by David Haynes
Dan turned his head. The voice he recognized belonged to Melody Adams’s mom, Christine. Now the shit was really going to hit the fan. She marched toward Gary who was still lying on the ground. His face was a mangled mess of blood and broken teeth.
“That true, Gary? Is what he said true?”
Gary rolled onto his back and shook his head. He tried to speak but his jaw was hanging at an odd angle. His words were unrecognizable.
“We saw it,” Paul said. “We saw inside. There’s…there’s…”
“I saw her sweater,” Ryan interrupted. “He’s got panties in there too. Girls’ panties.”
Christine Adams looked at Ryan, at Paul and then at Dan before turning back to Gary. Her mouth opened and closed in rapid succession. She blinked, raised her booted foot and stamped on his exposed groin. He wailed, frothy blood spilled over his lips.
“Stop!” Lori shouted, but Christine was raising her foot for another go. This time she brought her foot down on Gary’s neck. He grunted. Dan watched in horror, still locked in place with Paul. He knew Brad wouldn’t do anything with his rifle without Paul’s say-so. He had to hold on long enough, pray for the cops to turn up. If not, with or without his intervention, Gary Palmer would be killed.
From nowhere, something hit him behind the knee. It broke his stance, sending him to the muddy earth, but still he kept hold of the muzzle. It was harder to hold on now he was at such a bad angle but he couldn’t let go, not now.
He had time to register Brad Simmons’s ugly smile before the rifle stock smashed into his fingers, taking them off Paul’s rifle.
Paul turned to Gary immediately. He held the rifle to his shoulder as if he were about to fire. Christine had stopped kicking him but she was now on her knees, raining blows down on him with her fists.
Dan tried to get up but a shrill whine opened up in his skull. He pushed his hand down to brace himself and a flash of white-hot pain scorched through his fingers. He could see Lori trying to pull Christine away. She was resisting but eventually fell back. She buried her head in Lori’s chest and wept loudly.
Paul and the two Simmons men stood over Palmer, their rifles braced into their shoulders. They were the firing squad. Judge, jury and executioner.
“Wait!” Dan shouted, rising first to his knees and then standing. “Don’t do this, Paul! It’s not right. Anyone could have…”
He didn’t finish.
Detective Ronayne pulled back the slide on his Glock, holding it less than a foot away from Paul’s head.
“Put the gun down.” His voice was calm, not a trace of tremor in it.
“We were just keeping him here till you arrived,” Brad said.
“I know exactly what you were doing,” Ronayne replied. “Put the rifles down on the ground and step back. Both of you.” He looked at Ryan. “You too.”
Paul and Brad put down their rifles and moved away. Ryan walked backward. A few seconds later, Detective Burton arrived. He already had his firearm out.
“Check those rifles, please,” Ronayne said without turning.
Burton slid his Glock back inside the covert holster and gathered the two rifles.
“You can’t take them,” Brad whined. “They belong to us.”
“You can have them back when you tell me what the hell is going on here,” Ronayne snapped.
Lori stood up with Christine still in her arms. “You better take a look at that cabin.” She pointed at the outline of the building. “I think that will answer any questions.”
*
The whole area was cordoned off within an hour, with an enormous white tent erected over the cabin. Gary Palmer was taken away, his jaw broken and his ribs bruised but at least still alive. Another few minutes and they would have been taking him away in a bodybag.
The search parties were escorted back to the parking lot where they were directed back to town. Paul gave Dan a parting shot before driving away. “You ever get in my way again and I’ll put a bullet through your face.” His tires screeched, sending up clouds of dust.
Dan gave him the finger. He could have made a complaint of assault to the police. His cheek was swollen and sore, but he told Ronayne that it had been due to tripping over. The cop looked relieved, even if he didn’t appear to believe Dan. It was one less problem to deal with. He now had two murder suspects locked up in the town’s cells. There was no room for anyone else.
21
Anyone who touched one of his books was his.
