"You bitch," he whispered between clenched teeth and started toward her. She turned under the man porking her and looked at him. Her eyes, like headlights dazzling a deer in the middle of a road, stopped him cold. The inside of his head exploded in a flash of hot white light that burned everything out of his mind, leaving only her voice behind.
Guess what, Jake? Her words cut into his brain like a soldering iron into soft wood. In addition to all the other fine gifts I left you with, there's one more: I gave you AIDS. I got it from gang-banging those three. She nodded to indicate the three college boys. Thought you might like to know that you're going to die a horrible, lingering death ... unless, of course, you do something about it.
The message sank into his mind like steaming dog shit into fresh snow; it made an ever-widening hole and left a hot stench behind. As the hole got bigger, melting away his rationality, and finally his sanity, Jake the bartender knew what he had to do.
Norm Carr was getting a hard-on. As incredible as that was, it was true. It had been ten years since his last one; right about the time that his wife Roberta went through menopause and began sleeping in another room, refusing to let him touch her. Norm had dealt with it by telling himself that he was too old for sex anyway. Sex was for youngsters who could have kids, not for sixty-eight-year-old men.
From what the doctor had told him about it, Norm understood that menopause was nature's way of telling a woman that her childbearing years were over. Since Norm was of the view that women were meant for only one thing, being moth ers, he could understand Roberta's reaction when she lost the ability to carry out her purpose in life. The fact that they had never been able to have children only made it worse, he supposed.
From then on, Norm had kept his distance. He remained as kind and loving to his wife as a man of his limited emotional abilities could be, but left her alone and allowed Roberta time to get over it. He didn't know what else to do; he couldn't divorce her and didn't know what to say to make things better.
Since then, he had seen a lot of things that could have aroused him what with all the stuff they got away with on TV these days, especially cable. Nothing had. Roberta had even felt like fooling around one night after she'd had a few drinks at her sister's house, but poor Norm had been telling himself he couldn't for so long by then that he really couldn't. Naturally, Roberta took it as a rebuff and a comment on her attractiveness. She could hold a grudge a long time, and things had gotten only colder after that.
But never hard.
Until now.
The sight before him was disgustingly obscene and grotesque but this was the time his cock picked to come back to life. The old woman hung her head back and looked at him upside down, her head bobbing from the force of her young lover's thrusts. She hit Norm's mind like a stone hitting water, sending ripples radiating outwards. In the splash, Norm could see himself standing up on the table, straddling the old woman's face. What's more, he could feel her gummy mouth actually slurping him in.
What the fuck? he wondered, feeling his penis become wet with her saliva.
Come and join the party, her eyes said into his brain. In their depths he could suddenly see something very dark and hungry; something so evil it quickly soft-boiled his hard-on and scared the ever-loving shit right out of him. He staggered and backed away, then turned and ran out of the bar.
Something had gone wrong. The Machine had fucked up. With all the power of her mind and the Machine, Eleanor called for Norm to come back, ordering him to return, but to no avail. This was the second time since the little girl had snuck up to her window that the Machine had failed her. She was starting to exhibit the same lapses that had affected Edmund just before his death. She was running out of time, just like Edmund did.
I would have had plenty of time if it weren't for you. Edmund sat in the booth to her right. He stared at their sweaty, churning bodies and let out a hiss of disgust. Such manipulations, Eleanor. You never could do anything the easy way.
Eleanor opened her mouth to answer, but he disappeared. Between her legs, Steve was thrashing and pumping her frantically. She gave an extra little boost to his libido and he detonated into an explosive orgasm. She had to hurry up and get this over with; Norm was getting away, and that could spoil everything.
"What are you going to do?" the disgusted college boy asked the bartender as they came out of the back room together. The other two were howling with derision at the guy who had just run out of the bar as though he'd seen the devil getting pumped on that table.
"Maybe that was his mother," one gasped to the other. That fueled their laughter even more and they nearly collapsed from the intensity of it.
