Psycho-Paths

by Robert Bloch

  Meet the Master of Mayhem

  and have him personally autograph

  a copy of his latest shocker. . .

  DEATH DEVILS!

  She was suddenly flushed and shaking. What a marvelous opportunity—the chance to meet a genius whose mind spawned epics of terror, who understood the true power of darkness and death. Besides, she’d have a brand-new Carter book to read. She’d heard he was working on a new one, and here it was. What an opportunity!

  She checked her watch: 3 P.M. Still plenty of time. The Magic Mall was just two blocks away, opposite the Federal Building. Easy walking distance. Should she go home first and shower? Put on fresh makeup, change her clothes?

  By the time she was in high school, Daddy had moved to Kansas City and she saw him only on vacations. He looked worse each time, drinking the way he did. His face began to look melted, like the figures in the museum.

  Mom enjoyed being single again; she dated a new man every weekend, and most of them spent the night. Her mom told her she felt “free.”

  Now, as a grown woman, she didn’t see her mom anymore. Didn’t care to. Didn’t love her. Didn’t love her daddy, either. As a child, she’d been just one more thing for them to argue over, an object more than a person. So there wasn’t any love among the three of them. She knew her parents never really gave a damn about her, and the feeling was mutual.

  She had a pretty face and a sexy body (terrific boobs at thirteen!) and guys liked her. She never dated boys her own age. At fifteen, she was sleeping with a thirty-five-year-old man. Young boys were boring, and they never had enough money to give her a good time.

  She was hit on constantly—at the movies, in stores, at the shopping mall, and often at the gym where she worked out to maintain her figure. She was obsessive when it came to her figure; if she gained a pound or two she’d live on water and grapefruit until the extra weight had vanished.

  She was puzzled about why she could never seem to fall in love. Maybe it was because there had never been any love in her childhood and she didn’t know how to love someone. She felt desire, sexual excitement, but that wasn’t the same.

  She began to see men as predatory animals, on the hunt for physical delights, using her to obtain these delights. Just an object—as she’d always been from childhood.

  She hated being used.

  The great thing about horror movies was that death solved all the problems. The monster came along and chopped everybody up and got away neat to come back in the next picture and do it all over again. As she watched, she always cheered the monster on. Oh, yeah! Do it to them! Go, big Daddy! Slice ’n’ dice!

  Love was an ax, or a knife, or an ice pick.

  She especially enjoyed watching Freddy in that Nightmare on Elm Street series, with his razor-gloved hand and his glittery pig eyes and fire-ravaged skin. Freddy was great! He liked to make little jokes before he slashed up his victims. He was a riot! Great sense of humor. He was always able to crack her up, the things he said. She’d laugh so hard sometimes the tears would come to her eyes—and then quite suddenly she’d be crying. She didn’t know why she did that, why she cried after laughing. But both things would happen at once. Weird.

  She liked to read horror books almost as much as seeing horror movies. Had a complete collection of Stephen King paperbacks. He was her favorite. In fact, his book The Shining was a whole lot scarier than the movie. In the movie you didn’t get to see those animals made out of bushes, didn’t get to see them come to life the way they did in the book. Now every time she walked by the high, trimmed hedge outside her building she imagined it was moving, growing teeth and eyes, getting ready to attack her. It was a scary feeling, but it was also kind of delicious.

  Of course, she knew it couldn’t really happen, that a hedge creature could never slash her flesh, so the fear was never tangible, never truly real.

  Still, it was a lot of fun to think about stuff like that.

  Beyond Stephen King, her second-favorite horror writer was Terry Carter. What a warm, happy name for the man called the Master of Mayhem. That’s how his publishers described him in the ads for his books: “Another Tour into Terror from the Master of Mayhem!”

  She’d read every one of his four best-sellers (devoured was more the word for it): Slash by Night, Slaughter Sisters, Bloodaxe, and The Nightstabbers. The last one was really frightening, about this gang of kids who started out human and gradually turned into alien things who slashed up everybody they met, then ate them, even their bones. There would just be this little pile of clothing left on the street for the cops to find. Certainly, it was Carter’s best novel, no doubt about that. When she read about gangs in the papers she always thought about the Nightstabbers.

