Waltz of Shadows (6 page)

I got to my street and started down it. Dogs barked at me along the way, and a goddamn bat swooped down on my hair and scared the hell out of me. Time I got to my walk, I was a bundle of raw nerves. Everywhere I looked, I thought I saw Fat Boy or Cobra Man. My empty carport was full of shadows and all of them looked like people with guns.

But there wasn’t anyone. I got my key from under the steps and unlocked the door and slipped inside, still trying to figure what to do next, and it was while I was figuring that the smell hit me. The stink of Cobra Man. I tried to back out of there, but I went back too fast and slipped and fell. I tried to get up and my hand went into something wet. I lifted it to look, saw what I had slipped in.

Blood.

Then, between my bloody fingers, very close to me, I saw a face, eyes poking out of its head like a couple of golf balls with pupils painted on them. A tongue hung way out of its mouth and the teeth were clamped through it. I jerked my hand out of the way for a better look.

It was Dave.

I jumped up and skidded and fell back against the wall and stood there looking at Dave, smelling the blood on me and the sour stink of Cobra Man. I wanted to turn and dart outside, but I didn’t. All the noise I’d made, slipping and falling, it came to me that if Cobra Man or Fat Boy were in the house, they’d have been all over me. And with the front door open, the air had cleared out some of the stink. With that diluted, I felt stronger. I began to believe I was the only living thing in the house.

I slipped into the kitchen for a better look at Dave. He was lying on his stomach and he wasn’t wearing any pants. I could see the tip of an Old Hickory butcher knife hilt sticking out of his ass. He’d been sodomized with it. That’s where all the blood had come from. The knife belonged to me.

There was a coat hanger twisted around his neck so tight most of it wasn’t visible. One of his legs was cocked at the knee, the foot pointing at the ceiling. The other was stretched out on the floor, straight and stiff.

I had a feeling with all his talk about fear and dying, this hadn’t been what Dave had in mind. I think he expected something a little more noble; something not smelling of blood and shit.

Trembling, I went over to the open knife drawer and got another Old Hickory knife, eased around and looked in the living room.

Everything appeared okay, but it was dark enough in there to make me uncertain. I let my eyes adjust until I felt secure no one was hiding and waiting for me. Not that there were many places anyone could hide, small as the room was, and the only major pieces of furniture were a stuffed chair, a television set, and a couch with its back pushed flush against the wall.

I went in and looked around and didn’t see anybody, which of course is what I was pretty assured of, or I wouldn’t have gone in there.

The back door that led out of the living room and onto the little back porch was wide open and there was only the screen door between the room and the night. That door wasn’t much when it was locked. You leaned into it and picked up some, the latch would pop and you could come in. It was a strange time to worry about it, but I remember thinking to myself, after tonight I was going to get some kind of deadbolt and some latches for the windows.

I went over for a look through the screen door. The moonlight was falling over the tiny overgrown lawn and there was a dark-haired tomcat sitting on the wooden fence that bordered my yard and the neighbor’s, sitting there with one leg lifted, licking his balls.

I gingerly opened the screen door and went onto the back porch, jumping a little as the boards squeaked beneath my feet and the cat leapt with a surprised yowl into my neighbor’s yard. A dog barked. The cat hissed, and then the dog barked several times, moving away, pursuing the cat, I presumed. Finally, there was only the sound of crickets in the grass.

I went out and stood in the yard and sucked in some of the night air. It was so cold and clean it almost made me drunk. My wet pants legs felt cold as ice.

I went back in the house and noticed for the first time that there was a thin sliver of light slipping out from under my bedroom door and out of a needle thin crack where the door was pushed slightly open. I had concentrated on that open back door so hard, I hadn’t noticed it.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I squeezed the handle of the butcher knife so hard I felt it ridge into the palm of my hand, but I couldn’t let go. I kept squeezing, causing a slight cramp to run up my wrist and forearm.

