The New Neighbor (23 page)

"Luuuhh...Lorelle's." Dylan smiled weakly. "Jealous?"
 

So he killed them
, Robby thought,
and took a bath to wash off the blood. Jesus Christ, it's already started...
 

Dylan lifted first one hand, then the other, out of the bloody water slowly and made playful little splashes, like a small boy playing in his bath, and Robby saw the long vertical slashes in his wrists. They were small chasms from which black-red blood flowed to darken the water.
 

"Jesus Christ, Dylan!" Robby screamed, looking around the tub until he spotted the razor blade on the edge beside Dylan's head. "Jesus, why did you
do
this?"
 

"Dint ... wanna ... go ... to jail."
 

Robby stood and dashed around the bathroom, searching for some sort of bandage and murmuring, "Oh god, oh god, oh god ... " He found nothing and returned to the bathtub. "Listen to me, Dylan, okay? Stay awake! I'm gonna call an ambulance. Okay?
Dylan
?"
 

Dylan's eyes were closed and his head was turned away from Robby. He was not singing anymore.
 

Chapter 16
 

Succubus Interruptus

Karen woke slowly, thinking the sensation of teeth and lips on her nipple was only part of a dream. But as she rose closer to the surface of her sleep, she heard breathing ... felt hot breath on her skin ... the weight of a naked body on top of her own.
 

She reached down and felt soft, warm flesh, silk-smooth hair, and opened her eyes to see Lorelle, whose mouth curled into a slow smile filled with promise.
 

Karen jerked upright and turned to George who lay beside her, still as the onyx statue in Lorelle's house, his breathing so shallow it was almost invisible.
 

Sensing her panic, Lorelle reached up and touched her fingertips to Karen's cheek, brushing them over her lips, then crawled down her body and nestled her face between Karen's legs. Her tongue snaked through curls of hair, teased the lips of Karen's pussy, delicately separated the folds and traveled slowly up and down the crevice between them.
 

Karen turned once more to her husband. When he didn't move or make a sound, she allowed the tension to flow from her, feeling her body relax more and more with each sweep of Lorelle's tongue. She moaned softly, and before long, she was squirming, then writhing with pleasure that continued to build. Karen slapped a hand over her mouth to contain the cries she felt rising from her chest.
 

Karen reached up and closed a fist on a handful of Lorelle's thick hair as the first orgasm came, then another, and a third, each one battering her more than the last, until –
 

 
– Karen couldn't breathe and she was certain her heart had stopped beating and then –
 

 
– there was nothing. Not even dreams.
 

* * * *

"I saw it on the news," Prosky said, as Robby got into the car with a brown paper bag and a towel. "I'm sorry. Very sorry. Are you all right?" But even as he asked the question, Prosky knew the answer. The dark patches of skin beneath the boy's eyes and his deeply sunken cheeks made him look malnourished. He moved with the sluggishness of someone deeply depressed and spoke in a low, hoarse voice that Prosky had to strain to hear.
 

"No," Robby said. "I'm not all right."
 

"Believe me, Robby, I know how you feel, and I'm sure you're not in the mood for this right now. But we have to do it."
 

He nodded indifferently, staring out of the window. Then he chuckled.
 

"What are you laughing at, Robby?"
 

"The news. That bitch on the news tonight. She said Dylan was listening to Ozzy Osborne when he did it. And ... he
was
. But she interviewed some clown – some psychologist or something, I don't know – who said it was the music ... the secret Satanic messages in the music ... that made Dylan snap. Isn't that funny?"
 

“Yes," Prosky whispered, his gut wrenching for the boy, "unfortunately, it is.”
 

Neither said anything for a while, just stared down Deerfield.
 

"They all went to bed about half an hour ago." Robby sighed finally. "I almost did, too. I'm exhausted."
 

"No. You can't do that, and you know it. Let's go. We don't want to wait too long."
 

"Better be careful. There might still be some reporters hanging around. They've been circling like vultures all day."
 

"Right. And remember, Robby, the dogs ... whatever they are, they
aren't
dogs. If they see or hear us, so does
she
."
 

Leaving the key in the ignition in case they needed to get away quickly, Prosky opened his door and got out. A moment later, Robby did the same.
 

Looking down Deerfield, Prosky felt a chill. It looked like a dark alley. Mist hovered around the two streetlights. The rain had stopped, but the air was still damp. A soft bone-chilling wind blew some soggy leaves onto the wet street and into the messy gutter. A cat shot through a clump of shrubbery and crossed the street, dragging its left hind leg limply as it disappeared into a darkened front yard. On the whole street, only one house was lighted; the porch light shined and a dull glow came from behind the closed curtains of one window, while a candle flickered in another.
 

Lorelle's house.
 

"She's awake," Prosky whispered, taking the bag from Robby and checking the contents: fist-sized chunks of fire-blackened wood. He handed the bag back to Robby and said, "We'll have to be careful. Stay away from the streetlights, okay?"
 

As they started down the street, the rubber tip of Prosky's cane kissing the wet sidewalk with soft smacks, he watched Robby shuffle slowly beside him, hands in his jacket pockets, and Prosky began to worry. The boy's mind was – quite understandably – on other things, and he didn't appear capable of being careful. Prosky stopped, faced him and whispered urgently, firmly, "Listen to me, Robby, I know what you're feeling right now, but what happened to your friend and his family only proves that things are getting worse fast. So we
have
to do this, and we can't afford to be caught or interrupted. We've got to be very careful and very quiet. You can't shuffle your feet like that and you've got to pay attention to what you're doing. Otherwise, more people will die."
 

