He knew. Of course he did. Knew where Budweiser Boy would be waiting. Where Budweiser Boy would be watching.
Watching, ever watching.
Like the distorted deputy; the old man in The Folder Corner.
Watching faces, all dripping wax and freakshow masks.
He ran for the house where he’d followed a hidden watcher just a couple of days earlier. He ran towards the same alley alongside the house. Saw the tumbledown pile of lumber; the rectangle of sun-bleached grass, off-white and ghostly in the moonlight and distant sodium arcs.
Rufus sprinted around the corner, readying himself for the confrontation.
But the yard was empty.
The air above the lawn was undisturbed.
Rufus pulled to a halt, looking around himself, fearing a trap of some sort. But he was alone.
He stood, breathing heavily, letting his heart calm as he looked up at the stars, listening for anything over the silence of the sleeping town. But there was nothing. He might just have been the last man on Earth.
Maybe his panic had been for nothing. Maybe all of it was in his head.
Maybe I should just go back to Danni’s place.
Looking back over his shoulder, down the alleyway by the side of the house, he could see only a little of Shaw Street, though Danni’s house was obscured.
They wouldn’t watch from here, he thought, they couldn’t.
And, like that, he was back in the other day, standing outside Danni’s, sensing somebody
some thing
watching them from afar. From…
From the alleyway. Peeking around the corner.
Some instinct within him fired full blast and Rufus ducked to the back of the abandoned house, where he crouched down, pulling tight into the shadows.
Waited.
* * *
Crouching in the shadows, Rufus wondered just who he was becoming, just where this town in the mist was taking him.
* * *
A few minutes later he heard footsteps, slow and steady; the whickering swish of sneaker on sidewalk.
Here he comes, Rufus thought.
The footsteps approached, and Rufus pulled further into the shadows. Sure enough, whoever was approaching
Budweiser Boy
stopped at the end of the alleyway, and Rufus knew that he would be watching Danni’s place.
Rufus counted to ten, listening all the time for the sound of those footfalls. He scanned the night sky, looking for any reflection of blue and red, any sign of the distorted deputy.
When he was certain neither was coming, he stood slowly and stepped lightly to the corner of the house. He peeked around the edge and, sure enough, there was a shadow standing at the far end of the alleyway, looking down the street towards Danni’s house.
Budweiser Boy, Rufus confirmed; the size and shape were right.
Rufus had no chance of taking the other man in a fight, he knew. Sheer size would do for him, let alone the fact that he had little experience of self-defense; the few times he’d ever had to protect himself, he’d done so by getting out of the situation as soon as he’d been able.
He ducked back behind the house.
So what the hell are you going to do now? Rufus admonished himself.
He scanned the back yard, looking for exits, any way to…
They haven’t attacked me yet, he thought suddenly.
And it was true. They hadn’t.
He’d been threatened. He’d been followed. He’d been warned.
All of it.
But they hadn’t attacked him yet.
He closed his eyes briefly, breathing deep to calm himself.
And before he could think much further, he turned to step into the alleyway.
“What are you doing?” Rufus challenged the shadow, taking a step forward.
* * *
Budweiser Boy turned slowly, showing little surprise or even concern that someone was behind him in the alleyway.
Rufus couldn’t make out the other man’s face; all was shadow. The logo on his t-shirt was just discernible in the darkness.
“Singer,” his voice was quiet, definitive, “you are here.”
Rufus shrugged, stood tall.
“Guess so.”
Budweiser Boy took a step towards him, turned to look up at the house.
“We…”
Silence stretched between them, the other man continuing to stare up at the dark building. After a moment, he turned back to look at Rufus.
“You are staying at the camp-ground,” there was no question in the statement.
What? Rufus thought, his mind flashing on the strange interrogation with the distorted deputy; the dry recitation of the facts and figures of child disappearance.
“What are you doing here?” Rufus repeated his original question.
