Reign of Blood

by Sandy DeLuca

  FIRST EDITION

  Reign of Blood © 2012 by Sandy DeLuca

  Cover Artwork © 2012 by Daniele Serra

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DELIRIUM BOOKS

  P.O. Box 338

  North Webster, IN 46555

  www.deliriumbooks.com

  For Dad

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank Greg F. Gifune for his continual support, Shane Ryan Staley for supporting my work and contributions to the genre. I’d like to thank cousin Ann Marie for her love and help during some of the darkest times of my life. Thanks to Matt and Julie for their love. Lastly, thanks to my readers.

  Author Notes

  Barlow Falls is a fictional Rhode Island city. Although this novella takes place in Rhode Island certain landmarks have been fictionalized. Plain Meeting House Road does exist, but no murders took place there as far as I know, except in my mind. There is a “vampire cemetery” on that road, but certain facts and legends associated with it are from my imagination.

  1

  Bobby and I met a girl back in Boston, young naive, an easy target. After a few drinks we got the diamond ring on her index finger along with her wallet, which was stuffed with hundred dollar bills. I was satisfied, glad we’d have enough money to get through the next month, or so, but Bobby is never satisfied. I was scared in the beginning, always thinking we’d get caught, end up spending our lives in prison, but I’m not afraid anymore because I’ve learned that scamming and conning makes me strong—taking what I want—gives me a power over others and that’s what keeps us alive. It’s what keeps us safe.

  It’s raining and there’s not much traffic on the pike. I gaze at the gold band on my finger, a symbol of Bobby’s love. I haven’t taken it off since we tied the knot up in Maine. It’s been twenty years. It was a small ceremony, inside the preacher’s parlor. His two daughters were there, shivering when we finished our vows, knowing their time on earth was about to end. We grabbed the gold and silver they wore, and took five hundred bucks from a box on the preacher’s desk. He was already dead by the time we cut the second girl’s throat. We buried all three in the small graveyard by the chapel. There have been too many to count since then.

  Sometimes it’s quick, other times Bobby takes his time, toying with people we meet, earning their trust—ending it when they least suspect. Sasha and Tim will probably be no different.

  They sit close together in the back seat, her head on Tim’s shoulder, his hand on her thigh. They don’t mind dried blood on the upholstery, or moaning coming from the rear of the van. They’re young, spellbound by Bobby, hanging onto every word he says. He’s destroying them. They can’t leave, but sooner or later Bobby will set them free—in one way or another.

  Earlier I drank hot coffee, watching Sasha pace outside the restaurant window, high heel boots kicking up rain, thin clothing clinging to her body; cooling off after another fight with Tim. They’re like feral cats, clawing at each other until each is left with emotional scars, with heartache. Sasha said they didn’t fight before we hooked up with them. They didn’t do a lot of things they’re doing now. It’s Bobby who changes people and infects them with his evil.

  It didn’t take much for him to influence me. I was born into evil, raised by a woman named Mary Beth Farrell, somebody who had no respect for life and who hurt too many people. Sometimes I miss her, even though she never told me she loved me—even though I was one of the people she hurt. I believe she’s responsible for how I turned out, just like Rosemary West, a woman convicted of 10 murders. Her mother suffered from depression during her pregnancy, causing prenatal injury to Rosemary. There’s no doubt my mother, Mary Beth, suffered from mental illness while she carried me in her womb, and the things she did after I was born damaged me further.

  Rosemary West is serving time for her crimes, but I want to go down like Bonnie Parker did, right by my man’s side. I’ve always felt a connection to those women—and to others like them.

  Bobby reaches over and he touches my inner arm. I flinch when his fingers press against a vein where an angry black bruise appeared overnight. I don’t remember how it happened—I never do. It’ll fade in a day or two, and then a new one will appear. Sometimes I see strangers standing over my bed when it’s dark. They look at me with concern on their faces, and then straighten my sheets. They frighten me when I awake in the middle of the night, watching me as they whisper to each other. I wonder if they are ghosts, or just dreams.

