The Bleeding Season (36 page)

“It was all real subtle at first,” she went on.  “He never really talked about it or anything but we both knew what the other was about.  We started to hang out a lot more, not just on dates but other times too.  He’d always pay, didn’t seem to have anything else to spend his money on, and like I said, he had a plan.  Figured I fit into that plan somehow, and he brought me into his world slow and careful.  For me, I was still strung out then, still pumping that shit into myself every chance I got, so Bernard was good for me.  He’d supply me with the cash I needed to buy it, and sometimes he’d even get it for me.  Sometimes he’d fix me himself.  Got good at it, actually.”

I searched her bare arms.  A few old scars; mostly faded.  She no longer bore the typical ravaged flesh many addicts did, but glimpses of those same arms bruised and bloodied flashed before my eyes anyway.  I pictured Bernard on his knees, administering a syringe of heroin into this woman’s veins.

“Couple times near the end I fixed him, too,” Claudia said.  “He wanted to try it and liked doing it now and then, but he never got deep enough into it to get hooked.  He had other addictions.”

“Like what?”

As if staged, the shaft of sunlight that had invaded the room earlier slipped away, returning the kitchen to near-darkness.  “The other side,” she answered.  “Torture and death.  Destruction.
Blood
.”

A chill swept through me, temporarily defusing the humidity.  “The other side,” I said, “like an afterlife?”

She nodded.  “That was part of his deal, getting shit ready for when he crossed over to the other side.  He believed what he did in this life would determine the kind of power he’d hold in the next one.  Ain’t about Heaven and Hell to those like Bernard.  It’s all about power.  Only power he had here was what the darkness gave him, but on the other side he thought he could be different.”

“He was insane.”

Claudia raised an eyebrow.  “You think?”

“Don’t you?”

She watched me a while.  I could almost hear her thinking.  “We got close, me and Bernard.  Wasn’t really something I wanted but I was a drug addict, and drug addicts ain’t exactly got a lot of options.  He kept me fixed, and he made me feel powerful too.  Like I told you, I’d been around, seen and knew a lot of things before I met him, but Bernard let me get in close so I knew what he was doing.  And it was fucking intense.  Besides, I hadn’t left the dark yet myself, still thought it was where I belonged, and he was all I had.”

“You knew he was killing people?” I asked.

Claudia stood up slowly, gradually, and slid the chair out of her way.  She moved around the side of the table with a slinking, feline-like stride, until she was right next to me.  I looked up at her, uncertain of her intentions.

She reached down and touched my t-shirt, running her fingers across the collar and onto my throat.  Her flesh was damp and slightly warm, as was mine.  “Come here,” she said in a loud whisper, and in one motion, grabbed hold of my t-shirt and pulled me from the chair.  I cooperated and allowed her to stand me up.  I was taller than she was, and had to look down to meet her eyes.  She stepped closer, so close that her chest touched mine.  She smelled of cigarettes, sweat and cheap perfume.  Her arms wrapped around me and she smiled as her hands roamed along my back to my waist, past the gun on my belt and onto my ass.  One hand slid between my legs.  I swallowed nervously as she clutched me—hard—then ran her hands along the insides of both thighs.

“I’m not wearing a wire,” I told her.

Without answering me she sunk to her knees, her hands following, moving along my knees and calves.  She looked up at me, her face in line with my crotch.  I resisted the sudden desire to touch her hair, the side of her face.  Claudia rose, nonchalantly spun around and strolled back across the kitchen.  “You hear a fucking word I said, Plato?  You think that was the first time I was ever around a killer, around violent bastards who did the most depraved and fucked up shit you’ve ever imagined?”  She faced me again once she’d reached the counter.  “Difference was, most of the people I knew fell into it one way or another, went looking for the dark and found it or just got dragged in—you see what I’m saying?  But not Bernard.  Bernard was born into it.”

I remained standing.  “What are you talking about?”

“Another one of his addictions,” she said softly.  “His mother.”

“What about her?”

“You’ve heard the stories.”

“Before he was born she was in New York City, got mixed up with a bad crowd, mob guys or something, and got pregnant.  That was the rumor around town.  She never talked about it in specifics and neither did Bernard.”

