Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  As he made to go inside he heard a muffled explosion.

  When he turned back, he could see a fire on the road across the fields. It was a vehicle of some kind, a truck maybe.

  Rick went inside.

  (2)

  In the few days leading up to Martha Mortenson's disappearance (and the disappearance of a whole lot of other folks, too, as it was to turn out), Virgil Banders had watched one particular house very carefully before deciding to make his move.

  He had hired three cars, a different one each day: a Subaru, a Mercedes, and finally a Honda flatbed pickup, parking around the corner from the adjoining street, down by where she lived and, finally, with the flatbed, up by the Expressway that joined into the I-25, using a big hover-mower to cut the grass alongside the road. He had hired the mower from Toolland over on 4th Street – it wasn't cheap but then one had to invest. Got to speculate to accumulate, Arnie Banders had told his son, Arnie never amounting to much at all until the day he drifted off on a soup kitchen cot, coughing blood and long since moved away from the family seat.

  Arnie had been Virgil's first, Virgil only sixteen years old at that time, and the world was a happier place somehow, Clinton in his second term and riding all the hoo-ha about the White House BJ with Monica like a seasoned pro – which, of course, was exactly what he was. It was with this scenario as a background – a good few years before the whole world (it seemed like it was the whole world, anyways) got so mightily pissed at the good ol' US of A that they actually started killing themselves to make that point, flying airplanes into buildings for Chrissakes – that Virgil checked to see nobody was around and then climbed up and sat astride his old man, one knee on each elbow and his ass on his daddy's crotch, and then pressed the pillow down on the old man's face, the pillow covered with Virgil's old Levi Timberline coat, the corduroy one with the fake fur-type collar.

  "You left me," was all he had whispered into Arnie's ear, and then, even softer this time, "with her." And he had pressed the pillow some more, even feeling his father's nose through all the filling, that's how hard he was pressing.

  The old man hadn't had any strength left at all, just shuddered a little as the blood-and-mucous phlegm came up into his mouth, old Arnie sputtering his last and maybe wondering why his boy was doing this, him sick and all. What had he done? If the boy would just move that goddam pillow then maybe he'd just up and ask him right out, maybe sort out this mistake young Virgil was making here.

  But no, it didn't work quite that way. And it wasn't a mistake. "Think of it as a nightcap," was all Virgil said by way of explanation, and as far as Arnie Banders was concerned, it wasn't much of an explanation at all.

  When it was done (and it didn't take too long at all), Virgil slipped back onto the floor and wiped the gunge off of the inside of his jacket before pulling it on. Then he went off to find someone, tell them that his father had shuffled off the old mortal coil, Virgil all teary-eyed.

  Walking along the corridor after all the hoo-ha had quieted down and his dad had been covered over by the sheet, Virgil saw that his hands were shaking. But he felt good. If anyone had asked him why he'd done it, why… Virgil didn't think he'd be able to come up with an answer. Save for maybe that… that it felt good. And feeling good was what it was all about. Wasn't it?

  In fact, it felt so good that he did it again.

  Several times. So many times, in fact, they'd given him a name, the folks in the newspapers. "Mummy-Man" they called him, and "the Smotherer". Virgil liked both of those, made him feel special, like a superhero or something. And they – well, the papers and the cops, but mostly the cops, Virgil guessed – they were turning it into some kind of contest. Saying how it was a cry for help – that he wanted to be caught (the newspapers quite rightly deciding that the killer was a male) and so on.

  But Virgil didn't want to be caught.

  He liked doing what he was doing, particularly since his mom had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, her taking to her bed and too concerned with other things even to think about Virgil playing with her honeypot, the main one of the other things being her breathing oxygen out of the cylinder, that hoarse breathing, like a ruptured bellows, rasping all the time, her sitting in front of her game shows with a mask on her face, old arthritic hands clasped on her stomach, clasped but shaking.

  "I'm going out, mother," Virgil would say. "To work," he would add. She didn't know what he meant and was too breathless all the time even to bother asking, but there was an air of menace in his voice and she knew it didn't bode well for someone somewhere.

  Then one night he had come home and Alice Banders's hands were not shaking any more.

  They had buried her last week, Virgil's Aunt Deidre and his Uncle Demain – I mean, what the hell name is that? De-fucking-main? I ask you, Virgil told the guys at work, at the print shop down on Second – the pair of them putting in a lot of tears but managing, through sniffs and coughs, to ask what was happening to the house that Virgil's daddy, good ol' Arnie Banders, had seen fit to leave to her when he'd passed away last year, and him so young and all, dying of a heart attack like that, my, oh my, it was such a tragedy and all, the good Lord working in mysterious ways and no denying, and Virgil telling them, his voice just a little shaky, that his mom had left it all to him and he was maybe gonna live there for a while before selling up and maybe doing a little bit of traveling, seeing some places he'd only read about, places like Venice, with the roads of water, and Paris, with all its pavement coffee bars and pretty women.

  Virgil surely did enjoy the company of a pretty woman, no doubt about that at all.

