He opened the envelope. The card had a picture of a Boy Scout holding a heart. The words on the front of the card read, “Be prepared, Valentine.” Inside the card was a smaller envelope. Handwritten on the smaller envelope were the words “the last time you said you were prepared, you ended up dressing me like I was going to gym class.”
Jeremy opened the smaller envelope. Written on the inside of the flap was, “I’d hate to see you wearing a sandwich bag.” Inside the envelope were three condoms.
Jeremy’s brain locked up. He couldn’t think of anything witty to say, or for that matter anything at all to say. He stood there with a stupid grin on his face and time moving in slow motion.
Sarah broke the spell by kissing him. Jeremy forgot the need to say anything. Suddenly he knew what to do, and words weren’t part of it.
Quite some time later, Sarah kissed Jeremy’s neck and then snuggled against his chest. He said, “We can never do that again.”
She felt too good for the remark to worry her. “Why not?”
“Because I can’t imagine it ever being that good again.”
She drowsily replied, “Stick with me kid. You haven’t even begun to see good.” Moments later her breathing changed and Jeremy realized she was asleep. Jeremy shut his eyes but he couldn’t stop thinking about how lucky he was. He felt like he should be tired, but he had too much adrenaline in his system to sleep. It was all he could do to keep from shaking, or getting up to do jumping jacks or run around the block. He wanted to call everybody he knew and tell them how lucky he was. He lay there trying not to quiver.
After a few minutes, he was nowhere closer to sleep, so he grabbed his copy of The Two Towers off the floor from between his bed and his guitar and started to read.
He put the book down and went to take a leak. He wondered why characters in books never had to urinate unless it was a plot point. He tried to imagine Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn taking a break from their epic run to take a leak. He knew they had to, but couldn’t picture it. The image of them peeing while running was too absurd to even contemplate. On the other hand, in the movies or on TV it seemed like it was pretty fashionable for things to happen at a urinal. Guys were always having conversations (shown from the waist up, of course), not much like real life where men look straight ahead, and most conversation is paused, at least until everyone was back outside the restroom.
But peeing is a pretty big part of life. How many minutes a day does it take up for an average guy? How many did it take for him? Why does he start thinking this way at three in the morning?
Jeremy lay down and fell directly into sleep.
Saturday February 15th
1:00 a.m.
Ward left Samantha sleeping in his bed and wandered down to the kitchen to get a beer. He knew he shouldn’t have another beer at one in the morning, not when he had to be up and at work in a few hours. He should have just rolled over and gone to sleep like Samantha had, but he was just too wired. Sometimes getting drunk did that to him. He figured he would have a beer and watch some TV, maybe that would calm him down a little. He wondered if Samantha would wake up before he left for the office. He hoped she wouldn’t. That way there would be no awkward goodbyes. He would just go to work, and when he got home she would be gone. Smooth, clean, easy.
The light from the fridge was blinding after the dark house and he squinted as he looked for a bottle of Blackened Voodoo. He closed the door and all he could see was a pinkish rectangle, the afterimage of the fridge’s guts. He groped for the bottle opener on the door. He liked to be gentle to his hands, he hated to tear them up with twist-off caps; he was a doctor, after all. He popped the cap, tossed it in the general direction of the trash, and heard it rattle across the floor. It would have been an easy shot, if not for the pink rectangle. He decided he would worry about the cap in the morning.
He fumbled his way into the dining room and hit the light switch. He was tired of tripping over things, and the TV was still a room away. There was a mirror opposite from the door and he paused for a moment to look at himself. Maybe the alcohol had diminished his startle reflex, but when a bald head on top of a tight fitting shiny black collar appeared behind him in the doorway behind him, his mind leapt back to the couple of minutes of Hellraiser he had watched earlier and his first thought was, “Pinhead?”
That was also his last coherent thought, because as Aldous’ arm reached around his neck in a choke hold, Ward’s thoughts became gibbering and incoherent. A well-executed choke can leave a person unconscious in an amazingly short time, but Aldous did not wait for Ward to be fully under. It was only a matter of seconds before enough fight had gone out of Ward that Aldous was able to drop him to the floor, cover his mouth and nose with his own and thrust the eight inch chef’s knife under Ward’s rib cage, through his solar plexus and into his heart. Aldous made a clockwise circle with the knife, in an apple coring motion, and greedily sucked Ward’s last breath.
Aldous left Ward’s body in a growing pool of blood. He would finish his work here after he finished the girl. Aldous had been waiting in the house hours before Ward and Samantha had stumbled through the door. He had stood in the hallway and watched their drunken, clumsy sex. He could have taken them at any time, but he had felt like playing. He had also wanted to give the neighbors plenty of time to notice the blue GTO in the driveway.
While he had been alone in the house he had memorized the pattern of squeaky stairs going to the second floor, so he glided up to the second floor without a sound. The bed barely shifted as he lowered himself onto it. He knew that she was likely beyond awareness, and even if she had noticed the sounds would have assumed they were from her temporary lover, but he habitually practiced his stealth.
