RE: DEATHGAME 9000 [S!3] Round Two: Interplanetary Circus
03-14-2015, 02:48 AM
Take the thirty-one up north past the city, through the other city, and north a bit more, upstate towards the kind of land where your normal idea of what America’s supposed to look like breaks down a bit—not that it isn’t a pretty sight, mountains and woodlands and all, but I dunno, something about the way humanity asserts itself now and again with a big electrical tower, whatsit, a pylon; or some kind of plant or facility buried in a valley all surrounded by chain link; never mind the road itself, cutting through the land like a scar, which I suppose is what it is—I’m talking about the kind of human presence that doesn’t look quite human, though, like humanity, it stands apart from nature, if you understand me—you know what kind of country I’m talking about if you’ve been there—pretty as a postcard that’s stained with tears and a cigarette burn right through the middle—take exit 93, if you don’t miss the sign, night-driving as you might be depending what time it was you left the city—that’s where you’ll find Fervour Mour.
Exit 93 will take you right past that certain vision of fallen America, into a forest by a lake that the oldest people knew of old, and you’ll find that the road on which you travel is now called Main Street—so marked because along it you will find both of Fervour Mour’s two count-em two traffic lights—of course, I’m talking hypothetical, because it’s six weeks now the way off of Exit 93 is buried under thirty feet of snow, as tends to happen in winter, and ain’t shit that government nor private enterprise can do about it. But say you came in summer, the first sign you’ll see after of course the WELCOME TO FERVOUR MOUR sign with whatever charming defacement the local teens have sprayed on it—currently I believe it’s FERAL CATS DON’T ALWAYS BITE BUT THEY ALWAYS LISTEN—you never can quite decipher this teen slang, nowadays—but I digress—the second sign you’re gonna see is the sign for DAWN’S NIGHT LODGE—which is to say—I know this always confuses people, but Dawn won’t have it changed—the Night Lodge, owned and managed by Dawn—not to suggest that night follows or belongs to dawn—though the old stories speak of a place where it does just that—
FBI special agent Drake Dancer was contemplating his surroundings over the day’s second cup of coffee (compliments as always to Dawn). The sounds, sights, and smells of the Dawn’s Night Lodge—which he’d come to think of as both home and office, these past weeks—created, as always, a tranquil and meditative atmosphere conducive to investigative rigor.
Unfortunately, Agent Dancer was forced to admit, his investigative talents—which were not insignificant—had thus far failed him. Six weeks and still Patsy Oscuro’s killer eluded him and those citizens and officers who aided him in his investigation. Of course, the thrill of the chase was one of the great pleasures in his life, and ordinarily ever compounded by a seemingly-insurmountable challenge… and yet his failures in this case were disturbing to him. It was not only his occupational duty, but his moral imperative to identify and apprehend the killer. Not because of the abstract concept of justice—Agent Dancer was skeptical of his fellow lawmen who viewed themselves as avatars of God’s wrath, citing an ethical prerogative to facilitate the suffering of evil men—but because it was the only way the good and innocent people of Fervour Mour could sleep at night.
Bad dreams were, of late, as dependable a feature of the landscape as the trees.
Agent Dancer spent some time swilling his discontent around in his mouth along with his coffee when into the Dawn’s Night Lodge there walked an absolute vision of a young woman, dressed in white. And the puzzle took on a new dimension. The trick of the Fervour Mour case was its finitude—there were only so many possible subjects, so many possible scenarios, so many places to look. And here was somebody new. Even under ordinary circumstances, a woman like that in a time like this was bound to attract some attention.
But most striking of all was her resemblance to the deceased Patsy Oscuro—the girl at the center of all his thoughts.
The woman looked confused—lost, one might say, hard as that is to believe in a one-hotel kind of town—so Agent Dancer took upon himself the role of volunteer concierge. He walked over and extended a hand. “Hello, miss,” he said. “Welcome to the Dawn’s Night Lodge. You wouldn’t happen to be new to Fervour Mour, would you?”
For a moment, the young lady looked Agent Dancer over in the way that certain types of women often did, but then she diverted to his eyes, evidently deciding that she had more important things to be doing. “I would,” she said, haltingly. “I’m looking for somewhere to stay, and I don’t have any money.”
“Ah.” Having concluded that he was not dealing with a master criminal, Agent Dancer decided there was no need to immediately get to the bottom of her mystique. “Purse snatched?”
The woman smiled, grateful for the excuse. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right.”
“Well, I think you’ll find that the people of Fervour Mour are the hospitable kind, when they aren’t snatching purses. You’ll find a place to rest your head without too much trouble. You flew in, I take it?”
“Yyyyyyes.”
Agent Dancer pulled out a chair. “Please sit.” She sat; he took the seat opposite and sipped his coffee. “We haven’t gotten a lot of air traffic in or out since just after the road shut down,” he said. “Do you want coffee? My treat.”
“Coffee? Isn’t there tea?”
Agent Dancer winced; maybe he’d misjudged this woman. She had the sort of charms that could make a man misdirect his investigative faculties; he had to be careful. “I’ll ask next time Dawn comes around,” he said coldly. “Miss, before we speak any more, I don’t want us to mistake each other. I have no desire to mislead you as to my purpose, so I’ll get to the point.”
The woman blushed. “I…” she said. “But we’ve only just met. I don’t usually…”
Agent Dancer laid his badge and identification on the table in front of her. “My name is Special Agent Drake Dancer. I’m an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned to Fervour Mour to investigate the death of Patsy Oscuro.”
“Oh.” (Slightly disappointed, mostly relieved.) “You’re… law enforcement.”
