by Leo King
“Shhhh… stop talking,” she said softly, her voice like melted butter. “You’re cuter when your mouth is closed.”
He blinked and kept his mouth shut.
She smirked again. “Anyway, we want you to watch the finale of this sordid tale. So if you’ll just let us take you there, then you can go back home to Samantha.”
“Wait, what?” He shook his head. “No, not at all. I don’t wan—”
Again, she covered his lips with her finger. Sighing, she said, “Seriously, Richie. Shut up. I’m putting a lot of effort into this whole thing, and you’re starting to annoy me. Trust me, you don’t want to annoy me.”
Taking a step back, she looked behind him and nodded. He realized a moment too late what was about to happen. The impact to his head came hard and fast, and he was unconscious before he realized it.
Richie knew only blackness for a while. Slowly, the sounds of the wind and the bump of a car’s tires on the highway roused him. He was in the passenger side of Sam’s car, strapped in securely, with the Lady in Red driving and the three hooded figures in the back. He grabbed his head and groaned in pain.
“Feeling OK, Richie?” asked a deep reverberating voice.
He saw the Lady in Red. It looked like her eyes were glowing. Peering at him, she said, “Did we hit you too hard? Can you hear me?”
“What the fu…” He shook his head. “You look all messed up.”
“He says we look messed up, boss,” said one of the hooded figures, his voice deep and reverberating. Richie looked in the back seat. What he saw made him scream.
The three hooded figures were looking at him. The faces underneath the hoods were more visible, and they looked monstrous. Flesh was decayed, teeth were sharp like fangs, and jaws were several times bigger than normal. He cried out and turned around, his vision getting blurry.
“You hit him too hard,” said the Lady in Red, laughing with a deep, echoing voice. He turned to her and started to speak, but she grinned at him until her mouth was the length of her face, her teeth numerous. It was like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland, only horrible.
He screamed again and passed out. It was too much.
When he awoke again, he was aware of three things. One, he was lying on the sofa at Jacob Hueber’s apartment. Two, he was once again covered head to toe in blood. Three, there were a number of dead bodies lying around him. He recognized them: black hooded coats, a snake mask, a zombie mask, and even a clown mask. The biker gang.
The bodies were eviscerated and cut into pieces just like Marcello’s men.
Richie shrieked. His throat was starting to hurt.
The Lady in Red called out from somewhere. “Christ, Richie, will you please shut up!”
He looked around, his eyes adjusting to the light. It was a massacre. The Lady in Red was at the bar, sitting on a stool and drinking a highball. All around the room stood hooded figures. She was the only one not covered in blood.
He sat up and looked at himself. He was even more coated than at Rosemary’s house. “Why the fuck am I covered in blood again?!”
She snorted. “Sorry, kid. No matter where I put you, you end up getting sprayed down like a puppy getting a bath. It’s kinda cute.”
Richie got up, making a face. As he walked over to her, he saw two hooded figures standing by a skinny, terrified-looking guy in a black coat. Something was stuffed in his mouth as a gag. Richie recognized the coat as the kind the biker gang wore, the one that attacked Sam. “Who is this?”
“Ah, don’t remember him?” the Lady in Red asked. “Go ahead, boy, take the gag out. You’ll recognize him then.”
He inhaled deeply, struggling to keep his composure. As he reached for the gag, the guy recoiled from him. Finally, he just snatched the gag out of the man’s mouth.
Immediately, the man squealed in terror. “Don’t kill me, man!”
“Shut up,” ordered one of the hooded figures, kicking the man in the face hard enough to knock out teeth.
Richie didn’t watch the brutal display. Instead, he was fixated on the gag. It was a mask. A skull mask. This guy was the one who beat me up and taunted me while his friends tried to rape Sam!
“Figured you’d want to talk to him,” said the Lady in Red. “He’s got a name. And a very interesting story. Go on, ask him.”
Turning to the cowering man, Richie gritted his teeth. He was furious with the group of riders for what they had done to him and Sam. He kicked the man in the gut several times. “Tell me who you are! Tell me who the hell you are!”
