Plum Spooky

TWENTY-THREE

I OPENED MY eyes and looked at my alarm clock. It was seven A.M. and the phone was ringing. Diesel reached across me and answered it.

“It’s for you,” he said, handing me the phone. “It’s the Batcave.”

“This is Gene in the Rangeman control room,” a guy said. “I’m going to patch you through to Hal.”

A moment later, Hal came on. “I hope I’m not calling too early,” he said, “but a new monkey just showed up, and he’s wearing a scarf.”

“What kind of scarf?”

“It’s a scrap of material tied around his neck. Like decoration. Like you see on a dog sometimes. It’s made out of hippie material.”

“Tie-dye?”

“Yeah. Real bright colors. Like what you see in the house here.”

“Hang on to him. I’m on my way.”

I returned the phone to the nightstand. “Hal said a monkey just showed up.”

Diesel was already out of bed, getting dressed. “I heard.”

“How could you hear?”

“I have good ears.”

“I was talking to him on the phone!”

“I can’t find my shoes,” Diesel said.

I took clean jeans and underwear from the laundry basket and headed for the bathroom. “Under the coffee table. Just like always.”

“We’ve been living together too long,” Diesel said. “I’m not the man of mystery anymore. Your mother washes my underwear, and you always know where my shoes are.”

“You’ve never been the man of mystery. Ranger’s the man of mystery.”

“Then who am I?”

“You’re Diesel.” And just being Diesel was more than enough.

DIESEL AND I had breakfast sandwiches and coffee to go. Carl was in the backseat of the Subaru with a breakfast sandwich and a bottle of water. Our hope was that Gail had managed to tie a scrap of her skirt around the monkey’s neck and set him free. And that somehow we could get the monkey to lead us back to Gail. We’d brought Carl along as translator.

“This is going to be embarrassing,” Diesel said.

“What?”

“Talking to a monkey in front of Ranger’s man.”

“How about if I tell Hal we need to talk to the monkey in private?”

“I know Carl seems rotten enough to be human sometimes, but I’m not completely convinced he understands anything we say.”

“He can play Super Mario,” I said to Diesel.

“Yeah, but he can’t win. Mario keeps dying.”

Carl tapped Diesel on the shoulder. Diesel looked at Carl in the rearview mirror, and Carl gave Diesel the finger.

“I’m just saying,” Diesel said to Carl.

An hour later, we were on the dirt road that led to Gail Scanlon’s compound. It was early morning, and the Barrens felt benign. The sun was shining. It was in the midseventies. And there was no sign of the Easter Bunny, Fire Farter, Sasquatch, or the Jersey Dev il. Diesel drove into the clearing and parked close to the house, next to a black Rangeman SUV.

Hal came out of the house and met us in the yard. “I’ve got the new monkey in the cage,” he said. “It’s still got the scarf around its neck.”

We all walked to the cage and peered inside.

“The scarf looks like Gail’s skirt,” I said. “I saw the monkeys before Carl set them loose, and I can’t remember any of them having a neck scarf.”

“He doesn’t look very smart,” Diesel said. “He’s not even giving me the finger.”

“Can monkeys do that?” Hal asked.

Carl gave him the finger.

“Cool!” Hal said.

“So what do you think?” I said to Carl. “Can you get the monkey to take us to Gail?”

Carl looked at me and shrugged.

Hal opened the door to the enclosure, and Carl went in and sidled up to the monkey with the scarf. Carl picked something off the monkey’s head and ate it.

Diesel gave a snort of laughter.

“It’s a social ritual,” I said. “And you have no room to laugh. You were gobstruck by a guy who farted fire.”

“No way,” Hal said.

“Swear to God,” Diesel told him. “Fire came out of this guy’s ass like a blowtorch. I saw him burn down a chair.”

“Jeez,” Hal said. “I’d give anything to see that.”

“Stop the planet,” I said. “I want to get off.”

Carl did some chee chee chee and some whoo whoo whoo with the scarf monkey, and then they scampered out the door and ran away into the pine forest.

“Boy, he sure took off,” Hal said.

I nudged Diesel. “Okay, big boy, let’s see what you’re made of. Smell him out.”

Diesel grabbed my hand and pulled me into the woods. “I suspect that was sarcasm, but as it happens, I have a highly developed sense of smell.”

“Like a bloodhound?”

“Yeah. Or a werewolf.”

