It might have been Dustin, who’d already proven to have a delicate stomach. Good time to put an end to this, Tim told himself as he reached for the Stop button on his console.
“You dash yourself down, you pick yourself up, you dash yourself down and you knock yourself out…”
“What the…”
Tim hit the Stop button again. Nothing stopped.
The room was a tangle of fallen bodies, and now they were all up again before toppling, all together now, back to the hard floor. Ouch. One boy was sobbing, his broken eyeglasses glued to his face by sweat. Droplets of blood mixed with his tears.
“Stop it right now,” Tim snapped, still jabbing the Stop button.
“I can’t,” several boys moaned.
“The hell,” Tim grumbled, staring at his console.
“You slam your head down, you raise your head up…”
He heard small heads battering the carpeted floor and what sounded sickeningly like a bone snapping. A scream filled the air.
He grabbed his car keys and used them to pry the cassette out of the deck, leaving a trail of gutted tape in his wake. He crushed the whole mess in his fist and threw it against a wall.
“…and you bang yourself up…”
Tim stared helplessly at his sound system.
The recorded voices, a nameless woman backed by a small male chorus, sounded unfailingly upbeat. Manic, even, as they directed the eight-year-olds to bang skulls, break bones.
Tim followed the electrical cord to the wall and yanked it out.
“You throw a punch here, you throw a punch there…”
The bruised boys threw and absorbed punches. The scene was so unreal, the music’s very existence so utterly impossible that Tim could only watch and listen with a serene sense of awe washing over him.
“My God, what is happening here?”
The music turned sluggish and bassy, as though powered by dying batteries. By the time Patty’s boss and her husband hurried to the bloodied and sobbing children, the music had faded out.
He was sipping his beer quite calmly when the Davenports issued their quiet threats of police calls and legal action. The lawyer husband was calling for an ambulance for a boy with a broken nose and another with what looked to be a fractured wrist when Tim slunk away.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
If Patty had been asked to describe the furniture upon which their flat-screen television sat, she might have failed. The wooden trunk with its brass hinges and clamps had been bequeathed her by her grandfather, and was probably worth something. As a girl, she’d used it to store old yearbooks and photos and silly love letters which e-mail made obsolete. As an adult, she’d made it serve as a nearly forgotten TV stand.
How could it possibly interest her now?
And yet it did. Its contents tantalized her, while at the same time she wanted to know nothing. This much Patty already knew—whatever she found in there would change everything. So she sat on her new sofa with its bright splashes of color for fifteen minutes, just staring at her steamer trunk, before bringing herself to act.
The TV, a thirty-inch flat-screen, was too heavy for her to lift alone. She’d have to wait for Tim.
Yeah, right. Truth was, she’d have to be finished before he walked in the door or he’d do everything possible to dissuade her. This much she knew, without knowing how or why.
She grunted, her back and shoulder muscles bunched. Let her knees do the work, she told herself. Protect the back. She half lifted, half dragged the television from off of the trunk and let it slide down one leg and bump to the floor.
She stood, grimacing with lower back pain despite her caution, but felt unaccountably proud. The hard work was over. All she had to do now was unbuckle the clasps and peel open the lid.
Then look the dead body right in its rotting eyes.
Patty chuckled, a dry, untrustworthy sound. She felt herself grow giddy. She took a deep breath and set aside everything that got in the way of what she was about to do. She squatted before the trunk and the lid squealed as she raised it.
Papers. Letters. High school yearbooks. Photographs. Report cards and programs for plays she’d been in during high school. Pretty much what she’d expected. Dusty, musty odor and a treasure chest of shit. No rotting meat or blood scent.
The tapes and CDs and vinyl record albums were stuffed, a few at a time, on the ends of shelves and in nooks and crannies and wherever else an inch or two of space allowed. Patsy Cline and Johnny Paycheck and Charlie Pride. The Highwaymen and the Carter Family. George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, Lorrie Morgan and Craig Morgan, Hank Williams and Hank Snow. Traditional country, Tim had called it while sneering at what he called the white-hat, MTV, cute-chick cowboy crowd.
