New Title 1 (17 page)

Part 4

He awoke to the sound of hammering. After a moment he realized it was a combination of a fist repeatedly hitting the door and a much duller but more insistent pounding between his ears. Struggling to his feet he got to the door and threw it open to see two uniformed cops.

“Captain Straker, I’m Officer Mason and this is Officer Adams. We’ve been sent to assist with the bust or to relieve you if you’re not up to continuing.”

“I’ll be fine,” Straker lied. “We have a general idea where they’re at, we just need to check the You-Store-It in Big Stone Gap. We’ll take my car, it’ll attract less attention. It’s about a three and half hour drive. So some on.”

««—»»

When they arrived in Big Stone Gap, it was nearing 3:00 in the afternoon. Straker was almost beside himself after a gruellingly long drive where Mason and Adams had, ironicaly, talked of nothing but pro-wrestling. It was no small wonder that Adams was still in a uniform after seventeen years in law enforcement. The idiot actually thought it was for real. Mason was even worse: he had a memory for matches and past angles that bordered on idiot-savant. Straker had heard more about the history of the Deep South Wrestling TV Title Belt than any sane person would ever want to know.

Straker then met for an hour with the locals. A brusk Sheriff Tanner had a force of two deputies, giving them a total of six men to arrest what might prove to be the most dangerous serial-killer in the South. He wondered where Melinda was…and what was her angle in this; with her passion for sex, could it be that’s why she wanted to get to Goon before they did?

“The warehouses are out here on the edge of town,” said Tanner, jarring Straker out of his thoughts of Melinda’s perfect body. “We go in after it gets dark, see if we can catch these sick fucks with anything that will incriminate them. What with all the missing body parts, it’s a safe bet they’ve got trophies stashed in the warehouse.”

“We’ll split into three teams, so we’re each paired up with one of the local guys who knows the town. All the storage places are on a four block stretch here.” Tanner pointed to the map. “Straker, you go solo, but get these guys in there as soon as you see anything; and you guys pair up, and we’ll just work our way to center. As soon as you spot either one of these guys or even think you do, call for backup. We don’t want to fuck this up and have anyone get hurt. Do I hafta remind anyone about all those guys found with their dicks bitten off?”

Straker had a sick feeling that five well-armed men were terribly outnumbered by what they were going after…

A You-Store-It?
That’s what Melinda had said at the motel; Straker had gotten the address she’d circled in the phone book.

And that was the sign he saw from the end of the road. These joints were all over the place. Twenty bucks a month to rent a storage garage. First thing he saw in the main lot was a long row of garages. And the second thing…

A black Winnabego sat parked in the otherwise empty lot.

None of this made sense but he didn’t care. He soft-stepped past the sign, wisked around the back of the mobile home, and paused.
No gun,
he realized, patting his pants. He winced at the tacky sensation of semen in his shorts.
Christ, if I get killed, Jan Beck’ll have a good old laugh once she gets me into the morgue.
But he had to think. What was going on?

A light shone through the Winnabego’s window. He listened at the door for a full minute, heard nothing, then entered. A small rear room showed him nothing out of the ordinary, just—

Wait a minute…

On a supply shelf he found a box of SKIN SMOOTH hair remover, the same brand he’d seen in Melinda’s travel case. Weird. What would a wrestler be doing with something like that? But a more grim discovery came next: a cardboard box on the floor full of beige plastic shower curtains, the same kind all of the bodies had been found wrapped up in. Then he heard a groan.

Straker grabbed a metal flashlight from a rack, the only weapon available, then approached the curtain before him. He quickly whipped it back and saw—

“Felander,” he said.

On the floor a husky guy with a black goatee groaned again, holding his head. “Oh, man. Who are you?”

“State police. Where’s Melinda?”

Felander winced to lean up. “Christ, that bitch hits hard.”

“You don’t have to tell me. What’s going on?”

“Look, I had no choice. It was Kevin’s fault, he’s the one that had the book.”

“Book? What are you talking about?”

“The grimoire, one of those devil-worship things Kevin collected—Kevin the Druid.

Kevin the Druid,
Straker recalled. Melinda had mentioned him, and so had Traci Wilcox.
A wrestler who’d disappeared without a trace.

 
“He was really into all that occult shit—it wasn’t just a work. Him and me and three ringrats, we were all fucked up one night and just fooling around and somebody suggested we try one of the spells, and Goon is what we got.”

“Are you trying to tell Goon is some kind of demon?”

“I don’t know what you call him, all I know is that after we did what the book said, Kevin and the girls were ripped to pieces and this thing is telling me I have to help him out or get torn up like the others. What the fuck would you do? So we made a deal. I keep him isolated in the truck, drive him to the cards and set up the promotion, and he let’s me keep the cash. And in between…he does the girls.”

Straker paled, thinking of Melinda; he had to find Goon first before anything happened to her. “
Does
as in
murders
. You’ve been harboring a criminal. You’re guilty of accessory murder. Where’s Melinda Pierce? She came here a little while ago looking for Goon? If we can get to him, there might not be any more innocent victims!”

“Innocent victims? Melinda? You don’t get it do you? When we cast that spell, there were two of those things…” Felander offered a forlorn glance. “Melinda’s the other one.”

