Flesh (18 page)

Roland couldn’t understand. He had taken off the cuffs before pushing her down the cellar stairs, and he hadn’t put them back on because she was beyond struggling and he needed both hands free. So how come, now that he was done, he was suddenly cuffed to her again? It didn’t make sense.

He knew that he hadn’t attached the manacles again.

Had
she
done it? No. Huh-uh. She’s dead.

Then how?

He felt a tingle of fear.

As he dug into the pocket where he kept the key, he wondered vaguely why he was wearing clothes at all. Hadn’t he left them upstairs?

The key wasn’t there.

Don’t worry, you’ll find it. You’ve
got
to find it.

Fighting panic, he searched every pocket. The key was gone.

This can’t be happening to me, he thought.

Fortunately, he had turned on the overhead light before following Celia into the cellar. The bulb cast only a dim yellow glow, but it should be enough. Getting to his knees, he scanned the concrete floor. The area surrounding them was pooled with blood. Could the key be
under
the blood? He began to sweep his free hand through the wet layer.

Out of a corner of his eye, he thought he saw Celia grin.

No.

He looked directly at her. She was scalped, her skull caved in (and brain gone, don’t forget that), her eyes shut, her face a mask of blood, and she was
grinning.

Her eyelids slid up.

“You’re dead!”
he shrieked.

Her jaw dropped. Her tongue lolled out. The handcuff key lay near the end of her tongue.

He reached for it.

Celia’s teeth snapped shut on his fingers. Crying out in agony, he jerked his hand back. The stumps of three severed fingers spouted blood.

In horror, he watched her chew his fingers.

The cellar suddenly went dark.

He heard the stairway creak.

“Who’s there?” he yelled.

No answer came, but Roland knew who was there. He knew. He began to whimper.

“Leave me alone!” he cried. “Go away!”

In a mocking singsong, a voice in the darkness chanted, “I don’t
thinnnk
sooo.” Dana’s voice.

“Youuu are go-ing to diiie noww,” sang Jason.

The voices came from high on the cellar stairs but something grabbed the front of Roland’s shirt (Celia’s hand?) and tugged him. He toppled forward. Onto her. Her legs locked around him. Her hands (why wasn’t one cuffed to him anymore?) clutched his hair and forced his face down. Down against her face. She pressed his mouth against her mouth. She huffed. Into Roland’s mouth gushed the mush and splintered bones of his half-masticated fingers.

He started to choke.

And he woke up, gasping for air. For a moment, he thought he must still be in his dream.

But the bulb still glowed from the cellar ceiling. He wasn’t on top of Celia’s body; he was sprawled on the concrete floor beside it. Quickly, he lifted his hands. Though they both trembled violently, neither was cuffed and he still had all his fingers.

He glanced toward the cellar stairs. Nobody there. Of course not.

Just a nightmare.

As Roland sat up, his bare back came unstuck from the floor.

He looked around and picked up his knife, but he didn’t see the handcuffs. Then he remembered leaving them upstairs with his clothes.

He groaned as he struggled to his feet. His body felt tight and chilled. His muscles were sore. It had been madness, allowing himself to fall asleep down here. What if he had slept through the night?

He was confident, however, that he had only been asleep for an hour or two. There would still be plenty of time to sneak away under cover of darkness.

He climbed the cellar stairs as quickly as his stiff muscles permitted, and opened the door. The brightness of day stung his eyes. He cowered, shielding his face. Sickened, he saw himself shrivel and crumble to dust like a vampire. He wanted to turn away from the light, rush down into the comforting gloom of the cellar.

But the warmth felt good. As he stood hunched in the doorway, the deep chill seemed to be drawn out of his body. As the chill diminished, so did his panic.

Major fuck-up, he told himself. Not the end of the world, though.

Consider it a challenge.

Right.

He looked down at himself. His naked body was crimson and flecked with gore.

A challenge.

He was no longer cold, but he felt shivery inside as if he might start to cry.

If anybody sees me like this…

I’ll figure out something.

