The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Two

by James D. Jenkins

  Ignacios Lazo

  424-70-4063

  Mr Farley slipped the Social Security card back into his shirt pocket. He exchanged the in-flight magazine for the black loose-leaf notebook in the seat back pocket. He held the notebook in his lap for several minutes while he watched the man in the blue corduroy jacket next to him, timing his breaths by the sweep second hand on his watch. The man seemed genuinely to be asleep. Mr Farley declined a beverage from the stewardess, who did not wear a name tag, and put his finger to his lips with a smile to indicate that the man in the blue corduroy jacket was sleeping and probably wouldn’t want to be disturbed. When the beverage cart was one row behind and conveniently blocking the aisle so that no one could look over his shoulder as he wrote, Mr Farley opened the black loose-leaf notebook on his lap, and completed the entry for Halloween:

  2155/Ignacios Lazo/c

  27/Dallas Texas/ Airport/

  RR/38/Head onto Faucet

  RR meant Rest Room, and Mr Farley stared at the abbreviation for a few moments, wondering whether he shouldn’t write out the words. There was a time when he had been a good deal given to abbreviations, but once, in looking over his book for a distant year, he had come across the notation CRB, and had had no idea what that stood for. Mr Farley since that time had been careful about his notations. It didn’t do to forget things. If you forgot things, you might repeat them. And if you inadvertently fell into a repetitious pattern – well then, you just might get into trouble.

  Mr Farley got up and went into the rest room at the forward end of the passenger cabin. He burned Ignacios Lazo’s Social Security card, igniting it with a match torn from a book he had picked up at the casino at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. He waited in the rest room till he could no longer smell the nitrate in the air from the burned match, then flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and returned to his seat.

  The flight arrived in Mobile at three minutes past eleven. While waiting for his blue Samsonite bag, Mr Farley went to a Yellow Pages telephone directory for Mobile. His flight from Dallas had been Eastern Flight No. 71, but Mr Farley was not certain there would be that many hotels and motels in Mobile, Alabama, so he decided on number 36, which was half of 72 (the closest even number to 71). Mr Farley turned to the pages advertising hotels and counted down thirty-six to the Oasis Hotel. He telephoned and found a room was available for fifty-six dollars. He asked what the cab fare from the airport would be and discovered it would be about twelve dollars, with tip. The reservations clerk asked for Mr Farley’s name, and Mr Farley, looking down at the credit card in his hand, said, ‘Mr T. L. Rachman.’ He spelled it for the clerk.

  Mr Rachman claimed his bag, and went outside for a taxi. He was first in line, and by 11:30 he had arrived at the Oasis Hotel, downtown in Mobile. In the hotel’s Shore Room Lounge, a band was playing in Halloween costume. The clerk on the hotel desk was made up to look like a mummy.

  ‘You go to a lot of trouble here for holidays, I guess,’ said Mr Rachman pleasantly.

  ‘Anything for a little change,’ said the clerk as he pressed Mr Rachman’s MasterCard against three copies of a voucher. Mr Rachman signed his name on the topmost voucher and took back the card. Clerks never checked signatures at this point, and they never checked them later either, but Mr Rachman had a practiced hand, at least when it came to imitating a signature.

  Mr Rachman’s room was on the fifth and topmost floor, and enjoyed a view down to the street. Mr Rachman unpacked his small bag, carefully hanging his extra pair of trousers and his extra jacket. He set his extra pair of shoes, with trees inside, into the closet beneath the trousers and jacket. He placed his two laundered shirts inside the topmost bureau drawer, set his little carved box containing an extra watch and two pairs of cuff­links and a tie clip and extra pairs of brown and black shoelaces on top of the bureau, and set his toiletries case next to the sink in the bathroom. He opened his black loose-leaf notebook and though it was not yet midnight, he began the entry for 110185, beneath which he noted:

  110185 Eastern 71 Dallas-Mobile

  Taxi $9.80 + 1.70

  Oasis Hotel/4th St

  T.L. Rachman

  In the bathroom, Mr Rachman took scissors and cut up the Visa card bearing the name Thomas Farley, and flushed away the pieces. He went down to the lobby and went into the Shore Room Lounge and sat at the bar. He ordered a vodka martini and listened to the band. When the bartender went away to the rest room, Mr Rachman poured his vodka martini into a basin of ice behind the bar. When the bartender returned, Mr Rachman ordered another vodka martini.

