13 Views of the Suicide Woods
Page 4
Glancing back over his shoulder, expecting La Bestia to be coming for him with her own blade, he saw her standing in place, smiling. Martín wished she would make some kind of threat, show that she was concerned that he would get away with his daughter. She didn’t. That worried him more than the children with the rifles.
She already knew how this would end.
“I got your confession, puta! I know what you did. I’ll bring the Policía Federal back here and show them the heads and they’ll shut down your revolución before you can—”
La Bestia kicked a head from the top step of the dais down the aisle at Martín. “Tell this one. Él va a escuchar.” Martín shuffled back away from the head that stopped in front of him face up. The man’s badge glinted up from where it had been pinned to the skin of his forehead.
A shirtless young boy with ribs Martín could count through his skin lunged forward with a knife, clumsily stabbing toward his guts. Martín dodged and got stuck in the hip instead. He yelped in pain. Beneath the paint, a dark look of amusement showed on the boy’s face as he drew back to stab again. Martín swung the machete, chopping into the skinny boy’s shoulder. The child went from a hardened soldier with a death-dealer’s stare to a shrieking infant in the time it took for the blade to open his arm up. Horrified, Martín’s guts threatened revolt. I can’t fucking do it! She’s using children because no one can do it. They’ll do the terrible things she wants because they don’t know any better, and she’ll win because that sound . . . that sound!
Luz struggled to break his grip on her arm. He swung his daughter up in front of him, betting that the cult wouldn’t take the chance of hitting the girl. She howled in protest, kicking her feet, as he clutched her tightly around the waist. “Come at me and you’ll hit her.” Shoving through the children, he kicked at the doors, swinging them open, startling the guards outside.
Turning to take another look back, he saw La Bestia’s placid countenance break. Her glare sent a shiver through Martín’s body despite the summer heat. He began to run backward as best as he could, hoping the first band of children he’d seen leaning against the stucco wall had chosen to attend the service instead of waiting for him over the rise. Relief danced at the edges of his panic as he crested the hill and they weren’t there.
Hefting his daughter up over his shoulder, he turned and sprinted the rest of the way to the car. The stolen machete slipped from his sweaty grasp as he went. Fuck it! I just need to get to the car. We’ll get away in the car. We’ll head toward Texas and we’ll disappear. Just you and me, Luz. He didn’t feel the bite of the blade in the back of his leg at first—just warmth. It wasn’t until the second, deeper cut that the pain reached his conscious mind and his brain replied with the command to fall. Martín crashed face first into the dirt, landing on his daughter. Her knees drove into his chest, pushing all the air from his body. He gasped, inhaling a lungful of dirt instead of air, drowning on dry land. She kicked at him and scrambled out from under his weight. “Luz,” he choked, spitting mud. The car was only meters away. He could see freedom.
His daughter stood over him staring down with the same blank look that his guide had given him less than an hour earlier. She waited, loosely holding the wet blade at her side like a favorite blanket dragged everywhere. Martín started to pull himself toward the car. Luz stood still. The footsteps of the congregation soon followed as children came running over the hill, surrounding him. They encircled him wordlessly, each one sharing his daughter’s quietly malicious gaze. When La Bestia walked into the ring, two boys jumped in after her and roughly flipped Martín over onto his back.
With the sun behind her, La Bestia’s garland of roses framed her corpse-white face in a bloody red halo. She gently positioned Luz in front of Martín. The girl raised the machete over her head. She hesitated a moment, looking to the woman with an expression of concern. “Igual que con mamá, pero esta vez será más fácil,” La Bestia reassured her. The girl smiled sweetly.
“No, Luz! I’m your papa! Don’t do this. I don’t care what she’s made you do. I love you!”
“Niños, ¿Qué el amor?” La Bestia asked the children.
A chorus of voices answered, “¡Amor es lo que hacemos por los demás!”
“Muy bien. Love is what we do for others.” She smiled and Martín lost hope.
“You’re insane,” he said.
La Bestia looked into Martín’s eyes. “Don’t despair,” she said. “I only want your head. I’ll leave your heart for Luz. Because she loves you.”
THE BLOOD AND THE BODY
Em leaned in through the open window and gave her boyfriend a kiss, leaving a black impression of her thin lips on his cheek. “Why are we driving, Jay? You too good for the T all of a sudden?” Joshua’s car was rusting, noisy, and cold, but it was paid for and reliably started in any temperature above freezing. While she didn’t date guys based on what kind of car they drove, she preferred the subway to his rolling tetanus-mobile. It wasn’t the car as much as the freedom. If they took the subway, she didn’t have to rely on anyone but herself for a ride home.
“It’s a limo kind of night, doncha think?” he said, winking. She stared at him for a moment through narrowed eyes. On the other hand, if they drove, they could stay until closing instead of having to leave early to catch the last train. Dressed as she was in Dr. Martens, ripped tights, a corset top and black dancer’s shrug, she looked like a crazed cyberpunk ballerina who’d kicked her way out of the Matrix, and not the kind of person psychologically capable of the girlish skip and hop that carried her around Joshua’s car. She jerked open the car door with a crunch and a loud screech and plopped into the passenger seat. Before she was able to pull her door completely shut, he hit the gas and pulled into traffic.
