Buddy would have liked to have added Dil’s tongue and name to the collection, given how much of a grunter she was, and how much trouble she was about to cause him. But he couldn’t do that. Her death had to look like an accident.
She was his goddamn neighbor after all.
***
With Dil secured and gagged in case she regained consciousness, Buddy spent the next twenty minutes transferring his collection of tongues to his car, which was parked in the small lot behind the apartment building. He carried the bottles three at a time, in his orange backpack, and placed them in the vehicle’s trunk.
Back in his unit Buddy untied and ungagged Dil—he hadn’t needed to worry about her after all; she was out for the count—and carried her to the living room, where he set her on the floor. Then he gathered the four lengths of rope and stuffed them in his backpack, so as not to leave anything suspicious behind for the fire investigators to find.
Kneeling next to his mother, taking her frail hand in his, he said, “I’m sorry about this, Ma. But you know I have to do it, right? It’s the only option.”
“I know that, dear,” she said. “I understand.”
“And, well, maybe it’s for the best. Because sooner or later your sister, or someone from the city or state, would have started asking about you. And I couldn’t just say you died. They’d know you’d been dead for a while. They’d know what I did to you. But if they think you died in a fire, a really big fire, and there’s nothing left…” He blinked back tears. “I love you, Ma. I love you so much.”
“I love you too, dear. Now, stop wasting time talking to me, and go do what you have to do.”
Buddy kissed his mother’s papery lips, then scooped Dil into his arms. He carried her to her unit, set her in her bed, and pulled the duvet over her body, tucking it beneath her chin.
In the kitchen, he turned on the stove’s bottom left element and placed a cast iron skillet on it. He filled the pan with a dozen greasy strips of bacon from the fridge and sandwiched it with a roll of paper towel and two dish clothes.
Soon the grease in the skillet began to smoke. It popped and sprayed before eventually bursting into flames, which leapt to the adjacent combustible items.
A short time later the kitchenette was a full-blown inferno.
***
When Dil opened her eyes she thought she was falling through a cluster of storm clouds. In the next moment she rolled onto her side in a paroxysm of coughs. Eyes stinging, throat scorched, she tumbled out of the bed to the floor, where the air was cleaner but still toxic.
What was going on? What was burning? What happened—?
Buddy!
But there was no time to think about him.
The apartment was on fire.
She had to get out of there.
Now.
Although Dil couldn’t see—the smoke was too thick, creating nearly blackout conditions—she was able to crawl to the living room.
And became completely disorientated.
She attempted to make her way to the front door but somehow got turned around and ended up bumping into her easel, which was against the opposite wall.
She tried screaming for help but all that came out of her mouth was a dry wheeze. The fire had stolen all the oxygen from the air, making each subsequent breath feel as though she were sucking back glass.
Heart pounding, woozy as if drunk, she dragged herself forward with arms that had stopped cooperating. The heat blistered her skin, cooking her alive.
Her only hope, she knew, was the window, but where was it? How far away? She no longer had any sense of perception. She didn’t even know if she was actually moving. She wanted to believe she was. Yet maybe it was in her head, maybe—
Her hand knocked something—a table.
The stereo!
Mustering the last of her strength, she pressed her hands against the wall, slapped it, grasping for purchase—and gripped the window ledge. She pulled herself to her feet. Faced pressed against the warm glass, she hooked her fingers beneath the finger lifts and tugged the bottom sash up.
Wonderfully cold, spring air sprung in. Dil stuck her head through the opening, heaving, coughing, then flopping onto the steel gratings of the fire escape.
In a disorientated blur she descended two flights of stairs to the lowest platform, released the ladder, which swung down along a track, and continued to the ground.
As soon as her feet touched the sidewalk her legs gave out and she collapsed. People and noise swarmed around her, but she was already giving into the overwhelming urge to close her eyes, and everything faded to dark.
***
Buddy saw the smoke from half a block away. It streamed up into the morning sky lazily in thick black billows. A siren wailed in the distance, punctuated by the deep blast of an air horn.
