The morning's promise was fulfilled; it was a warm, pleasant late-summer afternoon, warm enough that Faith was in shirtsleeves when she stepped onto the still-empty sidewalk. The walk felt good. Her junk-food binge had been satisfying, but the aftermath was problematic, particularly the last bit: it turned out that even Slayer metabolism was no defense against the culinary atrocity of piling an orange, Nacho Doritos, and two twelve-ounce Cokes into the same stomach. She reached the corner and turned to face the sun. It felt good on her face. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it for a moment, then sighed and crossed the highway. There were two cars at the grocery store, parked at opposite ends of the building's facade. Faith shook her head. The only car at the convenience store was Tori's Sephia.
The air inside the store was cool and dry when the Slayer stepped inside. Tori looked up; she had been reading a magazine at the register. "Hey," she said, then glanced at the clock on the wall. "Bernice should be here in, like, ten minutes."
"Cool," Faith replied. "I'll just wander the aisles." She drifted toward the magazine rack. The cover of Seventeen promised '24 Funky Fashions Under $20' and 'The Sexiest Stars of '99', as determined by the magazine's readers. She leafed through it, then dropped it back in its spot.
"You want another hot dog?" Tori asked.
"No," the Slayer responded quickly, unconsciously touching her stomach, "I'm good." The door chimed and a woman in her late 20s with a pleasant face and a hairstyle that had missed the last twenty years came in. She chewed gum like it was a competitive sport and she was in training.
"Let me drop my purse and you can split," she said as she passed by the register. Tori reached under the register and pulled out a large canvas tote bag that she slung over her shoulder as Bernice came out of the back.
"You new in town?" she said to Faith, punctuating the individual words with a snap of her gum.
"Yeah," the Slayer responded. "Brand spankin' new."
"Huh. Well, you guys go on, have a good time." Bernice waved toward the door. "Although God knows what you guys can do for fun around here these days." She shook her head as she settled behind the register.
"Thanks, Bernice. It's been pretty slow." Tori jerked her head toward the door.
Bernice picked up a magazine. "So, it's a day ending in 'Y'. Scoot."
Faith followed Tori to the Kia. Tori grimaced as she unlocked the door. "I'm sorry, my car's so old. You probably want to roll down the window, the ac's broken."
"Hey," the Slayer said as she jerked the handle, "I'm riding the shoe leather express so, you know, beggars, choosers, et cetera." Still, Tori was not wrong; the Sephia had been well-used. The vinyl seats were split, the headliner was safety-pinned up in spots, and the dashboard was dull and cracked from the sun. Still, radio worked, even if the speaker was a little tired, and "Mambo No. 5" buzzed out as Tori turned left onto the state highway.
"You've got a radio station?" Faith asked.
"No, it's over at the county seat." Tori glanced over. "Just like the school, and the doctor, and the dentist, and the sheriff's department… pretty much everything."
Faith felt the wind blowing through her hair. "Okay, I don't really know you, but I gotta ask… why does your family still live here?"
Tori shrugged and thought about the question, her button nose in profile. "Well, it's me and my mom, my dad's gone, and my grandparents lived here, and my mom moved in with them to take care of them, and then they died and the house is paid for …" Her voice trailed away; her embarrassment was palpable.
"Hey, it's okay," Faith said, letting her hand drift in the slipstream outside the hitched around in her seat. "You said your dad's gone. Is he, you know?"
"Huh?" Tori looked over, eyes wide. "Oh, God, no, he's alive, he just… left." She looked back at the highway and swallowed. "He lives over at the county seat, which is probably another reason my mom won't move."
"Don't beat yourself up." Faith looked out the window and raked her hair away from her face. "My parents are both, what's the word I'm looking for, oh, yeah, drunks."
"Oh." Tori's voice was small. "Is that why you're…" She bit her lip.
"Yeah." The Slayer stretched her legs in the footwell. "I'm a real post-modern Huck Finn."
"We read that in English 3 last year."
Faith shook her head to let her hair flow free. "How old are you?"
"Oh, I'm a senior this year."
All the air went out of Faith's lungs. They were basically the same age, but that was their only commonality. She licked her lips and said, "Cool."
