Malice (5 page)

His guest’s eyes were shining.

The odd, expectant look on his guest’s face did not go unnoticed. Observation was Peter’s strong suit: his job at Zellermann’s demanded it.

Once in the living room, the warning bells became stronger. Not sure what to do, Peter went to the kitchen, where he put a kettle on the stove and waited for it to boil. With his guest sitting at the kitchen table, things didn’t seem so bad. No more flashing red lights, no sirens. That was one of the kinks with being alone all the time. Your mind was left to wander and the longer its leash, the wilder the ideas it stuck in your head. A few minutes later, they returned to relax in the living room. His guest was examining one of the breast rippers when Peter caught sight of Jesus’ face. But this wasn’t the face he knew. The face he had gazed at while they spoke for hours on end. No, this face was twisted and angry. Something had done away with the Jesus he knew and replaced it with this new one. This demented one.

His guest said something and Peter tried to force a laugh through his bubbling fear, a skittish kind of laugh that hung in the air.

When his guest approached and laid his hands on Peter’s face, his body tensed. Jesus’ mouth opened, and through the gaping hole came crackling static.

The room around him began to dim and with it Peter was suddenly outside himself, looking on like a voyeur through a foggy window. On the floor laying still was his guest, but it was clear, even to Peter that some part of this man had come slithering inside him.

“I did what you said,” he thought frantically, looking at Jesus’ twisted face on the table behind him. “I laid low like you said, but he found me.”

And then the realization slowly began to dawn that his guest had known all along. That he had only been bidding his time until that final critical piece had fallen into place. A piece that had come rolling into town only days before. A piece by the name of Lysander Shore.

Peter saw something gleaming from his hand—his physical hand. A knife, its blade long and sharp, winking shards of light at him from the breast ripper’s display case. The blade touched the flesh of his left wrist and to Peter’s surprise he felt the cold steel waiting to bite him just as though he were doing it himself. The knife rocked back and forth splitting the flesh so that it looked like a bloody eye staring back at him. But his real eyes, the ones controlled by that thing that were watching with sick delight, were white bulging orbs.

Blood ran down his forearm and fell to the floor in a thick stream. The pain was unbelievable as the blade sawed through first tendon and then bone. Peter was shrieking now, not just with agony but with the certainty that he was about to die and the sound of his screams were flat and dead in this new place. When he felt the blade begin cutting his other wrist, Peter could only hope that it would all be over soon. He had no idea that it was just beginning.

Derek was having trouble getting the lantern going.

“This thing have any gas?” Derek said, striking a match against the side of the box. The match burst into flame.

That was when Lysander heard a loud click and the room became shrouded by a deep orange haze.

There was a swooshing sound and then Lysander was swimming, an astronaut through a vast expanse of empty watery space. The feeling was strangely familiar. The thought of death crossed his mind quickly and then vanished ... he knew he wasn’t dead, he could still think. Where am I? The corridor, he thought. The last thing I saw was the corridor…Two figures were hunched over him. “Mom?” he screamed ... no, not Mom ... this one was different. The other figure was larger like his father, but that one too felt different. He looked down and he saw a third person lying on the floor. Someone dressed in black, with big black boots covered in white dust.

Sudden blackness descended and then intense movement. He was moving at the speed of light. Trees and houses flickered by. Below him appeared two men standing in a dark living room. The shorter one buttoned up in a yellow cardigan and bent over to slide his feet into a pair of slippers. But the other didn’t feel like a man at all. It felt more like a shadow pretending to be a man: something terrible hidden inside a shroud of blackness. The shadow turned and seemed to look up at him. A lump of charcoal without a single distinguishing feature ... except its eyes. They were milky white and cold, like two distant stars in the vastness of space. A glimmer of light was refracted from the shadow’s inside pocket. There was something there. Something metallic and shiny. The handle of a knife? Lysander wondered, a sharp chill shooting through his veins.

