by Cesare, Adam
It had been in the couple’s complementary soufflé, a voucher for which had accompanied their welcome folder.
Terry Chopin, the gentleman that he was, had let his wife eat the lion’s share of the desert, and had started awake as Roy entered the room, placing the sack over his wife’s face and pulling the drawstring.
As dumb and unreliable as he was, Roy was quick and strong. He’d had the collapsible riot baton fully extended before Victoria’s eyes could even register it and in one swift movement had ended Terry’s life.
Terry’s death had cast a pall over the entire ceremony. Brant did her part, though. She preached with all the fire she could muster, placed her hands on Father Hayden’s shoulders, and was sure to make extended eye contact with every one of their parishioners.
Even still, it was the death blow that they were all gathered for, where they derived much of their pleasure, spiritual and earthly. The sight of a thrashing body being made swiftly and permanently still was the reason that many still attended mass. She did not kid herself on this point.
They had the girl, Kendra Chopin, but one death was anti-climatic, especially when the group had been promised two offerings.
If Roy had only laced each of the courses of their meal with a smaller dose of sedative like she’d suggested, but no, that would have taken him a few extra steps. Since his last monumental mistake, the one in which he’d lost half of a finger, Roy’s productivity and willingness to follow instructions had taken a nosedive.
It was either that or he wanted an excuse to use the heavy expandable baton that he’d mail-ordered from Canada.
Roy tried his best to make up for it during the ceremony, attempting to pass off Terry’s lifeless corpse as unconscious.
After the deathblow had been delivered to Kendra, her blood flowing down towards the drain in the middle of the room, Roy propped Mr. Chopin up on his knees.
Roy said the words, received a half-hearted amen from the congregation and then slashed down with all his might with the mallet, splitting the back of Terry’s skull from his topmost vertebra.
The hit may have been ferocious, but the results were unspectacular.
Terry had been dead for too long. His neck only seeped blood. They wanted to feel the warm spray coat their ponchos and, because of Roy, Victoria Brant was unable to deliver that to them.
There was enough blood to go around, though. Roy and the rest of them had rushed forward to daub the fingers of their gloves in Kendra’s warm blood.
Victoria did not join them, but stood by and watched as they drew the sacred signs in blood. Doodling on the kill room walls was empty theatrics. It didn’t add any kind of power to the ceremony, but Victoria Brant didn’t tell them that.
If they wanted to wallow in the spectacle of the event, prolong it by finger-painting like children, she wasn’t going to stop them. They were enthusiastic and earnest, and that’s what really mattered.
She caught Roy by the shoulder. Behind his blood-spattered goggles, he looked at her with rage in his eyes, as if being interrupted awoke the animal inside him. His face softened when he realized who he was glaring at, his hairy face going from big bad wolf to puppy dog eyes.
“Clean this up when you’re through.”
He nodded.
Victoria turned and went back upstairs to finish some paperwork. She had a hotel to run.
Chapter Fourteen
Claire worried that she was going insane, so Tobin kissed her tattoos to make it better.
He liked her tattoos and she seemed to like his scars, so they were even.
She ran her fingers around the scars, finding patterns in the hardened lumps on his back and arms. Tobin knew that some of the patterns were there to begin with, while some of them were products of her imagination.
Tobin didn’t wait for her to ask, he volunteered a story to go with them. “Remember how I said that I never liked my father. Can you guess why?”
He shrugged his shirt back on before she could answer and buttoned it up. His father had given him some of them, but some of them he’d done himself.
“Tell me again what happened,” he said, changing the subject back to what it had been on their drive out to his place. It was more of a shed than anything else, but it was clean and dry and the bed was brand new. She didn’t seem to mind it.
He liked it too. Davey had helped him raise the funds to build it and had even poured some of the concrete. The other boys had helped him do the rest. Many of them had construction experience or something close enough to it. Tobin’s community had come together to help him build a home and that made him proud.
The only downside of the shed was that it was far enough into the woods that he couldn’t get mail delivered, had never even tried because the building was erected in such a legal gray area.
He opened up a P.O. Box at the Mission post office, but never ordered anything juicy. The employees opened his mail before depositing it in the box and made no effort to hide that they were doing it. The message was clear. We’re watching you. He’d entertained the idea of mailing himself a dead rat, but that seemed childish.
Claire repeated the end of her story for him, about how she’d seen some inexplicable things while she was drunk last Thursday.
“Terrible things,” she said. Tobin had no doubt that she’d seen them, but he did wonder how she was allowed to see them.
“I don’t even know if they’re real. I only remember images and a feeling that they’re real. It’s like a bad dream times ten,” she said. “It was like I was sleepwalking.”
“Have you ever been a sleepwalker before?”
“Yeah, actually a lot when I was younger, but it’s always been stupid stuff like putting my shoes on and trying to unlock the front door. I grew out of it. The only time I know about in college, Allison caught me putting my clothes hamper in the refrigerator, never anything like this.”
“Well, I don’t want to tell you that you’re crazy, and I really do think that you were sleepwalking, but,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “I know that Davey has never trusted Ms. Brant. Their fight goes back way before any of us kids had started hanging out with him, but Davey’s always warned us about her.”
