Joe Lansdale - Waltz of Shadows

I knew then, I didn’t try something, it was all over. I panicked. I hopped up and ran and palmed myself onto the long table in the center of the room and dove right into one of the big windows with the white curtains. The jump was close. I just barely made the window.

Hitting those thick curtains and getting wound up in them was what saved me from getting cut really bad. I struck the ground rolling and twisted out of the curtains and started up running, tripped, went down, then something went by my ear like a bee, and then I was dipping down toward the woods and the Doc’s park.

As I got into the pines there, Spinowaa piece of bark jumped off a tree next to me and puffed in all directions, then I was down the hill and tripping over a stone seat, tumbling into the creek. I waded on across and started running through the woods.

Behind me, I could hear someone coming, and I knew without looking it was Cobra Man. He had followed me through the busted out window.

I ducked and weaved under branches and jumped over bushes and briars, hoping if he got off another shot, I’d be a hard target to nail. One thing in my favor was he didn’t seem too good at hitting what he aimed at.

If he fired again, I never knew it. Few moments later I was out of the woods and stumbling onto the highway, not even looking for cars. One went by me and swerved and honked and someone screamed “Motherfucker,” but I was across the highway then, running like hell into the University parking lot.

I didn’t have Dave’s car keys, of course, so I kept running. Across the lot and down into the stretch of woods that grows on either side of Morgan Creek. I went along the creek a while and finally stopped to listen. I didn’t hear anyone following, but I didn’t come out. I laid down in the leaves and tried to be quiet and think.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I hadn’t broken any law, really. I hadn’t busted into the Doc’s house. We had been let inside by a man with a gun.

What was the deal?

What was the fat man, Fat Boy, the other called him, doing there?

Who had screamed?

What in the hell had happened to Doc’s schedule?

And the others, Sharon, the Disaster Club, what was to become of them?

No answers came to me. I lay there and felt the water that had splashed on my legs turn cold. Where I had banged the stone seat with my shin ached like hell. I felt like a coward, running like that, but what else could I do? I figured what Fat Boy had in mind was going to be unpleasant, and had I hesitated one moment longer, I felt certain I would have found out how unpleasant. There wouldn’t have been any getting away.

Finally, couple hours later is my guess, I got my nerve up. I went along the bank where the creek travels through the heart of the University, under the bridge and along these deep concrete channels the city put in for flood control. I came out on the other side of the University and started walking home. I guess I had been down there on the creek bank for a couple of hours, maybe longer, scared, not knowing what to do. I figured now the thing to do was get home and call the cops.

I wasn’t very far from my place by then, and I started walking home. You haven’t seen this place, Uncle Hank, but it’s not the Ritz. It’s over by the University and I moved there when I started school. It’s down in the one area over there hasn’t been upgraded. There’s about six streets with rows of ramshackle, slumlord houses on either side, and one of those dumps is mine. There’s one street light at either end of the street, so unless you’re under one of those lights, or you have a porch light on, way all those oaks and elms along there droop, you won’t see much.

I got to my street and started down it. Dogs ba Sn iyou’re rked at me along the way, and a goddamn bat swooped down on my hair and scared the hell out of me. Time I got to my walk, I was a bundle of raw nerves. Everywhere I looked, I thought I saw Fat Boy or Cobra Man. My empty carport was full of shadows and all of them looked like people with guns.

But there wasn’t anyone. I got my key from under the steps and unlocked the door and slipped inside, still trying to figure what to do next, and it was while I was figuring that the smell hit me. The stink of Cobra Man. I tried to back out of there, but I went back too fast and slipped and fell. I tried to get up and my hand went into something wet. I lifted it to look, saw what I had slipped in.

Blood.

Then, between my bloody fingers, very close to me, I saw a face, eyes poking out of its head like a couple of golf balls with pupils painted on them. A tongue hung way out of its mouth and the teeth were clamped through it. I jerked my hand out of the way for a better look.

It was Dave.

I jumped up and skidded and fell back against the wall and stood there looking at Dave, smelling the blood on me and the sour stink of Cobra Man. I wanted to turn and dart outside, but I didn’t. All the noise I’d made, slipping and falling, it came to me that if Cobra Man or Fat Boy were in the house, they’d have been all over me. And with the front door open, the air had cleared out some of the stink. With that diluted, I felt stronger. I began to believe I was the only living thing in the house.

I slipped into the kitchen for a better look at Dave. He was lying on his stomach and he wasn’t wearing any pants. I could see the tip of an Old Hickory butcher knife hilt sticking out of his ass. He’d been sodomized with it. That’s where all the blood had come from. The knife belonged to me.

There was a coat hanger twisted around his neck so tight most of it wasn’t visible. One of his legs was cocked at the knee, the foot pointing at the ceiling. The other was stretched out on the floor, straight and stiff.

I had a feeling with all his talk about fear and dying, this hadn’t been what Dave had in mind. I think he expected something a little more noble; something not smelling of blood and shit.

Trembling, I went over to the open knife drawer and got another Old Hickory knife, eased around and looked in the living room.

Everything appeared okay, but it was dark enough in there to make me uncertain. I let my eyes adjust until I felt secure no one was hiding and waiting for me. Not that there were many places anyone could hide, small as the room was, and the only major pieces of furniture were a stuffed chair, a television set, and a couch with its back pushed flush against the wall.

I went in and looked around and didn’t see anybody, which of course is what I was pretty assured of, or I wouldn’t have gone in there.

The back door that led out of the living room and onto the little back porch was wide open and there was only the screen door between the room and the night. That door wasn’t much when it was locked. You leaned into it and picked up some, the latch would pop and you could come in. It was a strange time to worry about it, but I remember thinking to myself, after tonight I was going to get some kind of deadbolt and s Seadsn’ome latches for the windows.

I went over for a look through the screen door. The moonlight was falling over the tiny overgrown lawn and there was a dark-haired tomcat sitting on the wooden fence that bordered my yard and the neighbor’s, sitting there with one leg lifted, licking his balls.

I gingerly opened the screen door and went onto the back porch, jumping a little as the boards squeaked beneath my feet and the cat leapt with a surprised yowl into my neighbor’s yard. A dog barked. The cat hissed, and then the dog barked several times, moving away, pursuing the cat, I presumed. Finally, there was only the sound of crickets in the grass.

I went out and stood in the yard and sucked in some of the night air. It was so cold and clean it almost made me drunk. My wet pants legs felt cold as ice.