The Clayton Chronicles E-Book

Edwin Stark

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Strange events are taking place in the small town of Nosfort, Massachusetts.

A corpse turns up with strange marks on its neck, key people in the town are disappearing - and who are those pale, sharp-toothed strangers the townsfolk can’t seem to notice?

For Sheriff Clayton Harris, there can be only one conclusion. But how can one lone lawman take on the nest of bloodsuckers that has taken root in his town? With the help of an undead sidekick, of course. Come inside and meet Sheriff Harris and Sherwin Williams, the sheriff/vampire duo that joins efforts to save the imperiled town of Nosfort from its impending doom.

Hop on a thrill-ride with Sherwin and Harris in an entertaining combination of mystery, biting and fun. Enter the small East Coast town of Nosfort in The Clayton Chronicles!

Leseprobe

The Clayton Chronicles

Edwin Stark

Copyright (C) 2011 Edwin Stark

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by http://www.thecovercollection.com/

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For ?wazithinking: In your review, You wished that there were more Clayton/Williams stories…. You know how the old saying goes; Be careful what you wish for…

Introduction

Only to be read by my fans (The Three of You)

By the time the two novellas within this book finally see the light, they will have traveled a really long distance indeed; not only in space, but also in time. They started their bizarre life during the 90s, in a completely different medium than the normal fiction narrative all readers are accustomed with: they began breathing and walking as screenplays.

At this point of the intro, I was partly tempted to just do a straightforward cut-and-paste operation in my word processor about why the screenplays in question were tossed unceremoniously into my fabled writer's trunk, but you can read about it in Cuentos, my short story collection. There's a rather short passage there, working as preface to one of my Williams/Clayton short stories, describing my reasons why I mothballed them… and the obscure reason on why I dusted them off in the end.

Let's concentrate on the inception of the tales themselves.

In Caracas, Venezuela, my home city, they used to cut off Boyaca Avenue from the main traffic grid during Sunday mornings, blockading it so bike riders, skaters and people could use it as an outlet for leisurely entertainment. Considering how stressful Caracas is, with a murder rate nearly four times worse than Manhattan (with one-third of the population), this is certainly one of the brightest ideas the dimwitted morons in charge of my country's government could have ever devised.

One Sunday morning, I was riding on my eight-speed bike along Boyaca Avenue, enjoying the view. Since Boyaca is a four-lane concrete strip (two going west, two going east, duh!) that skirts along the foothills of the Avila, one of our main National Parks, and it sits a hundred meters above the tallest building in the city, the view of Caracas was breathtaking. Birds were chirping and a slight mist had risen and was hazing the horizon.

There was someone riding along with me; it doesn't matter now who it was, the guy in question showed his true colors years later as a treacherous bastard and he still is, so let's not bother unduly about his identity.

This traitorous S.O.B. made an off-hand comment about The Blob and an assorted line up of old movies of the 50s (most of them of the American-International crop), and I was frankly amused at his total ignorance on the subject. He got all the plots wrong and some even mixed up, but it was funny to hear him rambling in his blissful stupidity. Then it struck me that the sheriff in all those movies is always the skeptic, who is a true unbeliever when the teenage kids storm his office, trying to warn him of the impending danger after the monster/vampire/outer-space creature (take your pick) shows up during the final half of the first reel or the beginning of the second.

I made a comment to this certified moron/asshole/creep (make your pick) on how funny it would be if there was a major reversal of the roles, and the sheriff was the one who was the true believer. He received the notion enthusiastically, and he started swinging the idea back at me with his opinions and suggestions. Now, if this had been a tennis match, you could say that I was practically serving him nice clean shots with the deadly precision that my writer's mind was capable of at the time… while he was shoddily tossing them back in childish rebounds… with the ball covered with the slime of his thoughts, thinking himself clever enough to be providing me with ideas.

Well, eventually the day's ride was over and I went back home with an idea bouncing inside my head. I guess that by the end of the day this jackass only had the foggiest notion about what we had talked about during the bike ride, and he probably forgot all about it by Monday, but let me tell you that I didn't forget. I wrote down that strong central image of the monster-believing sheriff (after polishing it with the mental equivalent of a Brillo pad: that guy's scummy notions were like wet clay; they really stuck to my lovely mental tennis ball), and stashed it into my idea file. Just as plain and easy as that—I wrote a yellow Post-it note with those words scribbled on it: Monster-believing sheriff.

Weeks later I unearthed my ideas file and went through it. I usually leave stuff there to molder: sometimes they just self-destruct (what the hell was this idea of a gargantuan lizard opening a deli shop? Huh?) but if the concept is very strong and truly good, they sparkle as well as a rare jewel, even after months of storage.

The Post-it note no longer stuck to anything; its halfway-sticky glue had dried out and was no longer clear and translucent: it was as gray and dusty as a recently unburied mummy, but the idea jotted on it still shone.

