“Okay, okay, maybe I could’ve worded things better, but you sort of took me by surprise there,” Gary said. “But I still don’t understand what your deal is. Obviously I made a mistake joining you girls, so just let me off at the next exit and we’ll call it even. No blood, no foul.”
“Poor choice of words, there, Einstein. Besides, it’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Janelle said, flicking Gary’s neck with her finger, laughing as he cringed and yelped.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’ve hurt me bad and I didn’t do a thing to you. Isn’t that enough revenge for you?” In the front seat, Audrey began humming the theme song from Jeopardy. Her voice was soft and pretty.
“Oh, for crying out loud, man up a little and stop being such a fucking drama queen,” Janelle said. “You’re not hurt that bad. Trust me, this little scratch is nothing compared to what you’ll be facing in a little while.”
Then she leaned forward, lowering her head until her mouth was next to Gary Newton’s ear. “And to answer your question,” she whispered, “we’re not even close to being square. Usually we pick up the victim; it was kind of a nice change to have you pick us up instead. But that doesn’t really change anything. Either way, you’re going to wish you’d never laid eyes on the two of us before this night is over.”
“I already do.”
She licked some of the blood off his neck and straightened up, a satisfied grin on her face as their kidnapper moaned in terror.
3 - Gary
The motel looked like it had been taken right off the set of Psycho, the Alfred Hitchcock classic that Gary had watched probably two dozen times growing up. His childhood had been traumatic and shitty, but he had always been able to lose himself in horror flicks, and Psycho had been one of his favorites. This out-of-the-way motel had probably been old and decrepit when that movie was filmed, and it hadn’t gotten any less so in the decades since. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see a black-and-white Anthony Perkins occupying the motel office, had he been allowed to see the office, which he wasn’t.
Audrey parked out of sight of the dirty plate-glass window fronting the manager’s office and went to rent the bizarre threesome a room while he and Janelle waited in the car. The bleeding had slowed from the slice that crazy bitch Janelle made in his neck a few minutes ago and he tried to wipe some of the blood from his hands onto the Saturn’s stained carpet, succeeding only in smearing sand and dirt into the sticky mess on his palms.
Behind him, Janelle snickered. She didn’t seem to give a damn about him transferring his blood—and consequently his DNA—onto the floor of the car, which seemed odd. Then again, everything seemed odd about this fucking nightmare. He had been a little uneasy about these two almost from the very beginning, but thought he had everything more or less under control, and then, WHAM! everything fell apart in about two seconds.
He had to do something, but what the fuck could he do? He thought he had been in charge since leaving the first ice cream stand, but that had been a pathetic miscalculation on his part. GI Janelle, here, had been playing with him from the very beginning, and he had a feeling quiet little Audrey might be doing nothing more than putting on an act, too. Her eyes were downright spooky. And she moved like a fucking zombie or something.
Begging to be set free was pointless. He had tried three separate times after getting cut by the bitch to convince the girls that they should let him out on the side of the road, and he had a feeling Janelle was getting tired of hearing it. The first time she laughed at him, the second time her voice turned cold and hard as she told him to forget it, and the third time she had simply said, “Shut the fuck up,” and punctuated her comment by sliding the back of the knife-blade across his throat directly over his Adam’s apple. For about three seconds, he had thought he was dead. His reaction seemed to amuse her.
He decided to try a different tack. “It’s obvious you girls aren’t college students,” he began.
“You picked up on that, did you?”
“It took me a while, but yeah, I figured that one out.” He flashed the easy, melt-the-heart-of-your-next-victim smile he had mastered so long ago, hoping he might finally be making a little progress. “You ex-military or something?”
She seemed to find that funny and said, “Or something,” which, of course, could mean anything. Or nothing.
“You always drive around with knives hidden in every door?”
