“Somethin’ to eat? Twenty percent off everything.”
“Maybe later.” The guy had an odd sense of timing, thinking that anyone would have an appetite after hearing about Barbara Nichols. I’d checked in earlier with Marilyn, who’d confirmed that my schedule was clear. She’d asked again if everything was okay; I’d lied again and told her it was. Okay? People were dying around me, and I was riddled with confusion about the situation with Cathy and Jennifer. Above all else, there was the specter of Molly. The difficulty in life is the choice.
Jack had reinforced my inclination to bring the relationship with Jennifer to a firm and abrupt end. Cathy had been there for me, by my side through the meds and the shrinks. And Molly was paramount. When I’d slinked past Molly’s bedroom to head downstairs after that fateful interlude with Jennifer, I hadn’t even been able to bring myself to look in on her.
I needed to dredge up my balls for the one-on-one with Cathy. The simple fact was that I had no explanation for the late nights. Maybe the best I could hope for was to beg forgiveness and ask her to let us just move on. Promising to recommit to our sessions with Father McGraw would be essential. But every succinct little speech that came to mind sounded trite. And if Cathy said that she’d had enough and ordered me to pack a bag, get the hell out, I wasn’t even sure where I’d spend the night. The bartender set the fresh round in front of me, and I sipped the whiskey, recalling Jennifer’s comfy leather furniture. One glimpse of her pink underwear that night, and my mind had drilled in on one thing and one thing only. I had failed to even consider the ramifications—such as endangering my relationship with Molly.
If Cathy tossed me in the street, I’d have to, at the very least, drop to my knees and implore her to temper any explanation to our daughter. We could explain to Molly that I needed some time alone, that I was going through a difficult period … any rationale that avoided words or phrases such as abandoned, ran out, threw our marriage away—all of which, of course, would be perfectly appropriate.
The temptation to rationalize my adultery was immense. Jennifer had lunged for me, her tongue eager, her fingers exploring, her mouth enveloping the strawberry jam coating my erection. And her last statement to me, about knowing where to find her if I wanted to talk. Or anything. I shook my head and finished the shot.
“One more, okay?” I said to the barman. “Whiskey: more sincere than a woman’s kiss, right?”
He gave me a long look. “You sure about that shot?”
Sometimes the old days seemed attractive, before the PC folks took over and getting hammered became some kind of crime. Now some punk in a T-shirt was determining my alcohol intake. I sat there for a couple of minutes, debating whether to argue with him. He studiously ignored me and polished the far end of the bar. Maybe the booze I’d washed down with Jack at the Parkview had stuck with me and I was coming across as more hammered than I thought.
I was about to give the guy some lip when the TV caught my attention. They were broadcasting another piece on Barbara Nichols, the screen filled with her winsome visage. Somebody had lost a daughter. I shut my eyes and thought of Molly’s pretty, innocent face. If she was torn from my life, I could not carry on. Even the prospect of no longer living under the same roof was painful. I shoved away the half-empty mug of beer.
“Hey,” I said, to catch the bartender’s attention. I glanced at my watch. I was already going to be late, and I sure as hell had better not show up smashed. “Just a cup of coffee, black. And a large ice water.”
He shrugged. “You got it.”
There was a multipaned window at the end of the bar. Twilight had descended over the city like a morbid warning, prompting people everywhere to get their kids inside and secure the doors. I thought of Cathy and Molly and how I should have been with them every single night when they were sitting home behind the double locks. I vaguely wondered whether a telephone discussion with Cathy might be the better choice. Just my voice and hers, talking in the shadows. Later, I could call Jack and offer to buy him a couple of drinks, smooth things over. Maybe I could even phone Jennifer and work toward an understanding. All the scattered little pieces of my life could be arranged in one long night.
I sipped the hot coffee and then rubbed my face with my hands. Who was I kidding? There would be no tidy ending. Cathy deserved to stare into my eyes and tell me exactly what she wanted. Let her scream, let her cry, let her roll her hand into a fist and strike me. I was mired in a quicksand mess of my own making. I had forfeited any right to object. After finishing the coffee and draining the water in a few long gulps, I paid the tab.
