Fog hung heavily over the street, so he couldn’t see Fun-land. He knew it was straight ahead, though. And he knew it was already closed for the night.
He felt a little quiver of fear.
Normally, he would’ve been safely tucked away in the dunes long before Funland shut down.
“Poppinsack has spreed too late,” he said. “But one must sail when the tide goes out, and spree when the purse is full. And full of gratitude is he to her who provided so generously for the night’s entertainment. I thank thee, Robin red-breast. And have you flown the coop? Or do you wait in ambuscade to retrieve your filched funds? There’s a hearty, foolish lass. A dame that’s long on moxie and short on brains, doomed to be brained.”
He chopped the air with his cane. “Felled, poleaxed, dropped like a sack of tomatoes. And a ripe tomato she is, my lovely songbird, minstrel, bard, my Robin red-breast of the smooth hot breasts, my cockless Robin of the saucy quiff. Shall we meet in mortal combat on the strand this night? Prepare yourself to taste my staff, and then my staff.”
But as he lumbered past the Lighthouse Bar, a man came out.
Poppinsack stopped and turned toward the door. In the few seconds before it swung shut, he saw the dim lights inside, the smoky air, the colorful array of bottles along the far wall. He heard laughter, talking, the song of a woman from the jukebox, the soft click of pool balls, the tinkle of glass. He felt the warmth of the bar’s air. Best of all, he
smelled
it. He sucked into his nostrils the familiar, cozy aromas of sawdust, stale smoke from cigarettes and cigars, and the heady mix of sweat, urine, and booze.
“Bless the gods,” he said. “Poppinsack feels a fresh thirst coming on.”
With that, he entered the bar.
Robin sat on the soft roll of her sleeping bag, waiting for Poppinsack at the bottom of the sand slope where he had camped last night.
He’s probably too smart to come back, she told herself again.
But I told him I was getting out of town. He’ll think I’m long gone. And even if he knows I stuck around, he’ll never think I have the guts to jump him.
What if he
doesn’t
come?
How long do I wait?
Though she was huddled down, hugging her knees to her chest, the cold kept her shivering. She longed to be warm inside her sleeping bag. But what if she got into the bag, and even fell asleep, and then he showed up? She would be at his mercy.
Robin rose to her feet, as she’d done every so often since settling here, and climbed the sand slope. At the top, she scanned the area. Though she heard the surf rushing in, the fog was so thick that she couldn’t see the ocean. The pale, blowing vapors allowed her to see only twenty or thirty feet in any direction, and nothing was visible except the deserted dunes.
She supposed that she might’ve missed Poppinsack while she was sitting at the bottom. He could’ve found himself a nearby place to camp. Maybe he’d even returned to his old spot, peered down and spied her, and crept off, planning to keep away from her—or sneak in after she fell asleep.
She knew she ought to scout around for him.
But the fogbound, desolate landscape made her nervous. She didn’t even like to be standing up here, exposed. It didn’t feel safe. She wanted to be at the bottom, hunched low and out of sight.
Come on, if you’re coming, she thought.
As she looked around, she began to fear that someone
would
come wandering out of the fog. Maybe not Poppinsack. Maybe two or three mad, jibbering trolls. Right now, they were just out of sight. If she stayed up here a moment longer, they would shamble into view and spot her.
Robin whirled around, rushed to the bottom of the slope, and sank onto her rolled sleeping bag.
This is ridiculous, she told herself. I’m just spooking myself. Nobody’s out there.
Anyone
could be out there.
And if she got into her bag and went to sleep, anyone could creep up on her.
What the hell am I doing here? she wondered.
Nothing good can come of this. If Poppinsack shows up right now, maybe I get some of my money back and maybe I don’t. One of us is bound to get hurt. At best, it’s him and not me. Then I’ll have that on my conscience. Instead of just the guy I stabbed at the bus depot, I’ll have two guys I’ll wish I hadn’t hurt.
Even if I get
all
my money back, it won’t be worth the guilt.
With the guy at the bus station, at least I didn’t have a choice. He attacked me. This would be my choice.
Forget it, she decided.
And felt, at once, as if an awful burden had been cast aside.
