Bedbugs (31 page)

The tape began to roll.

After several seconds, an opening guitar riff filled the office, drowning out everything else, even the high, rapid flutter of Abigail’s heartbeat in her ears. A faint smile touched the corners of her mouth as she waited in anticipation, but she said nothing as she tried to settle back in her chair and listen.

After the opening bar, the drums and bass kicked in; then, after another measure, her voice swelled up until it reached full volume in a sustained wail that sent a shiver racing up her back.

Damn, that’s good
, she thought.

Louie glanced at her and scowled. His jaw was set with grim determination, and his upper teeth were exposed, making him look like the flesh-eating jackal he was. Abigail’s recorded voice began to sing the first verse of “After the Rush.”

“Hmm . . . sounds okay to me,” Louie said after a few seconds of listening.

Abigail could barely hear him above the sound of her music, but then, as her voice spiraled into the bridge, another voice, so faint it almost wasn’t there, came through the speakers.

Louie’s expression dropped, and his face went suddenly pale.

“‘What the hell—?” he said. “That wasn’t there before. Who the fuck is that singing with you?”

He stripped his lips back, and his wide teeth flashed like fangs as he glared at her.

Abigail forced a smile as she focused on the second voice. It was almost—but not quite—buried beneath the mix. Like a tantalizing wave of the hand seen dimly through a thick mist, the second voice wavered up and down with an odd echoing effect as it gathered strength.

“That’s the second vocal track I told you I added,” she said, struggling hard to remain calm and not start laughing out loud.

“But that . . . that doesn’t even sound like you!”

Louie’s face was flushed beet red, and he looked like his head was about to explode.

“That’s a . . . a goddamned
man
singing! And it sounds like you’re playing his vocal track backwards! What the fuck are you trying to pull here?”

Abigail tried to ignore him as she bounced her head in time, grooving with the music. The two voices were matched so closely they quickly dominated the sound of the instruments. Like dancers . . . like lovers, the voices twined in and around each other, weaving up and down.

Abigail closed her eyes and, for a moment, imagined that the voices were two fast-growing strands of columbine that were so entangled they were becoming indistinguishable. When she opened her eyes again, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Louie’s expression of pure, blind anger.

“This isn’t . . .
No!
This is absolutely
not
acceptable!” he shouted, shaking his clenched fists at the machine.

Before he could continue, he paused and, wincing slightly, raised one hand to his mouth. A look of perplexity, then of utter shock filled his eyes when he took his hand away from his lips and saw a pink smear of blood on his thumb and forefinger. His frown deepened as he skinned his lips back and grasped one of his front teeth and started to wiggle it back and forth.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, shaking his head in confusion.

Abigail could barely hear him above the steady wash of music, but she had a pretty good idea what he was saying. Her own smile widened all the more as the voice she had recorded backwards continued to weave in and out with her own voice.

“So who the hell is this singing with you?” Louie asked, shouting to be heard over the music. His eyebrows lowered like storm clouds.

Abigail wanted to laugh out loud when she saw the thin trickle of blood that ran like a scarlet ribbon from one corner of his mouth. At first Louie seemed not to notice it, but then unconsciously he wiped his chin with the back of his hand and froze when he glanced down and saw the dark red slash of blood across his wrist.

“What the—?”

Reaching up with one hand, he felt around inside his mouth. Then he grabbed his front tooth again and started to wiggle it back and forth, hard. Beads of sweat glistened like dew on his forehead.

Abigail almost squealed with joy when she saw his front tooth shift back and forth like an ancient, teetering tombstone. Then, with a sudden snap that seemed almost as loud as a gun shot, Louie’s hand pulled away. His eyes widened with genuine shock—maybe even terror—as he stared at the bloody stump of tooth he was holding between his thumb and forefinger.

At first he seemed too stunned to notice the pain; but after a moment—as Abigail’s voice and that other voice continued to wail away in the background—his eyes clouded over. He cleared his throat with a deep, watery rattle, then leaned forward and spit a clotted glob of blood into the cup of his hand.

Abigail held her breath.

It’s working!
she thought.

Before he could find a tissue or something to wipe his hands on, the trickle of blood issuing from Louie’s mouth suddenly gushed, running so fast it dripped in a steady stream from his chin onto his chest and lap. His eyes were frantic with fear as he started to rise from his chair, then sat down heavily and stared vacantly at Abigail.

When he opened his mouth again and tried to speak, several more teeth shot out in a bloody spray and hit the top of his desk, rattling on the wood like a dozen lead pellets.

Abigail didn’t say a word as she rose slowly from her chair. All the while her eyes were locked onto Louie, who now slumped forward onto his desk and reached out to her with one trembling hand. The other hand clasped the worn arm of his chair, but it couldn’t support him. Moaning softly, he lurched forward and then slid slowly to the floor.

Abigail smiled, thinking how much he looked like a melting candle. Moving with a quick dance-like skip, she came around the side of the desk and looked down at him on the floor. His white button-down dress shirt and tie were now saturated with a spreading bib of blood. His shirt clung to his heaving chest as he looked up at her and panted heavily.

Like a mad dog in August
, she thought but still didn’t quite dare to say to him.
And that’s just what you are, Louie. Nothing but a cheating, scumbag, rabid dog!

Louie’s eyes rolled wildly in his head as he looked up at her and pleaded wordlessly for help. With a thick, bubbly groan, he thrashed from side to side and hit his head hard against one of the chair legs. Tears were streaming down his face, mingling with his blood as he tried once again to speak, but his words were choked off as more teeth fell from his gaping mouth onto the floor. Abigail almost couldn’t see them inside the thick wash of blood and mucous that was flowing from his mouth and nostrils.

