But you were tellin’ me yesterday ‘bout them fears called phobias, right, Doc? ‘N I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout them. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me—maybe I got
hydro
phobia, you know? Fear of water. I dunno . . . You’re the shrink here; you tell me.
—for Roman Ranieri
A
t first there was pain . . . an incredible, searing pain that made every nerve in his body burn like an overheating wire. Then, with an audible
snap
, as if a cheap electrical fuse had blown inside his head, the pain stopped, and he was instantly, miraculously transported beyond the pain or above it . . . floating like a rain-laden cloud, drifting through the cold, black void of the night sky.
But even then he suspected that the void was internal, deep inside his own mind.
What the shit? . . . Am I dying?
The thought was sharp and clear, but, curiously, it held no terror for him. His name was Alex St. Pierre, but throughout the state of Maine and the rest of the country, he was better known as the “Stillwater Slasher.” He had seen plenty of death in his thirty-eight years. Hell, nearly twenty times, now, he had stared death straight in the eyes, watching with a dizzying mixture of glee and curiosity as, one by one, his victims—all eighteen of them—died slowly in his arms, their lifeblood seeping from the long, curved slash he had carved into their throats, running from ear to ear like a horrible grin.
He had watched, fascinated, as the blood, looking like small, rounded rubies, had beaded up all along the gaping edge of the cut, and then—all eighteen times—he had drawn his knife along the slit a second time, running the blade in deeper so the blood would gush down the young woman’s throat until it looked like she was wearing a scarlet turtleneck sweater.
And then, once she was lying still, maybe not quite dead yet, but certainly beyond all resistance, the glow of life dimming in her eyes, he would unbuckle his belt, drop his pants to his ankles, and, kneeling beside her, masturbate onto the dying woman’s blood-smeared throat.
“Rubies,” he would always whisper tenderly, like a lover to all eighteen of them. “The drops of your blood . . . are a necklace . . . of rubies.”
Then, just as he reached his climax, his mind spinning with ecstasy, all eighteen times he would lean close to the woman’s senseless ear and, gasping and panting with exhilaration, whisper, “And my cum . . . is a necklace . . . of pearls.”
Later, after he regained his strength, he would clean himself up and take the body down to the Stillwater River, where he’d dump it in, not caring if it sank or floated down to the Penobscot and then made it all the way to the ocean. But after nearly four years, in which he averaged four victims a year, one for each season, the police had finally caught up with him, and for the past two months, he had been a prisoner in the Maine State Prison, awaiting trial. He was in prison, working out in the exercise yard, when a blood vessel in his brain popped, and they had to rush him under heavy guard to the emergency room at Mid-Coast Medical.
He had only a vague recollection of the timeless ambulance ride to the hospital. Once or twice he wished he could have mustered enough strength to put up a fight, maybe use this situation to try to make a break, but he knew there were at least three armed guards in the ambulance along with the medical team. Besides, he was strapped securely to the stretcher.
Nearly every sound he heard, even the caterwauling wail of the siren, seemed muffled with distance, as though his head was packed with cotton.
Only one sound had any clarity.
That was the heavy thumping deep inside his head. He hadn’t realized it was his own pulse until it started to flutter and slow, keeping a herky-jerky pattern. Then, from far off in the distance, he heard a wild commotion of disembodied voices shouting frantically back and forth. He sensed a flurry of activity around him and felt his limp body being jostled about, but it didn’t affect him.
Nothing affected him.
He felt curiously detached from everything when he opened his eyes and found that he was looking down from the ceiling as a platoon of doctors and nurses worked on the motionless figure lying on the operating table.
After a timeless beat, he realized that he was looking down at his own lifeless body.
Well son of a bitch!
. . . I must be dead! he thought, but surprisingly, the thought still held no terror for him.
In life, he had known death as a friend, almost as intimately as a lover. He had seen death drop like a shimmering gauze curtain over the eyes of eighteen young women and countless cats and dogs that he had tortured and then killed when he was younger. He had seen death extinguish the glow of life, making the facial expression of each woman go suddenly slack and frozen, casting their skin with a weird, gray pallor, their eyes focused so far away. He had studied it, trying to understand it, to experience it, but until now, he had never truly tasted death’s sharp sting.
And the surprise was, there wasn’t any sting.
There had been no panic, no pain, no struggle whatsoever.
That surprised him because he was positive he had seen extreme pain and agony and fear in the eyes of all eighteen of his victims. He had been thrilled as he watched each of them try so frantically to cling onto life, but it had slipped away like fine sand, sifting between their fingers.
So why did he feel none of that now?
There was only a curious, almost giddy sensation of flying, of floating high above the pain and agony of what he thought death should be.
For another timeless beat, he hovered above the scene in the operating room, watching as the medical team fought hard to save him. His mind was clear and focused, honed as razor-sharp as it had been on those eighteen glorious nights when he had taken his victims. He could see everything the medical team was doing to save him and hear everything anyone said. He noticed funny little details, like what color shoes they were wearing and on which wrist they wore their watches.
But he found that he didn’t care.
He almost laughed at their pathetic efforts to revive him. It was funny because he didn’t need them . . . he didn’t want them to succeed.
No, this was just fine with him.
One way or another, he had escaped.
Finally, however, he became aware of a subtle shifting behind him. Although it took no physical effort on his part, and he had no sense of motion, he turned his head and saw a bright tunnel receding into the distance like a long, luminous telescope. The tunnel was filled with a soft glow of lemon light that drew him toward it like comforting, beckoning arms.
