Dark Screams, Volume 5 Read online

  “Hi,” she said. “You’re Jack Tarrington, right?”

  Wow. She meant to come to me. It wasn’t a mistake.

  “Yes, I’m Jack. Who are you?”

  “I’m Marion,” she said. “Marion Crane.”

  I knew the name. Anybody who’d ever seen Psycho knew that name.

  “Then you’re not going to last beyond the second reel, are you?” I said.

  She smiled, but the smile was a dare.

  “It’s my real name. My parents once had a sense of humor and loved Hitchcock.”

  “Well, then, let me buy you a drink to toast to the Cranes and their little girl, Marion,” I said. “What’ll you have?”

  “I’ll have a Negroni,” she said. “And I’m nobody’s little girl.” She scooted into the seat next to me, and I tried to process what was happening to me as I tagged the bartender and ordered her drink. Me. Jack Tarrington. The guy who made Taxed. And Gigantic. In Indianapolis. At a horror convention. Thinning hair, thickening waist, deflated bank account. Sitting next to a really stunning woman, definitely from the dark side of the moon, but gorgeous nonetheless. Perhaps even more attractive because she was, indeed, not the girl next door. I liked individuality in a woman, in life and in art. And she was singular, to say the least. Which made me a bit nervous, frankly.

  The bartender settled her drink in front of her, and she immediately swooped it off the bar and swallowed in a greedy gang of gulps.

  It was clear that this was not her first beverage of the night. Her green-irised eyes were gleaming, with just the trace of red at the rims. But she maintained beautifully.

  “Could I have another one, please?”

  “Of course,” I said, happy to oblige. If it took drunkenness to keep her next to me, then drunkenness was definitely an option. Not that she was really drunk yet. A little friendly, maybe even a little tipsy, but a long way from drunk.

  “You should remake it,” she said, and I was confused.

  “The drink?”

  The bartender delivered her second Negroni.

  “Taxed.”

  I sipped my Dewar’s. “Um…are you an actress?” Oh, Christ, that would suck. I mean, in the past I was never above using the old director-actress thing to get up close and personal, but it created more problems than orgasms, and really wasn’t worth the insanity.

  She laughed—tittered, really. It was a petite laugh, and adorably unexpected from this Gothic beauty.

  “No,” she said. “Only when I have to be.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked, looking innocent. Which, given her exotic and sultry appearance, should have been a stretch for her.

  “You know, director, actress, all that Hollywood shit.”

  “I live in Kansas City.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I guess I do.”

  “So what brings you to Indianapolis from Kansas City?”

  That right side of her mouth crept up into an irresistible sideways smile.

  “MonsterThon,” she said. “And you.”

  That took me by surprise.

  “I love dark fantasy. I love horror movies and books and art. I was born in the shadows.”

  I looked down at the snake on her arm, and it seemed to squirm. Surely that was the Dewar’s.

  “I never would have guessed,” I said, and she did not miss the mild sarcasm.

  She smiled wide for the first time, and in that brief moment, it seemed that her fleetingly revealed canines were sharp.

  “I have never seen Taxed on the big screen, and I thought I might learn something from your master class.”

  “But you’ve seen it before, right?”

  “Only a couple dozen times,” she replied. “I’ve got the video. I’ve learned a lot from it.”

  “What on earth could you possibly learn from Taxed?” I asked.

  “How to make a really scary movie. But not just a scary movie. A movie with ideas. A horror movie that’s about more than the splatter, which is not to say I don’t like the blood. I do.”

  Great, I thought to myself. A fucking wannabe vampire. Just my luck. I fucking hate vampire stories.

  She fiddled with the little clutch purse that hung over a delicately muscled shoulder. The purse was covered in tiny rat and lizard skulls. She pulled out a DVD in a plain black sleeve.

  “I’m a filmmaker,” she said. “Would you take a look at my film and tell me what you think? And if you hate it, that’s okay, too. I have thick skin.”

  Her skin was smooth and lovely, creamy, seemingly delicious. It didn’t look thick at all.

  “But I think you’ll like it,” she said.

  “Is your address on it?” I asked.

  She paused, the wisp of a question mark crossing her face.

  “I was hoping you might have a DVD player in your room.” Her head tilted down and she looked up at me, innocence and danger crossing paths.

  I looked over her shoulder at the deafening party that was going on around us. I thought I had put in enough time to justify my being here, and the crowd, which had grown to capacity, no longer knew I was here. I looked at her and for the first time recognized a fleeting resemblance to Janet Leigh. Marion Crane, indeed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think I do.”

  “Would you like to watch it now? With me?”

  My life was just one what-the-hell after another. So…what the hell.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I would.”

  “Great.”

  I looked for Terry to ferry us back to the hotel.

  —

  I used the key card and opened the door to my suite and followed young Marion inside. My ears rang with a high squealing tinnitus, the silence of the room overtaking the relentless blare and thump of the nightclub.