"Are you going to call the cops?" the first one asked. His friends laughed themselves soundless at his question.
Jake went behind the bar and over to the cash register. He rang NO SALE and pulled out a gleaming .45 when the drawer opened. His first shot hit one of the laughing boys in the shoulder, spinning him around and slamming him into a wooden support beam. He looked at the tear in his shirt where the blood was oozing out. His laughter became choppy and his smile melted into a look of pain. Jake's second shot hit him in the chest and his laughter died with him. Jake's third and fourth shots were almost point-blank in the other two boys' faces. He made a new mouth, that wasn't laughing, for one of them where his eyes and nose used to be, and blew a hole the size of a silver dollar in the other's forehead. The latter's brains exited from the back of his head along with the bullet as both boys nearly somersaulted backward from the force of the shots. They lay side by side on the floor, flopping and twitching like fish out of water.
Jake's fifth shot was his last. He held the gun barrel under his chin, pointed up through his head at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. The bottles on the bar tinkled under the rain of flesh and blood and bone. Flecks of his brain pattered across the glass of the mirror and up to the ceiling, leaving tracks that looked like some small animal had walked up the wall.
Shuddering, Steve finished his orgasm and collapsed, spent, into the booth. He felt as if everything inside him, his blood, breath, organs, muscle, his life, had been ejaculated from his aching penis. His balls felt shriveled to the size of raisins.
He looked at the young woman and realized he still didn't know who she was. What's your name? he asked her, and noticed he was talking with his thoughts.
Eleanor, she replied likewise.
When can I see you again?
Bring your boss to my house tomorrow and I'll make sure he doesn'tfire you.
But where do you live?
In the woods right behind your house. The young woman touched his face and grinned. The grin widened when the sound of gunshots came from the front room. They shook Steve out of his post-orgasmic stupor and he sat up. The young woman began to get dressed and he followed her example.
What was that? he asked, liking this form of communication. He pulled on his pants and zippered them.
We can leave by the back door, she answered, ignoring his question. He didn't repeat it. He scrambled to finish dressing as quickly as she. He tucked his ripped shirt into his pants and hurriedly slipped his feet into his loafers as she went out the back door marked FOR EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. Hobbling, his right shoe not completely on, he followed her.
Once outside in the alleyway to the left of the bar, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him lightly just tickling his lips with her tongue. She looked deeply into his eyes. Bring him, she commanded.
I will, Steve responded. He put on his watch and noticed it was 4:15. He reached out to kiss her again and she wasn't there. He glanced at his watch again, saw that it was now 4:30, and realized that he was back in his car and fifteen minutes he couldn't account for had just passed in an instant.
Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs were singing, "Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood," on the oldies FM 101 station out of Northampton, but Norm Carr barely heard it. He was concentrating too hard on trying to get his hands to stop shaking. His
palms, his whole body for that matter were cold and sweaty. He couldn't keep a grip on the wheel, nor his mind off the old woman in Roosevelt's.
His balls ached and he felt sick to his stomach. The image of her grotesque body-the ancient, wrinkled flesh, the varicose veins like dead fingers under her skin-flashed repeatedly in his mind. And those eyes that had given him a glimpse of something horrible, like looking through a window into Hell, kept staring at him.
The wheel slipped in his grasp again as his pickup truck hit a bump. The vehicle swerved to the right, kicking up a little dust from the shoulder and nearly clipping a short sign that identified the road as Route 119 south. He glanced in the mirror as he pulled back onto the road, but didn't pay any attention to the black station wagon some distance behind.
Come and join the party. Her words echoed in his memory and he couldn't silence them. Had she really spoken in his mind? he wondered. He hadn't seen her lips move but had heard her voice as clear as a bell.
"Is that possible?" he whispered aloud.
Anything's possible. Her voice was back, no longer just a memory. He looked up. There she was, standing buck naked by the side of the road, her hand out and her thumb up like some kid hitchhiking. Going my way? she asked with a chuckle.
