Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: Amos
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 08:35 PM

She slipped out onto the bent, sloping porch just before sunrise, wearing her down jacket against the chill, her least-tattered jeans. a sturdy woolen shirt of red and black plaid, and a white bandanna covering her head and tying back her long silver hair. The moon was low, the sun still coming. It made no sense to lock anything, and she pulled the door with a sense of finality. She had done this before, when the paths opened to her on the far side, and she had never gone wrong. She turned her back on the creaky double-wide and made her way to the rusty Chevy pickup under the pepper tree, threw her single bag into it, checked her spirit pouch under her shirt on its leather thong, and fired the smoky V8 up.
She had to get a move on, she knew. It was seventy miles to the Greyhound station. She swerved out of the dirt drive onto the gravel-top county road that ran under the shadows of the mountains, and she did not look back, not once.

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 10:34 PM

Howell was just taking the 600 South exit from I-19 when his phone rang and the Captain's voice told him about Sean Hession. He pulled his Accord to the curb in front of the Port o' Call Tavern, stopping beneath the neon sign that read Fun! Food! Ghosts! He laughed because Sean had once pointed to the same sign and said "goddamn Mormons. Can't even use the word for spirits, gotta call them 'ghosts'." Rulon had reminded Sean that Rulon himself was a Mormon.."sure. GAY Mormon, so you don't count."
Rulon stared at the sign and considered having his first whiskey in 4 years, but instead he called the Captain back and had a patrol car sent to Sheila Huber's place. He cocked the rear view and had a look at his eyes. "I'm alright" he said aloud, as a drunken man and woman reeled out of the Port o' Call, he dressed as a Devil, she dressed as a vampire.
There was a cluster of reporters outside the main door of the Peery, and Howell ignored them as he entered. A uniformed cop was questioning the clerk, and Howell stopped and listened. "I saw the detective go upstairs, and then I guess about a half hour later I saw Mr Huber leaving. I didn't know it was him at first."
"Why not?" asked Rulon.
"He'd shaved his head bald. In fact, I recognized his duffle bag and guitar case before I recognized him. So then I thought I better check upstairs, because I knew the detective was staking him out, ya know."
To the cop, Rulon said "have they sealed the room?"
"It's closed and taped. Body's still inside. He was your partner, right?"
"Yeah."
"Sorry. It's really bad."
Rulon mounted the stairs, turned down the hall to where he saw another uniform keeping watch. He opened the door of 313 and the light from the hall illuminated a large dark stain in the beige carpet. Near the center of the stain was Hession's service revolver. The other light in the room came from the television, on, with the sound turned down. He recognized the program; it was the Disney version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and the cartoon Ichabod Crane was riding slowly down a darkened country lane on his goofy horse. There was more blood on the unmade bed that lay just near a recliner on which Sean Hession's body had been placed.
The eyes were open, staring, as if in horror at the animated film. Towels had been wrapped around the body, and just below the gaping wound in the throat, a half-halo of brown hair had been arranged. On the wall behind, the words Dark Hollow scrawled in blood.
Rulon squatted by the chair, laid his fingers lightly on Hession's chubby hand, and felt momentarily as though he might pass out.
His cell phone rang. "Ru? I'm sorry," said Jude Vinson.
"I know," answered Howell. "He had no business going in the room. He said he'd wait. Hell, Jude, I was a half hour away."
"I know," said Jude. "But listen, Rulon. In Sean's mouth...listen, I can talk to one of the cops and have them check."
"What? Check what?"
"Is there anything in his mouth?"
Hession's lips were slightly apart, but something, maybe his tongue, was protruding beyond his teeth. Rulon set the phone down, and switched a floor lamp on. There was something there. Using his left hand to pry the teeth slightly apart, he extracted the object with his right hand.
"Jude?"
"Did you find something?"
"Yes. A rose bud."
"I thought so. We found the same thing on Dave Ruben."
"Jude, I'm heading over to Sheila Huber's place. Somebody needs to call Cindy Hession. I can't right now."
"I'll take care of it Ru."
He placed the rosebud on the nightstand. On the flickering tv screen, the Headless Horseman rose on his steed, brandishing his jack o lantern head.

