Book of the Dead (4 page)

He withdrew, still hard, saying, “Don’t be afraid.” She had been falling asleep.

She expected him to go for the knife again, to stroke her nipples with its razor edge or tease her nerve endings with mock danger. Instead, he reached into a headboard compartment and brought out a rubber mask festooned with sewn leather and buckles and shiny gold zippers. It almost made her laugh. She protested. The contraption engulfed her head like a thick, too-tight glove. She thought of getting stuck in a pullover sweater, only this material was definitely nonporous. Her lungs felt brief panic until the thing was fully seated and she could gulp air through the nose and mouth slits.

Then Quinn resumed pushing himself into her, his prodding more urgent now. He broke rhythm only to zip the holes in the mask shut.

Fear blossomed loud in her chest, becoming a fireball. She pulled in a final huge draught of air before he zipped the nose shut, and wasted breath making incomprehensible muling noises against the already-sealed mouth hole. She could not tell him now of her congenital lung problems, that respiration was sometimes a chore. When the weather was wrong, she had to resort to prescription medication just to breathe. It had never come up, all through dinner. They had been too busy with aberrations and prime moments and eating flowers…

All she could feel now was a slow explosion in her chest and the steady pounding down below, in and out. She began to buck and heave, thrashing. Quinn loved every second of it, battering her lustily despite her abrupt lack of lubrication. The friction vanished when he came inside her.

Panting, he lumbered immediately to the bathroom. When he returned, Amelia had not changed position, and he finally noticed she was no longer breathing.

Sometimes it went down this way, he thought. The price of true passion, however aberrant. But she was still moist and poised at the ready, so he opted to have one more go.

He huffed with surprise when she began to squirm beneath him again. He went
aahhh
and started stroking rigid and slippery in a fast tempo. That was it—she had fainted. Sometimes it went down that way as well—orgasm put them in the Zone for a while. She would awaken on high-burn and come her teeny secretary brains right out.

Her jaw wrenched around at a ridiculous angle and bit into the leather muzzle of the mask from within, shredding a hole. A drop of Quinn’s sweat flew to mix with the blood staining her teeth and the vomit clogging her throat, and before Quinn could make sense out of what he thought he saw, Amelia bit his nose off.

In the brief second before the pain hit, Quinn thought of that crazy shit on the news. Cannibal attacks on the eastern seaboard. Some whackpot scientist had claimed that dead people were reviving and eating live people. It was all Big Apple ratshit. Yet it flashed through Quinn’s mind right now because Amelia had bitten his nose off
and was chewing it up and swallowing the pieces
.

His throat flooded with the foaming pink backwash of inhaled blood. He made a liquid gargling noise as he tried to recoil, to back out of her, to get the hell away from this fucking lunatic, but she had a deathgrip on him below-decks, as well.

Then Quinn was able to yell, and he did because he could feel the ring of vaginal muscle increasing pressure, locking up beyond the circumference of his cock. The more he tried to pull out, the harder he got. He’d heard of men getting stuck in wine bottles the same way. You can’t compress a liquid. Blood was a liquid. His panic erection was vised with no options. He shoved wildly against the bed, blood pumping from the cavern in his face. He began hitting her with both fists, but she was beyond feeling a thing.

When he felt the muscle sever his penis like a wire cutter, he began to scream hoarsely. None of his neighbors would pay any mind. Weird games, aberrations, were the standard menu at Quinn’s. Suddenly freed, he sprawled backward. Blood gushed, ruining the carpet and sputtering from his crotch. He watched the stump of his still-stiff manhood vanish into the slick red chasm between Amelia’s legs, overwhelmed by the sight of it being swallowed whole by the orifice that had bitten it off.

Quinn hit the floor and kept screaming until catatonia blanketed him.

It took Amelia about half an hour to gnaw through her bonds. She spent another hour and a half eating Quinn.

