Skull Full of Kisses

by Michael West

  They sat silently watching the old Zenith at the end of the bar. The Knicks were playing. Neither of them said another word until the game was over. Then Ray told Denny he could crash at his place if he wanted to. Denny thanked him and they left the bar together, feeling the sudden cold of the wind. They walked half a block toward the subway.

  Denny wasn’t ready for that. Even a six-pack couldn’t extinguish his fear completely. “You’re not goin’ down there, are you?”

  “How else we gonna get home?” Ray hadn’t meant to snap at him, but he’d been drunk and was starting to get one whale of a headache.

  Denny blinked at him and said, “Taxi. Bus. Shit, I’ll walk.”

  Ray stumbled down the narrow flight of stairs. In his inebriated state, it seemed as if they were rolling beneath his feet, but he kept his balance and avoided taking a header onto the tile. When he reached the first landing, he took a look around to find the station deserted, then turned back to Denny. “The coast is clear, man.”

  Denny looked at him as if he wanted to say something, but instead he grabbed the railing and began his own slow, deliberate descent. When he joined Ray, they staggered down to the edge of the track. Denny kept looking around nervously. Ray thought if he said “boo” the man would have vaulted free of his skin. Up to this point, he kept thinking maybe his friend was joking. He thought they’d both get a good night’s sleep and laugh about everything in the morning.

  Then Ray saw the creature for himself.

  Something moved in the tail end of his eye. Ray’s mind was trying to tell him it was nothing, but the ache in his temples beat it into believing what he was seeing. It was Denny’s devil, sitting Indian style over a heating grate, watching them like some sculpted gargoyle. Ray could see its small, black eyes staring back at him from the gloom. The face around those eyes was ghostly white and the smile below them was a crocodile’s grin. Its teeth glistened even in the gloom. As bad as that was, it wasn’t until Ray saw the horns that he began to scream.

  Denny was screaming behind him, and Ray turned just in time to see him fall across the arriving train’s path. Tests would later show he was legally drunk at the time. The police questioned Ray at some length, but he didn’t tell them what he’d seen, what drove Denny to run blindly into the arms of death. They were quick to rule the death an accident, and the whole affair was quickly forgotten.

  But Ray couldn’t forget.

  After a week of sleepless nights, he went back to the early morning emptiness of that subway station. The creature was there, lurking in the shadows and the moist heat seeping up from the grates—its face armed with those sharpened bull’s horns. A rat crawled across the twisted flesh of its legs and it stroked the animal with its claw as if it were a kitten. Ray pulled a butcher’s knife from under his coat and buried it in the beast’s pale belly. Its cries echoed through the vastness of the subway station and tunnels. Ray kept stabbing the animal until its wailing died in his ears, knowing it wouldn’t bring Denny back and not caring. Whatever this beast was, it needed to be killed. He continued stabbing it until the ache in his arm and head screamed for him to stop.

  The next night, another of the creatures was lying in wait in the alley beneath Ray’s window. It must have heard the death cries of its twin and seen him, must have followed him home. He crept up on this new monster when it was riffling through a dumpster for filthy scraps of rotten food. He wrapped his tie around its thick, pulsating throat—tightening it until the animal stopped writhing and fell limp onto a bed of Hefty bags—and then Ray left New York.

  He began to feel like The Fugitive. He would be on his way to starting a new life somewhere when one of these things would show up, forcing him to abandon everything in the dead of night. Along the way, he would kill as many as he could, hoping to keep them from following his every move, but it never stopped them. They were always able to pick up his scent, even in this log cabin in the middle of the wilderness.

  ***

  Ray abruptly halted his prayer and opened his eyes. His head was aching. He filled a glass with clouded well water from the faucet and drank deeply, his hand and lips trembling. After a moment, he put the glass down on the counter and reached for the butcher’s knife.

  When the beast saw the blade, it began to whimper.

  Ray ignored the sound and slowly approached his captive, hoping the salt would bind the beast to the chair even if the rope did not. Ray knew what had to be done. He would begin making slits in the tight skin of the thing’s chest until it told him what he wanted—no, needed—to know.

