I
Scream, You Scream
by Tim Waggoner
Ronald slowed until he came to
a stop, then he put his Tercel in park to extinguish the
red wash of brake lights. His headlights were off, and he'd
even turned down his dashboard lights in case their scant
illumination might give him away. It was well after midnight,
he was following someone, and he didn't want to be seen
- not until he was ready.
Down the street,
idling in front of a brick Cape Cod, sat the ice cream truck.
Despite the late hour, sterile electronic tones drifted
from the truck's rooftop speaker in an endless loop, "Turkey
in the Straw," but without any of the tune's usual jauntiness.
It sounded like the sort of music Nazis might play as they
marched victims off to the showers. Ronald waited for lights
to go on in the houses on the street, for people to come
to their windows, peer between curtains and wonder what
the hell an ice cream truck was doing out trolling for customers
this late. But no lights came on, no curtains parted. It
was as if no one heard the music -- no one but him, that
is.
But no, someone
was opening the door of the Cape Cod, stepping onto the
porch, walking down the front steps. There was a nearly
full moon out tonight and the sky was clear, but even so,
Ronald had a difficult time making out the man's features.
Ronald hesitated for a second, two, then put his Tercel
into drive and gently touched his foot to the gas pedal.
He needed to get closer, needed to see.
As his car eased
forward, he watched an obese man in an undershirt and boxer
shorts finish maneuvering his bulk down the porch steps
and begin plodding along the front walk toward the ice cream
truck. The man walked up to the side window, presumably
to order. Ronald wished he could see the "Neat Treats" driver,
but the angle was wrong. The Tercel crept to within a dozen
yards of the truck, and Ronald knew he couldn't risk getting
any closer. Hell, he was too close as it was. He braked,
saw red in his rearview mirror, and threw the car into park,
removing his foot from the pedal at the same moment. He
hoped the ice cream truck driver and his customer had been
too engaged in their transaction - of whatever sort - to
notice.
Now that he was
closer, Ronald could make out the fat man's features fairly
well. His black hair (at least, it looked black in the moonlight)
lay flat against his skull, as if it were painted on. He
had flabby jowls, like a basset hound's, and they quivered
as he spoke with whoever was inside the truck. Ronald rolled
his window all the way down, hoping to pick up something
of their conversation, but it was impossible with "Turkey
in the Straw" blaring from the speaker.
(And why wasn't
anyone looking outside to see who and what was making all
that noise? Everyone on this street couldn't be asleep,
and even if they were, the incessant cheerless drone of
that awful music should've awakened someone by now.)
The fat man stopped
talking, paused, then reached toward the truck's window.
Ronald lost sight of his hands for a moment, and when they
came into view again, they held a woman's head.
"No," he whispered
to himself. It was a doll's head, a mannequin's ... The
fat man grabbed a fistful of white hair (though it would
be blonde in daylight, Ronald guessed) and held the head
at arm's length as if to inspect it. He turned it one way,
another, then nodded, evidently satisfied. The head's features
were incredibly lifelike - eyes, nose, lips, ears, cheeks
- none possessed the stiff, unreal aspect of rubber or plastic.
They looked soft, malleable, as only flesh can. But that
didn't bother Ronald as much as the ragged stump where the
woman's neck had once been, or the black substance that
dribbled onto the sidewalk. He knew if he were to turn on
his headlights, the black would become red.
The fat man brought
the head toward his face, slowly, as if he were savoring
the moment, then closed his eyes as he touched the dead
lips to his. He reached up with his free hand, gripped the
back of the head, and held it in place as he thrust his
tongue into its mouth.
Ronald felt lightheaded,
nauseated. Good idea, he thought, his mental voice
tinged with an edge of hysteria. Have to keep her steady,
don't want her bobbing around while you play tonsil hockey.
Crimson spilled
through his windshield, and Ronald nearly screamed, until
he realized it was only the brake lights of the Neat Treats
truck (and didn't a severed head give a whole new meaning
to that company name?) flaring to life. The vehicle slid
away from the curve and continued down the street. The fat
man finished with the head - For now, Ronald thought,
and felt bile splash against the back of his throat - and
started toward his house, the head dangling at his side,
her face toward Ronald. He wasn't sure, but he thought the
grisly thing gave him a saucy wink as the fat man set his
foot on the first step and began ascending toward the porch.
