That was when he started to moan.
But it wasn't why.
Because the stink was in the room, invisibly clouding the air, heady as nitrous oxide and rank-as a dead man's asshole. It burned in his nostrils, made his eyes helplessly stream. The walls did a hallucinatory bulging outward, a Videodromeish nightmare sag. It was in the grips of that vision that the moaning began, and amplified.
He moved deeper into the room. Much of the rest was left untouched. He followed his nose much more than his eyes. It led to his desk, where the stench was overwhelming.
There were some photographs there, strewn all over the surface. The first one his gaze locked upon was Mona
(DING! DING! DING!)
and suddenly he knew what the smell was all about, he knew why it had dragged him by the nostrils to this place. The ugly gestalt was complete, and it was worse than he'd imagined.
But it was wonderful, too. Unspeakably, perfectly wonderful.
And that was when he began to laugh.
"Oh, you bastards," he said, interspersed between hiccups of cold, cold glee. "Oh, God, thou art so kind to me," he added, and then headed back into the kitchen.
Larry was still standing there. He had an unpleasant expression of cowardice on his face. He jumped when Billy stepped through the doorway, and his one unswollen eye was huge.
"Did you happen to catch the names," Billy began, "of the two charming gentlemen with Albert?"
Barring the height difference and lack of fur, Larry looked a lot like Bubba when he'd just been caught crapping on the floor. Billy laughed. Larry said nothing.
"Come on, big fella," Billy continued, sly and jovial. "Think on it for a second. Did you happen to catch the names of either one of 'em?"
Larry's expression remained unchanged, but he took one baby step back. Boy, you've got a spine of steel, Billy thought; he didn't say it, but he giggled a little as it rang against the inside of his ears.
"Well, let me ask you this," he persisted. "You say that there was a greasy little spic. Did he have a wormy little mustache?"
Larry slowly nodded his head.
"Now think real hard. Could his name have possibly been Rickie?"
Larry's good eye widened further, just before he nodded again.
"Ah!" Billy smiled. He was pleased. The next question barely needed to be asked. "And the big guy. The big one. Do you think he might have called himself—"
"Rex." The word, from Larry's throat, was nearly inaudible. But the jogging of his memory brought a strange light to his eyes; even the damaged one gleamed with a sudden dawning of comprehension, a slew of unphrased questions that took form within that glow. "Rex," he said again.
And Billy smiled.
"I'm going to pay off Albert now," he said. His hand slid into his pocket, pulled out the enormous wad of bills. "Give him everything we owe him. And then I think I'll settle up with his goons. Sound good?"
"Billy—" Larry began. The unspoken questions were beginning to take shape.
But Billy didn't care to answer them. He had just one more thing to say.
"Don't talk. Just listen. This is something you're gonna want to keep in mind."
He stepped closer to Larry. Larry backed away farther. Billy stepped closer still. He could almost taste the sharpness of his teeth.
"Don't ever fucking push me again, okay?" he said. "Don't push me, don't shove me, don't raise your tiny voice. You may be awfully sorry if you do, and I mean that most sincerely."
Then he turned, leaving his quivering roommate to the rubble, and made his way to the front door and beyond.
THIRTY-SIX
ALBERT
The whole thing went down in less than ten minutes. Like this:
Albert was in bed, his bloated body naked and stretched out on top of the sheets. In the blue light from the TV his sweaty tons of flesh took on an unpleasant sheen. He had a lot of body hair, and most of it was slicked down by the exertion and the heat. He had just gotten laid, and he stunk. Albert wallowed in the fumes like a pig in a poke.
It was a happy coincidence for Cinemax that they'd scheduled Magnum Force as their Friday Night Movie leadoff. The vigilante killings had kicked up their share of the viewing public monumentally. Ordinarily, Albert would have been watching Knight Rider.
Clint was just blowing off his first young renegade cop when the door of Albert's apartment swung open.
Albert jumped, sat bolt upright. He grabbed the pillow from behind him and used it to cover his crotch. His eyes, when he turned, were wide and huge.
