Virtual American Gothic - Third Season Episode One The Midnight Special by Queribus and Roguewriter NOT TO BE ARCHIVED TO A WEB PAGE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR'S PRIOR CONSENT. ********************************************** Early morning in Trinity, South Carolina, is a place, not a time. The strange, still hours before dawn have their own incorporated township of movers and shakers, grievers and dreamers. Not all of them are awake, and not all of them are alive. But all of them are restless. Deputy Ben Healy was in his patrol car, mulling over the strange events that had been occurring in Trinity lately. The flyboys out at the airport were still talking about the crazy St. Elmo's Fire and earthquake that shook them up the night before Ben himself nearly died by electrocution. (He'd never look at fishing quite the same way again.) He watched a pair of bone-thin, Goat Town herefords wander back and forth across the tracks, almost pretty in the foggy starlight, moist with half-fallen rain. He honked the horn once or twice to scoot them away. Cow duty, Floyd called it. The pre-dawn hour is an endless, abusive, wearying place its residents long to flee -- and most never do. For the people of Trinity, life is always lived somewhere between the lonely terrors of the night and the humiliated relief of dawn. Guilt and secrets, lies and whispers. In the dark, there's no place to hide them. Lucas Buck had turned on that boy that everybody knew was his son, his only son -- had knocked him down the night everything went wrong for everybody, his own fiancee dead, Dr. Crower hurt bad, the newly elected Mayor slain at his own wedding. Lucas had left Caleb Temple by the side of the road, the boy everybody knew was his, but The Sheriff has never said the words. Oh, they were still living together, sharing that dark shuttered house, but they weren't speaking, hell, they barely looked at each other. Never talking about the deaths, the mangled lives. The rest of the town talked plenty. Ben felt a shiver curdle through him. Goose walkin' over his grave, he reckoned. He flipped on the radio, found John Fogerty waiting for him. "Let the midnight special... shine a light on me..." He nodded, watching the cows idle on the tracks. That would do. The world moves on around Trinity, spinning giddily from morning to night, rarely sharing the endless 4 a.m. traumas of the small hamlet that rests upon it. But Trinity is not a closed system, and the dark tempest breeds. * * * The Allentown Steel freight came through Trinity like clockwork at 3:49 a.m., rolling like a black tide across the low country. The tracks crossed Dilman Lane at the fork to the Interstate, out where the shantyhouses and crippled trailers of Goat Town gave way to the real white-trash slums, the ones with paper-thin walls and paper-white people. Dead cars in the grassless lots and dead dogs on the gravel roads, and the stink from the dump becoming eye-watering in July. You can't hear the train in Buck's part of town. Its chattering noise never touches those shrouded, privileged streets. Never touches the old Buck house, where a small boy refuses to sleep, in a room covered with dust, where the B&O railroad cars lie on their 12-inch scale tracks. He picks up an engine, the wheels turn noiselessly. It's perfect in every detail. He only comes here late at night, when his father is asleep. Tonight will be the last visit. No one worried about the side of Trinity revealed to the passing train. Engineer Jimmy Coheeley and his brakeman, Dale Nutter, were the only souls aboard the Allentown freight, and neither came from anyplace better than Dogtown. Just the same, neither liked passing through this particular part of the Carolina countryside. Both invariably felt the weight of the night lift off their shoulders when they'd gotten around to the south side of town, chugging their way on toward Florida. Waiting at the train crossing, Ben watched the lazy herefords, not in any real hurry to be on his way, but not too pleased to be sitting here waiting on a pair of cows to get out of his way, either. "Yonder come Doc Melton, tell me how you know," Fogerty sang in his singular, mad prophet's voice. "He gave me a tablet, just the day before/There never was a doctor travelling over the land/that could cure the fever of a convict man." "Moo cow," Ben muttered, "Moo the hell outa there." * * * Even from a distance, the muffled sound of the metal wheels and the clanging track shook the old hospital as Matt Crower pulled himself along on his walker, folding bathrobes and socks into a duffel bag. "Can't you even wait for light, they're not going to release you in the middle of the night, Matt Crower." Loris was folding a pillowcase over and over, as she sat on the edge of his bed. Matt smiled. "Morning shift comes on at 5:30, maybe five if Rita's on duty. She can take my vitals and then I'm checking myself out before any doctor can tell me no." The nervous energy let loose of him for a minute and he saw the desperate circles round her eyes. "Why don't you rest if you're tired?" "If you want to be crazy, I'll be crazy with you. There isn't any sleep for me tonight anyway." "We'll sleep once we're home," he promised her. "In our own bed." He paused to listen to the whistle of the 4 a.m. train. Only an hour left. * * * Jimmy pulled on the whistle like a banshee warning of danger. The engine was a TranSteel 1108, a big old bitch that had been young when Ike was in the White House, all black iron and black heart, able to push up to near 70 mph and never so much as squall about it. Jimmy Coheeley who had never married, but laid plenty more than track in his day loved the 1108 just about best of any girl he'd ever had. They were in Trinity proper now, if you could use such a term for such a place. To toast the occasion, he glanced over at his sleeping brakeman, and removed the flask from his inner pocket, taking a long pull on it. It was not his first drink of the night, nor even his first flask. Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, he thought, trying to remember how the old ditty went as the liquor burned its way down into the center of him. Rye whiskey I cry. He'd need to wake Dale in another hour or so, and he'd better go easy. He'd been hitting it hard tonight. They both had. If I cain't have rye whiskey, I shorely will die. * * * Selena Coombs woke up in bed, wanting a drink more than she had ever wanted one in her life. **I don't care if the damn brat grows fins,** she thought. **I need a whiskey to keep me warm and senseless and a hard barstool under my ass. Lean forward over the bar and get the little boys coming and going.** It was long past last call, and opening time was months away. She rolled over in bed and clutched her loneliness to her like a demon lover. The kind she understood best. * * * It was a hard old world, and no mistake. Six months ago, Dale Nutter had been informed by his asshole doctor that he had bone cancer. Of course he hadn't told the bosses. The freightline wasn't big on keeping on trainmen with debilitating illnesses. Jimmy hadn't believed his partner when Dale told him his fatal secret earlier tonight. He supposed the signs had been there -- there was no getting around the weight Dale had lost, or the number of times over the last few months that he'd puked out his window into the cinders and stones in the trackbed as they roared through the night. But the news had still hit Jimmy hard. Time for another flask. * * * Caleb took the B & O engine back to his dark room and finished packing his small cardboard suitcase. Shirts and jeans all in a row. Toothbrush wrapped up in a Walmart bag so it wouldn't stain nothing. "You gonna take the locomotive?" his father said, a shadow in the doorway. "You got plenty of room." "Don't you never sleep?" "It's a bad night to run away for somebody's who's got no place to go." "Cain't stay here. You don't want a thief in your house." The boy kept his head down -- if he actually looked his father in the eye he'd start to cry, and then he'd be lost. The bastard was the only real family he had. * * * Dale Nutter's eyes were jittering behind their lids. **He knows it's the Trinity run,** Jimmy thought, **even in his sleep, he knows.** Jimmy took out the flask for another pull. What a goddamn shame the suits had no compassion for a man's needs. He swallowed, hissed through his teeth. Hot fire down the length of him, and Trinity half behind now. Goddamned if drinking wasn't the only thing kept a man sane on nights like this, with your only friend in the world dying next to you a piece at a time and Trinity just outside your freight, slinking past like a hungry cur with meat and murder on its mind. **If the ocean was whiskey and I were a duck, I'd swim to the bottom and never come up.** * * * "I never called you a thief, Caleb." "Nope, you just treated me like one. I'm sorry I borrowed your ring, I'm sorry I lost it. I had my reasons and you wouldn't agree with 'em. I'll find that damn ring and give it back and that'll be the last thing I ever do that has you in it." "I don't care about the ring," Buck lied. "You were playing with a deadly toy and I... I..." He couldn't finish the sentence. * * * Humming along with Creedence, Ben gave the cows a brief blat of his horn. They lifted their heads and regarded him, chewing their cud mindlessly. "Let the Midnight Special... run you damn cows dowwwwn..." Ben improvised. * * * Caleb closed up the suitcase and snapped the clips shut. "I wasn't playing and I lost anyway. Everything." He brushed by his father without looking up. "I got to get the Boarding house ready for Miz Holt to come home. Doctor Matt can't walk right yet, needs some help getting up the stairs." "You don't have to go, Caleb," Buck said, his voice a low growl, desperation building like churning wheels and a relentless motor. "Why would I want to stay now?" The model locomotive was sharp and heavy in the boy's clenched hand. Everything slipped through his fingers, the father he wished he had, the father he was stuck with and the sister who was finally, totally, absolutely dead. * * * Giving up on ever getting the cows out of the way, Ben leaned back in his seat, pinched the bridge of his nose and relaxed, humming along with Creedence Clearwater Revival. He was thinking about his son and the funny way his hair stuck up in the morning. Benjie was sleeping on the couch in his living room right now, having snuck out of Barbara Joy's house in the middle of the night again to bunk with Dad. Come to think of it, he'd better give her a call so she didn't freak. He yawned, and wondered suddenly whether he might catch a few winks first, while things were still so peaceful in the damp, half-rainy night. While the world was still on pause, before time or something else even more relentless set Trinity into motion again. Just late patrol duty, cow-duty thoughts, half asleep and half awake between the clicks of the clock somewhere shy of 4 a.m. For sure, he thought it would take a cataclysm to shake Trinity out of its current stupor. "Let the Midnight Speeeeeeshulll... shine its ever-lovin' light on me," Fogerty belted out. * * * Buck watched his son trudge down the stairs. "I was angry because I was worried about you!" The words came out harsh and grudgingly. He resented every syllable so he threw them, overhand, hard, at the son walking away from him. Again. "I don't believe you," Caleb muttered, the train still heavy in his fist, like the weight of his father he had to let loose of. "Well, take the train, anyway, it's better than anything you'll get in that house." Lucas said. Or it'd be sitting in that room for another ten years waiting the next heir. "I don't want nothing else of yours!" Caleb's voice rose to a shout. "I hate trains. I always told you that! I hate trains and I hate you!" He threw the small metal shape at the black and white floor. The delicate metal fixtures crumpled against the marble tile. Caleb slammed the door and walked off into the misty night. * * * The 1108 was doing a shade over 70, and Jimmy Coheeley's blood alcohol content was speeding too, when his black-hearted girl came around the curve above Dilman Lane, her lamps illuminating the pair of holsteins standing on the tracks. Jimmy shouted something that was half **goddamn** and half **sonofabitch** and lunged across his partner to hit the brakes as hard as he could, yanking down on the 1108's air-whistle at the same time. The whistle woke Dale