Oogie Boogie Central
by M. Stephen Lukac
Chapter 1
Milo Tucker’s headaches had caused him problems in the past. They made him irritable. They prevented him from reading. They made driving impossible, light intolerable and noise unmanageable. The near migraines brought him nothing but trouble (not counting a new empathy for Sharon’s infrequent nighttime headache excuses, because Christ knew that marital bliss was the last thing on his mind when his brain felt like it was in a vise), but usually the effects were short lived and restricted to him.
Before the afternoon at the subway station, nobody had ever died because Milo had a headache.
It started while Milo was waiting for the D train which, according to his fellow passengers, was running its usual twelve minutes behind schedule. Under normal circumstances, twelve minutes would have been enough time to travel from Harriford & Sons Department Store to PageSmart and back. He had made the trip between his employer and Sharon’s enough times in two years to have the route memorized, down to the timing of the traffic signals. Behind the wheel of his ’67 Chevy, Milo could navigate Charleston’s narrow streets more efficiently than West Virginia Transit’s fastest train.
Unfortunately, Milo’s Impala SuperSport was currently on the rack at Eddy’s Auto Hospital waiting for new valves. He sighed, regretting his decision to succumb to the pressure of six months’ begging and allow Keith to pilot the SS back from their weekly comic run. He knew about every car Keith had ever owned; his only exposure to a V8 was from PageSmart’s juice selection. Keith was too accustomed to his whiny, oriental, turbo-charged rice rockets to know how to handle a fine example of Detroit rolling iron. Now the remnants of the failed “let me drive us home” experiment were in intensive care at Eddy’s and Milo was stuck waiting for the WVT to get their schedules right.
He hovered at the foot of the steps, trying to determine if WVT’s disdain for keeping regular schedules had outraged him enough to walk the twelve blocks to PageSmart. It wasn’t the distance that bothered him; he covered twice that in a single day of patrolling Harriford & Sons sales floor. The weather wasn’t much of a concern either. The walk from Harriford’s to the MacCorkle Avenue WVT Station had reminded him of similar spring afternoon walks home from school, and it never hurt to be reminded of happier times, when the only thing he worried about was who he should ask to the Senior Formal.
Milo wished life was still that simple, or that the thought of an evening spent in a rented tuxedo could still excite him as much as it did twenty years ago. He sighed again, moving his briefcase to cover his groin, which had also remembered that May night with Marianne Lacy Drawers.
No, weather and distance had nothing to do with his decision regarding walking or riding. The only factor he considered was which inconvenience between walking and subway riding would get him more sympathy from Keith, and -given the current state of affairs below his equator- whether or not it would be enough to convince him to let Sharon slide out of work early.
He decided that a spring breeze would be just the thing to cool his reminiscing Southern Hemisphere and started climbing the stairs that would take him back to the street. The exodus from downtown had started, so going up was easier than coming down, but several of the commuters who ran past Milo seemed unusually anxious to reach the platform below. He didn’t ride the subway often enough to consider himself an expert, but the fear on these folks’ faces looked like panic, not anxiety about a twelve minute schedule discrepancy.
Milo could relate. The throbbing in his temples decreased with every stair he climbed. He made a mental note: Subways cause headaches. It was the latest in a laundry list of migraine triggers he’d identified, and so far, the easiest remedied of all of them.
Exhilarated by his discovery, Milo quickened his pace, ascending past the transit lemmings as quickly as they descended into the source of headache pain and blown timetables. Any pity he might have felt for them vanished when he realized how willing they were to enter the pit. They practically ran over each other in their haste to reach the underground terminal.
Good riddance.
The sounds of car horns and engine backfires filtered down the stairway as Milo neared the street, reminding him that all was not sunshine and roses in the world above. He accepted that. He could accept anything as long as a Buddy Rich solo in his skull didn’t accompany it.
The backfires from above him continued, and as he drew closer, he recognized two distinct tones in the sounds. He’d heard a lot of ailing engines in his life, and these two didn’t sound anything like them. He also noticed an increase in the number of people entering the stairwell, and they didn’t much resemble business commuters on their way home from the office.
Commuters usually didn’t scream.
What the hell was going on up there? Milo bounded up the last few steps, pushing through the stampede heading down. He caught parts of sentences as he moved through the crowd, but not enough to explain anything. A few of the stampeders grabbed at Milo’s arms in a half-hearted gesture designed to drag him along. No way, he thought as he shook them off. Springtime walks and conjugal wrestling awaited; plus, his curiosity demanded satisfaction.
A mass of bodies had crowded into the kiosk at the top of the stairs. Every backfire from the street prompted a forward surge and a new chorus of screams. Milo swam against a tide of flesh, losing a foot for every inch he gained. He turned sideways to lessen his resistance and the current of bodies swept past him as he hoped it would. In seconds, his strategy left him standing alone at the entrance to the station, confronted by the most notorious face in West Virginia.
Robert Munsch.
JoJo.
In West Virginia folklore, JoJo was a monster that roamed the mountains and hollows, stealing bad children from their beds. The behavior that parents couldn’t control, JoJo punished with sharp blades and heavy clubs. He was the bogeyman that lived in the abandoned house down the block, the man with the hook who haunted Lover’s Lane, the tapping at your bedroom window when the wind howled at night.
