Bone Orchard

by Doug Johnson

  Dylan’s face fell. He looked at Lazarus and noticed the dried blood on his arm. Rope burns on his wrists.

  “Sorry to be unannounced. Bad time, is it?”

  Dylan glanced back at Sian, who hid a smirk behind her hand. Lazarus grabbed Dylan by the arm and yanked him though the door. “Of course not! Come in.”

  Kitty glared at him as he dragged the stunned couple right past her and hustled them into the parlor. He quickly shut the door behind them and felt Kitty’s grip on his arm.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Saving my life.”

  “No, you’re ending theirs.”

  Lazarus gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “The hell I wouldn’t.”

  He shuffled his feet in frustration.

  “I’ll warn them.”

  Kitty put on a show of batting her eyelashes, masquerading innocence.

  “And who’s going to believe that little ol’ me could possibly do anything like that?”

  The innocence twisted into a cruel sneer.

  “They’ll think you’re crazy,” Lazarus said. He fixed his glare on her. A hyphen of blood had dried on her bottom lip where the desk drawer had nailed it. That luminous Van Winkle skin was bruised and her clothing seemed specifically chosen to suggest she’d just been violated. He searched her face for some chink in the armor, but there was simply none to be found. Kitty was nutters, all right. But it didn’t mean that she was wrong.

  “Bit of a dump, innit?”

  Sian nosed around the parlor. From the looks of this room it was a dump. A dump with peeling wallpaper, shabby Victorian fixtures, a battered grandfather clock and a sixty-thousand-dollar stereo.

  “Just means he don’t put on airs. Common folk, like.”

  Sian sniffed, unimpressed.

  The door opened and Kitty shoved Lazarus through. Sian’s expression flipped like a Venetian blind, suddenly donning a convincing replica of a smile.

  “Cozy in here!”

  Kitty matched the plastic smile with one of her own.

  “Thanks!”

  “Sorry, Lazarus,” Dylan said. “This here’s my lady friend, Sian.”

  Sian thrust a limp hand toward him. “Charmed.”

  Lazarus gave it a half-hearted shake and an awkward moment passed as everyone waited for him to continue the introductions. Kitty cleared her throat.

  “Ah. This is, uh…”

  Kitty held out her hand and finished for him.

  “Lola.”

  She gave Dylan and Sian tight-gripped handshakes. Dylan winced.

  “Make yourselves at home,” Lazarus said. “We’ll get some refreshments.”

  He took Kitty firmly by the elbow and led her out. Sian immediately resumed her snooping and spotted Kitty’s skull bag on the sofa.

  She rifled through the bag, apparently finding no indignity in it whatsoever.

  “Dylan, look at this!”

  “What’s wrong with you? Leave it.”

  She held up a pair of handcuffs. “Someone likes to get naughty.”

  Dylan rolled his eyes. “Nothing you haven’t done.”

  Sian pulled a black rubber tube with diamond-patterned ribbing from the bag. It looked vaguely like a vibrating dildo from the Matrix.

  “What the hell is this?” she asked. “Some sort of sex toy?”

  “Put it back!”

  Sian hit a release button and a spring-loaded steel truncheon telescoped out of the tube.

  “Fuck me,” Dylan gawked.

  “You think she’s an escort?” Sian asked.

  “High end from the looks of it. Did you see the marks on him? Bet he had to pay extra for that.”

  Sian snorted. “Lola, my ass.”

  In the kitchen, Lazarus boiled water in an electric kettle while Kitty organized a tea set beside him.

  “Don’t do anything rash,” he said. “It’s not them you want, its me. We’ll have a cuppa tea and I’ll send them on their way.”

  She reached under the sinks and pulled out a can of drain cleaning crystals. Lazarus might have noticed had all his attention not been focused on hiding the pen in his hand.

  “I don’t know. They’ve seen me. They can identify me.”

  He poured boiling water from the kettle to the teapot.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t be recognized. I thought you said your plan was foolproof.”

  He reached into an upper cabinet. While Kitty arranged the tea set, he hastily scrawled a message on a linen napkin:

  HELP. CALL POLICE. SHES CRAZY.

