Dark Corners - Twelve Tales of Terror (6 page)

“
That
first one was no fun. I was nervous, and the old fuck wouldn’t
die, even though I choked him so hard I couldn’t flex my hands
for two days. He just looked at me with a glazed indifference, and
when he finally snuffed out, I was neither satisfied or elated. Monde
had decided to keep quiet. He often did when things went to shit. It
didn’t deter me though. I chalked it up to nerves and poor
technique. I tried another couple of strangulations, but they had the
same empty feeling. Then I figured out what was bothering me…”

“
The
anonymity. You didn’t like the secrecy.”

“
Exactly.
I wanted people to know that I was out there, and what I was doing. I
wanted to smell the fear on the streets. I wanted to read about
myself in the paper and watch myself on the news. I wanted to become
the most famous killer in history. That was when I started to use the
knife, and I christened myself with the name I would become known by
the world over.”

Elgin
nodded his head and smiled. Unlike his previous reptilian versions,
this one was of genuine pleasure.

“
Of
course. The Demon Dismemberer. Demon is Monde. Monde is you. Genius,
Mr. Roberts. Absolute Genius.”

Roberts
swelled with pride, and although he tried to hide it, a smile cracked
the stern face he’d been trying to hold.

“
It
made sense to use Monde. When I was out there stalking the streets, I
used to pretend to be him—that swaggering Italian gangster who
lived to give the middle finger to the world. As with anything, the
more I worked at it, the better I got. By the time I had offed my
seventh hobo, I was pretty damn slick. They were no sport though, not
really. Nobody bats an eye when a hobo turns up dead. Monde suggested
we take things up a notch.

“
I
first saw the girl completely by chance. I was twenty one, and had
finally moved out of the shitty apartment where my alcoholic mess of
a mother still lived. She had stopped living in the true sense of the
word years before, and instead wandered around with yellowed eyes and
skin to match. I thought she would croak before Christmas came, but
the stubborn bitch is still ticking over as far as I know. Anyway, I
got a place of my own. It wasn’t spectacular, but at least it
was clean and didn’t smell of booze and vomit. I had taken a
job working security for an all-night supermarket. Because I worked
nights, it meant I didn’t have to mix with anyone and could
keep to myself. I didn’t have any friends, and didn’t
really spend much on food. I pretty much lived on takeout and TV
dinners, so I had plenty of money left over each week. I saved up and
bought myself a car—a white Toyota. It got stuck sometimes
between second and third and didn’t always turn over the first
time, but it got me from A to B.

“
I
was on my one-hour break. They still called it a lunch hour, but at
one o’clock in the morning, it was hardly lunchtime. It was one
of those hot and sticky nights where you could still feel the
residual heat of the day rising up off the pavement. I had walked
half a block down to grab a sandwich when I saw her, and I knew she
was the one. She was tall and slim and had long blonde hair, which
seemed to shimmer with a life of its own. She looked to be around the
same age as I was, but I didn’t think of her sexually. I never
really had those feeling; didn’t do anything for me. Anyway,
she was just leaning there against a wall, crying. She wasn’t
making any sound, but I could tell she was upset. I didn’t care
of course, but Monde whispered that special word in my ear, and my
heart began to beat a little bit faster.

Opportunity.

My
mind began to race about how I could get her somewhere quiet. I
approached casually, and almost backed out when she pretty much
handed herself over to me.

‘
Officer,
please help me,’ she sobbed as she looked at me pleadingly.

She’d
seen my security guard uniform and assumed I was a police officer.
How I managed to suppress the smile I felt welling up within me, I’ll
never know. I offered her the most reassuring voice that I could
muster, flashed my pearly whites and said, ‘Officer Monde. How
can I help?’

It
was easy.

She
was new to the city, had become separated from her friends, and was
now lost. I nodded in all the right places and wore an expression of
concern that was no more than a mask. I was thinking, you see;
thinking about how delicious it would be to kill her— to cut
her up. I had a bizarre and completely random flashback to a day
back at the vineyard when I was a boy. My mother was removing the
legs from a chicken she was preparing for our evening meal. I
remembered the gristle like crunch as the knife went through the bone
and separated the joint. My stomach quivered. I wondered how it would
feel to do it to this girl.