  That latest of them, this Wednesday evening in late February, was one of the prettiest. He had seen the girl at school, back when he used to go which was before he dropped out to concentrate on other things – like looking after his damn fool mom – and he'd taken what his grandfather used to call a shine to her. Of course, to his grandfather, that shine was probably best explained by an overall breathlessness and hot feeling around the crotch area as young Virgil imagined the girl – her name was Susannah Neihardt, but everyone called her Suze – parading around in tiny panties and maybe an already unfastened brassiere that hung loose on her small breasts. But that wasn't strictly true. Oh, the breathlessness was there and the hot feeling around the old pecker station, but the imagining was a shade different.

  What young Virgil thought of at night, safe in the sanctity of his bed, a much more pleasant place since he was no long required by his mother to provide her dreaded nightcap, was Suze Neihardt bandaged from head to foot, the bandages tight around her little titties and her furry area down below (Virgil's mom had called it her honeypot), the girl rasping for breath, her eyes popping out under all that whiteness as she tried to arch herself to draw in just one more tiny insect's breath of air, feeling all her stomach and intestines wrap themselves up, trying to come up her chest and her throat and her mouth to venture out into the world to get their own life-giving oxygen fix but not knowing that all there was was cloth, bandage cloth, pulled tight around the mouth and nose and eyes, so tight that her nose was squashed flat and her lips pulled back against and above her teeth, resting on her upper gums, in fact, contorting her face into a rictus grin.

  And with those thoughts in mind, Virgil could always get a response from the old pecker.

  And so it was that Virgil had taken to following her most days, making sure he stayed well back and out of sight if she turned around. He had thus discovered where she lived and, thanks to a real stroke of good fortune that must surely point to the fact that providence was smiling down on him, he had been able to watch her in some detail from the old record store across the street – The Vinyl Countdown – watching her house as he rummaged through the bins in front of the store windows (old Al Kooper, Big Brother and Seatrain albums for a couple of bucks apiece, all stuff he'd read about in his mom's old magazines, tall stacks of Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Fusion and Creem, plus old British mags like ZigZag and the mo
re recent Mojo and Uncut), seeing the girl come in and go out, seeing her open and lock the door on only two days – Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The other days some woman (her mother, he guessed) greeted her, either at the door – which was always unlocked on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays – or in the main room at the front of the house, the woman getting up out of her chair and hugging Suze like they'd just found each other again after being separated for years.

  So he'd decided on a Wednesday, the middle of the week, the worst days over with and the anticipation of the weekend still to come. He'd noticed when, while visiting with his Uncle Demain, he took in his mom's old Ford rust bucket to have the muffler replaced, that the repair shop, Tin Lizzie's over on Fontaine (on account of the proprietor, Elizabeth Macready, widow of Manny – "Just don't ask how come we can have a Macready named Emmanuel," is what Virgil's mom was told by old "Doc" Svenson soon after the marriage, when Virgil was still just a tyke with his mother's more peculiar affections still to be shown), had a pile of clean coveralls sitting on a dusty spin-chair in the reception area, the kind of chair you always found in those old aluminum diner cars, the coveralls colored a bright orange with blue seams on the pants and sleeves and around the pockets, and sporting a very nifty logo on the back – a big heap of mufflers and car tires stuffed into what looked like a big old square zinc bath with the words Tin Lizzie's stenciled on its side. Virgil helped himself to one of them, put it in his rucksack. Then the next day, this very day, a Wednesday, eight o'clock in the evening, he went calling on Suze, a big brown bag filled with crepe bandages, rang the bell just as bold as you please, hands neatly covered with a pair of plastic gloves he'd also picked up at Tin Lizzie's, his heart racing like a trip hammer, checking over his shoulder down the street to make sure nobody was watching him, even checking across the street in The Vinyl Countdown and half expecting to see his own self standing there, looking across at him, holding an old Mike Bloomfield or Love album, shaking his head–

  don't do it, boy, don't do this thing no more…. just turn around and walk aw–

  –but the store was closed at this time of day and, anyway, she'd opened the door by then and said, "Yes?" in that singsong voice of hers, and Virgil, who had already checked down the street and up the street and across the street, Virgil, whose heart was racing and whose blood was pumping away, Virgil who had a stiff one in his pants big enough for a rooster to perch on, why… Virgil, he just pushed the girl right back into the house and marched in just as ripe and ready as you like, the girl stumbling backwards, her eyes suddenly wide, eyebrows raised, taking in Virgil's face and his outfit and the plastic gloves, and Virgil closing the door behind him to make sure they weren't disturbed.

  And they hadn't been.

  Virgil had had the girl strip all her clothes off right there in the lounge, Virgil first pulling the curtains closed and not bothering about the fact that it was daylight and–

  wouldn't folks get a tad suspicious about curtains being drawn and all?

