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  He held his breath as a hand of long fingers gripped the curtain captured in black and white and pulled back the fabric to show another pale, bulbous and swollen face. The face chilled Owen’s spine, and his stomach rolled to see how tumorous growths had twisted and pulled at the visage’s features until all the parts appeared stranded in the wrong places.

  Yet Owen felt something else rising amid his emotions – a feeling a little like excitement, a little like awe, a lot like anticipation.

  Owen held the print steady as the last shadows gathered to shape the picture. The pale face winked at Owen before drawing back into the darkness from which it had come.

  He knew he had summoned another Turner with that strange camera, and Owen was anxious to learn how he was going to be rewarded.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11 – Perfume and Dream

  That night’s dream arrived with the scent of cheap perfume. Vision never appeared to hold hands with the night’s pleasures. Owen’s sleeping sight gazed into the eyes of none other, did not linger upon curves and swells. There was only the darkness and the touch, and through that black drifted the smell of the perfume that refused to give Owen the luxury of calling those who visited him strangers.

  Dream delivered those girls to Owen’s bed. Owen denied no touch those phantoms suggested, and he didn’t hesitate to offer any of his own. Hair fell into Owen’s face. Lips pressed against his own before drifting about his skin. Owen embraced all the dream brought to him. Sighs turned to moans. Moans growled into grunts. Owen tossed and thrust into the night. A word was never spoken. There was only the flesh and the heat, and Owen gave himself to the hunger until he shuddered through to the catharsis’ far side.

  Owen lingered in bed the next morning, still thrilling in the night’s dream pleasure.

  Yet he didn’t feel content. A new hunger scratched his blood, a craving Owen feared he would not easily satisfy. Though there had only been the dark, Owen knew he had been touched, and thus he had been changed. Though there had only been dream, he knew he too had reshaped those who visited him in the night.

  His sheets still smelled of that cheap perfume.

  * * * * *

  Owen was pulling at his strange camera’s aperture ring when Sheriff Kelso knocked upon his trailer’s door later in the afternoon.

  “I’m afraid I need you to invite me inside, Mr. Masters.”

  Owen hesitated to so casually open his home to a uniformed visitor following Roy Robinson’s death earlier in the week. He saw a second squad car parked behind Sheriff Kelso’s vehicle alongside the road, and Owen knew those two cars accounted in full for the policemen Flat Knob could muster. Owen doubted whatever problem brought both of Flat Knob’s officers to his door would vanish simply because he refused to offer Sheriff Kelso an invitation into his trailer.

  Owen opened his door. “What’s wrong? What’s brought you out here?”

  Sheriff Kelso helped himself to a seat at Owen’s kitchen table. “I’ve come out here for your protection.”

  Owen’s mind raced to think of culprits from whom he needed protection. Roy Robison would never again shatter his windows, but perhaps one from Roy’s pack held a grudge against him. There were the faces of his nightmares. Owen wouldn’t deny feeling threatened whenever those faces peeked at him from those nightmarish, black and white photographs. But how could Sheriff Kelso know anything about that family of ghouls populating his dreams? Sheriff Kelso had never peeked at anything produced by that strange camera.

  “Protection from whom? One of my current or former students?”

  Sheriff Kelso shook his head. “A parent has made a threat against you.”

  Owen knew then. His guts knew who would want to do him harm. The smell of that perfume still lingering in his trailer told him.

  Sheriff Kelso continued. “Mr. Masters, Mr. Day stormed into the county high school looking for you this morning. He made it all the way to your classroom before anyone even noticed him stomping down the halls.”

  Owen stared at the kitchen table. Of course it was Kelly’s father. What could the girl have told him?

  “He carried a gun with him, Mr. Masters. He said he was going to kill you for what you did to his girl?”

  Owen paused. It had only been dream, and yet he knew what Mr. Day claimed he had done. But he had to ask. Wouldn’t he give a reason for Sheriff Kelso to doubt him if he remained silent?

  “What does he think I did?”

  Sheriff Kelso took a breath before answering. “He thinks you had sex with her last night, Mr. Masters.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  Sheriff Kelso nodded. “I agree, Mr. Masters. Kelly doesn’t even claim to have left her home at all last night. She says it all happened in a dream.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m too serious,” Sheriff Kelso replied. “It’s crazy, but Jack Conrad called our office right after we booked Mr. Day and claimed you did the same thing to his daughter Jenny.”

  Owen shook his head. “That only means the girls collaborated this entire story before last night. There’s no way you can give such charge any consideration.”

  “It’s not the charge we’re worried about, Mr. Masters. We’re worried about the threats. No matter how insane it sounds, both Mr. Day and Mr. Conrad have made public threats against you. Threats we take very seriously.”

  “Are you considering taking me to jail?”

  Sheriff Kelso frowned. “The thought crossed our minds. If only for your protection. Look, Mr. Masters, fair or not, there’s going to a good many in this town hoping to see you harmed once word of those girls’ claims floats about Flat Knob. The story will change from one neighbor to the next. These stories most of the time grow more incredible with each telling, but we’re afraid this story is going to go the other direction. Flat Knob is going to tell Kelly and Jenny’s story, no matter how absurd it may be, over and over again until they can believe it.”