"Hi," Billy said, letting the door swing shut behind him. "I believe I owe you something."
Albert went from fear to fury in the time it takes a fly's wing to flicker. "What the hell are you doin' here?" he demanded.
"Don't you want what's coming to you?" Billy grinned as he said it, and took another step into the room.
Albert was confused, and a twinge of the fear came back. He didn't like that smile, and being naked put him at a very definite strategic disadvantage. "How'd you get in here?" he demanded again, a little less tough this time.
"Through the door. I thought you saw me."
"I—"
"I wanna ask you a couple of questions now, okay? You'll want to answer them quickly."
"Listen, asshole!" Albert bellowed. "I don' hafta take dis shit! You can't jus' walk in here without even knockin' without even fucking knockin'—an' try to intimidate me! Get outta here!" It sounded like "gitattahair": one word, with a cheesy Spanish accent. Intimidate was pretty funny, too.
Billy laughed. "I think you'd better put your pants on before you try to order me around. It's hard to take you seriously." Albert flushed. "Of course, it's hard to take you seriously, anyhow."
"Gitattahair!" Pointing at the door with his pudgy right hand, holding the pillow with his left. His whole body flushed and jiggled. Embarrassment. Rage.
Billy took another half-dozen steps into the room. He wasn't smiling. "You took a couple of guys up to my apartment earlier. I wanna know who they are. I wanna know where they live."
Albert used his patented sneer. "You can't prove nothin'."
"I don't have to prove anything. I already know. I want some names and addresses. Now."
"I don' know what you're talking about!"
"Don't play with me, Albert. I'll waste you right now." Albert looked stunned. "Are you threatening me?"
"Kinda sounds that way, doesn't it?"
The fat landlord was sweating more profusely now. He slid slowly down the length of the bed, backing away. There was a tiny noise from the bathroom. Roxie. Albert thought about making a dash for it, pounding the door. He thought again. Billy was coming closer. He thought again, and then it was too late.
"You touch me, fucker, you're dead meat!" The notes were shrill and warbling. They packed a lot of volume, but not much power.
But it was the words that got to Billy. He stopped in his tracks, gaze turning inward for a moment. A smile slowly lit across his face.
"No, no, muh man," Billy said very quietly. "You are."
And then he touched Albert, very lightly, on the forehead.
The landlord shrieked. The touch itself was butterfly) light, but he felt a spark go off, as if Billy had just struck a safety match off the wrinkles on his brow. His hands came up to touch the spot; and with horror he noted that the flesh of his forehead and fingertips seemed to smush into each other, soft and giving as the feel of bruised plums.
He shrieked again.
"You're dead," Billy said. "You just don't know it yet. You're a walking, talking corpse. Check it out."
Dirty Harry was involved in some serious shooting on the screen. There was the faint sound of whimpering from the bathroom. Billy yanked a mirror that was five feet long and two feet tall from the cheap wooden bureau with a visceral snap.
All of it was drowned out by the screams that persisted as a crackling charge ran through Albert's body, enveloping his head and shooting down to the s
houlders as it rocketed up his arms and down his sides. It wasn't pain so much as the feeling that his body was falling asleep: the tingling odd numbness that raced down his torso, overwhelmed his genitals, and made its way rapidly down either leg.
The stench in the room changed slightly for the worse. "Check it out," Billy repeated, holding up the mirror. Albert saw himself.
And the real screaming began.
Because he was rotting, the flesh going pale and greenish and slick with something other than sweat. Huge bruises were forming on his ass and thighs; the blood was settling there, purplish and nasty. A vile taste had befallen his tongue. Decay. As he watched, the greenishness became more distinct.
"NOOOOO!" he howled, but the effort was suddenly grueling. His muscles didn't work the way they were supposed to, and he seemed suddenly devoid of salivary help. His flesh was starting to bulge, bloating, like a roadside carcass beneath the summer sun.
Which knew no mercy.
"Okay, man," Billy said, holding the mirror steady.