Didn’t I hear something about death being like this on
Geraldo
or something just a little while ago? he thought. But—hey, I thought that was all bullshit!
He was filled now with a curious flutter of excitement and expectation as, floating weightlessly, he was drawn inexorably toward the inward spiraling tunnel of light. At the far end, the light seemed to brighten, shifting subtly from yellow to a pure, white radiance. He didn’t even consider resisting the euphoric rush as he drifted like a windblown dandelion puff along the softly pulsating walls of the light-filled tunnel. And then, up ahead, he could dimly make out the hazy silhouettes of people who appeared to be moving toward him, blowing and shifting like drifting snow. As they drew closer to him, and his vision cleared, he saw that their arms were uplifted as though in greeting.
Son of a bitch!
This is just like what those nut cases on
Geraldo
said it would be like!
He remembered how all of the people on the show that day who claimed to have died and then come back described the overpowering sensation of warmth and wellbeing, of flying, and of seeing friends and relatives who had died before coming to greet them.
Swept along through the tunnel, he heard the soft whispering rush of wind in his ears. A gradually strengthening blast of embracing heat washed over him. With the bright, pulsating light behind them, the figures were still indistinguishable, but he smiled to himself as he watched them draw closer, their arms held out to him in greeting.
And then, just as suddenly as the realization that he had died had hit him, everything changed. The yellow light quickly blended to a hurtful, stinging red pulse that throbbed like a frantic, racing heartbeat. Hard, grinding thunder rumbled all around him, deafening, and the tunnel seemed to collapse inward on him, squeezing him. With their arms raised high over their heads, the figures swept toward him, and in a moment of blinding intensity, he saw and counted eighteen of them.
Jesus God! No!
Something punched hard against the inside of his chest as he glanced from one blank face to another. Cold, unblinking eyes stared at him, glowing horribly as they bored into him with the acid of their eternal hatred. Their thin hands were hooked into claws that twitched and trembled as they swung at him, slicing the air with shrill, whistling hisses. Dangling around each woman’s throat, glowing dully in the eerie light, was a large necklace of alternating rubies and pearls. The gems swung back and forth with the women’s motions, making harsh grating noises that sounded like a dreamer grinding his teeth in his sleep.
Panic as deep and cold and stinging as the cut of a razor blade sliced through Alex as he stared at the eighteen women. Their eyes were glazed with death as they stared straight back at him. He withered beneath their steady gaze as they formed a circle around him and clawed at him. The steadily narrowing tunnel was filled with the sound of their high, squealing laughter.
No! . . . Oh, Jesus!. . . . Please! No!
He thrashed and twisted about, trying to avoid their icy touches, but every time their hands passed through him, he experienced a sting of numbing, sharp pain.
In the back of his mind, he realized that he didn’t have a body anymore, but this pain was worse. Every nerve, every fiber of his being vibrated with unbearable agony. The women’s howling screams rebounded inside the tunnel, wavering with maddening intensity. For a timeless instant, he imagined that he was nothing more than a thick column of heavy, black smoke that was being ripped apart by fierce, cold winds.
But then, with a sudden burst of energy, he somehow managed to propel himself away from the women. His mind echoed with their high, receding laughter and his own agonized wail as he fell, spiraling around and around in a fast-turning, backward spin. Impenetrable darkness and icy terror embraced him as he struggled futilely to stop the headlong, dizzying rush.
And then—abruptly—it was over.
With a roaring intake of breath. he opened his eyes and looked up at the glaring light suspended above the operating table. Through his watery vision, he saw the knot of figures huddled around him. For a flashing, panicky instant, he thought they were still the eighteen women, but then he recognized the pairs of concerned eyes peering at him over the edges of green surgical masks.
“Oh, Christ! Oh,
Christ!
I . . . I’m not dead,” he said, his voice nothing more than a trembling gasp.
“No, sir, you’re not,” said a stern voice that resonated all too close to his ear, all too real. “But for a minute there, we thought we’d lost you.”
“Wish we had,” whispered a faint, feminine voice. “Please,” Alex said with a dry gasp. “Please don’t let me die!”
His hands felt like they were being controlled by someone else as he reached up and fumbled to grab onto something—an arm, he thought—and squeezed tightly.
“Please! Oh, Jesus,
please!
You can’t let me die! I saw them . . . I saw them, and they . . . they’re waiting for me over there!”
“Huh? Who’s waiting for you.
“Jesus Christ!
They
are! They
all
are!”
A numbing torrent of chills washed through him like a flood of ice water. He found it almost impossible to breathe because of the compression in his chest.
“They’re waiting for me . . . on the other side . . . and they’re all wearing their necklaces of rubies and pearls!”
-1-
I
t all happened so fast, David Bensen might have sworn it hadn’t happened at all . . . except for the soft thump that shook the front of his car and jolted the steering wheel in his hands. The windshield wipers were having a hell of a time keeping up with the snow, which was falling so fast now it was nothing more than long, yellow streaks in the glare of his headlights. Several times, he had rolled his window down, reached out, and given the wiper blade on his side a quick snap to knock off the ice buildup. And every time when he swore softly to himself, each curse word was a frosted puff-ball in the cold air that sucked into his warm car.
It was very late—well past midnight—and David had just enough clear-thinking mind left to know that he probably shouldn’t be driving in this storm. What had started as a few beers in celebration of his promotion at Unum had escalated through the evening up to quite a few beers . . . and, finally, it had gone to too damned many!