He took the canister with the sensitive shots from his vest pocket and tossed it into the waves. The black speck bobbed on the surface, till a wave tossed it onto the wharf, nearly to Carton’s feet. He caught it up and tossed it harder and farther out over the water. The waves caught it and pulled it under. If daylight didn’t get the film, should the canister open, the salt water would drench it beyond recovery, taking one piece of a puzzle that few had a right to solve.
Once the strange evidence had vanished, he went on his way, to develop and deliver the new shots and to check in on Sybil.
1973
let’s kill her
Samantha Lucero
They stand there looking like black poles piercing up out of the bleak, spreading colors of a grey horizon. The morning is cold enough to numb and redden the tips of their noses and chap their lips.
They stand there, far off enough to be indistinguishable to the coffee-cranked drivers whirring past, trying to make it to work on time. Like wispy-faint statues, they stand motionless for several moments in a shared state of shock, silently deliberating what they’d done among them, as if the very act had given them an unusually empathetic bond; perhaps now they could read each other’s minds.
The masks are slid up from their young, hollow gazes and onto their filthy hair, specked with leaves and other decorations of soil and earth, and clinging to the bottom of their chins by a thin white elastic string that once held the plastic animal characters onto their faces. They’ve become bold in their actions—nothing can catch them, no one can beat them—and they look like wavy outlines of, perhaps, just imagination appearing as people. Going without their cheap disguises wasn’t originally part of the master plan, but neither was the murder. They just wanted to hurt her and leave, but she’d died instead. Now that they’d killed her, they could do anything they wanted. And the numb, corpselike way that people shamble on about their days, never fully noticing what stranger things go on around them, works out in any modern criminal’s favor.
The trio is in what could be dark suits, one in a dark dress—a ghost-girl with her sickly brothers—early for a funeral or tardy from a wrong turn from French fries, long after midnight. There’s the untroubled gaze of the pale girl, with her Parisian black bags under her high school eyes, whiskers of the cat mask in black and gold paint, dark as her long hair, and just a smear of blood at the grinning corner of the masks mouth, an ugly, unnerving hint of what occurred.
There are the two boys with wolf masks, no specific symbolism or plot to function as a reason for their broken unity, other than the Halloween store simply had only one smiling cat left and two big, bad wolves. Like most boys wouldn’t, they didn’t mind the idea of it.
They stand there looking utterly unrealistic against an autumnal backdrop of orange-red woodland and carcasses of abandoned houses. Three characters in search of an exit, trapped inside of a bleary scene out of a dark movie. Any other time of the year and their costumes would hardly make sense—they’d easily draw attention to themselves—but they know that they have the advantage today. That was the plan, after all, to start early at midnight and have all day on Halloween to celebrate until midnight again, when Halloween was over. Besides, the victory would certainly leave them sleepless.
They rove, seeming to glide in their fatigue, like specters, across the road and toward the breakfast place they’d designated as their first meal after becoming murderers. People honk at them because they love their costumes; they even wave and shout compliments at them. A dirty blonde, ringlets like a baby in a bonnet framing a California tan, emerald-city polyester suit, corduroy black vest with strangely ornate buttons, and a pasted mustache, on the road for a while, with Bowie’s latest blaring on the radio every ten minutes, passes slowly. He likes their costume more than the others, so much so, that he wishes them a happy, safe Halloween, with the biggest smile and straightest teeth they’ve ever seen.
The place isn’t far, and once they sit at the diner, the heavy scent of burnt coffee in their noses, sticky mug circles on the table underneath their hands, waiting on the waitress with their filthy napkins and spotty silverware, they howl with laughter. They view this place as the ultimate jurisdiction of their success. The boys howl, the girl meows, and they laugh until they weep, until everything hurts underneath their ribs. And then, silence ensues: hot-cheeked, tired silence.
They make no motion to individually excuse each other and wash the guilty-dried earth and innocent blood from their spidery hands, nor do they rise to relieve themselves in the restrooms from a long night of misdeeds. They’d already relieved themselves on the grave they’d left, one final way to mark her as theirs.
