Damn, why’d Val-Kiree have to take him to that exit? Why had she hung up, abandoning her TREMORS?
««—»»
“He’s headed for the roof!” Ed called out.
Ed stood in the street, gun dangling at his side, arms limp.
Tom raced into the open door, and took the stairs two at a time to catch up with the skinhead. Between clenched teeth, Blue Monk again played in his head, returning to him in a half-whistle/half-hum. Call it Stuck-Song Syndrome, like mindlessly chewing a gum wad long after it lost its flavor.
He spied an open doorway at the third floor landing. What he glimpsed—not to mention smelled—made him pause.
A gloomy room, threadbare cloth hanging across a glassless window. A single tallow candle burned, guttering a sepia light across a dozen faces crowded together on the floor.
They were dressed in rags if dressed at all. All the males had shaved heads, few teeth, causing Tom to scan them for the perp. Some coughed, others simply moaned, a few were silent. Their bodies unwashed, vermin crawling over faces, festering egg-sized black pouches at groins and armpits.
One man was a priest. He was dressed in a simple Catholic robe, face bloating indigo, beads and crucifix sticking from his mouth. He’d tried to save himself by eating his rosary.
A very blue monk…
Through the bare window, Tom heard the rattling of a cart and a voice:
“Bring out your dead!”
The pounding of his quarry’s boots overhead made Tom look up. When he looked again, the room’s door had closed.
««—»»
Ed wondered if Nubbing Cove always looked like this. He recognized landmarks—the Otronto West Apartments, Walpole’s Dry Cleaners, The Strawberry Hill Deli. And Udolpho’s Barber Shop where he damn near got scalped last winter when he stopped in for a quick haircut.
Was that a castle? And a bell tower on the other side? He was sure he’d’ve remembered the church, too, with high twisting spires and gargoyles at every edge. Yeah, so he’d seen gargoyles before, on the old county courthouse and the library. And on a Goth Channel set. Nothing like these. Had somebody moved Notre Dame? Why not, when London Bridge was now in Arizona.
He watched a group of nuns march around a corner.
The place hadn’t looked like this before. True, it had always been dilapidated. It was the oldest area in the city, over two hundred-years-old. It now appeared to degenerate further by the nano-second. It was unusually shadowy for noon, as if soot covered even the sky. Couldn’t see the freeway from here as he could just a few months ago. Couldn’t see the downtown high-rises. The sun might be the moon.
Only one building glowed in the June blaze. At the end of the street, iron-shuttered, beacon against ash and ashen. Man, it was bright. It positively emanated. “Don’t get too close or I’ll jump!” the skinhead warned from four stories up.
People crowded into the road around the building, no cars (however few there were), just people. For what? Too late for Flag Day and too soon for the Fourth of July. Shiny with sweat, half wore all-black clothes.
Faces had been painted grotesquely or were surgically-altered.
(The horse still screamed.)
They smiled, heads tilted back. Some grinned, mouths sliced wide across both cheeks. The few not smiling had round O’s, perpetually opened like a hungry choir. They waited for the skinhead to jump, without chanting as Ed’d seen other crowds do. Even the woman, bleeding in the street, watched keenly, one hand squeezing together the edges of a thigh wound. The other cradled a downed horse, stroking its muzzle, the beast gone silent, only its shuddering flanks showed it still lived.
“I mean it!” shouted the perp on the roof.
Ed watched, too. He sweated liters inside the suit he’d slept in, fascinated, able with some uncanny sense of smell to scent both shooting victims crisply. Where the hell is Tom? Had they made a pilgrimage to some madness mecca? Ed eyed the building. A sacred black Caaba, jumper perched atop, facing holy East. He had an overpowering desire to see the guy leap. The skinhead as a distant shadow-doll, framed by stratocumulus clouds, waved its arms. The eyes floated, piercing to street level. A natural gas burn: lewd azure.
Ed blinked. In the image, he saw sundogs. Sparking wires in his medulla oblongata.
(I am a bomb…)
Ed ached to act, a mixture of frenzy with lethargy. Then he simply ached. Must be coming down with something. A summer cold, food poisoning, layer of ash.
