Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,74

in Akron and working the odd construction job, moved into the shack to look after Earl and Floyd, for it was either that or commit them to Boston Mills Psychiatric Hospital. Over the next several years he collected wood and materials from the nearby abandoned houses and enlarged the shack until it resembled some post-apocalyptic hideout with eight or nine ramshackle additions in total.

Spencer didn’t remember the drive to the house, or his arrival there. He woke the next morning in a bed with Earl sitting on a stool next to him, patting the top of his head gently. He batted Earl’s hand away and explored the gash in his forehead, finding it had been sewn closed with stitches.

“Where’s the girl?” he asked hoarsely.

“She hasn’t woke up yet,” Earl said, and put on a sad face. “We got her out of the car, and fixed up her neck, but she didn’t never wake up, and Cleave, he says—”

“Where’s Cleavon?”

“He’s in the garage, fixing up the Mustang. That’s what it’s called, ain’t it, Spence? It’s a Mustang, ain’t it?”

“Get him.”

Cleavon arrived a short time later grease-covered and cranky as usual, though his eyes were alight with a shit-eating grin.

“Who did this?” Spencer said, touching the gash in his head.

“Hell if I know, Spence. I thought it was from the car accident.”

“The stitches.”

“That was Lonnie,” Cleavon said, wiping his greasy face with a greasy dish towel. “You were bleeding a fuckin’ river, and Lonnie said he’d fixed up his boy a couple times when he’d cut himself. He said he just needed some fishing wire and a hook.”

“You called Lonnie Olsen?”

“Nah. Lonnie was already here, Lonnie and Jesse and Weasel. We were playing cards earlier and they got shitfaced and passed out. Well, that was until you came driving your car right into the fuckin’ porch. The girl’s okay. Breathing at least.” Cleavon cocked an eyebrow. “Say, Spence, what was she doing in her pajamas? Rather, what were you doing driving her around in the middle of the night in her pajamas?”

Spencer didn’t reply. He was numbed with dismay as he imagined Lonnie Olsen sitting in Randy’s Bar-B-Q right then, telling all the other drunks how Spencer had ploughed his car into Cleavon’s porch with some girl’s head poking out of the windshield like a crudely mounted game trophy—

Lonnie Olsen appeared in the bedroom doorway, rubbing his eyes as though he’d recently woken up. Jesse Gordon and Weasel Higgins crowded behind him.

“Hiya, Spencer—Mr. Pratt,” Lonnie Olsen said awkwardly, clearing his throat. “Or is it ‘Doctor?’”

“Everyone’s still here?” Spencer said, surprised.

“Where else would we be?” Lonnie said.

“So what the fuck happened last night, Spence?” Cleavon said. “We won’t say nothing.”

“Speak what you want to whom you want,” Spencer said poker-faced, though his mind was racing, for he thought he might be able to dig himself out of the mess after all. “The woman’s name is Mary Atwater. She’s a patient at the hospital. She believes she’s possessed by a demon.”

“A demon?” Earl said in awe.

Spencer said, “I wanted to try a kind of psychodrama therapy—”

“Psycho-what?” Cleavon said.

“A type of role playing. It employs guided dramatic action to help individuals examine issues they might have. I was taking her to one of those abandoned houses where we were going to perform a black mass to ask Satan to deliver the demon from her body. It’s all in her head, of course, but acting her fears out rather than just talking about them can reap substantial results. However, on the way there she had a psychotic episode and attacked me.”

Spencer paused, reading their reactions, and decided they bought it. After all, why wouldn’t they? He was the psychologist-in-chief of a large hospital and one of the most respected men in all of Summit County.

“Now, I’m still prepared to carry out this black mass,” he went on confidently, swinging his legs off the bed and standing upright. “And I don’t mind an audience, if you gentlemen care for a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle? Come, truly, you’ll find it…engrossing.”

Spencer gathered the supplies he would need for the black mass—a can of primer paint and a paintbrush, a hammer and nails, a carving knife from the kitchen, a bottle of bourbon, a candle and matches, a wilted carrot, a beer stein—then he led Cleavon and the others on a half hour hike through the forest, with Earl carrying Mary over his shoulder. At the first abandoned house they came to he painted an inverted pentagram on the floorboards of a