“‘Course not.”  Her eyes nearly sparkled, and I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely amused or only making fun of me.  “She went off and got mixed up with a bad crowd, that much is true.  But they weren’t no mafia guys.  The people she fell in with make the mob look like choirboys.”

“More of these people from this world you keep referring to?”

“Crazy motherfuckers who think their rituals can conjure the Devil himself, can blur the boundaries between this world and the one underneath.  People who believe they can manipulate both worlds with rituals and hexes and spells and dark prayers.”

“This is what Bernard told you?”

“He didn’t know himself until his mother brought him into it.  He was in his early teens by then.”

The same timeframe in which he had attacked Julie Henderson and begun his descent into madness, evil or whatever the hell it had been.  “But his mother left all that and went to Potter’s Cove to have Bernard and raise him in a safe environment.  She ran from these people, from this world, so how could—”

“She didn’t run, she moved back into the world like they all do.”

“Like all
who
 do?”

“All of us who come up against them, who run with them.”  Her eyes turned dead.  “Demons, Plato.  Fucking demons.”

In my denial, or inability to fathom what she’d said, I responded with a burst of nervous laughter.  Julie Henderson had sworn they were all around us, and just like Julie, Claudia was either completely sincere, or completely out of her mind.  Maybe both.

“It ain’t like some cult that dances around fires in silk robes and calls themselves Satanists so they can do drugs and fuck and listen to bad rock and roll,” she said.  “I’m talking about the dark, man.  The
real
dark and the
real
 things that move in it, that live in it, you understand?  This ain’t like some movie, it’s fucking real.  They don’t use junkies like me, or street trash or even the innocent little girls who vanish from corner stores or parks or schoolyards or their own beds in the middle of the night—we’re just minor league players on the sidelines, around to be used and abused, demonic fucking toys.  They scoop up the older ones like his mother, the small-town girls who go wandering into places like New York or L.A. looking for a better life.  They show them the dark, show them the way then send them back to the world to give birth to the next wave.”

“The next wave of
what
?”

“Killers.  Destroyers.  The ones who devour.”

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
  Bernard’s final words on the taped suicide note.

I suddenly felt confined in the tiny kitchen, like the walls were creeping closer.  “This is ridiculous.  For Christ’s sake, Bernard never even knew who his father was.  His mother never told him.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Probably because she had no idea who it was either.”

“Maybe it was because she knew
exactly
 who it was.”

Anger swelled.  “OK, so I’m supposed to believe there are demons walking among us like people and that
they’re
the ones responsible for all the evil in the world—not us, not human beings, but
demons
.  They’re to blame.  What’s next—garden gnomes?  And let me guess, Bernard’s father was the Devil himself, right?  Bernard’s
Rosemary’s Baby
 now, is that it?  Give me a fucking break.  This is bullshit.  I told you before; I’m not playing games.  I need answers, goddamn it, not fucking fairy tales from the dark ages.”

“Oooo, big strong man making demands.”  Claudia gave a mock shiver.  “You’re the one who came to me, remember?  You’re the one telling me about your dreams and visions and all that.  You’re the one who wanted to know the truth, so listen real close, jack-off.  I never said it was anything but people who are responsible for all the bad shit in this world.  But people make choices—decisions—you understand?  There are temptations, and once choices are made there are forces that influence people.  Real forces.  Some good, some bad, and they’re in constant battle with each other.  They’re inside us, all around us, and you know it.  We all know it because we all hear the voices in our heads, the whispers.  We just learn to ignore them, to write them off, to label them with words like
conscience
.  That’s the way of the worlds, Plato.  This one, and the next.”

I ran my hands through my sweat-dampened hair.  “Christ, I’m so confused.”

“That’s the shit Evil thrives on.  Confusion.  Deception.  Uncertainty.  Chaos.  And the deeper you go the worse it gets, the more powerful it grows and the less sense it makes, because nothing ever makes sense in the dark.”  Claudia stabbed another cigarette between her lips.  “Welcome to the big leagues, asshole.”

