FireTower
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011
Version KD1.2
September 2011
Wallace Williamson
All rights reserved
Covers and artwork created by Wallace Williamson
All the stories contained in this story are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents as used in this story are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or otherwise, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. In another words, pretty much nobody and nothing described in these stories is real, with the notable exception of www.dollardreadfuls.com — a really fantastic place to find sensual tales of erotic daring-do.
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In deference to The Master, this story may be committed in its entirety to human memory for recitation as deemed appropriate by the rememberer.
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Your Best Read For A Buck!
It was just another suckass Friday night in The Crossing. I had money in my pocket, gas in the car, nowhere to go and all night to get there. Tonight was Water Valley's Homecoming. The Valley was The Crossing's arch football rival. Everybody who gave a shit about it was over at the game. The rest of the town went to sleep, or died, when the sun went down. The only place still open was Greasy Marie's, and when I pulled in ol' Meatball was out wandering around the gravel parking lot with a flashlight and a cardboard box picking up trash — well, the Styrofoam cups and plastic straws, anyway. Rumor was that they washed them out (hopefully!) and reused them. Waste not, want not.
I went in, ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a Coke, confirmed that the pinball machine was still busted, and parked my blue-jeaned butt in the least greasy chair I could find. Everything, including Greasy Marie herself, was covered in a dusty sheen of congealed burnt deep-fat-fryer oil vapor. When my sacked supper grudgingly appeared in the Pickup window, I was reminded once again that I had nowhere to go. So I forked over my two bucks and slid into a table bench to quietly chew my way to blissful indigestion.
"What'd y'all order at'ere to go for if ya gonna et'it ri'cheer?" Meatball Murphy, always a man of few words and even fewer movements, glared down at me with perpetually bloodshot eyes as he snatched up my two ketchup packets and grease-stained paper sack.
Duly chastised, I poured some watered-down ketchup from a crusty bottle and stared morosely at the jukebox that, to the best of my recollection, had never spun a record or squawked a tune. Just about the time I figured it couldn't get to be much more of a sorry excuse for a Friday night, in strutted Marty Jenkins and Bullwinkle Clark. No matter how shitty things get in The Crossing, they can always get shittier.
"Well looky here," Jenkins said as if somebody was actually listening to him. "It's Titty-Baby Tillman."
I just ignored the drooling little dumbass. He was a couple of years older than me, and thought that made him tougher. His even stupider partner was staring at the faded labels on the useless jukebox like he was deciding what music he wasn't going to listen to, and I was reminded once again just how much Bullwinkle looked like his cartoon namesake from the back, what with his shaggy brown hair and open-car-doors ears adorning his big ol' melon head — the resemblance was even more remarkable from the front!
"You still owe me a dime for 'at Pepsi, boy." Jenkins said with as much threatening bluster as he could whine out. He reached over like he was going to knock over my cup of flat Coke.
I tried to grab the cup before Jenkins got to it, but knocked it over myself — dousing his cheap tenny-shoes as well as my cold fries and burnt cheeseburger.
"Son of a BITCH!" Jenkins squeeked like somebody'd just dropped an ice-cube down his skinny little ass-crack.
"What's ah’goin'on outchyonder?" Meatball shouted without bothering to get up and take a look.
Bullwinkle just farted ... though he did seem proud of his contribution.
"Tillman throwed his Co'Cola at me!" Jenkins grinned as he danced around the three greasy shards of ice from my drink.
"What's'at!" Greasy Marie herownself stumbled from the kitchen. When she saw the mess, she flung a filthy little towel at me and screeched, "You wipe that up and get on outta here!"
Meatball Murphy snickered like a drunken sow from his Pickup Window stool. Marty Jenkins edged closer to Greasy Marie, and I remembered that the slippery old hag was his aunt. Realizing the futility of confrontation, I turned and left to the gnawing shriek of Greasy Marie's: "Don't y'all never come back'ere neither 'til ya learn to behave ya'sef! I'm calling your daddy right now! Y'all better come on back in here and clean up this mess right now! Ya hear me! I'm calling your daddy!"
I glanced around the parking lot on the way to my car — there weren't many vehicles that rolled under their own power that my Momma's '63 Rambler station wagon could outrun; Marty Jenkins' daddy's Dodge pickup was one of the few. I slipped behind the wheel and fired up all six anemic cylinders and waited for the smoke to clear — and almost pissed my pants when the dark hooded shape sat up in the back seat!
"Let's go somewhere," she said with a soft, trembling whisper.
Breath sucked back into my lungs when I realized who she was, though I had no idea in Hell where she'd come from. "Where?"
"Doesn't matter," she sighed with a sadness that felt like a dull poke at my chest. "Anywhere ..."
