Okay with me, I said.
As she was filling out the paperwork inside the shack I sized up the Mazda. I didn’t like the bench-type front seat. Her legs were shorter than mine, which meant that when she drove, my knees would be in my face. And there was a big dent in the front right fender, and quite a bit of rust along the bottom of the driver’s door. But I didn’t complain. Anything was better than driving Ted Bundy’s VW. That’s how I thought of it, as his. If she’d traded it for a hay wagon I would have kept my mouth shut.
We were moving along the Missouri River and Lorry was driving the pickup. It had more snap than the bug but it was still sluggish. And the front seat was uncomfortable.
You look kinda sour, Lorry said. I hope you’re not gonna tell me the Boston Strangler drove a Mazda.
I grinned. Lorry could be pretty funny and I admired her sense of humor.
It’s not the pickup, I told her. There’s nothing wrong with it.
Then what’s bugging you?
I’m hungry, I said.
I was, but that wasn’t what was bothering me. I’d been fighting back the compulsion all morning. It was spreading inside me, growing like a kind of dark fungus, getting more intense with each passing hour. I guess that’s the way a heroin addict feels when the need for a fix begins to take over his body. The feeling just kind of overwhelms everything else.
What worried me—and still worries me as I write these words—is that instead of lessening after each kill, the compulsion was coming back stronger than before. As if each time I killed someone I was feeding it, making it grow.
For the first time since I came to Montana I wondered if I could control this disorder of mine.
Which is really frightening to consider.
We found a cheap, family-type steak house and Lorry ordered a T-bone while I ordered a tuna salad.
Is that all you’re going to eat? she asked me. I thought you were hungry.
I am, I told her, but I decided just this week to quit eating dead animals. That’s what steak is, you know. A dead cow.
That’s crazy! she snapped. Tuna is fish. They’re animals, too. And they’re dead as any cow right there in your salad.
It’s not the same, I said. They fill cows with all kinds of chemicals in their food. You can get cancer and heart trouble and all kinds of other diseases from eating meat. And the animal fat is almost pure cholesterol. It’s a scientific fact that vegetarians have the best health of anybody. I’ve been giving the whole thing a lot of thought lately and I’ve decided not to eat any more steaks or hamburgers or bacon or ham. It’s a decision I made.
You’re a weird dude, Eddie, she said.
There’s nothing weird about not eating meat, I said. A lot of people are becoming vegetarians now. It’s in the magazines and newspapers and on the news and everything. I just want to be healthy and live to be a hundred years old.
Don’t we all? she said. Well, she added, not actually a hundred. That’s too old, and nobody wants to be a walking corpse.
She ordered strawberry ice cream for dessert. As she was eating it she looked up at me. You don’t trust me, do you? she said.
Why do you say that?
If you trusted me, you’d tell me what’s been bugging you. Ever since we got to Great Falls, something has been bugging you. I got rid of the VW, so it can’t be that.
I’m just a little tired, I said. Then I grinned at her, trying for some lightness. I’ve been in bed a lot, I said, but I haven’t been sleeping much.
She grinned back.
And rubbed her hand over my crotch.
* * *
We were parked at a spot overlooking the Missouri River. No other cars around. The sky above us was like an immense sheet of black punched through with stars. Below us, we could hear the sound of water going past.
Lorry had her head against my shoulder and I could smell the fresh-washed scent of her hair. I would have been enjoying it, except for what was building up inside me.
The compulsion.
You picked the wrong guy to travel with, I finally said. My voice was soft and sad.
Lorry raised her head to look at me. Her eyes burned like jewels in the darkness. I picked the right guy, she said.
If you knew me—really knew me—you wouldn’t say that, I told her honestly.
So what should I know about you?
The darkness roiling up inside me was blacker than the sky. A whole universe of pressure was engulfing me, commanding me. I couldn’t fight it anymore.
I’m him, I said softly.