Ronald didn't
plan to stick around for the fat man to get inside. Not
only because he couldn't bear to stay here a moment longer
after the nightmarish scene he'd witnessed, but because
he was more determined than ever not to lose track of the
ice cream truck. He put the car in drive, pressed down on
the gas, and made sure to keep his eyes front as he passed
the fat man's house. He had the impression of the man turning,
watching him go, but he didn't look in case he might see
something worse.
The ice cream
truck came to the end of the street and stopped. The right
signal blinked on, and the truck turned. Ronald followed,
keeping a discreet distance, all the while trying not to
think the thought that kept running through his head.
What did that
sick fuck do to my daughter?
"Whoever it was,
they were probably drunk." Bridgett leaned over, lifted
a couple pancakes with a spatula and deposited them on his
plate. She smelled like body wash and shampoo, with just
a hint of diaper cream. Eau de wife and mother.
Ronald began
slathering the near-tasteless vegetable-oil based gunk that
substituted for butter in his household (no trans fatty-acids!
proclaimed the container). "When you're drunk, you tool
around in your own car, you don't hop into an ice cream
truck and cruise the town."
From the kitchen,
Bridgett called, "You do if you're drunk enough!"
Sometime after
midnight the night before, Ronald had been upstairs in his
home office working on the computer, trying to decide whether
to place a trade, when he'd heard, of all things, the hurdy-gurdy
sound of an ice cream truck coming down the street. It was
mid June, definitely ice cream season, but this had hardly
been the hour for it. He'd gone downstairs, hurried to the
front window just in time to see the truck go by.
A wash of headlights
on the street. Pale whitish-blue, more like halogen lights.
The beams seemed to sweep back and forth, almost as if they
were spotlights playing across homes and yards, searching
for something. A white, blocky vehicle rolled past, a speaker
on top, NEAT TREATS emblazoned on the side in black letters.
The music - happy and light on the surface, but underneath
cold and sterile - was taped, of course, and electronically
produced, but nevertheless, he'd found himself trying to
visualize what sort of instrument might create such a sound.
Steel drums, maybe, the kind were used in calypso music,
but the metal would be surgical steel, the kind that speculums
and bone saws were made of.
"Daddy, what's
'drunk'?"
The question
brought Ronald out of his memory, and he looked across the
dining table at his six-year-old daughter. Marie looked
back at him with wide, innocent eyes, patiently awaiting
an answer. He then glanced at Katie, sitting in a highchair
next to her sister. The one-year-old was busy holding her
sipper cup upside down and shaking droplets of milk onto
cut-up pieces of pancake.
"Nevermind, sweetheart.
This probably isn't the best breakfast conversation anyway."
Marie frowned.
She didn't like to be put off. "Why did the ice cream truck
come around at night anyway?"
Robert poured
non-fat syrup onto his pancake, cut off a piece with his
fork and tasted it. Awful. "Maybe for those people who want
a midnight ice cream snack."
Marie licked
her lips. "Mmmm, I'd like that! How come you didn't go out
and get some, Daddy?"
Bridgett came
back into the dining room, carrying the last of the pancakes
on a serving dish. She set them down in the middle of the
table, then took her place next to Katie. "Because it was
too late for ice cream, honey." She turned to Ronald, gave
him a wink. "It would've given him a belly ache."
He smiled. "Actually,
I didn't go out because whoever it was wasn't really selling
any ice cream, not at night. It was probably someone just
playing a joke."
"That's a dumb
joke," Marie said.
"I agree, sweetie."
Bridgett turned to her husband. "I didn't hear anything,
but then you know how soundly I sleep. We'll have to ask
the neighbors if they heard it. And the weekly paper comes
out tomorrow; maybe they'll have something about it in the
police blotter: 'Rogue Ice Cream Truck Annoys Dozens!'"
Marie giggled.
Katie looked at her mommy, then her sister, and laughed
too, so as not to be left out of the fun, whatever it was.