The place is nothing fancy, a place for pop and pancakes. Vines intrude up the wall like lines of green paint. The place is as old as they are. The parking lot is gravel. It’s the kind of establishment where you find long, black hairs in your food and wonder who’s behind the counter, who’s behind the wall, over that open window you can’t see, swatting the bell when your order is up.
The waitress is a pudgy cartoon, wide in the hips and thighs, charmingly disheveled mid-thirties, with a spattering of freckles. She’s all smiles and maternal instincts, big red hair, looking down at the cat-girl with a coddling, half-hearted concern.
“You washing your hands before you eat, sweetheart?”
“I spent my whole life being clean. I’m going to be dirty today.”
There’s a weary, wondering silence that shawls itself over their shoulders. The waitress, in her infinite and practiced goodness, grins. She speculates that the girl is an abused orphan, creates a tale of unloved woe for her in her imagination, which furrows her brow with concern and surrender, collapsing her smile instantly. Only it springs back up when the wide eyes of the girl watch her in an uncomfortable blankness shared mutually with her entourage. Somehow, as the six eyes bore into her, she feels disoriented, stumped, grinning because it’s what she does when she’s uncomfortable. Grinning, because she hopes it makes them grin, too, but it doesn’t.
There’s a line of sleigh bells draped on the front door, some leftover Christmas antique of yesteryear, jingling as another Halloween guest enters. The two wolves and the cat watch who comes in.
They carry the distinct, slender, delicate gait of a small woman, or girl. It must be a girl; she lacks the swelling touch of puberty on the hips, has the flat chest of a dancer. She’s a short, scrawny thing, with no distinct body parts that lecherous men could scoff about behind her wispy back. Her Edwardian-lace white dress blends with the creamy contours of the entering rays of the morning, so much so, she’s almost hard to look at, the dress yellowed with age and old memories. It’s tattered at the ends, caked with mud, and her hair is merely one long, dark rope-braid that hangs down her spine like a backwards noose from her neck. No one can tell if she’s ugly or if she’s elegant, or if she’s anything in between. She’s wearing a mask.
Although the shape of the mask is at first indistinct, made so by their surprise at the quiet intrusion, it comes into focus as she walks past the others, black pointed shoes making gummy, dull thuds on the ill-cleaned floor. The mask is merely a woman’s face; eyes accented in garish turquoise and thick black eyeliner, finished with a ventilated, hissing-red mouth with vampire fangs. It’s a Ben Cooper plastic monster mask with black hair, and the eyes that stare ahead beneath it somehow familiar.
The cat startles the waitress by speaking in the silent pause.
“I’ll take a coffee and two pancakes.”
The shock dissipates as the new guest takes a seat behind them in a booth, farthest away as she can in a corner. She gently places her hands on the table, folding them together neatly, and waits, like a lost bride.
The cat rubs her eyes, her eyes that are as dark as the earth sullying her knuckles, dark as the running mascara. She adjusts her dirty, tangled hair, loosening some leaves from their graves buried in the strands, pulling it over one of her shoulders because she’s been told that t
his style makes her appear more attractive. She’s a fuller girl than the one who entered, but the fainter waist of the newest patron irks her, reminding her of somebody and reminding her not to eat too much candy tonight. She wants to leave now, but won’t, because she’s convinced that she’s powerful after what’s happened. They all are.
The wolves are two distinguishably different twin boys. Fraternal, but both with the ashy brown curls and the moon-kissed pale skin of dead myths, chins carved gently from generations of perfect genetics; handsome kids, young and beautiful. The cat is hard-featured in an alien way, not the taste of many with her thick brows, thin lips, and strange words. She is exotic and therefore too deadly looking to be approachable to anybody in her school.
The trio wish the guest did not have a mask on. It irritates them.
The wolves order the same thing the cat did, but with three pancakes instead of two, and a set of bacon for each. They can do that since they’re boys. The cat has to watch her figure.