“When we’re hunting, we do. Also under the seat.” She transferred the knife to her left hand, careful to keep it pressed against his neck, and leaned over, reaching down next to Gary’s kneeling body and fishing under the seat next to him, pulling out another identical hunting knife and tossing it on the passenger side floor up front.
Gary mentally kicked himself for not thinking to check under the seat. These psycho bitches had apparently hidden lethal weapons all over their vehicle and he had been kneeling within inches of one without ever knowing it!
As pissed off as he was at his own stupidity, though, something else was bothering him even more. Something that scared the shit out of him.
Or maybe he was just losing his fucking mind. Because it seemed Janelle’s voice was lowering in pitch, losing its girlish quality, becoming gravelly, deep and rumbling, like a ninety year old man with something shaking loose inside his lungs. It was the sort of change you might notice in a heavy smoker after decades of abusing cigarettes. Except this change wasn’t taking place over the course of decades; it seemed to be happening by the minute.
And there was something else, too, now that he thought about it. The car was beginning to smell. A subtle odor of corruption, of rotting meat, had begun to permeate the inside of the vehicle. It was as if they had parked right next to a dumpster where restaurant employees had thrown out spoiled food on a blazing hot day. And although it was still hot outside despite the hour—it was coming up on two in the morning—Gary was one hundred percent fucking certain that there were no dumpsters or restaurants in the vicinity.
Behind him, Janelle chuckled and it occurred to him that no one had said a word for several minutes. “A penny for your thoughts,” she whispered, her lips suddenly next to his ear, and as she breathed out the stench intensified, becoming sickeningly strong. Gary felt his gorge rising and he swallowed hard, trying not to puke, knowing instinctively that would be a very bad thing to do.
He closed his eyes and did his best not to breathe, wondering how long he could manage that feat before psycho chick figured out what he was doing, and then Janelle said, “Ooh, goody, here comes Audrey. She got us a room, aren’t you excited?” And this time Gary knew without a shadow of a doubt her voice had changed; he didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he could no longer deny it. The sound rumbling up out of Janelle’s chest was unlike anything he had ever heard come out of a girl before. Hell, it sounded unlike anything he had ever heard come out of a human being before.
Acidy bile spewed into his mouth from his gullet and he clamped his jaws closed. Outside, materializing out of the darkness, petite Audrey approached from the direction of the motel office. She didn’t seem to be walking as much as shambling, dragging her trailing foot behind her with every step, almost as if she couldn’t quite get her body to respond completely to her mind’s commands.
Gary felt dizzy and weak and a strange buzzing noise began filling his ears. It was the sound of a million bees approaching in a gigantic swarm and he realized dimly that the noise was coming from inside his head. He felt weak and sick. He concentrated first on regaining his balance, recovering his sense of equilibrium, and when that effort produced no measurable results, he pinched his left arm with the fingernails of his right hand, digging nails into flesh, drawing blood, the pain bright and fresh, causing him to suck air in through his clenched teeth.
He had to stay conscious. He was certain if he passed out now he would never wake up. And it worked; at least for the moment. The pain in his arm throbbed in harmony with the pain in his sliced neck and h
is vision cleared marginally. The world righted itself and the bees in his brain swarmed off into the distance and he felt a bit more focused. He had no clue what the fuck was happening, but if he could keep his wits about him he might still be able to figure a way out of this nightmare.
By now Audrey had reached the car and she pulled open the driver’s side door. The interior dome light flashed on and as she slid into the front seat, bright yellow light splashed the side of her face and Gary couldn’t help himself. He gasped and opened his mouth to scream. The skin of her face was sagging, hanging in folds off her jawline, her momentum causing it to swing back and forth like a rooster’s wattle. The delicate bronze color of her skin was gone, replaced by a mottled brownish-black that looked exactly like spoiled hamburger.
Janelle dropped her knife and slapped her hand over his mouth, choking off his scream before it had even begun. The speed at which she acted was astonishing. So was the smell. That whiff of corruption, the stench of rotting meat, intensified a thousand-fold as he instinctively breathed in through his nose. The odor emanating from her hand was worse than anything he had ever experienced. It was the smell of decomposition, of maggots and death and rot.