Him? She shifted in the seat, sitting up straight. What are you talking about?
The one they’re looking for. The one on TV and in the papers. I’m him.
There was a long, strained moment of silence. Lorry’s eyes got real intense and I could feel her muscles tighten underneath her clothes. She edged back from me.
Why are you doing this? she asked. Why are you trying to scare me? I don’t like it and it’s not funny.
I’m not trying to be funny, I said in the darkness.
Her eyes were wide now. She blinked rapidly. This is for real?
For real, I said.
You’re—
—the Big Sky Strangler. I finished the sentence for her.
Lorry threw open the Mazda door and jumped out. She began to run along the grass toward the main highway, about a half-mile from where we were parked.
She wasn’t hard to catch. Most women aren’t. They just don’t run the way a man does. Besides, I’m fast. I can move like a lizard when I’ve a mind to. I caught her before she’d gone five hundred yards.
I grabbed her by the throat, my thumbs in place, ready to dig in. She was shaking and sobbing. Killing her would be easy.
But Lorry was a surprising woman. Suddenly she brought up her right knee in a hard, swift arc and got me right in the balls. I doubled over, gasping, as waves of pain rippled through me.
You sick bastard! she screamed. She ran back towards the Mazda.
By the time I got there, still dizzy with pain, she’d managed to start the engine and was about to drive off. I grabbed through the open window, fumbling for the ignition key, as she tried to slap my hands away.
Then she lashed out with a fist, catching me a good one across the face. I felt blood running from my mouth. It tasted salty.
Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! She kept screaming the word at me as I got the door open and dragged her out. I got her arms pinned, but she was kicking wildly.
I really like you, I told her, spinning her around and punching her in the stomach. Her breath puffed out in a grunt as she collapsed forward.
I mean it, I said. I think the two of us share a very special chemistry. And you’re great in the sack.
She used the “f” word on me, which kind of ruined things. By then I had my thumbs in her throat. She began clawing at me, but I was a lot stronger and it didn’t take long to kill her.
I felt the power.
I was just sorry that it had to be Lorry.
I dumped her in the Missouri River with the idea that she’d be carried to the bottom and that no one would find her body. To make sure, I tied the Mazda’s heavy iron tire jack to her waist. I guess I didn’t do such a great job of it because when her body hit the water I saw the rope come untied. The tire jack sank while she floated on downriver with the current.
I’d botched the job. I’d been nervous and too hasty and I’d botched it.
I knew one thing: I had to get out of Great Falls. Fast. Before anybody found Lorry Haines.
I drove the Mazda out of town a few miles and left it in a wheat field. I couldn’t keep driving it because I didn’t know when Lorry’s body would be found. When it was—when Lorry’s picture was printed in the paper—Fred Farley would remember he’d sold her the Mazda and then the police would be looking for it. Better to be on the safe side and get rid of it early.
I mourned Lorry. I missed her. We’d had a really good relationship, the best of my li
fe up to now. But I’d given in to the compulsion and killed her. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted us to have a life together. But I went ahead and killed her anyway.
Which meant I didn’t have any real control left at all.
Not any at all.
DAVID STARKEY
Ready
DAVID STARKEY was born in Wytheville, Virginia, and has lived in Virginia all his life—“generally in rural, ‘back-woodsy’ kinds of places”. His first short story was published in Twisted No.1 in 1985, since when he has appeared in Grue, Fantasy Macabre, 2AM, Noctulpa, Deathrealm, Ouroboros, The Mage, Portents and Z Miscellaneous.
His story “W. D.” was reprinted in the anthology Tales By Moonlight II, and he has fiction upcoming in Grue, Tales of the Unanticipated, Doppelganger and Iniquities.
Another non-supernatural horror story, “Ready” builds to a truly shocking denouement.
READY
IT DIDN’T ACTUALLY START with the neighbor’s dog.
Something was there from the very beginning. Inside. Waiting. All it needed was the right opportunity.