Patty took each out and read the covers and let them fall into her lap and around her knees, three hundred dollars worth of hidden music. She stood, brushing off tapes and album covers and CD jewel cases like lint.
She’d been the monster, keeping him from the music he needed in order to advance his career. That’s how he would have explained it to the very understanding Melinda Dillon.
Of course, understanding women were never in short supply for good-looking Tim Brentwood. Kayla Cosgrove came to mind. And others. Tim’s too-understanding mother and sister, for instance.
But did Melinda Dillon, his newest understanding female, understand the real problem? That the economy was a bitch and staff cuts were going on all around her, the dead bodies piling up closer and closer, and there was no money to spend for more music so Charlotte Taft could give him a few more hours of work for a few weeks, until she changed her mind about country and went back to karaoke. When that happened, Tim would find himself screwed again at the Beer Belly Saloon.
Patty stopped, unaware until that very moment that she’d been pacing, living room to dining nook, dining nook to living room.
Screwed again at the Beer Belly.
Was that what her anger was really all about?
She sank to her sofa to think it over. Tim had met Kayla Cosgrove at the Beer Belly, but Patty had forgiven him for that indiscretion. She had, hadn’t she? Or had her fury spilled over to infect the bar itself and his chosen line of work? If there’d been no Kayla, how would she have felt about him buying the music? Would he have then felt the need to smuggle it into their home?
The phone on the dining room wall went off like a shot.
She jumped like before, and wondered if it was Tim. Doubtful. He’d call her cell. She stared at the music spilling out of her steamer trunk and tried shaping what she’d say if it was him.
She picked up the phone on the third ring.
“I never thought you’d go soft on me, sister.”
Reminding Patty of how Tim had shared his little secret with the woman on the line. How could Patty forgive or forget that? She tried to gather her scattered thoughts and form them into some kind of a reply, but Melinda Dillon beat her to it.
“Seems like the more you know, the more you put up with. Stand by your man, eh? Tim’s got the Tammy Wynette version in your trunk. You oughta listen to it.”
Patty’s hand went numb on the receiver, but she said nothing.
“At what point do you say enough is enough?”
“Jesus,” Patty croaked. “How did you—”
“Maybe I can help you step out of the way, girl. Under the underwear stack in his third dresser drawer, take a look. By the way, what’s with all the tighty whities. Looks like the excitement’s gone, but that’ll change. You can’t imagine what he’ll be wearing with me.”
She managed to get to the bedroom okay, so she mustn’t be in too much shock. She even remembered to notice in the mirror how normal she looked. She was holding up just fine. Her honest appraisal was that she even looked attractive, all things considered. She was tall and fit, with a creamy complexion, slender nose, soft eyes, high cheekbones, welcoming hips.
Patty stopped in front of Tim’s dresser and foug
ht down a surge of panic. She pulled open the third drawer and scattered aside a stack of white cotton briefs.
She’d expected love notes, phone numbers on cocktail napkins, condoms, porn, whatever. What she found were letters with foil windows. She frowned.
It was porn, all right. Financial porn. A hidden stash from Visa and MasterCard and Discover Card. There were unopened bills from his gasoline credit card and WalMart and Target. Bills he’d said he’d paid. Bills he was responsible for paying while she covered the rent and bought groceries and paid the utilities and saved for a house. She carefully tucked his unpaid bills back into the bottom of his drawer and layered his underwear over them like before. She closed the drawer and left the bedroom. She returned to the kitchen just as the phone rang.
“Seen enough?” the caller asked. “Or you’re still standin’ by your man?”
Again she said nothing. Numbness tightened her jaw and desolation robbed her of words, even if she had a mind to form them.
