Dark Screams, Volume 8 Read online

  I admit I believe in a little magic.

  She was lucky she got to be Eight. I positioned her bloody body in a way bodies aren’t supposed to bend. She was a red naked pretzel with heels pressed against her temples and cold hands in the dark cavern between her legs, and her toes bent down in rigor like fat peanuts. I do it for shock. I do it for fun. Fuck, I do it like no one does it, that’s the thing. If you’re going to do this final act, it should always be the ultimate scene the mind can imagine. Or what’s the point?

  If they ever connected the murders strung out along the California coastal highway, they’d have known I was at work again. Every kill was artful and bizarre. I’d stopped for a period of time—three years (and it almost killed me to be so silent, slow, and useless)—to throw them off. Now I am back again and they haven’t even picked up on it. The last string of deaths left behind brought me close to capture. That wouldn’t happen again. Fuck me sideways if it did.

  Cops and detectives were generally stupid anyway. I’d earned a Ph.D. in psychology by my mid-twenties, and it seemed to me many men drawn to law enforcement were twisted in some important way. Not as twisted as I had become over the years, no, but twisted just the same. You can’t convince me some of those guys don’t get off pulling the trigger on victims.

  Boom! Motherfucker down. Permanently.

  We’re all like that. All the twisted ones.

  My mother knew the score. My father, that faceless slouch who died of alcohol poisoning before he was forty, didn’t know his toe from a kettledrum. My mother, on the other hand, oh, she was a slippery thing; she was an electric eel who sleeps deep in the dark and slithers out to take a bite from prey, crippling it, blood spewing to stain the water scarlet.

  First time I realized she knew me, really knew me, rotten kernels filling my black heart hard as stone, I was staring at my acceptance letter to Stanford. I had taken the letter out the back door, letting it close softly. This was private. I’d worked hard, I’d taken all the extra courses, and I was a shining student who would be let into classes early. I was only fifteen. And brilliant, it goes without saying. It all came from her, from Mum, the eel who haunted me down there in the depths where I often swam. When educated with the proper words for people who are twisted, I labeled her folder: NARCISSISTIC-BIPOLAR. She was so manipulative you’d think she could have run a corporation. I’d kept that folder on her behavior for years. It was thick and stinking of depravity. She was, in a way, my first psychoanalytic case. The case was unsolved and the woman unsaved, but the longest study I ever did.

  That day, when I knew she understood the real me, she’d sneaked to the back door and peered out the crack, watching with those black, masterful, all-seeing eyes.

  I felt the stare right away. She was never far from me when I was home. I should have ridden off on my bike and hidden behind the piñon tree at the end of the street.

  To hell with her, I thought. I have to know if they accepted me. She couldn’t stop me from going. They’d offered a full scholarship so her poverty, and certainly not her disapproval, mattered. I could do this on my own.

  I looked from the sides of my eyes and saw the clot of darkness at the slightly opened door. Tearing open the envelope, I whipped out the white paper with the beautiful heading. “We are happy to offer you a position in classes at Stanford.”

  That’s all I had to read. The rest was simply scribbles. I was in. On my way to a good life away from this dirt saloon. Soon to stride over the world like a Colossus.

  I turned like a whip and saw Mother jerk back a bit, her dark column wavering as if underwater. I threw open the door and straightened my shoulders. My lips pulled from my teeth, producing a dangerous smile. If she was going to try to hurt me emotionally, she’d have to yank a miracle out of her ass. Nothing could change this. She’d just lost what little power she’d held over me.

  “What is it?” Her body had settled and she appeared relaxed. She pretended to be a curious mother.

  “They accepted me into Stanford University. Early entry.”

  “You’re only fifteen, you’re fucking lying.”

  I learned my language from her. I’d have to temper myself as I moved up in society. I leaned forward, my face not inches from hers, and said, “Mother, I’m a genius. How could you not know that? How could you miss it?”

