by Bryan Smith
Shit.
The photo of the smiling deceased woman was grotesquely large. She’d been in dire need of engaging the services of someone with some skill to instruct her on the proper application of makeup. In the photo she was wearing too much mascara and her use of eye shadow was positively hideous. She looked like a demented circus clown. Not quite as ridiculous as Red Nose, maybe, but it was a closer call than it should have been. Perhaps even worse, her flaring nostrils looked big enough to double as parking garages for alien spacecraft. She felt bad for thinking such things, but fucking hell, she couldn’t help it. And those eyes…oh, sweet Jesus, those eyes! The hi-res photo reproduction made Martha’s image look alive on the paper, which made Kayla feel like the woman’s big blue eyes were taunting her.
As if Martha knew exactly why and how she had died.
It was hard not to see a hidden malevolence in her expression.
A promise to even the score.
“Sad, isn’t it?”
Kayla was so spooked she flinched when the girl next to her spoke. “Uh…what?”
The girl nodded at the flyer, which announced the date and time for a memorial service. “That.” She shook her head. “So young. A shame.”
Kayla set her face in what she hoped was an appropriately solemn expression. Martha’s passing was genuinely sad, but what she really felt in that moment was a deep desire to never see that creepy goddamn flyer again. She ached to rip it off the wall and tear it to pieces, but standard rules of decorum dictated a calmer reaction.
“Yes. It’s very sad.”
“Did you know her?”
Kayla nodded. “She was my floor’s R.A.”
“Oh.” The girl touched her arm. “I’m so sorry.”
Kayla strove for a tone that showed she was trying very hard to be brave in the face of grief. “I’m fine, really.”
The other girl, the one who’d been texting the whole time, abruptly put her phone away and snorted irreverent laughter. “Fuck that cow. Look at her. I’d be mortified to have my picture taken looking like that.”
Kayla’s would-be consoler made a sound of shocked disbelief. “O-M-G. Way to talk ill of the dead. You should be ashamed.”
“Whatever. She was a beast. Deal with it.”
The irreverent girl was slender and dressed all in black. Her hair was cut in a choppy fashion and was dyed the darkest shade of black Kayla had ever seen. Her skin was pale and her fingers, ears, and throat were adorned with an array of strange jewelry. Silver skulls, spiders, and things like that. Pretty clearly into the whole goth thing, but rocking the look better than just about anyone Kayla had ever seen. Her eyes widened when she turned in Kayla’s direction. “Shit.”
Kayla frowned. “What?”
Did she look funny for some reason?
The girl laughed. “Nothing. You’re just so gorgeous. Seriously, I could almost go gay for you.”
“Almost?”
Kayla couldn’t help thinking about her recent tendency to draw unwanted attention from a certain kind of woman. She initially suspected this was a continuation of that trend, but something about the girl’s demeanor suggested otherwise.
“Yeah. Sorry. I’m straight.”
Kayla surprised herself with a laugh of her own, something she would have thought impossible mere moments ago. “Yeah. So am I.”
“So you’re not crushed?”
“Maybe just a little.”
There was a loud chime as one of the elevators arrived. It opened and disgorged several passengers. Kayla and the goth girl hurried into the now-empty elevator car, punching in their respective floor numbers before moving to the back. The door was starting to close when Kayla darted forward, slapping a hand against the edge of the door to stop it in its tracks. The other girl was still out there, staring at the floor indicator lights above the other elevator. “Hey, aren’t you going up?”
The girl’s face was set in an unattractive pinched expression “I’ll catch the next one.”
The tone of disapproval was hard to miss. Kayla reviewed her conversation with the girl and couldn’t recall anything offensive she’d done or said. The girl’s attitude was bothersome because her initial friendliness indicated she wasn’t affected by the shunning spell. Obviously her attitude shift was a result of Kayla’s friendly interaction with the goth girl. So it was guilt by association.
Whatever. She didn’t have time for this shit.
She shrugged. “Okay, then.”
She stepped back and the door immediately began to close again. The goth girl cupped a hand around her mouth and called out to the girl still standing outside. “Your loss, plain Jane! What kind of freak spells out ‘OMG’ anyway?”
Kayla couldn’t help it.
She giggled.
So did the goth girl, who extended her hand a moment later. “Hey. I’m Summer Henderson.”
Kayla shook her hand. “Kayla Monroe. Summer’s a funny name for a goth chick.”
Summer shrugged. “My given name, what can I do? I wear it like a badge of honor. I dig the irony.”
Kayla glanced at the lit floor buttons. “You’re on 8?”
“Room 815. We should hang out sometime. I think we’d get along. Let me give you my number.”
Kayla got out her phone and tapped the number in as Summer recited it.
The elevator chimed again as it stopped at the eighth floor. Summer waved goodbye as she stepped out into the hallway. “See you around.”
“See ya.”
The elevator resumed its upward trajectory and opened seconds later at the tenth floor. Kayla’s mood abruptly darkened again because the first thing she saw was another copy of the Martha Atwater flyer taped to the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. Martha’s accusing eyes seemed bigger and bluer than ever.