The nightmare you wouldn’t admit you had.
Where did all the bad children go? JoJo took ‘em cause they had to go. Where’d the children go again? JoJo came and ate their brain. As a transplanted Pennsylvanian, the ditty held no terror for Milo, but according to Keith, just a verse or two was enough to give most Mountaineers -no matter what their age was- a bad case of chillbumps.
Thirteen moths ago, when the first child disappeared, nobody mentioned JoJo. When the Charleston PD found the boy’s desecrated body twelve days later, JoJo’s name surfaced in the whispered musings of the officers guarding the crime scene. When the second child disappeared eighteen days after that, someone in the fourth estate recalled those whispers and when that child’s mutilated corpse was discovered, the press had a label to hang on West Virginia’s first serial killer.
Twelve months and eleven bodies later, CPD -represented by Lieutenant Kenneth Andrews, the detective in charge of the JoJo investigation- released a photograph of the man they believed to be responsible for the JoJo murders and broadcast his name across every television network. The chase was on, they claimed. Robert Munsch, number three on the FBI’s most wanted list under his nom de guerre, would be in custody within a week.
Now, a week beyond that deadline, Milo Tucker stood in the doorway of a subway kiosk, facing the most prolific killer in Mountain State history.
This wasn’t a new situation for him; Milo faced criminals nearly every day at Harriford & Sons. Sure, shoplifters and con men were a different class of lawbreaker, but even timid animals could be dangerous when cornered, and Milo had cornered quite a few. A few apprehensions had been tense, but Milo’s no nonsense attitude, backed up by a six foot, two hundred pound frame, had always kept things from turning violent.
As focused as Milo was on Robert Munsch, Munsch hadn’t noticed him yet. He swiveled in place, watching the panicked crowds run wild across the sidewalks and street, snarling MacCorkle Plaza and four lanes of traffic. The confusion seemed to please him. The smile plastered across his face grew wider with every scream.
“Nobody move!” he screamed. Of course the command prompted exactly the opposite reaction from the crowd.
Milo moved slowly to his left -baby steps so as not to alert Munsch to his intentions. With all the people running around, one nondescript man moving laterally shouldn’t draw any attention. The open area of the plaza surrounding the kiosk disturbed him; he was accustomed to racks and shelves masking his movements. Fixtures didn’t move; people did, which meant that he couldn’t plan his approach with any certainty.
A shoplifter in the act was on full alert, their paranoia radiating in waves like radar, sensitive to any imagined threats in their immediate area. Without cover, Milo could never get close enough to make a good bust, so he had trained himself to use his store’s environment to give him the freedom of movement he required. He’d mastered his self-taught techniques so that when he arrested someone, they never saw it coming.
Just like the citizen’s arrest he envisioned for JoJo.
The man was enjoying the chaos he had created. Instead of paranoia, Milo sensed confidence. The was a king surveying his domain; a god overseeing his creation. He sent out a silent prayer for JoJo’s braggadocio to continue.
It wouldn’t be the first time Milo had taken down somebody whose balls were bigger than their brains.
He continued his shallow arc, sliding wide to JoJo’s right while making subtle forward progress. Ultimately, he wanted to be in Munsch’s five o’clock area, the same blind spot experienced by drivers. He couldn’t prove it scientifically, but Milo had found that most people ignored the same areas on foot that they did while driving a car.
Another backfire sounded, and this time Milo recognized it for what it was: a gunshot fired from behind Munsch, followed by a high-pitched whine as the bullet missed its intended target and traveled past Milo’s position. Milo dropped and crab-walked further to his left. He looked away from the killer to try to identify the shooter.
Munsch didn’t seem at all curious about who was trying to kill him. He lifted his hand -which Milo noticed for the first time held a large revolver- and fired, without aiming, over his shoulder. The report caused another round of panicked screams as pedestrians fled the area.
The smile on Munsch’s face grew wider.
Milo saw that the killer’s shot was no more effective than the one aimed at him, but at least it had fired away from Milo. He watched for movement from where the first shot had come from. After it became apparent that Munsch had finished firing for the moment, he saw a figure dart across the entrance to the kiosk plaza, using the granite pillars that framed the entrance for cover.
The glimpse he got was brief, but it was enough to identify Munsch’s pursuer, whose face was only slightly less famous than the killer’s.
Lieutenant Kenneth Andrews.
Andrews fired again from his new place of concealment, and again, he missed. At least his proficiency with a pistol was consistent with his other skills. Milo counted himself among the minority when it came to appraising the Lieutenant’s performance during the JoJo investigation, but the residents of his adopted hometown were more forgiving. The small town he grew up in would never have showed the same patience that Charleston had while JoJo caused a county-wide shortage of child-sized coffins.
The coal mines and steel mills of Southwestern Pennsylvania had all but vanished, but the blue-collar sensibilities of the men who once worked there remained. The children and grand-children of miners and steel workers had retained their ancestors’ values; if a man could get the job done, then he had value. If not, then he was a waste of flesh and breathable air.
