Blood Games

by Richard Laymon

  ‘We oughta get more shells before we…’

  A screen door bammed shut. After a few unsteady shuffling sounds, Batty stepped into the living room and halted. Cupped in her hands - or his - was a human skull. A skull with bulging eyes. Abilene wondered if they’d come from the jar Cora had dropped in the shed. She imagined Batty scurrying around, crouching and picking up a couple and stuffing them into the sockets.

  ‘Come in here and sit down,’ Cora said. She nodded toward the table.

  ‘What’s this foolishness?’

  ‘Doit!’

  Batty carried the bug-eyed skull to the table, set it down, then sank onto one of the chairs.

  ‘For starters, take off the shoes.’

  ‘No,’ Vivian said. ‘They were fair payment. We don’t take them.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Squinting down the sight ramp at Batty, Cora asked, ‘Where do you keep your extra ammunition?’

  ‘Yonder.’ A nod at the shelves.

  ‘I’ll get the ax,’ Vivian said. As she bolted from the room, Abilene and Finley scanned the shelves.

  ‘I see ’em.’ Finley rushed across the floor, reached up, and plucked a small red box from between a black candle and a bowl. It was the same bowl, Abilene realized, that they’d used for the bleeding ritual.

  ‘Y’gonna rue the day y’tampered with old Batty.’

  ‘Screw you,’ Finley said. She flipped open the flimsy lid and dug into the box. Her hand came out full of shotgun shells. She dumped them into a pocket of her shorts, then tossed the empty box aside.

  ‘That’s all?’ Cora asked.

  ‘Y’take my over ’n under, I’m gonna call down a curse on all y’heads. It’ll be my killin’ curse.’

  ‘Curse away, bat brain,’ Finley said.

  ‘We’re only going to borrow it,’ Abilene said. ‘This, too,’ she added, raising Batty’s knife. ‘We need to have some weapons. But we’ll bring everything back to you. I promise.’

  The way Batty looked at her, she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘Doubt it. But I’ll get’m back. I’ll pick ’em up my own self outa y’dead hands.’

  ‘Not if you’re dead first, gonzo,’ Finley said. ‘Hey, Cora, go ahead and blow his fucking head off. Or hers. Or whatever. We don’t want that curse on us, do we?’

  Abilene couldn’t tell whether or not she was serious.

  Cora kept the shotgun trained on Batty’s face, but didn’t pull the trigger.

  Vivian hurried back into the room. An ax rested over one shoulder. ‘We ready to go?’

  ‘Find something we can use to tie Batty up,’ Cora said.

  ‘Right here,’ Finley said. She stepped up close to the side of the chair. ‘Get your arms up. Good. Keep them that way. Touch me and you’ll be sorry.’ Crouching, Finley unbuckled Batty’s belt and pulled it from the few remaining loops of die faded, cutoff jeans. The knife scabbard dropped to the floor. She tossed it to Abilene.

  Abilene sheathed the knife and slid it under the waistband of her skirt. It went under the side of her panties, too, but she decided that was all right. The leather case felt smooth and soft like doe skin.

  Finley was standing upright now, frowning at Batty, the belt in her hands.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Cora asked.

  ‘Just trying to figure out the best way to…’

  Abilene glimpsed a flying streak of white. Amos. ‘Look out!’

  Cora yelped, staggered forward under the impact and twisted around. The cat had hit her just above the waist. It clawed its way up her back, ripping cloth and skin.

  Before the others could move to help her, Batty’s upraised right hand darted sideways, clutched the front of Finley’s shirt, and yanked. Buttons popped away. A quick stumble, and Finley dropped across Batty’s thighs.

  Like a kid about to be spanked.

  Cora dropped the shotgun, tucked, and jumped. In midair, she flipped herself heels over head. The cat rode her down. Her back slammed it against the floor.

  Batty’s left hand clenched the nape of Finley’s neck. The right snatched her shirt halfway up her back, then reached for the hilt of the knife at her hip.

  Cora rolled. Vivian rushed the stunned cat and raised her ax.

  Batty jerked out the knife. Brought it up over Finley’s squirming, bucking body.