Gary twisted and bucked, Janelle’s knife forgotten, the condition of Audrey’s skin forgotten, every goddamn thing forgotten except the visceral need to get away from that horrible stench. Her grip was like iron, though, and he could hear her laughing behind him. The sound was somehow dry and ancient and utterly terrifying.
The bees came swarming back and this time Gary knew they were here to stay. His stomach betrayed him and he puked and he knew he was going to choke to death on his own vomit, but the thing that used to be Janelle somehow realized he was getting sick to his stomach and she removed her hand and he threw up all over himself and the inside of the Saturn and he didn’t care. Her hand, that awful dead hand, was off his face for now and that was a minor victory.
Then she leaned in to kiss him and his eyes rolled up into his head and his world went black.
* * *
Gary’s eyes fluttered open and for one frightening moment he had no earthly idea where he was. Then he remembered and his fright intensified into full-blown terror. He was inside a room, presumably at the piece of shit little motel they had driven to after the run-in with the State Police trooper, who Gary fervently wished were here right now. He would gladly trade life in jail for whatever these two lunatic bitches had in store for him.
The girls—or whatever the fuck they were—must have carried him inside while he was passed out. They had secured him to a nasty old double bed with handcuffs and sturdy twine, neither of which he had stored in his backpack. The stuff must have been stored in the trunk of the car. Both his wrists and both his ankles had been expertly manacled, and then the twine pulled taut and tied to the corners of the bed frame so that he was spread-eagled on top of the threadbare bedspread.
His captors didn’t seem to have noticed he was awake yet. He could sense their presence, though, they were definitely here in the room with him, but they weren’t talking or watching TV or doing anything at all, as far as Gary could tell. It was unnerving as hell, almost as scary as being in this fucking predicament in the first place.
He very carefully tried to move his arms, to test the slack in his bindings. Maybe if he could get a little momentum going, he could snap the twine holding him to this bed and get the hell out of here before the girls knew what was going on. But there wasn’t any slack; not even a little bit. He had not so much as an inch of movement in either his arms or his legs.
And he was naked. Before cuffing him, the girls had stripped him. He wondered where his clothes were and then realized it didn’t make any difference. He wasn’t going anywhere.
He kept his head motionless and tried to take in as much of his surroundings as possible without alerting the girls to the fact that he had regained consciousness. He was desperate to locate something that might help him fashion some kind of escape plan. He had no idea what that something might be. The room looked like every other cheap-ass motel room in the United States, with faded blue pastel paint covering the walls and one single cheap, mass-produced monochromatic print of generic woodland scenery to break up the monotony. The print hung slightly askew, across the room from the bed, directly above the television set. It would have been at eye level if he had been standing, which, of course, he wasn’t. The wall he could see jutted outward at a ninety degree angle to his right, presumably to accommodate the bathroom.
And that was it.
The room was bland, nondescript. There was nothing even to indicate where in the United States it was located. He could just as easily have been in Georgia or North Dakota or Nevada as Ohio. The room was completely anonymous. But it was where he was going to die.
That thought spurred his steadily building panic and before he could stop himself, he was moaning and breathing heavily, panting almost. His lips were dry and his breath smelled like stale puke, a situation he would normally have detested but tonight was thankful for. It helped cover the cloud of rot and corruption in the air, the stench which had caused him to pass out in the Saturn and which was now, incredibly, much stronger. It made his eyes water.
“Oh God,” he moaned, and immediately, the sound of rustling clothes to his right, just outside his peripheral vision, indicated the girls had been alerted to his wakefulness. He knew he should have kept quiet but just couldn’t stop himself from crying out. The reaction was visceral and involuntary and had come out before he even realized it.
