Holiday of the Dead

by David Dunwoody; Wayne Simmons; Remy Porter; Thomas Emson; Rod Glenn; Shaun Jeffrey; John Russo; Tony Burgess; A P Fuchs; Bowie V Ibarra

  But, like I said, I was troubled.

  The feeling got worse when I pulled into the driveway and saw the lights on upstairs.

  I had turned them off when I left. Tommy was usually calmest when the lights were off.

  “Fuck,” I said, and in my mind I was already throttling Isaac.

  I parked and went inside, just to make sure. But I wasn’t surprised to find Tommy gone. Isaac hadn’t even done a half-assed job of cleaning up Tommy’s latest meal. Nice enough girl. Said she was from Kentucky, I think.

  I went to the security room and replayed the tape. There was Isaac, talking to Tommy through the Plexiglas, opening the door, coaxing him outside. Tommy staggering toward Isaac, hands raised in a gesture that almost looked like supplication.

  And then they were off camera until they got downstairs and out the front door.

  I turned on the GPS tracker – basically a glorified version of what veterinarians use to track the family pet – that I had injected into Tommy’s ass after the last time Isaac walked him outside. Then I called the signal up on my iPad and got a good fix on him.

  He was heading down to the west point of Lake Travis. There was a secluded little pocket of vacation homes down there for the uber wealthy. Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey both had houses there not too far from Tommy’s. It was his private little retreat from the world. Tommy didn’t often like to disconnect, but when he did, that was where he went.

  And then, a terrible thought.

  Please dear God. Tell me he’s not taking her to meet Jessica Carlton. He can’t be that stupid.

  I called Isaac’s cell, and to my surprise, he answered.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I said.

  “Can’t talk,” he answered. I could hear Tommy moaning in the background. Car noises. Isaac struggling to keep Tommy off him.

  “Isaac. Isaac, don’t you dare hang up on me!”

  But he did.

  Damn it.

  I got in my Suburban – the one I’d specially modified with a police prisoner barrier in the back so I could transport Tommy if I needed to – and headed after them.

  Thirty minutes later, I was looking up at an eight thousand square foot mansion done up like a Mediterranean villa – red tile roof, white adobe walls, fountains and hibiscus everywhere. I had parked off the main road, in a small gap in a cedar thicket that concealed the Suburban just perfectly, and tried to figure what Isaac was doing. What possible reason could he have for bringing Tommy here? If Jessica Carlton saw him, we were done for. Despite the constant upkeep, Tommy was looking pretty rough these days. Worse than Willie Nelson after a three day whiskey binge. Which I’ve seen, by the way. It ain’t pretty.

  And then it hit me. Valentine’s Day. Today was Valentine’s Day. Isaac Glassman had no chance of ever becoming Tommy Grind’s lover. Not anymore anyway. The pathetic bastard’s heart was probably breaking. He couldn’t give Tommy flowers, or candy, or stuffed animals, or any of that worthless shit people give each other on Valentine’s Day. But he could give him something pretty. Something that Tommy did still care about.

  I heard shouting from the house. It was muffled, but definitely shouting.

  Then gunfire. Three pistol shots, one after another.

  That lit a fire under me.

  I reached behind the driver’s seat of the Suburban and took out a badly scuffed Louisville Slugger, the one with nicks in the business end that went back to the Houston beer joint days.

  Old School persuader in hand, I advanced up the driveway and tried the doors and windows until I found an unlocked servant’s door off the kitchen.

  I looked up and saw a camera in the corner, pointed right at me.

  Same system as at Tommy’s. I could deal with that.

  I looked around and noticed the stove. A huge Viking gas range with a dozen burners.

  I cranked them all up to full and walked into the living room, where I could hear a man whimpering.

  I didn’t recognize him, which probably meant he was part of the legal community. Maybe one of Isaac’s lawyer friends. He wore a light gray double-breasted suit with a canary yellow silk shirt and no tie, both of which were torn and splashed with blood. He was clean-shaven and fit-looking, but his eyes were crazed.

