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Leaving Louis’s office, it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet taken Keith Conway into consideration, and that yes, he might be a problem. 

But had Keith Conway even noticed Diane Parker?

My answer to that question was not long in coming.

“Hey, Stevie!” I heard someone shout. 

Speak of the devil. Or Keith Conway. Scant difference between the two.

Keith worked back in the kitchen area. I could see his tall, broad-shouldered frame between the metal shelves that the kitchen crew used to supply the customer service staff with cooked menu items, almost all of them fried. 

Keith’s long blond hair was tied back in a hairnet. He was smiling sardonically at me, accenting that dimpled chin of his, which I found ridiculous, but which I had once heard a girl at West Clermont describe as “the likeness of an ancient Greek god.” 

This same girl was quite intelligent. (How many high school students, when pushed for a metaphor, go instinctively to classical mythology, after all?) And I would have thought her amply capable of seeing past Keith Conway’s superficial charms. But I still had much to learn—or at least to accept—about such matters.

“Come back here,” Keith said, beckoning to me. He was standing over one of the fryers, tending a batch of the uniformly cut, uniformly cooked French fries that have always been a signature staple of McDonald’s.

I was torn. I should really have proceeded directly to my cash register. But I also wanted to hear what Keith Conway had to say. Ordinarily, I regarded Keith as a noisome presence to be avoided. But now I was in intelligence-gathering mode. 

The other two cashiers on duty had been watching me while I was talking to Louis. They were watching me now, too, as I talked to Keith Conway.

“Hey, Steve,” Jenny Tierney said, pulling some coins from her register’s cash tray to give to a customer. “Come on. We’re backing up here.” 

Jenny had just graduated from South Clermont High School. I didn’t know her well, and that was fine with me. Jenny had a reputation for being something of a tattletale, a goody-two-shoes who was always telling other people what to do. 

But in this instance she wasn’t being unreasonable: I looked out into the dining area and saw that there was, indeed, a line backing up behind both of the two cash registers that were currently in operation. 

“I’ll be right there,” I said. And then I stepped around the shelves and back into the kitchen area.

In contemporary parlance, Keith and I were what might be called “frenemies”. We had known each other forever, really—ever since our days of elementary school and tee-ball. But we were like oil and water together, and both of us knew it. We had never come to blows; and we maintained an external pretense of civility. We were teenage boys, however, and that pretense of civility occasionally cracked. 

As soon as I walked back into the kitchen area, two of Keith’s sycophants immediately fixed their attention on me, clearly interested in what was about to happen next. Keith was the unofficial leader of the guys in the kitchen on the night shift. 

Jonesey, a seventeen year-old who attended South Clermont, diverted his attention from his fryer to fix his gaze on his leader. Jonesey—whose actual name was Albert Jones—would seemingly miss no opportunity to curry favor with Keith. 

The other Keith Conway follower, a chubby West Clermont junior named Scott Thomas, was watching and listening, too. He was chopping unions on a metal table near the fryers, but that work was paused as I stepped back into the kitchen. 

“How are you doin’, Stevie?” Keith asked.

“Excellent,” I said. “Never better.” 

My mother called me Stevie, and that was fine. But when Keith adopted the diminutive form of my name, it was usually because he was about to annoy me. 

“I guess you’ve seen the new girl,” Keith said, jumping right to the heart of the matter. “Diane.”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t seen her.” I hadn’t yet, after all.

Keith made a noise with his lips that suggested I was lying. Scott Thomas and Jonesey simpered at their master, and sneered at me. 

“Don’t tell me you don’t think she’s cute,” Keith insisted. 

“Have you even heard me, Keith? I just got here. I haven’t seen her yet.”

“Well, when you do, you’re going to think she’s cute. And you shouldn’t get your hopes up. That girl is sweet on me, I’m telling you. She’s going to be taking a ride in the Love Machine any day now.”

This prompted much laughter and sniggering from the red-haired Jonesy, as well as the chubby Scott.

Keith drove a black 1971 Trans Am. He constantly referred to it as his “Love Machine”. 

And not entirely without reason. Plenty of girls found Keith attractive. Not only was he a big blond guy with an attitude. He occupied a niche between jock and outlaw that was uniquely possible in an environment like Clermont County. 

Keith played tight end for the West Clermont football team. He was also fond of smoking weed, and binge drinking. Keith had been arrested at least once for drunk driving. He saw no contradiction between these two modes of behavior. 

And many girls—including some otherwise smart ones—found this combination irresistibly appealing. 

“Steve—come on!” I heard Jenny Tierney shout from the cashiers’ area. “We need some help here.”