  Housekeeping had been in and tidied the place up and turned down the king-size pillow-top bed, and it looked soothing and inviting. New age music played quietly on the clock radio. Marion glided into the room on an approving appraisal, slipping out of her strappy little shoes and going to the curtains, which she threw wide open. The room filled with blue moonlight, and she shrugged out of her little jacket, dressed simply in the skintight little artfully ripped stretchy dress. She stood looking out the picture window for a long time, her back to me, and I appreciated her contours from a distance.

  “Come here,” she said, not turning to face me. “It’s a full moon.”

  I walked over to stand behind her, and she was telling the truth.

  “Yep. That’s full.” Or close enough, anyway. The room was bright with its light, and her face was luminous in its glow. Her lipstick sparkled, and she licked her lips. I know that my heart started to beat a little faster, nerves and arousal battling for control of my pulse. I started to raise my hand to place on her back.

  “Cool,” she said, as she turned and crossed to the minibar. She opened it, and worked her way through the collection of tiny bottles. “What do you want to drink?”

  “I’ll have a Diet Coke,” I said. I did not want my sensations deadened by alcohol tonight.

  “What do you want in it?”

  I didn’t want to sound like the lightweight I was, so again, I went to the Land of What-the-Fuck.

  “Surprise me.”

  “Good answer,” she said, and I left the fate of my beverage in her hands, passivity being one of the defining elements of my character of late. I wasn’t proud of that.

  So the bottles clinked, glasses filled, and she set them on the dresser as she walked over to the television and looked for the DVD player. She found it in the drawer beneath, drew the disc out of her cunning little skull purse, and booted everything up. The player swallowed the disc, and she came to sit on the edge of the marshmallow bed, patting the space next to her. I sat, and the credits began to roll.

  I was surprised. The camerawork was impressive, the sound and image very polished. I’ve been handed hundreds of student an
d amateur films over the years, and though I haven’t bothered to watch most of them, not one that I’ve watched was ever any good. But so far I was impressed. The title melted across the screen, rendered in quaint and quirky animation: Carnivorous. Next, A film by Marion Crane. I had never taken “a film by” credit. It just seemed greedy. Call me cranky, but I think you have to earn it.

  Marion stared unblinking at the screen as her magnum opus unfolded.

  Everything was shot at night—not day for night, but real night—and it was rich in shadows and atmosphere, and most of it shot with a Steadicam, which gave it a woozy, intoxicating quality. Long lenses intercut with wide ones, with little in between. There wasn’t much dialogue, but I was captivated. The bulk of it was shot in a crumbling inner-city church, and the exaggerated ten-millimeter lens compositions of the exteriors hearkened back to the original The Haunting. Though it was shot in color, there was not much of a palette; it was deliberately art-directed to be monochromatic.

  And then the people started to show up. No dialogue, but meaningful looks. They seemed to be meeting for a religious service of some sort. When their number reached about a dozen, taking their places amid the war-torn pews of this postapocalyptic House of God, they began to remove their clothes. This was not altogether a good thing: Though some of them were very attractive, some of them were scarred, some even missing body parts.

  I looked from the screen to Marion, but her wide, unblinking eyes were fixed on her masterwork. When I turned back to the movie, the group was getting more intimate. A man kissed the stump of a lovely young woman’s missing leg. As he did, you could see his penis rise into a natural erection. The group began to chant as they touched and smelled and tasted one another’s bodies. But the most perfect physical specimens were mating with the most physically imperfect—even repulsive—and the effect was surprisingly erotic. Beauty and beast alike were compelling and compulsively watchable when they conjoined…until the knives came out.

  I could hear Marion’s heightened breathing and I turned to see her, almond eyes locked on the screen, her face flushed. I looked down to see her hand rubbing between her thighs. Emboldened, I lay my hand on the thigh closest to me, but she did not break her gaze from the screen, nor did she acknowledge my touch in any way. I gently stroked her leg, but she was fixed upon her film on the big flat screen; she had eyes only for her movie.

  For the first time in a while, I was hard as a rock.

  On the screen, half of the cast lay down in a row beneath the altar in a cross-shaped shaft of moonlight. The other half withdrew blades from behind the altar and made long cuts in the flesh of the prone characters. The effects were remarkably real. It’s amazing how perfectly you can rend the flesh in movies today. If only I’d had that technology when we’d made Taxed.

  Blood flowed black in the moonlight, but it did not stop the coupling. New orifices were carved and entered, and the pistons of sex accelerated. In fact, the congress became more heated before the moon, visible through the cross-shaped window at the top of the chapel, took on a face, and that face roared, and the lights went out.

  We could hear screams from the darkness within as the film cut to the exterior of the dead church, the sound of bodies sliding against wet flesh, cries of pain and lust and ecstasy indistinguishable from one another, the metallic clatter of cutlery against bone, and the voracious sounds of consumption. Suddenly, my hand was gripped by Marion’s as she almost crushed it, her other hand with fingers deep inside her as she lost control and howled as she reached her peak. She screamed, then went limp, falling back onto the bed, and I could see the sharp canines clearly. She was breathing deeply now, the orgasm powerful but receding, and I could but watch, my own sex throbbing in want and need.

