After Midnight

by Richard Laymon

  “I did a pretty good job on him,” I said.

  “But just think what a couple of punks like that might do.”

  “You shock me, Judy. I am truly shocked.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “Now, give me a clue. Why exactly are we driving out here to rescue him?”

  “Good question.”

  “Maybe we should turn back.”

  “Nah,” she said. “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s my fault he’s out here tonight. I’m the one who made him nuts. He wasn’t a bad guy before I made him crazy. It’s my fault he beat me up, and it’s my fault he attacked you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s true. I got him into this mess, so I’ve now gotta help him get out.”

  “Whether you want to or not.”

  “Yeah, sort of. No, I want to. I mean, we had a lot of great times together. Before he went off the deep end.”

  “You just feel sorry for him.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I was in love with him. That sort of thing…I can’t just pretend it never happened. He was the most important thing in my life for a while. The things we did…they’re all part of me, and always will be…in spite of everything else.”

  “You’re nuts,” I said.

  She laughed softly. “Think so?”

  “Yeah. You sound like you’re still in love with him.”

  “Maybe with the way he used to be.”

  “Well, that guy’s gone forever.”

  “I know. It can never be the same. But still, I owe him. For the good times, and because this crazy stuff happened because of me.”

  “You gonna kiss and make up with him?”

  She let out a sharp laugh. “No way!”

  “Yep. And you’ll take him back to your place…supposedly so he can pick up his car. But before you know it, you’ll be asking him in for a beer. Maybe a coffee. Then wham! You’re all over each other.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Next thing you know, it’s Humpty Dumpty time.”

  “No!” she blurted, laughing, and slapped my leg. “That’s not going to happen. No way! Not in a zillion years.”

  I happened to know she was right.

  “It’s what he’d like to have happen,” I said. “He wants you back.”

  “Well, I don’t want him back.”

  “He kept pretending I was you.”

  “He what?”

  “Yeah. He’d shut his eyes whenever we were making love, and call me Judy.”

  “Oh, my God.” She sounded appalled. “Really?”

  “Yeah. He even did it tonight when he had me on the picnic table.”

  “While he was raping you?”

  “Yeah. He kept saying stuff like, ‘How do you like it, Judy? Huh? Big enough for you, Judy? Oh, Judy, you’re so tight and wet. I love your tight, wet pussy.’”

  “Tony said that?”

  “Not exactly. I cleaned it up a little. He didn’t say pussy.”

  “Oh.” She stared straight out the windshield. Her face looked gray in the moonlight, but I bet its true color was bright red.

  “That’s when I hit him with the bottle,” I explained.

  “Good going.”

  “Like I told you, guys are pigs.”

  “I’m willing to concede that he is.”

  “Trust me, they all are.”

  “I wouldn’t go along with that,” she said. “Not a hundred percent.”

  “Ninety percent?” I asked.

  She said, “Ninety-nine.”

  So then I had to laugh.

  “I tell you what,” she said. “When we do find Tony, I’ll run him over.”

  “All right!”

  15

  INTO THE WOODS

  But she was joking, of course. About running him over. She wanted to rescue Tony, not kill him.

  More’s the pity.

  If she’d been sincere in her desire to murder the guy, I might’ve changed my mind about killing her.

  No, not really.

  Here’s the deal. No matter how much I might like Judy (and I liked her plenty), no matter how much she might despise Tony (though I frankly believe she still loved him in spite of everything), no matter ANYTHING—she had to die.

  Didn’t she?

  Because if she lived, she could tell on me. I’m not saying she would. But she might. And then where would I be?

  Up the infamous Creek of Shit without a paddle, that’s where.

  Kill her, and I’m home free.

  Well, not completely. There was still the little problem of the redial button on Tony’s phone. If he even had a redial button. Wherever his phone might be. In his mystery apartment, wherever that might be.

  I wished I could get to it, but I didn’t know how.

  What could it show the cops, anyway? Only that Tony’s last call had been to Serena and Charlie’s phone.

  It didn’t prove that anyone had answered it.

  Serena and Charlie were away on a trip. I, of course, never heard the phone ring because I never left my room over the garage.

  There was only one problem with that.

  Phone records would show that the call had lasted a while. Four or five minutes? Which would lead the cops to figure he either talked to someone, or left a message on the answering machine.

  My insides shriveled.

  They’ll want to hear Tony’s message.

  But I couldn’t let them hear it.

  One little button on a telephone was going to destroy me if I couldn’t come up with a way to find Tony’s new apartment.

  “We’re almost there, aren’t we?” Judy asked.

  For a second or two, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then I saw the woods on both sides of the road. “It’ll be pretty soon,” I said. “The turnoff. It’ll be on the right. Shady Creek Picnic Area.”

  “I hope he’s okay.”

  “But not too okay?”

  “Medium okay, medium hurt. Maybe in great pain, but with no permanent damage.”

  “You’re so caring, Judy.”

  “I just hope he’s there. I thought we’d find him before now. You know, on his way home.”