  It’s almost midnight and Bobby tells us we should stop, get some sleep and head for New York City in the morning. I want to keep moving through the night, with familiar things residing in darkness, kindred spirits—creatures familiar with death.

  Tim lights a joint, and hands it to Sasha as we cross into Rhode Island, and pass through a town where I once lived. Barlow Falls, a place abound with crumbling houses and deserted buildings. I’m uneasy when we drive by the old house where my mother died. The windows are boarded up and the yard is littered with beer bottles and garbage. I wonder if things I did still fill those halls with darkness and specters of madness. I remember how alone I felt living there. I remember pain and death. I never wanted to come back, but I think I was meant to. I realize I’ve got unfinished business here, and I’m so much like my mother, a woman who took from others without remorse. It seemed normal, acceptable, because I’d been in her world since my birth. Hooking up with Bobby took me further into the darkness. Nothing ends, especially the killing.

  * * *

  I accepted loneliness and isolation when I was young, before Bobby. My family—especially my mother—had twisted secrets and being part of those secrets alienated me from the rest of the world.

  At nineteen I didn’t make friends anymore. It hurt when I had to leave them behind, promising I’d be back, knowing I’d never get the chance, so I lived with memories of those who’d gone away forever, like my sister Jane and my father, a man I still mourned, someone taken from me too soon. Looking back I realize he kept my mother, Mary Beth, in line and preserved a shred of sanity in my life.

  He worked two jobs, but still took the time to treat Jane and me to picnics in the park and Saturday matinees. He was a tall muscular man, fit and handsome. He insisted on walking to his night job as a security guard at a mall just outside of Atlanta. He always said he didn’t fear much, that his fists could take care of muggers and thieves who roamed city backstreets. He was too sure of himself and unaware of his own mortality, and it proved to be his downfall.

  He was beaten to death in an alley, two blocks from our home, on a steamy summer night. The killer got thirty bucks from my father’s wallet and his wedding band. I remember Mary Beth talking to somebody out on the porch after it happened, a man who remained in shadow, spidery fingers touching her, raspy voice whispering unintelligible words. He left when the moon slipped behind a dark cloud, footsteps tapping on cement, disappearing as the wind rustled the magnolia trees, leaving Mary Beth alone as rain began to fall.

  Later she told me we didn’t have cash for a proper funeral, but she lied because Dad kept money in a savings account at the corner bank. Despite that, we had a simple burial in a pauper’s graveyard on the outskirts of the city, a baron place of neglect.

  I used to visit Dad’s grave sometimes after school, bringing flowers I’d picked near the railroad tracks, wondering if my mother dreamed of him every night like I did. In my dreams he’d be leaning on the porch post, eyes fastened on Mary Beth’s bedroom window upstairs, and he’d tell me to pack my
things, take my sister Jane and run as far away as I could. He’d lift the lid of a small wooden box, revealing blood and bones, locks of golden brown hair—like my little sister Jane’s.

  Mom’s true self emerged after Dad died, her temper flared at the least little thing, sending Jane to her room for spilling her milk, or not finishing her vegetables. Mom belittled me, telling me I wasn’t smart enough to make it in the world, not pretty enough to get a good husband. Someone told me once that we all have our own way of mourning. I don’t believe my mother mourned my father at all. She cleaned out the bank account and moved fifty miles away after his murder. She took up with anybody who’d give her a handout, or a place to stay, and she didn’t give a damn about her children—or about our lives—or deaths.

  My mother moved around a lot, leaving one boyfriend, and then into a new relationship and home with another. After a while, men came and went so fast their names became unimportant and their faces seemed so much alike; business men with no family, but with wallets filled with cash, truckers with no ties and professional gamblers with little to lose. I didn’t know until later where they went.

