Strangers

by Mort Castle

  He turned away from her like a figure on a revolving music-box, bending, shoulders hunched, hand to his face, grunting, “You hurt me.” She whirled, picking up the portable television on the dresser, palms pressed on either side of the plastic cabinet. It was no heavier than a beach ball. The plug popped out of the socket as she lifted it, then smashed it, screen down, against the curve of his spine directly beneath his shoulderblades.

  His yell and the glassy-banging whump of the imploding picture were simultaneous. The set tumbled off his back.

  He was on his knees, feet touching the base of the dresser, head and arms draped over the foot of Kim’s bed. A ragged circle was blasted in his shirt and the flesh of his back looked like ground red meat, dotted with bits of gristle, and stringy yellow cords.

  But then he raised his head, glared at her, the corner of his mouth twisting up into the bloody streamers she had carved into his face—and he still held the knife.

  She jumped over his legs and the wrecked television. She screamed, “Marcy!” and ran.

  The stairway was dark. She sped down it but she was careful. She could not afford a misstep.

  Marcy would live!

  As soon as she reached the foyer, she heard him. He was on the steps, coming after her. She needed a new weapon.

  She dashed into the dark living room. She felt her way along the couch to the end table, traced the crystal lamp’s cord to the outlet and unplugged it. Holding the lamp by its base, she pressed back against the wall.

  “Beth?”

  He was in the foyer.

  “Beth?”

  He was in the living room.

  She squinted. She saw nothing.

  And then he was there, his smile nightmarish white, an arm’s length in front of her. She swung the lamp, felt it hit his upper arm or shoulder, saw the prisms hang in the air between them like too perfect hailstones and then she felt a fiercely cold instrument right below her breastbone.

  She dropped the lamp. She rose up on tiptoe as the blade of the knife worked higher within her. They were united now, she thought, for the first time, she and the one who had masqueraded as husband-lover-friend. They were joined by the knife that tore through every pretense and every barrier between them.

  I tried, Marcy, she thought. Live, Marcy! She looked at her murderer, saw a stranger, said, “You old codfish,” and died.

  The Stranger rested on the living room sofa. Now was his time, The Time of The Stranger, yet things had not gone as they should have. The child died much too easily and quickly. Her eyes not even open and, like that! she was dead. After the suffocating years in the bodily prison of Michael Louden, the first glorious rush of freedom had overwhelmed him; he had not been able to restrain himself.

  And the woman! She, an insignificant, meaningless nothing had hurt him.

  Oh, he was in pain, but he was almost glad for it. Severe pain was a unique sensation, one he had never expected to experience. He knew now what his victims felt, what his victims-to-be would feel, and that gave him new appreciation for his birthright, his killing gift.

  The Stranger rose. A victim awaited him, awaited his pleasure! He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with blood-death scent. He felt his strength surge omnipotent within him.

  Would she yet be asleep downstairs, now, after all the noise? It was possible. Children slept through hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. And if she were not asleep—perhaps huddled terrified but in an agony of imaginations, oh, better still! A game of hide and seek. Come out, come out, wherever you are!

  He went into the dark kitchen and opened the door leading downstairs.

  “Enroll now at DeLand School of electronics for the sake of your future.” He heard the television commercial. Quietly, clenching the butcher knife handle, he walked down the steps.

  The television was the room’s only lighting. He went to the sofa.

  She was not there!

  “MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

  The soprano shout behind him sent him jumping six inches into the air, whirling. Another commercial filled the TV screen, an animated advertisement for orange juice, splashing the room with garish, pulsing light, turning her into a psychedelic blur as she ran at him.

  She was stiff-armed. It seemed as though she were being pulled like a water-skier gripping a tow-rope, but she held the wooden handles of the hedge-clippers.

  With all her weight and speed driving them, the closed blades punched into him an inch above the belt-line, piercing cloth and flesh.

  He shrieked and, no strength in his arm, no strength in him at all, dropped the butcher knife. She drove him back and he plopped down onto the sofa. She was on him, straddling his thigh, working the handles of the clippers, twisting and tearing.

  He threw back his head and tried to scream again. He could not. The scream was not in his throat. It was white-hot and echoing in the huge, gut-torn crater from his navel to his ribs.