Ronald took another
bite of pancake, chewed, and tried not to taste it. "I don't
think it's all that funny." Despite what he'd told Marie
so she wouldn't worry, last night's nocturnal visit by the
Neat Treats had disturbed him. "It's weird, is what it is."
And it was something else, a word he didn't want to speak
around Marie because he didn't want to scare her. It was
dangerous.
Ronald and Bridgett
had been married for fourteen years, more than long enough
to develop a certain amount of spousal telepathy. She frowned.
"I think you were right a minute ago, when you said this
isn't a good topic to discuss at breakfast."
"We don't have
to discuss it, but I think we should at least be ... cautious
for a while. When it comes to-" he glanced at Marie - "making
purchases of frozen confectioneries, that's all."
"Frozen what?"
Marie said. She turned to her mother. "Does he mean ice
cream?"
Ronald sighed.
Six years old, and already he couldn't put anything over
on her. What was it going to be like when she was sixteen?
"Not now, honey."
Bridgett turned to Ronald and gave him the That's Quite
Enough look. He opened his mouth to say one last thing,
thought better of it, and nodded. She smiled, satisfied,
and they all ate in silence for the next several minutes.
Ronald decided
he'd try to bring up the matter of the ice cream truck again
with Bridgett before he left for work, sometime when the
kids were otherwise occupied. And if such an opportunity
didn't present itself, he'd call her on his lunch hour.
He wanted to make sure that she didn't let Marie buy anything
from the ice cream truck, not for a while, anyway.
He heard his
mother's voice whisper in his mind. You can't be too
careful, Ronnie. The world's a dangerous place. You don't
watch your step, you can trip on your very own porch, hit
your head on the concrete, and die right then and there.
You gotta keep a sharp eye out. Hell, you gotta keep two,
all the time. You listening to me, Ronnie?
He'd listened;
listened good. Not like he had much a choice - he'd heard
it (or some variation) from his mother all of his life.
And while as an adult he knew that his mother had overstated
her case (was "too damn paranoid," is how Bridgett put it),
in general, he'd found her advice to be sound enough. The
trick was to have a balanced perspective; the world was
a potentially dangerous place. A bit of healthy paranoia
was a good thing. He was doing okay, and so were his wife
and kids, and that was because he maintained his perspective
and kept a sharp eye out, kept two, all the time.
But indulge in
too much paranoia and you ended up like his mother. Shut
away in a nursing home, terrified of letting anyone on the
staff touch you, convinced they're stealing from you, short-changing
you on food, going through your trash when you're asleep,
plotting to kill you with deadly drugs they only say are
medicine. She'd died two years ago, and as much as he loved
her, Ronald couldn't say he was sorry.
Who knew why
the driver of the ice cream truck had chosen to do a Paul
Revere last night? Maybe it had been a joke, as he'd
told Marie. Or maybe whoever it was really had been drunk,
as Bridgett suggested, or on drugs. But there were other,
more sinister possibilities. Maybe the driver was crazy,
perhaps even a pedophile who fancied himself some sort of
suburban pied piper who used a truck and speaker in place
of a flute. Not very likely, perhaps - after all, why would
a child molester seek his prey at night, when all the kids
were inside and asleep? -- but that didn't make it, or something
equally as nasty, impossible. Maybe he should report the
night driver to the police, just in case. Loud as that music
had been, someone else had probably already called to complain,
but at least he could add his voice to the chorus.
He'd call the
police first thing once he got to the bank. That decided,
he felt better. Now all he had to do was finish choking
down the rest of his pancake.
Ronald followed
the ice cream truck up one street and down another. It was
a slow procession; the Neat Treats driver kept to speeds
of fifteen, twenty miles an hour max. If there was a pattern
to his nocturnal rounds, Ronald couldn't detect it. The
driver seemed to be selecting streets at random, sometimes
circling back to cover the same ones again. Ronald checked
his dashboard clock. He'd been tailing the ice cream truck
for almost half an hour now, and aside from that one horrible
stop, it hadn't so much as slowed down, just continued its
stately snail's pace through the neighborhoods.
