by Bryan Smith
First things first. She washed some painkillers down with a glass of water to drive back her lingering headache. Then she grabbed her purse and keys, leaving her backpack behind as she headed for the door. But she caught a glimpse of the Van Halen t-shirt crumpled on the floor and paused with her hand on the doorknob. Unpleasant memories assailed her at the sight of the scrap of faded fabric. The conversation with Red Nose at the bar. The blow to her head. Awaking to find herself nearly nude and tied to a bed in a strange house. Red Nose threatening to knock her teeth down her throat. Jack…
Oh my God, Jack the fucking Ripper.
She felt a deep chill at the memory of the resurrected killer’s dead eyes appraising her.
She let go of the doorknob and snatched up the discarded t-shirt. Touching it made her skin crawl--might as well jump--and filled her with an overwhelming sense of loathing and repulsion.
The pipes in the bathroom squelched as the water abruptly cut off.
Kayla dropped the Van Halen t-shirt in the waste basket next to her mini-fridge.
And then she got the hell out of there.
17.
Large iced mocha latte in hand, Kayla took a seat at a sidewalk table outside of Fido, an upscale hipster coffeehouse-slash-restaurant in Hillsboro Village. She set her purse on the table and slipped on her sunglasses. It was a sunny day, but that wasn’t the real reason for the sunglasses. They acted as a buffer between herself and the rest of humanity. She was inscrutable behind her shades. No one could make eye contact with her or otherwise engage her attention unless they were especially obnoxious intrusive types. The modification of the shunning spell meant some of the people she encountered today would react to her as they normally would. Presumably this would mean a certain amount of getting hit on by guys, which she didn’t want at the moment. Which was sort of crazy after her months of lonely desperation.
Her life was getting more awesome all the fucking time. If it got any more awesome, she’d have to consider suicide.
Yeah, right.
She remembered well what the devil had said about that notion. That she liked herself too much. It was true. She did like herself an awful lot. Which she refused to feel bad about. What else was she supposed to do? Her philosophy on the matter was simple. You only get one life. You only get to be yourself. You’re not gonna get a chance to ride around in someone else’s body. So, unless you’d done something truly heinous (murder, rape, that kind of thing), hating yourself was stupid. As far as Kayla was concerned, if you had your health and your body was intact, you had everything, including all the tools you needed to change whatever was getting you down. Fat people could exercise and eat better and get thin. Ugly people could have plastic surgery. And so forth and so on. Life was what you made it. Rebecca Galbreath was a prime example. Okay, so Kayla had treated her badly. But she should have used it as motivation to transform herself into the kind of chick you wouldn’t dare fuck with. Maybe train in martial arts or some shit and come back and kick her ass six ways from Sunday. Kayla could have respected that. But what the girl actually did?
No way.
Tough shit, sister. You dug your own fucking grave.
Or, whatever, maybe she was just telling herself all this to feel better about what had happened to the dumb bitch.
Someone paused at her table and turned toward her.
Kayla sighed.
Aw, come on, man…
It was some guy. Passably cute. Vaguely familiar. Slightly unruly mop of curly brown hair and an easy grin. “Hey, aren’t you in my abnormal psych class?”
Kayla stared at his chest, refusing him the courtesy of a glance at his face. “Fuck off.”
She rolled her eyes upward behind her shades and saw his grin vanish. He appeared too stunned to react for a longish time.
“You just gonna stand there with your mouth open or are you gonna move along now?”
He shook his head and turned away from her, muttering something under his breath that sounded like “ice queen” before starting down the sidewalk again.
“The ice queen says get a haircut, loser,” she called after him.
He flipped her off without glancing back.
She heard a chuckle at the table to her left and glanced that way. An attractive woman maybe a couple years older than she was lounging in a chair. The woman had glossy shoulder-length dark hair, an obviously expensive beauty shop perm, and was also wearing sunglasses. She had a textbook open on the table in front of her, so she was likely a fellow student.
Kayla kept her expression neutral. “Something funny?”
The woman shrugged. “Just amused by your bluntness with the young gentleman.”
“Well, here’s some more bluntness. Fuck yourself. Stay out of my business.”
This time the woman’s response was unrestrained laughter.
Kayla grabbed her latte and reached for her purse. She was just getting up when the woman leaned over and placed a hand on her arm. “Don’t leave on my account. I won’t bother you. It’s just that I appreciate the way you handled the situation. On a day like today I’d be wary of any strange man’s attention. Know what I mean?”
Kayla settled back into her chair. “No. I don’t. What do you mean by a ‘day like today’?”
The woman’s hand came away from her arm as she reclined again in her chair. “I guess you haven’t seen the news today.”
“No, I haven’t seen the fucking news. Who do I look like to you? Wolf fucking Blitzer?”
“Do you always talk like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like a sailor on shore leave. That’s something my mother always said. I gather sailors are known for salty language.”
“Your mom fuck a lot of sailors, is that what you’re telling me?”
The woman sighed and shook her head. “Forget I asked. Anyway…if you’d seen the news, you’d have heard the big local story out of Belle Meade today.”
