Rockabilly Hell Read online

  “Don’t tell me you’re starting to believe their cock-and-bull tales?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I don’t think they would go to all the trouble to bring an Episcopal priest in from Memphis, just to play a joke on us.”

  They had run Hank’s license plate as soon as he made contact with the group.

  “If the club is going to appear,” Sheriff Pickens said, “it’ll be any moment now.”

  “Turn off the radio, Charles,” Harry said.

  Burton looked at him. “The radio isn’t on, Harry.”

  Fremont looked at the dash. The radio dial was dark except for the numbers denoting the time—9:30.

  Then Charles heard the music, very faint. “Singing The Blues.” “What the hell ...?”

  Fremont sat and stared as old model cars and trucks began materializing all around them. The music grew louder. The roadhouse began to take shape. The neon sign over the door began flashing.

  “This is a trick of some sort,” Fremont said.

  “I don’t think so,” Burton replied.

  “Just one great big elaborate hoax,” Fremont insisted.

  “I wish I had gone to the bathroom before we came out here,” Burton said.

  A male singer, backed by a country band, began singing “Tom Dooley.”

  Laughter sprang from out of the club.

  Both men nearly jumped out of their shoes when someone tapped on the glass, Fremont’s side. They looked. A man stood there, smiling at them. Both men wrinkled their noses at the musty smell that surrounded the man. The man lifted a hand, made a fist, then extended his middle finger. “Fuck you,” he said.

  Then he vanished.

  Disappeared before their eyes.

  Only the musty odor remained.

  In the dark and close confines of the car, Harry Fremont and Charles Burton looked at one another, both of them too shocked to speak for several heartbeats.

  “Now, by God, I won’t put up with that,” Fremont said. He started to open his door.

  “Don’t do it!” Burton said sharply. “Stay in the car, Harry. Stay in the damn car!”

  Fremont pulled his hand away from the door. He stared at his partner.

  “I don’t believe any of this,” Hank Milan muttered, staring at the old club from across the blacktop. “This is impossible.”

  The front door to the club opened, and a woman dressed in a tight-fitting, red dress stood there. She hunched her hips suggestively at the two IAD men and smiled at them.

  The sounds of the Chuck Berry hit, “Maybellene,” rammed through the night. The building was vibrating from the impact of many shoes and boots on the dance floor.

  A pickup truck suddenly materialized behind the car where Burton and Fremont were sitting, blocking them in ... or so the agents thought.

  “I am beginning not to like this,” Fremont said.

  “Ghosts can’t hurt you,” Burton said.

  “There is no such thing as a ghost, damn it!”

  “Then where the hell did all this come from?”

  “I don’t know. It’s . . . some sort of trick.”

  “No. They’re ghosts, Harry.”

  “There is no such thing as a ghost!”

  Another tap came on the glass, Fremont’s side of the car. A man dressed in cowboy clothes stood there. The same musty odor clung to him. Fremont stared at the man.

  “Hey, asshole!” the cowboy said. “Yeah, you. The snooty-lookin’ one. Why don’t you carry your asses on away from here, ’fore I take a notion to jerk you outta that car and kick your fancy butt all over this parkin’ lot?”

  FBI agents are not accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner.

  His temper flared and Harry opened the door; the interior light flashed on.

  “No!” Cole yelled from across the road. “Don’t do it. Stay in the car.”

  Harry stepped out and faced the western-dressed man.

  The smell was much worse.

  “That’s Dick Chambers,” Al said. “He’s been dead for thirty years. I was in high school, when a state trooper shot him.”

  Hank Milan stared at the sheriff for a moment. He shook his head in disbelief.

  “You want to mix it up, hotshot?” the cowboy challenged Harry, then shoved him back against the car.

  “You are not real!” Harry shouted.

  “Oh, yeah?” the cowboy said, then knocked the crap out of Harry, a big cold fist slamming into the agent’s jaw.

  Harry was knocked to one side, off balance. He felt an ooze of blood from a cut lip. Burton was out of the car in an instant, pistol in hand.