Ronald's window
was still down, and cool summer air caressed his face, but
it failed to soothe him. He was sweating as if he were standing
under a desert sun at high noon, and he gripped the steering
wheel so hard he thought the bones in his fingers might
snap. He didn't know what to do. He had a cell phone in
the glove box. Should he call the police? They might be
skeptical of his story about the severed head, but surely
there would be some physical evidence - bloodstains and
the like - inside the ice cream truck. Or should he pull
ahead of the truck, block its path, force it to stop so
he could confront the driver about his daughter? He remembered
how the woman's head, dangling at the end of her hair, had
winked at him (seemed to, seemed to!) and was afraid.
He imagined the driver stepping out of the truck, grinning
maniacally, blood-stained machete held high. Heads up,
pal! It's your turn!
The next time
they came to an intersection, whichever way the truck went,
Ronald could go the other way, head home and try to forget
about ice cream trucks that came out in the middle of the
night, that played music which no one seemed to hear, and
which delivered body parts instead of dessert. He was tempted,
but he knew he couldn't give up, not after what the Neat
Treats man had done to his daughter. He decided to continue
following the truck for a little longer, see if he couldn't
learn something more that might strengthen his story for
the police. That way -
The ice cream
truck's brake lights bled onto the street, and the vehicle
slowed. The driver pulled up to the curb in front of a ranch
home with a yard full of cutesy lawn ornaments and a decorative
flag jutting out from the overhang that covered the porch.
Ronald drew as close as he thought was safe, then pulled
over to the curb himself and put the Tercel in park.
Several moments
passed, and then the porch light snapped on. The front door
opened, and a woman wearing a long nightgown stepped out.
She was drenched in blood, her face, hands, hair, nightgown
- she looked as if she'd been swimming in it. Her face was
slack, eyes wide and staring like a sleepwalker or a George
Romero zombie. She walked across the grass, making her way
through the maze of objets d'art that grew from the lawn
like some bizarre variety of mushroom. As she crossed the
yard, Ronald noticed for the first time that the decorations
weren't the usual sort of kitsch that littered suburban
lawns. Instead of gnomes, lawn jockeys or concrete geese,
this yard sported stunted, twisted things ... clawed, fanged,
with baleful yellow eyes that seemed to be staring right
at him. He thought he saw a taloned hand twitch here, a
tooth-filled mouth gnash there, but he told himself that
it was only his imagination, and he even managed to believe
it.
The blood-soaked
woman stepped up to the ice cream truck, and this time Ronald
was grateful that he couldn't see the driver as he handed
the "neat treat" over to the woman. It was a large hacksaw
that gleamed silver in the moonlight. The woman set the
blade against her forearm, sawed back and forth a few times,
displaying no expression as the teeth sliced through her
flesh and blood pattered to the grass. Finally, she pulled
the blade away, nodded to the driver as the Fat Man had
done before her, then turned and headed back toward her
house, hacksaw held up as if she were a soldier marching
with a gun. And now she was grinning.
The ice cream
truck pulled away as the woman returned to her home - and
whatever unfortunate family members were inside. Ronald
waited until she'd shut the door and turned off the porch
light, and then he pulled into the street and continued
following the Neat Treats truck, trembling so hard he could
barely keep control of the steering wheel, whispering to
himself over and over again.
"Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus...."
When Ronald walked
into the house, he found Bridgett in the living room, walking
Katie, who was fussing.
"I called the
police about the ice cream truck. Guess what they said?"
"Ronald ..."
He tossed his
car keys onto the phone stand next to the door. "They told
me it was a bit late to be playing April Fool's. Dumbasses."
"Ronald, please,
there's something -"
"I mean, I admit
it sounds crazy, an ice cream truck driving around in the
middle of the night, but you'd think they'd at least check
into it. But they said they hadn't received any other complaints.
Can you believe that? As loud as that truck was?" He shook
his head. "I guess people are getting too damn lazy to even
pick up a phone and -"
"Ronald!"
He broke off,
startled by her shout. As if it were an instant replay,
the last few moments finally managed to penetrate his consciousness.
"What's wrong?"
"It's Marie.
She -" Katie chose that moment to let out a howl, and Bridgett
shushed her, spoke words of soothing nonsense.
Ronald felt a
cold wave of fear wash through his gut. He walked over to
Bridgett, took her elbow, turned her to face him. "Forget
about the baby for a minute. What about Marie?"