I set down to write the screenplay (which was fairly decent, as these sort of things go), adding to my believing-sheriff a vampire buddy of sorts, creating the troubled small town of Nosfort and the strange happenings that occur there, and in the end there were plenty of ideas left over for a sequel. So I practically wrote a movie and its sequel, one right after the heels of the other.

Now, my love/hate relationship with Hollywood is something I don't really like to publicize, but a small studio optioned the first screenplay. Regrettably, these dudes let a year pass by and the option wasn't renewed; any further inquiries about the whereabouts of this particular group of filmmakers yielded no results; it was as if a voracious creature of another galaxy had swallowed them up (and considering the sort of beast that Hollywood is, I'm seriously considering that this may have been the case: don't worry, I cashed the optioning check, heh-heh)

I also wrote a few short stories about Sherwin Williams and Clayton Harris, some more about the town itself, Nosfort, and some bizarre things that had occasionally happened to its inhabitants, and one final Sherwin Williams story that wraps up the entire story arc that includes A.I. Rebellion and the A Timed Mess, books I never got around to write. Years later, an event that I tell about in the aforementioned preface in Cuentos, forced me to stash the scripts back in my Writer's Trunk. (Sigh)

I wish to make a few comments on the process of turning the screenplays into novels. First, I consider novelizing a movie the dastardliest deed that a writer could ever perform, so I'd be pretty offended if you ever suggest that I did that to my own work. I don't think that it even applies, since actually no movies were made out of the scripts (picture me blowing a raspberry at any reckless accuser).

The first Clayton Harris Chronicle goes exactly as the original script went. Something strange happens in Nosfort; Harris meets Williams and they team up to fight the menace. But I had a lot of surplus ideas after I finished the first Clayton's screenplay. I put into the second one lots of stuff that didn't make sense and, regrettably, that little darling was suffering a severe case of 'sequelitis' (the medical term for 'swelling of the sequel').

It was good and fun, but it was like any other second part of anything: pretty much the same. And it was basically an excuse to rocketsled the characters to the final confrontation. So you must realize by now that I was pretty reluctant to try turning that travesty of a screenplay into a novel, but something happened when I began to search for the original script, just to check my notes about it.

It was nowhere in sight.

I'm a guy that lives his life immersed in an organized mess, which means that there are piles of manuscripts, notes and magazines all around me. You only have to mention a certain piece of paper to me, and most probably I'll dig up the document in five minutes or less, for in most occasions only I know where the hell I should look.

This time, zilch. Niente.

I practically turned my entire house upside down. Finally, after two weeks of searching, I chalked up the loss to a typical moving fluke. Now, it was a good thing that the script got lost: what follows is a tenfold improvement of the original screenplay. Its title is as cheesy as ever, and its end is faithful to the central image that dominates the way our heroes prevail at the conclusion. However, while trying to flesh up the plot a bit, I stumbled upon a happy twist of fate.

The true horror writer must occasionally step into taboo territory to horrify his audience. I think I managed that in chapter six on the second Chronicle. There, I temporarily set foot over the boundary of Taboo County… and then I quickly withdrew, as if I had dipped it into scalding water. It's not every day that I get the chance to write something that shocks the hell out of me (and believe me, I have a pretty nasty imagination). I had to rewrite that entire chapter from the ground up to tone it down; it was too explicit, too graphic, so I reworked it out to cleverly suggest, only allowing the reader to see the faint shape that his mind suggests behind the gauzy curtain of imagination.

You see, I was rummaging through the psyche of a serial killer that kills small girls, knee-deep into the unpleasant stuff that I found there. And I stumbled into this teensy-weensy notion that's the central idea of the whole chapter. I immediately recognized the idea for what it was; as a fan of the genre (and an aspiring writer) I've read Stephen King's 'Danse Macabre' and I knew that I had stumbled upon a Taboo idea that I could easily work upon. Okay, so if you're wondering what I'm rambling about, I suggest you grab a copy of Mr. King's brilliant exposition on horror, because his concepts of Taboo County are well beyond the scope of this introduction. It's okay, I'll wait here while you check.

Now, the possibilities for a horror writer to horrify are shrinking with each passing decade, because taboos are constantly crumbling down these days; things that would turn the stomach of a 50s housewife now only elicit some tittering laughter. I suspect that Bart Simpson got it right in the first 'Treehouse of Horror' episode, commenting on the first Friday, the 13th movie: “It's pretty tame by today's standards”.

However, I think I managed to stumble upon a notion that will be always a taboo, as I imagine it will remain so in the future. It's just an itsy-bitsy thing that happens in chapter six on the Second Chronicle, but I know that once it is found and interpreted (or misinterpreted as you see fit), I know a lot of people that will make a very big fuss about such a little thing.

Well, to wrap this intro up, the stories you're about to read are time travelers from an age in which there was no Internet, cell phones were wet dreams and The Simpson's were just a twinkle in Mr. Groening's eyes. So I guess that my initial statement that they had traveled long and hard to reach your hands is a true one.

