The chance to exhibit some sanity loomed before me, but instead, I flipped the switch on the flashlight and it instantly illuminated the interior of the car. My luck was still holding. I tightened my grip on my buddy “Jim” by grabbing his easy-to-carry bottle by the handle and slid from the car.
Slowly, I walked up to the front door. I didn’t knock. I didn’t ring the bell. Instead, I stepped off the beaten path and clawed my way through the bushes so that I could peek in the windows. Now, not only was I trespassing, I was a Peeping Tom. I would be lucky if they only arrested me for trespassing and not attempted burglary. I ran the scenarios through my alcohol-filled head, knowing exactly how it would play out as the homeowner explained to the police why he shot me with his twelve-gauge shotgun. He would explain how I had driven up, gotten out of the car and stumbled toward the front door; only I went to a window instead, like I was casing the joint. He would explain how I peeked in the windows and how I saw his wife putting on her nightie in the living room. He would explain that I made my intentions clear when I shined my flashlight though the window, which caused his wife to scream. Fearing their home was about to be invaded, he then grabbed his gun. He kept it handy, right next to his La-Z-Boy, for just such occasions.
By the time he reached the front door, I, in my drunken stupor, stumbled out of the bushes mumbling about how I thought no one was home. He would then explain how I was making menacing eye contact, and when I raised my hand to take another drink, he mistook that motion as an effort by me to throw the bottle at him. His instinct for self-preservation then kicked in. He quickly raised and aimed his gun. He yelled for me to stop, but I continued waving the bottle at him, until he thought he had no other choice. He was as shocked as the officers that the shotgun blast literally blew me in half. Why, the whole top half of me just flew off into the swamp where the gators were enjoying it. His wife was extremely traumatized, as the inner fluids and bits of goo from my body had been splattered all over her prize-winning begonias.
I was standing there in my drunken state, imagining the worst, when suddenly an owl hooted, and I almost shit my pants. I jumped back, fell over some half-dead bush, landing in the overgrown lawn, causing three or four million mosquitoes to go on the offensive and attack me. It had to have been quite a scene. Me, rolling about, flailing my arms around, trying to get the little blood suckers to back off. The million-plus armada of bugs chased me back to my car where I hid behind the glass as the feeding frenzy subsided, except for the three or four dozen that managed to sneak into the car with me. But I handled them with ease by starting the car and turning up the air conditioner to the arctic setting.
I sat shivering for the longest time, before I realized I had no idea where I was or what time it was. After pondering the situation for a while, I remembered why I was here. I was to go inside and get some more money. That was why I was here—the money. It’s always about the money.
I checked the level of my liquid courage and found I had drunk more than half the bottle of Jim Beam while I had been waiting. I decided that I had better go in now before I finished it and lost the courage it was providing or just passed out.
I stumbled across the lawn again and tried to peek in the windows on the other side of the front door, but just like the big front window, my flashlight reflected off the glass causing me to see stars, while failing to illuminate the room.
I have to admit I was curious now that I had found the Apollo Road house. I could almost hear the guy on the phone begging me to come and get the money, and I needed the money. I needed the money really bad, so I did my best impression of a sober man and stumbled back over to the front door and twisted the doorknob. The doorknob creaked slightly and was a bit stiff, but it turned. Slowly, the door swung inward, and my heart raced as if I’d touched a live electrical wire. Before me was a near pitch black room.
“Hello? Hello! Anybody here?”
No answer. The house was open, and there was no one here. All I had to do was walk inside and get the money.
CHAPTER FOUR
Letting the flashlight lead the way, I slowly shoved the door open farther and stepped through the doorway into a pitch black foyer. The wind, whipping up briefly, quickly closed the door behind me with a loud bang! causing me to literally jump sideways a few feet. I took a quick swig of my liquid courage as I pondered how much money was waiting inside. God, I hoped it was a lot. It would suck to go through all this for a couple of grand. There had better be at least ten grand—twenty would be better.