  “Guess I’m a naughty girl, huh, Daddy?” she said, with a giggle. She pulled the handles of the clippers fully apart.

  Everything inside him was torn loose, uprooted, and spilling out onto his lap. All that remained was the excruciating pain.

  “I know you’ll have to give me a good spanking for this!” she said. Then she jumped off him, leaving the hedge-clippers rooted in his body. She stepped backward a pace, then another.

  “Oh, Daddy, sweet daddy, nice daddy, smart, smart daddy. Is this one of those times when Daddy could just kill his little girl?”

  Kill her! He had no strength but the power of the thought itself brought him to his feet. The hedge-clippers tore loose of his massive wound and fell on his foot.

  It hurt. He was amazed that he could feel such a tiny hurt while being consumed by a total, great hurt.

  Kill her! Kill her!

  He managed a half step and his intestines and blood spewed onto his legs and shoes.

  “Come on, fall down and die, you dumb bastard.”

  Kill her!

  A foot slid forward into the stinking, slippery mound. He fell down and he died.

  — | — | —

  EPILOGUE

  IN CHICAGO, Eddie Markell was tired and he wanted a drink. He was always tired and he always wanted a drink. He went into a sleaze-hustle bar on Rush Street. First came his drink and then came the B-girl with the hustle. After all, a guy shouldn’t be lonely on Christmas Eve.

  Eddie Markell said, “You know, I don’t give a shit.” That summed it up for him. It was The Time of The Strangers and he had waited too long. He shattered the rim of the glass on the table, rammed the jagged edges into her face, and twisted.

  She screamed, spraying blood all over and by then Eddie was on his feet, the .357 out. He fired at the bar and the heavy slug literally atomized a three square foot section of it.

  By no coincidence at all, Joe Rimaldi was at the tavern. He was a vice-cop come to collect his Christmas bonus from the management for not doing his job. But when push came to shove, the fat was in the fire, Joe Rimaldi was, by God, a cop and that nut with the monster pistol was…a nut with a monster pistol.

  Joe Rimaldi pulled his Police Positive. His first shot went wild and the second smacked Eddie Markell in the chest.

  “I don’t give a shit,” Eddie Markell said.

  When the .357 slug hit him, Joe Rimaldi died instantly and, dead, did a double back flip over a table.

  Eddie Markell emptied his pistol, killing three people. He left the bar and got halfway down the block before he collapsed and died.

  It was “hot Dr. Pepper” time for the Rasmussens. At Christmas time, their drink of choice was heated Dr. Pepper with floating slices of orange and lemon. A Dr. Pepper punch bowl was on the table in the center of all the cookies and brownies and fudge bars and peanut butter balls Grandma and Mom had made.

  Karl Rasmussen, Jr. was sipping his third cup of hot Dr. Pepper, an orange slice tapping his front teeth. Ask anyone, the finest young man in Monroe, Wisconsin was Karl Rasmussen, Jr. The blon
d high school senior maintained a B plus average in the college prep program, played football and basketball, was president of the First Lutheran Church’s youth group, participated in Future Farmers of America and 4-H, and was, along with his father, a full dues-paying, voting member of the county dairy cooperative.

  Karl Rasmussen, Jr. said, “I’ve got a surprise for all of you”—all being his father, Karl, Sr., and mother, Anne Marie, his nine-year-old sister, Lynn, Grandma and Grandpa Rasmussen, and Judy Stelter, his steady girl friend. Karl went to his bedroom.

  Like virtually every country boy, Karl liked hunting and for his fourteenth birthday, his parents had given him a Hi-Standard Supermatic Deluxe, a twelve gauge, five shot, auto-loading shotgun. It was the surprise he returned with.

  “Let’s all get together, real close together, right there in front of the fireplace.”

  “Karl, Jr.,” his mother said, “this is not funny.

  Karl, Jr. shrugged. “Depends on how you look at it. I’ve always had a quiet sense of humor.”

  Karl, Sr. realized the seriousness of the situation. He said, “Son, I want you to put down that gun so we can talk, father and son, okay? You tell me now, are you taking drugs?”

  Karl, Jr. smiled in the winning way he had for his yearbook photo. “Yes, Dad, I am. I have overdosed on hot Dr. Pepper.”