“Are you a werewolf?”

“No. I have it on good authority werewolves aren’t real.”

“What about the Easter Bunny?”

“His name is Bernard Zumwalt, and he’s originally from Chicago.”

“Santa Claus? Sasquatch?”

“They’re real. Sasquatch comes from a big family. They’re all over the place. Santa Claus is getting on in years. I don’t know how much longer he can keep it going.”

“I’m not taking the hook,” I said to Diesel.

“You were thinking about it.”

True. It was hard not to believe Diesel. He looked trustworthy. And “normal” had a tendency to expand in his universe.

“Are you sure we’re following the monkeys?” I asked him after a half hour of walking on pine needles and struggling through underbrush.

“I’m sure we’re following them. I’m not sure they’re taking us to Gail.”

We were on an ATV path, and the next moment, we stumbled into the Easter Bunny’s yard. He was back in his chair, wearing the same sad rabbit suit, and he was still smoking.

“Hey, Bernie,” Diesel said. “How’s it going?”

“It’s not Bernie,” he said. “It’s E. Bunny.” He took a long drag, pitched his stub of a cigarette onto the ground, and lit another. “Oh hell, who am I kidding, it’s Bernie. The bastards retired me, suit and all.”

“You don’t have to work anymore,” Diesel said. “This is the good life.”

Bernie nodded. “It ain’t bad. I get to sit here and smoke all day. Toward the end, they came in with all that no-smoking crapola. That was a bitch. You know what it’s like trying to sneak a smoke in a rabbit suit? It’s the shits.”

“Did you see a couple monkeys go past?”

“Yeah. One of them was wearing a scarf.”

After an hour, I was thinking everything looked familiar. “Have we been here before?” I asked Diesel.

“Yeah. The stupid monkeys are leading us in a circle. Bernie’s homestead is just ahead.”

“How did you know his name was Bernie?”

“I Googled Easter Bunny.”

“And it told you the Easter Bunny’s name was Bernie?”

“Okay, so I asked around.”

“Who did you ask?”

“Flash. He has a friend at the DMV, and he looked up the rabbit’s license plate.” Diesel draped an arm across my shoulders. “Do you believe me?”

“No.”

Diesel grinned. “People believe what they want to believe.”

We ambled back into Bernie’s yard and stopped to watch Bernie blow smoke rings.

“Looks like you’re still following the monkeys,” Bernie said, squinting through the smoke at us. “You’re about three minutes behind them. And watch out for the Jersey Dev il. He’s been in a real bad mood lately.”

We walked about a hundred yards, and ran into Carl. He was sitting back on his haunches, looking dejected.

“Where’s the other monkey?” I asked him.

Carl looked up. The monkey was in a tree.

“What’s he doing there?”

Carl shrugged.

“This was a stupid idea,” I said to Diesel.

“Yeah, but at least you walked off your sausage-and-egg sandwich. It would have gone straight to your ass.”

“I’m going back to Gail’s house, and then I’m going home. I don’t care about Munch. I don’t care about Wulf. I don’t care about their wicked weather machine. I don’t care if it rains rhinoceroses.”

“What about Gail Scanlon?”

“She’s on her own.” I looked around. “Which way do I go?”

“Wait,” Diesel said. “Do you hear something rumbling?”

I stopped and listened. “It sounds like Elmer’s truck with the broken muffler.”

We walked through the woods, following the sound. Carl tagged along, but the scarf monkey stayed in the tree. The truck cut out, but we kept walking in the general direction. The trees thinned, and we came to a large patch of scorched earth. A small, egg-shaped Airstream travel trailer sat on the edge of the clearing. Elmer’s truck was parked next to the trailer.

Diesel knocked on the trailer door, and Elmer answered.

“Holy cow,” Elmer said. “What a surprise. Nobody ever visits me. Do you want to come in?”

I gnawed on my lip. I didn’t want to be rude, but there was only one door. If Elmer farted and the trailer went up in flames, I’d die a horrible death.

“No thanks,” I said. “We were just out for a walk.”

“We’re looking for Gail Scanlon,” Diesel said.

“That’s the monkey lady,” Elmer said. “I met her once. She was real nice. I heard she was missing, and all her monkeys got loose.”

Elmer looked past me at Carl.

“Is that one of her monkeys?”

Carl gave Elmer the finger.

“Yep,” I said. “That’s her monkey.”