  “You’re…sure…you’re smart…”

  “I’m intelligent. I surpassed all the tests. You’ve never known anyone like me and may never again.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I moved even closer so our noses touched and our eyes locked. “You’re a peon. You’re a peasant. You are inferior stock. I’ll never come back here when I leave—not until the day you die.”

  She stepped back and slapped my face so hard my head swung to the side. The whole room twirled and swayed and threatened to drop me to the hard floor. It stung, but I didn’t reach to touch my cheek. Wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

  “I know you,” she said with a deep, ominous growl. “I’ve always known what you are. Smart, sure, you’re smart, like a viper, like a bear, a really wild thing, but I see the rest of it. The deep down. You’re the goddamn devil, boy, and don’t mistake it.”

  “And you’re not? Your evil, Mother, is legendary.”

  Now she smiled, and it reflected the smile I’d given her. “I can’t reach you. I’ve known that awhile. I didn’t think anyone could hate as much as I do, but I was wrong. You’re an infection. You’re antimatter. You’re the back ass of the moon.”

  I cared no more for her opinion than I would if she were a cockroach. Antimatter, indeed. She didn’t even know what it was, silly old fool.

  I took my precious acceptance letter and left her standing, that creepy Peeping Tom, among the shadows and the stink of cheap spaghetti sauce and under it all the scent of urine that leaked from the toilet bowl in the filthy bathroom. She was and always had been superfluous. I’d kill her if I thought I’d feel better, but she was such a nothing her death would have been anticlimactic. Like stomping a June bug on concrete. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing but an unsightly splotch on the grimy linoleum floor.

  —

  In my own private folder I never failed to list my kills, the stalking, the planning, and the thoughts in my head. I knew what I was. Natural-born killer, that’s all. Of course I hated my mother and I killed women as men who hate their mothers tend to do. So prosaic, yes, it seems so. But over the years I found more than that inside my burred and dark insanity. More than just taking out revenge on a bad mother. I took out pain and suffering on the world for tampering with my perfection. I could have been something. I might have done some good with all the brainpower. But I was twisted and turned and blackened deep down where eels sleep. That’s why I wanted recompense. That’s why the world was to blame and life a monstrosity. That the victims were women was no mystery. That I hurt them so splendidly and then moved on without leaving evidence—well, that was the trick. I proved my superiority and it wasn’t that hard, to be truthful.

  Television shows and movies would have you to believe we—killers—can be so easily caught. There are so many forensic scientists and tests to be performed. Well, let me tell you something, and it should scare the shit out of you. All that stuff is three-fourths fictional. There are very few districts with any criminal forensic techs at all. We’ll have him in cuffs by hour’s end, the character says on the television detective show. He struts in his dark suit, the sturdy detective, and he will, by God, get his man by the last commercial.

  That’s a joke.

  Because in reality, no, he won’t. For every murder solved, a thousand get away with it. Media won’t tell you the truth. Everyone would be paranoid all the time. Society couldn’t function. Yet that’s the way it is. Catching killers has a poor record of success. Get a homicide detective who has been around awhile, get him drunk, and ask him. You’ll find out.

  I wish it was easier to catch me. It’s a little boring to be so successful all the
time. Where’s the competition? Where’s my Sherlock? Where the fuck, Jesus God, are all the geniuses?

  —

  I teach at Stanford, where I was educated, because it’s easy and leaves me free time. I’m not likable or charming or funny, so I’m not one of the hot professors besieged by so many students they have to be turned away. My course is one I created. “Children in Therapy.” I don’t think I ever filled the room. You need charisma for that to happen.

  I didn’t have a practice, but I knew how to be a therapist and children were the most interesting. With adults you have a lifetime of baggage. With kids you get the straight skinny, the unbending rail. I didn’t say it quite this way in class, but by the time they finished my course, students of psychology held a stronger respect for the subject matter.

  I make a fine enough living to afford a nice two-bedroom cottage on a tree-lined street. I bought the place for eighty grand and now it’s worth four times that. I’m not moving because I’m a creature of habit in my “real” life—the life where I go to work, get a paycheck, shop for groceries, and mow my lawn.