She strapped the sleeping bag to her pack frame, shouldered the pack, lifted her banjo case, and climbed again to the top of the dune. Though she checked around to make sure nobody was approaching, her imagination conjured no phantoms. She no longer felt so exposed and vulnerable.
She trudged northward over the mounds of sand. Soon she came to the chain-link fence marking the boundary of the public beach. She followed it toward the sound of the combers. The sand became smooth and hard-packed under her boots. The black ocean came into view.
The tide was out, so she didn’t get wet when she stepped around the end of the fence.
On private property now, Robin felt as if she’d crossed into a territory that was beyond the reach of the trolls—and the trollers, though they were the least of her worries. The trollers, after all, were rational humans, not crazies.
She walked in the direction of the house, and soon it appeared through the fog. Its windows were dark.
The house stood on pilings.
Ducking down beside the porch stairs, she gazed into the black area among the posts. It looked like a cozy place to spend the night.
A real intrusion, though, to sneak in there right under someone’s home. And she might be spotted coming out in the morning.
Robin realized she didn’t care.
All that mattered was finding a secluded place where she might sleep in safety.
She dropped to her knees and began crawling into the darkness, dragging her banjo beside her.
Jeremy stopped beneath the dim, grinning face of the clown. He saw no one ahead—only the deep darkness under the roof of Funland’s entryway, the lesser darkness of the boardwalk beyond, and fog like a pale curtain suspended at the far side of the railing.
He lighted the numerals of his wristwatch: 12:58.
He was two minutes early.
He supposed that Cowboy was still in the hospital. Though he felt nervous about meeting the others without Cowboy present for moral support, the urge to be with Tanya had been so strong that he’d decided to come anyway.
Maybe they won’t even meet tonight, he thought with a mixture of hope and dismay.
As he stepped past the ticket booth, a hand clamped his shoulder and spun him around. A huge guy grabbed the front of his jacket, jerked him up onto tiptoes.
“It’s all right.” Tanya’s voice.
The guy set him down.
A girl came in from the side, followed by a cluster of teenagers. She wore a dark sweatsuit and her face was blurred by shadow, but Jeremy knew from her size and pale hair that she was Tanya.
“I didn’t think you’d show up,” she said.
“I didn’t know if I should,” he told her, and wished his voice didn’t sound so weak. “But I came last night, and…Do you know about the fight? Me and Cowboy—”
“We heard about it.”
“I saw him tonight,” Liz said, stepping up beside Tanya.
“Is he okay?”
“They put his ear on. He might be out of the hospital tomorrow.”
“Great.”
“He said you showed hair.”
“Yeah, good going,” said a girl he didn’t recognize.
Jeremy felt himself blush. “Well, I tried to help.”
“Wish I’d been there,” said the big guy. “I would’ve killed the fuckers.”
“One of the cops damn near did.” That came from the girl he didn’t know. She took a stride forward, pressing between Tanya and Liz, and offered her hand. “Nice to meet you, Jeremy. I’m Shiner.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand. She looked slim in her windbreaker and jeans. She had light-colored hair. Though he couldn’t see her well in the darkness, he got the impression that she was pretty, and maybe younger than Tanya.
She stepped back, and a guy standing on the other side of Tanya extended his hand. “I’m Nate,” he said.
“Hello.” Jeremy shook the hand. It felt strong, but it didn’t try to crush him. He remembered Cowboy telling him that Nate was Tanya’s boyfriend. “Welcome aboard,” Nate said.
I don’t stand a chance, he thought. The guy looked like a jock—a handsome jock, at that.
“I’m Samuel,” said the big guy who’d grabbed Jeremy from behind the booth. He wore a letter jacket with an enormous B on its chest. A varsity letter, probably for football. Or for sumo wrestling, Jeremy thought.
Samuel shook his hand. And squeezed it hard.
“You can call me Samson.”
“You can all call me Duke if you want,” Jeremy said, pulling his hand free and flexing the fingers. They still worked. “Cowboy came up with that.”
A small, skinny kid wearing glasses came in from the side. “Greetings and salutations. I’m Randy. You may call me Randy.” He smiled.
“Or Sandy,” Liz said.