The shorter man in the yellow cardigan motioned and walked into the kitchen. The shadow followed, leaving part of a shoe print behind, as if it had stepped in mud outside and was tracking it through the house. Panic gripped Lysander. Couldn’t this guy see he had let a monster into his house? It wasn’t trying to sell him a subscription to
Sports Illustrated
or get him to change his long-distance carrier. This thing, whatever it was, meant to kill him and Lysander was powerless to do anything about it.

The kitchen door swung open and the two men walked into the living room laughing, the thin man with the cardigan first. They stopped by the fireplace. Then the dark man cupped the other’s face. The man in the cardigan squirmed uneasily and then settled, his eyes blinking with mute expectation. They’re about to kiss, Lysander thought, puzzled. Then suddenly, the smaller man’s eyes grew wide with terror and he reached for the shadow, only to have the shadow slip away and crumple to the ground. Now only the man in the cardigan was standing, but there was something different about him. Even from far away Lysander could see the difference, but didn’t quite believe it. His eyes had become milky white. Somehow, the shadow had snuck into him like a fox in a henhouse. Cardigan leaned over the shadow-man, fell into his coat and removed a long blade. Lysander watched with morbid fascination, utterly perplexed by the display. The thin man rolled up his sleeves and brought the blade to his wrists. He began sawing viciously. A stream of blood gushed out and the man screamed, but the sound was not one of pain, but one of orgasm. He moved to his other wrist. The top button of his shirt was undone. He reached up with both bloody hands and ripped six buttons off so that his shirt flapped open. With the edge of the knife, he carved something into his chest, something Lysander couldn’t quite make out.

The floor at his feet was now slick with blood. He shuffled over to the table, careful not to slip on any of it and reached for a strange-looking bust. Lifting it in the air, he paused for a moment, admiring it, and then brought it arcing down onto his own face, crushing the bridge of his nose, releasing a fan of blood and bone. The bust rose and fell, again and again, until there was nothing recognizable of the man left. A stranger was destroying himself before Lysander’s very eyes. He was utterly disgusted by the spectacle before him. But Lysander couldn’t turn away.

There was a crater now where the man’s forehead once was. Shrieking, the man staggered and then collapsed to his knees. It was finally over, Lysander hoped, but he was wrong. The thin man’s fingers crawled up his face to where he could look at them and plunged them into the soft tissue between his eyeball and what remained of his nose. There was a sound like boiled eggs being plucked from their shell. He pulled his hands free and Lysander could see he was holding something in each hand. They were jiggling in his grasp. He had plucked out his own eyes, Lysander realized with horror. Dangling down the man’s blood-stained forearms like sinewy bits of rope were his optic nerves. At last, he collapsed and lay still.

Lysander suddenly felt an intense chill grip him. A gray mist began forming on the floor. The ghost, the creature, whatever the hell it was, was leaving the thin man’s corpse and moving purposely toward the other form lying prostrate on the floor. They united and the fingers of the shadow’s left hand began to do a subtle dance. The movement went up to his arm, then to his head. He propped himself up on his shoulder, admiring his work. Suddenly, the shadow’s head snapped in Lysander’s direction. His head perked up and for a moment it seemed as though he was sniffing the air. Sniffing for a scent he had found floating past him in the breeze.

Invisible icy tentacles began snaking out, probing blindly like something used to dark and damp places.

Lysander began to back away, but the tentacles were closing in.

Just then he felt another presence, a sound. He tried listening in spite of his gnawing fear. It sounded like a wolf, snarling low, vicious and threatening.

The tentacles approached and the growling turned to vicious snapping. Lysander swore he could hear the sound of jaws clamping shut, gnashing at dead air.

Someone was calling his name. Lysander…Lysander…Lysander. Sudden movement. Then blackness and pain. The pain racked his whole body with such intensity he couldn’t remember when he ever felt anything so real. His eyes opened to a dim room. Dim was good. Anything was better than orange. Later he would remember only flashes.

