Everett was breathing hard. ‘Shit, Sissy. I’m going to kill him. I swear it.’
T-Yon dragged the blanket back around her to cover herself up, while Shem gave Everett a self-satisfied wink. He must have heard what Everett had said about killing him but he plainly didn’t care. ‘Real tasty girl, your sister. Yum-yum-yum! Enough to satisfy any man’s appetite, wouldn’t you say?’
Everett was so wired up with anger that Sissy didn’t know how long she was going to be able to hold him back. But Vanessa Slider said, ‘Well, here we are at last. Now that we have you two together, you can make amends, can’t you?’
‘Amends?’
‘Exactly. What your mother did to me, so that she could rear you two sweet little children, that left me gutted. So that’s what we’re going to do to you.’
Sissy glanced worriedly behind her. There was still no sign of Aunt Epiphany in the kitchen doorway. Where the hell was she, and what was she doing? If she didn’t show herself soon, all three of them would be slaughtered like animals and their flesh scraped from their bones and jumbled up together and pushed into the grinder along with all the other poor girls they had killed.
Shem went across to the nearest counter, pulled open the drawer underneath it and took out a heavy stainless-steel cleaver. He came back, smacking the flat of the blade against the palm of his hand.
‘See the size of this chopper? Looks real hefty, huh? But it’s real surprising how del–i–cate you can be with it, once you know how. The Japanese sushi chefs, they use them, and they can slice a filet of beef so thin you can read your horoscope through it. And do you know what your horoscopes say today? They say, you three assholes thought you were going to get the better of the Sliders, but when it came down to it you don’t have the guts. Leastways, you won’t in a minute or two!’
He let out a raucous burst of laughter, and the figure in the black sheet jiggled and giggled. Sissy looked at Vanessa Slider and even though she wasn’t laughing she was repeatedly running the tip of her tongue backward and forward between her lips, as if she could taste her revenge already.
It was then, though, that Sissy felt something brush against her shoulder. She turned, and saw the faintest outline of a woman, walking down to the far end of the kitchen, and she could only see that because of the smoke. It was Aunt Epiphany, but she was almost totally transparent, like polished glass. She was holding up the equally transparent head of Adjassou-Linguetor in front of her and spinning it in a figure of eight pattern, as if she were winding an endless length of yarn.
Sissy had read that voodoo queens and houngans could walk through a room without anybody seeing them – not because they were really invisible, but because they had the power to distract everybody’s attention. They were like magicians, who could vanish from one side of a stage and reappear on the other.
Nobody else saw Aunt Epiphany – not Everett, not Shem, nor the head chef, nor any of his assistants. Not even Vanessa Slider.
But Sissy saw Aunt Epiphany’s glassy outline open the white enamel door that led to the cold store and disappear inside, and even though she couldn’t guess what she intended to do in there, she began to feel that the balance of power was about to change dramatically, from Vanessa Slider’s revenge to Aunt Epiphany’s righteousness.
‘Everett,’ she said. ‘Hold on.’
Walking Powder
Vanessa Slider circled around them, her pale green satin dress rustling on the floor. She came up close to Everett and prodded him with one sharp fingernail under the chin, as if he were a slave in a slave market, and she was considering buying him.
‘You’re a very handsome young fellow, Everett. Just like your sister is so pretty. A pity my two children never had the chance to grow up the same way you two did. Look at poor Shem. All those years in the juvenile detention center, and then the orphanage, and foster parents who beat him, and then prison. Plays havoc with a boy’s good looks, that kind of an upbringing, as well as the state of his mind.’
Sissy felt like saying, ‘How about a mother who recruited him to murder prostitutes and then cut them up like cattle?’ but she kept her mouth tightly shut. She kept glancing down to the white enamel door at the end of the kitchen to see if there was any sign of Aunt Epiphany, but so far the door had remained closed. The clamor of pots and pans continued unabated, and it was so deafening that even Sissy found it hard to believe that it all came from Vanessa Slider’s memory. It had really happened, but it had happened over twenty years ago, and now it existed only in the absolute refusal of Vanessa Slider’s spirit to forgive and forget.