  “Don’t forget, he’s naked. He probably hides when a car comes along.”

  “Yeah. We might’ve gone right by him.”

  “Or he could’ve taken a different route.”

  “What other route? There’s only one way to get back to town from out here.”

  “If you stick to the roads,” I said. “But maybe he took a shortcut through the woods.” I spotted the sign up ahead and said, “Here it comes.”

  Judy slowed down.

  “I bet we’ll find him here,” I said as she made the turn.

  “You hit him that hard?” she asked.

  “No. He’s probably conscious by now. But if I were in his shoes…or shoeless and bare-ass naked, as the case may be…”

  Judy laughed softly.

  “I might just decide to stay put. At least I’d be in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by trees, so I wouldn’t need to worry about everyone seeing me.”

  “You’d have to go home eventually.”

  When she said that, I immediately thought of my prowler. Maybe he was a guy who hadn’t gone home eventually.

  “I might just decide to stay in the woods,” I said, “and live like Tarzan.”

  “Yeah. I can just see Tony swinging through the trees.”

  “I said grab the VINE!”

  Judy laughed, shaking her head. Then she said, “Ouch.”

  “How would you know?” I asked.

  “It’s gotta hurt.”

  “I guess so.”

  I knew so. I bit one, once. Chomped it right off, in fact. You should’ve seen the guy! It hurt, all right.

  Don’t go feeling sorry for him, though. And don’t think I’m some kind of evil person or nut. He shouldn’t have gone and stuck it someplace where it didn’t bel
ong. Especially not after I’d begged him not to.

  He got no worse than he deserved.

  But you should’ve heard him scream! It hurt, all right! And then he went crazy trying to get it out of my mouth. He yelled, “Give it back! Give it back, you fucking bitch!” I guess he figured they could sew it back on for him at a hospital. But I wouldn’t let him have it. He kept yelling and hitting me, but I went ahead and chewed it up. After I swallowed it, he really went berserk and almost killed me.

  Anyway, enough about that. Like I said near the front, this book isn’t an autobiography. I just had to tell you about that incident because of how it fit in with what Judy and I were saying on the road to the Shady Creek Picnic Area.

  I didn’t tell Judy about it, though.

  I never told anyone about it, until now. Not even my mom or the people in the hospital where they took care of me afterwards. I made up a story about getting beaten up by a mugger, and the guy never told.

  I don’t know what ever happened to him.

  Well, I can vouch for two or three inches. Not the rest, though. When I got better and went back to school, we had a new principal. He got hired because the one before him had suddenly and mysteriously left town.

  Anyway, that’s really more than I intended to tell. I guess I’ll leave it in, though. Why not? It’s the truth. And it also goes to show you what pigs men are—even school principals.

  I only have one regret about what I did to him.

  No mustard!

  That’s a little joke.

  Anyway, I’ve strayed away from the real story.

  When I left off, I’d just told Judy the old Tarzan joke about grabbing the vine, and we were having some laughs about that. She was driving us along the road to the picnic area. She thought we might find Tony there. I was sitting in the passenger seat, and had Tony’s pistol in the front pocket of my cut-offs. I’d be using it on her pretty soon.

  The next thing you know, we came to the end of the road. The pavement spread out into a clearing with logs laid out to show you where to park. There were places for six or eight cars, but no other cars were there. Judy drove up to one of the logs and stopped.

  The beams of our headlights reached out into the picnic area, lighting a couple of the green wooden tables.

  “I don’t see him,” Judy said. “Do you?”

  “No. But we weren’t up here. We were down by the creek. If you want, I’ll run down and see if he’s there.”

  “No, don’t do that. We’d better stay in the car.”

  “What if he’s still unconscious?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll just run down and take a quick look.”

  “No, don’t.”

  “It’ll only take a minute.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Judy said, and shut off the headlights.

  The night dropped down on us.

  “My God,” she said. “It’s dark out here.”

  “Do you have a flashlight?”

  “Sure. Back in my bedroom. Maybe I should go get it.” But she was kidding. Instead of turning the car around, she shut off its engine and unfastened her seatbelt.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Not hardly. I don’t want to go out there.”

  “Then stay here. That’s fine. I’ll just go…”

  “No way. If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”

  “Then we might as well get it over with,” I said, and opened the passenger door. The car’s overhead light came on.

  “Much better,” Judy said.

  I climbed out. My legs were trembling. I was shaking all over, and sweating. My heart was pounding like mad. I was a genuine wreck.

  For one thing, the place gave me the creeps. As a general rule, I don’t like to be in forests at night. Plus, a lot of bad stuff had gone on in Miller’s Woods, and I was a little nervous about the prowler. He might be nearby. After his visit to Serena and Charlie’s house, he’d gone back into the woods only about a mile from here.

  My other reason for being a wreck is that I had to kill Judy. It stank, but there was no way out of it. And this was the perfect place for it.

  Dark as death, secluded, and within reasonable walking distance of home if I took the shortcut through the woods.

