After Midnight

by Richard Laymon

  It’s hard to climb out of a pool with a sword in your hand.

  I wasn’t about to let go of it, though.

  I guess I could’ve gone for the stairs, but that probably would’ve taken even longer than climbing out the awkward way I did, boosting myself over the edge with the saber clutched in my right hand.

  Steve never took his eyes off me. He backed farther and farther away while he watched my progress. He even took a few seconds, after his shorts were up, to tighten his belt.

  As I got to my feet, he took the cord out of his teeth.

  Holding it in his left hand, he whirled around and broke into a run.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  Of course, he didn’t stop. Why should he?

  I went after him.

  We sprinted over the warm dewy grass, Steve well ahead of me. I held the saber overhead, ready to strike him down.

  If I could only get close enough.

  Being built like “a brick shithouse” is never a picnic. But it’s a disaster when you’re trying to chase someone. You want to be tall and slim and lithe. You want to be flat. And quick.

  I didn’t stand a chance of catching Steve.

  The distance between us kept stretching.

  I didn’t give up, though. I stayed after him, running as hard as I could, saber waving high and breasts leaping, until he vanished into Miller’s Woods.

  54

  WIRES

  Lowering the saber until its tip met the ground, I slouched and huffed for air and didn’t go any farther.

  My lungs ached from the hard run.

  My legs felt heavy, as if loaded with granite.

  My heart raced like crazy.

  I was drenched. A combination of sweat and pool water, probably. It spilled down my body, dribbles sliding down my skin, all over, tickling me. Drops fell from the tips of my nose and chin and breasts. I used a hand to wipe my face, but it wasn’t much help.

  I was worn out.

  Vulnerable.

  Saber or no saber, I would’ve been easy prey for Steve if he doubled back and jumped me. I was too exhausted. And much too close to the edge of the woods.

  When I’d recovered a little, I trudged backward. I was too tired to move quickly, but I put more and more distance between myself and the woods.

  I wanted to lie down on the grass.

  The grass would make me itchy, though.

  So I kept moving, and didn’t stop until I reached the apron of the pool. There, I eased myself down and stretched out on the warm concrete. It felt awfully hard against the back of my head. It didn’t feel that great under my heels, either. Otherwise, though, it felt okay. I liked that it was solid and dry.

  I held on to the saber, my right arm on the concrete by my side, the blade resting across my thigh.

  This isn’t so bad, I thought. This is pretty nice.

  But what do I do now?

  Steve got away.

  I got away.

  We both escaped from each other.

  After such a close call, Steve probably wouldn’t be coming back. And he wasn’t likely to tell any tales, since he’s the one who’d murdered Elroy.

  Just let him go. Call it even.

  What about Judy? She’d promised to keep her mouth shut about me. I couldn’t completely trust her about that, but she would probably never get a chance to do any damage. If she wasn’t dead already (and I figured she might be, even though Steve claimed otherwise), Steve would almost certainly kill her sooner or later. She knew too much. He couldn’t just let her walk away.

  Maybe I can rescue her.

  Yeah, right.

  For one thing, you can’t exactly rescue someone who’s already dead. For another, supposing she isn’t dead, why would I want to save her? Dead gals tell no tales.

  Besides, I probably wouldn’t be able to find the campsite, anyway.

  And if I did, I’d end up facing Steve again.

  I’d been damn lucky to survive this encounter with him. Next time, he might win.

  Forget it.

  Forget both of them. They’re out of the picture.

  And I’m almost home free. Just a few little matters to take care of…

  Such as?

  Elroy’s head was still in the swimming pool, and the rest of him was locked inside the trunk of his car.

  I needed to get rid of them.

  Fish out the head, take it around to the car and throw it into the trunk and…

  Steve’s got the keys!

  Out front by the car, I’d seen him drop them into a pocket of his shorts.

  Without Elroy’s keys, I wouldn’t be able to open the trunk.

  Or drive his car away.

