The Evil Inside (22 page)

 

I really want Callum to enjoy this special morning with his Dad.

So after a nice big bowl of Cheerios, I take him over to the park and we visit the little zoo where we haven't been since that very first weekend we arrived.

We marvel at the micro-antics of the tiny battalions swarming the ant colony. We play peek-a-boo and duck the fruit bats in the indoor rainforest. We laugh at the dinner-suited comedians in the penguin house and feel sorry for the polar bears sweating it out by the pool.

I have a very strong compulsion to let all the animals out.

Then we leave the zoo and walk through one of those acrid-smelling tunnels towards the carousel. I stick Callum on a big brown horse and watch him blur past as a creaky ‘Campdown Races' wheezes out of the speaker.

Then I buy him a strawberry ice cream and a little
I love NY
T-shirt.

He wants to know if his real heart is the same size as the one on the shirt. He spills ice cream on his chest and the flies start to follow him.

Finally it's time to go home. It is time to put a stop to the evil, once and for all.

It's time for our big race.

*

‘Olcott Races, Daddy's Day, doo dah, doo dah … Olcott Races, Daddy's Day, oh–the-doo-dah-day …'

‘Again!' I yell at Callum. ‘One more race!'

‘I too tired, Daddy,' he groans.

‘One more!' I yell. I do a quick final scan of the corridor: dead and deserted both ways.

Callum leans, panting, against the wall near the corner. He bends down to roll up the bottom of his pants as I sprint towards him and scoop him up with my right hand.

‘Uggh,' he says, as I knock the stuffing out of him.

I have to move very quickly in case Violet cottons on to what comes next.

Round the corner, just a few more paces and we fly past room 901. The stairwell door yawns wide open with the small bin I've propped against it.

I watch him sail gracefully over the rail.

It was just as Mia had dreamed it all those months ago.

For an eternal second, his angelic little face looks up at me in cartoon confusion as he desperately flaps his arms.

Then he disappears into the soulless fluorescent void.

Of course I felt terrible – what father wouldn't?

But there was a lot more at stake now than just Callum or me: I was on a life-saving mission for the greater good.

Like a modern Abraham, I had been forced to make a horrible sacrifice.

And I'd just made it.

But then the unbearable thought slowly dawned on me: what if Violet had tricked me again?

What if she'd just convinced me to kill Callum – her cosy little home all these months – so I'd presume she was gone for good … when in fact she had
already
moved into her new abode?

Callum was just the bagman, the decoy, the ticking suitcase.

The patsy.

The MacCallum, if you like.

I ran back into the apartment for my remaining half-packet of albino powder and Nadine's last two Blue Meanies.

Most importantly, I was going to need my sacred sword.

Because what goes around, comes around, doesn't it, Violet?

 

They'd cut off the phone at the Olcott and I'd had to give my cell phone back to Brave Face before they'd pay me out.

So I fumbled for some coins and called from a payphone outside the same seedy bar on 8th Avenue where Anthony had kept company with me after Mia had tried to kill herself.

I wondered how Mia was. I wondered where Mia was.

It had been a while now since I'd seen her.

An eternity, in fact.

Someone finally picked up at Brave Face. Rosemary was at lunch. So it was actually Terry the Terrible who told me where Lucy was.

‘She's at home, throwing up.'

*

‘Guy? What are you doing here?'

She blinked at me in a black leotard.

I'd got to Lucy's apartment pretty fast. The running was really paying off.

It looked as though she had secreted a small round cantaloupe or coconut beneath the tight fabric under her plumper-looking breasts. There was a red yoga mat on the polished floor next to her crimson couch, and ocean wave breathing exercises were lapping gently in the background.

It seemed the only thing Lucy had really been throwing up that morning was her supplicant arms in a ‘salute to the sun'. Her body was glistening like a tantric goddess; she'd never looked more supple and radiant.

‘It must be a hundred out there?' The air conditioner clicked up a gear in confirmation as Lucy was walking away, not looking at me, towards the kitchen bench.

‘Get on the table,' I ordered her.

‘Oh no, Guy. I'm in no condition for games today,' she said, her voice cracking a little. ‘I'm not feeling well.'

‘It's no game.' I opened the escritoire drawer and removed the handcuffs.

A little bell chimed. The water she'd been boiling in the pot for her herbal tea was ready.

Once I had her cuffed to the table legs like the good old days, I stuffed her old purple panties into her mouth.

‘Bye bye, Lucy.'

She could still make a surprising amount of noise. I turned the ocean waves up so they crashed a little louder.

‘Bye bye, Bubby.'

I held the carving fork aloft.

Lucy's eyes rolled back into her head as if she couldn't bear to look.

‘Bye bye, Violet.'

There was a flyer sitting on top of the escritoire.

The YWCA on 53rd and Lexington.

I looked at Lucy's limp figure on the table. The slow-flowing crimson rivulets matched the couch beautifully. She suddenly spasmed and rattled as if voicing her aesthetic approval.

I knew that Lucy attended the gym at the Y.

Maybe she'd swung by the yoga classes for pregnant women and checked them out for future reference?

Maybe Violet was still one move ahead of me?

I couldn't afford to take any more chances.

4 p.m.

‘Excuse me, Sir!' the large bespectacled woman behind the desk was waving her paperback at me. ‘But this is a women's only class.'

I removed my earplugs: U2's ‘Beautiful Day' was humming quietly out of the radio behind her.

‘Sir!' she protested like an irate school ma'am. ‘Sir, you
can't
go in there – it's for pregnant ladies only!'

I snatched the key from the outside lock and pulled the door gently shut behind me.

The carving fork felt like a double-headed cobra in my hand.

Twin nine-inch nails.

I pulled it out like Lancelot drawing Excalibur. The long, tapered handle felt white hot in my hand.

I walked into the cool womb of semi-darkness and for some unknown reason self-consciously dropped to my knees into the combat stance that a personal trainer had once demonstrated to me back home.

There was a stubby row of candles flickering on the floor and incense smoking in little golden bowls.

It smelled like napalm.

I was the Stranger in the Night.

There were eight more bulging bellies in that room.

So many places for her to hide.

So much more work to do.

*

I staggered blindly out onto Lexington screaming in pain, my arms outstretched like a ludicrous Frankenstein charade.

‘Murder! Death! Bodies! Blood!' the receptionist was wailing behind me like a siren. ‘Murder! Death! Bodies! Blood!'

A musclebound security guard from the Charles Schwab next door truncheoned me into submission and made a beanbag out of me till the blue and white cavalry arrived.

I sustained second-degree burns to my face from the coffee urn water that the receptionist had thrown at me after she'd found the master key and burst through the door.

My eyes were fried, too.

But nobody worried too much about calling an ambulance for the crazy burning man.

Just for the now four dead ex-mothers, the three wounded ones, and the one that had gone into hysterics and couldn't form any recognizable human words.

They jabbed me with some sort of sedative.

I have a vague memory of Detective Barino appearing on the way down to the station and asking me some really stupid questions.

But maybe it was just the Blue Meanies talking.

And when I eventually came to, no matter how many times they asked me, I stuck to my original statement:

‘Read Beat the Devil, it's all in there.

The Kid Did It.

I'm just a pastry!'

The Post
– and all the other tabloids – immediately and lazily dubbed it
The Yoga Mommies Massacre.

They were equally unoriginal with my moniker: I instantly become known as
Australian Psycho.

Christ, one hack even christened me
Guy Forks.

The fucking media – they're even worse than ad agencies.

They're positively evil.