Night in the Lonesome October

by Richard Laymon

  We kissed with open mouths.

  Her purse still hung from her right shoulder. I felt its straps when I reached around her. They didn’t get in the way, though.

  I ran my hands up and down her back, savoring her silken curves. She shivered and hugged me more tightly.

  ‘Too cold?’ I whispered.

  ‘A little. And a little scared.’

  ‘Wanta go to my place?’

  ‘No. This is good.’ Her arms loosened their hold on me. Then they went away. I felt her breath on my face and the warm pressure of her breasts against my chest and small pulling sensations at my waist as she unfastened my jeans. Reaching into my shorts, she caressed me. Then her breasts eased away from me. I felt her mouth kiss my chin, the side of my neck, my chest and my belly as she crouched, pulling down my shorts and jeans.

  Then no part of Eileen seemed to be touching me.

  I stood there alone, shivering.

  What’s going on?

  I looked down, but couldn’t see her ... couldn’t see anything in the darkness, not even my own bare legs.

  ‘Eileen?’ I whispered.

  No answer came.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  A warm, wet something flicked against the front of my penis, then slid under it.

  Felt like a tongue.

  As it drew back, I was encircled by a moist, pliant ring. It slipped down me, taking me in.

  Lips ?

  ‘I sure hope that’s you,’ I whispered.

  In response, the mouth tightened its hold and sucked. Warm hands slid up the backs of my legs and cupped my buttocks. The mouth took me in deeper as the hands squeezed and pulled.

  Then the mouth slid off me.

  ‘It’s only me,’ Eileen whispered.

  She slowly stood up, keeping her body close to mine so that her breasts rubbed me and my penis rubbed her.

  When she was upright in front of me, I unfastened her jeans. I slipped a hand down inside the front of her panties. She was wet and slippery and hot. My fingers made her writhe and flinch. Whimpering, she took care of shoving down her jeans and panties. Her thighs parted.

  I took my hand away. She guided my penis between her legs.

  Between them, but barely into her.

  We tried for a while. Then I whispered, ‘This isn’t working too well.’

  ‘I should’ve worn a skirt. Damn. I’ve gotta get these jeans off. Hold onto me, okay?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘My shoulders, I guess. Just don’t let me fall. Gotta get my shoes off first.’

  While I held her shoulders, she bent down in front of me. I felt her hair against my belly and penis. She twisted and swayed, rocked from side to side, and gasped a couple of times when she lost her balance. I held her steady, though, and kept her from falling. Finally, she whispered, ‘There.’

  She stood up and eased in against me. She was bare and warm and smooth. She’d removed her jeans and panties. Even her purse and bra were gone, though I didn’t think she could’ve taken them off while I’d been holding her steady. All she still wore was her chamois shirt, which was wide open.

  I was stiff against her belly. As we kissed, she rubbed against me, her hands roaming over my back and rump.

  Then, almost as if we knew what we were doing, she parted her legs and I bent my knees. I felt the wet curls of her pubic hair along the underside of my penis, then only cool air when I was crouched enough to be under her.

  Her fingertips found me, guided me. She eased downward and I felt her slick flesh open around me. I straightened my knees.

  Eileen dug her fingers into my back and moaned as I slid up high and deep.

  She raised one of her legs and hooked it behind me and I went in deeper yet I wanted the feel of both her legs up around me so I pulled at the back of her other thigh. She brought it up and I was in all the way.

  Both feet off the ground, Eileen clung to me as if she were climbing a tree trunk while I clutched her buttocks. She grunted as I thrust. I could feel her breasts going up and down while I bounced her. They slapped the fronts of my shoulders. Whimpering, she clutched my head.

  And suddenly she was twitching and grunting. I’d been trying to keep control of myself, but her frenzy pushed me over the edge. I started to jerk and throb inside her. As my semen spurted, she squeezed my head between her breasts.

  And something went wrong.

  She let out a frightened squeal as her weight shifted backward.