  When I realized that, I suddenly went all hot and squirmy inside. I sat up. And sat there, head down, groaning.

  Doesn’t it ever end?

  My God, my God.

  Killing Tony had been an accident!

  All I ever wanted to do was get out from under it—make it go away so I could get on with my life.

  It had seemed so simple, at first. Clean up the mess and drop off the body somewhere else. So simple.

  But some things aren’t simple, and some things can’t be undone.

  Maybe nothing can ever be undone.

  That’s probably more like the truth.

  Once you’ve done it, it’s been done forever and there’s no making it go away.

  Because too much is attached.

  You might think you’re dealing with just one matter—like Tony’s body—but then it turns out that the body has a dozen wires attached to it. Or a hundred. And every wire leads off into the unknown. One’s attached to Judy. Another to an answering machine. Another to poor Murphy. You go to cut those wires, but run into more. Elroy, for instance. And Milo and Steve. Always more wires leading off somewhere.

  I guess this might sound like I’m talking about “loose strings.”

  I don’t see them as strings, though. Strings are soft and you can usually break them with your bare hands. What I mean are thin, steel wires. If you try to break these with your hands, they’ll cut into you.

  They’re everywhere, attached to every word out of your mouth, to your every action, to every person you encounter—and they all lead off somewhere else and drag new stuff into the picture—new stuff with wires leading off…

  Sitting there by the side of the pool, I felt lost and desperate.

  There has to be an end to it, somewhere!

  Oh, yeah?

  I’d gone through so much. I’d cut so many of those wires…A few more, and maybe I’d be free.

  Fat chance.

  There’ll be more. Always more.

  It’s hopeless.

  So what’ll you do? I asked myself. Just call it quits, take a nice bath, go to bed, pretend everything is fine?

  And go out for the newspaper tomorrow morning and find Elroy’s car in the driveway?

  I had to do something.

  Start with Elroy’s stupid head.

  I sprang to my feet. Standing at the edge of the pool, I spotted his head deep in the water, migrating toward the drain again.

  After scanning the grounds to make sure Steve wasn’t sneaking toward me, I put down the saber and dived into the pool. The cold of the water shocked me. But then it felt good.

  And I felt much better than before.

  My despair had gone away.

  Apparently, it had been shoved away by the mere act of making up my mind to get on with things.

  Fuck the wires.

  Take care of business.

  You know the mistake I’d been making? Why I’d felt such despair a little earlier? Because I’d been looking at the Big Picture. It’s the biggest mistake you can make.

  Fuck the Big Picture.

  Deal with one problem at a time, take care of it, move on to the next.

  That’s my advice. Take it from me, the deep thinker.

  Speaking of deep, I went plunging down through about ten feet of water to
reach Elroy’s head. He happened to be face up, at the time. I would’ve preferred to grab him by the hair, but it wasn’t convenient so I stuck my hand in his mouth and picked him up by the jaw.

  Then I kicked for the surface. I rose at an angle, and came up close to the side of the pool. Holding the edge with one hand, I swung Elroy’s head up with the other and set it on the concrete.

  I’d left the saber on the other side, so I quickly swam the width of the pool, boosted myself up and climbed out.

  As one who learns from her mistakes, I didn’t attempt to swim back across. Not with the saber. Instead, I ran around to the side where I’d left Elroy’s head. I snatched it up by the hair. With the head swinging by my left side, I jogged over to the garage.

  At the side door, I set down the saber. I plucked the keys out of my panties, fumbled with them until I found the right key, then unlocked the door. Inside the garage, I slipped the keys back inside my panties and hurried past my car.

  I knew right where to find everything. First, I put on a pair of gardening gloves. Then I went to the cupboard where Serena and Charlie kept their box of plastic garbage bags. I pulled one bag out of the box, shook it open, and dropped Elroy’s head inside.