I stepped farther into the foyer, and I was immediately hit square in the face by a pungent smell that was both sweet and sickening at the same time. I fought back the urge to puke and pushed onward into the house. I casted the beam of the flashlight about as if fly fishing, and I found I was in a large foyer. I jumped yet again when I saw my face in a mirror off to the right, but I quickly recovered when I realized it was me and hurriedly stepped farther into the house. I stopped at a juncture of archways, leading to the living room and the dining room. The living room was to the left and the dining room was to the right; both rooms were a mess.
The furniture was clearly old and all broken down. Dust webs hung everywhere, and I was pretty sure a rat or two ran from the flashlight beam as I swung it around taking in the sights.
In the living room, there was a fireplace with the required old painting hung above the mantle. It was either a picture of an old woman or an old horse in a hat. I couldn’t quite tell. It didn’t matter because when I stepped up closely and took a good, hard look, it turned into a poster for some bar at the beach with some cutie in a bikini advertising beer. The girl on the poster was leaning toward the camera showing off her cleavage with the beer’s name cleverly covering the highlights of her bosom. She wasn’t half bad, though the swimsuit looked to be maybe fifty years old. Then it struck me—I had been distracted by a woman in a bikini, just like during the lawnmower incident.
For a brief moment, I entertained the thought of leaving. The place was cursed—cursed by the dreaded ‘women in bikini’ curse. But as I turned to leave, the thought of the money crossed my mind, so I went across the hall to the dining room. The dining room held no tantalizing art work. Its walls were bare, and there was no furniture except for a large china cabinet on the far wall that had all its glass doors broken out. The glass was still scattered around the thing on the floor. The curtains were thick but full of holes that let in just a modest amount of moonlight, giving the room an out of this world feeling. That was when the thought crossed my mind. Was Lon Chaney home?
Leaving the spacious dining room, I stepped to the bottom of the stairs. Here the pungent odor was stronger, and once again I fought back the urge to puke. Doing my best to ignore my abdominal distress, I pointed the flashlight up to the landing at the top of the stairs. It was less than illuminating. All I could see were blank walls covered in now-yellowed white paint and cobwebs. I felt a chill run up my spine as I stood there staring at the landing, so I decided I had better check the rest of the main floor before I ventured upstairs. I took another large swig of my liquid courage, hoping it would fortify me for the trip up the stairs once I’d finished with the rest of the house.
The kitchen was in the back of the house. It was just as old and messy as the rest of the house. The cabinets were black and white, like they had been back in the nineteen fifties. The stove was like nothing I’d seen before, except in my great aunt’s house when I was a small boy back in Michigan. It was the kind that required you to light the burners whenever you turned it on. It looked to be made of cast iron, which might explain why no one had stolen it, like they had the refrigerator, which was now just represented by an empty space. There weren’t any table or chairs, but there was a McDonald’s wrapper in the sink—a McTasty or something like that.
I noticed through the window that it had started to rain. When the lightning flashed, my eye was drawn to the swimming pool where the rain drops danced across the surface. In this light, the pool lo
oked to be clean. I thought it was odd, but I didn’t dwell on it. I took another swig of “Jim” and headed for the stairs without bothering to check the laundry room.
Once again, I stood frozen at the bottom of the stairs. I flashed the light on the wall above the landing and another shiver ran up my spine. Every fiber of my body was telling me to leave, but “Jim” was telling me I could take on King Kong if he dared make an appearance.