Guess I felt like I had been such a coward before, I wanted to prove myself. Or to be more truthful, fearful as I felt, I didn’t believe anyone was in the house. It seemed obvious to me they had come in by springing the back door, and had brought Dave inside and killed him in the kitchen, which gave me an idea about what I’d find in the bedroom.

I touched the bedroom door and eased it open, stood in the doorway looking at an image in the corner of my dresser mirror. The image of a naked body standing very still. Or I thought it was standing. Another look showed it was hanging from a chinning bar I kept mounted between the frame of my doorless closet. It was a woman.

Her legs weren’t touching the floor. They seemed to be cut off at the knee.

I took in a breath and caught the fading odor of Cobra Man and another odor I didn’t like. I went in, looking in the direction of the reflection.

It was Carrie. Her legs had been pulled up and tied behind her and there was a coat hanger twisted around her neck and there were great strips of hair missing from her bloody scalp. The hair had been ripped out, and the tool for the ripping, a pair of pliers from my kitchen drawer, lay on the floor beneath her. Coat hangers had been taken out of the closet, straightened and inserted into her mouth at the edges of a cloth gag, and into her ears, nostrils, the corners of her eyes, her ass and vagina. Her face was spattered with blood. Her legs were coated with shit.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something behind the open bedroom door. I looked. Sitting naked, against the wall, hands pulled behind his back, was Bob. He had a wet spot between his legs and his dick and balls hung out of his mouth. He had a startled expression on his face, as if he couldn’t believe how things had turned out.

I turned around slowly, not wanting to, having some idea of what I would find, and what I expected was there.

Sharon was on the bed, spread-eagled, ankles and wrists tied up in strips of sheet and fastened to the bed post. Her eyes were wide open and her pink panties were stuffed in her mouth. She had a bullet hole between her eyes. The pillow her head rested on was dark with blood. Her breasts and belly were covered with blue-black spots. Her pubic thatch was no longer blond. It was rich with blood. There was a car battery on the floor and a pair of jumper cables and a pan of water with a wet towel beside it.

That explained the spots on her body. She had been touched up with water and the bastards had fastened the cables to her and given her the juice. At the foot of the bed, between her legs, was an empty soda pop bottle covered in blood, the Polaroid camera Fat Boy had worn around his neck, and an open book—the photo album I showed you.

I went over to see if Sharon might be alive, not that I thought she might be, but I had to know. I touched her neck. No pulse. She was still warm. She must have been the last, and that meant they hadn’t been gone long. A few minutes, I reckoned.

I picked up the book. It was open to the last page. The top two pictures were of Doc’s wife. They were like all the others you’ve seen. One of her alive, one of her dead. I knew then that the scream we’d heard when we were standing outside of Doc’s house had been her.

Below that, same way, pictures of the Disaster Club, ending with Sharon. But why? And why had they left the camera and the book on the bed? And why had they brought the Disaster Club back here to do them in? What was the deal?

I closed the photo album and put it in my jacket pocket. I don’t know why exactly, but I did.

I looked at Sharon again and got sick.

I left out of there and went out on the back porch for some air. I heard something then, turned and looked through the screen, across the living room and down the hall, out the open front door.

A police car, not using its cherries or siren, pulled off the little street and up against my front yard curbing. I saw another come from the opposite direction and park across the street. A door slammed and I saw a cop coming around his car, heading for my walk.

I began to get the picture. Fat Boy and Cobra Man had talked to my compadres, used some persuasive techniques to find out about me, find out where I lived. They’d brought the Disaster Club back here to do their business and they’d left plenty of business around to make it look like this had all been my work. The frame was so good and tight I could feel it fastening around my neck.

I threw the butcher knife away from me and bolted for the fence and grabbed the top of it and pulled myself over. The dog the cat startled wasn’t there. I guess he was still chasing the cat. I ran across my neighbor’s yard, through another, and on out to the highway.

I went across the highway and walked down to a convenience store and called a taxi. Can you believe that? A fucking taxi? I wasn’t exactly thinking right then.

While I waited for the taxi, I pulled up my pants legs and tried to pick window glass out of my knees.