  Owen’s hands trembled upon the kitchen table. His trailer suddenly felt too exposed. Too much light filtered from the shattered and taped windows. He needed more curtains. He needed more locks. He needed more walls.

  Sheriff Kelso stood from the table. “I don’t envy your position, Mr. Masters. What those girls are claiming may never stand up in court. Neither of them may ever offer the slightest shred of evidence against you. But most everyone if Flat Knob is going to find a way to believe them. That’s why we’re here to protect you until you can get your things in order.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it may be time for you to simply leave town.”

  Owen stared, dumbfounded, at Sheriff Kelso’s back as the officer walked out of the trailer. He could not return to the classroom. A trailer’s walls were too thin for the hatred Owen feared would soon be cast in his direction. Yet, after ten years teaching in a town as abysmal as Flat Knob, Owen had nowhere else to turn.

  He peeked his face out from between a broken window’s curtains. A pickup truck sped down the trailer park road and blared its horn, chasing Owen’s face back into his trailer’s shadow. He turned off every light bulb. He silenced the television. He barricaded the main door with his roll-top desk.

  Owen clutched that camera as the shadows gathered around him. He realized that he too had become another pale face trapped in a dark window.

  * * * * *

  Interlopers again intruded upon Owen’s dreams that night. No scent of perfume drifted into his bedroom. The outside world offered no ambient noise of crickets or traffic. No breeze stirred within Owen’s chamber. There were only the shadows that reduced all color in the sleeper’s dreams into black and white.

  The three figures rose from the darkness at the foot of Owen’s bed. Their legs stretched abnormally tall, and their arms scraped at the ground. His breath freezing for fear, Owen couldn’t distinguish the features of any of those faces. Shadows veiled all such detail. Yet Owen knew the identity of each dark man gathered at
the foot of his bed. They were the faces summoned by the shutter of that strange camera.

  Paralysis pinned Owen to his mattress as the dark faces floated towards him. Long, slender fingers grabbed at his arms. The shadows pulled him towards the edge of his bed.

  The clicking of camera’s shutter echoed in Owen’s dream.

  Owen gasped as he bolted upright. The shadow men had vanished, but Owen knew he was not alone.

  Owen hurried to his bedroom window at the sound of whispers and footsteps leaking in from outside. He peeked through the curtain and saw a different set of shadows hurrying about the trailer park. One dark form tripped as it leapt over a row of hedges, cursing as a weak streetlight in that trailer park briefly illuminated a masked face. A whistle sounded from the other end of the trailer, and Owen’s eyes blinked as the masked man outside his window flicked a lighter and set a rag to flame.

  “This is for Kelly and Jenny!”

  The first flaming projectile passed easily through the remains of Owen’s kitchen window, clattering across the linoleum and burning fuel jumped onto the walls and curtains. The outside attackers hurled several more burning jars into the trailer from other directions, rolling fire through Owen’s home that filled with smoke as fuel splattered about his rooms and halls.

  Owen was shocked at how quickly the walls erupted into flame. He felt the heat rush into his lungs as his trailer transformed into a furnace. He jumped to the floor in search for cooler, clearer air. His eyes winced in the fiery light as three faceless shadows of black coalesced in the center of the room. Their thin, long fingers reached towards him. They had come for him. They had not forgotten him. Quickly, those shadows enveloped him, and Owen felt a cool, wall of black shelter him from the heat.

  The Turners had risen to aid a brother. Though the town of Flat Knob despised him, Owen knew he was not alone.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 12 – Victims Out of the Strong

 

  “You’re a lucky man, Mr. Masters.”

  Sheriff Kelso smiled sadly at Owen in the county hospital’s emergency room, two towns down the highway from Flat Knob.

  “Where was my protection?” Owen asked as a frowning nurse, who had said nothing to Owen during any time she checked his pulse or listened to his lungs, inspected the flow of oxygen hissing into Owen’s mask. “I thought you guys were going to make sure something exactly like this didn’t happen to me.”

  “Someone called in a burglary that took my man away from your drive.”

  Owen smirked. “Did your man pause a moment to think it might’ve been a distraction?”

  Sheriff Kelso sighed. “It was a distraction. My officer suspected it might’ve been just that. But he still had to go, Mr. Masters. We can only do so much with what we have.”

  “Tell me, sheriff,” spoke Owen, “did you think the town would try to kill me?”

  “Not before what happened to the girls after they made their claims against you.”

  Owen closed his eyes. He tried to concentrate on pulling clean oxygen into his lungs from the mask. But his stomach felt sick. He dreaded to learn what had happened to those girls, but he knew the sheriff was going to tell him. Sheriff Kelso wasn’t going to proffer Owen much mercy anymore.

  “Both of the girls are under observation, Mr. Masters,” Sheriff Kelso started. “They’re not dead, though earlier tonight both girls tried for just that. Kelly Day cut up her arms real bad. Her mother found her before she bled out, but it was close. Took a lot of thread to get her stitched together again. Jenny Conrad swallowed every container of pills in her grandmother’s house she could get her hands on. Her younger brother saw her down a handful of something and called the paramedics. They pumped her stomach in time. Both girls are currently under supervision in this very hospital.”

