Reign of Blood

by Sandy DeLuca

  Jane is here, a finger to her lips, gazing at blood drenched sheets.

  “He’ll bury them all up north,” I tell Jane.

  She leans close to me, “He might bury you there, too.”

  I turn away from her when I hear Bobby whistling, the knife blade scraping across metal.

  The Boston girl begins to shiver, and she screams when he goes to her side, and I wish I could take her away from here, but it’s too late. I realize I still don’t know her name.

  9

  The first winter I spent in Barlow Falls seemed colder, longer than others I’d known; and death was a constant companion, floating above me and glaring at me with empty eyes. Sometimes he held Jane in his arms, cradling her, rocking her. She didn’t cry when she lay in those arms and I wondered if she’d been initiated as an angel of death, comforting those who died young—praying with them as she guided them to the great beyond.

  “I’m alright, Darcy,” she told me when she kneeled by my bed. “You’re the one who needs help now.”

  She stayed by my side one Friday afternoon when classes ended and the threat of a winter storm hung in the air. It seemed her presence kept others far from me, and they crossed to the other side of the school parking lot, their eyes cast downward. Jane smiled knowingly, and remained silent as wind intensified, and then the cloak of winter grew thicker and more somber. I contemplated walking home from school, five miles across old back roads, but snow had begun to fall lightly, and I heard kids saying within no time it would be coming down heavy.

  The bus revved its engine in the school lot, headlights glared like menacing eyes, and it seemed alive and evil. I took a few steps closer and noticed faces leering at me from its windows. Mary sat in the rear seat, her mascara smeared, and a red scarf on her head, knife to her mouth. Something dripped from that knife and she caught droplets on her tongue.

  “Darcy.” Bobby’s voice sounded behind me. I turned and he smiled at me from the window of a beat-up Ford van. When I looked back at the bus everything was ordinary, and the kids seemed engaged in normal conversations. Mary gave a slight wave; gone was the red scarf and mascara smudge. Jimmy winked and nodded as though nothing bad had ever gone down. “Immature and unpredictable,” I whispered to myself, thinking of Mary’s knife, wondering if she’d hurt anyone besides herself and Pamela with it.

  “Darcy,” Bobby called out again. “I’m not working today. I came here to get my school records. I saw you leave your last class. I called you, but—”

  “I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on around me when I’m at school.” Except when someone flashes a knife, or torments me, I thought to myself.

  He laughed. “I know what you mean. I was a year behind everybody else, and lots of what goes on seems immature once you’re past eighteen. Lots of things take time, like I’m thinking of going back to school next semester. That’s why I came for my records.” He smiled and my heart melted. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride. My van isn’t much, but it’s better than riding that bus.”

  “I’ll say.”

  At that moment the bus pulled away, moving past me. The driver, a woman, gazed down at me; red hair wild and unkempt, eyes tinged with red. Bright teenage faces once again gave way to something dark, evil; and Mary made stabbing motions with her knife. The others clawed at windows like animals in cages.

  I sighed, shaking my head. “Back to their old tricks again. For a minute I thought they’d grown up a bit.”

  Bobby turned to me as snow speckled his windshield and the sky turned a deep blue-gray. “Mary is on the verge of getting expelled, so are some of the others.”

  “Good,” I told him, feeling relief pass through me. “Who is driving the bus today?”

  He looked to the sky, “Lady who drives the preschool bus. She’s got time to make up and took my shift. Hey, want to see where I go when I need peace and quiet? It’s my sanctuary of dark souls.”

  I nodded, and then moved closer to the van, waited as Bobby leaned over and opened the passenger’s door for me. I slid inside, and then spoke softly as he drove past students exiting school, and yellow buses pulling onto the road. “Your sanctuary sounds creepy, but I can’t stay out too long or Eddie and my Mom will be on my case.” I felt safe with Bobby, but for a moment a feeling of dread filled me when an image of Mary flickered through my mind. She held her knife against my sister Jane’s chest, eyes blazing with rage, drool running down her chin.