“In part, yes. Is that a problem for you?”
“No,” said the woman. “No, of course not. I just wasn’t expecting…”
“Of course, I don’t want you to I’m ‘just some suit,’” said Agent Dancer. “The Bureau as a whole tends to mistake coldness for professionality; I try not to make the same mistake. A holistic model of criminal investigation, as well as basic human decency—the needs of the spirit—demand that I involve myself comprehensively in any community to which my investigations bring me. Whether or not that involvement proves directly pertinent to the case at hand.”
“As a licensed veterinarian, I understand perfectly.”
“Ah! A noble profession if ever there was one. There are so few who are willing to offer our animal companions the care they so deserve.” The woman visibly relaxed. Bringing a smile to the face of such an individual was, of course, its own reward, but it also opened some investigative doors. “Now--again, in the interest of full disclosure--I do believe our meeting here to be pertinent to the case that brings me to Fervour Mour. I’m not mistaken in assuming that you’re a relation of the victim? The resemblance is undeniable.”
She hesitated. Blinked. “You’re not mistaken,” she said. “Trisha Oscuro. Of the… southern? Oscuros. I’m a distant cousin. Patsy and I were pen pals. Briefly. Years ago. When I heard what happened…”
“You felt it was your duty to come down and see. I think we understand each other quite well, Dr. Oscuro.”
“‘Trisha.’ Please.”
“And, if you’ll forgive me one of my flights of fancy, I think it was more than just my good fortune and your sense of familial that brought you here.”
Trisha blushed again. A reaction to that “good fortune” line, or something more? “I don’t know what you—” she started.
“I only mean that I believe some manner of higher providence to be guiding events at this stage in the ‘game’—if you’ll forgive my irreverence in using that term—that I and the yet-unrevealed murderer have been ‘playing.’ If you’re interested in assisting in my investigation, it is possible that your veterinary acumen—and your uncanny resemblance to the deceased—might open some doors that have remained shut to me.” Agent Dancer looked around. The lodge’s cafeteria was nearly empty. “Until then, I’d suggest that you stay out of sight. That same resemblance may attract some unfriendly attention.”
“I’ll do anything I can to help,” Trisha said earnestly. “I’m a very good veterinarian. And I’d appreciate your help in… keeping out of sight.”
“That’s easily done. Why don’t you go lie down in my room? I’ll lend you the key.”
“Oh. Oh. I, um… I wouldn’t wish to impose—”
“It’s no worry at all,” said Agent Dancer, grinning. “I haven’t used that bed in weeks. He tapped his coffee cup and said this last in a whisper:
“I don’t sleep anymore.”
—But onward from the Dawn’s Night Lodge now—for you would not be staying there unless you had some business further up the road—which curves now downward and eastward, spiraling slowly down off of hill into bog—skirting the coast of Lake Proper—all the marsh frozen over now, but the ice on the lake is thinner—maybe a body who had reason to steer clear of the road might make it across without falling through—the most fascinating thing about winter is the way that the ice often reveals things in the marsh that are again hidden in the murk of the water come the thaw—but stick to the road and you come to the first of the two aforementioned traffic lights; this one marks Main Street’s intersection with Old Lake Road.
Now, that traffic light was deemed necessary primarily because of the school—when the Fog comes over the water a good old-fashioned crossing guard can’t hold a candle to a glaring red light—not that the good townsfolk of Fervour Mour didn’t try and make do in stubborn defiance of the onset of the twentieth century—which stubbornness led to casualties and in fact fatalities at the intersection and elsewhere, believe you me—a child fatality at the end of that, in fact—now, what can be said about that? Child dies so young, surely some force is to blame—sure enough there were those who blamed the stubbornness and so moved at town meeting to fund the erection of the traffic light—others blamed the automobile and so (seeing the light as a validation, a tacit acceptance of the automobile) resisted the light—some were even so bold as to blame the child for walking in the Fog so heedlessly—myself, I blame the Fog—which might be construed by some as wisdom i.e. a reluctance to blame aught but senseless chance for a senseless death—but those who might say such do not know the Fog the way I do—
Chuck “Chaz” Azalea ran the red light straight through. Like, vroom, whoo, giggle. Of the bad decisions he had made tonight, this one was not entirely unreasonable:
1) Anyone only ever gave a shit about the light when school was getting out;
2) Who the fuck was gonna be coming down Main at this time of night anyway and with the way back to the highway closed;
3) What the hell is even the point of driving drunk if you’re going to do things like stop at red lights? You stop moving, let a fog-shrouded red light tell you what to do, that’s when paranoia sinks in and the night is ruined.
Anyway, 4), Marcia—one of the more legitimately bad bad decisions Chaz had made tonight—seemed to like it. Hers was the giggle. Marcia had hair straight out of MTV, like the curls, like Chaz liked, and she wore jingly bracelets, and chewed bubblegum in a way that just naturally made a hot-blooded young male think of blowjobs. She was Fervour Mour born and bred like the rest of them but looked like she might have been a city girl, like on the TV. She and Chaz had been giving each other the eye since even before what happened to Patsy, but nothing was gonna come of it while he was still a murder suspect.
The videotape had sorted that out, just last night, and the hell he’d been through for it. Story in itself, there. But now he had Alibi, and couldn’t Dancer or the sheriff or anyone give him any shit about what happened to Patsy no more. So now that he’d rubbed it in the law’s face that they were Wrong About Him, he could finally get back to the work of his life, i.e. proving to the local moms and wholesome types that they were Right About Him All Along.
