9 Tales Told in the Dark 12

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  “Dwight?”

  Carlson faced Kupp directly. “I'm going for a walk. Want to be alone.”

  With that, he plunged his hands into his coat and stumbled toward the door.

  “Okay,” Kupp said, completely misunderstanding the other man's mood and intentions. “I'll see you back at the hotel.”

  Carlson shrugged; disappeared into the dark streets.

  As he walked, he remembered the strange mix of guilt and exhilaration. How he had volunteered to go right up to the trenches to retrieve the wounded—as if offering his life in payment for hers. He recalled the bursting shells, the shrapnel raining down from the Hun's Big Bertha guns. And he remembered all the wounded—all the grotesquely fascinating things that shot, shell, gas and bayonet could do to human flesh.

  And he came to know at last that he would not die.

  No—at least not at night.

  At night, anyone might die—in any number of horrific ways. Anyone else—just not him.

  He was Dwight W. Carlson and the night was his element. He was its master! And he further realized that it hadn't really been Melanie's eyes or face or figure that had drawn him. Oh, no—none of those mundane things!

  It was the blood. The warm, red, sticky blood upon her uniform.

  That was the great and important thing.

  While others suffered through the Great War, Carlson came to savor it. He feasted silently on its sights, its sounds, its smells—and on the power.

  He lived for the night: The shriek of artillery; the whimpers of the maimed; the warm, wet pulse of fresh blood.

  After the Armistice, he felt empty.

  He filled his time reading and in doing so discovered his true heritage.

  Beginning in 1888, the arcane figure known popularly as Jack the Ripper terrorized London, England. He carved up, killed and mutilated at least six women. He always struck at night, and was never identified. Then, as suddenly as he had begun, Jack stopped.

  Perhaps he died, Carlson thought.

  Then he noted the date of the Ripper's last reported kill. The day before Carlson himself had entered the world, Red Jack's last victim had gone down in a pool of her own blood and entrails.

  Just like Melanie.

  Back in the United States, Carlson resumed his wandering ways. But now he had a purpose, a point to his existence. And if he thought himself the literal reincarnation of the infamous Jack (as indeed, he did), then he was also surely a new and improved, a more modern version!

  The original Ripper had been bold and skillful, no doubt. But he had tempted fate, perhaps once too often, by always hunting in the same locale. Carlson would not repeat that error. Nor would he draw undue attention to himself.

  His first American kill was in Baltimore, where his ship landed. And she was a prostitute—the Ripper's traditional target. But Carlson had already resolved to broaden his horizons. After all, the American bitch who abandoned him as an infant and the English tramp who sniffed were neither of them whores—at least by the common (and woefully inadequate) usage.

  Still, that first night in Baltimore, the dark-haired and dusky-eyed prostitute had proved the most easily available. She was aged 20 or so and possessed of grossly pleasant curves, though Carlson hardly cared.

  For the first and last time in his career, Carlson bothered to use his prey carnally. He found the pleasure of that quite minimal—a disappointment, even.

  But then he clamped one hand over her mouth and brought forth the scalpel with the other. Again their naked bodies squirmed and bucked together. But this time with blood a new and exciting lubricant.

  Too soon, there was no more struggling.

  Carlson left the city in a hurry, never even learning the young whore's name. He drifted from town to city to village, doing odd jobs like a million other seemingly aimless young men. He never brought unusual attention to himself; never hunted too often or without foresight and planning.

  In a small town in North Carolina, Carlson slaughtered an elderly black-skinned woman out for one of her habitual late-night walks. He abandoned the body by the railroad tracks then quietly left the area by a different method.

  A buck-toothed girl of 16 tasted his blade in Tallahassee.

  Then it was onto Mardi Gras in New Orleans and a brunette schoolteacher out for a fling.

  Years passed. The '20s Roared. And Dwight W. Carlson crossed the nation—honing his skill and perfecting his technique.

