Rockabilly Hell

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Horror; Police Procedurals; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

NO COVER CHARGE From From Cairo to Vicksburg, along Route 61, they lit up the night with the sounds of wailing voices and twanging guitars. All the greats played at roadside clubs filled with smoke, sex, and a driving beat . . . Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash. These jive joints are now a thing of the past. Or are they? A sheriff’s deputy has just stumbled on a mystery that will take him into the cheating heart of rockabilly hell. NO TWO-DRINK MINIMUM In the last forty years over five hundred people have disappeared along that particular stretch of highway. Now Deputy Jesse “Cole” Younger and a beautiful reporter named Katti Baylor have entered the doors of one of those lost clubs to find what waits within—and to face what waits beyond . . . AND NO MERCY

Release date: November 8, 2016

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 275

Sample

“Who is this guy?” Deputy Younger asked, holding up the extradition papers.

“A nobody, really, Captain. He’s never committed a violent act that we know of. But he’s hung enough paper around to fill the local stadium. Are you sure you want to drive all the way up into Illinois for this loser?”

That brought a smile to the man’s lips. “I’ve got five more months to go until I pull the pin. I’m tired of sitting at that desk the sheriff put me behind last month. This will at least get me out of the office for a few days.”

The deputy leaned back in his chair and grinned. “What are you going to do when you retire, Cole?”

Jesse Cole Younger shook his head. He was named after his grandfather on his dad’s side and his great uncle on his mother’s side, but everybody always assumed he was named after the famous outlaws—and he suspected he was, too, for his dad had always possessed a weird sense of humor. “I really haven’t given it much thought, Dale.”

“Forty-five is too damn young to retire, Cole.”

“I’ve spent nearly twenty-five years wrestling drunks, getting puked on, chasing punks, sweeping up teeth, hair, and eyeballs after wrecks, and getting shot twice. It’s time to pull the pin. Besides, I don’t really need the money.”

The deputy glanced at his watch. “It’s sorta late. You going to leave now?”

“Might as well. I’ll get a room somewhere up in northern Arkansas or southern Missouri.”

Cole headed east out of Louisiana, heading for the Mississippi River bridge crossing, and then cut north on Interstate 55.

Dale was right, of course. Forty-five was far too young to retire altogether. He’d have to think of something to do. Not that he had to. Cole was comfortable, as far as finances went. His parents had been killed in a fiery automobile accident a few years back and had left everything to Cole, their only child. The estate had been substantial.

Dale had joined the Army at seventeen, spent two tours in Vietnam, gotten wounded, and then discharged. He’d gone to college for a year, didn’t like it, dropped out, and joined the Sheriffs Department. He’d been there ever since. Married, divorced after five bitter, stormy, argument-filled years. No children. He didn’t know where Janet was now. Last he’d heard she was out in California. Good place for her, Cole had concluded.

Cole usually picked a marked and fully equipped unit for any out-of-state run: that way he could stay just above the posted limit and be left alone by other cops, receiving only a wave or a quick flash of lights in greeting. Cops look out for other cops. But this time he was driving an unmarked unit.

Night had covered the land for several hours when he crossed the river again at Memphis and rolled into Arkansas. He had gassed up in north Mississippi and grabbed a cheeseburger, so he wasn’t hungry (but his stomach did feel queasy); he decided he’d pull in somewhere and get himself a Coke. And get off this damned interstate for a few miles; it was getting boring.

He took the next off ramp and pulled onto Highway 61. His appeared to be the only car on the old highway—once a main north-south link—and that suited him just fine.

Cole turned off the radio and drove in silence for a time, his driver’s side window down and his elbow sticking out. The early fall air rushed in and blew cool on his face.

When his radio clicked on and the 1950’s rockabilly music slammed into his ear, he nearly lost control of the unit. Shaken, Cole pulled off on the shoulder and sat for a time, eyes fixed on the lighted electronic dial of the radio. He almost never listened to AM, except for a news and talk station out of Shreveport, but there it was, the numbers clearly indicating an AM station. But it sure wasn’t KEEL from Shreveport. And the song was not at all familiar to him.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

The announcer came on. The guy was using terms like daddy-o, and toe-tappin, and rooty-tooty.