Abigail’s smile widened even more when she glanced over at the still-running tape deck. The music and voices—especially the male voice that she had recorded backwards—were subtly but steadily gaining strength, shifting into a low, sonorous chant that soon overwhelmed the steady musical backbeat. The backwards words were unintelligible, but they throbbed with an undeniable power. Abigail felt a twinge of pain in her own jaw and knew that she had to get out of the office soon.

After one last glance at Louie on the floor, she was satisfied that he didn’t have the strength to get up and turn off the tape machine.

That was good.

The music would keep playing while she got away, and he lay there, drowning in his own foul blood.

It’s really working!
she thought excitedly.

Before she turned to leave, she knelt down beside Louie and, leaning close to his ear so even through his panic and pain he would hear her, she said, “Oh, by the way—you wanted to know who that is singing with me. . . .”

Louie’s eyes were glazed milky white with pain. His face was pale as old bone, and his body had started to twitch as though a powerful electrical current was passing through him. He looked so far gone that he wasn’t even on the planet anymore, but Abigail almost didn’t care whether or not he could hear or understand her.

It didn’t matter.

It was the effect, the power of the music—
her
music that counted.

“You remember that you wrote me a letter threatening to sue me if I didn’t deliver a
master
-ready tape of my new album, right?”

She had been smiling for so long, now, that her cheeks were beginning to hurt. She had to massage her jaw before she could continue speaking.

“Well, that’s who’s singing with me.”

The male voice now dominated the music, chanting in low, somber, almost inhuman tones that reached down into her heart and deep into her soul. . . .

“Like the old ads say, that’s my master’s voice.”

—for the members of “Dead Eyes Emerson”

T
he only time Earl’s Cafe was filled with customers by four A.M. was in November, during hunting season. Normally, Earl didn’t even open his doors until five-thirty in the morning, when folks heading in to work at the National Paper Products mill stopped by for coffee, donuts, and gossip. Once hunting season started, though, Earl would put on his traditional hunters’ breakfast menu every Saturday morning, and just about every hunting man in Hilton, Maine, would show up.

The place always seemed unnaturally bright that early in the morning, what with the fluorescent lights on and it still being dark outside. At least thirty men, all dressed in hunter’s blaze orange, crowded around the counter and stuffed themselves into booths as they fueled up for a day in the woods. Earl himself was one of the customers every morning throughout hunting season because, like just about every other man in town, he wanted to be out there in the woods. For the duration of the season, he turned complete operation of the Cafe over to his one and only full-time employee, Gary Clark, who kept the Cafe going with the help of a part-time waitress or two and Sam Curry, the dishwasher. Gary didn’t seem to mind running the place alone all that much because he had never hunted a day in his life, and he swore time and time again that he never would.

Mixing with the strong aromas of fresh-brewed coffee, frying eggs and bacon, and the body sweat of men who had been in the woods for days on end without coming near soap and water, was the thick, almost cloying smell of Earl’s famous hunters’ stew. In truth, Earl had nothing to do with the stew that had made his pre-dawn hunters’ breakfast so special. Gary had first concocted it some five or six years back, when he first came to work for Earl after being laid off at the N.P.P. mill. Earl probably never would have even hired Gary except that was the same year Gary’s brother Albert died. Being second cousins, he figured Gary was pretty shook up, losing both his brother and his job about the same time. Any doubts he might have had about Gary’s abilities disappeared after Earl saw how much his customers went for the stew. It had a hefty broth and was loaded with chunks of potato, carrots, celery, onions, and meat seasoned to perfection. Anyone who tried it raved about it, swearing it was the only thing to eat before a day in the woods. It stuck to your ribs all day, as they say, and most of Earl’s customers swore that it carried them most of the way to supper time.

On this particular Saturday morning, the second weekend of hunting season, talk at Earl’s Cafe was a bit on the gloomy side. Roy Coleman had been missing since late yesterday afternoon.

“I’m telling yah,” Pete, Roy’s son, said as he sat hunched over his bowl of stew at the counter and looked from face to face. “It just ain’t like my pa not to show up. He’s hurt bad or. . . .” He wasn’t able to finish the thought, but he didn’t have to.

Herb Logan and Frank Harris, who had started out the day before with Roy but had split up sometime around noon, seemed most inclined to agree with Pete. Like every man in the Cafe that morning, they had known Roy all their lives. They knew damned well that Roy wasn’t the kind of man who’d get himself lost. No-siree! Roy Coleman knew the woods around Hilton like most folks know their own backyards.

“You wanna know what I think?” Ollie Johnson piped in, as if someone had asked his opinion. “I think you’re getting your undies in a bundle about nothin’.” He had his face down and was busily sopping up runny egg yolk with a piece of toast. “Your ole’ man was prob’ly too deep in the woods when dark came, ‘n he jus’ hunkered down for the night. He’ll more’n likely show up sometime today.”

“I reckon Ollie’s right ‘bout that,” Herb said, looking intently at Pete. “Your pa’s too damned smart to get hisself lost.”

“Gotta be smart if he didn’t stick with you this year, Herb,” Dennis LeCroix said with a snorting laugh. “Christ, you make enough noise in the brush to alert every friggin’ deer in the county. When was the last time you bagged a buck, anyways? Couldn’t’ve been this century.”

Herb glanced down at his bowl of stew and muttered, “It ain’t killin’ the deer that I like. I jus’ ‘preciate the opportunity to get out into the woods ‘n enjoy nature.”

“I suppose that’s why you don’t go down to Florida with your wife every winter, huh?” Dennis said. “ ‘N I ‘spoze that’s why you spent so goddamned much on that new 30-30.”

“Well,” Herb drawled, casting a long look at Gary, who was ladling stew into a couple of bowls. “‘Least ways I bother to get out there . . . unlike some folks ‘round here.”