  “You’re a grown up girl, Darcy. No need to worry about Eddie and your mother.”

  I silently agreed with Bobby, and then thought about the hold Mary Beth had on me. She was evil, dangerous, yet I couldn’t break away from her.

  Bobby drove past the football field and old ranch houses on the school road. He turned onto the mall road, where traffic lights flickered on and off, and then onto Route 95, heading south. Twenty minutes later he took an exit onto Route 138, then exited onto a long winding stretch, called Plain Meeting House Road. It was narrow, lined by trees, houses far apart from each other. Rumor had it that a group of witches lived deep in the woods, and they joined hands, chanting to the moon each time it was full. A couple of grisly murders had also taken place in those woods, and they said every now and then someone uncovered a new body, buried by a cluster of oaks, or by an abandoned wooden shed. Bobby seemed comfortable moving through the murky landscape, quiet, gazing upward as snow tumbled from the darkening sky. He pulled up to an old cemetery, neglected and stark.

  The scene was hauntingly beautiful, with bare trees, snow coming down like sparkling jewels and tombstones cracked and emblazoned with names and dates. A crumbling church was visible in the distance, its steeple glimmering with ice and blackbirds circling around it. A few of the graves were laden with red roses, and I wondered who’d gone into deep woods to a distant cemetery to deliver flowers.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s one of the state’s oldest cemeteries. It’s in the history books. Legend says a vampire’s buried here.” He put his arm around me.

  “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”

  He laughed. “There’s more to the world than you know, Darcy.”

  “I don’t like to think about things like that.” I wanted to deny Jane’s ghost and visions of death haunting me.

  “Maybe you’re part of those things. Just like me.”

  “Why do you come here anyway?”

  “Everybody needs a place to think.” He sighed. “Some of the graves go back to the Victorian era, but lots of people from Barlow Falls are buried here. Town cemetery ran out of room years ago, so people started buying plots out here in the country.” He gazed at the old church steeple, sighed as blackbirds screeched, and then he whispered. “I really like you, Darcy. I think we’d be a good team.”

  I laughed, “A team? Like Bonnie and Clyde?” I joked.

  “We’ll be better than them,” he told me, and then leaned over and his lips brushed mine. It wasn’t long before he wrapped his arms around me, bringing me closer to his body, making me wet and hungry for his love. I leaned my head on his chest, listening to his heart beat, wanting to be part of him, to breathe with him, to go inside his soul and know the darkness within.

  The wind howled and the snow intensified. Bobby’s kisses, his touch and his breath on my skin took away the pain, the confusion and horror I’d endured. I saw Jane standing by the crumbling church, hands clasped in prayer, looking to the sky.

  Bobby whispered in my ear. “Darcy, you’re not like other girls who live here. I wanted you the first time I saw you.”

  I pressed my hands against his chest, remembering how I’d given in to guys too easily before, and the pain when they shunned me afterward. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea. We should head back. My mom is probably waiting for me.”

  “Your mother wouldn’t hesitate if she were you. Stop letting her mess up your life. Besides, I need you—I need this. I think you do, too,” he told me through heated gasps, kissing me har
der, unbuttoning my coat.

  He slipped off my coat, and I thought about Jeff, how he’d convinced me to sleep with him, and then later bragged about what we’d done. There was a guy in Jersey who’d driven me out to the beach, told me he loved me, but he stopped calling after we made it. There were others through the years, but Bobby was different, older and seemingly more mature.

  My doubts continued as Bobby slid his hand between my legs, forcing me to spread them wide as he unzipped my jeans. “I hardly know you.”

  “You know me better than you think. You always have,” he said as he ran his hand over my breasts and belly. I didn’t want him to stop, and I accepted his kisses without protest after a while. I allowed him to slip off my jeans.

  “If we go to the back we’ll be more comfortable,” he said.

  It was like a dream, moving with him in snow, feeling the wind on my face, and before I knew it I was lying in back of that old van, moaning as Bobby’s hands and fingers made me climax. “You won’t think about other guys once we’re done here,” he said, so raw, so harsh, but it was what I craved.

