‘Do you want me to tell it, Ma, or do you?’
She flapped a hand for him to go on and sipped from her can of Coke.
‘Well, she’s not wrong,’ Bolton admitted, ‘although I wouldn’t want the guys back at work to know it. Security staff in a place like Gentlemen, Please ain’t supposed to get all spooked, you know. But I have been, kind of. Only nothing like last night. Last night was different. I woke up around two, out of a nasty dream, and got up to lock the doors. I never lock em when I’m here, although I make Ma do it when she’s here alone, after her Home Helpers from Plainville leave at six.’
‘What was your dream?’ Holly asked. ‘Can you remember?’
‘Somebody under the bed, lying there and looking up. That’s all I can remember.’
She nodded for him to go on.
‘Before I locked the front door, I stepped out on the porch to have a look around, and I noticed all the coyotes had stopped howling. Usually they howl like everything, once the moon’s up in the sky.’
‘They do unless someone’s around,’ Alec said. ‘Then they stop. Like the crickets.’
‘Come to think of it, I couldn’t hear them, either. And Ma’s garden out back is usually full of em. I went back to bed, but couldn’t sleep. I remembered I hadn’t locked the windows and got up to do that. The catches squeak, and that woke Ma up. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her to go on back to sleep. I climbed into bed and almost drifted off myself – by then it had to be going on three – when I remembered I hadn’t locked the window in the bathroom, the one over the tub. I got the idea that someone was climbing in through it, so I got out of bed and ran to see. I know it sounds stupid now, but …’
He looked at them and saw none of them smiling or looking skeptical.
‘All right. All right. I guess if you’ve come all the way down here, you probably don’t think it sounds stupid. Anyway, I tripped over Ma’s damn hassock, and that time she did get up. She asked me if someone was trying to get in the house, and I said no, but for her to stay in her room.’
‘I didn’t, though,’ Lovie said complacently. ‘I never minded any man except my husband, and he’s been gone a long time.’
‘There was no one in the bathroom or trying to get in there through the window, but I had a feeling – I can’t tell you how strong it was – that he was still out there, hiding and waiting for his chance.’
‘Not under your bed?’ Ralph asked.
‘No, I checked under there first thing. Crazy, sure, but …’ He paused. ‘I didn’t go to sleep until daybreak. Ma woke me up and said we had to go to the airport so we could meet you.’
‘Let him sleep as long as I could,’ Lovie said. ‘That’s why I never made any sammitches. The bread’s on top of the fridge, and if I try to reach up there, I lose my breath.’
‘And how do you feel now?’ Holly asked Claude.
He sighed, and when he ran a hand up the side of his face, they could hear the rasp of his beard. ‘Not right. I stopped believing in the boogeyman right around the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus, but I feel all upset and paranoid, the way I did when I was on the coke. Is this guy after me? Do you really believe that?’
He looked from face to face. It was Holly who answered him. ‘I do,’ she said.
6
They were silent for a bit, thinking. Then Lovie spoke up. ‘El Cuco, you called him,’ she said to Holly.
‘Yes.’
The old woman nodded, tapping her arthritis-swollen fingers on her oxygen bottle. ‘When I was a little girl, the Mex kids called him Cucuy and the Anglos called him Kookie, or Chookie, or just the Chook. I even had a pitcher book about that sucker.’
‘I bet I had the same one,’ Yune said. ‘My abuela gave it to me. A giant with one big red ear?’
‘Sí, mi amigo.’ Lovie took out her cigarettes and lit one. She chuffed out smoke, coughed, and went on. ‘In the story, there were three sisters. The youngest one cooked and cleaned and did all the other chores. The two older girls were lazy and made fun of her. El Cucuy came. The house was locked, but he looked like their papi, so they let him in. He took the bad sisters to teach them a lesson. He left the good one who worked so hard for the daddy who was raising the girls on his own. Do you remember?’
‘Sure,’ Yune said. ‘You don’t forget the stories you hear when you’re just a kid. That storybook version of El Cucuy was supposed to be a good guy, but all I remember is how scared I was when he dragged the girls up the mountain to his cave. Las ni?as lloraban y le rogaban que las soltara. The little girls cried and begged him to let them go.’
‘Yes,’ Lovie said. ‘And in the end, he did and those bad girls changed their ways. That’s the storybook version. But the real cucuy don’t let the children go, no matter how much they cry and beg. You all know that, don’t you? You’ve seen his work.’
‘So you believe it, too,’ Howie said.
Lovie shrugged. ‘Like they say, quien sabe? Did I ever believe in el chupacabra? What the old los indios call the goat-sucker?’ She snorted. ‘No more than I believe in bigfoot. But there are strange things, just the same. Once – it was on Good Friday, at Blessed Sacrament on Galveston Street – I saw a statue of the Virgin Mary cry tears of blood. We all saw it. Later, Father Joaquim said it was just wet rust from under the eaves running down her face, but we all knew better. Father did, too. You could see it in his eyes.’ She swung her gaze back to Holly. ‘You said you’d seen things yourself.’
‘Yes,’ Holly said quietly. ‘I believe there’s something. It may not be the traditional El Cuco, but is it the thing the legends are based on? I think so.’
‘The boy and those girls you told about, he drank their blood and ate their flesh? This outsider?’
‘He might have,’ Alec said. ‘Based on the crime scenes, it’s possible.’
‘And now he’s me,’ Bolton said. ‘That’s what you think. All he needed was some of my blood. Did he drink it?’
No one answered him, but Ralph could actually see the thing that looked like Terry Maitland doing just that. He could see it with dreadful clarity. That was how far this insanity had gotten into his head.
‘Was that him here last night, skulking around?’
‘Maybe not physically here,’ Holly said, ‘and he may not be you just yet. He might still be becoming you.’
‘Maybe he was checking the place out,’ Yune said.
Maybe he was trying to find out about us, Ralph thought. And if he was, he did. Claude knew we were coming.
‘So what is going to happen now?’ Lovie demanded. ‘Is he gonna kill another kid or two in Plainville or in Austin, and try to get my boy blamed for it?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Holly said. ‘I doubt if he’s strong enough yet. It was months between Heath Holmes and Terry Maitland. And he’s been … active.’
‘There’s something else, too,’ Yune said. ‘A practical aspect. This part of the country’s gotten hot for him. If he’s smart – and he must be, to have survived this long – he’ll want to move on.’
That felt right. Ralph could see Holly’s outsider putting his Claude Bolton face and muscular Claude Bolton body on a bus or a train in Austin and heading into the golden west. Las Vegas, maybe. Or Los Angeles. Where there might be another accidental encounter with a man (or even a woman – who knew), and a little more blood spilled. Another link in the chain.
The opening bars of Selena’s ‘Baila Esta Cumbia’ came from Yune’s breast pocket. He looked startled.
Claude grinned. ‘Oh yeah. We got coverage even out here. Twenty-first century, man.’
Yune took out his phone, looked at the screen, and said, ‘Montgomery County PD. I better answer this. Excuse me.’
Holly looked startled, even alarmed, as he took the call and walked out on the porch with ‘Hello, this is Lieutenant Sablo’ trailing after him. Holly excused herself as well, and followed him.
Howie said, ‘Maybe it’s about—’
Ralph shook his head without knowing why. At least not on the surface of his mind.