I haven't had breakfast yet! And I'm not going anywhere before we get our deposit back. We can't afford to throw away good money, you know."
Instead of wasting even more time with a verbal reply, Lilly stormed back toward the door with her arms full of a child who carried an unfortunate scent about him - Daisy followed closely behind clutching her tiny suitcase. On Lilly's way past the sideboard, she eyed the car keys in the reed basket next to a miniature bottle of gin and a bag of roasted peanuts. She grabbed the keys without bothering to look at her husband.
"Well, I've never!" Herbert said and threw his arms in the air once more.
---
Outside, Lilly came to a dead stop - Matteo and Valentina were less than sixty yards away and heading directly for the motel room. The ghoulish siblings let out roars of joy at the sight which in turn made Daisy and little Herbie break out in horrified screams.
Lilly clenched her jaw and tore around the rear of the station wagon. She needed to shift the wiggling, screaming boy to her left, injured, arm so she had her right hand free for the keys. Having done so, the violent trembling that permeated her entire body nearly made it impossible for her to work the lock, but good fortune smiled upon her for long enough to get the driver's side door open - the children had soon been shoved onto the bench seat up front.
"Herbert!" she cried at the top of her lungs while staring at the hideous, grotesque ghouls coming ever closer. "Herbert! Herbert! Please! Herbert!"
When her cries seemed to have no effect, she jumped behind the wheel and twisted the ignition key. A quick prayer was sent heavenward, and somebody listened as the engine caught on the first attempt.
Herbert finally came out to stand in the doorway. He initially carried all three of their leather suitcases, but put one of them down to obtain a better balance. "Quite frankly, this is intolerable. We need to have a serious conversation about this," he said as he moved around to the rear of the Townsman intending to open the station wagon's rear gate.
As he put down the suitcases, his peripheral vision caught a glimpse of something unusual and surreal coming toward him. Looking in that direction, his eyes flew wide open as they took in the full extent of the nightmarish scene. He tried to cry out but couldn't - instead, he just stood there all agape like a full-sized cardboard standee for Halloween.
"Get in! Get in, for the love of God!" Lilly yelled as she looked over her shoulder.
The cry - and the sight of the shiny meat cleaver and carving knife wielded by the ghouls - finally convinced Herbert to move fast. Letting go of the suitcases, he tore the lower part of the rear gate down, dove under the window and flung himself into the back of the Chevrolet. "Go! Go! Get out of here! Drive!" he roared while he clung onto the rear side of the second row of seats.
Lilly selected reverse and slammed her foot onto the gas. The large, lumbering Townsman did what was asked of it, but it had never been intended for fast getaways so everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The expensive leather suitcases were knocked aside as the rear wheels found traction on the wet and slippery parking lot. Soon, the vehicle went backward with the lower part of the rear gate wide open.
Up ahead, Valentina roared and pulled her arm back. A moment later, the meat cleaver hurtled through the air on a direct collision course with the car's hood. Although the throw had been a powerful one, the station wagon had gained enough speed to make the instrument of death literally come up short.
While Matteo let the world know of his frustrations through a lengthy blue streak filled with plenty of juicy four-letter words in English and Italian, Valentina fell down on all fours and entered a state of raw, pure aggression that saw her pounding her bloody fists onto the paved parking lot.
A good distance away from the murderous siblings, Lilly stood on the brake pedal which made the Townsman come to a screeching, rocking halt. "Is everyone all right?!" she cried in a trembling voice.
When Daisy and little Herbie nodded at her in tandem - both were unharmed but tearful and white as sheets - she turned around to wave her hand at her husband. "Herbert, close it! Close the tailgate! We can't drive like that! The exhaust fumes will make us sick!"
In the back, Herbert shuffled around and tried to grab hold of the inside of the lower gate, but there was nothing he could latch onto to pull it shut. "I can't… dammit, I can't- wait, I'll crawl out and do it from the outside-"
Lilly suddenly sensed they weren't safe yet - she craned her neck to look across the parking lot. Exactly as she had feared, the ghoulish siblings had seen the vehicle come to a stop and had taken off running to intercept their prey.
"There's no time for that!" Lilly said and pulled the gear selector into drive. The moment she heard the transmission responding with the loud clunk that indicated one of the two forward gears had been chosen, she mashed her foot onto the gas once more sending the large station wagon speeding across the empty parking lot.
Aiming for the rural road that would take them away from the outpost of Hell, she had time to eye the Hermes International delivery van and the dark-gray Ford sedan that had belonged to the religious family. Strong shivers swept all over her body as her mind revisited the horrors she had witnessed - and the even greater horrors that would have occurred if the ghouls had caught her.
The turn onto the two-lane road was taken on screeching, squealing tires as the unwieldy Townsman wrestled with gravity. Just like in the movies, one of the left-hand hubcaps went rattling across the road and into the undergrowth on the far side of the opposite lane.
Lilly couldn't care less about that. As she kept her foot planted on the gas pedal, she didn't care about forfeiting their deposit or even leaving the baby stroller, their suitcases and all their travel clothes behind - in fact, the only luggage that had been saved was Daisy's polka-dotted, doll-sized suitcase, and she was grateful no harm had come to it.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror as they raced along the difficult, winding road. The tall sign welcoming weary travelers to Rizzato's Motel & Cafeteria faded fast as did the two figures who had come out to stand on the grassy verge below the sign. Valentina's blood-soaked tunic resembled a beacon of light in the early-morning gloom.