  Gripping her buttocks, I pranced forward through the blackness in hopes of getting our balance back. But my feet tangled in something - her jeans? - and down I went, Eileen clinging to me, me clinging to her, me buried deep inside her.

  I thought we would probably fall into the stream.

  We didn’t, though.

  When her body struck the ground, she let out a hurt grunt Her arms fell away from around my head. Under my face, her chest was heaving, her heart thudding.

  As I started to push myself up, she clutched my shoulder. In a voice that was high and shaky and quiet, she said, ‘Someone else is here.’

  Chapter Twenty

  I didn’t want to believe her, but I did

  ‘Are you sure?’ I whispered.

  ‘Yessss. Oh, God.’

  ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘He pulled my hair ... made us fall.’

  Someone in the dark with us, standing so near to us that he could reach up and pull Eileen’s hair ... someone so stealthy, so silent, that we’d been utterly unaware of his presence.

  The fear made my skin crawl like last night when the old man on the porch struck his match. I wanted to leap up and run like hell.

  I couldn’t do it, though. My pants were down around my ankles. Eileen, under me, was naked.

  And hurt? She’d taken a hard fall, gotten herself pounded against the ground with all my weight on top of her and God-knew-what underneath her.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I whispered.

  ‘Not that bad.’

  ‘Bleeding?’

  ‘Yeah. A little, anyway.’

  ‘We’ve gotta get out of here.’

  From somewhere off to my left came sniffy sounds like someone laughing softly through his nostrils.

  Eileen’s arms clamped around me and her thighs squeezed against my hips. Her body was trembling under me.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ I whispered, my lips against the side of her neck.

  ‘I’m so scared.’ She started to cry. Small spasms shook her body. Her hitching sobs sounded awfully loud in the dark.

  I went, ‘Shhhh.’

  So did the person who had hissed his laughs.

  So did someone else, over to the right.

  Eileen gasped and went rigid.

  In a secret comer of my mind, I’d suspected that the stranger in the dark might be Randy, that he’d somehow followed us down here. It had been my fear but also, in some way, my hope. Randy was horrible, but at least he was known to me. He had a name, a face ... and I’d already hurt him once.

  When I heard the second ‘Shhhh,’ I decided Randy had nothing to do with this. Also, I suddenly remembered the Swiss Army knife in the pocket of my jeans.

  Jeans that were wrapped around my ankles.

  ‘Let go,’ I whispered against Eileen’s neck.

  She kept on holding me tight.

  ‘Let go of me,’ I whispered again.

  Though I spoke softly, the strangers in the dark could probably hear every word. I didn’t want to mention the knife.

  ‘Please.’ I said.

  ‘You’ll run away.’

  ‘No, I won’t. Just let go.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  She loosened her hold on me. With my hands on the ground on both sides of her, I pushed myself up. Then, holding onto my jeans and underwear, I rose to my feet.

  ‘Eddie?’ Eileen asked.

  ‘I’m right here.’ As I fastened my jeans, my belt buckle clinked.

&n
bsp; ‘Get my clothes for me,’ she whispered.

  ‘I will.’ But first I reached into the front pocket of my jeans and pulled out my knife. I shifted it to my left hand, felt the blunt edges of the closed blades and tools, and tried to catch the slotted side of a blade with my thumb nail.

  ‘Eddie?’ It was almost a squeal.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Right here.’

  ‘He’s touching me!’

  Somebody slammed into me from the right. The impact twisted me and sent me stumbling sideways through the dark. I tripped over my own feet, fell as if making a dive into shallow water, and slammed against the ground so hard that I skidded.

  In the distance past my feet, Eileen cried out, ‘Eddie! Get him off me!’

  I heard a smack like a fist striking bare skin.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ I yelled.

  As I struggled to get up, I realized that I’d lost my knife. I had to have it. Dropping to my knees, I swept my hands over the ground.

  Eileen whined ... part pain, part terror.

  The hell with the knife.