Budweiser Boy glanced back over his shoulder towards the street, when he turned back, Rufus got a flash of his profile in streetlight penumbra.
Emotionless, he thought, completely blank.
Rufus was struck once again by the angles of the other man’s face, how it didn’t seem to fit, to work right; accentuated by the half-light and shadow.
For the first time, he considered stepping backwards into the yard, where the moonlight at least gave some illumination.
Budweiser Boy stood stock still, staring at Rufus.
“I am watching,” he said, his tone neutral.
Rufus gritted his teeth; sudden anger welling up inside.
“Why are you watching Danni?”
Budweiser Boy just stared at him.
“Tell me!”
No response came, shadows exuding silence.
Rufus took a step forward.
“Huh?” he demanded.
“I am watching,” Budweiser Boy repeated.
Rufus could feel his face flushing, pulse racing, the nails of his fingers cutting into his palms where he’d coiled them into fists, and suddenly it was surging through him.
He reached out to push Budweiser Boy.
“Huh!” he yelled.
His hands touched the other man’s chest…
* * *
This hole runs so deep, swallowing his hands and forearms into its dark heart. Rufus fights to pull back but the ebon darkness sucks at him, all power and gravity. In his ears, the grisly, grinding noise of a thousand wasps, mosquitos, engines, blurring into one immense cacophony that lances through his forebrain and deeper into some animal part of him; he floods with nausea, panic and alarm.
Rufus screams to be free of this noise, but the blackness is sucking.
Sucking.
* * *
Rufus’ hands slid sideways as they made contact with Budweiser Boy’s chest and his momentum carried him forward towards collision. At the last moment, Rufus twisted sideways, falling past the other man towards the street.
Even as he fell, Rufus had chance to see that Budweiser Boy’s expression did not change, his eyes did not even track the fall.
Rufus tumbled to the ground and, fearing an attack, quickly turned to face the other man.
But Budweiser Boy was already moving down the alleyway towards the back yard.
“No!” Rufus exclaimed, realizing what was about to happen.
Budweiser Boy reached the corner of the house, disappearing behind the building as he entered the back yard.
Rufus jumped to his feet, sprinted after Budweiser Boy.
As he rounded the corner, he skidded to a halt.
The other man stood in the centre of the lawn, staring at him.
Watching him.
“You…” Rufus breathed out before realizing that he didn’t know what to say.
Budweiser Boy’s eyes looked to one side, as if listening to an unseen whisperer. After a moment, he turned back to Rufus.
“You should be leaving,” he said.
Rufus was shocked to hear the distorted deputy’s words from the younger man’s mouth.
“Huh?”
“You should be leaving.”
“I…”
But suddenly the air around Budweiser Boy was shimmering even as it was darkening, a black hole emerging around him. The blackness swelled, seeming to reach tentacles around the man, writhing and twisting as it…
Swallowing him, Rufus thought, it’s swallowing him!
“You should…”
Black tentacles writhed around Budweiser Boy.
Rufus felt his gorge rise, sudden pain slicing through his head on the sharp edge of an ungodly sound.
“Be…” Budweiser Boy continued.
Rufus fell to his knees, retching yet unable to look away from the sight of the blackness enveloping Budweiser Boy. A final caul ran up and began to cover that misshapen, wrong face.
“Wait!” Rufus choked out.
“Leaving.”
The blackness imploded in on itself, collapsing to a tiny dot that hovered in mid-air for a second, as that awful sound grew louder and louder, slicing through Rufus, who clapped his hands to his ears to try and claw it out.
The black hole collapsed, leaving only a shimmering heat pattern in its wake.
And the yard was silence once again.
Rufus lay face down on the lawn, catatonic; blood seeping from the scratches his finger-nails had made around his ears.
RUFUS – A NOVEL is a novel-in-progress by Vincent Tuckwood, a Brit author living and working in Waterford, Connecticut, USA. Read more by Vincent Tuckwood.