  Had to be Jessica Carlton’s lawyer. He must have brought her here so the talent could play while the lawyers talked contracts.

  He turned his insane eyes on me and that’s when I saw the pistol in his hand, the slide locked back in the empty position.

  “Help me,” he pleaded.

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Who else is in the house?”

  “To-Tommy Grind. Oh Jesus. He … something’s wrong. He attacked Jessica. He bit her leg off. I … I think she’s … I think she’s hurt real bad.”

  Then he held the gun up in front of his face like he had never seen it before.

  “I shot him. I emptied the whole magazine into his chest. He just … he just kept coming. He’s … oh Jesus.”

  “I see. Listen, what’s your name?”

  “Leslie Gant,” he said. He was in deep shock, functioning on autopilot.

  “Great. Listen, Leslie … you mind if I call you Leslie?”

  “Huh?”

  “Leslie, I want you to kneel down right here, okay?” He let me guide him to his knees. “That’s right,” I said. “Just like that. Now put your arms down at your side. Look over there.”

  “What? Why?”

  I pointed his face toward the sliding glass doors that led out to a beautifully dappled swimming pool.

  “Perfect,” I said. “Now I’m gonna tee off on your head with this bat.”

  “Wha–”

  I swung for the fence. Laid him out like a sack of rocks.

  Then I went to find Isaac and Tommy.

  Isaac was standing in a hallway outside the master suite. He turned when he heard me approach, and his eyes went wide as the bat came up.

  “No!” he said, showing me his palms. “It’s okay. Stop, Steve.”

  “Like hell it’s okay. I ain’t gonna let you ruin us, Isaac.”

  “No,” he pleaded. “You don’t understand.”

  I was close enough now to see into the master suite. Jessica Carlton, blouse torn off, exposing her absolutely amazing tits, skirt hiked up high enough to give a peek of a white, lacy thong, was pulling herself across the deep pile, honey-coloured carpet. There was blood on her face and a huge big bite mark on her right leg. From her expression, I could tell she’d been drugged.

  Tommy was staggering towards her, moaning like I’d never heard him do before. There was fresh blood on his face and hands and chest, but if I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he was aroused.

  “What the hell?” I said. I turned to Isaac. “Did you drug her?”

  “Yeah. GHB.”

  “How much did you give her?”

  “The usual.”

  “The whole dropper full?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she’s still moving around?”

  He shrugged.

  “Damn,” I said, and whistled. “The girl must be in pretty good shape.”

  “Yeah.”

  Tommy caught up with her, fell on her and started to feed. She let out a weak scream, but there was nothing behind it. In less than a minute, she had stopped thrashing.

  Feeling stunned, I said, “Isaac, I’m not sure if I’m gonna be able to unfuck this situation.”

  “I was …” he said, and drifted off feebly. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

  I didn’t even bother to respond.

  “I wanted to give him something, you know? We just take and take and take from his talent. Nobody ever gives back to him. I wanted to give him something special.”

  “So you gave him Jessica Carlton? Jesus, Isaac, how did you expect to pull that off. This isn’t some two bit groupie chick. People are gonna notice she’s gone.”

  “She wanted to meet Tommy. Leslie Gant called me. He said she was
going to be in town. He asked me if we could set up a private meeting between them. You know, a little romantic Valentine’s Day dinner the paparazzi wouldn’t know about. She’s still with that football player guy.”

  I took a moment to absorb all that. Then, “So no one knows she’s here. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Leslie Gant knows too.”

  “I’m not too worried about him,” I said.

  But I was worried about Isaac. In his mind, he must have felt he was making the supreme lover’s sacrifice. He must have felt almost like a martyr, giving someone else to Tommy Grind so that they could satisfy him the way Isaac only wished he could.

  “This must have been really hard for you,” I said.

  He looked at me, a suspicious note of caution in his eye.

  “I mean that,” I said. “I know you’ve been in love with him for a long time.”

