The Lost Boys Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Interlude

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Interlude

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Epilogue

  LOST-BOYS

  A novel by Craig Shaw Gardner Based on a screenplay by Janice Fischer & James Jeremias and Jeffrey Boam Story by Janice Fischer & James Jeremias

  BANTAM BOOKS TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND

  A BANTAM BOOK ISBN 0 553 17583 1

  First publication in Great Britain

  Published by arrangement with Warner Bros. Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Bantam edition published 1988 Copyright © 1987 Warner Bros. Inc.

  Bantam Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd., 61-63 Uxbridge Road, Ealing, London W5 5SA, in Australia by Transworld Publishers (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., 15-23 Helles Avenue, Moorebank, NSW 2170, and in New Zealand by Transworld Publishers (N.Z.) Ltd., Cnr. Moselle and Waipareira Avenues, Henderson, Auckland.

  Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Limited Member of BPCC pic Aylesbury Bucks

  Prologue

  Let me tell you about Santa Carla.

  It’s right out there on the Pacific. You can stand out on the beach at night and look at the surf breaking in the moonlight and swear that it’s one of the most beautiful places on this earth. On summer nights the kids—and there’s a lot of kids in Santa Carla—build bonfires on the beach, a strip of leaping orange and yellow lights as far as the eye can see. That’s pretty, too, as long as the kids aren’t being too rowdy that particular night.

  That’s one problem with Santa Carla; the town isn’t really big on peace and quiet. In fact, turn around, away from the beach and the beautiful view, and you’ll see the cause of all that racket, the real center of town.

  The Boardwalk.

  That’s right. There it is, all that music and all that noise, the beating heart of Santa Carla. You can walk up there, past the three-tries-for-a-dollar booths with the hucksters urging you to win a big teddy bear for the little lady, past the food stands where the kids can load up on hot dogs and cotton candy, past the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Giant Mouse, and the Snake, where the kids have a chance to lose what they just ate, up past the giant Ferris wheel, so brightly lit that it takes the place of the stars in the nighttime sky. Then you come to the carousel. The kids call it a “merry-go-round,” but what do they know? You want to learn something else about Santa Carla, that’s the next place you go.

  Besides, that’s where the whole story started, right inside there.

  It’s a nice carousel. Real, carved wooden horses, and a calliope that plays old-fashioned songs, the type some old fogies I know would call “the kind they don’t write anymore.” Of course, they probably never wrote piano rolls for “Sunshine of Your Love” or “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” and the kids don’t seem to mind. Somehow, when you’re riding up and down on a wooden horse, you want to hear how Casey would waltz with a strawberry blond. Know what I mean?

  This particular night, there was a certain bunch of kids riding the carousel. You’d recognize this bunch anywhere around Santa Carla, if not from their Mohawks and shaved heads and “punk” tattoos, then from the way they dressed. You know, their Day-Glo T-shirts with “My Beach, My Wave” scrawled across the chests, and their wet suits and surfing tank tops. This is one of the big gangs around Santa Carla.

  They call themselves the “Surf Nazis.” Charming name, don’t you think?

  Well, they laughed and jumped around the moving carousel, jostling the other riders, letting all the kids know that their gang owned this ride. Their leader, Greg, just leaned back on one of the carousel’s benches and watched it all, a half smile on his face, his arm around Shelly, his girl. The calliope started to play “Waltzing Matilda.”

  And then the Lost Boys walked in. Another gang, a lot better dressed than the Surf Nazis, but still a gang. Their leader, a tall, blond fellow named David, walked up and got right on the slowly moving carousel. The ride was almost over. The other Lost Boys followed him on. And as they spun around, Shelly managed to smile in David’s direction.

  David smiled back and nodded his head slightly in greeting, a polite gesture, the sort of friendly nod you might see a hundred times in the course of a day.

  Greg didn’t think so. He scowled at his girlfriend and jumped up from his seat. He took a couple steps in the Boys’ direction, but the other gang was moving too. No, not to face Greg. He realized they were going to go by him as if he weren’t even there.

  Greg stood up and said something that wasn’t exactly flattering. He shoved the Lost Boy out of the way.

  But now David was there. The calliope played on. Waltzing Matilda. The Surf Nazis joined Greg. Waltzing Matilda. The Lost Boys closed ranks as well. If the Surf Nazis wanted a fight, they were ready. Won’t you go a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.

  Greg stared at David. David took a half step forward. He found a nightstick pressed against his Adam’s apple. David let his eyes follow the nightstick down to a beefy hand, attached to the body of Big Ed. All three hundred pounds of Big Ed, a security guard with no love for Surf Nazis or Lost Boys.

  The carousel ground to a halt. The music stopped. The ride was over.

  Big Ed’s mouth was small for his head. When he opened it, his voice was soft after the calliope’s “Waltzing Matilda.” “I told you to stay off the Boardwalk.”

  David stared at the guard, not moving for a long moment. Big Ed’s eyes were small, too, but the anger there made up for what they lacked in size.

