The Creep (9 page)

Harvey was addressing a late evening group at I.O.H. headquarters, Springfield.

"Clients will come to you totally wrapped up in
themselves
, thinking all the time about
their
problems, behaviors and hang-ups. One of the things you can do, to stop this, is to give them even more to think about. Usually people can only cope with and process seven bits of information at a time.

"The formula is seven, plus or minus two
.
Give them things to do outside their normal realm of activity, and they'll have to spend time working on those and that will distract them from their own problems. The more they do for you, the less time they have to think about their own problems. You can give them all sorts of interesting little projects. Use your imagination.
As the Chinese professor said 'Use your noodle.'
A lot of ideas will come to your mind as you work with each client."

It was Wednesday morning and Bishman met Harvey at the Pa
sadena office for his regular 9
am appointment. At hypnotherapy appointments Harvey would immediately take Bishman into an altered state and start work.

That didn't mean to say they never talked to each other on a conscious level. Quite the contrary - many times Harvey met Bishman for a meal (Harvey always picked up the tab) to talk things over and give feedback. But this was a set appointment, so down to hypnotic regression. Bishman searched his mental atlas of faraway places and began:

Many times when you're on the road things go wrong, or at least not according to plan. One time Bishman was in Texas and got caught up in a brutal road accident. The truck in which he was a
passenger wasn't directly involved and only due to the swift reactions of the driver did they avoid getting entangled in the carnage.

The noise had been horrendous: smashing glass, the noise of steel grinding, twisting, buckling, skidding, scraping and banging along the ground in a
shower of sparks. It seemed to go on forever but, in reality, it was all over in seconds.

The truckie pulled, or rather lurched up. The two of them jumped out to see if they could help anyone. Apparently some maniac, a drunk, had somehow got onto the freeway and was driving down it the wrong way, at excessively high speed. He plowed headlong into oncoming traffic. There was wreckage strewn everywhere.

Bishman was the first to find the body, a woman's. She'd been cleanly decapitated. Bishman wondered what could have caused such a clean cut. He didn't have to look for the
head,
it was right next to him. It was truly awesome, and he couldn't help staring at it. The eyes were fully open and looking around as if to say,
what's happened, why can't I move?
Her lips were moving but no noise was coming out of them. The eyes kept looking around and eventually their gaze fell on her own body which was about six feet away. Her eyes and lips then started going mental.

Just then, Bishman's buddy arrived, took in the scene, heaved up,
then
threw his coat over the victim's head. Bishman didn't like to say anything, but he was fascinated by the woman's reaction.

Harvey waited patiently. He had an intuition Bishman would mentally click back in; whether it would be a continuation or another track would be anyone's guess. Without warning, Bishman started again, Harvey was ready and willing:

Bishman got lost in Upstate New York or Connecticut. He'll never know exactly where, all he knows is what happened.

He was dropped off out in the middle of nowhere by a severely angry truckie. That didn't happen often, but it did happen. It happens because a truckie gets bored with the conversation or he's as high as a kite or he's paranoid about something or he's a complete asshole. Bishman thought he was probably a combination of all these.

He walked
ten,
maybe twelve miles in the bitter cold and, despite his heavy jacket, he had to walk briskly to keep warm. The moon was full and the stars were bright and as he walked along, he spotted six falling stars.
Huh, some consolation!

Bishman heard the noise way before he actually reached it - metallic, droning and constant. The nearer he got, the louder the noise got. Eventually he reached a junction off the main road. By now, the noise was getting painfully loud. A few hundred yards down the junction, he discovered an immense train yard. There must have been at least a hundred trains there, all big diesels, all running their engines to stop them from
freezing up. Bishman remembered he'd read that during the war they ran the big tank engines every hour to keep them warm, sometimes they'd have to leave them running all night. If engine oil gets too thick you can never start the cumbersome engines again - especially the enormous diesel engines they use on trains.

A huge pall of oily smoke hung in the air, a powerful, solitary lamp casting grotesquely-shaped shadows over the yard, like a scene from hell. The din was horrendous; the belching of the exhaust, the detonation of the actual firing of individual cylinders and the metallic knocking of engine parts that diesels tend to make, all combined to make one unique, deafening rumble.

But there was no one around. That made the whole thing even more awesome. The moon and one lamp lighting up the place, an ungodly din, and the place was deserted.
Spooky
!

Bishman thought he'd snoop around and find somewhere warm to sleep the night,
then
push on in the morning. The thought even crossed his mind to go by train, there were enough of them.

"Hey you, fella, what are you up to?" Bishman was taken by surprise. The guy was about six foot two and about two hundred and fifty pounds.
Really ugly.
If you'd seen him you'd know we'd descended from apes. The security officer summoned Bishman to the office for questioning. Bishman
realized
the truth was as good a story as any. "You sure you ain't lying to me, fella?" The guard asked in a relaxed and friendly manner.

"No of course I'm not
fuckin'
lying to you. How the hell do you think I got here, fuckin' parachute'?" Bishman took out his cigarettes, lit one and, as an afterthought, passed one over. The guard took the cigarette and lit it with a large table lighter from a desk that was full of paraphernalia.