Then he saw Tom. His partner slowly made his way toward the skinhead, talking softly, actually trying to save the kid’s life. Ed half-smiled, So like the man.
Suddenly a dog howled.
The sound fried the air, scorched the ears, starved and insistent. So loud that dust sifted from every building and stone wall.
Another sound. Hissing, sibilant as pipes leaking gas. This, if anything, was even louder than that damn dog.
Tom looked down, startled, shielding his eyes to look down at the street. The suspect jittered along the roof’s edge.
The howling and hissing increased. A stained glass window shattered in that demonized cathedral. The Nazi-perp jumped—No! screamed Tom—sailing down to concrete, asphalt, and a few pitted cobblestones. (Had there been cobblestones when the detectives got there?) The bestial noises were so loud that Ed couldn’t hear as the man’s head burst on impact.
The noise stopped.
Ed inhaled, sustained and nourished by the sight and smell of red.
He realized the baying was his own; the hissing was everyone else in the street.
He sniffed redolent blood and caught his own scent.
God, but he stank!
««—»»
By the time Tom made it down to the street, Ed was gone.
– | – | –
Chapter 21
Rosie saw less and less of Lysette and Rita. The pair were usually at the mall for a hectic day of shopping, and guiding eager boys to the parking lot where Zeke Banoceke kept his van for their use—taking a 40% share of the gross income. They didn’t even come by to act sorry for her and lucky for themselves. Only Hannah stopped by the hospital every other day without fail, visiting Rosie on her way to school, taking summer courses.
But it was Marty who Rosie really wanted to see, and he didn’t disappoint.
He came in to her room carrying a brightly wrapped box: his promise of a sexy negligee. Who else would want her in something like that, when the mere sight of her ought to give them shivers? And who else would make her feel alluring enough to wear it?
Marty acted nervous, shooting glances behind him as he let the door glide shut. He’d looked as if he’d seen a…
“Rosie,” he began without bullshit, “was Chaz there when the store blew up?”
…ghost.
The bed seemed to drop out from under her. She was catapulted into her dream-Hell’s tiny back room with the stopped-up toilet of guts and the endless line of male corpses seeking gratification. Life was a trap. She blinked to clear away the dizziness and taste of putridly indigestible sepia emissions. She chewed her lip, hoping pain would snap her into sobriety from morphia’s drifting sensation.
“Chaz’s dead and buried,” she replied.
“But was he there that night?” Marty’s eyes riveted, hand on her arm with enough pressure to make her look up at him.
Rosie’s face became a pale globe, pupils in her eyes dilating, room gone to shadow. “Chaz’s dead and buried. But, yes…” She lowered her voice, fearing to invoke his spirit, “…he was there.” Her eyes darted around the room. Then she saw the book under Marty’s other arm.
“Where’d you get that?” She pulled from his grasp to point, pushing herself up from the pillows.
“At the Chisholms’ house, not twenty minutes ago,” Marty replied. He wondered why he’d taken this book from the fire. It must be a Satanic indulgence, like a relic of Lucifer’s leathery wing after he’d been cast down from Heaven and broken on Earth. Marty might’ve been burned, yet he’
d risked it. He ought to have tried saving old Mr. Chisholm.
But Chaz stood between us. He felt a stab of guilt. Yeah. So. He was a spirit. I’d’ve moved right through him. But the book…
The book.
It had power and worth. To catch a monkey, you set out a narrow-mouthed jar full of goodies. The monkey stuck its arm in to grab some. With booty in the fist, its hand wouldn’t come free from the slender opening. You had it dead-to-rights because—even though it saw you coming and was scared shitless—it refused to drop the loot.
Marty hoped he wasn’t being a monkey.
Why was this book valuable to him? Because it was a rare jewel. The center of any great spook collection: a diabolical talisman of raw erotic blood-hunt primalism from the first atomic-level drives felt by an original pre-human primate… to get nourishment… to be dominant… to be the beast of the species… the king, queen, of caverns and wastelands… Eat Kill Party Fuck Kill Live.
Rare jewel?
Not from the standpoint of great art in the illustrations. Nor the overblown prose of the super-ego who’d authored it. Trying to make up her mind if she was evil or the penultimate good. Her point of view of right and wrong changed from piece to piece.
