Another One Bites the Dust

by Chris Marie Green

  I whisked through the front door and outside to the driveway, whirling around, trying to find a sign of Tim or Louis. All I saw was Tim’s abandoned motorcycle.

  Who’d been the female who’d talked to him out here? Where’d they gone?

  I flew to the backyard, but there was nothing. And when I saw Mrs. Cavendish’s empty pool yard over the fence, I got a very bad feeling. It got even worse when I went to the rear of her house and found the door open.

  I streamed in through her kitchen, hearing an animallike sound. I found Louis—why was he so pale now?—on the tile floor, inches from an outlet that he was reaching for, and I got that sick feeling in my pit.

  “Keep . . . going . . .” Louis said with effort. Dammit, he’d left Tim’s house too soon.

  But too soon for what?

  I drifted low along the floor, so very quiet, gradually realizing that the sound I was hearing wasn’t exactly weeping.

  It was the sound of deranged delight. And it was coming from Tim.

  He was kneeling on the floor, staring at his clean hands, which he’d raised in front of him. He was staring at them like there was blood on his skin while he hunched over Mrs. Cavendish, whose still gaze was fixed on the ceiling, her mouth open in a silent scream.

  21

  The lights flickered as Louis slumped by the outlet, drawing too much power from the fuses as he lowered his head. “We were too late. . . .”

  The smell of breath mints traced the air as Tim rocked back and forth by Mrs. Cavendish, his hands still in front of his face as he stared at them. A shroud of silence pressed the oxygen from the room, weighing over me, and my arm was throbbing harder, like steps in a funeral procession for Mrs. Cavendish.

  I didn’t ask Louis what’d gone on in here, or if her wrangler had escorted her to the glare yet. I only rose up from the floor and inched into Mrs. Cavendish’s family room, decorated all over with framed landscapes of the sunny sea. Next to her, a coffee table was overturned, spilling travel magazines and potpourri over the carpet.

  My essence quaked, sputtering in disappointment and failure. Tim had fulfilled all the promises of his bloody dreams. Worse yet, that dark spirit, my killer, had helped him, just as if he’d wanted to make Tim into an apprentice. Back in the other house, he’d said, “I couldn’t resist quietly meddling. I suggested a diversion that might keep him away from Nichelle for a time, so you can thank me later for that.”

  Was this the result of his interference? But he’d also made another comment.

  “I told him something rather helpful, too. . . .”

  What had he meant by that? Because murder didn’t fit the definition of helpful.

  When Tim smiled, laughing softly to himself, I wondered if he’d gotten high from killing Mrs. Cavendish. Just to be sure, I reached out, touched him, using my empathy even if it was the last thing I felt for him.

  Hands around her neck, squeezing and squeezing, her eyes glassy, full of terror, confused and begging. Choking, gasping . . .

  Mom’s face?

  Nichelle’s?

  A rush of adrenaline pumping the heart. Alive, so alive!

  Pulling away from her, having the power of death over life. Fun. That was such fun . . . !

  I shoved out of Tim, retreating to the kitchen, weaker now, my arm like a flashing beacon. He shivered like he was in the middle of an ice storm, but he still had that smile on his face as he kept rocking over her.

  I wanted to maim him. No, better yet, I wanted to ignore the consequences fake Dean had said there would be for killing him and just do it.

  But all my choices didn’t matter worth a shit when Mrs. Cavendish made a final, tiny throttled sound—she hadn’t been dead?—and a misty stream of gray rose out of her eyes. . . .

  I could only stare as she officially gave up the ghost.

  She floated over her body, a pearly gray middle-aged woman in a white mesh bathing suit cover-up, looking at her new hands, just as Tim had looked at his—almost like she didn’t recognize that they were a part of her. She ran her fingers over her arm, then traced her palms down her torso, and I didn’t know if it was because she was realizing she was dead or if she was getting used to the fact that she’d be in this outfit for the rest of her ghost existence. Her long brunette hair was in disarray, probably from her battle with Tim, and when she saw him kneeling in front of her deceased body—the one she’d taken such pains to maintain in her cougar years—she fisted her hands, then let out a blood-stopping scream.

