Jack-in-the-Box

by William W. Johnstone

  “Softly now,” Nora instructed.

  The music began to play.

  In the den, Phil shifted restlessly in his chair. He could not concentrate on the program. His thoughts kept returning to his father’s gun cabinet, in the study. His father owned only two long guns: a rifle and a shotgun. Since the moment of the shooting, Phil had thought about his father’s shotgun, his thoughts urged on by strange voices in the boy’s head. The voices spoke to him several times a day, urging him to do awful things. At first the suggestions seemed awful. Now they seemed to be the right thing to do.

  The voices had justified the killing of his father. And they had convinced the boy there was more killing to do.

  “I would, Phil,” the now-familiar voice entered Phil’s head.

  The boy sat in the chair and listened.

  “There is no need to just sit and think about it. Do it!”

  Phil nodded his head in agreement.

  “And it would be fun, too. You know all those who professed to be your friends are now having fun and laughing at you.”

  “Laughing at me?”

  “Yes. Laughing at you.”

  “The bastards!”

  “And bitches.”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on, Phil,” the voice urged, speaking silently and soothingly. “Just get the shotgun, look at it, touch it. It might help you to make up your mind.”

  “Yeah,” Phil said. “You’re right.” He rose from the chair to walk into his father’s study. He found the key to the cabinet and unlocked it. Had he turned his head at just that moment, he would have seen a hideous face looking at him through a window. The lips were drawn back in what the woman felt to be a smile. The tangled, matted hair resembled a modern-day Medusa. The woman’s eyes glowed with evil and madness.

  Phil touched the lightly oiled barrel of his father’s twelve-gauge pump shotgun. His father had accepted the rifle and shotgun as gifts from a man he had successfully defended in a case. Phillip had never used them to hunt, only to skeet shoot several times a year at a club.

  Phil had asked his father to show him how to operate the rifle and shotgun, and his dad had.

  Phil took out the twelve-gauge and hefted it, feeling the balance of the expensive weapon. He removed the plug as his father had shown him, and loaded the shotgun full with three-inch magnums. He stuffed his pockets full of shells and then found his jacket, slipped it on, and filled the jacket pockets with shells too. There was a strange smile on the boy’s face. He took a hunting knife from the cabinet and fitted the sheath onto his belt.

  “That’s good, Phil,” the voice spoke to him. “That is very good. You know what you have to do, so do it.”

  “Yes,” the boy whispered. “Yes, I know. All right. I’ll do it.”

  “Fine. You’re doing the right thing, Phil. They’re laughing at you right now. You know they are.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “They should be punished for that. It isn’t right for them to make fun of you. And that’s what they are doing.”

  Phil’s eyes changed, turning hard and bright and mean. His fingers gripped the shotgun. “Yes, You’re right.”

  Phil walked out into the hall, carrying the shotgun, his pockets bulging with shells. He looked up toward the second floor landing. He was not surprised to see his sister there. He had been expecting her.

  Nora stood slim and pretty, dressed all in black, Silver death’s-heads on her collars. Her blond hair was clean and brushed and shining. She raised her right arm, the fingers straight and stiffened. “All praise the Dark One,” she said. “Power to those who worship the Prince of Darkness. Long may the Third Reich reign. One people, one Reich, one leader: the Prince of Darkness.”

  “Yes,” Phil whispered. “Do I get a pretty uniform like yours?”

  “All in time. Listen to me, Phil. Do you renounce all faith and belief in God?”

  “Yes,” Phil replied, mesmerized by the sight and sound of his sister. He felt a strange power take control of him.

  “Good, Phil. That’s good. Now, do you loathe and despise all things pertaining to Christianity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you renounce mother and father and pledge total allegiance to Satan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you renounce all ties to things of this earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe in the superiority and purity of the Aryan race?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now go and do what you know you must.”

  Phil turned and walked through the house, exiting out the back door.