“Belle Meade?”
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
Kayla shook her head.
The woman removed her sunglasses and set them on her table. She had gorgeous hazel eyes. “It’s a small city within metropolitan Nashville. Police responded to a distress call at a house there late last night. The owner of the house was found dead on his lawn. But that’s not the freaky part. They’ve been pulling bodies out of the house all morning. Early word is they’re all young women.”
“Holy shit.”
Kayla’s first thought, of course, was of Red Nose. But, if this was about him, why had he been found on the front lawn instead of inside the house, where she’d left him?
The woman smiled in a knowing way. “Holy shit is right. But wait, that’s not all. The man found dead is suspected of killing the women found on his property, but he himself was savagely slaughtered by someone unknown. The initial theory was it was a revenge killing. Some relative of one of the girls got on to what he was doing and took matters into his own hands.”
Kayla frowned behind her shades. “But that’s not what they’re thinking now?”
“No. Because another victim was found a little later in the same neighborhood, maybe two streets over. A young woman who went out for a late night walk with her dog and never came back.”
Kayla tried to ignore the sudden tightness in her chest. “What happened to her?”
The woman’s expression turned grim. “She was found in an alley between houses. Hacked to pieces. Same as what happened to Rupert Hunsicker.”
“Rupert Hunsicker?”
“The man with all the dead women in his house.”
“Oh.”
So now Red Nose had a proper name.
“It’s looking like both murders were committed by the same person. Which means--”
“That a psychopathic killer is still walking around free.”
The woman nodded. “Yes. So now you see why I liked the way you handled that guy. Odds are he’s not a killer. But when you have no idea who t
he actual killer is…”
It was Kayla’s turn to nod. “You don’t know who to trust.”
“Exactly.”
The murder in Belle Meade was undoubtedly the work of Jack the Ripper. The devil had made him corporeal for the duration of his assignment to Kayla. He was as flesh and blood as any other man. Unfortunately, this meant he was as subject to the compulsions that had driven him in the 19th century as he’d ever been. It was easy to guess what had happened. Frustrated by his inability to indulge his basest desires with Kayla, he’d wandered the streets of Belle Meade in search of a substitute victim. And, apparently, he’d found one.
It’s my fault, she thought.
A bleakness took root within Kayla then. Rebecca Galbreath’s suicide was one thing. Rebecca had made her own choice. The same could not be said of the woman from Belle Meade. She was an innocent who’d wandered into the path of a remorseless killer through no fault of her own.
A killer who wouldn’t have been there if not for Kayla.
The woman leaned over again, a concerned expression on her face. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
The woman touched her arm again. “Can I give you my number?”
Kayla frowned. “What?”
The woman’s smile was almost shy. “I kind of feel like we have a little bit of a…connection. I’d like to see you again.”
Kayla rolled her eyes behind her shades.
Holy fuck, all of a sudden I am a lesbian chick magnet. What the hell?
Then it hit her. This was probably the devil’s doing. It was his idea of a joke, in the same way that releasing Lee Stanley from the effects of the shunning spell was a joke. He was messing with her, having fun manipulating the ‘parameters’ of their agreement.
Bastard. Fucking bastard.
She heard faint laughter from somewhere and whipped her head around, searching for the source. It had sounded like him. Like the devil. The demonic timbre was hard to mistake. But she didn’t see anyone who looked remotely like Lucifer in the vicinity. So maybe she was hearing things.
She kicked back the chair and stood up. The latte would go to waste. She couldn’t stomach its heavy taste right now.
The woman gripped her wrist and stared up at her with pleading eyes. “I’ve made you uncomfortable. I didn’t mean--”
Kayla peeled the woman’s hand off her wrist. “It’s not that. You’re…pretty. But I’m already seeing another girl. I’m sorry.”
She hurried off before the woman could respond again.
18.
Kayla wandered around in a heightened state of anxiety for the better part of an hour. She didn’t know where to go or what to do. She had one more class scheduled for the day, but showing up for it was out of the question. So was returning to the dorm, at least for now. There was a good chance Sheila had blown off her own classes in favor of nursing her hangover, and Kayla didn’t want to risk crossing paths with her again just yet.
She eventually grew weary of walking and took a seat at an enclosed bus stop. There was only one other person seated on the long bench, an unconscious homeless man slumped over at the far end. He was snoring loudly, probably sleeping off a drunk. She based this guess on the strong alcohol fumes wafting from his open mouth. She sat at the opposite end of the bench, with her face turned away from him. The odor wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t endure it for a few minutes. She needed some time to just sit and think things through. That had been the intent of her excursion to Fido, but that hadn’t worked out so well. Maybe a few moments out of sight of anyone else would allow her to organize her thoughts and get a handle on how to proceed.