Vanessa Slider took a step back and said, ‘What I want you to do now, Everett, is to take off all of your clothes.’
Everett said, ‘What? You want me to do what?’
‘You heard me. I want you to take off all your clothes. I want to see you bare naked, the same way that your sister is. You’re the son of a whore, why should that worry you?’
‘There’s no fucking way,’ Everett retorted. ‘If you think we’re going to be acting out that nightmare you kept giving to T-Yon, you are sorely mistaken.’
‘Shem,’ said Vanessa Slider, without even turning around to look at him. Shem twisted T-Yon’s left arm high up between her shoulder blades and held the cleaver horizontally against her throat.
‘If anybody is sorely mistaken, Everett, it’s you. You don’t think that Shem would hesitate to cut your sister’s head clean off, if I told him to? Shem does everything I tell him to, don’t you, Shem?’
‘Yes, Momma. You bet.’
Again, Sissy was tempted to argue with her – to tell her that upstairs on the third floor she had heard the voice of a very young Shem protesting that he hated to cut up their victims. But she guessed that their relationship had changed since Shem had gone through juvenile detention, and years of abuse, and prison. And since his mother had died, of course, and become nothing more than a bitter, vengeful, domineering shadow of what she once was.
‘You’re insane,’ Everett told her. ‘I don’t care whether you’re dead or not. The dead are supposed to rest easy, and leave the living to their own affairs.’
‘Oh, believe me, I will rest easy, once you and your sister have paid the price. I’ll be resting easy like Sunday morning.’
Shem made a suggestive grunting noise as if to warn Everett that he was deadly serious, and he lifted the cleaver right up under T-Yon’s chin so that she had to tilt her head back.
Everett started to unbutton his shirt, and Vanessa Slider beamed and smacked her hands together. ‘You see? Nothing like a little friendly persuasion, is there?’
There was nothing that Sissy could do, except turn her head away as Everett stripped right down to his black Calvin Klein shorts. The head chef and the assistants in the kitchen were turning around and laughing and the girls were nudging each other and banging their skillets even more loudly by way of showing their appreciation.
‘Come on, Everett,’ said Vanessa Slider. ‘Shorts too. Can’t make love with your shorts on, can you?’
‘You witch,’ breathed Everett. But he stepped out of his shorts and dropped them on top of his shirt and his pants and his scarlet Red Hotel socks.
Vanessa Slider came up to him and smoothed the flat of her hand across his chest. He couldn’t stop himself from shivering, but he flared his nostrils and held his breath and managed to control his anger.
‘I never imagined this day would ever come,’ she said. ‘All those years of grief. All those years of pain. But here it is at last. Soon I can close my eyes, and sleep forever, like I was supposed to.’
She slid her hand down Everett’s side, and down between his legs. She didn’t take her eyes away from his eyes, but she cupped his testicles in the palm of her hand, and lifted them a little, feeling their weight. Then she pressed the ball of her thumb against the purple head of his penis, and rotated it around and around, so that her long green-polished thumbnail ran underneath his foreskin.
‘You see? Ar
oused already. This is what your dear sainted mother did to my Gerard, and she killed him. She might just as well have cut him open.’
She kept on rotating her thumb for a while, and in spite of his obvious disgust, Everett’s penis began to rise. Vanessa Slider rubbed it up and down a few times, and then said, ‘Shem . . . why don’t you take off young T-Yon’s blanket and fetch her over here. You can spread the blanket on the floor. Give them something to lay on.’
Shem pushed T-Yon roughly forward, until she was standing right next to his mother, and then he dragged the blanket away from her. She stood there, still shivering, still dazed, her hands crossed over her breasts.
‘There now,’ said Vanessa Slider, stepping back. ‘Why don’t you take T-Yon in your arms, Everett, and show her just what a loving brother you can be?’
Everett hesitated, but Shem gave another grunt and loose-wristedly swung the cleaver from side to side as if to warn him that he had better do what his mother wanted him to do, or else the disemboweling would come sooner rather than later.
Sissy said, ‘Go on, Everett. Hold her. Everything’s going to be all right, I promise you.’
Everett took T-Yon in his arms and the two of them clung to each other, shaking with fear and helplessness – two abandoned orphans rather than lovers.
