She stood in the kitchen, linoleum cold on her bare toes, toenails painted to match her fingers. Early morning light shone through the eastern window. There was a pile of freshly laundered clothes on the dining room chair. The fabric softener had a vaguely fruity scent. She made her way to the kitchen counter, pulled down the peanut butter from the overhanging cupboard. There were envelopes on the island separating the two rooms. Judy Zwidiker, Sandra read as Judy got the bread down. She popped two slices into the toaster. They were addressed to a house in Bristol, Connecticut. Sandra wanted to look more closely, but all her efforts didn’t make Judy twitch.
She moved to the fridge. The calendar said August. Judy had a doctor’s appointment on the twentieth and ‘Meet Sal for coffee’ on the thirteenth. Brightly colored cue cards were lined up with magnets on the freezer door. Grocery lists. Recipes. Inspirational sayings. A napkin casually proclaimed Rick’s phone number, name underscored twice.
A tug and Sandra found herself back in the living room. They were done. Judy’s throat hurt, a raw ring all the way around. As though Jeremiah’s hands had been there. She panted, was limp and grinning, held up by only his body, eyes nearly closed from the high. Her head lolled forward into his neck, along his shoulder, purring, “That was good.” She huffed a laugh, soft and breathless. “When I gave you my address, I never thought you’d actually stop by.”
“I know.” He pulled her away from the wall, ran his hand up her back once, twice. “You didn’t tell anyone about me.”
“I promised. You said we could have some fun.”
“We did.” His smile was disarming. “But you know what would be even better?”
“What?” she grinned, excitement fluttering through her body, Sandra twitching along with her.
“This.” Jeremiah pulled the knife out from the back of his jeans. Judy felt intrigued, and then confused, and then wide-eyed and gasping as she stumbled backward, hit the wall, and then fell toward the ground. Jeremiah didn’t stay clean this time. The blood spattered down the front of his shirt and his pants.
Judy didn’t scream. In fact, it took Judy a full minute to realize she was dead. And then she just flopped flat and laid there.
Sandra thought it’d been a good thing she hadn’t had that muffin the barista had offered.
“Hey, you alright?” Sandra blinked. The barista was looking at her – had even left the counter to come ask. The college professor look-a-like from two tables down had gotten to his feet, halfway between his table and hers, looking just as concerned.
“You were crying,” the girl said, hushed, crouching with her hand hovering just over Sandra’s knee. Sandra made a surprised sound, hand lifting to her face.
The barista was right.
“You wouldn’t answer me.” The girl sucked in her lip, clearly wondering if she ought to call someone, or maybe get Sandra a glass of water. “Are you…,” she began tentatively, “are you okay? Do you have a number I can call or—”
“I’m fine.” Sandra jerked upright, forcing the girl away. The professor was still hovering at her back, closer now, but not really getting involved. The blonde moved jerkily, leaned forward to put the lid of Sandra’s tea back on, and held it out.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Sandra summoned up a smile. She doubted it was successful, but the girl nodded all the same. She took a step back and motioned at the counter.
“Did you walk here? I can call you a cab.”
“I’m fine.” Sandra took her cup, made sure she had her wallet and moved to the door. She was. She was fine. She was absolutely, perfectly fucking fine. Her shoulder bounced off the frame, door hitting her foot. Her throat felt unreasonably thick. She couldn’t be more fine.
She didn’t reach up to wipe her face until she was back inside the motel. And then she poured her cold tea down the sink and rubbed her face raw. She still felt the salt on her skin hours after the boys returned.
She didn’t cry when she told them.
~
Judy Zwidiker lived in a nice house. It wasn’t big or even all that fancy. The yard was neatly fenced and the wood was freshly painted. It was a lot nicer than the dirty-carpeted room that they’d checked into in the middle of town. Judy had flowers in her garden. And shutters next to the windows. She even had a gnome.
Jack kept snickering at the whole Betty Crocker neighborhood.
The car was hot and smelled like sweaty boys and fast food.