She laid back down on the seat and I headed for the dark. She preferred the dark when she was like this. I drove carefully and not speedily through The Bottom with the radio on low, tuned to a Memphis station playing relatively new hard rock, wondering how long it was going to be before she started talking ... or crying.
About an hour later, I pulled over out in the middle of nowhere to take a leak. When I got back in, she was sitting in the front seat. The girl was creepily quick! "Are you ok?"
She didn't answer for a good long while. Then she leaned over and kissed me, her face still hidden by the hood of her long, black velvet cape. Her lips felt different, and tasted faintly of ... blood. "I need a beer," she whispered into my ear.
"I taste that bad?" I kidded, hoping to lighten her mood.
"It's not you I need to rinse away."
Even though you only had to be eighteen to buy beer, I reminded her: "I'm only seventeen, and everybody knows my daddy ... and me ..."
"My treat."
About twenty minutes later, we pulled into Deek's Groceries and Bait, one of the several dozen beer stores encircling Kilburn County; which, for some reason that made sense only to God-Fearing Christians, was dry for beer. The place was dead as Greasy Marie's. As she reached for the door-handle, I asked without thinking, "You got bread?"
She looked at me, though I couldn't really see her face buried deep within the dark hood. I got the message, though. She got out and went in, gliding silently, looking a lot like The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in that old movie that always scared the Dickens out of me when I was little. I couldn't help but wonder what, if anything, she was wearing beneath that long black velvet robe.
Ol' Deek was a grubby ol' son-of-a-bitch who always looked-like he hadn't shaved in a week and always had on the same ratty plaid shirt and threadbare overalls. He was the kind of lowlife that made you feel dirty just by grinning both his teeth at you. It suddenly made me sick to my stomach thinking what she might have to do just to get a few warm beers. What she did was more shocking than anything my darkest imagination could've conjured for the occasion.
Her back was to me and the beer store window was tinted with years of dusty grime and dried bugs. Only Deek could see her face when she peeled back her hood. When she unzipped the robe and laid it on the counter, his mouth dropped open ... and not in a good way. When she slowly turned in a small circle for him, he actually stepped back a little and turned his eyes away while she put the robe back on. I had absolutely no idea in Hell what was going on. It was like coming in on a movie with the sound turned off. I hadn't seen whatever she'd shown him because of an inconveniently positioned potato-chip rack. And he'd actually turned away! From Cherry Castaine! NAKED! That's when I started to worry.
Deek lit up a cigarette and handed it to her. She took a couple of drags while he talked — and looked directly at me! Even through his dirty window and my foggy windshield I could see fury burning in his bulging eyes. She shook her head and reached out and took his arm as he came around the counter, and I instinctively flinched! He kept his burning eyes glued on me, but whatever she was telling him eventually sunk in because he finally took back his cigarette and turned away and gave her a little hug. Almost ... gently. She pulled the big floppy hood back over her cascading blond curls and waited while Deek pulled a box of beer from a so-called cooler and headed right for me. I suddenly had to piss real bad. She followed him back to the car, and I noticed a slight limp I hadn't picked up on when she went in. Deek opened the door and she slid in right next to me, then he came around and put the beer on the floor behind my seat. He tapped my window and I rolled it down.
"You take good care of our girl, ya'hear me. Anybody messes with y'all, their ass is mine, ok."
"Yessir," I mumbled like a stupid kid.
"How's your brother?"
"Fine," I lied. "Doing real good."
"Glad to hear it." Deek just stood there, grinning like a daddy sending the kids off to school or something. "Tell'im to come see me next time he's home, ya'hear."
I didn't know what to do or where we were going to do it, so I just gave a little half-assed two-fingered salute and fired up the old Rambler. The oily smoke drove Deek back inside and afforded us a stealthy if not speedy getaway. I never saw him lock the door behind him, shut off the lights, fire up a Chesterfield, pop open a quart bottle of Pabst and slug it down in a couple of gulps, then sit slumped over with his head on the counter while his cigarette burned down to his fingers — guys like Deek don't do that kind of shit ... and I have always been glad that I didn't have to see it.
Her voice was barely a whisper, yet it startled me all the same. "Let's go to the firetower."
The firetower had always been a favorite make-out spot, even back when there was actually somebody up there watching out for forest fires. It was even more popular now that the little wooden hut perched up on top like an overgrown hunting stand had burned down. They'd put up a fence around the tower after the fire, but the gate hadn't lasted a week. They'd finally given up putting it back up. We drove up to the tower, but parked well clear of the base — dropping beer bottles from the firetower was a much revered local pastime. As expected, we were alone.