  Isaac started to object, but then he hung his head and nodded.

  “Listen, come with me. Let’s go have a drink and let him eat. What the hell, right? There’s nothing more you can do here.”

  I put my arm over his shoulder and led him back to the living room. He balked at Leslie Gant on the living room floor, but I guided him away from the body.

  “Don’t worry about him,” I said. “Here, we got time for one drink. Then, we got to think about how we’re gonna clean all this up. Can’t afford any loose ends.”

  He looked back at Leslie Gant and grunted.

  I handed him his drink. “To Tommy Grind,” I said. We clanked glasses. I downed mine in one gulp. He sipped his, but managed to get most of it down just the same.

  “Hang tight here, okay? I’m gonna go get Tommy and put him in the car.”

  About five minutes later, I was done with Tommy and back in the living room. Isaac was nearly passed out on the couch.

  I slapped his cheeks to rouse him. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t face on me yet.”

  He stirred.

  “Okay,” I said, “here’s what we’re gonna do. You got your lighter on you?”

  He reached into his pocket and held up a pink Bic.

  “Pink?” I said. “Seriously?”

  A corner of his mouth twitched. As close as he was going to get to a smile at this point.

  “Well, it’ll work. Start lighting those drapes on fire, okay?”

  He nodded.

  I took the whiskey and a couple of other bottles back to the master suite and lit the bodies on fire. Once I had it going, I came back to the living room and grabbed Isaac by the shoulder.

  “Come on,” I told him. “Gotta stay on your feet until we get to the car.”

  We passed his car in the driveway, and though the drugs I had slipped into his drink had made him so groggy he could barely walk, he was still able to point at his car and groan.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  At that very moment – and I mean it was cued like something out of a movie – the house behind us blew up.

  And I’m not just talking a part of the house, either.

  The whole fucking thing exploded.

  The shockwave nearly knocked me down.

  Isaac stared at me, stupidly. His mouth was hanging open, a thick rope of drool hanging from the corner of his lips. Some people don’t handle the GHB well at all.

  “What did you do?” he managed to say, though it came out all as one syllable, slurred together.

  “This is your big chance,” I said. I leaned him up against the front fender of the Suburban, reached into the driver’s side window, and turned up Janis Joplin’s ‘Take Another Little Piece of My Heart.’

  One of Tommy’s favourite songs.

  Then I helped Isaac Glassman to the back and balanced him on my hip as I opened the door.

  Tommy was waiting inside, watching, his dead eyes locked on Isaac.

  Isaac groaned and slapped at my hand in a futile show of resistance. Poor guy, he knew it was coming.

  Janis was singing never never never hear me when I cry.

  “She’s playing your song,” I said. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Isaac.”

  Then I chucked him inside, closed the door, and drove out of there before the first sirens sounded in the distance.

  I listened to the sounds of weak screams and tearing meat coming from the back seat, but didn’t look back.

  Instead, I turned up the radio.

  It ain’t easy being the manager for the biggest rock star on the planet. Sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty. But what the hell? I mean, the show must go on, right?

  THE END

  WABIGOON

  By

  James Cheetham

  I can still picture our surroundings. Above me the sun sparked bright while in the distance the sound of songbirds painted a picture entirely innocent and removed from the horrors of the day. Today should have been filled with fun, fish, and brotherly bonding; a beer in my hand, a line in the water, sunscreen on my nose. Things don’t always turn out the way one expects them to however – and I can appreciate that, but never would I have believed a day as beautiful as this one could have ended as tragically as it had.

  Even now, the cloudless sky remains a constant reminder of normality. The beer still waits in the cooler and my line remains forever in the water, along with my tackle box, my rod, and my cell phone.

  The boat still has power too, but the outboard refuses to turn over. I’ve done everything in my limited mechanical ability to change that fact, but it has not been enough. I am not blessed to be so inclined, and the person who did have that know-how – my brother, Jerry – lay on his back in the hull of the boat, inhaling tiny gasps of air, his skin slowly turning a shade of shocking blue as his eyes gazed past the infinite sky above.