  No. She couldn’t wait that long to meet him; even the short walk to the mall would be torture. Knowing that Terry Carter was waiting for her was enough to set her pulse racing.

  Questions burned in her mind. Could she lure him to her bed as she had lured so many others? Would he be attracted to her? Would her body serve to draw him to her as the fly is drawn to the web? It wouldn’t be enough, just meeting Terry Carter.

  Not nearly enough.

  B. Dalton was crowded as usual on a Saturday, and a line had formed at the rear of the store. Mostly women. Giggling nervously. Clutching their newly purchased copies of Death Devils. Waiting to get a personal autograph from the Master of Mayhem.

  The procedure was to pay for the book, then line up for an autograph. She couldn’t see what Terry Carter looked like; the line forked around a corner where he was seated at a desk. But that was all right. First she wanted to examine his latest book. She picked up a copy from the tall stack on the display table.

  The dust jacket pictured a blazing-eyed Hell Creature crouched over a screaming young woman who was spread-eagled on a lab table. The demon was in the process of clawing the clothes from her body. His fingernails were long daggers (like Freddy’s glove!) and he had already ripped away most of her blouse.

  She noted that the illustration was in good taste since a swirl of hellish steam obscured the victim’s naked breasts (you couldn’t see the nipples). The colors were bright and garish, emphasizing the red veins in the terrified girl’s popping eyes.

  Obviously, another Carter classic.

  When she rounded the fork in the line and got her first sight of Terry Carter she was shocked. And amused. Now she could understand why no photo of him had ever been used on the jackets of any of his books—because he was not what his readers would have expected. Terry Carter was anything but sinister. He was, in fact, a mild, gentle-faced man. Perhaps thirty-five. With a full head of dark hair and tranquil gray eyes. An easy-smiling man in a dark blue, neatly pressed suit and cream-colored button-down shirt, wearing a classic red striped tie. Could have been dressed for a Yale college reunion. No monster. Just a pleasant fellow who spoke softly and acknowledged each compliment with a warm smile.

  In the line, she’d been framing the words she would say to him; it was important that she make a strong initial impression.

  “Every one of your books is a masterwork, and your characters are totally alive on the page. I think you write better than Edgar Allan Poe.”

  He looked up at her with a degree of amazement, taking the copy of Death Devils from her slim-fingered hand. “That’s wonderful to hear,” he said, his voice smooth and deep-toned. “No one has ever told me I write better than Mr. Poe. I’d like to believe you!”

  And he gave her one of his warmest smiles.

  “Could you personalize the inscription?” she asked.

  “Of course.” His black felt-tip was poised above the title page. “I’ll need your name.”

  “Judy,” she said. “Just make it Judy.”

  And he wrote, in a flowing scrawl across the page: “Happy Nightmares to Judy, from Terry Carter.”

  At first, she hadn’t been certain she could pull it off, seducing this quiet man in his conservative suit—but as he handed the book to her their eye
s locked and held. And she knew he was hers. Her prize. All hers.

  To do with as she desired.

  It was in his eyes. His surrender was implicit—and total.

  She was waiting for him just after five outside B. Dalton, watching him shake hands with the store manager. The middle-aged woman was nervous and flustered; her smile was strained and her hand shook. Genius and fame can intimidate.

  He left the store carrying a scuffed leather briefcase, and she walked up to him just as he reached the elevators.

  “Remember me?” she said brightly. “Judy?”

  The warm smile. The flash of eyes. “Of course. How could I ever forget you?” he said. “The perceptive lady who tells me I write better than Poe.”

  “You’re on a book tour, right? One town to the next?”

  “That’s right. I’m due in Des Moines tomorrow afternoon.”

  “And you’re traveling alone?”

  “Unhappily, yes.”

  “And you have nowhere in particular to go? Tonight, I mean?”