“You’ll have to excuse Elizabeth, Duke. She resents anyone whose I.Q. exceeds her own, which is roughly equal to that of an oyster.”
She swatted the back of his head.
Tanya shoved her. “Cut it out.”
“He’s such a toenail.”
“Save it for the trolls,” Tanya said.
“Let me in,” came a whiny female voice. “I wanta meet him too.” She pushed her way in from behind the others. She had a pudgy face. Her dark hair enclosed her head like a football helmet. She wore a tight jumpsuit of stretchy fabric that hugged all her bulges. “I’m Heather,” she said, pumping his hand.
“Hi,” Jeremy said.
She moved in close. Her breasts and stomach pushed against him. Her breath smelled of onions. “Hey, you’re kinda cute.”
He managed to smile and thank her.
“That’s everyone except Karen,” Tanya said, and looked over her shoulder. “Come in here and meet Duke.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Tanya sidestepped, and a brunette moved in from the rear. A beret was tilted atop her head. Around her neck was a silken scarf, one end draping her shoulder, the other slanting downward to her right breast. She wore a jumpsuit similar to Heather’s, but the body it hugged looked slender and compact and somehow hard.
“Hi,” Jeremy said.
“God, I can’t
tell
you what a thrill it is to meet you.”
Her sarcasm gave Jeremy a sinking sensation.
“It’s nothing personal,” Randy explained. “Karen lavishes her disdain on every creature of the male gender.”
“Which includes you out,” Liz remarked.
“Another clever retort from the cretin.”
“So now you’ve met everyone,” Tanya said. “I suppose Cowboy’s told you what we do here?”
“Go after trolls?”
“You got any problem with that?” Karen asked.
“No. Hell, I think they’re a pain in the ass.”
“What have they done to you?” Nate asked.
Jeremy shrugged. “Nothing much, I guess.”
“Then why do you want to help us trash them?”
He knew better than to reveal the truth: that he had no special grudge against the trolls, that he simply wanted to be part of the group and close to Tanya. He didn’t care what they did out here at night, so long as he could be with them.
But he couldn’t say that, so he thought about his first afternoon on the boardwalk when the bum jumped in front of him and started begging. He remembered the man’s wild eyes and brown teeth and sour stench. He remembered his own confusion and disgust. Most of all, he remembered his fear—the fear that had made him feel small and helpless and shameful.
He heard anger in his voice as he said, “I hate them. They hang around and bother everybody. They bug you for money. They’re dirty and they stink. They act crazy. They’re creeps. I think they ought to be tossed out with the garbage. They
are
garbage. They ask me for a quarter, I want to give them a knee in the nuts.”
“My man,” Samson said, and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Right on,” Liz said.
“They’re disgusting and creepy,” the girl called Shiner said, “but it’s more than that. They’re
evil.
That’s why we come out here night after night. They
do
things. They attack people. They make people
disappear.”
Some of the others nodded. Nobody disagreed.
Jeremy felt himself going shaky inside. “They make people disappear?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady, but not succeeding.
“We haven’t, like, seen it happen,” Heather said.
“It’s conjecture on our part,” Randy explained, “that the trolls are responsible.”
“It’s them, all right,” Shiner said. “They got my sister. She went for a walk on the beach one night, and…just vanished. They got her.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Nate said. “We don’t know what happened to Shiner’s sister, or any of the others. But people do disappear without a trace. I guess that happens everywhere, but it happens here a lot.”
“Happens to our own trolls,” Samson added. “The ones we nail? Most of ’em, we never see again.”
“We used to think we were scaring them out of town,” Nate said. “But we’re not so sure of that anymore.”
“They get got,” Liz said, and giggled.
“We suspect,” Nate went on, “that other trolls come along after we’ve left.”
“And mop up for us,” Liz said.
“Christ,” Jeremy muttered.
Samson’s head bobbed. “If we don’t handcuff ’em to something or glue ’em down or stick ’em someplace where nobody can get at ’em, they’re gone with the wind. Most often, anyhow. Some get through, but most don’t.”
“What…what do the trolls
do
with them?”
“Gobble ’em up,” Liz said, and giggled again.
“We don’t know,” Nate said.
Jeremy groaned.
“You don’t have to get involved,” Nate told him.