"Here we are." Tori wrenched the wheel to the left and turned into a gravel drive that looped around to a concrete pad in front of a two-story U-shaped beige brick building. Tori did not follow the loop, but veered to the building's right and followed a rutted track around to the back. A twenty-five year old Chevy S-10 with serious dents in the fenders and quarter panels was parked beside a Mustang II of similar vintage, if slightly better condition. Tori parked and reached into the back seat. "Could you carry this?" She handed over a contraption with a metal base and a glass bulb. The Slayer felt liquid sloshing in the base. Tori grabbed her tote bag and a large rectangular flashlight. "Okay, I think that's everything."
Faith climbed out of the car and followed the smaller girl across a weedy patch and up three concrete steps to a door that had originally been painted brown, but had faded to a British khaki ornamented by spots of orange rust. Tori kicked the base of the door three times, then stepped back. The door opened and a face peered out, a face belonging to one of the other girls who had been at the diner on Saturday. She looked at Tori, then up at Faith. "I don't know, Tori," she said. "I still think she could be a narc."
Faith laughed so hard she almost dropped whatever she was holding. "Oh, man," she gasped when the guffaws faded, "that almost makes this whole trip worthwhile." She put her hands on her knees and shook her head. "What do you think this is, fucking 21 Jump Street?"
The girl scowled. "You don't have to be mean about it." She pushed the door open. "Come on in…" She raised her eyebrows at Tori.
"Faith," the small girl said. "She's Faith."
"I'm Kim," the holder of the door volunteered. The Slayer nodded as she slipped past and followed Tori down a dim hallway.
"Okay," Faith said as she looked around. "This is the school?"
"Used to be," Tori said over her shoulder. "They shut it down, what, six years ago?"
"Five or six," Kim said from behind them. "We were in middle school."
"So, this was the high school?" Faith stepped around a fallen acoustic ceiling tile.
"This wing was," Tori said. "You saw how the building's shaped? Elementary and middle school were on the other leg of the U, district offices and cafeteria were in the middle part, and the gym's down at the end of this hall."
Faith stopped. "Everybody, kindergarten on up, everybody in this building?"
"Yeah." Kim spoke from close enough behind that Faith had to quell an urge to swing.
Tori turned into an open door on the left and Faith followed. They were in a large room empty except for a card table and three old camp chairs. The third member of Saturday's trio, the tall girl, was already in the room. "What have you got?" she asked. Tori put the flashlight on the floor and reached into her tote bag. "Pizza rolls, the pepperoni kind, and… two kinds of chips, and a twelve-pack of Mountain Dew."
"Nice." Tall Girl stepped around Tori and held out her hand. "Give me that. I'm Lynda with 'y'." Faith handed over the contraption, which Linda placed in the middle of the table. She worked a rod of some sort, then took a long match out of a box. There was a quick flare, then Lynda-with-a-'y' turned a dial and the glass bulb glowed or, rather, two weird little sacks inside it glowed. Lynda adjusted the flame, then shook out the match, dropped it on the floor, and crushed it with her foot.
"Here," Kim said. "I brought some TGI Friday's potato skins, bacon and sour cream."
"Nice," Lynda sighed.
"Wait a minute," Faith said. "You broke into your abandoned old school to… eat junk food?"
"No," Lynda said, as though talking to a very slow child. "The food is for when the munchies hit." She held up a quart-sized Ziploc bag filled with very tightly-rolled cigarettes.
"Ohhhhhhhhh," Faith said, her eyes widening.
"Thus my concerns that you are a narc," Kim said.
"Well, ladies," Faith said, "if you're offering, I won't turn it down. That would be rude."
Thirty minutes later, the pizza rolls and potato skins were not the only baked goods in the room. Faith had gone foraging and found an old office chair with one broken arm in another room. She sprawled out, looking at the ceiling through a haze of smoke, and turned lazy circles as the wheels click-clacked over the tile floor. "Hey," she said, "did you know there are stars on the ceiling?"
"Yeah," Lynda drawled. "We stuck them up there, what, second time we came up here?" The other girls made noises that seemed to agree.
"So…" Faith struggled to raise her head as she held out her hand. Lynda passed the roach, which the Slayer pinched between thumb and forefinger before taking a deep draw. She held her breath until her face turned red, then coughed out "You guys just come up here and get high?" She waved her hand to dispel the immediate fug.