Everyone who ran their greedy little fingers over the spine, or caressed the beautiful covers, belonged to him. That was the rule. Ergo: anyone who was killed by one of his also belonged to him.
That was how things worked, how they had always worked. It was simple, effective and easy to follow.
Castavet – that was the name he’d picked for this town – worked his way down the shelves, glancing over the covers. In truth he didn’t have a name, not one that could be spoken in the language of men anyway. But he liked how names sounded; he liked the rounded way they tripped off his tongue and through the cherry-moistened lips of his customers. Mostly though, he loved how they looked on his shelves. Each new title, a death. Each name, another soul for his collection.
He’d lost count how many he had a very long time ago. It may have been when the kings and queens of Europe still fought bloody battles and put the heads of their enemies on pikes at the gates to their palaces. Those were good days, days when subtlety wasn’t needed, when men still believed in their gods.
He ran his fingers over the embossed spines. Even in the shadowy gloom their names shone golden, the titles almost effervescing. He picked one.
“Sour Toe Candy by Lillian Peters.” He read the name and title aloud, smiling. Each story, each person, had their own place in his thoughts, in his mind. He could hear them screaming in there, screaming to get out. That would never happen of course. Never.
He remembered this particular story well. Lillian, wife, mother of twin boys, harbored designs on running her own business. She was good too, creating and designing her own candies to sell from her porch. She even bought one for him to try when she came looking for a book on startups. He didn’t stock that kind of book, he’d told her, but he had one that she might find a little more stimulating. No charge!
Lillian loved how her boys’ toes smelled. She liked to kiss them, inhale the sweet, salty vapors they produced. It made them chuckle when she did it. But they didn’t laugh much when she cut them all off with a kitchen knife. She deep-fried them, dipped them in icing sugar and tried to sell them from her porch. Her husband came home from work, found her there and snatched one of the treats. The tiny toenail he bit into was a sign that things weren’t all they should be.
By the time the cops took him away, he’d stabbed Lillian thirty-three times. The boys ended up in the system, which wasn’t all that great back in the fifties. One of them ended up overdosing on heroin, funnily enough, at the age of thirty-three. The other boy got shot by the cops after he attempted to rob a bank just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. He made it to thirty-six. Their stories were next to their mom’s on the shelf. The dad was still alive someplace, but there was a place waiting for him next to his family. It wouldn’t be right to separate them.
There was enough room for thousands more souls, on the shelves and in his mind. There had to be – it was the only way he could endure. It was an insatiable hunger, a curse that had followed him since time immemorial; since the birth of humanity and the division of the great and dark continents.
The tribes of Africa knew of him, the Arabs and the Greeks too, yet his name had slipped from their memories as easily as it had slipped from his own. The ancient myths and legends were just tall tales now, stories made up to scare kids around campfires.
He laughed and slid back the book. They were fools. Naive fools. There were others like him out there. Ancient things that loved the taste of mankind, loved the feel of their skin, the scent of their blood, in just the same way as dear
old Lillian had loved the smell of her boys’ toes.
He could not afford to underestimate humanity though, for all their stupidity. They were a superstitious lot, and it didn’t take much for them to start looking in awkward places for answers. The murderous instinct that was apparent and obvious in all mankind was sometimes forgotten in the why question. Did there need to be why? Not in his opinion. The act in itself was enough for him to take sustenance and to endure. Yet they always looked for the why. It wasn’t helpful for anyone.
He sighed, walking slowly to the window at the front of the store. His belly rumbled loudly. He was hungry. He was always hungry. He’d taken a few snacks in the last few days, but nothing to really satisfy him. A young girl here, a fat old man there, yet it didn’t really cut the mustard. He needed to spice things up a little, get some real food on the table.
He straightened his hair and adjusted his tie. He’d had a million different faces over the years, and just as many variations on those faces. But he kept coming back to the same type year after year. Nobody ever suspected the kindly old gentleman who ran the bookstore. He was eccentric, but a nice guy.
Just down the street, a group of police cars pulled up outside the station. A man who looked like he’d been beaten half to death was hauled out, his hands in cuffs. He was marched inside, followed by another five officers.
Castavet raised his eyebrows. He didn’t recognize the man as a customer, not like the old lady they took in a couple of days ago. He knew her, knew her brother too now. He could hear the disgusting slob blubbering in one of the recesses in his mind. He didn’t care for him, he’d tasted bitter. Sometimes they did but there was no way of predicting that beforehand. They were just nourishment.
Maybe one of his customers was getting creative, going off-piste, bringing others into the frame. That was excellent. His roots were spreading and that was always good news. One-offs were all well and good, but unsustainable in the long run. What he needed was another massacre, a good old bloodbath, and the only way to ensure that was to get as many people reading books as possible. Help the fever spread.
A man crossed the street toward the shop. He looked tired, as if he were supporting the whole world on his shoulders and doing it with a bad cramp running up his neck. Every step was an effort.
Castavet opened the door and took a step onto the front. “Morning!” he called out.
The man looked up, raising a barely discernable smile. “Morning,” he replied.
“Would you like to come inside for a browse?” Castavet asked. “I’ve got fresh coffee and books. Westerns? Am I right?”
The man frowned. “I’m really not looking to buy anything right now, cash flow’s not great.” He shook his head. “Don’t know why I told you that.”
Castavet laughed. “You know, I always say a good book can take you miles away from your troubles. Surest thing there is.”
“I really can’t afford…”
Castavet raised his hand. “No, no! All my new customers get a free gift for stopping by. All of them.” He turned away. “Come on, I’ll fetch it now.”
He heard the man protesting again but went inside. He would follow. They always did. Greedy fools.
He reached down behind the counter and pulled out a book. It was light. This one wouldn’t satisfy him but it was better than nothing. “Here, you’re going to love this one!”
With desperation all over his face, the man took it from him. “Thank you,” he said, actually producing a real smile this time.
“You feel better now,” said Castavet. “Just wait until you’ve read that. Then you’ll feel like a new man. You’ll love, love, love it!”
“That’s only going to happen if I can get my hands on a few grand before next weekend,” he said. “There wouldn’t happen to be a few thousand dollars inside would there?” He laughed.
“Oh, you never know!” Castavet replied. “You just never know how a story will end!”
Sooner or later the cops would come knocking, maybe ask some questions, but that was okay. It usually helped things on a little. Anyway, it didn’t matter what job you did, police officer or otherwise, all new customers got a free gift. A story written especially for them.
22
Emily Carr had always been a good girl. Her grades were above average, her attendance record was spotless and her manners impeccable. She showered before school every morning and fixed her blonde wavy hair ruler-straight before ever leaving the house. Her homework was never late and was always just enough to maintain her B-grade average. She spent Saturday mornings working at her mom’s hairdressing salon in town. When she graduated, she was going to beauty school to carry on the family business. She liked cutting people’s hair. It felt worthy.
She had only ever had one boyfriend – Sam Portland. He was a popular boy, a football player. At weekends Emily would go with her girlfriends to meet Sam and the others at the lake. They made out regularly but she had never slept with him, despite his frequent insistence. They did other things instead, some of which she liked and some she definitely didn’t. She had always been faithful to Sam, although she suspected he might not have been totally faithful to her. He’d always denied anything happened between him and Megan at that party last year, as had Megan, but the suspicion was there. Underneath everything.
Nevertheless, Emily had always been a good girl.
Until now.
Something had changed. Something fundamental had altered in the way she thought about things. Not every single thing, just some things. Sex, for example. She’d always been pretty scared about it. Pregnancy was one thing, but she thought it might hurt too, then there was the risk of catching something. It had been too much of a minefield to even consider going through with one of the nearly times with Sam. The same alerts kept pinging in her mind as soon as he unzipped his pants. Pregnancy! Disease! Pain! It was enough to scare anyone.
