Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition

by Arnzen, Michael A.

  His feet crackled—almost slid—on the dark grit of the concrete steps that led to Corky’s front door. He raised his hand to knock, then pulled it back, recalling how thin the construction of Corky’s fourplex was, how such a thing as a pound on a skimpy door might be just enough to get the attention of the other residents…when one of them could be the Tattoo Killer.

  Roberts still wasn’t sure. He even felt a little silly, charging to Corky’s place just to have him check the signature in the register—maybe have him compare it to a check endorsement or something. But the chicken scratch certainly could say ‘Killer’s Ink,’ and…hell, Corky would understand, wouldn’t he?

  The front door opened in his hand. He stepped inside, the familiar black Harley Davidson banner looming over an empty living room. Nothing in the kitchen, and the bedroom was locked.

  “Shit,” Roberts said as he fell down onto Corky’s sofa, wondering what he should do. Wait? Break down the bedroom door? He put his head in his hands, considering his options. Wondering if it would just be best to return to Lockerman’s place and let them take care of it. Or…he could go knocking on the doors of the fourplex, asking if anyone had seen Corky, and maybe even get a look at this Kilpatrick guy to see if he really was as crazy-looking as Corky had said? No—he did feel ready to face the Tattoo Killer, after all he’d done to his friends—but all this was jumping the gun, jumping to conclusions….

  Roberts found a sketchpad and a set of colored pencils on Corky’s kitchen table, and decided to leave Corky a note. It was his best option, his only one. He wrote, “Corky, call me ASAP. I need to see you NOW.”

  “Well, well,” called a voice from behind him. “What do we have here?”

  Roberts twisted in his chair, almost spilling over.

  A large hippie stared back at him, the oily flesh of his cheeks raised in a dimpling smile of amusement.

  II.

  “Who are you?” Roberts asked, his voice faltering.

  “I’m looking for Corky. He around?” The man stood up on the balls of his feet, peering around the kitchen, though it was obvious that Corky was not in the room.

  Roberts wondered if this was Kilpatrick. He knew it wasn’t Jocko, who was supposedly obese—the Godzilla that pounded the floorboards upstairs—and this man was fairly skinny, his muscles too big for his bony frame, his skin veined and tattooed beneath his sleeveless denim jacket as if to hide his thinness. His hair was greasy black, uncombed and long. His eyes glowered in his sockets, as if he hadn’t eaten in a long time, giving the skin on his face a translucent thinness, a hollow look. His jeans were ratty, with angular knobs of kneecap poking out from stringy holes at the knees. And the jeans were ink-stained.

  Roberts swallowed air, his throat feeling coarse, as if he’d just gulped down gravel. The man’s odor wafted around him, entered Roberts lungs like musty smoke. A fishy smell.

  It’s him. Holy shit, it’s him.

  “What do you want?” Roberts asked, the question sounding stupid in his own voice box.

  “I told you,” the man said cautiously, still grinning. “I’m looking for Corky.” He pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, leaning on its frame like a walker. “Who the hell are you, anyway, sitting here in Corky’s kitchen all by your lonesome? I’ve never seen you around here before.”

  Roberts winced from the man’s breath. “I’m a friend of Corky’s—one of his clients. Corky just went out to go get some beer. He’ll be back any moment now.” The lies spilling from his lips sounded obvious, blatant.

  The man cocked his head crookedly, one side of his lips curling down to form a facial expression that was half smile, half frown. “Wait…maybe I have seen you before…” He looked down at Roberts’ arms, searching for something. “Maybe we met in Corky’s shop once?”

  “Yeah,” Roberts smiled. “That’s it.”

  The man shook his head. “No, no, that ain’t it either. But damned if you don’t look familiar to me…” The hippie rolled his eyes up to meet Roberts’.

  Roberts met his look, reflected its curiosity. The room hummed as they silently stared each other down. The smell was starting to get to him, drifting over to his side of the kitchen table—he was wondering if it was his own stench, streaming from the pools of sweat collecting in his armpits.

