The Messenger (2011 reformat) (20 page)

"Oh, it's
on the fritz all the time," she said.

He kept the
flashlight on to light their way back. A sudden breeze swept the backyard; it
pressed her gown right to her skin, highlighting the lines of her breasts.

"But I
don't remember the last time it's been serviced by a pro," she finished.

Another shake
of his head. It was time for a test. "Well, when we go inside, let me ask
your husband, see if he remembers the last time a repairman came out. Maybe a
service record was left with the receipt. I can see what was done."

"No luck
there," Annabelle told him. "My husband's out of town, and I don't
know where he might keep any records like that."

Okay, Erik
thought. This is starting to get very interesting. But what about the two other
repair guys in the house? Erik was thinking a way around that when Annabelle
stopped halfway back to the outside door.

What's she
stopping for? Erik thought. What, she wants to do it right here in the yard? It
was fine by him.

She looked up
to the moon, held out her arms. "It's such a beautiful night, isn't it?"

He stepped
closer. "Sure."

"I guess
you're in a hurry, got another call tonight, huh?"

"Nope,
this is the last one. I'm in no hurry at all."

"Then
come on! Let's have a beer!" She grabbed his hand and tugged him out
toward the other end of the yard.

"Beer
sounds great to me," he said, off guard. The yard grew darker the farther
they got from the house. "Where, uh, where are we going?"

"The
kiosk!"

Kiosk? Erik
could only see darkness. But he could smell something, too, something good, but
before he could ask.

"It's
where I have my quiet time. There's a cooler full of beer and a barbecue."

"Ah, I
knew I smelled something cooking. Smells great, by the way"

"I'm
cooking a brisket. It'll be done in a few hours. You gotta slow cook it all
day?

All right.
That made sense. She was cooking a brisket in her backyard barbecue and she had
a cooler of beer back there. Perfectly normal.

Erik strained
his eyes. It was very dark, but in a few more steps the wooden kiosk came into
view. His vision was adjusting now. The kiosk looked like a latticework of
crystal in the moonlight. Several high palm trees surrounded it, their leaves
gently flittering in the breeze.

"Have a
seat!" She released his hand and popped open a cooler, withdrew two beers
from ice. Erik sat down on the picnic table bench. The cold beer refreshed him.
"Nice little place back here," he observed. "Kinda dark,
though."

Annabelle
remained standing, reveling in the gentle breeze. "I could light the tiki
torches but that would draw mosquitoes."

Erik wanted to
get laid. What he didn't was to get was West Nile. "Then let's pass on the
tiki torches."

She seemed
lost in thought, looking up to the sky. Erik was looking at her back. She
raised her hands as if in some secret, exuberant prayer. Then-unless Erik's
eyes were deceiving him-her hands came back down very slowly. She was caressing
herself.

Then she
flipped off the straps of her nightgown. The gown slipped down her body like
dark fluid, pooling around her ankles.

To hell with
the beer. Erik stood up, walked toward her just as she turned. Stark naked now,
she smiled in the dark.

"Guess
it's time to get down to business, right?" Erik said.

"Yeah,"
she sighed, and then they were in a clinch.

They kissed
ravenously. She pressed right against him, standing on tiptoes. Erik's hands
prowled up and down her sleek back, played with her buttocks. When he squeezed
both cheeks hard, grinding her pubis to his thigh, she moaned out loud. Her own
hand began to play too, up front. It slithered over the denim of his jeans.

Hidey-HO! he
thought, sucking her tongue. This was going to be his best service call in a
long time.

He could feel
her nipples hardening against his shirt. Her fingers began to unfasten his
belt, and then...

She stopped
and stepped back, big smile on her face.

Erik's
shoulders dropped. "You're not just teasing me, are you? Please tell me
that ain't so."

"It ain't
so," she mocked his voice. "We have to check something first."

"What?"
He was getting annoyed. "There's nothing wrong with your a/c."

"Not
that, silly. The brisket!"

The fuckin'
brisket. Jesus. Lady, you've been all over me tonight. I don't give a fuck
about the fucking brisket.

"It'll
just take a second. I haven't checked it since before the sun went down. Get
your flashlight."

Erik had
plenty of doubts now. At least he got a good feel. She must just be some
nutcase housewife who got off on teasing men. It's a good thing I'm a nice guy,
he thought. You come on to some guys like that and then don't put out, you'll
wind up getting it the hard way. But, no, that wasn't Erik's style.

He'd set his
tool bag down at the edge of the kiosk and he thought he'd set the flashlight
down right next to it. He fumbled there now in the dark. When he looked to the
side, though, he noticed something white. What the fuck is that? He squinted,
then reached over. Picked it up.

It was a white
cowboy hat.

"What's
with the hat?" he asked impatiently. "Your husband's?"

She was
staring off again, distracted, only half listening. "Oh. No. It's the
furniture guy's. He must've ... left it out here earlier."

The furniture
guy? So she had him back here earlier, it seemed. And the cable guy, too, he
presumed. Erik thought about that a second, then shrugged. Sloppy seconds
didn't bother him. Hell, I got a rubber in my wallet. But-

He set the hat
down on the picnic table. The furniture truck was still in the driveway, and so
was the cable truck. "So those guys were back here earlier, and now
they're back in the house working?"

A pause.
"Um-hmm. They were ... just finishing up when you came. They've probably
even left by now. So...you don't have to worry about anyone...interrupting
us."