Kim looked at her as though the Slayer had the thickest skull in the solar system. "Have you noticed anything else to do?" She made a beckoning hand movement.
Faith passed the diminished doobie and thought about that for a moment. "I went to the library yesterday," she said, and burst out laughing. Her merriment was apparently contagious. It ebbed into giggles, then found new life before subsiding.
Lynda hiccuped and raised her head. "What bands do you like?"
Faith blinked. "Uh, Bikini Kill… Breeders… Pixies, love the Pixies, Boston forever!" She threw a fist in the air, then had to correct to keep from toppling over.
"I like the Pixies," Tori said. "I really like 'Here Comes Your Man'."
"Way to go out on a limb," Kim snorted. "Everybody likes 'Here Comes Your Man'."
"Hey, hey," Faith tried to snap, but it came out a little slurred, "take it easy on my girl. She had to face down Asshole Romeo."
"Who?" Kim looked around as though a fifth person had spoken.
"Dalton, she means Dalton." Tori waved a hand. "I told you about it, how he came into the store and she kicked his ass."
"Wait, her? It was her?" Lynda pointed at Faith. "You made it sound like it was that chick from The Matrix."
"Trinity." Kim pointed at Lynda. "And we don't say 'chick'."
Lynda waved her off. "Or Terminator… woman."
"Sarah Connor!" Tori shouted.
"Yeah!" Kim looked around at the other three. "Probably shouldn't yell."
"La Femme Nikita!" Faith hissed. The other girls stared at her. "Sorry," Faith stammered, momentarily sober, "somebody I… somebody I used to know watched it with me."
"You." Lynda returned to pointing at the Slayer. "You beat up Dalton Beck?"
"Well, not all by myself." Faith picked up a potato chip bag and shook it, then tossed it aside. "Lewis was there."
"Lewis?" Lynda looked at Tori like someone who expected an answer.
"He was gassing up his truck," Tori said. "He hit Dalton with a case of beer. It was pretty funny."
"Hey," Faith said, "why are we sharing one joint when you've got a whole baggie?"
"It's a bonding thing," Lynda replied. "Plus, it cuts down on the clean-up-"
"And we didn't do it one time and we ended up smoking half the baggie." Tori shook her head, eyes wide. "God, I was so paranoid when I got home."
"Yeah." Faith looked at the other girls, her hands spread wide. "I mean, I'm no expert, but that seems like really, really good weed."
"It is," Kim said.
"So, let me get this straight." Faith held up a finger and spent a couple of seconds staring at it. "You guys don't have a school, you don't have a doctor, you don't have cops, but you can get weed."
"Duh," Kim said. "You can get weed anywhere."
"Yeah, yeah, it's like what Mr. Flanagan said that one time." Tori bit her lip. "He's a teacher at the high school, not this one, because this one's closed, but at our school, the one we go to now-"
"Uh-huh." Faith nodded.
"And he was in the Air Force for, like, twenty years, and he traveled all over the world, and he said that you could go to places where they didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing, but there would be a guy selling Coke out of a giant inflatable bottle with a cooler running off a generator."
"Yeah," Kim said. "The less there is to do, I mean, what else are we gonna do?" She looked at Faith and the Slayer could tell that the other girl was having difficulty focusing.
"Which brings us back to Dalton Beck. Pew! Pew!" Lynda made finger-guns and faux-fired them.
"Huh? How?" Faith frowned.
Lynda sat up straighter in her chair and held up her hands shoulder width apart, the index fingers raised. Faith blinked and shook her head; it reminded her of the way Xander sometimes held his hands. "Dalton Beck's dad, Heath Beck, lets these two brothers run the weed business in the county… pretty much. I don't think they exactly stop at the county line."
Faith squinted. "So, Asshole Romeo's dad runs weed?"
Lynda shook her head very hard. "No no no no no. He lets these two brothers sell weed. They live over just east of the county seat." She licked her lips, grabbed a cold Pizza Roll, and popped it in her mouth. "Dalton's always over there picking up his dad's cut of the weed sales. I think he also gets some for himself, and he uses that to get girls to sleep with him."
"Gross." Faith mimed puking.
"Oh, yeah, and they're always, like, freshmen and stuff."
"Is he in your grade?"
Lynda wagged a finger back and forth. "He should have graduated last year, but he dropped out, like, four years ago."