  Too bad Tim couldn’t hear it. Too bad I couldn’t even go over to comfort her because, at that moment, a familiar, beautiful gray shape fogged out of the ceiling, like it’d traveled right through it, and wafted like a veiled bride toward Mrs. Cavendish.

  When she saw the wrangler, her scream cut off. Then she stumbled backward through the air.

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no . . .”

  I had to help her. “This is your reaper. It only wants to escort you to the real afterlife.”

  Mrs. Cavendish finally noticed I was there. She screamed again, this time at the sight of me, then Louis. Then, clumsily, she flew toward the rear of her house where the door was open, her scream drifting back to us, fading a little more with every passing second.

  All that was left was Tim, the wrangler, Louis, and me.

  The reaper didn’t seem to mind Mrs. Cavendish’s rejection. Instead, it gravitated to Tim, its veils flowing as it reached out and used its twiggy fingers to rake down his face, almost like a cruel, curious stroke.

  He gasped in agony, because the wrangler had combed over the same red streaks that he’d put there himself when he had scratched his face after my dark killer had shown up at his house. Now he scrambled away from Mrs. Cavendish’s body, coming to a stand, holding a palm over a cheek. With his other hand, he rubbed an arm. Then he started pacing back and forth while never dragging his gaze away from his victim.

  Had Tim just woken up from his killing glee? Did he realize now that he was in trouble?

  The wrangler paused above, then circled around him, sending a veiled glance to me and Louis. Deep in my essence, I knew what it was thinking.

  He’ll get his. Don’t worry.

  A sense of peace should’ve come over me, but it didn’t. Hatred was hanging through me like parasitic moss, and the wrangler must’ve known that, because it slowly shook its head, discouraging me from doing anything to him on my own, then drifted back to the ceiling in reverse, absorbed into the plaster, leaving a faint shadow of its outline before it disappeared altogether.

  The only sounds I could hear were Tim’s heavy breathing while he paced, plus the thud of his sneakered footsteps. As my own beating essence—the wound on my arm—ran a race with his rhythms, a random thought came to me. He must’ve grabbed the shoes outside, before he’d tried to start his bike. Right before he’d come inside to murder Mrs. Cavendish. He wasn’t crazed.

  My hatred of him swelled.

  “Jensen,” Louis said in that thin, wounded tone. “Don’t do it. Don’t put a mark of darkness on yourself by going after that monster.”

  I stayed silent.

  “The wrangler even warned you,” Louis said. “I saw it with my own two eyes. The universe must have a plan for Tim. Let it happen.”

  He came off like fake Dean when he’d warned me about acting like a god. But I had the power of a god over a dung beetle like Tim, didn’t I? And he was right here, pacing, nervously brushing a hand over his hair as he panicked and probably thought about how to dispose of the body.

  “What else did you see with your own two eyes?” I asked Louis. “How did this happen?”

  Grayness cut with faint color washed through him, thanks to the power outlet, but the fight with the dark spirit had still sapped him. I didn’t even have to ask if that thing had taken a chunk out of Louis and put it into itself during their fight because the answer was clear.

  “I’ll tell you after you plug in,” Louis said. “You’re not looking well.”


  I glanced at Tim wearing a hole in the carpet, and I knew that I’d need all the energy I could get to deal with him. So I slid to an outlet above the kitchen’s Formica counter, near a big blender. Space-age machines were all over the place, but Mrs. Cavendish wouldn’t be using them anymore. There was also a ceramic bowl filled with keys nearby, a patchwork purse, and two clean glasses on the counter.

  I started to electrify myself, ready to spring at Tim at a moment’s notice.

  Louis seemed satisfied with me now, although he kept monitoring Tim, too. “Mrs. Cavendish . . .” He trailed off and soberly corrected himself. “Margaret. She told Tim to call her Margaret when she saw him trying to start his motorcycle and went over to ask if she could help. He’d called her Mrs. Cavendish, and she’d told him that only her middle school students had called her that before she’d stopped teaching and went into online education consulting for herself.” He paused. “When she found out Tim didn’t have Triple-A for towing his bike to a garage, she offered to use her card to get someone out here. He thanked her, and she said that’s what good neighbors do, then asked him in for lemonade while she made the call.”