  The jack-in-the-box began laughing. Nora’s girlish laughter joined in. The house rang with evil laughter. The girl waved her hand and the laughter ceased. Nora returned to her bedroom. She closed the jack-in-the-box and placed it in the rear of the closet. She saluted the Nazi flag and removed it from the wall, folded it carefully, lovingly, and placed it in a drawer. She removed her SS uniform and put it back in the trunk. She changed into pajamas and slipped into bed.

  Everything was going well. Right on schedule. This night should prove very interesting. Oh yes. Most interesting.

  The jack-in-the-box laughed, muffled by the closed container.

  A mist materialized in the room, red-tinted and foul-smelling. A misshapen and horrible figure rose out of the mist to hover over Nora’s bed. The child slipped out of her pajamas and spread her legs, allowing the creature to enter her.

  Nora moaned as she physically became one with the creature.

  The woman dressed in tattered rags had watched Phil leave the house. She waited in envy as the marriage was consummated between the child and Satan. She slipped silently onto the back porch and softly made her way up the stairs. She paused on the landing, averting her eyes as the mist leaked from under the closed door to Nora’s bedroom. She waited until the mist was gone.

  “Go to your place, Jane,” Nora called. “And don’t come out again until you are instructed to do so.”

  “Yes,” Phillip’s sister said. “At once. I only live to serve you, little princess.”

  “Stop babbling and let me rest!”

  “Yes, missy.”

  Jane climbed the short flight of steps to the attic. She found her place in the darkness. She curled up like the evil animal she was born to be and went to sleep.

  Phil was ready to begin his bloody night’s work. He smiled at the thought.

  Happy New Year, everybody!

  26

  Phil walked the alleys and dark backyards toward Alec’s house. He knew Carl and Betty would be at the club this New Year’s Eve for the big bash. He also knew that Alec was having a party at his house that night, and he had not been invited. That pissed him off. All of them were probably sitting around making out and drinking beer and laughing at him. The dirty bastards. Some of them were probably screwing too. Phil was still a virgin. But that was about to change. Soon.

  He approached the house from the rear, after checking all the houses close by. He heard the music playing and the laughter of young people having their noisy fun.

  Phil would show them some fun. He gripped the shotgun and touched the hunting knife. Yeah. He’d turn this party into a real sharp blast.

  He laughed softly at that.

  Phil pulled on thin leather gloves and jacked a shell into the chamber, feeding another shell into the magazine. He stepped up onto the porch, knowing the back door would be open. The Tremains never locked their back door.

  He looked in through a window and saw Linda Greene in the kitchen. She was alone, pouring beer from the can into a glass. Phil licked his lips.

  Phil laid the shotgun aside and tapped on the window. Linda looked up, a frown on her face. When she saw who it was, she smiled and walked to the back door, opening it.

  “Hi, Phil!” she said. “I didn’t know whether you were coming or not.”

  “I’m planning on coming,” Phil said. “Come on out here, Linda. I want to talk to you.”


  She hesitated, then shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, Phil.”

  Linda stepped out onto the porch and Phil hit her on the jaw, knocking her to the floor, stunned. He tore at her clothing, ripping her jeans off, stripping her naked from the waist down. He dropped his jeans and underwear to his ankles and forced the girl’s legs apart.

  Linda groaned and bit at her lips, fighting back a scream. She endured the rape in silence as Phil hunched on her.

  When he was finished, he jerked up his shorts and jeans. Linda curled into a soft ball of hurt and glared at him.

  “I hate you, Phil Baxter!” she cried.

  Filled with rage, he reached down and cut her throat, the sharp blade ripping her. He kicked her body off the porch. It hit the ground with a soft, lifeless thump. He slipped into the house, past the kitchen, and into a room where he waited.

  “Hey, where’s Linda?” the voice rose over the throbbing of music.

  Phil recognized the voice as George Miller’s. Big jock type. Phil realized he had always hated George.

  “In the kitchen,” Susan Ward said.

  “I’ll get her,” George said.

  But when he went in she wasn’t to be found. He saw the back door open and went to look outside.

  The sight that awaited him shocked and sickened him.

  George’s mouth worked up and down, his Adam’s apple bobbing, no sound coming out. He walked around the body, not believing what he was seeing.