  In my killing life, and that’s the real one truly, things can get chaotic. It takes a lot of time and work to set up a kill. They have to be spaced apart by time and place. I don’t take the usual timber from the forest—prostitutes and runaways. It’s just too easy. I like all ages of women, all types of women who do different jobs for a living, but they’re always single or widows. I’m not into orphaning a kid.

  Number Eight was thirty-four and lonely as a crab clinging to a rock along a hard surf. She rented a four-room house in a neighborhood that was partly commercial. All around her little place were drugstores, Mexican cantinas, chop shops, and convenience stores that sold a little something-something on the side when no cops were around.

  I dressed down when hanging around the neighborhood. Chinos with a grease stain on the right knee and pullover solid-color shirts. My shoes were Walmart black sneakers that were wearing out in the toes and heels. I always took a cab in and out, pulling a brown felt hat down low over my face. I was as nondescript as the rest of the population squirming like fleas over the area.

  Even my too-blue eyes were disguised with brown contacts. I wore them all the time. Not many people saw my blue eyes after the age of twenty.

  Out to take a kill is no time to jockey for attention.

  I’d watched Eight for at least two months. She had a hangdog look about her. She brought a man home now and then, but they never came back. She wasn’t that pretty and she wasn’t that young.

  No one noticed who came and went at her place. It was small, clapboard, faded yellow, and had a black grilled door. She took me through it the last night of her life.

  I used a knife. It wasn’t drawn out. A few solid thumping stabs in the chest and she was gone. I sat awhile, watching the blood course over her ribs into the mattress and sheets and then to the floor, where it pooled. I carefully took off her clothes and put them aside on a green satin chair in the bedroom. I positioned her wildly, laughing in a soft way, enjoying myself. I’d worn gloves the whole time.

  When she offered me a beer and mentioned I might want to take off my gloves, I made up a silly story about a skin disease and how sensitive I was about anyone seeing my rashes. She shrugged, as I knew she would, and handed me a Bud from the fridge. I noticed a skim of black mold along the refrigerator’s gasket around the door and cringed. She asked if I were cold, should she shut off the window air conditioner, and I said no, honey, it’s all right. It’s all fine.

  We sat at her kitchen table that still held an egg-streaked breakfast plate on it and drank beer while chatting about her life. Not mine. I listened.

  She had been married once for three years, but he left for work one day and never came home. She had no children and didn’t want any. She made enough money to stay afloat, but she yearned to get away, maybe go down to San Diego sometime to the zoo. She was a meek, mild maid and I was her night’s fancy.

  Until I wasn’t.

  When they found her, they’d wonder why such a gaudy display. It would distract them and make them a little crazy, and they knew from the first they’d never solve it. This was majesty. Like the craziness of the Black Dahlia. This was no hooker bloodletting. No regular boyfriend rage.

  No, this was artful. She looked inhuman wrapped in all that blood. A perfect nonperson. My pleasure resulted from transformation. Alive to dead, human to thing, ugly to beautiful.

  —

  Mother died in the first week of April. She didn’t call me to let me know she was dying. Her doctor did. I’d given him my cell number and slipped a few hundred into his hand. He called early enough, like I’d told him.

  I found her in bed. Same house I grew up in, but now it was darker, dirtier, less respectable. The landscape of the yard had hardened to dry sand and the trees had died. The house stood canted as if a big wind had pushed it off its moorings.

  She opened her eyes when I entered the room. “You,” she said. Then closed her eyes against me.

  I pulled a kitchen chair into the room and up to her bedside. The scraping of it along the floor sounded grating, and I saw her wince.

  “Go away, I don’t want you here.”

  “Open your eyes. Don’t be a coward.”

  “You’re the fucking coward.” She kept her eyelids down tightly.

  “Cancer, is it? Doc Blein said it’s eaten you up. Like a sweet—a cupcake or a Butterfinger.”

  “You’re disgusting,” she said.

