by Ed Kurtz
With that consideration lingering in his brain, he looked up at the dreary, dozing faces in front of him. Only about half of them paid any attention to the film. Others napped, fiddled with handheld electronics or passed notes between them. One of them, Rob Scaife, gazed at the ceiling with glassy eyes while he mindlessly scratched the omnipresent red spots on his forearm. Track marks. Walt had successfully ignored the issue thus far—it was much more than his paltry salary was worth to intercede on some loser junkie’s behalf—but he studied the prematurely balding boy more carefully now than ever.
After all, who would miss a junkie?
***
Floating through the rest of her day in a haze, Alice was more than a little relieved when the last bell finally jangled at three o’clock. It was the weekend’s herald, and although she had no particular plans she was glad to be getting away from the school grounds for a couple of days. Maybe pop by In the Reads for another Brite novel, since she enjoyed the one Nora recommended so much. Packing her books up into her black denim book bag, she slung it over her broad shoulder and commenced the labyrinthine journey through the dim and dusty hallways that eventually led its captives to the brightly lit outside world. She crossed the front quad, rounded the rusty flagpole and walked through the teacher’s parking lot on her way to her third-hand Subaru hatchback in the student lot.
Along the way, she caught a glimpse of Mr. Blackmore unlocking his car. He stopped and began to stare at her. She only looked back at him for a fraction of a second before quickly whipping her head back to the sea of shitty used cars in front of her. But she knew he was still looking at her, following her with his gaze. It was all at once embarrassing and exhilarating; troubling and flattering.
When she finally reached her own car, she unlocked it and squeezed inside and brought her eyes back up to the teacher’s lot at the top of the slight hill. Mr. Blackmore’s car was gone. Alice turned the key in the ignition.
She wondered about that look, its subtext, if there was one. The hair on the back of her neck seemed to flutter, as if in a breeze.
***
Frustrated that Red’s couldn’t manage a same-day delivery but relieved to have taken care of the freezer’s purchase, Walt skipped up the porch steps to the front door. He hadn’t forgotten the sheer magnitude of cleanup required inside, but even that didn’t piss on his parade. A little bleach, perhaps a little wax and some good old fashioned elbow grease, and he reckoned there would still be a few hours left in the evening for just him and Gwyn. It was only blood. They would dine together—he on braised pork chops and she on the usual, raw human meat. Then, after Walt washed the dishes and poured himself a nice glass of merlot, he’d let her guide him into the bedroom where they’d fuck for hours.
Their often wild lovemaking sessions were at first decidedly awkward; she dealt with the pain of her exposed nerve endings while he had a hard time getting accustomed to all the sticky fluids that seeped out of her from crown to toe. Later, when the scabs began to form, it was as if Walt was screwing an entirely different person. Sticky became bone dry, slippery turned scratchy and coarse. But none of it quelled their heat. Not one night had passed since Gwyn first emerged from her prison in the ceiling that they hadn’t fucked like teenagers. Even last night, after she was sated on the raw steaks he sawed from Jarod’s thighs, she threw herself at him; right there on the floor between steaming mounds of freshly butchered teenage boys.
Walt set his briefcase down on the floor, shut the door and slipped out of his shoes. He smiled at the déjà vu.
“Honey, I’m hooooome!” he called out goofily.
There was no reply. The house was dead silent.
He tiptoed around the yellowing swaths of blood that coated the foyer floor, leaped over the sticky mass that completely blocked ingress to the living room. The couch, he discovered, was unoccupied.
“Gwyn?”
Rounding the couch, he spotted several large sections of brown, flaky scabs littering the living and dining room floors. From the look of them, he decided they must have been ripped off rather than having fallen off naturally. He scowled and followed the scabby trail with his eyes. They cut a path through the various stacks of books and boxes that filled the dining room and vanished around the dark corner.
The hallway.