“At least let me get in the car, okay,” she said, leering at him with her easy, black-lipped smile. He grunted and steered into the far lane without looking back. She pulled her feet up onto the seat and sat quietly for a couple of minutes bobbing her head to Dinah Cancer’s crazed screech on the 45 Grave CD. When he didn’t turn the corner where she expected him to, she began paying attention to the passing scenery instead of the music. After the third set of lights it was clear he had no intention of reversing course toward Central Square. “What the hell, Jay? You promised we were going to ManRay.”
“Don’t freak out. We gotta make a stop somewhere else first.” He was bouncing his knee to a different, faster beat than the song on the stereo. She had never known him to get spun out before they went out, but it was a special night. Em supposed he was as excited as she for their last trip to ManRay. Difference was she’d planned on sharing her scores; she wasn’t a selfish prick.
“Come on, turn around! I have to work every night for the rest of the week; this is my last chance.”
“You’ve been a million times. Tonight isn’t going to be any different. Trust me. This is going to be way better.”
She leaned over and traced his arm with a black polished nail. Blowing her warm, cinnamon-scented breath on his neck, she cooed, “I’ll make sure you remember this trip more than the other million put together.” She darted her tongue in his ear and let out a long sigh meant to tickle him in his reptilian brain. Despite the warmth of her exhalation and the obvious increasing tightness in his pants, he continued driving away from her preferred destination.
“Trust me. This is going to be better than all the other times we’ve gone to the club put together.”
She was unmoved by his hyperbole. “I just bet. So where are we going?”
“Tchort’s.” He turned a corner onto a side street, headed for the highway on-ramp. Em groaned and flopped back into her seat. “What’s wrong with Tchort?” he asked.
“You seriously have to ask? His stupid fake name for one. Second, he’s an asshole. Doesn’t it bother you that he won’t stop staring at my tits?”
He glanced at her pushed up china-white cleavage and said, “Can you blame him? You got nice tits.”
“Doesn’t Tchort live in JP? You’re headed the wrong way, Crankenstein.”
His head snapped around and he regarded her with a look approaching contempt before returning to face the road. Clearly, he’d steeled himself for her opposition. “We have to get someone.”
“Who?”
“The Lamb,” he said.
“Who or what is ‘The Lamb’?”
“Dunno. Some friend of Tchort’s he asked me pick up. She lives in the sticks.”
Em pulled her seatbelt across her lap, riding the rest of the way in pouting silence staring out the window as the city imperceptibly yielded to the suburbs. Twenty minutes later, Jay pulled off the highway and wound through a boring residential neighborhood that, at nine p.m., had rolled up its sidewalks for the night hours ago. He parked the car in front of an unassuming ranch-style house and beeped the horn twice. Em felt like they’d driven out to the country and half-expected the porch light to come on, followed by a wild-eyed guy in a bathrobe holding a shotgun. Instead, out of the house bounded a girl with Manic Panic red hair tied up in pigtails and a candy-goth outfit that made Em’s teeth ache with nascent cavities. The girl also made her feel a little tickle below the belt. Then she remembered why they’d made the detour. Picking up Lamb, as hot as she was, was the last nail in her true desire’s coffin.
The girl skidded to a stop outside the car, declaring, “I’m Lamb!” as if that introduction was all anyone needed to know about her. Em threw a look at Jay, silently imploring him to abandon this chick and resume the original plan. She wouldn’t hold it against him if he turned around now and drove back to Cambridge. Instead, he nodded for her to let the girl in.
She shoved open the car door without mentioning to Lamb that she might want to stand back. The girl skipped away from the swinging steel like she floated on a puff of air. Em crawled out and pulled her seat forward—Jay’s was one of the last two-door sedans left in Creation. Grinning, Lamb scrambled in without complaint or comment. Em watched the girl’s short skirt slide up revealing the bottom half of her peach-shaped ass as she bent down to duck under low clearance. Em resisted the urge to climb into the back right behind her and instead let the front seat fall into place before plopping in beside Jay. Lamb slid to the center of the back seat, leaned forward, and launched into a peppy monologue about nothing that lasted all the way into Boston.
It took a while, but Jay finally found a berth for his Ford landship near Tchort’s apartment. Em noted they could see the Forest Hills T-station from where they parked. She’d already decided that no matter how well the evening went, she wasn’t leaving with her boyfriend. He kept stealing glances in the rear view at Lamb, not even trying to hide his fascination with her. She understood why he couldn’t keep his eyes off of her, but that didn’t lessen the sting. If Lamb was supposed to be Tchort’s “date” for the evening, Em figured she’d hijack the girl back to the club when she slipped away herself. It’d be a double score, denying both Jay and Tchort their pleasure for the night. If the girl could fuck, it’d be a hat trick.