  The man broke eye contact, reaching into his vest pocket to withdraw a cigarette. Roberts saw handcuffs—no, black tattoos of handcuffs, crafted from barbed wire—on the man’s wrists. His bare chest was colorful beneath his vest, almost as if he were wearing an artistic shirt. Dark dragons peeked out from beneath his vest, eyes afire…and then Roberts looked at his bicep: he saw a familiar red Doberman inked there, barking in his direction.

  He needed no further proof that this was Kilpatrick. He looked nothing like he had imagined a killer would look, but it was him, no doubt about it. Roberts forced himself to concentrate, relax. Looking at the tattooed dog, he was reminded of something he had heard once: a dog won’t bite if you show it that you’re not afraid. “Nice work,” he said, giving Kilpatrick’s arm a nod. “Corky’s?”

  The man frowned, looked down at his arm and snarled. “Yeah, it’s one of Corky’s fuck-ups. He’s learning, though.” His snarl returned to grin.

  “I got one of his, too. On my back.”

  Kilpatrick snorted smoke in reply, smirking. “So what?”

  The fish smell in the room was now overbearing, tedious. I gotta get out of here, Roberts thought, and nervously looked around the kitchen, looking for escape if it came to that. The back door was blocked by a brimming trash can, but he thought he could make a run for it if he had to. He looked at the windows over the sink—they were nicotine-stained, and painted shut. Too small to break through. He looked down…

  And saw the knife.

  The long, serrated blade shined smartly as it protruded from a stack of filthy plates in the sink: Corky’s fish knife, the one he used to gut the squid back at his shop.

  That’s what that damned stench is…old squid.

  Kilpatrick was mumbling something.

  “Huh?” Roy asked, trying to make eye contact, to make sure the Killer didn’t see the weapon in the sink.

  “Now I know who you are,” Kilpatrick repeated.

  “You do?” Roberts made a face of surprise, as if he needed to be told who he was.

  “Yeah, I’m sure of it.” Kilpatrick winked. “You’re that guy who was on TV with Corky, right? That news guy?” He nodded, smiling, calm. “It all makes sense now…”

  Roberts lunged for the sink.

  Kilpatrick beat him to it.

  III.

  In the dark room, the tingles across Corky’s flesh felt like tiny insects—each dot of ink, each nerve ending that still buzzed with the needle’s quick puncture—each a microscopic worm, boring its way out of his pores.

  I’ll show you what’s inside of you, Kilpatrick had said when he made the tattoos—beginning at his balls and working his way up. The pain was intense at first, like accidental acupuncture, each jab of the tiny tattoo needle like a poison-tipped dart being rapid-fire-jabbed into his testicles. His lap had gotten hot and wet from Kilpatrick’s needle…he remembered thinking that he was leaking down there until he finally got up enough nerve to look, and see that he was pissing, his shrunken and flaccid cock dribbling urine all over Kilpatrick’s latexed hand, running down his lap and beneath his ass, the wetness spreading beneath him.

  He had almost laughed then, at the whole situation. But it was all too real—all too insane to find any humor in it; and it hurt like hell.

  He couldn’t make out what Kilpatrick had drawn down there until the needle had trailed its way up to his belly button. His neck was still sore from stretching it to look down at what the psycho was doing, staring in horror at the tattoos Kilpatrick was creating.

  Bu
gs.

  A million tiny baby spiders with pincers and clawed feelers, intermingled with large black daddy longlegs spiders and grotesque crabs with human faces. By the time he figured out what his scrotum had become—purple webs that held slimy white and black line-cracked eggs that spilled out the insect swarm—he no longer cared…because a much worse horror had presented itself to him.

  The writhing mass of disgusting arachnids was eating the old tattoos off his body, their dark pincers tearing at the flesh.

  Or so it appeared.

  But one thing was certain: Kilpatrick was covering up his wonderful work—the glorious tattoos that Corky had on his own stomach; pictograph work he had gotten in Asia during his time in the army; the beautiful Vargas girl he had gotten in Alaska after a three-week road trip for that purpose alone; his own creations, some of his best work….

  Years’ worth of experience, being destroyed.

  And Corky had been powerless to stop him.