“Rooty-tooty!” Cole said.

Then he smiled. Had to be a tape from years back, some golden oldie program.

Then he frowned.

But how the hell did the radio just come on all by itself?

He reached over and punched the on-off button. Nothing happened. The music continued to play. Thumping, hard-driving, early rock and roll—rockabilly. That unique brand of music that was pure Southern. He punched a preset selector button. The station didn’t change. Another one. Same results. He punched all the selector buttons. The station would not change.

Cole turned off the engine. The radio did not go off with it.

Cole felt himself getting a bit spooked by these strange happenings. He shook his head, got out of the car, and walked around it several times. The music continued to play as he walked.

Then it stopped.

The night was very silent.

Out of habit, Cole slipped his right hand under his jacket and touched the butt of his Sig Sauer 9 mm. It was there, nestled snugly in a shoulder holster. It was comforting.

He got back into his unit and cranked up. The radio stayed off. He reached over and punched it on. A Memphis station, playing music from the sixties, seventies, and eighties. No fifties rockabilly.

Cole shook his head, expelled air, sighed, and slipped the unit into gear, pulling back out on the highway. He occasionally would fix the radio with a very jaundiced glance.

Cole had been born in 1950, and he only vaguely remembered the early days of rock and roll. His music was the Beatles, the Stones, the Righteous Brothers, Neil Diamond, the Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac.

He didn’t know shit about early rockabilly.

He saw lights up ahead and, as he drew closer, saw it was a honky-tonk, a roadhouse. He wasn’t in uniform and decided he’d pull, in and get a beer. He needed one after that odd business with the radio. And his stomach still felt queasy. Bad cheeseburger.

He pulled into the gravel drive and sighed. “Well, this is damn sure a night for weird,” he said aloud, his eyes taking in all the cars and trucks parked around the honky-tonk.

There wasn’t a vehicle there less than thirty-five years old. IH and Studebaker pickup trucks. Turtleback Mercurys from the late forties and early fifties. A couple of Hudsons. One Henry-J.

Cole had never seen one of those except in picture books of classic and antique cars.

And all of the old cars and trucks ranged in condition from good to excellent.

Then the band inside started up, and the music was pure rockabilly. Drums, bass, lead guitar, and rhythm guitar. The song was something about a Rock House. Cole had never heard it.

Cole chuckled as what was happening came to him. Had to be. The cars and trucks belonged to members of a classic car club, and this was their monthly meeting. The band was playing songs from the era of the old cars and trucks.

Sure.

“Well, it’s easy when you figure it out,” Cole muttered, getting out of his unit and making sure the doors were locked.

He opened the front door and stepped inside. He immediately got the feeling he was entering a time warp of some sort. Rod Serling would have felt right at home. Cole felt every eye in the place on him as he walked to the bar.

“Bud Light,” he told the bartender.

“What?” the man said.

Cole looked up and down the bar. The beer was all in bottles, long-necks. He didn’t recognize a single brand. He cut his eyes to the bartender. “Just give me a beer.”

“Stag be all right?”

Stag? Had to be a local brand. “That’s fine.” Cole put a dollar on the scarred bar, and the barkeep gave him change.

Change? Must be some sort of special night. He slipped the change in his jacket side pocket without looking at it. Beer in hand, Cole swiveled on the bar stool and gave the place a look-over. Suddenly every cop antenna he had developed over the years was up and receiving signals. This was the roughest-looking bunch of ol’ boys he had ever seen all gathered up in one place. And the women, most of them attractive in a hard-looking and well-used sort of way, had the same mean look in their eyes. Even those doing some sort of dance on the dance floor. Then Cole recognized the step; or thought he did. It was the bop. He’d seen his parents doing it.

Strange, he thought, again swiveling to face the bar. Then his eyes centered on the calendar on the wall behind the bar, and he felt a light sweat break out on his forehead. October 1957.