Truly

Yours

Edwin Stark

The Wandering Blood - Clayton Chronicle # 1

Chapter One

Nosfort, 1971. - Summer

Danny Tremain walked intently down Main Street, passing the corner of Chelsea and ignoring Reader Street altogether. He strolled past the candy shop and paid absolutely no heed to the display window in the ToyLand store at the corner of Ashwood Street.

This lack of a pause in front of his preferred loitering spot, where he could gaze for hours at the newly arrived toys and novelties, was pretty unusual. Normally, he would while away the hours staring at all those toys he could never afford to buy on his own, until its owner, Mr. DeSalle, more often than not a very patient man, gently shooed him away with an impatient gesture of dismissal.

Danny Tremain, ten years old, would later return to his favorite spot after he dealt with the important matter he had in mind. He was heading to the sheriff's office to do the right thing. It was a good thing that other kids of his age weren't with him at the time; they would call him a goody-two-shoes, do-gooder, et cetera, et cetera, and whatever silly names they could come up with for a person who knew his civic duty.

Daniel was glad that he hadn't met any of his school buddies… yet. What he had to tell the sheriff was his personal secret and no one else's. So he relished the temporary possession of this dark secret, until the time came to disclose it to someone in authority.

He had been moseying around the industrial back lot in Elm Street, hoping to find something interesting to do near Hector's Junkyard since it was mid-summer, Friday, five days past the Fourth of July and school was out. Bored out of his skull, he had peeked in the narrow belt of greenery that bordered the crappy Latino scavenger's lot. There was a small ditch and a drain pipe there, well concealed by the greenery, and Dan used to hang around that place to see what the feeble current might bring up. It was shady and cool, particularly during these off-school summer days, and he usually made small but interesting discoveries. On one occasion he found a five-dollar bill, which he happily—but wisely—spent on Marvel Comics, two of them each week. On another, a golden chain with a small heart-shaped locket that held the picture of three beautiful girls; he had intended to give this to his mom on her last birthday, but this particular item generally gave him the chills for unknown reasons, and he had briefly reconsidered this notion, saving it for the next Christmas. In another instance he had found in that ditch a dead, bloated beaver. For Dan, since he had never seen one up close except in school textbook drawings, it was a very interesting opportunity to thoroughly examine it as best as he could; of course, all this from the safe distance afforded by a long pointed stick he used to turn the dead rodent around.

Today, Dan went near Hector's Junkyard, and when he entered the greenbelt, he suddenly got more than he had bargained for. He had found a…

Now Daniel stood in front of the sheriff's office at the corner of Main and Sycamore. It was a red brick and mortar two-storied building, with two big windowpanes in front. Stenciled across each, in a graceful arc of letters, was the word 'Sheriff'. Directly below were small letters that read, in a less ornate manner, 'N.P.D.' Daniel nodded approvingly at the sign and then climbed the three front steps, pulled the door open and entered the sheriff's office.

* * *

Being inside the sheriff's office was truly a major source of disappointment for young Daniel. It didn't resemble any police station he had ever seen on TV. Three desks, each one complemented by a set of filing cabinets, and a dozen wooden chairs pretty much summed up the furniture content of its first floor. There was a wrought iron spiral staircase climbing to the top floor of the building and next to it was a barred door that prevented access to a wooden staircase, leading to the lower darkness of a small detention block. Danny felt a certain curiosity about it and briefly considered asking Sheriff Clayton to let him have a look-see—after Dan had told him about what he had found, of course.

Danny quickly glanced at the nameplates on each desk and noticed that Sheriff Clayton's spot was empty and so was Deputy Hugh Pritchett's seat. Regrettably, Cliff Golan's wasn't. If there was a sheriff's deputy who ever hated kids as much as Golan did, Danny would certainly like to meet that hypothetical law officer: he'd be worthy of an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. Damn, Dan would even buy a ticket to see a guy like that.

Cliff Golan was sitting at the front desk that served as a reception area with his feet propped on the desktop, reading the NosfortGazette. Danny knew that if Sheriff Clayton caught Golan doing that once more, there would be hell to pay. Sheriff Clayton Harris was truly a professional cop and really didn't like it when one of his subordinates acted in such an unprincipled manner.

As soon as the entrance door shut at his back, Danny noticed Deputy Clifford Golan had cast an unconcerned glance over the edge of his Gazette and then had hurriedly sunk behind the pages of the open newspaper, acting as if Dan was the sort of trouble that would disappear from sight if you simply ignore it.

Danny approached Golan's desk and made a guttural sound with his throat to call the guy's attention. Golan practically shielded himself with the Gazette and Danny had to resort to this throaty sound, not just once but twice more, before the Deputy finally dropped his reading material with an exasperated gesture and deigned to spare a few seconds of his valuable time.

“What do you want, kid?” Deputy Golan inquired, with such an emphasis on 'kid' it nearly implied being underage was a crime deserving capital punishment.