The mirror was soon given a shove so it wouldn't reflect the past. Lilly kept her eyes glued onto the road ahead that represented their future. The horrific experience would be the catalyst for a great deal of changes in their lives, she knew that for a fact. That was for later.
She, her children and her husband were alive, and that was all that mattered.
*
*
THE END of RIZZATO'S MOTEL & CAFETERIA
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*
*
RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME
Fallen leaves and other miscellaneous lightweight debris swirled across the near-empty city street at the mercy of a steady breeze that whistled a cheerful little ditty while it worked. The breeze's apparent joy wasn't shared by the few people out airing their pets as everyone had folded up the collar of their coats or jackets to stay warm.
Although the day had been nice and sunny, if on the chilly side, the lateness of the hour meant that the evening of October 31st had turned dark like every other day since the creation of Planet Earth.
The street was quiet save for the inevitable mish-mash of sounds that wafted through the air in any major city: the hum of traffic, the shrill wailing of distant sirens and the ubiquitous knocks, thumps and bumps that everyone could hear but nobody could explain.
Deep in the dark shadows of an alley, a pair of brownish eyes observed an unhappy pet-owner dragging an even unhappier Poodle along the sidewalk so they could get back inside where it would be warm and pleasant.
The brownish eyes belonged to a large, mid-thirty-something individual clad in black from top to toe. The individual wore second-hand marching boots and a hand-dyed coverall that was so threadbare the person needed to watch out when bending, stretching or even merely breaking wind.
The pair of gloves were a little too tight for the width of the person's hands, but the advertisement boasted they could withstand 600 degrees Fahrenheit for half a minute which literally made the wearer cool - not that such an attribute would be of any use on this particular midnight job.
Up top, a knitted ski mask covered the entire face save for a pair of circular holes. As always, the mask refused to line up with the wearer's eyes giving the large individual a grotesque appearance akin to what Dr. Jekyll's infamous alter ego Mr. Hyde would look like coming off a four-day bender.
'Dude, it stinks like an effin' sewer in here!' a young, female voice whispered somewhere behind the large individual.
Conrad Ballard let out a sigh. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around the handles of the black bag at his feet. "That's generally how it smells when people piss up against the walls."
A loud cry of "Ewwwwwwwww!" burst out of Janeane McClure who shared her cousin's type of clothes down to the boots, the hand-dyed coverall, the gloves and the ski mask - and she'd had no better luck in making it line up properly at the eyes. At a mere twenty-one years of age, her more experienced colleagues considered her wet behind the ears, but she was in fact a seven-year veteran of shady, late-night activities.
Conrad spun around and gave the younger woman a small shove. "Will ya stick a sock in it! People are gonna notice us!"
"Oh yeah? And who the hell would that be, cuzz? We're the only ones here!"
The words had barely left Janeane's mouth before a white-and-green taxi cab drove past out on the street.
"Told ya," Conrad said in a surly tone. Before Janeane had time to make another snappy comeback, the taller, older but not exactly wiser of the shady individuals hunched over and took off in a jog.
---
The black-clad duo soon jogged across all four lanes of the city street. Once the opposite sidewalk had been reached, they carried on at regular walking pace so they wouldn't attract too much attention to themselves. They needed to walk past a furniture store, two clothes boutiques, a thrift shop and an all-night pizza parlor before they would reach the building they were aiming for.
Conrad came to an abrupt halt causing Janeane to bump into him.
A grumbled comment of "Now effin' what?" was uttered by the young lady. She reached up to adjust the typically misaligned ski mask with little success. The knitted fabric had twisted around to the point where part of her right ear was visible - this, of course, left her eyes in the proverbial and literal dark.
"Trick-or-treaters," Conrad said over his shoulder.
"They got any candy? If they do, let's rob 'em. The dutchie I smoked on our way over here gave me the munchies."
Conrad sighed and rolled his eyes behind his mask - it made for an even more bizarre sight than the earlier look of Mister-Hyde-on-a-Bender. "Can't. They got chaperones. Real battle-axes."
"Eff. They probably got tazers or some other nasty self-defense shit."
The group of five pre-teens who had just come out of an apartment complex further down the street were indeed accompanied by three adults: two middle-aged women and a younger man - the latter's slender build making him seem like a poorly-drawn stick figure next to the formidable Amazonic fighting force.
"Crap, they're coming this way!" Conrad said through a clenched jaw. "Okay… okay. Don't panic. We got this."
"Who's pani-"
"Shaddup and act cool! Here they come…"
Just to show they were in fact related by blood, Janeane rolled her eyes in the exact same fashion that Conrad had employed only a short minute earlier. Once that had been accomplished, she folded up the ski mask to reveal her button-cute looks, rosy cheeks and sparkling, brownish eyes.
A broad smile spread over her features as the trick-or-treaters and their chaperones walked past going in the other direction. "Hiya. Love ya costumes," she said as she eyed a robot, a washing machine, a sunflower, a Wonder Woman and one of Pac Man's purple ghosts walking past them.