“I’ve got to get to work, Keith,” I said. “Later.”

Chapter 29

Table of contents

Today a regular reader of this blog asked me for my opinion about Wattpad, and whether I would ever consider posting any content there.

To cut right to the chase: I have nothing against Wattpad, but my content would be a bad fit on the site.

I’ve visited Wattpad. (I even have a member login.) Everything on Wattpad seems to be written for teenagers by teenagers–especially teenage girls.

I think it’s great that the younger generation is taking an active interest in storytelling (as opposed to the mind-numbing white noise of social media), and that they have an online place to practice their skills, and display their work.

I also think it’s best if people my age stay away from there. I graduated from high school 33 years ago, after all.

The writer should know his place; and my place isn’t Wattpad.

The Sunoco station was a glass-paneled square building on a small parking lot. This was June, and the longest day of the year was fast approaching. At a little after 5:30 p.m., the sun was only beginning to edge toward the horizon. The windowed walls of the Sunoco station were lit up with reflected sunlight.

I parked at the edge of the parking lot, not at the gas pumps. I walked into the station, where a lone man around my father’s age was seated on a stool behind the counter. He was the only one minding the station. This he was doing while reading the sports section of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

I could only see the balding dome of the clerk’s head over the top of his newspaper. He had hair that was going grey, and receding from every possible angle.

The clerk had heard me come in, but he made a point of keeping his newspaper up. Yes, this was an hourly employee who was only putting in time. There were plenty of teenage employees like that, of course; but not every employee with a poor attitude was under the age of twenty-five. (Same thing now, as then.)

The store area of the gas station consisted of multiple rows of free-standing metal shelves. There was no signage to indicate what was shelved where. I supposed that I could have started at the front, and worked my way through every aisle and level of shelf. But I didn’t have that kind of time.

“Could you tell me where the oil is?” I asked. There might have been an edge to my voice. Maybe just a little one.

“Shelf closest to the window. Near the end of the aisle. Right side. Bottom shelf.”

The clerk delivered all of these instructions without looking up from his newspaper.

“Gee, thanks a lot,” I said.

The clerk lowered his newspaper for a second. He looked at me over his bifocal reading glasses. He pointedly glared.

Then he raised his newspaper again.

At least the oil was where he said it would be. The Sunoco station didn’t stock Pennzoil, but it did carry Quaker State. Just as good.

The clerk spoke to me as little as possible, and repeatedly glared, as he rang up my purchase and took my money.

What a dick, I thought, heading out to the parking lot, my quart of 10W-30 in hand.

I popped the hood and poured a quart of oil into the Bonneville. It was a maneuver with which I was well familiar by now. I removed a rag that I had placed in the footwell of the rear passenger seat. I used the rag to wipe the dipstick clean, then I checked to make sure that I had enough oil.

I did. For the time being. Luckily, it was a slow leak. I would be okay tonight. Possibly through tomorrow. By Monday I would likely need more oil.

I slammed the hood shut, and I happened to look over at the little patch of grass just beyond the parking lot, to my left.

And I saw the hoofprints.

A little chill went up my spine, defying the late-day heat.

The coincidences were stacking up.

I knelt down and examined the hoofprints in detail, just as I had done at the Pantry Shelf.

Once again, the hoofprints were slightly larger than normal. Growing up out on the fringes between the suburbs and the country, I knew what horse hoofprints were supposed to look like.

Not like this.

There was black gunk around the edges of each hoofprint. I could smell the foul odor, redolent of death and decay.

I was grappling with the weight of so many coincidences, trying to find a logical answer.

Maybe someone has been riding a horse, I thought—a normal Quarter Horse or Morgan—in the area.

If only a witness could tell me that he had seen a regular man or woman on horseback, their animal perfectly ordinary and mundane. If someone could tell me that, I could dismiss the black gunk around the edges of the indentations in the mud as unexplained but ignorable phenomena.

Because what was the alternative? 

The alternative was that I had to think seriously about Harry Bailey’s article. About the Headless Horseman.

According to Harry Bailey’s article, the Headless Horseman had recently been seen in Pennsylvania. I knew my American geography, and I knew that Pennsylvania lay directly to the east of Ohio.

If the Headless Horseman had last been seen in Pennsylvania, and he was moving west…

I needed assurance of a logical explanation for the hoofprints.

But who could provide me with such assurance? If that horse was ridden this close to the Sunoco station, who might have seen it, and its perfectly human rider?

Who else, perhaps, but that man behind the counter of the Sunoco station, the man reading the sports section of the Cincinnati Enquirer?

Chapter 26

Table of contents

Through Sunday the ebook version of Luk Thep: a horror novella will be reduced to $0.99.

