The dirt pathway wound through a copse of manzanitas and dipped into a muddy runoff channel. Barry avoided the mud by stepping on a series of half-protruding rocks, then followed the trail between an oversized boulder and an exposed section of hillside before it once again leveled off and continued through the trees and foliage.
He'd gone much farther than he had that first time, and he stopped for a moment to rest. As he'd expected, as he'd known, there was no sign of Stumpy. He had no idea what was going on, why anyone would try to fool others into thinking Stumpy was alive, how they could actually do such a thing, how they could physically accomplish the deception, but he had no doubt that the association was mixed up in it somehow. The motives were murky, and he couldn't figure out what anyone could hope to gain from such a ruse, but it appeared to be what was happening nonetheless.
He was about to turn back and make that call to the sheriff when he heard a noise off to the left. A heavy rustling in the bushes. Barry's heart leapt in his chest. It could have been a bird, could have been a javelina, could have been a mountain lion, could have been a hundred other things. But he knew it wasn't. He'd heard that sound before.
He recognized it.
No, he told himself. It wasn't possible. Stumpy was dead. He'd seen the broken body. Maureen had checked it. Hitman had confirmed it.
A branch snapped, leaves soughed.
This really was something out of one of his novels, and I in his mind he saw the sheriff dropping the body off at the j coroner's, saw Stumpy resurrected, saw the limbless body snaking out of the morgue, flopping up the highway in the dead of night, inching through the underbrush to get back to Bonita Vista.
There was the sound of moaning coming from somewhere around ground level, and he turned, got ready to run. What if Stumpy was a zombie?
Or a vampire? Or something worse? It was broad daylight, but he felt like a little boy confronted with the prospect of walking down a dark alley after seeing a scary movie.
Stumpy flopped onto the path, crying out.
Only... It wasn't Stumpy. It was someone else. Another dirty naked man with no arms or legs who forced himself forward with spastic thrashing movements, head and chest bobbing up and down, bloody genitals scraping dirt and twigs. Burrs and bristles were caught in the wild hair, and the face had only one eye, that one clouded and opaque. The other was a deeply hollowed out hole. Two cracked teeth were all that was left in the bruised and puffy mouth.
There was something familiar about that mutilated face, and though he was seized with panic and the instinctive urge to flee, Barry remained rooted in place, staring. He knew why Mike and that other man had been fooled. At a casual glance, even at a not-so-casual glance, this looked like Stumpy. But the differences were there if one bothered to take a look, and as the limbless man squirmed across the path toward a thicket of ferns, screaming incoherently while jagged stones scraped underbelly skin, it came to him.
Kenny Tolkin .
He squinted, staring, imagining a blue patch over the missing eye. He recognized those features, distorted as they were, and his mouth was suddenly dry.
'Kenny?' he said.
The new Stumpy looked up at him blankly and howled intongueless impotent rage.
Barry finished off another beer and dropped the can on the wooden floor of the deck with the others. He was living in a horror novel. His life had become his work--only he wasn't sure he could actually sell such oddball shit to readers and have them buy it. Psychotic friends, yes. Ghosts and ageless demons, sure. But a malevolent homeowners'
association that dismembered members for being late with their dues? It was too close to reality to be truly fantastic and thus allow readers to suspend disbelief, yet not realistic enough to be taken seriously on any sort of naturalistic level.
He grabbed another can from the ice chest, popped the top, took a swig.
He ran down a list of titles in his mind. Horror fiction was his reference point, and if he could just ascribe a cause to what was happening, if he could just determine a source, he could at least start to think about strategies, at least know what he was up against and plan for it. But there didn't seem to be a ready explanation. Bonita Vista was not built atop burial grounds to his knowledge, it wasn't the scene of some heinous murder or historic wholesale butchery. He doubted that the homeowners' association was an ancient fertility cult a la Harvest Home or The Ceremonies, and the likelihood that Satan was behind it all was practically nonexistent.
So what did that leave?
He didn't know, and that was what frustrated him.
Thinking about Kenny Tolkin squirming along the ground with his newly cauterized stumps dragging his damaged genitals, it occurred to him that the homeowners' association had killed Stumpy and that they had done so in order to hide what they'd done to Kenny. Hitman was oh Obviously in on it, and their plan to quietly dispose of the deformed man's corpse and substitute the other, pretend as though nothing had happened, probably would have worked had Stumpy not been hit in front of Barry's house. They'd screwed up there. That had been a miscalculation. The new Stumpy had obviously fooled Mike, and he would probably pass muster with everyone else as well. But he and Maureen had seen. They'd been there when it happened.
Despite what Ray had said about the courts siding in favor of homeowners' associations and ruling against the rights of individuals, a lot of this shit was illegal. It had to be. There was no way that mutilation and murder would be sanctioned by any law enforcement agency or member of the judiciary.
Except, of course, for Corban's beloved sheriff.
He tried to think this through logically. If he called the FBI or some outside law, would they be able to prove that what he said was true?
Kenny had no fingerprints to match, no teeth to correspond with dental records. If his DNA was on file somewhere, that might work. Or his blood type. But chances of that were pretty damn slim.
Hell, would they even be able to find Kenny, or would the association have him hidden away by then?
Or killed?
And what were the chances of finding Stumpy's corpse? It was no doubt scattered ashes by now with no paper trail documenting the steps.
Barry finished the beer, dropped the can on the pile, his brain starting to throb.
And what if he did turn them in, what if he did report the association?
Would that make him and Maureen targets? Would that put a price on their heads?
He tried to think about the situation from a novelist's perspective, tried to figure out what he would do, how he would have his protagonist get out of this predicament if this happened in one of his books, but he could not seem to come up with anything remotely helpful. The alternative-sitting on his ass and saying nothing--was morally repugnant. As was the thought of flight, escaping under the cover of darkness or anonymity and disappearing into the outside world, never to return to or think about Bonita Vista ever again.
So what were their choices?
He wished Ray were here. The old man could always be counted on to offer a balanced view of any situation and to come up with plausible courses of action. He also had a knowledge of Bonita Vista and the association that came with history. He'd possessed insider insights, something that Barry would never have and that was irreplaceable.
But Ray was dead.
They'd killed him, too.
Barry sat alone on the deck, staring out at the canyon lands as the sun went down, watching the shadows of the pines lengthen and take over the land.
And from somewhere in the trees, he heard Kenny howl.
The meatloaf was nearly done, Grandma Mary had already arrived, and the rest of the family was moving chairs and pulling out the leaves of the table for Sunday dinner, but there was still no sign of Weston.