  The credits rolled.

  She lay on my bed, open, exposed, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Then she opened her eyes and looked right at me. The fingers of her right hand were wet with blood.

  She rose to stand before the bed, silhouetted by the mandatory full moon, and lifted the tight, tiny dress off over her head, and was completely revealed before me. Her nipples, navel, and vaginal lips were pierced, and the chromium jewelry gleamed and glittered, casting reflections around the room. A trickle of menstrual blood ran down her thigh.

  She was still breathing hard as she stood naked as a Greek statue before me, her muscles slim but defined, her taut belly with a subtle ripple of musculature.

  “Did you like my movie?” she asked.

  “I did,” I answered honestly. “I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

  “Then what are you going to do about it?” She moved her feet apart and stood in front of me, her hairless coffee-and-cream skin radiating heat that I could feel from a foot away.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” I felt fat and old and stupid.

  “It’s got nothing to do with what I want. Take what you want.”

  I wanted it all. I stood and disrobed, there being no hiding the intense extent of my arousal now. She put her fingers into her vagina again, and when she withdrew them, they were wet again with her fresh blood. She put her other hand on the back of my neck and pulled my face close.

  “Taste me,” she said, as she slipped her fingers into my mouth. “Taste the blood of Marion Crane.” How utterly Hammer of her. I was so turned on I’d have done anything she wanted. And I did. I tasted her hot red blood. And that night, it tasted good to me. I leaned in to kiss her lips, but she pulled her head away. Confused, I took a step back. She grabbed my hand and pulled it to her breast, squeezing it tight. Yeah, I’m old, it was the first time I clenched a pierced breast in my hand, and the edges of the chrome jewelry were sharp. She took my free hand to her free breast and squeezed tight before leaving my hands in my own control.

  “Squeeze them tighter,” she said, and I did.

  “Tighter!” Okay, I did that, too. I gripped them with all my might and she closed her eyes and smiled, her pointed canines fully exposed.

  “Your teeth…” I said.

  “I filed them. Do you like them?”

  That night, I did. Everything about her was prurient, erotic, exciting, all in ways that were new to me. My sex life, when I had one, was fairly catholic, the positions missionary, orgasm being the point. But not now. Eros was to be savored, developed, encouraged, cultivated, grown, expanded…and then eventually harvested in an explosion.

  Maybe life was worth living.

  As the heat rose, I entered her, sliding into her womanhood, which was thick with hot, lubricating blood. When I was fully within, she gasped, and when I was just about to lose it, she pulled me out of her before I reached the end of my endurance.

  “Not yet,” she said. My pulse and my erection raised, my manhood bobbing with each eager heartbeat. “I’m not ready.”

  My breathing was as rapid as my pulse, and I took deep breaths to slow it all down. I had not been this excited since my first entry into a woman’s body at sixteen. As soon as I was subsumed in slick, hot, wet flesh, I shot my teenage cherry. She wasn’t going to let that happen here. She threw me over onto my back, gripped my wrists and held them to the mattress with surprising strength, then climbed on top of me and took me inside, taking total control of the rhythm, sliding up and down eager Little Jack with fury.

  I caught wind of a sudden smell. It was fleeting, but it was fetid. It smelled dead, rotten, moldering. I was on the verge of nausea, and I looked around to try to spot its source, on the verge of losing my erection, which surely could have proved fatal. It didn’t seem to be coming from Marion, thank God, and surely it did not emanate from me. I’m clean to the point of OCD, I’m afraid. Perhaps I had stepped on something, though God knows where that might have happened. But as quickly as it had clouded the room, the stench was gone. Looking at that remarkable pierced and tautly muscled café au lait body taking my flesh into hers quickly blotted out all distractions. The slippery crimson spot where our bodies met shone in the moonlight and made wet, smacking noises
as my pelvic bone collided repeatedly with hers. Jesus, I had never felt anything like this.

  She was breathing through her mouth, and I think it was so that I could see those hungry teeth. She slid up and down, up and down, faster, faster, deeper, harder…then slowed it down. Then started all over again. I was starting to feel raw from the frantic friction, but it did not thwart our coupling. It just kept going, and as much as I wanted to achieve Nirvana, I didn’t want it to stop. And, obviously, neither did she. The coupling seemed to last hours; perhaps it did. My body prickled everywhere with sensation, and though part of me was getting sore, the rest of me was lost to lust.

  I could tell she was close; her breath was as ragged and wild as her motions. She reared up and attached her mouth to my shoulder. She bit me! Hard! It hurt, but it didn’t stop us; it merely ratcheted up the sensations. Then she bit me on the neck, even harder. I know there was blood. I could see it on her mouth when she made me kiss her. I say “made me,” but it was irresistible impulse. She forced my blood into my mouth, and we swallowed it together.