Samantha did not wake as his mouth covered her mouth and nose, and only jerked once as the knife danced a circle though her heart. As deaths go, hers was easy. Aldous spent a moment imagining a spiel he could use in a year or two, once this house had been added to the Madness tour. “It is said she died so easily that she never realized she was dead. She never woke up, and she never will. Rumor has it that her spirit still sleeps in the second floor bedroom, never waking, though occasionally bleeding. The current owners of the house had to move their room, because it was too disturbing to occasionally wake up with a beautiful blonde college girl sleeping between them.”
It was a nice spiel, but it would be untrue. Aldous knew where the girl’s spirit was: inside him. And he wasn’t planning on staying in New Orleans long enough to ever tell that ghost story.
Aldous got to work on the rest of his task. First he dropped an eight-inch kitchen knife by the bed. It wasn’t the same knife he had used to kill the couple, but it was the same brand and size: close enough for forensics work. The most important thing about that knife was that it had at least one clear fingerprint and several partials on it. Standing in Dexter’s kitchen earlier, Aldous had made certain of that. He’d breathed heavily across the blade and handle and watched the fog of his breath reveal the prints on the handle. Now as he left it, he made sure that the knife would get bloody, but that Dexter’s prints would not be obscured.
Then he took the girl’s head. He put it in a garbage bag. He didn’t want any traces of his saliva getting gene tested by some bright forensics cop. He also wanted an easy to carry source of evidence. When the time came, the charred remains of her head would be found some place incriminating for Dexter.
He pulled out a small plastic bag and shook its contents onto the bed. Two of Dexter’s hairs were now somewhere on the pillow … he wanted some bright forensics cop to find those. Then he emptied another bag onto the bed. He chuckled as he scattered the next bag across the bed. It was organic corn flakes; he wanted the cops to be sure they were dealing with a serial killer. It was a cheesy, cliché gag, but he wanted to make sure the cops got it, and he believed that heavy handed was the way to go when he wanted to be positive the cops would get the joke
. The brand of corn flakes was also the same as the cops would eventually find in Dexter’s kitchen. The news hadn’t mentioned the Bed and Breakfast Killings. So if the cops had noticed the pattern he was trying to show them, they were keeping it remarkably quiet, and that just would not do.
He checked the room to make certain he hadn’t left any bloody handprints, then very carefully set the sole of one shoe into the still growing pool of blood. His feet were quite a bit larger than Dexter’s, but it hadn’t been hard to cut the soles off a pair of Dexter’s shoes and glue them onto the bottom of a pair of his own. He thought of it as rubber stamp evidence. He knew that the fake footprints would be a bad idea on soft ground, where his weight would press the soles too deep, but didn’t see a way they could fail on hardwood. He left a trail of bloody footprints back to the dining room.
He treated Ward’s body much the same as he had treated Samantha’s. He used a separate bag for the head. Then he took a shower in the downstairs bathroom, rinsing the blood off his latex. He left another of Dexter’s hairs in the drain, and, after wrapping himself in the dark cloak, he picked up the cap with the wig he had worn earlier and made sure it shed a couple of synthetic hairs in the corner of the room. The cap went on his head, and he left by the front door. He crouched a little as he walked to the car, making himself shorter, knowing the cloak would hide the bend in his legs.
The collection of bags went in the trunk. Starting the car, he pulled the cable that switched the exhaust cut-out from the very quiet muffler to straight pipes. Dexter had the cut-out installed so he could be a polite neighbor most of the time, but still feel the full roar of the mighty V8 engine when he was out on the road. It suited Aldous’ purposes perfectly: he wanted to wake a neighbor or two as he roared down the street into the night.
Saturday February 15th
2:00 p.m.
Jeremy was sitting on the front steps to his house, petting Mojo. Mojo was eating Jeremy’s food, and mostly ignoring Jeremy. Jeremy looked down at the cat, and when he looked up Aldous was standing in front of him. It startled him, but he managed not to jump.
Aldous said, “You’re a brave man. A lot of people would be scared to have a black cat cross their path, but you invite one to cross your threshold. Do you ever wonder how often that cat has crossed your path?”
Jeremy smiled and said, “Maybe that’s why I try to keep on his good side.”
“But does it matter to the forces of luck if you are on the cat’s good side or not?”
Jeremy shrugged. “Well, for the most part I don’t believe in luck, so I guess it doesn’t really matter to me.”
Aldous tsked and said, “Ah, but does luck believe in you? For a long time people didn’t believe in germs, and those people died by the millions.”
“I take it that you believe in luck?” Jeremy didn’t exactly like Aldous, but he also had no cause to let it show.
“No. I believe in many things, but luck isn’t one of them. I was just testing your beliefs.”
Jeremy was slightly annoyed by the conversation, but it was at about that moment that he had an idea. Aldous was a tour guide who talked to hundreds of tourists every day. He was a good speaker and would probably be a good salesman for an unusual attraction. Someone who talked to a lot of people could probably send a lot more people his way.
Acting with the impulse both to have another person referring clients to him and to change the subject before it gave him too much of a headache, Jeremy asked, “Aldous, how would you like to make some money?”
Aldous’ eyes lit up. “That depends, is it by doing something illegal?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Nope.”
“How disappointing. Dirty money is always so much more interesting.”