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:33 PM

When Cora's shift started she was told not to go near the room where all of the cops were; she could "clean" it up, later. Her boss, the gum-smacking Tina, the bitch, wouldn't tell her what happened. Cora pushed her cleaning cart at the other end of the hall, stopping for a moment to ease the pain in her back. After the last baby, she just wasn't right; everything hurt. She'd told her husband, Jack, she just couldn't do it, any more, no matter what the bishop said. Jack understood, but wasn't happy about going against the church's teachings. He knew she had to work just to help support the three they already had and he knew she was tired, hell, so was he, but in the grand scheme of things, they had to provide for their ancestors in the coming days. There was something more with Cora, though, and he just couldn't put his finger on it. She'd been acting strange for several weeks, almost afraid to go to work, but compelled to in sort of a horrid fashion. He didn't know if it was just because she was newly delivered of their last child and hormones going nuts or if it was too close to Halloween. She never liked Halloween for some reason; she'd told him once she was scared to death some ghost would come and get her, not just when she was a kid, but in recent times, too.

Now, here she was, working the swing shift, on Halloween, something bad happening at work and couldn't do anything but try to work through it. She knocked on the door in front of her at the opposite end of the hall from all of the hoopla with the cops. "Room service," she called out. Getting no answer, she used her pass card and opened up the door. She flipped the light switch just inside the door, but nothing happened. Darn that Mack, he never replaces lightbulbs when he's told to! Walking into the room, she started over to the bedside table, reaching for the lamp. Suddenly, she heard her name, "C-o-r-a...C-o-r-a." Turning around, she looked at the doorway, the light from the hallway casting a faint glow inside the door. No one was there. This is it! I've got to get out of here! She ran towards the door but stopped at the end of the bed. A wall of cold air and an invisible hand seemed to stop her, the hand on her wrist as cold as she'd ever felt. Cora wanted to scream, she wanted to fight, to thrash and hit, but she was paralysed with fear. Now her name was breathed into her ear, in a slow insinuating way. She felt faint. The pressure of the hand on her wrist led her back to the bed. She slowly fell onto the bed, pushed a bit by the cold, cold hand. As she drifted in and out of consciousness, she saw the shape of a strangely dressed woman, with long, stringy dark hair, surely one of the revellers from downstairs. Surely it was all a mistake, wrong room or something. That was her last thought just as she felt a weird sensation. It felt as though someone had put her on, like a coat! It was the strangest feeling. She could feel her arms being picked up and slithered on someone else's arms; she could feel pressure on her abdomen and chest as though someone was on top of her, then instantly seeped into her. The shock was too much; Cora fell into an unconscious state, a perfect host for the one who'd called her.

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 09:42 AM

Too scary!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: JenEllen
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 07:59 PM

"Oh, fuck this noise…" he muttered to himself while waiting in line at the airline counter while the costumed ticketing agents chatted up the people in line and handed out candy from plastic jack-o-lanterns. He looked quickly over each shoulder and couldn't see any "Get-you-to-Salt-Lake-with-no-bullshit" airlines advertised in the lights above the counters, so he stayed put.

After the perky cowgirl handed him his ticket he walked quickly to his gate, only stopping in the men's room long enough to use the urinal between another Dracula and a gigantic clearly transvestite Tina Turner and then splash some water on his face. As he looked at his reflection in the mirror (and the back of Dracula's too…SNAP! as Desiree would have said) he wondered just how he was going to pull this off. If he were in the costume line-up for the airline, his would naturally scream hobo at this point; wrinkled shirt from his sleeping on the desk, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd used a razor—probably Park City—so how was he going to convince the police that a fucking guitar was the cause of all of their worries?

He settled into his seat and immediately began scanning the occupants of the plane for a stewardess with whom to place a drink order. Great. Today's flight attendants were announcing themselves as Stephan and Trevor, or as they were better known--Tina Turner and Cher. This was quickly becoming ridiculous, a fact that became evident to him by the way he started giggling like a schoolgirl when he saw that the pilot coming on board was dressed as a airline pilot. Cheater… he thought.

