Chapter Twenty-Two

 

 

 

"Dark night!"

 

"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "If that's not one of the damnedest things you ever did see."

 

The barbershop was brightly painted, all of the wooden surfaces varnished and polished. The mirrors gleamed, and the floor was clean enough to eat off.

 

"See what you meant," J.B. said.

 

"What?"

 

"About there sort of being someone in here. I see what you mean."

 

There were nine figures in the single long room. Three were dressed as barbers, in blue-and-white-striped aprons. Three were customers, sitting in each of the mahogany-and-brass chairs. The other three sat or lounged on the padded bench that ran the length of the shop.

 

They were all dead.

 

 

 

"KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING. Or she was doing," Ryan commented, touching a wondering finger to the cheek of the stoutest of the barbers. It felt cool and waxen to the touch, like artificial fruit. The glass eyes twinkled with a convincing jollity, and the mustache had a spiky elegance.

 

"Seen plenty of stuffed animals." J.B. lifted the arm of a young man on the bench seat, testing it for weight and movement. "Real light," he said.

 

Ryan shook his head. "Damnedest thing," he repeated. "Yeah, I've seen fishes and birds and moose heads and cougar and bear. Every kind of embalmed and stuffed creature in the world. But never human beings."

 

The place was immaculate. Everything gleamed and sparkled, all dust and dirt banished.

 

There was a beautiful sampler on the wall, above the bench, in a hand-turned beechwood frame. The date at the bottom was the eighth day of the eighth month in the Year of Our Lord, 1888, with the name of the person responsible for the embroideryJemima Austerand her hometown of Pawtucket.

 

The sampler was a quote that Ryan knew related to the Great War between the States from the middle of the nineteenth century. "Grant stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk. Now we stand by each other, always."

 

J.B. had taken off his glasses to read it out loud. "Double-weird thing for a girl to sew," he said.

 

"Look at this." Ryan had seen a plastic box fixed to the wall beyond the second of the swivel chairs. A sign nearby read Turn This Handel Fifty Times And Youl Heer Whats On Our Minds.

 

"Go on then," the Armorer said.

 

"Could be boobied."

 

J.B. laughed. "Anyone takes this much trouble to set up these dummies isn't going to want them blown apart. Go ahead, Ryan, turn it."

 

There was a resistance, which he guessed came from it being used to generate some small flow of electricity, dutifully counting up to fifty turns.

 

There was a red button on the side of the box, and Ryan pressed it.

 

After a few moments of hissing and crackling, what he figured was a loop tape began to play through concealed speakers around the barbershop. They heard the clicking of scissors and the humming of clippers, overlaid with the voices, supposedly, of the trio of men standing frozen behind each of the chairs.

 

Different accents. One from the bayous and one, more terse, from New England. The third with the Texas drawl. The words were overlaid and overlapped.

 

"Blue Jays came back, top of the sixth, last night"

 

"So the priest looks at it and sprinkles holy water over the hood"

 

" Should've gone to the wide receiver on that third and long call"

 

"Bases loaded when he comes in and trips over the dugout steps and breaks his ankle"

 

"Buddhist holy man lights twenty sticks of incense and waves them around the outside of the auto"

 

"Little bit more off over the ears, sir? I couldn't agree more. Change comes from the top, not the guys doing the business on the line"

 

There was a click as the hidden tape wound through to its ending.

 

Though the recreation had been done with considerable skill, the overall effect was undeniably creepy. The skins had been cleverly preserved, and it was only when you looked real close that you saw the tiny network of fine lines and cracks that revealed the embalmer's artifice. Ryan noticed that one of the customers had tiny flecks of sawdust leaking out from a fault where the right hand joined the wrist.

 

"Think the rest of these painted buildings are going to be filled with thesethese things?" J.B. pushed back the fedora and shook his head.

 

"One way to find out."

 

"Yeah."

 

They shut the door behind them, just as the tape started to play through again. "Blue Jays came back"

 

Ryan paused, fingers on the brass handle. "You notice something about those three voices?"

 

"No."

 

"Reckon they're all the same person. Just disguising himself by using different accents."

 

"Could be."

 

 

 

EACH OF THE REDECORATED buildings had its own macabre inhabitants, and each one had its own recorded tapes that could be played by turning the handle on the little generator fixed discreetly to the walls. The lawyer's office had a tall, stately old man in a high wing collar, with long white hair and a snowy beard, his hands clasped piously in front of him dictating to his prim, gray-haired secretary.

