Rockabilly Hell Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Though known largely for his epic tales of the American West including The Mountain Man series, New York Times bestselling author William W. Johnstone began his career by writing some of the most frightening and nightmare-inducing novels of his generation, including The Devil’s Heart and The Devil’s Kiss, which have developed a cult following in the years since their first publication.

  You can learn more about Johnstone’s books including upcoming releases and special promotions by visiting williamjohnstone.net or kensingtonbooks.com.

  Click here to get all the latest news from William W. Johnstone!

  Rockabilly Hell

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Book One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Book Two

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 1995 William W. Johnstone

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LYRICAL PRESS, LYRICAL UNDERGROUND, and the Lyrical

  Underground logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Office.

  First electronic edition: November 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-6018-3540-6

  ISBN-10: 1-60183-540-X

  Dedicated to Mike and Connie Aubuchon (Brandy, Digger, Joplin, and Blue insisted I do this).

  Book One

  Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.

  —Gerald White Johnson

  One

  “Who is this guy?” Deputy Younger asked, holding up the extradition papers.

  “A nobody, really, Captain. He’s never committed a violent act that we know of. But he’s hung enough paper around to fill the local stadium. Are you sure you want to drive all the way up into Illinois for this loser?”

  That brought a smile to the man’s lips. “I’ve got five more months to go until I pull the pin. I’m tired of sitting at that desk the sheriff put me behind last month. This will at least get me out of the office for a few days.”

  The deputy leaned back in his chair and grinned. “What are you going to do when you retire, Cole?”

  Jesse Cole Younger shook his head. He was named after his grandfather on his dad’s side and his great uncle on his mother’s side, but everybody always assumed he was named after the famous outlaws—and he suspected he was, too, for his dad had always possessed a weird sense of humor. “I really haven’t given it much thought, Dale.”

  “Forty-five is too damn young to retire, Cole.”

  “I’ve spent nearly twenty-five years wrestling drunks, getting puked on, chasing punks, sweeping up teeth, hair, and eyeballs after wrecks, and getting shot twice. It’s time to pull the pin. Besides, I don’t really need the money.”

  The deputy glanced at his watch. “It’s sorta late. You going to leave now?”

  “Might as well. I’ll get a room somewhere up in northern Arkansas or southern Missouri.”

  Cole headed east out of Louisiana, heading for the Mississippi River bridge crossing, and then cut north on Interstate 55.

  Dale was right, of course. Forty-five was far too young to retire altogether. He’d have to think of something to do. Not that he had to. Cole was comfortable, as far as finances went. His parents had been killed in a fiery automobile accident a few years back and had left everything to Cole, their only child. The estate had been substantial.

  Dale had joined the Army at seventeen, spent two tours in Vietnam, gotten wounded, and then discharged. He’d gone to college for a year, didn’t like it, dropped out, and joined the Sheriffs Department. He’d been there ever since. Married, divorced after five bitter, stormy, argument-filled years. No children. He didn’t know where Janet was now. Last he’d heard she was out in California. Good place for her, Cole had concluded.

  Cole usually picked a marked and fully equipped unit for any out-of-state run: that way he could stay just above the posted limit and be left alone by other cops, receiving only a wave or a quick flash of lights in greeting. Cops look out for other cops. But this time he was driving an unmarked unit.

  Night had covered the land for several hours when he crossed the river again at Memphis and rolled into Arkansas. He had gassed up in north Mississippi and grabbed a cheeseburger, so he wasn’t hungry (but his stomach did feel queasy); he decided he’d pull in somewhere and get himself a Coke. And get off this damned interstate for a few miles; it was getting boring.

  He took the next off ramp and pulled onto Highway 61. His appeared to be the only car on the old highway—once a main north-south link—and that suited him just fine.

  Cole turned off the radio and drove in silence for a time, his driver’s side window down and his elbow sticking out. The early fall air rushed in and blew cool on his face.

  When his radio clicked on and the 1950’s rockabilly music slammed into his ear, he nearly lost control of the unit. Shaken, Cole pulled off on the shoulder and sat for a time, eyes fixed on the lighted electronic dial of the radio. He almost never listened to AM, except for a news and talk station out of Shreveport, but there it was, the numbers clearly indicating an AM station. But it sure wasn’t KEEL from Shreveport. And the song was not at all familiar to him.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  The announcer came on. The guy was using terms like daddy-o, and toe-tappin, and rooty-tooty.

  “Rooty-tooty!” Cole said.

  Then he smiled. Had to be a tape from years back, some golden oldie program.

  Then he frowned.

