Yes, it had been a very clever letter… And now he sat, a tattered, unshaven figure, eyes glowing with the unholy light of murder-lust—waiting, waiting. She would be here any time, now. For an instant his gaze shuttled to the battered alarm clock on the mantel; it was just three o'clock, the time appointed. That meant…
He jumped to his feet abruptly with a sharp and triumphant in-take of breath. There was a knock on the front door. The tap of a woman's hand, beyond doubt. Just the sort of tap Mary would give, he reflected. Dear, sweet child… He chuckled viciously to himself as he moved along the dusty hall, then flinging back the massive bolts he wrenched the door open.
His hungry little eyes flashed over a young woman modestly attired in a warm winter overcoat, golden hair peeping from beneath her hat. She was just as pretty as she'd been as a child, he decided. Not quite so luxurious in clothes as he had expected; there wasn't even a car visible in the drive. Evidently she had come by train to the local station… All these thoughts took perhaps two seconds as he surveyed her, then she started to speak—but he interrupted her with a raised, skinny hand, motioned inside the drab hail.
"Come in, my dear," he invited gently, but to his irritation she drew away nervously.
"No—no, thank you. I only just wanted to know if—"
"Yes, yes, of course—I'm your Uncle Abner. Come along in."
"But I—"
Hilton's lean jaws snapped together. There was no time for argument. Reaching forward suddenly he clutched the girl round the waist and flung his free hand over her mouth to stifle her cries of fright.
"You darned little fool!" he panted, dragging her within and slamming the door. "Do you want the whole damned place to hear you? Why can't you do as your uncle asks and—"
He stopped, momentarily surprised. The girl had fainted in his arms. For a moment he stood glaring down into her ashen face, then staggering beneath her weight he carried her into the living room and laid her on the long deal table.
Rubbing his skinny hands together he looked at her closely, puzzled for a while over the apparent cheapness of her clothing as he wrenched the overcoat from her unconscious form. For a girl worth a fortune she wasn't dressing half as well as he would have expected.
Still, that didn't matter—evidently the countryside was no place for finery. Besides, what did clothes matter anyhow? His main object was to be rid of her and put his predetermined plan into action.
Working with the swiftness of movements long rehearsed he tightly bound her wrists and ankles to the underside of the table legs. A piece of filthy rag thrust between her teeth and tied securely into position effectively gagged her. Another length of rope secured across her neck held her head tightly.
"A fortune, eh?" Hilton muttered, surveying her helplessly trussed form. "We shall see, Mary, my dear… We shall see!"
Turning, he strode through the dimming daylight to the rickety sideboard and pulled a long carving knife and a saw from the left drawer. Gently he laid them down beside the girl, rubbed his palms softly together in ghoulish anticipation. Grunting impatiently he lighted an oil lamp and placed it on the hook over the table.
His actions were deliberate—the brutal, inhuman actions of a fiend.
First he sliced the knife down the girl's clothes, tore them away from her body then bedded them down in the empty fire gate. His cruel eyes rested for a while on her lissome nakedness under the dull lamp glow. Broken teeth glinted in a ghoulish smile as he found she had recovered consciousness and was trying desperately to raise her pinioned head.
"Oh, no, my dear," he said gently, glaring into her terror stricken face. "It is of little use trying to scream now—the gag will take care of that. It's my turn! Not a trace will remain by the time I'm finished with you. Mary Lillian Digby will vanish off the face of the earth!"
The girl struggled again, threshed and twisted as far as the ropes would permit, pulled her head upwards until the constriction of the cord set the veins bulging in her forehead. Then again she relaxed, dumb, staring blue eyes fixed on Hilton's grinning face. Suddenly he turned away and went into the adjoining kitchen, brought forth two large buckets and placed them at the ends of the table runnels.
Complacently he nodded, picked up the wickedly pointed knife—then drove it with all his strength between the girl's heaving breasts, gave it a left hand twist that struck clean through her heart.