Straker looked around and shivered. Melinda, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The same as this monster…

“They get off on it,” Felander said, “sex, killing, drugs, just like the ones here. The only difference is that it’s been six months, and Goon told me that for some reason only one of them could exist here longer than that. They’re having a fucking contest! Goon didn’t do all those guys they found in that pit. It was Melinda…”

Straker felt his balls shrivel to the size of chickpeas. He thought of the corpses with their penises missing. Bitten off.

“One of them has to go back tonight. They’re from someplace else, Hell or whatever you want to call it. Melinda came here looking for Goon so they can have it out. The stronger one is going to get to stay here and keep killing, the other one has to go back. Where they come from, they’re bored. That’s why all the sex, drugs, booze and everything, they’re like the worst of our own scumbags and thrill-killers. Goon was their equivalent to a pathological serial-killer and Melinda is just as dangerous.”

Straker sat wearied on the edge of the bed, listening to this guy. He thought he’d heard everything. But with no gun and no cuffs, what was he going to do with him?

Felander went on with his pitch. “They’re probably inside the garage, but I wouldn’t go in there for anything, not with both of them there.”

“Supernatural serial-killers, huh?” Straker just shook his head. “Demons having a duel to see who gets to stay here and slaughter more people? That’s just great.”

“Don’t believe me, go look.”

“Oh, you’re sure they’re here?”

Felander jerked his thumb. “In the garage. Because of the spell we couldn’t get too far from here—the incarnation point. That’s why we’ve stayed in this territory instead of going to one of the big federations. Goon likes to come back here every few days. I don’t know why Melinda never did, but I think she might be the stronger of the two.”

Straker sighed. “All right, let me get this straight for the record. You conjured up a pair of demons in a You-Store-It, and you put one of them in professional wrestling and the other disappears and resurfaces masquerading as a reporter? That makes sense to me.”

“It does if you think about it. Regional wrestling? It’s perfect. He’s the ultimate heel. He can’t be hurt, so the gimmick is a real grabber. DDT the guy, run his face into a steel ringpost, break a bat over his head. The fans love it. He looks so good in the ring I could get him a million a year with WCW.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Too much exposure, man. In a big fed he’d have to travel all over the country. He’d be all over television. And the more exposure, the riskier it is with the ringrats. DSWC? It’s just a bunch of redneck towns and little arenas. A ringrat disappears every week or so, nobody gives a shit. Some drunken cracker vanishes after a match, no one even looks. It’s too obscure. But you start leaving mutilated bodies around the big card cities, then that’s another story. It’d be too difficult to manage. But down here everything’s cool, and the money’s not bad.”

“So why does he rape and kill these girls?”

“‘Cos he’s a thrill-junkie. What more reason do you need? He’s Jack the Ripper from another dimension. He does a girl a week, I get rid of the bodies, and that’s that.” Felander smirked, then sputtered. “But he always told me Melinda might come after him.”

“To fight it out to see who stays and who goes back to Hell?”

“Right.”

“She’s a demon, and so is Goon?”

“You got it.”

This guy actually believes this bullshit,
Straker could tell. He sighed again. “In Melinda’s travel bag I saw a box of hair-remover, then I come in here an see the same thing.”

“Their bodies look just like ours,” Felander explained. “I mean, you saw the chick—she’s a knockout.”

“Tell me about it,” Straker said.

“But their eyes are different—they’re yellow. So they have to wear designer contacts.”

Straker paused. Hadn’t he also seen a contact lens case in her travel bag?

“And they’re hair is, like, this really weird brownish-green color, the color of creek water sort of, and it won’t take to the hair dyes we got here. So every couple of days Goon spreads this hair-remover all over himself, burns it off.”

“But Melinda’s hair is blond.”

Felander shrugged again. “It’s a wig, man.”

Delusional people often believed their own delusions, Straker knew. Felander had an answer for everything, mad as it all was.
He acts and sounds like he’s telling the truth because he actually believes that he is.

“You got a mobile phone in this house on wheels?”

“The chick busted it when she came in here.” Felander pointed to the pieces. “She also took the keys. Then she put the screws on me to verify that Goon was in the garage. I gave her the unit number, then she punched my lights out.”

“Well, look, I’ve got to take you in,” Straker said.

Felander stood up. He was big. “With what? That flashlight?”

“You can go hard or easy.”

“Look, man. I don’t want trouble. My gig is washed up now. There’s never going to be any evidence left of Goon, so what do you care? I’m booking.”

“Don’t test me, Felander,” Straker tried to sound tough. No cuffs. No radio for backup.
I’ll have to tie the guy up,
Straker deduced.

Felander must’ve seen it coming. “I’m a pacifist by nature, but…I used to wrestle too.”

Straker swung the flashlight toward his unwitting foe’s head. Next thing he knew, Felander had him in a chicken wing. Straker howled. Then the belly-to-back suplex lifted Straker up, feet kicking, then dropped the back of his head on the Winnebago’s floor—BAM!

Groaning, he looked up through a half-conscious veil and saw Felander run off into the twilight-tinged woods.

««—»»

Goon was close by.

Melinda could sense his aura in the air.