Erik guessed
he bought the answer. The situation was easy to calculate. When the husband's
out of town on business, Wifey packs in as much strange as she can. Nothing
wrong with that.

"But..."
Erik looked back at the cowboy hat. "That looks like a pretty

expensive hat.
What, the guy just left it here?"

"Forget
about the hat," she said and faced him. Her nakedness radiated in the
dark. She was almost glowing. "He'll come back for it tomorrow."

Erik nodded,
then he noticed something else in the grainy darkness. Something right next to
the hat on the picnic table. It was a hacksaw.

"What's
with the saw?"

"Uh..."
She smiled. "The landscapers, silly. I told you, I had landscapers
here."

"Yeah, I
know. To till your garden."

She giggled.
"They were cutting some dead branches off the trees."

Erik chewed on
that one. It made sense but still... cowboy hats, hacksaw, a brisket on the
barbecue, and a whack-job naked housewife. The night was getting weird fast.

Her mood
switched; suddenly she was flighty again. "Now quit fooling around and get
your flashlight. Check my brisket! Otherwise I'll have to light the torches and
if I light the torches I have to put my nightgown back on."

Erik got the
flashlight.

The bright
beam bared down. A trace of smoke leaked out from under the barbecue's lid. It
smelled great, like pork roast or prime rib. Erik was looking down at the
barbecue, but...

...if he'd
actually looked up and shone the flashlight past the kiosk, he would've seen
two bodies.

He opened the
lid.

He didn't have
time to turn, to run, to shout. He didn't have time to react. He didn't even
have time to feel the impact of the shock.

WHACK!

The bend of
the crowbar hit him right at the top of the spine. The vertebrae shattered at
once. Erik was quadriplegic by the time he had collapsed fully to the kiosk's
floor.

He was still
alive, though. Brain cells still firing, eyes still seeing, thoughts still
flowing. He simply couldn't move. He lay paralyzed, staring up.

"Did you
see?"

Her voice
fluttered down. She was standing above him, one foot on either side, hands on
hips. She grinned down at him. "Did you see what was in the
barbecue?"

Erik,
understandably, could only think now in unsorted fragments. His heart was
slamming for all that had happened in the past few seconds, his horror and
terror and fear all colliding. But, yes, yes.

He had seen.

When he'd
opened the barbecue lid, two human heads looked back at him from the grill. The
pork like waft of aroma had floated up amid steam. It was only a split-second
glance but a split second was sufficient. The heads were roasting, crackling a
little. One victim had a shaved head and goatee, the other broader, hair
singeing off, clean shaven.

Annabelle was
now kneeling at Erik's side, breasts swaying, glee in her smile, as she briskly
began to saw Erik's head off with the hacksaw. Erik died shortly thereafter.

It took a few
minutes, the grisly rip of each thrust of the blade resounding upward as all
the blood pumped out of Erik's body. When the head was detached, Annabelle put
it on the grill with the others and closed the lid.

Annabelle
wasn't going to eat the heads, by the way. She was a vegetarian. It simply
occurred to her that cooking them would be appropriate. It had the right ring
to it: cooking heads. She could see the tabloid headline now: psycho housewife
cooks heads!

It was just
the kind of message she wanted to leave, and she knew that the Messenger was
pleased.

He walked her
back into the house, actually more drifting than walking. She felt wistful and
dreamy, the naked night-nymph wandering aimlessly down silent hallways. She killed
the furniture man in the cowboy hat and the cable technician exactly the same
way she'd killed Erik. By the time night had fallen, it was safe. No one would
see what was going on in the backyard. The four landscapers she'd killed in the
house, each in a separate room, cutting their throats during sex.

She couldn't
wait for the police to find the bodies, (especially the heads!). She couldn't
wait for the message to be spread. She could feel the Messenger close against
her from behind, lovingly walking her along, touching her with her own hands.

She left the
light on in the bathroom. She wanted to see him behind her in the dark, and
after a moment, staring into the mirror's dark veins, she did.

Did I do good?

Yes.

She took two
of her dead husband's razor blades out of the dispenser. She smiled dreamily at
the corroded face behind her.

Now?

Now, my dear.

Her master's
messages were done, and now it was time for Annabelle to be done, too. It was
time for her to go to a new and exciting place where she could serve the
Messenger and his colleagues directly.

Thank you.

Annabelle
gashed her wrist, then painted the master's symbol on the mirror. Then she
closed her eyes and grinned and very gently and slowly slid each razor deep
into the sides of her throat, severing the major arteries to the brain. She
leaned back, held her hands up as if to solicit the stars as the blood pumped
in soft jets to either side, like crimson angel wings.

I

Jane poured
the pizza sauce liberally into the center of the uncooked trust, then handed
Kevin the rubber spatula. Try to spread it as evenly as you can, honey,"
she said. "You don't want too much in one place and not enough someplace
else."

"I know,
Mom."

When he was
done, Jennifer grated a lump of fresh mozzarella over the pizza. While she did
this, Kevin's eyes lost their luster and he wandered to the table and sat down.
He looked dejected.

"But,
Mom," Jennifer was saying. "You know, you are sort of, aren't
you?"

Oh, Lord, Jane
thought. "What, honey?"

"Aren't
you sort of, like, dating him?"

"Steve?
Of course not, honey!" Of all the questions! she thought. Kids were so
precocious. It was something Jennifer had been edging at lately. "He's
just a friend, so I invited him over for dinner, that's all. I don't even know
him that well."

"Yeah,
but you like him, don't you?"

"Just do
the cheese, honey?