  Unfortunately, I should’ve been holding the bag higher. Its bottom was resting against the concrete floor, so Elroy’s head didn’t have a nice, soft landing. It made such a nasty THONK! that I had to cringe.

  Good thing he was already dead.

  Anyway, I shut the top of the bag with its plastic drawstring, closed the cupboard, and hurried on out of the garage. I kept the gloves on.

  After retrieving the saber, I ran to Elroy’s car.

  I had no idea whether I would find the doors locked.

  But I set down the bag and tried the driver’s door. It opened. The car’s ceiling light came on. I flicked the lock switch to make sure all the doors were unlocked, then stepped to the back door and pulled it open. I picked up the bag and swung it in. After dropping it onto the floor, I stepped back and shut the back door.

  Just for the hell of it, I put down the saber and climbed into the driver’s seat to search for keys. You never know. Some people hide a spare set of keys in the glove compartment or under a floor mat or in a magnetic device underneath the dashboard.

  Not Elroy, apparently.

  And I had not the slightest idea about how to “hot-wire” a car. It sure looks easy in the movies. I’d tried it a couple of times in the past, though, and knew I couldn’t do it. So I didn’t bother fooling with the wires under the dash.

  Unable to find any hidden keys, I used my gloved hands to wipe any areas inside the car that I might’ve touched on the ride over. Then I climbed out. I left the door unlocked, and shut it.

  After picking up my saber, I hurried to the other side of the car and wiped the handle of the passenger door.

  Then I whirled away from Elroy’s car and ran for the back of the house.

  As fast as possible, I gathered up all my clothes. You don’t want to be leaving home on an excursion in nothing but thong panties. I carried everything over to the table. I set the saber on top of the table, its handle in easy reach. Then, keeping an eye out for Steve, I got dressed.

  Jeans and a dark top would’ve been more appropriate for the next stage of my plans, but they were upstairs in my room. I was in a hurry. So I wore what I had: my red bra, my bright yellow blouse and long green skirt with the slit up the side. Also, of course, my white sneakers.

  All dressed, I picked up the pitcher and treated myself to a few gulps of margarita.

  I took a couple of steps toward the switch panel, intending to kill the outdoor lights. But I changed my mind and decided to leave them on. They might help me find my way back, later.

  Anything else?

  A flashlight? Maybe an extra weapon of some kind?

  I glanced into the house through the sliding glass door.

  Don’t waste any more time. Every minute counts. Get going!

  55

  INTO THE WOODS

  Gasping for air after my sprint across the back yard, I stopped at the edge of the woods. Stopped and listened.

  Steve was probably long gone.

  But you never know.

  He could be sneaky.

  Last night, after pretending to run off, he’d circled around to the front of the house and spied on me. He’d actually bragged about it.

  So I figured he might be just about anywhere.

  After catching my breath and listening for a while, I entered the woods. I moved along as quickly as I dared.

  No reason to sneak. If Steve was near enough to hear me tromping through the foliage, the noise wouldn’t matter because he was probably already watching me.

  I hadn’t brought a flashlight, though. A little moonlight came down through the trees, speckling some areas and throwing patches of snowy brightness onto others. But mostly the forest was dark. All around me were dim shapes of gray and black.

  Last time, I’d fallen plenty of times in the darkness and even crashed into that broken branch. I didn’t want any more accidents like those, so I walked fairly fast but not too fast.

  I soon managed to find a trail. It was a trail I’d probably used many times in daylight. In the darkness, though, it didn’t seem familiar at all. I had only vague notions about where it might lead. All I knew for sure was that it was taking me deeper into Miller’s Woods.

  Good enough.

  I didn’t know how to find Steve’s campsite, anyway.

  And if I somehow found it, he might not even be there. I had no guarantee that he’d returned to his camp after getting away from me.

  Maybe he’d gone there, packed up…finished off Judy…and hit the road in his van.

  Taking Elroy’s keys with him.

  I’d be screwed.

  What if I can’t get my hands on the keys?