Until now.
She knew exactly when her thought process had altered on this particular issue – and it had, drastically – but she didn’t know why. Now she wanted to try everything. She felt as if her crotch was constantly on fire, yearning for something she couldn’t quite explain. It was like a buzzing sensation down there. A pleasant, warming buzz.
She’d satisfied herself at first, something else she was normally reluctant to do. It provided temporary relief but after a couple of days of almost constant attention, even in the school toilets, she was sore and unfulfilled.
When she watched Sam and the others at football practice, it got worse. All those sweaty boys running drills in their tight uniforms, with their cute little butts. It wasn’t Sam she watched either. She liked Sam, loved him a little too, she guessed, but she didn’t want him. Not the way she wanted some of the other boys, the ones she’d paid absolutely no attention to for the last six years.
Everything changed around the time she’d read that book; the one that the old man had given her. At first, she was going to take it straight to her mom, show her, get her to read it, and then the old guy would probably get arrested. But she didn’t do that, instead she read a little more, and then a little more later that night when everyone was asleep. It was an awakening.
She’d met Tom Holiday quite by chance in the mall one Thursday night. She’d been picking up some supplies for her mom’s salon when he literally ran into her. He would have knocked her clean on her ass if he hadn’t grabbed her and held her upright.
“Aww, sorry Ems, didn’t see you.”
He was a big, likable lump of boy. Part of the offensive line and absolutely, one-hundred percent virgin territory. He smiled down at her, his big dopey eyes full of apology.
“You okay? Sam will kill me if I hurt you.”
She laughed. “It’s okay, Tom. I’m fine.”
“You sure? I don’t want…”
“Positive.” She paused. “Although I don’t suppose you could give me a ride home, could you? I’ve got all this stuff and I don’t really want to take the bus.”<
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He beamed. “You bet.”
She squeezed his bicep. “When did you get so big?” she asked.
He blushed. “Hey, leave it out, don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I never realized how strong you were.”
Her mom was at the salon for the rest of the afternoon and her dad was playing golf with his buddies. Tom Holiday was her first, she was his. It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering but Emily’s world had just changed and, at least in her opinion, for the better.
Tom Holiday wasn’t enough. He was a nice guy and all, but that wasn’t exactly what she was after. In fact, it was in no way what she was after. The next guy, Matthew Priest, had taken her in the back of his dad’s Audi Sedan. It was better, but only just. There wasn’t much room and Matt was worried about staining the leather upholstery too much to truly let go.
She made it through five of the football team before she understood what she needed to do. That was just before Ryan and Sam had got into it in school. She enjoyed watching them fighting, fighting over her. It had been a real turn-on. Poor old Sam had heard the rumors himself, he must have, but he never said anything to her about them. Maybe he was too scared to hear what she might say if he asked. If he did, she knew she would tell him straight, tell him exactly what she had been up to. Do what he had never been able to do after he’d fooled around with Megan.
Fucking Megan. After dealing with the fallout from her and Ryan’s split, she had been almost unbearable to be around. She said she was still a virgin, but Emily wasn’t sure about that. She was seeing a new guy now. Another quarterback, the second-string choice after Ryan Simmons quit the team. Jacob Straw had made first choice by default, not skill. He wasn’t as good-looking as Ryan, before Megan ruined him. He wasn’t as talented, but his ego had been stoked by being first choice and most importantly by dating Megan. Fucking Megan.
She was Emily’s best friend. Always had been. They had grown up together but Megan was always better than her, or thought so. She was prettier, she got better grades, she dated the best-looking guys in school and she pretended to be virtuous. She made Emily sick. Even more so after last year. They hadn’t spoken of it, but Megan seemed to believe she could do what she wanted without consequence where boys were concerned. She once made out with a boy just because she’d fallen out with his girlfriend. She was a user.