Samantha was above him, talking to him softly.

Alex turned left on Lincoln and into Wallace’s Motorcycle Repair. Gravel crushed under his tires. He stopped in front of a steel door that framed a dilapidated sign which read “employees only.”

The door swung open with a screech, and a tiny bell rang overhead. A round, misshapen man in dirty overalls glanced up from behind a large TV; antennas stretched out like the feelers of some mutant insect.

“Deputy,” the man said nonchalantly. He had a cool, unhurried air to him as though the trifling world of mortal concerns was far behind him. He stood and waddled over to Alex, favoring his right leg.

Alex took off his hat. “I’m looking for Derek.”

Wallace examined his watch, as though there was a new dial there he hadn’t seen before.

“Well, never showed up fer work last night. Does that sometimes, that boy. Never a call or nothin’, just plain doesn’t show up.” There was a whistle when he spoke. He looked up at Alex and his bottom lip hung down, revealing a row of empty spaces. “He’s a darn good mechanic, so I let the little things go once in a while. Why? He in trouble again?”

“You could say that.”

Wallace leaned forward, eyes fixed on Alex’s nose. “He do that to you?”

Alex shifted, and his heavy boots scuffed the wood floor. “Derek violated the terms of his parole. I was trying to apprehend him—”

“Deputy, I know Derek’s a big boy, but he doesn’t fight unless he’s got to.”

“He did today and we’re looking for him now.”

Wallace turned back at the TV, seemingly enthralled. “That’s too bad. He’s a good kid you know. One of the best mechanics I ever seen.” Wallace wiped his nose with his hand again. “What you gonna do to him?”

“Depends. If he turns himself in, we’ll go easy. He assaulted an officer, but we may be able to work something out.” Alex was lying through his teeth, of course, but the old man had to think that Derek would be coming back to work when this was all over or else he would never cooperate.

Wallace remained silent.

“You have any idea where we might find him?” Alex asked. “We’ve talked to his grandmother and she has no idea—”

The room exploded with Wallace’s laughter. “That ol’ bitch?” He was fidgeting with the rabbit ears over the TV. “She don’t know which end is up. She was ugly when Donny Thomas asked her to marry him and she’s even uglier now. Not that that’s possible.” He flashed a toothless smile. “No, Deputy, I’m not sure where that boy is at. He may be with the sheriff’s daughter.”

“She’s not talking.” It remained unsaid, but both men knew that you didn’t use the same kind of police tactics on the sheriff’s daughter as you might on a regular citizen. A certain amount of delicacy was required.

Wallace’s head snapped back and he exploded with phlegmy laughter again.

“Maybe you should talk to Mrs. Crow. Derek used to talk about her all the time. Talked me nearly to death once, he did, told him to keep quiet or I’d—”

“Cliff,” Alex said, dimly aware of the informality. “Mrs. Crow is dead.”

He tore away from the TV for a moment. “Oh, sorry to hear that. Guess I woulda known if I read the papers or kept into other people’s business. Just that she might have known where he was hiding. Derek talked about her all the time. They was close, you know.”

A strange expression flickered across Alex’s face. He had never known Diane was friendly with Derek, or any of Samantha’s friends, for that matter.

“Close?” Alex asked nonchalantly. “In what way?”

Wallace’s eyes found Alex’s again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said …”

“Too late for that now. The circumstances of Mrs. Crow’s death are still being investigated. There are signs…let’s just say the case is still open.”

The old man looked worried now. “Was she murdered, that poor woman?”

“Maybe.”

Wallace raised an eyebrow.

“So what do you know about Derek and Mrs. Crow?”

Wallace stood with some difficulty, wiped his hands on his overalls, and then braced himself against the counter. “Derek says he used to go over there a lot when the sheriff wasn’t home. Says he and Samantha were good friends, but that he and Mrs. Crow were better friends. That she used to give him money sometimes.”