"She's in her
bedroom. She's been there since after three. She ..." Bridgett
hesitated, and a mixture of guilt and defensiveness passed
across her face. "She saw the ice cream man this afternoon."
The fear turned
to a ball of ice in the pit of his stomach. "Christ! I told
you to keep her away from that bastard!" Bridgett opened
her mouth, no doubt intending to offer a reason why what
she had done - or rather failed to do - had seemed appropriate
and logical at the time. But Ronald pushed passed her and
hurried to Marie's room. The door was open a crack, but
he knocked before entering.
"Sweetie? It's
Daddy. How are you doing?"
Marie lay on
her small kid's bed, PowerPuff Girls sheets drawn up to
her chin. Stuffed animals surrounded her head like an anthropomorphic
halo. She didn't look at him as he crossed to her bed; her
gaze remained fixed on a point upon the ceiling.
Ronald knelt
next to her bed, reached beneath the sheet and felt around
until he found his daughter's hand. "Are you sick?"
No response,
not even an eye blink.
He felt a mounting
horror rise within him, and he struggled to maintain control.
The last thing Marie needed was to see how scared he was.
"Mommy said you've been in bed all afternoon. Is that true?"
Nothing.
"She said you
... you saw the ice cream man today." He fought to keep
his voice even. "Did you get something from him, from the
Neat Treats man?"
After his call
to the police had been unsuccessful, he'd looked through
the Yellow Pages, trying to find Neat Treats. Under Ice
Cream & Frozen Deserts - Dealers, he found well over
a dozen entries from Baskin-Robbins to Udder Delights, but
nothing for Neat Treats.
Marie gave the
merest of nods, a single head bob, though she still didn't
take her gaze off the ceiling.
Awful scenarios
ran through his mind: the driver had exposed himself to
her, had offered to sell her drugs, had tried to fondle
her, and perhaps succeeded. Whatever had happened, it had
to be something terrible, else why would Marie be lying
here, almost catatonic? "What did he ... what did you get?"
At first he thought
she wasn't going to answer, but then she said, "He didn't
give me anything; he showed me something."
Christ, the sonofabitch
had whipped it out in front of her. Sick horror at
the thought of his child being violated mingled with a sudden
overpowering anger. He wanted to wrap his fingers around
the Neat Treats man and squeeze until the bastard's eyes
popped out of his skull.
He didn't want
to ask his next question, didn't want to know the answer,
but he had to. After all, he was the Daddy, wasn't he? "What
did he show you, honey?"
A pause, as if
she were trying to figure out the best way to phrase her
reply. "He showed me the world."
Ronald looked
at her for a long moment, trying to understand what she'd
said. He tried to get her to clarify, but nothing he said
elicited any further response. She just lay there, looking
up at the ceiling, expressionless.
Finally, he told
her to try and get some rest, and he left the room. He heard
his mother's voice. You really dropped the ball on this
one, Ronnie boy. Didn't I tell you the world was a dangerous
place? Now look what's happened to your daughter. Some freak
has messed with her head - maybe messed with more than that!
- and she's so traumatized she can barely talk. And the
way she just stares! You should have kept a sharp eye out,
Ronnie. Should've kept two.
He wanted to
call the police and have them come to the house, but Bridgett
refused. "She's upset enough as it is. She doesn't need
a cop asking her all sorts of embarrassing questions. If
you must call, leave an anonymous tip, like they do in the
movies."
He was furious
with his wife. Didn't she understand that this sick motherfucker
needed to be stopped before he hurt any more kids? But when
he looked in on Marie again and saw her still staring without
expression at the ceiling, he couldn't bring himself to
call the police and put her through the additional trauma
of being questioned.
They continued
with their nightly routine as best they could. Bridgett
made dinner - spaghetti and salad - and they ate without
Marie, who could not be roused from her bed. Bridgett promised
that if Marie wasn't any better come the morning, she'd
take her to see the pediatrician. Ronald nodded absently.
Bridgett scowled.
"Did you hear what I said?"
Ronald glanced
at Katie, saw she'd smeared spaghetti sauce all over her
face. "Sorry, I was thinking."
"About what?"
He kept staring
at Katie; he couldn't get over how much the sauce looked
like blood. "Going for a drive."