  The creature rose suddenly on muscular legs, limp coils of rope sliding down its scaly torso. Before Ray had time to ponder how it had managed to loosen the knots, a claw blurred out, sharp talons carving bloody trails as they skated across his cheek. He fell backward, his forehead striking the edge of the kitchen table. Pain rang through his skull and the murk of the cabin was lit by sparks.

  His ring of salt did nothing to hold the creature in place. It bolted into the next room, and Ray could hear the sound of heavy chains banging against his wooden door, keeping perfect time with the throbbing of his temples. All the doors were padlocked. The only way out was with a key. Grabbing up the knife, Ray ran to the open doorframe that separated his kitchen from the rest of the cabin. With great caution, he peered around the wooden molding toward the front door.

  This monster was frantic, crazed.

  It pulled at the chain with its talons, trying to break the padlock with brute strength. When this failed, it began to pound on the door in frustration. The beast’s tail was swinging wildly through the air, and Ray found himself watching it with more than a bit of curiosity. It ended in a point, like an arrowhead, like the Devil’s tail. After a moment, the thing stopped trying to break down the door and scanned the room with its black eyes. It was making a strange mewling noise. If Ray didn’t know any better, he would have said it was actually crying.

  And then it saw him.

  At first Ray thought it was just staring off into space, contemplating its hopeless predicament with glacial eyes. Then it charged at him in a frightening blast of acceleration, launching itself across the room with its powerful hindquarters, its five-clawed toes digging into the wooden floor like the spikes of cleated sneakers, its horns giving it the appearance of a crazed bull. Ray stumbled backward in fear, but it was on him in an instant. It wrapped its talons around his forearm and pushed him down to the floor, trying to pry the knife from his grip. Its howl was ear-splitting; filled with rage, fear, and exertion. The black hair of its mane bristled and its mouth opened to bite Ray’s wrist.

  The pain was incredible.

  Ray wrapped his free arm around the monster’s throat and strained to loosen its hold. Its mouth came away in a splash of Ray’s own blood and he wasted no time in plunging the knife into its chest. There was a terrible, shrill screech from the beast and it writhed in his grip, desperate to work itself free. Ray pulled the knife out—the wound arcing blood across the scales of its chest—then stabbed it again. And he kept stabbing it. He stabbed it until the arcing blood and the yammering stopped.

  When Ray was certain the monster was dead, he slid out from under its carcass and shuffled over to the kitchen sink. The cold running water washed away the blood, but the mark remained. He bandaged it tightly with a dishrag and sat down at the kitchen table. He sat there for what seemed an eternity. Normally, he would have fled out the door and out of town. But he was tired of running from them and, to be honest, he didn’t think there was anywhere left to go.

  Ray dragged the lifeless hulk from his cabin and threw it in the back of his Jeep. He drove for some time, looking for just the right place to bury the monster. If others of its kind could smell its corpse, he didn’t want them to be at his doorstep when they found it. He went deep into the woods and dug a hole in the soft earth. He spent most of the night digging and, when he felt it was deep enough, Ray put the creature in its grave and covered it over with muck.
r />   ***

  Six months passed before they found the creature’s body. Toby Greer was out hunting, and his dog went and dug it up. Decay must have really done a number on it because everyone in town thought it was a human being, a woman. Ray couldn’t believe it. How many women had a four-foot-long tail? It’s amazing what the mind will come up with to protect itself from the truth. But he couldn’t really blame them. He wished he was still that innocent.

  A few days later, Ray saw a news crew when he went to get some Advil. A female reporter was standing on the corner so that her cameraman could get a good shot of Main Street as she spoke. “...and the victim has been identified as 22-year-old Nikki Miller. An autopsy revealed the girl had been bound with rope and may have been held captive prior to being stabbed more than thirty times.”

  When he walked into the drug store, Ray overheard more talk about this poor girl, heard them say she was found naked, that this was the work of some sexual pervert or serial killer.