‘Now touch her,’ said Vanessa Slider. ‘Slip your finger in and see if she’s ready for you.’
Everett turned his head and gave her a look of such hatred that Sissy could almost imagine his eyes flaring red, like a demon’s. But the banging and clashing of kitchen utensils grew louder still, and it seemed to take on a rhythm, urging Everett and T-Yon to get down on the blanket and start copulating.
Everett kissed T-Yon and whispered something in her ear that Sissy couldn’t hear. The two of them awkwardly knelt down on the blanket, and then lay side by side, and all the time the saucepans and skillets went clatter-crash! clatter-crash! clatter-crash!
T-Yon reached across for Everett. She said something, but the noise was so loud that Sissy couldn’t hear what it was. It looked like I love you.
Clatter-crash! clatter-crash! clatter-crash! went the saucepans and skillets, like a locomotive gradually gathering momentum.
Sissy looked away. She knew what a sacrifice that T-Yon and Everett were both making to give themselves a chance of survival, but she didn’t want to demean herself by watching them.
Clatter-crash! clatter-crash! clatter-crash!
And then – abruptly – the clattering and crashing stopped. A deathly quiet fell across the kitchen, and all Sissy could hear was the bubbling of chowder and the surreptitious rattling of saucepan lids.
She turned around. The head chef and his assistants were staring down the kitchen to the white enamel door of the cold store, their mouths open in disbelief. One of the girls started to weep – high, panicky yelps of sheer terror.
The door had been flung open wide, and out of it stepped Aunt Epiphany, holding up her black leather head in one hand and a thick cluster of multicolored beads in the other. She had a triumphant look on her face, her thinly plucked eyebrows raised in arches, her eyes glittering, and her lips drawn back across her big white teeth as if she were ready to take a bite out of anybody who dared to challenge her.
But it was the figures who were following her who had stunned the kitchen staff into silence. There were nine or ten of them at least, stumbling a little as they approached, as if they were drunk, and occasionally jostling each other. But this was hardly surprising because they were nothing much more than bones and bloody ribbons of raw flesh, held together only with tendons. Three of them still had their faces intact, but the rest of them had exposed cheekbones and jawbones, and grinning teeth, and triangular holes where their noses had been.
Their eyeballs bulged out of their sockets in a fixed, glassy stare because they had no eyelids or eyebrows to give their faces any expression. But what was even more frightening than their grisly appearance was their silence. Their feet shuffled on the green-tiled floor, but they made no other sound at all. They weren’t even breathing.
‘You stay back, whoever you are!’ shouted Vanessa Slider. ‘You stay back! Those women can’t get up and walk! They’re all of them dead!’
Aunt Epiphany’s eyes opened even wider, and even more triumphantly, and she pointed the black leather head at Vanessa Slider and crowed out, ‘So are you, my dear! You are passed away too! But you do not even have a body! Ha! ha! ha!’
Shem had backed away almost as far as the kitchen entrance, his eyes darting from side to side with fear and indecision. When Aunt Epiphany laughed at his mother, however, he brandished his cleaver at her in a show of false bravado, and called out, ‘Get this, OK? These girls belong to us! We killed ’em, we cut ’em up. They’re ours! You take ’em right back to the storeroom, you hear, else I’m going to do the same to you!’
Completely unabashed, Aunt Epiphany continued to walk toward them, until she was so close to Vanessa Slider that she could have struck her with the black leather head. Vanessa Slider was clearly unnerved, but she was defiant. ‘Whoever you are, this is no business of yours! This is my business! This is my hotel! Just like my son told you, these girls are all ours! This is my day for retribution and you ain’t going to interfere with it!’
The small figure in the black sheet had been standing close to the edge of Everett and T-Yon’s blanket, but now it came over and clung to Vanessa Slider’s left leg.
Vanessa Slider patted it on top of the head, and said, ‘It’s all right, bebette. This woman is going to take all of our girls right back to the cold store, and then she’s going to go right back to where she belongs, which I hope is hell.’