“I want to talk with Sheriff Clayton, sir,” Danny replied as courtesy required, fighting the mercifully brief urge to provide to his own 'sir' all the creeping ooziness his actual mood was suggesting.

“Sheriff's up at the second floor, in the archives, kid,” Golan said, pointing his thumb at the spiral staircase.

“Can I go up and talk with him? It's important,” the kid asked, straightening his spine to show he was serious about it.

Golan eyed him suspiciously. “Nah—you can't. It's against regulations. You better take a seat and wait,” he said, pointing his thumb at a row of three wooden chairs set against the opposing wall. He cocked his thumb twice as if it was the deadliest weapon in the world and then he raised the Gazette to isolate himself from Danny's sight. In Golan's humble opinion, if there ever were a snottier kid than Danny Tremain, he'd gladly buy a ticket to see him.

* * *

Sheriff Clayton Harris loved his job and that was why he was in the archives upstairs. He wasn't there trying to track down some relevant information amongst the dusty file cabinets, but making an important personal phone call. With all the insistence he placed on professionalism while lecturing his personnel, he didn't dare to make this call on the main phone line while sitting at his desk—lest Hugh or Clifford overheard him—so he climbed upstairs, claiming that he was going to rummage through some old files.

Earlier that morning, as he walked from home like he did every day, he had passed in front of Sal's Basement, the local collectible items store. Sal Schneider traded antique baseball cards, odd plaster statues from the twenties and thirties, and old comic books.

Today, his storefront sported in the shopping window a rare Vault of Horror #26 that seemed to be in mint condition, nary a crease on the cover or a dog-ear in any of its corners. All day long, Clayton had tried to get hold of Sal on the phone to work some kind of deal over that particular issue.

Danny Tremain, who was sitting one level below, could have told him a thing or two about this obscure yearning, since this sort of compulsive and nearly obsessive behavior was more fitting to a pre-adolescent kid than a thirty-eight-year-old male, who was also the town's sheriff. Many an eyebrow in town would rise and many town council brows would frown upon discovery of his secret little interest in EC horror comics.

Since it would look bad at the next fund appropriation meeting, up to the archives he went and used the phone extension that was there, being careful to bill the charges to his own home phone.

At last, Sal's familiar voice answered after a long series of beeping tones. “Sal's Basement. Sal speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hello, Sal, this is Clayton Harris.”

“Hello, Sheriff,” Sal said, “how are you doing?”

“Quite well, Sal, old chum. Say—did my eyes fool me or did you put a Vault #26 in your display window this morning?”

Sal's tone of voice suddenly shifted to a more businesslike quality. Clayton Harris could almost picture him, greedily rubbing one hand against the other.

“Yes—what about it?” Sal said.

“You know that my son Jonathan loves to collect that sort of stuff—he keeps pestering me about the missing issues of his growing collection and Vault #26 seems to be at the top of his major priorities lately,” Sheriff Harris said… and here he started to depart more and more from the truth. Yes, he had a seventeen-year-old son, but Jonathan couldn't care less for EC comics. Sarah, Clayton's wife, and Jonathan would shake their heads in disbelief over his vehement departure from the truth. After a short round of bargaining, Sal finally named a two-figure sum that Sheriff Harris found reasonable.

“Would you mind putting it away in your 'reserved' box until I drop by a bit later, Sal?” Clayton asked.

Sal agreed to do that and mentioned that it had been a pleasure to do business with him, just a couple of seconds before Harris set the phone receiver back in its cradle.

Sheriff Harris headed toward the circular staircase, while he pulled out his wallet to check on its contents. He nodded appreciatively at the fact that he could cover what Sal asked for the magazine without any major trouble, save that he would be hard-pressed for cash for the next couple of days until payday finally came. Sarah would kill him for this out-of-schedule buy, but that was the price one had to pay for being a knowledgeable collector of memorabilia.

He started his descent of the stairs, clanking down each metal step and whistling a happy tune.

* * *

Harris's high spirits, however, were short lived. When he reached the lower end of the twisting staircase, he noticed two things. Clifford Golan was shuffling stuff on top of his desk, which meant he had been putting his hoofs all over it again. The second was that Danny Tremain was sitting, with that usual stiff and righteous stance of his, on one of those terribly uncomfortable wooden chairs set against the opposite wall. Although the kid was already big enough to set his feet on the ground while sitting, he had managed to find a position that allowed him to dangle and swing them slowly, while softly scuffing the floor with the tips of his sneakers. He looked like a kid two years younger, bored by an unjustifiable wait.

Sheriff Clayton momentarily stood at the bottom of the stairs, unsure of how to proceed. Cliff looked particularly irked, most probably by the soft scraping sound that Danny's feet made—and in this situation it would be bad form to address the kid first. Harris shrugged and asked his Deputy what was up.

“The Tremain kid wants to talk to you, Sheriff,” Golan reported succinctly. Knowing how much Clifford disliked young children, Harris limited himself to replying with a shrewd nod. He then shifted his attention to the young boy.

