Supernatural Noir (31 page)

“It’s why you thanked me,” I said. “You thanked me for not sending her back. Is it because you did?”

The crack grew larger and beer started to seep out of the side of the mug. “I was ashamed. She laid in the back like one of our weekend whores and tried to make me. And I watched her get undressed, man. Christ, she looked just like Katy. I watched her for longer than I should have before I finally told her no. And then I proved what a worthless piece of shit I am. I drove her back to the hospital. Some of those fucking orderlies buy crank from us, and I shelled out some cash and had her slipped inside again. I’ve heard stories of what goes on there, and I sent her right back to that asylum.”

I nodded and couldn’t seem to stop. It was like my neck muscles had been cut. My heart slammed at my ribs. This prick had always said he thought he was her father, but when she came to him for help he dodged his responsibility. He’d never know just what he’d done. Unless he’d been inside, he’d never realize.

“Did you give her the gun?” I asked.

“No.”

We continued to drink. I decided that Dell and I would have to throw down one of these nights.

“If she came to see us she might’ve gone to visit others,” I said. “She must’ve met with someone three months ago. Who?”

“Whoever he is,” Dell said, “he’s dead.”

I kept running names and faces of my neighbors through my head. Who would a disturbed teenage girl listening to the veil-choked whispers of her dead parents go to in order to find out who killed them? Who else would she think might help her? Who had fallen off the razor’s edge into bed with her?

“You think it might be one of yours?” I asked. “The .22?”

“Our friend in the sheriff’s department said the serial numbers were filed and burned out with acid. That probably makes it one of mine.”

“You sell any recently?”

“The last six months?” He scoffed. “Dozens. They’re not worth shit to us. They’re not worth shit to anybody. You know that. No firepower.”

I nodded. “Unless you were going to swallow the barrel. She probably stole it from him.”

“So did she get it from him three months ago? Could she have hidden it that long?”

“No,” I said.

I’d failed again. I was being stupid, again. I feared I’d never smarten up no matter what was on the line. I was still going at this all wrong.

“She got it from him right before she came to see me. She stopped at his place first.”

I held up the little plastic purple house that looked like it belonged to a board game. I showed it to Dell.

“You ever seen something like this before?”

He had. He had a lot of contacts. He was involved with a lot of crooked deals and a few legit ones. He told me he’d seen this in a shop window on Main Street. It went along with a raffle. You fill out the paperwork and your name goes into a box for a drawing. He couldn’t remember what you won and he couldn’t remember the name of the business.

It didn’t matter. I thought I knew. I drove up Main Street until I found the right storefront. I parked and walked around back to the separate apartment behind the shop. Two windows bordered the back door. One to the left and one to the right. The left was new, with a plastic-frame screen instead of wood like the others.

Emily hadn’t known about any secret key stashed under a rock in the family yard. She’d visited here three months ago and smashed a window in. She’d come back before seeing me and gotten the gun. This is where she’d gotten the little house. It’s where she found a small gun and thought its power might help her to discover the answer to the question that haunted and tainted her life. It’s where she fell into bed with a man and whispered in his ear that her dead mother was asking for his help. It’s where the father of her baby lived.

——

I’d never been much of a burglar but I didn’t have to be. The new window was open. I slid it open and climbed inside.

John Acton—
Remember, Acton means action for your Home Buying Needs!
—lay naked in his bathtub with an X-Acto blade pressed to his wrists. He glanced up at me as I entered but said nothing. Emily’s death had given him the idea. There were hesitation cuts all up and down his forearms. It looked like he’d been trying to slash his wrists for days, but he wasn’t nearly as strong or single-minded as she had been.

He let the blade slip from his fingers and started to cry.

I closed the toilet lid and sat and listened to him weep. I lit a cigarette and smoked and stared at him, noting the half-moon scars on his chest and back made by a fierce woman who liked to cause her men to bleed.

He bawled like a colicky newborn. I couldn’t take the sound anymore. I stood and walked around his apartment. It hadn’t been cleaned in months. Old takeout-food containers littered the kitchen table and counter. A sweat-stained pillow and some balled blankets at the foot of the couch showed me where he’d been sleeping. His soiled bed still bore the signs of feverish lovemaking from months ago.

I thought about what could have led Emily here. I wondered how she had known John Acton had been one of her mother’s lovers. It couldn’t have been difficult. The ward is full of men who mutter and hiss about the women who had destroyed them.

I wondered how many of Katy’s lovers stalked the white halls of Sojourner in their slippers, and hid themselves away in the corners of the work room fondling wet clay like they were still touching her body.

I stood in the bathroom doorway.

“What were you going to do with the .22, John? Kill yourself?”

He responded with a whisper.