  Jane showed me how my mother slit their throats in silent darkness, on the rollaway bed in the den, its wheels creaking and blood dripping when she pushed it down to the wheat fields, her nightgown stained with crimson, and she’d hum a funeral song her mother taught her. Then she’d grunt and groan when she rolled those dead bodies into graves she’d made, covering them with fresh dirt, and then walking slowly back to the house, stopping to gaze at the magnolia and pecan trees, planning her next move as the warm Georgia wind ruffled her gown and hair.

  By the winter of 1991 we’d drifted up the Eastern Seaboard, settling in Southern New England, in a small Rhode Island town called Barlow Falls. Mom was desperate, taking up with a man, named Eddie Sloan, someone who came to town one day on business, smelling of too much aftershave and with permanent sweat stains beneath his shirts. She stuck to Eddie longer than the others, and I believe, despite his seemingly caring nature, he was a perfect match; someone who knew darkness and could scam the best of them.

  Barlow Falls High was the third school I’d transferred to in two years. I don’t think it would have been the last if things hadn’t worked out like they did, if Eddie had been like the others. Mary Beth would have met someone else, kept traveling, an eternal drifter, running from what she’d done, learning in the end you can’t run away from yourself.

  Most times she left everything behind, except for that small wooden box. I never saw that box before Jane passed; except in dreams of my father.

  Winter came quick that year, changing from mild autumn days, past brisk December and into a January when snow seemed to fall constantly. It made everything seem bleaker, darker, and my loneliness more evident, and the transition into a new school uncomfortable.

  I gazed at other students as I sat alone in the school cafeteria, wondering about their parents and homes; a book of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning by my side. A notebook, tattered, with a faded cover, lay open in front of me, newspaper clippings tucked inside; with faded photographs; with paper so old that names and dates were difficult to decipher, but I felt an odd fascination with those clippings and was determined to figure out why Eddie kept them in his basement. The deceased gazed back at me with vacant eyes. They were too young to die, or to be lost forever. Deep inside I knew Eddie was responsible for what happened to them, luring them with seeming concern, and then stealing their lives when they least suspected.

  I’ve thought about the day Mom and I left a town whose name I’ve forgotten, Eddie packing the few possessions we took into the back of his trailer truck, my mother insisting she hold her wooden box all the way to Barlow Falls. Eddie’s face red with anger, telling her, “We can dump it along the way. Don’t hold onto things that can hurt you.” She shook her head, hugged the box and told him to keep driving.

  It felt odd without my sister Jane by my side, giggling when I smiled at her, asking me to tie her shoe, depending on me to keep her safe—to keep her alive.

  I’m not sure if anyone went to our apartment after we left. I think the cops were watching my mother—watching me, too. Every now and then the papers ran articles about traveling businessmen who disappeared—seemingly dropping off the face of the earth. The incidents trailed up the Eastern Seaboard, but no bodies were found—no suspects had been questioned. There were several murders—elderly folks—as well. Cops thought the murders and disappearances might be linked. People blamed those disappearances on everything from alien abduction to the deeds of a serial killer. Of course the latter was true.

  I often wondered if anyone noticed Jane was gone, if they’d tie it all together. Neighbors saw Jane playing in the yard, and they saw when I used to walk with her to the store, buy her ice cream from money I earned helping Mr. and Mrs. Donahue, raking leaves and plucking weeds. Old Mrs. Tarbox sometimes called to us from her doorstep, and she’d put shiny quarters in our palms, tell us to make sure we got two scoops. Mr. Creston from the deli waited each morning, handing us Swiss and American cheese in fat packages, knowing our mother fed us condensed soup and bread from the day-old bakery. Funny thing is I didn’t see Mr. and Mrs. Donahue, Mr. Creston or Mrs. Tarbox for a while; newspapers scattered in driveways, mail piled high on doorsteps, Creston’s Deli dark and deserted. Now I think I know what happened.

  Last time Jane and I got ice cream she stained her new pink dress. She cried a lot that night. She always cried at night. I used to sit up with her, rock her and tell her stories, but I fell asleep early that evening, even though the crying hadn’t stopped. She was gone when I woke, but the smell of copper and bleach filled the house. Eddie was gone, doing whatever he did when darkness fell.

