Christmas Eve on Haunted Hill (3 page)

Luke’s fist connected with nothing
but air as the man who’d demanded his wallet danced backward, grinning as the
tip of his chin narrowly avoided being clipped by hard knuckles.  Rising from
the stool, Luke drew his fist back to take a second swing.  Then the man’s identity
belatedly registered.

          The face was ruddier and
a bit more grizzled-looking in general than he remembered, but it was still
recognizably that of Greg Lancaster.  Greg had been one of his best buddies
growing up, but they had fallen out of touch during Luke’s long period of
self-imposed exile from his hometown.

          The “gun” he’d pressed to
the back of Luke’s neck was actually the rounded end of a folded pocketknife. 
Still grinning, he tucked the knife back inside an inner pocket of his leather
jacket.  “You should see the look on your face, brother,” he said, chuckling. 
“You look like you did that time back in high school when Vivian Sloan walked
up to you in the cafeteria at lunch, pulled down that skin-tight purple tube
top, and flashed her tits at you.  Total stupefaction.”

          Luke smirked.  “She did
that on a dare.”

          Greg nodded.  “Right. 
Her friends bet her twenty bucks she wouldn’t do it.  You just stood there with
your mouth hanging open while she asked you if you saw anything you liked. 
When you didn’t say anything, she said ‘guess not’, pulled up her top, and
walked away.”

          “You guys gave me no end
of shit about that.”

          Luke laughed.  “You
deserved it.”

          “But I wound up banging
her at that field kegger a few weeks later, so I got the last laugh.”

          “That you did, brother. 
That you did.  Goddamn, it’s good to see you again, man.”

          They hugged awkwardly the
way manly men do and then Greg took a seat next to him at the bar.  As Luke
settled back onto the stool he’d deserted a few moments ago, he beckoned Stu
over with a raised finger.  “A drink for my friend, whatever he wants.  First
round’s on me.”

          Greg glanced at the
bottle of Pabst and the whiskey glass already in front of Luke, raising an
eyebrow as he said, “Looks like it ain’t technically the first round, at least
for you.”

          Luke shrugged and picked
up the whiskey glass.  “True enough, but I ain’t been at it that long yet.  Got
a ways to go before achieving maximum inebriation status.”

          “And is that your actual
goal tonight?  To get obliterated?”  He glanced at Stu, briefly making eye
contact.  “I’ll have a double bourbon, no ice.”

          Stu grabbed a fresh glass
from under the bar and reached for a bottle.

          Luke sipped whiskey and
nodded.  “Obliteration is definitely the goal.”

          The smile that had been
in place since shortly after recognizing Greg slipped some as it hit him how true
this was in more ways than one.  But that was a thought he kept to himself.  He
couldn’t very well tell his old friend he meant to kill himself mere moments
after seeing him again for the first time in years.

          And he realized something
else as he and his friend drank together and laughed about old times.  Setting
aside everything else, the real reason suicide had become such an alluring
notion boiled down to the utter emptiness of his existence.  He had nothing and
no one in his life that mattered.  His family was gone, except for some distant
relations he scarcely knew.  The close friendships he’d formed with a handful
of special people here in his hometown had ended in the years following his
departure.  Some of those friends, Greg included, initially made an effort to
keep in touch, but his total failure to respond to their letters and phone
calls eventually put an end to that.  He became a man without social
connections of any kind, an isolated hermit with nothing to live for.

          But maybe that wasn’t
really the case.  Maybe those old friendships weren’t actually dead.  They
might just be in a dormant state.  He’d figured all the old crew no longer
wanted anything to do with him after the years he’d spent ignoring them, but
perhaps this had been a false impression.  Maybe, like Greg, the rest of them
would welcome him back without recrimination if given a chance.

          It would be nice to
believe so, anyway.  In his infrequent moments of true self-aware clarity, he
understood there was a part of his psyche wired to self-destruct.  In these
same moments, he would also realize this was a direct and understandable result
of the horrendous trauma he’d endured on this night ten years ago.  He was the
only survivor of the Herzinger Family Massacre and he’d never stopped feeling
guilty about that.  The guilt ate away at him constantly and made it impossible
to live a normal life.  It drove him to punish himself in myriad ways. 
Deciding to kill himself was just the ultimate culmination of that.

          But right now he didn’t
much feel like propping that shotgun under his chin and pulling the trigger. 
At the moment, in fact, it was pretty much the last thing he wanted to do.  It
was astonishing how much better he felt.  And all it took was this chance
encounter with his old friend.

          If it really
was
a
chance encounter.  A part of him felt sort of like an angel had been watching
over his shoulder and had sent Greg to intervene.  Luke had no religious
convictions of any kind.  He hadn’t really been a believer in the first place,
but all the carnage he’d witnessed on that long ago Christmas Eve had convinced
him there was no God.  He was still pretty sure about that, but this thing with
Greg had him wondering, he had to admit.  Whatever the case, he was grateful it
had happened.

          The subject of Luke’s
attire was avoided for the first half hour of their booze-soaked reunion.  Luke
was sure this was an act of deliberate discretion on Greg’s part, but the
steadily rising level of alcohol in his system inevitably sent discretion
flying out the window.

          Greg drained off the last
dregs of his third double bourbon and thumped the glass on the bar.  After
signaling Stu for yet another refill, he gave Luke a cockeyed look and said,
“So what’s with the Santa suit?  I guess you know how fucked up it is that
you’re wearing that thing.”

          Luke nodded.  “I do,
yeah.”