I leaned in. “What?”

“I want to die,” he whimpered, “but she won’t let me. They’re under my bed—”

“Stop it.”

“—right now. All three of them. The whole family. Look if you don’t believe me. Go look!”

My pulse beat furiously in my wrists. My hands became fists. I wanted to wreck something. I wanted to hurt someone. An icy shiver worked through me and I had to cross my arms over my chest to keep from shuddering. “Did you do it, John? Did you murder Katy and Ron?”

His features shifted as if invisible thumbs were working themselves into the muscles of his face. His eyes widened as his cheeks sagged. “Christ, no! Don’t you understand? I loved her! I always loved her! I still love her! Nothing else works. No other woman means anything to me. Why do you think I’m still alone all these years later?” His eyes found mine. “You know, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“You know because you’re marked too.”

“Yes.”

“You know because
you’re exactly the same way! You’re just like me!
”

I didn’t know what to do with him. The cops could do a DNA test to discover he was the father, but there wasn’t enough evidence to lead them from there to here. I could kill him but there didn’t seem to be much point. He was either going to eventually dig into his wrists deep enough to do the job right or he’d wind up in Sojourner himself.

But I had to do something with my hands. I worked him over until his nose was broken and he was spitting teeth, but watching his blood pour off his chin onto the dirty tile floor did nothing to empty me of the rage, sorrow, and fear that continued to swell inside me.

Because he was right. I was just like him.

——

There was too much space under my bed. My fiancée forced me to buy a king size and never spent a night in it as my bride. She had screwed around, but it wasn’t her fault. I’d pushed her away because, deep where it counted, I hadn’t needed or wanted her as much as I’d once craved Katy Wright. Once you’ve enjoyed something so wild, vicious, and bitter, no one else could ever matter again. I’d been marked. I bore scars.

There was more than enough room for four or five or even more bodies beneath the bed. For them to lie there, contorted, swollen, black faced, and crawling over each other, mewling and brooding and conversing. I spent a lot of nights on the couch downstairs now, looking up the steps and listening to the noise of the squirrels in the attic, the wind in the trees, the soft whispers and sighs that might be angry voices or only the sound of my next anxious breath.

——

“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars.” —Elbert Hubbard,
Epigrams

——

Tom Piccirilli
is the author of twenty novels, including
Shadow Season
,
The Cold Spot
,
The Coldest Mile
, and
A Choir of Ill Children
. He’s won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.

Nate Southard

—

Shelly keeps her eyes glued to the scorched two-lane as she reaches for the radio. With frantic fingers, she twists the dial, finds Jack and Squat with a whole mess of Not-a-Damn-Thing in between. It’s the quiet radio that scares me the most. Whoever said silence is golden was a goddamn liar. Silence is terrifying, and don’t ever let nobody tell you different.

Shelly whines a split second before she hits the only pothole for miles. I brace myself, but it’s too late. The Mercury jolts up and down, and the hole in my gut tears a little, ripping a barking scream out of me. When I look down, blood weeps between my fingers. That can’t be good, not that anything good is coming down the pike.

“You okay?” she asks.

“No.”

“What do you need?”

“A . . . bed. Just get me a bed.”

Her face pinches, and she shakes her head without once tearing her eyes from the road. “If we stop—”

“I know. Just get me a bed.”

She nods, biting her lip. We both know there’s no outrunning the thing behind us. Best we can do is get ahead of it for a little while. Sometimes the small victories are just so damn hollow.

After a moment of road noise, I spot a motel on the left, a squat, dirt-caked building that would probably be ringed with buzzing neon if it were night. I point with a bloody finger. Shelly gives me another one of those nods and eases onto the brakes.

“Careful entering the lot,” I say. “Please.”

We enter the lot at a speed that wouldn’t even count as a crawl, and still my gut burns liquid fire. I hiss out my pain as tears leak from Shelly’s eyes.

“I’m okay,” I tell her. “Just park . . . by the rooms.”

“But you’re bleeding!”

“Been bleeding a long time. Blisters must’ve popped.”

“Stop it.”

“Wish I could. Just . . . Just not that easy.”

The Mercury groans to a stop, splitting a pair of parking spaces. Shelly turns to me, her face lined with worry, black hair a tangle.

“What do we do?”

I almost grin at the question, but everything hurts too much. Instead, I nod toward the first motel room. “See if it’ll open.”

“But—”

“Just check, baby. Please.”

Her teeth work that lip again, her eyes shifting toward the motel room, and then she shoulders open her door and climbs out. As she walks toward the door, pale denim sheathing legs I know all too well, I grab the flask from the dash and swallow a belt. The bourbon rips down my throat and sends warmth through my insides, drowning some of the pain. Not nearly enough, but some.

