by Kirk Alex
“What do you mean by scaring the living crap out of me like that?”
Monroe Perez did not speak right away. He was busy gasping. Wiped blood from his left ear and corner of his mouth. He was not certain what the source of the bleeding was, where it came from, to what degree he’d been hurt, although most definitely groggy and in pain.
“I heard sounds.” Monroe wanted to pull himself up so that his back rested against the utility cabinet under the sink. Petunia gave him a hand.
“I couldn’t tell who was in here. Thought you were both inside Cecil’s place. . . .”
“I got that, Monroe. Why didn’t you respond? Why didn’t you say something? This could have been prevented.”
“Couldn’t tell if anyone was with you or not. Didn’t want to risk it.”
“Oh Christ. Forgive me, Monroe. I wish you’d have said something.” She rushed to the bathroom for the peroxide and Band-Aids. Cleaned his wounds and cuts. Applied several Band-Aids below his left ear. “I just had no idea, Monroe. Wish you’d have said something to let me know. I had no idea.”
“I’m better now.” Perez asked for a glass of water. “I think the cut was caused by your rings.”
“Thank God. It could have been worse.”
She held a glass under the tap. Chased down two Excedrin, overlooking Perez’s own request for water. He wondered if her husband was still inside the bishop’s place.
“Yes. The big idiot. He’ll get himself shot. He’s trespassing. Biggs can easily claim he was being robbed and shot in self-defense. I hope nothing has happened to my husband in there. I’m all nerves, a wreck. The lights went out soon after Marty broke into the creep’s basement. I don’t know what’s going on. I wish Marty hadn’t gone in there.”
“I called up the Duartes and some other people for help.”
“Thank you. Only I believe it’s going to take a lot more than that. I’ve made up my mind: I’m driving to the North Hollywood police station to make sure they get what’s taking place here, what we’re up against. I’m convinced you can’t deal with the likes of Biggs any other way. I tried to talk sense into my stubborn husband. He just wouldn’t listen. He never listens.”
Monroe rose to his feet. Filled a glass with tap water. Drank a good deal of it down.
“Good luck, Mrs. Roscoe.”
He stumbled outside.
CHAPTER 529
He looked and found the basement window Marty Roscoe had gone in through. Saw the fractured boards, the wrought iron bars and mesh Marty had yanked off and left lying in the litter and weeds. What seemed incredible now is that the window had been sealed shut with a panel from the inside. He made a fist and rapped it with his knuckles—without much luck. He could have kicked at it—and risked breaking a toe, or worse—and decided against it. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get in this way. How then? I’ve got to get inside. Would it be a mistake to try another window? Why hadn’t Marty come back out? Why hadn’t he surfaced to let his wife know that he was all right? It worried him. He walked past the sign. Noticed Biggs’s latest pearl of wisdom:
HAPPINESS IS
SUBMISSION TO GOD
Just one more thing that bothered him about Cecil O. and others like him who used god and religion to cover up for a life and a way that had nothing to do with either god or religion.
Monroe decided he would climb the stoop that led to the front door of the owner’s sign one more time. He stood there and kept knocking, but nothing happened. He called out Marty’s name. Called the owner’s name. And got more of the same. No response. None. What now? Maybe the one and only way to get anywhere was to break in through a basement window the way Petunia’s husband had done. But what if Mrs. Roscoe had been right about Biggs possibly shooting Marty? What if that’s what happened? He’d be a target like Marty Roscoe. Yeah, but what about Rudy? What about Olivia? What if they were in there and needed him?
Monroe noticed Harold Crust checking him out through his parted living room curtains. Harold looked annoyed. The expression on his face said there’s just no peace of mind to be had living next door to Cecil Biggs.