  By the time Kilpatrick had created a full nest of the writhing insects—flies and mosquitos with razor-wings and dagger-snoots—Corky no longer cared to look, to watch what was happening. The tattoo needle driving roughly into his skin had turned numb, no longer biting, no longer stinging, but merely deadened, graven…and to Corky, he might as well have been dead. His skin was being robbed from him. He would not watch.

  And then Kilpatrick stopped. “What’s that?” he asked.

  Corky did not answer, did not know or care what he was talking about.

  “There’s someone in your place…expecting someone?”

  Corky remembered thinking that maybe he should scream for help, but then Kilpatrick had already stuck the needle—a much longer needle than the tattoo machine’s tip—into the crook of his arm.

  The lights went out as Kilpatrick exited, padlocking the door.

  And then he was here, now, the world swimming with red-and-white shadows and shapes, colors throbbing in the blackness of the room. Alone in the dark with the stink of sweat and old shit, newsprint and semen. Leather. His own urine.

  And the ugly nest of spiders that writhed in his lap. He couldn’t see them, but he could still feel them, climbing, tickling their way up. Moving. Finishing Kilpatrick’s job for him, worming in his pores, oozing out from beneath his skin on their own accord like tiny beads of blood, but not blood…ink, living ink, spreading, puddling all the way up to his neck…and he cannot move, he cannot reach down to scratch the insane itches and bites that prickle everywhere on his body….

  IV.

  “Pick it up,” Kilpatrick said, motioning with the sharp tip of the fish knife.

  Roberts bent forward and lifted the museum register from Corky’s coffee table.

  Kilpatrick brought a boot up into Roberts’ stomach, sending him to the floor with the leatherbound book clutched in his arms. “It was stupid of you to bring that book here with you. That was my message in there, not yours. Why the fuck do you think I left it at that cop’s friggin’ house, huh?”

  Roberts rolled on the floor, gagging.

  Kilpatrick reached up, tore the Harley Davidson banner from the wall above Corky’s couch. He crouched down and yanked Roberts’ hands behind his back, tying them together with the black cloth.

  “Stand up,” Kilpatrick ordered when he was done.

  Roberts couldn’t get his balance with his hands behind his back. Kilpatrick grabbed him by the groin and forced him to stand. Then he jabbed him in the soft flesh of his left forearm with the knife, drawing blood. “MOVE!”

  Roberts staggered forward through the front door. Kilpatrick kept the knife tip in Roberts arm, twisting it as he guided him up the concrete steps and down the concrete steps that followed—Corky and Kilpatrick both lived on the bottom floor of the fourplex.

  Kilpatrick threw a booted foot out beside Roberts, loudly kicking open his own door.

  Roberts looked around. In the dimly lit living room trash was scattered everywhere: potato chip bags, dirty paper plates and Styrofoam cups, soiled jumpsuits and jeans, and torn newspapers. The entire room stank—literally—like shit. In an empty corner Roberts saw a pair of chrome motorcycle handlebars. Cardboard boxes lined the rest of the walls. Some of the boxes were crinkled and sagged; they were not only for Kilpatrick’s belongings, but furniture, as well. To Roberts, the whole place looked like a storage closet more than a living room.

  Kilpatrick chucked the museum register atop a cardboard box, where it fell open to a name-riddled page.

  Pain. In his arms.

  “Keep moving, Mr. TV reporter.”

  Roberts turned to look over his shoulder. The fish knife whisked past his nose, forcing him to keep his head faced forward.

  “Don’t you fuckin’ look at me, asshole. Just move.”

  Kilpatrick pushed him ahead with a fist in Roberts’ shoulder blade, leading him to a padlocked door—the bedroom, if Roberts’ guess was right. Again, because of the padlock, he was reminded of storage. And he knew that he himself was about to be stored. An object, a part of some psychotic collection.

  Kilpatrick gripped and twisted the banner that held Roberts’ arms together, tightening it like a tourniquet, cutting off the circulation to his wrists even more than he already had. Roberts grunted in pain; his shoulders on fire from the sudden torsion. He looked up toward the ceiling—a slat of wood, a hand-painted sign, hung above the door that read KILLER’S INK TATTOO SHOP.