Shelly reaches the door—a number three hanging crooked on it—and tries the handle. It jiggles but won’t turn. The door to room two gives her the same deal. When she turns back to the car, her face looks panicked for a second, but then it goes hard, and I can see the resolve deep in those brown eyes. She stalks back to the car, and I know what she’s coming to get even before she opens my door and reaches over my lap. Her eyes don’t so much as tick my way as she opens the glove compartment and snatches the .38 snub nose from inside. She pops the cylinder, and I see four bullets inside. With ruthless efficiency, she slaps the pistol shut again, and then she stomps away, leaving my door wide open.

My vision dims as I watch her walk to the office, her fingers tight around the pistol and her entire body tick-ticking back and forth with each step. The fire in my belly’s getting colder, and I know that’s not a good thing. How she can walk like that in her condition beats the hell out of me.

Maybe I can just slip away, just be cold by the time Shelly returns. Then she can keep running. Then she can—

Two cracking shots snap me out of my daze. I jump, and a new jolt of pure goddamn torture kicks another scream out of me. Flashbulbs pop in my eyes. They don’t clear until Shelly tosses the gun at my feet and puts a warm palm on my face.

“Look, baby,” she says. She jangles a room key.

I force a smile. The pain makes it hard, but the whiskey helps. “Did good, babe.” I try to ignore the flecks of blood on her cheek. They almost match her lipstick.

“I love you.”

“Come here.” She pushes toward me, and I grab the back of her head, mash her warm lips to mine.

“Let’s get you inside,” she says, and then she slips an arm under my shoulder and lifts.

The world goes electric hot as she gets me on my feet. I feel another rip and press hard against my gut. Don’t want anything slipping through and slapping the concrete. Shelly gets her weight under me. She feels so small, but she supports this idiot better than any crutch.

As she walks me toward the room, telling me to watch the curb, I lift my head and look west. The sky looms black. Most folks would say it looks like a bank of fat storm clouds, but I know better. It’s something much worse—even from here, I can see the fire inside it—and it’s my fault.

Least I did it for love.

——

“Babe, you’re gonna break my heart, you keep that up.”

Shelly chuckles a little—giggling doesn’t suit her—and leans her head back, sending black curls to break like angry waves against her pale shoulders. She wriggles on top of me, sending tiny jolts of pleasure from my lap through my entire body, and my hands find her hips, make her grind a little slower so I don’t explode then and there.

We sit in a darkened corner of the club, draped in shadows, out of reach of the black lights and televisions tuned to sports, like any guy in here is watching something other than the latest dancer to take the stage.

“That sounds funny?” I ask. I hope it sounds playful, but everything that comes out of my mouth sounds cold. Just the way it goes.

“A little.” Her voice makes me picture honey, pouring slow and smooth.

“Why’s that?”

She leans in close. Her breasts press against me, and her hot breath finds my ear. She smells like soap, not the cheap, stinging perfume all the other dancers use. Somehow, I manage not to shudder.

“Because hearts don’t break, baby,” she says. “They scrape against the inside of your chest until they blister. Then they pop and leak and blister all over again until they get tired and give up.” She arches her back and sets her hips going harder.

“Speaking of popping, better slow it down.”

A pout appears on her red lips. Then, it breaks into a wicked grin. “Don’t you want me to get you off?”

“Not my game.”

Shelly—she says that’s her real name, that she only goes by Ivy onstage—slides back until she’s sitting on my knee. She arches one smooth leg the color of milk and plants her foot dangerously close to my crotch. I’m trailing my eyes from her shin down to her ankle when both her hands close around me and squeeze.

“This feel like a game, baby?”

No, it doesn’t. It feels amazing, and my cock jumps in response. She slides her hands up, down, working me through my jeans, and my entire body feels alive. My eyes slip shut, and my breath comes in ragged bursts. If it’s a game, it’s the best one I’ve ever played.

Pressure builds. My vision crackles red. I hear Shelly chuckle again, and I grab her wrists in my hands, move them to my shoulders.

“Babe, I didn’t show up for a rub and tug.”

She jerks away, and the look on her face makes me think I really wounded her. I figure it’s a practiced expression. A woman like her can use a look like that better than guys back in the yard can use a shiv. You never see it coming; you’re just bleeding all of a sudden.

The wounded look goes razor hostile. Another good trick. “If you’re not worth my time—”

I grab her hips and pull her close, press her hard against the bulge in my lap. She squirms, her lips slipping from a firm line to a smile, and a sigh breezes out of her.

My eyes lock with hers. “Maybe I just want a little company.”

She presses her weight down on me. Her chest rises and falls, a black bra mashing her breasts into a shelf of flesh.