“Do you have any neighbors?” Diesel asked.

“The Easter Bunny is a couple miles through the woods. And one of the Sasquatch boys lives down the road a ways. Used to be a young couple living in a little house at the end of Ju nior Sasquatch’s road, but they moved out, and then the house burned down. I swear, it wasn’t my fault.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not in this little patch of the Barrens,” Elmer said. “There’s some businesses on Marbury Road. A couple antique shops, the Flying Donkey Mine, a bed-and-breakfast that don’t serve breakfast.”

“Is it a real mine?” I asked him.

“I suppose years ago it might have been. I don’t know what kind of mine, though. Then it was a tourist attraction. Only thing, there was hardly any tourists. It closed almost as soon as it opened, and it’s been closed since. And, of course, there’s the Dev il, except he isn’t much of a neighbor.”

“Do you know the Dev il?” I asked him.

“Not personal. I hear him flying over the trailer at night sometimes. Lately, he’s been flyin’ a lot. I tell you, the Barrens are strange and getting stranger.”

“Have you ever been in the mine?” Diesel asked Elmer.

“Nope. I thought about it, but it got closed before I got around to visiting. I thought it might have been interesting.”

“I think we should take a look at it,” Diesel said.

“You can’t go in. It’s all boarded up.”

“Then we’ll look at it from the outside,” Diesel said to Elmer. “You feel like driving us over there?”

“Sure,” Elmer said. “I’ll get my keys.”

I glanced over at Diesel. “I thought you said it was a bad idea to get in a truck with the fire farter.”

“He’s what we’ve got. If we don’t go with Elmer, we walk two hours through the woods to Gail’s house. That’s two hours less to find Munch and Wulf.”

“Yeah, but what if we’re in the truck and he farts?”

“If he farts, we’ll jump out of the truck and run like hell.”

Elmer came out with the keys. I got in front with Elmer. Diesel and Carl climbed into the back.

“Do you ever explore around in the woods?” I asked Elmer.

“Hardly ever. I got a creaky knee. Makes it hard to walk in the pine needles. And the truck’s gotta have a road. I hear them ATVs riding around behind me, going in the woods, but I haven’t got one of them.”

It took twenty minutes to get to the mine, and Elmer was right about it being closed. A large, weather-beaten sign advertised tours of the Flying Donkey, but the sign was more of a tombstone than anything else. The Donkey’s gift shop windows were covered with crudely nailed-on sheets of plywood. The plywood was warped and water-stained. The shop door was boarded shut. The parking lot was large, made to accommodate tour buses that never came. Weeds struggled to grow in the cracks in the blacktop. The mine itself was several yards behind the gift shop. A path led from the parking lot to the mine.

Elmer parked close to the gift shop. We left Carl in the truck, and Diesel, Elmer, and I got out and took the path. Another sign was posted at the mine’s entrance. closed was spray-painted over the tour times. A half-assed chain-link fence was propped across an entrance that looked more like the approach to a cave than a mine.

A dirt path continued past the mine entrance. A smaller, barely legible sign announced that this was a nature walk.

“I’m feeling in the mood for nature,” Diesel said, setting off on the path.

Elmer and I walked along with him, and it occurred to me that this was a maintained path. It should have been overgrown by now, but the brush had been weed-whacked away. Diesel stopped after a couple hundred feet and then quietly walked several yards into the woods. We followed him and stared down at an air shaft. We returned to the trail and found six more air shafts at regular intervals. We stood over the last air shaft, and muffled voices carried up to us. Diesel motioned for silence, and we quietly walked back to the trail.

“This is why we couldn’t see it from the air,” Diesel said to me. “These underground caves can be huge and wind around for miles. Everyone walk in a different direction. Go two hundred feet and come back. Look for any disturbance in the undergrowth.”

I walked about fifty feet in and saw a wire running pine tree to pine tree, even with the top of my head. The pines were straight and tall and most of the lower branches had been trimmed. An antenna stretched along the trunk of the pine tree, disappearing into the upper branches. There were wires crisscrossing the stand of trees, and I counted twenty-six antennae joined by the wires.

I returned to the path and waited for Diesel.

“I found the grid of antennae,” I said to Diesel. “They’re hidden by the pines.”

“And I found a hatch that’s probably the roof over a rocket silo.”

“I didn’t find nothin’,” Elmer said.