Outside, I paused under a streetlight, styled after an old gas lamp, to turn my cell back on. No calls. Cathy would be waiting now, watching the clock. I focused on my drunken march along the brick sidewalk, toward the parking lot. The bartender had been right; I’d had enough. The attendant had departed for the day, and only a few cars remained. Except for a couple of stoner kids carousing on the corner, the streets were barren.
I was halfway to my Buick when I heard a faint voice, a soft cry.
“Help me.”
It sounded, definitely, like a woman’s voice. The plea came from a narrow alley that led all the way from the parking lot to the next street. I stared at the dark opening, hoping that my imagination had been in overdrive. Hearing nothing more, I turned back toward the car. Then, unmistakably, there was the voice again. I looked around and tentatively stepped toward the alley. Not twenty feet down the corridor, a figure was huddled against the brick wall.
She looked up as I approached, her features obscure in the dim light. “They’re gone. Took my purse.”
“Sorry.” The alley reeked as if half the city’s wino population urinated back there. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. I helped her up and offered to call the police. As she smiled, a sliver of light caught her face and she looked vaguely familiar. With a glance over my shoulder, she said, “For Daddy.”
There was a sudden movement behind me. Something hard smacked against my head, and my legs buckled. Tiny dots of lights twinkled as the dark stones of the alley floor rushed toward me.
22
“Come now, wake up. That’s a good boy.”
The cooing voice drifted to me as the sharp odor of ammonia bit into my nostrils. My head jerked as my brain throbbed to consciousness. Cold steel bit into my wrists, and I grasped that I was hanging by my arms, suspended from the ceiling. Tape was plastered across my mouth, securing a wad of mildewed cloth as a gag.
“Remember me?”
I willed my eyes open. The woman before me appeared to be in her late sixties. Her shiny hair was dyed raven-black, and her lips were coated with bright red lipstick. I suddenly recognized her as the woman who worked at Havlicek’s.
She gripped my face and peered up at me as though she were conducting an inspection. As if reading my mind, she said, “You now know who I really am, of course.”
My throat was parched, and I was about to piss myself. The Butcher. I remembered the black guy with no dick, Barbara Nichols, and what’d been done to her ass. Oyster and some unknown corpse on a beach, all carved apart.
She released her hold on me and stepped away. “I know, you’re thinking how ironic that I really am a butcher. Isn’t life humorous?” She plucked a stray thread from her red cocktail dress. “The work is enjoyable, even if Mr. Havlicek is a dullard.”
I had been stripped, and my feet were fixed in manacles, connected by an iron bar bolted into the floor. My eyes darted, wild, taking in the cramped room. An old white refrigerator was shoved against the concrete wall near me. A filthy window casing, the panes covered in ragged black curtains, was set high in the opposite wall. A long wooden workbench was positioned beneath the window, and an array of tools littered the worktop—knives, saws, and a meat cleaver.
“I’m so glad you’ve recovered. Sometimes he hits with such force that the game is already over.” She turned and barked up the staircase, “Billy!”
The staircase was separated from the room by a stark wooden wall, and heavy footfalls pounded down the steps. A huge man, at least six foot four, lurched into view. His muscles bulged beneath a skintight black T-shirt, and his bald head shone in the basement lights.
“Please, meet my little brother.” The Butcher rested a hand against my cheek. “Please understand that he’s not being rude, Mr. Coleman. Billy doesn’t talk; he just assists me.”
A monster, and his name was Billy, like a kid? He shuffled a few steps toward me and fixed his dead-fish eyes on mine. He said not a word.
“There is a delicious symmetry here, don’t you think? The games I played with your father, and now you are here, in my home, to play some other games.” She crossed her arms. “Tell me, after he shot himself, did you have to clean up the mess?”
I wanted to kill her. I wanted to break my shackles, grab a knife from the workbench, and drive the blade into her chest.
