Where Stars Won't Shine

by Patrick Lacey

  The moment she walked through the door she knew something was wrong. She could feel it in the air, a sense of dread so thick it was palpable. The smell hit her next: warm, coppery blood. The same smell she sensed so often these days.

  There were red footsteps, just like those in the kitchen earlier. She followed them, wondering if she ought to call the cops. If Scott was in trouble …

  When she reached the bathroom she saw Scott was not just in trouble.

  He was dead.

  He lay in the bathtub, his clothes in a pile on the floor. They were badly torn, as though they’d been through a wood chipper. Scott looked similar. His skin had been shredded. Much of his insides were on the outside. His eyes were gone, two empty caverns in their place. On the wall, written in nearly perfect letters with her boyfriend’s innards, was a simple phrase. The same phrase she’d been seeing in recent times.

  The same phrase that had made her decide to book the plane and rental car.

  I’ll be seeing you.

  Ivy hid another sob and pretended Scott was there to comfort her. She touched the cold sheets as if they were warm skin.

  In the darkness she heard a dripping sound.

  It was not a leaky faucet.

  “There’s still time to think this through,” Mariah said. She parked in the drop-off lane, her wheel kicking the curb. The car shook before evening out.

  “Believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to think it through.” Ivy reached a hand across the passenger seat and fixed a loosed strand of her sister’s hair.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Mariah said.

  “Fine but it’s got to be one you haven’t already asked a million times.” Ivy studied the clock. She had another hour before her flight. Earlier, she’d been on the lookout for a traffic jam or a car crash, some sort of cosmic sign. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to go to Marlowe after all. But the road had been clear, more like a holiday than Tuesday morning rush hour. How was that for a sign?

  “What do you expect to find in that town?” Mariah’s eyes were dark and tired.

  “That, honey, is a good question. And when I come back with my shit together, I’ll have an answer for you.” She kissed her sister on the forehead, grabbed her bag from the back, and sped away before Mariah could convince her to stay behind.

  She waved once on her way into the airport, trying to ignore the filthy windshield. Blood caked the glass, making it difficult for Ivy to see her sister’s face.

  After going through security, she was certain her flight would be delayed or canceled. Another wish for a sign that this was a bad idea, just like Mariah had been telling her. The screens told her the flight was on schedule. They were due in Logan airport ten minutes earlier than expected. The winds were on their side.

  Ivy bought a coffee, this one much more drinkable than her sister’s brew, and stepped into the bookstore kiosk. She doubted she could keep her mind steady enough to read but it was a long flight.

  She fingered through romances and mysteries but one book in particular caught her eye. It was in the new releases section, nestled between an espionage thriller and a western.

  The cover was simple enough: a close-up of a man’s face. His eyes were vacant and his lips thin. The skin along his face was taut, the chin and cheek bones threatening to burst through. It wasn’t hard to imagine the skull that lay beneath. She’d seen the face before, both in reality and nightmares.

  She picked the book up and brought it to the register, gritting her teeth. She wasn’t sure if she was scared or angry or both.

  The girl behind the counter, hair dyed bleach blond and dimples pierced, eyed the cover. “This is our biggest seller this week. Why would you want to read something like that on a plane? Or anywhere for that matter? No offense.”

  Ivy shrugged and paid without answering.

  The girl placed the book into a semi-transparent bag. Tucker Ashton’s hellish face peeked through. The book’s title was apt.

  Birth of a Monster by Charles Williamson.

  She thanked the girl and made her way to the terminal where the monitors and seats were soaked with red streaks. She chose to stand.

  THREE

  “YOU READY OR what?” Amy called from the living room.

  “Just a minute,” Zeke Evans said. “I’ve got to update the site and then we’re good.” It was a lie. He’d updated the site earlier that morning in bed, while Amy snored beside him. She always looked beautiful when she slept. In fact, sometimes Zeke would watch her for hours. There was something about the way her eyes were plastered shut, as if closed forever, that turned him on.