 

"The message and other elements of the hereditament can be included, inter alia, as in the above-mentioned paragraph, which shall be interpreted as at the vendor's discretion for all purposes and uses. Notwithstanding per ardua ad astra and nemo me impune lacessit whereby"

 

Ryan and J.B. left at that point, but the thin, prissy little Connecticut voice kept droning on behind them in the walnut-and-oak office.

 

"Triple crazy," the Armorer said.

 

"Can't argue with you."

 

They wandered through the largest house, decorated in the white Victorian Gothic style that they'd seen in other parts of Deathlands, but rarely in such wonderful condition as here.

 

There were embalmed corpses in most of the rooms, all placed with infinite care into pseudolifelike poses. Everything had been done with an astonishing eye for detail a grandmother in a mobcap, fringed with stiff white lace, perched in a rocking chair with an armful of knitting, a stuffed Pekingese dog by her slippered feet; father, reading a book, in a comfortable armchair in the parlour, a luxuriant mustache, each hair carefully glued into place by the mysterious master craftsman, a monocle gleaming in his right eye. Mother was in the kitchen at the back of the house, surrounded by shining copper pots and pans. There was the makings of a meal on the table, with a middle-aged cook, rosy-cheeked, up to her elbows in flour. J.B. checked out the meat and vegetables that lay scattered artistically around.

 

"False," he said. "Made out of clay or something like that. Looks good enough to eat."

 

There was another of the black plastic generator boxes on the wall, with another misspelled notice at its side, identical to the one in the barbershop.

 

Ryan turned the handle and waited.

 

The voice that floated out of the speakers was high and strained, giving the instant suspicion that it was a man attempting to impersonate a woman.

 

"Now make sure you get the bread baked, May, and you know that the master must have his gentleman's relish with his rarebit. The stew goes on in forty minutes, and remember to mix in the sassafras and moonlight."

 

J.B. walked out into the shadowed hall, pushing at a half-open door, brushing past a tinkling curtain of beautiful colored crystal beads.

 

"Fancy some music. Ryan?"

 

The one-eyed man followed his friend, hearing the plaintive, bossy little voice fading behind him in the kitchen. He looked into the room where J.B. stood by the window, beneath the elegant golden drapes.

 

"Notice the smell?" he asked.

 

The Armorer sniffed. "Yeah. Sort of bitter chemical kind of a scent."

 

"What the embalming was done with."

 

"And there's death."

 

Ryan nodded. It was true. Every room of every building that they'd been in contained that unmistakable odor, the sour-sweet taint of life departed.

 

Whoever had constructed this bizarre series of tableaux morts had obviously been aware of the problem. There were bowls of dried flowers and dishes of scented potpourri in each building. But their faded, dusty scents could do little to overcome the grisly reality of what stood and sat in all the chambers.

 

J.B. wound away at the handle that was set alongside a walnut harmonium. A young woman sat with her hands resting on the black and white keys, her head on one side, an attempt at a smile on her painted lips, a smile that resembled a rictus of horror at what had come to pass.

 

Ryan stood close behind her, and he pointed at a mark on the back of the neck, almost hidden by the tightly wound chignon of straw-colored hair.

 

"Bullet hole," he commented.

 

At that moment the music began, wheezing and slow, with a thin little voice trilling out the words.

 

"'Shall we gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river? Shall we gather at the river that flows by the throne of God of God God God God'" The repetitive click got louder, the music also halting and repeating the phrase. There was a faint grinding noise, like gears failing to mesh, and the silence returned.

 

The friends went back outside, Ryan holding the SIG-Sauer cocked and ready, the Armorer with his Uzi cradled in his arms. But there was nobody in sight.

 

It was late afternoon, the sun already slipping out of sight behind the range of mountains to the west. The township was still and silent.

 

Suddenly up beyond the school, they both heard the noise of a generator firing up, and the fragile evening breeze brought the odor of gasoline. All around them, lights began to flicker into life in the newly painted buildings.

 

Ryan instinctively crouched behind a tub of flowersartificial flowers, he noticed. J.B. flattened against the wall of the house.

 

"Might get to meet the creator of all this," Ryan whispered. "Not sure how I feel about that."

 

"Me neither."

 

"Notice something?" the Armorer asked quietly.

 

"What?"

 

"No children."

 

It was true. Even in the big mansion with the harmonium, where you would have expected to see little ones, in the nursery or in the living rooms, there had been no sign of any.