I’ve been out of high school for a good while now. And college is a few years behind me. I lived at home during college, thank God. Lord, the temptations that lurked on that campus. Thank God I had the shelter of my own parents’ Southern Baptist walls to protect me from all that.
But now, I’m on my own. As it should be. It’s family tradition: when a boy grows up, he leaves the nest, finds his own place, learns what it means to be a man standing on his own.
For me, it meant going to work in a town far away. Coming back to my apartment alone. Channelling persistent urges into writing the sort of poems that would have killed my mother if she ever saw as much as half a stanza.
But I’d been keeping myself clean. Living with my thoughts. Managing to keep myself away from the lure of opportunity—at least until it moved in right beside me.
He moved in while I was away at work one day. And that same night, I heard him through my bedroom wall.
He was beating his dog.
I remember breaking out in a cold sweat. My stomach got tight, and hot, as though I’d just eaten a steaming plate of spicy meat, and my mouth got dry, and then it filled with saliva, and then it got dry again.
That first night, I wanted him to quit. I wanted to make him quit. But after the second night, and the third, and he still kept at it, I grew less and less sure about what I wanted.
I figured he was using his belt, or the dog’s leash, from the sound of things. The wall between my apartment and his was thin, and after I got home from a day on the automotive assembly line, all I wanted to do was eat my TV dinner, write a poem or two, drink my sixpack of Pabst in front of the tube, and go to bed.
That’s when he usually started. Generally I’d be lying there in bed, my eyes wide open, waiting, waiting for him to do it.
Most of the time he would.
I’d hear the sound of a door slam, like he was closing the dog up inside one of the rooms in his apartment. I could only guess what room he was closing up, but I figured that all these apartments were pretty much alike, so I was pretty sure it had to be his bedroom.
“God damn dog,” I’d hear him say. And then I’d hear a slap, like a leather strap hitting flesh, and the dog would yelp.
He usually kept it up about half an hour. Slap! Yelp! Slap! Yelp! “God damn dog!” I’d hear him say. “God damn stupid dog!”
By the time he’d quit, it would usually be around 11:30 or so, and my heart would be racing. I’d be practically shivering. I felt like I had intimate knowledge of the most amazing thing in the world, and that it was going on right next door. This terrifyingly amazing monstrous thing. It began to hold an endless and sordid fascination for me. It aroused intense feelings of disgust, and, something else. I wanted to know if the dog bled, for instance. I wanted to know if he hit it hard enough to make it bleed. My stomach would be killing me when he stopped for the night. Hurting real bad.
I’d get out of bed and piss, and chug some Pepto, and sit there at my dining room table ’til the pain eased up a bit. Sometimes I thought about calling the police, or the SPCA. Having them take away that man’s poor dog.
But I kept telling myself that I didn’t want to get involved in any of it. That guy. His dog. The beating. And anyway, calling the police or the SPCA, that sounded like something some nerdy kid would do. One of those slimy tattletale kind of kids everybody knew in school. One of those creepy wimps that would never do anything about a problem himself, but just run and tell the god-damned teacher.
So I didn’t call.
What I did was this: I made a decision. I decided that if I wanted to do something about that guy and his dog, then I was going to do it myself.
It was getting pretty rough staying up past midnight most every night and getting up for work at 5:30. And even for those few hours I slept, I didn’t sleep well. I tossed and turned, wondering when I was finally gonna do it. Wondering when I was finally gonna get up the nerve to go over there.
I was getting real curious, too. I’d never seen the dog—not once, and I hadn’t seen the man either. It was pretty weird, his living right next door and everything. But he’d been living there a full five weeks and I’d never seen either him or his dog.
Yep, I’d have to say I was getting real curious.