  He checked his watch. They’d planned on leaving at nine to miss rush hour. The drive from Virginia to Massachusetts was roughly ten hours. That gave him five more minutes to admire his collection. The room was the second largest in their home. It served as his office, study, and man cave. It was not decorated with sports banners or swimsuit posters. The walls were covered with a different kind of memorabilia.

  He’d been interviewed by several authors and journalists and even a documentary film crew. They always painted him as a weirdo. Intelligent, sure. A damned good journalist himself, sure. But no one in their right mind collected serial killer trinkets.

  He begged to differ.

  The collection was organized by killer. From left to right were sections for Ed Gein, Albert Fish, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and of course, his all-time favorite, Tucker Ashton. He had more artifacts from Tucker than any other killer: pieces of clothing from his victims, rare taped interviews, childhood toys that had belonged to him, and—Zeke’s most beloved items—Tucker’s letters from prison.

  These he kept in a binder, the pages protected within plastic sleeves. Though he’d scanned each one onto his computer, the originals still looked pristine. Most of the correspondence could be found on Zeke’s site, killwithathrill.com, but many he kept private because of the subject matter. He’d never expected a reply back when, a year prior, he’d had a little too much to drink, scribbled a fan letter, and sent it to the asylum where his favorite killer had resided. Tucker had taken a liking to Zeke, respected his line of work, and kept in close contact from his cell up until the day he disappeared. Though that wasn’t the right term.

  That implied Tucker wasn’t coming back.

  Zeke opened his binder and flipped to the last page. The most recent letter was dated from two weeks ago. At first he’d thought it was a fake but the handwriting was spot on. He’d compared it to the other pages and there was no denying it.

  Tucker was alive and well and he had plans for Zeke.

  I hope this letter finds you well and I hope you’ve kept up the site. What you’re doing is important work. Invaluable. I must ask a favor of you. Keep this one off of the web. It’s for your eyes only. I’m coming back, Zeke. And I want you to be there when it happens. You can have the exclusive interview. Would you like that? You’d be a millionaire overnight. All you need to do is come to my home. That’s where I’ll be. In Marlowe. See you soon.

  Tucker

  Zeke had committed the words to memory. He read without blinking, a cartoonish smile on his face. This was the real deal. He was going to meet his hero, the man who made the rest of the greats look like jokes.

  There was a knock at the door. “Car’s all packed,” Amy said.

  He quickly closed the binder. She knew of the letters but not the most recent one. She thought they were just taking a road trip to visit the site of the Marlowe Massacre. To her it was a vacation instead of a pilgrimage. Tucker had asked for secrecy and Zeke intended to obey.

  “Come in.” He placed his laptop into its carrying case, tried to act casual. “I guess we’d better get going then.”

  Amy smiled. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing it, you know? I mean, I never thought I’d see this place.”

  He embraced her, kissed her with an urgency that hadn’t dwindled in the year they’d been dating. When they’d first met, her hair was a standard brunette.
Now it was green and she had twice as many piercings. He was rubbing off on her, which was, he must admit, a bit of a turn on. She was studying criminal justice, wanted to be a lawyer. Zeke knew there was a joke in there somewhere but she was too intoxicating to think hard on it. “You sure we packed everything?”

  She nodded. “I triple-checked.”

  “Then let’s get going, shall we?” He took her hand and led her out of his sanctuary. Before turning off the light, he caught a glimpse of the binder, still resting on the desk.

  He smiled again as he closed the door and locked it behind him.

  They had a long drive ahead of them.

  “Son of a bitch,” Ivy said under her breath as she flipped the page.

  This Charles Williamson, apparently an adjunct professor at Syracuse University, had written his book as if it were fiction. He’d sensationalized the thing so it read more like a second rate horror novel than true crime. It wasn’t that he’d made facts up but rather the way in which he presented them. He went into excruciating detail of Tucker Ashton’s past. His parents were horrid. His childhood was terrible. And so, Charles Williamson argued, the birth of a killer was inevitable.