  “Where’s Jane?” I asked, fearing something bad had happened to my kid sister.

  Mary Beth didn’t look me in the eye when she answered. “She’s gone with Uncle Kelly and Aunt Marie. They came to get Jane before you woke up. I want to make it work with Eddie and having a little kid like Jane around puts a strain on the relationship, you know? Once we’re settled in, she’ll come back.”

  I wanted to believe what Mom told me, and I hoped Jane was happy with my uncle and aunt, and that they wouldn’t scold her—hurt her—when she wept in the dark. I hoped my suspicions were wrong.

  I remembered my sister’s face when she smiled, how much I loved her, wanted to protect her, and I held back my tears, tears I should have cried because I failed her. I lived with a terrifying secret, with knowledge heinous and pure evil.

  I’d thought about it for months, and I know what Mom did to Jane. I knew Jane wasn’t with Uncle Kelly and Aunt Marie.

  My sister came to see me a lot, peering at me from beyond a smoky veil. On the day I sat alone in the school cafeteria she chose not to visit. My eyes were red from nighttime tears, and I was glad no one looked my way.

  I removed several newspaper clippings from the back of the notebook and laid them out in front of me. I gazed at each one, like I’d done many times, trying to make sense of names and events. Satisfied I tucked them back in between yellowed, line pages, smoothing them down almost lovingly.

  I took in my surroundings, observing young people sitting together, sharing lunch and teenage secrets. The town possessed an aura of sadness, longing and darkness. Smiles were infrequent and laughter sinister. I figured it was because Barlow Falls had been hit hard by the economy, businesses closed and banks foreclosed on homes. In the early ’90s unemployment was high and lots of families in Barlow Falls were forced to live in shelters indefinitely.

  Before we arrived there, we’d lived in the city, the suburbs and in rural areas. Kids were kids everywhere, all dreaming of bright futures, longing for love and acceptance, but this town was different. Creepier with neglected structures and strange dwellings where no lights shined. There were unlit storefronts where kids huddled together as though reciting wicked chants. It was a town where my mother would remain for eternity
.

  * * *

  I’ve been with Bobby since I left Barlow Falls, since I learned the truth about Eddie and my mom—about everybody who lived there. It’s been twenty years filled with blood-soaked nights and terror; time spent with others like Sasha and Tim, those who chose to follow Bobby, to worship him with twisted devotion—to honor him as though he’s a God.

  I’m not sure I love Bobby the way a woman is supposed to love a man—but he takes care of me, and I doubt we’ll ever split. I once thought that only Death could separate us, but I live with Death. He’s here with me for a moment, and then he’s peering down at me from an upstairs window in the house where I used to live, dark eyes glowing from beneath his black hood, hands waving like he’s conducting a bloody symphony. There are others with him, fingers tapping on glass, eyes hollow and faces ghostly white—my sister, Jane—Jimmy Russo, Carmine DelFino and Mary Sacks. I remember them all and I know they remember me.

  2

  Bobby keeps souvenirs in boxes, too. They are things we’ve stolen over the years; rings, silk scarves and tiny stud earrings. He sells some when he gets his price, but there’s some stuff he won’t let go of, like I won’t let go of the newspaper articles I found in Eddie’s cellar.

  Sometimes we arrange glittering objects in circles on hotel room floors, and pour crimson liquid in the center of those circles. “All in fun,” Bobby tells me, Sasha and Tim as he counts cash we’ve stolen, as he recites the names of our victims, whispering to me where some are buried, and where some were left to suffer—to bleed out slowly—before they died.

  I remember a salesman we met in Arizona, a middle-aged man, lonely and desperate, glad to buy me dinner, and then take me to a fancy boutique, allowing me to pick out new jeans and boots. Later I went to his hotel room, with promises I couldn’t keep. Bobby waited in that room, knife blade sharpened, smiling when he stabbed the man in the back, laughing as he slowly dismembered the guy.