The boys high-fived.
“Wish we could have gotten that on video,” Zane said.
“Yeah man, sucks that he destroyed our camera.” Seth kicked the corpse. “Jackass.”
Tara remembered the snuff film they had made of the married couple last time. They had pleaded for mercy, saying they had kids back home. Tara had felt nothing as she dismembered the husband and watched Zane carve up the wife, just as she felt nothing now, except disappointed that she didn’t get to finish her poetic movie.
They returned to the campsite and took off their masks. Seth used a stick to pull the video camera out of the fire. The dark gray plastic had fused around the metal. “It’s toast. Shit, the footage from that couple was in there too.”
Tara glared at her cameraman. “Tell me you backed up the card.”
“I-I was going to but my laptop battery is dead.”
“You lost two of our movies!” Tara walked over and slapped Seth.
He crouched by her leg and whimpered like a beaten dog. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“Razor is going to have our heads. I promised him some new movies tomorrow.” Tara let out a long, enraged scream at the lake. Her voice echoed across the valley.
Zane said, “Baby, we’ll fix this. Seth and I’ll go into town and find another gimp.”
“We don’t have a camera, you idiot.”
“We’ll steal one. Or swing by Walmart.”
She shook her head. “Just forget it. I’ll deal with Razor. All I care about now is getting high. Zaney, give me some blow.”
Her boyfriend spread a line of white powder along a tattooed dragon on his arm. Tara snorted, feeling an instant rush to her head. Then came the fireworks. “Oh, shit yeah, that’s the bomb.” The blow was a potent mix of coke and LSD.
She felt alive again. The night itself came to life as her ears tuned in to the crickets chirping in the grass, frogs croaking in the reeds. Her anger quickly turned to bliss. She pulled her man against her and kissed him. “You take such good care of me, Zaney.”
He smiled. “Whatever baby wants, baby gets.”
“Well, baby wants to go to Razor’s bar and get shitfaced.”
“You got it,” Zane said. “We’ll toss the body into the pit and then hit the road.” He snapped his fingers at Seth, who was skipping rocks across the lake. “Give me a hand.”
Deep in the woods, they had a mass grave where they had buried countless others. So far, no one had discovered the burial ground. And as long as the pit remained a secret, they would keep adding more bodies.
The guys were leaning over about to pick up Marty’s corpse, when Tara said, “Just a minute. I think this one deserves a more poetic farewell.” She knelt beside the bloody body, admiring all the stab wounds. She had really liked some of his poems and would have loved to carve her own into his flesh. She considered doing it now, but without the camera rolling it just wasn’t the same. Instead, she carved the name JENNIFER across his chest.
“What the fuck is that?” Zane asked.
“I don’t know,” Tara said. “Something about this one bothers me.”
“You didn’t start to like the guy, did you?”
“Fuck off,” she said, pushing him.
“Mind if I take a keepsake?” Zane asked. At home, he had a collection of skinned faces that he kept as trophies.
Tara shrugged. “Do whatever.”
Zane knelt and started to cut the skin along the dead man’s forehead.
A loud splash from the lake startled Tara.
Seth jumped back. “Holy shit, did you guys see that?”
Tara looked at the lake. A large ring of water was spreading, sending waves to the shore. “You threw a rock in there, didn’t you?”
Seth shook his head. “I didn’t. I swear. Some big-ass fish must have jumped. All I saw was the splash.”
Tara, Zane and Seth watched the water. Thirty yards out, it began to swirl like a funnel. All the floating pages that she had tossed into the lake were sucked down into the whirlpool. Then the hole in the lake closed and the surface started bubbling violently and moving towards the shore.
“What the hell is that?” Tara asked.
The three stood side by side, watching in awe as a pale head began to emerge from the bubbling lake, followed by a set of shoulders.
Tara shook her head, disbelieving. The drugs were screwing with her brain.
The thing rising from the lake was shaped like a man, but the moon cast light on a ghoulish face with hollow eye pits. Its head and body appeared wrapped in wet paper, like a figure made from papier-mâché. Its arms hung at its sides as the figure waded through the water towards them. A mouth opened and released a guttural sound that raised the hair on Tara’s neck. She backed away, pulling at Zane’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
She ran up the hill towards the parking lot, with Zane and Seth a few steps behind. When they reached their van, Tara summoned enough courage to look back down the hill.
The figure from the lake was on the shore, kneeling over the drowned poet’s body.
Chapter 7
The ghost of Marty stared down, disbelieving that he was dead. His corpse lay on the grassy bank, the eyelids half-open, staring blankly.
Marty howled in anger and then looked up the hill at the three standing in the parking lot. He released another wail of fury.
They climbed into the black van. The headlights spotlighted the Marty that had risen from the lake. He charged up the hill, squeezing his fists, eager to wrap them around the necks of his tormentors, tear away flesh, claw eyes from sockets.