  He once attended the newly famous Rose Bowl in California and celebrated the first scoreless tie in the game's history by killing a feeble-minded Chinese girl in Pasadena then a beautiful redhead, weeks later in an obscure village in Nevada.

  Yes, Carlson went everywhere. He hunted in places large and small—great cities and hamlets too tiny for any map.

  In time, he disposed of a policeman's sharp-tongued and unfaithful wife in Hagerstown, Maryland. And he moved north along the railway, into the Pennsylvania valleys that produced the bulk of the nation's coal and steel.

  And so, here he was on December 18, 1927—walking the streets of Riverton. His fingers clutched what was buried deep in his overcoat's right pocket. It was cool and sharp and intimately familiar to him.

  He passed the town's other movie house, laughing at the title: “Street Angel,” starring Janet Gaynor. Yes indeed, he thought, he needed to find himself another of those!

  But he wouldn't visit any of the town's three functioning brothels—too many witnesses.

  And there was no need, really.

  They were all whores anyway, one way or another.

  Carlson thought about the flapper, no more than 19 or 20, whom he had seen at the hotel. And he thought of the two whore-bitches Kupp willingly, even gladly lived with—Alonzo's wife, his daughter.

  But no, that would be striking too close to home. It had to be a stranger, or no more than the most casual of acquaintances.

  He walked on, past the filling station and its outdated sign proudly announcing “Anti-knock, lead-added gasoline sold here!”—as if it was still 1921 and the product was anything but the standard now.

  He did turn his head when he passed the Lamont Auto Sales lot. Several of the luxury models included the built-in automobile radios Lear had invented just last year—now there, at least, was a fairly new development!

  Carlson halted a moment before the Methodist Church. He spat, slowly and deliberately, on the first stone step. Then he crossed Lincoln Avenue. He moved behind the closed shops. Followed 8th Street to where the rail lines converged toward the read of the Pennsy Station House.

  No coal trains were on the move for once. So the area was one of peaceful desolation. Then, from a distance, he saw movement. Carlson froze. Waited and watched.

  She came from the north. Followed the tracks down from Mine 27.

  That was the Irish part of Riverton.

  She was small, or quite young—perhaps both. A teenaged girl, sneaking down to one of the town's numerous taverns? Or maybe on her way to rendezvous with some boy her family did not approve?

  Just above the point where that rail line met the others in a rather vast switchback complex, she turned to her left and increased her pace, heading east—toward the Albanian, Czech and Polish neighborhoods.

  So yes, Carlson concluded, the disapproved of suitor—one of the 'wrong' ethnicity—that seemed the likelier explanation.

  Carlson moved quickly, smoothly.

  She never saw him coming; never sensed his approach.

  Eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw the fresh, innocent smile—and how it twisted, transformed into abject terror as he dragged her down into the weeds of a hilly, forgotten area just below Sawmill Road.

  Was she 16, 17—18?

  It did not matter.

  All that mattered was that Dwight W. Carlson was in his element. He was performing his function. He was . . . hunting.

  He carved her up slowly, carefully. And as he disemboweled her, his prey's warmth kept his bare fingers from suffering in the
increasing winter chill. He savored the experience, even more than usual.

  She was so young! Maybe not more than 15, he reconsidered.

  So unspoiled looking—though he knew that was a foolish thought. None of them were unspoiled or pure!

  But this Irish girl was surely the finest and best kill he'd made all year. Spellbinding—that was the word for this child-woman!

  But he must not forget himself.

  Carlson listened to a distant train whistle and knew his time was growing short. This unplanned hunt was a foolish, self-indulgent, if satisfying, aberration.

  Now he must move on—and quickly, quickly.

  He couldn't even return to the hotel for his things. Kupp would be there, watching for him. And the bloody mess upon him could not easily be explained away.

  Damn!

  The whistle sounded again—closer. No more than ten minutes from the yard, he estimated.