So, past the intersection is where Old Lake Road, just as fake as everything else in this town, isn’t even on the lake anymore, and starts to do this swerving kinda dance up and down the hills into the deep forest. Nothing up out this far east but a couple rich fucks who built their mansion on the other end of the hill, to see the sunrise, like. That and some hunting cabins, some old Indian religious shit, you know, woodsy stuff. Chaz just liked the road. Absolute best place to take the convertible for a spin, especially whilst tanked. And plenty of places to pull over at any given moment and bend your companion over the hood of the car—get a look at what’s under all that denim. It was a good kind of night. Chaz felt like one of them old Indians they tell you about in the brochures, who’d get blitzed on those flowers that used to grow by the lake and go running naked through the woods thinking they could turn into different animals or whatever. Chaz, not to put too fine a point on it, was a goddamn wolf tonight. Tape deck blasting some local garage-grunge shit that’s as much to scare off bears as it is to stop the voices in his head. That sound like thunder.
Like any responsible-ass teen, Chaz calculated his alcohol needs off-the-cuff to make sure he was good to drive, but not too good-to-drive to drive, you know? So maybe he didn’t account for the fact that he hadn’t previously had a drop to drink since three days after what happened to Patsy, and might have gone through a brief period of something that might have been shakes, if it wasn’t just that he was sad about Patsy; and maybe he hadn’t slept so much the past three days, and the sleep deprivation and the post-withdrawal-type state fucked up his tolerance and bumped him over from the “comfortably wasted” zone into the “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing” kinda space. Maybe. Or maybe he actually saw the horse, and heard it neigh. Or did he hear the horse, and see the neigh? Whether he had just dozed off at the wheel or really seen it or what, from then on he could always picture in his head colors that he hadn’t known before. Colors he couldn’t explain to anyone else. But anyway,
“Neigh,”
And then he came to, with the convertible wrecked and his head bleeding, a little, and the windshield cracked. And nothing to see in front of him but the tree. Ah, well. He turned his key in the ignition. Chugchugchugfizzle. Ratatatatatatatafizzle. Shit. Looks like he’d half to hoof it back into town and take care of the mess in the—
Marcia.
Detective work, like Dancer’d taught him that one day they took that drive together. Take in the environment. Marcia wasn’t in her seat, okay. And her seatbelt was right there beside her seat—she’d never put it on. He’d put his on, apparently, just, what, instinctively.
The windshield was all cracked to hell where his forehead had hit it on his side. And on the passenger’s side, there was just a little dent and a little smear of blood, up near the top. So she hadn’t gone through the glass. Which was good, probably.
He had to get out of the car now, so he made himself stop shaking. He took the flashlight and some smokes out the glove box (somethings you don’t leave home without, not when you’re headed out in the woods) and went out to look for her.
Didn’t take long. She flew about ten feet before hitting the next tree in and slumping against it. Her hair was all fucked up and she wasn’t moving, but she was breathing. Right? Yeah. She was breathing, alright.
Marcia was too much for him to carry and the car was still shot. So what was he gonna do? Scream for help? Hoof it into town alone and get help? Sit here and sober up and wait til morning and hope Marcia’s just concussed or whatever and she’ll wake up?
“Shit.
What are you supposed to do about concussions? Would he fuck up his concussion if he tried to move her?
“Shit shit shit.”
Fucking Asshole of the Year right here, that’s Chaz. His last girl gets chopped up by some psycho, and yeah, maybe he shoulda listened when she asked him for help. Maybe he coulda done something. Then finally he gets another thing going. Figures hey, I’m still young. Can’t let a little thing like a horrific violent death—especially in Fervour Mour—stop me from living my life. And then one night out, and, boom, here’s another beautiful girl who shouldn’t have put her trust in Chaz Azalea. Jesus.
“Shit!”
Back when he was little he used to dream about how maybe he could move out to New York and kill someone, for real, you know, on purpose. He’d practice on the animals. Like, catch a rabbit, put it in a box, pull a gun on it, give a little speech like, “this is just business,” even though it wasn’t. Didn’t go through with it, though. Deep down, he wasn’t like whatever sick fuck did what he did to Patsy. ‘Course he wasn’t.
Still, if people were gonna keep dying on him, he’d like to have some say in it. That seems only fair, right? Maybe he’d rather be a psycho killer than just some fuck-up kid who carries death around him wherever he goes.
Suddenly Chaz was scared of the woods. He’d seen that horse—all weird with the colors and lights. It wasn’t just a horse. It wasn’t just a horse. Fuck the concussion. He had to go. He grabbed Marcia and held her like newlyweds and took off back up Old Lake Road as fast as he could. He was safer on the road, narrow as it was. The woods respected travelers on Old Lake Road, was what Aunt Manu had always said. Of course, that not-just-a-horse hadn’t respected shit. But he couldn’t think about that. He just had to keep moving.
He was walking for two minutes when he saw a light up ahead. Two lights. Car lights. Chaz panicked. Here he was holding a bloody girl in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, and he couldn’t fudge his way through no type of sober test, no way. He was done. He was fucked. He didn’t even think about hiding out in the woods. He had to stay on the road.
The car pulled up beside him and opened its door. Its driver’s side door. And there wasn’t anyone inside. But hey, Chaz was just relieved it wasn’t a cop. And he wasn’t one to look a gift, uh, you know, leave a gift wrapped under a tree, when he could… open the gift. So he laid Marcia in the back seat and got in the car and put on his seatbelt.
And the car closed behind him, and locked.
“Shit,” said Chaz. He put his hand on the stick…
…And got an electric shock for his trouble. “You’re in no condition to drive,” said the car.