After a few short minutes of an internal argument, “Jim” and his King Kong speech were victorious over the lesser man I was inside. Embracing the false bravado, courtesy of “Mr. Beam,” I climbed the stairs, hoping and praying that the rotted wood didn’t give way as I climbed. I also hoped I wasn’t about to get killed by a homicidal maniac who set me up with phone calls to a wrong number or what would be worse, he just maimed me then left me to die. My mind immediately conjured up scenes of hundreds of rats racing across the floor of the room to attack me. Then a truly morbid thought occurred to me—what difference did it make? There wasn’t anyone to mourn my passing. Hell, the soon-to-be ex-wife would jump for joy as she collected the insurance money, playing the role of a grieving widow for all the world as she left to go ballroom dancing or paragliding or something stupid like that.
Reaching the landing, I stopped and listened to the wind and rain slapping against the outside of the house. I took a deep breath only to suck in a lung full of that sweet, yet sickening smell, which was even stronger here at the top of the stairs. Once more, I fought to keep from puking.
It wasn’t just the smell that was causing me distress. The carpet, which at one time had run the length of the hallway, had long since been eaten away by insects and mold, leaving just a few strands of backing here and there. Enhancing the sense of squalor were the dozen large holes in the walls and the sheets of peeling wallpaper everywhere. The second floor was trashed worse than the main floor was.
Unsure if I should move forward or just go back downstairs, after seeing the decay and destruction, I took yet another swig of the bottle tightly clenched in my fingers to bolster my courage. As I waited to feel the warmth of the liquid courage flow through my veins, I tried to remember what the psycho had said about where the money would be. One of the bedrooms—yeah, that was it—but which one? Having drunk over three quarters of a bottle of whiskey, it was becoming clear that Jim Beam enhanced one’s courage and curiosity, while completely screwing with your memory.
Feeling encouraged by a fresh rush of alcohol, I went to the first room on the left because it was closest to the stairs, allowing me to make a quick exit if I found myself overwhelmed by the urgent need to do so. As I cautiously moved forward, my imagination started to run away with me. I just knew that the psycho was waiting somewhere in the house, waiting for the opportunity to knock me over the head and then drag me off into the basement where he would peel away my skin and let the cockroaches slowly devour me. Then, I remembered that houses in Florida don’t have basements, and I relaxed again. The only person who would enjoy skinning me and letting the cockroaches have me was The Bitch, and she was too busy doing the horizontal mambo with her attorney just now to care. But still, I looked around and found a discarded spindle from the stair railing, which I picked up to use as a weapon. Now I could handle King Kong for sure.
Using the spindle, I shoved the door open to the room on the left and peered in. It was empty—not even curtains were left. The closet door was closed, and I wasn’t too keen on opening it, so I stepped back and moved on to the next door on the left, which was the next closest door.
Once more, I used the spindle to push the door open, and again the room was empty. Well, not quite; there were a few empty beer bottles and a whole bunch of used condoms scattered across the floor and hung on the window ledge and even the closet door knob. What the hell is wrong with people? Like this is a great place to bring a girl for sex? Then it occurred to me that it could have been a bunch of gay guys, and that creeped me out even more, so I turned toward the room across the hall, the first one on the right. It was then that my pea brain kicked in its memory drive and reminded me of what the psycho caller had said. Shit. I didn’t have to even check those other rooms. What an idiot.
I beat myself up for a minute or two before I found the courage in another swig of my trusty bottle, and using the spindle once more, I shoved the door open. I was dumb struck at the sight. My arms and legs were frozen from shock and wouldn’t move. My heart skipped several beats, and I almost passed out. Every instinct told me to run—and run fast—but I was rooted to the floor. My liquid courage, my bottle of Jim Beam, slipped from my hand and bounced on the floor a couple of times before it shattered. The shattering of the glass bottle was enough to snap me out my trance but just barely. I spun to my left and slouched with my back against the wall. My eyes darted from doorway to doorway, searching for anything out of place or anyone trying to sneak up on me. Seeing no one, I stepped back into the doorway and took another look. Before me was the most macabre site I could have ever imagined.