Nutter from the last dream he'd ever have -- seemed like it was a fishing dream, a riverbank, a man in a sheriff's hat -- and he found Jimmy Coheeley staring at him with saucer eyes and whiskey on his breath. Lord, if Jimmy didn't quit drinking he was gonna get them both killed. Something behind them crunched and broke explosively, drowning out even the screaming whistle. Bolts snapped, connector housings flew apart, and the entire Allentown freight derailed with a great, sparking metal shriek that drowned out all sound, all sight, all knowing... * * * Selena heard the shriek and covered her head with a pillow. Another accident in a town that drew them like a lightning rod. She was sick of accidents, drawing up her knees to her belly, where her accidental child was turning like a gyroscope in the night. * * * Ben didn't have a pillow to pull over his face when the cataclysm came down, nearly on his head. One of the heifers leaped over the hood of his car to get out of the way, graceful as its legendary ancestor, the one that had jumped over the moon. The train derailed in a thunderous crash right in front of him, unreal in its thunderous destructive power, in its lethal proximity. Fire and horror spilled out into the night, and there was nothing for Ben Healy to do but watch helplessly. Ben radioed in a half-coherent message to a half-asleep Floyd, then stumbled toward the wrecked engine. Thank God for the rain, which was already damping down the flames. One man was pinned beneath bars of heavy iron, already dead. **Oh God, please let him be dead, chewed up like that!** He heard the sound of moaning further up, where the cab was lying on its side, buckled like a soup can. Ben hurries towards the sounds of life, blindly promising to help the shadowy figure outlined by dying flames. Didn't anybody else hear the crash, for God's sake? He looked around wildly. Through the smoke, a figure was approaching. Like an angel in the fog. A horrifyingly familiar angel. Ben paled. His jaw dropped. Merlyn Temple walked through the wreckage toward him, her black hair and her black dress fading in and out of dark iron and shadowy smoke. She looked at Ben with the saddest eyes he'd ever seen, too much sorrow for any one soul to ever bear. Before his knees could buckle under the impact, Merly blessedly averted his eyes, glancing down at the body at her feet. Unbelievably, the "dead" man crushed under the iron was coming to, whimpering for relief. Merlyn, compassionately, reached out to touch him, offering a comforting hand to share his last moment. But this angel of death could give no mercy, for the hand with which she touched Dale Nutter wore the ring of Lucas Buck. Nutter screamed as fire ripped through his guts, his veins, his mind -- bone cancer would have been a kinder death than this. The only mercy he received was the briefness of his agony. Then he was gone. Ben watched it all, unable to move or breathe. Merlyn staggered back, as if the pain she delivered she also bore, staring in stunned disbelief at the hand that had brought so much anguish to a dying man. Her lovely, endlessly sad face turned to Ben, fixing him with that terrible gaze once more, and he had to put up a hand to ward it off, averting his eyes as if staring at the medusa herself. Trying to speak, face twisting in sorrow, the revenant vanished, the blackness of her dress and hair finally fading away into the coiling black smoke and the blacker night. "Please," Jimmy Coheeley whispered in Ben's arms, clutching at him, making him cry out. Jimmy grabbed Ben's shirtfront, smearing the deputy with his life blood. "Please, don't let her touch me, Mister. Don't let her send me wherever she sent Dale." And he fainted dead away. Ben looked up at the place where Merly Ann Temple had stood. Someone else was walking through the smoke toward him. The mists of fog dissolved around the figure's long, purposeful strides, as the pale moon rose behind him. Lucas Buck, face grim, fingers bare of all ornamentation. Following the distinctive smell of his property. * * * The screen on the back door of the boarding house had a dodgy latch -- if you bumped it just right, it'd open up slick as a whistle. Caleb set his suitcase down on the kitchen floor and crossed to the stove. It was dark, but he knew where the safety matches were. Lit one up for a scrap of light and put the kettle on to boil. It was a chilly morning. They'd be needing a cup of tea to warm Dr. Matt's bones. There was plenty enough light to creep up the stairs and scratch at Rose's door. Hope she had sense enough to wake up easy. She knew how to make biscuits. * * * Barbara Joy Flood couldn't sleep. Hunched over on the far left of the big lumpy bed, still making room for a man who wasn't ever coming back, she was choking on more than self-pity this early morning. There was a foul smell in the air, something sour that got in your mouth and crawled down to your stomach. Something that made her afraid, and she didn't know why. "Why me?" she said, hardly giving the phrase much emphasis anymore it was so automatic. Her bare feet hit the cold floor and she stumbled through her dark house, looking for something that might be causing this godalmighty stink. * * * A guttering candle by the bed was reflected in the mirror over it. Selena didn't like to sleep in the dark anymore. Her shoulders were bare and thrashing in some kind of futile struggle. Covers kicked off, skin shivering in the pre-dawn chill. The struggle ended in a draw -- didn't it always? Selena opened her eyes, staring up at the mirror. Her face looked a long way off in the dim, dying light. Buck was sitting on the foot of her bed. "Wake-up call, sweetheart." "Take a number." She rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom before the urge could give her away. The sounds of her retching were muffled. Buck smiled and smoothed out the covers. Water ran in the bathroom, taps turned on and off. Selena slipped back into bed in a cloud of perfume and mouthwash, her eyes still puffy, losing focus in the sensuous mindlessness of morning. Buck reached out and put a hand on her belly. "You think you're fooling anybody with loose clothes, Selena? Too many people familiar with your curves not to notice a change." * * * **When you wake up in the morning, hear the big bell ring/you go marching to the table, see the same old thing...