I
listened politely and confidently with Monde guiding me, helping me
when I struggled for something to say. I loved that about Monde. He
always knew what to say and how to make it sound convincing. I let
him operate my mouth. He told her we would give her a ride back to
her apartment and that it was no trouble. She thanked us profusely,
and Monde told her that a young girl could never be too careful, that
there were a lot of bad people out there. It was all I could do not
to burst out laughing. She came willingly enough. It was easy to
reassure her, despite her questions.

‘
How
far is your patrol car?’

‘
It’s
just down here.’

‘
I
really appreciate your help, Officer.’

‘
No
problem, ma’am. It’s our duty to protect.’

‘
It’s
dark down here.’

‘
Don’t
worry, miss. Nobody will harm you whilst you are with a police
officer.’

‘
Wait,
what are you doing? No!’ ”

Roberts
smiled wistfully.

“
Her
neck felt tiny in my hands… Even though the alleyway was dark
and smelled wet and rotten—kind of like Alessio’s Well—I
enjoyed every second of it. I tried to cut off her head, but my small
pocketknife was dull, and try as I might, I couldn’t hack
through the gristle and tendons, so I had to stop. It was much more
satisfying than offing the hobos though. I looked into her eyes as
she died, and I swear I saw the life leave her. It was exhilarating.
That’s when I knew that all I wanted to do with the rest of my
life was kill.”

Elgin
looked up and Roberts was surprised at the look in his eye. He had
expected revulsion, or disgust. But what he saw was admiration.

“
This
is fascinating. What happened next?”

Roberts
shrugged. “I started to kill. As often as I could. I was smart
about it though. They found the girl’s body the following day.
It turned out she was only sixteen, but she looked a lot older to me.
I still didn’t feel guilty... I was desperate to kill again,
but to do another in my own city would be risky. Monde suggested we
select cities at random and drive out to look for someone to kill. I
also knew that if I wanted to continue, I would have to make
provision to hide the bodies. I didn’t want to be caught, not
when things had just begun.”

“
How
long did it take for them to catch you?”

“
Sixteen
years. A man can do a lot of killing in that time.”

“
So
what happened?”

“
If
I had the time, I could tell you in detail, but I suspect we don’t
have long left.”

Elgin
looked at his watch and frowned. It was the first real facial
expression other than the lizard smile that Roberts had seen.

“
We
have around fifteen minutes.”

Roberts
nodded. “Well, the short version will have to do. I did as
Monde suggested. I had a huge map of America pinned to my bedroom
wall. What I would do is take a dart and throw it at the map, and
wherever it would land, that’s where Monde and I would go to
find our kill. Apart from a few exceptions, like our failed trip to
Delaware, there was almost always an opportunity. Most serial
murderers go for a specific type of victim. Ted Bundy chose only
middle class white women. Jeffrey Dahmer chose only men and young
boys. They each had a profile, a reason for choosing that particular
type of victim. I didn’t have limits like that. My kills
weren’t about repressed homosexuality, or the thrill of the
chase. Do you remember that business with the clown who went ape shit
at the circus one day, completely out of the blue?”

Elgin
nodded. “Sure. It made headline news. But he was depressed, or
so they say.”

“
Bullshit,”
Roberts said flatly. “He wasn’t depressed. He just got
tired of pretending to be normal…”

“
You
don’t know that, not for sure.”

Roberts
grinned.

“
His
name was Freddy. He used to write to me. Sympathized with my plight,
or so he said.”

Elgin
offered no reaction, so Roberts went on.

“
The
poor guy was fucked up, tired of his life, alienated from his family.
He was a lot like me. I gave him a few pointers on how to break the
cycle.”

“
You…
encouraged him?”

Roberts
shrugged. “I don’t think so, not really. He would have
done it anyway, with or without help. The point I’m trying to
make is that there isn’t always a motive. Sometimes people just
lose it and want to go crazy.”

Elgin
nodded, but didn’t pursue the point.

