#
"I’m going to scare the wits out of you tonight after the movie," Joe Northumberland said to his wife, Sherry. He gave a low guttural growl and leaned close.
"Oh Joe, stop it now. I won’t go if you start that."
Marjorie Sider smiled over her glass of wine at her friends. It almost made her wish she were married.
"Know what she did after seeing Halloween?" Joe asked.
“You’re poking fun, Joe," his wife said.
"She slept with the sheet over her head and clutched my arm all night. This is a grown woman?"
"I did no such thing." Sherry tried to look indignant.
"She did too. She’s a little ‘fraidy cat."
"Marge, he laughs at me, but it’s his fault I get so scared. On the way home from that movie he started telling me about haunted houses in South Carolina when he was a kid. He knows gobs of ghost stories."
"What about you?" Joe asked Marjorie. "Are you frightened of the bogeyman too?"
"I never thought about it much," she admitted. "I haven't been to a horror show in years. I saw some Vincent Price movies when I was a kid, and that cured me."
"I've seen some of those rerun on TV," Joe said. "Pretty spooky flicks. That pendulum swinging...that wax museum made of real people..." He finger-walked up his wife’s arm.
Sherry ignored him. "Wait until you see the movie tonight." She began to clear the dinner table. "It’s about a woman living on a lake alone and this creature comes out of the woods..."
"Don’t tell the whole story, Sherry," her husband warned.
Marjorie offered to help with the dishes, but Sherry waved her away.
"Take your glass to the living room. I’ll be finished here quick as a flash. We have to make that nine o’clock showing."
The Cinema II Theater was three blocks from the Northumberland’s apartment and five blocks from Marjorie’s place. The three friends walked the short distance enjoying the mild winter night.
The movie was one of Hollywood’s B-rated attempts at horror fantasy. It was so badly made that every time the creature was shown, it was obviously only a heavyset, hairy man with a large paunch crawling over props on a sound stage. The heroine was half-crazy, as usual, and the entire movie was her fearful childhood memories returning to haunt her.
Marjorie yawned through most of the film. Sherry munched popcorn throughout the splatter scenes. Joe was the one who paid careful attention to the story. He was silent during the entire hour and a half and repeatedly refused the popcorn and candy his wife kept offering him.
When the last scene faded from the screen. Marjorie was more than ready to leave the theater for the fresh night air.
"What did you think, huh?" Sherry asked on the way up the aisle as the lights were raised. "Wasn’t that scary?"
"I guess so. Although I think John Wayne’s old westerns have this kind of thing beat all out."
"John Wayne!" Joe pretended he was wounded, clutching his chest. "God, John Wayne movies suck humpbacked turtles.This stuff is camp, Marge. You get to use your imagination."
"It was graphic enough without imaging anything."
Joe had fallen behind the two women without their noticing. Suddenly he ran to his wife from behind with a grrrr sound. They turned to see him on his toes, his arms spread to grab them. "I’m gonna get you! I’m gonna eat ’em up, eat ’em up," he said.
Sherry skipped away and giggled. She pointed an accusing finger at her husband. "I’ll sleep under the bed tonight if you don’t quit."
Joe came down into a flat-footed lope, his brow in knitted thought. "Hey, you know what? I just thought of something really horrible."
"What?" Sherry took his arm and smiled over at Marjorie.
"We’ve got a real live creature of our own somewhere in this city. That’s freakier than any movie."
"You mean the headhunter?" Sherry asked. Her smile turned into a grimace.
"The what?" Marjorie was thoroughly confused.
"Didn’t you hear it on the news today?" Joe asked.
"No, I didn’t. What do you mean ‘headhunter’?"
"You mean you haven’t heard about that little boy near the South Loop who was found with his head missing?" Sherry asked.
"Missing?" Marjorie’s voice turned cold. She did not like the turn the conversation had taken. .
"Yeah, missing," Sherry said. "'They couldn’t find it."