There was a faint moan from behind the gag, then her struggles ceased. Blood began to well from the knife wound in her breast. Unmoved, Hilton smiled. With a steady hand he withdrew the blade and began to cut swiftly, hacked and carved until at last he had removed the heart itself. Eyes bright with madness he laid the bluish organ gently to one side, sucked breath over his broken teeth in sadistic glee.
Again he returned to the mangled thing that had been a young woman. He worked ceaselessly until perspiration drenched him from head to foot, worked to the sound of blood dripping from the runnels into the buckets. Time and time again he traveled with them into the filthy kitchen and emptied them into a tub.
So, little by little, he dismembered the body, cut away the legs, arms and head, left only a bleeding torso with a gaping ragged hole where the heart had been torn out. Panting hard from his exertions he stared at the dismembered organ.
"At least you can never beat again!" he muttered. "Not even in a dead body! It is safer with the heart removed—detached…"
He brooded over that, then suddenly looked up with a start as there came a heavy pounding on the front door. For an instant he hesitated, staring at the pulped mess on the table. Then quickly wiping his hands on a filthy rag he sped through the crawling shadows of the hall and opened the door gently. The dying light fell on a young, well-dressed man with a clean-shaven face and determined blue eyes.
"Well, what do you want?" Hilton demanded irritably.
"You Abner Hilton, sir?"
"Certainly I am. What of it?"
"I believe Mary came along to see you this afternoon? I saw her come in as a matter of fact, a little while ago. I thought I might as well join her. I'm Courtney Wayne, her fiance."
"Oh, I see!" Hilton's face lighted with sudden understanding. In the gloom the young man failed to notice the subtle craftiness that crept into it. "Pray come in, young man—I've rather been expecting you. You must excuse the dim light but unhappily the current is off—a fuse, you know. I'm an old man and don't know much about these things."
"Maybe I can fix it for you, sir," Wayne remarked, and stepped into the shadows.
The instant he did so fear crawled through him. The damp, odorous air was heavy with the reek of human blood; the whole place stank like an offal dump. Abner Hilton felt his powerful young hand close on his arm.
"Where is Mary, sir?" his voice demanded from the dark.
"Right ahead," the old man chuckled. "We were talking in the lamplight, owing to the fuse. Go on—right ahead down the passage to that door there. You can see the light."
Wayne hesitated for a moment, then obeyed. In a few moments he gained the open doorway and started into the dreary surroundings. Instantly his eyes alighted on that ghastly horror on the table. The room was like a charnel house; the glow of the softly swinging oil lamp in the hall draft cast its dimness on things that sent his appalled mind tumbling madly in the depths of hell.
"Mary!" he screamed insanely. "Oh, God! I'm mad! That can't be my Mary there—"
"That is Mary," Hilton informed him, closing the door softly and moving towards the fireplace. "Mary—or what remains of her! You didn't expect it, did you? Thanks for coming like this—it's saved me the trouble of sending for you."
Wayne's voice cracked in hysterical horror and fury over the words ripped from his lips.
"You fiend! You filthy, murdering devil! You've killed her—even dismembered her body—mutilated her face! Oh, God, why didn't I get here sooner—"
"That is Mary, but you killed her!" Hilton said tonelessly. "I will arrange that later—"
H
e broke off as Wayne made a sudden violent leap towards him. It was the very action he had been expecting. Instantly his hand came up from behind his back and was revealed as clutching the heavy iron poker from the grate.
Wayne never realized clearly what happened, as he pitched senseless to the filthy, blood spattered floorboards…
II Heartbeats of the Slain
Wayne returned to his senses with the realization that he was firmly bound to the heavy old-fashioned fire grate. His eyes, blurred with the pain from his damaged head, stared drunkenly at the dancing, leering face of Abner Hilton in the lamp glow.
With a low snarling laugh the old man came forward, shook his skinny fist malevolently.
"I waited until you recovered, young man," he said throatily. "I wanted you to see everything right through to the end! You might as well—the police will want to accuse you." He went closer, hot fetid breath blowing in Wayne's face.
