And it was better for Whitey to be the one to get Heidi anyway. For one thing, if she was messed up, he could try to get her together before Herman saw her. For another, well, he just liked Heidi. That was hardly a secret.
He pulled up to the curb. She wasn’t on the porch, wasn’t visible either, and the light in her bedroom was on, so she was probably still upstairs. He watched the window for a little bit, waiting to see the curtain rustle or if he could catch a glimpse of her face peeking out, but nothing happened.
He checked his watch. Damn, time was getting tight. Herman would be pissed if they were late. Maybe he should just let her know he was here.
He doused the lights and turned off the engine and then, hands in the back pockets of his jeans, made his way up the front steps. He was looking for her buzzer, getting ready to buzz, when he realized that the front door was open. Since it was cold outside, he just let himself in.
Megan was behind the door to Lacy’s apartment, pressing her eye to the peephole. She watched for a moment, then stepped away.
“Looks like our little Heidi has another gentleman caller,” she said.
Across the room, Lacy sat in a rocking chair, calmly rocking back and forth.
“How nice,” she said.
She was resting her feet on Francis’s chest. Every time the chair rocked forward, they made a squishy sound against the blood-sodden fabric of his shirt. The skin of his lifeless face had begun to change, the bones seeming sharper now, the skin lying tighter on the bone as the remaining blood pooled lower in the body and rigor mortis began to settle in. Around him were torn and mangled pages from
The End of the American Witch
, which had been covered with strange symbols painted in Francis’s blood. A candle had been set at his head and at his feet, and his mouth had been stuffed full of pages from the book.
Across from her, sitting in an armchair and drinking tea, was Sonny. She took a sip, made a face.
“What kind of tea is this?” she asked.
“Lemon verbena,” said Lacy. “It reduces stress. It’s very relaxing.”
Sonny stared into her cup. “I’m not sure that I like it,” she said.
Lacy nodded. “You’re used to something a little stronger,” she said.
“What do we do about Romeo?” asked Megan from near the door.
Lacy waved her hand dismissively. “Nothing to worry about,” she said. “I’m sure that Heidi can manage him. And who are we to get in the way of young love?”
Whitey knocked on the door to Heidi’s apartment, but there was no answer. He pressed his ear to the door but couldn’t hear anything inside. Or didn’t think he could anyway—it was hard to hear anything over the sound of music coming from the end of the hallway.
He turned and looked, saw that the door at the end there was open, with Heidi standing in the doorway. She didn’t look like she was doing so well. She was as pale as a ghost, with dark circles around her eyes. He’d heard of Goth chic but this was ridiculous. And he’d never really taken Heidi for the Goth type.
“Hey, what’s up?” Whitey asked. “You okay, girl? Whose apartment even is that?”
But Heidi didn’t answer. For a moment she stared at him and then she took a step backward, was immediately lost in the darkness of the apartment.
What the fuck?
he wondered.
He slowly headed down the hall toward the apartment, the music growing louder as he got closer.
He stopped in the doorway. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. When they did, he saw Heidi moving around the room in a kind of wispy, random fashion, as if she were lost in a psychedelic haze and dancing to her own drummer. Shit, she was definitely on something. Herman was going to be pissed. He had to get her out and dressed and sober, and he had to do it quick.
“Hey,” he said. “We should get going. Herman will fucking shit if we’re late.”
But Heidi didn’t answer. It was like she hadn’t heard him. She just kept dancing, eyes lidded, head loose and swaying.
“Come on, girl,” said Whitey. “Seriously, we should get going.”
She still didn’t answer. So what was he supposed to do? Physically drag her out of there and force her to get ready? Not exactly his style. Just say fuck it and leave her? Not exactly his style either. Maybe keep trying to reason with her? He stepped into the room and moved toward her. “Heidi,” he said. “I really think—”
The door behind him slammed shut with a boom loud enough to make his teeth rattle, making the room a whole lot darker. It was suddenly silent. Confused, he spun around, searching for the door. He felt along the wall, found the edge of the frame, found the doorknob. He tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t turn. The door was locked somehow. He felt for a button or a latch of some sort but couldn’t find anything. He rattled the knob again, trying to open it, but it wouldn’t move.