  With both hands, Abilene grabbed Batty’s forearm. She wrenched it backward and down, unaware of Batty turning, stretching out her other arm. Suddenly, something was coming at her face. She looked up just in time to see an eyeball leap from its socket. The other seemed to watch her. She turned her face away an instant before the skull struck her. Its brow pounded her cheekbone. But she kept her grip on Batty’s arm as she staggered back. And heard a crack like a snapping branch. Batty wailed. The knife fell to the floor. Abilene released the arm.

  Staggering back, she saw Vivian double over and vomit Cora was struggling to free the ax from the floor. As she pumped its handle, Amos wobbled.

  Abilene’s stomach turned. She fell to her knees, heaving.

  When she finished and lifted her head, she saw Finley shoving Batty’s legs into the air. The chair tipped backward and crashed down. Batty spilled out of it, did an awkward somersault hit the floor knees first, and flopped down flat.

  Finley kicked the chair. It tumbled and skidded. Cora leaped out of its way. The chair stopped abruptly when a corner of its seat met the dead cat.

  Finley picked up her knife. Clamping it between her teeth, she turned Batty over. As the body rolled, the skinny arm swung the wrong way from its elbow.

  Abilene groaned.

  I did that, she thought. Oh, Jesus.

  Finley dropped onto Batty’s stomach and took the knife from between her teeth. Breathless, she gasped, ‘Told you not to touch me, you bastard.’

  'Leave her alone,’ Abilene said.

  ‘Him,’ Finley corrected. ‘See?’ She reached behind her and flapped aside a leg of the split cut-offs. ‘Felt it when he had me down.’ She leaned over and pressed the blade to his throat. ‘Dirty old shit. You killed Helen, didn’t you? Didn’t you!’

  ‘Fin,’ Abilene said quietly.

  She looked up, her eyes red and wild. ‘He did it.’

  ‘Even if it was him…’

  ‘Weren’t,’ Batty gasped. He was panting for air, wincing. Abilene saw no fear in his eyes. They seemed sly and full of hate. ‘I purely aim t’kill you, though. Ever’ one a ya. Get me plenty a fresh items for m’stock.’

  His lips peeled back, forming a nasty grin of gaps and brown stumps. Finley pressed the blade harder against his throat. Ignoring it, he reached up with his left hand. Reached inside Finley’s drooping, open shirt. She sucked a quick breath.

  ‘I’ll cut me this one right off.’

  ‘Uhhhhhh!’ She lurched backward, slashed his forearm and leaped off him, gasping and frantically rubbing the front of her shirt against her breast.

  Batty laughed. Quick, nasal beeps that sounded like a honking car.

  ‘You’re fuckin’ nuts!' Finley shouted.

  Batty laughed harder. He lay flat on his back only a couple of yards from his chopped cat, laughing. One arm broken, the other pouring blood, and he was shaking with laughter.

  Finley was first out the door. Vivian followed her with the ax. Cora backed away, keeping the shotgun aimed at Batty. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  ‘I’m coming.’ Abilene picked up Helen’s sleeping bag. No way would she leave a possession of Helen’s with this lunatic. Sidestepping toward the door, she said, ‘I’m sorry about your arm. But you shouldn’t have tried to stab…’

  ‘I’ll… have yers!’ Batty squealed between honks of hilarity.

  Abilene rushed for the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  She found the others down at the lake, Finley bending over the knee-deep water and washing her breast, Vivian washing splatters of cat blood off her thighs, Cora picking up the block of concrete that served as the anchor for Batty’s rowboat. The ax
and shotgun were already stowed in the craft.

  ‘We’re taking his boat?’ Abilene asked.

  ‘You got it.’ Cora dropped the anchor into the bow. ‘In, in, in! I’ll row.’ She held the boat steady while Vivian climbed aboard and made her way, crouching low, toward the stem.

  As Finley lunged over its gunwale and the boat tipped wildly for a moment, Abilene waded into the lake. The back of Cora’s tank-top was bloody and tom. Above its low neckline and around the right shoulder strap, her bare skin was furrowed with claw marks.

  Abilene tossed the sleeping bag aboard. It rolled under the center seat. ‘I’ll hold on,’ she said. ‘You climb in.’ As Cora moved out of her way, she grabbed the prow.

  Twisting her head around, she gazed back at the cabin. No sign of Batty. Nor could she hear the crazy laughter.

  He won’t come after us, she told herself. Not with a broken arm. Not with that gash.

  Not right now, anyway.