Buddy broke into a sprint, only slowing when he reached the crowd gathered in front of the burning apartment building. “Move!” he shouted, elbowing through the rubberneckers. “Move! Outta my way!” People cursed, a few cried out. Then he was at the front of the throng, next to a fire truck studded with a dozen flashing auxiliary lights. An American flag affixed to the back of it flapped in the warm air.
The building’s double front doors were wide open, likely left that way when the residents fled. Beyond them a furnace blazed, nothing visible except a wall of blustering flames. A firefighter in a tan Nomex suit with reflective stripes—“Boomer” written across the back of the jacket—was attacking the fire with a thick hose spraying a jet of water.
Buddy charged toward the building. Two burly cops blocked his way and seized him by the arms.
“Get back!” one of them snapped.
“My ma’s in there!” Buddy said. “She’s in a wheelchair!”
“You can’t go in,” the other one said.
“My ma’s in there!” he repeated, trying to twist free.
The cops led him away through the crowd, stopping at the rear of an ambulance. The cop on the right said, “Now take it easy, okay? You gonna be all right?” The ambulance’s cherry tops flashed rotating red light across his face. Grainy chatter from two-way radios seemed to originate from everywhere. A second fire truck rumbled to the scene, and someone on a bullhorn ordered everyone to move to the far side of the street.
“My ma’s in there,” Buddy said numbly. “She’s in a wheelchair. She’s trapped. She’s—” The words died on his lips. He was staring into the cargo area of the ambulance, where his neighbor, Dil Lakshmi, lay on a stretcher, an oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth. “No…” he mumbled, barely a whisper.
In the same moment Dil opened her eyes. For a second she stared at nothing, then her eyes fell on him. Something shifted in them, and she screamed.
The cops jumped. Buddy stumbled backward a step.
Dil tore off the mask and pointed a shaking finger at Buddy. “Him!” she said. “Him! Him! Him!”
“Miss, calm down,” one of the cops said, going to her.
“He kills people!” she wailed. “He kills them in his apartment! He tried to kill me!”
Both cops whirled to stare at Buddy. Their hands went to their holstered pistols.
Buddy was shaking his head. “Me?” he said, and his shock at seeing Dil gave way to anger. “Me? She’s a psychopath! She killed her boyfriend in Kentucky. That’s why she moved to New York. She did this! She killed my mother!”
Buddy lunged forward, to get to her.
The cops wrestled him to the ground, flipping him onto his chest and pinning him in place with their knees. The cold, sharp metal of handcuffs locked around his wrists.
“Not me, you fuckers!” Buddy shouted, his mouth squashed against the asphalt. “Her! Arrest her!”
The cops heaved him to his feet and shoved him into the back of a nearby patrol car.
EPILOGUE
Six months later Buddy was sitting in a reclining chair on his balcony, the sun on his face, proofreading the final draft of his novel, Neighbors. He
tipped a Sam Adams to his lips, taking a long, cold swallow. A smile curled his lips as he finished a particularly enjoyable paragraph in which Wendy moonwalks across her living room. The smile turned into a chuckle, and he reread the paragraph two more times. The book had really come together. The characters weren’t your typical two-dimensional clichés, and the climax on the roof was a definite winner. He’d sent off query letters to three agents this morning because he figured by the time they got back to him requesting the full manuscript, he would be done with the proofreading. He could already see himself in one year’s time, bullshitting to fans at bookstores and writing conventions across the country, hanging out with other famous authors, living the dream.
Ironically, Buddy owed much of this soon-to-come fame and fortune to Dil, for if it hadn’t been for her sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, he wouldn’t have set fire to the Bronx apartment building, he wouldn’t have collected on his renters insurance—which was paying his current rent and would continue to do so for another six months—and, consequently, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to write fulltime. Well, almost fulltime. He was working two days a week at a Subway restaurant to pay for everyday expenses. But what was two days? Not to mention he could eat as many free subs as he wanted, which were not only delicious but checked off all the ticks of a well-balanced diet.