  Owen thought that explained why the nurse had treated him so curtly.

  “Afraid there’s nothing left of your trailer,” the sheriff only confirmed Owen’s fears. “I can set you up at the county jail if you’ve no where else to go. They have a cot there that’s not behind bars. It wouldn’t be a hotel, but you’d be safe.”

  “That won’t be necessary, sheriff. I’d be happy to offer Mr. Masters a place to stay until he can figure out his next steps.”

  Owen coughed at the sight of Chandler Raymond standing in the emergency room doorway, dressed as always in a three-piece suit. There night carried no shortage of the strange. Flat Knob had attempted to burn him alive in his trailer. Shadow men had come to his rescue. He had come to his senses outside with that strange camera from the Turner estate wrapped around his neck, while his other belongings burned in the flames.

  Owen pushed the oxygen mask against his face and tried to think of any reason why Chandler Raymond would offer him a place to stay after the emergency room decided enough had been done to treat his symptoms of smoke inhalation. Had Mac Reynolds told Chandler Raymond of his interest in the furious parties once thrown by the plastics plant? Did Mr. Raymond know anything of his interest in the Turners? Had Mr. Raymond noticed the interest Owen had take in that dark skull auctioned during Homer Turner’s estate sale? How much, if anything at all, did Mr. Raymond know of that strange camera pulling upon Owen’s neck?

  Owen thought the nurse inflated the cuff a little too tight as she read Owen’s blood pressure a last time. “You should be fine, but do let us know if complications develop. Like blood in your saliva. Dizziness.”

  The nurse chased Owen and Sheriff Kelso back into the waiting room, where Mr. Raymond waited for them. Owen didn’t know what to say as she shook Mr. Raymond’s age-spotted hand. Sheriff Kelso nodded and left through the hospital’s sliding doors.

  “I wish we had the chance to meet on a happier occasion,” Chandler Raymond’s smile was slight, but no less expressive. “You must be very confused to as why I’m meeting you in this hospital and offering a place to stay.”

  “I am.”

  Chandler winked. “I’ll explain during the drive back to Flat Knob.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to my estate.”

  Owen added the idea of there being anything as exotic as an estate anywhere near Flat Knob as just another oddity since he had brought that camera around his neck home. The black model of the luxury sedan waiting outside of the county hospital looked over a quarter century in age. But the vehicle looked well polished and kept. Owen couldn’t spot any trace whatsoever of disrepair on the car. Helping himself into the passenger seat, he found the leather still plush and comfortable. The car did show some wear as Chandler turned the engine. The interior smelled of cigarette smoke. Owen thought the cassette deck in the dashboard an antique. His passenger-side, electric window didn’t work. Though he didn’t doubt Chandler kept the car as well as he was able, Owen still thought the vehicle felt, like all else in Flat Knob, another shipwrecked relic of a lost age.

  “Will your lungs be fine, Mr. Masters?”

  “The nurse seems to think so,” snorted Owen. “I’m not so sure I can trust her, though.”

  Chandler nodded as he turned the long hood of his car out of the hospital lot. “Still, a little fortune for you there. Smoke inhalation can be terrible business. I won’t cause you to waste any breath by asking you to defend yourself.”

  “Defend myself from what?”

  “Does it matter?” Chandler surged the car to speed, but Owen felt none of the momentum. “I also know how Flat Knob can turn on a person. I know how that town feeds upon anyone with the brains and the desire to pull himself up from that cesspit. I wouldn’t so casually offer you lodging in my estate if I thought for one moment you were guilty of anything that town is throwing at you. Can you tell me what crime you’ve committed? Tell me what terrible thing has been done at your hands.”

  Owen remained silent.

  “You realize they tried putting you to the flame for whatever it is they imagine you’ve done?” Chandler grinned in the windshield’s sunlight. “Flat Knob ne
eds its monsters, Mr. Masters. I’ve been that monster for long enough. I’ve gotten too old for them. The old who remember my terrible youth are dying off, and the young don’t want to put their hate in a geriatric monster. I hate to say you’re the next monster. Welcome to the fraternity.”

  Owen peeked into the car’s rearview mirror, but none of the pale faces he feared lurking in the backseat rose to wink at him.

  “Were there monsters before you, Mr. Raymond?”

  Chandler hesitated. “There was a whole brood of them.”

  Chandler’s finger jabbed at the radio console with an agitation that told Owen he had touched a sore nerve. Static crackled as the dial searched through the empty air surrounding the country until a pundit’s voice filled the car, making monsters out of the weak, turning the strong into victims. Such was the litany upon which all the country’s Flat Knobs collapsed. Owen said nothing as Chandler silently navigated those miles back towards Flat Knob.

  Chandler tuned out the radio’s voice as the car rolled past the outskirts of town. “I’ll give the good citizens who put your trailer to flame last night a little of the credit they deserve. The flame needs to devour this entire town, but I could think of all kinds of places where it would’ve been better to start.”