Walt narrowed his eyes to slits and cautiously proceeded through the maze of cardboard and paper, emerging in the dark hall on the other end. Just as he anticipated, the attic stairs were down. From above, he heard the faint sound of wet, anguished sobbing.
Sarah!
His puzzlement rapidly metamorphosing into anger, Walt grit his teeth and raced up the attic steps.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
He hated himself for having to keep his sister up there; it was no way to live, and certainly no way to treat one’s own flesh and blood. But Walt and Gwyn had an arrangement, a clear-cut understanding that Sarah was off limits. Under no circumstances whatsoever was Gwyn to even go near the woman, much less feast on her. Occasionally he took it upon himself to bleed her a little bit, but it was nothing serious and definitely nothing that threatened her overall health.
But there could be no doubt that Gwyn was in the attic now—with Sarah. And not yet twenty-four hours after the frenzied killings of Jarod and Clem.
There is still meat from those two little shits, goddamn you! his mind screamed.
He burst upward into a dusty shaft of orange afternoon sun. Beyond the perimeter of the light he could see nothing, but his sister’s desperate sobs were loud and clear.
“Sarah?”
The good news was that she was obviously still alive. For how long, he didn’t know. He pushed out of the light and into the gray shadows. Getting accustomed to the dimness he found his sister, sitting with her legs crossed on the mattress he’d given her, hunched over and shaking with each heaving sob. Walt quickly looked her over, checking her body and the bed for signs of violence, evidence that Gwyn had finally given in to her bloodlust and attacked the one person she was not allowed to touch.
He saw nothing of the kind.
“Sarah, are you hurt?”
The paper plate beside her had nothing but a bit of bread crust on it; the cup was only half emptied of water. He reckoned she must be starving, and worried that she wasn’t drinking anything.
“Fuck off,” she mumbled.
“Are you hurt? Did she cut you? Bite you?”
Her head jerked up. Her face was a shiny wet mound of swollen red skin. Her mouth was twisted down into a fierce sneer, her eyes squinty and leaking tears.
“I said FUCK OFF!” she roared. “FUCK OFF AND DIE!”
Walt’s breath got caught in his chest. He was startled by her outburst and hurt by her bald-faced hatred for him. Didn’t she understand he only did this to protect the women he loved, her and Gwyn both?
Clearly not.
“I hardly think…” he began, trailing off at the realization that he and his sister were not alone.
Across the attic, well out of the available light in the farthest corner away from them, something squished.
And slurped.
And groaned with pleasure.
“Gwyn,” he whispered.
“Go to it,” Sarah hissed. “Go fuck your monster some more, you demented son of a bitch.”
He ignored his sister and started to make his way over the crossbeams and past the insulated portion of the paneled flooring. Halfway across, he saw that Gwyn sat with her back to him, her shoulders jerking and her head slung low. Her back was a marbled pink, like a newborn rat. There were no scabs on it at all.
“What did you do?” Walt asked warily as he slowly drew near. “You’ve torn them all off…”
“Come here and I will show you.”
Walt stepped over onto another beam. He looked up from it and saw Gwyn jerk her arm quickly past her torso. She emitted a high-pitched cry and held up the five-inch scab she’d just peeled away.
“Nearly done n
ow,” she purred.
Dancing over the last remaining beams that separated him from Gwyn, he closed in on the bent figure as she spun around to display an awful, ragged visage of torn and bloodied skin. Walt shouted out in fear, stumbling backward while she jutted her tongue through Jarod’s mouth and made low groaning sounds that reverberated throughout the attic.
She had separated the dead boy’s face from his skull, and she’d done it roughly. The outer edges were tattered, as were the notched holes where Jarod once kept his eyes and lips. Now she pinched the loose pale skin between forefingers and thumbs and held it over her own face, like a Halloween mask. She was cackling hysterically.
Walt’s heart jackhammered in his chest.
“Jesus Christ!” he screeched. He was in no way amused by the stunt.