During her meal the life left his body, and the queer radiations mentioned on the news did their alien work. By then there was not enough left of his corpse to rise, or walk, or eat anyone else. The pieces lolled around on the floor, feeling the first pangs of a new hunger, unearthly and unsatisfiable.

Her savaged dress dropped away. Swaying side-to-side she found her way into the room where they had dined when they were alive. Sparks of remembered behavior capered through her dead brain matter, evaporating for the last time. She began eating the flowers in their vases, in no hurry to begin her nightwalk. The flowers were alive, but dying every moment. Their life might become hers. When she stopped, all the bouquets had been stripped.

Eventually Amelia found her way to a door, and moved into the world to seek others of her newborn kind. Never again would she be as beautiful. It was her moment, just as Quinn had said. She blended with the shadows, a striking, cream-skinned nude with flower petals drifting down from her mouth, ochre, mauve, bright red.

BY RICHARD LAYMON

Jean didn’t hear footsteps. She heard only the rush of the nearby stream, her own moaning, Paul’s harsh gasps as he thrust into her. The first she heard of the man was his voice.

“Looks to me like fornication in a public park area.”

Her heart slammed.

Oh God, no.

With her left eye, she glimpsed the man’s vague shape crouching beside her in the moonlight, less than a yard away. She looked up at Paul. His eyes were wide with alarm.

This can’t be happening, Jean told herself.

She felt totally helpless and exposed. Not that the guy could see anything. Just Paul’s bare butt. He couldn’t see that Jean’s blouse was open, her bra bunched around her neck, her skirt rucked up past her waist.

“Do you know it’s against the law?” the man asked.

Paul took his tongue out of Jean’s mouth. He turned his head toward the man.

Jean could feel his heart drumming, his penis shrinking inside her.

“Not to mention poor taste,” the man added.

“We didn’t mean any harm,” Paul said.

And started to get up.

Jean jammed her shoes against his buttocks, tightened her arms around his back.

“What if some
children
had wandered by?” the man asked.

“We’re sorry,” Jean told him, keeping her head straight up, not daring to look at the man again, instead staring at Paul. “We’ll leave.”

“Kiss goodbye, now.”

Seemed like a weird request.

But Paul obeyed. He pressed his mouth gently against Jean’s lips, and she wondered how she could manage to cover herself because it was quite obvious that, as soon as the kiss was over, Paul would have to climb off her. And there she’d be.

Later, she knew it was a shotgun.

She hadn’t seen a shotgun, but she’d only given the man that single, quick glance.

Paul was giving her the goodbye kiss and she was wondering about the best way to keep the man from seeing her when suddenly it didn’t matter because the world blew up. Paul’s eyes exploded out of their sockets and dropped onto
her
eyes. She jerked her head sideways to get away from them. Jerked it the wrong way. Saw the clotted wetness on the moonlit trunk of a nearby tree, saw his ear cling to the bark for a moment, then fall.

Paul’s head dropped heavily onto the side of her face. A torrent of blood blinded her.

She started to scream.

Paul’s weight tumbled off. The man stomped her belly. He scooped her up, swung her over his shoulder, and started to run. She wheezed, trying to breathe. His foot had smashed her air out and now his shoulder kept ramming into her. She felt as if she were drowning. Only a dim corner of her mind seemed to work, and she wished it would blink out.

Better total darkness, better no awareness at all.

The man stopped running. He bent over, and Jean flopped backward. She slammed something. Beside her was a windshield plated with moonlight. She’d been dumped across the hood of a car. Her legs dangled over the car’s front.

She tried to lift her head. Couldn’t. So she lay there, struggling to suck in air.

The man came back.

He’d been away?

Jean felt as if she had missed a chance to save herself.

He leaned over, clutched both sides of her open blouse, and yanked her into a sitting position. He snapped a handcuff around her right wrist, passed the other bracelet beneath her knee, and cuffed her left hand. Then he lifted her off the hood. He swung her into the car’s passenger seat and slammed the door.