  I was uncertain what to do with Jerry, my mind snared by thoughts of our mother – God rest her soul. She’d have rolled over in her grave if she knew I’d considered rolling my only sibling over the side of the boat.

  The last time I heard Jerry say anything coherent he’d been directing me on how to get the motor started again while he busied himself applying pressure to a gaping bite taken from the meat of his left hand, just below his thumb.

  “Take the filleting knife, and dig that shit out of the propeller,” Jerry had said as small streams of deep red trickled down his forearm only hours earlier. He removed the towel he’d been using on the wound and held it over the lake, squeezing the blood from it the way one might squeeze a chamois while drying a car. The motor was heavy but I managed to pull it up and tilt it back, bringing the propeller blades out of the water. I was repulsed by what I saw as shades of fleshy pink and crimson dripped back into the lake and tiny remnants of the morning’s catastrophe floated upon waves of water so crystal clear, you could see to the very bottom.

  “Dig it out with the knife. It won’t turn over because it’s blocked up with all that … crap.”

  The filleting knife wasn’t enough however. It was sharp certainly – which was fine for cleaning Pickerel, but was useless when utilized in the process of digging, like a spade or a spoon. The blade was too thin and it bent to the point I worried it might snap altogether, the blade-tip lodging in my eye leaving the both of us injured – two helpless fools drifting along in a boat that refused to start. Perhaps that was our punishment for wandering off the beaten track.

  Jerry had mentioned Raindance Island on the very first night spent in Wabigoon, Ontario five days earlier. Our wives were inside our rented cabin getting the kids off to bed while my brother and I sat in the screened porch enjoying a few drinks as the sun set over Wabigoon Lake.

  “I wouldn’t mind taking a look – might be interesting,” Jerry said after mentioning the isolated island with strange anticipation in his voice.

  “I imagine they’d have it all blocked off from the public somehow … wouldn’t they?” I’d asked.

  Jerry sipped at his whiskey and shrugged. “No need to block off a place nobody knows about.”

  “What’
s the big deal anyway?” I asked him. “You see dead bodies all the–”

  Jerry motioned for me to be quiet. I looked up to see our wives, Andrea and Jackie, coming out through the patio doors – Andrea still nursed the vodka cooler she’d had with our late supper of barbequed hotdogs.

  “They all tucked in?” I asked, watching Jackie – my brother’s wife, pull the patio door closed behind her.

  She smiled. “Sort of … Jonathon has Joshua convinced there’s a deranged lunatic in a hockey mask lurking in the woods. I wouldn’t be surprised if he crawls into bed with you guys tonight.”

  “That’s my boy!” Jerry said, toasting his son with his glass while the rest of us shared a laugh.

  “Some things never change.” I said. How ironic, Jerry’s son had my kid terrified – we hadn’t even unpacked yet. “You think he’ll be alright?” I asked, as Andrea sat down on my lap and wrapped her arms around my shoulders.

  “We’re here for two weeks, I hope so,” Andrea said with a chuckle.

  Jackie pulled up a plastic chair, sat down, and rested her bare feet on Jerry’s legs. “I feel so bad. Jonathon’s become a horror fiend – no thanks to his father.”

  “Ah, it’s just first night jitters – tomorrow night will be easier,” Andrea said, waving Jackie’s worries away with her hand before turning her attention to me. “You guys planning on unloading that boat at some point tonight?”

  “We were thinking we might head out tomorrow morning,” Jerry said, flirting with the possibility, forever a braver man than I.

  “Head out where?” Andrea asked, giving me the look only a wife could give a husband.

  “Fishing,” Jerry said and gestured with a flick of the chin, “out on the lake.”

  That was of course not what we’d been talking about, not exactly, but it was enough to make the girls groan nonetheless. I could imagine their reaction had my brother told them the honest to God truth.