Cary didn't have to wait long. Just one hour later, the jury was in.
"Is that a bad sign?" Cary asked Macintosh with alarm. Before, he'd hoped he wouldn't have to wait too long, but now it seemed as though his fate had been decided awfully quick. Too quick.
Macintosh coughed, sputtered, and did not have enough breath to reply. Cary helped him from his chair and they returned to the court room.
Cary's head was spinning and he felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding.
And the hallucinations were back with a vengeance.
As the jury filed back in, one by one, Cary could only stare in open-mouthed horror at what he believed only he could see.
Juror number one, the heavy-set man in work pants and a stained white tee-shirt came in leading juror number two by the hand. Juror number two was Diana Moon limping on stumps, her clothes disheveled, her eyes bulging and her throat livid. Juror number three was a small, bright-eyed, close-mouthed Indian man, the same one who had picked Cary up at the airport. He led juror number four by the hand, who was none other than Joshua Ryan. The Old Man wore a flesh-colored eye patch, just like Cary's own, and he winked his remaining eye when he caught Cary's stare. The four jurors took their seats and left ample room for the rest.
Juror number five was a blowzy blonde wearing an austere black and white maid's uniform, and following her was juror number six, Marlisa Moon. Marlisa's lips were blue and her face was fixed in a hideous death mask of frozen terror. Juror number seven, the cocky, zit-faced kid from Dallas, was leading juror number eight, Terry Applegate, by the hand. Cary wouldn't have recognized the nude, rotting corpse, had it not been for the photos he'd seen. She stumbled blindly, her putrid eyes stuffed into the holes where her nipples should have been. Juror number nine, a wizened old man with a hook in place of his left hand, was leading Juror number ten, Corinna Stubbs, to their seats. She was in less of a state of decomposition than Terry Applegate, but Cary could still see parts of her weathered cheekbones and collarbones showing through her decomposing skin.
Only two more. Cary gripped the sides of his chair and stared at the open door from which they would emerge. It was his mother and his dad, holding hands and grinning. Were they really grinning? They had been burned so badly that they had almost no flesh left to cover their cracked, charred teeth.
Cary's stomach dropped like an anchor and he slid from his chair onto the cold marble floor. He hoped vaguely that he was dying, but knew he was only fainting.
He awoke to a series of sharp slaps on his cheeks. The bailiff took a step back when Cary came around. It wasn't a dream. He was still in the courtroom. Still in the courtroom, but things had changed. The gruesome jury was sitting there, just as they were before, and the judge's podium was still there, but now both attorneys, Winesapp and Macintosh, were flanking the Honorable Judge Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles? Cary squinted and read the plaque again. Mephistopheles. That was the devil's real name, wasn't it?
Cary's eyes moved slowly up to the face of the judge. Cary saw what he looked like for the first time. The volume of his scream shattered his own eardrums.
But somehow, poor Cary could still hear what the judge had to say.
"Cary Bouchard," he grinned indolently, and drew the name out as though he was verbally unsheathing a wickedly sharp dagger. "Are you pleased to meet me? I hope you've guessed my name." The brass name plaque suddenly burst into flames and disappeared in a puff of blue-gray smoke. "I don't like to make it too hard to figure out; I've been Lewis Cipher, Belle Zebubbe, Mel Stafleese, just to mention a few. But I always give you pathetic mortals plenty of hints. Why, Old Scratch is one of my more well-known nicknames. Didn't you realize that?"
He leaned back on his velvet throne. The podium had disappeared, and the two groveling attorneys now sat on the floor at his feet, like dogs. "You were more stubborn than most though, Cary Bouchard. I tried to have fun with you, but you wouldn't play along. Didn't you ever suspect it was me?" His voice took on the tone of petulant child whose playmate wasn't cooperating.
"Why?" Cary gasped. "Why?"
"They always want to know why," the Devil laughed, his preternatural voice sending Cary's blood to scurry. He abruptly stopped laughing and leaned forward, as though ready to reveal an extremely profound secret. "Because," he said, "all the world is a dollhouse and you are my Brandies. Yes, all the world is a stage." Beelzebub paused, examining his black-clawed hands, and went on with a faraway smile. "All the world is a stage. Do you recognize that line, Cary? Forgive me; of course you do. You are a well-read man. That's one of my lines, you know. Oh, I've collaborated with many writers over the passage of time, Cary, not just you. I like writing. If only I could publish under my own name and not always have to ghost-write."