“Hello, Danny—what's up?” he asked.

Danny stopped his feet from swinging and reasserted himself in that insufferably upright demeanor of his that seemed to irk everyone else. Oh, boy, Harris thought. This kid's gonna be a major pain in the ass when he's a grown-up.

“I have something important to tell you, Sheriff.”

“Well, go ahead Danny.”

Danny Tremain gave Deputy Clifford Golan quite a sour look. Harris sensed Golan stiffen considerably under that stare and sighed inwardly.

“Clifford—will you be a sport and go to Betsy's Luncheon and bring me a coffee,” Harris said, pausing to eye young master Danny. “And an ice-cream soda for our young visitor here. What flavor, Dan? Chocolate?”

“Vanilla would be nice.”

Vanilla, oh, great. I should have figured that out, Harris thought.

Clifford harrumphed noticeably, his face flushed by the subdued anger of being suddenly turned into an errand boy, especially when it turned out that he had to bring a treat for a ten-year-old kid. Nevertheless, he got off his chair and headed toward the exit door.

Harris smiled as he heard the door slam shut.

“Ok, that will get him out from our hair for awhile. Step into my office, Danny.”

The Sheriff's 'office' being the desk farther from the door and the one sided by more file cabinets than the other two, Danny sat in one of the chairs facing it. The kid curiously examined Harris's nameplate for a second or two and then took the initiative.

“Sheriff, I was bumming around Hector's Junkyard and found something that you must see.” The kid said this with such a serious and straight face that Harris had to briefly fight the urge to laugh. That certainly would look like bad form.

“Were you alone, Danny?”

The kid nodded wordlessly.

“You know that kids your age shouldn't be hanging around that area alone, Danny,” Harris commented, matter-of-factly. “It's one of the most lonesome spots in town and there's no one at a shouting distance in case you get into trouble—so it's best if you take a few friends along.”

Danny nodded again.

The sound of the door opening called the attention of both males, Sheriff and kid, toward it. Clifford had returned from Betsy's Luncheon with the coffee and the ice-cream soda. Damn, he was fast!

“Thanks, Clifford,” Clayton said.

“Thanks, Deputy Golan,” muttered Danny.

Cliff scowled at them both. Then he returned to his desk and buried himself again beneath his copy of the Nosfort Gazette.

Sheriff Harris had pulled out a notepad and a pencil, and was readying himself to take notes, just in case Danny Tremain had stumbled onto something really important. Nosfort was a town caught in the middle between being a big town and a small city, and almost nothing that truly mattered happened there, but you never knew. “Will you tell me now what have you found, Danny? Please?” he asked.

Danny Tremain was noisily slurping the last remains of his vanilla ice-cream soda through the straw, making Harris wonder if the little holier-than-thou twerp had a penchant for the dramatic.

Sheriff Clayton Harris nearly dropped his pencil when Danny finally said what he had come to say: “I found a dead body among the bushes, sir.”

* * *

It seemed that it was a day filled with special delights for young Danny Tremain. First, he had made an interesting discovery, which provided him with a swell personal secret (at least for a few hours); second, the sheriff had treated him to an ice-cream soda when Dan's personal funds had been at their lowest; and third, he was now riding shotgun in the town's only police cruiser.

Of course, while the little wait he and the sheriff had—expecting Deputy Pritchett to return from his patrol in the police car—had been a bummer, the excitement of his journey back to Hector's junkyard, this time riding in a police patrol car, was overwhelming Danny's little heart.

Finally, after traveling along Elm Street's semi-industrial area (Danny had to concede this to Sheriff Clayton: it truly was a lonesome place, now that he had pointed it out for him), they arrived at Hector Lozano's Junkyard.

As they stepped down from the car, Danny really noticed the true loneliness of the area. Crickets were lazily chirping in the summer haziness that seemed to rise from the hot pavement and every sun-blasted surface in the area. Lozano's junkyard consisted of three or four acres of assorted trash and junked cars, surrounded by a decaying chain link fence. Today, its front gate, which was plated with corrugated metal held fast to the chain link with rusty wires, was chained and padlocked.

Sheriff Harris wasn't particularly fond of Hector Lozano. He suspected the seedy Latino of being responsible for the petty drug smuggling and illegal weaponry traffic that went on around the Nosfort Township. Nothing serious yet; some Mary Jane, perhaps some firearms dealt under the counter. The guy was certainly sneaky, for these were still unconfirmed rumors Harris wasn't able to pin on him. Then, on the other hand, Hector seemed to possess the uncanny ability to perfectly point out a person's resemblance to an object, animal or another person. It was a silly little game that many in town wished Hector kept to himself; the problem was that the Latino guy had the less-than-endearing custom of yelling it out to the four winds for everyone to find out. Ada Stevenson, for instance, a reasonably portly woman, had a very hard time when Hector compared her with a rosewood dresser—and a big rosewood dresser at that. After Hector had publicly glued this likeness on her, she had to quit her second grade teaching job because of it, with all the kids in the classroom doing eerie imitations of creaking hinges and the squeaks of opening drawers behind her back. Sheriff Harris himself didn't escape the Latino's wit; Lozano had once commented that Clayton had a striking and more-than-passing resemblance to James Garner, that actor in the old Maverick TV show. Everyone in town agreed, faced with this sudden epiphany, including Clayton Harris. It wasn't an unflattering comparison, but it certainly wasn't one that the sheriff wanted to cultivate.