“I’m not sitting here for a whole month,” she told them but hoped they didn’t take her seriously, because she would if she had to.
“I think the neighborhood watch might notice.” Danny drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The radio had crackled and cut out one town back and it was now fading in and out, even after he’d fiddled with it.
“I think we could be here every day and still miss Epps.” Jack played with the window crank for what may have been the fifth time in a row and Sandra ignored her urge to slap him in the back of the head.
They had phoned the police, left a tip – but there wasn’t much the police could do when Sandra couldn’t provide the proper information. They did question Judy, and, with any luck, the questions would make her slightly more cautious in her choice of bed partners.
Sandra hadn’t seen evidence of it yet.
“Wouldn’t Dad be proud?” Jack said as he rolled the window down again. “We grew up to be stalkers.”
~
Judy liked this bar down on Kirkness. It was a dance club, filled with bright flashing lights and loud music and sticky drinks spilled all over the floor. There were a lot of people Sandra’s age. She felt decades older than all of them.
Another giggling girl brushed by, nearly plowed into their table, and spilled half of her fruity number on herself. A new round of giggles erupted. Thank God Judy Zwidiker was two tables away and looked ready to leave. She’d flirted all night with a cute guy wearing a leather jacket and tight black jeans. She was going to leave with him, too.
“Our girl’s kind of a slut, isn’t she?” Jack was with her tonight, having drawn the short straw. The beer was watered down and neither of them danced. Jack had been half tempted to go over there and romance Judy himself just so they wouldn’t have to come back.
“Who says she sleeps with them all?”
Jack jostled against her arm, pressed too close and raised an eyebrow at her bored look. “She leaves with them.”
“Maybe they get scared off when she gets them home and things get a little kinky.”
“I knew you were holding out about that dream of yours.” Jack got to his feet, and then led the way to the door, cutting a path across the packed bar and dance floor. Sandra tried not to let anyone touch her. Everyone who did was thinking about sex, thinking give me more and he’s hot and maybe she’ll phone me. Sandra was flushed by the time they made it outside. Good thing Jack was busy keeping an eye on Judy and her latest conquest. He didn’t need any more fodder.
“Quit thinking dirty things and let’s get out of here.”
“Shut up,” was her snappy reply.
Jack watched Leather Jacket’s car pull out from the lot. Then he unlocked the car. “Epps better show up soon or I swear I’ll let her die,” he said in exasperation.
“No, you won’t.”
Jack turned the fritzing radio up loud.
~
“I hate her.”
“Jack…”
“I mean, I don’t want to agree with some crazy psycho, never mind the crazy psycho that put me in the hospital, but I really, really hate her.”
“You’re bored.” Danny threw a book at him. “Expand your brain.”
Jack threw the book right back at his brother’s head. It bounced into the backseat. Ooh, Ancient Egypt. Sandra picked it up off the floor.
“All she does is go to work. Go to th
e bar. Go to some guy’s house.”
“How I assume most normal lives go.” Danny’s voice was absolutely monotonic. The radio wasn’t working at all today and he’d already finished the crossword in the paper.
“Only with less sex,” Sandra said. The book was much better than listening to them bicker. If there were room, they’d be rolling around by now, giving each other bruises and black eyes and getting dirt stains all over their shirts.
Jack got a wistful expression. “Maybe I should pick her up.”
“I thought you hated her?”
“Sex,” he said. Danny shoved him in the head, which knocked Jack’s face into the window. “I was just kidding!”
The car got very quiet when Judy walked outside. She went to the garage, opened it, picked up a garbage bag and moved it to the curb. And then she went back inside. Jack leaned forward and clunked his head onto the dash. “Shoot me now. I don’t even care about going evil anymore.”
Sandra frowned and jabbed his shoulder with the pointy edge of the book.
“Don’t say that.” Danny frowned, too. Jack’s shoulders hunched. His head went down and he stared out the window.
“Sorry,” he said. It took him a real long time to start talking again.