  But how the hell did the radio just come on all by itself?

  He reached over and punched the on-off button. Nothing happened. The music continued to play. Thumping, hard-driving, early rock and roll—rockabilly. That unique brand of music that was pure Southern. He punched a preset selector button. The station didn’t change. Another one. Same results. He punched all the selector buttons. The station would not change.

  Cole turned off the engine. The radio did not go off with it.

&nbs
p; Cole felt himself getting a bit spooked by these strange happenings. He shook his head, got out of the car, and walked around it several times. The music continued to play as he walked.

  Then it stopped.

  The night was very silent.

  Out of habit, Cole slipped his right hand under his jacket and touched the butt of his Sig Sauer 9 mm. It was there, nestled snugly in a shoulder holster. It was comforting.

  He got back into his unit and cranked up. The radio stayed off. He reached over and punched it on. A Memphis station, playing music from the sixties, seventies, and eighties. No fifties rockabilly.

  Cole shook his head, expelled air, sighed, and slipped the unit into gear, pulling back out on the highway. He occasionally would fix the radio with a very jaundiced glance.

  Cole had been born in 1950, and he only vaguely remembered the early days of rock and roll. His music was the Beatles, the Stones, the Righteous Brothers, Neil Diamond, the Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac.

  He didn’t know shit about early rockabilly.

  He saw lights up ahead and, as he drew closer, saw it was a honky-tonk, a roadhouse. He wasn’t in uniform and decided he’d pull, in and get a beer. He needed one after that odd business with the radio. And his stomach still felt queasy. Bad cheeseburger.

  He pulled into the gravel drive and sighed. “Well, this is damn sure a night for weird,” he said aloud, his eyes taking in all the cars and trucks parked around the honky-tonk.

  There wasn’t a vehicle there less than thirty-five years old. IH and Studebaker pickup trucks. Turtleback Mercurys from the late forties and early fifties. A couple of Hudsons. One Henry-J.

  Cole had never seen one of those except in picture books of classic and antique cars.

  And all of the old cars and trucks ranged in condition from good to excellent.

  Then the band inside started up, and the music was pure rockabilly. Drums, bass, lead guitar, and rhythm guitar. The song was something about a Rock House. Cole had never heard it.

  Cole chuckled as what was happening came to him. Had to be. The cars and trucks belonged to members of a classic car club, and this was their monthly meeting. The band was playing songs from the era of the old cars and trucks.

  Sure.

  “Well, it’s easy when you figure it out,” Cole muttered, getting out of his unit and making sure the doors were locked.

  He opened the front door and stepped inside. He immediately got the feeling he was entering a time warp of some sort. Rod Serling would have felt right at home. Cole felt every eye in the place on him as he walked to the bar.

  “Bud Light,” he told the bartender.

  “What?” the man said.

  Cole looked up and down the bar. The beer was all in bottles, long-necks. He didn’t recognize a single brand. He cut his eyes to the bartender. “Just give me a beer.”

  “Stag be all right?”

  Stag? Had to be a local brand. “That’s fine.” Cole put a dollar on the scarred bar, and the barkeep gave him change.

  Change? Must be some sort of special night. He slipped the change in his jacket side pocket without looking at it. Beer in hand, Cole swiveled on the bar stool and gave the place a look-over. Suddenly every cop antenna he had developed over the years was up and receiving signals. This was the roughest-looking bunch of ol’ boys he had ever seen all gathered up in one place. And the women, most of them attractive in a hard-looking and well-used sort of way, had the same mean look in their eyes. Even those doing some sort of dance on the dance floor. Then Cole recognized the step; or thought he did. It was the bop. He’d seen his parents doing it.

  Strange, he thought, again swiveling to face the bar. Then his eyes centered on the calendar on the wall behind the bar, and he felt a light sweat break out on his forehead. October 1957.

  Cole blinked a couple of times. The month and year remained the same.

  “I reckon we’ll have a war with them damn Rooshins ’fore it’s all said and done,” he heard a man said. “Ike ain’t gonna put up with ’em for long.”

  “Ike ain’t gonna do shit,” another said. “We should have whupped them damn Bolsheviks back in ’45. Patton wanted to, but Ike didn’t have the balls for it then, and he don’t now.”

  Cole put a hand to his forehead. He felt feverish.

  Cole stood up, beer in hand. One of the men looked at him. “What do you think about Ike, buddy?”

  “I, ah, I’m not political,” Cole managed to say.

  The man turned his back to him and resumed the conversation with his buddy.