  “Was she . . . ?”

  “Inviting him in for another reason? I don’t think so, but I think Tim did. He popped one of those breath mints he’s always carrying into his mouth while she got ready to pour lemonade.” Louis lethargically indicated the glasses on the counter. “I was strong enough to follow them inside at that point. Tim was already worked up from the dark spirit, and he started getting insistent about borrowing Margaret’s car instead of having his bike towed.”

  “So he could go and find Nichelle, just like he’d threatened to.”

  “Yes.”

  Had Tim snapped then? Had he given in to my dark killer’s suggestion to kill his neighbor?

  I asked, “Did she refuse to give him her car?”

  “Yes. She was nice about it, and Tim began sweet-talking her, but in an aggressive way. She got nervous and asked him to leave the house.”

  Oh, no. That had probably been the start of the nightmare for her, because Tim’s dreams and fantasies had been much different from this reality. In his mind, she would’ve given him anything, a car, her body . . .

  In the family room, Tim stopped pacing, like his panic had finally subsided. He flexed his fingers, another hazy smile tipping the corners of his mouth as his gaze caressed Mrs. Cavendish’s body.

  Was he remembering what it’d been like to kill her?

  I hunched on the counter, wanting so bad to pry a picture off the wall and send it across the room, decapitating him.

  Louis went on. “I hadn’t juiced up enough over at the other house, so the trip over here made me tired. I wanted to go into Tim’s head to see if a hallucination might calm him, but I needed energy. I couldn’t even throw a lamp at him, not after that dark spirit took a piece of me.”

  I closed my eyes, not just in pain for Louis, but because I didn’t want to talk about my killer. It was too soon.

  Deal with this first, I thought. Then . . .

  Then I didn’t know what.

  Louis looked as sick as I felt. “Tim was barely containing his rage by then, and Mrs. Cavendish started running toward the back door to leave. He went after her, grabbing her arm, telling her that he was going to use her car. That she couldn’t deny him that.”

  “His board, his rules,” I said, tracking Tim while he got to his knees in front of the body.

  Louis continued. “Tim had that look in his eyes. Coveting. Anger. Aggression. A hint of those fantasies we saw in his dreams.”

  I knew what was coming next and steadied myself for it.

  “He took Margaret by the hair,” Louis said, “then dragged her into the main room.” His voice broke. “He started pulling down her cover-up, groping her, telling her to shut up because he’d seen how she flaunted herself in her backyard, knowing that he was watching. But Margaret was a fighter. She kneed him so hard in the groin that it stopped him, but not long enough, because he put his hands around her neck and squeezed.” Louis rested his head in his hand. “There still wasn’t a thing I could do but plug in and try to knock something off the couch nearby to distract him, and I did manage that.”

  I saw a yellow throw pillow on the floor, next to her body.

  “He didn’t notice,” Louis said. “She choked for minutes on end and then . . . It got so, so quiet. And you know what he said to her afterward?”

  “Do I have to know?” I whispered as I watched Tim staring at Mrs. Cavendish.

  Louis said it, anyway. “‘I thought you liked me.’ That’s what was running through his head after he killed her. Not I’m sorry or What have I done?”

  I’d never imagined Tim would be like some of the fiends I’d read about. A male chauvinist rapist? Was that what an expert might call him? He couldn’t fathom how a woman might ever want to deny him. He would even try to explain the attack away by saying something like Tim had said.

  “He didn’t expect her to fight back,” I said. “When she did, he just wanted her to cut it out. He panicked, and that’s why she’s dead. But, even if this was a mistake, he realized afterward that he’s got a taste for this.”

  Maybe even because my dark killer had implanted that in his psyche, encouraging what was already there, finally sending him over the line?

  Tim was reaching out a hand to Mrs. Cavendish’s hair now, and when he began fluffing the strands over her shoulder in a style that Nichelle or his mom might’ve worn, that was the last straw.

  “Don’t touch her,” I said.