The entire flight was spent ignoring his seat-mate and trying to come up with a somewhat appropriate approach for the police: "Hi, I'm a crack-pot who saw on the news that people were getting killed and want to provide my assistance" didn't exactly scream credibility. He was no closer to anything but drunk by the time the plane landed. When he asked the cab driver to take him to the police station he had resigned himself to just doing what he could to get his hands on that guitar. He left a quick voice-mail with Des and Danny, and then settled back to enjoy the ride.

For all of the inherent weirdness he really did like this city. The straight roads and cleverly planned north-and-south of it all appealed to his sense of order. As they drove past a billboard announcing cheap bus rides to Nevada casinos, he remembered that he'd probably need a place to sleep tonight and fished the notepad he'd jacked from the Peery out of his satchel. He dialed the number on his cell and waited for someone to pick up. When the answer finally came it was that no sir, there were no rooms. Not tonight and probably not tomorrow either. He shrugged it off to Halloween revelers getting their freak on, and decided he'd just ask someone at the station for a good place to call.   






The police station was brightly lit despite the hour, and he couldn't help but be comforted by the building. The slope and curve of the entrance seemed to embrace him as he passed through with a sort of "there-there" pat on the back, like the bricks themselves knew that the good guys lived here and every lil' thing was going to be all right. It was at that moment that he knew he was probably good and drunk, and he'd better be on his best behavior before someone got the idea to give him a breathalyzer test and throw his sorry ass in the tank for the night.

He took a deep breath and walked up to a counter where a tired looking woman in uniform sat. She looked like she was exhausted from a shift of answering phones and telling kids not to eat unwrapped candy. He'd have to be careful with this one. He grabbed a piece of gum from his pocket and began chewing thoroughly—swishing spit between his teeth trying to eradicate all traces of several teeny airline bottles of Johnny Walker Red—and smiled at the woman. She wasn't smiling back.
"Excuse me, Miss. I am looking for a…" he grabbed the Peery note pad from his satchel and scanned it. "A detective named Howell. Can you help me?"

Her eyes narrowed as she spoke. "What is this in regards to?" she asked as she picked up the receiver of the phone on the desk. When he told her that he had seen about the murder in Emigrant's Canyon that morning on the television and he had information that he could share with Detective Howell she grinned a very insincere "I knew it" grin and set the phone back in its cradle. She brusquely told him to have a seat.

There he waited….and waited….and waited…watching the officer at the reception desk and thinking of all of the delightful ways one of his movie zombies could eat her brains out. The waiting area was shared with several people who knew the killer, or saw the killer, or had missing pets that were abducted by the killer….When he couldn't stand it any longer, he went outside for a smoke.

As he stood in the plaza, smoking and pacing, a tired voice said: "Hey buddy, 25 feet from the building, please…" and Mark Arthur turned to face Detective Rulon Howell, taller and broader in the shoulder than he had appeared on TV. Arthur began to mumble an apology but the detective simply waved him off on his way into the building.
"Detective!" Arthur choked. "I've been waiting to talk to you. I think I can help…" All caution and self-preservation aside, Arthur began rambling about the guitar and how he was certain it was connected to the killing in Emigrant Canyon. The detective shook his head blearily but snapped to attention when Arthur mentioned the wire garroting.
"And just how do you know this?" asked Howell
"That's what I've been waiting to show you," replied Arthur, fumbling with papers in his satchel.
"Please sir," said Howell. "Won't you come inside with me?"
As they passed the reception desk and went through the swing double doors to the innards of the station, Mark Arthur grinned and flipped the receptionist the bird.



When they had gone into the interrogation room under the guise of a quiet place to talk, Mark Arthur felt fairly good about the reception he was getting with this Detective, but the longer he sat here the more wary he felt. He'd worked in the industry for a long time, and seen a hell of a lot of reality television, enough to know that when the detective sat him down facing the one-way mirror and started asking him about where he was during the events in question that he'd probably been better off to call his lawyer ahead of time.