Marjorie shivered. Movies were one thing, real atrocities were another. `
"There never was anything like it here before," Sherry continued, mistaking her friend’s silence for interest.
“Can you imagine how nutty the guy must be? Hell, I’m scaring myself again."
"Sherry calls him the headhunter," Joe explained. He glanced at Marjorie and smiled. "We shouldn’t be talking about this tonight. "
"I agree wholeheartedly," Marjorie said. "You’ll have me hiding under the bed."
After the good nights and thank yous were said, Marjorie Sider locked her apartment door with a relieved sigh. She slipped off her shoes and padded across the carpet, across the cool kitchen tile, and opened the refrigerator door. Looking at the milk carton, she thought about cholesterol, and chose the quart bottle of orange juice instead. She needed a lift, not clogged arteries.
After draining the glass, she rinsed it out, turned it upside down in the sink dish drainer, and started for the bedroom. The next day was a workday and Sherry was picking her up early. They were both fighting their way up from the secretarial pool, and at Brown and Root Engineering you had to be bright and eager to succeed.
In the bedroom, Marjorie avoided her image in the mirror as she undressed and put on a long pink nylon gown. With a quick motion she set the alarm and moved it closer to her pillow. It was only eleven, not too late to interfere with her upward mobility plans on the job.
Once in bed, with the lights out, Marjorie heard a tick. It was the silly clock on the kitchen stove. Because of some odd mechanical quirk, the tick came at irregular intervals, and it was so loud it carried through the apartment. Tick. Marjorie listened, letting the ticks lull her to sleep. Tick. Five seconds passed. Tick. How many ticks in a minute? She could not count them for that long. But the sound was a presence of sorts. Off center and unpredictable, but a presence nevertheless. It was not unbearable. Tick...tick...
Marjorie drifted off and dreamed of a June wedding.
#
The figure on the street was alone. He walked hunched forward, his hands in pockets, his jaw thrust forward. He might have been coming from a friend’s house or from an errand at an al1night store, but something about the way he carried himself showed he was not coming. He was going. He walked without glancing to either side. Every block or so he glared up at the night sky.
It was midnight. In a few strokes of the clock, Sunday, dead Sunday, would recede to the past. The only people awake were misfits, police, and insomniacs.
The man had watched from a long alley when the young couple dropped Marjorie Sider off at her apartment. He did not go in immediately. He saw her shut the door and then, agitated, he left the alley and began walking, arguing with himself. Too soon. It’s too soon.
By midnight he was back at her apartment. He moved softly. He entered the courtyard and started up the stairs to the second-floor balcony door. A deathly stillness crept over his mind. He heard a television droning somewhere. It was not nearby. A breeze ruffled his hair. He caught his breath and held it.
He reached her door. He thought he could hear a clock ticking inside. Cautiously he turned the doorknob and felt it catch. A grin spread across his face. Stepping back, he knocked firmly on the door the way someone in authority might knock in an emergency. Then it came to him what to say. He had not known until that very moment.
He waited. He knocked louder, more insistently. A sleepy voice called from behind the closed door, "What is it?"
"Gotta get out! There’s a fire!" he said loudly enough for her to understand the urgency, but not lo
ud enough to wake her neighbors.
"What?" Marjorie opened the door in alarm. It caught on the safety chain and bounced shut, startling her.
She pressed her face close to the opening, sniffing for smoke.
He began his act. He jiggled up and down on his toes as if about to run. His eyes were wild, panicky. "Get out! Fire!" Then he pointed down the landing and vanished.
But he did not go far. Four feet away from her door he stopped and pressed up against the wall. He inched back.
She took the chain off the door, then one step outside. He grabbed her.
Inside he closed and locked the door with one hand , while holding Marjorie Sider’s mouth with the other.
She kicked and jerked, but he had her fast. A light spilled across the carpet from the bedroom. Again he decided on the spur of the moment what he wanted to do. He dragged her across the room to the stereo. He leaned over and grabbed the wire dangling from the wall plug. With one great lunge he tore the stereo wire free from the socket and the wood cabinet. The plug end whipped behind him and struck Marjorie’s thigh.