The Neat Treats
truck stopped in front of a Tudor style house not quite
big enough to be called a mansion, but a damn site finer
than Ronald's home. This was the well-to-do part of town,
what residents called the "dollar side." Ronald and his
family lived on the more modest "fifty cent side." The truck
drew up to the curb and parked; three car lengths behind,
Ronald did the same. He watched the Tudor, waited for the
appearance of the ice cream man's next customer. The drapes
were shut, but they glowed muted yellows, oranges, reds;
it appeared that every light in the house was on. A party?
Maybe, but then where were the cars? There were none in
the driveway, and there weren't many more parked in the
street.
Ronald touched
his sopping brow, smeared sweat around with his fingers.
He felt as if he'd swallowed a cactus that was slowly expanding
in his stomach, and his hands trembled so badly, he wasn't
sure he'd be able to control the car well enough to get
home.
And that's all
he really wanted to do now - go home. It had been a mistake
to try and track down the ice cream truck, he could see
that now. And what had he planned to do once he caught up
with Mr. Neat Treats? Confront him, demand to know what
he'd done to his daughter? Maybe even beat the man up? It
had seemed to make sense back at the house, especially as
the evening wore on and Marie showed no sign of improvement.
But now, after finding and following the ice cream truck
down miles of suburban streets, he wanted to believe that
everything he'd seen tonight was just an hallucination brought
on by worry over his daughter's condition. But he knew better.
Something deep within his hindbrain, that primitive reptilian
part whose only concerns were eat-drink-fuck-survive, told
him that as much as he might prefer it to be otherwise,
everything he had seen tonight had been real.
Whoever ... whatever
the ice cream man was, whatever his fell purpose, there
was no room for him in the balanced perspective of the world
that Ronald had labored to maintain throughout his adult
life. The driver of the Neat Treats truck belonged in his
mother's world - that shadowy, fearful place in her rotting
mind where she'd spent her last days.
You were right,
Mom, he thought. The world is a dangerous place.
So dangerous that sometimes looking out the window to see
what's passing in the street is the worst possible thing
you can do.
Screw it.
Let the ice cream man finish his dark rounds alone. Ronald's
place was at home, with his wife and children. He put the
car in reverse, not giving a damn if Mr. Neat Treats saw
the red splash of his rear lights. He looked in the rearview,
intending to back down the street and turn around in the
first driveway he came to, head home and try the rest of
his life to forget the ice cream man and that goddamned
endless "Turkey in the Straw." But Ronald froze when he
saw what was looking back at him: a pair of animal eyes
set above an elongated canine snout, the whole of it painted
blood-red by his brake lights.
His first thought
was to gun it, run the fucker down, whatever it was, but
he hesitated, looked forward, saw the Tudor's front door
was open, and a group of people had come out onto the immaculate
lawn. No, not people, not exactly. Their bodies were human,
but their heads were those of animals - cats, dogs, pigs,
rats, deer ... They were dressed in S&M chic: leather with
studs and spikes, rubber with openings for nipples, crotches,
and anuses. One of the creatures, a well-muscled man with
the head of a twelve point stag and an enormous semi-erect
penis, stood on the sidewalk next to the ice cream truck,
making his transaction. The other animal heads decided to
not let the party die down while they waited, and started
chasing one another across the lawn, grunting and growling
in their bestial voices. Within moments, they began coupling,
tripling, quadrupling, screwing with animalistic abandon.
The wolf-head
behind Ronald's car walked around to the driver's side.
Ronald turned to look at her, saw she had eight small breasts
in two rows down her chest and abdomen. She reached a clawed
hand through the open window and put his car into park.
Her scent filled his nostrils, a musky mix of canine and
ripe vagina. She pulled her hand back, opened the door and
gestured for him to get out. Ronald looked at her. Her tongue
lolled out the side of her mouth, and her gaze was fixed
on him as if she were trying to decide whether to fuck him,
eat him, or both.