‘Oh, you think?’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘You can talk all you like about getting your revenge, lady, but these girls want their revenge, too. They want their revenge on you, for what you did to them, and these are zombis, and there is nothing you can do to stop them. These are not zombis from the movies, my dear. These are not the living dead like you see in a George A. Romero picture. These are the children of Adjassou-Linguetor, brought to life with the walking powder. Look at them, and look what you did to them, and be afraid!’
The zombis said nothing. They stood behind Aunt Epiphany, swaying slightly, their flayed and mutilated bodies glistening with connective tissue and bodily fluids.
Vanessa Slider began slowly to step backward, gripping the black sheet that covered the small figure beside her. She turned quickly to see where Shem was, but Shem had circled around to stand next to the head chef, putting the kitchen counter in between himself and the zombis. He had picked up a large kitchen knife, as well as his cleaver, and he was holding them both up in front of him. He was trying to look aggressive, but Sissy could tell by the way he was grinding his few brown teeth together how frightened he was.
Aunt Epiphany crossed over to Everett and T-Yon and laid her hand on Everett’s shoulder. ‘Go,’ she said, gently but urgently. ‘Go now, as quick as you can. Go back through the wall and don’t look back.’
Everett and T-Yon scrambled hastily on to their feet. Everett picked up the blanket and flung it around T-Yon’s shoulders and scooped up his own shirt and pants from the floor.
Vanessa Slider was standing in the kitchen entrance now. Her face was taut with rage, her smudgy eyes even blacker than ever.
‘You can’t do this! You can’t let them go! They have to pay!’
But Everett shouldered her aside and pulled T-Yon out of the kitchen. As they hurried away, heading for the elevators, Vanessa Slider let out a scream of pain and frustration.
‘You can’t go! You have to pay! Your mother killed my Gerard! Your mother destroyed my dreams, and all for you!’
Now, however, the zombis began to shuffle forward, lifting up their raw, meatless arms to seize her. Vanessa Slider took three deep breaths, as if she were about to scream something more, but then she clearly saw that these living dead wanted to punish her just as much as she wanted to punish Ever
ett and T-Yon, and that they couldn’t be stopped.
She pushed the little figure in the black sheet out of the kitchen ahead of her and started to walk as fast as she could along the cinder-block corridor. But the little figure kept tripping and losing its balance, and letting out little cries of dismay as it did so, and she had to stop every few feet to renew her grip on its sheet and tug it along.
Sissy hesitated for a moment and then went after her. The zombis would never be able to catch her, and in any case they had Shem to deal with. Sissy wished to God that she didn’t smoke so heavily, because she was wheezing after only the first fifty feet, but the little figure in the black sheet tripped again, and again, and it wasn’t long before Sissy caught up with them.
Vanessa Slider turned around and confronted her. ‘Why did you have to interfere?’ she demanded, her voice hoarse with hatred. ‘This could all have been finished with by now, and I could have gone to my rest.’
Sissy coughed, and coughed, but at last she managed to catch her breath. ‘Spirits like you, Vanessa, they never get rest. Believe me, I’ve talked to more than my share, although not one of them was anything like as troubled as you are. You – you’ll be tossing and turning until the end of time.’
‘I’ll have my revenge one day, mark my words.’
Vanessa Slider was about to turn around and continue along the corridor when Sissy lunged forward and seized the little figure in the black sheet. She pulled it back toward the kitchen with all of the strength she could manage, and even when it tripped she kept on dragging it. She would have guessed by its size that it was a small child, about four or five years old, but unlike a small child it didn’t feel taut and robust. It felt more mushy, under its sheet, and it gave off a faint but distinctive odor like bad chicken.
‘Bebette!’ shrieked Vanessa Slider. ‘Bring me back my bebette!’
The little figure began to whine and cry, but Sissy refused to lose her grip on it, and pulled it all the way back to the kitchen. For all of her shrieking, however, Vanessa Slider didn’t come after her. She must have been more frightened of the zombis in the kitchen than she was of losing her ‘bebette’, whatever it was. She didn’t run away any farther, though. She stood halfway down the corridor in her pale green evening dress, her hand pressed indecisively over her mouth. Do I save myself, or save my bebette?
The Red Hotel Page 23