  Across the room, two men in jeans and cowboy boots suddenly lunged to their feet and began fighting. Barroom fights usually happen that way, the viciousness coming so fast no one around them has time to get out of the way. For the most part, the combatants were ignored. One of the pool players reversed his cue stick and smashed the heavy end of it against the head of one fighter. The blood sprayed the wall, and the man went down in a boneless heap.

  “I never did like that son of a bitch,” the cue stick-wielder said, then tossed the broken cue stick to the floor and walked to the rack, picking out another one.

  The band never missed a beat.

  Cole knew he had to get out of this joint. He was coming down with something. Flu, maybe. “Have a nice evening,” he said to the bartender.

  “Whenever we’re here, they usually are,” the man replied strangely, a very mean look in his eyes.

  The band was playing and singing some song about a Rock and Roll Ruby.

  Cole made it to his unit and unlocked the door, falling into the seat. He slammed the door and locked it. “Jesus Christ!” the words exploded from his mouth. What the hell was this, the Twilight Zone? He set the long-neck bottle in the beverage holder and sighed heavily.

  Cole sat for a time, listening to the music and calming himself. It was a joke, he finally concluded. The locals were having fun with the stranger. Had to be.

  Cole stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and took out the change the bartender had given him. Sixty-five cents. Thirty-five-cent beer? He tossed the change into a section of the console between the firewall and the seat, and cranked the engine.

  Cole backed out onto the highway and took one more look at the roadhouse.

  But it was gone.

  There was no music, no old cars and trucks, no building. The gravel parking lot was all grown over with weeds, and only a cracked concrete slab remained of the honky-tonk.

  Cole put a shaking hand down to grab his long-neck and take a swig.

  But the bottle was not there.

  Cole felt his heart rate surge. He took several deep breaths and looked up and down the highway. No lights in sight. He pulled back into the parking lot. The roadhouse reappeared, the lot filled with old cars and trucks, the music loud from inside the joint.

  He put his hand down for the bottle of beer and his fingers closed around the condensation-covered bottle. Cole took a deep pull and could not recall any beer ever tasting so good. He watched as the front door opened and a man was hurled outside, landing hard on the gravel. He did not move. The back of the man’s head was bloody, where he’d been hit with the cue stick. He looked dead.

  “This is a nightmare,” Cole muttered. “Just a nightmare. This is not happening. Either that or I’ve got the flu and am hallucinating very badly.”

  He sat in the parking lot and drank his beer, while the loud rockabilly music wafted all around him. He waited for a sheriff’s department car to show up. After a few minutes, he decided that no one had called the police. Cole drained his bottle of beer and started his car, backing out of the parking lot and pointing in the direction from which he’d come. There was a town just a few miles back. He’d call in the incident from there.

  But when he looked to his right, the club was not there. No lights blazed, nobody on the ground, and as before, the parking lot was overgrown in a maze of weeds.

  “Goddamnit!” Cole yelled, spinning the steering wheel and once more turning in
to the old parking lot.

  Nothing happened. He drove right up to the edge of the concrete slab and stopped, cutting off his lights and killing the engine. He reached down to touch the empty bottle of beer, but it was gone. He fumbled in the tray for the change he’d received from his dollar bill. The tray was empty.

  Cole sighed heavily. “I gotta find a room for the night. I’m sicker than I thought.”

  * * *

  He spent the night in a motel in Blytheville. When he awakened the next morning, he felt fine, the strange events of the preceding night only an unpleasant memory, brought on, he was sure, by that bad cheeseburger he’d eaten earlier in the day. He showered, shaved, and felt much better. After breakfast, he paused at the checkout desk.

  “Back down the road about ten miles or so, there used to be a honky-tonk there. What happened to it?”

  “On the right-hand side heading south?”

  “Yes.”

  “Burned down years ago. Golly, I guess . . . oh, fifteen years ago. Maybe longer than that. Most people around here were glad it did.”

  “Tough place, huh?”

  “I guess. I was too young to go there. But I’ve heard some really wild tales about it.”

  Cole pulled out and headed north.

  * * *

  The prisoner Cole picked up was a small, very pleasant-speaking man in his late fifties. “He won’t give you any problems, Deputy,” Cole was told. “We just received word this morning that he’s been given a grant of immunity in exchange for his testimony in another case. As soon as he testifies, he walks out a free man.”

  “With that kind of deal, it would be kind of stupid for him to get cute on the last leg home now, wouldn’t it?” Cole said with a smile.

  Like many prisoners Cole had transported over the long years behind a badge, this one was, at least on the surface, a likeable man, and possessing above average intelligence. As they approached Cairo, Illinois, the man really started talking, lost in memories.