Murmuring softly to her, he lifted her and carried her to the bedroom. As he spun her onto the bed, he cuffed her once on the chin. It was enough. She fell onto the mattress unconscious.
It took less than three minutes to bind her with the wire and to stuff the end of a sheet into her mouth.
Marjorie came to as he was pulling her gown from her shoulders and slipping it down over her tied ankles.
She struggled. She looked at his face and her eyes grew large. She flung her head back and forth, trying to dislodge the gag. Her tongue was flattened to her teeth, and as she fought she felt the flesh tearing and blood oozing into the cloth. Sensing she was wasting precious energy in a useless struggle, she stopped.
Suddenly she saw what he meant to do to her. It was not what she expected. She thought she was to be a victim of rape. But when she saw the man take the garrote from his shirt, she knew it was a weapon, his weapon. She also knew her empty, paltry life was going to end. This was not a movie and not a nightmare. This was life slamming her in the face with the fact of her impending death. She spit at the gag and choked. She wanted to tell him, she wanted to say--but the wire was going around her throat--she wanted to beg him please, please, not this way, not this way, not...
Marjorie Sider’s last thoughts were of the boy who had died before her.
#
Things had to be correctly placed. The body, the pillow, the covers. The head was secure in a green plastic trash bag.
One last look at the woman. She was perfect. Her skin was still pinkish white. The blood seeping from beneath the pillow was the color of roses, blood-red roses. The bed looked like a whole bushel of them.
He let himself out the door after checking the landing and stairs and parking lot. He was as quiet as death come calling.
#
Sherry Northumberland was running late because once home from the movie, she had trouble sleeping. She had to pick up Marjorie and that would make them both late.
Finding no empty parking space in front of Marjorie’s building, Sherry left her car running and raced up the stairs. When Marjorie did not answer the door, Sherry went inside, wondering why it was unlocked when Marge never left it unlocked. Unperturbed at not finding her friend up, Sherry went to the bedroom with a good scolding ready on the tip of her tongue. How were they going to get out of the secretarial pool if they started running late?
At the doorway of the bedroom she paused. She smelled something strange. The shades were drawn and the room dark. Something was not quite right. Not at all.
“Marge? Why aren’t you up?" she called hesitantly.
Sherry saw the dried blood first. Creeping closer, she caught her breath. The smell grew stronger.
Sherry had mental flashes from old horror movies. They were pale in comparison to what she was seeing. Life was so much more intense than film, life was a sledgehammer where a movie was no more than a tiny ringing bell in the distance.
An intuitive voice warned her against touching the pillow. It was placed just so, resting partially on Marjorie’s chest and covering her head. It was spotted with blood stains.
But Sherry’s hand reached out for the pillow anyway.
Marjorie Sider was headless. The sheet around her neck was soaked with black splashes of blood. The room suddenly tilted. Screams boomeranged off the walls.
Sherry Northumberland fled the apartment in a mindless stagger and crumpled to a heap in warm morning sunshine outside, still screaming--still mindlessly clutching the bloody pillow from her friend’s bed.
Chapter 14
INSIDE THE OLD two-story red-brick town house, Nick dreamed. He lay on the newly upholstered Victorian sofa, his head on a pillow, his stockinged feet dangling over the wooden scroll armrest.
Outside a storm was brewing in the Gulf, and occasional drops of rain chinked against the windowpanes.
In Nick’s dream eyes were everywhere. Black Asian eyes staring into the night. Nick’s pulse quickened with alarm. He shuddered. The eyes were all around. He felt them on him, on his brother, and the other soldiers.
The moon was hidden behind thick smoky clouds, and the Vietnamese jungle was still as midnight. The Americans were trapped. They could not call out or signal. The Cong waited, hoping for a stupid move from the GIs. Nick and his platoon went right, slogging, tearing, their palms swelling with red welts. They doubled back cautiously, but not far. Finally they gave up and moved stealthily, padding across the forest floor with animal furtiveness into the limbo of the lost, the separated, the alone...
