Catching Hell Read online

  Dedication

  For Sandy DeLuca.

  And for John Roux, who was there.

  Thanks to my family,friends, fans and readers. Also, thanks to my friend, film director/writer Jay Woelfel, for the helpful discussions we had regarding this project when it was still in the conceptual stage. Thanks to Rob Dunbar for the afternoon chats that made me laugh and kept me sane (relatively). And finally, my deepest thanks go out to Rich Chizmar for his support, help, friendship and belief in me, and to Don D’Auria and everyone at Samhain Publishing.

  INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS

  “The first condition of immortality is death.”

  —Stanislaw J. Lec

  Chapter One

  Something had prevented her from dreaming. Normally a light sleeper, she often found herself lying awake in the night, momentarily stunned and unsure of where she was. But her sleep had been unusually deep this time, and she awakened with a quiet sense of purpose, which like the coming dawn grew steadily stronger.

  A breeze brought wind chimes outside the bedroom window to life, their delicate, otherworldly music drifting through the mostly dark room. A lovely sound, she thought, but strangely melancholy as well.

  The shadows parted as she sat up, and the beginnings of daylight bled through the windows, gently absorbing the darkness, devouring it slowly. She had a strong desire to stand before the mirror against the far wall, to look at her reflection, to see firsthand what had become of her during such a long and unforgiving night. But she remained in bed, remembering.

  They were all so impossibly young that summer of ’83. She’d still been a teenager, for God’s sake. Such a very long time ago.

  Yet it seemed like only yesterday.

  She touched her face, searched it for wrinkles.

  2001. My God, she thought, I’m thirty-seven years old. All those years, all that precious time, come and gone.

  She reached for the man next to her and touched his shoulder, as if to be certain he was more than a remnant of night, a residual phantom; hypnotic spots left in the wake of a photographer’s flash.

  “I’m here,” he said groggily.

  And she remembered then what had awakened her. “You were crying.”

  He turned his head, sad eyes blinking through fading darkness.

  “Just now,” she told him, “in your sleep. You were weeping.”

  With a sigh, he looked away, joining her if only for a moment in the deliverance of the past.

  1983 was a violent year. On February 24th, at the age of 72, legendary playwright Tennessee Williams died of asphyxiation when a bottle cap became lodged in his throat and blocked his airway. The drugs and alcohol he had ingested left him unable to call for help, and he died alone, lending added poignancy to one of his more prophetic sayings: “Whether or not we admit it to ourselves, we are all haunted by a truly awful sense of impermanence.” Later that same year, on April 28, the government of Argentina announced that all 30,000 persons who had gone missing in their country during the military dictatorship that began in 1976 were dead. On August 30th, a South Korean commercial jetliner was shot down by a Soviet SU-15 fighter after it mistakenly strayed into Russian airspace. All 269 people aboard were killed. On October 23rd, a terrorist bomb killed 237 U.S. Marines in Beirut, and two days later the United States invaded Grenada. In the U.S. alone, more than 150,000 people simply vanished, the overwhelming majority children, and all but a small percentage twenty-one or younger. Few were ever found or heard from again, and most were assumed to have met violent ends.

  That summer of ’83 had been particularly violent for Billy Valerio and the others too, but in a very different way. Ironically, it felt infinitely more real than those horrible things happening in other places to other people, but they had no way of knowing then what was waiting for them in those waning days of summer.

  From his cushioned seat, Billy came awake, drifting from the murky darkness of sleep until the apartment before him came into view. He paid particular attention to the short staircase just inside the front door. He’d killed from the top of those stairs for the last several weeks, stabbing Stefan in the back then watching as his body toppled and rolled to the bottom step in a heap. From there, he’d spent night after night terrorizing poor Alex and chasing her around the small apartment before himself being killed in her last-ditch effort to save herself.