The bum made some phlegmatic sounds deep in his throat and stirred to wakefulness, muttering a string of seemingly unrelated words in the raspiest voice Kayla had ever heard. The man was short and fat and was swathed in a haphazard assortment of clothes so ragged they weren’t fit for use as dust rags. He was wearing orange leggings beneath dingy gray sweatpants dotted with long rips and holes. He was using a length of badly frayed rope as a belt. A blue Baltimore Colts sweatshirt at least a size too small rode up high on his protruding belly. The brown suede jacket he wore over the antiquated sweatshirt was the nicest-looking item in the sad ensemble, but its appearance was marred by streaks of what looked like bird shit. His face was deeply lined and his longish gray hair was limp-looking and unkempt.
He made some more nasty sounds, sat up straighter, and swiveled his head in her direction. “Need bus fare.”
“Tough shit.”
He looked blankly at her. “What?”
“Ask me for money again and I’ll kick you in the balls.”
Another blank look. “What? Why?”
“Because it’d feel really fucking good and nobody would arrest me for beating on some obnoxious panhandler.”
“That’s not nice.”
“Fuck nice. Nice can jump off a fucking bridge.”
In truth, she had no intention of venting her frustration via physical violence, either on this poor homeless guy or anyone else. But giving in to the impulse to say something hateful satisfied some nasty imperative inside her. She didn’t like it or understand it at all, but feeling bad about it made the wicked little thrill that coursed through her immediately after the words were spoken no less real.
The old bum scowled. “You’ll get yours someday. Karma. Ya heard of that?”
“I have. You know why? Because I’m a college student. I know lots of stuff you’ll never know because you’re a fucking bum. You know what’s in my future, Mr. Hobo? A nice house, a cushy job, and lots of fucking money. That’s what. All you’ve got to look forward to is more days just like this one, begging money at the bus stop and stewing in your own piss and shit. Have fun with that.”
She got up and stalked out of the bus stop before he could reply. She felt no sense of satisfaction at putting the bum in his place--if, indeed, that was what she had done--not even the dubious sort she sometimes derived from delivering especially crushing ego blows to her adversaries. What she mostly felt was shame, for she recognized her closing speech to the homeless guy as being every bit as vicious and cruel as anything she’d ever said to Rebecca Galbreath. The devil’s revelations regarding Rebecca’s fate had shaken her, despite her defiant denials of responsibility. And until just now she’d truly believed that kind of adolescent behavior was a relic of her past. Apparently not. Christ, look at how shabbily she’d treated Lee last night. Obviously she hadn’t truly changed at all.
The train of thought put her in a very glum mood.
I suck, she thought. I have achieved levels of suckitude unrivaled by anyone ever in the entire history of suck.
The kicker was that she would have none of the things she’d taunted the bum with unless she did what the devil wanted. That bright future was still possible, but it would mean surrendering any decency or humanity she might still be able to claim.
Ironically, the way things were tilting so far, her ultimate fate would likely bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the bum’s squalid existence. She imagined a future in which her survival was dependent on grudging handouts from sneering strangers. The prospect was so bleakly terrifying she briefly considered hurrying back to the bus stop to apologize to the broken man she’d so callously insulted, but basic pragmatism kept her moving straight ahead. She didn’t have to be psychic to know how that would go. The abuse she was likely to endure certainly wasn’t worth the piddling amount of ‘karma’ the act might earn her back.
She was so lost in the unfamiliar territory of self-loathing and doubt that she scarcely noticed when the stranger fell into step next to her on the sidewalk. Awareness didn’t kick in until she came to a stop at a street corner on Broadway, opposite a Mellow Mushroom pizza restaurant. The stranger came to a stop in the same instant, standing approximately as close as a boyfriend would if they were out for a romantic aimless stroll through the city.
She glanced at him, frowni
ng at his beatific smile. The guy was definitely boyfriend material on the surface, with above average looks that reminded her at once of the devil. He had a similarly chiseled look, with a strong jaw accentuated by his neatly trimmed beard. He had lush hair a very light shade of brown verging on blond. His eyes had a soulful quality, as if he could see inside her head and already knew all her hopes and dreams and worries. Which, given her current state of mind, was disturbing on an epic scale. He was wearing one of those currently ubiquitous North Face jackets, khaki slacks, and polished loafers. The jacket was zipped up to his throat, which was odd considering how warm it was for early December.
“Right. So, who the fuck are you, Mr. North Face Poseur?”
The stranger’s smile didn’t falter at all. He apparently had some variety of very effective built-in insult filter. “I’m an angel.”
Kayla nodded. “Of course you are.”
“You’re not surprised?”
“No.”
“Why not? We angels don’t announce ourselves to humans every day, you know. So you probably should be surprised.”
“Get over yourself. I’m not even a little surprised you’re an angel.”
“Yes, but why?”
“You’ve got that glow about you.”
He frowned, glanced down at his hands, and looked at her again. “I do?”
The traffic light turned green and Kayla started across the street. She shot the angel a sideways glance as he hurried to keep up. “Are all angels as gullible as you?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m gullible.”
Kayla laughed.
The angel moved ahead of her and blocked her path as they reached the curb on the other side of the street. His expression was somber now. “You and I need to have a conversation, Kayla.”