“No, I can see it wasn’t enough,” the voice on the line purred. “I’m coming over and I’m out of patience. Be gone by the time I get there.”
Patty took the phone receiver with her as she sank slowly to the dining room floor. It was some time before she became aware of the dial tone droning in her ear.
Chapter Forty
The first gunshot splintered the wood and must have gnarled the metal lock. The front door slammed against the wall that stopped the momentum of the kick.
All of this, from the front of the apartment, Patty heard from her fetal position on the dining room floor. She scooted forward and peeked her head forward just far enough to see the petite, sandy-haired woman who’d haunted her thoughts, the woman who’d just gotten off the phone with Patty and was now in her living room with a big gun in one hand.
The second shot whistled by her ear and slammed into the wall behind her, sending missile shards of plaster streaming off in all directions. Patty bleated, a short gasp of a sound, as she crawled into the kitchen. She hunched against a bank of cupboards, panting, trying to steady herself while listening to a sound she couldn’t identify at first. A small sound, like metal being dragged across metal.
Then she realized she’d hit the nail right on the head. Melinda Dillon was latching the front door by locking the safety chain in place. Sealing the two of them alone together in the upstairs apartment.
Steady, steady, steady, Patty told herself. She came to her feet and froze. Spooked by the tiniest sounds, wondering if she’d have the strength to move when the time came that she heard approaching footsteps. Her limbs felt limp, drained, yet strangely stiff at the same time. She glanced one way and took in the back door, every inch of it caked in white paint.
She’d realized the safety hazard of only having one exit, but the door had been painted over long before them and it would take a blowtorch to unseal it. Now she wished they’d taken the time.
What about Mrs. Lascic? Patty could hear the soft murmur of the landlady’s television set, her constant companion down there. Patty pictured the woman lying dead in a pool of blood. Why else wouldn’t she be pounding on her ceiling for silence by now?
Then she had no more time for wondering anything. That soft creaking of the wooden floor wasn’t the house settling. It was a deliberately light tread. It was Melinda Dillon coming for her.
All at once, her assailant gave up the sneaky approach. She ran the last several steps into the kitchen, both hands coming together with the big black gun between them.
Patty bolted for the back hallway just as the gun spit fire and roared sound. Smoke and flash. A chunk got taken out of the wall beside her, throwing tile shrapnel into the air and into one eye. Patty stumbled like a drunk as she moved past the refrigerator which erupted in more sound and fury as she passed, a wedge of its door instantly gone. Her ears rang, her sight flattened as she made as much use as possible of her one good eye. She raced down the hall, bouncing off walls left and right, until she found her way, almost by blind luck, into her bedroom doorway. She slammed the door behind her.
With energy unknown, Patty grabbed her dressing table and dragged it across the floor to the bedroom door. She was sobbing, moaning, praying prayers she didn’t even realize she knew.
She heard a knock on the door.
She clamped a hand over her mouth to hold back everything that wanted to escape. She was trying to keep her eyeball from moving in its socket because it felt like glass grinding into the lens. Tears of pain and panic and dust irritation spilled down her face.
“You were warned,” rasped the woman on the other side of the door. “Now let me in.”
The scratching at the wood was actually more damaging to Patty’s shattered nerves than the voice. She backed away from the door, drew near a window and gauged the distance to the asphalt driveway two floors below. Too far, she reluctantly admitted, but she could use it to garner a little attention.
Patty picked up her dressing table chair and hurled it at the open window.
If it were a movie, the window frame would have exploded and the chair would have sailed out amid a noisy shower of glass. The way it played out, though, the chair didn’t more than crack the glass pane at the top of the frame. One leg punctured the wire screen, causing the chair to hang awkwardly from the sill.
The scratching sound ended and a fist crashed through one of the vertical panels on the bedroom door.
“Stand by your fucking man,” a voice screamed.