  But he’d done more here over the last seven summers than assume the role of psychopath Harry Roat in the thriller Wait Until Dark. Years before, at just fourteen, he’d debuted as a suicidal mental patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and then gone on to play a bevy of diverse roles that had helped him hone his craft as an actor and prepare him for what was still to come, the next step in his career: a move to New York City. The big-time, the real thing, and a journey he’d dreamed of since he was a child. Now, at twenty-one, he found himself staring at a stage in one of the older and more successful summer stock theaters on Cape Cod. He’d spent hours performing, rehearsing, learning and evolving on that stage, but the night before had been his final appearance, his time here was done. Within hours a crew was scheduled to tear down the set and close the theater until the following season.

  But this wasn’t only Billy’s final season here; it was Stefan and Alex’s too. Stefan, who joined the troupe two years after Billy did, had been his best friend since both were sixteen, and though, with the exception of this last production, he hadn’t landed many of the choice roles Billy had, he’d always been more focused on his writing anyway and hoped to one day fulfill his dream of becoming a successful playwright. Alexis Flynn was a few years younger than both of them, and rather than working the majority of her teenage years as an actor, had only signed with the theater two years prior, at seventeen, just after graduating high school. For the past year they’d all shared an apartment down by the ocean together, and in her time at the theater she’d been briefly romantically involved with Billy and Stefan both. It soon became evident, however, that they’d make better friends than lovers, and the three settled into a close friendship instead.

  Since her arrival, Alex had also skyrocketed to leading roles, including her latest as Suzy in Wait Until Dark, a performance that had brought the house down nightly for the last several weeks. She’d recently received a scholarship to attend the acting program at Emerson College in Boston, and planned to leave for school in the coming weeks while Billy and Stefan were set to load what little they had into Stefan’s old Ford Fairlane and head to Manhattan to chase their dreams.

  But first they’d planned a vacation getaway to Maine for a few days. Alex’s uncle managed a summer resort not far from Bar Harbor, and since tourist season was essentially over there too, he’d invited his niece and her friends to visit and use the facilities free of charge for a weekend. They all knew it might be the last time they were together again, so it was a bittersweet proposition, but also one they couldn’t pass up. Spending their final weekend together basking beneath the last of the summer sunshine at a beautiful resort was, if nothing else, a fitting last hoorah for the trio, a long weekend of fun and relaxation before real life again came knocking.

  The night before, at the conclusion of the final show, the cast and crew celebrated with a huge end-of-season party, and somewhere along the line Billy had lost track of everyone else and ended up back at the theater.

  As he sat up, a sharp pain shot from the back of his neck into his skull. He grabbed his cigarettes and a Zippo from the seat to his left then pulled his legs from the back of the chair in front of him. His hamstrings and lower back tensed, reminding him what a terrible idea it had been to sleep in such a position, and suddenly the concept of spending the next several hours in a car trekking to Maine seemed anything but appealing.

&
nbsp; Pushing a cigarette into the corner of his mouth, Billy sparked the lighter, inhaled then coughed out a cloud of smoke. Hair mussed and in need of a shave, it wasn’t until he absently scratched at his stomach that he realized he was nude.

  “You’re awake.” Dressed only in a pair of bikini panties, a young woman with shoulder-length bleached hair sauntered in from a small hallway to the right of the stage.

  “Somewhat,” he said, voice raspy. “Um…line?”

  “Jesse.”

  “Jesse. Right, cool.”

  “Nice of you to remember, thanks.” She found her bra draped over the back of a nearby seat and wiggled her ample breasts into it. After fastening it, she stepped into her uniform, a bright polyester dress. “I figured it’d be okay to use the bathroom in that office.”

  “There any aspirin back there?”

  “I have no idea. You’re the one who works here.”

  On the seat next to him, not far from where his cigarettes and lighter had been, Billy saw what was left of a bottle of Jack Daniels. He scooped it up, spun the cap and threw some back. “Not anymore.”

  “Gross, you’re drinking? You can’t drink this time of day.”

  Through bleary eyes, he considered the bottle. “Apparently I can.”