  “Freeze, you asshole!” Burton shouted, leveling the autoloader at the cowboy.

  The cowboy laughed at him. “Screw you, fancy pants. You can’t hurt me. Hell, I been dead thirty years.” He jerked a longbladed knife from a belt sheathe.

  Burton shot him.

  The slugs passed right through the cowboy, silently passing through several cars and trucks, and slamming into the right headlight and radiator of the car in which George and Scott were sitting a hundred or so yards down the way.

  “Goddamn!” Scott yelled, as he and George bailed out into the soybean field.

  The cowboy laughed, a foul odor springing from his open mouth.

  “Stun guns!” Cole yelled. “Use a stun gun on the thing.”

  Burton was momentarily frozen, standing staring stupidly at his pistol.

  Fremont took a wild swing at the cowboy and fell right through the man, landing on his stomach in the gravel of the parking lot.

  “Shit!” he hollered, crawling to his hands and knees.

  “Stun guns!” Cole shouted. “It’s the only thing that will work!”

  The cowboy turned to face Fremont, the knife flashing wickedly in his hand.

  Fremont jerked out his pistol and blasted away. The slugs passed through the cowboy and perforated the car they’d been sitting in.

  Burton hit the gravel of the parking lot and bellied down as the slugs whined and howled above him. “Jesus Christ, Harry!”

  Cole ran across the road and onto the parking lot. The band was playing, and the singer singing the old Buddy Knox hit, “Party Doll.”

  “Shit!” Fremont yelled again, jamming the pistol back into leather as he began scrambling away from the cowboy, tearing his trousers and skinning his knees and hands on the gravel.

  What had once been Dick Chambers whirled around as Cole neared. Cole sidestepped and hit the creature under the chin with the souped-up stun gun.

  The head exploded in a blinding shower of sparkling dots.

  Burton and Fremont stared in shocked disbelief at the scene before them.

  Minus a head, the cowboy began running wildly. And as had happened before, what was once unreal became real. The cowboy ran right over Fremont, who was just getting to his feet. Fremont was returned rather rudely to the gravel.

  Burton, remembering the line about discretion and valor, crawled under the car and stayed there.

  That which was once Dick Chambers ran all around the parking lot. He ran through some of the ghost cars and trucks and into others.

  Cole chased after it, finally catching up. He jammed the stun gun against the man’s back. The headless being exploded into thousands of sparkling dots that slowly fell to the ground, reassembling into a stiff corpse, dressed in rotting and ragged clothes.

  Fremont managed to get to his feet and was leaning against the interagency car, under which Burton had crawled. “Charles? Charlie? Where are you?”

  “Under here,” Burton called, his voice muffled.

  “Under where?”

  “Under the damn car!”

  “What are you doing under there? Never mind. I know. If I’d had any sense, I’d have been under there with you.”

  “Hang on, I’m coming out.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Fremont muttered.

  Burton brushed himself off and looked around. The red neon sign over the door of the club was still fla
shing. But the music had stopped. The old cars and trucks were still in the parking lot. Burton touched one. It was real to the touch.

  “Incredible,” he said.

  Fremont walked over. He was holding a handkerchief to his mouth. “I can tell you firsthand that ghosts can knock the shit out of you.”

  Scott and George walked up. “You two catch any of my bullets?” Burton asked.

  “One headlight did, and the radiator.”

  “Wonderful,” the IAD man said.

  The entire group had walked across the road and were now gathered in the parking lot. Cole strolled over. Burton looked at the stun gun in his hand.

  “I never would have believed that thing could do what it did.”

  “It displaces the electricity that makes up one’s soul,” Cole said.

  “Really?” the Episcopal priest said drily. “We’ll have to discuss that . . .theory some day. At length.”

  Cole grinned at him. “Can you come up with a better explanation right off the top of your head?”

  Hank cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and started to speak. He abruptly closed it and said nothing.