  She realized they had left their water bottle in the cabin.

  It’s okay. We’ve got two more back at the car. Sure not going back in for it.

  Just stay where you are, Batty. Don’t come after us.

  Returning her attention to the boat, she saw Cora already seated in the center and busy fitting an oar into the metal U of its oarlock. Finley, behind Cora, sat cross-legged on the bottom of the boat and now had the shotgun. She held it straight up, the barrels rising like a mast above her head.

  Cora got the other oar into position.

  Abilene leaned against the prow and pushed. The boat began gliding away, stem first, and she sloshed after it, guiding it farther from shore until the water climbed to her waist. Then she boosted herself up, kicked high enough to hook a calf over the gunwale, squirmed and twisted until she dropped aboard.

  She lay on her back, struggling to catch her breath. Beyond her upraised knees, Cora was rowing with a single oar to turn the boat around. Then both oars were in motion, Cora leaning forward to dip them in, coming back toward Abilene as she drew their blades through the water, and starting over again.

  Abilene lifted a hand to her face. Gently, she fingered the lump of soreness beneath her right eye. Her cheekbone felt as if a golf ball were growing out of it.

  I got him better than he got me, she thought. Still, she wished she hadn’t broken his arm. She had never hurt anyone like that before and the memory of it sickened her.

  He was going to stab Finley, she reminded herself.

  Besides, it was an accident. I only broke it because he bashed me with that skull and I started to fall.

  The boat dropped abruptly, then rebounded off the water, its wooden ribs pounding against her. Enough of this, Abilene thought. Rising, she scooted across the bottom until her back met the edge of the bow seat. She clutched the gunwales, pushed herself up, and sat on the narrow bench.

  The slate gray lake was choppy, but didn’t look nearly as rough as it had felt when she was lying on the bottom of the boat. The fresh breeze felt good.

  Leaning sideways, she looked past Cora’s back. Finley met her eyes and nodded. Vivian was twisted around, gazing toward shore.

  The limbs of the willow, hanging out over the lake, blew like green streamers.

  We really haven’t gone very far, Abilene thought. Maybe a hundred feet.

  And then she saw Batty come prancing down the slope stark naked. ‘Oh, my God,’ she murmured. The broken arm swung from its elbow like a dead thing. The other arm, bound with a red rag, was upraised and shaking a pale club that had a knob at both ends.

  A bone?

  Batty’s long gray hair blew like the willow limbs.

  Her breasts bounced and flopped like loose sacks of pudding.

  His erection was a rigid, jerking spike.

  Abilene’s mind reeled.

  Vivian pointed, swiveled her head and said something to Finley.

  Finley got to her knees and turned around and shouldered the shotgun.

  ‘Don’t you shoot,’ Cora warned, still rowing.

  Batty stopped at the water’s edge. And began to dance. Hopping from foot to foot, shaking the bone at the gray sky then bowing to dip it into the lake before thrusting it again overhead.

  Finley looked over her shoulder. Abilene expected a remark about hermaphrodites until she caught the strangeness in her friend’s eyes.

  Too freaked out to crack wise.

  This was the thing that had grabbed her breast. A lecherous old coot but also a hag, mad and sly, a drinker of blood, a collector of body parts, a conjurer.

  Freaks me out, too, Abilene thought, and I’m not the one who got groped.

  Finley turned away.

  Batty was still dancing, twirling and leaping, sweeping the hone from the water to the sky.

  A heavy blast slammed Abilene’s ears. The shotgun leaped beside Vivian’s shoulder. Vivian jumped as if her boat seat had turned into a cattle prod. Then she grabbed the barrels and shoved them up. Her face red and twisted, she glared back at Finley.

  She said nothing.

  But Cora shouted, ‘Damn it!’

  On the shore, Batty shook the bone and hopped with both feet, broken arm and breasts and penis bouncing up and down.

  Abilene found herself wishing Finley hadn’t missed.

  Finley yanked the barrels from Vivian’s grip, but she didn’t take aim again. Holding the shotgun upright, she scowled back at Cora. ‘The fuck’s putting a curse on us!’ she called.

  ‘Since when are you scared of shit like that?’ Cora asked.

  ‘Since today.’

  ‘Don’t worry. The creep can’t hurt us now.’

  ‘Should’ve cut its throat when I had the chance.’