“Warned you about what, specifically?” she asked, leaning up in his small bed. She held a hand out for her shirt and he passed it to her. He withheld it for a moment until she bent far enough forward that he could see the tattoo beside and below her right breast. It was a tiny bat in flight, no bigger than an inch. Without being told, he knew that this had been her first tattoo. It was small enough, hidden enough and juvenile enough.
He loved it and had kissed it twice before they’d started talking.
“Davey warned us that maybe her hold on the town was too strong. That’s part of the reason he’d decided to set up camp here and stay as long as he has, because he says he’s keeping an eye on her.”
Claire looked confused and Tobin wondered if he was laying it on a little too thick, then he wondered what exactly it was he was laying on. What was he putting down the groundwork for? He was so good at following orders that sometimes he scared himself.
“In my dream though, there were multiple people, and blood and the priest,” she said. “It wasn’t just Brant.”
He was silent, not wanting to speak until she pushed this conversation further in one direction or the other. Either she was going to resolve to get out of that hotel (and thereby out of Mission) or she was going to shrug the whole thing off. Tobin wanted to ask her about the priest, but he would wait.
Claire let the wisp of a smile cross her face and Tobin knew that the match had turned in his favor: she would be staying in Mission. “Could it maybe be a weird sex thing?” she asked.
“Could be. Any Ms. Brant sex thing would probably be weird. Too much skin, not enough elasticity,” he said.
She chuckled in response, still sounding apprehensive. She hadn’t been nervous in bed, but in a way he knew that had been some kind of escape for h
er. If he’d offered her a drink when she’d gotten in his truck, she’d have taken it.
He waited a beat before redirecting back towards a more serious subject. “Have you seen the priest while you were awake?”
“No, but Daisy told me about him. She told me about his burns and how Ms. Brant lets him stay there for free.”
“Did he look as bad as you imagined?”
“Worse.”
Tobin stood, pulled on his jeans and buckled his belt. “I bet you could imagine some pretty messed-up shit,” he said and poked a finger into her forehead. He left a white mark that filled in red.
“Ow, you prick!” she yelled, but laughed too, not really mad. Tobin already had a good idea of what he could get away with around her.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Head back to Boston? You were really loopy that night when I dropped you off. Eden mixes a mean drink.”
“I don’t think one bad night is going to scare me off. But still, I’ve had bad dreams, and then there was this.”
“I wanted to walk you to your room and put you to bed, but you wouldn’t let me.”
“Yeah. Put me to bed. I bet,” she said. Tobin guessed that the horrors of Ms. Brant’s basement were now forgotten. “Want to know the one funny thing that came from that night?”
“Sure,” Tobin said. She was slipping on her own jeans now. Playtime was over, he guessed, and stepped into his boots.
“Somewhere between the first-floor stairwell and the basement, I’m ninety-nine percent sure that I peed. That’s why I went out in the first place, to take a leak.”
“Well, this is a new carpet,” Tobin said, hooking a thumb towards the small toilet, the only other room in the shed. “Bathroom’s right there if you ever find yourself needing to use it while you’re here.”
“With that amount of wit, I dare say that you could make it in the big city, young man,” Claire said, holding her arms up and standing on his bed. He could see the small skull tattoo under her wrist, stylized and cartoony, but small enough that you might think it was a birthmark at first glance.
He took her hand and twisted it gently, turning her wrist up so he could kiss it. Then he swung her over his shoulder and patted her butt.
“This is not acceptable third-date behavior,” she laughed.
“So now we’re counting meeting by the dumpsters as a date?” He dropped her down on the bed, the bounce placing considerable strain on his rack raisers. He needed the bed up high or else he would have no place to store his clothes in the small shed.
She jumped to her feet before he could pin her to the bed again. She really was through for the afternoon.
“Just get me back to the hotel before my chaperones get suspicious that I’ve been gone too long.”
“After you,” he said. He motioned to the door and spun his key ring around his index finger.
They walked arm and arm to the truck.
“Want to head out to the party tonight? I’d like to see what a Saturday is like,” she said. “I promise I’ll take it easier on the jungle juice this time.”
He didn’t expect that she’d want to go back so quickly, and if she did, he thought he was going to have to be the one doing the convincing.
“Jungle juice? I’ve never heard it called that.”
“You don’t get out enough, Tobin.”
This was true.
“Sure, we can go. I’ll pick you up at eleven? Do you mind walking down the driveway and meeting me at the sidewalk in front of Dwyer’s General?”
She nodded. “Good idea.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble with your boss,” he said, then added, “especially if she turns out to be Count Dracula.”
Chapter Fifteen
Bert shivered and nestled closer to Jane’s chest. He wore a small, pink knit sweater that stayed opened at the bottom so he could go pee without dribbling all over the fabric.
Bert was a two-year-old miniature pinscher. Jane had never once used the pet carrier they’d bought for him during the trip down from Portland. She’d insisted on carrying him the entire drive.