          He picked up his
half-empty bottle of Pabst and frowned at the label without drinking from it. 
Wishing to at least somewhat slow down the progression of intoxication in the
wake of Greg’s arrival, he’d switched to strictly beer.  Beer was good.  Beer
was always good.  But he missed the sweet burn of the whiskey and consoled
himself with the certainty that it would be reintroduced to his liquid diet
before the end of the evening.

          He sipped from the Pabst
and stared longingly at the gleaming liquor bottles behind the bar.

          Greg grunted.  “Okay,
then.  Care to explain what the fucking deal is?”

          Luke stared in silence at
the bottles a moment longer, but now he wasn’t thinking about how much he
desired what they contained.  Instead, he was thinking again about how unlikely
it was that Greg should show up here at Sal’s at this particular time, on this
night of all nights.

          It had to mean
something
.

          Didn’t it?

          Well, maybe it did, and
maybe it didn’t mean a damn thing.  Who the hell knew?  Maybe Greg stopped in
here
every
night.  But Luke decided that didn’t matter.  What mattered
was he’d never expected to see anyone he actually cared about ever again.  He’d
expected to go to his demise tonight feeling as lonely and empty as ever.  But
that wasn’t happening.  Whether it was actually divine intervention didn’t
matter.  It felt miraculous, anyway.

          It
did
mean
something, goddammit.

          He felt a strange
swelling in his chest as he came to a decision.  “I’m wearing this goddamn
thing because I was planning to go home tonight.  Back to the old house on
Crandall Hill.”

          “On Haunted Hill,” Dave
Wannamaker interjected.  Dave was the man Luke had previously thought of as
Fatso.  The elderly man to his right was Virgil Alston.  They’d formally
introduced themselves shortly after Greg’s arrival.  “That’s what the kids call
it now.”

          Luke grimaced.  “Really?”

          Dave nodded.  “Yeah. 
Started a few years after…well, you know.  After what happened.”

          Some of the joviality had
drained from Greg’s expression.  His features twisted in a scowl tinged with
concern.  “Why in fuck would you want to go back to that place?”  The scowl
deepened as he shook his head.  “Jesus Christ.  That is messed the fuck up.”

          Luke sighed.  “I know.”

          “Your asshole father was
wearing a Santa suit when he went on his fucking rampage.”

          Luke drained the last of
the beer from the bottle.  He thumped it down on the bar harder than
necessary.  The force of it caused the bottle to slip from his fingers and go
rolling toward the other side of the bar.  Luckily, Stu was there to grab it
before it could fall to the floor and shatter.

          “Sorry, man,” Luke said,
wincing.  “Bring me another, please.”

          Stu’s brow creased. 
“Sure you need another?”

          Luke nodded.  “I ain’t
hammered.  Not by a longshot.  Not yet.  Just a little emotional.”

          “I’ll bring you another,
but I’ll cut you off if it happens again.”

          “It won’t.  I promise.”

          “Good.  I’ll hold you to
that.”

          Stu fetched another
bottle of Pabst, twisted off the cap, and set it on the bar in front of Luke,
who picked it up and looked at Greg.  “I don’t need any reminding about that
night.  I remember it all pretty fucking well, thank you.”  He knocked back a
slug of beer.  “Too well, in fact.  The suit is a symbol.  I’m wearing it
because
it’s what my father wore that night.  My plan tonight was to go up to that
house on Haunted Hill and use my shotgun to finish the job that son of a bitch
started ten years ago.”

          Luke couldn’t believe
he’d actually said it out loud, here in front of Greg and all these strangers.  But
he had.  Blame the booze, blame the heat of the moment, or some combination of
both.  It didn’t matter.  What mattered was that the words were out there and
he couldn’t take them back.

          An awkward silence
stretched out for maybe ten seconds.

          Then Greg cleared his
throat and said, “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight.  You came back home ten
years to the day after your insane father slaughtered your entire family to
kill yourself at the same location.”

          Luke sipped beer and
nodded.  “That’s about the size of it.”

          Another awkward silence
of slightly shorter duration ensued.

          Then Greg glanced at
Stu.  “Call the police.  Seriously.  A stated intent to self-harm warrants a
lockup for the night at the very least.”

          Stu drifted over to the
wall-mounted phone behind the bar

          He set his hand on the
receiver.

          Luke gave his head an
emphatic shake.  “Don’t do that.  It’s not necessary.  I’ve changed my mind.”

          Greg looked at him.  “And
I’m supposed to just take your word for that?”

          Luke sighed.  “It’s the
truth.  Look, running into you tonight isn’t something I expected to happen. 
It got me to thinking…”

          Luke spent a few minutes
explaining all the half-formed notions of redemption that had been whirling
through his booze-fuzzed brain for the last little while.  By the time he
finished, Greg looked somewhat placated if not entirely convinced.  He and Stu
exchanged a long look.  After another moment, Stu shrugged and took his hand
away from the receiver.

          Greg fixed Luke with a
stern expression.  “Fuck whatever other plans you might have had.  You’re
staying at my place tonight.  And I’m taking the goddamn shotgun from you. 
That’s non-negotiable.  You hear me?”

          Luke nodded.  “I hear
you.”

          Yet another awkward
silence descended for a few moments.

          It ended when Virgil
Alston said, “You might have had company if you’d gone up to Haunted Hill
tonight, anyway.”

          Luke frowned.  “Company? 
Nobody’s living there.  I know that.”

          Greg shook his head. 
“That’s not what he means.”

          Luke’s frown deepened as
he turned on his stool to look at Greg directly.  “So what
does
he mean?”

          Greg began an explanation.

          As Luke listened, he
pushed the bottle of Pabst away and indicated for Stu to bring him a double
whiskey.  What he was hearing was too unsettling for anything other than the
hard stuff.  The double whiskey was gone by the time Greg was done giving him
the lowdown.