And Chaz screamed.
--What you’ve got to understand about the people of Fervour Mour, now: is most of them aren’t bad folks—only it’s hard on a body growing up in a place like this: no real culture to speak of, no history that’ll come out to play in the day time, no road out—a sort of pervasive phobia of community as a concept and none of this aided by the introduction of whiskey to the local population in the mid-eighteenth century—among other regrettable episodes in the mid-eighteenth century—this is a place not yet healed, or at least scarred over tough, is the point I suppose I’m trying to make. And people respond to that; young people especially.
God save the children. Anyway.
The half-mile strip between the two stop lights is where the Mour really starts to look like a town in the modern sense: there’s the diner, the police station, town hall, the library, the barber’s, really all the comforts of home—and branching outwards east and west are the Mour’s residential district—I hear tell there’s one spot exactly where you can stand and look all around you and still feel you’re in a genuine suburb, like they show on the TV; good folks there, though perhaps a little arrogant from their proximity to downtown—a little removed from the land, perhaps—but it takes all kinds.
But past that, now—it is not downtown in the pretty houses that we will find the heart of this town—nor under the glowing light of the diner sign, anymore than under the light of the sun—for the second traffic light marks Main Street’s crossing with Mill Road, which is, in fact, the oldest road in town—older in fact than the mill for which it was eventually named. West to east it travels in a straight line—west to the mill or east elsewhere—it’s east we want—
--East along Mill Road is quite a journey and there may not be many places to rest, and already it is dark—fortunately there is a place along the road where the lights are always on—though what those lights reveal is often darker even than the road—LAST STOP 93 says the sign—it is a place where men go—women too—
The way the dead girl used to come in here with that look on her face like she was just daring you to ask her what a girl like her was doing in a place like this. That was how Lance knew it wasn’t her come back from the dead. This one wasn’t just pretending she didn’t give a shit; she just didn’t. Didn’t even shut the door behind her, letting two of them feral cats in. Lance would have to chase them out with a broom later.
Older, too, when she got under the light. Not that there was anything wrong with that in itself. But Patsy had that, you know, that look—like a candy bar. Crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside. Those were the kinds of girls Lance liked, but give ‘em a couple years, they go hard all the way through. Pity. In a way, it was probably best that that one went and died.
But still, this other one, hard though she was—she was a certain kind of woman. “Welcome to Last Stop 93, sugar,” said Lance. “Get you a drink?”
“If you’re paying.” Now, here was something. This lady—almost the spitting image of Patsy—she was wearing what Lance could only describe as a “leotard.” Like she’d just come from the ballet or something. With the little slippers, even. Not even a coat.
Not that Lance was complaining—it was a good look for her. “Oh, I’m paying,” he said. He began mixing her up one of his special cocktails. It was colorful and fruity and no one could ever tell what was in it. Girls liked it. “Name’s Lance, by the way.”
“Patricia.” Patricia gave the drink a sniff, and then a snip.
So what’s a girl like you doing in a—”
“Here’s what I need,” said Patricia. “I need warm clothes and a ride towards somewhere I could stay the night—preferably not here.” She looked around the Last Stop to see that many of the men were already looking back. Many of them looking over the shoulders of the girls who were already sitting on their laps, not looking at much. “I don’t have money and I’m not going to… let’s say, because I want to be comprehensive and I don’t want to waste your time, I’m not going to debase myself in any way as a form of payment. So you just need to accept that these things are going to happen.”
Lance considered this. “Okay,” he said.
“O… okay?”
“Yeah, why not? You seem like an interesting person and I don’t feel like getting on your bad side. Just gimme half an hour and then I’ll close up early and take you to Dawn’s, alright?”
“Alright.” She blinked twice and shook her head, as though she wasn’t thinking right. “Thank you… Lance,” she said.
“No problem, Patricia. See, I get the impression that you were maybe planning on putting some of your lean, gorgeously toned muscles on me, if I didn’t do you a solid tonight.”
“That was … I’d thought of it.” Patricia gulped down half her drink.
“It’s something about me,” said Lance, pouring her a glass of water. “Where people think they have to threaten me to get anything out of me. Prejudice against small business owners, I say. Or maybe it’s the mustache.”
He tweaked the offending facial hair with his finger. Patricia giggled. “In no universe,” she said, “at no time, was that mustache ever in fashion.”
“Hey, ‘looking like a chump never goes out of style.’ You know who said that? Batman. Look it up.”
“‘Bat man.’ Mmmm.” Patricia steadied herself on the table. Seriously, no one can ever tell what Lance puts in his special cocktails. Not until the last second. “Lance, do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d become a vege… a veterinarian?”
“Every day, babe. Every day. Now, let me ask you something. The name ‘Patsy Oscuro’ mean anything to you?” One of the feral cats hissed from the corner.
Nothing. No kind of reaction. And poor Patricia was way past the point where she could have hid it. “Paaaaatsy,” she slurred. “Isn’t that short for Patricia?”
“You know, I think it is. Isn’t it funny, the way words and names get all jumbled around like that?”
“But Patricia… that’s the real one. The normal one. The original.”
“Uh-huh. Patricia, from ‘patrician.’ As in the Latin word for a noble. But also ‘patsy,’ meaning: the fall guy. Meaning you’ve been set up.”
There it was. The moment of recognition. The last flicker in the eye before it rolls back and she hit the floor. This always happens at the last second.
“Whoa!” shouted Lance. “Sounds like someone’s had a bit too much!” He winked at each of his regular patrons in turn. “I’m not closing early, so if you heard that, no need to panic.”