The male chaperone just kept staring at his telephone, but the two middle-aged women - who both wore Amazonic leathers and feathers - smiled back at Janeane before they sent dark glares in Conrad's direction for dressing up like a common crook for Halloween.
"Are they gone?" Conrad whispered over his shoulder.
"Yup. That went well. They won't suspect a thing."
"Good. Okay. The bank's another seventy yards up the street. Let's go." Not wasting a moment waiting for an affirmative reply, Conrad took off at a pace usually reserved for either claiming the final table at a fast food restaurant - or the final bathroom stall.
"Sure thing, cuzz. Dude, this Halloween job is sooooo exciting," Janeane said and rolled her eyes again.
-*-*-*-
When they arrived at the building they had been aiming for, a large sign bolted onto the brick wall said it was home to Kim Son Park's Authentic Korean Delicacies.
Janeane folded up her ski mask once more to have room to scratch her nose. "Wow. Those banking folks sure are clever. Nobody is ever gonna believe this is a bank."
"That's because it ain't, you damn pothead!" Conrad growled before he unzipped the threadbare coverall down to half-mast; his fingers accidentally poking several holes in the tattered fabric while he searched for the map he knew was in there somewhere.
"Ohhh… that's even cleverer."
Conrad finally found the map of the city. Though bought for $1.99 at a gas station, it did in fact have a fairly high degree of accuracy when it came to the layout of the streets in the area. "Okay… hmmm… okay…" he said as he turned the map around several times to find the right spot.
Interested in adding her two cents' worth to the search, Janeane shuffled over to her cousin and peeked at the map. "Dude, are we lost or something? I thought you said you knew how to read the-"
"Shaddup. We're not lost. I just need to concentrate. Okay… the bank's on Eighty-third Street. Where are we?"
"How the hell should I know? Eff, we really are lost, aren't we?"
"No. No, we're not lost. This is just a minor setback," Conrad said, rubbing his brow. The gesture pulled his ski mask askew which in turn caused the holes for the eyes rotating around to cover his nose and right ear. "Aw… shit… who turned off the lights?"
"Gee, I dunno, cuzz," Janeane said and put her hands on her hips. "We're lost. Call the boss and tell him."
"The hell I will! If you wanna talk to him, you call him!"
Janeane kept standing with her hands on her hips for a few moments longer before she reached into her coverall and whipped out a telephone. "Fine. The boss doesn't make me crap my shorts unlike some here. Yeah?"
The number was soon found and selected. A few rings went by before a connection was established. "Hiya, boss. This is your favorite employee- yeah, that's right. Listen, me and my pal here have kinda ended up in the wrong place- yeah, I already told him, boss. Yeah. I told him that, too, boss. Yeah. But anyway, it looks like the deal on Eighty-third Street is a bust. It's not all bad 'cos we found a Korean deli. You want someth- yeah, I know it's almost midnight. So you don't want anyth- okay, boss."
Janeane suddenly noticed that Conrad had moved away from her. Turning around several times to see where he had gone, she found him standing in front of a building across the street. When they made eye contact, he waved at her. "Boss, I need to run. Looks like my pal found something worth my time. Yeah, I know… but I guess there's a first for everything, right? Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell him, boss. Bye."
After the connection had been closed and the telephone stored inside the coverall, Janeane jogged back across the four-lane street to catch up with her cousin. She had barely made it there when her eyes fell on the row of two-feet-tall block letters attached to the side of the building: Pembrook Heights Loans & Savings Bank.
"Dude! You found it! Way to go, cuzz!" she said and slapped a gloved hand onto her cousin's back.
"I'm not as dumb as this mask makes me look," Conrad said in a surly tone.
Janeane grinned. "I never said you were. Well, maybe a couple of times… by the way, Dad says hi."
"Nice. Let's get to work. Back door," Conrad said and picked up the black bag that contained all the tools of their nefarious trade.
---
The bank's rear entrance was a simple wooden door equipped with a frosted pane. Smashing the glass would have been the quickest and easiest way in, but it would have created far too much noise in the relatively quiet neighborhood. Conrad's set of picklocks took care of the old-fashioned lock in no time flat which produced the same results with far less racket.
The black-clad burglars found themselves in a small storage room that featured a linoleum floor and bare walls. Stacks of cardboard boxes that almost reached the ceiling took up most of the floorspace. A narrow table carrying a coffee machine and an electrical kettle had been crammed in between two stacks of boxes.
The wall above the narrow table was graced by a flip-over calendar that featured an image of a forest in all its autumnal glory. Fat, red squares had been drawn around the 29th, the 30th and the 31st of October on the calendar itself as if those three days held some kind of special importance - someone had even underscored the squares and added an abundance of red exclamation points.
Janeane scratched her neck as she looked at the calendar. "I don't get it… what's so special about-"
"Who cares. Come on," Conrad said in a strong whisper as he grabbed hold of Janeane's coverall. "The safe deposit boxes are in the basement. I checked the motion sensors and the cameras… they're off like the boss said they would be."
"Neat. So where's the basement?"
"Downstairs."