Cole blinked a couple of times. The month and year remained the same.

“I reckon we’ll have a war with them damn Rooshins ’fore it’s all said and done,” he heard a man said. “Ike ain’t gonna put up with ’em for long.”

“Ike ain’t gonna do shit,” another said. “We should have whupped them damn Bolsheviks back in ’45. Patton wanted to, but Ike didn’t have the balls for it then, and he don’t now.”

Cole put a hand to his forehead. He felt feverish.

Cole stood up, beer in hand. One of the men looked at him. “What do you think about Ike, buddy?”

“I, ah, I’m not political,” Cole managed to say.

The man turned his back to him and resumed the conversation with his buddy.

Across the room, two men in jeans and cowboy boots suddenly lunged to their feet and began fighting. Barroom fights usually happen that way, the viciousness coming so fast no one around them has time to get out of the way. For the most part, the combatants were ignored. One of the pool players reversed his cue stick and smashed the heavy end of it against the head of one fighter. The blood sprayed the wall, and the man went down in a boneless heap.

“I never did like that son of a bitch,” the cue stick-wielder said, then tossed the broken cue stick to the floor and walked to the rack, picking out another one.

The band never missed a beat.

Cole knew he had to get out of this joint. He was coming down with something. Flu, maybe. “Have a nice evening,” he said to the bartender.

“Whenever we’re here, they usually are,” the man replied strangely, a very mean look in his eyes.

The band was playing and singing some song about a Rock and Roll Ruby.

Cole made it to his unit and unlocked the door, falling into the seat. He slammed the door and locked it. “Jesus Christ!” the words exploded from his mouth. What the hell was this, the Twilight Zone? He set the long-neck bottle in the beverage holder and sighed heavily.

Cole sat for a time, listening to the music and calming himself. It was a joke, he finally concluded. The locals were having fun with the stranger. Had to be.

Cole stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and took out the change the bartender had given him. Sixty-five cents. Thirty-five-cent beer? He tossed the change into a section of the console between the firewall and the seat, and cranked the engine.

Cole backed out onto the highway and took one more look at the roadhouse.

But it was gone.

There was no music, no old cars and trucks, no building. The gravel parking lot was all grown over with weeds, and only a cracked concrete slab remained of the honky-tonk.

Cole put a shaking hand down to grab his long-neck and take a swig.

But the bottle was not there.

Cole felt his heart rate surge. He took several deep breaths and looked up and down the highway. No lights in sight. He pulled back into the parking lot. The roadhouse reappeared, the lot filled with old cars and trucks, the music loud from inside the joint.

He put his hand down for the bottle of beer and his fingers closed around the condensation-covered bottle. Cole took a deep pull and could not recall any beer ever tasting so good. He watched as the front door opened and a man was hurled outside, landing hard on the gravel. He did not move. The back of the man’s head was bloody, where he’d been hit with the cue stick. He looked dead.

“This is a nightmare,” Cole muttered. “Just a nightmare. This is not happening. Either that or I’ve got the flu and am hallucinating very badly.”

He sat in the parking lot and drank his beer, while the loud rockabilly music wafted all around him. He waited for a sheriff’s department car to show up. After a few minutes, he decided that no one had called the police. Cole drained his bottle of beer and started his car, backing out of the parking lot and pointing in the direction from which he’d come. There was a town just a few miles back. He’d call in the incident from there.

But when he looked to his right, the club was not there. No lights blazed, nobody on the ground, and as before, the parking lot was overgrown in a maze of weeds.

“Goddamnit!” Cole yelled, spinning the steering wheel and once more turning into the old parking lot.

Nothing happened. He drove right up to the edge of the concrete slab and stopped, cutting off his lights and killing the engine. He reached down to touch the empty bottle of beer, but it was gone. He fumbled in the tray for the change he’d received from his dollar bill. The tray was empty.

Cole sighed heavily. “I gotta find a room for the night. I’m sicker than I thought.”