  The cocktail lounge – and every other bar in Mobile – closed at 1 a.m. Mr Rachman returned to his room, and without ever turning on the light, he sat at his window and looked out into the street. After the laundry truck had arrived, unloaded, and driven off from the service entrance of the Hotel Oasis, Mr Rachman retreated from the window. It was 4:37 on the morning of the first of November, 1985. Mr Rachman pulled the shade and drew the curtains. Towards noon, when the maid came to make up the room, Mr Rachman called out from the bathroom, ‘I’m taking a bath.’

  ‘I’ll come back later,’ the maid called back.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Mr Rachman said loudly. ‘Just leave a couple of fresh towels on the bed.’ He sat on the tile floor and ran his unsleeved arm up and down through the filled tub, making splashing noises.

  Mr Rachman counted his money at sundown. He had four hundred fifty-eight dollars in cash. With all of it in his pocket, Mr Rachman walked around the block to get his bearings. He had been in Mobile before, but he didn’t remember exactly when. Mr Rachman had his shoes shined in the lobby of a hotel that wasn’t the one he was staying in. When he was done, he paid the shoe-shine boy seventy-five cents and a quarter tip, and got into the elevator behind a businessman who was carrying a briefcase. The businessman with the briefcase got off on the fourth floor, and just as the doors of the elevator were closing Mr Rachman startled and said, ‘Oh this is my floor, too,’ and jumped off behind the businessman with the briefcase. Mr Rachman put his hand into his pocket, and jingled his loose change as if he were looking for his room key. The businessman with the briefcase put down his briefcase beside Room 419 and fumbled in his pocket for his own room key. Mr Rachman stopped and patted all the pockets of his jacket and trousers. ‘Did I leave it at the desk?’ he murmured to himself. The businessman with the briefcase put the key into the lock of Room 419, and smiled a smile that said to Mr Rachman, It happens to me all the time, too. Mr Rachman smiled a small embarrassed smile, and said, ‘I sure hope I left it at the desk,’ and turned and started back down the hall past the businessman with the briefcase.

  The businessman and his briefcase were already inside of Room 419 and the door was beginning to shut when Mr Rachman suddenly changed direction in the hallway and pushed the door open.