"Clever. Okay, lead on," Janeane said and tip-toed across the storage room's smooth floor.
---
The wooden panel door separating the storage facility from the main room of the Pembrook Heights Loans & Savings Bank was unlocked, so it failed to pose any kind of problem for the experienced Conrad.
Everything was dark and quiet as the black-clad duo sneaked across a silver-gray carpet in their quest to find the staircase that led to the safe deposit boxes downstairs. Save for a few plastic palm trees that had been placed seemingly at random, the bank's main room was a bare-bones affair. A coffee vending machine took up a stretch of the far wall, but it had been turned off for the night.
Conrad defeated the darkness by turning on a powerful flashlight. Naught point two seconds later, he defeated the silence as well through a series of howls, cries, thumps, bumps and whumps that seemed to fade out as he became intimately acquainted with the design features of the deep, winding staircase located in the middle of the dark room.
"You found it at the first attempt, dude! Way to go!" Janeane said and hurried down the many steps. When she reached the black-clad lump of arms and legs at the bottom of the staircase, she couldn't hold back a series of snickers.
Conrad had ended up against another panel door. His rear-end was up top, his face was mashed against the carpet on the bottom landing, and his legs were spread so wide that the fabric of his coverall had been ripped apart at the juncture.
The flashlight had gone out, but Janeane picked it up and gave it a good shaking to make it come alive again. Holding it under her chin, she contorted her face into a proper display of Halloween-horror. "Rahhhhhh! I am your worrrrrst nightmare!" she said before she let out another round of snickers.
"Yeah, and that ain't even no lie," Conrad said as he fumbled around to get back on his feet.
"Awwww… hey, you kinda busted your jumpsuit, cuzz. Your shorts are showing. At least you're wearing shorts…"
"Shaddup. Let's try to be professionals, okay? We're almost there." Picking up the bag of tools, he reached into it to get his set of picklocks.
"Whatever, dude," Janeane said as she peeked past her cousin's shoulder to keep up with his progress.
-*-*-*-
The panel door offered little resistance and was soon swung open. As efficient as ever, the sneaky duo entered a small room that housed the bank's countless safe deposit boxes.
Designed as a perfect cube, the room's floor and ceiling were covered in white tiles which gave it a sterile look. Three of the room's four walls held a dizzying array of identical rectangular boxes that each contained a removable tray. The hatches protecting the boxes were all equipped with two locks and a small label listing the serial number.
Security cameras had been installed in all four upper corners to cover every square inch of the cube, but the lack of red lights on the plastic bases indicated that the cameras had been turned off.
Conrad came to a halt in the middle of the floor. A positive grunt escaped him as he rolled up his ski mask to get a better look at the hundreds of deposit boxes. The room was too dark to see much, so he reached for the flashlight only to remember Janeane still had it.
Turning to retrieve it, he let out a sigh at Janeane's antics - it seemed the age-old party game of holding the flashlight under one's chin while shuffling hither and yon like a mindless zombie was still considered hilarious in certain younger circles. "Quit goofing around and gimme that flashlight, you pothead. I can't see a damn thing over here!"
"Dude! You forgot to take your effin' chill-pills, cuzz," Janeane said before she handed over the flashlight to her impatient relative.
The cone of light soon moved across the many hatches on a quest to find a group of special boxes. Only the rightful owners knew what a majority of them contained, but Conrad had a note in his pocket that listed the contents of five of them.
The first, number 699, was soon found, but the remaining four proved elusive. He reached into the black bag to find a felt pen that he used to add a fluorescent-green X on the hatch so they could find it again. "Janeane, get over here," he said as he threw the pen back into the bag. "Look for the boxes numbered one-three-nine, three-two-seven, four-four-seven and eight-one-eight."
"Uh… wha'?"
A long sigh escaped Conrad; another following hot on the heels of the first one. "You need to look for the boxes numbered one-three-nine," he said in a monotone as if he was explaining it to a very young child, "three-two-seven, four-four-seven and eight-one-eight."
Janeane scratched her neck a couple of times but eventually shrugged and shuffled off to her left to begin the search at the start. "Okay, one-three-seven-"
"No, one-three-nine!"
"Whazzat?"
"One-three-nine, you fool!"
"You watch your effin' mouth!"
Conrad rolled his eyes several times before he barged past Janeane to take over her section of the search. "Never mind! I'll do it. Look for one of the other boxes."
"Sure. Okay. I can do that. And they were?"
"For cryin' out loud… three-two-seven. Four-four-seven. Eight-one-eight."
"Thanks. That wasn't so hard, was it?" Janeane said and used the darkness to stick out her tongue and thumb her nose at her older cousin. Applying a little mental logic suggested that eight-one-eight would be somewhere off to the right, so she shuffled over there to begin her search for the box.
---
All five had been located and marked with a fluorescent-green X by the time a nearby church bell struck midnight. Janeane checked her telephone that read one minute past the hour. "Hallo-weeeeeeen is heeeeeeere," she said in a screechy voice that she tried to modulate into sounding just like her horror-movie favorites.