  She called bullshit. No matter how bad life got, no matter how many curve balls it threw, you were in control of your own actions. She hadn’t lashed out or hurt anyone after Brad, though she’d certainly thought about it.

  She studied the cover again and, despite her growing anger, she shivered.

  Tucker’s eyes were too wide, his pupils too detailed. She swore for a moment she could see her own reflection in his iris, as if it wasn’t a book at all but a real, skeletal face, inches away from her own.

  “You think they’ll ever find him?”

  Ivy nearly screamed. She’d forgotten about the man sitting next to her, the man who’d already tried several times to initiate conversation. Small talk wasn’t her specialty and she wasn’t feeling very conversational.

  “He’s probably dead somewhere,” Ivy said, flipping over the book so the back cover faced upward, the blurb claiming Williamson had painted a most disturbing portrait of America’s newest infamous serial killer.

  “I don’t know about that.” The man smiled. His Coke bottle glasses magnified his eyes twice their real size. There was a piece of food stuck to his front tooth, perhaps spinach. “It seems too convenient, you know? The guy escaped a maximum security asylum. It’s like a movie or something.”

  She rolled her eyes and looked out the window. “I’m sure it will be soon enough.”

  He laughed as if they’d shared a joke, old pals instead of strangers. “Only in the movie, they’ll probably have him rise from the dead or something. You can’t end with him disappearing. Where’s the fun in that?”

  She didn’t answer, lest she invite more of his babbling. Eventually, he took the hint.

  Her neck was stiff and her body tense. She allowed herself to relax a bit, yawning and stretching. Her eyes grew heavy.

  A few moments later she felt a tap on her shoulder. “I’ve got it,” the man said, only his voice seemed deeper now. Perhaps her ears had popped again.

  “Got what?” she said without looking.

  “I know where he went. It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s gone to Marlowe. Why, yes, that’s it. I’m positive. Never been more certain of anything in my pathetic little life. He’s gone to Marlowe and he wants you to meet him there. That’s where you’re heading, isn’t it? He’ll show you where he’s been and if you’re lucky he might even bring you with him. And here’s the best part: he’ll kill again. Yes, ma’am, you can bet your money on it. He’ll kill again and he’ll never stop until the oceans are red and the blood drowns us all.” The man began to giggle, a slow laugh at first, turning to a full-on howl.

  She looked at him and wished she hadn’t. He wasn’t the same annoying man he’d been moments before. There was something wrong with him. He’d grown bloated and pale and there was a gaping hole where his throat should’ve been. It leaked red onto her seat, onto her arms. She tried to wipe it away but it was instantly replaced.

  “What did I tell you?” the man said. Most of his teeth were gone. “We’re all going to drown.”

  The blood gushed onto the floor, climbing until her ankles were covered, then her shins and knees, before rising to submerge her lower body. She made to scream but found she had no voice.

  She struggled to stand but her seatbelt was stuck in place. No, not belt—belts. There were more than one, too many belts to count, each with their own clasps, holding her back. Trapping her. She tried to undo them but the metal was scalding. Her fingers grew red, the flesh blistering instantly.

  “Just remember,” the laughing man said. “He’s chosen you for a reason. I’m not sure what it is, but you must be special.” He reached into his mouth and, as casually as someone picking spinach from their teeth, ripped his jaw off, letting the blood flow even faster.

  The plane flooded. It nosedived and began its descent toward the earth. All around there were screams and pleas and Ivy realized she was going to die just as she opened her eyes and saw daylight blinding her through the window.

  The overhead speaker came alive. “Welcome to Boston, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for flying with us today. Enjoy your stay.”

  “That was some flight, huh?” the man beside her said. He was no longer bloated and his throat was intact. “Haven’t seen that much turbulence in a long time. It’s like the plane wanted to turn itself around.”

  She nodded, held her neck, and tried to push back the panic attack.

  There was only one seat belt across her waist. She undid it and tossed the buckles aside as if they had teeth.

  FOUR

  “ARE YOU FEELING okay?” Amy said. She’d been watching Zeke in her periphery for the last hour.