“Wait a sec while I check something,” Harris said, getting closer to the junkyard's entrance gate. When he reached the closed gate, he extended his right hand and gave the padlock two or three firm tugs. Seeing Danny's questioning looks, he explained: “Hector's in Boston, hunting down '57 Thunderbirds spare parts. I was due to check on the place, anyway.” Harris smiled. “Good to kill two birds with one stone. Now show me your dead body, Danny.”

“Over here,” Danny said as he pointed to the far eastern reach of the junkyard. While Danny's young legs seemed to easily find ways around the brambles and goldenrod tufts that were peppered all over the place, Sheriff Harris didn't know how to readily handle the small obstacles he met along the way; he followed with difficulty the tiny trail that the kid was beating for him. At last they reached the greenbelt area.

“Here, Sheriff—about ten yards from where the bushes really start,” Danny said.

Both males, young and adult, walked along the small trickling stream that extended past Elm Street's culvert. When they entered the greenery, Sheriff Clayton Harris was struck by the nice coolness of this shady area, and didn't find it odd that kids ventured so far to horse around in this spot; it was both an adventurous trek and cool refuge from the mid-summer's heat. Harris, who knew deep inside that he'd always be a kid at heart, was half-tempted to play Pirate's Cave or something. Still, this wasn't a safe place for young boys to roam without company.

Exactly ten yards after the overgrown bushes began (the kid must have a terrific sense of distances, Harris thought), slumped on the concrete ditch that supposedly took care of a stronger water current during rainy season, was the corpse. It was lying on its side, head slightly lolling from the massive neck and shoulders.

Clayton Harris got closer to the body, crouching next to its head, trying to ascertain its identity. It was a Caucasian male, about fifty; big, towering kinda fellow, six feet tall, built like a refrigerator—and no one he knew from town. Most probably a drifter whose karma had casually decided it was this dude's time and place to die in Nosfort, Massachusetts. Man, I've seen karma at work, Clayton crazily thought. And it's flipping burgers at the nearest McDonald's. The man's pale and dirty features, with its salt 'n' pepper unshaven whiskers, struck a strong resemblance to someone he knew. Harris frowned while trying to place that disheveled face on one belonging to a local restless native… and failed miserably.

Harris noticed that Danny was hunching next to him. He was balancing his weight with both hands on his scraped knees, leaning as best he could for a better look.

“Did you touch anything the first time you were here, Danny?”

The kid violently shook his head. “No, Sheriff—I see enough TV and I know that cops are very strict about fuck-rensics.”

Harris's eyebrows raised, wondering if that was honest confusion, or if it was only an excuse for Danny to say the eff-word. Knowing the kid's overall reputation for high morals, he just shrugged it off and let it pass.

“Okay—I've seen enough,” Harris said while straightening up. “Let's go back to the police car.”

He suddenly stopped, scowling at something that worried him beyond words. He had caught a glimpse of something on the man's neck. Something he had only seen in his favorite movies and books.

The man had two punctures in his neck, right on the spot where his jugular was.

* * *

Back in the car, Harris immediately noticed the sweltering heat that seemed to have increased since they had entered the leafy greenbelt. He knew it all was psychological; that after exiting the shade, the heat would seem intolerable to him until he re-acclimatized. And yet, he felt that heat had become truly unbearable, particularly after he saw what he thought he saw. Jezzum crow. He reached for the two-way radio's mike and pressed the call button. A burst of static greeted him.

“Sheriff's dispatch,” said Hugh Pritchett's nicely modulated voice.

“Hugh, Sheriff Clayton here,” he said. Danny was patiently waiting in the passenger seat of the cruiser. The kid was sitting as far as he could from the slanting sunrays that streamed through the car's windows. Harris took note of the hour; it was ten past one. “Call Leonard Hamilton's office and tell him to meet me in twenty minutes in front of Lozano's junkyard. Tell him to bring in the fuck-rensics team. Over.”

Harris released the button and another burst of static followed.

“Beg your pardon? Over.”

Harris pressed the mike's button again—more static.

“You heard me,” Harris said while eyeing Danny, who seemed bored to the point of tears. “Twenty minutes—I have to drop young Daniel Tremain at his home and make an unscheduled stop. Over and out.” He set the radio's mike back into its cradle and got the car's engine started.

Clayton Harris drove back all the way to Elm Street, unmaking the road he had traveled to reach Lozano's junkyard.