Was he an old man? Or a young man? Some big stupid jerk with a beer belly hanging over the top of his pants? Or some skinny faggy-looking little elementary school teacher who took out all his frustrations on his poor dog? And was the dog big? Or little? It was hard to tell from just a yelp. But I guess it sounded like a pretty big dog. But something real good-tempered. Something that would take a beating without ever fighting back. A retriever of some kind, maybe. Labrador or Golden. Or maybe a setter. One of those nice red Irish Setters. They’ve got a real sweet disposition, or so I’ve heard. You could probably beat one of those setters for half an hour every night and afterwards it’d come crawling over and lick your hands.
The whole thing was making me kind of sick. Jittery. When my stomach wasn’t aching outright, it felt real hollow, real odd. And even though my stomach hurt like hell, I felt hungry most of the time. But food didn’t seem to fill me up. I just kept feeling hungry all the time. And I kept getting more and more curious about what that bastard looked like, and what kind of dog he had.
Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. It was Wednesday night. I was half dead. I needed some sleep. And that son-of-a-bitch started in on his goddamn dog.
What was wrong with the other people in this place, anyway? Why didn’t one of them do something? But, after all, his bedroom was right next to mine. So I’m sure I could hear what was going on in there lots better than anybody else. And I knew there was all this fire-wall stuff between the floors; that stuff kept pretty much all the noise from traveling to the rooms above and the rooms below. I was probably the only one in the whole crappy building who knew what he was up to.
More and more, it seemed like it was my responsibility to do something about it. But I kept hesitating and hesitating, holding off, as if I was afraid of something. As if I was afraid I might learn something I’d just as soon not know.
But I really needed some sleep.
And, dammit, I wanted to at least find out what that guy and his dog looked like.
So, that Wednesday night, after he’d been beating the blasted dog for a good solid ten minutes, I jumped out of bed.
I put on my blue jeans and a T-shirt. And my tennis shoes.
And I stomped into the hallway and pounded on his door.
At first he didn’t answer. But then I heard him coming toward the door. He walked fast, and when he opened the door, he didn’t hesitate. He pulled it the whole way open, all at once.
And he was all smiles.
This nice-looking guy. About twenty-five years old. Tall. Blue eyes. Blonde hair. Mr Normal. Mr All-American.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Mike Turner.
Your next door neighbor.”
“Hello,” he said. He smiled even wider, even warmer, like he recognized an old friend, somebody he could have gone to school with—he looked like he was about the same age as me. He had great teeth, really white. He looked like Mr Success. He was wearing a light gray suit that looked really smart. Great fit.
“I’m Jerry,” he said. “Jerry Rose. Come on in. Nice to meet you.”
He extended his hand, and I shook it. He had a good grip. Firm. Proper. He looked me right in the eye.
This all seemed too weird for me. It seemed wrong—like I had the wrong guy. This guy didn’t seem like a weirdo. He didn’t seem like a guy who would beat his dog. I glanced down the hallway to make sure I’d gone to the right apartment, to make sure I hadn’t gotten his place mixed up with the one next door. Nope. This was the one, all right.
I stepped inside, and he closed the door behind me. His place was clean, comfortable, normal-looking. White walls with half a dozen watercolor landscapes, a tannish-brown sofa and matching easy chair in the living room, a nice glass-and-dark-wood dinette set in the dining room. House plants in all the right places. My apartment didn’t look bad, but his place definitely looked better—classier, if you know what I mean.
“So, Mike,” he said. “You’re my neighbor, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Up kind of late, aren’t you?” he asked.
I saw him glance toward a closed door—it had to be his bedroom door. The layout of everything else I could see was a mirror-image of my own place. His bedroom was bound to be on the wall directly across from my bedroom.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know it’s kinda late. But I was having a tough time getting to sleep.”
“Really,” he said. “Hey, I’m sorry about that. You ought to do what I do.”
And then he opened the bedroom door.
“Come on in,” he said.
Just like that.
“What?” I said.
“In here,” he said. “I’ll show you what you came to see.”
I followed him into his bedroom.
The dog was lying in the corner.
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