  David smiled and turned his head toward the Lost Boys. “Come on,” he said to the others, “let’s pull.”

  He walked away, and the Lost Boys followed. Big Ed turned to the others.

  “You too,” he barked in Greg’s face. “Off the Boardwalk. And don’t come back!”

  Greg stared at the guard, looking for a moment as if he might spit in Big Ed’s face. He turned away instead and walked slowly toward the door, with the other gang members following. He waited until he was out of Big Ed’s hearing before he mumbled something that made the other Surf Nazis laugh. Then they, too, left the carousel house.

  It was getting late. Time to shut down the hot dog booths, the three-for-a-dollar come-ons, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Ferris wheel, and the Giant Mouse. Big Ed watched the banks of lights go out one by one as the amusement park closed down for the night.

  Damn those gangs! Ed cursed them all as he opened his locker and retrieved his lunch pail. None of those kids were any good! Not that Ed hated kids. He had a couple of his own, after all. It was those gangs, that was it.

  He knew how to handle those gangs. If only they’d let him carry a gun. Shoot through a couple of those snotnosed Surf Nazis and you’d be surprised how fast the rest of them would disappear. That would be the end of your gang problem on the Boardwalk.
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  But he’d never get a gun, just like he’d never be able to pass the police exam. Life just wasn’t fair, that was all. Lunch pail in hand, Big Ed slammed his locker closed and headed for the parking lot.

  Three in the morning and it was almost quiet in Santa Carla. The only sounds were Big Ed’s boots crunching on the gravel as he walked the length of the empty parking lot to reach his car, and the soft grumble of his voice as he cursed out all the kids who parked here in the evening so that he had to leave his car way out here. The last thing he wanted to do was take a walk like this at three a.m. He needed to get some sleep. Damn all these kids, anyways!

  Big Ed heard another noise. At first he thought it was the wind, rushing in suddenly off the beach. But he heard something else too. There were other sounds behind the wind, a high, screeching sound, like chalk skittering across a blackboard, and a whispering, like a hundred voices softly calling his name.

  Big Ed looked up. His eyes widened with surprise. He opened his mouth to scream.

  Before he could scream, he was gone. His lunch pail clattered across the worn pavement, the only sign that the three-hundred-pound security guard had ever crossed this parking lot.

  I know just what you’ll say next. Where could he go? A man of that size just can’t disappear. And yet the only faces you would see on the Boardwalk just then were the painted ones that leer from the sides fo the fun house. The beach was deserted too. All the bonfires had gone out. The only sound left was the lapping of the waves.

  But then, on the beach, there was another noise. A rush of wind, a screeching, a whispering. Something fell with a thud into the wet sand.

  If it wasn’t for the uniform, you wouldn’t know that this pitiful thing on the beach had anything in common with Big Ed. What had once been a beefy security guard was now nothing but a rag doll, nothing left beneath his clothes but bones and skin. There was a big hole in his neck, the flesh ripped clean away. Only a few bits of tattered meat still clung to the bone.

  But it wasn’t a messy corpse. Not really. It was all dried out. All the blood was gone. Every drop.

  Big Ed’s lifeless eyes stared into the sky as the wind and whispering faded into the night.

  It was quiet at last in Santa Carla.

  One

  “Santa Carla, here we come!” his mother shouted for perhaps the tenth time. Her short red hair blew back from her face as she turned her head around, trying to get her son to share her enthusiasm.

  But the thought of Santa Carla didn’t make Michael Emerson the least bit excited. He slumped in the backseat and stared halfheartedly out the window at the sky. Maybe, he thought, he should sit up and take a look at the coastline flying by. His younger brother, Sam, was sitting up front with his designer clothes and designer hair, perfectly happy sharing the front passenger seat with their dog, Nanook. Both dog and Sam sat with their heads out the window, watching the world go by.

  Michael knew he should look too. There might be someplace he could take his motorcycle, maybe even someplace out of the way he could show to a girl. Somehow, though, he didn’t even have the energy to sit up. He didn’t really care. That was it. Right now he really didn’t care about much of anything.

  His life was over. That was it. No matter what his mother said about moving on and finding new adventures, he felt like he’d left his life behind him in Phoenix. All his friends were there. He’d been doing all right in school. And there was Laurie. They weren’t really close yet, had only gone out together a couple times. Somehow, though, being with Laurie had been special, so much different from any of the other girls he had dated. When he had thought of taking a girl out on his bike a moment before, In- realized he had thought of Laurie.

  Now she was gone, part of a life Michael would never see again. Why did his mother and father have to go through their divorce? Oh, realistically, Michael knew. He had been there for all the fights, after all, had seen his father disappear for two weeks without a word, had sat with his mother all those nights that she could do nothing hut cry. But why did they have to move away?

  Michael knew that too. His mother had explained it to him until he had practically memorized the words. Even after their little scandal his father was still a pretty important person in their part of town. There was no way they could stay in Phoenix without running into him. He didn’t want the kids, and Mom didn’t want him. So Michael and Mom were on their way to Santa Carla, along with brother Sam, dog Nanook, and all their worldly goods.