He jumped, the truck swerved, and he stepped on the gas, speeding by her. He looked back but she was gone. When he faced forward again, he let out a scream. She was sitting on the hood of his truck, legs spread wide facing him, giving him a nauseatingly close up view of her swollen purple vagina.
Norm yanked on the wheel hard, sending the truck swerving wildly into the left lane as he tried to shake her off his truck. He thought he had succeeded when she disappeared, but the next moment he was screaming again-she was in the truck, sitting on the passenger's side next to him. He could see her disgusting body in near microscopic detail. Blood flowed from her cracked nipples; between her breasts, sweat glistened on several, long curly white hairs. The smell of her was overpowering, a stinking mix of bad fish and stale chicken shit.
Gotcha! she shouted in his brain. She reached out a long, flabby arm, the arthritic fingers of her hand resembling claws, and grabbed him firmly by the balls. Norm let go of the wheel and screamed like a woman. The hand on his balls tightened. In reflex, his foot stomped the gas pedal to the floor. Norm Carr screamed again, not so much from the hand rupturing his testicles as from the sight of the bus his truck was about to plow into head on. It was the last sound he made.
The pickup truck and bus collided. Norm Carr shot forward. His chest was crushed by the steering wheel. His head went through the windshield where the broken glass separated it from his body. It sailed through the windshield of the bus like a cannonball, rolling down the aisle, before the bus flipped onto its side and skidded to a metal screeching stop.
Eleanor drove by the wreckage slowly, smiling. All was well again.
Don't count on it. Edmund was sitting on top of the smoking bus. He was looking at her scornfully.
"You're dead, brother," she said quietly, but firmly, and drove away.
CHAPTER 24
And all the pretty maids are plain to be seen.
Something was wrong. Eleanor knew it the instant she pulled into the lot at the front of the house. She got out of the hearse quickly and ran as fast as she could to the front porch.
A window was open.
She went to the front door, unlocked it and hurried inside. The chapel door was open. From inside, she could hear a wet, lapping sound. She went in and found Mephisto feeding on the still warm body of Roger Eames. The dog looked up at her, licked away the bloody froth that was dripping from his chops, and wagged his tail.
"Good boy, Mephisto," Eleanor said, praising her familiar. She crossed to the altar and patted the dog's head. He licked her hand and went back to work on the soft flesh of Roger Eames's neck and face.
Who is he? Eleanor wondered. Though she had heard his thoughts many times, him living so close, and had even probed his mind on occasion to keep him from hiking in her woods, Eleanor had never actually seen Roger Eames. At first she was afraid he might be a policeman, but he wasn't wearing a uniform. His proximity to Margaret's body suggested to Eleanor that he had perhaps come looking specifi cally for her-and found much, much more than he had bargained for.
Being careful not to disturb Mephisto, who could get downright nasty if his feeding was interrupted, Eleanor knelt by the body and went through his pockets. In his back pocket she found his wallet. She opened it and pulled out his license, nodding slowly as she looked at it. It was just as she'd thought. Somehow Margaret Eames's father had tracked her to Grimm Memorials. Eleanor wondered if he had come by mistake, but didn't think so. If he hadn't, he might have told the police, or someone else about where he was going.
There was only one way to find out.
Judy Eames woke from her drugged sleep and called out to Roger. When she received no answer, she dragged herself out of bed, put on her robe and slippers, and stumbled out of the bedroom to the top of the stairs.
"Roger?" she called again, her voice slurring his name. No answer. She had started down the stairs when there was a knock on the back door. She hurried through the living room and kitchen as quickly as her doped body would move. There was no sign of Roger in the house and she wondered numbly where he could be. She opened the back door, half-expecting to see Roger, but a tall, white-haired policeman stood on the step instead.
"Mrs. Eames?" the cop asked. Judy nodded. "Mrs. Eames, we've found your daughter."
Judy grabbed the edge of the door so tightly, her knuckles flared white. "Is she ... Is she ... ?" Judy stammered, unable to finish the dreaded question.