  The windows in the front of the roadhouse suddenly slammed open. The front door banged open. The walls of the old roadhouse seemed to swell for a few seconds. The interior of the club glowed a deep red. A large burp sprang from the nightclub.

  “Was that what I thought it was?” Al asked.

  “I think so,” George said.

  Something flew out of a window and landed at the feet of Katti.

  “Oh, gross!” she said, looking down.

  It was a human arm, rotting and putrid. The smell nearly made them all sick.

  The old nightclub belched again, a long drawn-out, deep, ugly sound in the summer night. Another burp, and the building began disgorging human body parts, arms and legs and hands and feet and rotting chunks of human flesh, flying out from the open windows and front door.

  The pieces of long-dead body parts began peppering the group standing in the parking lot, landing on them with sickening wet, slopping, smushing sounds.

  The smell was terrible.

  The rotting body parts forced the group further back, until they reached the blacktop and were out of range of the belching expulsions.

  Laughter suddenly ripped the night, and the clear sounds of a coin being dropped into a container of some sorts reached the group.

  A needle touched a record.

  The night was shattered by the sounds of “Purple People Eater.”

  “I never knew the devil had a sense of humor,” the priest said.

  The body of Dick Chambers rose stiffly to its feet and slowly turned, facing the group.

  “Oh, shit!” Al said.

  The rotting corpse began lurching toward them.

  “What do you have to say about the situation now, Hank?” Cole asked the priest.

  “I say, fuck this!” the priest replied, and got ready to make a run for it.

  The corpse came closer.

  “Shotguns,” Al said. “Get the shotguns and blow it to pieces.”

  The building ceased its disgorging of rotting body parts.

  Dick Chambers stopped his lurching advance.

  The music faded away.

  The night was silent.

  “What the hell is that moving over there?” Jim asked. “By the right side of the building.”

  “It’s a man, I think,” Al said.

  Gerald Wilson stepped into the red glow of the flashing neon sign. His clothing was ripped and dirty, his face and hands grimy, his hair matted and tangled. Even from this distance, those who knew the man could tell his madness had pushed him past all point of reasoning.

  He grunted incomprehensible words as he advanced toward Dick Chambers. Chambers had turned to face Gerald.

  “Who is that?” Hank asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Al said.

  Before anyone could say more, Gerald lifted his rifle and shot the ragged rotting corpse in the chest. The round staggered Dick, but did not knock him down. That which was once human grinned in the neon glow.

  “I wonder what he’s smiling about?” Burton asked.

  “If that’s a grin, I’d hate to see a frown,” Fremont replied.

  Chambers began advancing toward Gerald.

  Gerald emptied his rifle at the walking corpse, each impacting bullet blowing dust out where it exited the back. Chambers kept walking toward Gerald.

  Gerald dropped his rifle and jerked out his pistol, putting a full clip into the lurching form. The bullets staggered the walking dead, but did not stop it.

  “Gerald!” Al yelled. “Get over here with us, man. Come on, Gerald. Get over here.”

  If Gerald heard the words, he did not acknowledge them.

  Dick Chambers reached the insanity that once was Gerald, and wrapped its stinking arms around the man.

  Gerald struggled, but could not break free.

  “Come on!” Cole said, and started running toward the struggling shapes under the red neon. Several of the group followed.

  A sudden and very powerful blast of hot stinking wind knocked them off their feet and to the gravel parking lot. The men struggled to get up, but could not.

  The wind became stronger and hotter, bringing with it the smell of burning sulphur.

  Hank Milan walked to the edge of the parking lot and began praying.

  From inside the club, there came a terrible, almost deafening roar of anger and rage, and the wind reached tremendous speeds and flattened the Episcopal priest, slamming him to the ground and knocking the wind from him.

  “Hank!” Bev screamed the word, and ran to his side. The wind lifted her off her feet and tossed her aside like a rag doll. Bev landed heavily on her side and cried out in pain.

  The corpse had lifted Gerald off his feet and was carrying him up the steps to the yawning door of the roadhouse. Horrible grunting noises were coming from Gerald’s mouth.