"Give me their names. Tell me where I can find 'em. Maybe I'll reverse the process.
"Maybe."
Albert was having a hard time concentrating. In the reflection, it seemed that his flesh was beginning to crawl. His stomach was bulging in a horrible pregnancy-mode, inch by visible inch.
He looked away from his nightmare image, bug-eyed vision locked on the bathroom door. It was the only locked door that he could retreat behind.
It was his only chance in the Hell that was so rapidly immersing him.
"Roxie!" he tried to scream, but the word came out burbled. He staggered to his feet and wobbled there, the pillow falling away. The deterioration of his internal machinery did a number on his motor control. He could barely haul his bulk to the door and slam his fists against it.
"ROXIE!" he bawled, tearlessly crying now. His hands stuck to the door as they struck it, pulled away with a squishing sound. Blotches of goo lingered on the wood veneer.
"Roxie," said the voice from behind him, drawing nearer. It sounded almost wistful, like fond remembering of a favorite dish that Momma used to make. Yes, very much like that.
It sounded almost hungry.
Roxie Wray, a rose by any other name, was cowering naked in the bathtub when the door blew off its hinges. It didn't bulge or boom, as if someone had rammed it; it didn't even crash to the floor.
It blew across the room as if fired out of a cannon, smashed against the opposite wall, and then crashed to the floor. A powerful blast of rancid wind swept in behind it, gagging her, blowing her back.
And then Albert staggered into the room.
In the blaring fluorescence of the bathroom light, the crawling of his flesh could be clearly seen for what it was. All the little white maggots squirming in and out were stark counterpoint to his darkening ripeness.
Roxie screamed and screamed and screamed, devoured by the horror. Her eyes bugged out in an unwitting parody of Albert's own, which caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His worm-ridden tongue poked out in grisly lolling raspberry as he let out a scream that had no wind behind it. The result was a gurgling death-rattle.
Then he plummeted to the tiles with a wet smacking sound.
And somebody else stepped into the room.
Oh, no, her mind whispered. Oh, no. Oh, no. The presence of the kid made her nightmare complete. The words Go and sin no more rippled across her consciousness in a voice that was not her own. And here she was, sinning again: an ugly sin that she hated, that was imposed upon her with force and threat by fucking Albert and fucking Cool . . .
"THEY MADE ME DO IT!" she shrieked, and then the wind blasted into her again, the crackling heat spackling against her skin . . .
Billy stopped himself. It wasn't easy. There were several things involved.
Number One: she was a witness.
Number Two: he had touched her, and she had failed him, and the failure made him furious.
Number Three: the Power was roiling and kicking within him. It didn't care who it hit, he realized with sick certainty. It just wanted out.
Billy stopped himself, swallowing the ball in mid roll and punting it back. She's a victim, his mind reminded him. You're not supposed to kill her. You're supposed to save her. He imagined being forced to fuck Albert, and the concept was more revolting than the steaming mound of rot on the floor.
She was babbling her story now. He listened with frigid detachment. All about how she'd tried to fight back, but Cool was already punishing her by making her work in the back of the Rambler, and she hated Albert but she couldn't turn him down because Cool would beat the shit out of her—pausing to show him the bruises, going here and here and here, as she pointed them out on her back and thighs—and how she didn't want to be here, and how he please should not kill her—
"Then there's no love lost between you and Albert, right?" he asked.
She shook her head emphatically, sniveling back tears. "And you won't tell anyone."
"No," she whimpered, head still shaking.
Billy thought, for a second, about the six hundred-odd dollars that were still in his pocket. "Was he supposed to pay you something?"
A deep scab of hatred got picked off inside her, bled across her features. She seemed to have deduced that he wasn't going to kill her, and her voice became stronger. "He own the building that Cool work out of. I hadda do him for free." Her eyes still streamed, but her lips curled into a sneer. She brought her gaze up ferociously to meet his and said, "I'm glad he's dead."