* * *

Clayton Harris made that unscheduled stop first, parking for two minutes in front of Sal's Basement to buy the mint condition Vault of Horror magazine as he had agreed on the phone. He noticed with pleasure Danny's big round eyes when the kid realized what the sheriff held in his hand, protected by a collector's acid-free plastic bag. Of course, Harris also saw the kid's disappointment as he casually tossed the mag onto the car's back seat.

Sorry, kiddo, he thought. This treat is not for you.

He drove Danny home and he found his mom nervously waiting for him in front of her well-kept home. She was a tall, lanky woman with short and curly ash-blonde locks framing her gaunt face. There was no occasion that Clay could remember that he didn't see the woman constantly wrenching her hands whenever he met her.

He parked the car in front of the Tremains' driveway, got out and opened the door on Danny's side. He walked along with Danny until both met the kid's mom and then commended Mrs. Tremain for having raised such a well-behaved kid, so self-conscious of his civil duties.

Clay left it at that and returned to the police cruiser without any further elaboration; he'd let Danny sort that out on his own. He had a more important meeting to keep with Leonard Hamilton, the local coroner examiner.

While he drove away, Clayton briefly glanced at the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of Danny and his mom, silently standing in front of their driveway. There was a startled and puzzled look on the lady's face.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Sheriff Clayton Harris was back in the knot's end of Elm Street and the semi-industrial area it represented. Hector Lozano's junkyard was exactly as he had left it; locked up and with an air of forlorn abandon. Leonard Hamilton's black hearse was parked in front.

Leo was a short and pudgy man with closely cropped curly hair, dark as deep night, who wore thin wire spectacles. He complemented his chin with a finely groomed padlock goatee. He was casually dressed, with a fresh short-sleeved cotton shirt and jeans, looking as if he was more ready to play a hand of cribbage than to perform the very grim duty he was about to do. And sneakers; Leo always favored his blessed sneakers. He was patiently sitting on top of his black hearse's hood smoking that smelly pipe of his. Herman Marcus, a scrawny and tall young man barely out of his teens, also accompanied him.

Herman was a high school dropout and his father, the renowned Dr. John Marcus, had decided that it would do the lad good to face some of life's hardships, since the young man seemed so disinterested in improving his school grades. So Dr. Marcus had asked Leonard Hamilton to take the kid under his wing. And since Leo was desperate to have an assistant, he accepted Herman under his tutelage.

Clayton got out of his police cruiser and approached the man.

“Hello, Clayton,” the chubby man said from around the stem of his pipe.

“Hello, Leo.”

“What have you got for me this fine afternoon, my dear fellow?” Leonard said with a faint trace of irony permeating his voice. He was a good-natured man, always on the brink of telling a joke. Clayton had never seen this jolly guy in a downcast or blue mood, as far as he could remember. To him, Leonard Hamilton had that bent look of a kid ready to pull a prank or two the moment you took your eyes away.

Clay nodded to the farthest end of Lozano's Junkyard chain link fence. “It's in the small stream that runs along the greenbelt, Leo,” he said.

Leonard made a silent nod, suddenly gaining a deadly serious and business-like attitude that Clay felt was terribly out of character. Thankfully, this jovial fellow was very professional in his day job as a coroner. I wish all my deputies were the same, the sheriff thought. Leonard Hamilton jumped off his car's hood, went to its back door and opened it.

From the car's back he pulled out two heavy rubber work boots, a doctor's black bag, a two-man stretcher and a body bag. Meanwhile, the coroner chatted amiably.

“You know, Clay,” he said while he sat on the rear bumper of the hearse. The vehicle's rear end lowered noticeably. Sheriff Harris watched while Leo removed his sneakers and replaced them with the rubber boots. “When your deputy called me, I was on my way to Halloway's Eat-Shack—about to take the monthly water samples that the law says is my obligation. As you're aware, it'd be a great personal pleasure for me to finally close down that scumbag diner spot, so I hope you have something very good for me—something that makes that long-time expected joy pale by comparison.”

Clayton grinned, oh, ever so slightly. “It is, Leo. It certainly is.”

* * *

Both adult males retraced the same road the kid and the sheriff had walked earlier that day. The afternoon's heat had grown more oppressive and Clayton Harris was more than relieved to finally reach the shady greenbelt. Rivulets of sweat were running down his temples. The young Herman Marcus, who was stumbling along encumbered with the stretcher, the body bag and Leo's handbag, closely followed them.

Amazingly, considering his sizeable bulk, Leonard Hamilton waded through the small brook, which was little more than a feeble stream this late in the summer. In a couple of weeks it'll be dry as a bone, for sure, Harris thought. The normally crystal clear current became obliterated in the spots where Leonard's rubber boots hit squarely, sinking deep, sloshing and creating small muddy puddles as the man advanced along the stream.

Finally, they reached the area where Sheriff Clayton had seen the body of the unknown stranger. For some strange reason of his own, Clay felt a certain relief in finding the corpse in the same position he had left it. Silly me, he thought. What did you expect? That Mr. John Doe may have felt a bit peckish and decided to walk away to have a bite at Betsy's Luncheon?