Everyone laughed. It was important to always be the fun guy in front of these types. Make out like you weren’t ever running any game that they wouldn’t think was cute. But he was the only one in here ever got a look at Patricia’s face. And man, that resemblance.
Lance had a nose for profit. Now what could a guy get up to in Fervour Mour with an exact duplicate of the late, lamented Patsy Oscuro?
--And once you get past Last Stop, there aren’t any more lights in any windows all the way to the end of the road.
Exit 93 will take you right past that certain vision of fallen America, into a forest by a lake that the oldest people knew of old, and you’ll find that the road on which you travel is now called Main Street—so marked because along it you will find both of Fervour Mour’s two count-em two traffic lights—of course, I’m talking hypothetical, because it’s six weeks now the way off of Exit 93 is buried under thirty feet of snow, as tends to happen in winter, and ain’t shit that government nor private enterprise can do about it. But say you came in summer, the first sign you’ll see after of course the WELCOME TO FERVOUR MOUR sign with whatever charming defacement the local teens have sprayed on it—currently I believe it’s FERAL CATS DON’T ALWAYS BITE BUT THEY ALWAYS LISTEN—you never can quite decipher this teen slang, nowadays—but I digress—the second sign you’re gonna see is the sign for DAWN’S NIGHT LODGE—which is to say—I know this always confuses people, but Dawn won’t have it changed—the Night Lodge, owned and managed by Dawn—not to suggest that night follows or belongs to dawn—though the old stories speak of a place where it does just that—
DAWN’S NIGHT LODGE
FBI special agent Drake Dancer was contemplating his surroundings over the day’s second cup of coffee (compliments as always to Dawn). The sounds, sights, and smells of the Dawn’s Night Lodge—which he’d come to think of as both home and office, these past weeks—created, as always, a tranquil and meditative atmosphere conducive to investigative rigor.
Unfortunately, Agent Dancer was forced to admit, his investigative talents—which were not insignificant—had thus far failed him. Six weeks and still Patsy Oscuro’s killer eluded him and those citizens and officers who aided him in his investigation. Of course, the thrill of the chase was one of the great pleasures in his life, and ordinarily ever compounded by a seemingly-insurmountable challenge… and yet his failures in this case were disturbing to him. It was not only his occupational duty, but his moral imperative to identify and apprehend the killer. Not because of the abstract concept of justice—Agent Dancer was skeptical of his fellow lawmen who viewed themselves as avatars of God’s wrath, citing an ethical prerogative to facilitate the suffering of evil men—but because it was the only way the good and innocent people of Fervour Mour could sleep at night.
Bad dreams were, of late, as dependable a feature of the landscape as the trees.
Agent Dancer spent some time swilling his discontent around in his mouth along with his coffee when into the Dawn’s Night Lodge there walked an absolute vision of a young woman, dressed in white. And the puzzle took on a new dimension. The trick of the Fervour Mour case was its finitude—there were only so many possible subjects, so many possible scenarios, so many places to look. And here was somebody new. Even under ordinary circumstances, a woman like that in a time like this was bound to attract some attention.
But most striking of all was her resemblance to the deceased Patsy Oscuro—the girl at the center of all his thoughts.
The woman looked confused—lost, one might say, hard as that is to believe in a one-hotel kind of town—so Agent Dancer took upon himself the role of volunteer concierge. He walked over and extended a hand. “Hello, miss,” he said. “Welcome to the Dawn’s Night Lodge. You wouldn’t happen to be new to Fervour Mour, would you?”
For a moment, the young lady looked Agent Dancer over in the way that certain types of women often did, but then she diverted to his eyes, evidently deciding that she had more important things to be doing. “I would,” she said, haltingly. “I’m looking for somewhere to stay, and I don’t have any money.”
“Ah.” Having concluded that he was not dealing with a master criminal, Agent Dancer decided there was no need to immediately get to the bottom of her mystique. “Purse snatched?”
The woman smiled, grateful for the excuse. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right.”
“Well, I think you’ll find that the people of Fervour Mour are the hospitable kind, when they aren’t snatching purses. You’ll find a place to rest your head without too much trouble. You flew in, I take it?”
“Yyyyyyes.”
Agent Dancer pulled out a chair. “Please sit.” She sat; he took the seat opposite and sipped his coffee. “We haven’t gotten a lot of air traffic in or out since just after the road shut down,” he said. “Do you want coffee? My treat.”
“Coffee? Isn’t there tea?”
Agent Dancer winced; maybe he’d misjudged this woman. She had the sort of charms that could make a man misdirect his investigative faculties; he had to be careful. “I’ll ask next time Dawn comes around,” he said coldly. “Miss, before we speak any more, I don’t want us to mistake each other. I have no desire to mislead you as to my purpose, so I’ll get to the point.”
The woman blushed. “I…” she said. “But we’ve only just met. I don’t usually…”
Agent Dancer laid his badge and identification on the table in front of her. “My name is Special Agent Drake Dancer. I’m an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned to Fervour Mour to investigate the death of Patsy Oscuro.”
“Oh.” (Slightly disappointed, mostly relieved.) “You’re… law enforcement.”
“In part, yes. Is that a problem for you?”
“No,” said the woman. “No, of course not. I just wasn’t expecting…”
“Of course, I don’t want you to I’m ‘just some suit,’” said Agent Dancer. “The Bureau as a whole tends to mistake coldness for professionality; I try not to make the same mistake. A holistic model of criminal investigation, as well as basic human decency—the needs of the spirit—demand that I involve myself comprehensively in any community to which my investigations bring me. Whether or not that involvement proves directly pertinent to the case at hand.”