  I grabbed a heavy, jagged rock that was larger than my hand, scrambled to my feet and rushed toward the sounds from Eileen and what was happening to her.

  The sounds sickened me. Sobs and giggles, punches and slaps, yelps of pain, gasps for air, muttered curses, wet slurps, frenzied grunts.

  I expected to be taken down, myself, at any moment.

  But then I came to where the sounds were.

  I was glad I couldn’t see what was being done to Eileen or who was doing it.

  I piled on.

  It was a pile on: me on top, the attackers underneath me, Eileen almost certainly on the bottom.

  Heads, arms, asses everywhere.

  More than two attackers. Three? Four? I couldn’t tell.

  I laid into them with my rock.

  Their turn to cry out.

  I couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see me. I think they hurt each other as much as I hurt them. During the minute or two it lasted, I got elbowed, punched, scratched and bit.

  Then nobody was between Eileen and me. I lay gasping for breath on top of her sprawled, twitching body, the rock still clenched in my hand. Where my bare skin was against her, she felt wet and sticky.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I whispered.

  Crying, she shook her head. I felt it against my cheek.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said.

  ‘Where ... are they?’

  ‘Gone. I don’t know. I think they ran off.’

  ‘Let’s hurry,’ she said.

  I pushed myself up. When I was on my knees, I reached down and took hold of her wrists. ‘Can you sit up?’ I asked.

  She started to rise, so I pulled her arms. She winced and whimpered.

  Soon, we were both on our feet. She felt wobbly, though. I had to hold her up. ‘I’ll carry you,’ I said.

  ‘My clothes.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here before we get jumped again.’

  Before she could argue, I dropped the rock and swept her up in my arms. She was too exhausted or hurt to fight me. I carried her, cradled against my chest, toward the gray blur at the mouth of the underpass.

  With every step, I thought we might get attacked again.

  Finally, I carried her out of the darkness. We were in the open for a few seconds, in plain sight of anyone who might be looking down toward the stream. I didn’t look back, but nobody called out.

  I hurried with Eileen into the shadows of the trees along the shore. There, I lowered her gently onto the grass. Then I glanced around.

  ‘Looks like we’re safe,’ I whispered.

  She squeezed my hand.

  We were shrouded in darkness, but not total darkness. For the first time since venturing under the bridge, I could see Eileen. I thought she would at least still have her chamois shirt, but it was gone like the rest of her clothes. She seemed to be bloody in places.

  ‘Can you tell if you’re bleeding badly anywhere?’ I asked. ‘Like if an artery got hit, or something?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m just ... leaking a little here and there.’

  ‘Okay. Good. Now, I guess we’d better get you up top and somewhere safe, and I’ll go find a phone and ...’

  ‘We left my purse!’ she blurted as if suddenly remembering..

  ‘Oh shit,’ I said.

  ‘All my stuff’s in it.’

  Nodding, I took off my shirt. ‘Put this on.’ I gave it to her. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  ‘No. You’d better not.’

  ‘We can’t leave your purse.’

  ‘I can cancel the credit cards and—’

  ‘They’ll know who you are ... where you live.’

  In a very small voice, she said, ‘But I don’t want ’em to get you.’

  ‘I’ll be fast,’ I said. ‘If anyone comes after you, yell, okay? Yell or scream, and I’ll come running.’

  ‘Maybe we’d better get help.’

  All I did was shake my head. There was not a moment to lose - not even in explanations - if we hoped to get her purse back.

  I whirled around and raced toward the bridge.

  Nobody was up top.

  When the blackness swallowed me, I stopped running. I put myself backward in time and tried to retrace the route I’d taken with Eileen.

  I heard nobody.

  They probably ran off, I told myself. For all they know, the cops are on the way.

  Crouching, I reached down and patted the ground. I felt moist earth, rocks and twigs.

  Who says I’m even close?