Robby seemed to think that over as he turned his eyes toward Lorelle's house.
 

"You can grieve later," Prosky said. "Right now, you've got to forget about it, cold as that sounds, and concentrate only on what we’re doing here.”
 

Robby changed slowly. His sagging shoulders lifted and his back straightened. He took his hands from his pockets and turned to Prosky, taking a deep breath. Unfallen tears were pooled in his eyes.
 

"Yeah, you’re right," he whispered. “Let's go."
 

* * * *

George woke from a sweaty dream about Lorelle to find her kneeling beside his bed, silently sucking his cock. Her right hand was tucked beneath his ass and her middle finger was pressed hard against his rectum.
 

Her eyes met his, glistening in the soft light bleeding through the curtains and she lifted her head and laughed.
 

"Hello," she said.
 

Until she spoke, George thought he might still be dreaming, but her voice broke through the bedroom's silence like a rock through a windowpane and he sat up suddenly, still heavy from sleep, hissing, "Ssshhh!"
 

She only laughed again.
 

"You've got to stop this," he breathed. "I don't know how you keep getting in here, but it's got to
stop
. Things are bad enough around here without my wife waking up to find –"
 

"She's not going to wake up. She's dead to the world."
 

George turned to Karen and watched her sleep. She was perfectly still; George could not even hear or see her breathing.
 

Lorelle wrapped her fingers around his cock again and led him off the bed with a gentle tug until he was on his knees. She hunkered down before him and continued sucking.
 

George's discomfort left him quickly and, as before, he forgot there was a third person in the room.
 

She licked his belly and whispered, "Fuck me like a dog, George. Hard." She turned around and squeezed him hard in her fist as she eased him into her,
 

slamming her ass backward against him. Grabbing his wrists, she wrapped his arms around her and pressed his hands over her breasts.
 

"Ahhh," George moaned, moving faster inside her as he smiled in the dark. But his smile faltered a moment later and he winced as images of pain began to flash on the backs of his eyelids –
 

 
–
teeth being knocked from a bloodied mouth with a rock
–
 

 
– changing with each thrust of his hips –
 

 
–
erect nipples being snipped off with garden shears
–
 

 
– and he began to move faster –
 

 
–
sleeping eyes being pierced with fish hooks
–
 

 
– and faster, until his smile slowly returned.
 

* * * *

Standing on Robby's porch, Prosky took the towel Robby had brought and carefully wiped the dampness from the front door, whispering, "Let's hope it doesn't rain now."
 

"Dad's gonna be pissed when he sees this," Robby said. He reached into the bag for a piece of the wood, handed it to Prosky and asked, "What do I tell him when he sees it?”
 

“Tell him the truth.”
 

"Are you serious?"
 

Lifting the wood, Prosky began to write on the door. "Yes. Tell him. All of it. Tell him everything."
 

"He'll think I'm crazy. And with the mood he's been in lately –"
 

"Just tell him." He finished the first name, Sanvi. "He might not believe you at first, but when he sees her reaction to it, he'll think twice." The second name, Sansanvi. "If you can convince him, maybe he'll spread the word." The third name, Semangelaf. "It might be the best thing that could happen." Then Prosky drew a circle around the three names and –
 

* * * *

 
– George was seconds away from an explosive orgasm, digging his fingers into Lorelle's round ass, when she craned her head back and released a scream that made his scrotum shrivel like a raisin and filled the room with the smell of rotting meat and shit and –
 

 
– the bare skin of her back split open, revealing glistening blackness, and something shot upward, hit George in the face and knocked him back and –
 

 
– he hit the side of the bed and lost consciousness before he slid to the floor.
 

* * * *

Prosky dropped the piece of burnt wood leaving the circle unfinished as the scream tore the night in half. It did not seem to come from just a single person – it was a sound that might have come from the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps, the combined screams of dying cultists in the jungles of Guyana; the cries of the unsuspecting outside Chernobyl as the air they breathed turned to fire and flesh and muscle began to peel away from bones.
 

There was a sweeping shift in the air and –
 

 
– Robby dropped the bag, spilling woodchips down the porch steps and onto the walkway and –
 

 
– the dogs began barking inside Lorelle's house across the street and –
 

 
– glass shattered and wood splintered with a piercing crack as a window to their left burst outward and something black arced up into the air, its sickening scream growing even louder as it headed straight for the streetlight that stood between the Pritchard's house and Lorelle's and –
 

 
– the streetlight exploded and sparks rained onto the street, sizzling on the wet pavement as darkness swallowed that section of the block.
 

"What is it,
what is it
?" Robby cried, pressing himself back against his front door.
 

Looking up into the darkness, Prosky said, "She was in the
house.
" A gust of cold wind stung his face as he stepped down from the porch, searching the black sky.
 

Dry flapping sounds moved over them, the sound of great wings slicing the air as the scream faded, then rapidly grew louder again as –
 

 
– a black shape swept downward led by two burning red eyes, heading straight for the porch, dropping so low that Prosky could feel a rush of air that swept his hat off his head. He dropped his cane and fell to his knees, covering his head with his arm and crying out like a child, actually afraid he was going to wet himself. The creature left behind a smell that conjured images of piles of rotting, vulture-eaten corpses stretching to the horizon of a hot barren desert.
 

Prosky got up and finished drawing the circle on the door. "Go in the house!" he shouted at Robby as the creature retreated. "She can't get to you in there!"