  A puzzled look crossed Kitty’s face, but she played it off by tinkering with the teacups.

  “Don’t go getting your hopes up, baby. You’re dying tonight.”

  Shielded by the cabinet door, Lazarus folded the napkin and realized with mild concern that the ink showed through the linen. His pulse stepped up a tick in his chest and he folded it again. Concern quickly escalated to alarm. No matter how he folded the napkin, the ink was still blatantly obvious. So was his silence. Kitty looked over suspiciously.

  “What are you up to?”

  He closed the cabinet, shoved the napkin into a stack of others and dropped them onto the tray. When he turned to face her, Kitty was peeking into the teapot.

  “Nothing. Just being a good host.”

  He shooed her away and spread an assortment of tea bags on the tray.

  “Come along, then…” he said, hoisting the tray with a smirk. “Lola.”

  “Oh, lemon zinger. I love that one!”

  Sian dropped the tea bag into her cup and Kitty poured with a saccharine smile. She poured for Dylan, too, then took a seat next to Lazarus across the coffee table from them. She wore a positively contented look on her face. The happy hostess.

  Lazarus leaned in close, slipping into his corresponding role as happy host.

  “Don’t you look like the cat that ate the canary?”

  She snuggled against him and whispered into his ear. “I poisoned the water.”

  His stomach rolled. He stifled a groan as he watched Dylan and Sian steep their tea.

  “So how do you know Lazarus?” she asked Dylan cheerily.

  “I work for McGregor’s Nursery.”

  Kitty returned a look that was utterly out to sea. “Kids?”

  “Plants,” Dylan clarified. The others chuckled and fury flashed across Kitty’s face, but disappeared just as quickly.

  Lazarus watched the tea set like a hawk. Sian removed the lemon zinger bag from her cup and helped herself to sugar and milk.

  “So, I guess you must have quite the green thumb,” Kitty said.

  Lazarus could physically feel his own heart palpitations as Dylan dumped three sugars into his cup.

  “Lord, no! I’m just a driver.”

  Sian lifted her cup and saucer. She raised the cup to her lips and Lazarus nearly leaped out of his seat to snatch it away.

  “So how did you and Dylan meet?” he asked instead. The words spewed from his mouth like buckshot.

  She set the cup back down on the saucer while she answered. Lazarus exhaled a modicum of relief.

  “I’m a bit of a groupie.”

  Sian eyeballed Kitty. Kitty wrung a little extra sunshine from the wholesome beam stretched across her face.

  “How so?” Lazarus asked.

  Dylan slammed his cup down on the coffee table and hissed at her.

  “I told you not to say anything.”

  She disregarded the reprimand. “He’s being modest. Dylan’s the greatest guitar player in Northern England.”

  “You’re in a band?” Kitty asked. “For real? What kind of music do you play?” It was incredulity simmering just above mockery.

  “It’s nothing, just some lads havin’ a lark. We play the pubs.”

  He pulled a Zippo from his pocket along with a pack of cigarettes. The lighter had an ace of spades engraved on one side; it was Dylan’s lucky charm.

  He motioned to Lazarus. “Do y
ou mind?”

  Kitty answered for him. “No, not at all.”

  Dylan raised an eyebrow. He lit up and blew a long, self-absorbed column of smoke toward the ceiling. Suddenly aware his own breach of etiquette, he sat up and offered the pack to the others. “Sorry.”

  Lazarus accepted. “Cheers.”

  While Dylan gave him a light, Sian perked up and grabbed her purse from the floor.

  “Oh, I almost forgot!”

  “Now, now, Love. You promised.”

  Sian waved off Dylan’s protest.

  “What?” Kitty asked. She was now genuinely curious.

  “I’m a bit of a psychic.”

  Dylan snorted.

  “Hush, you.” Sian pulled a cloth bag from the purse. She produced a deck of tarot cards and spread them out across the coffee table. Then she shuffled the cards and shoved them toward Lazarus expectantly.

  “No thanks,” he declined. “What about you, Ki—”

  He smiled, enjoying the chance to mark her the fool. “I mean, what about you, Lola?”