  He was about to ask someone what was going on, but the thing in the security mirror caught his eye. One of the monsters was following him, stalking him. It tried to stay hidden, but Ray could see it. He didn’t react, didn’t give any hint that he knew it was there, and after a moment, it retreated out the front door. Ray ran after it, going to the window, watching as the thing climbed into a car parked outside. He knew the car, too. It belonged to Fred and Mary Drake. The creatures must have killed them, must have been using their home while they searched for him.

  After fourteen years, Ray wasn’t going to run, wasn’t going to just hide himself away up in his cabin and hope that they would let him be. He finally had the upper hand, and he was going to make the first move. He loaded some knives and a shotgun into his Jeep. Tonight, he would go and wipe out the whole fucking nest. He was going to send all of these demons straight back to Hell. Then, maybe it would finally be over. Maybe... God, his head was killing him! He took more Advil, but it didn’t seem to be helping anymore.

  Jesus, Ray thought as he gnashed his teeth together against the pain. Poor Fred and Mary.

  They had four kids.

  Trolling

  Scott Jarvis was shocked when he opened the door and saw huge teeth gleaming in the light—an eight-foot-wide set of shark’s jaws, mounted to the bar’s back wall, surrounded by fishing nets, framed photos, and other décor—but what he saw next was even more surprising. A big-breasted woman sat on the far stool. Alone. He knew the teeth had to be fake, but he hoped those breasts were real.

  There were vacancies on either side of her, but Scott chose instead to sit two stools down. Experience had shown him that sitting down right beside a woman when other seats were available only served to spook her. He had to make a gradual approach, had to make sure she didn’t feel threatened.

  God, she was gorgeous.

  Her hair was a red beacon in the smoky gloom, and her fair skin had been kissed by the summer sun. Her lips were full, pouting, and those breasts stretched thin the fabric of her shirt; her nipples protesting the chill of air-conditioning. He had never been a believer in love at first sight, but lust...this was definitely lust at first sight.

  When she looked up, Scott turned away. He didn’t want her to catch him staring.

  A raised firepit filled the center of the bar, its walls constructed of gray stone and a black metal grill laid across the top. Scott longed to smell fresh New England lobsters and fish being seared over flame, but tonight the fires were dormant, leaving his nose to the cigarette stench that clouded the air.

  A Wurlitzer juke box glowed yellow in the corner, bubbling, singing Billy Joel’s “Downeaster ‘Alexa’” as two men in Hawaiian shirts and jeans played pool. There were small groups scattered among the tables and booths; people talking, drinking, laughing. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, everyone but Scott and the beauty that sat two stools over.

  The bartender wiped a wine glass clean with the towel that hung from his waist and turned to Scott. He was a tall man, muscular, his head covered by a thin lawn of crew-cut, his arms marked with tattoos. The white muscle shirt he wore had the bar’s logo printed on its chest. The Sand Bar. “What can I getcha?”

  “Miller High Life.” Scott glanced at the woman on the far stool. Her mug was empty. “Miss?”

  She didn’t look up.

  “Miss?” he repeated.

  Her eyes rose, found his. “Yes?”

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Killian’s,” she said absently. Her voice was soft, breathy.

  Scott smiled. An Irish red for the red-head. “Like another?”

  She nodded.

  He turned back to the bartender. “And a Killian’s for the lady.”

  The man looked Scott up and down, then glanced at the woman, his expression one of disapproval.

  “Is there a problem?” Scott wanted to know.

  The bartender walked away without a word.

  “Thanks,” the woman said, still fascinated by a foamy residue in the well of her glass.

  “Don’t mention it. I’m Scott, by the way.” He held out his hand to her.

  She looked at it for a moment before shaking it. “Sue. Sue O’Connor.”

  Now Scott moved to the stool next to her, thinking that with a name like O’Connor, she had to be Irish. “So, Sue O’Connor, what’s a beautiful girl like you doing here all alone?”