  “You promise?”

  “I swear,” he said as he mounted me, and I opened my legs so he could get inside me. So cold at first, and then it felt good when he pushed deeper into me, his breathing hard as his hands moved over me, making me explode with pleasure. Until then I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to be with somebody, to be intimate, to feel love even if it was fleeting. I thought about Mary Beth, peering out the window, watching as the bus drove past the house, cigarette dangling from her lips as she cursed and pounded her fists on the walls.

  Bobby took his time, driving me crazy, making me climax over and over, whispering, “Don’t it feel good, baby?”

  “Yeah,” I told him when I felt his semen inside me, as it poured down my thighs. He stopped for a few minutes, and then it began again, faster and fiercer than before.

  I heard Jane singing in the distance and phantoms floated over trees and crumbling gravestones as our movements intensified, like feral animals, making up for lost time. I heard footsteps outside and branches snapped, but I didn’t care, and merely closed my eyes when dark shapes surrounded the van, ghostly hands pressed against glass and a soft humming emerged.

  The ghosts melted into the falling snow, and Bobby moved away from me when it was over, cold air escaping from his lips, the sound of fabric and zipper amidst storm sounds. He turned to me, his face darker, and eyes smoldering. “We’ve got to get you home.”

  I thought about Mary Beth again as the sky grew darker and the radio announced the late afternoon news.

  The ride home was silent and a few inches of snow had accumulated by the time we got to the house.

  “Be careful,” I told him when I stepped onto the walk.

  He merely gazed at me with dead-dark eyes, and then drove away into the storm, leaving me alone as snow clung to my hair and clothes, soaking me, chilling me, bringing me back to the hell world I’d fallen into.

  * * *

  I hadn’t realized how hungry I’d been as I bite into meat Bobby roasted on our portable grill. Blood oozes onto my plate, red, smelling of rich copper. “So good,” I tell him.

  “Sasha and Tim tried to leave. I had to stop them—like I stopped the rest of them. Can’t let anybody tell what we’ve done.”

  “Did you bury them?”

  “Later, we’ll drive into the woods and bury what’s left.”

  “The girl, too?”

  He nods and I realize the screaming has stopped, but it won’t be long before we go to another city and it begins again, louder, fiercer and deadly. I read someplace we create our lives—every event—every chance meeting. Bobby and I—we’re like brilliant artists. We’ve made our lives together—a deadly couple—skilled at butchery, king and queen of an endless reign of blood.

  10

  This city is more silent—lonelier since I left. No one stands in drugstore doorways, or dines by restaurant windows. The high school is vacant, crumbling, with broken windows and doors. I wonder where everyone has gone. How many people find this place by accident, turning off the wrong road, or getting lost in the stillness of the night, and do they ever find their way back home?

  I walk the dark streets like in the old days, taking in the neglect, the sorrow of this place. I see an old abandoned bus in a parking lot strewn with garbage. I see what look like shallow graves in the dry earth. Mary sits in the back seat of that bus, running a sharpened blade across her neck. Jimmy and Carmine are slumped in their seats and there are blood spatters on windows.

  My arms throbs, but I keep moving closer to that bus, knowing soon Bobby will stroll across the street, hair combed back, eyes blazing, leather jacket speckled with snow. Tough, beautiful and deadly, taking in the city, and then telling me, “The dead are restless tonight, and so am I.”

  * * *

  Eddie met me at the door, anger on his face. “Where have you been, girl? We’ve been worried sick?”

  “Being a slut, I imagine.” My mother’s words stung. “Look at you. You’re a mess.”

  Eddie waved his hand in dismissal, smiling slowly. “Now, Mary Beth, go easy on the girl.”

  I spoke to Eddie, not wanting to look into my mother’s eyes, fearing she could destroy me with her rage. “Bobby Tandaro gave me a ride home. He wasn’t driving the bus today like usual. We stopped for soda, and then it was slow going because of the storm.” I bit my bottom lip. “Besides, I’m nineteen. There’s no need to worry and wait for me.”