“You’re crazy,” the man cried out. He retched as Richie kicked him. “Wait! Stop! No more! My name is Greg. Gregory Billot!”
Richie felt a torrent of rage open inside him. All that anger about Sam being attacked, nearly getting violated, and then almost dying at the wharf—it was all too much.
“What did you do?” he cried out, kicking Gregory again and again. “Tell me, you sorry sack of shit!”
Gregory continued to blubber, begging Richie to stop, and telling him how insane he was acting. Richie kept kicking, telling Gregory that if he didn’t start talking, he’d really show him crazy. After a dozen or so solid kicks, Gregory was starting to spit up blood. That’s when he said he’d confess everything.
Richie kept his foot ready, just in case.
“I helped screw over Samantha Castille,” Gregory said, crying into the wooden floors of the apartment. “I installed a modem in her copier, so that our boss could read her manuscripts. I swear, though, we were just supposed to steal her work. I didn’t know the boss was the Ripper, man. None of us did.”
The Lady in Red shrugged toward Richie. “I don’t believe him, but then again, I wouldn’t trust anyone who gave Cheryl Aucoin to the new Bourbon Street Ripper.”
Richie turned on Gregory, the desire to pummel him into paste growing. “You did what to that poor little girl?”
“I already told you, man,” Gregory cried out. “It was an accident.”
“You didn’t say shit to me,” Richie said, kicking him in the groin. A part of him relished the violence. He’d always fantasized about beating someone up, and now he was doing it. While he felt pangs of remorse, he also felt years of pent-up rage coming out. He could almost see the face of the man who had hurt his mother.
“Tell me what you did to Cheryl.” He felt his throat tighten around his words.
Gregory continued to sob like a little girl. “I fucked her. All the time, man. Made her shoot pictures with me. Talked her into thinking her cop daddy was an asshole who didn’t love her. I made her my little toy.”
Richie ground his teeth. Fucking pervert.
Gregory looked up at him, his lips quivering. “Cheryl was hot, in and out of bed. And Nick wanted a taste. Wanted to play with a young’n. Told me that he’d hook me up with enough blow for a month if I let him have Cheryl for one night. Christ, I didn’t know he’d fucking kill her.”
“Blow?” Richie asked. Then he realized what Gregory meant. Again, he seethed with anger. “You sold out a sixteen-year-old child for cocaine? And you call me crazy?!”
Yelling angrily, he continued to kick. When he finally realized what was happening, two hooded figures were pulling him back. Gregory looked badly beaten.
As the adrenaline wore off, Richie started to feel even more disturbed by his actions. The pangs of remorse grew. He felt like he was going to vomit. The smell of blood was thick.
“So that’s it for him,” the Lady in Red said. She looked into his eyes. “Do you want to kill him? Or should we?”
He blinked and shook his head. “No, no! Don’t do that. Come on, he confessed. Let’s drag him to the police. There’s no reason to kill him.”
“No reason?” she said, her voice suddenly deep and guttural, like a beast’s. “No reason to kill him? Need I remind you that not only have these people aided and abetted the new Bourbon Street Ripper, but they hurt your true love, Samantha Castille. And they are responsible for a sixteen-year-old
child being tortured to death.”
And then, just like that, she had her composure back. Her lips pouted as she said, “Trust me. Even the death we gave Blue-Eyed Giorgio was gentler than what Cheryl suffered.”
He looked at her and then at Gregory, who was eying him wildly. Shaking his head, he said, “I can’t watch. You do it, but don’t make me watch.”
The Lady in Red sighed. “Disembowel him.”
As Gregory started to beg for mercy, shrieking, “You’re fucking nuts,” and as the hooded figures converged on him, Richie closed his eyes. He heard the most awful sounds and smelled the most awful smells, but he refused to watch a human being die that way.
When the sounds finally died, Richie looked. Seeing Gregory with his intestines strewn about was disturbing, but Richie felt desensitized to the violence. Instead of throwing up, he just shook his head. “I need to clean off.”
Richie passed through the master bedroom on the way to the bathroom. Lying on the bed, bound and gagged but alive, was Officer Emilie Guidry. He stared at her for about a minute while she stared back, her eyes wide with terror. He felt numb to the scene. “Be right back, Emilie,” he said, going to shower off.