  She laughed bitterly. “That the best you could come up with?”

  He chuckled; ran a hand across his mouth and chin, feeling the prickle of goatee. “Pretty lame, huh? Well, for what it’s worth, you are beautiful.” He hoped the remark would coax a smile to her ruby lips, but it garnered nothing. “If you don’t want company, just say the word and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “There’s nobody from this God-forsaken island I’d want to sit with,” Sue told him.

  Scott gave an understanding nod, cursing himself for believing he had a chance. When he stood, however, she reached out and grabbed him by the arm.

  “You’re not an islander,” she said.

  “That obvious, huh?” He settled back onto the stool. “Yeah, I’m just here for the day, fishing with friends.”

  “Catch anything?”

  Scott shook his head. “We were out there most of the afternoon, but we couldn’t find any fish willing to throw themselves on our hooks.”

  “So...” She looked to either side of him and smiled, sending tingles down his spine. “Where’re your friends now?”

  “They got frustrated, went on home.”

  When the bartender brought their drinks, Scott could not help but study the man’s arm. Drawn monsters, with sharp teeth and equally sharp claws, rose from blue flames, crawling up his forearm toward a golden pitchfork that had been etched onto his bicep. The artwork was amazingly detailed, like Dante’s wet dream. Scott could make out individual scales on the creatures’ colorful skins, could see the gleam in their black eyes, the sparkle of light on their glistening fangs.

  They took their beers from the painted man and he eyed them across his shoulder as he moved away.

  “What’s his problem?” Scott asked aloud, though not loud enough for the bartender to hear.

  “Craig?” She rolled her eyes. “Where do I start? Used to work here for his Dad when I got outta high school. Waitressing, mostly. Did it ‘til I got a shop of my own.”

  “He...uh, looks like a pretty rough character, demons and pitchforks on his arm and everything.”

  “That’s not a pitchfork,” Sue corrected with a grin. “It’s a trident, Colonial Bay High School’s logo. Craig was a lineman on the football team. Pretty hard-core.”

  Scott took another look the man’s arm, trying not to be obvious about it. He saw the symbol clearly now. A trident. Neptune’s spear. And he realized something else: the blue tongues of flame weren’t really flames at all. They were meant to be a splash of ocean waves. “I’ve seen guys get tats of their college team before, but never high school.”


  She frowned. “High school’s ‘bout as far as people get around here.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Me too.” Sue looked into her beer again, her finger tracing the rim of the mug.

  Scott drank from his long-necked bottle and decided to quickly change the subject. “What do you sell?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “In your store?—fudge?—artwork?”

  “Well...” Her face tried to match the color of her hair. “I run the Shirt Shack.”

  “The Shirt Shack?”

  “Ayuh. I put iron-on decals on shirts for the tourists. You’ve probably seen ‘em around. ‘Colonial Bay: America’s Home by the Sea.’”

  Scott snickered into his bottle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Sorry,” he told her. He didn’t want to blow this. “It’s just that I haven’t seen one of those iron-on decal places since I was a kid.”

  “You sayin’ we’re behind the times?”

  “I...No, I—”

  “We are, you know.” Sue leaned over to him. The scent of her perfume was incredible. A trace of smile returned to her lips, but her voice remained quite serious. “Sometimes, this island feels like a damn prison.”

  Scott took another drink of his beer, grateful that she wasn’t pissed at him, then said, “I know exactly what you mean. I answer phones for an insurance company. Feels like I’m just shackled to that desk, listening to people bitch all day long about this and that. Not really what I wanted to do after graduation.”

  “Beats the hell outta standing over a steaming hot press ten hours straight.” She emptied her mug. “Wasn’t too bad today, though.”

  “Not a lot of call for iron-on shirts?”

  “Not a lot of tourists. Boy’s body washed up on the beach this morning. Shark attack. Scared ‘em all off.”

  “Our captain mentioned something about that.” Scott nodded at the set of serrated teeth that filled the wall behind them. “Had us all hoping we’d catch Jaws or something.”