  –the girl sobbing all the time even though Virgil kept telling her he wasn't going to hurt her at all, no, not at all, ladeez and gentlemen… just going to have a real good look at whatever she had to offer, wanted to see it all, and then Virgil seeing the dim realization in Suze's eyes, those wonderful little green eyes, seeing her see that this wasn't going to have no happy resolution when the end-credits rolled up the screen – nossir, this was going to end bad, mighty bad, because the guy in front of her hadn't taken any trouble at all to cover up his face and he must know that she would be able to identify him to the police–

  and why was he wearing plastic gloves, we all might wonder…

  –and it was right then, with Suze already stripped down to her smalls and unhooking her brassiere, that she made a run for it and that's when Virgil had had to swipe her a good one upside that pretty head, swiping her with the thing that was closest to his right hand, a porcelain jug with a deep ruffled handle imprinted with fluffy clouds, and Suze had gone down hard and fast, like someone dropping a sack of potatoes, just flopping down on the polished wooden floor and lying still.

  Virgil had removed her panties – closing his eyes in case he glimpsed her honeypot – and her brassiere, avoiding looking at her titties, and then bound her up real tight, bandages around her wrists and forearms and then across her belly and the small of her back, making her almost lie to attention before he started wrapping her up. By the time she came to, Virgil had covered her feet, ankles, shins, knees, thighs, hips, waist, belly and arms, chest, shoulders, and neck. And he had covered her mouth with duct tape so that her eyes darted side to side, flicking, like a deer's or a horse's eyes, nervous, anxious, fearful. Virgil liked that: fearful. Green and fearful.

  When he had started to wrap the gauze bandage around under her chin, slowly but surely removing those final bits of flesh, the girl had begged, begged silently, amidst hoarse grunts, communicating only by movements of her head and her legs, moving those legs the way Virgil imagined a mermaid might move her tail, just one glorious long piece of flesh and scale.

  And the best thing about it all was–

  How's momma's little boy, then? Does Virgie wanna play with momma's secret place? Virgie the Pooh… the little boy who likes to lick the…

  –there was no honeypot to be seen. No titties, neither… though Virgil had seen Susannah's breasts – just a flash, mind you – and they was no way like his momma's, big pendulous and veiny orbs, each with a flattened-out nipple area sprouting a couple curly dark hairs.

  Just a minute or two later, Virgil sat back on an orange and green chair in the kitchen area, his feet propped up on the bar, as Susannah squirmed and wriggled. Virgil tried to imagine what it felt like, the breathing, hoarse and raspy, straining for tiny pockets of air that might prolong life just another minute or so, just another few seconds, and another, and maybe just the one more. And that was when the old woman had come back in, just a little while before midnight. And he never did find out where she had been, the old woman, nor what her relationship had been to the soon-to-be-late Susannah Neihardt.

  Suze, well, she didn't know what the hell was happening, her down there on the floor and all, trussed up like a hog come Christmas, sucking in nanoparticles of oxygen – did oxygen even have nanoparticles? Well, Virgil didn't rightly know, but he did know he had to do something about the old woman so – saying "Hey, hey, take it easy, lady," holding his hands out, palms up, still wearing the plastic gloves from Tin Lizzie's and sporting that big cheesy smile of his, mouth turning up at the corners as he glanced down at the writhing bundle–

  Only, hey, it ain't writhing no more and, is it my imagination or does it suddenly smell a little ripe in here?

  –getting up from his chair, carefully avoiding touching her (but fully prepared to bring the old fart right down in her tracks if she looked set to spring for the door or holler out for help) and closing the door, nice and softly, no rush, no hysterics.

  And then he hit her.

  There was nothing available for Virgil to grab a hold of so he simply used his hand, his big right hand, clenching the fingers into a fist and bringing it around in a sweeping movement so that it was the middle sections of his fingers that connected with the side of the woman's face. She went over with barely a soft moan, her glasses flying off and skittering across the floor, with one lens skidding on and disappearing under the tasseled frill of a worn armchair, and the plastic bag – groceries, Virgil saw, though what the hell she was doing shopping for goddam groceries at this time was anyone's guess – scattering produce, loose vegetables and cans mostly, all over the floor.

  When she was down, she didn't make any noise there either, just kicked her feet out in a little flurry of movement, and swung her arms around like she was a little human windmill, her tiny fists clenched with the thumbs on the outside and not tucked under the fingers. None of the movements connected with Virgil so he left her to thrash around while he went for the brown ducting tape. Then he set to securing the w
oman's arms and legs, placing a thick piece of tape around her mouth to stop her making any noise (just in case it ever occurred to her to do so, which, as far as Virgil was concerned, no longer seemed particularly likely).

  When the woman was secured, Virgil pulled her back into the kitchen and laid her up against Suze. Then, with a deep sigh, he pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, a tubular steel framed job with garish yellow seat and back that were made out of either highly polished and veneered wood or some kind of heavy duty plastic, the shapes of them like amoebae, some kind of flashback to the kitsch designs of the 1950s and 60s, stuff he'd seen in his Uncle Demain's collection of Saturday Evening Post magazines back when he was a kid, cutting them up and sticking all the car advertisements into lined notebooks.

  The woman was lying very still, watching him. He had taped her wrists behind her back and ran a length or two of the brown tape around her elbows. It couldn't have been comfortable – the woman lying kind of half on one side, the points of her elbows clearly making her unable to lie flat – but she wasn't complaining.

  She was watching him.

  He saw a little cut on the side of her nose, running up to her left eyebrow. It had bled a little but wasn't bleeding now.