About fifteen minutes later, he was dressing in Jacob’s clothes.
The Lady in Red cleared her throat at the doorway. “You shouldn’t leave those there.” She nudged her head at his bloody clothes, smirking. “Police might think you witnessed a multiple homicide.”
He sighed and picked up the clothes. They were stained in blood. She offered him a plastic bag, chortling. “You, kid, would make a horrible murderer…”
“Thanks,” Richie said as he staggered into the bedroom. He honestly didn’t know what to make of the Knight Priory anymore. Part of him was still thankful for their help, but the rest of him was absolutely mortified by their recent actions.
Motioning to Officer Guidry, he said, “What about her? What did she do?”
“She is responsible for framing Samantha Castille for murder,” the Lady in Red said. “She took the skin samples her boyfriend collected and planted them inside Cheryl Aucoin.”
She rubbed Guidry’s hair, fondling it as one would check the texture of department store clothing.
Richie stared into Guidry’s eyes. He could see the remorse and fear. In that instant, he realized what she had done. He remembered his visit to Jacob earlier that day. He remembered the rough bandages with metal that had scratched his own skin. Suddenly, the plan seemed all too obvious.
Those bandages were outfitted with some kind of metal scraping thing. Jacob must have used it to get some of Sam’s skin cells. Then he gave them to Emilie, who put them in Cheryl’s body for the medical examiner to find.
He felt like a fool for not figuring it out sooner.
“So what about Jacob? Is he dead?”
“No, not yet,” replied the Lady in Red, continuing to stroke Guidry’s hair. “He’s out. When he comes in, we’ll descend upon him like wolves.”
Richie nodded and motioned back to Guidry. “And her?”
The Lady in Red leaned down and sniffed at her. “We’ll kill her, same as the others, of course…”
Guidry’s eyes got wider, and she started struggling harder. She thrashed so violently that she hit the underside of the Lady in Red’s jaw, causing her head to snap back. Shaking off the hit, the Lady in Red got a murderous look in her eyes.
“Wait!” Richie covered Guidry’s body with his own. She was crying fearfully into her gag and trying to push him off.
The Lady in Red just looked at him. Leaning back, she wiped a trickle of blood off her chin from where she had bitten her own tongue. “Boy, you have ten seconds to explain yourself to me.”
His heart pounded in his chest. As much as he hated Guidry, he knew her testimony could save Sam. “She’s a cop. If you kill her, the cops will be all over the Knight Priory. Do you want that when you’re so close to your revenge?”
This seemed to calm the Lady in Red. Adjusting her jaw once more, she sat down on a comfortable-looking chair in the corner of the room. Flipping back her long blond hair, she said, “So, then, boy, what would you do with her?”
Richie’s mind raced. He knew he needed to get Guidry out of there if he wanted to save her life. He also knew he needed to get her to testify to the police in order to save Sam. But I don’t want to piss these psychopaths off. So far, he was on the good side of the group, but he felt that one wrong move would make him a target.
He leaned down and whispered to Emilie, “Just play along.”
“What was that?” The Lady in Red sounded cross. “No whispering, boy.”
“I told her to start praying,” he lied. “I… I want to kill her myself.”
Immediately, Guidry started to thrash about like a fish, screaming into the gag.
The Lady in Red laughed. “Beautiful, little Richie. Just beautiful!” She motioned to the bedside table where a knife was embedded in the wood. “Go on. Kill her.”
Richie was sweating hard. He knew he was gambling with both his and Guidry’s lives. “No, no, too much here. I wanna take her someplace else. An alleyway. Something dirty like the whore she is…”
The Lady peered at him.
He held his breath, certain that she’d snap her fingers and point, and then, within moments, there wouldn’t be enough of him left to bury.
Instead, she started to snicker. “Yes. Yes, indeed. Very nice. Very wonderful.”
He kept up his fake smile.
Guidry had closed her eyes and was rocking back and forth, praying.
“Go ahead, then, but please don’t think we’re done.” The Lady in Red’s expression was serious as she rose.