 

"School?" Ryan said.

 

"Could be."

 

They moved up the street toward the crest of the hill, where the small white school stood. The rhythmic thudding of the generator was somewhere beyond it, just out of sight. They overlapped each other, in classic urban skirmish styleRyan going ahead while J.B. covered him, then the Armorer moving past, while Ryan kept watch with his blaster.

 

The church was on their right, the doors open, and a freshly printed poster pinned to the noticeboard outside Faith In The Lord Doesn't Determine Who Goes Right AheadJust Who Gets Left Behind.

 

"Yeah," said Ryan, to himself.

 

It was possible to make out several silent figures sitting in pews in the incense-scented pools of darkness inside the church. There was no need to go in and find out whether they were embalmed corpses.

 

They reached the school, looking at the gently swinging bell, listening to the sound of the gas generator.

 

"Up the hill?" J.B. asked.

 

"School first. You want to wait outside and keep watch or come in?"

 

"Guess I'll come in with you."

 

The grisly ville of the dead was getting to Ryan, his discomfort heightened by the memory of the puckered bullet scar in the tanned skin of the dead young woman at the keyboard of the harmonium.

 

The hinges of the entrance door had been recently oiled, and it opened without a sound.

 

"The children," J.B. said. "Black dust, Ryan! There's a triple-crazy mind working here."

 

It was like an illustration from an old predark magazine. Ryan remembered Doc had mentioned the name of an artist who specialized in portraying everyday life in the United States before it became Deathlands.

 

"Rockwell," he said.

 

There were rows of little figures, their straight backs toward the two men, faces toward the blackboard and the rigid statue of the teacher.

 

He was a very tall, skinny man, in his mid-thirties, with gold-rimmed pince-nez perched on the end of his beaky nose. His hand was folded around a creased book of grammar, and there was a whippy cane on the desk behind him. Ryan saw yet again the incredible attention to detail that the mysterious embalmer used. There was a faint dusting of chalk on the cuffs of the faded blue pin-striped suit, and a pottery apple rested on a table in the corner, by a globe of the planet.

 

There were about eighteen children in the classroom, all of them wearing antique clothes, making them look like visitants from Victorian times. All of them, boys and girls alike, wore cotton caps on their heads.

 

Ryan turned the handle on the box on the wall, by a poster showing the location of the centers of the wheat belt across the Midwest.

 

After a few seconds of hissing static, piping voices, overlaid, chanted their number tables. "Eight sevens are fifty-six and nine sevens are sixty-three and ten sevens are seventy."

 

J.B. walked slowly to the front, his boots squeaking on the waxed and polished floor. He turned and looked at the children, hesitated and peered more closely.

 

"Ryan" He gestured with the muzzle of the Uzi. "See what I see?"

 

"The kids?" He joined his friend. "Oh, fire-blast!"

 

At a first glance, all of the eighteen children looked roughly the same size and age, roughly ten years old. But that wasn't the reality. Now that he could see beneath the caps, Ryan realized the truth. Only four or five of the class were actually human. The rest of them were

 

"Dogs," J.B. said, unable to conceal his disbelief and disgust.

 

All of the other corpses that they'd seen had been skillfully preserved, arranged with great cunning into acceptable facsimiles of normal behavior. But the embalmer had been less successful with the dog-children.

 

You could see where vulpine jaws had been pushed back and muzzles extended, bristling hair shaved off and the sharp teeth filed and drilled. The peaked ears were hidden under the caps, but some of the silent rows of creatures showed mutilated paws, resting on pencils and primers.

 

And the clothes had been clumsily pinned and sewn together to try to fit around the misshaped bodies of the variety of canine breeds.

 

In the background, the tape was still grinding on. "Six eights are forty-eight. Seven eights are fifty-six. Nine eights are seventy-two."

 

"Let's get the fuck out of here," J.B. said. "Place is a nightmare."

 

"I'll go with that."

 

Ryan was ready to go. Before leaving he glanced up at the blackboard. There was a line and a half of roughly scrawled writing chalked on it, that simply ended, as though the person had lost interest.

 

Once upon a midnite dreery, while I pondered week and weery, Over many a

 

"What's it mean?" J.B. asked. "Looks like some sort of a poem."

 

"Rings a kind of bell with me. But the spelling's all up the creek."

 

They both felt the slightest breath of air as the door opened behind them. They started to turn, aware that they were going to be too slow and too late.

 

The voice was mild and gentle. "I fear that spelling was always my weak point."