The waitress, oddly, seems to wonder what they were perturbed by, jots down their orders, sprinkles in a smile as she dashes off and departs to inform the cook what to put on.
“I know now, for sure, that there’s no God,” one of the wolves says, and he doesn’t care to hush his tone or speak lightly. He’s tearing little pieces of his napkin and making strings, which he aligns together in motley lines of disfigured shapes.
“If there was, stuff like the thing that we did, or what like, Charles Manson did…it wouldn’t be possible.”
“Shut up,” the other wolf interjects. “If there wasn’t a devil, evil things like that wouldn’t be possible.”
“You’re both stupid. It’s all a myth. There’s no such thing as anything. It’s all inside everyone’s head, in their imagination, where they’re just bored and inventing something to entertain themselves. You live all your life, all your time in your head; you get bored in there, don’t you? So you make up a stupid story about mermaids or giant snakes, a burning tree and voices of God. Some cloudy, pearly-white place you go if you’re good when you die. Or a lake of lava if you’re not, and none of it’s real. Just this. Just us. Just what we did to prove it.”
The wolves share a twin-glance, and both stare back at her from across the table. Their silence speaks for them.
“She deserved it anyway, rich bitch. Her perfect life, how she’d offer to buy our lunches at school—show off—she got what she deserved,” the cat adds, as if an afterthought.
The high school students in search of hell had met their victim at a party last night, but had known her distantly from passing in the halls at school. She was new.
* * *
The woods were unkempt, raw lines of skinny-legged birches, stiff locks of dried out hair sprouting out of tall necks. Nature artfully cloaked the milling party-crowd of bored high school kids on the eve of Halloween, whose arms mostly wrestled with keeping beer steady to the destination, tongues with tiny ash-white squares of acid, pockets cradling Ziplocs of pre-rolled joints. Word spreads quickly on an empty-planned Friday, and so many chose to trek the far distance to plant themselves here like headstones and smoke, drink, trip and raise up their enraptured hands to invite the giggling stars between their fingers; fugitives of the Milky Way, glossy eyed. They all listened to Ziggy Stardust from a beat up Chevrolet. It was late and there were a lot of them.
Around eleven p.m., three kids in masks arrive, two wolves and a cat. They’ve been there the entire time, only now they had decided to slip their masks on and become their characters. Many people thought they didn’t exist because of the strong grasp of the drugs, and watched them walk, or waltz, across the rustling leaves with pupils black as the sky, wide as nickels.
The girl that they target is gazing through everyone’s complexion when they glance at her, aside their shifting bodies if they say hello, beyond where they all briefly meet in the unexpected line of the acquaintance of their eyes. She was all alone sitting Indian style, her father’s thick flannel enshrouding her petite limbs, a light plaid jumpsuit with bellbottoms that have a marriage of green grass and dark earth at the knees.
The girl’s shy. She hated sneaking out, but knows that nobody will suspect her of leaving the house, because she’s such a good kid. Even if they found out they wouldn’t care. Her family had moved to Salem for a fresh start, and they’d want her to be making new friends.
A breeze brushed past her chin, her neck, and she opened her mouth as if to taste the cold exhale of autumn. She’s had her fill of weed, beer, doesn’t even realize her ride took off to go make out in the woods beyond sight. The bone-white moon’s face glared, she glared back, thinking of how once, long ago, the moon and the stars were all people had to look at, and how the silvery banner of constellations before her looked nothing like lions, virgins, or thieves.
The two wolves and the cat pass her a joint and a beer that none of them have even partaken of. They help her to her feet, saying that they found something interesting and needed her help in holding the flashlight as they take it back to the party to show everybody else. Why would she have said no? Nothing sinister, terrible, or otherworldly has ever occurred in her life. She wants more friends. She wants to see what they’ve found, even through the dreary, watered-down glaze of her heavy eyes.
* * *
No one ever comes out to take the bride’s order. Even when they leave, she’s still sitting there waiting. They leave without looking back.