  I got down on my hands and knees and crawled. I wished I had gloves on. Not because of the cold, but because of the things I found myself touching in the darkness. Some were sharp, some mushy, some hard, some slimy.

  At last, I found a shoe. It felt and smelled like a fairly new athletic shoe.

  After wiping my hands on my jeans, I continued searching in the same area and found the rest: Eileen’s other shoe, her jeans, her bra and her purse. Her panties and chamois shirt didn’t seem to be there.

  Better get out of here while I still can.

  But I liked Eileen’s chamois shirt. I didn’t want her to lose it and I sure didn’t want someone else ending up with her panties.

  On the chance that Eileen might have a flashlight, I put a hand into her purse and felt around. I touched her billfold, various cylinders and small cases, a hair brush, a pocket-sized spiral notebook, and several unidentified items wrapped in plastic and paper. No flashlight, though.

  Digging deeper, I found a treasure trove of loose objects near the bottom of her purse: sticks of gum, coins, half-used rolls of something shaped like Lifesavers, a couple of condoms in plastic wrappers, an array of pens and pencils and markers, a couple of cigarettes and a book of matches.

  Yes!

  I pulled out the matchbook, flipped open the cardboard cover, tore out a match and struck it. The head flared, hurting my eyes. I was blinded for a second or two.

  When I could see again, I yelped.

  In the murky glow of the matchlight, I saw a bare foot on the ground just out of my reach.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  No one was standing on the foot.

  It was toes up. The ankle and shin looked hairy. Just above the knee, the leg vanished into darkness.

  Looking around quickly, I saw nobody else within the aura of light cast by my match.

  The match was starting to bum me. I shook it out, struck another, then hurried over to the man. He was naked. He lay motionless on his back. He had long, wild, filthy hair. His eyebrows, mustache and beard were so thick that he hardly seemed to have any face at all. After a moment, however, I located his small, sooty nose. Then I found his deep-set eyes with their closed lids.

  The hair on the right side of his head was matted flat, shiny red with blood.

  Had I done t
hat to him with my rock?

  It seemed likely, but not certain. The melee had been chaos. No telling who had done what to anyone.

  The man looked dead.

  Serves him right, I thought. He attacked us. Probably tried to rape Eileen.

  With that.

  It was upright, big and glistening.

  Did he rape her?

  The match started to burn me, so I shook it out. I struck another.

  The guy was still motionless on his back.

  I went looking for my Swiss Army knife. It almost certainly carried my fingerprints, so I couldn’t leave it down here with a dead man.

  Finding it wasn’t easy.

  Two matches later, however, I spotted its bright red handle on the ground near a smashed Budweiser can. I hurried over to it and picked it up.

  I shook out my match. Standing in total darkness, I pried open one of the blades. Then I held knife in my left hand with the matchbook. With my right hand, I struck a fresh match.

  I was too far away to see the body.

  What if he’s gone?

  What if he’s coming at me?

  I walked in his direction. A few seconds later, the murky light from my match found him. He was still sprawled on his back.

  I stepped up to him. His eyes were still shut. I stared at his filthy, hairy chest. It didn’t seem to be moving.

  He’s probably dead, I thought.

  But he’s got a hard-on. Can a dead guy have a hard-on?

  I had no idea. Seemed possible, but not likely.

  It suddenly occurred to me that it looked bigger than before.

  It’s growing?

  I muttered, ‘Oh shit.’

  What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil ...

  Don’t freak out, I told myself. He’s probably not dead.

  If he isn’t, I’d better help him. Check his wounds. Call an ambulance.

  Then I thought about what he’d done to us.

  ‘Fuck it,’ I muttered.

  I lit a new match, then did a quick search for Eileen’s chamois shirt and panties. Other clothes were scattered around: coats, shirts, trousers, shoes. Even a couple of hats. All of them looked filthy. Eileen’s shirt and panties, however, didn’t seem to be among them.

  Fast as I could, I gathered up her purse, shoes, jeans and bra and hurried out from under the bridge.