And yet still…

Leonard crouched by the body and asked young Marcus for his medical bag. He opened it, extracted two elbow-long black latex gloves and donned them. Clayton took a furtive peek into the bag and noticed a few odds and ends inside it. He half expected to have seen the familiar sight of a stethoscope, but that was the kind of equipment that definitely wasn't required in Hamilton's specialty branch. What he saw inside was a battered Polaroid camera, a carefully folded black leather apron, a vast array of tweezers, both small and big, a magnifying glass and some whatnots he didn't recognize.

The coroner stared long at the corpse's head, his brows clouding a little, and Clayton was immediately aware of what Leo was doing: he was playing 'Place the Face', exactly as he had done less than half an hour ago. Then Leonard pulled out the magnifying glass and started to thoroughly examine the body with the lens, without touching it at all.

The chubby man spent nearly ten minutes in this fashion, occasionally plucking small bits of threads, hair and grass off the body with a set of tweezers, and placing them in small plastic bags. Meanwhile, Clay cast a quick look at young Marcus, who was still holding the stretcher upright. The young man looked bored. At last, Leo finished his initial inspection and replaced the sealed plastic bags and the tweezers back in the doctor's bag. There was a satisfied and smug expression on his face. He then pulled out the old Polaroid camera and took a few snapshots of the body. He handed the developing photos to the Marcus kid and ordered him to rub on them that smelly gunk the Polaroid company provided to stop the pictures from becoming overdeveloped and curled up.

“Ok, now the basics of documenting the body's position are done,” Leo said. “Come here when you're finished rubbing that stuff and help me roll this dude over, Herman.”

As soon as Herman finished the task at hand, he drew closer to the cadaver. There was a grimace of disgust on the young man's features, Clayton noticed. He also noticed a small detail on the dead guy's neck was missing, as both men turned him over after Leo had unclasped the belt of the deceased gentleman's pants, but he didn't mention it. He really didn't want to make a fool of himself in front of the local coroner.

Leo pulled the man's pants and undies down, exposing the pale and dead buttocks. The coroner frowned at this morbid sight and then after a while he rummaged through the contents of his bag and extracted a red alcohol thermometer. Young Marcus tried to avert his eyes, knowing what was coming next.

Leonard Hamilton inserted the thermometer into the dead guy's anus. “Five or six minutes is more than enough to determine the body's temperature—that's the basic charm of using alky thermometers,” Leo said, rising to his feet. While they waited, he looked over the snapshots he had taken a few minutes earlier. There was a look of approval in his eyes. “You did a good job this time, Herman,” he added, appraising the resulting images. “The last time you applied the stop solution too early.”

Young Herman didn't react at all to the praise; he truly didn't enjoy this job. Clayton smiled inwardly, knowing that he was in the presence of a young man that would either rejoin high school next year, doubling his efforts to excel in his studies, or find a road out of town and away from his overbearing father.

While he waited the necessary five or six minutes, Leonard dedicated himself to telling the shocking story of a confused nurse who had mixed a batch of rectal and oral thermometers, but he seemed fated to botch the punchline.

After the specified time interval was past, Leonard leaned over to pull out the thermometer. It made a funny sounding poit! sound when it exited. Leo stared at it intently and twisted his mouth in disappointment.

“Too bad we're not indoors for the notion to apply,” he said, glancing at the surrounding bushes and ferns, “but our stranger here is at room temperature.”

He sighed. “I hoped to determine his time of death by calculating it, based on the temperature differential, but seems our fellow here has been lying in this place for more than forty-eight hours. I guess the histological decay exam after I get some tissue samples is still in order.”

Leo signaled Herman to come closer and the boy spread the body bag next to the corpse. Leo grabbed the dead man's body by its shoulders while Herman took hold of both feet. They placed the body inside the black leather bag. While young Herman was busy zipping it up and rounding up all the equipment that had been strewn around the examination area, Harris took Leonard aside to a spot where the kid couldn't overhear them.

“That guy seems familiar to me, Leo,” the sheriff said. “But for the life of me I can't place that face. Did you?”

“Yeah, it took me a while but I finally recognized the fellow.”

Sheriff Harris's head cocked in a questioning pose.

“He's Harold Callahan's father,” Leo explained, “Lawrence Callahan. Disagreeable fellow—a nasty summufabitch if you care to ask me. There were reports of wife beating and child abuse.” Here the coroner paused, thinking about the most tactful way—if any—to disclose what followed. “Probably there was a buggering case lurking beneath that. You failed to locate that face only because all that happened long ago before your time, Sheriff. Almost twenty years ago—your predecessor, Irving Wallace, was the one responsible for driving that nasty scumbag out of town.”

Clay nodded, now recalling the incident. Of course, at the time he had been eighteen, and was more interested in graduating and scoring with cheerleaders than the dubious local background history.