“I knew Bernard’s mother,” I insisted.
Skimpy bikinis and skimpier towels—slipping, shifting and falling—blended to suntanned skin slick with oil
.  “I knew Linda.”
The bedroom at the top of the stairs—her room—the bed against the back wall, the mismatched nightstands on either side of the headboard, the clutter of overflowing ashtrays and empty liquor bottles
.  “She was eccentric but—”
Garments stuffed into plastic clothesbaskets and strewn about the room as if thrown there or dropped there, an ironing board against one wall, a dressing table with mirror and closet against another
.  “—she was harmless, completely harmless.”
Lipsticks and makeup, small bottles of polish and colognes and body sprays, tins of soap and powder rattling, clicking one against the other
.  “I knew her,” I said again.

“You knew Bernard too, what’s your point?”  Claudia obviously sensed I was trying to recall the past without coming completely undone, but I couldn’t be sure if she meant to help or only make things worse.  “She brought him into it the way you bring an innocent into it.  Their little secret, got it?  Things you don’t talk about, even with your best friends, because nobody would understand.  It’s slow, a seduction.  It’s not the truth she had to tell him, only lies and sacrilege masked in love and trust.  She didn’t have to do anything else, no explanations or definitions of what he was or what he needed to do.  She just positioned him, set him on the right course and let him go, knowing from the start that his path was already determined by destiny—or whatever label you want to give it—and that he’d find his own way.  And that’s exactly what she did.”  She threw a look my way that might have been pity.  “I knew Linda’s kind too—dime a dozen.  Sex, drugs and rock and roll, little devil stuff thrown in—why not, it’s trendy and harmless, right?  I’ve seen the ceremonies, the gangbangs where they break in bitches like her.  Father could be anybody—any
thing
—but it don’t matter because what’s behind it, what’s holding their hands is pure fucking evil.  Stupid cunts never have a chance; they’re in over their heads before they know it.  When it’s over all that’s left is that same smiling Devil.  By then Linda wasn’t no saint.”  She plucked the still unlit cigarette from her mouth.  “But then, I ain’t telling you anything you don’t already know.”

Knock once and go on in
.  I closed my eyes, saw that staircase again, the landing at the top and the open doorway just to the right; heard the bottles on the dressing table clicking together, the headboard slapping the wall, rattling everything in the room.  I felt sick, like I had that day, a cramping, churning feeling deep in my bowels, as if someone had pushed their fingers through the skin below my navel, worked them deeper until they were inside me up to the wrist, curled around my intestines, twisting, crushing and yanking them free in one slimy, bloody mess.  “No,” I said softly.  “You’re not.”

“The dark loves denial.  Broken memories.  Buried memories.”

“So that’s where it started then?” I asked.  “With his mother?”

“Where’d she go when she got pregnant with Bernard?” she asked.  “And where did Bernard go when he lied about joining the Marines?  New York City.  Think that’s a coincidence?  Think maybe he went there to see the same crowd his mother knew?  The same crowd she was running with when she got pregnant with him?  Think maybe it was a homecoming?  Think maybe that’s where he learned to do what he ended up doing so well?”  Claudia slid the cigarette behind her ear.  “There were lots of killings there, especially back then, lots of activity, lots of history.  Destroyers walked there, fed the streets.  Fed them with blood.  That’s what they do; they want blood flowing in the fucking streets.  It goes in cycles, and with every wave there’s a destroyer, a beast.  The rest of them, they’re just gone, dead or vanished.  Fucking
poof
, like they were never there.”

“But wait,” I said.  The heat was so thick I was having trouble breathing.  “He attacks Julie Henderson when he’s thirteen years old, does nothing else for five or six years then goes to New York City and suddenly becomes a killer?”

“How do you know he did nothing else for five or six years?”

“Even if he did other things we don’t know about, he goes to New York and he starts to kill—maybe these, whatever the hell they are, his mother fell in with, taught him or helped him—and he slaughters two young women inside of a year.  Then he stops as suddenly as he began, moves back to Potter’s Cove with the Marines story and doesn’t kill again for nearly two decades?  Serial killers can’t just stop killing once they start.”