  Phil appeared out of the darkness and drove the blade of the knife into George’s back, all the way up to the hilt. It wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies. George made all sorts of disgusting sounds. He cried out and moaned and jerked his body. Phil grunted as he pulled the blade out. That wasn’t as easy as the movies made it seem either.

  Phil dragged the still-jerking and crying George into the dark room off the kitchen and began whacking at the boy’s throat with the bloody hunting knife. He stopped his gory work and wiped his blade clean on George’s shirt. He stepped into the kitchen and found a long butcher knife with a thick, heavy, very sharp blade. Then he resumed his whacking. Blood sprayed the walls and the floor; blood covered Phil.

  “Hey, what are you two doing in there?” someone yelled.

  The red-tinted mist gathered on the back porch. Eyes appeared from out of the mist, unblinking and staring in satisfaction at the scene.

  Phil locked the dead bolt of the kitchen door and put the key in his pocket. He slipped through the house, walking into a bedroom, his silent movements not disturbing a boy and a girl making love in a spare downstairs bedroom. Phil stood and watched.

  What did disturb the coupling pair was when Phil picked up a heavy iron bookend and beat their heads in with it. He knocked them both unconscious and then hammered their heads into a messy, unrecognizable, bloody mass of bone and blood and brains.

  Phil slipped into the foyer and locked the front door, again using the dead-bolt lock and again pocketing the key. Moving quietly, with the butcher knife tucked behind his belt and carrying the shotgun, Phil locked as many of the windows in the house as he could. The noise of the rock-punk music, turned up very loud, covered his silent, shadowy movements.

  Then he bumped into a warm, soft, breathing body.

  Carrie Dewese. She jumped back in fright then laughed nervously as she recognized Phil.

  “What are you doing sneaking around, Phil?” she asked. “Why . . . that’s a gun!” She looked at him in the gloom of the bedroom. “God, Phil, you’re covered with blood!”

  “How very astute of you, Carrie,” Phil said. He butt-stroked her with the shotgun, the butt breaking her jaw and dropping her unconscious on the floor. Then he sawed and hacked at her throat with the butcher knife.

  Her screams brought other kids running. It took about ten seconds for the crowd to react. Pandemonium took over. Some of the girls began screaming; some of the boys began puking. Everybody began running around in a wild panic, not knowing what to do.

  Phil knew what to do, even without the voice telling him.

  He stepped under the archway and began pulling the trigger of the shotgun. Phil knew the very loud music would cover much of the shotgun’s blast. The houses on both sides of the street had been dark and empty; all the adult residents of the very affluent neighborhood were at the country club for the big party. And a cold rain had begun falling, deadening the bloody night.

  Brains splattered the walls as slugs tore the life from the knotted-up young people in the den. Blood dripped from the walls, the drapes, the pictures hanging in the den. Great jagged, smoking holes appeared in the expensive paneling. Pictures were torn loose, smashing on the floor.

  Phil ducked back into the darkness and quickly reloaded. He ran through the house and once more appeared in the door leading to the kitchen. Several young people were at the back door, struggling and screaming, trying to open the locked door, trying to escape the carnage. Phil leveled the shotgun and pumped five rounds into them, knocking them spinning, great bloody holes in their bodies. Blood splashed around the kitchen.

  Phil reloaded and turned the muzzle of the shotgun toward the hall, pulling the trigger. Pieces of teenagers bounced wetly around the hallway, smearing the walls and ceiling and floor with a deep crimson.

  Phil stepped over the crying, moaning kids and walked through the house. Everybody was down. No, there was one huddled in a corner. Phil blew the boy’s head off. He caught movement to his right. A closet door closing. Grinning Phil reloaded as he walked. Pausing, he turned the stereo up, the rock-and-roll music blasting the quiet. Phil thought it blended in quite well with all the crying and moaning.

  He jerked open the door and found Susan Ward huddled on the closet floor. She was shaking and weeping uncontrollably. Her terrified eyes lifted. “Oh God, Phil!” she wailed. “Don’t kill me! Please, God, don’t let him kill me.”