Part of Jeremy’s brain started screaming at him that it was a good time to change the subject again, to say, ‘oh, never mind then,’ and talk about the weather or Mojo the cat some more. He noticed that Mojo had gone, leaving a small pile of food behind.
Aldous interrupted his musing by asking, “What sort of money-making venture did you have in mind?”
And Jeremy started explaining the Whisper Garden. His spiel was starting to gather a life of its own, and he was starting to get good at adapting it to the situation. For Aldous he started by explaining the electro voice phenomenon, and his theory that it worked purely through suggestion, and the human brain’s desire to find order in randomness. Eventually, Jeremy got around to the nature of his business, and was just suggesting that Aldous try it for himself when Sarah showed up.
Sarah was dressed for a day as a statue. She hoped that her makeup had hid the look of horror she was sure had crossed her face the moment she had seen Aldous. She had seen him around the Quarter, and he had always given her the creeps. She had never expected to see him talking to Jeremy. She said, “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by.”
Jeremy hopped down the steps and kissed her. “I’m glad you did.” She had only left his house a couple of hours before, so she could go get changed for work.
In a low voice she asked, “So are we still on for tonight?”
He nuzzled her neck. “We’re on for right now if you’d like.”
She pushed him back a little. “Sorry, I gotta make some money while all the tourists are here.”
Jeremy made a pouty face. She laughed, and Jeremy couldn’t help but smile along with her. She said, “Would you mind if I left some stuff here to change into when I get tired of being a statue?”
“You can leave whatever you want.”
She handed him a plastic grocery bag, tied shut. She said, “No peeking.”
“You want to stick around for a while?”
“No, I need to go get set up. Besides, it looks like you already have company.” He was trying to decide if he had heard ice in her last comment when she said, “I’ll see you tonight,” kissed him, and trotted off down the street.
He watched her for a moment, and then suddenly remembered he had left Aldous standing on his stairs. He turned back to his guest and said, “Sorry about the distraction.”
Aldous looked amused. “Will you be that distracted if she drops by when you have a paying customer?” Jeremy blushed. He couldn’t think of anything smart to say.
Aldous said, “Come on, show me that garden.”
Jeremy led him into the house and back to the courtyard. “Here it is: the one and only Whisper Garden.”
Aldous paused and turned as he was stepping into the garden. He said, “Your lips,” and then closed the door behind him.
Jeremy was puzzled for a moment then looked at himself in the trick mirror. Before his face dissolved into the devil’s, he saw that his lips were painted bright white from kissing Sarah. He blushed and wiped them off.
Aldous walked into the center of the garden, or at least what seemed to be the center, and sat down in a full lotus posture – legs folded over each other, back straight, hands resting palms up on his knees. It was a good posture for meditation, a good posture for listening to voices from beyond. Aldous hadn’t believed Jeremy’s explanation of internally generated voices; he lived in a less scientific world than Jeremy. He listened for the voices. He heard them.
The whisper seemed to come from everywhere. “She is the one.”
The voice clarified, “The vessel for your souls.”
He silently asked, “But I thought the souls were for me?”
“They are, they are your souls, but you must be born again before they can be consolidated into you. They must be blended into one with yours. Plant your seed in her. You will be the child and you will be the father. You will be both at once, and you will never die. You will be worshipped, and you will rule the world.”
Aldous pondered this. He believed the voice – after all this time, all his years of gathering souls it was time for fulfilment. “Should I seduce her away from him?”
“No. She must love you, but she thinks she loves him. You will not be able to seduce her, as long as he can get to her. Take her away, take her to the country, teach her your skills, show her your power. She will come to love you.”
“What about the boy?”
The whisper surged. “Destroy him. Or he will destroy you.”
Aldous stood and left the garden. Jeremy heard the door to the garden and came around, he said, “So can we do business?”
Aldous looked him in the eye and thought about killing him. It would be so easy. Jeremy’s guard was down and Aldous could think of a half dozen ways to kill him before he could even recognize the danger. The voice had instructed him to destroy Jeremy, but Aldous decided just killing him would be incautious, and even in his impending godhood, he was nothing but cautious. Aldous said, “Yes, I think I will be able to send you more business than you will know what to do with.”
Jeremy tried to hand him a stack of business cards. Aldous said, “Oh, I won’t need those.”
“But without the little star on the card, how will I know that you are the one sending me the business?”
Aldous smiled, and it sent a chill though Jeremy. “Trust me. You’ll know it when business comes from me.”
With that, Aldous left.
Saturday February 15th
3:00 p.m.
Jessica picked up a tiny alligator skull and pushed a button on the back of its head. The alligator’s eyes flashed red. She said, “This is just so typical.” She was talking about Samantha’s lack of consideration, though her comment could have applied to the gator head as well. New Orleans is one of the few cities in the world where an electronically rigged piece of taxidermy can be found in almost every souvenir shop.
Amber nodded. “Tell me about it.”
“She starts having fun, and forgets all about us.”
“Amen,” Amber added, perhaps a bit too loudly. Several other customers looked over at her. She lowered her voice a little. “How many times has she done this to us?”
The Whisper Garden Page 11