  “Right again.” He smiled.

  “I think you deserve some company. I’m volunteering.” She canted her head, pushing a strand of hair away from her face. “I hate to see a man like you eating all alone.”

  He nodded, smiling again. “That’s very sweet of you, to care about a stranger.”

  “You’re no stranger to me,” she told him. “I’ve read all your books at least three times. I feel as if we’re old friends.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve always felt there’s a special bond between writer and reader. A bond of. . .intimacy, perhaps.”

  “Then you’ll let me take you to dinner?”

  “So long as you allow me to pay for it. My publisher is footing the bills for this tour.”

  “Okay, Mr. Carter, we’ve got a deal.” And she put out her hand.

  He took it gently, turning the handshake into a kiss. His lips pressed her fingers. “Terry. After all, as you point out, we’re really old friends.”

  She drove him to one of the town’s best seafood restaurants. (A friend at work had mentioned the place, giving it high marks.) They both admitted to a passion for sand dabs with hollandaise sauce.

  The food was superb.

  Over wine, at the end of the meal, she leaned toward him: “There’s something I’ve always wanted to know about you.”

  “Ah.” He tipped back his head. “Which is?”

  “Well. . .I’ve read all the bios on the dust jackets of your books, and I read that article on you in Writer’s Digest last year. . .”

  “I’m afraid I sounded a bit pompous in that one.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “It was a wonderful interview. I just wondered why you’ve never married. I know it’s none of my business, and very personal, but—”

  “Oh, I don’t mind talking about it. The truth is, I was, in fact, married once. To a girl I met in college. We fell in love and married right after graduation. But it didn’t last long.” His voice dropped. “She died in an accident. I’ve just found it too painful to discuss with interviewers, so I leave out that part of my life. At least for public consumption. Understand?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, pressing his hand across the table. “And I’m so glad you were willing to confide in me.”

  It was easy, getting him to stop at her place for a nightcap before he returned to his hotel. And it was easy to get him into bed.

  She was about to add the Master of Mayhem to her list of conquests.

  “I have something here in my purse for you,” she said. “I think it will be a surprise.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, reaching into his briefcase by the side of the bed. “But I have something I think will surprise you.”

  And he removed the hunting knife his father had given him on his sixteenth birthday and plunged it into her throat.

  Judy’s purse tipped sideways and the small vial of cocaine rolled to the floor.

  She bled a lot, but he didn’t mind. His wife had been like that, after he’d done her. A bleeder. And there were so many others along the way. A lot of blood.

  He was smiling when she died.

  Them

  They met in Des Moines where his tour took him next. She had driven there in the Honda after quitting her job with the law firm.

  She’d delivered her last victim to a garbage dump at the outskirts of town before she headed for Iowa. The police would eventually find the corpse, but there was no possible way to connect her to the murder. She was always careful about details. (She ascribed this to her astrological chart: out of ten major natal positions, she had seven in Virgo.)

  He had chopped up Judy’s body for easier transport and had buried her in a lime pit. The lime would take care of the body parts. As he boarded the plane for Des Moines he dismissed Judy from his thoughts. Well, not entirely, since he planned to use the entire incident in his next novel.

  Hemingway had expressed it beautifully: “Live it up, write it down.” Splendid advice for any professional writer. Maybe Terry Carter’s books were not great literature (he knew Judy was bullshitting him about Poe), but at least he wrote out of personal experience. His books were, at the very least, authentic. He’d dispatched more than a dozen women. Each one snuffed out in a different way. And with none of the murders connected to the mild, self-effacing author of best-selling novels.

  “Tell us, Mr. Carter, where on earth do you get all those weird, murderous ideas of yours?”

  “Oh, that’s an easy one to answer.” And he would smile warmly at the questioner. “I just go around killing people and then write it all down.”

  That answer always got a big laugh. A real crowd-pleaser. Then he’d follow it with a broad wink at his interviewer. A horror writer with a wry sense of humor; his fans loved him.