Cary was petrified. But he was mesmerized by the Devil's words. He sat there in his wooden chair and surveyed as much of the room as he could without turning his head. He was still in the courtroom, all right. He couldn't see or hear the spectators and journalists behind him, but he knew they were still there. Is there freedom of the press in Hell? he wondered perversely. The twelve twisted jurors sat in their pews, all of them staring blankly ahead, as though they were in a state of suspended animation. Poor Diana. Was that really her, or was it only an illusion?
The courtroom had grown eerily somber and there was a hot wind coming up through the grates in the floor. Small fires crackled and spit from various places in the room. Cary was sweating bullets, wondering what would happen next.
Macintosh and Winesapp were still perched on the floor beside their master. Macintosh stared at him with steely blue orbs that more resembled fish eyes than human. He was on all fours and his body had taken on the tense mien of a pit bull ready to spring into attack. He even growled at Cary--a desolate, inhuman wail--then dissolved into a coughing frenzy. When the fit passed, the young attorney's white shirt front was covered with frothy, blood-specked foam.
"I'll bet you're wondering about your lawyer," Satan said conversationally. "Well, I'm sorry to say, he never was your lawyer to begin with. Oh, he thought he was at first. But then he began to realize that he was merely an actor on my stage. He has been my lawyer for almost a century now. He sold his soul to me to win a career-making case...but now the poor man can't lose. He keeps reliving the same case over, and over, and over..." Macintosh whimpered pitifully and hunkered down onto the floor, a beaten hound. The Devil reached down and patted the man's head affectionately. "There, there. You'll live to fight another day." The Devil turned his yellow-brown eyes back to Cary. "He died of consumption, so you'll have to forgive his nasty cough.
"And Winesapp." The other attorney perked up at the sound of his name. "Winesapp has been with me ever since he was drowning and said he would do anything if only he could be allowed to live. He was the prosecutor in the case Macintosh sold his soul to win. Little did Macintosh know that his opponent was already one of mine. Poor fellow never stood a chance. Neither did you, I suppose, but I really don't believe in playing fair. It's so boring that way."
"But," Cary blurted, "I never offered to exchange my soul for anything!"
"You wanted fame, you wanted fortune," the Devil said with a casual shrug. An acrid smoke drifted lazily from his nostrils as he exhaled. "I could smell you like a horse smells fear. I gave you a written contract outlining our agreement. Just because you can't read ancient Latin...well, that's no fault of mine."
Cary stared at the fiendish trio before him, his eye watering from the burning hot breeze and caustic smoke. So, he'd been right all along. Old Scratch Press was the root of all of his troubles. Cary was relieved in a way; at least he hadn't imagined it all. Then an icy fear gripped his heart and squeezed it so tight it nearly burst. He wasn't imagining this, either, then.
"You and I might have had a lovely partnership," said Mephistopheles with a tinge of regret in his voice. "You could have had a few more years of the good life, I could have continued to spread my message of death and doom...if only you did
n't go and get too big for your britches. Why, then you gave me no choice but to punish you."
"I'm sorry," Cary pleaded. "I didn't mean to disobey you. Can't I have another chance? Please? I don't want to die."
"Another chance?" the Devil snorted. "Do you think we might play a game of chess with your soul as the stake, like in some old Ingmar Bergman art film? Ha!"
Cary cowered in his wooden chair, still unable to move. "I don't understand," he muttered to himself, shaking his head with disbelief.
"Allow me to explain," the satanic voice boomed throughout the vast courtroom, bouncing off the walls. Some of the jurors cried out in pain and held their heads. "I love to retell my tales of glory," he said at more comfortable level of volume this time. "Let's start with your parents."
Cary's chair turned of its own volition slightly to his left, so that he might see the jury box without straining his eye. The crusty, burned-black corpses stood and turned toward him. "Hello, son," said Jean-Claude Bouchard, the white sclera and blue irises of his eyes standing out in marked contrast to his charred skin. His eyes were warm and soft and full of compassion. "Son, I just want you to know that I still love you, even though it is your fault that I'm dead. If you hadn't been born, Mommie's inner chemicals never would have gone out of kilter like they did," he said gently, speaking to Cary as if he were still twelve years old.
