The Stake

from where he sat that the briquettes were burning. The air over the grill shimmered with heat waves. “Be another ten, fifteen minutes,” Pete said. He turned to Barbara, arched a dark eyebrow. “Don’t you need to go inside and do something?”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“Just trying to be helpful. We’re going to have those sauteed mushrooms, we’ll want them withour steaks.”

“They only take a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll do them up when you put the meat on.”

Good, Larry thought. He wasn’t eager for her to leave. Not only was she the best defense against Pete’s crazy urge to fetch the jukebox, but it felt good to look at her.

She sat on a lounge in front of him, bare legs stretched out on its cushion. Her long, slim legs looked wonderful in spite of the scabbed areas. She wore red shorts and a plain white T-shirt. The shorts were very short. The T-shirt lay softly against her flat belly and the rises of her breasts. Its fabric was thin enough to show a faint pink hue of the skin underneath, the dark crust of the scabs above Barbara’s waist, the white of her bra.

He watched the way her muscles moved as she sat up straight to take a drink of her cocktail and settled back again and rested the glass on the moist disk it had left just below the hip of her shorts.

“You don’t want to go back there, do you?” she asked Larry.

“Not a whole lot.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“It’s probably too heavy for the two of us to carry, anyway,” he told Pete.

“Barbara will come along and lend a hand. Won’t you, hon?”

“Not on your life.”

“She’s just scared of the vampire.”

“You know it. Besides, we don’t need that piece of junk cluttering up the garage.”

“It’d be great for Larry’s book. He can come over and check it out whenever he needs some inspiration.” Looking at Larry, he added, “And we can take pictures of it. You know? A photo of the actual jukebox, all shot up the way it is, that’ll be terrific on your cover.”

“That would be pretty neat,” he admitted.

“Jeez, don’t encourage him.”

Larry smiled at her. “I have no intention of going back to that place.”

“You’re scared of the vampire, too, huh?” Pete said. “Hey, it can’t hurt you. Not as long as it’s got that stake in its heart.”

“I’m not worried about any ‘vampire,’ ” Larry told him. “I don’t think it isa vampire. But stiffs give me the creeps.”

“That’s a good one, coming from you.”

“I’m scared of my own shadow, man. That’s what makes me good at writing those books. And I tell you, Sagebrush Flat is a lot scarier to me than my shadow. My shadow pales by comparison.”

Barbara chuckled at his pun.

“Even if there wereno corpse under the stairway, I’d still want to stay away from that town. Just the fact that it’s deserted is enough to spook me. There’s something basically frightening about a place where people are supposed to be but aren’t. An abandoned town, an office building at night...”

“That’s really true, you know,” Barbara said. “Like a hotel really late at night when everyone’s asleep.”

“Or a school,” Larry added. “Or a church.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes widened. “Church’s are reallyspooky when nobody’s there. I used to go for choir practice when I was in high school. We’d meet on Wednesday nights at eight.” She leaned forward and gazed at Larry. “One night... God, I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about it.” Hunching up her shoulders, she squeezed her arms tight against her sides. “One night, practice had been called off and I didn’t know about it. I think we’d been out of town. Anyway, the choir director was sick, and everybody knew it but me. So my dad dropped me off in the parking lot and I went in.”

“You taking notes, Lar? Maybe you can use this.”

“Sounds promising so far.” He could feel himself shivering slightly as if Barbara’s fear were contagious.

“There was a light on in the narthex. But the stairway to the choir loft was dark. I went up there, anyway. I figured I was just the first to arrive. The choir loft was dark, too.”

“Why didn’t you turn on some lights?” Pete asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I thought I shouldn’t mess with anything like light switches. But also, I was afraid somebody might... turning on lights, you know, that’d be like giving away that I was there.” Her mouth stretched, baring her teeth.

“That’s the thing,” Larry said. “When a place seems deserted, you’re afraid you aren’t reallyalone.”

“That’s it. Exactly. Because you can’t see what’s out there. God, I started thinking someone was roaming around, sneaking up on me. I even thought I heard someone creeping up the stairs.” Her right hand still held the glass on her lap. Her other hand crossed over to that arm and rubbed it as if she wanted to smooth away the goose bumps. Larry saw that her thighs were pebbled. Though she wore a bra, it was apparently of a light, stretchy fabric. Her nipples made small points against her T-shirt.

I’ll have to remember that, Larry thought. A woman has gooseflesh, the nipples get erect.

Fear makes them hard.

Or is she turned on?

Turned on by the fear?

Barbara kept frowning, rubbing her arm. She seemed lost in her memory of that night.

“So what happened?” Pete asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Oh, that’s a great story.”

“I waited around for about fifteen minutes. I was almost too scared to move. I kept staring down at the nave and pulpit and everything, and thought someone was down there in the dark. You know, awareof me. Watching me.”

“Coming for you,” Pete added.

“Damn right.”

“ ‘They’re comingfor you,’ ” he said, mimicking the voice of the jerky brother in the graveyard scene of The Night of the Living Dead. “They’re comingfor...”

“Knock it off, would you?”

“Nobody ever showed up?” Larry asked.

She shook her head. “I finally beat it. I was never so glad to get out of a place in my life.”

“Not even the hole in the landing of the Sagebrush Flat Hotel?” Pete asked.

“That was different. I was in pain. That’s not the same as being scared half to death.”

“So you finally just bolted out of the church?” Larry asked.

“Sure did. I didn’t even stop to use the phone and call home. I waited in the parking lot, and Dad finally came along at the usual time to pick me up.”

“That’s it, huh?” Pete asked.

“It was enough. I quit the choir after that. Nothing was ever going to get me back into the church after dark.”

“Pretty drastic, considering that nothing happened.”

“It wasn’t exactly as if nothing happened,” Larry pointed out.

“That’s right. All these years have passed, and it still gives me the creeps if I think about it.”

“Still isn’t much of a story,” Pete said.

“A good setup for one,” Larry told him.

“Think you might use it?” Pete asked.

“I can just see it,” Barbara said, smiling. “You’d probably have a homicidal maniac chasing me through the