A smile tugged at the Butcher’s red lips. “Sounds are muffled here, Mr. Coleman, but please don’t cry out. We’re just going to have a pleasant little chat. Billy?”
He handed her a pair of latex surgical gloves.
“These days, one can’t be too careful,” she remarked as she slipped them on.
She ripped the tape from my mouth and removed the cloth, damp with my saliva. Billy, having donned his own pair of gloves, took the rag from her. His thick knuckles were visible through the stretched white latex.
“Please, let me go.” My voice was a whisper. “I have a wife, a daughter.”
The Butcher chuckled. “I’m well aware of that, Mr. Coleman. I’ve watched you, intermittently, over the years. They’re both quite pretty.”
“Please.” The thought that she’d seen Cathy and my little girl was unbearable. Tears filled my eyes. I prayed to God that the sacrifice of my life would ensure that she’d never follow my family again.
“Really, begging? That is so unseemly. I’m sure that your wife and child will miss you terribly. You can take comfort in that.”
The finality of her words made me shut my eyes for a moment. I didn’t want to wind up in a deserted alley with my dick cut off and a rag stuffed up my ass. Molly couldn’t grow up plagued by nightmares of a butchered father. And Cathy—in the back of my mind, I realized that she was the one I thought of, not Jennifer—should be nestled on the living room sofa with me, holding hands.
I wanted the chance to make it right.
“You’re not making this very interesting, Mr. Coleman. Should we just replace the gag and continue on?”
I knew that she was toying with me as part of her sick game but had no idea what to say to a woman who’d abducted me, trussed me naked, and hung me from a ceiling. “No, I … I …”
“Come now, please, don’t bore me. You remember my letter, of course?” She reached forward to massage my nipples with the latex gloves.
“I was just a kid.”
“Haunted you, didn’t it? I’m an expert in psychology, you see. Nightmares, Mr. Coleman. I know exactly how to cause them.”
She could never know how well she’d succeeded. My tantrums, the dreams. Wetting my bed in high school, for God’s sake.
She pinched my cheeks. “I needed to make certain that you’d remember me and wonder if I was watching you. The day your father cheated me, I decided that you would be my final victim. How delicious.”
“Cheated you? You drove him …”
“To blow his brains out? Are those the words you were groping for? Or should I say, for which you were groping?”
I remembered the mop, the sponge, the smear of red and white. “You bitch.”
Her eyes grew wide, and she stepped back, motioning to Billy. He swayed toward me and punched me in the stomach. The bouncer at the Alley wouldn’t have stood a chance against him. I sagged against the chain that suspended me from the ceiling and, as the wind rushed from me, I nearly vomited.
“Profanity is prohibited in my house,” the Butcher said.
My stomach cramped, my guts felt ruptured. Air came in quick gasps.
She sauntered toward me and rested a solicitous hand against my cheek. “Are you all right?”
I struggled to catch my breath. She wanted me conscious and alert for whatever she had in store. Billy hovered nearby, his fists clenched.
“I so enjoyed breaking your father, Mr. Coleman—delicious—but he took the coward’s way out.”
A vivid image of that gory bathroom replayed in my mind. “He was no coward.”
“But I valued our jousting, and he ended it too soon, don’t you see? That was cheating. The police nearly did apprehend us; your father made far more progress than he ever knew.”
“You called him hapless.”
She pursed those red lips. “Because of him, we had to collect our trophies elsewhere, enjoyable out-of-town jaunts. Playing was easy—hitchhikers, runaways. Nobody misses the dregs.”
I wondered how many devastated families she had left in her squalid wake, parents and spouses and shattered children who would never forget that someone they loved had been dismembered and left to rot. Trophies?
“We enjoyed our trips, Mr. Coleman, but my intention never wavered. Returning and once more outwitting the press and those idiots in blue. A triumphant reiteration of our Cleveland game—ending with you.”
Jack’s line about figuring these sick fucks out, came back to me. There would be no reconciliation with Cathy. Molly would grow up without a father. The Butcher was insane, and I was going to die.