  “You kidding? I’m great. Fantastic. Now that you mention it, though, I do have to take a piss. You mind if we pull over?” He nodded to a rest stop coming up on their right.

  “Fine by me,” Amy said, faking a smile. “You sure you’re all right?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe a little tired. I was up late working on the site. Not to mention I was excited about the trip. Like a kid on Christmas Eve.”

  She nodded and tried to hide her worry. “Yeah, I can’t wait to get there.”

  “Do I look sick or something?” He pulled into the rest stop parking lot and looked at her for the first time in the last hour. For some odd reason, she thought he could read her mind. And if that were the case, he wouldn’t like what he found.

  She shook her head too quickly. “You look great, babe. Just making sure you’re okay driving is all. Want me to take a turn?”

  He parked and cut the engine, rubbed her leg. “I’m good for now. Maybe at the next stop. You want a coffee?”

  “Not yet.” She took in her surroundings. There was a diner, its windows smeared with yellow stains, like they hadn’t been washed since the place opened its doors. Across the way was a row of public bathrooms that looked ready to crumble from rust. She wondered how many truck drivers picked up hookers here, how many drugs had been purchased. She thought she saw a needle near the car.

  “Suit yourself. Be back in a few minutes.” He made to get out but paused. “Oh and, Amy?”

  “Yeah?” Don’t read my mind. Don’t read my mind.

  “I’m really glad you came. It means the world. I wouldn’t want to go to Marlowe with anyone else. It’s weird but the closer we get, it’s like we’re going home, you know? Like we’ve lived there all along.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Hurry back. It’ll be rush hour before you know it. You know how cranky you get in traffic.”

  She watched him go. His walk had changed. When they’d first met, he stepped with an air of confidence. Not so much that he was into himself. He just seemed to know who he was and what he liked, which had initially drew Amy to him. Now, though, he moved slowly, his arms hanging like he was sleepwalking.

  Wh
ich was a very real possibility. She often woke in the middle of the night to an empty bed. She’d find him in his office, huddled over his desk and whispering something to himself, the words usually too soft to make out. The office door would be open, the keys dangling out of the lock. That’s how she’d known he was sleeping. Zeke guarded his study like it was a treasury. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, he insisted, he was just neurotic about his collection. Nothing more to it than that.

  A couple weeks ago, he’d woken her as he shuffled out of the bedroom and down the hall. She’d followed, keeping her steps quiet. Didn’t they say you weren’t supposed to wake a sleepwalker? He unlocked the door and sat at his desk. He mumbled something, his voice changing tone every so often as if he were speaking with someone. He tore a piece of paper from a notebook. He read aloud as he wrote: something about Tucker Ashton calling Zeke to Marlowe for his big return. Like the guy was writing from the grave or something. Everyone knew he was dead. The world’s most popular killer didn’t just up and disappear. If he was alive, surely he would’ve killed again by now. For the most part, serial murderers wanted to get caught. But Zeke refused to accept this. Zeke believed he was out there somewhere.

  When they’d started seeing each other, she thought the serial killer thing was an odd but harmless hobby, something he’d managed to turn into a business. But with Tucker it was different, more of an obsession. A compulsion.

  The bathroom doors opened. Zeke walked into the diner without looking back into the car. She was grateful. His sleepwalking wasn’t the only strange thing about him lately. His eyes were … different somehow. She couldn’t explain it. It was as if they’d been plucked from another source and placed into his skull. It got under her skin in a way she couldn’t vocalize. Combine that with his growing obsession with finding Tucker and you had the ever-expanding feeling of dread in her gut.

  And Amy had always trusted her gut. When she’d received a call in the middle of the night two years ago, she’d known her mother had died. She didn’t know the details, that a drunk driver had dropped his cigarette into his crotch and swerved onto the sidewalk. But she’d been certain her mother wouldn’t be visiting any time soon. Now, just like that night, she had a hunch this trip was a bad idea. Whatever awaited them in Marlowe wasn’t worth the wait.