Oh God, how could I have fallen asleep? How could I have slept till
morning?

He rubbed his sticky face, let out a trembling sigh, and stepped to the kitchen’s bat-wing doors. Before opening them,
he scanned the dining area. He listened. Satisfied that he was alone in the restaurant, he pushed through the doors.

Near the front, along with the stepladder, vacuum cleaner, toolbox and cans of cleaning fluids, he found several rags and old towels. The few rags were filthy, but two of the towels seemed reasonably clean. He took them with him.

He stepped to a window and looked out. His heart gave a sick lurch when he saw the car in the parking lot.

Just Jason’s car.

He turned away from the window. His shirt, pants, and handcuffs were on the floor near the rumpled blanket. Celia’s neatly folded gown lay on top of the bar counter.

Roland picked up his T-shirt. It was one of his favorites, orange with the slogan, “Trust me,” printed beneath a colorful, monstrous face. It was stiff with dried blood. He was about to throw it down when an idea came to him.

Why not
wear
his bloody clothes? He could probably walk right up to his dorm room in them. With his reputation, anyone seeing him would just assume it was another gag.

But he might be seen on the way back to campus. Townies didn’t know about his reputation for bizarre behavior.

Muttering, “Shit,” he threw the shirt down.

He knew that he could wash the blood from his hair and body. No problem, there. But he needed clothes. Jason’s, he knew, were even worse off than his. Only Celia’s gown was bloodless. No way, he thought. Talk about conspicuous.

If he’d had any brains, he would’ve stripped before he opened up Jason.

He felt trapped.

There
must
be a way out. Think!

Where there is a problem, there is a solution. There has to be.

Problem. I can’t leave here in bloody clothes. I can’t leave here naked. I can’t wear Celia’s gown.

Why is it a problem? Because if I’m seen by the wrong people, I might get arrested.

Solution?

Obvious. Don’t get seen. Stay here. Until say three o’clock in the morning.

Somebody might come. Like that guy yesterday.

Roland shuddered.

That guy yesterday.

That guy
knew.

Roland had been inside the restaurant no more than ten minutes when he heard a car and rushed to the window. Out of the car stepped a man in boots and leather clothes, a man wearing a gun on his belt and carrying a machete. The sight of him sent an icy surge along Roland’s spine. Memories filled his mind of other men, in other times, dressed in protective gar ments and carrying sharp weapons: axes, scythes, sabers, longbladed knives. Other men who knew, just as this one did.

Confused and terrified, Roland had fled out the rear door and hidden in the field behind the restaurant. Lying in the weeds, he had waited until his panic subsided. Then he had crept through the field, keeping low, working his way around the restaurant until he could see the parking lot.

Who
was
this man?

A cortez.

What the hell is a cortez? Roland wondered, and his mind suddenly reeled with images of carnage: bearded soldiers with swords and battle-axes slaughtering Indians beneath a blood-red sky. In the background stood a strange pyramid. As quickly as the images had come, they were gone.

That Cortez,
Roland thought. My God. He remembered reading an article in
National Geographic
a few years ago. His parents had a subscription, and he always used to look through the magazines for bare-breasted natives. But this article had caught his attention, and he’d read it. All about the Aztecs, how they not only offered the hearts of their victims as sacrifices to the sun god, but also how they ate the captured warriors. The greatest delicacy was the brain, and it always went to the high priests.

The writer of the article theorized that primitive cultures such as the Aztecs turned to cannibalism because they required protein and had no cattle. He was wrong, Roland realized, and grinned. Boy, was he wrong. The Aztecs had friends up their necks.

And Cortez, with his conquistadors, made mincemeat out of them.

So that’s why this guy who went into the restaurant with the machete is a cortez. One who knows, and therefore threatens the existence of my friend—and me.

Lying in the field, Roland understood why he feared the man so much. The man should be killed, but he felt no urge to attempt it. Better to remain hidden.

After the man finally left, Roland entered the restaurant. He climbed down the cellar steps. Finding a gooey smear on the concrete behind the stairway, he trembled with rage and sorrow at what the cortez had done.

