Norman Partridge - Slippin' into Darkness

Maybe they were in Griz Cody’s truck.

And maybe they weren’t. Maybe they were still at the drive-in, lying there on a gravel mound like so much junk.

Or maybe they were at the cemetery. Lying next to an open grave.

Lying next to the body of a dead man.

Shutterbug sat in his Jaguar, staring at the fuchsia-colored police tape twisting and flexing in the warm morning breeze. The projector wasn’t here. There was nothing here but a hole in the ground and a sea of tombstones. He could see that, even from the car. But even if the film had been here, it certainly wouldn’t still be here in the wake of a police search.

So, the projector wasn’t at the cemetery, and Griz Cody wasn’t answering his telephone. Maybe… hopefully…Griz had the film. But if Griz didn’t have the film, and the police didn’t have it, it was most likely at the drive-in, which was conveniently located just across the road.

Shutterbug keyed the old Jaguar’s engine. He could have driven a brand-new Testarossa, but he didn’t. He could have lived in a big city, but he didn’t. He could have lived an entirely different life, but that too was something he hadn’t done.

He had no time to spare for regrets. He pulled from the well-maintained cemetery drive onto the pitted road that separated Skyview Memorial Lawn from the old drive-in. He made the sharp turn onto the gravel road that Griz Cody had followed the night before. Ahead, the chain-link gate stood open, the top section of the right gate hanging unhinged and ready to collapse.

Cody’s truck had done a thorough job.

Shutterbug drove into shadow. Tall pines overhung the road, their branches scraping the car doors. Shutterbug glanced at the rearview to make sure that no one had followed him.

No one behind him.

Branches whispered against Jaguar fenders. He saw himself in the mirror for the first time since getting out of bed, saw the red scratches scoring his butterscotch skin. The window of the car was rolled down just an inch, and the sour, licorice smell of skunk cabbage and the dry scent of dead pine filled his nostrils. He suddenly remembered the ghost that had sent him screaming into a tangle of dead pines.

April Destino’s ghost.

No. The ghost…the trees had been in his dream.

But there were scratches on his face.

It was just another part of the dream. That was all. Nothing more.

Forget it, he told himself. Just get through this, and worry about the rest of it later.

Gravel spit from under the Jaguar’s wheels. Shutterbug advanced through the gate and made a quick left. The Jaguar climbed the first gravel hump and passed the first line of leaning, speakerless poles.

A gold-and-white police car was parked beneath the huge screen. The contrast made the car look small, but not at all insignificant.

Shutterbug’s foot mashed the brake pedal. The policeman stood near the trunk of his cruiser. Dark blue clothes and mirrored sunglasses.

And there, at the cop’s feet, lay the projector.

The cop was staring at it.

Shutterbug slammed the gearshift into reverse. He backed up, stirring a hail of gravel and a thin cloud of dust. The cop looked his way. Couldn’t possibly see him, but had to see the car, the license plate…

No, the cop couldn’t have seen that. Not from such a distance. Not with the morning sunlight filtering through the dead trees behind the Jaguar. Not with the dust rising.

A heavier cloud mushroomed behind the Jaguar as Shutterbug shifted into second and passed through the drive-in gates.

Pine boughs whipped the Jaguar.

The dust cloud hung in the wake of the Jaguar, a severed shadow drifting slowly toward the dead pines.

Steve watched it go. He hadn’t meant to come to the old drive-in. Leaving the cemetery, he had only wanted to find a quiet place where he could think things through. He had seen the pines from the other side of the road. They had reminded him of the trees in his dream, of the meadow where Homer Price romped with the girl who had once painted his portrait.

Those memories drew him to this lonely place. He drove up the gravel road and found the gates to the abandoned drive-in standing open. After checking the bashed gates and the broken chain that had secured them-stray paint chips on the gates and a sprinkling of broken glass on the ground told him that the gates had been damaged by a blue vehicle which lost a headlight in the process-he investigated the drive-in grounds.

Near the playground, he found several crushed beer cans. Most of the cans contained a final swallow of Bud Dry. Someone had visited the drive-in as recently as last night. In addition to the beer cans, Steve found a broken 16mm projector and a spool of film. He raised the film to the light, and he didn’t need to see more than a few frames to know that he was looking at April Destino’s nightmare.

Right there. In his hands. On film.

April’s nightmare.

Steve shivered, recalling his initial shock, the reel still gripped in his hand. The film ensnared his fingers, a series of coils that were as dark and slick the scales of a Black Mamba. But he didn’t concentrate on that image. Instead, he watched the morning breeze worry the dust cloud that looked so much like a Jaguar’s severed shadow, forcing it against the dead pines. The cloud was speared by a thousand rust needles, and then it was gone.

The needles remained, blanketing the trees, thrusting at the blue sky above. Whispering coos spilled from the shadows, and Steve recognized the music of doves.

He looped the film onto the reel. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Doves were nesting in the tree just as they nested in his dream. Across the road Homer Price ran wild in a dark Hansel and Gretel forest. He wasn’t supposed to be here, standing alone with a nightmare in his hands.

He was supposed to be with April, with the doves, and Homer Price, in dreams.

The last time they talked, Steve didn’t even realize that April was saying goodbye.

“We should have been the all-American couple,” she said, “but other people got in our way.”

He tried to apologize for the hundredth time. “I might have changed that. I never believed the things they said about you, but I couldn’t bring myself do anything about it. I was afraid that I might make things worse, but I was just plain afraid, too. Bat and Derwin and Griz, even Todd, they were king shit back then. I was scared to go up against them alone. But we could have stood up to them together. When you quit school, I should have gone after you. I should have done something to let you know how I felt. But I didn’t. I guess, deep down, I was more afraid of you than I was of them.”

“Maybe it would have worked,” she said. “But maybe it would have made things worse. Facing them… I just don’t know. I couldn’t give them another shot at me. The knives were out. I was terrified. It was my word against theirs. They were good boys from good families.” She smiled. “Except for Derwin, that is, but everyone thought he was some Horatio Alger character, the way those sportswriters wrote about him in the newspaper. I was the poor girl who’d gotten a little too big-headed for my own good, the girl following in the footsteps of a divorced mother, if you believed the stories. A little too ambitious and a little too certain about my future. Everyone wanted to believe that I was really what those guys tried to make me. Just because I got wasted at that party. Just because I did that, they were willing to buy the rest of it. I wasn’t a good girl anymore.” She ruffled the stack of tabloids lying on the table, smiling wryly. “It’s all very American-we love to build people up, and we love to tear them down. There were lots of people in that school who enjoyed tearing me down.”