Jesus fuck…
Kayla exited the elevator in a hurry and turned left down the hallway, marching fast toward her room. She passed two more Martha flyers on the way. The lightness of spirit she’d felt while talking to Summer evaporated completely by the time she reached her room. And that sucked. For the first time all semester, it seemed like she was on the verge of making a new friend, but the prospect was overshadowed by the darkness encroaching on her life from all corners.
Sheila had evidently recovered from her epic hangover and had gone off somewhere. Perhaps even to class. Hard to believe given her wretched state this morning, but strangers things had happened. Things, for instance, like being present for a massacre and then quickly absconding without alerting anyone to the carnage.
The people in that theater would all be alive right now if not for her.
The same went for that woman in Belle Meade.
And for Martha Atwater, who was dead because Kayla had run from the devil instead of dealing with him in the park.
Holy Christ on a cracker, where’s the fucking booze!?
The large bottom drawer of her desk was filled with loads of unsorted random junk accrued over the course of a long and joyless semester. Pens, pencils, and notebooks. An orange rubber dildo purchased one drunken night at the Hustler Hollywood store right before Thanksgiving. She tossed the dildo on the bed and continued to pull out more crap, dropping it all in a messy pile on the floor. Pictures from home and more pictures from last year of the friends who never wanted to hang out with her anymore. Nail polish remover and an unopened tube of self-tanning lotion. Piles and piles of junk mail.
At last, down there all the way at the bottom and tucked inside an otherwise empty large box that had once contained tampons, was the bottle of Everclear. She tugged it out, stood up, and thumped the bottle down on her desk. Half its contents had been depleted from previous boozing sessions, but half a bottle of this shit was more than enough to get good and fucked up.
She checked her mini-fridge and found an unopened quart of orange juice.
Perfect.
She mixed up a glass of orange-flavored firewater and chugged it down. She mixed a second glass and tos
sed that one back just as quickly. The third glass she decided to sip. She’d already consumed a significant amount of grain alcohol. It’d start hitting her soon enough.
She sat on the edge of her bed with the glass between her legs and tried to think.
What do I do now?
What can I do now?
She sipped more booze and stared in a contemplative way at the little flat-screen television propped on her desk. Something about the blank screen made her uncomfortable. A mental association with movie screens? Maybe. She got up and turned the screen so that it was facing away from her, then sat down with her drink again.
She already felt a little fuzzy around the edges.
Yep.
Definitely gonna get fucked up.
She knew there was an excellent chance this wasn’t the best way of dealing with the situation, but she was rattled enough not to care much just then. Still, she felt like she should be doing something constructive, even if it was just trying to brainstorm ideas for getting herself out of this mess.
If only she could think of something, anything at all that might--
Her eyes widened.
She set her drink on the bedside table and reached for her purse.
22.
Kayla scrolled through her cell phone’s list of recent calls. There were only a few new entries since the last time she’d checked. Two more calls from acquaintances suddenly interested in chatting with her again and another from mom. Judging from the time, the latest call from home came in while she had been watching the movie, perhaps just moments before Jack made his presence known. Kind of creepy to think about. But of course the same could be said many of things in her life lately.
She stopped scrolling when she reached the number she wanted. She tapped a button and put the phone to her ear.
A frosty feminine voice answered on the third ring: “Elizabeth Bathory’s office. How may I assist you?”
“I…I’d like to speak to Elizabeth Bathory, please.”
There was some keyboard tapping from the other end. “Whom may I say is calling?”
Kayla cleared her throat, reached for the glass on her bedside table, and took a fortifying sip of booze. “My name is Kayla Monroe. I, uh, made a deal with the devil yesterday.” Just saying this out loud made her want to giggle. Luckily, what remained of her common sense asserted itself and stifled the impulse. “Ms. Bathory left me a message saying I should call her if I had any issues or concerns.”
“Does your call concern an urgent matter?”
Kayla thought about the corpses in the movie theater. “Uh, yeah. I’d say so.”
“One moment, please.”
The line went silent for a short time, after which some unidentifiable bit of classical music started playing. Classical music wasn’t Kayla’s thing at all. You couldn’t dance to it. Well, you could, maybe, but it’d be that really boring kind of dancing you sometimes saw in period dramas. People in costumes slowly rotating around a ballroom. Fuck that. She preferred club music with lots of bass and a big synth beat. The kind of thing that really got people moving. Anyway, how crazy was it that even in Hell they had hold music?
There was a word for the feeling she was experiencing.
And that word was surreal.
This shit was surreal as a motherfucker.
The music abruptly stopped playing and after a brief silence she heard the voice of Elizabeth Bathory: “Miss Monroe?”
Kayla knocked back a bigger gulp of her drink before replying. Additional fortification seemed absolutely necessary prior to conversing with one of history’s most infamous maniacs. “Uh, yeah. Hey, Ms. Bathory.”
“I’m a busy woman, Miss Monroe. According to Miss Braun, you characterized your call as urgent. What exactly is your issue today?”