“If I’m worth your while or not is for you to decide, babe. I just know I ain’t paying for your hand.”

“You know how to use it?”

“Yeah.”

She climbs off of me and starts to walk away. I reach for my drink, sure she’s decided to move onto another worm she can hook, when she looks over her shoulder.

“C’mon.”

——

She drives a beat-up Mercury, but it looks real nice with her stretched across the hood behind the club. The night’s sticky hot, but Shelly doesn’t care. Everything’s given way to animal lust, me included. I try to be gentle, tender, but her eyes keep finding mine. She arches her back and digs her nails into my naked chest, and it’s like a whip across a thoroughbred’s flank. My groans become grunts. Her moans become screams.

When it’s done—when Shelly stretches her arms over her head and a smile fills her face—I button myself up and stand there with my hands in my pockets like some schoolkid. Shelly climbs off the hood and touches her hand to my face, kisses me.

“Amazing,” she says. “You better come back for me.”

I nod. She can tell I’m not lying. By now, she’s probably used to hooking guys like this. Give them the first one free, and then make them pay hand over fist. I know the game by heart, but her hand on my face feels so soft, so cool. I can almost feel the hook enter my skin, and I don’t think I care.

Maybe Shelly can see my thoughts tumbling around, because she pulls me close to her and plants a hard kiss on my mouth.

“You ain’t paying me a thing, baby. This is just you and me.”

My heart accelerates, and I can feel it start to scrape.

——

The days and nights blur, twist, and combine. Shelly burns everything down and builds it back up again. Her skin becomes my home, her touch the electric spark that keeps my pulse racing. Our time together is spent in a world of teeth and lips and sweat. Whiskey and cigarettes. Our eyes lock as our bodies buck against each other, only slipping shut when our passion explodes.

If it ain’t love, it’s the purest lust I’ve ever experienced.

——

Months pass blissfully, and then this guy, this total asshole, appears. Walks right into the club like he owns the joint. Maybe he does. Not like I know things like that. I just come to see Shelly, and I can feel her bristle the second he enters the place.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she says, but her voice is flat, far away.

I fix my eyes on the guy and try to burn holes through him. He wears a leather jacket that shines in the dim light. Long, black hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and the only thing distracting from his deep, shadowed eyes is a scar that travels a jagged path from his hairline to his chin. When he jabs a cigar into his teeth and lights it, I see fire dance off a collection of silver rings. The musky smoke from his cigar fills the club, and it smells like money. The kind of cash that comes with a whole lot of power.

I feel Shelly’s hands tighten around my arm as I watch the man sit. A drink appears at his hand the instant his ass hits leather, a nervous-looking waitress giving him her best smile. He waves her off with two fingers and then knocks back the entire drink in a single swallow. The smile his eyes give me over the rim of the glass makes me want to crush his throat. One by one, my muscles harden.

“Don’t,” Shelly whispers in my ear, and for the first time I can remember, she sounds scared. “He’s dangerous.”

“Who is he?”

“His name’s Michael.”

“Who
is
he?”

“I’m not sure. Deals art or something. I just know he’s dangerous.”

“So am I, babe.”

“Not like he is.”

I shoot Shelly a glance, and I see her watching Michael, her eyes narrow and worried. Another blister rises, and I know I hate this man. This man I don’t even know, I despise him with everything I have.

A waitress I know as Liz approaches. She looks scared, like a child afraid to tell her parents about the awful thing she’s done. Shelly’s hands ratchet tighter on my arm.

“Michael wants to see you, Ivy,” Liz says.

“I’m with somebody,” Shelly replies.

“He wants to see you now.”

“She doesn’t want to see him,” I say, standing before I even realize I’m doing it. Shelly pulls at my arm, dragging me back to my seat.

“Don’t.” There’s a begging note in her voice, and one of the blisters deep inside my chest pops.

“Who the hell is that guy? He bad news? Has he hurt you or something?”

She shakes her head. “Just go home. I’ll call you later.”

I stare at her for what feels like forever. Really? Like I can’t handle it? I know what she does here. My brain twists and tumbles, and I try to sort out what the hell’s going on, but eventually all I can say is, “I’m staying. Do what you have to.”

“Baby . . .”

“Just do what you need,” I say, making sure to phrase it in a way that hurts. Petty, but I don’t really care. My leaking heart wants me to be a child for a moment.

“Okay.” Shelly nods, and the look on her face is more than a shiv. It’s a Christmas tree, a jagged, barbed hunk of metal that rips out your guts when a con yanks it out of you. Without another word, she kisses me on the cheek and then leaves, the sex absent from her walk. She looks defeated, lost. Looking past her, I catch Michael smiling at me.