“Jesus, the door is stuck,” he said, turning toward where he thought Heidi must be. “I can’t get this open.”
He could see her still, though the room was dark enough now that she was more of a vague semihuman shape in the darkness—if he didn’t know already that it was Heidi he would have had a hard time identifying her. Again, she didn’t answer. She danced, turning slowly, and then suddenly stopped, fell to her knees.
“Heidi?” he said, and took a step forward.
And suddenly she collapsed in a heap on the floor. He moved forward and bent down to try to help her up, but when he grabbed her he realized it was not Heidi at all but just a tangled and twisted sheet.
Astonished, he lifted it up and looked at it. Where had she gone? He’d been sure he’d seen her—otherwise he wouldn’t have come in. Where was she?
He looked around the room now. His eyes were beginning to adjust further, the darkness not quite as total as it had been before. Here and there in the shadows, he began to see shapes. He began to think of one of them as human. He stepped forward, squinting, trying to get a better look. Yes, there was someone there, but someone hunched and deformed. He was sure it wasn’t Heidi.
“Hello?” he said. “Can you help me?”
He took another step forward, peered closer. Yes, someone was there, just in the corner, head down. Why wouldn’t they answer? He stepped again and looked closer. Was there something wrong with their skin? It seemed overly pale in some places, weirdly bruised in others. Mottled. The hair, too, seemed to have come out in clumps.
“Hey,” he said, and reached out and touched the person’s arm.
The arm was ice-cold, the shock of that so surprising that he yanked his hand back as if he’d been stung. As he did so, the head jerked up and he cried out in horror. The skin of the face had begun to decay, in some places had fallen off to reveal stretches of bone. The lips had fallen off or had been bitten off, revealing a length of jawbone and rotted teeth. The eyes, too, were gone, in their place only two deep black holes.
He stumbled back.
Holy fuck
, he thought.
It’s a corpse. I must have knocked it or something to make its head come up like that.
But then, as he stared at it, he saw the head turn, the empty eyes staring right at him. Its arms stretched toward him and the remnants of its face tightened in a horrific grin.
He made a break for the door, tried to open it again. It wouldn’t come. He began to pound on it, shouting and crying out. After a moment, he made the mistake of looking behind him and saw that the creature had made it halfway across the room and toward him, moving slowly but inexorably forward. Not only that, but also there were more of them now, at least three, maybe four. He began to pound harder, shouting himself hoarse.
But the door held firm and nobody came to let him out. He felt something touch his shoulder and he shook it off and then something was on his arm, too. He turned and there were six or seven of them on him, all of them dead, clawing at him, their mouths hanging open. One of them managed to press its mouth against his arm and bite it hard enough to draw blood. He screamed and shook it away and struck out and shoved and kicked and managed somehow to break
free and run to the other end of the apartment where there was a window.
He tried to open it but the latch had been painted over and it wouldn’t move. The sash had been painted into the frame, too—fuck, there was no way that thing was going to open—and the window was too small. He might be able to squeeze his way out of the opening if he could get the sash raised, but no way he was getting through by just breaking the glass and trying to squeeze through the frame.
Maybe there was a bigger window in the bedroom, he thought, and turned. There were now, he saw, nearly a dozen of them, as if somehow they were able to multiply when he didn’t look at them. They were nearly upon him. He tried to skirt his way around the edge of them and make it to the open bedroom door, but one of them got its skeletal hand on his shirt and slowed him down. He wrenched himself free, but got loose too quickly and too suddenly and went skidding down to the floor. He tried to get to his feet quickly but one was already wrapped around him before he was halfway up, and then another came, and another and another. He strained his way forward, groaning under their weight and pressure, feeling them scratch at his flesh, tear his skin away, trying, he knew, to make him one of them. He swayed and slammed into the door frame hard and one of their arms fell off, but even so it kept moving, taking hold of his ankle. He shook himself, and a few of them fell off, but more quickly took its place. There, just a few yards away, was the bedroom window. It was big enough. All he had to do was get to it and then he’d be safe.