Through the windshield, Jean saw him rush past the front of the car. She drove her knee up. It bumped her chin, but she managed to slip the handcuff chain down her calf and under the sole of her running shoe. She grabbed the door handle. She levered it up and threw her shoulder against the door and started to tumble out, but her head jerked back with searing pain as if the hair were being torn from her scalp. Her head twisted. Her cheekbone struck the steering wheel. A hand clasped the top of her head. Another clutched her chin. And he rammed the side of her face again and again on the wheel.

When she opened her eyes, her head was on the man’s lap. She felt his hand kneading her breast. The car was moving fast. From the engine noise and the hiss of the tires on the pavement, she guessed they were on the Interstate. The highway lights cast a faint, silvery glow on the man’s face. He looked down at her and smiled.

The police artist sketch didn’t have him quite right. It had the crewcut right, and the weird crazy eyes, but his nose was a little larger, his lips a lot thicker.

Jean started to lift her head.

“Lie still,” he warned. “Move a muscle, I’ll pound your brains out.” He laughed. “How about your boyfriend’s brains? Did you see how they hit that tree?”

Jean didn’t answer.

He pinched her.

She gritted her teeth.

“I asked you a question.”

“I saw,” she said.

“Cool, huh?”

“No.”

“How about his eyes? I’ve never seen anything like that. Just goes to show what a twelve-gauge can do to a fellow. You know, I’ve never killed a
guy
before. Just sweet young things like you.”

Like me.

It came as no surprise, no shock. She’d seen him murder Paul, and he planned to murder her too—the same as he’d murdered the others.

Maybe he doesn’t kill them all, she thought. Only one body had been found. Everyone talked as if the Reaper had killed the other six, but really they were only
missing
.

Maybe he takes them someplace and keeps them.

But he just now said he kills sweet young things: Plural. He killed them all. But maybe not. Maybe he just wants to keep me and fool with me and not kill me and I’ll figure a way out.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“A nice, private place in the hills where nobody will hear you scream.”

The words made a chill crawl over her.

“Oooh, goosebumps. I like that.” His hand glided over her skin like a cold breeze. Jean was tempted to grab his hand and bite it.

If she did that, he would hurt her again.

There’ll be a world of hurt later, she thought. He plans to make me scream.

But that was later. Maybe she could get away from him before it came to that. The best thing, for now, was to give him no trouble. Don’t fight him. Act docile. Then maybe he’ll let his guard down.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“The Reaper.”

“Very good. And I know who you are, too.”

He knows me? How could he? Maybe followed me around on campus, asked someone my name.

“You’re Number Eight,” he said. “Just think about that. You’re going to be famous. You’ll be in all the newspapers, they’ll talk about you on television, you’ll even end up being a chapter in a book someday. Have you read any books like that? They’ll have a nice little biography of you, quotes from your parents and friends. The bittersweet story of your brief but passionate relationship with that guy. What was his name?”

“Paul,” she murmured.

“Paul. He’ll get a good write-up, himself, since he’s the first guy to die at the hands of the Reaper. Of course, they’ll realize that he was incidental. You were the intended victim, Paul simply an unlucky jerk who got in the way. He got lucky, then he got unlucky. Good one, huh? Maybe I’ll write the book myself. He got off and got offed. Or did he? Which came first? Did he go out with a bang?”

“Why don’t you shut up?”

“Because I don’t want to,” he said, and raked a path up her belly with a single fingernail.

Jean cringed. Air hissed in through her teeth.

“You should be nice to me,” he said. “After all, I’m the one making you famous. Of course, some of the notoriety may be a trifle embarrassing for you. That book I was telling you about, it’ll have a whole lot about today. Your final hours. Who was the last person to see you alive. And of course, it won’t neglect the fornication in the park. People read that, a lot of them are going to think you were asking for it. I suppose I’d have to agree with them. Didn’t you know any better?”