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Lightning flashed in the sky, bathing the road with harsh white light; when the shadows returned, the road was empty.
2
Malcolm Crow held the severed arm in both of his hands and wondered what to do with it. Put it with the others? Or maybe hang it in the window.
He opted for the window.
Tossing it playfully up and down as he walked, he went to the long counter that formed the floor of the display window and peered at the tangle of skulls, rats, spiderwebs, tombstones, and necrobilia that lay strewn with artistic abandon in front of the thick plate glass. He pursed his lips, made a thoughtful decision, and then bent down to lay the severed arm in front of the largest tombstone, the one that read:
COUNT DRACULA
Born 1472
Died 1865
Died 1900
Died 1923
Died 1988
Died 2007
He checked to make sure the price tag was showing.
Whistling “Cemetery Blues” along with the CD player, he strolled back to his worktable and began opening a second box of gruesome goodies. Both cartons were stamped with the distinctive death’s-?head label of Yorick’s Skull: Repulsive Replicas, Inc. He removed four more identical severed arms, tagged them with his price gun, and set them on a shelf next to the severed hands, human hearts, and glow-?in-?the-?dark skulls. When the bell above the door tinkled he glanced over his shoulder to see a familiar burly, bearded figure amble in.
“Hey! Wolfman!” Crow said playfully, waving a rubber arm.
Terry Wolfe smiled back, his grin splitting the red beard with a flash of white. He was a big man, nearly six-?five, with logger’s forearms and a huge barrel chest, but dressed with expensive good taste in a Giampaolo Desanti suit in dark blue wool with faint pinstripes, a pale blue shirt, and a tie that matched his suit. His shoes were buffed to a polished-?coal sheen, and his red beard and curly hair were clipped short, though Crow noticed that Terry needed a haircut—he usually got one every week—and that his beard was a little uneven. Pretending not to look, Crow saw that Terry’s smile went no deeper than the surface of his face and that his eyes were bloodshot.
“Whatcha got there?” Terry asked as he stepped up and peered into the box. “Oh, yuck!” He reached in and fished out a huge black rat that lay crushed and sprawled in a congealed puddle of blood and gore.
“Cute, huh?” Crow said with a happy grin.
“Good God, what on earth are you going to do with this?”
“With ‘these,’” Crow corrected. “I have six of them. ”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“To sell ’em. ”
“To whom?”
“Kids. I already sold out of the first lot. Roadkill Ratz are this year’s ‘thing. ’” When you step on them they squeal. Kids snap them right up. And split skulls, severed limbs, popped-?out eyes, eviscerated dogs, and even bug-?eyed monster babies with bloody fangs. ”
“When we were kids we used to have rubber chickens. ”
“Dude, we grew up with Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers. ”
“Sounds like a law firm in hell. ”
“The di
fference is that you never went to monster movies when we were kids, Wolfman, so you don’t remember all the good horror stuff from the seventies and eighties. Zombie flicks and slasher pics and the kids loved it all. But all that changed and now every couple of years they have to amp it up to keep kids interested. It’s harder to spook them, harder to gross them out. They want to push the envelope of nastiness. ”
“To reiterate,” Terry sniffed with disdain, “‘yuck!’” He rubbed his tired eyes.