Kenneth Andrews was using up a lot of oxygen Milo didn’t think he was entitled to. Back home, men in chambray shirts and steel-toed shoes would have tied two ropes to a sturdy branch: one for JoJo and one for the man who let him operate for so long.
It comes to an end today, Milo decided as he watched Andrews line up another shot that would never find its target. He didn’t know how CPD had identified Munsch as JoJo -the news conference hadn’t revealed the details- but the evidence appeared conclusive, as conclusive as Andrews’ inability to capture the suspect. Milo hadn’t blown an apprehension in years. He didn’t plan on letting JoJo stop his streak.
Andrews’ shot missed the mark and Munsch returned fire with the same accuracy. The gunfire caused renewed frenzy among the plaza crowd and Milo used the confusion to mask his movement, looping behind Munsch for his final approach.
Less than five yards separated them. Milo eyed the base of the killer’s spine. Three running steps would close the distance and then he’d drive his shoulder into the small of Munsch’s back and let momentum carry them to the ground. The killer would provide Milo with a soft landing and if things got broken in the fall, so be it.
JoJo could still stand trial in a wheelchair.
This was it. This was the moment he had waited for his entire adult life. He’d prove that his physical limitations didn’t limit his abilities, that the strength of his mind was more important than the strength of his body and that when the scores were totaled, what he possessed outweighed what he lacked.
Milo wasn’t simply a security guard, trapped in a meaningless job because he wasn’t good enough to do anything else. Today, he’d prove to everyone else what he’d believed all along. He could make an impact on more than a department store’s bottom line.
Milo Tucker could make a difference.
He positioned himself squarely behind Munsch. His ankles cracked as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, calculating where to place each step. He leaned forward, ready to push off his back foot. He focused on a point on Munsch’s back, just above his belt line. That was his target. As long as JoJo didn’t turn . . .
“You idiot! Get the hell out of there!”
Milo’s charge sputtered and died before he could start it. He turned involuntarily to the source of the scream, as did Munsch.
Andrews stood between the pillars, gun held two-handed, in a standard combat stance. Milo suddenly realized two very important things. One, Andrews’ command was meant for him and two, he was caught in a crossfire.
He pivoted back to face Munsch and found Munsch facing him, twirling his pistol on his finger.
“It’s such a shame you’re not my type,” JoJo said, making kissy faces as he spoke. “You’re way too old, and I doubt you’d behave yourself.”
“Give it up Munsch,” Milo said, adopting the tone that could cause shoplifters to abandon any thoughts of flight. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Munsch stood at attention and flipped Milo a salute. “Ooo, just listen to you. Aren’t we just Mr. Do-what-I-say-if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you? Sell it to the peasants, buddy. Nobody here’s buying it.”
“Where do you think you’re going to go?” Milo asked as an itch burned between his shoulder blades. Thank God Andrews can’t aim for shit.
“Munsch!” Andrews commanded from the plaza entrance. “Drop your weapon and lie down on the ground.”
Munsch sighed. “Another country heard from.” He gave Milo a what are you gonna do look.
“Do me a favor hero,” he continued. “Don’t move an inch. OK? I won’t get anything out of it, but I won’t hesitate to put one right through you. Just keep yourself between me and the good Lieutenant. I’ve got a train to catch.”
He raised his hand and fired another round into the air. Milo ducked despite Munsch’s warning. He closed his eyes, waiting for the killer to fulfill his promise.
Two light taps struck him on the bicep. He opened his eyes to find Munsch standing over him.
“That’s two for flinching,” he said. Then he dashed through the crowd and into the subway kiosk, screaming as loudly as the pedestrians he passed.
Milo straightened up slowly, knees popping from the unusual strain of squatting. He wondered if he was still in Andrews’ gun sights, then decided that that was the safest place he could be. He heard the clatter of footsteps behind him and a second later found himself surrounded by SWAT officers, M-16’s at the ready.
Andrews pushed through the black uniforms. He looked Milo up and down before staring hard into his eyes.
“You’re lucky I can’t spare anyone right now or I’d arrest your ass,” the Lieutenant sneered.
“You be arresting Munsch right now if you hadn’t fucked things up. I almost had him.”
“You almost got yourself killed,” Andrews countered, “but now I remember where I’ve seen you before. Leave this to the pros rent-a-cop, or I’ll change my mind and haul you in for obstruction.”
More screams drifted out of the kiosk entrance. “Don’t you have an arrest to make?” Milo asked.
Andrews tipped his chin derisively and led the SWAT team down the stairs.
Milo stood still and watched the parade disappear through the entrance. Even as he considered his options, his feet began moving and he followed the police into the subway. Headaches and threats of arrest couldn’t squelch his curiosity now that he had involved himself. He had to see how things turned out, whether it be JoJo’s capture or Andrews’ embarrassment.
He flew down the steps, leaping over three treads at a time. If he hurried, maybe he might get both.
Available from The Horror Mall
Also available Oogie Boogie Bounce - the Sequal to Oogie Boogie Central (Read an excerpt here)
Stephen will be "Venting" three times a year at Horror World starting in April 2008