Gwyn wiggled the skin mask over her face. The white, leathery flesh rippled. Red strings dangled from beneath it, dripping tiny droplets of crimson gore. She tittered.
Tee hee.
The horrific tableau did not much improve when at last she took the grisly face away to reveal her own. The skin on her face looked just like the skin on her back—irritated, pink and mottled, like scar tissue. All around her on the bare, broken paneling where once her veiny pod grew there were piles of crusty scabs. Walt made a face. She must have been up there for a while, peeling and tearing all those crusty pieces from her entire body.
“Why?” he asked.
She let Jarod’s face drop to the ground with a muted slap and ran one palm over the smooth crown of her tender, scraped head.
“It will be so much nicer this way, don’t you think?” A sweet smile spread across her face, pushing her round cheeks back. For the first time since the scabbing began, nothing chipped away and sprinkled down with the simple muscle movement.
“I am becoming whole. I am becoming beautiful.”
“You are beautiful,” he shakily argued. “To me.”
Behind him, Sarah blubbered.
Scooting a foot or so to one side, Gwyn revealed the faceless skull her body had been obscuring. Viscous globs of muscle and tendons and gristle clung tenaciously to the bone. The rest of the head retained its skin, and Jarod’s distinctive shock of white-blonde hair still spiked out on top. The eyes were missing, but Walt didn’t want to inquire after them. He shuddered at his own imagination as it was; Gwyn digging them out of the sockets with her fingernails, popping them between her teeth and sucking out the juices as though they were grapes…
He gagged and slapped a hand over his mouth. With an admonishing look and a motherly laugh, Gwyn dropped down to her hands and knees and crawled over to him. She thrust her face close to his and licked his trembling lips. Almost instinctively, they parted, allowing her tongue into the warm interior of his mouth. Walt’s hands drifted up to her heavy breasts, smooth and dry for the first time. He groaned as his fingertips found the turgid nipples. She moaned girlishly and fingered the buttons on his shirt, popping them open one by one.
Walt did nothing to resist her. He never did.
Across the attic, in the diminishing afternoon light, Sarah moaned.
***
The mechanism inside the portable CD player whined and ground the new Jesus and Mary Chain album to a halt. Alice snapped out of her reverie, startled by the abrupt silence. She glanced at the drawing on her bed beside her. She hadn’t done anything new since she opened the composition book back up. All she’d done since getting home and barricading herself in her room was listen to albums and let her mind free-float.
For the most part, it floated toward Mr. Blackmore.
The way he’d stared at her in the parking lot after school confused and unnerved her. On the one hand, it was creepy as hell. Teachers were not supposed to behave like that, especially male teachers toward female students. He hadn’t actually done anything, not really, but the look in his eyes told a story only the most gullible naïf would fail to recognize. There was wanting in those leering eyes. Lust, although not necessarily the sexual variety.
But probably.
Alice pulled the Jesus and Mary Chain CD out of the player, put it back in its proper case, and replaced it with her favorite Fugazi album. As the curt punk sounds punched the air from the speakers, she shut the comp book and fell back against the mountain of pillows at the head of her bed. Any minute now her stepdad was due to start banging on the walls, bellowing at her to turn that goddamn noise off. She wanted to enjoy it as much as possible until then.
Fucking Harold.
She pushed him out of her mind. That allowed Mr. Blackmore to creep back in.
He wasn’t so bad, not even for a teacher. To most of the kids, he was just one step shy of freakishly weird, but that only served to endear him all the more to Alice. What made him weird to her peers—his passion for old books, the casual way he dressed and the sleepy, almost hypnotized look he usually wore on his bedraggled face—painted the picture of an interesting, even attractive person to her. Still, his role in her life acted as a barrier between them, something not even a perfectly normal friendship could pass through. He was the superior, she the inferior. He taught, she learned, and then they went in their wholly separate directions when that was done for the day.
Anything else, anything more, was strictly forbidden.