I shut down the lights and motor, but left the radio on low, which afforded us a soft, faint green glow to talk and drink and whatever by. She dug a couple of beers out of the box and handed me one. I opened them with the key-ring churchkey my older brother gave me for my fifteenth birthday. I tried to be casual, which came out sounding stupid instead. "What's going on, Cherry?"
She just sat and stared at her ghostly reflection in the fogging windshield (I had a really funny story about foggy car windows and glowing cigarettes and a scary cemetery, but I knew it'd have to wait for another time) for a good five or ten minutes before she asked in that trembling little whisper that made my blood run cold and my heart hurt, "Why didn't you go to the ballgame?"
"By the time I got off work, it was too late to drive all the way to Water Valley."
"You work a lot ... in that store ..."
"Yeah," I sighed, wishing she'd just get down to it, but dreading the moment when she did. "So, what's up with you tonight?" Not baby, not sweetie, not honey. Cherry was Cherry, and that was all she ever wanted to be.
"Magic, my love ... big ... bad ... black fucking magic ..."
Then she was out of the car. She'd always been out there, but this was really far out even for her. By now we should be well into our second or third beers, but neither of us had even sipped our firsts yet. She was just standing by the car, staring up at the big full moon. I walked up behind her and wrapped my arms around her — she'd always been big on hugs — and I felt her flinch, heard her breath suck in quick and hard. I let go and stepped in front of her. "Goddamnit Cherry! What's happened to you?"
With slow, shaking hands, she pushed back her baggy hood and looked at me with weeping eyes - one of which was bruised and swollen half-shut. Her cracked and swollen lips trembled as she said, "The Preacher was in a ... casting mood ... this evening. How far up do you think we can go?"
"What ..."
She looked up the old steel skeleton and asked again, "How far up can we go? Do you think we can make it all the way to the top?"
"I dunno ... I don't think so ... not anymore ... why?"
"Why?" She asked as if I should understand, and I felt like a fool because I didn't.
And then a really scary thought popped on inside my head like a flashing red light. "Why, Cherry? Why do you want to climb up the firetower?"
Her eyes traveled back up the old steel frame, paused a moment or so at the top, then crossed over to the brightly glowing moon. "So I can be closer, baby ..." Her words were a soft chanting whisper. "A Night Witch draws power from the moon ... I want to be ... closer."
She was very convincing, in a fucking-crazy sort of way. But I was still way too sober not to worry. "I dunno ... a lot of the steps are missing ... and it's hard to see them in the dark ... and it's a real long way up there ... and you're ... hurting ..."
"You're so sweet!" She cupped my face in her long, delicate hands and kissed me lightly on the lips — now she (her blood?) tasted like strawberries — and patted my cheeks. "Don't worry about me, baby. I'm a Night Witch, remember? I can see in the dark!"
"Yeah ... well ... I don't guess you can twitch your nose or something and maybe blink us and the beer up there or something ..."
"You're so silly!" she laughed — for the first time tonight! — and it sounded delicious. "You got a blanket or something in this rolling shoebox?"
"Better." I walked around the old station wagon, opened the tailgate and pulled out my pack. "Sleeping bag. Went camping with Lexy and Lonnie last weekend.
She picked up my pack and dumped out my camping stuff. "Well ... aren't you quite the little Eagle Scout."
"Not yet ..."
"How much beer can you carry in this?" She asked, holding up my Boy Scout backpack.
Three six-packs and a left-over bag of pretzels, as it turned out. Plus the sleeping bag hanging conveniently beneath. She carried the other four Michelobes — hey, this was the good stuff! — and her opened beer; all five of which were drained and tossed before we got to the top.
Witch or no witch, I went first with my trusty double D-cell BSA flashlight. We climbed slowly. Stopped often for beer and breath breaks. And it took us over an hour to get to the top. But she was right ... we were closer to that great big ol' grinning moon ... and it was indeed magical!
The little house that had topped the firetower was made of wood, but the floor was a sheet of steel, which was rusty now but still pretty much in one piece. There was no guardrail, not even a foot rail; we just sat there on the edge, feet swinging a hundred or so feet above mother earth, the spindly old tower creaking and swaying gently with the shifting breeze. I'd never really had much of a problem with heights, but I was kind of glad it was dark enough that I couldn't really see how far away the ground was. She didn't seem to notice, or care.
We sat and drank a few beers, but didn't really say much. After four brews, my tank was full and demanding release. Gauging which way the slight but shifting wind was blowing is always important in these matters, and I gave it due attention as I stood and unzipped. I must've been more focused than I realized, because she reached around from behind me and grabbed my dick before I even noticed that she'd stood up. She was always pulling shit like that, and it was always amazing ... and creepy.