"Look," he started. "I only came here to help, to tell you what I have found out…"
"And your occupation, sir?"
"I make films. Write, produce, direct, just depends on the picture……See, I first heard about this…'
The detective casually cut him off: "Anything I would have seen?"
"I dunno, Beach Blanket Bloodbath? Sorority Psycho? Anyway….this is from a reputable source in Haiti.."
"And you were in the city why, exactly?" the detective interrupted again.
"Listen, you stupid bastard…." Arthur barked. He started pulling papers out his satchel and the detective sat impassive until his gaze was captured by the notepad with the Peery hotel logo on it.
The detective's voice went cold and hard as he reached for the notepad and asked Mark Arthur "Where did you get this?"

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 12:00 AM

Cora felt as though she were in a bottle, trapped like a fly, buzzing to get out, but nothing happened. She could feel her body, but she didn't have any control over it. Oh, god is this how it feels to be paralysed? she thought as she felt lifted up,standing by the bed, moving, one foot in front of the other, arms out to the sides for balance. What's happening to me?. She tried to scream but her mouth wouldn't open except to tell her to shut up. Oh, god, I must be going crazy!

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: GUEST,Bruce Adamson, Peery Hotel Manager
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 06:22 PM

Gosh, I hope everyone's enjoying the story as much as I am! Almost makes me a little squeamish to enter my own tasteful, historic, boutique hotel, the Peery!
Seriously, while we are all amused and pleased to see our hotel on the pages of Mudcat Cafe, we hope everyone who visits the Salt Lake City area will stay with us, or at least, pop in and say hello!Walking distance from the LDS Temple and Tabernacle, the Delta Center, and numerous dining possibilities, the Peery has been welcoming guests for nearly 100 years, although you'll find our decor as fresh as a victorian lilly, while our amenities such as in-room wireless internet and the state of the art fitness center are meant to satisfy the most discriminating 21st century guest! Ghosts? Oh they say we have a few, but just enough to add a dash of mystery at Halloween time!
Hey wait a minute...what's that dark shape gesturing to me from the concierge desk? Oh my God, it couldn't be...AIEEEEEEEEE!
Just kidding, folks!!! The scariest thing you'll find here is the room service bill!
Now, back to our story!

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 11:05 PM

Finally! Christobel flexed the hands of her new body, looking at the worn nails and dryness of the skin. She lifted a hand to toss her hair back, then realised "her hair" was too short. Looking in the mirror (a better, bigger looking glass than she'd ever seen, full-length, as broad as it was tall) she saw a diminutive woman with large green eyes staring back at her. Her brownish hair was cut short like a man's, even shorter, Christobel remembered these several centuries later, than the men she'd known and loved. The clothing was quite revealing and mannish, too, comparatively. The breeches were odd, going all the way down each leg and being quite fitted on her rump. Altogether she supposed it would do, but it didn't come near to her own beauty. With a sly and wicked grin, she waved a hand at her reflection and said, "Keep thee still and I might free thee!"

Hearing voices in the hallway, she carefully crept over to the door. It felt so good to finally be out of that tower, to have a live body to inhabit. For years and years she'd struggled, searching everywhere for a suitable host and for the echoes of the music she once loved and played. The music she destroyed and for which she was destroyed. Her rage had grown stronger and stronger until she was able to take over a live person. Now, she would find the tune which had killed her; her very soul, gone and grown so cold, so long ago.

As the voices moved down the hallway, she took a deep breath and slowly, slowly opened the door. She could sense great evil - like attracting like - nearby somewhere. She must find it. She would destroy anything and anyone who got in her way.

As she started down the hallway, one of the men at the other end gave her a casual glance. He was slightly disturbed, wondering why the cleaning lady seemed to be slightly off-kilter. Maybe she drinks on the job, he thought with a shrug. He turned away, unconcerned, for the moment, at the approach of the small figure. Probably just coming for supplies.