I’ll get him, he thought.

No, he’s too dangerous. Better to get far away from one who knows. Leave town.

Not tonight, though. Stay tonight for Celia.

What about her girlfriend? I want that one, too.

We’ll see.

She would be worth a little risk, he thought. He remembered how she had looked when he saw her at the mall—that lovely, innocent face, that jumpsuit with the zipper down the front, the way the fabric hugged the mounds of her breasts.

His friend gave him a quick surge of pleasure.

Roland came out of his reverie and found himself standing over the blanket and bloody clothes. His penis was stiff, but it shrank quickly as he once again confronted his plight.

If he stayed here to wait for dark, he would be risking a return of the cortez.

I’ll think of something, he told himself.

He straightened the blanket, tossed his T-shirt and jeans and Celia’s gown into its center, rolled it up and carried it
into the rest room. The air in the rest room was heavy with odors of blood and feces. He shook open the blanket, the clothes falling out; and spread it over Jason’s corpse.

The sink had a mirror above it. Except for pale skin around his eyes, as if he had worn goggles last night, Roland’s face was painted with blood that had dried and turned a shade of red-brown. Locks of hair were glued to his forehead. A bit of something clung to one eyebrow. He picked it off, but it adhered to his finger. He flicked it with his thumbnail and watched it stick to the wall under the mirror.

He turned the faucet on, bent over the sink, and began to clean himself, using one of the towels as a washcloth. He didn’t like the noise of the splashing water. It deafened him to other sounds. A car could drive into the parking lot, someone could sneak up behind him…He shut the water off. As he listened, he straightened enough to see himself in the mirror. His face and neck were clean.

He turned the faucet on again and resumed washing himself, this time standing back from the sink, flooding the towel with warm water and slopping it against himself. The water spilled down his body, sluicing off blood. He rubbed his skin vigorously, wrung the pink residue from the towel, wetted the towel again and repeated the process. Soon, he was standing in a shallow pool of water and blood but the front of his body was almost spotless.

He shut off the faucet, listened, fought an urge to venture into the bar area for a glance out a front window, and turned the water on again. He began the task of washing his back. This was more difficult.

Restaurants ought to have showers, he thought, for occasions like this. He grinned.

When he supposed he must’ve gotten most of it, he splashed across the floor until he was standing almost at the rest room door. There, he looked over his shoulder. He was far enough from the mirror so that it reflected his back all the way down past his rump. The green-yellow bruise ran
down his spine and angled across his right buttock, but he saw no blood.

He used the other towel to dry himself. Now that he was clean and dry, he was very careful not to slip on the puddled tiles. He skated slowly along as he worked at his few remaining chores.

After draping the towel over one shoulder, he spent a few minutes at the sink washing his knife and handcuffs. He retrieved his shoes and socks from the space behind the toilet, and carried them, along with the knife and cuffs, to the rest room door. He opened the door and tossed them onto the hardwood floor outside.

Crouching beside Jason’s covered body, he flung the blanket aside and took the car keys from a pocket of Jason’s trousers. His hand got bloody again, doing it, and he sighed. He found Jason’s wallet in a rear pocket, removed the student ID and the driver’s license with its phonied birth date. After making sure that nothing remained in the wallet to identify its owner, he flushed the cards down the toilet.

He picked up his jeans. In the dorm yesterday, he had removed everything from his pockets that could be used to identify him. (The Skidrow Slasher, he knew, had been caught because the idiot had lost his wallet, driver’s license and all, on a hillside while fleeing from a break-in.) He took the handcuff key from the right front pocket and was about to toss the jeans down again when it occurred to him that they didn’t look too bad.

They were wet from lying on the floor. They were matted with blood. But they
were
blue jeans.

He spent a while at the sink, scrubbing them with hot water and wringing them out. When he shook them open, he found that the stains were not especially noticeable.

He left the rest room with them. Leaning against a wall by the door, he cleaned his feet. He stepped into the damp, clinging jeans and pulled them up.

You’re in business, pal.