  Kitty smirked. “Sure. Why not?”

  Sian frowned with disappointment, but rotated to face her. Her enthusiasm nose-dived.

  “Cut the cards.”

  Kitty did. Sian then laid out ten cards into two sections. It was the Celtic Cross pattern. Six cards on the left formed the circle and cross, while four on the right formed the staff. The cross was a single card turned down with a second perpendicular card placed on top. The circle was four cards placed around the cross in a pattern identical to the points of a compass. The four remaining cards were placed in a vertical column to the right, comprising the staff.

  “Do you want a general reading? Or do you want to ask a specific question?”

  “I think a general reading will work.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Sian turned over the first card. It displayed a garishly dressed young traveler under a golden sky. It looked quite appealing to Kitty until she read what it said.

  The Fool.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s upside down,” Sian said. “So I think it means you’ve made a bad decision.”

  Kitty smirked. “You think?”

  “I normally do palms. I’m still getting used to the cards.”

  She turned the second card. This sky was not golden this time, but gray. A yellowed skeleton in black armor rode a pale white horse. A corpse lay on the ground while a priest, a young girl and a baby prayed in vain to the bony buckaroo.

  Death.

  “Oh dear,” Sian offered. Dylan followed with an awkward titter. Lazarus and Kitty locked gazes.

  “It’s not a literal death though, is it, luv?” Dylan asked. “It’s metaphorical-like, innit?”

  Sian quickly gathered up the tarot cards. One did not get the impression she thought there was any metaphor involved at all.

  “So how’s your tea?” Kitty reminded her.

  “Oh, goodness. I’d completely forgotten!”

  Lazarus watched in anguish as she picked up the cup and saucer again, oblivious to the fact that she was about to guzzle down the last lemon zinger of her young, betarted life.

  “Always say she’d lose her head if it weren’t attached.”

  Dylan and Sian shared a chuckle and a syrupy, loving glance as they brought the teacups to their lips.

  Lazarus did the only thing he could think of. He pitched a coughing fit. He hacked and spewed a cloud of smoke out across the table. Sian set her cup down on the table and started patting him on the back. Dylan considered sipping his anyway, but opted for etiquette. He rested the cup on his knee to wait out the fit.

  “All right there, mate?” he asked.

  “Sorry, down the wrong pipe,” Lazarus croaked.

  Dylan leaned forward to help pound him on the back and when he did, the teacup tumbled off his leg and splattered over the floor.

  Sian grabbed Dylan’s napkin to blot at the spill. It was the napkin with the help message.

  Fuck, not that one, you silly trollop!

  Ink and tea bled together, forming one homogeneous, illegible blotch. She gasped, baffled by the striations of black in the brown tea stain as she held it up for the others to see. Lazarus buried his face in his hand.

  “What have you done, woman?” Dylan barked.

  Kitty snatched the napkin away so fast it actually left Sian with a friction burn across her palm.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Sian bleated at Lazarus. “I didn’t do anything, I swear!”

  Kitty shot a hard stare at him. “Looks like you must have washed it with something, baby.”

  “I’ll have to be more careful in the future,” he replied.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it. I doubt it’ll happen again.”

  She lifted her own teacup to her lips with a smirk, the porcelain ring hovering dangerously close but miles away. They were magnets of reverse polarity, and Lazarus could feel his plan crushed in the limbo between them.

  When you break a guitar string, do you quit the show? Or do you play even louder so no one can tell?

  “How ‘bout we really get this party going,” he said, springing from the couch.

  “What do you mean, dearest?” Kitty’s smile effectively belied the edge in her voice.

  Lazarus took Dylan’s cup from his hand. “I’ll get something stronger, shall I?”

  Dylan chuckled. “I won’t say no.”

  Kitty frowned. “Are you sure, baby? It’s getting a bit late.”

  As if on cue, the grandfather clock chimed the hour. Ten o’clock. Both Dylan and Sian bolted upright in shock. Neither Lazarus nor Kitty batted an eye.

  “Nonsense, darling. We should extend the utmost hospitality to our guests.”