Faith furrowed her brow, concentrating. "So, the money these brothers pay his dad is…"
"It's like a submission, I mean…" Lynda blinked.
"A commission," Tori said.
"Right, right, like that. They pay the commission, they don't get messed with."
Faith pressed her fingers against her forehead. "So, his dad is, like, what, the Whitey Bulger of Armpit, California?" She looked at their blank faces. "Sorry, Boston mobster. So, does he provide protection, or what?"
"I don't think so, I think it's more like a fee." Kim blinked, opened her eyes wide, and blinked again. "I mean, protect them from what, besides him? Anyway, he's hands-on with the big money. He handles the meth."
"Yeah," the other two girls agreed.
"Meth." Faith looked around at all three of them. "He sells meth in this county."
"Yeah, but not just here," Kim said. "He cooks it, then sends most of it further east and north, kind of like…" She searched for the correct term.
"An import-export business," Faith suggested.
"I don't know," Kim said, accepting the stub of the roach from Tori and finishing it. "But that sounds right."
"So," Faith said, turning her head like someone watching a kaleidoscope shift, "do you buy your weed from these brothers?"
"Probably, I mean, Kim gets it from Alan Paulk. He thinks she's cute, so he gives her a discount." Lynda shrugged. "He probably gets it from them."
"Hey," Faith said, almost falling out of the chair as her feet became entangled in the wheels, "what's the deal with the dark? Why is this the town that really dreaded sundown?" The girls exchanged looks, clearly uncomfortable. The Slayer waited. Her eyes felt itchy.
"Well," Tori finally said, "all those people died."
"Yeah," Lynda said. "That's probably it." She tilted to the right, then pulled herself back to center.
"What people died?" Faith looked back and forth between them.
"Well, we were just kids-" Lynda began.
"I don't even really remember it," Kim interrupted. Lynda shot her a look.
"Like I said, we were just kids. Anyway, the story is that some guys who came up here hunting got gutted in the woods, out east of town, up higher in the mountains."
"Yeah," Kim said, "they tried to say it was bears, but my grandpa always said no bear did that. Those guys were torn up bad, according to him."
"Okay, so, some guys from out of town get killed on a hunting trip." Faith put her hands to her temples. "That's not good for tourism, but…" She held up her hands. "Color me confused."
"That was the first time." Tori's voice was soft. "There were others."
"Yeah," Lynda added, "and the last one, right before they closed the school."
"What happened?" Faith's throat felt dry, and not just from the smoke.
Lynda rocked back and forth. "There was…" Her voice trailed away.
"Theresa Dedmon," Tori said, echoed by Kim. Lynda nodded sagely.
"She was here, at school. She stayed after basketball practice to work on a project for the science fair. She only lived, like, a half-mile up the highway." Lynda's face contorted. "They found her in pieces." She scowled.
"Was she the last one?" Faith's heart was pounding like a blacksmith's hammer.
"After Theresa, that's when our parents, shit, when everybody started harping on getting home before dark. We did it, because we were scared, but, you know, after a while, everybody started to forget, and then-" Lynda's eyes grew faraway. "They were just going out to party one night-" She looked around at the floor, littered with empty bags, wrappers, and ash. "They just went out into the woods, you know, and they all died."
"Eleven kids." Kim's voice was firmer, as though she had a stronger grasp of the history. "Eight seniors, that's, like, one-third of the class."
"Did they get lost? Fall off a cliff?" The Slayer remembered Lewis's caution. "Run into a mountain lion?"
Kim shook her head. "They didn't starve, or fall off a cliff. Everybody says they were slaughtered, just body parts everywhere."
"What? No way." Faith tried to convince herself as much as the other girl.
Kim looked at her with the eyes of someone who knew what she knew. "This wasn't just town gossip. I remember how the grown-ups tried to hide it, but they couldn't."
"Yeah," Tori whispered. "They told us it was no big deal, but a lot of people moved away right after that, and they closed the school halfway through the year."
"That's when they started busing us all to the county seat," Kim said.
"People started connecting dots," Lynda said. "All these weird, gross deaths, all of them in the dark." She stood up and walked to the door.
Faith took in the story and let it carom around her head for a while. "So, you just don't go outside at night, at all?"