** In the Flood house, the small countertop radio in the kitchen was little comfort. Barbara Joy hated CCR. She was gagging, every drafty creak and crunch of the settling, sagging house seemed to spread that noxious smell everywhere. She needed a cup of coffee to settle her stomach. The cracks in the linoleum were cutting into her bare feet. She reached for the switch near the door and turned on the light. A spark so bright it lit up the damn room jumped and crackled under her hand. She screamed and jumped, her hands covering her face. Miserably, she burst into tears. The house was falling down around her ears. It was the town joke -- the carpenter's wife living in a shack. Without Waylon's income, there was no way to keep up with the mortgage. She'd already tapped her parents for every dime they could give. She couldn't even afford the phone calls to Florida to ask them for more money. Her son hardly talked to her, hardly looked at her, wasn't even in the house most nights. There was no way out of this prison of wife and mother she'd built around herself... except there wasn't any husband anymore, and no son either most of the time. So what the hell was the point? There was nothing else she was fit for, thanks to two worthless men who said they'd always take care of her. * * * Everything about Selena was softer these days, open, blooming, vulnerable. Her lips grazed Lucas's face with velvet kisses as his hand slid on down to that bulge of baby pressing against her black nightgown. "Whose is it, Selena?" he asked, pushing closer to her on the big bed. Her face was wondering, quizzical, **doesn't he know, doesn't he always know?** She smiled like a slow dream, he certainly wasn't going to find out from her. "I mean, if it were mine, you know I'd take care of you, save your job at least." Lucas's eyes slipped from sleepy-sexy to sharp and calculating. "City can't have an unwed mother teaching our impressionable children. You need a man to put a ring on your finger." He kissed her just to throw the mix a little more off-balance. "You'd be there for me, Lucas?" Selena lay on her back, her hair curving in sensuous rays behind her, gleaming golden in the dawn. "You know you can trust me. I'm sure I could find somebody who'd marry you." The soft mood turned like a sharp rock in the road. "I'll bet Floyd's available." "Oh, I'm sure we can do you a little better than Floyd. A little higher up the food chain." "Can you really?" Selena pulled herself up slowly, treasuring the way Lucas followed every move of her body. "Don't worry about the impressionable children, Sheriff, I quit my job yesterday. I'm surprised nobody told you." She swung her legs off the bed. Her head turned, savoring the look on his face, trying to puzzle out what he had missed. "That $500,000 insurance policy Kane made out to me is gonna come in handy. At least when Jonathan said he'd take care of me, he meant every word." * * * Ben pushed open the glass door at headquarters, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass. He was a worse wreck than the train. Floyd was there to greet him. "The county boys have taken over the scene of the derailment, Ben," he announced. "Looks like it'll be cleared up in no time. Lucky there's nothing on board to lose our minds over." "Nothing on board, no," Ben replied moodily, inspecting his gorestained uniform. "We're real lucky, Floyd." The phone rang, and he picked it up automatically. "Fulton County Sheriff's Department." "Where's my son?" "Barbara Joy," he started, "Benjie's OK, he's at my place... I know he's been spending a lot of time there... No, I'm not encouraging him-! No, I didn't know you got electrocuted this morning... I'm real sorry about the smell- Barbara Joy- BJ! What has this got to do with me?" She went ballistic. "You're the man leaving your family in a house that's not fit to live in! I know you don't care about me anymore, but at least you could do something for your own child! Living in a place that's falling down, rotting around his ears, with vermin and God knows what else crawling through it! No wonder he doesn't want to come home! Well, it's not going to work, Ben, it is not going to work." "I don't know what grand conspiracy you think I'm plotting, Barbara Joy, but I'm having a pretty lousy damn morning myself, all right? So why don't you just call the damn electrician and bill me, call an exterminator and bill me for that too. And as for our son, you don't need to worry about it, I'm already getting that bill every minute of every day. And I'm getting sick of it too, Barbara Joy. It's not going to last forever. Someday the cow's going to run dry!" He slammed the phone down. "I'm going to wash up, Floyd. This has been a filthy morning all round." * * * Streaks of dirty pink dawn were illuminating the boarding house as Loris and Matt approached the front porch, where they found Caleb and Rose waiting for them in the pale light, with a pot of tea and some popping fresh biscuits on a plate. The tears rolled down Matt's cheeks as the boy hugged him. "Welcome home, Dr. Matt," Caleb said. "For both of us, if you'll have me." "Honey, this has always been your home, and it always will be," Loris said, choking up. "And I'm staying home this time, forever and ever." "Amen!" Rose said. "Can we go back to bed now?" * * * Lucas cruised up his driveway and pulled the Crown Vic next to a station wagon that looked familiar. BJ swooped down on him before he could get all the way out of the car. "Lucas Buck, you have got to help me! I cannot take it any more, I swear to God I cannot!" "There's a lot of that going around, Barbara Joy." "My house is falling down around my ears, and Ben won't help, and Waylon **can't** help and there is no money to do anything about it!" "Don't worry, if Ben isn't paying his child support, I'll get on his case. Now let me get out of my car." "Child support pays for food and clothes, it doesn't pay one dime on the mortgage." She followed Buck up the walkway, her misery keeping pace with every step. "I am at the end of my rope and I don't know what to do." "Find a tree to swing it over, I suppose," He