Billy smiled tightly and dug into his pocket. He split the pile of bills into equal halves and handed one of them to her. "Get your clothes on and get the hell out of town," he said. "Go home, if you have one. Visit sunny California. You've got a little over three hundred bucks there. Leave this shit. I'll take care of Cool."
Roxie stared from him to the money and back again. Her eyes were still bugging and wet, but it wasn't from terror. She shivered; it was just her central nervous system overloading.
"Oh, thank you," she babbled. "Thank God. Thank God."
"Hurry up," Billy said. He couldn't believe how cold he felt, how removed from her gratitude and his own benevolence. He pointed at Albert's ballooning belly and added, "Looks like our man has got a bad attack of gas in the works. You don't wanna be here when he blows."
Roxie nodded and stood, clutching the money to her bosom. Something went cold inside of her, too; she wrinkled her nose in revulsion, staring at Albert's maggot-festooned back, and then hocked a surprisingly healthy wad of spit at him. Albert didn't seem to notice.
Billy looked at her. Self-possessed again, she really was beautiful. He thought about how far the money would take her, how long she would last on it. He thought there's more where this came from.
He handed her the other pile.
"Get straight. Get a job. At the very least peddle your ass somewhere where they pay you what you deserve. But if I see you working that corner again, you're going to look like our friend here. Dig?" She nodded, the terror returning. "This is a new lease on life. You know the terms. Now go."
Roxie nodded, taking the money, and hightailed it out of the room. He never saw her again, but the image of her lithe form's exit burned forever into his brain.
"And now for you," he said, addressing the decay at his feet. He stooped beside it. "And now for you."
Albert was still aware. That was the worst thing of all. The death of his body had not released his mind or soul, such as they were. It wasn't easy for Billy to reach down and touch the back of the festering head. The stench was incredible, and the texture was worse. He pinched his nose shut with one hand and reached out with the other.
And learned everything he needed to know.
When the final grotesquerie went down, both Billy and Roxie were long long gone. Less than ten minutes had elapsed.
But Albert's perception, such as it was, went on and on and on.
THIRTY-SEVEN
A HAPPENING PLAC
E
It was dark inside the Variety Photoplays. It was just the way he liked it. The lonely men were widely dispersed singly throughout the theatre, their faces indistinct. The only congregations were in the back, near the projectionist's booth, where men paid money to either whack or be whacked off by their companions.
Of course, Stanley Peckard didn't think of it in those terms. All human sexuality fell under the blanket of Nasty Things: unforgivable to do, naughtily gleeful to watch. He was proud to say that he had never done any Nasty Things with anybody else; his mother would have been proud, too. He had done little things with himself, though, and they made him feel
(bad bad bad)
excited and tingly and curious as to what it would be like with a woman, or even another man.
Of course, these were Bad Thoughts, which were the second-worst things after the Nasty Things themselves. He had resigned himself to the Bad Thoughts, much as he had to the little things he did with his hand and the things that the Voices made him do with those girls and the Master Carver. He couldn't help but do those things. They
(had to be done)
weren't his fault. He hoped that God and his mother understood that.
They weren't his fault.
Stanley sat in the front row, balcony, and watched the beautiful naked people do the wonderful Nasty Things to each other on the screen. They were
(evil)
huge, much bigger than life, and their moans and sighs and rhythmic gyrations filled the theatre and flooded his senses. What fun they seemed to be having! How wonderfully wicked were their lives!
Stanley had a Nasty Thing all his own, and he was playing with it as he sat and watched the movie. When he closed his eyes, he could see the girlfriends that the Voices and his Little Friends had given him. They were so pretty. They were just like the girls on the screen. He wished that he were one of the movie stars, doing Nasty Things left and right with his girlfriends, making them
(smile)
happy and excited and tingly all over like he was. Then he thought about Lisa, his friend, while he played and played, and his Nasty Thing told him that he was going to get Sticky soon, but it was good, it was so good, it wasn't nasty at all, and he saw her moaning and bucking beneath him like the girls in the movies, and it was
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