Trauma
Page 15
Bonnie stood and stared at them for a long time. Dan folded his arms and waited for her, patiently.
“You told me you disposed of the mattresses before you drove home,” Dan reminded her. “But since you were so uncertain of your schedule, I had it checked through. I found out that you didn’t actually come here to deposit these mattresses until four forty-seven P.M., not long before the facility was due to close for the day.
“You made a phone call at home to Esmeralda at three oh two P.M. I suspect that Duke and Ray were already dead by then. All you had to do was cut the mattresses open, roll their bodies inside, stitch them up roughly, and drive them down here to the dump. They could have been bulldozered over and buried here forever.”
Bonnie looked at Duke’s swollen, distorted face, and at Ray’s, but they didn’t even look like her husband and her son anymore. “It was Itzpapalotl,” she said, very quietly. “I asked her for help. I asked her for a way out. So she came, and she set me free, free like she is, like a butterfly.”
Answering Machine Message
“Bonnie … this is Howard Jacobson. You remember, you brought me that caterpillar not long ago. Parnassius mnemonsyne, the Clouded Apollo. You may be interested to know that the larvae were brought over in several large consignments of Mexican kale. Because of the unusual weather conditions, especially El Niño, they hatched out and prospered, and we’ve had reports of them as far afield as Santa Barbara and Bakersfield. They don’t really have any relevance to our specialty, I’m afraid … determining the time of death … but you can’t win them all, can you? Don’t be a stranger, love, Howard.”
Night Falls
That night, Bonnie was awakened by a rustling sound. She turned over, grunting; but then she heard it again. She opened her eyes and sat up.
Standing in the darkest corner of her cell was a figure with an expressionless white face and wings with glittering edges. The figure made the softest of whirring noises, and its feet scratched on the concrete floor, as if it had claws.
“Itzpapalotl,” Bonnie whispered.
The figure came nearer and leaned over her, spreading its wings wider. She could see its eyes now, and a tongue that shone like a black-bladed knife.
“Take me with you,” said Bonnie. “Please, Itzpapalotl. Take me with you.”
Get Out of Jail Free
They had searched her, of course—but they had reckoned without her intimate knowledge of the ingenious ways in which people can end their own lives. When they opened the cell door at 6:03 A.M. the next morning, they found her lying on her back, staring at the ceiling in the same way that she had stared at the ceiling on the day Duke disappeared, except that there was an ever-widening pool of blood spreading across the floor of her cell, and she was dead.
She had pulled one of the buttons off her mattress and burrowed into the kapok filling with her fingernails, tugging out one of the springs. Then she had used the sharp end of the spring to tear open the veins in both her wrists.
At 11:17 A.M., Lieutenant Dan Munoz came into her cell to look at her. He stood by the door for a long time, wondering what it was that had brought her to this.
He didn’t notice two butterflies with almost colorless wings, which had been perched on the steel mesh that covered the windows. After he had been standing there for a while, they fluttered out the door and along the corridor, then out through the bars to the open air, and the morning sunshine, and freedom.
A Note on the Author
Graham Masterton (born 1946, Edinburgh) is a British horror author. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, Graham Masterton’s first novel The Manitou was published in 1976 and adapted for the film in 1978.
Further works garnered critical acclaim, including a Special Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America for Charnel House and a Silver Medal by the West Coast Review of Books for Mirror. He is also the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger for his novel Family Portrait, an imaginative reworking of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Masterton’s novels often contain visceral sex and horror. In addition to his novels, Masterton has written a number of sex instruction books, including How to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed and Wild Sex for New Lovers.
Discover books by Graham Masterton published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/GrahamMasterton
Burial
Corroboree
Feelings of Fear
Fortnight of Fear
Holy Terror
House of Bones
Lady of Fortune
Trauma
Praise for Graham Masterton
“One of the few true masters of the horror genre.”
—James Herbert
“Masterton is a crowd pleaser, filling his pages with sparky, appealing dialogue and visceral grue.”
—Time Out (London)
“Graham Masterton’s novels are charming, dangerous, and frightening … but all based on enormous erudition.”
—L’Express (Paris)
“One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time.”
—Peter James
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published by Signet in 2002
Copyright © 2002 Graham Masteron
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eISBN: 9781448214198
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