  Susan began slobbering. She banged her head against the closet wall, her eyes wild with sudden madness. Phil poked at her with the muzzle of the shotgun. There was no response. Susan was totally bonkers. Flipped out into zonkoville.

  Then Phil remembered something: Where were Alec and Jennifer? He walked through the house, pausing to cut the throat of each boy and girl as he searched. Alec and Jennifer were not in the house. The moaning and crying had ceased. The house knew only the throb of rock and roll as hearts labored and stopped beating. Stepping over the sprawled bodies, Phil looked outside just as headlights of a car flashed, pulling into the driveway.

  “Ah-hah!” Phil said, grinning through the blood splattered on his face. He unlocked the front door and turned off most of the lights in the den. He crouched down in the foyer, waiting. The door opened and Jennifer stepped inside. Phil drove the butcher knife into her soft belly and jerked up, the blade tearing through stomach and nicking the heart. Jennifer fell to her knees, dying in a vaguely prayer-like position. He drove the butt of the shotgun into Alec’s belly and then kicked his friend in the face, knocking him out.

  Phil stripped Alec down to his underwear and then stripped off his own gory clothing. He dressed Alec in his clothing and put on Alec’s clothes. He put the shotgun in Alec’s hands, several times pressing the unconscious boy’s fingers all over the blood-splattered barrel of the weapon. He put the butcher knife in Alec’s hand, pressing the fingertips onto the blade several times. He very carefully tossed the knife across the room. He found stashes of grass on several of the kids and put them in Alec’s pocket. He found some blues and greens and stuck the pills in Alec’s mouth, rubbing his throat until the boy swallowed them.

  Very carefully, he made his way back to the kitchen. He picked up the phone and dialed the police emergency number. “Please help me,” he said. “It’s just awful.” He made his voice gruff and hoarse. “There’s blood everywhere. Everybody is dead. I’m at 1006 Maplewood Drive. No, no! God! Don’t!” he screamed. “Please, Alec, don’t kill me. God, Alec, you’re crazy! Don’t . . .!” he screamed, letting the phone fall against the
wall.

  He pressed the fingers of a dead boy onto the receiver and let it dangle. He left the house by the back door. Carefully, keeping to the shadows, he walked through the rain to his house. He was home long before the wailing and moaning of sirens cut through the wet night. Quickly he showered and changed into pajamas and robe. He put Alec’s clothing into the clothes hamper, at the very bottom. He would wash clothes tomorrow. He’d been doing that since his dad had . . . gone. Helping out his mother. She would think nothing of it. He went into the study and broke the lock on the gun cabinet. He replaced the few shells he had left, and closed the door. He settled down in the den, watching TV.

  Like his sister, whom he now loved very much, even worshipped, Phil was beginning to appreciate the value of a good joke. And the events of this night had been funny. The way they all jerked when the slugs hit them. Like cute little dance steps. Might call it the Hot Lead Boogie. Phil laughed at that.

  But upstairs, in her bed, Nora was furious. Her brother had botched it all up. Phil was supposed to have been caught.

  Goddammit!

  The red mist materialized, soothing Nora. Telling her it was all right. Everything would work out. Just be patient.

  In the closet, the music began playing, lulling Nora into sleep.

  In the den, Phil chuckled.

  27

  “Turn loose of your cock and grab your socks, buddy,” Paul Weaver quoted the old military wake-up call.

  “Wh . . . what?” Sam mumbled. Sheela opened her eyes and looked at him. They were in Sam’s apartment, in Sam’s bed. They had chosen to celebrate the New Year in their own fleshy way, and then had fallen into a deep sleep. Sam looked at the bedside clock-radio. They had not been asleep long. “What’s up, Paul?”

  “There’s been a goddamn massacre at the Tremain house. That’s just up the street from the Baxter house. Eighteen kids shotgunned and stabbed to death. One girl totally flipped out, and the Tremain boy, Alec, is going to be charged with eighteen counts of Murder One.”

  Sam sat up straight in bed, now wide awake, the adrenaline pumping. “Paul, I don’t believe the Tremain boy had anything to do with it.”