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 12:24 AM

Sheila's sister Patti answered the phone, and Sheila told her about the murder, about the possibility that the killer was Michael. Patti was holding a plastic bowl of Kraft Caramels that had an animated plastic hand protruding from the center, and she put this down on the counter. Her daughter, wearing a SpongeBob outfit, stamped her foot and said "come on, Mommy!"
"Oh my God, Sheila. Do they have any idea where Mike is?"
"He was staying at a hotel downtown, and they plan to arrest him there."
"Are you by yourself?"
"Yes. Would it be alright if I came over for a little while?"
"Get yourself over here right now. Do you still have your key?"
"Yes. Won't you be there?"
"I have to take Lucy trick-or-treating for maybe forty five minutes. You come in and take care of a few ghosts and goblins ringing the doorbell, and we'll be right back."
Sheila put a fleece jacket on, locked the house and left. On the kitchen table, her cell phone played the opening bars of the 1812 Overture, and the caller ID lit up with "SLCHomicide" on the screen, but Sheila had already turned at the stop light.

Between the cottonwoods quaking in the night wind, dark figures loped in pairs or singly, ghosts, demons, monsters, tramps, superheroes with clenched bags of loot moving from porchlight to porchlight. To Sheila, the night had a nightmarish fever cast upon it, prismed and altered by the tears in her eyes. At a stop sign, a man in a complete werewolf mask and wearing hair-covered hands paused to gaze at her as she stopped, then trotted across the road.
At last, she pulled into Patti's drive, staring momentarily at the litter of plastic tombstones in the yard, the spectre moving in the limbs of the tree. A skeleton was mounted on the door, and as she approached it said "Happy Halloween! We're all dying to see you!"
Inside, the house smelled like apple cider and pumpkin pie. Sheial closed the door and sat down heavily on the couch. She turned on the television and saw Frankenstein's Monster stumbling through a dark medieval village street. The doorbell suddenly stammered into life and she heard the sound of several childish voices saying "trick or treat!!" As she opened the door, she saw a tiny witch and ghost with plastic pumpkin candy containers, a bored teenaged boy with a drawn-on mustache and goatee, and a woman of her own age dressed in a Raggedy Ann costume.
"Happy Halloween," said Sheila, "there should be some candy..." and a glance revealed the dish on the kitchen counter. She treated the children, closed the door, and had the sudden urge to call David. She was rooting through her purse for her cell phone when the realization came that she had left her phone on the table at home, and that there was no phone on earth that could reach David. She sat on the couch as the villagers on the tv screen gathered torches and pitchforks.

Michael studied his face in the rear view mirror. Of late, he had become reluctant to look into mirrors at all, for more often than not he saw the strange hollow-cheeked goggle eyed spirit that was possessing him leering back. But this time it was his face, the worse for wear, but his face nonetheless.
Through the windshield, he saw two more silent figures approach the porch, ring the bell, then burst into "trick or treat!" and then he saw Sheila answer, candy dish in hand. Something rose up in his chest when he saw her, something like love or sentiment, but Michael knew it was too late for all of that now. He had crossed that boundary when he killed David, and left it far behind when he strangled the cop. Why had he posed the cop's body on the chair? Why did he write on the wall with the blood? Michael rolled the stem of a rose between his fingers and thought why the roses? None of those things were his. All of those actions were the Dead man's. But the killings were his. With his left hand, he touched the coil of wire in his pocket. He felt another warm surge in his chest, felt it erupt as laughter. When he looked into the mirror again, he was not surprised at all to see the Dead Man's face.

Joe and Cindy Clark were dressed as buccaneers, and Joe was finding it difficult to drive with Cindy trying to jerk the parrot off of his shoulder with her hooked hand. She was giggling and he tried to stop laughing as he shouted "cut it OUT!" and pushed her across the seat. "Careful!" she said. He looked up quickly and steered the car left to miss the gray SUV parked at the curb. As he did, the headlights picked up a man in the front seat. Joe later told the police "he was just pulling a skull mask on to his face when we passed him" and Cindy had said no, no she didn't think it was a mask at all.

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 10:17 AM

Aside
Business takes me to Salt lake City this week, and I happen to be staying at the Peery, where I wrote the above excerpt last night. Oddly enough, when they gave me a room, it was Room 315, right next to the room where Mikey Huber was staying. I listened last night after I turned off the light, but heard no bumps, groans, laughter, or guitar music.