  “It’s not even nine o’clock in the morning. You shouldn’t party so hard.”

  “Didn’t we just meet last night?”

  “So? Look at you, you’re a mess.”

  Billy located his clothes in a pile next to a rumpled blanket on the floor in front of the stage. As he inched his way down the row of seats, he said, “Okay, let’s review.” He left the cigarette between his lips, moved to the blanket and stepped into an old pair of Levis. “You work as a waitress at a fried clam shack in a Cape Cod resort town, you fuck loser small-time actors like me from the local repertory theater because—let’s face it—we may not be anything special but at least we’re a step up from the lowlife redneck townies you usually spend your Saturday nights blowing. Your favorite TV show is The Love Boat and the last book you read had pop-ups in it. Sound about right?”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Hey, it’s a skill like any other.”

  “I was just trying to help you.” She slung a large purse over her shoulder, straightened her hair then headed for the exit. “Whatever, I’m history.”

  “Wait,” he said, head bowed. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean any of that, Okay?”

  “Sure you did.” Her eyes remained cold. “But you know what? You’re no different than I am. We’ve got the same life waiting for us. The only difference is I know it.”

  She rammed the exit door with her shoulder and stormed out.

  A swath of sunshine flooded the theater in her wake, catching the small dagger earring dangling from Billy’s left lobe. With a sigh, he collapsed into a seat in the front row. “Jesus.”

  “Like He’d help your lame ass.”

  Alex. Standing in the open doorway, she leaned against the frame, pushed out her bottom lip and blew a renegade strand of hair from her forehead. Just over five feet barefoot, she was petite and at first glance could easily be mistaken for a child. But closer inspection revealed she was entirely woman. She’d styled her hair into a short pixie-cut for the part of Suzy (in tribute to Audrey Hepburn’s portrayal in the film), and dyed it from its natural chestnut to black. With a little styling mousse, she’d given it a new wave look, and though she rarely wore much makeup, the black liner she’d applied earlier helped accentuate her large brown eyes.

  “Just keeping the faith, baby.”

  “Somebody better.” She bent down and grabbed Billy’s boots and T-shirt. “Figured I’d find you here.”

  “It’s not the first night I’ve slept in the seats.” He took a swallow of JD. “But I guess it’ll be the last, huh?”

  Alex threw the boots at his feet and snatched the bottle away. “Give me that, you idiot. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Best thing in the world for a hangover.”

  She fired the T-shirt at him. It landed draped across his head. “Come on, get dressed, we’ve got a long ride ahead of us and Stef’s waiting.” She put the bottle on the edge of the stage then looked around in a slow pirouette. “God, I’m going to miss this place.”

  “Lots of memories.”

  “Part of me wishes we were all coming back for another season.”

  “Can’t stay in the minor leagues forever.”

  She gave a sad nod.

  Billy watched her a moment. In a loose-fitting Pat Benatar concert sweatshirt that hung low on one shoulder, black jeans and a pair of white sneakers, he was certain she’d never looked at once sexier or more vibrant. She seemed on the brink of something better, an eventual greatness few would ever have the chance to experience.

  He maneuvered into his boots. “I haven’t even packed yet.”

  “I already packed your things into that disgusting duffel of yours.”

  He forced himself to his feet with a grunt. “What about the rent?”

  “Stef and I took care of it. You can square up with us later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you really think we expected you to be together and ready on time?”

  He squinted at the open doorway. “Listen, can you help me find my—”

  “Sure.” A pair of black wayfarer sunglasses seemed to magically appear in Alex’s hand. “No problem.”

  “What would I do without you?”

  “You’d survive. You’re Billy the Kid.” She winked at him playfully, the way she often did. “You can do anything.”

  With a devilish grin, Billy slid the sunglasses on. “Then let’s go to Maine.”