  Carlson bent back down, raised a bit of raw steaming liver. He took but a single hurried bite. He scarcely had the chance to chew before swallowing. But it renewed his strength, rekindled his resolve. And then, with a sigh of regret, he had to abandon his proudest kill to the brainless and weak scavengers—dim-witted creatures who would merely wail and shudder and consign the exquisitely tender, bloodied flesh to its rest—without partaking of a single nibble.

  Such waste!

  He moved reluctantly, but quickly—escaping into the darkness. Deeper, ever-deeper Dwight W. Carlson slipped into his Element.

  To survive and to Hunt—again and again—in so many other, equally unsuspecting places.

  THE END.

  VIVID GREENE or A Place to Lay My Bones by Jacob Ian DeCoursey

  Field

  The spade makes a deep crunching sound as it penetrates the dry and rocky soil. This was supposed to be a garden once, she thinks as she digs. A garden of beautiful flowers—bright, living, plentiful, their colors glowing beneath the hot June sun. The young woman strains and lifts another shovelful of dirt, turns her body to deposit it on the mound behind her. A cold wind pushes through her so she pauses, her fingers numb. Pale breath curls before her eyes. It's late October now, and late at night too. A cobweb of stars hangs overhead surrounding a white half moon. A white trash bag lies at her ankles, on top the matted brown grass touched with glittering frost. Inside the bag, a heap of wet pulp and raw carcass that was once her father's old golden retriever, Pluto. She'd grown up with that dog and loved it very, very much. But before church this morning, she'd accidentally left the basement door ajar, and the dog had wandered down.

  Everything that ever goes into the basement dies horribly.

  I wish we had pigs to eat our garbage, she thinks, stopping long enough to nudge the plump bag with her heel. It feels soft and lumpy, like a huge metastasized cyst. Somewhere in the darkness, she hears the hiss of dry leaves shaking on their mother branches like the choral death rattle of some croupy infants. Listening, she breathes into her hands, rubs them together. Then she grips the wooden shaft and handle and stomps the blade of the shovel back into the earth and twists. A large clod gives way, and she lifts and drops it behind her again.

  As she stabs the dirt and stomps the shovel blade hard, it hits against something beneath the dense soil. She stomps the blade again and again, frustrated, twisting it left and right, but nothing; the blade won't go deeper. So she lifts it out, and, as it comes free, another sharp wind gusts past and catches the concave of the blade, knocking it forward into her bare shin.

  Pain surges up her leg, and she bites her lower lip to keep from screaming. She reaches for her leg and stumbles sideways, landing on the white trash bag, and for a brief moment, she feels the comfort of its soft contents beneath her.

  Then it bursts open under her weight.

  Blood. Bones. Bits of soft, fleshy tissue. All the bag's contents, now strewn over the ground, over her clothes and skin.

  “Martha!” a hard, male voice calls through the thick darkness.

  Covered in gore, she lifts herself to her feet and places her hands on the small of her back and pushes. It cracks and pops as she straightens herself upright. She turns and looks a little ways off and sees her father standing on the porch of their small farmhouse. The front door is wide open. A television strobes blue and yellow and red and blue again somewhere inside.

  “Yes, sir,” she hollers, standing on top the ruptured bag in a pool of cold red, holding her throbbing shin.

  “Get in here, girl!”

  So she does. Slowly walking toward the silhouette of a house before her, toward the shadow of her father standing tall and masculine and oppressive in the glowing, flickering doorway open wide like a devouring mouth; her stride uneven, favoring the injured leg, shivering for the icy, stinking blood soaking through her clothes and dripping, dripping, dripping down into her shoes.

  House

  As she steps inside, her father grabs her arm and yanks hard.

  “Come on, girl,” he says.

  She stumbles into the living room and knocks against the tweed sofa, smearing it with the red covering her clothes and skin. Every light in the room is off, and her eyes wander in the dimness: before the sofa she's leaning against, the television flickers with muted gospel programming. On the walls hang pictures of Christ and saints and various artistic renderings of da Vinci's Last Supper; every square inch of wall covered in some sacred print; then, slowly, back to her father, still wearing his white dress shirt and starched khakis from earlier this morning, his entire form flashing blue and yellow before the tube's luminance.