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 12:18 AM

Further asideLeeJ, are you back, yet? Seems tonight would be a good time to wrap this puppy up, but I'm darned if I can summon up Christobel for the moment. How about it? 'course, nothing says it has to end on All Hallow's Eve...just a thought.{g}

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Sep 09 - 07:18 PM

Aside LeeJ? I've had some requests...maybe line this up for a Grand Finale by All Hallows? Whaddaya think?

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 01:23 PM

Yes, it does need a wrap, doesn't it? Let me see what I can come up with in the next day or two.

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 18 Sep 09 - 08:44 PM

Michael began to open the car door, but paused before the dome light snapped on. Two figures in sheets, holes cut for eyes, were running toward the doorway. By their size and their quick and limber movement he judged them as boys, maybe 12 years old. Behind them, he saw the tall figure of a man, their father, standing on the edge of the sidewalk beneath the elm tree from which a hanging spook, clothing stuffed with paper, swung slowly in the chill breeze. In the scattered illumination of the street lamp, the man's shadow lay in a black orb around his feet. Sheila appeared in the doorway, gave the both of them candy, and they quickly trotted off, swinging paper grocery bags, but stopped short by the garage door. When she had closed the door, one of them crept back to the porch, seized the jack o'lantern, ran past his Father and smashed it in the driveway. The man remained, stock still, as the boys dashed off down the street.
Michael stared at this figure, his impatience growing, until at last the realization hit him, sending the laughter spilling out of him. Like the specter in the tree, this was a Halloween prank, a mummy or scarecrow bought from Safeway for $19.99. Because it stood in the shadow of the tree, he hadn't seen it until the trick or treaters ran past it.
Michael pulled the door handle and stepped out into the street. The wind against his lips had the taste of snow in it. A glance in both directions revealed no children, no movement. He crossed the street, keeping to the shadows. He approached her driveway, the tall figure just 12 feet away. He crept closer to it, prepared for the motion sensor to engage, for a canned voice to cackle and greet him.
The lamplight filtering through the leaves was slow to reveal the thing, but Michael was surprised, swallowed hard, as he took in the fact that the figure was not wearing a vampire chintz tuxedo, but a Nautica sport shirt with a dark vest and pleated trousers. The dark shadow that circled its feet now shone in the light. Like liquid. As he watched, the right arm made a sudden jerky mechanical movement, raising something shiny to its face. The light was wrong for him to make out the features, but he saw that the shiny thing in its hand was a Pabst Blue Ribbon can. And now he could see that it was not a vest the thing wore. It was a wide swath of something dark that had spilled down it's chest. The hand dropped, and Michael heard the slow crackle of the can collapsing in its fist. When the thing spoke at last, it gave no comic Halloween greeting. The voice was guttural, gasping, as it croaked "did you think that Knights always wore armor?" Despite the grotesque voice that gurgled from its crushed throat, he knew who it was before the thing took the slow step toward him that brought the lamplight onto its face.
"Hello, Mikey," said the corpse of Dave Ruben.

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Sep 09 - 11:22 PM

Uh-oh, Mikey's in for it now!

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Sep 09 - 02:04 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Fiction : The Dead Man's Guitar
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 01:34 AM

