Highways to Hell (27 page)

He was initially defiant. “You realize this is ludicrous, right? What makes you think I’ll be a good little doggie and do everything you say?”

She smirked and looked down her regal nose at him. “Because you talk in your sleep. Mr. Madman. Why, you’re practically verbose.”

John just stared at her, suddenly cold and dead inside.

“There are things you don’t want people to know.”

He stayed silent, struggled to breathe.

“Nasty things.”

His fingers dug into his knees, made the bones grind.

“So, yes, I do think I have the leverage I need here.” Her smirk deepened, became a look of utter, smug certainty. “I own you now, John. You’re my little wind-up toy. Finish up whatever you’re doing in here and come out to the kitchen. I’m going to write up a list of new chores for you.”

She turned her back on him and sashayed back through the door, making a show of how little she feared the infamous Little Rock Madman.

John slumped in his chair.

His thoughts turned to murder again.

But that sense of revulsion was still there. He’d worked so hard to redeem himself. He just couldn’t let himself succumb to the old demons. Not even at the cost of his own manhood and dignity. The dark thoughts nonetheless stayed with him in the days that followed, though he struggled hard against them, even in the face of so much deep humiliation. And it got worse. She kept doing things to deepen his shame. The worst was yesterday, when she made him watch her fuck the prostitute. They tied him to a chair in the bedroom, and then they did it all. Missionary position. Girl on top. From behind, with both anal and vaginal penetration. Reverse cowgirl and face-sitting. Jesus, but it just went on and fucking on. By the time the prostitute left, John had been reduced to a trembling lump of insensible flesh. Linda didn’t free him from the chair until hours later. She then slapped him out of his stupor and ordered him to take out the trash and wash the dishes.

John did take out the trash.

Then he got into his Mercedes and drove far, far away from there. He stayed out for hours, drinking himself senseless in a succession of low-rent dives in the worst part of town. He didn’t remember coming home. Didn’t remember going to bed. But his sleep was tortured with nightmare visions of bloody murder. The images were so vivid and real. His wife dying horribly at his hands, tortured first, then chopped and diced into little pieces.

Turned out there was a reason the images were so damn vivid.

They were fucking real, man. Not nightmares at all, but memories.

John threw the refrigerator door shut.

He thought,
Well, that’s it.

There was no denying the truth of it. There was no coming back from this. It was the thing he’d told himself he couldn’t live with if it happened again, and John had always been a man true to his word. He would honor this vow.

But first he would bear witness to the rest of his shame.

He shuffled out of the kitchen and made his way to the dining room. Here was where most of the action had occurred. John’s knees went weak at the sight of the carnage. There were pieces of Linda on the dinner table. Her breasts on a ceramic plate. One looked to have been partially devoured. He saw fingers protruding from candle holders, each fingernail adorned with the shade of deep scarlet polish Linda favored. The lower half of her body was arranged with its legs spread in the center of the table. He supposed he’d climbed onto the table and defiled it at least once during the evening. What remained of her torso sat in a chair, a large knife protruding from the space between her missing breasts. And of course there was a simply amazing amount of blood splashed all over the room.

Feeling numb, John drank it all in.

It was incredible.

The Little Rock Madman had clearly not lost his gift for creative slaughter during his long period of inactivity. He even felt a strange sort of pride beneath the overwhelming sense of horror and failure.

The numbness faded.

A wash of nausea swept through him and he vomited profusely, the force of it sending him to his hands and knees. He heaved and heaved, spewing bile all over a severed big toe that had found its way to the floor. The spasms continued long after his stomach had emptied its contents. His joints and muscles ached with the pain of it, pain so overwhelming he actually welcomed it, because for a time it blocked out the reality of what he had done. But eventually the sickness gripping him faded and he was again forced to face the awful truth.

He got to his feet and staggered out of the room. His body reeled as he made his way through the big house, pitching side to side, hands held out to his sides in order to bounce off the walls and remain upright. Stumbling through the door to his study, he spied his leather chair and fell toward it with his arms extended, seeking it with the desperation of a shipwreck survivor grasping for the only life-preserver in sight. He made it to the chair, sat there slumped and panting for several minutes.

Many minutes passed. He began to regain some measure of physical and mental control. Then he set about doing the things he needed to do. He found a pad of paper and a pen, and he began to write the untold story of The Little Rock Madman. The rambling confession had more than enough details about the murders to convince authorities the real killer had at last been unmasked, albeit posthumously. The letter also contained heartfelt apologies to the families of his victims, and proclaimed that he would not ask for their forgiveness because he did not deserve it. Any of them were welcome to come to his grave to piss on it. He concluded by stating that while his wife had undeniably been a heartless bitch of truly epic proportions, she had not deserved to die. He apologized to her family and said that they, too, were welcome to piss on his grave.

He read the confession through two times, then signed it.