  Their grandfather lived in Santa Carla. From now on they would stay with him. That was fine with his mother, Michael guessed. And his brother was happy as long as he could buy his comic books and watch his brat-pack movie. Michael sighed and sank lower into his seat. Was he ever going to find anyplace that he really belonged?

  The car groaned as it started up another incline. Michael glanced back at the U-Haul trailer they dragged behind them. This old Land Rover of their mother’s could barely (like the extra weight. “Santa Carla, here we come!” his mother kept shouting. With the way this broken-down bus was acting, “Santa Carla or bust!” was more like it.

  They drove by a group of stores his mother seemed to recognize: a convenience store, a beauty salon, a post office that needed a coat of paint. “We’re getting close!” She called over her shoulder.

  Sam fawned and leaned toward the window. “What’s that smell?”

  Their mother laughed and took a deep breath. “Ocean air!” she proclaimed.

  “Smells like something died,” Sam replied, looking slightly nauseated.

  Their mother threw her hands up in the air, then quickly placed them back on the steering wheel.

  “Guys,” she began slowly, “I know the last year hasn’t been easy, but I think you’re really going to like living in Santa Carla!”

  Sam glanced back at his brother. He still looked slightly nauseated. Michael shrugged hopelessly. He sat up enough to look out the window.

  Their mother paused for a minute, waiting for a response.

  “How about some music?” she asked at last. She reached over and turned on the radio. Steel guitar whined from the speaker while a deep male voice lamented how he’d lost his wife because of whiskey.

  Sam turned back to her.

  “Keep going,” he instructed.

  She turned the dial. The Thousand and One Strings played a Paul McCartney song.

  “Keep going!” Sam insisted even more urgently.

  Their mother turned the dial again. The Young Rascals sang about sitting around on summer afternoons.

  “Keep going!” Sam and Michael shouted in unison.

  Their mother laughed. “Wait a moment! This one’s from my era!” She began to sing along.

  “Groooovin’!”

  Sam looked back at Michael again. Michael knew what he was thinking. What was this nonsense? What did you do when you were ‘groovin’,’ anyway?

  They turned back to their mother.

  “Keep going!” This time their voices held a hint of desperation.

  The three of them laughed as their mother twisted the dial again, finding a decent rock and roll station at last.

  Guitar and drums, a song about being on the highway. Michael sat up in the backseat and smiled despite himself, gently hitting his leg in time to the radio. Now this was music!

  “Here we are!” his mother prompted.

  Michael looked up to see them rapidly approaching a huge billboard. On one edge of the large blue sign was a jumping swordfish, on the other a bikini-clad girl with a beach ball. Between the two were the words: welcome to

  SANTA CARLA.

  So they were finally here. Michael kept watching the billboard as if those four words and the pictures surrounding them would give him some clue about his new home, as if they would speak up and tell him just what he should do to settle into this new town: how to make friends, how to fit in, how to be happy and forget about other people in other places.

  Michael stared at the sign until the Land
Rover passed it by, then turned to look out the back window at the sign’s other side. Somebody had spray-painted something in red across the billboard’s rear. It took Michael a moment to make out the words: murder capital of the world.

  “What?” Michael turned back to his mother and brother, but they were both facing forward. He was the only one who had seen the sign. Sam pointed at a brightly colored storefront. His mother laughed.

  Michael looked out the back window again, but the sign had disappeared with distance.

  Welcome to Santa Carla.

  Murder Capital of the World?

  Two

  Lucy Emerson watched two small girls bouncing on the trampolines. Up, down, up, down. It certainly was busy here. Santa Carla was a real, old-fashioned summer resort, full of flashing signs and moving bodies. In the last five blocks they had passed pizza joints, surfers, bikini shops, bikers, ice-cream parlors, and about two miles’ worth of “beach parking,” which got a dollar more expensive with every block that they got closer to the beach. And when they needed gas, they had pulled into a self-service gas station that also managed to rent surfboards, and had a trampoline ride on the side. Whatever brought in the money, Lucy supposed.

  That’s something else they were going to need in the near future: money. She watched the electronic numbers multiply on the gas pump as Michael filled their gas tank and imagined what little money she still had flying from her purse to vanish in thin air. She shook her head. She was being silly. A Land Rover certainly wasn’t the most economical vehicle for gas mileage. Still, it had gotten them to Santa Carla in one piece. She worried too much. Now that they were about to start a new life, she should concentrate on the good things for a while.

  Somehow, though, the bad things kept coming back to haunt her. Her friends said it was natural; her divorce had just been finalized, after all. It was a divorce she’d rather forget about, too; every messy little detail. Once Lance had done those things to her, she never even wanted to think about him again, either. Her friends had all said she had let him off easy. She supposed she had. She certainly could have gotten more money than the minimal child support the judge had awarded her. But all she really wanted was for the divorce to be over and done with. It was too painful any other way.