‘Guys’d never let you hear the end of dat, and you know it.’
But it wasn’t really teasing he was concerned about. Mostly he didn’t want to go in looking all wild-eyed and pushing the panic-button like any John Q. in off the road with a tale to tell.
And by the time he got inside, Arky actually did feel a little better. Still scared, but no longer like he was going to puke or just go bolting away from Shed B any old whichway. By then he’d also had an idea which had eased his mind a bit. Maybe it was just a trick. A prank.
Troopers were always pulling stuff on him, and hadn’t he told Orville Garrett he might come back that evening for a little looky-see at that old Buick? He had. And maybe Orv had decided to give him the business. Bunch of comedians he worked with, someone was always giving him the business.
The thought served to calm him, but in his heart of hearts, Arky didn’t believe it. Orv Garrett was a practical joker, all right, liked to have his fun just like the next guy, but he wouldn’t make that thing in the shed part of a gag. None of them would. Not with Sergeant Schoondist so hopped up about it.
Ah, but the Sarge wasn’t there. His door was shut and the frosted glass panel was dark. The light was on in the kitchenette, though, and music was coming out through the door: Joan Baez, singing about the night they drove old Dixie down. Arky went in and there was Huddie Royer, just dropping a monster chunk of oleo into a pot of noodles. Your heart ain’t gonna thank you for dat shit, Arky thought. Huddie’s radio — a little one on a strap that he took everyplace — was sitting on the counter next to the toaster.
‘Hey, Arky!’ he said. ‘What’re you doing here? As if I didn’t know?’
‘Is Orv here?’ Arky asked.
‘Nope. He’s got three days off, starting tomorrow. Lucky sucker went fishing. You want a bowl of this?’ Huddie held the pot out, took a really good look at him, and realized he was looking at a man who was scared just about to death. ‘Arky? What the hell’s wrong with you?
Are you sick?’
Arky sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs, hands dangling between his thighs. He looked up at Huddie and opened his mouth, but at first nothing came out.
‘What is it?’ Huddie slung the pot of macaroni on to the counter without a second look.
‘The Buick?’
‘You da d-o tonight, Hud?’
‘Yeah. Until eleven.’
‘Who else here?’
‘Couple of guys upstairs. Maybe. If you’re thinking about the brass, you can stop. I’m the closest you’re going to get tonight. So spill it.’
‘You come out back,’ Arky told him. ‘Take a look for yourself. And bring some binoculars.’
Huddie snagged a pair of binocs from the supply room, but they turned out to be no help. The thing in the corner of Shed B was actually too close — in the glasses it was just a blur. After two or three minutes of fiddling with the focus-knob, Huddie gave up. ‘I’m going in there.’
Arky gripped his wrist. ‘Cheesus, no! Call the Sarge! Let him decide!’
Huddie, who could be stubborn, shook his head. ‘Sarge is sleeping. His wife called and said so. You know what it means when she does that — no one hadn’t ought to wake him up unless it’s World War III.’
‘What if dat t’ing in dere is World War III?’
‘I’m not worried,’ Huddie said. Which was, judging from his face, the lie of the decade, if not the century. He looked in again, hands cupped to the sides of his face, the useless binoculars standing on the pavement beside his left foot. ‘It’s dead.’
‘Maybe,’ Arky said. ‘And maybe it’s just playin possum.’
Huddie looked around at him. ‘You don’t mean that.’ A pause. ‘Do you?’
‘I dunno what I mean and what I don’t mean. I dunno if dat t’ing’s over for good or just restin up. Neither do you. What if it wants someone t’go in dere? You t’ought about dat? What if it’s waitin for you?’
Huddie thought it over, then said: ‘I guess in that case, it’ll get what it wants.’
He stepped back from the door, looking every bit as scared as Arky had looked when he came into the kitchen, but also looking set. Meaning it. Just a stubborn old Dutchman.
‘Arky, listen to me.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Carl Brundage is upstairs in the common room. Also Mark Rushing — I think, anyway.
Don’t bother Loving in dispatch, I don’t trust him. Too wet behind the ears. But you go on and tell the other two what’s up. Arid get that look off your face. This is probably nothing, but a little backup wouldn’t hurt.’
‘Just in case it ain’t nothin.’
‘Right.’
‘Cause it might be sumptin.’
Huddie nodded.
‘You sure?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Okay.’
Huddie walked along the front of the roll-up door, turned the corner, and stood in front of the smaller door on the side. He took a deep breath, held it in for a five-count, let it out. Then he unsnapped the strap over the butt of his pistol — a .357 Ruger, back in those days.
‘Huddie?’
Huddie jumped. If his finger had been on the trigger instead of outside the guard, he might have blown off his own foot. He spun around and saw Arky standing there at the corner of the shed, his big dark eyes swimming in his pinched face.
‘Lord Jesus Christ!’ Huddie cried. ‘Why the fuck’re you creeping after me?’
‘I wasn’t creepin, Troop —just walkin like normal.’
‘Go inside! Get Carl and Mark, like I told you.’
Arky shook his head. Scared or not, he had decided he wanted to be a part of what was going down. Huddie supposed he could understand. Trooper gray did have a way of rubbing off.
‘All right, ya dumb Swede. Let’s go.’
Huddie opened the door and stepped into the shed, which was still cooler than the outside . . .
although just how cool it might have been was impossible for either man to tell, because they were both sweating like pigs. Huddie was holding his gun up beside his right cheekbone.
Arky grabbed a rake from the pegs close by the door. It clanged against a shovel and both of them jumped. To Arky, the look of their shadows on the wall was even worse than the sound: they seemed to leap from place to place, like the shadows of nimble goblins.
‘Huddie — ‘ he began.
‘Shhh!’
‘If it’s dead, why you go shhh?’
‘Don’t be a smartass!’ Huddie whispered back. He started across the cement floor toward the Buick. Arky followed with the rake-handle gripped tight in his sweaty hands, his heart pounding. His mouth tasted dry and somehow burnt. He had never been so scared in his life, and the fact that he didn’t know exactly what he was scared of only made it worse.
Huddie got to the rear of the Buick and peeped into the open trunk. His back was so broad Arky couldn’t see around it. ‘What’s in there, Hud?’
‘Nothing. It’s clean.’
Huddie reached for the trunk-lid, hesitated, then shrugged and slammed it down. They both jumped at the sound and looked at the thing in the corner. It didn’t stir. Huddie started toward it, gun once more held up by the side of his head. The sound of his feet shuffling on the concrete was very loud.
The thing was indeed dead, the two men became more and more sure of it as they approached, but that didn’t make things better because neither of them had ever seen anything like it. Not in the woods of western Pennsylvania, not in a zoo, not in a wildlife magazine. It was just different. So goddam different. Huddie found himself thinking of horror movies he’d seen, but the thing huddled up in the angle where the shed walls met wasn’t really like something from those, either.
Goddam different was what he kept coming back to. What they both kept coming back to.
Everything about it screamed that it wasn’t from here, here meaning not just the Short Hills but all of Planet Earth. Maybe the entire universe, at least as C-students in science such as themselves understood that concept. It was as if some warning circuit buried deep in their heads had suddenly awakened and begun to wail.
Arky was thinking of spiders. Not because the thing in the corner looked like a spider, but because . . . well . . . spiders were different. All those legs — and you had no idea what they might be thinking, or how they could even exist. This thing was like that, only worse. It made him sick just to look at it, to try and make sense of what his eyes said they were seeing. His skin had gone clammy, his heart was missing beats, and his guts seemed to have gained weight. He wanted to run. To just turn tail and stampede out of there.