Monroe pounded on Biggs’s front door some more. Kicked it even, once or twice. Got nowhere. Stepped down. Walked to the left side of the church. Considered the first basement window he reached. Had his hands on the iron bars. Tugged up. Down. From side to side. Couldn’t budge a thing. It was evident he lacked the hillbilly’s brute strength. Monroe looked back to see if Harold Crust was still peering. He was, and his wife had joined him at the window. All Monroe Perez could think to do was shrug, as a way of conveying that it was a hopeless situation, just a screwy, totally weird situation, and he was worried sick that his brother might be in this house somewhere, that he was anxious to get inside of, and quite possibly needed him. If Rudy’s note meant what he thought it meant, no two ways about it: Rudy had to be in there.
That’s all there was to it. But how in hell would he make it in?
CHAPTER 530
Petunia’s candle had gone out, and she relit it. She found the other copy of the car keys. Gripped the bread knife handle. Had second thoughts while doing so. Would she be able to use it on a person if she had to? Would she? The ball bat lay on the counter. Bat had more reach. It was confusing and it was ridiculous. If her husband hadn’t stopped her from getting her hands on his gun and going after Biggs she surely would have shot him, shot to kill, so why did the idea of using a knife on someone who deserved it trouble her? Simple. No denying it. She wasn’t made that way. It was a good thing that Marty had stopped her. People like Biggs usually got what they had coming to them. Usually. She still needed something to defend herself with until Marty got back.
She dropped the bread knife for the ball bat and walked in the back to the bedroom. Opened the porch door. Looked around. Needed to shake the apprehension, and could not do a thing about it. The anxiety was back, stronger than ever: clinging, practically suffocating.
She crept to her Datsun sedan parked in the backyard part of the driveway. Inserted, then turned the key in the ignition—and got nada. No juice. Not a thing. Her panel lights did not even come on. Suddenly it got too silent for her. It was too strange, too eerie. Cecil’s place had settled down; the noise had receded and it was quiet, and yet she felt eyes upon her, watching her every move. Her heart was at it again, as before, thudding inside her chest. Perspiration poured from her face. Her palms were moist and she did more wiping on her dress. Tried the ignition again, for the waste of time it was. She thought she’d heard footsteps coming up from behind, moving up the driveway from the garage, but could not be certain. Sat still to listen.
Turned her head. Could not make much out back there. The candle she held in her hand was small, in a porcelain dish, and flickered feebly, hardly yielding enough light.
She popped the hood. Got out and looked. Held the candle over the engine and it was plain enough, clear enough even to her: car battery was missing.
Petunia hurried back inside the house, turned to lock her back door. Stepped into the kitchen. Heard a sound, not unlike a horsewhip frying air, and felt extreme pain and throbbing inside her skull and upper body, as Cecil O. Biggs continued to thrash away at her face and shoulders with the poker in his hands.
Petunia Roscoe soon dropped to the floor. Out cold. Biggs was rather pleased with himself.
“You got discipline coming, Dragon Lady. . . .”
He threaded the poker through a trouser loop. Planted both hands on her head, grabbed big fistfuls of hair, and dragged her across the kitchen, down the hallway, through the bedroom and across the back porch threshold.
Marvin came up the stoop, lifted the woman by her feet, and they carried her this way to the backyard, past the Datsun.
Got her through the opening in the fence her husband created earlier, and carried her inside Biggs’s abode through the rear entrance.
CHAPTER 531
Monroe Perez had not had much luck breaking into the church. Marty Roscoe had been ab
le to do so because Marty outweighed him by about sixty pounds. It was frustrating. Then again, maybe a blessing in disguise. If anything did happen to Mr. Roscoe, at least now he would be able to see to it that help arrived and did something about it.
He entered Roscoe’s place through the front door. Called Petunia’s name. Looked about. Where was she? Left for the cop station? Said she would.
He was back outside. The Roscoes’ car was still there in their driveway, the hood up, battery missing.
What to do now? Sit and wait for the Duartes and others to show? Or drive to the station himself and convince the cops to come out?
There was no real proof that anything was the matter. There was nothing, nothing he had seen with his own eyes and would be able to claim.
Where was Mrs. Roscoe? What was up with the missing car battery? Man, this is too weird.