  My mother’s face turned an angry red. “You’re nineteen and still in high school—behind for your age. You need to be watched over because you can’t take care of yourself.”

  I kept my rage in check, thinking of the day I could leave and go on my own—away from her madness and evil. “It’s ok, Ma,” I said softly.

  “Bobby?” Eddie asked. “I didn’t see a car, and you’re soaked—as though you walked all the way home from school.” He pressed closer to me, making me uncomfortable.

  “No I—”

  I realized I was shivering and my teeth chattered. For a moment I wondered why Eddie was always there when I got home, not working like he should have been. There were stains on his shirt, and his forehead was beaded with sweat despite the cold.

  “Get into some dry clothes. I’ll bring you something hot.” Eddie went to the cabinet, pulled out a can of soup. He reached for the opener, and then stopped suddenly, asking once more. “Bobby you said?”

  “Yeah, Bobby Tandaro. I don’t want soup, but thanks.”

  My mother chimed in. “I told you she’s been slutting around.”

  Eddie shook his head, giving my mother a sidelong glance, and then turned to me. “Darcy, you’re mistaken. You must have heard the name somewhere else.”

  My mother went into a rage, her voice becoming high-pitched. “Get out of here. I don’t want to look at you. You’re a liar and a tramp.” At that moment I feared what she might do if I didn’t lock my bedroom door as I slept, and if I didn’t look over my shoulder when she was close behind.

  Eddie lowered his voice so only I could hear, “Go on. We’ll deal with this later.”

  I left them, feeling their eyes on me, knowing there was no love in their souls, and they were capable of destroying me—without mercy—without regret.

  I went to my room, plucked a book from beneath my mattress and began to read.

  Ian Brady murdered five children during the 1960s. In August 1987 he confessed to five more, and claimed he’d buried the bodies. The murders were done with a woman named Myra Hindley. The judge who presided over the trials claimed they were the most heinous killings of the century and Myra was a cold and calculating accomplice.

  In 1961 nineteen-year-old Myra became infatuated with Brady, even though she’d learn he had a criminal record. She wrote details of that infatuation in a journal, recording her feelings, documenting her twisted obsession. She became more obsessed with him after they began to da
te. She said he convinced her there was no God, and if he told her the sun rose in the west she’d believe him. His power of persuasion was that powerful.

  The power of love is terrifying at times and I wondered how Myra felt after the victims were buried, after night had fallen and she laid in Ian’s bed. Was their lovemaking savage? Were his kisses fierce and blazing like the Devil’s?

  * * *

  “Is this Hell?” I look into Bobby’s eyes, and then quickly turn away when someone cries out. My arm throbs, but I try to ignore the pain.

  “It’s just another town, with its ghosts, with its history. No such thing as Hell, except for the one you create in your mind.”

  He moves away from me, knife clutched in his hand, looking to the bus, strolling toward it, and then taking his place behind the wheel. He invites me inside, and I go, riding shotgun, gazing at the hell I’ve created—a curse I must endure.

  11

  Jane stood at the foot of my bed, eyes fastened on the window, on snow falling hard and fast. I asked if she was alright. She didn’t answer me, just waved her hand in silent dismissal. She’d come to listen to my nighttime confessions, so I whispered things I couldn’t share with anyone else.

  “Bobby gave me a ride home. We stopped and I let him go all the way. We were like animals. It’s raw between my legs. There are scratches on my back, but I liked what we did, and I want more of it. It wasn’t a mistake this time—like with Jeff last year—like with other guys.

  “I wish you would go peacefully, Jane. I wish you’d let go and stop worrying about me. Mary Beth and Eddie can’t hurt me now that Bobby is here.”

  Jane moved into gathering shadows, into the world of the dead. I wished I could bring her back, but you can’t change things once they’ve gone bad. You’ve got to move on, even if it’s into Hell.