Cary's mother, partially clad in her ravaged taffeta prom dress, her skin and blood burnt and dried into a smooth, hard reddish-black glaze, looked sympathetic. She took Dad's hand and said, "Yes Cary, it is your fault we're dead."
They sat back down and assumed their blank, unknowing stares again just as jurors number ten and number nine stood. "My name is Weldon Sears," said the old man in a gravelly voice. "You don't know me, but I know you! I did this little job just for you," he said, indicating the weather-beaten and yet inexplicably animated corpse of Corinna Stubbs. "I found her just as she was walking by your hotel room." He started laughing then, a maddening cackle. Corinna Stubbs mustered a few tears and they ran like sap from her putrid eye sockets, then she and her murderer sat back down in their seats.
"I'm Terry Applegate," said the second dead prostitute, tottering unsteadily on her skeletal legs. "I didn't deserve to die like this. Why did you have to write that horrible book?" she pleaded. "I was young and had so many dreams."
"I thought the book was cool," said juror number seven, the skinny kid from Dallas. He looked no different than he had in the bookstore that day. He smiled wickedly and looked at Cary, his eyes glistening with malice. "The Applegate bitch wasn't even cold yet when I handed you the photo. I'm surprised you didn't smell the blood on me. But that's how the Master of Lies works. Everything is a grand illusion." He held up his left hand proudly, showing Cary the ebony-lacquered pinkie nail. "I was the one who introduced you to this, wasn't I?"
Cary nodded with mute terror. He was so numb, he almost felt disembodied.
"Yeah, I thought so," the kid went on in his breaking adolescent voice. "This is how the disciples of the Dark Lord show their respect. We can't show our black souls to the world, but we can let them have a peek at a small effigy." He looked like a full, satisfied crocodile sunning himself on a rock.
When they sat, the next two jurors rose. Marlisa Moon's face, when animated, lost its grimace of horror, but took on a look of hard, granite hatred. She looked at Cary, her eyes narrowed into slits of spite. "I knew that trash you were writing could do the world no good," she spat. "Look what happened to me because of it. I always knew such things were rooted in true evil. Now that the lines of communication have opened up across the world, Satan is having the time of his...life. Murders in books, porno over the satellite, devil worship on disk. Now everyone has easy access to evil." Her eyes filled with tears and she bowed her head. "Thanks, Cary," she ended bitterly.
The maid in the black and white uniform stood beside her, and she held Marlisa's wrist with a tight grip. "The Devil made me do it," she said softly, mockingly. "Isn't that what you said to Diana in Sherwood Heights that day on your picnic? I was watching, but you didn't see me. I wasn't in the neighbor's yard anymore. Before following you and Diana, I went into the house where Mrs. Moon was dusting, and she tried to shoo me away. 'Get out, you stupid dog,' she shouted at me. But she sure quieted down when I began my metamorphosis! Please, allow me to demonstrate."
The maid's face began to ripple and pulsate, as though there were a thousand cockroaches scurrying beneath the surface. She cried out in agony--or perhaps ecstasy, Cary couldn't be sure which--as her bones condensed with a sickening crushing sound and her skin sprouted bristly gray fur. The maid's uniform fell away and she sat on her rump, looking at Cary and wagging her tail. Marlisa sat down, too, and stroked the maid's silky gray ears.
Jurors three and four stood. The Indian, tight-lipped as he'd been in L.A., said nothing. But Joshua Ryan, as he had in life, had plenty to say. "You see how dangerous evil thoughts are, Care? Thanks to your sick fantasy, I'm dead now." He indicated the stoic Indian with a quick, dismissive jerk of his head. "And, to make matters worse, 'Gandhi' here is going to be with me throughout eternity. First he kills me, then makes my life miserable!" The Indian smiled. A slow, deliberate smile, full of menace.