“
I
don’t have a preferred type of victim. Male, female, young,
old, black, white—it really didn’t matter to me, as I
chose based on Monde’s suggestions and our favorite word—good
old opportunity. The security job got in my way, so I quit and took a
job as a long distance delivery driver. Not one of the big eighteen
wheeled rigs, mind you, but the smaller transit types. It was
perfect. Not only was I left to my own devices, the company I worked
for even paid my fuel expenses. I’ve often wondered if that
makes them an accessory to murder.... Anyway, Monde came up with
another great idea. Once we’d selected a location via the dart
and map, we would ship a package to a random address there via the
company I worked for. All I had to do was make sure that particular
delivery was on my sheet— and boom. I had a paid trip to my
next kill.

“
Monde also suggested we keep the dual identity
game going too. That first girl had gone with me willingly because
she believed I was a police officer. It took a while, but I
eventually sourced some high quality police uniforms from a movie
costume company and bought them using Monde’s name. We didn’t
always use the police disguise, but it was an option. Sometimes I was
Monde the door-to-door salesman, or Monde the doctor. I also refined
my technique, and after my eighteenth or twentieth kill, I had it
down to a fine art. If my victim was a woman, I would strangle her. I
liked to watch that little light blink out in their eyes. If my
victim was a man, I would render him unconscious with a lump hammer.
In all cases, I would dismember the victim after death. I would
always remove the head, but if I could, I would also take the arms. I
tried the legs too, but they were difficult to take off, so I gave
that up early on.

“
Depending
on where I killed, I would try to conceal the bodies. Monde told me
the longer I could hide them and allow them to rot, the less chance
there was of the police linking me to any of the murders. I took to
dumping the body parts in rivers in weighted bags, and in the
woodland so the wildlife could finish the job I started.

“
In
the winter of ’02, I reached my century. One hundred kills. By
then of course, despite my best efforts to hide them, many of my
previous victims had been found. It didn’t take long for the
police to notice the similarities between the mutilations, and as
soon as word reached the press, I was finally in the spotlight. They
dubbed me the Decap Killer, which I hated. I had worked too hard to
let them label me with such a flimsy name. Monde suggested I contact
them to let them know the error of their ways, so I sent a severed
head to the editor of the New York Times with a letter suggesting
they call me the Demon Dismemberer. The public went into frenzy, and
if anything, I think that one instance of self-indulgence was what
led to my downfall and capture.”

Elgin
glanced at his watch. It was no more than a flicker of the eyes, but
it got the message across.

“
How
long left?”

“
Ten
minutes. We better wrap this up quickly.”

“
Yeah,
time flies when ya’ havin’ fun, doesn’t it Elgin?”

No
response. Roberts lifted his feet and crossed his legs on the bed,
his long, tattooed arms dangling down past his knees.

“
It
was some smartass called Petrov who caught me. Petrov. Can you
believe that? A damn Russian, at least in name. Turns out he was
technically an American—had become a full citizen back in the
eighties. He was famous for thinking outside the box, thinking like a
killer. I don’t think he was too different from me at heart,
apart from the fact that he never had the balls to take that first
step… Anyway, Petrov was brought in to work the case because
he’d already caught the Green Bay rapist, and was fresh off the
back of catching that female serial killer in Rio De Janeiro. I had
read about him in the papers, and when I saw his picture for the
first time, I was concerned. He had these eyes Mr. Elgin, and—not
unlike yours—they were hungry, knowing eyes. Eyes that said he
knew secret things. Monde told me not to worry about him, but I had a
feeling the game had changed. I was feeling the pressure of my
notoriety then, and I had developed insomnia. There is nothing worse
than nights spent lying awake, waiting for daylight to come. By that
time, they had found fifty bodies that were attributed to me, and as
they widened their search, more and more of my handiwork was digging
itself out of shallow graves. The headlines proclaimed me as the
world’s most prolific serial killer—said that I was the
most feared man in history. Monde was thrilled, but I was starting to
feel scared. For the next few months, I didn’t kill as often.
It wasn’t that the opportunity wasn’t there. I just
assumed that my nationwide notoriety had put people on guard, but
the truth is: people never believe such things can happen to them.
No, Mr. Elgin, killing was as easy as ever. By May of ’04, my
tally was at one hundred and two, and unbeknownst to me, there it
would remain. The police had discovered eighty-seven bodies, and the
general public was demanding action. I was worried, but Monde’s
confidence assured me that it was ok. I imagined him flashing his big
Italian grin, telling me he would take care of everything. But Monde
was wrong.”