Monroe walked to Harold Crust’s front door and knocked. When Mr. and Mrs. Crust answered, Monroe proceeded to explain the situation to them in detail. He then noticed that the middle-aged black couple had had a couple of candles burning, their own lights having gone out as well.
He asked them to please see if they could track down Mrs. Roscoe.
“She’s got to be around here somewhere. I better go get the cops.”
“Wait a minute,” Harold Crust said. “How do you know she ain’t got the battery with her and went to get it recharged?”
“Something as heavy as a car battery?” said a skeptical Monroe Perez. “I doubt it, sir.”
He thanked them, and drove off in his pickup.
CHAPTER 532
Petunia Roscoe’s features having been made up (in an admittedly wanting effort) to resemble a combination of Lilly Munster, Vampira, and of course, Charlotte Yvonne Biggs, had been taken to the Fun Room. She had been strapped down to the workbench-cum-butcher’s block, and for a brief moment Biggs considered abandoning his current plans for her and simply planting her in Miss Betty Rutterschmidt’s wheelchair and shoving Roscoe’s tub-of-lard of a spouse with the humongous udders against the two iron prongs imbedded in the wall to the left of the torture board for the briefest of moments. The prongs, always positioned at an inverted angle, so that if her head was shoved against them, far enough and hard enough, would have penetrated her temples and emerged through the eyeballs.
It had been months since he had put a victim through it and was such a sweet trick he looked forward to executing it on someone in the near future, but that someone would not be Petunia Roscoe. No.
He felt a need to save those prying peepers that she had for so long now been causing him nothing but grief with. Want to note my every move and bad mouth me behind my back? Enjoy yakking it up with blue-pill popping hubby Marty whenever I pull up in my backyard with a suitcase because I got business to do and a church to run and a basement full of hungry geeks to supply chow for? Want to run your mouth about me with losers like Lloyd Dicker and the Crusts behind my back that does nothing but cause me to toss and turn in my bed trying to figure out what you’re up to, how many different ways you might try to prevent me from achieving my goals?
Petunia Roscoe was slowly coming to, her eyes opening. Let them. They won’t stay open for long. Blood oozed from her mouth. A tooth dropped out. It was not gold, and it mattered nothing to Biggs. There was blood across the front of her chest, down across those disgustingly enormous hangers.
As far as Cecil was concerned, tits were all right. He didn’t mind tits. Lookit the tits on Pearleen Bell, Yolanda Duarte, and others like them.
Sure, it was part of the package. Not much you could do there. Even Marvin liked tits. Only ones who didn’t care for tits were fruits like Olin Goodfellow and Sassy Sassounian. Well, not exactly correct there. Sassy liked tits. Because if he could grow a pair, they would make him appear more like a woman.
So Sassounian was okay with tits. But to the fags, asexuals, and punks of the world, a woman with tits was just another reason to be disgusted. They hated tits on a woman, any type.
He could never go along with that, unless they were so sickeningly large and flabby like Petunia’s. That was a different tale there. All the more reason to be repulsed by her.
“You gonna do the same damn thing you done to that other ho name’ Connie Higgin’,” said Marvin, when he saw Biggs reach inside his medical bag and come up with the X-ACTO knife he used on the victim he’d just mentioned.
Biggs responded by tossing him the Maglite and telling him to aim it on her eyes.
“Think you can do that, ‘Base’?”
“I think I can do that, me.”
“And hold her head still at the same time?”
“Ain’t nothin’ to it.”
Muck stood at the end where Petunia’s head was. Gripped the top of it in his left hand, while shining the light on her eyes.
Biggs held the blade over her face. As he did with the teacher a while back, pinched the left eyelid between thumb and index finger of his left hand. Petunia Roscoe hadn’t cared for what was about to be done to her and began screaming and shaking her head. There was little that Muck could do to control her.
Biggs looked at him and held the stare.
“Are you not strong enough to keep this cunt from moving her melon? Want me to accidentally cut myself? Is that it?”