(Voices. Dreams of black moons and meat worlds. Of religions dick-driven and clit-simple.)
Marty looked at Rosie, and added: “I saw Chaz.”
“You saw him?” Rosie gasped, clenching the starchy hospital sheet to her throat. She’d convinced herself the supernatural part hadn’t been real. The explosion, the loss of her legs, was real enough. She let Chaz, his horror, flow away from conscious thought. What she’d repressed now returned in an aesthetic backwash.
“I saw him,” Marty affirmed. “He wasn’t pretty.” This walking corpse. This vengeful spirit. Or whatever else Chaz had become. But what did Marty know of beauty? It was in the eye of the beholder—like a boy who thought stumps were the most exquisite form to be adored.
“He did this to me,” Rosie said in her breathy, bite-sized, babydoll voice. “All that fire. Jizz’s fire…”
His scream in her mind. MY NAME IS NOT JIZZ!
“…Chaz, I mean. Daddy tried to save me. Told me to run. Whatever happened, whatever Daddy tried to do, he couldn’t’ve stopped Chaz, could he? ’Cause Chaz was already dead.”
She sighed, tears pricking. “I don’t blame Daddy. I know Chaz did this to me, to Daddy. But why? Guess he was mad after I knocked the crap out of him when he tried to rape me, at how angry Daddy was. Then he went home and burned himself up. I was such a bitch to him. He was a quiet guy. I never expected him to come into the storeroom and jump on me like that…”
Rosie talked faster, hiccupping words as breath hitched. Tears streamed now, down to her kewpie doll chin. “He threatened to tell my dad if I didn’t give it to him…but then I said no and Daddy kicked him out…and then he went home and died and, oh, God and Jesus and Mary, I felt so terrible when I heard…even though he said those things to my dad, I just figured it was ’cause he loved me…and then he shows up dead and burnt as morning bacon with a snake in his mouth and I’m like this forever…”
Marty dropped the book and box, the latter landing on the bed and the former on the floor. He sat on the bed’s edge and grabbed Rosie’s shoulders.
“It’s okay.” But he tried to absorb what she said. Jazzy? Trying to rape her? That wasn’t the Jazz he’d known. Sure, Chaz, like a lot of folks, enjoyed a violent or sexual read or two, and like a lot of those same folks, he was no danger to society. The fat boy would never’ve harmed anybody. He’d never bullied anyone at school. Never threw his considerable weight around or plotted vengeance on popular punks who viciously ribbed him every day.
But her description matched what Marty’d seen of Chaz. His tinny voice, putting doubt in Marty’s mind even when he saw Chaz’s ghost back at his house.
How could it be? Only assholes raped. They were bad guys in the stories. Only wicked damned returned from the dead. Chaz Chisholm had been neither asshole nor wicked damned. Right?
Rosie collapsed, sobbing against Marty’s shoulder. He ran his fingers through her blond hair, fibers of silk along her gracile neck. He repressed the urge to caress the bandaged ends of her amputations, she might not be ready, and kept a hand at her back. The free hand he let wander through that glorious golden mane, trimmed on the sides where it burned that night. The hair on her arms had singed off, almost crinkly polyester in texture.
Marty saw the book on the floor. He’d briefly been in possession of his first copy, seduced by its suggestive bloodlust, high on shock he wasn’t certain was really there, horny enough to fuck a yellow-pudding-puffed-roadkill-dog, his eighteen-year-old never-been-laid hormonal self-producing a desperate magic all its own.
A doctor entered Rosie’s room. A nurse with a clipboard followed. Rosie and Marty pulled apart, embarrassed. Marty hoped he could stay while they examined her. He wanted to see the stumps, free of concealing wrappings. Like viewing virgin territory, secretive and sensuous delights unappreciated by too many.
The doctor placed his stethoscope on the tray where the plastic cup, water pitcher, and a box of cheap scratchy tissues sat.
Then the nurse unzipped her uniform.
She slipped from crisp short sleeves and let the garment drop, stepping out of the resulting coil of bleached fabric. The doctor pulled off his immaculate coat. The nurse unrolled her panty hose as the doctor undid his shirt, then his trousers, scuffing off his oxfords at the same time.