I wrote this one I after I read this article in The Economist.

Amazon description:

The ‘luk thep’ are the ‘angel dolls’ or ‘spirit dolls’ of Thailand. Ultra-realistic in appearance, some Thais believe that each doll is infused with the spirit of a prematurely departed child. But are all child spirits benevolent?

Jane Hughes is an American executive who is visiting Thailand for a routine business trip. When she sees her Thai colleague’s ‘luk thep’ doll, she has dark premonitions about what is actually inside it. When Jane later receives the same doll as a gift, she begins a ghostly nightmare that will lead to terrifying supernatural encounters on two continents.

From the Author

(Excerpt from Chapter 5: “This is Lawan.”)

Jane looked closer, and now she saw that the small figure seated in the chair was only a doll, albeit a very realistic-looking one.

“She gave you quite a scare,” Khajee said with good humor. Jane noted Khajee’s use of the personal pronoun. Jane also noted that yes, indeed, the doll had given her quite a scare.

The corporate realm was not a world without fear. The cutthroat competitiveness of the global economy produced a macro-level fear of being downsized, “right-sized” out, or otherwise falling into obsolescence. Jane had not a protectionist bone in her body, but she couldn’t help feeling the occasional twinge of admiration-mixed-with-resentment toward her Asian colleagues: They worked so tirelessly, so efficiently. All of the jobs at TRX Automotive Thailand represented jobs that no longer existed in the United States. How long before her job, too, was outsourced to a more efficient Asian or Latin American rival?

Beneath the macro-level fears was the constant uneasiness about where you stood within the company hierarchy–not just the formal organization chart, but within the ever-shifting hierarchy of senior management favor. This was not simply a matter of doing your job well, but of maintaining the outward perception that you were doing your job well.

Although Jane was single and had no dependents, she had much invested in her career. She knew that despite her undeniable hard work, she was fortunate to be where she was at her age. Jane did not want to lose what she had gained. She wanted to continue moving forward.

Anxiety about such matters occasionally kept Jane up at night. But the fear of the genuinely unknown was mostly alien to her existence. No one ever discussed haunted houses or vampires at a corporate meeting, even during the informal pre-meeting banter. To express an interest in the macabre would be (yet another) way to sideline your career prospects. People would think you were unhinged.

Perhaps that was why Jane was momentarily uncomfortable over her reaction to the doll. She now knew, rationally, that the doll was just a doll. But it made her uneasy, nonetheless.

“It looks very realistic,” Jane said. “Like a real little girl.”

Khajee nodded. “Each one of them is unique. They aren’t cheap.”

Khajee then mentioned the price she had paid in baht, the Thai currency. It was an amount that corresponded to about $800 American dollars.

“A lot to pay for a doll,” Jane blurted out. Then she realized the potential rudeness of her observation. “I–I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that remark.”

But it was a lot to pay for a doll, realistic-looking or not.

“That’s okay,” Khajee said. “But this is a special kind of doll, you see. And I’m not only talking about the way it looks. The doll is called a luk thep. That means ‘angel doll’ or ‘spirit doll’. They perform a ceremony for each doll at the plant where the dolls are made. And then each doll is supposed to be inhabited by the spirit of a deceased child.”

“You mean the doll is–possessed?” Jane asked. Khajee gave a puzzled look in response. “I mean–haunted,” Jane clarified.

“Well, yes,” Khajee replied, after giving the matter some thought. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it, though a Buddhist would see the matter differently than someone from the West, you understand.”

Jane nodded noncommittally. A lapsed Roman Catholic, there were many holes in her knowledge of her own spiritual and religious traditions. She had only the vaguest grasp of Buddhist beliefs.

Didn’t the Buddhists believe in reincarnation? Jane was almost certain that the Buddhists did. Perhaps that would make them more comfortable with the notion of a ‘haunted doll.’

But still, even a Buddhist would have to ask certain inevitable questions. For starters: What kind of a spirit would want to inhabit a doll, and to what purpose?

“It certainly looks realistic,” Jane said, repeating her prior observation, not knowing what else to say.

“Her name is Lawan,” Khajee said, as if correcting Jane. Khajee smiled self-consciously. “Yes. I named her. Most luk thep mothers do. I suppose you’re wondering why an adult woman would want to buy a doll and name it.”

Jane couldn’t avoid an involuntary flinch at Khajee’s description of herself as the doll’s ‘mother’.

“I suppose I would wonder,” Jane admitted.

**

If you think you might like to read Luk Thep, now is a good time to get it. Next week, the price will go back to $3.99. (Still cheap, but not dirt cheap.)