Nevertheless, Dil didn’t deserve all the credit, because if Buddy had cracked during his arrest after the fire, he would no doubt be sitting in the slammer right now. But he hadn’t cracked. Quite the contrary, he’d been smart enough to invoke his right to silence. And if you’re guilty of something, and are unfortunate enough to get arrested and taken into custody, that’s what you have to do, invoke your right to silence, otherwise your goose is cooked. Because when it comes to interrogations, detectives have all the knowledge, experience, and power, while the suspect only has paranoia and fear. That’s why the Miranda warning was introduced some thirty years ago. The government knew the odds were skewed against the accused, and they wanted to level the playing field in the name of justice. Most people, however, are too stupid to know when it’s in their best interest to zip their traps, and instead they get suckered into confessing their crime. The really stupid ones even confess to crimes they didn’t commit. That’s how good detectives are at psychological manipulation. So you don’t want to go up against them mano a mano. You want to invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and arrange for a criminal defense attorney, or public defender, because they know the game inside out, they know the detectives’ playbooks, which means they know how to win.
Buddy’s attorney pretty much told the detectives and the prosecution to go fuck themselves, pointing out all the weaknesses in their case before they filed a single charge. Most important was the fact there was no evidence of any crime. No tongues were unearthed in the charred remains of Buddy’s apartment (Buddy had disposed of them in a Dumpster eight blocks away before parking his car and walking back to the building to “discover” the fire). And his mother, while not reduced to ash and bone bits in the blaze, had been burned too badly to determine her time or cause of death. So in the end it was a case of “he said, she said” that rested solely on Dil’s testimony—and she was about as unreliable a witness as you could get, considering she had been accused of murder herself. It didn’t matter she had been cleared of the charges; she had stabbed her ex-boyfriend six times. No jury in their right mind would take her word over Buddy’s, a man who had no criminal record and who had loved his mother enough to volunteer to become her primary caregiver after her stroke.
When Buddy was inevitably given a written release and allowed to walk free, Red Cross put him up in a hotel for a couple days with a hundred fifty dollar daily stipend while he negotiated with Allstate his future living arrangements. He could have remained in New York, of course. But he decided it was time for a change and got on a Greyhound and traveled cross country to California. Not Calabasas—no fucking way—but LA, where, like New York, there weren’t many grunters, and he could once more blend into the background.
Buddy tilted the Sam Adams to his lips and drained what beer was left in the bottle. Then he went inside to get another. The new apartment was a tiny studio, three hundred square feet, but pimped out, thanks again to his renters insurance, which had also covered all his personal belongings, including furniture, electronics, even his wardrobe.
In the kitchenette Buddy opened the fridge, but discovered no more beer. He considered making a coffee instead, but decided fuck that. He was celebrating finishing his manuscript; he deserved to get a little shit-faced, even if it was only ten thirty in the morning.
After all, he was going to be a famous writer soon, and famous writers could get shit-faced at any time they pleased; it all went part and parcel with being a tortured artist, a creative genius, an eccentric loner.
Grabbing his keys and wallet, Buddy left his unit, making sure to lock up behind him. He might not have to worry about someone discovering his mother anymore, but the building was full of minorities and college burnouts, and he didn’t trust a single one of them.
Halfway down the bland white hallway he stopped in front of a unit with its door left open. Two women, a black and an Asian, were inside. They were roughly his age and wore loads of makeup and short shorts. The black one was holding a paint swatch to the wall, while the slim Asian was sipping a Diet Coke through a fluorescent pink straw.
“Uh, hi?” the Asian said, seeing him. She’d styled her hair in idiotic pig tails.
“Hi,” Buddy said. “I live on this floor.”
“Yeah?” she said, acting pissed off for no reason.
“I’m just saying, I’m your neighbor.”
“I’m Nicole,” the black one said. “This is Izzy.”
“So—you just moving in?”
“Yup,” Nicole said.
“Cool,” he said.
“Umm… Did you want anything?” Izzy said, still pissed off.
“No, I’m just saying hi. I guess I’ll see you guys around?”
“Sure,” Nicole said.
“Whatever,” Izzy said.