“I ain’t wantin’ you to be cuttin’ yo’self no kind of way, me.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“I need both of my hand’ to do it.”
“Put the fucking Maglite down, then. Let’s get this shit over with.”
Marvin obliged. Clamped both of his large hands about the woman’s head and held her in place this way, gritting. Biggs stared at him. Marvin nodded the go-ahead.
Biggs was back at it, his eyes focused on the task at hand: cut the skin above and below her right eye, while the victim wailed away.
“Scream your ass off, Dragon Lady. And while you’re screaming, I’m creaming . . . in my boxers.”
He shifted over to the other eye. Pinched her eyelid and sliced the skin off. Pinched the skin below the eye and sliced that off. Blood bubbled up, then flowed down the side of her face. Biggs cursed. “A nearly perfect makeup job practically ruined. . . .”
Petunia was screaming and crying for her husband. Well, the door was solid and it was shut tight, the curtain over the judas window drawn. Even if Marty could hear enough of it to be pulled to this room, all the more better.
Let him.
CHAPTER 533
Biggs replaced the X-ACTO with a teaspoon. Dug it in on the outside of the right eye the way a grave robber might a shovel into the soil of a grave he was about to pilfer, scooped it in and around. . . . Once, twice, all the way around. More blood and yelping and frothing at the mouth from Petunia Roscoe, aka Pet, aka Babe. . . . Using his best scooping ability, Biggs plucked it. Up came the eyeball, trailing bloody roots. He dropped it into the solution in the jar.
Moved over to the other eye. The same procedure was implemented. In with the teaspoon. Circled the eye with it. Dug it under and pushed up and watched the eyeball surface. . . . Base was flinching. His face turned away some. Cecil didn’t care what the lame-ass did, so long as he held her head in place.
The other eye was dropped into the jar, and he told Muck to let go.
Cecil stuck a wad of cotton into each socket to prevent further loss of blood. Petunia seemed to pass out on him, but then would come back. In and out. Couldn’t decide.
He didn’t mind her passing out, so long as she did not expire on him just yet. Nope. Not this one. Enough of her brains in that fat skull of hers remained intact to prevent instant death from taking place.
There she was, though: going in and out, losing consciousness. Biggs cracked open a vial of smelling salts under her nose and it helped revive her to some extent. Thought to drop a couple of Tylenol gels down her throat. Poured some blood down from a chalice to chase the gels.
“You givin’ the ho aspirin’? After you done took bo
th of her eye’ out?”
“It’s Tylenol, dummy. Extra Strength.”
CHAPTER 534
Marty Roscoe staggered into the Furnace Room. Figured the only reason he was still alive and breathing was because Biggs and his gang of psychos had wanted it that way. Wondered what was behind it. What was the reason?
Hell, there didn’t need to be a damn reason. Man hated his guts; always hated his guts. Wanted to prolong his suffering. Nothing else to it.
He looked around. There was just barely enough light generated by the tv screen from the other room and by that red night-light out there by the patio table to reveal a shivering Patience McDaniel sitting in a corner by herself. She seemed to be staring at the open furnace gate. A pilot light inside the furnace flickered weakly. Place was too goddamn dark all around, as far as he was concerned. He had the loons, Biggs did, and it was probably easier to keep them under control in the dark.
Nut ward. Like the VA. What a fix to be in.
He approached the woman. Spoke to her.
“Help me get out of here. I need a doctor. I’m hurt. I’m losing blood.”
“The plague is coming.” The woman did not look at him as she spoke.
“It’s already here. And I’m the infidel.”
“Some days all we had to eat was dog biscuits.”
Patience McDaniel never turned her head; she did not dare look at anything other than the imaginary flames that supposedly danced inside the furnace. There was no way for her to stop the chills. “The fire is pretty and warm.” Her eyes continued to gaze at the open furnace gate and the flames that weren’t there.
The situation was not difficult to comprehend or took much to gauge on Roscoe’s part: there may have been a pilot light on within the bowels of the furnace, but certainly nothing to notice from where she sat on the floor.