“As a licensed veterinarian, I understand perfectly.”
“Ah! A noble profession if ever there was one. There are so few who are willing to offer our animal companions the care they so deserve.” The woman visibly relaxed. Bringing a smile to the face of such an individual was, of course, its own reward, but it also opened some investigative doors. “Now--again, in the interest of full disclosure--I do believe our meeting here to be pertinent to the case that brings me to Fervour Mour. I’m not mistaken in assuming that you’re a relation of the victim? The resemblance is undeniable.”
She hesitated. Blinked. “You’re not mistaken,” she said. “Trisha Oscuro. Of the… southern? Oscuros. I’m a distant cousin. Patsy and I were pen pals. Briefly. Years ago. When I heard what happened…”
“You felt it was your duty to come down and see. I think we understand each other quite well, Dr. Oscuro.”
“‘Trisha.’ Please.”
“And, if you’ll forgive me one of my flights of fancy, I think it was more than just my good fortune and your sense of familial that brought you here.”
Trisha blushed again. A reaction to that “good fortune” line, or something more? “I don’t know what you—” she started.
“I only mean that I believe some manner of higher providence to be guiding events at this stage in the ‘game’—if you’ll forgive my irreverence in using that term—that I and the yet-unrevealed murderer have been ‘playing.’ If you’re interested in assisting in my investigation, it is possible that your veterinary acumen—and your uncanny resemblance to the deceased—might open some doors that have remained shut to me.” Agent Dancer looked around. The lodge’s cafeteria was nearly empty. “Until then, I’d suggest that you stay out of sight. That same resemblance may attract some unfriendly attention.”
“I’ll do anything I can to help,” Trisha said earnestly. “I’m a very good veterinarian. And I’d appreciate your help in… keeping out of sight.”
“That’s easily done. Why don’t you go lie down in my room? I’ll lend you the key.”
“Oh. Oh. I, um… I wouldn’t wish to impose—”
“It’s no worry at all,” said Agent Dancer, grinning. “I haven’t used that bed in weeks. He tapped his coffee cup and said this last in a whisper:
“I don’t sleep anymore.”
—But onward from the Dawn’s Night Lodge now—for you would not be staying there unless you had some business further up the road—which curves now downward and eastward, spiraling slowly down off of hill into bog—skirting the coast of Lake Proper—all the marsh frozen over now, but the ice on the lake is thinner—maybe a body who had reason to steer clear of the road might make it across without falling through—the most fascinating thing about winter is the way that the ice often reveals things in the marsh that are again hidden in the murk of the water come the thaw—but stick to the road and you come to the first of the two aforementioned traffic lights; this one marks Main Street’s intersection with Old Lake Road.
Now, that traffic light was deemed necessary primarily because of the school—when the Fog comes over the water a good old-fashioned crossing guard can’t hold a candle to a glaring red light—not that the good townsfolk of Fervour Mour didn’t try and make do in stubborn defiance of the onset of the twentieth century—which stubbornness led to casualties and in fact fatalities at the intersection and elsewhere, believe you me—a child fatality at the end of that, in fact—now, what can be said about that? Child dies so young, surely some force is to blame—sure enough there were those who blamed the stubbornness and so moved at town meeting to fund the erection of the traffic light—others blamed the automobile and so (seeing the light as a validation, a tacit acceptance of the automobile) resisted the light—some were even so bold as to blame the child for walking in the Fog so heedlessly—myself, I blame the Fog—which might be construed by some as wisdom i.e. a reluctance to blame aught but senseless chance for a senseless death—but those who might say such do not know the Fog the way I do—
OLD LAKE ROAD AND MAIN
Chuck “Chaz” Azalea ran the red light straight through. Like, vroom, whoo, giggle. Of the bad decisions he had made tonight, this one was not entirely unreasonable:
1) Anyone only ever gave a shit about the light when school was getting out;
2) Who the fuck was gonna be coming down Main at this time of night anyway and with the way back to the highway closed;
3) What the hell is even the point of driving drunk if you’re going to do things like stop at red lights? You stop moving, let a fog-shrouded red light tell you what to do, that’s when paranoia sinks in and the night is ruined.
Anyway, 4), Marcia—one of the more legitimately bad bad decisions Chaz had made tonight—seemed to like it. Hers was the giggle. Marcia had hair straight out of MTV, like the curls, like Chaz liked, and she wore jingly bracelets, and chewed bubblegum in a way that just naturally made a hot-blooded young male think of blowjobs. She was Fervour Mour born and bred like the rest of them but looked like she might have been a city girl, like on the TV. She and Chaz had been giving each other the eye since even before what happened to Patsy, but nothing was gonna come of it while he was still a murder suspect.
The videotape had sorted that out, just last night, and the hell he’d been through for it. Story in itself, there. But now he had Alibi, and couldn’t Dancer or the sheriff or anyone give him any shit about what happened to Patsy no more. So now that he’d rubbed it in the law’s face that they were Wrong About Him, he could finally get back to the work of his life, i.e. proving to the local moms and wholesome types that they were Right About Him All Along.
So, past the intersection is where Old Lake Road, just as fake as everything else in this town, isn’t even on the lake anymore, and starts to do this swerving kinda dance up and down the hills into the deep forest. Nothing up out this far east but a couple rich fucks who built their mansion on the other end of the hill, to see the sunrise, like. That and some hunting cabins, some old Indian religious shit, you know, woodsy stuff. Chaz just liked the road. Absolute best place to take the convertible for a spin, especially whilst tanked. And plenty of places to pull over at any given moment and bend your companion over the hood of the car—get a look at what’s under all that denim. It was a good kind of night. Chaz felt like one of them old Indians they tell you about in the brochures, who’d get blitzed on those flowers that used to grow by the lake and go running naked through the woods thinking they could turn into different animals or whatever. Chaz, not to put too fine a point on it, was a goddamn wolf tonight. Tape deck blasting some local garage-grunge shit that’s as much to scare off bears as it is to stop the voices in his head. That sound like thunder.