suggested, pointing out a likely limb in his own yard. "Or get a job, there's a thought." Lucas strode to his front door, visions of BJ swinging from the sycamores amusing his morning. "How am I supposed to get a job with no training and no skills?" "Beats the hell out of me, is this a trick question?" "You help everybody else in this town! If you can't help me, I'll... I'll have to take Ben back to court... take him for everything he's got!" Lucas laughed and opened the door, waving her in. "Big deal, he ain't got a thing left to take." "You **have** to help me, Lucas! I- I **voted** for you!" "So did your husband -- we got a tie there, Barbara Joy." He walked down to the kitchen, tossed his duster on a ladder-back chair and checked the percolator. "You want some coffee?" He poured himself a big steaming cup. "I want some justice." "Well, I only got Maxwell House. Good to the last drop?" "Is it decaf?" "Looks like you're out of luck again. Orange juice?" He threw a can of concentrate her way and walked off to his study, sipping damn fine coffee. BJ followed him after a few minutes, stirring up a jug of Minute Maid. "Barbara Joy," Lucas sighed, watching her pour lumpy orange juice in a Baccarat glass, "Ben and his son are getting along so well right now, why would you want to mess that up?" And why was he even bothering to ask? "What about me?" she snarled, splashing juice on the hardwood floor."I took his name, I gave him that child, I gave him the best years of my life! What about ME?" "Well, to tell the truth, BJ, I don't much give a damn about you. Don't know anybody who does, offhand." The phone was ringing. "You better start giving a damn or find yourself a new deputy, 'cause I plan to make his life a living hell," she said furiously, slopping juice out of the glass as she pointed at him. "Starting with restraining orders and enforcing Benjie's custody. You want to arrest him or should I have a state trooper do it!?" "You do whatever you have to do, Barbara Joy, I gotta get the phone." Buck lifted the receiver and went from one obnoxious woman to another -- it was Lucilla. "Lucas, there is bad trouble coming. I've seen it in my basement." "I know, I'm looking at it." BJ took advantage of the break to nose through Buck's desk. "Only thing you been seeing in your basement is the bottom of a bottle of peach wine," Lucas told Mama Lucy in his most reassuring voice. "Don't you get funny, boy, this is serious. This is worse trouble than anything you've ever seen before." "Well, when it comes in I'll be sure to take a picture of it to preserve for posterity." Buck glanced at BJ as the tarantula spooked her, and smiled, rubbing his empty ring finger as if it were burning him. "Until then," he added, "shut up and let me do my job." He hung up while Lucilla was still sputtering that some fools don't deserve fair warning. BJ turned on him the minute the phone clicked off. "Listen, you make deals, don't you? I'll do a deal with you. You could use somebody to clean around here." She looked back at the desk and shuddered. "I'll do it for nothing if you help me." Buck looked at her as if she were the spider. "I swear to God, I'll be over here every single day to scrub and tote anything you want. I'll even cook for you. Ben used to like my meatloaf. It's the only damn thing I know how to do, Buck!" "I'll keep that in mind, Barbara Joy, thank you. And I'm sure I can find some way to help you out of your troubles. Just, well... get a grip." For a minute it looked like Mrs Flood was going to hug him or maybe even kiss him. Then she started sobbing again and bustled herself out the front door. My God, the things he did for his people. * * * The outfit Selena had picked out to wear to the bank was not low-cut, you could say that for it. High-necked, long-sleeved, the most clinging rayon jersey she could find. Waistline high up under her breasts, accenting her tummy. The respectable women lined up for the teller's cages made an impenetrable Maginot Line of hissing gossip as soon as they saw her brazenly slink in. Didn't matter a fig to her today, she was looking for Chris Watkins. He was young and new and in charge of loans. She slid into the lowbacked chair at Chris's desk, lightly stroking the fabric over her torso. She slapped two checks down on the table. "The first one is to pay off whatever's left on my house so I own it free and clear." He got his mouth working. "Of course, Miss Coombs, you realize there will be a tax disadvantage-" "You haven't been in Trinity very long, have you, Mr. Watkins?" The young man shook his head. "Let me give you a tip. No debt of any kind is an advantage in this town. Besides, a woman in my condition has whims that just can't be denied." "OK." Watkins was sweating a little with her eyes running up and down him slow. "Put the other check in whatever CD pays the best and keep rolling it over. There's going to be another one coming every month." "Is there anything else I can do for you?" Selena scoped out the rest of the bank -- mean-eyed, jealous women leering her from the left, avaricious lustful men from the right. All eyeballing the town tramp, knocked up at last. Lucas Buck himself leaned on the door of the bank manager's office and smiled appreciatively. "Not unless you know a good locksmith," Selena told Watkins coolly. "Some women shop for new dresses, I just want new locks on my doors." "Garfield's is good, and fast. They're just down the block." "Then that's my next stop. Thank you, Mr. Watkins, you've been so very helpful." She stood up, slow -- but then, moving slow was what Selena did best -- turning carefully and sinuously, so everybody could get a good last look as she sauntered out of the bank, an independent woman. Buck's eyes followed every smooth, rocking step. Always did appreciate her strut. * * * Ben wandered around headquarters, wondering when Buck was going to bother to show up. Train wreck takes out half a block and the sheriff doesn't even bother to check in! For his part, Floyd didn't know what the worry was -- state troopers would take care of everything. But then, he didn't have to run the horror over and over in *his* thick skull, did he? "We gotta at least check on the people," Ben growled. He dialed up the hospital, and Rita