Richie slid back as she crawled over him. He could smell her perfume, her skin, her sweat. She smelled like death.
With a throaty “mmm,” she leaned in and bit his ear, her voice eerily sensual. “If you’re wrong… and Jacob Hueber is not the new Bourbon Street Ripper… I’ll come back for you.”
He felt his junk shrink in his shorts.
She slid until she was staring him in the face. Her expression was pure cruelty. “And depending on my mood, little boy, that could be the worst day of your life.”
Leaning down, she nipped the tip of his nose in a manner that felt like complete domination. “So don’t even think about leaving town until I say you can. OK, sweetie?”
Richie nodded. As she got off him, he was grateful he hadn’t drunk anything in hours. Otherwise, he was sure he’d have pissed himself again.
A few minutes later, he was walking outside with Guidry, who was still gagged and bound. The Lady in Red’s instructions were for him to be “smart” about killing the policewoman. Richie had left from the apartment’s fire escape, leading Guidry to the alleyway below. She was quaking in fear, but she obeyed.
Once in the alley, he pressed the knife against Guidry’s back. Immediately, she started sobbing into her gag. Richie held her upright. “You’re doing great. Just continue to play along a little more. When we’re out of their view, I’ll cut your bonds. Then we make a break for it.”
The back alleys of the French Quarter were still deserted, most likely due to the strict curfew. But with Arsenault’s SWAT team completely destroyed, there was no noticeable police presence. Richie hoped they’d run into a cop. He’d rather be arrested than ever have to deal with those hooded killers again. Wait, isn’t Bourbon Street nearby? There had to be police on Bourbon Street.
As he crossed behind the apartments, he heard a lone engine, a motorcycle, stopping in front of the apartment building.
Shit, that’s got to be Jacob, he thought. Guidry must have thought the same thing, because she started struggling, crying out into her gag.
Her thrashing made it hard for him to hold onto her. “Stop it! Look, he’s as good as dead. I’m sorry. I can’t save him. I can only save you.”
She continued to struggle, and that made him nervous. If she breaks free and tries to run back to save h
er boyfriend, she’s dead and likely so am I. I need to get to a public place and fast.
Looking around, Richie saw a doorway in the middle of the alley. He pulled Guidry along as she continued to struggle. “Come on! Stop it! Why are you so hysterical? Don’t you realize I’m trying to save your life, you dumb-ass?”
He tried the doorway as soon as he got there. It was unlocked. With a sigh of relief, he went inside, pushing her along.
It was an abandoned art studio. There were a few easels in the room, and some covered paintings. A metal doorway led to what he figured was the front of the building. With a sigh of relief, he moved through the room to the metal door. “I think this building dumps out into Bourbon Street. Once we’re out, we’ll look for another officer.”
He stopped and turned her around, looking her in the eyes. She looked positively terrified. He exhaled and tried to smile comfortingly. His mouth quaked. “Listen, you framed Sam. I want you to promise that you’ll come clean. We’ll tell the police the whole truth, about the Knight Priory, how they murdered everyone, including Jacob, and so on. We’ll probably both do some time for this, but I swear to you, Emilie…”
Using her first name seemed to make Guidry lucid enough. She locked eyes with Richie, trembling.
“. . . if you promise me right now that you’ll tell the truth, I swear you’ll get out of this alive.”
Her eyes searched his for a long, silent moment. Then she nodded.
Relieved, he hugged her. She was still trembling. “I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. It’s almost over. I promise. Let’s go.”
Turning back to the metal doorway, he opened it and stepped inside.
He was not expecting what he saw.
As soon as the door opened, a light turned on in the room. It looked heavily barricaded, with no other entrance or exit, and the windows riveted shut with sheet metal. In the center of the room was a large metal operating table fitted with leather straps and a drain board. Next to the head of the table was hospital monitoring equipment—heart rate monitor, breathing machine, and intravenous drip. Nearby was a side table, with trays of scalpels, forceps, knives, and other surgical equipment. Next to it was a side table with power tools—drills, jigsaws, circular saws, and a chain saw.