He spent the night in a motel in Blytheville. When he awakened the next morning, he felt fine, the strange events of the preceding night only an unpleasant memory, brought on, he was sure, by that bad cheeseburger he’d eaten earlier in the day. He showered, shaved, and felt much better. After breakfast, he paused at the checkout desk.

“Back down the road about ten miles or so, there used to be a honky-tonk there. What happened to it?”

“On the right-hand side heading south?”

“Yes.”

“Burned down years ago. Golly, I guess . . . oh, fifteen years ago. Maybe longer than that. Most people around here were glad it did.”

“Tough place, huh?”

“I guess. I was too young to go there. But I’ve heard some really wild tales about it.”

Cole pulled out and headed north.

The prisoner Cole picked up was a small, very pleasant-speaking man in his late fifties. “He won’t give you any problems, Deputy,” Cole was told. “We just received word this morning that he’s been given a grant of immunity in exchange for his testimony in another case. As soon as he testifies, he walks out a free man.”

“With that kind of deal, it would be kind of stupid for him to get cute on the last leg home now, wouldn’t it?” Cole said with a smile.

Like many prisoners Cole had transported over the long years behind a badge, this one was, at least on the surface, a likeable man, and possessing above average intelligence. As they approached Cairo, Illinois, the man really started talking, lost in memories.

“I used to know every joint between here and Jackson, Mississippi, Captain. But most of your real good roadhouses were between here and West Memphis, Arkansas.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Really. I know, I made them all. I used to be a hell of a gambler. There were back rooms in most of those clubs, and the games got pretty damned high-stakes, let me tell you.”

And tell it he did, entertaining Cole with all sorts of stories. At Sikeston, Missouri, Cole cut off of the interstate and took Highway 61.

“I’m glad you did that, Captain,” the prisoner said. “Lots of old roadhouses on this stretch of highway.”

“So I’ve heard. You knew them along this stretch, too, huh?”

“Everyone of them.”

“Well, I had another reason for taking 61.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

At New Madrid, Missouri, Cole stuck the man in the county jail and slept for six hours, then was on the road again.

“That was mighty cold of you, Captain,” the man bitched, once they were back on the road.

“What’d you expect, Holiday Inn?”

The prisoner thought about that for a moment, then chuckled. “You’re right. You want to hear more about the clubs?”

“Sure.”

The man talked about the clubs in New Madrid County, then about the club where Elvis played when he was just getting started, here in the bootheel of Missouri. “Used to call that one the Bloody Bucket. I remember it well.”

They crossed over into Arkansas, and the man fell silent.

“What’s the matter?” Cole asked.

“Club used to be right down here a few miles. Brings back bad memories for me.”

Cole felt a cold tingle in the pit of his stomach. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Over the years it had a lot of names. Stateline, the Spur, the Cowboy Club. I remember it as the G & K Club. Locals called it the Gun and Knife Club, all the shootings and killings that went on there. Mean bunch of bastards hung out there. And their women weren’t any better.”

Cole felt slightly sick at his stomach as he recalled the sign over the club entrance in his feverish hallucinating. G & K Club.

“You sound like it’s personal to you.”

“It is. My first cousin was killed there. Man hit him on the back of the head with a cue stick. Fractured his skull; drove bits of bone into his brain. He died right there in the parking lot. Those sorry bastards and bitches just tossed him out the front door and left him. Oh, my cousin was no saint; he was mean as a snake himself. It’s just . . . well, kin, you know?”

Cole didn’t trust his voice to speak. He nodded his head. Clearing his throat, he asked, “You remember the date that happened?”

“Sure. October 1957.”

Cole never mentioned his strange experiences at the roadhouse to anyone for at least two reasons: He was not at all certain the events had actually happened, and he didn’t want his friends on the sheriffs department to think he was a nut. But Cole never forgot that night at the G & K Club, either. He just tucked it carefully away in the back of his mind.

Fall drifted into winter and the new year came and went. A month before Cole was due to retire, the sheriff walked by his desk and dropped an envelope in front of him. Pausing, he said, “Law enforcement convention in Memphis next week. You go. Hobnob with real people for the last time before retirement.”