The taxi came and I got in, hoped in the dark the driver wouldn’t see how bloody I was. I figured, with my dark clothes, and the blood dried on me, it wouldn’t be too noticeable. I had the driver take me here. I had seen this place before and thought it was the kind of place you might come to if you didn’t want anyone to ask questions.

I had enough money to pay the taxi and two nights rooming. After I paid the taxi, I took off my jacket and wiped as much blood off of me as I could with that, left it by the corner of the motel and went inside and gave the name Jack Frame, paid up, and didn’t get asked any questions. I got the room key and came back for the jacket.

I came in here and tried to go to bed, but couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and went out to the vending machines and got an orange drink, and later a Coke. Then I got some cigarettes and newspapers, like I really wanted to catch up on the fucking sports. I thought about calling the police. But the more I thought about it, less I liked it. Fat Boy and Cobra Man had me by the balls, and I didn’t even know who they were or how to explain what me and the Disaster Club were doing at the Doc’s house.

While I sat and smoked and thought, another truth came to me. Something I always knew deep down and wouldn’t accept.

Dave had planned to kill the Doc, his wife too. I’m convinced everyone knew the certainty of it, but me. It was like the night they took me out to the tracks and pulled the trick with the train. I was the patsy then, and they had plans for me again. This time, I was to have been the patsy to murder. They would have killed Doc and his wife and did me in and made it look like I came in to rob the place and got caught. Made it appear me and Doc killed one another. Me nailing him with the automatic Dave would leave in my hand, and Doc nailing me with… I don’t know, a fire poker maybe, supposedly right before he keeled over dead of a gunshot wound.

I began to feel that was the score all along, and the only reason I’d been brought into any of this in the first place. They’d laid out their plan for murder and a patsy before they ever met me. They may not have known who they were going to rob or kill, or who the patsy would be, but the plan got laid out and I got the patsy role and Doc drew the victim card. It was all so neat and well designed, just the way Dave would work it. Disaster Club business.

But it all backfired. They got killed and I got away, and then I got framed for their deaths. Something ironic in all that, I’m just not sure what.

Anyway, that’s about it, Uncle Hank. I haven’t been anywhere since then but here, and I haven’t slept or had anything on my stomach but that orange soda and that Coke, and I didn’t keep either of them down.

I think about what the Disaster Club planned for me, and I feel sick. Then I think about them in my house, all messed up like that, and I feel sicker. And finally, I think about how it looks like I did it all, and I feel sicker yet.

Christ, Uncle Hank. Help me out here. Tell me. What am I gonna do?

   I sat there stunned for a moment, then picked up the photo album and opened it. I took a real hard look at the photos on the last page. They meant more to me than before. These were the people Bill had been telling me about. He had avoided revealing that bit of information until he finished his story, to give added impact, and it worked.

I concentrated on the photos and picked out who was who from Bill’s descriptions.

The Doctor’s wife, on the left hand side of the page, wore a bikini that showed a lot of nice sun-browned skin. She was standing on the deck of a sail boat. Behind her, the sea glistened bright and blue. In the photo she might have been forty, but she wore it well, maybe a little too well. I guessed the Doc had helped her out some around the mouth and eyes, and had probably put some missiles in her titties.

It was a nice photograph and it hadn’t been taken with any snapshot camera. It was likely stolen from her own collection. The photo next to it was a Polaroid. It wasn’t as flattering. She was naked on a bed with her legs spread wider than was comfortable and her panties were around her right ankle. There were ropes fastened to her ankles and wrists, and the ropes ran out of sight of the camera. They were doubtlessly tied to the rails beneath the mattress. There was something bright stuffed in her mouth, and there was a tidy little bullet hole, looking as if it had been painted there, in the center of her forehead, and beneath her head was a blood stained pillow.

Beneath her photo, on the left, was a shot of a good looking young man—Dave, I presumed from Bill’s story—and beneath that, a photo of another nice looking young fella. Bob, of course. Neither looked happy.