~
Jack eventually stole a car.
Sandra had to admit it was a nice one – sleek lines and tinted windows and now parked in front of Judy’s house (because he said seeing theirs every day would make anyone suspicious). Sandra thought he just wanted to drive a car that sounded like a lion. Both boys seemed horrified when she didn’t know the make and year.
Sandra was tempted to point out all the things they didn’t know.
It wasn’t exactly low key or sensible, but it was nice not to have to hunch down in the seats when someone came outside.
“It’s not good if she notices us,” Danny grumped.
Jack shrugged. “So I’ll steal a new one tomorrow.”
Danny looked disgusted. Not from the stealing, obviously, but because Jack was being so damn cocky. “Less flair,” he said.
Jack’s grin, bright and crooked, said he was going to go for more.
He stole cars for five days, changing plates as he went, before the cops nearly nabbed him, and then they were back to their old routine and their own car. They were halfway into the month and there’d been no sign of Jeremiah.
The tension rose with every passing day, nights the only blessing. They could go home to the dirty motel and shower and eat and fall asleep as soon as their heads hit the mattress, because just sitting there and watching was tiring.
Sandra thought it may have been the most exhausting way they’d lived in years. She felt hollow in the mornings. They all looked sickly, permanent bruises under their eyes with their veins pumping caffeine. Danny had taken up smoking, nicotine stains building up around his index finger. He never tasted of smoke, so she didn’t complain. Except when he reached for one in the car. And then Jack just complained about the interior and how it would smell up the inside. If the car needed a shampoo, Danny was going to pay.
The smokes disappeared a week later. Sandra found a cigarette hole in the sleeve of his only good jacket and figured nearly catching on fire was as good an incentive to quit as any other.
Jack junked the pine air fresheners he’d started hanging inside the room. Sandra was still trying to figure out where Jack had gotten them. Their lives consisted of the hotel room, the car, and the restaurant take-out list they had stuck to the motel wall. He was an idiot if he spent the few hours they had to sleep every night walking to the mini-mart two blocks away.
“Hey,” he said, blue shadows from the television flickering across him, turning his face into some eerie abstract stranger. Danny breathed deep at her side, head buried near her hip from where she sat at the headboard, fingers tangled in his hair. Jack’s hair was getting long, too, starting to look a lot like his brother’s. “Have you thought about what we’re going to do if we see him?” A package crinkled between his hands. He ripped the vending machine chips open and reached over to offer her some. “I thought the whole point of this is that we don’t kill anyone. So how are we gonna stop him? Call the cops again?”
Sandra closed her eyes. On screen, a futuristic space vessel exploded into pieces.
“It’ll be too late for her,” he said.
She’d been trying not to think about that. She was pretty sure none of them had.
The chip bag crackled, Danny pressed firm into her hip and Jack turned the volume up. Warning klaxons followed her into sleep.
On screen, robotic voices droned, “Kill the humans.”
~
Sandra screamed.
She couldn’t stop. It poured out of her and continued on and on, no room to breathe.
She was covered in blood.
Someone was sobbing and she realized it was her. The room was dark. The drapes were pulled and the lights were off, nothing shining through. It was just dark shapes in a dark space, growing around her like monsters.
She hurt.
Judy Zwidiker hurt.
The screaming went on and on and Sandra wanted it to stop. Please stop. Just stop it. Stop it, stop.
This is a dream, she told herself. It’s just a dream. This isn’t how it happens.
“Are you sure about that?” The lights blinded her, coming on. Gore clung to Jeremiah’s knife, dripping down the blade and running past to his wrist and forearm, seeping into his spattered shirtsleeve. He moved closer, dripping a trail, and Judy stuttered, gasped, and tried to breathe. A long, piteous sound tore from her throat. Jeremiah chuckled and flung something that looked like flesh from his fingers.
She felt blood between her toes. Judy was in her sleep clothes and she gagged, gasped, flinched when Jeremiah drew close. This isn’t real, she said to herself. It was a dream.