  Kilpatrick leaned forward, propping a stubbled chin on Roberts’ shoulder from behind. “Do not move,” he whispered, the order carried on a cloud of fetid breath.

  Roberts heard Kilpatrick dig into his pockets, pulling out a ring of keys. He ceremoniously unlocked the door, and creaked it open, just a crack.

  Roberts smelled urine, bad meat.

  Kilpatrick reached up and violently grabbed a fistful of Roberts’ hair. He pulled him backward, throwing him off balance, and then quickly slammed him forward, bashing him skull-first into the doorjamb. The wood was like a giant metal spike hammered in one blow into his forehead.

  He crumbled.

  Kilpatrick threw him into the door, watching him sprawl into a pile of newspapers.

  He stepped over Roberts’ body, flicked on the light switch. Corky was out cold on the bed, looking dead but being only unconscious—Kilpatrick had given him a rather small dose. His tattoo was unfinished, incomplete. Kilpatrick saw the tattoo machine, still there, still powered up on the bedside table, the needle dangling on its cable that extended from the little engine that drove it. He rushed over to the table and grabbed all the sharp needles that he had strewn out there in preparation for Corky, not wanting to leave any potential weapons in the room, should the newsman regain consciousness before he returned.

  He exited, kicking Roberts’ head out of the way of the door and slamming it shut. He quickly padlocked it, and sauntered into the kitchen. “Fucking interruptions,” he said to himself as he pulled open the drawer full of sharp hypodermic needles and jiggling glass vials of clear liquid. “How am I supposed to get anything done around here?”

  He plunked a needle into the rubber cap of a vial—it was reminiscent of fresh, tight skin—and sucked the drugs into the syringe.

  V.

  Something like smelling salts reached inside his head and clicked it painfully on. Consciousness returned in a shotgun burst, scattered. The strong odor that had wakened him was quickly underpinned by a sense of pain, like white light.

  Roberts opened his eyes and moaned.

  Something was staring right at him, right in front of his face. A wall of eyes—false eyes. Tattooed eyes—drawn into the flesh of what looked like a rotten corpse. The dead woman reeked, a mixture of pungent tangerines and old shellfish. Roberts gagged, his stomach lurched, but he did not vomit anything but air.

  His head spun as he tried
to lift it; light entered his mind in impossible angles behind spiraling shadows, shimmering glimmers of cloudy, pink-yellow light. As if his eyes were two large, scabby bruises.

  He blinked, batting away the blurred vision. He realized that a mixture of sweat and blood had trickled over his eyelids. He only hoped that it was his own fluid, and not something from the body beside him.

  He rolled back to the door, leaning against it. He shimmied his way up to a standing position. His head throbbed painfully as he tried to attain balance, tried to remember what had happened. He knew he was in the Killer’s apartment—he knew he was about to be murdered—but where did the psycho go?

  With his hands still tied behind his back, he tried to twist the doorknob. It didn’t budge.

  He noticed a figure on the bed.

  It was Corky—naked, his limbs outstretched like a giant starfish. Roberts tried to focus his eyes as he stumbled toward him. He saw tattoos all over his body; a nest of disgusting insects inked into groin and stomach. He hadn’t seen these before, but they were not as good, not as complex as Corky’s usual work.

  And then he saw the tattoo machine, instantly realizing what had happened. The Killer was in the process of tattooing his friend.

  Roberts bent his head forward, nudging Corky’s side. He whispered, “Get the fuck up!” but the man did not move, did not recognize him. Roberts looked at his face; his eyes were open, empty—like the dead eyes of Judy Thomas. Roberts winced, thinking that the Killer had robbed him of yet another friend, but then wondered why a dead man would need to be tied up. He turned around, gripped Corky’s arm with a hand—he could feel a pulse: a dull, slow throb that could have been his own.

  He inhaled sharply through his nose, letting Corky’s arm go. His nose gurgled, bubbled. It was broken, he knew, because he could taste the blood running down the back of his throat. And even so…the reek of the room managed to burn its way into the carnage of his nose. A smell much worse than the living room—more like a neglected cage at the zoo.