Nick sat up straight on the sofa, his eyes wide, unseeing. "I hate this fucking place!" he shouted, meaning the war, meaning Vietnam.
Daley had been reading an assignment for his literature course, and he nearly jumped from his chair. "Nick, what is it?" he asked.
Nick woke up. I’m not in Nam, he thought. I’m okay, I’m not gonna die.
"Nothing," he said, noticing he had frightened his brother. "Just a stupid dream."
Daley looked at Nick in concern. "They seem more frequent lately. Maybe you need more than Valium for your nerves."
Nick touched his forehead and found he was sweating. He rubbed his shirtsleeve across his face. "If I need something else, I’ll get it," he said defensively. "Like a lobotomy maybe."
"You and that smart mouth of yours. I don’t know why I bother."` Daley went back to his reading.
"All right, I’ll tell you,” Nick said, beginning to pace the living room. "I was dreaming we were back in Nam that night we were ambushed and lost our way."
Daley lowered the book and watched his big brother carefully. The memory of that horrible experience bloomed in Daley’s mind. No wonder Nick had awakened screaming that he hated the place. It had been the depths of hell, and it did not seem they were out of it yet, not completely.
"I could smell Charlie and I got that sinking in the pit of my belly like when I knew he was behind us," Nick continued. "The dream was a rerun of that night. Everything was the same, and I thought I was back there, trapped, lost. I wish to hell I could forget it. Just when I think I can forget it all, it comes back in my sleep."
"Did you tell the doctor about it when he prescribed the tranquilizers?" Daley asked.
"What the fuck’s a doctor know about Vietnam?" Nick erupted. "Doctors know shit about nothing but pills and padded cells."
"If you’d trust one enough to tell him what you’re dealing with, Nick--"
"What could he do about it?" Nick circled faster and faster, his arms moving erratically in front of him. "Is he going to wipe it out? Is he? Can he get inside my brain and tell me what to dream about? I can see it now. Crawling through my ear on his hands and knees, stirring up the gray matter, taking a mop to the shit inside."
Daley knew a good therapist might know how to deal with his brother’s problems. Surely someone could do something. Besides Nick’s being irritable and unreasonable, his night
mares were getting worse. It had become unusual to pass one night without being awakened by a scream from downstairs. Daley was not sure if they were living with a lunatic or if he was blowing everything out of proportion because he knew things about Nick that would frighten anyone.
Nick stopped walking and turned to Daley, a puzzled look on his face. "Something else has been bothering me," he said. "Did you see in the paper about a couple of murders that happened last weekend?"
"Everyone on campus is talking about it," Daley said cautiously. He did not like the dark light that had suddenly appeared in his brother’s eyes.
"They’re saying that some kind of wire was used." Nick was standing very still.
"I know." Daley sounded perfectly calm, but his thoughts were racing.
"Like maybe they were garroted," Nick suggested.
Before Daley could say anything, Madra appeared at the doorway of the living room carrying two suitcases. She was fully dressed although it was after ten in the evening and Daley had thought she had gone to bed earlier. She wore a long blue patterned skirt, high-topped boots, and the cape around her shoulders. For several seconds both men stared at her in amazement.
Nick recovered first. "Sorry to see you go, but if you’re bound and determined...” He put out his hands in a mocking gesture of helplessness.
"Daley, may I please speak to you alone?" Madra asked. Daley put down the book and stood slowly.
"What’s going on, Madra? What are you doing?" He walked to her, his hands out.
"I didn’t want it to end this way, Daley, but I didn’t have the courage to talk to you about it. I’m moving out. An old girl friend offered me her place in Montrose.”
Daley touched her arms and stared into her eyes, her strange faraway eyes. She was not seeing him. He shook her gently, his heart heavy. He knew she had been unhappy ever since the first day, but he had never thought she would leave without discussing it with him.
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