Before Cole could state his objections, and that he really didn’t want to go, the sheriff had walked on. Cole studied the brochure and decided the convention might be fun after all. And for a fact, it would be the last time he could get together with like-minded people and talk shop. He would miss that.

Whether the department is large or small, cops belong to a closed club. You don’t wear a badge, you don’t get in. Period. If it’s a town of any size, cops have their own watering holes, and much of the time, cops associate with other cops. Us against Them mentality—it comes with the territory and goes with the job.

Suddenly, Cole began to look forward to the convention. But getting away from the office and having fun was not among the reasons.

Cole wandered around the hotel until he located some law enforcement people from north Arkansas and southern Missouri. They greeted him warmly and immediately made room for him in their little klatch. After listened to this and that for a few minutes, Cole said, “I was through your part of the country a few months back, hauling a prisoner from Illinois. That ol’ boy told me some pretty wild tales about the old roadhouses in this part of the country.”

The cops all smiled and nodded their heads, one sheriff from north Arkansas saying, “He was right about that, friend. Back in the fifties and early sixties, there were some wooly buggers along highway 61.”

“Any unsolved cases that might involve those roadhouses?” Cole asked innocently.

There was a moment of reflection, then the cops all started nodding their heads affirmatively. “Both directly and indirectly,” a deputy from the bootheel of Missouri said.

“Disappearances, mostly,” a deputy from Arkansas said. “Why?”

“I’m going to retire soon. I’ve been thinking about writing a book about these old roadhouses.” Cole lied easily; many cops are good at that, too. “And maybe some bizarre crimes that might be linked to them. You guys mind if I come visit and look through the old files?”

They all assured him he’d be welcome any time. Then they joked about Cole retiring so young, exchanged business cards, and soon the group broke up, the men—and it was mostly men there—wandered off to seek out old friends and make new ones.

“Bullshit!” the female voice spoke from just behind him and to his right.

Cole turned to face the voice. “I beg your pardon?”

The face behind the voice was interesting. She was not beautiful in the classic sense, but she was very attractive. Light brown hair, hazel eyes. Very nice figure. About five-five, Cole guessed. Her nametag read KATTI BAYLOR. She met his gaze and wasn’t about to blink first.

“That was a very interesting opening line, Miss Baylor. I don’t believe I’ve ever been approached with that particular phrase.”

“It’s Ms., thank you. And I don’t believe that book business.”

“Wonderful,” Cole said drily. “Did you bring Gloria with you?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Were you slinging that bullshit at me, Ms. Baylor?”

“Who is Gloria?”

“Steinem.”

“You’re pretty sharp for a flatfoot.”

Cole laughed at that. “Ms. Baylor, the term flatfoot went out years ago. I believe it was replaced by pig.” He studied her name tag and let his eyes drift to what lay just below the name tag. That was even more interesting. “You’re a reporter?”

“Freelance writer. Are you all through eyeballing my tits?”

Cole met her eyes. “I’m sort of old-fashioned, Ms. Baylor. I never thought profanity was very becoming for a lady.”

“Who the hell said I was a lady?” She studied Cole. Just a shade under six feet tall. Solid. Brown hair specked with gray. His eyes were so blue they were almost black. Big hands and thick wrists. Trim waist. No pretty boy, but handsome in a very rugged sort of way. A lot of character in the face.

Cole smiled. “We’re really getting off to a lousy start, Ms. Baylor. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

She stared at him for a moment. “No. But I can buy you one. And the name is Katti.”

She was lost. And these damned Arkansas back roads were the pits. If they were marked, she couldn’t find the signs. She should have stayed on the interstate, but she wanted to see that historical marker and was pressed for time. She hadn’t found the marker and now it was dark and she was all turned around. Then she saw the lights just up ahead and her spirits lifted. Civilization at last.

Pulling into the poorly lighted gravel parking lot, she didn’t notice that all the cars and. . .