The girls moved into his line of sight and he began to babble, ready to begin begging for his release. “Please,” he said, not having the slightest idea what he was going to follow that up with, and then he stopped, shocked into silence by the sight greeting his disbelieving eyes.
Janelle and Audrey were almost unrecognizable as the two hot young women he had hitched a ride with, with the intention of fucking and then killing. Their clothes hung off severely emaciated, nearly skeletal frames. Skin sagged everywhere, so much skin, and it was mottled and sickly-looking. The beautiful bronze coloration of the two girls was gone, replaced by an unhealthy pallor which seemed to be shifting before his eyes from gold to brown to black.
They looked ancient. Long-dead. Inhuman.
“Nice to see you’ve finally rejoined us,” the thing that used to be Janelle said. Its voice still retained the low, gravelly quality he had noticed before, but didn’t seem to have gotten any worse. Small favors, he thought, and tittered crazily. The girls looked at each other and smiled, cracked lips parting to reveal blackened stumps erupting from diseased gums.
Gary drew in a breath to scream and the Janelle-thing rumbled, “I wouldn’t do that, unless you’d like me to cover your mouth again with my hand. You didn’t seem to enjoy it too much last time, but I would be more than willing to give it another go.”
He clamped his mouth shut before releasing the scream. He wouldn’t have thought it possible that he could stop the wail threatening to burst out of his chest, but Gary Newton had felt the touch of that cold skin once, and it was not a sensation he wanted to repeat. Ever.
So he stopped the scream, instead whispering a question. “What are you?”
“Don’t you mean ‘Who are you’?”
He shook his head, afraid to speak.
The Janelle-thing chuckled. The sound was deep and raspy and terrifying. “You might be more intelligent than I’ve been giving you credit for; or at least more perceptive,” she growled. “How much do you know about the history of your continent?”
Gary shook his head to clear the fuzziness in his brain. The history of his continent? What the fuck did that even mean? Maybe the crazy bitches had drugged him; that must be it. That would explain everything. But he knew that wasn’t the case. He had had plenty of experience with mind-altering substances, and none of them had ever left him feeling like this. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, still whispering.
“North
American history, idiot, how much do you know about it?” Her voice was deep and angry, and Gary knew he hadn’t been drugged. He wished with all his heart he had, but he hadn’t.
“I don’t know what you want!” he shouted, and the putrefying monster loomed threateningly over his bed.
“Centuries ago,” she said quietly, “the Aztec civilization, in the area now known as Mexico, had a nasty little tradition called ritual human heart sacrifice. Their intention was to appease the sun god in its ongoing battle against the forces of the night and stars. The subject of the sacrifice, usually a prisoner of war, would be lashed naked to an altar on a temple, spread-eagled. An incision would be made, exposing the rib cage, and the heart would be wrenched from the chest of the prisoner, still beating, and then eaten by the holy man performing the sacrifice.”
Janelle’s tone was dead, devoid of expression, and Gary felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature spread over his body. He might be confused and panicked, but he wasn’t stupid. He was naked. He was spread-eagled. He was a prisoner. But whatever these two things holding him captive were, they weren’t men and they definitely were not holy.
Janelle smiled, exposing her blackened teeth and dry, swollen tongue in a skeletal grimace. “Well,” she continued, “sometimes the sacrificial victim was not a prisoner of war at all, but rather a virgin girl; a slave. Occasionally, two virgin slaves,” she added, glancing at Audrey, whose shark eyes gazed back at her, empty and desolate.
“As you might imagine, human nature being what it is,” Janelle rumbled on, “and men’s nature being what it is, often the ‘virgin slaves’”—she made quotation marks with her rotting fingers and dead skin flaked off them, fluttering to the floor like a light snowfall—“doomed to sacrifice were not virgins at all. Often, they were the sexual victims of their captors. Often they had been raped and brutalized, used like trash by the very ‘holy men’ now sacrificing them.
Heartless (Delirium Novella Series) Page 5