Like any responsible-ass teen, Chaz calculated his alcohol needs off-the-cuff to make sure he was good to drive, but not too good-to-drive to drive, you know? So maybe he didn’t account for the fact that he hadn’t previously had a drop to drink since three days after what happened to Patsy, and might have gone through a brief period of something that might have been shakes, if it wasn’t just that he was sad about Patsy; and maybe he hadn’t slept so much the past three days, and the sleep deprivation and the post-withdrawal-type state fucked up his tolerance and bumped him over from the “comfortably wasted” zone into the “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing” kinda space. Maybe. Or maybe he actually saw the horse, and heard it neigh. Or did he hear the horse, and see the neigh? Whether he had just dozed off at the wheel or really seen it or what, from then on he could always picture in his head colors that he hadn’t known before. Colors he couldn’t explain to anyone else. But anyway,
“Neigh,”
And then he came to, with the convertible wrecked and his head bleeding, a little, and the windshield cracked. And nothing to see in front of him but the tree. Ah, well. He turned his key in the ignition. Chugchugchugfizzle. Ratatatatatatatafizzle. Shit. Looks like he’d half to hoof it back into town and take care of the mess in the—
Marcia.
Detective work, like Dancer’d taught him that one day they took that drive together. Take in the environment. Marcia wasn’t in her seat, okay. And her seatbelt was right there beside her seat—she’d never put it on. He’d put his on, apparently, just, what, instinctively.
The windshield was all cracked to hell where his forehead had hit it on his side. And on the passenger’s side, there was just a little dent and a little smear of blood, up near the top. So she hadn’t gone through the glass. Which was good, probably.
He had to get out of the car now, so he made himself stop shaking. He took the flashlight and some smokes out the glove box (somethings you don’t leave home without, not when you’re headed out in the woods) and went out to look for her.
Didn’t take long. She flew about ten feet before hitting the next tree in and slumping against it. Her hair was all fucked up and she wasn’t moving, but she was breathing. Right? Yeah. She was breathing, alright.
Marcia was too much for him to carry and the car was still shot. So what was he gonna do? Scream for help? Hoof it into town alone and get help? Sit here and sober up and wait til morning and hope Marcia’s just concussed or whatever and she’ll wake up?
“Shit.
What are you supposed to do about concussions? Would he fuck up his concussion if he tried to move her?
“Shit shit shit.”
Fucking Asshole of the Year right here, that’s Chaz. His last girl gets chopped up by some psycho, and yeah, maybe he shoulda listened when she asked him for help. Maybe he coulda done something. Then finally he gets another thing going. Figures hey, I’m still young. Can’t let a little thing like a horrific violent death—especially in Fervour Mour—stop me from living my life. And then one night out, and, boom, here’s another beautiful girl who shouldn’t have put her trust in Chaz Azalea. Jesus.
“Shit!”
Back when he was little he used to dream about how maybe he could move out to New York and kill someone, for real, you know, on purpose. He’d practice on the animals. Like, catch a rabbit, put it in a box, pull a gun on it, give a little speech like, “this is just business,” even though it wasn’t. Didn’t go through with it, though. Deep down, he wasn’t like whatever sick fuck did what he did to Patsy. ‘Course he wasn’t.
Still, if people were gonna keep dying on him, he’d like to have some say in it. That seems only fair, right? Maybe he’d rather be a psycho killer than just some fuck-up kid who carries death around him wherever he goes.
Suddenly Chaz was scared of the woods. He’d seen that horse—all weird with the colors and lights. It wasn’t just a horse. It wasn’t just a horse. Fuck the concussion. He had to go. He grabbed Marcia and held her like newlyweds and took off back up Old Lake Road as fast as he could. He was safer on the road, narrow as it was. The woods respected travelers on Old Lake Road, was what Aunt Manu had always said. Of course, that not-just-a-horse hadn’t respected shit. But he couldn’t think about that. He just had to keep moving.
He was walking for two minutes when he saw a light up ahead. Two lights. Car lights. Chaz panicked. Here he was holding a bloody girl in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, and he couldn’t fudge his way through no type of sober test, no way. He was done. He was fucked. He didn’t even think about hiding out in the woods. He had to stay on the road.
The car pulled up beside him and opened its door. Its driver’s side door. And there wasn’t anyone inside. But hey, Chaz was just relieved it wasn’t a cop. And he wasn’t one to look a gift, uh, you know, leave a gift wrapped under a tree, when he could… open the gift. So he laid Marcia in the back seat and got in the car and put on his seatbelt.
And the car closed behind him, and locked.
“Shit,” said Chaz. He put his hand on the stick…
…And got an electric shock for his trouble. “You’re in no condition to drive,” said the car.
And Chaz screamed.
--What you’ve got to understand about the people of Fervour Mour, now: is most of them aren’t bad folks—only it’s hard on a body growing up in a place like this: no real culture to speak of, no history that’ll come out to play in the day time, no road out—a sort of pervasive phobia of community as a concept and none of this aided by the introduction of whiskey to the local population in the mid-eighteenth century—among other regrettable episodes in the mid-eighteenth century—this is a place not yet healed, or at least scarred over tough, is the point I suppose I’m trying to make. And people respond to that; young people especially.