  The first thing he’d noticed about her, when they met in a downtown seafood restaurant (both of them waiting for a table), was the lovely burned-gold hair which reminded him of a lion’s mane. It occasioned his first words to her.

  “You have beautiful hair. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Not at all.” Her smile was radiant. “And you, sir, have wonderfully soft gray eyes.”

  “So long as you drop the ‘sir,’ and call me Terry, I think we’re off to a great start.”

  “Terry.” Her voice was husky. “A name to match your eyes.”

  And she stood very close to him, pressing her thigh against his.

  It was going to be an interesting evening for them both.

  Clutter

  Brad Linaweaver

  After his parents died on the interstate, Paul Kraft, a small, freckle-faced boy going on fourteen, was moved into Aunt Rose’s house over in Culver City. It was an old two-story house surrounded by tall trees and he fell in love with it on first sight. Then, with the opening of a door, he came face to face with Aunt Rose, who until that meeting had only been a vague childhood memory, a shadow guest at his seventh birthday party: She stood thin in the doorway, a fifty-two-year-old librarian who had lived most of her years alone.

  She invited Paul inside, showed him to an upstairs room and waited quietly as the people from the moving van moved his possessions into the house—some clothes, a monster mask and a lot of books. With the boy settled in, the cousin who had overseen the transfer said his goodbyes and departed from Jefferson Lane, leaving behind two people to get acquainted who had in common blue eyes and virginity.

  The first thing Paul learned was that Aunt Rose cleaned house twice a week. The whole house. It was a strategy she had worked out against her arch-enemy, dust. Days when she didn’t clean were lulls between battles, a time for planning. When she was engaged in the grand effort, all brooms and dustpans, she had no time for so trifling a concern as a nephew’s privacy. His door was without a lock and he soon learned that Aunt Rose didn’t knock. No closed door could withstand her determination to get into a room at precisely the moment she desired entry. There was never any telling when
she would decide a certain rug or bureau required her immediate attention. After a month of diplomatic entreaties, Paul succeeded in being granted the privilege of cleaning his own room. As he had expected, inspections were twice a week.

  Occasionally, Aunt Rose would call him downstairs for the announcement of a shopping expedition. Then would ensue an hour of methodical preparation, Rose dressing herself in an outdated, high-collared dress smelling of mothballs, and having Paul dress in a suit purchased on an earlier outing, starched little-young-man clothes with the look of a mail-order catalogue about them. On the first trip, he had criticized his guardian’s selection of clothes when in a department store she asked what he thought of a shirt she was buying for him. He hadn’t liked it. She didn’t ask his opinion again. Instead, she frequently told him that it was a great sacrifice on her part to take him shopping and he obviously lacked gratitude for her generosity. She didn’t let him go in bookstores when they were out.

  When summer came, Aunt Rose opened the door to his room one evening, poked her head inside and asked, “Paul, dear, are you busy?”

  “No,” he answered, “not really. Just reading.”

  “I wanted to ask if you know what today is?”

  “Wednesday, the eighteenth.”

  “Yes, dear. It has been over three months since the death of your parents, one season in fact.” She peered intently at Paul’s eyes; he looked at her indifferently.

  “What is it, Aunt Rose?”

  She gave a little shrug. “Well, I thought you should know. You should think about it.”

  “Are we going to the cemetery?” he asked.

  “Would you like that?” she asked back. He said nothing.

  He was confused by the pleasant tone in her usually neutral voice. “Yes, Paul,” she continued, “we are going after we’ve finished the den.” He understood his cue and got up to help her with the vacuum cleaner.

  They only spent a few minutes at the cemetery because a strong wind disturbed Aunt Rose’s hair. On the way back she said she was glad their visit with his parents had been taken care of, as though a duty had been discharged. He wondered how many more anniversaries of the accident would be observed by his aunt. . .and then, feeling anxiety and impatience, concluded he must be depraved for thinking such a thing. Not able to understand his uneasy emotions, he put them out of his mind as best he could. He spent the rest of the day on Mars, courtesy of Edgar Rice Burroughs.