The van reversed in a frantic arc, giving him a view of orange-yellow flames painted down its side. Tara leaned halfway out the window and held up two middle fingers.
The van peeled away, kicking up gravel and dust as it disappeared up the road.
Marty returned to his butchered corpse, touched its pale face, gripped its right hand. He felt lost without his body, and as his mind tried to make sense of his purgatory, he realized that he’d never again experience the world through five senses, never kiss Jennifer with warm lips or feel the caress of her skin against his. Each love poem that had been a prayer to unite them would now go unanswered.
An overwhelming grief overtook him and he released a lamenting cry. From the hollow pits of his eyes, lake water streamed down his cheeks like tears. He touched his face, feeling damp paper molded around what felt like a head. This strange sensation birthed a new fear inside him.
What have I become?
He examined his resurrected body. The pages from his journal had wrapped themselves around phantom legs, arms, and torso―given form to feet and hands. He studied his moonlit reflection in the lake. Staring back was what looked like a head covered in bandages, like some badly burned victim, but it was the eyes―black, hollow, brimming with lake water―that made him look away in fear of his own reflection.
Marty sat down on a log by the campfire. He remained in its warm glow for several minutes. The wet paper began to dry, forming into a hardened shell. It wasn’t the paper, itself, that held him together, he realized. It was the poems―his sacred words. All those years of emotions―anger, love, lust, pain―had gone into the lake, gestated there, grown into a dark fetus waiting to be birthed. Now the words from his poetry tattooed his papery flesh. Gave him cohesion and strength. The lake’s cold darkness swished inside him. He picked up a log and tossed it into the fire, but the heat did nothing to stop the icy chill. He squeezed his right fist, then opened it. Scrawled into the palm in water-smeared ink was the poem he had written when he was ten and had first discovered he had a dark friend inside.
Cerulean blinked
And there came into birth
A dark side of me
I've come to fear
Always loving
Always angry
Always watching
Always near
The poem conjured a memory of an old house in the woods. The couple who live
d there, Mr. and Mrs. Crowley, were the worst of his foster parents. They often took Marty and the other kids up into the attic where they liked to play “naked-grown-up games”. After months of abuse, Marty ran away to the lake. He pleaded for his friend beneath the water to help. Cerulean had awakened inside Marty that day. The Crowleys eventually found him and took him back to their house. The next time they tried to touch Marty up in the attic, Cerulean took over and kicked Mr. Crowley in the groin, bringing him to his knees. Marty’s dark protector then grabbed one of their switches and whipped both of them until they cried for mercy.
After that, Marty had been sent to another foster home. Two twin foster brothers, Billy and Wes, tormented Marty down in the basement, playing keep-away with his journal, chanting, “Marty’s daddy went to pri-son! Cause his daddy is a psy-cho!”
Marty’d beaten Billy and Wes with a lead pipe, breaking their bones, putting both boys in the hospital. As a child and teenager, when Marty’s rage was triggered, he had turned violent against those who hurt him. Eventually, he learned to channel his rage into his journal and was able to control it.
Now, after being dormant for many years, Cerulean had returned and joined Marty in the black waters inside this new body.
“We must right the wrongs, Marty,” Cerulean said. “Hunt down those who gave you pain.”
Fueled with vengeance, Marty found his clothes and retrieved his keys from the pocket of his jeans. He looked at his corpse one last time. The body was just an empty vessel now. An old skin Marty had shed when he passed from death to some altered state that could only be punishment for his sins. He thought for a moment. He didn’t want to leave his body here to be found by strangers, only to be toe-tagged and examined on a morgue table and then disposed of in some mortician’s crematorium. His body deserved a more poetic burial.
With surprising strength, Marty picked up his corpse and flung it over his shoulder. It felt no heavier than a bag of laundry as he carried it down the old pier where he and his father used to fish. Marty looked out across the dark waters of the lake. It was the womb where his darkness had been born, and now it would be the watery grave of the Marty Weaver who had once walked the earth as a loner, a whipping boy, a silent admirer of girls he never summoned the courage to ask out. He lowered the corpse into the water. He gave no eulogy, only watched his body float away in silence. Then the lake bubbled up around it, accepting Marty’s body, pulling it down into the darkest depths. Perhaps this was a fitting place to spend his afterlife, because after his mother’s death the lake was the only one who ever loved Marty back. Not even the dead poets could do that.
* * *
Marty opened up the trunk of his faded blue ’72 Monte Carlo. Stored inside were a toolbox, cross-shaped tire iron, jumper cables and some chains. There was also his janitor uniform—a set of gray coveralls and workman’s boots. He put on the uniform then climbed behind the wheel. He started up his car and the engine roared. The refurbished Monte Carlo was his prized possession. He’d rebuilt the engine himself.
As he drove away from the lake, he glanced at the clock on the dash. Midnight. There was only one place in town for three freaks to go during the witching hour.
Marty gripped the steering wheel. There were no more tears shed about his death. Only anger roiled inside this new body held together by poetry, and a hunger for sweet vengeance.