  “Lord, I almost jumped out of me skin,” Sian said with an anxious giggle. There was a tension in the room she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and when she was nervous, Sian drank.

  Lazarus lifted the tea tray and Sian lifted her teacup. She downed it in one gulp. Lazarus gaped with horror and his face ashed over gray.

  “What?” she asked. “I love Lemon Zinger.”

  Kitty burst into peals of laughter. “Your face! It’s priceless!” It was genuine glee, which made it all the more infuriating to Lazarus. He grabbed her by the elbow and escorted her out of the parlor, leaving their guests more confused than ever.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the water,” Kitty confessed in the butler’s pantry.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I was just messing with you. The water’s fine.”

  Lazarus slumped. He was certain the stun gun had something to do with it, but suddenly his body felt too heavy for his bones to support.

  “Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you?” The words puffed from his mouth like a wheezing bellows.

  “Oh honey, there’s not enough time in the world to answer that one.” She arranged some sugar-dusted cakes on a serving plate. “Besides, we mustn’t keep our guests waiting.”

  Lazarus pulled a bottle of Glennfiddich from a cabinet as Kitty headed out the door.

  “But I did put ground glass on the cakes.”

  He shook his head in disbelief and ran an index finger through a sprinkling of coarse sugar crystals she’d left on the countertop. Tiny pinheads of blood beaded across his fingertip.

  “Shit!”

  He bolted from the pantry, cursing himself for wasting precious seconds with his skepticism, and now half-expecting to find both Dylan and Sian drooling blood from their glass-filled mouths in the parlor.

  Dylan was, in fact, about to sink his teeth into a cake when Lazarus stormed into the room and swatted it from his hand in the nick of time. It sailed off like a shuttlecock, slapping against the wall with a dry poof and a spray of glassy crumbs that was muffled by the thick Persian rug on the floor.

  “Hey!” Dylan whined. He rather enjoyed a nice cake.

  Lazarus took Kitty by the elbow again, thankfully retaini
ng the presence of mind to snag the plate of remaining cakes with his free hand as they made a hasty stage-left exit.

  Back in the kitchen, he slung the whole plate into the rubbish bin.

  “Stop this. Just stop.”

  “But I’m having so much fun,” Kitty taunted, twirling free of his grip.

  “I’ll get rid of them. I’ll go back and toss them out.”

  Kitty yanked a knife from the block on the counter and spun at him. For a split second, Lazarus wondered why he hadn’t grabbed it himself. In fact, Kitty had also wondered, but the fleeting thought sailed off like a glass-dusted cake when she saw the delicious look of fear on his smug face.

  The tip of the knife sliced through the fabric of his shirt and Lazarus withered in retreat, stumbling into the kitchen table with his back to the doorway.

  Kitty held the blade against his stomach. “Shut up and listen. I’m running this.”

  Sian could hear a tense volley of gasps and whispers through the wall as she crept through the dining room, sharp but indefinable like fractured steam jets.

  “Get away,” Dylan hissed from across the room behind her.

  She giggled but ignored him.

  “Come on, Sian”

  “I’m just having a look.” She peered into the kitchen through a crack in the double-swing café door that separated it from the dining room and saw Lazarus and Kitty standing face to face, his face glossed with sweat and muscles taut as his hands gripped the lip of the table behind him.

  Wait a minute. Is she…

  Lazarus grimaced as Kitty rocked her arm back and forth, flicking the knife point at his abs again and again, leaving a crosshatch of shallow nicks like paper cuts.

  Sian, however, saw no knife from her slivered perspective behind the café door. In fact, for all intents and purposes it looked as if Kitty was…

  She is! Holy shit, she’s jacking him off!

  Sian bit her lip to stifle a snicker. Dylan shuffled impatiently, refusing to venture past the doorway arch. His eyes gravitated to the guitar amp in the fireplace and the Flying-V beside it.

  Five thousand quid right there, he thought with more than a twinge of jealousy.

  Kitty slapped Lazarus. His eyes blazed down at her but he remained silent. She slipped the knife lower, still mindlessly flicking with the same mechanical rhythm.