Rulon pulled into his driveway, watched the wind feather the "Happy Halloween!"sash of the witch Bob had hung on their door. Rulon checked his watch and saw that it was almost 3:35 am. He started to push the garage door opener button, then decided that might wake up Bob, and left the car parked in the drive. He carefully eased open the door, and heard some Coltrane filtering from the stereo, noticed the fire burning to embers in the fireplace, and then saw Bob lying on the couch. Rulon took of his coat and hung it up, found a half-full glass of red wine on the coffee table and downed it, then turned off the stereo. Bob sat up, blurting "what happened anyway?" Then looking down, he rubbed his eyes and said "is there any wine left?" Rulon laughed and said "it's 3:30 in the morning." Bob gazed at him, groggy, and said "you alright?"
Rulon sat down on the couch, refilled the glass. It was a good Cabernet. "Yeah, I'm alright. You should go to bed. I won't be able to sleep unless I have another glass or two." Bob pushed a plate of iced Halloween jack o'lantern cookies in front of Rulon, who just shook his head. "Christ what a night," said Rulon. "You want to tell me?" said Bob. "Was it Michael Huber they found?"
Rulon stared into the dying fire and said "yeah it was him. Took a while to ID him." He smiled grimly at Bob. "You really want to hear this? It's nightmarish shit, Bob." Bob took a sip from the glass and said "you've probably told me worse stories." Rulon startled Bob with a sudden and slightly hysterical burst of laughter and said "I don't know about that!" His eyes were again fixed on the fire, and he said "Sheila Huber was inside the house, never heard a thing. When the lady who lived there- her sister- got home with her little girl, they saw the body right away. Thought it was a dummy or something, a Halloween gag. But there was lot of blood and that looked real to her, spooked her pretty bad. She took the kid inside, and went back out with Sheila, with a flash light. She knew it was a corpse, then, but she didn't know it was Michael."
Rulon replenished the glass, drained it. "Best guess is, he chose the tree in front of the house where Sheila was staying to off himself. He had to have climbed up in the tree. You could still see a wire tied around a branch up above the body. They were in shock when we got there, you know. And we still didn't know who it was."
Rulon sat quietly for some time, and finally Bob said "it didn't look like him?"
Rulon spoke very quietly when he said "it didn't have a head. When he hung himself with the wire, you know." Rulon inserted his finger in his mouth and made a popping noise, like a champagne cork. " We couldn't find it either. We looked in the shrubs, under cars. Maybe when the sun comes up..." Again, his voice trailed off, then he took another drink of wine. "He had ID in his pocket though. It was Mike Huber." Suddenly Michael's cell rang and he wearily looked at the caller id, the answered.
"Yeah, I'm still up. What's really weird?" He raised the glass and stopped just before he sipped. "Whose blood?" He set the glass back down, said "thanks." And lay down his cell phone on the coffee table. Then said "no wonder there was so much blood. Some of it was Dave Ruben's." It was at this moment that a pine knot in the fire place exploded, bathing the room in lurid light.

___    _____    ____

Officer Hallam leaned against Huber's car and checked his watch. 3:52 am. It was shortly after this that he heard the sound of a guitar being strummed, muffled but distinct. Hallam strolled around the Volvo, heard it again, as if it were coming from the trunk. He reached into the car, opened the glove box, and pushed the release. He walked to the back, and there lay a beautiful, black-bodied guitar with an elaborate gold etching engraved in the surface.
"What you got there, Hallam?" said the Sarge. They both looked at it in something like wonder. "It's the deadman's guitar. They'll want to hold it as evidence."
And they did, along with Michael Huber's other belongings; his clothing, wristwatch, shoes, suitcase, wallet. Other than the fact that the missing string turned out to be the instrument Huber used to decapitate himself, it was really immaterial to the events surrounding Mike Huber's crimes. His wife didn't want it back, and so it sat in the evidence room at the Salt lake City Police Headquarters. But things like that, rare, delicate, and valuable things, have a talent for finding their ways out of even wire mesh walls and bolted doors. Hallam never forgot the guitar, and Enquist even let him go in and check on it once in a while. And he found that he, who had never played a musical instrument in his life, could actually coax music from it. He even told his wife "it's like it's playing me.
Finally, after three years had passed, and he went to visit the deadman's guitar one day in mid October, old man Enquist says "Hallam, why don't you just take that damn guitar. Don't nobody even know its back there no more 'cept you and me. And I swear to God sometimes I think I can hear it playing, even though it's in a box under a pile of carpet."
And that's how Randy Hallam came to own the dead man's guitar. It lay in the back seat of his FourRunner as he drove home, excited to show his wife the guitar he had already considered his for three years. His heart was filled with joy, and he began to sing a song, a song he had never heard before, a song that seemed to be channelling through him.
I'd rather be in some Dark Hollow...


THE END

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!