answered. Good, she always knew what was going down. "Ben, I'm sorry. That engineer died ten minutes after you brought him in. And I tell you, I ran the blood tests -- pure alcohol through and through. I don't know how he could see, let alone drive a train. Fur's gonna fly when the Transportation Safety Board gets ahold of that." "Yeah, that's gonna hit the news for sure." Ben nodded, feeling a little better about dozing and daydreaming his way through cow duty. "Speaking about nothin' at all, I got this weekend off, Ben." "That's nice, Rita." "Well... I, uh... I thought about driving over to Charlotte, maybe having a nice dinner by candlelight, maybe check into one of those pretty bed and breakfast places, sleep in a featherbed. Forget about Trinity for awhile." "Sounds real nice, Rita." Ben was looking through his checkbook, figuring out how much would be left to pay for BJ's exterminators and still buy those high-class sneakers Benjie kept asking him about. "I thought maybe... you might like to go with me," Rita said haltingly. "To Charlotte. For dinner... and, uh... the featherbed." Ben looked up. Blinked. "Maybe some other time, Rita, thanks, though. I got things I gotta take care of out at Barbara Joy's this weekend." "Did you even **hear** what I asked you?" "Yeah, you want a little break from this town. God knows, I wish I could join you, but I got too many responsibilities here." "I don't know how long you have to be divorced before your responsibilities are over, Ben. I mean, that's **not** your family anymore. BJ dumped you for Waylon, I know he's no use to her, but that's not your fault-" Ben heard that just fine, and he snapped. "Family isn't over just 'cause the court says so! This is my BOY, Rita! This is the mother of my SON! These aren't strangers!" "I'm sorry, I really am, Ben. I suppose I'll never understand, never having had a child of my own. I'll go back to that little second-place slot where I fit into your life, and wait for you to find time for me." And with that, Rita abruptly hung up the phone. **Nice going, Healy,** Ben thought, sinking down on his desk, head in his hands. * * * **If you ever go to Houston, you better walk right/you better not gamble and you better not fight/cause the sheriff will arrest you and he'll carry you down/you can bet your bottom dollar you're jailhouse bound...** Lucas snapped off the Crown Vic's radio and got out, fingering the papers for BJ's mortgage -- and one other besides. Sometimes it was best to buy two loans for the price of one. You never know when it might come in handy. He was wondering if BJ had any insurance on her rat-trap, and just how good she'd be at cooking meatloaf for, oh... say six or seven, as he knocked on the boarding house door. Beautifully kept-up residence, immaculate down to that damn angel on the front stoop. Built-in income, just like money in the bank. **Too bad Loris ain't got any money in the bank,** he thought. * * * Buck had finally called in -- oh, not to take care of any sheriff's business, Ben thought grouchily. He was over at the bank, messing with people's lives as usual. He went into the sheriff's personal office to pick up some papers Buck wanted sent over to Trinity Savings and Loan. He turned on the lampswitch, for all the good it did. This lair of Lucas's just ate up light and threw out more darkness. Ben hated even standing inside its looming walls. It was like walking into the belly of the beast. He fumbled through the papers spread out on the desk. A shadow fell across his hand, dark and sharp, even in this dim room. Ben looked up. Merly was in front of him, backlit by the sickly light that oozed through Buck's window. He couldn't see her face clearly, only her eyes. Those hit him with the same force they had at the train site, and he staggered back, opening his mouth, not sure what would come out. "Don't hurt me," he gasped. "Ben, it's me." Her hand -- the hand bare of ornamentation -- reached for his, went right through him. Ring or no ring, he felt an awful cold pass through his bones. It took everything he had not to run from the room. "It wasn't me," she whispered urgently, ears shining in pain. "It wasn't, Ben." "What are you?" he asked. "What are you now? I SAW you-" "He was dying, Ben, and I reached out..." She reached out toward Ben again, and he backed away, he couldn't help himself. "I don't know what happened. I don't understand... anything." "What are you doing here?" "I need a friend. It's so... dark all the time." "Who you talking to, Ben?" a voice spoke up behind him. Ben whirled to find Caleb Temple peering around the office cheerfully. Ben was stunned. "Can't you see...?" Merly's shape slowly faded as the boy looked right through her. "See what?" Caleb asked, frowning. Ben whirled around, but Merly was gone. Pulling himself together, he changed the subject. "Are- aren't you supposed to be in school?" "It's a mess over there. Miss Coombs up and quit or something. I got tired of listening to 'em saying terrible things about her, she never done me any harm. Her substitute don't know nothin' 'bout nothing -- he won't even know I'm gone." The boy say down in Lucas's chair, bouncing up and down a little. "My daddy in? I gotta talk to him before I go home. I'm helpin' Dr. Matt fix his world-famous spaghetti tonight, least HE says it's world-famous-" "Don't you know?" Ben asked in surprise. "Know what?" "Lucas called me from the bank this morning, Caleb, talking about drawing up papers to foreclose on the boarding house. I thought he would have at least told you." He stopped, suddenly remembering that communication had walled itself up behind some unspoken brick and mortar barrier at the Buck house. "He don't tell me nuthin.' He never tells me nuthin.'" Caleb pushed the chair back savagely and ran out of the office like a child possessed. * * * Buck leaned back on the living room sofa of the boarding house as if he owned the place. Which, as a matter of fact, he just about did. "Now I can easily co-sign a lower payment on something smaller, one bedroom maybe. But, you know, that might be better for you to handle with that invalid husband of yours, or whatever he is to you." "Matt Crower is my fiancee." Loris kept her voice and temper down because Matt was