Chapter 8
At the Razor’s Edge Roadhouse, Seth sat with Tara and Zane at a corner table, drinking beer. They had cleaned off the blood and changed out of their costumes. Now, they blended in with the crowd. A black metal band was raging on stage, singing about a girl being raped, the death of innocence. At the foot of the stage, a mix of punks and metal heads thrashed in a mosh pit. The rest of the party sat around tables or played pool, drinking and riding whatever high they were on.
Seth smoked a cigarette and fidgeted in his seat. He had been on edge ever since they left the lake. The image of the ghoul that had emerged from the water haunted him. He still heard the wails that raged from its hideous mouth.
“What the hell did we see back there?” Seth asked the others.
“A hallucination,” said Tara. “We dropped acid, remember?”
“How can it be a hallucination, if we all saw the same thing?” he challenged.
Tara glared at him. “Let’s get shitfaced and forget about it.”
“It was Marty’s ghost, wasn’t it?” Seth said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zane said.
Seth believed in ghosts. As much as he enjoyed killing, he didn’t much like seeing the dead bodies afterward. The way they stared at him with blank eyes always freaked him out. He thought of all the hitchhikers and runaways they had abducted and murdered at that cove over the past year. He’d lost count after thirty. Most of the bodies had been buried in the pit. But their first victim, he remembered now, they had wrapped up in a sheet and chains and dumped the body into the lake.
“Maybe it was that hitchhiker we sank a year ago. He’s come back to haunt us.”
Zane punched his shoulder. “Tara said she doesn’t want to talk about it, so drop it already.”
Seth chugged his beer, brooding. Zane sat with his arm around Tara, who nestled into his shoulder. Seth hated it when they made him feel like the third wheel. Someone passed behind him, and a hand grazed his neck. He turned around. “Who touched me?”
“Jeez, you’re paranoid tonight,” Tara said. “Take a V and mellow out.”
Zane pulled out a packet of pills. “Stop being such a wuss bag.” He offered a Valium. “Take one of these.” He and Tara had already popped a couple and now gazed at him with lazy smiles.
He took the V and swallowed it down with his beer.
“Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get laid tonight,” Tara said. “I’m sure there’s some skank around here drunk enough to let you screw her.”
“Fat chance,” Zane said. “Seth only gets to bang ’em when they’re passed out.”
They both laughed.
Seth slammed down his beer bottle. “Fuck you two. I’m outta here.” He grabbed his skateboard and stood.
Tara made a pouty face. “Aw, did we hurt whittle Sethy’s feelings?”
He flipped her off and headed out of the bar.
The night had grown chilly. Seth rubbed at the goose flesh that sprouted across his bare arms. The country road that led back to town was empty. The only signs of life were sounds blaring from the roadhouse bar. THE RAZOR’S EDGE sign glowed in red neon lights. He didn’t like the vibe in there tonight. He felt like shit. He’d lost count of how many beers he’d drunk, joints he’d smoked, and pills he’d popped since noon. Now his high was coming down hard and his head was feeling the brunt of it. In a short while the V would kick in, making him drowsy. All he wanted to do now was get home and crash.
Seth tossed his skateboard on the pavement and skated down the road. He was dizzy at first, and it took a few seconds to get his balance. There were no streetlamps for at least a half mile. But the full moon lit the black ribbon that curved between the pines.
In the gravel parking lot behind him a set of headlights flashed on, followed by the start of an engine―an old muscle car’s souped-up motor by the powerful sound of it. Someone else was calling it a night. Seth thought about asking for a ride, but decided skateboarding home would clear his head. He only gave the car a casual glance as his skateboard made a snake pattern down the hill. The car sat idle in the lot, its motor purring. Perhaps the driver wasn’t leaving after all, had only gone to his car to snort a line or get a blowjob.
Seth rounded a curve and lost sight of the roadhouse and the car with the headlights. Riding the downward slope in a steady glide, feeling at one with his longboard, he wondered if his mother was passed out drunk again. He pictured her lard ass splayed out on the couch in front of the TV, its flickering screen the only light on in the house. There was sure to be a pile of beer cans around her and the stink from a box of rotting pizza on the coffe
e table. Probably some truck driver or salesman sleeping in her bed too. His mother, a diner waitress, brought home all kinds of strange men.
Seth hated going home. Usually, he shacked up with Zane and Tara, who often camped out of their van. Sometimes when Tara got horny and Zane banged her, she’d let Seth touch her tits and her hand would jack him off. He hoped one day he could screw Tara, but Zane was too territorial. Some nights, like tonight, the two were just into each other, making Seth feel like they didn’t want him around.
In less than ten minutes, he reached the bridge that spanned the river which separated his hometown from the outside world. On the other side he could see the small college town surrounded by mountains and pines. The chapel bell tower of St. Germaine College stood out in the center of town. At this hour, most of the buildings and houses were dark. A few dogs barked in the distance.
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