  Summoning energy, I rolled it into a bolt and hurled it toward one of the sea pictures, batting it off the wall, sending the frame toward Tim and smashing him in the face.

  He fell backward, his hand over his nose. When he took his hand away, it was covered in blood, and he could make only a yawping sound while getting to his feet. He was so off balance that he leaned over Mrs. Cavendish’s face in the process, dripping blood onto her, adding insult to injury.

  But he’d added even more than that. Trace evidence.

  I got ready to fling another projectile at him because the more blood he left here, the better.

  “Jensen,” Louis said.

  “It would only be right,” I said, my voice trembling. “Didn’t you see him? He was going to pose her body, making it into Nichelle’s or that picture I saw of his mother with her side braid. If we went into him right this second, we’d see a lot of sick new fantasies he’s conjuring up.”

  But I didn’t want to see anything more about Tim Knudson. I wanted him erased.

  Just as I was choosing which picture would look good up his ass, there was a rattle at the front door.

  The knob, twisting.

  Tim took off toward the kitchen, going for the ceramic bowl on the counter, grabbing Mrs. Cavendish’s purse, and fleeing for the back door. At the same time, the front door opened and Amanda Lee walked through, trailed by Twyla, who floated just above her.

  “Randy said you two would be in here. . . .” Amanda Lee froze at the sight of Mrs. Cavendish.

  Out front, a car started. Tim must’ve run around to the driveway to take Mrs. Cavendish’s vehicle.

  “Go!” I said to Twyla, who was at full energy. “He’s getting away!”

  She didn’t hesitate, darting back outside as the squeal of tires hit pavement.

  I unplugged from the outlet, even though my arm was still giving me fits, beating, beating. Louis could stay here and tell Amanda Lee everything, but I wanted to go with Twyla to catch Tim.

  I still wanted to give him more than a bloody nose.

  Zooming out the door, I sputtered on the street, seeing that Twyla and Tim were already gone. I thought of bringing up a travel tunnel for speed, but that wasn’t smart since I didn’t know the destination . . . unless he was going to Heidi’s house.

  But he couldn’t be that dumb. He might’ve even been making a run for the Mexican border, and we had to
get the cops over here quick so they could start pursuing him. Dammit, the minute that Louis or I saw what was going on, we should’ve manipulated a phone to report a killing, but we’d been trying to sort out the murder.

  I went back inside, admitting I wasn’t going to be fast enough for a car until I charged up more. Besides, I could be useful here . . .“The only witness to Mrs. Cavendish’s death was a ghost,” I said. “We need to tie suspicion to Tim before he makes it into Mexico. He had a nosebleed over the body, but it’ll take too long—”

  “To have his blood analyzed so he can be identified and charged by the authorities,” finished Amanda Lee. “I can lie and tell the police that I saw Tim leaving the premises. It’s close to the truth.”

  I had a better idea, and it was totally gross, but it was for justice’s sake.

  “Amanda Lee,” I said, “just call 9-1-1.”

  Then I went about my business. I sailed to Mrs. Cavendish, settling next to her and bowing my head, apologizing to the universe. Then I fortified myself, pressing my hand on her face.

  Once, I’d possessed a willing person. Gavin. He’d invited me in, and since there was no one at home to keep me out of Mrs. Cavendish’s body, I filled her up with my essence and—

  Oh, God, it was stiff and colder than hell inside her body, like I was wearing a wet suit that’d been soaked in icy water. I couldn’t even move her head to look around.

  I was a rubber mummy.

  I heard Amanda Lee gasp, long and harsh. Louis called my name again, but he would understand what I was doing soon enough.

  It took everything I had to manipulate Mrs. Cavendish’s hand, raising her fingers enough to dip them in the blood Tim had dripped onto her face. I reached over to the marble surface of the table that had probably been knocked over during her struggle with him. Then I forced that hand to write:

  T-I-M K-N-

  It was too difficult to get any farther than that, and I let Mrs. Cavendish’s hand trail down in a streak of blood to the carpet. Then I erupted out of her with a jarring thunk, shuddering in the aftermath.