Maybe that look indicated a disagreement with the rules. Maybe Mr. Blackmore saw something in Alice that no one else did, not even Harold. Maybe he could see the nascent spark of her burgeoning brilliance, hidden deep in her breast from anyone who couldn’t be bothered to give her a more detailed analysis. Or even a second look.
Alice made up her mind. She was going to pay more attention to Mr. Blackmore paying more attention to her. See what comes of it. In all likelihood, it would be nothing at all. But maybe…
She closed her eyes, laced her fingers over her stomach and smiled with satisfaction.
Her sweet, comfortable mind trip was cut short by the rapid pounding on the wall just behind her. Startled, she bounced up to a sitting position.
“Turn that shit OFF!” Harold yelled from the dingy bedroom next door.
Alice reached over and switched the portable CD player off. Silence once again flooded her head. The inundation of quiet drowned out all thoughts of Mr. Blackmore, leaving only emptiness and loneliness and a queer, unfathomable fear.
What do I have to be afraid of? she wondered.
The answer was there before she finished asking herself.
Everything.
46
It was Thursday when the freezer arrived in an unmarked white delivery van. The driver and his assistant hauled into the house, set it up in the kitchen, and gave its new owner a very brief tutorial on its most basic functions. Walt signed for it and tipped the driver an extra twenty for the long drive. It was only the work of a moment to get the freezer a third filled up with what was left of the two rowdy boys who had come to the house earlier in the week. To any uninformed observer who might take a peek, it would appear to be nothing more than a ridiculous quantity of frozen meat.
Which, essentially, it was.
47
The knock at the door came late Thursday evening. Walt’s breath hitched in his throat when he peered out through the window and almost screamed. Two uniformed police officers stood on his porch, shifting their weight from foot to foot, each of their faces bored and impassive.
Walt’s sphincter clenched and his chest felt tight. He froze up and his eyes felt wet. The policemen knocked again.
“God,” he whispered. “Oh God, oh God.”
“Mr. Blackmore? Walter Blackmore—Police Department.
Open up.”
They know, his mind screeched at him. They know they know they know they know…
“Mr. Blackmore?”
He was opening the door before he knew what he was doing. It swung in and away, leaving nothing but open air between him and imminent arrest…trial…conviction…surely death. How did they even execute people in this state nowadays? He had
no idea, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt it could not be long before he’d find out.
“Hello…Mr. Blackmore?”
This from the shorter cop, his head shiny and bald. Both men wore neatly trimmed moustaches.
“Yes, I’m Walt Blackmore.”
“Officer Forsyth,” the short cop said. Then, gesturing to his partner, “Officer Klein. We don’t want to take up too much of your time, sir, but it seems that a couple of boys have gone missing…”
“Oh?”
“Yes, and these boys were students at your school. In fact, students in your class, I believe.”
“Yes, yes of course. Jarod and Clem.”
“Well, you would know all about that, then.”
“Know?” Walt said, his voice a forced calm. “Know what, exactly?”
“That your students are missing, Mr. Blackmore.”
“Well, they haven’t been in class in several days, if that’s what you mean. But I’m only really responsible for reporting their absences.”
The taller cop, Officer Klein, stepped forward and sucked a deep breath into his lungs.
He said, “What we’d like to know, Mr. Blackmore, is whether or not you might have any information that could help us find these kids.”
“Information? What sort of information? Truth is, I don’t know those boys very well, officers. I hate to speak ill…”
“It’s all right,” Forsyth said. “Go ahead.”
“It’s just that neither of them are what you might call star students. They skip class quite a lot. Not much drive. I don’t know anything about their lives at home, or what sort of trouble they may or may not have gotten into. Heck, I don’t even have any of their assignments to show you on account of they almost never did any of them.”
“I see,” Klein said.
“I’d like nothing more than to be of help to you gentlemen, but like I said…”
“You don’t really know the boys.”
“That’s right. It is my first year at the school and all.”