Strutting away from me, her heels clacking against the floor, she popped open the refrigerator. The door swung toward me so I was unable to see inside. “Say hello to your friend.”
She extended her arm, her fingers knotted in the hair of Oyster’s severed head. Those curious eyes were now opaque, not really eyes anymore, but desiccated lumps of soft flesh. His skin was pallid, and the neck tissue, where they’d knifed through, was a dark grayish hue.
“We peel away the flesh after awhile and preserve the skulls.” She sounded like a proud collector of rare artifacts. “Oyster’s eyes are so unique, don’t you think? A special treat for my brother.”
Billy’s head bobbed, and he rocked back and forth on his heels, his blank gaze fixed on Oyster’s bulbous eyes. Bile rose in my throat, and a sob escaped me. She returned Oyster’s head, like leftover pasta, to the refrigerator and approached me, her bright lips leading the way.
“We knew each other from Havlicek’s, so choosing when and how to take him was an exceptionally facile way to resume our Cleveland fun. Not that you were much more of a challenge.”
I envisioned her, skulking in the dark, waiting for me to close the tab at Great Lakes and fall for her simple ruse. Setting me up so that Billy boy could slam something into my skull.
“I chose Oyster, of course, because you knew him. Did his death unsettle you, Mr. Coleman?” She chuckled.
I lifted my head. “Did you kill his son, too?”
“Not my style. Amateurish.”
“Photos, of me and my family. Oyster’s daughter. You took those.”
She scrunched her face dismissively. “No idea what you’re talking about, although that sounds like quite clever fun.” She reached toward Billy, and he dropped the gag in her hand, as though they were a practiced surgical team. “You’ve made our conversation tedious.”
“Wait, please.” I knew that once the gag was in, she’d want to play with her toys on the workbench.
“We’ll chat some more later.” She rested the palm of her free hand against the last part of my anatomy I wanted her touching. “There will come a time when you snap, when you’ll babble and drool and weep. But I’ll take every possible measure to preserve your lucidity as long as humanly possible.”
A chill ran through me as she cradled the most precious part of me in her palm. Her hand moved to my chest. My heart was pounding, and I imagined her grabbing it, squeezing the beating organ, my blood running through h
er fingers.
She nodded to her brother. “Let’s play.”
I clenched my mouth shut, but Billy grabbed my jaw and squeezed, forcing my gnashing teeth apart. He held my head in place, while the Butcher inserted the grimy rag and applied thick strips of tape. She smiled and then marched over to the workbench, the heels of her shoes striking the concrete floor. Click, clack, click, clack. Her back was to me, but I heard her rummaging, metal striking metal, while Billy ran his index finger up and down my arm. He glared at me, and I shuddered. The Butcher turned, holding a long-handled bolt cutter.
“Which little piggy, Billy?”
He made a sound, like a cough, and crouched down. His stubby finger tapped against the little toe on my left foot.
The Butcher smiled, and minute cracks appeared in her lipstick. “A good choice.”
She scrunched her face and fixed her piercing eyes on me. Billy stood, watching. The room was as silent as snowfall. My feet were totally immobilized. I tugged against the restraints, swiveled my waist a few inches, as the Butcher gripped the bolt cutter with both hands. She opened the handles, snapped them shut, once, twice, three times. “Billy oils all the working parts.”
The Butcher lowered the cutter, and I curled the toes of my foot as tightly as possible. She chuckled. “That never works.”
She fit the scissor-like blades around my little toe. Waiting, she forced me to sense the cold weight of the blades, feel their sharpness. My skin parted as she rocked the instrument back and forth. Her florid lips pursed, she cracked the handles together, and my foot was drenched from the blood.
I screamed into the gag, and it filled every crevice in my mouth. Tears burned in my eyes. A madwoman in a red dress and her lunatic brother were prepared to hack me to bits.
The Butcher stepped away and surveyed her handiwork, handing the dripping bolt cutter to Billy. “That’s how I was taught to do it, Mr. Coleman, by our father.”
She smiled warmly at Billy. “He looks so much like his daddy.”
The Company of Demons Page 15