  ‘Hey,’ said the businessman. He held his briefcase up protectively before him. Mr Rachman shut the door quietly behind him. Room 419 was a much nicer room than his own, though he didn’t care for the painting above the bed. Mr Rachman smiled, though, for the businessman was alone and that was always easier. Mr Rachman pushed the businessman down on the bed and grabbed the briefcase away from him. The businessman reached for the telephone. The red light was blinking on the telephone telling the businessman he had a message at the desk. Mr Rachman held the briefcase high above his head and then brought it down hard, giving a little twist to his wrist just at the last so that a corner of the rugged leather case smashed against the bridge of the businessman’s nose, breaking it. The businessman gaped, and fell sideways on the bed. Mr Rachman raised the case again and brought the side of it down against the businessman’s cheek with such force that the handle of the case broke off in his hand and the businessman’s cheekbones were splintered and shoved up into his right eye. Mr Rachman took the case in both hands and swung it hard along the length of the businessman’s body and caught him square beneath his chin in the midst of a choking scream so that
the businessman’s lower jaw was shattered, detached, and then embedded in the roof of his mouth. In the businessman’s remaining eye was one second more of consciousness and then he was dead. Mr Rachman turned over the businessman’s corpse and took out his wallet, discovering that his name was Edward P. Maguire, and that he was from Sudbury, Massachusetts. He had one hundred and thirty-three dollars in cash, which Mr Rachman put into his pocket. Mr Rachman glanced through the credit cards, but took only the New England Bell telephone credit card. Mr Maguire’s briefcase, though battered and bloody, had remained locked, secured by an unknown combination. Mr Rachman would have taken the time to break it open and examine its contents but the telephone on the bedside table rang. The hotel desk might not have noticed Mr Maguire’s entrance into the hotel, but Mr Rachman did not want to take a chance that Mr Maguire’s failure to answer the telephone would lead to an investigation. Mr Rachman went quickly through the dead man’s pockets, spilling his change onto the bedspread. He found the key of a Hertz rental car with the tag number indicated on a plastic ring. Mr Rachman pocketed it. He turned the dead man over once more and pried open his shattered mouth. A thick broth of clotting blood and broken teeth spilled out over the knot of Mr Maguire’s tie. With the tips of two fingers, Mr Rachman picked out a pointed fragment of incisor, and put it into his mouth, licking the blood from his fingers as he did so. As he peered out into the hallway, Mr Rachman rolled the broken tooth around the roof of his mouth, and then pressed it there with his tongue till its jagged edge drew blood and he could taste it. No one was in the hall, and Mr Rachman walked out of Room 419, drawing it closed behind him. He took the elevator down to the basement garage, and walked slowly about till he found Mr Maguire’s rented car. He drove out of the hotel garage and slowly circled several streets till he found a stationery store that was still open. Inside he bought a detailed street map of Mobile. He studied it by the interior roof light of the rented car. For two hours he drove through the outlying suburbs of the city, stopping now and then before a likely house, and noting its number on the map with a black felt-tip marker. At half-past eleven he returned to the Oasis Hotel and parked the rental car so that it would be visible from his window. He went up to his room, and noted in his diary, under 110185:

  1910/Edward P Maguire/c

  43/Mobile Alabama/Hotel

  Palafox 419/1133/Jaw and

  Briefcase

  On a separate page in the back of the looseleaf notebook, he added:

  Edward P Maguire

  (110185)/9 Farmer’s

  Road/Sudbury MA 01776/

  617 392 3690

  That was just in case. Sometimes Mr Rachman liked to visit widows. It added to the complexity of the pattern, and so far as Mr Rachman was concerned, the one important thing was to maintain a pattern that couldn’t be analyzed, that was arbitrary in every point. That was why he sometimes made use of the page of notations in the back of the book – because too much randomness was a pattern in itself. If he sometimes visited a widow after he had met her husband, he broke up the pattern of entirely unconnected deaths. Mr Rachman, who was methodical to the very core of his being, spent a great percentage of his waking time in devising methods to make each night’s work seem entirely apart from the last’s. Mr Rachman, when he was young, had lived in a great city and had simply thought that its very size would hide him. But even in a great city, his very pattern of randomness had become apparent, and he had very nearly been uncovered. Mr Rachman judged that he would have to do better, and he began to travel. In the time since then, he had merely refined his technique. He varied the length of his stays, he varied his acquaintance. That’s what he called them, and it wasn’t a euphemism – he simply had no other word for them, and really, they were the people he got to know best, if only for a short time. He varied his methods, he varied the time of the evening, and he even varied his variety. Sometimes he would arrange to meet three old women in a row, three old women who lived in similar circumstances in a small geographical area, and then he would move on, and his next acquaintance would be a young man who exchanged his favors for cash. Mr Rachman imagined a perfect pursuer, and expended a great deal of energy in evading and tricking this imaginary hound. Increasingly, over the years Mr Rachman’s greatest satisfaction lay in evading this nonexistent, dogged detective. His only fear was that there was a pattern in the carpet he wove which was invisible to him, but perfectly apparent to anyone who looked at it from a certain angle.