Conrad had no time for Halloween or Janeane's antics. Reaching into the black bag, he produced a battery-operated power drill that he held close to the lock on box number 327. Before he had time to bore out the first of the two locks, a loud and sudden bump was heard from upstairs. Though the sound wasn't repeated, the black-clad duo froze in place and stood stock-still for several, age-long seconds.
"Oh… eff…" Janeane croaked as she whipped her head around to look at the open door to the staircase. She continued to hold the flashlight so Conrad could see where to aim the drill bit - not paying any attention to the cone of light, it ended up in her cousin's face making him slap a hand over his eyes.
"Point that damn thing somewhere else! Great… now I'm seeing stars all over the-"
"Didn't you hear that bump?" Janeane said in a croaking whisper.
"Yeah, but it only happened once… c'mon, let's get the job done-"
THUMP-BUMP-BA-DA-BUMP-THUMP!
"Now! It! Happened! Twice! Eff!"
"Ohhhhh-shit… cops," Conrad said and spun around. The would-be bank robbers held their breaths to hear if a security guard or beat cop would descend the stairs, but nothing happened - save for a collection of creaks, whines, moans, groans, bumps and distant rattling of chains, everything fell quiet once more. "Go upstairs and check it out," he whispered into Janeane's ear.
The nasal screech that burst out of Janeane would have made a South American Howler-monkey proud. "Me?! Why me? You go upstairs and check it out! You're bigger and badder and way more scary!"
"Yeah, and I'm also the brains of this team. You're expendable!"
Clamming up, Janeane sent her cousin such a dark glare it was a miracle he even remained standing. "I'm gonna tell Dad you said that!" she said and poked a finger into Conrad's chest. "Ohhhh, effin' hell… you won't shut up until I do it, will ya?"
"No."
"Eff…"
Janeane tip-toed over to the door to the staircase. She had only just finished watching an episode of CSI so she knew exactly how to deal with the weird situation. First, she made herself inconspicuous by pressing herself flat against the room's fourth wall; then she peeked past the corner and up the staircase. No cops there. Then she crouched down to look at it from a different, lower angle. No cops there, either.
Grinning, she sent Conrad a big thumbs-up before she hurried around the doorjamb and stepped up onto the lowest rung. Her eyes went on a quick tour of the empty staircase before she dared to move onto the steps above her. She inched upward step by step until she reached the upper room. The bumps, creaks and rattles were much clearer up there though none of it had any visible origin.
A dark shadow raced past on the outer fringes of Janeane's peripheral vision. She whipped her head in that direction but was too slow to pick up any details. Even as she stared at the plastic palm trees and some of the bank's typical furniture, the dark shadow raced past her once more. She whipped her head in the other direction but was still too slow.
The classic noises of someone moaning and groaning while dragging a ball and rattling chains reached her ears. An owl or another type of nocturnal bird hooted up on the roof of the building. Heavy breathing and distant screaming. Limping footfalls. More moans and groans. Each time one of the noises reached her, she whipped her head around to look for the thing that could produce such a sound.
The dark shadow continued to race past just beyond Janeane's vision. When it couldn't get any kind of reaction out of the interloper, it stopped its activity and settled for hovering in mid-air.
Janeane scratched her neck. Moments later, a whiff of mildew, sulfur and rotten eggs wafted past her nostrils. "Ewwww… who farted?" she said out loud to the dark room - when she didn't get an answer, she broke out in a shrug and inched back down the staircase.
'See anyone up there?' Conrad asked before Janeane had made it all the way down.
"No. The coast is clear. I heard plenty of trick-or-treaters out on the street, though. They musta had an awesome candy-score 'cos they had one helluva party going on. What's the deal down here?"
Conrad handed Janeane the flashlight before he turned back to the box numbered 327. "Shaddup and hold the damn light. It's high time we got this show on the road."
"Yeah, yeah… sheesh, cuzz. Eat a cookie, whydontcha?"
Conrad and Janeane wasted another couple of seconds shooting dark glares at each other. Then Conrad activated the power drill and proceeded to work on the first lock on the deposit box.
-*-*-*-
"Okay, that's the last one done. Eight-one-eight," he said seventeen minutes and thirty-two seconds later. After shoving the empty tray back into the hole in the wall, he wiped his damp brow on his sleeve. Unfortunately, the beads of sweat caused some of the fresh dye they had used to darken the threadbare coveralls to transfer itself onto his forehead leaving a black smudge reaching from one eyebrow to the other. "So… what we got?"
Janeane sat cross-legged on the floor with stacks of documents and dollar bills in front of her. She fluffed out a plastic garbage bag that she stuffed all the money into. "Just shy of three grand in total, dude. That's… let me see… that's… hmmm… shoot, that's… ah… seventy-five bucks for each of us once Daddy gets his share. Not bad for a couple of hours' work. I think I'll blow it all on candy and raspberry fizzes."
"Think again," Conrad said and shook his head. "Don't forget who owns these deposit boxes. We don't want 'em to trace it back to us. No, the boss gets it all this time."
"Dude… bye-bye candy rush…"
"Yeah," Conrad continued as he crouched down. He put a gloved hand on the documents to underscore his words: "Here's the real prize. Their value is far greater than a measly three grand. Hey… wait a minute… four stacks… five deposit boxes! They were supposed to be kept separate, you pothead! You did remember that, right?"