  When we shut our doors, the light in the car went out. We met in front, but didn’t say anything. As if we were afraid to speak. Afraid of who might hear us.

  Side by side, we walked up the gentle slope toward the place where we’d seen the picnic tables. We could still see them, but now they looked so dark and vague that they hardly seemed real.

  Here and there, tiny dabs of moonlight made it down through the trees. A soft, warm breeze was blowing. It might’ve felt good, if things had been different. Just then, there was no such thing as good. Good, for a while, seemed to be gone from the face of the earth.

  We walked past the picnic tables, and went on to the crest of the hill. There, we stopped and gazed down toward the creek. I saw a few places that looked like moonlight glinting off water. And I saw a flat shape that might’ve been a picnic table. But nothing looked very clear or very real. Mostly, there was only darkness.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Judy whispered.

  What are you, psychic?

  “What kind of bad feeling?” I asked. I didn’t really want to know, but I had to ask.

  “Like we’re really going to regret going down there.”

  “You don’t have to go down.”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  Brave, innocent, stupid Judy.

  16

  KILLING JUDY

  As we made our way down the slope, I reached into the front pocket of my cut-offs and took hold of the pistol. With my thumb, I flicked its safety off.

  “Tony?” Judy called softly. “Are you there?”

  I slipped the .22 out of my pocket, but kept it by my side, out of sight.

  “Tony?” she called again. “It’s Judy. Are you down there?”

  I didn’t want her to know what was coming, so I slowed down a little. She was about one stride downhill from me and two feet to my left when I brought the pistol up and fired point blank at the side of her head.

  That should’ve done it.

  But on the way up, the muzzle of the pistol snagged her ear.

  I must’ve been standing too close. Probably because of the darkness.

  She yelped, “Ow!”

  The pistol spat out a bright, quick flash. In that instant, I saw the tilt of Judy’s head and the angle of my pistol.

  And I couldn’t tell if I’d gotten her.

  But she cried out, grabbed her head above the ear and fell, tumbling crookedly.

  On her way down, I took aim but decided not to fire again.

  For one thing, I didn’t want the noise. If you haven’t been around a .22, you might think it just makes a tiny bang like a cap gun, or something. But it’s more like a strong firecracker.

  BAM! My ears were ringing from the shot, and the sound of the blast must’ve carried for a mile.

  I probably could’ve heard it from my room above the garage, if I’d been there.

  My prowler must’ve heard it, unless he’d left the woods entirely.

  He’s the other reason I didn’t put a few more rounds into Judy. The fewer I used on her, the more I’d still have in the pistol in case I met him on my way back home through the woods.

  Him, or some other creep.

  (What about the guys in the Cadillac? Were they gone for good?)

  So instead of using Judy for target practice as she tumbled down the slope, I thumbed the safety on and hurried after her. She rolled all the way to the bottom, her arms and legs flopping around. When the ground leveled out, she rolled over a couple more times and stopped.

  She came to rest in a patch of moonlight.

  Her white blouse had come unbuttoned. It was wide open, leaving her bare to the waistband of her skirt. The skirt had gotten pushed up around her
hips.

  Except for the patch of white fabric between her legs, she looked like somebody who’d just gotten herself raped and murdered.

  Raped and murdered.

  An idea suddenly leaped into my head.

  A brilliant idea.

  I slipped the pistol into my pocket, then picked Judy up by the ankles and dragged her toward the picnic table. Along the way, she groaned a couple of times.

  Still alive.

  But she didn’t struggle at all, just remained limp.

  I stopped dragging her when the backs of my knees met the edge of the picnic table’s wooden bench. I lowered her feet to the grass.

  With such deep darkness, I couldn’t see any blood on her. But her head had to be bloody. So I took off my shirt—Tony’s shirt—and put it near the end of the bench, out of harm’s way.

  After that, I straddled Judy, squatted down, grabbed her sides just below her armpits, and pulled her up to a sitting position. Then I hugged her against me and stood up.

  A good thing I’d taken off the shirt. Her face was so slippery against my shoulder and breast, it must’ve been covered with blood.

  Though Judy felt awfully heavy, she didn’t weigh nearly as much as Tony. I managed to seat her on the bench and lean her backward against the edge of the table. Then, keeping a hand on her shoulder so she wouldn’t tip over, I climbed on top of the table. I crouched down, grabbed her, and hauled her up.

  Then I stretched her out so she was lying lengthwise on her back.

  By that time, I was sweating like a hog. I wanted to get it done, though, so I didn’t waste any time resting.

  First, I pulled the blouse off her shoulders and about halfway down her arms. Which made her bare all the way down to the top of her skirt. It also pinned her arms against her sides, in case she might wake up and try to struggle.

  Second, I rucked her skirt up around her waist. I was tempted to take it off her entirely. Some guys do that, preferring their victim naked. But most of them, when it gets to a certain stage, are in an awfully big hurry to get in. They’ll just shove the skirt up and go for it. Some guys even like you to be wearing clothes when they screw you. It turns them on.