  There must be another way to get rid of Elroy’s car. That’s all I really need to do—move it out of the driveway, leave it somewhere else. Just about anywhere, so long as it’s a fair distance from Serena and Charlie’s house.

  I tried to think of a way.

  It helped take my mind off other things.

  How heavy the saber felt, for instance. It seemed to grow heavier every minute. Now and then, I had to switch it from one hand to the other.

  How hot and sweaty I was, for another instance. I’d been better off without my clothes. They kept the air away from my skin. They clung to me, and seemed to hold the heat in. I didn’t have socks on, so the shoes felt slimy under my feet.

  I tried not to think about any of that, and concentrate instead on my real problem.

  What’ll I do with Elroy’s car?

  Can’t get it started without the key. So how…?

  There must be a way.

  Call a tow truck? That’d open a whole new can of worms. I’d have to contend with the driver, his company records…who knows what else? Forget that.

  How else can I move it?

  I’m not exactly capable of pushing the car myself.

  Hire some workers to push it away? But then I’d have them to worry about.

  Kill them all. Ha ha.

  I lifted my blouse and wiped sweat off my face.

  So damn hot.

  The heat was fine if you happened to be in an airconditioned house, or sitting around outside or enjoying cocktails or swimming in the pool. But when you’re trudging through the woods with a saber in your hand…

  I took off my blouse. That helped quite a lot. I didn’t want to lose it, so I tucked it under the waistband at the back of my skirt and it hung behind me like a tail.

  I kept my bra on. Even though it felt wet and uncomfortable, it stopped my breasts from bouncing and swinging all over the place. I kept the skirt on, too. It was wet and clingy against my rump, but otherwise okay. Besides, I figured it would be easier to wear than to carry. I also kept my shoes on. You don’t want to go walking through dark woods barefoot.

  With t
he blouse tucked behind me, I tried to focus my mind again on the problem of Elroy’s car.

  There must be a way to get rid of it!

  How about pushing it with my car? That might work. Push it backward out of the driveway. Once it’s on the street, tow it away.

  Yes!

  Of course, I’d have to do it at night to lower the chances of being seen.

  Out on the street in front of the house, I could fasten my rear bumper to Elroy’s front bumper with some rope or electrical cord—or even pick up a chain at a store tomorrow, and save the job for tomorrow night. Tow Elroy’s car into Miller’s Woods. Leave it near the picnic area, maybe.

  Fantastic!

  It would mean a lot of work, and a whole new series of risks, but the plan should succeed fine if I didn’t get caught in the act.

  I was glad to have a back-up plan. But it sure made me want to find Steve and get my hands on Elroy’s ignition key.

  So where are you, Stevie boy?

  I’d been walking for long enough to be fairly deep into the woods. I might even be somewhere near the camp.

  Maybe fifty yards away from it.

  Or half a mile.

  Or a mile.

  It might be dead ahead. Or somewhere to the left or the right.

  For that matter, where was the creek? What about the picnic grounds? The parking area?

  I’d be glad to find any familiar place. But even if I could get my bearings, I still might have trouble locating the campsite. I’d only stumbled onto it by accident, last night. With such a dim notion of where it might be, I probably had no chance at all of finding it again.

  There’s always some chance, I told myself.

  Fat chance.

  Maybe if Steve has an enormous bonfire…

  Or if Judy screams…

  Or I scream?

  Shaking my head, I muttered, “How nuts am I?”

  Nuts enough, apparently.

  I stopped walking, then took a deep breath and shouted, “HELLO! IT’S ME! I CHANGED MY MIND! DON’T GO AWAY WITHOUT ME! I’M COMING! CAN YOU HEAR ME? I WANT TO GO WITH YOU!”

  In the quiet of the woods, my voice must’ve carried awfully far.

  I listened for an answer.

  After a minute or two, I realized that Steve wouldn’t call out, even if he’d heard me.

  He might come for me, but he wouldn’t call out.