Cary cringed and trembled when they sat down. Only two jurors left. Diana Moon and her agent of death. The man, who Cary vaguely recognized as the superintendent of his old apartment building, grinned, exposing an almost completely toothless mouth. He had a three-day stubble on his chin, and his thinning black hair was dull and greasy. The man wore an impossibly stretched, threadbare white tee-shirt over his protruding beer belly, and a battered leather tool belt around his contrastingly slim hips. He reached down and jiggled some keys that were attached by a metal ring to his loose-fitting jeans. "I got a passkey to everything," he grunted.
Diana tried to free herself from his grasp, but she could not. "Cary," she said, so beautiful, so alive. Or so it seemed. Cary watched her bosom heave as she drew breath. Her green brassiere peeked out from the tatters of her torn shirt and glinted in the firelight. Her sweet Eternity perfume negated the bitter, acrid smoke that wafted on the hot air. Cary couldn't believe she was really dead. Couldn't believe it until he looked at the petechial hemorrhaging in her bulging eyes and the stocking tied tight about her throat. "Cary, I don't blame you. I love you."
Cary's eye filled with hot, stinging tears and he began to sob in earnest when Diana sat back down and resumed her blank, dead stare.
"Oh, how touching." It was Mephistopheles's mocking voice. "But haven't you forgotten something, Jury Foreman? The verdict."
Diana stood, her arms primly at her sides her voice full of remorse as she said slowly, "We the jury, do hereby find Cary Bouchard guilty and sentence him to burn in Hell for all eternity."
Suddenly, flames shot up from the grates in the floor and thick, white smoke filled the air. Cary looked down and saw that the marble floor was riddled with hairline cracks that were quickly spreading out of view. He heard a pillar crumbling and crashing to the ground just a few feet away.
The building was falling apart.
But Cary was riveted to his chair and couldn't move. He began to bleat like a terrified lamb and the smoke engulfed him, almost obscuring his view of the Dark Lord, who sat upon his throne, smiling. "Please," Cary implored. "I don't want to die."
"But don't you see," said the sepulchral voice from somewhere beyond the greedy, growing flames, "You didn't survive the car crash.
"You are already dead, Cary Bouchard."
Satan's laughter was still ringing in his ears as the floor beneath Cary's chair was rent and split open. He screamed one final, futile cry as the ground swallowed him up.
Cary Bouchard could see only darkness and feel intense heat as he was pulled down by an irresistible gravitational pull. Moving down deeper, and deeper, just like in his nightmare. But this time, he knew he wouldn't wake up before reaching the bottom.
Epilogue
Cary Bouchard sat bolt-upright in bed, his pajamas soggy with cold sweat. Oh, lord, what a nightmare. It was dawn, and although the windows had been painted brown, some muted sunlight still managed to filter through. Cary had only just beaten the alarm clock. It began to buzz insistently, reminding him as it did every weekday morning that it was time to get up and go to work. Cary punched the button and it quieted. He got unsteadily to his feet, his toenails catching in the scraggly tan carpet. He dreamed he'd had a gorgeous, opulent penthouse, with plush white carpet and marble floors, but there had been something wrong with it...he couldn't quite remember, but he knew that for some reason he was grateful to be here in his lousy little two room apartment.
He went into the tiny half-bath and rinsed his face with water. He peered into the mirror. He looked lousy, like he hadn't slept in days. His eyes were all bloodshot, and he had dark circles beneath them.
After taking off his pajamas and tossing them into the hamper he walked naked into the kitchen to start his teapot brewing. He'd take a shower while it perked. He opened the kitchen window and took the blanket off Tweetie's cage. She blinked a few times, then began to chirp her good morning song. "Hi, Tweet," he said lovingly. Tweetie had been in his dream too, but for some reason she wouldn't sing. She would only sing for one person in the dream...Diana.
Why had he dreamt of that two-timing bitch, he wondered as he stepped into the small shower stall which reeked of mildew and Lysol, each vying for top spot. He hadn't thought of her in ages. She was probably barefoot and pregnant by now, he thought with malice. Cary let the warm water run down his body as he just stood there, enjoying its caress. He soaped himself up, shaved, rinsed, then stepped out.
He threw on his threadbare terry cloth robe and walked into the kitchen. He only had ten more minutes before he had to get dressed and go to the "the hellhole."
The Tragedy Man: A Serial Killer Thriller Page 28