  Screaming and howling and shrieking ripped the night, the devilish sounds coming from inside the building. The neon sign over the door began blinking on and off. But the message had changed.

  HELLHELLHELLHELL

  The blood red words were flashing so fast they became an unreadable blur.

  Wild wicked laughter cut the night.

  Dick and Gerald disappeared into the roadhouse.

  The windows banged shut. The front door slammed closed.

  The howling and shrieking faded into nothing.

  The wind died away.

  The smell of sulphur dissipated.

  The neon sign went dark.

  Gerald began screaming. A wail of agony. A lone voice of anguish in the night. A voice filled with unspeakable terror and horror and unbearable pain. A red glow appeared in all the windows. Flames seemed to dance inside the club. Gerald’s howling grew in intensity. None of those outside had ever heard anything like it.

  Hank had caught his breath, crawled to his knees, and was once more praying.

  The hideous screaming stopped with a low blubbering moan of pain.

  Silence.

  The old cars and trucks in the parking lot began fading into nothing.

  The roadhouse became a mist in the night.

  The parking lot became weed-grown.

  Then, nothing but silence.

  Fremont broke the silence. He looked at Scott and George and said, “You two have my apologies. I mean that. And I’ll back your reports about these sightings all the way to the top.”

  “Did any of this really happen?” Burton blurted the words. “I mean . . . Oh, hell, I don’t know what I mean!”

  “Here is Gerald’s rifle and shotgun,” Cole called, the beam of light from his small flashlight pocking the night with a shot of illumination.

  Hank Milan helped Bev to her feet. Her left arm was going to be badly bruised from landing on it.

  “What did we just see, Hank?” she asked the priest.

  He looked at her and his eyes
were haunted. “Hell on earth,” he replied.

  Eight

  Harry Fremont’s heated words over his car phone reached them all. The discussion had been going on for several minutes. Fremont concluded the conversation with, “With all due respect, I don’t particularly give a big rat’s ass what you believe! I know what I saw, felt, experienced, and smelled. And furthermore, you can go teach your grandmother to suck eggs!” He punched the END button and stared at the cellular phone for a moment. “Asshole!” he summed it all up.

  “Calm down, Harry,” Burton told him. “Unless you want to retire immediately upon your return to Washington.”

  “Calm down my ass! That incompetent fool hasn’t got sense enough to pour piss out of his shoes before he puts them on. That’s the AG’s pet. He’s an idiot. Son of a bitch came from a cotton patch in Alabama, and he ought to go back there!”

  Harry got out of the car and walked around and around it for a few moments, mumbling to himself. When he once more had control of his temper, he called his partner off to one side.

  “We’re going to write this up exactly as it happened, Charles. All right?”

  “Suits me. Hell, I’ve always wanted to end my career in Fargo.”

  Harry smiled. “I don’t think it will come to that. But it is going to be interesting.”

  “After tonight, Harry, anything we encounter will be tame.” Everybody in the parking lot paused at what they were doing, as the very faint sounds of guitar music sprang out of the night. Someone was doing a very respectable job of picking: “Detour, There’s A Muddy Road Ahead.”

  The music drifted around them for a moment, and then faded away.

  “Someone is trying to tell us something,” Al was the first to speak.

  “I wish those people you spoke of could have made it, Bob,” Cole said.

  The Memphis cop shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, they’re up in Canada working with the RCMP.”

  All eyes swung to Hank Milam. The priest gave them all very jaundiced looks. “Look, people, I’m a preacher. Don’t expect any miracles from me.”

  “Can’t you, ah, exorcise this place?” Charles asked.

  Harry gave his partner a very strange look.

  “Are you kidding?” Hank said. “Even if I believed in that—which I don’t—you exorcise the demon out of the living, not the dead. How the hell would you exorcise a ghost?” He paused for a second. Shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you about this . . . situation. It’s the damnest thing I’ve ever seen.”