finally sleeping. If he woke up to this horror, it would kill him. Or he would kill Buck. Either consequence was not acceptable. "Shoo-oo! Tough time to get married, Loris, when you're down to your last nickel and the toll is a dime." "I don't recall asking your advice, Sheriff, and I NEVER gave you permission to use my Christian name." "Sorry, Miss Holt, no offense." Buck's smile ate up grief. The back screen door slammed open and they could hear Caleb running through the kitchen. "Miz Holt, Miz Holt, the sheriff is fixing to foreclose on us!" "Day late and a dollar short, isn't he?" Buck commented, smiling. His son heard him. When he saw the man sprawled across the sofa in indolent arrogance, he rushed his father with terrifying fury, hands out like claws. "You gonna throw us all out on the street now, you bastard!" "I wouldn't throw that word around too lightly, boy." Buck caught up the child's small hands in an iron grip. Caleb looked up at the sheriff with blinding hate, and easily threw off his father's grasp. Loris pulled the boy back before he could do more. Lucas's demeanor instantly became avuncular. "I'm not the villain here, son. This property's balloon payment came due months ago, while Doc Crower was still trying to find his feet. Seems like Miss Holt's had a few too many non-paying clients lately. Bank managers would've had the door boarded up today if I hadn't bought out the loan. I'm willing to give you, oh, coupla weeks to get your affairs in order before I move the next occupant in." "It's not true is it, Miz Holt?" "It's true enough," she said in a quiet voice. "I've been juggling foreclosure notices for a few months, but the bank was patient... and I'd saved up almost enough." "Until the hospital got first call on your money. Banks don't ever take that well. No Hippocratic oaths among financiers, I'm afraid." Buck continued smiling broadly. "Let's face it, Caleb, Miz Holt is a nice but not too practical lady who can't even handle the basic economic facts of life. Come to think of it, that kind of record wouldn't look too good on a custody hearing, either." Buck's eyebrows raised playfully. "Can we not talk about this in front of the boy?" Loris could see Caleb unravelling and it frightened her. The depths of power in this small child were palpable as he walked out of her reach. "He don't care what he says in front of me," Caleb said. He glared at his father. "You don't, do you?" "You're the one who started the morning with a lot of hard truths," Buck said, his smile cold and brutal. "I thought you could take a few more." "You're taking my home away!" Caleb shouted. Loris glanced up the stairs where Matt was sleeping. "Your home is waiting for you. Always has been." Buck's eyes burned into his son. Where was the wall going to be that would finally back that boy into a corner he couldn't break out of? "I'll die before I go back. I wish I had died trying to get Merly out of me with that damn ring of yours! I wish you'd die and STAY dead this time!" Buck rubbed his ringless finger with very blank, very dead eyes. "I see." The smile drained off his face, leaving only grim planes of determination. He walked to the door and opened it silently. "You know where to find me," he said to Loris. He closed the door behind him, as carefully and silently as he had opened it. Caleb ran to Loris as she stood shaking and crying. "It'll be all right, Miz Holt. We'll make it all right." She held the boy, but she couldn't believe his words. Not after seeing that look on the sheriff's face. * * * Alone, at home, for the first time in years, there were no papers for Selena to correct, no lesson plans, no grades, nobody else's children to concern her anymore. Two half-grown kittens crept into her lap to curl up next to her. Philander was living up to his name again; she thought another couple of the females might already be pregnant. She needed to have him fixed. She turned on the boob tube, glanced over her healthy bank balance, and threw the papers on the floor. As the shadows of the sunset cast more gloom into her house, she suddenly, inexplicably, she felt like crying. Both cats responded, pushing closer to her warm body with soft cries of affection. "Better love me now, while there's still room." Footsteps strode up to her front door, the characteristic click of cowboy boots. Without quite knowing why, she turned the dimmer switch on her lamp the rest of the way off, leaving just the dull flashing of mindless TV in a pitch-dark room. She listened to the scratch of a key that wouldn't fit, the rattle of the doorknob. No knock, no call. "Just ask me to open the door, Lucas," she whispered into the kitten's neck as it purred. "Please, ask me for once, you don't even have to be nice about it." Silence only, a cold, heartless silence that frightened her enough to run to the door. But instead of throwing it open, she latched the chain, her breath shallow and terrified. But at what? On TV, normal, middle-class women were cooing over their normal middle-class babies at a playground. The camera closed in on pudgy, drooling baby faces, round innocent eyes staring, Gerber lookalikes with Miss America mothers. "All the money in the world couldn't buy me a baby like that," Selena said aloud, her voice hollow and hopeless. "Not with the choice of fathers I've got." The nausea hit her viciously, as if the kid had taken her remarks personally. Three cats curled around her legs as the gorge rose in her throat, crying to be fed. "Go away," she moaned. "Go away!" She knocked over the chair, tossed a lamp at the TV. The crash and smoke exploded like applause. Six or seven cats shrieked and flew out various cat doors for dear life. "Just go away and leave me alone!" Selena screamed, curled on the floor in the broken glass. * * * Alone in her house, Barbara Joy was crying on her son's neatly made bed, in the room he hardly even visited anymore. Watching his toy train go around and around and around its hard plastic track. It wasn't the real thing, not like the one still waiting in the dusty room for Caleb, but it was bigger, with brighter colors, and Benjie had always loved it. Barbara Joy fell asleep on the bed her son so rarely used anymore, her swollen eyes still seeping tears. * * * **Yonder comes Miss Rosey, tell me how you know/I know her by her apron, and the dress she wore...