"Do you realize what I'm going to do to you, Courtney? I intend to break your will—turn you by slow degrees into an imbecile! By torture—by mental anguish, by whatever means I can and as soon as I can! Clever, isn't it? And well worth it!
"You see, with you and Mary both out of the way—you as her murderer, in a fit of insanity, it leaves only me to collect. So good of you to follow Mary here. Now watch!"
Wayne didn't answer. He felt already that his mind was on the verge of cracking under physical pain and the added horror of gazing. Yet gaze he did, with fascinated nausea, as the inhuman Hilton continued his work.
The knife carved flabbily into the unresisting flesh of the thing that had been a woman; the saw grated viciously over bone. Every sound of it went through Wayne's body and brain as though he were the victim.
By slow degrees through what seemed endless hours he saw the corpse carefully cut up into pieces and thrust into a heavy sack. Then Hilton became fiercely active. Lifting the buckets of blood he vanished into the kitchen and there came the sound of running tap water. When he returned he was rubbing his hands complacently.
"So easy to dilute the blood to the consistency of weak dye and pour it down the sink," he breathed venomously. "That is what the police will find you did! I will tell them that. You cut the body into sections and made it unrecognizable, hoping for the perfect crime. The remains will be buried in the garden. Remember that!"
So saying he seized the sack and pulled it along the floorboards to the back door, leaving behind him a smear of blood that deeply stained the boards. Wayne watched glassily, stunned with horror. He would not, could not believe that he was seeing all that remained of Mary being carried away in that sack.
He screamed at the thought—raved and cursed with impotent, helpless fury, wrenched and tore at his ropes with the ferocity of a madman but all to no purpose.
Thirty minutes later Hilton returned, the sweat of exertion dewing his lean, brutal face.
"Hard work, digging," he said ominously. "She's well bedded down—a good four feet. And when she went down my chances of inheritance went up. Understand? Say something, you idiot—say something!" He struck him savagely in the face with the flat of his hand, but Wayne remained silent. His mind was utterly numbed.
In a daze he watched the old man complete the details—watched him clean the table and floorboards with caustic, swab out the pails, and then set fire to the clothes in the grate. Turning at last from the glowing ashes he indicated the bloodstained knife and saw it laid carefully on one side.
"Evidence! He breathed maliciously. "Evidence when the Police come—evidence that you did it! You killed Mary Lillian Digby!"
Wayne remained mute; his head drooped between his shoulders with the heaviness of unconsciousness. Hilton went forward and examined him closely, convinced himself it was not a trick. Only then did he loosen the ropes, seize the young man by the shoulders and drag him into the filthy, dark apartment that had once been a second drawing room.
Working swiftly he rebound his ankles and wrists—spread-eagled him on the barren floor. Skipping back into the kitchen he brought hammer and massive curved staples, fastened the ropes around them then drove them deep into the boards.
"Guess that'll hold you," he muttered, reflecting—then again he went to the kitchen and presently returned with a large can of water, slightly punctured in the base to permit of the water dripping through drop by drop.
With fiendish ingenuity he fastened it to the old electric light fixture above, carefully arranged it so that the drops fell steadily on the forehead of the pinioned, unconscious man.
Torture—absolute and vicious—torture calculated to break a man's mind, not from pain but from the agonizing anticipation of each icy drop through endless hours.
The intense gratification at the thing he had done did not abate in Abner Hilton the next day. After a few hours of sleep—remarkably peaceful considering the inhuman brutality of his crime—he entered the second drawing room to survey his prisoner, dimly visible in the light drifting through the chinks in the drawn Venetian blind.
He found Wayne conscious again, still tightly bound on the floor, face drawn into tight, weary lines of suffering, water dripping down it from the almost empty can over his head.
"You—you inhuman fiend!" He muttered the words thickly. "You devil! Do you think you can get away with this?"
"I know I can," Hilton replied affably, rubbing his hands. "I'm sorry I can't make the room warmer—unfortunately there is no fireplace in here. Nor can I offer to release you."