“Well, I’m having some trouble with the guy you people sent to keep an eye on me.”
Keyboard tapping from the other end again. “Oh? And what is the problem?”
“Oh, nothing much. Except for, you know, the guy leaving a trail of dead fucking bodies all over town.”
Bathory made a clucking sound. “Hmm, yes, well, he does have a tendency to do that sort of thing when out on assignment. There are unsolved serial killer mysteries all over your world that are actually just more of Alfred’s occasional indulgences.”
“Can’t you make him stop?”
“Of course, if we so desired.”
“Well, I’d like him to stop.”
Bathory sighed. “You need to appreciate our position, Miss Monroe. This…collateral damage is not a matter of concern for us. Quite the opposite. Alfred is torturing innocent souls and spreading a great deal of anguish with each life he takes. In short, he is doing a good job. He is furthering the ultimate mission of hell. In fact, frequent outbreaks of serial murder is one of our best methods of strengthening our brand.”
“Your brand?”
“Yes. Our brand.”
Kayla felt dizzy. She set her glass down, scooted backward on the bed, and turned around in order to stretch out flat and stare at the ceiling. The paint swirls there reminded her uncomfortably of bodies floating on waves in that boiling red ocean. There was entirely too much booze sloshing around in her system. Or not enough, it was hard to tell. All she knew was she didn’t think she could take it if this shit got any more goddamn surreal. She couldn’t believe she was hearing a representative of hell using modern marketing buzzwords. Except for the insane larger context of the conversation, she could be talking to any snooty corporate slag with an MBA.
“Are you still on the line, Miss Monroe?”
Kayla swallowed. “Yeah. Look. You people are all about evil and getting people like me to do nasty, bad things because that’s just how you roll. I get it. I really do. But you have to believe me when I tell you this guy is acting in ways counterproductive to your best interests. He’s supposed to be shadowing me, lending me assistance when necessary, right?”
“That’s the essence of his mission, yes.”
“Well, that’s not really what he’s doing. He did help me last night. I’m sure you heard about that. But since then he’s just been harassing me.”
Bathory made a thoughtful noise. “How so?”
Kayla related the events at the movie theater, leaving nothing out. “You’ve got to see the problem there. How can you expect me to actually kill a person when this sick fuck is pulling shit like that and grossing me out?”
Bathory grunted. “Yes, well, it seems you may have a point after all.”
Kayla sat up again and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“I do?”
“Yes. This is unusual, I assure you. I’m afraid it does constitute a level of harassment that would not please Lucifer.”
This was surprising. Considering the boorish way the devil had behaved during much of their interaction yesterday, Kayla had assumed he’d tolerate any similar behavior from his employees.
“Oh. For real?”
“For real. You see, Lucifer has high hopes for you. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but it’s something you’ll discover soon enough anyway if you successfully complete the contract. He considers you something of a special case. He thinks you have the potential to do great things in hell.”
“Huh.”
She had no reason to believe what Bathory was saying. The woman worked for the devil. Surely duplicity would be second nature to someone like that. And yet Kayla’s gut told her the woman was being straight with her.
“You could have a bright future with us, Miss Monroe. It is literally yours for the taking. I suggest you think very hard on that.”
“Yeah. I’ll think about it. Now what about Jack?”
Some keyboard tapping again. “I’m making arrangements now. Alfred will be recalled for a brief correction session, after which he will again be dispatched to complete his assignment.”
“Correction session?”
“Torture.”
“Oh.”
Should’ve seen that one coming.
“I trust that concludes our business. Do you have any other questions for me before we hang up?”
The words sprang from her mouth before she could weigh their advisability. “How did it make you feel when you killed those young girls?”
Utter silence.
Kayla gripped the phone tighter and held her breath. She couldn’t believe she’d asked that question. She wasn’t sure why she’d asked it, except that maybe the answer would give her some insight into how she might feel should she choose to do what the devil had asked of her. The silence went on so long she considered hanging up. There was an almost palpable coldness issuing from the other end that made her skin crawl.
However, just as she was about to push the end call button, Bathory spoke.
“I never felt more wonderfully, gloriously alive than when I was taking those lives. The blood renewed me and gave me purpose. I loved hearing the screams of my victims at night when I would lie awake in bed and pleasure myself to orgasm.”
Wow.
Shit.
So glad I asked.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know before I go, Miss Monroe?”
Bathory sounded more than mildly amused.
Kayla gulped.
“Um…no. No, I don’t think so.”
“Good day to you, then. And remember, you may call me with any other issues that arise.”
The line went silent.
23.
Kayla had some more grain alcohol after her conversation with Bathory. Things started getting fuzzy after the fourth drink. She soon passed out and woke up an indeterminate time later still clutching the nearly empty bottle. Her head was pounding as her eyes fluttered open. Despite a bit of trouble focusing at first, she detected a living presence nearby, someone standing just outside the range of her peripheral vision. Part of her brain was telling her she should be afraid. For a moment she wondered why this was. Surely she was safe inside her own dorm room. Who could harm her here?
Then she remembered.