"Oh, sure. Sure. Chill, cuzz," Janeane said and waved her hand dismissively. "I'm positive. No, I did. I definitely did. Yeah. Look, dude… five stacks," she continued as she lifted a random wad of documents off one of the stacks and put them on the floor next to the others.
Conrad and Janeane eyed each other for a short moment before Conrad shrugged and reached into their black tool-bag to retrieve five manila folders. The all-important documents were soon safe in the large bag.
Another series of rattles, clunks, thumps, bumps and groans suddenly wafted down the staircase. Somewhere, someone started wailing - deep, heartfelt and tragic sobs and cries soon overpowering all the other sounds. After a brief while, the sobs gained a growly, guttural undertone that hinted at some kind of metamorphosis going on. As the crying developed into something more eerie, the temperature dropped like a rock in the small box room at the foot of the stairs.
"Wow, would ya listen to that," Janeane said as she got to her feet. "I'll bet some poor sap just dropped their bag of candy into a dog shit or something."
Conrad grabbed hold of the black bag's handles and held it tight against his chest. "Don't know and don't care. C'mon, we're done here."
"I hear ya, cuzz. Lead on," Janeane said as she swung the plastic garbage bag containing the money over her shoulder. Two seconds later, the last of the dollar bills fluttered back onto the while tiles on the floor - a large and unsighted tear in the plastic bag having given the Benjamin Franklins and the rest a perfect escape route.
Janeane stared at the pile of cash on the floor. Then she looked up at Conrad. Then she stared at the pile of cash on the floor. Then she stared at the tear in the plastic bag. Then she let out a sigh. A mumbled "Effin' hell," escaping her as she knelt next to the money. After scooping everything back up, she stuffed it into the pockets of her coverall to make sure it wouldn't make another run for freedom.
It was obvious by the sour look on Conrad's face that he wanted to let his inner feelings be known through a choice selection of four-letter words, but he settled for giving Janeane a shove in the back when she shuffled past him.
"Ouch! Watch it, dude," Janeane said as she walked up the stairs. "You're effin' asking for it! Don't forget I'm wearing boots and you got a tear in your suit right at your-"
"Can it! I told ya to quit goofing around, you pothead," Conrad said in a hoarse whisper. The progress was too slow for his liking, so he shoved Janeane again to get her to move faster.
Janeane let out a mumbled "Yeah, yeah… effin' hell…" as she made her way up to the top of the staircase. She had barely set foot on the silver-gray carpet in the bank's main room before she drew a deep gasp and came to a full stop.
"Whoa… whoa… whoa… these… aren't… trick-or-treaters… whoa!" she said in a thick croak as she took in the bizarre goings-on inside the hitherto calm and quiet Pembrook Heights Loans & Savings Bank.
After the hands of time had moved into the witching hour on Halloween Eve, the main room had turned into a colorful and surprisingly authentic reproduction of the latest Ghouls Rulz fan convention - not just for one, five or even ten of the ectoplasmic beings and their corporeal, monstrous friends, but for dozens if not scores of creatures large and small.
Some were tiny and cute; others were huge and frightening. Some continued to resemble the human beings they had once been; others had been transmorphed into creatures so hideous that their reflections could shatter glass. Some were pinpoints of light that zipped around at great speed; others were more static and settled for dragging their feet or the classic combination of a ball and chain.
One grumpy-looking, ghostly fellow stood out among the rest: he wore a night cap and a sleeping gown while carrying a porcelain chamber pot as if he had been struck dead when he had been up for a late-night whizz.
"Ho… ly… eff!" Janeane croaked as she took in the gruesome sight. She whipped her head around time and time again, but there was no reprieve no matter where she looked. None of the ghosts or bizarre creatures seemed to have noticed the living specimens who walked among them. To keep it that way, she tried to blend in with the background.
A big thump from behind made her jump on tip-toes, flail her arms and let out a high-pitched squeal. Though she feared the ghost of Jack The Leatherfaced Slasher From Crystal Lake had caught up with her to add her peeled-off face to his trophy cabinet, it turned out to be Conrad who had given her yet another shove in the back.
"Move your ass! Hustle! We gotta get outta here!" Conrad barked from somewhere behind the petrified Janeane.
"Yeah… yeah… get out… yeah," Janeane croaked as she staggered toward the rear entrance they had used to get in. She only made it a few paces in that direction before she came to another halt to stare at a specter of a seven-foot tall pirate captain whose larger-than-death flamboyancy took up so much space that the doorway was completely blocked. The pirate held a flintlock pistol in his right hand and a cutlass in his left - the blade whooshing through the air at such speed it seemed to create sparks.
"Eff that! No… no, deffa- deffi- deffer- definitely not g- going that wa- way… we… the… buh… main… entrance. Now!"
Struck mute for once, Conrad could only nod frantically to show that he agreed.
They moved fast and were soon at the glass double-doors that led to Eighty-third Street. Freedom awaited them no more than five feet away, but the next problem presented itself at once: Janeane looked high, low and everywhere in between for any kind of door handle she could use. "What the eff is this crock of shit now? I must be going blind… where's the effin' handle?!" she said while pressing her index fingers against her forehead in an attempt to make her brainwaves achieve a greater degree of oscillation.
"That's because it's a sliding door, fool! Quick, look for a manual release or-"
"What I tell ya about calling me that? Huh? Huh?! Didn't I tell ya to knock it off with that fool thing? I'm pretty effin' sure I did!"
"Shaddup and find that-"
"Don't tell me to shaddup! You shaddup! How we can both come from the same family tree is effin' beyond me…"
Conrad shot his younger colleague a dark, scathing look that could have stripped paint straight off even an unpainted surface. The fruitless search for a manual release continued for such a long time - and at such an impressive volume when it came to inventive swearing - that some of the bank's ghoulish visitors began paying attention to the world beyond their own realm.
It wasn't long before the first changed its steady routines to shuffle over to the main entrance and the two humans. Chamber Pot Guy and the one dragging a ball and chains soon followed. Within moments, the ectoplasmic beings and their freaky friends were lined up four-deep observing the frantic attempts at finding the door handle.
Ahhrrrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhhhhrrrrrrrr! Whoosh!
"Whazzat?" Janeane said as she crawled around on the silver-gray carpet to find the level controlling the manual release.
"Huh?"
Janeane rolled her eyes. "What. Did. You. Say?"
"I didn't say anything! Just find that damn-"
Ahhhhhhrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhrrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhhhhrrrrrrr! Whoosh!
"Well, someone sure is sayin' something!" Janeane said and crabbed around to get a better view - a second later, the look upon her face told a tale of wishing she hadn't. A croaking "Awwwwww-eff!" escaped her as she craned her neck to take in all seven feet of the ghost of the pirate captain that had somehow managed to sneak up on them despite its massive size.
The burly pirate was a mix of the height and breadth of Long John Silver - minus the peg leg - and the untamed ferocity of Blackbeard. His eyes were deep pools of fire and it appeared that tiny devil men frolicked in his wild beard. An entire stuffed goose rather than a mere handful of feathers adorned his traditional three-pointed hat; his cutlass continued to draw sparks as it whooshed through the air.
Another Ahhrrrrr! Ahhhhhhrrrrrrrr! burst out of the frightening creature; the blade was put through several practice swings as if he was fine-tuning his aim for a game of Bouncy Heads later down the line.
When Janeane realized they were surrounded by an entire regiment of supernatural beings, she forgot all about finding the lever. Instead, she grabbed hold of her cousin's threadbare coverall. "Cuzz-"
"Ease up, will ya… you're gonna tear-"
"Cuzz -"
"Will ya let go, for cryin' out loud! And quit yappin'! We need to find that-"
Ahhhhhhrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhrrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhhhhrrrrrrr! Whoosh!
"Cuzz!"
"I said-"
Ahhrrrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhhhhrrrrrrrr! Whoosh!
"Conrad! Shaddup and look! We're in trouble… ohhhhh-boy, we're in a whole effin' heap of trouble!"
Sighing, Conrad turned around to discover for himself what had Janeane so frazzled. He had barely clapped eyes on the pirate's boots, purple-and-gold pants, huge belly, red coat, leather bandolier, wild beard and burning eyes before he grabbed Janeane by the shoulders and yanked her away from the main entrance.
"Hoooooooly eff!" Janeane cried as she was pushed across the bank's main room en route to the rear entrance. A second before she and her cousin could reach it, the pirate captain materialized directly in front of them swinging his blade with barely hidden glee.
Off to the side, Chamber Pot Guy seemed to find it all rather amusing - he even began to clap at the entertainment which wasn't easy considering what he held in his ghostly hands.
"Ohhhhhhh-bogeyman! Effidy eff! Can't get out that way!" Janeane croaked as she came to a screeching halt.
Conrad grabbed hold of Janeane's shoulders once more. Though she tried to shrug his hands off her, he was relentless and soon yanked her in another direction altogether. "Quick! Over to the counter!"
"What the hell good will that do?!" Janeane cried while she tried to comply with the somewhat impolite request.
"We gotta trigger the alarm!"
Janeane reached the regular counter at high speed; she vaulted over it with surprising grace and landed on her booted feet just inside the cubicle used by the bank tellers. "You wanna what?!" she howled the moment she spun around. "The hell for? Then the cops gonna show up and arrest our asses! And Daddy's gonna be real pissed!"
"Shaddup!" Conrad roared as he clambered over the top of the counter; he was far less agile than his younger relative and thus had a great deal of trouble persuading his rear end to come along for the ride.
"Don't tell me to shaddup! You shaddup! Ohhhhhh-eff! Here comes the Cap'n! Duck!" Janeane cried and grabbed hold of her cousin's ruined coverall - a lengthy Rrrrrrip! proved she tore yet another hole in the fabric.
Ahhhhhhrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhrrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhhhhrrrrrrr! Whoosh!
The pirate ghost was hot on Conrad's heels, but the older of the two bank robbers eventually managed to get his entire frame down onto the floor behind the counter without having his tail feathers singed.
The Chamber Pot Guy had found himself a good spot over by the coffee vending machine next to one of the plastic palm trees. The maniacal cackle he let out proved he found it most amusing.
Ahhrrrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhhhhrrrrrrrr! Whoosh!
Conrad was forced to duck several times in a row: first for the actual swings of the cutlass and then for the showers of otherworldly sparks that followed. During one of the evasive maneuvers, he spotted the hidden alarm button installed on the floor beneath the counter - he slammed his boot onto it the next time he was down there.
Ahhhhhhrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhrrrr! Whoosh! Ahhhhhhrrrrrrr! Whoosh!
Although the motion sensors and the cameras in the basement had been turned off by an employee - whose pockets had been lined by plenty of green dollar bills - some of the standard security features could not be disabled.
At the triggering of the alarm button, a warning light began to flash above the bank's main entrance to inform the public of the robbery in progress. Inside, three smoke cannons ignited at once which created a massive, impenetrable cloud that billowed through the entire main room and even down into the basement.
To cap it all off, a barrage of white noise and random electronic sounds burst out of several hidden speakers to create severe interference for the robbers in case they were in radio contact with each other, or listening to a police scanner to monitor the law's progress.
"Ohhhhh-effin' eff!" Janeane cried as she rolled herself into a ball down on the floor of the bank teller's cubicle. She clapped her hands over her ears to block out the electronic plingety-pling-plongs and plongety-plong-plings that reverberated around the room. "Way to go, cuzz! Nobody ever gonna suspect a thing now!"
"Shaddup!"
"You shaddup! I'm gonna tell Daddy you're the one who screwed up!"
Conrad let out an angry growl as he inched upward to see what their ethereal opponents were doing. The pirate captain had broken off his attack and conferred with the fellow dragging the ball and chain while Mr. Chamber Pot kept to himself in the background - to a being, the ghosts and creatures were unaffected by the smoke and the noises.
"Damn," Conrad mumbled as he slipped back down onto the floor.
As the electronic warfare reached the end of its pre-recorded pattern and started over, Janeane crabbed over to her relative and held her mouth next to his ear. "Are the cops here yet?"
"No," Conrad said, shaking his head in case Janeane couldn't hear him.
"And the ghosts?"
"They haven't left."
"Shit."
Janeane tapped her fingers on the nearest smooth surface. That was only fun for a few seconds; then she inched upward to see what went on with their 'friends' from the other side. A croaking, smoke-affected "Wha'?" escaped her when she realized the ghosts were fading out just as she observed them.
The pirate captain in particular didn't seem too pleased with leaving the party before the rum and the trays of finger food had been served - looking frustrated, he let his cutlass do the talking. As it whooshed through the smoke-filled air, hundreds of golden, glittery sparks followed in its wake. Soon, even that colorful spectacle had been consigned to the history books.
The surprising sight prompted Janeane to give her head a fair shaking. When the familiar flashing of red-and-blue emergency lights suddenly appeared through the glass windbreak at the main entrance, she jumped up onto the counter at once. "It's the fuzz, cuzz! If we hustle out the back door, we can still make a run for it," she said before she jumped down onto the silver-gray carpet.
Conrad peeked over the counter's edge at once. A grunt escaped him as he clambered over it and made a beeline for the rear entrance. On his way there, he snatched the black bag of tricks that contained the five manila folders - then he sprinted toward the wooden door that would take them to the storage room and ultimately the back alley.
"Eff, yeah!" Janeane cried somewhere in the murky, foggy conditions inside the bank. She raced through the inner door, past the countless cardboard boxes in the storage room and out into the rear courtyard.
All they needed to do was to get rid of the ridiculous coveralls, find the street where they had left their car, and drive home to Daddy with the loot - it was an easy-peasy list of tasks that any fool could accomplish.
"Freedom! Freedom!" she said as she punched the air. Her next cry turned into a comically strangled "Free-d'ohhhhhh…" as she clapped eyes on a pair of plainclothes police Detectives who waited for them with their service pistols drawn and ready to fire.
Coming to a halt in the middle of the rear courtyard, Janeane threw her arms in the air. Not only did the gesture create two large tears in the coveralls from her armpits to her waist, it sent several stacks of dollar bills fluttering out of her pockets and onto the ground. She looked down at the green bills; then she glanced at the plainclothes officers who were already waving their metal handcuffs.
She opened her mouth to add a quip to the somewhat humorless situation when she was rudely interrupted by a booming, otherworldly laugh that wafted out of the bank's rear entrance. Still reaching skyward, she inched around to glare at the door to the pitch-black storage room; somewhere in the far distance, she thought she could see the pirate captain's creepy pools of fire staring back at her.
Another booming laugh followed a moment later. The last echoes of their over-sized sea-farin' opponent were accompanied by the familiar whooshing of the cutlass and the tinkling of golden sparks.
"Figures. Right place… wrong effin' time. Dude, I need to hit the weed… hey, cuzz?"
"Yeah?"
"I'll give Mom your regards when I meet her in the slammer. Okay?"
"Sure. Thanks."
"You're welcome. Yeah. Kinda looking forward to the family reunion. Maybe she can teach me the second verse of The Chain Gang Hymn this time…" Janeane said before she became too busy being escorted over to - and put onto the back seat of - an unmarked squad car.
*
*
THE END of RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME