Alison?
. . . she was in the bathtub, where a steady tide of pink water surfed over the rim and splashed on the floor. Jonathan could see her hand, languidly draped over the stark white porcelain of the tub’s rim, a hand that was china white now, pale as a death shroud. Above her, stark, crimson, and splattered on the wall were words written in the smeared blood of the girl he had loved in the night and joked with in the morning. The girl who had sworn to bear his children.
JONATHAN—HAPPY BIRTHDAY—HORACE PINKER!
He let his father pull him away. There was too much to see, too much red, too much pink, too much white.
pink
pinker
horace pinker
He felt himself standing at the cliff edge of insanity as Don dragged him away from the horror that had occurred in the bathroom. And well, why not? How much terror can the human mind experience before a fuse or two blow and blot out reason? How can it be prevented?
Only one way came to mind as Jonathan was hauled into the living room and dumped on the couch with his shoulder pads rattling like old bones. Only one way to fight this horror.
It was time to get mad. Time to get very, very mad.
Mad like angry, or mad like a dog?
Jonathan felt something harden inside him, a determination that Horace Pinker would die much the same as Alison had. Very, very much the same.
Mad like a dog, then. He had no problem with that.
No problem at all.
No More Mister Nice Guy.
Chapter •
Five
The funeral was awful. Jonathan, dressed in a fine and proper suit, sat during the ceremony with a lump in his throat that had nothing to do with the knot of his tie, which he had managed to jerk into an unrecognizable ball about the size of an orange. He endured the hour-long ceremony though, not caring how disheveled he might look, endured it and went with the procession of cars to the cemetery.
The burial was awful. The coffin was closed, and stayed that way while a Presbyterian minister droned on about the glories to be found in heaven. Jonathan doubted it. If heaven was so great, why not just nuke the planet and send everybody off to a fabulous and cost-free eternity? It didn’t make much sense. Neither did anything else.
The coffin was lowered. Jonathan felt like screaming. For God’s sake, his mind echoed over and over again. For God’s sake, she’s only nineteen!
God didn’t mind. The coffin was cranked down into its cement liner, the lid of the liner lowered with ropes, and Jonathan had the awful pleasure of tossing in the first handful of dirt.
Awful. Awful awful awful. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep without waking up in the night with tears just this side of his eyeballs and a scream of denial building behind his lips. The days stunk. The nights were, well … awful. Jonathan felt pale and weak and hopeless, waiting for that internal nuclear bomb to ignite and send him to Horace Pinker. Waiting for the grief to leave him long enough so that he could get mad.
And it happened, finally. Walker Stevens, that daring reporter with fake hair and no stomach for blood, let the people of Maryville know that yes, our pal Horace had struck again. Family of six. A toddler had been nailed to a door. They found a six-year-old stuffed up the chimney. Dad was missing entirely. Eventually he would be found on the roof, dismembered, his arms and legs plugging up the guttering, his head lounging in the old birdbath behind the house where the yard ended and the weed fields began. Pretty nifty stuff.
Jonathan decided enough was enough. He called Rhino. He laid out the plan. Rhino listened. Rhino told him he was crazy. Jonathan begged. Rhino said okay.
It might have been Saturday, maybe Friday. Jonathan did not know and did not care. His blood was hot, his energy up. Sweat was beading on his forehead and back, making his shirt sticky as he drove his wreck to Rhino’s house.
Jonathan scooted over to the passenger’s side. Rhino got in behind the steering wheel. Jonathan could see his face register amazement that the ancient Chevy was actually running, at least on a few cylinders. Rhino turned his head and looked into Jonathan’s eyes.
“What are you high on? Got some PCP in the old brain, or what?”
Jonathan returned his stare. “You do know what to do, don’t you?”
Rhino smirked. “Easiest job I ever had. Question is, why?”
“Just drive.”
Rhino, all 220 pounds of him, rocked the seat into a different position so that his knees were not scraping the steering wheel. He dumped the Chevy into first and headed out. It was dusk, the sky a smear of orange and pink, threatening to exchange day for a swift new night. Rhino popped the headlights on. “Any particular place, my boy?”
“Sure. Wherever your heart leads you.”
Rhino grunted amicably. “It’s your gas, Jon. How’s the ESP tonight? Functioning?”
Jonathan leaned back and propped his feet on the dash. “One hundred percent, Rhino. Just drive.”
Rhino nodded. “Sweet dreams, Jon. I’m only charging five bucks an hour.”
“Eat shit.”
“Six an hour for that, and you supply the ketchup.”
Jonathan almost laughed. “Shut up, you big turd.”
The big turd chuckled. “Alright. Just don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Jonathan closed his eyes and brought up a vision of tattooed arms and a face that would frighten a blind man. All he could see was the beauty that had been Alison’s face on a morning two days ago, when the chief mortician closed the lid on Alison and shut her light away forever.
And so they cruised, Rhino pretty much amazed and mystified by all this funny business, Jonathan determined to show Alison what true love meant, even if it meant dying for her.
Four hours later the gas was almost gone and Rhino was obviously getting tired of driving all the back roads Maryville had to offer. He pulled over to a darkened curb, where the street signs indicated that they were at the intersection of Maddalena Street and Wagner Avenue. Rhino killed the lights and shut the motor off.
“My ass aches,” he groaned.
Jonathan sat straighter, watching the blank slate of the dark outside, listening behind the tick of the Chevy’s cooling engine for a signal, a light, a sound, anything. He frowned suddenly. Something was thumping. The sound seemed to come from a thousand miles away.
“Illinois?” he murmured. “Two states away, like she said?”
The thumping went on. Below it came the rasp of heavy breathing.
Jonathan cracked his door open and got out. A moist night breeze tugged at his hair, making him squint. On the far side of Wagner Avenue was a ruined apartment building, its brick sides pitted and discolored by the years, some of its doors gaping open and black. To the right was a tiny flicker of color.
He started toward it at a slow jog, checking over his shoulder once to make sure this was all real, aware of his Reeboks slapping the sidewalk and gritting on the cast-off trash and debris the wind had deposited there. He thought he saw Rhino wave. Then the way back was fully black.
He came to an open doorway and peered inside. Warm air wafted out, laden with the stench of old diapers and rotting wood. Jonathan shivered involuntarily as he went into the building. This place was most decidedly not the Ritz.
But the thumping was coming from upstairs. And the breathing. And—perhaps—the sound of screams.
He took the steps three at a time. They creaked and muttered under his weight, groaning from age and rot. He came to the landing. Dim light shafted down a long and musky hallway. The smell of dead carpets and ruined plaster was overpowering. It seemed as though Jonathan could hear the cockroaches scurrying around inside the walls, breeding, eating, festering with decay. His stomach performed a slow, queasy roll.
The thumping was coming from his left. Also the screams. Also the breathing. Also a low, animal growl.
Pinker. Trying to smash a door down.
Jonathan grinned, his face twisting up with raw hate. Here also now was Jonathan,
about to show Pinker what was what.
He took two steps. A shadow bulked up ahead, some huge thing trying to crash through an apartment door. Jonathan’s heart jumped into high gear.
“Pinker!” he shouted as loud as he was able. His throat was pulsing with anticipation.
The shadow ceased throwing itself at the door, then wheeled around.
Jonathan felt a hot surge of adrenaline pump through his veins. His hands became fists. “Come on, you bastard! Take me on!”
The voice that came out of the shadow was deep, husky, almost like some prehistoric animal growling with rage and hate. “You got it, asshole!” it screamed, and the shadow that was Pinker lunged at Jonathan.
Jonathan took a huge breath as Pinker bore down on him. “Rhino! Rhino, now!”
Nothing happened. No Rhino at the other end of the hall, no 220 pounds of meat and sinew. No Rhino at all. Hadn’t that been the plan? Hadn’t it? Jonathan took a wild side step, his brain feeling queerly drained. Pinker shot past, smelling of sweat and hate, the long blade of his slashing knife catching a bit of light and throwing dim pinpoints into Jonathan’s eyes. He saw Pinker turn. The killer’s teeth gleamed a loathsome puke yellow. Jonathan caught a whiff of something hideous on the outrush of his breath, a smell like old potatoes left to putrefy in a dank cellar. God only knew what his last meal had been. Chunks of Alison? Highly possible.
“Try again,” Jonathan hissed at him. “Make my nightmare.”
Pinker lunged. Jonathan caught the muscled slabs of his forearms, forearms slick with sweat, and held the knife away from his own throat by sheer strength of will. Pinker laughed in his face, this time blowing out a perfumed breath that was exactly the perfume Alison had been wearing when she was … killed.
Alison.
Jonathan shoved Pinker backward against the stairwell’s banister, amazed at his own strength, at the same time screaming for Rhino. Pinker’s mad cackling filled the hallway again. Still no Rhino. Jonathan lashed out with both fists, hoping to connect with this laughing monstrous demon, needing to, but Pinker lunged again. Jonathan could only cringe away and scream, madly batting at the air, knowing that the knife was slashing down, waiting for it to slice through his hands or his arms or …
He began to shake, not out of terror or helplessness, simply began to shake as if he were a rag doll in the hands of a kindergarten bullyboy. Pinker’s insane laughter hammered his eardrums, filling his head with echoes and madness, then drifted away …
… and Rhino was there, shouting in his face, dragging him back to consciousness, cuffing the side of his jaw to make him wake up. Jonathan’s eyes jerked open, unable to focus, seeing a carnival world of lights and darks and colors.
“Jon!” Rhino bellowed in his face. “Just wake up!”
Jonathan looked at him. They were nose to nose, Rhino looking pale and afraid in the flashing glow of a neon sign that proclaimed, simply, Maryville Bar & Grill.
Jonathan pushed Rhino away and sat up, shielding his eyes from the flashing blues and yellows of the bar sign. They were in the parking lot. Maryville’s main street was behind them, arrowing its way toward Cleveland.
“Are you among the living again?” Rhino asked worriedly. “I’ve been pounding you awake for two minutes.”
Jonathan put on a smile. “Yeah, and you did fine, old buddy. It was weird, but it was worth it.”
Rhino took a look at his watch. “Jesus, it’s almost two and I gotta get to bed. Want me to drop you off at home? I’ll give you the car back tomorrow.”
“No way,” Jonathan said. “There’s still something I have to do.”
“This late?”
“I’ll dump your ass off at home. Okay?”
Rhino yawned. “Nah, screw it. I’m with you all the way.”
“Good. Do you know where the intersection of Maddalena Street and Wagner Avenue is?”
“I think so.”
“Then haul ass. Time’s running out.”
Rhino started the car, and they headed east. The city was dead this time of night, but people were waiting. Eyes were watching.
Four cars followed, making no sound, making no light.
They came to the intersection fifteen minutes later, Jonathan and Rhino, Jonathan peering at the dark, trying to orient himself, Rhino sidling up to the curb and killing the motor. Jonathan stepped out, frowning, looking for something familiar.
“Well?” Rhino asked, yawning hugely.
Jonathan shrugged. “This looks like the place, I think. But where’s the light?”
Rhino stepped out of the car. “Swear this isn’t a put-on, Jon. Sometimes practical jokes seem to—”
He was interrupted by distant wail of a woman screaming. The noise seemed to grow and grow until it filled the night. Then it was gone, a mere echo booming down the deserted streets.
“Holy shit,” Jonathan breathed, feeling his heart speed up. He took a step and was suddenly engulfed in a glaring wash of light. He turned, squinting.
Four cars drew up to the curb. The lead car had its headlights on now. It stopped, and Lieutenant Don Parker got out. “Evening, Jon,” he said, smiling. “Out for a little drive?”
Jonathan shielded his eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“My job.”
The woman screamed again. For a crazy moment Jonathan wondered if he was still dreaming all of this, a nightmare that repeated itself endlessly. He dug his fingernails into his palms hard enough to draw blood.
Nothing changed. Don Parker shouted to the cars behind, and a small squad of uniformed officers piled out. He pointed at one of them. “Keep these two kids here!” he shouted, then raced off toward the ramshackle apartment building with his men close behind.