Wayne glared at him dully. His body was already numbed and stiff from his immovable position and the icy draft blowing under the door. Only his head seemed to have feeling, felt near the bursting point with the leaden dropping of the icy cold water, more searing than molten metal. His jagged nerves were keyed into intense agony of expectancy for every drop.
"Sorry, too, that I can't offer you anything to eat just yet," Hilton went on sardonically. "I have little to spare, but I'll see you get enough to keep you alive until the police come. Water, though, you can have in plenty," he added grimly. With that he went out and refilled the can, put it back in place, and left the tortured man to himself again.
So, throughout the day, Wayne suffered exquisite tortures, he felt his mind slipping little by little under the terrible strain. Abner Hilton waited in fiendish expectancy for something to happen—but nothing did.
He had expected inquiries for both Wayne and Mary, but neither came. Instead a host of invisible presences seemed to watch him silently in dire and horrible reproach for the sin on his soul. Most of the fears he dismissed with a sneering grin on his feral lips.
Once he glanced through the rear kitchen window towards the spot where he had buried Mary's remains, and beheld it untouched. Then he returned to commune with himself in the shadows.
Late in the afternoon he moved into the second drawing room, cut Wayne's limbs free from the staples but nonetheless kept him securely bound.
"I'm going to be merciful to you," he said thickly, delivering a kick in his aching ribs. "I'm giving you a respite; tomorrow I'll resume the treatment. In the end I'll break you!
"When the police come I'll say it was you who attacked both Mary and me. Understand!" His bitter little eyes glared in the flickering light of the lamp in his gnarled hand, hurled mental suggestions into the torture-weary mind of the man sprawling on the floor… All ideas of escape were stillborn in Wayne's brain. He could hardly even think, so overcome was he by exhaustion.
Hilton left him at last and so, for two more days, the ghastly business went on. Wayne was alternately tortured and released, given only enough meager food and water to keep him alive in order that he would be able to speak when the law finally caught up.
And, just as Hilton had hoped, he was hardly master of his own will any longer—almost did believe by the endless hours of implacable hypnotism the old man indulged in that he had killed Mary. The horror of her death and the continued torture had become a crushing obsession slowly warping his mind.
&n
bsp; Only at times was he aware of himself, realizing with leaden helplessness that nobody would be concerned about his disappearance. He had been on a vacation from his normal work in any case and only Mary knew. Mary! Merciful God!
It was on these occasions of self-assertion however that he tried with pained weariness to work free of the ropes holding his wrists. The staples holding them were fairly rough; in time he might break through his bonds. But it would take days.
On the third night, puzzled by the continued absence of action, Hilton went to bed early, lay awake gazing at the darkened, chilly room. Then at last he turned on his side amidst the dirty sheets and closed his eyes.
The silence was still disturbing him—even Wayne in the adjoining room was curiously quiet, working silently and laboriously in the dark on the ropes that held him, fraying away the tough thickness little by little with muscles that were cracked and aching.
Then, as he lay silent, Hilton heard something. There crept into his senses a dull, ticking sound, heavy with apparent distance.
Tick—tick—tick. With the measured beat of a metronome, gradually becoming louder. Very slowly creeping up by imperceptible degrees, until at last the faded walls of the entire room groaned with the pulsating mystery.
Thud—thud. Thud—thud. Rhythmic, insistent, inhuman.
At last Hilton sat bolt upright in the bed. One skinny hand clutched the dirty tattered shirt that served as night attire. Staring wildly into the gloom he listened with twitching face muscles to the still resolute beating, for all the world like a gigantic human heart.
Heart? That thought knifed into his rotten brain. Instantly his memory was transferred to the heart he had cut out of the girl. He had cut it out to be sure life could never return, and now—
Clammy sweat drenched him as he listened. His breath rasped over his stumpy teeth. There was no way of telling exactly where that awful sound was coming from. It might be to one side, above or below—he could not determine. It seemed to fill all space.
Liquid Death And Other Stories Page 13