A dog was not a child, but baby steps had to be taken sometimes. Christine had to remind herself of this fact often.
Christine held the door open for Jane and followed her inside the lobby, dragging their heavy rolling suitcase behind her, a duffel thrown on top.
She was only estimating, but she guessed that the bags were much heavier that Bert. Jane was carrying the lighter load.
Relief swept over Christine as she observed that the lobby of The Brant Hotel looked much like it did on the website, better even.
The last time they’d opted to spend a summer vacation south of Maine, Christine and Jane had ended up with a Florida time-share that they no longer owned but were still paying off.
The time-share had been Jane’s fault.
Bert had been Jane’s fault too, but only Christine had a problem with the dog and it was one she tried to keep secret, so nobody was gaining or losing any blame points there.
Christine followed Jane up to the front desk, her tread heavy as she pictured herself as Jane’s live-in servant.
There was a high-pitched mewling sound and for a moment she thought that someone had pulled the fire alarm.
Christine peeked around Jane to see that the woman at the front desk was the source of the unpleasant noise.
The shrieking woman behind the desk was broad and plain, overly made up to compensate for the canvas. Even from a couple yards away, Christine could see that the woman’s cheeks sparkled where she had applied makeup intended for girls half her age.
“He’s just a wittle-little baby. Oh my, does he ever get confused and think that he’s a big dog?” the woman asked Jane, her voice up an octave and demonstrating a strong lisp.
Christine couldn’t tell if the lisp was an affectation that came with the woman’s baby voice or whether she actually spoke that way.
Either way, Christine had an instant dislike of her.
She was wearing an ugly green-and-white dress that upon further appraisal was a uniform. Over her left tit the name Daisy was embroidered in green thread. Christine wondered if Daisy was the girl’s name or the tit’s. She called hers Larry and Curly.
“He thinks he’s big man on campus all the time,” Jane said, hugging Bert closer, kissing his tiny snout.
Christine received approximately one-eighth of the amount of kisses that Bert got. Bert didn’t even appreciate them, and if Christine ever tried to get that close to him, she’d end up with a bloody lip.
“Hi,” Christine said, speaking up and inserting herself into this Daisy/Bert/Jane love-fest. “We’re checking in. The last name is Joyce.”
“Let me check that right away,” Daisy said. Her lisp was no longer as pronounced when she spoke in a more professional voice, but it was still there. She pulled her hand back from Bert’s small head, leaving a doggie cowlick between his ears. He didn’t look like he appreciated the gesture.
“We have you booked for a seven-night stay, starting tonight. Would two double beds be okay?”
“Not really. I had thought I’d booked a king bed,” Christine said. She congratulated herself on pegging Daisy as an asshole before she’d even spoken to her.
Jane always gave her a hard time about prejudging people, but over the last few months she’d learned that as long as she only internalized her snap judgments, she could no longer catch hell for them.
“I’m sorry about that,” Daisy said, a plump finger gliding down the grid of the registrar. “Let me see what I have available so we can have this cleared up for you.”
Christine saw an opportunity to make things harder for Daisy and she took it.
“Actually, I forgot to ask this on the phone, but does your hotel have a honeymoon suite?”
“We do,” Daisy said. The girl looked puzzled. Christine had seen this face a number of times over the last six months. The expression seemed to say, “Two ladies? Married?”
In her peripheral vision, Christine could see Jane shift Bert to her other arm, the way you might adjust the strap on a purse when it didn’t really need adjusting.
“If it’s not in use, we’ll take that then,” Christine said. “The increase in rate isn’t much of a concern.”
“Are you on your honeymoon? You should have told us in advance so we could have the room prepared,” Daisy said, looking like she was trying to regain some kind of foothold in the conversation.
“It’s been legal here even longer than it has in Maine. You’ve never had a couple like us in the honeymoon suite?”
“That’s not what I meant to imply. What I mean to say is congratulations, of course. But the suite is going to take about an hour before we have it ready.”
“Oh, we’re in no rush.” Christine placed a hand on the desk, leaning in.
These kinds of interactions still made Jane uncomfortable. They might have been newlyweds, but they’d been living with each other for fifteen years. Christine understood why interacting with new people in a strange town might scare her wife, but it didn’t scare her. In fact, it felt like her civic duty to explode people’s misconceptions, even if she did it by trying to make fools out of small-minded assholes.
“Would it be possible to keep our bags at the front desk while we wait?” Jane asked.
“Sure, if you’ll just leave those right here, uh, ma’am.” Daisy indicated that Christine should wheel the suitcase to the side of the desk. “I’ll go make sure we get that room ready for you as soon as possible.”
“Before you go,” Christine said, raising her hand from the desk and touching Daisy’s fleshy forearm. “Do you have any suggestions about what to do in Mission for an hour or two?”
This seemed to pull Daisy out of her stupor, her eyes brightening. “If this is your first time in the area, taking a walk up and down Main Street may be your best bet. You’ll get to sample our historic architecture and get a good idea of where the amenities are located. Of course you could also take a short nature hike, but I wouldn’t recommend going too far into the woods. It will be getting dark in a few hours.”