They occupy themselves in the day by planning what they’re going to do until midnight to keep themselves awake and alert. It’s easy to stay busy, because the streets of Salem are alive today for Halloween. There are a few dizzy, energetic parties they pass by, other streets of just a few kids trick-or-treating, and then the quiet religious neighborhoods with the curtains drawn. They walk around for hours until their feet hurt. Kids lug pillowcases of candy over their bony shoulders, and excited smiles, hidden underneath plastic masks, reek of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and glee. It’s the perfect place to blend in, the perfect place to be anonymous, like pain in the dark.
The cat is such an angry girl. Her face has become a pendant for that wrath, contained inside her like a caustic waste, which has destroyed the light in her eyes. She’s empty and it shows; she has no spark left, not like the wolves. The two wolves still had hope until last night, when all of it was lost, and now they treat each hour as a special liberation from a crime they never expect to pay for, fading away.
They’re still kids underneath the secrets that sink their young eyes; they trick-or-treat with a Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space pillowcase, and a Sealab 2020 for the boys.
They conspire in the park among the dying out, younger shrieks and merriment of the evening, masks down to cover their lack of shame.
“I want to do it again,” the cat says in her expressionless, unsettling mask, the wiry, painted whiskers still as a statue, still flaking with a splatter of murder.
“Me too,” the twins say, in a near enough unison to be eerie. The wolves begin to howl, covered in the beginning of a brief spell of rain, and the cat meows. Their laughter mingles, intertwines like fingers and their hatred for life.
It wasn’t always like this.
It never is.
They met as outcasts often do, on the outskirts of the schools fenced in, prison-like yard, where there’s a community of trees to hide the cigarette smoke and a radio to listen to Alice Cooper or The Velvet Underground.
“What do you do?”
“What do you mean, what do I do?”
“To have fun? Like, what do you do to unwind?”
“I don’t. I don’t unwind.”
“Not on the inside? Me either.”
The twins and the girl, before they were the wolves and the cat, devised a plan that could make them feel nothing. Their goal was to be utterly numb for the rest, if not most of their days, because of the tedium of school, the abuse at home, the cold emptiness rustling inside of them; they wanted it go
ne.
What’s it like to be like Manson, or the Manson girls? No guilt, to just be free? The wild eyes of those killers grinning out of the courtroom, sinless to their own twisted minds and unfeeling, was that the inspiration and ultimate goal, to become heartless? Did it work?
When they arrive at the woman’s house, the doorbell is obnoxious and long, something torn out of a black and white holiday movie, and the sound of her, the woman’s voice, is soft and high, as if speaking to a baby. She answers the door without a costume, smiling as she balances an orange-plastic bowl, a pumpkin that’s mouth is full of various candies.
The winter-blonde toddler has no costume, either, and is flexing her stretched hands up as far up as she can to reach the bottom hem of her mothers’ loose, ostentatiously floral shirt, where she can tug on it in an endlessly vain attempt to climb her to be in the comfort of her mother’s smooth arms. She bleats once, twice, before she’s kindly shushed and patted on the top of the head.
The woman is grinning nearly as large as the pumpkin bowl she’s wielding, but she’s standing there in her Lisa Marie Presley big, shiny black hair in quiet wondering why the trio hasn’t spoken yet.
They wondered, for a moment, what to do with the baby, but they figured that they’d come to that decision later.
“Trick or treat,” the cat says, in an unusually happy and uncharacteristically bright tone. She steps forward—she feels like she can do anything, say anything, people will go along with whatever she says now—and boldly lifts her mask. Her face is still smudged from an earlier evil, yet underneath the filth, her skin is resplendent with a desire to do evil again. The mother misinterprets the madness in her eyes as merely the harmless joy of Halloween excitement. After all, by now the three of them had a decent enough quantity of candy in their pillowcases to show their determination and success. What else could that flaking brown stain be on the cat’s mask? Certainly it’s not the dried blood of an innocent victim who made the fatal decision to trust two wolves and a cat.
One Night in Salem Page 11