  At six-two and weighing no more than one hundred and fifty pounds, Stefan Boudreau was tall and lean to the point of sometimes looking emaciated. But he carried himself with a natural grace and style, his movement conservative yet fluid, his behavior reserved but not quite aloof, and his mind blessed with a quick, often stinging wit. His pensive eyes and angular features resulted in a look somewhere between a young David Bowie and an even younger Donald Sutherland, and though he was only twenty-one and known for his sense of humor and the ability to somehow keep pace with Billy’s crazed drinking, in many ways Stefan seemed an old soul.

  Leaned against the front grill of his somewhat dilapidated but dependable ’67 Ford Fairlane, arms folded across his chest and sporting an ironic smile, Stefan watched Alex and Billy’s approach. Dark sunglasses shielded his eyes, and he was clad in a pair of khaki shorts, maroon penny loafers and a yellow Izod shirt. His wispy brown hair—normally worn to his collar but cut and styled more conservatively for his role as Mike Talman in Wait Until Dark—was combed neatly into place and still wet from a recent shower.

  “Hey look,” Billy said as he drew nearer. “It’s Thurston Howell the third.”

  “Style, laundry detergent and ironing,” Stefan replied without altering his expression. “Look into them, won’t you?”

  “Oh, dah-ling,” Alex said in her most theatrical voice, “I think you look positively dashing!”

  Stefan replied in kind. “Oh, thank you dah-ling!”

  “No, no, thank you dah-ling!”

  Billy sighed wearily. “How long is this fucking ride again?”

  “Six, seven hours,” Alex beamed.

  “Just kill me now. Run me over with the car.”

  Alex put an arm around both men and pulled them close to her. As one, they turned and looked back at the theater, sitting in the middle of a dirt parking lot at the end of a nondescript country road. No one spoke for a very long time.

  “Hey, guys!”

  From the field behind them came Tory Gruden, a twenty-year-old stagehand they’d only known a few months but had befriended during the season. With his long blond hair, blue eyes, vacuous good looks and deep tan, he looked like a surfer from central casting. As he bounded across the field, one hand holding a straw cowboy hat in place and the other toting
a small suitcase, he smiled and called out to them again. “Sorry I’m late!”

  “What the hell’s he doing here?” Billy asked.

  Alex offered a timid smile. “He asked if he could come.”

  “Yeah, seriously, you know what? Run me over.”

  “Stop, he’ll hear you.” She elbowed him. “Stefan didn’t mind and I didn’t think you would either. I felt bad for him. He’s like an abandoned puppy, he’s—”

  “He’s Jeff Spicoli.”

  “He had nowhere to go and we’re his only friends and—”

  “Okay, Okay, whatever. If nothing else, he’s always got good weed on him.”

  Tory stumbled into the lot, the seashells on his necklace clacking together. “Tasty rays today!” In cutoff shorts, flip-flops and a tie-dye T-shirt, he already looked ready for poolside. “I’m stoked, never been to Maine before. I hear it’s totally bodacious.”

  “Great.” Billy headed for the passenger seat. “Try not to talk again until we get there, Okay?”

  Tory frowned. “Whoa, mucho negative energy alert.”

  “He’s kidding.” Alex guided him toward the trunk so he could stow away his things. “He has a headache.”

  “Hey, no problem-o, bro, I got some doobage that’ll fix that right up.”

  “On that note,” Stefan grinned, “let’s ramble.”

  The sky was a perfect crystal blue, void of clouds, and though the sun burned high and bright, humidity was low, so despite the rather tight quarters the car remained comfortable.

  Billy drifted off to sleep even before they’d reached the Bourne Bridge, one of two enormous structures that connected Cape Cod to the mainland. The last thing he saw was trees and brush along the side of the Cape Cod highway rushing past his window.

  “Some copilot,” Stefan quipped. “He’s supposed to be riding shotgun.”

  “We should be to Boston in about an hour,” Alex said, “then figure another two to Portland, give or take. Once we get somewhere between the two, stop for a bathroom break and I’ll switch with him, Okay?” She leaned forward to check on Billy. “Have you ever seen anyone sleep the way he does?”