  “Your little sin is making some devil of a racket downstairs,” he says.

  She's quiet for a moment, listening. Through the floorboards, she can hear it.

  “Yes, sir,” she says in reply with her head lowered, not wanting to look him in the eyes.

  He always calls his grandson “little sin” on account of the boy's condition. This is a time of testing for the land, he often tells her, days of clay feet and fire. A few miles down the road, in the little town of Vivid Greene, Mississippi, other mothers have been making news, giving birth to babies with similar ailments—always young mothers like Martha, underage and unmarried—but none, so far as she knows, afflicted so severely as Martha's child. So much so, that her family doctor, a churchgoing man well past prime retirement age, upon examining the boy, could only scratch his white beard and address her father solemnly:

  Best keep this under lock and key, Joseph, he'd said quiet enough for it to be a secret but loud enough for Martha to hear. Save yourself the embarrassment.

  His words were like candleflames, small in their movements but capable of great destructions.

  “Go put the little sin to sleep so I don't have to,” Martha's father says.

  “Dad—”

  “It angers me, you understand?”

  “Dad, I—”

  “You understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you can shampoo the mess you've just made off the couch.”

  “Okay.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” he says, forcefully rubbing his palms across his eyes. “I'm going to bed.” He turns around and heads for the stairs. She looks up, watches him go.

  “Night, Dad.”

  He doesn't say anything. Just climbs the stairs. She hears the door to his bedroom close then gets up and begins walking toward the kitchen where the basement door is.

  The darkened kitchen feels like a monastery long abandoned to rot.

  A familiar cul-de-sac of horded holiness.

  What was once a dinner table is now a makeshift altar covered in drippy, burnt out candles, their pooled wax gripping them to the woodgrain like deformed fingers. Other dollar store trinkets crowd the counter tops:

  A Jesus bobble head grinning and nodding as she passes.

  Wood carvings of angels.

  Resin statues of every apostle.

  A crucifix shaped candelabra
covered in milky white wax.

  Three different versions of the nativity, all ceramic, one with a black baby Jesus and white Mary and Joseph.

  A plastic “suffer the little children to come unto me” figurine set complete with suffered children. She imagines them all levitating and floating around the kitchen and out the window, ascending into a cloud in the night and disappearing.

  Just ahead and to the left of the pantry stands the wooden basement door with peeling paint that she remembers tasted sweet when she ate a piece as a little girl. When she gets to the door, she reaches out and touches the knob, turns it; the door opens.

  Downstairs, the air is cold, almost as cold as outside but windless. She doesn’t come down here but more than once or twice a day, and even then, she doesn’t stay for very long. It hurts too much.

  At the bottom of the stairs she reaches up and pulls a thin string that clicks on a lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. The dark is bleached by dirty incandescence exposing a six-by-six-foot cube of black metal bars bolted to the bare concrete wall and a red stain smeared on the floor from where she'd cleaned the dog up some three hours ago. A heap of quilts heaves and rises behind the bars, wailing like a child with the voice of a man, as a small foot darts out from underneath and begins kicking the bars frantically.

  “Baby,” she says, stepping forward.

  The heap falls from the child's body, a little boy. He stands naked and hunched, his spine contorted forward in a low arch, vertebra poking sharp beneath his pale skin. he turns around. His bony chest is covered with scratches and his arms are sinewy and strong with spidery hands and long and dirty finger nails stained pink with Pluto's hairs still underneath. His malformed head, uneven like a sack of potatoes and sparsely haired. It is the child's face that bothers Martha the most though: his eyes are hollow and dark, almost lifeless glass beads pressed deep into his sunken features. He looks at her with those eyes what feels like a long time. There's blood coagulated on his chin. And when he opens his mouth, she sees his rows of sharp, crowded teeth.

  He gurgles at her in a language both primitive and infantile. He’s almost three now.