God save the children. Anyway.
The half-mile strip between the two stop lights is where the Mour really starts to look like a town in the modern sense: there’s the diner, the police station, town hall, the library, the barber’s, really all the comforts of home—and branching outwards east and west are the Mour’s residential district—I hear tell there’s one spot exactly where you can stand and look all around you and still feel you’re in a genuine suburb, like they show on the TV; good folks there, though perhaps a little arrogant from their proximity to downtown—a little removed from the land, perhaps—but it takes all kinds.
But past that, now—it is not downtown in the pretty houses that we will find the heart of this town—nor under the glowing light of the diner sign, anymore than under the light of the sun—for the second traffic light marks Main Street’s crossing with Mill Road, which is, in fact, the oldest road in town—older in fact than the mill for which it was eventually named. West to east it travels in a straight line—west to the mill or east elsewhere—it’s east we want—
--East along Mill Road is quite a journey and there may not be many places to rest, and already it is dark—fortunately there is a place along the road where the lights are always on—though what those lights reveal is often darker even than the road—LAST STOP 93 says the sign—it is a place where men go—women too—
LAST STOP 93
The way the dead girl used to come in here with that look on her face like she was just daring you to ask her what a girl like her was doing in a place like this. That was how Lance knew it wasn’t her come back from the dead. This one wasn’t just pretending she didn’t give a shit; she just didn’t. Didn’t even shut the door behind her, letting two of them feral cats in. Lance would have to chase them out with a broom later.
Older, too, when she got under the light. Not that there was anything wrong with that in itself. But Patsy had that, you know, that look—like a candy bar. Crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside. Those were the kinds of girls Lance liked, but give ‘em a couple years, they go hard all the way through. Pity. In a way, it was probably best that that one went and died.
But still, this other one, hard though she was—she was a certain kind of woman. “Welcome to Last Stop 93, sugar,” said Lance. “Get you a drink?”
“If you’re paying.” Now, here was something. This lady—almost the spitting image of Patsy—she was wearing what Lance could only describe as a “leotard.” Like she’d just come from the ballet or something. With the little slippers, even. Not even a coat.
Not that Lance was complaining—it was a good look for her. “Oh, I’m paying,” he said. He began mixing her up one of his special cocktails. It was colorful and fruity and no one could ever tell what was in it. Girls liked it. “Name’s Lance, by the way.”
“Patricia.” Patricia gave the drink a sniff, and then a snip.
So what’s a girl like you doing in a—”
“Here’s what I need,” said Patricia. “I need warm clothes and a ride towards somewhere I could stay the night—preferably not here.” She looked around the Last Stop to see that many of the men were already looking back. Many of them looking over the shoulders of the girls who were already sitting on their laps, not looking at much. “I don’t have money and I’m not going to… let’s say, because I want to be comprehensive and I don’t want to waste your time, I’m not going to debase myself in any way as a form of payment. So you just need to accept that these things are going to happen.”
Lance considered this. “Okay,” he said.
“O… okay?”
“Yeah, why not? You seem like an interesting person and I don’t feel like getting on your bad side. Just gimme half an hour and then I’ll close up early and take you to Dawn’s, alright?”
“Alright.” She blinked twice and shook her head, as though she wasn’t thinking right. “Thank you… Lance,” she said.
“No problem, Patricia. See, I get the impression that you were maybe planning on putting some of your lean, gorgeously toned muscles on me, if I didn’t do you a solid tonight.”
“That was … I’d thought of it.” Patricia gulped down half her drink.
“It’s something about me,” said Lance, pouring her a glass of water. “Where people think they have to threaten me to get anything out of me. Prejudice against small business owners, I say. Or maybe it’s the mustache.”
He tweaked the offending facial hair with his finger. Patricia giggled. “In no universe,” she said, “at no time, was that mustache ever in fashion.”
“Hey, ‘looking like a chump never goes out of style.’ You know who said that? Batman. Look it up.”
“‘Bat man.’ Mmmm.” Patricia steadied herself on the table. Seriously, no one can ever tell what Lance puts in his special cocktails. Not until the last second. “Lance, do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d become a vege… a veterinarian?”
“Every day, babe. Every day. Now, let me ask you something. The name ‘Patsy Oscuro’ mean anything to you?” One of the feral cats hissed from the corner.
Nothing. No kind of reaction. And poor Patricia was way past the point where she could have hid it. “Paaaaatsy,” she slurred. “Isn’t that short for Patricia?”
“You know, I think it is. Isn’t it funny, the way words and names get all jumbled around like that?”
“But Patricia… that’s the real one. The normal one. The original.”
“Uh-huh. Patricia, from ‘patrician.’ As in the Latin word for a noble. But also ‘patsy,’ meaning: the fall guy. Meaning you’ve been set up.”
There it was. The moment of recognition. The last flicker in the eye before it rolls back and she hit the floor. This always happens at the last second.
“Whoa!” shouted Lance. “Sounds like someone’s had a bit too much!” He winked at each of his regular patrons in turn. “I’m not closing early, so if you heard that, no need to panic.”
Everyone laughed. It was important to always be the fun guy in front of these types. Make out like you weren’t ever running any game that they wouldn’t think was cute. But he was the only one in here ever got a look at Patricia’s face. And man, that resemblance.
Lance had a nose for profit. Now what could a guy get up to in Fervour Mour with an exact duplicate of the late, lamented Patsy Oscuro?
--And once you get past Last Stop, there aren’t any more lights in any windows all the way to the end of the road.