She really wanted to wake up.
The bed was soaked. She couldn’t see herself, couldn’t move, but her chest didn’t resemble any human’s anymore. It was all red, protruding muscle and bone and – oh my god – how could she still be alive? Judy moved again, made that thin, piercing wail and Jeremiah leaned closer, carpet squishing underneath his toes. His knife slipped in again. The pain was already so great that she barely noticed, world fading around her.
“Do you like what you did?” Jeremiah Epps asked.
Waking was like surfacing through water. Sandra shuddered and Danny’s sleeping lips were on her throat, dark lashes heavy on his cheeks, hair humid-damp against her skin. His arm was thrown over her chest. She could feel her heart, the rapid rush through her veins that seemed to shake the whole bed. “Danny,” she said, and she was suddenly crying so hard it was a wonder Jack didn’t wake. She couldn’t get air in, couldn’t breathe. A horrible, gasping sound came out of her. Danny came awake with a start, arms tightening around her and saying nonsense things. He rubbed her back until she could talk, until she’d stopped crying. She ran her palms over her eyes, used Danny’s shirt and the bed sheets to wipe all the tears away.
Jack hadn’t woken up, she realized, because he wasn’t there. His bed was a wrinkled mess of cold and lonely linens.
“I need this to be over,” she whispered. Danny’s hand rubbed and rubbed in slow circles on her back. Air stuttered through her lungs, choking her until she could say, “You need to check on Judy.”
Danny left. Jack didn’t return. The night was quiet. Stars shone brightly overhead. There were no clouds and the moon had a halo, fog high up above. Sandra sat on the front walk, knees bent and feet down the half step to the paved lot. Still bare. No blood. Just the cold turning her skin pale and numb. She watched, waited, until Danny came back. The car’s headlights cut a path across the dark, blinded her, and then Danny’s hands were on her arms, pulling her up and pushing her inside the warmth of the room.
“She’s
okay,” he said, and Sandra didn’t care how he knew, just that he was back and pressing her back under the covers. He climbed in next to her, cool hands and hot chest. His jeans were puddled on the floor at the foot of the bed and Sandra rolled close, pressed everything together, shivering.
“Please,” she said.
Danny understood. He tangled his fingers in her hair, tangled his tongue in her mouth and fucked her until she cried all over again. His fingers never left her, held her down, held her up, just held her. Thank you, she thought, lying there afterward, throat still closed tight, but not unbearable, and at least she felt alive.
“We’ll stop it,” he said. This time, he didn’t sound so sure.
Chapter Twenty-Five
He found her five days later.
They changed shifts, now. Took turns. Time was determined by day and night and sometimes Sandra woke with Danny gone, watching, and Jack gone, she didn’t know where. Time bled together. Days and hours and minutes. Sometimes she walked to Judy Zwidiker’s house. Sometimes she walked to the mini-mart and stocked up on bottled water and plastic-tasting sandwiches and just-as-processed junk food. When Danny’s shifts ended, he came back with stolen money and even deeper circles under his eyes.
Alone in the car, her head was tipped to the side and she stared blindly out the window. The opposite door opened and, startled, she jerked upright, hand reaching for her gun. Then she felt the blade at her throat.
“Hello again,” Jeremiah said.
Sandra thought she saw Judy, staring out her front window, before Jeremiah slammed her head into the steering wheel and everything went black.
~
She woke on a floor. No. That wasn’t right. Her legs were on the floor. Her arms were tied behind her, bound to something cold. Metal. She thought it was a pipe, some sort of water main that stuck up from the dingy cement. Her shoes had been removed. Jeremiah must’ve learned from Jack. There was debris. A dull scattered shine of broken glass. Sandra doubted she could run far, even if she got free. Her hands had gone numb. Her fingers felt like sausages. It was hard to turn her wrists and she could tell he’d used rope – the fibers scratched and burned as she wriggled.
Sticks and Stones Page 25