"She's fine," the policeman said, smiling. His teeth were bad. "Your husband's with her. I've been instructed to take you to them"
Judy nearly collapsed. For one horrible moment she thought this was just another version of the same dream she'd been having every night since Margaret's disappearance. But this time it was real.
"Oh, thank God," Judy exclaimed, nearly collapsing with joy, her voice thick with tears. "Thank you, dear God."
"I can take you to them now, ma'am," the policeman said.
Judy smiled at him, tears running joyfully down her face, and nodded. "Yes, yes please." She started out the door.
"You'd better get your car keys, ma'am. My partner had to go on ahead and your husband asked me to bring the car to him."
"Yes, of course," Judy said, as if his request made perfect sense. She never stopped to wonder how Roger had gotten to where ever he was; she was too overjoyed at getting her baby back to think of anything else. She went to the key rack on the wall near the kitchen table and retrieved the keys to their Volvo station wagon. In her haste to be reunited with her daughter, and with her eyes so full of happy tears, she didn't see her husband's note lying on the floor under the table.
"I'll drive, ma'am," the policeman said, taking her keys and holding the door open for her. "You're in no condition to" Judy readily agreed and anxiously got in the car.
When the policeman steered the car down Dorsey Lane and turned into the woods, Judy asked, "Where are we going? Where are they?"
"They're at the Grimm Memorials Funeral Home. Seems the old woman who lives out there discovered your daughter wandering in the woods. She must have hit her head or something and was lost. The old woman called your husband and he called us"
Judy didn't remember hearing the phone ring, but she had been so doped up that it didn't surprise her. But she couldn't understand why Roger hadn't woke her. She supposed he had been too excited to think of it, just as she would have been, or maybe he had wanted to surprise her. It didn't matter. The question of how Margaret could have been lost in the woods for nearly two weeks when search parties had combed the entire area nagged briefly at the back of her mind, but she pushed it away. That didn't matter either. All would be explained. All that mattered was that she was getting her little girl back. Everything was going to be just fine
; she could feel it for the first time since this horrible nightmare had started.
Judy Eames's mind had been as easy to fool as taking blood from a sleeping baby. Before she had even left Grimm Memorials, Eleanor had probed her mind, found that she knew nothing of her husband's whereabouts. From there on it was child's play to don the image of the friendly policeman and capture Judy Eames's confidence. Now the obese woman in her bathrobe, nightgown, and slippers was Eleanor's plaything, her clay, her puppet, and she didn't even know it. She believed her thoughts were her own and she was completely unaware of Eleanor's presence.
"I haven't lost my touch," Eleanor mumbled, reassured by this easy conquest after so much trouble with Norm Carr. She steered the Eames's Volvo up the incline to Grimm Memorials.
"What?" Judy asked, her eyes still running with tears.
"Nothing," Eleanor said, smiling her policeman's smile. She brought the car to a halt at the foot of the porch stairs. "This is it," she said and got out, pocketing the keys.
Judy jumped out of the car and ran up the stairs. She never noticed that there were no police cars around and that the place looked deserted.
"Hold on there, missy," Eleanor said, stopping Judy with more than her voice. She hustled around the car and went up the steps to where Judy waited, breathless with anticipation. Eleanor opened the door and led her inside.
"They're in the chapel," she told Judy, pointing to it. Judy ran to the door and nearly exploded through it. Eleanor went quickly into the kitchen and returned. She stood outside the chapel door and through Judy's mind, saw all that she saw and felt all that she felt; from the joy of seeing Margaret wrapped in a blanket, sitting at the altar, to horror and revulsion when she realized the Christ on the cross was a dead girl. She ran to Margaret, embracing her, and the top of Margaret's shaved head fell off, revealing a scooped-out cavity. Judy screamed then, and Eleanor laughed. Judy continued screaming as the blanket fell away from Margaret, revealing her butchered body. Her screams went up a pitch when she saw the huge dog feasting on her husband's mauled corpse directly behind the altar.
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