Kim shrugged. "There's wiggle room. If you're in a lighted place, you're probably okay, long as you stay in the light. I only think one person actually died in town, so that's not as dangerous as the woods, and if you drive at night, you always keep your high beams on." She sniffed. "Some people drive with their dome light on, just in case."
The Slayer's tongue pressed hard against her teeth. "And nobody knows what's doing it?"
"It's the shoggoths." Tori's voice was barely above a whisper.
"The what?" Faith said, turning to the small girl.
Tori kept her eyes on her feet. "I took Mr. Flanagan's Short Stories class last year. We did a unit on horror stories, and we read Lovecraft. You ever read Lovecraft?" Faith shook her head, slightly spooked by the hollow, empty quality of Tori's voice. "He was scary as shit, and there's this one story, it's really long, practically a book, called At the Mountains of Madness, and there's a shoggoth." She looked up at the Slayer. "It's a monster, and it kills because that's what it does, and it's never satisfied."
Faith hitched forward. "And you think one of these… shoggoths… lives in the woods around here?"
Tori stared at her, the light of the camp lantern reflecting an odd, blank expression in her eyes. "No, not a real one, there aren't real shoggoths, but…" She licked her lips and Faith realized that, while they might be the same age, these girls were, in very important ways, much younger than her. "There's something around here, something bad, and it's killing this town, and one day, it'll all be gone."
"Not to rain on Morbid Millie's parade," Lynda said from the door, "but it's getting pretty close to sunset. We need to clean up and book." The girls began to gather up the empty bags.
"Why are you doing that?" Faith said.
Lynda stopped and looked at the Slayer. "Because this is our spot, and there's no reason for it to look like crap. That's just depressing, plus, there is a guy who kinda pokes around and patrols here, I think because of the insurance or something, and we don't want him finding out what's going on." Faith nodded as they picked up the trash and packed it away. Lynda turned out the lantern, suddenly throwing the room into a spectral gloom. Faith picked up the lantern as three flashlights snapped on. "Okay, remember, call each other when we get home." She looked at Faith and bit her lip. "Sorry." The Slayer shook her head and the four of them were silent as they went down the hall. The door scraped slightly as Kim pushed it open; the evening breeze was fresh and cool on their faces. The sky above was a deep navy blue and a layer of neon pink and orange lay over the western horizon.
"Hey," Faith said, as a thought occurred to her, "are you guys okay to…" She turned an imaginary steering wheel, the lantern clanking in her hand.
"Oh, yeah," Lynda said as she got into the Mustang. "We all live in town, so none of us have to go that far, and we space out leaving, so we're not really on the road at the same time." She slammed the door, fumbled with the key for a moment, then fired up the engine. She executed a very careful three-point turn, then bounced down the rutted path. Her headlights turned right onto the highway; as they faded, Kim climbed into the pickup, started it, and slewed around in a big, sloppy U-turn. Her entrance onto the highway resulted in gravel spraying over the pavement as the truck fishtailed a bit. Her lights diminished, leaving Tori and Faith standing beside the Kia in the gathering gloom.
"You sure you're good?" Faith asked.
"Oh, yeah," Tori said. "I know I'm really high, so I'm a lot more careful." She scrunched up her button nose. "I'm probably a safer driver when I'm high than I am straight."
"Doubt that," Faith said, getting into the passenger seat. Tori did seem to pay extra attention to her driving, to the point of driving twenty miles an hour on the highway.
"Where do you need to go?" she asked.
"You get yourself home," Faith said. "I can walk from your house and be where I need to be before it's full dark." It seemed like Tori wanted to argue, but her driving occupied all of her attention. When the Sephia pulled into the carport, the girl released a breath that she appeared to have been holding since they left the school. She looked at the Slayer and blinked, slow and heavy. "You," Faith said, "should get inside." Tori simply nodded and grabbed her tote bag, then sort of rolled out of the car and wobbled toward the door. Faith got out and watched until Tori was inside and the door was closed, then turned to walk to the diner. The breeze felt good, cutting through the haze that enveloped her brain. Her legs and arms started to coordinate a little better as the color drained from the world. She was crossing the street toward the diner when full dark arrived. Faith pulled the key out of her pocket and felt a chill run up her spine, rapid enough that her left hand groped for the knife in her pocket before the door opened and she stepped inside.