The nurse unhooked her bra and let enormous white chocolate moons loose from their lacey DD-cup moorings.
“Hey!” Marty protested. “We’re here. Do ya mind?”
They ignored the kids. She slipped off her panties; he took off his shorts. The nurse had nary a single blade of errant pubic hair, denuded all the way around her prominent labial lips. The doctor had a good fifteen inches, sleekly circumcised. Smooth and unpimpled, it gleamed of polished metal, sculpted tip trenchant. Rosie exhaled sharply as the nurse—standing on tippy toes—glided it between her legs. He lifted her by her hips. They groaned, grinding as he skewered her.
Rosie whispered, “Don’t they care we’re here?”
The boy shrugged. He couldn’t turn away. It was fascinating, X-rated cable without parents wandering in to shut it off.
“Hey!” Marty shouted again, trying to get their attention. “Ya got an audience here. Try the drug closet, why don’t ya.”
They paid no heed. The nurse’s legs gripped the doctor’s back, locked at the knees with ankles crossed, extra-jointed toes knotted in ecstasy. She had her arms around his neck, his fingers gripping her muscled ass. They soldered mouths together, salival slurps and lips smacking while melded loins thrusted below.
Rosie pointed. “God, look…”
Blood cascaded over the nurse’s thighs, pumping from the vaginal opening where the doc’s huge organ rhythmically buried itself. The blood hemorrhaged in crimson puddles and rockets, soapy streams and berry clots.
The room grew hot. Marty wiped a bead of sweat. Had the air conditioning been switched off and the furnace turned on?
The blood grew worse as the teens watched. Coppery rivulets spilled over mutual shoulders, channels of an irrigating claret as the doctor grunted and the nurse squealed. The two toppled, creamy-skinned torsos tangling arms and legs, still thrusting, hands clutching one another’s head in torrid embrace. The floor lathered with salt-wine bubbles beneath them, nurse continuing to gout. They sputtered and gurgled. Passionate kissing… or were they eating noises?
Marty murmured, “I think we’re in trouble.”
On top, the doc wrenched himself backward, thick gore matted across his face and chest. Parts of his lips were chewed away until his teeth freely glittered in gravy. The nurse’s mouth was worse, most of her jaw visible within ravaged cheeks, truncated tongue gagging gory spittle at the back of her throat.
Marty pulled from Rosie’s panicked grip on his shoulders and ran to
the door, sidestepping the snarling, sexing ghouls. He skidded on slippery tile. The door wouldn’t open, as if it weren’t a door at all but a painted feature.
He pounded with both fists. “Someone open up! Let us out! Is anyone there? Help!”
No answer.
The nurse’s bare leg touched Marty’s foot, its skin rolled down to the ankle like a loose, wool sock. He jumped away in disgust, scampering back to bed. He heaved chunks of air to slow his racing heart.
“I can’t…can’t…” He panted. “I came through that door… just a few minutes ago… are they all on a fucking coffee break?”
“What’re we going to do?” Rosie trembled, hair limp with perspiration. She clung to him.
The couple on the floor changed places, the nurse on top, hovering over the doctor. She’d split his abdomen with frosted razor-peach nails. She rubbed the twists and cords of his spilling organs over her face, hair festooned with steaming bulbous ribbons. The doctor writhed, hips thrusting as he bleated from a cavernous mouth hole, his hands reaching up to squeeze the nurse’s pale saggy highlands. He started digging into her rectum with first one finger, then two, then his entire hand. With a triumphant howl, he pulled out the colonary lining, wrapped like a delicate caul around inches of tarry stool. The nurse grinned through the hole in the jaw, shuddering with impossible pleasure.
Marty forced himself to look away. What would Rosie think if she saw this getting him off? What would he think if it actually did?
“We gotta get outta here,” he said. He screamed again: “Somebody please help us!”
The bed became a lifeboat on a sea of blood, beginning with the couple on the floor—making the metaphoric beast with two backs. Every trace of checkerboard linoleum, obliterated. No two could possibly have so much blood in them. Where did it come from?
Marty saw the book. It floated in it, flotsam from a crash at sea.
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