While continuing down the hall, Buddy heard Izzy mumble “creep” under her breath before the two of them burst into juvenile laughter.
Nevertheless, Buddy didn’t care, was barely listening. Because he’d just been zapped with a new story idea, a sequel to Neighbors. He could call it Neighbors 2: A New Nightmare. Or Neighbors 2: The Next Chapter. Or maybe even something like, The Girls Next Door. Yeah, he liked that one. Anyway, the plot would go something like this: After his ordeal with Wendy, good old Don moves to LA, and he’s liking it there, really digging it, until these two girls move in next door. They’re real bitches, right off the bat. He does his best to ignore them, but all their partying and loud music and shit starts to piss him off, so he goes to their place one night, to tell them to turn down the music. Only one of them is home, the angry Asian—sure, the bitchiest one—and she says the wrong thing, something that sets him off…and he kills her? Damn right he does! Get a murder happening within the first few chapters, get the reader hooked right away. Maybe make it an accident though? Need to keep old Don sympathetic. So it’s an accident, but the Asian’s still dead. Don freaks out and…what? Brings her back to his unit? Okay. He brings her back and dumps her body in his bathtub or something. There could be a really intense scene in which the black roommate comes over looking for her friend—good one, Buddy, keep the suspense high!—and after this Don knows he has to get rid of the Asian’s body. Not only does the roommate continue to suspect him of foul play, the corpse is beginning to stink. But—conflict, Buddy, conflict—there are CCTV cameras in the elevator, the lobby, so instead he…well, shit, he embalms her! Stuffs her with sawdust, keeps her in his bedroom!
Write what you know about, right?
“You better believe it!” Buddy said to himself as he skipped down the staircase, never feeling better. “You better fucking believe
it.”
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Thank you for taking the time to read Dark Hearts. If you enjoyed the story, it would be wonderful if you could leave a review on the Amazon product page. Reviews might not matter much to the big-name authors, but they can really help the small guys to grow their readership.
Also, please check out the books in the award-winning “World’s Scariest Places” series below:
BOOK 1: SUICIDE FOREST
SUICIDE FOREST IS REAL - ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
CLICK HERE TO GET IT NOW (FREE WITH KINDLE UNLIMITED)!
Just outside of Tokyo lies Aokigahara, a vast forest and one of the most beautiful wilderness areas in Japan...and also the most infamous spot to commit suicide in the world. Legend has it that the spirits of those many suicides are still roaming, haunting deep in the ancient woods.
When bad weather prevents a group of friends from climbing neighboring Mt. Fuji, they decide to spend the night camping in Aokigahara. But they get more than they bargained for when one of them is found hanged in the morning—and they realize there might be some truth to the legends after all.
“In Bates’ (The Taste of Fear, 2012, etc.) horror novel, a simple excursion into a reputedly haunted forest turns into a nightmare when people start dying in conspicuously unnatural ways. Ethan Childs, an American teaching English in Tokyo for the last four years, plans to climb Mount Fuji with girlfriend, Mel, and a few pals. But when a looming storm nixes the outing, Israeli tourists Ben and Nina convince the group to join them on a hike through nearby Aokigahara Jukai. The forest is infamous for an incredibly high number of suicides, reportedly in the hundreds per year, and some believe the ghosts of the dead haunt it. What begins as an unsettling ambience (there are no sounds of animals or any trace of wind) quickly gives way to serious, tangible threats when one of the party members dies from an apparent suicide. Ethan and company are soon lost, and the noises they hear in the woods either confirm the existence of ghosts, or perhaps worse, mean that a murderer is tracking them down. Readers may recognize a slasher-film vibe—people willingly go into the creepy woods—and familiar characters...But Bates’ approach to the story is surprisingly restrained, cultivating impressive frights in the unnerving environment...No one is sure whether the unseen villain is human or apparition or whether they are simply victims of unfortunate circumstances...Bates’ choice to avoid brazen scares makes for an understated horror story that will remind readers what chattering teeth sound like.”
Dark Hearts: Four Novellas of Dark Suspense Page 25