  “I’m sorry no one came to see you, Dr. Prescott,” Miss Williams said. She had drawn Christmas Eve duty at the small nursing home in Lebanon, Missouri. “It must make you feel terrible that nobody cares if you live or die. Well, I care—and I want you to die.”

  Miss Williams had an ice-pick. Twice in the chest and once in the throat and then Miss Williams left Mr. Prescott’s room. There were six other patients on the floor.

  “Laura,” Vern Engelking said, “let’s exchange gifts.” They sat at the kitchen table.

  “Now? Don’t you want to wait until tomorrow?”

  “Ah, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps into your pretty pants from day to day.”

  Laura giggled. “You sly old fox! You’re feeling all romantic, aren’t you?”

  Vern said, “Ah, love of my life, believe me you cannot know the depths of my feeling for you at this very point in time.”

  “Do you want your gift now?” Laura said. “I mean, the one I bought you? The other gift you’re hinting for we’ll arrange when we get to bed.”

  “No-no-no,” Vern said. “I wish to bestow my special gift upon you first, my dear.”

  “I’ll bet I know what it is,” Laura said. “I’ve certainly dropped enough hints about that diamond necklace.”

  “Close your eyes, my dear.”

  “You’re being so silly, Vern!”

  “If you don’t close your eyes, you won’t get your fine surprise,” he said in a sing-song.

  She closed her eyes. He stepped behind her, took a nylon cord from his pocket, looped it around her neck and drew it tight.

  “Gaah!” Laura’s head shot forward. Vern pulled her back. Her face turned red and then blue. Her eyes bulged and the veins at her temples writhed. Her tongue shot far out of her mouth.

  Slowly, slowly, Vern Engelking increased the pressure.

  There is a “New South” where whites and blacks go to the same schools, work in the same places, and even socialize together, but in Beau Bien, Mississippi remains “Old South,” and the white people there maintain their tradition—of “Keeping the colored in their place.” That’s why Lee Charles Deveraux, the manager of the Beau Bien Holiday Inn, always addressed thirty-year-old Willie Jones, a custodian, as “boy.”

  It wasn’t that he was fed up with being called “boy” that made Willie Jones go to Lee Charles Deveraux’s office and kill him, slashing his throat with a pearl-handled straight razor that had been his father’s. Willie Jones did that because it was Christmas Eve and it was his time.

  Then Willie Jones took the master key to all the Holiday Inn rooms. There weren’t many guests at the motel but Willie and his razor were busy for well over two hours.

  The emergency room staff at New York’s Bellvue Mental Hospital were ready for an overflow crowd. The holiday season was not a universal time of gladness and joy. For many people, it was time for a crack-up, time to blow their tops, to blast off into the ozone. Christmas was a time for crazies.

  Nobody thought Dr. Juan Castillo was going to go crazy. In addition to Spanish and English, the middle-aged psychiatrist spoke passable Yiddish and Italian. He was the one who could usually calm down a psycho, get him responding in a more or less rational way. Dr. Juan Castillo was the heart-of-gold staffer others at Bellevue went to see when the job pressures were squeezing them because he was one easy guy to talk to.

  Dr. Juan Castillo didn’t have the clipboard he usually carried when he came into the emergency room. He had a machete and he started swinging it.

  Caroline Lynch had lived in Indianapolis all her life and was happy about the prospect of going somewhere else, even though she did not know where that would be. She was fifteen, mature and responsible, and, because tonight was Christmas Eve, the Hansens were paying her two dollars and fifty cents an hour to baby-sit their three year old Eric. She was, of course, free to raid the refrigerator, to take anything she wanted.

  She didn’t bother with the refrigerator. She went to Mr. Hansen’s tool box and took out a hammer and pounded Eric Hansen’s head to a pulp.

  The Hansens had told her she might use the telephone just as long as she didn’t tie it up too long. Her call to another Stranger took only a minute and he came and got her and they drove west, away from Indiana.

  His last name was Friday but he was not a sergeant, just a uniformed patrolman with the Los Angeles Police Department, and his first name was Emil, and not Joe, but that didn’t lessen at all the amount of bullshit he had to put up with:

  “Dum-de-dum-dum,” when he stepped into the locker-room, a gang of idiots with the theme from Dragnet.