On the sidewalk in front of the apartment building, however, Em felt a tinge of curiosity that needed satisfaction. The windows on all three floors were blocked with opaque red blinds that glowed like bloody membranes. She could feel the beat of several different songs throbbing into the night and her heart sped up a touch with the excitement of standing before a building that felt like a living thing. The party apparently spilled onto every floor of the triple-decker. She couldn’t imagine how Tchort expected to host a party this big in a neighborhood as “densely settled” as his. That the Boston P.D. would come shut the whole thing down seemed like an inevitability. There was no way a rager this loud and obnoxious could go on uninterrupted. Except the houses on either side of his building were dark. How was it there was no one home to complain on a weeknight? She continued to fantasize about a raid and the look on Tchort’s face when the police shut his soiree down as she climbed the steps to the front door. The club could wait for a little while, she told herself.
Lamb ran up ahead of them, pushing through the front doors without waiting for her companions. “There goes your date,” Em said to Jay. He screwed up his face with apparent frustration.
“Don’t be like that. Let’s go in and have some fun.” He held the door open for her as though a late show of chivalry made up for hijacking her evening. “Next time we’ll go wherever you want.” She brushed past, turning her back to him so he couldn’t steal another glance at her chest. No matter how she found her way home tonight, there wasn’t going to be a next time.
The humid heat in the stairwell was oppressive, and the light rhythm she’d felt outside took her breath away as she stood in the red-hued hall. The door to the first floor apartment hung open. Inside, Em saw people milling around with red Solo cups in their hands, laughing and shouting over the music. The throb of some remixed bland Reggae band shook the walls and a couple inside did some kind of horrendous, rhythmless dance they should have been ashamed to be seen attempting. Most just stood around, however, doing what people did at a party like this—nothing. A trustafarian girl with dreadlocks stared through the door at her and scowled. Em stuck out her tongue.
“Up up up!” Jay shouted as he took her hand and pulled her toward the stairs.
The island beat was soon eclipsed by the sound of some ironic alt-rock band pouring through the open door of the second-floor apartment. The view was similar, but these people were more animated. A novelty disco ball hanging from the ceiling flashed and made everyone sparkle. Still, she wasn’t dressed for beer pong and quarters. “It’s bullshit,” she shouted over the music. “Can we go now?” Jay didn’t answer, pulling her up the next flight of stairs instead. She threw a glance over her shoulder as they went and thought she saw the people on the second floor staring out the door at her.
Climbing higher, the music changed again, this time to a darkwave band doing a decent cover of “Paint It Black.” Lamb stood at the top of the stairs, waiting with a drink in each hand, declaring, “It’s about time.” She handed the cups to the couple before disappearing back inside. Jay tipped his cup in a silent toast and smirked.
“Yeah, that totally makes the hour drive to pick her up worth it,” Em said. “One drink.”
“We’re going to have a séance or some shit at midnight and I don’t want to miss it.”
“Like I care about Tchort’s little coven and their spells.” She wiggled her fingers in the air like she was swirling around faerie dust.
“It’s not a coven. They call it a ‘grotto,’” he said.
“I care?”
“Come on. It’s going to be fun. Trust me.” He sighed and ushered her into the party. Behind them the door slammed and she thought she might have heard a deadbolt snap shut. She glanced over her shoulder but people had filled in the space and she couldn’t see the door, let alone whether or not the knob was twisted.
Black Visqueen sheeting covered the walls and the lamps in the apartment were covered with crimson scarves that imbued the space with a smoking, warm glow that matched the temperature. If she squinted, it almost seemed like she was at the club. Deathrockers, punks, and people in BDSM gear filled the space. Some danced while others performed small acts of consensual cruelty upon one another. A couple in the corner were making out so vigorously Em wondered whether they were about to screw or cannibalize each other. Tchort stepped in front of the scene, breaking the spell.
“All noctu
rnal people are welcome here!” he said, holding out his hands in a mock benediction, sloshing a little of the drink in his right hand on the floor. Em tried to hide her contempt, but failed when he smiled at her tits. At over six feet, he had to look down to make eye contact with almost anyone, but he invariably missed that mark with her, aiming low. His smile was nearly all pink and gray gums, with tiny yellow teeth that were lost in his alligator-sized maw of a mouth. “Always nice to see you, Marianne,” he said, using her full name. “Drink?” He extended his cup toward her.
She looked at the golden liquid like it was a glass of piss, or more accurately, a cheap chardonnay swimming with Rohypnol. She tilted the cup she already held to her mouth and gulped at whatever it was Lamb had given her. Finishing, she said, “Where’s the bar?” Lamb appeared with another pair of cups, pressing one into her hand.
“Ask, and ye shall—”
“Whatever.” She took another long draught, downing half of the drink before realizing it was vodka and ginger ale and something else a little bitter. She daubed at her black lips and smiled a “thank you” at the girl before resting her fist over her cleavage and extending her middle finger. Tchort’s expression clouded briefly before splitting again into his fleshy grin.
“I hope you have a good time,” he said. “This is a very special night for us all; the Grand Climax is at hand!” He tilted his body in an attempt at a gentlemanly bow, looking Em in the face for the first time that she could remember. The whites of his eyes had a jaundiced cast that matched the crappy wine in his hand. His gaze shifted to Lamb and he licked his lips like a cartoon wolf at a burlesque show. He took the girl’s free hand in his and kissed her palm with open lips.