Patty whirled as Melinda Dillon’s hand, lacerated by hundreds of wood splinters, pushed against the dressing table barricade. The hand gripped it and twisted her dressing table back and forth to loosen it from under the doorknob.
The door moved.
Walk, Patty told herself. Just like in a fire drill at school. Mustn’t run and twist an ankle like those silly bimbos in the slasher flicks. She opened her closet door and told herself, Yep, this is about right. Trap yourself in the closet, first place she’ll look when she breaks through.
She pulled the door shut behind her and groped blindly at the clothing hanging in her way. Her cheek felt warm from the tears trickling down her face. At least she hoped it was tears.
She heard wood squealing from outside her dark prison and knew her bedroom door was being shoved open, the barrier worked free. The psycho bitch would see the cracked window first, figure out that she hadn’t made her way out that way, and look under the bed next. About all she’d have left after that would be the closet.
Meaning that Patty had maybe thirty seconds to save herself if she worked quickly and quietly.
She groped through layers of hung clothing, machete-slashing her way to the back walls. She fell to her knees, her hands pressed against that wall like she was trying to move it.
She’d been too loud. The closet door handle turned sooner than expected.
Patty’s hands scrabbled harder at the wall as the door squeaked open behind her to admit enough outside light to reveal the outline of the small panel door in front of her. She yanked its tiny knob and felt the door trying to pull free. But it had been a long time since anyone had used it, and it was nearly sealed by summer humidity. Nevertheless, on the third yank, it yielded.
“Get out here, you bitch,” Melinda Dillon screamed as Patty wormed through the small opening.
She slammed the Alice-in-Wonderland door behind her and crawled up the half dozen steps that took her into the pitch-dark attic. She remembered it to be high in the middle and sloped on two sides.
Still on all fours, Patty moved toward what she imagined to be the attic’s center. She scrunched up her nose against the scents of cedar and dust and dried-up mouse droppings. Her nose tickled and she pictured herself sneezing in the dark just as the psycho-bitch cop came up looking for her. Her head banged painfully against something, a hard angled ceiling, momentarily putting her sneeze instinct on hold.
The darkness would have been more helpful if she knew much more about the space than the pursuer who
’d soon be joining her. But Patty had only been up here once before, Tim coaxing her one night with a flashlight, like a kid on a camping trip.
Patty moved forward—what she hoped was forward—until she no longer banged her head when she stood straight. She groped for the lightbulb that should be dangling from a chain at the very center if she remembered the room’s layout.
She rapped two knuckles so hard against it that she thought she might have shattered the bulb. She didn’t, but the contact got the bulb swinging so hard and high on its chain that Patty’s flailing hand lost contact with it again. She glared at the black void above her with her one good eye, convinced that she should be able to at least detect motion, but she couldn’t.
She could still hear soft rustling sounds downstairs, hangers squealing on metal rods as the woman cop shoved them aside.
There. The lightbulb hit her hand in one of its weakened return arcs and Patty clenched it. She worked her fingers up its length until they found the on-off switch.
She got, for her efforts, a dull yellow glare, a smear of light that managed to create more shadows than it dispelled. But it was something. It told Patty that there was a three-wheeled grocery cart up there with her. The sort of thing that some past tenant without means of transportation had taken from a supermarket and never returned. Instead, sealing it in this attic tomb with her.
Of greater importance was the shuttered window at the room’s opposite end from its staircase and Alice-in-Wonderland door. With one hand clamped over her injured eye and limping from causes unknown, Patty crept to the window and jerked the flimsy shutter aside, letting in light, air and a cascade of dead flies. The sash was up, held in place by one of those sticks paint stores give away for stirring paint.
Her fingers found one of many holes in the tattered screen and went to work on it, enlarging it so that her hand, then her arm, then half her upper body fit through.
The small panel door at the foot of the stairs screeched against its jamb, making Patty work faster. The door slammed against the wall as the bitch tried prying it free.
Malevolent Page 18