** Lucas Buck walked through the shadowy streets of his town, looking for something that was only identifiable by smell. He couldn't go home -- he tried, three times he tried. But he couldn't sit and he couldn't stand in the emptiness of that house that was driving him crazy. If he couldn't fill that empty space, this empty place, someone was going to get hurt... and he didn't much care who. But he had someone in mind. **Merlyn Temple is in my town this night,** he thought fiercely, **walking through MY town with MY ring on her finger.** And when he found her, when he sniffed out her presence, she would pray for forgiveness but there would be none for her, not on this side or any other. She would beg him to leave her some trace of oblivion, some shred of blackness. The shadows draped in front of each other, forming patterns in the night. The grip of a familiar power stunned him, pulling him by all his senses, like no woman he'd ever wanted, like no lust he'd ever known. A sinuous shape fell out of the shadowy night, appearing at the corner by the park, bending low to pet a skittish cat. Black hair, falling down a pale shoulder. Buck lunged forward, fingers tangling in that dark hair, other fingers reaching for a solid, easy-to-snap throat. "Don't hurt me!" Stacey Johnson cried out, her white nurse's uniform gleaming in the moonlight. Face stricken, Merlyn Temple faded into the park trees as Buck tried to apologize to the nurse, his excuses ringing hollow. He was out of breath, still swept up by the scent, the lure of the ring. "I thought you were someone else," he told her sincerely. "Someone dangerous." "I'm not, Sheriff. I'll do anything you want, just don't hurt me!" Buck's eyes were wild and feral -- Stacey would have killed her own mother at that moment to get him away from her. Buck's fingers slowly let loose of her hair. "Go on home. I don't want anything from you." The nurse ran off... and the presence of the ring swept over him again. It was everywhere. It was the night itself. There was no finding it in one place or one thing. He swept into the darkest shadows of the park, telling himself he was chasing it, ignoring the thought that he might be trying to escape it. Selena's cats brushed around him, hissing, their own ancient instincts lit up like silent alarms by the strange wild scent on the breeze tonight. He kicked at them, scattering them. He had one more place to go tonight. And Lucas Buck walked through the very shadows where Merly stood, walked by without knowing she was there. For a moment, his boot caught on a branch, and he almost stumbled as his blue duster brushed **through** her black dress. The cats hissed one last time and ran off, fleeing the black-hole shadow that was Merlyn Anne Temple. * * * Barbara Joy Flood awoke, strangling, in a world of stink and a cacophony of noise. She jerked upright, coughing, eyes streaming, unable to anchor herself to consciousness, unable to assimilate her whereabouts, unable to breathe. It set off alarms in her head, old alarms, preset ones, the kind every upright ape possesses from birth: danger... danger... danger... get out... get out... get out... She struggled off the bed -- Benjie's, she realized, Benjie's, Benjie's room, she was in her son's room -- and reached for the shrieking telephone on the small table beside her. She slapped at it, and discovered the shrieking noise was not a phone, but the whistle of the toy train on the floor, whirling round and round its diminutive track, chasing its own caboose. Still she slapped at the squarish shape on the bedtable, her brain screaming at her an old warning cry she couldn't understand. In her confusion, she slapped the On knob of the radio on Benjie's bedtable. The local classic rock station bellowed into life, full volume. John Fogerty. Creedence. "LET THE MIDNIGHT SPECIALLLL..." Barbara Joy screamed, lunged off the bed, and kicked the whistling engine of the train across the room. The whistle began to fade as the small machine expired, only to be replaced by the gonging of the cheap pendulum clock, striking the first of the last 12 strokes it would ever strike. "SHINE A LIGHT ON MEEEEEE..." She didn't know it was gas, couldn't register the fact. She'd slept too long in its hungry embrace. But she heard the hiss of it in the kitchen, heard it over clock and Creedence, beckoning her to come to it like the silky hiss of a cobra luring a rat. She bent double, vomited. Staggered on down the dark hall. She flipped the hall switch. Nothing. "LET THE MIDNIGHT SPEEEE-SHULLLLL..." "Benjie!" she gagged. "BENJIE!" She struck a wall, rebounded, screamed soundlessly. Eyes rolling in her head, lungs clutching desperately at whatever oxygen they could pull from the gas-choked air, she spun through the kitchen door- "SHINE THAT EVER-LOVIN' LIGHT ON MEEEEEE..." -and flipped the light switch there. The one that gave her shock every third time she flipped it. This was a third time. The Flood home exploded in a geyser of flame. The gas had been on for nearly 30 minutes, and the air was rich with it, even outside. A good deal of the stove, the kitchen, Barbara Joy and the surrounding 30 square feet of the house simply vaporized. The blast threw lumber, brick, ruined furnishings and other debris both organic and inorganic a hundred feet into the air. Debris rained down in the driveway, but the man standing beside the Crown Vic didn't flinch away. He merely stood there, jaw hanging open, eyes like flint, watching the flames lick upward into the night. Something spanged off the hood of the car and landed at his feet, smoking. He recognized the twisted hunk of metal as a toy train engine, very like the one he had given his son. Firelight reflected in his wide eyes, Lucas Buck closed his mouth, and went to radio in. FADE OUT DISCLAIMER: Any story/episode appearing that states it is part of Virtual AG-Season Three is based upon the Television show, "American Gothic", which is the property of Shaun Cassidy, Renaissance Productions, and CBS (apparently). The characters added to support this concept, and the storylines, are the property of the writers acknowledged as such. PLEASE, DON'T SUE US!!