Ronald stepped
out of the car. He felt numb, distant, as if he were a disembodied
observer watching this happen to someone else. He knew he
was in shock, though he couldn't summon the mental energy
to care much at the moment. He wondered if his legs would
support him, was mildly surprised to find they did. He looked
to the ice cream truck, saw the staghead had completed his
transaction and was returning to the house. In his arms,
he carried a naked child with a lamb's head. Boy or girl,
Ronald couldn't tell, and he supposed it didn't really matter
which sex it was. The child bleated nervously, and the bestial
partygoers ceased copulating and turned their heads as one
toward the child, tracking it, nostrils flaring, drinking
in the air, tasting its fear scent and finding it sweet.
One by one, they fell into line behind the stag. Licking
lips, rubbing hands, fondling themselves in anticipation.
The wolf woman
gave him a final look, as if she were considering where
to sink her teeth first. But instead she pointed at the
ice cream truck, then loped across the lawn to join her
half-breed brethren. Ronald watched as they filed into the
Tudor house to continue their revels, the wolf woman entering
last, and the door slammed closed behind them, the noise
echoing in the night's silence.
Silence. Ronald
realized the truck's music had finally stopped. It was such
a relief that he nearly cried. But he didn't; he started
toward the sidewalk, reached it, turned and headed toward
the ice cream truck. He knew he didn't have to do this.
The animal heads had gone inside to partake of their "treat,"
and there was no one now to stop him from fleeing. Yet he
continued.
He walked up
to the truck. The surface above, below and to the sides
of the serving window was decorated with stickers that displayed
Neat Treats wares - kaboom pops, fudgecicles, ice cream
sandwiches, rooty-toots, a dozen more. But then, this truck
didn't really sell ice cream, did it? It sold something
else entirely.
The serving window
was open, but only shadow was visible beyond the counter.
It wasn't merely that the inside light wasn't on, or that
the moonlight couldn't reach inside due to the angle at
which the truck was parked. This was an intentional
darkness, thick and solid as chocolate syrup and far colder
than any ice cream could ever hope to be.
The darkness
rippled, as if a wind played across its surface, though
Ronald felt no disturbance in the air. He waited, trembling
and sweating, for Mr. Neat Treats to finally put in an appearance.
Moments passed, and the darkness beyond the serving window
remained unbroken, though it continued to occasionally roil
and shift.
"Hello? Is there
... is there anyone in there?" His voice sounded small and
weak in his own ears, not at all unlike the pathetic bleating
of the sheep-child as it was carried into the house.
He waited some
more, but no response came.
And then he understood.
Mr. Treats wasn't coming because there was no driver. This
truck - or rather this thing which mimicked the outward
shape and appearance of an ice cream truck - was alive.
A thought flickered
through his mind then, an insubstantial whisper drifting
on a cold, ancient wind. Not truly certain he had heard
it, Ronald nevertheless replied.
"Yes, I've been
following you."
Another whisper.
"My daughter
came to you this afternoon. You ... did something to her.
She's ... not right."
Whisper.
"I want to know
what you did. I want you to show me."
The darkness
hesitated for a long moment, and then it parted like a stage
curtain, and Ronald saw.
When he walked
into the house, he found Marie sitting at the dining table.
She was drenched in blood. What was left of Bridgett lay
sprawled on the kitchen floor. On the table lay Katie. She
was naked and still twitching, but her movements were already
diminishing. In her right hand, Marie held a hammer smeared
with gore and bits of matted hair. In her left hand, she
held a carving knife.
She turned to
look at her father and smiled with blood-stained teeth.
"You know now, don't you?"
Ronald nodded,
numb. He had thought he'd understood, had learned his mother's
lesson well. But the world wasn't merely a dangerous place;
it was much worse than that. Worse than the living darkness
within the Neat Treats truck, because when that darkness
drew back, you could see that beyond it was ... nothing.
Absolute and total. And in the end, no amount of caution,
of foresight and planning could protect you from that. One
might as well take a hammer to the skulls of his family,
slice them up, swallow them down. In the long run, it was
kinder.
Ronald might've
said, "I hope you saved some for me."
He might've asked
Marie, "Are you still hungry, sweetie?" and then she might've
come for him, grinning, hammer and knife held high.
She might've
said, "You should've kept a sharp eye out, Daddy. Should've
kept two."
But neither of
them said anything. They just looked at each other, tears
of blood running down their cheeks.
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