  “You’re dying.”

  “Thank fucking God.”

  “I hate you, you know. I didn’t come to make this easy for you.”

  “Do your worst. No love lost.”

  She coughed and hacked, and when she calmed I began talking.

  What I said to her was worse than if I’d plunged Eight’s knife into her chest. I talked for hours. There were old memories and I was sure to tell her once as a little boy I’d thought her beautiful, but that’s before I understood what she was really about.

  I told her about the murders, all eight of them. I bragged that it had only begun. I’d never be caught.

  She coughed in scared excitement and tried to threaten that she’d tell, but we both knew she’d be dead before the light left the western sky.

  I never laid a finger on her. Didn’t have to. My long-talking, matter-of-fact voice and cold disdain did it all.

  She rolled over onto her side away from me, and I hurriedly moved the chair around to that side of the bed and continued talking to her, this mother of mine, this bitch mother I’d hated nearly my entire life.

  She never opened her eyes to look at me. Once she called out, “You’re the devil,” as she’d done when I was a boy, and then she spluttered, coughed up blood, and died. Just like that. The mother thing was at the bottom of the ocean now, floating amid the fish skeletons, no more than a shadow of her eel self. I had her cremated so I could fling her across the ocean, where she belonged, shadow flecks of hatred floating away.

  —

  Nine is unlucky. If you depend on nine to save you, think again. Nine isn’t good at all. My ninth victim caused a problem. None before her had caused even a ripple of disruption. This unbroken record had spoiled me.

  Bad luck might have been because of the goblin cane and my intention for it. That’s what I called it. In reality it was a smooth-skinned, warped, three-foot of driftwood. One end was curved and gnarled like a handhold on a cane. The other end was whittled down by the washing of water and sand until it was sharp as a scalpel. It would fit agreeably for a goblin to use as a cane. Goblins are small, right? Studying the driftwood that day on the shore when I found it, I realized, too, it could be a lethal weapon. A murder tool to further mystify the homicide crew.

  I took it along and stashed it where needed. I brought Nine down to the beach after tacos and beer. She was a single woman who had just landed in town. The golden land of California was going to make a big difference in her life.


  “I couldn’t stand Choctaw County in Oklahoma another minute. Indians, casinos, bad weather, and I mean really bad weather. I’ve gone through four tornadoes!”

  “Is that right?”

  “Hell, yeah. Made my hair stand on end.” She giggled. “Once one of them took off the garage roof. And it was attached to the house. Sounded like a wrecking crew. I knew it would be so much nicer out here in Southern California. I saved for months to get the bus ticket.”

  I almost felt sorry for her but not enough to change my well-laid plans. The goblin’s cane waited down at the shore near the pier, under it, soaking in the shadows high up from the tide. We were a long way from people. No one came here this time of night. It was almost midnight. The moon drove up the sky on its milky circle, the sea whiskered up the shore with creeping foam, and Nine just kept talking about herself.

  I was a trained psychotherapist. I could listen, no problem. The story flowed over me, however. It didn’t go inside where I dwelled, the stories never did. In there I thought and plotted and panted for the act of murder. I might pick up a word here and there.

  “…rode a horse…broke my cellphone…ate mac-and-cheese for a month…”

  She was a slight woman, twenty-nine, childless, and unmarried. She was not a pretty woman, but they rarely were. Besides, I’m not handsome and prettier girls aren’t attracted. I didn’t go for the Hollywood wannabes, either, the ones who will go off with you if you’re an ugly toad if you tell them lies about being a director. Too high-caliber, with too many friends. Nine was slight and willowy, but her face was a perfect fat U. It looked as if it belonged on a much heavier woman. When she grinned she showed big teeth, these too big for her face, her face too big for her body. She was a mismatched piece of work. She had one saving grace. Her voice was mellifluous. If I didn’t look at her, she sounded like an angel. I let her story lull me as we tracked the beach, moving farther and farther from housing and cafés, closer and closer to the lonesome pier and the goblin’s cane.