Jonathan looked at Rhino. Rhino gave him a small nod of his head, then charged at the officer who had been assigned to keep them out of the action. Years of football training served him well. The cop flipped head over heels and went sprawling. Jonathan winced at the sound his head made when it thumped the street. That guy would have one hell of a headache when he came back to life.
They ran to the building. The cops were jamming themselves up the narrow stairwell. Rhino elbowed them aside, clearing a path for Jonathan. Together they thundered up the steps and broke through to the landing.
Don had his service revolver out, holding it with both hands. The screaming went on and on, shrill and loud. In the dim light spilling through a door that had been rammed to pieces, Jonathan caught a glimpse of a woman in a flimsy nightgown. She was running from the huge and shambling creature that was visible only as a shadow behind her, but then a darkly tattooed arm was slung around her neck, dragging her backward.
Don shouted at him. “Freeze, you bastard, or I’ll blow your head off!”
Pinker hauled the woman in front of himself as a shield, aiming his knife at her throat. He was grinning. “Take your best shot, bud. She won’t mind.” His wild eyes flicked over to Jonathan. “You just had to bring Daddy along, didn’t you? Well, Jonny-boy, take this!”
He threw the woman. She smashed into Don, knocking him down the stairwell, and together they tumbled down the steps, knocking the other policemen askew. Pinker turned and ran, laughing in a series of whoops and screeches. Jonathan saw him disappear, bouncing up and down as he dragged his dead foot behind. He raced after him, past the ruined door into darkness, guided only by that hideous laughter.
His feet encountered more stairs, nearly tripping him. Pinker was laughing from above now. Jonathan sprinted up, taking the stairs three at a time. He heard wood thunk against wood, and got a brief glimpse of stars. He nodded internally. Trapdoor to the roof, that simple. Pinker was no dummy.
The trapdoor slammed shut, sifting dust down in a fine powder. Using both hands, Jonathan pushed it open again. Night air drafted down, cool against his sweating face. He caught the edges of the opening and hauled himself up. A cold slice of moon was suspended in the velvet sky, beaming just enough light for him to see. The roof was flat, sme
lling of old tar. Television antennas sprouted out in places, most broken or wobbling, a forest of elderly aluminum and rusting bolts. Jonathan hoisted himself fully out, looking around.
Pinker was doing a weird tightwire act off to the right, his arms waving and flapping as he crossed a fifteen-foot-wide chasm to the next building. Jonathan sprinted toward him, frowning, not knowing what kind of trick this was, hoping to hell that Pinker would fall. He skidded to a stop at the building’s edge just as Pinker reached the other side.
An ancient wooden ladder was lying across the two buildings, spanning the gap. Jonathan hesitated only a moment, then put a foot on the first rung. He was no daredevil, but if Pinker could cross it with a bum leg, Jonathan could do even better.
As he put his weight on the rung the ladder was jerked away, nearly making him fall. He pinwheeled his arms for balance as the ladder helicoptered down to crash on the ground below. Pinker laughed, doing a mad little victory dance on his good leg. Then he turned and staggered away, still howling with joy.
Jonathan nearly screamed. What was the old saying? So near, yet so far? Jesus, what a life. Jonathan ground his teeth in helpless frustration and rage. He could see Pinker limping across the opposite rooftop, dragging his bad leg, with his macabre laughter, a mixture of screams and whoops, trailing behind him. He came to a hump on the roof, where Jonathan could make out, dimly, a door. Pinker tried the knob, thumped a fist against the door, then quit laughing.
Jonathan heard movement behind him. He whirled around. Don Parker emerged from the trapdoor, his head swiveling as he surveyed the rooftop. Rhino popped up behind him, followed by six cops. Don ran to Jonathan, looking mad enough to kill. And if it was Pinker who caught the blunt edge of his rage, Jonathan thought, the more the better.
“Did you see him?” Don shouted. “Where did he go?”
Jonathan pointed to the next building, where Pinker was ramming himself against the door, moaning and groaning, no longer quite the happy lunatic he had been before.
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