  Or stopping a motorist for speeding and, “Is your badge number 714?”

  Tonight, though Emil Friday had more on his mind than the grief he had because of his name. It was Christmas Eve and, in his words, “Christ, everyone is killing everyone.” Their gumball lights demanding “Make way,” the siren blasting, they were racing to investigate a stabbing on Sepulveda. The radio was crackling with reports of shooters and knifers and hot damn! You name it bad scenes.

  “Just what the hell is going on?”

  “Tell you what it is,” said his partner, Ralph Washburn, who was behind the wheel of the patrol car. “It’s a good time to kill, if you know what I mean.”

  “Huh?” said Emil Friday.

  Ralph suddenly swung a hard left and squealed into the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant.

  “What the hell…”

  Ralph twisted his upper body. He was holding his pistol and he jammed it into Emil Friday’s throat and pulled the trigger. “And those are just the facts, Friday,” he said.

  The snow fell dream-like, blanketing the world with the purity and cleanliness seen only in vintage Bing Crosby Christmas musicals. The Buick Regal pulled into the driveway of the house on Walnut Street. Vern Engelking sounded the horn for the briefest of instants and left the engine running.

  “Which one?” he said.

  “We’ll find out,” Jan Pretre said.

  The front door opened and Marcy Louden stepped out. She was dressed for winter, in her blue, white trimmed parka and boots. The hood of the parka was back.

  “I wish you could see it, Vern,” Jan Pretre said. “Her aura is almost blinding. I’ve never seen one like it. It’s so much more intense than when I first saw her at your house.”

  Marcy was slowly walking toward the car.

  “Michael never knew?”

  “Michael thought he knew everything,” Jan Pretre said.

  Marcy got in the front between them. “Well?” Jan Pretre asked.

  “You told me to be ready and I was ready, Jan. I used the hedge-clipp
ers. There were a lot of other things I had hidden all over the house, just in case, but the hedge-clippers worked fine. So, they’re all dead,” Marcy giggled sweetly. “Even Chopper, the guinea pig. I got him just like I got the other one.”

  Vern Engelking backed out ‘of the driveway. The three Strangers drove into the snowing silent night to kill and kill and kill…

  — | — | —

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Four time Bram Stoker Award nominee, four time Pushcart Prize nominee, and International Horror Guild award and Pulitzer Prize nominee Mort Castle has published seven novels, two short story collections, three chapbooks, dozens of comic books, one CD, and some “other stuff,” including journalism, gags and captions for cartoons, and the entire print advertising campaign for a hog farm flooring system manufacturer. He edited the essential reference work WRITING HORROR: THE HORROR WRITERS ASSOICATION HANDBOOK, from Writer’s Digest Books, is the only living author to have stories in all five volumes of the acclaimed Masques anthology series edited by J.N. Williamson, and, along with legendary blues diva KoKo Taylor (“Wang-Dang-Doodle”) and Broadway and Hollywood actress Etel Billig (Project Greenlight) was named one of “21 Leaders in the Arts for the 21st Century in Chicago’s Southland.”

  Though Castle’s recent story collections Moon on the Water and Nations of the Living, Nations of the Dead, have been widely praised and award nominated, his horror writing is perhaps best represented by the novels The Strangers, published in 1984, and Cursed Be the Child, 1990. The Strangers was labeled “one great scary book” by The Star and is currently optioned for film. Cursed Be the Child “deserves to be acclaimed a classic” wrote Rave Reviews, and has also been published in Germany (an abridged edition) and Poland, where it earned such praise as: Kilka s?ów o “Zagubionych duszach” od autora: “Opisuj?c obyczaje i wierzenia Cyganów w tej ksi??ce opiera?em si? na gruntownych badaniach, jednak?e przy paru okazjach wymy?li?em cyga?skie przys?owie lub bajk?. (...) Chocia? w ksi??ce mowa jest o zboczeniach seksualnych - napastowaniu nieletnich, gwa?tach, pedofilii i kazirodztwie - nie ma ?adnych scen opisuj?cych szczegó?owo akty seksualne pomi?dzy doros?ymi a dzie?mi. (...)”