  Batty still capered about the shore, bobbing and spinning and leaping. But indistinct now. A pale, blurry shape in the distance. In the darkness.

  Abilene tipped back her head.

  A low, black mass of thunderheads was rushing in from the hills behind Batty. As if it carried winds of its own, the advancing range of clouds roughed up the water in its path.

  ‘Oh shit!’ Cora yelled, and started rowing faster.

  A blinding dagger of light gashed the nearest black cloud, splitting it with a noise like ripping fabric. Then came an explosion that shook the air. Abilene felt the concussion all the way to her heart.

  Batty vanished behind a curtain of rain.

  Cora rowed furiously as if trying to outrace the approaching storm.

  ‘Should we head for shore?’ Abilene called.

  ‘We’ll make it!’ Cora shouted.

  Twisting around, Abilene peered forward and saw that they were heading straight for the old dock at the far side of the lake. But they weren’t even halfway there.

  Rain suddenly poured down, drenching her.

  The boat pitched. She turned back toward the others and grabbed the gunwales. Cora’s hair was matted flat. Raindrops splashed off her bare shoulders, rinsed the blood from her skin, exposed the raw scratches. Finley was facing forward. She’d put down the shotgun. With outstretched arms, she clung to the sides of the tossing boat. Her head and shoulders jerked from side to side. Vivian, abandoning her seat at the stem, lowered herself behind Finley then reached out and held on.

  The boat rocked and bounced. Abilene flinched as a wave broke over the bow, slopping her rump with water much colder than the rain.

  Lightning cracked the sky. Thunder roared. The rain came down even harder than before.

  A sudden lurch nearly threw Abilene overboard. With a gasp of alarm, she hunched down to lower her center of gravity.

  The bottom of the boat was awash with water, a puddle erupting with tiny splashes of raindrops as it slopped from side to side, forward and back, sometimes rolling over the white toes of her sneakers. Willow leaves floated on its surface. So did a few dead worms.

  Not enough water to worry about, she told herself. It’d take a lot more than this to sink us.

  Shouldn’t have taken the boat, damn it.


  Stepped right into Batty’s trap.

  Come on, give it a break, she thought. Batty didn’t do this. It’s a storm. Storms happen. Even before we got to Batty’s place, Viv had said it was going to rain.

  Man, she was right!

  But what was that fuckin’ dance Batty was doing? Sure looked like some kind of ritual. A rain dance?

  Bull. Batty didn’t do this.

  The seat dropped abruptly out from under Abilene. She clenched the gunwales. The bench smacked her rear and she felt as if a bucketful of water had been hurled at her. It splashed high up her back but most of it hit her skirt. Some, spilling beneath her, licked between her buttocks with an icy tongue that made her gasp.

  ‘We’re taking in an awful lot of water! ’ Finley yelled.

  ‘Tell me about it! ’ Abilene called to her.

  The puddle, now, was ankle deep. She knew it must be worse at the other end of the boat.

  Sitting up, she leaned sideways to see past Cora. Finley sat on the bottom, knees up. Vivian had her legs wrapped around Finley’s hips as if they were riding a Matterhorn bobsled at Disneyland. The water surrounding them was high enough to slosh over the tops of Vivian’s thighs.

  ‘Start bailing!’ Cora shouted.

  ‘With what?’ Finley called.

  ‘Try your hands!’

  ‘Oh, that’ll help a lot!’ In spite of her remark, Finley apparently decided to give it a try. With both hands, she scooped up water from between her legs and hurled it over the side. Much of it blew back into her face.

  Thinking that Batty might keep some kind of container aboard, Abilene slid to her knees and managed to turn herself around. Ducking, she peered under the narrow bench. The concrete anchor was there, piled with rope. But nothing that might be helpful for bailing.

  It’ll help, she realized, getting rid of the anchor.

  She reached under the seat with both hands and started to drag the heavy block toward her. As it skidded closer, a wave dumped water over the back of her head. She blinked her eyes clear and tugged the anchor out against her knees.

  The rope was knotted to a rusty steel eye embedded in the concrete.

  Hanging onto the rope as if it were the reins of a bucking bronco, she straightened up. She drew Batty’s knife from the scabbard at her hip and slashed through the taut rope. The instant it gave way, she was thrown backward. She grabbed the gunwale and managed to stay on her knees.