He reached for the bottle of old scotch Linda had pried from his fingers a week ago, but didn’t pick it up, deciding he didn’t deserve even this one last fleeting pleasure. Instead he opened the bottom drawer of his desk, removed the .44 Magnum from the lock box at the back, put the gun’s barrel in his mouth, and squeezed the trigger. He didn’t hear the gun’s report or even really feel what the large-caliber bullet did to his head. The awesome destructive power of the weapon did its work too fast and too efficiently for that, triggering a brief geyser of blood and brains that splattered shelves of leather-bound books behind his desk.

The next thing he was aware of was music.

Crunchy, distorted guitar chords and a thumping drum beat.

In a moment he recognized the song as “Highway To Hell” by AC/DC. He had loved them as a teenager, but hearing this particular song now was not exactly the most reassuring thing he had ever experienced.

John opened his eyes and realized at once that he was in Hell.

At first blush it looked like any large metropolitan city. Buildings, the rumble of traffic, honking horns, and the buzz of nearby voices. He was standing on a sidewalk. A standard issue city sidewalk. This could have been a street in Manhattan. Maybe Greenwich Village. But then there were the obvious big differences. The street vendor selling fried human eyeballs from a cart across the street. The sign on a utility pole which read CITY MUTILATION ZONE. And the many creatures that could only be demons of various sorts in the mix of milling pedestrians. He looked up and saw the roiling red sky and the sickle-shaped black moon that hung there.

He pinched himself and said, “Ouch.”

He patted his face and the top of his head, which was somehow intact, and that was quite a remarkable thing indeed, given that he’d just fired a bullet through it. But there was no denying the physical reality. He was alive again. In Hell, but alive.

He shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”

A hooker in miniskirt, high heels, and red fishnets paused in the process of strutting past him, turning a face toward him that looked like it had been boiled in acid. “We’re all Damned. You want a blowjob?”

John decided her face probably had actually been boiled in acid. “Um...no. Thanks anyway.”

The hooker’s face twisted, forming an expression that might have been a sneer. It was hard to tell through all the scarring. “You sure? You don’t know what you’re missing. Ask anybody, they’ll tell you. I give the best head of any whore in Hell.”

Against his will, an image of his erect cock wedged in the scary black slit that was the hooker’s mouth formed in John’s head. He grimaced. “No, sorry. I, uh, no offense or anything, but...”

The hooker reached into the little handbag slung over her shoulder and removed something. He heard a click of a button and saw a shiny blade pop open. The hooker brandished the switchblade and said, “We’re going into that alley behind you. I’m gonna blow you and then I’m gonna cut your dick off for a trophy.” Her face twisted again, the scarred flesh arranging itself into something that could theoretically have been a smile. “And there ain’t shit you can do about it.”

John swallowed hard. “Um...”

Run
, he thought.
Just run
.

Another second and he might have bolted, but the soft, sultry voice to his right stopped him. “Get lost, whore. This one’s mine.”

Great.

The whores of Hell were arguing over him, and he hadn’t been here five minutes yet. Not an auspicious start. He was feeling a bit like a piece of meat. It was not a feeling he enjoyed. “Look—”

He turned to address the second whore, but the words died in his throat with a gurgle. He went cold inside and again felt the urge to bolt. The second woman was not another cheap streetwalker. She was gorgeous, with long, lustrous blond hair and an exquisite face worthy of the cover of Vogue. The body was just as stunning, sleek and slender but with lush curves and ample breasts. It was the kind of body meant for modeling swimsuits. The dress she wore looked stylish and sexy, not at all like anything a whore would have in her wardrobe. It looked expensive, as if it must have been purchased from one of Hell’s most upscale boutiques. He knew nothing of the current fashion trends in Hell, but instinct told him this woman would always stand at its cutting edge. The backless black dress looked molded to her figure, a supple second skin that would be a pleasure and privilege to peel away from her creamy, unblemished flesh.

John felt the same instant, reflexive lust he’d felt the first time he’d seen her.

Which had been at a nightclub in Little Rock twenty years ago, the night before he hacked her into seemingly a million little pieces in that public park.

Her smile broadened, became truly radiant. “Hello, John. I knew you were coming. I can’t tell you how good it is to see you again.”

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, it was her.

Angela Willis.

A memory came to him. Angela’s mother on the news, crying for the cameras, begging the police to do anything to catch the monster who had taken her baby.

John turned and ran.

He shoved his way through the crowd on the sidewalk with heedless abandon, knocking a fat man into a demon’s back in the process. The demon turned, snarling as its black wings unfurled. Its mouth widened, the flesh displaying a shocking level of elasticity as the black maw grew to a size large enough to swallow the fat man’s head, which it promptly did. John kept moving, turning his back on the demon as its flashing, razor-sharp teeth clamped together.

He glanced back twice to see if Angela was pursuing him, but he seemed to have lost her in the foot traffic. He slowed his pace and eventually came to a panting stop outside the open door of a rock club. Live music blared through the open door, filling this section of the street with its concussive beat. It was yet another AC/DC song. “Night Prowler.” John frowned. It was obvious he was hearing live music and not a recording. But that voice...