CHAPTER FIVE
In the far right hand corner of the room was the source of the sweet yet sickening smell. Through the alcohol-induced haze, my brain shouted, It smells like death, dumbass! I stood staring at a partially decomposed naked body. I had to look hard to see that the body was that of a woman. The skin had sagged and some places it was even falling off in sheets like the wallpaper in the hall. Where her breasts had been, there was only a flap of skin with dark spots where there were once nipples. Where her vagina should have been was just a large hole. Her hair was dark brown, short and all frizzy. Her eye sockets were empty. My stomach did a flip, and for a moment, I almost lost my dinner of alcohol, but at the last second, I was able to hold it down.
Her hands and feet appeared to be tied and there was a wire wrapped around her neck and tied to a large hook in the ceiling. It had cut very deeply into her neck. Under the body was a large piece of Visqueen plastic sheeting caked with dried blood and who knows what other bodily fluids. There were rat droppings all over the Visqueen and on the floor under the body. As I stood mesmerized, a rat stuck its head through the hole that had once been her left breast. That was when I finally lost my liquid dinner.
Quickly turning my head, I managed to project the vile upchuckings down the hall to the left, so I wouldn’t have to walk though it to leave. Once more, I leaned against the wall, this time hunched over face first on my arms, gasping for air and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. As I leaned over, my state of drunkenness seemed so much more intensified. My vision blurred, my head was spinning, and I knew if it weren’t for the wall, I’d be face down in my own vomit on the floor. That was when the memory portion of my brain kicked in again. It reminded me there was money here, and psycho man had said I could have it, but I still wasn’t sober enough to remember where.
Gradually, the hallway came back into semi-focus, and I forced myself to survey the rest of the room without looking at the body. There was a bed that looked to have fresh linen on it. The floor next to the bed was covered by what appeared to be a clean carpet remnant. There was a book on the night stand, “Mr. Murder” by Dean Koontz. How apropos, I thought. Next to the book was a small battery-powered lamp and a couple of candy wrappers.
What was it that psycho man had said about the money? He owed the money to someone whom he mistakenly thought was me. He had said he expected me to come and get the money, even if I didn’t want to meet up with him. If I didn’t go get the money, he said he’d come back and hurt me. Damn! So where was the money? Think!
I stood frozen in the doorway, hoping that something would pop into my head because I sure as hell couldn’t remember what he had said. I was also wishing I still had my buddy with me. I could use a good, stiff drink right about now.
A loud clap of thunder roared in the distance, startling me and causing me to jump about three feet to the side of the door opening. I could feel myself trembling as I leaned once more against the wall, certain something bad
was about to happen. Outside, the wind picked up and the rain intensified. It sounded like a stampede of wild horses racing across the roof (not that I know what the difference in sound would be between wild and domesticated horses.) Within seconds, I started hearing water dripping all around me in the hallway, which made things all that more creepy.
Summoning all my courage, I quickly crossed the room on the opposite side of the bed from the body and stood by the window. When the lightning flashed a moment later, I thought I saw someone in the back yard, and I dropped to my knees below the window sill.
“Shit, I knew it,” I mumbled out loud. That psycho is out there waiting for the chance to kill me. God, how could I be so stupid? I started to mumble a prayer, hoping that God would intervene and save my sorry ass, but deep down, I knew that he was too busy laughing at me.
I snuck a peek over the windowsill to see if I could see exactly where he was, but it was far too dark to see anything. Then the lightning flashed again, and I was now blinded by the brief but intense flash. It was accompanied by the loudest thunder I had ever heard. I swear my ears felt like someone had held a bullhorn to my head, turned the volume up and screamed. Tucked back down below the sill, I did my best to remain motionless. I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe. Slowly, the fear subsided, and I peeked once more through the window only to be greeted by the darkness once more. I played the flashlight around the room, keeping it aimed at the floor, hoping it wouldn’t be too noticeable from outside. I saw nothing new until I came to the bed. My new angle had provided me with a better view underneath it.
Cliff Roberts Thriller Box Set Page 3