One of them sunk its teeth into his neck, making him scream. Another took hold of his ear and tried to pull it off. Others were tearing into his stomach and back with their teeth and claws, gouging and ripping, harder than they had been before, as if they grew stronger as he grew weaker.
He stared down, willing his feet to move. The floor around him was slick with blood. It took him a moment to realize it was his own.
Just a little more
, he told himself.
He took a step forward and collapsed under the weight of them. He tried to push up with his arms and climb to his feet again, but there were too many of them. They sunk their teeth into his arms, and one of them tore his ear off. One of them bit him in the back of the skull, and then worked its fingers into the wound and began to peel his scalp away. He roared with pain and fear, tried again to get up but he was weaker already, all the little wounds adding up. One of them dragged his hand to the side and bit off one of his fingers. Another was slowly running its broken nails up and down his back in the same spot, gradually wearing its way down to bone. All the while they gave moans of pleasure.
He made little motions like he was crawling away, but he didn’t move at all. Slowly the pain grew, eventually becoming so great that he prayed for death. Yes, death would come, but it would come very slowly. When one of them tore out one of his eyes and then the other, it felt like a mercy. And a greater mercy still when he finally lapsed into unconsciousness. But even after that, and even long after he was dead, they kept at him, slowly reducing him to a bloody pulp, making him one of them.
Herman stood in the alley outside the Salem Palladium. Fucked is what it was. It looked just as deserted as ever, definitely a fire hazard, and nothing had been done to fix the place up. The windows were even boarded over, and so were the entrances, except for one in which they’d pried the boards off and leaned them against the wall next to it. Nobody taking tickets either. He’d gone in, expecting to see some sort of creepy, horror-show setup, something that’d make the most of the deserted space, but there was nothing backstage. There was just a red curtain with nothing behind it. Real amateur hour. A lot of the theater seats were still in place but the inside was also full of piles of trash and rubble, needles scattered around from where junkies had broken in, the whole place stinking of piss. Herman sighed. It was going to be a long night.
For a while he paced back and forth, smoking a cigar. And where was Whitey? Goddamn, if his car had broken down again already, that was fucking it. Plus, no Whitey meant no Heidi, and there was no way in hell he was going to handle this bullshit alone.
He puffed on the cigar a few more times, paced a little. People were coming in, but just a few, not enough to make for much of a show. What was up with that? Plus, they were all chicks. Every fucking one. Probably not a surprise, considering the way that the Smash or Trash had gone with the Lords track, but it was still one more fucked thing about an already fucked scene.
He pulled out his cell, tried to call Heidi’s number. The phone rang and just kept on ringing. Maybe that meant she was on her way. He hung up and then dialed again.
“Hello,” said a voice. “WXKB. Station manager Chip MacDonald here.”
“Chip, what exactly is going on here?” asked Herman.
“What do you mean?” asked Chip. “Is this Herman?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” said Herman. “Well, for starters I just looked everywhere and there’s nothing. No band. No equipment. Nothing. And for another thing, what little crowd that’s in there is one hundred percent girls.”
“Are people getting upset?” said Chip. “Are we going to have a problem there?”
“No,” admitted Herman. “They’re pretty calm so far. But I can only assume that they’re going to get mighty restless waiting for a show to happen that I highly doubt is going to go on. Eventually it’ll get ugly. There’s no way I’m sticking around when it starts to turn bad.”
Chip began to natter on, trying to calm Herman down even as he got more and more nervous himself, but Herman didn’t want to be calmed down—he just wanted things to be done right. Was that too much to ask?
“And when are you going to get me some reliable help?” Herman finally said. He almost regretted saying it, felt a little guilty about throwing Whitey and Heidi under the bus, but his wife was right: he had to stand up for himself.
Chip was silent for a moment. “Reliable help,” he said slowly. “What do you mean?”