Bishman rubbed his hands together to warm himself over the electric heater and said, "Anyway, you know what the three biggest lies in the world are?"

"No, go on," said the guard.

"I won'
t put it in if it hurts, I won'
t come in your mouth, and the check's in the mail." They both laughed and the guard put on some coffee.

"Yeah, I've heard it before but I can only ever remember two, I always forget the last one."

The guard made coffee in brightly glazed mugs. Bishman added his own milk and eight sugars, which shocked the security officer.

Bishman burped. "Did you hear the one about the old prossie?"

The security officer stirred his coffee and drew deeply on his cigarette.

"No, go on," he said.

"Fucking old prostitute had worn out her pussy and was starting to get complaints from her johns. They complained that her pussy was so big they couldn't feel anything. So she went to her pimp. 'No problem,' he told her. 'All prostitutes wear their pussies out sooner or later. All you have to do is get it rebushed.' The old prossie wanted to know how, so he told her.

"You buy a large leg of ham from the butcher's with a bone that goes right the way through it. Boil it for at least five hours, seven would be better. Then you shove the whole thing up your pussy and pull out the bone. That should do you for another twenty years." Bishman was already laughing before he finished the joke and the guard wasn't far behind him. Tears were trickling down their cheeks.

"More coffee?"

"Yeah, I'll force one," said Bishman, getting out his cigarettes again.

"Is that a .38 Smith and Wesson?" asked Bishman enthusiastically, pointing to the gun in the security guard's hip holster. "We call those Saturday Night Specials where I come from."

"Yeah, it sure is. You know something about guns then?" The guard poured coffee into two cups and pushed one towards Bishman.

"Sure I know a bit. I've owned over a hundred and fifty guns in my time, so they're like second nature to me. Mind if I take a look?"

"Sure, there ya go. Don't fire the fucker though. That's all we need." The guard took the gun from its holster and handed it to Bishman.

Bishman deftly flicked open the chamber, six bullets, clicked it back, spun the chamber,
satisfied
himself he had a perfect working specimen in his hand. The guard watched, fascinated. Here was someone who obviously knew what he was doing. Bishman lined up an imaginary target in the middle distance, his arm extended, his eyes fixing themselves, bugging out
with concentration. Slowly, slowly,
he brought his arm round, in a 90 degree arc as if he was lining up a moving target, until it was poi
nting directly above the guard'
s head
. Slowly and carefully
he brought his a
rm
down to chest height.

The guard had only an instant to recognize the danger he was in, his face only briefly flickering with fear, before Bishman let him have six slugs at point blank range, his body jerking like a marionette. He died instantly, a crumpled heap face-up, spilt coffee steaming off his coat. Six neat holes meant that remarkably quickly there was a large pool of incredibly dark red blood. Very quickly too the color drained from his face. He looked like an ugly ghost.
Apelike.

Bishman bent down and fumbled through his pockets. He knew there had to be a car outside although he hadn't seen it. He found the keys in the pocket in his pants, not the jacket.
Shit! Things are always in the last place you look for them.

Bishman closed the door behind him and went looking for the car. He found it
quickly,
it was a fire-engine-red Lincoln Continental. He put the key in the door and opened it.
JEEEEEZUSSS!!!!!!
He got the fright of his life. It was a big German
Shepherd
, a
Schutzhund Three
attack dog, and as soon as it realized Bishman was not with his master, it went berserk. It jumped out of the car and was all over Bishman before he could close the door. Snapping and biting, growling, frothing, lips curled back, Bishman was getting pinned down. He thought he was going to die. He tried to protect himself but the dog kept tearing at his arms. Flashing its teeth
and snapping furiously, this dog was not going to quit.
This is a professionally trained attack dog, no doubt about that,
thought Bishman.
Fuck! I'm gonna
die,
get killed by a lousy fuckin' dog.
No way, Jose.
Boogaloo.

With the strength and determination of a desperate man, Bishman forced his arm deep into the dog's mouth, jammed it there and grabbed hold of the root of his tongue for good measure. He then sank his teeth into the dog's
nose and bit it
clean
off. You should have heard that dog yelp. It ran off, all the fight had gone out of it. It whimpered, yelped and yowled. Bishman spat out the dog's nose thinking,
pick the bones outta that ya bastard,
spat again to get rid of the blood and the salty taste, and lit a cigarette, holding the smoke in his mouth.

Bishman was in agony. Both his forearms felt like they were on fire. He fired up the Lincoln and drove like hell, spinning its wheels all the way out of the yard and a good fifty yards down the road. He nearly overshot the
junction,
his adrenalin was pumping so hard.

He looked at his watch,
then
checked the clock in the car. It was ten minutes to midnight, Saturday night.
Now you know why we call them Saturday Night Specials, pal
. Bishman had gone into the train yard humming
Catch a Falling Star.
He came out humming
You Ain't Nothing But
a Hound Dog.