  No one took notice of Mr Maguire’s rented car that night. Next morning Mr Rachman told the chambermaid he wasn’t feeling well and would spend the day in bed, so she needn’t make it up. But he let her clean the bathroom as she hadn’t been able to do the day before. He lay with his arm over his eyes. ‘I hope you feel better,’ said the chambermaid. ‘Do you have any aspirin?’

  ‘I’ve already taken some,’ said Mr Rachman, ‘but thank you. I think I’ll just try to sleep.’

  That night, Mr Rachman got up and watched the rented car. It had two parking tickets on the windshield. At 11:30 p.m. he went downstairs, got into the car, and drove around three blocks slowly, just in case he was being followed. He was not, so far as he could tell. He opened his map of Mobile, and picked the house he’d marked that was nearest a crease. It was 117 Shadyglade Lane in a suburb called Spring Hill. Mr Rachman drove on, to the nearest of the other places he’d marked. He stopped in front of a house on Live Oak Street, about a mile away. No lights burned. He turned into the driveway and waited for fifteen minutes. He saw no movement in the house. He got out of his car, closing the door loudly, and walked around to the back door, not making any effort to be quiet.

  There was no door bell so he pulled open the screen door and knocked loudly. He stood back and looked up at the back of the house. No lights came on that he could see. He knocked more loudly, then without waiting for a response he kicked at the base of the door, splintering it in its frame. He went into the kitchen, but did not turn on the light.

  ‘Anybody home?’ Mr Rachman called out as he went from the kitchen into the dining room. He picked up a round glass bowl from the sideboard and hurled it at a picture. The bowl shattered noisily. No one came. Mr Rachman looked in the other two rooms on the ground floor, then went upstairs, calling again, ‘It’s Mr Rachman!’

  He went into the first bedroom, and saw that it belonged to a teenaged boy. He closed the door. He went into another bedroom and saw that it belonged to the parents of the teenaged boy. He went through the bureau drawers, but found no cash. The father’s shirts, however, were in Mr Rachman’s size – 16 ½ x 33 – and he took two that still bore the paper bands from the laundry. Mr Rachman checked the other rooms of the second floor just in case, but the house was empty. Mr Rachman went out the back door again, crossed the back yard of the house, and pressed through the dense ligustrum thicket there. He found himself in the back yard of a ranch house with a patio and a brick barbeque. Mr Rachman walked to the patio and picked up a pot of geraniums and hurled it through the sliding glass doors of the den. Then he walked quickly inside the house, searching for a light switch. A man in pajamas suddenly lurched through a doorway, and he too was reaching for the light switch. Mr Rachman put one hand on the man’s shoulder, and with his other he grabbed the man’s wrist. Then Mr Rachman gave a twist, and smashed the back of the man’s elbow against the edge of a television set with such force that all the bones there shattered at once. Mr Rachman then took the man by the waist, lifted him up and carried him over to the broken glass door. He turned him sideways and then pushed him against the long line of broken glass, only making sure that the shattered glass was embedded deep into his face and neck. When Mr Rachman let the man go, he remained standing, so deep had the edge of broken door penetrated his head and chest. Just in case, Mr Rachman pressed harder. Blood poured out over Mr Rachman’s hands. With a nod of satisfaction, Mr Rachman released the man in pajamas and walked quickly back across the patio and disappeared into the shrubbery again. On the other si
de, he looked back, and could see the lights going on in the house. He heard a woman scream. He took out a handkerchief to cover his bloody hands and picked up the shirts which he’d left on the back porch of the first house. Then he got into his car and drove around till he came to a shopping mall. He parked near half a dozen other cars – probably belonging to night watchmen – and took off his blood-stained jacket. He tossed it out the window. He took off his shirt, and wiped off the blood that covered his hands. He threw that out of the window, too. He put on a fresh shirt and drove back to the Oasis Hotel. He parked the car around the block, threw the keys into an alleyway, and went back up to his room. In his black loose-leaf notebook he wrote, under 110285: